Noneastern Family Politics

I began reading Jane Anna Gordon's "Creolizing Political Theory" from the back toward the front, as usual, because if I appreciate where this narrative journey will end, then I probably will find we start off with similar questions of economic and political urgency right now. And, also as is my dialogical custom, I am working my way through George Lakoff's "The Political Mind," this morning starting his chapter on Family Values. Here is what happened to my parenting political minds, both the LeftBrain rational-deductive dominant, and the RightMind matriarchal-familial nurturing, cooperative Yin-nonWestern, as Gordon might prefer, and seems to conclude: "Dallmayr...warned first against 'imperialist modes of theorizing,' in which one portion of the [competing rather than cooperating]globe would monopolize the production of hared means and practices that should 'only arise from lateral [Right is bilateral, while Left is vertical-hierarchically deductive, empowered exegetically from above] interaction, [co-mentored, co-operative] negotiation, and [struggling with but not violently/aggressively against] contestation among different, historically grown cultural [evolutionary compete/cooperate] frameworks.' In addition, he advanced, worldly [familial-matriarchal-domestic] theory would emerge out of a middle course [Taoism: wu wei = MidWay, in-between] between the methods of [geosystemic] abstract generalists and of narrow [biological ecosystemic] specialists, neither through seeking 'indiscriminate [yin] assimilation' nor radically untranslatable [yang-independent] otherness." "...[A]s evident in the instances of Aristotle, Machiavelli, Baron de Montesquieu, Charles-Louis de Secondat, and Alexis de Tocqueville, [Gregory Bateson, Buckminster Fuller, Albert Einstein, Teilhard de Chardin George Lakoff] theory transpires out of journeying to alien political [yet extended familial] worlds that stir a critical [empathic] sense of the peculiarity of one's own [monoculturing] institutions, challenging their seeming [exegetical] inevitability by nurturing [new bilaterally eisegetical, polypathic] self-understanding that grounds an enlivened [RightBrain] sense of [yang-cooperative with yin-integrative] possibility." "Euben stresses that comparative politial theory cannot rely upon and should endeavor to challenge any perception of [extended familial] cultures as radically distinct or hermetically sealed. Countering a dangerous tendency also comparing Western [nonEastern?] with non-Western philosophical writing fosters the misperception that these traditions developed in parallel [silos], independently of one another [rather than also containing mutually empathic interdependencies]-- Euben focuses on ambivalent treatments of Western modernity in Arab thought illuminating internal [both/and] fissures in both that belie their presumed [exegetical ecopolitical] opposition [as more eisegetically appositional tensegrity (B. Fuller)]." "If historical designations [LeftBrain deductive labels and frames]...cannot simly be dispensed with, since they are forms of represenation embedded in [RightBrain] mythologies that anchor our [ecoconscious] understanding... and, however imperfectly, remain short-hand for [extended familial] constellations of [ecosystemic] sources, issues, and [ecopolitical] methods of argumentation [acclimation (G. Bateson)] that while constructed through post factos [symbiotic] agendas produce family resemblances and recognizable attributes..., they still obscure messy [chaotic, unresolved, dissonant] and interpenetrating histories [which are also potentially nutritional herstories, understories within our larger ecological MotherEarth frame]." "After all, argues Euben, the possibility of engaging in comparative [familial] discussions is a function not of radical [competitive-deductive] difference but mutual [cooperative-inductive] indebtedness of worlds not juxtaposed as [theoretically, paradigmatically] discrete. In the case of 'the West' [nonEast cultural dominance] and 'Islam,' both are fundamentally shaped by Semitic [patriarchal, from-above universal empowerment] traditions, texts considered classical within Europe [extended families] were reintroduced to its readers through preserved Arabic [extended family Wisdom Literature] translations, and the Golden Age of Islamic thought was defined by efforts to forge syncretic [YHWH patriarchal] fusions of Greek and [pre]Islamic [Arabic ecopolitical familial-tribal] resources." And here's what happened while continuing my Family Economic and Political Values discourse with Lakoff: "Why do certain people, most of them self-identified as conservatives [of monoculturally supremacist heterosexuality] find certain acts of love-- premarital, extra-marital, or homosexual-- more [extended family] sinful than war or torture?" "Why should a [LeftBrain ego-supremacist] conservative living in the Midwest find it personally threatening when gays get married in San Francisco or Massachusetts?" "Why doesn't a [health and safety utilitarian survivalist] conservative government take better care of its veterans, and why don't [conservative self-condemning] veterans and their families rebel en masse?" "Why do progressives feel a sense of responsibility for righting the wrongs of past generations?" [Because we hope that's what our kids will do for their kids?] "And why should we find progressive and conservative values and modes of thought outside of politics proper-- in kindergartens, Little League coaching, churches, summer camps, and so on?" [And who said these are not ecopolitical paradigms?]