Saturday, December 29, 2012
Nachman
On the subject of medicine and the importance of avoiding physicians completely, the Rebbe said that when a person has someone sick in his house, if someone came and told him to give the patient a blow with a big wooden club he would certainly be very shocked. Yet when one puts the patient in the hands of the doctor it is literally like handing him over to a murderer. The doctor's remedies are more harmful than the blow of a murderer. Who would want to kill the patient with his own hands? Just because you have to do something to try and save the patient does that mean you should hand him over to a doctor? You might as well call someone over to beat the patient to death. Understand this.
Editor's note: The fact that the Rebbe himself traveled to Lemberg where he received medical treatment contains deeply hidden secrets. He did not go there for the medical treatment but for other purposes known only to him. It was the same with all his journeys: they all contained awesome mysteries, as when he went to Kaminetz, Novorich, and Sharograd.
"I used to have a beautiful body. It never made demands or pushed itself forward. Now I need to be careful when I eat, and so on. I used to drink henna. The people living where the henna grows are total unbelievers. They say, "There's no law and there's no Judge". I used to take other remedies from other areas where there are different kinds of heresy. When they all came inside me, they turned into whatever they turned into."
The drugs from each place all had to come into his stomach in order for the atheism of the place to be crushed. This was true of several drugs.
Editor's note: From this it is possible to gain a little understanding why the Rebbe submitted himself to medical treatment, although there were hidden reasons, as there were behind all his actions and behaviour. But his advice to other people was very emphatically to keep away from doctors and medical treatment.
On the second night of Rosh HaShanah, after the Rebbe had given his lesson, his condition became very critical. A few people wanted to summon the doctor, however they couldn't get him to come because it was the middle of the night. The Rebbe said: "It is good to give thanks to God that the doctor didn't come." He said anyone who cared about his life should make sure not to let any doctor near him. "Even if I myself later on give instructions to bring me a doctor, I still want you to see to it you don't let any doctor come in to see me."
This is actually what happened later on, but because of our many sins we did not keep to what the Rebbe said. The day before Sukkot the Rebbe was in very serious condition, and a number or people started saying they should bring the doctor. The Rebbe himself told them to do so. I myself was completely against this, even though the people there thought the Rebbe himself was willing for the doctor to come. But I knew the truth- that he was completely opposed to it. I knew very well that he he had no desire for a doctor at all. It was just that he was forced to agree because everyone around him was saying they should bring a doctor. The Rebbe once listed several things he had done because of the pressure people had put on him, even though he himself knew they would not help at all. The same happened now with the doctor. This was why I was totally opposed to calling him. But it was impossible to prevail, especially now that the Rebbe himself seemed to be agreeing with them and his condition was so serious. Accordingly, they summoned a doctor. If only they had not, because it did not help at all. If anything, it hastened his death.
Editor's note: The fact that the Rebbe himself traveled to Lemberg where he received medical treatment contains deeply hidden secrets. He did not go there for the medical treatment but for other purposes known only to him. It was the same with all his journeys: they all contained awesome mysteries, as when he went to Kaminetz, Novorich, and Sharograd.
"I used to have a beautiful body. It never made demands or pushed itself forward. Now I need to be careful when I eat, and so on. I used to drink henna. The people living where the henna grows are total unbelievers. They say, "There's no law and there's no Judge". I used to take other remedies from other areas where there are different kinds of heresy. When they all came inside me, they turned into whatever they turned into."
The drugs from each place all had to come into his stomach in order for the atheism of the place to be crushed. This was true of several drugs.
Editor's note: From this it is possible to gain a little understanding why the Rebbe submitted himself to medical treatment, although there were hidden reasons, as there were behind all his actions and behaviour. But his advice to other people was very emphatically to keep away from doctors and medical treatment.
On the second night of Rosh HaShanah, after the Rebbe had given his lesson, his condition became very critical. A few people wanted to summon the doctor, however they couldn't get him to come because it was the middle of the night. The Rebbe said: "It is good to give thanks to God that the doctor didn't come." He said anyone who cared about his life should make sure not to let any doctor near him. "Even if I myself later on give instructions to bring me a doctor, I still want you to see to it you don't let any doctor come in to see me."
This is actually what happened later on, but because of our many sins we did not keep to what the Rebbe said. The day before Sukkot the Rebbe was in very serious condition, and a number or people started saying they should bring the doctor. The Rebbe himself told them to do so. I myself was completely against this, even though the people there thought the Rebbe himself was willing for the doctor to come. But I knew the truth- that he was completely opposed to it. I knew very well that he he had no desire for a doctor at all. It was just that he was forced to agree because everyone around him was saying they should bring a doctor. The Rebbe once listed several things he had done because of the pressure people had put on him, even though he himself knew they would not help at all. The same happened now with the doctor. This was why I was totally opposed to calling him. But it was impossible to prevail, especially now that the Rebbe himself seemed to be agreeing with them and his condition was so serious. Accordingly, they summoned a doctor. If only they had not, because it did not help at all. If anything, it hastened his death.
Tuesday, December 18, 2012
Friday, December 14, 2012
Friday, November 30, 2012
A Canned Beer That Tastes Like Bottled Beer
The Coors family firmly believed that stewardship of their empire entitled them to public advocacy of the family's traditional conservative social agenda. Management at companies like IBM, Georgia-Pacific and Kraft scrupulously protected their firms' image and avoided public controversy. But Coors family philanthropy sponsored everything from the Right to Life movement to the Nicaraguan Contras.
