Thank you Bonnie. I'm going to have to spend a few days reading and reading the whole series you've shared to try and understand what you are offering :)
As always just a few thoughts to share:
First, I'm working with a group of leaders this week in California and I'm engaging them in a sense making inquiry as part of the work. With the idea that the problems they are interested in solving are not solvable with existing ideas and practices. The complexity requires slowing down, engaging in shared sense making and then creating learning/experiments. I can already feel their resistance because they need/want quick solutions.
Second, I sitting with the quote from Gandhi as he pushed back on the idea of partition of India. He said, let us walk through the fire together. I kind of feel that way as I read this post. It seems as if the malware called separation will require us to walk through the fire together just so we have the possibility of creating a different shared story of reality.
These thoughts feel contradictory but here I am in central California wondering how to authentically and with empathy engage with the leaders I work with.
Also I'm wondering about a central tenet of Gestalt theory that says (as Jan Zwicky puts it in the video David referred to) that wholes are both logically and epistemologically prior to their parts. We perceive wholes prior to the parts.
If gestalt theory is compatible with the above and I try to reconcile that with the paper, then the wholes are not abstract terms. They are are r terms. Observable, right, as a rush of meaning and enchantment sometimes? Appearing when the clutter (including metal clutter) is absent and we feel and perceive and know more clearly. Living wholes.
Then I come to the notion in Gestalt theory that we perceive wholes prior to the parts. Which rhymes with your words that the body is antecedent to the mind. But in the table wholes are put as "later" which is breaking my head a bit. Maybe the parts re-constitute the whole? And also there does seem to be a prior whole that is sense/felt that can feel like a metaphysical posture (of raw potential? or knowingness?) (an address, even or an invocation) that somehow allows / reveals / discloses the parts re-constituted into wholes again at different zooming apertures in and out
hi Claudia, thank you for this comment. when you say the whole comes later in the table, in which it seems to me still appears in the r-term column, how can i understand your conflict you describe so nicely.
Hey Samuel, as you say, in the table, whole appears as an r-term and r-terms are later, successors. We directly perceive and participate with living wholes in reality, they form and flux and flow.
What I was conflicted about is that wholeness is also experienced as a prior antecedent. As a background potential with no boundaries, which, according to the table, would make it into an a-term. (Have to be careful here that our experience is not solidifying a concept of wholeness, making it into an abstract category, but is immediate, intimate, releasing.)
Bonnie's comment that we are making the word do too many kinds of work, helped dissolve my conflict.
Yea, your seeming conflict is now clear for me. thank you.
I still don't feel it resolved somehow. I can see how using words with their context and create an resolve this way but as you tried with "allows/reveals/discloses the parts re-constituted into wholes again at different zooming apertures in and out" to map the gestalt pre-wholes into being part of the "Creative Advance"(Lower quadrants) is still churning for me.
Not sure if this will help resolve it but here is a little example from walking Maya, my friends dog, earlier today. We have walked together many times before. I was in that surround-sound-vision-feeling-sensing potential state that we could label as wholeness. I'd put this in the upper quadrants as prior-antecedent with more perception than memory.
The water hole we were approaching quickened us both into play energy. She started digging in the sand with delight. Another much bigger dog joined her and they synchronised up despite their different sizes running in circles in and out of the water etc etc. Reality leaned in, a magpie joined and the ducks bobbed in the ripples they caused etc etc A living whole, or set of living wholes as another dog joined and they play chased a rabbit (that is always there) and so on. I think this would be the lower quadrant. Lots of participation and maybe with some imagination thrown in with the enchantment of it all.
The energy of all of this for me is how the prior antecedent posture seems non-trivial to the participation in the living wholes - and not just when dog walking.
thank you! that is very helpful. I can sense That, in your description of the situation, arising.
It brought me this reflection:
an impression of 2 kind of non-absolute wholes working.
new wholes are generated while an antecedent whole has been already been playing.
predecessor wholes are coming in through perception, so antecedent, and so maybe successor wholes are more "furnished" (maybe not a good word for this).
AND a non-trivial participation in that antecedent whole that brings JOY (cognition in the wild).
Yes, you ar RIGHT, and it shows a HUGE capacity for metaphysical thinking! Congratulations.
We use one word to do many kinds of work. The word "whole" is like that. The "whole" that is an a-term is a "synthetic abstraction" -- we sum all the parts to a "higher, generalized whole." That is not the gestalt whole which is more like an internal relation that is prior to the things being related (we must intuitively already know how they are related in order to relate them). The first "whole" is an outcome of dialetical-synthetic mind (left brain, if you like) the second, gestalt "whole" is predecessor of mind, it lives in the body as aesthetic or synaesthetic appreciation. Good work, professor Gonella.
Thank you Bonnie. I'm going to have to spend a few days reading and reading the whole series you've shared to try and understand what you are offering :)
As always just a few thoughts to share:
First, I'm working with a group of leaders this week in California and I'm engaging them in a sense making inquiry as part of the work. With the idea that the problems they are interested in solving are not solvable with existing ideas and practices. The complexity requires slowing down, engaging in shared sense making and then creating learning/experiments. I can already feel their resistance because they need/want quick solutions.
