Preview: A Herculean diatribe---and NOT to be continued hereafter in this
fashion by me, anyway.....
Beloved co-learners,
On Fri, 26 May 2000 15:45:25 +0200 "AM de Lange"
<amdelange@gold.up.ac.za> rites in response to Sajeela's provocative
letter to him----and then Sajeela responds herein---[at ther risk of this
communication getting yet ever-more convoluted---how i hope that is not
the case]....So here it is---At says:
> Dear Organlearners,
[An interesting nuance At --- what organ is it that we are learning???]
OK, I'm just being silly....hope you appreciate my humor....you go on to
say At of my letter to you:
>You made many accusations on what I have written.
In all due respect for your own words, another way you might have framed
this statement between you the sayer and me the listener: "Sajeela, from
the center of my own experience I feel you have made many accusations
about me which I would like to explore further with you". The reason I
share this alternative with you is that the way you say it above, it is as
if it is a statement of fact that I have accused you of some things. This
may or may not be true outside of your own perception and personal
experience. I think it's important to own that as your perception of what
I wrote to you.
You continue:
> Should they {these "accusations"} help
> you in
> your further learning, then let them all be true.
At, truth for me is such a relative experience--- what is true for me may
or may not be true for you---or any one else. And really, all things help
me in my learning if I remain open to exploring. Sometimes I choose not to
explore if something feels wrong for me personally. That doesn't mean I
deny another of what they wish to explore if they feel it is right for
them.
> Should they
> reflect
> your learning up to now, then let us get into some further learning.
I believe everything I am is a reflection of what I have learned up until
this moment. You say elsewhere At:
> Sexual differences among higher order animals is chromosome based.
> Among
> plants (dioecious) it is not chromosome based. Among even simpler
> prokaryotic microbes its is unknown. Animals plants and microbes are
> physical things, is not more, like chromosomes are too. I believe
> that God
> is spiritual so that sexual identifications is misplaced.
I hear what you are saying in the above passage. And I believe that
creative life and death forces exist, and are part of our experience. I
can segment up that experience into many descriptions, as i think you have
aptly done above, yet in the end, for me personally, all forces are
interconnected, including all the phenomena (social and biological and
otherwise) from the natural world in which I live. So, segmenting off all
those descriptions from a diety seems an odd notion to me, because i think
they are all the same thing.
Along that same vein, I personally do not subscribe to an anthropomorphic
identity of a particular supernatural being overseeing creation. This
notion is not part of my life-space world view. Therefore, I have no
particular investment into the gender of said entity, since it seems a
ridiculous idea to me to begin with. HOWEVER, that does not preclude you
from believing what ever you want to about some entity you call God. You
are a free agent At, and I don't personally require you to think just like
I do, or to even understand how I think. I just want you to not assume
that I think like you, since it so happens that I don't.
> I believe that God is one of content (substance), but many of form.
This appeals to my Pantheistic nature At, and is closer to my idea around
creativity and its presence in our world. we might have a furhter
discussion along these lines some time.
> In the
> Bible this many is depicted as three personalities. I seldom think
> of
> personalty in terms of sex, although I am aware that many others do
> so.
I don't subscribe to the bible as any kind of authority for me, so when
you cite that document please know it has absolutely no meaning for me
personally At. If it does for you that's just fine with me. AND, if your
purpose in communicating with me specifically is to actually connect with
me, it is maybe not so useful to even go there. If you must, OK, but I am
not drawn in to that kind of document as an authoritative reference point
form which to discuss things.
Regarding the sex of a personality (human or otherwise in the context of
some anthropomorphic diety) this is an orientation. I am more interested
in thinking in terms of gender for the purposes of this discussion At.
Gender difference, and all differences for that matter, are important to
me. I think humanity does itself (and the natural world) great injustices
by not aknowledging differences. By the same token, if differences are
aknowledged only in a striated or heirarchical format, then we lose
equinimity because certain differences are given precedence OVER others.
And there is where I believe opression and objectification of the other
starts.
That is why I pay alot of attention to gender and other categorical
references. I am looking to see if they are used in an exclusionary way.
Difference OVER some other difference is not what I want to emphasize in
my own life. Rather, I want to aknowledge that there simply are
differences, and that I may have a personal preference for one difference
and not another, but I don't expect you At or anyone esle to always join
me there. So I will avoid using language that is exclusionary or
assumptive, because I am aware that you think differently from me. And I
will always try to bring that to the attention of you or anyone else who
uses language in exclusionary ways.
> I was "asleep" when I was created. I was shocked into consciousness
> at an
> age of about four years.
