winter note on winter impression

mall shopping as an ant-hive level of human semi-conscious activity
like Dostoevsky's observations in Paris

senselessly?

worse?
coming to feel years of study and search had no more reality and meaning

Moscow 105.2 FM -- another tranquilizer

at its start it, Radio Moscow FM 105.2, is such an uncreative copy of American radio programs of even decades, that it shows how people would not seem to be able to recognize themselves if they didn't copy what was elsewhere.

now people can "sleep" intellectually during the day listening -- I suppose some actually do?-- to this musical anesthetic.

RT?

Rest Trashing

genes' blue jeans?

another little-noted "anthropological" fact in the daily world -- including in Moscow -- that can be a free, insightful lesson about the human being...jeans. blue jeans.
started in California in the mid-1800s, they are now worn globally.
sit in any Moscow metro wagon anytime and observe how many -- and sometimes who -- are wearing blue jeans. (new, faded, stylishly "pre-worn", etc) often at least half the wagon will be in blue jeans.
comfortable perhaps, but more than that.
this fact -- again, little noted these mundane days -- shows group mentality. group taste. a desire to "fit in", to be a part of fashion. and being a world-wide phenomena, it seems a rather good external indication of "inner blue jeans" in ideas, desires, likes, dislikes, tastes etc.
ie conformism.
it's probably in the genes.

orphans as pawns

the mentality, quality and character of the Russian government can be seen in their proud tit for tat revenge bill to ban Americans from adopting Russian orphans.
of course they have always cared deeply for orphans in Russia, and what better way to punish America than by preventing Russian orphans from having a life there.

1 photo would change history

one massacre photo inside the classroom of Newtown, Connecticut would permanently change the history and culture of guns in America... in about 5 hours.

Xmas music in Moscow?

it is surprising how many Russians listen happily to Christmas music from the "West", but do not know many of the lyrics of the songs and carols they listen to.
here too is a revealing of the blithe acceptance of the life-, culture-, social and mind-styles from the former adversary's world

dreams we lived by

a history of unconscious societal "ontic" assumptions need be written

Christmas in Moscow?

Not much.

where life goes up in smoke

a walk on any street of Moscow at any time of day or night can help explain why the population and health, especially of men, in Russia has declined.
they are smoking it away.

passive to tobacco, their needs and weaknesses, and the behavior of the crowd...the pervasiveness and continuousness of cigarette smoking unself-consciously on the streets everywhere is an outer signal of the state of the passive majority of the Russian populace.

(btw: will be good when they are maneuvered to stop smoking. good for their health as well.)

homo (post-?) Sovieticus

even in deep winter, when the air of subway tunnels can be quite cold, it is rather common to see Russians sitting and/or standing in a cold air draft of a subway wagon open window (though there are also tableaux and announcements to keep them closed), and rarely does someone close one.
is this not due still to fear of standing out in a crowd?

new travel trend: apocalypse tourism

seems that the end of the world has been quite good for the Mexican, especially Yucatan, economy!
wonderful. just in time.
maybe a new periodic, apocalypse-tourism economic stimulus program could be set up, and the end of the world could be predicted every few years in a different location, and silly people could be traveled around to help other economies?

smiling spiritual solipsism

recently received another announcement from another spiritual "teacher", this time of soul astrology (much easier to do, since one can be intuitive only, and need not do anything so rash and realistic as actually be able to predict any future with the stars -- like an astrology lite -- and be required to be correct).
an apparently nearly complete ignorance of anything resembling the actual facts of history allows a much easier,  and happier, untroubled solipsism to enjoy itself explaining about "leading from the dark ages of recent civilization to something better".
this mentality is the main reason California was, after years, unendurable.

this too shall pass

howsoever and however much we may now unawares (also?) take the world we live in as fact and final...all history reveals that it is also sic transit -- whether glorious or mundane

unsolicited inspectors of the tragicomedy

Thoreau playfully described himself as an unpaid inspector of snow-storms...and perhaps someone(s) need take on the devoted, unpaid tasks of seriously observing "the human condition" -- whether solicited or not by something or nothing more

"comments" on gun control as commentary on America

to gain some realistic insight into the American psyche en masse, read any few pages of public "comments" on gun control in America -- especially in the aftermath of the Newtown, Connecticut schoolroom massacre

"real-death" photos would change gun culture of America

if photos of the massacre in the classroom in Newtown, Connecticut were shown on the news to the nation and the world...the laws would change, and fast.

Faust or Seagull

on a day when the idea of a 'Faust level' was peculating...a sincere gift came of Bach's Seagull, which was helpful the year it was published

the mystery on Mt Sinai

whatsoever great divine revelation or none happened on a long uncertain mount in the Sinai an indeterminable number of centuries ago is disputed -- but powerful -- to this day, a dispute which, as is written, began amongst those below the mountain when a possible Moses was still on it

and if there was neither a Moses nor a revelation (wherever there was)?...

a write to live

writing as a replacement for a missing "God"

the society of a laugh

the Brit at the nearby table laughed with a soul-openness and volubility still rarely heard amongst Russians her age.

let me sleep!

most remain in a doze of the tradition that carries them

not a "tragedy", but...

the word "tragedy" is very often incorrectly used, but what to put in its place...especially for terrible events caused by willful human act?
and a glance at a list of synonyms shows the element of inevitability of "tragedy", and how other words need be sought and used to correctly express varied natural and human events or disasters

go, and sin no more?

part of the sermon in St George Hall on 12.12.'12 to the very worldly unconverted was that they should repent and corrupt no more.
though as the Patriarch sat politely by, in the VVIP rows of the VIP gathering, there could be no believable serious archaic threats of other- and after-worldly consequences and punishments. whatever those present may or may not worry about personally, it had surely more to do with getting caught, of protecting their earthly ill- or well-gotten goods and gains, even with keeping their body guards happy and on their side, than worrying any distant guardian angelic views of things done publicly and privately.

for those gathered, this-worldly incarceration in the worlds of Siberia and prison are much more troubling than any other rumored judgmental worlds above and/or hereafter.

and how many know or really believe that the preacher himself is innocent...

and do those then there present even reflect now on the sermon: go and sin no more?

mirror mirror...

is mankind ever not looking into a mirror?

begging style in Moscow

those persons in Moscow who ask for money in public, aka "beggars", have a very set pattern of speech, intonation and attitude in their body and voice. it rarely varies at all.

the fact is that, generally speaking, beggars in eg the USA and the UK are much more individualized and creative.

is the "begging style" in Russia set in Moscow? is it pre-Soviet? did Leo Tolstoy hear the same of begging? Pushkin? Lomonosov?

12.12.'12 excitements

as long as people are dreamy and thoughtless enough -- be it in the "Far East" or other non-"Western" countries -- to forget that the year 2012 of 12.12.2012 is based on a life and death -- not to even consider some kind of "resurrection" -- that most either do not believe, ignore, or are indifferent too, then they can be very excited about the auspiciousness of their weddings

the nobility of man

much easier to imagine by not watching the news.

democracy with Russian characteristics

aka oligarchy
or perhaps rather as Augustine wrote in City of God, Bk IV, 4.

an unmystical Stonehenge moment

waking and seeing stars in the night's closing hours, it was clear that it must be visible. but when, and where?
waiting an hour or so, perhaps but one-half hour before sunrise, there it was, in a kind of private Stonehenge moment, just over the very point of the spire of MSU's Stalin tower -- a very very slight slivered moon.
suspect few others noted it. (and not forgetting  all that "Stalin" says.)

no grand moment. unfortunately? such seem to come seldom nowadays, if they ever came more than in imagination.

the basket list

a "bucket list", for all those many who can not realistically imagine or sense death (often until a mature age, or it's nearing), has become a kind of popular way to describe an entertainment/activities list, a distraction list, even a bragging list of things a person will do.
one can hear that the movie title is now used rather as a list of ways of killing time, rather than before being killed in time.

music saves

perhaps music is about as close as the gods will approach us now, and allow being approached

Adam's god-given right to stupidity

watching over many years many Americans ardently defending their "constitutional right to bear arms" -- though in psychological fact they often speak more as if it is their "God-given" right -- shows, to one of my perspective, the endemic stupidity and cussed boundedness of the human creature.

many problems are blamed on the USA that are rather inherent to a deeply fallen and very lost "Adam".

inner freedom and independence

one need not be an independent mystic standing alone in the cosmos to develop some more substantial inner freedom from social, cultural and political dominance, though few enough even seem to imagine such here

myths of Er and UN

two profoundly definitive and different views of the human:
that of Er and that of the UN
the myth of Er and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights

good question

and when was it first historically asked in this sense, where and by whom?: can a person live without (any) meaning in their life?

united in sin and the end?

augustine believed that we are all originally united in the sin of adam. in our time, when there is no place to escape to, we may all be united in the end.

a rich man

watching a rather heavily-guarded cortege of some "important man" in Moscow, I imagined a different scenario:
"an armed convoy escorted the most well-educated, most-respected, wise man of the city to a library. he again arrived safely, having been neither robbed, mobbed nor kidnapped."

the simple, sleepy Christology of Bing Crosby

to dislike or disdain Christmas music would be an attitude that few children could normally be born with or grow into, though an adult, aggressive or passive, atheist or agnostic or not, might come to take such a position. but it seems a bit like disliking sweets.
still, though it seems certain that dear Bing Crosby was never troubled by any of history's higher criticism of the Bible, nor of any esotericisms of a cosmic Christ, his simple man of Nazareth -- well and sympathetically told in the first two minutes of the recording linked here -- is a sleeping Christology, for he merely accepts as truth the images and story he tells.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iz1UdOW6QRgb

city aurascapes

reflecting on the people on the streets of Moscow:
it would be interesting to see the actual invisible inner lives of the people of a city, visibly manifest. to see their real thoughts and feelings, longings, despisings, habits, fears...an aurascape of a city...behind the often thoughtless facades of clothes, faces, demeanors.

