Category Archives: consciousness

Hannah Arendt And the Importance of Critical Thinking

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Hannah Arendt is visiting me this morning!  Yes, she dropped by in the form of one of her books and I am fully taken by her grasp of the Hitler era and the workings of the mind. In scholarly culture, if you think of totalitarianism you inevitably think of this woman because of her book, “Origins of Totalitarianism.”  But her visit this morning is via another book of hers, “The Life of the Mind: The Groundbreaking Investigation of How We Think.”

We usually do not think about “thinking” because we are too busy thinking, too busy with the white noise we are accustomed to. To “think about our thinking” is to bring to bear thought upon the very process of our “thinking,” or cognition. This complicated involution of the mind is one dimension of the thinking process and is commonly called, “critical thinking.”  Arendt’s work posits the notion that if we are not willing to employ  “critical thinking” there is a sense in which we are not thinking at all but are “thought” by what are merely the machinations of our unconscious mind.  As a result of this, we are carried along life’s way by a subterranean conglomerate of unacknowledged premises and assumptions which do the “thinking” for us. Someone once said, “Our thinking is but belated rationalization of conclusions to which we have already been led by our desires.”  In simple terms, “We think what we want to think.”

This is a very complicated vein of thought I am presenting here and merits further explanation; but that would take me too far from what I am trying to present.  In simple terms, Arendt teaches us that if we never get beyond “thinking what we want to think” we become easy prey to totalitarianism.  There is sense in which we are imprisoned by our very thinking and will make decisions that can be catastrophic in the long run.  This is what Socrates told us about in his famous “Cave” allegory, a delightful summary of which can be found in a cartoon—https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1RWOpQXTltA

Here is a brief selection from Arendt’s “Life of the Mind”:

Non-thinking, which seems so recommendable a state for moral and political affairs, also has its perils. By shielding people from the dangers of examination, it teaches them to hold fast to whatever the prescribed the rules of conduct may be at given time in a given society.  What people get used to then is less the content of the rules, a close examination of which would lead them into perplexity than the possession of rules under which to subsume particulars.

The “non-thinking” which Arendt’s work explores relies heavily on that term, “subsume particulars.”  This refers to taking in what we read or hear and “subsuming” it into “categories” which lay unexamined in the realm of perception.  Here in perception, as opposed to cognition, one can reject anything coming his way that is antithetical to this perceptual field.  Within the perceptual field lies unquestioned assumptions and biases which almost always “dictates” our thinking, ruling out anything not consistent with our view of the world.

Does Our “Emperor” Have No Clothes On? Yep, You Can Bet Your Sweet Bippy!

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Trump is again deflecting, trying to get the country…all of it, not just his disciples, to focus on Obama, allowing Trump to swim in the delight of, “It’s Obama’s fault!” Other options for him have been, “Its Hillary’s fault” or even the generic, “It’s the Democrats!” He desperately seeks to take our focus off of this cursed pandemic that he has horribly mismanaged. Of course, Congressman Devin Nunes, one of Trump’s most insipid brown-nosers, immediately stepped to the plate and tried to lend a hand, accusing the Democrats of “hiding stuff” even as Trump and the GOP continue to be the poster boy for “hiding stuff.” Nunes gleams each time he aids and abets Trump, hoping Trump might toss him an, “Atta boy!”  or find a place on the ever-growing “pardon list” for his own political peccadillos.

“Awareness is all” said a bumper sticker of a good friend of mine.  Honest acknowledgement of misbehavior and mistakes is a fundamental part of the social contract that keeps society functioning.  Furthermore, lacking this quality can become comical when we egregiously violate this agreement  and appear oblivious to it.  I grimace at the many occasions when I have been in that position…and probably still am!

