All my life, it seems, I've been aware of the caution against what you are calling the Gaia Assumption. Now I find myself more allergic to the caution than to what it's reacting against. I cannot make sense of a world-view in which "homeostasis" or ecosystemic health simply are asserted not to be important or (at the extreme) not to exist. If homeostasis did not exist, nothing living could persist -- and of course, in the end we don't, so if it's Eden you're looking for, of course you won't find it. But...homeostasis is just the term for the negative-feedback loops which enable life to thrive. No, it's not eternal. Yes, though, we can learn from how "natural" systems do it, in "our" absence (not human absence, though, but industrial absence) -- and though I don't have nostalgia for the race relations of the early 1960s I can certainly have nostalgia for the louder or richer birdsong I might have heard then, if I'd been paying attention. There are things which are worthwhile and which are being lost, and this is a separable question from the sentiment in which we drape the music and pop culture of our youth. I might have waited until I've actually read McKenzie Wark, if my up to date iPad ever decides to perform properly and download her book. But the reaction against what might be called the David Attenborough aesthetic has not only come from leftists. It has also been a staple of the "realistic" mainstream biologists back starting in the Eighties. And they did enough damage, in my opinion, that I don't mind a bit of pastorale.
Thanks for your honesty, Phillip, I'd expect nothing less! Do you think that the damage came from mainstream biologists in the 80s? Silent Spring was way before that, as was the documented pillage of the Earth for decades. Maybe its a clumsy way of attempting to explore different contexts - but what I mean to highlight is the way in which the world views of (some) integral, holistic folks can be smug and go in developmental straight lines upwards. I'm criticising the wishful thinking for Eden, not the awareness of complex, ecological systems. I totally agree that there are things being lost. I just prefer a bit of realism, I think, in the response. I'm totally with you on ecosystemic health, and birdsong (I spend a lot of time listening to it and writing about it!), by the way, I an just exploring my world and responses, beyond what I may have previous gone along with... Thanks for taking the time and space to respond...
I know what you mean about some of the integral holistic folks. But in California I was center stage in the Sixties and Seventies for the environmental movement as it developed there. Some wishful thinking for Eden was part of the emotional underpinning of why people supported real activism and a burgeoning movement, but this movement itself tended to be criticized by Marxists who were more interested in fair distribution of the industrial cornucopia that we thought would last forever. So the tension goes back a ways. Now people like Gregory Bateson taught that the industrial cornucopia could not last, and that we had to question the conscious purpose of technological solutions. He had some hope, I think, that the 1970s back to the landers were the vanguard of a social movement away from some very bad ideas. The era of complacent spiritual bypass was yet to come, and the organic industrial complex. Meanwhile he taught that Nature was full of double binds and the bread and butter fly might be you.
Issues like what is ecological climax really? and how fragile is it? were circulating in Gregory Bateson's mind near the end of his life, and I am still exploring some hard to approach thoughts of his that I find in audio tapes and hidden corners.
The new ecological Marxists like Wark and Morton are not the same Marxists, I don't think. I was around the Left in the UK, and recognise what you say. The culture was industrial - coal was King. Ironically it was being around Nora, and you and rereading Gregory Bateson, that took me towards these new eco-left writers. I travelled via the Dark Mountain project (Paul Kingsnorth and Dougald Hine's deep green initiative), and this seemed mired in apocalyptic versions of the Gaia assumption. There's some rigour and difficulty in Wark and Morton (who both also write about music interestingly - Wark's latest book is about her new transitionary life in the Techno scene in NYC) that I like and which reminds me of Gregory more than anything - though you might not agree as someone who knows his work intimately! They may not use the term, but they're always pulling double binds out the the hat!
...also interesting you say 'There are things which are worthwhile and which are being lost, and this is a separable question from the sentiment in which we drape the music and pop culture of our youth.' Isn't the point of transcontextuality that these are all together systemically and culturally? More prosaically, musical nostalgia often goes with ecological complacency in a world view; musical idealism goes with integral thinking and Gaia (and cultural appropriation too); musical rebels, I would argue, might, in the moment, be more mindful of the ecological realities. I didn't put it in this piece, but I have been influenced a lot by Bjork and Timothy Morton's conversations, and the way ecology (rich but not naive) goes through her music and sensibility. And I love David Attenborough...
