stargeek
Glenn Milne: The challenge is in the waitingGlenn Milne: The challenge is in the
|
| The Idea:
As regular readers know, I have occasionally published articles on
this
site from people who do not have their own weblogs. This will mark the
third time I've published the work of Glenn Parton, best
known for his wonderful eco-philosophy/ eco-psychology essays The Machine in our
Heads and Humans
in the Wilderness. His essay Love Politics was published here last year, and Part 1 of
this three-part essay, entitled Exterminis
m,
was published here in January. As I mentioned in Part 1, the ideas in
the essay are Glenn's, not mine, and you can tell him what you think
through the comment facility below, or e-mail him
directly. I'll add my two cents at the end of Part 3. In this part,
Glenn moves from criticism of Western culture to mysticism in support
of a polyamory life: Free Love, by Glenn Parton Look up at the clear night sky! The free play of two cosmic forces, Eros and Thanatos, Love and Hate, Attraction and Repulsion, Intimacy and Distance, sustains harmony among the heavenly bodies and evolves the beauty, wisdom, and goodness of the universe. What is the message or lesson for human association or society that is written in the cosmos? We know that human society is a microcosm of this great celestial order, and that we have fallen out of balance with the rest of Nature. What must we do in order to become part of the Universal Harmony again? Everyone recognizes that friendship cannot be mandated or legislated, that it arises naturally, spontaneously, one person at a time, and that it is possible and desirable to have many friends, on different levels of communication, conversation, and commitment. The hope of peace on earth, and peace with the earth, has a lot to do with spreading friendship around the world, but I do not believe this ideal will ever be realized (enough to save the world) until we acknowledge that Yin and Yang, the feminine spirit and the masculine spirit, are also cosmological principles and/or forces, which change the balancing point between men and women by adding sexuality to the mix. We should not pursue a vision of worldwide peace and friendship that ignores, minimizes, or misunderstands the sexual-polarity of human association. My heavenly vision, and long-range political solution, is Free Love between man and woman. By free love I mean sexual love that does not restrict itself to one person at a time. It means holding oneself open to the possibility of sexually loving more than one, and taking that voyage when the opportunity arrives; it means taking each man/woman relationship on its own terms, as far as it will go, as far as it wants to go, including sexuality, until it finds its own point of equilibrium between Love and Hate, Intimacy and Distance. That is the Way to reach the proper balance between men and women. The message of evolution is that each being finds its balancing point with all other beings, according to the laws of nature, including Yin-Yang, creating a self-balancing dynamic whole in which each being is what it is in terms of the totality of its relationships. Human beings must freely associate, form, and bond, including Yin-Yang sexual energies, or we disturb the natural order of human society, our alignment or agreement with the logic and love of the cosmos. Human society, with its sexual-polarity, must freely arrange itself, or we will not achieve a harmonious community, and without a harmonious community we will not reach consensus on the political level because sexual frustrations, conflicts and hostilities spill over into the major areas of life, work and government. In other words, the ideal of friendship will remain an empty ideal if we do not understand that free love is part of the original architecture of human togetherness, and that we must allow sexuality between men and women to work itself out, according to inherent interests and desires, or we will never build good government, real democracy, or a true Republic because if we do not first put our sexual lives in proper order, then politics will collapse on a faulty foundation. Out of the fundamental harmony of a sexually balanced civil society will come political intelligence and wisdom. Respond, as much as you can, to all heavenly bodies orbiting around you. That’s how the suns and moons and planets behave toward one another, pushing and pulling everything into a vibrating, pulsating, interconnected totality. Of course it is not possible to love everyone with the same intensity and completeness (with some people a simple nod or smile, or even silent toleration, is enough), but each man/woman relationship has its natural sexual closeness and distance, and we must have the courage to seek it, and go there, without interference from custom, convention, or imposed morality. Friendship is always, at bottom, a relationship between two people, but everyone knows that it is not socially desirable, not community-building, for each person to have only one friend. Rather, each person is permitted and encouraged to have a diversity of friends, each one created on its own unique terms, as deeply as possible, with no outside direction or definition. If sexual love was free to follow this path, like friendship, then we would have discovered the secret ingredient in a self-balancing social constellation (of friends and