Virtue

[Trunk]

How have you experienced it? (of your own, or another's)

 

-- later edit --

That is, how did it show up? Describe the event. Probably people experience virtue (or te) in a lot of different ways... what happened?

[mbanu]

How have you experienced it? (of your own, or another's)

 

Don't know about virtue, but I have had fleeting moments of Te. I also once lived with a dog and a cat who seemed to possess Te.

[sean]

For me I think the furthest I've gotten with virtue is feeling that it comes most naturally when I am aligned with sincerity.

[Wayfarer64]

I think of my work for tenant's rights as an on-going series of acts of continuing vertue.

 

I find most people just do not care about doing good things for other people.

 

Even here at this wonderful site, I've gotten very few votes on my Give Meaning site that I posted three weeks ago. There is just very little generosity of spirit when it takes an effort. And that to me is what amounts to virtue, putting other's efforts and needs on a par with your own.- Working for a better world not just a better life for yourself.

Namaste-

[Starjumper]

Have you experienced it? (of your own, or another's)

 

 

You look down that long hallway filled with smoke and mirrors. After you have achieved continuous non thinking during your day to day routine, which comes after achieving both samadhi and non thinking during meditation, then thought can return to stillness. Then the next and main and final step along the Way is Te, a step which you never finish taking. You can attempt to practice Te before achieving clarity too, but it doesn't do much good, except as practice, of course =)

Edited February 5, 2007 by Starjumper7

[sean]

I find most people just do not care about doing good things for other people.

Just read this today, thought I'd share. Via Steve Pavlina

 

"One of the most important relationship lessons I learned was this: The relationships we have with other people are projections of the relationships we have within ourselves. Our external relationships and our internal relationships are in fact the same relationships. They only seem different because we look at them through different lenses." Read more

[QiDr]

In different circumstances, the positive energy or virtue of life expresses itself in a myriad of ways, these are all Teh. The Tao is the great movement or turning of the cycles, Teh is the outcome of that process. One is in a state of Teh when one is alligned with the posative outcome of the process, that can be everything from working for tennants rights, helping someone clean out their closet to making green choices when voting or consuming.

[Wayfarer64]

I recently started to read H L Menkin's Tretise on right and wrong There is an interesting few paragraphs from Darwin on social intincts, which are found in many species.

A quick over-view-

IMPULSE TO POSITIVE BENEVOLENCE & NEGATIVE RESTRAINT:

The Basic componants -

1) Intelligence-weighing options to gain durable satisfaction from one's efforts

2) Language- Creates a common value system allowing good/bad opinions to form

3) Habit I think of this as the Habit of Civilisation that Will Durant writes of as well

 

These add up to a Phenomina of Morality. They can be attributed to "lower" species as well as our own...

All this, plus Reverance or Fear of Gods and Spirits. For those issues we seek theologians to penitrate the impenitratable.

 

So many do good things to support their position and security in their environment, it need not only be altruistic.

[Spectrum]

"I find most people just do not care about doing good things for other people. "

 

Was talking about this w/ my significant other last night. The idea that not doing evil does not equal the same as doing good, rather doing good is a qualitatively different experience then just not doing evil. Te.

 

After the work, there's a different work it seems.

 

Spectrum

[mbanu]

How have you experienced it? (of your own, or another's)

 

-- later edit --

That is, how did it show up? Describe the event. Probably people experience virtue (or te) in a lot of different ways... what happened?

 

Oops, there was an edit! Didn't see. D:

 

Hmm, first I guess a definition would be good? My understanding of Te is that it refers to the natural manifestations of an object. "Virtue" isn't an incorrect way of expressing this, but the way that it means is a way that isn't really common in English anymore, I don't think. For instance, the Te of a rock (well, many rocks) is that it is hard. That is, it is hard "by virtue of" it being a rock. A better word for Te might be something along the lines of "genuineness".

 

Unfortunately, this makes Te kinda hard (for me at least) to describe second hand, because Te isn't in the actions performed exactly, it's in the thing performing them. The Te of a rock is not the Te of a butterfly, even if sometimes the rock grasps Te by flying through the air, and sometimes the butterfly grasps Te by resting on the ground. I guess Te is really something that needs to be witnessed.

