Myopia and Technologies of Denial

So I know this next post is supposed to be about Life-Logic, but I am still working on that. Hopefully it will be up next (there actually might be more than 2 parts to it and I can only vouch for the 2nd part as coming right after this one). This post is something related to part one that I thought I would post in the mean time.--I-P




I Think that so far, I have made it too easy to think of Alienated Phoniness as some kind of purely moral failing, something blameworthy. That would be a mistaken impression. I do think that there has to be a morality and some kind of moral freedom (at least at some point) involved in being in recovery from alienated phoniness, or in "choosing" (the quotes are there to reflect some ambivalence) to be in denial of the condition.  And once in recovery,  the condition of having to deal, as part of that recovery, in some compassionate and creative way, with the ubiquity of what I will here be calling "Technologies of Denial" in our sick culture is absolutely unavoidable. Still, the self or other blaming response is just another aspect of problem rather than a part of its solution.  In this situation, the more we can acknowledge and make conscious the many  different forms and patterns of symptoms of our shared suffering from the shared disease of sick culture, the more compassionate, rather than self righteous, we will become and the more inclined to heal ourselves and each other in a shared recovery process. In this post I want to try to contribute to this kind of possibility by using the physical (but also the psychological) condition of myopia and its "treatment" in the dominant culture.

 I read a definition of the metaphorical meaning of the word "myopia" that said it meant or implied, among other things, " a lack of far-sightedness".  Well, I think this would only really be true if  "far-sighted" was being used to mean  "healthy-sightedness", in which case why not use the word "near-sighted" to mean the same, unless appropriate "seeing far ahead" is being deemed intrinsically better than appropriate seeing of "what is near", by our collective unconscious.  However that may be,  what I want to affirm here is that "healthy-sightedness" both literally and metaphorically is the ability to properly coordinate that which is near with that which is far, with that which is in the mid-ground (and , I would venture to add, even with that which is in the imagination). It means not only to be able to "see the distant" but to see that distance in the context of the not so distant and the near, and like wise, healthy-sightedness means being able to see the near "in perspective"; in the context of he bigger picture and so of a deeper meaning.  And it means having an inclusive fluidity of (relative) focus, so as to be able to move freely from near to far to middle distance etc and back as appropriate without getting caught in dissociation("staring"). Thus myopia as well as hyperopia (whether considered literally or metaphorically, are both variations on the same theme of "Dysopia" or dissociated, uncoordinated visual cognition, and healthy-sightedness is equally different from both of them.

Now, if you've read the previous post on "Life-logic" as well as others you will understand that general cognitive disorientation and dissociation is sort of the basis of sick culture and is implicated in just about all of its manifestations. Its obvious to me that "dysopia"(and particularly its myopic version) is thus a part of this dynamic both metaphorically and literally. Here I want to show that pathological socio-cultural conditions exist that encourage both metaphorical and literal "short-sightedness", and then add insult to injury by providing technologies of denial that allow one to "function" without healing the underlying condition,  which is both internal, and external and which is left to keep on progressively degenerating.

The first on the list of outer conditions which encourage both literal and psychological myopia would be Slavery (and similar regimes of socio-economic coercion). Certainly the inherent violence of the "Master/Slave" relationship forces the slave into the myopic and narrow version of "sick-sightedness" since the slaves are obliged to follow orders about which they are not given the "bigger" picture; to "stare" at their work and evaluate it only in terms of uncoordinated, isolated, and usually external criteria of "efficiency" and the like.  Superficially Hyperopia,  (which is of course no healthier) would seem to be the more likely fate of the "Master" who allegedly is in charge, and has to be always looking to the future to plan the next move. However, if you examine this " distant future" that the supposed master is supposed to be responsible for, the "horizon" in question never seems either very distant or very broad. What we actually end up with in every coercion-based relationship, (and employer/employee, as well as Husband/Wife, in patriarchal societies and families are not to be excluded), is not so much a "Master/Slave" relationship but a kind of "hierarchy of Slaves", in which no one is really free to consider or act in terms of any defensible conception of the "big picture, whether dissociated or not.

I trace the reasons for this to the unavoidable Competition  in such systems, which, among other things, tends to ensure that a real comprehensive, responsible attitude toward the  future is not practically possible on anyones part because competition has a tendency to mutually enslave those who take part in it both to each others actions, and to certain short term considerations related to the necessity of winning or at least of staying in the game. To limit ones consideration of the future in such a way is to adopt a form of cognition no different then that of the slave since, of course consideration of at least a narrowly conceived future is equally possible even within the dissociated present which is forced on slave, as in the case of internal competition to please the master and rise in the hierarchy.

Thus, as I argue elsewhere; it seems better to abandon the concept of "master" completely in such a context and speak of a "Hierarchy of slaves", (or perhaps just of a "Culture of Slavery") since (at least for this purpose) one can easily consider the "Master" as just a high ranking slave in a delusional system in which "rank" is one of the delusions. You might say that "rank" helps facilitate the denial of the actual shared unfreedom and immaturity of the situation. I do think that, within such a system there is a useful distinction to be made between a slave and what I call a "conspiring captive" (this latter being a person who is conscious of being trapped in, but has not assimilated to, slave culture) but that is for another blog post.

So far, what we seem to have is a socio-economic paradigm that manifests a kind of continuum of various degrees of Myopia, but with Hyperopia nowhere to be found. Perhaps the hyperopic version of todays sick-sightedness, involves the kind exclusive devotion to a dissociated conception of the future that is the provence of those "visionaries" who are so besotted with their, usually one-dimensional and naive conceptions of future good,  that they are effectively blind to the present "near" evil at which they daily connive and to which they daily contribute. Interestingly, competition is implicated here as well, in this case competition between the vision of such "jihaders" and that dominant one of the "McPeople" they are trying to destroy (though "Jihaders" in the sense I mean is a category that would not cover all the Hyperopic "futurists" by any means : see my old post "McPeople" here: http://healthyculture-piankhy.blogspot.com/2008/10/mcpeople-parts-one-and-two.html for more on this angle of social analysis) . One can see how such a hyperopic view would be an inevitable dialectical counter to the prevailing myopia, although (contra Hegel), its clear that nothing good is to be expected from either a combination of,  or a battle between, two aspects of the same Dysopia.

But all of this has been much too metaphorical so far. What I am saying is that the epidemic of real physical eye-problems is in large part implicated both as contributing factor to, and as result of, our coercive, competitive and collectively dissociated and myopic socio-economic-politcal situation. Our culture has in the main created both the conditions of physical dysopia and means for its denial.  Thus myopia usually starts in childhood as a result of stresses and "misuses of the self" (what the Alexander Technique folks would call the "end-gaining" of squinting, among other things) encouraged and faciltated directly and indirectly by our overstressed culture of alienated rituals oin inner and outer competition. Moreover, Glasses, and contacts (at least as they tend to be used) facilitate only a kind of Alienated, Phony Sight; Since the coordinated, fluid and holistic nature of Healthy-Sightedness (which of course mimics and supports the coordinated cognition discussed in the previous post) is emphatically not restored by prescription lenses or other such treatment, they result in the production of persons literally subjectively alienated from and numbed to, their actual visual (and likely general) disorientation/confusion in a way that not only encourages a perpetual denial (phoniness) as to its existence, but to its progressive worsening, rather than true healing. Simply removing ones own glasses will demonsrate this state of benumbed cognitive alienation and disorientation.

The Phoniness seems to be about an ego-based sense of "competence" (note the relationship with the word "competition"), that seems to be demanded as part of the competitve "public/private" life of such sick cultures as our own.

To make a comparison; Just as a person getting breast implants very much decreases the possibility of their growing out of a fixation with self-objectification and one-dimensional and just plain false standards of beauty,( at the same time as losing a great deal of sensitivity to the feeling in her own breasts), so glasses and the like (when not used as a supplementary part of an active practice of original vision recovery) similarly inhibit cognitive growth and the progressive recovery of a balanced coordinated form of cognition and experience of oneself and other. Moreover in competitive culture and economy, both  these two kind of technical modification (as well as many many others I do not mention here), are likely to be motivated by the same pressures not to fail (and if possible to rise) in the hierarchy of Slaves-in-Denial alluded to above. And the decision may even be a very reluctant one. For example, maybe the breast implant is not the result of a willing assimilation to a phony conception beauty, but a reluctant concession to a "need" to stay "competitive" in the socio-erotic "market"  (or if you happen need to keep your job at the strip club, the real job market as well). And of course no one likes getting glasses or contacts (worst of all) eye surgery).

