Michael, where did you find the McClintock quote?
It’s very Goethean , isn’t it?
I think of the ur-organ leaf applying in some way to mitochondria and ribosomes, et al (plus chloroplasts, the photo-synthesizers in plant cells) which are generally considered “sub-units” and even “biological machines” in the cells of a complex organism, rather than “organs” as McClintock quote says.
“How can we hope to understand disease (or health or life itself) if we have no idea WHY cells work the way they do?” Nick Lane, bio-chemist
If we insist on hierarchies based on what we happen to know (or think we know), rather than considering each element of a cell (or organism or…) as a whole in itself as well as part in the Whole?
“I challenge you to look at one of your own cells down a microscope and distinguish it
from the cells of a mushroom. They are practically identical.” (Nick Lane again)
I was inspired by your sharing of her and went surfing online asking for picture quotes of her…it’s a pastime of mine in the"Spirit of Carnal Hermenuctics of Richard Kearney" / " allowing ourselves
to first feel what we see, and not rationalize,intellectualize, or thematize" a practice I do daily with my eyes receiving instead of
reaching out for perspective as a Default ( which doesn’t exclude that action , just a exercising the muscle sense in different ways-relaxing).
YES ,Tis very Goethean & ROCKS my Worldview/s with JAZZ!!!
Well, John said it didn’t matter to him, but both you and Michael voted for Imaginary Landscape, so I’d say, let’s go with that. Like you, however, I am also (more than) allergic to reading longer texts online. When do you think you might have the text that we can start reading? I’m certainly not trying to rush you … I’m just thinking about a plan of sorts.
In the past, for longer readings, we generally met every two weeks. Looking at this book, it seems reasonable to break it down into Front matter (>20 pp.), and then one chapter per session (each ca 40 pp., except for the last chapter (the “Epilogue”), which is only about 20 pp., but is a cycle of poems, not prose text, which calls for slower reading anyhow). That equates to six get-togethers, the first and last of which have less “text”, but more opportunity to talk about how we want to proceed plus some time at the end for a wrap-up. (Modifications along the way are always possible … nothing online is cast in stone: it’s all just magnetizations on electronic media somewhere.)
Our current plan is to get together on 9 Feb (i.e., in about 12 days). It looks like I’ve been volunteered to “organize” things: set up the pages (as the anchor for the archive Marco is deservedly interested in), given some concrete expression to our agreed structure, etc., but given that I’m (for me) disturbingly slow these days, I’m always on the lookout for all that helps me plod along to the goal. The last thing I want to do, though, if offload pressure onto anyone else. 
So, to the whole group: do we want to start on the 9th, or do we want to just get organized?
I’m ready to go with the 9th. This will be a review for me as I read the book recently. I’ve read lots of Thompson and watched many interviews. He has a great many recordings of public talks that still resonate. He considered himself to be a performing artist. Of great interest to me is his involvement in Lindisfarne organization, which sponsored some of the deepest conversations in the 80s and early 90s when Globalism was laying foundations for our current collapse. Thompson was a superb critic of that artificial movement and brought forth the adjacent possiblity of a vital Planetary culture. As a troubled young person in the midst of catastrophic change ( the AIDS epidemic) I drew great strength from the eclectic esotericism at the heart of Thompson’s project.
When it rains it pours, eh? Well, I am quite happy to go with the emerging consensus on this one, so long as I can get a copy of Imaginary Landscape by around next weekend. I have a couple options for this, so I’m fairly certain it will happen. (I do also much prefer holding a physical copy than reading online.)
So I say let’s do it! While I’m waiting, I’ll catch up with some of the other intriguing talks and resources that you’ve all shared here.
Indeed! Back in 2017 we published a kind of philosophical fantasia on the Timaeus in the journal, which would pair well with this idea.
The author (also a poet) has since disappeared, but I’d be glad to attempt to re-establish contact and see if he’d be up revisiting the piece, or participating in our dialogue, if/when the time comes…
Ed, as you will come to know, I love sloooow…so don’t worry about me on that score. But
I will order the book tonight or tomorrow and it usually takes a week or so to arrive. But if not in time, I could
read the first pages online or something, just to get going. I’d like to start on Feb. 9th.
Thanks for your camaraderie in Slowing Down Mode…
Thanks, John, for the link!
