Birthing a New Worldview?

Imbolc and the Waiting to Cross Moon

Saturday gratefuls: Dr. Doverspike. Kep. Acupuncture. Salmon. The lick mat. Powder on the way. Back country skiing. Snow today. Black Mountain white. Dawn. Tom in Mendocino. His 75th today. Happy birthday, Tom. Cafe Beaujolais. Doug the Painter. Marilyn and Irv. The 60’s are not dead. Psilocybin. Mescaline. LSD. Ayahuasca. Peyote. Good friends, in depth conversations. Ruth calling me yesterday.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: Ruth’s call

 

Brunch with Marilyn and Irv at Aspen Perks. We discussed the Alan Lightman PBS series: Searching: A quest for meaning in the age of science. We all found Lightman’s emphasis on the journeys of specific Atoms from Supernovas to Solar system formation to Planets to life to us and back out again after death reassuring. Yes. And we also thought his reductionist materialism left out an important perspective. A world beyond, within, in addition to this one we can know with our sensorium. Dreams. Hallucinogens. Mystical experience. Emergent phenomena as evidence, including consciousness. The John Cleese moderated University of Virginia panel on reincarnation.

We also discussed family, grandkids, and dream work that happens at CBE. Gonna join the dream work group.

 

Dr. Doverspike came to see Kep at 2. He agrees that Kep’s recovery is slower and less obvious than he had hoped. Could be some spinal issues, too. He believes we’ve handled the pain and may (he hopes, me too) be looking at a need to strengthen muscles. That will be easier once Kep can move freely in the yard, but that won’t happen for another month or so. Snow.

Kep seems happier, more alert. Pain under control. He also stands taller when he’s not exhausted.  I’m willing to go a full month to see if we can generate better results. I did move Kep’s food downstairs.

Doverspike is off to the interior Mountains today hunting for powder.

 

Started a fascinating book yesterday by Jane Bennett, Professor of Political Theory and chair of the Department of Political Science at Johns Hopkins University. Vibrant Matter. She’s arguing for what she calls the active participation of nonhuman forces in events. Thing-power. “I will try to give voice to a vitality intrinsic to materiality, in the process absolving matter from its long history of attachment to automatism or mechanism.” p. 3

I’m reading it as part of my project of understanding the New Right and as part of my Becoming a Pagan project. There’s an odd and uneasy convergence between the two. It may be only the sound of rebellion against received wisdom, but there may be more, too. I’m beginning to wonder if the forces threatening to drive our nation apart might have deeper, more profound roots than has been noticed so far.

Those roots might have fertile soil in a rethinking of the influence of the Enlightenment and the role of science in our daily and political lives. In other words we may be trying to birth a post-enlightenment worldview. One that honors science and rationality, but dethrones it from an imperial position to a collaborative one. A lot going on here. Only have a partial toe in the water.