The Self-Contained Causal Nexus is akin to its own universe, immutable, and without outside rational and verifiable and quantifiable experience. It is wherein mysticism, the supernatural, the supranatural, and superstition reside, and it is without rational explanation. As I understand self contained causal nexus, it is a metaphysical situation where religion, truth, and such philosophical issues originate within themselves, with the help of an agent or medium. The self contained causal nexus contains its heroes, its mythologies, its religions, its narratives, its prophets, its messiahs, and it always contains its creators. The self contained causal nexus can be understood from a perspective of semantics; the self is consciousness of one's own being or identity, the ego; contained of course can be understood as to have within, or to hold; and the causal nexus has been defined as the bonding or link between a cause and its effect.
Faith is an agent for religion, in that it acts in place of external verification. Faith stands in for statistical significance, for scientific method. As science celebrates the fetishization of objectivity, religion fetishizes its own subjectivity. In regards to religion, the metaphysical is basic and inherent. As science seeks to classify and clarify, metaphysics is by definition transcendent, as is religion, and as such, science and religion (read metaphysics) are incompatible. This is what makes religion a self contained causal nexus, the fact that it is only measurable, to any degree of truth, from within itself. As to messiahs, as to prophets, as to saints, and the sacred, religion’s proof is available only to believers, and those others seeking statistical significance are left dissatisfied. As such, faith is the archetype of religion’s agency; it is the ideal example of what an agent is, within this concept of religious and metaphysical as self contained casual nexus.
Larry Shiner, in 1967 declared of the world, that a “…process (which) had been occurring in Western civilization; as a result of which one after another sphere of life had become subject to the belief that explanations for events could be found within this-worldly experience and the application of human reason.” Shiner’s perception in regards to this world’s causal nexus pinpoints the reverse proposal; that an explanation for otherworldly phenomena cannot be from another world. As we know, reality is in the eye of the beholder; only in the most specific sense does reality mean only the quantifiable; only the strictest rational definition would mean only the most objective. Phenomenology is an accepted way to view reality, stressing the suspension of judgment, relying on the instinctive grasp of knowledge, free of prejudices and intellectualizing, and is sometimes referred to as the science of experience. In these ways, reality itself can be defined as a self contained causal nexus, in that there is no universally accepted definition of what the whole of reality entails. Truth is another concept which is a self contained causal nexus, in that some define truth as only that which is verifiable and subjective, and some believe, more broadly that truth is objective and obscured. Truth is, in a sense, a matter of perspective; some truth is only true to its perspective, and as such, perspective is the agent for reality, in that it delivers external veracity.
The brain is a biological system in which the sum is greater than its parts; it is the seat of the Self. The brain is an internal map that reflects your external world; it interprets your experience and reality’s input. The brain is the center of the nervous system, and the focus of external sense organs, as well as a collection of soft tissue and electrical activity, contained within a bony helmet. As such, the brain is a self contained causal nexus in that even though it is understood, basically, that some association between the electrical impulses and the brain tissue contributes to the brain’s consequence, it is not understood, in any true sense, from where consciousness arises, other than from a geographical sense of the word. To the brain, consciousness is its agent, in that from a biological perspective, it is the only route to external verification. There is no other way to understand the brain, except from a most topical and shallow perspective, without considering the perspective of consciousness. Consciousness is awareness, responsiveness, and cognition; to quote Rene Descartes: “I think therefore, I am.” Known as the “three pound universe”, the brain is consciousness, and that consciousness is the self contained causal nexus upon which all reality turns.
Similarly, the subconscious is poorly understood. Disciples of detail and the clergy of classification are flummoxed and rendered almost incomprehensible in their attempted subjugation of the murky world of the subconscious, and is understood shallowly and topically only, from the perspective of its effect, and this is the best science can offer. Science is great for interpreting ideas; science is similarly good at rationalizing certain ideas, yet to get to the marrow of truth, science can no more than approach the truth of the subconscious, as it does not have the benefit of the incomprehensible. The dream is the agent of the subconscious, its shadowy medium, and its advocate to the conscious world. As Freud would have it, the psyche has an unconscious or subconscious component, the id, which is only approached from a standpoint of analogy. As such, the subconscious is a self contained causal nexus wherein its truth is only available from within and through the agency of the dream, and approachable only through the interpretation of the dream or through various parlor tricks.
Max Weber said in The Sociology of Religion, 1922, “Not ideas, but material and ideal interests, directly govern men’s conduct. Yet very frequently the “world images” have been created by “ideas” have, like switchmen, determined the tracks along which action has been pushed by the dynamic of the interest.” This is the crux of the concept of self contained causal nexus, as I understand the term; that some ideas are capable of establishing and defining their own nexus; ideas that define themselves, that have their own meaning and importance, and the truth of them not independently verifiable. Mystery is seen not as something to be entered into but something to be conquered by human reason, ingenuity, and the products of technology; explanations referring to forces outside of this world are constantly being laid aside. Weber’s de-magification did not mean that people did not believe in the old mysteries of religion, but rather that the concept of mystery was devalued. The consequence of this worldview was that explanations referring to forces outside of this world were constantly being laid aside, in agreement with Shiner above, and weakens the bonds between this world and the next, and weakens our allegiance to a higher power. C.S. Lewis opines in The Problem of Pain, the world will be a “…uniform infinity of homogeneous matter at a low temperature…” which leads to a lack of faith in the Sacred. A heartfelt belief in the rational only, to the detriment of the supernatural, can only lead to an understanding of the rational, to the exclusion of the supernatural. This devaluation of the incomprehensible and the supernatural is schizophrenic, as mankind is not the arbiter of destiny, but only another biological organism upon this planet. Grace cannot be verified or studied by intricate mathematical formulae, and Grace is something which mankind gravely needs.
The concept of rationalism is "…any view appealing to reason as a source of knowledge or justification." Lacey, A.R., A Dictionary of Philosophy, and a theory "in which the criterion of the truth is not sensory but intellectual and deductive..." Bourke, Vernon J. (1962), “Rationalism” Clearly, the above definition is derived from objectivity and classification, from scientific method and statistical significance, wholly dismissive of the metaphysical and irrational. Rationalism, then must apply to reason, and men’s intellect, and must reject the supernatural, as such, echoing Shiner’s statement above, rationalism is the process which blinds men to the sublime, and by which all explanations must come from this world. As Lewis opines, this leads to a devaluation of the supernatural, of the supranatural, and the dismissal of the mystical. Broadly, rationalism can be explained as a form of humanism, wherein the transcendental (the divine) is rejected in its many forms, and mankind is elevated to truth and primacy. Humanism seeks to supplant and replace the esoteric; it is a broad philosophy, but its major tenet is an adherence to mankind’s abilities, and rationalism is the vehicle upon which it relies. Rationalism, then, is the agent of humanism, generating humanism’s veracity to the extent that much older and more broadly accepted truths are corrupted through its insidiousness. Humanism and rationalism lend themselves freely to the western fetishization of individualism, and as such, tend to replace other, seemingly wiser views through its scorn and rejection of the transcendental, as well as their reliance on statistica and detail. Rationalism and humanism seek a plaster cast of God’s footprint, and only offer up incomprehensible mathematical models to verify, not truth, but snapshots of the verifiable. The supernatural offers truth, but through faith, and the denial of self, which run counter to western values and mankind’s urges, and thus rationalism and humanism are in opposition to the mystical.
Morality has multiple aspects, but the most common usage of the concept has to do with accepted and shared codes of conduct, and is utilized within the framework of society and social interaction. In this sense, morality is not a self contained causal nexus, in that the ability to judge and verify morality is available to anyone, and from many external perspectives. Often, however, as such things tend to be, the definition of a concept, rather than exposing a truth, defines, as this does this definition of morality, which restricts its truth. Morality then, being definable and restricted, is not a truth, but is rather the agent of ethics, which resists being easily defined. Ethics gives meaning to morality, but it is not understood whether ethics are a natural and biological phenomena, something imparted from a higher power, or a purely social construct. There are many instances of ethical conduct which are clearly social in nature, like holding a door, but considering the concept of ethics more deeply, from whence does right and wrong flow? Is there some biological imperative governing us only upon a path upon self sustenance, or is there a more universal and supernatural imperative goading mankind upon a righteous path? Obviously then, ethics falls squarely into the realm of self contained causal nexus due to the fact that its truth can only be found from within its own conception.
Death is the cessation of our existing biological function; death is the terminus of this mortal coil; death is the endgame of this existence. The statistical significance of death ends at its beginning. There is no further understanding of death, from a scientific perspective, beyond its inception. Science can only point to its causes, not its origins, and its effects, not its meaning. As noted above by Lewis, entropy (death), without considering the unverifiable, leads to a deep melancholy. Science and the “Rationalitat” have no answer, no explanation, no verifiable data as to the truth of death, beyond a topical description.
Life is easier to classify, at least portions of it, however, the truth of life, in its totality, eludes classification. Erwin Schrödinger, among others, opines that life can be understood as operating through the agency of what he called “negative entropy”, which means, loosely, that life is an open system able to decrease its internal entropy at the expense of substances taken in and subsequently rejected in a degraded form. But this does not even approach defining life, but rather is descriptive. Similarly, describing life from a purely biological perspective is again only descriptive; the biological imperative is not truth, but rather a form and a framework to describe the actions of living organisms. There is no universal definition of life, but a classification, at a cellular level is possible, but this is wholly topical, as it does nothing for a broad understanding of the truth of life.
it means something of a philosophical mobius strip, wherein an outside explanation is not viable or verifiable.
Again, as I understand it, per Weber, the process wherein religion, truth, philosophical issues are addressed from an only-within-this-world perspective is not a proper, as such things are “SCCN.”
So, the metaphysical is ignored, to the extent that a fuller truth is bypassed in favor of a more quantifiable explanation; which is, in a sense, a shortcoming of rationalization.
Tuesday, April 20, 2010
SELF CONTAINED CAUSAL NEXUS: Definition
I. Self Contained Causal Nexus: The bordering or link between a cause and its effect.
II. Larry Shiner, in 1967 defined “self-contained causal nexus as: a process which had been occurring in Western civilization; as a result of which one after another sphere of life had become subject to the belief that explanations for events could be found within this-worldly experience and the application of human reason.
III. Like Weber’s switchman, some ideas are capable of establishing and defining their own nexus; ideas that define themselves, that have their own meaning and importance.
IV. Faith is an example of an idea which originates within itself and is outside the realm of rational and verifiable and quantifiable experience.
V. The brain is a biological example of the sum being greater than its parts, and thus it qualifies as an example of the self contained causal nexus.
VI. Explanations referring to forces outside of this world are constantly being laid aside. Mystery is seen not as something to be entered into but something to be conquered by human reason, ingenuity, and the products of technology.
II. Larry Shiner, in 1967 defined “self-contained causal nexus as: a process which had been occurring in Western civilization; as a result of which one after another sphere of life had become subject to the belief that explanations for events could be found within this-worldly experience and the application of human reason.
III. Like Weber’s switchman, some ideas are capable of establishing and defining their own nexus; ideas that define themselves, that have their own meaning and importance.
IV. Faith is an example of an idea which originates within itself and is outside the realm of rational and verifiable and quantifiable experience.
V. The brain is a biological example of the sum being greater than its parts, and thus it qualifies as an example of the self contained causal nexus.
VI. Explanations referring to forces outside of this world are constantly being laid aside. Mystery is seen not as something to be entered into but something to be conquered by human reason, ingenuity, and the products of technology.
Friday, April 16, 2010
Fixion: PREMISE
PREMISE
4 stages of reality-KABALAH:
1 metaphorical-a figure of speech in which the context demands that a word or phrase not be taken literally-the sun is smiling, a comparison which doesn't use like or as;
2 allegorical-a dramatic, literary, or pictorial device in which each object, character, and event symbolically illustrates a moral or religious principle;
3 literal-without embellishment or exaggeration.
4. esoteric-secret.
FABLES OF THE ID
1 metaphorical: Hades and Persephone
2 allegorical: Garden Of Compromise
3 literal: Phineas Gage
4 esoteric:
OTHERS
Winter James
Selfish Moses
The Conquest Of The New World; Heman Cortes
The Japanese soldier who stayed at war for 30 years after the war ended.
Those addicted to rebellion.
4 stages of reality-KABALAH:
1 metaphorical-a figure of speech in which the context demands that a word or phrase not be taken literally-the sun is smiling, a comparison which doesn't use like or as;
2 allegorical-a dramatic, literary, or pictorial device in which each object, character, and event symbolically illustrates a moral or religious principle;
3 literal-without embellishment or exaggeration.
4. esoteric-secret.
FABLES OF THE ID
1 metaphorical: Hades and Persephone
2 allegorical: Garden Of Compromise
3 literal: Phineas Gage
4 esoteric:
OTHERS
Winter James
Selfish Moses
The Conquest Of The New World; Heman Cortes
The Japanese soldier who stayed at war for 30 years after the war ended.
Those addicted to rebellion.
FABLES OF THE ID
A collection of short stories, accounts, myths, dramas, and narratives from the recesses of mood, from the lair of personality; an account from the redoubt of the soul. A warfront journal of moods, characteristics, secret furtive facets of persona; an index of mental oddities that strives to catalogue the archetypes of our collective anguish. An appraisal of the gem called being.
These are fables from the id
These are fables from the id
Garden of Compromise
This is the story of the bony beginnings of Mankind, a tale of how things came to be, and an ironic, irrational, feeble explanation of the beginning of this living Life.
In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth. And the earth was without form (the function was there, truth be told, eternal and infinite,looking for a meme and a will) and void (called space and time by science); and darkness was upon the face of the deep (the unknown and unknowable.) The imagination of God moved upon the face of the waters, and God said, "Let there be light" and there was light. Essentially, God was irrational in a huge, metaphysical way; after all in the Void were all sorts of ideas and universes ready to boil out of the ether into reality, to create reality, but no one had ever had the bold irrationality of our Lord. His cosmic Self stirred, there was a stirring witin Him, and so life was created, basically, to satisfy His need for stimulation. From the Void He rose full-formed and ancient, an embodiment of the All, in order to be entertained.
