On Tue, Feb 06, 2018 at 11:54:51AM +0530, Srini RamaKrishnan wrote: > On Feb 6, 2018 8:57 AM, "Tomasz Rola" <[email protected]> wrote: > > > Frankly, the whole thread reads a bit surreal to me, to the point > > where I wonder if my English... > > > On Mon, Feb 05, 2018 at 06:54:52PM +0100, Dave Long wrote: > > > On some other day, Someone Else wrote: > > >"We are human beings, not human doings". > > > > This may be very deep and wise and yet I happen to have other opinion > > on this: those who do not do might as well cease to be and nobody > > would be able to tell the difference. We are perfectly described by > > our doings, including acts of thinking and acts of having > > opinions (thus, a consciousness is defined by some "internal acts", > > which might also manifest in the outside world). > > Not that long ago European aristocrats prided themselves on "being" > aristocratic, and any useful work was looked down upon. So much so, a > frightful disease such as consumption was tied to the literary and poetic > aesthetic.
I admit that "being proud" because one has been born into some family is very shallow. On the other hand, at least some aristocrats became very valuable human beings, because they had enough education, resources and free time to push civilization forward, just a little. And some, like Evariste Galois, have been remarkably talented in their fields. Of course I would rather live in a society where everybody can choose a career according to his/her own talents, not to family name. > Today we have become the opposite. People must work till they die because > there's no respect or income in just being retired. Monks and nuns or poet > philosophers are a vanishing race because they are considered lazy bums who > can't contribute anything of value. > > We ought to balance the two energies of being and doing because there's > wisdom in both. The head and the heart. It seems to me we have two very differing notions of "doing". Mine is totally unrelated to monetary compensation. Monks & nuns "do" by serving their god(s) and poets "do" by describing world in new ways, both "dos" is enough for me to distinguish relevant persons from dead matter. As of head/heart - I perceive them as two sides of same coin, and in well developed human this coin is already balanced. I think it requires some work to unbalance it. I realize there is a lot of mentally derailed people (i.e., among other things, "unbalanced" is one form of such "derailation") but I am unable to help this in an easy way and I have no time and knowledge to help this in a hard way. [...] > Compulsively being or doing is bad. Yes it is. > > Many people are engaged in compulsive doing today because that's how they > define themselves. The ruling belief is that a human life is ab initio > worthless, and each ought to prove her worth by doing something. This has > destroyed a lot of social and family ties, and is the cause of distress and > disease. > > A human life ought to have respect and value in society regardless. People > ought not to start out of the gate feeling worthless. I very much agree. But in my opinion "people" should be told they get dignity when they do things that are important to them. The problem starts when "important to them" is part of what you describe as compulsive. There is no easy way out of it, see above, but sometimes there is a way to help one or two people. That is quite a lot. > > Stalin would consign to Siberia those who didn't believe in communism. > Today, the banks will have us living under the bridge, if we are lucky, if > we don't believe in capitalism. No, not really, I am afraid. Stalin, from what I have read, sent at least as many believers as not. Or, their beliefs were among the least important things. On the other hand, if you were a tailor and happened to stick a needle in a newspaper, but so unfortunately in a place where there was an eye of Stalin, you got five years in gulag (if I recall correctly). -- Regards, Tomasz Rola -- ** A C programmer asked whether computer had Buddha's nature. ** ** As the answer, master did "rm -rif" on the programmer's home ** ** directory. And then the C programmer became enlightened... ** ** ** ** Tomasz Rola mailto:[email protected] **
