Auticulture - Liminalist, Criticism of Kripal/Streiber

S

Sciborg_S_Patel

http://auticulture.com/

What is Auticulture?

Auto: meaning “self,” “same,” “spontaneous,” e.g. autonomous.

Culture: a particular stage of civilization; development orimprovement of the mind by education or training; thebehaviors and beliefs characteristic of a particular group; thesum total of ways of living transmitted from one generation toanother; the cultivation of microorganisms

The term auticulture is a deliberate oxymoron, because cultureentails a collective body (developing over time) where autosignifies an individual self acting spontaneously (or even self-as-spontaneous action?).

What does this have to do with autism (neurodiversity)?

I am on the autism spectrum (high-functioning Aspergerian), and knowing that I am neurodivergent has helped me recognize that I do not participate in, or belong to, the dominant culture in the way that most people (neurotypicals) do.

As I see it, autism is not a disability but an alternate way of perceiving (and expressing) the world and the self. It is part of a human response to the unnatural limitations of the dominant culture.

What does this have to do with culture (and movies)?

That’s another ironic paradox, because culture in one sense is created by creative human-types and creative types (also known as innovators) are similar to autistic types in that they/we don’t adapt to culture because they/we are not good imitators. Innovators don’t take social conditioning the way that imitators do.

Alienation from the dominant culture is the price of being an innovator, but also, the necessary condition from which innovation can arise. It is not a choice to innovate. It is psychological (and sometimes physical, and even spiritual) necessity.

The autos (micro-organism) which cannot shape itself to match the dominant culture must create its own culture in order to survive, and flourish.

In a word, auticulture.
 
My initial impression is like many conspiracy sites - or whatever is this site is supposed to be about - you'd have to read through so much stuff it's hard to know where to begin.

Reading through I feel like I'm reading someone who has the right idea - exercise some caution about spiritual/metaphysical claims especially where experiences are involved - but then throws that into a soup of references and ideas that I just find exhausting and can't help but feel a skeptical resistance toward.

On the Streiber stuff, I do think it'd be interesting to see Streiber and Kripal address criticisms of Streiber that have been noted in the past:

Through a Fractured Glass, Darkly (Part One): The Facts in the Strange Case of Whitley Strieber

http://realitysandwich.com/142495/strange_case_whitley_strieber_1/
 
Mind the Theory - History, Culture, & Language As Seen Through a Liminal Looking Glass

1. Originally the word was coined by anthropologists to refer to religious ceremonial practices, during which participants were led by ceremony masters from one state (and status) to another, such as in a coming of age ritual. The liminal stage is the intermediary one in which the initiate is on the threshold (līmen) between his or her old status and a new, as-yet unknown one.

2. Socially speaking, liminality refers to periods of chaos in which old structures, institutions, traditions and mores, have all broken down or been destroyed, and in which new ones have not yet been established. People trapped in a liminal situation are not able to act rationally because the structures upon which their rationality was based have disappeared. Being in a liminal statespells crisis for most people; emotions run wild, making clear thinking all but impossible. This leads to “mimetic” (imitative) behavior by those trapped in the liminal space. Situations of permanent liminality are known as schismogenesis. Societies can be stuck for a long time in this state, when the previous unity is broken but the various now inchoate elements are forced to stay together.

3. In the politics of liminality, the future is unknown. This means there can be no ceremony masters, because no one has gone through the process before, so there is no one to lead people out of it. This allows for the emergence of false ceremony masters who fill the void created by people’s need to be guided. These self-appointed leaders perpetuate liminality because their power and authority depends on the disorientation and helplessness of others.

4. In psychotherapy, liminality describes a stage in the individuation journey when a person’s old personality (ego) and the accompanying beliefs, values, and standards, have begun to break apart, but in which no coherent new self has as emerged from the “ruins.” In this process, the psychotherapist acts as ceremony master. He or she is there to guide the patient into a new, more individuated state of being. There are two problems with this arrangement, however. Firstly, that the therapist can only act as a ceremony master to the extent that he or she has gone all the way through the liminal journey of individuation (an extremely rare achievement). Secondly, more problematic still, the nature of individuation requires a new, more autonomous state of being, meaning that the person must go through it alone, and eventually reject all external forms of guidance, including (especially) that of the ceremony master (therapist). In a sense, to leave the liminal stage at an individual level means to become functional within it, to accept liminality as the human condition, not as a means to an end but as a never-ending end in itself
 
My initial impression is like many conspiracy sites - or whatever is this site is supposed to be about - you'd have to read through so much stuff it's hard to know where to begin.

Reading through I feel like I'm reading someone who has the right idea - exercise some caution about spiritual/metaphysical claims especially where experiences are involved - but then throws that into a soup of references and ideas that I just find exhausting and can't help but feel a skeptical resistance toward.

