belonging by default • gary e. davis • berkeley


	Project	iso-belonging

	belonging by default gary e. davis	August 30, 2025

Nebulousness of one’s given life (background personity) can be regarded as partly inherited, partly chosen, relative to the individuation of one’s life: self-determin-
ative engagement versus accepted subjectivity, mostly untraceable by retrospective interest. It gives given ambiguity.

Also, retrospection is “colored” by retrojective interest: To what degree does one care to understand, given a present domain of interest causing desire (or need) to reflectively think? The given domain of interest will proximally determine a range of relevance, except inasmuch as openness to discovery easily lets proximal interest dissolve into unexpected emergences of phenomenal appeal.

We always want to feel a richness of belonging in our times, our life. So, the given domain of reflective thinking is oriented by feeling interest which renders the giving domain of given relevance.

You want a wholly flourishing life? But do you care to bind that to an appealing prospect of ecologically flourishing humanity?

You probably agree that your life heartily endorses the Value of providing for future generations (in some implicit sense). But advancing and ensuring one’s own decent quality of life is challenging enough.

Yet, “our bonds of affection” best show as shared values across the better scale of belonging.

Yea, values of neighborhood, community, regional sustainability, and democratic governance in a world of collaborative leadership.

Yea, conceivability of progressive continuua.

But available time and available resources determine any feasible practicality for resourcefulness.

Nevertheless, better scales of found belonging deserve to prevail in our available time and care for understanding and orienting of life: “mine” and my belonging in some good scale of Ours.

In any case, one’s felt interality of belonging is a living conception implicitly giving domain to reflective thinking.

The better one’s articulation is, the richer is one’s heuristic medium for thinking holistically; and the better can be one’s living conception (however implicit and explicit) of appealing horizons of cohering life.

Always, better holistic appreciation implies, if not leading to, better scales of relevant belonging.

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