What we do to each other matters, for that is the very being of our humanity.

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Seth says

interesting how popular this meme has been on Facebook: 15 likes and 6 shares.

though that is probably for the pictured meme, which was already viral, rather than my take on it.

If you are going to build a house, it matters whether how you build the foundation and it matters what materials you use to build the structure. That is the sense in which what we do to each other matters. My analogy, what we do to each other matters, AND is the being of our humanity, ... was a new thought for me ... thought in response to Mark's apparent not wanting to be just a communal hive. It expresses part of the relationship i want to have to Nature and the rest of humanity. It works as far as it goes, but there are elements that yet need to be integrated in it.

Mark de LA says

I acknowledge your response to the Rudolf Steiner prayer for children:

Seth on FB: ... Problem is anyone's "God" necessarily refers to just some human story.

& my response to your pictorial epigram

Mark on FB: ... so a story begets an epigram.

god says

seth 2014-08-27 14:26:46 17690

source: mark
Yeah, that didn't work for me. Anyway I have been preaching the Golden Rule for a long time encountering mostly skepticism about workability here on fbi.

According to the story in the Gospels it was Jesus who said ...

source: Matthew 22:34-40
"But when the Pharisees heard that he had silenced the Sadducees, they came together. And one of them, a lawyer, asked him a question, to test him. "Teacher, which is the great commandment in the law?" And he said to him, "You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind. This is the great and first commandment. And a second is like it, You shall love your neighbor as yourself. On these two commandments depend all the law and the prophets."

... which of course is the golden rule. The billboard just leaves out the rubric.

I went a tiny step beyond and said it matters ... that loving others is what creates our humanity.

Without that we might just as well go back to being slime mold as far as i care.

Yep good stuff. I'm unclear about how it creates our humanity since humanity is already created. A future humanity may separate away from the evil part today & form something which evolves still further leaving the evil part today to evolve like the animals do today.

Seth says

source: God
Yeah, nothing is intrinsic there. But just an aggregate of what we do, think etc. ..doesn't really mean anything either. You might as well say mankind & be done with it. It is all an abstraction.

I don't know about that, "God", it feels absolutely intrinsic to me. Nothing can be more intrinsic than my own experience ... that is really all that i have ... er, all that i am. My experience is not an abstraction. Though, of course, any description of it necessarily is.

Incidentally aggregates are just as very real as distinct individuals. Notice all the beings which make up a forest. Would you relegate the living ecology or a forest and all the complex relationships and interactions of its beings to just an "aggregate" ?

Mark de LA says

seth 2014-08-27 12:52:18 17690

source: mark
I acknowledge your response to the Rudolf Steiner prayer for children:

Seth on FB: ... Problem is anyone's "God" necessarily refers to just some human story.

... well i probably should not have made that comment in response to RS's poem. I always liked the poem ... a lot ... and it still can almost bring tears to my eyes. That everything we associate with this "God" word is just what people make up, is a different matter entirely. Unfortunately that was the only word that was close enough to RS's thought for him to use.

Actually it was not specified in any way, much as things like infinity, being, everything & nothing while having words attached cannot be specified. I assumed Anthroposophy for those who cared about the prayers.

god says

seth 2014-08-27 15:33:05 17690

Such is like the distinction everything. You don't really have experience of it. Rarely does one have a whole distinction of one's own experience.

god says

Might as well go for the distinction lettuce-kind ..

Seth says

choy 2014-08-27 13:17:13 17690

seth 2014-08-27 12:55:04 17690

source: mark
& my response to your pictorial epigram

Mark on FB: ... so a story begets an epigram.

... i don't know what you mean here. Sorry it is too dangerous for me to guess. If it is an important for us to consider in this context, can you describe it more directly?

If God is just a story, your epigram was signed (begotten) by yet another story.

... i noticed that too ... i think what happened is that sombody signed a fictional characters's name to that epigram. i used it to gain attention to what i wanted to say about what makes up humanity.

