'structural'

[sus]

There was an interesting thread on the Red Scare sub recently with people lamenting how much of their education was now based around 'deconstructing' things they'd never really been taught in the first place, e.g. The Western Canon.

Yes this take is around, "Picasso first had to learn how to draw a bird naturalistically," It's broader than Western Canon though it's the whole archetypal structure, the types and the roles and the casting, the fronts and values, the life scripts and behavioral algorithms. The language, the categories the language provisions. The culture is in a "questioning authority" phase

 

[sus]

And there's such a mix, some people's problem is too much belief in that structure, in its myths and prescriptions, and some people's it's too little.

 

[WashYourHands]

As apex pattern recognition hunters, archetypes are one of the main reasons your ancestors survived long enough to breed and raise offspring. The beacons of the subconscious pre-date language

 

[sus]

As apex pattern recognition hunters, archetypes are one of the main reasons your ancestors survived long enough to breed and raise offspring. The beacons of the subconscious pre-date language

This is a good question to carve up the board, who believes in the collective unconscious and who's a dirty materialist like me

 

[version]

This is an evisceration:

'... I learned not only a way of reading but a way of living. The more removed I was from a primary act, the more valuable it was. Why scoop soup at the homeless shelter when you could say something interesting about how naive it was to think that feeding people really helped them when really what was needed was structural change.'

'... Because these are some of the smartest, kindest and most energetic people I know, I cannot resist the question: Is this the best way for them to spend their lives? If they acknowledged that they were largely engaged in the amoral endeavor of pure intellectual play, that would be one thing, but each of these people considers their work deeply, emphatically political... I do wonder if we're handicapped, publicly impaired somehow.'

'Like most of my siblings of Theory, from time to time I have tried to get off my duff and do something concrete: protest, precinct walk, do volunteer work — whatever — but I always get impatient. I wasn't meant to chant annoying rhymes. I am trained to relish complexity, to never simplify a thought. I am trained to appreciate "difference" (between skin tones and truths), but I don't know how to organize a political meeting, create a strategy or make a long-term commitment to a social organization.'

Salon | I was Michel Foucault's love slave

web.archive.org

 

[Mr. Tea]

This is an evisceration:

'... I learned not only a way of reading but a way of living. The more removed I was from a primary act, the more valuable it was. Why scoop soup at the homeless shelter when you could say something interesting about how naive it was to think that feeding people really helped them when really what was needed was structural change.'

'... Because these are some of the smartest, kindest and most energetic people I know, I cannot resist the question: Is this the best way for them to spend their lives? If they acknowledged that they were largely engaged in the amoral endeavor of pure intellectual play, that would be one thing, but each of these people considers their work deeply, emphatically political... I do wonder if we're handicapped, publicly impaired somehow.'

'Like most of my siblings of Theory, from time to time I have tried to get off my duff and do something concrete: protest, precinct walk, do volunteer work — whatever — but I always get impatient. I wasn't meant to chant annoying rhymes. I am trained to relish complexity, to never simplify a thought. I am trained to appreciate "difference" (between skin tones and truths), but I don't know how to organize a political meeting, create a strategy or make a long-term commitment to a social organization.'

Salon | I was Michel Foucault's love slave

web.archive.org

This reads like something nomadologist might have written after someone snuck up behind her and stabbed her with a syringe loaded a drug that forces you to develop self-awareness.

 

[Clinamenic]

This reads like something nomadologist might have written after someone snuck up behind her and stabbed her with a syringe loaded a drug that forces you to develop self-awareness.

So thats what you call it?

 

[version]

This is a good question to carve up the board, who believes in the collective unconscious and who's a dirty materialist like me

Are you setting them in opposition?

 

[sus]

Are you setting them in opposition?

Well, what do you mean by "collective unconscious"?

 

[version]

Well, what do you mean by "collective unconscious"?

The two ideas which came to mind were 1) the hippy "we're all one consciousness" sort of thing where we're literally scattered fragments of a whole or 2) that there are shared ideas, concepts, and so on which we're collectively aware of on various levels.

 

[sus]

The two ideas which came to mind were 1) the hippy "we're all one consciousness" sort of thing where we're literally scattered fragments of a whole or 2) that there are shared ideas, concepts, and so on which we're collectively aware of on various levels.