Newton, Blake, Goethe, Steiner,...

the real Newton has come to be more clearly known in recent decades, and it is very interesting to consider that the "Newton" that Blake, Goethe, Steiner, et al, rejected -- paradigmatically one might say -- was not the real Newton.
the real Newton was in fact much closer in actual life to the man-, nature- and world-views of these "contrasting" personalities in history.
new studies that compare the actual common historical biographical/personal interests and involvement of these individuals in and with esoteric, the mystical, the alchemical, etc will quite likely be interesting to consider. (little seems yet to have been done here.)
though it must not be forgotten, that these three, and many others, in their lives and works, strongly opposed what was in fact a false image of Newton, and that this determined -- and incorrectly defined -- their views not only of him.

useless, ignored lighthouses of ideas?

the need for a subtle discernment of the ideas by which the majority unconsciously live...to bring them to consciousness...
ignored lighthouses.
unwanted mirrors.
applied philosophy?

"God" -- MIA

how to find Hesse's ,,Gottesspur" when God is MIA?

a Nietzschean near death experience?

there are many accounts of NDEs (near death experiences), and a student today was reading one...which has the semi-educated/literate character often found in such reports.
it would be interesting to read such an account by a mind of the caliber and character of a Nietzsche or a Thomas Huxley.

the world will again not end

the world will again not end on December 21, 2012, and there will not be a new level of consciousness, nor a change in the poles, etc...but it is instructive to observe the psychology of those who do so believe -- before, during and after.
the end of the world has been predicted in fact hundreds of times over the centuries since eg the Book of Revelation was -- and it almost wasn't! -- added to the end of the collection that became the Bible. it does not matter for the reality that this is another misinterpretation of the Mayan calendar.

no mysteries here now

most I see now in Moscow seem to live less like all the mysteries are solved, than that there are none

the '60s conscious

the '60s and the hippies were a naive youth in a naive time, and those who participated then are immature now if they do not know how and why they were so.

-- reflections on Culture and Society, 1780-1950 (1958) by Raymond Williams

unconsciously consumers

it is impossible to in reality understand the times in which the world is now moving, without a knowledge of the actual history and psychology of (the epidemic of) shopping and consumerism.

"out to save the world"

after all these years of study, observation, reflection, travel, am convinced our human plight cannot be saved by us, but it seems our task, or inherent dream, to try.

the bad news about the good news is old

few of those who ardently argue the originality and primacy of "Biblical truth" would be glad to learn that many arguments for and against had begun more than 4 centuries ago.

relfections while reading in Early Anthropology in the 16th and 17th Centuries (1964), Margaret Hodgen

sub specie humanitatis

we earthly "adams and eves", dolls of clay, microcosms, male and female quintessences of dust, homo insapiens, murderers of God, risen apes, advanced chemicals,...can surely not even think seriously of any thing sub specie aeternitatis.

ageless

very few ever mentally recognize the age in which they live

the periless journey

packaged experience

Adam Doe: Lethe Intoxication

how long back in history can a continuing intoxication of Lethe, amidst the high and low, be traced? certainly most in our times seem drunk out of their minds of it -- as if history had not been.

report: "Subject is found to have forgotten identity. No recollection." "Adam Doe. Approx. age: 21st century."

the present absences

thought: the preponderation of the presence of the Present Life and World in human experience forgoes whatever Past has passed, and totally eclipses the rumored transcendent Omni-Presence.

a steppenwolf in...

a steppenwolf in Southern gentlemen's clothing...but few seem to notice

I loathe smoking

if walking any street of Moscow you see an average man not smoking...
just wait a minute.

if average Russian males didn't smoke so often and so thoughtlessly in public, I wouldn't tend to daily disdain them so much.

the unimportant pedigree of the demos?

the "democracy" of a creature of uncertain pedigree...
risen ape?... fallen angel?...
does it not matter?

lonely Russian women

very many Russian women are far too fine and soulful for the likes of most men here.
a depressing reality for them.

reasons to read

if you read this for entertainment, you are wasting your time as well as mine

traveling in history

a traveler in history is an internal journeyer into our human being (our 'human having been'), with such study and insight leading also to a kind of self-knowledge, of the history of which we are a part.

education (leading out) rather than entertainment, distraction or escape, I doubt there is much I could have done in Moscow -- since it prides itself now on being a normal city (if with greater variety and choices than more staid London and NY?) -- and certainly nothing I did, that would have been as exciting and "insight-yielding" as reading in the recently-received Early Anthropology in the 16th and 17th Centuries (1964)  by Margaret Hogden -- which admittedly addresses directly the history of the understanding of man by man, which is clearly also in the direction of gnothi seauton (which most -- it is important to know, prefer to ignore, though some few not).

Odysseus at the mast in Starbucks?

though mochas help keep my daily spirits up, it is easy to recognize that very few who ever anywhere enjoy Starbucks have also enjoyed, or worried, Melville's Moby Dick, and that the Siren logos is closer to the facts of the psychology of Starbucks

and when a man dies...

two older men die by accident...
one: an experienced hunter deep in his own woods stalking a big buck glimpsed the previous season
the other: in his decades-old private library of books in history, religion, philosophy,...

what differences would show in the post-mortems?

transcendence over Starbucks, anyone?

the apparent near-total absence of any questioning, thought, feeling or concern in the transcendent over the mundane life and person

relax, enjoy, all is well... http://uploads3.wikipaintings.org/images/john-william-waterhouse/ulysses-and-the-sirens-1891.jpg

mirages and oases

the danger of being as parched as I am, is readiness to drink any water I might come upon.

and if this man dies...

if i die unexpectedly, it will have been due to a Steppenwolfian aloneliness

an awesome, meaningless mystery?

the naturalization of science, or the scientization of nature, whereby no spirits were to be sought, found, or (for some eventually even suspected to be) discoverable in nature, lead to our time of the experience or belief in the awesome (the cliche:"awe-inspiring"), the incomprehensible vastness, the marvelous, wonder, beauty, even the mystery ("Mystery") of the universe being devoided of "God" (as Creator, 'Hierarchic Supervisor'').
the incredible, vast, awesome universe, which otherwise before might have inspired of the power, majesty and goodness of "God", as the (now) king(less)doms of nature once upon a time did, now "inspires" -- if that -- of a mystery.
and whereas for some God was the Great Mystery, now it is the Physical World, the Physical Universe...which is expanding beyond an infinitude which even Newton (or Pascal or T. Huxley or Nietzsche) might have found credible.

the universe had already become "lonely" enough, and for a demystified few, meaningless enough, without learning during the past century (and also decade) that our vast galaxy is itself a minor location -- whether divinely, mysteriously, or merely materially conceived.

-- journal extracts in reaction to reading in Wouter Hanegraaff's Esotericism and the Academy (2012)

fashion (un)conscious

external "man" ad nauseum -- people walking around Moscow in their unreflective mundanity of life and world happily copying the life-, mind- and fashion-styles of London, Paris, NY.

about "man", see: http://www.geocities.com/americanreflections/Man_Mankind_and_Related_Words.html

the mythic music of Christmas

let Christmas be a myth, even if one not merely humbug, it helped create a consoling music.

Help in Nederland om iemand te vinden?

Als u in Nederland woont, please help me vinden van een advocaat (advocaat) met de naam Cathy (Katrien?) Die op sabbatical was tijdens dit jaar, en was in juli in Peking die Chinees studeren.
Ze is een polyglot, wie weet Oudgrieks, Latijn, Engels, Frans, Nederlands, waarschijnlijk ook enkele Arabisch, is het leren van Chinees.
Ze is een bibliofiel, en houdt van geschiedenis.
Ik ontmoette haar in de Boekenwurm boekhandel in Peking 13 juli en ik wil het eerste gesprek te beëindigen.

http://forum.fok.nl/topic/1898316

"Helen" No. 2,167,443

in order to control over-population in Russia, a strict annual quota should be instituted on the number of females born, who by lottery will be permitted to live with the name Elena (or any variant thereof).

tobacco smokes hookah humans

it is false to say that people smoke tobacco. tobacco smokes people.
and smoking sections are not where people are allowed to smoke, but where tobacco is allowed to smoke them.
and if the native Americans believed truly, that there is a guardian spirit to plants and animals...then presumably there is a spirit of tobacco invisibly "above"...and humans are its hookahs.

eau de ashtray

it is almost impossible to walk on a city street in Moscow without being downwind of at least a few smokers, mostly, but not only, blithely-thoughtless males.
and in the subway wagons one can often hardly avoid the fragrance of ashtray cologne

"no prob!"? "no is(h)!"?

