A Place in Space: December 2007 Archives

The Intuitive Acupuncturist firmly pressed all five of her fingers around my tan t'ien: "You've got to feel that you're connected, because you are!"

Tan t'ien: "refers specifically to the physical center of gravity located in the abdomen three finger widths below and two finger widths behind the navel." Interestingly, the IA also mentioned the ming men, the location in the small of the back facing the tan t'ien. The ming men

"stands for 'the door of life'. Kai Ming Men means open the life door to stay alive. Ming Men as an acupuncture pressure point is located on your spine where is the most concave spot. To open Ming Men refers to convex “the small of the back” and make it bow out."

Posture is important, with awareness of location within the body: "Ming Men is simply an area where, due to channel confluences, a person may be strengthened or weakened."

I want to make a contiguous leap, now, between individual centering and group centering. Just as a person needs to balance around their own center of gravity, so do groups. Just as persons need to determine with their own consciousness how to relax into their purpose, groups have to establish some consensual acceptance concerning collective mission and task. I do believe we can do it!

...the difference, according to Heidegger, is pain.

"Diviners," writes Dennis Tedlock, "Stay close to 'the rift of difference,' as Heidegger calls it, even a small difference. They leave us between two points, or at both of them, and sometimes three." (1983:254)

Within minutes of each other I watched and listened to Steve's rousing (northern) seasonal greeting from (as he says) "a happier time, before Vietnam, the Civil Rights, and all the "horrors" of our "modern" world," and Tamer's reminder of other realities: snapshot of a modern horror.

Meanwhile, the economic news is better in Bethelem this year, tourism has increased since a sharp dropoff after the second intifada in 2000. The increase of visitors is, however, a qualified "good": the occupation is as real as ever.

I was playing the other day. Often people ask me, "Why" (especially in relation to some thing I propose to do) and I often return the favor, "Why not?" The presumption behind the first "why" is that things are good enough as they are, why rock the boat? The presumption behind the second is that things could actually be better. The hinge has to do, I wager, with the unpredictability of change. Things could be better, or they could be worse! If the risk appears 50/50 (or more like 10, 20, or 30 "better" to the corresponding fear of 90, 80, 70 "worse") then we're led to the most common outcome, premised upon things being tolerable enough as they are, thank you!

In other words, why get all tangled up?

The homonymality of not/knot struck me with inspiration the other day, as I realized part of the question of "why" is a concern with winding up in a knot. I'm thinking not only of the most obvious, literal knot - all twisted and tied up together, but dynamically, in terms of social relations and time, i.e., dialogue or discourse?

My mind has been abuzz all semester with the concepts of physics as a means to illuminate group dynamics. This is not a new interest, by far, but as I become more familiar with definitions and principles, I become increasingly convinced that sociality can be described with similar concepts, albeit with somewhat less reliability. :-) Ain't it grand that life and human individuality keep us always guessing?!

"Mathematicians also study knots, but they have different concerns [than those who study the literal versions]: which knots can be untied without cutting the rope, how many different knots are there and how can we tell if two complex knots are the same or different?" - Gnomen, h2g2

The challenge in human relations, no doubt, is to discern which knots to try to untie, and which knots to create and re-create, ever more securely.

An ambivalent anthem and a quasi-clone?

Zizek's critique of 'Ode to Joy' as the European Union's choice of anthem is on the mark.

The exchange in the comments between dmclaney and elver about the signing of the Lisbon Treaty, United States of Europe finally created, are a mirror (with a different cultural text) to some of the media critiques produced by students this month. In particular, Evan Grabelsky's "The News Media: The War on Journalism" and "com375"'s "The Non-Reality of Reality TV." Most of the news coverage I encountered involved Gordon Brown's avoidance of the ceremony to sign incognito. (Reminds me of Governor Howard Dean signing Vermont's Civil Union Bill in a private, closed door ceremony.)

The question (as always) is what to do about our recognition of the problem? Bela presents an example of organized activism that is making a difference: "If the technology and the heart come together...." ElR6 follows the theme of cyberoptimism with " Communication and Global Consciousness."

Probably there are ways to counteract the shallow coverage of mainstream media, but we can't isolate only the media as the enemy. The cumulative effects of consumerist socialization are dulled awareness and self-absorbed insensitivity. Not to mention the desperate weaknesses of institutionalized education. A radical notion proposed by a friend the other night included not teaching history until the eighth grade. Why? "It's in third grade you learn that blacks used to be slaves. What are you supposed to do with that information?"

This is the central question. What are we 'supposed to do' with all the information we have?

"...who demonstrates patriotism today—the critics who stand fast by our foundational values? Or those who would ignore our traditions by reaching quickly for the base and the brutal? No real patriot today, no citizen who is concerned about the fate of our fellow citizens in uniform, can be silent on this issue."

This is the challenge.

Non-violent resistance, as a synonym for peace activism, still centers "violence" as the standard. The force of much anti-war talk revolves around violence as the anchor, providing energy that feeds momentum. I have been puzzling over this discursive looping for a long time: all talk is subject to perpetuating something. That "something" is wildly out of our control - because "it" is always mediated by interpretation.

I have been guilty, way too often, of getting caught up in layers of interpretation ("processing") instead of maintaining discursive intentionality. In a dialogue, both/all parties recognize the inevitable looping, making conscious choices about a) when to discard the historical baggage and b) how to create the present interaction on preferred terms. Shared recognition is, I think, key to successful shifting. Recognition is not the same as acknowledgment: acknowledgment (disclosure) will be important on some matters to establish trust but is not always necessary. If depended upon overmuch, distrust will grow in response to apparent evidence that recognition can never be assumed.