Emergent third...

Have a watch of this video... there's something vaguely interesting in the bit at the start.

Let's assume there's something in this variation of GMH's inscape/instress thing... Would it suggest that nothing has intrinsic value, only instrumental value? I don't want to think of it like that... what I am instead suggesting is that value arises out of relationship or encounter with one who is different... The difference matters... you are not looking in a mirror, you are acknowledging the other as other and valuing their otherness. And the you who is valuing can be wasp or sycamore seed or fox or broadcast journalist or honey fungus or ecoli. Encounters are what create value. Something isolated and independent has no value. Something entangled in a vibrant multispecies community has great value. Something who is the only something that provides something someone needs has ultimate value.

So then I think of, say, plastic. Lots of people want it for various reasons. But when is it ever needed? For false teeth, perhaps? But do I need the face of a goddess? Maybe, just maybe, I do need that more than I need the plastic pot my prepared vegetables came in? How would I parse that out?

And the bacteria who have learned to digest plastic (or is it fungi?), maybe they now need plastic?

I think there has to be, there just has to be, a reckoning toward richness, diversity, complexity. But maybe that's just my preference?

Kairos says you can't know good or bad in the span of a human life, even a human civilisation. But surely we can know that rape is bad? Does that mean I condemn cheetahs and mallards? Ah... disvalue... in the same way that I can value the apple I eat (which doesn't make it "good" but does make it valuable), I can disvalue the person who harms me? What's the difference? Is it just all subjective?

I guess it comes to the idea that that which enables flourishing at each level (cell, organ, animal/plant, habitat, planet) is valuable.... something that is valuable at one level may not be at others, but something that is valuable at all levels, that, yes that, can be said to be good.