The problem I want to get at here is that the same sick culture usually provides (due to a myopic and uncoordinated path of technological innovation) the means, not to heal the disorders it produces and reinforces but, (through various forms of formal and informal Miseducation),  to repress and deny both the symptom and the disease, which thus only gets progressively worse. I suppose you could call such technology the Technologies of Denial, (here in a medical manifestation).

I also want to call such technologies Malignant Technologies* in the sense (which I will explore in a future post) that it is possible to understand the replication of healthy culture in general as like that of healthy biological tissue; that is, as something involving the "education" of cultural "stem cells" (young people) into the status of mature cells fulfilling their intended (and so meaningful) places in the living "tissue of reality". This process being analogous to the way that stem cells replace dying cells in a living body. Clearly cultural malignancy happens when an educational (we could also call it "initiatory") process that successfully manages this transition is replaced by one that (in the short term) seems to allow the cells to avoid this kind of growing up indefinitely, with the help  of technologies of denial. In short, cancer cells are immature confused, dissociated,  damaged, alienated from their purpose and place within the larger organism, as well as, being presumably unconscious and "in denial" of these things. Historical humanity, including its denial-facilitating technical infrastructure, could be described in exactly this way.

And it really seems to be the unconsciousness/denial that makes for the malignancy (though it seems that competition in various forms makes for much of the denial). This bringing together of Unconsciousness and Denial is a strange thing on the face of it since it is hard to see how you can be in denial of something of which your are unconscious. This gets back to the ambiguous feelings about the moral aspect of this whole situation that I brought up at the beginning. I think there is some resolution of the issue in the realization that "consciousness is consciousness of togetherness" and that no one is absolutely unconscious, and so the choice always exists to be open to greater inclusivity of meaning, or to be closed to it in principle (usually because of some intuited fear that such openness would disturb ones inner or outer status quo or otherwise challenge ones status or self-conception relative to others). Denial then would be a kind of fear-based siding of the emotions with the seeming security ofthe status quo against expanded consciousness,  probably in response to the competitive and alienated context which informs everything in this culture. So such a competitive culture selects for denial, alienation, and phoniness , both in terms of the malignant technologies of denial that thrive in it and in terms of the phony and alienated social relationships it fosters.

This relationship aspect deserves more comment. Generally speaking friendships, partnerships, social circles are not conscientious, soulful associations dedicated to the compassionate work of inner and outer healing. People are not coming together in an inclusive and non-alienated spirit to help each other and the world recover from our shared sick culture and from  the specific individual forms of Alienated Phoniness this takes in each each of us. Rather people tend to come together in basically dissociated, exclusive in-groups in which the tacit intention seems to be establishing and maintaining (or just assuming) some sense of superiority over those excluded, largely through what amounts to the the tacit denial of everyones equal and shared participation in the very sick, dissociated, culture that such associations exemplify and that I am trying to get across in this blog.

In this connection I can't resist mentioning the "logical technique" of "Invidious Comparison" by which this is collusive denial is usually facilitated (more of this and other "Life-Logical fallacies" in future life-logic posts). The formula is essentially "A" is good (and so does not have to change) because "A" is better than "B". Of course even If it were true that A were "better" than "B" in a given respect or even in every conceivable respect), it would not mean that A is Good. Before the concept got subsumed into the competitive paradigm, something was Good because it helped other things (indeed every other thing) be Good, more whole, more itself, rather than because it surpassed them. Unlike "better-ness" or "best-ness, Goodness does not presume some kind primary alienation, exclusion, or zero-sum competition. If A is a good A it would be because it helps B be a good B and visa versa. Goodness, like Truth, Beauty, etc, implies an inclusive, non-alienated, holistic, healing quality and emphatically does not belong at the beginning of any list which includes "better" and 'best" in our ordinary sense of those words, which take their essence from a sort one-dimensional, narrow (myopic), and usually linear framework.  Socially speaking, such an invidious confusion of better-ness with goodness, translates in to "We are good and so can afford to be complacent, because we are better than "They"  (in this or that respect which WE are sure is decisive), and thus our closeness to each other is more or less based on our alienation from outsiders and on our denial of our shared disease of alienated-phoniness, however different our symptoms may be from those of others. Moreover in such a model "they" (that is , those in group B), have just as much a claim to complacency and rightousness vis-a-vis some carefully chosen group C as A might claim toward them, and C of course will choose its own object of invidious comparison and so on and so on...In the light of ongoing entropy, what can this be but a shared dynamic of mutual degeneration cultural erosion?

Of course the point would not change anything essentially to reverse things and replace collusive and alienated shared complacency with equally alienated and misbegotten sense of inferiority, shame, envy and "ambition", as that would if anything only accelerate the same delusional, disintegrative, "synentropic" process.  It is as though we were all different particles of soil on an eroding hillside; complacency does nothing to slow or stop the ongoing erosion and a general competitive scramble to be higher up the hill, let alone "King of the Hill" would make things worse.

What I am trying to do with these blogs it to facilitate ways for everyone (including myself) to sustainably reverse this underling competitive (alienated) dynamic of denial-enabled cultural erosion in ourselves and each other--and so "build healthy cultural soil" together---in a way that is genuine, balanced and so avoids becoming simply another form of competitive alienation (for example in the "less-alienated-and-phony-than-thou" sense). This is why I want to be clear that accepting that (like everyone else), one suffers from and is involved in one way or another (actually in many, many ways) with the technology of denial (whether or not this is explicitly medical), is the most important aspect of recovery from it.  After all, this acceptance--which is more like an insight or act of comprehension--is obviously already a breach in the very regime of denial and mutual alienation the Technology of Denial itself exists to maintain, and so is also a sign of a present and potentially ongoing recovery of the  health and sanity.


Moreover, once this sophisticated; (shameless/prideless, yet inwardly and outwardly compassionate, committed, and resolute) attitude of recovery is awake in us, it is sometimes even possible, to use  or modify the technology itself in such a way that it does support healing. For instance, with regard to glasses,  there are various ways to limit the use of the glasses or contact lenses to when it is really necessary, while practicing vision exercises like the Bates Method when not using them. There is even a paradoxical use of lenses (a series of increasingly strong reading glasses for Myopes for example) which, when used properly and combined with other things, works to reverse the degenerative effects of normal glasses.Such Technologies might be called soft technologies or "Technologies of Recovery" rather than of Denial (I also call them Coremissive Technologies, but more on that later ). Of course such technologies can only be really technologies of Recovery if they are coordinated with a general culture of recovery;  otherwise another pattern of denial (perhaps a more "new-agey one) is likely to replace the old one.


Now | want to be very clear here; What I am saying is that the conditions of our culture make a persons suffering from one or another form of psycho-physical disorder inevitable, whether this is obvious or not. It is a sick culture and it does not produce healthy people (it does not even produce healthy conceptions of health). No one is born with or allowed to acquire, enough critical distance to escape some form or other of the alienated cosmology, identity politics, and rituals or our culture, even if these were not inextricably mixed up with an equally alienated and toxic physical infrastructure to which we are all forcibly exposed. This situation being  universal, the more obvious any given persons particular "pattern of trauma" is the better, in as much as it becomes that much easier to acknowledge and treat.

 What I am getting at is that I don't want anyone to feel guilty or ashamed for wearing glasses (or having breast implants, or being involved in any other the myriad heads of the hydra of sick culture) anymore than I want anyone to feel proud for not doing this or that particular thing. Pride and Shame are themselves forms of denial, and trying to perfectly address (or even assess) this or any particular aspect of sick culture in isolation would itself be a psychologically myopic move, as though curing this specific symptom  would  actually cure, rather than potentially strengthen (by strengthening denial), ones underlying disease of sick culture. It might not even make sense, in a given situation, to make this area visual cognition a priority in ones process of recovery (though making a beginning--since this is so easy to do seems like a good idea so long as its coordinated with a general process of recovering from sick culture as a whole).