 

This probably sounds like a lot of hemming and hawing. I guess this is just my way of saying I am unable to supply approprite descriptions. I doubt my notes on watching dogs run around or cats clean themselves and take naps would really have the desired effect. I'm not trying to be mystical or anything. I hate those cryptic fuckers.

 

There are a lot of places one can witness Te, though. Babies while unaware of their parents, animals that neither fear nor cater to humans, very drunk people sometimes...

 

The biggest problem to witnessing Te is in having an unclear mind. When the mind isn't clear, the Te of others becomes like a mirror; all one sees are one's own thoughts and feelings reflected back at them. People anthropomorphize and project, and when the original nature of the thing arises, it is quickly obscured.

 

Plus there's temporary Te and true Te. Temporary Te is fleeting, it can be induced by circumstances, exercises, or substances; it can point the way to true Te. True Te is more fundamental, and only comes with enlightenment and Wu Wei or manifests itself in those things which never lost their original nature.

Edited February 5, 2007 by mbanu

[Taomeow]

There's an English word that contains the concept and implications of Te in its entirety:

 

INTEGRITY.

 

It's not something that "happens," you either "are" it or aren't, "have it" or don't, it's the way you are organized, or not.

 

Sean's "sincerity" is close, but also closer to the surface. "Sincerity" is an attitude of the mind, which one can take or leave, have today, change tomorrow, display to some people, refuse to approach others with; while "integrity" is the organizational principle of the body-mind-spirit as a whole that is (or isn't) present at all times and is not contingent on the particular attitude of the moment. That's what te is -- the way you are when you are whole.

[MatthewQi]

I thought I would share this. It is something I wrote down out of one of Cleary's Taoist Classics many years ago...

 

"Tao is based on meditation; Te is rooted in cultivation. Meditation is for the body/mind whereas cultivation is a treatise on virtue and conscious mind. To meditate is to gather and circulate chi; to cultivate is to abandon the ego and to purify the consciousness."

[mYTHmAKER]

TE - How about right action. Appropriate in the moment.

Helping without even knowing you're doing so.

Virtue can be more mind. Deciding to be virtuous, to do good,

to be a good person.

[sean]

There's an English word that contains the concept and implications of Te in its entirety:

 

INTEGRITY.

 

It's not something that "happens," you either "are" it or aren't, "have it" or don't, it's the way you are organized, or not.

 

Sean's "sincerity" is close, but also closer to the surface. "Sincerity" is an attitude of the mind, which one can take or leave, have today, change tomorrow, display to some people, refuse to approach others with; while "integrity" is the organizational principle of the body-mind-spirit as a whole that is (or isn't) present at all times and is not contingent on the particular attitude of the moment. That's what te is -- the way you are when you are whole.

Nice. What do you think the relationship between Sincerity and Integrity is? I think sincerity is more accessible in the moment. Am I being sincere right now? Whereas integrity has more of a solid feel to me. Like deeply worn grooves in solid rock over a long life of sincere choices. Something like that.

[Wayfarer64]

Sean-thanks for the link.

 

I mostly disagree with Pavlina. The way we treat each-other has far more to do with our relationships than what we think in the abstract of each-other. The only place that his ideas work is in cyberspace where our relationships are so very ephimeral.

 

(My internalized sense of what someone is thinking about me only used to have any impact when I was smoking too much ganga some twenty years ago).

 

I think it very odd to have relationships that exist mostly in one's head as it were. I do not intellectualize about how I feel. I feel. I express how I feel and share a real life with those I inter-act with. It is not a purely mental construct.

 

We have gotten so far away from any true shared society that what we imagine about others has become our relationships to them?! Not me bro. My point about people not caring is proved by his take on this. IF_ Inter-relationships become some sort of an abstracted series of linked phenomina, projected from the self. Then I see a fearful lack of us having any shared humanity to speak of

 

NO! We live as real people who interpret each-other's feelings face to face and get and share feelings with each-other. These are not mental projections.

