Right and Wrong4thMarch
by Lisa Wells
2008 ended like any year, in the super charged atmosphere of family, naughty and nice skipping around the rooms of belonging. January and February; winters frozen sleep began to crack and drip as the promise of spring exploded early from the earth. And now we have entered the year's most onomatopoeic month, in my opinion. The spring tease has begun it's cycling, and the long gray stretches between drone on like Mao's long march.
As the soothsayer warned Caesar, beware the ides, we might look to Brutus as a hero or devil depending on which group has our allegiance. That is to say; Naughty and nice, good and evil, right and wrong, are not universal truths but subjective laws that keep our actions in accord our in-group. A clear or guilty conscience has much to do with the ethics proffered by personal relationship, these ethics are limits. Sheepdogs nipping at our heels to keep our actions in line with our tribe. Of course horrendous acts can be committed with a clear conscience, as we saw in Nuremberg, while acts in the interest of liberation that deviate from our in-group (abolition for example) might leave the residue of guilt in their wake.
The old parable goes: a hunter's arrow misses the deer, good for the deer, evil for the hunter. The arrow strikes, good for the hunter and his children, evil for the deer.
And of course I can't help but compare this to our current "economic crisis," as they're calling it. The drag in our sails. As Briar Patch Magazine put it: "What if the economic recession we're presently experiencing is not just a regrettable temporary setback in the never-ending march of growth-fueled prosperity, but the beginning of a painful but ecologically necessary process of scaling back our footprint to a more sustainable level?" What then, when the old stories told by our personal and familial consciences come into conflict with the realities of an ailing planet? What greater conscience might we align with? I honestly don't know, but my instinct is to turn back to the natural world for advice. When in doubt consult the experts. I asked my friend Jim Kinley what he thought:
We concern ourselves with ideas of justice and equitability, right and wrong, assuming that these concepts have a reality or weight outside of our ideologies or desire to be true. Yet wishful thinking driven by ego can't make it real.
I doubt that a Bobcat or Snowshoe Hare worries over much about justice. I suspect that they're more interested in the unassailable connection between cause and effect. Of the uncaring, cold fact that there are times when they must run very hard to either eat or escape with their life. This is their lovely, dependable justice. The irreducible fact that effort brings results.
Sometimes that effort must surpass any bounds of comfort or fear. It must be intelligently directed in accordance with natural laws that we know, as well as we can know through study and observation, to be true rather than being based on debatable politics or ideologies. If we have a goal -say a finer way of life – it will only be achieved by making an effort that will tax our very being. If we want a new world we must pursue it with the intensity of that beast running for its life."
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