To try to give more of an example of what mean, I will use myself:  I, who am also physically myopic to a certain vary variable extent, do some and have done all of the above mentioned coping/recovery work with glasses and without them. I don't wear glasses these days, (though I would if I really needed to for a specific limited purpose). I do eye exercises when I think of it but I can be a slacker at it. I listen to a lot of books with Text-to-speech on an ebook thing to spare my eyes, though I still probably read too much and not always in the best "Alexander Technique" way. Most of the time I feel that I am at least not going backward in this area. This is actually pretty good, almost ideal really, since there are so many other aspects of sick culture that I ( like everybody) suffer from and have to deal with. Going off the deep end about getting "perfect sight" would likely just mean a failure to "coordinate my problems", with the ultimate effect that this particular symptom would be gone (at least temporarily) while  various others, and worst of all, the actual underlying disease, will have only been strengthened (perhaps I would become "big headed about my sight, my cognitive myopia having ironically gotten worse while I myopically fixated on "conquering" my physical myopia).  Things could always change of course but for the time being at least I am happy with the state of coordination of this part of my recovery process with rest of it.  I see "very well" some of the time, not so well some of the time and fair-to-middling most of the time.  The main thing is for me to not be in denial about this general state of affairs or about the state any other symptom of my own sick culture and to do the best I can not to either over-fixate on it or neglect it all together.  Having as little recourse to the relevant technology-of-denial as practicable (glasses in this case)  actually facilitates the "minimizing neglect" part  because my state of seeing itself tells me when I have been too lax in my "healthy-sightedness" practices and in general need to step things up in this area relative with other things, at least for a while.  The main thing is to keep working on the disease while I keep all the various symptoms attended to best I can in a way that is coordinated with and facilitates that work; to keep everything more or less progressing in a coordinated way both in terms of my inner relationship with myself as an "Individual" and my outer relationships with others as a "Person"...

 Again: the general situation of being sufferers of sick culture, whether we suffer from actual physical dysopia or not, is universal; as I have tried to show above, Invidious comparisons are themselves an aspect of that culture, and any sense purity or righteousness is just a form of denial and bad taste. But the same is true of any sense of shame.  We all have Individual physical, (inner animal), emotional (inner child), mental (inner adult) and psychological (inner elder) problems to discover and coordinate (through inner and outer "co-inference") with Personal (Familial, Local, Civil, and "Religious") problems. Only by doing so is there any hope of sustainable and progressive (real) healing for anybody (see the epigraph of the previous post about cognition).

I may not have sufficiently proven the claims of the the above paragraph to you so far (though, If you have read the last 4 or 5 of these posts I am not sure why not, and would be interested to receive your comments on the matter). Anyway, I think if you keep reading this blog you will be convinced eventually.

So; conclusion: I have used as my main example the technology and culture of glasses (and their dissociation-and-denial-facilitating effects), rather then more obvious technologies of denial like the use of Alcohol and a host of other legal and illegal drugs, just because the glasses business is clearly such an "innocent" thing. All the others are also essentially innocent in the same way, but the fact that no one asked to be so systematically deprived of necessary love and affection during critical development years that the only way they can experience something that feels like a genuine hug is through an external chemical substitute, is, evidently, less easy to see then the fact the no one deliberately abuses their eyesight in order to become addicted to another substitute technology-of-denial like glasses/contacts/surgery that also worsens, rather than addresses the original condition and its causes.  On the other hand I think part of me also wants to scare you a little, as I have recently been scared, with the situation of ever increasing myriads of morally, intellectually and physically myopic "educated" professionals, specialists, managers, and "efficient" workers (all equally proud of being thoroughly "detail oriented" and  equally oblivious of any inability to put those details in proper perspective or single out the truly relevant ones), so adapted to the hierarchy of slaves and the culture of denial as to be unable to conceive of anything else, running around in charge things. Of course, things have pretty much been that way since even before what we call civilization. The fact that   in our time the situation seems to have hyper-metastasized, is not cause for panic, but, hopefully thinking about it will give you some sense of urgency about this whole sick culture/healthy culture thing.

*note: I  usually use the word "Comalignant" to stress the two-fold (inner/psychological as well as outer/social) nature of the pathology of sick culture I am describing, just as I use the word "Coremissive" (as well as "Cointegrative"), to describe the culture of recovery (healthy culture), when looked at from this point of view. I didn't in the above sentence because I thought introducing such a neologism at that time would be unnecessarily  distracting in that particular place....I'll say more about such things later...



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Postscript

Ever since writing this post I have felt that, because I so wanted people not to become psychologically myopic in thinking about their physical myopia, I down played the effects of the latter--and so the need to begin addressing--it a bit too much. Its a tricky balancing act I am trying to manage in addressing this kind of thing at all, but when you consider how much vision figures in brain and mind functioning in general, its not something I want to under-emphasize.

Since its been quite a while since I researched the topic, I wanted to finish the the book "Conscious Seeing" by Roberto Kaplan, (as well as another similar book, ) before adding this postscript, but other things seem to be supervening, and I think I can ease my conscience about it just by exploring the implications of what I have read so far.

Kaplan says that glasses and contacts have the effect of deferentially focusing light directly on the fovea centralis to compensate for the eyes inability to do this properly and in a balanced way. The fovea centralis is the most acutely "analytical" part of the retina, whereas the rest of the retina tends toward the more diffusive and field-like (corresponding to right-brain functioning).

This makes me suspect that glasses and contacts etc might facilitate that kind of either/or "panic-logic" that the culture is informed by, through (among other things) dissociating right brain and left brain thinking. My guess is that correspondingly, thinking and feeling are likely to become more dissociated from each other and less nuanced and flexible in themselves, so that a person under the influence of this sort of technology might have a tendency both to look at things in black and white ways, and/or to flip-flop between being over emotional (sentimental) and over intellectual (coldly calculating or excessively abstract). Of course this itself is an oversimplification of the actual kind of imbalance that is likely to result in a real person. Nevertheless, I suspect that, in a lot of people who have been wearing glasses most of their lives,  the brain circuits  will have been assimilating to the this one-sided effect of the lenses, (as well as to the subliminal emotional effect of the constant stress in the eyes that has to be there in order to maintain the exact degree of refractive error the glasses are prescribed to correct for), and that they are likely to think that the above mentioned, (or any similar) tendencies of thought and feelings they might have are either just a natural part of their character or something that just reflects reality ("feelings are usually opposed to thoughts--thats just the way it is").

All of this seems to me a big deal because, if one is making decisions and interpreting reality and information in such a dichotomized, uncoordinated, insufficiently nuanced or graduated way because of ones mind/brain's subconscious assimilation to an unhealthy technology, its going to be hard to sustain a balanced view of the importance of that very problem (as well as any other problem really). Either one will over emphasize the problem (and so abandon any attempt to deal with it--and our sick culture in general-- as hopeless) or one will under under emphasize it (since it is only one of a myriad of technologies and infrastructures of denial in a culture full of them and can therefor, presumably wait indefinitely to be addressed).

Although it is true that the culture is full of technologies of denial, (I would even say that it is a good rule to assume any technology, or ritual of the dominant culture to be at least partly guilty until proven wholly innocent), it seems that the ones that effect the mind itself--and so the powers of discernment-- in a constant and ongoing (and likely degenerative) way need to be singled out for special recovery measures for that very reason. Of course almost any psycho active drug that is used daily ( or at such a frequency that there is no time to for its effects to really wear off) is in this same category. And also, there are certain ritual and infrastructures of apartness which, in future posts, I will argue are similarly crucial to begin to address for similar reasons.

I want to emphasize the word "begin" in the previous sentence, since that is all I am taking about really. There is no idea of having to ever "having dealt with" any of aspect of sick culture in the sense of having achieved perfect state of achievement or whatever. That would very probably be a bad sign itself for many reasons, some of which I've already gone into. One begins....One begins again. In general the culture of recovery is pretty comic in spirit, full of back-slidings, errors, failed experiments etc...there are no ranks or grades and its the farthest thing from feeding the ego or any egoic sense of "righteousness" of any kind. Its like a kind of progressive balance between balance and imbalance itself, in which the one can only be maintained by constantly acknowledging and being sensitive to presence (manifest or not yet manifest), of the other.... the kind of thing that, when you're doing it right, the process itself is its own reward, (which is great because, as I say, the process is endless....)

Life-Logic (Part One) Preliminaries: The Cognitive Coordinates

Introduction:

 "If we do not coordinate our problems then the solution to one problem is likely to reinforce (or even create) other problems which we were not thinking about when we "solved" the original problem. Understanding this is the Beginning of Intelligence."

"Consciousness is Consciousness of Togetherness (of Coexistence)"

“An argument is not something to be won or lost but 
something to be healed”

"speech/thought cannot be more healthy than the silence it comes out of".

"Wounded Eros means wounded Logos"

--Healthy Culture Proverbs

I have been working on a post on the Logic of Healthy Culture for a very long time and have a bunch of notes on it that probably amount to a small book by now.  I can't really get it into the kind of shape I want without a lot more work but I am finding that, as I "progress"--I am not sure if that is the right word--in the culture of recovery, (as I progress as recovering Alienated-Phony), I find myself acting more and more on Life-Logical principles, and this is more and more leading to "culture shock"-type misunderstandings between myself and others that I would like to avoid as much as a can, thus I'd like to have something up about it even if its just, like what follows, a kind of  rough sketch or outline.

