Mentorship, Reciprocity, Reality's Backdrop, and Panta Rhei (Everything Changes): An I Thou Video Series Conversation with Richard Wicka and Joel David Lesses

The I Thou Video Series' host Richard Wicka has a conversation with Joel opening with the posited question, 'What Is?' or 'What Is, existentially?'

The discussion response from Richard offers Panta Rhei (i.e., everything changes).

What is identity?

Identity and a Real Self, are there two aspects within each of us?

• Is only one real?

Kireeragard: real world self (work self), imaginary self (the self you desire to be), true self (the one you don't know be discover)

• The question of First Principles (i.e., don't question, axiom)
• Richard as a mentor to many, including Joel, at Home of the Future
• The beginning of Unraveling Religion podcast, when Richard asked Joel 'would you like to do a radio show?'
• Arguments of Philosophy can sharpen one another
• Chavruta and sharping one another
• Thomas Aquinas
• Do things exist outside of time?
• Zen (i.e., in China Ch'an, the Mind Only School of Buddhism) is discussed
• Bodhidharma and Joshu, and the koan 'does a dog have Buddha nature?'
• Joshu started teaching at age of 80 and lived to be 120, he taught for 40 years
• Does this contradict Hieggerder's Being and Time that everything exists in Space and Time
• Is economics the basis of consciousness?
• Richard and Joel deconstruct that premise
• The reciprocity of energy is the basis of healthy community
• How do we support people who do not value the importance of recipocity
• Father Greg Boyle, Gangs Service and Kinship
• Judaism's emphasis on care for the widow, stranger, and the orphan
• The Lubavaticher Rebbe emphases on care of those without parents
• How is this emphases is embeded in Torah?

From Richard Wicka's notes:

• Kierkeggaard spoke about the concrete self (where you are today), the ideal self (the self you aspire to be) and the true self (the self that contains all your potential)
• 'Expanse' (a type of experience) is in contrast to words you use to describe the world.
• You are observing.
• (Identity is a verb not a noun).
• I can't think of anything that exists outside of time. People who think there are such things are following in the footsteps of Plato.
• Krista Tippets has a podcast called 'On Being'.
• The widow, the stranger and the Orphan vs. The Alienated, the ostracized and the damned.
• I am where I am now because of good mentorship.

Biography

Richard Wicka is a Buffalo, N.Y.-based media artist and photographer and the proprietor of "The Home of the Future,"a media access center and production/recording studio based in his Kaisertown home.

Wicka has been providing a forum for artists in all media, activists, and everyday...