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permaculture - [permaculture] Khalil Gibran offers a context for commenting on other people's work (was Intellectual property)

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  • From: Chris Wardle <cjwardle@gmail.com>
  • To: permaculture@lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: [permaculture] Khalil Gibran offers a context for commenting on other people's work (was Intellectual property)
  • Date: Mon, 16 Nov 2009 20:16:59 +0600

Dear permaculture colleagues,



While the discussion has basically been characterised by goodwill from all
sides and some excellent options and evidence have been presented for open
public access for the PDM, I am disturbed by the somewhat holier than thou,
litigious, belligerence and antagonistic responses this debate has spawned.



We are all welcome to our opinions and must take responsibility for the way
in which we express them. I am guilty myself of coming across too strongly
at times, but I hope the author and his publishers are following this debate
and we can get a view from them. At the end of the day it is their decision
to make, not ours.



As for my view - for what little it’s worth - I don’t see a lot of
difference between the arguments put forward for intellectual property
rights and those attempting to justify plant variety registration.



However, if we were to concentrate on our commonalities rather than our
differences, perhaps these words from Khalil Gibran's epic poem 'The
Prophet', offer a way of contextualising our disparate and at time
desperate, views on other people's work.



*"... Often have I heard you say, as if speaking in sleep, “he who works in
marble, and finds the shape of his own soul in the stone, is a nobler than
he who ploughs the soil.*

* *

*And he who seizes the rainbow to lay it on a cloth in the likeness of man,
is more than he who makes the sandals for our feet.”*

* *

*But I say, not in sleep but in the over-wakefulness of noontide, that the
wind speaks not more sweetly to the giant oaks than to the least of all the
blades of grass;*

* *

*And he alone is great who turns the voice of the wind into a song made
sweeter by his own loving.*

* *

*Work is love made visible.*

* *

*And if you cannot work with love but only with distaste, it is better that
you should leave your work and sit at the gate of the temple and take alms
of those who work with joy.*

* *

*For if you bake bread with indifference, you bake a bitter bread that feeds
but half man's hunger.*

* *

*And if you grudge the crushing of the grapes, your grudge distils a poison
in the wine.*

* *

*And if you sing though as angels, and love not the singing, you muffle
man's ears to the voices of the day and the voices of the night."*



Sent with love and salaams from Pakistan,



Chris Wardle.

~~~~~
Online at Facebook/Skype/Twitter/LinkedIn: cjwardle
Mobile: +92 333 784 1679
~~~~~




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