 
Date: Fri, 30 Apr 1993 15:32 EST
From: BLUECANARYINNAOUTLET 
Subject: hasta la vista, kerista? :-)
To: +dist+/afs/andrew/usr/js9b/Public/camc.dl@andrew.cmu.edu
Message-Id: <01GXML9EHX34002AUM@YANG.EARLHAM.EDU>

Hi again, all.

   Cosmic Bob writes:

>From:  IN%"angst+@cmu.edu"  "Jon C. Slenk" 30-APR-1993 13:05:48.11
>To:    IN%"+dist+/afs/andrew/usr/js9b/Public/camc.dl@andrew.cmu.edu"
>Subj:  More Kerista
>
>>From: wce@hogbbs.scol.pa.us (Bill Eichman)
>
[...]
>
>Yeah, well, maybe you didn't know that they work with Spirit Guides,
>which they call the "Holy Names."  These beings are guiding the commune
>with ideas, suggestions, inspiration, plans.  I saw three of them the
>evening after my second private party.  Three beautifully lit faces is what
>I saw, hovering above my head as I was in my bed in that place between
>waking and sleeping.  They were checking me out (since I was a potential
>member).  I told them I wanted to go to sleep and I asked them to
>leave and they left me alone.  It was a slightly scary.  I could pass a
>gauntlet of lie detector tests that it really happened.  That episode is my
>closest encounter with non-incarnate entities.  Interesting that they
>consider using an alphabet board, similar to a Ouija board, to be a
>completely *rational* way to talk with their guides.  Actually, it *is*
>rational but lotsa people would say NOT.

   (Raising hand) Not. :-)
   I don't doubt that you think you saw something.  What that experience
was, I couldn't tell you, but I have no reason to suspect that mysterious
floating entities had a conversation with you; it seems every bit more
likely that they were proprioceptive, which is to say that the source of
the sensory experience was in your head.  I'm not calling you sick or
stoned, mind you!  (Though both are possible. :-) Hey, if you buy at least
some of Julian Jaynes' theory of human psychohistory in *The Origin of
Consciousness*, hallucinated voices may once have been a feature of
"normal" experience... and traces of this ancient mode of cognition still
pop up occasionally, in extreme states like hypnosis and religious trance.
   Take or leave that explanation, do experiments to test it, whatever;
I'm pretty sure it's a better one than one that invokes entities which not
only have no place in our best scientific paradigms, but also would fall
outside the scope of rational investigation, being "supernatural" (a
category I'm damn sure doesn't exist).

