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laodan

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laodan is a guy from Milford, Pennsylvania, USA

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THE WAY THINGS ARE: The meaning of life is to be found in thinking about what is reality and the beauty of reality is to be found in our DNA's memorization of all forms that have been successfully retained along the four billion years of evolution of the principle of life on Gaia our earth. In the end what I mean to say is that beauty is something objective and what we call ugliness is then simply our unconscientious feel of something evolution did not retain.
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  • Le « pire » spectacle du chorégraphe Jan Fabre - LeMonde.fr

    Rated Apr 02 2009 • 1 review • society, worldviews • lemonde.fr

    L'Orgie de la tolerance
    a one-sided review by Rosita Boisseau in Le Monde

    Il n'y a que le metteur en scene et plasticien flamand qui puisse chausser des sabots aussi gros et oser une telle surchauffe au demarrage. Le titre du spectacle, L'Orgie de la tolerance, lui ressemble et met le curseur au niveau ad hoc : en dessous de la ceinture. C'est a prendre ou a laisser.

    Au royaume du politiquement correct et des faux-culs, Fabre propose une alternative devastatrice. Programmee au Festival d'Avignon, L'Orgie de la tolerance signe le crepuscule de l'humanite dans un rire d'ogre, une demesure rageuse et vengeresse.

    L'Orgie de la tolerance



    The orgy of tolerance is a piece I wish I could see. I understand from where comes the vitriolic critique of Rosita Boisseau. It has to do with the contrast between a certain snobbish Parisian lightness and a down to earth Flemish passion for life and believe me I know what I'm speaking about. I know both attitudes intimately for having lived within both areas during my earlier years.

    But this choc between Parisian lightness and Flemish passion for life is not what I'm interested in here. It's "the orgy of tolerance" that interests me. It is something that resonates particularly in Dutch Europe. it seems to have started in Holland as a reaction toward what was perceived as an invasion by Muslim fundamentalism. Theo Van Gogh's assassination by a Muslim fanatic (Vincent brother's great grand-son who was a movie maker), a few years earlier, had repulsed the Hollandish who were the most tolerant white people since as early as the reformation. What caught my eye was that Flanders seems now to follow Holland.




    118 views
    Le « pire » spectacle du chorégraphe Jan Fabre - LeMonde.fr

  • Culture Change - Bill McKibben and the Technofixers...

    Rated Apr 02 2009 • 1 review • change, worldviews • culturechange.org

    The Technofixers' Tragic Myopia
    in Culure Change by Jan Lundberg

    Like all the global-warming commentators who between them get almost all the press that's not pro-fossil fuels, Bill McKibben is trapped in the faulty logic of the technofix. To understand the pseudo-green vision, read McKibben's recent essay "The Fierce Urgency of Now" that appeared in the Toronto Star and the Common Dreams website.

    The Technofixers' Tragic Myopia
    The fierce urgency of now

    As always the vanguard is being recuperated when the elites discover that there is no way out within the path of their traditional ways. When what was the norm does not work any longer the elites take over the reasoning of the vanguard while dressing it with its own sauce and that's how the vanguard's message is being turned on its head.

    This particular moment in history is no different.

    Green is now the buzzword. Anywhere one looks the marketeers have taken over the buzz... but recuperation sloganeering denatures. Green now means the continuation of the old ways through the use of technologies that were initially propagated by the ecological movance. What has changed is the economics. The ecological movance saw such green technologies applied locally in a communitarian fashion but the corporate take-over of the green buzz-word displaced the application of such green technologies from communitarian use value to corporate exchange value generating profit.

    This corporate take-over is also breaking the ecological movance in two.
    On one side are those who feel vindicated and satisfied with the corporate take-over.
    On the other side are those who SEE and understand that ecology is a systemic approach that integrates the various sub-systems of a societal approach based on communitarian use value. In other words those who reject the corporate take-over have a vision and idea of a future society that is no longer powered by the logic of capital.

    The logic of capital is a totalitarian concept applied on a global scale by the corporate elite while communitarian use value is a people's concept practiced on a local regional base.

