otherness

The human in what it is objectively ever since its beginning is two, two who are different. Each part of what constitutes the unity of the human species corresponds to a proper being and a proper Being, to an identity of one's own. In order to carry out the destiny of humanity, the man-human and the woman-human each have to fulfill what they are and at the same time realize the unity that they constitute.

To become a true global citizen, one must abandon all notions of otherness and instead embrace togetherness.

Life can be generous, but leaves us with a trilemma: How can we reconcile three diverse features: ___, 'me' and the 'others'. Since the ___ entails what I want; the __e_ what others expect of me and the __thers_ what others themselves want. The bridges between "individuality", __urroundings_ and "otherness" can be abysmal and very often waiting to be restored. (__ am on my own side, but I can listen _ )

If you__e an Orthodox believer, then what sustains this framework is the obligation that you follow. But if you live in a democratic, liberal world whose motto is: __ake choices and manage your choices according to what is good for you,_ then there is a built-in tension between that which connects and that which divides. Between the material and the intellectual or ethical. Materialism is not a dirty word, but in this tension between the individual and the material on the one hand, and the communal and the ethical on the other, we are at the end of an age in which the material and the individual are triumphing.

The shadow escapes from the body like an animal we had been sheltering.

How fair is it to judge a person based on his sexual preferences, or their __therness_? As long as a person is not __armful_ for others or not violating the rights of others, I think we need not be bothered about their personal lives, whom they love or whom they marry. It is a personal choice. I think the most important thing about a person is his or her __umanity_, kindness, selflessness not their __ex life_ (only as long as he or she is not violating the rights of others or causing harm to others).It is entirely a disgrace on humanity to __iscriminate_ a person solely based on their __therness_. I am surprised to see how the society stands against or make fun out of __ay_ people, who are totally harmless, ignoring the __uman_ in them, but feel __K_ with __apists_, __ex maniacs_, __rostitution_ and __exual violence against women and children_ occurring in Sri Lanka every day.

Plants are not like us. They are different in critical and fundamental ways. As I catalog the differences between plants and animals, the horizon stretches out before me faster than I can travel and forces me to acknowledge that perhaps I was destined to study plants for decades only in order to more fully appreciate that they are beings we can never truly understand. Only when we begin to grasp this deep otherness can we be sure we are no longer projecting ourselves onto plants. Finally we can begin to recognize what is actually happening. Our world is falling apart quietly. Human civilization has reduced the plant, a four-million-year-old life form, into three things: food, medicine, and wood...

They want us to be afraid. They want us to be afraid of leaving our homes. They want us to barricade our doors and hide our children. Their aim is to make us fear life itself! They want us to hate. They want us to hate 'the other'. They want us to practice aggression and perfect antagonism. Their aim is to divide us all! They want us to be inhuman. They want us to throw out our kindness. They want us to bury our love and burn our hope. Their aim is to take all our light! They think their bricked walls will separate us. They think their damned bombs will defeat us. They are so ignorant they don__ understand that my soul and your soul are old friends. They are so ignorant they don__ understand that when they cut you I bleed. They are so ignorant they don__ understand that we will never be afraid, we will never hate and we will never be silent for life is ours!

I was always amazed at Cambridge how quickly people appeared to take offence at everything I said, but now I see plainly that it was not my words they hated - it was this fairy face. The dark alchemy of this face turns all my gentle human emotions into fierce fairy vices. Inside I am all despair, but this face shows only fairy scorn. My remorse becomes fairy fury and my pensiveness is turned to fairy cunning.

So what do you want? Does what happens inside show on the outside? There is such a great fire in one__ soul, and yet nobody ever comes to warm themselves there, and passersby see nothing but a little smoke coming from the top of the chimney, and go on their way.

He wanted to limit me to his own investigation of who I was . . .

Christianity grasped perfectly that there is an element in the apparent contingency of love that can__ be reduced to that contingency. But it immediately raised it to the level of transcendence, and that is the root of the problem. This universal element I too recognize in love as immanent. But Christianity has somehow managed to elevate it and refocus it onto a transcendent power. It__ an ideal that was already partly present in Plato, through the idea of the Good. It is a brilliant first manipulation of the power of love and one we must now bring back to earth. I mean we must demonstrate that love really does have universal power, but that it is simply the opportunity we are given to enjoy a positive, creative, affirmative experience of difference. The Other, no doubt, but without the __lmighty-Other_, without the __reat Other_ of transcendence.

I think_ that love encompasses the experience of the possible transition from the pure randomness of chance to a state that has universal value. Starting out from something that is simply anencounter, a trifle, you learn that you can experience the world on the basis of difference and not only in terms of identity. And you can even be tested and suffer in the process. In today__ world, it is generally thought that individuals only pursue their own self-interest. Love is an antidote to that. Provided it isn__ conceived only as an exchange of mutual favours, or isn__ calculated way in advance as a profitable investment, love really is a unique trust placed in chance. It takes us into key areas of the experience of what is difference and, essentially, leads to the idea that you can experience the world from the perspective of difference. In this respect it has universal implications: it is an individual experience of potential universality, and is thus central to philosophy, as Plato was the first to intuit.

There is this question of otherness_.So just as it is blood alone that binds people to defend one another in the face of danger, on the spiritual plane one person will struggle to help another only if this person is not __ifferent_, and if, quite aside from opinions and convictions, they share similar natures at the deepest level.

There is no rational commensuration between what affects us and what affects others; the first we sense physically, the other only touches us morally.

When we are looking for the unexpected, we are not only looking for the unexpected in ourselves, but we are also curious about the unexpected in the behavior of the others. So as to know the others, we have got to learn how and where they differ from us. By understanding this, we are able to establish an uplifting link with otherness. ( "Looking for the unexpected" )