Yeah i wasn’t quite referring to an either or but to the difficulty to engage with the world in that non binary fashion within the confines of your world where as an academic words are so loaded with meaning. Fields like cybernetic sociology for instance have helped to point toward other ways but over all I think it is hard to create an alternative pathway within a system too busy fighting itself. This said I wish you the best in your endeavours.
I like the idea however if your goal is to flip the switch, free the body from his enslavement to the mind , surely the wordy arena is not the most suitable one. Just like any rebellion, the oppressed can’t be using the same rule as its oppressor to dismantle its regime.
Thank you Rachel. I do not want to flip the switch. This is the sort of movement that has characterized much of my field (philosophy and the cognitive sciences) for the past century. I would rather like to let that switch be (or to continue to flip as it must) and notice what other points of relations might be possible beyond its binary choices. The place to begin is definitely the body and the senses. Words helps us communicate what can only be known through bodily action, as you suggest. Still, mind is part of that action. It is not language or words.
Rachel, your point resonates. There's a real tension in using heavily theorized language to argue against the primacy of theory, and I've bumped into this edge myself. The word "navigational" carries its own academic cargo before Andrea's body-first meaning even gets a chance to breathe.
That said, I don't read Andrea as trying to flip the switch. It feels more like what James Hillman meant when he said a revelatory image heals by and in itself beyond narrative.
The perpetual "why why why," and I recognize this in myself, is curiosity as engine rather than curiosity as opening. (I've been exploring this constant drive for answers in-depth lately) Kurt Vonnegut elucidated in his Bokononist calypso poem: "Tiger got to hunt, bird got to fly, man got to sit and wonder why why why." He was naming a long historical tradition of too many whys. The follow-through is "man got to tell himself he understand," and that's the trap, that compulsion to close the loop (understand) rather than receive what arrived.
The way I read Andrea's framing, it's about noticing what's already available at the edges of the binary, in that space where body and mind are still in conversation before the switch gets installed. Just noticing. The body knows through proximity and dwelling long enough to let something speak, what Andrea calls "attending." That's a patient arena, and patience has its own vocabulary. That's my take.
Came upon this Huxley passage from "The Perennial Philosophy" sitting in my saved quotes for years and feels newly alive in this context: "Whenever, for whatever reason, we wish to think of the world, not as it appears to common sense, but as a continuum, we find that our traditional syntax and vocabulary are quite inadequate. Mathematicians have therefore been compelled to invent radically new symbol-systems for that express purpose."
It speaks to both Andrea's project and Rachel's challenge simultaneously. Rachel is right that the tools carry their own distortions, but Huxley suggests the response isn't rejection, but an acknowledgment of the limits while reaching for something adjacent. Mathematicians weren't inspired to find new notation; they were "compelled" to, because the existing tools simply couldn't hold what they were trying to describe. This points to the existence of something language was never designed to reach, which sounds like exactly what your navigational framework is reaching toward, Andrea.
Andrea, regarding your "crucial" note at the bottom "all navigability is inaccurate precisely because it is a representation" is careful and I appreciate the grounding. Though it leaves me sitting with a question: is there something inherently paradoxical in a carefully theorized model of how to move beyond carefully theorized models? Isn't a map that acknowledges its own limitations still a map. Curious where you'd take that.
Yeah i wasn’t quite referring to an either or but to the difficulty to engage with the world in that non binary fashion within the confines of your world where as an academic words are so loaded with meaning. Fields like cybernetic sociology for instance have helped to point toward other ways but over all I think it is hard to create an alternative pathway within a system too busy fighting itself. This said I wish you the best in your endeavours.
I see what you mean about how hard it is and honesty feel that and really appreciate the good wishes
I like the idea however if your goal is to flip the switch, free the body from his enslavement to the mind , surely the wordy arena is not the most suitable one. Just like any rebellion, the oppressed can’t be using the same rule as its oppressor to dismantle its regime.
Thank you Rachel. I do not want to flip the switch. This is the sort of movement that has characterized much of my field (philosophy and the cognitive sciences) for the past century. I would rather like to let that switch be (or to continue to flip as it must) and notice what other points of relations might be possible beyond its binary choices. The place to begin is definitely the body and the senses. Words helps us communicate what can only be known through bodily action, as you suggest. Still, mind is part of that action. It is not language or words.
Rachel, your point resonates. There's a real tension in using heavily theorized language to argue against the primacy of theory, and I've bumped into this edge myself. The word "navigational" carries its own academic cargo before Andrea's body-first meaning even gets a chance to breathe.
That said, I don't read Andrea as trying to flip the switch. It feels more like what James Hillman meant when he said a revelatory image heals by and in itself beyond narrative.
The perpetual "why why why," and I recognize this in myself, is curiosity as engine rather than curiosity as opening. (I've been exploring this constant drive for answers in-depth lately) Kurt Vonnegut elucidated in his Bokononist calypso poem: "Tiger got to hunt, bird got to fly, man got to sit and wonder why why why." He was naming a long historical tradition of too many whys. The follow-through is "man got to tell himself he understand," and that's the trap, that compulsion to close the loop (understand) rather than receive what arrived.
The way I read Andrea's framing, it's about noticing what's already available at the edges of the binary, in that space where body and mind are still in conversation before the switch gets installed. Just noticing. The body knows through proximity and dwelling long enough to let something speak, what Andrea calls "attending." That's a patient arena, and patience has its own vocabulary. That's my take.
Looking forward to any feedback.
Came upon this Huxley passage from "The Perennial Philosophy" sitting in my saved quotes for years and feels newly alive in this context: "Whenever, for whatever reason, we wish to think of the world, not as it appears to common sense, but as a continuum, we find that our traditional syntax and vocabulary are quite inadequate. Mathematicians have therefore been compelled to invent radically new symbol-systems for that express purpose."
It speaks to both Andrea's project and Rachel's challenge simultaneously. Rachel is right that the tools carry their own distortions, but Huxley suggests the response isn't rejection, but an acknowledgment of the limits while reaching for something adjacent. Mathematicians weren't inspired to find new notation; they were "compelled" to, because the existing tools simply couldn't hold what they were trying to describe. This points to the existence of something language was never designed to reach, which sounds like exactly what your navigational framework is reaching toward, Andrea.
Andrea, regarding your "crucial" note at the bottom "all navigability is inaccurate precisely because it is a representation" is careful and I appreciate the grounding. Though it leaves me sitting with a question: is there something inherently paradoxical in a carefully theorized model of how to move beyond carefully theorized models? Isn't a map that acknowledges its own limitations still a map. Curious where you'd take that.