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So having knuckled under and bought the book, I think this is a must read for me, so I plan on joining the group. Do you have some kind of schedule laid out? I am just now listening to the intro session, maybe you talk about this towards the end of the conversation.
As to what I want to get out of the reading, I think I want to wear this work like a garment, get down inside it, surround myself with it, and then find out what it’s like to live inside it, everyday. For me, fashion is largely a second order culture, it has to do with relationships between parts and wholes, between individuals, between cultures, indeed most modern fashions draw inspiration from many cultural fields, it is a meta culture. And it is related to TJ’s ideas about a town meeting and the need for transparency in culture. Michael’s pilgrimage may also be a set of clothes, and the geography of culture that Ed talks about.
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While I think John did an excellent job responding to your question, I thought I might just chime in with a perhaps more formal Gebserian response.
As you know, as Gebser conceives his model, each structure of consciousness (except the Archaic) has it’s efficient and deficient mode. So, there is the “efficient Magic structure” and the “deficient Magic structure”, the “efficient Mythical structure” and the “deficient Mythical structure”. What follows the “efficient Mental structure” is, in fact, the “deficient Mental structure”. However, that deficient structure got its own name, “the Rational structure of consciousness”, and that makes it seem like there another structure between the Mental and Gebser’s postulated Integral structure.
This has always been a bit of a bug-a-boo for me, due to the impression it can raise, but I also understand that since we are currently (still, for the most part) experiencing this structure it gets its own designation and focused treatment.
Having said that, generally speaking there is a series of structures, from Archaic to Integral, and it would appear that when looking at humanity as a whole, there is an unfoldment that occurs in that order, I read Gebser as saying this is not an absolute and invariant progression. I think he makes a lot of effort to dispel that way of reading him. For this reason he argues specifically against any notion of “progress” (particularly the one developed in post-Darwinian thinking), and his use of the notion of teleos is also rather guarded. This could be one of the reasons that Gebser has not received the attention he perhaps deserved, for quite a while any hint of teleology in one’s thinking could get them shunned in certain academic circles. Only recently do I sense that we are once again becoming more often to the idea.
A further “complication” arises when we move from a phylogenic to an ontogenic consideration of his model. He describes how things are with us at the species level, if you will, but there are some who might want to think about the maturation of the individual in, for lack of a better word, Gebserian terms. Are toddlers “magical” in their consciousness? When and how does a given individual become “mythical” in their apperception of the world? Is there even a parallel between Gebser’s description and how we as individuals mature? This is, at least in part, what I see Kerri Welch doing with her exploration of the mapping of Gebser’s structures to brain-wave states. We’ll never know how relevant or irrelevant it might be until we do some serious thinking and researching, so I’m all for it. At a first-glance, general level it seems like a project worth pursuing.
I think this is precisely what Wilber and those who resonate with his approach are doing. AQAL is “applied” to individuals, is it not? I can imagine that it may be or is seen as applicable to groups as well, but I’m not familiar with it to make any reasonable statement in this regard. It would seem to me, though, that is could very well be a valid approach.
And one final thought. When reading Gebser we get the strong impression that the pathway of unfoldment is from efficient to deficient mode, but I’m not convinced that Gebser is implying that this must be the case. I don’t know if there are any pressing reasons why the deficient Integral couldn’t precede the efficient Integral, if I may phrase it that way. There is a good deal of substance in Gebser, but I’ve never gotten the impression that there is something hard and fast and immalleable about his model (whereby, even though I keep referring to it as such, I’m not absolutely conviced that’s the best word to describe what he’s presenting us, so I’m using that term as a placeholder till I find a better fitting term).
Just a couple of more “formal” thoughts on the matter.
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Spot on, John.
Correspondence (“what is somehow alike” as well as “point-to-point communication”) is a whole other cosmos than “email”.
Back in the early 70s when I first came to Germany, the only real means of communication with those “back home” was by post. At the same time I came here, my best friend from high school headed off for a two-year stint in Australia. Correspondence in a global context. Even with airmail, letter-and-response couldn’t happen in much less than a week, at best. And the only way to afford postage to Australia was to use aerogrammes (a prepaid, one-page, fold-it-up-as-its-own-envelope, piece of blue tissue paper … space constrained on top of everything else).
You had to think about what you were going to write before you wrote it. You had to remember what you had written for the next response. I had as many as a dozen letters out and about at any given time and each one demanded attention in the reading and writing, but you thought about the multiple threads at any free moment any given day. Since I taught during the day and had a family of students to get to bed and conferences and family and social obligations, most letter-writing took place late at night. I’d sit in my study with my utensils and materials (a leather portfolio for paper, envelopes, stamps, aerogrammes, and pen – one I only used for correspondence) under the glow of my desklamp formulating each and every sentence as if it mattered … well, because it did. The writing was slow because mistakes were costly (striking through was an abominable waste of time and space) and quick follow-up clarifications just didn’t exist.
