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Dear Sonia, Thank you very much for these comments! It's good to encounter you here, having heard a lot about you and enjoyed your 'people pool' picture from your notebook (which relates so very strongly to the story of 'sectored communion', attached)! Yes, there is much in eastern philosophy and elsewhere (even, ironically, in Richard Dawkins' writing) that points to the need for a more fluid way of thinking that liberates us from the divisive definitions of old. The problem has been, I think, that there hasn't been a sound logical basis on which to found this 'involution' - and there won't be as long as the logic itself unnaturally assumes discontinuity between inner and outer worlds (and ultimately between 'matter' and 'space'). This is the fundamental problem that Jack and I are seeking to address in our joint paper. To my mind, the problem resolves as soon as it is acknowledged that space, as a receptive presence, does not stop at boundaries. Meanwhile, the paradoxical inconsistency of continuing to think 'the old way', whilst seeking liberation from competition and conflict, is evident in Richard Dawkins' comment that:- ‘Let us try and teach generosity and altruism, because we are born selfish’! I would be inclined to rephrase this as follows:- 'Let us stop teaching ourselves that we are born selfish, because we are mutually influential flow-forms, not isolated objects!' In this way we can move beyond the evolutionary restrictions of '(un)natural selection' to the evolutionary understandings of 'natural inclusion', and recognise that both 'selfishness' and 'altruism' are evolutionarily untenable products of the way we rationalize reality, not the way we really are. Do feel free to check out the following video clips about this from my presentation at the Linnaean Society, London (where the 'Origin of Species' was first presented in 1858) this summer... http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wORIPFa2sEk 8 mins http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Db8OeyveFUY 10 mins http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QXiopcw88Vk 4 mins Warmest Alan ----- Original Message ----- From: Sonia Hutchison To: [log in to unmask] Sent: Saturday, November 07, 2009 10:28 PM Subject: Re: Joint paper Hi Thank you for your paper. It is a pleasure to both your thoughts and to be refreshed by people not accepting that the current mode of thinking is to be upheld purely because that is the way we have thought for the last 2500 years. I believe the west has a lot to learn from eastern thinking and to develop their thoughts on energy and is something I am exploring in my research. A practical point first the link on page 9 http://people.bath.ac.uk/edsajw/naidoo.shtml doesn't work. On a more personal level my current thinking is being shaped by some interesting reading: B. Alan Wallace's book Choosing Reality A buddhist view of physics and the mind is a fascinating argument as to the limitations of the western views of realism vs instrumentalism and the need for a new more flexible world view. Jon Kabat Zinn's book Full Catastrophe Living - How to cope with stress, pain and illness using mindfulness meditation, and his Book Wherever you go, there you are, looks at a mindful approach to reality which accepts the pain and suffering that life brings and offers a way to cope and to find the energy to live life to the full. It is something I am finding extremely interesting in these times of extreme testing and monitoring of all professions and the focus on outcomes rather than valuing the process. I also found Richard Dawkins book The selfish gene fascinating as he comes writes from a perspective which is optimistic and take the same view as you that 'It becomes possible not to regard ‘self’ as a fixed locality', stuck forever in the same old skin, with the same old genes controlling its every move, on course for inevitable competition and conflict.' Despite the name of the book he argues that by understanding our genetic make up it frees us to be able to choose a different way of being that is not selfish. Andrew Curran's book The Little book of big stuff about the brain - The true story of your amazing brain is a delight to read and uses cutting edge research on the brain to explore the amazing abilities of the brain to learn and how emotions increase or decrease our potential for learning depending on what the emotions are. They are all well worth a look and hopefully will interest you too. Kind Regards, Sonia > Date: Sat, 7 Nov 2009 08:49:07 +0000 > From: [log in to unmask] > Subject: Fw: Joint paper > To: [log in to unmask] > > Dear All, > > Over the last few months, Jack Whitehead and I have been preparing a joint > paper regarding the move from 'dialectics to inclusionality'. > > This has now reached the stage where we wish to share the work we have been > doing. It can be found at the url below. > > Warmest > > Alan > > ----- Original Message ----- > From: "Jack Whitehead" <[log in to unmask]> > To: "Alan Rayner" <[log in to unmask]> > Sent: Friday, November 06, 2009 5:32 PM > Subject: Joint paper > > > > Hi Alan - I've put the joint paper in the What's New section of > > actionresearch.net at: > > > > http://www.jackwhitehead.com/jack/arjwdialtoIncl061109.pdf > > > > Good to see. > > > > Love Jack. > > > > ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ New Windows 7: Find the right PC for you. Learn more.