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Sir Charles the Snob

Posted February 3rd, 2012 by Layman Pascal in Integral Autopsies

(Apologies, doubtlessly unneeded, to Charles for the public indecency of deploying his remarks as the jump off point for this inquiry -- but I suspect it might be a good pondering for folks in general & I have often observed that his classicism nonetheless permits him a good portion of sporting humor.)

So,

Charles "Intrinsic Dignity" Bowling, integral astrologer & all-round sensible chap, periodically refers in his posts -- and often with a slight tone of apology -- to his snobbishness.

Of course we assume this term has been vetted.  We expect it is partly humorous & partly a way of keeping his aristocratic sensibility in play conversationally while preemptively protecting it against the barbarically common accusation of "elitism".  But should he bother?  Is it obviously to our advantage to make a gesture of humility in this fashion?  

Ought we, as good Integralites, to always affirm BOTH the heights of personal refinement AND the popular apprehensiveness about all rare airs & verticalities?  Or ought we, rather, to be more overt champions of our resurrected, multi-dimensional loftiness?  

Sometimes it seems we are striving to "get over ourselves" -- and rightly so.  Other times it seems that what we need to "get over" is precisely our limited ideas about how to get over ourselves.  

When Integralites make up 10% or 20% of the population will we be even more fluidly and sincerely ready to verbally accommodate the ten thousand communication concerns?  Or, conversely, will we be feeling our strength in a new way and becoming more likely to assert ourselves without so many cautious, sensitivity-demonstrating maneuvers?

Now -- I pray that everyone has a hybrid answer which escapes the parameters of these questions!

Amen.

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Canadian style transborder curiosity…

Posted February 4th, 2012 by Charles Bowling

Hi Layman,
 
Just now in considering how best to respond here I began toying with the notion of a possible linkage between trust and courage. Maybe these two are simply the exterior and interior of the same phenomenon.
 
In any case it takes certain qualities to engage with each other in a sort of collective inquiry, in this case about snobbishness. (Because it's very easy to run a ship aground on the reefs of misunderstanding.)
 
Do I hereby plead guilty to snobbishness? I must answer, “Yes!”
 
Yet there is a line of directionality that runs through this inquiry; it's a line of unfoldment or development sometimes referred to as discernment or viveka. Entering on this path is pretty much about assigning value to everything and preferring higher value over lesser. But looking back on the process it takes on a different form or coloration; often referred to as neti neti. (Or not this, not that.)
 
Fluidity in perspective taking, turns out to be one of the chief benefits of integral theory and practice.
 
Example: yesterday I was at group luncheon with the guest maestro of the local symphony orchestra prior to an afternoon concert. There was a bit of a kerfuffle over the food. By special arrangement previously entered into I was to be served a vegetarian entrée. (Instead I was offered something I had specifically not agreed to; a plate with some extra vegetables!)
 
Others at my table had plates that included an entrée, in this case beef as jus. One of whom while engaging their fork and knife observed, “This beef is tough!” The animal-loving wag in me couldn't resist replying, “Imagine how tough it is on the cow!" This elicited some tittering laughter in the group, but humor wasn't exactly my point.
 
-Charles

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my thoughts

Posted February 4th, 2012 by Annie

Perhaps it is snobbishness that defines what others may perceive, but to articulate a dominating characteristic regarding Charles, snobbishness hardly covers it. I have actually seen this trait in personal interactions, but my interpretation was quite different. The first time I spoke to Charles on the phone, he spoke in a monolog, barely taking a breath and never asking or looking for a response. My immediate response was to reject him, but I was also obligated to inform him of the way in which he was received. He made no apologies, which only clarified my conviction that this was an impossible relationship. As I look back to that first encounter, I suppose it was like an interview, I was the interviewer and he the interviewed...although I was not able to ask many questions, he provided the information he thought I needed to hear. I was certainly not prepared for this type of deliberateness, and I understood it at the time as one who was so full of themselves that they needed no one to augment their satisfaction. Perhaps only then did I see him as snobbish.

Initially we exchanged emails with sarcastic humor, always attempting to maintain integrity but without failure to inflict appropriate rebuttals. He prided himself on his autonomy, referring often to his self-sustaining lifestyle and exuberant joy with a fully embodied life.
 
I became more and more curious of this man, investigating what I saw was a part of me that I had neglected. He was body where I was head, he was grounded where I was soaring above the earth. He saw the superior in human enfoldment, while I looked at the inferior. He loved his body, he embraced sexuality with a robust and unhindered gusting forward motion, exposing me as the lopsided and dysfunctional gross form.
I began to perceive the space in which he lived, the place that we would meet and the seduction I felt at being drawn into an autonomous body/mind. He seemed genuinely surprised when I articulated this reality, talking about the phenomenon I was experiencing and how I felt myself jettisoned into some dimension of being I was unfamiliar with. Just then I realized that neither one of us had had the opportunity to experience it in relationship, and in every sense of the word... it was in fact the relationship.
 
