Contemplations on the nature of reality
Contemplations on the nature of reality
Finally found a moment to do some writing. I miss it. At the same time has my personal focused moved a bit to creating our strategic learning and evaluation architecture. I hope to come back to writing before long. I'm contemplating moving the newsletter to LinkedIn so I can save the monthly charge with Buttondown. Any reason why I should not do that? Let me know! Here we go with today's note.
Recently, I listened to a conversation between Iain McGilchrist and Rowan Williams, former Archbishop of Canterbury. I think what these two gentlemen talk about is relevant for our work in strategic learning and evaluation. I will share a few quotes first and then a few thoughts on my own (transcription might not be 100% accurate - all highlights in the transcript are mine).
First, I want to point out that McGilchrist posits that there are four ways of understanding reality that need to go together to get as full an understanding of reality as possible - on their own, they will not do: science, reason, intuition and imagination.
Iain McGilchrist @ 5:01: in reality, everything is connected ultimately to everything else, that it's never completely fixed or known or certain, though it is knowable. And we can have greater degrees of certainty and truth about it. But it is not a final thing that exists out there, it comes from a relationship. And this is a really the key thing, I argue in the Matter with Things [McGilchrist's latest book] that relationships are what the universe is made of. And the relata, the things that are related, emerge secondary from the web of relationships, I know that sounds paradoxical, no time to, to go into that, perhaps too much. But the point there is that things only become what they are, those things we think we see, because of where they're situated in relation to everything else, and the full context in which they inhere. And so that perception changes the way we think of knowledge. It's not that there's stuff out there that we can more faithfully or other otherwise record, simply, passively. It's something about if we really want to know it, we have to enter into a relationship with it. And that means that something of us goes into the experience of whatever it is we experience, no surprises in that. But it does not, I emphatically insist, does not lead anywhere near a sort of postmodern belief that we all just make it up. I resist that with every fiber of my being. I think instead, we have a task, a duty, which is to follow truthfully, our intuitions where they seem to be testable and true in the experience of life. And that there is a truth, but it is something that we approach in the spirit of approximating and trust. In a relationship you trust the other and trust and truth have the same origin. So I believe that whatever it is that we know and experience ultimately comes out of relationships, and of course, in the Christian religion, but also in other religions, the ground of being, whatever word one uses to describe that, is love. And love is nothing except a relation.
Rowan Williams @ 7:18: And the way you put it there reminds me of the way in which somebody like St. Augustine talks about knowledge itself, we don't know unless we love, and he doesn't, by that, mean, we know what we feel warmly about. He means simply that we have an investment in our knowing: this is about me and how I'm going to be and how I'm going to receive and give. And, when I'm in that kind of relationship, truth actually impresses upon me I am in an adequate or appropriate relationship with what is coming to me. And that's truthfulness. But precisely because it's relational.
Iain McGilchrist @ 9:46: And what we need to do is not always trust, but certainly not never to trust, but to pay adequate respect to our intuitions. The same is true of reason and science. They can lead us to mistaken places, even reasoning can, believe me. I'm a great believer in science and reason. But they are not able to tell the full story and intuition can tell us enormous amounts. And when you have to collapse an intuition, which is often implicit, into an expression in language, it becomes single, explicit and defined by language. Whereas when it remains at an intuitive level, as many as 12, or 15 different strands of knowledge and experience are being brought together and weighed together.
Iain McGilchrist @ 19:14: Our knowledge is, of course, partial, but not in the sense that it only goes part way towards reality. It's partial in the sense that any one person can only perhaps see what they can see. But nonetheless, what they see is actually real. And therefore, when people say, you know, purpose and value which are so important to human flourishing, are things we invent to cheer ourselves up, you see, they're not inventions. They are dis-coveries, we are un-covering things that are there, and I hold that purpose and values like goodness, beauty and truth, are primordial, they are ontologically primitive, they are part of the nature of consciousness – whatever we mean by consciousness. It's always directed towards something and that something is guided by values and purpose, which are intrinsic. And scientists are now beginning to recognise purpose at any rate, and beginning to talk about it more freely. But, you know, the trouble was that in the past science started from very reasonable premises but it was not going to consider values or purpose. It was going to see where it could go without those. But at the end of the day, then reports back that having thoroughly examined, it can't find any values or purpose, which brings us back to the idea of needing to be given partly to it to find it at all.
The questions that come up for me when listening to this are:
- How can we engage all four ways of knowing in strategic learning - science, reason, intuition, and creativity? While the first two seem obvious, what is the role of intuition and creativity in strategic learning? I certainly have some ideas here, particularly because some of our grant managers have told me that intuition plays an important role in their decision-making. The question here is whether their intuition is backed by the other ways of understanding reality as intuition can be misleading if used on its own. So then it is a question of understanding what is being used now and how that can be complemented by the other ways of understanding - and how this can be done in a more systematic and well-documented way.
- What does it mean for strategic learning at a foundation level that we have to bring something of ourselves into the knowing if we want to truly understand something; that if we want to really know something, we have to get into relationship with it? And that knowing something happens on the basis of approximation and trust. Can we only truly know when we share the lived experiences of the people we aim to benefit from our funding? Or listen to them sharing it. Or are there other levels, even within the foundation, that allow us to engage in a meaningful relationship with parts of reality that allow us to know something about the world we engage with that might be a day's travel away from where we are? I experienced the importance of being present when lived experiences are shared as you can take in so much more when you are there than when you read these stories in a report. Lot's more to explore here ...
- Interesting that McGilchrist and Rowan bring in love as an important aspect in knowing: "we don't understand unless we love." This obviously reminds me of Tamkeen, an organisation and process we have been partnering with in Morocco. I wrote about it before (here and [here]). Also Tamkeen is based on realising the essentiality of love. What roles do trust and love play in our work at the foundation? Can we even invoke a love as an important element of our work or will people say love is something private, not work-related?
- McGilchrist holds that values and purpose are what he calls 'ontologically primitive,' part of the nature of consciousness. It is not for us to define values and purpose, but to discover them. In that sense, this is in line with the principle of emergent purpose that we hold in our organisation - we continuosly discover it while working, rather than to pre-define it and follow it blindly. It also connects with more embodied traditions of knowing, including the work of my teacher Philip Shepherd, who holds that through the body we can connect to the wholeness of being and sense one's purpose in the bigger whole.
Many more questions, but enough for today. I'd love to hear what you think.
Reference: McGilchrist, I. Williams, R. (2023). On the nature of reality | Iain Mcgilchrist and Rowan Williams [accessed on 2024-03-29]