"no problem" -- an American export one can hear around the world.
but "problem" has now become an "issue" -- in America and elsewhere -- which it is increasingly replacing. this small example shows the pressure of mass psychology.
but hey, "no is(h)".

Anderson Cooper sees ~60°

rather than the CNN program AC seeing 360°, it shows itself unashamedly -- one wishes it were much more circumstantial, and ashamed -- as emotion-, sensation- and gossip-mongering, thus often seeing only ~60° -- and that often ad nauseum -- on any story.
to the degree that it reflects American mentality, culture and society, and is taken seriously in the USA, it is no surprise that Americans are provincial, and in decline.

addenda, December 13, 2012:
it would be interesting to know what AC actually thinks and feels as he goes daily, hourly, minute-to-minute from one emotionally-laden tragedy to another, and in such exhausting detail. but perhaps there is little hidden to him, and he will not see more of himself, or his emotional mongering, till he has grown -- if ever -- deeper, more serious and mature.

about the masonic conspiracy to control the world...

...it is perhaps somewhat comforting to imagine that they are trying.

Mo$cow's carpe mundi

conscious communist social ideals replaced by a semi-conscious consumerist carpe mundi.

Seeking: Cathy, Advocaat, sabbatical, Netherlands

seeking to contact a solicitor (advocaat) named Cathy (Katrien?) of the Netherlands who was on sabbatical during this past year, also studying in Chinese in Beijing in July.
met in Bookworm bookshop Beijing. Polyglot (including Ancient Greek and Latin), bibliophile, lover of history.
if you know her, or know how to find her, please help me get contact.

branded: external man

watching a CNN "marketplace" show on luxury yachts in Monaco, and Chanel brands in "difficult times" (where new customers in eg China just want the best, like in the West, and exclusivity is required to keep the brand image...), I recall a winning series of dialogues written here in the '90s, in journal Москва, in which was clearly added to kindred useless critiques in history: "the life and culture of external man".

walking alone in the spiritless city

to walk in the city, with all of its streets, buildings, people, cafes, shops, cars, noise, activities
and yet feel in soul that one is walking alone in the modern-proverbial "wasteland", with the soul open to the world that does not answer

shopping malls: a waking spiritual sleep

malls: shining, smiling places of human spirit asleep?

trapped in the mundane...

...still searching for "God", though most do not know He is missing.

enjoy, change, understand

though we certainly have little more common in ideas than a remnant "cosmic anthropology" with when we might attempt to judge with some agreement, these three ways of relating to the world do give insights into different people and their attitudes to life and world.

but this is too simple, and "ideal" for the live of most. perhaps there is something more of a contrast of central "principles". endure/survive-enjoy. exchange/trade-change. categorize-understand.

humor and suicide in animals?

do animals have (even) a (nascent) sense of humor; are they known to have organized "practical jokes"? and have any animals been determined to have committed suicide?

answers to questions most have not imagined.

how to feel after seeking four decades answers to human questions most do not yet imagine.

whysoevers

we can not but understand the world and life from within whenever, wherever and whoever we are, especially in trying to imagine our 'whyevers'.

self-knowledge?!

human self-knowledge would recognize the strong tendency of humans to self-deception.

high-heeled souls and cigarette tossers

a subtle sociologist on the streets of Moscow should be able to accurately predict high-heel height by observing only the individual woman's face.
and whether any particular Russian male walking the street smoking will put out his cigarette before tossing the butt in the waste-bin, just toss it away indifferently onto the street, or throw it still burning into the waste.

trapped in a (dis)enchanted castle

the psyche of the born American is like an isolated castle in which each lives trapped, out of which few escape, and from which signals and messages are sent to others trapped in their own castles. (sometimes the messages are to help them out.)

are you telling a story?

while we live we all tell stories to each other...in, about and from our lives. so that we are all more or less able and interesting story-tellers.
but tales of yore, say that when we die we are told, even shown, our own life as a story.
do you want to learn your own story?

the decisive who and why of travel

"been there, done that" is now a kind of abandoned, popular trivialization of human experience, and one which no serious soul could ever seriously say...save perhaps with great regret.
"who" travels and "why" determine the depths or shallows of any "travel experience".

though travail has been organized (Cooked) out of much travel in the course of the 19th and 20th centuries, a shallow or trivial "who" with a "why" which is merely entertainment and distraction, or being banally able to brag "been there, done that", will clearly experience little more than its trivial self.

meanwhile, where in the world is not yet flooded with mass tourism?

the lives of pleasure, practicality and contemplation

many people are trying to change the world; fewer are studying to try to understand it. this puts them in very different relations and attitudes to the world and our life. (not to consider those "just enjoying life".)
as far back as Pythagoras there was the distinction of the life of enjoyment, the practical life, and the life of contemplation. "Steppenwolves" distinctly belong to the latter. the malls are filled with others.

nice and comfy

99.99 percent of those who use the word "nice", have no consciousness of the words original meaning, nor how it is thus more deeply true.
and "comfort", once referred to strength(en), not weaken, ease.

Cooked, prepackaged tour(ist)s

it was surely inevitable that someone cook up the package tour, now globally sold. this might not be so confining, were the tourists not also pre-cooked and -packaged.

have a nice depression! : )

life and the world -- and/or your personal life and world -- may seem to have no Meaning...but is that a good enough reason to get depressed?

it is always astonishing to hear how "depression" is spoken about in and by the publicly dominating middle-class mind. it is difficult for a Steppenwolf-type to know where to begin to critique such a presumptuous optimism as so confidently describes "depression" as an illness that is treatable.
if one takes a realistic look at human history in merely the past 100 years, or the scores of world conflicts current today... oh, who needs to get depressed listing all the problems in the world, past, present and future, and how they affect our nations, societies, families, careers, personal lives, mental health...
fyi: there are many aspects of our daily life and world, that fully merit, that well deserve, being depressed about.

and then, what of those poor, unfortunate individuals in history who suffered from some Platonic madness, Renaissance melancholy, Faustian despair, Romantic brooding...who might have done so much better and more with treatment for their depressions. Dante was lost in those damned dark woods; Michelangelo was said to have not only depressions, but a temper. Beethoven could have smiled in spite of his growing deafness. and what of distressed Dostoevsky...he surely would have written such nice stories. and Nietzsche...with his horrid "death of God" news...no wonder he went mad.

being depressed is perhaps one of the most realistic relations to the world as it is, even if we do not accept a contemptus mundi.

travailess travel

reading in The Accelerated Sublime (2002) by C. Bell and J Lyall will fundamentally alter not only any thoughtful person's future travels, but all their past travels as well.

reason to write

considering the rarity of readers here, there is really very little reason to write

mass ahistoria

people live in the current(s) of human history(ies), in their societies' ideas, beliefs, even emotions, but most know neither this nor how.

"...but my words shall not pass away"?

who in human history has had views of the world that have stood the "tests of time"?

Moses? Plato? Pythagoras? Ptolemy? Augustine? Dante? Thomas? Bacon? Galileo? Newton? Goethe? Emerson? Einstein? et al...

even the words in the Bible "heaven and earth shall pass away, but my words shall not pass away", (Matthew 24:35) seem -- sub specie mundi -- clearly already during some centuries to have increasingly passed out of the belief of many. (even if we still have the year "2012".)

"Steppenwolf" as a personality type

probably few take the idea "Steppenwolf" as a real type of person seriously (though it was one of Hesse's most autobiographical novels). just as, one must have a certain inner experience and perspective of life, one's life and the world, to be able to enjoy reading Goethe's Faust.

breaking news: human insignificance increases

while the moon may noticeably influence a peoples' sleep or societies' criminal activities, and can also for a time make a river seem romantic... Hubble again has more deeply revealed just how vastly insignificant we apparently are.
"awesome" in the words of a scientist about the "universe" we are being shown is perhaps about as adequate and realistic as it sounds with immature teens.
Pascal is well-known for having written of his fright of infinite space. Nietzsche later wrote of how our earth is adrift from what had been believed to be its moorings of meaning. Scientists are now rightly proud of what they have been able to discover via the Hubble telescopes. and yet, while for most people even the politics in the societies in which they live are distant to their lives, the solar system, not to seriously consider our own reported galaxy, are hardly a part of their lives. and yet it seems the extremely distant, "irrelevant", recent "news" which the Hubble telescope has brought of the oldest times is bad, disheartening, even disminding. an increase of human desolation and insignificance.

close to the edge

the people i know do not seem to know how close to my inner edge I am being so little really known. they perhaps read "stephenwolf" as show and pretense rather than desperation and a plea.