On the Streiber stuff, I do think it'd be interesting to see Streiber and Kripal address criticisms of Streiber that have been noted in the past:

Through a Fractured Glass, Darkly (Part One): The Facts in the Strange Case of Whitley Strieber
I think if Chuck had pulled out a few relevant bits to start with, it might have made the website less of a mess to look at for those of us new to it. What I read was a much too literal take on every word ever put out there by Strieber. It seemed somewhat childish and unable to grasp the difficulty of putting the ineffable into words. It came across as mean spirited and petty.

That may not be the intention of the author, and perhaps if one has the time to wade through the entire website to look for a few pearls of wisdom, the reward will be worth it.
 
I think if Chuck had pulled out a few relevant bits to start with, it might have made the website less of a mess to look at for those of us new to it. What I read was a much too literal take on every word ever put out there by Strieber. It seemed somewhat childish and unable to grasp the difficulty of putting the ineffable into words. It came across as mean spirited and petty.

That may not be the intention of the author, and perhaps if one has the time to wade through the entire website to look for a few pearls of wisdom, the reward will be worth it.

I feel like the reality is somewhere in the middle? Kripal puts a too positive spin on Streiber, Jasun OTOH goes too negative?

Plus when someone starts talking getting suspicious of cultural shifts as part of conspiracies it starts to feel like same paranoia that makes me doubtful of Gnosticism.
 
I feel like the reality is somewhere in the middle? Kripal puts a too positive spin on Streiber, Jasun OTOH goes too negative?

Plus when someone starts talking getting suspicious of cultural shifts as part of conspiracies it starts to feel like same paranoia that makes me doubtful of Gnosticism.
Kripal takes Striber's report of his experience at face value... which was one of the points Horsley takes issue with.

The Super Natural looks at the phenomenology of Strieber's personal experiences. If an academic starts his analysis of the reported experience by saying that the experiencer is crazy or a liar, then there is no point in continuing the process, because you believe the source material is invalid. In other words, ANY phenomenological consideration of Strieber's experiences would be flawed from Horsley's POV. That seems a bit silly to me.

It isn't Kripal's job to believe or not believe Strieber. His job in this book is to look at what has been reported and analyze it.
 
Kripal takes Striber's report of his experience at face value... which was one of the points Horsley takes issue with.

The Super Natural looks at the phenomenology of Strieber's personal experiences. If an academic starts his analysis of the reported experience by saying that the experiencer is crazy or a liar, then there is no point in continuing the process, because you believe the source material is invalid. In other words, ANY phenomenological consideration of Strieber's experiences would be flawed from Horsley's POV. That seems a bit silly to me.

It isn't Kripal's job to believe or not believe Strieber. His job in this book is to look at what has been reported and analyze it.

I agree with this to an extent, and I definitely enjoyed what I've read of Supernatural so far (have some bits left).

But Kripal seemed confident that Strieber's experiences fit into something that is happening in the evolution of our consciousness. I'd say Kripal is confident that art (or at least text) interweaves with reality, and from his other works it seems he'd assert there is a perspective that occurs outside of space-time. He also continually talks about Fort's ideas that this reality is one from which greater entities keep us as pets or livestock.

Kripal does in fact note some disagreements with Strieber (about the implant IIRC?), but it seems his criticism never extends too far. I'm not saying Jasun is right - in fact I can't help but look at Auticulture stuff on Strieber as both petty and pedantic as you say - but some deeper skepticism on Kripal's part might've made Super Natural more balanced?
 
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Is it really skepticism from Kripal that is missing from the book, or is more discussion on divergent points between the two of them needed?
 
I posted a link to this article elsewhere, but I'm posting it here as well because the author does a good job of explaining the "Kantian cut", which is the whole basis of how Kripal has addressed Strieber's reports of his unusual experiences. I think the Horsley blog doesn't quite get this aspect of the book.

http://literalmagazine.com/the-super-natural/

Now to the Kantian cut. It is to distinguish between the appearances of things and what may actually lie behind them. In making that cut, we recognize that while our physical senses provide us with essential survival-oriented information, in no way do they even begin to convey to our consciousness awareness the totality of reality. As Kripal writes, this cut “is a very reasonable and appropriate response to our actual situation in the cosmos.” Furthermore, “Once one makes such a cut, one can, in principle, take any religious experience or mythical world seriously and sympathetically without adopting any particular interpretation of it, much as one suspends disbelief to enjoy a good novel or watch a science-fiction movie.”

In other words, we don’t need to accept nor reject Strieber’s reports of UFOs and “the visitors”— yes, we can keep the lids on our coconuts while adopting the stance of radical empiricism in considering large-scale quantum phenomena!

Put yet another way: if we can simply look at such experiences as Strieber’s, sit with them, consider them “seriously and sympathetically, without adopting any particular interpretation”—we can then, to quote Kripal again, “begin to study their patterns, histories, narrative structures, sexual dimensions, and philosophical implications.” The Kantian cut thus gives us the power to then spiral up to a broader, richer view. It is an astonishing power.
 
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