------------ Forwarded Message ------------
Date: 14 December 2006 09:01 +0000
From: "A.D.M.Rayner" <[log in to unmask]>
To: BERA Practitioner-Researcher
<[log in to unmask]>
Cc: Alon Serper <[log in to unmask]>, Jack Whitehead
<[log in to unmask]>, "A.D.M.Rayner" <[log in to unmask]>, Marie
Huxtable <[log in to unmask]>, Ted Lumley <[log in to unmask]>,
[log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: Educational
Dear Alon,
I'm responding from my home computer, which the BERA server rejects, so
perhaps you or Jack or Marie could forward this on to the others?
Yes, I like 'ings' too.
Flows are 'dynamic relational', always with reciprocal inner (concave) and
outer (convex) distinguished and coupled through intermediary aspects (e.g.
when 'I walk across a room', there is a reciprocal reconfiguration of the
inner space that my skin outlines with outer space that my skin inlines',
just as there is a flow of water around a boat that reciprocates its forward
passage). They do not involve the movement of a spatially dislocated object
from A to B as a linear progression in a Euclidean 3-dimensional framework
(this being a dimensionally collapsed view of Nature, with space and time
abstracted as empty outsiders). They involve the reciprocal coupling of
concave and convex domains in non-linear (curved) energy-space.
Insofar as flows have 'purpose', this is to sustain dynamic equilibrium, via
a continual 'living' process of 'attunement' or 'harmonization' (in physics,
called 'resonance'), as when a hurricane transfers heat from tropical to
temperate latitudes (note that a hurricane cannot be considered as an
'object' independent from the atmosphere of which it is a dynamic inclusion,
anymore than a human body can be considered as an object independent from
Nature). So, the Severn Bore, for example, is quite different from the
Kiekergaardian bore; it is a flow form that sustains dynamic equilibrium.
And so are you and I.
Below I am pasting in some writing from Chapter 9 of 'Natural Inclusion',
which develops some of these themes in relation to management and
educational practice.
Incidentally, I have just come across a book by Petruska Clarkson called
'The Achilles Syndrome: Overcoming the Secret Fear of Failure' (1998,
Element Books). It describes my personal distress, arising from my childhood
and adolescent experience of 'education', and my associated 'Achilles Heel'
or 'Secret Flaw', perfectly (also alluded to in my novel, 'Design Fault',
see http://people.bath.ac.uk). It contains the following, telling sentence:
"Another important reason for the prevalence of the Achilles Syndrome are
the inadequacies, deficiencies, absurdities and cruelties of our educational
systems"
If ever there was validation of the need for living educational theory, this
is it.
Here are seven characteristics of the 'Achilles Syndrome' (linked also to
what is more popularly referred to as 'Impostor Syndrome', but I think the
Achilles version is deeper and more Archetypal). All apply well to me.
1. A mismatch between externally assessed competence or qualification and
internally experienced competence or capability, leading to feelings of 'I
am a fraud';
2. Inappropriate anxiety or panic in anticipation of doing the relevant
task;
3. Inappropriate strain or exhaustion after the task;
4. Relief instead of satisfaction on completion of a task;
5. Inability to carry over any sense of achievement to the next situation;
6. A recurrent conscious or unconscious fear of being found out, and of
shame and humiliation;
7. A longing to tell others about the discomfort but the fear of being
called weak or unstable. This sense of a taboo adds to the strain,
loneliness and discomfort
You might find the following passages of Chapter 9 of interest also in this
light. I think they're also very relevant to Marie's work with 'giftedness',
and how giftedness is abused in our current systems, leading to the
predominance of 'concrete blockheadedness'.
Warmest
Alan
---------------------------------------------------
Inclusional Implications of the Boundless 'Fifth' Dimension: Curing Cosmic
Cancer
Perhaps it was unwise of Mother Space, in her everywhere-Divine Wisdom, to
enable any of her diverse local expressions to become aware of its awareness
of itself. But if there is to be creativity at all, any possibility of life
and evolution, maybe such possibilities must also be entertained. The
trouble is that such a form of expression could develop a Mind of its Own to
declare itself an independent entity and so make an enemy of its
neighbourhood, setting the scene for invasion of its birthplace, determined
to take over vacant possession.
Maybe it was this declaration of independence, through an ever-hardening
belief in its own free will or purely internal purpose as 'first cause' of
its own actions, associated with its ability to make absolute judgemental
choices, that brought about the Fall of One such a form from Merciful Grace.
