From: Dan Glover (daneglover@hotmail.com)
Date: Sun Jul 11 2004 - 23:36:22 BST
Hello everyone
>From: "Mark Steven Heyman" <markheyman@infoproconsulting.com>
>Reply-To: moq_discuss@moq.org
>To: moq_discuss@moq.org
>Subject: MD the metaphysics of free-enterprise
>Date: Sun, 11 Jul 2004 13:59:57 -0700
>
>Hi Dan, David-M, and all,
>
> >David:
> >
> >I get your drift. The allocation of resources
> >is tricky business. In fact my concern would be
> >less with respect to inequality within our technological
> >societies than with making it possible for people to do things
> >to explore their lives and not be too obsessed with commerce
> >and materialism, such as taking off on a bike trip. Wealthy
> >kids seem to get lots of chances to play at life, poor kids
> >have far fewer choices.
>
>On 11 Jul 2004 at 11:57, Dan Glover wrote:
>If only I had been born rich instead of handsome who knows what I
>could have done with my life. But I guess we all have to play the
>hand dealt us. RMP wrote of his time at Blake and it struck a chord
>with me. While the rich kids were riding to school in their limos and
>dreaming of being doctors and lawyers I was out in the field picking
>asparagus so I could buy some decent clothes. Things haven't changed
>much. Sometimes I feel like I'm still out there in that field,
>walking up and down the endless rows. I remember the early morning
>rain on the roof meant I could sleep in. That's my only solace.
>
>msh says:
>This is a beautiful paragraph, Dan, as were those you wrote earlier,
>about the never-failing light bulb. I enjoyed them very much.
Hi Mark
Thank you for saying so. I do enjoy writing improv fiction. And the part
about being born handsome instead of rich is fiction although I wasn't born
rich, that part is true. But that's what I want to do when I grow up. Be a
writer. Actually I'm polishing up my first collection of short stories
though it won't be ready to publish for a year or two yet.
>
>But you're position seems to be that things are the way they are, and
>there's nothing we can do about it. You now, if you're born rich,
>good for you; if not, tough. I realize that this is all related to
>the "suffering is illusion" ideas of Eastern Philosophy, and maybe
>it's correct. But if it isn't, and suffering is real, and we CAN
>help alleviate it, no matter how little, then aren't we morally
>obligated to try? Even if our attempts are futile, or are pre-
>determined and therefore illusory choices, what harm comes from
>trying?
None whatsoever. That's what I mean by sometimes I feel like I'm still in
the asparagus fields of my youth. Suffering isn't an illusion, to me, but
Buddhism teaches that perhaps I am the illusion. It's been my experience
that the world is made of sorrow so the only way suffering could be an
illusion is if the world itself is an illusion. I don't believe that to be
the case.
I like the term that Carlos Castaneda used in his books: "controlled folly."
It means something like this: even if our attempts are futile, and even if
we are fully aware that our attempts are futile, we still can choose to act
as though the attempts matter, as if the attempts really do mean something
-- to comfort a dying person, for example. So it is in the act that we find
meaning, not in the result.
Thank you for your comments,
Dan
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