A concept that guides my model for 'art in integral broadband', as an introduction, is the concept of the quadrants. I take this concept from the work of spiritual philosopher Ken Wilber. I honor the generic manner that he used the idea in his philosophy, but I apply the quadrants in altogether different (and I believe, more inclusive) ways, at least for the art world. The concept of the quadrants opens an inclusive and comprehensive view of that world. And it allows the important characteristics of the art world⎯artist consciousness, artwork production, art institutions, and artwork interpretation⎯to reside peacefully and distinctly in a philosophy that aims to be practical.
The goal is this: to be inclusive of perspectives. It illumines the complimentary perspectives of an occasion, person, place, thing, or moment. These genuine perspectives are stitched into every aspect, small- and large-scale, of the art world. To think with the quadrants is to wear a pair of glasses. Its lenses orient the wearer to indigenous perspectives, or windows of thought. And as you start to see these basic perspectives that are bundled together at every turn, you also can see the basic systems and schools of thought particular to each perspective. Humans have emphasized various systems and schools of thought over time, and through various cultures. With the quadrants, you can at once see nearly all of them, at least in basic form. Both perspectives and systems of thought appear in your mind, through careful use of the quadrants. Sound powerful? Well, actually it is.
So here, in abstract diagram, is what the quadrants look like. Draw a vertical line, then a horizontal line that intersects in the middle. You get a cross. Now look the four white spaces. Each illuminates a perspective. In turn, these spaces represent 1) Subjective Singular, 2) Objective Singular, 3) Subjective Plural, and 4) Objective Plural. It looks like this:
Diagram 1: the generic quadrants
Each space has a name. The name comes from its relative position to the others. Because, obviously, there are upper and lower halves, as well as left and right halves, the spaces are names as the upper-left quadrant, the upper-right quadrant, the lower-right quadrant, and the lower-left quadrant.
An example of the quadrants
Let’s don the quadrants glasses, for example, to look at the moment when I drink my morning coffee. It is rather simple, of course, and meant to illustrate. I’ll describe this experience inclusively, through a one-by-one description of the illuminations framed by the quadrants. The quadrants are not the actual illuminations or felt perspectives, but instead frame what those are for this particular occasion.
So I get my coffee from the local stand. I feel the coffee in my mouth, its taste and sensual effects. There are interior drives of various kinds that operate as I swallow. My psychology that values and needs this lubrication, as well as feels its effects (thus phenomenology - the philosophy of intuitive experience), is illumined by a subjective-singular perspective. All such knowledge, data, and insight would be what an upper-left quadrant analysis offers.
A person who watches me do all of this sees my overall behavior. I also watch my own behavior, as an object. With bare eyes, one can see that I am a man with Styrofoam coffee cup. My body moves in certain ways. Scientific experiments upon me would show physical data and measurable changes. My bodily responses to caffeine, sugar, and cream, can be seen objectively (biology, scientific empricism). This kind of perspective is illuminated by a objective-singular perspective, and is elicited by a upper-right quadrant analysis.
Furthermore, rather than an isolated event, of course I participate in a larger system as I drink my coffee. The sociology and markets of business distribution provide the means for my purchase of the cup of coffee every morning. There is a coffee economy, interdependent with other forces in the world (various systems-theories). All of this is illumined by the objective-plural perspective, or 'me and the coffee as part of a larger, systemic whole'). This is a lower-right quadrant analysis.
Finally, people regard coffee (its merits, its downsides, its standing) and so values are attached to coffee. These differ to various degrees from culture to culture. Coffee is held differently around the world. There are various kinds of meanings that coffee elicits, and different people will respond differently to coffee, and to me drinking it. Coffee’s values and meanings (hermenutics) are illumined by the subjective-plural perspective, from a lower-left quadrant analysis.
Parts of a whole
So if you put it together, all four of these quadrants come together in complimentary fashion to in large part give a substantial account of the morning coffee occasion Each perspective can be explored in manners both deep and wide. There is a story to tell about each reality, and a broad science (or methodology) that investigates each thoroughly. But you do want to put everything back together, as quadrants reunited. The synergy of a full, 4-quadrant analysis means your point of view just got multi-perspectival, or made of 'many perspectives'. And within each perspective, there is a story to tell for every moment, in all of its beauty and mundacity.
The concept of the quadrants does not tell those stories, or give the particular details and accounts of the coffee experience (or any experience). It underpins those investigations. It is an outline that shows where to look if you want an inclusive account. It is a guide to what might be the shape of the narrative. It orients you to the general contours of a comprehensive point of view. It gives a sketch to fullness. It reminds you of what, in broad terms, you ought to include in your thinking. It gives sturdy banks to a river of further exploration.
The Art World, Viewed Anew
Any aspect of the art world can be viewed through this lens. In The Integral Stories of Art (posted here) I use the concept of the quadrants to fashion a very general view of the art world, in its largest span. Doing brings into focus what are thus the primary aspects of the art world -- those of artist consciousness (upper left), artwork production (upper right), art institutions/curatorship (lower right), and artwork interpretation (lower left). These four aspects form a comprehensive grouping that, in general fashion, gives basic outline to what we mean when we say 'the art world'.
