Jonquil,
Since I seem to have difficulty comprehending exactly what you mean by mechanism, I offer this thread. Perhaps you and others can show me where I err in understanding.
A tentative definition of mechanism, which I’ve gleaned from your comments in other threads, might be–an oppressive mindset held by persons who see other people as mere cogs in the machinery of progress or personal gain; a mindset the oppressed often accept as part of the definition of their lot in life; a mindset that dehumanizes those who accept it by closing their channels to the infinite possibilities of being holism includes.
You and I seem to agree that the “dark, satanic mills” and “sweatshops” that chacterize the industrial revolution describe mechanism in action. Where I tend to disagree is in favor of the resilience of the human spirit (as Faulkner noted0. Often, I lapse into believing we humans are so preoccupied with personal survival that we would relinguish both body and spirit just to believe in belonging here as long as possible. Then, I see that such persons as the Dalia Lama do exist in our mean and selfish world.
You recommended the philosophical take of novelist Philip K. Dick (1928-1982). The New York times describes Dick as “A kind of pulp-fiction Kafka, a prophet.” I just finished his 45th published novel, “Voices from the Streets”. A character in that book, Marsha, talks of Jung’s acceptance of Eastern holistic ideas and Sartre’s notions of individuial responsibility. I’ll read more.
Yet, I cannot see a final closing of the channel to the greater whole, call it spirit or soul if you will. I cannot see mechanism as I understand it, even in these numb and dumb times, as our ultimate destiny. Although my definition of mechanism given above is severely abridged, perhaps even truncated, it may give us a start toward discussing what mechanism actually entails.
That’s a good synopsis, ler.
Think of mechanism as the prevailing antithesis to holism. Thus, mechanistic thinking depends on dualism and separation. It is a mindset based on the assumption that the whole is the sum of its parts, and that each part is separate and divisible from the whole. On that premise then, a mechanist sees everything else as ‘other’ and assumes that everything and every human can be studied and analyzed through dissection or disassemblement. This feeds into the ways of rationalism and science which seek to understand the world mechanistically and want to be able to fix things by replacing or repairing or treating parts analytically and chemically. Mechanists can then be thought of as analytical chemists and biogeneticists as well.
However, if the world and everything in it is not mechanistic but rather holistic, then we have a problem. That problem can be seen in the way a holistic world reacts to mechanistic thinking and action. That reaction is what we are witnessing and experiencing today with all the chaos, unrest, instability, and destruction across the planet. People know that something is wrong, but they think that mechanism is the answer when it fact it is the problem. If you give power to a machine in order to get control of the world that way, things will only get worse. As Albert Einstein said, insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result. That’s what we have now, a vicious cycle of utter irrationality at play as the world spirals down into complete collapse. The solution, then, is not more of the same, but rather a virtual metanoia, a global mindchange from mechanism to holism; from self-interest to altruism; from fascism to cooperacy.
Thanks,
In the last midcentury many writers believed that we had already blown it, that we were doomed to live on a dying planet, whose death was orchestrated by lack of empathy (Mechanism). Some of these writers, including PKD, turned to drugs in hopes of seeing “everything as infinite” and connected.
"The force that through the green fuse drives the flower
drives my green age; that blasts the roots of trees
Is my destroyer. . ."Dylan Thomas.
Thomas understood the connectivity of all life, but went on to say that it could not be communicated where it mattered. The midcentury writers were longing for some sort of algorythm, template, life raft, that would make of flux a static reality. Religions, philosophies and sciences are engaged in this–in the primordial humans looking at stars and imagining lines representing things they knew. Dick’s characters appear to me to be suffering from the dictates of evovling possibilty in a world where such is becoming decreasingly allowed. They see the well springs of creativity chocked by entrpy and lack of empathy.
And–politics is welcome here. It fits in. I see Obama’s fault as believing Christianity could be legislated. It can’t be because, among the majority of those who vote, the Golden Rule is less personally attractive than is the Gold Rule (Get more!) But, that attitude calls for some compassion. Things are the only enforcements of self-worth many people have. If we react to venality and greed simply with disgust and anathema, we will never influence a change in the attitude. It’s a life raft in a turbulent sea!
