> I certainly don't have a recipe spelling out the difference but if one > does it right, "the urge to heal and convert" is a fundamentally moral act > and it would be too tough to make a case that this urge has been a powerful > force in our cultural evolution.
In Dr. Peck's community building model tho, the urge to heal and convert is a major roadblock on the path to true community. He spends a great deal of effort showing how this egoism blocks consensus and growth. Winning gets to be more important than truth. Also, it's just natural. If memory serves, Pirsig paraphrased Nietzsche in > comparing the intellectual competition in universities to the way plants and > trees compete with each other to gather the most sunlight. And that's another point I'm challenging. Trees don't compete, they cooperate, they communicate chemically with each other when attacked, they make diverse contributions to soil chemistry that enhances the whole. Plants are solar powered gardeners, not pests to be controlled and fought. Trees utilize the maximums available to them and the shade and protection they provide to each other causes them all to grow taller. Just take a flyover of untended forests and ponder the fact that all that rich fecundity is self-creating and self-sustaining. This is one major component of Fukuoka's insight which is that "weeds" are beneficial to gardens. They perform jobs of aeration and cultivation of soil as well as beneficial insect hosting and shading. I've followed this idea for years now and realized great fertility and growth using no labor, no composting, no tillage, no weeding, no normal control freak gardening in nice straight rows. Plants grow best according to natural patterns and have no trouble with tight growing conditions. Roots find paths in the three dimensions of ground and three dimensions of sky and lean heavily upon one another for support from wind and excessive heat. Or to put it as succinctly as I can, the more life you got, the more life you get. In nature, biodiversity is its own reward. And don't get me started on the insect world... Talk about misunderstood. These concepts of competition have been taught to us wrongly as applicable to natural systems. It's a clear case of intellect forcing humanistic ideas of conquest inappropriately. Somebody is always trying to overshadow the other guy. Hopefully, they both > grow as a result of that struggle. Anyway, if this is true in the jungle and > in the academic world, it's probably true on the street as well. I mean, you > can watch out for the control freak thing and otherwise be cautious, but > don't feel guilty about the urge itself. It's just the way things work, > don't you think? "Guilty" wouldn't be an appropriate feeling, I'd agree. Self-aware of my motivations leading to caution in making assumptions would be entirely appropriate. > > Moq_Discuss mailing list > Listinfo, Unsubscribing etc. > http://lists.moqtalk.org/listinfo.cgi/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org > Archives: > http://lists.moqtalk.org/pipermail/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org/ > http://moq.org.uk/pipermail/moq_discuss_archive/ > -- ------------ Doing Good IS Being ------------ Moq_Discuss mailing list Listinfo, Unsubscribing etc. http://lists.moqtalk.org/listinfo.cgi/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org Archives: http://lists.moqtalk.org/pipermail/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org/ http://moq.org.uk/pipermail/moq_discuss_archive/
