Attention and Worldview in International Development, Iain McGilchrist & Ameer Shaheed
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- čas přidán 27. 07. 2024
- This conversation is part of an online seminar series taking place in the Spring and Summer of 2023 bringing innovative thinkers into conversation with Iain McGilchrist to explore his philosophy as laid out in The Matter with Things. www.amazon.com/Matter-Things-...
In the week following each event, we hold free connection and inquiry sessions online to meet and reflect more deeply with others on the significance of the ideas shared in the previous week’s seminar. Incorporating embodied and relational practices, we’ll alternate between break-out room conversations and whole-group discussion. The emphasis is on authentic connections, epistemic humility, and a sense of wonder in relation to Iain and his interlocutors' work. You're warmly invited to join us!
To join the live events or learn more about this series go to our webpage here: systems-souls-society.com/iai...
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Since 2018 I have spent every single day trying to create Beauty with a capital B. In my garden with roses, in my art with sparkle and in my thoughts with Love for all. Thank you both...so nice to listen to intelligent men conversing about deeper subjects that affect us all.
I love this series with Iain. This is one of my new favorites.
Oh this was like music to my ears!! Concepts of system, complexity and convergent and divergent thinking are topics of deep interest and importance. LOVED this conversation.
Excellent conversation, thanks to both. I am one who left the corporate world 14 years ago, on a strong hunch that I had something 'other' to contribute. I had no plans, left myself with minimum resources, released all ballasts, and allowed myself to be moved by inspiration wit no plan. I also made a vow not to make any decision based on self-interest even self preservation. I wanted to see where I would land, how I would adapt, and to what purpose.
I foumd myself making art, and studyng Jung, totally taken up with the exploration of right-brain function. The outcomes have ranged from finding belonging from abbandon
🙏love to listen, thanks for describing 🧡
Brilliant
i love Iain
Surprised to find that I didn’t gain new insights from this conversation, where Ive got something rich and interesting from all the other Perspectiva series with Iain. The questions from Esther and Kevin were good tho’.
Context at 1.05....names and government..maybe not art..but words have magical powers for eg. curamoir ...an irish word means care of noble souls.....(etymology from latin) compared to 'carer'...which is from old french...'greif burden and sorrow' the intention behind both words is vastly different in relation to thosr with disabilities..old age...intellectual disability etc...and all it is is a reframe of a persons worth....as being everyone has worth..just because they exist
I’d love to hear Iain speak to Charles Eisenstein. I think they might find a lot of commonalities
One person blabbering is NOT how the world gets better. Time to GROW!
Interesting that Iain has brought in another person who doesn’t seem entirely familiar with The Matter with Things. Ameer is interesting because of the arts based approach he seems to be developing BUT this doesn’t come out very much in the discussion, and the person who is making links between Ameer’s practice and what Iain has thought and written is primarily Iain. If the discussion was intended to be primarily about participatory approaches in development then there are SO many people who are “at the top of their game” and to be honest it would have been more interesting to hear from them. I think the problem was that Ameer is quite a talker just as Iain is, and it would have been good to have someone chairing this so as to steer the conversation into the arts. Or maybe I’m jaded because I’m so familiar with participatory methods and the evidence for their value. It just felt like Iain was encountering this long established field for the first time. Surely I’m not right?
Re: Ameer's observations of Australian societal dynamics;
"Tall Poppy Syndrome",
I concur.
For example if one should possess both athletic prowess and an I.Q exceeding 140, the view taken ,usually by those of the social science bent, is one of the utmost fear and unbridled disdain which for some reason, must be acted upon with extreme prejudice.
Subsequent social outcasting quickly ensues via rumour, lies, innuendo and all methods associated with the sociopathic narcissist.(These alpha - psychos tend to go on to join police or other authoritarian institution).
Oz is indeed a hostile place for anyone with the intention of nothing more than seeking that which is excellent , needed or forward-thinking. There have been times when "decapitation" of the poppy seemed preferable,emotionally , to the abuse and scapegoating.
Salvation for the young standout, lay in the hands of genuine teachers ; those who appreciate fresh thinking, capability and love to nurture such.
Your chat is very much appreciated.
Does anyone know what book Iain refers to with, “the data allows you but they're all we've got?”
Could it be 'The Tyranny of Metrics' by Jerry Z Muller?
