Saturday, September 18, 2004

Family-Member post

I want to relate something about the familial aspect of my Life-Dance, the Life, the Mutuality that is and isn’t in the relationships I have with those who are currently most familiar, whom I live in the same building with and see everyday. Yet I don’t know that there is much to relate, or how much detail that I would feel comfortable relating. I live in a big rambling example of hippie architecture with non-working solar panels, which is too incoherent in design to really visualize the whole of, even after you’ve seen it. Its called Tupelo. Out of all the other SLG’s (Single Living Groups) at Twin Oaks I choose to live here because of the relatively mellow atmosphere and the instrument-filled Music room (half of which is also the hammock chair shop). I live here with 16 other people 3 “families” in the contemporary sense of the word, among them.

In much the same way that T.O. is not as intentional or alive a community as it could be, but is quite a bit more livable than a lot of other places, so Tupelo is not a very intentional, Friendly, Personal, or Alive, but is still more so than a lot of other house holds. I want to write an essay for my other blog (integralscience.motime.com) that goes in detail about what I think Healthy Familiality would be, so I won’t go into it too much here. The questions here are: what am I doing, what would I like to be doing, what do I intend to be doing to extend Living Friendship and create healthy culture here at Tupelo (I don’t write “healthy familial culture” since healthy culture among those you see most often ishealthy familial culture).

As for what I am doing; I would have to say not much. I speak freely and as an Individual Person from an Integral Science point of view since—well…since that is who I am and that is my point of view—but I’ve made no real formal gestures or invitations to any one. Familial culture here at tupelo errs on the side of neglect rather than over-emphasis (I think I prefer this form of mal-familiarity to the other at some level). As I said, it’s not really very intentional; there are no regular house meetings because everyone is too busy. There is not really much familial capital to work with so to speak. And I haven’t yet figured out how to invest in what does exist.

My best Idea so far has been to have Individual-Personhood meetings (life-Dance Union meetings) and some Life-Dance Parties here with Thea, in shared space and with no expectations, as way of just introducing healthy culture to my familial environment in a non-intimidating and easy way. I still think this is a good Idea and Thea and I have done this more than once. But there seems to be a problem—maybe just logistical one Thea’s part—with it happening every week here and so it seems unlikely that this will have whatever effect I think I want.

Until recently I had Integral Science “Propaganda” on my door. It started to fall off—it had been there for almost 2 years—so I took it down and have not put anything in its place. I think I would like to paint some kind of integral science matrix mandala and hang it on my door as a familial gesture and conversation piece.

Other than that I have been doing my daily stretching-chi gung routine—though not my meditation—in shared space since there is more room and Thea has been gone. Perhaps I will continue doing them in the evening in the tupelo living room while continuing to do them in the morning with Thea.

What I cant get up my nerve to do yet—It might not even be a good idea—is to post something like this entry or my essay “On Family” in the hallway entrance to Tupelo (where people post messages—usually just practical messages--relevant to the household as a whole.) I’m still facilitating inwardly about that—I’d feel pretty vulnerable.

Well, such as it is, that is the state of the familial step of my life-dance as of today. In the language I use to talk about the dynamic of Living Friendship, I would say that I am Listening to, Supporting, and Challenging myself as an Individual-Personal Tupeloid pretty much in that order. Maybe by the next time I make a familial entry, the challenging aspect of befriending this household will have moved up to second place and there will be more to report.

posted by: piankhy | 08:38 | comments

Experiment entry

Experiment entry:

I want to be clear that as a kind of Personal Politics, and so as part of the civil aspect of my own Life-Dance, these web-logs are relatively “Themless” and non-factional in intention. This means that, the reader, whoever you are, is being addressed and appealed to, primarily as an Individual-Person; that is, as an Individual Family-member, Neighbor, Citizen of the world, and Soul, with the inherent and primary relationships, rights, and responsibilities that go along with that 5-fold Identity.

Implicitly, you are being asked to recognize, and then bracket, the Public, Private, Professional, Cultural, Racial, Gendered, and even religious, familial, and national, and other Factional Identities of Apart-ness in terms of which you normally understand and express who you are as a member of the dominant culture. This is not a website for progressives or radicals or conservatives, or women or men or adults or business people or this or that race or class or creed As Such. Nor is it even for those who consider themselves primarily Individuals or primarily Family-members, or Citizens of the world, or Neighbors, or Souls, in such a way that any one of these relationships/responsibilities is understood exclude or compete with the others. It is an appeal to Everybody on the common ground of our equality as Individual-Persons, and an Invitation into of a kind of Healthy Culture in which the Paradox of this 5-fold identity and its inherent responsibilities can be understood, accepted, and danced as something that accurately reflects the paradoxical nature of Life itself, and of our lived and Living Truth.

I understand that it is possible, perhaps even, in statistical sense, inevitable, that this appeal and invitation be misunderstood, rejected, or ignored by some readers and I don’t see any way to avoid. I can only say that, at present, I feel that I have a stronger inner consensus to share in this way, what I consider to be healthy information, than to try to keep it secret or restrict my sharing of it to other media of communication. I am a cautious person by nature, and that cautiousness can sometimes turn into a paralyzing phobia. I am a discriminating person and that discrimination can some times reveal its shadow as rejection: rejection of relationship and responsibility in regard to that which I discern to be tasteless and stupid or even just less than ideal, as I tend to regard current computer culture. I am subject also to a kind of arrogance that also tends toward dissociation from, rather than conscious participation in, the world. These tendencies all suggest that positive, deliberate, and sophisticated engagement with, rather than disaffected retreat from, the collective venue is the way to go for me.

On the other hand I have a kind of Idealism that can be naïve and I have to take into consideration the extent to which this gesture is informed or motivated by such naiveté. As regards to this, I think and feel that my expectations of this step in my life-dance are really only that it help me, myself, dance the personal politics of Individual-Personhood by keeping me focused on (because I need to report on and explain) my experiments in each of its 5 venues. I do have a modest hope, but no expectation, that, partially as a result of reading these blogs, others will be willing to join me in the healthy Culture and the Dance of Life of which this experiment is apart. But I think such a modest hope is reasonable and fairly harmless.

I have also considered how certain entries, such as soul entries in the Life-dance log, might be quoted out of context and/or used against me in various ways. So far as that goes, its seems to me that some people will believe what they want to believe anyway, and that if the majority of human beings are really so inwardly/outwardly factional and confused as to fundamentally buy in to any such one-sided defamation of my, (or anyone’s) character, than there is no real hope for healthy culture and real human Life on earth anyway.

So again, on balance, I have inner consensus that making the gesture of posting these 2 blogs is part of the catalyzing of my own healing together with that of others and the world, and so is truly a part of Healthy Culture. All of this may change in the future of course as I grow and learn and get more insight into the world and myself. For now, I can only make this gesture in good faith and in the hope that you, the reader, receive it in the spirit in which it is intended.

Sincerely, Piankhy Thompson.2004

posted by: piankhy | 08:35 | comments