tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-245418292024-03-13T18:48:52.331+00:00love unknownPhilosophical and mystical musings of no interest to anyone with a real life.unenlightenedhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09711296867159960861noreply@blogger.comBlogger30125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-24541829.post-67943874636763209532018-07-01T15:24:00.001+01:002018-07-01T15:24:20.798+01:00<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-1P65nzA68I8/WzjjiyTyp4I/AAAAAAAAACY/9uleIRt2i6oIk-byMcIhlm7DnIddm7zLwCLcBGAs/s1600/IMG_3812.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1200" data-original-width="1600" height="240" src="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-1P65nzA68I8/WzjjiyTyp4I/AAAAAAAAACY/9uleIRt2i6oIk-byMcIhlm7DnIddm7zLwCLcBGAs/s320/IMG_3812.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
<br />
<br />
The defenceless tomatoes and aerial display.unenlightenedhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09711296867159960861noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-24541829.post-24840301546807071612010-02-28T18:22:00.002+00:002010-02-28T18:33:12.339+00:00Mrs unenlightened's new book.Well I think it's rather good, but then I am so close to it that I hardly trust my own judgement. But here is an unsolicited response from someone we had not seen for forty years, that we gave a copy to.<br /><br /><div><span></span></div><blockquote><div><span>I'm reading Isabel's book and I more than love it, there is a pureness about it that I find so refreshing.</span></div> <div><span> </span></div> <div><span>Have you ever thought of making it into "radio novel", everything about the book, so far, is full of images, history, psychology and incredible human feeling. The whole content, read so far, is an experience that would help so many, many people though their changing moods and life's experiences. </span></div> <div><span> </span></div> <div><span>Isabel you have written a book that I will read over and over again, thank you for giving it to me.</span></div></blockquote>So jump in, folks, and invest in a first edition now, and when the film comes out and a major publisher takes it up, you'll be quids in.unenlightenedhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09711296867159960861noreply@blogger.com8tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-24541829.post-57867616842384543832010-02-28T18:15:00.002+00:002010-02-28T18:21:37.172+00:00Everything you always wanted to know...Here is an interview with yours truly from the <a href="http://forums.philosophyforums.com">philosophy forum</a> where I waste most of my life these days. It's less than a year old, so hot news.<br /><br /><span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: separate; color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; orphans: 2; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px; font-size: medium;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: sans-serif; font-size: 12px;"><b><u>An evening with unenlightened</u></b><br /><br /><b>Caldwell:</b><span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>Hello, unenlightened. It's my pleasure to spend some time and expose some enlightening moments with you. Your humor and witty remarks make your posts philosophically readable and engaging. Tell me what you think of that style of writing.<br /><br /><b>unenlightened:</b><span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>I've never tried to create a style, just to be as clear and simple as I can. But I do like to play with words, and sometimes a little humour can clarify something that sometimes gets forgotten - that the world is not constrained by what we have to say about it, even if we can 'prove it'. How many times has it been proved that nothing has any meaning? But it is only talk that<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span><i>needs</i><span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>meaning, which it gets by reflecting the world; the world itself is not a reflection. So as long as one doesn't live entirely in one's head, one is quite safe from meaninglessness and can afford to be amused by it.<br /><br />So I suppose my<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span><i>style</i><span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>comes from that philosophy that thinks that philosophy is important but not serious, or do I mean serious but not important? Whichever, it's not<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span><i>life</i>.<br /><br /><b>Caldwell:</b><span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span><i>As long as one doesn't live entirely in one's head</i>. The natural language philosophers would agree with you. Our interaction with each other, through our language, injects and reinforces meaning in our words and action. So, how is philosophy<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span><i>not</i><span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>life? Most especially in the kind of work you do, working with the disabled, how does philosophy play a role?<br /><br /><b>unenlightened:</b><span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>Yes, I suppose I should qualify that by saying that from the point of view of life, there is no separation, language and thought are part of life; but in thought there is this divide, which is inescapable in that it is the way language works.<br /><br />It is quite a privilege to work with disabled people, and I find in general, that they are kinder, happier, and more positive than the average. When someone needs help to go to the toilet, for instance, it is so simple, natural and intimate that words are unnecessary and ineffectual to describe it. Ego and intellect find no purchase there, sentiment has no place either, but there is a relationship of life to life. So I think I would say that it is my work that plays a role in my philosophy, rather than the other way round, in that I am always aware of the limitation and emptiness of all theory; there is much that it cannot capture - everything important in fact. I think that disability tends to hold one close to the physicality of life, and the necessity of relationship, and<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span><i>there</i><span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>is to be found the joy and significance that one cannot match in thought. Talk is part of that relationship, but cannot capture the whole.<br /><br /><b>Caldwell:</b><span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>Let us, then, try to capture the image in your avatar. What is it, or what is it about? I think it has some significance in the work you do.<br /><br /><b>unenlightened:</b><span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>It's a picture my daughter, Yemaya, drew when she was two and a half. It's the terrace where we lived, and it says "I live here." for those who can't read phonetically. If I was being extravagant, I might say it is her 'cogito' - the beginning of a philosophy. Anyway, it is a joyful expression of the beginnings of conscious thought and the power of image and language. Plus to me it is a sentimental reminder of innocent times gone by. she's doing her A levels now: English, maths, sociology, and plans to study journalism at university. So I expect to see her in a few years on the telly, announcing, "I am here outside 10 Downing Street..." or some such.<br /><br />But I'm thinking of changing it to a picture of one of our local goats.<br /><br /><b>Caldwell:</b><span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span><img src="http://forums.philosophyforums.com/templates/images_default/smilies/smile.gif" alt="smiling face" style="border-width: 0px; vertical-align: middle;" border="0" /><span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>A nice beginning. A cogito, yes. It is also Wittgenstein in a way. Your daughter says "I live here." with certainty. I think it is melancholic to look at it, now that you have explained what it is.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span><br /><br />You have a blog. You write prolifically, like many blog writers. Tell me about this<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span><i>need</i><span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>to have a blog. Is it like a shrine? Certainly, it's not a private place.<br /><br /><b>unenlightened:</b><span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>A shrine? More like a garbage dump!<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span><img src="http://forums.philosophyforums.com/templates/images_default/smilies/biggrin.gif" alt="grin" style="border-width: 0px; vertical-align: middle;" border="0" /><span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>But I haven't done anything with it for ages. These days I tend to empty the rubbish from my head straight into the forums. Looking back at various things I've written, I tend to think, 'well that makes some kind of sense', but it doesn't seem all that important - I'm much more interested in what I'm doing now; this question, not the question I was trying to answer a few years ago. So it sits there in case anyone wants to know some background about me; it might be useful if one wants to understand what I am saying now, I'm not sure. There again, it might be an idea to update it; I could put this interview on there maybe. I think I started it out of a certain frustration and loneliness that probably quite a lot of forum members feel, that there are very few people around that one can really engage with. It is quite a rare thing, even on this forum, to achieve a real meeting of minds that is mutually productive, and that is what I think I am mainly concerned with - how communication can breach the walls that isolate the self. That is the attraction of religion and nationalism, is it not, that they give the illusion of participating in a greater whole? Ha! Philosophy Forums as a new religion... Being banned is going to hell! Oh dear, that makes me some kind of a priest.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span><img src="http://forums.philosophyforums.com/templates/images_default/smilies/no.gif" alt="shaking head" style="border-width: 0px; vertical-align: middle;" border="0" /><br /><br /><b>Caldwell:</b><span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>Very well put.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span><img src="http://forums.philosophyforums.com/templates/images_default/smilies/biggrin.gif" alt="grin" style="border-width: 0px; vertical-align: middle;" border="0" /><span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>I think that is a very good reason for having that blog, that need to connect, which is, as you rightly said, common to many forum members. PF as a new religion. Hmmm, not bad. Yes, it is communication to a wider group. So, now, let us test your culinary taste. Tell us your attitude about food. And while you're at it, how you do you spend your leisure time when you're not here at the forums?<br /><br /><b>unenlightened:</b><span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>Ah, my stomach is a subject close to my heart. I blame Tolstoy for making me a vegetarian; I decided long ago that I didn't want to be responsible for someone else having a job of killing animals for me, and I found I didn't much like doing it myself, although when I kept chickens, and they stopped laying eggs, well they got recycled. But I like making and eating bread, and all kinds of cake and pudding, although, come to think of it I haven't contributed to the recipe thread yet - maybe a Danish pastry would be good?<br /><br />Otherwise, I'm very much a home-body, repairing the house and so on. I used to keep an allotment (a rented vegetable patch, for the non-Brits) but my back is not in a fit state these days, so I go for longish walks most days instead. In my youth, I was involved with alternative education, and I lived for some years in a commune in France, but these days I am tediously conventional and small minded. House, family, work, and snarling at the telly; that's my life outside the forums - which explains why I'm here more than I'm not, I suppose. My partner writes, paints, and tutors primary school children after school, and I tell her where she's going wrong in all those of course. It's a small, unimportant life, but I do enjoy it, by and large.<br /><br /><b>Caldwell:</b><span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>Tediously conventional and small minded? Small, unimportant life? Strangely, this short description of your daily life sounds just about right; and not preoccupied with tech gadgets. Isn't that the life conducive to philosophical pondering? You did, at one point, write something about Eastern philosophy. What do you think of this philosophy as it relates to today's fast and quick-changing exchange of ideas?<br /><br /><b>unenlightened:</b>That's a heck of a big question, and calls for some outrageous generalisations; so leaving out Confucious, and all the other stuff that doesn't fit my prejudices, I think Eastern philosophy is more psychologically sophisticated. When you talk about 'the exchange of ideas', it rather nicely indicates the Western tradition, which is that the goal is to bring thought to order using thought itself. If we can get the right ideas, and properly organise them, then all will be well. There is not the same faith in ideas in eastern philosophy, rather they are seen as a hinderance to 'the good life'. There is something of this in Wittgenstein, and perhaps others, but the state of mind of the philosopher is really not much considered in the West, only the coherence of the ideas therein.