Awareness is a basic dimension of being human.  It allows us to join the human narrative, participating in a shared reality that is implicit in the aforementioned social contract. Having this quality requires a certain schism in the soul, an ability to “stand apart” from our self and be aware of the presence of that  whirl-i-gig in our soul that Trump, Nunes, et al are unaware of.  Without this quality I might even find myself, being a “chrome-dome”, obsessively criticizing and heaping contempt upon bald-headed men!

This brings to mind the Hans Christian Anderson story of kid who didn’t know any better than to declare that “the emperor has no clothes on.”  In this simple tale, the emperor was buck-naked but did not know it and lived in a community in which no one would point out to him.  And then that damn brat came along!

I’m glad to be one of the “brats” in this moment of history.

Over-emphasis of Law Reveals the Absence There Of

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The Trump/Covid 19 virus continues to beset us!  I am afraid, as you probably are, but I do have a “Center” that does indeed hold…apparently!

I hate to brag, but from even before this twin-faced pandemic hit us, I recognized that Trump and the GOP’s need to hide was very significant, and very revealing.  “Build that wall” was about more than the boundary between our country and Mexico; it was a disclosure that Trump has always been desperate to “build walls” between himself and the world, between his conscious mind and the monstrous, demonic madness that rages in his heart.  (NOTE—I confess that I must really want to brag…but am still too “humble” to embrace this and all other human qualities!!)

This “virus” is the expression of a denial system that has lain not-so-dormant in the American soul for decades ago, and egregiously so in the Republican Party.  But, as Carl Jung told us, “What resists” persists and the Bible told us in its heavy-handed ancient manner, “The heart is deceitful above all things and desperately wicked; who can know it.”My adulthood spent largely in the mental health profession reveals this tumult in my own soul.  Since early childhood, I too have “built walls” and comforted myself in the self-referential and linear prison that denies “reality.”  But as Jung noted, “it” is now coming out, paralleling this historical moment we are living through.  But spiritually/emotionally I appear to harbor less “darkness” compared with that which cowers in the bowels of Trumpism.  (Hmm!  “darkness” and “bowels.”  Do toy with that  Metaphor in your heart;  toy with that choice of words!!!)

“Walls,” i.e. boundaries, are an essential dimension of human experience…and technically of the whole Cosmos that embraces us.  But over-emphasis of “walls” reveals a corresponding absence of them in the depths of one’s heart.  Trump is the poster boy for this ancient human malady.  His crawl out from under the socio-cultural/political rock of our nation reveals an opportunity for us, individually and collectively, to consort for a moment with this primordial darkness.

(CONCLUDING AFTERTHOUGHT–If you are subscribed to this blog, please indulge me for a while as I post more frequently.  My “belly is full of words” and they want to spew, just as they did in the belly of that ancient bloke in the book of Job who merited but a cameo in that narrative. This is the thing about blogging that I appreciate; it permits the self-indulgence that my timidity prevents.  Those who know me personally should be so grateful!!!)

 

Mother Earth, Taos, N.M., and a Talented Local Poet

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A year ago I met a lovely poet, writer and “empath” who, for lack of a better term I would describe as doing “soul work” with animals and humans.  I received a blog post from her yesterday morning which beautifully conveys the passion and wisdom that she brings to the table anywhere she goes.  With her permission, I am sharing a link to her work along with an excerpt from a recent post of hers. Here you will see her love of life, including Mother Earth, and this little corner of this earth, Taos, NM.

A week or so after Earth Day, the days have begun to feel warmer here in Taos, even hot just after midday and into mid-afternoon. So Blue and I ventured to where the shadows of trees would cool and protect us as we walked together. These delicate flowers were thriving in the protection of the Ponderosa pines in the forest we found ourselves in. Whenever I can, I will take a pause to sit or even lay on the Earth, perhaps my favorite kind of meditation. After sitting awhile, then my eyes were drawn to these beauties.

