Organizing retrospective 18

This is a post in my series on organizing ”between and beyond.” Other posts are here. This is a retrospective of what has happened during the week. The purpose is to reflect on the work itself. Here is my previous retrospective. Here is my next retrospective.

What has happened? What needs to be done?
I still haven’t published my review of Future Sense by Malcolm Parlett. I love the book — both contentwise and how it’s written — but I have difficulties in mobilizing enough energy to finalize the review. I will need yet another week to finish the review.

Instead, I have read Poiesis: The Language of Psychology and the Speech of the Soul by Stephen K. Levine and Ecological Intelligence by Ian McCallum this week. Poiesis as soul-making lies at the core of Levine’s thinking.¹ Poiesis is the act of working through disintegration, while poetry is the speech of the soul. Interestingly, poetry is also the language of Ian McCallum’s ecological intelligence.² Actually, poetry is more than a language for McCallum — it’s an attitude.³

Ian McCallum makes many good points in his book, but I get the feeling that he is more influenced by a reductionistic Cartesian outlook than he probably is aware of. His view is that everything — including the human mind — is made up of particles.⁴ I’m not so sure. No-one has been able to show how the mind can be reduced to matter.⁵ Furthermore, McCallum misunderstands some of the physics he writes about.⁶ It’s unfortunate, because McCallum looses some of his credibility, at least in my eyes.

What was good? What can be improved?
I find great joy in reading! However, I have lost some of my initial energy. I need a break!

Notes:
¹ Stephen K. Levine, Poiesis: The Language of Psychology and the Speech of the Soul (London and Philadelphia: Jessica Kingsley Publishers, 1992), p. xvi.
² Ian McCallum, Ecological Intelligence: Rediscovering Ourselves in Nature (Golden, Colorado: Fulcrum, 2008), pp. 147, 213.
³ Ibid., p. 18.
⁴ Ibid., p. 119.
⁵ Paavo Pylkkänen, Mind, Matter and the Implicate Order (Berlin Heidelberg: Springer-Verlag, 2007), p. 10.
⁶ For examples, see Ian McCallum, Ecological Intelligence: Rediscovering Ourselves in Nature (Golden, Colorado: Fulcrum, 2008), pp. 26, 135, 147, 214.

Related posts:
Organizing in between and beyond posts