Generations I

That is very intriguing. I know little about Toronto media theory but I will have to look it up. I am very drawn to topological figures and this book I mention seems to suggest how Plato has internalized the size and shape of Athens, almost like another character, in the dialogues. Timeus, is also is of imagery of the lost Atlantis, the fabled city, that went under water. That echos so much of what the future of Manhattan, the great metropolis, might become if we fail to act now. This gets personal!

I would love it! TJ, I hope, will continue to bring his scholarly interests to the mix. And I look forward to hearing more from @Barrett.A_87 . Also, I want to get a chance to study the essay you posted. This is exciting.

Now, that we have a video to share with our community, I expect others may be drawn to the next part of the introduction. Thanks again, Davor. Let us know what the best time for you is and we will make it happen.

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Just a quick reply in form of some links:

Toronto School: Innis, Havelock, McLuhan

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toronto_School_of_communication_theory

The connection of media and philosophical thought according to Havelock/Toronto School:

“For nearly thirty years Eric A. Havelock advocated the view that alphabetic literacy was chiefly, or even solely, responsible for the Greek Enlightenment and thus provided the foundations of western civilization. In this view the creation of the Greek alphabet (and it alone) was able to bring about widespread literacy, which in turn radically and permanently transformed human consciousness. Alphabetic literacy enabled thought to transcend the limitations of “oral mind,” represented by Homer, to become the instrument of logic, philosophy and sci- ence-an entirely new kind of consciousness, whose first great exponent was Plato. Havelock’s theory first appeared in 1963 in his Preface to Plato, was developed further in The Greek Concept of Justice and in a series of papers collected in The Literate Revolution in Greece and Its Cultural Consequences and received its last compendious formulation in The Muse Learns to Write.”

https://www.jstor.org/stable/pdf/2709915.pdf?refreqid=excelsior%3A4c0045aad97eae726a8eaa41e0cd4768

Havelock: Preface to Plato - PDF

https://monoskop.org/images/0/0d/Havelock_Eric_A_Preface_to_Plato.pdf

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I remember reading Havelock a long time ago. Thanks for the links, Davor.

It’s a basic premise of The Human Web: A Bird’s-Eye View of World History (New York, 2003) which he co-wrote with his son J R McNeill (an environmental historian of renown in his own right - among other things proponent of the need to distinguish the Anthropocene from the Holocene to highlight specific human contributions to the rate of current damage).
“A web, as we see it, is a set of connections that link people to one another.” (p. 3)
“All webs combined cooperation and competition. The ultimate basis of social power is communication that sustains cooperation among people… If a cooperative framework can be maintained, the larger the web gets, the more wealth, power, and inequality its participating populations exhibit.
“But, paradoxically, hostile competition also fostered a parallel process… Competition at one level… promoted cooperation at other levels.” (p. 5)

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This process,perhaps, goes on at the cellular level. The boundary between outside/ inside is maintained by the lipids, some of which like water, some of which dislike water. The boundary has an inside and an outside dynamic. This boundary maintenance ( not the nucleus) determines what goes in and out, what is friend or foe. Many of the interior critters that make up the community of the cell are fixed in the same routines, some are more able to move around, but the DNA is not the boss that gives orders to the members. This old notion, of Crick and Watson, is a hangover from the top-down, corporate management style, of the fifties. The DNA is more like an inert library at the center of the cell, that the active members of the cell read and interpret. We have a much more dynamic situation than we can adequately model, as the cell, is a community, within a community. We know that the prokaryotic cells were once outside of the cell but became members of the eukariotic cells which hosted them during the great explosion of oxygen, that wiped out many prokaryotic cells. The prokaryotic cells were allergic to Oxygen, and sought a safe haven within the walls of the eukaryotes. We can see that this arrangement was beneficial. So we have foreigners mixing with the natives in new living arrangements. Lynn Margulis points this out in her version of Gaia theory. Are we scaled up versions of cells? Are we a parallel process to these ancient cellular mergers and acquisitions? We may need to coordinate research in current bio-semiotics with history of technology. This, I think, is already happening.