Seth says

god 2014-08-27 16:06:15 17690

seth 2014-08-27 15:33:05 17690

Such is like the distinction everything. You don't really have experience of it. Rarely does one have a whole distinction of one's own experience.

i'm having extreme problems resolving your prounouns to be somethig specific. For example, "Such" what, and experience of what "it". I hesitate to guess those ... too many choices.

Seth says

source: mark
I'm unclear about how it creates our humanity since humanity is already created.

Well your getting to the meat of what i am saying. Just what is this distinction that we have named "humanity", anyway. What would an ultimately wise alien creature perceive it to be? What part of what we are today will grow up into something that will be worth all this effort? Me, i don't think it will be our worst habits ... nor even our beautiful bodies. Rather it will be what we do that works and the spirit that makes it work. That is the spirit we create when we cooperate, agree, understand, and love each other. The negative stuff is just what we struggle against to do what actually creates our be-ing.

In other words: I am what i think, feel, and do. We are collectively what we think, feel, and do. We are not just some assemblance of individual static bodies. Perhaps not a popular meme, but none the less works for me.

Mark de LA says

seth 2014-08-27 16:51:34 17690

god 2014-08-27 16:06:15 17690

seth 2014-08-27 15:33:05 17690

Such is like the distinction everything. You don't really have experience of it. Rarely does one have a whole distinction of one's own experience.

i'm having extreme problems resolving your prounouns to be somethig specific. For example, "Such" what, and experience of what "it". I hesitate to guess those ... too many choices.

such refers to the topic under discussion i.e. aggregates & aggregation. it refers to the word everything.

Seth says

ok, then apparently ...

source: mark said
aggregates is like the distinction everything. You don't really have experience of everything. Rarely does one have a whole distinction of one's own experience.

yep, that is true

.

but i have my own experience ... and by observation and empathy i can imagine others. it is not necessary for me to experience the actual aggregate's experience for me to presume that it is very similar to my own, yet vastly enlarged. it's like going to a party and having fun, and seeing those around me with the same expression on their face as i have on mine, and extrapolating that the be-ing of the party is fun.

or work it from the opposite direction. have fun, imagine the contribution of a part of your being contributing to that fun.

oh sure these are articles of Faith that must be assumed. in that regard they are similar to believing that Christ is your savior (or pick your favorite Faith based belief). Thing is this matter is based upon your own experience, the extrapolation is what needs of faith.

Then too you can ask, if it does not matter to humanity what you do to your fellow man, then who/what does it matter to? It matters to a house what you build it with. Me thinks it matters to humanity what what we do to each other in approximately the same way.

Seth says

Then too we there is a way to personally experience an analogous relationship. Remember I asked what would an ultimately wise alien creature think mattered to humanity. Well we can experience that ourselves by observing an ant colony, or a bee colony. As we study these hives, what kinds of thing matters to what we think this being is. Perhaps we will determine that it maters to ant-anity that individuals touch feelers when thy meet ... or that it matters to bee-dom how they swarm to choose a new queen ... etc, etc. So then, i don't think it is much of a presumption that I think it matters to humanity what we do to each other.

Seth says

source: mark
To me this is all theoretical abstractness. I am exiting now.

Well fact is: the brain is a collection of interacting networked cells, humanity is a collection of interacting networked individuals. When something looks like a duck, and walks like a duck, we expect that it might also quack like a duck. To proclaim that thought "theoretical abstraction" is just habitual disagreement for its own sake. Bone Voyage.

Incidentally throughout nature, as described by fractal mathematics, we notice the features of the microcosm repeated in the macrocosm ... or said differently no matter at what level of detail we examine a fractal pattern the same features are repeated. So i think it is natural for us to expect that what happens within an individual will be repeated outside in what those individuals comprise.

What we do to each other matters, for that is the very being of our humanity.

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