Quarrel over the interpretation of bodies

Religion and Art: Allies or Adversaries? By Brian Kluepfel

In her forthcoming book, Complex Delight: Secularization of the Breast, 1350-1750 (University of California Press, 2007), Miles notes a historical demarcation: until the 1700s, the breast, particularly that of Virgin Mary, was a religious symbol. In the post-Renaissance world, she says, the body became an “object of both erotic pleasure and medical use,” objectifying what was once holy. “The conflict is a quarrel over the interpretation of bodies,” Miles said.

Miles defined religious art as “art that offers the viewer orientation in the universe and a consonance with other living beings.” She said that there is a schism between religion and media culture, in which “bodies are a spectacle, a source of medical scrutiny or pleasure and pain.” Miles offered a strong view about what religious art should stand against. Art that reinforces consumerism and capitalist values, she said, is certainly not religious, even if it uses religious imagery (as in television commercials, for example, that use images of Adam and Eve). Return to Inside Fordham home page

Plato or Aristotle hardly reflected the average mentality of the time

One Cosmos Under God Robert W. Godwin

There are many good books on mankind's practice of human sacrifice -- again, it is our "default" religion -- but perhaps the best one is Violence Unveiled by Gil Bailie, because he places it in the context of the overall arc of salvation. I cannot possibly do justice to his full argument here, but in his view, human beings were actually in desperate need of a cure for religion, and Christianity turned out to be this cure. "Ironically," Jesus was a victim -- and as a result, a permanent reminder -- of that which he came to cure -- the ritual scapegoating of victims in order to create social solidarity. For nothing creates social solidarity and temporarily eases the war of each against all so much as when everyone's aggression is hypnotically focussed on a sacrificial victim...

As I mentioned yesterday, not only did the ancient Jews begin to reflect superior ideals that far surpassed their contemporaries, but these ideals have still failed to permeate into many modern groups -- e.g., in Africa, China, and Islam. Not only that, but the modern West has produced its own permanent counter-revolution in the form of the international left, which, since it rejects the cure for religion, is reverting back to primordial religion -- undisguised "born again" paganism in the form of body mutilation, magic (almost all "new agers" and "integralists" are leftists), infrahuman entertainment, the cult of celebrity, blood worship ("multi-culturalism"), pantheistic environmentalism, sexual license unbound from any sacred channel, etc.

As mentioned yesterday, Breiner's book Slaughter of the Innocents: Child Abuse Through the Ages and Today goes into some of the distinct values of the ancient Jews, as mankind took a particularly dramatic turn into verticality. I just realized I have posted some of the following material before, but it can't hurt to review the situation. Starting first with the goyim, Breiner notes that the women of ancient Greece were essentially slaves. A wife’s function was to “look after the household and produce children -- preferably boys.” While courtesans -- who were used for pleasure rather than procreation -- could be educated, wives were illiterate.

Similar to Islamic societies today, the ancient Greeks “viewed men as sane and stable while women were considered mad, hysterical, and possibly dangerous and destructive to men.” Furthermore, “a woman’s freedom was severely restricted” and she was without power. “A man could sell his daughter or sister into concubinage if he wished.” Children of concubines were simply “aborted, killed or sold into slavery.” (Please bear in mind that we are not talking about luminaries such as Plato or Aristotle, who hardly reflected the average mentality of the time.)

At the time of Pericles in the late 5th century BC, a girl could marry only through parental arrangement: “no man married for love.” And once the marriage took place and the Athenian bride went to live with her husband, “she was cut off from her family and became a menial worker in her husband’s home.” Even the children she bore were not her own, but belonged to the husband to dispense with as he saw fit. Out of a population of 400,000, only 14,240 people had full civil rights. The rest were women, children and slaves. Unwanted children were simply exposed on a mountainside to die. “In all the Greek cities except Thebes the father had the right to kill his child at birth without question. In all cities except Athens the father could sell his children to slave dealers.” Female infanticide was the norm. Like China today, very few families raised more than one daughter. Even then, girls were given inferior food and no education.

Breiner feels that the revulsion towards women was at the basis of Greek male homosexuality. Can you think of a better explanation? The fashionable modern idea -- a fine example of leftist anti-scientific magical thinking, by the way -- is that homosexuality is purely “genetic” and not subject to environmental influences. If so, how does one account for the prevalence of Ancient Greek homosexuality? “It was considered quite proper for the young men of Athens to engage sexually with older men, and most did.” “Merchants would import handsome boys to be sold to the highest bidder”; these boys would “be first used as concubines and later as slaves.”

Breiner speculates that “homosexual pederasty was so universal in Greek society” because it was “a means of ‘rescuing’ the male child from the perceived dangers of women...” “Boy brothels flourished in every city and a child prostitute could be rented, even at the height of Athenian culture... A freeborn child might see his father having sexual relations with a child his own age who was a slave” (!!!). In this context, the evolution of so-called "homophobia" by the ancient Hebrews was clearly an advance, not a regression, as it particularly benefitted women and children.

I don’t even have time to get into the pervasive human and animal sacrifice. “Human life was considered so short and cheap that there was little concern about killing. When a town was captured the men were automatically killed or sold into slavery and the women were taken as concubines or slaves.” Traits such as “gentleness, kindness, industry, honesty, and integrity were scorned as effeminate and inferior.”

I could go on, but I think you get the point. Obviously, human beings were desperately in need of a vertical intervention to save them from the hell on earth they had created. All of us continue to benefit everyday from that little sliver of light that miraculously opened up in a world of infrahuman darkness. More on which -- now, don't absolutely hold me to it, just in case I am seized by other energies -- tomorrow.