The difficulty lay in its declaration, as an abstraction of its Mind alone,
not the actuality of its inescapable inclusion in interdependent
relationship by and of All, space included. For, by no stretch of
imagination is this form truly able to act or be acted upon as a superior or
inferior object independent from its dynamic situation. It cannot be an
absolute, independent singleness. Every man like every form is no more and
no less than a transient island of flow, connected through and undersea with
every other, a distinct identity but never a discrete entity.
The declaration of independence was the product of a partial and idealistic
vision, which led this one such form mentally to Box reality securely and
paradoxically in a finite, three-dimensional Euclidean frame stretched to
infinity, whilst vaunting its own free agency. By the end of the second
millennium CE, life in this frame was painfully overheating. Was there no
escape from the pressure cooker? What could this form do about it? Could
this form, for so long the World's plunderer now save the World from
depredation? What kind of transformation would such a noble act of rescue
take? Would it be some wondrous new technology and/or legislation, of the
kind that this form was so good at inventing, again and again, in the nick
of time, as crisis loomed? Then there could be some great collective sigh of
relief, followed by a return to die-hard habits to await the next crisis of
exploitation. Or, perhaps, as one of Man's star mathematical performers
suggested, it was already too late: it was now time, through the ultimate
technological fix of space travel, to move on like a virus to other host
planets, leaving the wasteland of His own vacant possession behind.
But there always was, is and evermore shall be a loophole: a window into and
out of the solid confinements of the 'Adverse Square Law', through which the
unbounded presence of space everywhere melts all into coherent, fluid
dynamic relationship. An eye of the needle through which to ask not how to
shift the world from a disastrous course, but how to help the world
transform our sense of individual, active-reactive self-identity into
receptive-responsive neighbourhood. A loophole at the intersection of
Vertical ('I') with Horizontal ('-') outwardly recurving planes, to form an
electrogravitational centre of inference: a centre of dynamic balance in the
core and spread through the surfaces of all tangible, primarily non-linear
form, a zero-point source and receiver of all through all, distributed
everywhere. A core of pure spatial relationship, continually reconfiguring,
and hence utterly different from the fixed-point control centre of Euclidean
geometry upon whose illusory existence so many principles of human
governance have been founded. One place and many where apparently opposing
sides are conjoined and transformed into complementary dynamic partners via
the inclusion of light in darkness and darkness in light, in vastly unequal
proportion. One place and many corresponding with the notion of 'space' as
the '5th element' in Hindu philosophy, which both includes and is included
in the 'melted elemental forms' of 'Earth, Air, Fire and Water': a boundless
'fifth' dimension transcending the three-dimensional singularity of frozen
space and extraneous time.
Once 'seen with gravitational feeling', this boundless dimension utterly
transforms and revitalizes understanding of how we may manage our lives and
living space in a loving and sustainable way. Here boundaries are understood
as co-creative, co-created zones of differentiation, mutual respect and
complementarity, not severing divides between conflicting sides in
opposition. It is the implications of this transformational understanding of
our natural, dynamic human neighbourhood for the way we may live in
harmonious, respectful, co-creative evolutionary relationship that I wish
now to consider in this opening ending chapter.
The Vitality of Imperfection - From Abstract Concrete Blocks to Natural
Evolutionary Neighbourhood
As may be apparent from previous chapters, I think that the notion of
evolution by natural selection is an oxymoron, a paradoxical 'concrete block
evolution'. When we accept and work with this notion, we assume the role of
obstructive 'concrete blockheads' intellectually out of touch with our
feeling, receptive-responsive hearts. It is a truly compassion-killing
notion, Hell-bent on replacing natural, fluid-dynamic diversity with
concrete monoculture. It is a model of cancerous degeneration, not
co-creative innovation. Set within an abstract, 3-dimensional Euclidean
frame, a cubical cubicle filled to completion with independent cubical
singularities, it leads inexorably to the notion of an ideal form of
individual 'unit of selection' - the 'fittest' competitor within a rigidly
walled niche. This in turn gives rise to the idea of perfecting individuals
by selecting out those traits that don't conform to a prescriptive set of
standards - an idea that has become deeply entrenched in human educational
and regulatory systems. It comes inevitably with an intolerance of those who
in one way or another are judged by fixed standards to be 'not good enough
- 'imperfect' in some way. Such intolerance can lead to great cruelty and
great distress as we impose rationalistic notions of perfection and
imperfection upon others and ourselves in a conflict-ridden anti-culture of
discontent, as I described in Chapter 1. We actively seek out, punish and
attempt to eliminate whatever we find fault with, whilst glorifying what we
perceive to be flawless in a culture of blame, shame, claim and gain.
