the same river

Howl 2011

2011-12-11T14:09:00.000-08:00

i saw the best minds of my generation seduced by
corporate capitalism, distracted calloused oblivious,
pleasing clients in hip offices in the afternoon
after the next big project,
accessorized hipsters apathetic to the world outside
their little insulated bubbles refusing to see the bigger context,
who amused and sarcastic and ego-driven and narcissistic sat
up laughing in the artificial comfort of
fashionable bars floating through gentrified parts of the city
contemplating money,
who bared their brains for career within companies and
saw lifestyle brands reaching target audiences successful,
who passed through universities with sexy cool eye wear
dreaming of fame attending exclusive social functions
among the celebrities of tomorrow,
who graduated with honors from the academies for excellence &
publishing fresh ideas on their fresh personal blogs ,
who conformed upwardly mobile in tasteful denim,
untouched by distant horrific reality reduced to soundbytes and choosing
to ignore their removed complicity in it all.

Manufacturing Consent

2011-11-07T04:45:00.000-08:00

just in case you have not read or seen it. like me.

Killing Hope

2011-10-03T18:37:00.000-07:00

Killing Hope: US Military and CIA
Interventions Since World War II.

by William Blum

Table of Contents

Introduction
1. China - 1945 to 1960s: Was Mao Tse-tung just paranoid?
2. Italy - 1947-1948: Free elections, Hollywood style
3. Greece - 1947 to early 1950s: From cradle of democracy to client state
4. The Philippines - 1940s and 1950s: America's oldest colony
5. Korea - 1945-1953: Was it all that it appeared to be?
6. Albania - 1949-1953: The proper English spy
7. Eastern Europe - 1948-1956: Operation Splinter Factor
8. Germany - 1950s: Everything from juvenile delinquency to terrorism
9. Iran - 1953: Making it safe for the King of Kings
10. Guatemala - 1953-1954: While the world watched
11. Costa Rica - Mid-1950s: Trying to topple an ally - Part 1
12. Syria - 1956-1957: Purchasing a new government
13. Middle East - 1957-1958: The Eisenhower Doctrine claims another backyard for America
14. Indonesia - 1957-1958: War and pornography
15. Western Europe - 1950s and 1960s: Fronts within fronts within fronts
16. British Guiana - 1953-1964: The CIA's international labor mafia
17. Soviet Union - Late 1940s to 1960s: From spy planes to book publishing
18. Italy - 1950s to 1970s: Supporting the Cardinal's orphans and techno-fascism
19. Vietnam - 1950-1973: The Hearts and Minds Circus
20. Cambodia - 1955-1973: Prince Sihanouk walks the high-wire of neutralism
21. Laos - 1957-1973: L'Armée Clandestine
22. Haiti - 1959-1963: The Marines land, again
23. Guatemala - 1960: One good coup deserves another
24. France/Algeria - 1960s: L'état, c'est la CIA
25. Ecuador - 1960-1963: A text book of dirty tricks
26. The Congo - 1960-1964: The assassination of Patrice Lumumba
27. Brazil - 1961-1964: Introducing the marvelous new world of death squads
28. Peru - 1960-1965: Fort Bragg moves to the jungle
29. Dominican Republic - 1960-1966: Saving democracy from communism by getting rid of democracy
30. Cuba - 1959 to 1980s: The unforgivable revolution
31. Indonesia - 1965: Liquidating President Sukarno … and 500,000 others
East Timor - 1975: And 200,000 more
32. Ghana - 1966: Kwame Nkrumah steps out of line
33. Uruguay - 1964-1970: Torture -- as American as apple pie
34. Chile - 1964-1973: A hammer and sickle stamped on your child's forehead
35. Greece - 1964-1974: "Fuck your Parliament and your Constitution," said
the President of the United States
36. Bolivia - 1964-1975: Tracking down Che Guevara in the land of coup d'etat
37. Guatemala - 1962 to 1980s: A less publicized "final solution"
38. Costa Rica - 1970-1971: Trying to topple an ally -- Part 2
39. Iraq - 1972-1975: Covert action should not be confused with missionary work
40. Australia - 1973-1975: Another free election bites the dust
41. Angola - 1975 to 1980s: The Great Powers Poker Game
42. Zaire - 1975-1978: Mobutu and the CIA, a marriage made in heaven
43. Jamaica - 1976-1980: Kissinger's ultimatum
44. Seychelles - 1979-1981: Yet another area of great strategic importance
45. Grenada - 1979-1984: Lying -- one of the few growth industries in Washington
46. Morocco - 1983: A video nasty
47. Suriname - 1982-1984: Once again, the Cuban bogeyman
48. Libya - 1981-1989: Ronald Reagan meets his match
49. Nicaragua - 1981-1990: Destabilization in slow motion
50. Panama - 1969-1991: Double-crossing our drug supplier
51. Bulgaria 1990/Albania 1991: Teaching communists what democracy is all about
52. Iraq - 1990-1991: Desert holocaust
53. Afghanistan - 1979-1992: America's Jihad
54. El Salvador - 1980-1994: Human rights, Washington style
55. Haiti - 1986-1994: Who will rid me of this turbulent priest?
56. The American Empire - 1992 to present

http://killinghope.org/

The Tree of Life

2011-09-20T21:29:00.000-07:00

before seeing this film i had no idea that the lives of rich white people can be so deeply moving in such profoundly cliche ways. i had no idea that their privileged private tragedies are connected with the suffering of like, DINOSAURS from turn of the last ice age. amazing use of stock footage, whispering, and befuddled story arc. truly a masterpiece in sophomoric pretension and pure, grade A+ horse shit.

and to drive the point home, the film's inclusion of a few scenes showing the disenfranchised, blacks, and mexicans provided a silent background for the drama of our upper class main characters to unfold. all of this makes it all too clear that the lives of the underclass is filled with common place misery and garden variety pain, nothing remotely similar or even comparable to the intensely poetic, exalted, noble, transcendent and COSMIC suffering of the rich.

all set to a romantic, ethereal and elegiac soundtrack filled with Mahler's operatic soprano solos, emotive pieces from the top 40 Classical cannon, and ECM favorites like Górecki and Tavener. so romantic... BARF

while i always like to see more abstraction in films, and in some ways this one can be said to be pushing the envelope, it ends up as nothing more than a garishly sentimental middle class product just like the suburban setting it takes place in. Hallmark™ Surrealism.

i can't believe how many otherwise (seemingly) non-stupid people are praising this rubbish.

do not, i repeat, do NOT mention The Mirror in the same paragraph, or even on the same page as this supreme idiocy.

when hollywood tries to be artsy it makes me want to dig my eyes out with a rusty tea spoon. i knew we should have seen Transformers 3 instead.

a little perspective

2011-09-07T07:55:00.000-07:00

click to enlarge.

night in Merano

2011-05-03T23:03:00.000-07:00

This part of northern italy used to be inhabited by the Ladin (hold the OBL jokes) people, before the arrival of Italians and Germans roughly 800 years ago. Through out the centuries the natives have become increasingly displaced and marginalized, politically, economically, physically: and ended up moving to the mountains to "wait for an age of eternal peace" after losing a final battle with Germanic tribes.

Only 2-300 years ago the main language in these parts was Ladin, a form of old Latin, before being over taken by Italian and German. The downfall of the Ladin people continued to WW2 times, when, at the possible lowest, they were reduced to nomadic "tinkerers" who moved from place to place with horse drawn carriages, making little wooden sculptures here and selling little gadgets there. Yet from the very bottom and outskirts of society, they have consistently produced amazing artists of all kinds: influential film makers, conceptual artists (one of Gilbert and George, etc.), and musicians (Giorgio Moroder, etc. -- Fun Fact: the Top Gun soundtrack was produced in these very mountains).

Today there are only about 30,000 Ladin speakers left; but they are doing quite well for themselves up in the Dolemite mountains with ski resorts and tourism.

there you go, something wikipedia can not tell you. thanks to Haimo Perkmann for imparting this bit of local history over Tyrolean dumplings (more like matzo balls) last night.

Perceptual Shift

2011-03-17T03:11:00.000-07:00

badly recorded sweet and groovy little songs from 1950s Congo > self-important people behind laptops making serious "sound works" in front of spectacular video projections.

in terms of pure form, structure, mathematics, musical ideas, theory, and practice; in terms of performance art and ephemeral social sculpture weaved within the fabric of everyday life; in terms of dynamic engagement with audience -- in nearly every important way.

.

2011-03-16T23:09:00.000-07:00

israel-palestine revision

2011-01-02T01:37:00.000-08:00

not that it matters at all to the world or anyone in any way shape or form what i think, but have just been given some historical information with which many others are no doubt familiar, but i was ignorant of before, that makes necessary a partial revision of my previous (almost entirely pro-palestine and against israel) position toward the entire ongoing conflict. namely, the proposal and rejection of the Partition of Palestine back in 1947:

In November 1947, the United Nations voted in favor of the partition of Palestine, proposing the creation of a Jewish state, an Arab state, and a UN-administered Jerusalem.[16] Partition was accepted by the Zionist leadership but rejected by Arab leaders, and a civil war began. Israel declared independence on 14 May 1948 and neighboring Arab states invaded the next day. Since then, Israel has fought a series of wars with neighboring Arab states,[17] and has occupied territories, including the West Bank, Sinai Peninsula, Gaza Strip and the Golan Heights, beyond those delineated in the 1949 Armistice Agreements.

and then a friend clarifies a bit:

considering what happened in the war, why wasn't there a country carved out for the roma? it is the holocaust that got the world behind a jewish state perhaps, but the modern Jewish state was not born out of WW2. ... there are several books out there that can provide the history of zionism and the origins of the state of israel...

i don't think the majority of people in palestine in the 20s through 40s wanted jews to leave the region. there were obvious tensions (especially after the Balfour Declaration, where it became obvious to those in Palestine the intentions of creating a separate Jewish state), but no where near the anti-Semitism in the West. in fact, most colonial sources agree that tensions between Zionist immigrants and the local Christian and Muslim Arabs was BECAUSE of the Balfour Declaration and subsequent talk of a Jewish state, not just a homeland.

furthermore, being opposed to a jewish state is FAR different from wanting jews to leave. there had been Sephardic Jews in Palestine and North Africa for a long while. being opposed to a Jewish state is FAR different from racism. the imperialist powers had no right to legislate a Jewish state within the territory of the Palestinian people. i see no good reason why any right-thinking Palestinian in 1947 (or 1917 for that matter) would support the actions of the imperialist Western powers. even more so when this action is being forced on a former colony--in those early days of decolonialism and self-determination, no less. if you were a Palestinian in 1947, it would be supporting the colonial occupiers, the Western imperialists, to accept a Jewish state.

they carved Palestine into a homeland for the Jews--into a Palestinian state and a Jewish one. why? was this the ONLY solution to a history of Western pogroms against the Jews? and what right-thinking Palestinian would accept this answer? why should Jerusalem need to be a UN occupied city when the tension in Jerusalem really only started after Balfour and talk of a Jewish state?

living with the Jews? over the centuries, the Palestinians had gotten along better with the Jewish population than their European neighbors. living with them is one thing. a Jewish state is quite another.

there was plenty of anti-Jewish rhetoric before independence. plenty of Zionist rhetoric against the Arabs. attacks, murders, riots--all went both ways. it was not a peaceful time--the end of a colonial regime rarely is. it should be noted that British officers who were anti-Zionists have been condemned by history for being somewhat complicit in Arab riots and violence against Jews. this is deplorable, but i mention it to show the ultimate responsibility is certainly not Arab leaders, but the criminal colonial occupation by (mainly) Britain.

i think it is Historical Revisionism to begin blaming Arabs for the situation today because of a resistance to the 2 state solution in the 40s, resistance to a policy forced on them by decades of Western imperialism

read about the Balfour Declaration, the history of nonreligious Zionism, the British Mandate, all that shit. i think you will empathize even more with the Palestinians after reading it.

medium prejudice

2010-12-21T23:52:00.000-08:00

books are taken seriously, films are taken seriously, but the medium which exists exactly between the two, with expressive and narrative possibilities unique to its format -- adding the visual dimension to text, and allowing more imaginative freedom than film -- is still considered by so many ignorant people to be childish and unworthy of attention.

commonly accepted bullshit

2010-12-12T22:28:00.000-08:00

1. "cooked food is easier to digest and generally better for you than raw", this everyone my generation and above knows, and is complete false.

2. "third world" people who move to another country are called "immigrants", but "first world" people who do the same are called "expats". so i guess i was a Chinese immigrant, but now i'm an American expat. i'm going to exchange the 2 terms during usage starting now. i wonder if people will actually correct me after i say "Swedish immigrants" or "Nigerian expats". (or as someone cleverly said on Facebook: "Mexican Expats living in America with non-Mexicans")

3. coming soon

1961 CIA murder of Congo leader Patrice Lumumba

2010-08-26T07:25:00.000-07:00

New evidence in controversy over CIA responsibility for the 1961 assassination of democratically elected Congolese leader Patrice Lumumba. Evidence which more than ever implicates the US and Holland in this murder which had catastrophic consequences for the region which last until today.

from "Padraig (u.s.)":

"Lumumba's death paved the way for the rise to power of Mobutu Sese Seko, an enormously corrupt dictator who spent most of the next 30-odd years exorbitantly enriching himself & his cronies while the majority of Congole...se languished in poverty. Sese Seko, who came to power in a CIA-backed coup, was supported by the U.S. on "anticommunist" grounds. Lumumba wasn't a communist himself, but he was fiercely nationalist and anti-imperialist, bit of a firebrand, a man before his time (like Nelson Mandela in his younger years, kinda). of course in the Cold War terms to the U.S. that made a communist, despite his explicit avowals that he wasn't & that he disliked communism as much as colonialism. anyway Sese Seko's regime was disastrous for the Congo, as he didn't do anything to administrate the country beyond ensuring that he & his could steal as much as they wanted to, so consequently by the time he was finally overthrown the country was a) a simmering pot of ethnic & tribal hatreds & 2) ripe for plunder, with that amazing bounty of resources (hardwood timber & enormous mineral wealth & so on) an inviting target for neighboring countries (Rwanda, Angola, Uganda, a bunch of others) who would back various factions in the endless, multifacteted series of civil wars that continue more or less unabated to present day, as well as foreign multinationals. so in a not too-indirect way you could say that Lumumba's death, and the kinds of policies it was a part of, is largely responsible for the absolute effing mess the Congo is in/has been in for the last twenty years or so. granted there's no way of knowing what Lumumba would've done had he not been assassinated, but one imagines that at the very least it would've been something different. after his murder Sese Seko not only declared Lumumba a national hero but also, in an act of staggeringly shameless irony, attempted to portray himself as Lumumba's successor; Sese Seko was always kinda a master of pretending to be anti-colonial while in reality wedging himself as far up the West's collective ass as he could possibly get. Lumumba's death was also related to the secession of the mineral-rich province of Katanga under another anticommunist strong man, Moise Tshombe, supported by the Belgians (Lumumba was actually murdered in Katanga, almost certainly by Belgian security forces, possibly w/American collusion)."

