X
Most of us spend an inordinate amount of time arguing about politics, sports, or religion on blogs, around the proverbial water cooler, or over beers in some evil-smelling grogshop. And we spend much of our remaining time reading op-eds and topical books and magazines, or sitting at the pixilated feet of the talking heads on cable TV, in order to stockpile ammo for our next face-to-face or cyber-argument.
It often seems, after all this expended energy, that we’ve just been spinning our wheels, unable to gain any rhetorical traction. The following excerpts from The Aquarian Conspiracy may provide some insight as to why this is so often the case:
Life is not constructed like a sentence, subject acting on object. In reality many events affect each other simultaneously. Take, for example, the impossibility of sorting out who-did-what-first or who-caused-what-behavior in a family. We construct all of our explanations on a linear model that exists only as an ideal.
Hmm. Apply that thought in a post-mortem on your last argument about who’s to blame for the financial melt-down.
Semanticists like Alfred Korzybski and Benjamin Whorf warned that Indo-European languages trap us in a fragmented model of life. They disregard relationship. By their subject-predicate structure, they mold our thought, forcing us to think of everything in terms of simple cause and effect. For this reason it is hard for us to talk about--or even think about--quantum physics, a fourth dimension, or any other notion without clear-cut beginnings and endings, up and down, then and now.
Gosh. Maybe the failure of AIG was not primarily due to Barney Frank’s unnatural lust to put every shiftless, nappy-headed Negro and his web-toed hillbilly cousin into his own six-bedroom mansion on a wooded cul-de-sac, after all? Maybe it’s just that the nature of language requires us to designate a simple cause-and-effect explanation for the event, if we insist on discussing it at all?
Events in nature have simultaneous multiple causes. Some languages, notably Hopi and Chinese, are structured differently and can express nonlinear ideas with less strain. They can, in effect, "speak physics." Like the ancient Greeks, whose philosophy strongly influenced the left-brained West, we say, "The light flashed." But the light and the flash were one. A Hopi would more accurately say, "Reh-pi!"--"Flash!"
[bridge and chorus]
I recently e-mailed my good buddy, John Derbyshire, with regard to my new-found enthusiasm for the poetry of Jane Kenyon. In reading various biographical pieces on Kenyon, I had learned that her earliest poetic influence was most likely Witter Bynner’s translations of poetry from the Chinese (which I previously mentioned here.) Knowing Derb to be a knowledgeable poetry guy, as well as a world-class sinologist, I wondered if these twin competencies might have led him to read Kenyon? Although it turns out that he wasn’t familiar with Kenyon (a deficiency that I hope I’ve now prompted him to remediate), his return e-mail did include this link to his excellent article on the vicissitudes of translation. It also provides some concrete examples of the differences between Indo-European language structure and that of “Chinese,” as referred to in the last excerpt from The Aquarian Conspiracy above.
[refrain]
Korzybski warned that we will not grasp the nature of reality until we realize the limitation of words. Language frames our thought, thereby setting up barriers.
So you see, I wasn’t going off-topic when I abruptly brought up Kenyon and Bynner and Derb (Oh, my!). I wasn’t even “connecting the dots”—I was transcending the linguistic barriers that compartmentalize our thinking and verbal intercourse. Lie back and enjoy it.
X
Showing posts with label The Aquarian Conspiracy. Show all posts
Showing posts with label The Aquarian Conspiracy. Show all posts
Saturday, January 3, 2009
Thursday, January 1, 2009
Reflections: New Year, New Age?
X
When a writer who has given me something of value recommends writings from which he has derived value, I go for it. The same source which prompted me to read Trickster Makes This World, about which I have posted below, also cited, in the same piece, The Aquarian Conspiracy by Marilyn Ferguson. I borrowed them both from the library on the same day. I will admit that I was dubious about the latter, based on its title, which is why I read Trickster first. Still, my faith in the intellectual discriminatory powers of my source led me to give the book a try, regardless of its gimmicky, “New Age” sounding title. I will be quoting from it below.
