A good analysis. I especially like your comments about embodiment. Huxley's utopia Island is also worth reading, and in fact I discuss both in my book What Lies Beyond. In Island, Huxley has the inhabitants of his utopia take psychedelics for healing and to access mystical states of reality. Similarly, I think that mystical states might have things to teach us about reconnecting to the natural world and each other.
Hello Rachel and commentators. This was a very different essay from my expectation, and I really appreciate it.
I believe part of the west's collective treatment of the natural world is our unacknowledged extreme biophobia, and more pointedly our fears about sex and death .
Yes a million times yes. I just read this book for the first time in the beginning of the year and had very similar thoguhts. Connecting to our bodies is an act of rebellion in a political economy that thrives off its disconnection.
Inspired by this analysis I once again retraced the quote from Deleuze I've been haunted by for ages:
"When Spinoza says that we do not even know what a body can do, this is practically a war cry. He adds that we speak of consciousness, mind, soul, of the power of the soul over the body; we chatter away about these things, but do not even know what bodies can do.”
I truly wonder if we're done with placing the mind and rationality on the pedestal and heading for a better understanding of our bodies, whether individual or collective.
Yes! Your conclusion is paramount, home is where we entangle ourselves with the other bodies, transcending the shiny dreamworld of self-identity inhabitation for the messy reality of inter connectivity.
The modern attention grabbing chat bot consumerism metaverse is so clearly both a product of and panders to the mad insecurities of utter attachment to self identity as isolated minds.
An interesting teaching that comes up for me from Buddhism:
Ananda (chief attendant) says to the Buddha- “My insight is that spiritual friendship is half of the holy life”, Buddha replies “not so, it is the WHOLE of the holy life”.
‘Whole?’ Really? He goes on quite emphatically on this topic for some time...
Meaning then perhaps that we need make friends, connect with kindness, to ALL life, all experience, all embodiment and disembodiment. Total inter-relationality.
From There, all of life and experience IS holy, perfect as it is, in flow, in the middleness, in Tao.
And from there, we can truly see the shape of things, and respond to enact appropriate and positive change.
I'm in the lighthouse but I am not grieving and harming myself. I escaped. I'm no survivalist just staying sane. I hear everything, was involved in everything (almost). I use no pills. I empty the soma capsules 'cause faking is the thing when one has a direction in the turmoil. I'm blissful having noticed in time the common heading toward the slaughterhouse of happiness.
I think this is fundamental to the understanding of where we are, over-using this substitution of the real, visceral experience of engaging with life itself for the curated facsimile of life that is largely the content of the web.
It also offers a direction for us to move in. Not necessarily to abandon the internet but to value the real and immediate as the primary source of our experience to which what we read, hear and see in other media can add further to the sense we make of it.
Much else of what is being damaged in this precious world of ours may be repaired through this one act of reconnecting with the messy, wonderful and endlessly creative potential that is our existence on this earth.
The swim in the ocean sounds so envigorating, what a celebration of feeling and embodiment. I realize I remember very little of Brave New World after reading this, and I definitely had not appreciated this angle on embodiment. Thank you illuminating the preciousness of our embodiment in your reading of Brave New World and with your writing today!
You might find Social Presencing Theatre from the Presencing Institute à propos to your delightfully reasoned reflection. Aligning one's human body to the social body to the Earth body as a way to work through difficult situations.
A good analysis. I especially like your comments about embodiment. Huxley's utopia Island is also worth reading, and in fact I discuss both in my book What Lies Beyond. In Island, Huxley has the inhabitants of his utopia take psychedelics for healing and to access mystical states of reality. Similarly, I think that mystical states might have things to teach us about reconnecting to the natural world and each other.
Hello Rachel and commentators. This was a very different essay from my expectation, and I really appreciate it.
I believe part of the west's collective treatment of the natural world is our unacknowledged extreme biophobia, and more pointedly our fears about sex and death .
♾️ Thanks for Being Alive♾️
Yes a million times yes. I just read this book for the first time in the beginning of the year and had very similar thoguhts. Connecting to our bodies is an act of rebellion in a political economy that thrives off its disconnection.
Inspired by this analysis I once again retraced the quote from Deleuze I've been haunted by for ages:
"When Spinoza says that we do not even know what a body can do, this is practically a war cry. He adds that we speak of consciousness, mind, soul, of the power of the soul over the body; we chatter away about these things, but do not even know what bodies can do.”
I truly wonder if we're done with placing the mind and rationality on the pedestal and heading for a better understanding of our bodies, whether individual or collective.
Yes! Your conclusion is paramount, home is where we entangle ourselves with the other bodies, transcending the shiny dreamworld of self-identity inhabitation for the messy reality of inter connectivity.
The modern attention grabbing chat bot consumerism metaverse is so clearly both a product of and panders to the mad insecurities of utter attachment to self identity as isolated minds.
An interesting teaching that comes up for me from Buddhism:
Ananda (chief attendant) says to the Buddha- “My insight is that spiritual friendship is half of the holy life”, Buddha replies “not so, it is the WHOLE of the holy life”.
‘Whole?’ Really? He goes on quite emphatically on this topic for some time...
Meaning then perhaps that we need make friends, connect with kindness, to ALL life, all experience, all embodiment and disembodiment. Total inter-relationality.
From There, all of life and experience IS holy, perfect as it is, in flow, in the middleness, in Tao.
And from there, we can truly see the shape of things, and respond to enact appropriate and positive change.
I hope you swim in the cold sea some more.
Much peace for you, yours and your merry readers.
Thank you as always
I’m at the other end with the old trying to contribute to a conversation at McGilchrist’s The Matter with Things. Huxley’s ‘John’ is in evidence.
This post here was my next read. Smile.
Solutions!
https://open.substack.com/pub/christophermeestoerato/p/if-democracy-survives-the-future?r=12utpl&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web&showWelcomeOnShare=false
I'm in the lighthouse but I am not grieving and harming myself. I escaped. I'm no survivalist just staying sane. I hear everything, was involved in everything (almost). I use no pills. I empty the soma capsules 'cause faking is the thing when one has a direction in the turmoil. I'm blissful having noticed in time the common heading toward the slaughterhouse of happiness.
I think this is fundamental to the understanding of where we are, over-using this substitution of the real, visceral experience of engaging with life itself for the curated facsimile of life that is largely the content of the web.
It also offers a direction for us to move in. Not necessarily to abandon the internet but to value the real and immediate as the primary source of our experience to which what we read, hear and see in other media can add further to the sense we make of it.
Much else of what is being damaged in this precious world of ours may be repaired through this one act of reconnecting with the messy, wonderful and endlessly creative potential that is our existence on this earth.
Our little forum, Substack, is a data processing center. Is it extracting a price from Earth? Shall we renounce it now?
The swim in the ocean sounds so envigorating, what a celebration of feeling and embodiment. I realize I remember very little of Brave New World after reading this, and I definitely had not appreciated this angle on embodiment. Thank you illuminating the preciousness of our embodiment in your reading of Brave New World and with your writing today!
You might find Social Presencing Theatre from the Presencing Institute à propos to your delightfully reasoned reflection. Aligning one's human body to the social body to the Earth body as a way to work through difficult situations.