God said, "Let us make man in Our image, after Our likeness: and let him have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that crept upon the earth." And the Lord God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and Potential became a living soul. Potential may or may not be the first man made ever, this is outside our understanding, outside time and knowledge, but he was the first to satisfy God's requirements; the potential for love and war, truth and fantasy, comedy and drama.
And so, Potential was made, in the image of God (that most complex yet basic of all personae's). Potential was the mold, if you will, of all our Selves that came after. Potential was the most elaborate, psychotic psychosis, the most frugal, flashy id; the most resplendent, regressive creation of the cosmos. Potential was like a baby: selfish, selfless, not self-aware, feeble, savage; ignorant. Potential spent untold, unrecorded epochs of time after creation chasing beasts, naked, ravaging them with his teeth, beast-like himself. Potential was a savage, lived savagely, unaware of his potential, potentially king of the beasts, but no more.
This was a reflection of God at this time, Potential was in His image after all, neither was self-aware, there was no self-awareness at this time, there was no self, only potential. It was a pristine world; God's brilliance sat naked in this reality, His radiance unfettered by moral judgments, and likewise Potential galloped nakedly through creation, unfettered by his humanity, and wallowed in his being. Potential was the noble savage unleashed, complex biology and no more. Yet, the potential for our history germinated there in his brain; awaiting the unleashing.
The Lord God planted a garden; and there He put Potential to rule over the Garden, a seething spot in the center of reality. The five Earthly senses, this plane of reality, this mortal coil, was linked to the Garden of Compromise; reality was anchored to creation through this place; it was the eye of the hurricane, the fingerprint of the Creator. This is where God limited humanity, laid out the confines of creation, the borders of our biology, the outskirts of His omnipresence. Within this Garden was our drama to unfold, within this corral was the experiment of our biology to occur, the most noble savage yet, Potential was to enliven creation with his antics.
Potential yearned for contact, yearned for interaction on a level he could relate to. God saw this and made him a helper, Template, an upgrade from Potential. Potential was the origin of all who would come, but Template was the processor from whom they would come forth. God foresaw, in Template, the precursor for conflict, for which Potential yearned.
And God blessed them, and God said unto them: “Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it: and have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over every living thing that moves upon the earth." And the Lord God commanded the man, saying, “0f every tree of the garden thou mayest freely eat, but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt not eat of it: for in the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die."
The nature of the relationship between God, Potential, the Garden, and Template necessarily made Template the lowest on the totem pole, hierarchally; she was the newest, the least unique, and subservient. She was after-all second, second-made, and secondary in the patriarchal system of creation.
Subliminal, the serpent, was subtle, and sublime, and sensual in his cursed ways, and naturally envious of Potential and Template, for in his subliminal way his limitation was influence, not creation, so Subliminal hated the parents of mankind.
Subliminal asked of Template, "hath God said, 'Ye shall not eat of every tree of the garden?" Template answered, ''We may eat of the fruit of the trees of the garden, but of the fruit of the tree which is in the midst of the garden, God hath said, 'Ye shall not eat of it, neither shall ye touch it, lest ye die."
Subliminal hissed in his scaly way: “Ye shall not surely die, but rather, your eyes shall be opened." And mother of mankind, the Template of all who would forevermore be born men, was tempted, and found lacking, ravished by the whispered rustlings of the subliminal. The itchy tickling in the back of the brain, the grasping barb, our own self-imposed mortality reared at us in antiquity, as it does today.
The serpent in the template of her personality awoke the potential of her psyche for doing mischief, and her reptile brain could not resist. So Template ate, and tempted Potential, and he ate, for the potential was there, in him, created by God, and Template was but a form for function, and the design of her personality was to be filled by Potential, so they ate, and the Garden was compromised, as its confines became clear, as grim reality intruded, and innocence was lost.
Potential's and Template's eyes were opened, they became man and woman, forever to suffer death, and disease, and despair. What they lost was grace, and judgment, and favor of the Lord; for the knowledge of good and evil was not theirs, they did not gain some secret insight into creation; rather, they sat, judged lacking; poor, and humiliated before God.
Potential and Template vainly tried to cover their nakedness (physically, spiritually, realistically) - as we still do. Their vine and fig leave clothing is exactly like our feel good humanism, our selfish escapism, our consuming materialism. The induction into the punishment of our reality because of their banishment from God's favor is the lot of man. The Garden was compromised; humanity shall suffer the consequences.
Potential and Template heard God walking through the Garden, so they hid from Him, as we do, hiding in trees and chemical stupor, jungle and pointless hedonism, leaves and ignorance.
“Hide? From whence and where have you hidden from Me;" asked the Lord, “For didn't I create even the hidden spots? Tell me, why do you hide."
Answered Potential, "I was afraid because I was naked."
Naked! The least of his worries, as for time uncounted, Potential had rooted with the pigs naked; ran with deer naked; slept in the grass naked; yet the difference was not nudity, for he had always been naked, but his awareness of otherness from God, his awareness of being outside of God, the nudity of his self-awareness.
Of course God knew how, and why, and when this awareness became, yet He asked: '''Who told thee that thou wast naked? Hast thou eaten of the tree, whereof I commanded thee that thou should not eat?"
Potential blamed Template, and Template blamed Subliminal, as I blame you and you me, as if blame were of any consequence. When the Garden was compromised, self, awareness, nakedness, despair, dejection, shame, were unleashed as consequence.
The consequence for Subliminal was to be cursed amongst all creation, to be evil on his belly, eating dust forever for eternity. The consequence for Template was sorrow, pain, and subservience wherein Potential was to rule over her. For Potential the consequence was the terrible judgment and disappointment of the Lord.
Therefore the Lord sent them forth from the Garden, to wander the earth, to live apart from God in futility, and to till the ground from whence they was taken.
At the east of the Garden, Cherubim and a flaming sword turned every way, to guard the way of innocence lost.
In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth. And the earth was without form (the function was there, truth be told, eternal and infinite,looking for a meme and a will) and void (called space and time by science); and darkness was upon the face of the deep (the unknown and unknowable.) The imagination of God moved upon the face of the waters, and God said, "Let there be light" and there was light. Essentially, God was irrational in a huge, metaphysical way; after all in the Void were all sorts of ideas and universes ready to boil out of the ether into reality, to create reality, but no one had ever had the bold irrationality of our Lord. His cosmic Self stirred, there was a stirring witin Him, and so life was created, basically, to satisfy His need for stimulation. From the Void He rose full-formed and ancient, an embodiment of the All, in order to be entertained.
God said, "Let us make man in Our image, after Our likeness: and let him have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that crept upon the earth." And the Lord God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and Potential became a living soul. Potential may or may not be the first man made ever, this is outside our understanding, outside time and knowledge, but he was the first to satisfy God's requirements; the potential for love and war, truth and fantasy, comedy and drama.
And so, Potential was made, in the image of God (that most complex yet basic of all personae's). Potential was the mold, if you will, of all our Selves that came after. Potential was the most elaborate, psychotic psychosis, the most frugal, flashy id; the most resplendent, regressive creation of the cosmos. Potential was like a baby: selfish, selfless, not self-aware, feeble, savage; ignorant. Potential spent untold, unrecorded epochs of time after creation chasing beasts, naked, ravaging them with his teeth, beast-like himself. Potential was a savage, lived savagely, unaware of his potential, potentially king of the beasts, but no more.
This was a reflection of God at this time, Potential was in His image after all, neither was self-aware, there was no self-awareness at this time, there was no self, only potential. It was a pristine world; God's brilliance sat naked in this reality, His radiance unfettered by moral judgments, and likewise Potential galloped nakedly through creation, unfettered by his humanity, and wallowed in his being. Potential was the noble savage unleashed, complex biology and no more. Yet, the potential for our history germinated there in his brain; awaiting the unleashing.
The Lord God planted a garden; and there He put Potential to rule over the Garden, a seething spot in the center of reality. The five Earthly senses, this plane of reality, this mortal coil, was linked to the Garden of Compromise; reality was anchored to creation through this place; it was the eye of the hurricane, the fingerprint of the Creator. This is where God limited humanity, laid out the confines of creation, the borders of our biology, the outskirts of His omnipresence. Within this Garden was our drama to unfold, within this corral was the experiment of our biology to occur, the most noble savage yet, Potential was to enliven creation with his antics.
Potential yearned for contact, yearned for interaction on a level he could relate to. God saw this and made him a helper, Template, an upgrade from Potential. Potential was the origin of all who would come, but Template was the processor from whom they would come forth. God foresaw, in Template, the precursor for conflict, for which Potential yearned.
And God blessed them, and God said unto them: “Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it: and have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over every living thing that moves upon the earth." And the Lord God commanded the man, saying, “0f every tree of the garden thou mayest freely eat, but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt not eat of it: for in the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die."
The nature of the relationship between God, Potential, the Garden, and Template necessarily made Template the lowest on the totem pole, hierarchally; she was the newest, the least unique, and subservient. She was after-all second, second-made, and secondary in the patriarchal system of creation.
Subliminal, the serpent, was subtle, and sublime, and sensual in his cursed ways, and naturally envious of Potential and Template, for in his subliminal way his limitation was influence, not creation, so Subliminal hated the parents of mankind.
Subliminal asked of Template, "hath God said, 'Ye shall not eat of every tree of the garden?" Template answered, ''We may eat of the fruit of the trees of the garden, but of the fruit of the tree which is in the midst of the garden, God hath said, 'Ye shall not eat of it, neither shall ye touch it, lest ye die."
Subliminal hissed in his scaly way: “Ye shall not surely die, but rather, your eyes shall be opened." And mother of mankind, the Template of all who would forevermore be born men, was tempted, and found lacking, ravished by the whispered rustlings of the subliminal. The itchy tickling in the back of the brain, the grasping barb, our own self-imposed mortality reared at us in antiquity, as it does today.
The serpent in the template of her personality awoke the potential of her psyche for doing mischief, and her reptile brain could not resist. So Template ate, and tempted Potential, and he ate, for the potential was there, in him, created by God, and Template was but a form for function, and the design of her personality was to be filled by Potential, so they ate, and the Garden was compromised, as its confines became clear, as grim reality intruded, and innocence was lost.
Potential's and Template's eyes were opened, they became man and woman, forever to suffer death, and disease, and despair. What they lost was grace, and judgment, and favor of the Lord; for the knowledge of good and evil was not theirs, they did not gain some secret insight into creation; rather, they sat, judged lacking; poor, and humiliated before God.
Potential and Template vainly tried to cover their nakedness (physically, spiritually, realistically) - as we still do. Their vine and fig leave clothing is exactly like our feel good humanism, our selfish escapism, our consuming materialism. The induction into the punishment of our reality because of their banishment from God's favor is the lot of man. The Garden was compromised; humanity shall suffer the consequences.
Potential and Template heard God walking through the Garden, so they hid from Him, as we do, hiding in trees and chemical stupor, jungle and pointless hedonism, leaves and ignorance.
“Hide? From whence and where have you hidden from Me;" asked the Lord, “For didn't I create even the hidden spots? Tell me, why do you hide."
Answered Potential, "I was afraid because I was naked."
Naked! The least of his worries, as for time uncounted, Potential had rooted with the pigs naked; ran with deer naked; slept in the grass naked; yet the difference was not nudity, for he had always been naked, but his awareness of otherness from God, his awareness of being outside of God, the nudity of his self-awareness.
Of course God knew how, and why, and when this awareness became, yet He asked: '''Who told thee that thou wast naked? Hast thou eaten of the tree, whereof I commanded thee that thou should not eat?"
Potential blamed Template, and Template blamed Subliminal, as I blame you and you me, as if blame were of any consequence. When the Garden was compromised, self, awareness, nakedness, despair, dejection, shame, were unleashed as consequence.
The consequence for Subliminal was to be cursed amongst all creation, to be evil on his belly, eating dust forever for eternity. The consequence for Template was sorrow, pain, and subservience wherein Potential was to rule over her. For Potential the consequence was the terrible judgment and disappointment of the Lord.
Therefore the Lord sent them forth from the Garden, to wander the earth, to live apart from God in futility, and to till the ground from whence they was taken.
At the east of the Garden, Cherubim and a flaming sword turned every way, to guard the way of innocence lost.
Thursday, April 15, 2010
Fixion: Sperrgebiet; premise.
The Sperrgebiet (German, meaning "Prohibited Area"), also known as Diamond Area 1, is a diamond mining area in south-western Namibia, in the Namib Desert. The Sperrgebiet extends 60 miles inland, and its total area of 10,400 square miles, makes up 3% of Namibia's land mass, though actual diamond mining only takes place in 5% of the Sperrgebiet, with most of the area acting as a buffer zone. Members of the public are banned from entering the area.
Fixion: Waw an Namus, premise
Waw an Namus, or the Oasis of Mosquitoes, is a volcanic field, cone and caldera in the southern region of Libya, in the near-geographic center of the Sahara Desert. The inside of the caldera houses rich foliage and three small salt lakes of variable color which are the reason for the volcano's name.
Fixion: Le Grand K
In a a maximum security vault at the International Bureau of Weights and Measures (BIPM), under the suburbs of Paris is a cylinder of platinum and iridium approximately the size of a raquetball. It is known as "Le Grand K" and the International Prototype; it is the only object known to man that has a mass of exactly 1kilogram. It is the reference from which the unit of mass is derived; every object measured in kilograms is defined by Le Grand K.
Fixion: Lenin's Family (pre-revolution)
Lenin's family clung desperately to its status on the lowest rung of the czarist aristocracy.
Fixion: Korea's Subjugation; premise
North Korean life is closed, dead, immobilized, totalitarian country, transformed into a land of vagabond children stealing wares and hunting pests; middle-aged women haggling over cheap goods in the black markets; young women wading naked across rivers to sell themselves to ignorant Chinese farmers; family patriarchs starving as the rations run out, sometimes going mad before the horrible death of starvation. It is, the apocolyptic tale of Korea's total subjugation.
Deep Brain Stimulation
Deep brain stimulation (DBS) is a surgical treatment involving the implantation of a medical device called a brain pacemaker, which sends electrical impulses to specific parts of the brain. DBS in select brain regions has provided remarkable therapeutic benefits for otherwise treatment-resistant movement and affective disorders such as chronic pain, Parkinson’s disease, tremor and dystonia.