I cannot stress enough, however, just how general an outline this is. The truth offered by this outline is on the one hand, fairly inclusive, and on the other hand, general to the point of bare introduction. We can and need to go further than this to have a genuine integral art philosophy. I personally find that this generalized use of the quadrants acts to help artists and art lovers create a system of organization (of books, articles, interviews, instruction methodology, and accounts of any kind about art) in a way that is open to a planet-centric moral embrace where we look for information and truth from any source and from any tradition. This most general use of the quadrants is a contemporary navigational tool, in other words.
To use the concept of the quadrants in a more localized and intimate manner is to, simply, examine each of these four aspects of the art world with a fresh and unique quadratic lens. Where at first each aspect was a particular quadrant, now we put each aspect at the center of each quadrant, and examine each for perpectives native to, in turn, artist consciousness, artwork production, art institutions/curatorship, and artwork interpretation. Each gets a quadrant diagram of its own.
With this basic map of the span of the primary aspects of the art world, my approach is to proceed in a manner that makes useful distinctions between what is relevant to a particular aspect of the art world, and what is not. And again, this map can act as a guide to artist, and art lovers, so as each seeks knowledge and truth about the art world, one can self-diagnose towards fullness and inclusion of the major perspectives.
I'm registered. It is official. On Oct 2, 2005, I will run 26 miles and change through the beautiful streets of both Minneapolis and St. Paul. I will die. But I will live again. Or at least that is what I'm telling myself right now. I'm excited and pumped, but my teeth are clatterin'.
In the end, the only thing truly worrisome about the Pope's past is precisely the sentence that got the conservative hyperbolists in such a lather in the first place. If there is anyone who should appreciate the vast differences between the amoral excesses of democratic secularism and the brutality of actual "dictatorship," it's the man who saw Hitler's handiwork up close. If the shepherd can't get such a basic truth straight, it's no wonder the flock sounds so ridiculous.
Have you heard of a 'Jewbu'? I hadn't until I read about it today when it was mentioned in passing in a Chicago Sun-Times article. Basically, a 'Jewbu' is a person of Jewish heritage/religion who has converted or embraced Buddhism. Thus, Jew-Bu. This is new to me. But Reason Magazine had an article about this in 2003. It focuses on Rabbi Zalman Schachter-Shalomi, who is associated with the Wilber Institute. To wit:
Writing in The Wall Street Journal in 1999, Lisa Miller described not only the rabbi who became a Sufi sheik but a "Christian Buddhist, but sort of tongue-in-cheek," plus a Jewish/Buddhist cross-over that’s "become so commonplace that marketers who sell spiritual books, videotapes and lecture series have a name for it: ‘JewBu.’" Within the Unitarian Church, there are organi-zations of Unitarian Buddhists and even Unitarian Pagans.
And it makes me wonder what Christian-Buddhists are ... Christbus? And Christian-Sufi ... Christfis? Suftians? Stuff to ponder.
Me, I'm a Christian, and a Lutheran, but I don't attend Church anymore (did until age 18). For me, the Bible is allegory. Hannah and I were married in a Lutheran Church, but we designed most of the ceremony (it turned out to be a pretty good mix of non conventional and conventional, though we didn't set out for it to be that way). I tend to agree with Hazrat Inayat Khan, who said (quoted in the Reason piece): "We need not give up our religion, but we must embrace all religions in order to make the sacredness of religion perfect." I certainly embrace any and all religions as paths towards divine realization. Of all the ideas of the other religions I've studied, I'm most attracted to Sufi ideas and ideals. Sufism strikes me as the most musical of faiths.
But I generally think you never really leave home. While I try to absorb the ideas and experiments found in other religions, I have found that if I take it too far, spirituality turns at best to mush, and at worst to mental masterbation. Each person is not just indoctrinated to a set of religious practices and ideals, but is also born into a larger culture. The culture I was born into was entirely German and Lutheran, on both sides. This is my lineage, and I haven't been presented with a good reason to cut those ties, even as I seek to expand my own embrace and knowledge, in small ways and at my own edges.
A male black bear was being held at the Milwaukee County Zoo this morning after it was captured prowling around a business at 114th St. and W. Burleigh in Wauwatosa.
Authorities are trying to determine how the bear made its way to the commercial area near Highway 45 - it had not come from the zoo - and whether it is the same bear sighted in Cedarburg earlier this week.
Black bears have rarely, if ever, previously been seen this far south.
"I spilled my coffee all over myself," said Neil Tomkowiak, who got a good look at the bear when she climbed up to the break room window at Schwaab Stamp & Seal, 11415 W. Burleigh.
But it was super fun to be there. Ben and I shared a bag of peanuts. Ben kindly bought me a beer - for $5.50. Yikes. When it got chilly around the 8th inning, I warmed myself with some fries. Glad I brought gloves and a hat. Throughout, we chatted it up about this that and the other thing. And we both called our Dads from the seats, to tell them that we were 'at Wrigley'. Yeah I know - aww...
We had good seats with a full view of the field. Every seat is pretty close at Wrigley. And there was plenty of action in defeat. The Cubs' starter, Carlos Zambrano, got off to a slow start, then found his rhythm in the 4th inning as he struck out the side. But he was ejected in the 5th inning after he hit a Reds player on the back with a pitch (whether he meant to is the big question ... I think he did). The Reds lineup is stacked with power hitters, and Zambrano was frustrated that he had allowed a home run. You take the good with the bad with Zambrano.
