Dr. Luanne Frank opened the Conference on Global Transformation 2010, occurring this weekend in San Francisco.  Because she is a professor of philosophy, those who want quick and easy information might find her dry.  She commented, in fact, “Information is largely bereft of being.”

I found her fascinating.  Imagine having a job thinking about how people think, and why they think that way, by studying the sources of those thoughts.

This two minute video clip is Dr. Frank’s extemporaneous answer to a question from the audience, “What is Truth?  Heidegger’s sense of Aletheia is an attempt to understand the meaning of truth in a completely new, or rediscovered manner.

Dr. Frank ‘s presentation of post-structuralism included the thoughts of Heidegger (the 20th century philosopher), whose thinking is rooted in pre-Plato times.  As best as I can tell, being a fringe student of philosophy, Heidegger is the main man of post-structural thought.  As opposed to analytical thinkers, Heidegger was the expert/writer/author about the world AS we know it; AS means it’s “a burdened world.”  Post-structuralism attempts to point people toward a clearing, an opening.  That we (people) are the givers of meaning to this world requires words if we are to have meaning. Post-structuralism asserts that we have made our world, we can change it.

Dr. Frank made several additional points that stood out for me, within her intense, dense academic message.  She said, “Information is largely bereft of being, and being comes before knowing…. Daza is “Being THERE, there is no being without ‘there”; being is related to the world of there. …. Two-sided-ness is necessary, for example to bring in the light requires darkness….. We are always there, in the way!…. Hermeneutics (one of those pot-structural comments) means interpretation, or understanding…

What I make of that presentation (and my Landmark Education eperience) — that is to say, my interpretation of her incredibly deep and mind-bending presentation — is that information, data, reality is not real, it is infused with our interpretation which is limited by where we are at any given moment.  Being-in-the-world is Heidegger’s replacement for terms such as subject, object, consciousness, and world. Being is temporal meaning it is related to time.

I am particularly mindful of paradoxes, and although she didn’t SAY “paradox,” her comments clearly point to the requirement of the paradox (a seemingly opposite which is in fact two ends of a continuum).  For example, she said, “We can only know a given truth when we also know it’s opposite.”

Touching this deep subject of how we think, why we think, what we think FROM was surrounded by the request that we look, in the conference, at where are we coming FROM, and what are we speaking FROM, and where are we listening FROM… right now!  As we have embarked on this weekend inquiry for ourselves, it is clear that my “evil twin” is sometimes speaking, my “higher self” is sometimes speaking, my “ego” is sometimes speaking…. and being aware if who is speaking gives me access to myself at a more forgiving, understanding, compassionate level.  I can then extend that forgiveness, understanding, and compassion to others with whom I am speaking.

So far, it has been a phenomenal conference… more later.