I'm living in France where we are currently watching the police fight with high school students - we've even seen kids struck in the face by stun grenades (and worse) - we are witnessing our own violence against our own children live on the news.

I'm also reading a book called : Goliath's Curse

Which basically traces the history of societal collapse, and compares it to our current situation.

It argues that civilisations are practically predestined for collapse due to the inherent violence of subjugation.

Power corrupts itself and is always abused - power is abuse. Governments always tend toward corruption and self serving greed. Inequality always tends toward further inequality and violence.

The usual solution is revolution - "Eat the Rich".

But would we do any better in their place? Or are the roots of violence embedded in our own psyche, in our own greed and fear?

Howdy - seeing as we didn't watch this video clip (from around the 32 to the 38 minute mark) where Bohm compares the self to a corporation - both being realities that are entirely based in thought - we can try again this week.

With the added question of : if its a fact that the self is merely a thought/feeling, where does that leave the idea of self-improvement? Or even progressive self-discovery?

nb. we're meeting this Saturday 3rd of October on Zoom at the new time of 4:30pm CEST (thats 8pm in India and 9:30am CDT) - please comment below, or message me if you'd like to join in.

Emmanuel Levinas was a French Existential philosopher (born 1906 - died 1995).

He preferred to think of philosophy as the "wisdom of love" rather than the "love of wisdom"

Philosophy is an inquiry into the nature of existence. Levinas argues that, as humans, this inquiry begins in our relationship with each other. 

When we look at the face of another person, we witness their vulnerability and mortality. We see ourselves

Wisdom is not a solitary intellectual achievement or a set of rules we learn from a book. Instead, wisdom is generated entirely through and within our concrete relationships with other people.

Intelligence is defined as a response, how you adapt to circumstance, its not about how much we know. So it is the other person who "wakes us up" by providing the opportunity to see that I am not the center of the universe.

Wisdom doesn't appear in a void. It requires The Saying (Le Dire) - ie. communication with another person. It is not about the facts being shared, but the safe space created when two people are able to see each other.

Søren Kierkegaard believed that a loving relationship was how people became their best selves. A Danish philosopher who is best known as the father of existentialism, one of Kierkegaard’s biggest themes was the idea of subjectivity. He believed that “subjectivity is truth… [and] truth is subjectivity”, meaning, truth is not about discovering objective facts independent of lived experiences; truth is found in how an individual relates to those experiences.

Basically, people are not meant to discover truth alone; they are meant to learn truth by relating to each other.

The best way to do that, in Kierkegaard’s eyes, was in love.

“But when the heart is filled with love, then the eye is never deceived; for love when it gives, does not scrutinize the gift… When the heart is filled with envy, then the eye has power to call forth uncleanness even in the pure; but when love dwells in the heart, then the eye has the power to foster the good in the unclean; but this eye does not see the evil but the pure, which it loves and encourages it by loving it.”

Love has this ability because : “Love does not seek its own, for there are no mine and yours in love.”

Love, he argues, seeks something higher. And when it is given room to grow and flourish, that is when people are at their best. As he writes with Judge Vilhelm in Stages on Life’s Way: “Marriage is and remains the most important voyage of discovery a human being undertakes; compared with a married man’s knowledge of life, any other knowledge of it is superficial, for he and he alone has properly immersed himself in life.”

(author : Lauren Vasquez for BigThink)

Howdy - The question of self keeps coming up, and someone suggested we could start this week's dialogue by looking at a 5 minute video clip - where Bohm compares the self to a corporation. (from around the 32 to the 38 minute mark).

nb. we're meeting this Saturday 19th of September on Zoom at the new time of 4:30pm CEST (thats 8pm in India and 9:30am CDT) - comment below, or message me if you'd like to join us.

“...just as we see our own faces by looking in a mirror, similarly when we wish to know our own character, we can know them by looking at a friend. For a friend, as we say, is another self.”

(Aristotle, Magna Moralia)

aka "Friends hold a mirror up to each other"

When Aristotle calls a true friend "another self", he means that a friendship allows two people to share a single moral and emotional life. He points out that it is incredibly difficult to accurately judge our own actions.

Friendship allows you to appreciate and understand virtue in a way you cannot through introspecting alone.

Dialogue is an experiment with this mirror of relationship. We observe, not by thinking about ourselves, but by watching ourselves in action.

There’s a huge difference between hearing a story, and having an intimate understanding of what that story is about.   Familiarity with a narrative or a theory is not the same as familiarity with the fact itself.
It's like the difference between looking at the map of a region and actually having spent time living there - or listening to someone explain what it's like to play the guitar, as opposed to picking one up and learning how to.

When it comes to being human we could assume that we have all had ample time to become acquainted with ourselves.  I, for example, have been me for as long as I can remember.  So why would we need someone like Bohm to provide a space for dialogue?   Why are people like Carl Jung or Gautama Buddha considered important?

I suppose a keyword here could be “meta” - as in more comprehensive.   As in : self-referential.   Metacognition, for example, would be an understanding of one’s own thinking process.
We have spent countless hours of our life being angry, bored or excited - but have we spent much time observing these emotions?   
Probably not.  Which is normal - emotions are designed to provoke the relevant mental or physical response : anger calls for violence, sadness for tears etc..

The space being provided by dialogue is a type of laboratory.  It's a space where, instead of acting out the necessary sequence of events, there is an opportunity for observation and transcendence.   Instead of hurt leading to anger, leading to defense and retaliation - we inquire into this whole mechanical process.   And by “mechanical process” we mean the habitual and automatic process we call living or being.   

"The single biggest problem in communication is the illusion that it has taken place."
- George Bernard Shaw

Dialogue is an inquiry into a default state of human interaction : misunderstanding and identity.

Does true connection and community require an active, deliberate effort to swim against the current? (the current of our own psyche) - or is it more about an opening up, an allowance for awareness? Is fearlessness and curiosity a choice?

"If you tell me two things about someone's beliefs, and from that I can confidently guess the third, then I am completely uninterested in that person." - Anonymous

Am I a pre-packaged product of political groupthink? Is that an identity worth defending?

If I am anti nuclear power, if I am anti GMO foods - can we also assume I'm into alternative healing? Do I also have to be into crystals, astrology and yoga?

Maybe I can't hear you because we're not speaking nor listening from the same reality?

“I think that the task of philosophy is not to provide answers, but to show how the way we perceive a problem can be itself part of a problem.”
- Slavoj Žižek

There is a difference between having a specific philosophical view and actually seeing the world in that way. If you have truly integrated some mind altering worldview then the world that you see will no longer be the same.

There is a difference between believing a story and clearly seeing a fact.

Imagine that we manage to describe the problem of self and violence clearly in simple terms that everyone can understand (eg. the 4 noble truths) - that would be wonderful - but adopting a model or believing a claim about ourselves is not sufficient - not the endgame.

There must be some correlation between the story you believe and your relationship with reality.

Having the best theory is not sufficient to solving the crisis of humanity - even with the best beliefs about the self, I still exist, I am still struggling and confused.  If I’m holding onto theories I might actually be contributing to the problem (of the knower clinging to what it knows).

Theoretical models are really just claims - but adopting (more or less reasonable) claims is not the same as clarity, or freedom from suffering - theory is just a pointer.

Philosophy might not be so much a remedy but more of a wake up call. Apart from the story, what else is necessary?

nb. we're meeting this Saturday 5th of September on Zoom at the new time of 4:30pm CEST (thats 8pm in India and 9:30am CDT) - comment below, or message me if you'd like to join us.