The Monophonic Self... Or The Polyphonic Self

What Do You Mean? I have So Little Time On My Hands As It Is!

When I got make the argument that the Renaissance stands as some sort of human potential landmark that would serve us all well to consider more thoughtfully I am sure to get a few skeptics wondering how the hell they are going to fit more considerations into an alreayd overwhelmed existence. This is understandable. I mean, how can we be a world-class sculptor and painter ala Michelangelo? Isn't that a bit much to ask?

Maybe looking at it that way is to miss the point. Maybe looking at it from an 'achievment perspective' is the exact opposite of what I am getting at.

So, 'What am I getting at then?' you may ask. Well, I am getting at the psychology of the Renaissance. It is that same psychology--or, paradigm, if you will--that seems to have informed the Samurai of Japan, the greatest era of Liberal Arts Education as found in Europe and the Americas, and, I am contending, the burgeoning Integral Movement championed by the likes of the late India sage, Sri Aurobindo, Esalen's Michael Murhpy, and the contemporary philosopher Ken Wilber.

Despite the noticable differences in each of the philosophies, paradigms, psychology's espoused by the above, there is a common theme that each contends holds true: namely, that we are multi-dimensional beings; beings that we exist on mutliple levels of reality. Some put in the terms of the Perrenial Philosophy, stating that we are constituted of body, mind, soul, and spirit. Others delineate us according to quadrants, lines, levels (Ken Wilber). Someone like Sri Aurobindo suggest that the human-being is a multiplicity of potential 'states of consciousness' that unfold progressively through stages.

Like I said, there is a common thread that runs throughout each of these 'maps' or 'systems' that seeks to explain who we are. Each 'map' converges on the theme of our inherent multiplicity as human-beings.


The Efficiencies Of the Monophonic Self

Maybe it was the assertion of the sciences of increasing reductionism--those which sought to discover the 'essence of all things;' to find the 'lowest common denominator' of our humanness. Perhaps it was the Judeo-Christian concept of the soul as this inviolable substance that went far beyond the gates of heaven and hell in its existence; that was the 'one thing' we most certainly are. Whatever it was--the prime cause--there has come to be an emphasis on discovering 'who we are.' 'What is my True Self?' has been one of the chief questions of the past 50 years or so. People in the developed nations of the world have been asking this question with an intensity that has grown to the point that 'Self-Help' books are being found in supermarket checkout lines.

The Answer. What is The Answer? Who am I? Why am I here? What am I here for?

There is an assumption behind these sorts of questions that presumes there is a single answer! Can't you feel it? Can't you feel that assumption? Haven't you felt it? Hasn't each of us, in our own way, been on a search for the One Big Thing? The One Big Thing in the form of a wife or husband, a job or a mission, a plan or an idea, a winfall or a lottery-prize? Aren't we all seduced by the prime tenet of Monotheistic Pscyhology: that there is really only ONE!?!


What's Wrong With The One?

So many of us spend so much time looking for 'the One.' We bounce around from relationship to relationship, from town to town, from city to city, from bed to bed, from bar to bar--all in search of the 'that One.' Job after job and house after house we never seem to be able to settle. There is a perpetual agony with the search it seems to me. Shoot! I am no better and have spent a good portion of my time searching for 'the One' too!

The thing is, not unlike yourself, I wanted it to stop. I wanted to fine 'the One.' I wanted to locate 'the One' in space and time--i.e., in a job or a lover or a town or a guru or a philosophical system. I wanted to find 'the One!' I wanted my restless search to be over. I wanted the game of life as a game of musical chairs to end! I was dying to find 'the One.'

I don't think it is at all a stretch of my own imagination--nor anyone else's for that matter--to imply that this search... this desperate ache for 'the One'... is not just my own. I think it is pandemic. I personally have come to conclude that this desperate desire to discover 'the One' and fuse with 'it,' whatever 'it' might be, is a logical consequence of monotheism. And following from that conclusion I am daring to contend that there is a possibility of relief from the agonies/ecstasies of the search (or should I say agonies and false hopes?) in investigating the history of polyphonic humanity in the form of the Renaissance, the Sumarai, and the potential seemingly offered by the burgeoning Integral Movement.

Most of my evidence for contending that there is relief to be found from the cultural norm of 'monotheistic psychology' is founded on this logic:

1) If we are a multiplicity--a multidimensional species, a diverse conglomeration of varius entities, a community, a polyphony.. then...

2) no 'single thing' is bound to result in satisfaction, contentment, fulfillment, happiness, or what have you.

In other words, no 'thing' can be 'the ONE!'

According to that logic it would appear to indicate that monotheistic psychologies are inherently unsatisfying. That is an apparent truth that seems to be corroborated by the glorious degree of consumption of goods, services, commodities, and relationships that the Judeo-Christian West is infamous for--and all to no avail!