 |
 |
Dear Eugenia
Partly, I envy your easy recognition of origins in your language. It’s a bit more complex in English!
>dictionary.com cannot tell you all you need to know.
I don’t doubt that, Eugenia. It’s all I had.
I think, though, that you push the boundaries of _ethics_ a little.. I think it is more than _ what is allowed and what is not_
And that I guess is why Aristotle spent so much time going into the issues surrounding the ethical
But also, your example of differences of behaviour that can seem so outlandish as to be insane is a good one.
Maybe it is a sign of the ethical that one pays close attention to others! And looks, I mean, to deeper patterns
> But anyway, I agree -ethos is not purely a product of cultural heritage. It is, however, partly defined by it.
Yes
> We, no matter how many of us are out there - share a space: a virtual, digital space: some kind of geography.
I won’t disagree with this but I do urge you to remember it is a metaphor
> This does not necessarily relate to Foster's (and many others') idea of not going anywhere or not. I feel this is an entirely different conversation. People who are part of the "digital world city" might physically travel or not. Their citizenship in this world city might prevent them from travelling or urge them to do so. The way i see it, this is irrelevant. Just as irrelevant one's actual place of origin is to one's travelling habits.
> Perhaps I expressed myself poorly. One character in the story – I think her name is Vashti – is concerned with *ideas. She lives surrounded by machines and shares (nb) ideas with other people. This, as I understand it, is not a good idea from the author’s point of view. To concentrate only on ideas is psychotic… Another sign of this and a consequence is that there is no point in going anywhere because it doesn’t provide difference. The physical is abolished
Not everyone will see that as bad, of course; but it is a tendency of digitisation to abstract from the physical
> I am not a fan of Aristotle - i find him far too arrogant in his brilliance. I prefer Plato who feels like a medium of brilliance rather than its generator.
Fair enough… I did once have a
beer in the Aristotle Café in
Aristotle may have been a pain; but I prefer his reasoning to Plato’s i.e. his starting points
> Whatever each of them might mean by ethos though, they both examine its expression - the behaviour that comes as a product of it. And once you live in a city, you political ethos is examined. If you lived in the fields, your rural ethos would be examined, if you lived underwater, your submarine one...[…] The ethos we, citizens of the world city, share is actually this: to share. To be on line is an act of participation.
What went through my mind reading this was “Clearly then”. In the translations I have read, Aristotle often says “Clearly then”; and whenever he does I start paying attention – on the rare occasion I read him. Sometimes, he uses this “Clearly then” to imply a “Therefore” when it is no such thing. He does it brilliantly, but there's still a gap
My reference to the rural was
*meant to ridicule the pastoral idea… I spend a large part of my time in what
passes for the rural in
There may be differences of detail and interpretation in the search for the happy life and or the good life. Aristotle stresses the *kind of life over the *details (I feel I am at the edge of my knowledge here and may be in danger of stepping in the brown stuff at the edge of my path); but what matters is striving to the good / godlike, says A
So, if location is not a final differentiator and if the local aspect of being wired is metaphorical (necessitated by our having invented a somewhat new experience), I think we are still stuck in the one ethical “place”
The difficulty is that there are so many of us. We cannot know all of our community no matter how prominent we become, no matter how long we live. Being wired adds to that if – yet (?) – it makes no difference
> the core ethos of the web: sharing.
Well, it was or seemed to be. I notice now there is a crowd of carpet baggers in here with us
> Being wired does not share our ethos, you are right. What I believe is that it actually IS our ethos, the ethos that we share.
Another “clearly then” perhaps?
I share in all sorts of ways. I go online when I need to… I really don’t follow you. Being online is habitual for me. No more
One thing you write i do
not understand:
" If we *did share ethos by sharing city then there would be
no need to have any politics.
By this I mean I assume that Politics arises because we all have different ethics and behaviours. If we were all agreed exactly how we should behave then there would be no need of talking about it
> What do you mean? Politics is the way you deal with the city, the way you go about negotiating your relationships within the city, the way you choose to connect , to communicate - right?
Not always, no. Those who carry mobile phones are potentially tracked. Video cameras… Underground gates… Police checks… I triedload to down a canon brochure the other day and they forced me to register. A physical brochure is easily taken; but they took the opportunity of the electronic to demand data
> Public includes what's private in a city. it does not exclude it.
In the above context, yes. I was giving my somewhat doubtful account of _The Politics_, with its emphasis upon the domestic establishment. Still, it persists, in that there is something that can’t yet always be got at (“If my thought dreams could be seen, they’d probably put my head in a guillotine”, not Dylan’s most elegant line)
> How could you share ethos, be sharing city, and not have politics?
Indeed. Politics is necessitated by our not sharing ethos
> And i remember you were particularly fond of that idea, which is why I thought you'd remember it.
I grow old, I grow old
> I don't think that making art is ethical necessarily.
ok
> (I take it that you mean good by ethical).
Seeking it (as in A rather than P)
> so good the police didn't shoot you - I'd miss you!
I had asked KallKwik to print me a t-shirt saying _Don’t shoot, I’m not Brazilian_ but they thought it was “too political”. Just as well. It was a lot of money for a joke
> And such an interesting report of the ethics you marched alongside. Well, you all shared the ethics of protesting - to all of you (how many thousands really after all?)
I have no idea how many. The organisers say 20000 and I’ll go with that. Remaining surprised. The police (7000) always underestimate – except for the Countryside Alliance march, a rather reactionary phenomenon, when the police overestimated
> marching is good. And so you did it - you participated. The way you did it was your politics. Different politics, same ethos. This can often be a problem, which is why i have stopped marching.
It was interesting to be among
people so different to me That’s one thing I like about being online even
intermittently – this conversation e.g.
I’ll end with an etymological
story. When quite young, my step daughter staggered into the kitchen one morning
and her mother said “My God, you look bedraggled”
Some time later, the girl asked her mother what that word was, and would she write it down…
I imagine that she didn’t look at it for a while; and then, suddenly, some time later, she began saying “I look bed raggled” i.e. after a night sleeping, when you get up you look “raggled” by the bed
I am still bed raggled. I must away to the bathroom and complete the process of getting up.
Ta for your attention to my doubtful ponderings
L