Comments on: Podcast 12: All-Encompassing Compassion

By: Tim Boucher

Tim Boucher — Sun, 26 Nov 2006 06:22:48 +0000

Is individualism evil?

I don’t know. But I no longer think it is the “ultimate good” we’ve been lead to believe it.

then how shall we live?

That’s up to you to decide - unless individualism really is bad, then its up for me to decide and for you to follow.

Either way, you’re fucked, right?

By: Justin Hart

Justin Hart — Sat, 25 Nov 2006 20:27:22 +0000

If evolution moves us all toward greater interconnectedness and harmony, and if individualism is to be valued less than some other unspecified values (as you, Tim, wrote in your post on European burqa bans), then how shall we live? Is individualism evil?

By: speedbird

speedbird — Fri, 24 Nov 2006 15:46:55 +0000

We sit indoors and talk of the cold outside.
And every gust that gathers strength and heaves
Is a threat to the house. But the house has long been tried.
We think of the tree. If it never again has leaves,
Weâ€™ll know, we say, that this was the night it died.
It is very far north, we admit, to have brought the peach.
What comes over a man, is it soul or mind—
That to no limits and bounds he can stay confined?
You would say his ambition was to extend the reach
Clear to the Arctic of every living kind.
Why is his nature forever so hard to teach
That though there is no fixed line between wrong and right,
There are roughly zones whose laws must be obeyed?
There is nothing much we can do for the tree tonight,
But we canâ€™t help feeling more than a little betrayed
That the northwest wind should rise to such a height
Just when the cold went down so many below.
The tree has no leaves and may never have them again.
We must wait till some months hence in the spring to know.
But if it is destined never again to grow,
It can blame this limitless trait in the hearts of men.

- Robert Frost, ‘There are Roughly Zones’