Introduction
There is a magic in the fluidity of organizing. Neither complete nor an exact science, it seemingly has been “cracked” time and time again. Most of the treatments to “organizational deficiency” are flaccid. Often failing the aspiring “do-gooder” who simply just wants their life under their thumb again.
However, Julie Morgenstern has some of the greatest advice out there in her book Organizing from the Inside Out. Before we dig in, try to think along the lines of these questions: what would happen if we swapped the words “space” and “objects”, in this book, with words like “mentality” or “symbols”? Is that any different than advice on lifestyles? And how (in the organizing of our values) might this be any different than deciding what goals and life mission to pick? Think on how this affects your initial impression of organization as an object of study.
My Experience
On a personal level, my testimony to Morgenstern’s book is just, “I wish I had found it sooner.” Morgenstern is correct when she announces early on possible psychological blocks; those that might be (like a riptide) pulling you back to chaos. At first it might seem that she wants to change you and install a set of “pre-made aesthetics” into your life. Yet, paradoxically, she remarks emphatically on personal preference. Embodying the wisdom of, ‘It doesn’t have to be pretty to work if it still works and works well.’ She has plenty of anecdotes on how she has turned down costumers: A boss might want a different organizational methodology than his workers who already figured out a working system (even if it is a lil’ ugly). Rather than destroy those environments, she remarks, you should try to add a barrier to the costumer or simply invest in prettier tools.
I’ve attempted about everything under the sun to get myself organized, and it really wasn’t until Organizing From the Inside Out did it make sense. I'll attest: she knows what she is talking about.
Our Goal
Search out the book on your own, but hopefully I can provide a meaningful substitution here. We’ll be tackling a wide range of analysis on this method of “order”. That action, being the organizing of your spaces, is the ordering and cohabitation of your peers and the interaction with historical centers.
Five (and more) Questions
Within the book she boils down her methodology to 5 Questions:
What’s working?
What isn’t?
What’s essential?
Why do you want to get organized?
What’s the issue?
These, when properly and consistently applied, can instill a great amount of order. They are designed to reorient how you think about rituals. If what you’re doing isn’t “working” then what ostensive needs to be input in its stead?
We look into our lives to find we hold within ourselves a set of imperatives. Maybe they are your morning and nightly rituals. Things to relax or excite oneself. Even though we perceive these as from the center (where doing these self-driven orders gives us an impression that the scene of representation is upheld) they ultimately bellow out from within.
What makes these five genius is that the creation of change begets a question. That is: who is anyone to be a judge let alone commander of others? Who are we to order the center who orders us? We all know, inside, that there will always be an air of selfishness in asking this. It brings to mind this, as well: who are you to even ponder that, and why does it matter? By asking ourselves questions of value and preference, rather than simply doing it, we bring a degree of consciousness into the field. While it might not get things done immediately, it sets us up for compromise. Eventually, we all will reach something we agree upon if we ask enough questions.
Ordering
In modern times, there is hesitancy in everything. Politeness is, in this aspect, a degree of inflection in our tone to signal a question: permission? There are many different ways we order our own scenes and request to be on others. Think not just about your actions and implicit questions but also your own history that others ask to be on.
Baked into time itself is dependency. To be in time means we’re going to be somewhere new that—while dependent on where we are now—is currently beyond us. It forces us to come to recognition that we, ourselves, might be misplaced. Perhaps we detect and intuit someplace we’d rather be that is independent of where we are at. The fact that it isn’t dependent, or not actionable within time, strikes hesitancy within us.
Think of how psychology came to rule the modern world or the clique-y New Age spiritualism. These are some of the biggest undercurrents one can talk about; thus as well, the closest language we have to describing this primal paradox. Often they are embedded in questions of “how much agency do I have?” “Even if I am here, insignificant, I am dependent on the orientation of the planets/I am dependent on my unconscious desire.”
What I think is interesting in Morgenstern’s Five Questions is that it hooks up to this dependency. What are you dependent on? Who is your lugal? What pokes at your internal machinations and mimetic currents? What do these objects depend on so you can be dependent on them when you need them? If you follow this train of thought, I have trouble seeing it leading you anywhere awful.
Common Rhetoric
I, like any of us, am dependent on a multitude of things and peoples. My dependence, while different than yours, can be thought of as a kind of independence. In fact, we often see a degree of spiritual independence—the ability to exist in orders despite dependency—as a particular solution to dependency itself. Excluding the paradoxical revelation within that discussion, it always falls short. Dependency is not something that can be so easily compartmentalized. It, like any degree of transcendence, constantly adapts.