 

I do not project my inner self outward onto those who I have contact with, any more than I absorb their beings into my realm of consciousness through my senses. Both take place but I do not isolate myself from others in my own little world of being to interpret their reactions to me.

 

My point stands. People just do not have time for others as was once the norm in tribal conditions and every society up to our current one. 30 years ago one could leave their home and/or car unlocked in most small towns across America. No more. We are isolating ourselves and hardening our hearts to each-other.

 

Pavlina's perspective of the projected self is as much a part of this problem as fear-mongering and Arab-bashing. It assumes the self is seperate and not already connected in spiritual and cosmic oneness to the other in empathy and compassion. If empathy and compassion are added to his equation it falls to pieces.

Namaste-Pat

[Taomeow]

Nice. What do you think the relationship between Sincerity and Integrity is? I think sincerity is more accessible in the moment. Am I being sincere right now? Whereas integrity has more of a solid feel to me. Like deeply worn grooves in solid rock over a long life of sincere choices. Something like that.

 

Interesting question!

 

Sincerity is not one of the virtues of tao, far as I've been able to discern. (One of my favorite sources, the Ta Chuan or Great Treatise on the Changes, does go into "virtues of tao" in some detail.) Looks like "spontaneous, sincere lying" is part of how things seem to work in nature. E.g., there's a whole huge class of biological phenomena known as mimicry, which is used by thousands of species in an attempt to fool other species into believing they are what they really aren't. In appearance and in behavior, they lie and lie -- an insect pretending it's a dry leaf, a pair of butterfly wings pretending they're the eyes of an own, an ears-flattening hissing cat pretending she's a snake, a virus that tricks a cell into believing it's part of its natural milieu by simulating the kind of chemical signals to which the cell wall that is supposed to stop the alien invader responds like to an open-sesame... there's literally thousands of examples of this "lying game" in nature. And besides mimicry, there's thousands more ways natural things fool other natural things. Psychomimetic substances in plants that the brain mistakes for its own neurohormones. All creatures who make a living by arranging traps for other creatures -- the spider being a familiar example. Are any of them being "sincere" or not?.. Looks like "sincerity" is a concern of "the human mind," not of "the mind of tao."

 

Integrity, on the other hand, is what all these creatures and humans alike need to have in order to be exactly what they are, no more, no less (that's another shade of meaning of "de" -- "true to self"). This "exactly what they are" seems to include, all across the natural spectrum, the ability to be insincere on occasion.

 

So it looks like there's only one kind of insincerity that's not compatible with integrity and with te: lying to oneself!..

 

A hissing cat who pretends she's a snake still knows in her heart she's a cat. A butterfly with wings painted to imitate a staring owl's eyes, who scares away a hungry swallow by pretending to be something that can swallow the swallow, still knows he's a butterfly (unlike Zhuangzi who seems to be unable to decide whether he's man or butterfly in an often-quoted fable that, to me, illustrates the confused state of man in general, not of Zhuangzi specifically). So it looks to me as though "fooling oneself" is the kind of insincerity that would clash with "integrity," while "fooling others" for a good cause is not off limits... or at least to tao it isn't.

Edited February 6, 2007 by Taomeow

[sean]

I express how I feel and share a real life with those I inter-act with. It is not a purely mental construct.

Wayfarer, not purely a mental construct, agreed. But feelings are also part of our perception. The questions is, how do you firmly distinguish between your perceptions (thoughts, feelings, sensations, impressions) of another and the way that other "really is"? Because that which you use to make the distinction is also your perception, no? Pretty crucial inquiry.

 

"I find most people just do not care about doing good things for other people", is just your opinion, that's fine. But I would suggest not to mistake it for an insight into reality. And to equate Pavlina's article with Arab bashing and fear mongering. LOL! You old-school hippies are a trip sometimes.

 

Integrity, on the other hand, is what all these creatures and humans alike need to have in order to be exactly what they are, no more, no less (that's another shade of meaning of "de" -- "true to self"). This "exactly what they are" seems to include, all across the natural spectrum, the ability to be insincere on occasion.

