London Calling

[Pat Black]

Masud, Chris, Raffi, Paul, Funda and All
I have been reading the thread on terrorism and the London bombing and feel compelled to respond to the thread. I want to thank you all for sticking with it.  Thank you Masud in particular for your response to Paul.  If felt reasoned and not reactionary to statements that could have very easily elicited reactionary responses.  I felt the need to respond but could not find words to convey what my heart felt.  I thank you for speaking my heart's desire and your eloquence.  

I feel it necessary to respond here because I face these issues everyday in the community I live.  Everyday I study history.  I study it from the a viewpoint I was not raised in.  I live in a Native American community.  Everyday I get the chance to view history through the perspective of Naive Americans who are trying to recover from colonization and the degradation of their life's blood the land.  I am not suggesting that there is unanimous opinion with in the Native community on any topic.  I do not think there is but I do witness unanimous sorrow and grieving for what has been taken.  I did not learn their version of history growing up in school.  I learned history from the colonizer's viewpoint.  We only learned about the Abraham Lincoln who freed the slaves not the man who hated Indians.  You speak of history, Paul, as if there were "a truth" to the description of events that have occurred amongst humans.  You describe history as if we all witnessed events from the same place in space with the same cultural lenses to filter and interpret.  

I have a son who is Indian.  Everyday he has experiences that he interprets to be racially motivated.  Everyday I have to challenge him to examine his presumptions.  Everyday I have to challenge him to examine the consequences of his presumptions and chose the ones that promote his intentions and desires for himself and the world.  I offer you the same challenge Paul.  Not to single you out Paul.  I find unchallenged presumptions common on the list.  Yours too were eloquently presented and also struck my heart with an equal intensity as Masud's. 

I have included a bit from your email about the Practice for Peace event that you attended.  I think that you are right on when you describe the problem as one of othering.  

 "At that conference, a fundamental question arose in my mind and led to a 
joint session led by myself and Harrison, which was: "If we agree that war, 
violence and conflict is horrible and that we don't want it, why are we not already 
peaceful??"   My 'answer' relates to the Gandhian paraphrase in another letter 
on this thread, and that is that we are Unconscious in greater or lesser 
degrees.   Thus we still see the another person different from us as Other and 
they do likewise.  " 

I have to agree that to other is the core problem.  It is the ground on which wars are fought.   I am intrigued by your insight here and what I perceive and interpret to be othering in your emails.  It is not that I judge the person othering.  I think that othering is by definition a component of identity and that identity is core to self-organization and complexity.  But there are different ways to know identity.  Identity is cellular and required for the maintenance of life and the languaging that occurs to do the maintaining.It is embodied. But humans often and experience identity in a disembodied way, through some construct of their mind and they offer it as if it were concrete like matter, as if it were embodied.  My belief is that all the constructs from the brain which would include all that occurs on this list are responses to patterns of interactions.  They are not the interactions.  Huberto Maturana has written lots about this and offers some theories about language that I would like to include for everyone's consideration.  The following is a passage from a paper Maturana wrote.  I have included a small section on human languaging and thought and knowing.  I've included the web address for those who would like to read the whole paper.  I feel understanding this notion of recursive language and the role it may play in our othering is a key to understanding how to move forward in our use of language as a cognitive tool in achieving the consequences we desire.  Thanks to all who find a way to struggle with these issues.  i love that Maturana says the the sixth recursion is Freedom and that is in the self awareness of self awareness.
pat
/"Once a brain has become a "languaging" brain, its recursive
operation in the domain of linguistic behavior through the process described
in III.9 <http://www.enolagaia.com/MatMpo&Let%281995%29.html#III.9>, will give rise to new phenomenal dimensions
in this domain./ Let us start that process with an organism that, like our
relatives primates or, presumably, our ancestors, lives in a well established
linguistic domain, that is, a domain of consensual coordinations of behaviour.
A first recursion in the linguistic behavioral domain, as it becomes part
of the manner of living of such an organism, will constitute language and
"languaging", in terms of consensual coordination of consensual
coordinations of behavior (Maturana, 1978). At the same time, as the circular
processes of the brain become coupled to the linear flow of "languaging",
that brain becomes a "languaging" brain. Furthermore, the first
recursion of coordinations of linguistic behaviour, as it constitutes language,
constitutes objects, by making a consensual coordination of behaviour a
token or object for other consensual coordinations of behaviour. From here
on, objects, different kinds of objects will arise in language with every
new recursion, and the kind of this objects will depend on the behavioral
circumstances in which the new recursions occur. Thus, a second recursion
gives rise to observing, that is, the distinction of the operation of distinction
of an object. A third recursion gives rise to the observer, in the distinction
of observing that localizes observing. Self-consciousness, that is, the
observing of the observer, will arise in the fourth recursion of the coordination
of coordinations of consensual behaviour. The fifth recursion gives rise
to the experience of responsibility as self-awareness, and the sixth gives
rise to the experience of freedom as self-awareness of self-awareness.
All these operations are operations in language, that is, features of the
operation of the organism (/i.e./, human being) in its relational
space, and although they require the nervous system to take place, do not
take place in it. Or, in other words, recursive linguistic behavior is
not an operation of the brain, and is not determined by a particular feature
of the nervous system. Furthermore, it follows from what we have said so
far that not all nervous systems can participate in the generation of recursive
linguistic behavior, and that not all the nervous systems that can participate
in the generation of recursive linguistic behavior integrate animals whose
manner of living can become a "languaging" manner of living."

http://www.enolagaia.com/MatMpo&Let(1995).html

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