I’m open to reading the Timeus. Last read it in the 70s sometime, as part of my Religious Studies major which
was really Cosmic Philosophy… from Taoism to Zen and back.
OK, done deal. I’ll set up a page for our 9 Feb get-together. It will be – as always – a wiki page, so if anyone has anything to edit or add, feel free to do so. 
Hello, just to let you know I’ve ordered Imaginary Landscape and it wil be on its way to me tomorrow.
Won’t arrive until Feb 3rd late morning, though, so I’ll wing it through the first meeting, and catch up afterward…no problem. 
FYI, everyone: the page for our first Imaginary Landscape get-together is up. Feel free to add to it, if you feel it is necessary, and keep the conversation rolling “over there”.
@Ariadne Since we’re meeting every two weeks, our first session is not until Feb 9th. I’m hoping my own copy also arrives by the 3rd or so…
There is an iconic image over Wolfgang’s shoulder that depicts a Platonic Ontology. It’s disarmingly simple.
There is a point in the center and a line that connects center to periphery. The periphery is the corporeal, the perceptual system,the horizontal , the exteriors, operating in space and time. Everything in the circle are spaceless interiors, the Intermediary, including art, dreams, visions mathematics, angelic heiarchies and demons, more real than the periphery. Time in the interiors is more basic than space The center of the circle is beyond time and space, the Transcendent . The center is primary, and does not emerge out of the intermediate or the corporeal. What this entails is mind-expanding. He has let the fly out of the fly bottle.
Physics, a subject I have begun to despise, has become a perverse spectacle as each spin-meister, goes out on stage, wallows in parodies of paradoxes, and offers another spin on another newly discovered subatomic particle. No one understands it , everyone aknowledges that and nothing can be tested or proven falsifiable . Nice work if you can get it.
And I now know why I hate physics so much. This is a parade of materialist dogmatics. Wolfgang claims Einstein’s theory of relativity and Quantum Theory are all wrong. And I think he is right. And if your ontology goes wrong, nothing goes right. But that is a large topic.I plan to read all of Wolfgang’s work as he is re-arranging the way I relate to the world. This kind of transformation in thinking only happens two or three times in a lifetime. Wolfgang has caused me to flip once again!
I finished his most recent book in a long afternoon. It is 95 pages, packed with clarity and designed for an educated lay person. The best critique of scientism I have read and it offers a manifesto for a new vision which shares much with the ancients. Reading him with Steiner is instructive. They both have a Christic orientation. I sense that we are on the edge of a Neo-Platonic revival! This would be on my list of things to read with the group, as it develops many of our efforts and may take us to another level. This is compatible with Kastrup and Faggin and perhaps Tenen but goes even further. And if we have a good ontology what happens to our epistemology? Are we there yet? Yes, I believe we are.
When I saw it, I was immediately reminded of this:
… an old attempt at depicting the Tzimtzum (Contraction of G-d) which in Lurianic Kabbalah made “space” for the Creation.
Dear Ed, I know I’m ages late, but I just found this book info you kindly provided and just now requested it through our zip program which acquires unusual books fo rthe library by buying and mailing them to readers who then return them whenever done and the library, voila! has another great book on its shelves. Funded by CA State I believe.
The timing though is very, er, timely… because I have just once again begun to be capable of such meditations (during an ebb tide of illness) and eagerly look forward to reading this.
A young scientist trying to build his own cosmology larger than the usual scientism allows, asked me about Indigenous cosmologies…which is never a theory or blueprint, but rather a practice/way of relating to everything in our world. This book if I receive and read it, I will recommend to him along with Sand Talk, by Tyson Yunkaporta, which you asked about in one of our Cafes I think? (Bad subtitle: How Indigenous thinking can save the World, which I bet he was forced to add onto his own laconic and striking title.
Anyway, a longwinded thanks you!
There is no such such thing as “late” on the internet. That’s the whole idea of “asynchronous communication”.
