2015.06.13 — A Drivel of Small June Fushigis*

Hello. It has been long since I’ve blogged. At last I have a few free moments, which has become a rare thing. Well, define ‘free’ of course! I have several letters I’d like to write. And a ‘humorous’ essay, that I began a few months ago, that examines the subversive nature of humour. And it is still unfinished, even though the idea of it and ideas for it are constantly running through my mind. (The synopsis: I think that what is subversive about humour is that the outward humour of comics pointing to our naked emperors does not change the society, but allows it to continue as it is regardless the inequality that may be extant. But that when someone moves from being angry to inwardly laughing at their friable humanity, that is when the transformation of the world begins.) [[Odd! As I'm writing this, Laurie Brown on CBC Radio is quoting someone's opinion on the nature of what it takes to write about what is close to the heart and soul.]]

My life is filled with strange tiny fushigis. Here is a quick sampler:

I learned from one of my sisters that a sister I haven’t seen or talked to since 1979 scanned and uploaded old family pictures for me. As i have been estranged from my family, I haven’t seen any of them for more than 35 years. I struggled to remember the names of some of my old elementary and school class mates. I struggled to remember the name of one in particular. The following morning I heard on the radio her name, well almost her name: Anitra is what I heard, Anita was her name.

Yesterday I asked a young woman* in a clothing store what the text in her tattoo said. She answered ‘There are no coincidences’ (I think — or something like that.) So I told her about this blog, with its fushigis and my old black books filled with small fushigis. And then I told her “I don’t usually ask people about their tattoos, and so isn’t it odd that I would ask you about yours?” And now I am smiling, because the last time I asked a person about their tattoo, that had fushigi elements in it. It was a quotation from Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliette, now forgotten, about being true to one’s self, I seem to remember.

*[Addendum 2015.08.23. I was once again asked by ML to pick-up clothes for her from the clothing store. And this same young woman happened to be there and be available to serve me because the CSR who was helping someone chose not to help me when she was done. After our ‘Hellos’ she smiled and mentioned the following fushigi. It was she whom ML had called to place the clothing order a few days earlier and shortly after that call Michell (I asked her her name) found the note I’d left her with my blog’s url. So she was curious to see if I’d blogged this incident, and smiled to see that I had.]

Yesterday morning before going to work I gave to ML ‘my’ pair of scissors from upstairs because she had misplaced her downstairs pair over a week ago. (She is largely confined to a wheel chair and is physically unable to get upstairs.) As she is very hard on scissors, dulling them quickly by using them on things like trimming plants, I planned to replace ‘mine’ with a new pair. Well, yesterday afternoon, shortly before it was time for me to shut down the office computer at work, I visited the WSS word association game thread — it is one of the few things I seem to have time to ‘write’ these days — and was amused to read Leslie’s word: scissors. And so yes, the universe helped me to remember to pick them up on the way home from work. And, as I’m writing this, I just realized that I had those scissors with me when I asked the customer service rep about her tattoo, because I bought them while on my way to pick up some clothes ML had ordered.

Today I planned to make chocolate chip cookies. (Sigh. Didn’t get to it before the day ran out.) But while standing in line at Galloways, I engaged in conversation about the store with a blind man and his severely vision impaired wife. When it came time to get our stuff, she asked for chocolate chips, because she was going to make chocolate chip cookies. ‘She makes the world’s best,’ her husband said. And then, after they had gone, and I was paying for my order, the woman behind them set her stuff on the counter. And I recognized couscous, and I was thus reminded by the universe that I had indeed forgotten that I needed couscous! So I apologized to the customer service rep, and rushed off to get the couscous. Now it gets strange. I thanked the woman for reminding me that I’d forgotten something. She asked me what she had that had helped me. I pointed to the bag of couscous. ‘Oh!’ she said with some excitement. ‘Do you know how to cook it? I’ve never cooked it before.’ And so then I gave her quick cooking instructions.

