The 4 Rs

So today's theme is about the 4 Rs. They are

Rights
Responsibilities
Respect
Restraint

These qualties, in balanced proportion are what is needed for a civilized life. These, not stuff, however useful and pleasurable the stuff is.

As a member of American mainstream society, I put Rights first, couldn't help it. After all, that's the message we hear all the time, isn't it. And it really comes down to 'MY Rights'.

Well, Rights only can exist meaningfully if each of us takes on the Responsibility to Respect other's Right to exist and try to gain a safe and free life. This is what the founders of this country, at their best (and who is at their best at all times? Or their worst?) were working for.

Mainstream Americans need to get a new focus on the role Responsibility plays in a civil society. And to be mindful of the question Responsiblity to whom. Those to be considered are all that live and contribute to life. This includes those living beings we all see, but it also includes the life in the soil and in the rock. It includes beings we really do not like at all.

In this I also have to concur with my Haudenosaunee friends that 7 generations is an appropriate time scale to consider.

Whoa, this means going a lot slower about new things than we have.

So along with Responsibilities, and Rights, come Restraint, and Respect, these last two are values rarely exemplified these days, muchless encouraged.

It might help if we remember that while we often think of democracy, free enterprise and capitalism as inseparable social realities, they can be decoupled. In fact, it is imperative that we begin to examine what this decoupling might mean for the long term health of ourselves, our families, our nation and our planet.

More later,

molineux