Re: (Essay) A Phenomenology of Mechanism: The Liminal Spaces of Perception
Posted: Sat Aug 20, 2022 12:27 pm
Federica wrote: ↑Fri Aug 19, 2022 9:55 pmLet's say I put the 'tracks' example in the essay (which is actually from Steiner) and nothing else - that wouldn't be a phenomenology, only a metaphor. The former should also include something which gets the reader to interact with perceptions from their first-person experience, either as actual perceptions (like sentences and music clips) or thought-experiments, which then leads their thinking to the underlying principle which the metaphor is also illustrating. So, on that note, I want to ask - what example would you have used if you were writing it, if not language or music?
The example is from Steiner not yours?! : ) That was subtle, I’m glad I ‘passed the test’ : )
I think the ‘tracks’ example alone would have worked well in the essay for the purpose of exemplifying the liminal spaces of perception. But your goal was to ultimately draw some conclusions about mechanism, and the tracks would not support that purpose. In my opinion the tracks would work equally well for the purpose of exemplifying a phenomenology of the liminal spaces of perception. To make the essay about penomeno-logy it’s enough that you offer the logic of the phenomenon. Then readers can always put on their boots if they want, go outside, leave tracks in the mud and perceive them, if they want to experience the phenomenon directly, once they know its phenomeno-logy. The suffix -logy inserts a thinking articulation between the bare phenomenon and the perception you want to offer, so that you are not bound to offer the perception of the phenomenon itself as a direct experience immediately accessible within the essay, but only the logic of its perception, which is its phenomenology.
What other example I would have used: I don’t think I am entitled to seriously answer this question. Commenting on what’s already there as I did is obviously way easier and different than producing standalone conclusive content. This being said, taking the question as an exercise, what comes to mind is the perception of the-things-that-are-not-there that we so commonly intuit in between someone else’s thoughts. We have a perception of someone else’s expressed train of thoughts and from that emerges in our conception a sense that something can be read between those lines. This could probably work as a thought experiment and those spaces would be of the non-typographic sort, found within the interpreted language. This phenomenon happens very commonly, here are two recent examples from this conversation: “I sense that perhaps you feel that I keep externalizing the blame for…” and: “What I think could be the explanation behind the choice of these examples…”
I would say it's not relevant whether or not the inference is confirmed within the perspective of the other person. What could be a liminal creation in this act is that by leveraging the percept, which not only encompasses thoughts, but also feeling and memory, we create, or co-create, or discover a new coherent idea. In retrospective, this opening on feeling makes sense to me, with reference to both the connection you made on the whirlpool side between liminal spaces and the things that are not manifesting, and the related Steiner lecture (that I have now read in full and grasped a little better) where the other world where the dead live, explorable through liminal creation, is also the world where feeling is consciously grounded.
When it comes to music, it should be equally possible to enter its melodic and lyrical meaning hence its spaces, but I admit that finding a specific example of search for liminal spaces within the perception of the interpreted musical language is easier said than done, because the qualitative focus makes it all more elusive, connected to feelings, personal. I have made a ‘quick and dirty’ attempt with the song you have shared on the other thread. By the way thank you for sharing it, I enjoy the song very much, wondering how I never heard before of this apparently popular band. What the song has inspired me in this case is a graphic transposition. All in all, very doubtful that there’s anything remotely liminal in there, let alone usable and convincing in an essay : )
The purpose of this phenomenology was to show, at the most basic level, what we do with our cognitive activity to get meaning from perceptions (and that our cognitive activity is actually involved). I also wanted to show with the quotes how earlier thinkers had reasoned out to the same conclusions about perceptions as negative images of meaning. The quantities and the melodies are the perceptions. It sounds like you prefer to focus directly on the meaning itself, and I am not sure how that would deepen a 'beginner's' understanding of how their own cognitive activity mines the meaning from perceptions. Now if we have already moved on to post-PoF inquiries, as you are at least very close to, then the liminal spaces of qualities (meaning) takes us even further into the realm of exploring higher cognition with our concepts. That's when we get to searching for meaning where the melody could have gone but is not going. Surely you see why that is a much more advanced discussion? It's not going to be one that is easy to follow. This is why I started to feel your criticism had a lot to do with you already progressing past the point where my essay would seem very useful for deepening your own understanding of these dynamics.
Ok, I had not realized this beginner’s focus of the essay. Which in all logic seems to point to only one conclusion : )
But, where we may still disagree, is whether the principle at work is the same for all liminal spaces, including those between words in a sentence and the beats of a song. That is how we characterize the tempo of a song, after all - based on the temporal intervals between the beat-perceptions. I have to reiterate here that there is a deep spiritual science behind why these 'spaces' are important in relation to our own spiritual activity. There is nothing arbitrary about these spaces and there are no spaces which are unimportant. They all simply reflect what is still subconscious in the World Process (WP) for us - the ideal, logical forces which weave together the perceptions. When we become inwardly conscious of them, they are no longer spaces but new perceptions within the WP (but at a higher spiritualized level). Then we move on to the liminal spaces between these new perceptions. What we can't do is simply extrapolate the method of searching within our normal waking spaces to that of all the higher-order spaces - later evolved modes of cognition cannot be derived mechanically from the earlier ones in any linear way. Yet the archetypal principles at work remain the same.