 Of course, in some sense such misunderstandings are unavoidable because of the nature of the topic. I mean, I am after all saying that the dominant form  of our thinking/logic, and cognition generally, is basically alienated and phony; a kind of dissociated  "Logic of Denial and Exclusion", but, in as much as it is the dominant logic, most people who read this will be using this very logic to make sense of what I am saying, including  of the "Logic of Recovery" that I will also be trying to introduce in what follows.  Therefore it seems to me that a lot of misunderstanding is almost guaranteed.  However, because Life is the way it is (and Life-Logic is the way it is), it's also clear to me that something like what I am calling "Life-logic" coexists in every person, with the default  either/or Logic of denial and death*, though in some kind of  half suppressed distorted form.

Anyway, I am thinking that to have any chance at all a nailing such a daunting summary (or really just getting it all out) I am going to have to try a kind of stream of consciousness, perhaps extremely informal and emotional way of writing. I thought of trying to write it as though I were, say 16 and had just learned the whole thing in school (in some alternate universe in which healthy culture is the norm) and was trying to explain the whole thing to my little sister as we make the 45 minute walk back home (or something like that).  I still think that is a good idea and intend to do it sometime, but adding the cute fictional narrative touches and character details would just give what is already very difficult to write and added dimension of difficulty and right now I am not up to it. So what follows will maybe be something between that juicy fictionalized version and the rather dense and dry notes that I referred to; so something somewhat loosely sketched At least this is the experiment here, just to make a start.  As certain vocabulary is introduced things are likely to seem a little complex and formal anyway but for that very reason it seems better to start as simply and informally as possible. so here goes:

(Part One) Preliminaries: "Phenomenology of Cognition": coexistence, common sense,  and "Good Intentions"

So even more basic in a way than the "Phenomenology of Logic" or discourse, that I will describe in the next post as Life-logic, is the Phenomenology of Cognition I introduce here. This is because, Life-logic or "Cointegrative Coinference" (as I will show), cannot exist without the coordinating motivation of a core or ultimate intention that is not alienated. It requires "Good Intentions": a cointegrative intention of inner/outer healing and this in turn requires an active core of common sense and conscience, an active core cognitive comprehension of coexistence and primary togetherness. When such comprehension exists, cointegrative "good intentions" follow naturally. In other words, the quality of Intention depends largely on the quality of Cognition/Comprehension and, because of generations of sick culture, everybody's cognition is pretty damaged as I will try to show in what follows. As I will also try to show, such non-alienated comprehension is latent in everyone, and Life-Logic, at the same time that it relies on such latent knowledge for its inciting spark, will also, in its turn, help cultivate and strengthen it, hopefully with the end that "common sense" in the sense of consciousness of primary coexistence becomes "common sense" in the normal sense of the word. Don't worry, you'll understand all of this better by and by. 

So now is the time to introduce as normative certain cognitive coordinates. Understanding these coordinates will help you to appreciate the sense and value of the logic that is based on them as well as the way in which the loss of such coordination through trauma contributes to the felt rightness of the dominant form crippled and damaged, alienated, "panic logic".  (Here, I have to do this as succinctly as possible to get on with the main point of this particular post; in a future post I will treat of this topic more in detail).

So to begin with, Seven cognitive coordinates are relevant to the topic of logic as I discuss it here; they are best introduced  in 3 parts, a group of 5 (which I call the Cognitive Nexus) and a group of 3 (which, together with the common center comprise the upper, lower, and middle part of what I call The Cognitive Axis) and their cointegration in the 7-fold Cognitive Matrix. In order to show its centrality vis a vis the Axis and the Nexus, the cognitive center is shown as the center of each of the diagrams.

The Cognitive Nexus

Nexus diagram (informal)

Nexus diagram (formal)

         

The Nexus, (The North, South, East, and West of cognitive orientation) is comprised of  The Indefinite ("Itness"), The Finite ("Thatness"), The Definite ("Thisness") and The Transdefinite ("Whatness". To explain briefly; Imagine a distant image, lets say the vague dot of something seen from a great distance while walking along a beach. This represents a relatively Indefinite, schematic, experience of something. One experiences whatever it is as an indefinite "it" relatively speaking, with all the possible curiosity and surmise that this implies . As you approach the thing more closely Its possible identity becomes relatively limited, relatively finite, rather than relatively indefinite. It becomes more of a "That" (a living being rather than other wise, a human living being rather than another animal etc) in proportion as one gets closer to and begins to recognize it. At some point this relatively Finite, "Thatness", phase of cognition becomes  a relatively Definite, "Thisness" phase as one reaches immanent proximity with whatever (whoever) that is. One is now confronted with not only a human person with such and such qualities but This human person sharing immanence with you in the present moment. This is the "Thisness" of ones experience of the entity in question. Now, finally, imagining that you stay with that person on the beach long enough to have  enough relatively Definite knowledge of the person, so that you feel you know them as well as you know yourself, you come up against the fact that definite experience of something does not replace mystery but rather reveals it; that there is a kind of  Transdefinite "Whatness" at the further end so to speak, of ones experience of the definite, thisness of some one, of life, of oneself: what is, another person really? For that matter what am I? what is anything?

Now the very possibility of the the above example on the beach presupposes the coexistence of the Relatively Subjective (your thoughts your experience of yourself and of the other) and the Relatively Objective (the  other, the beach etc, but also your own physical body). The Subjective and the Objective then are the correlative "Axial" poles (the up and down) of cognitive orientation.

Axis diagram (informal)

Axis diagram (formal)

Finally (so far as we need to go here) what reconciles both the subjective and objective poles of the cognitive Axis to each other as well as the reconciling the four-fold Nexus to the Axis is the Cointegrative Cognitive Comprehension at the Center, (which completes and coordinates the whole Cognitive Matrix:

Matrix diagram (informal)

Matrix Diagram (formal)

But it seems necessary to discuss this last diagram more thoroughly. Its not like the comprehension of primary Coexistence is "built up" or linear in any way, even though I had to present it that way to introduce the various aspects of it it here. Its a single 7-fold "gestalt" of orientation; the center defines the other parts which define the center, and its the same with all of the other aspects of the whole. Its like using compass which has to be correctly oriented to the vertical so that the needle and the 4 directions can be correctly oriented in the horizontal.  Moreover, the things that "move" from "Itness" to "Thatness" to "Thisness" and "Whatness" (and in the reverse direction), are not experienced or understood as purely Indefinite, or purely Finite but only corelatively so, so that each aspect of experience makes up the context of every other aspect of experience. To freeze, focus and in short Identify (as opposed to to "distinguish, sense, or intuit) a given aspect of  Coexistence as "X" is thus at the same time to freeze and Identify a given context as "Not-X"; it is to freeze, Identify, and abstract Coexistence itself. From the point of view of the gestalt of Coexistence no "it" can be identified in itself but every "it" is intrinsically Codentified with and by the context that it creates and that creates it. But such Coidentity is still on the level of the abstract and indefinite. The Coidentity or "Co-itness" of experience is just one aspect of the gestalt of coexistence:

  

Coexistance here means the coexistance of the sense/feeling of coidentity, codistinction, coentity and cotranscendence. Through a kind shared axis of Subject/Object togetherness and Ying/Yang-like mutuality.

 Coidentity (to reiterate) reflects on the mental level an understanding of the definitive mutuality of x and not-x, that in the limit of  progressively (co)distinguishing x (from a, b, c etc) one creates not-x as a necessary coidentity. In other words, instead of the primacy or the law of the excluded middle (the law of identity), of X OR Not-X, we have the primacy of the law of Coidentity or X-AND-Not-X. It seems ala Sauserre that this coidentity (I forget what he calls it) is a necessary quality of language and so it should not be surprising that it is here presented as a necessary part of the phenomenology of cognition. More about this in other posts.

Codistinction describes a process where a kind a "diversimilitude" (similarity-implying-difference-implying-simlarity  in which both are considered as aspects of the same thing) is experienced. It is the process from which coidentity results  but it is also the process/experience that bounds the experience of coentity (which is essentially perceptual) on the other side. Or you could say that Codistiction is the "thatness" of Memory that mediates between non-alienated conceptual abstraction (coidentity) on the one hand and non-alienated sensation (coentity) on the other. In other words, Codistintion is like memory in that it mediates between Concept (this chair in its abstract, conceptual but not conceptually dissociated) aspect on the one hand and this chair as Percept (as a relatively concrete sensual--ideally almost wholesthetic-- experience under my butt) on the other. In itself Codistinction is the living image of the chair as experienced, conceptual in part but also with some of the "juiciness" of immanent "thisness".