<br /><br />So my best understanding of the depth of Eastern philosophy, is that thought cannot bring thought to order, and that when there is a very clear realisation of this fact - which means a direct, immediate insight, not another thought - then there is a natural quieting of the mind, and in that quiet is the order that thought seeks and never finds. But when one articulates this, it is just another idea to add to the 'exchange of ideas' unless one is actually following the movement of one's thoughts, and seeing how everything is transformed and distorted into more ideas. Which is back to the problem of living in one's head again. It is the nature of thought and ideas, rather than the content, that is the concern of the East.<br /><br /><b>Caldwell:</b><span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>I think that is a good distinction you make between the East and the West. While the West focuses on ideas, the East concerns itself with the state of mind. Incidentally, do you practice meditation or some form of yoga? It might be good for your back, no?<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span><img src="http://forums.philosophyforums.com/templates/images_default/smilies/smile.gif" alt="smiling face" style="border-width: 0px; vertical-align: middle;" border="0" /><br /><br /><b>unenlightened:</b><span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>No. I do some exercises which are vaguely yogic, but the practice of meditation, or premeditated meditation, is a contradiction to my mind; it is a form of self-hypnosis, and I am looking to de-hypnotise myself. I like to spend some quiet time, sitting or walking, and pay attention to what is running through my mind, but I neither practice nor perform it, if you see what I mean. There is a danger, I think, if one has seen the problems of Western thinking, to leap instead into the problems of Eastern thinking - they are not necessarily an improvement. Understanding where one is requires not rushing off to become something else, and only a deep understanding of oneself can bring about a real change, not this or that practice, which is just the creation of another habit.<br /><br /><b>Caldwell:</b><span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>Ah, that is a breath of fresh air. A deep understanding of oneself is a good philosophy. Well, unenlightened, this has been a very nice evening. I enjoyed it very much and I wish we could do it more often. We'd like to see you cook in the food thread. Also, you promised to post a picture of your local goats, so I'm going to wait for it. Is there anything else you want to say to our readers?<br /><br /><b>unenlightened:</b>Well thank you Caldwell for some interesting questions and kind comments. There's a whole lot more I have to say, but I will save it for the forums; That seems like a good place to stop for now - suspended between East and West. And I'll try and fulfill my promises in the next few days.<br /><br /><b>Caldwell:</b><span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>My pleasure.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span><img src="http://forums.philosophyforums.com/templates/images_default/smilies/smile.gif" alt="smiling face" style="border-width: 0px; vertical-align: middle;" border="0" /><span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>Stay unenlightened.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span><br /><br /></span></span>unenlightenedhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09711296867159960861noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-24541829.post-84764983371833824752007-08-19T16:37:00.000+01:002007-08-19T17:12:01.067+01:00Postmodernist bollocks...<pre><br /><br /></pre><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Arial;" lang="EN-GB">So there I am thinking about ‘mixedness’ and suchlike and I come across this:<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Arial;" lang="EN-GB"></span></p><blockquote><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Arial;" lang="EN-GB">Extract from 'LEVINAS, TOTALITY AND THE OTHER' BY MARTIN JENKINS<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Arial;" lang="EN-GB">Second article in <a href="http://www.philosophypathways.com/newsletter/issue126.html">http://www.philosophypathways.com/newsletter/issue126.html</a><o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Arial;" lang="EN-GB">Western Philosophy and ethical systems devised within it, have practiced a methodology of systematic foundationalism. In other words, consequences and corollaries are developed and deduced from founding first principles constituting a closed, reflexive system. As phenomena are categorised and judged from within such epistemological and ontological monoliths, 'Identity' and 'Sameness' are practiced. The system is total in its explanation and account of phenomena -- hence Levinas' term, 'Totalisation'. Whatever is within the system is legitimate because defined by and identical with it. Whatever is outside the system is either incorporated into it (thus repressing its otherness and extending the violent sameness of the same) or is denied any existence whatsoever.<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Arial;" lang="EN-GB"><!--[if !supportEmptyParas]--> <!--[endif]--><o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Arial;" lang="EN-GB">Existing ethics such as Immanuel Kant's Deontology[4] and Jeremy Bentham's Utilitarianism[5] operate totalisation. Kant's defence of the individual as an end in itself intrinsically deserving of autonomy and respect, practices a totalising sameness of the same in its emphasis on rationality inherent to each and every individual. Utilitarianism treats the individual as an instrumental cog in the felicific calculation of the sum total of happiness. The individual <i>qua</i> individual is smothered and definitively pre-judged by prior existing categories. As such his/ her Otherness to the totalisation of sameness is deemed insignificant. <o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Arial;" lang="EN-GB"><!--[if !supportEmptyParas]--> <!--[endif]--><o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Arial;" lang="EN-GB">Transcendence<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Arial;" lang="EN-GB"><!--[if !supportEmptyParas]--> <!--[endif]--><o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Arial;" lang="EN-GB">Although totalisation is unavoidable in its acting as an operational guide for everyday human interaction, it is subject to Transcendence. The Other founds the self and society as it is the primordial and original relation. It constitutes the beginning of everything human as it is only through the Other that I can become myself, so that the event of the Other marks the beginning of language, of community and of course, the beginning of ethics. The sheer presence of the Other is unavoidable: it demands my attention by charging into my world and disrupting it in a profound way that a rock or tree does not. Although established upon the revelation of the Other, subsequent culture smothers the Other under the edifices and categories of totalised sameness.<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Arial;" lang="EN-GB"><!--[if !supportEmptyParas]--> <!--[endif]--><o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Arial;" lang="EN-GB">The Face of the Other is not a physical appearance but an <i>Epi-Phany.</i> This epiphanic event of irruption disrupts the sameness of the self and breaks its expectation of linear totalised categories of Being constituting the world. Its revelation demands a response and the nature of the ethical is to provide the appropriate response. This event is so profound it evokes an Infinity which from its exuding plenitude, overflows and transcends the existing representational structures of totalisation. For example, the presence and caress of a lover is such an instance of transcendence. We may use a word to thematise the event and those involved but the sheer presence of the Other, as lover, cannot be contained in a mere description as a theme or event. Overflowing mere conceptual representation, it transcends totality.<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Arial;" lang="EN-GB"><!--[if !supportEmptyParas]--> <!--[endif]--><o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Arial;" lang="EN-GB">This event of the Other cannot -- on pain of being re-absorbed into the existing schemas of conceptual totalisation -- be represented. It is an event of such magnitude and height that it discloses 'signification without content'.</span></p></blockquote><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Arial;" lang="EN-GB"><o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Arial;" lang="EN-GB"><!--[if !supportEmptyParas]--> <!--[endif]--><o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Arial;" lang="EN-GB"><!--[if !supportEmptyParas]--> <!--[endif]--><o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Arial;" lang="EN-GB">And much as I hate the way these postmodernists write, and keen as I am to dismiss it all as waffle and mystification, I can’t help noticing that I’m thinking, oh yeah, that’s what’s going on with this new obsession with mixed race identity. What is outside the system is being incorporated into it (thus repressing its otherness and extending the violent sameness of the same). So I have to look for what else one might do… um what’s an epiphany? “A sudden manifestation of the essence or meaning of something.</span><span style="font-family: Arial;" lang="EN-GB"> </span><span style="font-family: Arial;" lang="EN-GB">A comprehension or perception of reality by means of a sudden intuitive realization.”<span style=""> </span>The meaning of what though, God? Oneself perhaps? I’m not too sure, but it does seem to me a little that for society at large and for the individual who is mixed race, there is something threatening and dangerous in the undefined nature of mixedness which academics and politicians are trying to control and absorb into the pervasive sameness of the liberal democratic monoculture. These strange ‘others’ must be made part of ‘us’ in order to enter the ‘same’ moral framework. The CRE conference is a desperate attempt to cope with people who somehow fail to be part of the total scheme of things. But in this case, the ‘other, as lover’ is equally keen to be absorbed into the system. It is so hard to be the constant occasion of another’s transcendence.<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Arial;" lang="EN-GB"><!--[if !supportEmptyParas]--> <!--[endif]--><o:p></o:p></span></p>unenlightenedhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09711296867159960861noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-24541829.post-79934092620588535632007-08-18T11:26:00.000+01:002007-08-18T11:28:51.062+01:00Graduation: a Question of Judgement.<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="" lang="EN-GB">The sizes of stones vary from the finest dust particle to enormous boulders. There is a machine which grades stones; it is like a sieve with a mesh which can be varied in size - say for building a road. The mesh size that separates sand from gravel, or gravel from pebbles is a social construction; it is arbitrary in relation to stone in the sense that the largest grain of sand is closer to the smallest piece of gravel than it is to the average grain of sand. Nevertheless, the grade is set to suit the purposes of the builder, and in relation to the builder it is not arbitrary but meaningful. No one is going to try and tell a builder that there are no such things as ‘sand’ and ‘gravel’ really, that they are just social constructions. Of course size isn’t everything, colour, hardness, chemical composition may be more significant for some purposes…<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="" lang="EN-GB">The grading of students at graduation is similarly arbitrary at the margin between, say a 2/2 and a 2/1. Students don’t divide into ‘natural’ kinds in this way, but academics find it useful and meaningful to make these distinctions as social constructions. There is an important difference from the case of stones though, that academics have themselves been through the grading process - 2/2s don’t generally ‘make the grade’ of becoming academic graders. It is as though sand itself decided what was gravel and what was sand, and gravel had no say in the matter. Academia constructs itself, or defines itself, by this recursive process.<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="" lang="EN-GB">‘Human nature’ is similarly constructed in a recursive way; the Catholic church, for instance, operates according to a ‘one cell rule’, where a fertilised egg is already human, whereas the legal position in this country is rather different. Where exactly we draw the boundaries of humanity is debatable, but whatever falls outside the boundary, has no say in the matter because ‘having a say’ is a human attribute - we do not ask chimps to comment! It seems that we have explored the limits of the world and established or decided that there are no debatable individuals as ‘races’ or ‘subspecies’. Yet we know that it could have been otherwise; Neanderthals could have survived for example, talking hairy apes might have been discovered. <o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="" lang="EN-GB">The boundary of human nature is fundamental to morality in the sense that what is not human may be treated instrumentally - as an object, whereas what is human may not be so treated. This boundary has changed over time in this society, and indeed in academia. In particular, black Africans were excluded from humanity, and treated ‘like cattle’, as possessions. Women have also been excluded in this way - by the recursive process of self-definition, from that very process. We still have to remind ourselves occasionally, that ‘mankind’ includes women. It is tempting to believe that we can escape from this recursive self definition into an objective view of human nature, but my thesis is that this is impossible, and that recursive self definition is <i>the </i>defining feature of humanity. And there is no escape into vagueness available, because the boundary of what is human defines what it is acceptable to eat, to exploit, to have sexual relations with, etc. We cannot do without a clear distinction here. Whether one analyses philosophically or not, life decisions are continually being made on the basis of sameness and otherness, as to who/what one has to care about, take account of etc.