[Mis] Encounters at the Edge of the World

It occured to me the other day, when seeing yet another person on cruise control, with a dog in one hand and an iphone in the other, and having just read a quote by the German psychologist Paul Christian (referenced in Karlfried Durckheim's wonderful book Absolute Living) that people, even when they go into Nature, are not really going into Nature, but simply skating about on its surface.

I was on the Loch Humphrey Path again, going up and into the Kilpatrick Braes, and I thought to myself when seeing all these distracted minds: What is the point?

And I came quite quickly to the conclusion that there is little point, except perhaps the point of self-delusion, thinking that by going into the hills, tied down by your dog and your iphone, you're actually going to see something. But of course, it's a means to an end, the hill, and as long as it remains a means and not an end in and for itself, it will forever be misinterpreted. We could then argue that going into the hills in such a deluded manner is actually counter-productive, that it will further reinforce in the mind of these people that the hill is simply some thing to be used, exploited, taken advantage of. But of course, it isn't. She isn't. These hills are your mother, and you would hardly take advantage of your poor mother, would you?

What we have here is what Martin Buber called a 'mis-meeting', something I had first recognized several years ago in Kelvingrove Park when I saw a couple of schoolteachers take their kids to the local duck pond only to stand at the side for the next half hour blethering and smoking amongst themselves, whilst the kids, without any guidance, screamed at the ducks and threw bread at the seagulls. Counter-productive, I thought. Better to stay in the classroom, I thought. What a stramash! I thought.

Anyway, here's Paul Christian, following on from Buber, writing about genuine meetings which he refers to as 'encounters':

To meet another person [here we can extrapolate Christian's 'person' to any living breathing entity] is to interpret him or her in terms of the objectively coherent and explicable world. To encounter him or her as a person is a matter of sharing directly in his or her existence, of identifying vitally, unreservedly with his or her actions, of personal commitment, and of mutual understanding and complicity.'

Meetings occur in the dehumanized zones like the city, the corporate office, and the workaday world. This is evident from Christian's definition. Yet, meetings also occur whenever you are tied down by the artificial and the conventional, by those things that prevent you from opening up to yourself. I call them 'existential stabilisers'. Castaneda called them 'shields'. Yet, whatever name you call them, they are virtual blindfolds that are pulled over Being, and which prevent Being not just from communing vitally and essentially, but which, more significantly, prevent you from identifying with what you are seeing. No longer do people have the space and the time to meditate upon a flower or a tree, or a hillside, or a stream, and see their own self within those processes that constitute the tree or the flower or the stream.... but emphatically they see a tree, a flower, and stream that is apart from who they are. Nature then becomes nature, and the I becomes me. No wonder the man world is in such conflict. Man creates it with his blindness.

Yet, there is the possibility to unencumber the self from these impositions. It is through  the quest of constant questioning, particularly of conventions and the way things are. I recall an interview with the French philosopher Alain Badiou where upon being a little riled by the interviewer implying that he was causing trouble, replied that the job of the philosopher was to question the state of things precisely because they are the way they are. It is then the job of every active human (not just the philosopher) to ask these self same questions. Why would you hire someone to think for you when you can do it for yourself?

What luck for leaders, Hitler once said, that men do not think.

So, get rid of your silly little 'mobile' devices. They are not mobile, you are. Get rid of the leashes. They only tie you down, and though they may engender 'meetings', actually prevent encounters. All these shields are as stabilisers, to protect your fractured inner geo-graphy. If you really want to encounter the world outwith the silliness then go into nature alone, with an open mind, and no agenda (maybe a vague outline)... under your own steam and at your own pace, and you will slowly begin to see.

And encounter.