Quidnovi

Samhain

2003-10-31T17:09:13Z

The Path Less Traveled

2003-10-26T23:31:49Z

One of the themes of the Grail romance is that the land, the country, the whole territory of concern has been laid waste. It is called a wasteland. And what is the nature of the wasteland? It is a land where everybody is doing as other people do, doing as they're told, with no courage for their own lives. That is the wasteland. (The one T.S. Eliot meant in his poem The Waste Land).

In a wasteland the surface does not represent the actuality of what it is supposed to be representing, and people are living inauthentic lives.

---Joseph Campbell, The Power of Myth

Out of Time

2003-10-24T19:06:59Z

Before time, before the big bang, we were nothing. What is nothing? Nothing is infinite potential. Nothing is pure creativity. Infinitely hot. Infinitely dense. Nothing is every possible quantum uncertainty. Before time, before the big bang, we were all one with God. She is us. We are Her, fallen into time, fallen into pieces. But before time, all of us were one. All of us Her. God is a gambler. And She played the ultimate casino---The Stairway to Heaven. It is the hottest casino you can imagine, a vast, elegant, and winding staircase. Each step is decked with flashing lights and playing tables. Players begin with a trillion dollars. And they are packed together on each step so densely that every point is a player. All are rolling dice dazzingly fast, every roll of the dice a quantum fluctuation.

---A. A. Attanasio

"New organs of perception come into being as a result of necessity..."

---Jelaluddin Rumi

	TURQUOISE MEME Holistic meme - starting 30 years ago Worldview: An elegantly balanced system of interlocking forces Mindset: Experience the wholeness of existence through mind & spirit Manifestations: Holonic, intuitive thinking; global networks for global results
	YELLOW MEME Integrative meme - starting 50 years ago Worldview: The world is a chaotic organism forged by differences and change Mindset: Flexibility, functionality, responsibility, and spontaneity have highest priority Manifestations: Integrative structures, systems thinking, "Third Way" politics
	GREEN MEME Communitarian/Egalitarian meme - starting 150 years ago Worldview: A human habitat in which we share life's experiences, feed from dogma Mindset: Seek peace in the inner self and explore the caring dimensions of community Manifestations: Human rights movement, communes, Woodstock, multiculturalism
	ORANGE MEME Achievist/Strategic meme - starting 300 years ago Worldview: A marketplace full of possibilities and opportunities Mindset: Play the game to win; cultivate optimistic, risk-taking self-reliance Manifestations: The Enlightenment, Silicon Valley, Fortune magazine, corporate states
	BLUE MEME Purposeful/Authoritarian meme - starting 5,000 years ago Worldview: An ordered existence under the control of the "ultimate truth" Mindset: Life has meaning, direction and purpose; enforce principles of rightful living Manifestations: Puritan America, codes of honor, the Moral Majority
	RED MEME Impulsive/Egocentric meme - starting 10,000 years ago Worldview: A jungle where the strongest and most cunning survive Mindset: Avoid shame, get respect, and do what you want Manifestations: Feudal kingdoms, rebellious youth, epic heroes, "terrible twos"
	PURPLE MEME Magical/Animistic meme - starting 50,000 years ago Worldview: A magical place alive with spirit beings and mystical signs Mindset: Keep the tribe's nest safe and warm; observe tribal customs, seasonal cycles Manifestations: Family rituals, shamans, blood oaths, magical New Age beliefs
	BEIGE MEME Instinctive/Survivalistic meme - starting 100,000 years ago Worldview: A natural milieu where humans rely on instincts to survive Mindset: Do what you must to stay alive, Food, warmth, sex, and safety have priority Manifestations: First human societies, starving masses, African Bushmen, street people

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Source: WIE: The Never Ending Upward Quest, an interview with Dr. Don Beck, founder and CEO of the National Values Center, and Spiral Synamics Group, inc.

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Related topic: Man's search for meaning

Noble Lies?

2003-10-21T19:11:11Z

Shadia Drury, a professor of political theory, argues that the use of deception and manipulation in current US policy flows directly from the doctrines of the political philosopher Leo Strauss (1899-1973). She elaborates her argument in this interview with Danny Postel.

A Brave New World Revisited

2003-10-19T20:05:39Z

Huxley saw, in 1958, a world full of the noise of what he called singing commercials, flooding the mass media, much like the hypnopaedia that shaped conscious thought in the world of the novel. He saw people everywhere in greater numbers taking tranquilizer drugs, to surrender to the unacceptable aspects of modern life---not unlike the drug called soma that everyone takes in the novel. The power of propaganda, he believed, had been validated by the rise of Hitler, and the postwar world was using it effectively to manipulate the masses. Brave New World Revisited despairs of what has come to pass, primarily modern humankind's willingness to surrender freedom for pleasure.

