Conversing with oneself

Transforming the Art of Conversation (Part #13)

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The exploration through metaphor could be taken further, and given greater "focus", through the framework of organized human activity through which the environment is "transformed" -- then suggestive of how patterns of conversation might be transformed. Especially intriguing for the individual is the sense in which such patterns of activity can be detected in personal engagement with the environment. Examples include:

• farming, whether practiced intensively or over larger domains -- offering the contrast evident in tightly organized conferences as against episodic and occasional interaction. For the individual, however, there is a sense in which everyone is a farmer -- variously cultivating fields of knowledge and experience over which each can claim ownership and for which each has responsibility. Fields can be ploughed, crops can be grown and harvested, or the land can be allowed to lie fallow. As with any farmer, there are concerns regarding the weather, drought and irrigation. and with the fertility of the land. Most fundamental is the deeply felt sense of engagement and bonding with the land, potentially ever more diffuse with the size of the domain. As a farmer, one is engaged in ongoing conversation with the world framed as "my land".
  
  
• animal husbandry, again practiced intensively or over larger domains -- in which features of the environment are framed by the individual through characteristics and dynamics of animals, whether cattle, pigs, chickens, or the like. The focus differs of course between intensive farming and that associated with large ranches. Common appreciation of the quality of "free-ranging" is then usefully reminiscent of what is appreciated in "free-ranging conversations" in contrast with those which are tightly managed. Especially interesting is the deep quality of the bond which may be associated with particular animals.
  
  
• fishing, may be similarly recognized as a frame though which engagement with the world is articulated -- whether in the case of the lone fisherman on the bank of a river, or on the high seas. As conversations with the world, these both contrast with the conversation implied by the process of fish farming.
  
  
• hunting, is familiar as a behaviour anchored in the human psyche over millennia. For the individual the pattern continues to be evident in "hunting" for a spouse, or a job, or some other opportunity. This may notably involve identifying the vulnerable of one's world. The process of "moving in for the kill" is well recognized as the final phase of some forms of conversation -- most notably negotiations with respect to selling. Such conversations evoke the respectful reflections regarding the "victims" to which some indigenous cultures have been especially attentive. The contrast is evident in the miss-selling mode of conversation so characteristic of financial institutions -- recently cultivated to a degree which has triggered a global financial crisis (presaging an environmental crisis consequent on a similar mindset).
  
  
• mining, involves processes dating back over centuries, most readily evident for the individual in current mining for precious stones, gold, or coltan. Mining claims, whether official or informal, typically imply a personal stake of considerable psychological significance. As a metaphor of relevance to a knowledge-based society, data mining could potentially acquire corresponding significance, especially when restrictive access is specially authorized. How might individuals come to develop their relationship to the work through mining their knowledge world for valuable "precious stones" and "gold"? "Mining" as "making mine"?

The above examples all suggest the possibility of ways of engaging with nature -- conversing with nature -- otherwise understood. As explored separately, they point to the possibility of "en-joying oneself" (En-joying the World through En-joying Oneself: eliciting the potential of globalization through cognitive radicalization, 2011). This reframes the above-mentioned approach advocated by James Lovelock (The Vanishing Face of Gaia: a final warning: Enjoy It While You Can, 2009).

The sense of conversing with "oneself" can be understood even more radically -- in the light of the argument of various authors (Gregory Bateson, Mind and Nature: a necessary unity, 1979; Henryk Skolimowski, Participatory Mind: a new theory of knowledge and of the universe, 1994). Individuals are in fact free to "be the universe", notably by cognitively embodying the far reaching speculations by cosmologists, as tabulated above (cf. Being the Universe: a Metaphoric Frontier, 1999). It is worth checking the credentials, track record and motivation of those who reject this possibility. As teasingly remarked by Kenneth Boulding (Ecodynamics; a new theory of societal evolution, 1978):

Our consciousness of the unity of self in the middle of a vast complexity of images or material structures is at least a suitable metaphor for the unity of a group, organization, department, discipline, or science. If personification is only a metaphor, let us not despise metaphors -- we might be one ourselves. (p. 345).

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