Tabula Rasa, Arvo Part, set to Dance

Tabula Rasa, Latin for 'scraped tablet' refers commonly to the mind before it receives the impressions gained from experience.

Miguel Robles - Curriculum Vitae - Miguel Robles - choreagraphed this new contemporary ballet piece for the highly-strung energy-surging music that is Tabula Rasa by Arvo Part - Arvo Part Website. This music was also used in the opening scenes of the award-winning 2001 documentary War Photographer, about photojournalist James Nachtwey.

Integral Psychology - Ken Wilber, Part II

The Central Plot
One such suggested architecture of the Kosmos is called AQAL (pronounced "ah-qwil," short for "all quadrants, all levels, all lines, all states, all types...").

The pragmatic correlate of AQAL meta-theory is a set of practices (or meta-paradigms) referred to as Integral Methodological Pluralism, which attempts to honor and include the many important modes of human inquiry already arising in this spacious Kosmos.

Wilber particularly focused on the quadratic aspects of this methodological pluralism, where "quadratic" refers to four of the most basic dimensions of being-in-the-world, dimensions that are so fundamental they have become embedded in natural languages as variations on first-, second-, and third-person pronouns (which can be summarized as "I," "we," "it," and "its").

These represent the inside and outside of the singular and the plural: hence, the four quadrants ( subjective or "I," objective or "it," intersubjective or "we," and interobjective or "its").

The Sub-Plots
Human beings, over the decades and sometimes centuries, have developed time-honored methods of inquiry that enact, bring forth, and illumine these basic dimensions of being-in-the-world.

For example, phenomenology and introspection enact, bring forth, and illumine the first-person singular dimensions of being-in-the-world ("I" or subjectivity, the UL quadrant);
hermeneutics and collaborative inquiry enact, bring forth, and illumine the first- and second-person plural dimensions of being-in-the-world ("thou/we" or intersubjectivity, the LL quadrant);
empiricism and behaviorism enact, bring forth, and illumine the third-person singular dimensions of being-in-the-world ("it" or objectivity, the UR quadrant);
And ecology, functionalism, and systems theory enact, bring forth, and illumine the third-person plural dimensions of being-in-the-world ("its" or interobjectivity, the LR quadrant).

There are many other important modes of inquiry, but those are a few of the historically most significant, and certainly ones that any integral methodological pluralism would want to address.

The Plot Thickens
The collective or communal dimensions--the inter-subjective and inter-objective dimensions--are not something that can be derived from the interactions of subjects and objects, but rather, the inter-subjective and inter-objective dimensions are there from the start, along with subjectivity and objectivity, and not something that "comes after" subjects and objects.

Inter-subjectivity is not more fundamental than subjects and objects, which don’t "come after" or "out of" inter-subjectivity (if so, any genuinely individual creativity would be nullified, which is not supported).
The four quadrants are not four different occasions but four different perspectives on (and hence dimensions of) every occasion. (That is, various perspectives--such as first-, second-, and third-person--are not merely perspectives on a pre-given single event, but rather bring forth and enact different aspects or dimensions of an event, and hence these perspective-dimensions are ontically not reducible to, nor interchangeable with, each other.)

The whole point of a quadratic approach is that all four dimensions arise simultaneously: they tetra-enact each other and tetra-evolve together: - ‘transcend and include’.

Losing the Plot
The pre-quadratic approaches that imagine one of these dimensions to be prior or fundamental--and the others to come after or out of the allegedly prior dimension--are caught in what we called quadrant absolutism, which takes a favorite dimension and absolutizes it, making it the ground out of which all other dimensions must issue.

Modernism tends to privilege objectivity; postmodernism tends to privilege intersubjectivity; ecology tends to privilege interobjectivity, etc.
Wilber sub-divides other examples into wave absolutism, stream absolutism, and type absolutism. Such absolutisms seem contrary to the spirit of an integral methodological pluralism, which is guided by the heuristic principles of nonexclusion, enfoldment, and enactment.

Such absolutisms would likely find little place in an integral metatheory, although their respective methodologies would.

It is the absolutism, not the inquiry, that is declined.
Nevertheless, each point on each axis is liable to distinctive pathologies requiring characteristic therapy.

Integral Psychology - The Plot of Plots
This is Wilber’s goal: to "reverse engineer" an explanatory framework that plausibly accounts for all of those major methodologies--from phenomenology to autopoiesis to systems theory to hermeneutics--by "transcendentally deducing" a structure of the Kosmos that would allow those methodologies to arise and exist in the first place, because already exist they do.

The suggested explanatory framework is called AQAL; its orientation is an integral overview of indigenous perspectives; its social practice is an Integral Methodological Pluralism; its philosophy is Integral Post-Metaphysics; its signalling network is IOS (Integral Operating System).

These are all third-person words for a view of the Kosmos in which first persons and second persons are irreducible agents, bearers of sentience and intentionality and feeling, not merely matter and energy and information and causality.

