Thursday, October 2, 2014

Public Phoniness and True Modernism


The effects of having a "public" blog--or rather a blog that is trying to be a challenge to "Public/Private" sick culture---are not as clear for me as they would probably be if I got out more. Judging from the few times I have been into town or elsewhere outside my neighborhood (or even in the social whirl inside my neighborhood), the few things that have happened to me that seem to have been blog related are interesting in but at the same time not exactly encouraging. Basically, what publishing this blog seems to have done socially vis a vis myself and my civil venue (to the extent that it has done anything) is just made me occasionally vulnerable to psychological ambushes, pot shots, unexplained rudenesses, treacherous kindnesses, and a few come-ons.  Just as no one ever seems to comment on my blog post though I know I have readers, no one ever just comes up to me on the street and introduces themselves and says: "I've read your blog and I think such and such about it" positive or negative. Usually, there is just the occasional, weird indirect social gesture that seems to alternate between being mostly private (alienated) or mostly public (phony) in spirit but seems anything but forthright.

The whole thing makes me think of George Soro's Idea of "reflexivity" which I understand as a kind of social feedback model exploring the ways in which what is said and believed about social reality effects social reality in a way that (barring the probably overused and distorted example of quantum physics) one doesn't find in "objective" world. Its a pretty obvious thing really but, it turns out you can make a kind of science out of the principle and (if you know a lot about Mutual Funds and stuff), make billions of dollars. At least it worked for Soros. Of course, not particularly caring about such things,  I can't help but tweak the idea so that it makes sense in terms of my "healthy culture" world view. I would like the things that I say in my blogs to have a "Sociatric" effect; to work like some kind of homeopathic "media pill" which begins to heal Public/Private (Phony/Alienated) world inside as well outside me (since I am  a recovering alienated phony myself, "allopathy", as opposed to "homeopathy" seems pretty much out of the question even If I believed in it). However there is the little problem that I don't completely know what I am doing with these blogs (other than trying to stay in recovery) and don't have much real feed back coming my way so as to be able gauge what little outer effect this blog is having one way or the other. I guess Its a good thing that I am almost a complete nonentity in the blogosphere at this stage at least: experience is beginning to teach that passive alienation is a lot less draining to deal with than aggressive phoniness...


For example the last time I was in town I was checking out Thomas Cleary's translation of "The Flower Ornament Scripture" (the Avatamsaka Sutra) at the University library, on the the strength of the public recommendation of my favorite architect Christopher Alexander in his last book, when the Librarian (a Person who's name I do that know) exclaimed very loudly and with a kind of aggressive geniality "A Buddhist!".  This exclamation (actually mostly the loudness of it) really quite surprised me, (it also seemed to surprise others whose heads I saw turn in the rather large room). This was so much so that without contradicting him (I might have even nodded stupidly and meaninglessly out of some kind of reflex politeness), I just said the books were highly recommended and a few other innocuous things and checked them out and left.

But the whole incident began to bother me afterwards (I was mostly annoyed with myself), and later that day I began to come up with various theories about what had happened. My guess is that that person had read my blog and, not really wanting to deal with the relative originality of the contents--or maybe just the contents themselves--decided that labeling me a Buddhist would somehow absolve him of...I don't know, having to be bothered by it or something. Or maybe somebody praised the blog to him and (as often happens in "public" life) he felt the need to label and so dismiss it in that way.  Whatever (if anything) was going on, with my unthinkingly obliging response, I felt that I had fallen into what I imagine will be the first of many "public" traps by allowing myself to be labeled as a "Buddhist" which,  like any other religion in our sick culture tends to act, even against its will, as much as a kind of factional identity like any other.

