dear alan,
i like your essays on 'an example of inclusionality' and 'tolerance'.
they elicit in me the following comments which employ different
metaphors while transporting what seems to me the same meaning.
right now, robert mugabe is 'drawing a line' around zimbabwe', ... the
sort of line that seeks exclusion of outside influence so that one's
'local' courage and perseverance can command the destiny of the local
people. what is frustrating to mugabe, as it was to mandela, is that
the behaviours of africans inside their local nations are inductively
shaped by the dynamical behaviours 'out there' in 'the rest of the
world'.
many can understand this frustration. third world nations are
controlled by the world bank/world economy etc. which is in turn
controlled by the G8 and which protects the precedence of 'the profit
motive' as the primary driver of the world social dynamic, by way of
the 'free market economy'.
mandela was encouraged (in the transition as apartheid was
terminated), and he had the power to TRY to do it, to split off from
the western economy, but he did not. i am sure that he did not 'like
to be in bed with western free-market economic ethics (or non-
ethics)', but i suspect he thought of this in terms of a shared
destiny for all of us, that we are all included in a common unfolding
world dynamic.
this did not mean that he could not put his priorities on improving
'local conditions' but it does mean that his view of 'local' is not an
absolutist or sovereigntist view, where the welfare of the local
region originates from within the local region. nature's dynamic
does not work this way.
so, your following comment 'resonates' with this difference between
mandela and mugabe (inclusionality vis a vis rationality); and while
mandela's 'inclusionality' does not preclude his 'rationality',
mugabe's rationality precludes his inclusionality; i.e. 'rationality'
is a reduced special case (mathematically degenerate case) of
'inclusionality' in the same sort of manner that 'rectangular space'
is a reduced special/degenerate case of 'curved space'.
in order to understand 'local behaviour' as truly 'local', one has to
'frame it' with an absolute reference space to give meaning to such
absolutely local behaviours. this is a case of our penchant for
'choosing that which is not most true but that which is most
easy' (kepler). what is most true is that our behaviour, locally, is
relative to the dynamics of space we are included in, and we are each
uniquely, situationally included in the world dynamic. to 'invert'
this understanding and thus declare that our behaviour originates
fully and solely 'locally' (as in our justice system where we say that
we, as individuals or nations, are fully and solely responsible for
our own behaviours) cannot be validated by our real-life experience
since 'absolute space' cannot be validated by our real-life
experience, and besides, we know that individuals can be 'cornered'
and teased and tortured to the point they explode in anger and do
something to break out of their entrapment, as jean valjean did by
stealing a loaf of bread in 'les miserables'.
if we focus on him and his actions and interactions and this is what
we set out to describe, then and only then (in this local object
dynamics view) does it follow that 'he is fully and solely responsible
for his own behaviour'. by isolating him and his actions and
interactions in our 'mental viewframe', we are in effect imposing an
absolute space reference frame so as to give meaning to his behaviour
as if it were locally originating within him.
on the other hand, if we open up our view so that we understand him to
be situated in the dynamics of a common space that he (and everyone/
everything) is included in, then it becomes evident, and affirmable by
our experience, that individual and collective behaviour is
inductively shaped by the continuously unfolding dynamics of space we
share inclusion in. when the storm blows up, the ships head for port,
and we can say that the captains are fully and solely responsible for
their own behaviour, but they will tell us 'any port in a storm'; i.e.
their behaviour is inductively shaped by the shape of the dynamical
space they are included in.
captain mandela will take his crew into safe haven even if the
unfolding weather comes at a time when he has found a prolific school
of fish and was ready to deploy his nets and take the long awaited
harvest (he will acknowledge the more powerful dynamic in which he and
his crew are included). captain mugabe will continue to focus on
commanding his destiny locally, to proceed with his own local plans,
and exclude from his consideration, the dynamical unfolding in which
he is situated (he will spite the more powerful dynamic in which he
and his crew are included).