A grasp of Wilber’s sweeping model, to include and transcend all approaches, is clearly of value for maximising satisfaction and personal enrichment.
Some benefits of applying integral principles are:
- The model factors in the organic reality that people are not reducible to any one simple type, but are actually constellations of levels of development, different values, personalities, social strategies…
- It approaches individuals with multiple assessment tools to arrive at a fuller and more accurate understanding of their strengths and weaknesses, hopes and fears, likes and dislikes…
- It offers a larger range of change technologies that can address the various dimensions of human existence: cognitive, emotional, physical, spiritual…

It all starts by listening to our own native perspectives. In other words, take it from the here and now which goes way beyond psychology into all aspects of living.

References
Integral Psychology by Ken Wilber
What is Enlightenment? Journal, Dec/Feb 05/06
http://twm.co.nz/kwilb_bio.html
http://wilber.shambhala.com/html/books/psych_model/psych_model1.cfm/


- goinghome

Integral Psychology - Ken Wilber, Part I

Bio of Ken Wilber - Born 1949 in Oklahoma;
- On the move growing up – father in army;
- Dropped out of medical school, then biochemistry
too, for informal East-West research funded by odd jobs;
- His influential relationship with his second wife, Treya, who died of cancer in 1989, was described in “Grace and Grit”.
- Over 20 world-renowned books now published on spirituality and science;
- Key insights into transpersonal psychology, and "perennial philosophy", the conception of reality that lies at the heart of all major religions;
- Dubbed “the Einstein of consciousness”
- Now lives in Boulder, Colorado, and has set up set up the Integral Institute, promulgating his theories and their application through multi-media outreach.

Need for a New Psychology
Einstein said: “We should take care not to make the intellect our god. It has, of course, powerful muscles but no personality. It cannot lead, it can only serve”.

Wilber’s belief is that psychology as a discipline--referring to any of the four traditional major forces (behavioristic, psychoanalytic, humanistic/existential, and transpersonal)--is slowly decaying, never again, to be a dominant influence in culture or academia.

Western history (basically, an amalgam of traditional, modern, and postmodern currents)--and specifically in America has been recently going through a period of rampant scientific materialism (‘flatland’) and the "nothing but surfaces" of the extreme postmodernists.

Interiors are out, exteriors are all; there is no depth. This puts an intense selection pressure against any sort of psychology that emphasizes solely or mostly the interiors (psychoanalytic, humanistic/existential, and transpersonal).

This is compounded by numerous specific social factors, such as the medical/insurance and "managed care" industry supporting only brief psychotherapy and pharmacological interventions i.e. biological psychiatry, behavioral modification, cognitive therapy (a manipulation of the sentences one uses to objectively describe oneself).

Silly things like trying to find out why you behave in such a fashion, or trying to find out the meaning of your existence, or the values that constitute the good life, are not covered by insurance policies, and so, in this culture, they basically do not exist. Three of the four forces (psychoanalytic, humanistic/existential, and transpersonal) are thus, once again, selected against; a negative cultural pressure is moving them to extinction and in some ways has already succeeded, so that these major forces are one jot away from dinosaur status.

Book Summary
The goal of an "integral psychology" is to honor and embrace every legitimate aspect of human consciousness under one roof.

Wilber's is the first truly integrative model of consciousness, psychology, and therapy, drawing on hundreds of sources — Eastern and Western, ancient and modern.

Psychological model includes waves of development, streams of development, states of consciousness, and the self, and follows the course of each from subconscious to self-conscious to superconscious.

Charts are included, correlating over a hundred psychological and spiritual schools from around the world, including Kabbalah, Vedanta, Plotinus, Teresa of Ávila, Aurobindo, Theosophy, and modern theorists such as Jean Piaget, Erik Erikson, Jane Loevinger, Lawrence Kohlberg, Carol Gilligan, Erich Neumann, and Jean Gebser.

The book is recognised as a landmark study in human development: "The first truly comprehensive map of the human mind”, said Larry Dossey.

In What Sense Integral?
“Integral” means integrative, inclusive, comprehensive, balanced; the idea is to apply this integral orientation to the various fields of human knowledge and endeavors...deeply alter conceptions of psychology and the human mind; of anthropology and human history; of literature and human meaning; of philosophy and the quest for truth…” - Ken Wilber, The Eye of Spirit

General if not unanimous consensus prevails that neither mind nor brain can be reduced without remainder to the other. Wilber argues that indeed both mind and brain need to be included in a non-reductionistic way in any genuinely integral theory of consciousness.

Results of an extensive cross-cultural literature search on the "mind" side of the equation are analysed, suggesting that the mental phenomena that need to be considered in any integral theory include developmental levels or waves of consciousness, developmental lines or streams of consciousness, states of consciousness, and the self (or self-system).

A "master template" of these various phenomena, culled from over one-hundred psychological systems East and West, is presented. It is suggested that this master template represents a general summary of the "mind" side of the brain-mind integration.

This leads to break-through reflections on the notorious "hard problem," i.e. how the mind-side can be integrated with the brain-side, to generate a more integral theory of consciousness. -> -> ->

- goinghome

David Foster Wallace, Culturally Waylaid

David Foster Wallace, an American writer whose darkly comic and satirical books stirred an epidemic of gratitude amongst his generation for how he gave voice to their disaffection and exhausted compulsion to absorb stimuli, died by suicide two months ago aged 46.