Following is an excerpt:

A Brave New World Revisited

---Aldous Husley

The really hopeless victims of mental illness are to be found among those who appear to be most normal. Many of them are normal because they are so well adjusted to our mode of existence, because their human voice has been silenced so early in their lives, that they do not even struggle or suffer or develop symptoms as the neurotic does. They are normal not in what may be called the absolute sense of the word; they are normal only in relation to a profoundly abnormal society. Their perfect adjustment to that abnormal society is a measure of their mental sickness.

These millions of abnormally normal people, living without fuss in a society to which, if they were fully human beings, they ought not to be adjusted, still cherish the illusion of individuality, but in fact they have been to a great extent de-individualized. Their conformity is developing into something like uniformity. But uniformity and freedom are incompatible. Uniformity and mental health are incompatible too... Man is not made to be an automation, and if he becomes one, the basis for mental health is destroyed.

The wish to impose order upon confusion, to bring harmony out of dissonance and unity out of multiplicity, is a kind of intellectual instinct; a primary and fundamental urge of the mind.

Biologically speaking, man is moderately gregarious, not a completely social animal; a creature more like a wolf, let us say, or an elephant, than like a bee or an ant. In their original form human societies bore no resemblance to the hive or the ant heap; they were merely packs. Civilization is, among other things, the process by which primitive packs are transformed into an analogue, crude and mechanical, of the social insects' organic communities. Needless to say, the ideal will never in fact be realized. A great gulf separates the social insects from the not too gregarious, big-brained mammal; and even though the mammal should do his best to imitate the insect, the gulf would remain. However hard they try, men cannot create a social organism, they can only create an organization. In the process of trying to create an organization they will merely create a totalitarian despotism.

The current Social Ethic, it is obvious, is merely a justification after the fact of the less desirable consequence of over-organization. It represents a pathetic attempt to make a virtue of necessity, to extract a positive value from an unpleasant datum. It is a very unrealistic, and therefore very dangerous, system of morality. The social whole, whose value is assumed to be greater than that of its component parts, is not an organism in the sense that a hive or termitary may be thought of as an organism. It is mere an organization, a piece of social machinery. There can be no value except in relation to life and awareness. An organization is neither conscious nor alive. Its value is intrumental and derivative. It is not good in itself; it is good only to the extent that it promotes the good of the individuals who are the parts of the collective whole. To give organizations precedence over persons is to subordinate end to means. What happens when ends are subordinated to means was clearly demonstrated by Hitler and Stalin. Under their hideous rule personal ends were subordinated to organizational means by a mixture of violence and propaganda, systematic terror and the systematic manipulation of minds. In the more efficient dictatorships of tomorrow there will probably be much less violence than under Hitler and Stalin. The future dictator's subjects will be painlessly regimented by a corps of highly trained Social Engineers.

In the totalitarian East there is political censorship, and the media of mass communication are controlled by the State. In the democratic West, there is economic censorship and the media of mass communication are controlled by members of the Power Elite.

(...) The nature of oratory is such that there has always been a tendency among politicians and clergymen to over-simplify complex issues. From a pulpit or a platform even the most conscientious of speakers finds it very difficult to tell the whole truth. The methods now being used to merchandise the political candidate as though he were a deodorant, positively guarantee the electorate against ever hearing the truth about anything.

The Nationalist Nightmare

2003-10-12T13:42:56Z

Nationalism

The emotional nature of nationalism makes it the most powerful of all ideologies. It affects the individual more deeply and needs less reinforcement than any other political idea system. It unifies people and gives them a common basis for identifying themselves and one another. (L.T. Sargent)

At the same time, nationalism establishes an artificial barrier between people. Human beings are identified on territorial basis and property divisions. Nationalism encourages people to define their interests and values in terms of something less than the good of humanity as a whole. Hence, it tends to work against the ethic of human rights. Because of its emphasis on the property value at the expense of human values, nationalism is firmly rooted in the conservative tradition of the political spectrum.

The Force Theory

That school of thought developed in Germany during the nineteenth century. Georg Hegel (1770-1831) and Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900) emphasizing that civilization was created by force (historically, the natural evolution of conquest and the forceful imposition of the strong over the weak) argued that force was not something to be avoided or looked at as something "evil". On the contrary, it was the primary value in society. It was its own justification.

Students of Hegel and Nietzsche have argued that the state is the most powerful form of human association. As such, it is above any ordinary moral or ethical restraint, and it is greater than any individual. It is not limited by something as insignificant as the individual's rights.

