Hola Ali. I want to really thank you and Mark for a phenomenally important conversation. It touched upon a number of things that I tend to in my work.
I see what I'm doing as helping to develop self-sovereignty in individuals who also come together in a group context. I often remind folks that we are actually quite adept at being in a collective - the collective that we know so well is a collective where we become subsumed. Whether it be as part of a mob, a football game or a potent religious ritual.
What we're looking for is the development of enough self-sovereignty so that we can be together in a collective without losing ourselves. A way we can be together in a collective and find even greater autonomy than we do as isolated individuals .
Additionally, as Mark so well articulated, the pendulum has swung too far toward exploration of the interior of the individual. It is important, but it also feeds right into postmodern narcissism. Like Mark, I am passionately committed to our spending more time bringing care and attention to the interior of the we. The subjectivity of the collective.
Finally, I also really appreciated the part of the conversation that focused on how we in fact don't know the future. A friend of mine recently referred to it as the “arrogance of despair” Collapse talk can be arrogant in that it presumes to know what is so evidently unknowable.
Thankyou for a fascinating conversation. I think our cultural psyche at the moment is extremely unhealthy with its obsessive insistence on the priority of individual fulfilment. Mark used the phrase “true freedom” which can be experienced only when there is a sacrifice of our individual desires in the service of others. Jesus taught this (Mark’s Gospel 10.41-45) as did St.Paul (1Corinthians 12.15-26)
Great conversation! So many variables affecting society and civilization in general today…love your point about how the modern individual has more power and influence than ever. We need to understand that this is not to be taken lightly and people need to understand that this can be both powerful and destructive. Personal education and the proliferation of knowledge needs to go hand in hand with responsibility and creating a better, more universal understanding of the cosmos.
Thanks for this thoughtful excerpt - there's a lot to unpack for such a short piece!
I appreciate how you bring Blake into dialogue here, but I do wonder about the way Melissa Nelson’s words are presented. “Indigenous peoples live in relational worldviews” feels like it must be a fragment of something more nuanced - surely there are important differences, frictions, and debates within and across Indigenous traditions (which, of course, are never static) that can’t be captured in such a sweeping line. Anthropologists have amply documented the essential ambivalence of many Indigenous moral systems - think Mary Douglas on purity/danger and her theory of the unity of knowledge - so I’m curious how “relationality” is held alongside conflict, harm, and contestation.
Ethnography also complicates the key binary you rely on: many Amazonian traditions, for instance, strongly prize personal autonomy and rigorous self-control - so it's probably incorrect to suggest that “individuality” is somehow uniquely Western. At least, the contrast risks being overstated.
And I wonder too about the framing of Western individualism as the corrective (“a step further”) to Indigenous ontologies. This risks suggesting these traditions are somehow incomplete until supplemented. I’d love to hear more about the full depth of Nelson’s insight and how it might complicate this connection to Blake that you want to draw.
You’re right! It is covering a lot of ground fast. Melissa Nelson herself has a lot online too if you wanted to hear more from her (https://search.asu.edu/profile/3748589) - and I’ve no doubt she would say that relational worldviews include differences etc. Her work also is much to do with the complex meeting of Indigenous and western epistemologies.
Very timely and rich conversation, keeping up the good work of making cultural tradition into a resource for today's challenges. Love me a Blake, he's been everywhere in my conversation the past few weeks.
I found it particularly compelling, Vernon's framing of 'catastrophe talk' and total rejection of modernity, not as a solution, but as a part of our schism with the sacred. It reminds me of the objection brought by N. Fye (literary critic) to Jung's idea of the Unconscious: if you objectify and 'out-there-ify' the sacred, you hinder the flow of its interconnectedness with the mundane.
I also experienced first-hand the risk of falling into a deeper dualism after gnosis which you Alex were talking about. In my case, it came as personal inability to reconcile the two sides in the face of a deaf and blind consensus reality.
William Blake forever! I chanced upon Blake's grave last year, whilst visiting Daniel Defoe... I sang to him, then later that day I realised it was his birthday. (I wrote about it here: https://rosiewhinray.substack.com/p/a-postcard-from-london-bone-hill )
Then when John Higgs read my post, he sent me this song by The The- Some Days I Drink my Coffee by the Grave of William Blake: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=irmURXnkt54
Hola Ali. I want to really thank you and Mark for a phenomenally important conversation. It touched upon a number of things that I tend to in my work.