Russian uncertainties for certain

living in Moscow Russia one needs be able to emotionally go through unexpected surprises, changes, shocks...a company or a shop closes, someone in a stable job suddenly loses it, an entire building is 'there one week and gone the next', a reliable service is cancelled... these can make one shake inside, but that is life in Russia.

historical (in)sighteeing

perhaps it is somewhat like being an explorer and scientist of history...today received new reports, mailed gifts at a planned party: The Lords of Human Kind: European Attitudes to Other Cultures in the Imperial Age (1969) by Victor Kiernan; Seven Types of Adventure Tale: An Etiology of a Major Genre (1991) by Martin Green; Imperial Fictions: Europe's Myth of Orient (1994) by Rana Kabbani; The Myth of Continents: A Critique of Metageography (1997) by M. W. Lewis and K. E. Wigen; The Japanese Discovery of Europe (1952) by Donald Keene; and Inventing Africa (2011) by Robin Derricourt.

hopefully the next few weeks will be as engaging, enlightening and satisfying as these titles suggest. the goal being insights into our human story...like historical (in)sightseeing.

will only understanding will be changed? or -- rhetorically, but really to escape the daily mundane --  better go to a series of Bach concerts, a Viennese ball, or a "magic theater"? or again to Optima Pustyn or Dornach?

Magellan, monsters and Cameron in the Pacific

finished the well-written "Magellan's Terrifying Circumnavigation of the Globe -- Over the Edge of the World" (2003) by Laurence Bergreen. 5 ships with 260 crew left Seville August 10, 1519; on September 8, 1522, 1 ship of 18 bare survivors returned to Seville (Magellan not among them).

what is interesting -- in a year when a private explorer, James Cameron, in his own submarine can view the deepest known place in the earth's seafloor, in the Mariana Trench (not so far from where Magellan was killed unnecessarily attacking natives) -- was the transition in viewing the world.

"At the time, Europe was deeply ignorant of the world at large. Magellan undertook his ambitious voyage in a world ruled by superstition, populated with strange and demonic creatures....To the average person, the world beyond Europe resembled the fantastic realms depicted in The Thousand and One Nights....Going to sea was the most adventurous thing one could do, the Renaissance equivalent of becoming an astronaut, but the likelihood of death and disaster was far higher. These days there are no undiscovered places on earth; in the age of the Global Positioning System, no one need get lost. But in the Age of Discovery, more than half the world was unexplored, unmapped, and misunderstood by Europeans. Mariners feared they could literally sail over the edge of the world. They believed that sea monsters lurked in the briny depths, waiting to destroy them." (p. 73)

Cameron saw some odd sea life, but hardly monsters. someone perhaps has written an appropriate 'eulogy to monsters'...the predecessors of eg recent years' physical challenges and "extreme sports". however that may be, Bergreen has written a good word on the circumnavigation undertaken with Magellan as Captain General.

the best and worst of the human

if one, merely for good example, realistically compares Salman Rushdie and the common world-wide protester of the latest offending film -- just the recent wave of such events -- one is able to evaluate and understand the top and the bottom of the human being. anthropology on the TV screen.

R. I. P.?

perhaps best not to till the examination is over -- even if the Examiner seems already dead and gone.

cliché everyone?

there is a deep difference -- rarely noticed I notice -- between those who speak, even quite "intelligently" and/or prominently, using set expressions, cliches, idioms, fixed metaphors, etc, consciously, and those who do not realize that they are so expressing themselves.

self- vs crowd-control

the current attacks on embassies and consulates mainly in the "Middle East" due the "inflamed passions" at a insult to their religious leader shows again, by the hourly news, how those without self-control require crowd-control.
an interesting piece on origin of the expression "the thin veneer of civilization" can be found at: http://www.erblist.com/erbmania/nkima/veneer.html

dispirited?

a person can feel dispirited.
Nature too.

and I pray to the missing God that the universe is not also so.

in a deep theological coma?

one of the signs of a very deep human self-ignorance is in those who so often and loudly speak of and, so they claim, for "God", unaware that if He Is, He surely Is able to watch their every thought, word and deed.
they speak about Him and His being, as if He wasn't actually.

God the Institutionalized Grandfather

God the Institutionalized Great Grandfather, mysteriously appears in public only in rare moments of lucidity, while there are hordes who claim to preach on His behalf.

by grasping ideas in the sky

(without a norm-al family, home, work/CV, interests, occupations, life...)
I find that I must try to hold my self up by grasping ideas in the sky. often in these years I find I am not strong enough.

ignore the lights?

reading in The Adventurer -- The Fate of Adventure in the Western World (1974) by Paul Zweig.
in a coffee shop in Moscow in the pretentiously-named European Shopping Center, the book  -- as an example only -- suggested:
how is it that such enlightening insights, such clarifying words, have so few eager eyes and ears? the pervasive darkness and dumbness?!

Harry Hallers of the world, unite!?

perhaps those who recognize themselves as learned kin of Hesse's "Harry Haller", sh/could write to "unite"? at least to commiserate!

from a Colorado to a China peak

leaving the South as a "sweet Southern boy" to hitch out west searching for...
I could barely then imagine what I was doing, though I felt I had to...
'testing of self' for sure...but that was about all my Southern upbringing allowed me to conceive.
I somehow at the time came to believe that sitting on a mountain allowed one's mind to calm (whatever I thought that would mean or bring), so I headed for the Rockies...
now, four decades later, reading history and lit on lit of pilgrimage, travel, adventure, quest...I can understand such historically, philosophically, religious/spiritually, though less certainly in regards to literature per se.
the trip in July on to Mt Tai was a kind of culminatory continuation of that vague need years ago -- which took me then, alone, to the peak of a Colorado mountain -- but now to the top of that Taoist mountain with conscious intent. (Still alone.)

an earthly seeking of a paradise

it would, it seems to me, be an overly-clever exaggeration to say that post-Soviet Russian consumerism, such as it has shown itself to be, is either a misconceived earthly seeking of paradise ("svetli budushem"), long pent-up desires, or just a copying of the life-styles in the "West". they are not conscious enough for that.

outer and/or inner journey?

which was the more life-changing and lasting journey this summer -- the outer or the inner?
my trip to China for 3 difficult weeks...with that glimpse of Mao in his anti-Feng-shui Memorial? the crowds of the forbidden in the Forbidden City? thoughts on the politics of the aesthetics of decor in the Great Hall of the People? my visit to Confucius' home? that day's ordeal to reach the top of desecrated sacred Mt Tai? ...
my soon -- in our jet-age -- enduring again, with an attempted smile, the thoughtless mental state in the Heart of Dixie? the nervous excitement on "hiking out" on one pontoon for those high wind moments on my Hobie Wave? the emergency beaching of the boat, in fear, as lightning struck too near? the great fried crab claws?...
or the insights and comprehensions of our human story via reading through When China Rules the World, The Idea of the West, The Adventurer -- The Fate of Adventure in the Western World, Inventing Europe, et al?

foggy minds in the USA

an observation I have made of many in the USA is that, with rather little serious common educational and study background, and yet a general idealism at least of American and/or "universal" ideals and values, is that people live in a kind of personal idea fog. they don't have a shared intellectual conception of history, their society, themselves, the secular and the spiritual, etc, so they of necessity talk in and from their own personal fog of ideas. were they clear about their ideas, and how these relate to the world, others, history, etc, they would not be foggy.

fearful pulses in the eyes

even in the deeper pulses in the eyes of the Ambassador's wife yestereve, as I tried my best to seem casual and friendly as we exchanged some "small talk", I could see why I am so out of place in the USA, and feel like a solitary "steppenwolf".

escape via an era of consumption

is the culture of consumption, with its activity of shopping, not an understandable effort to escape for a time deeper and darker realities of human history?

by spirit alone

only a kind of ethereal, insightful reading keeps me at times from sliding back down into a Steppenwolfian solitary pit. but such an escape is not oft in regular reading.

...by books alone?

man does not live by books alone...unless he must eat his bread so too.

and after hope dies...?

I once asked a Russian friend here -- who died of cancer due to the intense stress of a political-economic attack by the new powers here (he himself was a friend of Gorbachof) -- what happens after "Hope dies". he said: try Vera or Lyubov (Faith and Love).
and as I have, after China, perhaps 1 remaining item now on my "bucket list", a geographic net of  Samos, Ephesus, Patmos...I wonder what happens when the "bucket list" is done?

query II to Cathy

if "companion" (com- + pān bread + -iōn) is someone with whom one shares bread...how might one construct a word for someone with whom one shares... soul? ideas? travels? et al!

judgement vs happiness?

has fear of universal judgement been replaced by a demand for equal happiness?

how to feel life is a "pilgrimage"...

...when most all of the traditional supports for "God" lie in ruins?

pilgrimage, bildung and shopping

the old, mostly-forgotten and/or ignored idea that we are "strangers and pilgrims" (cf. eg Epistle to the Hebrews 11.13) in this world, is in fundamental contrast to the dominant ethos of eg "life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness", and even more so to the unexamined occupation of consumer shopping to pass the time.
"pilgrimage" and bildung are related, if they have differing ideas of man at their cores.

is "God" an "It"?

if a person would speak of "God", as a being, an entity, which one speaks about, but one does not want to use "It", nor the traditional "He", not the equalizing "She", then how is one to speak of "God". "It" just does not seem right, and the other two are limited by our human condition.

