Empathy…Intersubjectivity…efforts…

empathy

Empathy: A Way, but not My Way

O.E.D. – Empathy / einfuhlung

  • “The power of projecting one’s personality into (and so fully comprehending) the object of contemplation”
  • “to feel oneself into it”
  • “the feeling-out of other minds”
  • “a form of imaginative identification of self with non-self, a feeling-into”

 

Feeling out, feeling into, projecting one’s experience in order to absorb the experience of another.  “In and out of one another’s bodies” (Maurice Bloch), “intersubjectivity” (Daniel Stern).

Notebooks full of conjuring, I’ve dreamt and striven to elucidate or embody, to caress and coerce language to convey or carry-like-a-message the interpersonal convergence, experiential agreement we might be signifying with the syntax and semantics of empathy.

There were moments, instants, it seemed evident, nearly obvious – as when a child ran itself across a brittle late-summer yard, lodging a prickled sticker in the pad of its heel, and hearing its friend following close behind, sensing its similar fate…a kind of “predictive apprehension” become co-mprehension as experience is multiplied, at least observably shared – at least sympathy – a feeling-with, if not –out; and –into.

Two humans losing their loved ones, or spouses enduring the same tragedy?

Experience-learning applied to replicated or duplicated occasions.  Similar, perhaps, sympathic.

But “fully comprehending” journeys beyond this.

Apparently, empathy happens when one extends emotion beyond the individual body and absorbs, joins, or feels-into another – a verge of meeting, movement,

beyond into between, meshing as a sunset goes about forming itself, or the creation of fog – something like con-gene-ial requirements.  Some of us, hell, all of us (and more) share genes, so this must be possible (we have a word for it after all!).

Our forms, our reach, must be flexible.  We share-with, finally, down to our atoms out through our environment, galaxy, and beyond.

EXTENDED – EMBODIED – EMBEDDED

-components of empathy-

 

…a coordination of coordinations of actions…

(Humberto Maturana / Francisco Varela)

 

            Perhaps empathy, a possibility of intersubjectivity, occurs when subjects extend awareness through a mutual orientation into a consensual domain…each feeling-out the other by feeling-into a shared sensual arena, learned by experience and therefore anticipated predictively…in rare occasions of empathy…simultaneously!?

In other words, based out of our shared genetic realities, generated by the kinds of experiences and “worlds” our species can have, we feel-out of our heartbreak, grief, joy, ecstasy, fear – emotive and sensual experiences – into con-sensual co-ordinated domains of those experiences occurring in some liminal, marginal space verging each; similarly to the way a coastline clearly separates and thoroughly connects sea and land, while both continue going on underneath one another.

Perhaps.  But I was not seeking to describe, explain, or indicate empathy in language, my desire was to enact it, evoke it…and in that I have failed…ever to try again.

A Letter of Yearning Light – Friday Fictioneers 1-17-2014

Copyright - Erin Leary

It mingles as I tarry here.  Fence and branches joining what they distinguish.  From here to there I yearn.  Details all so near.  In my reaching they grow hazy.  I long for you.  I follow.  I wander.  Toward you?  From me?  Out beyond?

There was a time.  It’s lost its focus.  Forward, back, I cannot tell.  I am here.  A something-is divides us.  Even as it joins.  I reach across.  I feel you back.  And yet.

Yet not.  The moony sun illuminates.  Draws attention.  Drawing all the lines connecting us, all the angles between.

**********************

Many thanks to Rochelle Wisoff-Fields and Erin Leary‘s image

for the continuous and faithful prompts to compose 100 words

responding to instigating images and the Friday Fictioneers participants

Immunity (Writing from Everywhere)

perhaps you will be able to play this WHILE you read the linked entry below (as it was written)

Immunity (Writings from Everywhere)

Our 80/20 Vision and Rememory

“Nothing’s like anything else in the long run.

Nothing you write down is ever as true as you think it was.”

-Charles Wright, “Lost Souls”-

Rememory is just a thing we do when we “need” it – or, for reasons that aren’t really rational at all – we seem to feel we do.  In other words, our experience (what our organism, our little assemblage of cells, lives through) works in us like nutrients that our neuronally connected organs (even smaller collectives of cellular functional troupes) select predictively – as probable perhapses – to aid our survival in each moment.

That it’s always subject to change, often flatly incoherent, or dreadfully inappropriate to any given situation proffers no guilt or dishonor – could we really expect accurate predictions of unforeseen and total novelty with infinite contingencies each next moment is?

