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      Heiner Benking

My „Annual Survival Report":

The need for a pragmatic spin by making words solid, creating places between them

December 1998

Seasons Greetings,

as many of you are used to receiving annually, here is my survival and work report:

 

Like many OTHERS ( http://www.others.com ) on this planet, I have been pondering over the last year what a "world without borders" might look like and if we really want such a world. What do we mean by "without boundaries", can't we create them in order to understand and then take them away (see Friedrich Rückert's „Schranken" in „Wisdom of the Bramins" - as translated and included in many of my papers). My search for answers to this question is what this report is about, my work and Life.

So what I actually did last year was further explorations on how to tell on different levels of expertise what things are „about" and what is „in" it (the subject). Or, how can we enter issues and situations in order to avoid getting caught up or tangled in words. I had to design and follow two main roads in parallel. One with Children, doing seminars, playing puzzles, and pondering about and filling the „know- and interest maps", the other with „Searchers and Designers", preferably Decision and Policy Makers.

What came out of it? New words and concepts to make concepts more „real" for grasping, groping, and groking; in German we say „anschaulich". I called the new pictures „A House without Walls", the „House of Eyes", or a „House of Horizons and Perspectives", or again on the „high end" a meta-paradigm, a framework of being and sharing, as if we consider a paradigm a way of thinking, then the meta-paradigm is the context, the map to plot the different paradigms (kids call them in the house above „eyes", into a landscape of paradigms, which can be compared and reflected upon...

Central is the realisation, that I embody and make visible and immersible, what the philosopher, biologist and sociologist Hellmuth Plessner called in his philosophical anthropology „excentric positionality", consider it the human capability to hold many views at the same time and reflect upon it. I have called through the years embodied „lateral thinking" (in German „querdenken" -diagonal thinking) but it is always the same, we need to take our viewpoints in and out in order to realise where our neighbour is.

During the last two years I have reduced my usage of the term „Cognitive Panorama" as it is too abstract for some, and instead went back to the „Open Blackbox" which I had built in 1990. In and around this „space" we can exemplarily and jointly experience „touch, see, and feel". This experience makes us more curious and cautious, creates humility and awe, the more we gaze... And exactly this is what I feel matters most and makes a difference. By the way the touring exhibition „Global Change", of which the „blackbox" is an exponat, was recently updated ! and is touring in Germany now since 8 years having perhaps something to do with environmental consciousness, awareness, management and communications. Interestingly only the research projects needed updating, the posters on values, lifestyles, understanding, capacity building, ... remained more or less the same (for example only the picture and name of our President von Weizsäcker had to be changed...).

In short and coming back to the „opening" exponat of the exhibition, The Blackbox: What was created was a map/model in which I we can jointly find places and scrutinise situation or plot various paradigms (ways of thinking) viewpoints and „positions" - a global workspace or -place of the mind, a „stage" which can orient the inner and outer dimensions. Please see the paper from Ljubljana and the exchanges with Krippner and Baars on my homepage, and check the lecture on „worldview compositions" which was presented early 1997 in the „emergence" series of the Konrad Lorenz Institute (KLI). There I looked at what Paul Weiss was telling Bertalanffy and Koestler, and how von Uexkuell had seen „living things" long before. The purpose?: to exercise simultaneously mental mobility, the ability to integrate perspectives and live with paradox, dilemma, checks and balances. To which result: Towards a tolerance towards intolerance, seeing with other eyes, bridging the gap, and understanding on the basis of new or extended common grounds .. and where we can show how to „negotiate" issues and situations, a „topica universalis" like we negotiate „terrain". See Rückert's "starmap" example in „Wisdom of the Brahmins" which I have included in many places on my sites. Again in German: we call this „er-örtern" - negotiating logical places of topoi," a topic being treated as a topos. In German „Ort" means place (a space where we can share) and so we can represent and relate the different „positions" of Plessner and exercise mental mobility, the most basic and natural form of healing..., besides questioning our assumptions and doing what we do in the various dialogue exercises, taking our viewpoint out and being able to combine different perspectives.

This reflection of what something is about and what is in it, specially when you enter it and forget the „modern" observer/spectator „Age of Show" attitude (see also Illich's new pieces). This pondering about who is saying what, where, and why has let me back - through extensive Dialogue exercises - back to an old project: A mediation procedure we have called „CONSULTATIVE", it goes along with a „cookbook" as we have called it 5 years ago, a procedure to combine good management and organisation practice with an ordered process or procedure. Then reason? It is not enough to „play" democracy, we need to know what something is about and what is behind an issue, its context. And there the circle closes.

Such a negotiation and sharing of societal matters in a fair and open process was the subject which concerned me most through the years (for example in my work with and for Robert Jungk's (Bob's) 80th birthday celebrations in Graz (End and Beginning). This more so every day, the more I paid attention and learned how different words are used and misused. That is why I had to focus more and more on terminology „Das Orten und Worten der Welt" (borrowed form Wüster Exhibition, Vienna) during the last 20 years, on (image-)schemata and architectures which allow us to find what is meant beyond a certain classifications or coding systems and to be able to translate it into other „buildings", „languages", or „cultures" in order to avoid the „battle of perspectives" and the fight for „proprietary portals" in the new cyberworlds: The Problem? Without having a set of open „common house" (common frames of references), all these windows and doors lead nowhere, and that is critical, as „magnetic" portals make us go only a given way... („portals" are electronic gates, the entry pages on the World-Wide-Web, and if groups are paying lots of money for a certain place, then the HUMAN RIGHT of „Freedom of Information" is in jeopardy. Even the idea of „information at our fingertips" is illusion, as certain door leads to a certain proprietary „house". Having no site-map or transparency is the danger, and without the Human Right to be able to get to the origins, sources and backgrounds, the whole remains „surface" and „show". As you can easily see, the matters are a little deeper the moment you enter, when you go into something...

Much more would need to be said and done in order to realise what I describe above, but go to my web-sites and check out the ways and designs presented there. As a first step I invite you to look at the IFSR Newsletter, the growing and living „landscape.htm" file which will eventually develop into the „world-view compositions" paper (see KLI paper as mentioned above), and last not least the pieces on dialogue and creativity. All is available at http://www.uia.org/guests/benking , you just need to follow the links and sign posts, and keep going. All the best and let us look forward to next year's report.....

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