In many ways, nothing seems changed. The view out my window is the same as it has been for the 16 years we have lived here. Now, dead leaves quiver on the sugar maple before me, a cold north wind trying vainly to rip them free. Beyond are the pines, coated with light snow, and beyond them, the vast corn field with its stubble poking out from the white-whiteness of this newly fallen snow. It will sting to take a walk today, my glasses freezing the bridge of my nose as the cold goes deeper into the forehead. The snow glare will hurt, and it will be nice to get back inside for a hot cup of tea.
All the same, except for the new organic pig pens being put up in the alfalfa field to the north, but it isn't really. The closest town is expanding its borders beyond the new beltway, running up along route 12 to someday join the expansion flowing east from Madison. Almost everywhere in this country it is the same, and for those worried about jobs, this is a good thing. Except - except, when will it stop? In Wisconsin, we have gone from sparse Indian settlements to industrial farming and cities in only 150 years. Our system depends on this kind of growth but there are, as has been said, limits. When and how does it end?
This, along with a whole system of thought, is tackled expertly by author Gary Lachman in his book, The Secret Teachers of the Western World. It is not an ecological treatise, but rather an exploration of the West's esoteric - that is, inner - teachings, and how they have become buried - but not killed - by a changing form of consciousness. He uses the right-left brain model for simplicity, although he explores this split far beyond this division. The left brain, the logical, discursive side, he claims, overtook the right - the intuitive side - in the Renaissance, a process that has continued to this day, which has almost destroyed the efficacy of the intuitive. We can not only know this is true by what is valued in our thought processes, but by the fruit of its aggressive expansion. The discursive side wishes to dis-assemble everything into discrete bits that it can completely understand and control, and thus has set its sights on "messy" nature, by overrunning it with human structures, limiting it more and more to passive farming belts or fenced-in, controllable parks for our occasional amusement.
However, it has its limits, not just ecologically, but mentally. Lachman, borrowing from a slew of other thinkers, claims that the dominance of one side of our nature always runs into a wall when its excesses become so obvious it falls into self-parody. And more: the discursive mode must constantly pick things apart, down to the tiniest particle, like a kid taking apart a watch, to understand and control it. However, in so doing, it starts to eat itself up - that is, pick apart the nature of its picking apart.
In grad school, this was abundantly clear, as we fell into studying the deconstructionists, but one does not have to go to the ivory tower to see that it's happening. The West, which has dominated the world by its left-brain thinking, is now in the process of deconstructing itself - from its cultures and morality to its very processes of picking things apart. We see now the dragon eating its tail. We can clearly see now the destruction of Western hegemony by its own hands
The current political crises in our country reflects this knowledge and this fear, and the concern is real. However, Lachman claims that this has happened before, and it is part of a spiral process: as Hegel put it, the thesis forces the antithesis, and the result is a synthesis, a movement forward out of reconciliation. This is part of the magic of "three", from Pythagorean theory to the mystery of Christ. And thus the book moves on, to sum up this hidden knowledge that has been forced into the shadows by the modern rational mind, but nevertheless remains, because it cannot be lost - it is as much a part of us as our physical brains.
This book is the best I have read for a synopsis of the Perennial Tradition, representing it with a clear (and sane) eye, but it also brings about our own perennial question here: Will the discursive brain give way to a synthesis with the holistic mode of thought that has been marginalized by the mainstream, or will it insist on running us into the ground, jealous to the bitter end of its supremacy? It seems to me more and more that, this time around, it will depend on a global presence of goodwill that is so far absent, so much so that it seems our fate is in the hands of a greater force. This is the greater, unifying force that the esoterists speak of, but they, too, have long differed on how it works. For some, transitions run smoothly; for others, an apocalypse must first ensue. Perhaps by the end of the book I will have a better idea as to which way things might know, but it is my guess that no one really knows. But we do know that, in the end, it will depend on us as always, and how each of us contributes to global consciousness. FK
All the same, except for the new organic pig pens being put up in the alfalfa field to the north, but it isn't really. The closest town is expanding its borders beyond the new beltway, running up along route 12 to someday join the expansion flowing east from Madison. Almost everywhere in this country it is the same, and for those worried about jobs, this is a good thing. Except - except, when will it stop? In Wisconsin, we have gone from sparse Indian settlements to industrial farming and cities in only 150 years. Our system depends on this kind of growth but there are, as has been said, limits. When and how does it end?
This, along with a whole system of thought, is tackled expertly by author Gary Lachman in his book, The Secret Teachers of the Western World. It is not an ecological treatise, but rather an exploration of the West's esoteric - that is, inner - teachings, and how they have become buried - but not killed - by a changing form of consciousness. He uses the right-left brain model for simplicity, although he explores this split far beyond this division. The left brain, the logical, discursive side, he claims, overtook the right - the intuitive side - in the Renaissance, a process that has continued to this day, which has almost destroyed the efficacy of the intuitive. We can not only know this is true by what is valued in our thought processes, but by the fruit of its aggressive expansion. The discursive side wishes to dis-assemble everything into discrete bits that it can completely understand and control, and thus has set its sights on "messy" nature, by overrunning it with human structures, limiting it more and more to passive farming belts or fenced-in, controllable parks for our occasional amusement.
However, it has its limits, not just ecologically, but mentally. Lachman, borrowing from a slew of other thinkers, claims that the dominance of one side of our nature always runs into a wall when its excesses become so obvious it falls into self-parody. And more: the discursive mode must constantly pick things apart, down to the tiniest particle, like a kid taking apart a watch, to understand and control it. However, in so doing, it starts to eat itself up - that is, pick apart the nature of its picking apart.
In grad school, this was abundantly clear, as we fell into studying the deconstructionists, but one does not have to go to the ivory tower to see that it's happening. The West, which has dominated the world by its left-brain thinking, is now in the process of deconstructing itself - from its cultures and morality to its very processes of picking things apart. We see now the dragon eating its tail. We can clearly see now the destruction of Western hegemony by its own hands
The current political crises in our country reflects this knowledge and this fear, and the concern is real. However, Lachman claims that this has happened before, and it is part of a spiral process: as Hegel put it, the thesis forces the antithesis, and the result is a synthesis, a movement forward out of reconciliation. This is part of the magic of "three", from Pythagorean theory to the mystery of Christ. And thus the book moves on, to sum up this hidden knowledge that has been forced into the shadows by the modern rational mind, but nevertheless remains, because it cannot be lost - it is as much a part of us as our physical brains.
This book is the best I have read for a synopsis of the Perennial Tradition, representing it with a clear (and sane) eye, but it also brings about our own perennial question here: Will the discursive brain give way to a synthesis with the holistic mode of thought that has been marginalized by the mainstream, or will it insist on running us into the ground, jealous to the bitter end of its supremacy? It seems to me more and more that, this time around, it will depend on a global presence of goodwill that is so far absent, so much so that it seems our fate is in the hands of a greater force. This is the greater, unifying force that the esoterists speak of, but they, too, have long differed on how it works. For some, transitions run smoothly; for others, an apocalypse must first ensue. Perhaps by the end of the book I will have a better idea as to which way things might know, but it is my guess that no one really knows. But we do know that, in the end, it will depend on us as always, and how each of us contributes to global consciousness. FK
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