Gabriel Duffy

This site was originally launched to promote my autobiography ‘Sham to Rock’.  It was also intended to arouse interest in the factional novel ‘Inga’, which is in preparation for publication.

Finally, it would provide a forum for philosophical reflections.

The idea for a site came from my friends Jonathan Tapsell and Paul Hughes-Barlow, who generously gave of their time and web expertise to set it up.  Initially it seemed to Paul that pasting in a blurb and reviews for ‘Sham’ would both advertise the book and provide me with a basic tutorial on site work.  If the result was a somewhat untidy jumble of entries, it did get me started.

I gradually began to post the various entries on ‘Inga’; a story which ends on a positive and optimistic view of human nature. (While taking full account of the horrors of our modern world.)

 
Then I wrote the entry ‘On Philosophy’, which led to ‘Husserl’.

That entailed references to Colin Wilson, Abraham Maslow and my awareness that a pattern was forming, for the site as a whole.

These three represent a view of human potential; more precisely of  the untapped potential of the human mind, which is so rare as to be generally ignored, dismissed, or disparaged, in our time.  (Much as the ‘evolutionary humanism’ of  Shaw, Julian Huxley and Teilhard de Chardin, has been lost to mainstream culture.)

Forthcoming entries on Wilson and Maslow will expand on this.

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I did have another major figure in mind, to complete a quartet of  thinkers who represent the human spirit working at its best.  I’d completed the Husserl, with its persistent emphasis on the vital  importance of  intuition, when I came upon a book of his with that very title.  It completed the ‘pattern’, enabling this Guide.

(It also makes more sense here, than tacked on to the ‘Husserl’).

 
‘Intuition’, by Richard Buckminster Fuller (1895-1983), was published in 1972.  Here is a sample of RBF on the cover blurb:

“Again and again,

Step by step,

Intuition opens the doors…

Towards the physical and metaphysical success

Of all humanity.”  

 
Glancing again through ‘Intuition’ to refresh my memory I find it a treasure trove of wisdom: pithy, aphoristic, inspiring; Fuller at his best.  In one passage, he points out that the “corporeal morphology…governed by the internal DNA-RNA genetic codes”, seems to him a partial explanation of how “living phenomena” operate and evolve.  In effect he is saying there is more to life than any ‘corporeal’ code can hope to unravel.  It is implicit here that human consciousness is a prime conundrum.

 
Now in ‘Inga’, their wise old advisor takes a similar line when he suggests to Ted and Inga that there may be a ‘metagenetic DNA’, of Consciousness, governing how and why we think. If we could crack that code, he adds, self-awareness is attainable. Or the self-knowledge Socrates saw as the basis of real wisdom.

Recalling that, it occurred to me to make a wild extrapolation of a kind which would have (I think) amused ‘Bucky’; that I had in a way my own four bases, for a DNA of Consciousness.  To wit:  Husserl: Philosophy; Maslow: Psychology; Wilson: Creativity; Fuller: Eco Science.   Preposterous?  Perhaps.  But to push the  metaphor we need minds, not chemicals, to tackle metagenetics.

But there is of course a tongue in cheek element to restricting a search for meaning and purpose to four men, however gifted.  I have already indicated that Shaw, Teilhard de Chardin and Sir Julian Huxley also have a great deal to teach us.  Read Colin Wilson for a multitude of other creatives who have exerted a similar influence, in the effort to expand our mental awareness. In 50 years of writing he has woven a web of ‘truth-seekers’; Blake, Nietzsche, Gurdjieff, to mention a few ready examples.

He also covers the Oriental sages, like Buddha and Confucius.

Now all of these figures are essentially pioneers, in the attempt to analyse consciousness and reveal its ‘meta-helical’ structure.  I have simply selected four, as apposite to this site ‘pattern’…   

A few lines about women.  In the last century we began to see that long suppressed half of the human race begin to give voice in the realm of ideas.  E.g.: Simone de Beauvoir and Germaine Greer proved two undoubted pathfinders, for ‘the second sex’.   

Here ‘Inga’ is of interest as the story of teenage girl who wishes to become ‘a philosopher’; in my entry ‘Duffy on Inga’ I draw attention to Danah Zohar, as a contemporary creative Thinker of exceptional ability.  I would be remiss to omit here, Ms Marilyn Ferguson, whose book ‘The Aquarian Conspiracy’ (1980) is an astounding tour de force of positive thinking…on our growing potential to attain real humanity and evolve in social harmony.

I need hardly underline her relevance, to the theme of this site.

Finally, ‘Inga’, as a story about the harsh as well as the sublime side of life, is my cue to change tack here, for a Reality Check.                                                      

…At time of writing (this Guide), the 2007 Reith Lectures are being given by Jeffrey D Sachs, under a general heading:

‘Bursting at the seams’ – expressing his primary concern that in our time the greatest threat to human survival is overpopulation: too many of us (and rising) chasing dwindling natural resources. 

His second lecture was given from Beijing, where he discusses the impact of Chinese development (with a nod also to India) on related problems: pollution, global warming, desertification, poverty, famine; all everyday news to us, with the nightmare of war and terror.  Sachs is optimistic that we can find solutions and prevail, by ramming home the message internationally, that all nations and regions must strive to work co-operatively, rise above political, religious, or economic differences, and so on. 

