Tuesday, Jan 15, 2019
Good afternoon, M,
Ongoing thinking happening here. Hope you're having a good week. How are you?
Ordered some clothes from Lands' End, first time in a while. Wondering too about somehow professionalizing World Univ & Sch re its platform, and beginning to hire graduate students (to teach to MIT OCW faculty in video in 'sections') ...
Hippy professional, post Stanford, MIT and Google would be one potential direction re this vision. Searched on recently what the hippest or coolest companies are these days, and the words 'BEST companies' came up ... perhaps since cool companies think of their employees, the environment etc . But hippies in the 60s and 70s are old, ie these freedom-seeking movements happened a long time ago (when I was just a kid) ... and the future is ahead, ... so maybe an India CEO at WUaS eventually, .... since I sometimes think of India and Indians as Ur-hippies culturally ... maybe I'll begin to wear nicer professional but India-informed clothes.
Wondering too about what kind of world I want to live in, communities-wise too, and create as well - old questions for me (out of Reed and re Alpha farm, both in Oregon), but re realism as well. Appreciating Dad's creative thinking here, that we can create or shape the world we want (and he modeled an engagement of this for me), via a kind of activism (and he was a maverick, born in 1929, but a father to me living through the '60s and 70s) good high-achieving modeling (as a MD and Professor who took on the establishment and the powers that be, successfully in some ways - and Professionally, and sought to change things for the better) . And I have a social conscience, (in a QuAker way too) - Dad did too, but in different ways (and not everyone does, - au contraire, in fact) - re seeking to shape and realize a better world, and re peace and social justice.
Yoga philosophy includes the idea of self-study (positing concepts too of the divine in these regards culturally), and Lacanian psychoanalysis is also about self study - with a focus on language (as well as realism), and I bring these together here in my Hippy Anjali Yoga Notations ... http://www.scottmacleod.com/
Community, social groups, - and for me? ... troop bonding, pair bonding (2 of 5 of John Money's exigencies - http://scottmacleod.com/
Web too offers new kinds of sociality. Had a WUaS Hangout yesterday with Romanian friend Nicolai who waS in Romania, here -
http://scott-macleod.blogspot.
That this group video Hangout and much on the Web are recorded re new sociality makes me glad I'm a good person, and that I'm creating something great and good in World Univ & Sch as well.
How to generate a great social ethos online - community - post-Cuttyhunk in 70s /80s, post Reed (including living in collective houses in first half of '80s - which were communes in a sense, but not
French), post Quaker-informed Earlham, Haverford, Swarthmore, Pendle Hill - in modernity and now internetity (a term I coined in a UC Berkeley paper I wrote in 2000) - post Stanford, Harvard, Yale,
Oxbridge's connectedness (those that visionary, studying, and knowledgeable, and re '60s and '70s there too)? And in each countries' main languages, and online (e.g. in a realistic virtual earth with avatar bots for new kinds of sociality - re peoples' current engagement with TV figures, cartoon characters and animations on the internet, etc? Ethics, goodness and excellence academically
(smarts-wise) are key to this community generation online in my thinking ... and how will this ethos ripple to the ground around individuals (learners and students) where they live, I wonder? (Stanford students with all their international diversity and with its goodness, and legality, - the ethics it engages - may be a good Harbinger of this).
Seeking to increase good sociality in my life re connecting with a partner and growing a circle of good friends ... not clear how to connect with an attractive partner to begin a family of 2 or 3 kids,
but checking into Harbin Hot Springs after beginning a family has merit and re a kind of what I'll call a California hippy-informed kind of 'India' there too, culturally. But a realistic virtual Harbin especially for community generation has much merit too (and re a realism about Harbin's 'negative vortex' - which is Heartsong's phrase).
California - as community, as commune re laws too, and as successful economy - is an interesting real example to grow from as well. But it's not the community of early 20 year olds living in a collective house, and thinking about how 'community' could grow.
Self-study, psychoanalysis, consciousness of personhood with therapeutic orientation, thinking about one's bodymind analytically, and pairbond- and troopbond- dynamically (re psychodynamically) ... yes .. (and eventually with avatar bot interlocutors, conversational agents to guide such self-study, such self understanding?). Writing to you, Ma, re thinking and self-study here, and via email ...
