Gene wrote:
> In another few billion years, what you and I have done will have been as
> nothing. Bottom line--we must do what makes us feel good. It's a matter of
> style, class, morality, ethics, integrity.
Eric Responded:
> Perhaps there is a middle perspective between the short
> term (0.5 - 5 year) outlook of most of todays cultures and
> the geologic millions or billions of years. Would we do
> things differently is we take a 200 year perspective? Or
> 50? Or 2000? This sounds like something Jeff could write
> about.
For me this topic is the base we build our ethics around
and is important. I think the thread started exploring
sustainability and is now looking deeper and asking things
like:
Why be sustainable?
What is important?
What is sustainable?
We can approach these questions from different perspectives
and follow different paths but many of the destinations
eventually converge. The perspectives are:
What is important to: individuals
culture
all humans
all life on earth
Other perspectives can be obtained by using different tools:
What does Chemistry say is important?
Physics
Biology
Anthropology
Ecology
Politics
Economics
Religion
Eric's long term view and short term view can be added to all of
the above giving another useful set of perspectives.
My personal bias says we need to start with individuals and test the
ideas Gene introduced. The individual is a component in all the
different perspectives and through ideas can create new perspectives.
The question now becomes personal. What is important to me?
Maslow looked at this question and decided we go through phases.
Initially our interests are survival and then we move on as
our knowledge and understanding grows. The later phases get
more philosophical and we tend to look at religion and things
like long term sustainability. When under stress individuals
tend to move back towards the survival level.
This says our model of "whats important" changes and can get
complex. Most people simplify the discussion at this point
by saying we are seeking "happiness" or in my case
"contentment". Lots of books have been written about this
and many old Greeks said the same thing. Recently the idea
that selfishly pursuing happiness might consist of helping
others has become understood and accepted. The old idea that
one grabs happiness at the expense of others is considered
flawed. Another way to view this is to look back at Maslow
and see that we act differently in "survival mode" and tend
to define "selfish" differently.
At the individual level we can also add in the mothering instinct
and other emotions. A mother who feels she would die for her
child has a strong feeling about what is important. The solder
who dies for a country has a strong cultural drive and defines
importance as sacrifice. Thus, there isn't one right answer
to "what is important". Individuals are different.
>From this point my reasoning takes some long paths but
eventually ends up at two points:
sustainability = long term contentment/happiness.
sustainability isn't a "thing" it is a "process"
We might say happiness is an individual need that one can
never hold in the hand. The poets say happiness is a
butterfly in flight and dies when confined. This is another
way to say it is a "process".
Do these ideas fit everyone? I don't know. They seem to fit
a lot of old writers and myself. I read these same ideas
in college and thought i understood them, but didn't. Some
days i get out of bed and have forgotten them. They are not
easy ideas.
I think there are some old essays exploring the process of
being happy and the connection to sustainability. They go
back a few years..
jeff