Coentity is, as I have already implied, a sense of primary belonging-with the world on a physical level (for that reason, maybe a the chair in the above example was a bad choice since rarely do chairs elicit or support a sense of inner/out belonging, but I'll let it stand for now). In a healthy culture, the sense of coentity that is often shared between infant and mother would not be traumatically destroyed but rather transformed and extended to all of "Mother Nature" as the individual person matured. Thus a relatively non-alienated sense of coentity between a Shared Self (Shared Subjectivity) and a Shared Nature(Shared Objectivity) would be preserved into adulthood.

Cotranscendence is the intuition of the "beyond", of ultimate things when it can be understood and experience from a non-alienated point of view. As I have just alluded to above, in Cotranscendence, there is a sense of the primacy of a Shared Subjectivity a shared Self which is itself not separate from the shared Nature of our physical world (including our bodies. Thus what would otherwise be the an alienated and false intuition of the possibility of "individual salvation" or transcendence becomes an intuition of the necessity of Co-trancendence.

The togetherness or inclusive coordination of coidentity on the thinking level, codistinction on the feeling level, coentity on the sensing level and cotrandence on the intuitive level (to be somewhat Jungian here), amounts to a general sense of the coexistence common to each of these, only relatively differentiated, functions. In otherwords commonsense itself is the sense of the primary coexistence of these functions, and it is their shared ground.

I think this common sense is more what philosophers would call Ontological or something like that, in that these aspects of cognition has to do with Being (or in this case with co-Being; Coexistence) rather then Knowing (beyond identification) per se. Since this just occured to me I might take it back, but for now I want to say that the "knowing" ("Espistemological") part of the whole thing (which of course is not really separate from the other) is what I choose to call "Conscience". Conscience, Like common sense can be illustrated by a nexus-diagram;

Because Outer Knowing is generally linguistic it here corresponds to coidentity and coidentification, as our shared naming of things within the context of other tacitly agreed upon names and meanings. 

Rational Knowing (when is is suitably relieved of the primacy of aristotelian "allness" and "either/or"-ness is what mediates between shared outer knowledge and Inner subjective knowing. 

Inner Knowing is all the relative inchoate subjective knowing that needs to be included and expressed in outer discourse just as much as more readily articulated subjective experience. In includes an ongoing attention to whatever is being felt, sensed, thought, intuited inward the moment that might be relevant to the progressive communion of those speaking. 

Intuitive Knowing constitutes all that needs to be included in a given process of knowing-together in order to keep in alive as an experiment with the ultimate and core intention of inner and outer healing, so that for example the outer knowing doesn't get out of balance (thus becoming superficial or misleading) and the inner knowing does not similarly over dominate, making the knowing dissocated and narcissistic.

Now here I must say that the above is a very limited introduction to some of the cognitive coordinates and some aspects of healthy inclusive cognition. Its just meant to set up whats coming about Logic and all.  However even with this limited introduction it should be clear that the certain kinds of cognitive confusion/exclusion/dissociation are possible (and in our culture, actual). Cognitively speaking  Dissociation and Exclusion are already forms Disorientation and the very idea of treating one of the cognitive coordinates out of context and to the exclusion of the rest is to be "uncoordinated", disoriented, confused. This disorientation tends (as disorientation will) to lead to an ongoing feeling of Panic, (and the repression/denial of that panic). I think what we generally call the "ego" derives from this disorientation/panic ( which is the "Alienation" part of the ego) as well as its denial (which is the "Phony" part of the ego). This suggests a dynamic in which this confusion and panic (especially in response to external stress) leads inevitably to "injuries" and "scars" of various kinds which if not properly treated result in "cognitive scar tissue" that, however stronger it might be than cognitive tissue it is replacing, is nevertheless more insensitive, and as such probably deepens the disorientation/denial and the rest of it, leading to more panic more denial more injuries etc..., in an increasingly deadening, and destructive feedback loop so that the whole complex of the dissociated ego is just this collectively individually reinforced cognitive scar tissue.  This is something I will come back to and elaborate on in part two of this post.  For now it feels important to note that what we generally understand as "mathematics" (which means etymologically means something like "the art of learning"--from the base of manthanein ‘learn.’)   represents only an incomplete intrinsically Indefinite aspect of cognition which can only suffer from its dissociation from (and so lack or coordination with) the other aspects of cognition mentioned.  In fact mathematical "Infinity" would be much better called the "Mathematical "Indefinite" and Mathematics as a whole would be much better re-conceived and recreated as "Cointegrative Mathematics": a true coordinated "Art of Learning" which coordinates knowledge of the indefinite aspect of reality (currently misconceived as the whole mathematics; the whole "art of learning") with the Finite, Definite, Transdefinite, etc aspects of a full coordinated course of Learning.  

The problem is that, in our present sick culture the totality of a healthy coordinated and cointegrative "Art of Learning",  (an Art that would acknowledge the mutually defining--and for that reason essentially egalitarian coexistence of the cognitive coordinates) has been reduced to an unconscious dissociation and privileging the of indefinite aspect of reality and of cognition, a privileging and dissociation of the "Itness" of the world and the self. It would be like trying to dissociate the direction "north" from east west south etc (as though these could even exist without each other) and then reduce all the other directions to aspects of this supposedly  fictionally independent direction. Such effort to reduce all the directions in space to some form of "North" as basically analogous to our present state of cognitive reduction, dissociation, and general disorientation. This could happen only if the central and essential Togetherness and coexistent cointegral aspect of the cognitive coordinates--the part the allows them to Be coordinates and that allows us to be coordinated balanced beings--has itself been dissociated and lost sight of. Or to put it another way, (and to recapitulate some): the four-fold cognitive nexus of indefinite, finite, definite and transdefinite is like North, South, East and West in the horizontal cognitive compass, then subjectivity and objectivity represent the correlative vertical axis of orientation (the up and down of cognition) and the Cointegrative Coexistential coordinate would then be represented by the center, which includes and coordinates both axis and nexus. Loss of this coointegrative coexistential center means loss of common sense and is thus a General Cognitive Disorientation. Cognitive Dissociation and Cognitive Reduction .  Of course the  dissociated ego derives from this as an (essentially fear inspired) coping mechanism when this center of balanced coexistence cannot be regained, usually due, among other things, to the ongoing external and internalized stress of sick culture.

To be clear however; the in our culture the general cognitive dissociation and reduction works in many ways, not always in a way the privileges and reduces everything else to the Indefinite aggregates of "its" and systems of "its". It is just as unhealthy to dissociate and privilege the Finite, Definite, or Transdefinite aspects of experience and our culture is full of these kind of chronic dissociations as 

well.

Anyway, what coordinates all of these forms of Knowing is what I call "Conscience" (the world means "Knowing Together" etymologically after all). Here you might say we have a kind of system of mutual checks and balances in which every form of knowing qualifies, modifies enhances and coordinates the other so that a balance and inwardly and outwardly healing comprehension of a given situation becomes possible. Without such "conscientious" knowing, one will generally have dissociation and "miscomprehension" in both the ontological and epistemological aspects of coexistence.

this is something I'll get back to briefly in the second part of this post.

So enough with the preliminaries in the next post I will get to the gist of Life-Logic (version 47 or something--well I'm exaggerating...somewhat. see you there.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.

postscript: Oh yeah: for those who are sticklers for "scientific evidence" and stuff, (and notwithstanding all of the paradoxes stemming from the fact that modern science itself suffers from the problems alluded to above), there is this business about the Three Brains, based on the all grey matter discovered--I believe in the pericardium--of the Heart, as well as it the Gut. Google "HeartMath" for info on the former and "The Second Brain" for info on the latter. These, together with the brain in your skull of course, could be understood to account for 3 of the for cognitive categories I am introducing. There is the book called "MBraining" that goes into some ideas about how to use or coordinate these 3 brains. My critique of the book has to do with its lack of giving due consideration to the Pineal Gland, which, even though it is also in the skull I would nominate as a Forth Brain analogus to the "Transdefinite" aspect of cognition. Because it (and possibly the the authors) lack a Cotrascendent cognitive category the book is not surprisingly a bit crass and commercial (and a bit irresponsible) in its presentation of the information and techniques, not questioning the alienated assumptions of current ontology and epistemology, and economics, not to mention ethics. Anyway, my (at the moment not very articulate) ideas about the location (or non-location) and nature ("Selfnature") of a 5th or cointegrative brain would take us too far afield to go into here though there seems to be some respected "science", physics (David Bohm) as well as neurology (Karl Pribram) to back it up as well. But don't ask me for any details; its been too long since I read any of those books. I'd have to get back to you.

