science-fiction-economic-collapse

[Ian Livingston]

Well, actually Mark, I do think that's a good question. As I was
reading AtD (both times), it tickled my thoughts whether Pynchon had
read Wilber somewhere in the process. It occurs to me that they were
SF Bay Area at about the same time, and Wilber was just making waves
at the intellectual edge of the woo-woo scene, that being in
"transpersonal" psychology at the time, and somewhere along about the
late '90s someone dubbed Wilber "the Einstein of consciousness
studies." So he was "in the news" along the coast in those days. That
was just before the rather rapid evolution of his AQAL theory in the
years following his first wife's death from breast cancer. The point
being that AQAL emerged as a new, much discussed idea, in some
circles, during the time when Pynchon was drafting AtD, and there is
adequate reason to suspect that Pynchon might have encountered some of
that discussion.

As to whether he peeked into the theory enough to assimilate some of
it into his fictional worldview, that's clearly a moot point, and
maybe worth some consideration. It's more than the Chums who made me
think of Wilber as I read AtD. There's Wilber's whole notion of
"holons," being a whole which is a part of something greater--a
concept he borrowed from Koestler. AQAL theory posits that every holon
arises in 4 quadrants at all times. Those quadrants are the exterior
(objective), and interior (subjective) of the individual and its
environment. The environmental exterior, for a human (a whole human is
a part of its environment), is the observable society and space it
inhabits; the environmental interior, is the cultural intersubjective
exchange that cannot be directly observed by the senses or extensions
thereof. For instance, you can read Hegel, but no one can observe the
dialectics of integrating Hegelian philosophy by way of the arguments
that arise between the individual and the idea. We can extrapolate
those dialectics, but we can't really view the process because it is
based on shared understandings between writers and readers, speakers
and listeners, etc. The whole business of ideas is much greater than
the print available in the world. This struck me in Pynchon as far
back as M&D where the exteriors of some buildings, for example, were
much smaller than what went on inside them (See The Chums of Chance
Visit the Center of the Earth). An individual human can hold a great
deal of the world in her mind.

The Chums also seem to move in an atmosphere where things sometimes
happen without observable data to reference, and, when Yashmeen walks
into a closet and winds up on a distant street, it seemed to me
allusive of the sort of leaps we make when emotion elicits some
insight. Then there's the whole bifurcation implicit in the spar. I
mean, I'm obviously not there yet, but I just saw all sorts of
evidence that Pynchon might be offering parodies of AQAL in any number
of places, from M&D on through IV. It's within the realm of
possibilities. And Wilber offers many opportunities for parody.

Links to AQAL info:

http://www.formlessmountain.com/aqal.htm  (a map)
http://wilber.shambhala.com/html/misc/tosewo.cfm/  (art crit)

and, of course, Wiki, for balance:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ken_Wilber


