Editorial

OUR ESSENTIAL BOUNDARY DYNAMICS

There is no danger in fighting against the spreading of boundaries, but their dynamics deserves our concern
      We said that boundaries should be crossed, and that their cracks should be bridged. We said that we can and should take action with respect to the invasion of boundaries. Urgently, in various ways. In terms of balanced interdisciplinarity. In terms of a new approach like the one of complexity science. In other terms – existent or to be invented. We said that otherwise we might become complete strangers – to our surroundings, to each other, to ourselves.
      And here we come to talk about how essential these boundaries really are. To underline the meaning of their dynamics.
      (This is more than a problem of epistemology. It concerns, in our view, more than all the areas that already hold names.)

If you choose the safety and the efficacy of classification, you open the door to its coldness
      Setting boundaries implies your relation with their empire - an empire to which you have to pay the toll of isolation. Putting others into boxes unconditionally fixes limits to your own box. Your choice in classifying them designs the room of your own class, draws the walls of your cell and rises them inexorably. 
      And there might be nothing wrong about having your own room, your own walls. Unless the room you get assigned is the cell of a prison. 
      And there might be nothing wrong about living in the cell of a prison – provided that you choose so. 
      The fault begins mainly when you fix your walls without knowing that you are doing it. When you validate a Faustian pact without looking at what you are signing.
      Because we set boundaries incessantly, without being always aware of it, and we classify as naturally as we breathe.

When you design and throw the net of classification over the world, what you catch might be surprising
      Mainly because you are part of the catch. 
      The magic of the net always surpasses our rational expectations. Whatever your skill in throwing the net, it falls also over your own head and turns you into prey. 
      Turning into prey implies a transformation.
      Each throwing of the net changes the catcher.

Boundaries help us defend ourselves against the enemies of little questions
      Classification as an effort of boundary setting keeps us busy and saves us from repulsive duties otherwise dangerously requesting attention from our part. Our daily universe is haunted by a swarm – that grows denser and denser – of local figures, silhouettes of here and now, thought not only to be real, but to be the reality itself, obscuring all the other entities and rejecting them far away in the backyard of fantasy. Boundary crossed and boundary framed pictures tend to wrap us in their sticky fabric, hindering our action flavoured movements and confining us to the realm of mere reaction; cutting us off from the murmuring voices from beyond the net with deafening myriads of minor visions.

– Am Anfang steht die Differenz.  (Niklas Luhmann)
– Im Anfang ist die Beziehung.  (Martin Buber)
(You should know when you fear the magic of the circle)
      Too often, being afraid of differences is being afraid of a certain coldness: the coldness of being judged by the other, fixed on the table under the focusing lens, left to the mercy of critic.
      Being the same may imply a chance to be allowed in a certain circle; safe. 
      While stepping out of the circle means never being on the same level again: As if nurtured by an obsession for gravity, a mechanism seems at work, which turns every difference into a change in altitude. Apparently obeying a generalised, though slightly changed unforgiving principle – known as “Pauli’s” – positions found to be different necessarily get distinct heights. Otherwise, confrontation begins. Until levels are fixed.
      It might be the obsession of a fractalist to follow this process at various scales and find delight in its self-similarity. But conflict can hardly be a source of delight, even if significantly self-similar.

A growing group of scientists dedicates the best available tools to the investigation of boundaries
      Mathematical systems are expected to behave properly in front of proper mathematical tools. They are not supposed to show the embarrassing ambiguities that strike the scientist who studies the mind; or the society. 
      And still, surprisingly, it is from this domain that thorny questions began to grow, when it came to finding boundaries. Let us not stir mathematical details. Suffice it to say that one had a field shared by three possible colours. Let them be green, red and blue. The problem was to find the boundaries between the three – roughly equal – domains. An apparently simple task became the nightmare of minds used to sharp clear answers. Because every time one thought to have found the boundary, a zooming in proved that the expected separating line was not there. Every time something else, something weird, sneaked in. On the limit between red and blue, there was always a domain filled with green. And between this green patch and its blue neighbour, there was always a red field. The boundary was not to be found because it changed again and again. It changed with every closer look. Endlessly.
     Following such a change, trying to track such a change and to reach its limits, is exhausting. In real life, one must take a decision. One must have an answer. “What colour is THERE?” you are asked, being pointed to a tiny spot. And then you decide. Green, you say. Green. And it happens that this answer becomes part of your portrait, of your way to ask further questions and to search for answers. 
      You do not have to keep in mind that your choice was green. This is already on the record.
      The important thing might be to remember that green was your choice. And that green was your choice.

