Remembering Our Wolves, as Politics Heats Up

THE WOLF YOU FEED

One evening an old Cherokee told his grandson about a battle that goes on inside people.

He said, "My son, the battle is between two "wolves" inside us all. 

One is Evil. It is anger, envy, jealousy, sorrow, regret, greed, arrogance, self-pity, guilt, resentment, inferiority, lies, false pride, superiority, and ego. 

The other is good. It is joy, peace, love, hope, serenity, humility, kindness, benevolence, empathy, generosity, truth, compassion and faith."

The grandson thought about it for a minute and then asked his grandfather: "Which wolf wins?"

The old Cherokee simply replied, "The one you feed.”

Two Quotes and an Interview

for those of us examining and reexamining directions and needs

Artists can choose what their profession will be about—

inventing deceptions that encourage more consumption—

or helping repair the world. David Berman (Do Good Design)

Learn to dwell in timelessness, give yourself away, tend youth  andyfisher.     

And this Interview with Murray Stein                       

Re-Visiting Morse Peckham

These kaleidoscopic times churn and turn up new/old insights.
I've been re-reading the rich works of cultural historian
Morse Peckham (1914-1993). 
Here are my notes and underlinings from one of his books:

Art and Pornography  (1969)       

Art is the exposure to the tensions and problems of a false world so that man may endure exposing himself to the tensions and problems of the real world”

Anarchy is the mother of Order   Source of Tension:  Libido always trying to control the Ego which was trying to absorb the Libido.  Freud

Art offers not order but perceptual disorder or discontinuity,  contact with chaos

Art is rehearsal for the orientation that makes innovation possible

flickering between need for stability predictability control and innovation  risk  (free energy)

Story-Making 85 is a near instinctual activity forward, backwards, always adjusting     

All discourse is equally fictional. Putting changing, meaningless bits into a meaningful context Managing  multiple, shifting  social roles/personal (archetypal) needs Making meaningful organization of Materials via the Imagination     Contact with the Unpredictable

Porn is a Storyline, like political propaganda and religious art:   simplified view/fairy dust sacred

Human beings prefer stability to innovation… 99.9% of genetic variations are dysfunctional. Stick with ones that work  132 Human beings have two primary but divergent and irreconcilable interests. to stabilize the cognitive model;  the other is to compensate for the necessary inadequacy of the model correcting and improving through innovation

Exemplary thinking 156  is a relief from explanatory and theoretical thinking, so mediating non-verbal thinking is a further relief  157        

No aspect of the empirical world is meaningful until it elicits a behavioral response

Unreal = inability to organize it into an available belief system vs Rational/real  = cooperates with known belief system   165  Interest=activity that serves to smooth the adaptational process

Cognitive Overload 177 precedes powerful innovative thrusts/breakthroughs                                        

Need for Multiplicity of roles/models  179                     

Man is free and freedom threatens stability/predictability  two aspects of same thing: 181        

Paradise 189  = no disparity between cognitive and sensory data, (Ego and Libido)

Harmony between remembered, projected and perceived realities,  The Head, Hand, Heart

No social management necessary, futility of anarchy, trance, cult, religious deference of personal authority 192 “vacation from cognitive tension”  Issues of hierarchy, dominance, authority competition for scarce resources

NEED to disengage  from controlled society (stability/predictability) 298     

Beliefs in how much stability/Innovation is tolerable, or destructive Art-Making can effect that 300

Roadmap to introspection

This 7-page booklet may help jumpstart
some needed processing
FAST START

More through the Kaleidoscope

This Image of the Kaleidoscope has lingered for these few months.  Pieces getting re-ordered, and re-ordered; patterned and re-

patterned. the Meaning has to be discovered within the Change.
So I offer a few pieces from a stack of notes and clippings for your ordering pleasure:

"The art of medicine consists of amusing the patient while nature cures the disease"  Voltaire

"Life and Life Abundantly Comes Through Expression"  in an Arts & Crafts era pamphlet

Human nature loves heartily well-balanced irregularity and longs for it in life, in character, 

and in almost everything else     Calvert Vaux  

“attitude more than aptitude”       

We are not human beings having a spiritual experience.

We are spiritual beings having a human experience.               Pierre Teilhard de Chardin

The Arrowhead         Mary Oliver

The arrowhead,  which I found beside the river,
was glittering and pointed.
I picked it up, and said,  “Now, it’s mine.”
I thought of showing it to friends.
I thought of putting it—such an imposing trinket—
in a little box, on my desk.
Halfway home, past the cut fields,
the old ghost  stood under the hickories.
“I would rather drink the wind,” he said,
“I would rather eat mud and die
than steal as you steal,
than lie as you lie.”

More coming

Four Horsemen

For Introverts:

what's happening: Umbra Mundi
chironpublications.com/a-world-shadow-covid-19/

For Extraverts:

The best long-range view of what's (been) happening that I've seen.
onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/bies.202000063


Let me know what you think.

Eric Neumann Scapegoating; Spiritual Accompaniment

In his book “Depth Psychology and a new Ethic,” written in response to the Holocaust, Neumann argues that the “old ethic,” which pursued an illusory perfection by repressing the “shadow,” has lost its power to deal with contemporary problems. He argued that Judeo-Christian morality represses evil, leading to horrific phenomena such as Nazism. Every person has to accept the evil within him or her, not to cast it away and not to repress but to live with it, sometimes even to manifest it, and to pay the price of sorrow and guilt feelings. He was convinced that the deadliest danger now confronting humanity is the “scapegoat” psychology associated with the old ethic. We are in the grip of this psychology when we project our own dark shadow onto an individual or group identified as our “enemy,” failing to see it in ourselves. The only alternative to this shadow projection is its recognition, and integration into the totality of the self. The goal of the new ethic is wholeness, not perfection.      From Jurgen Braungardt’s website

This practice of "Spiritual Accompaniment" may be a bridge.

It's the process of contemplative listening carried out in the context of a one-to-one trusting and confidential relationship. A trained spiritual director journeys with another person by listening to that person’s life story and experiences with an ear for the movement of the spirit, the presence of the sacred, and/or the insights that come from making deep meaningful connections. By offering supportive responses as appropriate and encouraging deepening reflection, clients can open up to new understandings and paths of growth. Spiritual accompaniment is typically conducted in monthly sessions that range from 45 - 60 minutes.