...In 1975 when Miller Brewing introduced Miller Lite...sales of Coors Banquet Beer dropped by .5 percent per year from 1975 through 1980, while sales of Miller Lite increased by an average of 36 percent...Instead of taking bold action to reverse a decline, the Coors brothers set out on a series of public-relations blunders...Coors workers struck in a salary dispute in 1977...Striking lineworkers were fired and replaced by non-union employees...labor unions nationwide instituted a national boycott of Coors beer. Sales continued to plummet after Bill Coors's alleged racist remarks before a gathering of minority businessmen in March 1984. The Rocky Mountain News reported that the Coors Chairman of the Board not only claimed blacks in Zimbabwe lacked the intellectual capacity to govern, but that "one of the best things they [slave traders] did for you is to drag your ancestors over here in chains."...Not wanting to be left out, Joe Coors, as a card-carrying conservative and member of President Reagan's informal kitchen cabinet of advisors, decided to buy Oliver North... a 65,000 plane to be used by Contras in the Nicaraguan civil war...covertly supporting the Reagan Administration and the CIA's controversial Central American activities...Members of the Coors family provided financial backing to such conservative organizations as the Heritage Foundation, the John Birch Society and the Moral Majority...Coors was also a major environmental polluter.
A manager in the Human Resources Department dramatized Coors problem by telling me, "We used to be the top selling beer in Colorado, but we turn down about forty thousand people a year for jobs, and a lot of them fail the polygraph test . That's a lot of people running around hating Coors."
In combination with the introduction of Miller Lite, the public-relations furor drove down sales of Coors Banquet Beer by 11 to 13 percent per year from 1980 and 1983 which cost the company $360 million in lost sales revenue...Their product was no longer unique, and to the drinker with a conscience, drinking a Coors was like buying a share in a Contra plane, or union-busting...
And the trouble didn't stop there. Appearing to be bigoted, ultra-conservative, and anti-union, the Coors brothers and the company were also rumored to be supporting almost every right-wing cause known to mankind. Large constituencies of customers, including gays, blacks, Catholics, Jews, Teamsters, women, and environmentalists felt they had a reason to avoid drinking Coors beer....
(By 1986) Coors was running out of options. The war on the new-products front, including the battles over Colorado Chiller, Crystal Springs Cooler, and Masters III had failed miserably. The company was also running out of money, as constant price discounting of Coors Banquet and Coors Light were draining valuable cash reserves...The General noticed that Coors was the only the only major brewer without a malt liquor product. While Colt 45, King Cobra, and Schlitz Malt Liquor dominated this market, the General decided to explore the opportunity for Coors to market a menthol-flavored malt liquor...A new malt liquor product could bring black beer drinkers into the Coors fold. Or, as the General noted, "We [Coors] need the coons." He decided to proceed with Project Cool, commissioning focus groups to test consumer interest...Focus group participants in Los Angeles were enthusiastic about the menthol-flavored product. As one drinker in noted, he would drink the Cool Beer because it would "keep his shit off the streets." In Chicago the reaction was much the same.
Shortly after we returned from Chicago, Project Cool was tabled. According to the General, engineers from the brewery had warned that menthol could contaminate Coors beer lines.
...Coors was the only major brewer without an economy beer. In the fall of 1987, Pepe noted in a staff meeting that "Miller's got Meister Brau, A.B. has Busch, Stroh has Old Milwaukee. We've got a real gap to fill."...I blurted out, "Jeez, if Miller can have draft-beer taste in a bottle, then why couldn't we have bottled beer taste in a canned beer?" "Yeah," he responded excitedly. "Yeah! Beer drinkers are always telling us that they don't like the tinny or metal taste of canned beer. Why couldn't we give 'em the smooth, cool taste of bottled beer in a can?"..."How do we make the beer in our cans taste different?" Captain Kangaroo asked.
"Well, that's the part we're going to have to figure out. Maybe we could brew it differently, you know, with a new process or something. Or maybe... can we do anything different with the can?" I asked.
"What do you mean?"
"Well someone in the focus group suggested we line the beer can to make the beer taste like bottled beer."
"With what?" he asked. "Trash-can liners?"
"No, glass."
"Glass. Sure, each beer will weigh five pounds."
That's the last I heard of bottled beer taste in a canned beer, until that fateful spring day when the project team met with Foote, Cone, and Belding to discuss potential marketing strategies. As [they] unveiled the agency's concepts for Coors new economy beer, I was generally unimpressed: Tommy D's, a beer brewed in a fictional character's basement...Bighorn, a Canadian-style economy beer ...Nightlife, the beer for after dark...and then finally...a canned beer that tastes like bottled beer.
-excerpts from Silver Bullets: A Soldier's Story of How Coors Bombed in the Beer Wars by Robert J. Burgess
...In 1975 when Miller Brewing introduced Miller Lite...sales of Coors Banquet Beer dropped by .5 percent per year from 1975 through 1980, while sales of Miller Lite increased by an average of 36 percent...Instead of taking bold action to reverse a decline, the Coors brothers set out on a series of public-relations blunders...Coors workers struck in a salary dispute in 1977...Striking lineworkers were fired and replaced by non-union employees...labor unions nationwide instituted a national boycott of Coors beer. Sales continued to plummet after Bill Coors's alleged racist remarks before a gathering of minority businessmen in March 1984. The Rocky Mountain News reported that the Coors Chairman of the Board not only claimed blacks in Zimbabwe lacked the intellectual capacity to govern, but that "one of the best things they [slave traders] did for you is to drag your ancestors over here in chains."...Not wanting to be left out, Joe Coors, as a card-carrying conservative and member of President Reagan's informal kitchen cabinet of advisors, decided to buy Oliver North... a 65,000 plane to be used by Contras in the Nicaraguan civil war...covertly supporting the Reagan Administration and the CIA's controversial Central American activities...Members of the Coors family provided financial backing to such conservative organizations as the Heritage Foundation, the John Birch Society and the Moral Majority...Coors was also a major environmental polluter.
