On suffering
Suffering it seems has always been our path to redemption and the restorative process. Betrayals are opportunities for psychological growth as we become open and available to broader spectrum of the human experience. Frankl (1959) writes that in moments of our most intense suffering, it is the “mental agony caused by the injustice, the unreasonableness of it all” that is the most intolerable. These things must cause us to lose our reason else we have none to lose he says. In these moments, Frankl continues, we are operating under a provisional existence in which retrospective thinking keeps us stuck in the past and we must transition our thinking from what we may have always expected from life to one in which we ask, “what does life expect from us”. In writing about his internment in a Nazi slave labor camp, Frankl states that under the harshest conditions we still have our one remaining, undeniable human freedom “to chose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances”. Our sense of purpose sometimes miraculously blossoms from the rich soil of our suffering, especially when that suffering draws forth from a betrayal of our sense of who we are in relation to our family and community.
The Longplayer
Longplayer is a one thousand year long musical composition. It began playing at midnight on the 31st of December 1999, and will continue to play without repetition until the last moment of 2999, at which point it will complete its cycle and begin again. Conceived and composed by Jem Finer, it was originally produced as an Artangel commission, and is now in the care of the Longplayer Trust. The Longplayer Website.
Green Man, Earth Angel
We must descend fully into the real, messy world, and not stop short of the real individuals who make it up. We get so constricted! So many are afraid to think about the world because only Scientists can do that. So many are afraid of their innate creativity because that is the realm of Artists. But anyone can experience the thrill that accompanies the new ways of seeing that lie at the heart of scientific discovery, anyone can write, or paint, or make music. And yet we mostly don’t. Because, “I’m too busy . . . I’m not smart enough, I’m not good enough, I can’t really dance, or sing, or write poetry or make pots … I’d be too embarrassed.” We are haunted by the Canon, by the experts, by the professionals. We are afraid of our selves, afraid that we won’t measure up. When great thought, art, and literature become an impediment to human life and action rather than an inspiration, then something is seriously wrong. The democratization of imagination is essential for the full descent into the world of all the virtual beings crying out in their sadness to be revealed.
Tom Cheetham, Green Man, Earth Angel
Zeitgeist & Zeitgeist: Addendum
Two important pieces of work in terms of understanding some of the foundational aspects of our prevailing social world. I am not sure that we can always posit a conspiracy when the system of thought forms the type of ideologies that both support ad resist its existence. In other words, the ideologies are part of the emergent system itself rather than consitituting it. Somewhat “chicken & egg” I suppose, but important to the type of alternative ways of being that are possible and the type of resistance that emerges as a result.
More information is at: http://www.zeitgeistmovie.com/
ZEITGEIST: ADDENDUM
ZEITGEIST MOVEMENT: ORIENTATION PRESENTATION
L. appellare “to address, appeal to, summon, name,” iterative of appellere “to prepare.” For more information about what's behind this site,