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You are at:Home»OPINION & ANALYSIS»Letters»A brilliant name for the monument
Letters

A brilliant name for the monument

Staff ReporterBy Staff ReporterJune 14, 2019No Comments2 Mins Read
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The Grahamstown Foundation has invited the public to participate in renaming the Monument.

What could be more inclusive than to rename the monument The Monument of the Ancestors? This is not my original idea, but I consider it brilliant and I wish to support it.

In his latest book, This Idea is Brilliant, John Brockman collects from a stunning array of scientists and thinkers, the concepts they value most in their various disciplines: scientific humility; the anthropocene; exponential growth; synaptic transfer; information pathology; and so on.

The philosopher Melanie Swan chooses “Included Middle” as her favourite concept, and she explains more or less as follows: In classical logic, a proposition is either true or its negation is true; there is either A or not-A. The law of Excluded Middle. The field of quantum mechanics, however, has revealed a more complex world. We know now that there are circumstances where both states could be true – another state of reality, if you like, containing both A and not-A, thus a third possible situation. This idea “overcomes dualism and opens a frame that is complex and multidimensional.”

The Included Middle – the notion that two contesting positions can exist side by side in a complex new reality – is a robust and promising model for addressing any situation.

Could the Included Middle provide a conceptual model for social analysis and nation building in South Africa? In a complex society, might it be possible to be both peacefully and robustly united and divided at the same time? A monument to “The Ancestors” might be the symbol of such a complex state of unity in diversity. We all honour them all, while we also each honour our own. And to extend the model just a little further: it is possible, in the complex state that is the human condition, to both honour and chastise one’s ancestors, all at the same time.

Lynette Paterson

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