<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="" lang="EN-GB">Ideas of Race are similar to, and closely involved with the idea of human nature; they are in a sense, (at least nowadays, and according to respectable opinion) subdivisions of<span style=""> </span>‘humanity’ and partake of the same features of recursion and arbitrariness. The one-drop rule sets an arbitrary limit on blackness; it is at the extreme end of the black/white spectrum, so that on one side the distinction is very fine (the finest sand) and on the side there are many variations (gravel, pebbles, great boulders). In South America there is a different grading system. But remember, the grader in this case, is also a stone and whatever mesh you are using, you have to jump through it too.<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="" lang="EN-GB">In this country, people do not generally eat dog or horse meat - horses are regarded almost as part of the family, human by association, and therefore taboo. Intellectual rigor gives way to ‘gut feeling’. It seems likely that notions of race are subject to similar non rational associations; what is familiar, close to me, similar to me, I am inclined to treat more respectfully. ‘Human’ always means ‘human like me’. If I could think of myself as an animal, and not <i>morally</i> distinguish ‘humanity’, I would, by my own definition, either be a vegetarian or a cannibal. There is an inevitable short-sightedness. If I am sand, I’m on the look out for other grains of sand, I know about sand and I am very good at discriminating. If I am gravel, I have a different point of view. <o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="" lang="EN-GB">In matters of race the speaker has a (short-sighted) point of view, a race to be taken into account. When people say of other races, as they do, “they all look the same”, it’s human nature; for the qualities that are close to me are more meaningful than those that are far away. However you set your scales of difference and sameness, the chances are that you give yourself more importance. What is taken into account at the graduation of students is what is important to those who set the exams. And <i>who</i> is important, is who passes the exams, because who passes <i>is</i> who sets. And those same people, the leading thinkers, to a great extent also define the categories of thought, like race and human nature, which are the social constructs which construct society. <o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="" lang="EN-GB">There is inevitably a question of power, here. Whose writ runs? The Judeo-Christian (white?) tradition has an origin mythology in which humanity is characterised by the fall from the state of nature into (self) knowledge and shame for the naked (animal) body. It is hardly surprising that the sight of Africans with different facial features, different hair, different skin, and above all <i>shamelessly</i> naked, would raise questions of human boundaries in the minds of the first Europeans to encounter them. Likewise, the Africans probably saw the white men as angels or ghosts. But whose writ runs? Who has the guns! The academic tradition has its roots in the monastic tradition, and follows the mythology to the extent at least of emphasising knowledge as being of primary significance in characterising human nature. The tradition long was that women were excluded from universities, and on the whole, they are still dominated by white males. And everyone ‘other’ has to prove their humanity first, before they even get to have a voice, leave alone a say, in what constitutes good, rational, human, thinking.<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="" lang="EN-GB">We like to think we have moved beyond all this now; we used to be racist and sexist individually and institutionally, but these days we are egalitarian and inclusive… but who is this ‘we’?<span style=""> </span>The story is still being told by the white man, a black woman cannot subscribe to it. She would have to say that we used to be racially and sexually oppressed and excluded – and it looks like we still are.<o:p></o:p></span></p>unenlightenedhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09711296867159960861noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-24541829.post-13081416233757727402007-08-10T12:09:00.000+01:002007-08-10T12:47:35.949+01:00Identity again<div style="text-align: center;"><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_huw8OuLbFsI/RrxM4szHQoI/AAAAAAAAAAM/3xayvrdxrXs/s1600-h/the+undiscriminating+seagull.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer;" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_huw8OuLbFsI/RrxM4szHQoI/AAAAAAAAAAM/3xayvrdxrXs/s400/the+undiscriminating+seagull.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5097033415258489474" border="0" /></a><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">The Undiscriminating Seagull<br /><br /></span></div>If you have come here from the CRE discussion on mixedness, you might be interested in one of the essays on the left. If from elsewhere, you can find my latest little gem <a href="http://www.mixedness.org.uk/Default.aspx.LocID-0hgnew0wi.RefLocID-0hg01l0hg01l001.Lang-EN.htm">here</a><br />And above is a picture of the seagull mentioned in the piece.<br />And if you come back in 6 months I might have put something else here. Your comments welcome here or there. The seagulls here have learned to fly over your shoulder from behind you and knock your ice cream or chips out of your hand. Once it's on the floor, they know you won't want it... but they really don't care about the colour of your skin. The grey/brown jobs in the background are the adolescents, who will doubtless learn from their elders soon enough, but at the moment are both timid and stupid.unenlightenedhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09711296867159960861noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-24541829.post-69995489592363252872007-01-09T13:00:00.000+00:002007-01-09T13:05:36.060+00:00Writing Home - it's all about me!I remember crying. I must have been six or seven when I read in the local rag that Purley, my hometown, was being amalgamated with Croydon, the next and bigger town. I felt the loss of something - my home - the separateness of it, the meaning of the name that was part of my identity - my home town. It hurt, and I remember crying. Now, I feel very little connection. Purley is a dreary middle-class sprawl, a characterless suburban nothing. I was born and brought up there, in that house look; you can just see it across the valley from the train. I used to always count the special brown and cream coaches of the Brighton Belle sitting at the kitchen table. I haven't been back in forty years, never wanted to.<br />When I was eleven I was sent to boarding school. We were supposed to write home at the weekend - that was the terrible thing about that school, all your life was supposed- I never had anything to say, except the thing I knew I wasn't supposed to say, which was "For God's sake get me out of this hell-hole''. School was no home, and home had sent me to school; I felt truly homeless, abandoned and alone. I ran away in the second term, terrified on unknown buses, travelling alone for the first time in my life, and eventually got back to the house. We had just moved - or rather they had just moved; I was at school - and I arrived late evening, dark, wet, and cold, in shock I suppose. All I could say was 'I didn't like it, so I came home...' standing in the living room, trying not to cry. They phoned the school, and took me back next day. My house-master had a little chat with me, and explained that I was just having a little adventure; nothing more would be said about it, on the understanding that it wouldn't happen again. So it didn't. What was the point, there was nowhere left to go. I've never really got over that time. I'm pretty much disconnected from my family; I've never felt really part of it since I suppose I'm a sort of refugee from the middle class and from the Home Counties.<br />I live in Wales as a foreigner and in a way I'm comfortable with that. It's a funny place, Wales; 'Welsh' is an English word meaning 'foreigner' and in some ways the place is defined negatively, as not being England. No one seems quite sure what it takes to be Welsh. You can be born here, live your life here, and still not quite fit in South Wales is another country to up here in the North; West Wales is more Welsh than the Marches (at least in the eyes of the West Welsh). Some people are, in their own words, 'Very Welsh'. Llandudno, where I live, is not Very Welsh, it's a tourist town and has been since it was built in Victorian times for presumably English holiday-makers. Even the time it was built is English - we appropriate everything in our arrogance. So even the locals are not altogether local for the most part, and in the season, there are all sorts come here, and all sorts are welcome if they have money to spend. Some people resent Llandudno as an English enclave in Wales, but although it's not entirely Welsh, it's not English either - there are too many churches and chapels for one thing. There's an air of nostalgia for a bygone age that probably never was, and a history that no one can quite lay claim to, from the Bronze Age Mines to the Alice in Wonderland Statue.<br />My favourite author, J. Krishnamurti, wrote that he felt at home everywhere. Feeling at home, he said, is feeling affection and feeling responsible for what is around you and what goes on. I have lived in other places, in Wales and elsewhere, and not felt like that, instead I've felt unwelcome, resented and an outsider. I'm very dependent on other people in that way, I think most of us are. Perhaps that's why I like to live here in a Victorian Wonderland, a foreigner in a foreign town in a country called foreign - I almost feel at home.unenlightenedhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09711296867159960861noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-24541829.post-1167320328352332262006-12-28T15:26:00.000+00:002006-12-28T15:38:48.393+00:00Culture and Identity: an introduction to a discussion<strong>Map and Territory.<br /></strong>The map is not the territory; the word is not the thing. Here is a fundamental distinction, which can be expressed in many ways: map/territory, idea/reality, thought/existence, representation/represented. In thought and logic, division and distinction is all. “A” is not “not A”, and never the twain shall meet. Whatever is said, here or elsewhere, is going to be part of a map, a representation of “what is”. If what we say is honest, faithful and true, then we will be producing an accurate, meaningful map, but it is important to bear in mind that it is only ever a map and it takes its meaning from the territory. Everything that is said is indicating, pointing to something else, something beyond the words. We are talking about the meaning of life, but we should not expect to find it in the words we use, or the thoughts we have.<br />Many a good town map has a label on it saying “You are here”. Of course it’s only true when you’re looking at the map. What is always “here” is the map itself. There are two things to be noticed: (1) the map and the territory are both represented on the map; (2) the map is a genuine part of the territory. In the end, the distinction breaks down; “A” is a part of “not A” and “not A” is in turn a part of “A”. This may all seem rather abstract and confusing, and this is because what I am trying to indicate here is a limitation of thought, and that is something that thought cannot grasp.<br />All our thoughts and ideas, all the activity of our busy minds, is a map of “what is”. If the map is an accurate representation of the territory, it is meaningful, but if it is distorted, untruthful or imaginary, then it loses meaning. Suppose the bus company published the timetable they would like to run if they had more resources instead of the one that they could actually achieve; it would be useless, meaningless. Now one of the most persistent, busiest ideas in my mind is the idea of myself. Everything seems to get connected to this idea because the idea of myself is the map of the map, the “You are here” label. At this point thought makes an almost inevitable mistake; seeing the map of the territory containing the map of the map, it mistakes itself for the map of the map, and not the whole map. So the map and the map of the map take on an enormous significance, myself becomes more important than anything else, thought becomes the world, and error and distortion result, which leads to a loss of meaning.<br /><br /><strong>Identity.<br /></strong>There are the facts of my life, where I was born, my upbringing, education, qualifications, occupation, habits, religion, nationality, skin colour, etc. and there is no problem with these - they are not a source of conflict. But then there is my and other’s interpretation of, and attitude to, the facts. I was born and brought up in England and now I live here in Wales – “No problem.” I say, but to some people there is a problem; “Wales for the Welsh, English go home.” The facts of my life have become an identity - I have been identified as English. I’ve lived here for 15 years, my children have been brought up here, I vote for the national assembly, but there is no point in argument pitting fact against fact. The question is, what is the importance of the facts, to me and to the other fellow. Ownership, entitlement, honour, this is where there is conflict; my country, right or wrong? my religion, right? my profession, under-paid? my people, sadly misunderstood?