As we are active agents, with many kinds of constraint and freedom, we are not fixed in a rigid outside/ inside dynamic, but engage with fluid interpreters of signs and symbols that allow us to communicate, as well as clash, with strangers and aliens. As we re-enter and re-exit frames of reference with other communication systems ( human and other than human)and it is easy to imagine that other kinds of drives can begin to emerge than simple fight or flight. We are Second Order creatures, participant/observers, not good soldiers or loyal employees, stuck in a pre-given slot. We can decouple perhaps from the either-or friend foe dynamic and move towards something that we can’t define yet. As we learn how to read different kinds of code ( digital and analogical) we are entering into a new kind of intelligence. Some are suggesting that we are decoupling from the biological as culture reshapes these drives and niches. Biology can’t be reduced to Physics, Culture can’t be reduced to Biology. That is what I imagine some of Davor’s work comes from. A Second Order Culture emerges out of First Order Culture. The Globalization of the Planet seems to mirror this First Order. We are now able to move towards a Second Order but we are still able to make First Order distinctions. Indeed, the capacity to make a distinction is primary at every level of organization. Biotic systems have a first person oriention. We have a personal pronoun’ I’ that interacts with multiple kinds of ‘we’. We are bodymindsigns in action! But it is my view, we have to differentiate from the BORG and explore interior space rather than try to colonize the Cosmos in while operating in a Cartesian grid. This is an amazing phase of evolution we are at the cusp of. We might blow a fuse!

Pardon the broad strokes of my crude style of presentation. As we move between contexts we may need a more trans-contextual style of communique. I am working on this. We are no longer becoming what we were becoming.

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Intriguing, Johnny. Can you give a couple of examples of this?

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That’s a great question, Ariadne, and I find it a challenge to answer as the examples usually arise from a liminal space I enter when I no longer am using the technology to do a search for specific research or have a plan of action I want to make happen. It is more off to the side, something I save and look at later, a glimpse of some face in pain, or an odd turn of phrase in an article. It is usually present when I am in a certain mood and the material finds me receptive. I hear overtones, I feel the presence of something invisible, I marvel at something that I could not have anticipated. Life is like that.

I feel the presence of the Trickster. I am not that interested in scandal but I am drawn to the recent uproar around Jussie Smollett, a gay, black, activist/actor/singer who has managed to enact a master hoax on just about everyone and seems to have gotten away with it legally. He has had a slide into the mud in public opinion.He did not show up for the NAACP awards last night, was fired from job as a leading actor on the hit show Empire, has been mocked by late show comics. But he seems to have had people in high office pull some strings on his behalf. The man who cried victim is become a smooth operator, a manipulator of others for personal gain, hiding behind those who have been dealt a bad deal by society. Smollett and most recently, the young celebrity, Octavia Jade and her notorious actress/mother, are the faces of a highly privileged hypocrisy. I offer this video as an overview of this whirlwind of a scandal, which seems to have landed Jussie ( renamed Jessie by Chris Rock, a dark skinned performer mocks a light skinned fraud) on an easy joke list. I imagine this scandal the tip of an Iceberg, as the Me too movement and the Mueller report expose how Hollywood and Washington, DC. are more fully entangled as a new kind of show business. It is becoming a giant ponzi scheme. The rich lie for each other, then get caught on camera with their hand in the public cookie jar, and posted all over Youtube. Oh the banality of evil! Can we align ourselves with Trickster and make use of these serendipitous events for good rather than for ill? Perhaps.

There is a shift ( I imagine) as the Trickster uses the technology to stage certain tricks on the rich and famous and the fans who have made them rich and famous. It appears that the Trickster is a powerful agent of change, who hides behind and assembles these multi layered scenarios and often triangulates from the margins, trying on different roles, and intruding in public affairs. These large scale scandals happen, leaving the rich and the powerful in their glass houses, with lots of broken glass scattered around the community. It just doesn’t seem to stay localized but the crisis spreads to other glass houses. I could add the recent College Admission Scandals as another related example of how private subterfuge opens up deep fissures in public facades . These are the kinds of odd and weird activity that is generated by Trickster, they are thick with plot and hidden dynamics. Trickster is everywhere and will upset the best laid plans. We need to pay attention to these cracks that we try to collectively paper over. When the ice caps melt and the waters of a heated up ocean start to rise, many a rising career will be floating out to sea. Can we do something for an endangered ecology with these scary clowns causing so much commotion? I wonder. As Shakespeare says, Life is but a walking shadow, a poor player, that struts and frets his hour upon the stage, and then is heard no more.

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John, I love the Trickster correlation you made, as Native lore sees the Trickster or Heyoka as a nessesary entity which moves in opposite currents, yet is essential to the gateway of the fourth (or new) world. This is the world we are trying to get to…the Trickster is necessary towards the path of contact with the sacred. We have seen people crucified for the sin of telling the truth, only to have civilizations built upon their lives 500 years later, to be resurrected and crucified again. The dialectical/historical viewpoint underestimates this power of disruption and upset, this is where metaphysics can be a most powerful agent, is in the face of the Heyoka.

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I’d like to suggest an Anishinaabe writer, Gerald Vizenor, who wrote a novel called “The Trickster of Liberty”, he draws a lot upon native folklore and Deleuze/Baudrillard.