For thousands of readers, especially those in their thirties and forties, Wallace was more than a favorite writer. He was our hero. It’s been pointed out how many young writers imitated his prose. Even more, perhaps, were inspired by the attention he paid to the visual and aural and mental noise we all knew, but hadn’t known you could write about. And of all the would-be writers he influenced, maybe the biggest group is made up of the ones he let off the hook, the ones who felt—reading Infinite Jest—that our novel had already been written. Wallace spoke for us in a way that no writer has done before or since.

From:
David Foster Wallace: Interview Reconstructed - 9/16/2008 7:56:00 AM - Publishers Weekly


Reading by Wallace, UCTelevision, 1997:

Anthem for our Times - Wake Up, Arcade Fire

Somethin' filled up
my heart with nothin',
someone told me not to cry.

But now that I'm older,
my heart's colder,
and I can see that it's a lie.

Children wake up,
hold your mistake up,
before they turn the summer into dust.

If the children don't grow up,
our bodies get bigger but our hearts get torn up.
We're just a million little gods causin' rain storms turnin' every good thing to
rust.

I guess we'll just have to adjust.

With my lightnin' bolts a glowin'
I can see where I am goin' to be
when the reaper he reaches and touches my hand.

With my lightnin' bolts a glowin'
I can see where I am goin’
With my lightnin' bolts a glowin'
I can see where I am, go-go, where I am

You'd better look out below

Capitalism strangles Democracy - Noam Chomsky

Anti-democratic nature of US capitalism is being exposed - The Irish Times - Fri, Oct 10, 2008


Excerpt: -

In earlier years, the public had not been much of a problem. The reasons are reviewed by Barry Eichengreen in his standard scholarly history of the international monetary system. He explains that in the 19th century, governments had not yet been "politicised by universal male suffrage and the rise of trade unionism and parliamentary labour parties". Therefore, the severe costs imposed by the virtual parliament could be transferred to the general population.

But with the radicalisation of the general public during the Great Depression and the anti-fascist war, that luxury was no longer available to private power and wealth. Hence in the Bretton Woods system, "limits on capital mobility substituted for limits on democracy as a source of insulation from market pressures".

The obvious corollary is that after the dismantling of the postwar system, democracy is restricted. It has therefore become necessary to control and marginalise the public in some fashion, processes particularly evident in the more business-run societies like the United States. The management of electoral extravaganzas by the public relations industry is one illustration.

"Politics is the shadow cast on society by big business," concluded America's leading 20th century social philosopher John Dewey, and will remain so as long as power resides in "business for private profit through private control of banking, land, industry, reinforced by command of the press, press agents and other means of publicity and propaganda".

Market Trading, Python-style

Monty Python - Life of Brian - The Haggle

Europeana: 2 million cultural treasures online!

"Europeana: think culture
Europeana.eu is about ideas and inspiration. It links you to 2 million digital items.

Images - paintings, drawings, maps, photos and pictures of museum objects
Texts - books, newspapers, letters, diaries and archival papers
Sounds - music and spoken word from cylinders, tapes, discs and radio broadcasts
Videos - films, newsreels and TV broadcasts
Some of these are world famous, others are hidden treasures from Europe's

museums and galleries
archives
libraries
audio-visual collections
Here is a list of the organisations that our content comes from. They include the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam, the British Library in London and the Louvre in Paris.

You can use My Europeana to save searches or bookmark things. You can highlight stuff and add it to your own folders.

This website is a prototype. Europeana Version 1.0 is being developed and will launch in 2010 with links to over 6 million digital objects.

Europeana.eu is funded by the European Commission and the member states.

More about:

How Europeana came to be developed: the background to the project
The deliverables from the project: technical plans etc
New projects that will be channelling material into Europeana Version 1.0
EuropeanaLocal
European Film Gateway
How organisations can contribute content to Europeana
Getting in contact with the Europeana team
To be added to the press list
The e-news to keep you in touch with developments
Background
The idea for Europeana came from a letter to the Presidency of Council and to the Commission on 28 April 2005. Six Heads of State and Government suggested the creation of a virtual European library, aiming to make Europe's cultural and scientific resources accessible for all.

On 30 September 2005 the European Commission published the i2010: communication on digital libraries, where it announced its strategy to promote and support the creation of a European digital library, as a strategic goal within the European Information Society i2010 Initiative, which aims to foster growth and jobs in the information society and media industries. The European Commission's goal for Europeana is to make European information resources easier to use in an online environment. It will build on Europe's rich heritage, combining multicultural and multilingual environments with technological advances and new business models.

The European Commission's goal for Europeana is to make European information resources easier to use in an online environment. It will build on Europe's rich heritage, combining multicultural and multilingual environments with technological advances and new business models.

The Europeana prototype is the result of a 2-year project that began in July 2007. Europeana.eu went live on 20 November 2008, launched by Viviane Reding, European Commissioner for Information Society and Media.

Europeana is a Thematic Network funded by the European Commission under the eContentplus programme, as part of the i2010 policy. Originally known as the European digital library network – EDLnet – it is a partnership of 100 representatives of heritage and knowledge organisations and IT experts from throughout Europe. They contribute to the Work Packages that are solving the technical and usability issues.