By "trap", I don't mean to assume any specific ill will towards me by the public sector, its just that; to the extent that it is a "Public" sector, it is a "Phoniness Sector" from the point of view of Individual-Personhood and as such it's a realm in which being praised is just much a lie (and a set up) as being blamed. (see my post on Shame at cointegrative.blogspot.com for more about this dynamic). This is because, among other things, the only response that makes sense in terms of  actually understanding what I am saying in these blogs--the response I am seeking--is some kind of core realization of our shared sick culture and alienated phoniness, leading ultimately, to some kind of collaborative experiments in recovery between us (between you the reader and myself). In other words, I would like us to be in cahoots, helping each other recover from sick culture and alienated phoniness, which event would, of course, require that you, as well as me, stop being in denial about this shared sickness  and suffering, its causes, and the completely unacceptable implications of its continuing untreated (unacceptable for ourselves as well as for the world). The Public/Private manifestation of such Denial includes, as I have said, praise and "popularity",  just as much as blame, as both tend to be only good for suppressing Good Sense, true Comprehension, and True Friendship, mostly by facilitating our projection of our own possibilities and responsibilities (or alternatively--or even successively--our own shit) on to others.  And both kinds of phoniness seem to be impossible without the kind of one-sided and dismissive Labeling, (whether of a given Individual-Person, a given set of practices and ideas, or of anything else), that seems to be the essential lingua franca of the "Public/Private" discourse.

So, getting back to the library story, what I was supposed to do was to clearly demur regarding the Buddhist label and (if there was time) explain that I consider myself to be an Individual-Person and Recovering Alienated Phony etc etc. I have done as much at various times before, but in this case  I guess I was sort of stunned into phoniness by the surprise of the whole thing and so was unable to defend myself against such labeling in a timely manner.   If I was a recovering alcoholic rather than a recovering alienated phony, an approximate analogy would be one of me thoughtlessly letting someone hand me a drink on the way out of a room (out of habit perhaps) and, while dumping it out immediately, beginning to worry about the possibility of a bigger relapse and so wondering whether or not I should go back and announce to everyone that I am still in recovery in order to avoid attracting similar events from the same person or others. I didn't go back in the Library and Loudly declare my Individual-Personhood (besides being inhibited by the thought of how silly that would look, I processed the whole thing much too slowly for that anyway) and so was left with just a sort of annoying feeling that I had let myself down or something. Well, whatever; you live and learn. Anyhow I am hoping that writing in this blog will end up making me feel better about, and learn something from, the whole experience.

I want to be clear that I don't have anything against Buddhism (or any of the various Buddhism's) per se: I am sure it has its piece of the Truth and piece of the Lie like every thing and everybody else under the sun.  And there certainly seem to be a lot of things in healthy culture that sound Buddhist  (and Taoist, and Christian, and Tantric, and Confucian, and Atheist and, Phenomenological, Postmodern, Modern, Traditional, Native American, Native African, Wiccan etc etc). But that is more less the point; just calling it Buddhism would exclude everything else and hide all the explicit and implicit divergences from Buddhism in what I have to say. Same with calling it Taoist, Tantric, etc).  I mean, if I thought healthy culture was equivalent to any of these things that already exist, I'd just go where they are doing that and do it with whoever  else was doing it. As it stands, every institution or practice I know about seems just as much in need of recovery as the culture as a with which it has become codependant.

I mean if: A) as I have said above, every Institution, Movement as well as Individual has its piece of the Lie as well as its piece of the Truth, and B) there is Entropy at work in the world such that the former is overwhelmingly likely to increase at the expense of the Latter unless the Former is Acknowledged and Treated and Monitored, if C), these pieces of the Lie, these "leaks" in the cultural boat, can change in nature and location in a given institution over time, and if D) much of all this is likely to be happening in, (as well as working to obscure existence of)  the Blind Spot of the Institution or Individual in question, Then E);nothing is going to bring about sustainable healing except the establishment of ongoing formal and informal conditions of "Conscience" (of Inner and outer "Knowing Together") in which diverse institutions and individuals keep themselves and each other on the road of cultural recovery, aided by their very diversity (in the sense that, groups and individuals with wildly different blind spots are well situated to remind each other of the presence of a species of sick culture that any given one is blind to).

