#gregory bateson

[koshigurajumy]

Trance and Dance in Bali

Husband and wife anthropologists Gregory Bateson and Margaret Mead ventured to the island of Bali (now Indonesia) in 1936 to document the country’s culture including such behaviors as parent-child interactions, artists at work, and ritual performances and ceremonies in which participants meditate to reach a half-conscious state in order to commune with spirits of ancestors. When possessed by these spirits, those involved may perform unusual acts such as eating glass or fire, until they are brought out of the trance by a shaman. While Mead and Bateson’s field work is still considered groundbreaking for illustrating how film could be used as a research tool, it has been criticized, particularly for not accounting sufficiently for the role of religion in Balinese culture.

僕は憑かれた人を研究するより、憑かれたいのだ。精霊ザールに憑かれた女についての一部始終を科学的に知るよりも、彼女を肉体的に知りたいのだ。 ミシェル・レリス『幻のアフリカ』 (1934)

[comparativetarot]

The Lovers. Art by Suzanne Treister, from HEXEN 2.0.

Margaret Mead and Gregory Bateson 

[thedudelovesflicks]

"We create the world that we perceive, not because there is no reality outside our heads, but because we select and edit the reality we see to conform to our beliefs about what sort of world we live in. The man who believes that the resources of the world are infinite, for example, or that if something is good for you then the more of it the better, will not be able to see his errors, because he will not look for evidence of them. For a man to change the basic beliefs that determine his perception - his epistemological premises - he must first become aware that reality is not necessarily as he believes it to be. Sometimes the dissonance between reality and false beliefs reaches a point when it becomes impossible to avoid the awareness that the world no longer makes sense. Only then is it possible for the mind to consider radically different ideas and perceptions."

"Steps to an ecology of mind" G. Bateson

#truedetective #nightcountry #issalopez #bateson #rose #navarro #truedetectivenightcountry #gregorybateson #stepstoanecologyofmind #ecologyofmind

[shrinkrants]

[dreaminginthedeepsouth]

My sea friends never disappoint. :: [Muriel Lindsay] :: [This is a friend who lives by the ocean. She kayaks every day and is a real dolphin whisperer. Her videos and photos of her friends brings me joy every day.  She is also an astrologer.]

* * * * *

The map is not the territory, and the name is not the thing named.”

- Gregory Bateson

[Alive On All Channels]

[protoslacker]

Tripping on Utopia by Benjamin Breen

Nora Bateson in a public letter signed by Sevanne Kassarjian,  Stephen Nachmanovitch, and Phillip Guddemi accuses Breen of promulgating "falsehoods" and "manipulations of history" in his book. So far as I can see Nora Bateson and those associated have provided little evidence of either. The letter demands "accountability." Likewise accountability entails a responsibilty for the accusers to offer evidence for charges of malfeasance against a scholar.

[fabiansteinhauer]

Die Geburt des Rechts aus dem Geist der Choreographie

1.

Wenn die Disco der Tempel und das offizielle Gebäude ist, dann spitzt sich die urbane Architekur im Tempel und im offiziellen Gebäude, also in der Disco zu. Sind Tempel und offizielles Gebäude nicht die Disco, dann spitzt sich urbane Architektur in der Disco zu. Dort wird Urbanität intensiv, dort gibt es, wie man in Warburgs Heimathafenstadt Hamburg singt Tamm-Tamm und Rämmi-dämmi. Immer wieder kommt es in der Disco zu erhitzter Gesellschaft und zu Ausbrüchen erhitzter Gesellschaft, anders gesagt: zu Haufenbildung, wobei der Haufen ab und zu wie ein Vulkan asoziale Elemente auswirft. Die Elemente erscheinen asozial, tauchen ab einem bestimmten Punkt außerhalb der Gesellschaft auf, unabhängig davon, wer genau Gesellschaft und wer den Ausschluss schuldet, aber unabhängig von ihrer Geselligkeit oder Gesellschaftsaffinität können sie dolle oder gar unverzichtbare Einzelene/ Vereinzelte oder auch schlichte Verbrecher sein. In der Disco wird immer auch etwas angebahnt, am Ende reproduziert sich die Menschheit bis auf weiteres.

2.