Yes we'll maybe that is one of the major issues we as humans grapple with...how does a body come alive...I have delivered what looked to be a dead lamb and after a few seconds a quiver ran through it and it began to breathe, similarly when people and animals die the force that animated the matter has left the body. People call it all kinds of names but if you have witnessed either of these transitions then you will know what I am talking about...I call it divine because my experience of these transitions has been so profound. But in a more everyday way...how does breathing occur, or a wound form a scab....do we will these things to happen. In many ways we are completely unconscious of the magic of these things...birth is a great example of the medicalisation of something our bodies are naturally designed to provide pain relief for if the conditions are safe and supportive but if women are frightened by what they have been told, these natural systems are thwarted and it becomes a trauma for both mother and baby with attachment and developmental problems. We have been trained to not trust these amazing organisms that we walk around in and that creates anxiety and depression because at some level we feel the wrongness of that.
It seems capitalism capitalizes on a human longing for something new and different...we are familiar with it in the form of physical items but your writing and the clip makes me realise it is alive in our demand for new music, new ideas, new structures. The opposing force is that of nostalgia spoken of with such disdain. I can't help comparing a film of Aboriginal people pre colonization with the state of inner contentment to the humans alive today and think that what we are longing for will never be met in these external ways. movements against "something " rather than a curiosity about why that "something " arose...avoid an involvement in what already is...avoid the very organic process that true lasting change . The desire for no rules i imagine came out of overcontrol or a sense of exclusion but if we don't understand why some rules were there in that time such as traffic rules or taxes, we as a species simply bounce back and forward between reactions, wars, running down the opposing point of view.
Really interesting and thoughtful response. It's hard, isn't it, to follow the threads and flows and make distinctions between the impulse for the new (which I don't think is just a cultural response to capitalism - though it undoubtedly plays a big part), and the being with 'what is'. Nostalgia is what leads us to see pre-colonised peoples as living in a state of bliss – but we don't know this – we assume it through a backward looking lens. I don't think 'curiosity' and 'being against' are at all in opposition, but the way, and maybe it's out of the tension between them that lasting change happens? Though change might not ever be lasting in any case! Many thanks for the contribution - it sparked off a lot of thoughts...
I want to understand exactly what you are saying but find myself unable to. If I can't understand your point and potentially be enriched by it, then I am left with the question - for what reason are we actually communicating ?
It may well be my inability to be able to cope with very complex ideas cognitively and I apologise if I sounded harsh. But much of the Unpsychology stuff I find completely unfathomable - I try to perservere, I want to - I am sure there is wonderful ideas in there but I just can't understand the complexity and I have to stop after a couple of sentences as my head starts whirling about....maybe I am more prehistoric brain ! I need straight forward and direct. I appreciated your feedback. Thank you
You don't sound harsh at all. I find complex ideas difficult too, which is why I sometimes find myself swimming in them rather than understanding them! I find when I'm reading people like McKenzie Wark or Gregory Bateson that something (things) important (to me) gets evoked, but I can't pretend that I am getting the theory fully by any means. I work with immediate things - like music and family and poetry and experience mainly, and sometimes these come together in a kind of reflection. I guess one point I was trying to get across in the piece was that cultural and political expression are linked, and tied together in ways that sometimes get missed. Another is that human minds are complex too, but sometimes we want to reach for definitive meaning - maybe it is more comforting that way...
Yes that desire for things to be clear is something about comfort but although the semblance of chaos is inherent in nature and in human beings, we are all actually creatures of divine order. I am hungry I am driven to look for food, I feel threatened there are flight fight or freeze responses...they have unique expression but they have an order to it.
I see where our misunderstandings might arise! Maybe we just use different language to describe our world views? I can't really get on with us being 'creatures of divine order'. I'm not sure what that means, really... I think I'm in more material realms of creativity and culture, though agree that human needs and responses are fundamental. And order, if it's there at all, is only temporary isn't it? There are cycles of breakdown and reconstruction, perhaps, so maybe this is 'ordered' but not sure about divine... I do love your perspective though!
