Motivation to learn when in Despair LO28583

From: ACampnona@aol.com
Date: 05/22/02


Dear LO,

 - The reasons for things do not proceed like an arrow, but rather spread
to the side like a wind.

Jeff Gates noted that, - "Our notion of community is contracting,
precisely when when it most needs to expand. In the same way two stones
cannot occupy the same space but a fragrance can, two sovereign states
cannot occupy the same physical space, but mutual respect and love of
liberty can." In Africa today some 22.3 million souls are HIV-positive.
Jeff Gates in 'From Containment to Community' tells the story of what that
means when people start to lift up the stones hung around their necks as
if they were so many fragrances, "In many Countries like Zimbabwe women
are taking the leading role. Watching neighbours succumb slowly to AIDS,
deaths are not statistics. - It is friends and children facing lonely
futures. There are some 11 million orphans as a result. Unable to wait any
longer for outside solutions to flow to the forgotten content, these women
devised their own. At great personal sacrifice they volunteer time to care
for the ill and watch over their children, often traveling great distances
to clean beds, cook food, wash clothing, console the dying, and comfort
the living. Sustained by group singing and community spirit, they care for
hundreds. What do they need? Not much. With the help of Synergos one of
the USA's most creative non-profits, they were provided with uniforms to
mark their new roles and bicycles to help them travel the long miles
between homes."

Jeff has what looks to me like a fundamental law. It's the law of
sufficiency. Plato in his grounded and ideal wisdom said that for the
Republic in Greece the ratio of wealth among people should not exceed the
span of 5 to 1and for Jefferson in America is was set at the ideal of 100
to 1. In our global village I wonder if anyone reading here has the answer
to the question of what the ratio actually is.

Jeff Gates, unlike Andrew travels the world. He is he says' always struck
at the remarkable number of Americans who are overweight. Foreigners
comment on it too. " Funny knot that a 40% reduction in calorific intake
would lead to better health and longer life. He points out that the
average food intake to an American's mouth travels 1,300 miles. A pot of
strawberry yogurt for Germans entails a staggering 5,650 miles of truck
transport for its assembly and delivery to lips of eager and hungry
mouths. Jeff then moves straightaway to show how outdated is the model of
Adam Smith and it's promotion of specialization of steps toward producing
'pins', one to draw the wire, one to sharpen the point;-) one who attached
the head of the pin. "It still forms the basis of modern labour
productivity." It is now antiquated because it takes no account of the new
clouds of environmental, geo-political costs. A bit less one size fits all
" puckered-up notion of money measurable productivity." More of us could
LEARN how make our own yogurts once we LEARN more of the why?

Mays beautiful tiny hand make book sits beside me on my desk, a work of
art that shines out as an empty book inviting human creativity to fill up
it's pages. She is teaching her community how to make these objects. But
who will buy beauty and truth and at what price will they settle. I am
getting interested in those scientists like At, Penrose, Sheldrake, and
Beamish who can, it seems to me discover and bring forward an IMage in
which our rusted and blunt pins become whole and golden arrows of good
intent so small they can pass through the eye of a needle in which a
trillion angles;-) are at play.

There is a vast desert plain and clouds gather, there is storm high up on
the ridges and lightening rods now gathering, electrify the atmosphere and
these arrows now so numerous are electrical clouds grounded and below the
figure of a shepherd with a famished flock is struck by that energy into
the clay and what was the dead clay becomes alive once again.

Bateson said quite categorically that, 'Anything by nature in excess
becomes caustic.' In a tiny bit of wisdom from nearly five hundred years
before Christ was born and the Greek ideal overthrown,- The Master said,
When substance predominates over style, it is crude; when style
predominates over substance it is pedantic. When style and substances are
in balance, then you have a gentle-man;-) (The Balance of Qualities LY6)

At, you recently said I could give a reason for every mark in a painting I
make. I cannot. I can though say this, if I take any single mark away the
whole that it represents falls apart. The 'reason' artists learn is in the
whole and not the parts;-)

Love,

Andrew

-- 

ACampnona@aol.com

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