Conversations For Transformation: Essays Inspired By The Ideas Of Werner Erhard

Conversations For Transformation

Essays By Laurence Platt

Inspired By The Ideas Of Werner Erhard

And More

Commitment For The World

Cowboy Cottage, East Napa, California, USA

July 9, 2019

"I am committed to your commitment."


...		answering the question "What are you committed to?"

"This is the true joy of life: being used for a purpose recognized by yourself as a mighty one and being a force of nature instead of a feverish, selfish little clod of ailments and grievances, complaining that the world will not devote itself to making you happy."


... George Bernard Shaw, Man and Superman, read out loud by

This essay, Commitment For The World, is the sixth in an ennead on Commitment:

"What's your commitment for the world?".

That's the question which came up recently in a conversation with a good friend of Werner's (who also happens to be a good friend of mine). It's one of the questions to which I know I have an answer (or answers) and yet ironically I've never pointedly asked it of myself, so I don't even know my own actual answer(s) to it. And it's worth noting and confronting that you don't know something by knowing it. No, really you don't. No kidding. You really know something when you can say, express, articulate, speak etc out loud that which you know, in a way that's getable to others - so I assert authentic knowing lives in language (that's what piqued my interest).

He didn't articulate it as the more colloquial "What's your commitment to the world?". What he asked was "What's your commitment for the world?". OK. Language / words are absolutely critical to bringing forth transformation. Even without having (yet) discovered any answers for myself, it was abundantly clear to me that "What's your commitment for the world?" is an entirely different order of question than "What's your commitment to the world?" (to try both on for size, ask each of them of yourself, then listen where each of them comes from and where each of them lands). When "to" is replaced with "for", it's not the same question - not even remotely.

So I began investigating "What's your commitment for the world?" for myself and my life, given that's the way he asked it (and on another occasion I may also investigate "What's your commitment to the world?" - but not now). I discovered I have more than one answer. Or maybe it is only one answer but in multiple guises.

Our political persuations, religions, practices, traditions, and rituals, are not who we really are as human beings. We're destroying the planet and literally killing each other (and if we're not killing each other, then we're making life miserable and in many cases unbearable for each other) over that which we aren't. My commitment for the world is we've had a massive, global breakthrough in transformation. We've realized how much our pre-breakthrough actions have cost us, a scenario in which no one won (not even the victors) - to the contrary, in that scenario we were all losers. We've realized that "a world that works for everyone" is no longer merely a smart idea: in fact it's a fundamental axiom on which the very survival of the human race and Earth as a planet that's inhabitable for us humans, and sustains us, depends.

We've learned to identify with our minds to the degree that for all intents and purposes, we've become little more than a species of minds breeding ever more minds, while only cursorily questioning who we really are in the matter of our own being. Consider this: any action taken by any human being (that means you and I and everyone) while failing to comprehend whether the source of the action is the mind or their being, can only be inauthentic. Really. We've become not merely a species of minds breeding ever more minds: we've become an inauthentic species of minds breeding ever more minds. My commitment for the world is we realized how much this has cost us. We finally realized being this way never made any difference (not ever), and we're committed to seizing the opportunity to be who we really are.

Listen: would you rather be just another mind with just another feverish, selfish agenda, or would you rather be who you really are? (hint: that's not a trick question). You decide which works best for you and for your life in the world - and more so, for the world itself at large and for all its denizens. My commitment for the world is that we got to the point where the answer to this essential question became a no-brainer, the resulting impact of which is we're inspired to honor it, acting globally.

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