In which I offer a way of dipping your toe in the waters of a new way of thinking and living ...
In my previous article I wrote that the hermeneutic journey of living involves an ever-widening cognitive, affective, spiritual – existential – embrace of self and world. Perhaps that statement distils the essential intent of a term I used in my November 2017 article – a philosophy of homecoming. If a philosophy of homecoming feels like opening oneself to the universe, if it holds within it the notion of progressive acceptance of the nature of things, including the capacity of human beings to renew themselves and their world,(1) how likely would you be, now or in the coming week or year, to accept that you’d like some of that? If your answer is not likely, is this because the values expressed in my depiction of a homecoming philosophy are anathema or irrelevant to you? Or because you can’t imagine a person like you thinking and wanting like that? Or some other reason?
We can leave these personal questions suspended in the air for the present. For now, I invite you to join me in a hypothetical, imaginary game. It may be that by playing the game and reflecting on your experience, you may be more inclined and / or better equipped to hear your still, small whisper framing an answer to the ‘how likely’ question posed above.
A playful imagination exercise? If you are anxious to find out about my proposed rabbit/worm-hole into this other way of knowing-doing-being, fast-forward to the next section heading; otherwise read on!
How would I distinguish the philosophy of homecoming idea from that of hermeneutic consciousness and that of lived hermeneutics? These terms all have a bearing on this blog’s concern for the giant learning curve facing humanity if it is going to preserve the qualities and potentialities unique to humankind into the next century; so how are they different?
hermeneutic consciousness is progressive attunement to the implications of the hermeneutic circle for our lives, and how we make sense of that. It is like a filter overlaid on, or a timbre breathed into the individual’s continuous present tense awareness of self and world. Aspiring to hermeneutic consciousness involves more than head work: it can be thought of as an attitude to life that values the fostering of ever more complex, comprehensive and coherent relations between the self and the myriad imaginable contexts in which the self exists.(2) Hermeneutic consciousness, a central aspirational outcome of a curriculum of becoming, fosters a holistic conception of the connectedness of all things.(3)
a philosophy of homecoming is a personal belief framework a meaning maker crafts over time to support the realisation of an ever more complex, comprehensive and coherent sense of self in the world, that is, progress towards holistic, global, integrating understanding.(4) As argued above, it holds within it the notion of progressive acceptance of the nature of things, including the transformative, regenerative capacity of human beings to renew themselves and their world. Aspiring to such a philosophy expresses a meaning maker’s desire to achieve an ever more complex, comprehensive and coherent rationale for living life as a hermeneutic journey. This philosophy of living becomes one’s ‘Here I stand; I can do no other’.
lived hermeneutics is the hermeneutic journey of living, a way of life, a lifestyle that nurtures hermeneutic consciousness.(5) If the proof of the pudding is in the eating, the value and validation of fostering a personal philosophy of homecoming may be discerned in the integrity of experience of one’s life journey.
A playful imagination exercise
So then, how likely would you be to give cultivation of a homecoming philosophy a go? I invite you to attempt the following imagination exercise. I think that doing the exercise could help you clarify your own sense of who you are and therefore judge the possible value of spending more time here.
I’m going to set a very loose task for you, loose in the sense that you will have considerable freedom to create a narrative or image or tone poem or audio-visual sequence – or a mental stand-in for one of these forms – in which you can give expression to your ‘ultimate concerns’.(6) Even if you haven’t yet consciously identified your true self-defining concerns, the exercise is designed to help you tap into them.
The work you create will focus on a relationship or meeting/confrontation between two living things or qualities or values. For simplicity’s sake let’s call them characters A and B. Here are some guidelines to help you develop your project:
A and B can evoke drastically different emotions in you as they take form in your imagination. You could imagine yourself being deeply drawn to one, but the other one either strikes you as repugnant, or else she/he is or appears to be morally ambiguous (at best) and leaves you cold. The first stage of the project then is to develop an initial sense of your two characters. You may reach this stage by first leaning towards the category they belong to: living things, or qualities, or values; or other?
On the other hand, you already know that the ‘action’ involving A and B centres on a relationship or meeting/confrontation between them. Knowing this could influence the way that you draw these two characters. Bear in mind however that we get to know fictitious characters in the same way we do with real acquaintances – over time, from shallower to deeper familiarity. Allow yourself therefore by stage 1 to have just a ‘first impression’ appreciation of A and B.
Stage 2: plotting how you will bring A and B together in your ‘storyline’. Allow yourself some mulling time, because we want this exercise to help you to reappraise the values and beliefs you stand for – your ultimate concerns (see endnote 6). Tread gently in this activity, and don’t bite off more than you can comfortably chew. If you start to feel anxious about this exercise, stop work and consider talking to someone you can rely on.