"Thou" would be a form of direct address, but the question here is to find a "pronoun" that would allow one to speak appropriately about the, at least, imagined "Being" that is called "God".

today, in an old mirror...

it is both consoling and disconcerting to read one's recent thoughts and insights already first written in  the 1870s and 1880s, as I did today while sitting in a Starbucks in Moscow reading in yesterday's- received The Spiritual Crisis of the Gilded Age.
eg. 1874, James DeKoven, Anglican priest (!): "More people, in this western land, are lead away from God by a sort of every-day materialism than by scientific doubt." and, in 1878: "The visible encroaches on the invisible...". (p 14, 16)

sic permanet gloria mundi?

the myth of Er suggests that we did choose our parents, and the idea that all that we do on earth -- also hinted in the lines toward the end of Goethe's Faust "Es kann die Spur von meinen Erdetagen/Nicht in Äonen untergehn" (lines 11583-4) -- might be permanent, if not in "this world", could be termed in contrast to sic transit gloria mundi: sic permanet gloria mundi.
this assumes some such reality as the Zoroastrian daena.

Russian soul?

Ru$$ian $oul?

the uninformed state of America

Susan Jacoby's The Age of American Unreason (2008) is enlightening and realistically depressing, and personally I better understood why I feel like my mind is dullened after just a few days visiting "down South", and this à la my heroes become kinsman Emerson and Thoreau.

in sum: The Uninformed State of America. but I believe the condition is one not especially homo (in)sapiens Americanus, but of homo insapiens. or a tendency of fuga mundi (escape the world) or better agnothi seauton.

cosmos?

if "God" is not where, how, when or why many believe(d), is the vast cosmos with the order and beauty we presume(d)?

a bridge crossing

for some years now I have thought that my studies were useless in this demi-thoughtful world, and rather more -- though this is surely a bit "theoretical", as it is said -- preparing for some test like crossing the Chinvat Peretu.

Moscow is safe! rob me!

walking unguarded in public, rich, no one tries to rob me of my gold in ideas and insights.

WARNING! ACTIVE INGREDIENT: money

money can be poisonous if taken or administered improperly, and has long been recognized as a possible pathogen in humans. symptoms include: distrust, dis-ease, fear, anger, dishonesty, frustration, disappointment, annoyment, and others. can cause: ruptures of relationships, psychic disease, robbery, homo- and suicide.
strongly recommended to be taken only with the advice of your person's Consultant.

nb: can be given to animals in any quantity.

we are all asleep

if "God" is, then it seems to me probable that we are all more or less in a kind of coma, whether we are asleep or awake.

the death of God?

Nietzsche's madman declared the death of God; less lamented was that of the devil...and what of the spiritual hierarchy... and monsters? seems there was a massacre really.

but at the very same time, many never believed any of these deaths, and eg angels were, and still are, very popular.

what is serious history of ideas to one, is rejected by the other.
an inclusive history of mankind would need be able to comprehend both.

consumerussia

Holy Russia...Czarist Russia...Soviet Russia...Consumer Russia

play without a script(ure)?

even "All the World's a Stage" could be comforting, until it was recognized that the Director was missing, the Assistants apparently had left the Theater, the Script seemed outdated, the Plot incredible,...leaving many actors feeling lost, alone and absurd.

holey Moscow

as VVP drove on the empty streets to the Kremlin for his inauguration, just near the iconic St. Basil's Cathedral, his motorcade drove about 100 meters from the edge of a large hole in the ground, where the Hotel Rossiya once stood.

eyesore it may have been, with some 3000+ rooms it could hold many tourists in Moscow. (its loss kept subsequent hotel room prices exorbitant, for some conveniently so.) with the weeds, perhaps it is more attractive now as a huge hole?

in March 2006, demolition began on the Hotel Rossiya, with plans to build a new hotel complex (the project to be overseen by architect Sir Norman Foster); in October of 2006 Supreme Arbitration Court annulled the tender.

now, for more than 6 years (and certainly with a legal circus and nightmare surrounding the place, and when will this end? how?), just near the center of Moscow, on the east side of the Kremlin, just beside the symbol of Russia: St. Basil's Cathedral, Russians can see their good Russian earth, in the hole where tourists used to stay.

VVP is proud of Russia, but it is best to not look too closely out the windows of a motorcade, or those of the Kremlin.

RIP -- rest in posterity?

with someone like Nietzsche, who was by some considered mad before he went mad...is posthumous recognition interest in his work a kind of mass for the dead? a kind of resting in posterity? (requiescat in posteritate, or requiescat in fama)

comparative inaugurals

during the late Soviet times, the majority of the people a visitor would meet had a common enemy: the government and its bureaucracy. this gave them solidarity.
today, it seems that many of those who even voted for VVP think he is the best they can expect. but it seems very few people are in fact for the Re-Re-Elected President.
VVP was driven in a well-planned and -timed and -televised motorcade to the Kremlin, through empty streets. compare this to Obama's inauguration. (and let us not consider the Queen of England's.)

sic transit gloria cogitati

the rejection by William Godwin of his father's Calvinism leads to his ideas of human perfectibility which are rejected by Malthus whose ideas are accepted by Darwin whose ideas are rejected by Christians.

gravitas in our times?

having watched and considered the TV presentations of the inauguration of Vladimir Putin to the President of Russia (even possibly until 2024), and comparing it the inauguration of US presidents (the last one being President Obama)...it seems to me that gravitas -- if it ever existed, in Rome or later -- is absent from our times. neither Obama nor Putin, nor for examples the Pope or Russian Orthodox Patriarch...have much gravitas of person. and this a true reflections of our societies, cultures and mentalities.

homo sapiens sapiens' instinctive need for meaning

observing the human species not even very intently or clearly reveals a creature with an instinctive need for meaning. this need, this lack, does seem to indicate some immaterial need, an absence.

"...pflanzschule für eine Welt von Geistern..."

it seems that Goethe's words about this material world being a "pflanzschule für eine Welt von Geistern" (a school/nursery for a world of spirits) was influenced, at least in choice of words, by Swedenborg. that seems to me now quite dismaying, as since I have long wanted to find a greater history of this "idea" from both before and after Goethe, finding it may "originate" in Swedenborg is like learning one need look for the source of a river in the clouds.

"God's" and/or Nature's inhumanity to man?

thinking about the Nazi extermination camps, the Soviet "Gulag", and wondering what in human history has been an equivalent good in contrast to these human evils...

"man's inhumanity to man" (from the Robert Burns poem: "Man was made to mourn: A Dirge", 1784) is perhaps more than less understandable (if less than more endurable), but it was the idea which people devolved from Lyell, Darwin, et al, of 'God's and/or nature's inhumanity to man' that people could not, and can not, accept.

and what most humans cannot accept believing in is "'God's' inhumanity to life".

0

it is of course very encouraging to have almost no readers to my blogs. most are marked "0" for visits, not to consider my followers (1 to this date).

Thoreau, Hesse and heroism

a biographer of Emerson and Thoreau describes in his work on Thoreau, how he, Emerson, Margaret Fuller, et al, sought to live 'a heroic life in an unheroic time'. Hesse's biographical "Steppenwolf" sought to live a spiritual life in a world he found mundane and trivial -- seeking a life sub specie aeternitatis amidst one ordered sub specie mundi.
Hesse, who wrote of being awakened by WWI, came to write inoffensive calls for a spiritual and cultural life amidst the world as he found it, which brought on his being being publicly attacked in print by many Germans as a traitor. (WWII he foretold even in the early 20s.)
Hesse would not have called himself a hero; also because such (pretension) is not the task, as he saw it, of a poet. but he did not live in unheroic times.

Anti-Luke 23:34

much social criticism would say:
'Father, reject them, for they know not what they do.'
or
'Father, reject them, for they know what they do.'

...signifying something.

There is the well-known soliloquy of Macbeth:

Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player,

That struts and frets his hour upon the stage,

And then is heard no more. It is a tale

Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,

Signifying nothing. (Act V, Scene V, 20-31)

but most of us live as if the tale signified something.

ad hominem

having now found and read many of the known notes of those who lived and died above the tree line, I can say, with some real dismay, that few of these few had been able to find, or make, a clear way above the mountain peaks.

barbarians inside the gates?

inner or outer "barbarians", in the end we will reportedly learn how much we were.

the deepest question

do we in fact live our daily lives sub specie aeternitatis or sub specie mundi ?

Nietzsche's "errand into the wilderness"?

no. into civilization.

eulogy to monsters?

preparing for a conference where I am to read from Walden to Russians...

it is insightful to note that when Thoreau’s searching in nature was a “spiritual quest”, he did not fear meeting monsters, dragons, demons or tigers therein. that too was part of the disenchantment of the world. eulogy to monsters?