Islamic parenting advice, untouched by the arc of salvation. posted by Gagdad Bob at 2/22/2007 06:09:00 AM 68 comments links to this post

Family-related issues

By JEFF ISRAELY/ROME TIME EuropeTuesday, Feb. 20, 2007

In recent months, Martini has raised subtle though crucial objections to the Church's steadfast opposition to all circumstances of assisted fertility, distribution of condoms for AIDS victims and so-called "right-to-die" cases. His long cover-story interview last April with the Italian magazine L'Espresso set off an internal Church debate about whether a married AIDS patient's use of a condom is the "lesser of two evils," and a Vatican document on the issue may come out later this year.

Martini has long understood that speaking softly is the best way for a dissenting voice to be heard. Most recently, in an interview published Sunday in the Rome-based daily La Repubblica, he politely challenged both Benedict and Cardinal Camillo Ruini, head of Italy's bishop conference, for their repeatedly strong condemnations of an Italian government proposal to legalize civil unions for homosexuals and heterosexuals who don't want to marry. Though no supporter of gay marriage, Martini nevertheless decided it was time to register his opposition to the Vatican's hammering away on family-related issues. "The family is the cell of society, and is therefore very important," he said. "Certainly the family should be defended and promoted.

But the promoting, I think, is more important than defending." He went on to warn against the "confrontation among the various positions that create tensions and useless and dangerous clashes." In the past, he has voiced his support for woman deacons, and even called for a Third Vatican Council to address the many issues dividing Catholics. Martini has long been a beacon for a generation of progressive bishops and cardinals, like Archbishop of Westminster Cormac Murphy-O'Connor, who has recently pushed to have a mass for gay parishioners. Martini and his followers, in fact, have long contrasted with the future German pope.

The vast cultural differences between the ancient Jews and their contemporaries

One Cosmos Under God Robert W. Godwin

Perhaps it is because I have been incubating these curious ideas for so long, but it is not even a question to me that the Jews were evolutionary agents chosen for a divine mission -- or, if they were not, they might as well have been. In the course of writing my book, many obscure books synchronistically fell into my eager coon paws at precisely the right moment, including In the Shadow of Moloch: The Sacrifice of Children and Its Impact on Western Religions by Martin Bergmann, and Slaughter of the Innocents: Child Abuse Through the Ages and Today by Sander Breiner...

One of the virtues of the book we recently discussed, Before the Dawn, is that it pulls no PC punches in chronicling just how unimaginably savage human beings were in the past...Thus, from our vantage point, the 20th century looks like a catastrophe, but from the vantage point of antiquity it was conspicuously peaceful -- even though seven out of ten European descendents of Abraham were incinerated in the process...

The devolutionary forces of the lower vertical are always visible in groups that oppose the Jews, currently Islam and the international Left. In his book, Breiner analyzes the vast cultural differences between the ancient Jews and their contemporaries -- the Greeks, Egyptians, Romans, and Chinese. The notion that these vast differences can be explained by "genetics" is strict nonsense. This would be the position of Wade and other orthodox Darwinians -- as if Abraham didn't sacrifice Isaac because of a random genetic mutation! Perhaps tomorrow I'll discuss further the cosmic "righteous angle" represented by the people chosen to carry out phase I of the arc of cosmic salvation. posted by Gagdad Bob at 2/21/2007 06:54:00 AM 18 comments links to this post

It's a collective experience of reconsidering bodies

Despite all the jiggling, sweating flesh on display Saturday as crowds of dancers pressed together in the first full day of carnival celebrations, Brazilians say the spectacle is not all about sex. They see it as a celebration of the body, closer in the spirit to the Olympics than the strip bar...

Brazilians say nakedness at carnival is about sensuality. Yes, sexual imagery abounds in the samba schools, and thousands of revelers dance skin-to-skin on the sidelines. But nudity carries a different connotation in Brazil than in many other countries. "Here, nakedness doesn't only lead to sexuality, it leads you to aesthetic appreciation. A woman is dancing but it's not pornographic. It's a collective experience of reconsidering bodies, like at the Olympic games," said Roberto Da Matta, a retired University of Notre Dame sociology professor and author of Carnivals, Rogues and Heroes.

Da Matta says his granddaughters watch the nearly nude samba dancers in TV ads during the run-up to carnival, grading them like judges at a gymnastic competition, or in the same way Rio's Samba parade is judged..."This is Rio de Janeiro, it's all about the beach and sun. We don't wear many clothes here at anytime during the year," Faria explains. Front page / World

Let English bloom

State of English KANCHA ILAIAH The Times of India 21 Feb, 2007

The proposal of the Congress party to constitute the second state reorganisation commission (SRC) necessitates a larger debate. Linguistic states deserve a relook at a time when English is developing as a pan-Indian language. The rationale behind establishing a linguistic federation of Indian states is questionable. If one assumes that regional languages develop like the European languages, then the federation is likely to break, as each advanced linguistic region would like to be a nation by itself. Would India like to take the course of Europe, where many developed linguistic nations emerge and contradictions sharpen?

But Indian regional languages are not as advanced as European languages like English, French, German, Spanish and so on. In the ancient period, Sanskritic forces stilted their growth. In the late mediaeval period it was stilted by Persian. In the colonial period, English intervened. Now, there is no possibility of these languages developing to the levels of European languages. In an under-developed language system, thought processes will also remain underdeveloped. In modern knowledge societies, underdeveloped languages cannot produce advanced thought. The present Indian languages, including Hindi, were more underdeveloped than any European language of the early 18th century. The advanced linguistic nationalism of Europe sharpened contradictions, leading to nationalist wars among them, even though they all shared the same religion. The common historical roots of all the European languages, in Greek and Latin, did not prevent the emergence of such contradictions.

