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diff --git a/timeforms.otx b/timeforms.otx index 30ea3f9..3d5d034 100644 --- a/timeforms.otx +++ b/timeforms.otx @@ -239,237 +239,68 @@ Center for the Study of Social Change\par} Despite the anarchic confusion of change rates in the various segments of our lumbering, creaking, and gear-grinding behemoth of a society, few people, as Victor Gioscia points out with some astonishment, have sought to understand and control its mechanisms of acceleration and deceleration. Most people feel themselves to be prisoners of time and in that darkness find it difficult to say anything intelligent about it. This book attempts to order our contemporary chaos in temporal terms. It is an essential work for anyone trying to understand our era, its changes, the counterculture, the future. -The fascination of TimeForms for me is not merely the arresting ideas, such as that psychedelic drugs serve to enable people to handle and even enjoy the information overloads characteristic of contemporary society. Nor is it Gioscia's bold effort to construct a temporal conceptual framework, a framework that forces us to bend and stretch our rigid linear ways of thinking about time. Even more significant for me is the character of Gioscia's thought processes: a restless questing, a nibbling and clawing at the boundaries of the presently unknowable. Without this questing, which is unfortunately almost totally missing from academic productions today, in either their scholarly, .scientific or polemical manifestations, I find it difficult to maintain interest in the written word. - -This is not to say I have no quarrels with TimeForms. Gioscia -and I have several chronic intellectual differences. I am hypersensitive, for example, to the slightest lapse into the kind of -progress-infatuated boosterism that characterizes Toffler and Bucky -Fuller. All my life, and that of my father and my grandfather, people -have been telling us enthusiastically that the next scientific breakthrough would really do it, would erase the ravages of the previous -ones and bring health, wealth, and happiness to us all if we would -just open ourselves to it and adapt. The demand I make on all such -arguments is proof that their spokesmen are not traditional futurists---that they have successfully routed out of their psyches those -tendencies that have propelled us into our current pathological -condition, for it is characteristic of neurotic thought patterns to -imagine that their only error lies in quantitative insufficiency of -application. - - -Like many contemporary theorists, myself included, Gioscia -sees humanity enmeshed in a process which will force a transformation of some of these thought patterns more or less inevitably. The -only question is whether his system specifically encompasses those -that have wrought the destruction. For me, linearity and chronic -accelerative growth are the defining symptoms of social sickness, as -are discontinuity and lack of temporal harmony. I would therefore -raise the following questions about his theses: - - -(1) Does not his position take the ego-driven, achievement- -oriented, power-infatuated ethic of modern humanity for granted in -the very process of explaining recent changes in our attitudes toward -it? Is it mere pleasure-seeking that leads us to desire a portable -computer the size of a shoe box, a 500-volume library on a wallet -size piece of paper, energy to send a thousand rockets to the moon, -or the ability to dial China on a wrist-phone? - - -(2) I am far convinced that generalization is what produced -achrony in the first place---that the fantasy of transcendance is the -origin and root of modern social pathology. Synchrony is, after all, a -commonplace of uncontaminated nonliterate societies. - - -(3) Can the complexity of future communication technology -by itself restore the automatic sense of connectedness that the -ravages of individualism have destroyed? Like Gioscia and other -social analysts, I place a certain amount of hope in the young, who -have been spared the inculcation of certain deplorable motivational - - -Xii - - -structures, At the same time, despite their impulse toward community, and its accompanying ideology, it is my strong impression that at -a gut, mMoment-to-moment level social responsivity in the young has -atrophied even further than in their parents. Gioscia explicitly -disclaims any view of the young as especially enlightened, but I -would like to see him turn their own eyes on themselves with the -same brilliance that he exposes the occupational neuroses of -traditional psychotherapists. Hope is a precious commodity and -Americans have centered it in their offspring since the earliest -settlers, a habit the results of which oppress us on every side. The -logic of change processes would lead us to expect the young both to -evolve cures for our diseases and to exhibit them in their most -extreme form, and this is the way it appears to me. I confess to a -personal bias here, however. Although I am fond of the young and -approve of them in a general way, I must admit that one of my -reasons for leaving university life was the profound boredom aroused -by having to spend a great deal of time with people who haven't lived -very much. - - -(4) I am suspicious of analyses which stress discontinuity and -shucking the past. Most of the achrony of which Gioscia speaks -comes from our living in a mammoth junkheap of discarded -novelties. The only discontinuity that would impress me favorably -would be the rejection of our national commitment to transitoriness. -The most radical change possible in our society would be the -establishment of environmental stability and conservatism. In the -same vein, it seems important to distinguish between media-defined -social revolutions and real ones. Not all of our culture or population -is plugged into the media circuitry, and while a 5-year old ideology -may be regarded as "hopelessly irrelevant" the same is not true of a -500-year old one. Academics fall