Here in Taos, we still have a month or so before the clouds will gather enough precipitation for rains to begin falling as part of the monsoon season in northern New Mexico. The cloud beings that gather in these parts are favorites of mine. I literally feel the uplift of their presence and feel, oddly, as if they are my very own playmates! (What do they hold within themselves?)Cloud beings seen ‘dancing’ and touching the thermal rise of the mountains, here looking toward Taos Mountain and the Sangre de Christos a few days before Earth Day on April 18th.This time of year, early springtime with things warming up some, we see the apricot trees starting to come out in full bloom. I see this as another kind of precipitation, that of life force and nectar and flower essence. I often pause and thank the trees for their beauty and renewal, once again, calling to the inner reaches of my own essence to hint forward.

Every year with every season, I notice differences and fluctuations, subtle shifts within my own timing that most often are stimulated by that unique elemental dance before and around me. Grasping that I am part of all life, life being life, what a potent way to wake up to what is moving for me within the internal landscape as my own earth and skies! There I can also experience what is budding or coming to fruition literally and creatively.

And, here is a link to her entire blog, including the rest of this post:  

https://lifebeing.life/ 

 

 

“Within Be Rich, Without Be Fed No More”

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That Shakespearean quip is a succinct summary of what Carl Jung offered us decades ago:

If you remain within arbitrary and artificially created boundaries, you will walk as between two high walls: you do not see the immensity of the world. But if you break down the walls that confine your view, and if the immensity and its endless uncertainty inspire you with fear, then the ancient sleeper awakens in you, whose messenger is the white bird.

Then you need the message of the old tamer of chaos. There in the whirl of chaos dwells eternal wonder. Your world begins to become wonderful. Man belongs not only to an ordered world, he also belongs in the wonder-world of his soul. Consequently, you must make your ordered world horrible, so that you are put off by being too much outside yourself.

Your soul is in great need, because drought weighs on its world. If you look outside yourselves, you see the far-off forest and mountains, and above them your vision climbs to the realms of the stars. And if you look into yourselves, you will see on the other hand the nearby as far-off and infinite, since the world of the inner is as infinite as the world of the outer.

Just as you become a part of the manifold essence of the world through your bodies, so you become a part of the manifold essence of the inner world through your soul. This inner world is truly infinite, in no way poorer than the outer one. Man lives in two worlds. A fool lives here or there, but never here and there.“ ~Carl Jung, The Red Book, Page 264 |

Thoughts About a Chattering Monkey Mind

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In the following epigram, one of four epigrams under the title “Four Poems after Callimachus” by Stephanie Burtt, I discover the presence of a cautionary self-reflection with anyone who deigns to write…even in the humble milieu of the blogosphere.

(Epigrams, 60)

Lucky Orestes.
          If you know his story,
you probably think that saying so makes me a jerk.
Fair enough. But I’ve been losing my mind
in my own way this week: Orestes lost his,
but at least he didn’t insist
on asking his loyal companion to read and critique
his own book-length original fictional work.
That’s why he kept Pylades as his friend.
True friendship can exist.
          As for me,
I need to learn how not to speak,
when not to hit send.

I am “full of words”; yes, even too full of them, like Elihu in the book of Job who noted, “My belly is full of words, like a taut wineskin, about to burst.”  And that is ok; all of us have our “belly” full of something and I’m glad my stubborn willfulness is sublimated into verbiage as opposed to less benign “stuff”.  But I’m certainly learning how to “not hit send” more often and the same discretion is being exercised in my daily life.  It makes me remember a bromide from a pastor in my youth, three filters through which should pass anything we might say—-1) Is it true?; 2)Is it kind?; 3) Is it necessary?  Number three is really challenging, putting about anything we do or say into question.  I recall the tune from the ‘60’s, “Silence is Golden” by the Tremeloes.  My meditation experience of the past ten years gives rise to these thoughts about silence.  This practice continues to remind me of the chattering of the monkey mind and how that much of this chattering can take the form of “noble” thoughts.  It often is still “chattering.”  W. H. Auden noted, “We are afraid of pain, but more afraid of silence.”

Back When I Knew I Was Right….

