Author’s Preface to PSI-2; Post-Stroke Impressions: No. 2.

In his preface to ‘La Nouvelle Grille’ (the new framework)… French Author and physician Henri Laborit, who was also an early explorer of the effects of the anti-psychotic, chlorpromazine [his patents funded his further researches and writing], points out the problems associated with attempts to ‘break out’ of the existing cultural-psychological social framework.  The following intro is from an earlier essay ‘Exploring a Double Bind’; https://goodshare.org/wp/exploring-a-double-bind/

Henri Laborit (La Nouvelle Grille), whose research was also ‘outside of the scientific orthodoxy’ captured what it feels like to be in this double bind by saying that ‘we’ who explore such topics, cannot easily share them because; (a) they do not fit into the typical dinner conversation format of our present culture, since to express them takes a lot of relational connections that can’t fit into a rapid-fire repartee, and; (b) because the humanism implicit in trying to share them is not seen as “a humanism of real worth” since it undermines, besmirches or topples the esteemed icons, pillars of society, founding fathers, and celebrities of the culture-in-place.

What I am suggesting in this preface to ‘Post-Stroke Impressions: No. 2’, … is that comments such as Laborit’s ‘feel’ very relevant to the problems in communicating one’s post-stroke experience, and for the same reasons as Laborit stated.  For example, in my post-stroke understanding, ‘the relational’ is in a natural precedence over ‘the discrete/rational’.

When David Suzuki was gathering material to make films on (North American) aboriginal culture which included interviews with aboriginal elders, he could not use them ‘as is’ since the comments of the elders were too long and seemingly indirect (rambling) for standard Western viewer tastes (as is the nature of raw relational experience prior to its reduction, Western style, to analytical-rhetorical terms of ‘what things-in-themselves’ are doing’).  Suzuki was saddened by the fact that a lot of great footage he had obtained in his interviews of indigenous aboriginal chiefs and elders had to be discarded or left out of the final film presentation.

For me, it is clear that ‘the new framework’ or ‘La Nouvelle Grille’ is the same thing that Jill Bolte Taylor intends in ‘My Stroke of Insight’; i.e. it is the restoring to its natural precedence of relational understanding [as occurs in a stroke where notional ‘named things-in-themselves’ ‘drop out’ while relational forms of recall persist’ and rise to the surface to resume their natural precedence].  That is, while names like ‘Jack’ imply the existence of a thing-in-itself which noun-and-verb grammar credits with being a local thing-in-itself source of ‘their own’ ‘actions and deeds’, giving them a ‘thing-in-itself’ identity fleshed out by ‘what they say and do’, … by contrast, ‘Dances with Wolves’ is a relations-based identifying approach.  Relations-based identities do not depend on isolating individuals and understanding them ‘in their own right’ as ‘things-in-themselves’ with inside-outward asserting behaviour; i.e. there is an implicit acknowledgement in relational representation that things do not exist ‘in their own right’.  That is an abstraction manufactured by noun-and-verb language-and-grammar that, in Western culture, has come to equated with ‘reality’.

Among the many forms of linguistic communication, noun-and-verb languages such as English stand out in that their mode of communicating ‘breaks down’ relational understanding into abstract terms of ‘things-in-themselves’ and ‘what things-in-themselves do’.  Meanwhile, this type of communication is what modern Western society has come to officially (socially) endorse as a legitimate conveyor of ‘reality’.  It is the ‘scientific’ reality of Thomas Gradgrind in Dickens’ ‘Hard Times’ (and Western rational thinking in general).  This contrasts with the ‘poetic’ or ‘romantic’ reality of Sissy Jupe that is decidedly ‘relational’, and like indigenous aboriginal reality, considered by the mainstream of modern Western society, to “convey a humanism that is not of real worth” (Laborit).

Experiencing a stroke can put one ‘back in touch’ with relational values/understanding which Western noun-and-verb language influenced culture has obscured.  That is, the ‘loss’ associated with a stroke, at the same time, removes superficial clutter, unveiling relational experience-based insight that has been unnaturally ‘buried’ beneath simplified thing-in-itself based (‘scientific’) rhetoric.  Since ‘stroke therapy’ aims to restore one’s cognitive functioning to its Western cultural standard condition, the challenge for a post-stroke experient such as myself, is to retain access to the mindspace wherein relational understanding prevails, while redeveloping facility with the abstract worldview fostered by ‘literal’ interpretation of Western noun-and-verb languages, which, for convenience, puts into an unnatural primacy, a worldview based on ‘things-in-themselves’ and ‘what things-in-themselves do’.