into the same trap:---most intellectual history is like the universe seen through the eyes of a company -house organ. The fact that flower children, Woodstock, campus -protest, psychedelic culture, and so on, seem hopelessly passe today -is often used to argue the meaninglessness of those events, rather -than, as I would argue, the meaninglessness of our ways of defining - - -our experience. - - -xili - - -I don't know how these issues are to be resolved, for Gioscia's -vision of the future cannot lightly be dismissed, and may hold a -monopoly on hope. For me, in any case, our wrangling over the -future is of less interest than his effort to transform our spatial -thought patterns into temporal ones, an enterprise at one with the -redefinition of matter as energy, product as process, thing as long -event, - - -Clearly this is the direction in which the exploration of ultimate -concerns must go. All events which seem mysterious to us---psychic -phenomena, unexplainable forms of communication, transcendental -experiences---lend themselves to explanation in temporal terms. As -Gioscia points out, "some frequencies, after million year evolutionary periods of interacting dyssynchronously, have come into a -harmony which we call sensation. Air waves and ear vibrations in -synch result in our experience of sound." Once we abandon our -"thing" orientation and begin to pay attention to the coordination -of frequencies all sense of weirdness disappears from these phenomena. - - -One specific question that this book raised in my mind was the -issue or "readiness". Why do people suddenly take action after -avoiding it for long periods? Pay a debt, break off an unhappy -relationship, perform a task, go on a journey. How does a person -achieve sufficient synchrony within himself and between himself and -his environment to act with grace, effectiveness, and meaning? These -issues are at least recognized in the East, but Westerners (with the -exception of a few athletes and performers) are largely out of touch -with them. Most acts are performed mechanically by Westerners, in -accordance with clock time or some other bureaucratic compulsion. -This perhaps accounts for the harsh, chaotic, discordant, and -Oppressive quality of our urban life. The sense of the interconnectedness of all living things, of the exquisite timing necessary to maintain -and express this harmony, has largely atrophied. Hopefully this -volume will assist its reawakening. +The fascination of TimeForms for me is not merely the arresting ideas, such as that psychedelic drugs serve to enable people to handle and even enjoy the information overloads characteristic of contemporary society. Nor is it Gioscia's bold effort to construct a temporal conceptual framework, a framework that forces us to bend and stretch our rigid linear ways of thinking about time. Even more significant for me is the character of Gioscia's thought processes: a restless questing, a nibbling and clawing at the boundaries of the presently unknowable. Without this questing, which is unfortunately almost totally missing from academic productions today, in either their scholarly, scientific or polemical manifestations, I find it difficult to maintain interest in the written word. +This is not to say I have no quarrels with TimeForms. Gioscia and I have several chronic intellectual differences. I am hypersensitive, for example, to the slightest lapse into the kind of progress-infatuated boosterism that characterizes Toffler and Bucky Fuller. All my life, and that of my father and my grandfather, people have been telling us enthusiastically that the next scientific breakthrough would \e{really} do it, would erase the ravages of the previous ones and bring health, wealth, and happiness to us all if we would just open ourselves to it and adapt. The demand I make on all such arguments is proof that their spokesmen are not traditional futurists---that they have successfully routed out of their psyches those tendencies that have propelled us into our current pathological condition, for it is characteristic of neurotic thought patterns to imagine that their only error lies in quantitative insufficiency of application. -XIV +Like many contemporary theorists, myself included, Gioscia sees humanity enmeshed in a process which will force a transformation of some of these thought patterns more or less inevitably. The only question is whether his system specifically encompasses those that have wrought the destruction. For me, linearity and chronic accelerative growth are the defining symptoms of social sickness, as are discontinuity and lack of temporal harmony. I would therefore raise the following questions about his theses: +\begitems\style n +* Does not his position take the ego-driven, achievement-oriented, power-infatuated ethic of modern humanity for granted in the very process of explaining recent changes in our attitudes toward it? Is it mere pleasure-seeking that leads us to desire a portable computer the size of a shoe box, a 500-volume library on a wallet size piece of paper, energy to send a thousand rockets to the moon, or the ability to dial China on a wrist-phone? -Prolog +* I am far convinced that generalization is what produced achrony in the first place---that the fantasy of transcendence is the origin and root of modern social pathology. Synchrony is, after all, a commonplace of uncontaminated non-literate societies. +* Can the complexity of future communication technology by itself restore the automatic sense of connectedness that the ravages of individualism have destroyed? Like Gioscia and other social analysts, I place a certain amount of hope in the young, who have been spared the inculcation of certain deplorable motivational structures, At the same time, despite their impulse toward community, and its accompanying ideology, it is my strong impression that at a gut, moment-to-moment level social responsivity in the young has atrophied even further than in their parents. Gioscia explicitly disclaims any view of the young as especially