I’ve been interacting with Alex Klaushofer since 2014 though I discover I’ve mentioned her previously only once, just earlier this past year in a Leonard Cohen context. (We met in a Theos / Rupert Sheldrake context originally.)
Natural theology is probably my new favourite word for whatever worldview we share – the reality of human values, something more, beyond orthodox scientific objectivity. That and a shared need to relate to human experience beyond the confines of our home culture. We differ recently in so far as she sees much more threat in restricted freedoms – eg in Covid responses and the rise of more right-wing authority – where I see a more pragmatic “shit-happens” bureaucratic incompetence. A difference of political and metaphysical focus.
Anyway, as an actual journalist / writer, she’s written more (and better) than I have, and I’ve not done justice to reading her published stuff closely enough until recently. Here, three links from her current SubStack platform “Ways of Seeing”:
The need for human company, how often, and what form it takes, varies hugely from person to person, and at different times within the life of the same person. But it is not something that we can do without, nor is it wise to construct a society which gives the state the power to take it away.
Can’t argue with that. As someone who’s been remote working on multi-national projects for decades before Covid I can assure anyone that real human interaction has to be part of the mix. And …
As a modern human, I re-affirm my need-right to spend time in nature.
As I was saying myself only recently. And human nature IS a part of nature, a part that the orthodoxy of received wisdom tries very hard to discount and ignore. (And the reason I see a more fundamental metaphysical problem whereby the orthodoxy supports nefarious authoritarian aims.) For me the “song and dance of life” has always been live music, the sweatier the better – something I do regularly mention in the blog, even if the encounters with nature herself tend to go unmentioned in symbolic language.
“Ways of Seeing” (*) is a telling title for her blog.
100% aligned with Iain McGilchrist’s natural theology agenda.
(* Though as she points out, it’s clearly a Berger reference. The socio-political scholars point out that we have choices and are influenced by peers and power-structures in our “ways of seeing” the world. The neuroscientists simply reinforce that we physically evolved to have this gift, but have allowed an orthodoxy of “received wisdom” to dominate our choices of world-views.)
Alex Klaushofer. Worth a read and a follow.
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[Follow-up post here: Tower of Song]