Stimulus Package: Pork & Shovel-Ready & why can' t they Just Get Along

Dear Dialecticians and Colleagues
Across the Curriculum (Courses W/O Borders Series)

Prelude to “The Model”

(chapter 4 in Gregory Bateson’s Angel’s Fear
Toward an Epistemology of the Sacred).

We were talking about The SYSTEM in class.
Whether we can beat it, or not.

It’s a way of talking, is all. IT – systems talk.

But the system is no thing & we can beat it and
it can beat us only in manners of speaking.

But then: we live inside our manners of speaking,
so to speak: our cave, culture, convention, closet,
traditions, disciplines: all systems and manners of
speaking: we live inside them—so to speak.

So what is my relationship to a SYSTEM which is
no thing but manners of speaking? I ask my self—
my self a system too. .

Is it merely habit? Habitats of humanity? Addiction?
Literally: an addiction means “to speak to.”

You can maybe see how talking about our Ways of
Talking and even talking about how we’re talking
about our Ways of Talking --as recursive and loopy
as that sounds and is— is nevertheless a liberal art
& dia-lectic (talk that talks across itself) and how
else does one bring one’s Ways of Talking (cave,
culture, convention, closet etc) into play without
talking about how we are talking instead of just plain
talking all the time? I'm asking. .

Ad diction to my addictions.
Hooked on my manners of speaking.
Thinking without ever thinking about
how I’m thinking because it’s convenient.
Conventional. Cultural. Plus so much work
to get done: always a work-program &
service project going on and on. Global
warming concerns etc

Bateson talks about MIND minding and matter
mattering in terms of systems of communication.
It’s a way of talking.

In Steps to An Ecology of Mind: among other
things, he talks about addiction and schizo-
phrenia and evolution, and learning and epi-
genesis and diplomacy: all in communicational
cybernetic system self-correcting terms of
RELATIONSHIP.

RELATIONSHIP (relays, ratios, rationals, reasoning)
becomes a mighty big term for Bateson. As opposed
to (not to be collapsed, conflated, or confused with)
the terms of relationship, the tokens, the “nouns,”
the “this’s” and “that’s::the persons, places, and things,
x’s & z’s, a’s & c’s & such as.

Sure: these devilish details are necessary. But Batesons’s
focus is on the ratios, the reasoning, the relationship
going on, the communication and not just the
communicators.

“God has no respect for persons.”
He quotes Bible, but was raised a
“healthy atheist.”

It’s the Play in Play that, for Bateson, counts.
That’s what he watches. The GAME, not so
much the gamers.

Do you see the distinction? Somewhat uncanny?
Inhuman, sure. The monkey’s aren’t as interesting
as the Monkey Business Going On. Jane G. would
understand.

Chapter 4's a gem. Modeling Relationship.
Thinking in terms of Systems--not just
persons & players. Both--and the
relationship in between, so to
speak.