> Who is "WE"? the species as a whole, a particular unit of the whole,
> national or otherwise.
...one one level [we] is the species, yes. I do realize I can't get up and cooperate with the whole of homo sapiens, but I can do the best I can to cooperate with those around me to build full and rich lives which don't infringe on the ability of others to live lives of their own. So that's what I try to do.
> We are all in one system, but the system will perform and exist
> whether all parts are there or not. No country, no company, no
> religion, can go even the shortest time without rifts in its
> organization. It is not currently possible to cooperate on the scale
> you imagine.
...the scale I imagine is the person on in the seat next to me on the bus in the morning. The person who checks my groceries at the store, the librarian who helps me find a book, the person at the next table in a cafe, the cabby, the printer, the people around me every day.
> We dont know that - we adapt and adapt fast. You should say, "our
> survival as we are now depends on the stability of our ecology".
...our survival as we are now is a moot point. Like I keep saying to people here - I don't know any of you except as abstracted bits of text glowing out at me from a screen, I don't know what kinds of people you are, I don't know what kinds of worlds you live in - I only know what surrounds me every day. That's the world I grew up in, the world I live in and it's dying fast, dependent on the enslavement and pain of millions, eating itself alive from the inside out.
Now,
> I would prefer an improving ecology as in a healthier, more diverse,
> less poulted ecology - but my taste and reality are two different
> things. i will take the most pragmatic and reasonable approach to
> improving it - but my expectations are limited to the scope of
> possibility.
...I have no expectations, I haven't since I was 8 years old and found out what a nuke was. But my aspirations, my hopes, my dreams and the things that drive my efforts... those things know no limits.
> You underestimate the power of cleaver tricks
...you're so wrong - but you don't know me any better than I know you. Clever tricks are what we've based everything on and the power in that is enormous, but the potential, the power of our minds and the ability of our biology to communicate is so much more than that.
>> ...to communicate we must cooperate.
...how can we communicate without cooperation?
> but not as a whole, although a whole is nice. absolutism is your
> demon and reality your hell. To make improvement you need
cooperation
> - you say so yourself. Yet you are difficult to cooperate with due
to
> your combative and dominating nature.
...as I keep saying - you don't know me. I'd venture a guess that I find most of the people on the list as combative and dominating as you find me - it's a limitation of the medium. Yes - I'm argumentative, it's how I learn... people tell me things, I have questions, I ask them. people ask me questions, I do my best to answer. We can communicate symbols and agree on a meaning for them, but abstracted information is only a model and any model is incomplete - lived understanding can't be fully encoded in text, so I muddle along the best that I can, learn theory, apply practice, and - hopefully - gain wisdom.
For you, pragmatism is the
> missing component and I think experience will be the key.
...what kind of experience do you think? How much more experience do I need seeing people get abused and ignored, fobbed off with pat answers and ready systems? How much more experience do I need seeing beautiful, valuable, brilliant people denied becasue they don't fit the mold, can't relate to a system, all because they've never been listened to? How many more people do I have to see give up and sell out their dreams and ideals because they're told "that's just the way it is - accept it," so they do? How many more people do I have to see busting themselves up and giving themselves ulcers trying to give a few kids a chance to learn the world is not full of pain and greed and stupidity? How many more times do I have to see wealth and ignorance crush every outside system and cover its ass with a cheque or a gala fundraiser? How many times do I have to see people speechless and unable to articulate their position because they have no meanigful symbols to describe the state of their world? How much more experience before I give up too and adopt the most flexible justification for my own short-sightedness? When do I get beaten enough so that the blows don't sting?
-psypher