Not only is this concrete block view of evolutionary perfectionism deeply
distressing to those judged not good enough, but its rigidity results in the
exclusion of the enormous creative possibility of bringing diverse,
complementary relationships to bear as we navigate the ever-transforming
world of our natural, fluid dynamic neighbourhood. It is radically
counter-evolutionary; a bastion set against change other than its own
proliferation and concomitant destruction of diversity. It makes no sense in
an ever-reconfiguring, non-linear, space-including context where the
evolution of one cannot be dislocated from the evolution of all, and vice
versa.
There is therefore very good intellectual reason for feeling compassionately
that what we might deem in a perfectionist framework to be a design fault in
human nature, our vulnerability and proneness to 'error', which comes
through the inclusion of space - darkness - in our make-up, is actually
vital. It is an aspect of our nature that enables us to love and feel love
and so work co-creatively in dynamic relational neighbourhood, celebrating
and respecting rather than decrying our diversity of competencies and
appearances.
Correspondingly I think there is a need for us to grow beyond the obsessive
perfectionism that is evident in our present educational and administrative
systems, governed by fixed, objective, rules, regulations and standards.
There is a need to recognise that there can be no such thing as an ideal,
fixed, individual form that all can aspire towards. Evolutionary perfection
can only be a property of all in dynamic relationship, not one in isolation.
The exception that seeks to rule can only create turbulence, not perfection.
Our educational and administrative systems need to help us learn how to
flow, by including and loving the very source of irregularity that makes us
imperfect as independently performing objects but perfect as dynamic
relational - receptive and responsive flow-forms. The standards that we tend
to encase ourselves in need to be allowed to come alive: to flex and
transform as ever-reconfiguring guide-linings in our ongoing evolution. In
this way we can be naturally intelligent neighbourhoods, not artificially
intelligent, concrete blockheads.
So, how can such ever-reconfiguring guide-linings be formulated and
communicated through our educational and administrative systems? What kind
of leadership is required? Is the very idea of leadership one of the
die-hard habits that keep us stuck in concrete?
Powerboat Leadership and Sailboat Craftsmanship
There is a form of leadership that does not call for a careful, creative and
reflective consideration of possibilities viewed from all angles by all
concerned. Rather, it demands conformity with its own vision and
specification of destination. In the absence of others' agreement, it
carries on regardless with whatever action it has planned, convinced in its
own mindset that this is the 'right thing to do'. Any leader of this ilk,
whether elected by a supposedly democratic majority or not, considers him or
herself to have a prerogative to do what they know to be best for the world,
regardless of context. Moreover, by exercising their moral imperialism in
the face of opposition they demonstrate the strength of their authority, a
resolve that historical narrative will, they imagine, in due course affirm
and celebrate. But events often don't exactly turn out as predicted. The
real life and death situation on the ground is far more complex and
non-linear than envisaged. The effects of intervention in complex situations
aren't so certain in the long run. The ensuing tragedies are never more
heart-rending than when a leader decides to declare war upon his
neighbourhood.
This is a style that I think is all too commonly the sole form of leadership
recognized in human organizations: a product of prescriptively definitive
(rationalistic) thinking and action that places deterministic power at
control centres or hubs. It amounts to what might be called authoritarian,
dictatorial, proprietorial or, as my friend Ted Lumley puts it, powerboat
leadership. It entails leadership towards a set destination of a fleet of
individuals that have declared themselves independent of their natural
situation by dint of strapping an outboard motor of technology on their
backsides, which creates one Hell of a wash of collateral damage for those
caught up in their turbulence. It is the kind of leadership provided by some
so-called experts, gurus, presidents and ministers whose actions primarily
serve individual self-interest, whereby an individual or elite lays down the
law or 'codes of conduct' for others to follow, regardless of circumstances.
Personally, I would hate to provide, or be accused of providing this kind of
leadership, even though I have found it to be expected of me as a
professional academic responsible for initiating students and non-academics
into 'good theory and practice'. There is another style of leadership, or
perhaps more aptly, craftsmanship, that I do, however, feel more comfortable
with and indeed aspire to, as a cultivator of creative space for myself and
others to air our views and benefit from shared experience. This is what
might be called Arthurian (after King Arthur and the Knights of the Round
Table), co-educational, non-proprietorial or, as my friend Ted Lumley puts
it, sailboat leadership. Such craftsmanship is based on learning through
experience how to attune with natural processes, in a way that others can
learn from. This is what I try to bring to my role as a University educator.