Unexpectedly clear visions of boundary dynamics arise from circumstances when the margin and the centre are one and the same
      The dynamics of limits that cover for us surrounding items either with the glare of the sacred or with the flavour of contemporary ‘actuality’ (‘the profane’) comes perhaps with one of the best images of boundary fluctuations. ‘Usual’ objects become the meeting place of two different universes, and the way the border line advances or recedes is bound to our soul dynamics, which, in this regard, while not easy to be analysed, is always discernible.
     If ‘boundary’ and ‘centre’ are key concepts in this field, the intensity of their meanings seems highest when they overlap. Guided by a master like Eliade, one finds the gate between essentially different worlds being placed in the centre, in the middle, in the core. 
      However, evolving boundary dynamics seems to push us centrifugally towards the ‘other margins’, the usual ones: far from the core. Classification steps in again, putting a smile between the unbeliever and the believer.
      With an eye on the seducing picture of the complexity paradigm, one cannot help asking what implications this shift may have in the long run. How meaningful as a symbol is the cultural discourse of the Vijayanagars, who moved the dominant features from the sanctuaries to their gateways? What meaning for the future dynamics has their being ‘wiped out’ by a different culture? Who can tell how India would look today, had that centrifugal shift not taken place? Remember boundary dynamics is involved…
     And the core is still there waiting.

Do not forget the ‘crux scenica’, and if you choose to abandon it, do not forget you did
      We classify as naturally as we breathe, and it is hard to tell what role choice plays in the process. And it is hard to tell what scale of the perspective had the last word in our final choice.
      What is easier to tell, however, concerns the part that the boundary setting master, the all-powerful classification, may play in our future. Whole ranges of paths open, while others are obscured or sink into everlasting oblivion. Peace and conflict dramatically depend upon it. The colour of our choice directly affects the others. How should we stand between the extremes of our choice? How can we keep the balance in our action, leaving room for other perspectives that may emerge in the future?
      ‘Crux scenica’ is the best way to stand when facing the world – confesses us P. Franciscus Lang in his ‘Dissertatio de actione scenica’.
      It implies being oriented neither exclusively towards the one on the left, nor towards the one on the right; it means advancing the right foot a little – and holding the feet on perpendicular directions to one another; the shoulders should make a certain angle with the border of the scene; so you keep an eye on both persons, on the left and on the right; thus you never offer yourself to the public in a flat, full-face full-shoulders position, but care about the people you are involved with, even more than about those who are watching.

If there is a sudden rise of requirements from our part, these are requirements of awareness       (‘If you can keep your head when all around you…’)
      We must suddenly be aware, permanently be aware, of things that were of little – if any – concern not long ago.
      We have been made aware of the pervading role of instabilities, which literally disintegrated the older image of an all-encompassing equilibrium. How can we go on living in an undoubtedly recognised landscape of risk?
      We have been made aware of the key function of signs, which we may never neglect from now on in our explicit process of perceiving the world and ourselves. How can we keep on facing the overwhelming task of multi-scale signs evaluation?
      We have been made aware of the crucial outcome of the setting of boundaries, something that we do as naturally as we breathe. How can one manage to live, when being permanently aware of one’s breathing? Doesn’t it lead to irregular, precipitated inspirations and belated or incomplete expirations? (By the way, doesn’t it sound much like the way we breathe today?)
      These questions may make sense if we really have a choice. However, we may have only to choose to adapt to the new setting of awareness – or not. But whatever the choice, it will probably be worthless if we forget that beyond our boundaries people like us might try, in their turn, not to forget about us.
      Meeting places (like this) could help. It might be a good idea to keep them alive.

Cristian Suteanu