Customer Reviews

Completing Distinctions

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4 star:		(0)
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1 star:		(1)

 

 

I saw the only review so far was a poor one and this prompted me to speak up for an interesting and thoughtful book - not to balance out the other reviewer, but simply add another plain opinion.
Not often have I read such a rich confluence of ideas as in Flemons' book. I found myself constantly being engaged with the text, scribbling notes, ideas, and disagreements in the margins. It's like taking Goethe/Goodwin's worldviews and growing them with gestalt, taoism, Gregory Bateson, Laws of Form (G. Spencer-Brown) and poetry. The ideas are liquid and though there are many tributaries and turbulent flows, I found it to be clear. Definitely outside the box, as it were!

I read this book a few years ago, and it's amazing. It's not a text to read and understand but one which will change how you understand, so I can only speak to how my understanding was changed. The basic theme I received is how distinctions unify, for instance how a person who strongly believes there is no god and a person who strongly believes there is a God are alike in that both have strong beliefs about whether or not a God exists. This allowed me to see connections where others see only separations, and to see through false separations (for example, how people speak of nature as separated out from things like chemicals). There is a definite tone of how understanding requires distinctions (red is red b/c it's not blue, green, etc.), so unifying wisdom is to be found not simply in deconstruction of what appear to be flawed or incomplete traditional ideas but in studying other ideas enough to see common values where they exist, and accepting that when they can't be seen, it may be an inevitable result of a different perspective which in its distinctness gives rather than takes away its own natural significance.

This seemed like the kind of thing I would like from the title, but I could not understand it. If I could understand it I might give a better review.

I don't think my lack of understanding is entirely my fault. I'm capable of understanding much - college graduate and all that.

Perhaps this one of those things that can be understood, but for which I am not prepared to understand.

Perhaps you would like to have a go. Good luck.