The Blueprint is Bleeding
The exposure of the illusion that is our financial markets has ruptured the very core of the American Reality. The macro-disaster of a system whose tendrils reach into the very hearts and dreams of the individual has created slowly expanding fissures in the perception of every person whose belief system is based upon acquisition, accumulation and maintenance of the American facade. The American Dream is to live in a dream that is constructed by the materials of a consumer-based economy. Who you are is subservient to whom you appear to be.
If we are no longer able to acquire, what then is our purpose as a culture? If we are no longer have the tools to maintain our skyscrapers of sand, then what is the individual to do?
The societal neurosis that has been placated through the numbing effects of consumption and informational inundation will now be left unfettered. If this process is left unchecked, the behavior of the society will most certainly devolve into manifestations of the uncontrolled subconscious: acts of violence and the inevitable reaction to these acts.
A new reality must supplant the illusory kingdom. A reality that is based upon being human, not trying to be a concept of what we think a human is supposed to be. A new community must be formed from the fragments of the self-serving, predatory and competitive social structures we see crumbling before our eyes. Look what the old ideals have wrought: economic bubbles, irreparable environmental damage, and exponential mental deterioration.
There must be no more ideals. There is nothing to strive for. There must only be the examination of what is. And what is? Relationship: the relationship we have with ourselves, with our neighbors and with the world at large. Only from this starting point can we hope to create a society that is capable of sustaining itself.
April 28, 2009 at 9:26 pm
Hey THERE old friend… Good to see you’re pondering out THERE once again.
I like this right up to the pinnacle of your word to point at the answer to “What is?” – “relationship.”
I can understand this word choice given your recent metamorphosis. Maybe a better label exists. And we both know the joy of labeling, right? Mr. Twain says it beautifully: “The difference between the ‘right’ word and an ‘almost right’ word is like the difference between lightning and a lightning bug.”
Let me just nudge this game a bit… Maybe you’ll nudge a bit too…….
- “Relationship” encapsulates the assumption of “more than one” – i.e. subject and object must exist for a relationship to occur, right? To have a relationship with oneself… How does this happen without creating an illusion of two where THERE is only One…?
- It also necessarily involves memory of both an individual and collective type. (Collective memory is rather like the idea of the meme and is meant to refer to such ideas as cultural ideas, historical notions, social concepts, and so on, all relating aspects of the myriad differentiated ideas of a “relationship.”)
- In the present moment, we relate, but in this same moment, Now, THERE is no reality to the idea of “relationship.”
I would contend that the idea of “relationship” – and the incorrect identification with a concept of one of the entities having the relationship – points toward the root cause of the behavioral patterns unconsciously acted out by most of the human race, including the behaviors that have resulted in the “illusory kingdom” as you aptly call the insanity. To identify with an idea in your head… Yes, illusory and insane are good pointers to this state of being…
I’m sure you can find the end of this quote in an email attachment I’ve sent you:
As long as I have an idea that I am in a relationship, no matter with whom, I will ___…
To reduce any form of Life to a concept in your head… This is a form of violence, and the seed of the more common notions of violence, as well as the common reactions to these acts…
I honor your presence here, now, Jackson.
Let’s catch up soon.
Cheers,
Jp
April 29, 2009 at 11:04 pm
I am beginning to see the subtly of distinction here: All that is NOW cannot be differentiated from each other with not only the LABEL but with the very act of acknowledging a spatial separation. As soon as that distinction is made, there is no longer the NOW but THERE (the physical reality) and the HERE (the mental forge hammering away at new weapons with which to slice into NOW).
Duality is not the cause it is the effect of the tool of the mind, the weapon which has wrought the violence within and around us.
The mind is the Subjective, the NOW is the Objective.
Thank you for the insight, Jp…always…
J>
May 7, 2009 at 5:53 am
Jackson,
Thank you for inviting me to this conversation.
