THE HIJACKED MIND

I was dragged kicking and screaming into the world of computers and the Internet. Somehow my gut feeling led me to avoid this new technology. However, as fate would have it, good friends of ours were updating their computer and it was going for a song. Once installed, like the telly, it becomes the centre of our universe. However, unlike the telly, it is now portable and accompanies most of us wherever we are. Our minds have become hijacked by the Internet.

Now, I find myself trying to wean myself away from the temptations of "surfing the net". Whatever your interests or obsessions may be, there is a multitude of sites, forums etc to distract you from your business or daily routine. But of course one might argue that its only the same process that strted with  speech and then the written word, then radio etc. But this is the point- all these mediums have the power to distract us from "reality", the natural world and of course from our fellow humans. The difference between the various mediums is their relative power to distract and entrance. I note that the author of the 70's book "Four Arguments for the Elimination of TV", Jerry Mander has also more recently written about the Internet. The issues are the same.

So, when we see people walking the streets, on the metro, in the restaurant, absorbed with their I-phones and other gismo's we are observing hijacked minds. We have allowed our minds to be taken over by the practitioners of the net- be it the news networks, blogggers (like me here!) or Tweeters. 

So perhaps it is worth contemplating how much time we spend in this manner and whether perhaps we could be creative rather than just a spectator of life. This latter mode I believe to be our proper purpose in life- to be co-creators with God of our own reality. If we succumb to the net, fascinating as it can be, we are declining the offer, during that period, of being creative. So, on that note I will sign off and get creative!

TOOLS, TOYS, TEXTILES and TECHNOLOGY

Scientists recently were reportedly"amazed" to discover that fruit flies were capable of "fighter jet" type manoeuvres in response to an enemy- able to bank steeply and reverse their direction of flight within milliseconds.  Is it really amazing to discover that nature is capable of feats which approximate to the capabilities of humans?
Such reports are not new and they reflect a worrying naivety among the scientific fraternity and probably much of the mainstream culture. The irony is that nature in all its myriad forms is infinitely complex and incredible- far more so than any technology man has ever been able to create. The problem seems to be that our culture has a rather bloated sense of its own knowledge and understanding. This is despite the fact that every new generation has to revise its previously accepted understanding of the world.
This is not merely an intellectual observation- there are profound social and spiritual implications. Throughout history individuals have felt the need to escape their everyday lives to be closer to nature. Thoreau went to Walden Pond; Carl Jung went to Bollingen and many less famous examples could be quoted. There is clearly something deep in our nature that calls for simplicity and a close relationship with the natural world.  And technology represents a wedge driven betwixt us and nature- and therefore between us and our inner being or soul.
Of course, for those who believe, as many do, that man is merely a biological machine that functions according to fixed laws, our relations with technology and other machines does not pose any obvious problems. However, if your understanding, like mine, allows for a much deeper aspect to man's being, then the potential effect that technology has on us should be taken seriously.
During the '70's I became something of an anti-TV missionary. partly motivated by Jerry Mander's    book "Four Arguments for the Elimination of TV". Now I think I understand better why I was, and still am so uncomfortable with this medium and what it represents. And its no coincidence that this author has since developed his thesis to incorporate the more recent developments in IT communications. Both TV and the computer create artificial worlds which mesmerise us and form a screen through which we perceive the real world. And of course, with virtual worlds, Avatars and gaming taking hold of more and more of our waking hours, our inner lives are becoming ever more superficial.
I also appears to me that this process of separation that technology triggers in us has the effect of an addiction- as technology attracts us, so we are less able to maintain a healthy balance with our natural  environment and our inner life suffers.  Whether it be the latest Apple laptop or I-pad, we become mesmerised by the technology- holding us captive within an artificial world that ultimately is unsatisfying. For all the clever marketing that labels these products as interactive and promise to keep us "connected" we are in fact just bit-actors in the global corporations' bigger game.
Of course, IT, virtual reality games and TV are merely one aspect of a wider separation that technology in general has created between us and "nature". The very fact that we use the word 'nature', thereby implying something "out there" just amplifies the problem we are now facing. We are not separate from nature- we are part of it , we ARE nature. But our lives are now so cushioned from this reality, with our centrally-heated houses and cars that blanket out the elements, that we can only see separation- but it is not reality.
If we extrapolate backwards through history and the development of human culture we find a series of quantum jumps in technology which, whilst each will have had great benefits in themselves, will have also resulted in an element of social cost. The Luddites were infamous for their rebellion against  the de-skilling and mechanisation of their way of life and their struggle and the values it represented would profitably bear a re-evaluation even today. (A good place to start would be Ralph Borsodi's "This Ugly Civilsation" from 1929).
But even in the early 1800's, mechanisation was well advanced and, as Ludd and his men found, to their cost, society was not ready to learn the lessons that still need to be learnt today. People like Thoreau, Blake, Goethe and a host of others going back throughout history have understood the issue being considered here but the attraction that tools and technology of every type, have over us, hold us back from a balanced appraisal of their relative benefits.
We can of course go further into this by recognising that every aspect of our lives, starting perhaps with clothing, that comes between us and the "natural world" also separates us to an extent. The very first stick used as a tool could be seen as the precursor to a whole process of development now being represented by the laptop and mobile phone and there is a corresponding cost reflected in our social fabric and personal lives.
The decision to be made then is perhaps at what point along this continuum of technological development are we happy to base our lifestyle upon?. This is a hard question, since we share the world with a lot of people who seem only too content to accept whatever new technological and scientific "advance" is thrown at us.