 

So it looks like there's only one kind of insincerity that's not compatible with integrity and with te: lying to oneself!..

Powerful! You've really enriched my sense of the meaning of natural sincerity. Thanks.

 

Sean

[voice]

I'll add a quote from pages 59-61 of "A philosophical translation of dao de jing" by Hall and Ames. Like their translation of the phrase "dao de jing" (as "making this life significant"), their description of the word "de" is also very different from what how it is given in the western tradition. Given your philosophical inclinations, Sean, you might really like this book. I find it hard work, but VERY rewarding.

 

_______________________________________________________________

 

In the early philosophical literature, de retains a strong cosmological sense, connoting the "insistent particularity" of things generally, and of humans beings specifically. It is for this reason that de is conventionally translated as "virtue" or "power", defining the particular as a focus of potency or efficacy within its own field of experience. Given the intrinsic relatedness of paraticulars in this conception of existence as process, de is both process and product -- both the potency and the achieved character of any particular disposition within the unsummed totality of experience. Dao and de are related as field and focus respectively. De is holographic, meaning that each element in the totality of things contains the totality in some adumbrated form. The particular focus of an item establishes its immediate world, and the totality as a noncoherent sum of all possible orders is disclosed however faintly by each item.

 

The cnetral issue of the Daodejing -- literally "the classic of this de and its dao" -- is how this participating item can most effectively excel in brining its perspectival field into focus. It is this process of focusing de that, for the human being, generates cognitive, moral, aesthetic, and spiritual meaning.

 

The earliest Confucian literature tended to limit its oncerns to the human experience, where this qualitative dimension of de more nearly suggests both "excellence" and "efficacy" in terms of what we can truly be and do if we "realize (zhi)" the most from our personal careers as members of a flourishing community. Like "authoritative conducts/person (ren)", de can certainly be generalized, but it is an inductive generalization that must always begin from a particular instance within a particular context. The cultivation of de is pursued through one's full participation in the ritualized community, where achieved excellence in the roles and relationships that constitute one's person makes on an object of deference for others.

 

The Daodejing brings both a political and a cosmic dimension to this idea of effective potency. When located within the political realm, de describes the most appropriate relationship between a ruler and the people. In this context, de has a rnage of meaning that reflects the priority of this situation over agency, thus characterizing both the giving and the getting. That is, de is both the "beneficience" extended to the people in response to their worth, and the "gratitude" expressed by the people in the response to the largesse of a wrothy ruler. De encompasses both participating agency and its effects. It is the character or the ethos of the polity. On this basis, we misth suggest "virtuality" in hte archaic sense of the word as "having inherent virtue or power to produce effects" as another possible translation of de.

 

Recognizing the meaning-creating and meaning-disclosing power of the cultivated human being, the Daodejing emphasizes the ay in which this personal articulation extends beyond the human community into appreciating the cosmos itself. Thos of "highest efficacy" (shande) as paragons of achieved excellence have cosmological signifcance in maximizing the symbiotic relationship between the human experience and the context within which that drama unfolds.

[Wayfarer64]

Wayfarer, not purely a mental construct, agreed. But feelings are also part of our perception. The questions is, how do you firmly distinguish between your perceptions (thoughts, feelings, sensations, impressions) of another and the way that other "really is"? Because that which you use to make the distinction is also your perception, no? Pretty crucial inquiry.

Sean

 

Yo Sean,

My perceptions do not create my reality. They interpret my reality. I can differentiate between what I take in and my cognition of these various elements. And my equating his ideas with any other thought process that seperates one being from the other beings they inter-act with, as the given state of inter-action is just a matter of degree. We are not so much seperate beings as he implies. Where is the Namaste recognition?

 

The whole working on the self to get others to change seems apt in very few situations. It gives us yet another way to seperate ourselves from each-other rather than bringing us together in open trusting discourse.