Interesting notion At. Reminds me of the mystic Gurdjieff, who felt that
we are all asleep, or unconcious, and that we must be awakened into
greater and greater awareness. You continue:
> I once met a wise Nama (a Xhoi nation) in
> Namaqualand. We got into some deep talking. He said this: "When men
> enters
> the world as baby boys, the first human they connect to is a woman.
> When
> they leave the world, the last tears shed on them is by a woman.
> Woman are
> just here -- its is men who come and go. Why cannot we wake up to
> this
> fact."
What a beautiful image! I would love to learn more about the Xhoi culture.
Another rich repository of a life-space lived differently then my own. I
love and honor particularly the wisdom that indigenous people bring with
their experience. You are lucky to live (or have lived) in proximity to
this Nama.
> Have you ever lived in a desert like a Nama or a San? Is it right
> for me
> to disqualify any of your imaginative thinking on the desert since
> you was
> not there?
I don't know about right or wrong for you At. I only know what is right or
wrong for me. I just know that if I am sharing an idea from my own
experience that it is important for me to say it comes out of my own
experience. If I am sharing an idea from some other source outside of my
own experience it is important for me to make that distinction overtly if
I am going to bother communicating in the first place. Why? Because I want
to be fair to my listener. I do not wnat to assume that they will simply
take it for granted that whatever I say is the truth. It is only true for
me, and all the more so if it came from my own experience. Less so if I
borrow an idea and express it as if it is my own.
>I am not a kid any more, although I wish I was one again.
I am certain I am still a kid At, and glad of it! I have a healthy and
vibrant little four year old inside me and I love her dearly! She keeps me
in wonder of things, and helps me stay in a really creative space...when
she gets fussy and tired i let her go to sleep so i can get some things
done as an adult. This arrangement works out fairly well, so i think I'll
keep it for a while. Maybe all of my life. You go on to say At:
> We must take care to promote the imagination of kids.
Again, (picky picky Sajeela) if you say "we must" At, can you imagine
that I might take offense to this because it feels like you are spaeking
AT me instead of with me? If you said this instead:
"I believe that it is so important to promote the imagination of kids"
then I experience your staement very differently At. I experience that
you are talking to me from your center, and not that you are telling me
how I and all the rest should think. When you say "we must" it fells so
much like an assumption to me, or an order you are giving me, rather then
an invitation to see if I want to go there with you. I said to you At:
> >Your Socratic style of writing seems to me to be something
> >of a block in your own way,.....
Your reply:
> Let us think about Socrates. Some think he was the leader of "the
> gang of
> three" who corrupted the Western World with his feelingless
> thinking. His
> wife was Xanthipe. She lashed out with her tongue whatever feeling
> came to
> her mind. Perhaps the duality of the sexes degenerated there into a
> dialectical conflict.
First of all, this business about his wife may not even historically
viable, and certainly subject to historical bias. Furthermore, you
digresses from my point, and do not close the loop of communication by
aknowledging what I am saying. My point is that in my view there are
opressive ways of speaking and less opressive ways, and that if I am
trying to comminicate an idea, then it may make sense for me to express
myself in a way that is more easily received, i.e., less opressively. My
experience of you At is that I have a hard time accepting many of your
statements because they feel to me as if made from aplace where you are
insisting I go somewhere conceptually with you before finding out if I
even want to.
> Socrates did not teach any systemic outcome. He merely
> tried to learn others how to question all things so as to become
> wise. He taught a systemic way -- the becoming -- and found
> joy in the outcome -- the being --.
At, this is merely your opinion. You are giving us your opinion, and
stating it as if it is a fact when it isn't. It is a fact for you perhaps,
in your own conceptual bubble, bit it isn't in mine, and I would prefer if
you are speaking to me that you aknowledge where your thoughts are coming
from and ask my permission about taking me there with you, because I just
might not want to go the journey.
> Questing-answering is a profound way of problem-solving.
> Problem-solving is but one of five elementary sustainers for
> our creativity. That is why too much problem-solving alone
> cannot sustain creativity.
Again At, your statement is another example of what I am talking about.
When you say "That is why", for me it implies you have some kind of final
understanding here, and that you are expecting me to believe you point
blank simply because you said it, when in fact your statement may or may
not be true for me or anyone outside of your private universe.
I said to you At:
> >I as your co-learner don't HAVE to do anything. I don't HAVE
> >to care for my personality bifurcations (and here you assume
> >that I have them, yet this may or may not be true, other then
> >in your own personal gestalt) and I don't HAVE to be sensitive
> >to anything. I may choose to do be, but I don't HAVE to.
