The catalogue
Soul Manifestos 2026 - #10 in the series
The catalogue
A tentative kind of weird manifesto for the possibility of a future unpsychology
The life of world and mind is multifaceted, evolving, ever-changing, flowing, poetic, discoverable, mysterious, personal, collective, ecological, connected, disconnected, uncontainable, free, constrained, creative, loving, violent, gentle – and always contextual.
The world of mind and life we live with is one in which the uncontainable is contained, boxed within language-bound boundaries, their scope restrained by limitations of human imagination – and a fear of that which tries to fly free. Pinned down to be understood within frames of meaning and belief.
Our mind is catalogued. All our minds are…
The mind of world and life is constrained by the cultural predilections of human communities, societies and civilisations. The mind is held in time and place by the expectations, assumptions and intuitions of humans whose own minds require boxes and certainties and particular words in particular orders, in order for their institutions, organisations and nations to be sustained.
The words hold the key – are seminal. The words in the mind, are spells that conjure meaning and action; turning to mayhem, or else to relationship and belonging.
Boxes and boundaries give the semblance of belonging. They pretend to connect. They play at ecology. The words and thoughts are channeled down well-worn pathways, ending up in familiar, dangerous places.
The metaphors matter. Our minds and worlds are not machines, but living landscapes. We are not broken down, brain-divided, trauma-inflicted inevitabilities. Rather we are emerging, changing, mutually learning pieces of consciousness. We, and our cultures, are not lines of development and advancement, but waves and clouds and forests and burgeoning, interconnected, interdependent cities, technologies and ecologies.
When we are digging in the garden, or crafting pots, or writing poems, or surfing waves, our minds and bodies (extraordinary things that they are) respond to the tiny adjustments and requirements of the lives we are living. When we are in relationship, we are tender, and loving, or sometimes hateful or cruel – and each of these states is worth paying attention to. The wider, systemic contexts matter too. How can we carry on living our own ordinary lives – touched by privilege and/or inequality – when the patterns that are supposed to connect… well, don’t?
We can ask: what are the acorns that hold our potential. What are the ghosts and alter-egos that mirror our self-hood. What are the minds that flow, and grow, and connect, and relate, and grieve, and learn? Where do the collective winds come from, that blow our humanity this way and that? How do we – together – shelter from the storms that face us? Where is mind and world and life in all this?
These words and questions, stories and metaphors are at the heart of what we have come to call unpsychology. In systems, organisations and cultures – families too – the category, the label, the box, the development, the direction, has become the thing. Meaning made easy by constraining, measuring and targeting it. Relationships made linear by pathologising and policing our bodies and behaviours – the ways we ‘function’, or not - in this demanding, conflicting world of ours.
Madness. Gender. Sexuality. Neurodiversity. Class. Colour. Ethnicity. Disability. Illness. Belief. How would it be imagine minds without the categories and boxes we are given – that we give ourselves? How could a world emerge that was layered so finely that everybody’s experiential life was brought to life – and mind?
What could we imagine from the inside-out and the outside-in that might keep our world learning, our souls full, our minds flowing freely, out in all directions? Through the layers. Deep in Time. Humble and horizontal, with nowhere to go except out to meet with and learn from each other – and the world.
Curious. Playful. Uncontainable. Free.
Amen. This resonates strongly with my piece https://open.substack.com/pub/domdib/p/fourfoil-the-little-weed?r=1hymsa&utm_medium=ios (inspired by Le Guin).
A timely provocation in the midst of my current headspace. Thanks for this.