The most exciting thing is that you have not only found it but are “up” for engaging it as well. Kudos. As the Kabbalists say, “No paths cross by chance.” (There’s no “when”, only a “where”.) In other circles, “You may not (always) get what you want, but you (always) what you need.” We may not like it, but we get it anyway. Or, as Epictetus phrased it, well, OK, my words: “Lump it and love it.” I’m so glad to hear/read of your re-invigoration:
Zajonc is one of those few academics these days who are willing to utter the word “spirit” (or any of its modified forms). (I don’t care if he’s tenured, and that’s the reason he “feels secure”: what’s security good for if it doesn’t enable one to speak one’s mind.) What is more, he is one of the few who says what he means and means what he says: it’s about how you wrap your head around something, not whether. He lets me know there’s still hope. (That’s the curmudgeon speaking, of course.)
Consequently, I can only support your desire to pass him on to a current student who could benefit therefrom. What good is any of it if we can’t share it?
Which brings me to Sand Talk which I no doubt asked about, but haven’t thought of since then. Old minds get more things wrong than right, even if the important things are beyond the grasp of age. No reason to fret the details. The subtitle isn’t as important as the content: it’s not so as important what you call it, but rather what it’s about that matters.
This is precisely what I’m also trying to integrate at the moment: just what might “Indigenous thinking” encompass? What does it mean? Just what it is it bringing to the party? (I’m excited; I’m sure it’s more than worth the wait. But) no one has been able to bring that across so far. I’m thinking you can help me out here.
My life has been unimaginably “European” up until now. Both as a child and now, as a old guy, I wondered about those who were living on the ground upon which I find myself – then, the Algonkin; now, the Chats [Chatten] (a Germanic tribe that settled in the area of Germany where I now live), and I still do. Unfortunately, living on European soil frequently cross-signals the American (i.e., “continental”) memory. I’m appreciative of every extra-cultural impulse I get.
It is, so to speak, another piece in the puzzle. Not that I’m going to complete any puzzle before I check out. It’ not about completing it; it’s about trying, laying the pieces.
Thanks for the reminder. Hardly longwinded; very helpful. The internet knows no time.
Ed, thanks, I needed to hear your reminder about timelessness…which is one key to “indigenous” thinking. Which is really a way of relating to, rather than “thinking” only or per se. Another is how Space/Matter is primary, while time is kind of a child of theirs, who rarely if ever moves in straight lines, or perfect circles, but often crooked spirals and playful backwaters and… and… well. Tsalagi say all times are mutually touchable, anywhere from anywhere, but most easily from definite places we (or whatever beings) know and love. Is that what “asynchronous communication” means? Kind of hard to model, though.
I actually enjoyed Intersteller and Arrival, two (American?) movies addressing this kind of time. Have you seen either? I really like the music, as well.
I’ve lately been getting more than ever (in several senses) the kind of tweaked lyrics you mention below. “lump it and love it!” It takes a lifetime with things we implicitly felt/surmised in childhood to understand even a little bit and more importantly to live out what we “know” in everyday, on the ground ways, yeah?
Sand Talk is not a beginning place I don’t think. But I can’t point to any (single) book that is. You’ll likely understand when I say that “indigenous” generally has to be grokked (two "k"s or one?), absorbed via patient exposure, by gleaning, by inference, gathering the general and applying it to the very specific, rather than via systematic maps and explanatory lay-outs. Most Indigenous writers don’t explicitly explain things in books. Partly for protection (“not casting pearls” before those who are after pearls they can use/sell) and partly because, as with mystical experience, language (ordinary English anyway) is ill equipped . Indigenous stories are like dreams more than systematic philosophies. And dreams are …Mind expanding, but not easily thinkable or “usable”. The trouble with mind expanding in persons who are not “ripe”, is that like meditation, it can end up magnifying Western mind-troubles. And therefore, increasing Western havoc viz the natural world and vulnerable beings, including other humans, indigenous or not. But you don’t need me to tell you this!
My heritage is Tsalagi AND Irish/Welsh AND a good bit of German with a shake of English. All these areas, as you know, had their own indigeneity. I might say it has been a land-people’s way of knowing, wherever that land may be, in relation to all the beings and elements they live with and depend upon and dream about and fear and revere. The land and beings there long before the people, teach people how to live and behave and why. That foundation gets lost through wars and barbarous raids and droughts and ice ages. I might say indigenous thinking is thinking WITH and FROM, more than ABOUT. This certainly is needed as a strong supplement to Western ABOUT.
