Theos-Talk Archives (April 1996 Message tl00579)

Alan,

Re:

>Below is the revised version for the consideration of TI members, as
>also mentioned on theos-l in a separate post.  If you accept
>this revision, which seeks to extend the potential outreach of TI
>into the community at large, as well as the specifically
>theosophical organisations, please send a "YES" or "NO" vote to
>TI@nellie2.demon.co.uk

Thanks for re-sending this as a personal e-mail message. I hope you don't mind
if I respond to it on the list as a whole.

I hadn't seen the previous version because I have not been able to read
theos-l for over a fortnight. That is because I've been putting my available
time into setting up a new Internet connection and trying to unravel some
technical problems with it. So I've stored many of the latest theos-l digests
away on disk for future reference. Apologies to all, too, if I go over ground
already well-covered. At least this will be a plagiarism-free zone.

First, I subscribe wholeheartedly to what I perceive the intentions of this
statement to be, as indeed of TI itself.

However, I don't think the wording in a couple of places says clearly enough
what is intended. The first of these is where it says

"THEOSOPHY INTERNATIONAL comprises free men and women who ...".

To my mind, the word "free" used here

1   contains an implicit declaration that some people are free and others
    aren't, with a corresponding exclusion of those who are not free.
    Do we want to exclude somebody living in a dictatorship who would love
    to be a bit freer and belong to TI as well?

2   blurs the clarity of the statement by making it dependent on the wide
    range of differences of opinion on what freedom is, and how free people
    really are, etc etc. (Yes, I've seen some of the discussion on this in
    theos-roots & buds.)

I think what "free" is meant to imply here is that members of TI

1   expect the decision to join TI to be made free of fear or undue influence,
    and

2   recognise the need and right of individuals to choose the paths on which
    they seek understanding, free of coercion.


To address 1, I suggest that the opening paragraph be changed to read

"THEOSOPHY INTERNATIONAL comprises men and women who, of their own free choice,
subscribe to the spirit .... etc."


For 2, I suggest that the paragraph

"No belief system is required - nor assumed to be held - by any member."

be extended by making it read

"No belief system is required - nor assumed to be held - by any member,
in acknowledgement of their right to choose, without trace of coercion,
the path on which they seek understanding."


Now, my second point is about the phrase

"To investigate unexplained laws of nature ..."  in the 3rd object.

With my science background, I have always felt uncomfortable with "unexplained
laws of nature", and I think that words like  "regularity" and "consistency",
as Don DeGracia put it a while ago, do much better than "law", today.

The use of "unexplained" also sits poorly with the current understandings
and approach of science at large, as I see it, for the simple reason that we
tend not to think in terms of final explanations anymore.

A hundred years or so ago, people didn't realise nearly as well as they do now,
that a "law" is more of a repeatedly-observed PATTERN of response or behaviour
than a declaration that nature will always obey from now on. When a pattern
does appear to repeat reliably, scientists allow themselves to infer that
there's an underlying principle or process or relationship.

Not only that, but there was an almost proprietary feeling about discovering a
"law", not unlike the blithely-assumed right of visitors to another land to
stick a flag in it and declare that it henceforth belonged to their home
country.

Today, science has a degree of humility born of seeing classical physics fail
in the quantum arena, etc, and the realisation that a humanly-declared "law"
of nature is basically a mental construct or pattern placed over a pattern
observed in nature, and that a mismatch can be discovered between the two at
any time. Then, the law either has to be scrapped, or seen as being useful
in certain circumstances, like Newton's laws of motion.

The word "explanation" seems now rather naive and obscure in its effect because,
like "laws", an explanation is a humanly-constructed connection between
observations on the one hand (and heaven knows, they can be fraught with
distortion and incompleteness), and the ever-expanding world of theories on
the other.

So, for the 3rd object, I would suggest something like

"To investigate realms of nature not yet within common knowledge, and
unrealized human potential and abilities, with an underlying respect for
all life.

I think this sits a bit better, despite having 2 "ands" in it, and addresses
also the aspect that a vast body of theosophy may be already known to a few,
but that it's our job to help the evolutionary process on the planet where
it's up to right now, not 120 years ago. Plus a hint of the fact that we're
not trying to compete with science.

These changes may seem minor in terms of wording, but I feel that they connect
to issues which it is part of TI's work to address.

Despite my keenness to see these suggestions accepted, I am willing to vote YES
for the wording you sent, especially if you have already secured a large
proportion of YESes, for the sake of seeing a cohesive forward step taken now
rather than later. However, if that is the case, I would very much like to see
them taken into account next time changes are being considered.

So it's YES for now, and even more so YES if you can incorporate these ideas!

Murray
Member TI & TS in NZ

PS:  My new e-mail address is     mas.jag@iprolink.co.nz

     I will still get e-mail sent to the old address, but want to keep that
     address for work-related messages as much as possible.