lovers), and secured the social foundation for rational discourse and action. If there was only Love, then the Big Bang would not have occurred, and the world would collapse (into undifferentiated Oneness), and evolution would have to begin again; if there was only Hate, then the world would fragment, scatter, and fly apart. The Great Harmony is a balance between the forces of Attraction and Repulsion, Contraction and Expansion, Integration and Disintegration. Free Love is the mystery of the universe, and if human beings would learn to sexually love who we want, when we want, in the way that we want, as much as we want, instead of imposing artificial constraints, or false morality, on love, then the gravity of love would create a tight and intricate web of human connections in which we would not have to struggle for political consensus because we would already basically have it. The first and foremost criticism that is raised against free love is that it harms children, but actually it is best for children because the nuclear family is too small a world for the development of the vast potential of children. The nuclear family limits childhood reality to the overbearing influence of two adult perspectives, making it nearly impossible for the child to escape from prejudice, ignorance, narrowness, and parental unconsciousness. The wounds of the parents are visited on the children, and the cycle of the neurotic family is perpetuated from one generation to the next, which slows down the evolution of the human species tremendously. Free love makes intimate communities (like tribes), rather than isolated families, the center of childhood upbringing, exposing the child to many viewpoints, expanding his/her consciousness, increasing the opportunities for sanity and self-realization. A second objection that is raised against free love is that it will not work because human beings are competitive, jealous and possessive creatures, but actually it is monogamy that causes these problems because it makes us fearful that if s/he loves someone other than me, then s/he cannot also love me. If your concept of love is limited, then that creates jealousy and possessiveness because you are afraid of loss, abandonment and loneliness, but if you “see” that it is possible to love more than one, then you will not fear abandonment and loneliness when love overflows to include others. Free love makes intimate networks (like tribes), rather than fragmented couples, the center of personal life and love, exposing the adult to a diversity of potential lovers, broadening the horizon of intimate contact, communication, and knowledge, increasing the opportunities for security and happiness. Another criticism leveled against free love is that there is not enough time to love more than one, but of course love concerns quality, not quantity. Eliminating the boredom of monogamy alone would provide more than enough time for at least a few additional lovers, and then there are those habits, routines, hobbies, and fantasies that could be replaced, for almost no money, with deep and thrilling real sexual love adventures. There will never be enough time for co-dependent individuals because every gesture or sign of independence is seen as a minimization or devaluation of their relationship, and there will never be enough time for someone who is waiting for the one and only perfect lover. Such people cannot get enough love no matter how much they get because they misunderstand free love. To these people I say: contemplate the heavens and let your personal life become a feeling and thoughtful expression of the Will, intention, and intelligence of the Universe! |
instapundit.com/archives/013314.php
track this
site | 5 links
Link to movie homepage, and check it out in LA at a free preview screening on Tuesday, May 11th, 8:00pm at CineSpace, 6356 Hollywood Blvd. 2nd Floor. 323 817 3456.In November 2001, to support the release of his debut solo CD, The Incomplete Glenn Tilbrook, Glenn embarked on a different kind of independent route as he took to the road in America: One man, two guitars and a mobile home. Glenn Tilbrook: One for the Road follows him on every step of that journey: arriving in the States; picking up his mobile home; performing the shows; meeting the fans; packing away his guitars; camping at campgrounds; traveling in the RV: All access, all of the time. It's an intimate look at how an established musician adjusts to his new independent surroundings. It's a commentary on the current state of the music industry. But, most importantly, it's a human interest story that transcends its musical base.
washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A16583-2003Dec19.html
track
this site | 8 links
theaustralian.news.com.au/common/story_page/0,5744,10859477%
255E7583,00.html
track this
site | 3 links
instapundit.com/archives/012499.php
track this
site | 7 links
 |
Together, we wait.
track this site | 15 links
I’ve finally been able to post a few things because for the first time in about three weeks, I’m not spending my nights working on grants. In Illinois, 2006 LSTA grant submissions were due Friday, June 17, so it’s all over but the waiting now. Which is a killer, because I’m very excited about both of the grants MLS is involved in.
So now we wait until September to hear back. I don’t want to say much more until then, so light a candle for us!
