Immaterialism 7

dan wrote:99,

What role for US........?

We’ll just be playing out our Manifest Destiny...... No...... Yes?

And we will be building Jerusalem......

Build it, and they will come.......

Without this mind-set, which Buber called “I-It,” there would be no science, economics, or politics. But, the more we engage in such thinking, the farther we drift from “I-You,” his term for addressing other people directly as partners in dialogue and relationship. Only when we say “You” to the world do we perceive its miraculous strangeness and, at the same time, its potential for intimacy. Indeed, it’s not only human beings who deserve to be called “You.” As Buber wrote, even a cat or a piece of mica can summon up in us the feeling of a genuine encounter with another: “When something does emerge from among things, something living, and becomes a being for me . . . it is for me nothing but You!”

.... the world is holy because it is where we can encounter God. That is why any theology or politics that seeks to bring this world to an end—through an apocalyptic transformation or a total revolution—is fundamentally opposed to Buber’s Jewish ideal.