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




Perfect Medium

Monticello Road, Napa Valley, California, USA

August 19, 2011



"Earth's the right place for love: I don't know where it's likely to go better."  ... Robert Lee Frost transcribed by  
This essay, Perfect Medium, is the companion piece to Friend Of The Planet.

I am indebted to Palmer Kelly and to Glenn Fry who inspired this conversation.




I like the way Robert Lee Frost distinguishes what's right about Earth. What's right about Earth is right, right now - just as it's always been right about Earth through the millennia, even when it doesn't look like it.

Wait! What do you mean  Laurence by "even when it doesn't look like it"? Are you suggesting when Life is wrong, when Life is bad and horrible, are you suggesting when Life on Earth clearly doesn't work, that it isn't  really wrong, that it isn't really bad and horrible? When Life is wrong and bad and horrible, are you suggesting it isn't really  this way? Are you suggesting it only looks like  lt?

In a word ... yes.

And in case you missed it, my suggestion that it only looks like  it, goes both ways. The quality on Earth which Robert Lee Frost distinguishes as right, doesn't come from Earth. It's not inherent in Earth. It's not intrinsic to Earth.

Let me say that again: "The quality on Earth which Robert Lee Frost distinguishes as right, doesn't come from Earth. It's not inherent  in Earth. It's not intrinsic  to Earth.".

That's the second part of this equation. Here's the first part (which is the essential communication in this conversation): the quality on Earth which looks like  it's wrong, which looks like  it's bad and horrible, which looks like  it's not working, doesn't come from Earth either. It's also not inherent in Earth. It's also not intrinsic to Earth.

Especially if you're skeptical (and if you're skeptical, you may also call yourself a realist), you may say given the dire circumstances and diminishing quality of Life on Earth, Life on Earth isn't right at all. You may say Robert Lee Frost is just making it up.

If you say that, it isn't a stretch. It's easy. There's a lot of agreement for the point of view that Robert Lee Frost is just making it up. But what's not so easy to see is the point of view opposing  Robert Lee Frost's ie that the quality of Life on Earth and bad and horrible, is also made up.

Earth is the perfect medium for Life. It's also the perfect medium for love. And perhaps what's so perfectly fascinating  about Earth is whether you see this perfect medium as wrong or whether you see it as right or whether you don't see it as perfect at all, Earth has no qualities, be they wrong / right, bad / good, not working / working, other than how you say it is. And why this is such a god‑damned  hard conundrum to grasp is when you get it, it puts you fair  and square  and front  and center  in charge of the quality of your life on Earth.

Robert Lee Frost is quite right: Earth is  the right place for love. It's also the right place for everything else we human beings choose to get up to while we're here. But that  he's right is only my point of view. And if you say he's wrong, that's only your  point of view. Earth itself is too busy being Earth to bother with any inherent or intrinsic qualities of either being wrong or of being right. That's  what there is to get from this conversation: neither your point of view nor my point of view are wrong and neither are they right. They're just points of view. Granting each other the space to have differing points of view without being righteous  about them and without confusing them with "the truth"  is the genesis of the possibility of peaceful co-existence.

I like the way this confirms Earth's the perfect medium for Life. Indeed Earth's the right place for love.



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