* Book: Spretnak, C. Relational Reality: New discoveries of Interrelatedness That Are Transforming the Modern World Topsham: Green Horizon Books, 2011

URL = http://www.charlenespretnak.com/RelationalReality/index.html

Summary

1.

"Ms. Spretnak's eighth book, Relational Reality: New Discoveries of Interrelatedness That Are Transforming the Modern World was published in 2011. Noting that our hypermodern societies, currently possess only a kindergarten understanding of the deeply relational nature of reality, she illuminates the coherence of numerous recent discoveries that are moving the relational worldview from the margins into the mainstream. The central realization, with myriad manifestations, is that all entities in this world, including humans, are thoroughly relational beings of great complexity who are both composed of and nested within contextual networks of creative, dynamic interrelationships. Nothing exists outside of those relationships. She presents newly created relational approaches that are already transforming the way we educate our children, attend to our health, green our communities, and rethink economic activity. New analysis of the crises of modernity and bountiful new solutions are the result." (http://www.charlenespretnak.com/contact.html)

2.

"Relational Reality reveals the coherence among numerous surprising discoveries of the interrelated nature of reality. These discoveries have resulted in a new perspective that has been emerging gradually for the past several decades but has gained momentum and is now transforming every mainstream field of human endeavor. All our basic assumptions (built on the old idea that everything in the physical world is essentially separate and functions mechanistically) are being reconsidered. No longer a marginal perspective, the Relational Shift is based on the realization that all entities in this world, including humans, are thoroughly relational beings of great complexity who are both composed of and nested within networks of creative, dynamic interrelationships. Nothing exists outside of those relationships. As we try to grasp the interrelated nature of reality, emergent relational approaches are already transforming the way we educate our children, attend to our health, green our communities, and rethink economic activity. New analyses of the crises of modernity and abundant new solutions are the result." (http://www.charlenespretnak.com/RelationalReality/index.html)

Review

by Gina Messina-Dysert:

"In Relational Reality, Spretnak explains that we have “missed the way the world works” as a result of our cultural tendencies. “The failure to notice that reality is inherently dynamic and interrelated at all levels – including substance and functioning – has caused a vast range of suffering” (1). Spretnak offers “snapshots” of the various crises we face within education and parenting, health and healthcare, community design and architecture, and the economy with purpose; to name the suffering and hardship endured within the world and demonstrate that these crises are the result of anti-relational thinking. She states these problems cannot be corrected until they are acknowledged; “Only then can we grasp the significance of the relational breakthroughs and solutions that are emerging” (20).

Following each crisis “snapshot”, Spretnak discusses emerging relational approaches that are already transforming our lives. As a teacher and hopefully soon to be parent via adoption, I found the chapter on education and parenting to be particularly captivating. While modernity has led to high levels of functional illiteracy, lack of critical thinking, poor social skills, and narcissism, relational factors within education have resulted in high levels of academic success. Spretnak explains that rather than money or class size, “relational trust” between teachers, students, parents and administration is what has led to positive outcomes within education. She states, “Cultivating relational trust…turns out to be the secret of success” (40). Efforts to revitalize our lives include ecoliteracy and relational knowledge programs. Students who have been concerned about specific issues or feel connected to a certain cause are drawn to pragmatic solutions allowing for a relational shift.

Likewise, efforts within health care, community design, and economy are resulting in the revitalization of our communities. Various types of eco-therapy are being successfully utilized to relieve symptoms of ADHD and stimulate memory in Alzheimer’s patients. The City Repair movement, which seeks to enliven urban areas through the work of volunteers, has spread nationally. Organic architecture has created buildings that are in harmony with nature and allow for “daylighted” spaces that reunite our bodyminds with the sun. Grassroots aid organizations that focus on co-creating with communities have been incredibly productive in rebuilding economy. Although crisis clearly exists, the examples of revitalization and relational shift are many.

In the final chapter, “Stepping Up,” Spretnak calls for us to make the relational shift by learning to live and discern in relational ways. She explains that in the Western world, we “hardly have the necessary vocabulary to shift our thoughts and utterances to a more deeply relational orientation. Vietnamese monk and peace activist Thich Nhat Hanh has suggested we think of existence as matter of interbeing. We interare. They interare. Everyone interis. Our bodymind needs real connection with the embodied presence of other people and with nature” (201-2).

