I was surfing in a Jungian Space yesterday evening, out for dinner with some heavy hitters I know or was getting to know. Dwaraka was open for indoor seating, per our current zip code protocol (not that protocols are defined at the zip code level -- I refer to Asylum District, here along Hawthorne Boulevard, 97214).
Lets pause for a moment to cite Ken Kesey and One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, his novel and later a movie Ken didn't much care for. That novel put Oregon in the map nonetheless, as thematically about mental health and/or the lack thereof. Asylum State. With the double-meaning of "asylum" as "sanctuary" and/or "hangout" and/or "safe space".
What might asylum mean today? Where might you enjoy an outdoor concert while tripping in some way, without fear of arrest, but in potential need of medical attention?
I'm tempted to go on about Portland's particular place in PsyWar Space (the business of the "intelli-seers") but at this point lets talk about the space of meetups, newly facilitated by Zoomer culture, and also Meetup the website.
The catalysis of online meetup culture, thanks to covid and people staying at home more, trading First Life (more driving and flying) for Second Life (more virtual) conventions, has sparked an acceleration in the conversation. New equilibria get established through communities comparing notes, and not just through owner-controlled mass social media.
I'm thinking here of ISEPP Wanderers meetups 52 Thinking Ideas, with Thinking Society of Philadelphia and Humanists of Greater Portland as supporting actors. This was happening in my backyard, but also through related listservs and emails.
Humanists were already studying the job of ship crew worker, several weeks back. I've been looking at the truck driver role for several years myself, not as a driver myself, but as a role play designer (call it "cosplay" if you must).
The idea here is to apply design principles (ala The Design Way) to lifestyle design, wherein lifestyles contain their workflows, such as truck driving, heavy equipment operating, jet engine development and so on.
The so-called "dirty jobs" are not outside academic experience, per the polytechnical institute model. Include housework in the above. The focus of Fuller's Dymaxion House was its unique particularity along one dimension, but its function in family life along another: as shelter against the mortgage holders and the related slave driver regimen of both parents working (or lose your home), kids abandoned (to daycare shelters).
In place of polytechnic, think polymathic just as readily. The "maths" in "polymath" come from "mowings" etymologyically, i.e. the condensed harvest from any "field". The Silicon Forest is polymathic and its curricula are designed accordingly. Like check out mine.
How this all connects around on Planet Jung is The Design Way by Harold Nelson and Erik Stolterman invokes James Hillman and other Jungians, and dwells on the importance of the unconscious in creating "organic" solutions that are "with the grain" of a situation.
A commitment to comprehensivity (polymathy) gets the ball rolling, providing a wholesome starting context, with experienced judgement suggesting when to transition from analysis to implementation. "Analysis paralysis" is a stalling out to avoid, although maybe not in sciences wherein simply describing the status quo is the final objective. "Paralysis" might mean "arrived at the station" in that case (mission accomplished).
Harold Nelson doesn't use the term "Feng Shui" that I could find, but I'm sure many of his followers do. On Planet Jung (in the space of depth psychology) we permit Alchemy, Feng Shui and Astrology (interconnected "failed paradigms" and/or "pseudo-sciences" to some), to perpetuate some of their ideals, not as scientific truths, but as intentional associations and mnemonic systemic structures of potential value upon selective amplification. We live as players, not as cogs.
The Design Way posits Truths, Realities, Ideals as orthogonal axes.
Ideals must be served by Truths in the long run, and the Realities provide the necessary feedback, without which steering would not occur.
"Are we leaving the ideal path because our truths are wrong, or because we have been lazy in updating our truth tables?" We sometimes get behind in telling the truth. Reality overtakes our storytelling.
Again, if you don't bother to have at least these three independent axes in your model, you may more easily become disoriented, as you'll confuse ideals with facts in need of proof, or special case realities, with what's true in general.
Whatever the case, keep in mind your worldview is (a) yours to keep designing and (b) never finished.
What would Disneyland be without all the "fairy tales" it weaves together using some of the highest tech of the day? Even "humans making a success of themselves" (Fuller) is but a fairy tale we may embrace, or laugh off as somehow beneath or beyond our ken. Did we have some better story in mind then?
Does choosing to remain oblivious make us devils?
Humanity bereft of any cause for hope might pass for the subhuman-tormented, as lost souls, in some dark novel (science fiction?) about mental illness. "Ill to the point of losing our humanity" reminds us of the benefits of getting our collective mental health back. "Humanity" still registers as a positive, even if, as creatures (monsters), we abandon our ideals and reconcile ourselves to cruelty and inhumanity as our lot.
Will the pendulum now swing the other way then? There's always the hope that these dystopian moods are but cyclic.
