Dear Eugenia

>so good to read anything you write always :  )

Thank you very much. & I can always do with someone who can speak of the 
Greek lexicon and is prepared to challenge my assumptions. But

- I am going to rush this because I am going to _march_ through London 
against the murder in Lebanon -

>yes, ethics - this is what it comes down to. I recently learned the 
>etymology of the word "ethics" too - you'd be surprised: it comes from 
>ethos of course, which literally means "place of origin".

I was amazed, yes. And then I began to rationalise it; and I thought of the 
slang / colloquial (Am.) usage _I know where you're coming from"

And then I looked it up. That volume of the Shorter OED is not here. (??? I 
think the mice are getting more ambitious and taking whole items of paper 
home to eat - usually they prefer interference shielding from Belkin modem 
cables) But I looked it up on dictionary.com & that traces it back to Greek 
_thos, character._

So that one's ethos descends from the kind of person one is - if that is 
right

(Does this derivation and yours indicate an idea that people from place a 
are more ethical than people from place omega? If so, I reserve the right 
not to deduce anything from it!)

I think we should be careful of deductions like

> So, one's ethos is a direct descendant of one's cultural heritage

because language is metaphorical and is subject to metamorphosis according 
to linguistic trends not scientific / philosophical analysis (off the top of 
my rushed head I offer yoof slang _wicked_ as an example of this) and - re 
genetics - I resist the idea that ethical behaviour is an output of the 
genetic code. That way lies Auschwitz

Having said which, I do agree that detail of ethos is often partly and 
largely a matter of cultural heritage - but it is not purely a product of 
cultural heritage. I disagree, therefore that ethos is defined by one's 
geography of origin in terms of practice.

(I imagine being robbed and the perpetrator being acquitted of crime on the 
grounds that robbery is ok where he / she lives)

Now then, big breath, turn the chattering radio down, deny myself a cup oif 
tea a little longer... I nearly wrote about the world city etc in our 
previous exchange; and maybe now I should express some view as youi argue 
that

>geography is redefined in the digital age, and is replaced by time + access

Not that I *disagree; and I may come back on that presently. But what I 
wanted to say was that we are hardly living in a world city given the number 
of people who are *not online. I think the world city is an idea that has 
been in the air for a while - McLuhan, for instance, who came to it for 
slightly different reasons.

There is a truth to it, but there may be other things to be said (see for 
instance a section in E M Forster's THE MACHINE STOPS where one of the 2 
main characters ponders the pointlessness of going anywhere because it's all 
the same; and the other character sees the need to smash it all up and start 
again in order that anything / something will be worthwhile

I'll leave that bracket open, Black Mountain poetry style, because I want - 
always - to be cautious about the benefits of being webbed... There's a bit 
in C S Lewis's THAT HIDEOUS STRENGTH about "pragmatometry" which is often 
taken as a visionary prediction of the web; when it was clearly meant as an 
attack upon Haldane-style technological progress

I think that if one looks at Aristotle's ETHICS, it's clear that he was far 
from suggesting that we all share the ethics of our city. Personal action 
comes into it. There is a lot more to it than allowing one's to be seen, 
anonymous or not. And it is in that - good or bad action - at least which 
leads him on to TREATISE ON GOVERNMENT / POLITICS, how we govern ourselves 
in a city... I *think this is not a perception that the city is one form of 
civilisation but *the form of civilisation, leaving the country to idealised 
shepherds! but I feel less sure of myself there

I've expressed disagreement with anyone, blogger or not, who suggests _I 
have no politics_ is a valid statement; and I have to disagree that being 
wired shares our ethos. Do my ethics change when I am not online? NB It's 
not that I want to offer Aristotle as a model of governance; just that the 
bits that are not anachronistic still serve as a commentary which needs to 
be answered as one of the bases of our ideas

For instance, he documents a wide variety of political arrangement, not one. 
Perhaps you are being a little more Platonic here, going back to the idea of 
what a word may mean and arguing from there - Aristotle starts from what 
people are actually doing and generalises from there...

There is also the idea of governance. If we *did share ethos by sharing city 
then there would be no need to have any politics. Being in the city is 
public; but politics is public and private, it includes what is not 
disclosed behind the avatar

Also there is a differential in our access to the web.

If it were simply that

>bloggers are citizens of the same city, sharing ethos.

then, having established the fact of _Mitochondrial Eve_, we'd have done 
ethics, having already done Politics by going online

This cannot be so

Plug-and-Behave?

Making art is ethical, an attempt at it... And perhaps what makes it 
ethical, when it is, lies in cutting out the bullshit that we are heirs to

And poetry is a lot more than processing experience

I think you are expanding the meaning of _art_ when you say

>Blogging is a form of art then

e.g. a lot of blogs are a form of propaganda!

Expanding the idea of art is good, but surely not if it leads to a 
generalised / undifferentiated category

I hope that was still good to read. I am off now to protest against what I 
see as Racist Murder. I wonder what Ethics I shall find myself marching 
alongside!

I hope the police don't shoot me

Smileys and Emoticons

Lawrence 

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