<br />Why do we adopt and impose these identities? Perhaps it is for security, not to be alone; perhaps for convenience, to take advantage of other people; perhaps we cannot bear the feeling of being nothing. Even the identity of “madman” has its uses as an excuse. There is such comfort in knowing who you are, and knowing that it is “good” to be that thing, that people will happily die to maintain it, indeed that is the very stuff of being a good Englishman or Christian or whatever.<br />If I am a teacher, you know not only who I am and how I’m likely to behave, but also how to respond - to listen and learn and ask polite questions. But if I am not the teacher, then you don’t know what to expect or what is expected of you. Then there is the encounter of two unknowns, and the past cannot help us.<br /><br /><br /><strong>Communication.<br /></strong>In this world of instant, global interconnectedness, communication skills are seen to be very important, we put it on our CVs “good communication skills.” What is communication, is it a skill, is it important? If we mean the ability to persuade people of something, to move them, motivate them, manipulate them, then advertisers, politicians, charismatic religious leaders are good communicators. This is a skill that can be learned to a great extent through the study of psychology and the practice of acting. If you want to be one of the movers and shakers, this is what you need.<br />But I want to talk about something quite different, something that we might do together, not one do to another. The word “communication” has the same root as “common”, which means sharing. If we can share our questions, insights and confusion without trying to convert, persuade or control each other, perhaps there may be a meeting of minds - a meeting of equals as friends. This requires something quite other than psychological knowledge or acting skill; I cannot be “better” at meeting you than you are at meeting me – that’s not meeting at all! So this kind of communication requires some humility, not someone who thinks of himself or herself as a “good communicator”. If I’m trying to persuade you, or sell you something, to get you to think or do or be something, that’s not what I mean by communication.<br />The quality of listening is important here; we need to listen to ourselves and to each other, not accepting or rejecting what is said, but checking it out - does this make sense, does it agree with my own understanding, am I being honest? I’m not talking about counselling techniques or any method, learned or habitual; anything, which is set up in advance, can only act as a barrier to us meeting. In listening there needs to be freedom from duty, effort and technique, and a genuine interest in the other person, in what is being said, and in one’s own response. So if I notice that I am getting bored and my attention is wandering, I might ask myself why; is it because nothing interesting is being said, or is something being talked about that I am reluctant to go into, or is there something more important on my mind? Then I might or might not want to say something, or ask something. What I hope I won’t be doing is gritting my teeth and trying to concentrate, or letting the conversation pass by in a dream, and if I find myself doing that, again I will look to see why.<br />We come here each with our own burden of thought, belief, fear, hope, etc. Our minds are preoccupied with our own affairs, and this is the difficulty. If our minds are already full, there is no room for meeting; there is no room for you in my mind or for me in your mind. In asking ourselves how we can make some space, there is a danger that we will arrive at a method, of meditation or of self-expression, but these things only add to the clutter of our minds, when what we need is some empty space. Can we ask the question, but refuse to answer it?<br /><br /><strong>Meaning, Value, Purpose.<br /></strong>Purpose relates a thing to something else, something beyond itself, to a before of someone who purposes or plans and to an after of some effect or result. So if life has a purpose, it has to have a purpose to someone who is beyond and behind life, and an end result beyond death in the hereafter. There are plenty of people who claim to know about God’s plan and the hereafter, and many others who say that there is no God, nothing beyond life, and therefore no purpose to life. My position is that everything that I can see or know or experience is part of life and not beyond it, if I have some revelation, true or false, it is part of my life, so I prefer to leave all that on one side. When we are dead, perhaps we can talk about these things.<br />Value also relates a thing to a person, something has value to someone, and it at least invites comparison - I value this more than that. This means that life is the necessary condition of value, without life I cannot value anything, so to talk of the value of life is to talk of the value of value. Life has infinite value or it has none. To ask whether it is worth laying down one’s life for another is a wrong question, to answer it requires one again to see beyond life, it takes us back to purpose.<br />Meaning is a word of many slippery uses, and my reason for talking about purpose and value first is to clear a space in our minds for the word to occupy. I do not want to talk about the meaning of the word “meaning”, I want to talk about the meaning of life. Our coming together, our discussions, may have more meaning than is contained in the things we say; there may be more meaning than we intend. I don’’ say that it is so, or that it is not, but I want to suggest that to look for meaning in the sense that I mean, is to look at the thing in question and not at something or someone else. So I have a purpose in mind in starting these discussions, which I hope we will all find valuable, and that purpose is to look for meaning in life.<br /><br /><strong>Creativity.<br /></strong>We are always looking for something new, in art, science and the media. Creative writing courses abound; television especially, is hungry for new ideas. So it is natural to ask where new ideas come from and whether it is possible to learn or teach people to be more creative. Perhaps, indeed there is nothing new under the sun, and all we ever have is a rearrangement of the old. Certainly there is a great deal of that going on, but occasionally, with Einstein or Van Gogh say, there seems to be something genuinely new, something original and creative happening. Is this something peculiar to a few individuals, or is it potentially available to everyone? I am very interested, not because I want to be famous or rich, Van Gogh had neither in his lifetime, but because being creative seems to me to be essential for life to have some real worth or meaning.<br />There is a very old, mythical idea of a Cornucopia, or horn of plenty, an animal’s horn that is an inexhaustible source of food and drink and all good things. The open end is a wide mouth from which everything flows like water gushing from a pipe, but the other end, the source, tapers down to nothing. It is contrary to common sense, but creativity must be something like this, because to be original means precisely not to have come from anywhere else but to start here. So the source of creativity, of anything new, is nothing and nowhere; it has to be so, otherwise it would not be new but just a rearrangement of what is old.<br />Now when I think about myself, I am seeing myself with the eyes of memory, all my ideas about myself are old ideas, old knowledge, old habits (habits are always old aren’t they?). If there is anything new about me, it is not that, so it would be foolish of me to say “I am creative.” I might say, “I was creative”, but that too is old, so whatever is new is not “me” and is unknown. What is difficult, because it is frightening, is to let go of the known habitual me, to let go of my ideas about time and space, or the principles of art and painting, and without letting go of the old there is no room for the new. There needs to be some emptiness, some “nothing” in my mind from which new thoughts, new understanding can come; if I am “full of myself” full of my own ideas and knowledge which are all old, there can never be anything creative.<br /><br /><strong>Life and Death.<br /></strong>We tend to think of life and death as opposites. It’s getting hard to draw the line with modern medicine, but in general the difference is clear. I know that I am alive now and I will be dead eventually, but I prefer not to think about that very much. In fact my mind seems to slide off somehow; “being dead” is almost a contradiction - “dead” is “not being”. Death comes to us all, and yet when it arrives we are not there. Many people say that there is life after death, the body dies but we continue somehow, somewhere. Perhaps they are right, I don’t know, but that is not what I mean by death. When I talk about my death, I mean the end of me; if there is never an end of me, then I am talking about nothing.<br />Some things are not alive. Talk to a rock, caress it, flatter it, mock it, it does not respond; leave it alone, it does not move; there is no life in it. I tend to think of myself as continuing through time; I stay more or less the same while the world changes around me. But life is always moving, changing, responding, so this image of a fixed “me” is the image of something dead like the rock that carries on the same no matter what. Life is always new, always renewing itself, and this means that it is always dying. Yesterday’s response will not do for today, things have changed. The old bob needs to die so that a new bob can come into being. If I keep saying the same thing each week, you will all get bored and stop listening, but if I am alive to the difference in you from week to week, from moment to moment, then my thought and my talk will change responsively - we will respond to each other. It seems that life and death are not separate, but one process which goes on in me all the time, from moment to moment. If I try to postpone my death until some distant tomorrow, I am trying to be a rock; I am trying to be already dead. And this rock of unchanging self becomes a terrible burden to me that I have to protect and carry with me, the source of all my fear. So when someone says “There is no death.” I reply, “Please, God, let it not be true!” because without death, there can be no birth; death has to come before birth.<br /><br /><strong>Culture.<br /></strong>Plato, Jesus, Shakespeare, Newton, Bill Gates; - two thousand years of culture influence what I say, and shapes the world I live in, not to mention the forgotten heroes who invented fire, metal- working, pottery, the wheel, etc. Culture is like the heartwood of a tree, the remains of previous years of growth, that no longer lives, but supports and shapes the new green twigs and leaves of our present lives.<br />The names I give are the ones I know, and you will know others that influence you, but we all live amongst the bones of the ancestors. Their influence is not always benign, and we do not owe them any favours. At least that is what my ancestors say; yours may have different ideas.<br />Indeed, the whole of this introduction is written from a particular culture which happens to have dominated and exploited half the world for the last few centuries, but which has no special claim to the authority of the truth, let alone any moral authority. It seems to me though, that culture and identity are in the end the same thing, they are history and knowledge and all that is the past, and we urgently need to be free of it all. It seems that we cannot be free by forgetting or ignoring it, because it is what we are, and what we seek to become or to escape from; perhaps we can be free by examining it together in the mirror of relationship.unenlightenedhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09711296867159960861noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-24541829.post-1158155077940103442006-09-13T14:42:00.000+01:002006-09-13T16:09:38.176+01:00At Sea with no PurposeIf I can just express this thing fully and clearly, that is running through my mind, that will be enough. Will it bring me happiness or satisfaction? I don't know, and it's not important. will anyone read it with care and understanding? It would be nice to think so, but that is not the purpose. A thought worth thinking, or a life worth living, is like a universe worth creating - it can't depend on something else, it has to contain its own value and be its own purpose. When God did the creation thing, He 'saw that it was good.' Only the devil would ask Him, 'Good for what? It's a question with no end, because any answer can be subjected to the same question again. It is tempting to make a barrier of the self; my happiness as good for me. Philosophers and religionists are fond of this answer, and it does seem to end the question, because no one can argue with me about my personal happiness, but what a small, mean world it confines me to! Nothing that is beyond my experience or beyond my comprehension can have any value to me - and that is almost everything. Besides, the fact is that by and large, I am not happy, and in such a small world how could I be?<br />This morning in the woods, amongst the undergrowth dying back at the end of the summer, I came across a little clump of flowers standing bright purple in the greens and browns. And if I hadn't been that way, if no one had seen them? Well I did see them and the seeing was a joy; but they did not need me to see them to justify their existence, and that too was a joy.