> Why care
>about radical politics at all if you don't share some appreciation
>for us as a species full of possibilities?
>
>Doug
>
I do appreciate the possibilities; I had children after all.
And I spent most of my twenties listening to the B-Minor mass. But do not accept that it is something "higher" than bird song at dusk. Or rather, I do not accept the need to make the activities of some animals "higher" than those of other animals. The game is about species survival, sure. The generation of complicated and self serving justifications bores and irritates me.
Because we are creatures partly shaped by history (a huge "Because"), our song at dusk is the B Minor Mass -- a work that is the result of many generations of labor, tool building, symbol making, etc. But whether we are able to understand how history conditions us and whether we are able to begin to live on honorable terms with one another and with the earth, is something much more difficult than the B Minor Mass. Yes, it is something we have the potential to do, but I see scan't evidence of much progress in that direction. And what's missing in our progress is not the power of reason or advanced technology -- it is the absence of empathy, of humility, and of a type of intelligence that is not content to express itself merely in symbol manipulation.
Joanna
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