Dear All,

You might like to see what I think are these very insightful responses from 
my inclusional co-spiriter, Ted Lumley.

Warmest

Alan


----- Original Message ----- 
From: "emile" <[log in to unmask]>
To: "Inclusional Research" <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Tuesday, April 29, 2008 10:39 PM
Subject: Re: Rationalist value and inclusional worth



dear alan,

some additional 'connective thoughts' on 'value' and 'worth'.

since nature is a continuing dynamic one cannot conceive of any
meaning to 'value' or to 'worth' without an 'evaluator' whose
experience gives meaning and 'relative importance' to either and both
of these.   some people would clearly sacrifice 'worth' to 'value' or
sacrifice 'integrity' to 'richesse', as we know is a common 'falling'
in our 'social darwinism-tending' society.  the suggestion in the
following is that we can relate our 'driver psyche' to giving
precedence to 'value' (localized worth as in 'worth' that can be
possessed in attaining a destination) over 'raw worth', and our 'pilot
psyche' to giving precedence to 'worth' (nonlocal worth as in the
sustaining of dynamical balance in our experiential voyage).

since the relative meaningfulness/importance of 'value' relative to
'worth' originates in the observer/experient, it is useful, i think,
to consider two modes of engaging with the dynamics of our common
living space; i.e. 'the pilot' (the 'sailboating psyche') and 'the
driver' (the 'powerboating psyche').  i.e. you wrote (in the parallel
thread 'the simplistic nature of favouritism - and how it produces
junk';

"I was struck by your use of the word 'pilot' for the guider of the
convection cell. I'm often struck by the way we speak of a 'driver' of
a car on solid tarmac, but a pilot of a boat or plane on sea or air
ways. Of course, the very idea that we can DRIVE a car as if we were
some internal power source and ghost in the machine is the same kind
of nonsense that lies in the core of objective rationalization.... But
the notion of a PILOT, who guides the responses of his/her vehicle as
a dynamic inclusion of fluid context is much more naturally
inclusional."

i suspect that with most of us, our experience has taken us through
'stormy phases' in which it becomes apparent to us that we can no
longer 'control' the unfolding of events.   for example, one of our
children may enter in a phase of their life experience which is
destructive to them (e.g. what we like to call 'mental derangement' or
'illness') and they will no longer take guidance and direction from
us.   social systems begin to take over control of our child and seek
to cure them by 'institutionalizing them' and drugging them etc.   or,
it might be that some machiavellian colleague erodes our good standing
in our workplace and we lose our job, then the mortgage company evicts
us from our home, conflicts emerge more frequently and intensively
within our family, our teenager rebel and strike out in anger against
'us' or 'society' etc. etc.

the general point here is that we come to the realization that we can
no longer 'keep things together', ... we are no longer 'in control of
our destination'; i.e. we are no longer 'in the driver's seat',
'powerboating no longer works' and we must accept that we are included
in a dynamic greater than ourselves and thus go into 'sailboating
mode' (piloting mode).

this is the time where many people seek to get in touch with God or
some 'higher authority' since one recognizes that one is included
within an uncontrollable unfolding and that one can only 'roll with
the punches' rather than 'overcoming the dynamics that one
'encounters' [one's experience is no longer seen in the binary sense
of 'encounter' in the manner that powerboater encounters a large wave
while driving forward to his destination.  instead one's experience is
seen in terms of inclusion in a dynamic that is not simply 'opposing'
one's forward drive, but which is including one within it; i.e. one
must shift from 'driving' mode (absolute local-self-directed motion)
to 'piloting' mode (moving relative to the dynamic of the space one is
included in so as to sustain 'dynamical balance' with(in) it].

