Gregory Bateson – and how I came to know and understand his work.

Gregory Bateson: claimed by some to have been one of the greatest thinkers of the 20th Century, has been too little read and understood. My book, Understanding Gregory Bateson: Mind, Beauty and the Sacred Earth, State University of New York Press, 2008, provides a bridge – closing the gap between Bateson's often ‘less than accessible’ publications and the understanding of people who have not had the time and opportunity to come to an insightful appreciation of his work.

Readers may be interested to know about my own process - from puzzled incomprehension to some measure of understanding of this great man's importance in relation to our present ecological extremity.

The story begins with a four-week residential course at Schumacher College in Devon, England in 1991. This was the first year of the college’s existence. Thirty-six ‘participants’, ranging in age from early twenties to ‘senior citizens’, had travelled from seventeen countries world-wide. The Scholar-in-Residence (the teacher) was Theodore Roszak, well known as the author of Where the Wasteland Ends and, importantly for me, Person/Planet: the Creative Disintegration of Industrial Society which I had discovered while studying, in mid-life, with the Open University.

When I arrived at Schumacher College that 1991 September, I was fifty-nine years old. My highly miscellaneous life story had, by then, led me through a wide variety of experiences. My early childhood was marred by much illness, the outbreak and development of World War II and a stressful relationship between my parents. When the time came to sit my ‘11 plus’ examination (which, in those days, decided what sort of further schooling one would have) I had been absent for some months from school with pneumonia and, unsurprisingly, failed the examination. There followed the break up of our family, return with my mother to her home town of Burnley in north-east Lancashire, more illness and intermittent attendance at a local “Secondary Modern school”. There, amidst much irrelevance, I found a good woodwork teacher and a young teacher of English who recognised and fostered my ability to write. Perceiving some quality in my attempt at a County-wide essay competition on the subject of road safety, she made a fellow pupil re-copy my almost illegible handwriting so that my effort could be read by the competition judges. Of course, after this, my essay could not win – but I did receive a Certificate of Merit – my only academic success in childhood. I also discovered the school library! One blessing in this childhood was the encouragement to read widely that I received from my mother and her family – and others including my doctors who brought their own books to my bedside! With many months in bed or confined to the house I absorbed the elements of style from every book in my grandmother’s house – even, in desperation, reading her dictionary.

Adolescence brought me (by means of the young people’s novels of Arthur Ransome and the coincidental founding of a very friendly sailing club on a local reservoir) to discover the joys of sailing small boats. Many days of wind, wet feet, chilly spray and the excitement of racing brought me, perhaps surprisingly, to better health. Also important was my eldest uncle, Eddie, who introduced me to walking the countryside, teaching me about birds, flowers, and introducing me to his farming neighbours. He planted in me the roots of the concern and dedication I now feel towards the living Earth. The years of employment in industry and commerce which followed saw my development as a hill walker – and also as someone deeply interested in farming practices. Walking, initially on local hills, later more widely in the north of England and then Scotland, membership of the Youth Hostels Association and many friendships all helped to form my concern for wildlife and the wider environment.

My other preoccupation in those days was music – playing the violin. This, partly due to family influence, came to dominate my forward planning. I would be a professional violinist! It took an attempt at enrolment in the Royal Manchester College of Music to convince me that I did not have the abilities necessary for a career as a musical performer. Jobs in shops and industry followed. The first, in a bookshop, was fun - they let you take books home to read! The second (selling ‘gentlemen’s clothing’) less so. Following this, I worked as a ‘Raw Material Inspector’ in a factory making television tubes, then became a works office clerk in a firm of cotton making machinery manufacturers before moving to a production control job in a factory making auto-electrical switches.

All this gave me an income, some confidence – and also the understanding that I was capable of more. In my mid-twenties I decided that school teaching was not ‘beyond me’ and set about obtaining college entry qualifications by means of classes in a local further education college – financed by part-time work in a local garage.

