From: Samantha Atkins (samantha@objectent.com)
Date: Tue Jul 09 2002 - 13:08:27 MDT
scerir wrote:
> "Heimdall will sound his Horn" [2002 theme at the Pio Manzł - U.N. Centre]
>
Fun to chop into a bit...
> http://www.piomanzu.com/giornate2002/uk/indice_uk.htm
>
> " The new identity of mankind is bound together by the common concern about
> the uncertainty that prevails today, together with the understanding of that
> relationship of inseparability, indeed indivisibility, we have with each other."
Well, yes, and no. We are bound together on one planet. With a
lot of further work we may all be able to live and grow
indefinitely. But we will not be able to do so if some insists
that doing so is wrong and must be stopped and if those who
believe this are allowed to carry out such an agenda. We can be
all tied together in highest potential without being chained
together.
> Difficult but not aleatory, is the struggle with causality which involves
> a worldwide intelligence in the determination of an "ecology of action" useful
> to all and with which all can identify.
> But a new element of our times is that the demand for harmony has become
> global. It is no longer a matter only for the religious or the individual, but
> it has become a question of global concern opposed to emerging hatred. At the
> beginning of the last century, more or less faithful to nineteenth century
> positivism, Arturo Graf maintained the advantage of instituting a "cathedral of
> ignorance" which " would represent the many things that we do not know", and
> which "would keep alive and ever-present in our minds, problems both ancient and
> modern."
A "cathedral of ignorance"?! That is disgusting across the
board, including from a spiritual perspective. We can be aware
of problems ancient and modern and work on solving them. A
"cathedral of ignorance" instead seems to enshrine them as holy
relics and work against resolving them. How about a "Cathedral
of Solutions" or "Cathedral of Fulfillment"? Much more positive.
> Likewise, in this century, Edgar Morin urges the setting-up of a "Faculty
> of Globalized Problems".
> As yet, we do not know how to join together the different realms of
> knowledge, and relate to them and each other in as much as we are a planetary
> community, where we are all conditioned by the same possibilities for hope or
> for destruction.
> In spite of the uncertainties, "Heimdall will sound his Horn" to arouse us
> all as individuals with responsibility for the future. This call invokes the
> builders of harmony to create a network against brutality, An economic system
> without consideration for the Natural World threatens not only the future of
> development but the very future of humanity.
Well, yes, but so does consideration for the Natural World
divorced from human potential and advancement.
> Technology, which is only consumed with its own fundamentalism, devours
> all that is energy and growth, rendering inedible the fruits of the earth. Any
> generalized monoculture, which drives out individual characteristics, creates
> dispersion - (the diaspora of ancient times), and oppression. Thus a Europe
> without an understanding of its origins in Africa is a Europe without roots. And
> so harmony cannot be only a belief but a mutual search and a common basic
> foundation, an interdependent destiny. It will be a source of strength and not a
> "tearing apart" of wisdom.
>
Here we get into heavy BS. Technology is not "consumed with its
own fundmentalism" and has been the very wellspring of energy
and growth. If we eschew technology there can be no "wisdom"
applicable to common problems and needs. Without technology you
can only get more or less other-worldly excuses for misery,
limitation and death in this world.
> There is no need to go too deeply into theoretical issues or depart too
> radically from everyday practicalities to realise that today's world is subject
> to two apparently irreconcilable forces vainly striving to coexist within the
> framework of an image such as Heracleitus's famous bow and lyre. On the one
> hand, there is the tendency to step up the output of the powerhouses of
> capitalism, which is incessantly raising the stakes of its own development and
> consumption of the Earth's energy resources, multiplying with titanic audacity
> the presence of monsters and disharmonious furies on the face of the planet.
Is that all? What about the increasing quality and length of
life of human beings, not as universal as I might like but
present due to technology and capitalism? I may think current
capitalism (at least as practiced) is insufficient for the
future, but it must be given its due.
> On
> the other, there emerges a clearer tendency in the form of a global demand for
> harmony arising from individual suffering and the failure of human relations and
> culminating in a new conception of the Earth based on the awareness of belonging
> to a global community. It is in this situation, then, that signs are emerging of
> a radical change in vision. Thirty years ago marked the start of a courageous
> redefinition of nature and the universe which today gathers together all the
> disjointed and widely scattered fragments of knowledge in a surprising new
> vision of reconciliation and harmony. Thus, in the various realms of science and
> learning, from medicine to biology, from evolutionary physics to ecology,
> cosmology, psychology, sociobiology and bioenergetics, we are now witnessing the
> advent of the so-called "sciences of complexity", which with some justification
> may be alternatively defined as the sciences of harmony.
Huh? How?
> Fritjof Capra was right, when, in the context of a debate with David
> Steindl-Rast at the Elmwood Institute in 1985 on the relationships between
> science and religion, he prophesied "perfect agreement" in the light of the
> dynamics ever present within the universe.
That depends a lot on what is and is not included under
"religion", and "science" for that matter. If the anti-mind and
anti-life on this world is included in "religion" then I hardly
see how such "harmony" is to be wished for. If all that is not
measurable in the lab is removed from consideration I again do
not see how any real "harmony" is possible.
> A great specialist in historical semantics and stylistics such as Leo
> Spitzer, in an exceptional book devoted to the idea of "world harmony", talked
> about a "global concept" that needs to be sought in all the nooks and crannies
> of our languages and civilisations". In many ways these ideas prefigured the
> present-day fusion of knowledge and responsibility that defines, within an
> extended framework, the complex course of the new multidimensional
> configurations and exchanges, as well the ordinary relationships, between the
> sciences.
Does this seem like much more than pseudo-scholarly blather and
wishful thinking?
> In other words there is a demand for harmony which stems from the
> individual, invests entire communities and peoples and ultimately entails the
> creation of a sustainable situation of "citizenship of the Earth". Mankind and
> the world's economies, philosophies and arts are now in a position to respond
> nihilistically, as has generally been the case in the course of the past
> century, or with a sense of responsibility, re-routing and harnessing man's
> spiritual forces in order to create a lucid network of builders of harmony. "
>
Hmmm. On the one hand technology, our very tools and knowledge,
are disowned and on the other harmony is called for. What is
one to make of this? It seems to leave open endless demands at
an irrational level in the name of "harmony" while disowing the
means to do more than idolize problems. Is there so little
sanity on this planet?
- samantha
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