    Communitarian use value does not reject long distance exchanges. Those are conceived as a mutually beneficial exchange between regions being totally detached from the totalitarian control of the logic of capital.

    Mutually beneficial exchange is thus the anti-thesis to the logic of capital.
    This for sure implies that corporate structures are being countered by regional popular structures! But this is another subject.

    On the same subject see:
    Facing Decline, Facing Ourselves by John Michael Greer in The Archdruid Report
    Sacred Demise: Walking the Spiritual Path of Industrial Civilization's Collapse new book by Carolyn Baker




    41 views
    Culture Change - Bill McKibben and the Technofixers Tragic Myopia

  • ScienceNOW -- Sign In

    Rated Mar 16 2009 • 1 review • science, reality, worldviews • sciencemag.org

    Science Cannot Fully Describe Reality
    in ScienceNOW Daily News by David Lindley


    What is reality? French physicist Bernard d'Espagnat, 87, has spent a lifetime grappling with this question. Over the years, he has developed the idea that the reality revealed by science offers only a "veiled" view of an underlying reality that science cannot access, and that the scientific view must take its place alongside the reality revealed by art, spirituality, and other forms of human inquiry. In recognition of these efforts, d'Espagnat has won this year's Templeton Prize, a u00a31 million ($1.4 million) award sponsored by the Templeton Foundation, which supports research at the intersection of science, philosophy, and religion.

    Science Cannot Fully Describe Reality

    To have a clear understanding of reality supposes we have a clear picture of the whole in which we are such tiny particles.

    But the whole escapes us.

    We are looking at it from the inside. From the point of view of that tiny particle that we are inside of it. As far as scientific instrumentation allows us to see it fails to give us a description of the whole. It is as if the borders of the whole were always set further and out of reach. Scientists keep alive the hope that one day they will be able to attain the limits of the whole. Entering such a kind of debate has no merit, for, the optimistic scientific argument is based on faith. Faith that one day...

    There is another way to look at this conundrum. It is based on the acceptance of our limitations and the recognition that a particle has no way to leave its environment. Once this idea is accepted we understand that we 'll never get to see the whole or observe it from the outside. Being unable to observe the whole from a distance humanity is bound to be stuck in belief for ever. Whatever the belief, be it scientific or spiritual, it will never get us to see or understand the whole of our reality, but it gives us a vision that when shared with others gives us peace of mind ....




    508 views
    ScienceNOW -- Sign In

  • Publication Reprints: Jordan B. Peterson

    Rated Mar 11 2009 • 1 review • psychology, worldviews, society • utoronto.ca

    Maps of Meaning: The Architecture of Belief.
    by Jordan B. Peterson, Ph.D, PDF revision with figures of his book published in 1999

    There's a link here to the complete text of Maps of Meaning, which brings a new understanding of the role of myth in human psychology. Peterson discusses the importance of the affective dimension of experience to how worlds are created and maintained by mythology.

    Maps of Meaning
    Maps of Meaning: The Architecture of Belief. 402 pages FREE pdf of Peterson's book.



    Collossal work. Very similar to what I write in Artsense.

    In short, the whole in which we are such tiny particles is unattainable. This leaves humanity in a bind of uncertainty that has to be filled by what we can call "belief". Such belief is then the substrate upon which societal cohesion is being build upon.




    34 views
    Publication Reprints: Jordan B. Peterson

  • How art killed our culture | Art and design |...

    Rated Mar 06 2009 • 1 review • arts, art, reality, market, worldviews • guardian.co.uk

    How art killed our culture
    in The Guardian by Jonathan Jones

    All the shallowness of modern mass culture began in avant-garde art 40 years ago.

    What happened? How did art become the mirror of fraud?

    We're Warhol's ugly brood. Art has even fed the unsustainable appetites that are destroying the planet by constantly telling everyone cities are better than the countryside, culture more real than nature. It has become the enemy of truth, the murderer of decency.

    The modern world has screwed itself and art led the way.

    How art killed our culture
    Art as we know it is finished



    It's not art that killed late-modern culture, it's the logic of capital that used art as one of its vehicles at profit generation.

    It's a fact that while being used as a profit generation vehicle art died. It did not kill culture, for, it was dead before consumerism established its hegemony.

