Forever in draft

In the late 1980s Assad Shoman, a radical Belizean politician, reckoned that the national cultural policy should be forever in draft. This is because the national, cultural reality is in a perpetual state of flux. Other influential Belizeans felt the need to prevent traditional culture from slipping away. They would carve the cultural policy in stone and would suffer cognitive dissonance at the mere hint of change.

As with national cultural policy so with personal cultural reality. This is a matter of ‘what is’ rather than ‘what should be’. It is a fact that a new born human baby is ill equipped to survive in their natal culture on their own. However, over the course of 25 supervised years nature, nurture and serendipity serve to enculture them. The process is variously named education (informal, non-formal and formal), training, tutoring, apprenticeship, conditioning, conscientization, enlightenment, schooling, brainwashing, programming, instruction, indoctrination, enculturation. The essence involves ‘changing minds’ and developing an overall world view (Weltanschauung) linked to a series of smaller points of view.

The forces of nature, nurture and serendipity are perpetually busy with reacting and responding to changes in the internal and the external environments – physical, biological and socio-cultural. When the sperm meets the egg the process begins and continues till death. Confucius and the Jesuits are famous for their assertion ‘give me the child till he is five and I will give you the man.’ However, recent thinking about neural plasticity suggests that the human brain does not reach full maturity till about 25 and even then it is capable of radical revisioning till over 100. Think of the impact of propaganda on the demonising of ‘them’ as a preparation for war.

Technology has been with us for millions of years but for most of that time there was not much change to our tool kit - a stone axe in a basket? Language has been with us for 150,000 years and that helped spur the rate of progress. Something approximating to science has been with us for 5000 years and this led away from foraging into more complex ways of being in the world of chat and tool kits. I am a baby boomer now in my late 60s and there are many other people who are 70 and over. We golden oldies have lived through massive environmental and socio-cultural change such that our overall world view has been revised many times.

My natal enculturation was upper working class, rural, Scottish Presbyterian (NE of Scotland flavour). I graduated as a biology teacher and then lived and worked in Scotland (2 years), Jamaica (2 years), Zambia (3 years), Sudan (4 years), Belize (4.5 years), Lesotho (3 years) Tanzania (several short stays) and Geneva (short visits for the ILO). Early on I was a school teacher, later I was an Education advisor and, before retiring about 10 years ago, I was a plain language editor.

SO – my personal cultural reality is particularly idiosyncratic.

SO – can the ‘real’ George (Dod) Gordon Clark please stand up

Which one? Who asks? Why do they ask?

How will they expect a reply to be structured?

The only constant thing is change.

‘I’ am forever in draft

fizzle and footer

Yesterday featured fizzle and footer.

Sometimes the monkey mind was swinging from one focus of attention to another. It was busy with fleeting and seemingly random thoughts, feelings and moods (TFM). There were hundreds if not thousands of them. But they were presumably the tiny tip of the massive iceberg created by the ongoing unconscious churn.

Sometimes the self-conscious, rational ‘I’ was present and it was threatening to run those negative TFMs associated with depression. This was not a problem. The human mindbrain evolved to make sense of inputs from the sense organs and to create suitable reactions and responses to them. It is a fiercely complex and messy business during which a negative bias is adaptive.

Sometimes the cool ‘I’ that bears witness to what goes on in my head captured the cerebral control panel and diverted attention to non-egoic states of mind linked, for example, to doodling, reading, and cooking etc. This was self-less ‘flow’ which in retrospect was close to blissful - although that label can be applied only after the event.

Today the footering fizzle has abated and there is enough calm to write about it

The indivisible oneness

Thoughts, feelings and moods (TFM) appear to my conscious mind which is deeply rooted in an evolutionary stream that stretches back to the big bang.

The TFMs come from the unconscious churn which draws meaning from inputs arriving at my sense organs (eg eyes, ears etc). I ‘understand’ the inputs by matching them with memories of similar TFMs in the past.

My TFMs are created by nature, nurture and serendipity (NNS). Nature has hard wired (a) the range of stimuli to which the sense organs can respond (eg visible light within the electromagnetic spectrum) and (b) a range of high level frameworks which can be filled out during the nurturing process. ( eg my nature creates the ability to learn a language but the details of the particular language are provided by nurture.) Nurturing involves never-ending womb to tomb education and enculturation. Serendipity is another name for chance. (eg droughts and floods can give rise to TFMs about gruesome gods and angry ancestors.)