 

Today's society is very different than when I was growing up. Kids are not out playing. They are most likely in front of a computer screen. There is little trust of any stranger. Even marriages now have pre-nups as a rule rather than the exception.

 

If the woman I live with is a slob I talk to her about it. I don't internalize the issue in hopes of communicating my druthers of her behaviors. I am not scared of confronting or expressing any emotion to those I am in contact with.

 

The fear of living as an emotional being that shares one's inner life with those around them seems inherent in Pavlina's thinking. It is palpable to me, yet it is also the norm in our society.

 

You may have no references from 40-50 years ago to relate to. So you use Pavlina's methods to project your perception of me as an old school hippy as if that were a reality. You are buying into something that is not real. It is a cop-out -to use an old hippy term... It uses its own premise to prove its point.

 

The being that is ME does not filter the reality of the beings around me as if I have no clue as to their nature save through my perceptions. For instance I also have to have some understanding of circumstance to form an opinion of behaviors. Why did she hurry away? Was my breath stinky? Did she just remember an appointment? Did she have to pee?

 

Looking outside of ourselves will give us as many answers as to our fellow beings' ways of being themselves as looking inward at our interpretations. Interaction is sloppy and often hurtful. We can learn to deal with it and share it, not as a projection of self but as an interactive dance.

[sean]

Wayfarer, I am not saying that you create reality itself. That's a different discussion. I am asking you how you are making the distinction between your perceptions and reality as it is.

 

Here is a very simple question.

 

Can know with absolute certainty, that "most people just do not care about doing good things for other people"? Yes or no.

 

 

Sean

[Spectrum]

 

E.g., there's a whole huge class of biological phenomena known as mimicry, which is used by thousands of species in an attempt to fool other species into believing they are what they really aren't. In appearance and in behavior, they lie and lie -- an insect pretending it's a dry leaf, a pair of butterfly wings pretending they're the eyes of an own, an ears-flattening hissing cat pretending she's a snake, a virus that tricks a cell into believing it's part of its natural milieu by simulating the kind of chemical signals to which the cell wall that is supposed to stop the alien invader responds like to an open-sesame... there's literally thousands of examples of this "lying game" in nature. And besides mimicry, there's thousands more ways natural things fool other natural things. Psychomimetic substances in plants that the brain mistakes for its own neurohormones. All creatures who make a living by arranging traps for other creatures -- the spider being a familiar example. Are any of them being "sincere" or not?.. Looks like "sincerity" is a concern of "the human mind," not of "the mind of tao."

 

Integrity, on the other hand, is what all these creatures and humans alike need to have in order to be exactly what they are, no more, no less (that's another shade of meaning of "de" -- "true to self"). This "exactly what they are" seems to include, all across the natural spectrum, the ability to be insincere on occasion.

 

So it looks like there's only one kind of insincerity that's not compatible with integrity and with te: lying to oneself!..

 

 

Engrained preservation. We value life intrinsictly no? Create music with it weedoodoo. Insects I'm sure don't think about being the mimic, that is their role in the face of their natural survival obsticles. Humans, clutching onto life, lose it, Embracing death is a transformative journey. A bridge between two spaces in which we must pass. Reborn we forever know that the layers are eternal, perhaps competition matters little more then the tortoise and the hare concept. The expansion and contraction, the dialations, um, last time I checked in we're still floating through space spinning, spiralling, oh God we are going some place out of c0ntrol. Navigation is real, it's happening all around us if we're still and listen. There is most definately an energetic accumulative around "works" of deed, but unless the intention is vof irtue behind it's manfestation or movement, your song, your call, your inspiration, isn't this the Dhama Inititive? <laughkaugh>

 

A hissing cat who pretends she's a snake still knows in her heart she's a cat. A butterfly with wings painted to imitate a staring owl's eyes, who scares away a hungry swallow by pretending to be something that can swallow the swallow, still knows he's a butterfly (unlike Zhuangzi who seems to be unable to decide whether he's man or butterfly in an often-quoted fable that, to me, illustrates the confused state of man in general, not of Zhuangzi specifically). So it looks to me as though "fooling oneself" is the kind of insincerity that would clash with "integrity," while "fooling others" for a good cause is not off limits... or at least to tao it isn't.

