According to a rough search, the word "cultivation" yields two types of definitions. Bot relate to growth based on something.
One type concerns biological cultivation - that is growth of living things - particularly of plant life.
Another type concerns metaphysical cultivation - that is growth of a certain sense - particularly of human and communal life.
I was prompted to conduct this rough search after a conversation with MK last night. The conversation - as always - covered many topics, but one seemed to stick for some time. That topic was about cultivation. Though we didn't use the word, we spent some time contemplating what it is that we grow up to be. Growth is inevitable, it is something we cannot prevent or whose rate we cannot decrease. So what is the reason for which we grow?
Some options we discussed for answers to this question were: To make a living, to reproduce, to maintain the young or elderly, to search for new frontiers, to create from what is around us and to compete with one another.
While this discussion is far bigger than one blog post, my opinion is that we grow to reproduce. The process of reproduction comes with many other roles and responsibilities, such as to make a living and to maintain the young, which in turn come with further responsibilities. For instance, to make a good living, one needs to create something that is equally "good", and this sometimes also implies a certain degree of competition with fellow human beings.
But I also think that the answer lies in individual pursuits of life. I can already think of human lives whose stories have travelled through time, not because their growth was for reproduction, but because their growth was associated with something larger than themselves. People like the Prophets, Ibn Sina, Christopher Columbus and Mother Theresa did not necessarily live to reproduce, yet their acts of cultivation did something to our humanity as a whole.
See definitions:
One type concerns biological cultivation - that is growth of living things - particularly of plant life.
Another type concerns metaphysical cultivation - that is growth of a certain sense - particularly of human and communal life.
I was prompted to conduct this rough search after a conversation with MK last night. The conversation - as always - covered many topics, but one seemed to stick for some time. That topic was about cultivation. Though we didn't use the word, we spent some time contemplating what it is that we grow up to be. Growth is inevitable, it is something we cannot prevent or whose rate we cannot decrease. So what is the reason for which we grow?
Some options we discussed for answers to this question were: To make a living, to reproduce, to maintain the young or elderly, to search for new frontiers, to create from what is around us and to compete with one another.
While this discussion is far bigger than one blog post, my opinion is that we grow to reproduce. The process of reproduction comes with many other roles and responsibilities, such as to make a living and to maintain the young, which in turn come with further responsibilities. For instance, to make a good living, one needs to create something that is equally "good", and this sometimes also implies a certain degree of competition with fellow human beings.
But I also think that the answer lies in individual pursuits of life. I can already think of human lives whose stories have travelled through time, not because their growth was for reproduction, but because their growth was associated with something larger than themselves. People like the Prophets, Ibn Sina, Christopher Columbus and Mother Theresa did not necessarily live to reproduce, yet their acts of cultivation did something to our humanity as a whole.
See definitions:
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