Further Thoughts: Pineapple Express

By the end of the film a familiar siren was sounding within my head, accompanied by a flashing neon sign that insisted: "This is a terrible film." And yet, despite the fact that the film was terrible, there were still elements of it that I liked. In particular, the two main characters were likeable, and their relationship was, for want of a better word, nice. And yet, it is impossible to ignore the wail of the siren, or the glare of the sign, all the time reminding me that "This is a terrible film"!

Why must I classify it in this way? Why can I not, when I talk of the film, talk solely of what I drew from it; what I liked about it? What meanings it gave me? If, despite its terribleness, it still managed to impart some sort of meaning, then is this not something? Why must whatever I say be prefaced with a objective judgement upon the whole?

But, of course, standards must be maintained. We, as a collectivity, must be able to tell good from bad; the terrible from the sublime; the beautiful from the ugly. Perhaps this is why the sign flashes and the siren sounds.

Set It Free

A three year old child has just finished a drawing that she has spent the last few hours meticulously composing. In her opinion, it is the best drawing she has ever done, and she can't wait to show her mother, who she knows will be overjoyed to see it. She runs to her, shouting "Mummy, Mummy, I've done a drawing for you!"

"Wow!" exclaims her mother, "let me see!"

"Here!" she shouts, and thrusts the drawing into her mother's hands. "That'll be three pounds please!"

This situation may seem a little absurd, but each of us encounter a similar scenario on a near daily basis, whenever we pay for a song, a film, a theatre performance, or any other cultural creation; or whenever we, as creators ourselves, charge money for our creations. We are the excited child, enthused about our creations and eager to share them with others; it seems perverse for the child to demand money for her creation, and yet much of the time we may not give a second thought in issuing the same demand.

In charging for her art, our three-year-old is placing limitations upon it. Her mother can have it, but at a price. A hurdle has been erected, and it must be jumped before the goal is reached. For a child to place these limitations is absurd, precisely because the child could not conceive of any reason to do so. Unaffected by the necessities of commerce, her logic is of a different variety to ours. She sees only how proud she is of her creation, and imagines only the joy that it will bring someone else. Her logic exists between these points, and works to connect them. Like her, it is uncomplicated, naïve, and pure.

Our creations are our children, and we have a responsibility to them; if we truly believe in them - that they are ready to go out into the world and do good - then we must think carefully about every barrier we place in their path. Money can be one such barrier. In placing a price upon something we proclaim, "I will free you so that you can enter the world, but I must get something in return." This is the logic of exchange: if we spent so long raising this child, then surely our efforts must be compensated.

Copyright is another barrier. We tell our creation, "I think you are ready to leave my house and go out there, but you must remain under my watchful eye." We allow it a facsimile of freedom; it can roam, but only if we know its whereabouts - who it is with, what it is doing. We retain our parental presence, but in doing so may stunt its growth. It shows us that it is ready to go out there, to mingle and explore, but we are unable to relinquish our control. After all, we spent so much time and effort bringing it to this point, surely we are entitled to a few ownership rights?

The logic is as before. We have fooled ourselves into thinking that, because we created this thing, we must own it. It seems logical, but perhaps only because this is the brand of logic that our society surrounds us with on a daily basis: the logic of commerce. "Ownership" oils its gears; is vital to the smooth running of the system. But there are other ways of thinking, other brands of logic that may not place so much emphasis upon this idea. We must consider what happens when we apply the logic of commerce - with its rules; its favouring of certain values over others - to the world of creativity. Is it a good fit? Or is it a constraint, inhibiting possibilities of movement?

When we jettison the idea of ownership, the creative product can be seen in a new light. We may be proud of it - it may be handsome, or intelligent - but we understand that its greatness is its own, and not a reflection or a comment upon us. We may have raised it well - said the right things at the right time; doted and nurtured - but we did so for its benefit, not in order to reap rewards for exceptional parentage. Our joy is in seeing it take flight, wherever its wings may take it, and whomever it shall meet. Our joy is in knowing that it is out there, flourishing and, hopefully, doing good. Whilst it may be our child, we understand that it has a life within the community, and a duty herein.