 

Perhaps once seekers find "zero point" consistantly, nuturing their bud if you will, not smoking it, the textures that make up different forms of consciousness can flow like the master dancer expresses emotion through suggestion from stage distances. The power of natural habit, compressed into the Mimic, the Story Teller, the Poet.

 

Fooling oneself, forgetting oneself, into following the flow of the natural cycles observal by nothing more then being quiet, then nothing more then sacrificing your own forms of dialog in order to accept the finality of the naural order, the music inside and around, takes on mythical proportions when the mechanism of story and heretidary preservation is applied to the medium of kinesthetic awareness, psychosomatic alpha state of suggestability etc... ; at this point the DMT cults of South America start to sound almost psycokinetic, because this people are all seeing the same thing, not different "subjective" results. Much more interesting in my opinion then what's on the 6 o clock news. Playing music by a creek for a week straight in general feels more accumulatively better than say a week in 60 hz cubeville delux. Hans Jenny and Buckminster Fuller were onto something about how we organize and integrate, internally and externally. Funny you see the same patterns in the Green Living section of any bookstore. Greenhouses and the flow of the ecosystem are natural organizers. If only "the system" wasn't an exploiter of the natural order.

 

Sounds like we're talking about Animal Styles & Shaman Dances?

Edited February 7, 2007 by Spectrum

[Wayfarer64]

Hi all-

Sean- I can perceive a noticable change in our society from how it was a few decades ago. So yes I can say that compared to how people were before in our society there is far less caring for our fellow beings than there was in the past. This is not new phenomina. And it is not a projection from within myself. There has been a long history of human kind becoming more and more anti-social in practice and acceptable behaviors.

 

These changes have taken a marked leap away from the caring of or for our neighbors in - (for an easy example of popular TV shows)... The TV show Lassie of the late 50's early 60's always had a moral to illustrate how we need to live together. Most TV shows did. Today it is in marked contrast to any popular show. Common decency has taken a back-seat to self-interest. From Gangsta rap to wars of pure cynicism and greed, we are a failing society. I believe much of the problem stems from living with our minds on our insides and not our outsides as it were. We live in this society as if the universe revolves around each of us seperately.

 

And the changes from truly ancient times is even more stagering. The issue of this thread is virue. In tribal cultures almost every activity was proscribed so to benifit the tribal union and nullify the individual. Ancient China, as most agrarian societies were, was extremely well rooted in an extended family cohesion, where the individual had little meaning. For Socrates there was no virtue other than that of being a good citizen. Plato and Aristotle followed suit in this. Almost all morality is related to how we treat each other and has little to do with how we perceive each-other. Virtue is about being and doing unto others.

 

The wickedest sob in the world has a self-image that is palatable to themselves; at least enough so that self-loathing doesn't drive them to suicide. I heard someone say today that even being a murdering and loathsome bastard, Sadam Hussain had the most personal integrity of any major figure involved in the Iraqi conflict. I am not sure that is so, but the perception of this says volumes about how the other characters are perceived by some. And I don't think that guy was projecting anything other than his distain for our own leadership, not his internalized life.

 

If Sadam was just being Sadam and George is just being George than all is forgiven because they are just being themselves? I don't think that all is usually forgiven so readily by those who suffer at the hands of others.

Particularly those in power. That is why many people around the world are justly appalled at America allowing a man with such obvious short-comings of character and ability to lead us and the rest of the "free world"...

 

Is the worlds' perception of America a projection or an observation?

[sean]

Is the worlds' perception of America a projection or an observation?

