Janus, the Roman god of transitions, came up in dialogue months ago as an angle of entry into the subject of liminality. Since then, I've been meaning to write about Janusian thinking as an essential tool for people who find themselves between worlds.
Janus came up again last week with the same interlocutor. This time, he responded to a LinkedIn post in which I started to explore the journey to the post-corporate horizon. In my post, I suggested that one way to respond to corporate resistance to innovation is to stop pushing for innovation, to give the corporation what it appears to want. Hence, my interlocutor's question: And what then?
Here's the first part of my answer:
In addition, I offer you the following fragmentary comments about the wilderness between Pharaoh's Egypt and the Promised Land.
One
This is a land of paradoxes and irreconcilibilities. Here, our maps of meaning can seem trustworthy and untrustworthy at the same time.
Two
The experience of liminality stirs one of the oldest fears — the fear of the unknown — and it often causes the psyche to seek safety through denial. As a result, we often don’t notice our daily passages through physical, psychic and relational thresholds.
Three
When we don't notice the thresholds we cross, we “don't know where we're coming from”, as the cliche goes; we are unschooled in our own history and psychogeography. These unconscious transitions explain much about the epistemic foundations of our constant crisis.
Four
Observe the transitions. This way, you make the unconscious conscious.
Five
The Gates of Janus were closed when Rome was at peace and opened in times of war. Through the opening and closing of the Gates, the Romans tried to make the transitions between war and peace conscious.
For next week, I'm shifting focus to The Other Pandemic: How QAnon Contaminated the World.
Imagine a deadly pathogen that, once created, could infect any person in any part of the globe within seconds. No need to wait for travellers, trains, or air traffic to spread it, all you need is an internet connection. In this gripping investigation, Pulitzer Prize winner James Ball decodes the cryptic language of the online right and with a surgeon's precision tracks the spread of QAnon, the world's first digital pandemic.