Writing in the late 1930s R.G. Collingwood thought it appropriate to describe World War I and the Treaty of Versailles as a situation that "got out of hand":
"Whether it was deliberately plotted by a ring of German war-lords, as some believed, or by a ring of English trade-lords, as others believed, nobody has ever supposed that any except the most tiniest fraction of the combatants wanted it. It happened because a situation got out of hand. As it went on, the situation got more and more out of hand. When the peace treaty was signed, it was more out of hand than ever. Fighting ended because one side was fought to a standstill, not because the situation was under control again" (An Autobiography, 90).
When I look at my life and I look at the world I see a lot of things that feel out of hand. I am currently living through several personal situations that I feel I must simply live through. There is nothing for me to do, at least not in any simple or straightforward sense. There are no switches to flip, bridges to build, messages to send, or phone calls to make.
I am in the midst of things that will take time.
Curiously, they are decidedly human situations; relationships of various kinds that I am navigating.
Indeed, it was the difference between "physical" and human situations that Collingwood ultimately thought the War highlighted: "The contrast between the success of modern European minds in controlling almost any situation in which the elements are physical bodies and the forces physical forces, and their inability to control situations in which the elements are human beings and the forces mental forces, left an indelible mark on the memory of every one who was concerned in it" (90).
Collingwood's answer to this problem was to encourage the study of history as a type of training in human affairs. He spoke of a "science of human affairs" whereby we could learn to handle human situations as skillfully as we had learned to manipulate the physical world.
To be capable of handling human situations could be called being 'tactful'. To be tactful, as I was just discussing with a friend this morning, means to be in touch, to be sensitive, close, intimate. To be 'tactful', however, implies some type of contact, as in 'tactile'. To be tactful is to 'handle' something in a certain way.
I am struck by the relationship between things being 'out of hand' and being 'tactful'. For something to be out of hand is for it to be out of control, for it to take a course in which we cannot or do not know how to intervene, guide, or control.
This emphasis on 'hands' and 'tact' is interesting because Collingwood's major way of describing the science of human affairs emphasizes vision or seeing. He claims that historical study offers a type of optic training, not unlike the way a trained tracker or hunter can perceive a wealth of detail in a patch of woods that would appear indistinct to me. Indeed, walking with my friend John in the woods yesterday I was struck by his ability to point things out to me that I never would have noticed: little types of bushes, notches in trees left over from logging, rock formations created by particular processes.
This is the deep meaning of the word phenomenology that Gendlin explicates so well in his essay on Heidegger: when we speak about or name things in a certain way we 'lift out' features of reality that can then be seen or perceived on their own. I will forever be sensitive to the many meaningful noises of a cafe, and I began to look at art differently after I started painting.
Psychotherapy, my profession and a practice I've participated in for many years, is largely an exercise in this sort of phenomenology. Therapy is not about helping people decide what to do, but helping them learn to see. Chiefly, we are learning to see things that are invisible: patterns and dynamics that have a different existence from physical objects.
I believe Collingwood was fundamentally talking about this 'phenomenological' quality of historical study.
When we see things differently we handle things differently. But seeing and handling are different realities. Stanley Rosen helped me appreciate that the hand and the eye are fundamentally competing metaphors for knowledge or understanding. We say "I see what you mean" or "I don't grasp that sentence."
Things in my own life feel deeply out of hand. I feel less in control than ever of my ultimate path, less clear than ever where it is all going, and less sure about where my many relationships will ultimately go. But I'm not terribly afraid. I'm certainly somewhat afraid. But not terribly.
I feel that I see fairly clearly what is happening to me and around me, at least in my personal life and relationships. And I am confident that the clarity of my vision will ultimately serve me in my decision making. I don't need to know what is going to happen, I don't need to plan every detail. I can improvise based on what I perceive.
The key is to feel safe enough to continue to see clearly.
I am less confident and more afraid of what is happening in the larger world. I continue to work in Collingwood's wake, picking up his project, working on seeing clearly the situation we find ourselves in. I have currently been reading and writing some on Ivan Illich, and today picked up my copy of Limits to Medicine from Elliot Bay Books. Illich saw incredibly clearly things that I badly want to understand.
Before writing this blog post I got out of the shower and was reflecting on the many difficult situations I find myself in. I imagined myself speaking to someone and saying "it isn't important to me what happens." I was moved by the notion. Because what I feel when I say something like that is a great clarity about how I want things to happen.
I want to continue to show up for myself and for those that I am able to. I want to continue to work on seeing clearly. Part of me feels this is naive, as there is an urgency in me, we/I must do something. I, for example, recoil from the final line of John Grays Straw Dogs: "Can we not think of the aim of life as being simply to see?" As my brief reflections on phenomenology should make clear, to see is to think. There is no separating of these things for us. And to think is never to think in some simple sense, but always to think more or less clearly. The problem is thus with seeing clearly.
While I feel it necessary to poke at John Gray, I wholly endorse Tokyo Police Club's lyric:
"But I was a lover, and I could see it clear."
Things feel out of hand, and I feel confident that the most important thing I can do is to continue to work on my seeing.
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