According to force theorists, the weak should be ruled by the strong. By institutionalizing the power of the strong over the weak, the state simply arranges affairs as they should be.

The Bush Doctrine

Rebuilding America's Defenses: Strategies, Forces And Resources For A New Century (pdf file – 90 pages), a blueprint drawn up for Dick Cheney (now vice-president), Donald Rumsfeld (defense secretary), Paul Wolfowitz (Rumsfeld's deputy), George W Bush's younger brother Jeb and Lewis Libby (Cheney's chief of staff), was written by the neo-conservative think-tank Project for the New American Century (PNAC) in September 2000.

The text advocated taking military control of the Gulf region whether or not Saddam Hussein was in power.

It says: "The United States has for decades sought to play a more permanent role in Gulf regional security. While the unresolved conflict with Iraq provides the immediate justification, the need for a substantial American force presence in the Gulf transcends the issue of the regime of Saddam Hussein."

The PNAC document supports a "blueprint for maintaining global US pre-eminence, precluding the rise of a great power rival, and shaping the international security order in line with American principles and interests".

The report describes our armed forces abroad as "the cavalry on the new American frontier". The PNAC blueprint supports an earlier document written by Wolfowitz and Libby that said the US must "discourage advanced industrial nations from challenging our leadership or even aspiring to a larger regional or global role".

U.S. President George W. Bush addresses the United Nations (UN) General Assembly

As the Washington Post recently pointed it out, it is little wonder then that the international community is not seduced by Bush's refusal to dilute the present monopoly of power over the occupation administration, the reconstruction program or the contracts that have been awarded almost exclusively to US firms.

In London, the Guardian newspaper said "Mr. Bush had an opportunity to build bridges---and chose instead to burnish his self-image as the square-jawed, undaunted Captain Marvel of the fight against evil. It was thus an opportunity lost (...) Some Americans may find reassurance in this robustly simplistic analysis. But the rest of the world will look on uneasily, as before."

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Related article: From Republic to Empire (Roger Morris)

Shortly before he died in 1989, the eminent American writer Robert Penn Warren, author of All The King's Men, a novel about a democratic demagogue and dictator, was asked if he foresaw another president with too much power.

"Well, it'll probably be someone you least expect under circumstances nobody foresaw," he said. "And, of course, it'll come with a standing ovation from Congress."

Means and Ends

2003-10-01T10:49:52Z

Liberal thinkers have sought to show that it is possible for each individual to be used as a means for another to achieve his ends without undue coercion and to his own distinct advantage. This occurs not by conscious cooperation or deliberately pursuing a common end but by each man pursuing diverse ends in accordance with the “law” of the natural identity of interests, a “law” that is justified if not guaranteed in terms of metaphysical or economic or biological “truths”.

Authoritarian thinkers, on the other hand, justified coercion in the name of a pre-determined common end, the attainment of which cannot be left to the chaotic interplay of innumerable wills. The end may simply be the preservation of a traditional order, or the recovery of a bygone age of glory, or the ruthless reconstruction of society from the top to secure some spectacular consummation in the future.

It appears to be common to most schools of thought to accept a sharp dichotomy between ends and means, a distinction that is deeply embedded in our ethical and political and psychological vocabulary, rooted in rigid European pre-suppositions regarding the very nature of human action. Distinctions have been repeatedly made between immediate and ultimate, short-term and long-term, diverse and common, individual and social, essential and desirable ends, as also between attainable and utopian goals. Discussion about means has not ignored questions about their moral implications and propriety or about the extent of their theoretical and contingent compatibility with desired ends or widely shared values. But despite all these reservations, the dangerous dogma that the end entirely justifies the means is merely an extreme version of the commonly uncriticized belief that moral considerations cannot apply to the means except in relation to ends, or that the latter have a moral priority.

---Raghawan N. Iyer: Means and Ends in Politics

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Related Topic: The Anti-Machiavel

Being There

2003-09-16T16:35:04Z

BEING THERE

By Roger Ebert

On the day that Kasparov was defeated by Deep Blue, I found myself thinking of the film ``Being There'' (1979). The chess champion said there was something about the computer he did not understand, and it frightened him. There were moments when the computer seemed to be . . . thinking. Of course, chess is not a game of thought but of mathematical strategy; Deep Blue has demonstrated it is possible to be very good at it without possessing consciousness.

The classic test of Artificial Intelligence has been: Can a computer be programmed to conduct a conversation that seems human to another human? ``Being There'' is a film about a man whose mind works like a rudimentary A.I. program.

