By Dr. Charlie Palmgren

“I wouldn’t give a fig for the simplicity this side of complexity, but I would give my life for the simplicity on the other side of complexity.” – Justice Oliver Wendall Holmes, Jr.

Overview

The above quote of Justice Oliver Wendall Holmes, Jr. captures the heart of this series on the psychodynamics of creative interchange.

I will be starting from an unfinished manuscript outlining a book Henry Wieman, Erle Fitz and I started to write. The manuscript originated in late 1967 when Wieman was in the final editing of Religious Inquiry, published in 1968 by Beacon Press. The working title of our manuscript was The Human Predicament: The Culture Game. Henry was to write the Prologue and chapters 1 and 2, Fitz would write chapters 3, 4 and 5 and I would write chapters 6, 7 and the Epilogue. According to Fitz, Henry wrote 3 versions of the prologue and preferred one over the others. I’m using his preferred version. The opening Prologue statement was/is:

“We are concerned with valuing consciousness—distinguishing human existence from every other form of life. Rarely in human beings do we find a consciousness that can expand indefinitely in a range of diversity of what can be known, controlled AND valued. This consciousness is subject to evolution, but it evolves not primarily by changing the organism but by changing social relations that are necessary for human survival. It is sustained by fuller, more free and extensive communication where each individual learns more [with and] from others.”

In these 4 sentences Henry provided a comprehensive understanding of the origins of human consciousness. It will take some unpacking to make sense of his insights, wisdom and appreciatively understand his perspective on human consciousness. He is not writing about consciousness in general, but focusing on how consciousness relates to increasing our values. Elsewhere, he defines value as “a goal-seeking activity”. It involves a sense and feeling of movement toward changing, evolving and emerging. Such emergence also has an element of inclusion. There is a moving AND including as well as a seeking AND evolving. Wieman continues:

“When communication does not extend the range and fullness of shared values to correspond with increased complexity and range of interdependence, [a] society drifts toward anarchy or chaos, with an increase of coercive control, often these two alternatives intertwine (entangle) until the social system breaks. At that point, it disintegrates into smaller and simpler units where communication and sharing of values can again sustain the social order.” 

If you read The Final Frontier series you will recognize these same thoughts when Henry was writing Religious Inquiry. It’s clear that this was the context from which Henry, Fitz and I were thinking and writing our manuscript as well. For Henry, its roots link back to his Harvard dissertation in 1917. I will stay with this thread of thinking to clarify the context for this CI psychodynamics series.

“Coercive control…refers to the ill-intentioned manner of persecution imposed on those who do not conform to the societal norms. Coercive control…is often perceived as evil. ‘Evil’…denotes a reduction in the range and fullness of positive values accessible to the vulnerable consciousness of individuals. Life is experienced as ‘good’ when the opposite occurs, and the expansion in consciousness, richness, and fullness of what can be known is valued in community interactions, enhancing mutual enjoyment and understanding among people.”

This can be made into a working Wiemanian definition of Good ‘AND/OR Evil’. GOOD is the expansion in consciousness of what can be known [and] valued in community interactions, enhancing mutual enjoyment AND understanding among people. “EVIL“…is a reduction in the range and fullness of positive values. Simplified further:

Good is expansion of the valuing consciousness through inclusion, interdependence, mutual respect AND increasing coherence. Some call this love.

Evil is stagnation/reduction of the valuing consciousness through exclusion, independence, disrespect AND increasing coercion and incoherence. Some call this hate.

“Society wholly throughout the cycle is drifting toward anarchy and increasing coercion. These two opposites incite one another. When social order breaks beyond what is, then law and order are not sustained by [custom], and people cry out for law and order.

…But people accustomed to freedom or resisting coercion, it often leads to more anarchy unless there is a change in the social system promoting the value of freer, fuller cultural cooperation, whereby society is sustained by a community of shared values…coercion.”

The required change “in the social system promoting the value of freer, fuller cultural cooperation” Henry said needed to happen is not currently occurring. Wieman did not address the issue of what if the tyrant is mentally and emotionally ill and operating from an alternative reality. That would support the notion that Wieman was prophetic, not psychic and telepathic. 

“Human society is today threatened with great evil, reaching to the point of annihilating the human race. But it also carries the possibility of attaining a greater good than was ever before possible. This possibility of greater good arises out of the enormous increase in power, resources, interdependence, fluidity, and means of communication. These might be used to shape the social order on the one hand, and forms of…communication on the other, so that values might be more extensively and fully than ever before expanded beyond the possibilities of the past.”

