h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

I want to say something about my principles.

1. Humility and Pride. For me the core of this, is philosophical. Humility first of all: philosophical humility, to me, means understanding that one does not know EVERYTHING and also, that one may be wrong about the things one thinks one DOES know. Someone else may be right. There can never be a full 100% certainty about anything.

BUT ALSO - and here's where I make a stand - one MUST try to get as close to certainty as possible, where important things are concerned. As a philosopher, I have questioned and tested all my major beliefs as strenuously as possible, and I feel I have emerged with some that are reasonably certain. That is where Pride comes in: I do have enough faith in my own abilities to think that what I have, is good; I think I have found some truths of which one can be as certain as one can be certain of anything. I am proud of the amount of thought I've given to many questions, and I am proud of the answers I came up with.

In life we all need the right amount of humility AND the right amount of pride. That's one of my 'principles'. Every person who wants to be a THINKING person, must find the balance between pride and humility when it comes to certainty about beliefs - the right balance between certainty, and uncertainty.

2. Love, Care, and Responsibility.

Now for me this is, after the testing and questioning necessitated by the above, the thing that emerges strongest and most certain of all.

It is good to have an attitude of Love towards others and also to oneself. It is better than not having this love. Now like I said above I can't be 100% certain of this, but I'm as certain of it as I'm certain of everything.

We are precious. We are ALL precious. Every single living human being, and all human beings that will come. I really try to love ALL. Myself included. People MUST have the proper love, respect and care for their own selves as well ... oneself is, to oneself, also another human being as deserving of love, care, and respect, as any.

One should care about things that affect oneself and also things that affect others. This care CAN become destructive when one worries too much about things one can't change. But becoming apathetic may be even worse. Or becoming cynical. I find there is much cynicism in the world ... people fully acknowledging all the problems in our societies, but thinking, nothing can be done about it.

The proper balance of care is, in my view (and again I may be wrong but I'm reasonably certain I'm not) is to try and care as much as possible and to try and become *more capable* of caring - as in, becoming more capable of helping oneself and others, so that one becomes progressively more capable of *doing something* about all the things one worries about. One can also expand one's mind to try and think of ways in which one can help out - even if only in the tiniest way.

Other people - no matter what country they live in, no matter what language they speak, no matter what their culture or their beliefs - even people who do bad things and wrong things, even murderers and sociopaths - are to me like brothers, sisters, children, parents ... to me, we *really are* a giant family where I'm concerned about *everyone*. I acknowlegde the world we live in is a mess where people do incredibly horrible things to each other and even to themselves. This doesn't change the fact that I care about them all. I do not have the attitude of wanting to punish people or to take revenge. I don't know the answer as to whether we should punish people by locking them in prisons or even killing them for their crimes. Personally I find the idea repugnant and I yearn for a way to get people to do what's right to themselves and to each other ...

This is my biggest dilemma. The idea of *forcing* people to do what's right, goes against the conviction that people should be free to act, and that it's better if people freely did what's right. The idea of punishing people for what they did wrong, also jars ... many times, the person does not learn a thing from the punishment. Many criminals, after having been punished in prison, are released and promptly commit similar crimes. What's the point of the punishment?? What's the point of hurting someone for having hurt others ... or even killing someone for having killed others?

Maybe these things are necessities because we live in an imperfect world. But ... wouldn't it be so much better if we found a way to get people to behave more responsibly and could really minimise on the amount of 'punishment' we had to deal out?

That's why I want to stress the huge importance of *responsibility*. It is the notion I want to push *heavily*. If we can get people to accept a much, much greater degree of responsibility for themselves and also for others ... by means of *persuasion* rather than force ... and we can reduce crime that way ... to me it would be infinitely superior to the system of laws and legal punishments we have right now.

That's the stand I want to take: things cannot go on like this. We are wrecking the planet, and we are all making horrible messes of our societies. In my own country, the social situation is bad beyond belief. This is also the norm over most of the world. Even affluent societies like Europe and America have horrendous social problems if only they would openly acknowledge it. Right now we're seeing unforeseen economical problems suddenly tumbling a great many people into crisis.

We need to face all of this squarely: our systems, even our economic system, are collapsing and turning dysfunctional. We have made mistakes somewhere. Mistakes in our ways of thinking and in our ways of doing. We must have the courage and the RESPONSIBILITY to face and to fix these mistakes.

Because we are responsible for each other, right now. We're responsible for the kind of world we live in. We even have a responsibility to all the non-human species that share our planet with us. They share it with US - it was theirs before it was ours. We have only been here for the tiniest sliver of geologic time and we act as if we're so bloody important and as if we own everything! THIS IS WRONG!!!

We are responsible for future generations of human beings too! We - and every thing we do, every thing we say, every thing we *think* - are shaping the world they will inherit, and right now, we are shaping it into a monstrosity.

We are responsible! We must RIGHT NOW start realising just how precious we are ... how precious our world is. We must start seeing each other for the incredibly precious living, thinking, feeling and creating beings that we are. We must revive a sense of the SACREDNESS of human life - at the least! Personally I would go further and say we must have the profoundest respect for all forms of life. But we cannot take things for granted any more! We have to stop turning everything precious to shit!

We are responsible for how we view things, for this is the view of things we show others! We are responsible for seeing, sharing, protecting and nurturing all that is beautiful and precious in the world!

We are responsible for *what we do* and for all the effects stemming from it. We must start thinking in terms of consequences. How will what I do affect others? We must start recognising that we have the POWER to CHOOSE to act in a way that is right. So few people today have true self-discipline. So many people do not seem to have the strength of will to do what is right by themselves and by others also. One of the most important responsibilities people have, is to find out what is really going on in the world - in their own societies, and elsewhere also. Because IGNORANCE is causing so many problems ... people are innocently doing things that are causing harm. People are innocently BELIEVING people who are exploiting them, letting massive harm come to themselves as well as to others.

We are responsible for turning the tide of ignorance and apathy! Every single person in the world has a sacred duty to find out what is going on and to start making a *positive* difference, locally as well as globally. We cannot let humanity drown in an unstoppable flood of ignorance and apathy!

We are facing a time of incredible lies. With global warming seemingly now established as really happening ... there will be *thousands* of charlatans offering 'solutions' to our energy and environmental problems ... solutions that won't actually work, but we'll be dazzled enough to believe they will, and somebody will run off with a heck of a lot of money, while nothing is actually done about the problem.

We now need people with the courage to say what must be said. We are now responsible for giving them a fair hearing and pondering what they tell us. We must find out what's really going on, and establish what we must do about it.

It may seem that it is already to late for us. But it is never too late as long as there's still someone who can say, it's not too late. We may be headed for extremely tough times - inhumanly tough times. We are responsible for facing our challenges and making it through them and *not becoming inhuman ourselves*.

Very dear Willem,

Thank you for setting out your thoughts so clearly and vigorously.

You are so right. We are all responsible. However, if you will allow me, I shall think about what you say, and then respond hopefully in a fashiion which will mean that our dialogue can continue and benefit us all. We live in an imperfect world, but as long as we practice kindness and compassion and "love our neighbour as ourselves" there is still hope I believe.

With much affection

Christiane.
AR80
8/11/09 17.05 GMT