This is a retrospective of week 17, 2024 (2024-04-22–2024-04-28).
I’ve spent the week looking into Forrest Landry’s work. This means that I’ve continued reading An Immanent Metaphysics and listened to some podcasts. Here is a post from earlier this week which is based on one of the podcasts. Below are some additional quotes from two other podcasts. My conclusions are at the end.
Quotes from Forrest Landry
Life is valuable. Life is meaningful. There’s no meaningfulness that is not alive. There is no aliveness that is not meaningful.
—Forrest Landry https://youtu.be/fQSpPx9qrz8?feature=shared&t=4365
Machinery is much easier to work with. … As a result, we end up with this over application of the idea of the tool of control, the tool of causation, the tool of essentially trying to simplify everything so that we have a conceptual model that we can use as a replacement for our own choice.
—Forrest Landry https://youtu.be/XxR7by4HB3s?feature=shared&t=868
It is just as important that we be able to feel through what is a good choice as think through what is a good choice—both are necessary, either one by itself is not enough. … How do you know that it is good? What is the nature of goodness actually mean? … I would submit that an understanding of the nature of choice is the kind of thing that we need to get really good at. We need to understand the principles of effective choice—not just effective choice, but healthy choice, wise choise.
—Forrest Landry https://youtu.be/XxR7by4HB3s?feature=shared&t=913
There is so much that we could talk about. We could talk about how the metaphysical ground allows us to understand what is the nature of knowing, and how that can help us to know the nature of both the principles of effective choice, and the nature of choice, and the nature of even what it means to be human—to know how to balance the totality of feeling with the totality of intellect, and then to blend them, because that’s what we are going to need to do if we’re going to make good choices. It’s not going to be because we have some simplified model, but because we can feel clearly. And clarity is not the same as simplicity. Life is complex. If you simplify it it will die.
—Forrest Landry https://youtu.be/XxR7by4HB3s?feature=shared&t=981
You can either relate to the world from continuity or from the world of symmetry. You can go back and forth, but you can’t do both of them perfectly at the same time. … Now, the habit is so in favor of symmetry, to let go of continuity in favor of the third person perspective we let go of the first person perspective. We devalue it. … There’s a need for us to be discerning about the nature of our relationships in a first person sense. And that vehicle of discernment, coupled with the vehicle of attunement—because, again, we’re attuning to another person. … We’re connecting in a relational dynamic, we’re connecting in a communicative process. So in effect, if we’re wanting to honor the nature of choice, which is fundamentally creative, fundamentally cooperative—which by the way in the same way that creation can neither be repeatable, nor observed. That means that something about the nature of choice is not repeatable, nor observable. If you go looking for choice in the sense of trying to find some scientific rationale for it you will fail, because it doesn’t show up in a symmetry way—it’s not causation, it is choice. So, in this particular sense, we’re noticing that the kinds of things that create good attunement, the kinds of things that create good discernment. And when we place those in the right ways, we make the kinds of skillful distinctions that implies a whole new set of questions. And those questions create transparency, they create insight.
—Forrest Landry https://youtu.be/XxR7by4HB3s?feature=shared&t=2003
How do we make better choices? We communicate better.
—Forrest Landry https://youtu.be/XxR7by4HB3s?feature=shared&t=2319
If we think about human relationships in terms of care, and we’re discerning about how we’re holding that, then we’re going to notice that there’s a difference between an institution and a community. An institution is defined by hierarchy—power relationships, essentially, and transactional relationships.
—Forrest Landry https://youtu.be/XxR7by4HB3s?feature=shared&t=2401
If strategy…[is] first, culture…second…, in effect what happens is that…transcationalism…is built in from the very beginning, and that’s just not going to be a solution to collective choice making. It’s like a means/ends problem. If I start with power I’ve already taken away choice.
—Forrest Landry https://youtu.be/XxR7by4HB3s?feature=shared&t=2577
I’m a foundational ontological metaphysicist. What that basically means is that I’ve looked at the fundamental ground of being itself. And so as a result I can look at the relationship between doing, being, and becoming.
—Forrest Landry https://youtu.be/XxR7by4HB3s?feature=shared&t=2680
I would suggest that we choose on the basis of meaningfulness, because there is no meaningfulness that is not alive, and there is no aliveness that is not meaningful.
—Forrest Landry https://youtu.be/XxR7by4HB3s?feature=shared&t=3375
Conclusions
After listening to a few podcasts with Forrest Landry the message is starting to sink in. What Landry says sounds great here and there, but he doesn’t walk the talk. I find him passive-aggressive in this talk.
Meta-conceptual reasoning is no doubt very powerful, but there are places where I don’t agree with Landry’s conclusions. I might misunderstand him, or not?
One example is when Landry says ‘what’ is a more important question than ‘why’, which is more important than ‘how’.1 I’d say, provide an answer to ‘why’, and the answers to the other questions more easily fall into place, including ‘who‘, ‘when‘, and ‘where‘. In other words, the ‘why‘ question is potentially the most important one!
Another example is when Landry says values need to be specified in a positive way. He says, “I can’t say I don’t value“.2 Well, I can value not valuing myself. Landry misses an entire value category, i.e., disvalue posing as value. It’s a major omission!
The third example is Landry’s conclusion that “Self is Truly Owned by Choice”.3 This doesn’t sound right to me. How can choice own anything? Can anything own self? The concept of ownership is problematic in itself. I think Landry ends up with this conclusion because of his way of constructing the concept of self.4 My question is, does this construction hold? If it doesn’t, then Landry’s entire metaphysics falls into pieces, because “metaphysics is an inquiry into the relationship between the self and the world”.5
The conclusions you reach are determined by how you define your concepts. For example, if you view self as an intrinsic of choice,6 then choice becomes primary. I’d suggest (note the aphorism) that ‘no thing—nothing—can own anything’, including Self. Where you start determines where you end up. What does it mean to be metaphysically valid?
There are many ways bias can affect the conclusions of even the most well-structured meta-concepts.
Notes:
1. Reference to be added.
2. Reference to be added.
3. Forrest Landry, An Immanent Metaphysics, p. 40.
4. Reference to be added.
5. Forrest Landry, An Immanent Metaphysics, p. 63.
6. Reference to be added.
Related posts:
The McGilchrist Manoeuvre in the Immanent Metaphysics
Retrospective 2024-16
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