Once each language branches out, it develops nationalist aspirations, whipping up linguistic chauvinism. The recent chauvinist expressions that Telugu is greater than Tamil or vice versa, in order to get ancient status, is an indication of that trend. The Dravidian or Pali linguistic roots of these languages are set aside and every linguistic state wants to prove that its language is great. With English developing as a language of administration and the market in India, the country can now afford to sidestep the European model of linguistic nations.

It is important to initiate a debate on this larger question before Andhra Pradesh, the first linguistic state to be formed, is split on developmental grounds. Once this happens, the principle of underdeveloped regions within every linguistic state being divided on the same grounds as AP comes into play. Each region can put forth its own case. The only option left for us is to choose the American model of developing one national language across the federation and dividing provinces into viable administrative units. Given the historical roots of English in India over a period of a few centuries, it can become the spoken language of all Indians alongside regional languages. Linguistic history has enough evidence to show that whether one is literate or not every human being can become bilingual.

By 1510 (before the Bible was translated into English facing a great papal resistance), English was a language of the British illiterate productive masses. Within just 500 years it has become the most popular language of the world. Within 200 years of its introduction in India it has become the language of easily about 100 million people. Its expansion in future will be several fold faster than earlier. It has become a language of day-to-day use for several million upper middle classes and rich. The poor and the productive masses have a right to learn the language of administration and global communication. This ground reality forces us to accept that at least 50 per cent of the school syllabus in all govern-ment schools across the country should be taught in English. The country would then overcome the yawning gap between convent and missionary English-medium school education and regional language-centred government school education.

When educated social masses communicate in English across the country, the concept of linguistic state would become redundant. The provincial states then should be compact administrative units. This 21st century reality should compel us to have a second SRC. This should examine the very concept of continuing with language-based provincial units within integrated Indian federal system. The writer is a political scientist

Economics to sexuality in bureaucratic regulation and control

Consider what happens if one looks a little more closely at the data, and breaks up Indian bloggers by gender. Among women netizens 51 per cent are bloggers. Declining sex ratios attest that India is a land of sharp gender disparities, and women are resorting to blogging on a large scale to give vent to pent-up feelings.

India may be a democracy, but in areas ranging from economics to sexuality it is heavily invested in bureaucratic regulation and control. The culture of mai-baap sarkar gives little latitude to the individual. Babus routinely stonewall requests for information, despite being required to do so under the RTI Act. Adultery is not just an ethical transgression and homosexuality an alternative lifestyle choice; both are criminal offences. Moral crusaders in the I&B ministry can and do pull the plug on TV channels. Liberalisation notwithstanding, red tape remains rampant and India is near the bottom of the world in several business metrics. The Times of India> Editorial> 19 Feb, 2007

How to deal with religion in the political sphere

Islam challenges Europe view religion is private, church heads told Stephen Brown Wittenberg, Germany (ENI) 16 February 2007 07-0139

The growth of Islam in Europe is challenging deeply-held notions that faith is a private matter which should be banished from public life, a prominent sociologist of religion has told a gathering of European Christian leaders. "We ignore the presence of Islam at our peril," Professor Grace Davie of the University of Exeter in Britain told leaders from Europe's main Christian traditions at a 15-18 February meeting in Wittenberg in Germany. "This is a catalyst for a much more profound change in the religious landscape of Europe."

Recent controversies such as those about the wearing of the Muslim headscarf by school students in France, or the publication of cartoons depicting the Prophet Muhammad in Danish newspapers, were cases in point, noted Davie, professor of sociology at Exeter university and director of its centre for European studies. "The presence of Islam is a catalyst that has reopened issues that Europeans thought were closed," Davie said on 16 February. "You cannot privatise Islam. We have seen that." But she said Christian churches had a major task in helping to find ways to deal with such public expression of religion.

Davie was presenting the results of recent research* on the place of religion in Europe, in which she wrote about the controversy over the cartoons: "The lack of comprehension on both sides of this affair, together with an unwillingness to compromise, led alarmingly fast to dangerous confrontations, both in Europe and beyond." The notion that religion should be banished from public life - and particularly from the state and from the education system - was widespread in Europe, Davie noted. But in part due to the presence of Islam, religion was increasingly likely to penetrate the public sphere in Europe, a tendency being encouraged by the ever more obvious presence of religion in the modern global order.

However, this was "probably more of a problem for the secular elite than the Christian churches", Davie suggested in her comments in Wittenberg. She said, "We need to grasp how to deal with religion in the political sphere and here Christian churches have a huge contribution to make." * Grace Davie, "Is Europe an Exceptional Case?", in The Hedgehog Review, Spring/ Summer 2006 issue, www.virginia.edu/iasc/hedgehog.html

In some radical Islam societies, women are surviving a horrible life

Redefine Religion for Equality [Opinion] Faith-based discrimination a misinterpretation of scripture Smita Poudel (smita)

In the "Biographical Dictionary of Prominent Muslim Ladies," writers Kabir Kaushar and Inamul Kabir in the introductory part of the book write, "Islam gave women many privileges, legal rights and a high status in the society which in the 7th century AD she didn't possess anywhere in the world." The writers assert that those privileges were not given to them in the Western world until 1918, and Western women acquired those rights only after agitation and demonstration.The above-mentioned fact is a contradiction, if compared to the real situation of millions of Islam women in many parts of the world. What has led to such a pathetic situation of women despite the freedom from the religion's side? Definitely, the answer would be misinterpretation with the pure motive of male supremacy. Such radicals can in no way be called religious; rather, they are hypocritical.