I have found through experience that all students except those relatively
few most fearful for their qualifications and future prospects come to love
and greatly appreciate this approach as a source of guidance for their
creative and critical development.
Now, as the supposedly 'United Nations' of humanity contemplates its 'next
steps', in the face of seemingly global environmental crisis, the question
of which, if either, of these forms of leadership is wiser seems very
important. Here, it is not a question necessarily of 'which is better?' in
an 'either/or' sense, but how can these styles best be balanced? I accept
that pragmatically, given the current predominantly concrete mindset of our
culture, there may need to be at least some 'powerboat' leadership by way of
technology and legislation to help us on our way. But I would want to ensure
that it doesn't become exclusive and is balanced by a good and perhaps
increasing dose of 'sailboat' leadership.
How does anyone in this situation who seeks leadership or has leadership
thrust upon them, see their role? Do they see themselves as co-cultivators
of creative space for wise enquiry? Does they see themselves as Directors
and Proprietors of organizations? Is wise leadership something definable
that we can be instructed about via the 'right kind of training' in a real
or virtual Institution? Is wisdom perhaps identifiable with love, some
indefinable presence that we can open ourselves to and co-cultivate?
I want now to explore in general rather than specifically detailed terms how
different perceptions of leadership, power and geometric influence affect
approaches to three kinds of life management. These respectively set out to
regulate, apply and mimic living processes.
----- Original Message -----
From: Alon Serper <[log in to unmask]>
To: <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: 13 December 2006 17:21
Subject: Re: Educational
Alan - I would replace the ed to ing - namely, detached to detaching;
fixed to fixing: And space to one's subject of interest:
Conceptualising and approaching human existence and the human subject
in my case. 'Biology and ecology, human relationships?' in your case?
Otherwise I fear we abstract into a theory of all theories.
I still think life has to flow somewhere: A clear purpose and
intention. Otherwise it is just a big Kierkekaardian bore. The idea
of just floating in space with no clear purpose and direction scares
me. Anyone can flow somewhere in space: What is important to me is
where it is flowing to. I am not sure the question of fixed static or
flowing and transforming is an issue anymore, at least not in my field
of interest and purpose. The living/transforming has won. I believe
the question now is flowing where?
My point is that poetry can and should be used for scientific analysis.
Poetry is aesthetic but why, for what purpose: And how is it
epistemological and educational, convincing and coherent?!. Alon
Quoting Alan Rayner <[log in to unmask]>:
> Dear Alon,
>
> I very much like this emphasis on the artistic and lyrical as a vital
> inclusion of any deep enquiry into the fundamental nature of human life,
> taking you beyond the realm of detached objectivism. I feel that the story
> of how you are transforming your originally purely analytical perspectives
> by this means exemplifies the transition from fixed to living 'standards
of
> judgement' and could provide the basis for a highly creative and original
> thesis. I might liken this to 'ice melting through becoming receptive to
> warmth', 'salt dissolving into solution through exposure to water' and a
> 'seed germinating into a flower'. There is this vital transition from the
> crystalline or latent form to expansive fluid form, a transition which is
> not the 'annihilation' that positivistic thinkers may fear. In terms of
> 'inclusionality', I see this transformation as arising most fundamentally
> from the dynamic embodiment of space as 'immaterial presence', opening the
> door to the creative possibility of unfixed, non-Euclidean geometry.
>
>
> Warmest
>
>
> Alan
>
> --On 13 December 2006 14:49 +0000 Alon Serper <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>
>> Dear All,
>>
>> I was watching Federico Fellini's 'La Strada' yesterday: An incredible,
>> classic, poetic and artistic film but not so much educational or
>> epistemological with no clear message and insight, other than the usual
>> Fellinian anti Church messages. And certainly not analysis. It is full
>> of artistic symbols (e.g., sea).
>>
>> I am using it to reflect on the difference between poetic and artistic
>> and epistemological, phenomenological, educational and analytical that
>> uses poetry and art.
>>
>> I have been drawn to art in my heuristics of human existence so as to
>> analyse and delve inside it as an educational exercise and rebelled
>> against my original training that told me to leave the poetic and
>> artistic for the analytic, empirical and scientific.
>>
>> I transformed myself from being a very cold, impersonal scientist to an
>> artist of human existence. I am overwhelmed this transformation.
>>
>> My intentions are still educational and epistemological though as a
>> psychologist and the constructor of my heuristics of human existence.
Alon
>
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