One’s post-stroke ‘stroke of insight’ can be understood in terms of restoring ‘level 1’ cognition to its natural primacy [see Erich Jantsch’s ‘Design for Evolution’, a discussion of which can be found at https://goodshare.org/wp/inclusionality-update-june-14-2013/ ].  That is, our manner of perceiving is capable of three levels, as follows; (level 3) ‘objectively’  (Gradgrind’s view) as things-in-themselves or ‘independently existing objects’ ‘out there in front of us that move about separately’; … (level 2) ‘relatively’ as in a dual self-other relational sense (two people swimming in a common flow); and; (level 1) ‘inclusionally’ where we understand ourselves as inclusions within a transforming relational continuum.   Level 1 cognition implicitly includes level 2 cognition which implicitly includes level 3 cognition.  The ‘stroke of insight’ ‘re-grounds’ one in level 1 cognition while at the same time de-emphasizing level 3 cognition which is abstract and dependent on language-based ‘thing-in-itself’ definitions and labels along with verbs and grammar to fabricate synthetic cognitive animations.  Because level 1 ‘understanding of reality’ ‘includes’ levels 2 and 3, there is no fundamental loss of ‘understanding’ of self and world in ‘retreating to level 1’,  but there is ‘loss’ in one’s ability to articulate, in common language-and-grammar based terms, what one is experiencing, since the common (Western) means of sharing experience is to use noun-and-verb language constructs based on the abstract notion of ‘things-in-themselves’ and ‘what things-in-themselves do’ (level 3).

Stroke recovery, viewed not as a ‘stroke of insight’ but as a net ‘loss’ of cognitive capability, involves re-learning how to use language to reduce one’s relational experience so as to express oneself in level 2 and 3 terms, level 3 being the Gradgrind-like scientific view/portrayal that has become the common [and legal standard] communications mode of Western society which, while it is efficient at constructing and articulating visual imagery in terms of notional ‘things-in-themselves-and-what-things-in-themselves do’, … garners its efficiency by dropping out the primary level 1 relational context of ‘real life experience’.  The ‘stroke of insight’ connotes the recovery of access to level 1 cognition that has been, in Western culture, buried by the cultural elevating of level 3 to an unnatural primacy via noun-and-verb language constructs.

* * * End of Author’s Preface * * *

PSI-2 Post-Stroke Impressions: No. 2. (PSI-2)

“Nationalism is an infantile disease; … it is the measles of the world” — Einstein

‘Relativity’ restores the ‘relational’ to its natural primacy.  A stroke of the type described by Jill Bolte Taylor in ‘My Stroke of Insight’ does the same.  Understanding the world in terms of ‘things-in-themselves-that-are-the-jumpstart-authors-of-their-own-actions’ is the more general expression implied in Einstein’s above ‘nationalism-as-an-infantile-disease’ critique.  That is, ‘nations’ are not really ‘things-in-themselves’. That is abstraction that is reified by noun-and-verb language; e.g. ‘nations’ appear and disappear on a world map depending on the whims of politicians and political followings.

Nations are not ‘physically real things’; they are abstractions that depend upon people ‘believing’ that ‘they exist’.  The ‘nations’ that unbounded lands were notionally carved up into by European colonizers exist as ‘things-in-themselves’ only in the minds of the colonizing ‘believers’.  They do not exist physically.  There are no ‘things-in-themselves’ in the world of physical experience, only in the conventions of language.   Noun and verb language, meanwhile, allows us to write and speak about ‘nations’ as if they were ‘physically real’ entities enjoying ‘their own independent existence’.

In the simple physics (mechanics) of notional ‘things-in-themselves’ and ‘what things-in-themselves do’,

[S.T.R.O.K.E. = Stops Things-in-themselves Reigning Over (relational) Kinetic Energy.]

There are no such ‘beings’ as ‘things-in-themselves’.  Things-in-themselves-that-initiate-actions-that-cause-results are mental abstractions stimulated by noun-and-verb language which abstractly breaks down dynamics that are purely relational into notional ‘things-in-themselves’ that are imputed to have the power to ‘jumpstart their own actions’.  Employing this type of abstraction correspondingly forces the invention of a complementary abstraction; i.e. an ‘operating theatre’ within which this thing-based activity can take place, setting up the synthetic dualism of ‘space’ (as container) and ‘material things-in-themselves’ (as contents).