The question of “relationship with one self” is an interesting yet highly subjective one. I see two aspects relevant to its meaning and phenomenology. Firstly the concept of “One self” which objectively means one single ‘object’. The second the meaning of relationship, i.e.: connectedness, similarity, identity (identical).
The trick factor in Jackson’s existential foray as I understand it, involves the notion of consciousness which endows the “one self” entity with the added characteristic of being sub divisible. Self = Ego/Identity (Ego, Superego, Id) + Subtle, to borrow from K.Wilber.
This dialectic implies a quest for ‘truth’ out of contradicting premises (Thesis+antithesis = antithesis), in Hegelian terms. For Kant it is a matter of contradiction arising from the very notion that knowledge (subjectivity) of an object (one self) exists beyond the limits of experience. So, Jackson’s quest for truth (relationship) within his self (object) is, in metaphysical discourse, ostensibly plausible.
The missing link in JP’s assertion above (“an illusion of two where THERE is only One”) is Wilber’s notion of “Subtle” which is precisely a higher awareness of one’s ‘mind’, a subjective perspective on to one’s self which is a subjective relationship. It also presents a state of consciousness which allows for the detachment from any form of identity with objects and ideas, allowing the world to unfold as the illusion that it is.
In sum, it is not an illusion to conceive of ‘one self’ as multiplicity. Understanding this ushers the detached perspective, higher awareness that the world out there we deem to be ‘reality’ is in fact an ever fluid stream of illusions which are constantly mediated and mythologized by wo/man’s impulsive need to cast meaning on every single event.
In reference to “Memory” and reality of ‘relationship’: Memory sub serves awareness in a Bergsonian sense. To access the ‘subtle’ through a relationship within the self is the conduit/access to a collective memory and meme space. I think it is important to distinguish between collective memory (subconscious) in the Jungian sense (subjective knowledge), and the historicizing process of the mind (cultural machines), myth-making (objective knowledge). Memory implies chronology of events (Bergson). In the subtle there is no past nor future but simply ‘now’. To ‘relate’ within the subtle space means full actual awareness. Relationship with ‘self’, consummated. The only truth or reality, ‘one’ in-the-moment.
Relationship with objects or ideas (attachment) IS the illusion. According to DZOGCHEN, this binarity or dualism is the root of our suffering and all our conflicts. When one identifies the ego with personal ideas, one believes those ideas as embodied identity and runs the risk of defending them as such. An illusory relationship in and of itself, observable from the subtle.
I guess we seem to be in agreement with this.]————
Back to Jackson’s original text.
There are various views which propose that human civilization is entering -climaxing- a colossally relevant paradigm shift, whereby anima-femenine is finally manifesting within the forces that forge the collective spiral of cultural evolution. Incidentally, this Anima/femenine characterization is also a metaphor for a move away from vertically oriented, patriarchal hierarchies, towards a more horizontal, community based form of interrelating, relationship building (no accident that Obama’s views are informed by his experience in Community (horizontal) organizing, and no accident that the ideologically driven GOP specifically poked fun at this very factor during the campaign, the same way they are trying to demonize most of his program as threateningly ‘socialist’, a qualifier which has notably lost steam, precisely because the collective subconscious is open for those kinds of implicit horizontal structures!).
Vertical, masculine is more reliant on and –identified with, ‘rules’ and punishment, (read ‘competitiveness’ as in sports (FOX NEWS), Capitalism (Free markets), and materialism (attachment)). Horizontal, feminine gravitates to dialog and conversation, connecting, community building. Subduing the Ego in favor of subtle connections. So, going back to the notion of ‘meme’, it is relevant to observe, which such cultural memes are being shed and which favored. Here is where the new values are being identified, the new identities forged, the new voices defined and projected.
Hopefully, this gorging and bloating of western culture which has been driven by the values of the fictional ‘American Dream’ are maturing into what I call the ‘American Scream”. A state of alarmed awareness which will usher our collective presences into the next level of coexistence as individuals, meaning smaller parts (divis) of a greater whole.
Peace,
FzS