Stephen R. Weissman

...Intelligence and National Security
Vol. 25, No. 2, 198-222, April 2010

Abstract

Controversy over alleged CIA responsibility for the 1961 assassination of Congolese leader Patrice Lumumba continues to swirl despite a negative finding by the US Senate Church Committee in 1975. A new analysis of declassified and other Church Committee, CIA and State Department documents, memoirs of US and Belgian covert operators, and author interviews with former executive branch and Church Committee officials shows that the CIA Congo Station Chief was an influential participant in the Congo Government's decision to "render" Lumumba to his bitter enemies. Moreover evidence strongly suggests the Station Chief withheld his advance knowledge of Lumumba's fatal transfer from Washington policymakers, who might have blocked it. Flaws in the Church Committee's verdict are traced to CIA delays in providing key cables, staff overreliance on lawyers' methodology, and political pressure to water down original draft conclusions. What happened in Lumumba's case provides insight into the contemporary problem of establishing accountability in US anti-terrorist programs. Current rendition policies are also characterized by ambiguous performance standards for covert operators on the ground and difficulty in pinpointing US responsibility within the intimate relationship between the CIA and foreign government clients. The Church Committee's experience clarifies the conditions for meaningful outside regulation of anti-terrorism operations today.

[in film footage taken after Lumumba's capture, available on http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JGnGFaJqmzU] "a tall dark man in his 30s with a small beard and mustache and open collared white shirt sits in the back of an army truck, his... hands bound behind him. One of the numerous non-American soldiers around him brutally pulls his hair to raise his face to the cameras; another gratuitously tightens his bonds, causing him to grimace in pain. ... The young Commander watches his men abusing the prisoner, smiling occasionally. The CIA - a strong backer of the Commander - had been trying to kill or capture the 'target' for months. Recently, the CIA Station Chief had met with security officials to make sure the right roads were blocked and troops alerted. According to the CIA Director, the prisoner's background was 'harrowing' and 'his actions indicate that he is insane'. Within weeks of this incident, the authorities decided to transfer the prisoner to another government - one that had threatened to kill him. They immediately informed the local CIA Station Chief of their plan. Three days later, the prisoner and two colleagues were hustled onto a plane bound for enemy territory. Savagely beaten throughout the flight, the prisoners were taken away after landing and never seen again."

thanks to Sufi and Padraig (u.s.)

Russia in color, 100 years ago

2010-08-26T07:20:00.000-07:00

more here

Zhaoist Manifesto

2010-07-07T10:43:00.000-07:00

1. FUSION

"The boundaries of objects are vague - and that goes for us too... Describing the world in terms of discrete objects is a useful fiction." - Kees van Deemter

Well worn cliche or not, everything is connected. Borders and separation, in the spheres of physics, of politics, of "race", as it is of culture, are illusions fostered by narrow and fearful minds, often purposefully fabricated by those who seek control and to benefit from alienation, antagonism, and the suffering of millions.

Today our conceptions of the cultures of the world, of their history and relationships to each other, is sadly still under heavy influence of 18th and 19th century revisionist versions of history. During those colonialist times in the United States, education reform initiated by the wealthy elite of powerful industrialists applied sweeping changes across university campuses, teaching a fundamental and intrinsic divide between "East" and "West", painting the former as largely superstitious, backwards, repressive, and the later progressive, modern, liberal. While in Europe racist German and English scholars began erasing the African and Asian foundational influence of classical Greece out of history, replaced by an absurd Euro-centric story of the "Cradle of Western Civilization" developing more or less autonomously, with the only outside influence from "Northern Tribes", separate from much older and more advanced civilizations in close physical proximity. The dissemination of this fictional dichotomy between the "occident" and "orient" has always been politically motivated: it furthers the aims of the ruling class, provides a necessary ideological backdrop for colonial and neo-colonial agendas, and is still instrumental in world affairs today (the structural basis for "the war on terror" as related to the demonization of Islam).

But there is no essential divide between "East" and "West", their relationship being more like parent and child. And when it comes to music, the inter-relatedness of all cultures and the character of their specific relationships can be perhaps even more easily understood. For instance if one looks at the history of the guitar, one finds that it was descendent of the Oud, the first record of which appears in ancient Mesopotamia during the Acadian period (2359-2159 BC). The Romans around 40 AD made a version of it called the Cithara, which spread to the Vikings in Europe; and later Gypsies living in Islamic Spain created the modern guitar based on that. And if one traces the history of 20th Century North American pop and dance music, a crude and very abbreviated but basically sound genealogy describes a line going back to Disco, to Soul, to Funk, to Motown, to Gospel, to Blues, to Jazz, to work songs of the slaves, and indeed, to Africa.

Continuities are everywhere one chooses to look: the Balkans are connected to Israel to Iraq to Spain to Egypt to Morrocco to Mali to the Congo to Haiti to Cuba to Colombia to NYC. Yet there is still this prevalent vantage point that "World Music" is indeed somehow fundamentally different from "Western Music", and it is still shocking to some that non-Western sounds are making such a ripple in 2010 (the success of artists such as Omar Suleyman, and a new wave of indie musicians citing non-western influence). As if Rock and Roll itself wasn't African American, and less directly, African in origin. As if Led Zeppelin wasn't heavily influenced by Turkish music, or the Rolling Stones by Morroccan traditions, the Beatles by Indian Classical, Can and (early) Kraftwerk by East Asian sensibilities and African percussion, Debussey and John Cage by Indonesian Gamelan, Steve Reich and Georgy Ligetti by African polyrhythms, etc, etc, etc. Forward thinking and ground breaking modern music in the "west" has always taken cues from much older non-western sources (similar to the way modern visual art owes much to pre-modern, so called "primitive" forms).

2. RE-ENTRY

“Those piles of ruins which you see in that narrow valley watered by the Nile, are the remains of opulent cities, the pride of the ancient kingdom of Ethiopia. There a people, now forgotten, discovered while others were yet barbarians, the elements of the arts and sciences.” - Count Volney

Humans have surely forgotten much more than we know today, with the ravage of time, after countless wars, destructions of entire cultures, libraries burnt down. By the same token, ancient musical traditions contain forms which are more advanced, more inventive, more structurally challenging, more revolutionary in every sense of the word, than any "futuristic" electronic dance music today. And in terms of the expansion of minds or shaking of booties, the bits and pieces passed down to us, remnants of sound traditions reaching back to ancient times, often embody methods far superior to what you might find in today's dance clubs. One man sitting on the island of Madagascar, singing over an insistent rhythmic melody plucked out of a one string instrument contains more ingenuity, more innovation, more raw power, more soul, more fire, than anything produced in the last 30 years.

All rhythm certainly comes from Africa, as the drum itself was invented somewhere around Kenya tens of thousands of years ago. But African music is much more than drumming, for example the various Kora traditions weaving complex melodic structures that would make Bach dizzy. To be more precise, in much of African music one finds an un-differentiated oneness of rhythm and melody, never divorced from each other by over analytical minds. Examples of this can be found in Soukous guitar playing, the various Mbira (thumb piano) musics scattered through out the continent, and the "Shangaan Electro" phenomena which is all the hype right now, itself only the latest expression of age old tradition.

What we have seen in the last few centuries is a return to rhythm, after being largely divided from it for many centuries under the European Classical establishment, which reduced its importance and saw it as "primitive" and "plebean", emblematic of music of savages and the underclass. But in the melting pot of the Americas, a traumatic confrontation between European and African traditions became probably the most important source of innovation in the past mellenium, forming the seeds of the myriad kinds of musical styles we know today.

The only way to move things forward is to look back upon the treasures of our collective past. It is indeed this re-entry of indigenous musical heritage, fused with urban bass culture, this combination of ancestral musical ideas and modern sound, which is now giving rise to irresistible next level dance music on every continent. Crucial new scenes thrive and vital new styles are born in almost every corner of the world, challenging and displacing the centralized hegemonic culture manufacturing machine which attempts to fill the world with its vacuous regurgitation. But despite the spread of information technologies, there is a pointed lack of communication between musical communities of the world today, and many scenes remain relatively isolated and insular, inaccessible to their potential global audience who hunger after new sounds. For instance Kwaito, the South African House/Hiphop hybrid style based on traditional Zulu music, flourished for 2 decades within the townships while being virtually unknown outside, and only recently began to make waves in the world at large.

3. the Responsibility of DJs

"who cares? it's just music!" - anonymous

Economic, political, and other arbitrary factors entirely other than artistic merit often determine which music rises to global prominence, and which is relegated to obscurity and silence outside of it's region. As Alan Lomax put it half a century ago (i paraphrase): "mass media broadcasts the voice of the privileged, while often times more deserving, more beautiful voices in poverty stricken places remain unheard." Thus djs in these neo-colonialst times, as cultural workers whose particular role affords them direct access to audiences, must be aware of the many levels of inequity in the world, and do his/her job with this awareness in mind.

Of course, above all other concerns, djs must rock the party. We must create unforgettable experiences on the dance floor, and fascilitate that most important (no, it is not frivolous at all!) of social functions: the celebration of life despite its hardships. But there is more than 1 way to mash up the dance, and djs do not have to pander to the charts or appeal to lowest common denominators to please a crowd.

Djs can both entertain and educate the audience. They can transcend the here and now, go beyond or destroy the status quo, if they choose to. Music is never "just music", but always an expression of social reality. I would love to see the world around us and the situation we are in to inform more dj sets, which make site specific references and conceptual links, infusing the musical experience with many levels of meaning. A good Dj should do in depth research into her/his chosen styles, its history and lineage as related to other styles, find and make unexpected connections.

In this day and age, many members of society and especially other artists still view the DJ as a clown-ish, superficial, unsophisticated and unimportant character, who exists solely to entertain drunk idiots. If all other reasons fail, this might be motivation enough to start taking ourselves and what we do more seriously.

Morality

2010-06-04T23:09:00.000-07:00

A man does what he must — in spite of personal consequences, in
spite of obstacles and dangers, and pressures — and that is the basis
of all human morality. - John F. Kennedy

and another, congruent definition, is the giving of one's life to a higher cause.

and we should note here that perhaps more clearly, perfectly, and undoubtedly than any other, the Suicide Bomber exemplifies both.

sneak preview T-shirts

2010-06-02T09:45:00.001-07:00

just a few teasers:
^^the gentrified city we hate :)

^^the fucked up city we love :D

Art is...

2010-05-08T15:56:00.000-07:00

Art is what people make for non-utilitarian purposes, which become more than the sum of its parts, and possessive of multiple layers of meaning, to which the viewer may return a thousand times, each walking away with a new experience.

- Zhao

Art is artificial and absurd. From a religion attendent it has become a religion surogate, and unlike religion it is a psychologocial side effect within a sense and meaning seeking creature in a sense lacking world. So it just creates its artificial universes of meaning. Thats it and it is phantastic and fascinating.

- Carsten Heisterkamp

ok your turn :)

2010-05-07T05:53:00.000-07:00

War and the Noble Savage

2010-03-11T01:04:00.000-08:00

i would start with the slide cast linked to below, as it is a good overview of the book and its key points -- a look at both the history of the notion of the "noble savage" as well as analysis of recent theories concerning them and pre-civilization.

War & the Noble Savage
A Critical Inquiry into Recent Accounts of Violence amongst Uncivilized Peoples

people who have taken an interest in the recent "declining levels of violence through history charts" may find this especially interesting.

Interim Camp by the Field

2010-01-10T07:42:00.000-08:00

a nice abstract ambient film about glacial formations to go with the cold winter. via Human Resources.

Spiritualism and Capitalism

2010-01-05T02:06:00.000-08:00

i recognize value in, and actively try to learn from both the teachings of spiritual disciplines as well as critical theory. But i find deeply troubling things in both camps: in Spiritualism apolitical disavowal, and in Theory an inability to see the world outside of materialist terms, to recognize "deeper essences of reality".

For this post i will focus on my problems with the New Spiritualism very popular amongst upwardly mobile yuppies all over the world, and especially in Southern California.

Someone who might as well as be the woman in the photo above once explained the massive suffering in Africa in terms of "these people paying for things they did wrong in past lives".

As if colonialism, post-colonial exploitation and current global economic interests, of which we are all complicit, have nothing to do with the genocidal violence taking place right now.

Needless to say i was shocked and deeply disturbed.

ignorant, irresponsible, and morally reprehensible views like this is almost enough for me to turn away from this whole "Spiritual" thing entirely. And even when i realize that this particular statement is only one extremely stunted, naive, and abhorrent viewpoint, it does reflect an over all perniciously apolitical modus operandi of the New Spiritualism.

No good can come from easy absolution of responsibility, release of guilt, by absurd denial or willful ignorance of the consequences of our actions in the real world.

No good can come from discounting, ignoring, and dismissing the massive influence of social forces on how we perceive the world and what we think about ourselves.

No good can come from complete disavowal of Capitalism as the organizational model we exist within, which shapes us and our individual subjectivity.

No good can come from pretending that deep structural biases do not exist in our consciousness, and ideological conditioning do not heavily everything we think and do.

Critique of Spiritualism often runs along the lines of all this health and self improvement working perfectly with Capitalism (especially with some "Spiritual" groups outright teaching get-rich-quick schemes), and i have to agree. (however i have no interest in denying a spiritual essence deeper than Capitalism, deeper than even genotypes... although how accessible it is while under so many layers of coding and conditioning is up for debate)

Buddhism has been co-opted many times before by dominant ideology -- for example enlightened Zen priests supporting the rise of militarism and fascism in late 19th Century Japan, and later actively condoning extreme cruelty and violence during WW2.

And I see today the same kind of dangerous co-optation of Spiritual teachings and the power which they contain by Capitalism and its omnipresent and invisible ideology.

It is a good sign when the discipline in question embodies the political convictions of dominant ideology, espouses propaganda, repeats party lines, provides rationalization for its agenda, eases consciences, absolves guilt, and paves a smooth road for despicable action.

The pro-fascism Zen Buddhist majority in Japan not only justified genocidal slaughter but actively promoted murder on a mass scale, often using poetic, spiritual language.