My interest isn't in discounting your observations or changing your conclusions. I could challenge your belief intellectually by suggesting that the past only appeared "nicer" because there were more established social norms in America that people more or less followed blindly, often at the expense of their true nature. And that for a variety of reasons - including your sixties, these social constraints in America are missing, resulting in generations left to make their own way without clear or consistent answers from culture and media. So the decisions modern generations make may not look as pretty and clear and consistent as a heart warming episode of Lassie, but, arguably, they have a lot more integrity. Furthermore, American government doesn't strike me as any more or less fundamentally corrupt as in the past, it's just that, again, media covers things much differently. Arguably with more accuracy and less propaganda. Don't get me wrong, there is still plenty of propaganda. But mass media is held to a whole different standard today. Particularly now with the existence of rich social media such as forums and blogs. As far as I can tell, television of the 50's was ALL propaganda for one very narrow view of a white American way of life.

 

But I really don't care to further debate intellectually on this point. I know what my answer would be if someone asked me "Can you absolutely know your opinions on this is true?". So I'm more interested in your response as a person, to the question: "Can I, with absolute certainty, know that most people just do not care about doing good things for other people?"

 

When you ask yourself that question, what comes up?

 

 

Sean

[Wayfarer64]

As far as I can tell, television of the 50's was ALL propaganda for one very narrow view of a white American way of life.

 

But I really don't care to further debate intellectually on this point. I know what my answer would be if someone asked me "Can you absolutely know your opinions on this is true?". So I'm more interested in your response as a person, to the question: "Can I, with absolute certainty, know that most people just do not care about doing good things for other people?"

 

When you ask yourself that question, what comes up?

Sean

 

My response is yes again - I am sure people have become more openly selfish and less caring as a rule in our society. It is now a fully accepted stance to take in our society. Most communal or altruistic motives are suspect. And that may indeed be true. It was always selfserving to be socialy oriented in the past.

 

I do certainly believe that most people do not care to do good things for others as a rule. And I do believe this tendancy has been getting more prevalent over the several centuries since Socrates began the western tradition of contemplating these things.

 

It is most likely that Zaoroastrian teachings out of Persia were the very first to address the common good as a goal for human activity in any organoized societal rules of conduct.

 

That there was always hypocracy in the selfless acts over the millenia is also a given. We may be more honestly selfish than in the past, but I do not see that as gaining integrity. Some assume that primitive man was brutish and anti-social. I believe early man to have been much more naturally social than we are; as the group was the safest and most comfortible state of being. There was absolutly nothing else for a human to do on their own, but subsist. Being ousted from the tribe was the worst punishment for early man, just as it is for other social animals such as monkeys and wolves.

 

Being part of a group entity is natural for people. But now one can be isolated and still remain safe from the world at large. And never even get bored or feel anti-social with the web to link onto. The very nature of our hyper-protective society has allowed us to further isolate ourselves with impunity from social or physical dangers. This is a new phenominom in the world and most pervasive in the USA. It is no longer needed to be part of a larger group in the physical world.

 

 

The propaganda hasn't changed, on mainstream TV. Public TV is still the most consistant source of thinking outside of the box as it were... & Now that Utube has surpassed the network TV stations for viewership things are changing to be more inter-active if also more self-centered. Wharhol's 15 minutes of fame is a clearly formed componant of today's media experience.

 

The Lassie analogy was meant to bring a scornful response. The very thought that such quaint social mores aren't somehow selfserving to the "white" masters of that society is obviously the cynical response of all sophisticates. We can now see through the jargon and rhetoric to see the false and empty promise of cooperative farming communities. It is such a good thing that they exist no longer in most of the economicaly advanced nations...

 

Only silly old Willy Nelson or Neil Young think those suckers should remain a viable source of nutrition in our world. Lets all realize that the corporate-run combines and geneticly enhanced techniques will serve our needs much better than some old hick farmer could. How many care about that situation?

 

Or that the whole industry of album cover art has gone the way of the dinosaurs and we now just download our music right into our ears as it were. Fewer are now going to buy music at a store where the interaction stimulated sharing of tastes and ideas face to face. Same with videos being offered on line or through the web. These are social trends that stem from our advanced technology. But I do see these trends as isolating us one from the other in small ways that satisfy our egos and compel us to live apart and in a far less caring mode of cultural interaction.

 

It may indeed be a natural shift in human behavior, it is real. We do not need to care so we do not. Naturally.

[sean]