Nine years ago there were predictions of some kind of cataclysm to befall us at the turn of the century—the advent of a new millennium. But nothing happened. Or did it? Are we witnessing the apocalypse now? We know that the dates of the Christian calendar are only approximations. Perhaps as the world we have known implodes around us—as we witness what may be a paradigm shift in our way of life—what we are seeing is our calendar notion of “millennium” being fine-tuned to conform to a Cosmic Clock which transcends human history.
I am a member of the post-WWII generation who came of age in the nineteen-sixties. I was among those who had hoped for, and briefly had seemed to be able to see on the horizon, a revolution in values that would take not only this country, but the entire world, into a future where all of mankind would share in the comforts and freedoms enjoyed by the majority of Americans. It didn’t happen that way. The entrenched powers, operating from within their politico-economic bunkers, prevailed. Their heirs are still in power as I write. The lesson learned was that of the Buffalo Springfield anthem of the day: Step out of line, the Man comes and takes you away. It’s not hard to look back on the sixties as a failure.
But history is not a series of facts strung like beads along a timeline. History is a process. And what manifested socially, culturally, politically in the sixties did not begin in the sixties and did not end with the sixties. The Aquarian Conspiracy has that message as one of its central themes.
America is currently having its world rocked. The future--our future, your future, my future—is today uncertain. The eggs are broken. Do we make an omelet, or do we go hungry? Do we mock those who tell us that every disaster is an opportunity to move forward, or do we pick through the rubble looking for keepsakes--the baubles and snapshots of bygone days?
Chapter 5 of The Aquarian Conspiracy is entitled “The American Matrix”. Its message, when the book was published in 1980, was that America had been, and still was, the incubator of a process that would transform the world by nurturing what would eventually become a critical mass of “Aquarian conspirators.” This loosely defined network of individuals would take this country, and then the world, into a future something like that which was envisioned by those “radicals and hippies” who were energized and mobilized by the zeitgeist of the sixties. Such transformational figures are the true heirs of the Founders, whose zeitgeist was the Enlightenment, and of the Transcendentalists, whose zeitgeist was the Second Great Awakening. Here now is an excerpt from chapter five of The Aquarian Conspiracy:
XX Civilizations decline, [Arnold] Toynbee said, not so much because of invasions or other external forces but because of an internal hardening of ideas. The “elite creative minority” that once gave life to the civilization has been gradually replaced by another minority—still dominant, but no longer creative.
XX Creativity requires constant transformation, experimentation, flexibility. Cynicism, a chronic state of distrust, is antithetical to the openness necessary for a creative society. To the cynic, experiments are futile…all conclusions are foregone. Cynics know the answers without having penetrated deeply enough to know the questions. When challenged by mysterious truths, they marshal “facts.” Just has we must let go of dead philosophies, illusions, and old science to confront reality, so a country must keep challenging its traditions if it is to be transformed—if it wants renewal.
XX Through the heavy seas of crisis, through social movements and wars, depressions, scandals, betrayals, the United States has been consistently open to change. When a television interviewer asked [Jean-Francois] Revel [author of Without Marx or Jesus] in 1978 for his current assessment of the potential for transformation in America, he said, “The United States is still the most revolutionary country in the world, the laboratory for society. All the experiments—social, scientific, racial, intergenerational—are taking place in the U.S.”
As an Aquarian myself, with a birthday later this month, it would seem to me that the above is a pretty good fit with our current situation. On the 20th of this month we swear in a new regime—an experiment that exhibits potential for change—social, scientific, racial, and intergenerational. Let’s work for it, rather than against it. There should be no fear in being scorned by the armies of conformity. It is more than mere coincidence that “mocks” rhymes with “box.” One can hunker down inside walls, or one can climb out and marvel at the beautiful patterns change makes potential when one takes in the Big Picture.
X
When a writer who has given me something of value recommends writings from which he has derived value, I go for it. The same source which prompted me to read Trickster Makes This World, about which I have posted below, also cited, in the same piece, The Aquarian Conspiracy by Marilyn Ferguson. I borrowed them both from the library on the same day. I will admit that I was dubious about the latter, based on its title, which is why I read Trickster first. Still, my faith in the intellectual discriminatory powers of my source led me to give the book a try, regardless of its gimmicky, “New Age” sounding title. I will be quoting from it below.
