CORE PRINCIPLES OF MINE

PRINCIPLES I VALUE WHILE I TRY A NEW APPROACH  — PREVIOUS, UNDER, FELT, BUT NOT INSTITUTIONAL OR EVEN CONGREGATIONAL.  Too early to be conscious or organized.  NOT a new religion.

Possibly, these issues are addressed by the category of “embodiment thinking.”

ORGANIZING PRINCIPLES

*  Radical inclusion, even of dissension.

*  Acceptance of both the presence of constant small changes and possibly apocalyptic decimation of all life forms, and the inevitability of evolution when certain forms survive and others don’t.

*  Process — everything changes all the time, which is on the one hand a loss and on the other hand survival by adaptation.

*  Tension exists between individuals versus community.  Individuals may be destroyed by changing community, but individuals also struggle to change (destroy) communities.  Or the two aspects of life may join to preserve the status quo.  Or change it.

*  Universal but unevenly felt “spirituality”— all humans and probably the hominins before homo sapiens have the potential to feel the sacred, but it is intense in some individuals and weak in others.  What is the source of the intense moments we call “epiphanies”?

*  One of the core problems of democracy is how to give everyone equal opportunities when they are so different.  

*  A major move is from evading death to realizing the continuousness of life among all species and even across plants/animals/microbes.  (Quammen’s horizontal gene connections.)

*  New science is showing from many angles that humans/hominins are the culmination of a sequence of evolving species and may not last, due to their own actions.  Certainly they will change.

*  The study of Deep Time back to the Big Bang and the new histories of previously unrepresented points of view in history have revealed how provisional and problematic our ideas of civilization are, how momentary life on this planet is, how many life forms we have already snuffed.  How do we handle our disappointment with ourselves?

*  Genomics, epigenomics, proteomics, microgenomics, and all the other enmeshments within our bodies itemize how interdependent on meshing systems we are,  all governed by the conviction that we are each ONE identity.

*  The conflict between science and humanities is bogus.  This distinction was invented for convenience in managing knowledge a few centuries ago and we can poke holes in it.

INSIDE THE SKIN

*  Genomics, epigenomics, proteomics, microgenomics, and all the other enmeshments within our bodies itemize how interdependent on meshing systems we are,  all governed by the conviction that we are each ONE identity.  

*  And yet we are complex beings whose brains can shift from one mode to another, one “personality” to another, and be completely blind between the two sides of the brain with different ways of thinking on each side.  Learning to manage all this is essential, but ignored.

*  Arousal, attachment, and so on are very useful concepts that arise from studying the body.  I prefer these new terms to the old ones like “love,” or “faith,” that have taken on mystical supernatural qualities, encumbered with unproven associations.

*  We think in metaphor and the metaphors guide us, even control us.  They are one access to the subconscious, which is simply all the matters that go on without our knowing it: breathing, heart beat, endocrine organs, digestion, et al.  But there is also a lot of organic brain development of concepts and ideas that are unconscious.  One goes to bed with a problem, wakes up with a solution.

*  Metaphors emerge from the ecosystems we occupy and don’t always work in different places.  The appeal of Christian systems is using family, esp. patriarchs, but limited by its base in history.  Moving to a new ecosystem means making changes:  the birth-symbol of the palm tree becomes a fir tree in Europe.

(Lakoff and Johnson)

*  The ability to create a virtual space between two humans begins at birth, comes from mother caring for infant, and is the foundation of empathy and story.  (Winnicott, Porges)  Polyvagal theory explains the “frame of expression” we present to each other, face and upper body where breath and heart beat can be seen.  This is why the first years of a infant are so crucial in terms of both individual and community later on.

*  The recovery of emotion and embodiment means new access to the subconscious which is far more powerful than the consciousness and rationality we have privileged in the past.  We can think in stories, poetry, dreams, art forms, and bodily experience.

*  The opposite of love is not hate, but indifference.  The deep terror of our time is of the indifference of the cosmos.

OUTSIDE THE SKIN

CULTURE

*  Affinity groups and their support for survival are crucial when moving from feeling the holy to composing “religion.”  Affinities (socioeconomic) are what form and maintain “religious” groups that share meanings, and experiences.

*  Culture ALWAYS fits the ecosystem and is distorted if moved to a new system, but this may give rise to new and valuable forms of culture.  Our current challenge, of course, is reconciliation among cultures and forming at least an aspect of culture in the space age, conscious of space, rhythm, waves of forces, and so on.

*  Socioeconomic is just another word for ecosystem.  To be universal we must find the deeper levels.  Not every communion can be unleavened bread and table wine, for some only eat rice or sago palm pith.  But we all eat.

GEOGRAPHY

*  Geography and climate are factors we evade in cities, but not in the rural settings or the wilderness.  Still, we impact them all, whether or not we mean to.

CAVEATS

11.  I’m staying away from linguistic analysis because I don’t understand it well enough, but the historical study of language fits with populations and their movement.  I read linguistics are a source of structuralism, the realization that things and experience are organized different ways.  I guess this is related to the idea of Whorf’s that Hopi people speak in gerunds and participles -- a grammatical difference big enough to notice.

*  The trajectory and location of language fits well the spread of humans over the continents, confirms history.  It has been effective consciousness raising to study a language from a different ecosystem than we know.  This is particularly valuable and effective when studying indigenous languages IF it is studied in its ecosystem so that ultimately one can simply point to an example when saying “grass” or “dog” or “sun.”