Portrait of Li-Qin-Zhao, 李清照, Chinese poet
Li-Qin-Zhao, famous Chinese poet, 1084- 1155. She was born in a family of scholars-government officials received a comprehensive education. Along with her husband, both were poets,, they collected art, calligraphy and epigraphy and were famous for love poems. and essays about bronze artifacts of the Shang and Zhao dynasties. She is known as establishing the first detailed critique of the metrics of Chinese poetry and master of wǎnyuē pài (婉约派) “the delicate restraint”.
Usually remembered the sunset at a kiosk by a creek,
Didn’t know the way to get back as drunkenness,
Too happy to back to a boat so late,
Entered to the depths of lotus by mistake .
Rowing,rowing urgently,
Let egrets feel surprised to fly.
Painting, calligraphy and translation by Janney
Alameda Creek
Through history philosophers have asked —Are people naturally good, naturally bad? If one or the other, is every person good? or every person bad? or are there mostly good with a few bad or mostly bad with a few good? Perhaps some good, some bad an most people in between on a continuum? A graded playing field so to say, a view conceptually metaphored by the bell-shaped or “normal” curve . . .
ie, , most people are more or less good (or bad), with a few real bad or good on the ends, kind of a middle of the road approach.
For me the thing is that if there is a “natural” human behavior then everyone should have it, and those that do not are people who are “unnatural.” That is too confusing, “they” are always the “other people.”
One story through history is some people (group 1) have something, other people (group 2) want it, so group 2 attacks group 1 , maybe loses, but if they win, they steal the desired property and then pass a law against stealing — i.e. stealing it back from them of course.
Is this a natural behaviour ? Is the cycle of humans on earth producing, killing and stealing?
Some see that all people have the same set of natural— basic human— qualities , but in different quantities, ranging more to less . . .
where one difference between people is the ability of the individual to control the negative aspects of the “natural human qualities”—which by the way always happens to be the “self controlled” behaviour of an elite ruling class of people, i.e. the ones who make the laws others are supposed to follow.
This cyclically comes to a climax when the people want back their stuff stolen from them or another group of people militarily stronger attacks, kills and plunders and then , and again, passes laws that killing and plundering are illegal.
Its a non-ending cycle??
Basically every white person in the USA who owns a house owns property on land which was not only stolen from the original owners but stolen by genicide—over 80% of the human beings who occupied this land were systematically murdered to steal this land.
Yet if any of these “descendants of the original people” were to make an armed effort to get their property back the “law and order” would not hesitate to prevent them from doing this or if they did it, would not hesitate to use armed force to get the property back for the descendants of the people who stole it in the first place Where is justice? does it matter, everywhere indigenous peoples have been not successful in recovering their property from those who murdered and stole it from them.
This is why order is more about sending the status quo than is about justice. Just imaging what would happen if in a specific case the US Supreme Court would find in the favor of the original people here and order the return of the land to them.. There would be civil chaos and violence to prevent it. In other words, in the cycle of producing, killing and stealing there is no end, or perhaps just no end that human beings can attain because of their “natural conditions,” —that’s life , what’s life, five cent magazine, I don”’t have five cents, that’s life.
San Francisco
The Earth is finite, people are everywhere in large populations, there are no “undiscovered places” to hide or restart life.You can r2un away from this cycle of violence and if its “human nature” it will always be.
Throughout history civilizations have risen and fallen by violence between those who have and those who do not. During that time political units have grown in size from family-clan to city-states and todays geo-political entities with tax payer funded weapons of mass destruction and professional armies to defend the sovereign tights of countires
Where does it end? When one last band of armed gangsters steals everything from everyone else and creates a “global order” ? Or perhaps better, people learn to get along with other and stop the cycle of killing, stealing property and justifying this inhumane behaviour with a political and/or religious idealogy.
Can we look at the unjust and genocidal path we had to get to the present, sort out the good things and find a way to mold justice with order? Do people who are born on this big rock winding its way through the universe have any natural rights as an individual?
Its unlikely we will ever know who we really are, who is our “natural self,” its a moot question. We seem to be always changing, and science instead of giving us answers to everything in the universe finds that the process of knowing results in more questions, not less.
New Deal style mural at Coit Tower.
EndPapers
Looking down the Sumida river from a bridge to Asakusa. You are basically safe where ever you walk around Tokyo, AND its clean AND there are convenient clean public bathrooms. Just having respect in the public space prevents a lot of crime while making being in public space more enjoyable.
At the stoplight, just a second to make the image, diagonals among perpendiculars framed by complimentary colors
If you had just a minute to breathe
And they granted you one final wish
Would you ask for something like another chance
Lyrics from The Spark of High Heeled Boys written by Steve Winwood and Jim Capaldi
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