And you reply:
> I am willing to wager a bet that it is impossible for you to
> demonstrate
> that you "don't HAVE to do anything". Is becoming not as essential
> to our lives as being?
Again, At, rather than acknowledging my point [which is that you put words
and thoughts into my mouth and don't leave any room for me to express my
own view or have a different belief] you force the conversation in a
direction of my responding to you in some ridiculous counter argument. I
just find this a useless way of engendering learning conversation. It is
hard for me to ever connect with you if that's all we ever do with one
another.
The following portion of your response to my letter, is, in my opinion, an
example of the way you swing off into some outrageous abstaction about
what I have said, thus distracting yourself and the reader from the real
point I was making, and so you never really are connecting with me. It's
like you are playing a game of solitaire and all you want is to win. It's
as if you grab the focus of the point I was making and wield it back to
yourself so you can convince me how clever you are. My original point was
in regard to Jan Smuts, and I said to you:
> >I personally cannot subscribe to some (probably) caucasian
> >and certainly male as THE great authority on wholism and
> >evolution.
After that I made some (and I apologize for this) sarcastic remark about
his last name and the word smut. Now, you had a choice At about which of
these points to respond to, and you went for the bate and ignored what was
for me the real point I was making, which is that I am not going to take
your word for it that Smuts is the foremost authority on holism. So you
ignore that point and go off into some wild absract construction that for
me is meaningless in relation to the things I would like you to learn from
me if I am going to even bother communicating with you:
> What has greater authority than a nuclear bomb? E = mc^2 Who
> created E =
> mc^2 ? Einstein. How? By his mentality. What has authority over
> this
> mentality? Wholeness, among other things. Study Faraday since of all
> scientists he was the most careful to deny that he has any authority
> over
> others.
(etc., etc., snipadelic)
Then you say:
> You better have to read what Smuts had to say on authorities in
> general.
> Perhaps you will recognise a friend in him.
That's fine At, AND the way you are expressing yourself here "you better
have to read"----for me that is like you are giving me an order. You could
have said "Sajeela, you might really enjoy reading Smuts"....that's very
different then "you better have to"....can you understand my point? You
go on to say At:
> Do you know which is the youngest language in the world with the
> least of
> gender specifications? Do you know that in the desert even much of
> this
> gender syntaxis is collapsed because it does not matter in the
> desert
> whether a person is a man or a woman.
(snipadelic once more)
Of course I don't know. What I do know is about you and I on this
list-serve now. We are not in that desert. We are sharing (at least I hope
we are) ideas on some list-serve in abstract space. And we are doing so in
linear written form---very different gestalt from the desert (probably
oral and land connected) culture. So we probably need to attend to what it
is we are dealing with in our differences in some other way then those
great folks do and can. We probably are constructing that way right now. I
hope so. It is fascinating to hear about your cultural ways. AND I want
to connect with you now in this present moment in a way that is useful for
us both. I praise a culture that is genderless in its linguistic
orientation, AND it may or may not be useful to practice such linguistics
here. It may be quite important to be sensitive to gender differences and
how our linguistic choices impact others. That is my essential point, and
by now it must be getting pretty boring hearing that. I had said to you:
> >The English language was shaped by and reflects the values
> >of a Eurocentric dominator culture of the past 5,000 years.
You sucessfully evaded the point I was making when you reply in what
feels to me like a rebuttal housed in a series of questions:
> Is English really that old? Is Hebrew and Aramic not a little bit
> older.
>
> (etc, etc. sniposomy)
Though some of those questions would be interesting to follow up on, so
what? That's not the point I was hoping to get across to you in order to
open up a learning dialogue, and I suspect you are more then aware that
you didn't really adress my point. So, I'm done with you. I don't really
feel like communicating in a vacuum anymore, which is what seems to me to
be going on here. I don't want to engage in challenges or bets with you or
anyone else.
Life is too short for me to pour it into some virtual box with a keyboard
with a bunch of words strung together in endless argument. For me that is
a not a way of learning and connecting that I want to spend so much time
on. And by the way, please don't call me "dear Sajeela". It feels way too
pajorative to me when you preface a sentence with that.
Making whips eh? Why take a whip to a living creature or teach a young
child to do that? I ask only rhetorically. Please please don't answer,
because I won't respond to you most likely. It's just too far from my own
frame of reference and I choose not to go that journey with you At.
Crows crying across the skies,
Sajeela
--Sajeela M ramsey <sajeelacore@juno.com>
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