At 12:58 PM 2003-09-25 +1200 I wrote "things and not-things"; LIM & GV {at: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/LessIsMore/message/11719 after signing-in}

· This is about: cardboard boxes, shooting someone you want dead, enemy nations, Morris Travellers.

· I have just turned a thing into a not-thing.
  I found a big corrugated cardboard box in our garage (see why, below), and had to get rid of it. It was a thing, and I had to deal with it.

· So I burned it. Then while standing under the trees at the bottom of our garden, where we burn paper rubbish, musing about the small pile of ash on top of several decades of ash, I realised there _was_ no more cardboard box, there was no _thing_; I had turned it into a not-thing.

· The US Administration over the years has totally ignored lots of groups of people ("nations"); they were not-things. Afghanistan was one, maybe Iraq was another (from time to time).

· Then in the late-80s-early-90s certain people (the New American Century PNAC people in particular), decided the American way of life was being threatened (specifically: access to low-priced oil), and that certain groups of people (nations like Iraq and Afghanistan) were obstacles to "what America had to do", enemies, and so became things. To be removed.

· IMO the vast majority of homicides-by-gun in the USA occur because one person similarly sees another as a thing, that "has to" be turned into a not-thing. Being simple-minded, childish, reaching for a gun and shooting this "enemy" is usually seen as the obvious way to turn this thing into a not-thing.

· Fortunately for the world, there _are_ a minority of Americans who can and do see that their personal world is more complex than that, and recognise that there are other ways to turn obstacles, enemies, into not-obstacles, not-enemies. Such as by talking with them with the hope of changing both their and your goals so as to be much more compatible. Clearly, this requires that the other person or nation not be treated as a thing. Coming to some accomodation with the other person or nation may require outside mediation or arbitration, if agreement can't be reached by bilateral treaty discussions. In the case of individuals: police, social agencies, psychiatrists, judges, and so on are all generally available. In the case of US Administration attitudes: the UN and the World Court are available, _provided_ US negotiators and Government recognise that America cannot expect (childishly) to just get what it wants.

· Finally; in our garage is a 1959 Morris Traveller that has been owned by one or other member of my mother's family since new. It was bought by her second husband (in South Africa - he was a "Coloured" school principal), well before he met her. With our intention to turn this small, cheap, aging house through 90 degrees, to become our retirement home (most of the time; we'll also have some 10 sq.m "chalets" on our farm), we have to remove the equally old garage (a separate building), and specifically the _thing_ that has to be dealt-with first, the Morris Traveller (the wood-and-aluminium station-wagon version of the Morris Minor). It has been almost buried in what is mostly rubbish like the above cardboard carton (and there's my bicycle, lying on top of the Traveller).
  To turn this thing into a not-thing, I have to find a buyer. Tomorrow morning, if the guy who's coming to look at it is sufficiently interested. My original plan was to do the repairs myself, but as I've gotten older, my energy had diminished; I'm also no longer interested in having my own fossil-fueled vehicle.

· A tiny extension of this way of thinking: traditionally women are supposed to see spiders, mice and snakes as things. But they can be turned into not-things by means other than killing them; you can seal your house (and cupboards) so they can't get in; you _could_ even feed them, so the not-thing is an individual to be watched and learned-from.

David.