[MD] growth and sustainability

[ml]

Good evening Gav,


> hi mel,
>
>
>
G
philosophy is not just about clarity of understanding. indeed at university
it is not even about this (what did a friend say: the art of remaining in
perpetual confusion)
> philosophy is about what we do when we understand.

m
I wish you were here this evening to share a cup or two and see the
absolutely magnificent sunset that lit the entire sky over the Rocky
Mountains.  Oranges and pinks, brass and cantalope, colors that have
no name and change in the space of a breath -- beauty in one of its most
dynamic forms.  It lasted nearly forty minutes, tonight.  Poetry that needed
no poet.

The science trained part of my brain knows that this magnificent beauty
is because of the California fires, and yet, despite the property loss,
devastation to people's lives, loss of habitat and even life; the sunset
was beautiful.

You obviously touch the world with your heart and as most on this site
are possessed of a keen mind.  (What a fantastic evening would be made
by a gathering of all the folks who have tossed ideas and discussion on
this site, no?)

Philosophy, to move back to our true mother culture, the love and study of
wisdom.  It informs everything we do and helps us to dance with meaning
as a partner and not shred ourselves on the wicked thorns that my rest
therein.

Life is what we do with our understanding.  Some are so deeply effected
that they are sacrificed on the altar of "for their own good" and burned
with
electric fire.  Some find an "open space" and wait with patience.

Be careful of action, it is not always what we think, even if it feels
right...


> G
> truth is self-knowledge. delphic knowedge. this epithet captures the pivot
point between homeric/sophistic/divinatory/ecstatic ancient greece, and
platonic/aristotelian ancient greece, which is the beginning of SOM.
knowledge became divorced from self-knowledge, self-knowledge diminishes in
the wake of the creation of more and more 'objective' knowledge. the
universal truth of tat tvam asi is forgotten and the fall gets into full
swing.

m
Truth is better thought of as a measure of deductive manipulation and
always discernable in the associate truth tables of formal logic.

I would substitute wisdom as your first word.  "Wisdom is self-knowledge..."

On the one hand it seems lamentable, the effect of such cause, but on the
other it is clear that the desirable Quality of education is indispensible.
Personal evolution is an endless spiral and climbing it continuously
changes our view...and fall in the North becomes Spring in the South.



> G
> the world is not some object to be studied, indeed there are no objects
for study strictly speaking. the world is a mirror of our selves, and we are
a mirror of the world.

m
There is no mirror, there is no self, as the story goes, but the instinct
of mind to study what fascinates us is a strong as sex or survival--
stronger with age...


G>
> to take responsibility for oneself is to take responsibility for the
world. all the massacres, genocides, ecocides are not incidental folks -
they are a direct reflection of YOU....make no mistake, you, we are the
murderers, the liars, the thiefs, and most of us still do it every day -
consuming the earth through our mindless purchases, lying to each other and
ourselves about how we truly feel, murdering, by proxy, the plant and animal
life of the planet, and murdering by proxy, the poor and non-white fraction
of the human population. i am not on about righteous anger mel; i am not
railing against past injustices, i am telling myself and you and everyone
that we are all the fucking problem NOW. until we get that we remain dumb
components in the global rape and slaughter machine.


m
And here, I am afraid we must part company.  Responsibility and
accountability
though oft interchanged in speech, a lazy  English speaker's practice I
assure
you, are to a Western American sensibility opposite sides of the different
blades.

Responsibility is best thought of as the state of open-eyed consideration
for not just yourself, but for the effects of what you are doing,
potentially on
others.  There is the thought of looking three or four moves ahead, of
thinking and considering, applying awareness as you act and wherever
possible improving what you can for those around you, those who follow
you, and those who will never know you exist.

Walking the neighborhood at evening, and stopping to pick up the odd,
roofing
nail, deck screw, broken bottle, is a tire-saving act of responsibility.  It
is not
a moral imperative, failure to do so is not a sin, but to do so is
responsible.

Sometimes we are in a hurry and we don't act with such consideration of
effect upon the world.  That does not make us become immoral people,
but it does mean we are not acting with much depth of responsibility.


Accountability is the state of being the identified actor for failure to act
responsibly, or for the deliberate act of irresponsible wrecklessness,
carelessness, or maliciousness.

To attempt to assign blame for actions of others is tenuous, poetic maybe,
but it lacks logic or sense.  The tangled responsibilities of actions
between
two people and the attendant accountabilities is difficult enough outside
the
simplemindedness of law.  Without awareness there is no meaning, no
significance.

To hold one individual, a third person, accountable for the actions of a
first
and second person that the third person has never met, nor heard of, is not
reasonable.  It waters down or diffuses accountability to meaningless.

If someone is going to hit me with that blame, my reasonable emotional
reaction, knowing how much time I spend trying to act responsibly,  would be
f**k-em, they can kiss my ass and I'll just stop trying...  but i know
better.

I try for the responsibie state of action and as much as I am aware I make
that choice, but I still have to live and provide for family.  Lacking the
power
to change Darfur and having voiced my preferences, I am not guilty of the
slaughter, as I return to supporting the generations of my family and my
community I've earned no bad-karma there.

However,  there are other acts that I am accountable for and these inform
me of how great that difference is.  When I awaken in a panic at three in
the
morning and I remember the gut-punch feeling of knowing that the bullet,
which punched the gun stock against my shoulder and back-slap echoed
the kinetic sound of copper & lead striking flesh; I earned that.

When I see an eye, the same shape, the same shade of brown as that
one that I saw freeze mid-motion as life passed, and that brings back
the revulsion of taking a life, of wanting to cry like a little boy, but
instead
I just swallowed and looked at the guys around me and they all looked away,
not to avoid sharing what I felt, but because they did.  That's my
accountability.

Violence does cause damage to the self, but oddly enough, sometimes
it is the responsible act.  And it may never leave memory the same.

So, the poetic notion of shared blame is as attractive as a tender bruise,
but it is really not as romantic as it sounds.  However, the sunset this
evening was no less beautiful.  The food from the grill is no less full
of flavor.  And I cherish the company of my fellow MOQ travellers
no less.

cheers--mel




> cheers
> gav
>
>
>
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