According to Spretnak, “Communion with nature…enables us to be our true, caring, generous, and expansive selves. It seems to free us of the psychological restrictions – self-absorption, disengagement, and diminished empathy – commonly imposed by modern, industrialized cultures, which are proudly devoted to progressing in opposition to nature” (202).

In a world where emails and text messages are our primary form of communication, our work environments are enclosed structures with artificial lighting, and our communities depend on global economics for survival, our relational abilities have suffered greatly.

Spretnak offers an illuminating read by providing an eye opening look at the crises we face as a result of modernity as well as the scientific evidence that supports the relational way our world works. Optimism is imbued throughout her work with the countless examples of efforts that are revitalizing our communities and initiating a Relational Shift in the collective conscious of humanity. However, there is much work that needs to be done, and thus Spretnak calls us to recognize this and live in relational ways." (http://feminismandreligion.com/2011/08/16/charlene-spretnak%E2%80%99s-%E2%80%9Crelational-reality%E2%80%9D-an-illuminating-read-by-gina-messina-dysert/)

Excerpt

Charlene Spretnak:

"Our hypermodern societies currently possess only a kindergarten-level understanding of the deeply relational nature of reality. It may seem unlikely that such advanced cultures could have missed “the way the world works,” but it was simply a matter of habit. Our cultural tendency has been to perceive the physical worlds as an aggregate of separate entities. We noticed some relationships between and among things, of course, but those seemed of marginal significance compared to what things are made of and how they function. The failure to notice that reality is inherently dynamic and interrelated at all levels – including substance and functioning – has caused a vast range of suffering: our medical system designed treatments as if our bodies were biomachines with independently functioning parts; our education systems regarded students as essentially isolate units into which learning can be implanted; our psychologists authoritatively conveyed to patients the Freudian notion that separating from core family relationships is the key to healthy maturation; and our workplaces and dwellings were designed with no inkling of the relationship between human health and natural light. Moreover, our communities have become fragmented and alienating, as the focus of modern life has largely contracted to the sphere of the Individual Consumer, a disintegration that has not been countered by support for the social fabric. Even more tragically, the entire planet is now imperilled by climate destabilization and ecological degradation, resulting from the modern assumption that highly advanced societies could throw toxic substances “away” somewhere and could exude staggeringly unnatural levels of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases into our atmosphere without ill effect… " (Spretnak, C. Relational Reality: New discoveries of Interrelatedness That Are Transforming the Modern World Topsham: Green Horizon Books p. 1-2)

The relational shift and the effect on our children

"Of all the areas being revitalized by the Relational Shift, the education of our children may well be the most poignant. While the relational perspective is, as yet, more influential in the academic disciplines at universities than it is in elementary and secondary schools, this is a moment of tremendous potential for reshaping the educational experience of young children starting out on their journey from kindergarten to high school graduation – and beyond. For the first time in the modern era, they are increasingly likely to be taught not the misleading mechanistic worldview but, rather, a coherent presentation of the relational nature of reality, a study of the fundamental relationships of the physical world and the cultures of the human family.

An organic progression would begin for very young children with a focus on the internal relationships that allow their own bodies to work so well (that is, a version for 5- and 6-year olds of the recent discoveries in relational physiology that reveal how creative and smart our internal bodymind relationships are).

This would lead to a focus on the relationships between their bodies and the sun, the weather, and water and subsequently to relationships between oxygen and breathing, between sunlight and photosynthesis for plants, between bees and pollination, and between juveniles and their parents in all animal and human families. From the early years of elementary education the children would enter into an understanding that the various areas of study are specific ways of grasping the relationships that constitute the world. They would learn about relationships among numbers (arithmetic); relationships among letters and words (reading, writing, and storytelling); relationships among the sun, the Earth, the moon, and the other planets (science); relationships among people who constitute a culture (social studies), and so on.

As the children mature, through high school, their understanding of the dynamic, creative relationships that constitute life becomes increasingly advanced, in areas such as literature, mathematics, science, history, art, music, social studies and political science (what used to be called civics). These would no longer be viewed as isolated fields, from which students readily disengage. They would comprise ways for students to grasp the relationships in which they themselves exist. In each area, understanding one level of relational analysis opens students’ eyes to the presence of further levels and developments.