Alienated-Phoniness

So I think I am wrestling with my own ego in considering whether to actually post the various posts that I occasionally write here. I am a naturally cautious person and I have no real sense of the effect of just broadcasting my feelings, thoughts and understanding to an anonymous "public". There is always going to be something false and phony about anything that enters the prevalant the stream of "collective unconsciousness", especially via expected channels....

I feel a bit isolated and helpless but in a mild way...it feels that writing a blog is naive and useless and I don't really know how I could have thought that anything would come of it (if I did think anything would come of it).

... its also sort of weird and dissociated to see certain strangers on the street look at me in what seems to be a knowing way and not be sure whether or not it is because they have visited a page of yours...

....basically anyone professing or promoting healthy culture in the context of our normal media of communication has to begin with a lot of disclaimers since the very media being used is generally conveying a message very different than the one intended (as though one were to write "I Love you" on the baseball bat and then hit someone with it!).

My real message both to you and myself is that what we call civilization and its media (including the printed word) obscure our common sense (or sense of coexistence), cater to a kind of dualistic either/or "panic"- logic, through shaming and blaming among other things, inhibit coinference, conscience and communion, and generally foster and support the kind of alienated-phoniness and factional identity politics that are ubiquitous in a sick culture.

Moreover since I am a recovering "alienated-phony", myself  I don't always feel up to successfully dealing with the results of my contact with public/private culture....

None of this is necessarily any reason not to take that risk and try to use our media in a way that overcomes of subverts such tendencies, but evidently I don't have much confidence in the way I am going about doing that..

So why am I writing this? purely as a kind of therapy I guess...trying to clarify things to myself and practice communicating from the heart. And there is also still a lingering sense of responsibility, as a citizen-of-the-world and an adult,  to try get some of these ideas across...I mean the world needs these Ideas; people need a kind of compass, a way to properly coordinate their problems so that the solution to one problem doesn't end up reinforcing or even creating, other problems that were not being considered when they were "solving" the first one. They need a way of orienting themselves so that they may help themselves and each other to find  the path of recovery from this culture and to be able to continue on that path. Most of all they need the example of someone who is actually doing (or even genuinely trying to do) that. So far as  I know I am the only one with anything close to something that fills this bill....

 So here we go again. below is the table describing individual-personhood that your will find elsewhere in this blog.

Individual (Inner Relationship)	Person (Outer Relationship)	Time Orientation
Mind (Inner Adult)	Citizen-of-the-World	Future
Heart (Inner Child)	Neighbor	Past
Body (Inner Animal)	Family-Member	Present
Intuition (Inner Elder)	Soul/"Religious" venue	Eternity

What I mean to say now is that the this concept of Individual-Personhood is in some ways a kind of "Ideal Type", at least its not the case that Individual-Personhood actually is consciously realized by anybody in a healthy way these days. I mean, both the Individual and and Personal (inner and outer) relationships actually pertain for everybody, but the conditions of our present sick culture are such that it is basically impossible to be in a consistently Healthy Inclusive and coordinated relationship either within ourselves or with others. For the time being I will refer to the imbalanced, dissociated and unhealthy state of affairs of both our inner and outer relationships as Dysmutuality  and say that Inner or Individual dysmutuality ("vertical dysmutuality") is another name for what I call Alienation, and Outer or Personal dysmutualtiy ("horizontal") is marked by what I call Phoniness, so that, though we each have the intrinsic relationships and responsibilities of Individual-Persons, we are all basically failing to live up to this  and instead show up basically as various kinds of Alienated-Phony. This is also true of myself I must confess, so that the only difference between me and everybody else is that most of the time I am a "Recovering Alienated Phony" (at least I believe I have found the path of recovery) and not one in Denial like everybody else I know anything about. (Perhaps even this sounds arrogant, but this is my honest experience so there it is....)


But more about alienated phonies. Alienated Phoniness, like Individual-Personhood, is a kind of Yin Yang concept so its pointless to try to differentiate Alienation and Phoniness absolutely since they mutually define, support, and even contain each other, such that wherever you find one you'll find the other. Nevertheless It might be useful (or just necessary) get at the idea by treating them separately at first (at least to some extent).

People tend to be more alienated in private and more phony in public. You could even say that both the public and private venues of our culture are intrinsically unhealthy and engender phoniness and alienation respectively. You could say that the public venue is anti-individual in the sense that it seems to inhibit authentic individuation by obliging everyone to accept phony factional identity "uniforms" of race, gender, nationality, and in general to act as though complicated things were simple. In the same way you could say that the private venue is anti-personhood because it keeps people isolated from each other (the rationalizations here usually amount to making simple things seem complicated) so that all feeling of familial, local, civil, or spiritual conviviality is basically thwarted.




As an example of public phoniness I will use the Idea of Gender.

Consider this analogy: If the masculine is Yang and the feminine is Yin then the relation of Yin/Yang (in which there is a some masculine in the feminine and some feminine in the masculine) makes it true that there is and can be no pure masculine or  feminine. More importantly, to the extent that these relative genders correspond to certain pairs of Yang and Yin qualities, (for example "activity" for yang/male and "passivity" for Yin/female), it seems clear that it would be good to be able to be active or passive as an intelligent response to what a given situation requires and that any such intelligent response is going to be inhibited by Identifying as either Yang (Male) or Yin (Female). It would be like trying to ride a bike by Identifying not as the rider primarily but with say, the right side of the bike, so that, no matter what the terrain or the needs of the journey one feels that need always to tilt and turn to the right since one has Identified with that side. Wouldn't it be better to actually identify as the rider of the bike and cultivate the ability to go left or right as it seems appropriate? Likewise wouldn't it be wise to actually Identify as something that transcends masculine or feminine so as to be able to cultivate the facility of being "Yinlike" or "feminine" or "Yanglike (masculine)--or some appropriate combination--as the situation requires? You will object that psychophyiology is naturally asymmetrical in human beings unlike in a bicycle, but to this I argue that brain chemistry function and hormones follow behavior as much as they engender it  (no pun intended). See for example the various books about neuroplasticity (for example "The Brain That Changes Itself"). Moreover, even if your bike was "naturally" lobesided, wouldn't the thing to do be to learn to specifically tilt more to the lighter side so as to be able to still maintain balance?

The real reason we do not act as Individual-Persons who are free to spontaneously express masculine or feminine qualities as seems appropriate to the situation, but rather choose to identify in an "either/or" manner as Men or Women" is Phoniness, engendered by the Trauma of formal and informal education into this sick culture.  In the absence of support for, or even understanding of, individual-personal development in particular and the principle of Coidentity (about which more later) in general, the child is basically forced to identify with the side of their nature thought to correspond with the kind of genitalia they possess. Being  a creature of Attachment, the child is thus forced into a kind of self betrayal and self censorship in exchange for at least the semblance of being accepted and loved. Over time they  become so inwardly alienated from their whole selves that their gender role does not even feel phony to them anymore. This inner alienation from and denial of the "inner-other" can even take the form of surgery in which an attempt is made to completely extirpate any sign of the offending gender from the body.  Some of this is perhaps an over simplification for the sake of clarity but I think you get the picture.

Its worth noting in the above how inner alienation (alienation from ones own inner yin if "male" or yang if "female", and from recourse to an intragendered grey area or continuum for both) results in a phony public gender identity; a kind of factional-identity-uniform which collectively and individually takes the place of the individual poise and strength of character needed to actually be oneself; to be in touch with and  manifest ones own individual-personhood without fear of loss of acceptance. Of course when what is being accepted is not ones real selfnature but ones Phony self-image, perpetual dissatisfaction and insecurity (whether conscious or unconscious) will be the necessary result.

There are of course forms of Feminism that rail against the effects of gender and its phoniness proffering some version of "humanism" in its stead. I think however that the identity of a "Human" is also factional alienated and phony (at least in practice). I think that if our inner animal (the body) is to be fully included and a personal relationship with the nonhuman beings fostered, some thing like Individual-Personhood, rather than "Humanism" is more appropriate. Humanism also seems to exclude, (because of its materialist "enlightenment" origins, the idea of the "Inner Elder" or Intuiition, along with its corresponding soulful/spiritual/religous social venue and this will also not do. I also feel that the relationships and responcibilies implicit in Individual-Personhood are more clear and valuable then those implied in the identity politics of Humanism...



As an example of Private Alienation i will use the idea of Property, or Ownership in the sense of belonging-to and contrast it with an Individual-Personal conception of property as "belonging-with".

