Engaging with other elective affinities

Affinity, Diaspora, Identity, Reunification, Return (Part #13)

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The argument above focuses on affinity with a tangible or virtual place. As implied, it could be extended to include the challenges of affinity with any "other" -- especially individuals and groups -- implying another place

In the case of individuals, this highlights the fruitful potential of subtler thinking regarding interpersonal affinities and bonds -- most notably as suggested by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (Elective Affinities, 1809). This is currently evident in the tragedies of marital breakdown and the challenges of homosexual partnership (Marrying an Other whatever the Form: reframing and extending the understanding of marriage, 2013).

In the case of groups, this highlights the challenge of those groups whose mission is to seek recognition of their primacy in any new world order -- and to ensure the conversion of all to that perspective. They readily welcome a return of the estranged "to the fold"!

Is there a case for recognizing that such affinity may be based on recognition of a diaspora -- most fruitful understood as non-exclusive. Does affinity with multiple diasporas, with their disparate focal "places", fruitfully raise the question of fragmentation of personal identity mirrored by fragmented externalities? Does this point to new possibilities, through more powerful metaphors, of reframing (re)unification -- as a prelude to meaningful"return"?

In calling for imagination, this argument might then imply that thinking in conventional society (as argued by Edward de Bono) is characterized by imagination frozen in the past -- effectively a "coagulation" of past creativity. This is perhaps exemplified by the focus on the "static" with little capacity to respond to the "dynamic" -- except through surprise at any "unimaginable disaster" (Dynamic Transformation of Static Reporting of Global Processes: suggestions for process-oriented titles of global issue reports, 2013). A more fruitful approach to "solution" might "re-cognize" the value of alternation between processes traditionally explored through the alchemical formula of solve et coagula (Steven M. Rosen, Dreams, Death, Rebirth: a multimedia topological odyssey into alchemy's hidden dimensions, 2013).

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