    Now we also have to be careful in our affirmation that art is dead. Art is only dead on the market because the market can't swallow art. It can only swallow something neutral or to say this otherwise something that is not containing profound truths about our reality. In other words the market consecrated acceptable and sterilized "interior decoration fashions"... But outside of the market, in real life, some artists were producing, perhaps some of the best artworks ever produced in history. It's a shame that such works are confined in the interiors of their creators.
    Perhaps Jonathan Jones could give a hand to the public at large by finding the pearls among contemporary artists? But is he able to distinguish between the wheat and the shaft?




    814 views
    How art killed our culture | Art and design | guardian.co.uk

  • Fox News "war games" the coming civil war - Glenn...

    Rated Feb 23 2009 • 12 reviews • economics, politics, worldviews, society • salon.com

    Fox News "war games" the coming civil war
    in Salon by Glenn Greenwald

    The week-long CNBC Revolt of the Traders led by McCain voter Rick Santelli and the fledgling little Tea Party movement promoted by the Michelle Malkins of the world are obvious outgrowths of this 1990s mentality, now fortified by the most powerful fuel: deep economic fear. But as feisty and fire-breathing as those outbursts are, nothing can match -- for pure, illustrative derangement -- the discussion below from Glenn Beck's new Fox show this week, in which he and an array of ex-military and CIA guests ponder (and plot and plan) "war games" for the coming Civil War against Obama-led tyranny. It really has to be seen to be believed.

    Fox News "war games" the coming civil war

    This is a follow-up of my last posts.
    What's being described here is frightening but we all better be conscious of what is going on if we want to avoid being caught in the inferno...
    Check the war-room videos and make up your minds.
    We are de facto entering a historical societal aberration. After any such previous aberrations passed we wondered aloud "how could such a societal barbarity have taken place?". This time around will be no different.
    This is a time to keep our eyes open and our minds quiet. The path through barbarity is always narrow. Each step counts and what matters is to keep our steps in the middle that means out of the polarities that divide our late-modern societies. Avoiding to become a barbarian ourselves will cost that much.

    The Abyss Stares Back




    1,021 views
    Fox News

  • Readers build vivid mental simulations of narrative...

    Rated Jan 27 2009 • 3 reviews • science, art, worldviews, change • physorg.com

    Readers build vivid mental simulations of narrative situations
    via physorg, by Gerry Everding in Medicine & Health / Psychology

    A new brain-imaging study is shedding light on what it means to "get lost" in a good book suggesting that readers create vivid mental simulations of the sounds, sights, tastes and movements described in a textual narrative while simultaneously activating brain regions used to process similar experiences in real life.

    Readers build vivid mental simulations of narrative situations



    "... the conclusion that when we read a story and really understand it, we create a mental simulation of the events described by the story" that conclusion relates to the understanding of reality that is already present in our brain as a result of our brain having processed during our whole life the information supplied by our sensors: knowledge through the eyes, feelings and mood through the ears, smells through the nose, touch through our fingers tips, etc...

    This return of signs from the brain to our sensors is, it seems to me, causing us to understand reality at a superior level than the "first degree" our sensors habitually communicate to our minds. This basic fact is what unleashed the flurry of trials and mostly errors that the "avant-garde" in visual arts struggled with from the turn of the 20th century till today.

    My personal thesis (see my books and articles in Crucial Talk) is that this return of information from our brain to our sensors is unleashing new degrees of understanding about reality that leads us straight to the emergence of a new paradigm of reality that will be the substrate upon which a new worldview will emerge that shall be shared by all in the future area of post-modernity. And I believe that visual arts will play a central role in diffusing such a worldview for all to share.




    20 views
    Readers build vivid mental simulations of narrative situations, brain scans suggest

  • The State as Über-Entrepreneur: Berlin Sees No Limits to...

    Rated Jan 22 2009 • 1 review • economics, society, worldviews • spiegel.de

    THE STATE AS UBER-ENTREPRENEUR
    in Der Spiegel by SPIEGEL Staff

    As part of her efforts to combat the economic crisis, German Chancellor Angela Merkel is increasing the state's influence in the market, buying holdings in banks and bailing out individual industries and companies. Is Germany turning into a planned economy?