Of course this manifestation or flourishing of "Conscience" would constitute the normalization of Cointegrative Co-inference  (which happens to involve that Life-Logic that I am in the process of introducing in my other blog) on what one might call the"Global" Level. It would probably also mean a great deal of progress in a general process of inner/outer recovery from sick culture which I feel quite safe in saying has not yet occurred. Actually, outside of my own, (perhaps somewhat pathetic and bumbling), project, it is difficult to say that such a process has even begun. And at least until such a level of general progress in cultural recovery happens, my  identifying as a member of any group or institution which is not explicitly in recovery from Alienated-Phoniness would only strengthen that general status quo, it seems to me. Actually such an identification would be problematic even then, but no time to explain that now.

Maybe this is a digression that should be its own post, but if I was going to label my thing anything besides "Healthy Culture-ism" or  myself as anything other than a Recovering Alienated Phony, I would probably call it "True Modernism" and myself an  "True Modern". At least thats what I have being thinking recently.

 I think that what has been, and what was is currently being called Modernism was/is ersatz modernism and not a true modernism. A True "Modus" or "Way" would never run so blindly from the past  but, like the "Way" of Life,  the "Tao"of the Taoists (or my version of it), manifest Legba-like at the crossroads or nexus of Past, Present, Future and Eternity in the service of all that is healthy in each.  For such a Cointegrative Modernism, "progress" is not something to be understood as an indefinite transcending of the past, or of anything else, but more like a kind of progressive recovery, a progressive recovery of, coordination, dynamic balance and of Good Sense.

I'll give this idea another paragraph for clarity. The uncontroversial understanding of culture is as a "way of life" and what I want to say is that healthy culture is a "Way" (a "Mode", "Modus") of "Life" in the best meaning of both those words; a balanced, inclusive, and coordinated Way of inner and outer healing and inner/outer recovery.  Such a "modus" or culture, or "Way" can be followed by an individual-person or a group of them and indeed would be followed (as much as possible), by individuals and collectives if they are not suffering unconsciously so much of the time) from factional identity politics or some other form of sick culture. So it seems possible to talk about True or healthy "Modernism", not in a reactionary way vis a vis the historical past  (as was the case with the false Modernism) but in the sense of a sophisticated inclusive Way of Life that can creatively "coordinates" what is healthy from the past, with whatever seems healthy in the present, desirable and possible in the future while remaining in harmony with "timeless" (if not yet formally agreed to) , Eternal truths/realities. Of course I don't think that such an explicit thing as I have in mind (for further explicitness you will have to wait for the Manifesto of which this and the preceding paragraph is a prototype) actually exists anywhere, though I could make a list of people I think I would describe as "Proto-True Moderns (I think I will wait and put that list in the future manifesto too, if I end up writing one; It might turn out that the word "Modern", even with the new adjective and the explicit disclaimer,  has too much baggage to be  useful).


Anyway, at the library that day I was certainly not up to explaining any of this "True Modern" stuff, or even just making my usual affirmation of Individual-Personhood. Being so long out of "polite society" just made me too unsuspecting and slow on my feet I guess.  Moreover, since I am in recovery for the foreseeable future and beyond and so have no expectations of ever being "recovered", I  imagine I will make the same kind of mistake again sometime. I do think though, that one can, in a relative or conditional sense, progress in ones recovery, so that I expect that the times when I have the awareness and energy to challenge Public Phoniness with authentic Individuality and Private Alienation with conscientious Personhood, will increase rather than decrease (though I know I can't count on this). The way I see it, such progress in recovery is intrinsically paradoxical, being the opposite of any kind of cocky or complacent reliance on some fait accompli status of recovery, it  is rather more like the progress involved in going from "one day at a time" to "one hour at a time" to "one second' etc.  In other words progress in such recovery means taking both ones "righteousness" and ones "un-righteousness" less and less for granted rather than more and more so....




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