I’m interested in hearing more about the Algonkinn. And anything else you want to say about other ancestral/ tribal peoples of your regions. I am almost afraid of my own Germanic roots, due to conditioning, most via immediate family experience, shame, anger, post-war silences, my father’s love of discipline, punishment and “fitting in”. My mother carried Tsalagi, Jewish, and English heritage, while my father carried Germanic and Irish Catholic. My mother was always ashamed of being “Indian” as was her mother. I never was, strangely, happily, though I didn’t claim anything and try not to now. Inch by inch over my lifetime I’ve come to embrace and quietly express Tsalagi roots, ways of perception/conception/action. And to some extent Irish/Welsh. But not my Germanic ones. I keep promising myself I’ll work on that …I took German in high school as my first attempt to warm up to the culture. Didn’t work! Kind of backfired. Closest I’ve come to rapprochement is via a few poets. So maybe YOU can help ME out , Ed. Actually, you already have.
I have too much to say as usual, and too many questions, which is not always a great thing. (Mockingbird, Blackbird and Crow might disagree)
But thank you so much for this rich conversation. tbc
The whole notion of “thinking” is problematic, I believe, because of what we moderns have done to the term: stuffed it completely into only our brains, and then act surprised it’s such a limiting notion. What our brains are responsible for, namely organizing perceptions and sensory input, is important, but it’s not “thinking” in the generally accepted rational-analytic understanding of the term. The lion’s share of that input is delivered from our gut (by density) and our skin (by surface area), but the organ which, let us say, motivates the brain’s organizing function is, of course, the heart. In other words, “thinking”, as I understand it at least, is a whole-body operation. (But at least you now know, or at least have an idea of, what I’m thinking when I talk about “thinking”.)
And, as our Hermetic friends put it: as above, so below; the large is reflected in the small, and vice versa. As our friend Jean (Gebser) phrased it: each of the parts informs a different structure of consciousness (here, the Magical, Mythical, and Mental), but together they constitute what it is to be human. (Don’t get me wrong: we’re not better than our life-bound cousins, just in our own way different.) What Jean also continually emphasized was the fact that in order to successfully negotiate what he saw as the currently impending transition to the Integral structure, we needs reactivate / reinvigorate / reintegrate all of these structures. We’re slowly recognizing that the Mental is not the be-all and end-all it might like to “think” it is, and we’ve done a fairly respectable job of rediscovering the true value of myth (e.g., our latest Thompson reading has been such a contribution), but we’re still way behind the power curve on the Magical structure – at least as I see it. And this is where the timelessness (and as you also note, other aspects) of indigenous “thinking” have such an important role to play.
We simply do not have enough reminders (note, the Greek word for “truth” is alethia, which means literally “un-forgetting) from the peoples and cultures which could provide us access. It is only with the past few decades that it has become widely acceptable in scholarly and academic circles. (Unfortunately, the postmodern anti-colonialists are going to do us a great disservice and cause more damage than they may realize if they don’t get their zeal under control.) But this is not something that we can simply hand over to that particular professional group: we all have to do what we can to carry out this work, which is why I’m always so pleased to encounter laypersons, like yourself, who are helping us find our way there.
Also. Just like this particular thread was “active” at a given point in current time, you have, with your “belated” response, reactivated it. It is now living (again), though it’s hard to grasp that perhaps it never died; it was merely quiet. The same is, I am sure, true in larger contexts across larger timeframes. Experientially, I am convinced that it happens much more often than we (would like to) admit, simply because we are “told” time’s linear and that is that. Again, here we are being called upon to retrieve, re-enliven “older” notions of time and engagement with, say, the time sensibility of indigenous people can be of great value in helping us do just that.
Models can be helpful, but sometimes just a bit of experience can be even more so. Unfortunately, I’ve seen neither (which is not surprising, considering how limited my TV/theater experience is these days, but I shall check around. I certainly don’t mind watching something if I think I might get something out of it, i.e., it has been recommended.
Amen. But isn’t this also an example (or a follow-up) of the ‘mutual touchability of all times’ of which you spoke of earlier?