In the case of plants, the shortfall of modeling these ‘organisms’ as ‘things-in-themselves’ has become evident, and while the relational view in terms of plants as relational forms within a transforming relational continuum is ‘waiting in the wings’, the biological sciences continue to ‘hold on to’ the view of plants as ‘organisms’ separate from, though dependent upon their ‘living space’ in contradiction to the modern physics view where plants can be understood as relational forms within the transforming relational continuum.

As Nietzsche has suggested, our human ego has us holding on to the view of a human/animal ‘self’ as a local material thing-in-itself, … notionally ‘separate and distinct’ from the living space it is included in.  This materialist portrait of ourselves, born of our ego, we apply also to plants and ‘biological organisms’ in general.   While the notion of humans as ‘independently-existing organisms separate from the environment’ is problematic, as Nietzsche and others have pointed out, the notion of plants as ‘independently-existing organisms separate from the environment has even greater credibility issues.  For example, ‘how does a plant identify its own offspring and distinguish them from other plants?

There is a long list of the ‘intelligent capabilities’ of plants that cannot be explained by conventional ‘independently-existing thing-in-itself’ based biological theory of organisms.  All of these shortfalls are meanwhile explained if one assumes, instead, that a plant is a relational feature in the transforming relational continuum, as in the views of indigenous aboriginals and modern physicists such as David Bohm and Erwin Schroedinger (as discussed in ‘Blackfoot Physics’ by F. David Peat).

Appended below is a short conclusion extracted from an earlier (pre-stroke) essay which discussed the ‘Smarty Plants’ phenomena [‘Smarty Plants’ is the title of a David Suzuki ‘The Nature of Things’ episode that explores the unexplainable astuteness of plant behaviour].

The conclusion distinguishes between ‘semantically constructed scientific reality’, abbreviated SCSR; … and physically experienced intuitive reality, abbreviated PEIR.    This distinction ‘shows up again’ in post stroke experience, such as I am currently navigating.  Jill Bolte Taylor refers to such enlightening post-stroke PEIR experience as ‘the stroke of insight’.

That is, … although there is, in immediate post-stroke experience, a loss of capability in solving certain kinds of problems ‘rationally’ (i.e. in term of ‘what things do’), there is a gain in relational insight due to the fact that, after the stroke, the capacity for relational understanding is no longer (unnaturally, but in line with Western cultural thinking) pushed down (and buried) beneath rational understanding.   For example, ‘understanding plants’ in a relational context as in post-stroke awareness, admits that plants are relational forms in a transforming relational continuum.   Understanding plants in a rational (mechanical) context, on the other hand, has us envisage them as ‘things-in-themselves’ that are fully and solely responsible for their own actions, growth, production of flowers and fruit etc. as with machines that have their own ‘inputs’, internal ‘processing capabilities’ and ‘outputs’.  Gone from this view is the understanding of plants as ‘inclusions’ in a transforming relational continuum.

E.g. see the essay;

* * *

The ‘Smarty Plants’ enigma, discussed above, is where plants seem to possess an intelligence that shows up in their ‘plant behaviour’ that goes far beyond what could possibly come from ‘their own internal workings’.

The answer to the “Smarty Plants” enigma is that plants are NOT ‘things-in-themselves’ but inclusions within the transforming relational continuum, and the story we make up about ourselves as humans, which is easier because we are not ‘rooted’, doesn’t work for plants.  Meanwhile, the ‘things-in-themselves’ assumption doesn’t work for humans either.  That we believe in it is the folly of Western culture; a trap that indigenous aboriginal peoples did not fall into since they did not develop a noun-and-verb ‘thing-in-itself’ based language that seduced them into seeing the world NOT in relational terms but in terms of ‘things-in-themselves’ and ‘what-things-in-themselves-do’.

