siete veramente perverti

One of the interesting themes of some writers is that old categories of meaning have lost their boundries, and the “memes” that originally defined those categories cross over into other categories.

For instance, Rush Limbaugh is actually very postmodern/unconventional in how he rabidly defends convention and tradition. He attacks relativism with relativist arguments. Entertaining, but absurd and nasty.

James Hillman has an interesting “take” on part of this phenomena, as it relates to economics and social conditions.

Normally, the subject of psychotherapy would seem to fall into the world of liberal, progressive culture. Some critics have disparagingly referred to the “culture of therapy” (“nanny state”, etc.) that absorbs liberal culture.

What James Hillman appears to be saying in his critique of the institutionalization of therapy is that the “bad memes” of Corporatism have leaked across the boundry into the liberal/caring institutional world. (This isn't surprising to me since I've seen “caring” culture become increasingly fascist/absolutist about “thought policing” and “political correctness” for a couple of decades.)

http://www.scottlondon.com/interviews/hillman.html

excerpts:

… In spite of these achievements, Hillman is not exactly an establishment figure in the world of psychology. If anything, he is looked upon by many in the profession as a profoundly subversive thinker, a thorn in the side of respectable psychologists.

As the founder of archetypal psychology, a school of thought aimed at “revisioning” or “reimagining” psychology, Hillman believes that the therapy business needs to evolve beyond reductionist “nature” and “nurture” theories of human development. Since the early 1960s, he has written, taught, and lectured on the need to get therapy out of the consulting room and into the real world. Conventional psychology has lost touch with what he calls “the soul's code.”
. . .

London: You're not a very popular figure with the therapy establishment.

Hillman: I'm not critical of the people who do psychotherapy. The therapists in the trenches have to face an awful lot of the social, political, and economic failures of capitalism. They have to take care of all the rejects and failures. They are sincere and work hard with very little credit, and the HMOs and the pharmaceutical companies and insurance companies are trying to wipe them out. So certainly I am not attacking them. I am attacking the theories of psychotherapy. You don't attack the grunts of Vietnam; you blame the theory behind the war. Nobody who fought in that war was at fault. It was the war itself that was at fault. It's the same thing with psychotherapy. It makes every problem a subjective, inner problem. And that's not where the problems come from. They come from the environment, the cities, the economy, the racism. They come from architecture, school systems, capitalism, exploitation. They come from many places that psychotherapy does not address. Psychotherapy theory turns it all on you: you are the one who is wrong. What I'm trying to say is that, if a kid is having trouble or is discouraged, the problem is not just inside the kid; it's also in the system, the society.
. . .

London: In The Soul's Code, you talk about something called the “acorn theory.” What is that?

Hillman: Well, it's more of a myth than a theory. It's Plato's myth that you come into the world with a destiny, although he uses the word paradigma, or paradigm, instead of destiny. The acorn theory says that there is an individual image that belongs to your soul.

The same myth can be found in the kabbalah. The Mormon's have it. The West Africans have it. The Hindus and the Buddhists have it in different ways — they tie it more to reincarnation and karma, but you still come into the world with a particular destiny. Native Americans have it very strongly. So all these cultures all over the world have this basic understanding of human existence. Only American psychology doesn't have it.

London: In our culture we tend to think of calling in terms of “vocation” or “career.”

Hillman: Yes, but calling can refer not only to ways of doing — meaning work — but also to ways of being. Take being a friend. Goethe said that his friend Eckermann was born for friendship. Aristotle made friendship one of the great virtues. In his book on ethics, three or four chapters are on friendship. In the past, friendship was a huge thing. But it's hard for us to think of friendship as a calling, because it's not a vocation.

London: Motherhood is another example that comes to mind. Mothers are still expected to have a vocation above and beyond being a mother.

Hillman: Right, it's not enough just to be a mother. It's not only the social pressure on mothers by certain kinds of feminism and other sources. There is also economic pressure on them. It's a terrible cruelty of predatory capitalism: both parents now have to work. A family has to have two incomes in order to buy the things that are desirable in our culture. So the degradation of motherhood — the sense that motherhood isn't itself a calling — also arises from economic pressure.
. . .

London: What is the danger for a child who grows up never understanding his or her destiny?

Hillman: I think our entire civilization exemplifies that danger. People are itchy and lost and bored and quick to jump at any fix. Why is there such a vast self-help industry in this country? Why do all these selves need help? They have been deprived of something by our psychological culture they have been deprived of the sense that there is something else in life, some purpose that has come with them into the world.
. . .

But when the medical becomes scientistic; when it becomes analytical, diagnostic, statistical, and remedial; when it comes under the influence of pharmacology and HMOs — limiting patients to six conversations and those kinds of things — then we've lost the art altogether, and we're just doing business: industrial, corporate business.

London: Doesn't this have to do with the fact that, at a certain point in its development, psychology adopted the reductive method in order to gain the respectability of science?

Hillman: I think you're absolutely correct. But as the popular trust in science fades — and many sociologists say that's happening today — people will develop a distrust of purely “scientific” psychology. Researchers in the universities haven't picked up on this; they're more interested in genetics and computer models of thinking than ever. But, in general, there is a huge distrust of the scientific establishment now.