It is all too easy to slip into becoming the controlling parent, especially when common logic urges us to think in terms of ownership and parental rights. But we mustn't forget our parental responsibilities; our duty to our creation, and to the community that is ready to accept and celebrate it. As the good parent we must give it all the freedom that it asks for, and allow it its encounters and escapades.

Commerce may wish to elbow its way into our lives at every opportunity, but we needn't let its rules and limitations colour all aspects of our existence. We have to make a living; this much is unavoidable. But the choice is ours as to whether we involve what is most precious to us in this struggle; whether we exploit its beauty, its greatness, in order to keep ourselves afloat. With the greater good in mind, it may be that we must do our best to protect the things that we truly care about from the corruptive imperatives of commerce, so that they can flourish uninhibited.

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Charging money for something suppresses the material or service by restricting or deterring people from using it.

A very small percentage will buy something as opposed to using it for free, because it is unaffordable for most of the world's population, requires carrying money or having credit cards and wastes time for bookwork and transactions. Also it discriminates against the needy.

Instead people who can afford it should offer to donate, even if they are not asked for money. Would you be reading this information if you initially had to pay for it?

Here: http://www.trueconspiracies.com/

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[On Balinese village life]

It is common to find that activity [...] rather than being purposive, i.e., aimed at some deferred goal, is valued for itself. The artist, the dancer, the musician, and the priest may receive a pecuniary reward for their professional activity, but only in rare cases is this reward adequate to recompense the artist for even his time and materials.

The reward is a token of appreciation, it is a definition of the context in which the theatrical company performs, but it is not the economic mainstay of the troupe. The earnings of the troupe may be saved up to enable them to buy new costumes, but when finally the costumes are bought it is usually necessary for every member to make a considerable contribution to the common fund in order to pay for them.

Similarly, in regard to the offerings which are taken to every temple feast, there is no purpose in this enormous expenditure of artistic work and real wealth. The god will not bring any benefit because you made a beautiful structure of flowers and fruit for the calendric feast in his temple, not will he avenge your abstention.

Instead of deferred purpose there is an immediate and immanent satisfaction in performing beautifully, with everybody else, that which it is correct to perform in each particular context.

[Gregory Bateson]
Steps to an Ecology of Mind ('Bali: The Value System of a Steady State'), p.117-8

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You don't need to ask me permission to quote something I have written or said. We are both doing the work of the Creator. Our responsibility is to get the information out there. Use whatever you like.

This answer was given to me by Don Coyhis, president of the White Bison Society, when I asked him if I might use some words from his wonderful new meditation book based on the Medicine Wheel and Native American spirituality.

[...] Most Native people I know are like Don. They realize that possession - of anything, and especially of words - is an illusion. Once we put them out there, they belong to the universe. If we are all, to the best of our ability, doing the work of the Creator, there is no possession.

I assured Don that I felt the same way about his using my material. Our interaction felt so sane, so truly human.

When I am doing the work of the Creator, possession is an illusion.

[Anne Wilson Schaef]
"January 3rd", Native Wisdom for White Minds

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High Stakes

We are engaged in an argument with someone else. We are assured of our stance, and are pulling out all of the stops to come out on top.

But all may not be as it seems. Are we really arguing passionately on behalf of our beliefs - on behalf of an idea - or could it be that we doing something else?

Let us imagine that there are various types of dialogue, classified by what is at stake in the exchange. Firstly we have those dialogues in which something is at stake, a category that we could split further, dependent upon what exactly this thing is. On one side of our split, what is at stake is an element of the individual (pride, reputation), and any gains or losses will be felt within their borders. On the other side, what is at stake lies beyond the individual, and it is this third party that stands to gain or lose the most. Finally we have those dialogues in which nothing is at stake, in which any gains or losses will not be particularly important to any party.

