museum of thought collective

I sat with Freddy and Ali late last night. We found ourselves discussing climate protests, the breakdown of democratic practices through the corrupting power of wealth and finance and, inevitably, the ordinary and everyday increase of mental health issues.

“Honestly,” said Freddy,” I just don’t get it. As a planetary species are we that stupid that we sever the source of our own life, pollute our oceans, poison our air supply, overheat the atmosphere and think nothing of it? Or do we know what we are doing and are trying to stop freaking out?”

“Feels like, ” commented Karl,” we’re sleepwalking off a cliff. Something is desperately going wrong. Our politics seems to be stuck in a loop of problems it creates. It seems lost and empty. Our education system has no inspiration. And, all the while I feel like the human species is lost in fantasies and daydreams.”

“Ironic”, I added,” Most people I know don’t even sleep well.”

Jacques I know I don’t often join in. I prefer to keep a critical distance to the work you all do but I thought I would say something. Today Peter Lato and I were discussing a number of things – mainly funding and the future of the Collective – but we then fell into a discussion of this ‘post-truth’ and ‘alternative facts’ culture being promoted by mainstream politicians and we both realized we need to discuss these things.

Peter Well, I brought these two pictures along for us to discuss. It seems that truth is not a simple thing – but if we lose it and relativize everything or reject it as a fascist construct or do any number of stupid maneuvers then we will poison the lifestream.

Jacques That’s a bit dramatic Peter, but I’m with you over this question of truth and meaning – so how do we recover this relationship? That was your question, I believe. Here’s my answer. Truth has two parts: it is an emergent-relation and it is an exchange-relation.

Peter Emergent-relation? I think I understand what you might mean in the following way. We speak, we act, we manifest in the world. right? This speaking, acting and so on emerges out of conditions. That does not make the truths we utter relative – but contexts are critical here. The sense of what we utter, do and so on require a relation to the conditions out of which they emerge.

Jacques Yes, so these utterances, actions are wired to the contexts out of which they emerge. We have a second relation: the exchange-relation. An utterance is in an exchange relation to the very context out of which it emerged. The exchange relation means that its truth or meaning is simply not given once you decode its contexts – or conditions out of which it emerged. The reason for this is that it is in a dynamic relation with those conditions.

Peter That’s a good start, but we need to spell this out even further. A lie, for example, has two aspects – either or both of these are in operation. Firstly a lie simply severs the utterance or act from the conditions out of which it emerged. Secondly, the utterance or act blocks its exchange-relation to its conditions. It then free-floats. Language is fractured and a lie can be uttered with the deception that it is interchangeable with the truth. How does that sound?

Karl I went for a walk this morning with the dog and found myself thinking about the sketch you made last night.

Ali I was tired and not sure if the others would agree with this picture – whether it breaks the basic grammar of this new thought-art.

Karl You seem to be saying that, the basic condition of our daily interactions are social, economic and political institutions. I get that. But interaction itself is always a potential act from within – like a plant growing in the cracks of concrete paving – and has the potential not just to subvert the institutions but also to move them in different ways –

Ali There is no inevitability of the way we move through working life. Yes, but I was also thinking about the way meaning, the field that in-forms the world, itself is a complex movement of formations that appear and dissolve, so what actually emerges grows out of complex dynamic conditions.

Karl Yes, I get that too. Don’t you mean that we are situated and emerge out of possibility, not necessity.

Ali Yes, I do. Nature does not emerge out of some pre-ordained plan, but grows and learns and changes. Just like our human forms of life. There is no inevitability about any of them.

Karl So capitalism is not inevitable?

Ali No, it is not. And if it is not then we have to look at the internal dynamics of our current modes of life that maintain rather than transform or change? Why are we voting for those who perpetuate the corruption and greed of capitalism, rather than a civic ethic which recognizes the community as a basic living condition for any human being?

Karl You’re criticising individualism again? So, what do you offer?

Ali Integrity. As a personal and institutional virtue. How much of what we have stays where it is because of the lies we tell ourselves and each other?

Nadim I have become deeply aware that the notion of an intelligible individualism, in which, I think of myself as separate from nature, society, and others, is deeply and profoundly flawed. The consequences are so deeply anti-ecological and destructive of the environment and our social fabric. I am wired into my contexts and my contexts include others, society, and the Earth.

Kurt But there are so many out there who hang on to the claim that it is perfectly intelligible. I can think of myself of a self-contexting individual. I do not need anyone else or anything else.

Nadim I agree. And there are some very prominent people who promote this agenda.

Kurt I think I would say it’s not just that I am wired to my contexts – take ‘breathing’, for example – my internal desire, my drives, and my emotional life are deeply wired into my relation to my context. If I sever my connection to the world I enter a state of profound bad faith –

FROM PHILOSOPHICAL SKETCHBOOK, 2019

FROM PHILOSOPHICAL SKETCHBOOK, 2019

FROM PHILOSOPHICAL SKETCHBOOK, 2019