[...]
>>------------------
>>Utopian Psychology
>>------------------
>>Fundamental Principles for Mental Health
>>========================================
>>(Excerpted from Utopia 2, page 13 & 14, a publication of the Kerista
>>Commune, 547 Frederick St, SF, Ca, 94117, 415-753-1314)
>>========================================
[...]
>>UP Principle # 3
>>----------------
>>Total Rationality at all times is the Basic Mental Milieu for Optimal
>>Psychological Healthiness.
>>
>>This principle does not deny the existence of unexplained phenomena,
>>some of which may be inspiring or perplexing to the human mind, but it
>>does include the idea that all phenomena are ultimately explicable
>>wether or not our limited biocomputers can do the explaining. It also
>>does not exclude very deep feeling about all sorts of things. Feelings
>>and emotions can be very rational reactions to real life events.
>>However, it does rule out giving yourself the right to insist that
>>something is true simply because you feel strongly about it. That's OK
>
>Here's where I got off the bus.  The world is full of people who feel, or
>more importantly *experience* something unique and meaningful. People
>*are* at different steps on the evolutionary trail.  Kerista attempts to
>achieve stability by getting everyone at the same place on the trail.  This
>boosts those not as far along but hinders those whose views and
>experiential life is a superset of the commune in general. If Einstein
>had been a member of Kerista he probably would have had the theory of
>relativity obliterated from his thinking in an all night gestault session.
>After all, when he came up with the original idea, it was in his
>imagination and he couldn't prove it at first, the equations came later.
>
>That last sentence above does provide for static quality (stability) but
>limits dynamic quality, ie it provides a service but introduces a limitation.
>I think there *must* be a way to have both.  If there is, I don't know
>what it is.  The novel "2150" dealt with this in an interesting way, but I
>don't think it's functional now.  Or perhaps Kerista would say that those
>who are on an eccentrically individual (or "loner trip" as they might call
>it) are not cut out to be in the commune.  I think their 500 year plan,
>in full fruition, shows most people living communally - but not all people.
>
>
>>for starters, but if challenged, you've got to be able to defend your
>>view with something more than subjective experience, which may be
>
>The human configuration includes external (objective) life and inner
>(subjective) life.  For me, the inner world is very rich, and what I am
>most interested in exploring.  The inner and outer are connected.  I think
>Kerista is interested in expanding external oriented awake consciousness.
>And that's a noble objective, I'm into that too, but I go about it
>differently.
>
>There is an old saying about "East is East and West is West and never
>the twain shall meet."  The saying has merit because, to use an analogy,
>Eastern man builds the pyramid from the top down and Western man
>builds the pyramid from the bottom up.  This is clearly the case when
>you compare, say Hinduism with Western Science.  The Hindus are mainly
>into the inner life and their outer lives are essentially backward,
>considering how long the Indian culture has been around.  Western
>man by comparison, has been eccentrically outer oriented to point where
>we've achieved fantastic feats of material engineering, but have relegated
>the inner life to such a low position that many argue it does not even
>exist.  I argue that *both* methods of understanding self and the
>universe are valid, but very different.  I use both methods because I want
>the largest, most functional worldview I can have.  Why not use the best
>tools that are available?  I'm getting off the point a bit, but the point is,
>the point is, that Kerista is outer oriented, building reality by agreeing on
>what it is from the bottom up.  Top-downers get that shit gestaulted out
>of them in Kerista, and speaking for myself, I value my top-down, inner
>oriented methods.  I don't want it gestaulted out of me.  For me, that
>would not be psychologically healthy.  Thus, UP Principle #3, is *not* a
>true for everyone, imho.
>
>>connected more to old ideas in your head than to what's really,
>>objectively going on in the present.
>
>Yes, but they may also be connected to the optimal future for the
>human race contacted through visionary experience.  The emphasis on
>rationality and the external discount inner experience.

   I don't think they do, if by "rationality" they mean what I usually
signify by "reasonability" (very similar in the English language, I know,
but "rationality" (like "logic") always sounds much colder to me, an
association that I don't regard as necessary).  A "reasonable" person who
has a vision, hears a voice, or has some other kind of experience which
isn't accountable for *as external phenomena* in the best existing
paradigms, does not insist that it must have *been* an external
phenomenon!  This is not to say that "nothing really happened"; obviously,
something happened; experiences, so far as we understand them, are *all*
actual physical events (chemical action in the brain, etc.).  Not *all*
experiences represent what they appear to represent about the outside
world-- as Descartes began by pointing out, we are often fooled by our
senses.  Therefore, if the better explanation points to an *internal*
cause for the experience...
   But all this is pretty common-sensical, wouldn't you say? In fact, the
phrase "common sense" is pretty important to my idea of the best
compromise between subjective and objective truths.  It implies that the
solution lies in remembering the existence of the *community*.  If too
much authority is given to subjective accounts of reality which have no
good grounding in that which can be perceived by others, then people may
act on really unreliable information.  But if the community, while placing
importance on the *sharability* of truths, remembers that it is a
collection of individuals, each with a uniquely subjective viewpoint, as
in Herrick's phrase--

   Here we are all, by day; by night, we're hurled
   By dreams, each one into a several world.

                                     [Robert Herrick, "Dreams"]

   --then, I think not too much can go wrong.

>>The language spoken in this totally rational environment is reason and
>>logic. A sect of ancient Hinduism calls this language _Nyaya_. Ongoing
>>rational dialogue (nyaya) with friends who share my basic values is a
>>kind of mental jogging which keeps my mind the most robust and healthy.
>>
>>Nyaya is the language of Gestalt-O-Rama, the ongoing, equalitarian peer,
>>self-help group therapy process of UP. Inside this process, the ongoing
>>pursuit of truth through the elimination of contradictions takes place
>>on an around-the-clock basis.

   I would need to see the reference to understand exactly what is meant
by the word "Nyaya", but the idea as represented here has some attraction
for me-- because I think of "reasonability" as a sort of universal
language, something that has a uniquely communicative property.  I think
that finding common terms through reference to things we all know (which
includes both objectively observed phenomena, and the universally observed
phenomena of *having a subjective life*) can overcome just about any
conflict that arises when different groups' versions of the truth collide.

