Tag: Psyche

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Arthur M. Young

Young when young!

I had never heard of the man until recently, and now he is everywhere. Seems he has a lot to say relevant to the psyche and cyberspace, and specifically to the questions raised in the Talbott / Kelly discussion.

Here is a bio.

In 1976 The Reflexive Universe and The Geometry of Meaning were published. These books attempt to identify valid universal first principals and correlate them with modern science. As well, they provide a holistic system for organizing the data of science and generating first order hypotheses for scientific research.

“The theory of process,” says Stanislav Grof, “is a serious candidate for a scientific metaparadigm of the future. His metaparadigm is not only consistent with the best of science, but also capable of dealing with non-objective and non-definable aspects of reality far beyond accepted limits of science.”

Arthur Young believed that the real function of science is the exploration of the human spirit. A bold, humorous, patient and original pioneer, he continues to inspire scientists and philosophers alike towards a truly interdisciplinary vocabulary by opening doorways to the universe of the spirit.

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Suzi Gablik

The Nature of Beauty in Contemporary Art

Suzi Gablik has discussions with Thomas Moor and James Hillman.

Here is an excerpt.

Suzi: In our culture, the notion of art being in service to anything is anathema. Aesthetics doesn’t serve anything but itself and its own ends.

I would like that to change. When Hilton Kramer says that the minute you try to make art serve anything, you’re in a fascistic mode’well, I don’t believe that.

Hillman: I’d like to defend the cleaning of the river, for a moment. I’m going back to what you said a little earlier: it’s the attempt to put art in the service of something.

Suzi: Yes, that’s where the issue is.

Hillman: Art in the service of something. If we say that it’s life, and if we think, for instance, of the Balinese village where everything is made to be functional and useful, for celebrations or ceremonies… you’re still in service to the gods, somehow. Now we don’t have that we’ve wiped the gods out… So the god that art now serves is the god that dominates the culture, which is the god of commodity, of money. So it is in service, it’s in service to gods we don’t approve of… Now suppose the question doesn’t become what art should do, but rather how do we find that which art should serve? Art is already in service, so we could perhaps change that to which it is in service?

Suzi: So the question is what could art better serve than the things it has been serving, like bourgeois capitalism, throughout our lifetimes?

Hillman: Right! And I think the artist in the river is serving a different god.

To relate it back to the themes here, what it we replaced the word Art with Net? I see them as both mediating soul. However for it to be of the sort of art they are advocating here it is not all the net that works this way… have we wiped the gods out of the Net?

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Free software and psyche

Free Software and the Psyche

What are all these posts on open source and free software doing on my weblog? What is the link with psyche?

Well there is a link with my psyche, in that I gravitate to the of edge. Free software is on the edge of some sort of cultural social advance. It may peter out like the “counterculture” or it may actually be a continuation of something of that spirit.

More directly there is a psychological side: identity in a virtual realm relates to ownership. In the early says of the well there was the phase You Own Your Own Words. The theme has a powerful presence on the Net, relates right back to notion of “free speech” with its elevated, sacred, archetypal complexities.

I’m not all that clear, I know. I just have a sense that probing the noosphere here involves fully grasping the free software phenomena, with its associated stories of cathedrals and bazaars etc. Anyway, I run Linux for that reason, to travel into the different realms of the cyber-world. I think of it as a journey into the psyche!

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Psychological roots of political life

Free as in Freedom
Richard Stallman’s Crusade for Free Software

The whole of this book is online.

amazon

“”If anything deserves a reward, it is social contribution,” Stallman wrote. “Creativity can be a social contribution, but only in so far [sic] as society is free to use the results. If programmers deserve to be rewarded for creating innovative programs, by the same token they deserve to be punished if they restrict the use of these programs.”

I like that line from Chapter 7. I think that reward could well come from taxes – more govt payment for free software.

Edit: 20 April 2002

“I really admired the way Richard built up an entire political movement to address an issue of profound personal concern,” Sarah said, explaining her attraction to Stallman.

My wife immediately threw back the question: “What was the issue?”

“Crushing loneliness.”

Fascinating comment… the idea we do political things for personal reasons. I buy it. I am glad RMS has such a psychologically minded friend – I hope it is working out for them. But there would be an interesting twist to entertain: He had to set up a life of crushing loneliness so that he could fulfil his destiny as a political leader.

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Linux & community

The Community of Linux

“Anyway, I wanted to come back to the idea of Linux. It is a careful phrase, ‘the idea of Linux’. It occurred to me this morning, as I was reading the technology news and reflecting on the tasks of the day, (I’m not exactly sure how, but that is an interesting side question) that Linux and the whole Open Source movement isn’t about the software. It is about community. The Community of Linux.”

This is from Aldon Hynes a regular on Psyber-L. I am looking forward to discussion on this whole topic. The idea of Linux to me is central to the psyche in cyberspace. Community is one reason for that, to be sure.

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Internet as Mirror of the Unconscious

Internet and Unconscious: The Psychic Interface by Peter Gomes

“The process of internet use becomes – in part – a dialogue with the Self – the united whole, the complete psychic entity of ourselves both personal, collective, conscious and unconscious – with the internet mirroring the unconscious, working on both a collective and personal level – with use affecting the process of individuation”

An article on the psyche and the net.

Later Sunday, 25 September, 2011

The link above seems not to work.

I’ve found it again – or something similar?) and it is now here too (see below)

Continue reading “Internet as Mirror of the Unconscious”

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