A manager in the Human Resources Department dramatized Coors problem by telling me, "We used to be the top selling beer in Colorado, but we turn down about forty thousand people a year for jobs, and a lot of them fail the polygraph test . That's a lot of people running around hating Coors."
In combination with the introduction of Miller Lite, the public-relations furor drove down sales of Coors Banquet Beer by 11 to 13 percent per year from 1980 and 1983 which cost the company $360 million in lost sales revenue...Their product was no longer unique, and to the drinker with a conscience, drinking a Coors was like buying a share in a Contra plane, or union-busting...
And the trouble didn't stop there. Appearing to be bigoted, ultra-conservative, and anti-union, the Coors brothers and the company were also rumored to be supporting almost every right-wing cause known to mankind. Large constituencies of customers, including gays, blacks, Catholics, Jews, Teamsters, women, and environmentalists felt they had a reason to avoid drinking Coors beer....
(By 1986) Coors was running out of options. The war on the new-products front, including the battles over Colorado Chiller, Crystal Springs Cooler, and Masters III had failed miserably. The company was also running out of money, as constant price discounting of Coors Banquet and Coors Light were draining valuable cash reserves...The General noticed that Coors was the only the only major brewer without a malt liquor product. While Colt 45, King Cobra, and Schlitz Malt Liquor dominated this market, the General decided to explore the opportunity for Coors to market a menthol-flavored malt liquor...A new malt liquor product could bring black beer drinkers into the Coors fold. Or, as the General noted, "We [Coors] need the coons." He decided to proceed with Project Cool, commissioning focus groups to test consumer interest...Focus group participants in Los Angeles were enthusiastic about the menthol-flavored product. As one drinker in noted, he would drink the Cool Beer because it would "keep his shit off the streets." In Chicago the reaction was much the same.
Shortly after we returned from Chicago, Project Cool was tabled. According to the General, engineers from the brewery had warned that menthol could contaminate Coors beer lines.
...Coors was the only major brewer without an economy beer. In the fall of 1987, Pepe noted in a staff meeting that "Miller's got Meister Brau, A.B. has Busch, Stroh has Old Milwaukee. We've got a real gap to fill."...I blurted out, "Jeez, if Miller can have draft-beer taste in a bottle, then why couldn't we have bottled beer taste in a canned beer?" "Yeah," he responded excitedly. "Yeah! Beer drinkers are always telling us that they don't like the tinny or metal taste of canned beer. Why couldn't we give 'em the smooth, cool taste of bottled beer in a can?"..."How do we make the beer in our cans taste different?" Captain Kangaroo asked.
"Well, that's the part we're going to have to figure out. Maybe we could brew it differently, you know, with a new process or something. Or maybe... can we do anything different with the can?" I asked.
"What do you mean?"
"Well someone in the focus group suggested we line the beer can to make the beer taste like bottled beer."
"With what?" he asked. "Trash-can liners?"
"No, glass."
"Glass. Sure, each beer will weigh five pounds."
That's the last I heard of bottled beer taste in a canned beer, until that fateful spring day when the project team met with Foote, Cone, and Belding to discuss potential marketing strategies. As [they] unveiled the agency's concepts for Coors new economy beer, I was generally unimpressed: Tommy D's, a beer brewed in a fictional character's basement...Bighorn, a Canadian-style economy beer ...Nightlife, the beer for after dark...and then finally...a canned beer that tastes like bottled beer.
-excerpts from Silver Bullets: A Soldier's Story of How Coors Bombed in the Beer Wars by Robert J. Burgess
October 28, 2000: My First Google Search
******************************************************************
10-29-00: "civil war" +"nude girls" = 871 results
11-27-12: "civil war" + "nude girls" = 5,490,000 results
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Thursday, November 29, 2012
Wednesday, November 28, 2012
Monday, November 26, 2012
The Forest Trees and the Fruit Trees
The forest trees once asked the fruit trees: "Why is the rustling of your leaves not heard in the distance?" The fruit trees replied: "We can dispense with the rustling to manifest our presence. Our fruits testify for us." The fruit trees then inquired of the forest trees: "Why do your leaves rustle almost continually?" "Because we are forced to call the attention of man to our existence."
-Talmudic Fables
-Talmudic Fables
Saturday, November 24, 2012
Gregory Corso: "Last Night I Drove a Car"
Last night I drove a car
not knowing how to drive
not owning a car
I drove and knocked down
people I loved
...went 120 through one town.
I stopped at Hedgeville
and slept in the back seat
...excited about my new life.
not knowing how to drive
not owning a car
I drove and knocked down
people I loved
...went 120 through one town.
I stopped at Hedgeville
and slept in the back seat
...excited about my new life.
Wednesday, November 21, 2012
C.P. Cavafy: "The City"
You said: "I'll go to another country, to another shore,
find another city better than this one.
Whatever I try to do is fated to turn out wrong
and my heart lies buried as though it were something dead.