When what is at stake lies beyond us, we are in service to a higher power. We become an advocate for truth, and we must serve it loyally and to the best of our abilities if it is to win its case. Perhaps, in the course of the hearing, we may realise the untruth of our case; that it is not what we thought it to be; and we may then abandon it, acquitting ourselves of our service. When we engage in a dialogue we may hope to convince of the truth of an idea that has captivated us, and the dialogue becomes a form of testing ground. The idea is released from its cage, and we are able to see it fly. Is its flight true and graceful? Can it survive out there?

When we are not in service to truth, then we will most likely be in service to our self, or perhaps more accurately, our ego. It is the self that is at stake, and we argue for the sovereignty of our borders, the excellence of our individuality, rather than something that lies beyond us.

In the first kind of exchange we are concerned with knowledge and truth, and engage in dialogue as a form of expedition, a search for something that currently lies beyond our grasp. In the second instance, we are not concerned with searching, rather with seeking to consolidate or strengthen what we already own. We are the embattled nation, both proud and insecure, alternately fearing and relishing the encroachments of others.

When there is nothing at stake, then an exchange is always a game. Games can be played seriously, but the very fact that they are being played implies nothing of importance is being sought beyond the solipsistic concerns of either player. A game is synonymous with a battle; we set ourselves against another, and seek to win the battle for the gains it will bring us or our familiars. In setting ourselves against another - in saying, "this is a battle, and you are my opposition" - we draw a divide and don our battle-colours, allowing us to identify our team-mates and avoid slaying our own. Whilst those who wear the opposition colours may be like us in certain ways - two arms, two legs, hands and feet - the fact that they are on the other side means that we are no longer amenable to them in the way that we may have been during peacetime.

The dialogue-as-game may seem to be about finding truth - the embattled parties may seem to be fighting for the greater good - but in reality the "greater good" may simply be an excuse for a battle. We could call this a battle of egos: a display of oratory skill, wit, logical ability and so on, in which the conversation becomes a ritual dance; an occasion to flex muscle and flash plumage.

Just as a battle can appear to be about something greater, the search for truth can also sometimes resemble a battle. The difference is in our motives. If truth is what we seek, then the battle is only useful, and justifiable, inasmuch as it brings us nearer to it. As with our earlier analogy, it may be that in that in fighting we realise that our reasons for going to war are flawed; in which case, as befitting someone who has no interest in conflict beyond its usefulness as a tool of truth, we will exit the fray immediately, and humbly.

If we are in service to a higher power, then we cannot allow ourselves to be tempted by the distractions of a game, or the personal gains of battle; and must always be prepared to put its concerns ahead of our own.

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God is just out my back door, yet I choose not to visit. I would rather sit alone and scheme on how to be remembered, on what more that I can do here to cement the evidence that I once walked these roads with you. It is a futile exercise. I know it is, and yet I persist.

[Billy Corgan]


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Two competing ideological systems may easily be predicated upon fundamentally opposed axioms – in which case to give credence to the opponent’s viewpoint is simultaneously to disrupt the basic substructure of current belief, and its attendant restriction of complexity.

[Jordan B. Peterson]
‘Complexity Management Theory: Motivation for Ideological Rigidity and Social Conflict’, in Cortex, December 2002, p. 450


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Pre/Post

Integral supposes that as we progress upwards through the various levels of being we can transcend and include those below. Of course, there is some truth in this - if we adopt the modern, liberal, scientistic mindset (‘orange’) then we still contain traces of our more ancient and less civilised selves.

However, it may be that these less civilised elements are in fundamental opposition to the later, ‘higher’ levels - there is nothing to say that they can sit together harmoniously within a unified whole.

The whole notion of pre/trans belies a progressive worldview, with the idea being that trans is preferable to pre.  

Wilber purports that many claims about non-rational states make a mistake he calls the pre/trans fallacy.

According to Wilber, the non-rational stages of consciousness (what Wilber calls "pre-rational" and "trans-rational" stages) can be easily confused with one another.

