Gail, this will take some time. I will have to give it time because I am in a busy schedule at the moment. Thanks for your effort. Respect for what you [and Mike] explored is the reason I will come back to it.
REH -----Original Message----- From: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Gail Stewart Sent: Tuesday, February 15, 2011 6:29 AM To: RE-DESIGNING WORK, INCOME DISTRIBUTION, EDUCATION Subject: Re: [Futurework] The Way of Right Relationship ----- Original Message ----- From: "Ray Harrell" <[email protected]> To: "'RE-DESIGNING WORK, INCOME DISTRIBUTION, EDUCATION'" <[email protected]>; <[email protected]> Sent: Sunday, February 13, 2011 2:44 PM Subject: [Futurework] The Way of Right Relationship I wrote this article for another purpose. I now share it with this list. REH ----- Ray, thank you. I read your article as a gift. As you say, "a difficult task. However, that is the point ...." Precisely so, at least as I understand it. And a difficult one it is in present circumstances. In your situation though, you have the great advantage of a cultural tradition of "right relationship" to draw upon. Many of us are being forced to discover or invent new traditions for ourselves in immensely complex circumstances. (Keith's posting today, on the death of elders, is a dramatic illustration.) It is difficult to see clearly beyond our own cultural curtains (within which "right relationships" are not a priority). Your article came into my mailbox hard on the heels of my own post jesting that Mike Spenser's challenge to the list be addressed. Mike wrote, as I had quoted him with an excision: "If the objectives of serious, reality-based, empathetic thought can be realized only by capturing the minds of a large fraction of a population (...) then what are our possible strategies? Are we limited to methods the use of which violates the integrity we claim to evince and represent?" (From: "Mike Spencer" <[email protected]> To: <[email protected]>Sent: Saturday, February 12, 2011 2:10 AM Subject: [Futurework] Re: FW: Blogpost: Immiserating the Poor: We Have An AppFor That (Social Media vs. the iPhone in Egypt and a Kenyan slum) I had not, although should have, anticipated the answer implicit in your article, Ray. Mike's post was a challenge to a zero sum game: could we capture them? The stance in your article implicitly changed the game from a finite one to an infinite one. (Here I thank John Verdon for having pointed me to (James Carse, Finite and Infinite Games): the rules of the finite (win/lose) game may not change but for an infinite (win/win) game to go on (such as living together in the planet's changing circumstances), it is the rules which must be changed.) Following your lead, Ray, that the game in an infinite one in which all are involved, not a we/they in which we seek to capture the minds of others, I will assume that serious, reality-based, empathetic thought is a challenge for all of us, individually and as a society, let alone sharing it in such a way that all may become intrigued by it and, together, we change the rules so the game may go on. Here then, following upon your own more massive contribution, is a small contribution from me toward the kind of discussion to which I think Mike's impulse, if not the structure of his challenge, points. Suppose the following: "If our environment is not merely 'out there' surrounding us, but we and all our activities and constructions are inside and part of it, then we are participants, all, in the global environment, immersed and active in the Earth's ecosphere, and might as well get used to it." (I leave aside, deliberately and for the time being, the question of how we might have got here.) Might the above count as a serious, reality-based, empathetic thought, a place to start? It would certainly open some interesting horizons and opportunities if we accepted that assertion as reality and a right relationship to our environment, rather than continuing with our current approach to our environment as if it were "out there" and ourselves on the sidelines observing it. Might sharing this thought constitute an answer to Mike's first question, what is our strategy, given that my "our" would now be everyone's? Then to Mike's second question: Might the objectives of such thought be asserted with "Integrity?" Ah, that is the question. The assertion were it widely accepted, would bring change, like a happy new finding. However, not all of it would be incremental, as it postulates a different perspective, Copernican in its implications. Is there such a thing as proposing, with integrity, a constructive discontinuity? What experience do we have of this? (Incidently but not irrelevantly, has anybody on this list ever experienced themselves as active participant in the ecosphere, the thin skin of this spinning planet, among all its living inhabitants? Might you be willing to share something of that experience?) Regards, Gail P.S. I apologize in advance that (as has happened before, to my regret), my circumstances are such I may not be able to keep pace with the discussion should it continue. I will though follow it with interest as I am able. _______________________________________________ Futurework mailing list [email protected] https://lists.uwaterloo.ca/mailman/listinfo/futurework _______________________________________________ Futurework mailing list [email protected] https://lists.uwaterloo.ca/mailman/listinfo/futurework _______________________________________________ Futurework mailing list [email protected] https://lists.uwaterloo.ca/mailman/listinfo/futurework
