Design Constraints for the Making of Statements
This dispatch sketches out four design constraints for the deconstruction of domineering statements and the (re-)construction of convivial statements.
Ecoregionalism
This week, the nation of Russia attacked the nation of Ukraine in what is widely and rightly being regarded as a brazen act of nationalist imperialism. The liberal news media in the West has tended to criticize Russia’s actions in the name of the sovereignty of the nation of Ukraine, taking the inviolability of sovereign national territories for granted.
In this dispatch, I propose that we criticize acts of nationalist imperialism otherwise than affirming the inviolability of sovereign national territories. In brief, I propose that we criticize acts of nationalist imperialism by affirming nations’ shared concern for ecoregions and by affirming more or less permeable ecoregional boundaries.
Countering Power
The “living worlds“ that I have envisioned must not to be made by seeking power but, rather, they must be made by countering power.
But what is power and how is it countered? And how do those processes “pivotal” to the making of living worlds contribute to countering power?
Pivotal Processes
The previous dispatch examined the fifteen processes (or “structure preserving transformations”) that the architect Christopher Alexander found to be pivotal to the deconstruction of deathly worlds and the (re-)construction of living worlds.
In considering the specific kinds of living worlds that I would (re-)construct, I have found that, while all fifteen of these processes have their place in my worlds, some are more pivotal to my worlds than others. The most pivotal processes to my worlds are the processes of (i) NOT-SEPARATENESS, (ii) DEEP INTERLOCK AND AMBIGUITY, (iii) ROUGHNESS, and (iv) SIMPLICITY AND INNER CALM.
Living Worlds
A living world respects the unity of life and its sufferings and it maintains and multiplies the wholeness of life.
A deathly world dismembers and dissects life and its sufferings and it maintains and multiplies the parts that it plucks from life, without respect for the wholeness of life.
The architect Christopher Alexander has proposed that the fundamental characteristic of a living world is that it is composed of “strong centers” or, to use an alternative term much more to my liking, Alexander has proposed that a living world is composed of “strong foci”. These strong foci are themselves, in turn, composed by and through processes that Alexander calls “structure preserving transformations”, of which Alexander finds there are fifteen.
Decolonization
I would like to explore the hypotheses that (i) decolonization as antidote to a nationalist imperialism means promoting bioregionalisms, (ii) decolonization as an antidote to a capitalist imperialism means promoting communisms, and (iii) decolonization as an antidote to a careerist imperialism means promoting dilettantisms.