Rock: Venue, Problem, Flourishing in Harbin and Meditation Projects

Venue, Problem, Flourishing

How does venue as scene function to give rise to flourishing, in the present, vis-a-vis Michel Foucault's 'care of the self' in his “Hermeneutic of the Subject”? Flourishing in Ja's project on meditation may be 'accessible' through meditation, where the integrative and releasing aspects of meditation make possible a basis for flourishing. Scott would like to suggest that the venue (as scene or space), vis-a-vis Harbin, gives expression to practices, in response to the problematic as qualities of 'flow' experiences (Csikszentmihalyi), which are kinds of flourishing.

[Eudaimonia (can be translated from the Greek as 'good spirited,' or 'flourishing,' and literally means “having a good guardian spirit”) brings us to Aristotle's “Nichomachean Ethics.” For Aristotle, Eudaimonia is not a means to an end, but an end in itself. Aristotle thought of it as the ultimate goal of life (Nichomachean Ethics: Book I, Ch. 4). Happiness for Aristotle, is not a temporary state or a mood, but a state achieved through virtuous action over lifetime, together with some good fortune (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nicomachean_Ethics).

And Mihalyi Csikszentmihaly's research on enjoyment engages Aristotle explicitly as a basis for conceiving of and empirically studying flow experiences in his book "Flow: the Psychology of Optimal Experience".]

In Scott's project, ethnography shapes a 1st order interpretation of venue, in the present, which gives rise to forms of flourishing, unique to Harbin. But ethnography, which Foucault's “Course Summary” and his examination of 'care of the self' don't engage, is the method through which he examines and interpret the assemblage of Harbin. In terms of second order questions, Scott sees the venue-problem-flourishing question, in the present, in terms of scene, 'howness,' and then the biology-neurophysiology of bliss (with the drug ecstasy – MDMA as an imaginary reference experience), which a nuanced ethnographic approach gives shape to, in the unfolding present, but where imagination and neurophysiology are significant. In terms of a kind of third order questions, it's possible to engage the representational qualities of virtual worlds, to shape a related-Harbin venue, and if people got into their bathtubs while they were in the virtual Harbin pool area, I think field work would show (interviews, conversation, and observation} that a related kind of flourishing emerges here, but more research is needed.


Multi-sited projects

In terms of comparison between Scott's and Jas' projects vis-a-vis venue-problem-flourishing, actual~virtual Harbin Hot Springs is a multi-sited / -venued approach for examining questions of flourishing, as is Jas' project, which incorporates multiple sites where people are getting together in order to practice attention, as a form of meditation. But in Jas' formulation, the mediation practitioners “all do so believing that practicing attention in a certain way will help them to flourish.” So, here site is basically irrelevant, and venue is in people's minds vis-a-vis meditation. [Csikszentmihalyi's research confirms Jas' view that an absorbed mind is what people report as most enjoyable, so the act of attention or focus is what people report as most enjoyable, which gives rise to flourishing]. The scene for Ja, then, is in his project, which is, significantly, a study of meditation; the venue as scene for Ja is meditation, then. For Scott, however, his examination of flourishing emerges in relation to the assemblage of Harbin, whereas site is irrelevant for Ja. But like Ja, Scott interprets the qualities of flourishing experienced at Harbin to be in visitors and residents' minds – as kinds of individual, improvisational operas, to use one metaphor, - but where site vis-a-vis venue is very significant.


Co-constitution

So, for Scott, the problem in terms of how flourishing emerges or functions in relation to the venue of Harbin - its "howness" as problematic – focuses partly on questions of co-constitution, or co-forming. How do people shape flourishing (in themselves) by going into the pools, for example, or by going to Harbin itself, and then how does Harbin, as scene or venue {milieu}, give rise to the “Harbin Experience” and related flourishing. And, in a related way, how might this function virtually? For Ja, the venue of the meditator, or his or her mind, may give rise to a problematic for which meditation is a practice. For Ja, the cultural, social, institutional and other frames within which meditation is practiced become less significant. And the "howness" is the practice, where the "scene" is the form or the mode, as meditation is key. For Scott, the venue (Harbin) is the form, and the howness, as problem, has to do with, also, how are qualities of flourishing (meditation is practiced at Harbin, as well) emerge in these contexts. So Scott is asking, why is Harbin constituting this particular form of subjectivity, vis-a-vis Jas' focus on the generalizability of the meditative practice, regardless of site.


Scott's thesis:

Scott would like to suggest that the venue (as scene), vis-a-vis Harbin, gives expression to practices, in response to the problematic, as qualities of 'flow' experiences (Csikszentmihalyi), which are kinds of flourishing. Those qualities, which are in the 'present,' ('flow' experiences lead to a loss of sense of time - Csikszentmihalyi) have to do with an assemblage that is 'hippiness' or counterculture, which is a response to modernity. And Scott interprets this as happening in three registers, ethnographically.