American politics

it is impossible to understand politics in the USA unless one recognizes that it is ~80-85% emotional, about 7-10% rational, with a needed buffer zone in between. this is based purely on my life-experience, and about 40 years of personal observation and reflection.

the cacangel of Nietzsche

on Nietzsche and Christianity...

not revivalist: devivalist
not evangel: cacangel
not evangelism: cacagelism
not evangelist: cacangelist

not the gospel, but the bad news.

late soviet to post-soviet Mo$cow

a visitor to what afterwards came to be recognized as having been the last years of the Soviet Union, if they had the potential in them, could see how the outer "unfreedom" in which the vast Russian majority lived in a kind of enforced solidarity (if with a necessary humor against the Soviet system and ideology) helped to build a kind of "inner freedom" (a common enough self-/socially conscious topic of Russian kitchen commiseration of those times) which gave an inner intensity, content and vitality which the more externally free "Western" travelers might discern (though often enough not) as visitors
with the transition from "the big village Moscow" of the "late Soviet period", to booming Mo$cow with its malls and billionaires, and all the variety of entertainments and activities which had formally not existed for most people in the USSR, the external freedoms and possibilities and activities, have meant that the average, passive Russian, who had a greater "inner life" by the force of necessity of social and living conditions in the past, is quite happily now able to live his or her inner life in relation to greater "outer freedoms".
only those for whom "the inner life" is a personal need (when not perhaps required by outer life), continue to evince the inner life more common in what I call the enforced monasticism of the Soviet times.

the great and terrible Toto!

in the well-known movie version of Baum's The Wizard of Oz, towards the end, the dog Toto goes over to the side of the Wizard's great hall to pull aside the curtain behind which stands the small "humbug" of a man behind the
"I am the great and terrible wizard of Oz!!!".
to all of my experience, observations and study, most that seems "great" in this world is just such a show, but majorities rarely seem to want to see behind the side curtain.

newsless USA

it is very difficult to get international news in the USA, that is, news about events in other parts of the world which do not impact America society or psyche directly. this is both a telling and a disturbing fact of America.
each time in the past 2 decades I have returned to the USA for a visit, I have found "international news" is missing. not only is news filled with the well-known entertainment gossip, and human-interest scandals, but international news is almost impossible to find, without special effort. (and now via the internet.) this "provincial" self-mirroring of the US population viewing itself in hours of often trivial "news", is another sign of the fact that the USA is out of touch with the world.

one aspect of "news" in the world that many people do not seem to know, is that the international broadcasts of eg CNN and BBC are not the same as is shown in the USA. they have perhaps 70-80% -- but this is just a guess from experience -- different content. American BBC and CNN, not to consider the other domestic networks -- are about America almost exclusively. and and program like Anderson Cooper 360 is little more than emotion-mongering.

one hour of international BBC or CNN in Moscow is more international news that one might view in a month of US domestic news", even on "the same" channels.

foolishness and fear in Pyongyang..."1984"?

watching the rare recent broadcasts of the obedient populace and soldiers of North Korea shows the state of foolishness and fear to which humans can be brought. yhese broadcasts should be viewed -- by those who seek a kind of large-scale gnothi seauton to mankind and it story -- as a mirror on the human being in mass conditions. it was not 'just another news story', but a public revealing of some of the darker sides and potentials of and in the human story. ("1984" in 2012?)

one might compare the people of Pyongyang to NY or London to see the contrasts currently possible in the human story.

on "American" patriotism and values

one is born into one's nationality, and unless there was some pre-natal choice, that is hardly one's  achievement, or fault. and even this assumes that one is speaking of "nationality" in the sense of one's political identity, and not as many educated Russians did, and perhaps still do, mainly as of one's culture, ethnicity or country.

American "values", eg freedom, equality, etc, are now (historically again) spoken of abroad as universal human values. secular, they are perhaps not much less undefinable than pre-modern characterizations of the divine. though it is almost impossible in our world to agree on (non)things divine, it is perhaps much more possible for many of differing nationalities to believe we agree in the ultimately ambiguous character and facts of eg "freedom".

a "Harry Haller" in Spaso House would not be unpatriotic, but he would see necessary attempts at political solutions as just temporary and often all too human, however sincere and well-intended. a discussion where the transcendent does not disturb, even by its absence.

"bread and circus" in Moscow

reflections on reading in Patrick Brantlinger's Bread and Circuses... 

Juvenal here looked at the human being merely externally -- which is in fact evident in both "bread" (bodily, earthly life) and "circus" (entertainment; inner life of an outer sort). and kin to choosing between Barabbas and Jesus before Pilate, the crowd condemned Sejanus, but might have praised him. the crowd are fickle. but there seems to be no deeper psychology here. and, reflecting on this, I recognized that it would be possible to describe the majorities of human -- including those I will see in Moscow as I go about my way today -- in deeper and broader ways. Paul's men of sarc, psyche, pneuma; Plato's cavemen; the decisions witnessed by Er, et al; Pythagoras' levels of mankind -- eg not those who love wisdom; the Purusha-Sukta; Steiner's levels of soul; Thoreau's descriptions related to those of "quiet desperation"; even Dostoevsky's Grand Inquisitor's sociology; et al. several of these are more insightful, even "cosmic", in their meaning, to mere "bread and circus" (which is perhaps also not unrelated to Skinner's positive and negative reinforcement, though that reduces men to dogs and mice, which even Juvenal does not seem to have done.)

one can be outraged if one believes the majorities might en masse be much more (which I now do not), or one can just recognize that this is how most people are...be they inwardly or outwardly delighted -- looking somewhat historically -- with circuses, church services, or consumerism.

and though I can still feel daily in Moscow an aspersive attitude to the majority, history shows that this is a permanent fact(or) in the human world.

probably better to understand and accept it -- practical (and theoretical) anthropology -- than condemn and challenge it.

nb. Hesse's Steppenwolf gives a clear(er) 20th century critique of what Brantlinger's book shows has been found for two centuries by serious thinkers, philosophers, social critics, et al in Juvenal's "bread and circus".

april 10, 2012

the shopping cathedral of enjoyment

in Moscow's new Afimoll (a mall) beneath the crisis-halted construction of the Moscow Citi project, I read yesterday in a work on the meaning in Gothic architecture (which I got in NY's Cathedral of St John the Divine), of how Bernard of Clairvaux had a stance to the world very different to that present in this mall's shops, shoppers and strollers.
"We who have turned aside from society, relinquishing for Christ's sake all the precious and beautiful things in the world, its wondrous light and colour, its sweet sounds and odours, the pleasures of taste and touch, for us all bodily delights are nothing but dung." (Universe of Stone, Philip Ball, p. 44-45)
this is a retreat, a kind of escape from the lures of the world of the senses.
another stance to the world, and one I have tended to live, is to "turn away from society" not "for Christ's sake", but for the sake of insight into the world, life, mankind. to learn through experience of the world; to turn experience and study into insight and knowledge. closer to the idea of education, to the German Bildung (in it later, 19th century sense).
escape. experience.
the thousands of people ambling around the mall with no more apparent aim than relaxation and enjoyment of a day off in the marble-floored mall, gave no sense of being interested in escaping from the world, and not much intention of insight via experience.

Moses, Nietzsche, big bang...

Moses: ex deo lux

Nietzsche et al: ex nihilo lux

big bang: ex materia lux

reflections on a week in Manhattan...

from the 102nd floor of the Empire State Building looking south...Manhattan is just a large island. not even seven hills to deify or mythologize it, it is all really just a massive human construction.

the Statue of Liberty, as much as it would represent NY and/or the USA, is not old historically, however much it may have sincerely inspired viewers with varying and changing ideas over this time. (even a skeptical steppenwolf recommends the audio tour of the island. well-done, it should perhaps move any heart sympathetic to the human story.) like nearby Ellis Island, mainly for those of "steerage", its meaning has been mostly surpassed by flight, and it is a period piece in fact. a tourist site.

the New York Stock Exchange...so much power is some a comparatively small building!

the UN General Assembly Hall...gathering today almost all the nations of the world...a necessary, understandable gathering...has surely already been compared to the Tower of Babel, probably also to the  ancient Agora of Athens...but it has nonethemore a "flat", horizontal kind of human reality of discourse to it.

"Times Square", for whatever it was in the past, seems to be an empty location of facades, where preponderantly less than thoughtful people photograph a missing meaning.

the memorial site of the World Trade Towers...difficult to imagine the height, but the physicality of the planes crashing into the Towers reminds how of earth-bound we humans are.

St. Patrick's Cathedral seen inside and Park Avenue's shopping street...characteristic contrasts, indeed contradictions, in the human condition: (not only) vertical vs horizontal, otherworldly vs this-worldly.

seeing these and other places in "NYC"...a kind of demythologizing of NY.

