From Cultural Tyranny to Co-Creative Community

Alan Rayner

Evolutionary ecologist, painter, author, and poet

May 3, 2020

Is it a surprise that a culture that systematically rewards deceit, inanity and cruelty while penalising honesty, reasonableness and kindness comes to be full of selfishness and iniquity administered by tyrants addicted to power over principle? Does it help to blame those in power for the rot that results, while turning a blind eye to the flawed philosophy and psychology that serves their self-interest? No-one has the power to overrule others without the consent of those others. A leader cannot lead without followers. A lone voice in the crowd can’t be heard without amplification.

If you want the rot to stop, start following this 10-point route-map:-

Stop complaining about the tyrants and the iniquity while doing nothing to change the cultural psychology and flawed philosophy that puts them in place, and start working together to bring about cultural transformation.
Stop believing in or asserting the absolute independent unity of individual or group, and start recognising how each needs the other in co-creative companionship
Stop believing or asserting that humanity is separate from Nature, and start recognising our evolutionary and ecological source in natural neighbourhood
Stop believing or asserting that tangible substance and intangible space are mutually exclusive or indistinguishable and start recognising the natural inclusion of each in the other
Stop believing or asserting that energetic motion is independent from spatial stillness and start recognising that the former cannot exist without the latter
Stop believing or asserting that substance is inert and has to be forced into motion from outside, and start recognising that substance is made of space and energy in receptive-responsive, mutually inclusive, co-creative relationship
Stop believing or asserting that reason is separate from emotion, and start recognising that there is good reason for emotion
Stop believing or asserting that subject is definitively isolated from object, and start recognising that all natural material forms exist within each other’s receptive and responsive, spatial and energetic influence
Stop believing or asserting that ‘light’ is good and ‘darkness’ is bad, and start recognising that all material bodies consist of both in responsive-receptive relationship
Stop believing or asserting that ‘positive’ is ‘good’ and ‘negative’ is ‘bad’, and start recognising that ‘positive’ is responsive and ‘negative’ is receptive

Once all that is said and done, it will become possible for us to live together more lovingly, sustainably, creatively and peacefully than we currently do.

Further Reading:

Rayner, A.D. (2011). Space Cannot Be Cut—Why Self-Identity Naturally Includes Neighbourhood. Integrative Psychological and Behavioural Science, 45, 161–184.

Rayner ADM (2011). NaturesScope: Unlocking our natural empathy and creativity. Winchester, UK; Washington USA: O Books.

Rayner, A. (2012). What are natural systems, actually? Advances in System Science and Application 12, 328–347.

Rayner, A (2017). The Origin of Life Patterns: In the Natural Inclusion of Space in Flux. Berlin/Heidelberg: Springer.

Rayner, A (2018). The Vitality of the Intangible: crossing the threshold from abstract materialism to natural reality. Human Arenas 1 pp 9–20.

Rayner, A (2022). Honesty, Reasonableness & Kindness

Rayner, A (2020). From Abstract Freeze-Frame to Natural Kinship

Rayner, A (2020). Cold & Warm Geometry

Rayner, A (2020). The Natural Inclusion of Difference

Rayner, A (accepted for publication) The natural inclusion of diversity in community. A preprint is privately available on application to the author.

Rayner, A (2020). Evolutionary Flow