The reifying of relational forms in the transforming relational continuum and making them out to be ‘things-in-themselves’ is a grammatical-logical device that simplifies describing the far more complex relational dynamics of the natural world [relational dynamics are ‘circular’ as in fluid transformation and have no beginning and no end].   Thing-in-itself based dynamics assume a static reference container or notional absolute reference frame within which notional locally-existing ‘things-in-themselves’ move and interact over the passage of time.  Western civilized people have found it ‘convenient’ to allow ‘thing-in-itself’ noun-and-verb rhetoric-based imagery to ‘take over’ our intellectual conceptualizing and in so doing, relieving our relational experience within the transforming relational continuum of its role as our primary cognitive informant. In this manner, our language-based cognitive constructions ‘take over’ and become the source of our ‘operative reality’ that guides and directs our actions.

This furnishes ‘consistency’ between ‘what we say is going on’ and ‘what we do about it’, without fully addressing ‘what we are experiencing is going on’.  We may live in a divided society which is breeding child soldiers, however, our Western ‘thing-in-itself’ based view speaks only to ‘what the child soldier does’ without acknowledging the inherent primacy of the relational influences he is situationally included in, something that indigenous aboriginal (relational) mode of understanding would comprehend (“it takes a whole community to raise a child”).

Returning to the issues raised in ‘Smarty Plants’, … since plants are deemed to be ‘independently-existing organisms’ as we also deem ‘humans’ to be, we impute to them, as well, the powers of jumpstart sourcing their own actions/behaviours [even though they are not, as with the way we model humans, equipped with language that supports behavioural direction coming from cognitive dynamics that can be ‘put above’ sensory experience-induced behaviour shaping.

The basic pattern as exemplified by ‘The Charge of the Light Brigade’, where men put their intellectual conditioning and rational thought-obeying into an unnatural precedence over their sensory experience, exemplifies the inverting in priority of the relational-experiential over the objective/rational-intellectual, putting the latter into an unnatural precedence over the former.

This inversion that puts rational analysis in precedence over relational experiential influence is cultivated generally within Western culture (it becomes the socially accepted rule rather than the exception) while it remains the exception rather than the rule in indigenous aboriginal cultures.

The post-stroke experient, like the indigenous aboriginal, puts the relational-experiential (back) into precedence over the rational.  This can be seen in the loss of the post-stroke individual’s ability to remember others in terms of ‘names’ employed as ‘things-in-themselves designations’, remembering them only in terms of the relational dynamics they share inclusion in.

For the father in the wake of his stroke, the daughter’s son may not be remembered by his ‘thing-in-itself’ name, but knowledge of him will be included in the web of relational context that includes the stroke experient, the daughter, her son, husband and the world they are situationally included in.  Recall of a picnic or other family experience may bring this out.  But what has ‘dropped out’ is the memory of dynamics in linguistic (rather than experiential) terms of notional ‘things-in-themselves-and-what-these-things-in-themselves-do’.  The name-labels that denote the notional jumpstarters of action [not possible in relational dynamics] do not come to the stroke experient’s mind because the memory landscape that survives the stroke is relational rather than ‘what things-in-themselves-do’ based.

In a stroke, our understanding of ‘other’ and ‘others’ in terms of ‘things-in-themselves’ falls away and what remains; i.e. that which is no longer artificially obscured by ‘thing-in-itself’ based semantic constructions, are the insights coming from our ‘relational experience’.

In the relational, pre-objectification worldview of the ‘stroke experient’, there are no ‘things-in-themselves’, there are only ‘relations’.  This is why a parent with a stroke can ‘forget’ the names of his friends and family members.  ‘Forgetting names’ is consistent with the ‘dropping away’ of the ‘thing-in-itself’ mode of understanding, a form of understanding that is a Western culture-cultivated capability that was not developed in indigenous aboriginal cultures.  Indigenous aboriginal cultures and their relational languages support the retention, in its natural primacy, of the relational view of self and world [e.g. see ‘Blackfoot Physics’ by F. David Peat].

As a stroke experient who has experienced the ‘drop out’ of ‘thing-in-itself’ based understanding so that ‘the relational’ ‘returns to the forefront’, I have experienced, with this drop-out, how dependent our standard Western communications are on ‘thing-in-itself’ based conceptualization, whether in ‘nationalism’ or ‘egotism’ [the former being a collective form of egotism].

Relational interacting with friends and family continues on in the post-stroke experience without a major break; however, communications become more difficult because of the ‘drop-out’ of the ‘thing-in-itself’ conceptual base that has evolved to play a foundational role in Western modes of communication.

