Looking together, exploring together, being together, what does ‘together’ mean in the context of online forums like Kinfonet in which we listen and respond from different places, at different times?
Are spatial and temporal togetherness prerequisites for inquiry togetherness? (If so, we’re in trouble!) Another spin: What are the consequences, for an inquiry, of spatial and temporal non-togetherness? Say I read here “Can we look at this together?” Or better yet: “Can we simply be together?” Are these best understood metaphorically? If not, what does ‘together’ mean?
Looking and exploring together means sharing your own inquiry with others, and this means being openly uncertain, vulnerable. So when someone responds with what they think they know about what you’re inquiring into, it puts you off of togetherness. Why look and explore with others who can’t put aside what they think they know so as to look and explore openly?
When you’re looking for answers, you find them because insecurity demands conclusions - not opening, widening, deepening awareness of actuality. When you’re looking and exploring for its own sake, you’re seeing what’s there and exploring its complexity - not dismissing it with knowledge.
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Why do you think they might be?
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I question whether togetherness can happen when people are not together in the same place and the same time. When I feel together with you in this conversation, is that feeling my imagination? Are you here where I am in my now? If not, whom/what am I interacting with? A delayed image?
Together means when you and i disappear and only enquiry remains.
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Nothing “disappears”. What we believe or think we know about the subject is consciously suspended for the sake of inquiring. We can’t (as K put it) “go into” what we’ve formed an opinion or belief, so we set aside what we presume to know about what we’re inquiring into.
If nothing else, inquiry is about self-knowledge. We may not know what we think we know about something until the subject comes up and we realize we’ve never really questioned or examined it.