<br />We should not call them suicide bombers; they are martyrdom bombers. Their purpose is their own happiness in paradise by means of doing God a big favour. Apparently, God wants us all to be Muslims, and He needs the help of the faithful to destroy the infidel. It's hard work, but the pay is excellent. Well, <em>my</em> faith is that each thing and each person is their own justification; this limited, confused and often unhappy person who is writing, and that limited and confused person who is blowing himself up - God sees that we are good; not good because He sees, not good because we do his will or fulfill his purpose, nor our own purposes, not good for <em>anything,</em> just good.<br />Dying is part of life. Things that don't die, like stones, are not alive. The two things are inseparable parts of one process. Birth and death are the limits of myself and myself is a limit on what exists. My skin separates me from, and joins me to the world, as my death separates me from and joins me to the life of the world; it is the limit of the limitation called me. And after, so we are told by those that heard it and misunderstood, comes paradise. But paradise comes first not last, and it is paradise and eternal precisely because there is no self, no me in it; it consists of the end of that limitation.<br />And that is the end of this line of thought; but the world continues...unenlightenedhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09711296867159960861noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-24541829.post-1155910535999481442006-08-18T14:35:00.000+01:002006-08-18T15:15:36.066+01:00...ismsPhilosophy's full of them - Platonism, pragmatism etc etc. I could never be bothered to work out which was which and how they all linked and differed. I suppose it can be quite useful to have a name for a general way of thinking as a shorthand, and to avoid having to deal with repetitious arguments... 'Oh thats just another version of ...ism, how boring.' They do rather tend to take over one's mind and become the whole of philosophy, and I have decided to call this Ismism in order to save time and desparage it more conveniently. Classic examples of Ismism will not be gratefully recieved at this site.<br /><br />It goes for politics and religion even more so, and I have been struck of late by how some people you can very easily talk to and some you can't. I'm fascinated by the possibility of communication - it seems a rare and wonderful thing that requires minds that are open to something new. So I am always going to be more interested in philosophies that are incomplete and provisional; once they have hardened into systems, with axioms laid out on tablets of stone, I start to find that there is nothing to do or say, except to accept or reject. People who have adopted this sort of system will tend to discount anthing which does not conform to the axioms as 'nonsense'. All they will do is show you, with more or less patience and condescension, where you have 'gone wrong'. In other words, they are impossible to talk to as they inhabit a different conceptual world. I quite like to try to liberate people from the confines of their certainty, but mostly it proves fruitless, and one learns to conserve one's energy and avoid the most obvious hardliners. One way to spot them early is by the tendency not to even attempt to understand what one is trying to say, but merely to pick up on some key word, God, freedom, identity, or some such, and rush in to tell you what it 'really means' (I'm looking at you, John).unenlightenedhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09711296867159960861noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-24541829.post-1155328142168708952006-08-11T20:42:00.000+01:002006-08-11T21:29:02.323+01:00PainWow, 2 comments in one day, how gratifying, I'm inspired!<br />By way of excuse/explanation/ for not laying my swine before pearls for a while, I shall now discourse on pain.<br />I don't react very well to pain; it makes me even more irritable than usual, and I can't concentrate on anything. To be specific I have a 'bad back' and every then and right now, it 'goes'. When it happens I rush to take some nice pills that anti-inflame it a bit, and suddenly get all conscientious about doing exercises and stretches. What I don't generally do is be philosophical about it - it hurts, it's a pain, I don't like it, my life becomes a misery. Theoretically I know that pain is necessary; people who either don't feel pain, or who feel it but it doesn't hurt (that sounds weird but it happens), get into trouble and damage themselves. The pain when I move makes me rest and allows the body to heal, bla bla bla... Yeah but it hurts all the time and I'm all full of self pity and rage and I don't care about anything except I want it to stop.<br /><br />Where I work is a hotel for disabled people, and one of the worst things is that I can see my own troubles are insignificant in relation to some of our guests, and yet they are, by and large, the nicest people you could wish to meet, and this is a bit of a mystery to me. If I was bedridden, incontinent, unable to eat solid food, hardly able to breathe or in constant pain, as a condition of life - permanently, I think I would be unbearable to live with, yet these people are an inspiration, generous, loving, full of humour, and clearly enjoying life to the max. How do they do it? Is pain good for the soul? It sure doesn't seem so in my case - but perhaps I'm biased? The other week there was a couple, must have been in their nineties, he used a walking frame, while she was in a wheelchair. And he came to ask me to lift his wife on and off the toilet, she had MS to go with her arthritis and something else which I forget, and he was just too frail to help her. And yet the love and joy that emanated from them, their simple humanity and warmth... I can't really convey, but it was a privilege to help them, bad back or no.unenlightenedhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09711296867159960861noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-24541829.post-1153485575419748702006-07-21T10:10:00.000+01:002006-07-21T13:39:35.540+01:00Man, Nature, and DawkinsThe idea of 'memes' is itself a meme, derived from/associated with other memes such as evolution, rationality, science, etc. These memes may have a particular survival advantage of being 'true' in the sense of corresponding to the way the world is (or maybe not). It is also the case though, that the power to change the world that science gives to humans has led to new threats to the survival of the species through things like global warming and neuclear holocaust. So the theory of memes could be used as an argument against science and in favour of a return to a fundementalist and back to basics primitive society that is not in danger from this hubris, rather than the other way round. Just because it's true, doesn't make it conducive to our survival, and there is no room in a survivalist ethic for a romantic attachment to truth. The rise of fundementalism then could be seen as a Gaian attempt to restore the memetic and ecological balance which was destroyed by the western enlightenment and the rise of science. The clear duty (to the species) of anyone who understands this theory, then, is to give up science and promote religion.<br /><br />But the whole concept of the selfish gene in the first place is just anthropomorphism gone ugly. You don't have to be a brilliant geneticist to notice that genes can <em>only</em> survive by cooperation, both within the organism and with the environment. Selfishness, almost by definition, is a form of myopic short-termism. Selfishness is a peculiarly human disease, which pervades the practice of science as it does every human practice, although the methods and principles of scientific enquiry are designed to eliminate this 'personal bias'. An old fashioned (non-evolutionary) psychologist such as myself, detects in the selfish-gene theory a case of gross projection, which goes a long way to explaining its popularity - our human failings become necessities of nature, and not our fault after all. I am not arguing for creationism, but there is more psychological sense to me in the idea of a fall from a state of innocence, from nature as Eden, into as state of conflict arising from self-awareness as the knowledge ofgood and evil. This self-awareness is what separates and distinguishes humanity from the natural world, and this gives rise to our contradictory relations on the one hand to God and on the other hand to Nature - our internal divisions result in a separate and separating relation to both. Our fall is out of the world, and into thought and time. What interests me is not the survival of thought as meme, or the replacement of religious with scientific memes, but the ending of thought as meme.<br /><br />I think it was Steve Jones, the geneticist who said that while we share 98% of our genes with chimpansees, we also share 50% of them with the banana. It seems that the whole of the living environment is a close relative in genetic terms. If that 50% of us influenced our vaunted intelligence, we would all be radical environmentalists, like St Francis, whose brothers and sisters were birds and animals. But if genes are not selfish, perhaps there is a gene for selfishness unique to humans and closely associated with intelligence. The way we tend to think of ourselves and the way we generally behave is very much 'as if' we had different, selfish genes (or are they just memes?). The endless conflicts of class, race, nationality, religion, culture are very much based on identification of 'people like us' against 'others'. But the genetic facts deny such identifications and distinctions and cannot be used to either explain or justify them. On the contrary, the way we behave in general 'explains' why we have come up with this strange theory.<br />Evolutionary psychology makes great use of game theory, and gains the credibility of mathematics thereby. But game theory assumes the reality of seperate identifiable individuals with differing interests, it is not clear that it is relevant to something that is 98% chimp and 50% banana. It's not that there is no competition in the natural world - round here the squabbling of seagulls is completely commonplace - but it is misleading as a dominant metaphor for evolutionary processes, because competition is only possible on the basis of a more fundamental cooperation. In order for game theory to apply, we have already to be in agreement about playing the game.<br />Bananas do not want to survive; they do not compete with us or with each other. They live and develop according to their (genetic) nature, and reproduce, or not. Chimps are more complex; they seem to like their children, and look after them; they seem more consciously to compete and cooperate, but we do not attribute to them a desire to continue their 'bloodline' as we used to call it before we discovered genes. One can see how our ideas of family, tribe, nation, race self have arisen from our complex behaviour as social animals, but it does not seem useful to then use those ideas to explain how this complex behaviour came into being, let alone to explain the fundamental processes of nature.unenlightenedhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09711296867159960861noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-24541829.post-1152301468087897272006-07-07T20:41:00.000+01:002006-07-07T20:44:28.096+01:00A Tale of Two Beaches<a href="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/4244/2545/1600/Llandudno.5.jpg"><img style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; CURSOR: hand; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/4244/2545/320/Llandudno.2.jpg" border="0" /></a>unenlightenedhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09711296867159960861noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-24541829.post-1151246660788926652006-06-25T15:40:00.000+01:002006-06-25T15:44:20.806+01:00Man, Nature, God.Nature is one of those concepts that seems to slide about all over the place and tends to become problematic. I’ve been tramping about cyberspace, particularly blogland and the province of philosophy, and I think it’s time to marshal a few thoughts. I, (you, we, one,) is/ are/ am ‘man’. At this point I haven’t decided what exactly that is: toolmaker, language-user, conscious being, or whatever. There is me, or the people, and then there is the world.<br />I am fairly familiar with the world, and to the extent that I am, it is natural. For example, I live by the sea; the tide comes in and goes out on a regular basis; it acts as expected by and large. Then there is a tsunami. This is unexpected and therefore unnatural; therefore it is supernatural. This is in barest outline, a ‘natural history’ of the way that Nature comes to be defined in a dual opposition to Man and God.<br />It is fairly obvious to me at least that nature is defined as being known or at least knowable, while God is the unknown, unpredictable. Of course there is always someone ready to come forward to interpret these unnatural events for me, or I can invent my own story to explain them, the point is that they need some explaining, as opposed to the tide, which is ‘natural’.<br />Now along comes science and says well here’s a better explanation for tsunami, or eclipses or whatever unnatural thing you may wish to consider, and actually if you look carefully you will see that all these things are perfectly natural, and are only to be expected. In fact as it happens, everything, including man, is quite natural – it was quite natural for us to have thought of God as an explanation in the old days, and it is quite natural for people to be reluctant to give up old ideas, but these explanations are not needed any more, and have no real meaning or value.