Lucy Weir
I'm doing what I can to reorientate my thinking from the atomistic individualism of the global North to something more spirited. But what is spirit? I would say that Dan Dennett had it right: spirit is attitude. We therefore don't need to posit an alternative reality superimposed on the world of matter. Within matter there is already this capacity for awareness, and within awareness, the capacity for a particular quality, to use Pirsig's brilliant dichotomy (though in my view the two are not alternatives, but coexist within the same space). We are not separate from, but interactive features of, natural systems. If we could realise this, both in the sense of becoming aware of it, and in the sense of making it real, through how we act, then a stewardship role would be the natural outcome. We have had a huge impact on the planet, but we can mitigate many of the harms through awareness of the nature of interaction, that it is a dance between internal and external worlds. We cannot create utopia, but we can live better. That, I think, is what is important.
Metadata
Econaut: Lucy Weir
AlphabeticalOrder: Weir, Lucy
DeepestValue: Love as Compassion, an attitude that encompasses kindness, curiosity, joyfulness in another's success, and a desire to mitigate another's suffering, and also the capacity to retain equanimity, without judgment and to learn from, actions that create suffering, and harm, which emerges when we realise how enmeshed and how unavoidable our and all other reactions are to the situations and conditions we find ourselves in.
RelationshipWithTruth: Truth as uncovering, letting go of beliefs that obscure, so that we see what we are and subsequently, how we are to live, notably with regard to other beings.