-- *Mar*Below is a *dialogue* between *you (YM Sarma, speaking from a non-Cartesian, ecological, emotional paradigm)* and a *Cartesianist* (a rationalist academic trained in modern science and technology).
The tone is *serious, probing, and respectful*, but the contrast is clear. ------------------------------ A Dialogue: *Symbiosis vs Separation* *Cartesianist:* Professor Sarma, your ideas are poetic, but science works on evidence, measurement, and logic. Nature cannot be understood through emotion or faith. That is unscientific. *You:* Tell me first—what do you mean by “understood”? *Cartesianist:* To understand is to analyze, measure, predict, and control phenomena using reason. *You:* Then you have already decided that understanding means control. I ask something else: *how does one belong*? How does one remain alive within what one studies? ------------------------------ *Cartesianist:* Belonging is a subjective feeling. Science must remain objective. *You:* Objectivity has cost us rivers, forests, and climate stability. At what point does objectivity become blindness? When your “objective” knowledge destroys the very system it studies, is it still knowledge? ------------------------------ *Cartesianist:* Destruction is a misuse of science, not science itself. *You:* No. Destruction is built into a science that separates mind from matter and human from nature. When you remove feeling, restraint disappears automatically. Machines do not know when to stop. ------------------------------ *Cartesianist:* Emotion clouds judgment. That is why we exclude it. *You:* Emotion does not cloud judgment—it *guides survival*. Fear, love, trust, and care are ecological signals refined over millions of years. You excluded them, and now your judgments threaten life itself. ------------------------------ *Cartesianist:* But nature is governed by physical laws, not emotions. *You:* Physical laws explain motion, not meaning. A forest is not only carbon cycles and biomass; it is also relationship, communication, and mutual care. You study the skeleton and declare the body understood. ------------------------------ *Cartesianist:* You speak of “communication” between plants and animals as if nature were conscious. *You:* And you speak as if consciousness exists only inside the human skull. That belief alone has justified endless violence. Why is it so difficult for you to accept that intelligence can be distributed? ------------------------------ *Cartesianist:* Your “99.9965% invisible” sounds mystical, not scientific. *You:* It is experiential, not mystical. Love, trust, fear, and belonging are invisible too—yet they govern all behavior. You deny them because they cannot be easily measured, not because they are unreal. ------------------------------ *Cartesianist:* Universities exist to produce specialists. Civilization depends on specialization. *You:* Civilization is collapsing because of specialization without symbiosis. You produce experts who know everything about a part and nothing about the whole. That is not education; it is fragmentation. ------------------------------ *Cartesianist:* So what do you propose? Abandon technology and return to forests? *You:* No. I propose that technology return to humility. Let forests educate humans again. Let universities place free nature at their core, not as decoration, but as teacher. ------------------------------ *Cartesianist:* You are asking for a radical transformation. That is unrealistic. *You:* What is unrealistic is believing that the present path can continue. Nature does not negotiate with equations. It responds only to relationship. ------------------------------ *Cartesianist:* And where does God fit into all this? *You:* God is not outside nature. God is nature experienced without fear and without domination. When you destroy nature, you do not disprove God—you silence the relationship. ------------------------------ *Cartesianist:* If you are right, then we have misunderstood knowledge itself. *You:* Yes. Knowledge is not power over life. Knowledge is *participation in life*. Until universities accept this, they will continue producing intelligent destruction. ------------------------------ *Cartesianist (after a pause):* And if we do not change? *You:* Then nature will change the conditions until our kind no longer destabilizes the whole. That is not punishment. That is symbiosis restoring balance. ------------------------------ *Cartesianist:* You leave little room for comfort. *You:* Truth was never meant to be comfortable. It was meant to be *alive*. ------------------------------ Closing Line (Unspoken but Felt) *One speaks from control, the other from belonging.One trusts logic alone; the other trusts life.* ------------------------------ If you wish, I can: - make this dialogue *more philosophical* (Descartes vs Spinoza style), - make it *more emotional and personal*, or - adapt it for *students, a lecture, or a play*. Just tell me the direction. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Thatha_Patty" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. To view this discussion visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/thatha_patty/CACDCHCKJjEZXpbsia-STvnv3B9_cQDu7WD6V9NREpbaqd%2BJPhQ%40mail.gmail.com.