We do the best with what we have.  After all, we’re not even able to use our tools intentionally – they work on automatic algorithms we are not aware of unless there is a problem.  Scientists might use machines and fabricated contraptions or instruments to measure and calculate “experiences/experiments” – something semi-controlled, devised and arranged in a lab.  We, on the other hand (scientists included), do not have access to our controls (of which there really aren’t any – just meticulously interconnected and recursively interactive meshworks) – our controls (or rather, effects) result in their humming along.

Ah, rememory, refraction – there whenever we need it (or think/feel we do, or hadn’t even sensed it) – and never to the point but that we make it so – experiencing piecemeal fragments the system spits out in relation to itself and its environment, and puzzling them together as if encountered in the world – using them like stencils or frames through which to assess our surrounds.

What a tricky treat!  Phantasms of deconstructed digestions floating a stream, plucked willy-nilly by impulsory triggers and collaged onto a canvas called Perception.  Howdy-do!  When 80% of the show is our relation to ourselves, it’s no wonder we feel criticized!  (for a sensory example – here’s a breakdown of what influences what we see….):

Vis Path 3

– from Maturana and Varela, The Tree of Knowledge

Each of us with our 80/20 view on the realms between – the worlds we share – it’s no wonder we’re ill at ease arguing agreements.  I’d have to ask my sons to calculate the potentials, but even from my 80+20 it’s infinitesimal – our shot at “sharing a moment” as we say.

Hanson brain

-from Rick Hanson, Buddha’s Brain

Perhaps to some Turing machine, or deep-distance galaxy view we’d look like a calibrated system, but the contingencies and unknown variables all changing with each changing change surpass even the weather…

So go on rememoring and adapting your stories, just keep in mind the bric-a-brac you’re rummaging in and it’s exponentially altering situation and experiencing states (by the millisecond), and consider offering those with and around you something in the neighborhood of 80% benefit of your doubt (your self-generated POV)!?

“I give you mine [dreams] for the same reason,

To summon the spirits up and set the body to music.”

-Charles Wright, Lost Souls-

 

There’s a story behind it

blank notebook

 

notebook paper

 

wrinkled paper

A Kind of Credo : Intertextuality : “Art is Difficult” : Manifesto?

“perhaps our arrival at interpretive conclusions participates in that process and affirms the inescapability of attempting to read the world in an empowered way, even if we are always missing the point”

-Anne McConnell, Approaching Disappearance

But then there is a reality to writing – the unexpected, the making-up, emergence and invention.  I believe in it, in spite of my theories, in spite of acquired knowledge.  Something like the terms of paradox.  Little matter, much substance (not really).

For fun, let’s say (in the manner of a credo):

  •  “I believe…

that language is a socially constructed resource recursively constituting and innovating meaning potential

  • “I believe…

‘the notion of meaning potential can be characterized as a heterogeneous totality of knowledge of conventionalized patterns of normatively correct situated verbal behavior which manifests itself and emerges from social practices of a given social community’ (-Mika Lahteenmaki)

  • “We believe…

that actual meanings are emergent from meaning potentials – are jointly created – recursively and interactively dependent – in their situatedness and perspectivity, unique and irreducible

  • “We believe…

‘reality works in overt mystery’ (-Macedonio Fernandez, via JL Borges)

  • “We believe…

that to live ‘is to make all these repetitions coexist in a space in which difference is distributed’ (-Gilles Deleuze)

  • “We believe…

that living occurs via the ‘conservation of autopoiesis and the conservation of adaptation – a constant and mutual structural coupling of continuous transformations betwixt organisms and environments (envorganisms)’ (-Humberto Maturana, Francisco Varela, Paul Kockelman)

  • “We believe…

in complexity and meaning, difference and repetition, redundancy and novelty, structures and contingencies, openness and change

Measures of reality (situated and perspectival…partial and relative to) – our As-if-oscope and Toxic spoon-deep.  A hurly-burly and chaotic entanglementintertwingled – adjoined in movements (writing of writing) to use an outdated metaphor:  textuality and trace.

  • “We could believe…

that ‘texts record the meanings we make: in words, pictures and deeds…shaping and shaped by our social relationships, politically, as individuals as members of social groups’ (-Jay Lemke)

That no effect is not mutual, recursive, intermingled and intertwined.  Life is ambient, writing of writing.

In other words.

