Tripping the Dreck Eclectic · 9 March 2008

I can feel you all out there bristling that I’d fill this space with ideas that are not “all mine,” that I would present this system as if it could be valid. Do devil’s advocacy for a dangerous idea that can’t hold together without tinges of hierarchical thinking, essentialism, determinism and necessity (dispositions it’s easy, these days, hate). It’s pretty irritating, I know.

But back to the idea of migrating concepts from one system to another, disrespecting them, taking them out for a night of slumming through the dreck of eclectic thinking. I guess that's a smirch on the integrity of any system.

Bring it! It’s 2008! Here, concepts are free-floating against the background of god-knows-what. They are not locked away inside isolated systems. Concepts are happy whores. Tools-at-hand. (When is somebody going to nail me on the Heidegger shit?) They are rafts to sail across whatever river, and to abandon once we reach the shore. They don’t belong to anyone. They’re loose women. I’m done trying to reign them in and judge them by the rules.

So I wonder:

What would spiral dynamics say about my reaction to spiral dynamics?

Is it more interesting to deconstruct a tool or use it to deconstruct yourself?

These are richer questions than What is wrong with this worldview? We already know how to locate the contradictions in a worldview and tear it down. Who cares? Who needs perfect worldviews?

I offer that it is worth suspending the meta-critique to look (from whatever point of view) at what is revolutionary about the proposition that consciousness evolves. The possibility that people are not all at the same place in their, well..., development of consciousness. (Insert quotation marks as needed.)

Come on. Think about where you have been in your lifetime. The ways you feel your awareness and your own ego changing. Just use your personal experience and nothing else, but subject that to some close, detailed examination. Before you turn on these questions one last time, turn them on yourself.

You are already acting on the assumption that consciousness evolves.

Posted by (0v0)        
Categories: arbitrage , social theory , spirituality

Comment

1. It’s rare that a post asks for Molly Bloom to answer (and I love that it does!), so:

   “...I was a Flower of the mountain yes when I put the rose in my hair like the Andalusian girls used or shall I wear a red yes and how he kissed me under the Moorish wall and I thought well as well him as another and then I asked him with my eyes to ask again yes and then he asked me would I yes to say yes my mountain flower and first I put my arms around him yes and drew him down to me so he could feel my breasts all perfume yes and his heart was going like mad and yes I said yes I will Yes.”

   Posted by: karen · Mar 10, 04:16 AM · #

2. Molly! Come inside and sit down a bit, dear. God knows you upset even the catholic boys, cavorting like you do.

   Posted by: (0v0) · Mar 10, 04:48 AM · #

3. Let’s not forget that the riverrun brings us back, circumlocution-style, to Howth Castle and Environs.

   Posted by: patrick · Mar 10, 06:22 AM · #

4. Are you making a spiral, Patrick? :-)

   Posted by: karen · Mar 10, 06:32 AM · #

5. But of course…I’m more down with spirals than my evolution rhetoric implies. Often, the way this culture uses “evolution” sets off my “intelligent design” hot buttons. Shall I write a long footnote-worthy post about this? :)

   Posted by: patrick · Mar 10, 08:54 AM · #

6. You know so many words. And you string them together so nicely. How come I understand so little? Sigh. I am off to research what the heck is a spiral dynamics …

   Posted by: Alfia · Mar 10, 10:20 AM · #

7. Hmmm. Is it that we pre-position ourselves to the idea that our consciousness evolves? Or is it that we know intuitively that our inner workings are not perfectly transparent to us and that we can use our vast capabilities to figure out all that stuff?

   My money is on the second scheme.

   Posted by: Carl · Mar 10, 02:29 PM · #

8. I have decided my consciousness has spiraled downward. The more highfalutin I act the more retarded I realize I have gotten. I jumped off the boat and into the river, fuck the boat. I’ll swim.
   Oh my god! I can swim! I can swim! Stupid boat leaks anyway…full of holes. Full of holes!

   Posted by: Susan · Mar 10, 05:31 PM · #

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