prynne, leary & thinking in stages

luka

Well-known member
i read the prynne-oliver letters and leary's book of life and was struck by and thought about (not for the 1st time) the consequences of thinking in stages
in both you encounter the notion of the child-bearing/rearing adult as an unavoidable stage, something that cannot be shirked, and the consequent contempt for homosexuals, incels, asexuals etc.

this progressivism, or evolutionary thinking sometimes seems baked into psychedelic thought (re. psychedelic fascism). that we must ascend a ladder and those stuck on the lower levels are failures.
 

Benny Bunter

Well-known member
Don't know what you're getting at really but I've just received the Prynne/Oliver letters book in the post and just read the introduction so far so I guess I'll find out. Has Prynne got kids?
 

sus

Well-known member
this is real but also, completely abysmal examples

developmental psychology is built around the concept of stages, from Maslow to Piaget.

Robert Kegan's stages here are key too
 

Benny Bunter

Well-known member
of course
I have wondered about it before but there's very little biographical info on him available and the only time I've detected anything kids-related in his poetry is that one in white stones where he's on about fixing his lawnmower, can't remember what it's called now
 

Corpsey

bandz ahoy
It's a truism (but probably actually true, at least for many parents) that being a parent makes you less selfish. Your life is no longer all about you.

Obviously parents are hardly purged of selfishness, my friends who have kids are certainly envious of my 'freedom' as a childless (childish) singleton, my freedom to pursue my own interests.

Anyway, I wonder if this is how Timothy Leary fits into this (not that I know much about him)--the abandonment of ego, ala. LSD.

Having spent a little time with some friends' children I do see how, even leaving aside the primal bond, being around children could be good for the soul. They're relatively uncorrupted, they're creative, they're optimistic, they've not seen it all before.

I read a review John Updike wrote about an Alan Hollinghurst novel. Updike got into hot water over it cos he wrote about what he perceived to be the pointlessness (because childless) of homosexual life--I suppose as he saw it portrayed by Hollinghurst, at least.

Was any of this relevant? I don't know. But it took me about five minutes to write so I'm afraid I have to post it now.
 

Benny Bunter

Well-known member
I've got one and it was totally unplanned. I wouldn't change my life if I could go back but neither would I recommend it to anyone, I just see it as something that happened and were it not for certain circumstances occuring it wouldn't have. I'm lucky in that it turned out alright but equally it could have been a disaster
 

sus

Well-known member
Dlx-JqmWwAAzs8f
 

sus

Well-known member
 

luka

Well-known member
this is real but also, completely abysmal examples

developmental psychology is built around the concept of stages, from Maslow to Piaget.

Robert Kegan's stages here are key too
i didnt say make a list of anyone anywhere that's ever thought in terms of stages!
 

mvuent

Void Dweller
when i was a teenager, maybe younger, i got this idea in my head that i would forgo a lot of normal rites and experiences in order to get a glimpse of the sights beyond those parochial confines. but it turns out there are actually people who do both. my bad!
 

poetix

we murder to dissect
I did not know of the existence of the Prynne Oliver letters. Douglas Oliver doesn’t get talked about so much at the moment but he’s an unusual figure, less fractally oblique than Prynne but often surprising.
 

luka

Well-known member
I did not know of the existence of the Prynne Oliver letters. Douglas Oliver doesn’t get talked about so much at the moment but he’s an unusual figure, less fractally oblique than Prynne but often surprising.
give me a ring lets go to brockley wetherspoons this afternoon i'll lend you the book
 

entertainment

Well-known member
I have thought about thinking in terms of numerological stages.

Any thought travels through a chain of stages, one following from another (1-2-3) as it builds in sophistication until it reaches its breaking point (9) and resolves back into nothing (0) leaving only the memory trace of the thought, the 1 in front of anything that comes next.

I had an idea at one point that the perfect poem is one bears this logic inside it, a sort of knot that ends up untying itself, leaving you with nothing except the memory of the words. The ultimate metaphor for meaning.
 

version

Well-known member
I have thought about thinking in terms of numerological stages.

Any thought travels through a chain of stages, one following from another (1-2-3) as it builds in sophistication until it reaches its breaking point (9) and resolves back into nothing (0) leaving only the memory trace of the thought, the 1 in front of anything that comes next.

I had an idea at one point that the perfect poem is one bears this logic inside it, a sort of knot that ends up untying itself, leaving you with nothing except the memory of the words. The ultimate metaphor for meaning.

"Seeing things from beyond their end - as transfinite, so to speak. They appear in an entirely different light. Events come to you from the opposite direction in time, from the depths of their past occurrence.

It is the same with concepts in theory: you see them coming from another direction than that of their logical unfolding - from the depths of their accomplishment, which is also their end, as in a film run backwards.

One should always maintain a kind of balance in this way between a thing and its extreme final term, hold the two simultaneously in tension. Thus we live both with the system and with the extreme consequences of the system."

Baudrillard, Fragments
 
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