Where Angels Fear to Tread.
a) President Elect Obama ordered a cheeseburger
and fries Sunday, taking flight form
DC in one of the various Presidential jets.
b) Some time ago, Jonathan Edwards hoped to
convince his congregation that they dangled over
the pit of hell by a thread held by an angry God.
c) More recently Senator-Appointee Roland Burris
intends to show up at the Congressional confirmation
proceeding—regardless of the brou-ha-ha over his
Blagojevich relationship.
d) In Steps to an Ecology of Mind, Gregory Bateson
transcribes a “metalogue” with his young daughter
in which they talk about “tidy” and “muddle,”
the difference and the relationship; and talk about
how they’re talking about it, too, while they’re talking
about it—which is what a “metalogue” (as opposed to
a mere dialogue) is.. .
e) Genius is the enemy of Genius, says noted
Transcendentalist, R.W. Emerson and also claims that
“ man is clapped into jail by his consciousness.”
These are samples. Specimens. Arbitrary. Random.
Any of the 5, unpacked and put into play might could
generate converse-action. It doesn’t take much.
The action of converse-action these varied samples
might generate, would be the SAME in each instance.
In the same way driving across the county—to Santa
Cruz or
Like all the different courses you take and have taken
—sure: varied content and subject matter, but still: the
SAME. COURSE-ness what you are “learning.” .
Converse-action is what all my courses are about—
regardless of samples, subject matter, token content.
Of course, you may not agree: I wouldn’t blame you,
You would not be alone. It’d be perfectly normal for you
to insist that a course is-what-it-says-it’s- about, and not
about COURSE-ness, and that a road trip is about the
variations of
drive driving.
To be able to juggle SAME and Difference, without
doing injustice to either—or getting stuck in one
or the other (the differences or the sameness) that
would be one way of talking about Liberal Art.
Angels Fear.
1. What Actually is Going On in a Class Room
(whatever the subject-object matter
and token texts)
Learning? Educating? Edification?
To raise this question unifies my 3 (or any) courses
by shifting attention “up” from the different and varied
texts to the context of readers-reading and righting so as
to include: the untidy mess & guess process of coming
to terms and making some sense as opposed to, not to
be collapsed, conflated, and confused with the TAKING
of sense.
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2. Gregory Bateson was raised an atheist by a father
(William Bateson, who coined the term “genetics”), who
nevertheless raised his children on great books & sacred
scriptures and his last work (Angels Fear: Toward an
Epistemology of the Sacred) attempted to spark the gap
between Science Ways of Talking and Religion Ways
of Talking, without doing injustice to either.
A hard core British empirical scientist (biology):
Gregory became an anthropologist, cyberneticist, systems
and informational theorist and studied learning theory,
dolphins, schizophrenics, and addiction.: all framed in
terms of COMMUNICATION as opposed to “pathology.”
Can you tell the difference?
To study communication patterns in any self-correcting
and purpose-driven cybernetic system ( a meadow, forest,
factory, family, marriage, classroom, pod of dolphins,
pride of lions), is to watch, observe & consider all aspects,
facets, angles, exchanges & transactions —as Jane Goodall
would consider the monkeys and the monkey business.
Allof it: interesting, relevant, significant, revealing: “good.”
No such thing as a bad monkey from Jane Goodall's viewpoint.
On the other hand: to study pathologies is to see what’s-going-
on in terms of the dysfunctional, wrong, injurious, maladapted,
injurious, reprehensible ratios of appropriate-to-inappropriate,
naughty & nice, civilized and politically incorrect:: loaded with
the bias of good & evil…as opposed to the (at least intentional)
desire willfully to suspend “judgment” as well as both belief and disbelief.
As Snoopdawg says: S’allgood. And Alexander Pope too:
Whatever Is is good.
Imagine viewing (I.E. the: theatric, thetic: “view”) hap happening
as always interesting if not “all good.” Or at least before if not
beyond good&evil. Call this possible impossibility: the practice
of liberal art, and prerequisite for the practice of Dialectic.