The Cubs came back and went ahead 8-6 on the strength of four - count 'em, four - out of the park home runs. The wind blew out at the friendly confines! But the subsequent six reflief pitchers for the Cubs were not able to hold on to the lead. The team's biggest problem right now is the middle relief and closer positions. While it is certainly tough to pitch in Wrigley (a haven for the long ball), the Cubs have not done a good job to cultivate the 3-4 pitchers who can lead them to victory when they are ahead in the late innings, like they were last night.
The team had a chance to tie the score 11-11 in the last of the ninth, but with runners on 2nd and 3rd with one out, neither Jeromy Burnitz or Todd Hollandsworth were able to get a hit to drive the runner in. The crowd, on their feet in support of their Cubbies, alas moped home in the windy night of a tough Cubs loss, 11-9. But the Cubs play another game today, and if they win, they take the series, 2-1. Go Cubbies. Yay Wrigley.
PIKESVILLE, Md. (AP) -- A herd of buffalo somehow got loose and wandered around an upscale neighborhood Tuesday, disrupting traffic and alarming homeowners before officers managed to corral them in a tennis court.
More than a dozen police cars and a police helicopter were used to herd the roughly 10 beasts, authorities said.
The amazing thing about being a homeowner is how endless the handy-person jobs tend to be. There is always more to do - another window to paint, another weed to pull, another door to refinish, another lighting fixture to replace, another lock to install. Then there are floors to refinish, circuitry to rewire, appliances to replace, kitchens to renovate, walls to hang, insulation to roll out.
In my normal moments, I get a little frustrated by the endlessness. I mean, on and on and on. But in my reflective moments, I envision that acceptance of the open-endedness of one's home can allow a simple embrace of everyday. It is like a river that flows in front of me all the way to the horizon. As I float down the river, I chop wood, carry water, paint house. Just float along, and do what I need to at every point of the journey, and float some more. And there is a nice buzz you get from a handy-man job well done. Just installed a new lock on the backdoor, and it is nice to look at it and say, 'I did that.'
So after I roto-tilled, we now have successfully re-seeded the backyard with Kentucky Bluegrass, and Hannah just yesterday planted our wildflowers, sunflowers, moonflowers, and morning glories in the front yard. There are gonna be lupines. Hannah is the lupine lady. (Have you read that classic children's book? You should.)
Next on the docket is to finish painting our exterior windows on both 1st and 2nd floors. We are using two shades of purple - one light, one sexually dark. And then after that a new gutter in the front. And then new gutters all around the garage. Like I said, it is endless. But I'm cool with that. Gotta be, right?
Can be found if you click here. It is from The New Criterion, one of our best journals of arts criticism, and is written by Stefan Beck. Beck finds much to be positive about. His kosmic kwote:
Paglia is hardly unique in revering popular as well as high culture. She is unique in her ability to graft one to the other in her critical style without creating, as so many do, a lifeless or offensive hybrid. Her association of ad copy with cathedrals is at least felt, not trotted out to shock or amuse. (That is not to say she has ever refrained from being shocking.)
By that token, though not all of the forty-three poems discussed in this volume are among the “world’s best,” the reader is confident that they really are Paglia’s favorites, and grateful that she is generally lucid, diligent, and entertaining in justifying her taste. She doesn’t call the lyrics to Joni Mitchell’s song “Woodstock” an “important modern poem” just to shoehorn an extra woman into the canon and rankle the Great Books set. She is agenda-free. For good or ill, she means it.
Indeed. If there is an agenda with Paglia, it is to honor, celebrate, and expand upon the lineage of passionate art lovers and commentators - art is held as object of deep significance for humanity by this group - with which she gladly and so expertly associates.
Click here to read his interview of Jim Paredes, a man of many talents. This is the third in the series of B-SCAN interviews, first of myself, then Vince Horn, and now Mr Paredas. Congrats to Coolmel for another great offering.
Until 7:05 pm CST. That is when the first pitch of tonight's Cubs - Reds game happens. And I'll be there.
My first Cubs game in ten years. My first Cubs night game ever. And the Cubs' ace, the feisty Carlos Zambrano, will be on the mound. So after work, I'll speed walk to the Red line El, and take it to the Addison stop. There I meet McB, we'll walk into Wrigley Field, and then the magic begins.
Growing up a Green Bay Packers fan, with their mystical Lambeau Field (the 'frozen tundra'), I'm a sucker for storied franchises and their equally storied stadiums. For at these hallowed grounds, the excitement to just be there is almost the game itself. Boston's Fenway Park is the same way. These are the stages for contemporary folklore, where the post-literate visual cultures can still get their tribal groove on.
The Cubs, of course, are infamous for their bad luck and curses. These stem from the 'Billy Goat' incident - when an man was shut of the Wrigley because he wanted to bring his pet goat along with him - and also from the 1908 playoffs - when they won a game they should not of, and thus won the World Series with a cloud over the legitimacy. And this year is no different, with injuries to many key players, including fan favorite Nomar Garciaparra. They don't have a good closer, and several of their key pitchers have had slow starts to this season. The fans and media moan and groan (if you step back from it, the hubbub is friggin' hysterical in this town), but both still, deep down, will never not be Cub fans, and won't give up. Besides, people moan and groan when the care.