These are very apt and beautiful thoughts, ler. The idea of flux suffuses the holism of David Bohm, whose river metaphor also reminds me of Heraclitus and Bede. I think the pre-Socratics and the Catholic mystics were on the same quantum and mystical page as Bohm, and I have always been mystically inclined to holism from a young age, particularly after reading Steinbeck’s Grapes of Wrath and Log from the Sea of Cortez where he so eloquently represents the sacred and holistic view of life fleshed out with his friend Ed Ricketts while drinking and philosophizing in Pacific Grove. I sometimes wish I could have been a fly on the wall there. Also, it turns out that Joseph Campbell spent some months in Pacific Grove studying with Ricketts, drinking with Ricketts and the Steinbecks, making a pest of himself with Steinbeck and ruining his marriage, and then taking a marine biology expedition up the west coast northwards with Ricketts. That must have been some experience!
What is it about California that produces such great holistic writers like Steinbeck, Jeffers, and Dick? And it was from my family in California that I got introduced to ESP at age 16, and life has never been the same since. It’s my California roots that saved me from Texan fundamentalism and racism, that moved me into mindbending and mind expanding explorations, but not as much through drugs as through consciousness raising reading and practices. I am so grateful for that I can’t tell you.
I really like that quote from Dylan Thomas. I definitely think that our great poets have a direct line into holism and mysticism; that’s where the great thought and the art originates. If you are a poet, it’s there for you too. There’s an energy to it, and tapping into it puts the artist in direct contact with the true reality that informs consciousness and all of life. Yeats knew it too. He called it the Spiritus Mundi, and he spoke often of the world of spirits, fairies, transformations, second sight, and so on. It’s all there in our Celtic roots, I think. It has followed us in our blood, so to speak.
I don’t know what you mean about Obama believing that Christianity could be legislated. You’ll have to elaborate on that with examples. It’s definitely true of many Republicans and the Christian right. GW Bush actually legislated morality and faith based initiatives from the oval office. That was truly scary. Now, with Reeps in charge of so many state legislatures, it’s going to get worse. Look for abortion rights to be severely restricted, and for rightwing fundamentalist agendas to start becoming legislated in the public schools. Teachers are going to have a very tough time of it because they will lose their jobs for teaching good science or refusing to teach creationism. One teacher just got in trouble for having a conversation with students about learning to see gays as fellow humans in an effort to reduce bullying. It’s a tough world out there with crazed limbaughtomized xtians in charge.
Ier,
What may be a personal revelation isn’t necessarily something enjoyed by everyone. Think of a river, where most of the water simply flows past any given point. Occasionally, unaccountably, a tiny swirl will appear unbidden in that flow. This is more like my observations of humanity than anything else. The tendency is to see awareness as something special, mistaking relative rarity for a unique special insight. It isn’t. Some of us just look at the world “standing on our head”, like that tiny swirl in the mass of river water. Why? Damned if I know. Like the poets and authors so generously referenced, it just happens. Is this a blessing or curse? Again, I don’t know. For me, it is simply part of the ineffable mystery and the rest is to get through the day in the best way possible. What is mystery isn’t also magical. To see holistically doesn’t mean I don’t have to take the trash out…
Neither mechanism nor holism are correct representations alone, as both are accurate accounts of differing aspects.
Both are nothing but perspective means of articulation for tangibility; that is all.
There is no problem unique to now that hasn’t been from the onset of humanity.
It is a simple equation; population density and demand of livelihood.
Reduce one or the other; or both; and your perceived problems will reduce in magnitude, but they will still exist in ratio.
Tent & Stumps,
How I wish the human dilemma of experiencing an isolate self in dire need of some complementation with what is other could be simply reduced to perpectivism. The experience and need are archetypal, among humans, universal. There is nothing magical, mystical about it. There is no demand that we put our heads in the clouds and forget about taking out the trash–although that does happen with some.