All my life, it seems, I've been aware of the caution against what you are calling the Gaia Assumption. Now I find myself more allergic to the caution than to what it's reacting against. I cannot make sense of a world-view in which "homeostasis" or ecosystemic health simply are asserted not to be important or (at the extreme) not to exist. If homeostasis did not exist, nothing living could persist -- and of course, in the end we don't, so if it's Eden you're looking for, of course you won't find it. But...homeostasis is just the term for the negative-feedback loops which enable life to thrive. No, it's not eternal. Yes, though, we can learn from how "natural" systems do it, in "our" absence (not human absence, though, but industrial absence) -- and though I don't have nostalgia for the race relations of the early 1960s I can certainly have nostalgia for the louder or richer birdsong I might have heard then, if I'd been paying attention. There are things which are worthwhile and which are being lost, and this is a separable question from the sentiment in which we drape the music and pop culture of our youth. I might have waited until I've actually read McKenzie Wark, if my up to date iPad ever decides to perform properly and download her book. But the reaction against what might be called the David Attenborough aesthetic has not only come from leftists. It has also been a staple of the "realistic" mainstream biologists back starting in the Eighties. And they did enough damage, in my opinion, that I don't mind a bit of pastorale.
Thanks for your honesty, Phillip, I'd expect nothing less! Do you think that the damage came from mainstream biologists in the 80s? Silent Spring was way before that, as was the documented pillage of the Earth for decades. Maybe its a clumsy way of attempting to explore different contexts - but what I mean to highlight is the way in which the world views of (some) integral, holistic folks can be smug and go in developmental straight lines upwards. I'm criticising the wishful thinking for Eden, not the awareness of complex, ecological systems. I totally agree that there are things being lost. I just prefer a bit of realism, I think, in the response. I'm totally with you on ecosystemic health, and birdsong (I spend a lot of time listening to it and writing about it!), by the way, I an just exploring my world and responses, beyond what I may have previous gone along with... Thanks for taking the time and space to respond...
I know what you mean about some of the integral holistic folks. But in California I was center stage in the Sixties and Seventies for the environmental movement as it developed there. Some wishful thinking for Eden was part of the emotional underpinning of why people supported real activism and a burgeoning movement, but this movement itself tended to be criticized by Marxists who were more interested in fair distribution of the industrial cornucopia that we thought would last forever. So the tension goes back a ways. Now people like Gregory Bateson taught that the industrial cornucopia could not last, and that we had to question the conscious purpose of technological solutions. He had some hope, I think, that the 1970s back to the landers were the vanguard of a social movement away from some very bad ideas. The era of complacent spiritual bypass was yet to come, and the organic industrial complex. Meanwhile he taught that Nature was full of double binds and the bread and butter fly might be you.
Issues like what is ecological climax really? and how fragile is it? were circulating in Gregory Bateson's mind near the end of his life, and I am still exploring some hard to approach thoughts of his that I find in audio tapes and hidden corners.
The new ecological Marxists like Wark and Morton are not the same Marxists, I don't think. I was around the Left in the UK, and recognise what you say. The culture was industrial - coal was King. Ironically it was being around Nora, and you and rereading Gregory Bateson, that took me towards these new eco-left writers. I travelled via the Dark Mountain project (Paul Kingsnorth and Dougald Hine's deep green initiative), and this seemed mired in apocalyptic versions of the Gaia assumption. There's some rigour and difficulty in Wark and Morton (who both also write about music interestingly - Wark's latest book is about her new transitionary life in the Techno scene in NYC) that I like and which reminds me of Gregory more than anything - though you might not agree as someone who knows his work intimately! They may not use the term, but they're always pulling double binds out the the hat!
...also interesting you say 'There are things which are worthwhile and which are being lost, and this is a separable question from the sentiment in which we drape the music and pop culture of our youth.' Isn't the point of transcontextuality that these are all together systemically and culturally? More prosaically, musical nostalgia often goes with ecological complacency in a world view; musical idealism goes with integral thinking and Gaia (and cultural appropriation too); musical rebels, I would argue, might, in the moment, be more mindful of the ecological realities. I didn't put it in this piece, but I have been influenced a lot by Bjork and Timothy Morton's conversations, and the way ecology (rich but not naive) goes through her music and sensibility. And I love David Attenborough...
