Check out a number of our previous Earth Day postings – here, here, and, notably, here.
Our focus today (prescient, and relevant, and not forgotten) – a tip of the hat to the remarkable Gregory Bateson (1904-1980)
Anthropologist, philosopher, biologist, psychologist, ecologist, and, most importantly, interdisciplinary thinker
A pioneer ecologist but also a pioneer of thinking about ecology
“People keep asking me Why do you shift from anthropology to porpoises and from schizophrenia to this and that, but my answer to that would be that I don’t shift, I maintain a perfectly steady (well, not quite steady but fairly steady) interest in the same set of certain sorts of problems and sometimes I think these are going to be illustrated with porpoises and sometimes I think they’re going to be illustrated with psychiatric data or ecology or something else. What I try to do is to study the nature of order, and where it can come from, and what sort of business it is anyhow. The way people think about it makes an enormous difference to the sort of order which they’re going to make when they make something – or (to) dis-order.’
‘It takes two to know one”, Bateson famously observed (something to think about )
“What is the pattern that connects the crab to the lobster and the orchid to the primrose, and all four of them to me? And me to you?”
Ecology as connectivity, ecology as unity, but a necessary fundamental awareness of a complete interconnectivity.
Steps To An Ecology of Mind, a ground-breaking selection of short works drawn from his long and varied career appeared originally in 1972 (it was republished in 2000, with an introduction by his daughter Mary Catherine Bateson, by the University of Chicago).
Mind and Nature, an equally important text (his last thoughts on the subject, Mind and Nature – A Necessary Unity (sic)), appeared in 1979, just a year before his death.
More from the International Bateson Institute (for more on Bateson)
Ted Gioia‘s July 2020 essay for the LA Review of Books “Why Gregory Bateson Matters” is strongly recommended.
Allen’s connections with Bateson were profound and wide-ranging and go way back. Significantly, through his earlier connections with military intelligence and the more shady aspects of consciousness research, it was Bateson who, back in 1959, was responsible for setting him up on his first LSD trip. Allen’s response was revealing:
“I lay back, listening to music, & went into a sort of trance state . . . and in a fantasy much like a Coleridge World of Kubla Khan saw a vision of that part of my consciousness which seemed to be permanent transcendent and identical with the origin of the universe – a sort of identity common to everything (sic).”
Another key moment was their shared participation in the 1967 legendary Dialectics of Liberation Conference. For Bateson’s contribution – see here. For Allen’s contribution – see here.
but our primary focus for today will be from the early ’70’s and Naropa Institute (later Naropa University). Bateson was among the very earliest distinguished visitors to that fledgling institution.
See Jeff Bloom’s revealing gallery of photos from the Summer of 1975
Bateson can be heard in the Naropa Archives – (from 1973 (“Parts and Metaphors”) – here and here, from 1975 (“Orders of Change”) here and here, and (“Intelligence, Evolution and Experience”) – here )
In 1975 he was interviewed by the journalist Duncan Campbell for his radio program, Open Secret
We’ll be featuring tomorrow a number of sections (transcribed) from that illuminating talk.
to be continued