A thought experiment:

Imagine consciousness as a tiny seed of light, and that multitudes of them are spread throughout the universe. These seeds of light do not have personalities; they are awareness as such. They are, possibly, the way the universe comes to know itself.

These seeds of light draw physical forms around themselves like magnets. They cannot be unphysical for long. The seeds take on a new physical form in infants of every species and they leave at death—and then go on to draw another physical form around themselves, which may be of any species.

The purpose of these seeds of light is to gather experience in all its forms. A person—to look at this from the other direction—is a nexus of parents, physical and emotional environment, ancestors, friends, history, everything. A person is a temporary wrapper around a particular and unique intersection of forces, which are continually changing. There is no such thing as a separate individual. There is no person apart from the intersection of these forces.

The seed of light draws these forces around itself, wraps itself in particularity, in order to experience the world as that new person. For one person, their environment is unhealthy, their parents are angry, and that person will live, for example, as an angry and unhealthy person. The seed of light learns what that experience is like. For another person, they may exist in bad circumstances but some force intersects in their life that allows them to find their way out. The seed of light learns what that experience is like. The seed of light is, in this way, neutral; it does not influence or direct the life of the person. It is pure awareness experiencing life.

Earlier today, @ReaderJohn posted a link to a Joseph Campbell quote, which was behind a paywall. The quote was:

The role of the community is to torture the mystic to death.

That’s a tantalizing enough line that I wanted to find the source–which is A Joseph Campbell Companion, a collection comprised mostly of a talk he gave at a seminar, along with additional material added for context.

The chapter begins with Campbell telling the story of a tiger raised by goats who grows up believing he is a goat, until the day he meets a tiger who tells him who he really is.

Now, of course, the moral is that we are all tigers living here as goats. The right hand path, the sociological department, is interested in cultivating our goat-nature. Mythology, properly understood as metaphor, will guide you to the recognition of your tiger face. But then how are you going to live with these goats? Well, Jesus had something to say about this problem. In Matthew 7 he said, “Do not cast your pearls before swine, or they will trample them under their feet and turn and tear you.”

The function
of the orthodox community
is to torture the mystic to death:
his goal.

You wear the outer garment of the law, behave as everyone else and wear the inner garment of the mystic way. Jesus also said that when you pray, you should go into your own room and close the door. When you go out, brush your hair. Don’t let them know. Otherwise, you’ll be a kook, something phony.

So that has to do with not letting people know where you are. But then comes the second problem: how do you live with these people? Do you know the answer? You know that they are all tigers. And you live with that aspect of their nature, and perhaps in your art you can let them know that they are tigers.

The quote, then, seems to be saying that the orthodox community–that is, the dogmatists; those who have the form of godliness while denying the power thereof; the whited sepulchres full of dead men’s bones–serve as the sword that makes the martyr. They are the villains in the superhero’s origin story.

Anna Havron has a really wise post today on how to function in a crisis. I’m not in a crisis right now but I am in what I have discovered to be a regular, low-energy cycle. My main struggle in cycles like this is putting aside feelings of guilt for not doing … whatever. For example, we’ve now experienced several days of reasonable temperatures and I just couldn’t muster the energy to go outside after work.

Also, I’ve also just come out of a time that felt intellectually creative (new books, new ideas, increased writing in response) and that seems to have just collapsed in the last few days.

Another thing: Over the past few months I’ve been listening mostly to folk and Americana style music. That’s also shifted recently, as I’ve been listening to more heavy music and rap. Weird, that shift to more energetic music when I’m feeling less energetic. Maybe a spot of yang in my overall yin.

The cause of this is, I think, that I’m very busy at work along with it being the dog days of summer. It’s okay. As Anna says and as I’ve experienced over the years, these times pass.

As in other low-energy cycles, I am again drawn to those who talk about the wisdom of withdrawal and silence. I’ve been thinking about Bill Porter’s Road to Heaven again and might re-read it.

In any case, thanks to Anna for the post. And to echo her, when you’re in a crisis or just a time of low-energy, be patient with yourself. Everything moves in cycles.

A friend sent me a link to the No Labels organization and asked if I had any thoughts. I replied:

Personally, I’m a leftist so I’ll never be particularly interested in such a centrist organization. I can appreciate what they’re trying to do—ignoring partisan divides by taking mediating positions on issues—but my feeling that ours is a time of great change. No Labels is trying maintain the old order, to play it safe. I’m interested in what’s on the other side of the crisis.

To elaborate on this (and to make a point larger than reacting to No Labels), I do feel like we are in a time of crisis. We are already living in a post-apocalyptic world and none of the usual rules seem to apply. And for that reason, there’s something of the inevitable about all of this.

As Bayo Akomolafe says, “what if the way we respond to a crisis is part of the crisis?” We are told, for example, that we must take part in street protests and direct action; yet those very actions often entrench the opposition and become tools used against the protestors themselves. The levers which we have used in the past appear to be broken.

What if the crisis that is upon us is one in which humanity is being told to sit down and listen to teacher? That it is precisely our usual reaction—reaching for levers with which to work our will on the world—which is the source of our problems and what we must unlearn?

There has been some welcome talk here on micro.blog about practical actions people can take to reduce their contribution to climate change and our ongoing ecological disasters. There’s also, inevitably, been a lot of discussion about what “works,” whether it is wise to make demands on individuals when what we need is systemic change. And we most emphatically do need systemic change. Nothing I’m about to say should be interpreted as political quietism, though I won’t deny I’m pretty pessimistic in that regard.