It is said that during the Caliphate of Abbasid from the 8th down to 12th century, Muslim women in Baghdad, the capital city of Iraq, presided over literary meetings and salons, worked as jurists and lectured on history in Baghdad University. But the images of women behind the dark veil have marred the glory of that time.Women's confinement within narrow horizons in the name of religion prevents them from their quest of higher achievement. They were not allowed to study or work outside the kitchen, perhaps in the fear that their awareness would someday provoke justifications of the rules imposed upon them.

In some radical Islam societies, women are surviving a horrible life. Honor killings, the Purdah system and many other evils that are justified in the name of religion have tortured women. These people are twisting Mohammad's true meaning for the sake of their supremacy; similar is the case of radical Hindus. Now it's high time to redefine the true spirit of religion so that the dream of equality becomes a reality. Religion is the very first point from which the battle should be announced. Better than saying that Islam suppresses women or that Hinduism and Christianity undermine women's roles, one should now point the finger towards the chauvinistic interpretations that have truly created the ground for discrimination. 2007-02-17 09:35 (KST) OhmyNews Other articles by reporter Smita Poudel

Religious practices have drifted away from their philosophy

HindustanTimes.com » Editorial » The Big Idea » A time to heal Open space

Sri Sri Ravi Shankar February 16, 2007

Laws have failed to change the attitude of people, and contemporary religious leaders have done precious little to remove the prejudices and bring about reconciliation. In the past, Maharishi Dayanand, Sri Basavanna in Karnataka and Ramanujacharya in the South have taken up the cause of the oppressed. Ramanujacharya put tripund/tilak and gave janeu (sacred thread) to thousands of Dalits and made them Brahmins. Basavanna vigorously fought against the caste system and brought together people of all castes into the path of bhakti.

Maharishi Dayanand dented the caste system through his brilliant and eloquent dialogues and speeches. He fought against prevalent superstitions. Thanks to him, thousands of Dalits could access the knowledge of the Vedas and the yagyas. He also created many purohits from among the Dalit community...As Maharishi Dayanand, Sri Aurobindo and many others have rightly pointed out, religious practices have drifted away from their philosophy.

It is unfortunate that people without proper knowledge of the scriptures simply quote from the Manu Smriti, which is only a code of conduct given by a king and has nothing to do with the Shrutis, Vedas or the Upanishads. It is time to honour the philosophy and discard the unscrupulous practices. Instead, people have discarded the philosophy and allowed the unscrupulous practices to continue.

I am following the path of bhakti to the Mother and Sri Aurobindo

Shall We Walk on Water? (Or, About Me): Several years ago, while a freshman in college in Lahore, Pakistan, my life changed dramatically when I stopped being an orthodox Muslim woman, and became an agnostic. Religion was too limiting and the God of religion too forbidding. I figured, even if such a God existed, I despised him. I felt stronger once I had gotten rid of the shackles of exoteric religion, and my skepticism felt liberating. Later on, still in college, I came out as a lesbian and had to deal with an abusive sexual experience. In healing from this experience, I went through what is known as a psychospiritual emergency in transpersonal psychology, which culminated in a kundalini awakening. In the years that have gone by since this experience happened, I have struggled to reconcile my newfound spirituality with my love for science and philosophy. It is easy to fall for the tricks of the ego-mind, which only wants to manipulate us and to change things to suit itself. My struggle as a mystic has been to try to silence the noise of the mind, and listen carefully to the quieter desires of the soul and become more grounded in it.

This does not, however, mean that I am anti-science or an anti-intellectual. I enjoy building up cognitive maps of reality that fit in with my own experiences and those of others, but I am careful to remind myself not to take these maps too seriously. My focus is on my own spiritual transformation, not on being intellectually “right” on all counts. Truth cannot ever be adequately expressed in words. Truth can only be lived — because we can never encompass Reality, only live in it. In other words, Truth encompasses us, not the other way around, and it is only our petty egos that think they ever possess Truth. I am following the path of bhakti to the Mother and Sri Aurobindo, whose philosophy I find to be very encompassing and inclusive of all others, including science. However, my devotion to them does not imply naive, cultic guru-worshipping. When I disagree with them, I gladly admit it. I merely see them as conduits to my own higher Self. Worshipping them would be just another religion, something they were both vehemently against. What is required is a healthy amount of skepticism with an openness to higher spiritual experiences.

the stumbling mystic God shall grow up . . . while the wise men talk and sleep

Each stumble and fall gets me one step closer. The spirit rises mightier after it has been defeated. The purpose of this blog is for me to teach myself humility, to quieten my mind and gently strip away its arrogant mental pretensions, and learn to see things as they really are and not as I would like them to be. And, also, to perhaps see the humour in life and stop taking myself so seriously!

Teaching how to negotiate relationships

This is why I think the critical thing at this age group is teaching them how to negotiate relationships and peer groups. By the time they enter this volatile period they should already know the basics. Remember, one of the girls had her first experience when she was 11. It’s time we stopped being in denial.

