"All mankind is of one author, and is one volume; when one man dies, one chapter is not torn out of the book, but translated into a better language; and every chapter must be so translated...As therefore the bell that rings to a sermon, calls not upon the preacher only, but upon the congregation to come: so this bell calls us all: but how much more me, who am brought so near the door by this sickness....No man is an island, entire of itself...any man's death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind; and therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee."
John Donne
TomG
Wonderful read.
Thank you!
The imagery of water is the most used metaphor in Taoist literature. Water is allegory for time and one perspective on the human spirit.
No amount of hand wringing and breast-beating, wailing and anger can reclaim something that’s been lost.
That includes drowned river valleys and the human spirit.
There are many comments from several folk participating here at CC that appear to confirm the idea that people ‘ought’ to voluntarily limit their window on reality. Limits and boundaries, fences and barricades to both protect notions like “patriotism” and “nationalism” and “make a case” for an idea or an opinion. In calling on these imaginary structures, the call isn’t to acknowledge the nature of these concepts, but to claim protection against opposition and stem critical examination.
Mankind lives in the ‘macrocosm’ and the ‘microcosm’ simultaneously.
We rally around our favorite sport-team, cheering them on to win that contest, to vanquish the challenger and permit us to bask in the glory of their victory through our prudence in supporting them.
Some people ‘belive-in’ elected representation, “democracy” as the most representative model of government. When the greater number of people involved, the ‘majority’ support a concept or an idea, these people are satisfied when representative government craft legislation and laws, that are binding on everyone to the anticipated benefit of everyone. If in fact everyone does benefit from these laws and structures, we believe that the “greater-good” is served and everyone “wins”.
How often are the ‘needs’ of the “majority” placed in context?
How often do we employ an exhaustive examination and debate of alternative perspectives? How frequently is an audit of the history of our “successful” and not so “successful” decision-making-process juxtaposed to the immediate?
We invest in individuals, politicians and “political process” to act as our facilitators and our guides. We “expect” (in a democracy) that these “leaders” will actualize the intent of the majority decision, that the laws that each of us voluntarily embrace will result in outcomes that will satisfy that idea of the ‘greater-good’.
But what is the actual, the “real” nature or character of this ‘greater-good’?
Is this ‘greater-good’ insulated from ‘time’?
Separate some how from the great river of human enterprise and experience?
Is this ‘greater-good’ and our pursuit of it, tempered with an understanding that balance relies on and demands that sacrifice be made?
And who will decide which sacrifice and made by whom will satisfy this “end”?
Government is an abstraction at best. Will the decision by government, this abstraction of a concept… to form compacts agreements and treaties with similar yet different abstract collectives beyond the imaginary boundaries, the borders and limits of our social collective satisfy the notion of the “greater-good”?
Whose “greater-good”?
Will profits realized by those invested in industry and manufacturing represent the “greater-good”? When a person chooses or through circumstance is blessed with the duty and the joy of raising a family, individual desires and self-interests are through necessity given lower emphasis on our priority lists. We have little choice in trading our skills and our abilities for food and shelter, the tasks we face demand that a broader perspective be taken, that a greater horizon than the ‘self’ is now our individual horizon.
If industry and manufacturing provide us the means to realize rewards from our trade, if they facilitate our means to address the needs of our loved ones, then surely the greater-good is served….
If our industry and our trade destroy the world around us, whose greater good is being realized?
If our industry destroys our air, if our industry destroys our water, if our industry destroys our planet, whose greater good is being served?
Are we inescapably and inexorably bound to strive for more wealth more power more of everything to the exhaustion of everything that exists?
Are we serving that “greater-good” through narrowing our focus to the immediate?
We “need” more power to facilitate our taking minerals from the soil, to refine more ore to till more soil to plant more crops to harvest more trees to “prosper”…..to ‘consume’.
We “need” to form agreements with nations, so our “prosperity” will flourish and our bounty will expand. Need we be concerned that grave injustices and great inequity is harbored by those with whom we strike these contracts? On one hand we’re taught to fear those who are “different”.
People who have a different belief system, a different perspective on culture and “law”, to extrapolate from the misdeeds of some few of these different folk to a generalized notion that these differences represent a chasm that cannot be bridged, and that the misdeeds of a few are exemplars for the greater. Yet when these contracts and agreements appear to satisfy at least “our” greater-good, we can “look the other way”, we can accommodate those differences and accomodate compromise on values and perspectives with which we disagree and would find unacceptable in “our” social construct.
Obviously we’ve elected to focus on the immediate. Our appetites for more power and more prosperity and more of everything drives us to forego consideration of everything and anything. We will dam rivers to generate more power. We will clear-cut ancient forests to build homes we must by necessity heat with yet more we take from the earth…..and whose “greater-good” is served when our planet stumbles and quakes under our demands?
We’re prepared and willing to sacrifice the future for the immediate, and we don’t care who pays whatever the price may be. We don’t care so long as we’re satisfied that our “greater-good” is served.