His mind has been supplied with a fund of simplistic generalizations about the world, phrased in terms of the garden where he has worked all his adult life. But because he presents himself as a man of good breeding (he walks and talks like the wealthy older man whose house he lived in, and wears the man's tailored suits) his simplicity is mistaken for profundity, and soon he is advising presidents and befriending millionaires.

The man's name is Chance. We gather he has lived all of his life inside the townhouse and walled garden of a rich recluse (perhaps he is his son). He knows what he needs to know for his daily routine: Where his bedroom and bathroom are, and how to tend the plants of the garden. His meals are produced by Louise, the cook. The movie provides no diagnosis of his condition. He is able to respond to given cues, and can, within limits, adapt and learn.

Early in the film he introduces himself as ``Chance . . . the gardener,'' and is misunderstood as having said ``Chauncey Gardener.'' Just the sort of WASP name that matches his clothing and demeanor, and soon he is telling the President: ``Spring, summer, autumn, winter . . . then spring again.'' Indeed.

Chance is played by Peter Sellers, an actor who once told me he had ``absolutely no personality at all. I am a chameleon. When I am not playing a role, I am nobody.'' Of course, he thought himself ideal for this role, which comes from a novel by Jerzy Kosinski. Sellers plays Chance as a man at peace with himself. When the old man dies, the household is broken up and Chance is evicted, there is a famous scene where he is confronted by possible muggers, and simply points a channel changer at them, and clicks. He is surprised when they do not go away.

Sellers plays Chance at exactly the same note for the entire film. He is detached, calm, secure in his own knowledge, unaware of his limitations. Through a series of happy chances, he is taken into the home of a dying millionaire named Benjamin Rand (Melvyn Douglas). The millionaire's wife Eve (Shirley MacLaine) establishes Chance in a guest suite, where he is happy to find a television (his most famous line is, ``I like to watch.'')

Soon the rich man grows to treasure his reassuring friend. The family doctor (Richard Dysart) is perceptive, and begins to have doubts about Chance's authenticity, but silences himself when his patient says Chauncey ``has made the thought of dying much easier.'' Chauncey is introduced by Ben to the president (Jack Warden), becomes an unofficial advisor, and soon is being interviewed on television, where his insights fit nicely into the limited space available for sound bites.

Satire is a threatened species in American film, and when it does occur, it's usually broad and slapstick, as in the Mel Brooks films. ``Being There,'' directed by Hal Ashby, is a rare and subtle bird that finds its tone and stays with it. It has the appeal of an ingenious intellectual game, in which the hero survives a series of challenges he doesn't understand, using words that are both universal and meaningless. But are Chance's sayings noticeably less useful than when the president tells us about a ``bridge to the 21st century?'' Sensible public speech in our time is limited by (1) the need to stay within he confines of the 10-second TV sound bite; (2) the desire to avoid being pinned down to specific claims or promises; and (3) the abbreviated attention span of the audience, which, like Chance, likes to watch but always has a channel-changer poised.

If Chance's little slogans reveal how superficial public utterance can be, his reception reveals still more. Because he is WASP, middle-aged, well-groomed, dressed in tailored suits, and speaks like an educated man, he is automatically presumed to be a person of substance. He is, in fact, socially naive (``You're always going to be a little boy,'' Louise tells him). But this leads to a directness than can be mistaken for confidence, as when he addresses the president by his first name, or enfolds his hand in both of his own. The movie argues that if you look right, sound right, speak in platitudes and have powerful friends, you can go far in our society. By the end of the film, Chance is being seriously proposed as a presidential candidate. Well, why not? I once watched Lamar Alexander for 45 minutes on C-SPAN, as he made small talk in a New Hampshire diner, and heard nothing that Chance could not have said.

In the much-discussed final sequence of ``Being There,'' Chance casually walks onto the surface of a lake. We can see that he is really walking on the water, because he leans over curiously and sticks his umbrella down into it.

When I taught the film, I had endless discussions with my students over this scene. Many insisted on explaining it: He is walking on a hidden sandbar, the water is only half an inch deep, there is a submerged pier, etc. ``Not valid!'' I thundered. ``The movie presents us with an image, and while you may discuss the meaning of the image it is not permitted to devise explanations for it. Since Ashby does not show a pier, there is no pier--a movie is exactly what it shows us, and nothing more,'' etc.

So what does it show us? It shows us Chance doing something that is primarily associated with only one other figure in human history. What are we to assume? That Chance is a Christ figure? That the wisdom of great leaders only has the appearance of meaning? That we find in politics and religion whatever we seek? That like the Road Runner (who also defies gravity) he will not sink until he understands his dilemma?

