[Xmca-l] Re: Paul Mason's comment on how ebooks are changing writing/reading/speaking/listening

[HENRY SHONERD]

Larry,
I find so many points of resonance in your post that it “blows my mind”, as the 60’s was fond of saying: 
You have discussed undergoing before, but in the context of your post it evokes movement and grounding as I had not sensed before. Movement is embodied in a dynamic way. Grounding is a humbling experience both intellectually and emotionally. I have added to the subject line, expanding it from just writing to reading, speaking and listening, because I think the thread is broader than writing alone. I would add also that reading and listening are potentially very humbling, especially when one reads and listens from the heart. I have attached an article from Gendlin. Have you read it? (I apologize that I haven’t, but time in an email chat really is of the essence.) Do you think it resonates with your post?
Henry
  

> On Aug 10, 2015, at 10:50 AM, Lplarry <lpscholar2@gmail.com> wrote: 
> 
> To stay with the notion of "provisional" as an adjective linking to "experiences".
> 
> I wonder if Dewey was being prophetic, anticipating where our cultural meaning was trending. 
> 
> If "meaning" when germinated is actually transforming the "stream" of conscious appearances by ordering or structuring THIS stream IN ORDER TO generate  meaning then this transformation as a germinating phenomena becomes our shared experiences.
> 
> THEN the notion of life be/coming "provisional" is linked to a loss of "immersive" experiences that are undergone.
> 
> The terms "instrumental" & "substantive" can also be explored through Dewey's understanding of experiences becoming "an" experience.
> It may be that the instruments or artifacts (including psychological tools) are useful for germinating "meaningful experiences".
> 
> If life is tending to become more "provisional" than it may be a loss of what is "substantive" when we loose a sense of mutual "meaning".
> If Dewey is indicating that it is the quality of our experiences that must CONTAIN both doing/action & undergoing & the  "interval" ( "/" ) then the loss of immersive experiences brought TO FORM (the human way of being using instruments) creates life that is felt as "provisional".
> 
> A life of mutual undergoing is a life that is substantive, not provisional.
> 
> Dewey also valued "inquiry" to germinate democratic "freedom" and understood the "shadow" side of immersive shared experience and the central place of our shared RESPONSIBILITY to contain the shadow side of becoming inclusive/exclusive.
> 
> Eugene Gendlin's notion of "embodied" befindlichkeit as a notion of our "be finding" ourselves in "moods" as expressing the substantive quality of immersive experience has a place in how we understand life AS "provisional" or "substantive" 
> Tools are instrumental in germinating "an" experience and as instruments facilitate (but do they also determine?) meaning?.
> This returns is to our shared responsibility.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> -----Original Message-----
> From: "HENRY SHONERD" <hshonerd@gmail.com>
> Sent: ‎2015-‎08-‎10 8:51 AM
> To: "eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity" <xmca-l@mailman.ucsd.edu>
> Subject: [Xmca-l] Re: Paul Mason's comment on how ebooks are changing writing
> 
> Lubomir,
> Another thing about TV and movies is that you just sit there!
> Henry
> 
>> On Aug 10, 2015, at 9:42 AM, Lubomir Savov Popov <lspopov@bgsu.edu> wrote:
>> 
>> Hello everyone,
>> 
>> I don't see a big problem here. Book writing and publishing follows the history of film-making. Movies used to be pieces of art, just like theater plays. See what TV and commercialization by Hollywood did to the art of filmmaking. If you commercialize something, you have to play to the market, vast masses of people, semi-educated and not educated. So, authors start catering to them. We have had such books for decades -- the "paperbacks." The good news is that even reading such simplistic and simplified fiction is better than watching crime stories on TV. Still a step forward. The written word pushes the imagination, people develop their ability to imagine, to reconstruct images, to experience, to think abstractly. The TV/film industry offer everything ready and flowing in images, no need to make an effort, just use our prehistoric instincts and skills. Thinking with words is still better than thinking with images. Just a few thoughts. You can correct me for the details.
>> 
>> 
>> Best wishes,
>> 
>> Lubomir
>> 
>> -----Original Message-----
>> From: xmca-l-bounces+lspopov=bgsu.edu@mailman.ucsd.edu [mailto:xmca-l-bounces+lspopov=bgsu.edu@mailman.ucsd.edu] On Behalf Of Lplarry
>> Sent: Monday, August 10, 2015 11:03 AM
>> To: eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity <xmca-l@mailman.ucsd.edu>
>> Subject: [Xmca-l] Re: Paul Mason's comment on how ebooks are changing writing
>> 
>> Paul Mason points up one relation that causes wonder?
>> 
>> Novels that are memorable are "immersive" experiences (in Dewey's sense of undergoing experience.
>> 
>> Today (contempory) types or kinds of reading are more "provisional" 
>> 
>> Annalisa, this linking to our lives becoming more "provisional" (less depth and lived more on the surface) is a phenomena that Dewey would explain as the stream of experiences not becoming "ordered" or "structured" as "having AN experience".
>> 
>> The loss of memorable experiences when living within the ongoing flow of experiences (the stream of appearances) when we don't pause to incorporate the corpus as embodied "meaning" that has been lived through in depth.
>> The metaphor of depth/surface as a way of locating ourselves in "spaces OF ....? 
>> Not space as geometric but space as places OF (upon which) meaning "forms".
>> 
>> I wonder if the phenomena Paul Mason is reflecting on is an aspect of what Dewey more generally is exploring with his notion of "experiences" be/coming having "an" immersive experience that is "lived-in" and so not "provisional".
>> 
>> Is life be/coming more "provisional" and therefore less "meaningful"?
>> 
>> Larry
>> 
>> -----Original Message-----
>> From: "Annalisa Aguilar" <annalisa@unm.edu>
>> Sent: ‎2015-‎08-‎10 6:10 AM
>> To: "eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity" <xmca-l@mailman.ucsd.edu>
>> Subject: [Xmca-l]   Paul Mason's comment on how ebooks are changing writing
>> 
>> Not sure I agree exactly, but I do agree that tools change us!
>> 
>> 
>> http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/aug/10/ebooks-are-changing-the-way-we-read-and-the-way-novelists-write
>> 
>> 
>> <http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/aug/10/ebooks-are-changing-the-way-we-read-and-the-way-novelists-write>Thought this article might interest this group of folks!
>> 
>> 
>> Kind regards,
>> 
>> 
>> Annalisa
>> 
>> 
> 
>