[Xmca-l] Re: Political constructions of selfvspoliticalconstructions of identity

[Annalisa Aguilar]

Hi Rein,


Thanks for the discussion. :)


Yes, but from what can change be measured? How do *you* detect change of any kind? There must be something static in order for change to be detected. I'm not arguing at all that there is no change or that everything is static. Even in Einstein's Theory of Relativity an stationary observer is required to detect change.


As far as "ity," it is an interesting concept, but if I am understanding you, it seems to possess something of an ethical challenge for my sensibility because it means that lying or psychopathology are acceptable states of being, unless you are using this theory of "ity" to explain how it is that a person can vacillate between one moral point of reference and another without any self-awareness, one mood to another.


Even though the weather patterns change, there are levels of predictability. Why be able to predict at all?


How can any pattern of change be detected at all if there is nothing stationary?


Also, why is it that there isn't constant mayhem and destruction, everywhere, all the time, forever and for all time; past, present, and future?


Regardless of what Aristotle said, something must be stationary to account for change and that stationary point is you. In what you describe, there is nothing holding it all together to measure by except you. Without an orientation point, it dissolves into moral relativity and ethical morass, and seems nihilistic. If that is the cosmology you see as obtaining, then how is there any determination of values at all?


Even if Trump is vacillating here and there between this and that form of ridicule, his body is relatively constant, his body doesn't suddenly shape shift into Liza Minelli and start singing broadway musicals, then into a pink flamingo eating crayfish and then back to The Donald we all know and love. :)


Or how about this? Why is there only one Donald and not 5? Sort of borg-like hovering around the podium waving his hands in that way he does but like a slide carousel of display?


How did Dogen detect the change, that is, when what was the firewood, underwent transition through time, turned into ashes, which was firewood no more? And why didn't the firewood turn into a potato chip, a cellphone, or an Apollo space capsule instead?


What is your definition of change? If you don't mind sharing. :)


Kind regards,


Annalisa