David Abram at the SEED Language of Spirit Conference

Video presented by the Foundation for Global Humanity (http://www.f4gh.org/home). Albuquerque based SEED Graduate Institute has hosted a meeting of the minds between quantum physicists, Native American scholars, and linguists to discuss the underlying principles of the Universe, based on a mutual respect for their differences in worldviews. The format followed the late David Bohm's work "On Dialogue".

David is a cultural ecologist, philosopher and author of The Spell of the Sensuous: Perception and Language in a More-Than-Human World (Vintage, 1996) and his new book Becoming Animal: An Earthly Cosmology (Pantheon 2010). Through words and imagery, David Abram speaks fo the SEED conference and his view that a dialogue on "time" must "aim toward the present moment." David expresses, with impassioned clarity, that "to come deeply into relationship with one another and with our world necessitates that we drop inside of time into the thick of the sensuous present..."

To obtain a DVD of this and other interviews via donation visit: http://www.f4gh.org/store

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[vihiway]

weird to watch him talk about this in that context....

[jatrent411]

The 13th annual Language of Spirit conference, August 13th - 16th, 2011 at the Embassy Suites Hotel in Albuquerque NM. Register online or by phone:

(505) 792 - 2900

[SwimminginaBubbler]

You're saying Abram is a narcissist? If so, why would you say that?

[Corndigable]

@rtsteltz1, I am thankful that we are not all afraid of ourselves, running always to help others because we feel that they too must live hating themselves.

[aMUSEher]

Thank you David.

[aMUSEher]

His viewpoints, supported by phenomenology, also dovetail with the luminous awareness present within all beings. I meditate in the Buddhist tradition and his ideas speak to me without words. I communicate with animals with and without words. Our essence transcends any linear time line and all concepts..

[SwimminginaBubbler]

Cool. Would you be willing to share your Zerzan critique with me?--I'd love to read it! Sounds really similar to where I'm coming from actually.

Didn't mean to imply that Zerzan rejects Abram outright, btw--as I said earlier, he praises Spell apart from its ending (because Abram doesn't call for the wholesale violent overthrow of civ, technology, written language, etc.).

I agree Zerzan seems not to fully register post-Heideggerian phenomenology and is imo overly deterministic, Manichean, etc.

[Anarch0tec]

I've written a critique of Zerzan too, mostly focusing on the pro's and con's of rejecting symbolic thought - it is not just that we 'rejects' Abram, it's that he rejects a lot of other thinkers who I don't think he fully understands. Heidegger is one of them.

THanks for the feedback !

I haven't been NW, but I assume there are more followers of Abram there than anywhere else ;-)

[SwimminginaBubbler]

I agree with you about Zerzan. I've read all his stuff (and the bulk of Jensen's) and I dig a lot of what he has to say, but I also find him too closed off to other views, Abram's being a perfect example.

Am in the process of writing an Abram-inspired critique of Zerzan and Jensen, so it's nice to hear there's interest for it! :)

[SwimminginaBubbler]

Thanks for the follow up--really encouraging to hear! Do you find such groups mostly in the NW or elsewhere, too?