(Dystonia is a neurological movement disorder in which sustained muscle contractions cause twisting and repetitive movements or abnormal postures.) Deep brain stimulation has been used experimentally in treating a few patients with severe Tourette syndrome. In August 2007, Nature reported that scientists in the US had stimulated a 38-year-old man who had been in a minimally conscious state for six years using DBS. The patient initially had increased arousal and sustained eye-opening, as well as rapid bilateral head-turning to voice. After further stimulation, the previously non-verbal patient became capable of naming objects and using objects with his hands—for example, bringing a cup to his mouth. Moreover, he could swallow food and take meals by mouth, meaning he was no longer dependent on a gastrostomy tube. DBS has been used in the treatment of obsessive-compulsive disorderand phantom limb pain.
(Dystonia is a neurological movement disorder in which sustained muscle contractions cause twisting and repetitive movements or abnormal postures.) Deep brain stimulation has been used experimentally in treating a few patients with severe Tourette syndrome. In August 2007, Nature reported that scientists in the US had stimulated a 38-year-old man who had been in a minimally conscious state for six years using DBS. The patient initially had increased arousal and sustained eye-opening, as well as rapid bilateral head-turning to voice. After further stimulation, the previously non-verbal patient became capable of naming objects and using objects with his hands—for example, bringing a cup to his mouth. Moreover, he could swallow food and take meals by mouth, meaning he was no longer dependent on a gastrostomy tube. DBS has been used in the treatment of obsessive-compulsive disorderand phantom limb pain.
FIXION: Maneaters of Njombe
The Maneaters of Njombe were a pride of lions that killed and ate over 1500 people under the influence of witchdoctor Matamula Mangera.
Fixion: Chile, premise
Late 19th century, Chile acquired most of its territiry. During the 1880s War of the Pacific, it battled Peru and Bolivia for control of the lucrative, nitrate-rich land to the north. The Chileans snatched up Peru's southern tip and Bolivia's entire Pacific coast. Bolivia is landlocked til this day.
Chile ammassed the bottom one-third of its territory at that time, conquering the strip of land south of the Biobío River that belonged for centuries to the indigenous Mapuche people. Although the Mapuche repeatedly resisted the Incan and Spanish Empires, the Mapuche were defeated by the Chilean army.
Chile ammassed the bottom one-third of its territory at that time, conquering the strip of land south of the Biobío River that belonged for centuries to the indigenous Mapuche people. Although the Mapuche repeatedly resisted the Incan and Spanish Empires, the Mapuche were defeated by the Chilean army.
Wednesday, April 14, 2010
The Great Society: Lyndon B. Johnson, 05/22/1964
President Hatcher, Governor Romney, Senators McNamara and Hart, Congressmen Header and Staebler, and other members of the fine Michigan delegation, members of the graduating class, my fellow Americans:
It is a great pleasure to be here today. This university has been coeducational since 1870, but I do not believe it was on the basis of your accomplishments that a Detroit high school girl said, "In choosing a college, you first have to decide whether you want a coeducational school or an educational school."
Well, we can find both here at Michigan, although perhaps at different hours. I came out here today very anxious to meet the Michigan student whose father told a friend of mine that his son's education had been a real value. It stopped his mother from bragging about him.
I have come today from the turmoil of your Capital to the tranquility of your campus to speak about the future of your country.
The purpose of protecting the life of our Nation and preserving the liberty of our citizens is to pursue the happiness of our people. Our success in that pursuit is the test of our success as a Nation.
"For a century we labored to settle and to subdue a continent. For half a century we called upon unbounded invention and untiring industry to create an order of plenty for all of our people. The challenge of the next half century is whether we have the wisdom to use that wealth to enrich and elevate our national life, and to advance the quality of our American civilization.
Your imagination, your initiative, and your indignation will determine whether we build a society where progress is the servant of our needs, or a society where old values and new visions are buried under unbridled growth. For in your time we have the opportunity to move not only toward the rich society and the powerful society, but upward to the Great Society.
The Great Society rests on abundance and liberty for all. It demands an end to poverty and racial injustice, to which we are totally committed in our time. But that is just the beginning.
The Great Society is a place where every child can find knowledge to enrich his mind and to enlarge his talents. It is a place where leisure is a welcome chance to build and reflect, not a feared cause of boredom and restlessness. It is a place where the city of man serves not only the needs of the body and the demands of commerce but the desire for beauty and the hunger for community.
It is a place where man can renew contact with nature. It is a place which honors creation for its own sake and for what it adds to the understanding of the race. It is a place where men are more concerned with the quality of their goals than the quantity of their goods.
But most of all, the Great Society is not a safe harbor, a resting place, a final objective, a finished work. It is a challenge constantly renewed, beckoning us toward a destiny where the meaning of our lives matches the marvelous products of our labor.
So I want to talk to you today about three places where we begin to build the Great Society -- in our cities, in our countryside, and in our classrooms.
Many of you will live to see the day, perhaps 50 years from now, when there will be 400 million Americans -- four-fifths of them in urban areas. In the remainder of this century urban population will double, city land will double, and we will have to build homes, highways, and facilities equal to all those built since this country was first settled. So in the next 40 years we must rebuild the entire urban United States.
Aristotle said: "Men come together in cities in order to live, but they remain together in order to live the good life." It is harder and harder to live the good life in American cities today. The catalog of ills is long: there is the decay of the centers and the despoiling of the suburbs. There is not enough housing for our people or transportation for our traffic. Open land is vanishing and old landmarks are violated.
Worst of all, expansion is eroding the precious and time honored values of community with neighbors and communion with nature. The loss of these values breeds loneliness and boredom and indifference.
Our society will never be great until our cities are great. Today the frontier of imagination and innovation is inside those cities and not beyond their borders. New experiments are already going on. It will be the task of your generation to make the American city a place where future generations will come, not only to live but to live the good life.
I understand that if I stayed here tonight I would see that Michigan students are really doing their best to live the good life.
This is the place where the Peace Corps was started. It is inspiring to see how all of you, while you are in this country, are trying so hard to live at the level of the people.
A second place where we begin to build the Great Society is in our countryside. We have always prided ourselves on being not only America the strong and America the free, but America the beautiful. Today that beauty is in danger. The water we drink, the food we eat, the very air that we breathe, are threatened with pollution. Our parks are overcrowded, our seashores overburdened. Green fields and dense forests are disappearing.
A few years ago we were greatly concerned about the "Ugly American." Today we must act to prevent an ugly America.
For once the battle is lost, once our natural splendor is destroyed, it can never be recaptured. And once man can no longer walk with beauty or wonder at nature his spirit will wither and his sustenance be wasted.
A third place to build the Great Society is in the classrooms of America. There your children's lives will be shaped. Our society will not be great until every young mind is set free to scan the farthest reaches of thought and imagination. We are still far from that goal.
Today, 8 million adult Americans, more than the entire population of Michigan, have not finished 5 years of school. Nearly 20 million have not finished 8 years of school. Nearly 54 million -- more than one-quarter of all America -- have not even finished high school.
Each year more than 100,000 high school graduates, with proved ability, do not enter college because they cannot afford it. And if we cannot educate today's youth, what will we do in 1970 when elementary school enrollment will be 5 million greater than 1960? And high school enrollment will rise by 5 million. College enrollment will increase by more than 3 million.
In many places, classrooms are overcrowded and curricula are outdated. Most of our qualified teachers are underpaid, and many of our paid teachers are unqualified. So we must give every child a place to sit and a teacher to learn from. Poverty must not be a bar to learning, and learning must offer an escape from poverty. But more classrooms and more teachers are not enough. We must seek an educational system which grows in excellence as it grows in size. This means better training for our teachers. It means preparing youth to enjoy their hours of leisure as well as their hours of labor. It means exploring new techniques of teaching, to find new ways to stimulate the love of learning and the capacity for creation.
These are three of the central issues of the Great Society. While our Government has many programs directed at those issues, I do not pretend that we have the full answer to those problems.
But I do promise this: We are going to assemble the best thought and the broadest knowledge from all over the world to find those answers for America. I intend to establish working groups to prepare a series of White House conferences and meetings-on the cities, on natural beauty, on the quality of education, and on other emerging challenges. And from these meetings and from this inspiration and from these studies we will begin to set our course toward the Great Society.
The solution to these problems does not rest on a massive program in Washington, nor can it rely solely on the strained resources of local authority. They require us to create new concepts of cooperation, a creative federalism, between the National Capital and the leaders of local communities.
Woodrow Wilson once wrote: "Every man sent out from his university should be a man of his Nation as well as a man of his time."
Within your lifetime powerful forces, already loosed, will take us toward a way of life beyond the realm of our experience, almost beyond the bounds of our imagination.
For better or for worse, your generation has been appointed by history to deal with those problems and to lead America toward a new age. You have the chance never before afforded to any people in any age. You can help build a society where the demands of morality, and the needs of the spirit, can be realized in the life of the Nation.
So, will you join in the battle to give every citizen the full equality which God enjoins and the law requires, whatever his belief, or race, or the color of his skin? Will you join in the battle to give every citizen an escape from the crushing weight of poverty?
Will you join in the battle to make it possible for all nations to live in enduring peace as neighbors and not as mortal enemies?
Will you join in the battle to build the Great Society, to prove that our material progress is only the foundation on which we will build a richer life of mind and spirit?
There are those timid souls who say this battle cannot be won; that we are condemned to a soulless wealth. I do not agree. We have the power to shape the civilization that we want. But we need your will, your labor, your hearts, if we are to build that kind of society.
Those who came to this land sought to build more than just a new country.
They sought a new world. So I have come here today to your campus to say that you can make their vision our reality. So let us from this moment begin our work so that in the future men will look back and say: It was then, after a long and weary way, that man turned the exploits of his genius to the full enrichment of his life.
Thank you. Goodbye."
It is a great pleasure to be here today. This university has been coeducational since 1870, but I do not believe it was on the basis of your accomplishments that a Detroit high school girl said, "In choosing a college, you first have to decide whether you want a coeducational school or an educational school."
Well, we can find both here at Michigan, although perhaps at different hours. I came out here today very anxious to meet the Michigan student whose father told a friend of mine that his son's education had been a real value. It stopped his mother from bragging about him.
I have come today from the turmoil of your Capital to the tranquility of your campus to speak about the future of your country.
The purpose of protecting the life of our Nation and preserving the liberty of our citizens is to pursue the happiness of our people. Our success in that pursuit is the test of our success as a Nation.
"For a century we labored to settle and to subdue a continent. For half a century we called upon unbounded invention and untiring industry to create an order of plenty for all of our people. The challenge of the next half century is whether we have the wisdom to use that wealth to enrich and elevate our national life, and to advance the quality of our American civilization.
Your imagination, your initiative, and your indignation will determine whether we build a society where progress is the servant of our needs, or a society where old values and new visions are buried under unbridled growth. For in your time we have the opportunity to move not only toward the rich society and the powerful society, but upward to the Great Society.
The Great Society rests on abundance and liberty for all. It demands an end to poverty and racial injustice, to which we are totally committed in our time. But that is just the beginning.
The Great Society is a place where every child can find knowledge to enrich his mind and to enlarge his talents. It is a place where leisure is a welcome chance to build and reflect, not a feared cause of boredom and restlessness. It is a place where the city of man serves not only the needs of the body and the demands of commerce but the desire for beauty and the hunger for community.
It is a place where man can renew contact with nature. It is a place which honors creation for its own sake and for what it adds to the understanding of the race. It is a place where men are more concerned with the quality of their goals than the quantity of their goods.
But most of all, the Great Society is not a safe harbor, a resting place, a final objective, a finished work. It is a challenge constantly renewed, beckoning us toward a destiny where the meaning of our lives matches the marvelous products of our labor.
So I want to talk to you today about three places where we begin to build the Great Society -- in our cities, in our countryside, and in our classrooms.
Many of you will live to see the day, perhaps 50 years from now, when there will be 400 million Americans -- four-fifths of them in urban areas. In the remainder of this century urban population will double, city land will double, and we will have to build homes, highways, and facilities equal to all those built since this country was first settled. So in the next 40 years we must rebuild the entire urban United States.
Aristotle said: "Men come together in cities in order to live, but they remain together in order to live the good life." It is harder and harder to live the good life in American cities today. The catalog of ills is long: there is the decay of the centers and the despoiling of the suburbs. There is not enough housing for our people or transportation for our traffic. Open land is vanishing and old landmarks are violated.
Worst of all, expansion is eroding the precious and time honored values of community with neighbors and communion with nature. The loss of these values breeds loneliness and boredom and indifference.
Our society will never be great until our cities are great. Today the frontier of imagination and innovation is inside those cities and not beyond their borders. New experiments are already going on. It will be the task of your generation to make the American city a place where future generations will come, not only to live but to live the good life.
I understand that if I stayed here tonight I would see that Michigan students are really doing their best to live the good life.
This is the place where the Peace Corps was started. It is inspiring to see how all of you, while you are in this country, are trying so hard to live at the level of the people.
A second place where we begin to build the Great Society is in our countryside. We have always prided ourselves on being not only America the strong and America the free, but America the beautiful. Today that beauty is in danger. The water we drink, the food we eat, the very air that we breathe, are threatened with pollution. Our parks are overcrowded, our seashores overburdened. Green fields and dense forests are disappearing.
A few years ago we were greatly concerned about the "Ugly American." Today we must act to prevent an ugly America.
For once the battle is lost, once our natural splendor is destroyed, it can never be recaptured. And once man can no longer walk with beauty or wonder at nature his spirit will wither and his sustenance be wasted.
A third place to build the Great Society is in the classrooms of America. There your children's lives will be shaped. Our society will not be great until every young mind is set free to scan the farthest reaches of thought and imagination. We are still far from that goal.
Today, 8 million adult Americans, more than the entire population of Michigan, have not finished 5 years of school. Nearly 20 million have not finished 8 years of school. Nearly 54 million -- more than one-quarter of all America -- have not even finished high school.
Each year more than 100,000 high school graduates, with proved ability, do not enter college because they cannot afford it. And if we cannot educate today's youth, what will we do in 1970 when elementary school enrollment will be 5 million greater than 1960? And high school enrollment will rise by 5 million. College enrollment will increase by more than 3 million.