Surely the shaping of a child’s consciousness would be enhanced by learning from the very beginning that she or he exists as an inherent part of more richly complex relationships – physical and mental, organic and cultural, creative and open-ended – than anyone could ever map. Along the way, children would also be taught the relational keys to happiness, resilience, responsibility, and what Edith Cobb called “compassionate intelligence.” By that Cobb meant a “generous worldview and process of understanding” involving a sense of relational identity that transcends a narrow focus on the self and that benefits from “humility as the creative tool.” She observed that a child’s development is ‘regulated by the meanings of nature imparted to him by the culture of his particular period in history.”

In modern Western culture she noted that a very young child “perceives preverbally the logic of relationships that are overlooked in later, more formally fixed and intellectualized systems of knowledge.” Cobb made that observation long before the relational critique of modernity illuminated the problem: the relational aspect of reality is not simply “overlooked” but brusquely shoved aside by the inculcation of a mechanistic worldview into the minds of children once they enter modern schooling.

The exciting potential in K-12 education today is not only that we might finally get it right in terms of accurately bringing our mechanistic knowledge systems up to date with the myriad recent discoveries in science about the deeply relational nature of the physical world. The relational orientation, in fact, contains all the best of several recently proposed educational reforms, including a focus on getting our children more interested in math and science so they will not be shut out of 21st-century jobs – but this overarching approach offers much more.

For our children to come of age securely situated in the understanding of organic and cultural interconnectedness might, just might, rescue them from the contagion of narcissism, aimlessness, and alienation that plagues so many of our young adults. It might well give them back their birth right as human organisms fully engaged with the embodied, embedded, organic interconnections needed to be healthy and to thrive, no longer isolate units of “coolness” and consumption but linked in their very cells with the dynamics of the entire Earth community and the entire universe." (http://ncronline.org/blogs/eco-catholic/excerpt-relational-reality-charlene-spretnak)

Examples of Recent Findings on the Relational Nature of Reality:

Charlene Spretnak:

"Relational Reality example #1: In a series of four studies in 2009, people shown slides of entirely human-made environments were surveyed afterward and ranked money, fame, and/or power as the highest values – but people shown slides of nature photography afterward ranked caring, generosity, and personal relationships and community as their prime values. Nature enables us to be our true, caring, generous, and expansive selves. It seems to free us of … self-absorption, disengagement, and diminished empathy. (Relational Reality, p. 202)

Relational Reality example #2: A study of 906 elderly adults in 2009 found that those with fewer friendships and other social interactions experienced a more rapid decline in motor function such as walking, gripping, and balancing. Truly, we are relational beings. (Relational Reality, p. 2)

Relational Reality example #3: Many studies since 1973 have found that when an IQ test is given to young adults, first-born individuals tend to score a few points higher than do siblings who came later in the birth order of the family. However, in 2007 a study in Norway of the records of 241,310 19-year-old males doing their military service found that if the first-born child in the family had died and the second-born was raised as the eldest, he then scored the extra points on the IQ test at age 19. Moreover, if the first two children had died and the third-born was raised as the eldest, he at 19 scored the extra IQ points. Intelligence is not, after all, a fixed inheritance at birth, and birth order is not, after all, the determining factor. Rather, the development of intelligence is partially a result of relational dynamics between parents and child. (Relational Reality, p. 2-3)

Relational Reality example #4: Researchers ascertained in 2007 that for people of all ages ten minutes of talking with someone, in person or even by phone, boosts mental performance and memory as much as doing crossword puzzles for the same amount of time. Moreover, it was found that the more social contact people have, the higher their level of mental functioning. (Relational Reality, p. 2)

Relational Reality example #5: The biomechanical orientation in modern medicine was never able to explain why some people catch cold far more than others, even if they eat well, exercise, and take Vitamin C. In 1997, though, researchers at Carnegie Mellon University designed a postmechanistic experiment -- and discovered a substantive, if partial, answer. They sprayed a cold virus directly into the noses of subjects and then correlated the connection between those who had an thriving social network and those who developed a cold. They found that those people with more friends were four times less likely to come down with a cold after they received the virus. That is, most people have by now heard that having friends is vaguely good for one's health overall, but this study shows how direct and significant the effect is on our immune system. (Relational Reality, p. 73)