Beyond the linear

    "Western man firmly believed nature to be an entity with an objective reality independent of human consciousness, an entity that man can know through observation, reductive analysis, and reconstruction... In his efforts to learn about nature, man has cut it up in little pieces. `He has certainly ;earned many things in this way, but what he has examined has not been nature itself. 
                             MASANOBU FUKUOKA

How often I find myself renewing that process that Ivan Illich first inspired in me to "de-school" myself! So many ideas and theories imposed on us during our years of education, need to be re-evaluated and often rejected in the light of experience. Ivan Illich had a talent not just for lateral thinking but going beyond the thinking brain to bring in the feeling heart. Theodore Roszak had a similar skill- his book Beyond the Wasteland I recall making a very deep impact on me.
But now, many years on I find myself peeling more layers off the onion to reveal even more fascinating perspectives. Having seen the film of the life of Rudolf Steiner, whom I had admired for a long time, but from a distance, led me to discover Goethe's perspective on science. Goethe considered science to have become preoccupied and limited by linear thinking. And as our society has become increasingly materialistic,  this highly mentalised,  logical way of looking at the world has become consolidated.
Goethe was not anti-science, far from it. In fact he saw himself very much as a scientist, but one who stressed the importance of seeing the world, and nature around us, from as many perspectives as possible. The logical, brain-derived, linear view of the world is one perspective, but for Goethe, there was another, direct way of "seeing" reality through our intuitive senses.  Goethe , amongst his many other attributes, was a poet and as such would have recognised that poetry was able to express certain realities more clearly and precisely than other mediums could.  Similarly, the intuitive, heart-based mode reveals aspects of reality inaccessible to the thinking brain.
There is evidence, as many researchers such as Jeremy Naydler, Robert Bly, Stephen Buhner have indicated, that earlier cultures, such as the ancient Egyptians saw their world from a radically different perspective  to us. Naydler, for instance suggests that the Egyptians and other cultures could have lived in a different state of consciousness, which in turn would have radically altered their perception of reality. That many of these cultures lasted for thousands of years may suggest that their understanding of reality was more in tune with their environment than our, very recent modern culture perhaps is.
There is certainly plenty of evidence that natural healers, shamans, learn directly from nature- they consider plants for instance to be their "teachers". Stephen Buhner is one writer having spent many years developing this very ability, in the mode of Goethe and Steiner before him. Buhner has also investigated how cells, organs and organisms communicate and he describes how a vast network of electromagnetic fields interconnect all living life. But more than being inert physical forces, these fields actually carry information between all levels of life. Hiumans interact within this information environment and Buhner has indicated for instance that our heart is vastly more than a muscular pump, that it is a highly evolved organ of perception and communication.
So, I find it fascinating to see how, after all these centuries of scientific progress we are finding ever more "material" evidence supporting an understanding of nature that was probably shared by some of the most ancient of human cultures. What goes round comes round..eh..!

WHAT IS LEARNING?

