HarveySarles.com

Monday Aphorism: On Being Called an Elitest

May 4, 2009 in aphorisms by admin | 8 comments

Yesterday a friend told me that I am an elitist; that I drop ideas and abandon old friends as I move on in my life.

I said, no, at first, thinking he meant I was snotty and arrogant, and I feel that I am neither to any particular degree.

But he is correct. Unless there is some pedagogicalÂ reason, some rethinkings, some…something seeming newâ€¦

I have had already many conversations, been involved in the myriad plots of novels and of life; I donâ€™t want to rehash them forever.

I am not in love with my own history, nor totally entranced with the words I wrote yesterday.

I want to grapple with new challenges. I want to grasp at lifeâ€™s chances, each and every day…with very little rest and diversion.

I donâ€™t deny that anyone and everyone else can move along with me.

Most donâ€™t want to, for many reasons: they are not ready to move on, or are afraid of…an uncertain or unclear future, not knowing what there could be; or they are already satisfied; orâ€¦

I would rethink with those who want to know, and converse with those who want still to engage in lifeâ€™s struggles.

But I need to feel that I am serious, to live life seriously; prepared to engage in discussion and argument, and moveâ€¦onâ€¦forward, with a sense of directedness, always demanding.

I try to be the observer of lifeâ€™s simplicities and complications, and wonder which is which.

I want to think large, globally, to see the patterns quickly, to deepen compassion and understanding without abandoning humanity: the worldâ€™s or my own.

My skills, always limited, require honing and practice and care, lest others dissuade my purpose.

Elitist, I am, mostly about my own history. Yes, it is all me, but how to choose which memories to rethink, which to hold in abeyance. How is forward, next, expansive?

Not loving my own youth, it is how I arrived, the path which chose me.

The path of elitism – now some form of code word – travels the edge of the abyss between being worshipped and being understood.Â For me, it – my elitism – is either wanting to be understoodâ€¦or the abyss.

What do the others want, that they decide who I am?

Next elections, Next policies

November 1, 2006 in A Meaningful Life (WIP), Next Places, Nietzsche's Prophecy by admin | No comments

Next Tuesday’s election will mark a key milestone in Democracy, hopefully its renewal.

If, and it’s still a big if, Congress changes hands and resumes a progressive stance next Wednesday AM, will there be policy based on updated progressive research ready to go? Ready to enact?

If progressive policy for today’s world is ready to go, where did it come from? How new is it? How relevant?

If there is no progressive policy ready to go, why not? When will there be?

If progressives win the Congress a platform of collected issues, debating points, dissent and living-against will no longer be the only way to deal with today’s reality. Today, a platform based on a renewed Enlightenment, a redefined Democracy, that’s globally aware, is urgently needed. Now.

Deeply social animals

October 11, 2006 in Language and Human Nature by admin | 1 comment

In the ever emerging nature and nuture research, this NY Times article, written by Daniel Goleman, author of Emotional Intelligence (1996) and recently Social Intelligence (2006), reports the following:

“Such coordination of emotions, cardiovascular reactions or brain states between two people has been studied in mothers with their infants, marital partners arguing and even among people in meetings. Reviewing decades of such data, Lisa M. Diamond and Lisa G. Aspinwall, psychologists at the University of Utah, offer the infelicitous term â€œa mutually regulating psychobiological unitâ€ to describe the merging of two discrete physiologies into a connected circuit. To the degree that this occurs, Dr. Diamond and Dr. Aspinwall argue, emotional closeness allows the biology of one person to influence that of the other.

John T. Cacioppo, director of the Center for Cognitive and Social Neuroscience at the University of Chicago, makes a parallel proposal: the emotional status of our main relationships has a significant impact on our overall pattern of cardiovascular and neuroendocrine activity. This radically expands the scope of biology and neuroscience from focusing on a single body or brain to looking at the interplay between two at a time.”

Anthropoligists of the ordinary have predicted and deduced this via observation for some time. Will all of what was leading anthropological research 30 years ago need to be restated in neurosciene terms before the pithy qualitative ‘what now’ and ‘what next’ questions can be picked up again? Are anthropologists better predictors than biologists of understanding what is human? Should a new interdisciplinary field be formed?