How long can I let my mind moulder in this place?
Wherever I turn, wherever I happen to look,
I see the black ruins of my life, here,
where I've spent so many years, wasted them, destroyed
them totally."
You won't find a new country, won't find another shore.
This city will always pursue you. You will walk
the same streets, grow old in the same neighborhoods,
will turn gray in these same houses.
You will always end up in this city. Don't hope for things
elsewhere:
there is no ship for you, there is no road.
As you've wasted your life here, in this small corner,
you've destroyed it everywhere else in the world.
Wednesday, October 31, 2012
Mashal and Nimshal
Solutions to be found within the Hidden Realm of What Is Apparent are expressed in similarities. If that which is matters within the reality of the Apparent Realm of What Is Apparent, what matters here is that which is like...
Reframing is another way of asking "What is this like?" But here the emphasis is on separating a given text from the context in which it is presented...When a loss occurs, for example, it is very common in the Jewish tradition to use this reframing technique to find comfort and learn acceptance. When something unfortunate but of minor importance happens- if a cup or a plate breaks- the conditioned response in a Jewish household is "Mazel tov," which means "What good fortune!" The situation has been reframed to say: "It's a good thing something worthless broke; now you've been made aware that you're preoccupied, and you can be more careful so that no more serious accident will happen." If we look at it this way, losing money, scraping a tire against the curb, and countless other situations that many other people would take as signs of bad luck can be reframed as signs of good luck. Most certainly this was a lesson learned from the hardships that have marked the history of the Jewish people down through the ages. It is survivor knowledge, as evinced in this reframing, "It's better for a Jew to lose his beard than for a beard to lose its Jew."
Reframing is vital in problem solving because it exposes hidden elements of what is obvious. Let us consider the situation narrated in this traditional Jewish anecdote:
A young man who worked in his father's shop caught an employee stealing. He went to his father, told him the story, and asked: "What should we do with the fellow?"
"Give him a raise," his father replied in a blink.
"A raise?" his son asked in astonishment.
"If he was stealing, it means he's not earning enough," the father explained.
The son was expecting his father to suggest some form of punishment, not a reward. But his father's understanding of the situation- which may not be appropriate to every situation involving theft- reflected a very sensitive view of reality. By reframing the event, a good employee kept his job and saw his inadequate salary raised. The son had been seduced by the aesthetics of logic, which demanded some form of punishment. If we don't know anything about reframing, our choices are reduced to a single plane of possibility: from among all types of punishment, which should be applied?
Not binding yourself to one context constitutes a kind of perspicacity that derives from an acquired awareness of the ignorances and uncertainties inherent in our store of knowledge...
If you are to master the Hidden Realm of What Is Apparent your mind must remain malleable, not locked into the rigors of a literal text...You must listen to propositions from a critical distance so that the aesthetics of logic do not expropriate your power to perceive...
Reframing is a subversive way of approaching reality. It is generally an uprising against unanimity or consensus...It recognizes that "truths" can be impostors and that thought processes can be fraudulent and easily corrupted, that the act of thinking entails not only an intellectual dimension but emotional and affective dimensions as well.
-from Yiddishe Kop by Rabbi Nilton Bonder
Reframing is another way of asking "What is this like?" But here the emphasis is on separating a given text from the context in which it is presented...When a loss occurs, for example, it is very common in the Jewish tradition to use this reframing technique to find comfort and learn acceptance. When something unfortunate but of minor importance happens- if a cup or a plate breaks- the conditioned response in a Jewish household is "Mazel tov," which means "What good fortune!" The situation has been reframed to say: "It's a good thing something worthless broke; now you've been made aware that you're preoccupied, and you can be more careful so that no more serious accident will happen." If we look at it this way, losing money, scraping a tire against the curb, and countless other situations that many other people would take as signs of bad luck can be reframed as signs of good luck. Most certainly this was a lesson learned from the hardships that have marked the history of the Jewish people down through the ages. It is survivor knowledge, as evinced in this reframing, "It's better for a Jew to lose his beard than for a beard to lose its Jew."
Reframing is vital in problem solving because it exposes hidden elements of what is obvious. Let us consider the situation narrated in this traditional Jewish anecdote:
A young man who worked in his father's shop caught an employee stealing. He went to his father, told him the story, and asked: "What should we do with the fellow?"
"Give him a raise," his father replied in a blink.
"A raise?" his son asked in astonishment.
"If he was stealing, it means he's not earning enough," the father explained.
The son was expecting his father to suggest some form of punishment, not a reward. But his father's understanding of the situation- which may not be appropriate to every situation involving theft- reflected a very sensitive view of reality. By reframing the event, a good employee kept his job and saw his inadequate salary raised. The son had been seduced by the aesthetics of logic, which demanded some form of punishment. If we don't know anything about reframing, our choices are reduced to a single plane of possibility: from among all types of punishment, which should be applied?
Not binding yourself to one context constitutes a kind of perspicacity that derives from an acquired awareness of the ignorances and uncertainties inherent in our store of knowledge...
If you are to master the Hidden Realm of What Is Apparent your mind must remain malleable, not locked into the rigors of a literal text...You must listen to propositions from a critical distance so that the aesthetics of logic do not expropriate your power to perceive...
Reframing is a subversive way of approaching reality. It is generally an uprising against unanimity or consensus...It recognizes that "truths" can be impostors and that thought processes can be fraudulent and easily corrupted, that the act of thinking entails not only an intellectual dimension but emotional and affective dimensions as well.
