The freedom to do what needs to be done establishes individuals in the right to their own perceptions and convictions by making the individual the responsible party answering the question, "Who says so?" Who says what is right in each situation as it arises? "I DO!", shouts everybody participating in the situation. And, there is a catch. They all have to be right about it. But, there is a qualification to the catch: There is no penalty for being wrong. The only stipulation is that each individual in the situation has to use the experience gleaned from the situation in being right about the next situation. We are all growing up here, one situation at a time, in the work to be right about what is called for and needs to be done in each situation as it arises. It is crucial that each individual lives with integrity and sincerity, transparent to themselves, situation by situation all their life long. Cheating, pretending, lying, collapses the social contract among all people at every point in their life together, and creates complexity, noise, confusion and chaios where cooperation and collaboration should be. We all bear the burden of being sincere and transparent-- primarily to ourselves-- in all of our dealings with one another. Deceit, deception and duplicity destroy the bonds of society and throw everything into the "might makes right," and "everybody for themselves," scramble for personal gain at everyone else's expense, ending all hope for the mutual care and concern that is the foundation of the human experiment, and throws us into a situation in which everyone has to look out for themselves instead of one in which everyone has to be responsible for themselves. Mutual responsibility to oneself and one's peers has to be the familial responsibility borne equally by every family in every generation. Where that is absent, we have what we have, with no one to blame but ourselves.
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Jim Dollar's Photography and Philosophy 