My sceptical and dismissive self says:
Okay, you say each encounter has a ‘fresh future forever’. That’s great–for it. But what about me, here and now, with an eye on tomorrow? What is yesterday’s encounter going to do for me today?
And you say once ‘minted’ and in circulation–and encounters have been, are being produced in prodigous quantities by all of us–each keeps its value, even after we whose faces are on these ‘coins’ are gone. But other than my imprint on it, what good is that value to me? They’re each off on their own autonomous adventures while I’m struggling to pay the rent and survive this cockamamie time.
We are mortal, encounters are immortal, you say. So It’s like a mythological romance that ends in apotheosis or tragedy. Me, ever older and more decrepit, but linked to what is ever young. The image is ridiculous.
I get the idea of encounters–occasions of making common cause with the livingness of an other addressed as you. They are good, maybe even beneficial, but to give them metaphysical status? ‘Fresh future forever’ sounds like ‘pie in the sky by and by’, at best a distraction and at worst a cheap consolation, prime for abuse and exploitation. Encounters are a side show, optional, like home on leave, while real life is happening in the trenches and no man’s land.
That’s my rant, Peter. But how do you respond? These are temperate remarks. Others will be less so. Your assertions are, let’s face it, unusual. Maybe you’re going over the top just to get attention which is a legitimate tactic in this age of information overload.
I reply:
Don’t forget freshness, the breeze from beyond. We’ve all experienced freshness and know we want more, need more. All I’ve done with encountering and this website is take that universal human experience seriously and work out the implications.
Transcendent freshness flowing into our mundane world is in fact what is required for us to liberate ourselves from the ponderous weight of the past and the compelling immediacy of the present to envision and mobilize for a new good future.
But leave that aside. Let’s go back to your first question. It’s a good one. It seems based on the notion that encounters are inaccessible like assets in a blind trust. But the analogies I unfortunately have to use to make my point clear are misleading. Money, currency, economics: all are aspects of the mundane realm, important in that context but not pertinent to the transcendent.
The value represented by encounters is not like that of ploutos, wealth dug like gold, nor money serving as the tally of value in commercial exchanges. Freshness, exhibiting always an intrinsic livingness, is at the heart of the value of every encounter and partner in all our encounters.
Our encounter partner cares about us, about who we are, loves working with us and wants to keep going. With practice we know each other better, are more attuned to each other’s ways. Freshness knows better and better where to find us for new encounters with new others, and we make ourselves more available to others seeking encounters (along with their (the same) partner).
The very environment of possibility changes as our encounters beget new ones, more and more others are brought into the network, and more and more unanticipated occasions of common cause occur from previous encounters.
So, that ‘fresh future forever’ doesn’t refer to some testamental legacy down the road, but what freshness is doing right now and going forward in each of encounters we’ve ever participated in. Encounters are never old news.