-from Yiddishe Kop by Rabbi Nilton Bonder
Scientific Corrobaration from Dept. of Uphill Fighting
"The greater power of bad events over good ones is found in everyday events, major life events, close relationship outcomes, social network patterns, interpersonal interactions, and learning processees. Bad emotions, bad parents, and bad feedback have more impact than good ones, and bad information is processed more thoroughly than good. The self is more motivated to avoid bad self-definitions than to pursue good ones. Bad impressions and bad stereotypes are quicker to form and more resistant to disconfirmation than good ones. Various explanations such as diagnosticity and salience help explain some findings, but the greater power of bad events is still found when such variables are controlled. Hardly any exceptions (indicating greater power of good) can be found. Taken together, these findings suggest that bad is stronger than good, as a general principle across a broad range of psychological phenomena..."
-Baumeister, Bratslavsky, Finkenauer, and Vohs in Review of General Psychiatry, Vol.5 No.4 2001
-Baumeister, Bratslavsky, Finkenauer, and Vohs in Review of General Psychiatry, Vol.5 No.4 2001
Friday, October 19, 2012
Joy and the Tzaddik
Rabbi Nachman left Bratslav soon after a fire had destroyed part of the town.
He said, "It was right that I leave after this [fire]. It would not be right that while others are in sorrow, I am joyful. If [my house] had not been burned, I would have to join the others in their sorrow, because when a Jew has such a sorrow I must take part.
"But now that my house was also burned, I must accept this in love and joy, and I need to be tremendously joyful. So it isn't right that I should be with the others; for how can I be joyful while they are full of sorrow?"
Understand this well.
Thursday, October 18, 2012
Spontaneous Male Aggression Towards Unicyclists
All of the unicyclists noted that adult male onlookers responded with the same repetitious, snide remarks made aggressively as a "joke", of which most were based on the single wheel, e.g., "Do you know...", "Have you noticed...", "You have only...", "Have you lost a wheel?"
By contrast, women did not make aggressively humorous remarks; their responses were warm, appreciative, and supportive, with a concern for safety.
The male "joke" response with its repetitive content and irritating, offensive intent, was observed by male and female unicyclists in many parts of the world.
Unicyclists observed that young children showed interest and curiosity, which they communicated to their parents, and noted a subsequent transition of this response toward physical and verbal aggression in older boys- but not girls- with stone throwing, spitting, obstruction, and sudden shouts of "Fall off!".....The repetitive nature of the male "joke" response , in particular the frequent reference to the number of wheels, was repeatedly confirmed.
The universality of the response across different individuals, environments, and dates of observation suggests an endogenous mechanism, and the association with masculine development relates this to androgen....It is concluded that humor develops from aggression in males and is evolutionarily related to sexual selection.?
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3284262/
By contrast, women did not make aggressively humorous remarks; their responses were warm, appreciative, and supportive, with a concern for safety.
The male "joke" response with its repetitive content and irritating, offensive intent, was observed by male and female unicyclists in many parts of the world.
Unicyclists observed that young children showed interest and curiosity, which they communicated to their parents, and noted a subsequent transition of this response toward physical and verbal aggression in older boys- but not girls- with stone throwing, spitting, obstruction, and sudden shouts of "Fall off!".....The repetitive nature of the male "joke" response , in particular the frequent reference to the number of wheels, was repeatedly confirmed.
The universality of the response across different individuals, environments, and dates of observation suggests an endogenous mechanism, and the association with masculine development relates this to androgen....It is concluded that humor develops from aggression in males and is evolutionarily related to sexual selection.?
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3284262/
Sunday, October 14, 2012
Catharine G. Evans
If dying after a billion years doesn't sound sad to you, it's because you lack
a thousand-year-old brain that can make trillion-year plans.
Fun fact: by listening to music you have past associations with, you're overwriting your past selves and killing them forever.
One wish can achieve as much as you want. What the genie is really offering
is three rounds of feedback.
It's easier to seem obstinate in writing, because your words are still there
even after the reader expresses clear and repeated disapproval.
If you get out of bed early enough you can witness the Big Bang.
When the wise man points through the moon, the fool looks at the moon.
"They laughed at me! They called me mad! But we'll see who's calling people now!" -A.G. Bell
"They called me dad! But we'll see who's dad now!" -mad grandfather
When I hear the words "military robotics", my gun reaches for me.
These boots are made for stamping on a human face, and that's just
what they'll do- forever.
I believe it's called evidence because it's what we were put on earth to evade.
Every human is a unique mixture of Apeshit, Batshit, and Chickenshit.
Live dogmatic, die wrong, leave a discredited corpse.
I'd like to teach the world whether to sing.
-https://twitter.com/aristosophy
a thousand-year-old brain that can make trillion-year plans.
Fun fact: by listening to music you have past associations with, you're overwriting your past selves and killing them forever.
One wish can achieve as much as you want. What the genie is really offering
is three rounds of feedback.
It's easier to seem obstinate in writing, because your words are still there
even after the reader expresses clear and repeated disapproval.
If you get out of bed early enough you can witness the Big Bang.
When the wise man points through the moon, the fool looks at the moon.
"They laughed at me! They called me mad! But we'll see who's calling people now!" -A.G. Bell
"They called me dad! But we'll see who's dad now!" -mad grandfather
When I hear the words "military robotics", my gun reaches for me.
These boots are made for stamping on a human face, and that's just
what they'll do- forever.
I believe it's called evidence because it's what we were put on earth to evade.