London: As people rebel against the scientific approach, they often wind up at the other extreme. We're seeing many new forms of self-help and personal-growth therapies based on non-rational beliefs.

Hillman: The new age self-help phenomenon is pretty mushy, but it's also very American. Our history is filled with traveling preachers and quack medicine and searches for the soul. I don't see this as a new thing. I think the new age is part of a phenomenon that's been there all along.
. . .

My book is about a third view. It says, yes, there's genetics. Yes, there are chromosomes. Yes, there's biology. Yes, there are environment, sociology, parenting, economics, class, and all of that. But there is something else, as well. So if you come at my book from the side of science, you see it as “new age.” If you come at the book from the side of the new age, you say it doesn't go far enough — it's too rational.
. . .

————
callmesquanky,

re: raw reality (human suffering, liberation from suffering)

I'm an ex-bahai, but I think you have a valid point, aside from the religious specifics.

Why? rationalism is good for understanding “It” (objects, externals). But not “I” (inner awareness, individual emotion), or “We” (collective emotion, goodness, human decency, empathy, compassion…..).

I think you have correctly reacted against the “absolutism” that rationalism typically represents in the minds of many anti-religious people (this is probably a “projection” of the pain they experienced in a religious community, or family). Mavaddat is correct concerned about ( and presumably pained by) the absolutism in religion, but is perhaps less sensitive to rationalist absolutism.

Alienation results from modernist and postmodern conditions.

Rationalism, since it “sees” emotions/feelings from the “outside” isn't going to lead anyone, by itself, to emotional healing, or wholeness, or love, or awe of the horrible emptiness and expanse of the universe, or any of that kind of stuff.

Rationalist absolutism is as limited and “partial” a perspective as is fundamentalist/authoritarian religion.

Balanced, holistic/integral, rationalism is good. It stops “needing” to be absolutist, because it is healed of pain and suffering.

Mavaddat is right that religion isn't strictly needed in the postmodern world that has had the basis of culture “deconstructed” via pluralism and relativism. The bits and pieces of good stuff about religion can be picked up hither and yon for those interested. No exclusivist membership needed. [no dogma needed]

The bigger question is: what will replace religion now that it had been deconstructed?

The answer is: lots of scary stuff at least as bad as religion, and some good stuff.

People need to start finding the good stuff fast, but relying on a non-holistic form of rationalism won't work, it simply can't lead people to emotional healing.

What rationalism can do is tell us that our brains are wired, by evolution, for compassion and altruism, love, bliss and enlightenment.

For the next step, some healing process, and/or contemplative practice, which implies “real” community has to exist.

The larger forces of the world are hostile to holism and the integration of spirit and rationalism. Healing (emotional wellness, and the “demands” of community that rise from it: equality, justice) is a “threat” to the worship of money and ego gratification that are the driving force of Corporatism and other forms of “New Totalitarianism” that are taking over the postmodern world.

Mavaddat's rationalism is necessary, but not sufficient.

The New Totalitarians are rationalists that are irrational (their universe is one of ego, power and control for itself, and greed). The world they are creating is vile, and is likely to got more ugly and more unenlightened, and more evil, and more corrupt, fast.

Liberation from ego, from clinging, from suffering is the real game.

—–

(plus apparently more persecution of the Baha'is)

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/08/world/middlee…

I have had it with the entire human race about this very bad state of deranged brain chemistry. It is all mas mental illness. I am sick of it. All of this killing and violence for what?

http://www.conservationmagazine.org/articles/v7…

The Green Movement (and Green economy) will be driven by urban slum culture in developing countries. The center of global power will shift away from europe/usa within a generation or two. Depopulation is a bigger problem than overpopulation.

Cities are more “green” (and better in general) than rural villages. This directly contradicts the “spiritual” (romanticist) notion in bahai scripture that rural life is better.

Nuclear power is the only viable solution to global warming (which is mainly caused by coal pollution). Solar/wind are only supplemental.

Genetic engineering (of foods) can be part of the “green” movement/economy.

excerpt:
The man who helped usher in the environmental movement in the 1960s and '70s has been rethinking his positions on cities, nuclear power, genetic modification and geo-engineering. This talk at the US State Department is a foretaste of his major new book, sure to provoke widespread debate.

About Stewart Brand
Since the counterculture Sixties, Stewart Brand has been a critical thinker and innovator who helped lay the foundations of our internetworked world.

also see: http://web.me.com/stewartbrand/SB_homepage/Home…

Bob,

Thanks for sharing the link.

What you NEVER see in such propaganda is the whole truth.

What you NEVER see is honest discussion of the giant problems that have existed in bahai for many decades.

What you DO see is feel good stuff that is either just an act for the camera, or so short terms as to have no real impact on structural problems, or stuff that any group of people could have already known, or done, without all the negative baggage that bahai administration attaches to the very valid efforts of people to gain a sense of community and shared meaning at a “populist” level.

no false prophetology is needed, no dysfunctional administrative bureacuracy is needed for people to work together to solve their communities' problems, or to work together to become more enlightened, self-realized people that are transforming the world into something better.

bahai administration does not “own” people's souls, or their freedom.