The project is run by a core team based in the national library of the Netherlands, the Koninklijke Bibliotheek. It builds on the project management and technical expertise developed by The European Library, which is a service of the Conference of European National Librarians.

Overseeing the project is the EDL Foundation, which includes key European cultural heritage associations from the four domains. The Foundation’s statutes commit members to:

Providing access to Europe’s cultural and scientific heritage though a cross-domain portal
Co-operating in the delivery and sustainability of the joint portal
Stimulating initiatives to bring together existing digital content "
Supporting digitisation of Europe’s cultural and scientific heritage.

Goto: http://www.europeana.eu/portal/aboutus.html

Big is ambiguous - and a Smiths song!

PROPORTION
(addressed to a beloved oppressor [who just happened to be an economist])

I could, unimpeded, impress you with my need,
Stock you wan entreaties, your hero fetish feed,
Though the freight should really be proportioned to the groove:
Thus spoke seer Emily when microscoping love.

In the temple of delight reigns melancholy’s shrine,
Pleasure turned to poison, as Keat’s rich ode opines.
Supplying your demanding thirst, investing in your trust,
Is capital for you, but costs me till I’m bust.

It’s uneconomical to contract at a loss,
When weight is broken down, at tight net-rate, not gross,
And all risk bounces back, shares offered float unsafe,
With dividends deducted towards exorbitant tariff.

Your dashing dynamism is subduing, stultifying,
Heeding now prostrations, before frankly inspiring.
Where’s the wider vision, the muse to regain balance,
Invigorating metric chords? - To march is not to dance.

Trading with segmentalisers tests one’s imminence,
And tempts sophisticatedly to negate what’s whole, immense.
Only emblem, sustenance, can partial progress be,
To travelling, universal souls, claims Whitman. - I agree.

- goinghome

William, It was Really Nothing - The Smiths

Power lines

THE POVERTY LINE

I was poor. Very poor.
There was no food to quell my hunger.
No clothes to hide the shame of my naked body.
No roof above my head.
You were so kind.
You came and you said
‘ No. Poverty is a debasing word. It dehumanises man.
You are needy’.

My days were spent in dire need.
My needy days, day after day, were never-ending.
As I grew weaker
Again you came.
This time you said.
‘Look, I’ve thought it over,
“Needy” is not a good word either,
You are destitute’.

My days and my nights, like a deep longing sigh,
Bore my destitution.
Cowering in the burning heat,
Shivering in the cold winter nights,
Drenched in the never-ending rains.
I went from being destitute to greater destitution.
But you were tireless.
Again you came.
This time you said
‘There is no meaning to this destitution.
Why should you be destitute?
You have always been denied.
You are deprived, the ever deprived’.

There was no end to my deprivation.
In hunger and in want, year after year,
Sleeping in the open streets under the relentless sky
My body a mere skeleton
Was barely alive.
But you didn’t forget me.
This time you came with raised fist.
In you booming voice, you called out to me.
Rise, rise the exploited masses.

No longer did I have the strength to rise.
In hunger and in want, my body had wasted.
My ribs heaved with every breath.
Your vigour and your passion
Were too much for me to match.
Since then many more days have gone.
You are now more wise, more astute.
This time you brought a blackboard.
Chalk in hand, you drew this glistening bright long line.
This time you had really taken great pain.
Wiping the sweat from your brow, you beckoned me.
‘Look. See this line.
Below, far below this line, is where you belong’.

Wonderful!
Profusely, Gratefully, Indebtedly, I thank you.
For my poverty, I thank you.
For my need, I thank you.
For my destitution, I thank you.
For my deprivations, I thank you.
For my exploitedness, I thank you.
And most of all, for that sparkling line.
For that glittering gift.
O great benefactor!
I thank you.

- by Bangladeshi poet Tarapodo Rai, from New Internationalist magazine, March 2000: BANGLADESH: Which way now? - NI 332 - Keynote: Building up the poor - or reinforcing inequality?#poem

Small is Beautiful: Economics as if people mattered

Milton Friedman may have had more leverage than he dreamed possible, advocating as he did the shrinking of government power to make way for the free market, paving the way for GATT, WTO, and so on. The new world of globalization has tended to homogenize the economic plans of political parties. If anything, however, the ideas of Galbraith, and Kehnemann and Smith, are more at the cutting edge in current circumstances. And with the very definite exponential awareness of ecological issues being embraced by politicians everywhere, it must be timely to exhume some previously dismissed approaches for a fair trial that protest at the priority afforded to accumulation rather than ensuring access to at least enough for all.

Though published in 1973 and long since gone out of fashion, denounced as primitive, one of my favourite books remains “Small is Beautiful: Economics as If People Mattered” by E.F. Schumacher. Because the author seems to report with eyes wide open conditions of living as observed rather than represented in a hypothesis, and then addresses these in the context of economics but with common sense, he doesn’t baulk at the task of reconciling the necessity of governing with the individual good.

