This is http://www.essayz.com/a9503131.htm Previous-Essay <== This-Essay ==> Following-Essay Click HERE on this line to find essays via Your-Key-Words. {Most frequent wordstarts of each essay will be put here.} ========================================================== %RESPONSE-RESPONSE JUDGMENT CONDEMN AFFIRM PRIDE+950313 %OBSERVER WATCH TALK ARTICULATE DISCUSS DIALOGUE+950313 %TRANSACTION SELF OTHER OK CHILD PARENT ADULT+950313 %ANALYSIS SYNTHESIS INTEGRATION FRAGMENTATION 950313 Our lives are fabrics woven out of the threads of our decisions, actions and responses. Our responses to previous decisions, actions and responses may themselves be regarded as decisions, actions and/or responses. Our actions in response to previous decisions, actions and responses may themselves be regarded as decisions, actions and/or responses. Our decisions in response to previous decisions, actions and responses may themselves be regarded as decisions, actions and/or responses. It is often not a simple matter to characterize decisions, actions or responses as of one kind to the exclusion of being of another kind. If we are preoccupied with engaging in consensus building and arriving at group decisions regarding the classification of types of human behavior into mutually exclusive categories---we are likely to fail to recognize the ways in which different types of human behaviors relate to each other, and are like each other, and so likely to fail to transcend our chosen exclusive system of classification. Reflexive human relationships which form endless chains of decisions-actions-responses-decisions-actions- responses---do not yield readily to exclusive systems of classification regarding the artificially separated out elements of the pattern. What the elements appear to be like, depends upon how they are defined in the process of separating them out of the patterns from which they are extracted. There is a sense in which humans create the elements which they discover in the process of separating them out of the whole, naming and talking about them as if their identity was independent of the whole. Thus the classification process is in a sense an echo of the process of separating the elements out of the whole. In the consideration of living creatures the process of separating out organs, cells, cell-components, molecules, atoms, nuclei & electrons, mesons, leptons, baryons, quarks and strings---has been defended as an objective process which is rarely regarded as having any reflexive aspects. In the consideration of living humans the process of separating out decisions, actions, responses, judgments, condemnations, affirmations, praise, rejection, acceptance, attitudes, expectations, etc.---has rarely been reflected upon in any explicit and well articulated way. Often a third order response to a second order response-response situation is in some sense an assessment, reflection-upon, judgment, condemnation, or other like appraisal of the second order response- response. In any response-response-response pattern the individual "elements" depend in part upon how we separate them out of the whole, as well as how they were present in the whole. The individual "elements" may be regarded as initiatives, reactions, responses, assessments, reflections, judgments, condemnations, etc. The elements may entail pride, shame, guilt, respect, affirmations, etc. It is not helpful to insist upon treating the elements which we have chosen to separated out of wholes, as if they did not depend in any upon how we have chosen to separate them out of the wholes from which we have extracted them---whether objectively or reflexively. How we regard them depends not only upon how we separate them out. How we classify and name what we have separated out also influences greatly how we name our chosen elements. In our process of classification/naming we chose to regard some chosen elements as more alike than other elements which we chose to regard as more different. It is not entirely honest to pretend that the product of our efforts pre-existed before our efforts! The process of analysis of the cosmos into objective elements has lead to a remarkable consensus among members of many different races, nations, religions and cultures as to the nature of the most elemental parts of the cosmos and as to how they interact to constitute the whole. That success story is no guarantee that it will be possible to parallel it with a like success story regarding the elements of reflexive relations among the participants in the first success story. How different reflexive participants chose to separate out elements of their cooperative efforts will greatly influence what kinds of elements and relationships they "discover". Reflexive elements of personal relationships do not pre-exist the creations of and evolutions of the relationships. The reflexive elements of reflexive relationships cannot exist independently of the relationships in the same way as electrons, protons and neutrons can exist independently of the molecules of which they were previously parts. In reflexive relationships the process of separating out participatory elements does violence to the nature of the elements themselves. Thus the process of analysis of reflexive relationships within which we are participants cannot parallel the process of analysis of objective elements of non-reflexive objects. (c) 2005 by Paul A. Smith in (On Being Yourself, Whole and Healthy) ==========================================================