Of Experience

"Even facts become fictions without adequate ways of seeing 'the facts'.  We do not need theories so much as the experience that of the theory.  We are not satisfied with faith, in the sense of an implausible hypothesis irrationally held: we demand to experience the 'evidence'.

The opening words of R.D. Laing's The Politics of Experience.

Yesterday I went to see a mother who's twenty year old son had just died of leukaemia.  I felt some sort of bond with this friend  as I recall my own experience of being forced to put my hand on the door handle of death.  (We were allowed to stand back and did not go through.)  It struck me that the only thing I needed to do was to listen to her experience, which was painful and wonderful at the same time.

Laing notes that our experience of the world is an internal affair.  We make sense of what is going on around us by interpreting our own experiences, 'I experience that you experience'.  He also reflects how experiences become communal.  For example the experience yesterday of banging on pans and clapping the NHS.  Without others, there is no experience.  The experience has a meaning, but we all take part (or not) for our own various reasons and motivations. The two cause an interaction.

Listening to the 2016 recording of the 'In Our Time' discussion on Animal Farm, I was very interested by the critique given by Mary Vincent, professor of Modern History at Sheffield University.  I felt that the comment made was salutary for everyone.Vincent felt that George Orwell (Eric Blair) had made fundamental errors of judgement on the Spanish Civil War giving Stalin too much credence for events in that country.  She felt that he had made up his mind, based on his own personal experiences, and then launched his book, with initial resistance from publishers, with a calm, clear but one-sided view drawn from his own blinkered experience.  Orwell's position was not being judged by Vincent.  It was a statement of 'what Orwell did, neither right nor wrong'.  He chose not to listen to other view points for his own reason.   (And this is my own personal understanding of Vincent's critique!)

I understand Orwell's need for 'journalese'. It's a shame when a good story is marred by 'facts'. And it is just a story, an offering, so you can do what ever you will with it. 

Sometimes the clear uni-dimensional voice is the easiest to comprehend.  This gives it greater power, with positive and negative effects.  I also thought about the recent articles in The Guardian (and other papers) about the interview with Mano Totau, an Australian resident of Tongan decent, who along with five other boys, actually experienced life on a desert island for over a year and a half.  Their experience was quite different from the one portrayed in William Golding's 'Lord of the Flies'.  I considered that when I read the book, years ago as a teenager, my thoughts were to be despondently drawn into thinking, 'yes, he's right, I would be like that.  Terrible and depressing.'  But the paper went on to describe William Golding's own childhood experiences of brutality and deprivation, even as one of the elite in British society.  Perhaps this was Golding's own personal experience of life, not to be generalised to all?

In Chapter Four (Us and Them, page 65) RD Laing says:

"Only when something has become problematic do we start to ask questions.  Disagreement shakes us out of our slumbers, and forces us to see our own point of view through contrast with another person who does not share it.  But we resist such confrontations.  The history of heresies of all kinds testifies to more than the tenancy to break off communication (excommunication) with those who hold different dogmas or opinions; it bears witness to our intolerance of different fundamental structures of experience.  We seem to need to share communal meaning to human existence, to give with others a common sense to the world, to maintain consensus."

It strike me that there are two specific aspects of intolerance to notice.
1) Intolerance towards minute difference.  This intolerance to 'the cult', or anything that is close, but misses my perfection.  So to outsiders the Mormon, or Jehovah's Witness looks no different to any other Christian doctrine.  To the insider, it's 'chalk and cheese'.  We see this intolerance in the natural world where the robin in my garden can tolerant any other bird (within reason) but not another red breasted robin, oh no.  Also I notice that children tend to fear, impress, engage with, peers, or people they are most similar to, rather than older or younger people, where none of this dynamic seems to apply.
2) Intolerance towards fundamental differences.  Here we see right-wing governments preferentially  choosing 'christian' refugees from Syria, even though this is such an 'unchristian' act.  They fear the dilution of 'their own culture', when it is will be the other cultures that have the most to fear.  An example I note from George Borrow's books is the intolerance to gypsies and travellers, because they 'break all the rules'.  They do not recognise the laws they themselves had no part in making.

This morning, as I consider where to explore, I looked at my maps.  I have cycled, walked, every lane, every path in my vicinity. I have to reach further now; to extend myself.  My near world is completely examined.   I now must explore further away.

