In considering progress. In thinking reflexively. In pondering what humans are as well as what we are able to produce. Gilbert Simondon, like Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari, John Deely, Mikhail Bakhtin, Paul Thibault and many other profound scientists and thinkers, continually examine “human progress” within a conceived totality of systems. This enables us to reflect, question and surmise. To be conscious. To conceive. The following article, only recently published, provides I think an intriguing overview of such networked and systemic thinking…
Last night Holly and I viewed Terence Malick’s The Tree of Life, having no preparation or knowledge about subject or style. One of those films you throw in the bag at the library so you have a variety to select from should the time offer itself.
turns out as a meditation, the oscillatory experiences of nature/grace; faith/doubt; hope/cynicism; mother/father…
and so on.
A kind of imaging of dialectics.
Aside from the choice of personal pronouns relating to “ultimate questions” it has stayed with me.
Ruminatively.
The oddities of learning development for the human organism; the broader context our lives happen within; contexts and networks, systems from family-to-universe, from cell-to-individual.
The developments of guilt and shame. The nostalgia for innocence, the wonder of betterment, of choice.
What experiences “stick” and become paradigms to fit new experiences within.
The music was glorious and suited expertly to the images and tone.
I guess I recommend it.
It is a worthwhile experience to add to your complex and idiosyncratic mix.
In the arena of my recommendation that humans watch Synechdoche, New Yorkby Charlie Kaufmann at least once every six months, to retain self-awareness and humility…
“Each biological life-form, by reason of its distinctive bodily constitution (its ‘biological heritage,’ as we might say), is suited only to certain parts and aspects of the vast physical universe. And when this ‘suitedness to’ takes the bodily form of cognitive organs, such as our own senses, or the often quite different sensory modalities discovered in other lifeforms, then those aspects and only those aspects of the physical environment which are proportioned to those modalities become ‘objectified,’ that is to say, made present not merely physically but cognitively as well…the difference between objects of experience and elements of sensation is determined primarily not by anything in the physical environment as such but by the relation or, rather, network and set of relations that obtains between whatever may be ‘in fact’ present physically in the surroundings and the cognitive constitution of the biological organism interacting with those surrounding here and now.”
-John Deely, Umwelt–
Given the apparent disjunction of its maps to the potential largesse and intricacy (unknowns) of the territory, it reconsiders.
It thinks it may be inextricably related to the territory. In no way accurately or exhaustively (in relation to the territory) yet constitutively via what kind of co-respondence pertains (in relation to the species of which it is an example).
In other words, by inter-relation to the territory, and by nature of its dynamic organismal systems of sensation-perception-cognition and communication (+ language – the capacity to model the above relational systems): it is I.
It co-evolves personhood. The capacity to refer to an I among Is. An individual personality among a We.
Map and territory, co-respondent. The map being a model of that correspondence and correlation. Therefore, of course it is idiosyncratic and fraught with misperceptions, disjunctions and erroneously organized interpretations and representations of the networked environments…yet the map = correspondence with the territory in species-specific experience.
Perhaps?
Correspondences of one to many and many to one, and to a very delimited aspect of the territory, but still constructed by real linkages (reciprocal relations and responses) to that “Territory.”
Bees’ links look different. If a lion were to speak we would not understand. Every organism its own relations to the territory, selecting and responding, sensing and processing various aspects of the territory into species-specific lifeworlds, but correlated and corresponding particular to their kind.
Or…our maps are our maps. Ever changing, adapting, responding to our environments and experiences, genuinely related to the territory, representations of our habits of being in the world (in-habit-ing it as humans).
I can’t lay claim to truth about the territory, but my maps derive from it and shape my forays within it, can be shared and examined, evaluated and adjusted with other mapmakers, and trusted as the experience of a peculiar entity of a particular species modeled in reciprocal relation to specific environs of the territory.
“The map is not the territory” but a model, a depiction, a fragment co-evolved in and with that territory, a specific kind of rendering and representation, and valuable for the explorer-species of the sign.
I’ve been working over things in my sleep. Parenting issues, marriage. Vocation deadlines, assignments. Logistics and payments and scheduling. Improbable care of the self.
– that overwhelm is inevitable, inherent.
Everything we know (or surmise) about anything indicates vast beyonds unknown and ignored. In order to see, to breathe, to speak, to hear, to feel, to think, to live. We filter and avoid. Press the vast majority of the world’s availability into a void. So of course we can’t manage our world, or comprehend, even minimally control. We can barely deal with even a relatively microscopic set of variables, and those only enough to survive.
Reminded, awake then, that overwhelm is constant and inevitable. Inherent to the systems of which we are and are a part. Living is processing vastness. Essentially unscalable. And we thought bacteria were small!
So it comes as no surprise that at times we feel oppressed, drowned, immersed – helpless, confused and at loss. Pretend for a moment that we have to-dos that seem important + unforeseen and substantial grief + illness + snow days (which = a house full of ecstatic children, active and noisy and eager to be entertained) + inclement weather shuffling schedules and doctors, activities and possibilities around + limitations of time, energy and internal resources + anxiety or mood ‘disorders’ + love and high hopes + responsibilities and intentions + fears and deep hurts + a body (bodies) mind (minds) to feed and nourish +…
Too Much Information, a saturated context for the human organism. The black box crashes. The connections run slow. The screen jerky and fuzzy. Head aches, breath thickens or shallows, noise is incommensurate – the signals scramble…
At first breach, first sign of imperturb…we check in, acknowledge – perhaps argue or fight or make love (i.e. signify our overwhelm and our intensity), sit still, register what we can…
and wake up, reminded:
WE MAKE ART.