The movie's implications are alarming. Is it possible that we are all just clever versions of Chance the gardener? That we are trained from an early age to respond automatically to given words and concepts? That we never really think out much of anything for ourselves, but are content to repeat what works for others in the same situation?

The last words in the movie are, "Life is a state of mind." So no computer will ever be alive. But to the degree that we are limited by our programming, neither will we. The question is not whether a computer will ever think like a human, but whether we choose to free ourselves from thinking like computers.

Copyright © Chicago Sun-Times Inc.

One of the hallmarks of a parable of this type is that it can serve as host to a treasure trove of interpretations. …[You can] see Chance as yourself experiencing all the ways in which others try to force you to play a part in their movies. Others have hailed the political prophecy of Being There—individuals have been elevated to high political office for simply coming across well on television. Or here's a final one to process: the film is simply a very savvy meditation on being present—being at the right place at the right time.

---Frederic and Mary Ann Brussat (Spirituality and Health)

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Related topic: Being Real

Economics as if People Mattered

2003-09-07T13:49:55Z

Schumacher was born in Germany in 1911. In the 1930s he went to England as a Rhodes Scholar and was detained there as an enemy alien during World War II. He spent the war working on a farm in the north of England, an experience of common productive labor that played an important role in his formation. He also became a Roman Catholic. After the war he worked as an economic advisor to the British Control Commission in Germany. For twenty years he was the top economist and head of planning at the British Coal Board.

Through these experiences he came to believe that traditional economics, despite its scientific pretensions, was really a kind of religion, and an inferior one at that. It was based on a materialistic view of reality in which growth, efficiency, and production were the ultimate measures of value. In this fashion economists ignored the spiritual dimensions of human beings while promoting a civilization headed for catastrophe.

In the 1960s and 1970s Schumacher began to publish his “heretical” opinions in obscure alternative publications. But in 1973 he achieved wide recognition with the publication of his work Small Is Beautiful, subtitled, “Economics as if People Mattered.” The book caused an appropriately modest sensation arriving just at the time when ecological consciousness was beginning to catch up with the deadly perils of pollution, unbridled growth, and the depletion of the earth’s nonrenewable resources.

One of the most popular essays in the book was called “Buddhist Economics,” which reflected Schumacher’s experience as an advisor to the government of Burma. Most economists, he claimed, were utterly unaware of the degree to which their programs for economic “development” reflected Western metaphysical presuppositions. In this essay he imagined what an economy would look like that reflected the Buddha’s idea of “Right Livelihood.” In describing an economy regulated by concern for permanence, equality, the reduction of desires, the alleviation of suffering, respect for beauty, and the dignity of work, he implicitly called into contrast an economic system sustained by waste, short-term savings, and the stimulation of avarice and envy. (He later observed that he might just as well have written an essay called “Christian Economics,” but then “no one would have read it.”)

In his second book, A Guide for the Perplexed, Schumacher was even more explicit about the spiritual and theological concern behind his work. He traced the problems of our civilization to a failure of metaphysics, the loss of a “vertical dimension,” which meant that while we have the answers to all kinds of technical questions we no longer know how to answer the question, “what am I to do with my life?” Science, he argued, cannot produce the ideas by which we can live. “the task of our generation, I have no doubt, is one of metaphysical reconstruction.”

Not everyone could follow Schumacher’s erudite appeal to the wisdom of Thomas Aquinas. But his lucid writings and speeches on the virtues of decentralization, appropriate technology, renewable resources, and “economics on a human scale” made eminent sense to a wide audience. In fact, one of his frequent themes was the idea that we are approaching a Great Convergence – that is, a convergence between the practical imperatives of planetary survival and the great, though unheeded, wisdom of our prophets and sages. The current logic of our civilization he said, indicated a “violent attitude to God’s handiwork instead of a reverent one.” If this did not change, the human species would simply not survive.

Schumacher’s ideas quickly entered the permanent vocabulary of the modern ecology movement. But his own presence was short-lived. Only four years after the appearance of his famous book, he died on September 4, 1977.

Robert Ellsberg: All Saints: Dayly Reflection on Saints, Prophets and Witnesses For Our Time.

Edition no. 0002

2003-08-31T00:25:37Z

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So far in this issue:

Straw Paws [Martha Borders]

A reprint of the infamous Bearly Ponder Press articles by Loopy B Nosey

<
Interview with Baalberith [Editorial]

Who is Baalberith? Enquiring Muse wants to know.

< Out of Time [Julos, "Noé"]

Past issue:

Edition no. 0001