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I got saved when I was eight years old and I knew that the Holy Spirit came down, “like a dove”, and entered my soul and was then guiding me in “all truth and righteousness.”  I had been taught that this was the truth, and the Bible clearly told me that was so, and the Bible was the Word of God.  I knew that no one could quarrel with God.

But now I have grown up, some six decades later.  “When I was a child, I spake as a child,” but now I see just how I had self-deluded.  I do not blame this on the faith tradition I was born into; they were doing their job, offering me the rudiments of a faith, one in which I still find great value. When I began to grow up in later teens and then in my twenties, I could have found the courage to think for myself but I refused to do so, opting to draw the blinders even more tightly around my consciousness.  The notion of my finitude, that my very view of the world was a flimsy, a cauldron of the timidity and insecurity that characterized my life at that time, was a vein of thought I could not handle.  The specious “certainty” offered me a citadel that I was not able to discard at that time.

But now, as I view the tragedy that is gnawing away at the soul of my country, I see so clearly how that certainty is deadly.  It is deadly in that it is so effective at thwarting the vulnerability that is intrinsic to being an “alive” human being.  As long as one can cling to certainty, and whatever contrivances that give him that certainty, he will be “fine” in his deluded sense of reality. And when this certainty is not checked, is allowed to metastasize, something like Trump is likely to happen.  If we are lucky Trumpism will be checked before it reaches its full-flowering with an expression of Isis lunacy.self

An Exploration of Trump’s “deity”

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I’ve long noted a rock-solid “belief” that many Trump supports have in him, so firm it is almost like he is a god.  I do think that divinity is an issue with him, though it is a dark divinity.  Carl Jung pointed out that the notion of god, if explored deeply and honestly, would always expose the ambivalence of the heart.  A theological term, aseity, is relevant.  This term means “in and of and for itself.”  In Christian theology this is often called the pleroma or the god-head.  This is the god who is the prime mover, able to move others but incapable of being moved by anyone or anything outside of himself. This is a valuable term for an exploration of Deity but when it is discovered in a human being, to any degree it will be malignant narcissism and catastrophic in its consequences.

This Trumpian darkness has been present throughout Trump’s life.  For example, in 1995 walking into the dressing room of Ms. Teen USA beauty pageant where young girls were in various stages of undress or nude.  He explained later, “Well, I owned the pageant.”  And he frequently voiced in public…video is still available… his lascivious designs on his daughter Ivanka.  God’s can even intrude into the incestuous realm.  In the 2016 campaign he avowed, “I can stand in the streets of Manhattan and shoot someone” and not lose my support base; this is being proven almost daily.  In the impeachment furor currently underway, his minions are speaking in explicit terms of Trump’s invincibility and inviolability, Lindsey Graham declaring earlier in the week, “All I can tell you is from the president’s point of view, he did nothing wrong in his mind.”  Someone quipped on Twitter, so astutely, that the same could be said of Jeffrey Dahmer.  Then yesterday Alan Dershowitz contributed to the aseity-complex demonstration, declaring that as President there are no limits for Trump, adding that if he deems his re-election as President is best for the country he can do what he needs to obtain that re-election.

Group-think has enveloped the Republican Party and is threatening the entire country.  Their investment, their “faith” in this dark “savior” is so intense that they’ve pledged more loyalty to him than they have any awareness of.  They have “drank the Trumpian kool-aid” and it is more deadly, in the long run, than the Jim Jones flavor.  People who have been devoured by group-think have lost the ability to “think” and are completely subservient to premises which they will not dare to look at.  This reminds me of an intense argument I had decades ago when I was in college with a girl friend who was studying law.  My argumentation was proving too much for her and she suddenly, in exasperation declared, “You are arguing to make a point and I’m arguing to stay alive.”  We later explored that exchange and I learned she meant that she was arguing to “stay on top” or win the argument and found herself in dispute with someone who merely wanted to make a point. She could not handle “losing” the argument though winning/losing was not on any agenda I had in mind.