There is within us a hunger for completion, an existential hunger. I can explain it in genetic terms, but I won’t go there yet. This is not a desire for the ineffable, if by ineffable we mean something more than what is human. From the first records of history and from looking at primitives still extant, the hunger and upreach are evident. Many Shamen and Priests have served as guides for the upward extension of humans. Jung, Cambell, and writers presented here have realized these things on a gut level. If what they realized was not really a human expression, but, instead, the documentation of a fluke of nature, no one would have found their writings meaningful.
What, in what I wrote, causes what you wrote to not be possible or in conflict?
I simply said that neither were the nature of things, but instead perspectives; but that the core issue isn’t how we look at things but our population density and demand for livelihood.
I wasn’t talking about isolationism.
But you are wrong. What is at stake in these views is the very nature of reality. There is one reality viewed from the mechanist position and another viewed from the holistic position. What you are doing here, rather insidiously, is hijacking the thread in order to change the topic.
Though I’m not sure why Stumps is mentioning population density here, I see no evidence of anything insidious going on. Is there a reason you’ve come to this conclusion? I agree with him that views are perspectives. The nature of reality is not at stake. What’s at stake is how you and I relate to each other, and to the world we share.
Um…I’m definitely not being insidious, and I’m not sure what I have written that denotes this air to you Jonquil.
Nor am I attempting to hijack the thread.
Your central point about mechanism is the endless assumption that there are actual components of which can be exchanged independent of the whole and tinkered with for what is perceived as improvement.
Your assertion is that this is incorrect, and that the holistic approach is more apt in that all is a whole and not pieces assembling together to comprise a whole.
That the endless mechanism viewpoint, largely starting from the age of enlightenment, is tearing down and inhibiting cohesive life rather than furthering it as it purports to be in aim and ambition of doing.
I am simply saying that the viewpoint of mechanism is not the fault-line of degradation of societal livelihood.
I am saying that we would accomplish the same degradation via holism.
Whether you pick atomism or holism, I am saying, that at this stage in the evolution of humanity either would lead to the same degradation level because neither are the cause of the observed degradation in my opinion.
In my opinion, it is inevitable and consequent to our shear mass in relation to our proximity and connection.
If you stick a bunch of rats in a cage over time, it doesn’t matter whether they think in parts or as whole in their troubleshooting of obstacles in the cage; once a given population density asphyxiates inside of that cage, their societal structure will come under duress and degradation.
Switching from atomism to holism won’t solve the problem.
Switching from holism to atomism wont’ solve the problem.
You would literally have to reprogram the genetic build of humanity to include the propensity of the ant to accomplish any sort of success in holism as a solution; meaning, people would have to be alright with servitude and death for the greater whole of the colony.
That is not something that inherently exists on the scale of 7+ billion people in the capacity of the human empathy nominative range.
We can, genetically, only grasp the empathy range of a few hundred at best as the typical individual.
However, our average advanced society has cities commonly numbering into the millions.
The washout to tangible relation of empathy to another person in that city in general is at a 10,000 to 1 odd against the standard capacity of people the average person can encompass in their number of empathy.
This means that the average person is nothing more than a thing that moves and is not capable of being thought of deeply as an emotional attachment nearly as much as smaller groups of humans that live in a few hundred people, or less, density .
So my point, again, isn’t to derail the conversation or hijack it.
It’s to say that neither atomism nor holism are the answer or the problem.
100 people can live together fine and rejoicingly ideal across several thousand acres of open land with either being their societal vantage point or central philosophy.
But place 1,000,000 people into that same area and regardless of which viewpoint is being expressed, conflict and societal degradation will begin to emerge where it was not prevalent before in the same magnitude.
Stumps,
I strongly suggest that you actually read my posts and go with what I actually wrote instead of providing straw men and other wrong assumptions. You have definitely hijacked this thread to promote your own agenda instead of dealing with the issues as presented.
How is my response hijacking when this is your central point; to which I was literally responding to:
You are asserting that “mechanism”, or atomism, is the problem to all of the chaos, unrest, instability, and destruction across the planet.
I am simply saying that it is not, and switching to holism won’t make it go away.
His post seemed on topic to me. 
The topic is mechanism and spirituality, though from the content of the initial posts it seems to be, more specifically, mechanism and holism. Stumps gave his view on that. Is he not welcome here for some reason?
