Sign me up for JOHNNY’S ASTRAL ESCORT SERVICE! What a thread…
My attention was elsewhere for a couple days working on “magic spells”—which is very hard work, actually, but very enjoyable when the mind can relax (especially the strictly mental, time-bound, rationalizing mind) and enjoy the play of healthy energies, images, sounds, and words.
That our various “sandboxes” for mindplay have been poisoned—the diabolical is everywhere!—is lamentable. But this conversation is literally en-couraging. We don’t have to play in the toxic quicksand of fake narratives and fake consciousness. The ever-multiplying reproductions can fold back into origin, which reproduces itself through our metaphors, as well as concrete experiences, in regenerated spaces of intelligent communion.
The Tricksterish Generative Self is more interested in experience than mentation, I think, but not opposed to reason and logic, and can use reason and logic toward a desired outcome. At the same time, I think we can admit that nobody’s unslimed, “uninfected” by the emotional contagion of modern power-logic (coupled with strategic disinformation campaigns, neuromarketing, etc.) and the resultant pervasive state of confusion. A certain plodding, thoughtful, slowness, a deliberate not going or getting swept along, seems like an antidote to me.
When I go to work, half the battle is just filtering and “disinfecting” the words I use—for which, @johnnydavis54, I’ll just mention, I’m finding a “clean language” approach to be quite helpful, though I’m a bumbling beginner with it, a queerly buzzing, and sometimes buzz-killing, mis-spelling bee. But it’s essential because words “have power,” and our communication acts (or fails to), and so it needs doing with love and care.
But the filtration process, to really get out the micro-contaminants and communicate cleanly (and vitally), takes time. You can’t just zap or irradiate your language without creating some crap that takes like corporate cardboard. No way around the purification process I’ve found yet. Might as well learn to love the torturous path.
Our predicament reminds me of the Walking Dead—which I watched a couple seasons of, rapt, a few years ago (then abruptly lost interest). At one point, the band of living human survivors discovers from an NIH-CDC biologist, who has been trying to understand the disease and find a cure, that in fact everyone is already infected. They’re all carriers. Blood contact with an actual zombie only activates an infection which was already present. This is a highly disturbing revelation in the context of the show.
So I do think extra caution is required when working with the magic and mythic. I think this is what Ed is getting to with his statement that “Too many of us are too willing to do too much with too many things that we know too little about.” And it’s behind @JDockus’ gift for calling bullshit bullshit. This is an essential “immune system” response.
I realize that “biology” is only a kind of metaphor, too. We are dealing with objects that aren’t easily represented. Yet the idea that a “protective sheath” has been burst reminds me of Peter Sloterdjik’s contention, in Bubbles (which I would like to read with a group), that society and history can be interpreted through both spatial and immunological metaphors. From cellular structures to architectures to media ecosystems, “bubbles” are created (or spheres, or foam) and we live (and die) in these. Interestingly, Sloterdjik positions his work contra the 20-century temporal focus of Heidegger, et al (though I doubt he’s read Gebser; it would be interesting to read them side by side).
Looking forward to checking out Jordan Peterson as well. Thanks for that, @bradsayers!
So much to work with in this thread! And I do think much of what has been shared has something to do with “empowerment,” although I think we might need to question this word. What does one want “power” for? What would it mean to have this power? To seek empowerment is to presume disempowerment, no? But is this real—are we really lacking power—or is it part of a fake narrative that certain entities have great power (usually based on money and fame) and so we play along with the rules (or deep logic, even if we oppose the overt rules) that reinforce this perception?
And yet: clearly there is something in play we can call “power.” A “will to power,” even. We all have it. @Mark_Jabbour argues, over at the election thread, that Trump “gets it” (which is something we might learn from his admittedly negative example). Yet…what? Do we disown it? Do we trick ourselves into “giving away” our power? What do we give it to? “When” do we give it? What stories, and what feelings, hold sway?
I like how @care_save (who talked about rotting “in a forbidden cell” and a “coup to reclaim our time from the Total Capital Consolidation Machine”—both Space AND Time are critical dimensions) began to frame it here:
To help someone go to where they need to be is the essence of empowerment,
it is the essence of conversation and discourse too.
I’m going to start a few new topics to follow up on specific directions we might explore toward concretizing some of the ideas here on Clean Language, a Gebser course, etc. I hope this “empowers” some of us to take these considerations further (to the infinite!) and beyond…