I would like to add this to the conversation: right behavior does not calculate. This is something that is found in many wisdom traditions, from the Bible to the Stoics to (all hail, Tolkien!) Lord of the Rings. Is there anything more stirring than a person who does the right thing, damn the consequences?

I wonder if the spirit of calculation continues to assert itself in these conversations because climate change is consistently framed as a STEM problem by the technocrats. The whole discussion becomes one of a technological problem with technological solutions, rather than a moral failure that must be addressed by repentance and amendment of life followed by the establishment of right relationship with the more-than-human world.

What sort of person do you want to be? What do you love? These are the questions that should drive our behavior with regard to climate change and other human damage to our planet. Do you want to contribute to that damage? How will your ancestors and descendants judge your actions?

Now, I will not prescribe what “right action” will look like for you. I do things I wish more people would do—and I do things other people wish I wouldn’t do. I don’t know the circumstances of other people’s lives so I’m uninterested in judging. I can only say, as the torso of Apollo said to Rilke, you must change your life.

Listen to your conscience. Do what you can—and maybe a little of what you think you can’t. Meet the challenges of your time in such a way that you can, like Théodon, stand among your ancestors without shame.

Asha Amemiya, in The Abundance of Less by Andy Couturier:

“So, why do you think so many people get caught up in this [drive for convenience]?”

“I really don’t know,” she says, laughing, although perhaps somewhat bitterly. “I wonder why it is? Maybe it’s just that humans are that kind of animal; they don’t really want to move toward satisfaction.”

”Humans are that kind of animal.” I have a theory that’s something like this.

The Christian creation/fall story says that the sense of wrongness in the world is due to the sin of Adam and Eve. Because of their disobedience to God’s command, humanity is cursed—and the rest of the cosmos with them.

I also feel that sense of wrongness (“this is not how it’s supposed to be”) that lies at the root of the Adam and Eve story. It would seem that many other people in many other cultures also feel it, given that something like a fall story exists in other cultures around the world.

In my theory, I take the sense of wrongness as a given but I am not convinced that it exists beyond humanity. In other words, humanity has a problem but the cosmos does not. What if humans just are that kind of animal? What if humanity evolved in some way that was reproductively beneficial but broke humanity relative to the rest of the cosmos? What if the incorrigibility of humanity gave us a temporary advantage (we’ve taken over the world, after all) but is, in the long run, an evolutionary dead end and will lead to our extinction?

If this is true then it’s not (as in the revivalist hymn) that this world is not our home; it’s that we have forgotten who our family is.

I am very grateful to David Walbert @dwalbert for two posts—here and here—in response to my posts on Ivan Illich’s theory of tools. He got me to think about the ideas a little more carefully than I did in my first enthusiasm. And in doing so, I’m attempting to think with Illich’s ideas rather than simply repeating them.

Let’s see if we can read Ivan Illich animistically, by reframing his ideas against the background of a living cosmos. For those who may be unfamiliar, animism is—to use Graham Harvey’s famous definition—the recognition that

the world is full of persons, only some of whom are human, and that life is always lived in relationship to others.

It would seem that Illich sees tools as objects, created and used by human subjects, but not as subjects in themselves. That is, he is concerned that tools are designed in such a way that they give maximum creative freedom to their users as they exist in relationship with other humans, without ever addressing the relationship with the tool itself. So let’s see if we can push his ideas in an animist direction.

In a convivial society, the human tool user can enter into a partnership with a tool such that the human can exercise their creativity freely while respecting the nature of the tool and the tool can fulfill its own purpose freely and peacefully, without dominating its human partner.

The question then becomes: can I enter into partnership with this tool? Will the partnership be one where each respects the nature and role of the other?

I need to make a fine measurement so I partner with a caliper and it gives me the measurement. We each accomplish our purpose. But if I then use the caliper as a hammer, I am not respecting the nature of the tool and it will not cooperate with me in driving a nail.

If I have a small business that I need to market to others, I could partner with the Big Tech social networks to get the word out. I am willing, for example, to learn how best to use the tool to advertise my service. But (and this is based on the experience of people I know in this situation) is the social network an equal partner? Certainly not. In order to get the word out, I must continually seek the approval of the algorithm. It’s a never-ending series of tricks I have to pull—and we’re all familiar with what that looks like. In this case, I and the tool are not in an equal partnership. No matter how much I try to adapt myself to the demands of the tool, it will never adapt itself to my needs because it is designed according to machine logic, not human nature.

So to get back to one of David’s important questions: are tools inherently convivial, or is the conviviality in the use? He makes a useful distinction between tool and technology and use. Seek (to use his example, which I like because I also use it!) is an app that helps identify plants and animals. It is a tool based on the technology of artificial intelligence. The technology could be harmful while a tool based on it could be convivial—or even just my use of it. The distinction, I say, is useful because it allows or more nuance than a simple yes/no vote on any given tool.

It’s also useful—back to the animist framework—because relationship are similarly complex and require wisdom and judgment. I can partner with Seek in order to better name the beings around me, despite the face that Seek is part of a technology that is much more complex and fraught with potential abuse. I can use my own judgment to limit the partnership in such a way that no tools or the technology they embody exercise control over my creative activity. Some tools (hammers and calipers) are simple and require less judgment; some are more complex and require it.