Normality -- across the quenching boundary

The Isdom of the Wisdom Society: Embodying time as the heartland of humanity (Part #15)

The theme of the above argument is that there may well be a way of reframing and refocusing our momentary understanding of space-time -- in the spirit of the openness of contemporary physicists to the necessary craziness of insight required to provide coherence to our understanding of these times and of our place in them. This craziness may indeed be of the kind suggested in Zen by the "sound of one hand clapping".

The core of the argument is that the true "heartland" of humanity -- usually projected into elsewhere and elsewhen -- may well be in the present moment understood in a different mode. Hence the reference in the subtitle of this paper to "embodying time as the heartland of humanity" -- rather than buying into seductive arguments that the essential truth lies elsewhere and elsewhen. It is from this heartland -- Isdom -- that humanity has been essentially divorced and estranged, forced to settle a cognitive landscape that is basically impoverished and ill-adapted to psychic needs of survival and thrival. There is also a continuing threat of encroachment on Isdom by banality -- despite its counter-intuitive protection.

The world that people are all educated to inhabit may well be a true (but very pale) reflection of the nature of Isdom -- a denatured reflection. In particular the problems of that world may be a reflection of issues whose roots within Isdom we do not choose to address (see My Reflecting Mirror World: making Joburg worthwhile, 2002)

The art then may somehow involve consciously embodying or "incorporating" Isdom -- or rather recognizing that, as noted earlier on the cover of The (Updated) Last Whole Earth Catalog (1974): "We can't put it together; it is together". Isdom necessarily "is" within the Spirit of Now. In Sufi terms it is the perfection of what is.

The challenge of exploring the present moment could then somehow be associated with the cognitive process through which the sense of the ordinary is sustained in all its fragmented, and potentially alienating, bittiness and banality. It would seem that there is a real possibility of re-membering that to whose cognitive dis-memberment we contribute in every moment. There are aspects of our cognitive processes that constitute, and sustain, the quenching boundary -- such as to destabilize any effort to give coherence to Isdom in our understanding. It is perhaps Francisco Varela (On Becoming Aware: a pragmatics of experiencing, 1998; Laying down a path in walking: a biologist's look at a new biology, 1986) and his colleagues that have best focused academic thinking on the associated challenges -- through their work on enactivism (see also En-minding the Extended Body: Enactive engagement in conceptual shapeshifting and deep ecology, 2003)

Such work points to the challenge of the widespread use of the spatial metaphor of "the way" as the preferred mode of achieving wisdom (Pointing the Way; The Way to Happiness; Taoism, or the Way; The Way of Perfection; The Way of Qigong; The Way: an ecological world view; Way of Science; etc). This metaphor focuses thinking on envisioning somewhere else, going there and gaining "access" -- a journey that will necessarily "take time". The metaphor encourages extension and implicitly denies the significance and value -- and learnings -- of the current place in time. In many respects it is basically "green fields" thinking: somewhere else is better. In its metaphorical association with "vision" (seeing The Way), it elicits a disengaged, spectator role -- and raises the possibility of ignored disorders of strategic vision: myopia, presbyopia, colour blindness etc (see Developing a Metaphorical Langage for the Future, 1994). Humanity continues to invest very heavily in strategies implied by this metaphor -- "globalization" may even be one consequence as is "growth".

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Normality -- across the quenching boundary