Theres a way i explain this to kids...its about fairness and equality....kid one falls in plaground hurts knee...teacher fixes him up with plaster on the knee...kid two falls in playground cuts her elbow...plaster gets put on knee....after a while kid 3 falls in playground and breaks a finger....plaster gets put on knee....the treatment is considered 'fair' as everyone gets their entitlement to a plaster placed on the knee...but 'needs' go unmet..but its all thats available....2 infections and huge hospital costs and sepsis ensue...servant leadership would save a fortune..as the adult children could learn about decent relationships and effective communication.....in ireland disability wefare is paid using the medical model ignoring social and moral models..and the database in ireland is called the national ability support service (a completely different intention thats not communicated to the burnt out carer who has no automatic right to even childcare ....in contrast to united nations which argue for use of all 3 models...a ternary ground up approach..almost feminine and nurturing....and dont get me started on cptsd(legacy of genocide etc and development levels)....Skinner if applied using Robert Frosts intentional wonder could swap patriarchal to paternal care and the onna de could nurture and lead from the left(mythical return..not political)....🙏
..jordan peterson is incorrect intelligence and perseverance doesnt root someone out of poverty....learned helplessness was the trauma bond required to rule the artless....bring back indigeneous art and conversation to the ordinary....picking blackberries off the ditch has become a marker for poverty if poor or 'high brow conservationist' if rich....its horrible same with baby milk...la leche league has to be for the ordinary....not seen as a luxury
At 42..its called meitheal in ireland....and to get rid of thr knots in wicked problems...how about creating zoom wells....ie get the effected in to speak and 'emerge' sane solitions out of the insanity....
I’m not quite ten mins in but mention of the WHO conference in Geneva sets off serious alarm bells - I strongly recommend people look up Michelle Bachmann’s recent reporting on Bannon’s WarRoom. She is Dean of the Robertson School of Government, Regent University. Also Noor Bin Ladin’s reporting; very troubling!
Because the WHO is a corrupt organization, or some other reason?
She's that horridly power-hungry republican "professional politician", isn't she?
There is no such thing as international development, except as a left hemisphere abstraction. Not sure if I can listen to an hour and a half of chat to see if they get to that rather central point.
a typical government advising bureaucrat having no knowledge of the issues at hand once again demonstrates the shameful truth of his position.
Another completely uncontroversial comment; also recycled
The biggest problem, cause of fragmentation, is what I call Pornos; deriving from Porneia as used in the writings of St Paul, but connoting Eros - if we think of Eros as the most generous (idealised?) conception of the erotic, that is, when it is subordinated to Agape, then pornos is the inversion of that Eros/Agape dynamic.
To quote the most important essayist of our time, Theodore Dalrymple:
“The sexual revolutionaries' ideas about the relations between men and women-entailing ever greater sexual liberty, ever less mastery of the appetite-were so absurd and utopian that it is hard to understand how anyone could have taken them seriously. But mere absurdity has never prevented the triumph of bad ideas, if they accord with easily aroused fantasies of an existence freed of human limitations.”
Pornos engenders a radical aversion, even phobia, of judgement. Again, Dalrymple:
“Not all the malnourished are drug-takers, however. It is when you inquire into eating habits, not just recent but throughout entire lifetimes, that all this malnutrition begins to make sense. The trail is a short one between modern malnutrition and modern family and sexual relations.”
That ‘short trail’ must, for many people, be denied and obfuscated at all costs... the Jeffrey Epstein and Harvey Weinstein scandals are of course high profile, but sadly not actually extreme, examples of what’s at stake. [actually, Majorie Taylor Greene has recently revealed that government has been in possession of ‘Suspicious Activity Reports’, going back years, that show evidence of extensive sex trafficking but are left to gather dust]
The more one reads Dalrymple, the more obvious it is that virtually all societal dysfunction, not merely malnutrition, has that same short trail.
For further elaboration of pornos as radical inversion; the following quotes are from Iain McGilchrist (I should point out that McGilchrist does not explicitly make, or at least emphasise, this ‘short trail’ argument... he probably largely disagrees; it is exceedingly unpopular, ‘that’s why incriminating SAR’s are gathering dust’)
“[Max] Scheler's hierarchy begins with the lowest level, of what he calls sinnliche Werte, or values of the senses-whether something is pleasant or unpleasant. Values of utility (or uselessness) are on the same level as those of the senses, since ‘nothing can meaningfully be called useful except as a means to pleasure; utility … in reality has no value except as a means to pleasure.’ The next level is that of Lebenswerte, ‘values of life’, or vitality: what is noble or admirable, such as courage, bravery, readiness to sacrifice, daring, magnanimity, loyalty, humility, and so on; or, on the contrary, what is mean (gemein), such as cowardice, pusillanimity, self-seeking, small-mindedness, treachery and arrogance. Then comes the realm of the geistige Werte, values of the intellect or spirit-principally justice, beauty and truth, with their opposites. The final realm is that of das Heilige, the holy.”