Jerry Seinfeld once joked that in this era of free-agency and diminished player-town relationships, what fans really root for is their favorite laundry. Maybe that is more the case in less-historical towns, but in Chicago, it is more than just the duds. Both the Cubs and the Sox have over 100 years of history. If anything, you root for those magic moments when the ghosts of players past somehow infuse the current roster, when basemall magic happens, and a moment or two of a game is elevated into sheer poetry, and raucous joy - the 'holy crap, did that just really happen?' moments.
As a fan, those are the moments that live on as tall tales and folklore that you tell and retell the stories to friends, family, and children. You build common meaning with your kin, as your tales get longer and more dramatic. Because sports moments tend to happen in a flash, it takes months if not years for the meaning to unfold, in the proper words. As a Packer fan, I've been lucky to attend more than a couple of those kinds of game (such as the Monday night game when Antonio Freeman caught a Favre pass while on his back in a driving rain, and scampered in for the winning score in overtime to beat the dreaded Vikings - it felt like lightning flashed).
As a newly minted fan of the Cubs (yes, it's fashionable, but so what), I guess we'll just have to wait and see. I've watched a couple magic Cubs moments on the television, so maybe if I'm lucky, lucky, lucky.....Either way, tonight will be a riot. I'm just a little excited.
Y'all know the 'Mozart Effect', right? It suggests that by listening to certain kind of music, your intelligence increases. It has spawned a whole series of CDs and educational materials, geared to children of all ages. Well, it appears to be greatly overblown, and that is the good news, according to researcher Chip Heath:
"When we traced the Mozart Effect back to the source [the 1993 Nature journal report titled 'Music and Spatial Task Performance'], we found this idea achieved astounding success," says Heath. The researchers found far more newspaper articles about that study than about any other Nature report published around the same time. And as the finding spread through lay culture over the years, it got watered down and grossly distorted. "People were less and less likely to talk about the Mozart Effect in the context of college students who were the participants in the original study, and they were more likely to talk about it with respect to babies—even though there's no scientific research linking music and intelligence in infants," says Heath, who analyzed hundreds of relevant newspaper articles published between 1993 and 2001.
The truth is that the original study in Nature (PDF here) claimed that the 'effect' of Mozart's music lasted for no more than fifteen minutes in college-age students. That didn't stop the whole cottage industry from emerging - books, CDs, websites - that claimed, snake-oil style, that music listening could make you smarter. Mind you, it is not at all bad that people who bought in to this charade listened to more classical music. It is just that the reputed benefits could not be delivered by mere listening, and certainly not for babies and young children.
Yet the case is different for music training. There are documented case studies that illustrate the benefits of piano and voice instruction. Verified effects on both spatial intelligence and logical/mathematical intelligence result from regular training, even for preschoolers. A run-down of several studies can be found at a website, here.
My favorite study can be read in its entirety if you click here (it is a PDF). Due to piano and voice instruction, there is a long-term increase in 'spatial reasoning' capacity, which "involves maintaining and transforming mental images in the absense of a physical model and is required for higher brain functions such as chess, mathematics, and engineering." The results were dramatic for the piano/voice instruction group, and static for those who received computer lessons.
So music training rewires neural activity. Plato was right.
And with him goes one of the preeminent postmodernistic voices. Dave Newbart of the Chicago Sun-Times has the story:
Inside a small, utilitarian classroom on the University of Illinois at Chicago campus, Stanley Fish is concerned about this pressing question: What is truth? Or, more specifically, how one comes to believe what is true and what is false.
Fish, among the best-known English professors in the world, is teaching his last class as a full-time academic.
"This is about my last chance to get it right,'' he says.
Here's Wikipedia's background of Fish, long a controversial lightning rod sort of figure. He famously said of deconstructionism that it "relieves me of the obligation to be right . . . and demands only that I be interesting." (Oh how that sentiment applies to more than just contemporary literary theory...) For yet more background about Fish and his theories, good god, just Google him and see ya in five years.
How fully can my artwork be felt by others along a spectrum of emotional touch-points: ... formal precision? ... mental ingenuity? ... essential transparency?
FROM DEPTH OF THE SUBJECT: KEN WILBER'S INTEGRAL ART:
Here is a short excerpt from this paper, long promised by the bibliography I posted some time ago in my Knowledge Library. The passage below is part of an introductory summary of Wilber's longest writing about art, two chapters from his book The Eye of Spirit.
Overall, my opinion of this particular essay is mixed: it is valuable as a general overview for readers unfamiliar with the array of interpretive methods; it is wildly ignorant of contemporary scholarship which comes to exactly the same conclusions of this essay; it is not particularly relevant to artistic process, practice, inspiration, or artwork production; it is easy to be confused by theoretical points that he himself has revised or changed since this essay; it usually merely names various schools instead of an actual tactile negotiation of each's merits or problems; it does not set its ideas in a larger context distinct from non-interpretative aspects of art philosophy. And of course, it is rather user-friendly for non-technical audiences, which is always nice.
