Ted Lumley
Jacques Rainville
Sunday May 20, 11am ­ noon
Canada

Inclusionality:an immersive philosophy of environmental relationships

Space and its constituents, in natural, collaborative partnership, co-create resonance between the geometrical 'shape of space' and the assertive codynamics of the 'included' constituents, as manifest in nature in the systems of sun-and-planets and hexagonal cell producing honey-bees to the drivers on a crowded freeway. Like the collaborating freeway drivers and the creatures of the forest, the 'indigenous tradition' comprehends and appreciates the reciprocity between the dynamic form of assertive actions and the 'dynamic shape of space' that assertive actions 'open up' (or 'close down') to accommodate continuing assertive action.

While the planets, bees and 'friendly' freeway drivers realize that their assertive codynamics continually reshape the opportunity space into which they 'assert', and while 'relativity theory' underscores this resonant 'participation of space' in natural phenomena, rational science continues to ignore and deny it. In its pursuit of simplicity and precision, our rational-science guided culture persists in visualizing, theorizing, managing and governing on the basis of the 'independent assertive actions' of the 'discrete' constituents of space, ignoring and denying the 'bigger story' of innate container-constituent-coresonance and natural precedence of 'opportunity-space management' over 'assertive-action management' (e.g. the freeway driver understands that the co-creation of corridors of opportunity is in a natural precedence over laws and rational management strategies oriented to individual constituent actions.).

Whilst rational science's unrealistic notions of discreteness and independence have not held us back from huge advances in knowledge and technology, they have impeded understanding and so contributed to a deeply adversarial culture that has brought about, and continues to bring about, enormous psychological, social and environmental damage. There is thus a need for a philosophical framework that enables us to engage harmoniously with the contextual living space in which we are immersed and from which we are as inseparable as a whirlpool is from a water flow. Reversing the man-induced ebb of essential harmonies may come through a philosophy of 'inclusionality' wherein, as in the wisdom of indigenous traditions, all things are understood to be dynamic contextual inclusions that both include and are included; i.e. wherein 'self' is to 'other' as whirlpool is to riverflow.

Such a philosophy 're-envisions' rational inquiry as a supportive tool for clarifying the explicit aspects of our implicit, relativistic reality, rather than as 'all there is to know'. Such a re-envisioning appreciates that we live and evolve in dynamic, reciprocally transforming partnership with, rather than apart from, our environment: our environment becomes us as we become it, and by ignoring it, and 'others' within it, we betray the natural wellspring of our 'authentic selves'.

Biography

I have been interested in the 'geometry of space' and its management within social systems since age six, when all of us first graders were asked to run a footrace to 'benchmark' us for the school's athletic selection and refinement process, … a purification approach which I came to realize was central to our culture, where the fattest opportunity space was opened up for those rising to the top of the various 'performance hierarchies' leaving slim opportunity pickings for the so-called 'less performant'. This performance-based 'purification' practice, which struck me as being strongly contra-nature, niggled away in the back of my mind and I realized many years later that it ran counter to 'relativity theory' in the same way that classical physics did; i.e. 'material cause' or 'assertive performance' is, in natural systems, the dependent child of the 'geometry of space' ('shape of opportunity') and any theory which puts 'managing performance' on a higher priority than 'managing opportunity' can be shown to be dysfunction-inducing.

My 'backdoor' introduction to 'relativity theory', by recognizing that the natural geometry it described was in basic conflict with performance-based purification programs, equipped me with an able framework for navigating natural 'complexity'. That is, while relativity asserts that the geometry of space is a participant in physical phenomena (i.e. it is reciprocal to material codynamics and constitutes the volumetric shape of opportunity), performance-based purification programs depend on space being 'empty' and 'non-participating'. It became apparent to me that the cultural penchant for putting together 'purebred' teams of 'high performance causal agents' (the analogue of precision machinery) was at the expense of the harmonious 'container-constituent-codynamical' balancing that natural diversity facilitates and was making 'chaff' out of a goodly portion of the raw materials, aka 'my fellows'.

After studying physics at UBC and working for thirty-two years as a geophysicist in international petroleum exploration, it became evident to me that in natural systems, the geometry of opportunity is the staging ground for all assertive behaviour; i.e. it became evident to me that the geometry of opportunity is in a natural primacy over causal performance, … or as Louis Pasteur said on his deathbed, turning his 'anti-biotic' advocacy into a 'pro-biotic' advocacy, … 'I was wrong, the microbe [causal agent] is nothing, the 'terrain' [geometry of opportunity] is everything'. After studying the respective 'geometry of opportunity' management approaches of exceptional and dysfunctional teams and finding the former to be consistently opportunity-over-action oriented and the latter consistently action-over-opportunity oriented, I left the petroleum industry (1996) to pursue independent research, working informally up to the present with similarly motivated individuals via internet sharing circles (a historical account can be found at www.goodshare.org). My goal of the past six years has been to find ways to share with young people the broader 'opportunity-over-action' models of relativity whose geometries are identical to those underpinning the traditions of the Native American, Taoist and Celtic cultures as well as exceptional teams, so that they might avoid suffering as long as I did under the popular illusion cultivated by mainstream science, that the 'action-over-opportunity' management strategies western culture is addicted to are capable of delivering sustainable community harmony.

Biography

Jacques Rainville graduated from the École des Beaux Arts de Montréal in 1956 and has since worked as a Graphic Artist, Set Designer, Violin Bow Maker, Painter, and Actor. In 1964, he was awarded a Special Mention at the Festival National D’Art Dramatique for his Set Design. He currently lives in Longueuil, Quebec.