I’ll put it this way: I understand that what you describe here can be understood. By the way I have to admit that the active search for meaning in a complete song made it evident to me that the separation between tempo and melody is in reality softer than I thought, as it’s also intertwined with lyrics along the whole song.
It seems more clear from this post that we are mostly debating the choice of examples in the essay. I am not sure whether that particular debate will deepen either of our understanding of the principles at work. Certainly the essay was intended for a beginner level, pre-PoF audience, which was really the limit of my ideational capacity at that time. But perhaps there is still a principle divergence between us somewhere here. I am confused as to your position on writing/speech. Do you feel the actual spaces between the letters, words, sentences, etc. don't count to illustrate the principle of liminal spaces, or that they just don't work too well for most people?
I want to emphasize the importance of speech again. It is the mediating link between Nature, the human individual, and the Cosmos. Just like the physical Sun, it unites the Earth and the Heavens through human consciousness. We think in speech, we sing in speech, we express ourselves in speech (including gestures), we communicate to creatively shape the world in the speech. Like the Gods above once did, we are constantly speaking new worlds of forms into existence. And, as mentioned before, it is nearly impossible for someone to miss/deny the role of cognitive agents and logical structure in the speech they hear or text they see.
A person can deny such a role to tracks in the ground or any other outer natural perception. They could say a gust of wind blew a wagon down the road to create the tracks. Or perhaps, "sometimes the ground does actually sink on its own!" Speech, on the other hand, never arises spontaneously or independently of human thinking activity. Granted, it's getting to the point where many will say every sound they hear in Nature is a form of speech, and actually it is, but they have no idea why/how, and certainly they don't link these sounds to their own consciousness. The speech expressed through Nature is not inwardly creative activity as it has become in the speech of human individuals. The latter is truly unique in the history of our world evolution. Human speech resides at the threshold of the inner and outer worlds - it really is the threshold.
I think you're right that the tracks and other metaphors would greatly aid the discussion. If I were to update these and other essays, which I am contemplating doing, then I would certainly include such metaphors. I would also try to provide better examples of the liminal spaces in written speech. Perhaps I move from sentences to a full paragraph, and integrate speech and music, the spatial and temporal dimensions, with examples from poetry. Speech is really hearing made active from within and turned outwards, which then gets the inner warmth/breathing involved, and our vision in the case of written text. Moving on from that, the discussion on 'what isn't there' from our personal experience and collective history could be really helpful.
You have clearly grasped some of the key import of that discussion from Steiner, which I am glad you revisited. I am confident that it would mostly sound like gibberish to others who have lived with these ideas less and more abstractly. Certainly it wouldn't be a great place to start from. I sense we are going through similar tendencies, i.e. the spiritualizing impulse which we must lean into on this intuitive thinking path. When I first came across these ideas and delved into them, I felt the urge to skip past the beginner level stuff in my essays/comments and get into the deeper dynamics. Also the urge to express my ideas and express them quickly, which is clearly an egoic impulse. Actually that is still the case today, as is probably evident in my comments. Often I will condense some major points into a paragraph or two, simply assuming people are following the logic, remembering past comments I made, holding key insights fast in their mind like I am, and whatnot.
Looking back and, hopefully, forward to future posts, I think this is often a mistake. If we look at Cleric's posts, for ex., we often find he will revisit the same point multiple times with multiple elaborations and illustrations within the same post. This is the safest best, because these are completely unfamiliar modes of thinking for most people. And our modern memory of what was read before is also very weak. I can't count how many times I have reached a shared understanding with people on key points only for them to completely ignore them in future discussions on the same topic only a day or two later. So it's all about striking the proper balance, as usual, and that is clearly a task which evolves in relation to our own inner development. It gets easier as we get more and more living feedback from the higher ideations within, which provide the overarching context for all that we think, feel, perceive, and do.
On the topic of mechanism, it is clear to me that the essays didn't flesh out the connection between the liminal spaces and this phenomena nearly enough. Nevertheless, there is no doubt that mechanistic technology is permeated by spirits of darkness, which flow into the world through us. Even without any spiritual scientific research, we can discern that it is not progressive technology in the least. Everything from the purposes it serves to its modes of expression and its effects on our inner activity, like our attention (discussed more in 3rd installment), is regressive. Even if we approach such technology with the best of intentions, we must also have great Wisdom in our approach. We should limit our use of it whenever possible or at least get very creative in putting that use to more selfless spiritual purposes. I referenced Steiner's discussion of the sleeper car and how it's mechanisms 'grind down' the etheric body - these influences are very real and happen regardless of whether we are aware of them. They originate from and feed back into the deeper layers of our Being. Although our inner orientation to these things is critical, we shouldn't imagine it is a purely personal matter - these are transpersonal forces which are part of World Karma and should not be underestimated in their influence.