In many places, classrooms are overcrowded and curricula are outdated. Most of our qualified teachers are underpaid, and many of our paid teachers are unqualified. So we must give every child a place to sit and a teacher to learn from. Poverty must not be a bar to learning, and learning must offer an escape from poverty. But more classrooms and more teachers are not enough. We must seek an educational system which grows in excellence as it grows in size. This means better training for our teachers. It means preparing youth to enjoy their hours of leisure as well as their hours of labor. It means exploring new techniques of teaching, to find new ways to stimulate the love of learning and the capacity for creation.
These are three of the central issues of the Great Society. While our Government has many programs directed at those issues, I do not pretend that we have the full answer to those problems.
But I do promise this: We are going to assemble the best thought and the broadest knowledge from all over the world to find those answers for America. I intend to establish working groups to prepare a series of White House conferences and meetings-on the cities, on natural beauty, on the quality of education, and on other emerging challenges. And from these meetings and from this inspiration and from these studies we will begin to set our course toward the Great Society.
The solution to these problems does not rest on a massive program in Washington, nor can it rely solely on the strained resources of local authority. They require us to create new concepts of cooperation, a creative federalism, between the National Capital and the leaders of local communities.
Woodrow Wilson once wrote: "Every man sent out from his university should be a man of his Nation as well as a man of his time."
Within your lifetime powerful forces, already loosed, will take us toward a way of life beyond the realm of our experience, almost beyond the bounds of our imagination.
For better or for worse, your generation has been appointed by history to deal with those problems and to lead America toward a new age. You have the chance never before afforded to any people in any age. You can help build a society where the demands of morality, and the needs of the spirit, can be realized in the life of the Nation.
So, will you join in the battle to give every citizen the full equality which God enjoins and the law requires, whatever his belief, or race, or the color of his skin? Will you join in the battle to give every citizen an escape from the crushing weight of poverty?
Will you join in the battle to make it possible for all nations to live in enduring peace as neighbors and not as mortal enemies?
Will you join in the battle to build the Great Society, to prove that our material progress is only the foundation on which we will build a richer life of mind and spirit?
There are those timid souls who say this battle cannot be won; that we are condemned to a soulless wealth. I do not agree. We have the power to shape the civilization that we want. But we need your will, your labor, your hearts, if we are to build that kind of society.
Those who came to this land sought to build more than just a new country.
They sought a new world. So I have come here today to your campus to say that you can make their vision our reality. So let us from this moment begin our work so that in the future men will look back and say: It was then, after a long and weary way, that man turned the exploits of his genius to the full enrichment of his life.
Thank you. Goodbye."
Self-Awareness
Self-awareness is the explicit understanding that one exists. Furthermore, it includes the concept that one exists as an individual, separate from other people, with private thoughts. It may also include the understanding that other people are similarly self-aware.
Self-consciousness is credited only with the development of identity (see the self). In an epistemological (theory of knowledge) sense, self-consciousness is a personal understanding of the very core of one's own identity. It is during periods of self-consciousness that people come the closest to knowing themselves objectively. Jean Paul Sartre describes self-consciousness as being "non-positional", in that it is not from any location in particular.
Self-consciousness plays a large role in behavior, as it is common to act differently when people "lose one's self in a crowd". It is the basis for human traits, such as accountability and conscientiousness. Self-consciousness affects people in varying degrees, as some people self-monitor (or scrutinize) themselves more than others. Different cultures vary in the importance they place on self-consciousness.
John Godfrey Saxe's ( 1816-1887) version of the famous Indian legend,
It was six men of Indostan
To learning much inclined,
Who went to see the Elephant
(Though all of them were blind),
That each by observation
Might satisfy his mind.
The First approach'd the Elephant,
And happening to fall
Against his broad and sturdy side,
At once began to bawl:
"God bless me! but the Elephant
Is very like a wall!"
The Second, feeling of the tusk,
Cried, -"Ho! what have we here
So very round and smooth and sharp?
To me 'tis mighty clear
This wonder of an Elephant
Is very like a spear!"
The Third approached the animal,
And happening to take
The squirming trunk within his hands,
Thus boldly up and spake:
"I see," quoth he, "the Elephant
Is very like a snake!"
The Fourth reached out his eager hand,
And felt about the knee.
"What most this wondrous beast is like
Is mighty plain," quoth he,
"'Tis clear enough the Elephant
Is very like a tree!"
The Fifth, who chanced to touch the ear,
Said: "E'en the blindest man
Can tell what this resembles most;
Deny the fact who can,
This marvel of an Elephant
Is very like a fan!"
The Sixth no sooner had begun
About the beast to grope,
Then, seizing on the swinging tail
That fell within his scope,
"I see," quoth he, "the Elephant
Is very like a rope!"
And so these men of Indostan
Disputed loud and long,
Each in his own opinion
Exceeding stiff and strong,
Though each was partly in the right,
And all were in the wrong!
MORAL:
So oft in theologic wars,
The disputants, I ween,
Rail on in utter ignorance
Of what each other mean,
And prate about an Elephant
Not one of them has seen!
Self-consciousness is credited only with the development of identity (see the self). In an epistemological (theory of knowledge) sense, self-consciousness is a personal understanding of the very core of one's own identity. It is during periods of self-consciousness that people come the closest to knowing themselves objectively. Jean Paul Sartre describes self-consciousness as being "non-positional", in that it is not from any location in particular.
Self-consciousness plays a large role in behavior, as it is common to act differently when people "lose one's self in a crowd". It is the basis for human traits, such as accountability and conscientiousness. Self-consciousness affects people in varying degrees, as some people self-monitor (or scrutinize) themselves more than others. Different cultures vary in the importance they place on self-consciousness.
John Godfrey Saxe's ( 1816-1887) version of the famous Indian legend,
It was six men of Indostan
To learning much inclined,
Who went to see the Elephant
(Though all of them were blind),
That each by observation
Might satisfy his mind.
The First approach'd the Elephant,
And happening to fall
Against his broad and sturdy side,
At once began to bawl:
"God bless me! but the Elephant
Is very like a wall!"
The Second, feeling of the tusk,
Cried, -"Ho! what have we here
So very round and smooth and sharp?
To me 'tis mighty clear
This wonder of an Elephant
Is very like a spear!"
The Third approached the animal,
And happening to take
The squirming trunk within his hands,
Thus boldly up and spake:
"I see," quoth he, "the Elephant
Is very like a snake!"
The Fourth reached out his eager hand,
And felt about the knee.
"What most this wondrous beast is like
Is mighty plain," quoth he,
"'Tis clear enough the Elephant
Is very like a tree!"
The Fifth, who chanced to touch the ear,
Said: "E'en the blindest man
Can tell what this resembles most;
Deny the fact who can,
This marvel of an Elephant
Is very like a fan!"
The Sixth no sooner had begun
About the beast to grope,
Then, seizing on the swinging tail
That fell within his scope,
"I see," quoth he, "the Elephant
Is very like a rope!"
And so these men of Indostan
Disputed loud and long,
Each in his own opinion
Exceeding stiff and strong,
Though each was partly in the right,
And all were in the wrong!
MORAL:
So oft in theologic wars,
The disputants, I ween,
Rail on in utter ignorance
Of what each other mean,
And prate about an Elephant
Not one of them has seen!
Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs
Jacob Maslow's hierarchy of needs is a theory in psychology, proposed by Abraham Maslow in his 1943 paper A Theory of Human Motivation. Maslow studied exemplary people such as Albert Einstein, Jane Addams, Eleanor Roosevelt, and Frederick Douglass rather than mentally ill or neurotic people, writing that "the study of crippled, stunted, immature, and unhealthy specimens can yield only a cripple psychology and a cripple philosophy.
This diagram shows Maslow's hierarchy of needs, represented as a pyramid with the more primitive needs at the bottom. Maslow's hierarchy of needs is often depicted as a pyramid consisting of five levels: the four lower levels are grouped together as being associated with Physiological needs, while the top level is termed growth needs associated with psychological needs. Deficiency needs must be met first. Once these are met, seeking to satisfy growth needs drives personal growth. The higher needs in this hierarchy only come into focus when the lower needs in the pyramid are satisfied. Once an individual has moved upwards to the next level, needs in the lower level will no longer be prioritized. If a lower set of needs is no longer being met, the individual will temporarily re-prioritize those needs by focusing attention on the unfulfilled needs, but will not permanently regress to the lower level. For instance, a businessman at the esteem level who is diagnosed with cancer will spend a great deal of time concentrating on his health (physiological needs), but will continue to value his work performance (esteem needs) and will likely return to work during periods of remission.
Deficiency needs
The first four layers of the pyramid are what Maslow called "deficiency needs" or "D-needs": if they are not met, the body gives no indication of it physically, but the individual feels anxious and tense. The deficiency needs are: survival needs, safety and security, love and belonging, and esteem.
Physiological needs
These are the basic human needs for such things as food, warmth, water, and other bodily needs. If a person is hungry or thirsty or their body is chemically unbalanced, all of their energies turn toward remedying these deficiencies and other needs remain inactive. Maslow explains that, "Anyone who attempts to make an emergency picture into a typical one and who will measure all of man's goals and desires by his[her] behavior during extreme physiological deprivation, is certainly blind to many things. It is quite true that man lives by bread alone — when there is no bread".
The physiological needs of the organism take first precedence. These consist mainly of (in order of importance):
• Breathing
• Drinking
• Eating
• Excretion
If some needs are not fulfilled, a person's physiological needs take the highest priority. Physiological needs can control thoughts and behaviors and can cause people to feel sickness, pain and discomfort.
Safety needs
With their physical needs relatively satisfied, the individual's safety needs take over and dominate their behavior. These needs have to do with people's yearning for a predictable, orderly world in which injustice and inconsistency are under control, the familiar frequent and the unfamiliar rare. In the world of work, these safety needs manifest themselves in such things as a preference for job security, grievance procedures for protecting the individual from unilateral authority, savings accounts, insurance policies and the like.
For the most part physiological and safety needs are reasonably well satisfied in the first world. The obvious exceptions, of course, are people outside the mainstream — the poor and the disadvantaged. If frustration has not led to apathy and weakness, such people still struggle to satisfy the basic physiological and safety needs. They are primarily concerned with survival: obtaining adequate food, clothing, shelter, and seeking justice from the dominant societal groups.
Safety and Security needs include:
• Personal security from crime
• Financial security
• Health and well-being
• Safety net against accidents/illness and the adverse impacts
Social needs
After physiological and safety needs are fulfilled, the third layer of human needs is social. This psychological aspect of Maslow's hierarchy involves emotionally-based relationships in general, such as:
• friendship
• intimacy
• having a supportive and communicative family
Humans need to feel a sense of belonging and acceptance, whether it comes from a large social group, such as clubs, office culture, religious groups, professional organizations, sports teams, gangs, ("Safety in numbers") or small social connections (family members, intimate partners, mentors, close colleagues, confidants). They need to love and be loved (sexually and non-sexually) by others. In the absence of these elements, many people become susceptible to loneliness, social anxiety, and depression. This need for belonging can often overcome the physiological and security needs, depending on the strength of the peer pressure. e.g. an anorexic ignores the need to eat and the security of health for a feeling of control and belonging.
Esteem needs
All humans have a need to be respected, to have self-esteem, self-respect, and to respect others. People need to engage themselves to gain recognition and have an activity or activities that give the person a sense of contribution, to feel accepted and self-valued, be it in a profession or hobby. Imbalances at this level can result in low self-esteem, inferiority complexes. People with low self-esteem need respect from others. They may seek fame or glory, which again depends on others. However confidence, competence and achievement only need one person and everyone else is inconsequential to one's own success. It may be noted, however, that many people with low self-esteem will not be able to improve their view of themselves simply by receiving fame, respect, and glory externally, but must first accept themselves internally. Psychological imbalances such as depression can also prevent one from obtaining self-esteem on both levels.
Growth needs
Though the deficiency needs may be seen as "basic", and can be met and neutralized (i.e. they stop being motivators in one's life), self-actualization and transcendence are "being" or "growth needs" (also termed "B-needs"), i.e. they are enduring motivations or drivers of behavior.
Aesthetic needs
Based on Maslow's beliefs, it is stated in the hierarchy humans need beautiful imagery or something new and aesthetically pleasing to continue up towards Self-Actualization. Humans need to refresh themselves in the presence and beauty of nature while carefully absorbing and observing their surroundings to extract the beauty the world has to offer.
Self-actualization
Self-actualization is the instinctual need of humans to make the most of their abilities and to strive to be the best they can. Working toward fulfilling our potential, toward becoming all that we are capable of becoming.
In Maslow's scheme, the final stage of psychological development comes when the individual feels assured that their physiological, security, affiliation and affection, self-respect and recognition needs have been satisfied. As these become dormant, they become filled with a desire to realize all of their potential for being an effective, creative, mature human being. "What a man can be, he must be", is the way Maslow expresses it.
Maslow's need hierarchy is set forth as a general proposition and does not imply that everyone's needs follow the same rigid pattern. For some people, self-esteem seems to be a stronger motivation than love. Mussolini, for example, alienated his closest friends by undertaking reckless military adventures to achieve status as a conqueror. For some people, the need to create is often a stronger motivation than the need for food and safety. Thus, the artist living in poverty is a classic example of reversing the standard hierarchy of needs. Similarly, persons who have suffered hunger or some other deprivation for protracted periods may live happily for the rest of their lives if only they can get enough of what they lacked. In this case, the level of aspiration may have become permanently lowered and the higher-order, less pre-potent needs may never become active. There are also cases of people's martyring themselves for causes and suffering all kinds of deprivations, particularly in the physiological, safety, and sometimes social categories, to achieve their aims.
Maslow writes the following of self-actualizing people:
• They embrace the facts and realities of the world (including themselves) rather than denying or avoiding them.
• They are spontaneous in their ideas and actions.
• They are creative.
• They are interested in solving problems; this often includes the problems of others. Solving these problems is often a key focus in their lives.
• They feel a closeness to other people, and generally appreciate life.
• They have a system of morality that is fully internalized and independent of external authority.
• They have discernment and are able to view all things in an objective manner.
To further confound the problem of understanding motivation, Maslow points out that motives are not always conscious. In the average person, he believes, they are more often unconscious than conscious — showing the influence on his thinking of Freudian psychologists who have long been concerned with the hidden causes of human behavior.
