Replying to LO30768 --
Dear Organlearners,
Mark Feenstra <mark@practicefield.org> wrote:
>My sense is that I need to answer your question for myself
>first as I see the axis of the question being in the "we", and
>it seems good to me to first address your question for myself,
>before I attempt to respond as part of a larger "we".
Greetings dear Mark,
As for myself, i thought the same as you did. But i was very surprised
that the answer to the question "why am i living" gave me no clue to
answer the question "why are we living". I that it is because i have
to take otherness ("quality- variety") into account when moving from
the "i" to the "we". I think that you are saying the same with:
>When I ask "why am I living" I have the sense that my
>answer to this question is my own. It belongs to me, to my
>particular life journey, and the place I am at in it when I ask
>the question. There is no question of whether my answer is
>true for others. Only how deeply true it is for me.
Like in Don Dwiggens' reply, your "... to my particular life journey,
and the place I am at in it ..." strengthen my suspicion that all
"why" questions are complextely dependent on their context!
>In this sense it feels like a question to help me deepen
>my understanding of where I stand in relation to the
>fundamental nested (in consciousness) axioms by which
>I live my life. It opens me up to question who it is that
>asks such a question, and what it is they are seeking for
>in attending to the territory the question opens up.
Mark, i came to this question because of laying somewhat isolated
(from my family, friends, books and internet) in hospital. I had only
my thoughts, some triggered by my observations in the high care unit,
which converged upon the question "why are we living" because of this
isolation. Soon after each answer to the question, i became
dissatisfied with such an answer because of futher reasoning.
>In attending to this question I have the sense that I am
>on an uncertain journey, that may have begun when I was
>born, and which may end, or in any case will fundamentally
>change when I die. In this context it feels to me that my
>answer to this question IS MY LIFE.
Again the CONTEXT of the "why"!!!
>So perhaps OUR LIVES are the answer to your
>question to "why are we living"
>
>Naku noa
Thanks.
Your "OUR" -- whom does it include? All fellow learners subscribed to
the LO-list? All humans living today? All humans back to six thousand
years ago? All humans since the emergence of Homo sapiens from Homo
erectus? All species (like Australopithecus africanus) of the family
Hominidae of which all became extinct (the missing links!) except Homo
sapiens?All species of the order Primata? Can we exclude the three
great ape species (Gorilla, Chimpanazee, Orang-Utang) since humankind
may be responsible for their future extinction, i.e., they will also
have become "missing links"?
Why can we exclude humankind from all the other primata, what to speak
of other life forms, when answering the question "why are we living?"
While I was laying there in hospital, I was thinking what premonition
I had by teaching one of my workers a month earlier how to care for my
fishes. Unfortunately, i taught him only how to care for the adults
and not the fry (babies) too. So when i came back to home, i saw that
all the fry were lost. "You stupid", is said to myself, "your cared
more for the adults than the fry. They need much more care. Let this
be a lesson to you."
With care and best wishes
--At de Lange <amdelange@postino.up.ac.za> Snailmail: A M de Lange Gold Fields Computer Centre Faculty of Science - University of Pretoria Pretoria 0001 - Rep of South Africa
Learning-org -- Hosted by Rick Karash <Richard@Karash.com> Public Dialog on Learning Organizations -- <http://www.learning-org.com>
"Learning-org" and the format of our message identifiers (LO1234, etc.) are trademarks of Richard Karash.