On being an initiate

Ken Wilber has the concept of ‘no boundaries’. The idea is that the process of enculturation causes individuals to adopt a narrow world view. As a general principle, this is a good thing. We are social animals and need rules and regulations. But also as a general principle, this is a bad thing in that we are cut off from many possibilities and thus we do not achieve our potential. This is unfortunate for two main reasons (a) being stuck in our ways we are unable to change with the changing environment and (b) we miss out on many alternative ways of being human.

Archaeology has shown that, since ancient times, there has been easy mobility over great distances of tools and practices and presumably of ideas and people We can thus speculate that the masses are narrow minded and parochial while there is allowance for a few explorers and traders who are broadminded and cosmopolitan.

Most of the people most of the time would have thought that their main boundary was the skin. Then there was the family (usually extended before the welfare state), then the community (It takes a village to grow a child), and so on through the nation, humanity, the environment, the planet and the cosmos. There are ‘No boundaries’ after apprehension of the Oneness.

In these modern times it is normal for people to expand beyond their natal enculturing. Shakespeare reckoned that a person in their lifetime plays many parts. They begin as the children of particular parents and branch out from there. Some people branch out further and more often than others. Think of your graduating class from primary school. Where are they now? … In lots of places.

As a child I got mixed messages about how to be. They came from my mother, father and my father’s sister who was an unmarried, primary school teacher who kept me supplied with books. I am brother to two sisters – one older and one younger. So it was a fairly standard enculturation into dour, NE Scotland Presbyterianism where the devil finds work for idle hands; where meticulous housewives snoop from behind lace curtains; and where there is broad and deep worry about what the neighbours would think. I resolved to find better ways to be human.

I did well in school and there was a serendipitous early involvement with field archaeology which introduced me to middle class academics and awakened an ongoing fascination with cultural evolution and with the why and how of changing minds.

I graduated in Zoology in 1971 and committed to zero population growth. I trained as a teacher and taught in four countries before becoming an education advisor in three countries. Along the way I acquired a couple of Master degrees, found work as a short term plain language editor, and had several years contemplating the infinite. Green socialism should rule – OK.

Along the way I read several  bookshelves of non-fiction tomes from cutting edge thinkers. In more recent times I listen to the luminaries on TED and follow their daily thoughts on social networks.

I am now retired from paid employment but I continue to ponder the puzzle of changing minds – my own and possibly a few others who read my blog. After several years of fairly regular meditation and mindfulness I find it easy to be content with whatever is happening in the here and now. (Note there is a powerful drive to get to grips with new ideas from evolutionary psychology and neuroscience.)

The project at the moment is to (a) read, write and doodle in a state of non egoic flow and (b) release the products to the world via web sites and a blog.

SO – I have been culturally initiated many times. My boundaries are way out. There are many ways to be human.