Dear Alan,
I personally find your thoughts and ideas exciting and they help me clarify 
my own thinking as a psychotherapist BUT I frequently struggle with the 
language you use. There are times when others on the this list have invited 
you to explain your ideas in plain and clear English and when you have done 
so I have often thought to myself, "why didn't Alan put it like that in the 
first place?". I sometimes experience the language you frequently use as 
having an exclusional effect on me.
Regards
Matthew
----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Alan Rayner (BU)" <[log in to unmask]>
To: <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Friday, March 21, 2008 10:13 AM
Subject: Re: Ojectivity etc.....


> Dear Darragh and all,
>
> I have woken this morning with the strong feeling that it really isn't 
> language or labelling as such, but the thought underlying the language and 
> how thought and language relate to one another that is the issue. i.e.
>
> Objectifying thought gives rise to and is reinforced by objectifying 
> language.
>
>
> I have been working on how to express non-objectifying thought using 
> non-objectifying language in a culture that predominantly thinks in an 
> objectivist way and expects language to follow suit.
>
> So, I suspect that it is not so much my unfamiliar use of language that 
> people object to as the unfamiliar thought that my language seeks to 
> guideline. If people 'get the idea', the language is no longer a barrier 
> and actually comes to facilitate mutual understanding. Indeed I have 
> Russian, Finnish and Nigerian correspondents, for example, who have no 
> difficulty in following my language and indeed derive much pleasure from 
> its fluidity, recognising that the meaning is in the context of usage, not 
> in the words alone (whose meaning can change dramatically when the context 
> changes from rationalistic to inclusional). With others who are not 
> initially on the same flowlength, the unfamiliarity of the 
> thought/language can spur on to further enquiry - as was the case with 
> Jack, for example, and it can be off-putting and lead to peremptory 
> dismissal - as in the case of many of my fellow biologists who are steeped 
> in Aristotelian-Newtonian-Darwinian tradition.
>
> Meanwhile, inclusionality to my mind turns objectivist thinking 
> inside-out, upside-down and round and around - in a way that can break the 
> spell that has held us bewitched by the logic and language of conflict for 
> millennia. I'd love to have some more help in communicating this to a 
> wider audience.
>
> Warmest
>
> Alan
>
>
>
> ----- Original Message ----- 
> From: "Alan Rayner (BU)" <[log in to unmask]>
> To: <[log in to unmask]>
> Sent: Thursday, March 20, 2008 5:14 PM
> Subject: Re: Ojectivity etc.....
>
>
>> Dear Darragh,
>>
>> Well, indeed I do agree with you, except in so far that I think it's also 
>> a not-very-helpful game to call language a game! Mindful as I have been 
>> of Wittgenstein and Zen, my effort has been to make the most of language 
>> as a tool by bringing it as close as I can to evoking the meaning of 
>> inclusionality whilst avoiding reification/prescriptive definition. I 
>> have felt this effort to be necessary because keeping mum in our present 
>> 'anti-culture' doesn't to my mind help very much to bring about what I 
>> feel to be the radical dynamic re-orientation in worldview desperately 
>> needed to relieve the distress and oppression that arises from 'the 
>> crippling mutilations of an objectivist framework'. My insistence on 
>> explicitly or implicitly acknowledging  'spatial non-locality' is not 
>> 'splitting hairs', but vital to transcending the limitations of (whilst 
>> acknolwedging the utility of ) propositional and dialectic logics.
>>
>> So, yes, I haven't been able to escape the labelling but I have at least, 
>> I hope, helped a bit in the process of developing more sophisticated and 
>> fluid forms of labelling that are not quite so mentally entrapping as the 
>> 'keep it simple stupid' language that people keep telling me I should use 
>> ("if I am to be understood and not dismissed" as one colleague recently 
>> put it) and that the likes of Richard Dawkins exploit to the full in 
>> conveying what is more simplistic but not more true or indeed truly 
>> simple. One of my ultra-Darwinist colleagues has been known to say to me 
>> 'I might bother to listen to you, Alan, when you learn to use precise 
>> language'. Not much room for co-creative dialogue there!
>>
>> Meanwhile I am working with my Nigerian friend Lere Shakunle on 
>> developing transfigural mathematical formulations of inclusionality, 
>> based on local-non-local logic, and have also worked very intensely on 
>> developing lyrical and non-verbal forms of expression, as in my anthology 
>> on 'natural communion' downloadable from www.inclusional-research.org.
>>
>>
>> Warmest
>>
>> Alan
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> ----- Original Message ----- 
>> From: "Darragh Power" <[log in to unmask]>
>> To: <[log in to unmask]>
>> Sent: Thursday, March 20, 2008 1:31 PM
>> Subject: Re: Ojectivity etc.....
>>
>>
>> Dear all,
>>
>> Sometimes I think Wittgenstein hit the nail on the head - to paraphrase:
>>
>> ...we should try to prevent of the bewitchment of our intelligence by 
>> language
>>
>> and secondly - language is a game - we need to know the rules of the game
>> in order to participate. If part of the values of a living theory 
>> approach
>> to action research is sharing meaning, and creating and sharing meaning 
>> while
>> in relationship - with others, with local or non local space - whatever 
>> you
>> want to call it - is this not splitting hairs a little.
>>
>> In Zen, vedanta etc take your pick - it is the act of labeling, the game
>> of language that is considered part of the problem, so most of them 
>> bypassed
>> this local non local, or subject / object divide by using stories, in 
>> plain
>> language - to spark thinking or action rather than go for full on 
>> explanation.
>> I am not sure that inclusional logic can be fully expressed through 
>> language,
>> and I think in a way attempts to explain subject / object as dynamic 
>> flows,
>> local non local etc is really changing one set of labels for another more
>> refined set, but still labels none the less.
>>
>> Thats why I kept silent and didnt write this - grin!!!! Maybe plain 
>> English
>> that suggests something rather than tries to fully explain it - stories 
>> or
>> poetry is the only form of expression that allows us to convey meaning, 
>> without
>> reification.
>>
>> best wishes......bewitched by language.
>> Darragh
>>
>