Letter writing (and reading … the anticipation of the response, it’s arrival, perhaps having to lay it aside till the evening to read it) was anything but spontaneous. It was careful, deliberate, attentive – almost ritualistic … no it was a ritual of profound importance, a rich and deep experience. Even trivialities took on an air of decorum. Deciding what to leave it and take out just seemed to matter. Every word counted. The air surrounding the act was sublime, the act itself almost religious. It was as good as any praying or meditation I ever did.
But that all went away with the digital revolution. It was hounded out of town by a new kid on the block who had no patience, no tolerance for depth. There was suddenly this unholy need for speed. If there’s anything I miss about “the old days”, it’s letter-writing.
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Ed- I love your description & attention to detail of the place,materials & Hands-Thinking process,which for me reveals a aspect of your Whole-Heartedness with the Act of Letter writing.
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I love these metaphors, Geoffrey, and I am sure we can develop these further. It is out of the interplay of metaphors that religion and the arts and the sciences catch the rhythms of the Great Other-that Stranger within and without-that we wrestle with in our own unique ways. I am sure you can sense the influence of Bateson in our musings (mullings)about these ultimate concerns. Your presence is greatly appreciated.
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I recall a poignant separation between a boyfriend when I was in college. He went to another city and we corresponded for several months. Then he returned and we got back together briefly. The weird thing was, I really missed his letters. There is something devotional that is unleashed in the longing for the Beloved or the Best Friend that opens us to a wide range of thought-feels. He died many years ago but I still have his letters, written in his beautiful script, on pale green stationery. I reread them every other decade and am amazed that such a young man, who died so long ago, had felt that way about me. This is an instance of communing with the Silent Other( that dearest him, that lives, alas, away…) that is, I believe, the mystery captured in much religiosity and ritual. The absence becomes a presence through the act of Imagination. This is the basis for elaborate productions of though-forms, which have vast real world effects. We activate fields through our Imaginations and we better learn to do this with integrity for we can also use our imaginations to create great havoc. Kripal has much to say about the articulation of the symbolic, through the art of writing, and how this is a spooky kind of action at a distance. When we read what others wrote in the past, we revive something this is very, very real.
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Thanks, Ed, and this bears repeating again and again. We are not dealing in Gebser with facts that are like barcodes. The facts of the historian, the poet, and the scientist, are different kinds of facts. This was what I got out of our quartet the other day. No matter how diverse each person’s speech and metaphorical constructs, they can, miraculously, make sense, and reverberate. We can intuit a deeper structure that organizes these surface expressions. We can, when we make the effort, and slow down and chunk slow, touch this ancient power, and re-cohere, rather than de-cohere, but it is not easy to do this in the rush we are habituated to. I am glad you echo TJ here, with the rational-mental distinction. Ultimately, it is how we complete these distinctions, in our live discourse events, that makes the differences the make differences. The Integral, whatever that is, will not become a new structure, without our direct participation. The Integral must already be present for there to be such a virulent rational backlash against previous structures. The anomalies and paradox that inflame the Rational need to be addressed. Currently, the deficient rational maintains it’s inflated status by taking the paradox off the table. This is not pretty. It resembles the Inquisition. I think many individuals are way beyond what the consensus offers and so these tensions between individuals and culture clashes are heightened in our overly connected social spaces. I am not sure there would be much deficient Integral happening unless there is a lot of Unity Consciousness being registered in great enough intensities to warrant that concern. I am not sure of very much except that I will make the bold assertion that the Poets get there first.
Now I am here, what thou wilt do with me
None of my books will show:
I reade, and sigh, and wish I were a tree;
For sure then I should grow
To fruit or shade: at least some bird would trust
Her houshold to me, and I should be just.
No one is better than George Herbert, in tracking this vast dimension, and putting it into words. When it comes to poetry, there is, indeed, no such thing as progress. Souls, through out poetic history, have crossed over and brought back a language that may have confused their culture but soon becomes a new norm. The poet takes us to the edge of maps and beyond.
And when we are in the grips of great grief and sorrow, it is the beauty of a simple line of poetry that can be the antidote. We can somehow cope.
Ah my deare God! though I am clean forgot,
Let me not love thee, if I love thee not
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Given the times (the '68er Revolution, 'Nam, …) there were a lot of love relationships that were forced into correspondence. While I am sure that many survived, I know of none personally that did.
By the same token, the only real friendships that I still have today are with those which went through the Correspondence Crucible. Odd that, somehow.
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And certainly anything but factoids.
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