Our competition
Oh, and thanks to Su Bochenski for driving all the way to Springfield to make sure they were there on Friday before the deadline!
|
All great ideas are
dangerous, wrote
Oscar Wilde. And someone else said that every great idea is initially
ridiculed as absurd or reviled as heresy. Philosopher Glenn Parton,
whose essay The Machine In Our Heads
I recommended
recently, has a new, great and dangerous idea. It builds somewhat
on the ideas in James W. Prescott's paper I wrote
about
earlier, that human violence stems from a combination of childhood
neglect and adolescent sexual repression. Glenn has given me the
honour
of allowing me to publish his essay on it first on this blog. Although
this may be hard to believe, Glenn's idea is more radical than
anything
I have ever written, perhaps even more radical than anything I have
ever dared think. It will probably trouble you, as it did me.
Please take the time to read this essay in its entirety -- it will requre an hour's investment. The first two sections are below, and the link at the bottom will take you to the whole essay. If it seems overly long, bear with it -- it has a lot of well-entrenched preconceptions about our culture to challenge before what he proposes will seem at all acceptable to most readers. And if it seems overly preoccupied with the sexual aspect of relationships, substitute the words 'love' and 'emotional' for 'sex' and 'sexual' respectively, and plug on. You may have some deep misgivings about what Glenn has to say, but if this article affects you as it did me, you will not be the same person when you finish reading it as when you began. Please let me know what you think. I'll add my own comments either in the comments thread below or in a follow-up article. I'm sure Glenn will be interested as well. LOVE POLITICS: A Case Against Monogamy by Glenn Parton  Introduction Let's shift the focus from the question, what is to be done? to the question, Why can't people see the obvious? If people could see what is self-evident to the rational mind, then appropriate action would soon follow. That Americans do not see the obvious truth is amply demonstrated by the popularity of George W. Bush. Outline of a strategy for human renewal: One: Americans cannot think deeply because the heart is closed. When the heart is closed, then Reason, the mind, becomes a calculator, an instrument, a machine that knows the price of everything and the value of nothing. It is hard-hearted people who are unknowingly supporting world-disaster. True knowledge, wisdom, must be informed by sympathy, feelings, and heart. Two: The American heart has turned to stone due to sexual repression, stretching back to our Puritan beginning. Everyone in this culture is, as a manner of upbringing, sexually wounded, resulting in fear, shame, guilt, and resentment. The wound festers; self-doubt and self-hatred prevent us from loving others. Generosity, the opening of the heart, begins with the ability to experience sex as a gift. If you cannot do this, then all your good deeds will be wrapped in resentment. The Christian concept of love, which desexualizes it (Agape instead of Eros), leaves the person sick and suffering at the core. Three: To open the heart so we can think deeply it is necessary to search and find our erotic nature, accept it, and freely express it. This is not something that can be done alone -- through Yoga, Tantra, for example -- but requires a new man/woman relationship. The old relationship -- namely, monogamy (whose first historical form was patriarchy, but which is now co-dependency or co-ownership) is unnecessarily restrictive, a bedrock value, an unquestioned premise, the ideological basis of State Monopoly Capitalism which is destroying this planet. In short, we will not think deeply unless we love, and we will not love unless we practice a free sexuality. Dare to love more than one person! It's a simple idea that's hard to do. Consult your daydreams! Beginning The integration of politics and sexuality is the best way to build a social movement for resolving the ecological crisis which is threatening to bring Life on this planet to a crash in probably one or two generations, perhaps sooner? Traditional politics, party-politics, and protest-politics, are necessary for postponing world disaster, for providing time and space for fundamental lifestyle changes, but is not sufficient to heal us from the ground up, according to the original-natural order of things. For this task we need to mobilize a different kind of energy, not negative energy, but positive energy, the energy of Eros. Sexual love is the prototype of all human happiness. If we let this joy, instead of conscience or duty or protest be the source of our community building, it would bring together and hold together aware people. Necessity alone, the advantages of work in common, even the primary work of saving the planet and ourselves, will not hold us together because the psychological damage in America is too great. Americans have a defensive ego-structure -- a system of self-deceptions, projections and prejudices that distort our perception of the world -- the cost of survival in this harsh and grossly unfair society. This makes us, “as we are”, incapable of forming enduring political communities for social transformation, which is precisely what we must do in