Here’s an extract on p. 20-21: “The substance of man cannot be measured by Gross National Product. Perhaps it cannot be measured at all, except by certain symptoms of loss…crime, drug addiction, vandalism, mental breakdown, rebellion…statistics never prove anything. .. one of the most fateful errors of our age is the belief that the problems of production have been solved. This illusion… is mainly due to our inability to recognize that the modern industrial system, with all its intellectual sophistication, consumes the very basis on which it has been erected. To use the language of the economist, it lives on irreplaceable capital which it cheerfully treats as income. I specifed three categories of such capital: fossil fuels, the tolerance margin of nature and the human substance…any…suffices to make my case.

And what is my case? Simply that our most important task is to get off our current collision course. And who is there to tackle such a task? I think every one of us, whether old or young, powerful or powerless, rich or poor, influential or uninfluential. To talk about the future is useful only if it leads to action now. [how soon is now?!] And what can we do now while we are in the position of “never having had it so good”? To say the least – which is already very much – we must thoroughtly understand the problem and begin to see the possibility of evolving a new life-style, with new methods of production and new patterns of consumption; a lifestyle designed for permanence. To give only three preliminary examples: in agriculture and horticulture, we can interest ourselves in the perfection of production methods which are biologically sound, build up soil fertility [lots of worms!!] and produce health, beauty and permanence. Productivity will then look after itself. In industry, we can interest ourselves in the evolution of small-scale technology, relatively non-violent technology, “technology with a human face”, so that people have a chance to enjoy themselves while they are working, instead of working solely for their pay pocket and hoping, usually forlornly, for enjoyment solely during their leisure time [heaven knows I’m miserable now!!] In industry, again – and surely, industry is the pace-setter of modern life – we can interest ourselves in new forms of partnership between management and men, even forms of common ownership”.

I mean, how enlightened is this, and how much more pressing than ever before?!

How many economists does it take to change a light-bulb?
Eight – one to screw it in, and seven to hold everything else constant – which is of course a wish rather than an attainable strategy.

Rather than dissing Schumacher for being ossified in Plato’s cave with the great unwashed, it's worthwhile reflecting that the 2006 Nobel Prize went to an economist for promoting some of his recommendations:

- With the announcement of the Nobel Peace Prize to Muhammad Yunus and the Grameen Bank, it appears that everyone has reason to celebrate. There is wide agreement that Yunus is fully deserving of the highest recognition: he launched the idea of ‘microcredit’, or the grant of very small loans to the destitute who are incapable of offering any collateral. This is a far-reaching idea, since loans are generally given by banks against collateral or assets, and the poor have traditionally been excluded precisely because of their inability to offer any surety. The Grameen Bank that Yunus founded over three decades ago has so far given out 6.6 million loans, averaging around $130 each, and it claims from its borrowers, who are overwhelmingly women, an astounding repayment rate of 98 percent. The Nobel Prize citation states, in justification of the award to Yunus, that ‘economic growth and political democracy cannot achieve their full potential unless the female half of humanity participates on an equal footing with the male', and evidently Yunus has done much more than most others to empower women. –
- From http://www.sscnet.ucla.edu/southasia/History/Current_Affairs/Yunus.htm

- goinghome

Economics: 1 step forward, 2...

It was John Maynard Keynes who said that markets can stay wrong longer than you can stay solvent.

Another economist Armen Alchien concluded that in the Western economy, host as it is to an enormous number of people and companies competing, success is more about “the result of fortuitous circumstances”, or luck, rather than any sign of skill or intelligence.

Daniel Kahneman and Vernon Smith won the Nobel Prize in 2002 for establishing that:

- Traditionally, economic theory has relied on the assumption of a "homo œconomicus", whose behavior is governed by self-interest and who is capable of rational decision-making. Economics has also been regarded as a non-experimental science, where researchers – as in astronomy or meteorology – have had to rely exclusively on field data, that is, direct observations of the real world. During the last two decades, however, these views have undergone a transformation. Controlled laboratory experiments have emerged as a vital component of economic research and, in certain instances, experimental results have shown that basic postulates in economic theory should be modified [to take account of people’s common irrational behaviour]. This process has been generated by researchers in two areas: cognitive psychologists who have studied human judgment and decision-making, and experimental economists who have tested economic models in the laboratory. –
see more at: http://nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/economics/laureates/2002/public.html

Judge Richard Posner, in his book “Law, Pragmatism and Democracy”, claims that: “…reasoning about the most effective means to a given end – instrumental reasoning, the type involved in self-interested action – is a good deal more straightforward than reasoning about ends, the type of reasoning required for determining what is best for society as a whole”.

R.H. Tawney is often quoted from his book “Religion and the Rise of Capitalism” for writing “If, however, economic ambitions are good servants, they are bad masters”. Then he added, “The most obvious facts are the most easily forgotten. Both the existing economic order and too many of the projects advanced for reconstructing it break down through their neglect of the truism that, since even quite common men have souls, no increase in material wealth will compensate for arrangements which insult their self-respect and impair their freedom. A reasonable estimate of economic organization must allow for the fact that, unless industry is to be paralysed by recurrant revolts on the part of outraged human nature, it must satisfy criteria which are not purely economic”.

Like Jello Biafra put it, “for every prohibition you create you also create an underground”.

J.K. Galbraith, Harvard economics Professor, recently wrote that, “… reality is more obscured by social or habitual preferences and personal or group pecuniary advantage in economics and politics than in any other subject”.

