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306.365: Let me suppose, then, that the idea of a relationship with an impersonal system of life, personified by our analogical thinking, is not absurd. The question still remains, "what standards are internal to it?" Only then can promissory justice with respect to the Earth begin to get a grip. The standards cannot be generated by an expectation or even a work to be done. An impersonal system expects nothing of me, and the system does not generate a job, even a normative niche (a role). No, the expectations have to come from me, from what I expect myself to honor in my relationship with the system. And where can I locate those self-expectations *from* my understanding of the relationship? The immediate answer would be: from what I value or respect in the system. These each generate specific self-expectations, i.e., to honor what is valuable, to respect what is respect-deserving. In other words, the impersonal system of life can demand behavior of me, behavior I ought to live up to, from what is valuable and respect-deserving in the system and from my self-expectation to recognize these things. My relationship can consist of norms that I attend to in respecting myself in the relationship. "The Earth's given me a chance to live. Do I act to show I deserve it?" Only if, you might say, I honor the Earth's value, respect what deserves respect in it as a mode of respecting myself! Of living up to myself.
307.365: In today's corporate-style-managed militaries, soldiers, too, are often treated like the Earth under industrialism -squeezed to produce effective results, trained, equipped, even drugged or biotechnologically modified, they are used up and left over, so often polluted by the process. The ones responsible for it all sit back, far away from the destruction and left-over toxicity (real and psychological), and drink cab blancs. ... Against this dishonoring of the tragic seriousness of self-defense, military conscience and honor are like the outdoorsman or farmer who know how to use the Earth in respect.
308.365: I was shocked tonight to see that the same depersonalization that allows corporations like BP to turn the Gulf's ecosystems into numbers without sentimental value, much less moral value --this depersonalization is present in the U.S. government's discharging and treatment of combat veterans. These women and men are just numbers, boxes checked off -"Did you kill anyone?" "Were you wounded?" "Have you ever had thoughts of suicide?" Check, check. "Thank you. That will be all.". Resource used. This "human resource". This object-non-person who is really a person. ... Around us all, vast, impersonal bureaucracies -governmental and non-governmental, public and private - organize our economy of scale; we have chosen it and them; and they run our veterans down, run down the Earth, drive wars based on lies from being seen for what they are, defer and dissolve responsibility. Here, there is a unity of problem across many domains, a unity, too, of cause. The problem is depersonalization -even of the system of life to which we can relate personally- and its root cause is the economy of scale without which industrial society would not be. In this light, from veterans too, we need a post-industrial society whose organization is also post-bureaucratic. A post-mass society. A society that maintains the relational, the personal and the responsible so that in any part of its large, large reach -there is a community. Should it be a sin, a flagrant violation of professional responsibility, to be impersonal?
309.365: The sound of the bell in the wind.
310.365: \In memoriam, R.W.S./ The leaves -red, and green, and red - are tonight like so many other things, red, and green, and red. Our sore eyes, the newness after crying, the love of trust.
311.365: Jumbled and thrown together --and apart-- our personal histories (and *our* personal history, when we are in families, friendships and all kinds of loves) emerge out of unknown origins and the translucent, blurry, disregarded texture of our youth. As we gain our footing in this life, forms become clear up ahead and some clear markers appear in our sense of the past. But where in all this can nature be a part of what made us, a part in this most personal memory that burdens the insomniac at night? In the analogy, of course, in the textured chorus of trees as wind rises through them along the hills. In the sense of time and the open system all that nature brings. It let's us be obscure and clear at once, a living thing which is mostly energy and a good part blur...
312.365: As I complete these "Earth thoughts", I become aware of time and of the decisions I make. Each day, what I write is significant in small ways to me, and what I don't write is -in a sense- more significant. In the space of possibilities, the actual carries responsibility --the responsibility of having chosen how to use my time and to locate and take up space. This elementary awareness -awareness of decision, opportunity, and resource- is a good part of what environmentalism ought to be about. Analogously, we ought to be aware of our time on Earth, inside Earth-time's limits and contours, and cognizant of our use of space, of what opportunities we have and resources we have used. The good, short writing is then like the house we decide to build, or occupy, or restore. Is it respectful of time, of Earth?
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