Aesthetics is Kegan 6

How do you ponder the dialectic between ideologies? Aesthetics

What is level 6 subject to? Creation

Level 6 doubles back to level one, which was a simply perceiving existence, and reclaims perception with the strength of wisdom Image
Wisdom traditions are *not* about teaching you facts, or even ideologies; they are about teaching you to *see rightly*, which vision is the illegible territory every ideology attempts to map

This is why they sound so confusing; you expect maps and they stare at the territory
Wisdom, in other words, is about aesthetics, knowing what is beautiful and what is not

You train this with attention—what you behold transforms you in its image. Reflected beauty becomes our own

This is what meditation is for; what scripture is for. Accept no substitutes
At Kegan 6 you are no longer subject to the conflict of ideologies; you have returned to the origin, to Kegan 1, and you simply view the world—but now you know people, communities, systems, ideological dialectics are all *part* of that world, and you observe them
What constrains you—what you are subject to—no longer lives in your own head exclusively. You are subject to Creation, both in the sense of the world and in the sense of the act of creating. You do not simply self-author, you co-author the world.
You do that through vision, through understanding the world, and then calling forth beauty from it. You Name the world like Adam; you see what could be and you encourage it out. You’re in the image of the seeing speaking acting creating God
Fear is the mind killer, the blinding force; it’s opposite for John the apostle is love, because love sees rightly and fully. Fear draws you into yourself, love draws you into the creation that governs you and which you govern
I only started to understand this once I’d written this thread; I realized that what I found beautiful and good lay behind everything else, and that it was central

This isn’t news; the first three chapters of Genesis SCREAM this at you.

Good to the eyes indeed
The difference between level 6 and level 5 is that you cease to think *through* your aesthetic preferences and begin to think *on* them, to shape them

You meditate on the beautiful so that you can find different things beautiful
Wisdom literature (which is to say all of Scripture) really only comes into its own at this level. It presents you with goodness and ugliness and gives few explanations (explanations are sooooo level 4). You meditate on that beauty and it transforms your aesthetics

• • •

Missing some Tweet in this thread? You can try to force a refresh
 

Keep Current with Poor Yorick

Poor Yorick Profile picture

Stay in touch and get notified when new unrolls are available from this author!

Read all threads

This Thread may be Removed Anytime!

PDF

Twitter may remove this content at anytime! Save it as PDF for later use!

Try unrolling a thread yourself!

how to unroll video
  1. Follow @ThreadReaderApp to mention us!

  2. From a Twitter thread mention us with a keyword "unroll"
@threadreaderapp unroll

Practice here first or read more on our help page!

More from @a_fellow_of

20 Nov
I had the weird experience in high school of going from pretty weird/awkward to charismatic/popular in about 6 months

The problem was I didn’t realize it was happening

I essentially didn’t believe anyone would be into me, and so I mishandled things badly
I definitely led a few girls on because I didn’t think I could really, you know, do that

Leading people on was for cool people

Not that I was entirely oblivious to the pleasures of attention, but that I used my self-ID as “uncool” to avoid *noticing* that that was going on
I also could never close

Everyone in my high school thought i was gay, because I was flirty and (it turned out) desirable and never pulled the trigger

But I was never sure what I was supposed to do! I faced a couple problems:
1) was Xian and didn’t want to just mess around
Read 11 tweets
20 Nov
a series of alphanumerical chains rumored to instill uncontrollable psychic powers in the reader
the cryptic texts of a 4th century rodent cult
Read 5 tweets
17 Nov
Alexander's 15 Principles as applied to sermons

1. Levels of Scale

Good things are structured at every level, and each level helps the others

in particular, the largest *does not* simply determine the smallest; they are both shaped by one another
I think this means that our sermon shouldn't be shaped at the beginning of our writing process by a simple "hook", an empty image of what the sermon *should* look like that we fill in with verbal concrete

the levels need to shape one another
2. Strong Centers

Our sermons still need coherence, though; the bits need to work together. One way to do this *is* to have some larger image that you're trying to build and point back to, some key theme that undergirds every part of the sermon ImageImage
Read 43 tweets
17 Nov
So I want to find a way to redesign the way I/my church/evangelicalism in general writes sermons

I'm reading Alexander's "The Nature of Order" and it's super helpful for this

I think building beautiful things is a deeper way of thinking, that somewhat translates across domains
First let me articulate what I find dissatisfying about current sermon prep

We begin with a "hook", a concise main point summed up as a sentence, and then we have ~3 sub points that support/build on that "hook"

This gives sermons a sort of top-down symmetry ImageImage
We do things this way because it's a clearly communicable method, something a beginner preacher can just fill-in-the-blanks and do. And it makes it easier to coordinate sermons across locations so two preachers can preach the same thing: same hook, same points
Read 10 tweets
11 May
I'm gonna try to do the long-list-of-opinions thing but I don't know if I have the follower account to do the one like, one opinion thing

So let's just see what I can rattle off about wisdom
1. Wisdom assumes that the world is ordered. This sounds trivial, but it's not; there's a whole lot of power packed into the belief that the world is ordered and you can perceive that order.
2. Wisdom also assumes that the world's order is fractal--that analogies work, that what is above mirrors what is below, that order passes through levels of abstraction
Read 77 tweets
7 Nov 19
So I’ve recently been increasingly conflicted re: cops. I grew up in the sort of family (let’s call it ascendant working-class) that was *very* pro-cop: thin blue line, that kind of thing. Have some ex-cops in the family, who I quite like
Plus, families like mine tend to 1) relatively rarely have negative run ins with the police and 2) generally act so respectful to cops that they get pretty positive handling. Not because they fear cops but because they respect them. Also, my small town had pretty good police
So I grew up with a generally positive view of police. Never really had a negative run in. But then I crack open the DoJ’s report on police killings and brutality in places like Baltimore and Cleveland, and... whoa. ImageImage
Read 16 tweets

Did Thread Reader help you today?

Support us! We are indie developers!


This site is made by just two indie developers on a laptop doing marketing, support and development! Read more about the story.

Become a Premium Member ($3/month or $30/year) and get exclusive features!

Become Premium

Too expensive? Make a small donation by buying us coffee ($5) or help with server cost ($10)

Donate via Paypal Become our Patreon

Thank you for your support!

Follow Us on Twitter!