They spoke eloquently of "the sword which gives life", and of the purifying and cleansing power of violence. The structural support of militarized hierarchy had accompanied the Bushido code for several centuries before the 19th century, and only had to be modified slightly to fit the rise of new Fascism: the life of the soldier is nothing compared to that of the master, and thus the life of the enemy is much less than nothing -- and so Buddhist teachings went to encourage gruesome torture, mass rape, forcing fathers to kill children, bayonet practice on young men.

Today i see the same thing happening.

Spiritual groups exalting selfishness and greed are the most obvious examples. You know the ones which teach that wealth is not only a right, but a virtue.

But in general, while the new spiritualism pay lip service to "the interconnectedness of all things", they willfully ignore pandemic suffering on a mass scale which are a part of the political economic system they exist in -- systems based on injustice, exploitation, and slavery.

Today's systematic violence is several steps farther removed than before, but it is no less cruel, and not happening on any smaller scale, than what took place during WW2. the disastrous consequences of our lavish and wasteful lifestyle are unknown to, and unfelt by us. The chain of causality is largely hidden, but just because we are disconnected with events in areas remote to us, does not mean they are any less directly caused by us.

And while the new spiritualism pay lip service to "peace", "love", and "compassion", they do nothing to raise awareness of things such as the Genocide in the Congo taking place as i type. In fact, most of them probably don't even know about it, or even care.

Instead, people continue to make each other feel good with incense, yoga, and slogans like "the Universe is Pure Love". Reassuring each other that all is well, and that nothing can destroy eternal peace and harmony. And the 12 year old child soldiers in Uganda? Well don't think about them. They are just paying for wrongs in their past lives.

So while i respect and want to learn much more from various spiritual teachings, and want to practice some of the disciplines, i also see that a LARGE part of the New Spiritualism is entirely co-opted by Capitalism, and is as sinister and despicable as the pro-fascist Zen Buddhism of 100 years ago.

references:

Zen at War ~ Daizen Victoria and Daizen Victoria
Weatherhill; February 1998 ISBN-10: 0834804050

Robert Anton Wilson Explains Everything

2009-12-25T07:22:00.000-08:00

thanks to Ugly Radio, we have a cure for holidays boredom. it's nothing too challenging or difficult, covers ground a lot of people probably are at least a little familiar with, but it's still good to go over it. the man has a nice voice (not at all annoying like William Burroughs) and an infectious chuckle, and it's nice to listen to him go on about General Semantics, Joyce, Peyote, and a thousand other topics. also works well if you can't sleep...

Tape 1: The Life and Times of Robert Anton Wilson
Traces Pope Bob's childhood, formative years, Catholic rearing (pun intended), his lifelong love of James Joyce via an interview.
Warning: Side B has a great example of twisted tape syndrome, wherein a small chunk of it plays backwards. Don't worry, it's in a very appropriate place, as you'll hear!
Download Tape 1 (tape warps at the end so you don't hear the Leary story punchline... sorry)

Tape 2: Language and Reality
Incorrigible optimist Bob explores how language shapes our perceptions of the world, or how our reality tunnels are formed. He discusses Korzybski and Neuro-Linguistic Programming and other modes of thought construct.
Download Tape 2

Tape 3: Techniques for Consciousness Change
Bob discusses various methods for obtaining various states of consciousness as well as LSD, Sensory Deprivation and Leary's Eight Circuit model of consciousness and how to reprogram them.
Download Tape 3

Tape 4: Politics and Conspiracy Theory
How trying to unravel the big control conspiracy can both drive you mad and how the more you learn about it, the less plausible, yet undeniably 'real' it all becomes. Also how dogmatic religions tend to have their own, unique conspiracy theories.
Download Tape 4

Tape 5: The Acceleration of Knowledge
Live lecture on the doubling of information and how it seems to be occurring at an increasing interval and where Bob thinks we're headed.
Download Tape 5

Tape 6:
Side A- Religion for the Hell of it
Side B- The New Inquisition
Hilarious and enlightening two-part lecture in Boulder Co., where Bob rails against all stripes of fundamentalism and the rigid, Aristotalian mind-set, as well as the hardcore skepticism of fundamental materialists (with their mantra of 'it's only a coincidence, it's only a coincidence!') . Also, the rabbit-UFO connection revealed at last.
Download Tape 6

Against Developmentalism

2009-12-22T23:52:00.000-08:00

quotes from a few scholars and economists which might serve to outline critique of current developmentalism:

"The question remains whether human beings can improve their lot or are they left to the mercies of ineluctable forces-such as the now fashionable "global market." In its non-answers to this question the World Bank (and others in the development establishment) is currently "ploughing ahead with an increasingly incoherent discourse of opposites: the state is needed, after all, but not too much, and only when the market doesn't work well; democracy is important but not if it leads to inappropriate demands for redistribution; and so on" (Leys)."

"Half a century after the first promise of 'modernization' was held out for the `third world,' it is obvious that very little of that ambition has been realized". The result is that "academics are mired in a neo-classical versus state interventionist stalemate . . . and workers in the agencies are trapped in the dead-ends of macro `structural adjustment' policy panegyrics or an endless array of directionless and context-devoid projects. Where the 'people' do have promising projects and meaningful aspirations, local states and global capitals-the roots of the real crisis-conspire against them"

Rather than squarely face these problems the development establishment has shifted its rhetoric and coopted such terms as democracy, equity, participation, and sustainability to use for their own nefarious purposes. Moore and Schmitz ask whether the concepts designated by these terms can have any real meaning if vested interests can make such easy use of them.

the current developmentalism is simply "an exercise of elite institutional selfpreservation responding to the threat posed by systemic breakdown" (Moore and Schmitz)

"Despite his Ph.D. in business and deep roots in the conservative establishment, Korten opens the book talking about his "gradual awakening to the conclusion that the conventional development practice espoused by most conservatives and even liberals is a leading cause of-not the solution to-a rapidly accelerating and potentially fatal human crisis of global proportions"

"We might say that GNP, technically a measure of the rate at which money is flowing through the economy, might also be described as a measure of the rate at which we are turning resources into garbage" (1995:38). Or in terms of an evolutionary perspective we could describe the GNP as a measure of how much we now pay for what was once free in our preagricultural era.(Korten)

"the World Bank and the IMF have worked in concert to deepen the dependence of low-income countries on the global system and then to open their economies to corporate colonization"(Korten)

The current trend toward economic globalization has resulted in a lessening of the power of governments responsible to the public and an augmentation of power of a few transnational corporations and financial institutions. Compelled only by the crusade for short-term profits, these institutions incessantly bombard us with the myths "that consumerism is the path to happiness, governmental restraint of market excess is the cause of [our] distress, and economic globalization is both a historical inevitability and a boon to the human species"(Korten)

"Our international political leaders are entrapped in these myths, and the sociopolitical rewards and punishments in societies are allocated by the institutions dedicated to upholding these myths."(Korten)

"the origins of Africa's tragedy clearly lie far back in the emergence and evolution of the world capitalist economy; and the seeming impossibility of surmounting it today is also bound up with the fact that the leading industrial states have recently chosen to abandon that system of regulation to which the global economy was subject at the time when Africa was launched into independence" (Edoho)

"The natural systems of many African countries are on the brink of collapse" (1996:63) resulting from a poverty caused by "debt burden, degraded land resources because of prolonged use, trade barriers imposed by wealthy nations, mismanaged and misdirected assistance from rich countries, and general lack of institutions to carry out sustainable development policies" (Edoho)

"Policy makers are disillusioned, the poor are dispirited, donor agencies are tired, and the international organizations all are weary of the herculean task of developing [sub-Saharan Africa]" (1996:154). "If the 1960s were characterized by optimism in sub-Saharan Africa, the 1970s by frustration, and the 1980s by widespread disillusionment and unrelieved pessimism, the 1990s are definitely characterized by outright despondency and cynicism" (Edoho)

"externally imposed 'development' was seriously disrupting human relationships and community life and causing significant hardship for the very people it claimed to benefit. By contrast, when people found the freedom and self-confidence to develop themselves, they demonstrated enormous potential to create a better world". The concept of development (must) be radically shifted from a money-centered economics to a people-centered ecology." (Korten)

"for all countries in the world, recapturing control over their own destinies requires the re-establishment of social control over capital and the resubordination of markets to social purposes" . Africa is only the first victim of a return to a market-driven world, though the weakest sections of the First World "are already bearing . . . the costs through unemployment, intermittent or part-time work, lower real wages and the contraction of social services and social security" (Leys).

"difficulties in development theory "are not due to the working out of an inexorable law of economics but, to a significant extent, to politically motivated policy decisions (setting capital free to pursue profit wherever it wishes and on whatever terms it can impose), rationalized by a particular brand of development theory (neo-liberalism) which assigns all initiative to `the market' (i.e. to capital)". In the short run the results of neo-liberal developmentalism could be a boon to a very small elite in the First and Third Worlds and a disaster for most of the people in the Third World (and some in the First World). In the long run the results will be a disaster for everyone.(Leys)

"The new global order ... will have to be more representative of, and accountable to, people (as opposed to wealth) than most global institutions are now". the new leadership must "come from within civil society", ... a citizens' agenda to enhance these efforts by getting corporations out of politics and creating localized economies that empower communities within a system of global cooperation" (Leys)

"These are not insurmountable problems" . He claims that they can be solved through the economic development of people, institutionalization of democratic processes, cultivation of visionary leaders, production of food crops rather than cash crops, and integration of technologies" (Edoho)

"We must give high priority to legislative and judicial action aimed at establishing the legal principle that corporations are public bodies created to serve public needs and have only those privileges specifically extended to them by their charters or in law" . We must to cut down on inequality through guaranteed incomes, progressive income and consumption taxes, and equitable allocation of paid employment. We must to localize the global system by international debt reduction for low-income countries, international financial transactions tax, regulation of transnational trade and investment, and, of course, close down the World Bank (Korten)

Leys, Colin. The Rise and Fall of Development Theory. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 1996. 205 pp.

Moore, David B., and Gerald J. Schmitz, (eds.). Debating Development Discourse: Institutional and Popular Perspectives. New York: St. Martin's Press, 1995. 259 pp.

Korten, David C. When Corporations Rule the World. West Hartford, CT: Kumarian Press, 1995. 374 pp.

attractiveness, media, and social control

2009-12-16T09:11:00.000-08:00

not pretending that the following is anything new which have not been said before, just some thoughts in my head. and written very fast with hardly any editing, so please be kind and overlook the unprofessional use of language and just focus on the big picture...

the sharp distinctions between "beautiful" and "ugly", and the conformity to these standards in the globalized media saturated world, are not only largely arbitrary and manufactured, but actually designed to play a central role in what i have termed "the artificial rarity of sex as commodity".

to be sure, sex is a commodity in our culture. beyond prostitution, there are countless industries which manufacture countless lines of goods which act as substitutes, are marketed as attraction enhancement, or self esteem boosters -- in fact it is difficult or maybe entirely impossible to disentangle these from the whole of commodity culture itself. and the important required condition for it all to function, which is to say for global capitalism to function, is if the human need for companionship, affection, and sex was somehow made artificially rare.

lonely nights where you cruise around desperate for human contact, we all know what that's like. for dudes its difficult to get a piece of ass without status symbols, for girls, the looks -- it's an entire system constructed of arbitrary and artificial values which regulates social interaction, and isolates people from each other.

and all of this brought into sharp relief by the endless representation of sex everywhere you look, and the endless neurotic obsession with "relationships" in the media. the truth of the following equation i do not doubt: the more representation of sex exists in a culture, the more sexually repressed it is.

it is not difficult to imagine different social organizations where definitions of attractiveness take on much more diverse and individual form, not conforming to an imposed standard of beauty such as what we have. (not difficult to imagine because they exist)

bottom line is that everyone should be fucking. pretty or ugly, fat or thin. all the time. as much as they want. and no one should be made to feel unattractive (or at least to a much lesser extent). we are all people with the same needs, and the system we live in exploit these needs, by deprivation, and at the same time manufacturing artificial desire.

it is a simple dynamic, similar to the way cosmetics industry works: if people are made to feel ugly by comparing themselves to images of ideal beauty, which confront them everywhere and all the time, they will buy more make-up.

but what i have described is of course still a small part of the puzzle. the institution of the nuclear family, and monogamy, very recent forms in human history, of course plays a large, maybe more fundamental, part in this. don't want to ramble on more than i already have, but humans are pack animals, whose "natural" existence is amongst an extended family of 30-60 individuals. a child should be raised by and learn from not 2 adults, but many adults and many peers. and taken away from this way of life, we are already lost, and vulnerable.

someone said once that there are 2 things human beings need: community and autonomy. and in this modern world of ours we have true forms of neither.

ADDENDUM:

a major difference between anglo saxons taking over the world in the last few hundred years and the empires which have come and gone before, is that technology for the first time in history allows the victors to saturate the world with images of themselves.

consider when the Moorish Islamic empire ruled Spain during the middle ages for more than 500 years. a time when Europe was hell on earth, a backward and ignorant world of torture and disease with no running water and no toilettes, a time when North African culture was at the height of civilization, with progressive social values and high standards of living, arts and sciences blooming, when the wealthy in Europe sent their kids to Spain to be educated -- i have not read anthropological studies but it only makes sense at that time North African features were considered beautiful, and Europeans imitated the latest fashion of the Moors.

it is these larger forces of history and the resulting social realities, the effects of which in our age exponentially exaggerated by the advent of global media saturation, largely make up what we think is beautiful. (there are of course other factors such as white being a symbol of purity in many traditional cultures... but i am against any kind of essentialist notions. does that make me a behaviorist?)

so today it is thin noses and pale skin, more or less waspy features being the most desireable, but this will surely change...

I Will Never Understand

2009-11-12T21:08:00.001-08:00

why people feel proud of, build their identity on, and pledge allegiance to, the piece of dirt that they happen to have been born on.

shit makes no damn sense. word?

essentially: patriotism = nationalism = fascism.

and it seems to me, that in order to move toward a world without borders, without wars, without inequity, subjugation, or the needless suffering of millions upon millions, that we first need to give up this bullshit, useless, childish and embarrassing turf mentality.

bottom line is this:

the world can only be a better place if more of us put "human" and "earthling" before "Chinese", "German", "American".

some might even say the survival of our specie depends on it.

why pandas? why NOT pandas!

The (lack of the) Mysterious

2009-10-18T01:06:00.000-07:00

in a tangent from the Giving Up Coffee thread in which Chaotropic started telling amazing stories about his cryptozoological expeditions on Dissensus.

I think it's important that some things aren't grounded, aren't accepted, aren't codified, aren't nailed down. So, the important thing about my kind of cryptozoology, isn't finding things, necessarily, but simply that the act of looking allows other people to have faith that the world is larger than they've been led to believe. In the same way that surrealism does. It sortof sanctions dreaming. Does that make sense? It's like, somebody in the world has to be doing this, otherwise nobody is doing it, & that what a boring world it would be if nobody was doing things like this.

