Hello James
From my perspective, your post above completely fails to take into account the current discussion in this thread: We have work to do - General - Second Renaissance Forum
I will ask you to reconsider what you have written, because right now you are putting me in an impossible position. You have identified the wrong problem. You believe my interpersonal skills are at fault, when in fact I am offering you the path to the solution, and you are trying to block it in order to protect the person who is the real root cause of the problem.
Or to be more accurate, the problem is with the whole group. David Joseph has clearly articulated it. You cannot manifest 2R unless the group has the basic required level of cohesion, which means getting the underlying meta-ideology right. At the moment you have a serious problem to deal with, and you have chosen to attack the messenger instead of listening to the message. You are repeating exactly the mistake which has caused so many previous attempts at this sort of movement to fail.
Please can we try to sort it out.
. If I were you right now, I think I’d feel very frustrated.
Well, I am not. I am trying to help you. I am saying what I am saying because I am absolutely convinced it needs to be said, even though I’m being threatened with expulsion from this group if I don’t stop saying it. Please consider your actions and your motives.
It even says on your main page, very clearly, that materialism is part of the problem. And yet when I go to great effort to explain exactly what the problem is, and why having an unreformed materialist (somebody who wants to bring Dennett into the new paradigm(!?)) as part of the admin team is likely to cause a serious problem with group cohesion, you identify me as the problem?? Would you also think it is OK to have somebody in this group trying to bring capitalism into the new paradigm? Because that’s the level of absurdity we’re talking about here. Dennett is a textbook example of what the new paradigm cannot look like.
This “Second Renaissance” cannot happen if people prioritise personal politics over the actual ideas themselves, and that doesn’t just apply to Jonah either. I am the only person around here who is offering the sort of ideas that you need, but those ideas are disruptive. They involve the definition of lines, which also implies some people finding themselves on the wrong side of those lines. I am talking about the psychology of materialistic belief because the psychology of materialistic belief is a central part of the complex of problems we are dealing with. This new paradigm needs to be disruptive. It needs to disrupt the comfortable, decrepit existing ideological order (where everybody is allowed to believe whatever they like, because there’s no actual truth) to the extent that it can be replaced with something else. Do you think that can happen without people going through extremely uncomfortable transitions and groups being broken apart and remade?
Jonah’s materialistic metaphysics are a perfect example of the old paradigm which cannot be accommodated in the new. I have explained very clearly why, and nobody has responded with any criticism (at all) of that explanation. What I am saying is completely in line with the views of Iain McGilchrist, who is the number one person on your list of “new paradigm” people. And yet when I try to force this issue - just as it is going to have be forced in order to make the paradigm shift happen - you have decided to step in to prevent me from being able to to do so, on the grounds that it is too disruptive to the group and too disrespectful of people’s opinions.
Please can I ask you to leave this discussion open. Let me continue to speak openly even if it causes discomfort within the group. This discussion is desperately needed. This is the work that needs to be done. As a group, you need to come to terms with the real problems which are preventing 2R from happening. This cannot happen “nicely”. It will necessarily involve certain people having to change their views or accept that they can’t be part of the new paradigm.
You appear to believe it is more important to keep this place comfortable, with nice friendly vibes, without serious ideological rifts, than you think it is to actually hammer out the meta-ideology you need to make this happen.
We cannot birth the new paradigm unless we are prepared to systematically defeat the old one. That’s how paradigm shifts work, and this is The Big One.
I am the only person offering this group the epistemological meta-ideology it desperately needs. And all I am doing is saying what needs to be said in order for people to understand how that epistemology works, what the underlying cosmology is, and why this idea is revolutionary enough to carry the paradigm shift. This is extremely difficult stuff to explain. I cannot do so if also being put under pressure to not say anything that other people do not want to hear. I need to be able to speak completely honestly and openly, or it will not be possible for me to adequately answer people’s questions.
EDIT: I have a suggestion as to how this can be resolved. The problem here is that, just as with Jonah, I am facing an individual disagreement with a moderator about ideas which are extremely important to the goals of this group – and they are the most important goals imaginable. I fully understand how my presence here, and what I am saying, is disruptive and difficult for people in many different ways. But I am also getting a lot of positive feedback, and I see that people are understanding me. Could we please have a thread, in which everybody who has been paying attention recently takes part, where there is a discussion about how we proceed from here as a proto-movement. Specifically we need to talk about how the group can be kept together, which is a fore-runner of the question of how the meta-movement can be kept together and what is to be the framework for our theory of change. That is going to have to involve a frank discussion of two specific categories of belief – metaphysical materialism and postmodern anti-realism (especially its presence in some forms of metamodernism). It will not work if I am the only person willing to speak uncomfortable truths – if other people leave it to me to articulate all of the difficult stuff while they remain in their comfort zones because they don’t want to take the sort of risks I am being forced to take. Don’t you think it would be easier for me if I compromised on my principles and prioritised personal politics over the truth? I will be happy to abide by the conclusions of such a discussion. If the conclusion is that materialism and anti-realism are to be considered acceptable in some forms, then I will abide by it. I would also be happy to leave this place for a while to give the group some specified period of time to discuss what I’ve said without me taking part in the discussions. But I cannot just back down on what I consider to be essential components of the paradigm shift because I’ve been told by a moderator that I’m causing too much personal discomfort and making too many “you…” statements. I have spent my whole life speaking truth to power. I have no intention of stopping now.
I am NOT any sort of messiah figure. I already flunked that. It was much too hard to walk that walk, so I do not talk that talk (I also do not want to repeat what I see as mistakes made by Wilber in this regard). Now I see myself as somebody who can bridge ideological divides, but the process itself could not be better described than in Luke 12:49-52:
“I have come to set the world on fire, and I wish it were already burning! I have a terrible baptism of suffering ahead of me, and I am under a heavy burden until it is accomplished. Do you think I have come to bring peace to the earth? No, I have come to divide people against each other! From now on families will be split apart, three in favor of me, and two against—or two in favor and three against.
Please let me know if you want me to start such a thread, although it will be very much more effective if somebody else initiates it and sets the questions. Alternatively just tell me I am not wanted here and I will disappear. However, please bear in mind that if that is what happens then I’m going to end up on a collision course with this group anyway, precisely because this group will have demonstrated that it is not capable of hosting the conversations needed.
From the intro of my book:
The attempts to suppress Bendell’s work bear striking similarities to the broader pattern of resistance to challenging dominant worldviews—whether in academia, politics, or media. His story illustrates the precarious position of radical thinkers who poke at the comfortable narratives of progress and control, and reflects the reality that institutions built on the old order – those of economic growth, material consumption and technological optimism – are incapable of hosting the conversations necessary for the transformation required. At the heart of this struggle is a recognition that the future we imagine must be liberated from the intellectual and cultural forces that resist it.
You are resisting it.
Please note that if you do choose to exclude me from this group, I must insist that all long quotes from my book are deleted from the forum, as well as this thread. It is not OK to just leave this stuff here if I am not free to respond to future comments about it. This group can then just return to its materialistic/pomo comfort zone and I will get on with the job of actually making 2R happen without you.
Geoff