whether or not one gets in touch with 'a higher authority' of the
various types offered by the diversity of religious and philosophical
traditions, there is usually a profound 'letting go' that occurs in
these experiences, and in my own experience, this 'letting go' feels
like 'giving oneself up to love'; i.e. putting oneself in the service
of sustaining harmony with the dynamic of the living space one is
uniquely situationally included in; i.e. one stops trying to take over
control of the child's life so as to ensure they do not continue on,
on a path that is destructive to them, but one concedes that one is
'not in the driver's seat' and reverts to a supportive role relative
to the unfolding of events that are beyond one's control.  the picture
that comes to mind here, is one of two sailboat's in a storm.  while
the unfolding dynamic of winds, waves and currents is too strong and
unpredictable to plan one's movements in advance [one must open
oneself up to continuing simultaneous engaging with the unfolding
(fluid-)dynamic], one is nevertheless able to move so as to give 'lee'
or 'shelter' to the accompanying vessels (e.g. the boat of one's
child, spouse, friend).

'piloting', in this sense, is clearly not the same thing as
'driving'.   our emotions may 'spike' when we think of ourselves as a
'john wayne', a symbolic driver of the bus that in spite of intense
opposition, gets all of us to our desired destination, ... but in
'real life', the best efforts of the 'john wayne's' may not succeed in
driving forward and arriving at the sought after 'happy ending'.
when the 'driver ego' takes over at the head of powerful nations
equipped with weapons of mass destruction, persistence in the futile
goal to prevail in 'john wayne driver mode' leads on to more 'pre-
emptive strikes' and 'collateral damage' that further excites the
turbulence of the common space we share inclusion in.   dedicating
oneself to the 'piloting mode' of accepting that one is 'not in
control' (not in the driver's seat) and instead of moving as in
'drivers mode' to impose PASSIVE-AGGRESSIVE STASIS as in 'peace-
keeping', moving so as to (simultaneously, mutually) put one's fellows
in one's lee in a 'dynamical balance sustaining' behavioural
orientation.

to close the loop on the meaning/importance difference between 'value'
and 'worth', both of these concepts involve the fulfilling of
something missing in the experience of the meaning-giver.   meanwhile
'fulfilling of something missing' can also be addressed in terms of
'restoring balance', so there is an implied connection or parallelism
between the difference between 'value' and 'worth' (two modes of
fulfilling something missing) and 'driving' and 'piloting'; i.e.
'value' relates to 'worth' in the manner that 'destination' relates to
'voyage'.

in economic theory, a individual or corporation or property developer
is seen as a 'driver' of 'value-added' and as we know, 'the free
market economy' is 'destination-oriented' and the 'voyage' is reduced
to the 'by hook or by crook' means of attaining the destination.
'value' is something you can POSSESS and 'keep piling up' as you
attain 'desired destination' (goals, objectives) after 'desired
destination'.  i.e. 'value' is 'localized worth' or POSSESSABLE WORTH.

but on the subject of where 'value' comes in, in our continuing life
experience, we often say that 'the value is not in the destination but
in the journey-experience'.  while we can possess the 'fruits' of
attaining our desired destination (objective, goal) and speak, in the
manner of the property-developer, of the 'added value' we have
generated in the process (we have improved upon the zero-improvements
base-case of what nature is giving us to start with (the value of the
dynamical space of nature we take to be 'zero').   the WORTH OF A
HARMONIOUS/BEAUTIFUL/LOVING EXPERIENCE IS NOT A POSSESSABLE WORTH;
i.e. the value is in the quality of the voyage and not in the
attainment of the destination.

and this ties back to your comment as to where 'value' is to be found
in living, alan;

"I now feel that I/we may now be positioned to explain my/our living
practice in terms of receptively and responsively communicating the
evolutionary understanding of life as: ... a gift of natural inclusion
in co-creative energy flow, to be held and passed on with love and
care, not a possession or trophy to be competed for"

this implicitly parallels;  'the value is in the (co-shaped dynamic of
the) journey rather than in the attainment of one's desired
destination'.

