Every now and again one comes across absolute gems of thoughts.
A sheer serendipitous accident … although gut feel tends to play its part as one digs a little deeper on the basis of a hunch.
What is called “social networking” has not been a past time of mine … until Google+.
Google+ has something about it that makes intuitive sense, and although not much more than 5% of Facebook in its current user population (although it reached this rapidly) it seems to be attracting the less frivolous and more intellectual types, with rich veins of Thought deeply immersed and intertwined in its 40 million plus community.
I cannot specifically recall how I picked up on this online writer, but it would have been something in one of his comments to a stream I was following.
That is the gut feel aspect.
Personally, I am also put off by any form of arrogance or lack of compassion. The scathing and contemptuous have not yet left their high school life style of daily human rights abuse … (besides the availability of guns, is it not also the psychological abuse of teenage peers that leads to Columbines?)
So the combination of gut feel and personal inclination together highlighted this writer.
A few comments later and I saw it time to visit his blog.
Bull’s Eye!
At GreenIt! we are of the conviction that Sustainability is Green … and Green is Sustainability.
And in this holistic equation Harmony and Compassion are crucial aspects.
Without these there is no sustainable Sustainability.
Wherever there is conflict globally due to opposing world views there is no Sustainability.
Not even the Causes or Creeds that are invoked suffice.
Mercy however is one way to achieve Harmony ... and it derives from Compassion.
There is a need for a ‘global corporate mercy’ … at least from those who can and should in the Developed World.
As he says:
“I just learned that student debt is over 829 billion dollars; it has just surpassed revolving credit debt (826 billion dollars). That’s nearing a thousand-billion. There are stories of the rich uncle who pays the loan of his nephew so he can “get on his feet.” I wonder what would happen in North America, if there was mass “mercy.” “Mass clemency,” as Appel puts it, implies that sometimes people don’t necessarily get what they deserve, and that we all are, are part of a story of a higher, better, reformed economy.”
“All I want for Christmas, like Appel, is mass clemency. Think about the resounding freedom of the youth, and the subsequent psychological weight of debt. Think about the “sweetness and lightness” of a culture where students were free to pursue labor that contributes to cultural renewal and social justice–think about the freedom of “more than just okay.” I can’t even imagine an “America of more than just okay,” but I can dream it. And the dream alone prompts the living giddiness that a new social order, could be, may-be, possible.”
The banks in particular need to be attuned to this kind of thought.
Perhaps in Mark Robertson's Christmas Wish - "Mass Clemency" lies the catalyst for Recovery?