Our responsibilty for others (a perspective)

[Barry]

We all may have come here for different reasons, we all have different background, way of life, and dreams. Yet we all share this world together. In many ways we are responsible for each other. Maybe we are responisble fo all of humanity. Not that is some sort of weight, pressure or anything to do with get. but maybe each of us is responsible to be as much as we can be for the good of all others.

I know this is just something that others do not feel, yet i think if we can attain a certain way of thinking we will find the path before us not so much against our nature, but that we are creating a nature for that world that we hope for. We must see that where ever we go we ring those things that are inside of us for good or for harm, i must rid myself of as much harm as possible so that I do not bring that to others or to theirs or my dream.

[Robin Upton]

Have you heard Ivan Illich on 'responsibility'? He can be a bit cryptic, but I like his notion of 'conspiratio' - small acts of kindness to others, exceeding society's usual expectations of how much we should care for others.

For a lot of human history, we only every met a small number of other people, usually a bunch of blood relatives. Google on "Dunbar's Number" for the relevance of this. Basically, the idea is that city dwellers in particular are living in circumstances for which they are very poorly prepared. Culturally, I think we have more preparation, but with a lot of misplaced respect for great wealth (and the violence/greed which usually lies behind it).

[I-P]

Hi Robin,

I seem to remember listening to Illich speak to david caley about responcibility and conspiratio in the audio series "the corruption of christianity". What I recall is illich speaking against that kind of abstract, arrogant, and one-sided sense of "responcibility" for "the millions" (specifically the millions of "under developed" peoples), which he called something like "the underbelly of power fantacies"...I suppose it might be interesting to go into the difference between "charity" in the sense of that which illich seems to be stongly against (i tend to agree) and "altruism"....

I cant really remember the complete gist of what illich said about conspiratio but I very much like the idea of a conspiracy of friendship (though I am not sure if I am not glossing my own conception of what that could of should me on illichs understanding--I'll check my tape if I can find it, or I guess I can just follow your link...

I think city dwellers (depending on the city) can have more chances to transcend factional identity politics and see strangers in some "us and us" rather than "us and them" way then in most other places just because of the diversity that is there. unfortunately the "universals" in terms of which we are encouraged to encounter each other in a capitalist society are the negative ones of fear and, as you say violence and greed). that everyone is succeptable to these things at certain times is of course no reason to base ones social system on them. I think the opposite kinds of feelings are just as universal and actually more basic, though obscured by millenia of conditioning and bad education....

[Barry]

Thanks Robin, for that information, I will research this. I do really want to better understanding of such things. Often I have questioned, in my mind, others who are able to engage in a life of community often disengage form society. As a Christtian I do not see this for Christ told us that we are to be in the world but not of the world. I know not many will want to do this, yet I do not want to die without having done all that I can to experience that which I yearn for and that which i wish the world could taste, and to have the choice to follow.

I have lived my life in many ways to live these things, maybe there are others who have done the same on their own. No doubt society is blinded by all that has been force feed to them since the day of each person's birth. I feel that you cannot make something into something tht is contrary to it nature and foundation.

People think that society can change, yet it really only changes when it must. It only changes when people dare to live by a dream. So many people do not even know what it is to think, to have an original thought, all they have is mostly the ideas and concepts or others that they have attached to their own minds. To me thinking is a joy, understanding is like a treasure map showing us where the treasures are in life. Then we use that wisdom to find them.

Tthere may be a lot of reason why we cant do this, but there is always a reason to do it and that is hope, to hope that we can experience even if for a day or a week or year of those things we yearn for inside of our being. What if a way can be made for others to follow, a way of life and thought and of understanding. A connection of our mind,soul, and heart to ll those around us. A place where we beleive in dreams or better yet that we can dream together and together live that dream.

I have some thought that i beleive are helpful to me. One is that like money, failure is only a concept in our mind that does not really exist. We do not fail, we just lack the understanding to do tht which we are desiring. We fear failure so much that often we forget what hope is. Perhaps we s in so many are the ones who limit ourselves. I fear very few things, but the thing i fear most is not to live and not to follow my dreams. People may look at me as a fool yet i know that through my life I have stepped up to do that which I beleived in. But that really is nothing except that I choose to live, I choose to beleive that some can do something good for the beneift of mankind.

