Club of Budapest Members Meeting at UNESCO Headquarters, Paris 1997

Positions and Identities in Global Contexts:

Awareness of Self and Others

with me, you, we, they and "others" models

Heiner Benking

Situational Analysis

Positionality and Personality are deeply intertwined and so is our identity connected to our fields of activities, influence, and frames of references.

The issue is that we think, act, and associate not just for ourselves "the I" in modern societies or just our families, friends, groups, clans, nations, "the we", but also with other's, something apart from us like the "you" or the others.

Traditionally we have been focussing on the me and the you, ignoring the positions and personalities of others and ignoring the greater whole of all beings or the we of Gaia's earthlings, or other living things or communicates, and maybe even aliens or call it "other" or “others”.

To concretely communicate and share individual positions, differences and commons and constructively realise differences and create greater commons we have to keep in mind not only the who, but also the where, how and what.

What we are talking here about are fields within fields, or patterns within patterns and meta-patterns.

The Problems

Our language and ways of thinking and reasoning (dualistic and clockwise) approaches, our labellings and maybe call it "box thinking". [1], and our annotations and sign systems, where we separate our representations into -sign-systems which are isolated symbols, icons and indexes (acccording to C.S. Peirce. Not connecting like in our living world our observations and concepts like our perception through the senses in the natural world leads to another deep canyon for our shared mental constructions.

Focussing with deconstructivism, constructivism and radical constructivism into one-eyed or ego-centered construction in our sweet isolation leads into and reinforces isolation and hinders shared observations and realities. What is meant here is the old game of inclusion versus exclusion. Do we create models of just the “me”, the “we”, the “us”, and exclude “others” ?, and can we create models of not just the “we all”, but also the “all all” (universal models) in different manifestations (forms and details).

This leads to the issue are the different scale platforms, our actions and effects we cause on other levels, spacial and temporal dimensions. Finallly we have to connect this with other spheres, other cultures and languages. Work on minority in/exclusion is abound and turfs need to be understood, included or accepted in a unity of diversity. [2]

One possible way which needs exploration and testing - AND connections to other ways and means to re-connect

If we embody fields of action and interests we can relate and overlay these "fields within fields", (Stuhlman) we can see patterns and meta-patterns that connect Ĭ If we only tentatively and pragmatically agree on shared imaginary spaces (3-dimensional and extensional).

Why all this trouble?

(box thinking and clock-wise thinking or old&new embodied or tangible thinking and communicating (sharing)!?

Is it not enough to separate the "me" and the "you", the "in" versus the "out", the "urban" and the "pagan", the natural vs. the cultural, the black vs. the white, ecology vs. deep-ecology, north vs. south, east vs. west, body vs. soul, real / material vs. virtual (imaginary/potential/immaterial), exoteric /esoteric, perspective vs. a-perspective, coded (signs) vs. non-coded (icons), good vs. evil, given vs. not-given?

And through this labelling and "boxing" (Schachteldenken) make order and seperate, divide and govern (divide et impera) ?

I want to show here that we need to get beyond such "over-simplistic" see: http://www.ceptualinstitute.com/genre/benking/overview.htm ignorance, because this only makes us believe we know and have orientation, when we have not !

Footnotes

[1] Intercultural Workshops: OUT OF THE BOX THINKING AND PARADIGM MAPPING Kurt Hanks and others

[2] The work of UNITY in DIVERSITY, Turns and Turfs, but also Zusammenhang und Zusammenhalt (Coherences and Connectedness) and how to strengthen commons is the central focus of the author. You are invited to check this link lists: Culture, Dialog, Systems, Education for the beginning and maybe come-back ! write to heiner [@] benking.de.