Personhood

November 30, 2010 at 10:51 am · Filed under contraction~expansion

Consider the following approach to defining a “person” in a legal and moral sense:

A person is an individual in any form that shows at least some signs of internally created intention, rather than only simple automatic mechanical responses, in its action.

In other words, if a thing changes it’s responses to external input through some apparently internal process, and isn’t clearly entirely and directly being controlled by external forces, then we might say that this thing is an individual person with what appears to be at least some awareness of it’s own actions (it is self-aware, at some level) and thus probably has some personally driven motivation.

This doesn’t mean that things that by our assessment don’t show unpredictable behavior, and thus some internally motivated intention, don’t have any rights, it simply means that we have an option for a simple test of how to prioritize our morality and relationship with other individual things in our environment. We can still value things that are simple and mechanical, but we might choose to place more value on things that do show uniqueness and variability of action.

In other words, we might value diversity!

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taking a stand

November 29, 2010 at 2:56 pm · Filed under contraction~expansion

I stand for creativity, love, evolution, health, growth, and life – the earth, generally, and more specifically, my close family and friends, especially my husband, and my own self.

What do you stand for? What are you willing to risk your comfort to defend/support/create?

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giving thanks

November 25, 2010 at 5:37 pm · Filed under contraction~expansion

I am grateful for the rare few individuals who are willing to stand up for a better world. I am thankful for their inspiration, as we collectively face challenging times, and work to create a world where EVERYONE is taken care of, unconditionally, so that we can all be our best, most healthy, compassionate, creative, and inspiring selves.

And I am grateful to those of you who support me and/or David in our journey to a better, healthier, more stable future. Your support means so much to us.

Thank you, so very much!

Love,
T

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