Nine years ago there were predictions of some kind of cataclysm to befall us at the turn of the century—the advent of a new millennium. But nothing happened. Or did it? Are we witnessing the apocalypse now? We know that the dates of the Christian calendar are only approximations. Perhaps as the world we have known implodes around us—as we witness what may be a paradigm shift in our way of life—what we are seeing is our calendar notion of “millennium” being fine-tuned to conform to a Cosmic Clock which transcends human history.
I am a member of the post-WWII generation who came of age in the nineteen-sixties. I was among those who had hoped for, and briefly had seemed to be able to see on the horizon, a revolution in values that would take not only this country, but the entire world, into a future where all of mankind would share in the comforts and freedoms enjoyed by the majority of Americans. It didn’t happen that way. The entrenched powers, operating from within their politico-economic bunkers, prevailed. Their heirs are still in power as I write. The lesson learned was that of the Buffalo Springfield anthem of the day: Step out of line, the Man comes and takes you away. It’s not hard to look back on the sixties as a failure.
But history is not a series of facts strung like beads along a timeline. History is a process. And what manifested socially, culturally, politically in the sixties did not begin in the sixties and did not end with the sixties. The Aquarian Conspiracy has that message as one of its central themes.
America is currently having its world rocked. The future--our future, your future, my future—is today uncertain. The eggs are broken. Do we make an omelet, or do we go hungry? Do we mock those who tell us that every disaster is an opportunity to move forward, or do we pick through the rubble looking for keepsakes--the baubles and snapshots of bygone days?
Chapter 5 of The Aquarian Conspiracy is entitled “The American Matrix”. Its message, when the book was published in 1980, was that America had been, and still was, the incubator of a process that would transform the world by nurturing what would eventually become a critical mass of “Aquarian conspirators.” This loosely defined network of individuals would take this country, and then the world, into a future something like that which was envisioned by those “radicals and hippies” who were energized and mobilized by the zeitgeist of the sixties. Such transformational figures are the true heirs of the Founders, whose zeitgeist was the Enlightenment, and of the Transcendentalists, whose zeitgeist was the Second Great Awakening. Here now is an excerpt from chapter five of The Aquarian Conspiracy:
XX Civilizations decline, [Arnold] Toynbee said, not so much because of invasions or other external forces but because of an internal hardening of ideas. The “elite creative minority” that once gave life to the civilization has been gradually replaced by another minority—still dominant, but no longer creative.
XX Creativity requires constant transformation, experimentation, flexibility. Cynicism, a chronic state of distrust, is antithetical to the openness necessary for a creative society. To the cynic, experiments are futile…all conclusions are foregone. Cynics know the answers without having penetrated deeply enough to know the questions. When challenged by mysterious truths, they marshal “facts.” Just has we must let go of dead philosophies, illusions, and old science to confront reality, so a country must keep challenging its traditions if it is to be transformed—if it wants renewal.
XX Through the heavy seas of crisis, through social movements and wars, depressions, scandals, betrayals, the United States has been consistently open to change. When a television interviewer asked [Jean-Francois] Revel [author of Without Marx or Jesus] in 1978 for his current assessment of the potential for transformation in America, he said, “The United States is still the most revolutionary country in the world, the laboratory for society. All the experiments—social, scientific, racial, intergenerational—are taking place in the U.S.”
As an Aquarian myself, with a birthday later this month, it would seem to me that the above is a pretty good fit with our current situation. On the 20th of this month we swear in a new regime—an experiment that exhibits potential for change—social, scientific, racial, and intergenerational. Let’s work for it, rather than against it. There should be no fear in being scorned by the armies of conformity. It is more than mere coincidence that “mocks” rhymes with “box.” One can hunker down inside walls, or one can climb out and marvel at the beautiful patterns change makes potential when one takes in the Big Picture.
X
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