I dunno. Anyway, Zhau, that's why I do it. It totally relates to music. I'm serious.

it does make sense and i understand/agree with/am all for those reasons. but at the same time it also makes counter-sense: in the act of "destroying" the mysterious you want to remind the world of the mysterious.

and similarly the surrealist agenda is 2 fold like this: one can convincingly argue that the basic impulse is still to bring the dark to light, make the unseen seen, the "conquering" of the irrational by the rational mind. surely what is not seen or represented is the real frightening mysterious?

but i think the work of Gabriel García Márquez and Salmon Rushdie functions slightly or a lot differently from the above. and some films and music and art do too. i like the idea of making things which jolt people out of their routine, quotidian reality - and the fact that this is needed (very much so IMO) is testament to the sad (in melancholic sense) state of the world.

the reign of the rational in "the west" is ridiculous, boring, and fuels an absurd sense of self righteousness. it is horrific and laughable that people do not believe in the possibility of something if no photo has been taken of it. people like to, and do, think that they are more or less standing on a complete set of knowledge about everything under and above the sun, and this is simply far, far from the truth. (add this to the list [URL="http://dissensus.com/showthread.php?t=5607&highlight=critique+science"]here[/URL])

chinese medicine has maintained for 5 thousand years that the balance of the world and its inhabitants is being systematically destroyed, and that this is the main cause of all the collective sickness (environment, etc, etc etc etc). too much light, not enough dark.

What do Truthers Want?

2009-09-15T22:37:00.000-07:00

lets forget that i am kind of one myself for a minute.

what do they hope will happen as a result of their tireless campaigning? (as someone accurately pointed out a few years ago) it seems 1 or both of 2 things:

1. an admission of guilt from the powers that be. white house officials going on national TV, coming clean of the inside job. and / or

2. for enough people to recognize the truth to rise up and overthrow the government.

and now my second question is:

they do realize that neither will ever happen, right?
that these scenarios will forever remain exactly what they are now: fantasies.

now i'm not saying we should do nothing and swallow the bullshit official story on 9-11, or indeed anything else. but there has to be a better strategy than just endlessly going on about the durability of steel or what really hit the pentagon. because it doesn't matter how irrefutable the Truther's case may be, history has shown over and over again that evidence and facts don't do shit. why? because the primary ideological imperative of the American people is to keep things exactly as they are: they want their SUVs and they want their TIVO and they want their fast food. if you wave banners they will ignore you, and if you really try to change things they will slit your throat.

the human condition

2009-08-01T23:54:00.000-07:00

our inherent connection and bond with a spiritual realm inextricable from everyday life was lost around 10 - 20,000 years ago, with the rise of the shamen, and from there our craving for that connection has been more and more effectively and efficiently exploited for power and control, convolution upon miserable convolution, deceit upon deceit, until today's bottomless confusion and utter disarray. and we

fester and rot in some hell hole of competing bacteria and killing machines,

unable to even remember life before slavery, save for a very few true practitioners within maggot infested religious traditions who still carry with them, through the ravages of history, a shadow of that bond; and a few transcendent moments in our "art", which are all but pathetic attempts to capture a sliver of that ecstatic original grace which filled us and surrounded us.

the Wrestler

2009-04-06T06:01:00.000-07:00

intentional, consciously, or even came across the director's mind or not (most likely yes), the film readily becomes a metaphor of the decline of Empire.

• opens with shot of American flag
• the constant weight, fatigue of a once mighty being struggling to maintain a reckless, unsustainable lifestyle
• bad choices and burnt bridges from the past catches up: spitting in the wind
• violence and its spectacle; the behind the scenes planning and negotiating with the "enemies" - non of it is what it seems, but the blood and toll on human life is real.
• sharp devide and contrast between public persona and private, emotional life
• theme of dehumanization where bodies are reduced to commodities: meat
• the heart condition is like the deficit
• the addiction to the show which is killing him is like the dependence on oil
• instead of change when given the chance, the course is to plunge ahead on the suicidal path.

who's with me?

Deeper Roots 2

2009-04-01T00:19:00.000-07:00

Black Athena I, II, and Black Athena Writes Back, can be downloaded here, in e-book format. also included in the archive is A Deeper Discussion on "Black Greeks" & More, which i can not yet vouch for.

i believe this is some of the most important reading we can do: it constructs a good case for what we were all taught as children about the history of western civilization being false.

in Bernal's terms, there are 2 models for the rise of Greek culture: the ancient model, and the Aryan model. the Ancient model describes the massive influence on Greece that the much older Egyptian and Asiatic/Semitic civilizations had. and the Aryan model denies both, and posits that there were invading tribes from the north which influenced Greece.

the Ancient model was held by the Greeks themselves and all through out the ages, had no internal explanatory problems, and was only overturned during the 19th century, replaced with the Aryan model that most of us believe to be truth - a white, euro-centric Greece.

Bernal puts it very clearly: European culture did not start in Norway or the Swiss Alps -- it started in the Southern most, Eastern most region, a place geographically closest to Africa and Asia -- why? he talks about the relationship between Greece and Egypt as similar to that of Japan to China: the younger cultures certainly did have their innovations, but as a whole came from, borrowed heavily, and is largely a product of the much older civilization which preceded them.

and here is a video:
Afro-centricity Debate - Dr. Clarke (above) & Professor Martin Bernal debate professor Mary Leftkowitz and Professor Guy Rogers. Mid 90's, Topic of discussion and debate is the book 'Black Athena' written by Professor Bernal. Split into 5 parts: Part 1 part 2 Part 3 Part 4 Part 5

(the 5 parts are not named very well, the first starts with the host woman making small talk before saying "good evening")

enjoy.

and just for a laugh, predictably, these are the kind of people who dismiss Black Athena. LOL.

proud of myself

2009-03-24T06:40:00.000-07:00

so i was reading an article about the government in China on the can this morning, and it was not long before realizing that there was no more toilette paper. thus, being the kind of resourceful person as i am, and wholly believing in making do with the hand one is dealt, i tore a page from the magazine and wiped my ass with the Chinese Communist Party.

What If...

2009-02-18T04:34:00.000-08:00

sums it up pretty good.

Rise of the Love Song

2009-02-04T00:02:00.000-08:00

if not rigorous journalism/commentary, an interesting (but a little sophomoric) article with some worthwhile observations (and funny bits that had me laffing) by Ian Svenonius. here is an excerpt, the most pertinent part.

Worst Since WW2

2008-12-31T01:08:00.001-08:00

to continue the happy vibes from the last post... this one is for the new year.

had a dinner party last night and there was someone who works as camera man for the UN, just arriving in Berlin a few hours earlier, after being stationed in various parts of Africa for the past 8 years: mainly Uganda, Rwanda, and for the past 4 years, Congo.

a few hours before he got on the plane (i guess the day before yesterday?), a church where 400 children and some adult refugees were hiding was discovered by rival faction soldiers, and all 400+ were hacked to pieces with machetes, and thrown into the river.

a normal occurance, just another day.

i knew that things have always been bad since (and before) the beginning of the second Congolese war, and after its "end", and that there have been recent escalations of violence, but i did know just how bad.

he told of child soldiers aged 7 to 17, acting in groups of 6 to a dozen: the oldest would be the leader, and the job of the youngest was to carry the cut off hands and feet of dead enemies. they would return to base at night, and would take out the body parts to show the commanders, like "here are 12 pieces, look how well we did." hoping to get a promotion, and/or more food, more drugs.

regularly he documents the aftermath of a battle, with hundreds of bodies strewn about, sometimes having been left in the sun for weeks. and on several occasions run ins with child soldiers, and having the nozzle of an AK47 shoved into his face, and the cold, empty, inhuman eyes of a 10 year old staring into his own.

the drug of choice for these children is a mix of heroin, sometimes cocaine, cut with gunpowder as an extender, mixed with a bit of water. the method of intake is to soak a piece of cotton with the mixture, and insert it into a slit cut into a cheek on the face, sealed by a bandage -- this way the dope slowly and steadily enters the bloodstream, and lasts all day, as they go out and do their thing. (not sure why the face is used and not, say, inner thigh).

he told of millions of people who have been moving from refugee camp to refugee camp, often several times a year, for the past decade or more. the lucky ones have a single cooking pot that they carry with them on top of the head. at each camp, they are given a piece of plastic and some wood/branches, with which they build a small tent/shelter, after clearing the ground of rocks with their hands.

the main objective for the many different factions, is of course to dominate pieces of land rich with mineral and other resources, mainly diamonds and the stuff that goes in cell phones. gaining control of territory and setting up mines can mean billions of dollars for the war lords -- every cell phone in the world has a piece from those regions, and every diamond -- the global economy is directly connected with what is happening.

"talk about 'how the other half lives'", he said.

some Congolese Rumba came on my randomized itunes play list, and he told of the smiles immediately lighting up African faces when they hear music, and immediately getting up to dance: it is the only good thing in life. and "similar to the culture of fashionable men with starving families who support their obsession with haute couture: entire villages will celebrate if someone brought back a Comme des Garçons jacket from Brussels -- it is one of the only happy things in their lives".

he told of a Dutch artist who made a project called "Enjoy Poverty", which involved him traveling around various parts and trying to explain to the local photographers how much the foreign journalists would make from a single photo of their misery, and that if they did the same...

the UN has called these wars and conflicts the "worst since WW2", and it doesn't even make headlines in the west or east.

someone threw out an equation, something like 100 African deaths = 10 Middle Eastern deaths = 1 European death to the news media.

and someone else commented that when he hears the endless reports about the Gaza strip and the jews vs. arabs thing, he's just like "shut the fuck up already." adding "of course there are many socio economic geo political reasons for the focus on the conflict in that region, but we need to balance it out a little bit with reports of things like what is happening in places like Congo.

"what is the answer to the question asked by a first world citizen: 'what can i do to help'?" "the only one is Not Much". of course there are cosmetic things one can do, but it can not amount to much of anything in the face of this kind of pandemic suffering. and most people really devoted to the cause, who volunteer in these places, soon see their own lives fall apart...
for me, any concept of "right" and "wrong" and justice and morality just fall apart like a house of cards in a tornado when i consider this, and especially how it is directly connected to the life of obscene luxury that i live.

had a hard time sleeping last night and am crying as i type this.

American Violence

2008-12-29T22:51:00.000-08:00

started watching DeadWood this week between christmas and new years and i must say it's a pretty entertaining little vitual bubble to get sucked into. characters are strong and although cliched, believeable; story engaging... if ultimately pointless, at least it doesn't shrink away from straight forward depictions of the real stuff America is founded upon: greed, inequality, complete disregard for human rights/life, and violence without flinching or remorse.

to the show's writers' credit, there was even mention of "Rough and Tumble", a specific style of early American sport fighting, in which the opponents gouge eyes out, tear lips off with teeth, and rip the gentials off, etc.

seems like in many ways an integral part of the "southern ethic" and early American experience, but so dark, so disturbing, and so embarrassing that it is altogether swept under the rug. i think it is important to know about this stuff, in relation to the particular American fascination and relationship to violence, and a specific set of social values, which to this day in some way shapes everything from film-making to politics.

the following is a chilling artile, but fascinating in terms of social history and anthropology.

"Gouge and Bite, Pull Hair and Scratch:" The Social Significance of Fighting in the Southern Backcountry
a historical account and sociological study from 18th Century on.

a few excerpts:

... a man’s role in the all-male society was defined less by his ability as a breadwinner than by his ferocity. The touchstone of masculinity was unflinching toughness, not chivalry, duty, or piety."

"The southern ethic anticipated human evil, tolerated ethical lapses, and accepted the finitude of man in contrast to the new style that demanded unprecedented moral rectitude and internalized self-restraint."

"The lower classes are the most abject that, perhaps, ever peopled a Christian land. They live in the woods and deserts and many of them cultivate no more land than will raise them corn and cabbages, which, with fish, and occasionally a piece of pickled pork or bacon, are their constant food'. Their habitations are more wretched than can be conceived; the huts of the poor of Ireland, or even the meanest Indian wigwam, displaying more ingenuity and greater industry." [EN22] Despite their degradation - perhaps because of it - Janson found the poor whites extremely jealous of their republican rights and liberties. They considered themselves the equals of their best-educated neighbors and intruded on whomever they chose. [EN23] The gouging match this fastidious Englishman witnessed in Georgia was the epitome of lower-class depravity:

We found the combatants' fast clinched by the hair, and their thumbs endeavoring to force a passage into each other's eyes; while several of the bystanders were betting upon the first eye to be turned out of its socket. For some time the combatants avoided the thumb stroke with dexterity. At length they fell to the ground, and in an instant the uppermost sprung up with his antagonist's eye in his hand!!! The savage crowd applauded, while, sick with horror, we galloped away from the infernal scene. The name of the sufferer was John Butler, a Carolinian, who, it seems, had been dared to the combat by a Georgian; and the first eye was for the honor of the state to which they respectively belonged.

Janson concluded that even Indian "savages" and London's rabble would be outraged by the beastly Americans."

"The battle began - size and power on the Kentuckian's side, science and craft on the Virginian's. They exchanged cautious throws and blows, when suddenly the Virginian lunged at his opponent with a panther's ferocity. The crowd roared its approval as the fight reached its violent denouement:

The shock received by the Kentuckyan, and the want of breath, brought him instantly to the ground. The Virginian never lost his hold; like those bats of the South who never quit the subject on which they fasten until they taste blood, he kept his knees in his enemy's body; fixing his claws in his hair, and his thumbs on his eyes, gave them an instantaneous start from their sockets. The sufferer roared aloud, but uttered no complaint. The citizens again shouted with joy. Doubts were no longer entertained and bets of three to one were offered on the Virginian.

But the fight continued. The Kentuckian grabbed his smaller opponent and held him in a tight bear hug, forcing the Virginian to relinquish his facial grip. Over and over the two rolled, until, getting the Virginian under him, the big man "snapt off his nose so close to his face that no manner of projection remained." The Virginian quickly recovered, seized the Kentuckian's lower lip in his teeth, and ripped it down over his enemy's chin. This was enough: "The Kentuckyan at length gave out, on which the people carried off the victor, and he preferring a triumph to a doctor, who came to cicatrize his face, suffered himself to be chaired round the ground as the champion of the times, and the first rougher-and-tumbler. The poor wretch, whose eyes were started from their spheres, and whose lip refused its office, returned to the town, to hide his impotence, and get his countenance repaired." The citizens refreshed themselves with whiskey and biscuits, then resumed their races."

