auto-critical

Auto-criticality suggests a way of being that is like that of the naturalist who knows she is a stranger in "nature" and enters the world with deep affinity in order to track and name and come to understand with humility, for herself and her ideas rather than for the creature tracked, the apparently familiar and apparently unfamiliar aspects of everything she comes to know.

Auto-criticality is this naturalism directed "inside" the individual and "outside" into systems of thought and practice such that these become designed to expose their own flaws authentically and welcome difference and friction. This often weary welcome rests only in the conviction that there are breaks in conflict (different influences wanting different things) but never a surcease.

Auto-criticality asks //how// rather than //if// my understanding of the need in this sphere of influence is incomplete. This undermines the reflex to dominate in the face of incompleteness and gives way habitually to more sustainable responses to mortality and finitude than are currently the norm.