If you are unfamiliar with this essay, here is my general introduction to Wilber's version of integral art interpretation:
In his essay, ‘Integral Art and Literary Theory, Parts 1 & 2,’ Ken Wilber offers an overview how his integral approach can be applied to the interpretation of artwork. In doing so, Wilber highlights the different ways artwork can be reflected and received by viewers, critics, and audiences. He lightly examines several schools/approaches to artwork interpretation, and how these schools answer the question, 'where is the art?' His focuses on one of Vincent Van Gogh's paintings, A Pair of Worn Shoes, and contrasts his own interpretation of the painting with that of Martin Heidegger. Wilber rather confusingly attempts to connect the concept of a 'holon' (or, a whole/part) with art and the art experience. And Wilber ends with a poetic fantasia about consciousness, which as a spiritual philosopher, he is wont to do.
As far as art interpretation goes, Wilber’s essential suggestion is this: each school is partially right. Each school can offer truth, meaning, information, and insight into artwork. He focuses on schools that examine artist intention, artist psychoanalysis, formalism, symptomatic social critique, viewer arousal/response. Each can offer some slice of truth, value, or insight. To not be aware of these schools, or to deemphasize or marginize a school's perspective, is to potentially have a narrower interpretation of art. Wilber suggests that an integration of these interpretive schools can bring forth a fuller inquiry into the nature of art, one that transcends and includes the insights offered by any one single school. The point is that Wilber's model does not restrict interpretive choices, but in fact opens one's inquiry significantly to a wider span, at least potentially.
There are safeguards that this approach offers. By its nature, the model automatically recontextualizes critical analysis away from absolutism: by the viewer (a critic alone constructs the meaning, unmitigated by any outside forces), by the artist (the creator alone dictates meaning), of deconstruction (meaning is solely symptomatic of larger social forces and dynamics), of actual objects (the material artwork alone contain all meanings). Each is taken to be potentially true, or useful to interpretation, but also limited by its own emphasis on a particular perspective upon artwork. For Wilber, any one school of interpretation is 'true but partial'.
In simple terms, Wilber attempts to sketch a platform to transcend eclecticism (or even in a certain sense 'relativism') in favor of a comprehensive interpretive stance. His is a theory of how to negotiate other theories. Like a DJ who spins records at a party, Wilber's interpretation theory rests primarily on the work of other thinkers. His work is in how he threads everything together into a coherant mix for rather easy consumption (he hopes). He is a synthesizer, in that he culls together cogent points from various sources in a general outline that begs further and deeper analysis.
If through 'theory', we aim to set parameters for the experience of meaning, and through 'integral', we aim for fullness and inclusion, then an 'integral theory' for art aims to set the parameters by which we can behold the objects of art in the fullest resonance possible. Wilber's integral art and literary theory aims to enrich audience’s experiences. His version is true but partial (as I shall demonstrate). But towards the goal of more inclusion in artwork interpretation, I give him plenty of credit. For art educators and gallery curators particularly, this essay can help one think in different and interesting ways about art's meaning, and the conditions by which students and art lovers might more fully absorb its contours. Wilber's essay is far from unproblematic, and overall not particularly academically original, but it offers value and depth, nonetheless.
m a t t h e w 's k i t c h e n CHOCOLATE BANANA PANCAKES
This is adapted from The Expectant Father, by Armin Brott. It has been a huge hit with Hannah during our pregnancy. I've made it for both breakfast and dinner. The grilled bananas combine with the melted chocolate, both grounded by the fluffy pancake, all of which makes for easy to make feast that is filling and good for ya.
raw materials 1/2 cup white flour 1/2 cup whole wheat flour 2 teaspoons baking powder 1/4 teaspoon cinnamon pinch salt 1 tablespoon turbinado sugar 1 egg 2 teaspoon vanilla extract 1 tablespoon vegetable oil just under 1 cup milk 1 cup chocolate chips 1 tablespoon butter 3 bananas, sliced
directions for batter Mix the dry ingredients in a large bowl. Add the oil, milk, egg, and vanilla. Mix until you have a smooth batter. Add the chips and mix again.
directions for pancakes Melt butter on a heated griddle, or flat pan. For each pancake, pour a large spoonful of batter on the griddle. After pan is full, quickly place banana slices on each pancake. When surface bubbles on the pancake pop, flip over. Flatten with spatula if needed. Cook until the second side is as brown as the first, and remove from griddle. Serve with butter and maple syrup.
Very close to my house, under the Interstate 94 bridge over Western and Fullerton Aves, formed of salt and dirt on the concrete wall is this image.
Many claim it to be the Virgin Mary, and there is a 24 hour vigil that has emerged of Catholic Chicagoans flush with candles and flowers - a site to protect, worship, and pray for. It is a spontaneous shrine, right down the street.
Me? I see an image clearly reminiscent of common Mary imagery and iconography. No doubt about that. I don't think it is the result of manifest divine intervention, more than the marks all around it (kosmically, yes, everything is divine). But I'm heartened that people find something to believe in, be inspired by, and share with those around them who find similar meaning. Their devotion inspires my own devotion to what I believe in.