"I’m a salt River roarer! I’m a ring tailed squealer! I’m a regular screamer from the old Massassip! Whoop! I’m the very infant that refused his milk before its eyes were open and called out for a bottle of old Rye! I love the women and I’m chockful o’ fight! I’m half wild horse and half cock-eyed alligator and the rest o’ me is crooked snags an’ red-hot snappin’ turtle…. I can out-run, out-jump, out shout, out-brag, out-drink, an’ out-fight, rough-an’-tumble, no holts barred, any man on both sides the river from Pittsburgh to New Orleans an’ back ag’in to St. Louiee. Come on, you flatters, you bargers, you milk white mechanics, an’ see how tough I am to chaw! I ain’t had a fight for two days an’ I’m spilein’ for exercise. Cock-a-doodle-doo!"

"Davy Crockett coolly boasted, 'I kept my thumb in his eye, and was just going to give it a twist and bring the peeper out, like taking a gooseberry in a spoon.'"

and if you want to take classes and train in this style of fighting, The American Rough and Tumble Society is right in Santa Monica, California, where i have lived before. NOTE: this link is not working any more. i guess this last vestige has vanished?

Against Human Nature

2008-12-15T20:03:00.000-08:00

it does not exist. there is no such thing.

and any case for it, one way or another, can only be attributed to, motivated by, and stink of agendas related to ideology to which the person making the case subscribes. Marxists say humans are good for one set of reasons, and christians say humans are evil for another set of reasons -- but both only seek to further their cause with these fictional claims.

while i truly believe, without a single doubt in my mind, that humans are not inherently anything -- that we are adaptable to any condition, malleable under all circumstance, and each one of us are capable of behaving in a million ways, from saintly compassion to horrifying cruelty. if any one of us is groomed and educated and trained, we can become a spiritual leader, and if we are mal treated and abused enough, can become a serial killer.

a misguided soul remarked once that humans are inherently selfish, because if there was one piece of bread left and 4 people are starving, they would all want it for themselves. well i'm certainly impressed because a leap across the gap in logic of this proportion truly requires extraordinary levels of stupidity. if people are put in desperate situations, they will behave desperately. sure, and if these same 4 people had all taken ecstasy 2 hours before they would be laughing and hugging eachother -- what is the point? circular logic like this is for the birds.

of course a certainly level of "free willie" and "personal choice" exists, but its importance compared to the shaping circumstances in which people find themselves have ALWAYS BEEN GROSSLY EXAGGERATED. "nature" is privileged in our art and thinking over "nurture" for several reasons: 1. it is easy: "this person is good, this person is bad" -- like in the movies. 2. it appeals to the romantic notion of fundamental individual differences and uniqueness 3. it allows the comfortable and well to do to feel self righteous: "i've never committed a crime because i'm good, and not because i come from a perfect family and i've never needed to" 4. it upholds the illusion of personal "freedom" - and we prefer to think of our lives as autonomous and our choices our own, and not dictated by circumstance. but reality, when examined by a sober and rational mind, seems obvious: that environment dictate much much more the shape of our lives than we like to admit.

and there is a 5th reason: that the structure of much of our bullshit society of lies will crumble if people stop thinking like this ---- just think of the "justice system" ---- which i'd like to point out once and for all, is not "flawed" as much as it is fundamentally absurd and cruel.

of course there are countless exceptions but if you grow up poor and neglected from a broken family in a squalid part of town, the chances of you becoming a criminal is exponentially greater than if you were born in the royal family. i don't see how anyone with half a brain not permanently damaged by doctrine can argue with this.

ANCIENT CHINESE PAINTING

2008-11-05T05:08:00.000-08:00

a massive collection: 2,300 pieces, 3 GB.

thanks very, very, very, very, very, very, very much to who ever uploaded this.

rapidshare download links here

a happy pre-holiday for those who appreciate.

i was thinking about the caligraphy and the name-stamps on these paintings.

one way to see them is that they get in the way of the image, of the view of the picture. but another way, which is how i think the ancients saw it, is that it reinforces the "object-ness" of the piece of art. that it was not desireable to produce a perfect illusion -- after all, what is the point to represent already breath-taking reality? i think these artists were masters of abstraction, and well aware that what they were making was a "thing" (piece of rice paper); making an object according to its own "laws", following its own logic; and that its resemblance to the actual world is almost inconsequential.

so what you end up with is poetry, is abstraction; based on "impressions" of the world, but not amenable to it.

for all my musings on the continuity between "east" and "west", there certainly did develop, over time, distinctly different approaches to seeing, and very different relationships to nature.

Science and Religion

2008-10-06T22:53:00.000-07:00

the trendy religion-hating among "progressives" bent on blaming all of humanity's ills on spiritual practices world wide, while naming science as some kind of infallible way forward, is a view equally myopic, a position just as simple/closed-minded and solipsistic as those of the ignorant fundamentalist freaks these rationalists rail against.

i am very much convinced that one of, if not THE, foundational causes making everything so royally fucked is that the world is too "rational". traditional chinese medicine has maintained that the world is too "yang" (the light part); and indeed, most of the serious problems we face as a species are by-products of the industrial/technological age of 20th and 19th century. this is pretty much irrefutable. isn't it clear that the results of too much "logic" and "order" and ego and power and law and repression can only be disastrous? (military-industrial complex is pretty much the apex of rationalism, is it not?)

no, what we need more of in the world is not more order, rigidity, anal retention. what we need more of is empathy, connection, intuition, mystery, sensuality. which is NOT institutional, organized religion. the Church (of which ever faith), for all its absurd anti-rationalism, actually operates according to the bureacratic rigidity of the hyper-rational, hierarchical, corporate/government model based on domination and subjugation.

what we need, is what organized religion is a corrupt bastardization of: the return of a much, much older de-centered, non-hierarchical, non-patriarchal spirituality. and with it, social organizing principals based on localized, perhaps mobile, closely knit, self reliant and self sustainable communities.

i should probably get a medal of some kind for solving all the world's problems in about 300 words.

Deep Roots

2008-08-04T05:56:00.001-07:00

what little i know about revisionist history and the fictional divide between "east" and "west":

during the first half of Greek empire everything came from Egypt and Persia: food, music, technology, philosphy, mathematics, astronomy, religion, medicine, fashion, etc, etc, etc, etc. and it was not until the second part of the empire that the Greeks started coming up with their own ideas - and even then, very much influenced and inspired by Egyptian, Semitic, South Asian (Indian), Middle Eastern (Iranian), and East Asian (Chinese) thought and practice.

the myth that Greece developed more or less by itself, as the beginning of "progressive" and "modern" "western" civilization, was largely a product of 19th century racist revisions of history. German and English scholars began erasing Egypt and Semitic cultures out of history; and in America powerful industrialists apply sweeping education reforms across America, firing professors that did not tell their version of the story, and installing yes-men that propagated the idea that "the West" was something different, and of different origions, from "the East".

the propagation of this fictional dichotomy between the "occident" and "orient" has always been politically motivated, provides a foundation for racism, distrust, and divide which furthers the aims of the ruling elite -- and is still instrumental today (the structural basis for "the war on terror", which also may be seen as the latest expression of these false ideas)

much of this train of excavations can be found in this book, derided by the ignorant and the brain-washed (just look at the ratings and comments on amazon):

from Amazon:

What is classical about Classical Civilization? In one of the most audacious works of scholarship ever written, Martin Bernal challenges the whole basis of our thinking about this question. Classical civilization, he argues, has deep roots in Afroasiatic cultures. But these Afroasiatic influences have been systematically ignored, denied, or supressed since the eighteenth century--chiefly for racist reasons. The popular view is that Greek civilization was the result of the conquest of a sophisticated but weak native population by vigorous Indo-European speakers--or Aryans--from the North. But the Classical Greeks, Bernal argues, knew nothing of this "Aryan model." They did not see their political institutions, science, philosophy, or religion as original, but rather as derived from the East in general, and Egypt in particular. Black Athena is a three-volume work. Volume 1 concentrates on the crucial period between 1785 and 1850, which saw the Romantic and racist reaction to the Enlightment and the French Revolution, and the consolidation of Northern expansion into other continents. In an unprecedented tour de force, Bernal makes meaningful links between a wide range of areas and disciplines--drama poetry, myth, theological controversy, esoteric religion, philosophy, biography, language, historical narrative, and the emergence of "modern scholarship."

Could Greek philosophy be rooted in Egyptian thought? Is it possible that the Pythagorean theory was conceived on the shores of the Nile and the Euphrates rather than in ancient Greece? Could it be that much of Western civilization was formed on the "Dark Continent"? For almost two centuries, Western scholars have given little credence to the possibility of such scenarios.
In Black Athena, an audacious three-volume series that strikes at the heart of today's most heated culture wars, Martin Bernal challenges Eurocentric attitudes by calling into question two of the longest-established explanations for the origins of classical civilization. To use his terms, the Aryan Model, which is current today, claims that Greek culture arose as the result of the conquest from the north by Indo-European speakers, or "Aryans," of the native "pre-Hellenes." The Ancient Model, which was maintained in Classical Greece, held that the native population of Greece had initially been civilized by Egyptian and Phoenician colonists and that additional Near Eastern culture had been introduced to Greece by Greeks studying in Egypt and Southwest Asia. Moving beyond these prevailing models, Bernal proposes a Revised Ancient Model, which suggests that classical civilization in fact had deep roots in Afroasiatic cultures.

This long-awaited third and final volume of the series is concerned with the linguistic evidence that contradicts the Aryan Model of ancient Greece. Bernal shows how nearly 40 percent of the Greek vocabulary has been plausibly derived from two Afroasiatic languages--Ancient Egyptian and West Semitic. He also reveals how these derivations are not limited to matters of trade, but extended to the sophisticated language of politics, religion, and philosophy. This evidence, according to Bernal, greatly strengthens the hypothesis that in Greece an Indo-European-speaking population was culturally dominated by Ancient Egyptian and West Semitic speakers. Provocative, passionate, and colossal in scope, this volume caps a thoughtful rewriting of history that has been stirring academic and political controversy since the publication of the first volume.

About the Author
Martin Bernal, formerly a fellow of King's College, Cambridge, and professor of Government and Near Eastern Studies at Cornell University, is now retired.

Many More Sides of Tibet

2008-05-08T00:18:00.000-07:00

people always knee-jerk assume I'm pro-China when i mention the realities in Tibet. and it is understandable, for when Chinese people cite the horrible pre 1956 conditions or Dalai's association with SS officers, is is usually in service of a pro-China agenda.

let's make one thing clear: i hate the chinese government and CCP more than any other living soul. everyone in my parent's genereation were traumatized by the persecutions of the cultural revolution... i feel the effects of the brutality and inhuman acts of those years immediately prior to my birth to this very day -- my family has been in many ways shattered by it, and has never healed.

but even with that in mind, shouting stupid slogans in ignorance of what they mean (like Bjork does) is not helpful to anyone - least of all Tibetans.

now to address a few particular points. recently a friend of mine said

"we should ask Tibetans what they want - and all the ones there i have talked to said they want their Lamas"

at the risk of sounding patronizing, it is important nonetheless to consider the education system under the rule of the monks: all buddhism, zero anything else. so of COURSE Tibetans want their Lamas, because THAT IS THE ONLY THING THEY KNOW.

as much as i immensely value a drastically different world view from the way I was raised, because i do believe that there are amazing and unspeakable truths, understandings, and experiences which are unique fruits of a spiritual practice such as Tibetan Buddhism --- the value of a well rounded education can NOT be underestimated -- and this has been but entirely deprived of Tibetans by their Lamas. and of course this would be perfectly acceptable and the rule of the Lamas would be peaceful and just and prosperous except... except it's not and never was. actually quite the contrary as we have seen from these articles:

the Dark Ages before the Chinese came: an elite owned all of the land, and serfs who labored under them with not a penny to gain. not more than slaves with no freedom, owned by their masters. debt was passed down from generation to generation, and those who tried to run away were brutally beaten. yes, indeed, torture was common place - hands chopped off for stealing, tongues cut for lying, eyes gouged out for betrayal.

last week i met with a friend who was a "Tibetologist" for 20+ years, who has traveled there on many occasions, and have had significant interaction with Tibetan people and monks, who rightfully claim inside knowledge, assures me that there is not merely 2 sides to the coin, but it's more like a tetrahedral die (like those used in role playing games). so, a brief run down of things glimpsed from this man's knowledge:

• Tibet was itself headed toward the direction of modernization around the time the Chinese invaded in the 1950s. but no one can say how that would have went with the conflicts that would have surely arisen.

• Chinese certainly did build infrastructure during occupation, but not with Tibetans in mind -- for its own ends of establishing trade route.

• many Tibetans did welcome the Chinese as agents of change, but after 10 years life did not get better for them under Chinese rule, and in some cases, even worse -- Tibetans, just like the Chinese people themselves, were subject to many of the disastrous policies of the CCP.

• it was not until much later, 1970s or 80s, when Chinese efforts in Tibet yielded some positive results.

• corruption certainly existed and exists in the theocracy of the monks, where inequality, injustice is common place, many recorded accounts of bribery, abuse of power, sexual abuse, etc.

• many attempts have been made in recent history to address the gap between western perception and realities in Tibet, such as many conferences with leading scholars which were well attended, and best selling books on the subject, but nothing seems to fundamentally shake the false conviction of most who simply WANT to believe in a mythical paradisal Shangri La, even when confronted with irrefutable evidence to the contrary.

• India never had a problem with border until Chinese took over - since then they have had to pour a ton of money into defense, almost bankrupting them.

• in current events it is very stupid for the Chinese government to blame the Dalai for instigating anti-China protests, for he acts more than anything else as a mediator and peace keeper, without whom the anti-China sentiments would become more heated.

so... what conclusion can we possibly draw from all of these disparate facts? the answer is i have NO IDEA.

but someone just said this:

Heres a simple question:

Do you support national self determination - that is, the idea that those who live in a country or region have the right to decide on their own future free from outside interference?

If the answer is yes in relation to Europe, the middle East or wherever, then its yes for everywhere.

sometimes it's good to have someone cut through all the butter with a hot knife. i guess on some level it is as simple as that.

my answer is of course yes.

the chinese should get the fuck out (not happening anytime soon though).

but also the world needs to stop projecting it's own spiritual privation on this country full of poor folks who have been suffering for way too long.