Die Disco ist eine der wenigen Architekturen, die nach einem Polobjekt benannt sind, in diesem Fall nach einer Scheibe, die man drehen soll und wenden kann. Man hat dem Wort Disc (einem runden Desk oder einer runden Tafel) extra noch ein O angehängt, damit auch die letzten Doofen verstehen, worum es in der Disco geht: um's Schlängeln, Schlingen und Kreisen.

Man hat in Städten nur relativ kurz Gebäude Disco genannt, heute heißen sie eher Club. Das hält uns nicht davon ab, die Disco für eine Basilika zu halten: Die Disco ist eine Messehalle und eine Regungsstätte, die darauf ausgerichtet ist, Körper durch Körper zu affizieren, nahe zu bringen oder auseinanderzubringen, das ist die Stätte offiziellen Tanzes. Dort sollen Körper sich eine zeitlang zueinander und miteinander bewegen, wie zu derjenigen Wahrheitsform, die man Prüfung nennt.

Andere Kulturen haben zwar keine Disco, aber im Hinblick auf den Tanz äquivalente Stätte, etwa das wompunau, von dem Gregory Bateson für sein erstes großes Buche Naven ein Foto gemacht hat.

3.

Immer dann, wenn irgendetwas anfängt, dann fängt auch Recht an. Technisch betrachtet fängt das Recht mit graphischen oder choreographischen Akten an, die Differenz operationalisieren, kurz und knapp (normativ) gesagt: die etwas unterscheiden und die Mobilität und Austauschbarkeit des Unterschiedenen bestimmen sollen. Solche Akte konturieren und definieren etwas, nehmen es als Form wahr und führen es einem limitierten Wechsel zu. Der limitierte Austausch ist kuratierter, 'besorgter' Austausch. Exzesse sind darin nicht nur möglich, sie sind einkalkuliert, aber in kuratierter Form.

Ricardo Spindola war in Brasilien und hat ein Geschenk mitgebracht: Naven von Gregory Bateson in der Übersetzung von Magda Lopes. Sag ich doch: Maria Immaculata was such a perfect day, merci Ricardo!

4.

Gregory Bateson erwähnt in dem Vorwort des 1936 zuerst erschienen Buches einen doppelten Zug: Im Zug habe ihm der Zoologe und Anthropologe Alfred Cort Haddon versprochen, ihn als Anthropologen zu trainieren, sprich: zu ziehen oder zu erziehen. Bateson formuliert das richtig: Dr. Haddon first made me an anthropologist. Im Zug, mit einem Zug, den man mit Adolf Reinach einen Akt, in in diesem Fall ein Versprechen nennt.

Die Rechtsgeschichte der Züge ist immer noch nicht richtig, also nicht diagonal erzählt und darum ist noch etwas unklar, was die wirklich wichtigen Unterscheidungen in der Rechtsgeschichte des Zuges waren. Dass der Zug ein Ort für die Wahrheitsform ist, die man Geständnis nennt und mit der Inquisition verbindet, ist seit Alfred Hitchcocks Strangers on a train zwar allgemein bekannt, aber auch nur das ist über die Assoziationen zwischen Zügen und Recht allgemein bekannt und gesichertes Wissen, alles andere ist immer noch nur besonders bekannt und ungesichert. Leider ist das Programm für Tagungen, die ich organisiere, schon bis 2025 voll, aber für 2026 könnte man eine Tagung zu Zügen und dann endlich auch zu großen und kleinen Bahnhöfen machen, denn Bahnhof heißen wir jene Stelle, an der Züge halten.

[toletoletole]

Gregory Bateson (9.5.1904-4.7.1980), ein ökologischer Vordenker

Heute jährt sich zum 120. Mal der Geburtstag von Gregory Bateson, der nicht nur ein Pionier der Kybernetik und ein wichtiger Mentor für die Entwicklung systemischer Konzepte in der Psychotherapie war, sondern auch früher als andere die aufkommende ökologische Katastrophe vorausgesehen hat. Im Juli 1967, wenige Wochen nach dem Sechs-Tage Krieg zwischen Israel und seinen arabischen Nachbarn (!),…

[vineetakamal]

Anthropology quote

[horsesource]