enlightened, but I would like to see him turn their own eyes on themselves with the same brilliance that he exposes the occupational neuroses of traditional psychotherapists. Hope is a precious commodity and Americans have centered it in their offspring since the earliest settlers, a habit the results of which oppress us on every side. The logic of change processes would lead us to expect the young both to evolve cures for our diseases and to exhibit them in their most extreme form, and this is the way it appears to me. I confess to a personal bias here, however. Although I am fond of the young and approve of them in a general way, I must admit that one of my reasons for leaving university life was the profound boredom aroused by having to spend a great deal of time with people who haven't lived very much. -Print is a kind of delayed music, playing now words composed -in another time, a process in which the reader confers a temporary -immortality on the author's once private thoughts and experiences. -You have before you the scores of compositions written in the last -five years for various occasions and performances. One is never sure -it is the best one could have done, and so, perhaps too late, one tries -to add a few grace notes. It would please me, as you read these -pieces, if you heard the music you remember hearing and enjoying in -the past half-decade, beginning just before "hippies" became news, -and ending in August, 1971. - -It was a time of many changes, some deep and anguished, some -sweet and enduring. For me, it was a dialectical time, of birth, death, -and transformation. I learned, and in learning, died, and in dying, -learned. I was always surprised when I sat down to write, to find -myself as terrified as before to form the words the wisps of -awareness that serve as my understanding. - -Once, it was possible to read leisurely and ponder long on the -eternal mysteries---who are we---why are we here---where are we -going---and transmit the results of these ruminations to classrooms -full of bright, eager, beautiful young people. That time is steadily -disappearing, as the young navigate through oceans of novelty more -freshly, more innocently, and let it be said, more perilously, than the -professors who presume to teach them. Deprived of time to reflect, -the young cannot gain perspective: deprived of innocence, professors -cannot learn. The era of rapid social changes blinds us all, blindly. - -So too it was once possible to attend the meetings of learned -societies, to hear papers of significance and meaning, and even once -in a while to deliver them. +* I am suspicious of analyses which stress discontinuity and shucking the past. Most of the achrony of which Gioscia speaks comes from our living in a mammoth junkheap of discarded novelties. The only discontinuity that would impress me favorably would be the rejection of our national commitment to transitoriness. The most radical change possible in our society would be the establishment of environmental stability and conservatism. In the same vein, it seems important to distinguish between media-defined social revolutions and real ones. Not all of our culture or population is plugged into the media circuitry, and while a 5-year old ideology may be regarded as \dq{hopelessly irrelevant} the same is not true of a 500-year old one. Academics fall into the same trap:---most intellectual history is like the universe seen through the eyes of a company house organ. The fact that flower children, Woodstock, campus protest, psychedelic culture, and so on, seem hopelessly passe today is often used to argue the meaninglessness of those events, rather than, as I would argue, the meaninglessness of our ways of defining our experience. +\enditems -But we live in strange times, when nothing is as deadas -yesterday's news, and nothing more difficult than tomorrow's vision. +I don't know how these issues are to be resolved, for Gioscia's vision of the future cannot lightly be dismissed, and may hold a monopoly on hope. For me, in any case, our wrangling over the future is of less interest than his effort to transform our spatial thought patterns into temporal ones, an enterprise at one with the redefinition of matter as energy, product as process, thing as long event, -These are things which everyone knows, except perhaps those -so tossed and wrung that they must cling to views no longer adaptive. -They are recorded here partly to insure myself against the reader's -anger when I stridently demand newer bolder imaginations, and -partly to explain the very ordinary circumstances in which this book +Clearly this is the direction in which the exploration of ultimate concerns must go. All events which seem mysterious to us---psychic phenomena, unexplainable forms of communication, transcendental experiences---lend themselves to explanation in temporal terms. As Gioscia points out, \dq{some frequencies, after million year evolutionary periods of interacting dyssynchronously, have come into a harmony which we call sensation. Air waves and ear vibrations in synch result in our experience of sound.} Once we abandon our \dq{thing} orientation and begin to pay attention to the coordination of frequencies all sense of weirdness disappears from these phenomena. +One specific question that this book raised in my mind was the issue or \dq{readiness}. Why do people suddenly take action after avoiding it for long periods? Pay a debt, break off an unhappy relationship, perform a task, go on a journey. How does a person achieve sufficient synchrony within himself and between himself and his environment to act with grace, effectiveness, and meaning? These issues are at least recognized in the East, but Westerners (with the exception of a few athletes and performers) are largely out of touch with them. Most acts are performed mechanically by Westerners, in accordance with clock time or some other bureaucratic compulsion. This perhaps accounts for the harsh, chaotic, discordant, and Oppressive quality of our urban life. The sense