Relational Reality example #6: What factors predict significant psychological stress in college students? The old, Freudian model would have posited a thorough separation from one’s mother and father to be key in well-adjusted young adults. A study in 2005, however, found that the protective factors were entirely relational (not separative): “secure parental attachment; authentic, empowered, and engaged community relationships; and, for the women especially, peer relational quality.” (Relational Reality, p. 58)

Relational Reality example #7: Living near green, open spaces has been found to decrease the incidence in urban residents of depression, anxiety, and a range of diseases such as asthma, diabetes, intestinal problems, and back and neck pains, according to a study in 2009. (Relational Reality, p. 101)

Relational Reality example #8: We need sunlight and some long-distance focusing to protect our eyes from myopia, the incidence of which increased by 66% in the US between 1970-2000. A study in 2008 found that 12-year-olds who spent more than 2.8 hours per day playing outdoors (which few children do today) were less likely to develop myopia, regardless of time spent on computer or video screens. (Relational Reality, p. 97)"

(https://www.charlenespretnak.com/relational_reality_116771.htm)

Discussion

Objects Are Real!

By Andre Ling:

'I must admit I get a bit frustrated by statements like 'everything is interconnected' or, more specifically this: " the realization that all entities in this world, including humans, are thoroughly relational beings of great complexity who are both composed of and nested within networks of creative, dynamic interrelationships. Nothing exists outside of those relationships." There has been a vibrant ongoing philosophical debate online about the relational vs. object-oriented approaches to philosophy. The relationalists believe that all entities can be reduced to their relationships. Reality is then a giant tangle of relations and entities are entangled clusters of these relations; the points where multiple relations converge into a dense nucleus. Key philosophical influences here include Deleuze (used by both camps), Whitehead and William James and some leading lights here are Brian Massumi and Erin Manning. Those in the object-oriented camp insist that objects cannot be reduced to their relations to other objects. Rather it is objects that enter into relationships with each other. There is a consensus in both camps in the understanding of reality as ecological (prompting Stengers, for example, to propose the term 'ecosophy' as an alternative to philosophy) but the critical gap is in the autonomous, irreducible status the object-oriented philosophers give to objects (which include both physical objects and ideas). If objects can enter into and exit various relationships without themselves undergoing change then surely they cannot be reduced to those relationships. Objects also enjoy a certain degree autonomy from their parts: if you cut off my leg I am still me. Furthermore, objects are understood to have withdrawn powers/capacities, which is precisely what enables them to introduce novelty, to be available to different kinds of uses and, indeed, what makes any kind of change possible at all: if all entities were already fully deployed as bundles of entirely external relationships, the universe would resemble a grid-lock with no possibility of change/movement. OOO-ers hold that it is the inner reality of objects - the fact that they are never fully deployed or expressed through their relationships with other entities, that opens up possibilities for change, movement and novelty. Furthermore, a fully relational ontology is most probably also necessarily one that depends on what OOO-ers call ontotheology: the belief that everything, ultimately, can be reduced to one, the source, the ground of being, God - a kind of singular universal relational web, with everything else (entities) being a kind of transitory or surface appearance/expression of that underlying reality. OO philosophy challenges this kind of thinking which is often a source of heated debate amongst both camps. OOO holds that there is no fundamental ground of being; there are just myriad kinds of objects, a kind of epic list of things that populate the cosmos, entering into and exiting their relationships with each other, being created, being destroyed, transforming and being transformed by each other. This in no way means that the relationships are not important, or even a central question (which is why I am so obsessed with Stengers' ideas of 'ecology of practices', 'ecosophy' and 'cosmopolitics') and matter of concern for us in the contemporary period. The hegemonic patterns of relationships that have been established amongst the myriad entities that populate our world can be characterised as structural injustices, as capitalism, as a direct threat to continued human survival. Our practices, our world-views, our institutions, the way we relate to each other and the other entities around us are sick. However, to write-off entities as mere epiphenomena, secondary to relationships, with no autonomy (ontological, physical or otherwise) of their own, seems to be a bit of a case of throwing the baby out with the bathwater." (Facebook, August 2012)

More Information

Bio of author Charlene Spretnak

Relational Reality

Contents