File spoon-archives/bhaskar.archive/bhaskar_2003/bhaskar.0310, message 21


Subject: RE: BHA: Re: The tall poppy syndrome within CR
Date: Wed, 29 Oct 2003 21:20:46 +1300
From: "Radha D'Souza" <rdsouza-AT-waikato.ac.nz>


Mervyn
You say:
"I wondered why you call the spiritual turn 'so called'. What is the 
problem with 'spiritual turn' (given that handy labels are more or less 
necessary)? I think there has been a definite turn in Bhaskar's thought,

and that 'spiritual' is the best single-word label, but I might be 
missing something owing to my one-thirds perspective."
First, in response to the bit about:
"but I might be missing something owing to my one-thirds perspective".
I hope you were not offended by my statement about the Third World being
the two-thirds world - please read the statement only at the 'empirical'
level and nothing more. I remain absolutely committed to love as the
first structuring principle, a common humanity, together with all the
trees, monkeys, bears et al, even if, going by the World Vision ads, it
takes two dollars a day (NZ $ i.e.) to save a third world bear and a
dollar a day to save a third world child. But that's the way the world
works and let's retain love and humanity as a philosophical idea and
leave it at that.
About the other point:
I recall an extended discussion on this list a while ago about the
primacy of mind/matter, materialism/idealism etc. etc. 
Beyond a point, I find those types of discussions on
materialism/spiritualism etc make sense only if philosophy is
interpreted to mean Western Philosophy and after a certain point, to me,
those types of debates are meaningful only as inter-paradigmatic
interrogations, that inevitably entail questioning founding premises of
ones modes of reasoning, thinking, being and feeling.
What can an 'eastward' turn mean to someone in the "east"? Hardly as
shocking, for a start. But confusing too on more than one count. On the
one hand, intellectual labouring is rewarding when it leads one to new
understandings/insights. If it leads one back to what our grandparents,
elders and ancestors have always dinned into us, then the whole
labouring could become an anti-climax in some ways - one strain of
responses could be to say: did I spend my best years trying to figure
out what all those dead white men said only to be told, east is best. On
the other hand, rediscovery is important and valuable, not least because
we always rediscover ourselves in new ways. Rediscovery however happens
in a socio-political-historical context, and in the present context the
question/challenge is what is it that we ought to be rediscovering about
the east? The problem is even more confounding in case of "Macaulay's
children" baptised by him as the Westernised Oriental Gentlemen (WOGS),
or, in a more charitable vein, the children of colonisation, who can
rediscover themselves only enroute the "West" and there is a lot of
seepage in ideas, concepts, structures of thought and belief systems
that occurs in the process due to institutional, political and power
structures (very, very causally efficacious I may add). In an ideal
world, this Eastward and Westward turns should bring everyone together
and equip us to find common grounds, or, to use more eastern language,
become seekers. I am not sure if that is happening in any meaningful way
and at deeper levels.
Sorry for this rave. I don't know if any of this makes sense. But, the
discussion has certainly deviated considerably from the issue you sought
to raise in your email.
Radha




-----Original Message-----
From: Mervyn Hartwig [mailto:mh-AT-jaspere.demon.co.uk] 
Sent: Tuesday, 28 October 2003 9:49 p.m.
To: bhaskar-AT-lists.village.Virginia.EDU
Subject: Re: BHA: Re: The tall poppy syndrome within CR

Hi Radha,

I'm not surprised, but I must confess to a certain irritation and 
frustration. I spend a lot of time trying to encourage people to read 
DPF etc and don't find it helpful when people seem intent on doing the 
opposite.

For the rest, I absolutely agree. Thank you for taking the discussion to

a deeper and more rewarding level.

Do tell us when you're ready what's in that crystal ball! I have one of 
my own, and I'm trying to exercise some influence over what's in it.

I wondered why you call the spiritual turn 'so called'. What is the 
problem with 'spiritual turn' (given that handy labels are more or less 
necessary)? I think there has been a definite turn in Bhaskar's thought,

and that 'spiritual' is the best single-word label, but I might be 
missing something owing to my one-thirds perspective.

Mervyn


r.dsouza <r.dsouza-AT-waikato.ac.nz> writes
>Mervyn
>My spontaneous reaction to your mail was "why am I not surprised"
followed
>by "but why is Mervyn (the writer of the new age, new left article)
>surprised?" and are you surprised Mervyn? I don't mean this as a
rhetorical
>question in any sense. Surely, CR is not exempt from a sociology of its
own
>and from its historical, cultural and political contexts that we talk
about.
>As someone from the so called "Third World" (which in my view, is the
>two-thirds world) it interests me that with so many radical "schools of
>thought" in the so called "West", from scientific theories to Marxism,
>socialism et al, the problem for the two-thirds world is not so much
with
>the philosophy or theory per se (the text) but with the sociological
and
>cultural assumptions (the context) that makes the theory/philosophy
>problematic. There appears to be threshold beyond which the
>theory/philosophy is constrained by its own cultural and historical
context.
>It certainly happened with Marxism in the "West" and the ramifications
it
>had for the "Third World".
>Is it surprising at all that the so called "spiritual turn" should have
>invited the kind of response it did, or, for that matter the reactions
on
>this list to the ad for a publicist recently (I don't recall how the
>position was described exactly now). And, do we not lapse quickly and
>comfortably into bourgeois norms of discourse or social practices for
that
>matter, even when critiquing those norms in the issues we talk and
write
>about?
>Calling it "tall poppy syndrome" is putting it too simplistically, it
is
>much deeper than that. I am reminded of Rumi's famous story of the
parrot
>and the merchant, (I don't know if you are familiar with it). Indeed,
like
>the parrot in the story, one has to give up things (die) to be free and
>enlightened, and to "gain" new things. I am not sure the adversarial
and
>individualistic intellectual traditions in Western academic
institutions
>ably guided by the "invisible hand of the market" are the most
conducive
>places for an introspective approach that helps to locates oneself  in
the
>wider search for answers to the questions of our times.
>I am tempted to look into my crystal ball now to see what CR will look
like
>25 years from now, but I think I will leave it for another time.
>
>Radha
>
>
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