1st first order sense:

1) Soaking in the clothing-optional Harbin pools emerges as a way of being naked together - often involving cuddling and intimacy for some in the pools - and doing what people like and want to do at Harbin.

2) Being (emphasis mine) in the milieu of Harbin offers an experience of freedom, for the people who are on property, which is a form of flourishing.

3) Harbin and people there have developed a whole range of related practices that build on the above and generate new forms of flourishing, over 37 years, and which emerge from counterculture.


In a 2nd order sense, imagination and biology are integrated

1) Something akin to the relaxation response, a physiological response, occurs in relation to the pools, that then is further developed by the Harbin pool's clothing-optionalness, and the snuggling and sitting that occur there.

2) Some people find these Harbin practices to be a kind of invisible improvisational opera (my language), stimulating their imagination in flourishing ways - which generate, in turn, creative practices and freedoms in their own bodyminds (the imaginative, far-reaching creative expressions and explorations in a countercultural sense – both for individuals and groups at Harbin).

3) These Harbin visitors realize a kind of care of the self in the present, that is, people find these practices to yield a flourishing, so they return again and again to Harbin, as a kind of coming home.

4) Defining flourishing in terms of imagination vis-a-vis Harbin, in a myriad of ways - potentially without limit - opens further possibilities qualities of freedom at Harbin; the vocabulary for this is rich.



Jas' Meditation thesis

Jas' thesis statement: The practice of attention constitutes a venue, that is, a shared "space" that his project creates in order to do concept work, a "space linking multiple sites.” For Ja, the problem is "how to produce a sense of commensurability, stability, wholeness and belonging ('care of the self') out of a manifest (primarily phenomenological) incommensurability. In this context, a meditator might say "my thoughts are scattered and multi-tracked", "I have anxiety", a sense of "not fitting in," or the vagaries of Israeli history scatter me, or all the other things that my fellow meditators are dealing with are multitracking me. So, in order to resolve this problem and care for themselves, these people turn to meditation.


1st order observations:

Meditation allows them to do the following:

1. re-unify body and mind in new ways

2. create an "intentional community"

3. meditation allows meditators to develop a certain level of self-consciousness, an applied reflexivity, which gives them more "space" or "distance" to the problem defined above, so there is already a first-order observation going on in meditation. To some extent, the reflexivity inherent in meditation practice becomes a second-order self-observation.


{Scott observes that a different kind of subjectivity, or positionality, or even neurophysiology, emerges vis-a-vis meditation}.


2nd order observations:

In Jas' examination of meditation and thinking about this in 2nd order terms, Ja provides another level or order of observation because he is

1. comparing sites that are not in direct contact;

2. contextualizing them with reference to their broader national and cultural spaces;

3. participating in these practices, but as an intentional outsider

Scott: or as a participant observer, so, doing field work (see Cerwonka and Malkki's book "Improvising Theory: Process and Temporality in Ethnographic Fieldwork" is helpful in terms of pragmatics of and 'theorizing' field work).


Actual and Virtual

Scott:

Similarly,

1) I'll compare sites that don't have direct contact - actual and virtual

2) contextualized both actually in terms of the 60s and early 70s vis a vis modernity, and in terms of digital technologies, and the ability for the user to shape even ongoing building projects in-world and

3) where I can participate in them as ethnographer {voice and type chat in-world are recordable, with permission, for study}, and

4) where virtual world generation itself, is a form of 2nd order representation, relative to the representation of the actual, as 1st order generation

Scott asks how will ethnographic field work, both actual and virtual, offer ways to understand how the practices that emerge at Harbin in the present, but since 1972 (when Ishvara bought the Harbin property), such as soaking, 'the Harbin Experience,' the dances, the films, are shaped by venue/site. Also how do they express a problematic, to which flourishing is one emergence. Also, what blockages make it difficult to assure them?



To conclude, Scott suggests that Harbin's venue shapes the 'howness,' in which people find 'flow,' that is flourish, in unique-to-Harbin ways, but which are site related.

Ja situates venue apart from his three field sites, in the practice of meditation, which can lead to flourishing.





References

Aristotle. 2003. Nichomachean Ethics. Penguin.

Cerwonka, Allaine, and Liisa Malkki. 2007. "Improvising Theory: Process and Temporality in Ethnographic Fieldwork. Chicago.

Csikszentmihaly, Mihalyi. 1991. Flow: the Psychology of Optimal Experience. Harper.

Foucault, Michel. 2005. The Hermeneutics of the Subject: Lectures at the College de France 1981—1982. Picador.

Rabinow, Paul. 2003. Anthropos Today: Reflections on Modern Equipment. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.

Rabinow, Paul, and Gaymon Bennett. 2007. A Diagnostic of Equipmental Platforms. Working Paper No. 9. anthropos-lab.net/documents/wps/ Berkeley: Anthropology of Contemporary Research Collaboratory.