I also think it odd that some people can profess a desire to protect children from the alleged emotional trauma of young sex but then be unmoved about school bullying claiming that it will toughen them up. Curiously moral conservatives seem to like ‘tough love’ programs. In which case I can digress into Reich on Fascism and its origins in sexual repression. Posted in Sexology, Ray's Integral Blog 1 Comment » show comment »

Pastors, creationism teachers, Christian stand-up comics and rockers

By ALESSANDRA STANLEY nytimes.com: January 25, 2007

The French writer Bernard-Henri Lévy took a more self-serious tour of evangelical Christianity when he retraveled the road taken by Alexis de Tocqueville in his study of the modern American psyche, “American Vertigo.” (Mr. Lévy found New World religiosity a little less admirable than his predecessor did.)
“Friends of God” is not intended as a satire or even an exposé; Mr. Haggard’s fall from grace occurred after the filming was complete and is summed up in a postscript.
The documentary is a good-natured travelogue: it glances on the more intolerant and grotesque manifestations of Christian fundamentalism and also the faith’s vast following and political clout. Ms. Pelosi’s film doesn’t go deep; it doesn’t even explore why so many televangelists seem to follow the trajectory of Elmer Gantry. But it doesn’t snicker. “Friends of God” serves as a breezy, colorful reminder of how George W. Bush became president, why Fox News has the highest ratings of any 24-hour cable news network and why Democrats didn’t win an even greater landslide in the 2006 elections.
Ms. Pelosi is the daughter of the newly elected House speaker, Nancy Pelosi, and this is her third HBO film, and the one furthest afield from her natural habitats of Washington, New York and San Francisco. The first documentary, “Journeys With George,” was a mischievous, camcorder-look inside the world of the presidential campaign. (Ms. Pelosi was an NBC News producer on Mr. Bush’s press plane.) Her second, “Diary of a Political Tourist,” a smart-alecky, first-person tour of the Democratic primary process, was less winning.
Ms. Pelosi stays off camera and out of the way in “Friends of God,” and we only occasionally hear her voice. “So explain to me the concept of this Biblical mini golf,” the filmmaker says to a man who putts on a paper-and-glue parted Red Sea. (The ninth hole is a papier-mâché miniature of the Holy Sepulchre.)
Mostly, Ms. Pelosi lets pastors, creationism teachers, Christian stand-up comics and rockers and the founder of the Christian Wrestling Federation speak for themselves.
“So we do have a public relations problem; we always have — they killed Jesus if you’ll recall,” Mr. Haggard tells her. “And the church has always had this problem because we are the ones with the role to say, ‘There is a moral plumb line, and we need to rise up to it.’ ” At this point, the disgraced minister seems almost to foreshadow his own fate.
“And that’s also why secular people are so concerned when the church doesn’t fulfill its own moral standard,” he said. “Like if a pastor falls into corruption or becomes dishonest or greedy: it’s heartbreaking because even secular people want godly people to be authentically godly.”
FRIENDS OF GOD A Road Trip With Alexandra Pelosi HBO, tonight at 9, Eastern and Pacific times; 8, Central time. Written, directed and produced by Alexandra Pelosi; Lisa Heller, supervising producer; Sheila Nevins, executive producer. nytimes.com

4 core types & 3 core strategies

How types, strategies, and stations all fit together: In recent posts we've looked at the the 4 core types (masculine, feminine, introvert, and extravert) and the 3 core strategies (cardinal, fixed, and mutable). These are some of the most basic patterns that organize the human personality and therefore our experience of ourselves, our worldspaces, and worldviews.

When put together, the 4 types and 3 strategies may be arranged into 12 distinct combinations. It is no coincidence that these 12 combinations are the same as the 12 stations of life used by Whole Writing. Each station depicts a particular orientation to reality, a set of competencies that must be faced (and hopefully successfully navigated), a set of concerns and strategies for advancement, and a set of developmental potentials.

Perhaps the clearest way of introducing the 12 stations is to identify briefly how each of the stations reflect the core types and strategies. At the most fundamental levels, these are the building blocks of who we are, what we do, and how we change.

If you are familiar with astrology, then it will be helpful for you to think of the core types, core strategies, and stations as analogous to elements, qualities, and signs. However, knowledge of astrology is not required. (In the following discussion, a mythopoetic expression of how the stations appear is offered as an aid in visualizing the progression from 0 to B.)... Monday, January 08, 2007 posted by Joe Perez at 1/08/2007

Sexuality is a great conduit of power

Foucault asks how it is that we have come to see sex as the key to explaining us, as holding the truth about us. The answer has to do with the relationship sex has with power and knowledge. Foucault criticizes the "juridico- discursive" conception of power as something that simply represses and restricts, always taking a law-like form. He suggests instead that power is as productive as it is repressive, that it is multi-faceted and omnipresent. Power is everywhere and working in all directions. Sexuality, then, isn't something that power represses, but a great conduit of power.

Foucault identifies four major focus points: the sexuality of children, women, married couples, and the sexually "perverse." The deployment of sexuality through these four points allows power to spread itself into the family and throughout society. This deployment took place with the rise of the bourgeoisie, who saw sexual deviance as hereditary and dangerous to the continued survival of their class. The controls they placed on sex were thus primarily intended to ensure their own health and longevity. Philosophy Study Guides

Natural castes exist

Sunday, December 03, 2006 Know Your Caste

posted by Gagdad Bob at 12/03/2006 08:26:00 AM

The great metaphysician René Guenon once mentioned that one of the problems with the modern world is that so few people are “in their proper place.” He made the remark in reference to something that we in the West categorically reject, the caste system, so it should not be surprising that people have no idea what caste they belong to.

