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 oikos & ecumene & ecodomy - (sacred)spaces as fullness/emptyness/potential
picture 25 May 2007 @ 13:34, by Heiner Benking

The International Symposium Nature, Space and the Sacred: TRANSDISCIPLINARY PERSPECTIVES, an international, inaugural conference of the European Forum for the Study of Religion has brought together politicians and scholars from theology, architecture, geography, anthropology,... to discuss space and sacred spaces. My contribution was about metaphors & models for oikos & ecumene & ecodomy - spaces as fullness/emptyness/potential and tragic translation errors...
see powerpoints and links.


The International Symposium Nature, Space and the Sacred: TRANSDISCIPLINARY PERSPECTIVES, an international, inaugural conference of the European Forum for the Study of Religion has brought together politicians and scholars from theology, architecture, geography, anthropology,... to discuss space and sacred spaces. My contribution was about metaphors & models for oikos & ecumene & ecodomy - spaces as fullness/emptyness/potential and tragic translation errors...

metaphors & models for oikos & ecumene & ecodomy - spaces and sacred spaces as fullness/emptyness/potential

Just writing from Bamberg about Religions and Ecology/Environment sharing with preachers, geographers, architects, politicians our common "HOUSE" or common places, or "general commons", may they be called GAIA, Ocean, Tree, House, or whatever with the help of analogies, symbols, metaphors, stories, maps, schemas, models AND their meaningful combination !

If you are interested in the theory behind signs & cultures, merging and morphing - please take this "detour": [link] -
[link] - [link]

- The Collection for the Bamberg event about Religion and the Environment - Nature, Space and the Sacred - Transdisciplinary perspectives** May 2007
[link]
- The title slides (powerpoint): [link]

- The text article will be published in the near future with the conference organisers.

Additionally, I will add here the slides linking to the relevant background references. For now, these links provide you more: [link] Please note the footnote on space, full / empty and breathing / emptyness and tragic translation errors mentioned below.


ECODOMY:
A the word is ecodomy is very important here but unfortunately not widely used, here a little explanations: Ecodomy is the art of inhabiting instead of dominating the earth, our house. See also Ekistics: [link]
- and Cognitive Spaces [link]

A my little presentation was in response or a little at on the full paper of Ernst Conradie, I urge you to see his paper and read his books about Christainity and Eccological Theology by Ernst Conradie [link]

Please note that we do not just play with words, images, sign, symbols, maps and models here, Please read about sign integration supersigns and superstructures or levels of reality elsewhere: [link]


CREDITS
or a late eulogy for Ralph Siu, Alfred Schinz, and Herbert Stachowiak (triggered by the request for some references to the scholars I had mentioned after Mary Evelyn Tucker's [link] keynote:

The mentioned scholars bridged old chinese wisdom and policy and exact and fine arts:
- RALPH SIU: he wrote TAO OF SCIENCE [link]
and founded the The Panetics Society [link] and
- ALFRED SCHINZ: [link] and ... raising some particular interest and questions by participants:
- HERBERT STACHOWIAK: the Founder of the General Model Theory and a Systematic Neopragmatism (in the 60ies-70ies: Herbert Stachowiak. [link]

They were most important to my professional focus and personal development, one for more than 30 years and the other more than 15 years, and Herbert only 5 years most recently. I owe them much for advising me without dominating the directions or involving themselves.

Alfred, Ralph, and Herbert were "fatherly friends" or great teachers who taught through example and helped me to learn to "subsume and resonnate" in the typical chinese way of taking "oneself out". They contributed immensely to the "Reflections and Work Report towards an Embodied Covenant" bridging oikos and ecumene.

They should be remembered.

Here another reference as I was asked afer my statements what I meant with Wholeness-Holism-Healing and who this Jan C. Smuts is, whom I call the "father of the cocept of holism. pls. see: History, Concepts and Potentials of Holism. [link] and the electornic Seminar on Wholeness [link] - (ISSS - http://www.isss.org/projects/doku.php/wiki:primer ) and [link] - [link]


POSTSCRIPT:
such a house has to be concete - "Make words solid" TS.Eliot and this has been done already in some cultures - traditions. A built utopia or vision which brought together a community over generations. See Mamun - the son of Harun Al Rashid in the Arabic tradition and in particulatr the HOUSE OF WISDOM.
More about this here: [link] in the Epilogue:

<>
The alternative is the fight over belief systems in a foggy and vague continuum, a post-modern indecisiveness full of fear and aggression. See Information War and Cyberculture versus a Humane Information Society? (Benking 1998a) or a Kommunikative Gesellschaft (Benking 2000a). Shared models and metaphors only speak to you when you listen, so we tried dialogue and new stories, new analogies and architectures (Benking 1998d) showing that we belong together and that there are alternatives to clashes. One story is that of an extra skin we need to imagine around Gaia, [see: WOC’99], the other is building an imaginary social design (town" like the story in 1001 with Mamun, the son of Harun al Rashid, see Ethics Summit, 1999 contribution (German) and House of Wisdom) Other stories are told around the campfires, real and virtual ones, visit us at vun.org where we try to stay together because we are different, and the difference is the real beauty, mandatory for respect and tolerance.

For ''House of Wisdom'' above see also Oikos, Ecumene, Ecudomy [link]

snip>>

< Here the words of the organizers of Ulm School of Design - Hochschule für Gestaltung:
[link]
http://www.ifg-ulm.de/15.html
At the moment, people's capacity to think three-dimensionally is underdeveloped. That is why studies examine the opportunity of three-dimensional intelligence and orientation. The 'panorama of knowledge' is a model designed to facilitate visual access as well as the interlacing of fields of knowledge. It provides a structure for navigation processes and at the same time, is a dynamic, modular and configurable system for a comprehensive architecture of knowledge.

or see "To see with other eyes - The “World House” links realities" a profile published in 2007 on mind architetures and what that means for awareness and environmental consciousness.
[link]

FOOTNOTE:
A tragic translation error by western scholars from texts from Shunyata [link] - noted by Blawasky about SPACE:
She wrote that the "breathing of space" was tragically/unfortunately translated as the "breathing of the empty void or emtyness (in German: Leere". A whole "dogma" came to being with what the LEERE is in Philosophy and Theology today(or maybe even as an a-priori in philosophy). See the works on post-modern nihilism and Cyberculture: United Nations conference on Cultural Rights/Needs/Resaponsibilities 2001: [link]
in 2001.

The tragic is that the embodied, full, alive,.. was pushed away in favour of abstract vagueness leading maybe even as far as to postmodern cyberculture concepts.
I have covered this and the sources in many articles during the last 15 years, with a professional focus on EARTH&SPACE, Human & Cultural dimensions, maps, models, order, and archiving, media, and communication during 40 years with varying focus.

see powerpoints and links.

Related links:
"geoecodynamics" 1989 [link], "visual demagogy" 1987, "earth and space truthing" and Harmonization 1989-92 [link], http://benking.de/Global-Change/info-about-info.html, ... we focused recently on: "fidelity and literacy": [link] or the human dimensions and duty of geosciences we put together in exhibitions, like: [link] or 1990-1995: [link], http://benking.de/Global-Change/local-global-change-1991.html, [link], http://benking.de/Global-Change/international-corner.html

Maybe you start here and get some proper references into discussions of scholars and schools about this: or maybe event better start more general and here as this was the material collected for the presentation: [link] or look broader into maps & models and cosmologies at the deepworlds and in-betweener websites: [link]

More on Maps & Models - Media & Cyberculture:
[link] - [link] - [link]
- [link] - [link]



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