Aged 28, I gained entrance to Bretton Hall College of Education to start a three-year training course for teaching Music, English and Art. Within a few weeks, a fellow student and I fell in love with each other and soon after completing the college course and starting our first teaching jobs, Jean and I were married. The following years saw teaching in schools in Birmingham and Oxford for me (including developing an innovative course for older teenagers in forestry and environmental awareness), the birth of our two sons, a period teaching sailing on the south coast of England and then – a complete change – our move to a deeply rural part of south-west Scotland. We repaired and rebuilt our Galloway cottage, kept goats and hens and grew much of our own food. Jean taught music in the surrounding communities, I struggled with an extended period of clinical depression, studied successfully for an Open University BA and restored and operated a historic sailing boat, offering sea trips to the public in Luce Bay. Our sons grew up, attending local schools and coming home to miles of open countryside and hills. One important event was the attempt, by the Atomic Energy Authority, to bury high level nuclear waste in our local mountain, Mullwharchar. This threat led us to found, with friends, Dumfries and Galloway Friends of the Earth – and to play our part in much local awareness raising and in the eventual Public Inquiry. After the AEA abandoned their waste disposal plans the FoE group went on to help with endangered species preservation, a ‘shore-line interpretation centre’ and other ‘green’ activities.

During these years our remote Galloway location, close to sea and hills, led many friends to come to stay with us at times of stress in their own lives. Learning how much benefit such people found in a week or two ‘away from it all’ in a deeply rural environment, combined with my Membership of the Iona Community and our experience of the healing effects of time spent in remote Iona – led us to a decision to found a community that would offer such hospitality itself. Our planning led us to return to the north-west of England, to finding Rigmaden Farmhouse in the superb Lune valley in Cumbria and to the gathering of a group of friends and volunteers who formed the Rivendell Community – offering supportive hospitality to some thirteen hundred stressed visitors over the nine years of its operation.

To return to our starting point: it was during the middle years of the Rivendell Community’s operation that I learned that Theodore Roszak was to teach for four weeks at the newly opened Schumacher College and that bursaries enabling attendance were a possibility. ‘Ted’ Roszak was at that time writing “The Voice of the Earth’ and shared with us much of his creative process. All of us lived together in the College with the resident staff and volunteers – helping with cooking, cleaning, gardening, washing up – as well as growing into an amazing unity as we studied, heard Ted and his poet wife Betty teach and discuss, expanded our creative writing skills with novelist Lindsay Clarke, walked over Dartmoor or along the sea coast, organised our own social events and made some friendships which are still important in our lives.

When the course ended and I returned to the north I did not (after four weeks of such learning, study and companionship) want to stop doing it! A course member was at that time reading Lancaster University Philosophy Department’s very innovative MA course in ‘Values and the Environment’. He encouraged me to find our more about the course so, very soon after returning home, I called the Head of Philosophy, had a very friendly chat during which he said my age was “completely irrelevant” and then: “Well, it’s starting next Wednesday evening – why not just come along and see what you make of it?” That evening of learning and discussion marked the beginning of fifteen years of interaction with Lancaster University – which saw the completion of the MA, a period as ‘Honorary Research Assistant’ which kept me in touch with the department until the whole Gregory Bateson project gelled into a PhD and, eventually, the book now published by SUNY Press.

It was at my second Schumacher College course in 1993 that Fritjof Capra introduced me to Gregory Bateson’s work. Capra had known Bateson during the later years of his life and described his work and personality in ways that have been lastingly important to me. During that course we had a visit from Polish philosopher Henryk Skolimowski who had also met and known Bateson when he visited and held discussions there during his last visit to the UK in 1979. Skolimowski had, in fact, been Philosopher in Residence at Dartington Hall. Schumacher College is located on the Dartington Estate and is, itself, one of the Estate’s innovative educational projects. Skolimowski talked with the group about Bateson and also discussed his work with individual students. I remember him saying to me: “Never let anyone tell you that Gregory Bateson was not a deeply religious man!” We formed the beginnings of a friendship during those days in the College and I was later able to visit him (with Jean and our two sons) at his summer home in a village called Theologos (!) on the Greek island of Thassos – where he gave me many insights into the development of my MA Dissertation – and the process that has become my Bateson book.

I have been able to return to Schumacher College many times during the last fifteen years – latterly as course facilitator for a wonderful mixture of teachers of ecological wisdom. The staff at Lancaster University have given me many years of friendship and guidance. After the 1993 Capra course I returned home with my new awareness of Gregory Bateson’s work and it’s importance for our human understanding of how to live sustainably on planet Earth. Several friends spoke of Bateson and his work, references to him emerged in the MA course process and then, one afternoon, browsing in a ‘remaindered’ bookshop in Kendal town, a copy of his ‘out-of-print’ final book “Angels Fear” seemed to fall from the shelf into my hands. My course was set. Gregory Bateson had to be my next focus – and has remained so. I am absolutely certain that his wisdom is vitally necessary for all of us as we struggle to learn how to live sustainably, ethically, reverently as members of the living community of Earth.

May we all learn together.