This idea of "belonging-with" is a reference to a conception of property based on ones implicit Personal responsibilities to ones familial, local, civil and "spiritual" venues which of course one cannot fulfill unless one  has a healthy relationship inwardly, that is with oneself as an individual. Something (or someone) belongs-with me (and me with it) to the extent that we mutually and progressively facilitate a shared healthy culture. Belonging-With is a kind of shared belonging which works sort of like the dabs of color on a beautiful painting; each color belongs-with, sets-off, ornaments each of the others as well as the picture as a whole and this can be so even though two given dabs may not be in proximal relationship on the canvas. In the same way the check list for Individual-Personal belonging-with is not only whether a given association facilitates healing/recovery in a proximal Familial social venue, but also if it can be seen to help the Neighborhood, the larger Civil community and facilitate a life that is meaningful and progressive in terms of ultimate things ("Spiritual" venue) . Of course belonging-with must also be justified in terms of a given associations facilitation of ones own progressive Individuation, of ones own progressive recovery from the sick culture of alienated phoniness.  This means that the association must not only nourish my Mind, but also my heart, body, and intuition/conscience in some way. This may seem a tall order but the wholeness of the individual-person --and the nature of true health itself--makes it likely or even necessary that what truly belongs with me in one respect will (while this is the case) be justifiable in all of the others as well due to the fact the none of the facets of individual-personhood are fundamentally separate from each other.

It remains to be said that a state of belonging-with is never perpetual but is both achieved and modified by ongoing inner and outer conference which is the fundamental social hygiene upon which a healthy culture is based. You may say, for example, that a contract or agreement as to a given state of "Belonging-with", in such a culture is itself a living thing which must be periodically "fed" with a kind of fair and inclusive  conference (which might result in the consensual alteration of the state of affairs in the light of changed circumstances).  If such an agreement is not regularly "fed" in this way, it would ultimately be pronounced legally "Dead" from starvation in a healthy culture. Of course the conferential process that secures belonging-with must also be of good quality as well as good frequency (that is; the conferential process must be really inclusive, fair and non-coerced) or else the same contract or agreement may be again pronounced dead or terminally ill and so void, in this case because of  "malnutrition". 

In contrast to all of this, Belonging-To (that is, the normal conception of property in a sick culture), is a unilateral (and so dysmutual) relationship that in general is both established and maintained through inner and outer coercion, dissociation, exclusion and alienation.

Inwardly, the prevalent  "Rational Actor Theory" of modern  economics  privileges not only mind, but a certain  dissociated kind of mind,  over Heart, Body, and Intuiton.These latter three aspects of the individual are not expected to confer with the "rational mind" as equals, but rather to defer to it as to a tryrant. Thus we already have a kind of inner Dysmutuality and alienation that can only inhibit individuation.

This tyranny of the  mind happens in large part because the mind in question--the so called "rational" mind or the rational actor is really a mind distorted by a Logic of Identity rather than a Logic of Coindentity. I will say much more about this latter kind of Logic in a future post, but suffice it here to say that a logic of identity is a logic of exclusion which supports an economics of exclusion while the logic of Coidentity is a logic of inclusion with supports an economics and general culture of inclusion. I think that Logic is more or less like the DNA of a culture and when that logic is damaged (usually by inter and intragenerational violence in the form of child abuse and war respectively) then a kind of cultural mutation takes place in the direction of malignacy. But more on this later.

While it is true that people do not always, or even usually act as rational actors, even in a capitalist economy they do usually act in terms of some kind of logic of exclusion even though the groups being excluded vary in size and composition.

All of this leads to irresponsible and alienated behavior in which our intrinsic relationships and responsibilities as family-members, neighbors, citizens-of-the-world, and souls are denied, excluded, externalized, betrayed owning to our insistence on considering ourselves "Individuals" without "Personhood" that is, as essentially separate and atomized beings (or even groups of beings) relating to the world and each other only unilaterally through relationships of control or of property in the sense of Belonging-To. Economic activities such as exchange, renting, trade, and even barter and "giving" all presuppose some degree of such inner and outer alienation on the part of all involved because they propose to change only one form of alienated and phony "belonging-to" into another.

Moreover this feeling of being a totally or primarily separate individual, which amounts to alienation, is also Phony in the sense of being, like gender, a social pose inculcated by traumatic and manipulative aspects of education (by education I mean both the informal and formal transmission of culture across the generations). Emotionally a sense of a primarily isolated and separate self is provoked by rewards and punishments as well as competition (see Alfie Kohn's many books). While inwardly, "Common sense" as the sense that is the common ground of the 5 senses (this is an ancient meaning of that phrase), and which I describe as the sense of Coexistence, is thwarted in many ways by diet and environments and practices. Of course nothing could be so antagonistic to (or healing for) a sense of alienation and primary separateness of self then a visceral  and primary sense of Coexistence.

There will be more of Coexistence (more of what I am calling "Coexistentialism") in a future post as well.



Anyway so much for my examples of Phoniness and Alienation. I am tired of writing or I would go on to try to show how to be functioning in the present sick culture is basically to be an Alienated-Phony so that the only real difference between people is the extent to which they are in Recovery at any given moment or in denial. I am not aware that this specific concept of alienated phoniness exists anywhere else. If it is generally valid then it means that conscious recovery of individual-personhood (conscious recovery as recovering alienated phonies) is possible now for the first time (in history at least).

I will try to share my experiment is such a project of recovery in future posts...


All for now...


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Postscript


It makes sense, in the light what I have said of of the inseparability of alienation and phoniness, to try to show the interrelatedness of Phony Gender and Alienated Property/Ownership in the above two examples, so I will try to do a little bit of that now.

Of course The communist Idea (via Engles and others) is (as I remember it) that the property relationship of belonging-to is a function of Patriarchy  and the patriarchal Familial structure in which men claimed exclusive ownership of women as a way, among other things, of ascertaining and claiming similar ownership of children (especially of a male heir to property).

There is no critique of the idea of gender perse in this, and the form of property suggested by this communist approach in general seems only to prescribe  a replacement of "Private" belonging-to with of "Public" or Collective belonging-to rather than a transcendent replacement of the Public and Private Belonging-To relation itself with Individual-Personal Belonging-With.

I think that these two facts; that neither Gender itself nor the unilateral relation of "Belonging-To" of property are challenged in the communist model, are related, and I think the relationship has to to with, among other things, the issue of Sexuality as it relates to that of gender and to that of property.

In a previous post I outlined (or at least alluded to) a form of sexuality consistent with Individual-Personhood and so capable of healing/transcending both the phoniness of Gender and the Alienation of Private Property. I will go into this further here in order to shed light on the present issue.

Some people might not even be able to conceive of sexuality without gender, but it seems obvious to me that two Individual-Persons might encounter each other and be attracted to each other as such. Or rather, its probably better to say that two Recovering Alienated Phonies could encounter each other and be attracted to each other in ways that include sexual interest. However, this mutual attraction, in the case of those in recovery will be between to whole individuals (mind to mind, heart to heart, body to body and intuition to intuition and the "imaginative surmise" that is comprised in the attraction will involve an intention of using sexuality for mutual and inner and outer healing as whole persons rather than the kind attraction based on"possession". "conquest", and "exploit" that comes about in the normal, more or less dissociated experience of lust.

In normal "orgasm seeking" sex, the other tends to be  more or less just a means to the end of the dopamine high produced by this experience (addiction to which is, like all forms of addiction, a kind of temporary anesthetic relief to an essentially painful and meaningless life that usually amounts a kind of slavery). Orgasm is a kind of dissociation in the same way that identity (rather than coidentity) is a dissociation and this is evinced by the fact that the actual individual-person in front of you (on top of you, beneath you, whatever) is not even usually necessary for the experience and can often even get in the way of it with their ontologically stubborn insistence on being a real "intergendered" person suffering from sick culture and not some fantasy of absolute masculinity or femininity. Of course faking and lying (both to oneself and to the other) is more or less essential to such alienated-phony sex by definition since lying to, censoring ,or consciously or unconsciously excluding of parts of oneself is more or less the same as self alienation and lying etc to and for the other is more or less the same as phoniness...

Thus the familiar ritual of  mutual faking and mutual insecurity in which phony Manhood Meets phony Womanhood for an experience of phony Intimacy and (when it happens) phony transcendence (and my claim here is that orgasm is phony transcendence even when it is not faked and even on the rare cases that it is mutual--or rather-simultaneous. (I call real transcendence "Cotranscendence", about which more in another post...)

But it is still not clear what "Property" or belonging-to has to do with this sort of thing, although the words "conquest" and "possession" already mentioned are highly suggestive.  I think this can be better explained by sharing more of the alternative model of Individual-Personal sexuality.