Galbraith placed much of the blame for this on what became the title of a booklet he wrote in 2004, “The Economics of Innocent Fraud”. Explaining what he meant by this he went on: “Some of this fraud derives from traditional economics and its teachings and some from the ritual views of economic life. These can strongly support individual and group interest, particularly, as might be expected, that of the more fortunate, articulate and politically prominent in the community, and can achieve the respectability and authority of everyday knowledge.“

He ends the booklet by summarizing: “Civilisation has made great strides over the centuries in science, healthcare, the arts, and most, if not all, economic well-being. But also it has given a priviledged position to the development of weapons and to the threat and reality of war. Mass slaughter has become the ultimate civilized achievement.

The facts of war are inescapable – death and random cruelty, suspension of civilized values, a disordered aftermath. Thus: the human condition and prospect as [is] now supremely evident [mass poverty and starvation…] War remains the decisive human failure”.

At least with these voices, there might not be the need to complain, like Herbert Hoover did, to “please find me a one-armed economist so we will not always hear, “ but on the other hand”’…

“An economist’s guess is as good as anyone else’s” , concluded Will Rogers, who might have elaborated if someone had asked, that a study of economics usually reveals that the best time to buy anything was last year!
- goinghome

The Line drawn between the Good and the Bad of Us

"Child in Time" was written by the band Deep Purple in 1969, purportedly inspired by a much quicker riff in the song "Bombay Calling" by contemporaneous band It's a Beautiful Day. "Child in Time" is straightforward in form, based around three power chords, two minute long solos, and an organ intro. The serious import of the words, revolving around the theme of Cold War (a threat that persists) is ingeniously conveyed in this hair-raising performance. - http://ie.youtube.com/watch?v=Ay_UfUBhtlo




As the latter is only periodically available, a 1970 version can be seen here -

YouTube - Deep purple - Child in time 1970


Sweet child in time you'll see the line
The line that's drawn between good and the bad
See the blind man shooting at the world
Bullets flying, taking toll
If you've been bad, lord I bet you have
And you've not been hit by flying lead
You'd better close your eyes
Bow your head
Wait for the ricochet

I wanna hear you scream

Sweet child in time you'll see the line
The line that's drawn between, good and the bad
See the blind man shooting at the world
Bullets flying, taking toll
If you've been bad, lord I bet you have
And you've not been hit by flying lead
You'd better close your eyes
Bow your head
Wait for the ricochet

I gotta hear you scream

Oh, god, oh, no don't, oh, ain't gonna do it, oh, no, no, no, no, no, no, oh no, no, no, no, no, no, no

Introduction to the Communist Manifesto

Suggestions of 'spreading the wealth', and considerations of alternatives to the capitalist system that has been found wanting, have led to a recent resurgence of enquiry relating to the possibility that aspects of socialism may have something to offer yet untapped in a usable form.

PREFACE TO 1883 GERMAN EDITION OF THE COMMUNIST MANIFESTO

- "The preface to the present edition I must, alas, sign alone.

Marx, the man to whom the whole working class class of Europe and America owes more than to any one else -- rests at Highgate Cemetary and over his grave the first grass is already growing. Since his death [March 13, 1883], there can be even less thought of revising or supplementing the Manifesto. But I consider it all the more necessary again to state the following expressly:

The basic thought running through the Manifesto -- that economic production, and the structure of society of every historical epoch necessarily arising therefrom, constitute the foundation for the political and intellectual history of that epoch; that consequently (ever since the dissolution of the primaeval communal ownership of land) all history has been a history of class struggles, of struggles between exploited and exploiting, between dominated and dominating classes at various stages of social evolution; that this struggle, however, has now reached a stage where the exploited and oppressed class (the proletariat) can no longer emancipate itself from the class which exploits and oppresses it (the bourgeoisie), without at the same time forever freeing the whole of society from exploitation, oppression, class struggles -- this basic thought belongs soley and exclusively to Marx.

[ENGELS FOOTNOTE TO PARAGRAPH: "This proposition", I wrote in the preface to the English translation, "which, in my opinion, is destined to do for history what Darwin's theory has done for biology, we both of us, had been gradually approaching for some years before 1845. How far I had independently progressed towards it is best shown by my _Conditions of the Working Class in England_. But when I again met Marx at Brussels, in spring 1845, he had it already worked out and put it before me in terms almost as clear as those in which I have stated it here."]

I have already stated this many times; but precisely now is it necessary that it also stand in front of the Manifesto itself.

FREDERICK ENGELS
June 28, 1883

London" -

For more information see - http://www.anu.edu.au/polsci/marx/classics/manifesto.html#Notes

In the Public Interest: Between Hope and Reality -- Ralph Nader

Ralph Nadar who competed in the Presidential election once again this year, has just posted a public letter of remonstration to the successful candidate Barack Obama on his website:

In the Public Interest: Between Hope and Reality -- Ralph Nader for President in 2008

If Obama gets wind of it which he probably will, the world will thank him to pay heed. The following is a selection of extracts: -

"In the Public Interest
Between Hope and Reality
by Ralph Nader

Dear Senator Obama:

In your nearly two-year presidential campaign, the words "hope and change," "change and hope" have been your trademark declarations. Yet there is an asymmetry between those objectives and your political character that succumbs to contrary centers of power that want not "hope and change" but the continuation of the power-entrenched status quo.