and this in turn implies the quest for 'restoring balance' in two
different ways, (a) the piecewise restoring of balance (making whole
what has a hole/deficit in it) by driving forward and acquiring and
possessing that which we feel we has been missing (as in economics of
book balancing with locally possessable, measurable and countable
'localized worth' aka 'value'), and/or (b) to accept that we are
included in a dynamical space whose continual unfolding is continually
beyond our control though we participate in shaping its continual
unfolding so that 'restoring balance' in a 'making whole that which
has a deficiency' is never 'attained' and is in fact inherently
unattainable since we are not in the driver's seat to do so (in other
words, to model 'restoring balance' in terms of 'a whole that is
missing something' is a case of 'choosing not that which is most true
but that which is most easy').

as we know, many people (many of us) to a greater or lesser degree,
give up the quality of their(/our) journey and put it in the service
of attaining their individual self-interest determined destination;
i.e. the ends of their desired destination justifies the reducing-to-
hook-or-crook' means aka their voyage/life-experience.  there is a
subtlety in doing this as to which one we put into psychological
precedence over the other (which one we assign 'greater value' to).
for example, our 'sailboating' (piloting) experience of inclusion in
an unfolding life dynamic naturally 'comes first' and then we 'sit
down and think about it' and make plans, objectives etc..  then we set
out in 'powerboat' (driving) to implement these plans as we experience
the ongoing unfolding life dynamic so that we have the choice of
thinking of ourselves primarily as 'sailboaters (pilots) who take our
plans along on the ride with us' , or as 'powerboaters (drivers) in
charge of deterministically executing our destination-driven plans'.
in the former case our pilot-psyche gives precedence to sustaining
balance within out unfolding life dynamic (our unique situational
inclusion within the common living space dynamic) and uses our
destination oriented plan as back-up, while in the latter case, our
driver-psyche gives precedence to attaining of our destination leaving
staying in harmony with our unfolding life experience we allow to be
whipped about in this 'destination-as-ends that justifies the
experience-as-means' psychological precedence.

so, there seems to be a case for 'trying on' the respective
equivalencing of 'value' to 'destination' (localized worth possessable
by an individual/corporation/nation that fulfills in the stasis
oriented sense of a whole with a piece missing), on the one hand, ....
and on the other hand, 'worth' to 'journey' (nonlocal worth in a
'balance-restoring' sense wherein it is not us, as the driving force
(that restores balance and acquires 'what is missing' in the sense of
our personal 'wholeness' and what seems THEREIN to be
'missing'), .. .but where we are included in a simultaneously mutually
influencing dynamic (three-body problem) where we must throw our body
into the service of seeking to sustain/restore dynamical balance, in
the manner of the sailboat crew in the storm turbulence, or better, in
the manner of a convection cell within a mutually-sourcing cluster of
convection cells as constitutes a high energy current in the flow).

