Tuples and Attributes

The other night I went to bed a bit disheartened about things in general. As I lay there feeling a bit sorry for myself, I thought about how nice it would be to have a warm body to hug. Brindy was in her bed on the floor, so my obvious choice seemed to be to invite her up on the bed.

My immediate reaction to that thought, though, was that it would not be fair to the dog. After all, I don’t ordinarily allow her up on my bed while I’m sleeping and it didn’t seem right to confuse her just to satisfy my own need. How was she to know why the next night it was back to her own bed?

This idea of not treating other beings as objects for my own desires is something I have tried (very imperfectly) to practice for a long time and I started thinking about where I had first run across the concept. I was sure I had first seen it in Martin Buber’s book “I and Thou”. I know I tried to work my way through that tome when I was 26 or 27. I could picture reading it in my first apartment in Reseda. I can still even see a page in the book (left-hand side, middle of the page) when the idea enveloped my mind. I don’t know now if I ever finished the book or not, but what I took from it has stayed with me all these years as being part of a worthwhile guide to how to live an ethical life.

Since I had never looked at it again, I went on Amazon to see what was written about it; wondering if I was, indeed, thinking about the right book. Here’s a quote from the Amazon write up:

Throughout I and Thou, Buber argues for an ethic that does not use other people (or books, or trees, or God), and does not consider them objects of one’s own personal experience. Instead, Buber writes, we must learn to consider everything around us as “You” speaking to “me,” and requiring a response. Buber’s dense arguments can be rough going at times, but Walter Kaufmann’s definitive 1970 translation contains hundreds of helpful footnotes providing Buber’s own explanations of the book’s most difficult passages. –Michael Joseph Gross

“Rough going at times” is indeed what I remember about it, but apparently I did get the gist of his argument. I still haven’t found many better guides to how to treat others.

Any one else have a book that made a profound influence on their life?