both give their priority to their 'local situation'; one with the
acknowledgement that 'local' is included in a nonlocal fluid-dynamic,
and the other believing he can exclude 'outside influence' and operate
as if the local crew can, by their courage and perseverance, command
their own destiny.
this, you seem to have captured in a very succinct manner in your
following statement;
"What this means, most fundamentally, is that rationalism cannot cope
with any presence that isn’t finite in the sense of being confined to
a particular locality. When it encounters such an unquantifiable
presence, rationalism attempts, for the sake of its own convenience
and at the expense of truth, to force fit it into confinement within
or conflation with a measurable, fixed structure."
as individuals, we are 'polyphrenous' and have both a 'mandela' and a
'mugabe' persona inside of us. the same goes for nations. the US,
in particular is undergoing an internal psychic war between its
mandela persona and its mugabe persona; i.e. between whether to give
priority to 'inclusionality' over 'rationality' or vice versa. the
practice of attempting to command one's destiny LOCALLY is running
into problems. dependence on oil (not to mention water and air) that
is outside of one's locality is a reminder that the concept of 'local'
is the result of our 'choosing not that which is most true but that
which is most easy'
the world economy is based on 'rationality', the pursuit of commanding
one's destiny LOCALLY through courage and perseverance (the 'american
dream') and what it promotes is 'litte mugabes everywhere'. mandela
resisted letting his mugabe persona rise to precedence even though he
did not like the ethics of the world dynamic that he and his south
african people were included in. such resistance to extremism
(exclusion) is the beginning of the antidote for a world pysche that
has been infected with mugabe-ism in a not-so-obvious way.
the film 'blood for diamonds' and many others, brings to our attention
the ills of the free market economy with its inbuilt mugabe-ism.
economically powerful movements extort unscrupulous behaviour from
starving people. the perpetrators of the unscrupulous behaviour, the
recruiters of child soldiers etc. are one step removed from the
respected sources of economic power. there is simply the passage of
money between them, for oil or diamonds or whatever, and what happens
on the other side of that transaction is not the business of the
respected companies and their national governments who give them
special treatment and protection. this is because each and every
person is held to be fully and solely responsible for his/her own
behaviour.
what a wonderful 'behaviour laundering' vehicle this is! good thing
everyone buys into it, ... at least for those who wish to keep alive
'the american dream' (mugabe-ism).
sure, we can point our fingers at the 'oil companies' and the 'diamond
companies' and the 'banana plantation companies' but so long as we all
support the notion that we are each 'fully and solely responsible for
our own behaviour', we will continue to 'launder' ourselves out of any
responsibility for 'blood for diamonds' and the like.
i.e. finger-pointing accompanied by 'mutual exclusion' is the
pretension that we are each 'local beings' that are capable of
operating in our own right; i.e. it is mugabe-ism which puts
'rationality' into precedence so that there is no room for
'inclusionality'.
mandela-ism is the acknowledging that we are includied in this
dynamical brotherhood of man whether we like it or not and there is no
such thing as a 'local dynamic' that originates locally/
positivistically. .everything that is 'local' is an included feature
of the nonlocal fluid-dynamic spatial continuum of nature. this does
not mean it is determined by what it is included in, it means that
what unfolds is by way of simultaneous mutual influence. each of us
has a job to do to sustain dynamical balance and harmony in the
continuing, unpredictable unfolding. this requires great courage and
perseverance but not in the same 'mugabian' sense of 'commanding one's
local destiny'. it is putting our 'sailboating captain' persona
(humbly accepting that we derive power and directional traction from
the dynamical space we share inclusion in) in precedence over our
'powerboating captain' person (proudly rallying our local resources to
command our local destiny while excluding [denying] our inherent
inclusion in unfolding dynamic great than ourselves).
regards,
ted
On 24 Jun, 00:50, "Alan Rayner \(BU\)" <a.d.m.ray...@bath.ac.uk>
wrote:
> Dear All,
> FYPI, I've just written the attached short essays.
> Warmest
> Alan
> Exemplifying Inclusionality.doc
> 39KDownload
> tolerance.doc
> 58KDownload
