Reality Beyond Realism

[David Morris]

My God, this seems an ambitious task!  In Buddhist or Hindu or other
ancient eastern schools, ubiquitous reality is seen as an illusion, a veil
one hopes to see past.  Individuality (personal identity) is also seen as a
false reality, at least partly so.  Many lifetimes of observance by a
select few are sometimes required to see beyond the illusion of common
reality.  I wish you all the best.

David Morris

On Sun, Jun 28, 2020 at 3:06 PM Smoke Teff <smoketeff at gmail.com> wrote:

> Fellow Plisters,
>
> Starting July 1 I'll be leading a class you and/or people you know may
> find interesting. The class is called Reality Beyond Realism:
> Storytelling for/versus Enlightenment.
>
> It comes out of a tension I’ve been feeling in my own work in recent
> years. The tension is basically this. On the one hand, the telling of
> stories is maybe the original human activity. On the other hand,
> stories also seem to represent our most formidable limitation as
> individuals and as a species. Buddhism (and related traditions) seems
> to agree with contemporary science (neuroscience, quantum physics,
> etc) in the claim that our notion of individual “self” is ultimately a
> kind of delusion. A fiction we compulsively tell ourselves, which may
> have once been adaptive, but may no longer be so. There are stories at
> the bottom of all our sufferings and all our social strife. This is
> easy to see in personal psychological dysfunctions (depression,
> anxiety, etc.), political cynicism (which relies on limited and
> outmoded stories), as well as deliberate misinformation (i.e. "false"
> stories).
>
> So the tension leads to the question: can stories actually take us
> closer to individual and collective enlightenment? And the related
> question: Is what separates us from a more enlightened world the
> telling of bad stories, or the telling of stories altogether? As
> people who are uniquely attuned to the telling of stories—who may even
> look at (literary) storytelling as a kind of calling or chosen life’s
> work—is it possible for us to really use them for “good”? Can stories
> get us free, or do they only imprison us? Can they bring us closer to
> “absolute reality” or can they only distort our apprehension of
> things?
>
> So this “class” is a four-part inquiry where we will look at some of
> the conventions of Western realism as well as some texts that
> deliberately subvert those conventions (this will include some Pynchon
> excerpts, of course). We’ll try to see what other kinds of stories are
> possible or desirable, whether stories can be used to dismantle
> stories, or whether they inevitably entrap us in the constant karmic
> ping-pong of the world of forms.
>
> Some of those conventions of storytelling will include: the
> individuality of subjectivity, the linear and strictly forward
> movement of time, the mechanics of cause and effect, certain
> epistemological regimes and attendant values (including capitalism,
> scientism, post-Judeo-Christianity, etc.), as well as the more
> literary-specific conventions of stories built out of language (i.e.
> subject-verb containing sentences) and the form of the prose story
> (with its beginnings/middles/ends, conflicts and rising action and
> climaxes, etc.).
>
> The course will be four sessions, on consecutive Wednesdays, starting
> July 1, 6-8pm Eastern Standard Time. It’s run through this very cool
> organization called Incite Seminars, which is trying to bring
> ambitious learning out of neoliberal higher education institutions and
> rebuild it together with the people. They’re Philly-based, but now
> operating on Zoom. The classes run on an “enable-as-you-can” (i.e.
> donate-what-you-choose) structure. A few people have signed up already
> but I’d really love for there to be a diversity of
> perspectives/experiences involved. If you think you might know someone
> who would be interested, I’m including a link to the class page, where
> you can read the full description and fill out a registration form:
> https://inciteseminars.com/reality-not-realism/
>
> Also, if you have some favorite relevant excerpts, other reading
> suggestions, or ideas for the direction of the class, I'd be happy to
> hear and incorporate them.
>
> Love,
>
> Smoke
> --
> Pynchon-L: https://waste.org/mailman/listinfo/pynchon-l
>