Once ground is touched, we go in (or out) – “seventh direction perception” – we begin to consciously process/perceive.
The query that sprouted is as follows: might the activity of art-a creative dialogic relation of index-sign-symbol, signifier-signifiant-and interpreter, i.e. “becoming-forth” – expand our perceptive capacities/processing?
In other words, in enacting the relationship of making, creatively, holistically, might we draw on more of the world’s availability – perceived and “dismissed” – a fuller context of experience less limited by intentional activities of categorical aims and constraints, thereby opening more of us to more of it in an open reciprocal dynamic interrelation, thereby sort of processing in “lump sums” – a gulping digestion of overwhelm?
We set aside prescribed roles, beliefs and opinions and work out, work into, an arbitrary generalized conventional (safe) medium…we fog our normalized paradigms and strictures of interpretive alertness – mores, values, expectations and censorship – we reach out gathering in. Interact. It seems something larger is carried, is moved – more than the medium, more than ourselves, more of a context, a world.
Does art extend our perceptive capacities? Our scope of perception – to process, to be? A kind of open-boundaried passage of experiencing between organism and world?
“the rare scholars who are nomads-by-choice are essential to the intellectual welfare of the settled disciplines.”
-Szolem Mandelbrot-
After 12 nomadic years of self-study, retail labor, marriages and parenting, I am now in my second semester of graduate studies in Library & Information Sciences. As my coursework progresses and evolves toward more specified researching, the organization of my passions and values, interests and desires do as well. Over the past year my blogmanoftheword and the other blogs I participate in have primarily been creative instigations and outlets. Places where my ongoing work in art and literature can find some audience and I can process and work through ideas and conceptions as they fumble their way toward something more finished, hopefully one day publishable, perhaps useful to others. Most of my poetic efforts I have exposed through Spoondeep along with the work of a dear friend of mine. The works my wife and I set out to do and continue (not nearly as often as we desire) can be witnessed at Combinatory Art in Motion, where we attempt a contemporary and relational ekphrasis as an open and intimate artistic endeavor.
As the demands of schooling, parenting and marriage bundle and thicken, my focuses also need to sharpen and grow more efficient. In accord with this, I have changed the title and some of the goals of keeping this blog active and vital. The discipline ofLibrary & Information Sciencesis proving to be a wonderful practical theoretical grounding of the majority of those aspects I love most about our world: language, art, relationships and learning, and I am focusing my investigative work in the program on semiotics, human-information-behavior, Information Retrieval systems and tools and design, and the function of language in our acquisition of knowledge and interpretation of the world and its data. This is nothing new for me, and I have attempted and practiced many of these same methods throughout my life – reading, writing, and communicating with others.
All this to say that The Whole Hurly Burly will become a place for me to work out my creative life in language and symbols (or images) as it has been, but will probably have fewer posts and hopefully entries that are more fully developed. Research takes time, and so many hours of reading and interpretation, and as elements arise that I can only work out for myself poetically or in imaginative prose, if they seem to have some merit or I need feedback I will post them here. There may also be more theoretical hypotheses as I struggle to make sense of the many lines of thought rubber-band-balling my brain. I will keep up with Friday Fictioneersso that there will be at least one fiction exercise a week and will continue to pass on crucial inspirational quotes/music/arts/ideas as they flood my desk.
It has become very clear to me that I want whatever I do to be drawn up from the whole messy complex background texture and tangle of being a living human being among other humans and the larger matrices of the world – it is this untangleable complex and network of social and natural, individual and corporate, intimate and estranged, abstracted and imaginative realities that I take Wittgenstein to be referring to when he refers to it as“the whole hurly-burly”of our goings-on. And the sinewy, grueling and challenging process of attempting to refer to our experience semantically, in language, in symbols, in sounds and shapes is the most rewarding activity I experience – and when we come close to our desire it feels in me to be what David Foster Wallace signifies “making the head throb heart-like.”
These, then are the goals of this blog moving forward. To engage and investigate the “whole hurly burly” and to offer it to you in hopes it might cause your “heads to throb heart-like.” I cannot thank you enough for whatever time you give my process and work, your kindness in engaging and insightful comments. Here’s to development and change —
Greetings and so many thanks for those of you who take the time to investigate my works here. Our lives have been a bit topsy-turvy in the ekphrastic household – I’m adjusting back into another semester of Library & Information Science, Holly is busy practicing and painting and starting more graduate education in Expressive Arts Therapy, the kids are growing and struggling and succeeding and being beautiful young people in our world. All that to say I haven’t had the open spaces for creative composition that function effectively for creating new verbal connections – I’m sure they’re happening, I just haven’t had the time to attend very closely and note them down. I received a request to update my Currently Reading page, which I usually do 2 or 3 times a year, or as the books-at-hand protecting my desk/work area experience significant change. My “To the Library” post offered a number of new (to me) books that I’m currently intently poring through, and here are a few more titles this week:
Frank by R.M. Berry
and I’ll work on a refresher of my Currently Reading page soon!
All my Words are Silent 