Inclusional arboriculture- from the top

[Paul Jenks]

Looks to me like someone has been watching Avatar too much. Perhaps when avain flu mutates with ebola and wipes out 95% of the worlds (human) population, the remains of the human species may consider the thread as a viable and sustainable alternative to where we are currently.

I doubt it though as all or at least most of the survivors would need to be inclusionists. I don't believe that any rational person would think the world we inhabit isn't special.

Unfortunately there is not enough naturally occuring food to sustain our species so living in the woods and talking to trees is the reserve of the lucky few.

BTW. Your pushing on an open door with the interdependence of ecosystems with me.

[Tony Croft aka hamadryad]

NI (Natural inclusion) is a way of being, a way of re awakening our naturaly inclusive natures and in doing so reconnecting us to our natural empathies. This way of thinking, of being is its own reward, and encourages in us all a more empathic and tolerant mindset.

 

It seeks to disperse the perception that life is a "rat race" that survival of the fittest mentality that has driven mankind to shut down his open mind and hearts to the possibilities that ly beyond walls.

 

To be open and to feel love, to be "open" to ones vulnerability is a frightening prospect to many, but it is a sad downward spiral that diminishes empathy and compassion for ones kin, and wider community, this is our great tragedy.

 

I am always trying to connect others with this through a love of nature, for nature is itself the ultimate natural inclusion, I came across this great and very well narrated video today and feel a sense that this man is so in touch with his NI so embraced by it that he cant help but express its meaning for him.

 

Following a path of Natural inclusion is for me the essence of living, its a path that feeds and fuels the fire of my soul, without NI my life would be but a shallow and meaningless existence. It is difficult to explain and put into words what it means to walk this path, or the sense of love received from a thing (Nature) that communicates on a level that is beyond the tongues of man.

 

that said, this little video narrated by a man I knew nothing of is the finest attempt to put into words this tangible presence. I have been to Wistmans wood, and I can assure all that it is indeed a pilgrims destination, a place that has a magic and majesty even the hardest of souls would find hard to deny.

 

[ame=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w0COUVAvyGM&feature=related]Wistman's Wood on Dartmoor - YouTube[/ame]

[sean freeman]

A very beautiful short video Tony, which includes some fabulous footage of the bird life.

[Tony Croft aka hamadryad]

[ame=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R2gZ6FRhc3w&feature=related]Deep Ecology - YouTube[/ame]

[Tony Croft aka hamadryad]

[ame=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Eg7Jt_Yzl1o&feature=related]The Vanishing Face of Gaia - Part One - YouTube[/ame]

[Tony Croft aka hamadryad]

I have cometo a realisation that I have been not quite getting "IT" as in NI, but im still learning, loving this piece from Alan!

 

 

Univanity

A song of definitive abstraction and its remedy

 

By Alan Rayner

 

I know where I stand

At the top of this heap

My pyramid of numbers

With me alone

At the top

.

A wholesome wholeness

Complete in every way

Superior to all my parts

That make me up

As a divine construction

Knowing it All

By Being Above It All

.

Yet, not having a clue

About what it means

To become

In the thick of it all

.

Doh!

.

I seem to have forgotten

What love means

Perhaps I’d better

Take a look around myself

Then feel my way inside my self

To find out why it really hurts

To be this way

Then, let my self breathe again

.

Sigh!

.

 

 

 

The ‘univanity’ alluded to by the above poem is an intransigent belief in the supremacy and completeness of individual or group as an ‘absolute independent singleness’ or ‘wholeness’. It thoroughly permeates modern thought and culture and is characteristic of both ‘individualism/reductionism’ and ‘collectivism/holism’. It is embedded in all forms of definitive abstraction – philosophical, mathematical, scientific, theological – that envisage the numerical figure of ‘One’ to be a discrete entity, ‘on its own’. It is neither consistent with our sensory experience of natural energy flow, nor can it make consistent sense. But it does lead to the exclusion or suffocation of human creativity, love and variety, as well as profound social, psychological and environmental conflict and harm through the pursuit of definitive knowledge as a source of power.

 

 

As I have put it elsewhere:-

 

Knowledge without Love is Power without Wisdom - Fearful Vanity that commits crimes against humanity and Nature. BestThinking / Articles / Society & Humanities / Philosophy / Power, Love, Vanity and Humility (Article)

 

 

Yet the pursuit of knowledge alone has, since the so-called ‘Enlightenment’, increasingly led to ‘Institutionalized Univanity’.

 

Correspondingly, it seems that most modern universities have become Institutions of Univanity, licensed to impoverish creative thought through having discarded their poetic licence in favour of money and kudos

 

 

But they’re not alone! For thousands of years we have been ramming univanity down our own throats, reinforcing it in our educational, political and religious institutions and ideologies, without recognizing how and why we do this, in spite of our selves. We have needlessly been hardening or removing what is needed to distinguish and nurture ‘ego’ as unique local self-identity in order to brutalize this into the abusive ‘egotism’ of individual or collective entireties.

 

Univanity is virtually impossible to remedy without profound mental breakdown or breakthrough, because it is by definition singularly unaware of its actual situation IN Nature, and hence unaware of the needless conflict and suffering that it induces. It is convinced of its own virtue and beneficence, thereby attributing all blame for harm elsewhere, by means of psychological projection. It views all questioning of its foundational premises as an unwarranted violation of its integrity, from which it defends itself by means of an exclusive and paradoxical wall of self-definition. Anyone who does question its premises is disregarded as ‘mad, bad and dangerous to know’ (except in so far as they may agree with its premises, in which case they may be disregarded as ‘having nothing new to add’). No doubt, my calling it ‘Univanity’ will be regarded as an ‘insult’. Such is the difficulty of politely alerting Univanity to its own intransigence and harmfulness: one way or another it will find an excuse to take offence and/or ignore the point that is being made.

 

 

The 'hole point' of the fluid boundary logic of natural inclusionality is to move on from the 'univanities' of 'whole ways of thinking' that base themselves on the definitive completeness of individual or group, to a dynamic 'hole new way' way of thinking, where space is acknowledged to be a continuous intangible presence and boundaries are appreciated as energetic interfacings of inner and outer 'holeyness' or 'hollowness'. This corresponds in turn with the move from an idealist (abstract) vision of a 'hole' as an 'absence of presence' or 'gap/discontinuity IN the fabric(ation) of everything' and an authentic (natural) vision of a dynamically bounded locality OF space as intangible presence everywhere, without limit.

 

This natural inclusional move is commensurate with the vision of Robert Frost in his statement:

 

“Nature does not complete things... Man must finish, and he does so by making a garden and building a wall"

 

It is also a fundamentally different transformational move from the simple recurrent exchange of one kind of 'univanity' or 'partial truth' (e.g. reductionism – which fragments natural energy flow) for another (e.g. holism – which suffocates natural energy flow) depending on what is 'in vogue'

 

"Most of the change we think we see in life is due to truths being in and out of favor."

- Robert Frost, The Black Cottage

 

 

Here it is vital to appreciate that natural inclusionality (NI) seeks to TRANSFORM the ‘Pride and Prejudice’ of Univanity into a more sensitive and sensible understanding of our human place in Nature. It does not seek to eradicate and replace what has preceded it, but to learn and evolve from it in a creative and sustainable way.

 

Hence:

 

NI doesn't preclude conventional arithmetic or reasoning but transforms the meaning of its answers

 

Most fundamentally, NI recognizes that One is never all one alone; one dynamically includes and is included in the infinite space of Agape (deep Love).

 

 

Now, what could actually be so mad, bad and dangerous to know about that?