More Sense To Sharing

For me, sharing is an activity rather than an entity, a consciousness of, and reverence for, our all too often unjustice-stricken and physically ill world.

Should sharing be unencumbered by any moral or social purpose?

The hegemony of the eye is very strong in our culture. It is time to challenge the commitment to its ocular-centric, “We need to see results” vision-centred aesthetics. Replacing this paradigm with a shift from vision to the very different attitude of listening (and actively responding) to someone/something else, means recognizing that sharing is a form of social work or service.

When sharing is actively engaged with the world, its aesthetic quality is not necessarily compromised. If we consider sharing as a practice, then sharing is an art, an art in the service of something. As a ritual of serving (ars and ritus share the same root, in Latin), sharing may be intensely aesthetic (from the Greek verb aisthànomai, “to feel”), because in responding compassionately (=aesthetically) to whatever it touches, it is helping to create a more beautiful world.

Until the paradigm shift from a vision- to an action-sharing is enacted completely, we will continue to approach our world much as we approach our cars. As held by James Hillman in his interview with Scott London, we go to a doctor and ask:

"What's wrong with it, how much will it cost, and when can I pick it up?" We can't change anything until we get some fresh ideas, until we begin to see things differently.

Sharing may help create a therapy of ideas, actively bringing in new ideas so that we can see the same old problems differently.

The question, then, may be not what sharing should do (sharing is an activity, not an entity), but rather, what it could better serve. Can we change that to which it is in service?