Curious how I'll connect with a partner re our self-study conversation in raising a family of 3 ... so would each in their teens head to a psychotherapist re their own self-study as individuals becoming adults? (Thinking G.A. here and his kids ... good to have a culture which supports such self-study ... ie cultures of professional psychotherapy - but not re Yoga's interpretation of this Svādhyāya (literally meaning 'one's own reading' according to Wikipedia, and is one of 5 Niyamas which can be translated as 'virtuous observances'). A society too where one could find Yale trained, for ex. - so really smart - MD young adult psychiatrists - psychiatrists - where George was Yale-trained, and a Lacanian MD psychoanalyst (maybe as a dissent from the mainstream psychoanalytic orthodoxy framework, and because it offered him better approaches to work with analysands as a psychoanalyst in Pittsburgh), whose kids as teens all saw psychotherapists. As a kind of preventive medicine? But which could become much less expensive with avatar bot MD psychiatrists - and for self-study.
Interesting ~ The right understanding communication between people - an exchange of information technology in a sense - can be transformative and so beneficial to people's well-being. (May have
heard this in your voice even in our conversation the other evening (a kind of ease, understanding and caring), making me wonder who you had talked with and what the conversation was (re beneficial I.T. exchange for human beings / between bodyminds / between friends who understand).
Agency as in free-action, (in society - where I take a Castellian approach too, to the idea of "the aggregate of people living together in a more or less ordered community") and the Desiderata -
http://mwkworks.com/
I think I'd be interested in a wonderful MD resident or similar, although I wonder L possibly as Mom? ... and also living a potentially more 'civil' life in Pittsburgh than 'free' California for raising a family ahead? Would be easier to inform 'goodness' in my circles there than here - including good / great thinking. Would like too to develop the excellence in thinking and ethos of Stanford but newly online at World Univ (in multiple languages too) ... and yet in new ways too eg with multiple channels of communication (i.e. at least 3 in group video - voice, text, gesture). Would like to get started soon ... thanks to a great connection with a new friend.
And if we all live beyond our 120s ? ... would like to have had kids ...
This email has turned out longer than I thought ... woke up a bit before 6 ... and basically just kept writing until around 8 or a little after.
Time to see (came out) / sit in half lotus and meditate ...
L,
Scott
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Sunday, January 20, 2019
Dear Claire, Victor, Nontheist Friends,
Appreciating your 'sense of the meeting' and 'being part of a corporate whole' (both Quaker-ish language) focuses re NtFs.
Searched on 'john woolman tender quaker business meeting,' having a recollection of him often becoming 'tender' on his Friendly travels often and in Quaker contexts, as he sought to persuade (convince) other Friends of abolitionism (ie not to become business-hardened too) - and he was a good businessman according to what I found online. Appreciating too the 'becoming tender' idea emotionally - perhaps because of Woolman's Quaker envisioning of care and conscience, - even as a 'virtual' experience expressed in his words, I hypothesize. Methinks I've experienced tenderizing in Meeting (due to what I'd call a de facto relaxation response relating to Friendly centering down, but also re the Harbin Hot Springs' warm pool due to the warm waters (and re both corporate cultural contexts). Seems becoming tender NtF-wise re NtF sense of the meeting Quaker decision-making could be due to biology even a kindly of Friendly metaphorical human information technology exchange.
Another 'leading' comes up for me here. NtF consensus decision making re 'sense of the meeting' might be able to make decisions re questions of a Meeting seeking MD psychiatric support when warranted, and hypothetically, not be 'blinded' by a concept of the divine, or the spirit, in a way that theistically oriented Quakers might not be able to, because of their belief system involving the divine or a concept of God etc ... and in a world with much more specialized knowledge than in the mid-1700s (and also with the internet via which we NtFs too are conversing, sharing leadings, and could be seen as coming to a number 'of senses of this NtF email list meeting').
Some musings re non-theist Friends, Quaker business meeting and how it works & in other contexts (NtF? secular? re consensus decision-making).
NtFriendly regards,
Scott
Scott
See, too:
Columnea consanguinea: Governance at WUaS - Consensus-informed (Quaker), Quaker business meeting - how it works & in other contexts (including conceptually re Nontheist Friends, and with regard too to inspirations from the 1970s/1980s about good ways to do business, Friendly-informed, Quaker-inspired, but re environmental activism, and in many other ways, where Alpha Farm's consensus decision-making was secular and Quaker-informed, and had a history; I visited Alpha Farm a number of times while studying at Reed College).
~ https://scott-macleod.blogspot.com/2019/01/columnea-consanguinea-governance-at.html ~*
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