Texts that point towards a different way of being on this planet.

2022-01-07

I believe the market-capitalist system I live within is fundamentally flawed and is leading to planetary destruction and a great deal of human, plant and animal misery.1 I wonder if there is a better way. I want to imagine it can be replaced with something, it just isn’t clear what that something might be or whether replacement is even possible, given that a great deal of wealth and power has been accumulated through it. I have come across a number of texts that point to a different way. I don’t know if this different is viable or even interconnectable across the texts, but I would like to explore it and see what comes of it.

The texts I have found informative and inspiring to date are:

  • Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, Robert Pirsig
  • Buddhist Economics, E. F. Schumacher
  • Braiding Sweetgrass, Robin Wall Kimmerer
  • Moby Dick, Herman Melville (?)

I will add more texts as I go.

My next step, when I am finished with current reading, will be to re-read these texts… where this inquiry goes from there will be determined by what I find/rediscover in the Texts.

  1. I am aware that many people claim that overall, the world is a less violent and easier place to make ones way in. That the overall condition of humanity has improved markedly during the unfolding of this market-capitalist system. I am aware that I lack, at present, sufficient knowledge and understanding of how this might or might not be true and that I will need to investigate more to determine whether this premise is true or false. Intuitively I believe it is true, but evidence for or against it must be gathered and weighed. ↩︎

2021-07-13

02 The Daily Read:

… yesterday i found and downloaded a book on animals in Issa’s poetry… i was expecting a book about animals as symbols of the culture… it turned out to be a book about animal ethics and what Issa has to teach us about treatment of animals… i believe that animals feel and think more than commonly given credit for, that one should always handle them with respect… i regret killing ants on the kitchen counter… i cause to be killed, or in some cases, kill animals to eat… so i am not that interested in the idea that we should never kill animals, that it is unethical to do so…

… Issa was a Buddhist1, and worried about the karma of killing insects, yet he did kill insects… my perception is that Buddhism respects all life…

… nature is constructed such that one animal is food for another… it’s a cycle of life… humans perhaps have reached the place where they think about the consequences of their actions and are capable of offering respect to animals, even as they kill them… Native Americans are thought by many to have had this down… one takes only what one needs to survive… one takes with honor and respect… one gives thanks for what one is able to take… this is an ethics of resource treatment i can get behind… i am mindful of the book Braiding Sweetgrass, by Robin Wall Kimmerer in which the Native American attitude towards natural resources is laid out in full…

  1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kobayashi_Issa ↩︎