Structure of the book
Part I approaches the invisible dimension of perception itself. art as a bodily experience, and yet as abstraction. It consists of the bodymind and DIY-mentality, two elements in society that are thought to be completely invisible in their functioning. It delivers an interpretation of Marshall McLuhan’s body of work that reflects the basic premise of this book: that nothing really makes sense unless it is seen in light of insanely magnificent, and more importantly, unattainable life goals. It might also be the only chapter worth reading. This part also provides a cognitive approach to the triadic structure of reality, to show our embedding in the world and our confused relationship with framing in an increasingly dense society. It does this by attempting to fulfil the hopeless task of dissecting human beings from other brain-like beings (such as media technologies). In the confusion it causes, suddenly a potential for a new paradigm arises. The overlay of Myers-Briggs ‘thinking’ with Milarepa’s feeling ‘elated’ is particularly insightful, as this reflects the common understanding of the purpose of technology: to take care of business (TCB, Cosmo Kramer on Seinfeld episode in which he works for Brandt-Lelandi) for us, so that we can simply and rationally ‘think’ that everything is on rolls while we can lay back in the sun.
Part II relates to knowledge of the extraterrestrial and describes its origin. Note that the criticism or absence of praise is not moralistic, in the sense that one ought to do it this or that way. The extrovert, praiseworthy attitude relates to picking up other kinds of communications using what is given to us without the use of computing devices.
Part III attempts to perceive the nature of our upbringing and relates to knowledge and continuation of the path of those one has learn to consider as predecessors. It is the explanation of ‘what is’, providing an analysis of the realm in which everything that we know takes place. This social realm explains ‘presence’ or private self-hood in and of framing by related to the world of one’s youth. Experimenting with loss of self-identity, the loss of ‘I’ and ‘you’, is therefore particularly insightful. The harshest judgements we learn when we are young and taught what ‘good’ and ‘bad’ by our parents, caretakers and/or other family members or close friends of the family come back in the observation of the system of laws within society. Eventually, this determines the personal sense of freedom.
The strongest element forms being denied love, gifts or attention, and the easily recognizable MBTI ‘judging’ type is closely tied to this deprivation, as well as to the way in which we present ourselves or keep ourselves private to others. The decisive insight that makes this subsystem worth witnessing is that it can directly lead to a fuller understanding of the tradition one stands in, what conflicts and struggles former generations must have went through. This also opens up ways to ‘sense’ deceased family members, close friends of one’s family, or even outsiders that one learns to consider as family in the course of one’s life. This objective, however, requires the ‘letting go’ or objectification of one’s own value system, leading into the art dimension.
The last part (IV) highlights the easy-to-recognize social (moral, ethical and values) side of framing. Within this dimension one is tainted, often for life, without the need to acknowledge that all ‘goods’ and ‘bads’ are up for closer inspection. The subsystem of Friends & Networks (chapter 7) is related to networking culture and the paradigm of sociability introduced and gradually enforced by creations like Facebook and Twitter. It forms an enhancement of our world that causes delight in people, while the second dimension of this realm, the hyperreal, is linked with a largely ignored passion for religion. Even though this is the path leading away from the suffering paving the road to knowing a supreme being, it depends on the degree to which one attains the skill of telepathy with close and far others revolving around us.
Click Follow to receive emails when this author adds content on Bublish
Comment on this Bubble
Your comment and a link to this bubble will also appear in your Facebook feed.