When Henry wrote, “Human society…carries the possibility of attaining a greater good than was ever before possible. This is the process that he called creative interchange. This is how the good is increased and the evil is decreased. When he was writing this, he was a prophet not a psychic. A psychic would have known the current tyrant was also mentally and emotionally challenged and the “possibility of attaining a greater good” was/is not a real option. As Henry pointed out, the tyrant uses the law as long as it achieves the desired outcome of the tyrant and ignores them when they obstruct the desired outcome. Continuing:

“This progressive expansion of the valuing consciousness is recognized, by those who have experienced it, to be the greatest good human life can experience. This greatest good is attained by the kind of communication whereby diverse individuals acquire values from [AND] with one another that they could not otherwise have AND integrates these values already had, thus expanding the consciousness of values.”

As we discovered in The Final Frontier series, many of the oligarchs in their quest for power and riches never knew when enough is enough. They seem driven to accumulate more and more power, wealth, prestige and control. So, the satisfaction of their material goods, their ethereal dreams and worldly travels and in some cases includes space travel, are insufficient to satisfy their deepest longings. Many of them have ended up plotting and engaging in some form of war like Putin, Musk, Kim, Urban, Erdoğan, Netanyahu and President Elect Trump.

When Henry said that people who have experienced progressive expansion of the valuing consciousness recognized the experience to be the greatest good human life can experience. He was identifying something extremely important. Wouldn’t this be a classic example of something “money can’t buy”? In the case of Oliver Wendall Holmes, it’s an example of something “I would give my life for.” It would seem such an experience would be worth appreciatively understanding at a much deeper level. Henry adds an interesting cautionary note:

“…Often the newly acquired values in communication are not fully integrated into consciousness until [a] later time.” 

I often ask people if they have ever been wrestling with an issue or problem and all of a sudden, while taking a shower or doing something totally unrelated to the problem they had a sudden ‘aha’ moment and the answer they had been searching for suddenly arrived in an instant of unexpectedness. Abe Maslow called such moments “peak experiences”. We’ll be getting deeper into this notion later in the series.

Before venturing further into integrating AND expanding our valuing consciousness, I want to take a closer look at what we mean by consciousness. I want to get a more general understanding of what being conscious means. The word comes from the Latin com- +scrie, meaning to know. Scrie comes from the Indo-European root skel-¹ which means to cut or split. Some of the derivations include science, and you’ve got to love this one, shit. In more upscale society they probably prefer to call it excrement. Either way, there is movement involved.

A personal note regarding the word shit. I came back the day after I’d written the paragraph above to see if I’d read it correctly. I spent over 30 minutes trying to find the word again because I wanted Marian to be my witness. I did find a section that related the Indo-European root that mentioned dung. She looked at it for less than 30 seconds and found the word shit. So, thanks to her I got the word verified. What that says about my psychodynamics will come up later in this series.

From a Wiemanian perspective, it is interesting to note that conscience contains the same Indo-European root as conscious. There is a clear connection between science and consciousness, especially neuroscience. There is also a connection between science conscience. There is a direct connection between conscience and the ever-emerging-transforming of the valuing consciousness. So, what is the connection between science and Wieman’s valuing consciousness. That’s the heart ‘AND’ soul of CI psychodynamics.

In order to understand the meaning of consciousness in creative interchange, we must make another distinction. That is the difference between awareness AND consciousness. Some neuroscientists and psychologists make this distinction, while many others do not. Henry made it over a hundred years ago. The subtle part is the realization that awareness AND consciousness can be differentiated, but not separated. It is not one OR the other; it is one AND the other. I use a metaphor to clarify this distinction. 

Imagine a clown at the carnival or circus who has a long yellow balloon, which can be twisted into the shape of a little animal. Clearly there is a difference in the shape of the balloon before and after it is twisted into an animal shape. However, both are part of the same latex used to make the balloon. The clown provides the creative-twisting-energy that molds the latex into an animal shape. The creative-twisting-energy is a metaphor for understanding the distinction between awareness (the latex), consciousness (the shape of the animal) and the attention, intention and manual manipulation of the clown’s hands in creating the animal shape.

The same metaphor can be used to describe creative interchange. Wieman, talks about creative event through which our original creative self produces a created self through the process of creative interchange. Our original self is awareness and our created self is consciousness and through creative interchange a “valuing consciousness” emerges and transforms the created self in toward greater good.

To develop AND sustain the CI process requires, according to Wieman, a two-level commitment.  While the process is unbelievably simple, it is extremely difficult to master and requires a great deal of disciplined practice. The good news is that it opens the way to one’s greatest good ‘AND’ highest satisfaction. Perhaps that is why Henry said above, “…Often the newly acquired values in communication are not fully integrated into consciousness until [a] later time.” For example, there’s much more I want and need to creatively integrate into myself regarding how to live CI, and I started in 1966.In the next segment of this series Henry, Fitz and I will move closer to issues like PTSD, the birthing process and early childhood development. I’ll look at the process that shapes awareness into a consciousness while repressing and relegating our innate, integral and instinctual preconscious awareness into our collective unconscious and our personal sub conscious. Remember, knowing is short lived but learning is forever.