Introducing Verge of Now
Verge of Now is retired, but the next three posts I'll leave up as is. New posts are under the Silent Letters banner.
“To see what is in front of one’s nose needs a constant struggle,” Orwell famously observed.
Consider the observer effect, the mysterious cause of the collapse of light waves into particles. We could just as well call it the observed-observer effect, because the collapsed light wave is equally “the observer,” perceiving change in its environment and responding with an “effect.” Our way with words can be simplifying and self-referential, reinforcing unexamined assumptions and putting the rest of the universe in the dark. Poetic expression aside, we do this all the time but it can be hard to see until someone points it out.
I’m interested in words and what they can point to, and I’m equally interested in what they obscure. I dismantle unexamined assumptions. I look at the ways I am blind in order to see what might be found.
The above and more of what Silent Letters is can be found on my “About” page. I copied this bit here and begin with this observation because it’s as good a sample as any of what I’m aiming for.
Why I Write
I didn’t write as a child. I didn’t keep a journal or dream up stories or do much of anything you would call creative. I read a few books and a lot of news though, and I will confess I was possessed by an adolescent dream of having my own opinion column. What I’m launching here is not so different than what I conceived forty odd years ago, before I learned that all but the most intimate information space is a psyop to prepare the battlefield of our minds, objectives ranging in banality from ‘buy this toothpaste’ to ‘kill those foreigners.’
I write now because, after all those years of taking things in and never speaking or writing of them, it’s time to exhale lest I float off into space or explode from the internal pressure. I write now because here on substack, at least for the time being, I’m free of editorial oversight, subject only to my own inner lights. I’m curious to discover what will come out.
Preface to the Real Introduction – Part I
A Map of your Mind and Mine
There is no getting to where I want to go, i.e. where I’m free to riff as I please on whatever strikes me, without passing through a bit of academia. This old school professor’s discovery of how attention works, which confirms ancient wisdom traditions all over the world, provides a lens and a vocabulary I find compelling and widely applicable. However, the words that will form Silent Letters are my own hill to die on. I wish to be neither parasocial nor ride his coattails.
Dr. Iain McGilchrist discovered our brain is divided into asymmetric hemispheres which gives us access to two different attention types at all times. We slide back and forth, subconsciously and continuously, between the left hemisphere mode of narrow, bright focus and the right hemisphere mode of open, searching perception. What we see, and conversely what we don’t see, depends on how we pay attention.
In the early days of cell phones, did you ever text while driving? That moment when everything in the universe but your texting disappeared, which hopefully you snapped out of before hitting a light pole, is an example of your left hemisphere taking temporary charge of your attention. Bright, narrow focus can be appropriate or not, depending on the circumstances, but when it takes over completely you become temporarily blind to everything except what you’re focused on. That’s the quickest way I can think of to communicate the idea to you. I’ll leave it at that and encourage you to look into the source material.
I pondered hemisphere theory for several years now and consider the main argument ironclad. I approach the idea as an engineer, seeing applications for the discovery which I feel offers unparalleled insight into who we are and where we live. Verge of Now will be all over the place and I won’t talk about the brain stuff much explicitly, but there’s a reason I bring this to the foreground.
Preface to the Real Introduction – Part II
Music of the Inner Spheres
In late summer 2022, hiking in the Rocky Mountains, I had a prolonged, once-in-a-lifetime encounter with my hemispheres and a lot more. I unpack the experience in Meeting Mountain, Mind, and the Momma Grizzly. In many ways Mountain is my real introduction, but it’s unlike anything else I’ll ever write.
Mountain needs its own introduction – the experience was so singular I made the structure unlike anything I’ve ever read. I couldn’t just drop it on you without some explanation. It’s free of academic citations but when you read it you’ll know it’s as true as any science experiment, which is to say bounded and partial, never the whole story but illuminating all the same.
It’s said that we detached moderns are still indigenous to the planet, and that our own health and fulfillment call us to recover our own indigenous ways of being and knowing. Mountain is my testimony. I wish to convey the sheer wonder that is in us and around us, even if you live in the city or have no access to the wild.
I hope to see you on the other side of Meeting Mountain, Mind, and the Momma Grizzly. Let me know what you think and what, if anything, connects with you. Or constructively, what doesn’t.
Meeting Mountain, Mind, and the Momma Grizzly
Jeff Verge – Silent Letters