I see what I'm doing as helping to develop self-sovereignty in individuals who also come together in a group context. I often remind folks that we are actually quite adept at being in a collective - the collective that we know so well is a collective where we become subsumed. Whether it be as part of a mob, a football game or a potent religious ritual.
What we're looking for is the development of enough self-sovereignty so that we can be together in a collective without losing ourselves. A way we can be together in a collective and find even greater autonomy than we do as isolated individuals .
Additionally, as Mark so well articulated, the pendulum has swung too far toward exploration of the interior of the individual. It is important, but it also feeds right into postmodern narcissism. Like Mark, I am passionately committed to our spending more time bringing care and attention to the interior of the we. The subjectivity of the collective.
Finally, I also really appreciated the part of the conversation that focused on how we in fact don't know the future. A friend of mine recently referred to it as the “arrogance of despair” Collapse talk can be arrogant in that it presumes to know what is so evidently unknowable.
Thank you again for doing what you do.
Thankyou for a fascinating conversation. I think our cultural psyche at the moment is extremely unhealthy with its obsessive insistence on the priority of individual fulfilment. Mark used the phrase “true freedom” which can be experienced only when there is a sacrifice of our individual desires in the service of others. Jesus taught this (Mark’s Gospel 10.41-45) as did St.Paul (1Corinthians 12.15-26)
Thank you both for this fascinating conversation!
Great conversation! So many variables affecting society and civilization in general today…love your point about how the modern individual has more power and influence than ever. We need to understand that this is not to be taken lightly and people need to understand that this can be both powerful and destructive. Personal education and the proliferation of knowledge needs to go hand in hand with responsibility and creating a better, more universal understanding of the cosmos.
Well said!
Oooh I'm looking forward to this talk. I've been really enjoying his new book so far.
Thanks for this thoughtful excerpt - there's a lot to unpack for such a short piece!
I appreciate how you bring Blake into dialogue here, but I do wonder about the way Melissa Nelson’s words are presented. “Indigenous peoples live in relational worldviews” feels like it must be a fragment of something more nuanced - surely there are important differences, frictions, and debates within and across Indigenous traditions (which, of course, are never static) that can’t be captured in such a sweeping line. Anthropologists have amply documented the essential ambivalence of many Indigenous moral systems - think Mary Douglas on purity/danger and her theory of the unity of knowledge - so I’m curious how “relationality” is held alongside conflict, harm, and contestation.
Ethnography also complicates the key binary you rely on: many Amazonian traditions, for instance, strongly prize personal autonomy and rigorous self-control - so it's probably incorrect to suggest that “individuality” is somehow uniquely Western. At least, the contrast risks being overstated.
And I wonder too about the framing of Western individualism as the corrective (“a step further”) to Indigenous ontologies. This risks suggesting these traditions are somehow incomplete until supplemented. I’d love to hear more about the full depth of Nelson’s insight and how it might complicate this connection to Blake that you want to draw.
You’re right! It is covering a lot of ground fast. Melissa Nelson herself has a lot online too if you wanted to hear more from her (https://search.asu.edu/profile/3748589) - and I’ve no doubt she would say that relational worldviews include differences etc. Her work also is much to do with the complex meeting of Indigenous and western epistemologies.
Very timely and rich conversation, keeping up the good work of making cultural tradition into a resource for today's challenges. Love me a Blake, he's been everywhere in my conversation the past few weeks.
I found it particularly compelling, Vernon's framing of 'catastrophe talk' and total rejection of modernity, not as a solution, but as a part of our schism with the sacred. It reminds me of the objection brought by N. Fye (literary critic) to Jung's idea of the Unconscious: if you objectify and 'out-there-ify' the sacred, you hinder the flow of its interconnectedness with the mundane.
I also experienced first-hand the risk of falling into a deeper dualism after gnosis which you Alex were talking about. In my case, it came as personal inability to reconcile the two sides in the face of a deaf and blind consensus reality.
Please find some references which are very much about this topic by and from a Self-radiant Beng who was wide awake at the moment of his birth
http://www.kneeoflistening.com The Incarnation of Conscious Light
http://beezone.com/baptism-of-immortal-happiness
http://beezone.com/current/chapter_7-3.html The Enlightenment of the Whole Body
http://beezone.com/lopezisland/lopezisland/description.html
http://beezone.com/adida/gos-is-not-elsewhere.html
http://www.integralworld.net/reynolds16.html Reality as Indivisible Conscious Light