In Maslow's theory, then, human needs are arranged in a hierarchy of importance. Needs emerge only when higher-priority needs have been satisfied. By the same token, satisfied needs no longer influence behavior. This point seems worth stressing to managers and administrators, who often mistakenly assume that money and other tangible incentives are the only cures for morale and productivity problems. It may be, however, that the need to participate, to be recognized, to be creative, and to experience a sense of worth are better motivators in an affluent society, where many have already achieved an acceptable measure of freedom from hunger and threats to security and personal safety, and are now driven by higher-order psychological needs.
In short, self-actualization is reaching one's fullest potential. However, to further clarify “There are certain conditions which are immediate prerequisites for the basic need satisfactions.” Such conditions as freedom to speak, freedom to do what one wishes so long as no harm is done to others, freedom to express one's self, freedom to investigate and seek for information, freedom to defend one's self, justice, fairness, honesty, orderliness in the group are examples of such preconditions for basic need satisfactions.
According to Maslow, the tendencies of self-actualizing people are as follows:
1. Awareness
• efficient perception of reality
• freshness of appreciation
• peak experiences
• ethical awareness
2. Honesty
• philosophical sense of humor
• social interest
• deep interpersonal relationships
• democratic character structure
3. Freedom
• need for solitude
• autonomous, independent
• creativity, originality
• spontaneous
4. Trust
• problem centered
• acceptance of self, others, nature
• resistance to enculturation - identity with humanity
Maslow discovered that healthy individuals are motivated toward what he termed self-actualization, and noted that Self-actualizing people had strikingly similar characteristics. He described self-actualization as:
“an episode or spurt in which the powers of the person come together in a particularly and intensely enjoyable way and in which they are more integrated and less split, more open for experience, more idiosyncratic, more perfectly expressive or spontaneous, or fully functioning, more creative, more humorous, more ego-transcending, more independent of their lower needs, etc. They become in these episodes more truly themselves, more perfectly actualizing their potentialities, closer to the core of their being, more fully human. Not only are these their happiest and most thrilling moments but they are also moments of greatest maturity, individuation, fulfillment - in a word, their healthiest moments.”
Self-actualizing people, those who have come to a high level of maturation, health and self-fulfillment, have so much to teach us that sometimes they seem almost like a different breed of human being.
This diagram shows Maslow's hierarchy of needs, represented as a pyramid with the more primitive needs at the bottom. Maslow's hierarchy of needs is often depicted as a pyramid consisting of five levels: the four lower levels are grouped together as being associated with Physiological needs, while the top level is termed growth needs associated with psychological needs. Deficiency needs must be met first. Once these are met, seeking to satisfy growth needs drives personal growth. The higher needs in this hierarchy only come into focus when the lower needs in the pyramid are satisfied. Once an individual has moved upwards to the next level, needs in the lower level will no longer be prioritized. If a lower set of needs is no longer being met, the individual will temporarily re-prioritize those needs by focusing attention on the unfulfilled needs, but will not permanently regress to the lower level. For instance, a businessman at the esteem level who is diagnosed with cancer will spend a great deal of time concentrating on his health (physiological needs), but will continue to value his work performance (esteem needs) and will likely return to work during periods of remission.
Deficiency needs
The first four layers of the pyramid are what Maslow called "deficiency needs" or "D-needs": if they are not met, the body gives no indication of it physically, but the individual feels anxious and tense. The deficiency needs are: survival needs, safety and security, love and belonging, and esteem.
Physiological needs
These are the basic human needs for such things as food, warmth, water, and other bodily needs. If a person is hungry or thirsty or their body is chemically unbalanced, all of their energies turn toward remedying these deficiencies and other needs remain inactive. Maslow explains that, "Anyone who attempts to make an emergency picture into a typical one and who will measure all of man's goals and desires by his[her] behavior during extreme physiological deprivation, is certainly blind to many things. It is quite true that man lives by bread alone — when there is no bread".
The physiological needs of the organism take first precedence. These consist mainly of (in order of importance):
• Breathing
• Drinking
• Eating
• Excretion
If some needs are not fulfilled, a person's physiological needs take the highest priority. Physiological needs can control thoughts and behaviors and can cause people to feel sickness, pain and discomfort.
Safety needs
With their physical needs relatively satisfied, the individual's safety needs take over and dominate their behavior. These needs have to do with people's yearning for a predictable, orderly world in which injustice and inconsistency are under control, the familiar frequent and the unfamiliar rare. In the world of work, these safety needs manifest themselves in such things as a preference for job security, grievance procedures for protecting the individual from unilateral authority, savings accounts, insurance policies and the like.
For the most part physiological and safety needs are reasonably well satisfied in the first world. The obvious exceptions, of course, are people outside the mainstream — the poor and the disadvantaged. If frustration has not led to apathy and weakness, such people still struggle to satisfy the basic physiological and safety needs. They are primarily concerned with survival: obtaining adequate food, clothing, shelter, and seeking justice from the dominant societal groups.
Safety and Security needs include:
• Personal security from crime
• Financial security
• Health and well-being
• Safety net against accidents/illness and the adverse impacts
Social needs
After physiological and safety needs are fulfilled, the third layer of human needs is social. This psychological aspect of Maslow's hierarchy involves emotionally-based relationships in general, such as:
• friendship
• intimacy
• having a supportive and communicative family
Humans need to feel a sense of belonging and acceptance, whether it comes from a large social group, such as clubs, office culture, religious groups, professional organizations, sports teams, gangs, ("Safety in numbers") or small social connections (family members, intimate partners, mentors, close colleagues, confidants). They need to love and be loved (sexually and non-sexually) by others. In the absence of these elements, many people become susceptible to loneliness, social anxiety, and depression. This need for belonging can often overcome the physiological and security needs, depending on the strength of the peer pressure. e.g. an anorexic ignores the need to eat and the security of health for a feeling of control and belonging.
Esteem needs
All humans have a need to be respected, to have self-esteem, self-respect, and to respect others. People need to engage themselves to gain recognition and have an activity or activities that give the person a sense of contribution, to feel accepted and self-valued, be it in a profession or hobby. Imbalances at this level can result in low self-esteem, inferiority complexes. People with low self-esteem need respect from others. They may seek fame or glory, which again depends on others. However confidence, competence and achievement only need one person and everyone else is inconsequential to one's own success. It may be noted, however, that many people with low self-esteem will not be able to improve their view of themselves simply by receiving fame, respect, and glory externally, but must first accept themselves internally. Psychological imbalances such as depression can also prevent one from obtaining self-esteem on both levels.
Growth needs
Though the deficiency needs may be seen as "basic", and can be met and neutralized (i.e. they stop being motivators in one's life), self-actualization and transcendence are "being" or "growth needs" (also termed "B-needs"), i.e. they are enduring motivations or drivers of behavior.
Aesthetic needs
Based on Maslow's beliefs, it is stated in the hierarchy humans need beautiful imagery or something new and aesthetically pleasing to continue up towards Self-Actualization. Humans need to refresh themselves in the presence and beauty of nature while carefully absorbing and observing their surroundings to extract the beauty the world has to offer.
Self-actualization
Self-actualization is the instinctual need of humans to make the most of their abilities and to strive to be the best they can. Working toward fulfilling our potential, toward becoming all that we are capable of becoming.
In Maslow's scheme, the final stage of psychological development comes when the individual feels assured that their physiological, security, affiliation and affection, self-respect and recognition needs have been satisfied. As these become dormant, they become filled with a desire to realize all of their potential for being an effective, creative, mature human being. "What a man can be, he must be", is the way Maslow expresses it.
Maslow's need hierarchy is set forth as a general proposition and does not imply that everyone's needs follow the same rigid pattern. For some people, self-esteem seems to be a stronger motivation than love. Mussolini, for example, alienated his closest friends by undertaking reckless military adventures to achieve status as a conqueror. For some people, the need to create is often a stronger motivation than the need for food and safety. Thus, the artist living in poverty is a classic example of reversing the standard hierarchy of needs. Similarly, persons who have suffered hunger or some other deprivation for protracted periods may live happily for the rest of their lives if only they can get enough of what they lacked. In this case, the level of aspiration may have become permanently lowered and the higher-order, less pre-potent needs may never become active. There are also cases of people's martyring themselves for causes and suffering all kinds of deprivations, particularly in the physiological, safety, and sometimes social categories, to achieve their aims.
Maslow writes the following of self-actualizing people:
• They embrace the facts and realities of the world (including themselves) rather than denying or avoiding them.
• They are spontaneous in their ideas and actions.
• They are creative.
• They are interested in solving problems; this often includes the problems of others. Solving these problems is often a key focus in their lives.
• They feel a closeness to other people, and generally appreciate life.
• They have a system of morality that is fully internalized and independent of external authority.
• They have discernment and are able to view all things in an objective manner.
To further confound the problem of understanding motivation, Maslow points out that motives are not always conscious. In the average person, he believes, they are more often unconscious than conscious — showing the influence on his thinking of Freudian psychologists who have long been concerned with the hidden causes of human behavior.
In Maslow's theory, then, human needs are arranged in a hierarchy of importance. Needs emerge only when higher-priority needs have been satisfied. By the same token, satisfied needs no longer influence behavior. This point seems worth stressing to managers and administrators, who often mistakenly assume that money and other tangible incentives are the only cures for morale and productivity problems. It may be, however, that the need to participate, to be recognized, to be creative, and to experience a sense of worth are better motivators in an affluent society, where many have already achieved an acceptable measure of freedom from hunger and threats to security and personal safety, and are now driven by higher-order psychological needs.
In short, self-actualization is reaching one's fullest potential. However, to further clarify “There are certain conditions which are immediate prerequisites for the basic need satisfactions.” Such conditions as freedom to speak, freedom to do what one wishes so long as no harm is done to others, freedom to express one's self, freedom to investigate and seek for information, freedom to defend one's self, justice, fairness, honesty, orderliness in the group are examples of such preconditions for basic need satisfactions.
According to Maslow, the tendencies of self-actualizing people are as follows:
1. Awareness
• efficient perception of reality
• freshness of appreciation
• peak experiences
• ethical awareness
2. Honesty
• philosophical sense of humor
• social interest
• deep interpersonal relationships
• democratic character structure
3. Freedom
• need for solitude
• autonomous, independent
• creativity, originality
• spontaneous
4. Trust
• problem centered
• acceptance of self, others, nature
• resistance to enculturation - identity with humanity
Maslow discovered that healthy individuals are motivated toward what he termed self-actualization, and noted that Self-actualizing people had strikingly similar characteristics. He described self-actualization as:
“an episode or spurt in which the powers of the person come together in a particularly and intensely enjoyable way and in which they are more integrated and less split, more open for experience, more idiosyncratic, more perfectly expressive or spontaneous, or fully functioning, more creative, more humorous, more ego-transcending, more independent of their lower needs, etc. They become in these episodes more truly themselves, more perfectly actualizing their potentialities, closer to the core of their being, more fully human. Not only are these their happiest and most thrilling moments but they are also moments of greatest maturity, individuation, fulfillment - in a word, their healthiest moments.”
Self-actualizing people, those who have come to a high level of maturation, health and self-fulfillment, have so much to teach us that sometimes they seem almost like a different breed of human being.
Johari Window
1. Known to Self
2. Not Known to Self
3. Known to Others
4. Not Known to Others
The Johari Window, named after the first names of its inventors, Joseph Luft and Harry Ingham, is a model used to describe the process of human interaction. A four paned "window," as illustrated above, divides personal awareness into four different types, as represented by its four quadrants: open, hidden, blind, and unknown. The lines dividing the four panes are like window shades, which can move as an interaction progresses.
In this model, each person is represented by their own window. Let's describe mine:
1. The "open" quadrant represents things that both I know about myself, and that you know about me. For example, I know my name, and so do you, and you know some of my interests. The knowledge that the window represents, can include not only factual information, but my feelings, motives, behaviors, wants, needs and desires, information describing who I am. When I first meet a new person, the size of the opening of this first quadrant is not very large, since there has been little time to exchange information. As the process of getting to know one another continues, the window shades move down or to the right, placing more information into the open window, as described below.
2. The "blind" quadrant represents things that you know about me, but that I am unaware of. For example, we could be eating at a restaurant, and I may have unknowingly gotten some food on my face. This information is in my blind quadrant because you can see it, but I cannot. I f you now tell me that I have something on my face, then the window shade moves to the right, enlarging the open quadrant's area. Now, I may also have blind spots with respect to many other much more complex things. For example, perhaps in our ongoing conversation, you may notice that eye contact seems to be lacking. You may not say anything, since you may not want to embarrass me, or you may draw your own inferences that perhaps I am being insincere. Then the problem is, how can I get this information out in the open, since it may be affecting the level of trust that is developing between us? How can I learn more about myself? Unfortunately, there is no readily available answer. I may notice a slight hesitation on your part, and perhaps this may lead to a question. But who knows if I will pick this up, or if your answer will be on the mark.
3. The "hidden" quadrant represents things that I know about myself, that you do not know. So for example, I have not told you, nor ever mentioned, I am attracted to women. This information is in my "hidden" quadrant. As soon as I tell you that I am in love with Megan Fox, I am effectively pulling the window shade down, moving the information in my hidden quadrant and enlarging the open quadrant's area. Again, there are vast amounts of information, virtually my whole life's story, that has yet to be revealed to you. As we get to know and trust each other, I will then feel more comfortable disclosing more intimate details about myself. This process is called: "Self-disclosure."
4. The "unknown" quadrant represents things that neither I know about myself, nor you know about me. For example, I may disclose a dream that I had, and as we both attempt to understand its significance, a new awareness may emerge, known to neither of us before the conversation took place. Being placed in new situations often reveal new information not previously known to self or others. For example, I learned of the Johari window at a workshop conducted by a Japanese American psychiatrist in the early 1980's. During this workshop, he created a safe atmosphere of care and trust between the various participants. Usually, I am terrified of speaking in public, but I was surprised to learn that in such an atmosphere, the task need not be so daunting. Prior to this event, I had viewed myself and others had also viewed me as being extremely shy. Thus, a novel situation can trigger new awareness and personal growth. The process of moving previously unknown information into the open quadrant, thus enlarging its area, has been likened to Maslow's concept of self-actualization. The process can also be viewed as a game, where the open quadrant is synonymous with the win-win situation.