Every human is a unique mixture of Apeshit, Batshit, and Chickenshit.
Live dogmatic, die wrong, leave a discredited corpse.
I'd like to teach the world whether to sing.
-https://twitter.com/aristosophy
Thursday, October 11, 2012
Guise Without a Face
"When the modern corporation acquires power over markets, power in the community, power over the state and power over belief, it is a political instrument, different in degree but not in kind from the state itself. To hold otherwise - to deny the political character of the modern corporation - is not to merely to avoid the reality. It is to disguise the reality. The victims of that disguise are those we instruct in error. The beneficiaries are the institutions whose power we so disguise. Let there be no question: economics, so long as it is thus taught, becomes, however unconsciously, a part of the arrangement by which the citizen or student is kept from seeing how he or she is, or will be, governed."
"Let's begin with capitalism, a word that has gone largely out of fashion. The approved reference now is to the market system. This shift minimizes - indeed, deletes - the role of wealth in the economic and social system...Instead of the owners of capital or their attendants in control, we have the admirably impersonal role of market forces. It would be hard to think of a change in terminology more in the interest of those to whom money accords power. They have now a functional anonymity."
"This is what economics now does. It tells the young and susceptible (and also the old and vulnerable) that economic life has no content of power and politics because the firm is safely subordinate to the market and the state and for this reason it is safely at the command of the consumer and citizen. Such economics is not neutral. It is the influential and invaluable ally of those whose power depends on an acquiescent public."
-John Kenneth Galbraith
"Let's begin with capitalism, a word that has gone largely out of fashion. The approved reference now is to the market system. This shift minimizes - indeed, deletes - the role of wealth in the economic and social system...Instead of the owners of capital or their attendants in control, we have the admirably impersonal role of market forces. It would be hard to think of a change in terminology more in the interest of those to whom money accords power. They have now a functional anonymity."
"This is what economics now does. It tells the young and susceptible (and also the old and vulnerable) that economic life has no content of power and politics because the firm is safely subordinate to the market and the state and for this reason it is safely at the command of the consumer and citizen. Such economics is not neutral. It is the influential and invaluable ally of those whose power depends on an acquiescent public."
-John Kenneth Galbraith
Friday, October 5, 2012
Wednesday, October 3, 2012
Thomas Bernhard's Acceptance Speech for the 1967 Austrian State Prize for Literature
Honored Minister, Honored Guests,
There is nothing to praise, nothing to damn, nothing to accuse, but much that is absurd, indeed it is all absurd, when one thinks about death.
We go through life impressed, unimpressed, we cross the scene, everything is interchangeable, we have been schooled more or less effectively in a state where everything is mere props: but it is all an error! We understand: a clueless people, a beautiful country- there are dead fathers or fathers conscientiously without conscience, straightforwardly despicable in the raw basics of their needs...it all makes for a past history that is philosophically significant and unendurable. Our era is feebleminded, the demonic in us a perpetual national prison in which the elements of stupidity and thoughtlessness have become a daily need. The state is a construct eternally on the verge of foundering, the people one that is endlessly condemned to infamy and feeblemindedness, life a state of hopelessness in every philosophy and which will end in universal madness.
We're Austrians, we're apathetic, our lives evince the basest disinterest in life, in the workings of nature we represent the future as megalomania.
We have nothing to report except that we are pitiful, brought down by all the imaginative powers of an amalgam of philosophical, economic and machine-driven monotony.
Means to an end when that end is destruction, creatures of agony, everything is explained to us and we understand nothing. We populate a trauma, we are frightened, we have the right to be frightened, we can already see in the dim background the dim shapes of the giants of fear.
What we think is secondhand, what we experience is chaotic, what we are is unclear.
We don't have to be ashamed, but we are nothing, and we earn nothing but chaos.
In my name and in the name of those here who have also been selected by this jury, I thank all of you.
There is nothing to praise, nothing to damn, nothing to accuse, but much that is absurd, indeed it is all absurd, when one thinks about death.
We go through life impressed, unimpressed, we cross the scene, everything is interchangeable, we have been schooled more or less effectively in a state where everything is mere props: but it is all an error! We understand: a clueless people, a beautiful country- there are dead fathers or fathers conscientiously without conscience, straightforwardly despicable in the raw basics of their needs...it all makes for a past history that is philosophically significant and unendurable. Our era is feebleminded, the demonic in us a perpetual national prison in which the elements of stupidity and thoughtlessness have become a daily need. The state is a construct eternally on the verge of foundering, the people one that is endlessly condemned to infamy and feeblemindedness, life a state of hopelessness in every philosophy and which will end in universal madness.
We're Austrians, we're apathetic, our lives evince the basest disinterest in life, in the workings of nature we represent the future as megalomania.
We have nothing to report except that we are pitiful, brought down by all the imaginative powers of an amalgam of philosophical, economic and machine-driven monotony.
Means to an end when that end is destruction, creatures of agony, everything is explained to us and we understand nothing. We populate a trauma, we are frightened, we have the right to be frightened, we can already see in the dim background the dim shapes of the giants of fear.
What we think is secondhand, what we experience is chaotic, what we are is unclear.
We don't have to be ashamed, but we are nothing, and we earn nothing but chaos.
In my name and in the name of those here who have also been selected by this jury, I thank all of you.