order to avoid eco-catastrophe. We cannot get along well enough with one another for long enough to do the things that must be done. All our sincere and noble efforts self-destruct, but we can no longer afford to fail, for now the planet as a whole is in jeopardy. What will bring us and hold us together for world transformation? Erotic love is the last remaining force in the modern world capable of mobilizing, sustaining, and perfecting us for this long and difficult task. But not if the erotic life-force is damned by monogamy. A transforming political community of monogamous couples is impossible because monogamous love places itself first and everyone else second; it produces separation and tension between lovers and everyone else, couples and society. However, by refusing monogamy in favor of a highly discerning free love, there is a chance of knitting a community that will not easily unravel. The pairing process, as far as I can see, will remain the basis of the social structure, but we could all work more easily and much better in a network of loving relationships, pairing without exclusivity, opening lines of deep communication that are presently jammed by jealousy, competition, mistrust, fear and arrogance. The key is not to abolish one-to-one love, but to multiply it. There is already a manifest hostility between the sexes, which is going to get worse. Much of it is a result of a false morality that prohibits us from knowing one another. Each man is "allowed" to intimately know only one woman, and vice versa. How can we expect to find and work out answers to the critical problems we face, if a vital point of discovery, wisdom and sustainability -- love between men and women -- is so limited! The age of discovery and togetherness between the sexes has not yet begun, so let it begin now with a few individuals who defy the sacred cow of conventional morality -- namely, monogamy-- in favor of political love, which means loving the “highest” in oneself and others, making one's political destiny with a lover clear and binding, creating diverse relationships, loving communities, in which women draw out the best in men (infusing men's minds with love), and men draw out the best in women (inspiring them with intellectual theory and global political priorities). Real love is transcendence, beyond the mutual validation of empirical egos, toward a shared commitment or vow, not just between two people, but to a new commonwealth. The function of these erotic-political inter-relationships is to accelerate evolution, nature's effort to become aware of itself as a whole, before an eco-catastrophe resets it back to the stage of the cockroach. Why not affirm sexual love as a vehicle for progressive social change; it is presently misused for every moneymaking purpose imaginable -- with great success. That should tell us something. This retail culture would collapse if people tasted real happiness, instead of being locked in monogamous relationships that cannot satisfy the mass of humanity for a lifetime (even if a few simpletons stick to a single spouse), driving people elsewhere for satisfaction, finding everything but the real thing. When material circumstances are ripe, an idea, Learn to love more than one person, can be a decisive force in history. It depends on a handful of living examples that prove the reality of the concept, and then thousands and tens of thousands will spontaneously respond to it. Today, the information and organs of communication for world transformation are in place: it is the inner readiness for widening the domain of love that is lacking, as Lewis Mumford said. That is our challenge, for without a positive concentration on love, understood as the integration of sexual desire and political awareness, we will not be able to rescue the planet and its creatures from the growing forces of hate and violence. Did everyone who is dissatisfied with his or her love life make the wrong choice, or could there be something inherently wrong with monogamy? The American way is to always want to solve every problem with a new and improved technique, rather than consider a bold, new reorganization of life. The solution of the sexual problem, however, takes us to the core of human nature, and demands that we come to terms with the human role in the greater scheme of reality, our place in the cosmos. According to the German philosopher, Maik Hosang, the logos of love can save us: evolution occurs through qualitative leaps, from matter to life to human life. Love among the parts sets the stage for the emergence of higher reality. The gravitational order of the celestial bodies generated life, and the balance and harmony of living beings gave rise to humankind. A just and peaceful world-order is the next step forward, but we need to untie the knot of monogamy and let the whole of evolution flow through a new and free man/woman relationship, creating loving and lasting human communities, which will rationally regulate our relations with nature. Frederick Engels' book, The Origin Of The Family, Private Property And The State, argues that "group marriage" is characteristic of hunter-gatherers, whereas horticultural people prefer "pairing marriage." The later is more hedged around with restrictions, but is not based on any assumption of sexual exclusiveness for either partner. Pre-European