Dear All

In response to my suggestion on 5th Dec that we identify evidence that 
expresses with some clarity the living standards of judgment we use, Jack 
replied on 7th Dec that he found himself focusing on both the idea 
of ‘living standards’ and ‘we’. Jack  posted some video clips that he  
hoped would aid his justification of the word ‘we’ – and he then used the 
word “conviviality” - which had the effect of opening a door for me. Having 
been thrashed through O-level Latin 40 years ago, I recognised this word as 
coming from ‘convivium’ which means ‘a feast’, formed from con = together 
and vivere =  to live. Michael Polanyi (Personal Knowledge)
used ‘conviviality’ to convey a sense of "mutual endeavour and trust within 
the community in question", which seems wholly appropriate to Jack’s sense 
of the word as I understand it. 

However, where is the connection to be found between conviviality, we/us, 
evidence, and living standards of judgment? It is at this point that I must 
try to connect the language to the embodied meaning that might lift these 
words off the page and give them a form of life that truly corresponds to 
the lives we lead and the values we express through those lives.
 
Example: when I look at the video clip of Moira at 
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z1jEOhxDGno saying her ‘goodbyes’ to 
students at the end of a class, I derive a sense that I am sharing with her 
an understanding of the word ‘conviviality’ as expressed in her actions – I 
get an understanding of the ‘we’ of which Jack speaks. However, the 
generation of this sense is crucially assisted by the paper Moira has 
posted at http://www.jackwhitehead.com/china/mlesem1112.htm . In this  
paper, Moira quotes from Michael Bassey’s BERA presidential address that: “…
Conviviality has a profound meaning, concerned with the nature of human 
life. A convivial person is trying to achieve a state of deep and 
satisfying harmony with the world, which gives joyful meaning to life. 
Convivial people are striving for harmony with their environment, with 
their fellows and with their self” and she then goes on to claim: “This 
present writing is an attempt to show how I am trying to live my values of 
conviviality in my professional life in China” – and, most importantly, 
Moira then offers evidence in support of this claim. Thus, the paper tells 
me and the video clip shows me and the language of telling connects with 
the video of showing to create a fusion that holds a form of embodied 
meaning that enfolds me within a ‘we’ that rests on shared understanding. I 
see this 'we' as an aspect of 'conviviality' that can hold a shared 
understanding of living standards of judgment; I would claim that 
living ‘convivially’ offers us a bridge by which we can mediate between 
the ‘tell-me’ of words and the ‘show-me’ of video clips and audio 
recordings of us going about our daily lives. 

But I first met Moira in 1990 and since then have shared many conversations 
(mostly hysterical) and correspondences (mostly preconception-busting) with 
her. Perhaps this past experience causes the video to set all sorts of 
other resonances into motion that fills out my immediate ‘reading’. So what 
might be the impression of an ‘outsider’ who has not met Moira face-to-face 
over time? What sense of ‘we’ and conviviality might they generate from the 
clip and the paper? In conclusion, may I ask someone who does not know 
Moira well to please read her paper, then look at the video clip and then 
let us know if they have a sense of ‘we’ with Moira – a sense of  
conviviality that identifies evidence and expresses with some clarity the 
living standards of judgment we use?

- Pete