The General Theory School and Insider-Outsider
Abstract
The modern general theory of religion begins with Otto’s universalisation of the ‘Holy’ – the belief that all world religions express and interpret the same Christian ‘Holy God’/ holiness, achieved differently through distinctively shaped cultural filters. From this schema arises the task for religionists to develop models explaining diverse religious beliefs and practices. A central theme is an assumed division between ‘insiders’ and ‘outsiders’ (McCutcheon). The premise is that only those acquainted with the inner life of a particular set of religious belief, experience, or practice can articulate that particular model of religion. This is a contentious point on several levels. Globally, it suggests that the historical category of religion in western thought is not applicable to non-western cultures, as McCutcheon argued. Rather than viewing ‘foreign’ cultural practices as simply ‘insider and outside,’ both Fitzgerald and McCutcheon created a more articulated political binary of the colonized and colonizers. Locally, there is fragmentation in the possibility of reducing an organisational inside to one person. Furthermore, the insider-outsider binary is existentially suspect, given the fluid nature of being inside and outside over the course of a person’s life.
https://www.academia.edu/165907060/Buchs_Notes_on_Insider_Outsider
Attached: Buch’s notes on Insider-Outsider
Blind-Sight and the Original Synthesis of Experience
Abstract
This essay examines Dr. Neville Buch’s analysis of the Insider-Outsider “blind-sight” problem, a systemic cognitive failure where individuals and institutions become trapped within rigid ideological horizons, unable to perceive the validity of the “Other” or the contingency of their own frameworks. Drawing on the philosophical synthesis of Jack McKinney and the information channels identified by Ross Reat, Buch argues that the traditional binary between the “inner life” of a believer and the “objective” view of the outsider is existentially suspect and structurally limiting. The “blind-sight” occurs when a “Junior” mindset of unreflective execution prioritizes institutional preservation over “Sufficient Comprehension,” leading to a state of “denoetization”—the mechanical liquidation of judgment. To remediate this, Buch proposes the “Original Synthesis of Experience,” a social process where knowledge is reclaimed as an interpersonal thing, moving society toward a “Senior” state of social accountability and Aristotelian flourishing.
https://www.academia.edu/165907133/Blind_Sight_and_the_Original_Synthesis_of_Experience
Attached: Blind-Sight and the Original Synthesis of Experience
Featured Image: Duncan Park, Greg Spearritt, Neville-Buch at the 2000 Melbourne SoFiA Conference
Neville Buch
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