The ‘scientific’ mode of communications builds on a base of notional ‘things-in-themselves’ even though such communications fail to capture real-world dynamics that are intrinsically relational.  This failure of thing-based communications is brought out (mockingly) by Charles Dickens in ‘Hard Times’, as the tersely ‘scientific/logical’ teacher Thomas Gradgrind observes;

“Now, what I want is, Facts. Teach these boys and girls nothing but Facts. Facts alone are wanted in life. Plant nothing else, and root out everything else. You can only form the minds of reasoning animals upon Facts: nothing else will ever be of any service to them. This is the principle on which I bring up my own children, and this is the principle on which I bring up these children. Stick to Facts, sir!”

‘Bitzer,’ said Thomas Gradgrind. ‘Your definition of a horse.’

 ‘Quadruped. Graminivorous. Forty teeth, namely twenty-four grinders, four eye-teeth, and twelve incisive. Sheds coat in the spring; in marshy countries, sheds hoofs, too. Hoofs hard, but requiring to be shod with iron. Age known by marks in mouth.’ Thus (and much more) Bitzer.

Gradgrind ridicules the ‘relational’ mode of understanding of Sissy Jupe which is, meanwhile, like the post-stroke mode of understanding; i.e. the relational mode of understanding is restored to its ‘natural primacy’ by the stroke.

The stroke has the effect of lifting off the unnatural superimposing of thing-in-itself based rhetoric [that is obscuring the relational] that then serves as a makeshift ‘reality’.  The ‘ego’ concretizes this unnatural inversion that puts the materialist [thing-in-itself-based] view over the relational.  This problem issue is clearly exposed by Nietzsche;

“In its origin language belongs in the age of the most rudimentary form of psychology. We enter a realm of crude fetishism when we summon before consciousness the basic presuppositions of the metaphysics of language, in plain talk, the presuppositions of reason. Everywhere it sees a doer and doing; it believes in will as the cause; it believes in the ego, in the ego as being, in the ego as substance, and it projects this faith in the ego-substance upon all things — only thereby does it first create the concept of “thing.” Everywhere “being” is projected by thought, pushed underneath, as the cause; the concept of being follows, and is a derivative of, the concept of ego.” – Nietzsche, ‘Twilight of the Idols’.

What ‘falls away’ in a stroke is the sense that ‘being’ is at the bottom of everything and everyone.  This allows a relational understanding of the world to resume its natural primacy.

Nationalism is a collective form of ‘ego’ that gives rise to a sense of a ‘collective self’ (the ‘nation’) that is the jumpstart source of what are ‘talked up’ as great and noble acts and achievements.  Nationalism is a kind of ‘collective ego’ which is the underpinning of the concept of a collective as a ‘thing-in-itself’ aka ‘nation-in-itself’.   Grammar takes over from here to attribute many actions and results fully and solely to particular ‘things-in-themselves’ (e.g. ‘particular nations’) so that a new way of understanding unfolds that is ‘independent object (nation-as-thing-in-itself)’ based’.

While a relational understanding-based portrayal of the world is incapable of isolating and identifying the ‘source’ [responsible agent or agency] of an action or its ‘result’ [the ‘deed’], noun-and-verb language constructs have the capability of riding roughshod over this inherent limitation, imputing full and sole sourcing origins [causal responsibility] to particular ‘things-in-themselves’.   In noun-and-verb languages, ‘people’ and ‘machines’ and other material entities are conceived of, in language, as ‘independently-existing-things-in-themselves’ with the power to jumpstart the execution of actions and deeds that are then deemed exclusively attributable to such notional ‘authors’.  This is impossible in a relational physical reality; i.e. the thing-in-itself sourcing of actions and results is purely conceptual [figurative] and not physically actualized.

The Zen expression “make me one with everything” recalls the stroke experience; e.g. as documented by Jill Bolte Taylor.  For me, it recalls my own stroke experience, where one experiences a dropout of named ‘things-in-themselves’ so that relational understanding resumes its (natural) precedence.  It is not that I forgot my children when I forgot their names, … what dropped out was my ‘thing-in-itself’ based knowledge of them, allowing my relational-experiential understanding to rise back up to its natural foreground situating in my awareness.  If I were to re-learn who they were from written profiles documenting their birth and personal development and achievement histories, it would be possible for a trickster to slip a couple of fictional ‘extras’ in there whose particulars and photos I could also memorize; e.g. where he/she went to college etc.