There are parts of Charles that I occasionally try to soften; he maintains rigidity almost to its extreme, while I maintain flexibility, quite often to my own detriment. I sometimes can witness his switch (on/off), that abrupt moment in time when circumstances make the demand for him to cut off or alienate an intruding force or being in his life. I too assume, I am vulnerable to that disconnect, he will not cling or hold anything past this point of perceived departure. The problem lies not in this process of letting go, but in the judgments he makes regarding his own value and his ability to keep what he makes sacred. He does not assume that people will love him, he assumes they cannot possibly do so, any hint of negativity he would take as a rejection toward the entirety of his being. He will cut off anything that may hurt, disregarding and oblivious to his charms and another's ability to perceive them. He maintains he has exceptional qualities, but they are of no significance, if he cannot realize that that are obvious to others. Only when, and most importantly given, by holding firm to the demands of love. He is not apart from that dynamic and hence he cannot be excluded from that which moves any heart.
 
To be a snob one must see themselves as superior to others, and although Charles claims to be superior, he doesn't quite believe it. If he believed it, he would wait long enough for it to be perceived. Rather he retreats quickly, before his fear can be seen. Even if this is a product of past experience, he now knows of the autonomous being. Reality is made of the Many but directionality and purpose all reside within the One. We choose our directions and we choose those that can make the journey more enjoyable, but when we don't choose something, it is simply not moving in our direction. That is the courage and conviction I think Charles speaks of, and perhaps again I have misjudged it as fear. But the road towards any aspiration is wide, and many travel in that direction, even he would have never imagined, the two of us walking together.

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The Viveka Kerfuffle

Posted February 4th, 2012 by Layman Pascal

ON COWS

I grew up on a remote farm -- patiently caring for & then slaughtering my fellow creatures.  

The chickens were creepy, crazy -- specially disturbing for a child (no bigger than those hens) to observe smelly, bloody, erratic bodies moving about headlessly after my father's precision hatchet chop.  And worse!  Heads moving without bodies!  But this fate seemed almost in keeping with the mindless day-to-day idiocy of ordinary chicken behaviour.  

Pigs, on the other hand, were devastingly present.  They stared back.  Some of the boars even tried to escape... and periodically succeeded.  There were quasi-souls "in there" which did not want to die.  Very hard to shoot such being.  Prorgressively remorseful in hindsight.  

Cows, though -- not too hard to shoot.  Dumb & often broodingly malevolent.  Never even knocking aside the little wooden handle to escape.  Waiting patiently as their family is heard being slaughtered.  Yet swarming suddenly with angry eyes for no apparent reason and moving to thoughtless trample anything under hoof.

So - through the rear view mirror of a boy's mind -- a hierarchy of beasts.  Insentient, Sentient, Pseudo-Sapient, Sapient... a kind of moral ladder of superiority.  One might see this ranking as essentially immoral and subjectivist. Or it may be that this is very pertinent data and that the only way to ethically comprehend the value of creatures is to discover their relative value.

ON HUMANS

One of the most frequent Nietzschean points is that the farther anyone journeys along the route of complexification and depth and intensity of being, the farther "up the holarchy" we carry our emergence, the more we are characterized by a "looking down" at everything else.  To those who are used to being below, or who are stricken with grave sympathy for whomever is below, this can seem sinister.  On the other hand there is no necessity that the superior feeling be accompanied by a dismissal, contempt or non-comprehension of whatever is outer & lower.  

ON MOVIES

Josh: "Ten best movies?"

Me: "Best?  Or my favourites?  Or both?"

Josh: "It's a bit pretentious to make that distinction isn't it?"

Me: "Of course.  The very meaning and value of cultural forms requires a bit of pretentiousness.  If we don't even try to think this way, then we make all values hypothetically equal -- which is to say: relatively value-less."

Josh was not persuaded.  

 

ON CHARLES & ANNIE

Charles observes that trust & courage, qualities which permit collective inquiry, may be linked to the appropriate holding of verticality.  And he observes, rightly I think, there is no part of the developmental human path which lacks for a discrimination of higher/lower and a voluntary adaptation to the higher.  

What I didn't hear him address was the relative value of the use of the 'snobbish' to describe an unfolding dimension of discernment.  It is used merely mockingly -- for fun?  It is used strategically to forestall an imbalanced accusation of snobbishness from others?  Or is he internally divided concerning the worth of his discriminating attitude?  

More importantly -- are Integralites internally divided on this topic?

Annie observes herself and Charles along classic masculine/feminine dynamic lines -- with the fluidity of the all-embracer wondering if the asserted integrity of the autonomous male is a secret reactivity born of sensitivity.  But, of course, she is open to the opposite as well.  

She observes "to be a snob one must see themselves as superior to others".  Yet the feeling of superiority might run even deeper in a person who imagined themselves as "only the equal of all".  And, of course, we are still a little hazy about this feeling of superiority -- when is it ALTITUDE & when is it PETTINESS OF THE HEART?

Interestingly, Annie & Charles both bring up the subject of "fluidity".

 

ON VARIETIES OF SNOBBISHNESS 

I find myself to be a snob although (a) I probably wouldn't self-apply that term (b) my refinements are unorthodox -- finding peaks in the lowest and furthest places, seeking the new classicism, separating the higher from the lower even within the lower itself, etc.

In our community ought the word "snob" to apply to the very fact of one's practiced fidelity to perfection & nuance, or should it be reserved for a particular, possibly off-putting, style of demonstrating & claiming such fidelity?

Or are my questions waggishly obtuse?

 

"An instinct for reverence & rank is among the surest signs of a high rank." -- Nietzsche

 

 

Thanks, I've been...

 

Layman Pascal

 

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