The problem is not that we should shirk transcendence, independence and the like in favor of hedonic Machiavellism. The problem is its mis-order, or inappropriate order, that interferes with “necessary dependency”. Necessary dependency is simply tradition we’ve been given. It is history.
Consider:
Why should the Buddhist favor Christ?
Why should the Christian favor Shiva?
Ultimately, the only reasoning we can give is the individual histories of each tradition. We cannot begin to answer the first without the stories of Buddha and Christ. Neither can we without their inherent spirituality and the peoples enactment of their doctrines. If those questions speak to your soul, I encourage you to think about the stability (or lack thereof) of their histories. In order to establish compromise there must be dependency. The problem lies in finding where both traditions are dependent upon.
Within the more psychological rhetorical histories there is another multitude of orderings. With, especially, the Freudian psychoanalytic techniques to the Jungian individuation process we could nitpick ad infinitum and ad nauseum. How we begin to deal with the realization of our dependency is the problem addressed by both disciplines. Perhaps, we come to realize that something independent of us is creating a dependency that shouldn’t be there. Whether that is confronting the shadow or the unconscious, both are adequate. We should rather come to see the differences in their dialogues. What particular histories and objects are they trying to apprehend?
If we ignore dogma and talk about how we teach, and then order, we find commonality again. If we assume dependency and its ordering is precisely what any given word and its utterance does to us, then we are just perpetuating old history. What made these traditions innovative was their new naming, their new ordering. Not their dogmatic compliance with older models. They led through teaching and relieved through ordering. If you wish to instill order in your own life, you must open up first. Then, when you learn you lead and order.
While we might talk about intellectual discourse, selfhood, and reverence, it is all for naught if it cannot lead. We defend them exactly because they have done and still do accomplish this.
History
While I haven’t gotten to either of these books quite yet I’d like to put forth two more options for you guys to digest. They are Luke Burgis’ Wanting: The Power of Mimetic Desire in Everyday Life—a book on Girard’s mimetic theory and tips for leadership—and Michel Pastoureau’s The Bear: History of a Fallen King. Keeping the discussions in mind you can likely guess why I’ve included Wanting, but might not be so sure on The Bear. Simply put, I’d like for you guys to see where dependence and order take place outside of this essay. One is directed explicitly on the themes we’ve built here, and gives practical advice to boot. The other is a historical escapade on political conflict surrounding a strange religious figure.
Consider how transcendence is dependent on its historical incarnation. Within Pastoureau’s The Bear we see that in shocking accuracy. In fact, what used to serve as a transcendence for peoples in the past was obliterated by the church, nearly completely. Think about how you might reconcile the goods the Christian tradition has wrought, with its prideful dependency on its universality. To the point of conducting a massacre on bears, to destroy the pagan cults.
Think also about the goal of Wanting. Why would pointing out mimesis, our dependence on other humans, help orient ourselves? You might recall how similar that is to the psychological models of the unconscious and the shadow. What makes it interesting is, like both of those forces, it is very much observable.
Conclusion
I am running low on my own time schedule, so I think I’ll end it here. What we’ve discussed is this general process: Dependency into Order.
Generative Anthropology goes into intellectual lengths at entertaining a hypothesis on the origin of language. Meaning and thus order. We see, as well, the hesitancy and politeness I discussed above in its own verbiage. Looking at its definition of the sign as the aborted gesture of appropriation; it is exactly the creation of order out of dependency through hesitation. It is also no wonder that we find Morgenstern’s Five Questions to orient and re-organize “From The Inside Out” so effective. It's this precise, but fluid, questioning of dependency that leads to new signs. Thus, the restructuring of our lives.
Use these questions, discussions and books to help find what motivates you to get up. What gets you moving, and what are you dependent on? How might you reason and bring that into order? Where can it be harnessed?
Originally I was going to include some discussions on lifestyle choices, but I found it to steal away too much of my time. And the anecdotes were a tad platitudinous and bland. Maybe some other time if I think there’s reasonable demand. Just remember to not take anything too seriously, as you’ll likely just fall into old patterns. So, take a lil’ bit of fun every now and then.
“Don’t you mean ‘have’ a little bit of fun?”
No. I mean take.