Yes we'll maybe that is one of the major issues we as humans grapple with...how does a body come alive...I have delivered what looked to be a dead lamb and after a few seconds a quiver ran through it and it began to breathe, similarly when people and animals die the force that animated the matter has left the body. People call it all kinds of names but if you have witnessed either of these transitions then you will know what I am talking about...I call it divine because my experience of these transitions has been so profound. But in a more everyday way...how does breathing occur, or a wound form a scab....do we will these things to happen. In many ways we are completely unconscious of the magic of these things...birth is a great example of the medicalisation of something our bodies are naturally designed to provide pain relief for if the conditions are safe and supportive but if women are frightened by what they have been told, these natural systems are thwarted and it becomes a trauma for both mother and baby with attachment and developmental problems. We have been trained to not trust these amazing organisms that we walk around in and that creates anxiety and depression because at some level we feel the wrongness of that.
It seems capitalism capitalizes on a human longing for something new and different...we are familiar with it in the form of physical items but your writing and the clip makes me realise it is alive in our demand for new music, new ideas, new structures. The opposing force is that of nostalgia spoken of with such disdain. I can't help comparing a film of Aboriginal people pre colonization with the state of inner contentment to the humans alive today and think that what we are longing for will never be met in these external ways. movements against "something " rather than a curiosity about why that "something " arose...avoid an involvement in what already is...avoid the very organic process that true lasting change . The desire for no rules i imagine came out of overcontrol or a sense of exclusion but if we don't understand why some rules were there in that time such as traffic rules or taxes, we as a species simply bounce back and forward between reactions, wars, running down the opposing point of view.
Really interesting and thoughtful response. It's hard, isn't it, to follow the threads and flows and make distinctions between the impulse for the new (which I don't think is just a cultural response to capitalism - though it undoubtedly plays a big part), and the being with 'what is'. Nostalgia is what leads us to see pre-colonised peoples as living in a state of bliss – but we don't know this – we assume it through a backward looking lens. I don't think 'curiosity' and 'being against' are at all in opposition, but the way, and maybe it's out of the tension between them that lasting change happens? Though change might not ever be lasting in any case! Many thanks for the contribution - it sparked off a lot of thoughts...
I want to understand exactly what you are saying but find myself unable to. If I can't understand your point and potentially be enriched by it, then I am left with the question - for what reason are we actually communicating ?
It may well be my inability to be able to cope with very complex ideas cognitively and I apologise if I sounded harsh. But much of the Unpsychology stuff I find completely unfathomable - I try to perservere, I want to - I am sure there is wonderful ideas in there but I just can't understand the complexity and I have to stop after a couple of sentences as my head starts whirling about....maybe I am more prehistoric brain ! I need straight forward and direct. I appreciated your feedback. Thank you
You don't sound harsh at all. I find complex ideas difficult too, which is why I sometimes find myself swimming in them rather than understanding them! I find when I'm reading people like McKenzie Wark or Gregory Bateson that something (things) important (to me) gets evoked, but I can't pretend that I am getting the theory fully by any means. I work with immediate things - like music and family and poetry and experience mainly, and sometimes these come together in a kind of reflection. I guess one point I was trying to get across in the piece was that cultural and political expression are linked, and tied together in ways that sometimes get missed. Another is that human minds are complex too, but sometimes we want to reach for definitive meaning - maybe it is more comforting that way...
Yes that desire for things to be clear is something about comfort but although the semblance of chaos is inherent in nature and in human beings, we are all actually creatures of divine order. I am hungry I am driven to look for food, I feel threatened there are flight fight or freeze responses...they have unique expression but they have an order to it.
I see where our misunderstandings might arise! Maybe we just use different language to describe our world views? I can't really get on with us being 'creatures of divine order'. I'm not sure what that means, really... I think I'm in more material realms of creativity and culture, though agree that human needs and responses are fundamental. And order, if it's there at all, is only temporary isn't it? There are cycles of breakdown and reconstruction, perhaps, so maybe this is 'ordered' but not sure about divine... I do love your perspective though!