Jay,
Your post gathered two threads (the Pokemon and the duree). This might
present problems for folks like Eva and Bill who try to analyze multilogue.
Which thread does this continue? The Pokemon thread which had nothing to do
with duree, or the response to Diane's wonderings about silence and the fate
of ideas in the face of othodoxies, or even my revival of the November
reading thread. Then again, we could call this a good example of entities
with different time scales but the problem there is that the independent
entities with their respective multilogue time-scales: Pokemon,
silence/absorption by orthodoxy, and time scales, now have become part of
one. Are they one? Is this one different than the other three? Are they
now all part of a larger discussion or did this new "thread" start when you
united the two (which themselves contained two) into a third (that now
contains three or just two?)?
I really liked almost all of your observations on Pokemon. In particular the
idea that Pokemon reflect " . . . a very Japanese cultural value, the same
one that rquires broad consultations, not leaving out any class of
stakeholder in decision making, mobilizing all segments of the corporation
or community for effective action, etc." Since you've come this far, I
suggest you take the plunge and go see the Pokemon movie. As someone else
pointed out, the overt message of the movie is not about "nature red in
tooth and nail" as Phil fears, but rather self-discovery and the limits of
"fighting"/competition. The climax of the film features one Pikachu
literally turning the cheek to another Pikachu (remember the 150 Pokemon are
species, not individuals, except for the 151st who is a genetic hybrid and
unique). The effect of this "Christian effort" is a moral recognition on
the part of everyone, Pokemon and trainer, that Pokemon fight for sport, not
to determine victors and vanquished in any other way, and that fighting is
definitely not how one finds out their own "purpose in life".
When I used the term "tertiary artefact" I wasn't intending to uphold any
hierarchy of artefacts, simply to tie it into a way of talking about such
phenomena that is familiar to xmca-ites. It just seemed so appropriate as
compared to other artefacts (a football, for example).
I guess you would like to have integrated the Pokemon thread into the
Bergson duree issues but I still see them as distinct (maybe I should post
two messages to make it easier for the multilogue trackers). Nevertheless,
it is interesting that Dogen, the Japanese Buddhist teacher and founder of
Soto Zen, who is widely considered to be the greatest Japanese philosopher,
developed a teaching on the relationship between Time and Being in 1240 that
parallels Heidegger's analysis of time. (cf. Steven Heine 1985). The key
issue here is the notion of "primordial time" and "derived time". Derived
time, in both Heidegger and Dogen, is the source of our "everyday"
perception of time that flows, that moves on. It is based on our
entanglement with the world which we find ready-to-hand (vorhanden), It is
precisely that time frame resulting from what Heidegger calls the
"spannedness" of time: "What we call duration, the during, the enduring of
time, lies in this meanwhile." (Bas Prob of Phenom, p 263) This derived
time is identical to how you characterized time: "an aspect of process,
generated by process, as the on-goingness of interactivity", by which I
assume you mean the interaction of phenomena with different "time scales".
In contrast, primordial time, for both Heidegger and Dogen, is much more
concerned with existential realization of finitude. Here there are obvious
issues related to the question of socially constituted individuals
(Vygotsky, Ilyenkov, Bakhurst, etc.) and unique personal existence;
primordial time being that time that would not be generated out of mediated
experience. It is not clear to me that this sort of primordial temporality
is compatible with any attempts to arrange or categorize phenomena with
respect to comparative durations, a move that presupposes an objectifying
stance toward experience. It is also not clear that such a conception of
primordial time is compatible with the social constitution of identity and
consciousness.
The bridge between my personal interest in CHAT and related approaches, on
one hand, and Heidegger, Bergson, Dogen, etc. on the other, is most
generally a concern with "liberation" in the broadest and most inclusive of
senses; Heidegger's concern for authenticity, Dogen's concern for
enlightenment, Bergson's linkage of "lived time/duree" to free
will/anti-determinism.
But there seems to exist an inescapable incompatibility between any
objectifying approach and the integration of the concrete, active,
realization of primordial time that "is the basis of Hweidegger's view of
authentic existence and Dogen's approach to Zen enlightenment" (Heine
1985:9). So if I find the time-scales approach incompatible with the
Bergson - Heidegger (700 yrs after Dogen walked the same path) approach,
this is perhaps not a failing of the specific approach, as perhaps an
impossibility to resolve this issue.
It should be pretty clear what this all might have to do with the purpose of
education and learning for those who ask "what will the outcome of
discovering all of these technical structures of learning lead to?" And
this ties back into Pokemon I guess, for those like Phil who really worry
that the effect of learning in the Pokemon COPs might not be leading to the
a desirable outcome.
In this sense I certainly sympathize with Diane's poeticizing along the
curves of the body electric.
Paul H. Dillon
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