2. Not Known to Self
3. Known to Others
4. Not Known to Others
The Johari Window, named after the first names of its inventors, Joseph Luft and Harry Ingham, is a model used to describe the process of human interaction. A four paned "window," as illustrated above, divides personal awareness into four different types, as represented by its four quadrants: open, hidden, blind, and unknown. The lines dividing the four panes are like window shades, which can move as an interaction progresses.
In this model, each person is represented by their own window. Let's describe mine:
1. The "open" quadrant represents things that both I know about myself, and that you know about me. For example, I know my name, and so do you, and you know some of my interests. The knowledge that the window represents, can include not only factual information, but my feelings, motives, behaviors, wants, needs and desires, information describing who I am. When I first meet a new person, the size of the opening of this first quadrant is not very large, since there has been little time to exchange information. As the process of getting to know one another continues, the window shades move down or to the right, placing more information into the open window, as described below.
2. The "blind" quadrant represents things that you know about me, but that I am unaware of. For example, we could be eating at a restaurant, and I may have unknowingly gotten some food on my face. This information is in my blind quadrant because you can see it, but I cannot. I f you now tell me that I have something on my face, then the window shade moves to the right, enlarging the open quadrant's area. Now, I may also have blind spots with respect to many other much more complex things. For example, perhaps in our ongoing conversation, you may notice that eye contact seems to be lacking. You may not say anything, since you may not want to embarrass me, or you may draw your own inferences that perhaps I am being insincere. Then the problem is, how can I get this information out in the open, since it may be affecting the level of trust that is developing between us? How can I learn more about myself? Unfortunately, there is no readily available answer. I may notice a slight hesitation on your part, and perhaps this may lead to a question. But who knows if I will pick this up, or if your answer will be on the mark.
3. The "hidden" quadrant represents things that I know about myself, that you do not know. So for example, I have not told you, nor ever mentioned, I am attracted to women. This information is in my "hidden" quadrant. As soon as I tell you that I am in love with Megan Fox, I am effectively pulling the window shade down, moving the information in my hidden quadrant and enlarging the open quadrant's area. Again, there are vast amounts of information, virtually my whole life's story, that has yet to be revealed to you. As we get to know and trust each other, I will then feel more comfortable disclosing more intimate details about myself. This process is called: "Self-disclosure."
4. The "unknown" quadrant represents things that neither I know about myself, nor you know about me. For example, I may disclose a dream that I had, and as we both attempt to understand its significance, a new awareness may emerge, known to neither of us before the conversation took place. Being placed in new situations often reveal new information not previously known to self or others. For example, I learned of the Johari window at a workshop conducted by a Japanese American psychiatrist in the early 1980's. During this workshop, he created a safe atmosphere of care and trust between the various participants. Usually, I am terrified of speaking in public, but I was surprised to learn that in such an atmosphere, the task need not be so daunting. Prior to this event, I had viewed myself and others had also viewed me as being extremely shy. Thus, a novel situation can trigger new awareness and personal growth. The process of moving previously unknown information into the open quadrant, thus enlarging its area, has been likened to Maslow's concept of self-actualization. The process can also be viewed as a game, where the open quadrant is synonymous with the win-win situation.
Id, Ego, and Super-Ego
Id, ego, and super-ego are the three parts of the "psychic apparatus" defined in Freud's structural model of the psyche. According to this model, the uncoordinated instinctual trends are the "id"; the organized realistic part of the psyche is the "ego," and the critical and moralizing function the "super-ego." Freud's proposal was influenced by the ambiguity of the term "unconscious" and its many conflicting uses. The terms "id," "ego," and "super-ego" are not Freud's own but are Latinisations originating from translations ; Freud wrote of "das Es," "das Ich," and "das Über-Ich"—respectively, "the It," "the I," and the "Over-I" (or "Upper-I"); in German Freud's original terms are more or less self-explanatory.
Id
The Id comprises the unorganized part of the personality structure that contains the basic drives. The Id is unconscious by definition. In Freud's formulation,
“It is the dark, inaccessible part of our personality, what little we know of it we have learnt from our study of the dream-work and of the construction of neurotic symptoms, and most of this is of a negative character and can be described only as a contrast to the ego. We approach the id with analogies: we call it a chaos, a cauldron full of seething excitations. It is filled with energy reaching it from the instincts, but it has no organization, produces no collective will, but only a striving to bring about the satisfaction of the instinctual needs subject to the observance of the pleasure principle.” Freud, New Introductory Lectures on Psychoanalysis (1933)
Developmentally, the Id is anterior to the ego; i.e. the psychic apparatus begins, at birth, as an undifferentiated id, part of which then develops into a structured ego. Thus, the id "contains everything that is inherited, that is present at birth, that is laid down in the constitution -- above all, therefore, the instincts, which originate from the somatic organization and which find a first psychical expression in the id in forms unknown to us".
The mind of a newborn child is regarded as completely "id-ridden", in the sense that it is a mass of instinctive drives and impulses, and demands immediate satisfaction. This view equates a newborn child with an id-ridden individual with this analogy: an alimentary tract with no sense of responsibility at either end.
The id is responsible for our basic drives such as food, sex, and aggressive impulses. It is amoral and egocentric, ruled by the pleasure–pain principle; it is without a sense of time, completely illogical, primarily sexual, infantile in its emotional development, and will not take "no" for an answer. It is regarded as the reservoir of the libido or "love energy". The id stands in direct opposition to the super-ego. Freud divided the id's drives and instincts into two categories: life and death instincts. Life instincts are those that are crucial to pleasurable survival, such as eating and copulation. Death instincts are our unconscious wish to die, as death puts an end to the everyday struggles for happiness and survival. Freud noticed the death instinct in our desire for peace and attempts to escape reality through fiction, media, and substances such as alcohol and drugs. It also indirectly represents itself through aggression.
Ego
The Ego comprises that organized part of the personality structure which includes defensive, perceptual, intellectual-cognitive, and executive functions. Conscious awareness resides in the ego, although not all of the operations of the ego are conscious.
“The ego is that part of the id which has been modified by the direct influence of the external world. The ego represents what may be called reason and common sense, in contrast to the id, which contains the passions, in its relation to the id it is like a man on horseback, who has to hold in check the superior strength of the horse.” [Freud, The Ego and the Id (1923)]
In Freud's theory, the ego mediates among the id, the super-ego and the external world. Its task is to find a balance between primitive drives and reality (the Ego devoid of morality at this level) while satisfying the id and super-ego. Its main concern is with the individual's safety and allows some of the id's desires to be expressed, but only when consequences of these actions are marginal. Ego defense mechanisms are often used by the ego when id behavior conflicts with reality and either society's morals, norms, and taboos or the individual's expectations as a result of the internalization of these morals, norms, and their taboos.
The word ego is taken directly from Latin, where it is the nominative of the first person singular personal pronoun and is translated as "I myself" to express emphasis. The Latin term ego is used in English to translate Freud's German term Das Ich, which literally means "the I". In modern-day society, ego has many meanings. It could mean one’s self-esteem; an inflated sense of self-worth; or in philosophical terms, one’s self. However, according to Freud, the ego is the part of the mind which contains the consciousness.
The ego is the mediator between the id and the super-ego, trying to ensure that the needs of both the id and the super-ego are satisfied. It is said to operate on a reality principle, meaning it deals with the id and the super-ego; allowing them to express their desires, drives and morals in realistic and socially appropriate ways. It is said that the ego stands for reason and caution, developing with age. Sigmund Freud had used an analogy which likened the ego to a rider and a horse; the ego being the rider while the id being the horse. The horse provides the energy and the means of obtaining the energy and information need, while the rider ultimately controls the direction it wants to go. However, due to unfavorable conditions, sometimes the horse makes its own decisions over the rocky terrain.
When the ego is personified, it is like a slave to three harsh masters: the id, the super-ego and the external world. It has to do its best to suit all three, thus is constantly feeling hemmed by the danger of causing discontent on two other sides. It is said, however, that the ego seems to be more loyal to the id, preferring to gloss over the finer details of reality to minimize conflicts while pretending to have a regard for reality. But the super-ego is constantly watching every one of the ego's moves and punishes it with feelings of guilt, anxiety, and inferiority. To overcome this, this ego employs methods of defense mechanism. Denial, displacement, intellectualization, fantasy, compensation, projection, rationalization, reaction formation, regression, repression and sublimation were the defense mechanisms Freud identified. Other identified defense mechanisms include: undoing, suppression, dissociation, idealization, identification, introjections, inversion, somatisation, splitting and substitution.
Super-Ego
The Super-ego comprises that organized part of the personality structure, mainly but not entirely unconscious, that includes the individual's ego ideals, spiritual goals, and the psychic agency (commonly called 'conscience') that criticizes and prohibits his or her drives, fantasies, feelings, and actions.
Freud's theory implies that the super-ego is a symbolic internalization of the father figure and cultural regulations. The super-ego tends to stand in opposition to the desires of the id because of their conflicting objectives, and its aggressiveness towards the ego. The super-ego acts as the conscience, maintaining our sense of morality and proscription from taboos.
The super-ego retains the character of the father; the more rapidly it succumbed to repression (under the influence of authority, religious teaching, schooling and reading), the stricter will be the domination of the super-ego over the ego later on — in the form of conscience or perhaps of an unconscious sense of guilt.
In Sigmund Freud's work Civilization and Its Discontents (1930) he also discusses the concept of a "cultural super-ego". Women allegedly do not identify with the father, and therefore form a weak super-ego, leaving them susceptible to immorality and sexual identity complications.
"The ego is not sharply separated from the id; its lower portion merges into it.... But the repressed merges into the id as well, and is merely a part of it. The repressed is only cut off sharply from the ego by the resistances of repression; it can communicate with the ego through the id." (Sigmund Freud, 1923)
Advantages of the structural model
The partition of the psyche defined in the structural model is one that 'cuts across' the topographical model's partition of 'conscious vs. unconscious'. Its value lies in the increased degree of diversification: although the Id is unconscious by definition, the Ego and the Super-ego are both partly conscious and partly unconscious.
With this model Freud achieved a more systematic classification of mental disorder than had been available previously:
"Transference neuroses correspond to a conflict between the ego and the id; narcissistic neuroses, to a conflict between the ego and the superego; and psychoses, to one between the ego and the external world" [Freud, "Neurosis and Psychosis" (1923)].
Id
The Id comprises the unorganized part of the personality structure that contains the basic drives. The Id is unconscious by definition. In Freud's formulation,
“It is the dark, inaccessible part of our personality, what little we know of it we have learnt from our study of the dream-work and of the construction of neurotic symptoms, and most of this is of a negative character and can be described only as a contrast to the ego. We approach the id with analogies: we call it a chaos, a cauldron full of seething excitations. It is filled with energy reaching it from the instincts, but it has no organization, produces no collective will, but only a striving to bring about the satisfaction of the instinctual needs subject to the observance of the pleasure principle.” Freud, New Introductory Lectures on Psychoanalysis (1933)
Developmentally, the Id is anterior to the ego; i.e. the psychic apparatus begins, at birth, as an undifferentiated id, part of which then develops into a structured ego. Thus, the id "contains everything that is inherited, that is present at birth, that is laid down in the constitution -- above all, therefore, the instincts, which originate from the somatic organization and which find a first psychical expression in the id in forms unknown to us".
The mind of a newborn child is regarded as completely "id-ridden", in the sense that it is a mass of instinctive drives and impulses, and demands immediate satisfaction. This view equates a newborn child with an id-ridden individual with this analogy: an alimentary tract with no sense of responsibility at either end.
The id is responsible for our basic drives such as food, sex, and aggressive impulses. It is amoral and egocentric, ruled by the pleasure–pain principle; it is without a sense of time, completely illogical, primarily sexual, infantile in its emotional development, and will not take "no" for an answer. It is regarded as the reservoir of the libido or "love energy". The id stands in direct opposition to the super-ego. Freud divided the id's drives and instincts into two categories: life and death instincts. Life instincts are those that are crucial to pleasurable survival, such as eating and copulation. Death instincts are our unconscious wish to die, as death puts an end to the everyday struggles for happiness and survival. Freud noticed the death instinct in our desire for peace and attempts to escape reality through fiction, media, and substances such as alcohol and drugs. It also indirectly represents itself through aggression.
Ego
The Ego comprises that organized part of the personality structure which includes defensive, perceptual, intellectual-cognitive, and executive functions. Conscious awareness resides in the ego, although not all of the operations of the ego are conscious.
“The ego is that part of the id which has been modified by the direct influence of the external world. The ego represents what may be called reason and common sense, in contrast to the id, which contains the passions, in its relation to the id it is like a man on horseback, who has to hold in check the superior strength of the horse.” [Freud, The Ego and the Id (1923)]
In Freud's theory, the ego mediates among the id, the super-ego and the external world. Its task is to find a balance between primitive drives and reality (the Ego devoid of morality at this level) while satisfying the id and super-ego. Its main concern is with the individual's safety and allows some of the id's desires to be expressed, but only when consequences of these actions are marginal. Ego defense mechanisms are often used by the ego when id behavior conflicts with reality and either society's morals, norms, and taboos or the individual's expectations as a result of the internalization of these morals, norms, and their taboos.
The word ego is taken directly from Latin, where it is the nominative of the first person singular personal pronoun and is translated as "I myself" to express emphasis. The Latin term ego is used in English to translate Freud's German term Das Ich, which literally means "the I". In modern-day society, ego has many meanings. It could mean one’s self-esteem; an inflated sense of self-worth; or in philosophical terms, one’s self. However, according to Freud, the ego is the part of the mind which contains the consciousness.
The ego is the mediator between the id and the super-ego, trying to ensure that the needs of both the id and the super-ego are satisfied. It is said to operate on a reality principle, meaning it deals with the id and the super-ego; allowing them to express their desires, drives and morals in realistic and socially appropriate ways. It is said that the ego stands for reason and caution, developing with age. Sigmund Freud had used an analogy which likened the ego to a rider and a horse; the ego being the rider while the id being the horse. The horse provides the energy and the means of obtaining the energy and information need, while the rider ultimately controls the direction it wants to go. However, due to unfavorable conditions, sometimes the horse makes its own decisions over the rocky terrain.
