Martin Buber – I and Thou (Notes)
Jenny Mackness,
Jenny Connected,
Sept 02, 2021
If you are religious, then you should see God (or Allah, or Buddha, or the Tao) in everything. This means that you should no longer view them as objects to be consumed, commodified, classified, etc., but as possessing will and grace, so that you "become bound up in relation to it", transforming it from 'It' to "Thou". That is what I take to be the central message of Martin Buber's I and Thou, nicely summarized here by Jenny Mackness. And I think it's central to connectivism, especially the George Siemens account of connectivism. This sort of message is common in a lot of religious writing (I think back to Spinoza as a starting point) and it's not wrong. And I don't think you need to be religious or spiritual to see the continuity between yourself and things in the world; they are literally part of you, and you of them. And if you're religious - well, I don't see how you could be religious and not experience this continuity. I don't see how you could be religious and externalize the Other.
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