(As originally an aspiring English teacher (Fate deemed I would take a different path), I would maintain that “grokked” must be written with two “k’s”, otherwise the vowel, in that inflected form, would not be (as we say) short as it is in the root form. Nevertheless …)
Can any one book be t-h-e starting point for anything? Phrased differently, can any starting point be anything other than a single book (assuming, of course, that one’s reading one’s way into something)? What I hear you saying is that one must live into the indigenous, not just read about it, and if that is in fact what you are actually say, then I would say, I couldn’t agree more. The real deal with the Magical structure of consciousness is coming to terms with, well, the Magical, and that is, well, lived-experiential (Erlebnis- (not Erfahrungs-) based in Gebser’s terminology (the difference between the two “kinds” of “experience” in German should not be underestimated). There’s really no other way.
Being the immersed European that I am, I had to take a very different way towards recapturing Magic, namely via Magic(k) itself. My sojourn in CA not only exposed me to digital technology and its consequences, it also sucked me down that pre-web rabbit hole called Usenet, an online, distributed, hub of email lists devoted to just about any topic you could possibly imagine. Alongside my rather intense Rosicrucian and Martinist (and consequently, Kabbalistic) pilgrimages, I found myself involved in extremely lively discussions (? debates? confrontations?) involving (Chaos) Magic(k) … good ol’ Crowley/Thelemite, post-Golden Dawn in-your-face interactions) of an extremely serious nature. It became clear then and has remained clear till now that you can read about it and you can talk about it, but if you want to know about it (that “it” being magic or Magic or Magic(k) or whatever else you might want to label it), you have to do it. It’s not an area of abstract study, not a field of conceptual knowledge, not an academic discipline, it is a praxis, and this for the simple reason that it is at base “a way of relating to everything in our world”, as you phrased it elsewhere.
After all, what can/could/should the writers “explain” in their books. The best – the very best – they can do is point, indicate, and provide some practical tips on how to proceed (though Magic(k) has the potential to also be a bit dangerous, psychologically). From what little I’ve gleaned of the Indigenous Path (the comparatively “safer” one), Nature herself is foregrounded. There are certainly awesome and terrible “forces” involved, but they are not (pun intended) by nature nefarious. As you said, it can be grokked, “absorbed via patient exposure, by gleaning, by inference, gathering the general and applying it to the very specific”; that is, via relegere, as Gebser formulated it, by “careful observance” (an essential in any approach to the topic). Hence my desire to learn more.
Our heritage – genetics, actually – is a way of finding out where we’ve been, or at least parts of us have been. I find it fascinating that all we physically pass on is our DNA and it itself is not physical at all. Sure it’s in every one of our cells, but we all know that all of those cells get swapped out for new ones every seven years or so: all that remains is a pattern, one that allows certain specific proteins to be created and organized in a unique way. But that’s hardly “who we are”, ultimately.
We’re all diverse creatures. I’ve never heard of or met anyone who was just of one heritage. Even my wife, whose maternal and paternal families have been living in this area for literally millennia are originally from somewhere else. Sometimes we find out where all of those places were, sometimes not. Sometimes it piques our interest and sometimes not. My wife has a lot of Skandinavian DNA that she has no idea what to do with: for her “up there” is the epitome of dark and cold. She’s never felt more at home than when we lived in warm and light CA, but, as is so often the case in the postmodern world, economics trump preferences and we often end up in places where our options are at least perceived as better.
This is not to say that place does not have an effect. It most certainly does, as you so aptly point out:
If we are open to it – and it is a significantly weighty “if” – we start tuning in to that “with” and “from”. Some peoples are more inclined to do so than others. The mere fact of physical manifestation (i.e., birth) allocates each of us our space in this reality, but we have to find our place. The Germans, for example, are more generally sensitive to that, and the notion of Heimat (your “home place”, so to speak) still plays an important role (though I sense a weakening of this in the younger generation). Americans tend to have less of that awareness for they very often changes places; they even pride themselves on their mobility, but the price one pays for that can be high. Regardless, every place in which we find ourselves has something of deep importance to “teach” us, if we can tune into it. Too many people these days are unaware that such tuning is even possible. It’s one of those things we postmoderns have “forgotten”.
Truth be told, I was very fortunate to have been born where I was, in Western Pennsylvania (just SE of Pittsburgh). That is a space with an exceedingly strong sense of place: it was coal and steel when I arrived, and the people were literally rooted there, like gnomes with rooty toes clinging to the soil or dwarves digging out the mountains. My dad, for example, manifested, lived, and died within a 10-mile radius of where he was born; and he managed very well with it all. He felt at home there, which is a very good thing. I, on the other hand, found myself not so particularly disposed to the place, which is also always a possibility.
