Nicholas Morgan -  Joanna Macy study questions

1) It seems that we have been discussing the concept of humanity’s distinction  at great length.   Are humans distinct from nature?  Are there one or more characteristics that distinguish humans from plants and animals?  As of now, what is your personal thinking on these  issues?

2) What do we gain/lose by putting shifting the sense of self to include the trees?

3) How can one place oneself in the position of another and still respect the competition/predation that occurs naturally?

4) Citing Einstein, Macy claims there is no scientific or logical basis for "construing one part of the world as ‘me’ and the rest as ‘other’" does she prove her case?

5) How would Erwin Laszlo’s theory, that we can not abstract organism from what we know of environment due to its intimate connection, respond to actions taken to preserve endangered species? When it’s at the cost of other species?

6) Bateson claims species and environment are essentially symbiotic, or mutually dependent. In what ways can the environment benefit from the individual? The individual human?

7) Do other species act in the way Bateson prescribes against, acting on the premise "what interests me…or my species"? Are other species more intuitively concerned with the larger body (environment) of which they are a part of than humanity is?

8) What is "systems theory" and what does it help us do?

9) Does the last sentence of section II seem strange to anyone?

10) Thich Nhat Hanh’s poem identifies him with the snake and the rapist pirate as well as with the innocent. How does unity with agents of suffering help to have compassion and relieve suffering?