humble attitudes of highland altitude

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Wandering through my textual garden…

Is that a frivolous trope for my library?

No: The work of having gathered preferred flourishings into my own constellation mirrors an oriental holism of value that can prevail over ephemeral news, soon forgotten in disjointing days of our times.

Our times?

We have in common this medium, what may be said, preferring to be here, giving time to this.

We have in common spaces, events, values, and engagements, which can be shared heights and depths, horizons and immanences—skies, divinities, Earth, and mortality.

But wanting solitude for belonging here, there, in some mirrorplay of [t]here is presumed.

I easily feel I’m seeming to dismiss others’ known unhappiness, and so much impoverished suffering far away through the news, as if I’m insignificant relative to very present need of genuine neighborhood, community, regional health, global justice, sustainability, humanitarian care, and so on.

Lives come and go, maybe remembered after death, but leaving us to our own designs for endearing youth deserving to grow well, to flourish, then giving to new lives, aging to move on, and maybe briefly remembered.

Easily realized is that most important to Our being [t]here is that Our kind of lives continue across generations, hopefully to be better than we could advance. We live as well as we do thanks to legacies of Our gardening humanity which should be always progressing for more generations’ better sense of shared humanity being in Time.

That’s so abstracted from daily life.

Yet, leadership in Our world (by default, if not by election) must genuinely have fidelity to its relevant humanity, be that ensuring healthy societies (required for healthy markets) within their domain; or be that orientation to the future of life on Earth which obviously can’t be humanely left to chance.

There is leadership, exemplary or not. There are indeed Extinction Level Events (ELE) which only collaborative global political leadership has chances to prevent.

To whom belongs the responsibility for future generations’ chances to flourish? Who has the chance to make life better for near and dear others, as well as for oneself, by living as if “parenting” the future of humanity?

Anyway, gardening ideas is fun.

Provincial life has little understanding of the real scale of being, which is Our Gaic village (merely trite now?) at planetary scale prevailing over all other kinds of life, so obviously Present that conceptions of ELE are prey to people feeling bored by incessant pessimism about dangers. “Change the news feed.”

“Let’s have opportunities prevail,” they (we?) may say—or live as if presuming to have said that, as if the difference between that and opportunism is an avoidable annoyance.

Let there be optimism, plain and simple.

No. Let there be humane constructiveness prevailing over dangerous opportunism.

Yet, who’s to ensure a good scale of prevailing good?

So many persons distrust expert discretion to design policies which prevail over opportunism.

“Too much” merited claim to know better looks opportunistic.

The teachers we trusted are tired. The authorities are hard pressed to stay principled. Disagreement on what is “principled,” what principles are, how fair fidelity lives well across generations, becomes congestive public noise engineered by marketing of divisiveness which keeps people distracted.

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Think of humanity as being a highland, midland, and lowland: The midland of good lives (let’s say) can’t escape the lowland of common-
place humanity which dominates economic reality. A highland, which defines itself, easily looks elitist to lowlanders; highland even may need to protect itself from low resentments.

The trope of levels is useful, and common: a “lower class” aspires to live a decent quality of life. Aspiration for higher education mirrors the appeal of leading examples.

Yet, the trope also figures a profound shift in humanity, commonly associated with “modernity”: We develop our lives in already developing worlds, not merely growing like plants or other animals into better fitting a given structure. Our form of life is constructivist, beyond structuralisms.

Where once upon a time, mattering belonged to what the gods say, better mattering is what “We” do. Yet, better than that is mattering which may be fruitfully original. A person can individuate their life beyond ultimate givenness into giving way to singular flourishing, even exemplarily.

That kind of thinking has a standard version in developmental psychology: pre-conventional (historically paternalist), conventional (ideally socialite-ist), and post-conventional (maturely autonomist).

But mature autonomy doesn’t, as such, anticipate intergenerational influence or desire noteable originality which contributes to progress.

Master teaching has an orientation to the potential of others which is beyond mature autonomy (e.g., beyond capability to profess or advise expertly). Important influence is better than expertise (let alone fame). We must teach trust in understanding.

Understanding humanity developmentally entails that people’s potentially better quality of life can be personal (individuating), not merely environmental, not merely more adaptive to change (i.e., beyond a sense of “evolving" which is natural: ecologically more fitting).

We are the species which can do ecological designing. We are the progressive species who mapped that kind of value into natural change (calling that “evolution,” though it’s not really). Our evolving is post-natural. We are evolving a kind of being beyond biological emergence of self-formative intelligence.

We can make sense, beyond being adaptively responsive to what’s perceived. We can determine futures. We can conceive humanity as both demographic and caring to advance general interest in future generations. We can be good ancestors, designing news ways of planetary thinking.

So, wandering through present associations of mind, I’m intimating
a kind of singular gardening of conceptuality which is nebulously mirrored by my little library (albeit a preferred hundred-or-so books among 4.000+ owned, mostly stored), my singular bibliophilia, also mirroring a freedom of venturing which is humbly devoted to being
as fair as I can be to and for our times.