We can summarise the thought train with a two-way formula:

NNS <==> TFM

The NNS to which I have been encultured presumably gives rise to unconscious TFM on an ongoing basis: and some of the TFMs are passed into conscious attention where they are ‘thought about’ and then channelled back into the unconscious where they influence the nurturing process. It is an ongoing two-way process;

Cause <==> Effect]

NNS is the cause of such TFMs as may appear in the self-conscious. The new born baby has built in nature which acts as a foundation upon which to build nurture and serendipity. But what is the cause of the Nature? The answer is evolution which results from natural selection acting on the variations that are generated during sexual reproduction: and this allows for the survival of the fittest. But the ‘fittest’ what?

There are three phases of evolution – Cosmic, Biological and Cultural. Biological evolution deals with individuals while cultural evolution deals with groups communicating with each other using language

Reality changes from one, mind-made thought moment to the next. The thoughts (TFMs) exist in some individual minds more than others and their popularity is constantly changing. Minds change to harmonise with ongoing changes in the internal and external environments. We might thus be led to ask “What’s it all about, Alfie?

We can deal with particular topics using whole systems theory. This involves moving from sub atomic particles through cells, from individuals through cultures, from ecosystems through the planet, from solar systems through the cosmos and so on till the big bang.

Different Alfies will answer the question differently depending on their pattern of enculturation and specialist know how. For example, those who, like me, have been got at by academia include thoughts of the:

Atomic physicist, biochemist, palaeontologist, astronomer, archaeologist, psychologist, sociologist, anthropologist, economist, politician, ecologist, philosopher, neurologist, cleric, historian, journalist, novelist, poet.

There is the idea of nesting. Thus a ‘thing’ is made up of smaller things and is at the same time a part of something bigger. And, as a general rule, a whole, at whatever level, is greater than the sum of its individual parts.

A thing (eg me), is made up of sub-things (eg organs and tissues) and is part of a super thing (eg cultures and technologies).

Sub-thing ↔ thing ↔ super-thing

Carl Sagan reckoned that we are stardust that evolved and created consciousness (ie the ability to be aware of and respond to changes in the external environment,). And then consciousness evolved and created the concept of an ego or self-consciousness. The stardust congeals into droplets of self-centred ego that are successful in turning increasing amounts of the substance of planet earth into human beings.

Unfortunately this ego-centric and anthropocentric point of view is leading to the destruction of the planet as we know it.

Fortunately ego is mind-made and has no abiding reality: and, over the last 4000 years or so, there have been individuals who have (a) intuited the non-abiding nature of the ‘self’ and (b) transcended it.

There are two forms of transcendence. One is ‘flow’ and is known amongst athletes as being in the zone and by improvising musicians as being in the groove. These transcendent frames of mind are non-egoic. Self consciousness melts away and the unconscious is in control. The mind has a mind of its own.

The other form of transcendence involves mindfulness. This is rooted in Eastern traditions and comes in a variety of forms. One of the main ideas involves watching the breath such that you become still and know the peace that passes all understanding.

SO – “What’s it all about Alfie?”

• The ordinary mindbrain can be transcended
• It is never too late to change your mind
• Nothing comes from nothing
• The indivisible Oneness

The clothing of language

• Plato reckoned that information can be true when it is rationally related to the real reality that is out there (ie to the Platonic ideals).
• Lao Tzu reckoned that the reality that can be described is not the real reality. This is because language cannot do justice to reality.
• Mystics reckon that reality can be intuited when the mind is in a meditative state of non-egoic flow (ie when in a transcendental condition).

In ‘fact’ all beliefs, feelings and intuitions are mind made: and they are developed and sustained using language in a variety of sociocultural settings.

Culture is like mental clothing woven in words – the new born baby learns to wear it. It provides the nurture that complements their nature. But in this case there is no going back. We are social animals that cannot return to being culturally naked.

BUT there is globalisation - and cultures collide. There are many ways to be human. And many more  people are becoming acquaint with a range of options in the nature v nurture debate.

Intellectually honest people can no longer be zealous xenophobes. There may still be them and us but there are expanding horizons which can lead to a state of ‘no boundaries’ (ref Ken Wilber). There is no demonic propaganda but rather thoughtful discussion leading to win/win agreements among like minded souls.

SO – the emperor of global thought (ie public opinion) is fashion conscious and has a wardrobe full of cultural clothes which more or less suitably address the human condition as expressed in a planetary game of Chinese whispers replete with cumulative errors.

BUT we now have Chinese whispers on the internet. There is thus an irrevocable, bottom up groundswell of a new hegemony where ‘truth’ is spoken to elegant power.

AHA – a meme – ‘speaking truth to debunk the hegemony of elegant but elitist power’.