"Learning is experiencing; everything else is just information"
                                                           Albert Einstein

I always assumed that learning was what happened to me at school- that is at least when I was paying attention.. But a few years ago I started to read the works of Krishnamurti and he presented a rather different perspective.  K tells us that learning is not accumulative- it is not the accumulation of knowledge, information etc. In other words very little learning actually takes place in schools. What occurs predominately in schools is absorption/adsorption of data and its regurgitation during exams. In contrast, learning can only occur with a clear, unbiased mind, unclouded by prior conceptions or ideas. To those of us privileged to have gained a university education, relinquishing our ideas and preconceptions, in order to really learn- is quite a challenge!
Several decades ago I became acquainted with the writings of Christopher Alexander - specifically "A Pattern Language" and "The Timeless Way of Building". Both are masterpieces and their most intriguing aspect is that they are written by a respected architect who is telling us that we all can build- if only we truly listen to ourselves. How many professionals do you know who are willing to make such a daringly modest assertion? But Alexander is very clear- you cannot start from a place of knowing, from a set of ideas or preconceptions.
Another perspective on the same theme came to me on learning about the work of Betty Edwards. As an art teacher she often became frustrated to see her students unable to accurately reproduce an object as a drawing. One day, an inspiration led her to ask her students to try turning upside down a drawing that they had been assigned to copy. The resulting drawings produced by the students amazed her in their accuracy. Edwards later concluded that ordinary thinking and preconceived ideas get in the way of simply seeing things as they really are. Looking at the upright object in front of them, the student brain uses predominantly the left hemisphere which is mainly concerned with rationality and logic- and the student draws upon past experience and knowledge about the object. However, when the object is turned upside down and the left hemisphere is deprived of its ability to recognise and name the object, it drops out of the task, turning it over instead to the right- creative hemisphere. A similar result was found when students are asked to draw a chair. However, instead of drawing the structure itself, they are asked to do this by drawing the spaces between the legs. The left-side logical brain recognises a chair and will tap into past experience of chairs- which may or may not coincide with the exact image in front of them- with the resultant unsatisfactory result. However, when asked to draw the spaces between the legs, the left hemisphere cannot call upon any useful experience that defines such spaces. In such a situation, the task is handed over to the right, creative brain which reflects what it actually sees.
From all these examples it becomes clear to me that, whilst, of course we need to be able to use the logical, thinking brain for all manner of tasks and everyday life situations, we also need to be able to override our mind's reflexive tendency to judge, name, define when what we need to do is just "experience" and "be in the moment".

DIRECT KNOWING

It has often occured to me that "God" must have a sense of humour. Obviously, as "God" is all knowing, is everything, everywhere and nowhere etc, she/he must, by definition also have a sense of humour. But the thought first entered my mind when contemplating our search for knowledge and wisdom. Man is constantly looking, searching, seeking, travelling- in an attempt to gain knowledge and wisdom. But it appears to me that all the while, we are totally self-sufficient creatures- we have everything within us and our immediate environment to meet our needs and fulfill us in every way. The idea of "God", watching us for ever looking outside of ourselves for something that resides within, I find quite amusing. 

The ultimate transference of information, knowledge and wisdom is a direct one, with no recourse to intermediaries. We experience this when we talk of intuition which represents our "tapping into" the all-enveloping ether which is truth. The process of tranference of knowledge or widom by speaking inevitably can only approximate to truth. The written word is a further approximation and of course the moving, visual medias, such as TV and digital technologies etc represent even greater approximations.  

This direct knowing was understood by Rudolf Steiner who tried to express realities such as this in a scientific manner and make bridges between science and spirituality. He was a great admirer of Goethe who, likewise stressed the importance of "seeing" nature directly, unhindered by the various instruments which were increasingly becoming available to man during his lifetime.

Rupert Sheldrake has further elaborated on this possibility of direct knowing through his concept of "morphic fields". Roughly expressed, this postulated that we are surrounded by  a field, or many fields that shape the development of plants and animals but also underlie mental activities and shape the habits of minds. By the process of "morphic resonance", these fields contain a cummulative collective memory which we can and do tap into.  Is this what we know of as "intuition"?

Krishnamurti expressed a similar understanding of the world in which we live when he said that learning can only take place when we discard all previous knowledge and experience, since this will inevitably cloud and distort truth which can only be seen directly and without prior ideas and without any mediation. Steiner shared this view that the seeking for truth had to be perpetually "in the moment" and that acquired knowedge and experience gets in the way of this direct understanding.