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3. Mission Impossible: the study of
C O M M U N I C A T I O N
(logic & pathologic
digital & analogical)
is impossible, but it becomes a possibility if the impossibility is
acknowledged and factored in. Let that paradox register and
simmer but not aggravate. Both paradox and contra-diction are
essential to the study ofCOMMUNICATION:
That’s the IDEA and word that is central to Bateson’s thinking.
And to the practice of Dialectic.
Communion.
Thinking, Learning, Minding, Evolution, for Batson are all
studied “in the terms of” communication as fundamentally
in certain ways represented by such activities as Ping Pong.
Tennis.
Intercourse. Converse-Action. Back & Forth. In & Out,
Give & Take. Tit for Tact. Call & Response....mutual and
reciprocating interactive ratios, relays, relativities, relationships.
Beyond unilateralism.
Game. (ludic) In Play.
Or how do you want to define IT?
COMMUNICATION.
Go ahead: improve my terms and images. We can argue—
or what's a college for?
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4. Stephen Pinker (The Stuff of Mind) claims that every utterance
fulfills 2 simultaneous agenda which I call TCB
(taking-care-of-business) and SSR
(stroking status and relationship)
Pinker actually calls what I call SSR: Negotiating Relationship
but I don't like the term “negotiating” as it connotes the conscious
control & manipulation that characterizes TCB—know what I mean!
The SSR (stroking status & relationship) I want to preserve as an
UN-Conscious agenda—a blush or stammer, sweating arm pits,
smiles & frowns um er ah see me, hear me,touch me, feed me :
the agenda we all carry, determined to fit or mis-fit our self into
the context: the be-here-now environ mentalism.
Sure, anyone can turn their TCB ego-conscious purposive agenda
toward Relationship so as to improve or manipulate, but then what's
going on is no longer SSR but TCB. SSR (I insist, for the sake of
argument) is unconscious process.TCB is conscious.
As soon as TCB pokes around in SSR it reduces
Un to Con something like going into a closet with a flashlite to study
darkness. Like interpreting dreams. Like claiming to understand the
economy. Like Monday Morning Quarterbacking the Saturday
Afternoon Game. Like Howard Cosel telling me what
Mohammed Ali is doing in the boxing ring. Like
some EngTeacher insisting I start my theme
with a clear thesis, damnit.
Conscious-Taking-Care-of-Business invading the Kingdom
of Unconscious to carry off the Goose that lays the golden eggs,
know what I mean?
See the pattern here? What happens when my Conscious Purposive
Ego aims & intentionality applies its exquisite lucid schemes to
figure and fix, manipulate and mend, uncover and discover
and make my world a better place?
It reduces the whole to the parts and partial perspective of my
conscious objectives and goals and I get always what I pray for
at the occlusion of the larger picture: the whole which is beyond
my attention efficient consciousness and I’ve collapsed a sphere
into circles—stick in my thumb and pull out a plumb, thinking
what-a-good-boy-am-I.
We're just not smart enough as people.” says Alan Greenspan—
addressing the current economic meta-sustainable situation
confounding our best efforts to tweak, fiddle and regulate stuff
so as to serve our sense of order and predictability.
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5. 2 faces & a GRAIL
(a common figure/background ambiguity; I'm sure you've seen
it before: which is the figure? Which is the background? And what
determines which is which and when and how? That's the “joke”
of this image)
Let it stand-for (represent) the difference between the vis-a-vis or
TCB (taking care of business), our conscious sense of “converse-
action”on the one hand and on the other hand: the Grail: let it
signify the always emerging SSR (strokes & status relationship)
going on and on—call it “communion” maybe—not to be conflated,
collapsed, or confused with the conscious converse-action &
expression of our back&forth exchange.
Let “COMMUNICATION” stand-for what's going on
1) on the level of conscious converse-action,
2) the unconscious level of communion and
3) the relationship between the two
Communication is to Communion & Converse-action as
Information is to News & Noise as (NEG) Entropy is to
Order & Random as Temperature is to Hot & Cold as
Relationship: aka relays, ratios, rational rationality,
rationalization ( L. reri: to think—I.E ar “to fit together,
connect, join, harmonize: art, order) is to what we
are: relationshipRus
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