Growing old is
mandatory; growing up is optional.
----- Original Message -----
Sent: Monday, June 02, 2003 3:58 PM
> Robert E. Bowd wrote:
>
> > Hi Ray:
>
>
> > I like the Will Rogers quote. I would likely
alter it, though, to
> > suggest I have never met a life form, I
didn't like. Is not the embrace
> > of all life forms (Gaia) a
preferred stance, in our stewarship of this
> > planet?
>
> [snip]
>
> Have you embraced your oncogenes and colon
polyps yet?
> Your dental carries? Head lice?
....
We embrace people do we not? What higher form of
viral contamination or parasite is there?
> It just struck me: "Gaia" applies not only to the
>
muddleheadedness of the New Ageys who think(sic) that
> the universe
thinks
Where do all these converted, polluted, convoluted
ideas come from (muddleneadedness, smokeybrains)? People attempt to
anthropomorphize everything and/or anything so they can feel closer to it, or
perhaps understand it in an emotional sense. But I have never spoken to a
"hippy" or "one who loves and cherishes the earth" who believes the universe
thinks. They may hope it has the ability but that is not the same.
If we consider that the universe is an extension of
this plane in which we find ourselves, there may be RE-actions to our actions.
But the energies that have given rise to this universe (whatever the name:
God, Holy Spirit, The Great One, Allah, Vishnu,....) likely is not concerned
with what these wholly insignificant beings called humans do. We are not on
the plane of "creation" (currently, it appears to be one of MIS-creation). We
are here, on this planet, as Robert has suggested, to be stewards. That
becomes a much larger thought position than most on this planet can
comprehend; due less, I think, to their ability than to their education and
circumstance.
(*what* does it think? Perhaps
> what Stephen Jay Gould said
it thinks: "Nature is
> in love wih the idea of the individual,
*not*
> with specific individuals" -- such a characterological
>
disorder wouldn't cut the mustard with a mere
> human being....)
>
> More anthropomorphizing.
>
>
Anyway, there is another "Gaia": the adjective
> in the title of
Nietzsche's book "Die Froliche Wissenschaft"
> ("The Gay Science") -- in
Italian:
>
> La Gaia
Scienza
>
> So, folks, there's a second, better Gaia out there,
not
> in "nature", but
> in the library: Tulle,
lege!
This would be where the education begins. The growing
up is part of circumstance.
> (I should have thought of this 20 years ago....)
>