CARNAL TORPOR

The nature of PURIFICATION as a self-refining and never resolving process can be overstood in relation to Laffoley’s rather graceful idea of Utopia as a trajectory. This trajectory is embodied in the symbol of the golden spiral, ever closer to the point of “Total-Purity”, without ever collapsing the duality of Being/Becoming. PURIFICATION is the process of discarding Other habit/pattern/trajectories and moving into deeper and more intimate resonance with the Utopic trajectory. EVOLOVE.

JAM 4 CT

2 years ago • 3 notes

2 years ago • 0 notes

WHY PURIFY?

Can something be ‘purified’?

There is an implication to the word that seems to say that there is an ‘ideal’ state to which something can be brought. Obviously ‘to purify’ is ‘to make pure’, but what is ‘pure’? Would you recognize a pure thing if it were in such a state? How would you tell? The concept of the ‘ideal’ is platonic in nature and is the source of many of the problems of modernism. The notion of the ‘ideal’ is partly responsible for illuminating modernism as an unsustainable philosophical model for humankind. Along with many other terms and concepts, we will need to re-think the term ‘purification’ and its implied ‘ideal’ if we are to move forward into a Transmodern era of culture.

It is a fallacy that there would be an ‘ideal’ state to which a thing returns. Life is not simply made of solid objects sullied and marred by imperfections. It should be clear that these imperfections (the ‘filth’ that must be cleansed by ‘purification’) are, quite literally, a part of the thing which is to be discussed. Life exists not only in its material, objective state, but also in its relational, subjective aspects. Does everything have a pure state? If so, what is the pure state of an imperfection? Are not the imperfections part of the polarity which bring meaning to life? To cleanse all ‘imperfections’ from life would destroy life. There would simply be nothing left.

three grids

The evolution of our Modernist heritage makes quite clear the hazards of the Platonic ideal. We see this in the narrative of industrialized modernism crumbling under its own ideological imperatives and giving birth to an already teen-aged (and rebellious) progeny called post-modernism. The beautiful destructiveness of postmodernism showed (among many other things) that the materialistic beliefs of the Modernists unfold into an incredible, Gollum-like creature. To see only objects, to know only things, to yearn only for ideals is to negate a very important contributor to reality; belief. It can be very valuable to take a postmodern perspective in order to understand the deeply constructed nature of our various institutions, but to stop there surely provides a hindered take. The systems and institutions may in fact be ‘constructed’ but it is belief- a REAL agency- that makes them work. This is a beautiful and mysterious thing.

So, if we hope to usher in a new era, that of the Transmodern, what room do we have for terms such as ‘purify’? In the case of Purifications of the CalmDome, the process and meaning of these purifications is manifold. If we understand CalmDome as an aesthetico-spiritual concept seeking to create a meaningful relationship between people and other aspects of the noosphere, we can also then see that the CalmDome is necessarily always in process. The process, and the CalmDome itself, do not have a ‘pure’ state- they shall always be in flux if they are to continue to be meaningful. That said, we can offer an alternate understanding of ‘purification’. As a process and a thing, the CalmDome has a logic. Being as-yet unaware of itself, CalmDome is currently working through the means of human collaboration. As it continues to manifest itself, it becomes more self-aware. The CalmDome communicates with its human collaborators, showing new facets of itself to which the collaborators must respond.

This dialog itself along with the changes it demands of both the CalmDome and its human attendants comprise the Purifications of the CalmDome.

SET for CT

2 years ago • 0 notes