    Berlin Sees No Limits to Economic Intervention

    Very interesting.
    - First refuse the Anglo-Saxon financial model and say so forcefully ("crass Keynesianism")
    -Secondly return to the roots of the Continental model of development: state + private sector where the state voluntarily leads society...

    This European Continental model of development, it seems to me, is strangely similar to the Chinese model of development. Could it be that they are philosophically identical? From. Yes they are.
    They both state:
    - the centrality of the role of the state in defining, coordinating and investing in the economy, culture and social programs.
    - the freedom of the economic and cultural actors within the realm of the societal understanding defined through the state's decision making process. (democratically or other)

    Contrast that with the Anglo-Saxon model where:
    - the market is considered to be the level playing field for economic and cultural actors
    - the state is viewed as the guardian of the "leveled" character of the field and its intervention is thus limited to the authority of a guardian: army, police, courts...

    The conclusion of the present economic depression will sanctify one model of societal development over another and, I believe, it is going to nullify the validity of the Anglo-Saxon model.




    67 views
    The State as Über-Entrepreneur: Berlin Sees No Limits to Economic Intervention - SPIEGEL ONLINE - News - International

  • Controversy Over New Conscience Rule

    Rated Jan 14 2009 • 5 reviews • health, worldviews • webmd.com

    Rule on Refusal of Health Services for Moral Reasons
    in MedMD by Daniel J. DeNoon

    An 11th-hour ruling from the Bush administration gives health care workers, hospitals, and insurers more leeway to refuse health services for moral or religious reasons.

    The rule, issued today, becomes effective in 30 days. Its main provisions widen the number of health workers and institutions that may refuse, based on "sincere religious belief or moral conviction," to provide care or referrals to patients.

    "This rule protects the right of medical providers to care for their patients in accord with their conscience," says Health and Human Services Secretary Michael O. Leavitt in a statement.

    Controversy Over New 'Conscience' Rule


    How is something like this possible in the 21th century? Isn't providing health care an absolute moral obligation any longer in the heads of some? But had this not been established as one of the fundamental human rights of any individual? Isn't the absolute character of this moral obligation what finally led congresses and parliaments all over the world to regulate the obligation to provide care by health care workers, hospitals, and insurers with sanction and punishment in case they did not execute this obligation?

    This last minute decision of the Bush administration is criminal, retrograde, and should be overturned immediately by the Obama administration.




    401 views
    Controversy Over New Conscience Rule

  • Hippie Masala - Watch the Documentary Film for Free -...

    Rated Dec 27 2008 • 1 review • subculture, video, worldviews • snagfilms.com

    refugees from the West who stayed East
    via nickyskye/Metafilter, Hippie Masala, on Snagfilm a production by Ulrich Grossenbacher and Damaris Luthi.

    Hippie Masala [masala is the Hindi word for spice mix] is a documentary which poignantly depicts the lives of a handful of old hippies from different countries, who not only remained in India but also remained in the caricature roles of a small few in those days. These are, in some ways, lost souls stuck in the amber of the 1960's and 70's and this movie offers glimpses into their lives now. SnagFilms also has 510 other excellent documentaries to watch for free online.
    "In the 1960s and 1970s thousands of hippies journeyed East in the search for enlightenment, free drugs or a "pure" life. Indian peasants assumed that a severe drought in the West was the reason for their migration. India's holy men saw it, more accurately, as a search for spirituality. Most moved back to their home countries after a few months or years. Some stayed for good. HIPPIE MASALA shows aging flower children who, after fleeing Western civilization, found a new home in India."

    refugees from the West who stayed East
    Hippie Masala
    Snagfilms

    video.aol.com/video-detail/hippie-masala/482828242 [video.aol.com/video-detail/hippie-masala/482828242]

    Excellent documentary about the lives of those rats who jumped the ship and who did never re-enter the game.
    Their life is no better but also no worse off than the lives of those who re-integrated the big game. But their experience was assuredly more intense...




    61 views
    Hippie Masala - Watch the Documentary Film for Free - SnagFilms