<br />But to say that something is natural is not to explain anything, it is simply to say that no explanation is needed. ‘Man’ is ‘naturally’ selfish, as is ‘Nature’ itself. And this is somehow more satisfying, more useful, and more rational than a ‘religious’ explanation?unenlightenedhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09711296867159960861noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-24541829.post-1150040029426117822006-06-11T16:11:00.000+01:002006-06-11T16:33:49.443+01:00Pavement RageI hate you all in your ugly metal coffins, rushing from here to nowhere with such noisy self-importance. Why must the pavement always end at a junction, and never the road? Why is there never a quiet time or a still place any more? Once there was freedom of the road, joy of speed, new places to go - all the ads recall those days, long gone. The roads are all full and they all go to the same cramped noisy traffic hell with not enough (and yet far too many) parking spaces.<br />Even the shops are now warehouses marooned in a sea of cars. And that expensive sound-system of yours only plays one song; boom, boom, boom, boom, as if the engine-noise is not loud or ugly enough on its own.<br />This is not freedom or democracy, it is a tyranny of manufactured desire become a nightmare. Even the sea and the sky are no-longer immune from your need for speed; the infernal racket of your desperate chasing after - what? Another place, another feeling, a futile and temporary escape from the emptiness of yourself.<br />I hate the complacent naturalness of it all; of course we must travel, of course we must have this freedom - What freedom? In any town it is hard to walk 100 metres without having to defer to the holy car's priority. And where, even in the country, can one escape the wretched noise; and how does one get there?unenlightenedhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09711296867159960861noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-24541829.post-1150038417377216102006-06-11T15:56:00.000+01:002006-06-11T16:06:57.386+01:00Everyday feelingsHow extrordinary! How marvelous!<br />It is alive; it sees, it thinks<br />Ten million things. And here<br />In this little space, for a moment it thinks,<br />'How extrordinary! How marvelous!<br />It is alive...'<br /><br />And as I think and write, from beneath my seat<br />a small grey lizard scuttles across the path.<br />I cannot catch it with my words;<br />It is immune to my wonder,<br />Safe, hiding in the bushes.unenlightenedhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09711296867159960861noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-24541829.post-1149260492643752662006-06-02T15:57:00.000+01:002006-06-02T16:01:32.656+01:00Friends of FollyThe town is a chessboard spread below me, my own little back street just visible between the large hotels. The Great Orme, where I sit is a lump of rock that juts out into the sea, with bronze-age mines above me somewhere, and here on the landward slope, a public garden, with sloping paths and benches between the trees. The town itself is built on a wide shingle bank that joins the Orme to the mainland. It’s a town with not only a sea-front, but a sea-back as well; in 50 or 100 years it will probably be under water, as it was in the bronze-age – the Orme a fire breathing dragon’s head, bursting from the sea. A grey squirrel trots down the path, giving me a casual glance. Birds and children chatter over the grumble of traffic. In the bright sun, there is a smell of dry earth and pine tree resin.<br /><br />The Friends of Wisdom have been discussing what’s wrong with science – which seems to be that it has no values, or rather that it has hidden and highly suspect values, which it cannot consider and take account of. I find this somewhat confusing: science as a method, a practice, an institution, a body of knowledge, a system of technological innovation, a community of scholars, whatever it is, it does what it does, and we who do it, pay for it, enjoy its fruits, do whatever we do with it. Its values are our values. When the Chinese invented gunpowder, they had a different name and a different use for it – they made fireworks. Same powder, different values. Is there a problem with calling the making of the powder science, and the use of it something else, art or ethics or politics? Of course in the world, things cannot be separated like this, but thought and talk can only get going by making some distinct categories. I separate thought from world, fact from value, division from unity, and it is all thought making distinctions that are not separate in reality.<br /><br />Seems to me that the success or progress of science exposes to us the complete lack of our development in wisdom or virtue – whatever we want to call this ‘other’ aspect of our lives – but why shoot the messenger? It might be convenient to have a scientific answer to how we should live, a science bible, but it’s a contradiction; science doesn’t do that. Science says that we are warming the earth with CO2 emissions, and the climate will change and sea levels will rise, leading to mass extinctions. It also explains what we might do to change this scenario – if we want to. It does not tell us that we either do or should ‘want to’.<br /><br />I used to have a recurring dream – a nightmare I suppose. It wasn’t either images or words so it’s hard to describe. I was in a field, not a grassy field with hedges just an uncharacterised, but limited space, and there was a sense of huge constriction, an inescapable weight of the ‘sky’ about to crush me, and no way to escape it. When I was about 14, I suddenly realised that this dream was a birth memory – the wordless formless claustrophobia of uterine contractions. I never had the dream again after recognising it. Here is my psychological beginning: first memory, first trauma, first fear, the first distinction. Here is a value – I value not being crushed; I value the freedom of the un-contracting womb. Self, value, and psychological time come into existence with memory. I was un-constricted; I was constricted; I want to be un-constricted now, and I fear being constricted tomorrow.<br /><br />I am so sensitive to my own pain, to my own fear and desire, that I give hardly a squirrel’s glance to the feelings of others. I cannot relate my time to geological time, the time that formed the rocks and fossils behind me, or even to the social time, a century and a half, that formed the town in front of me. How can I be concerned with the planet, when I haven’t even recovered from the trauma of birth? But I feel that trauma itself as a constriction, a limit to thought and feeling, which I want to be free of, and so I overlay this with a construction of ‘higher values’ – I want to be free of the constriction that my fear of constriction puts me under. But my higher values are merely the repetition of my primal fear – just another contraction on the road to the freedom of birth.unenlightenedhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09711296867159960861noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-24541829.post-1147960809837326932006-05-18T14:39:00.000+01:002006-05-18T15:00:09.850+01:00Busy BacksonWhat with editing a newsletter for People in Harmony, responding to a sudden rush of poetry for my other site, and starting to get involved with a list called 'Friends of Wisdom' ( yeah I'm so pretentious I think they <em>must</em> mean me!), along with the usual emergencies of everyday life, I haven't been keeping up with this blog - life is just too interesting to write about at the moment. It's on my mind to say something about why we want to find that unselfish, person - as per Ebert's comment. There's something to do with avoiding change, waiting for the other to be that first, waiting for an authority to show us the way... I'll have to get backson to it when things are quieter. I should put links to the things I've just mentioned, but my brain has gone on strike. I'm putting it off 'til I meet an unselfish man (or preferably, woman), or hell freezes over, or I feel more energetic. Bit of a pointless post really - just to say I've done one.unenlightenedhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09711296867159960861noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-24541829.post-1145175604014717402006-04-16T09:06:00.000+01:002006-04-16T09:20:04.026+01:00A Good SchoolHonourable daughter no 2 (14) told me last night that hugging has been banned at her school on pain of detention. I offer this as a (negative again, I'm afraid) definition of a good school in an imperfect world. 'A good school is one where an excess of hugging is a serious problem.' I have always thought that any school that has a truancy problem should be closed immeadiately, the same way that shops close if the customers don't turn up. What is it about education? From age 2 kids cannot be prevented from learning and pestering everyone with continual questions - Why this and how that - they are insatiably curious. Yet a few years in school and all that is gone; how do they manage to do it? More important, why don't they find something better to do?unenlightenedhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09711296867159960861noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-24541829.post-1145000460506415052006-04-14T08:14:00.000+01:002006-04-14T08:41:00.526+01:00The Final BattleIt would be nice to think - and so a lot of people do think - that Good is stronger than Evil, and will always triumph in the end. Do I need to clarify what I'm talking about, these are old-fashioned words? Not angels and devils and such, but ordinary human evil, starting with selfishness, greed, pride, etc, and descending into violence, cruelty, murder, war. And good is the absense of all that; goodness doesn't make deals - I will love you if you love me - it is unconditional, and that sort of thing is clearly self-serving.<br />But being unconditional - non dependent - it cannot persuade; it has no power over evil. This is not to say that it does not act at all, this is not a council of despair; but its action is not one of power, and the battle of the title does not take place.<br />Or if it does, it is a battle where evil, which is always divided and in conflict, defeats itself without any influence from good, which is by definition absent. Ah, if only this selfish self could fully realise this...unenlightenedhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09711296867159960861noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-24541829.post-1144776605798837122006-04-11T18:25:00.000+01:002006-04-11T18:30:05.823+01:00The Beauty of Philosophy<a href="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/4244/2545/1600/BOBTWICE_MED.jpg"><img style="FLOAT: left; MARGIN: 0px 10px 10px 0px; CURSOR: hand" alt="" src="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/4244/2545/320/BOBTWICE_MED.jpg" border="0" /></a><br />I may have aged a little since this was taken.unenlightenedhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09711296867159960861noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-24541829.post-1144689128229927122006-04-10T17:53:00.000+01:002006-04-10T18:12:10.623+01:00Man-fluWomen just carry on because the have to, and because they have more stamina; I have managed to go to work and do more or less nothing (bar complain) and that's it. No chance of blogging or anything intelligent. It's quite interesting in a pathetic sort of way how totally dependent any sort of creativity or clarity is - in my life at least - on feeling fairly comfortable. Anyway, I did manage to update my website with a couple of poems from Christopher Barnes, who claims to be gay apparantly, and I added a link to this blog. And now, let me take this opportunity to introduce to you the long suffering, and long sufferable <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/wales/northwest/sites/llandudno/pages/isabeladonis.shtml">Mrs Unenlightened, </a>whose interests are quite similar to mine. And what is more, she notonly looks after us all, but also <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/wales/northwest/sites/llandudno/pages/isabel_adonis.shtml">makes stuff!</a>unenlightenedhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09711296867159960861noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-24541829.post-1143903771552894752006-04-01T15:53:00.000+01:002006-04-01T16:02:53.026+01:00Requium for Counselling<span style="font-size:100%;">I wrote this a long time ago now; it should probably go in an archive for about 1996, but what the heck, it's fairly bloggy at least. A lot to wade through, but it's stunning stuff if you like that sort of thing.</span><br /><span style="font-size:100%;"></span><br /><span style="font-size:130%;"><strong>Requiem for Counselling<br /></strong></span><br /><br /><blockquote>Only when you begin to lose that Alpha and. Omega do you want to start to<br />talk and to write, and then there is no end to it, words, words, words.<br />(R.D.Laing)<br /><br /><br /></blockquote>Some months ago, I had an awakening, a realisation, a glimpse of the possibility of a new way of living, with real communication, real community. I knew that I needed help and that I could give help. I joined a short Introductory Counselling course, and started reading Carl Rogers; I was frightened but excited, and determined to change my life. Respect, Genuineness, Empathy, yes! Faith in the individual, of course! Recognizing in these concepts the way of being with people that I had glimpsed, I began to see in counselling – for the first time in my life - a place where I could be myself and also be an accepted, contributing member of society. I had found my vocation.<br />Almost from the beginning of the course, I had a problem with 'empowerment'. Here is an extract from my journal from week two. After considering some experiences of my partner, who is black, in terms of respect, I start to consider 'power'.