The problem in Congress on display here…reflecting a problem in the American soul…is that the GOP is “arguing to stay on top” making compromise impossible.  If they did not suffer from that Trumpian insistence on “being right” as in “not being able to concede the possibility of ‘being wrong’”, they would be able to see that there are national interests that supersede this fracas and focus on any of these problems would diminish the internecine hostilities.  But this is not a matter of reason.  They have “dug in” with Trump, dug in so deep they cannot get out, and he knows it.  Their judgement is impaired and you can’t reason with someone or “someones” whose judgement is impaired in this fashion.  On a lighter note, but actually not so light, they might wonder at some point, “Hey, putting a man who is so insecure about his penis size that he had to reassure the entire world about the matter on Tv was not such a good idea.”

The “Wounded Healer” and Its Pitfalls

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A couple of friends today introduced me to the work of a “wounded healer” that I had not run across, Marsha Linehan.  Linehan is a noted mental health professional, a professor of psychology, psychiatry, and behavioral sciences at the University of Washington who suffered severe mental health issues of her own earlier in her life.  Her turn around was the result of a mystical religious experience which, to cynics can admittedly be credited to “mental illness.”  I am not one of those critics.

The “wounded healer” is one who is not a detached “caring soul” who is offering an aloof “care” to someone who is suffering.  The “wounded healer” is one who has, and is, suffering her/himself and does not draw the distinction between “me and thee” that the aloof, detached care givers offer.  To those who are ensconced in the aloof, detached comfort zone…their mind and heart teeming with clinical lore…this patient or client is a “thing”.  Absent is the awareness of the relationship, the consciousness and experience that “there go I but by the grace of God.”  The wounded healer has seen, experienced, and owned his/her pain and can offer an empathy that those without that woundedness can offer.

However, the pitfall of the wounded healer is the inability to set boundaries.  If that person cannot recognize that even with that powerful empathy there is not simultaneously a distinction between “me and thee” he he/she will be sucked into a morass of self-indulgence in which he/she and the patient is done great harm.  You might want to check out the following link:

https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/evil-deeds/201112/linehan-and-jung-wounded-healers

 

Stymied by Fear in an Arkansas Chicken Pen…by a Duck!!!

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When I was a little tyke, living in the sticks of Arkansas, I recall an innocent little moment when fear etched itself deeply into my heart so that I clearly recall the event six decades later.  I was in the chicken pen and apparently alone when suddenly I found one of my fingers inside the open mouth of a furiously squawking duck.  I guess object constancy had not sunk in with me at that early age…I must have been about two-and-a-half years old…for terror overwhelmed me as if this “crisis” was about to be the end of me.  And I don’t know how this “existential” crisis was resolved, but I faintly remember “momma” calling to me from the front porch.  At that point in development, “momma” was the solution of all woes!

This tempest in the young teapot that I was probably lasted all of a second and a half but I clearly recall it as if it happened yesterday.  Experiences at that stage of development when we are only beginning to “come on line” and find the comfort of an ego to protect us from moments like those that are very intense.  For “limits” are a very fleeting phenomenon then; had this “tragedy” presented itself to me in another year or so, I probably would have been grounded enough in reality to realize, “Hey, take your finger out of the damn duck’s mouth!”  But in that second I was immobilized, stymied by fear, without the comfort of what I would later learn to describe as “reality.”

And fear will do that to one.  At any age!  Fear is part of life but we have been given the capability of addressing our fears, even the fear of fear, but only if we have the maturity and humility to acknowledge, “I’m afraid.”  Failure to acknowledge this dimension of our human-ness will leave us crippled with maladaptive emotional and behavioral strategies than can be more deadly than the thing of which we are secretly fearful.