Other Side of Tibet / Other Side of Lama

2008-04-16T22:00:00.000-07:00

those who know me know that i have a personal relationship with Tibetan teachings and ideas and much love and respect for the amazing bodies of knowledge to be found in spiritual traditions in Tibet. I have seen the Dalai Lama in person, and heard him speak. he is a great spirit, a great man and a great leader, who has given the world much wonderful things, and have done much good for his people and people of the world.

but there is another side. a seriously disturbing and deeply problematic one. a side that is rarely talked about.

following are 2 episodes from a radio program called For The Record which deals with fascism in all its manifestations (and in the past has focused on fascist elements within Catholicism, Islam, Hinduism, Zionism, etc )-- google the author -- i have no doubt that this information is reliable. (there are many other fascinating episodes if you wish to explore further)

there are surely many ways to view this material, but one thing which is for sure is i believe it is very important to consider this information, especially in these times. it is also important to point out here that it does NOT follow that i support the Chinese government or the Communist Party (actually quite the opposite).

the main questions i have after absorbing some of this is: what would it mean for Tibetans to "Free Tibet"? what would complete Tibet independence mean for the lives of its citizens? would it mean a plunge back into the dark-ages? abject poverty with no hope of anything better? a back-wards and brutal theocracy which enslaves the citizens? a country with almost zero infrastructure, very poor sanitation and health care? how to weigh the benefits and efforts to modernize and build infrastructure in Tibet by the Chinese against their oppressive rule and human rights violations? for there are certainly 2 sides to the coin, unlike mainstream western media would like us to believe.

also, what about the Lama and his regime? what position to take in light of his shady (to say the least) dealings? should i simply take what is good for myself and ignore the rest? or... or what?

do not misunderstand me:

THE MESSAGE OF THIS POST IS NOT PRO-CHINA. I DO NOT THINK CHINESE OCCUPATION SHOULD NECESSARILY CONTINUE - BUT JUST WANT TO, AS MUCH AS POSSIBLE, CONSIDER ALL SIDES OF THE ISSUE.

would be very much interested to hear if anyone knows more and how you look at it.

Hell-o Dalai

This program begins a lengthy examination of the Dalai Lama’s association with a covert-action milieu, much of it fascist and associated with the Underground Reich. In addition to the Dalai Lama’s collaboration with Islamist and secular Pan-Turkist separatist elements in Xinjiang province of China, the Nobel Peace Prize winner has maintained close connections over a period of decades with SS officers, some of them war criminals.

Introducing the subject of the Nazi SS’s fascination with Tibet and its exploration of that country, the program presents an account of the 1938 SS expedition to Lhasa.

full program with real streaming

Tibet or not Tibet

at the beginning of this one dude rambles a bit, sorry about that. but it's over in like 15 minutes or maybe 20, and then he gets to the nitty gritty - a picture of Tibet far from the idealistic Shangri-La of popular imagination:

Tibet was anything but the earthly paradise the Dalai Lama and his associates claim that it was. In point of fact, Tibet was a brutal, theocratic feudal society, presided over by the Dalai Lama and other Tibetan Buddhist prelates. Much of the population were serfs—actually little more than slaves. They had no rights to speak of, and were bound to the land owned by the religious leaders. Even the smallest of offenses was punished with extreme brutality—grisly torture was routine.

Addressing a cognitive consideration central to grasping the enormous gap between the public perception of the Dalai Lama and the unsavory reality of his political connections and religious practices

full program with real streaming

COLLAPSE by Jared Diamond

2008-04-01T07:38:00.000-07:00

i normally dont share things that are commercially available, but this is just too important of a work, and i think it needs to be spread around as much as possible.

(trying not to sound corny or over-dramatic but don't know how else to put it: the survival of our species is on the line)

for those who don't know, it's a book about the collapse of past civilizations -- how societies choose to survive or shoot themselves in the throat. for instance the chapter on how the Vikings in Greenland all starved and froze to death after living there for 500 years is really interesting... and he says something like "before you start laughing at the vikings, should remember that they survived in Greenland longer than europeans have survived in N. America. another highlight is when societies in the Solomon Islands descended to cannibalism, a popular insult was "I pick pieces of your mother from my teeth"

i love audio books don't you just? (thanks to Chris for hooking it up)

one and two

Truth vs. Lies

2008-02-14T06:40:00.001-08:00

2 hours long lecture from ex-LAPD, ex-CIA turned political commentator and activist Mike Ruppert on the CIA dealing drugs, the Bush family, 9-11, etc. among others he interviews an ex-congress woman. and makes a compelling case for just how bottomless the evil runs.

no i do not think he is a conspiracy nut. he is the real thing.

the main picture i get is that America is not a place where there is some bad stuff happens behind closed doors -- but that it is a place where exceptions prove to be the rule: the country is indeed FOUNDED on vile criminality at the highest levels.

Worst Mistake Never Made (NEW LINK!)

2008-01-09T06:54:00.000-08:00

as a follow up to the previous Jarred Diamond essay, i just finished a cultural anthropology audio lecture series and one chapter focuses on the Dobe Ju/'hoansi bands of South Africa. one real living example among a number of other currently functioning micro societies scattered in the remote to us areas around the globe.

a few main points:

• gather 70 percent of their food (roots, nuts, fruits, etc.)
• no hierarchy and no authority, only "temporary leaders"
• no private property
• work 20 hour weeks with only division of labour being between sexes
• does not distinquish between work and play
• zero starvation: 100% of population fed compared to 30% starving in the "civilized" world
• superb health

studying them has lead one sociologist to conclude that "scarcity is a myth", because the Dobe live in abundance 365 days a year. yet another has coined the term "Original Affluence" to describe Gatherer/Hunter lifestyle -- that is, if one measures affluence not by material possessions but free time.

here is the Gatherers and Hunters (not the other way around) chapter for your pleasure/scrutiny:

14 MB

http://www.sendspace.com/file/tv96b9

this prof actually goes further than me the crazy, in conjecturing that the advent of agriculture and hierarchy and all that was actually the result of power itself and the evolution of human society, and not out of need which came with "little ice-age" and/or population growth.

Confronting the Bono/Geldof Obscenity

2007-10-28T10:18:00.000-07:00

i know many good people who naively believe the crock of shit these shameless pricks cook up. "well at least they are doing something". yes, they certainly are doing something: using the suffering of millions to make themselves look good, and selling pity to fatten their own wallets. if but a single person reads this and realizes that they've been duped by these disgusting slime-balls, my work here is done.

the following is pieced together from various comments on Dissensus.

"According to the Product Red website, "(RED) has delivered a total of $11,303,926 to the Global Fund thus far. Based on early conservative estimates, we believe that when holiday sales have been totaled, (RED) will have generated another $10 million for the Fund."

Hardly surprising, then, that this announcement has received zero media coverage (U2 earn more in a month and Bono himself is estimated to be worth $700 million).

Given that a total of US$ 9.8 billion has been pledged and/or contributed through 2008 to the Global Fund (though only US$ 3.3 billion from this has actually been disbursed to date), Red's "contribution" represents approximately 0.001%-0.002% of the total pledged funds to date.

- hundredmillionlifetimes

Bono's heavy involvement in private equity companies (ie- one of the most pernicious mutations of capitalism to date) tells you everything you could ever need to know about his true motivations and the sickening hypocrisy that marks his every "charitable" move.

- gek opel

Why Bono and Geldof Got It Wrong, VIRGINIA RODINO, Counterpunch.

The Make Macho-Posturing Kapital Whores History musick-celebritishy spectacle was essentially part of the Blair government's PR campaign surrounding the G8 meetings last July [or was it June, or maybe August, or maybe why should anyone bother to care?], a cynical campaign aided and abetted by the Bush regime, British NGOs, and quite unfortunately, those two blarney-babblers, the ultra-montane reactionary Kapitalists, Bob Geldof (wealth: 200 million [in pick your favourite currency]) and Bono/Paul Hewson (1 billion).

The most influential player of Make Geldof History was Oxfam, a centrist-complacent NGO with close allegiance to the British government, in particular with British Chancellor Gordon Brown's office. Working closely with the Commission for Africa, which is chaired by, um, tyrannical ego-maniac Bob Geldof and run by batty Blair, nosey Brown, and Britain's overseas aid minister Hilary Beenie Benny, the official Make Bono History campaign ignorantly fell into supporting the neo-liberal agenda of the G8 leaders.

Meanwhile, calling George Bush a "sincere and passionate man," [making Michael Moore real envious] resting his head lovingly on Tony Blair's shoulder while posing for the media cameras, Bob "What about Paula, Bob?" Geldof joined Texan-Stetson Bono's tradition of delegitimizing the protesters and pandering to elite leaders, in particular two of the eight men who actively facilitate the poverty in the first place.

Geldof and Bono's actions not only dismissed the much more complicated and deeper critiques made by the G8 protesters, but also implicitly condoned the hypocritical decisions of the corporate and government elites made during that week alone. The Scottish government punished members of Parliament who spoke out in favor of protecting protesters' rights to peacefully dissent in Gleneagles. For an entire month, these MPs were banned from government buildings and their salaries as well as the salaries of their staff were taken away. While Bonol and GAdolf spoke from the sublime heavens about "saving" the Africans, the rock stars took no action to pressure the UK government to let across the African protesters who were being denied entry into the country and denied participation in the events at which they had been invited to speak. Worse, Geldof, on a panel at a press meeting and in front of the gathered world broadcast media, contemptibly dismissed as "offensive and outrageous" the comments of an African member of the panel, who had simply questioned the effectiveness of Make Geldof Rich History.

Moreover ["as if we didn't know"], the assumptions and recommendations manufactured by Bobbly's Commission for Africa will prove disastrous for Africa's workers, peasants, and the urban poor. These include the assumption that the impact of Western manoeuvers on Africa has been largely benign. There is a complete absence of criticism of the ongoing Western military interventions of the last half century, and the colonial exploits and brutality forced upon the peoples of African nations. The other damaging assumption of the Commission revolves around the premise that free trade and privatization are somehow the key to liberation for Africans. The International Monetary Fund is viewed as being able to "play an invaluable role" in clearing the way for "private sector investors." Private profit making is seen as the panacea to poverty: "Successful growth will be led by the private sector." The commission concludes that only by ridding themselves of barriers to free trade and exporting to the rest of the world can Africans work their way out of poverty. Yes, Bobo, "Make Poverty Permanent cuz it made me obscenely rich. And I like it."

Besides completely whitewashing the real story behind Africa's debt burden, which has deteriorated further post-Live8, and the continuous misery their policies impose on the rest of the world, Blair and Brown and the rest of the G8 leaders hoped to use the Make All The Little People, The Masses History events as a smokescreen for the crisis occurring in Iraq. Unfortunately, agents-of-Kapital Bono and Geldof wholeheartedly supported this move. Because of their facile and naïve view of the political situation, Bono and Geldof helped to take the heat off Bush and Blair at their weakest point, the Iraq war, which is strategically situated as the first in a long series of dominos set up by and for both Western administrations. If this domino falls, pressured by the global anti-war movement, then the long line of imperialist drives, including the debilitating imposed debt on Africa, has a much greater chance of falling, of being cancelled. Instead, with foolhardy optimism in a system and its pushers who have literally created the misery, the millionaire rock stars persist in criticizing protesters through name-calling and displays of ignorance about protesters' understanding of the situation as if ordinary people simply could not grasp the real story behind the debt.

"Ironically bolstered by the strength of the global anti-war movement's ability to draw out millions in the streets, Geldof organized Make Poverty History concerts all over the world and called for people to march in Edinburgh. As opposed to providing the real justice that South African activist Trevor Ngwane and others called for, however, Geldof instead used his impressive soapbox to call for patronizing charity, and a more than polite request to the G8 leaders to "play nice." In the same vein, Geldof also intentionally refused most African artists to play on his stages, saying they wouldn't draw crowds. Thus, he paternalistically reduced the people of Africa to uncultured children who need to be pitied, not empowered. He also privileged the minuscule numbers of the powerful ruling class into the position of being willing and able to change the world not the masses of ordinary people everywhere.

To make matters worse, Geldolf emailed an edict to each of the Live 8 performers, forbidding them from mentioning the Iraq War or saying anything that would "embarrass" Blair. As with the Make Everything History demonstration, this was a case of the millions of participants being more progressive than the organizers of the event.

It was also a perfect exemplification of class unconsciousness. From the stage, the wealthiest man on the planet, Bill Gates, along with the likes of Sir Paul McCartney and Sir Bob Geldof, positioned themselves as experts on Third World debt and poverty. Millionaires like Madonna, before performing, asked the crowd if they were ready for a "revolution." And perhaps the most egregious moment came when Chris Martin of the pop band Coldplay, commented that the Live 8 concerts were the most important events ever organized in human history."

and also the following. these people really have no shame and their depravity knows no bounds:

Bono Moves to Holland to Avoid Taxes

Worst Mistake in History of Human Race

2007-10-11T16:00:00.001-07:00

By Jared Diamond
University of California at Los Angeles Medical School

preface (by little old me):

i have been interested in the fundamental claims (if not the concrete solutions) of Anarcho-Primitivism for some time, and unsurprisingly, every time i bring up these ideas, there is only resistance -- nothing but knee-jerk dismissal of anything resembling the Noble Savage (stanley kubrick you listenin?). but consider the opposite: humans have ALWAYS lived the way we do now, with slavery and systematic oppression and heirarchy and power and subjugation and exploitation, even under drastically different conditions such as small population and abundance of resources, for millions of years.

is that believable if you really think about it?

agriculture (and with it the myriad of new forms which we call civilization) started roughly 10,000 years ago, in response to, as a necessity created by a drastic diminishing of natural vegetation -- a result of the last ice-age. there is ample evidence that prior to that, earth was exponentially more lush and abundant a place compared to the earth that we know.

but whether an egalitarian paradise existed for 4 million years prior to the advent of language/power/civilization is not necessarily the main point; even though a reasonably good case for this has been made many times (the ancient myths and religions of all cultures on earth, for instance). the important thing is that these claims allow us to open up to the idea that the way we live today may not be the only way, that it may prove to be a very recent development.

the important thing is to realize that what we believe today about ourselves and our history is tainted by civilisation itself, its ideology, and its agendas -- and that it may not be nearly as rational or factual as we think.

the story of our violent and competitive ancesters is dominant in our art and culture, but this representation of our past in the image of our present may be completely false. the way we look at the world and ourselves, it may be a very limited view, which excludes multiple other ways of perceiving and understanding, which are all just as valid, if not much more valid.

what i am interested in is NOT bemoaning how the world sucks today in comparisson to some edenic, prehistoric perfection, NOR am i advocating a return to gathering and hunting - a "natural" way of life (whatever the fuck that means); what i AM suggesting, however, is that the only way to envision a better future is to strip away the lies and illusions that we have been living under - the myths perpetrated by civilization - and to realize that human potential is much wider and bigger than our culture would have us believe, and that maybe we haven't ALWAYS lived the lonely dog-eat-dog way we do now. only when we break from these limited and limiting traps which define us can we possibly find another way of existing.

if we deny that there are other ways of life, if we refuse to accept the possibility that we once were different, if we do not believe that our specie is CAPABLE of living peacefully, gracefully, then what better future can there be?
______________________________

i do not necessarily agree with everything in the following, and it does not nearly cover all of the important points and issues that I'm interested in; but in the face of all the ridicule, mockery, flat-out denial and complete refusal to consider, i find much consolation and vindication in this piece by the world reknowned historian, biologist, and archaeologist. it actually is not necessarily the best out there on this subject, but it is more than sympathetic to many of the basic ideas of Anarcho-Primitivism. my main reason for choosing it over others is because people are less likely to knee-jerk dismiss Jarred Diamond than someone like John Zerzan, whose work makes up a much more radical stance and all-encompassing world view. but while many consider Zerzan to be missing a few marbles, i consider him to be the dictionary definition of sane sobriety, and whole heartedly recommend his books (some of which are published by a division of Columbia University Press).

so, without further ado:

The Worst Mistake in the History of the Human Race

US of Assholes

2007-09-24T08:40:00.000-07:00

voting is a smokescreen which perpetuates illusory freedom. it is a happy pill which makes the masses feel as if they are making a difference.

