Fuck People Magazine...and American Idol...and K-mart...and MTV...and probably you...

Throughout history, intellectual life has been marked by the fact that only a small number of people have done the serious thinking for everybody else. What we are witnessing is a passing of the torch from one group of thinkers, the traditional literary intellectuals, to a new group, the intellectuals of the emerging third culture...(http://www.edge.org/) ...d22

Chuang Tzu:

Chuang Tzu (369? - 268 B.C.) was a leading thinker representing the Taoist strain in Chinese thought. Using parable and anecdote, allegory and paradox, he set forth the early ideas of what was to become the Taoist school...Chuang Tzu means Master Chuang,his personal name was Chou, and he was a Taoist philosopher of the fourth century BC, contemporary with Plato and Aristotle.
The Butterfly Dream:
Once Zhuang Zhou dreamed he was a butterfly, a fluttering butterfly. What fun he had, doing as he pleased! He did not know he was Zhou. Suddenly he woke up and found himself to be Zhou. He did not know whether Zhou had dreamed he was a butterfly or a butterfly had dreamed he was Zhou...d22

Saturday, July 14, 2007

Call of the Tribes...

How may it be that the Schools of Athens/Greek(western)Philosophy and Chinese(Eastern)Philosophy, both developed around the same time period, even though they were never aware of one another? Was there "outside" manipulation or was there just something in the air?
Posted by at No comments:
Subscribe to: Posts (Atom)

What is String Theory?

The Official String Theory Web Site:-->

Your name in chinese and Zodiac sign:

Get a Chinese Name

Philosophy in film -jc

HERE ARE SOME FILMS WITH PHILOSOPHICAL ELEMENTS. IN NO PARTICULAR ORDER:
1. FEARLESS- self-actualization 2. MY BEST FRIEND'S WEDDING -narcissism 3. THE FISHER KING- redemption 4. CRASH - carnal attachments 5. GROUNDHOG DAY- existing in the here and now 6. SPIDERMAN 2 - selfless heroism for the mediocre 7. TOY STORY - anti-competiveness 8. THE SURE THING - respect in love 9. BARTON FINK - the thinker's detachment 10. PLEASANTVILLE- society's facade 11.. THE PHANTOM TOLLBOOTH -think bugs bunny meets Arisrotle12. PURPLE ROSE OF CAIRO- reality invades fantasy-fantasy invades reality... and of course 13. THE MATRIX-are we in control, fate etc...jc

Fyodor Dostoevsky:

Fyodor Dostoevsky:
Must Read: Dream of a Ridiculous Man-- a short story of about twenty pages...(Mira Ginsburg translation) d22

Tao Te Ching - #46

When a country is in harmony with the Tao, the factories make trucks and tractors.
When a country goes counter to the Tao, warheads are stockpiled outside the cities.
There is no greater illusion than fear, no greater wrong than preparing to defend yourself, no greater misfortune than having an enemy.
Whoever can see through all fear will always be safe.

the claws of a culture-vulture...

The great bird AVANTIS GARDIUS appears dead. Or at least it's showing no signs of life. The movement isn't moving. The bird has ceased to soar skyward and, in fact refused to fly at all. When it stopped, is uncertain. When was the exact moment, day, month or even decade it froze to a standstill is difficult to determine. But we know its heartbeat is growing impossible to hear. Sadly, it may never be heard again and the improbability of its revival can be directly linked to its birth. It was a bird destined to be nurtured and loved by few. Like an esoteric movement; a starved child with a limited life expectancy. The few who cared have died. Some still alive, have grown tired of deaf ears and impaired vision for their subject. Some, simply ran dry of new ideas to re-energize this bird. And there it is! NEW IDEAS! As this poor bird is endangered of becoming extinct so, perhaps are new ideas! Is this the missing link? How can something so special be left to die? The answer might lie in the very characterization of the Avantis Gardius bird: Not a predator but anti-social--solitary, but not meek--exotic, but unedible--breeds seldom--seldom seen, a useless commodity! Has it come to this? Uniqueness is measured only by its function in the marketplace? Is 'extraordinary' only usefull if it can be engineered to produce a multitude of such to boast EXTRA extra-ordinary with a little extra on the side with the opportunity to supersize extra, so it's EXTRA, EXTRA? WHERE ARE THE NEW IDEAS? How will we wake the bird? Still, there may be justice in the universe, for while we as people exude apathy and disregard for our fellow species, especially those who have been rendered useless to us, we are left to our own devices; our brains. And there is no greater prison on earth than the human brain. So here we are, powerful homo-sapiens, the most dominate animal on earth, a bunch of regular guys inside our brains. There's four walls, a sleeping cot, an alarm clock, a T.V., a computer of course and a window. One small 8 by 12 window. And that's the world we see behind the picture frame; the same picture over and over again. So we turn away. But not to face ourselves, we turn away to TURN ON; the T.V, the computer and anything with an 'ON' switch. We're active and we're busy, so much so that we barely have time to think. Like a catatonic patient with spectacular reflexes-a lot of activity but no progress and we haven't had an original thought or a new idea since we were six. We say LET THE BIRD SLEEP while we transform successfull past patterns of thought and creativity, with so much to draw from in the now 21st century, into instant facsimiles of credible, more communitive and profitable old ideas. Let the bird sleep. Today, in a computer age with every answer in a short sentence at our disposal, the reality is there is a greater chance of unearthing a fossil in a desert than ever stumbling upon a fresh muse, or an undiscovered species of bird; a bird, that if found would almost certainly be caged, with its uniqueness gawked at, instead of admired for its individualistic flight patterns. And, indeed THIS BIRD, The Avantis Gardius was never a member of any particular species to begin with. It was neither a pure bred nor designer breed. It was natural to the extent that it was born on earth, however it seemed to be heavenly in its origins and quite accidental to a mortal's eye. Still, accidents happen often, miracles seldom do. With all the perceived luck involved in its conception, there was an apparent design involved. In the case of this un-hatched egg, the luck was clearly the residue of design; of a devine sort. Still we let it sleep. In fact we hope it goes away, like every other freak of nature. So is that it? What about the young man who hears a noise in his head and then opens up a piano with a wrench to play the strings inside the box to emulate his thoughts when all around people implore him to play outside on the keyboard where ideas are traditionally played. Thinking outside the box indeed!But should we tell him don't do that - sorry, too late- it's already been done- and then tell him by who? Should we put another one in the encyclopedic bubble of academia, only to forever banish him from himself? SHOULD WE EMPTY THE NEST PERMANENTLY? No of course not. So here's the plan; WAKE UP! From now on let us use our fertile minds and imagine the world of tradition and a consumption driven populus have been decimated by a mind bomb, destroying all banks, concrete attatchments, and media infrastructure - some critics too... But you, my visionary friend have survived... The bird too. Feel lucky. you now have carte blanche, a clean slate - go forth and if you see a fossil, pick it up, study it and then hide it, nobody will ever know. The truth is, the spirit of discovery has always suffered at the hands of the few critics whose function to judge has seemingly helped to hold back the progress of culture. The critics became us who then became cognizant of hindsight while we morphed into greedy culture-vultures feeding off the leftovers of our own kills. So as we remember a bird that nobody gave a damn about in the first place, let us imagine a new one with new wings, willing to fly, to soar through the day and the night, never noticing those who watch, never noticing those who ignore. Seeing past yesterdays ruins, seeing only what grows underneath. Never looking back! Never talking about the past...Soaring...... soaring ............... past today...-jc