Moscow, London, NY

untraveled Moscovites really have little realistic sense of how provincial, even mono-tone, their life and society is compared to eg London and NY.

the peace that passeth understanding?

more the human restlessness that surpasseth understanding.

terra cognita, mare incognitum, mundus supernus incognitus

a couple of days ago, James Cameron took a well-supported and -funded solo trip to the deepest known place in the oceans. that this is known to be the deepest, is part of what Cameron indicated when he said that with satellites we (humans) can look down upon and into all the regions -- however "distant" -- of the earth's surface. what was once terra incognita (actually, a Latin specialist says it were better to write orbis terrarum incognita -- for the entire globe, rather than one area unknown or known) has become terra cognita. Cameron suggests -- though these are not his words -- that the seas are still mare incognitum; to which he added the unknown of space, outer space, the enormous universe, which could likewise be termed: mundus supernus incognitus.

Cameron also did not find monsters ('here be monsters') long and often seen or imagined in the oceans deep, be they mythic or biblical, those of the time we call the age of exploration, or those in fiction, 'scientific' or not.
it is also to be noted, what James said, as he remarked about taking a moment at depth: 'to take it all in' --- this life experience, that is. to get from it as much as possible, also in the realization that he was there doing it.

"Rome was not built in a day"

that "Rome was not built in a day" (c. 1530s) has been a cliché much longer than the word cliché has existed in the sense it has today (c. 1888), but the expression continues to be used thoughtlessly, as if this were not obvious.

global village?

I heard again the other day the cliche that we live in a "global village".
sentimental sociology to my mind.
I am sure most people who repeat this have never lived in a village; for is it not rather a global city (even if people do need to live as if society were a village)?

Mathus, Darwin and Moses

[journal extract]

13 March 2012     5:15 am      Moscow

it is interesting to learn that Malthus was an "annihilationist" (that hell was not eternal for those who failed in the growth-of-mind) and that he viewed human suffering via famine, poverty, etc (natural and moral evil?) as means by God to human development.

i must consider all of this more closely, and widely, again later, but it begins to seem to me as of a piece with the human exaggerated sense that he can understand the world and "God". many have rejected "God" because "He" "allows" evil, and disbelieved in "God" because Darwin "proved" we are 'apes' (vaguely stated). well, if Genesis is no longer convincing, neither, in my reading, is the human ability to explain himself materially. elementary school humans may be upset that Darwin proved Moses wrong ∴ we are apes and there is no "God" -- but it seems to me that the human history of ideas shows that humans imagine too much of their own capabilities -- which becomes even more convincingly popular in the institutions called universities.

a "Harry Haller" in Spaso House

one is born into one's nationality, and unless there was some pre-natal choice (as some ancient accounts would reveal), that is hardly one's achievement, or fault. and even this assumes that one is speaking of "nationality" in the sense of one's political identity, and not as many educated Russians did, and perhaps still do, mainly as of one's culture, ethnicity or country. how serious is it to be proud of the nationality into which one is born (by chance or fiat)? and what was American patriotism in 1776 or 1861, and what will it be in 2076?

American "values", eg freedom, equality, etc, are now (historically again) spoken of abroad as universal human values. secular, they are perhaps not much less ultimately undefinable than characterizations of the divine. and while it is almost impossible in our world to agree on (non)things divine, it is perhaps much more possible for many of differing nationalities to imagine we agree in the ambiguous ideals of eg "freedom".

a "Harry Haller" in Spaso House need not be unpatriotic, but he need see necessary attempts at political solutions as temporary, and often like Nietzsche's "all-too-human", however sincere and well-intended.

-- thoughts from a "town hall" with the new ambassador March 22, 2012, where the transcendent did not disturb, even by its absence.

agnothi seauton I -- a great, unobserved social experiment?

the changes in Russia since the signatured end of another empire in history, the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR, CCCP), has presented an opportunity to observe humans, political systems, societies, cultures...in a time of broad and deep social change. it is an additional indication of the demographics of societies and psyches, that so few people have cared (or dared?) to pay attention to this great historical, social "experiment"-experience as such. as an opportunity to learn more about humanity. most just live(d) in it, not reflecting much on it or themselves. carpe diem of an unreflective sort.

sub specie aeternitatis?

whatever may be believed, many in the "civilized", modern world, live assuming mostly, and mostly unconsciously, that life is sub specie terrae, sub specie mundi.

no holy grounds, only deadly grounds

"And he said, Draw not near here: put off your shoes from your feet, for the place on which you stand is holy ground." (Exodus 3.5)

I believe there is no such "holy ground" in our world today, our world of terra supercognito...of geo-maping and spy satellites...of demi-literate tourist hordes flying casually hither and thither seeing all things packaged and unpacked ("been there, done that"), of ancient cities built, destroyed and rebuilt, of no untread places on earth...

perhaps such places were only in our imaginations...but where does one fear to tread today -- I dont mean childish fools -- except for places like Chernobyl and Fukushima.

the alphas and omegas of history

history (in the sense of the lived human past) seriously understood and learned from is rare, which surely adds to its popularity in being so naively and perennially repeated, also in the passions and philosophies many (have often) imagine(d) they discover(ed).
still, it is perhaps inevitable that a person's life and time seems to be the alpha and omega of life and world, the beginning and the end of time and history, since each is inbounded in it.
nevertheless, history shows this is naive.

sic transit gloria Quixote?

"The Bucket List" and Don Quixote as figure, and for that matter all the now popular lists of 'things to do before you die', are related. the main problem being that we live in a time and place when and where "God" seems not only absent, but in which we are uncertain “He” was ever there.

"Russian spring" II?

two Moscow rallies

a British correspondent lamented as we chatted near Pushkin Square of his not being able to see “the other rally”, as he must stay and report on “this one”. I was not so bound, having gone to and observed the “Pro-Putin Rally”, and then to see the “Anti-Putin Rally”.

there has been some recent talk of a “Russian Spring”, but in fact the “Russian Spring” happened in the summer of 1991, August. (though that was a different “wave” of socio-political change in the world, related to the fall of the “Iron Curtain”.) with many contemporary commentators this seems to have been already forgotten, though there were tanks on the streets then, and there was an order given to take the Russian “White House” , surrounded though it was by some 15,000-25,000 Russians who wanted a new, better country.

it is a step forward in the political development of Russia that enough people have shed enough fear to come out onto the streets at protest rallies: Bolotnayas I and II, Prospect Sakharova, the “Great White Ring” around the “Garden[less] Ring” of Moscow...
and tonight there were two rallies in Moscow. while there were many police at hand – off to the side ready if need be – this was, and is, not a “Russian Spring” as in summer 1991. perhaps it might be better named Russian Spring II.

in 1991 some 99% of the population of Moscow went about their daily lives as if nothing were happening around the Russian "White House"...as if to say: ‘you decide if we live in the USSR, or something different'. that defense of the Russian White House was said by many of those who were there to have gathered the brightest and most beautiful faces…

there was a rally tonight of those who clearly belong to the crowd, and one of those who do, or would, not.

Moscow crowds and individuals -- march 5, 2012

there were two rallies in Moscow this evening: the “Pro-Putin Rally” near the Kremlin on the Manezh; the other, an “Anti-Putin Rally”, at Pushkin Square. one meeting had people who clearly were part of the dormant Russian crowd; the other had many of the best, bright, and beautiful faces. one might also compare intellectual and educational levels, or independence of personality and thoughtfulness.

the letters of Paul and the letters of James, William, in the Moscow Metro

the old woman, the "babushka", who sat beside me yesterday in the Moscow metro wagon was reading her Евангелие, her gospel, her good news from 'messengers on high'. glancing at her, reading, I wondered if her well-worn Bible had the letters of Paul in it, and whether she spent much time seeking sense and guidance from them as well...

the letters of Paul... I was reading the "selected" letters of William James, who in the course of his life also came to write much about "religion", also in published letters.

two very different life journeys -- both apparently serious -- sitting for a time side by side. her life closer to its physical end than mine may be, so already "written" as it were. her surely consoling good reading was nice and quaint, even mythic, to my mind; even in good translation William James would I feel certain have been of no use to her.

the Letters of Paul, and the letters of James, William.

Apostle... Psychologist/Philosopher... how much history, time and mind is there between!/?

the woman and I sat next to each other on the same train, going different ways.

the abandoned school of life? anthropogogy?

probably?...possibly?...hopefully?... in spite of human ignorance and knowledge, despair and hope, triviality and nobility… “beneath”, “behind”, “above”, somewhere and -how “in” humans’ lives, societies… beliefs, religions, societies – ardently or indifferently, capably- or stupidly-held,… politics, classes… if somehow “in” the lives of the statistical “600,000,000” poor of India, or the reported more in China, and inside the luxurious lifestyles of the rich and famous in NY, London, Paris,…recently Moscow, more recently Beijing... and beyond the middling, middle-class lives and malls everywhere…there is some invisible, meaningful and ordered school system and anthropogogy ongoing, some invisible “school(ing) of life”… then where, when and how are the reported “teachers”, janitors and The Principal, in hiding – and why?!

“Twin Towers”, “Golgotha”, “Moscow’s ‘City’”…

the stories of New York’s “Twin Towers” and Jerusalem’s “Golgotha” – join the ruins of Rome(s), Carthage(s),…and all other cities, to remind that sic transit gloria mundi. and our cities’ buildings continue to bear a false sense of permanence in our lives and world.

it seems that Thomas à Kempis’ – who is believed to be the source of the idea of the expression, which was used in Papal coronation ceremonies – thought of some scholars who, once “important”, were then, as we say today, dead and gone. (presumably, though, he felt one life, an inimitable one, was not “a passing glory of this world”.)