<br />"Last night I read 'Black Boy' by Richard Wright. Every relationship he has is infected and distorted by power; within the family, between black people, everywhere. Northern whites of goodwill are constrained by the racist society of the south and a real relationship is impossible. The white man in a racist society can refrain from exercising power, but he cannot abdicate, in the same way that my middle class well-educated English upbringing remains available to me, although I am unemployed and usually choose to avoid using that power. My own experience of this kind of situation was at a minor public school. There were no lynchings, but the structure of the school society was very similar and the emotions and relationships were the same, though obviously far less intense - it was bad enough! Basically, the class structure was replicated with the big ones having power over the little ones. This was maintained by dividing each class into four 'houses' like nations or races, thus diverting any possible resistance in the lower orders towards an artificial conflict within the class. The other feature which maintained the power was its unquestionability. Power relations could not be discussed or acknowledged. There was a complex rhetoric of unity, democracy, Christian values, fair play and sportsmanship which denied the reality of the situation, which was the exact opposite of the talk.... What I want to look at is how these social/political phenomena relate to counselling and counselling training. The power structure of the course is demonstrated in the financial and the seating arrangements. The one who is paid as opposed to paying is the one who controls the door and the seating and the board, and on whom the rest are focused, who organises the games but does not participate in them. At the same time, we are being taught a language - a rhetoric – of respect, genuineness, empathy, non-judgement, tolerance, equality, responsibility, etc. There is the same contradiction between structure and rhetoric, between the talk and the reality, that struck me at school; Double-think! The goal of counselling is empowerment but the method is the standard hierarchical system and the initiation and training is precisely designed to ensure that all the power remains with the counsellor/trainer. Not only is the 'client' not empowered in the relationship/ s/he is also required to be 'responsible' for the disempowerment of the social situation which is the cause of the meeting. The counsellor is subverted into acting as a means of social control, diverting the pain and dissatisfaction of the individual away from its source in the structure of social relations towards internal relations; 'divide and rule on the level of the individual psyche."<br />Two weeks later, I borrowed a book from the library:- Group Counselling 4th edition, by Gerald Corey. It seemed to be an important book as there were several copies; I think it is a set book for the diploma course. This book hurt me and it hurt my partner. I spent some time writing an unsolicited essay criticising the book's attitude to issues of race. This was, and is an important issue for me. The book promoted a dangerous attitude to ethnic minorities, and I wanted the department to take some action;- to challenge the views being expressed. I gave the essay to my tutor with a note asking him to pass it on to his colleagues and hoping that they would start to look for material by black people instead of about them and suggesting that they might like to organise a workshop on race.<br />The following week, I was given a controlled ten-minute chat by my tutor in which he explained that the essay had made him rethink some of his ideas, but there was not much he could do to change anything. He did not run the Group Counselling course; he didn't know anything about publishing articles; the department couldn't let unqualified people (my partner and I) give talks on racism. Lacking the time, and the confidence, to respond directly, I reply in my journal:- "How predictable, P, that you deny your own and your department's power to change reality, as an excuse for disempowering me.... From my disempowered position as "unqualified', "unemployed'/ etc. I am reclaiming the power that you and your department have usurped. I am a Rogerian, and you by your actions are not. I claim equal right to assess you and the course as you claim the right to assess me and this journal. Carl Rogers had to fight for the right to practice before he could even begin to empower others."<br />At the end of the journal, I am debating with myself whether or not to apply for the next course:- "...I don't have a choice. All choice is conflict, but now I can be happy; I have no choice. I am right to be angry at falseness. I am right to be afraid and ashamed of the world we are making. I am right to be fighting to empower the downtrodden and oppressed. And I am right to be starting with the counselling trainers of XXXX College. I am a whole, feeling, growing person; it's your choice if you want me on the next course, my course is set and in judging me you are really only judging yourselves. It is a hard choice for you because either way, all this and more is going to leap out of this journal and into the wide world. I have a faltering sense of my own power and it satisfies me deeply to allow you the power that you claim and deny in the traditional contradiction of oppressors."<br />Three months later, I am vibrating as I type, with the resonance of the feelings expressed in my journal. I am waiting for my journal to be returned, waiting for an interview for next year's course, getting involved with CRUSE, talking, reading, writing/ living. The other day, I came across some back issues of The BAC Journal/ which have reawakened my interest in the relationships between counselling as an activity and as an institution, and between the profession of Counselling and the related professions of Social-work, and Psychiatry. Thomas Szasz, who did much to draw attention to the relationship between the social and the psychological, gave this warning:-<br />"The general principle that a liberating rule may, in due time, become another method of oppression, has broad validity for rule-changing manoeuvres of all types.... Christianity, the French Revolution, Marxism, and even psychoanalyses Itself - as a revolution In medicine against the so-called organic tradition - all succumbed to the Inescapable fate of all revolutions - the setting up of new tyrannies.... If we sincerely desire a sclentlflcally respectable psychosoclal theory of man, we shall have to pay far more attention to religious - and perhaps even more to professional - rules and values than has been our custom heretofore." [T.S.Szasz. The Myth of Mental Illness. 1972 P.186-7]<br />My overall impression from reading the BAC Journal (there are a few beautiful exceptions) is that counselling is dead. There is so much about training, accreditation, models, techniques, about definitions and codes of ethics, and so little about clients and counsellors in communication. Nowhere is there any critical analysis of the function of the rules of the institution and their effect on the aims of counselling, one of which I take to be empowerment of the individual. Counsellors seem to have lost their commitment to the individual and have become committed instead to standards, institutions, and models. Nobody knows the limits of human potential, no-one can provide a methodology of life; let's stop prevaricating and defending ourselves, and face the void of ignorance within us as we encounter another human being. I cannot be dispassionate and nor can you. If we care about another, that is passion. It must be expressed as it is felt - with fear and humility, with anger and love. Because I care about you, I am moved to anger and despair when I see you sleepwalking into a jungle of institutional bureaucracy which is diverting, perverting, and strangling the life out of you.<br />There is so much to talk about, I don't know where to begin. I am a white man, living in a white supremacist, patriarchal society. What can I say about empowerment? Here's what a black woman has to say:-<br />"Why is it so difficult for many white folks to understand that racism Is oppressive not because white folks have prejudicial feelings about blacks, (they could have such feelings and leave us alone) but because It Is a system that promotes domination and subjugation. The prejudicial feelings some blacks may express about whites are In no way linked to a system of domination that affords us any power to coercively control the lives and well-being of white folks." [bell hooks. Black Looks: race and representation. 1992]<br />The ending of oppression is to be achieved, not by the setting up of alternative (black?) systems of domination, but by exposing the rhetoric of power which 'justifies' oppression. I met a black man the other day, he was selling insurance. "I was brought up white; I feel white." he said; and later, "You can't know what it is like to be black." I cannot tell him that I treat him just the same, I never say that to white men. I feel the gulf between us of our skins and our society, and it hurts. I can cry about that and cry about his uncried tears - years of tears - a lovely, lonely, friendly man. Spare him your psychological analysis for a moment, and instead consider what feeling white feels like. Do white people feel white? My partner was 'brought up white'. Before I met her, I did not distinguish feeling white from feeling human - they were the same thing. Now I am finding that feeling white, being white, is an uncomfortable, shameful feeling, it seems to mark me as an oppressor.<br />An acquaintance of my partner has a diploma in counselling. She's probably a member of the BAC, I don't know, but anyway, she has done the Group Counselling course and read the Corey book. "Oh let me touch your hair," she said to my partner, "Oh its lovely and soft, I love African hair." I am reminded of those TV programmes where somebody dares to touch a snake. "Oh its dry and smooth!" they say in surprise. It might be interesting to a white person to wonder what it is like to live in a society where almost everyone has a deep, irrational fear of you which they deny, so that they constantly have to reassure themselves that they 'treat everyone the same'.<br />For most of us white folks the fear is still unacknowledged and projected onto black people, which is why we put so many of them in prison or mental health wards. It may be possible to overcome the barrier of race - I do not wish to deny the possibility of inter-race counselling - but it cannot be done by denial and projection. Race is fundamentally a white problem, it is not out there but in here. I notice that the BAC has d special section for those who cannot address race issues; why not be open and call it the white section?<br />I feel like the little boy saying, "The emperor has no clothes." Will anyone else take up the cry? And what happens after? Does the emperor put on clothes, or does everybody take their clothes off, or is there a change of government? You see, in spite of her diploma, my partner's acquaintance is a menace to black people - she thinks that she loves them, and they might believe it too. All the training and certification and accreditation in the world cannot protect one from the risk of doing harm to clients. On the contrary, by giving the illusion of guaranteed competence and adequacy, it increases the risk that one will fail to see the harm that one is doing.<br />My partner has a black therapist to help her with stress following harassment by white professionals. Now that I have offered to you some of my own confusion and exposed some of my weakness, what kind of counselling would you recommend for me? What core model will suit the case, and what colour or race of counsellor would be the best? I will finish with that essay on Gerald Corey's book that I mentioned, but first a couple of quotations from my own favourite counsellor, J.Krishnamurti.<br />You can't listen with opinions; you might Just as well be dead. (J.Krishnamurti & Dr. David Bohm. The Ending of Time. 1985 P.228)<br />I am asking you, is it a shock to discover that your brain, and your mind, your knowledge, are valueless? All your examinations, all your struggles, all the things that you have gathered through years and years, centuries, are absolutely worthless? Do you go mad, because you say you have done all this for nothing? Virtue, abstinence, control, everything -and at the end of it, you say they are valueless! Do you understand what this does to you? (ibid. P.105)<br />Racist Counseling. A review of "Theory and Practice of Group Counseling 4th. edition." by Gerald Corey."There is a high dropout rate for ethnic minority clients: as many as 52% of them terminate counseling after the first session (Mokuau 1987). One explanation for this obvious dissatisfaction with professional counseling is that these clients quickly make the assessment that they will not get the help they are looking for from the counseling relationship." [Corey p.287]<br />Gerald Corey is talking here of the Person centred approach. He has clearly given a lot of thought to issues of race and culture. He strongly favours a multi-cultural approach to councelling and discusses in some detail the problems, advantages and professional implications for theory and practice. He is concerned that the needs of ethnic minorities are not always met, and has much of interest to say on the subject of cultural difference and core values. He has almost no insight, however, into the effects of the status of different cultures.