  • “We believe…

that ‘Art is difficult’ (-Viktor Shklovsky) and meanings dialogic/multilogic / multimodal/multivalent (-Mikhail Bakhtin, Gunther Kress, Bruno Latour, semiosis)

Empiricism regarding ourselves is impossible (the situation and perspective necessary are not available) so we rely.  i.e. we need one another and beyond.  Envorganisms, we.  We believe (we could say.  I might).

“When we leave each other, we leave.”

Henrik Nordbrandt

A text composed is intertexuality – an Irish monk illuminating a copy; a modern blogger mashing-up – bricolage, meaning – I write, WITH.

To say I instantiate a social practice.  It becomes.

Thank you.  And welcome.

-a glyph is a hunt for optimism-

Slideshow of works cited:

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A Real-ization?

A Real-ization(?)

“…And here begins my despair as a writer”

Jorge Luis Borges, “The Aleph

 

I should say, “began.”  And not “as a writer,” per se, or even primarily, no, I should more accurately portray the experience “…and so began, and ever continues to begin, my despair as a human.”

For experiences, no matter where or when, in full matter of where and when, are multitude that begin such despair.  They are occurrences of a process we call variously “knowing,” “comprehending,” “understanding” – encounters with unlimited and unnecessary contents we might describe as “revelatory,” “visionary,” or “true.”  We describe their feeling and fumble with content.

For they seem to circumscribe an everything – as contained and opening out – well-metaphored by the scientifically religious Big Bang, an un-caused cause or some like.  Experiences we couch in the babbles of mystery: synchronicity, omniscience, omnivorous, omnipotent and omnipresent.  We feel them like an orb or spiral, a series of looping waves without succession.

A.k.a “convergence,” simultaneity and emergence coming together at now and here.

I write “as a human” because I cannot be anything else.  And a human, as a living being, is characterized by limitations and potentials.  Although kinds of things never exhaust their potentials (as far as we know) – thereby always altering what might constitute affordances and constraints lists – nevertheless, in order to be unique (or anything at all – “what –so-ever”) humans must be limited, those limitations providing the very contexts for exploring potentials and potency.

One such environment or niche is the operation of our living processes in space and through time.  I.e. a simultaneous occurrence of everything cannot be processed, cannot be shared, as such.  It must needs be dissected and dismembered via many spaces and over time in order to be perceived by such an animal as we – re-membered and imaged-in (imagined) according to our nature (our processes and practices in our environments).

This is why moments we might re(in)fer to as “transcendent” or “wholistic” perhaps “encapsulating” or “converging” – compressing and expanding (synonymously) some happening that seems “total” generate despair for our kind or species.

I am unable to deny what comes to experience, but with labels and descriptions (interpretation) must take care.  One often turns to symbols or metaphors: icons that serve to absorb a variegated but comprehensible share of human experiences.  Accrued via descriptions and depictions over time, these symbols resonate and traverse times and boundaries in order to gather experiences of a kind.  Take for example the term “hunger,” or a drawing of an eye.  Mirrors, or a resolving I-IV-V progression.  These activities of reference and participation, renewal and recognition, present and re-present for us experiences that seem to extend or equal (again, synonymously) us.

Despair comes in the desired specificity each individual of the species wishes to convey (form of convergence – communicate meaning for our kind can be spotted by our use of the prefix co-).  That experience (in itself necessarily co-), in order to have meaning(humanly speaking) must be shared – we find that telling/singing/dancing/painting/acting/writing/ filming/making/working/sculpting/creating/crafting or any combination of them all and the human-specific processes this entails are unable to re-present such “totalizing” experiences, except at certain angles, perspectives, fragments, over time.

Yet, were it otherwise, we would have no need of any of our abilities – for we would know.  The relations, practices, potentials and processes depend on this inability (limitation) to be.  For us to be, as humans, what and whom, where and when, we are.

Unity would undo this.  In fact, we have no evidence that ANY living entity “shares alike” – reciprocates perfect understanding or replication (or reproduction, ex-ist-ing) exactly…down beyond our cells…there is difference, mis-matching, variation.  In fact, all the co-operations that provide con-vergence and co-mmunity, me-and-ing (meaning) depend on the disjunctions we strive to come over or through in order to express, be understood, known, “as one.”

So, though never “of the same mind,” perspective, or feeling, even when we experience me-and-ing together (gathered) – – this is also how we are.

Perhaps then, less despair than real-ization?

