Modes of Caring
Care (verb)
To feel concern (great or little), be concerned, trouble oneself, feel interest.
To care for: to take thought for, provide for, look after, take care of.
To have regard, fondness, or attachment for (a person).
To take care of, guard, preserve with care
The Oxford English Dictionary
Mode (noun)
a manner of doing; method; way; a particular type or form of something; a designated condition or status, as for performing a task or responding to a problem;
In philosophy, appearance, form, or disposition taken by a thing, or by one of its essential properties or attributes.
Modes of Caring
A manner, method, or way of performing a task of concern
A manner, method, or way of performing as task of taking care of, providing for, thoughtful of
A manner, method, or way of performing a task of regard, fondness for a person or object
A manner, method, or way of performing a task of guarding and preserving with care
On Caring | The Project
The Earth
The earth and nature is our common good. All modes of caring should circulate around her, connect to her, sustain her. Caring in all modes is otherwise pointless.
Household | Community
How do we take care of the local without sacrificing our connections to the common good? How do we form caring communities without creating borders and walls?
Ethics and Justice
What values support cooperative and caring communities? How do we come to know our values? And how do we avoid value relativism?
Politics | Government
Why do people hate government (see Glynos for interesting essay on this question, and also David Levine)? We should care about government and the modes of caring produced or limited by state actors. And we should especially care about the loss of trust in government.
Work
If we don't care about meaningful and purposeful work, how can we care about justice? Paul Gomberg calls for contributive justice, which he juxtaposes to redistributive justice. Contributive justice looks at each of our contributions to the overall social division of labor.
Love
Caring societies need truth and authenticity. Is it possible that love is the connective tissue? Love is the connective tissue binding us to others. How do we bind ourselves through emotional connections allowing for non-transactional approaches to caring?
Science
Here's the big question: how do we have a science in the public interest? We must care about science while at the same time our science must be cautious: we must be open to fallibility. Science often gets in wrong. That's why we go back to the lab over and over again.
Art
Artists, writers, poets, actors, dancers, musicians all have many things in common but perhaps the most important is the imagination. They ask questions we are often unwilling or afraid to ask. They imagine what we're unable to imagine.
Mind | Body | Brain
The body, the brain, the mind, the self, and identity emerge from one another, determine one another, act on one another. And we care about these dynamic emergent relationships. We care because we’re otherwise left with troubling neuro-reductionism.