Second, I sitting with the quote from Gandhi as he pushed back on the idea of partition of India. He said, let us walk through the fire together. I kind of feel that way as I read this post. It seems as if the malware called separation will require us to walk through the fire together just so we have the possibility of creating a different shared story of reality.
These thoughts feel contradictory but here I am in central California wondering how to authentically and with empathy engage with the leaders I work with.
Hi ,
I loved the depth of the research.
Creatingutopia.substack.com would you check if the explanation to sentience is complete and something you would like to discuss with me.
Regards,
Anand.
Bravo I love this.
https://www.integral-review.org/issues/vol_15_no_1_roy_why_metaphysics_matters.pdf - bonnie I put the link here to the paper that has the images that are referred to above.
Also I'm wondering about a central tenet of Gestalt theory that says (as Jan Zwicky puts it in the video David referred to) that wholes are both logically and epistemologically prior to their parts. We perceive wholes prior to the parts.
If gestalt theory is compatible with the above and I try to reconcile that with the paper, then the wholes are not abstract terms. They are are r terms. Observable, right, as a rush of meaning and enchantment sometimes? Appearing when the clutter (including metal clutter) is absent and we feel and perceive and know more clearly. Living wholes.
Then I come to the notion in Gestalt theory that we perceive wholes prior to the parts. Which rhymes with your words that the body is antecedent to the mind. But in the table wholes are put as "later" which is breaking my head a bit. Maybe the parts re-constitute the whole? And also there does seem to be a prior whole that is sense/felt that can feel like a metaphysical posture (of raw potential? or knowingness?) (an address, even or an invocation) that somehow allows / reveals / discloses the parts re-constituted into wholes again at different zooming apertures in and out
hi Claudia, thank you for this comment. when you say the whole comes later in the table, in which it seems to me still appears in the r-term column, how can i understand your conflict you describe so nicely.
Hey Samuel, as you say, in the table, whole appears as an r-term and r-terms are later, successors. We directly perceive and participate with living wholes in reality, they form and flux and flow.
What I was conflicted about is that wholeness is also experienced as a prior antecedent. As a background potential with no boundaries, which, according to the table, would make it into an a-term. (Have to be careful here that our experience is not solidifying a concept of wholeness, making it into an abstract category, but is immediate, intimate, releasing.)
Bonnie's comment that we are making the word do too many kinds of work, helped dissolve my conflict.
Yea, your seeming conflict is now clear for me. thank you.
I still don't feel it resolved somehow. I can see how using words with their context and create an resolve this way but as you tried with "allows/reveals/discloses the parts re-constituted into wholes again at different zooming apertures in and out" to map the gestalt pre-wholes into being part of the "Creative Advance"(Lower quadrants) is still churning for me.
Not sure if this will help resolve it but here is a little example from walking Maya, my friends dog, earlier today. We have walked together many times before. I was in that surround-sound-vision-feeling-sensing potential state that we could label as wholeness. I'd put this in the upper quadrants as prior-antecedent with more perception than memory.
The water hole we were approaching quickened us both into play energy. She started digging in the sand with delight. Another much bigger dog joined her and they synchronised up despite their different sizes running in circles in and out of the water etc etc. Reality leaned in, a magpie joined and the ducks bobbed in the ripples they caused etc etc A living whole, or set of living wholes as another dog joined and they play chased a rabbit (that is always there) and so on. I think this would be the lower quadrant. Lots of participation and maybe with some imagination thrown in with the enchantment of it all.
The energy of all of this for me is how the prior antecedent posture seems non-trivial to the participation in the living wholes - and not just when dog walking.
thank you! that is very helpful. I can sense That, in your description of the situation, arising.
It brought me this reflection:
an impression of 2 kind of non-absolute wholes working.
new wholes are generated while an antecedent whole has been already been playing.
predecessor wholes are coming in through perception, so antecedent, and so maybe successor wholes are more "furnished" (maybe not a good word for this).
AND a non-trivial participation in that antecedent whole that brings JOY (cognition in the wild).
Yes, you ar RIGHT, and it shows a HUGE capacity for metaphysical thinking! Congratulations.
We use one word to do many kinds of work. The word "whole" is like that. The "whole" that is an a-term is a "synthetic abstraction" -- we sum all the parts to a "higher, generalized whole." That is not the gestalt whole which is more like an internal relation that is prior to the things being related (we must intuitively already know how they are related in order to relate them). The first "whole" is an outcome of dialetical-synthetic mind (left brain, if you like) the second, gestalt "whole" is predecessor of mind, it lives in the body as aesthetic or synaesthetic appreciation. Good work, professor Gonella.
I edited it again as you commented - so hope did not take if off the rails (again) hahaha
No really, though, your noticing and processing this is very unique. I hope it helps you in real life, too.