But natural castes exist, and if you try to eliminate them, they will just return in a perverse form -- just as you can try to eliminate sexual differences but will end up with weird sexual hybrids and a lot general confusion -- confusion that is then institutionalized and taught as “wisdom” in our universities.... but only because there are so many academics who are in the wrong caste and have no business being in academic life! (As a brief aside, you will also notice that when I have a troll problem -- or more accurately, a “problem troll” -- it is always a caste issue, so that there is really little Dupree can say aside from “pipe down and keep pulling the rickshaw!”)

Let’s review our castes, shall we? But before doing so, let us remind ourselves that this is not a matter of equality under the law, much less before the eyes of God. To be honest, it is actually an issue of compassion, for it is difficult to be happy if one spends one’s life on the wrong path. As the Buddhists say, “another man’s dharma is a great bummer,” or something like that. I hope it goes without saying that I am not advocating some sort of imposition of the caste system, any more than I would advocate stratification of society based upon Jungian typology. Having said that, there is a good chance that you will be happier in life if you know your Jungian typology -- your “psychological DNA,” so to speak -- and pursue a career consistent with it. In fact, in order to avoid any misunderstanding, let’s just stipulate at the outset that we are speaking “mythologically,” in a Jungian sense of the term. One Cosmos Under God Robert W. Godwin

Complements Will Get You Everywhere4 Dec 2006 by Gagdad Bob Yesterday someone characterized my caste as “priest artisan,” but perhaps “laborer priest” is more like it -- a blue backward collar worker. Ever since it came into existence, the United States has been the key to the material and ...

The Flat Cosmos Society and their Junk Metaphysics30 Oct 2006 by Gagdad Bob Now, all of the castes also exist within each caste, and I make no apologies for being a “warrior priest,” as it were, even if atheists end up with hurt feelings because they’re not used to someone above Pat Robertson or Jerry Falwell’s ...

Men Without Chests and Women Without Breasts23 Oct 2006 by Gagdad Bob - References ... Jung’s useful system), caste (eg, priest, warrior, menial/intellectual laborer, merchant, etc.), and even zodiacal type (in the archetypal sense, not the debased “predictive” variety found in newspapers and most books on the topic). ...

Hey Baby, What's Your Caste?16 Feb 2006 by Gagdad Bob Now the Hindu caste system was originally based on the banal but accurate observation that individual human beings do indeed belong to different castes--that there are different personality types (for example, consider Jung's...

Cosmic Solidarity, Part One: A River out of Eden24 Oct 2005 by Gagdad Bob The caste system? Very bad. The American constitution? Unsurpassed. American materialism? Troubling. Etc. ***** A primordial fork in the road took place in mankind's evolutionary journey sometime after the 10th century BC, when both the ...

Nudity per se not obscenity: Court

Dismissing a petition seeking a ban on publication of obscene photographs in newspapers, a Bench comprising Justice A.R. Lakshmanan and Justice Tarun Chatterjee said: "Where art and obscenity are mixed, what must be seen is whether the artistic, literary or social merit of the work in question outweighs its obscene content. In judging whether a particular work is obscene, regard must be had to contemporary mores and national standards."

Writing the judgment, Mr. Justice Lakshmanan quoted a U.S. Supreme Court ruling and said: "Articles and pictures in a newspaper must meet the Miller test's constitutional standard of obscenity in order for the publisher or the distributor to be prosecuted for obscenity. Nudity alone is not enough to make material legally obscene."

"While the Supreme Court of India held `Lady Chatterley's Lover' to be obscene," the Bench said, "in England the jury acquitted the publishers finding that the publication did not fall foul of the obscenity test. This was heralded as a turning point in the fight for literary freedom in the United Kingdom."

"The definition of obscenity differs from culture to culture, between communities within a single culture, and also between individuals within those communities," the judges added. "Many cultures have produced laws to define what is considered to be obscene and censorship is often used to try to suppress or control material that is obscene under these definitions."

"A blanket ban on the publication of certain photographs and news items etc., will lead to a situation where the newspaper will be publishing material which caters only to children and adolescents" and the adults would be deprived of their share of entertainment permissible under the normal norms of decency in any society, said a Bench consisting of Justices A.R. Lakshmanan and Tarun Chatterjee.

"The incidence of shielding the minors should not be that the adult population is restricted to read and see what is fit for children," the Bench said.

"In view of the availability of sufficient safeguards in terms of various legislation, norms and rules and regulations to protect society in general and children in particular from obscene and prurient contents, we are of the opinion that the writ at the instance of the petitioner is not maintainable,"

Gagdad Bob of One Cosmos

Who stumbles out of bed each morning at 5:00 AM, seizes the wheel of the cosmic bus, and embarks on a bewilderness adventure of higher nondoodling?

Who loiters on the threshold of the transdimensional doorway, looking for handouts from Petey?

Who, with Cousin Dupree's pliers and a blowtorch, has wrested the ancient sword from the stoned philosopher and stuck it in the breadbasket of metaphysical ignorance and tenure?

Whose blog is the vertical church of the New Testavus for the Restavus, channeling the roaring torrent of O into the feeble stream of cyber-k?

Whose absurcular mythunderstanding blows the locked doors of the empyrean off their rusty old hinges?

Who chucks the first water balloon out the hotel window at the annual Raccoon convention?

Who gets to steer the boat up to Raccoon Point this year? Bob! Can you dig it? My Web Page

Compassion and resolute regard for reality

dilys said... The gender sideline to the discussion simply underscores the taken-for-granted transgressiveness of the pomo/liberal disdain for conventional boundaries, which may need creative adaptation in occasional situations (what practial Christians call the "pastoral"), but which on the whole provide the cartography of human sanity ("right doctrine").

