Across the Curriculum.
Dear Dialog & Dialecticeans
(& Colleagues AtC)
“Fools Rush in where Angels Fear to Tread.”
Gregory Bateson got the title for our “text”
(Fools Rush In: Toward an Epistemology of the Sacred)
from this quote by Pope in “Essay on Criticism.” (Pope
also wrote “Whatever IS is Good” —which Snoopdawg
collapsed several centuries later to “’Sall good!”
Bateson was a hard-core British scientist raised atheist, who
over the years recognized the inadequacy of human reason –
and the liability in failing to recognize this inadequacy. In an
“Age of (so-called) Enlightenment & Reason’sWhy: a critique
of human rationality, such as Bateson’s, is a challenge to
popular common sense.
The notion of SACRED (and the “sacramental”) informed
Bateson’s increasing awareness of a kind of a 3rd term or
synthesis emerging continuously from a dialectical relationship
between institutionalized scientific empiricism on the one hand
and organized religion/spiritualism/new-age-ism on the other.
A pox on both houses—or hands; Bateson eventually declared:
neither economy is adequate by itself to represent the whole
and holy.
&&&&&&&&&&&
The algorithmic form of the practice of Dialectic is this.
.......Y
X <----> Z
Of course that’s reductive.
That’s its beauty. It doesn’t mean that the play of opposites
(thesis/antithesis) doesn’t get complex and complicated
as it wrestles-out a synthesis.
(A synthesis, by the way, doesn’t collapse the opposition
between thesis and antithesis, no more than TEMPERATURE
annihilates differences between Hot and Cold. A synthesis
reveals relationship between opposition, opponents, “enemies”:
a way of seeing their complementarity.)
ON the One hand (X) and ON the Other hand (Y):
the sound of 2 hands clapping.
If we keep the opposition alive and well (fight-club kind of deal)
we can anticipate a revelation (synthesis—small apocalypse)
which shows relationship between what (on a bottom line level)
is also genuine and ongoing hostility.
Dialectic is the practice of “loving the enemy.”
“An enemy is as good as a Buddha”
Bring it on: the opposition.
“if a fool persist in his folly: he becomes Wise”
says William Blake
Get it?
This is perhaps irritatingly reductive and simple—but
it doesn't deny complexity. Take issue! It’s a liberal art,
life-long sport: to put opposition IN PLAY rather than
merely at war. A mind game, not a political one.
x on the one hand and z on the other
& why can’t they just
fight-it-out to get
along?
This course is not information-driven.
It provokes a concept. Attitude,
Frame of Mind..
Out look.
&&&&&&&&&&&
This class turned out larger than usual.
I don’t know what the critical mass is for
converse-action, but I do know we are all
naturally fearful of “public speaking”— like
angels embarrassed (literally: “behind bars”)
to foolishly rush in & reveal our foolishness
which is never the less necessary to get our
thoughts and ideas and concerns in play:
or what’s a college for?.
That’s the COURSE. We’re not studying any
body else. US: we’re the text and context.
I’ll need help.
Increasingly I’ve been trying to shift my courses
OUT of just-the-classroom—spamming notions
and ideas and images to those enrolled & colleagues,
too: inviting an e-continuity & sustainable electric
company beyond the borders of my courses, which
the media allows. More than allows: a new resource—
local foodback.
For good and for ill, we’re all ‘in touch” with our selves
and with the intelligence of the whirl, laptop dancing
24/7/365.
Consider or Ignore. I’m as whelmed as your are by
the alma matrix and our media. and we’ve always got
to be selective in our attention efficiency.
Feel free (encouraged) to hit reply (or better:
Reply to All) so as to keep ideas in play.
(PS) Our opening class & the inauguration.
If you plan to watch
an e-mail reaction to this (or to the first
syllabus) I posted you last week. That’s all
we’ll be doing in
half-a-class: reading and writing a
response, and then leaving, ( and then—get into
this
room publication. )
Best, Sam
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