WORKSHOP ON INTEGRAL EDUCATION ... - Sri
Aurobindo Society 20 MAY TO 27 MAY 2012. I have gone through the Information Sheet for the Workshop
on ...
Comment on Introduction to The Seven Quartets of Becoming by
Kepler from Comments for Posthuman Destinies by Kepler
Is technology and commodification the only way to
condition human subjectivity? Did the Spanish Inquisition not condition the
subjectivity of those living under it? If you made more modest and nuanced
claims like maybe that the present-day scale of global techno-capitalism is
unprecedented and may be affecting human subjectivity in significant ways that
are not yet completely understood, then it wouldn’t warrant any comment. E.g.
instead of “Human subjectivity belongs to the market”, maybe “market forces
might be having an impact on human subjectivity”.
But to make such sweeping claims without citing
evidence or detailing arguments, just re-asserting them repeatedly in an effort
to “awaken the sleepers”, well doesn’t it have a certain religious feel to it?
But these ideas seem close to your heart so I’m sorry if I’ve poked you too
hard over them. Meanwhile your book has arrived and at a glance it seems to be
mostly about yoga, not global techno-capitalism, and thus coincides with my own
interests.
Comment on Introduction to The Seven Quartets of Becoming by
debbanerji from Comments for Posthuman Destinies by debbanerji
OK, if I seem to make totalistic claims, it is
because such totalistic trajectories are hegemonic in our times. To what extent
they have determined subjectivity today may be questioned, and my interest does
not lie in fighting on one side or other of that debate. What I am concerend
about is the danger and the need to be aware of our historicity, which indeed,
is unprecedented and thus being recognized, even by mainstream anthropologists
as an entry into a new era, the anthropocene age. But to call it by that name
hides other serious implications of such an age.
For a yoga which is not just about finding the
jivatman, whether culturally bounded or not, and is more properly related to an
evolutionary change, interiority becomes the grasp of Being-in-Becoming and our
position in its evolutionary history. This is what Bergson and Deleuze refer to
as Duration and this is what is rendered increasingly inaccessible by the
flattening and instrumentalizing effects of our age, where forces of global
competition utilize global technologies to accelerate the production of
perpetual novelty and the manufacture of corresponding packaged desires for
consumption through (near-)instant gratification. These processes of production
press for the human subject to turn increasingly into instrument bereft of
interiority and the processes of consumption in turn produce a surrogate
interiority and populate it with its manufactured desires. Again, how completely
these things are accomplished is not what I am debating, but pointing to the
need to be aware of these forces and developing alternate technologies of
consciousness against their grain to aim for another kind of human subjectivity
and global fulfillment, one that pertains to a divine life.
Sri Aurobindo describes a certain static component
to the human essence (Jivatman), and another evolutionary component that
develops over time/births (Psychic being), that are both accessible via yoga;
and then there’s the mental/vital complex (i.e. ordinary subjectivity) that
varies a lot across culture and history, although still with certain
recognizable patterns (ego, desire) despite the varying outer forms.
There’s also a global history of mystics writing
about their essential experiences across time and culture in which one can
observe certain common or repeating features. This might count as some evidence
that human essential subjectivity is not entirely a creation of a specific
culture at a specific historical time, and that this essence is accessible,
although not easily.
Most "fundamentalisms" involve special
forms of identity politics, meaning, and labeling, characterized by a quest for
certainty, exclusiveness, and unambiguous boundaries, where the
"Other" is the enemy demonized. It also reflects a mind-set uncompromising
and antirelativist, as one response to the openness and uncertainties of a
cosmopolitan world, and [tries] to chart a morally black and white path out of
the gray zones of intimidating cultural and religious complexity. — Judith
Nagata, Beyond Theology: Towards an Anthropology of ‘Fundamentalism’ (2001),
page 481. Juergensmeyer
An-Na'im
Lifton
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