>Yes, but it also tiles over the inner world.  The drive for rational
>agreement on all things does build stability and functionality but at the
>expense of individuality and the inner world and ultimately, I will argue,
>creativity.

   Actually, I really have never felt the need, even while imagining *very*
wild things about the world, to claim any kind of premature authority for
them.  Neither did Einstein go around trying to convince people of the
interrelatedness of time and space simply because a voice in his head told
him it was so.  Lots of scientists, to be sure, have their first
intimations of a new theory in a dream or a vision, like Kekule's dream of
the benzene ring; following Marvin Minsky's lead in *The Society of Mind*,
I imagine this sort of signaling to be sort of like a premature bulletin
issued from a closed-doors committee operating somewhere in the mind.
Good scientists *always* provide justification for their views before
regarding them as in any degree authoritative.  *Good* intuition isn't
extra-rational; it's simply pre-awareness, it has yet to be consciously
elaborated.

>I think they need a better balance here.  For example, I think
>mythology might provide better guidance than strict rationalism. << Ok,
>Ok, come down from the ceiling my scientific friends! :)  We can explore
>this later>>.

   In some senses, I agree that mythology has real wisdom in it; however,
this is only extricable through interpretations which include the reasons
*why* these mythological truths are really valid.  You don't appreciate
the myth of Oedipus' descriptive value because you believe that you are
really a prince who was adopted by country folk, and that you are destined
to kill your father, etc.; rather, you understand it as a metaphorically
encoded version of the independently observable facts of psychological
conflict between parents and children.

>Rationally, the Titanic could not be sunk.

   No; rationally, the engineers of the *Titanic* should have known that
it was capable of being sunk.  Rather, their foolish arrogance led them to
make irrationally inflated claims of unsinkability.  To be "reasonable" is
to realize that you might be wrong.  It is also to realize that you might
be right even if no one else thinks so, but that you need reasons more
solid than mere faith in your own right-ness to make a claim to truth.
   When people make claims to truth that can't be substantiated well
enough, and attempt to enforce them on others, truly horrid tyranny
results.  Cf. Human History, ongoing.  My father, a biology teacher in a
public high school of an extremely insular, conservative school district,
is fighting to keep Creationism out of the curriculum.  This is something
that's happening all over the nation, as the secular compromise sweated
and bled for by generations of progressive people is hacked and hacked
away at by religious zealots, who don't think they *need* to provide good
reasons for their claims to people who don't share their faith.  It
depresses me incredibly to watch this process.

>>UP Principle # 5
>>----------------
>>Judgement is essential to optimal mental health.
>>
>>The notion of "non-judgementalness" has become a popular fad in some
>>schools of new age psychology. It is humourous and ironic because the
>>statement "judgement is bad" is a total judgement.
>
>Wrong. Wrong! Wrong!!  They have *completely* misinterpreted what is
>meant by judgement as a negative or limiting behavior.  It may be a
>semantic problem.  I think Kerista is using "judgement" when I would use
>"evaluation" or "discrimination."
>
>I portend to understand the psychological dynamics underlying the idea
>that judging other people limits your own experience.  Many New Agers
>are grokking this.  Kerista is in left field on this issue, imho. If
>anyone's interested, let me know and I write it up a post on the topic of
>judgement.

   I am interested, since I didn't quite understand the essence of either
your definition of "judgement", their definition of "judgement", nor the
definition they ascribed to the new age psychologists.

   Interesting stuff to talk about, though.  Do people get what I'm going
on about?? What I'm really interested in, in terms of building a society,
is a compromise philosophy that allows people to operate in maximum
harmony, that produces the least injustice.  I think that science offers
many cues for this-- its insistence on looking at the objective world of
nature underscores the fact that it gives authority to the voice of each
and every subjective observer, something which hundreds of years of
scientific revolutions (including ones which drastically revised our
understanding of the meaning of what it is to be an "observer") have not
obscured.  This accomodation of peaceful revolutions, along with the
universal empowerment of individuals, seems to me to be very much at the
roots of what we call democracy.  If such a compromise is not part of
one's vision of the future, it seems to me, one is likely to perpetuate
the oppression and warfare of the past.


   --Jesse.


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