Civilisation's sell-by date

A learned professor who is glorified by the title of Professor of Complementary Medicine seems to have a mission to destroy the practice of homoeopathy. His zeal is fuelled by a belief that his chosen understanding of medicine is truer than that of homoeopaths. Meanwhile an old man carrying a fisherman's crook, strange hat and lomg, flowing purple robes and shoes, white simar with fringed fascia, pectoral cross and white     zucchetto gestures to a huge crowd in Rome. And nearer to home, I find fascination for a small group of once-hippies known as the Twelve Tribes, previosuly known as Messianic Communities who bake the most wonderful bread.
Where is the common thread in all this? It lies in the various myths that all these individuals respect, even in the face of much ridicule from the wider populace. The learned professor clearly feels his myth, that of "progress" and reductionist science trumps that of the homoeopath; the Pope is respected by those who follow his understanding of what God is and the Twelve Tribes have their own myth which bonds their communities together. 
So what about our myth- the prevalent myth of 21st century civilisation, the Myth of Progress? Why should this be any different from any of these other myths? And what role do these myths play in our lives?. 
The first thing to understand is that they ARE myths. And modern "man" unfortunately falls at this first hurdle, because we don't see the Myth of Progress as being a myth at all. We cloak it in robes of "science", "modernity" and "reality" and we feed our young children on this myth at institutions we call schools. 
And of course, all myths share the same fate. They all get destroyed by other people who don't share the same myth. The British have done their bit at destroying myths. When we "discovered" America, we realised we had to destroy the indigenouis peoples' belief structure and culture in order to pacify and "civilise" them. We stuffed them into schools and uniforms.
And today globalisation has taken over the role of chief myth debunker. Whether you are in Africa or China the Western model of "progress" is the only dish on the menu, and the eating place is called McDonalds or Burger King. The victims of course are all the local dishes that never get served. But we justify this vandalism in the name of efficiency, modernisation and a multitude of other constructs.
Wade Davis, in the film "Schooling the World" explains how myths shape the way we behave in our societies and that what is important is how we behave in response to these myths. Native Americans survived with their belief structures without damaging their environment. Does it matter what their myths are if they enable them to live in harmony with their environment and each other? And is our myth of "progress" any truer than theirs was? Does the reality of life in downtown Chicago or East London provide evidence to support this?
The role therefore of those of us seeking a post-civilsation model is surely to craft a new myth which can better enable us to live happily within our means and within our resource base.

CONNECTION

Modern man talks of a battle with Nature, forgetting that, if we won the battle, he would find himself on the losing side".

                                                           E. F. SCHUMACHER


Can we distill our present global predicament into a contest between the "connected" and the "unconnected"?
What made me ponder on this was watching the excellent documentary film on Rosia Montana http://www.rosiamontana-thefilm.com/ which highlights the contrasting values on one side, of the locals who don't want to move away from their homes and on the other side, of the "investors" who see no problem with making money from mining the earth of its riches. This village in Romania is being torn apart by the conflict between those living a very modest life in harmony with their natural environment, and those wanting to extract the buried gold using a process invoving opencast mining and cyanide extraction.
To my mind, this scenario represents, on a small scale what is being played out across the planet, with globalisation and the McDonaldisation of cultures and societies. Often, the conflicting parties are defined as  the clever, progressives versus the uneducated, unsophisticated traditionalists. And, in this film, the contrast is   stark- the peasants with a few sheep and cows, living a subsistence life with few luxuries are up against the rich and powerful Canadian-funded corporation.
But there is a common thread to be detected here- people who have found connection with their environment cannot contemplate damaging their beloved earth any more than they could hurt their own children. The disconnected, having lost that earth-ing have no such qualms and any rape, mutilation or other destrcution of the planet can be justified in the name of profit or perhaps what they perceive as "progress". If we extend this idea to its logical conclusion of course, we shouldn't be mining coal or other precious materials which have delivered us a wealth of material benefits, albeit at a cost.
However, in this film, Rosia Montana, one resident of the village tells us that their forebears believed that the earth had spirits who could guide them to its riches under the surface but that misfortune would befall them if they were greedy or otherwise exceeded their needs. And in this village, gold mining had a history going back 2000 years to pre-Roman times. One might conclude therefore that minerals such as gold have a legitimate purpose for humans, but certain guidelines should limit our use of them or the price we will pay for our greed will ultimately exceed any benefit we derived from it.
Such a principle would seem to have guided many "primitive" cultures in the past, whether it refered to the mining of gold or the killing of animals for food, and as long as we are "connected" , those groundrules will provide us with the boundaries beyond which we should not venture.