The Other Environmentalism

Always for the Sake of Argument

TALK: the Other Environmentalism.
(Or if you prefer: Converse Action)

It is true that we had uncommon schools…that
villages were universities and the elder inhabitants
the fellows of universities—with leisure to pursue
liberal studies the rest of their lives.”
Thoreau, Walden..

5 Favorite Words

1. incommensurate: measuring Venus in terms of Mars,
& vice-versa; dreams in terms of waking-life, affect
in terms of intellect, psycho-pathologic in terms of
neuro-cognition, history in terms of be-here-now, eternity
in terms of time, Mohammed-Ali-boxing in terms of
Howard-Cosel- commentating, the process of composing
in terms of after-the-fact-finished-product, WHOLES
in terms of Parts, Conversation in terms of conversants
i (& vice versa).

2. emerging: emergency: surprise—not to be predicted
or estimated in the terms of the dynamic that generates it.

3. stupid : from I.E. steu: to be hit by a stick: stunned:
prerequisite for study and student-dom.

4. school: Latin - schola : leisure; scholar, scholar ship:
leisure time activity.

5. idiocy – IDIOS: personal, private, unique original.
idiosyncratic: source of “new” & anyone's
contribution to the common sense.

EP
(emerging phenomena)

Dear Jeff,

You and I have been tossing “emergent phenomenon”
(the idea) around this summer, and I believe you said EP
might characterize the heart of your discipline.

I think we both tend to view EP descriptively, as an
explanatory principle: a way to look and talk about
what evolves .

(O Evolve!: #1 favorite campus bumper sticker if we
were listing out top 5.)

Similarly, we could view DIALECTIC (another way to
talk EP) in terms of done-deal as Hegel does—looking
backward at the opposition that generated new paradigm
shifts, pheno-typical variations, network printing
conventions as opposed to individual ownership..

BUT: we might could view EP and Dialectic as a practice
(not just explanation): like some martial art, say, or life-long
sport that depends on loving the opposition, turning it up
and putting it in play rather than smooth-it-away away so
as to get on some same page and cover ground to get stuff done.



My Idiocy: how I represent Dialectic & EP in terms
of a ternary (triadic) relationship: the back&forth of
opposing positions generating 3^rd term higher level
synthesis, phenomena and values —more than
the sum of parties going on.

As-if a whole-y Grail right under our very gnosis,
know what I mean? This ambiguous play of
figure/background signifies the

INCOMMENSURATE

difference between focusing on the vis-à-vis OR fixing on the
emerging phenomenon being generated in real-time as genial
fight-club is is sustained and progresses. (LIKE: focusing on
maintaining individual printers OR fixing on the Network System
Sustainability. LIKE, I said: analogy is all--any analogy will
break down if you push it.)

It’s a parts-to-Whole deal: players-in-play on the one hand
(their token agenda always up for grabs)—and on the other
hand: the emergent phenomena and values that evolve from
the agon (y) — assuming the distinction can be sustained
(not collapsing or conflating or confusing the 2 levels) so as
to then be able to wonder about the relationship (faces-in-
opposition AND Whole-which-is-more- than-sum-of-players)

This takes practice—liberal art arting and talk talk talk talk
talk talk talk talk goes round and round, digresses, transgresses,
ends up back where it started from but a level up let’s say
(hope) so that the new evolves—expected, but unpredictable:
in terms more than ( & not to be measured by) the terms of
the opposers opposing (so to speak, in manners of speaking.)

Maybe you could say something like I just tried to say,
talking in Biology. Or in environmental studies: ought to be
comparable lingo that speaks to the EP- Dialectic-Liberal-Art
practice. If I put a grade gun to your head, I bet you could
come up with comparisons. Any thing can be seen as LIKE
some thing else, true? Need we argue? Who knows what
will emerge?
.
WHAT WOULD IT LOOK LIKE to Practice EP (as if it
were work-program & service to academics rather than
merely theoretical – which of course it has to be before
it canbe practiced and serve…

like stochastic process?
like Alice-in-Wonderland Croquet?
like structuring structured chaos?
(factory-ing IT in)
like leaps and bounds in Ambiguity Tolerance?
like willful suspension of disbelief & belief?
like Black Boxing up the wazoo still taking
care to track in-put and out-put loops
like fight-club, bring IT on
like 3 little pigs loving BB Wolf even as
he huffs and puffs & wiggles the hairs
on their chinny, chin, chins.
like deferring the habit of rationalizing the irrational
and resisting always linear-izing the non-linear and
constellational or at least accounting for the
incommensurate-ness and factory-ing it in..

I’m Mixing the Orders of Insects here: meta-force::


Scarabaeidae

Pushing Great Balls of Dung here: our ARCHES
rise up emergent, beyond our scope and vision.
“toward frontiers yet unknown.”


Macrotermes bellicosus

xxxooo, Presbyter