Photo by Erica
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75 Who will tie the bell?
Story 1: mice
The mouse convention
proudly announced their best safety measure to date: tie a bell
on the cat so that they always have warning of the predator’s
approach. The jubilation halted abruptly when an elderly mouse
asked the body, “Who will tie the bell on the cat?”
In this happiness blog I
have floated many ideas for improving the world.
Article 74 urged
applying all real wealth to improve quality of life. That was a
setup for the above question, which is now “whose resources do
we use?”
The maxim “gold is where
you find it” makes the simplest answer obvious: resources exist
to improve life, and society will use the resources that
exist.
Story 2: self and/or other
We should all be thinking
of others, not ourselves, right? WRONG! That thinking separates
individuals and shifts burdens onto “others.”
Unselfishly helping is a
consummate virtue. However, distinguishing between self and other
is muddled thinking. Worthwhile benefit accrues to people
together. A good deed done for you improves my life also. This
reciprocity is inherent and inescapable.
If humans remain discrete
silo worlds, there will never be social order. The self-not-other
viewpoint is an exclusive characteristic of those silos. It does
not comprehend the fact of life which article 71 calls
blending.
Therefore “we”
Society is the
perspective in which humans are equal parts of a whole. The field
of view is always the whole. That viewpoint defines and
creates social order, a blessing that nobody possess
alone.
“I in you, and you in me”
is a popular phrase describing mutual being. That defines the
concept “we,” the combination of, not distinction between, self
and other.
Bonus: a poetic koan
Interbeing
I knew you before we met for the first
time.
You were there before me
At the fountain of creation
When I was already old.
When time enfolds us again
Will you be wearing my moccasins?
Beloved sibling, be part of me
That we may know our differences
From each other.
Do not imitate me that I may not know another way of being.
O separate soul and being, should we live
together forever until the beginning,
Let my uniqueness be your identity for
but a moment until the explosion
That increases the extent of the
immeasurable universe.
Let not the tools of our emergence
Close the door that else were life
Outside our own.
Copyright © 2009 Kent V. Busse (23
October 2009)
It may be helpful to contemplate
the Moebius
Strip and Klein
Bottle.
Please do not brush this aside as
meaningless prattle. It is a collage of terms that lets you
connect the parts. (Were you unique before the Big Bang?)
Life is like that. You never see all of it and the connections
you make are unique to you. You make different connections at
different times. The koan contributes to blending self and
other.
What this means for self and
other
Western civilization has
emphasized individuality and independence, sometimes letting
trees block the view of the forest. We are underdeveloped in
awareness of being a group. Western religions might emphasize
personal worthiness so much that people forget to respect the
other and never realize their interdependence and
interbeing.
It seems to come
naturally to want to prevail, to be at the top, and to be
independent of others. However, without the whole, there would be
no individuality (article 46 difference is essential to
meaning,
article 64 please
disagree). Enlightenment is appreciating how my reality dovetails
with your reality as part of universal reality. Blending self and
other is not diluting either; it is enriching both.
Activism without demands or protests
Principle
“Majority rule” means
minimizing the number of voters who face disappointment. As a
counting process it is more logical than flipping a coin, but it
never validates a principle. We cannot change the temperature of
the ocean by popular vote. Majority voting for inaccurate ideas
leads to implementation of unsuccessful decisions.
Application
Now we can apply today’s
lesson to activism, the promotion of specific ideas. Advocates of
all stripes seek popularity for their proposals. Where public
demonstration means teaching by “demonstrating” a truth, it is a
shared two-way communication. However, the word demonstration is
often applied instead to demands and protests. Both of those
words drive the parties apart; “demonstrators” of that type
are expecting others to change. Too often a demonstrator
is demanding that government force “others” to
conform.
Insisting rather than
persuading denies the humanity and rights of others. Contention
and discord are assertions of self over others. Western
civilization will be much better civilized when we decide that
cooperating is winning. We are not in a survival contest
against members of the human family. We are interdependent for
our survival as a family.
The keywords of world
peace are “we” and “together.” After we stop separating ourselves
from others, today’s proposal says: we use
our resources to improve our
lives.
Being For Others Blog copyright © 2020 Kent Busse
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