For fun, here's a link to other recent 'spontaneous shrines', found in all sorts of odd configurations. (Photo courtesy Chicago Tribune) Where shall it be next?
Ever wondered what the evidence suggests about the human capacity to create art object and symbols, and how that capacity tends to develop? If so, then check it, cuz I long-wondered, too.
I've long-thought to myself, where does the capacity to create symbols come from? How does it develop? We certainly see plenty of examples of art objects that are fashioned in better and worse ways, technically. Some artists appear to churn out art objects (a generic term for any kind of artwork, or 'creative symbol'.) of a consistently tight and solid quality. Some consistently churn out less-tightly formed artwork, and many are in the middle.
I mean, humans create symbols. This has been long known. The study of how we create symbols is formally known as 'semiotics'. But to scan the major work of Gardner, and his well-known seven streams/intelligences (kinesthetic, interpersonal, spatial, musical, linguistic, logical/mathematic, and intrapersonal) as well as those added to the mix, DJ-style, by Ken Wilber (witness, moral, values, needs, cognitive, affective - all of which are aspects of Gardner's 'intrapersonal' given particular attention) as well as the important offering by Abigail Housen, for an aesthetic stream, in general you don't see anything particular to the tactile creation of artwork. You don't see much about how humans develop the capacity to make creative symbols, extensions of consciousness into form.
The truth is that there is evidence and relatively small literature, but few talk about it. For some reason not clear to me, the symbolization stream has been sorely neglected. Virtually all integral theorists appear to have either missed, dismissed, or ignored this intelligence. The only two who haven't are the well-known Howard Gardner and, humbly, the little known me. While I was with Integral Institute, I was the only scholar who worked on this area. Certain of my colleages, and even the shiny one himself rather dismissed the idea of a symbolization intelligence.
Well, pooh on them. As another addition to my Integral Art Knowledge Library, this introductory 4-pg paper can be checked out if you click here. I owe primary credit for this paper to Gardner, whose research forms the basis for this introductory paper, and many of my ideas still to be written down. Many thanks to him and the Project Zero team. (Viktor Lowenfeld's important work informs this paper, as well.)
In addition to a review of Gardner's research in this area, what's new in this paper is that I formally introduce the symbolization stage of essential flow. This is the symbolization stream at its most developed and flexible. You will find no other philosopher who employs 'essential flow' as a stage in a particular stream. Other talk of a 'flow state', which is important but a different aspect of consciousness. (It is basically a feeling of openness, courage, and concentrated focus, available at any stage of development - a kind of altered state). No, essential flow as I use it is a permanent acquisition, something you reach through cultivation, training, and commitment.
Of course, it is not at all uncommon for artists to reach this level. I do not peddle snake oil, nor make mystical what is simply available to any artist motivated enough to give art production his or her all. The point of theory for art is to make artists more aware of their own capacity. And to operate with a full spectrum of skills and technique is entirely within the capacity of the normal, everyday artist. So this is for you. Hope you enjoy. This is just an outline, and there is much more to come from me on the symbolization stream and essential flow.
Seseme Street plans changes for the Cookie Monster. The song is no longer 'C is for Cookie'. Now it is 'A Cookie is a Sometimes Food'. Cookie Monster will preach moderation. And Jonah Goldberg is irate:
If the Cookie Monster is no longer a cookie monster, what is he? Why didn’t they just name him “Phil: The Monster Who Sometimes Likes to Eat a Cookie”? Conceptually, this is no different than the idiot animal rights types who want their dogs and cats to be vegans, too. Cookie Monster cannot help being a Cookie Monster any more than your tabby can stop liking fish. It is their nature to do so. Why not just declare that Big Bird is now an elm tree? If the ineffable, inexorable, immutable nature of Cookie Monster’s cookie-eating can be erased for some good cause, why should Big Bird’s birdness be safe?
Sesame Street and its defenders say they are just trying to do their bit in the war against child obesity. That’s nice. But at what price? The whole point of the Cookie Monster character was to have a character who was silly because he ate so much. If Cookie Monster were a Greek god, he’d be the god of gluttony. Wouldn’t it have been more honest and simply better to implore kids not to be too much like the Cookie Monster rather than make the Cookie Monster like everyone else? We all understand we shouldn’t be like Oscar the Grouch.
Look, the Seseme Street producers and writers are undoubtedly well-meaning, and childhood obesity is indeed an enormous problem. I just think the change of Cookie Monster's song is one step over the line. The Cookie Monster was funny. His glottuny was something was laughed at. We learned from his example of excess, learned in a negative manner - how not to treat treats.
It is important to have negative role models. This may fly against the prevailing wisdom. I speak entirely for myself when I say that the most learning I've done is in the negative mannner. I meet someone, or a group of people, and after I get to know them, I see some behavior, belief system, or philosophy that I don't jive with, deep inside, and then after I run screaming, I realize that I don't have to act that way, and in fact it is deeply disagreeable for me to act that way. And so I don't. Sometimes this takes courage and time, but life is nothing but time and courage.