And this brings me to my favorite “whipping boy,” Trumpism and its raucous, shrieking mouth piece in the body of one Donald J. Trump.  The Republican Party is stymied by fear that it will not acknowledge, they have their “finger stuck in the mouth of a duck” and are so overwhelmed with the threat of this darkness that they can’t employ “the purge” that our Constitution offers.  They have dug themselves in over their heads, though they had and still have the levers of governmental process to set limits with Trump; though now it appears too late for them.  They are now trapped by their own inertia, an inertia that all of us has an element of, but one they have allowed to metastasize.   They are now enthralled with Trump and have placed their emotional, spiritual, economic, and political welfare is in his hands.

So often in my “day-to-day” Jesus comes to my mind now that His wisdom is longer mere dogma; and on this occasion it is, “Perfect love casteth out fear.”  I certainly do not, however, have “perfect love” as fear is a daily visitor to this dog-and-pony show that cavorts about in my skull.  But I do have confidence that this “perfect love” is present somewhere in my heart, and always has been…even back in that pen …and this allows me to face fears that I’ve avoided all of my life.  And this “perfect love” abides in all of our hearts, even in that of the Trumpster, though I don’t have any hope that he can find the humility to seek its comfort.  Seeking this Comfort would be tantamount to admitting a need, admitting that he is insufficient in the sense that all of us are, and that he needs forgiveness; he could then find acceptance of his internal haunts and fears and no longer have to lash out at the world.  And, btw, “forgiveness” is today an easy and almost meaningless word.  But I don’t see it as a judicial decree from some “Pillsbury doughboy in the sky” but a gift that is, yes, from “out there” in some sense, but simultaneously woven into the very fabric of our being.  It is something we have to evoke from the depths of our being, an evocation which can only occur with that Pauline “fear and trembling” that comes as we “work out our own salvation.”

Well, I’ve come along way here in this narrative, all the way from an Arkansas chicken pen in the mid-1950’s to the “insane” notion of “perfect love” here as the year 2020 beckons. And it is “insane” in the sense that there is no place for it in the “sane” world that we have allowed to descend into madness, protected from this realization by our preference for an illusory reality.   But this salvific dimension of human experience has been with us from our beginning, and even before, if one will here indulge me here, briefly, with the notion of a pre-existent deity!  And this same maddening fate would devour us all individually, and collectively, if we ever should ever lose the vision and experience of hope.

A CAVEAT HERE ON THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN FEAR AND ANXIETY— PERHAPS THE FEAR I’VE ADDRESSED ABOVE IS ON A DEEPER LEVEL ANXIETY.  IN FACT, THE FOLLOWING PARAGRAPH FROM Samantha Harvey, in The Guardian a couple of days ago, MAKES ME FEEL THE NEED TO ADDRESS THE ISSUE OF “ANXIETY” RATHER THAN “FEAR.”  PERHAPS ANOTHER TIME!

The flight from Bristol airport passes over in a distant smear of sound. I switch on the light, get my laptop and Google I AM AWAKE. An article explains how fear and anxiety, often conflated, belong to different parts of the amygdala – fear arises in its central nucleus, which is responsible for sending messages to the body to prepare a short-term response – run, freeze, fight – whereas anxiety arises in the area responsible for emotions, a part which affects longer-term behavioural change. Fear is a response to a threat, anxiety a response to a perceived threat – the difference between preparing to escape a saber-toothed tiger that is here and now in front of you (because it’s always saber-toothed tigers in the examples) and preparing to escape the idea of a saber-toothed tiger in case one appears around the next bend. While fear will quickly resolve – you will run away, fight it or be eaten – anxiety has no such resolution. You will need to stand guard in case. Standing guard will make the perceived threat seem more real, which necessitates a more vigilant standing guard. Fear ends when the threat is gone, while anxiety, operating in a hall of mirrors, self-perpetuates.

 

(Link to Samantha Harvey Guardian article— https://www.theguardian.com/books/2019/dec/28/its-as-if-im-falling-from-a-50-storey-building-a-novelists-year-without-sleep