“The values of the useful and pleasurable, those of the lowest rank, are the only ones to which left-hemisphere modes of operation are applicable-and even these are often self-defeating to pursue (as the paradox of hedonism demonstrates). As things are re-presented in the left hemisphere, it is their use-value that is salient. In the world it brings into being, everything is either reduced to utility or rejected with considerable vehemence, a vehemence that appears to be born of frustration, and the affront to its ‘will to power’.”
"The right hemisphere sees the lower values as deriving their power from the higher ones which they serve; the left hemisphere is reductionist, and accounts for higher values by reference to lower values, its governing values of use and pleasure."
If the left hemisphere mode of being were dominant:
“Philosophically, the world would be marked by fragmentation, appearing to its inhabitants as if a collection of bits and pieces apparently randomly thrown together; its organisation, and therefore meaning, would come only through what we added to it, through systems designed to maximise utility. Because the mechanical would be the model by which everything, including ourselves and the natural world, would be understood, people in such a society would find it hard to understand the higher values in Scheler's hierarchy except in terms of ultimate utility, and there would be a derogation of such higher values, and a cynicism about their status. Morality would come to be judged at best on the basis of utilitarian calculation, at worst on the basis of enlightened self-interest.”
Speaking of cynicism, a passage from the late Roger Scruton (Fools, Frauds and Firebrands) gets to the heart of it:
The Party’s ability to turn the negative to the positive, and repudiation to redemption, offered precisely the psychic therapy of which those who had lost all religious faith and all civic affection stood in need. Their negative condition was well expressed, on behalf of the French intellectuals, by André Breton, in his second Surrealist Manifesto of 1930:
“Everything remains to be done, every means must be worth trying, in order to lay waste the ideas of family, country, religion . . . [Surrealists] intend to savour fully the profound sorrow, so well acted, with which the bourgeois public . . . greets the steadfast and unyielding need they display to laugh like savages in the presence of the French flag, to vomit their disgust in the face of every priest, and to level at the breed of ‘basic duties’ the long-range weapon of sexual cynicism.”
That ‘long-range weapon’ is formidable... Breton’s Luciferian insight was right on target, and at the core of all Leftist sophistry i.e compare A.C Grayling’s chapter on sex (The Reason Of Things), to Dalrymple’s observations. Grayling is clearly the comfortable academic who has never really witnessed the consequences up close... or worse is a thoroughgoing ‘Bretonite’.
Theodore Dalrymple, on J.S Mill, 'harm principle':
"The philosophic argument is that, in a free society, adults should be permitted to do whatever they please, always provided that they are prepared to take the consequences of their own choices and that they cause no direct harm to others. The locus classicus for this point of view is John Stuart Mill’s famous essay On Liberty: “The only purpose for which power can be rightfully exercised over any member of the community, against his will, is to prevent harm to others,” Mill wrote. “His own good, either physical or moral, is not a sufficient warrant.” This radical individualism allows society no part whatever in shaping, determining, or enforcing a moral code: in short, we have nothing in common but our contractual agreement not to interfere with one another as we go about seeking our private pleasures.
In practice, of course, it is exceedingly difficult to make people take all the consequences of their own actions-as they must, if Mill’s great principle is to serve as a philosophical guide to policy. Addiction to, or regular use of, most currently prohibited drugs cannot affect only the person who takes them-and not his spouse, children, neighbours, or employers. No man, except possibly a hermit, is an island; and so it is virtually impossible for Mill’s principle to apply to any human action whatever, let alone shooting up heroin or smoking crack. Such a principle is virtually useless in determining what should or should not be permitted.“
Pride And Prejudice is one of the most popular novels of all time. Austen has Elizabeth reflect on her prejudice toward Mr Darcy, she later concludes:
“It was an union that must have been to the advantage of both; by her ease and liveliness, his mind might have been softened, his manners improved... and from his judgment, information, and knowledge of the world, she must have received benefit of greater importance. But no such happy marriage could now teach the admiring multitude what connubial felicity really was. An union of a different tendency, and precluding the possibility of the other, was soon to be formed in their family.”
And...
“How Wickham and Lydia were to be supported in tolerable independence, she could not imagine. But how little of permanent happiness could belong to a couple who were only brought together because their passions were stronger than their virtue, she could easily conjecture.”
'Unions of a different tendency' are prevalent, their influence ubiquitous, in western nations. They certainly violate Mill's principle, the Golden Rule... they are antithetical to the values, the qualities, that make Austen's work so popular and enduring, and civilisation civil.
Thank you for making so utterly clear where you're coming from!
Put all the top economists in a room and get them to hammer it out like a jury and get rid of neoliberalism. At least it will change the subject. So bored. But they will argue it will be a Ralsian veil.