In terms of music, this works with the whole tried and true method of imitation. You imitate musicians and composers who you like. You learn their techniques, their styles, their methods, their practice. You learn it to the point where you recognize their style in your own. And then you evolve. You choose not to play or compose like that anymore. You recognize them in you, as you create, and you stop yourself and create in some other way that seems fresh. This is another example of evolution by negation. Through learning and then negation, you find your own voice. You don't know it until you feel it, or until others tell you that you have a unique voice. It surprises you. It is supposed to. When you grow by negation, you don't know what is next. Novel emergence is built into this approach.
We react and often bounce away from our influences. Kids see Cookie Monster for all his craven humor, and I bet with just a little conversation, parent with child, kids can see 'I don't want to be like that'. That, anyway, is the idea. You want to have both negative influences, and positive influences. You do need good old heroes. I applaud Seseme Street for all the positive role models they provide in an entertaining TV show for kids. My simple advice is don't forget that negative role models can be just as alchemical. The world isn't white-washed with all goodness, and in age-appropriate ways, neither should our children's television.
From the Chicago Sun-Times: "ST. LOUIS-- Chicago Cubs shortstop Nomar Garciaparra will be sidelined at least two to three months because of a torn left groin." I listened to this injury happen on the radio last night, as we took a smoothie to Ben, as he gets well. Even on the radio, the injury sounded like it hurt. I hope he recovers and helps to Cubs to the National League pennant. This guy is a trooper, and you can tell he has a big heart. Perfect for Chicago, which is why the town is a little bluer today because of this bad news.
My essay, A Planet-centric iPod: World Ears for Composers, has been published over at Frank Visser's website, IntegralWorld.net. It will permanently remain posted here on MD.com, as well, so no worries.
If you go to Frank's great site, you can find my essay in the 'Reading Room', or under the 'What's New?' link. I really appreciate that Frank agreed to publish the essay on his site. Frank published my very first integral art essay, "Constructing an Artistic IOS", back in 2003, and this newest posting makes a total of four MD essays over there.
Frank does a great service to open dialogue, debate, and provide a egalitarian forum for fresh integral voices. His book, Ken Wilber: Thought as Passion is excellent. Thanks for everything, Frank. You are in inspiration.
It flows. You learn that to feel creative requires nothing but the act of acceptance of flow. To force creativity is akin to forcing a change of direction in a river's flow. Of course, such a change is possible. Just look at the Chicago River. But short of major overhaul of river banks, channels, and locks, it is easier to simply find, enter, and expand in (and as) a river. You realize that it is here, right now, at all times in your life. Situations arise that make you forget this, and sometimes you don't want to be so close to the river. But it always flows. Creativity awaits your irrigation. It awaits your agreement that is flow through you. So the work is not to find creativity as much as commit to acceptance and simple recognition of it in this moment.
Artists can express inclusive intuition, and fashion extensions of their intuition in the form of artwork. It is just that simple. Such is today's reality for our leading-edge artists. Read this new essay here, posted over at Knowledge Library. This piece is an excerpt of The Artist's Mind, part two, soon to post in its entirety. Do enjoy!
"I think everybody should love me, and when someone doesn’t, I get nervous. So, as a child, I overcompensated like crazy. Class president, valedictorian, even captain of the football team. A frantic dance for acceptance, an attempt to have everybody love me." - from Geoffrey Ward's enlightening book, Stripping the Gurus, posted here as a sample chapter. (hat-tip, Coolmel)
I'd admire this candor if I didn't think that he wrote this so that readers would admire his candor. Given the level of meanness, vitriol, nastiness, and insult directed by him to myself and my wife - this after 16 months of tireless volunteer leadership as the IU-Art Director - my most immediate reaction to reading this is that it is pathetic. He exhausted my sympathy for him the moment he, in response to no insult whatsoever from me, said I had a 'big fat ego', that he would return me to my 'relative obscurity', and called Hannah 'petulant', after she withdrew a video donation after continued bungled management by WilberNaked. And since a whole lot of people appear to not like Wilber anymore (myself, my family, and my friends included), it appears that the true fear-based Wilber has yet to rear its ugly shiny head. Look out above.
"To those who want profound change, consider an outsider’s perspective: the Catholic Church is the National Review of religion. You may live long enough to see it become the Weekly Standard. In your dreams it might become the New Republic. But it’s never going to be the Nation. And if ever it does, it will have roughly the same subscriber base."
"Note: every era is the modern era to the people who inhabit it; a "modern" pope in 1937 would have announced that godless collectivism was the wave of the future, and ridden the trains to Auschwitz standing on top, holding gilded reins, whooping like Slim Pickens. The defining quality of 20th century modernity is impatience, I think – the nervous, irritated, aggravated impulse to get on with the new now, and be done with those old tiresome constraints. We’re still in that 20th century dynamic, I think, and we will be held to it until something shocks us to our core. Say what you will about Benedict v.16, but he wants there to be a core to which we can be shocked. And I prefer that to a tepid slurry of happy-clappy relativism that leads to animists consecrating geodes beneath the dome of St. Peter's. That will probably happen eventually, but if we can push it off for a century or two, good."
Read the whole essay here. Lileks is an amazing writer.
"I was trying to explain last night to a non-Catholic just how dumb-struck many reformist Catholics are by the elevation of Ratzinger. And then I found a way to explain. This is the religious equivalent of having had four terms of George W. Bush only to find that his successor as president is Karl Rove. Get it now?" -- Read it here. Right underneath this short post is a longer one that details Sullivan's objections to Pope Benedict's views. As always, Sullivan is on the front line, his hand within the pulse.