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Yes, I agree, and there is a vast literature on Trickster. He is related to Hermes and Mercury and Coyote, those fast talking shape shifters, who love to move between the margins and knock over tables and chairs, turn our plans upside down, let the hot air out of our balloons. I see Trickster operating in the well mannered social set ups that the rich and powerful try to maintain, as they seek to impose a global order upon what they imagine is utter chaos. Chaos will always win! Showing respect for these chaotic forces ( which the mental structure will never tame) is something the magical and mythic are pointing out to us. Those who claim to be post-metaphysical are usually trying to apply a soft sell for some kind of Neo-Liberal ponzi scheme.

Thanks for this suggestion, Barrett, I will look it up. I am glad to know that alternate fictions are happening. Who could make up something as crazy as the Jussie Smollett story? If it were turned into a movie, it would be rejected as “over the top”. It is so melodramatic and yet it is so called ’ real life’. The boundary between fiction and reality is a blur and this is where Trickster loves to fuck with us.

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I’ve long admired Vizenor, butnever read The Trickster of Liberty. WIll see if I can I find it!
Thanks.

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I feel there is a whole lot more to the Jussie story than we are hearing about in the news. I don’t disagree at all, but I do wish you would go into more detail about how you see “trickster” working in Jussie’s particular story, or at least what we can know of it.

Just by the by: Maia is Hermes/Mercury’s mother. One of the versions of his birth is, naturally, a rape by Zeus. She raises him alone in a cave to keep him hidden from Z. Before Maia was a “nymph” and thus rapable by Zeus, she was a Great Mother Goddess of life and death. “Maia” means : grandmother, good mother, great mother, etc. So really, Hermes is the son of the Great Goddess, no need for Z. at all.

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This is the part of your comment I so much resonate with!
I am still thinking about the rest of what you’ve written. Something I can’t put my finger on…

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I can’t put my finger on it either. That is why I call it Trickster energy, an illusive sense of things out of control. Jussie has fallen prey to this mischief maker and I agree we have yet to figure it all out. My remarks come out of reading a wonderful book Trickster and the Paranormal by George Hansen. He claims that Trickster is an anti-structure energy, and that makes sense to me. I have also noted there are a lot of happy accidents, too. Right now I feel as many of us are that the old institutions are cracking up…setting the stage perhaps for something new.

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In my own tradition(s), trickster is also a source of wisdom and healing, not just disruption. There is humor, foolishness, misguided action, accidental insight, retreat into selfishness, theft, bumbling and grace, craftiness and innocence. etc it’s a very rich spirit, a wind of many directions.
I don’t see (yet) how Jussie’s story fits this (at the news level). I just want to hold judgement, wait until more emerges. Because I feel that it wil. And most of all, I want to hear him talk about it, hear those close to him who still support him, talk about it.

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I am open to that, too. I am a big fan of Jussie! So, I have to put aside my own favoritism to admit that he may have taken advantage of his fan’s affection to promote his self interests. This is a wake up call to everyone! I am open to believe that Trickster energies can work with other energies, too. That he would use his mother’s name to defend his actions troubles me. I would not be my mother’s son if this were true.… If he is lying this is a a blasphemous thing to say. This is a very sad case, and it makes me worry about his mental health. It is not a good thing to see a talented man, driven by ego to betray his supporters. There are serious ethical dimensions being brought to our attention and the scandal is not over yet. I don’t think Jussie is the Trickster…but I believe the hoax he tried to pull turned on him with a vengeance. The Trickster is working through him and throwing the whole system into havoc. Oh the webs we weave…but I think the deeper layer that Barrett brought out is that technology has made this scandal possible…none of this could have happened without surveillance cameras, smart phones, email, etc. It is hard to cover your tracks. The same is true of the College Admissions scandal. There is a long trail of videos that capture the double messages of those self promoters. This is, I believe, a new kind of exposure to our collective shadow.

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Hi everyone ~ I really enjoyed this talk; I listened to it twice. I think you’re onto something with the idea of generating a movement in the direction of a plausible pleroma—one which has operational integrity (can be replicated by others, is unenclosed) and also which allures as so much better than what appears to be systemic reality.

The question of whether we need a planetary scale “maximal stress” event to catalyze the necessary re-organization of everything I think basically is already answered—just not evenly distributed. Whoever gets the message, “Evolve or die,” is in this camp.

But then there’s another message—which doesn’t come from the future, as much as from the distant past, and that’s that in order to evolve consciousness, a profound relaxation is necessary, an embrace of the non-linear. This is the meditative path to the pleroma, which doesn’t reveal itself at the end of history, but rather through the infinite within—the weird frontier.

