A while back an acquaintance put together a remarkable effort to address the meaning crisis—an organization called Consilience Project. The aims were righteous enough: to lend epistemic clarity in a “post-fact” world; to notch down the culture wars; to provide a common problem-solving language to the various echo-chambers of humanity. The publication was very well written, well-researched, and backed by the excessive genius of Daniel Schmactenberger and company. But the last post from Consilience was in February—and I don’t hold my breath for another. My sense is that the project did not generate enough interest to make the sort of dent it had been designed to make. I have thoughts...
"into the light of admittance", it withers from its imaginary, immortal glory into a small and frail thing, a golem which we would do better to care for as a childly creature than to make the king of our minds."
That is a beautiful statement. But the other side is: we have to sacrifice the golem when the childly creature becomes monstrous. Not as an external 'enemy' (god forbid) but as the accumulation of our ego constructions. Burning the golem in the fire is the destructive prelude to a pure state of dynamic creativity. Don't virtually, ritually, and never as an external scapegoat.
In a better world—or at least, in a country that took itself more seriously—Jacques Ellul's book on Propaganda would be required reading. Particularly now that the organs of Official Thought aren't even hiding the fact that every new message is intended to elicit an emotional response, rather than a rational, reasonable reaction.
Thanks as always, Alex, for helping us forge a path through this muddle.
I still think that the consilience project is really good and hope they come up with more content. I see them (I especially like Zak S.) as more of post-post modern bunch (metamodern) and actually expounding a set of principles that are better guide than most I have read as of late (see Zak's http://www.zakstein.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/09/Stein_IR_EROS_Pub.pdf) as well work with Gafni and other from the Integral school of thought. As for the "worm at the core" theory you share, it has great contributions by William James, Earnst Becker and Sheldon Solomon - the worm is indeed at the core.
I mean, possibly a slightly bitchy tone in places. But, for sure, our minds do live in ongoing, existential crisis and we do cling to whatever it is that promises to make things seem more solid. Somewhere it feels like that needs to be expressed and owned before we can try to see if some stuff is more enduring than other.
A coupla things. I think a good option would be to address Zak Stein for the most fruitful result re propaganda. Clearly that was his baby. Daniel is somewhat locked in on the Natural selection narrative which in his, as mentioned, capable hands is profoundly fruitful heuristic. Zak's meta psychology can provide a ground for much needed communal dialogue re the temporal (which necessarily includes death). Secondly I think what you might be missing in your otherwise lovely willingness to engage with death is origin of the finite. That is to say before birth. One might like to avoid the one way street of (im)mortality that is already a given in the repressive approach to the grim reaper, lest one fall prey to the linear after life fixation (whether terminus or exodus). I wonder if rather than presupposing an unconscious in relation to the questions one might then begin to perceive a supra consciousness as Georg Kühlewind displays. I look forward to future dialogue. Perhaps you could engage with both Daniel and Zak. Tons of potential in that trinity for us all, I would say.
This is great.. None of us are without bias. We can be better at it than others, but we have to have bias. AKA survivall: physically, genetically, culturally, our values, and on and on. But we should still try to rise above. A pragmatic society takes what is, projects what could be, then takes baby steps to get there.
If you know the general lingo of epistemology, neuroscience, group dynamics, etc, then Schmact is the clearest thinker on what's going on. But, to the other 98% of the world he is a pedantic bore. He needs apostles. Like Rutt and Game B talked about a bit back, they need storytellers and musicians, etc. What worries me about the post-meta-world is that it is so full of repulsive trust fund babies and other holier than thous that make most folks shut the gates. Hopefully the moment can be answered by some truly original, compassionate people to reach right on past everyones filters/psycho-social immune systems. I think one way to do that is to build enough trust to get folks out of their castles. Or, maybe folks in the community should stop trying so hard and just make art organically until one of them busts out and gets the ideas to spread. Folks want a world they can trust, they want something more to believe in. The ground is fertile.
"into the light of admittance", it withers from its imaginary, immortal glory into a small and frail thing, a golem which we would do better to care for as a childly creature than to make the king of our minds."
That is a beautiful statement. But the other side is: we have to sacrifice the golem when the childly creature becomes monstrous. Not as an external 'enemy' (god forbid) but as the accumulation of our ego constructions. Burning the golem in the fire is the destructive prelude to a pure state of dynamic creativity. Don't virtually, ritually, and never as an external scapegoat.
In a better world—or at least, in a country that took itself more seriously—Jacques Ellul's book on Propaganda would be required reading. Particularly now that the organs of Official Thought aren't even hiding the fact that every new message is intended to elicit an emotional response, rather than a rational, reasonable reaction.
Thanks as always, Alex, for helping us forge a path through this muddle.
I still think that the consilience project is really good and hope they come up with more content. I see them (I especially like Zak S.) as more of post-post modern bunch (metamodern) and actually expounding a set of principles that are better guide than most I have read as of late (see Zak's http://www.zakstein.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/09/Stein_IR_EROS_Pub.pdf) as well work with Gafni and other from the Integral school of thought. As for the "worm at the core" theory you share, it has great contributions by William James, Earnst Becker and Sheldon Solomon - the worm is indeed at the core.
I mean, possibly a slightly bitchy tone in places. But, for sure, our minds do live in ongoing, existential crisis and we do cling to whatever it is that promises to make things seem more solid. Somewhere it feels like that needs to be expressed and owned before we can try to see if some stuff is more enduring than other.
Excellent points and great piece.
A coupla things. I think a good option would be to address Zak Stein for the most fruitful result re propaganda. Clearly that was his baby. Daniel is somewhat locked in on the Natural selection narrative which in his, as mentioned, capable hands is profoundly fruitful heuristic. Zak's meta psychology can provide a ground for much needed communal dialogue re the temporal (which necessarily includes death). Secondly I think what you might be missing in your otherwise lovely willingness to engage with death is origin of the finite. That is to say before birth. One might like to avoid the one way street of (im)mortality that is already a given in the repressive approach to the grim reaper, lest one fall prey to the linear after life fixation (whether terminus or exodus). I wonder if rather than presupposing an unconscious in relation to the questions one might then begin to perceive a supra consciousness as Georg Kühlewind displays. I look forward to future dialogue. Perhaps you could engage with both Daniel and Zak. Tons of potential in that trinity for us all, I would say.
This is great.. None of us are without bias. We can be better at it than others, but we have to have bias. AKA survivall: physically, genetically, culturally, our values, and on and on. But we should still try to rise above. A pragmatic society takes what is, projects what could be, then takes baby steps to get there.
If you know the general lingo of epistemology, neuroscience, group dynamics, etc, then Schmact is the clearest thinker on what's going on. But, to the other 98% of the world he is a pedantic bore. He needs apostles. Like Rutt and Game B talked about a bit back, they need storytellers and musicians, etc. What worries me about the post-meta-world is that it is so full of repulsive trust fund babies and other holier than thous that make most folks shut the gates. Hopefully the moment can be answered by some truly original, compassionate people to reach right on past everyones filters/psycho-social immune systems. I think one way to do that is to build enough trust to get folks out of their castles. Or, maybe folks in the community should stop trying so hard and just make art organically until one of them busts out and gets the ideas to spread. Folks want a world they can trust, they want something more to believe in. The ground is fertile.
Thank you Alex ,you help a lot🙏🏻