When the ego is personified, it is like a slave to three harsh masters: the id, the super-ego and the external world. It has to do its best to suit all three, thus is constantly feeling hemmed by the danger of causing discontent on two other sides. It is said, however, that the ego seems to be more loyal to the id, preferring to gloss over the finer details of reality to minimize conflicts while pretending to have a regard for reality. But the super-ego is constantly watching every one of the ego's moves and punishes it with feelings of guilt, anxiety, and inferiority. To overcome this, this ego employs methods of defense mechanism. Denial, displacement, intellectualization, fantasy, compensation, projection, rationalization, reaction formation, regression, repression and sublimation were the defense mechanisms Freud identified. Other identified defense mechanisms include: undoing, suppression, dissociation, idealization, identification, introjections, inversion, somatisation, splitting and substitution.
Super-Ego
The Super-ego comprises that organized part of the personality structure, mainly but not entirely unconscious, that includes the individual's ego ideals, spiritual goals, and the psychic agency (commonly called 'conscience') that criticizes and prohibits his or her drives, fantasies, feelings, and actions.
Freud's theory implies that the super-ego is a symbolic internalization of the father figure and cultural regulations. The super-ego tends to stand in opposition to the desires of the id because of their conflicting objectives, and its aggressiveness towards the ego. The super-ego acts as the conscience, maintaining our sense of morality and proscription from taboos.
The super-ego retains the character of the father; the more rapidly it succumbed to repression (under the influence of authority, religious teaching, schooling and reading), the stricter will be the domination of the super-ego over the ego later on — in the form of conscience or perhaps of an unconscious sense of guilt.
In Sigmund Freud's work Civilization and Its Discontents (1930) he also discusses the concept of a "cultural super-ego". Women allegedly do not identify with the father, and therefore form a weak super-ego, leaving them susceptible to immorality and sexual identity complications.
"The ego is not sharply separated from the id; its lower portion merges into it.... But the repressed merges into the id as well, and is merely a part of it. The repressed is only cut off sharply from the ego by the resistances of repression; it can communicate with the ego through the id." (Sigmund Freud, 1923)
Advantages of the structural model
The partition of the psyche defined in the structural model is one that 'cuts across' the topographical model's partition of 'conscious vs. unconscious'. Its value lies in the increased degree of diversification: although the Id is unconscious by definition, the Ego and the Super-ego are both partly conscious and partly unconscious.
With this model Freud achieved a more systematic classification of mental disorder than had been available previously:
"Transference neuroses correspond to a conflict between the ego and the id; narcissistic neuroses, to a conflict between the ego and the superego; and psychoses, to one between the ego and the external world" [Freud, "Neurosis and Psychosis" (1923)].
Eden's Orcas
In Australia in the early 20th century, shore whalers at Eden, on the coast of New South Wales, co-operated with a pod of orca led by a bull male named Old Tom. The killer whales—so-called by early hunters because they saw these whales killing their own kind—would herd humpbacks passing by on their migration south toward the Antarctic. The orca would corral the unsuspecting great whales into the cup of Two-fold Bay. There the human hunters would row out to harpoon them. The carcass sank to the shallow sea bed, the orca would be allowed to claim their part of the bargain: the humpback's tongue, the only part of the animal they relished. Twenty-four hours later, bloated with gas, the dead humpbacks would rise to the surface for collection by the whalers. Eden, whose bloody waters were so ill named, was a cynical exploitation of two species of cetacean.
A Live Dead Baby
That's what happened to the Korean couple. A live, dead baby. They left her at home, alone, while they spent their days at an Internet café, in cyberspace. The café was like a portal, a doorway to appear in another. Once a day they returned to the real world to feed their daughter formula. Then they went back to cyberspace. After an extended online session, they came back to the physical world and found the baby dead. The baby girl died of malnutrition and dehydration. They immersed themselves in an online world, living a virtual life, which led to the death of their real baby."
French Bread
An American journalist claims he's uncovered evidence that during the Cold War, the CIA slipped LSD into the bread supply of a tiny French village, setting off a wave of hallucinogenic reactions that had people thinking they were or on fire, or flying, or being attacked by snakes. In 1951, the residents of Pont-Saint-Esprit, in southeast France, "were suddenly racked with frightful hallucinations of terrifying beasts and fire." Five people died and dozens were insitutionalized. At the time, scientists concluded that the bread of the most popular baker in town had been accidentally contaminated with a hallucinogenic mold. But now, an American journalist says he has evidence that the entire "Cursed Bread incident" was the result of a CIA mind-control experiment. While researching the supposed suicide of an Army biochemist, H.P. Albarelli Jr. came across records of a conversation in which a CIA agent told a scientist the hallucinations were caused by diethylamide (the D in LSD), not by mold. A White House document on CIA abuses makes reference to the "Point St. Esprit incident" and CIA documents mention the "secret of Pont-Saint-Esprit."
Horace Wells
Sometime after returning to the United States, Wells became addicted to chloroform. At that time the effects of sniffing chloroform and ether were not known.
In January 1848, Wells self-experimented with chloroform for a week. He became increasingly deranged. One day, delirious, Wells rushed out into the street and threw sulfuric acid over the clothing of two prostitutes. He was committed to New York's infamous Tombs Prison. As the influence of the drug waned, Wells' mind started to clear.
In despair, he realised the horror of what he had done. Wells then committed suicide, slitting an artery in his leg with a razor after inhaling an analgesic dose of chloroform to blot out the pain.
In January 1848, Wells self-experimented with chloroform for a week. He became increasingly deranged. One day, delirious, Wells rushed out into the street and threw sulfuric acid over the clothing of two prostitutes. He was committed to New York's infamous Tombs Prison. As the influence of the drug waned, Wells' mind started to clear.
In despair, he realised the horror of what he had done. Wells then committed suicide, slitting an artery in his leg with a razor after inhaling an analgesic dose of chloroform to blot out the pain.
Trapped
True story: A friend received a call from her mentally retarded son. "Mom, mom, there's a troll in the house!" the son said. Mom was like, I can't leave, ur imagining things, there's no troll. Son calls back a lil later "Mom really there's a TROLL IN THE HOUSE." She tells him to behave, she's working. He calls back a lil later, freaking out.
So she has to leave and calm him down. She gets home, her couches and tables are pushed against a closet door, from which she hears banging and yelling, a commotion. She moves the furniture as her son cowers, and lo and behold, the son had trapped a midget census worker...
True story...
So she has to leave and calm him down. She gets home, her couches and tables are pushed against a closet door, from which she hears banging and yelling, a commotion. She moves the furniture as her son cowers, and lo and behold, the son had trapped a midget census worker...
True story...
According to my Bday, the following is a sort of list of those sorts of things
Associations (02/14/1973): #9
Tarot: Hermit
Astrology: Sun,Virgo, Moon, Mars, Jupiter, Sagitarius
Rune: Jera
I Ching: #20 Kuan
Tree of Life: Jesod, Foundation
Hebrew Letter: Teth, Tzaddi
Shamanism: Squirrel, Snake, and Reptiles
Element: Fire
Alchemy: Earth and Gold
Aura: Fall Colors
Colors: Yellow-Gold, Indigo
Gemstone: Opal
Crystal: Quartz
Month: September
Week Day: Monday
Lucky Numbers: 1, 5, 6, 9, 18, 27, 36, 54, 63, 72, 81, 90, 99, 108,
Flora: Holly, Magnolia, Buttercup, Sycamore, Oak
The Hermit is a card of connections and enlightenment. They're likely to be grumpy and anti-social. But for the Querent (if no one else!) this is a special time. Like an artist who hides for days then emerges to paint a masterpiece, this quiet time allows all the pieces to fall into place. So go ahead and encourage them to go on late night drives, long walks, hide in their room or go on retreat for a month. When they come back, they'll see everything in a brand new light. It'll be the best thing for them, and for everyone else in their lives.
Jera refers to the year, and especially the harvest. When Jera appears in a reading, it often indicates that querent is about to reap the rewards of previous actions. Because its meaning is "harvest," it can also indicate change, but not the shocking, disruptive change of Hagalaz; the change of Jera is the gradual, almost imperceptible change of spring to summer or summer to fall. Jera often appears in casts concerning legal matters. This is another nonreversible rune, which means that sometimes you must look to the other runes in a cast to see if Jera is telling you that you are reaping rewards or sorrows for your actions
A slight variation of tonal stress gives the Chinese name for this hexagram a double meaning. It means both contemplating and being seen, in the sense of being an example. These ideas are suggested by the fact that the hexagram can be understood as picturing a type of tower characteristic of ancient China. A tower of this kind commanded a wide view of the country; at the same time, when situated on a mountain, it became a landmark that could be seen for miles around. Thus the hexagram shows a ruler who contemplates the law of heaven above him and the ways of the people below, and who, by means of good government, sets a lofty example to the masses.
This hexagram is linked with the eight month (September-October). The light-giving power retreats and the dark power is again on the increase. However, this aspect is not material in the interpretation of the hexagram as a whole.
The sephiroth of Jesod is the basic sexual principle of life. Everything revolves around sex, and through sex comes Birth, Death, and Regeneration. Jesod means "Foundation", and is the foundation of the Holy Spirit within us. Therefore the Third Logos has Jesod as its center of gravity. Since it is the sephiroth where the sexual force of the Third Logos gravitates, Jesod is the center of gravity of the Magical Triangle (which also includes the sephiroth of Hod and Netzach).
Fire stands for changings, as it means the changeover between Earth, Water and Wind (Air). Fire stands for fighting in the open field, without mean tricks and ambushes. Fire is the thing burning in your soul, moving you to fight for the things you believe in. Even if there is just a tiny chance to survive. Fire represents a dream, a virtue, a belief, and never means your commitment only, but its realization.
Tarot: Hermit
Astrology: Sun,Virgo, Moon, Mars, Jupiter, Sagitarius
Rune: Jera
I Ching: #20 Kuan
Tree of Life: Jesod, Foundation
Hebrew Letter: Teth, Tzaddi
Shamanism: Squirrel, Snake, and Reptiles
Element: Fire
Alchemy: Earth and Gold
Aura: Fall Colors
Colors: Yellow-Gold, Indigo
Gemstone: Opal
Crystal: Quartz
Month: September
Week Day: Monday
Lucky Numbers: 1, 5, 6, 9, 18, 27, 36, 54, 63, 72, 81, 90, 99, 108,
Flora: Holly, Magnolia, Buttercup, Sycamore, Oak
The Hermit is a card of connections and enlightenment. They're likely to be grumpy and anti-social. But for the Querent (if no one else!) this is a special time. Like an artist who hides for days then emerges to paint a masterpiece, this quiet time allows all the pieces to fall into place. So go ahead and encourage them to go on late night drives, long walks, hide in their room or go on retreat for a month. When they come back, they'll see everything in a brand new light. It'll be the best thing for them, and for everyone else in their lives.
Jera refers to the year, and especially the harvest. When Jera appears in a reading, it often indicates that querent is about to reap the rewards of previous actions. Because its meaning is "harvest," it can also indicate change, but not the shocking, disruptive change of Hagalaz; the change of Jera is the gradual, almost imperceptible change of spring to summer or summer to fall. Jera often appears in casts concerning legal matters. This is another nonreversible rune, which means that sometimes you must look to the other runes in a cast to see if Jera is telling you that you are reaping rewards or sorrows for your actions
A slight variation of tonal stress gives the Chinese name for this hexagram a double meaning. It means both contemplating and being seen, in the sense of being an example. These ideas are suggested by the fact that the hexagram can be understood as picturing a type of tower characteristic of ancient China. A tower of this kind commanded a wide view of the country; at the same time, when situated on a mountain, it became a landmark that could be seen for miles around. Thus the hexagram shows a ruler who contemplates the law of heaven above him and the ways of the people below, and who, by means of good government, sets a lofty example to the masses.
This hexagram is linked with the eight month (September-October). The light-giving power retreats and the dark power is again on the increase. However, this aspect is not material in the interpretation of the hexagram as a whole.
The sephiroth of Jesod is the basic sexual principle of life. Everything revolves around sex, and through sex comes Birth, Death, and Regeneration. Jesod means "Foundation", and is the foundation of the Holy Spirit within us. Therefore the Third Logos has Jesod as its center of gravity. Since it is the sephiroth where the sexual force of the Third Logos gravitates, Jesod is the center of gravity of the Magical Triangle (which also includes the sephiroth of Hod and Netzach).
Fire stands for changings, as it means the changeover between Earth, Water and Wind (Air). Fire stands for fighting in the open field, without mean tricks and ambushes. Fire is the thing burning in your soul, moving you to fight for the things you believe in. Even if there is just a tiny chance to survive. Fire represents a dream, a virtue, a belief, and never means your commitment only, but its realization.
Pencil
Pencil lodged in woman's head removed after 55 years BERLIN — A woman who had a pencil lodged in her head for 55 years after a childhood accident has finally had most of it removed, which should end her chronic headaches and nosebleeds, her doctor said today. Margaret Wegner was 4 when she fell while carrying the 3.15-inch pencil, which went through her cheek and into her brain. "It bored right through the skin and disappeared into my head," Wegner, now 59, told Germany's best-selling newspaper, Bild. "It hurt like crazy." At the time, the technology did not exist to safely remove the pencil, so Wegner had to live with it — and the ensuing chronic headaches and nosebleeds— for the next 5 1/2 decades. But on Friday, Dr. Hans Behrbohm, an ear, nose and throat specialist at Berlin's Park-Klinik Weissensee, was able to identify the exact location of the pencil so that he could determine the risks of removing it, and then took most of it out. The operation was difficult because of the way the pencil had shifted as Wegner grew, Behrbohm told The Associated Press today. "This was something unique because the trauma was so old," said Behrbohm, who has also done brain surgery to remove bullets from shooting victims and glass from people involved in car accidents. Although a piece of a pencil about four-fifths of an inch long could not be removed, Behrbohm said it does not pose a danger.
Reincarnation of the Pachen
China in 1992 rejected the exiled Dalai Lama's choice for the latest reincarnation of the Panchen, seizing the boy and appointing another boy in his stead.
Kumari's
China insists that the government only can approve the appointment of the three most-revered Kumaris, who are honoured by Hindus and Buddhists alike. Kumaris are 10-year-old girl who are worshipped as a living goddess.
