[MD] NAP

[MarshaV]

At 08:55 AM 6/8/2009, you wrote:


>Nick:
>It's the best possible way that I know of to
>minimize conflict.  Since we are social animals,
>this principle conflates with natural law and therefore
>the natural rights of liberty, life (person), and property.
>It is an age old knowledge (just saying this so you know
>I'm not making this up) that natural rights are moral values.
>Yet not all moral values are natural rights.  Natural rights
>are universal and are therefore moral values that are
>natural law.  Where are all the moral values and including
>those that conflate into natural rights originating?  In the
>pursuit of happiness.  When the greek word for this concept
>is understood (cause that's where it comes from), happiness
>means flourishing, quality, well-being.  Do you see what
>I mean now?  Quality is all about minimizing conflict in
>order that all flourishes, and thus for human nature to flourish
>as well.  It is meant in this way:
>
>flourish
>verb
>1 ferns flourish in the shade grow, thrive, prosper, do well, 
>burgeon, increase, multiply, proliferate; spring up, shoot up, 
>bloom, blossom, bear fruit, burst forth, run riot. antonym die, wither.
>2 the arts flourished thrive, prosper, bloom, be in good health, be 
>vigorous, be in its heyday; progress, make progress, advance, make 
>headway, develop, improve; evolve, make strides, move forward (in 
>leaps and bounds), expand; informal be in the pink, go places, go 
>great guns, get somewhere. antonym decline.
>
>This dictionary mentions ferns and arts.  But flourish includes 
>everything.  Thus it means for society, individuals, life to thrive, 
>prosper, be of good quality.
>
>The telos in flourishing is of good.  Humans telos what is 
>good.  That's what flourishing is about.  I have a paper by a 
>professor that discusses this.  I'm actually in a conversation with 
>the professor now about quality and the pursuit of 
>happiness.  People haven't seen this side of what quality means and 
>how it fits.  I've been able to resolve a lot of intellectual 
>debates cause I understand quality from the moq.  Somehow I have 
>been getting people that disagree with each other, to agree with me 
>and yet I understand quality and that's why.  Yet they are using 
>flourishing sometimes, but haven't gone to the depths that the moq 
>goes in explaining it.  Aristotle talks about flourishing and how it 
>is a society and person striving for what is good.  He lists in his 
>book on ethics what is thriving and what is decay.
>
>Does this help show you where I'm coming from now?


Marsha:
You introduced me to the Platform Sutra and as a vehicle to 
Buddhism.  Thank you for that.







_____________

"He who neglects the present moment throws away all he has."
   (Friedrich von Schiller)