Holding On
Another thought provoking discussion. This one considered the work of Martin Heidegger and William Faulkner. Both men, one a metaphysician, and the other a writer of fiction offered a lifetime’s worth of caution, of alarm about what we are doing to Nature. Faulker writes of the last of the large game, an old bear regarded as a mythic symbol of the wild that was being consumed by the needs of civilization. The bear shares the fate of his surrounding, living habitat. Faulkner’s narrator describes the destruction wreaked by a lumber company mill, by the adjunct railroad, the mule corrals, and accommodations for men, — all necessary for the final cause of the mill: profit.
Heidegger gets into the weeds of language analysis, as you would expect of a philosopher. I am intrigued by his offering that aition, encapsulates the older Greek concept of cause. Aition has a connotation of “debt” of personal responsibility, of obligation, of unveiling, of revealing. The “aition” of a work of craft, refers to the indebtedness of the acting subject, the crafts-person, for what new thing he or she has brought forth. Heidegger suggest a recasting of our thinking about technology.
How this contrasts with the profit motive, the notion that markets consisting of anonymous selfish actors, focused upon individual benefit, will take care of us all. A foolish assumption. — that the good of the individual coincides with the public good of all. Yet most of us continue to believe this dogma.
In our post-modern time we humans are Homo-Comedo, — the mammal that consumes.
I’ll conclude with a song that makes the point better than I, or perhaps even Faulkner or Heidegger were able to achieve.
WE NEED A PHASE SHIFT IN OUR CONSCIOUSNESS!
5 thoughts on “Holding On”
Jerry,
Thanks for sharing a succinct synopsis of last nights topic. It was a thought provoking article, and also a stimulating discussion on a very important issue. On the drive home I was thinking about the fact that we all share one home, planet Earth. If we have any wisdom we will decide to do all we can to take care of it; not only for ourselves, but also for future generations.
And God said, “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness: and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth.”
So what’s the point of even attempting to argue with those who have a clear mandate from a non-existent, fictional, omniscient entity who speaks directly to them through their subconscious mind and has also answered their prayers to help their sports team win the championship. I think we just have to let this ethereal being have its way. I mean he/she did give all of us Carte Blanche to do whatever we want with the earth so I’m certain that he/she would not let us completely foul our own home.
Right? Amen!
Clearly these words have most often been taken quite literally, with little reflection. This is the old narrative so here we are. We are well into the 21st century, and we are running short of everything that just a few years ago we never worried about: oceans with stocks of fish, untouched wild forests, clean water, etc. Habitual ways of thinking have got to change or the end will be near. Can we change?! Do enough of us perceive the necessity for a shift in self understanding, a new relationship of ourselves to the earth and to one another? Is that unrealistic, asking too much? We need a new story.
A final observation, the Genesis creation story myth has been so sullied, so transmogrified by Evangelical Christianity to be an adjunct for Capitalism, that it is beyond resuscitation. We must come up with a new myth…
But Jerry, Gene Roddenberry DID come up with a new mythos that performed many of the functions you called for. He called it “Star Trek,” and after more than half a century, many still try to live by its tenets. (A belief system is no less valuable just because you know who initiated it.)
Yes! The source of insight is irrelevant to its value generally speaking. I’m not sure that is an invariable principle though.