Subject: [permaculture] long paragraphs and readability
Date: Wed, 26 Dec 2007 09:04:32 -0500
Hi All-
Could you try to break up long paragraphs into short ones?
This is an issue not just for the following item, but for other posts about
which
I haven't spoken up, on this list and other lists.
It is just about impossible for me to decipher
a text block like the one below. If I truly did want to read it, I'd copy and
paste in
into a word processor, and insert my own breaks, so that I could at least
understand the posting.
I acknowledge that sometimes software will strip out the blank lines that we
build
into our emails (like the one that should be between "other lists" and "I
acknowledge".
Thanks, and please don't repeat the long paragraph below if you reply to the
list.
Thanks,
-- Jim
PS- I agree with many of Knat's thoughts on governance. I don't want to have an interchange
between the 700 people on this list about how to govern it, nor do I want
sudden banning of folks from the list.
***********************************
First of all, I guess nobody knows what Jesus really said and what the
church officials in charge tampered in the writings of the New Testament. To
me, as somebody to whom love means the most precious part of life, to whom
love gives meaning, significance and sense to life, this command always
sounded kind of peculiar, as love is rather an emotion over which one has
little authority. I wondered how can I love my enemies. - And so, one of the
most crucial questions arises: What can we do to affect and initiate love. -
But what we can control is our mind, and as compassion is one of the closest
things to love, we are able, at least to a sufficient extent, to put
ourselves through imagination in our fellow beings place. If at least the
Christians would practice this relatively simple and evidently first rank
(command) task, there would be a lot more compassion, understanding, and
most likely, fairness and peace, and as a result of that, love. Without this
a Christian has hardly the right to claim to be such.
I guess most agree that fairness is a crucial precondition for a loving
social environment. Many, if not most, interpersonal, interpolitical and/or
interreligious problems could be solved much easier, or wouldn't even
emerge. As I already hinted at in a previous posting, a society of sharing
rather than the preposterous owning and owing, would be a precondition for
fairness. Property rights, and its resulting redlining and borders which
don't exist in nature, or just very short term temporarily in animal
communities, are, just like money, made up by persons, which probably
through pressure from unbalancedly high populations, were trying to secure
their self-preservation. As it wasn't possible back then to communicate on a
global scale about the improvement of the "hunter and gatherer" lifestyle,
nor were they likely to have the required knowledge and skills (as we have
today) to do so, they saw themselves forced to start developing agricultural
practices, to declare land as their property and to defend it, so they could
harvest the products of their labor. With the consequences of this
development we have to deal today. As long as people hold on to property
rights, there will be others redlined, there will be borders, there will be
the need for defense, certainly with population numbers like we have today,
and this is hardly a viable base for fairness. No wonder that people,
especially the mostly unpropertied people in the third world, as well as
most youngsters, are so frustrated with the conditions they encounter.
Virtually everything they see around them is considered to be the possession
of others.
[permaculture] long paragraphs and readability,
Jim, 12/26/2007