And - unfortunantly, I am at a stage of age, self-educating,
self-knowing and career, where my position is very much formed and made
up. It will take a most unpleasant ontological crises (similar to a
Catholic priest who has lost his faith in God and became an atheist) to
change my position. I am working on making it clear for others not to
construct it. It exists and being published now quite a bit to give
meaning to my human existence.
I welcome very much and indebt for your instruction to relax. I have
been hearing this all my life. And am beginning to entertain the
thought that if everybody is telling me this then there may be
something there. And so I am planning a flowing dynamic relaxation in
which my self-self position will be made public.
Also, as P.S., I really wish you could have come up with a better term
than inclusionality. I never liked this word: I'm not even suire it is
you who came up with it. A.
Quoting Alon Serper <[log in to unmask]>:
> 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 of
> reflection over time and space, in the way that as a trained
> phenomenologist, I was, myself, taught and taught others to do.
>
> I'd commence with my main training as a personality, clinical
> psychologist and therapist who believes that a therapist role is to help
> one to help herself: The self namely the 'I' is an ever complex
> matter, constructed of some vicious and auto-poietic,
> autoethnographical, self-dialectical, 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' have 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 very 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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