And while I walked back to the car, I reflected on how the universe was helping me along in these tiny little ways. And I realized that for the universe to help me I had to be present, in the moment aware of my surroundings and the people. This is relatively new territory for me, as I have spent most of my life being unaware of my body and its presence in life, and mostly oblivious to everyone around me. And I realized that the yoga has been making very interesting changes to my presence of mind in the here and now. For example, I have become aware of my clothes, how they look on me and on them getting dirty by life. Again, yesterday: for the first time in my life I became aware of how I splashed water on my clothes while washing my hands. For years ML has complained about that, and I have never noticed nor cared. And today, while shopping, I was aware that I did not want to brush my light coloured clothes against my dirty car. In the past I would not have noticed that I had dirtied my clothes until ML, with frustration, castigated me on having gotten dirty. I am definitely more present. Funny, I was going to include that changed awareness of my physical self in a blog about how much I’ve changed.

Well, there is more. But time to stop. It is time to do my daily meditation exercise. Yes. That is another change. Six weeks ago I attended a meditation class, and have, since then incorporated twice daily meditation practice in my life. That is another blog, as I am seeing huge changes in my physical and emotional states of being. Hmmm. Is my changed state of awareness, just discussed, related to it? Interesting timing, to say the least.

But before I go, maybe another small fushigi. A few weeks ago a young friend, who just happens to be burdened with a philosophical turn of mind and with whom I’ve been exchanging e.letters, expressed her puzzlement over what Chuang-Tzu meant by ‘good’. This brought a huge smile to my face, and I jumped in with a Taoist take on age old problem of ‘Good and Evil.’ I cited different translations of Chapter 8 in Lao-Tzu’s Tao Te Ching. While writing that I have been reading The Inner World of Trauma by Donald Kalsched that has been blowing my mind and connecting things up. It is completing and connecting things between my unconscious and mind in a complementary way with what yoga has been doing with my body and spirit. Anyway, a key part of Kalsched’s discussion is about the good/bad dyad, which he has called the persecutor- protector duplex. Fascinating discussion, and explains much of my own experience. Anyway, as I was reading this and writing about the age old problem of ‘good and evil’ to my friend, I did not see the connection. Amazing, even as I am discussing becoming aware, how much I keep myself unaware of. In fact I did not see the connection until I followed my intuition and answered the call of a book I purchased several months ago, and opened it at random June 8, 5 days ago. Wow! This is what I read:

… [T]he prince asked the master again, ‘Venerable Teacher, if good men and women are motivated to attain correct awareness in order to restore their integral nature, how can they maintain the awareness and subdue the delusive activity of the mind?’

The master replied, ‘Kind prince, good people who are motivated to attain the correct awareness of an integral being should dissolve all conceptions of duality. With integral awareness of their moral responsibility, they will be able to help all people to eliminate the darkness of the dichotomous mind and the delusions stemming from concepts of existence and non-existence so that they can finally attain the essence of the integral subtle transcendence. When this has been achieved, the one who renders service to others discovers that, in truth, there is no one being served; he no longer perceives other lives as external to himself, nor does he perceive his own existence as separate and individual. If integral beings still held any concepts of self and others, longevity and brevity, life and death, [good and bad,] then they would not be beings of true integral awareness.

‘Kind Prince, what do you think? Did I attain awareness of the integral nature of the universe through the use of any special esoteric method [such as science or other religious practices]?’

‘No, Venerable Teacher,’ replied the prince, ‘As I understand, what you teach us is not something that can be obtained thought the practice of any esoteric method, for there is no specific device that can uplift one to the higher realms. Once something is labeled as the ultimate method or device, it has already become a hindrance to one’s attainment of integral awareness. Therefore, to an integral being, any external, established means is not the Integral Way.’

‘You are right, kind prince. There truly is no way for an Integral One to separate his being from the nature of the universe. If I had used any particular way to attain awareness of the integral nature of the universe, then the masters who live in the deep central realm of one great life would not have recognized me as an integral being. They refer to me, however, as a cosmic person who lives in all times and all places, and this is what an integral being should be.