Your beginning meditation on castes has the most subtle resonance of anything of yours I remember reading. I've been thinking about careers, and "class" for years, and the Myers Briggs, but the way you bring them together here wonderfully combines compassion and resolute regard for reality. Ah reality, where we find the good stuff if we look closely, putting away wishful thinking, envy, and complaint, and receive the embrace of the harness of our respective rickshaws.As my spiritual mentor says, "Heigh ho, I Owe, it's off to work I go!" 12/03/2006 02:32:46 PM

Lisa said... Bob is so far off the ground he does have some sense of un-touch-ability!!!

HV said... Thanks for your praise of the warrior caste. Even though I've been an artisan from day 1, I've always admired the true warrior, because he has mastered the fear of death. This is not an exaggeration, because I've known a number of special forces guys in my life, and that's just how they are. How that works, I have no clue. 12/03/2006 06:53:33 PM

Our society still backward, Constitution modern

HindustanTimes.com » Print Editions » Lucknow » Other Cities » Gorakhpur » Story
Our society still backward, Constitution modern: Katju
HT Correspondent Varanasi, November 19

JUDGE Markandey Katju of the Supreme Court stressed the need for women’s emancipation to make India a modern industrial nation.
“No doubt Article 15 (1) prohibits the state from discriminating against women, but it does not prohibit society from doing so, and in fact such discrimination is widespread beginning from the very birth of a child”, said Justice Katju while mentioning about sexual discrimination in Indian society. Justice Katju, who was delivering a lecture on ‘India and the Constitution’ in BHU here on Saturday, said: “Crime against women has increased lately, the courts are flooded with cases relating to dowry deaths, rape, domestic violence etc and all this shows that our society is still backward even though the Constitution is modern.”
“It may be mentioned that I.Q. tests in modern psychology have shown that the I.Q. of an average woman is the same as that of an average man”, he said adding, “If equal opportunity is given, a woman can perform as well as a man can e.g. Madame Curie who was the first person in the world who won two Nobel Prizes-one for physics and another for chemistry, Elizabeth I and Catherine the Great who were great statesmen etc.”
“The stories and novels of great Bengali writer Sarat Chandra Chattopadhyay clearly bring out the great oppression which the Indian women were subjected to in our country.
Hence, it is not due to any inherent inferiority but only due to the fact that women were not given education and other opportunities that they could not come up to the level of men”, he said.
“No doubt, by a mere declaration of equality as a Constitutional right discrimination and inequality can not immediately be abolished, but it can certainly set forth an ideal which all patriotic and modern minded nations should strive for”, he observed.
“The great right in Part-III of our Constitution (i.e. the fundamental rights) would be meaningless unless it has a socio-economic content. The right in Part-III becomes only formal empty right unless people are guaranteed certain socio-economic rights e.g. right to employment, right to education, right to housing and medical care etc”, he said.
“A hungry man has no use of the right to freedom, of speech and expression. Similarly, an unemployed man has no use for the right to liberty. Hence, our Founding Father borrowed from the Irish Constitution, the Directive Principles and incorporated them in Part 4th of the Constitution”, said Justice Katju.

I chose love

Ned Says: November 15th, 2006 at 10:28 pm I should quickly introduce myself on this forum, since I have been a lurker here for quite a while, but I haven’t contributed anything yet. I’m a friend of Alan’s and have known him for quite some time now. I had a kundalini awakening after being sexually abused. In healing from sexual abuse and dealing with a lot of other issues as well, I discovered spirituality (I was previously a secular agnostic) and Integral philosophy. Perhaps some day I can share my experiences in detail. Two things I have noted about this forum:

(1) Where are the women? Everyone here seems to be male! (I’m a woman, in spite of my nickname. )

(2) Alan is totally right about this forum being over-intellectual. Integral theory is missing the point. Spirituality, at its core, is not about theory. Theory is a very useful tool, but it is just that — a tool. In healing from sexual abuse, I ended up having to make a choice: will I enslave my ability to love unconditionally to my faculty of reason, or will I enslave my faculty of reason to my ability to love unconditionally? I chose love, and that is why intellectual disagreements or challenges don’t threaten my faith anymore.

Pull the right levers in other people’s psyches

Second helpings Richard Morrison Seventy years after it first appeared, Dale Carnegie’s classic self-help manual How to Win Friends and Influence People is being republished in a new edition. Is it still relevant? The Times August 08, 2006

So what was his recipe for success in 1936, and would it still work in 2006? Rather as Jean-Paul Sartre was to do a few years later in Being and Nothingness (but in less pretentious prose), Carnegie put forward the thesis that we can all choose to control our lives if we wish, rather than being buffeted around by the blustery winds of fortune. He believed that most of us utilise only a tenth of our potential, and that the key to unlocking the rest is to develop our skill at dealing with other people.

How do we do that? Well, Carnegie had a brutally mechanistic view of human nature. He believed that words and deeds are largely shaped by genes, upbringing and circumstance. “You deserve very little credit for being what you are,” he tells the reader. “And remember, the people who come to you irritated, bigoted, unreasoning, deserve very little discredit for being what they are.”

This apparent denial of free will may seem chilling. But Carnegie thought it could be turned to advantage. If you know the right levers to pull in other people’s psyches, he argues, you can make them respond in an entirely predictable way, like puppets. Which, of course, is the fundamental principle upon which all cunning salesmen base their techniques — whether they are marketing soap powder to housewives or (at the time when Carnegie was writing) the concept of Aryan supremacy to Germans.