America, according to Lewis Morgan on whose empirical research Engels based his theory, is the classic soil of the pairing family. The Iroquois, for example, simply dissolved relationships at will by going back home, and held festivals every year when tribes came together for the purpose of wider sexual enjoyment and cultural enrichment. According to Engels, “monogamous marriage”, the third historical stage of the man/woman relationship, results from the influence of private property (beginning with the domestication of animals). Its express purpose being to produce children of undisputed paternity (so women cannot be permitted to have sex with other men), which later come into their father's property as his natural heirs. Engels shows what a small part individual sex love played in the rise of monogamy. It has an economic origin. And along with permanent monogamy there soon appeared prostitution (for men) and adultery (for women), with no cure for either one. According to Engels, women brought about the transition from group marriage to pairing marriage, with its greater equality and joy, but men introduced strict monogamy -- though indeed only for women. In her introduction to Engels’ great book, Eleanor Leacock argues that it is crucial for women to understand that the monogamous family as an economic unit is basic to their subjugation, calling it, quoting Engels, “the world historical defeat of the female sex.” Monogamous marriage, characteristic of modern people, imposes too heavy a weight on human beings. It is not the natural form of human association that corresponds best to human nature; it was a wrong turn, a historical mistake, perhaps facilitated by natural selfishness, but the important point is that it is not irreversible. We need to recapture the freedom and happiness of pre-monogamous tribal love relationships. L. Morgan, after studying the American Indians, came to the conclusion in his book, Ancient Society, that the advanced forms of civilization “will be a repetition, but on a higher level of the principles of liberty, equality and fraternity which characterized the ancient gens.” Love Politics is the idea that sex, the oldest force in the world for building community, when linked throughout to emancipatory consciousness, is still the basis for building a political community that puts us on the path towards a good society. The way to make us strong enough, wide enough, and deep enough to carry out the required socio-economic changes is to make the entire process an erotic adventure. A group of monogamous couples is a boring place, dead spirit, because you cannot stifle the erotic basis of community and hope to keep it alive and well. Gatherings and meetings of any kind do not work. Politics is bleak in America; we have come down to the primal energy of Eros as the source for a genuine political revival. Only by allowing sexual energy to flow more openly, as in aboriginal societies, can aware people create and sustain enough human cohesiveness and solidarity to make a true beginning... Read the whole essay (includes the above extract; scroll to the third section of the essay, entitled "Family", to continue reading where the above extract leaves off). ©2004 Glenn Parton |
I'm tired of waiting. The iPhoto book printing service never did arrived in Singapore, and I doubt the iTunes Music Store will ever materialise here either. So, I'm throwing this out, instead, to the Scobleizer: when will Microsoft bring its Media Center PC to Singapore?
:-)
P.S: Sheal Israel: Scoble is an evangelist for Microsoft and is totally enthused about its technology. What is news is that Scoble, at times, is among Microsoft's toughest critics... He's the most honest company evangelist youwill find, anywhere.
So BloggerCon II is scheduled to take place on April 17 this year, again in Boston at Harvard.
Happy: there will be a
session on weblogs and libraries!
Sad: I have no budget to
attend (although I'm really pushing Steven to go).
I'm glad there's a follow-up and that these folks will continue exploring the impact and potential of blogging, but I'm also ready for SyndiCon (or AggregatorCon or whatever you want to call it). As evidenced by Will Richardson's vision among other things, it's time to take syndication to the next level - make it more user-friendly, integrate it into other tools, figure out what users want, and in general take RSS to the next level. Same types of sessions - education, politics, business, libraries, journalism, etc.
The RSS Winterfest was a good start, but it's difficult to over-emphasize the value of this type of conversation taking place in-person, face-to-face. In addition, how great would it be to include an "RSS Hackfest" (led by Andrew Grumet) to get us BitTorre nt + RSS, authentication, better customization, metadata, and more?!
The following phrases have been identified by the grok system as matching this entry:
At least Glenn 
In his email signature, Glenn Fleishman calls himself
an unsolicited pundit -- and he's not lying. He'll send you a five
page screed on the latest Wi-Fi news, dropping unexpected science out
of the ether, and every single time you'll come away smarter than you
started. Fortunately, he doesn't limit his insight to email, instead
writing for a variety of outlets including the Seattle Times and his
own technology weblog,