POPE BENEDICT XVI (NEE CARDINAL RATZINGER) ON PLURALISM:
From his Monday homily in the Mass for the Election of a Supreme Pontiff:
In the second reading, taken from the Letter to the Ephesians, St. Paul mentions "the measure of the fullness of Christ" to which "we are called in order to truly become adults in the faith. We must not remain children in the faith, without coming of age. What does it mean to be children in faith? St. Paul says that it means being 'tossed to and fro and carried about with every wind of doctrine.' A very pertinent description!
How many winds of doctrine have we known over the last few decades! How many ideological currents! How many schools of thought! The little ship bearing the thoughts of many Christians has frequently been shaken by these waves, thrown from one extreme to the other: from Marxism to liberalism, even to libertarianism; from collectivism to radical individualism; from atheism to a vague religious mysticism; from agnosticism to syncretism, and so on. Every day new sects arise, and St. Paul's words concerning the deception of men and the cunning that leads into error come true. Having a clear faith, according to the Creed of the Church, is often labeled as fundamentalism. While relativism, in other words allowing oneself to be 'tossed to and fro with every wind of doctrine,' appears as the only attitude appropriate to modern times, a dictatorship of relativism is being formed, one that recognizes nothing as definitive and that has as its measure only the self and its desires.
We, nonetheless, do have another measure: the Son of God, true man. He is the measure of true humanism. An 'adult' faith does not follow the waves of fashion and the latest novelties; an adult and mature faith is profoundly rooted in friendship with Christ. ... We must bring this adult faith to maturity, to this faith we must lead Christ's flock. And it is this faith - faith alone - that creates unity and is realized in charity. ... In the measure in which we approach Christ, so truth and charity come together in our lives too.
I find this is be a terribly interesting passage. For those familier with my art philosophy, I have dealt with pluralism and how it effects the lives of artists (see, for example, The Integral Stories of Art). As Pope Benedict uses the term, 'relativism' is, essentially, a product of the pluralist worldview. In the value system that seeks to operate from a diversity of perspectives (pluralism), there is a slippery slope to a madness where no truth can reasonably be asserted (relativism). Thus, in the new pope, we see a man who makes a symptom of pluralism one of his chief adversaries. On that count, I will look upon his papacy with great interest, and root for him to continue his intellectual search for a philosophical reckoning with relativism.
Along with Father Thomas Keating, a Colorado abbot, as well as many others, I view the Bible as allegory. To view it as literal and historical truth is to rest in tautology (its historical authenticity determined because the book says so, instead of an outside verification). In the allegorical view, the wonders of deep Christianity - the Holy Spirit of Jesus Christ, embodied and self-less love, authentic simplicity, and such - can be seen, felt, and experienced in Holy Scripture. These are interior truths, a phenomenology of our human essence, seen as humanistic divinity. Brought up Christian, I have deep sympathies for Catholicism; as a composer, I hold Catholic sacred music in deep reverance.
One of the ironies I always laugh at is how the liberally-inclined people tend to want activism in our judges, but loathe it in the church. Meanwhile, the conservatively-inclined people loathe activism in the judiciary yet celebrate it in the church. For conservatives, it is not okay for judges to reinterpret the United States' constitution, but it is entirely okay for the Pope to reinterpret the Bible and decide that, for example, homosexuals are part of an 'ideology of evil'. For liberals, it is okay for judges to get proactive on gay marriage, but it is not okay for the Pope to dismiss the need for contraceptives.
The real arbiters are common sense of people over many years. I tend to want my institutions to be conservative, because that is what they are there for - to protect the organic development that led to each's creation and sustainability. But I want the people in charge of those institutions to have an extraordinarily open-mind and intellectual curiosity, because conservative ought never to mean 'close-minded'. And then I tend to want my popular opinion and 'will of the people' to be more on the liberal/progressive side, because it is through demonstration and the free exchange of ideas in the world commons that the seeds of change ought be planted. Likewise, I want the common sense of people to be tempered by realism and practicalities, because a democracy allows anyone to speak if they really want to.
So I disagree with the Pope that 'faith and faith alone' that will circumvent relativism. I think a lot of things will help the world transcend the pitfalls of extreme relativism, of pluralism snared in its own traps, of endless processing and analysis paralysis. Faith sure helps, but so does reason, a multiplicity of perspectives, common sense, and the time to allow a full understanding of the particular context (which calls for truth in the first place) to grow. If anything, patience, collaboration, humility, evidence, and an open mind - added to religious/spiritual faith - are what I see as the tools of a post-pluralist toolkit.
For one of the core truths of pluralism is that there is never just 'one' reason for anything, 'one' solution for a problem, 'one' kind of truth, or 'one' way to look at the world. And it is that truth that I hope the Pope realizes, takes to heart, and amplifies to the one billion of his newest followers. Would that, in a sense, put a limit on conservative church doctrine? It would, but it would allow the church to be more honest, more responsible, more aware of its own skin, and I believe even more resonant. For within limits lies freedom, and it is freedom, mystery, love, and insight that we look for it our spiritual leaders.