 

8th segment

’cause I don’t have to stop.  ’cause it doesn’t.

experience anyway cover

8

            And now “I” am different, again.  Change.  Is how I would “put it.”  What with the whip of atoms calling “I” ever-coupling to the Itself that the “I” calls “world,” really, when one gets down to it, in it (always), the distance is elusive (is “illusion”).  And so “I” changes at the rate of the wind “I” is sharing; of the sea “I” is seeing; of the matter (volatile shivering).

It is Here.  We are.  Since we cannot claim a territory, we strain for modes to re-fer (de-fer?).  Differ.  We’re attuned to it.  The rhythm of our tune is differance.  There is no reason that suffices.  We are in it.  It.

A live.

In vocalizing, movement sounds (for humans).  Or in gesture – perceptible matter (always suited to the version capable).  It is always a matter of moving around, shuffling space with time.  I cry, there is movement.  The air and the chemical sea.  I look – things displace, replace, are placed by my gaze – an interactive mechanism – part of a NEVER discontinuous train.

We touch, because sound, because cell, because particles and waves (as both) – because movement.  Because “separate” is an aberrant traction (abs-traction).  A practical folly.

I love you – re-cognition that borders are empty, margins erased.  That “you” and “I” intersperse (wind, sea, light) molecules.  Movement.  Alive.  I love a live.

Because live doesn’t noun an “f.”  Life.  Life is a period, an arbitrary stop.  Imposed.  But a “v” simply vibrates.  We are a-live.  We are the living.  Even the “the” can’t contain it.  It rushes the punctual, overcomes it.  We are us and I love you (us).

Perhaps we need little realms to find out.  To discover.  Acting networks to re-member (to sew, to put back together) what’s dismembered convention.  “The way it is” – what we’re impressed to “get by” (“survive”).

This, It, is NOT the survival of fittest, a live is the fittest and cannot be dismembered, “I’s” just being particled Lifes – and those not really – except in that most human of ways (itself a “not really” invented by us).  It is more complex than that (call it “what’s live” or Enaction), and can’t be reduced to its “parts.”

Nor combined in a “whole” (another punctuated word).  It’s not final, complete, but just changing (rates of wind, of sea of weather; of stones and planets, emotions and plants) – if we could dissect it (and we try) the variation of paces “seem” astounding…but It’s chock full of seams like two sides of paper – not different but same save the semes that are perceptible.

These semes are intended for motion:  I love you.  My so-called chapters and segments to “say” – we are us, there’s no other, and we’ve little idea of that.

“I” lean back, am exhausted, and rest (always moving).  “I” don’t see the difference in sleep.

Experience, anyway. (parts 6 and 7 are new)

This work is a slow-grower.  I think it wants to be read that way as well.  Slow accretions of interaction and recursively referent.  Not sure where it will continue.  Click the title page to investigate.  Comments are welcome.

experience anyway cover

Experience, anyway. Coupling. (section 5)

Coupling Chaos

 

5

 

Couplings

 

            We conferred, that is, we engage, experiencing contact.

 

We will set out, clinging, and submerge in, together.  To gather, to keep hold.  To track and trace in the tracing of trackings.  To recognize with(-ness).  To witness with-ness.  As experiment – critical.  Experience, anyway.  “Ours.”

 

Between the quark and the jaguar, we leap in, already moving.  Enduring much criticism: stop-motion behavior/practice.  A snipping tool.  We move on.

 

Must have been moving before we begin, different organization, as also (ever “also,” both/and) until “we” is spoken, still speaking.  In other words.

 

If complexity allows purpose, however shallowly combined – moment-airy radiant gradient – if selection involved “choice” (in other words), so we.  So-viet.  Co-Be=”It.”

 

We continue beginning potentials.  Experience.  Anyway, any way at all, even those unimagined per se – potentially – given contexts (complexes before and beyond) to speak spatially (corrupted language: co-ruptured, erupting-together).  “Always more than one,” our simple mantra.  Breathe.  Walk.

 

Early ones (to speak temporally, parler temporellement, another language) tout “the world knows not boundary.”  Perceptual divisor, arbitrary (i.e. species-specific) and then some.  Or boundary as invented in traversal, trespass, complex thoroughfare, reciprocity.  Feed-forward in a sort of randomness, chaos emerging orders.

 

We blend thus to cognize.  We merge to pattern difference.  Another way of saying “no boundary” (i.e. engagement, interactivity, living, being).  To couple.

 

Beginning again in infinite multiplicity (our limited numeracy) – were we able to count even to we.

 

casclick here to read Experience, anyway. in its current entirety