K: not only do we have relationships with people and idea’s but
we have a very clear relationship with the past…
for who we are today, both individually and collectively,
are the result of the past and the interactions of
both people and ism’s and ideologies…
this interaction, this relationship that those in the past had
with each other dominant even today…for example,
the event called the “American Civil War” is an relationship
that still influences us today…over 150 years later…
and we also have one more relationship that should be high on
anybody’s understanding of relationships… and that is our relationship
with the future…what we do, how we do it, how long we do it,
who we do it with, and why, we interact with others, influences the
future…the past and the present interacting, creates the future…
whither you have one or two or three TV’S, depends on what influence
you wish to leave into the future…by conserving resources, we
profoundly influence the future as does laying waste to what
resources we have today influence the future…
our actions today influence what kind of future our children have…
we have a relationship with the future and we help determine
that future by our actions today…
my wife and I have a goal, which is to leave our daughter the condo
we live in and that goal is going to impact her life… that goal will
influence her life… perhaps we can leave the condo to her, perhaps
not, it all depends on events that occur today and events that will occur
tomorrow… we have a relationship with the present, today and perhaps that
relationship will change in the future, which means our present goals
and possibilities might also change…
all of life is a series of relationships, some permanent like family and
some not so permanent, TV’S and couches and cars……
I believe that values are a permanent relationship……
values like love and justice and hope and peace…
I believe that these values being permanent, (but the
meaning of justice, hope, love and peace… change
over time… what was justice to the Greeks, what is treated
equally in relationships, has changed from the Greeks to our time…
(the value of human life has changed, recall that the Greeks had
and valued slavery… slaves… and that is not justice, not being
treated equally, but today, at least in the west, we don’t condone
slavery except in terms of capitalism… but that is another story)
when Plato asked, what is justice? he answer was and will be different
from our answer and why? because we live in a different time, a different
place with a different environment and different values……….
But the word justice still exists because we can have a relationship with
justice, but as every relationship is different from person to person and
society to society, we exists in a different place in regards to the concept
of justice…
we can exist within different ism’s and ideologies differently…
in other words, we can exists within an ism of capitalism if, if
we can have another formula of success which is not the accumulation
of wealth, but the advancement of who we are and what is possible for us…
Kropotkin