So on the one hand, a generative agent finds oneself in virtual maximal-stress mode, hyperaware of the metaphorical comet streaking through spacetime on a collision course with the Earth: cause for urgency. On the other hand, the only way to develop the cooperative ethos called for in collectively facing our divine doom is to relax into a deeper/wider identity than the extant individual, nation, or tribe.

The relaxation part is key because the planetary that’s required can’t be forced by one small part of humanity on another. That’s “globalization.” Moreover, the planetary is not the opposite of the local, particular, or cultural—one’s identity is multidimensional, fractal. So we need to allow for myriad forms of self-expression, not all of which can be neatly integrated. Time is different as well, and I would submit that the future (in which linear time is recontextualized on the order of both vast and intimate quantum cyclical dynamics) will involve us in a “Cosmic time” regime, which (for us moderns and never-have-beens) represents a whole new horizon.

I think crafting actual alternative structures on small enough scales that we can get the logic right is really important—this is what I see us doing here. We can then experiment with generating realities at different scales. I have no deep desire to propagate dumb meme culture, but I agree there must be a way to create real functional alluring attractors for the kind of social, cultural, and ecological relations (or simply, world) we’d prefer to live in. I believe the way to do this is to systematically incarnate the pleroma that attracts; do your art and make social-economic choices from that place.

This is also like making music and learning to play a new tune. For what it’s worth, again, I really enjoyed your quartet and hope to hear the quintent next time, or whatever other ensembles these dialogues generate. Myself: I have been focused lately on generating poetry and money, in that order. I look forward to jamming with you when the timing is right. So far, I feel I probably have more to learn than to contribute in this context.

That said, as an editor for Metasychosis, I am quite interested in publishing some writing and artwork on the theme of generative realities and related topics. We could also come up with ways to more efficiently propagate whatever ‘outsights’ you can communicate from your research.

A follow-up talk where Davor gets to complete his overview sounds in order—and I would also be happy to work with Doug in getting a dedicated page up for the series, so that the talks get a nice archive that can be accessed more easily and distributed more widely.

I’ve trimmed and leveled the audio from the one above, so you can share the direct link with anyone who wants to listen to the converation: https://www.metapsychosis.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/7/2019/04/Generations-1.m4a

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Yesterday was a cold, gray day and I felt melancholy. The last of winter, the anticipation of spring and the weariness that comes from a mixed day at the library. I had read Bateson for the study group, and related readings. My concentration is excellent but the feeling tone is of loss upon loss. Anthropocene blues.

At Tompkins Square I find a picnic table and sit with my cold hands in front of me on the table and a straight back. I do my breath work, in the cold air, for ten minutes. I relax and feel the pleasant prana flow through the subtle channels. The melancholy is shifting to a sense of a relational spaciousness, the beauty of the bare trees, the commotion of birds, a squirrel digging in the dirt. And then a robin appears. He looks like this
image
Notice the white that frames his eye, an hypnotic effect. Robin has his eye, that single black eye, framed in the white, fixed upon my human form. I feel my size and shape, a lonely man, next to his size and shape, in close proximity. We each have become to the other a boundary object. His intelligence is clear and sober, I am fragmented and sad. Robin gazed at me for a long time. I am not so lonely now. He moves, with sharp, staccato hops, boldly towards me. He is under the bench where I sit. I feel his presence under me, feel his awareness of my awareness and I wait. I wonder why he hops on the ground when he could so easily fly. Perhaps he is taking in some data that is beyond my perceptual range. After studying my presence, he hops back into the shrubs and out of sight. But I know he is watching, sensing, knowing something that I don’t.

Then from out of the shrubs appears a sparrow with a shelled peanut. Sparrow, unlike Crow, has a hard time cracking that shell open. It is pecking at it without much success. I signal to Sparrow that I am going to assist. He is okay with that but flutters into the shrubbery and gives me space. I peel the shell and lay the two nuts on the ground and return to my bench and wait. Sparrow returns to it’s meal, and eats with a good appetite. I walk home, grateful, for my bird community. I feel a shift in attitude.

Last night, I dreamed of Bear. I am in a performance space with a ferocious Bear. Standing, raised up to his full height, and there is a thick glass that stops the Bear attack. He shows his jaws, sharp teeth, a roar, and though the partition prevents contact, I feel a deep fear of Bear’s fury.

