Recently, we walked out of the temple … I am not sure if it had been a problem of pronunciation, some Freudian slip or some hint — two words merged to one, one divided itself into two meanings
Immortal — immoral
Categoria: thoughts on life and its philosophy
Not just Greece
I am currently attending a social policy conference in Tianjin, the overall all topic”New Orientation in the Socioeconomic New Normal.
The situation in Greece is a more than worrying shadow over it. The leaders of “the institutions”, self-appointed, are crashing with their style of negotiations a project that claims to stand for peace and social progress. The Greek crisis shows from the very beginning that the interest of those leaders is against the people not only of Greece. Economic potentials are destroyed and democratically elects governments are forced to work against genuine interests.
I only can hope that the referendum will succeed with a No as result, showing that people are not ready to accept a coup d’état-like strategy that results in further breaches of human rights at the very core of Europe.
The “new normal” has to serve the people, instead can of the people being sacrificed for the elites.
Hegemony
The are different sides and it is crucial to recognise where one stands.
- You see the car driving, tainted window, not allowing you to look into it — let alone to throw stones …
- You are sitting in the car, tainted windows, not enabling you to see what is going on outside — if there is a need, others may throw stones or come with tanks …
- You are on both sides, at different times, and at no time really being on either side … — definitely, really sitting in the glasshouse, just don’t throw stones, they will definitely hit back …
- Walking – no tainted windows …, no side …, just the one: and we may throw stones … — but why should we?
So accepting
Of course, there is some hassle when it comes to using the Internet here in China – this includes services like dropbox, google and wordpress. Still, there is a but …, we are easily throwing out the baby with the bathwater. Searching for “a way around”, I found this:
Welcome to the wonderful restriction colloquiallly known as “the Great Firewall.” All of China’s Internet providers route through national proxies that block specific terms, redirect certain sites, and do various other kinds of nastiness.
As an example, if you’re outside China and perform an image search for “Tiananmen,” you’ll see photos of the confrontation in the square. If you’re inside China and do the same thing, you’ll see photos of trees and tourists, but no tanks.
I do not want to discuss tanks and trees but the underlying supposition of tremendous freedom in other parts of the world. I am using a “multilingual” computer, i.e. writing in different languages, the operating system running in one language, the software running in (a) different language(s) and traveling a bit around the world. The google-censorship, the youtube-censorship etc. is frequently stunning – we ac tally all know about it, though may be to different degrees and we easily accept it.
Also, reading different national newspapers, especially when traveling … – well, the critique should not worry so much about the single cases but about about principles of hegemonic structures that are defending what is the great achievements of enlightenment, namely sovereignty and freedom, stripped off their humanist stances and veiled in the spirit of nationality and capitalist market principles and religious fundamentalism and parochialism.
I came across a kind of perfection of the principle the other day, opening a website, obviously open for google advertisement. The that had been shown pointed to a VPN-service for China, promising
Be Free, Truly Anonymous & Secured
and opening the way to Facebook, youtube etc. – the imagined freedom of (not only, but also) exhibitionism.
For me the only reason for not getting too worried is somewhat frightening in itself: I grew up in Western Germany, what had been the FRG. I remember too well this times one could there a little and telling “click” when using the phone, seeing a tiny stripe on the envelope, telling us about the “special treatment” and the cameras behind the curtains when we rallied against and for .. a better world. (For detailed documentation, please contact the headquarters of the NSA, though I am not sure if the freedom of information act applies ….).
If it fails, you may apply for a job directly.
Still along way to go … – the real danger is that we slide down the way Uncle Sam uses.
Narratives
梁啟超 (Liang Qichao) said
to renovate the people of a nation, one must first renovate its fiction
Which can be about the dissemination of ideas, though with modern sociology we can know that society is itself a kind of fiction, a narrative that is the result of power games between people, and their organisations and institutions, resulting int he great narrative that we ay call society, be it in the shape of small communities and neighborhoods or be it as matter of the word society.
The part of the narrative is not (only) a matter of the presentation but moreover and importantly a matter of establishing the inks, thus also the gaps that we may be able tip open fro a counter-hegemony. Wasn’t Goethe right?
An extremely odd demand is often set forth but never met, even by those who make it: i.e., that empirical data should be presented without any theoretical context, leaving the reader, the student, to his own devices in judging it. This demand seems odd because it is useless simply to look at something. Every act of looking turns into observation, every act of observation into reflection, every act of reflection into the making of associations; thus it is evident that we theorize every time we look carefully at the world.
From: Goethe, Preface,” Theory of Color, Miller 159; Quoted in: Frederick Amrine, 1990: The Metamorphosis of the Scientist. Goethe Yearbook, Volume 5: 187-212; here: 188
A spectre haunts the world
A recent entry on these pages linked to a critical article on the tradition, still haunting the word gendarme, celebrating the Founding Fathers.
Looking for the roots, they are especially constituted by the
No person shall be held to answer for a capital, or otherwise infamous crime, unless on a presentment or indictment of a grand jury, except in cases arising in the land or naval forces, or in the militia, when in actual service in time of war or public danger; nor shall any person be subject for the same offense to be twice put in jeopardy of life or limb; nor shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself, nor be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation.
Well, constitutions are about constituting something, right?
It had been repeatedly stated that the EU could not be member state of the EU as theEU is actually not committed to its own rules …
The paradox with the USNA is that it completely complies with its own rules — on the one hand: fir the white (yes, Barack, there are exceptions), male (yes, Hillary, there are some exceptions), upper-middle class society; still, there is something in the US that actually reminds me of the ancient societies: some people, namely slaves, had not been considered as people, as human beings — so they could be treated differently – and the proclaimed freedom provides the means.
A sad state of the nation – a saddening nation state …. that makes these days the headlines again and again, showing the teeth of a shark to its own people – especially to the black who had never been part of the “community”.
Ownership
Your children are not your children.
They are the sons and daughters of Life’s longing for itself.
They come through you but not from you,
And though they are with you yet they belong not to you. You may give them your love but not your thoughts,
For they have their own thoughts.
You may house their bodies but not their souls,
For their souls dwell in the house of to-morrow, which you cannot visit, not even in your dreams.
(Kahlil Gibran: The Prophet, 1923)
The fish and her friends ….
So our fish glided his little body past the angry neighbours who could not believe their ears. No one, certainly never an insider, had ever insulted them so by questioning the ways of their idyllic stream. But for everything there is a first, and for that mossy stream this little fish was indeed a first. And now, swimming breathlessly away from the mob, he was trying to reach the waterfalls and the big, unseen world under it. The little black fish looked down and saw his friends, who soon would go back to the same old life. What a thought! He took heart and said, ‘Farewell, my friends. Do not forget me.’
(Hakakian, Roya, 2004: Journey from the Land of No. A Girlhood caught in revolutionary Iran; New York: Crown Publishers: 31 f.)
shadows
Beware lest you lose the substance by grasping at the shadow.
Æsop
La pura verità – Deeper truth
Dipingere – Painting –
Il pittore che ritrae per pratica e giudizio d’occhio sanza ragione è come lo specchio, che in sé imita tutte le a sé contrapposte cose, sanza cognizione d’esse.
*****
The painter who draws merely by practice and by eye, without any reason, is like a mirror which copies every thing placed in front of it without being conscious of their existence.
(da Vinci, Leonardo: Scritti. A cura di Carlo Vecce; MilanoGruppo Ugo Nursina Editore, 1992: 143)
COMMEDIA DELLA VITA OR PÁNTA RÊI'S FIRM GROUND 