“We played some memorable rounds of the Training Game at Sea Life Park, especially one in which philosopher Gregory Bateson, being the ‘animal’ for some of my dolphin trainers, proved indeed to be impossible to train, not because he stood still and thought but because he offered such an endless variety of responses that the trainer was swamped”

Karen Pryor

[iaintnoflower]

Pensaba ¿qué cambio puede gestar una desde su pequeño lugar, desde lo quizás insignificante de su aporte? Y después me acordé de los primeros organismos anaerobios, que eran microscópicos pero cambiaron la composición de la atmósfera terrestre y así modificaron por completo la vida en la tierra. Dejando de lado el hecho de que el oxígeno que producían era tóxico para las otras formas de vida preexistentes... Esta idea de modificar el ambiente colectivamente me hace pensar que aunque parezca ínfimo un cambio interno que se refleje en las interacciones sociales puede gestar una conciencia colectiva que genere eventualmente el cambio que queremos ver en el mundo.

[cerastes]

Hey how come you making flippant comments in regards to your own self-improvement fetish is so enlightening in regards to mental health things is this the whole 'professional' thing at work.

I would like to think so! When we think of "psychology", most people might have a very Freudian image of it: A therapist solemnly but very comprehensively taking notes as a patient lies on a couch and spills their guts, only interjecting once or twice in the hour-long session and then charging you. Psychoanalysis, the Freudian technique, I don't think it's useless, but it's definitely just one of a myriad of techniques and methods with which to carry out therapy (and one I myself am trained in and do not like). I myself am more of systems theory of psychology kind of guy (Humberto Maturana, Ludwig von Bertalanffy, Gregory Bateson, among others), and systems has a very input-output sort of view (if you want to learn more, you can also look up second order cybernetics and radical constructivism).

Where I am going with all of this is that if it may seem like I'm making flippant comments, then that means I've synthetized my own self-care mind palace to such a degree that it has simply become part of my discourse, my lingo, my poise, if you will, but that in itself took a lot of introspective work in a way that was tangible to me, or in other words, in a way that my brain accepted it. Ultimately, it's the role of the psychologist to lead one to something rather than to reveal any sort of secret to wellness. Using myself as an example, as someone that had suicidal depression at one point, being told to "think positively" didn't do a damn thing, because if it was that easy, then depression wouldn't exist. Instead, I more or less had to trick my own brain into giving it reasons as to why it should think positively, because it makes sense to do so, and in the same vein, I had to give it reasons as to why thinking negatively was dumb. Because that sort of logic works with me. So it's less "hey, think nice things :)" and more "okay but does it have to be like this? Does everyone else have this crushing sadness as their normal as well? I don't think so, so maybe what I'm feeling isn't normal. Why am I thinking that way? What do they have that I don't? Oh, thing A and thing B, yeah, makes sense, and do I want these things? Mmm thing A doesn't really matter to me, but thing B, I'm loathe to admit, is something I desire, how about I work towards having thing B for now as a goal and then see if that is good enough or at least improves my mental state? Are things really as hopeless as I think they are and am I enlightened by my grim outlook? Probably not, so why am I hopeless and why are they not? There's something I don't have or don't know, let's see what that is, and put these shit thoughts on hold until I can ascertain these things". This is a summarized version, of course, but you know what I mean.

But where I'm going with this (again) is that once you grab onto your own internal logic (which is where the introspective work leads to!) and know what makes you click and how your own metrics and parameters of motivation work, it becomes much much easier to have a healthy mental state and keep it healthy. This, in my opinion, should be the long term objective of any good therapy: To at least start your user (I don't really use the term "patient") on this road. I'm making it sounds all sunshine and rainbows, but introspective work worth having does entail having to look at the uglier parts of yourself and acknowledging them, hence why not a lot of people see it through. It takes commitment and guts because you very much do reach a point where you need to look at these things that are awful and be like "yes, this, too, is me" before you can start going into how to turn these into advantageous things instead.

Likewise, the therapy I do tends to have this as goal: Let's work this shit together so we can organize it in a way that's easier to handle for starters, and then you can have a very good grip on the reins of what makes you feel good and what makes you feel bad, and so can easily dispel the brain fog by simply consulting your inner blueprint. Each user is a whole different journey, and it's part of what makes psychology such a beautiful field.

