No Man is a Three Mile Island
Ross recently posted on the realty that wherever we stand in the world our "world" is only three miles. This is the approximate distance of unaided vision by most people in ideal conditions. He then asks the important question of what the political ramifications would be if people strove to live within their three mile bounds. I think if we took seriously our three mile plot of being we would find that our limits are prettylimitless.
(aside) I'm reminded of the film 1900 where the title charcter is a man who lives his entire life on a steamship, one day he ambarks to a life on shore and the man who spent his entire life staring at the atlantis was overwhelmed by manhattan and the sheervastness of the human life that could happen on that tiny island.
I'm one of those Crunchy's (sans modifier) who believe that the most important political issues are environmental and that the primary political question is "who lives downstream from me"? We don't live in a three mile area we live on a planet. I believe that concern for the wider world pushes us back to our three miles and challenges to live ore responsibly in our global connections, and that politics focused on our three mile area pushes us outward towards those who live up and downstream from us.
posted by Matt Lyke at 4:54 PM
2 Comments:
That may be the best title ever.
"we don't live in a three mile area, we live on a planet".
So the three mile thing was more representative of living locally than a literal three miles. From the simple way I can see about three yards before my vision is obstructed. But still...
I guess maybe it doesn't have to be an either/or, either live locally or live globally, I just don't think humans have the capacity to know how to live ethically outside of a small area. We resort to abstractions or personifying large groups or movements or whatever, because we don't have the face to face.
Mostly I felt obliged to write because I was talking to a guy who has recently been convicted about his selfish individualistic christianity and wanted to start living out what he's learning, and so he says to me, "If I'm going to really live out the gospel I guess I might just have to move to Africa."
Ross
2:42 PM
I know it wasn't meant literally I was just using it as a cipher to represent the danger of sperating ourselves from that which is outside our field of vision.
3:11 PM
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