Far more than Senator McCain, you have received enormous, unprecedented contributions from corporate interests, Wall Street interests and, most interestingly, big corporate law firm attorneys...."

" ...Israeli writer and peace advocate—Uri Avnery—described Obama’s appearance before AIPAC as one that "broke all records for obsequiousness and fawning, adding that Obama "is prepared to sacrifice the most basic American interests. After all, the US has a vital interest in achieving an Israeli-Palestinian peace that will allow it to find ways to the hearts of the Arab masses from Iraq to Morocco. Obama has harmed his image in the Muslim world and mortgaged his future—if and when he is elected president.," he said, adding, "Of one thing I am certain: Obama’s declarations at the AIPAC conference are very, very bad for peace. And what is bad for peace is bad for Israel, bad for the world and bad for the Palestinian people."

A further illustration of your deficiency of character is the way you turned your back on the Muslim-Americans in this country. You refused to send surrogates to speak to voters at their events. Having visited numerous churches and synagogues, you refused to visit a single Mosque in America..."

"... But then your shameful behavior has extended to many other areas of American life. (See the factual analysis by my running mate, Matt Gonzalez, on www.votenader.org). You have turned your back on the 100-million poor Americans composed of poor whites, African-Americans, and Latinos. You always mention helping the "middle class" but you omit, repeatedly, mention of the "poor" in America.

Should you be elected President, it must be more than an unprecedented upward career move following a brilliantly unprincipled campaign that spoke "change" yet demonstrated actual obeisance to the concentration power of the "corporate supremacists." It must be about shifting the power from the few to the many. It must be a White House presided over by a black man who does not turn his back on the downtrodden here and abroad but challenges the forces of greed, dictatorial control of labor, consumers and taxpayers, and the militarization of foreign policy. It must be a White House that is transforming of American politics—opening it up to the public funding of elections (through voluntary approaches)—and allowing smaller candidates to have a chance to be heard on debates and in the fullness of their now restricted civil liberties. Call it a competitive democracy.

Your presidential campaign again and again has demonstrated cowardly stands. "Hope" some say "springs eternal." But not when "reality" consumes it daily.

Sincerely,
Ralph Nader"

Fresh Starts: Phenomenal Physics, Other Worlds

Imagining the Tenth Dimension: Animated presentation of dimensions of reality, which includes reference to the work on parallel/many worlds theory of physicist Hugh Everett III, father of Eels' singer Mark O. Everett-

Imagining the Tenth Dimension - A Book by Rob Bryanton



Also, a helpful CERN animation of the Big Bang Experiment in the Large Hadron Collidor can be viewed at: -
http://cdspages.web.cern.ch/cdspages/1125472.htm?ecp=tat-100208


"Everywhere I go I find that a poet has been there before me." - and -

"Poets are masters of us ordinary men, in knowledge of the mind,
because they drink at streams which we have not yet made accessible to science."

- Sigmund Freud

Nobel-List Economist Cues The Obama Agenda

Paul Krugman who won the Nobel Prize for Economics last month, is popular through his regular column and blog with the New York Times newspaper.

Here's the conclusion from his article that appeared this week, on November 7th: -

"...But it would be fair for the new administration to point out how conservative ideology, the belief that greed is always good, helped create this crisis. What F.D.R. said in his second inaugural address — “We have always known that heedless self-interest was bad morals; we know now that it is bad economics” — has never rung truer.

And right now happens to be one of those times when the converse is also true, and good morals are good economics. Helping the neediest in a time of crisis, through expanded health and unemployment benefits, is the morally right thing to do; it’s also a far more effective form of economic stimulus than cutting the capital gains tax. Providing aid to beleaguered state and local governments, so that they can sustain essential public services, is important for those who depend on those services; it’s also a way to avoid job losses and limit the depth of the economy’s slump.

So a serious progressive agenda — call it a new New Deal — isn’t just economically possible, it’s exactly what the economy needs.

The bottom line, then, is that Barack Obama shouldn’t listen to the people trying to scare him into being a do-nothing president. He has the political mandate; he has good economics on his side. You might say that the only thing he has to fear is fear itself."

Full article at:
Op-Ed Columnist - The Obama Agenda - NYTimes.com

A nice introduction to his view of the world can be found in his first blog post at this link: -

Introducing This Blog - Paul Krugman - Op-Ed Columnist - New York Times Blog

Messianic misunderstandings

The film "The Life of Brian" was created by the Monty Python team John Cleese, Michael Palin, Terry Gilleum, Eric Idle, Graham Chapman and Terry Jones. It was released in 1979. The story concerns Brian, who happenned to be born on the night of the original Christmas in an adjoining stable, and how he spends his life wretchedly being mistaken for the real Messiah. The reaction to its treatment of religious pretensions was extreme, ranging from rapturous admiration to protests and pickets, and even outright bans. Nevertheless the public and critics alike have consistantly voted it as being the greatest comedy movie of all time.