regards,

ted

On 28 Apr, 21:23, emile <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> dear alan,
>
> a few thoughts come to mind in regard to 'value' and 'worth', partly
> in association with comments by wittgenstein and lao tsu.
>
> wittgenstein said, "for the crystal clarity of logic was not the
> result of our investigation, it was an imposed requirement" ... "the
> pre-judice of crystal clarity can only be removed by turning our whole
> investigation around. ("one might say, the axis of reference of our
> investigation must be rotated about the centerpoint of our own
> need.")
>
> it would seem that 'value' is also some kind of 'explicitized worth'
> that corresponds to 'the pre-judice of crystal clarity'; i.e. "value
> is not the result of our experiential exploring, it is an imposed
> requirement. ... the pre-judice of value can only be removed by
> rotating the axis of reference of our investigation about the
> centerpoint of our own need."
>
> if we are in a desert, the oasis we are searching for has value (the
> desert we are included in is what we see when we rotate the axis of
> reference of our investigation about the centerpoint of our own
> need).
>
> that is, 'what is missing' defines where the 'explicitized worth =
> value' comes from, and if one asks 'missing from what?' it is missing
> from the included-in-living-space experience of the assessor of worth
> or value.
>
> meanwhile, if we stay with 'things in themselves', the gift of gold
> would have neither worth nor value to a man dying of thirst or famine;
> i.e. the worth lies in what is missing in 'where one is coming from',
> while those (many different) things that can fill what is missing have
> value; i.e.. to a lonely man, a dog or bird or lizard coming into
> their lives will have value.
>
> lao tsu separated 'value' from 'utility' in the example of a clay
> vessel, the containing property of the vessel is its 'worthiness' but
> the vessel-as-local-object is where its value (profit) lies.
>
> Thirty spokes unite at the wheel's hub;
> It is the center hole [literally, "from their not being"] that makes
> it useful.
> Shape clay into a vessel;
> It is the space within that makes it useful.
> Cut out doors and windows for a room;
> It is the holes which make it useful.
> Therefore profit [value] comes from what is there;
> Usefulness [worthiness] from what is not there.
>
> the 'something missing' invokes space and this seems to put us on a
> slightly different tack than hyde with his 'gifts' and 'commodities';
> e.g. 'this wooden golf tee was given to me by sam snead who used it on
> the clinching hole in his British Open win'. or, ... 'this solid gold
> golf tee was given to me by my obscenely rich brother-in-law who never
> shot 18 holes in less than 100 strokes'. in this case, the 'worth'
> derives NOT FROM THE GIFT IN ITSELF but from the manner of the thing's
> enfoldment in the fluid-dynamics of space.
>
> this old wooden vessel is very sea-worthy while the one over there
> with gold-plated cleats and teak inlaid salon is 'worth a fortune' but
> i wouldn't trust it on a long voyage', .... is a use of 'worth' which,
> in the former, invokes inclusion in dynamical space while in the
> latter invokes value in the 'thing in itself'.
>
> similarly, 'he would be a worthy opponent' invokes inclusion in the
> dynamics of space while 'he is worth millions' does not.
>
> tying this back, ... the desert and oasis example is a kind of
> 'euclidian' notion of 'something missing' that invokes 're-balancing'
> or 'fill-fulling' in the sense of restoring 'stasis' (balancing the
> books) while the 'sea-worthiness' example is a kind of (beyond) non-
> euclidian notion of a 'dynamical missingness (simultaneous asserting-
> accommodating based missingness-fillingness, gathering-scattering as
> constitutes 'flow'). (see dynamical-balancing in the glossary in A
> Fluid-Dynamical Worldview, pp 62-68 www.goodshare.org/fluiddynamicview.pdf
> )
>
> i don't know if 'this invoking of dynamical inclusion in space works'
> for differentiating 'value' and 'worth' but i think there is something
> here and it ties to timo's remarks on 'motivation' implying a base
> case of 'passivity' in the organism (fulfilment is passivity). i.e.
> the 'value' of an organism is seen to be in proportion to motivation
> that is in turn seen to explain fitness and productive achievement.
>
> regards,
>
> ted
>
> On 27 Apr, 05:51, "Alan Rayner \(BU\)" <[log in to unmask]>
> wrote:
>
>
>
> > Dear All,
>
> > On p. 62 of 'The Gift: How the Creative Spirit Transforms the World', by 
> > Lewis Hyde, I came across these sentences:
>
> > '... I would begin the analysis by saying that a commodity has value and 
> > a gift does not. A gift has worth.... I mean 'worth' to refer to those 
> > things we prize and yet say 'you can't put a price on it'. We derive 
> > value, on the other hand, from the comparison of one thing with another'
>
> > This resonates with a sense of disquiet I often feel when people talk 
> > about 'values' and 'what is truly valuable in life'. It may also link 
> > with perceptions of 'valueless junk' and how people who are judged or 
> > judge themselves to be 'unsuccessful' often feel 'worthless'.
>
> > Maybe there is a worthwhile distinction to be made here, which also 
> > links to 'transfigural numbers' that can have different values yet all 
> > have the same worth - since they are distinct but not discrete local 
> > inclusions of non-local space.
>
> > Perhaps an inclusional 'value' lies in the recognition that in a nature 
> > where each is an inclusion of all and vice versa, 'different value' need 
> > not signify 'different worth'.
>
> > Just a thought.... that we should not confuse worth with value ....
>
> > Warmest
>
> > Alan- Hide quoted text -
>
> - Show quoted text -
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