Caulfield’s argument in favor of David Gray’s “liminal thinking” is very appealing but emotionally and cognitively a big leap. Why should we spend our time and our social capital clamboring up somebody else’s ziggurat of understanding? Personally, I am aware of how little my own model is the smallest of strange attractors. I am OK with it, but small scale, part-time farming, the idea of usufruct, sustainable, minimum viable footprint, maximum return of fertility, ad infinitum…to call this “conservatism” is to radicalize that term. It is a radically conservative idea that the land is the commons. Or at least some of it. We only are allowed the fruits. It is even hard to say this without knowing the larger hypocrisies I am guilty (car, tractor, commute, growing meat animals for slaughter).
What conceivable value does this have for anyone other than my wife and me? And the answer to that is “no one”. That harsh truth is borne out amongst most of my readership. It is borne out in my own family. No one wants at this point to carry on this model of thought by pushing it into the future another couple of generations. And we don’t have grandkids to proselytize. Most people are not interested in climbing my model of understanding or even using the tools I have developed in applying my model into other areas of my life like teaching and learning.
I know I sound like a whinger here and have for awhile, but I have been advocating for slow consideration of others “farms” by taking walks in their “fields” for a number of years now, but I think I have come up with an personal insight into why this hasn’t worked: I am still viewing my colleagues’ model through my own filters. I have not considered throwing off my own personal blinders and become a liminal thinker.
Here is a very small way to begin to do that. I have put Jim Gray’s video introducing “liminal thinking” on Vialogues and below where we can have at it. I am not sure what “having at it” means, but I think figuring out a way to shuck off as best we can enough of our personal biases, assumptions, and personal models of thought, that is the source of our way to adopt someone else’s model of thought at least temporarily. I don’t think Gray addresses what happens after we do that or as we do that, but that is probably something he is saving for his book, Liminal Thinking, which is not yet published. That’s ok, there is plenty on his website.