Saturday, September 29, 2012
A Pious Individual
Rambam quotes a pious individual who was questioned about the happiest day of his life:
"I was traveling on a ship. Because of my poverty, I was assigned the worst quarters imaginable- in the lowest hold, together with the cargo. A group of rich, arrogant, and uncouth merchants were also on board. Once, as I lay in the hold, one of the merchants actually urinated on me. I must have appeared so despicable in his eyes that he felt I was unworthy of elementary respect as a human being, but I was not offended in the least, nor did I react in any way. When I realized how indifferent I was to my own prestige, I was overcome with joy, because I had achieved a level of genuine humility and self-effacement and was able to ignore the disparagement of that person."
Friday, September 28, 2012
Yourself-Control
In this way, the angle of possible political and social intervention changes. It is not socio-structural factors which decide whether unemployment, alcoholism, criminality, child abuse, etc. can be solved, but instead individual-subjective categories. Self-esteem thus has much more to do with self-assessment than with self-respect, as the self continuously has to be measured, judged, and disciplined in order to gear personal "empowerment" to collective yardsticks...
What were previously extra-economic domains are now rendered economic and are colonized by criteria of economic efficiency; this enables a close link to be forged between economic prosperity and personal well-being. As regards labor relations, for example, this means that work and leisure time are no longer inimical opposites, but tend to supplement each other...
Neo-liberalism is a political rationality that tries to render the social domain economic and to link a reduction in state services and security services to the increasing call for "personal responsibility" and "self-care". In this way, we can decipher the neo-liberal harmony in which not only the individual body, but also collective bodies and institutions (government, universities, corporations) have to be "lean", "fit", "flexible", and "autonomous": it is a technique of power.
-Thomas Lemke
Sunday, September 23, 2012
Russell Edson: "The Taxi"
One night in the dark I phone for a taxi. Immediately a taxi crashes through the wall; never mind that my room is on the third floor, or that the yellow driver is really a cluster of canaries arranged in the shape of a driver, who flutters apart, streaming from the windows of the taxi in yellow fountains...
Realizing that I am in the midst of something splendid I reach for the phone and cancel the taxi: All the canaries flow back into the taxi and assemble themselves into a cluster shaped like a man. The taxi backs through the wall, and the wall repairs...
But I cannot stop what is happening, I am already reaching for the phone to call a taxi, which is already beginning to crash through the wall with its yellow driver already beginning to flutter apart...
Realizing that I am in the midst of something splendid I reach for the phone and cancel the taxi: All the canaries flow back into the taxi and assemble themselves into a cluster shaped like a man. The taxi backs through the wall, and the wall repairs...
But I cannot stop what is happening, I am already reaching for the phone to call a taxi, which is already beginning to crash through the wall with its yellow driver already beginning to flutter apart...
Saturday, September 22, 2012
Go About Your Business Like the Lowly Maggot
A powerful king once gave one of his servants a piece of paper and said to him: "If you ever see me enraged give this to me." Written on it was the following: "You are not God, merely a flesh-and-blood body who will soon return to earth and be consumed by worms."
HaChassid Yaavetz interprets this description of man's end as a reason why man should be exceedingly humble spirited and suffer insult gracefully. Just as one does not feel insulted by a dog who barks at him, he should never feel too hurt by the disparaging remarks of his fellow man, a temporary creature who eventually will be food for the maggots.
* * *
A person should measure his own standing against the performance of the lowly maggot. Worms play an important role in the ecology, softening the soil so that roots can spread out, allowing the rain water to reach them, and turning fallen leaves into rich earth which fertilizes the growing plants. Nonetheless, the worm remains silent, never bragging of its importance. Man should measure himself against the worm in trying to assess whether he too goes about his business without fanfare and arrogance.
- Pirkei Avot
HaChassid Yaavetz interprets this description of man's end as a reason why man should be exceedingly humble spirited and suffer insult gracefully. Just as one does not feel insulted by a dog who barks at him, he should never feel too hurt by the disparaging remarks of his fellow man, a temporary creature who eventually will be food for the maggots.
* * *
A person should measure his own standing against the performance of the lowly maggot. Worms play an important role in the ecology, softening the soil so that roots can spread out, allowing the rain water to reach them, and turning fallen leaves into rich earth which fertilizes the growing plants. Nonetheless, the worm remains silent, never bragging of its importance. Man should measure himself against the worm in trying to assess whether he too goes about his business without fanfare and arrogance.
- Pirkei Avot
Wednesday, September 12, 2012
Thursday, September 6, 2012
Cohen Owes Me Ninety-Seven Dollars
(Irving Berlin)
Old Man Rosenthal lay sick in bed.
Soon the doctor came around and said
"There's no use crying,
the man is dying.
He can't live very long"
"Send my son here to my side," they heard the old man say.
"I've got something to tell him before I pass away."
Soon his son was sitting by his bed
What's the matter , Papa dear?" he said.
The old man said, "My son,
before my days are done
I want you to know"
"Cohen owes my ninety-seven dollars
And it's up to you to see that Cohen pays.
I sold a lot of goods to Rosenstein and Sons
On an I.O.U. for ninety days.
Levi brothers don't get any credit,
They owe me for one hundred yards of lace.
If you promise me, my son, you'll collect from everyone,
I can die with a smile upon my face."
Old man Rosenthal is better now.
He just simply wouldn't die somehow.
He is healthy
and very wealthy
since he got out of bed.
Such a change you never saw, he's got such rosy cheeks.
He picked up in just one week what should take weeks and weeks.
Ev'ryone who knew he was sick
Couldn't tell how he got well so quick.
They went and asked him to explain how he pulled through.
