Alan - also: Do you see any possibility where ontological and ethical
reflective can be done within the 'we'. I am saying this as I perceive
reflection to essentially and intentionally be a very personal and
embodied matter between one and oneself in a systematic meditation.
And be very happy to be stood corrected for I, myself, do not see any
other possibility. A
Quoting Alan Rayner <[log in to unmask]>:
> Dear Alon,
>
> I think what you say here illustrates all too clearly how invasive
> totalitarianism engenders defensive totalitarianism through the breakdown
> of trust. The abused is seemingly left with little option but to try
> autopoietically to construct, reconstruct and protect their local
> self-identity through a semi-permeable facade that isolates them one-way
> from their neighbourhood and precludes two-way (mutual)
> receptive-responsiveness. The Vampire Archetype reproduces itself in its
> victims. Likewise, Vampiric conventional educational practices reproduce
> themselves in learners, who become additional Bricks in the Wall of
> exclusional practice.
>
>
> This is why I think an 'Educational Re-evolution' based on 'Natural
> Inclusion' (cf objective comparison and selection) is necessary, at the
> heart of which is a move from regarding the individual self as an objective
> 'entity', embodied 'in the world' (an occupier of living space) to
> appreciating the self as OF THE WORLD, a fluid dynamic, COMPLEX IDENTITY
> with both local and non-local dimensions. We need to move from a system
> that instructs purely how to discriminate, to one that equips with the
> ability both to integrate and differentiate in an evolutionarily
> co-creative natural neighbourhood where One can never consistently Stand
> Alone.
>
> I think you can play a vitally important role in this re-evolution if you
> allow your defensive barriers to relax (they don't have to be removed
> ENTIRELY!), softening and hardening as appropriate to circumstance rather
> than being absolutely defined.
>
>
> Warmest
>
>
> Alan
>
>
> --On 19 December 2006 16:40 +0000 Alon Serper <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>
>> Dear Alan,
>>
>> As I am writing this, I am listening via the web to a very disturbing
>> Israeli radio programme that tells the story of the Polish Jewish
>> holocaust survivors who were murdered after the war and their liberation
>> from Auschwitz. This explains and embodied my idea on trusting no one
>> but yourself.
>>
>> I am not sure there is a contradiction between what you are saying and
>> what I saying. I am not sure that I have ever written that I, and the
>> individual, is/am isolated from the world. On the contrary, I always
>> said that the 'I' is embodied in the world. And responding to,
>> interelating and engaging with the world for his/her auto-poietic
>> progress. Still, I also talked about the need for self-education as the
>> most productive education. This is why I sanf Pink Floyd (Another Brick
>> in the Wall, verse 2) to my teachers. Alon
>> Quoting Alan Rayner <[log in to unmask]>:
>>
>>> Dear Alon,
>>>
>>> Great!
>>>
>>> As I'll be going off-line shortly, I thought I'd let you have a very
>>> preliminary response (and also to your second message which came in as I
>>> was composing this one).
>>>
>>> I'm intrigued by your feeling that moving to 'we' is a 'betrayal' of
>>> 'I'. I do indeed accept that the 'I' needs to love and care for itself,
>>> but as part of that loving and caring I see the receptive-responsive
>>> opening up, in appropriate circumstances, of communication channels with
>>> its neighbourhood - like a hedgehog uncurling, a seed germinating, an egg
>>> hatching, a tree forming mycorrhizal partnerships with fungi etc - as
>>> vital to its well-becoming (dynamic ontology)as an expressive,
>>> space-embodying, flow-form.
>>>
>>> I think that real life cycles (or, better, 'spirals') are all about the
>>> transitions between latent and expressive forms of spatial inclusion. The
>>> HUGE mistake, as I see it, of objective rationality, through the
>>> exclusion of space ('boundless fifth dimension'), has been to try
>>> externally to FORCE (rather than inclusionally dissolve or melt) latent
>>> form into expressive form (motion).