So how do you know which levers to pull? First, says Carnegie, by working out what makes your clients or customers tick. “Think always in terms of the other person’s point of view,” he advises. Rather than talking about yourself, listen patiently to them talking about themselves. Butter them up by lavishing appreciation on their work. Ferret out every personal detail you can about them, then drop this knowledge casually into the conversation; it will show them that you care. (Carnegie commends the American politician who could recall the first names of 50,000 people.)

Glass of whisky, chicken drumsticks and gobi pakoras

Happy Birthday Lord Macaulay, thank you for ‘Dalit empowerment’ Vrinda Gopinath Indian Express Home > Front Page > Story Posted online: Thursday, October 26, 2006

New Delhi, October 25: He’s the Big Mac for the Dalit intelligentsia — reviled as the ugly face of English imperialism by detractors, exalted by intellectual renegades. Lord Macaulay, denounced for trying to dare promote English among Indians, to make them “intellectual slaves’’ of the British Empire, celebrated his 206th birthday today with merriment, joviality and jesting, in the heart of the city.

It was a birthday party organized by Chandrabhan Prasad, Dalit intellectual and activist, who hails Macaulay as the Father of Indian Modernity, for it was after the introduction of his English system of education in 1854, that Dalits got the right to education, he says.
As sodas popped and the whisky poured (aptly called, Teacher’s Scotch) Prasad led his guests - a motley mix of Dalit poets, singers, academia, a sprinkling of the international media, social scientists Ashish Nandy, Gail Omvedt - to the centrepiece of the party’s action. The unveiling of a portrait, English, the Mother Goddess, painted by Dalit artist Shant Swaroop Baudh.
Said Bhan, “Today, English-speaking Dalits and Adivasis are less disrespected, therefore, empowered by Goddess English, Dalits can take their place in the new globalised world.’’ Bhan has three reasons for revering Macaulay - his insistence to teach the “natives” English broke the stranglehold of Sanskrit, Persian and Arabic teaching, a privilege of only the elite castes and, he argued,for the European kind of modern education, with focus on modern sciences. “Imagine, if we had only followed indigenous study,’’ said Bhan, “we would be like Afghanistan or Nepal today.’’ “I certainly do not agree with some of Bhan’s thesis,’’ said an aghast Nandy, “but I certainly support every oppressed community or individual’s right to pick up any weapon, be it political, academic or intellectual incorrectness, to fight the establishment. It’s the sheer audacity of it that makes it so forceful.’’
Dalit poet Parak sang a couplet to the portrait - a refashioned Statue of Liberty, wearing a hippie hat, holding a massive pink pen, standing on a computer, with a blazing map of India in the background - Oh, Devi Ma/ Please Let us Learn English/ Even the dogs understand English, to cheers and laughter, even as Lord Macaulay’s portrait, looking the perfect English buccaneer, gazed below. Bhan then declared his new intention - the painting will be printed on calendars and distributed at all Dalit conclaves and community meetings. “Hereafter, the first sounds all newborn Dalit and Adivasi babies will hear from their parents is - abcd. Immediately after birth, parents or a nearest relative will walk up to the child and whisper in the ear - abcd,’’ he said mirthfully.
“I welcome the fact that English gives access to the world,’’ said Omvedt, “but remember, some of the best English has come from oppressed quarters, like the Blacks in America. Their language, known as rap, their music, poetry, literature, has a dynamism. It’s important to reclaim your regional languages from Brahminism and Sanskritisation,’’ she says. It set the theme for other speakers, and as heaving plates of chicken drumsticks and gobi pakoras were passed around.
“Dalits must no longer see themselves as oppressed and repressed,’’ said Nandy, waving his glass of whisky, “they have their own traditions and knowledge systems which must be preserved. There’s a very powerful tradition of history, music, life, which the younger generation must be proud of.’’ Bhan nodded agreeably - he had certainly hosted an evening of Dalit empowerment and pride. There was no hard luck story here. vrinda.gopinath@expressindia.com

To spread the faith majority at the Centre is a pre-requisite

Mayawati to embrace Buddhism Special Correspondent The Hindu Tuesday, Oct 17, 2006 ePaper PHOTO: SHANKER CHAKRAVARTY BLESSINGS: Bahujan Samaj Party supremo Mayawati seeking blessings from a Buddhist monk after paying homage to Kanshi Ram in New Delhi on Monday.

New Delhi: Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) chief Mayawati and her followers will embrace Buddhism after the BSP gains an absolute majority at the Centre. Ms. Mayawati announced this on Monday at the conclusion of the seventh day rites of party founder Kanshi Ram which were conducted according to Buddhist tradtions at her New Delhi residence.
Addressing the press, she said that although Kanshi Ram did not convert to Buddhism, he was Buddhist by belief. It was exactly 50 years ago, on October 14, 1956, that Babasaheb Ambedkar converted to Buddhism. "It was Manyavar's dream to see the BSP in power at the Centre, and in the States, before the 50th anniversary of Babasaheb's conversion. Unfortunately, that did not happen," she said.
What was the connection between political power and religious conversion? The BSP chief said power was essential to spread any faith. "It is not about me becoming a Buddhist. I could do it today but it would be just me. We have to spread the faith for which absolute majority at the Centre is a pre-requisite."
Ms. Mayawati said she lit the funeral pyre of Kanshi Ram because both she and her mentor strongly believed in gender equality. "It was his view, and also mine, [that] boys and girls are equal in all respects. If a girl can discharge other responsibilities, there is no reason why she cannot perform the last rites of her near and dear. I believe that my gesture is an example for other women; by lighting the funeral pyre of my guru I have laid the foundation of future social transformation."