of the interconnectedness of all living things, of the exquisite timing necessary to maintain and express this harmony, has largely atrophied. Hopefully this volume will assist its reawakening. -XV +\nonum\chap Prolog +\parskip=0pt -was composed. For there are two ways to read it, depending on who -you are. +Print is a kind of delayed music, playing now words composed in another time, a process in which the reader confers a temporary immortality on the author's once private thoughts and experiences. You have before you the scores of compositions written in the last five years for various occasions and performances. One is never sure it is the best one could have done, and so, perhaps too late, one tries to add a few grace notes. It would please me, as you read these pieces, if you heard the music you remember hearing and enjoying in the past half-decade, beginning just before "hippies" became news, and ending in August, 1971. +It was a time of many changes, some deep and anguished, some sweet and enduring. For me, it was a dialectical time, of birth, death, and transformation. I learned, and in learning, died, and in dying, learned. I was always surprised when I sat down to write, to find myself as terrified as before to form the words the wisps of awareness that serve as my understanding. -If you are literate, if your primary way of learning is through -the printed word, and have sampled the philosophers, the sociologists, the psychoanalysts, etc, that is, if you are an educated -academic person, you will probably want to begin with the metalog, -On Social Time IJ, since, in académic terms, it is the paradigm, or set -of hypotheses the other pieces "test". It was written first, and -gradually expanded, patched, modified, changed. It will show you -what is written between the lines in the pieces that appear before it. +Once, it was possible to read leisurely and ponder long on the eternal mysteries---who are we---why are we here---where are we going---and transmit the results of these ruminations to classrooms full of bright, eager, beautiful young people. That time is steadily disappearing, as the young navigate through oceans of novelty more freshly, more innocently, and let it be said, more perilously, than the professors who presume to teach them. Deprived of time to reflect, the young cannot gain perspective: deprived of innocence, professors cannot learn. The era of rapid social changes blinds us all, blindly. +So too it was once possible to attend the meetings of learned societies, to hear papers of significance and meaning, and even once in a while to deliver them. -J€ on the other hand, you derive your principal education not -from books, but from experiences with friends and lovers, and if you -are already familiar with the psychedelic experience, you will -probably be able to trace my own psychedelic evolution through the -chapters. +But we live in strange times, when nothing is as dead as yesterday's news, and nothing more difficult than tomorrow's vision. +These are things which everyone knows, except perhaps those so tossed and wrung that they must cling to views no longer adaptive. They are recorded here partly to insure myself against the reader's anger when I stridently demand newer bolder imaginations, and partly to explain the very ordinary circumstances in which this book was composed. For there are two ways to read it, depending on who you are. -In either case, I want to tell you why I have assembled them -here, in book form, though each was originally a paper spoken to an -audience. I have several reasons. +\brk +If you are literate, if your primary way of learning is through the printed word, and have sampled the philosophers, the sociologists, the psychoanalysts, etc, that is, if you are an educated academic person, you will probably want to begin with the metalog, \et{On Social Time II}, since, in academic terms, it is the paradigm, or set of hypotheses the other pieces "test". It was written first, and gradually expanded, patched, modified, changed. It will show you what is written between the lines in the pieces that appear before it. -First, it is the first of four books on the nature of time, which I -want to do because I believe that time is to us what water is to fish: -it is dangerous to ignore. +\brk +If on the other hand, you derive your principal education not from books, but from experiences with friends and lovers, and if you are already familiar with the psychedelic experience, you will probably be able to trace my own psychedelic evolution through the chapters. -Second, the psychedelic era too often naively divided us into -pros and cons, often parents against their own children. I want to -stop that war, if even only a little. +\brk +In either case, I want to tell you why I have assembled them here, in book form, though each was originally a paper spoken to an audience. I have several reasons. -Third, I am, God help me, a teacher, and without an audience, I -am nothing. +First, it is the first of four books on the nature of time, which I want to do because I believe that time is to us what water is to fish: it is dangerous to ignore. +Second, the psychedelic era too often naively divided us into pros and cons, often parents against their own children. I want to stop that war, if even only a little. -Fourth, timidly, I think some of the ideas might be useful to -others who, like me, believe that we are in the midst of an -evolutionary crisis, and who believe, with mie, that a good theory -sometimes helps. +Third, I am, God help me, a teacher, and without an audience, I am nothing. +Fourth, timidly, I think some of the ideas might be useful to others who, like me, believe that we are in the midst of an evolutionary crisis, and who believe, with mie, that a good theory sometimes helps. Finally, I wrote these words in joy, which I would like to share. - - - -LSD SUBCULTURES: ACIDOXY VERSUS ORTHODOXY +\chap LSD SUBCULTURES: ACIDOXY VERSUS ORTHODOXY +\arabicnumbers There is no need to document what everyone knows --- there are a |