‘If there is someone who states that an Integral One has attained the correct awareness of the integral nature of the universe by means of any specific way, then he is simply mistaken. There is no relative, specific way in which one can achieve awareness of the integral truth. The integral nature of the universe cannot be distinguished through a dualistic mode of perception. … What are labelled as methods of achieving enlightenment and uplifting one to the higher realms, wise prince, do not exist in the integral realm (114-5).

The Complete Works of Lao Tzu Translated by Hua-Ching Ni.

Well it is now indeed time to go. And I apologize for this being all words. I want to post this, and so am doing so before I my day runs out, and that precludes pictures. Good night.

2009.03.21 - MP Election by Lot - Secondary Rumination Part 3.

Philosophical Issues Around Learning and Teaching

I hesitate, sitting here, facing this e.tabula rasa. When first I thought of writing this piece, I remember having felt a clear sense that this would be an easy and interesting elaboration. But tonight I find myself unsure about how to begin or where I want it to go. My feeling of clarity muddied and hesitant, my ideas wispy and muddled.

Why? By now it would seem evident that I am not wanting for words. Perhaps I am concerned that further elaboration on whether or not the loquaciousness of my argument for MP Election by Lot is counter productive verbiage, and that any more words would be piling futility on top of pedantry. Yikes — that would never do!

And yet … is it wrong to question and explore the nature of ideas, especially contrarian ones, and their dissemination into a thinking-circumscribed society? I think not, although historically many have died and/or been imprisoned for doing just that. Not that my idea warrants a rub-out!

But I hesitate, none-the-less. I hesitate in part because I've read Lao-Tzu aver that

Those who know do not speak

Those who speak do not know (Ch.56).

But I think I know enough, maybe, maybe just enough, to make an argument. But if I think that that is so, then maybe I don't. Know enough, I mean. Yet, I can't help feeling that if I cannot argue ideas, then how will I sit or walk or breathe without exploding? Is Lao-Tzu's argument true? It certainly has a ring of philosophical wisdom, but perhaps this idea is one that simply sounds good when, in reality, it lacks significant veracity or sagacity?

If those who 'know' do not speak, how does knowledge get disseminated?

After sitting here off and on over several days, reading, re-reading and wrestling with how to proceed, the locus — or perhaps the strange attractor — bending my thoughts has to do with the nature of societal or, perhaps, civilizing learning. Does a civilization learn from the bleated preachings of the wise or from first person experiences with scammers shilling shams? Neither? A tertium quid melange of both? For now I'll cherish the thought that with time and experience civilizations that do not collapse under the weight of their own corruption evolve wisdom enough to be saddened by war in both victory and defeat; to have heart enough to argue, over shared bread and wine, ultimate truths with the enemy rather than killing them on behalf of any of them.

And still so esoteric! Take a deep breath. Wrestle my ideas back to an acceptable perception of my so-called 'real' world. And so I wonder, in the 'real' world, have there been any civilizations that have risen above their ignorance, that have avoided collapsing under the weight of their corruption? My knowledge of history is too weak to think of any.

Perhaps the thing for me to do is remember that this, this ... thing I am writing began at the inner promptings I felt around electoral systems and democratizing them. I elaborated why 'my' little (s)electioneering by lot idea makes more sense, i.e. is more truly democratic, than re-clothing electioneering politics with one that is, at its very best, only superficially distinctive from it. I even argued that our current system is not, in pragmatic functionality, a democracy at all and that moving to an STV system will not change that.

Did I make this argument because I am too ignorant to know not to speak? Well, I think I made it because I felt compelled to convince the people of my society of the verity of my argument. I rationalized that I did not want to be just a purveyor of just another nonsensical idea to a people I knew would mostly perceive the idea as perverse at best, and ludicrously insane, at worst. And even as I write that I know that perhaps if I'd read Aristotle enough before I wrote anything I could have spieled less stridently because I'd have the backing of a respected authority. 'Aristotle said...' sounds so much more weighty and meaningful than 'e.gajd wrote.'

