How shall we contain the ongoing environmental damage that proceeds around us?

By disallowing all construction in all zones which are still in a “natural” state or which are allocated to agriculture? But that will bring in its wake a strong negative reaction mobilised by many interests.

By instead creating new zones to serve as “lungs” for communities which are suffocated by over construction? But this would be equivalent to trying to repair with one’s left hand what one has damaged with one’s right. 

By trusting the existing rules for environmental protection to work in the best way possible? But that would mean allowing the current mayhem to accelerate.

By increasing a strong national conscience in favour of environmental protection in the hope that the sitation will improve? But by the time that such a conscience becomes effective, there won’t be any natural environment left to protect.

***

THE OTHER

When attending sociology or “applied” philosophy courses at University, I used to be nonplussed by ideas that were put forward about what would be called the Other: that person who is not you but is present in your life-stream and with whom you need to deal. You need to understand who he is, what he thinks, wants, where he comes from, what he wants to achieve... etc. (Apologies that for the sake of convenience in writing, all this is being expressed in the masculine mode, sexist as this is.)

Today I believe I perhaps know somewhat better what the Other stands for. He is the being whom one must consider as if he is oneself, in what he feels, wishes, aspires for – only with his own sentiments and consciousness derived from other experiences than one’s own, which build into a personal context that is not one’s own. How to understand this Other requires an effort of sympathetic imagination.

The Other can be a neighbour, a political adversary, an irregular migrant, one’s comrade at one’s place of work... All are persons just like one is and like one, are experiencing life in a similar way as one is. Fundamentally, the Other is in no way different from yourself.

***

RULES

The Ukrainians have stated that Russian attacks on residential areas can be assimilated to crimes against humanity and contrary to the rules of war. The Russians have declared that the attack carried out against the bridge connecting their country to the Crimea was a terrorist attack  that should be condemned totally, and they blamed the Ukrainian secret services for it. The Europeans introduced economic sanctions against Russia in response to its invasion of the Ukraine, and when Russia then cut off its supply to them of natural gas they proclaimed that this was blackmail.

The query that remains unresolved is the following: in the senseless activity called war, is it true that there is – or that there can be – reasonable rules regarding its conduct? The time is long past when war meant bloody fighting that used to be organised between two rival armies meeting in some distant place like Waterloo or Marengo in order to do their best to massacre each other.