There was a thrilling moment in the recent Communication course I did. I was on stage getting some coaching from the course leader about an issue I have with another person whom I’ll call X.
I was complaining about X and in my complaint I used a “distinction” we learn at Landmark.
What’s a distinction?
A distinction is a common philosophical term that means to bring something from the background to the foreground; it refers to the act of distinguishing something.
“Number” is a distinction. Without the distinction “number”, we wouldn’t have mathematics, technology and a host of other things. “Balance” is another distinction. Consider a child learning to ride a bike. At one moment, the child doesn’t have the distinction “balance”, in the next moment, the child does. And once they have it, they can never un-have it. Distinctions are like fields or realms which allow things to show up, to be perceptible.
I’ll call the distinction involved in my complaint Y.
Five amazing words
So what I said to the course leader was something like,
X is really hard to deal with because X has Y.
You get the picture that Y is a not a good thing, right? Right. When I said this the course leader asked me if X had done a Landmark course and I said no. Then the course leader said this amazing thing:
Then X doesn’t have Y, like dog doesn’t have music stand.
Now speaking as a one-time philosopher, this is just brilliant. For umpteen reasons. Trust me. If there are any mathematicians reading, it is the equivalent of the sweetest of mathematical proofs. It has phenomenal compression and elegance, “elegance” in the engineering or design or mathematical sense of achieving maximum function with minimum moves.
Stay with me, won’t you, while I try to see how it works …
Vorhandendheit
First notable thing. She made the point with whatever she had to hand, in this case, the music stand.
Anyone who’s done a Landmark Education course knows the course leaders travel lightly. A folder of notes, a collapsible music stand on which to rest it, a director’s chair and a chalkboard is all they have. And yet from these simple pieces of equipment they make props and skits and jokes and highly sophisticated philosophical investigations.
Without computer, book, projector, PowerPoint or any of the other paraphenalia of pedagogy, the course leader made her devastating point with simply the first thing on which her eye fell.
Dog’s eye view
Second notable thing. With five words – “dog doesn’t have music stand” – she completely disappeared my concern. And she did so by addressing not the content of my concern, but the context or meta-point.
A dog doesn’t have “music stand.” Instead, a dog has something like “object to pee on” or “object getting in my way of chasing cat.”
With a dog’s eye view of the world, “music stand” literally does not exist. To return to the definition of a distinction, dog has not “distinguished” music stand, ie, dog has not had cause to bring “music stand” from the background to the foreground as music stand.
Category error
You can see straightway that it’s pointless to try to talk about dog and music stand in the same sentence. It’s nonsensical because music stand does not apply to dog. It’s like a category error.
In the same way, the course leader was saying (though without saying, you see?), it was pointless for me to try to talk about X and Y in the same sentence.
My concern evaporated
As soon as she said the words, my concern evaporated because it literally could not be sustained. And here’s where it becomes very beautiful: my concern evaporated not because I no longer had issues with X but because the explanation I’d attached to “having issues with X”, the justification, the reasons, could not be sustained.
Just so you know, the course leader did say other things that went to the content of my concern, but the real work had been done in those five words when she was addressing the context.
Transformational vs Informational Learning
The exchange I had with the course leader was a very great example of the kind of coaching you get in Landmark, and a very great example of the kind of learning that’s involved which is transformational learning, rather than informational learning.
Transformational learning is not in the realm of explanation, reason and description. It’s not about information. This is one of the reasons why what you hear in the Landmark Forum and other Landmark courses often has a koan-like quality as in my dog example. It’s also one of the reasons why Landmark graduates can be nonplussed when non-graduates ask,
… but what’s the Forum about?
Because this is a request for explanation and it’s both impossible and inimical to convey the experience of transformational learning using explanations.
The world is out there; the truth about the world, elsewhere
Third notable thing. When the course leader said what she said she was demonstrating one of the most basic premises of all Landmark courses: that the world arises in language.
This was the breakthrough intuition of Continental philosophy in the 20th century. At a certain point in that century, philosophy stopped, pivoted on its heel and made what is known as the “linguistic turn”. Suddenly, somehow, it became clear that the world is created in language, and that until that point, philosophy had been paddling in the shallows. Thousands of years! Playing with artefacts! All the time, the true source – language – had been just doing its thing. And what was its thing? Nothing less than bringing the world into being.
Some people object to this. They say things like, “That’s rubbish! Things do actually exist.” Or, “What about trees? And animals? And cars? Are you saying they aren’t there?” Or,
But what about reality?
The point is not that the world is not out there. The point is that the truth about the world is not out there. The truth about the world is with us, with language. In what we say about the world, about others, about ourselves, either silently or interiorly, or for everyone to hear.
Saying the world into being
The world comes into being for us through what we say about it. We say the world into being.
So when the course leader said the words “Then X doesn’t have Y, like dog doesn’t have music stand”, she was also showing me that my world about X was showing up in language, and that X’s world was showing up for X in language. I was attempting the impossible: to attribute to X something X didn’t have, in language. I had it in language, but X didn’t. Literally, therefore, despite my complaint, X did not have Y.
I was routed, and in the most instructive and powerful way.
*****
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I really like this post and the idea is both intellectually and emotionally appealing. But . . . doesn’t this kind of thinking open the door for normalisation of negative behaviour? Say you have an organisational deviant–isn’t the best way to deal with them to fix them rather than have everyone tip toe around them making allowances for limitations in their world view? Or am I missing something?
haha, no, you’re not missing something. Priceless question. If I asked it in the Landmark Forum, the Forum leader would probably respond, “And how’s that working out for you, fixing people?” And then everyone would laugh because everyone would have had a variant of the same question.
It goes to the entire content of all Landmark’s courses: how to have loving, satisfying, productive relationships with others given that fixing them is not possible? You raise the organisational context, and yes, you could probably say there are ways someone can be “fixed” in that context, though they might not also be ways to have satisfying, productive relationships.
But say it’s a family we’re talking about? A husband who’s doing something that doesn’t work for the wife or the marriage? A mother who’s doing something that’s having a negative impact on her children? A son or daughter going seriously astray?
Or what about if it’s a country, or a religion? Say if we’re talking about the Israelis and Palestinians. Look how far attempts at fixing the Other go in these contexts.
The central plank of what we learn in Landmark is that faced with the desire to have loving, satisfying relations with others, we have one thing and one thing only at our disposal: who we are being. It sounds like it’s not much, yeh? Only it is much, very much.
Very Buddhist, too. If you play it out logically the solution is the best and most logical–we need to fix ourselves.
Thanks–this is an interesting challenge to think about.
Or maybe it’s not fixing that’s required …
I like the sound of that!!
Please enlighten me, Narelle.
How do you manage to distinguish the world out there in order to establish that it does not exist?
Does this come before or after the truth of its non-existence is assigned by language? Or is language and non-existence of the world out there coterminous?
How can there be criteria to apply to distinguish out-there from in-here if out-there does not exist?
You need to read what I wrote again. I didn’t say the world is not out there or doesn’t exist. I said the opposite.
Thank you, Narelle. I have re-read your thesis.
Notwithstanding your ninth heading, as a dog I am unable to discern a music stand, let alone speak as to its location away from its truth. I am spellbound that you are able to distinguish existence from truth. Teach me more, particularly about language, since I do not have it.
Perhaps you do not seek consistency when you extend the discussion from dogs to human beings, in which case I must read a third time.
Sorry. I don’t speak dog peeing on object. I speak music stand.
Language that brings music stands into existence? Out-there, in-here or somewhere in between?
Woof.
:)