>>>
>>> It is this contrast with objective rationality that I hoped to draw
>>> attention to in my invention (yes, it was me who thought of this term) of
>>> the term 'inclusionality' (Contrasting 'including all' with 'rationing'
>>> or 'rationalizing' reality into discrete factions and fractions through
>>> collapsing its dimensionality down to three, plus time). Whatever term
>>> one uses is rarely likely to please everybody. Having put it out there I
>>> have to stay with it. Correspondingly, I do appreciate your sense of
>>> obligation to stay with your presently constructed heuristics, and I
>>> recognise that it is valuable and courageous for you to show in public
>>> how you have struggled (with what I see as the paradox) to apply this in
>>> living your own life. I also suspect you may not find the ontological
>>> crisis (transformation) of opening up (relaxing) this construction as
>>> unpleasant as you fear. In fact, you might find it rejuvenating and
>>> revitalizing! Who the Hell is Telling You You are too Old?! Perhaps
>>> that's the strain of the heuristics telling upon you.
>>>
>>>
>>> Warmest
>>>
>>>
>>> Alan
>>>
>>>
>>> --On 19 December 2006 15:26 +0000 Alon Serper <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>>>
>>>> Alan - Thank you very muchfor this.
>>>>
>>>> I will take time to reflect and internalise your very fair and
>>>> productive constructive criticism and will unfold a single chunk
>>>> reflection over time and space, in the way that as a trained
>>>> phenomenologist, I was, myself, taught and tught others to do.
>>>>
>>>> I'd commence with my main training as a personality, clinical
>>>> psychologist and therapist who believs that a therapist role is to help
>>>> one to help herself: The self namely the 'I' is an ever cimplex matter,
>>>> constructed of some vicious self-self struggles. Shouldn't it be wise
>>>> to deal with it before moving to the we? Isn't moving to the we a
>>>> betrayal of the 'I'. Doesn't the 'I' has an obligation for itself to
>>>> take care of itself in a loving and productive fashion?
>>>>
>>>> More reflections and questions will unfold soon and during course. I
>>>> just want to pick up on your claim that I'd be offended. On the
>>>> contrary I welcome your challenge very much and am veruy prompt to
>>>> respond constructively to show that I have nothing but respect for you
>>>> for this entry. Alon
>>>>
>>>> Quoting Alan Rayner <[log in to unmask]>:
>>>>
>>>>> Dear All,
>>>>>
>>>>> I was going to post a response to Sarah's description of
>>>>> 'fluffy-bunniness' and reference to Alon's bone-chilling honesty
>>>>> yesterday, but was forestalled by her personal critique of Jack, which
>>>>> I can neither entirely accept nor entirely reject, though I can sense
>>>>> and acknowledge the pain that must underlie it and hope that this can
>>>>> be allowed the space to ease.
>>>>>
>>>>> For myself, I just want to see the amazing creative conversation space
>>>>> that has been opened up via the B.E.R.A. list sustained.
>>>>>
>>>>> Anyway, just to reassure you all, if reassurance is the appropriate
>>>>> word, inclusionality is no 'fluffy-bunny philosophy'; it includes
>>>>> foxes! And for myself, born as I was under the sign of Leo in the year
>>>>> of the Tiger, I have some quite sharp canine teeth that for better or
>>>>> worse have been known to
>>>>> play a role in consuming fluffy bunnies (though not as yet Vampire
>>>>> Bats,Imperial Rats or Concrete Blockheads) through opening up their
>>>>> bodily boundaries for dissolution by my digestive enzymes!