It’s not hijacking, and now that you’ve posted a couple more times I know why you brought up population density.
Whoa! Let’s not get into hijacking, usurping or other such personalizations. If we want to be personal, lets show what of the person among humans appears to be universal. We’re all in this boat together. Some see it as sinking; others see it as evolving. Both considerations have merit, because of our personal experiences of growth and entropy.
Perhaps holism is misinterpreted here because it has not been clearly defined. It seems to represent a globilization that homogenizes human differences and alligns with mechanistic depersonalization. IMHO, population density is not the current problem. Global, instant communication has put diverse life-affirming beliefs in each others faces. We must somehow join or die, must somehow see what we have common while not dismissing what is not. Perhaps in that sense the holism spoken of by mystics is nothing more than the recognition of our common humanity, the “last, best hope” for human survial
Although he was a minister, Malthus was a liar, trapped in fear.
Jonquil,
By Christainity as pertains to Obama, I saw him as attempting to attend to the here and now social problems from the perspective of Christ as a way, a method, a means, an ideal, and not as some personal idol that allows one to believe he/she is freed from the prospect of hell, but allowed to continue doing what brings hell for many here on earth.
Methinks that jonquil believes that reality as viewed from the holistic position is reality as it is.
S.,
So glad to see you here! So, do you know what Jonquil thinks? Have we described anything here clearly enough to come to such conclusion? Bring Nietzsche into this disussion. I’d like that. He’s pivotal in the enlightenment/modernism evolution.
First, there is a difference between dualism and mechanism. Dualism is a way of perceiving and dealing with the world that is necessary for many humans to survive because that is their primary assumption about reality. The brain distinguishes between this and that, and it even needs the distinction between this and that to make sense of the physical world and negotiate it in order to live.
Mechanism, however, is the outlier taken from dualism and morphed into an assumption that everything, including animals and humans, can and must be thought of and treated as machines. This is an idea that began with Descartes’ “beast machine” and grew into La Mettrie’s “human machine” in 1748. Then, once the Industrial Revolution was firmly in place as the arbiter of the manner in which people would live their lives, literally as machines and as cogs or numbers in the greater machine of the industry, the school, and the state, then mechanism was able to take hold of public minds and consciousness in a big way. Now it is the primary meme that drives western thinking, and I believe it is spreading across the world where western industrial models and mechanistic practices have encroached. It’s hard to resist since humans driven by that model of thinking and living have a strong sense of rightness and entitlement to other people’s space: their land, their resources, their bodies, their minds, and their beliefs. Add to that the fact that mechanists also have huge corporations and governments with which to wield their weapons, weapons by which they conquer and enslave others and take over. In many cases, it’s either conform or die; and I’m certain that there’s a kind of Stockholm Syndrome operating in the process as well, particularly in the men who feel as though they have to adopt western dress, thinking and practice even in their own countries. Very little is left of indigenous holistic societies to show us what that manner of life, thinking, and practice is like. But we do have great books like Blackfoot Physics to give us a pretty good idea of what has been destroyed. We also have individuals who have somehow managed to retain a sense of holism, who have experienced life in such a way that scientific mechanism cannot explain, and they have offered us a different way of viewing life, the mind, and spirituality.
What we are missing in our mechanistic Weltanschauung is the concept of wholeness and connectedness, which is our birthright and the essential reality of the world. Many of us are so conditioned and inured in the mechanistic view of the world, that we just go along with it and assume it is right and that it is the only reality. What is lost is the sense and the knowledge that there is a greater reality, and that we are one with everything in a holistic organic nexus or flux. Hence, it serves our best interests to live in accord with that reality, treating ourselves and mother nature with respect and a wish to keep things in harmony and balance instead of the chaos and destruction that is now prevalent in our very distressed world.
Sorry, I just don’t get this view. I see Obama as dancing with the ones that brung him to office, the rich financiers and corporatists. Now he’s just a puppet trying to jiggle his strings a bit as they become ever tighter.
“Methinks” means “it seems to me”. I base this on all I’ve read by jonquil. And it explains her response to the Stumps. But she’s free to correct me if she thinks I’m wrong.
By the way, Stumps, there’s a mistake in your signature picture.