That is, the ‘being-based’ portrait of individuals and things differs fundamentally from the ‘dances with wolves’ relational understanding [quantum entanglement comes to mind].  There is no limit to the amount of detail that one could pack into a portrait of someone-in-himself or something-in-itself of the type employed by Gradgrind and Bitzer in describing a horse;

 ‘Quadruped. Graminivorous. Forty teeth, namely twenty-four grinders, four eye-teeth, and twelve incisive. Sheds coat in the spring; in marshy countries, sheds hoofs, too. Hoofs hard, but requiring to be shod with iron. Age known by marks in mouth.’ Thus (and much more) Bitzer.

Where is the world of continual relational transformation in this?  — the ‘real world’ that Bitzer, Gradrind and the horse share inclusion in?

The world of nationalist politicians is the world of Gradgrind and Bitzer that is described as if ‘out there in front of us’ rather than as something we are relationally included in.  It is decidedly ‘unlike’ the relational (‘romantic’) world of Sissy Jupe.

What our Western social and governmental protocols teach us [and legislate as compulsory, ways of understanding the visible world dynamic] is that we must ‘put facts first’ and by ‘facts’ what is intended is observations that are in terms of ‘things-in-themselves’ and ‘what things-in-themselves’ do’.  The ‘relational understanding’ of the dynamics of our natural experience may not see the child-soldier as being fully and solely responsible for ‘his own actions’, … but may instead understand the child soldier scenario in relational terms wherein it is impossible to ‘break out’ the ‘individual-and-his-thing-in-itself-actions-and-results] as a meaningfully separate and independent activity, as it is presented in noun-and-verb language-and-grammar.

For me, the ‘insight’ referred to as the ‘stroke of insight’ is the resurfacing of relational understanding that has been unnaturally pushed down beneath the artificial edifice of thing-in-itself-based [aka ‘being-based’] cognition.

“Everywhere “being” is projected by thought, pushed underneath, as the cause; the concept of being follows, and is a derivative of, the concept of ego.” – Nietzsche, ‘Twilight of the Idols’.

Western government is a competition among the big egos to win support from the masses so that they can ‘direct the social dynamic’ from the top of hierarchical power structures.  This makes no sense in a relational world.  That is, if the physical world is inherently relational, organization that employs deterministic actions aimed at achieving fixed goals and objectives will be a Sisyphusian exercise.

There is an unnatural ‘inversion’ here that characterizes Western society.  All of the ‘talk’ constructed with noun-and-verb language which ‘portrays’ people and ‘nations’ as self-animating ‘things-in-themselves’, notionally with their own innate powers of acting and authoring outcomes, is rhetorical illusion that is un-grounded in physical (relational) reality.  Insofar as one ‘buys into’ this noun-and-verb language-based thing-in-itself [‘being’ and ‘ego’ driven] portrayal, climbing the ladder of ‘ego-growth’, as an ‘individual-being-in-itself’ and/or as a member of an ‘independent nation-in-itself’, will hijack the natural primacy of the relational over the material ‘thing-in-itself’.

Western society has cultivated in the minds/beliefs of its adherents, a language-and-grammar pseudo-reality based on the notional existence of ‘things-in-themselves’ that are seen as the jumpstart authors of actions and results.  As Nietzsche says;

“Everywhere “being” is projected by thought, pushed underneath, as the cause; the concept of being follows, and is a derivative of, the concept of ego.”

My own ‘stroke of insight’ restores, for me, the natural primacy of relational understanding whereby ‘thing-in-itself’ or ‘being-based’ thinking falls away.

Of course, living in a culture where ‘being-based thinking’ is employed ‘socially’, as the ‘operative reality’ means that one must be able to be not only ‘conversant’ with ‘being-based thinking’ but adept at moving so as to cultivate and sustain harmony in the ‘relational reality’ of the physical world while at the same time minimizing conflict arising from the cultural norm of equating ‘being-based thinking’ (intellectual, ‘objective’ reality) with ‘reality’.

In the case of social justice, this means, for me, following the indigenous aboriginal understanding as implied in ‘mitakuye oyasin’  (‘we are all related’); … a perspective which does not allow us to assume that ‘good’ or ‘evil’ acts derive from the interior of notional ‘independently-existing-individuals’ (there are no ‘independently-existing individuals in the transforming relational continuum).

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