Laing discusses the difference between this 'outer world' of exploration, and the 'inner world'.   Just as yesterday we visited my sister-in-law in Bedford, who although living in Bedford for thirty years, had never walked down a certain footpath until it was pointed out to her, so we can have lanes, and pathways of our inner world, that are completely missed.

Some paths of the inner world may be well trodden.  Some can be walked 'with eyes closed'.  Some I have never valued, or assume I already know (we don't need to go down there'), and therefore give little attention.

Some aspects of my inner world I may not like.  It might notice a smell, or associated experiences such as shame, fear, prejudice or even weariness.

In my mind, the inner world is like entering the 'Underland' as described in Robert Macfarlane's book of that name.  Macfarlane notes that 'up' in our language is generally 'good', and 'down' not good.

The underland is an unfamiliar world, a world of darkness, mystery , ancient wonders (Paris Catacombs) and atrocities (Julian Alps).  A bit like our homes, the inner world is a reflection of ourselves, what we value, our motivations, our vulnerabilities.  Like our homes, parts of it may be presentable, other part 'dumping grounds'.  We also have a relationship with our inner world; parts we will like, and feel comfortable in and safe.  Other parts we treat like our worst enemy.  We are at war in our inner world, or at the best, at an uncomfortable truce.

To Experience- 
Experience come through the senses-

Level One - Starts with the physical sensations picked up by the body through sight, touch (pain, pleasure, temperature, pressure), sound, taste, smell.  People will use these senses different.  For those who do not have access to some of these senses, they are likely to use the senses they have to compensate, and experience the world differently.  For example a blind person may have a different view on the Muslim 'Niqab' to a sighted person.  Deaf people are affected differently by the social isolation experience caused by coronavirus.  Our senses integrate also, sometimes successfully, sometimes with dissonance.

Level Two - The interpretation given to sensations - 'this is good', 'this is indifferent', 'I don't want this'. We see this in animals.  Our rabbit approaches, inquisitive, indifferent, alarmed (and withdraws).  Attribute can operate subconsciously and present as an automatic reaction, regulated a split second later by cognitive appraisal.  Thus I may experience an automatic reaction to the sight of a spider, which a split second later I see is dead, or know not to threaten me.

Level Three - Internal experiences affect the present.  The current experience mingles with past experience.  This can trigger new sensations (in the mind, or psychic).  Thus past experiences curse or bless the present.  A Somali mother I met was devastated by a 'mad' neighbour throwing eggs at her door.  She had fled a war to come to the safety of England.  The eggs were more than a perplexing irritation. Michel Foucault urges us to be aware of the power of 'history', and its effect on limiting or intervening on  the present.

Level Four - Our body operates within our current mental states.  Generally this is understood as a unitary state (we are in one state or another, dependent on threat levels, stress and mental wellbeing.   'A state of alert' (the red zone) is when our brains are on self preserving autopilot.  'A state of Arousal' (orange zone) is when we are apprehensive of an incoming threat and can either go to red, or to green. A State of Stasis or calm (green zone) is when we are able to explore, think, problem solve, rationalise and plan.  Thus we may have many aspects to ourselves, not just one.

Laing (page 33) echos Ecclesiastes when he says....

'We are afraid to approach the fathomless, bottomless groundlessness of everything.  

"There is nothing to be afraid of" - The ultimate reassurance, and the ultimate terror.'

'Science' must observe, measure, and record  'behaviour', before making an objective hypothesis about experience.  However to truly remove (or reduce) prejudice, behavioural observations are simplified to the level of 'stupid'.

There has to be a framework on which to construct experience that offers satisfaction (to link back to Laing's original quote).

I am more interested in the side of agreement  rather than disagreement here.  Sometimes it takes 'the outsider', free from the reverence given to the shibboleths of culture and faith, to illuminate what true 'experience' actually is, rather than 'theory' or 'blind faith' (the story of the Emperor's new cloths).

Recently reading Ecclesiastes in the Bible I thought, 'does this really encompass great wisdom?  Are there not far more profound books?  What is my relationship with this work?  What if I came across it in a newspaper article, or it was presented as a great work from another faith, what would my appraisal of it then be?'

As with Shakespeare, is it great for all, or for those who are told to consider it great?
And what about other people's Shakespeare?  What ever that might look like?  Would I be able to notice?