On Wilber's view, one can reduce trans-rational spiritual realization to pre-rational regression, or one can elevate pre-rational states to the trans-rational domain.

For example, Wilber claims that Freud and Jung commit this fallacy. Freud considered mystical realization to be a regression to infantile oceanic states. Wilber alleges that Freud thus commits a fallacy of reduction.

Wilber thinks that Jung commits the converse form of the same mistake by considering pre-rational myths to reflect divine realizations. Likewise, pre-rational states may be misidentified as post-rational states.Wilber characterizes himself as having fallen victim to the pre/trans fallacy in his early work.

Wikipedia
Ken Wilber

The most fascinating item about such empirical studies is something that is often seen with 'pre' and 'post' situations - namely, both pre-X and post-X are non-X (for example, both preconventional and postconventional are nonconventional, or outside the conventional norms and rules), and thus they are often confused.

In such situations, 'pre' and 'post' will often use the same rhetoric and the same ideology, but in fact they are actually separated by an enormous gulf of growth and development. 

[Ken Wilber]
A Theory of Everything, p.23

The prerational religions were dominant in the past, in premodern times, but the transrational religions are on their way, destined to descend on a collective humanity with a global consciousness at their core.

[Ken Wilber]
A Theory of Everything, p.134

A careful reader will see that Wilber has considerable sympathy for many of the claims made by radical environmentalists and by people exploring nature-oriented religions. He understands that some people need to explore previously repressed areas in order to become better integrated.

Conceivably, he might even regard some of current interest in shamanism as a potentially promising development, provided that those practices are explored in the right spirit, i.e., with the goal of moving forward by first looping back, and in a way that does not require the sacrifice of critical forms of consciousness.

[Michael E. Zimmerman]
Ken Wilber's Critique of Ecological Spirituality

What were some of the artistic beliefs that the modernists adopted? Above all they embraced freedom, and they found it in the artistic forms and emotions of the primitive cultures of Africa, the Orient, the Americas and Oceania.

This act was the repudiation of all of the stylistic refinements that were the basis of 19th-century artistic endeavor.

On the one hand, primitivism represented the simplification of form, which was to become one of the hallmarks of modernism. This abstraction of form suggested that some essential structure, previously hidden by realistic technique, would come to light.

Art had, according to the modernists, become too concerned with irrelevant sophistications and conventions that detracted from the main purpose of art: the discovery of truth.

'History of Modernism: Modernism: Characteristics'

In theory, each new structure of consciousness integrates the previous structures into itself, creating a broader, more expansive structure that takes up the best elements of previous structures and does new and more creative things with them, while discarding all the elements of previous structures that don’t work.

Enchantment […]? That’s one of the things that, in Wilber’s theory, was discarded because it doesn’t work. Those who still perceive the world that way are either falling behind in the great onward march of evolution, or mistakenly headed the wrong direction.

Wilber warns at length about what he calls the Pre/Trans Fallacy, which is his term for anything that moves back toward the pre-personal stages instead of going forward to the transpersonal stages.

Any tradition of spiritual practice in the modern world that makes respectful use of myth and magic is considered by Wilber to be an example of the Pre/Trans Fallacy. That includes those of us who practice magic, of course, but it also includes anyone who seriously embraces any religion in its traditional form, as well as thinkers such as Carl Jung, whose attentiveness to the mythic dimensions of consciousness is in Wilber’s way of thinking wrongheaded, a throwback to a pre-personal stage of evolution.

From my perspective, the narrative structures of mythic thought aren’t a stage to be outgrown, they’re healthy and necessary elements of all human consciousness, just as much so as the discursive structures of rational thought.

Give the mythic structure its proper place and it’s easy to keep it in that proper place. Try to insist that you’ve outgrown myth, as Wilber does, and you can count on having it sneak up behind you so and playing merry hob with your oh-so-rational ideas, inserting mythic narratives into those ideas when you’re not looking.

[John Michael Greer]
‘Against Enchantment I: Ken Wilber’, Ecosophia

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