Then I feel the presence of another man. I discuss with him my disappointment in a previous performance. We are looking at maps and diagrams and we learn something. I tell him about the changes that are happening in the left side of my human body. I sense an energy on the left that centers around the left nipple and is felt along the spine and moves in a pleasant current of strong, but not overwhelming intensity. The sensation is mildly erotic and feels oddly like I am being suckled by a baby. I wonder if a male can have such a female feeling? Obviously, I do feel that. The man says that is okay and the process is working.

The man vanishes, I am alone with Bear,and to my surprise, the glass partition is removed. There is no physical boundary protecting me from Bear. I can easily become his prey. But he doesn’t attack, he is in a gentle mood. He is on all fours and walking towards me. I know I must not register fear of him, for he can smell fear and that may trigger his wrath. I stay centered and open to his presence. He nuzzles me, I stroke him and we feel a bond. He tells me in English something that I can’t remember but the feeling tone is one of approval.

So, this morning I record my memories of Robin, of Sparrow, of Bear, of Man. And what is the nature of the personal in network theory? No networks are stabilized and standardized for everyone, especially not for someone like myself, who feels more at home with birds of the air than I do with my own money worshiping species. Those on the inside can see things that those on the outside cannot see. Maybe that is a good thing. We cant see infinity but we can hear it. The voice is inside and outside at the same time.

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(image from google, not my backyard . . .)


I mentioned hugelkultur (“hill culture”) last year as a project practiced in my backyard and as a metaphor for the layerings and compostings of the thought and writings of thought we place upon this site and in our journals and notebooks.

With lolo (Filipino grandfather) as an extra hand now, we can now complete this project. It requires much sawing of decaying trees, dragging, tossing over a fence and lugging logs around and I could not do all of this alone. The topsoil is removed, logs and branches placed in the shallow hole, the top sod placed upsidedown atop the logs, and then layers of compost, dirt and other yard items, eventually creating a perfect hill for plants to grow for years. compost can be added at any time.

The Robin has been watching as we build. The earthworms stirred out of slumber and snatched as snack. In the mornings when I run outside barefoot to the compost pile, the brave robin flies in right next to me as I toss the scraps on the pile, getting its fill before the groundhog feasts.

The Language of the Birds: I am starting to think this is one of our hidden talents. an augur of sorts.

The earth is a living testament, like a book, who’s pages are the aeons of history. The organic pattern of history explicates from seed and nut into frond, bough, leaf, tree.

The tree takes different branches and pathways, and upon its branches fly the eagles and subtle birds of winged thought, angelic powers that belong to an immortal tradition – the language of the birds, the mysterious patterns of the hidden prime, the conveyors of the inspiration of gnosis. – quote taken from here

From Wikipedia:

There are also examples of contemporary bird-human communication and symbiosis. In North America, ravens have been known to lead wolves (and native hunters) to prey they otherwise would be unable to consume. In Africa, the greater honeyguide is known to guide humans to beehives in the hope that the hive will be incapacitated and opened for them.


I have mentioned to some of my recent collection of walks and wanderings at a favorite park, the same park in which the sparrow song was sung. March and April seem to have robins in full presence. They have guided me to certain trees in the forest as I trek off the park’s paths and follow them into the green wild. The wild child, climbing trees and leaping off rocks. Hermann Hesse would often mountaineer in the nude with friends and yodel.

image

There is construction occurring on all sides of the park. Earth dug up by construction crews coming in and out in droves. Houses built atop previously secluded coves. This is great for belting out a yodel atop the mountain without concern of others listening in, but this is not “perma-culture” or “hill culture” that preserves the land or listens to alternate languages. There is a grand difference between an augur and an auger. As we continue to explore this weird frontier, more voices like ours need to be heard, not for our words alone but as the conveyors of gnosis, before we get lodged beneath the wheel, the conveyor belts of a single, abusive language.

All the more reason to become an artist before it is too late!


and a note to @johnnydavis54 and fellow realm explorers: this thread doesn’t need to be about dreams/dreaming, but wanted to inform you that I had three ravens in my dream two nights ago. My son found an abandoned cabin and we noticed three ravens. Then came right up to a wooden table/platform with wash basins and we gave them bubble baths! I refrain from finding interpretation but savor that I have the language carrying over into weird spaces.

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Marco, what you are saying here is electrifying and I don’t know if I can express how much I resonate with everything you’ve written here, maybe especially this:

"there’s another message—which doesn’t come from the future, as much as from the distant past, and that’s that in order to evolve consciousness, a profound relaxation is necessary, an embrace of the non-linear. This is the meditative path to the pleroma, which doesn’t reveal itself at the end of history, but rather through the infinite within—the weird frontier.?

Haven’t listened yet to the talk, but definitely will.
Thank you so much for the palpable energy, devotion and wisdom in your words.
And how I love that you are working on poetry …and secondly! income.

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