>>>>>
>>>>> By its very dynamic nature, inclusionality can neither ENTIRELY accept
>>>>> nor ENTIRELY reject the exclusional practice of any form of
>>>>> totalitarianism (orthodoxy, objective rationality), the latter being
>>>>> dependent on faith in the COMPLETE (absolute) definability of self and
>>>>> other as autonomous Whole Objects (paradoxical singularities that make
>>>>> axiomatic nonsense of real life dynamics). This does not mean that
>>>>> inclusionality is oblivious of such practice and faith. Nor does it
>>>>> mean that it is good inclusional practice directly to confront such
>>>>> practice or faith, for confrontation simply amplifies the opposition
>>>>> upon which such practice and faith is founded. Good inclusional
>>>>> practice works lovingly to transform the cultural context in which
>>>>> totalitarian hostility is empowered, whilst artfully
>>>>> circumventing,and where necessary resisting and puncturing its
>>>>> potentially domineering (hegemonic/impositional/bullying) influence.
>>>>>
>>>>> Some forms of totalitarianism are primarily defensive, forming 'benign
>>>>> tumours and cysts', others are invasive and malignant (imperialism).
>>>>> Much as I greatly value and have benefited from his contributions, I
>>>>> see the form of totalitarian orthodoxy that in all honesty I think
>>>>> Alon sometimes expresses as being primarily defensive, a response to
>>>>> deep hurt and/or fear that cries out 'Leave Me All One', like a
>>>>> hedgehog rolling itself up into a ball covered in prickles.
>>>>>
>>>>> Indeed all kinds of survival structures produced naturally in the face
>>>>> of energy limitation or threat - seeds, spores, cysts, eggs, crystals
>>>>> - etc are of this ilk - protective packages of creative potential in
>>>>> suspended animation. But such suspended animation is of a purely
>>>>> LATENT form; for real life EXPRESSION it has to open up and become
>>>>> receptively responsive to its neighbourhood, of which it is
>>>>> inescapably a dynamic inclusion. As an inclusional fox, I am inclined
>>>>> to leave Alon to himself, as he TELLS me to stick to myself and speak
>>>>> in terms of 'I', not 'we'. I feel this is quite an unpalatable
>>>>> proposition of personal sovereignty and it succeeds well in deterring
>>>>> my inclusional interest. My difficulty arises when such
>>>>> totalitarianism is expressed in my neighbourhood, in terms that I find
>>>>> nonsensical (if scholarly)and self-defeating. This arouses in me both
>>>>> a compassionate concern for the hedgehog, that he is suppressing his
>>>>> own creative potential and intellectual acuity in a very
>>>>> self-disabling way, and a concern for others (including me) who get
>>>>> hurt, stifled and misled in the process. From time to time I therefore
>>>>> find myself
>>>>> receptively-responsively impelled - as here - to take some risk in
>>>>> inviting Alon (as yet unsuccessfully) to loosen up in a way that will
>>>>> be productive and creative both for him and his evolutionary
>>>>> educational neighbourhood. But so long as he remains profoundly
>>>>> attached to the notion of his absolute singularity (autonomy) as a
>>>>> self-contained object, dislocated like the 'number 1' from his
>>>>> neighbourhood, the most I feel he can accomplish is to epitomize
>>>>> rather brilliantly and artistically what such attachment implies for a
>>>>> life all one, talking to oneself. And, yes, as a singular exception
>>>>> that illuminates the complex reality, that would in some ways be a
>>>>> most valuable contribution to our understanding of natural
>>>>> neighbourhood as neither one nor many in isolation, but all,
>>>>> everywhere, in dynamic relationship. But I suspect it would not be the
>>>>> most happy outcome for Alon, remaining stuck within his brilliantly
>>>>> constructed facade, immune to what is being offered and unable to
>>>>> offer his scholarship and insights in a way that can be hole-heartedly
>>>>> recognised and acknowledged by others. I just wish the hedgehog would
>>>>> open up a bit more and relax, but I know also the danger that he will
>>>>> regard my critical prodding as provocation and curl up even more
>>>>> extremely, if not launch a few spines in my direction.
>>>>>
>>>>> There we are then. I hope these unfluffy comments won't have got any of
>>>>> you or myself into a stew, but will serve to open up some helpful
>>>>> possibilities for creative cuisine.
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> Warmest Growls
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> Alan
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>
>
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