Tldr: Write an effortpost on the subject of human intuition by February 10th, we will pick the winner by poll, I will donate $200 dollars to a charity mutually agreed upon with the winner
I've been thinking a lot about the subject of intuition lately, due to some life events. What do we know without knowing we know it, what can we communicate without knowing we communicate it. When I'm thinking a lot about something what do I want to do? Read a bunch of Mottizens thinking about it too! So, on a whim while thinking about the fact that great works like the Oresteia, Frankenstein, and Rousseau's best work were the result of competitions; I've decided to launch my own little essay competition and see if anyone bites.
The basic rules are thus:
-- Write an effortpost on the topic of Intuition. Standalone or in the CW or side threads; only rule is effort. Intuition can be as broadly or as narrowly defined as you like. Effortpost we define informally, but I'd say it must be at minimum 2000-4000 characters that is substantially your own original work. No ripping off another post, of your own or someone else's. An original summary/condensation or retelling of someone else's thesis is fine. How will we be able to tell? I'm kinda counting on the crowd here, especially if we get a little competitive fire going. I wouldn't count on slipping anything by the peanut gallery here.
-- On February 12th, as long as we have at least three entries, I will publish a poll, and we will select a winner. If anyone has a suggestion for a better method of picking a winner, I'm open to it. I'm thinking a poll would be better than just raw upvotes, but I'm open to other possibilities.
-- Once a winner is selected, I will work with the winner to select a charity, and I will donate $200 to that charity. I say I will work with the winner, I'm not donating $200 to NAMBLA or Mermaids UK or the StormFront Charity Fund just because somebody wins a poll. I will do my best to be reasonable, but there are some lines I'm not gonna cross here, and IDK there might be legal issues in some countries. I will post some kind of digital receipt in all likelihood, unless it's something like give the $200 in cash into the collection bin at church or to a homeless man or something. I'm sure for most here, the bigger thing will be winning, and being acknowledged as the winner.
So why? The mood just sort of struck me. And how do you know it will really happen? You don't, except that I spend way too much time hanging around here so you can figure I'll probably stick to my word. And anyway, you'll get even more motte street cred for being the guy who got welched on than you would for being the guy who got $200 donated to mosquito nets or whatever.
I'm curious to see what a bit of direction and effort could bring out, or maybe we need chaos. We'll see if we get three.
Please bring up any questions, or rules I haven't considered.
Jump in the discussion.
No email address required.
Notes -
I'm too late to participate in the contest, but am somewhat interested in the topic, and wanted to at least mention a few things.
A while back I was looking into intuition in the context of Jungian personality type theories. It is the oddest category by far, with different people meaning different things by it, but everyone agreeing that it's one of the four major psychological functions, and that there are many people who strongly favor it, as much as a person might favor "thinking" or "sensing" or "feeling". No-nonsense postmoderns tend to talk about recognizing and internalizing complex patterns. Jung's meaning is less likely, but far more interesting, about seeing around corners of reality, perception via unconscious thought, and symbolic understanding in parallel to rational thought, bypassing thought. For instance, an account of a woman using introverted intuition.
A good place to go looking for "snake in my abdomen" sorts of intuitives seems, then, to be in poets. I used to read symbolic poets, and was pleased to see this essay on Charles Williams in the latest ACX link roundup. George MacDonald is an excellent . A bit of TS Eliot. Bishop Nikolai Velimirovich comes across as strongly intuitive in Jung's sense.
There was a period of my life where I was reading those poets, and listening a lot to an excellent self-described introverted intuitive priest reciting TS Eliot and Gerard Manley Hopkins and Jung, and there was a sense of numinosity. This was very lovely, but apparently not sustainable. American culture is inhospitable to numinous intuitive poetry, and it turns out that I am not myself a poet. Even actual poets are struggling with disenchantment; I tried reading Wendall Berry, who people assured me was a great poet of rural America, and the whole book he was complaining about tractors and synthetic fertilizers, with no symbolism at all. Perhaps he is not an intuitive poet in Jung's sense.
In any event, if I were to attempt writing more about intuition, it would be in the Jungian symbolic vein. It seems like, as a civilization, we have relegated Jungian intuition to the sidelines of people arranging crystals and talking about chakras and astrology and tarot. I've been following someone like that lately, a woman I know in real life but don't interact with very much. She writes lovely, deep, insightful intuitive, poetic prose posts, but then goes on also about astrology a lot, in a way that seems poorly integrated. Possibly if there were some sort of details about the symbolism of the planets it would be less deeply off putting, as I have nothing against using celestial bodies as a storytelling framework. Intuitive energy is wasting away in boomer women coming to schools to talk about chakras, but then failing to convey any actual sense of the symbolism that attracts them to it; just some sterile disconnected handouts about what they "represent," staying rather firmly in the "thinking" sphere we moderns are comfortable with, despite that not being an appropriate treatment of the subject matter. This seems related to not having a shared religion to keep things on track, and I've read at least one person [paywalled] with an actual religion complaining about Jung's Red Book going off the rails very badly into utter nonsense, which seems to be his attempt at strongly intuitive, mythopoetic writing. I have not read The Red Book, and am not in a position to comment.
Old stories seem to suggest that ancient people were much more mythopoetic/intuitive storytellers, and it seems like the stress on more rational thought has to some extent crowded that out. The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind by Julian Jaynes is very suggestive in that respect. There was a link from the December ACX roundup that seemed quite interesting in a similar vein. but nobody knew what to say about it, and neither do I. Probably the right thing to do in this situation is go sit under a tree, look at the seedheads and read a poem, rather than write an essay, though as I say I don't have any more access to intuition than any other modern who likes spending time on rationalist adjacent forums, so this may not happen.
Wow excellent link there. I had no idea other folks had so clearly outlined some of my own half baked thoughts on intuition.
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