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
>>
>>