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 19 Dec 2002 @ 14:26, by jewel. Visual Arts, Graphics
Ming said yesterday
"I was watching a documentary on HBO about this artist Spencer Tunick who has been traveling America and the world, photographing nude people in unusual settings and arrangements. Now, what was very refreshing and inspiring about that is that there is nothing lewd or even tintilating about how he does it. It is very normal people, not picked based on any standard of physical beauty, but mainly based on that they're real people that one meets on the street. And there is something very powerful and beautiful that comes from that. Besides being art, and performance art, it is activism. It is activism asking us to look at things a bit differently, and breaking through stupid bourgeois norms for what is proper and expected."
I remember watching a documentary about Tunick's work on the ITV last year in the U.K. I would agree that it is very refreshing and radical. That this might indeed be the kind of answer we need to get out and DO: Yes! All size and shapes of nudes for peace, nudes for exposure, nudes for some sort of message and Truth with a capital T.
But I wouldn't say this is NOT lewd and tintilating, only in that we denounce being lewd and tintilating for it's own sake. What is lewd? What is tintilating? When it is cut off from the rest of us, then it is crass and lewd. But do you think this art is NOT erotic? I think it includes being erotic by it's Nature. By not seeming to be about the flesh, but by using the flesh, it becomes even MORE about the flesh... about the flesh we hide and deny. But then the perversions is that there is a lewd and lurid obsession with flesh that 'acts out' the parts of us that have been hidden. Tunick is lurid in that he is vivid. He is NOT obscene in that he IS obscene beyond obscenity. To say he is NOT what he IS, is the transcendence of when things are healing on many levels, dealing with where we are split apart whilst we become whole again just to split ourselves up for the sake of it.
The settings in which his nudes appear in to me are very exciting and arousing because they embody where we are so split from Nature, and thus, bringing the Nude Nature into the setting, is like some pledge from purgatory that is pleading us back into some purpose and inclusive reality. Therefore it's existential and idealistic at once. I am always for radical expressions that include the beauty and bizarre of our human pain and pleasure. More >
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 19 Dec 2002 @ 04:26, by ming. Counseling, Psychology
NY Times reports that a naive psychology researcher at Harvard advertised for people who had been 'contacted or abducted by space aliens', thinking that it would be a great way to find a few suggestible weirdos who were out of touch with reality, so that she could study how fabricated memories work. Instead she got overwhelmed, both with responses from lots of people with abduction experiences to tell about, and then from people ridiculing it, and finally from fellow Harward researchers who actually had been studying the phenomenon.
For the record, I have memories of being abducted by aliens as well, and I frequently had nose bleeds as a child. And I'm not a particularly suggestible or gullible person. But I don't have much urge to convince anybody about what is real and what is not. I think our universe is big and mysterious, and there is a lot of things we haven't really figured out yet about how reality works, so sometimes it is best to keep an open mind and reserve judgment for later.
As to the fabricated memory thing that the Harvard doctor was researching, yes, as a counselor and a certified hypnotherapist myself, I agree that this can be quite a problem in a therapeutic setting. Particularly when it comes to recovered memories of childhood sexual abuse. I think that can possibly happen, but it might just as well be something else. Just because one remembers it, doesn't necessarily mean it physically happened that way. I've had clients who suddenly remembered childhood molestation, where I must admit I didn't quite believe it. It can be very productive to work on the issues related to that, regardless, but it is very problematic if the client considers making the jump to go home and actually confront somebody with what they supposedly did 30 years ago, if all you have is some suddenly recovered memories. Bad idea. Processing it emotionally and mentally versus acting on the reality of it in the material world are two different things. More >
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 18 Dec 2002 @ 02:41, by ming. Philosophy
Years ago I wrote up a vision about a synergetic society that I called HoloWorld. It is incomplete, and I still hope to put more meat on it, but nevertheless it is fairly detailed. It all boils down to some very simple principles, like:
People are free to choose how to live
That can be expressed in an assortment of ways, each of which is more or less likely to be misunderstood by a lot of people. "People can do what they want". "An it harm none, do what thou wilt". Anyway, when used as an organizing principle, a whole lot of other principles and approaches would have to come from that. As everybody aren't likely to agree on how they want things, we must inevitably have:
Negotiation of self-interest taking place along the edges
Edges of what? Edges of any space of any kind where one or more people have a certain interest, a certain agreement on how things are supposed to be. So, if anybody has a different idea about what is supposed to happen, there's something to talk about. And if groups of people arrive at somewhat homogenous agreements on how they like things to be, but some people don't like it, there's then a need for:
Voting with your feet
Meaning, that if you don't like how things work in one place, you move into another place where things are more to your liking, or you make a new place and invite people to come to it. That implies the principle that you are allowed to arrange things in different ways in different places. More >
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17 Dec 2002 @ 19:27, by craiglang. Ideas, Creativity
Twas the week before Christmas, and all through the town,
Not an auto was moving, I saw gridlock abound.