In fact, two movies express my relation to that place very well. One is “All the Right Moves”, with Tom Cruise and Lea Thompson which tells how sports (football, in this case) is the way to “escape”. As it turned out, though I “made the team”, I was never more than highly mediocre player, so it quickly became clear that this was not going to be my ticket out. (What it did do was spare me a lot of potentially traumatic rejection in those formative adolescent years, and for that I am more than thankful.)
The other is “The Deerhunter”, which, if you’ve seen it, is pretty self-explanatory. This other, much more dire and violent way out, was spared me as well, though not without a smile or two from Lady Fortuna. I had a wealthy Uncle (Sam) who was very determined to sacrifice me upon the altar of patriotism and economics we were preaching in Vietnam. But, according to the motto: a good offense is the best defense, I managed to wrangle my way to Germany instead – at that time, the equivalent of military heaven, where the Great World Bluffers were simply pounding their chests and grunting a lot.
Though I learned a lot before my “escape”, the Indigenous were, sadly, most difficult to find. What evidence there is remains sketchy. My forebears arrived in the New World relatively early – except for the Mahoods that is, who have always been known as latecomers (“a day late and a dollar short” is one family motto, as is “if it weren’t for bad luck, we’d have no luck at all”) – and they pushed west early on, but sort of got stuck along the way.
The area where the Allegheny and Monongahela Rivers meet to form the Ohio was always pretty much of a crossroads for people heading west, including the indigenous peoples. After the Mound Builders left around 1000 CE, nobody seemed to want to hang around for any real length of time so there are traces of the Lenape, the Susquehannock (Algonkin, I understand), and the Iroquois, all of whom came from the East themselves, and some Shawnee who most likely wandered north. (The Treaty of Fort Pitt was the first “government” treaty to be negotiated with the Indigenous People (in 1778), but it only lasted a year, and ever more settlers were pouring into the area and pushing whomever happened to be there on further. It would appear that quite a few of my ancestors were among them. That means I feel I have quite a burden to carry even if there’s not a damn thing I can do about any of it, according to what we’re encouraged to believe today. I’m guessing they simply didn’t know any better, and while that’s certainly no real excuse for anything, I keep trying to do my part to change that original trajectory (hence my heightened interest in Indigenous Wisdom) … but without as much success as I might like.) It’s almost like from time immemorial everyone knew that this was a place one could get “stuck”, and quite a few Europeans did. Including my ancestors who bequeathed me 98% European heritage (British Isles, Central and SE European) and <2% traces of West Middle East and Central Asia).
What I believe is that we make the choices we need to make in our lives (or are given the opportunity to do so), for whatever immediate or perhaps even alternate timely (i.e., that “all times are touchable” theme) reasons. There are those who believe that we choose our incarnations, that is our parents, the geographical area, the timing because those choices provide us with the amplest opportunities to learn whatever it is we’re supposed to this time around. Feeling as utterly inadequate knowledge-wise as I do, I am in no position to effectively assess the validity of such a belief, but it doesn’t seem to be an utterly unreasonable one either. And if one would believe it, then one would also be obligated to at least live as if it were true.
What is more, we can never know whether we must work it all out for ourselves individually, which I don’t think we must. With so many “others” around, why should I have to figure out everything all by my lonesome self? So it would seem there are others in our lives who have things to give us … gifts, perhaps, which would be one way to put it: no, we don’t know who they are, nor do we know perhaps which gifts they are bringing; and often they haven’t the slightest clue what their mission is or what they have to offer, but the interconnectedness of creation and the subtle tremors in the Great Web of Life bring them together so that the exchange can take place. And, just in case you were wondering: not all of those “others” are what we call “human” (give my best regards to Mockingbird, Blackbird, and especially Crow), even if they very often are, especially in these congested postmodern times in which we live.
So, as I see it, you don’t have to “worry” about those old Germanic ties. Those dusty (and I would guess, stale, pale, male) poets may have been enough so far, but if this Appalachian escapee can also lend a hand, as needed, never hesitate to ask.
Thank you ever so much for the opportunity to share.