awhile ago over...

at joe's (mmmm....scotch) blog there was a discussion about connecting with others, well i'd like to expand on that in some way.

we live in a state. a civitas. why?

well many philosophiers have tried to answer this very same question. plato believed it was because no individual was self sufficient. so we formed a state to 'help' each other out. however; this state would form in such a way that the state would look at itself as an individual. the details are not needed here.

aristotle believed that humans are political animals. we need to form a state. a state grows from a family, then to a village, and then after we have many villages we have a state. it is in the state were humans are able to reach their true actuality. where we become moral. the state is very important for this.

the list could go on, but i want to get to my point.

in our 'society' here; i believe that we have forgotten the importance of the state, and it's unity. not only have we become more individualistic based; where everything is 'me, me, me'; we lost the idea of the state somewhere. anything that is said about the government or state is deemed bad, or evil. this whole 'big brother' thing. (side note: i hated '1984'). with this lose of the state has come the lose of community. closeness. who are your neighbors? much less the guy next to you at a bar. i went to a certain bar for years, all the time. and the only ones i felt close to was the ones i was drinking with, and the wait staff. just me? i don't know, but i couldn't find a 'friendly' face. everyone was too involved in their own space.

you may not like what is going on in the political world, but that does not take away from the importance of the state. meaning you should not throw away the baby with the bath water. the state is important. community is important. has i have gotten to know my neighbors, i have this feeling of saftey in my neighborhood.

understand what the state, and society is here for. the importance of community. unless you'd like to go back to the state of nature?

so maybe we should get a bunch of people together, and go down to a bar and put delilah on the box, and play it and sing it loud and proud over and over and over again. until we are kicked out (would we have to pay our bill?), or people start singing along.

[shalom...]