At de Lange wrote:
>It is very important not to dwell on only hurt and its negative
>outcomes.
>We have to contrast it with "ubuntu" and its positive outcomes. Thus
>we
>set up an entropic force which will guide the flow of our actions.
>Then
>these negative things will not push our actions into chaos, but the
>positive things will pull them into order.
Let me start the new year with a provocation:
What are the positive outcomes of hurt?
What are the negative outcomes of "ubuntu" (mutual benefit)?
While answering these questions for me, I recognise that real hurt can
come in the clothes of ubuntu and feel mutually beneficial and that real
ubuntu can feel very hurting.
I will not share my answers, but the lines of reasoning that help me to
distinguish "the wolf from the sheep":
We need to distinguish our thinking of reality and reality itself. But we
must not fragment or separate thinking of reality and reality itself. A
common mode of such fragmentation is not to distinguish thinking and
reality but to identify both. Such identifications are the root cause for
hurt feeling like ubuntu und ubuntu feeling like hurt.
(Side remark: This is an example of the Onsager relation between At's
essentialities sureness and wholeness. Impaired sureness (the
identification is uncategorical with respect to reality) impaires
wholeness (the uncategorical identity fragments itself from reality). I
think this relation is called "cognitive dissonance". It would be
interesting to explore existance and stability of cognitive dissonance
from the hurt/love perspective. I guess that collective cognitive
dissonance (if the term is correctly used) or commonly impaired sureness
and wholeness (in At's terms) is one of the main reasons for the death of
corporations - impaired liveness (becoming-being))
If such an identification took place, than any event that helps to face
reality will hurt, yet it is ubuntu - I think this is the prototype of
"ubuntu feeling like hurt".
On the other hand, any event that supports such identification will feel
like ubuntu, but is hurt in fact - the wolf in sheeps clothes. I think
this is the prototype of "hurt feeling like ubuntu".
The content of this mail is part of my thinking about the reasons why to
think in a way that continuously strive to make the gap between thinking
and reality narrower. I do not directly deal with reality nor with reality
as it should be and the backaction, that such thinking has on reality.
This reasoning will lead to another common mode of fragmenting thinking
and reality: to neglect that thinking is always part of reality.
If it is so dangerous to fragment thinking and reality, why do I have to
distinguish them? Because:
I have to distinguish thinking and reality in order not to fragment them.
(I hope I could exemplify this statement above.)
I expect that the generalisation is still true: One needs to distinguish
in order not to fragment. (Deutsch: Man muss unterscheiden um nicht zu
trennen.)
(Second remark: "to distinguish" is what sureness is about, "not to
fragment" is what wholeness is about. As necessary conditions for
emergences both (+ five other essentialities) are required. If the normal
state of consciousness is cognitive dissonance - neither sureness nor
wholeness - from time to time a pair of either sureness or wholeness pops
up in history like Smuts and Herzog or Freud and Jung. When will the
historical moment come when the "both" will start to shape
outside-reality? What can we do to support this moment to come? To act as
a midwife for the birth of this moment to emerge?)
Finally from hurt to love: Let me define hurt as the state of
consciousness separated from reality. Hurting then are all actions taken
based on this separation. Love is the state of consciousness in full
congruence with reality. This state is not achievable for humans due to
the necessary incompleteness of selfreferential systems (consciousness is
part of reality itself). But humans can be loving, they can take actions
to reduce the gap. What is the path from hurt to love? I have written it
before: to continuously strive to make the gap between thinking and
reality narrower. Reality is how it becomes. It is neither good nor bad.
(Final side remark: the gap is an entropic force and striving the
corresponding flux. Is there a chance for a more loving order to
establish? Not without giving up the established identity. I guess this is
the crucial point (wow, did I really write "crucial"?!!). I guess that
impaired sureness is the primordial impaired essentiality in the
historical moment called today: i.e. giving up established identity is the
impossible imperative (compare At's contribution on the San-people). Other
impaired essentialities are Onsager-effects as the one discribed above on
wholeness. Of course just throw away ones identity cannot be the cure, it
will cause immediate breakdown instead. It is sufficient to accept that on
the path of life identity may change and may change also in a
death-rebirth manner.)
Liebe Gruesse,
Winfried Dressler
P.S.: Thank you At, for contrasting hurt with "ubuntu" and its
positive outcomes. Did you notice in this contribution, that I made a
step forward on the form - content issue? I think I managed to
distinguish form and content but not to separate both anymore. While I
learnt that it is a mistake to generalise a first-second order for
form and content, I believe that a cause-effect oder for the
essentialities can and should be set up as a hypothesis about "reality
today", which when tested will narrow the gap. It is not an order
inherent to the essentialities (there I think the order is really
reciprocal), but in a given situation I guess that it is not
sufficient to establish just any essentiality that has been impaired
for the others to follow, but one specific essentiality needs to be
established and the others will follow.
--"Winfried Dressler" <winfried.dressler@voith.de>
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