America is not a democracy. has never BEEN a democracy. and never will. America is a REPUBLIC, set up to make MONEY for a few already filthy rich white men, and the hell to everyone else. there is no such thing as "free-market" (as envisioned by Adam Smith), never has been, and never will. America's economic system is more like a serfdom, with a few lords owning most of everything, and the rest work their asses off as slaves. just look at the recent statistics on CEO pay versus empolyee salaries.

the ideas of American "freedom" and "democracy" are the Big Lies that no one doubts, and more than any other beliefs put forth by propaganda, responsible for efficiently keeping people ignorant and passive.

regarding the following videos: it's not a matter of what the country has come to, it's a matter of the underlying, deep rooted sickness showing through. (thanks to Milton for some of the links):

UF Student Tasered During John Kerry Speech

a nation of zombie sheep. hundreds just sitting there staring while the guy is dragged away screaming for help.

Nomos notes: "also disturbing how "don't tase me bro" has turned into a pop culture meme divorced from the context in which it was uttered. It's on t-shirts already. "bro" became an excuse to turn it into a saying on the level of "don't have a cow man" and laugh at him instead of taking a position." makes me sick.

Citizens Arrested for commiting FREE SPEECH in Washington DC

don't know the local laws on assembly, etc., are, but assuming the people interviewed are not lying through their teeth... the authorities are obviously so confident that the American people have been turned into such helpless worms that they can get away with this outright violation of civil liberties. and they 1. are right 2. can and 3. will.

President Bush bill pardons himself for his war crimes

Bush also bought 100,000 acres of Paraguay, which he is making into some kind of retirement mega-fortress, heavily armed and guarded by miliatary personnel. it sits on top of the largest water supply of S. America, and the country has also recently, conveniently, granted immunity to all war criminals.

thought of everything didn't he -- tell me again what an "idiot" this man is

which brings us to the final piece in this post:

The Bush Gang: "A veritable juggernaut of competence."
by Jack Riddler

excerpt: "Those who call the Bush mob "incompetent" make a fatal error. On some unconscious level, they seem to think that these criminals somehow share any of the goals of decent human beings, and have therefore "failed" to produce good results. But that, of course is the idea that motivates the Bush crime family: to produce evil results that happen to enrich their own class."

Humour: media / politics

2007-09-17T02:48:00.000-07:00

just saw the Simpsons movie and was thinking this:

humour can be liberating, defiant, or even insurrectionary, when you laugh in the face of authority. but in "The Media" humour becomes a very efficient tool used by authority to pacify- a way to shrug off and ignore things we need to change and deal with ----- often it is the very thing we are laughing about: this shrugging-off and ignorance. Simpsons Movie exemplify this. we are in a dire situation, yes, and we are still behaving in irresponsible ways willfully ignoring the consequences -- it's all true but let's have a good laugh about our own suicidal stupidity and not take any of it seriously. it's all just entertainment isn't it, and a good laugh will make the viewer sleep well and wake up in the morning to do exactly like Homer.

the priviledged and smug self-entitled (ironic how rarely people deserve their riches, and how all of them feel that it's their god given right) take nothing seriously, and a smirk (often ironic - how's that for meta-irony?) always hangs about their faces -- life is a party/commercial and they are always witty, pleasant, and in good cheer.

in fact, there is an INABILITY to be serious. not even for a moment. the world would come crumbling down if one becomes serious -- fear of appearing to not be a good sport or even (GASP!) unhappy. as if all the things swept under the Happy Rug™ will come crawling out and take over if in "leisure" time we do anything other than go-with-the-flow, and project anything other than good humour.

i suppose like Zizek says, the official position is irony, sarcasm, and poking fun.* so i guess there are only 2 things left to do: 1. be the confrontational serious party-pooper or 2. over-identify and become a super swanky cheese-ball / party animal who actually makes others slightly uncomfortable because of how much one is (perversely) enjoying EVERYTHING and finding it all absolutely hilarious ALL THE TIME.

*while politicians display sanctimonious forced seriousness and phoney caring, the proscribed, encouraged, to the point of being mandatory, behavior for people in everyday life is a happy-go-lucky ironic distance, and this "shrugging-off" with a laugh. in the office, in a bar, in almost EVERY social situation. save, perhaps, funerals.

in my experience "caring" or being serious is definitely discouraged in society. I've "ruined" enough dinner parties to know. (yikes!) but this is very likely more true of the United States and perhaps of LA in particular than other parts of the world -- where the overwhelming feeling is one of "everything is and will always be just fine". and the creepy feeling that there is something wrong with you "if you are not as happy as people in commercials appear to be".

a friend pointed out guys like John Stewart are probably more a part of the problem than anything aproaching any kind of attempt at solutions -- the effect they have is more pro-status-quo than pro any kind of change.

in fact, fake democracy loves guys like Stewart, because in response they can dish out the endlessly annoying party-line: "well at least we are allowed to criticize blah blah blah" - one of the best reinforcements for illusory freedom. while in reality the Daily Show just makes people laugh about things they should be angry about and gives them a free pass to go on with biz as usual.

Looking VS. Listening

2007-08-28T12:28:00.000-07:00

a friend made the observation that the term "communication design" means visual design, while human communication itself arguably has more to do audio. also in the education of children, looking is focused on as a means for knowledge to enter the brain, while hearing is more or less ignored.

other sound-artists I've talked to have sometimes complained that sound and music are not something the public and the (art) establishment, take nearly as seriously as visual art. music is entertainment for the most part, while "art" is deemed a more profound, significant, and indeed almost religious, experience.

and it's true, only in recent years have sound been *kind of* taken seriously, with the popularity of artists like Christian Marclay. while famous observations such as "sculture is more suited for the medium of sound, because you can perceive 3 dimensions simultaneously; and with an object you have to walk around it" (who said that again?) have been uttered many years ago. so in this light perhaps the concerns of something like cubism can be easier realized with sound rather than collage or sculpture.

would you agree that in general our societies and cultures seem to (unjustly, arbituarily) privilege the eyes over the ears? and if you do, where do you think this prejudice comes from?

my knowledge of western philosophy is limited, but i vaguely think this has something to do with the enlightenment and the materialism which followed -- sight would seem to be a more concrete measurement of the physical universe - after all seeing is believing, and sound is just so abstract, intangible, and ephemeral.

any of you smarties out there care to elaborate?

Carnivores vs. Vegetarians

2007-05-26T10:44:00.000-07:00

"I heard a fellow the other day on the radio saying that 'we eat as though it were a feast day, everyday'. That's spot on. The frequency with which we eat meat is the problem, not the fact that we eat meat at all." -- Lichen from Dissensus

recently read a very good NY Times cover story which thoroughly analyses the issue from all angles, including Animal Rights, History/Culture of Culinary Arts, Biology, Environmentalism, Religion, Morality, Economics, etc. and the conclusion he came to was not simple vegetarianism - which is actually also harmful to animals and the environment - but rather getting rid of industrial meat farming in favor of raising animals in farms both ecological as well as humane -- the cost of meat would rise, and people would eat less of it.

An Animal's Place

it's a bit long, the first part is philosophical debate, and gets into actual facts later.

Critiques of Science

2007-04-24T08:58:00.000-07:00

having 2 quantum physicists for parents, both of whom leaders in their field for long periods of time, i grew up with, and personally have massive respect for science and the scientific method for creating knowledge. but it is certainly NOT an absolutely neutral, objective sphere entirely divorced from, outside of, and untainted by human subjectivity. and as a human endeavor, especially the philosophical foundation it rests upon and the subsequent story it weaves, it is not beyond criticism (outside of its own celebrated revision process). i think the likes of Lyotard and other post-structuralists referenced in this article are dealing with Science in the wider sense, as an ideology, as a "master narrative", as an "episteme"; in it's implications, effects, as well as methodology. the "age of reason", an increased priviledging of rationality, and a simultaneous repression of what is deemed the "irrational", can certainly be construed as a product of dominant patriarchy.

the biases which constantly shape scientific thinking can be easily described, in ordinary situations. an obvious one is choice -- which area to focus a study on, out of thousands, perhaps tens or hundreds of thousands of possible areas? with limited funding, personel, and time, the choice is always informed by society, politics, and ideology - with the myriad of human emotions this entails. another obvious one is interpretation -- we can probably all think of examples of how the results of experiments or research programs can be seen in different lights, from different perspectives, thus arriving at sometimes drastically different conclusions.

what i am interested in is a critique of science as one of the central disciplines which informed Modernism and the progressive view of history; a critique which deals with a particular narrative which science has helped construct, which in the past few hundred years have tinted our lenses, put certain ideas into our heads, and influenced human behavior on the deepest levels.

below is an article i found the other day, by Steve Denning, which sums up some ideas i'm very much interested in at the moment. of course the kind of discourse cliff noted here has been going on since more or less the 60s, and involves a large body of work by many philosophers and theorists. i have read very little of the original texts, and my own understanding of them is admittedly shallow. until the day i will have time to explore these ideas in depth, this will have to do.
_________________________________________________

What is the intellectual foundation of science? What is the basis of the claim of scientists to have access to a higher form of knowledge? Often scientists simply assert the claim, without bothering to probe the philosophically murky foundation on which all knowledge ultimately rests. According to scientists, research is conducted in an objective spirit of scientific inquiry, that discoveries add to our ever-growing knowledge about the universe, and that it is self-evident that science will in due course improve the lot of humanity. Television reinforces such views with the use of laboratory technicians as a source of evidence about the germ-killing properties of a particular brand of bleach, or the clinically-proven ability of a mouth wash to fight bad breath.

In 1979, Jean-François Lyotard was asked by Quebec's Conseil des Universités to review the state of scientific knowledge and information in the late 20th century. He looked at how knowledge comes into being, who controls it, who has access to it, and how it becomes accepted as valid. He concluded that science's claim to possess a higher kind of knowledge was seriously flawed.
For Lyotard, scientists have no more direct access to the truth than philosophers or historians, or anybody else for that matter. For him, scientists are storytellers. Thus it is not possible to describe the result of an experiment except by telling a story. The narratives that scientists produce, such as research papers, hypotheses, histories, are always governed by the protocols of the field in which they work. Each discipline is like a game. It has a special terminology which only makes sense within its own boundaries. In practice, a theorist or researcher is not faced with infinite possibilities to explore, and can only play within the limits of a system of permissible moves. The scope of permissible moves is determined by the power structure of the particular branch of science in which the scientist is working, which is just as political and unscientific as any other human activity.

Thus, according to Lyotard, narrative is not a sub-branch of science. The truth is exactly the opposite: science actually comprises particular branch of narrative. In effect, science is a sub-set of storytelling. Science is made up of language games which generate particular forms of narrative. Lyotard's view goes against the common sense view of science as a superior form of knowledge. It also contradicts modern science's view of itself.

For science to maintain its privileged status, it has usually tried to deny its own involvement in storytelling, denigrating storytelling as the epitome of the unscientific, the very thing that science must fight against, and expel from civilized discourse and education systems.

Science thus pretends to be beyond narrative. How does science do this? Ironically, it appeals to a story, or what Lyotard calls grand meta-narratives. A meta-narrative is an over-arching story, which can supposedly account for, explain, or comment on, the validity of all other stories. It is implicitly a universal or absolute set of truths, which transcends social, institutional or human limitations. Thus, a small local narrative, such as the result of a scientific experiment, or an individual action, is usually granted significance only by its ability to reflect or support some broader narrative which people generally support, like the pursuit of truth, justice, or economic growth.

Lyotard argues that some time around the 18th century, science developed the view of itself as the source of enlightenment. Prior to this, appeals to religious narratives had often been used to guarantee truth. Now, building on its practical successes and on the theoretical work of Francis Bacon and others, science took over and put forward the claim that it alone was the source of truth. It suggested that being scientific or rational was the sign of credibility. Possessing scientific knowledge implied that you could get behind mystification and superstition, reveal the facts about world and lead all of humanity to a brighter day. The underlying assumptions were:

- science is progressive, moving towards a state of complete knowledge;
- science is unified, with many different areas, but all sharing the same goal;
- science is universal, working for the good of all of us, and
- science aims at total truth that will benefit all of human life.

Thereafter, science justified itself through the neat trick of claiming that science needed no further justification. Thus, it took advantage of the idea that its activities were pursued in the name of the timeless meta-narratives of progress, emancipation and knowledge. By appealing in this way to ideas whose meanings were quietly assumed to be self-evident and universally agreed, science was able to masquerade as a single project, objectively carried out for the good of the entire human race.