Mistaken for someone else on the street
Mistaken for someone else on the street, Anomieric is attacked by a man. Apparently some jealous husband. As the man weepingly attempted to strike him, he was crying and mumbling “I love her and all you wanna do is fuck!”.
Anomieric was from the streets, and knew how to fight, so he blocked each blow, and counter punched. “I wanna have children, I respect her, and you fuck her in the bathroom stall!” the man cried, in extreme duress, still attempting, albeit weaker and more bloody, to attack.
Finally, Anomieric struck the man square in the throat, and he went down, hard, sobbing. “I love her!” the man shouted, as he pulled a pistol from his coat.
I turned to run, afraid I was going to die. The man stuck the gun in his mouth and Jackson Pollack’ed the wall. Who was this guy, I couldn’t remember having met him, I didn’t really get a good look as he was trying to hit me, and of course he was very emotional, with tears and spittle everywhere.
Now that he was still, I couldn’t recognize him because most of his face was hamburger.
Anomieric was from the streets, and knew how to fight, so he blocked each blow, and counter punched. “I wanna have children, I respect her, and you fuck her in the bathroom stall!” the man cried, in extreme duress, still attempting, albeit weaker and more bloody, to attack.
Finally, Anomieric struck the man square in the throat, and he went down, hard, sobbing. “I love her!” the man shouted, as he pulled a pistol from his coat.
I turned to run, afraid I was going to die. The man stuck the gun in his mouth and Jackson Pollack’ed the wall. Who was this guy, I couldn’t remember having met him, I didn’t really get a good look as he was trying to hit me, and of course he was very emotional, with tears and spittle everywhere.
Now that he was still, I couldn’t recognize him because most of his face was hamburger.
FIXION: Persephone and Pluto
Prosperina is an ancient Roman goddess whose story is the basis of a myth of Springtime. Her Greek goddess' equivalent is Persephone. She was the daughter of Ceres, goddess of agriculture and crops and Jupiter, the god of sky and thunder. Venus, in order to bring love to Pluto (the Roman god of the underworld, the counterpart of the Greek Hades), sent her son Cupid to hit Pluto with one of his arrows. Prosperina was in Sicily, where she was playing with some nymphs and collecting flowers, when Pluto came out from the volcano and abducted her in order to marry her and live with her in Hades, Underworld, of which he was the ruler. Her mother Ceres, the goddess of agriculture or of the Earth, went looking for her in vain to every corner of the earth, but wasn't able to find her. In her desperation Ceres angrily stopped the growth of fruits and vegetables, bestowing a malediction upon the world. Ceres refused to go back to Mount Olympus and started walking on the Earth, making a desert at every step. Worried, Jupiter sent Mercury to order Pluto (Jupiter's brother) to free Proserpina. Pluto obeyed, but before letting her go he made her eat six pomegranate seeds, because those who have eaten the food of the dead could not return to the world of the living. This meant that she would have to live six months of each year with him, and stay the rest with on Earth. This story was meant to illustrate the changing of the seasons; when Ceres welcomes her daughter back in the spring the earth blossoms, and when Proserpina must be returned to her husband it withers.
Fixion: Bus Ride, premise
After stopping for drinks at an illegal bar, a Zimbabwean bus driver found that the 20 mental patients he was supposed to be transporting from Harare to Bulawayo had escaped. Not wanting to admit his incompetence, the driver went to a nearby bus stop and offered everyone waiting there a free ride. He then delivered the passengers to the mental hospital, telling the staff that the patients were very excitable and prone to bizarre fantasies. The deception wasn't discovered for 3 days
Tuesday, April 13, 2010
FIXION: Stalin's Monkey Men; Premise
“In the 1920s, Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin sent an animal-breeding expert to Africa in hopes of creating an army of half-man, half-monkey soldiers. Attempts both to inseminate women with monkey sperm and impregnate female chimpanzees with human sperm failed.”
FIXION: You May Find Yourself
“You may find yourself with a beautiful house…with a beautiful wife…with a beautiful life. And you may ask yourself: “Self what is this beautiful life?” – And you may ask yourself: “Self –How did I get here?’
I love that song; it’s so surreal, dada even. It touches my inner anhedonia; it tweaks that itchy place in my soul. I hear it every Saturday morning, buzzing in my ears, as I prepare for my trip to the Woodland Park Episcopalian Medical Center in Heavy Rapids. The buzzing starts in my teeth when I awake, drowsily, and realize, again, that I’ll have to subsume myself to the pain and vibration. Again and again, the pain wipes away the stirring of my ego; it wipes the scowl emanating from the uncanny valley of my personality’s resurrection. That uncanny valley, the unsettling psyche in my soul where my Self takes on it’s human aspect, abstract, androgynous and unsettling; it is a peaceful place, warm and fuzzy, womblike. The buzzing pulls me from that womb; I remember being born, every Saturday, through the anticipation of pain –like someone behind you – the chalkboard noise - the anticipation of a chilled knife to your spine, the expected fear of these things awake me, and buzzes, and vibrates, and fills me with dread – every Saturday morning. Every Saturday morning, I go to Woodland Park for my Court-ordered electroshock therapy.
“Same as it ever was...same as it ever was...same as it ever was...Same as it ever was...same as it ever was...same as it ever was...Same as it ever was...same as it ever was...”
I love that song; it’s so surreal, dada even. It touches my inner anhedonia; it tweaks that itchy place in my soul. I hear it every Saturday morning, buzzing in my ears, as I prepare for my trip to the Woodland Park Episcopalian Medical Center in Heavy Rapids. The buzzing starts in my teeth when I awake, drowsily, and realize, again, that I’ll have to subsume myself to the pain and vibration. Again and again, the pain wipes away the stirring of my ego; it wipes the scowl emanating from the uncanny valley of my personality’s resurrection. That uncanny valley, the unsettling psyche in my soul where my Self takes on it’s human aspect, abstract, androgynous and unsettling; it is a peaceful place, warm and fuzzy, womblike. The buzzing pulls me from that womb; I remember being born, every Saturday, through the anticipation of pain –like someone behind you – the chalkboard noise - the anticipation of a chilled knife to your spine, the expected fear of these things awake me, and buzzes, and vibrates, and fills me with dread – every Saturday morning. Every Saturday morning, I go to Woodland Park for my Court-ordered electroshock therapy.
“Same as it ever was...same as it ever was...same as it ever was...Same as it ever was...same as it ever was...same as it ever was...Same as it ever was...same as it ever was...”
FIXION: Catastrophia Malaise
ACQUISITION IS A BIOLOGICAL IMPERATIVE OF THE HUMAN CONDITION THAT COMPELS US TO ATTACH VALUE TO THE PARAPHERNALIA AND DETRITUS OF OUR SHARED REALITY. THE ENORMOUS NET OF OUR SOCIAL APPARATUS CONTAINS THE VARIED INTERESTS, REFUSE, AESTHETICS, AND IDENTITY OF OUR MULTITUDINOUS BEING. AS TO OUR OBSESSION WITH GRATIFICATION, OURS IS AN ORGANIC BEING; BIOLOGY TENDS TOWARDS ACRETION.
As I understand it, art is an exercise of likes and dislikes, with value attached towards truth and the fulfillment of what one understands as truth. Art has many rationalizations; from glorification; as satire; as advocacy; as affirmation; propaganda, ego, expression and many such reasons – essentially art is an engagement of one’s perspective. Art is powerful - it can challenge the fundamental assumptions of society. Art can influence, as in a relationship – even with oneself. Art is sentimental, too – and can also be sterile. Art can be dystopian and even nihilist. Art is expression, a vehicle for expression; a conduit to the unconscious, and affects both the creator and the participant. Art has the capacity to affect us all, to promote the rise of objectivity, to kill nationalism – or to exacerbate the world’s problems.
Reptile brained American – we’re all Americans now, with a cut and paste and cropped culture; a species gradually advancing towards syntheticity, consumerist, materialist, rationalist, fast-fed, exceptional, selfish, polychromatic and mono causal – art is anarchist’s alchemy, sublime pornography, a plaster death mask for history, the thin veneer, an ornamental anarchy for a baroque dystopia!
Panic in our self contained selves, in our inner being, from the hidden quadrant, sick and sick, organic in the rot of our diversity and our perversion, and cleansed of our hypocrisy and our paternalism and superstition - we revel in lakes of insecurity. The dogma is indeed in the details, and the ethics external, a modern dismissal of romance, a disregard of tradition; embracer of modernity; Modern Primitive Futerion, uncomfortable in this world and the next, without judgment cleansed by anemic sterility, without passion and reason. Only logic and the rational and its reaction, revanchist revolutionary - clothed in the emperor’s new cloths, again – but unaware. History is a struggle for bread and decoration. Art is an expression of raw sensitivity.
Innocent cherub sitting naked, with Satyrs and virgins, apples and wine, how you doin? What's going on? Mind if a smoke?
Collective effervescence, light, nature; innocent voluptuous teens sitting naked drinking wine. With cherubs, and naked virgins, goat dudes, smoking bowls. Laughing out loud, and rolling on the floor, effervescent and retreating, dreaming, dreaming.
It is a yin and yang situation, as art serves motivation and expression.
“A group of crows is called a ‘murder’. One species, the New Caledonian Crow, has also been intensively studied recently because of its ability to manufacture and use its own tools in the day-to-day search for food. These tools include 'knives' cut from stiff leaves and stiff stalks of grass. Another skill involves dropping tough nuts into a heavy trafficked street and waiting for a car to crush them open, and then waiting at pedestrian lights with other pedestrians in order to retrieve the nuts.”
“Crows also will often mob owls much more fiercely when they find them in daylight than the hawks and other raptors. Frequently crows appear to ’play’ with hawks, while escorting the raptor out of their territory. Their attacks on owls, on the other hand, possess a definite serious quality.”
“The American Crow is omnivorous. It will feed on invertebrates of all types, carrion, scraps of human food, seeds, eggs and nestlings, stranded fish on the shore and various grains. American Crows are active hunters and will prey on mice, frogs, and other small animals. Like most crows, they will scavenge at rubbish dumps, scattering garbage in the process. Occasionally, they will visit bird feeders. These habits have historically caused the American Crow to be considered a nuisance. The most usual call is a loud, short, and rapid ’caah-caah-caah’. Usually, the birds thrust their heads up and down as they utter this call. American Crows can also produce a wide variety of sounds and sometimes mimic noises made by other animals, including other birds. ’Eating crow’ means suffering embarrassment after having previously boasted. This phrase originates in the use of crows - including this species - as famine food (compare ’humble pie’). While American Crows are theoretically edible they have little meat; in addition, those from densely-settled areas often carry parasites that can infect humans.”
As I understand it, art is an exercise of likes and dislikes, with value attached towards truth and the fulfillment of what one understands as truth. Art has many rationalizations; from glorification; as satire; as advocacy; as affirmation; propaganda, ego, expression and many such reasons – essentially art is an engagement of one’s perspective. Art is powerful - it can challenge the fundamental assumptions of society. Art can influence, as in a relationship – even with oneself. Art is sentimental, too – and can also be sterile. Art can be dystopian and even nihilist. Art is expression, a vehicle for expression; a conduit to the unconscious, and affects both the creator and the participant. Art has the capacity to affect us all, to promote the rise of objectivity, to kill nationalism – or to exacerbate the world’s problems.
Reptile brained American – we’re all Americans now, with a cut and paste and cropped culture; a species gradually advancing towards syntheticity, consumerist, materialist, rationalist, fast-fed, exceptional, selfish, polychromatic and mono causal – art is anarchist’s alchemy, sublime pornography, a plaster death mask for history, the thin veneer, an ornamental anarchy for a baroque dystopia!
Panic in our self contained selves, in our inner being, from the hidden quadrant, sick and sick, organic in the rot of our diversity and our perversion, and cleansed of our hypocrisy and our paternalism and superstition - we revel in lakes of insecurity. The dogma is indeed in the details, and the ethics external, a modern dismissal of romance, a disregard of tradition; embracer of modernity; Modern Primitive Futerion, uncomfortable in this world and the next, without judgment cleansed by anemic sterility, without passion and reason. Only logic and the rational and its reaction, revanchist revolutionary - clothed in the emperor’s new cloths, again – but unaware. History is a struggle for bread and decoration. Art is an expression of raw sensitivity.
Innocent cherub sitting naked, with Satyrs and virgins, apples and wine, how you doin? What's going on? Mind if a smoke?
Collective effervescence, light, nature; innocent voluptuous teens sitting naked drinking wine. With cherubs, and naked virgins, goat dudes, smoking bowls. Laughing out loud, and rolling on the floor, effervescent and retreating, dreaming, dreaming.
It is a yin and yang situation, as art serves motivation and expression.
“A group of crows is called a ‘murder’. One species, the New Caledonian Crow, has also been intensively studied recently because of its ability to manufacture and use its own tools in the day-to-day search for food. These tools include 'knives' cut from stiff leaves and stiff stalks of grass. Another skill involves dropping tough nuts into a heavy trafficked street and waiting for a car to crush them open, and then waiting at pedestrian lights with other pedestrians in order to retrieve the nuts.”
“Crows also will often mob owls much more fiercely when they find them in daylight than the hawks and other raptors. Frequently crows appear to ’play’ with hawks, while escorting the raptor out of their territory. Their attacks on owls, on the other hand, possess a definite serious quality.”
“The American Crow is omnivorous. It will feed on invertebrates of all types, carrion, scraps of human food, seeds, eggs and nestlings, stranded fish on the shore and various grains. American Crows are active hunters and will prey on mice, frogs, and other small animals. Like most crows, they will scavenge at rubbish dumps, scattering garbage in the process. Occasionally, they will visit bird feeders. These habits have historically caused the American Crow to be considered a nuisance. The most usual call is a loud, short, and rapid ’caah-caah-caah’. Usually, the birds thrust their heads up and down as they utter this call. American Crows can also produce a wide variety of sounds and sometimes mimic noises made by other animals, including other birds. ’Eating crow’ means suffering embarrassment after having previously boasted. This phrase originates in the use of crows - including this species - as famine food (compare ’humble pie’). While American Crows are theoretically edible they have little meat; in addition, those from densely-settled areas often carry parasites that can infect humans.”
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