Just Another Cultural Visionary: Recent Comments

Comment on denial dialectics

2010-03-19T23:22:34Z

.
Let's see if I can do this without sounding snarky.

Yes, I've explained this elsewhere (and in quite a few places). Don't ask me to point to the specific posts, since I tend to mix things up as I go; and the whole is developmental.

The addiction to self is the universal condition of self-awareness - an inevitability. What precedes self-awareness is only immediate - animal or infant awareness. Therefore self-awareness is both addictive and preclusive, since it also 'covers' the immediacy with the reflective interpretation - 'conscious' time, space, objects, concepts and, above all, 'self'.

The reason self-addiction is undesirable is because it precludes our actual nature - not simply the 'immediate' consciousness that grounds our awareness, but the structure of reflection as well. Only a conscious knowledge of self-awareness - arrived at only by breaking the addiction - allows us to understand the 'inner nature' of both self and world - insofar as we can understand them. And it is the sole access to the mirroring 'humanform' which is the true basis of the ethical.

Presumably, breaking the addiction is not only the first step on the path of the sage, it is an active principle essential to sage wisdom or gnosis.

This is not only the self knowledge of which Socrates spoke, it stands at the center of all the serious religions that I have been able to analyze, including the western.

But the thrust of your questions, then, is deflective. What this post is about is how something which is as old as human self-awareness - presumably tens of thousands of years old, if we go by the history of art - has more or less suddenly become the all-pervading vortex or black hole that swallows all conscious culture. Historically, the addiction to self explains human hypocrisy, and therefore tends to hold us in the periphery of our experience. But it has never before become the touchstone for 'culture'. What has turned culture inside out, leaving only the void nature of denial? And why have we, collectively, bought into this pervasive denial function as if it were a positive, and not the obvious negative that it is?

Comment on denial dialectics

2010-03-19T13:06:54Z

Perhaps you've already explained it elsewhere -- but what's wrong with being addicted to self? And can you offer an example of someone who was not?

(please forgive me -- but it does seem that I am addicted to making trouble on the internet!)

Comment on shark dentures

2009-12-05T14:36:26Z

Beautiful!

Comment on a dire season

2009-10-17T15:51:11Z

Love this Poem! Om Om Om

Comment on the map

2009-08-20T16:37:04Z

Wow! Very powerful and beautifully written. Thanks!

Comment on Reed, a tribute

2009-08-13T20:38:57Z

It is good to hear of Reed...even in the midst of his life struggles, his intelligence shone through. I think he was the beatest of the beatified. I remember him in San Francisco with Apple Alice, her kid Sherwood, Dave Bender, Joanne, Reeds woman of the time a hopeless alcoholic..and other extreme characters of the streets. Psychedelics, Alcohol, speed, welfare and madness. Chanting to god and sifting thru the wreckage. I'm not sure why the time comes up so sweet for me now. Maybe because the street is not that far away...

Comment on Reed Fry, poet, died 8/6/09

2009-08-11T17:18:14Z

Thanks Jeremy, So great to read those lines...

Comment on why

2009-07-30T17:50:05Z

Fiercely stated, unfortunately true, my feelings concur, The pain body dances and dances...

Comment on the being poem

2009-07-21T19:07:08Z

tis cryptic. we'll have to call you jeremy dickinson, son of emily.

Comment on the being poem

2009-07-15T17:40:19Z

Have been enjoying and working with this poem. Really is a contemplative event. Actually starting to glean some understanding from it. Initially, it just felt like yoga to me. Any way, thanks for the post.