The parking lot full of both new cars and old
The snow was not here yet, but only the cold
With prices reduced, on gifts all around
The economy hopefully soon would rebound
I with my MasterCard, and Visa and Cash
Had bought my last package, completing my stash
Toting my purchases out to the lot
I wondered a year from now what would mean what
Would we be locked in a war with Iraq
Or would peace prevail, with prayer and with luck
As I turned the key, and started my car,
I felt that the cheer of Christmas was far
Yet as the car started, the engine to purr
I felt a sense of warmth start to stir
The feeling that God watches over us all
And living within us, answers our call
It made me feel better, as I drove in my car
This season is time to enjoy who we are
I arrived at my home, my family to greet
I saw decorations, ribbons and wreaths
And looking, I saw the family room filled
With holiday ornaments, stacked to the hilt,
As I continued to take off my coat
A tear of joy rose, and a frog in my throat
I thanked our dear God for this time and place
The best of the season, to this blue dot in space. More >
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 17 Dec 2002 @ 17:24, by ming. Business
IM - Instant Messaging - is my most important business communication tool. I mention that because quite a few people seem to think it is about wasting time chatting with people all day about nothing. I have little interest in that. That is also why I don't list my IM account numbers in the sidebar here, because I don't want to invite just anybody to drop by and ask me how the weather is. IM is a high priority channel for me, for short business-like messages, but it is also something I can answer in my own time. I get too much e-mail to easily notice everything. I don't like phonecalls much, as I can pretty much do nothing else while talking. I'm multi-tasking, I usually do several things at the same time. I mainly use ICQ because it has the professional features I need, like archiving and being able to write to people who're off-line, and because everybody I do business with are on ICQ. I'd like to get into Jabber, as it is open source, and I can interface with it from my programs, but I haven't had time yet.
For those who don't know what IM is - it is a little program running on your computer which allows you to send a message to somebody you know, and the message can pop up right away for them at the other end. But they don't have to answer right away. So, you can have a conversation without having to be fully present. For you Europeans - it is SMS on your computer, and for that matter, there are various ways of sending messages between cellphones and IM programs. More >
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 16 Dec 2002 @ 12:29, by swan. Visual Arts, Graphics
Quilt by Martha Borders mmborders More >
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14 Dec 2002 @ 23:59, by ming. Communication
I'm getting a little paranoid about how remarkably well Google finds the things I'm saying here. OK, I'm writing so that people might read what I write, but sometimes I just casually refer to something, and the next day Google seems to indicate that I'm one of the top authorities in the world on that matter. Meaning, I appear on the first page of matches, out of sometimes hundreds of thousands of webpages. I often appear higher than the articles I linked to, even if I didn't say anything very intelligent. So, if you want to know about underground living, virtue viruses, power-law distributions, limits to spectrum or mechanic brains, this is mysteriously one of the first places people might look. Which is largely undeserved. On online business networks, I'm number 1 our of 2.5 million, even though I didn't say a word about it before last week. I'm number 2 out of 2 million when it comes to friendly sex. That all makes me a bit nervous, like I need to think of some better things to say, or I shouldn't talk about things I don't know about. And, even more unnerving, the fact that I mention these things right now will probably mean that the search engines will be a little more certain tomorrow that I know something about them. Uarrrgh! More >
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 14 Dec 2002 @ 23:47, by ming. Inventions
It is hard to introduce new ideas when you're dependent on only verbal persuasion and education to change people's minds. Things often don't change that way before the people with the old ideas die out.
But give people a technological device that happens to do something they like, and the world might be changed comparatively instantly.
Devices don't discriminate. Devices are generic. A telephone doesn't care what race, religion, height, weight or gender you are. It is equally present for anybody who wants to use it. It has no feelings about it.
But devices organize people. Or, rather, their presence allow people to self-organize in new ways. And that will typically be ways that are less dependent on emotions or separateness or classification of people.
Devices make you unite with others, not based on some way you in particular are different from others, but based on how you're all connected. The connectedness of technological devices brings things together that previously wouldn't be together. People are connected and united through technology who wouldn't have dreamt of connecting with each other without it. The same phone system, the same Internet, the same water pipes, the same TV standards, the same cars, the same nuts and bolts are used by very different people. And it unites them, without them having to consciously make a decision for or against it.
The spontaneous and voluntary adoption of new technological devices is a force that changes the world faster than anything else. A revolution takes place, meeting next to no resistance.
It rests on the shoulders of technological designers to think up devices that not only are useful and compelling for their prospective users, but that facilitate social behavior that is inherently beneficial for everybody involved, and for their families and communities, and for the planet. Individuals might adopt a new piece of technology because they selfishly like what it does, but it is the social and environmental re-organization that is the most important result. More >
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 13 Dec 2002 @ 23:16, by matrxmuziq. Ideas, Creativity
I wandered lonely as a cloud... (please pardon my poetic ravings) More >
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13 Dec 2002 @ 02:57, by beto. Old Age, Retirement
To live is not to pursue the visible or immaterial fruits of this world, be them immediate – conquered to the force – or expected in any future, as a reward. To live is not to be subject to the wheels of a gear – mental or physic – where the wandering soul is arrested by some time. To live is to find the inexistent Tao and to let float with him, calmly, amid storms if needed.
The objective of life is not pleasure, nor power, nor wealth, nor erudition, nor the conquest of the virtue, nor spiritual evolution. The objective of the life is to discover the Tao of every moment, to smile, and no more permit you to separate of it. The objective of life is the encounter of the Self when navigating safe along the Tao River. The objective of life is to learn how to navigate in the great river Tao.
While you're still in the way along the little Tao, you must seek knowledge and wisdom by the development of the four fundamental virtues: Jen, the love-compassion born of honesty that allows to feel the difficulties and the happiness of others as if they were yours; Yi, that is the nobleman's feeling of his duty to the other ones; born of the altruism, it allows to act devoid of personal interest; Li, that is born of the adoration for the Sky and for the Earth, manifesting in the harmonious procedure in which living turns into a permanent ritual. And, finally, Chih, that is the wisdom able to understand everything and is born of the long experience and of the knowledge of the celestial road, where no longer disobedience exists. Then, in the great Tao there are not searches, nor virtue, nor objectives, nor obedience, nor any rule to proceed. More >
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