If we do not, our species will be extinct within a century or two.

Sachs is meeting with predictable scepticism from audiences who must feel he is dreaming, in a world permeated by criminal greed and characterised, it seems, by survival of the…slickest. Let us hope that even the most self-interested will begin to see that Sachs is no dreamer and take the point: we unite, or perish.

‘Utopia or Oblivion’ is the title of another book by R B Fuller.

Well Utopia is a tall order indeed, but Co-Operation is less so.

Think of it:  6.6 billion of us on his tiny ‘Spaceship Earth’ and probably far more than the billion Sachs cites, barely subsisting in total abjection.   (But even a billion is a billion too many.)

War, famine, homelessness, all those babies born only to die. It does seem hopeless and depressing, eh; watching the TV news? And not just in the Third World, but on the ‘affluent’ treadmill, the age old catalogue of human conflict and social ills continues.

Never before has radical change been so desperately needed…

I mention Sach’s Reith Lectures as one way of showing that I am fully aware of what must seem my own apparent dreaming; in a world where most people are just struggling, or fighting, to survive, with no time or energy to devote to ‘metagenesis’ or the like.  Well I’m not saying they have to.  But parallel to Sachs I offer the possibility of hope and happier times, if they at least begin to realise that beneficial change can begin with mentally accepting that we are all interdependently equal human beings.

In this “global village” (Marshall McLuhan), we are one tribe.

Just to go beyond paying lip-service to liberty, equality and fraternity, or the idea that race, creed or colour do not matter, and act on them, as facts, would be a powerful way to invoke the truly human spirit of understanding, tolerance and union.

That alone would be an unprecedented advance on the way we presently think, feel and behave…and surely not impossible?

Okay, everyone can’t change overnight; but even a few working  on the principle that co-operation instead of selfish competition  is now the only way to preserve our species, may start a trend…

Whereas Sachs is primarily concerned with what Teilhard de Chardin called “the without” of human life, our theme is his “within” of it: the consciousness which we barely know about. In this respect we may but hope that some major breakthrough in our understanding of the psyche will truly facilitate change.

Insofar as the pattern of this site has emerged, it is beginning to reflect my own aims in the above context: to specifically draw attention to four major thinkers, any one of whom are worthy of attention as pioneers in the study of human conscious potential.

Each of them is scientific in the best sense of the word, in that, as non-judgemental observers of the human condition they work to suppress their personal prejudices and explore it objectively. Or to put it simply they do not preach; seek mainly to enlighten. And like the best scientists, they view problems as…challenges.

Yet, although we may learn a great deal from sages, old or new, it seems to me that it will take a network of diversely talented, or concerned  people, working together, across the globe and bonded by an urgent necessity to do so, if we are to survive. 

We do have the lineaments of such a Community, on the Net.

I return briefly to mention the entry ‘Duffy on Inga’, which was another influence in prompting this Guide.  Not least because it deals with quantum theory as perhaps a vital link between the subatomic dimension and that of consciousness.   I referred to a “Fullerene polymath” I met at Manchester University. I can add here that the reference to Buckminster Fuller was apt, in that he is now quite an icon to many physicists, molecular biologists, to chemists, engineers, and among nanotechnologists. (‘Fullerene’ and ‘Bucky Balls’ are now valid scientific terms, in his honour.)

……………. 

I will refer back to ‘Inga’, to finally focus on one topic which is of  very great importance today: Religion. Their sage reminds Ted and Inga that every religious belief merits respect. He also tells them that for many people across the globe belief in God and a heavenly afterlife is all they have, to sustain them and provide some hope, against an unbearable existence; where poverty, disease and violent conflict inflict unending misery.  

He adds that the need for religious faith is not confined to those areas where existence is arid, but evident in every society; that it takes many forms but everyone has an equal right to believe as their nature, or culture, dictate. If it gives meaning to their lives, provides comfort in affliction and general existential harmony, any deeply held Faith is indispensably beneficial to the infused.

A minority find Faith in Art or Science; the majority are Deists.

We all think, feel, believe, differently; Tolerance must be key. 

I feel that reflection on religion is justified here.  In the sense that of race, creed and colour, it is nowadays creed that seems to be the most intractable of these, in terms of expecting tolerance.

Yet it seems to me that the resurgence of extremely dogmatic Christianity and militant Islamic Fundamentalism is partly a reaction to a technocratic milieu where, especially in the West, even moderate believers are often mocked.   This despite the fact that the United States and Western Europe are nominally Christian and still go to war under the banner of their…God. 

In fact all the major religions have a great deal in common, with  similar aims of satisfying a spirituality, which is ‘unscientific’.

I hark back to Sachs here, on the need to overcome differences; in this instance those between the religions themselves, as well as those between Religion and Science.  For that, let us…Pray.

We stray onto tricky territory there; theological and geopolitical. Beyond the remit of a Guide, which I hope has at least served to illustrate my site pattern and aroused interest in the material.  I do hope you will return to browse as it progresses and…enjoy.