In the webinar yesterday I mentioned the term the despotic eye--this is the eye of distance that looks at things/nature and takes their measure. It is the style of techne
Poiesis is is a way of seeing that looks from within things, and speaks from how things, nature impregnates the flesh and establishes within us the carnal formula of their presence
Not a judgment of which is better-Techne or Poiesis-but a description of the difference.
So important to know where and when each is appropriate.
I mention this today because this difference was thrown into sharp relief in the Antarctic
Techne and poiesis/the scientist and the poet/different ways of being in the world!!!
How to stay sane in a wired world--this webinar--is a matter of remembering both especially when the speed of the wired world becomes overwhelming.Then perhaps if we stop for a moment looking at the world and wander in wonder by slowing down and waiting and allowing ourselves to be stunned by the terrible beauty of the world, by the miracle in the mundane, we might---maybe, perhaps, if the gods and goddesses are kind---catch a glimpse of the living spirit of nature.
And riffing on Rilke's question--Earth isn't this what you want?-- are we being asked, each day to make space and time to notice the play of light and shadow and all the marvelous mysteries of nature's sensuous dis-plays?
The poet is our guide here for that kind close embodied knowing, with knowing the world as one might know a lover/ a cardiognosis, a knowing though the heart
the scientist is our guide for that kind of knowing at a distance, with knowing the world by stepping back for a moment to gain a perspective/a knowing through the mind
After close to 50 years as a psychotherapist I know the other as patient and as fellow sufferer. I have always needed both
Blaise Pascal: The Hert has its reasons that Reason does not know!
And so when I watched the video that Bonnie assigned for yesterday's web the images felt like a homecoming and in my left non dominant I wrote this:
Who are You?
Are you the eye of the Tucan?
Who are you?
Are you the wing of the Parrot?
Who are you?
Are you the drop of rain falling from the sky?
Who are you?
Are you Elemental?
Replies
I love the distinction between the poet and scientist and how we need both. Jung in The Red Book says something similar here (pg 247):
"One cannot live with forethinking alone,
or with pleasure alone. You need both. But you cannot be
in forethinking and in pleasure at the same time, you must take
turns being in forethinking and pleasure, obeying the prevailing
law, unfaithful to the other so to speak. But men prefer one or the
other. Some love thinking and establish the art of life on it. They·
practice their thinking and their circumspection, so they lose their
pleasure. Therefore they are old and have a sharp face. The others
love pleasure, they practice their feeling and living. Thus they forget
thinking. Therefore they are young and blind. Those who think
base the world on thought, those who feel, on feeling. You find
truth and error in both."