I may be insane, and often I tell myself, if this is insanity and reality is that these things are not true, then I choose to be insane rather than to live a life that means the things I hope for are not real. or attainale.

This site is fantastic. My hope is that we can connect, that even in our lives we help each other walk the path that is set before us. I am not an intellectual, but a slow thinker, but what I lack in speed I make up for in persistance. lol But I would just say let us too break away from the world which tells us want we cant do and what things make sense and what things dont, let lay behind us all that has been laid uon us and be free to be whtever it is that is in us to be.

i am sorry i am trying to convince you of this. I will do what it is in me to do, I just hope that I will find others to live the life that I have long to live in connection, community, and in peace and love.

[Robin Upton]

Illich's take on friendship is that in the past, it sprang from shared ethnicity (=geography, since ethnos=place) which people were born into and spent their whole lives in (c.f. Dunbar's Number). In the modern world, that has changed, he said. We can't rely on the friendship of the people into whose company we're born, but instead it has to be cultivated through acts of kindness and love. So this is unsettling in a way, but also liberating. He worked hard to nurture this, elective, community around himself, usually over a meal.

I think that the WWW has democratised people's communication potential, and will continue to do so for some years to come. As this happens, I expect those at the top of current power hierarchies to get increasingly desperate - not an optimistic forecast for those in cities in US/UK - but I believe that in their desperation to keep control, they will undercut their own legitimacy in more and more people's minds by exposing their real purposes and drives more clearly. Compare, for example, widespread disillusionment with the war in Iraq with continuing ignorance of what Vietnam was really about. But I digress. [See the new thread 'The Coming Change']

Self belief is vital to the coming change, as is following the inner voice -- don't wanna get too mystical here :), but how can someone have faith in the goodness of others if they don't have faith in themselves? I think the internet is allowing a massive RE-education of young adults, whose curiosity and self-belief was not extinguished by forced schooling. Those who control the current social infrastructure are afraid of the unwashed masses re-learning to live and love again, hence the emphasis on negative news, terrorism, paedophiles and anything else that can scare people.

[Attached is a poem from 12 years back -- still seems appropriate]

[I-P]

Hi Barry,

I like the idea of "creating a nature for the world that we hope for". but, I don't think the culture of alienation, seperation and fear that we live (and that some time lives in us) is actually our "first nature" but rather a "second" nature (maybe its better just to think of it as a kind of traumatized way of being and seeing) that obscures rather then reflects our original and essential nature. any way, if that is true then I think people acting together in a way that truely reflects and brings out that original nature of non-fear-based, not-alienated being can expect that what they do will have an extremely deep and inspiring resonance with everyone else since it would be touching something very deep (though very submerged) in everybody and showing them a viable way, not only to express it, but to base their life on it...I do think creativity has a lot to do with it, but I think a lot of the creativity will be about creating ways to discover, free, support and enable the true Self-Nature that is already there in all of us....

[Barry]

Hi I-P,
Yes. I agree. It is that we discover our true selves and nature and toss aside all that limits us from being free to be who we are and were meant to be. I often think of it as attachments. People often think they are what is attached to them, and do other things that really just confuse things, and become prideful, or judging others, or let the difference and uniqueness in others form prejudice in themselves. Such things always bring about what is contrary to our own nd others good and well-being. Sometimes it almost seems that there is a sort of revelation which must occur. Or maybe it is to get people out of their brain and into their essence. Into a deeper part of themselves that is there yet dormant or undiscovered.

It is often that people think that in agreeing with something that they now qualitfy themselves or see themselves in that light, yet they are unchanged and untransformed. They only think they are what they are not and do not know there is a difference. That is the hardest part of this. It isnot about what we think but in becoming and renewing our minds to a whole different process of thinking.

Yes too, I think there is a creativity, as a liberating means to expand, to evolve, to connect and to merge in thought and that the thought is not something beleonging to one but is a contiuation, that has no one form but shifts and reforms maybe taking on the form of a truth, or of beauty, or of a solution. Sometimes I have expeirenced connection with others, it can be of the simplest thing, but what happens is that you go from two singularites itno a single plurality. lol I one time wrote a blog, who will save me from my singularity. Is was a plead for connection.

Maybe the same is true here, who will save me from my singularity, can we together find the oneness in plurality.