[luxe-pauvre]

The view of plants as autonomous individuals with neat borders is causing destruction. 'Consider a blind man with a stick,’ wrote the theorist Gregory Bateson. 'Where does the blind man's self begin? At the tip of the stick? At the handle of the stick? Or at some point halfway up the stick?’ The philosopher Maurice Merleau-Ponty employed a similar thought experiment nearly thirty years earlier. He concluded that a person's stick was no longer just an object. The stick extends their senses, and becomes part of their sensory apparatus, a prosthetic organ of their body. Where the person's self begins and ends is not as straightforward a question as it might seem at first glance. Mycorrhizal relationships challenge us with a similar question. Can we think about a plant without also thinking about the mycorrhizal networks that lace outward extravagantly - from its roots into the soil? If we follow the tangled sprawl of mycelium that emanates from its roots, then where do we stop? Do we think about the bacteria that surf through the soil along the slimy film that coats roots and fungal hyphae? Do we think about the neighbouring fungal networks that fuse with those of our plant? And - perhaps most perplexing of all - do we think about the other plants whose roots share the very same fungal network?

Merlin Sheldrake, Entangled Life

[bellshazes]

i am very curious about your academic history! uni or informal or personal interest or otherwise. i've seen you mention a number of disciplines from time to time, v cool to see medieval studies be among them. always awe-inspiring to see someone use their wealth of lit knowledge to help create incredibly provocative posts about minecraft youtubers. your experience with philosophy is one i'd love to know more about.

(if you're comfortable with sharing it! otherwise, feel free to ignore this ask :P)

this is a very lovely ask and i don't mind to share at all because it's really just... a hodgepodge. it took me twelve years to graduate college. i flunked out my junior year and tried in fits to go back and chip away at my last requirements only when i got reimbursement through my job. i concentrated my courses on medieval culture/literature, french, and general linguistics (these often overlapped). i didn't study any actual theory in my courses until i took my final 2 humanities ones. which in fact i took and blogged through right here.

taking that theater of the absurd class (as Last Life happened!) connected me to academic game studies, which was easy pickings since i spent about a decade teaching arkham horror (and occasional other pinch hits for e.g. catan) at game conventions. so i have a lot of friends from those cons who enjoy and have the vocabulary to dissect games' mechanics and feel and the social dynamics of them. i love rehashing the difference between game mastering a co-op board game vs. an official strategy tournament vs. casual improv games vs. casual competitive vs. asymmetric, and then rehashing the player pov of each of those and more, and people who can argue back.

i'm very lucky to have friends who also think of philosophy not as being walled off from daily life but a practice of examining the world and our relationships within it. we sit and argue for the sake of tearing a concept apart, like "what differentiates art from craft?" or "does the platonic ideal suck or is it romantic?" or "what are you most afraid of?". do this for at least 5 years and you'll end up with complex opinions and perspectives. in my early 20s, biking from my restaurant job to free museums and writing about local art history kept me alive.i'm lucky my very bizarre career path since has led me to jobs where taxonomical flexibility and philosophy are necessary skills.

i think everything is worth taking seriously, even the most unserious parts of life, and i think you can take play seriously while also remaining playful in your examination. i think all your experiences build on themselves by virtue of aging, if you allow yourself to play with them. i think that there are a thousand silver threads between each thing and every every every other thing in the world and universe and imagination and drawing those lines of juxtaposition illuminate the edges of a negative space that is dynamic as it pulls and is pushed by all of its interrelationships, even the most obscure thinnest threads. i wouldn't have worked all that out without talking with the same people again and again.

at a work conference last year i was introduced to gregory bateson, whose ecology of mind makes me feel like i just stepped off the tallest rollercoaster in the world. i'm still not sure that i've got a good enough understanding of pedagogy of the oppressed (which i discovered via um les mis fanfic?) but i reread the second chapter even more often than i revisit quine's the ways of paradox. for good advice on how to be an amateur, tampopo lays it out the best. i lead with being a college dropout because i want to emphasize i'm no master of anything, just a lover of many, but that i think a critical amateurism, a love that drives learning and development and communion with others is just about the best most life-giving thing there is.

[jeanchrisosme]

La sagesse c'est savoir être avec la différence sans vouloir éliminer la différence.

Gregory Bateson