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<DIV><FONT face=Arial>One of the curious things about Open Space -- or at
least the experience of Open Space -- is the apparently conflicted notions of
"self" and "community" flow easily and naturally together. Folks often report
that they never had felt so respected/honored/perceived as a person. And
simultaneously the awareness of the collective (may I dare say -- community?) is
almost overwhelming. It never seems to be the case that individuality must be
sacrificed for the whole or that the whole is simply an assembly of individuals.
It has often occurred to me that the "problem" of individual and community is
less a function of our experience than our logic. Or maybe our logic forces a
false distinction so that we expect the individual to be in conflict with
community? This is the logic of "either/or" -- and not both/and. It is a logic
dominated by an awareness of contradiction as opposed to paradox -- and somehow
all paradoxes are thought to be contradictory and therefore to be resolved and
eliminated. </FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial>Alan Rayner, the developer and proponent of what he calls
Inculsionality, has done some interesting work in this area, and writes as
follows:
<P>"Using inclusional logic, however, the <I>isolation</I> of the simple, fixed
notion of self becomes subsumed by the <I>togetherness</I> of complex, dynamic
forms (in effect ‘flow forms’) comprising inner, outer and intermediary spatial
domains, <I>all</I> of which are <I>vital</I> to their distinct, but not
discrete, <I>identities</I>. Rather than being unitary or binary, ecocentric or
egocentric, such <I>‘complex selves’</I> represent ternary couplings of inner
with outer, of the kind alluded to by Shakunle’s ‘fluid logic numbers’ (see
above). Their behaviour is therefore ultimately intractable to impositional
logic, as was implicitly acknowledged by Newton ‘himself’ in his analysis of the
‘three body problem’ (Montgomery, 2001). Moreover, this behaviour can neither be
regarded as intrinsically ‘selfish’ nor ‘altruistic’, because neither the
disregard of the outer (‘collective’/ ‘we’) nor inner (‘individual’/’I’) aspect
is evolutionarily sustainable in such a co-creative system." </P>
<P>The language is a little turgid I guess -- but I find the notions
appealing.</P>
<P> </P>
<P>Harrison</P>
<DIV><FONT size=2></FONT> </DIV></FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial>Harrison Owen<BR>7808 River Falls Dr.<BR>Potomac, MD
20854<BR>USA<BR>301-365-2093<BR>207-763-3261 (summer)<BR>website <A
href="http://www.openspaceworld.com">www.openspaceworld.com</A></FONT></DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
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