<br />"This path [multlculturalism] provides a picture of this society as a cultural mosaic rathier than a melting pot. It offers a basis for helpers to develop new structures, paradigms, policies and practices that are responsive to all groups in society." [Corey p.18]<br />The mosaic image is a telling one. A mosaic consists of coloured fragments embedded in a white cement. It is the ever present, ever dominant white western culture that holds, defines, separates, deliniates and controls the multi-cultural mosaic pieces, and it is colour that distinguishes them. Compare this with the Rainbow Nation image of the new South Africa. There is no pure white, no separation, and no domination of one colour. Cultural variation is pictured as a natural phenomenon; a spectrum which does not contain boundaries.<br />"Practitioners writing about multicultural counseling often assert that many counselling approaches fail to meet the complex needs of various ethnic and minority clients because of stereotyped narrow perceptions of those needs. Asian Americans, African Americans, Hispanlcs, Native Americans and members of other minority groups leave counseling significantly earlier than do Euro-Amerlcan clients. This tendency is often caused by cultural barriers....." [Corey p.19]<br />Here we can clearly see the sorting of the mosaic pieces by visual (racial) characteristics and especially by skin colour. From a European perspective it seems strange that Irish and German cultures for example are not distinguished/ while Hispanics seem to have been ejected from Europe altogether, presumably because of their darker complexions. One strongly suspects that Arabs are likewise barred from Africa and sent to join Asia/ the land of "other" religions and "other" complexions. Gerald Corey claims to be talking about culture and ethnicity, but the groups which he specifies are racial and not cultural. Notice too, the way that "Euro" is punctuationally linked to "American", unconsciously signalling a special relationship denied to other groups. Again, it is clear that "Euro-American" behaviour is the standard against which all other groups are measured and from which they deviate. Mr Corey goes on to locate the cultural barriers within the minority groups, but it is possible to turn the whole question around…<br />Let us consider why it is that Euro-Americans - and what is meant here is strictly white Americans, visibly mixed race Americans are involuntarily assigned to the "inferior race" -why do whites, then, remain in counselling significantly longer than everyone else? Maybe white culture is inherently more damaging to the individual than other cultures; maybe their fundamental belief in their own superiority leads them to suppose that their own problems are more significant; perhaps our culture's responsibility for the Holocaust/for the murder and enslavement of millions of Africans and the destruction of their culture, for global pollution and global warming, etc. etc. leads to particular problems with guilt and shame; perhaps we are psychologically a weaker race; or maybe white counsellors are less able to challenge white clients effectively.<br />This is in no way presented as a definitive analysis but simply as an example of how easy it is to transfer the "barriers" from one culture to another or even, Rogers forbid, to the counsellors themselves.<br />All this talk of cultural differences serves mainly to obscure and deny the reality of racial oppression. Take for example the case of African Americans. The vast majority of African Americans are descended from slaves. Their traditions, their history, their languages, their tribal origins, their freedom, their names, their very humanity were deliberately taken from them. Their history begins with slavery and their culture is the culture of the oppressed. Their continuing rejection by white society has led to the formation of a culture which is at once part of, and a reaction to, the racist, exploitative and abusive culture of western civilisation. Debarred by whites from assimilation, the heroic search for African roots becomes a psychological necessity.<br />The core value system of the dominant American culture is expressed in the American Dream of the self made man. Social mobility allows the individual to rise by his own efforts to the heights of society. Corey identifies freedom, responsibility and achievement as the core values of western models.<br />"....self-contained, individualism helps sustain the core values and institutions that represent North American society today."[Corey p.21]<br />British society used to operate with ideas of class and station, which moderated and limited these core values. Freedom and responsibility were exercised within the boundaries of one's given position in society which one was not expected to transcend. Having "ideas above one's station" was not encouraged. This is replaced in America with the "self-evident" equality of all men. The individual is thus responsible for his social and economic status as well as the general conduct of his life. Let us be clear here, equality is not regarded as an ideal towards which we should strive, requiring the privileged to make sacrifices so that equal opportunity can become a reality. It is declared to be already true. No redistribution of wealth is required; the poor and deprived are by definition responsible for their plight, because we are all equal. Wealth and status are thus made identical with high morality.<br />This is a very comforting delusional system for Euro-American professors and for privileged people everywhere, and a great deal of effort is put into maintaining it. Multiculturalism is one way of "explaining" why ethnic and racial minorities remain ghettoised and poor:- their values are different.<br />People whose skin colour and facial features result in their daily experiencing negative discrimination have some difficulty in believing the myth of equality and some even attempt to make it more of a reality. Incredibly though, many of them swallow the lie and some of these dutifully go along to counselling sessions to learn to be more responsible and raise their self-esteem.<br />I have tried in this essay to write a reasoned academic analysis of my dissatisfaction with this book. It is far from exhaustive, but I confess I am quite pleased with my effort. Last night I read some pages by Carl Rogers, and now I want to finish in a more personal way.<br />I am privileged, as a white man, to live with a highly sensitive and insightful woman of mixed race. My partner has helped me to see that the life-experiences of black people are radically different to those of whites. The other day, she went to buy some trousers for her daughter. An assistant rushed up and fussed round, insisting that only one person was allowed in the changing room and keeping a close watch on everything. A white woman and her daughter were freely allowed into the changing room together and were left in peace to choose their clothes. Clearly, the assistant thought that my partner might try to steal, and she felt obliged to explain and reassure at each stage; "I'm putting these two pairs back now because they are too small, and taking these three others to try on, then we will decide which ones to buy." A simple, everyday transaction becomes a drama, a mutual problem and a source of stress, and the apparent cause is my partner herself. Any suggestion of discrimination would have been dismissed as paranoia.<br />This kind of incident occurs every time my partner goes out, but whenever she tries to draw attention to it, she is met with denial. "We treat everyone the same." and "There's no racism here." have become familiar refrains to us. It is so depressing, when one has a problem with one's daughter being racially and culturally isolated at school, to be told by child guidance that it is just like having freckles.<br />Naively, I thought that counselling would be different. These people will understand, will empathise. This is why I am shocked and angry to find this book doing the very same things; ie. locating the source of the problem in the minority culture, denying the existence of racial prejudice as a major barrier to communication, and completely ignoring the ethnicity of the counsellor while in fact assuming that they are all white. The problems of ethnic minority clients are relegated to a separate section at the end of each chapter the main body of which deals with "normal" people - people like us? What about black counsellors Mr Corey? Do they also need to "... accept the challenge of modifying your strategies to meet the unique needs of special populations."[Corey p.19]? Mr Corey is only talking to "Euro-American" counsellors; he does not see the need for black counsellors. He cannot even bring himself to talk honestly about race and colour, hiding instead behind euphemisms like "Euro-American", "culture", "ethnic minority", etc. How on earth can he expect black people, or native Americans, or anyone for that matter to be open with him?<br />I thought I had finished there but I am struck by the difference in tone between "Native American" and "native American". The former seems to prioritise ethnicity over nationality; it- emphasises a separatness from other kinds of American (Immigrant Americans?), whereas the latter would seem to allow all Americans a measure of commonality, and I like it more.<br /><br />References<br />Corey, G. (1995) The Theory and Practice of Group Counseling 4th Edition, International Thompson.hooks/ bell. (1992) Black looks: Race and Representation, ISBN 1873262027.Krishnamurti, J. and Bohm, D. (1985) The Ending of Time, New York: HarperCollins.Laing, R. D. (1967) The Politics of Experience and The Bird of Paradise, Harmondsworth: Penguin.Rogers/ C. R. (1951) Client-Centered Therapy, London: Constable.Rogers, C. R. (1980) A Way of Being, Boston: Houghton Mifflin.Szasz, T. S. (1962) The Myth of Mental Illness, Seeker & Warburg.Wright, R. (1945) Black Boy, reprinted (1998) London: Pan.unenlightenedhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09711296867159960861noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-24541829.post-1143850149476911382006-04-01T00:42:00.000+01:002006-04-01T15:13:10.276+01:00A Carnival RideI've just done a tour of the latest Philosophy Carnival and had a shy at a few coconuts of various quality and stickiness. What a big tent philosophy is! I suspect I have made some naive and hasty comments here and there, but what the heck, you can ignore or delete them can't you. Anyway I will be looking around some more, and cribbing what I can for my own work. The one area where I simply cannot find any patience to hear the arguments is the abortion debate. If I was prepared to sell my house and devote my life to bringing up some of these unwanted babies, then I might feel entitled to hold an opinion on the matter, as it is I can't help feeling that probably no one actually likes abortions, and if we can't arrange things so that every woman can feel sufficiently supported to give birth, it's as much our fault as hers, and laying down the law about it isn't what's required. People are very selfish and there's not enough love - there ought to be a law against it.<br />Later... I've been grovelling in the html and actualy managed to put the beginnings of an essay list and some links in the sidebar, so I'm feeling like a pretty smug dinosaur. Have a look at 'Black people love us' - you won't know where to put yourself... some of the comments they get are pretty amazing too.unenlightenedhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09711296867159960861noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-24541829.post-1143639107133050232006-03-29T14:27:00.000+01:002006-03-29T14:31:47.143+01:00Choice, Suffering and Suffrage.Well today's effort is only rhetoically inquisitive; this is the truth, no question, so just take it.<br /><br /><span style="font-size:130%;">Choice, Suffering and Suffrage.<br /></span><br />Do not confuse freedom with choice. I do not choose what to want, and I do not want choice; I want what I want. And what I want is what I do not have; it is wanting in me. To be free is to be free from want and the necessity of choice.<br /><br />Choice is conflict. If there is no conflict there is no choice, it is already made. Choose between food and poison – there’s no conflict, no choice, no question. Choose between nourishing but dull food and tasty but un-nourishing food and there is a conflict between short term and long term wants. I do not want the conflict, and I do not want this choice, what I want is food that is both nourishing and tasty; that would be freedom.<br /><br />The inverse of want is fear. I fear losing that which I have or not getting that which I want. Fear and want are the basis of all suffering which is not just physical pain, all psychological suffering. So although we do not choose to suffer, we do suffer from choice; choosing is suffering.<br /><br />The freedom of the creative process, painting for example, is nothing to do with choice. The artist does not choose this colour over that colour, he simply tries to find the right colour, freely responding to what he sees before him and in his imagination. He is absorbed in his work; neither wanting nor choosing, seeking visual contentment from moment to moment. If he chooses, say, what to paint, then he suffers from the conflict, and many artists suffer, but they suffer from the conflicts of choice, not from the creative act.<br /><br />It would be a mistake to think that one can choose not to choose; fortunately this is a choice one does not have to make. But there is no need to go looking for ever-more choices, which bring ever-more suffering. Democracy is not good government, democracy is the choosing we have to suffer to get something approaching good government; if we could have good government without all that fuss, well there’d be no choice, would there? To promote choice is to promote suffering, and there should be a better reason for doing it than merely to sell a few more packets of crisps, of any flavour.unenlightenedhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09711296867159960861noreply@blogger.com3