Gregg, yes, I feel there's a very promising convergence afoot. John's recent conversation with Rich Blundell was one of the main reasons I was inspired to make public two of the meditations I do with one of my classes (which I shared to the TOK list last week). I believe what I have been teaching for many years covers very closely the territory Rich and John explored in that conversation -- the 1st- and 3rd person (participatory and objective) approaches to Big History, but also much else that is in convergence. And I shared the meditations to the TOK list because of their obvious, to me, relation to the inner/out dynamics of the coin and the tree that you have been exploring.

Specifically, since 2007, I have been teaching a course called Paradigms of Consciousness, which combines living systems theory; philosophy of mind; autopoietic cognitive science (Varela/Maturana/Thompson); Big History/new cosmology; indigenous wisdom; some aspects of quantum theory, carefully handled; the practice of holistic dialogue (Bohmian and other); creative myth-making; and philosophical-phenomenological inquiry as a means of addressing the fundamental fragmentation and disconnection of our modern way of being. This course is a foundational one for our whole program, which overall includes multiple courses that go into each of these facets in even more depth.

I don't mean to suggest at all that what John is doing, or what you are doing, is not new and ground-breaking in very important ways -- I think you both have great contributions that people need to attend to -- but I do feel that I've already been working in my classes for 15 years on presenting a particular convergence of elements and themes that are getting a lot of emphasis in these recent conversations. That's one reason why I'm so attracted to both of your bodies of work. But I also sometimes burst a little with excitement, wanting to say, "Yes! yes! I've been taking my students to these places for a good while now," very specifically with an aim to address the current psychocultural crises in which we find ourselves enmeshed.

On Sun, Mar 27, 2022 at 6:52 AM Henriques, Gregg - henriqgx <[log in to unmask]> wrote:

Hi TOKers,

Just wanted to highlight the latest Voices with Johnny V episode, where John welcomes Rich Blundell:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cfbqaj5Gxyo

I found this episode interesting because Rich is an ecologist who starts with Big History and then does the “journey inward” so to speak and arrives at a participatory inside-out/outside-in view of the world. And he reached out to John to build that bridge. From a UTOK vantage point, Rich IS pointing to us being properly aligned via the Tree and the Coin.

So, just so that we are clear: The Tree of Knowledge System gives us the proper Big History descriptive metaphysical ontological scientific naturalistic behavioral position that properly frames the levels and dimensions of complexification. It “fixes” the normal big history view, which posits eight complexification thresholds, leading to a ninth.

As this article makes clear (and made even clearer in a chapter in my current book), the standard Big History frame is not adequate for a holistic philosophy because it CLEARLY fails to even see, yet alone resolve, the problem of psychology. And, it also fails to realize that complexification is a function of both levels of part-whole-group across scale AND different dimensions of complexification networked together by information processing/communication systems that make the shift form chemistry to biology different and “more” than the shift from physics to chemistry (which remains within the Matter dimension). Here is the relevant vision logic:

With that picture of big history corrected, we can now shift from the vantage point of natural science to the vantage point of each of our unique particular psyches. Specifically, we can experience the field of our awareness as material entities, organisms, animals at the animal-mammal-primate level (i.e., pleasure pain, mind’s eye, attachment/relational heart), and person (justifying ego-persona) and transpersonal-spiritual dimension (5^th joint point, Elephant Sun God as iconic of right relation to transcendent wisdom).

This brings us back directly to Brendan’s mythopoetic narrative and metamodern spirituality which we shared last week and generated this symbol:

The point is that we are in an Energy-Information Complexification Web that we can see now both from the vantage point of (a) the psyche (subjective), (b) natural science (objective), (c) transjective pragmatism and (d) relational-intersubjective (create common ground into social construction/justification systems in context). This is iQuadratic Aspect Monism:

We have the right frame at our finger tips. The problem is now a problem of translation and bridging.

Big hug to all,

Gregg

___________________________________________

Gregg Henriques, Ph.D.
President of the Society for the Exploration of Psychotherapy Integration (2022)

Professor
Department of Graduate Psychology
216 Johnston Hall
MSC 7401
James Madison University
Harrisonburg, VA 22807
(540) 568-7857 (phone)
(540) 568-4747 (fax)

Be that which enhances dignity and well-being with integrity.

Check out the Unified Theory Of Knowledge homepage at:

https://www.unifiedtheoryofknowledge.org/

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