La Gira

Back from the celebration of Dragon Boat Festival at 汨罗江

da Peter Herrmann's Blog, posted in Peter's Log, quotes

Just returning from the celebration of Dragon Boat Festival at 汨罗江, remembering a poem:

Alone I stand in the autumn cold 

On the tip of Orange Island, 

The Hsiang flowing northward; 

I see a thousand hills crimsoned through 

By their serried woods deep-dyed, 

And a hundred barges vying 

Over crystal blue waters. 

Eagles cleave the air, 

Fish glide in the limpid deep; 

Under freezing skies a million creatures contend in freedom. 

Brooding over this immensity, 

I ask, on this boundless land 

Who rules over man’s destiny?

I was here with a throng of companions, 

Vivid yet those crowded months and years. 

Young we were, schoolmates, 

At life’s full flowering; 

Filled with student enthusiasm 

Boldly we cast all restraints aside. 

Pointing to our mountains and rivers, 

Setting people afire with our words, 

We counted the mighty no more than muck. 

Remember still 

How, venturing midstream, we struck the waters 

And waves stayed the speeding boats? 

毛泽东 (Mao Zedong)

Surely a beginning only

da Peter Herrmann's Blog, posted in contemporary socio-economic situation, Peter's Log, Uncategorized

It is surely not a complete analysis of the encyclical letter which is due to be published today. But one thing seems to be striking: it continues to dichotomise economy and ecology, only demanding taking responsibility FOR nature. 

Quando si analizza l’impatto ambientale di qualche iniziativa economica , si è soliti conside- rare gli effetti sul suolo, sull’acqua e sull’aria, ma non sempre si include uno studio attento dell’impatto sulla biodiversità, come se la perdita di alcune specie o di gruppi animali o vegetali fosse qualcosa di poco rilevante.

(Para 35)
Shouldn’t we move further, looking for responsibility IN nature?
Indeed there are several instances in the letter that suggest a too technical understanding to the real social responsibility, i.e. a responsibility that sees nature as an inherent part of the social existence.

Difficult questions and the surely important contribution of the 

LETTERA ENCICLICA

LAUDATO SI’

DEL SANTO PADRE

FRANCESCO

SULLA CURA DELLA CASA COMUNE

will offer many impulses for a hopefully productive debate.
… Camminare insieme … 

con tutte le nostre differenze 

Narratives

da Peter Herrmann's Blog, posted in quotes, thoughts on life and its philosophy

 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

da Peter Herrmann's Blog, posted in general, thoughts on life and its philosophy

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

Fifth Amendment, amendment (1791) to the Constitution of the United States, part of the Bill of Rights,

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

da Peter Herrmann's Blog, posted in quotes, thoughts on life and its philosophy

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 ….

da Peter Herrmann's Blog, posted in Peter's Log, quotes, thoughts on life and its philosophy

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.)

Odi et Amo

da Peter Herrmann's Blog, posted in quotes

For even as love crowns you so shall he crucify you.

Even as he is for your growth so is he for your pruning.

Even as he ascends to your height and caresses your tenderest branches that quiver in the sun,

So shall he descend to your roots and shake them in their clinging to the earth.

(Kahlil Gibran: The Prophet, 1923)

The Stranger

da Peter Herrmann's Blog, posted in quotes

And when he entered into the city all the people came to meet him, and they were crying out to him as with one voice.And the elders of the city stood forth and said:
Go not yet away from us.
A noontide have you been in our twilight, and your youth has given us dreams to dream.
No stranger are you among us, nor a guest, but our son and our dearly beloved.
Suffer not yet our eyes to hunger for your face.

(Kahlil Gibran: The Prophet, 1923)