And Rosenthal said:
"Cohen owed me ninety-seven dollars
And my son went out and made poor Cohen pay.
A bill was owed to me by Rosenstein and Sons
And they settled on that very day.
What could my son do with all that money
If I should leave it all and say goodbye?
It's all right to pass away,
but when people start to pay
That's no time for a businessman to die."
Thursday, August 30, 2012
TR
"Too much cannot be said against men of wealth who sacrifice everything to getting wealth. There is not in the world a more ignoble character than the mere money-getting American, insensible to every duty, regardless of principle, bent only on amassing a fortune, and putting his fortune only to the basest uses- whether these uses be to speculate in stocks and wreck railroads himself, or to allow his son to lead a life of foolish and expensive idleness and gross debauchery, or to purchase some scoundrel of high social position, foreign or native, for his daughter. Such a man is only more dangerous if he occasionally does some deed like founding a college or endowing a church, which makes those good people who are also foolish forget his real iniquity. These men are equally careless of working men, who they oppress, and of the State, whose existence they imperil. There are not very many of them, but there is a very great number of men who approach more or less closely to the type and, just in so far as they do so approach, they are curses to the country."
-Theodore Roosevelt
-Theodore Roosevelt
Tuesday, August 28, 2012
Friday, August 24, 2012
Thursday, August 23, 2012
Mark Strand: "Man and Camel"
On the eve of my fortieth birthday
I sat on the porch having a smoke
when out of the blue a man and a camel
happened by. Neither uttered a sound
at first, but as they drifted up the street
and out of town the two of them began to sing.
Yet what they sang is still a mystery to me-
the words were indistinct and the tune
too ornamental to recall. Into the desert
they went and as they went their voices
rose as one above the sifting sound
of windblown sand. The wonder of their singing,
its elusive blend of man and camel, seemed
an ideal image for all uncommon couples.
Was this the night that I had waited for
so long? I wanted to believe it was,
but just as they were vanishing, the man
and camel ceased to sing, and galloped
back to town. They stood before my porch,
staring up at me with beady eyes, and said:
"You ruined it. You ruined it forever."
I sat on the porch having a smoke
when out of the blue a man and a camel
happened by. Neither uttered a sound
at first, but as they drifted up the street
and out of town the two of them began to sing.
Yet what they sang is still a mystery to me-
the words were indistinct and the tune
too ornamental to recall. Into the desert
they went and as they went their voices
rose as one above the sifting sound
of windblown sand. The wonder of their singing,
its elusive blend of man and camel, seemed
an ideal image for all uncommon couples.
Was this the night that I had waited for
so long? I wanted to believe it was,
but just as they were vanishing, the man
and camel ceased to sing, and galloped
back to town. They stood before my porch,
staring up at me with beady eyes, and said:
"You ruined it. You ruined it forever."
Friday, August 10, 2012
"Wal-Mart: the Panopticon of Time"
We believe that Wal-mart is an iteration of new tendencies in global capitalist power, a power whose primary driving evolutionary motor is its need to overcome, incorporate, subordinate, co-opt or otherwise harness evolving forms of resistance that always-already escape its grasp. Any analysis of resistance, however must be informed by a rigorous analysis of power. As we will shortly make clear, we are deeply skeptical of forms of resistance to Wal-Mart currently on offer, at least in North America, precisely because they do not fully attend to the evolution of capitalist power the firm represents. By global standards they are also, even at their most energetic, phenomenally tepid in both their demands and their tactics. As a result, our analysis has a definite dystopian flavor. But this appoach is as performative as it is analytic: we are seeking to paint a picture of the world Wal-Mart wants to build so as to call out those social forces which might stop it from coming to pass.
-Max Haiven
-Max Haiven
Wednesday, August 8, 2012
Tony Hoagland: "Jet"
Sometimes I wish I were still out
on the back porch, drinking jet fuel
with the boys, getting louder and louder
as the empty cans drop out of our paws
like booster rockets falling back to Earth
and we soar up into the summer stars.
Summer. The big sky river rushes overhead,
bearing asteroids and mist, blind fish
and old space suits with skeletons inside.
On Earth, men celebrate their hairiness,
and it is good, a way of letting life
out of the box, uncapping the bottle
to let the effervescence gush
through the narrow, usually constricted neck.
And now the crickets plug in their appliances
in unison, and then the fireflies flash
dots and dashes in the grass, like punctuation
for the labyrinthine, untrue tales of sex
someone is telling in the dark, though
no one really hears. We gaze into the night
as if remembering the bright unbroken planet
we once came from,
to which we will never
be permitted to return.
We are amazed at how hurt we are.
We would give anything for what we have.
on the back porch, drinking jet fuel
with the boys, getting louder and louder
as the empty cans drop out of our paws
like booster rockets falling back to Earth
and we soar up into the summer stars.
Summer. The big sky river rushes overhead,
bearing asteroids and mist, blind fish
and old space suits with skeletons inside.
On Earth, men celebrate their hairiness,
and it is good, a way of letting life
out of the box, uncapping the bottle
to let the effervescence gush
through the narrow, usually constricted neck.
And now the crickets plug in their appliances
in unison, and then the fireflies flash
dots and dashes in the grass, like punctuation
for the labyrinthine, untrue tales of sex
someone is telling in the dark, though
no one really hears. We gaze into the night
as if remembering the bright unbroken planet
we once came from,
to which we will never
be permitted to return.
We are amazed at how hurt we are.
We would give anything for what we have.
Monday, August 6, 2012
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