Of course philosophers have warned against the reliance on the words of dead philosophers, especially the esteemed ones. For example, Linji (or Lin Chi), founder of Rinzai Zen, wrote that 'If you meet the Buddha on the road, kill him.' Of course, if he actually knew that then, following Lao-Tzu, he would not have expressed it! Furthermore, if the 'killing the Buddha' metaphor holds weight, then the knowers who do not speak are aware that a misplaced word from the adulated sage has the power to kill an individual's proper path to their own individuality and enlightenment.

Sigh!

And now another sigh! I just realized that if Aristotle was actually respected, then I would not have been ignorant of his ideas. If Aristotle was actually respected his arguments, both right and wrong, would have been a part of my schooling more substantively than they were, given my six years of university across ten departments (although not philosophy). As I pondered why that is, I had an odd thought: is this an example of what Lao-Tzu may have meant when he wrote about knowers remaining mute? What I mean is that expressing the truth may be irrelevant because those who know it do not need to hear it, while those who do not cannot hear it anyway.

Curious. Thought of in this light, Lao-Tzu's adage has direct correspondence with the myths of Cassandra who was cursed with the ability to see and speak the truth, but to have that truth disbelieved and ignored by her society.

This whole train of thought is very grim! It infers that people cannot really learn unless they already know. This would mean that society is always doomed to death and decay, as those who know get ignored or, in many cases, persecuted, shunned or otherwise extirpated by the grasping ignorant who compulsively carve their way into positions of societal importance and influence. Sadly, this does somewhat correspond with both my perception of the nature of personal development, especially as influenced by formal post-secondary education, and the rise and fall of societal organizations and civilizations. C.P. Snow enunciated this 'truth' most eloquently:

More often than I like, I am saddened by a historical myth.... I can't help thinking of the Venetian Republic in their last half-century. Like us, they had once been fabulously lucky. The had become rich, as we did, by accident.... They knew, just as clearly as we know, that the current of history had begun to flow against them. Many of them gave their minds to working out ways to keep going. It would have meant breaking the pattern into which they had crystallized. They were fond of the pattern, just as we are fond of ours. They never found the will to break it.

Snow, C.P. The Two Cultures and the Scientific Revolution. Cited in The Game, by Ken Dryden. Toronto: Macmillan Canada, 1993, pg 205. [20th Anniversary Edition published by Wiley.]

More grimness! I must say, this rumination has plodded in a direction I had not anticipated. At least not consciously. Although it is quite likely my unconscious knew something of the flavour my thoughts were taking me, given the protracted time it has taken me to get my ideas up into my word processor. Also, I quite likely have had trouble finishing this peregrination because it undermines my ostensible goal of getting people to believe my words that advocate the adoption of a democratic idea likely as old as agricultural city-states.

Even Chuang Tzu, my favourite writer, suggests that you take my words and toss them into the heap of over elaborated 'good intentioned' ideas:

Besides, do you know how virtue degenerates and

how learning arises? Virtue is consumed by fame.

Learning is born of contention. Fame causes men to

fight with one another. Learning is the weapon for

both. Both can be evil instruments. They are not

the means to perfection. Though you are highly

virtuous and trustworthy, if you do not understand

the spirit of men, and though you are famous and do

not compete, if you do not understand the minds of

men, but instead go to a tyrant and lecture him on

goodness, ethical behaviour, measures and

standards, you are just using the failings of

others to demonstrate your own superiority. This

is deliberately hurting other people. One who

hurts others will in turn be hurt.

...

You have too many plans.

These preconceived ideas probably won't get you

into trouble, but that is as far as they go. How

could you possibly influence him? You are still

too rigid in your thinking.

Chuang Tzu. Wandering on the Way: Early Taoist Tales and Parables of Chuang Tzu. Toronto: Bantam Books, 1994. Translated by Victor H. Mair.