Individual-Personal sexuality is really "healing sexuality" or "recovery sexuality" and is motivated by the ("cointegrative") intention of both inner and outer healing. Thus one is motivated to be with the other intimately because ones intuition, mind, heart, and body concur that such consensual healing intimacy can/will be part of  that recovery. That is, one has something approaching "inner consensus" that one "Belongs-With" the other individual-person (and visa versa) in  such a practice of mutual healing and recovery, or at least that this possibility is worth investigating.  And this kind of belonging-with, once established, is, like every other kind, something that needs to be updated regularly through outer as well as inner conference. Of course the  kind of inner/outer "consensuality" that I am talking about is itself an intimate conspiracy against gender and the unilateral control and use implied in possession and conquest (and every other kind of phoniness and ego-alienation), rather then a celebration of them. Thus those involved (because they really are fully involved) treat each other as both incipiently individuated and whole beings that are ends in themselves as well as in a way that is mindful of the relationships and responsibilities of Personhood. The goal here is the cultivation of common sense (the sense of coexistence), conscience and compassion, awakening, and inclusive unconditional love and the transcendence and healing of the ego in all its forms...

What is important here so far as property goes, is that in neither motivation nor execution are we involved in any kind of self or other commodification/objectification. When we are not primarily alienated from ourselves and phony with others we are cultivating  "belong-with" ourselves and others, that is we are authentically involved the recovery of our distinctive mutuality, and shared SelfNature as Individual-Persons. Commodities are essentially alienated and phony entities produced to satisfy with "possession-of" that which can only be satisfied by belonging-with. The situation is the same as with the rest of capitalism; "Demand" is Addiction (to a kind of anesthesia) because "Supply" (the labour involved in filling the demand) is misery (a kind pain). The phoniness and self alienation that people go through to fulfill the demands of the gendered and image-based "relationship-market" involves an anxiety and pain that can only be (however temporarily) repressed by a "success" or "profit" in that market though the pains are actually augmented by such "success" perhaps even more than by failure or loss. Thus the social market equally runs on such alienation, phoniness (including the phoniness of denial) and the perpetual insecurity that results from them. Its all kind of social and erotic ponzi-scheme that just goes along with the economic ponzi scheme that is capitalism itself. The only thing wrong with that analogy is that it doesn't make clear the fact that the joke (both economically and erotically) is equally on everybody in on the scheme, including the original schemers...

Thus  Belonging-With is Inclusive Shared Belonging that is not private in its conception--or rather, the criteria for  belonging-with each other in this specific practice is Personal as well as Individual. In other words, ones motive for doing this at all includes doing it in such a manner as to be a healthier and more complete, authentic and responsible family-member, neighbor, citizen-of-the-world, and soul; to bring healthy culture to world outside oneself as well as to each other. It is again like a painter putting a dab of color on a big canvas with an eye to not only its appropriateness vis-vis the colors adjacent; but to so that the colors ornament not only each other but those father away and indeed the entire painting considered as a whole. The "Belonging-with" of the two proximal colors can only be gauged or realized in the context of all the other colors and shapes in the painting as a whole both near and distant.The main difference here is that one must account for the fact that the whole "Painting" is really a "movie" that is always changing in different places and at different speeds though the essentials remain the same, so that the color will be often in need of "touching up" (I am not quite satisfied with this metaphor but will let it stand for now).

This is not an arbitrary or even essentially altruistic or idealistic motive; we all have within us an "inner animal" that is interested in healthy Familial environment in the present,  an "inner-adult" that is motivated by civility and the future, and inner-child that is motivated ay adventurous delight in the beauty of the "village it takes" to raise it, and we all have an inner-elder that is interested in soulful connections with others that nourish spiritual growth and healing.  Moreover, in the kind of "inner household"  of child, adult, elder and animal, that I am describing as an "Individual", the unhappiness of one member of the household is going to effect the whole, so that, for example, a way of pleasing the inner adult that excludes or repress the interests the inner animal, child and elder is not really possible; the "pleasure" of the inner adult would be an inwardly alienated, then therefore, phony pleasure. What I am saying here is that this kind of inclusive inner wholeness and healing  is not the stuff anyone is "supposed" to want; its the stuff everyone would realize they do  want  and need if they could just come off it with themselves and with each other...


  At any rate, such healing sexuality as I am describing is therefore not an inwardly alienated and outwardly phony act but an "Individual" and Personal act, not only because it is not conceived and enacted in an inwardly exclusive spirit but because the inner inclusivity implies and outer inclusivity as well.  What I hve call "Consensuality" can not be a private act because we are not essential private, and so alienated, individuals. However it is not a "public" act either, since it is being done in such a way as to challenge both the false "we" of public, shared phoniness as well as the false "I" of private alienation. This last statement is worth emphasizing since, at least in theory,  its easy to confuse personal belonging-with (in which the "we" is inclusive) and public belonging-to in which the "we" is an alienated-phony and factional "we" and one ends up with a concept and practice of more widely shared, phoniness and alienation. To reverse a false binary is not to transcended it but just to strengthen it  whether the binary is the male/female one or the pubic/private one.

But I think that the relation of gender to property still needs some more explaining. What does Belonging-To (whether public or private) have to do with the phoniness of gender? If it is the primacy of this mutually exclusive either/or binaries, whence does this come and what, besides orgasm, does sex have to do with it?

Catherine Mackinnon sources the power of and pathology of gender norms in the suppressed or unconscious experience of child abuse of a sexual kind. I agree with this to a large extent but think its necessary to clarify first the effect of violence (or even chronic stress) on a child and then go on from this to the effect of specifically sexual violence.

Violence provokes fear of course and fear puts one in the fright (reptilian) and fight-or -flight (lower mammalian), part of the brain and basically paralyzes the higher mammalian and distinctively human parts of the brain associated with free inquiry, real and undistorted relating, learning etc (all of which require the relative absence of fear to function properly). I think that in a developing child enough violence or stress could have the effect of stunting (at least in some areas)  full maturity into human adult functioning so that the consciousness is still stuck in the "Fright" mode and more often in the Emotional binary of Fright or Flight.

My idea is that when this happens in our society, on top of this now dominant emotional fear-based  binary is mapped, as the child grows up, various other binaries  (Actually this emotional false binary is very closely related with an equally primitive pathological binary in the realm more of sensation than of emotion, namely the sense of of "self-or-other"; the felt-sense of  alienated existence, which is really a kind of numbness to the felt-sense of "self-and-other"; that is, of essential coexistence" which would be the norm in a healthy culture) .  A much later false binary overlay is our present alienated and trauma-induced either/or form of Logic (which I elsewhere call "Panic Logic" for this reason). A little thought will make clear that the relation of property in the from of belonging to is, also essentially binary in this exclusive way...

And of course another of these binaries is the gender binary of male Or female. One can now imagine a physically adult, but emotionally and sensually stunted, alienated-phony "individual" suffering especially greatly from these violence and trauma induced binaries, basically going crazy and , probably with the help of drink or other drugs, disowning, repressing and dominating "his" own inner feminine and "acting out" this self dissociation/alienation on others "weaker" and so more "feminine" then "himself".  In these others ("wife", children etc) this trauma induced confusion and dichotomizing alienation is, in our imagined example, mixed with the experience of sex and sexual violation, resulting in the common dichotomy-contaminated and so gendered, sexual identity politics founded in trauma and based ultimately on fear and inner and outer alienation.

Of course not everyone is sexually abused as a child, but my point is that the dynamic is really founded on violence and undue stress, and so, once a society becomes based on a dynamic of violence (through the social traumas of war and dislocation) a selection pressure begins to favor the "success" of those whose imbalance in this emotionally dichotomous respect extended to gender, establishing a collective norm to which others will be socially intimidated to conform. In other words once society has mutated in this malignant way, the more intimately dissociated  and insecure one is, the more likely one is to succeed in the context of the now alienated social, economic and legal norm and then contribute to helping intensify and extend those coercive, alienating, norms....

In short (and extremely oversimplified): violence and trauma lead to fight-or-flight dynamic and either/or sense of existence, which leads to either/or logic generally; which leads to either/or identity politics, which lead to either/or conceptions such as gender and property, which in turn are reinforced strengthened and sexualized, via correspondingly unhealthy conceptions and forms of sexuality, all as aspects of alienated phoniness and  sick culture generally. But this "Leads to" thing is really much too linear; what is happening is really more of a synergistic (or better "synentropic") dynamic....


{I am not quite satisfied with this postscript. Its alright so far as it goes but I've missed something important about self/other-objectification and self/other-commodification as they relate to both gender and property as aspects of alienated phoniness. I could have also have made things more clear by introducing the concept of conscience (individual) as the inner aspect of the more personal or outer conference....And now various other ways to possibly make what I am saying clearer come belatedly to mind but, I think they will have to wait for future posts as this one seems long enough}

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