I sourced two youtube clips for our viewing pleasure:

Sunrise with Barack Obama

President-Elect Barack Obama's acceptance speech yesterday:




A poem, 'Take Care Soldier' by acclaimed Israeli writer Yitzak Laor captures something about how the world is finally stopping to take stock -

Perspectives on Language and ... - Google Book Search

A Poem by Jim Morrison (The Doors' frontman)

An American Prayer

“Do you know the warm progress under the stars?
Do you know we exist?
Have you forgotten the keys to the Kingdom?
Have you been borne yet & are you alive?

Let's reinvent the gods, all the myths of the ages
Celebrate symbols from deep elder forests
[Have you forgotten the lessons of the ancient war]

We need great golden copulations

The fathers are cackling in trees of the forest
Our mother is dead in the sea

Do you know we are being led to slaughters by placid admirals
& that fat slow generals are getting obscene on young blood

Do you know we are ruled by T.V.
The moon is a dry blood beast
Guerilla bands are rolling numbers
in the next block of green vine
amassing for warfare on innocent herdsmen
who are just dying

O great creator of being
grant us one more hour to
perform our art & perfect our lives

The moths & atheists are doubly divine & dying
We live, we die & death not ends it
Journey we more into the Nightmare
Cling to life our passion'd flower
Cling to cunts & cocks of despair
We got our final vision by clap
Columbus' groin got filled w/ green death
(I touched her thigh & death smiled)

We have assembled inside this ancient
& insane theatre
To propagate our lust for life
& flee the swarming wisdom of the streets
The barns are stormed
The windows kept
& only one of all the rest
To dance & save us
W/ the divine mockery of words
Music inflames temperament

(When the true King's murderers
are allowed to roam free
a 1000 magicians arisein the land)

Where are the feasts
we were promised
Where is the wine
The New Wine
(dying on the vine)
resident mockery
give us an hour for magic
We of the purple glove
We of the starling flight
& velvet hour
We of arabic pleasure's breed
We of sundome & the night

Give us a creed
To believe
A night of Lust
Give us trust in
The Night

Give of color hundred hues
a rich Mandala for me & you
& for your silky
pillowed house
a head, wisdom & a bed

Troubled decree
Resident mockery has claimed thee

We used to believe
in the good old days
We still receive
In little ways
The Things of Kindness
& unsporting brow
Forget & allow

Did you know freedom exists
in a school book
Did you know madmen are
running our prison
w/in a jail, w/in a gaol
w/in a white free protestant Maelstrom

We're perched headlong
on the edge of boredom
We're reaching for death
on the end of a candle
We're trying for something
That's already found us

We can invent Kingdoms of our own
grand purple thrones, those chairs of lust
& love we must, in beds of rust

Steel doors lock in prisoner's screams
& muzak, AM, rocks their dreams
No black men's pride to hoist the beams
while mocking angels sift what seems

To be a collage of magazine dust
Scratched on foreheads of walls of trust
This is just jail for those who must
get up in the morning & fight for such

unusable standards
while weeping maidens
show-off penury & pout
ravings for a mad staff

Wow, I'm sick of doubt
Live in the light of certain South

Cruel bindings
The servants have the power
dog-men & their mean women
pulling poor blankets over
our sailors
(& where were you in our lean hour)

Milking your moustache?
or grinding a flower?
I'm sick of dour faces
Staring at me from the T.V.
Tower. I want roses in
my garden bower; dig?
Royal babies, rubies
must now replace aborted
Strangers in the mud
These mutants, blood-meal
for the plant that's plowed

They are waiting to take us into
the severed garden
Do you know how pale & wanton thrillful
comes death on strange hour
unannounced, unplanned for
like a scaring over-friendly guest you've
brought to bed
Death makes angels of us all
& gives us wings
where we had shoulders
smooth as raven's claws

No more money, no more fancy dress
This other Kingdom seems by far the best
until its other jaw reveals incest
& loose obedience to a vegetable law

I will not go
Prefer a Feast of Friends
To the Giant family”.

Critical Mass

The controversial Internet film 'Zeitgeist' raises some disturbing questions -



May whatever natural, supernatural and any other forces of benevolence that hold sway, preserve Barack Obama and keep him wise, human and safe all his days.

No more heroes, anymore

The caption composed by the controversial graffiti artist Banksy from Bristol, UK, for this drawing is, "we don't need any more heroes, we just need someone to take out the recycling". His works have been identified in locations all over the world.

Examples of graffiti and street art have been found in Pompeii and in Newgrange from past millenia, but it wasn't until the 1970s as the hip-hop culture took root in New York and LA that ornamental tagging began to be added. The graphic embellishment of urban space is now a given of modern metropolitan living. What is new is the push towards commercialisation of these practices and the ambition of some of the practitioners. What was heretofore known as vandalism is now eligible for high art status. The trend is also detectible in the opposite direction.

More creations by banksy and his peers can be viewed at the following links:

http://www.banksy.co.uk/menu.html

blekmyvibe.free.fr

www.blublu.org

www.theartofasbestos.com

www.maserart.com

www.woostercollective.com

www.artcrimes.org

3 Icons (2 living, one dead): P. Glass, P. Smith, A. Ginsberg

Memorial Reading with Patti Smith and Philip Glass from The Life and Times of Allen Ginsberg by Jerry Aronson - http://allenginsbergmovie.com