As you progress, feel relaxed about how you are travelling. Remember that on the hermeneutic journey of living, we do well to feel at home in the muddy waters of uncertainty because ‘lack of clarity is the prior state of growth in understanding’.(7) This exercise is designed to encourage your imagination to fall in step with the more philosophically mature and accepting mode of being of living life as a hermeneutic journey. I’m not suggesting that you try to reign in wild horse imagination. Rather, I ask you to metacognitively monitor the multi-layered threads of thought that you may be progressing in parallel in this exercise, and stay within or close to your comfort zone.
Start to imagine A and B located within time. Look into the future and start to imagine the moment in which A and B come together … perhaps when they become conscious of each other’s presence, how each one might appear to the other in that moment. Or, if you are drawn to the idea of developing your storyline out of a past, present or future relationship between A and B, each one’s brush with the other could be a recollected past or imagined future happening. In this case the narrative could take the form of juxtaposed shards of A and B’s inner conversations. Or, again, if you intend to create a single freeze-frame composition, like a landscape painting, the storyline, the action may be implied; for example, A could have the form of a built environment seen from above, and B, brewing, ominous storm clouds.
… ?
I pause here because I feel the need to check how you are doing. I also need some kind of confirmation that someone is interested in pursuing this activity. I have not got any further than this in activity design, and will wait to hear from someone before taking the next steps. If you would like to give me feedback, please do so via the Comment window at the end of this article (other readers will have access to your comment), or email me via the Contact tab on this blog (only I will see your response). If you would like to be part of the further development of this experimental personal development activity, or if you want to discuss use of this kind of staff development process in your organisation, please email me. Thank you.
Endnotes
(1) A. McKenzie, ‘"Lived hermeneutics" – a conceptual artefact as tool for personal and professional transformation and global wellbeing?' One giant learning curve for humanity – A blog about learning and teaching in the twenty-first century, 18 November 2017, <http://bit.ly/2yWbniA>, accessed 26 January 2018.
(2) A. McKenzie, 'Towards a pedagogy of holistic understanding for living meaningful lives', One giant learning curve for humanity – A blog about learning and teaching in the twenty-first century, 21 June 2017, <http://bit.ly/2tKymu9>, accessed 26 January 2018.
(3) A. McKenzie, ‘An educator ponders the state of the world (circa 1915)’, One giant learning curve for humanity – A blog about learning and teaching in the twenty-first century, 25 August 2017, <http://bit.ly/2wa3MMN>, accessed 26 January 2018.
(4) A. McKenzie, Meaning making: a university curriculum framework for the twenty-first century, LAP Lambert Academic Publishing, Saarbrucken, ISBN 978-3-659-52667-1, 2014, p. 2.
(5) ibid., p. 184.
(6) Margaret Archer’s term, paraphrased as ‘deepest concerns’ in this telling extract:
"When we seek to be loved, regarded and respected, not only are these things not for sale, but also they are something like a terminus in that they do not lead on to further ends which could be achieved by an additional dose of instrumental rationality. Ends like these, to which we are ultimately committed, are those things which we care about most. As such they are both extensions and expressions of ourselves, but also ones which can be irreducibly social. In other words, those social relationships to which we are committed as our deepest concerns (marriage, family, career, church, community) are not for the agent the ‘means to his flourishing but its constituents (Hollis)’." M. S. Archer, Being human: the problem of agency, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 2000, p. 79.
M. Hollis, ‘Honour among thieves’, Vol. I, xxv. Proceedings of the British Academy, 1989, p. 174.
(7) McKenzie, Meaning making, op. cit., p. 111.
Bibliography
Archer, M. S., Being human: the problem of agency, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 2000.
McKenzie, A., Meaning making: a university curriculum framework for the twenty-first century, LAP Lambert Academic Publishing, Saarbrucken, ISBN 978-3-659-52667-1, 2014.
McKenzie, A., ‘Towards a pedagogy of holistic understanding for living meaningful lives’, One giant learning curve for humanity – A blog about learning and teaching in the twenty-first century, 21 June 2017, <http://bit.ly/2tKymu9>, accessed 26 January 2018.
McKenzie, A., ‘An educator ponders the state of the world (circa 1915)’, One giant learning curve for humanity – A blog about learning and teaching in the twenty-first century, 25 August 2017, <http://bit.ly/2wa3MMN>, accessed 26 January 2018.
McKenzie, A., ‘”Lived hermeneutics” – a conceptual artefact as tool for personal and professional transformation and global wellbeing?’ One giant learning curve for humanity – A blog about learning and teaching in the twenty-first century, 18 November 2017, <http://bit.ly/2yWbniA>, accessed 26 January 2018.
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