On Fri, Dec 2, 2011 at 8:48 AM, Mark Kohut <markekohut at yahoo.com> wrote:
> Interesting, Ian...
>
> This, from the article, leads me to ask if this paragraph may be part of the
> suggestive meanings to the Chumsworld airship civilization in AtD?
> The grace into which they are last seen flying into, between the Wars?
> An Iceland Spar-like, i.e.refracted from the known world, as/into an utopian 'world'?
>
> Discussion question of the day. Maybe?
>
> "The irony of a post-scarcity setting is that our civilisation could
> have achieved it a century or more ago. Once again, the solutions are
> not technological but rooted in our own nature as human beings.
> Overcoming or improving our nature may require a moment of
> society-wide Satori. Whether we are ready for that yet is up for
> debate."
>
>
>
>
>
> This is where Spiral Dynamics and other AQAL disciplines help in
> mapping the terrain, and helping to show how it is we are where we are
> in terms of social and cultural development in the contemporary
> political morass. They aver that societies evolve and develop in paths
> very like those of individuals, which only makes sense in that in both
> terms we refer to humans. Individuals all begin at the same
> rudimentary stage of development, then develop along lines
> representative of what we might loosely call "skill sets". For
> instance, sports stars evince exceptional development along a line we
> could label kinesthetics; musicians and other artistis have especial
> aesthetic development; Einsteins and Schweitzers show strong cognitive
> development; etc. The point is, while we all show some development
> along all the many lines of development, no one excels in all of them,
> and some really go great-guns along one or a few lines as in the
> sciences or economics, for instance. We often call these folks
> geniuses, but they may have very rudimentary skills in, say,
> interpersonal relationship, morality, compassion, etc.
>
> Some people in every era of human history have out-developed others in
> their milieux. In some ways these folks are regarded as freaks, but
> they often inspire others to follow along where they pioneer the way.
> And just as everyone starts at the same stage, everyone also has the
> potential to develop to any point along the various lines; and the
> more people who take up the trail after a real trail-blazer, the
> easier it becomes for others to follow along as well. I think it's
> safe to say that most 'trends' can be cited as examples of this
> phenomenon, but not all trends have equal value in human development,
> and the vast majority get dropped relatively quickly. But the ones not
> eliminated persist and deepen and broaden both in their appeal to
> others and in their practical relation to social evolution.
>
> Also, development along any line may consist of any number of steps,
> or stages discovered via states of awareness of the further potential
> ahead of them. These are insights, and can help an individual pursue
> the further training needed to achieve the next stage, or center of
> gravity, in the discipline.
>
> Societies develop according to the impetus of the developmental arrays
> prevalent among their participants. So we get societies of great
> technical and economic power, like the USA, which may show very poor
> development in ethical or spiritual intelligence. That's not to say
> everyone in the US is a moral dunce. Not at all. On the contrary, we
> have shown some profound capacities for recognizing and reaching out
> to help others in need--even when we get it all wrong and lend support
> to the bad guys, or send money and supplies that never reach the
> people most in need--we have the capacity for care and sometimes do a
> very good job of delivering. But, and this where it most hurts, we
> have developed amazing technological capacities and yet apply those to
> militaristic / dominance disciplines instead of using those abilities
> to discover more harmonious ways of living with others and with our
> host planet.
>
> The significant point here is that of the 'center of gravity'
> phenomenon. When you add up all the various lines of development in an
> individual or a group, you get a sort of central locus of overall
> development. For instance, to someone at, say, an 'autonomous' stage
> of cognitive development it may seem inevitable that conflicts arise
> and they try to rise to define those conflicts at the cognitive level,
> but if they are morally 'conformist', they may try to solve those
> arising conflicts according to the group with which they identify,
> and, furthermore, be rather intolerant of people who do not see things
> their way, all depending upon where their overall center of gravity
> is. This is because whatever insight we gain will always be
> interpreted back to our center of gravity, rather than up to our
> furthest developmental reaches. I think this combination really is at
> the heart of much of the current American political disjuncture. A
> great variety of people at relatively advanced stages of cognitive
> development take profoundly differing reads on the current milieu
> because they identify with differing views of moral and ethical
> virtue, but few can step outside their egoic attachments to fully
> recognize the needs and status of others with views different from
> their own. Once a significant portion of people reach a level of
> development comparable to, say, an Elizabeth Warren, in terms of
> cognitive and valuative measures, a number of things start to happen.
> They begin to see that their own interests are intimately bound with
> the general welfare of everyone else, which really inspires some folks
> with middling valuative perspectives but high cognitive ability and
> training, while really pissing off the folks with very good cognitive
> skills and relatively naive values.
>
> The point is that we could not have achieved a post-scarcity setting a
> hundred years ago, because there were not enough people who had
> developed beyond individualistic thinking and values. As more people
> see the concerns and relative effectiveness of their more
> highly-developed peers, they begin to lock into those values memes and
> start to develop in relation to that stage of perceived desirability,
> and ever more complex responses come into reckoning. Are there enough
> people yet at high enough stages of development to allow
> post-scarcity? Well, I think not, but there is some evidence that more
> complex and subtle values are entering the military all the time. I
> think that, ultimately, it will rely on where the military stands as
> to how far our society can go in terms of actually helping others
> instead of setting out to destroy them.
>
> All this is a very rudimentary reading of the overall schema AQAL
> offers, but I hope it reflects, somewhat, the potential this very
> complex, yet elegantly simple mapping technique offers. Whether it can
> prove itself useful in defusing the current mess, so that we can move
> into a position of offering stewardship rather than policing to the
> world remains to be seen.
>
> On Thu, Dec 1, 2011 at 1:07 PM, Mark Kohut <markekohut at yahoo.com> wrote:
>> http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/booksblog/2011/dec/01/science-fiction-economic-collapse
>
>
>
> --
> "Less than any man have I  excuse for prejudice; and I feel for all
> creeds the warm sympathy of one who has come to learn that even the
> trust in reason is a precarious faith, and that we are all fragments
> of darkness groping for the sun. I know no more about the ultimates
> than the simplest urchin in the streets." -- Will Durant



-- 
"Less than any man have I  excuse for prejudice; and I feel for all
creeds the warm sympathy of one who has come to learn that even the
trust in reason is a precarious faith, and that we are all fragments
of darkness groping for the sun. I know no more about the ultimates
than the simplest urchin in the streets." -- Will Durant