[For Dianne]
Summary: Received Wisdom
Meeting Minds, Opening Minds and Changing Minds.
Dear Learners,
"We should do well to commiserate our mutual ignorance, and endeavour to
remove it in all the gentle and fair ways of information, and not
instantly treat others ill as obstinate or perverse because they will not
renounce their own and receive our opinions, or at least those we would
force upon them, when it is more than probable that we are no less
obstinate in not embracing some of theirs. For where is the man who has
incontestable evidence of the truth of all that he holds, or the falsehood
of all that he condemns?- The necessity of believing without knowledge,
nay often upon very slight grounds, in this fleeting state of action and
blindness we are in, should make us more busy and careful to inform
ourselves than to restrain others..À¦There is reason to think that if men
were better instructed themselves, they would be less imposing on others."
John Locke, Essay Concerning Human Understanding, Book IV, Chap. xxi, sec.
4.
I have always thought that modern Americans would like John Locke's sane
philosophy and watching from afar as I do though sometimes close up <
close up that pioneering community of what, quarter billion souls? In
which the 'average man' consumes the same daily intake of energy as a
sperm whale and yet seems to not realise the profundity of his place at
his own continental continual edge of edginess. I would put Walt Whitman's
'Song of Myself' to the head of the list of readings for your young minds,
sanest of sane minds among you ever.
At reminded me today, through a story of a little boy whom, looking less
than attentive at school was quizzed by his master or mistress as to the
matter, to wit the reply 'It was not my turn to eat today.' And I ask you
to ask others, what are you giving up today so that your children may
gather a better harvest without going to war to get it? What will you tell
the great Whale when he comes to sing his last song? Or shall we shift the
burden? Hmmm. What are gentle and fair ways?
I was once 'with' a woman who had to care for two children, herself and
the usual debts
And in order to do so she had taken some very strange detours away from
sanity, which was strange in itself since her profession was psychiatric
care of others. I too enquired as to her 'state'. A flood of tears ensued
- catharsis - who knows? She was working double ten-hour shifts back to
back to pay for a childminder to care for the children while she earned
the money to pay the bills. The kids were delightful, mum was a wreck and
no-one noticed in the organisation of which she was a part. I asked how
much she was earning on the second shift. I asked how much the carer for
her children cost. I calculated the difference (my Maths was better that
day At;-) and it seemed the price she paid for the profit she earned was
the difference between a nervous breakdown and twenty pounds sterling. In
the maelstrom of whirring detail she had not realised that the price she
was paying was out of all proportion to any fiscal gain, or long term
emotional one. I gave sagely advice. A year later she wrote me a letter,
damned woman made me cry! She asked me if I had read Carl Rogers, I had
not. I did thereafter and found this and I would appreciate attendance to
it for reasons of wholeness and roundness.
Though I appreciate you may not have time to give in the attendance to
more important things.
A snipped but still I hope cogent for you paraphrasing of dialogue between
a master and his patient.
(Rogers)-Something we have lost in the warping process of development.
-One sees something, a forerunner of feeling, an incident making more
clear a fundamental nature - Mrs Oak gives forth something embarrassing
revealing something hitherto hidden from shared vision - that what she
brought forth took some inner cost was signalled by a long pause, then she
spoke,
" You know this is kind of goofy, but I have never told anyone this and it
will probably do me good. For years, since I was seventeen I have had what
I have come to call to myself, flashes of sanity, wherein, really, I feel
sane. And pretty much aware of life. And always with a pretty terrific
kind of concern and sadness of how far away, how far astray that we have
actually gone. It's just a feeling once in a while of finding myself a
whole kind of person in a terribly chaotic kind of world."
She goes on, " And knowing how far we, we've gone from being whole healthy
people. And of course one doesn't talk in those terms..¦"
Her carer (Rogers intercedes), " A feeling that it would not be safe to
talk about the singing you* - (she had in a previous dialogue thought of
her dialogue as singing;-)
"Yes, where does that person live?"
Consideration is given like the souls after death to where that place for
that singing person might be..¦
Rogers asks, " That whole you somehow lives feelings instead of somehow
pushing them to one side?"
"That's right, I feel from a practical point of view I ought to be solving
day to day problems. And yet I - I - what I am trying to do is solve,
solve something that is a great deal more important than little day to day
problems. Maybe that sums up the whole thing."
Rogers wonders if she means that from her hard head she thinks she ought
to be solving specific problems but maybe she could be on a quest for the
whole of herself and that therein lay all the important solutions to the
important problems.
" I think that's it. I think that's it. That's probably what I mean."
What a strange gift to me then, her note and reference to Rogers' work
should bring forth treasure of understanding for me. That I should have
learned so much from my own 'pupil', that she should care so much for me.
Or is it? And that ten years on I get to share it with you. Or is it?
I often wonder at the gap between sitting where Mrs Oak sits and where
many of us sit, you know that little field of ground between the 'hinged'
and 'unhinged', 'control' and 'out of control'. You see I sense that
background noise coming to the foreground. And so it is I point one ear to
the ground and the other to the sky by a natural inclination.
Someone once spoke me a question, "How does one acquire humility?" My
response was immediate, "Only through self humiliation." Rotten teeth
spoke me that truth. Rembrandt understood that;-)
I read here and there the fundamental that often as not it is the
'client', 'cared for', 'recipient of facilitation' who is the graceful
one, the wise one and the agile one.
Since Christmas I have been silently meditating upon these words, - " The
following case is used as a metaphor to engage readers or listeners in
conversation about the epistemological confusion that we are all sharing
especially when we meet -the schizophrenic, the mystic or the poet." (Who)
in our current context, "-may be more 'flexible' and can present more
fruitful challenges for our epistemological evolution." A new kind of
person seems to issue in emergence and I hear that whisper here
-
"A new kind of person is he/she who awaits the unexpected and responds to
uniqueness." (Bateson)
It is the 'they' who now may know better and better than you or me. They
may see the 'thou' we miss to see.
Verela proposes that edge of a shared edginess I rightly sense here, "This
is not the end of science but the beginning of a new science, the science
that would include confusion as a legitimate part of scientific procedure,
the science of confusion and groundlessness."
That some would call 'artescience' ;-) I prefer today to call it,
'learning to let go.'
Best,
Andrew Campbell
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