More recently, particularly in the last few decades, scientists have had growing difficulty in getting away with these claims, and cracks in the facade of science's grand meta-narrative have been appearing:

-- science's own contribution to ecological problems and the development of nuclear and chemical weapons has made obvious that science is not always directly beneficial to the human race;
- groups who perceived themselves as disadvantaged by the existing political and institutional arrangements (women, developing countries, the poor) have argued that the science's claims to benefit the entire human race have often turned out, on closer inspection, to be linked in practice to promoting the interests of privileged minorities.
-- the outcome of scence - technology - was supposed to save time and reduce stress, but few people today feel as though they are enjoying the fruits of that promise. Technology often seems to make life more complicated, more hectic, more stressful, with time feeling every day more scarce, and everyone's nerves more frazzled.
-- the unscientific politics of science has come under the scrutiny of writers like Thomas Kuhn, in his depicting of the social processes of science and the phenomenon of paradigm shifts;
complexity theory and quantum mechanics have highlighted the fundamental uncertainty in understanding the world;
-- private sector funding of science has given rise to suspicions that theories and discoveries are based on contributions to performance and efficiency and contributions to the bottom line as much as on truth or purpose.
-- public sector institutions are sometimes perceived as pursuing their own agendas, driven by the internal interests of the institutions themselves, independently of the genuine public purpose.
-- even scientists have largely abandoned the goal of penetrating truth or finding the answer, in favor of the pursuit and promotion of the perspective of their own particular sub-topic.
-- scientists themselves are sometimes perceived as interested in putting out work which will generate more research funding and add to their own power and prestige within the academic "market-place".
-- science has splintered off into a mass of specialized sub-topics, each with its own language, pre-occupations, priorities, agendas, and politics, and each seemingly disinterested in the work going on in other sub-topics. Some funding sources such as foundations encourage inter-disciplinary research, but the overall dynamic is that of knowledge silos.
-- the overall result of this mass of fragmented, and only partially-compatible, activity on separate sub-topics is not necessarily enlightenment and the betterment of the human race, but often noise and a degraded quality of life for all.
-- an underlying issue is that many of the elements excluded by definition from the purview of science, because not directly observable, turn out to be some of the things that make life most worth living. It is painful to think of the coming millennium being based on such a stunted vision of human life.

References:
See Stephen Denning, The Springboard: How Storytelling Ignites Action in Knowledge-Era Organizations. Boston, London, Butterworth Heinemann, October 2000, chapters 7, 12.

Thomas Kuhn, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, (1960)

Jean-François Lyotard, The Post-Modern Condition: A Report on Knowledge, Minneapolis, University of Minnesota, 1979.

Glen Ward, Postmodernism, London, Hodder & Stoughton, (1997)

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feel free to leave comments or join the discussion here.

Science Vs. Religion - A Retarded Debate

2007-04-10T13:44:00.000-07:00

am i the only one supremely irritated by what seems to be a relatively recent trend of religion-hating among liberals and progressives? Sam Harris, Daniel Dennett, and now Richard Dawkins with his book "The God Delusion" -- these "men of reason" seem bent on blaming all of humanity's ills on spiritual practices world wide, all the while claiming science as some kind of absolutely objective, unquestionable, infallible way forward.

a view equally miopic, a position just as simple/closed minded and solipsistic as the ignorant fundamentalist freaks they rail against.

one of the fundamental problems making everything so royally fucked is that the world is way too "rational". most of the serious problems we faced are by-products of the industrial/technological age of 20th and 19th century. this is pretty much irrefutable. it should be clear to all that the result of too much left brain "logic" and "order" and ego and power and bureaucracy and hierarchy and law and repression is disastrous. (military-industrial complex is pretty much the apex of rationalism, is it not?)

what we need more of in the world is empathy, intuition, mystery. which is NOT institutional, organized religion, which, for all its absurd anti-rationalism, actually operates according to the hyper rigidity of the hyper-rational inhuman corporate/government model.

what we need, is what organized religion is a corrupt bastardization of: the return of a much, much older de-centered, non-hierarchical, non-patriarchal spirituality. and with it, social organizing principals based on localized, perhaps mobile, closely knit, self reliant and self sustainable communities.

Sensible Juice

2006-08-30T00:54:00.000-07:00

'Morality is not on our side.'. by Ze'ev Maoz, professor of political science at Tel Aviv university.

http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/742257.html

A Few Good Pieces

2006-08-21T18:21:00.000-07:00

from a few recent openings I happened to catch, during the few times that I had a camera with me. sorry but I did not take note of the artist's names... prolly should but to me it's the work and the idea that are important.

this orange cocoon-like bio-morphic sculpture used to be a traffic cone. there was also a painting made with pieces of traffic cones, but it was not nearly as successful. it casts a beautiful shadow on the wall (sorry I didn't get a good picture of that). I am soooooo into ordinary things becoming strange.

this and the next hair piece are both from a show partly curated by Tim Hawkinson (can't really go wrong with this guy. ever)

in case you can't tell what it is - a perfect square shaped grid made of tiny holes drilled into the gallery wall, and out of each hole a single piece of what appears to be human hair sticks out. the height is about the length of a girl's long-ish, past shoulder-length hair. definitely some attraction/repulsion thing going on. except the attraction is more like an obsessive compulsive's (at best. a serial killer's at worst) idea of attraction. guess it's more strange/alarming/creepy/repulsive than attractive. I guess this falls easily in the camp of post-minimalism, where rigid (often geometric) formalism is problemized - in this case, by a biological system.

absolutely love this. a giant photo of the areal view of a piece of cement sidewalk. I saw it as an abstract painting at first, and then noticed the couple of cigarrette butts and like, a penny. reminds me of "The Washing of a School Yard", a film by Charles and Ray Eames - exact what it sounds like - areal view still shot of foam and water spreading and washing over the cement of a school yard, forming beautiful psychedelic patterns.

this is one of the only saving graces of the first installment of the Super-Sonic show (entirely arbituary, stupid name), which was comprised of the work of 8 MFA programs of the artschools in the LA area. includes Art Center, Cal Arts, Otis, etc, etc. the second installment did not have a saving grace.

these are about the size of your palm, and appear to be made of rubber, encased at eye-level into the gallery wall; its concavity is only maybe an inch or 2 deep, but the receding perspective gives it the illusion of depth. there are so many ways to look at this that I'm not going to go into it - maybe it's enough to just say that they are pretty fucking cool.

Against Pluralism

2006-08-09T10:12:00.000-07:00

"Against Pluralism" is an essay by Hal Foster in the 1980s in which he makes the case that the current "all is permitted, nothing means jack-shit" supermarket-mentality of the art world is falsely liberating; that it is an illusory freedom; that it actually cloaks sinister conservatism and even fascism just beneath the variety-show surface. an image of art finally and completely succumbing to consumerism, losing all of its vitality, much less subversive power.

some may consider Hal to be a rigid old modernist who needs to "lighten up", but to me this piece of writing is as crucial as ever now in 2006:

my mind keeps going there when I'm in some new gallery space staring at paintings that look like T-shirt graphics, or photos of drunk people, or installations involving hundreds of ball-point pen portraits drawn on bar napkins...

it's ironic innit? the collapse of cohesive discourse in the academic establishment signaling fascism... but it kind of makes sense to me.

my through and through populist friends dissagree completely. To these anti-academics who are quick to shout "Elitism" and "Ivory Tower", the current "whatever it's all good" art world is an image of the triumph of the common man...

but is it?

from the second part of Against Pluralism entitled "A state of Grace?":

"... (Pluralism) is a situation that grants a kind of equivalence; art of many sorts is made to seem more or less equal - equally (un)important. Art becomes an arena not of dialectical dialogue but of vested interests, of licensed sects: in lieu of culture we have cults. The result is an eccentricity that leads, in art as in politics, to a new conformity: pluralism as an institution.

Posed as a freedom to choose, the pluralist position plays right into the ideology of the "free market" ... Indeed, the freedom of art today is announced by some as the "end of ideology" and the "end of the dialectic"- an announcement that, however naive, makes this ideology all the more devious. In effect, the demise of one style (e.e., minimalism) or one type of criticism (e.e., formalism) or even one period (e.g., late modernism) tends to be mistaken for the death of all such formulations. Such a death is vital to pluralism: for with ideology and dialectic somehow slain, we enter a state that seems like grace, a state that allows, extraordinarily, for all styles - pluralism. Such innocence in the face of history implies a serious misconstrual of the historicity of art and society. It also implies a failure of criticism.

When formalism prevailed, art tended to be self-critical. ... When formalism fell, even this attitude was largely lost. Free before of other discourses, art now seemed free from its own discourse. and soon it appeared that all criticism, once so crucial to art practice, had lost its cogency. ... We are free - of what, we think we know. But where are we left? The present in art has a strange form, at once full and empty, and a strange tense, a sort of neo-now moment of "arriere-avant-gardism." Many artists borrow promiscuously from both historical and modern art. But these references rarely engage the source - let alone the present - deeply. And the typical artist is often "foot-loose in time, culture and metaphor": a dilettante because he thinks that , as he entertains the past, he is beyond the exigency of the present; a dunce because he assumes a delusion; and a dangling man because historical moment - our present problematic - is lost.

Modern art ENGAGED historical forms, often in order to deconstruct them. Our new art tends to ASSUME historical forms - out of context and reified. Parodic or straight, these quotations plead for the importance, even the traditional status, of the new art. In certain quarters this is seen as a "return to history"; but it is in fact a profoundly ahistorical enterprise, and the result is often "aesthetic pleasure as false consciousness, or vice versa".

This "return to history" is ahistorical for three reasons: the context of history is disregarded, its continuum is disavowed, and conflictual forms of art and modes of production are falsely resolved in pastiche. Neither the specificity of the past nor the necessity of the present is heeded. Such a disregard makes the return to history also seem to be a liberation from history. And today many artists do feel that, free of history, they are able to use it as they wish. ...

To be unaware of historical or social limits is not to be free of them; one is all the more subjected. ... So it is that the freedom of art today is forced (both false and compelled): a willful naivete that masquerades as jouissance, a promiscuity misconceived as pleasure. Marcuse noted how the old tactics of (sexual) liberation, so subversive in a society of production, have come to serve the status quo of our society of consumption: he termed this "repressive desublimation." Similarly, pluralism in art signals a form of tolerance that does not threaten the status quo.

... Art became skittishly stylish - everyone had to be different... in the same way. ... as Adorno remarked, "the official culture's pretense of individualism...necessarily increases in proportion to the liquidation of the individual." Meanwhile, the conventions of art are not in decline but in extraordinary expansion. ...

... an art of "effect"... cannot escape its own condition of hysterical futility. It strains for effects only to degenerate into postures, and these postures have no relief: the emerge flat and ephemeral...

... The victim here is not the historicist model of an autonomous, causal line of "influence," but rather the dialectical model that demands radical, materialist innovation. It is this history that tends to be denied, only to be replaced by history as a monument (or ruin) - a store of styles, symbols, etc., to plunder... Rather than explore this condition of cliched styles and prescriptive codes (as Barthes and Derrida have done), many artists today merely exploit it, and either produce images that are easy to consume or indulge in stylistic references - often in such a way that the past is entertained precisely as publicity. The artist innocent today is a dilettante who, bound to modernist irony, flaunts alienation as if it were freedom. "

___________

this essay has made me realize that in recently years, just as often as I have been disgusted with so much crap being shown, that I have been too easily seduced by the superficially tasteful and pretty.

what's more, I realize that I too have delighted in the irresponsible plunder of history, and the thoughtless mix'n'match of signifiers for mere effect.

I too have felt the "illusory freedom" afforded by this state of affairs - "hey look I can just put these Victorian patterns on top of these images of break-dancers and it looks cool and it's OK!"

conversation a designer has with himself

2006-08-02T08:02:00.000-07:00

on a regular basis:

"it's abitrary"

"it looks cool"

"but it's abitrary innit"

"but it looks awesome!"

"is there any reason for it being there?"

"because it looks fucking great that's why!"

"besides that one"

"it's sexy! people will like it!"

"it's meaningless."

"who cares!"

"still abitrary."

"but it looks so good..."

...

Against Subjectivity

2006-08-01T22:38:00.000-07:00

When Alexander the Great told Plato that there is nothing bigger in the world than his kingdom, Plato replied "but of course there is!" Confused, Alexander asks "what is that?" and Plato replied: "my eyelids! because when I close my eyes, your entire kingdom is covered up!"

Everything is relative, and the only reality is perception. This we know well. From taking acid as teenagers or other similarly invaluble learning experiences.

But serious problems occur when an universal truth like this is blindly applied to specific human endeavor; and we come to the single most irritating remark anyone can make in regards to art:

"it's all subjective."

This mistake is often made by otherwise reasonable people, and is nothing short of lazy, irresponsible, and so unjust that it borders on being amoral in its carelessness.

what does it mean to make this blanket statement?

that all conversations about art are pointless because it's all personal likes and dislikes? that anything anyone ever makes, whether a lewd drawing in a public restroom or the Sistine Chapel, should be equally valued?

There are no absolutes, but with anything we humans do, there is one or more convincing sets of criteria with which to judge it. A plate of pasta can be judged on the quality of the noodles and the richness of the sauce. A hiphop track can be judged in terms of quality of production, dexterity of flow. and conceptual art can be judged by a combination of its economy, grace, originality, ingenuity, wit, contribution to discourse, profundity of its message, etc.

things can be only compared to other things within the same "genre", and judgement is more problematic and complex in some areas compared to others (conceptual art is more difficult than pasta), but none the less we use existing or invent new sets of criteria to determine the quality of man made things every day of our lives, and in most cases agree with what these sets of criteria include and how they function.

perhaps there is one over-arching criteria above all else: fitness to purpose. (if a thing does what it has proposed to do and does it well, then it is good.)

Sartre had this to say about it:

"Opinion" reduces all ideas to the level of "taste" and ofcourse all "tastes" are valid. it is what a hostess says when a discussion threatens to become unruly: 'you are all entitled to your OPINION, so everyone, shhhhhhh!'"

people who are anti my stance on this subject (including a few friends), who insist on absolute subjectivity (creepy parallel to the moral relativism of the neo-cons), will often accuse me of being an ego-centric fascist who thinks he can impose his own (priveledged, "educated", "western") values onto the entire world.

not so.

Because when I see contemporary Arabic Typography, look at a porceline vase from 4000 BC China, read a novel by Viginia Wolfe, listen to an 18th century Raga from India, use a piece of designer silverware from Sweden -- I perceive the same level of accomplishment - attention to detail, sophistication in simplicity, inventiveness, and resolution of formal elements into a finished, cohesive whole which is greater than the sum of the parts. (this incidentally may be a good definition of art)

And I do believe that to some extent, people all over the world of all times, of varying degrees of "education" (whatever that means), will feel the same way -- a well made thing is a well made thing, easy to tell from the badly made things.

Again, obviously nothing is absolute and there must be countless exceptions - due to cultural differences (Westerners love cheese and most of Asia thinks it is disgusting) or entirely different functional nature of the object (modern art), but the bigger picture remains the same.

so people please, you know who you are, stop saying this ridiculous thing... because not only does it make you seem utterly banal and sub-moronic, but everytime you do, something in me dies.

Hello World

2006-08-01T22:32:00.000-07:00

Different Waters is the music blog, and this one will be everything else: art, philosophy, poetry, politics, movies, personal accounts of strange or funny phenomenon, bad and good jokes, the behavioral patterns of wild Geese during mating season, and what ever else I god damn feel like writing about.

word.