Or, in the words of a couple of westerners:

Give not that which is holy unto the dogs, neither cast ye your pearls before swine, lest they trample them under their feet, and turn again and rend you (Matthew 7:6).

And:

None of the institutions, measures, and means of education established for the masses and the needs of men in the aggregate, whatever shape of form they may take, serve to advance human culture. In the vast majority of cases they are completely worthless for that purpose and are directly opposed to it. Our race develops its human qualities in essence only from face to face, from heart to heart. Essentially it develops only in little intimate circles which gradually grow in graciousness and love, in confidence and trust.

Pestalozzi, Johann Heinrich. Pestalozzi Werk, edited by Martin Hürlimann, II. Zurich, 1927. Cited in The Practice of Psychotherapy: Essays on the Psychology of the Transference and other Subjects by C.G. Jung. CW Vol 16, 2nd edition. Pantheon Books: Bollingen Series XX, 1966. Footnotes 8, 9 & 10 p.106-7. (LCCCN 52-8757.)

And:

... The great decisions in human life usually have far more to do with the instincts and other mysterious unconscious factors than with conscious will and well-meaning reasonableness. The shoe that fits one person pinches another; there is no universal recipe for living. Each of us carries his own life form within him — an irrational form which no other can outbid.

Jung, C.G. The Practice of Psychotherapy: Essays on the Psychology of the Transference and other Subjects. Pantheon Books: Bollingen Series XX, 1966. Par. 81.

Well, then, is there no hope that formal learning can do anything but produce 'mass' men fueled with irrational puffery and petulant ignorance? And that elaborated knowledge produces mass confusion and drifts of snarling swine? Is there any value in reading the ideas of others or of expressing my ideas?

The answer to that likely moves and shifts like

... the moon, the inconstant moon,

That monthly changes in her circled orb…

Sigh! I did not mean to be so dark and gloomy, here. And I must counter that, on my bright days, I say and even shout 'Yes!' Expressed ideas do bring about change beyond simply creating a weapon to trump all weapons, such as the abolition of slavery, an end to child chimney sweeps, the suffrage and emancipation of women. But other times I am dubious. I certainly don't expect my tiny little argument in the nether-worlds of society to effect broad societal change. But to pretend with the world that the naked emperors are clothed when they are clearly hanging free goes against the nature of my nature, and I will certainly describe the lay of the genitalia, even if no one believes me and the act of doing so marks me ignorant or, worse, a dismissible, cantankerous contrarian.

And we never know what may come from an expressed idea, what friendships may be struck and from them the exchange of ideas and culture. From there it is a tiny leap to see the possibility of the expansion of wisdom, the rejection of oligarchy, and the smallest most personally profound victories against vasty ignorance.

If you don't know the kind of person I am

and I don't know the kind of person you are

a pattern that other made may prevail in the world

and following the wrong god home

we may miss our star.

For there is many a small betrayal in the mind,

a shrug, that lets the fragile sequence break

sending with shouts the horrible errors of childhood

storming out to play through the broken dyke.

And as elephants parade holding each elephant's tail,

but if one wanders the circus won't find the park,

I call it cruel and maybe the root of all cruelty

to know what occurs but not recognize the fact.

And so I appeal to a voice, to something shadowy,

a remote important region in all who talk:

though we could fool each other,

we should consider —

lest the parade of our mutual life

gets lost in the dark.

For it is important that awake people be awake,

or a breaking line may discourage them

back to sleep;

the signals we give —

yes or no, or maybe —

should be clear:

the darkness around us is deep.

Stafford, William. "A Ritual We Read to Each Other," from Stories That Could Be True. New York: Harper and Row, 1977.

And is that what teaching/learning is? An 'appeal to something shadowy,' with the hope that we are moving away from the darkness?

Well, I hope my argument is a move away from the darkness, but if not that perhaps from oligarchy.

Good night.