Posted by boB on April 16, 2000, at 18:48:42
In reply to To boB and bob and everyone else, posted by In Need on April 15, 2000, at 23:13:47
> > p.s.s. If your are looking for purpose in life, you are welcome in the army I am a member of, which is fighting a multi-millenial war to preserve the web of life and to resist the notion that humans are superior. Knowing that we will not likely win the war in our life time sometimes makes our sacrifices a little easier to offer.
>
> boB, where do I sign up? Lately, I feel more and more strongly that animals are as equally important as people and that they should be protected as any child should be protected, although we don't do a very good job of protecting children.
>I.N. - makes me feel good that you recognize this. As for signing up, I heard Arlo Guthrie many years ago (that's Woodie Guthrie's son. Arlo sang City of New Orleans and Alices Restaraunt, among other songs) Anyway, Arlo said that things in the movements (a general movement for social justice, etc.) are so infiltrated and misdirected people have to act on their own. The citizen's militia's of 1990's fame championed a technique called "leaderless resistance." Both of these strategies imply that people know what needs to be done and act on their own without having to be told what to do. The great thing about that way of activism is you can be a part of a group - any group, such as Earth First!, GreenPeace, or the anti-World-Bank coalitions, but you still have the freedom to move about more or less at your own will. Individaul actors learn for themselves about the conflicts in our world, and about the often competing merits of forces on both sides of those conflicts and act to resolve conflict in ways that help everyone, rather than create an Us vs. Them scenario.
You know best what appeals to you. You can get into groups - heck even like i am participating in this Babbleland discussion, where my philosophy might be very opposed to the dominant philosophy of the group, but because i care for the people as fellow critters, who are living out their lives in the same narrow window of time as mine, I can offer genuine affection and insight, and both teach and learn. And since most of the pagan, animistic souls I side with don't expect to win this struggle in our lifetime, I am spared the delima of needing to act definitavely for immediate results. Things seen in this way are more natural - individuals can at the same time be seperate, autonomous and powerful, but also dependant parts of a system they have only a little power to effect.
Learning to abide the suffering caused by these contradictions makes me more able to abide whatever organicly mediated mood swings i suffer.
As for where to sign up, all I can say is that when I realy need spiritual respite in this life, i tend to gravitate toward either natural environments, or toward people whose lives are lived in a natural environment. Framing houses, or landscaping are great occupations because you are outside in the open air. I hung around a lot of native people, but turning to them as if they are supposed to endow me with some ancient wisdom is a dead end street. Looking in books feeds the mind, but I take everything I read with a grain of salt. Language is a bit of a burden, when you consider that life related among itself for eons and eons in terms far beyond language , and survived for a long time before our unique species started trying to speak in precise words.
Volunteering, helping others, even hanging with people in informal settings who are more in need than myself allows me to look beyond the somewhat irrelevant trauma of my life, and to experience the greater tangle of living and dying of which humanity is but a small part. Participating in protest groups sometimes gives me a sense of accomplishment, though reporting the news of their activity almost gives me the same sense. Study and learning, in highly technical area or in social sciences and linquistic arts seems to help me think more clearly sometimes.
One other tidbit, a native lady I knew once said it is not for people to manage natural resources. They can manage themselves. All we can do is manage the way we get along with our own kind. I sortof beleive that, though I also realize that other living things are my own kind. A popular native prayers is that we would honor all of our relations.
Maybe you, In Need, will come up with the definative answer for all of us concerning where to sign up. I'll have my eyes open...
poster:boB
thread:29931
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/20000411/msgs/30249.html