Well, I guess I believe in #2, since I believe that people within a society share cultural frameworks, and I guess I believe in #1 insofar as I think "part" vs "whole" is just a conceptualization choice, we talk about individuals as "parts" of society all the time. I'm not sure what it would mean for us to all partake in a higher consciousness—"who" would be the entity experiencing this, and what would it be like?

 

[Mr. Tea]

The two ideas which came to mind were 1) the hippy "we're all one consciousness" sort of thing where we're literally scattered fragments of a whole or 2) that there are shared ideas, concepts, and so on which we're collectively aware of on various levels.

I don't really see how anyone could "not believe in" the second one here, since it's virtually a definition of "culture", isn't it?

 

[WashYourHands]

This post took on a life of its own during a very late dinner break





vs



=

 

[version]

Well, I guess I believe in #2, since I believe that people within a society share cultural frameworks, and I guess I believe in #1 insofar as I think "part" vs "whole" is just a conceptualization choice, we talk about individuals as "parts" of society all the time. I'm not sure what it would mean for us to all partake in a higher consciousness—"who" would be the entity experiencing this, and what would it be like?

What was your initial definition which opposed it to materialism then?

 

[mixed_biscuits]

In Kastrup's Decoding Jung's Metaphysics, Kastrup is an idealist who thinks materialism is a subset of the unconscious and says Jung's collective unconscious encompasses everything and is the ground from which the personal unconscious and conscious develop. He considers archetypes to reveal something about the stuff of the unconscious with the patterning in the elements that are amenable to consciousness reflecting deeper tendencies in the unconscious in the same way that the structure of a crystal as it grows reveals tendencies to grow in certain ways.

In his book Science Ideated he goes into the status of matter and materialism qua consciousness but I can't remember exactly what he says.

 

[HMGovt’s Glorious Return!]

In Kastrup's Decoding Jung's Metaphysics, Kastrup is an idealist who thinks materialism is a subset of the unconscious and says Jung's collective unconscious encompasses everything and is the ground from which the personal unconscious and conscious develop. He considers archetypes to reveal something about the stuff of the unconscious with the patterning in the elements that are amenable to consciousness reflecting deeper tendencies in the unconscious in the same way that the structure of a crystal as it grows reveals tendencies to grow in certain ways.

In his book Science Ideated he goes into the status of matter and materialism qua consciousness but I can't remember exactly what he says.

Got a stack of Kastrup on my Kindle, but haven't gone into it yet.
I strongly recommend Iain McGilchrist’s "The Matter with Things" — incredible book on deep structure of the mind, idealism, process biology, various agnosias. Book of the decade, in many ways, but a little too empirical for the average Dissensian SoCIaL sCieNtiSt

 

[mixed_biscuits]

F me

 

[mixed_biscuits]

Got a stack of Kastrup on my Kindle, but haven't gone into it yet.
I strongly recommend Iain McGilchrist’s "The Matter with Things" — incredible book on deep structure of the mind, idealism, process biology, various agnosias. Book of the decade, in many ways, but a little too empirical for the average Dissensian SoCIaL sCieNtiSt

Just read an interview with Gilchrist about the book and it sounds fascinating. In the interview he says the God consciousness creates individuated subconsciousnesses for mutual benefits otherwise not achievable. This is an idea that underpins Chris Langan's Cognitive Theoretic Model of the Universe and also turns up in supposedly first-hand modern accounts of people's encounters with the spirit world and apparent revelations of its workings and the purpose of the incarnation of individuated subconsciousnesses in the 'material realm' which might better be thought of as the realm of constraints through which will and discernment and choice and moral value can be brought to bear or even into existence per se. Gilchrist in the interview also makes much of the value of constraints.

Gilchrist is also pleased that his view incorporates much in common with spiritual traditions. That is a major advantage of seeing consciousness as primary: that the wealth of spiritual experience is taken seriously as being as true as anything else.

 

[Slothrop]

There was an interesting thread on the Red Scare sub recently with people lamenting how much of their education was now based around 'deconstructing' things they'd never really been taught in the first place, e.g. The Western Canon.

This was pretty much every Zhao thread too IIRC.

 

[sus]

I can't be expected to account for my eighteen year old self

What was your initial definition which opposed it to materialism then?