Scipio Africanus in Carthage, remembering Troy, pre-cognizing the future “fate” of Rome (559 years before it occurred) is more true to the scale and depth we require today.

and Moscow’s “City” yet languishes from being a quickly-built, respectable, sky-scraping business area due to another financial crisis.

Goethe's Faust, Hesse's Steppenwolf...

Eckermann records for January 10, 1825 the visit of an English engineer officer during which Goethe heard that he had read Egmont and Torquato Tasso, but was quite amused to learn that he was reading Faust. “Really I would not have advised you to undertake Faust. It is mad stuff, and goes quite beyond ordinary feeling.”

Hesse in his 1961 author’s note to Steppenwolf described how it had been the most misunderstood of all his works, in part because it was read and understood by those who did not have the needed age, perspective and experience.

the “blogs” here – just recent pieces of nearly 40 years of journal notes – are written from a view similar to the experience of life and world of “Harry Haller”. there are those who call themselves Christians, Buddhists, Hindus, even, God(s) help us, New Agers…  I find myself to be a “Steppenwolf” -- a kin of Hesse’s “Harry Haller”. In my case: Stephenwolf.

the blogs here have all the “optimism” and angle on life and world as those with which “Harry Haller” saw the world.

a blond over Putin and Russian politics

the well-known correspondent was speaking with what I had presumed was some seriousness about Putin and Russian politics to three of us in the noisy café, when I suddenly noted by his eyes looking up at the entrance door (behind me) that he was clearly distracted by someone who had come just come into the café.

he just gradually stopped speaking, so distracted that he even apparently forgot that it was he who had been speaking to us, and he did not resume, or seem even to remember that he had been in mid-speech. he just smiled, not really realizing what had happened.

she was blond.

homo utopianus?

read the Epilogue to the Manuel’s Utopian Thought in the Western World [1979] – which said what I might have guessed, but nothing much more. I did note the short comments he made of the “communes” of the 60s/70s, which I myself glimpsed: “Stephen’s Farm”, “New Buffalo”, Lama ranch (Ram Dass), et al.

“Many of the rural communes that spring up in contemporary America, Great Britain, or New Zealand tend to eschew theory altogether and have no identifiable character. Their array of teachers and gurus have introduced no elements that were previously unknown, beyond perhaps the use of drugs as chemical agents heightening fraternal feelings among the members. Without a religious base these widespread experiments have a short life expectancy, about three years, the span of a serious love affair. 

They repeat the dismal experiences of nineteenth-century American utopian communities.

Idyllic, pastoral, anarchistic, universalistic, syncretistic utopias may regularly possess young persons coming out into the world of science and technology and find it wanting. Their latest creation, the utopia of the counterculture is a potpourri of outworn conceptions – a bit of transcendentalism, body mysticism, sexual freedom, the abolition of work, the end of alienation.” [p. 808]

certainly I had no idea – and I suspect this was common – of the prior history of communes, nor of the prior stories of the ideas in which we youth were swimming in those times.

the Manuels’ apparent view of utopian thought à la Freud, does not detract from the many insights they provide on the history of utopia(n)s. and there are so many historical personalities in this story whose ideas show the “escapist”, the fantastic aspect of the human mind. many – if not most of these utopias – can not be taken seriously, but the fact that these many “utopians”, over some 25 centuries, in many times, climes, cultures, countries  and minds, did so themselves, and firmly believed they were serious as utopias and “utopians” (even if the word had not yet been created, or they rejected or neglected it) is to be seriously understood as a reflection of the human being. I prefer to believe these dream(er)s source in some lost transcendent anthropology – but that may in fact only be my wishful thinking.

recent (un)Platonic prisoners

malls are the latest visions on the cave wall.

"old" in NY, London, Paris,...new in Moscow, and soon coming everywhere to a city near you.

true nowheres to Steppenwolves.

the world is flat, inside

years ago I conceived: 'Columbus helped make the world round -- McDonald's to make it flat again.'
today: 'to make the world flat again, it had to be conquered inside the human being.'

War Horse hooey

inwardly escaping the mundane once a week or so seems healthful and needed for me, but going to view "War Horse" was a waste of time, mind and money. it was about as engaging and unpredictable as the newly-refurbished "Pioner" movie theatre in Moscow hall where it was shown to perhaps 12 -- the red seats were nice and clean, and almost had lower back support in the correct location.

probably the film was addressed to simple teens, like its main hero, for it showed no developments that were not -- after I realized the level of the film -- expectable. I almost left earlier than half way through, and finally got up and left when I could not take another wholly implausible scene of formulaic emotions. it wasn't Saving Private Joey (the horses name for those who have not given their money to Spielberg and friends), but it was a lot of hooey.

the no wheres of Comte, Rousseau, Marx

reading more in the Manuels’ 800-page tome Utopian Thought of the “utopian ideas” of e.g. Comte, Rousseau, Karl Marx...their ideas of man, society and some variant of the best, true, ideal and/or perfect way of life…it is clear that realistically they could be applied no place.

Steppenwolf -- sub specie aeternitatis

one reason Hesse's figure Steppenwolf ("Harry Haller") could not have lived in academia, to which his studies might have lent him, is that he did not live -- by fate, choice, or need -- sub specie scientiae.
i.e. to try to apply it to life: whether one thinks inside the university or the universe, and whether one worries life and world as per their respective regents.

here were monsters

"By the 18th century a reader could be expected to regard skeptically a traveler returned with tales of monsters and natural prodigies after the manner of the medieval voyages to the East; but he could readily be convinced that somewhere among the gentle people living in a state of nature or in a simple state of civility there was an ideally happy society."

p. 435, F. E. and F. P Manuel, Utopian Thought in the Western World.

deep amnesia in 2012

there is a kind of deep amnesia present in our world's mass culture and societies today: living in the "21st century" without knowing or caring much to know about the prior 20-30 "chapters", and living by a calendar year ("2012") in which few people even care whether they believe or not, including where anno domini gave life and society order and meaning to at least temporal life for centuries, even if in a earlier kind of sleep.

let's go shopping!

a dying breed in the Moscow Metro wagon?: intelligentsia

a I sat down in the new metro wagon last night heading to my apartment from  the first evening of an Environmental Film Festival in the House of Journalists, I noted that an older woman to my left was gazing openly on me, like perhaps on a lover, or a painting, with admiration. it was clear in her eyes, and she looked directly, with a tilt to her head.

after some moments fully aware of being observed, I could not avoid at least returning her look, as she was continued unashamedly looking at me, and with a smile.

she said, of course in Russian, ‘I know it is impolite, but my children are artists.’

when the man between us left, she started talking to me…of her life, her self, her family, and with questions to me.

I quickly realized she was not some nutty old woman, but of the old (Russian/Soviet) intelligentsia… Studied at the Preparatory School to the Conservatory, then in the Conservatory. her parents had studied or worked with Stanislavski himself...

where was I from?

impossible! Americans have closed faces, not often with “character” like yours. they are even banal.

what is your “nationality” she asked again, meaning not what we in the West mean, as I had already told her; but what culture, what people, did I come from. French and Scottish-English clearly confirmed her point .

she spoke of China and India as coming world powers, and what did I think of China being dangerous in future…

it is reported that in his last years Beethoven’s clothes – unaware to him it seemed -- were unclean, and that he they even stank. my passing Russian companion was a woman, so it was not nearly so bad, and probably she didn’t notice the scent herself either. (I imagine it might not have been so in the latter Soviet years.)

in the USSR such people were noted and noticed in public. respected. turned to for guidance in life. now…? it was not clear the young people across the wagon were even listening to her, to us, to her animated and insightful thoughts and ideas…sadly become rare in Russia these days. sspecially for a Steppenwolf

I remembered the years when I first came to Russia, in what came to be the last years of the USSR. such conversations, such meetings, such persons were not so rare.

the outer desert?

after one has journeyed -- or worse, not -- through natural and social scenes romanticized by one self, then the terra and socio cognita leaves one barren, and perhaps longing and searching for nobler days.

raison d'être

writing as an assertion of meaning, at least hoped-for, and in some personal control.

invisible golden nuggets?

whether the costly gold, silver and jeweled creations of ancient bazaars or modern malls are much more than the oft-condemned 'passing earthly desires and joys of fools', the metaphorical "nuggets" of insights, of understanding, of knowledge which I have found in decades of individual nights and days of studied search and discovery in the matters of human history, religions, philosophies -- what I have come to call "anthropography", the intellectual biography of mankind (noography?) -- have most all disappeared...as my memory cannot hold so many fresh in-sight in my diurnal human mind. (many life-inspiring "Eurekas!" -- like yesterday's in Manual's Utopian Thought in the Western World -- are now often long gone and forgotten.)

so, unless, as is rumored, such are preserved invisibly, knowledgeably elsewhere (~forgotten, but not lost)...then I suppose I have been much like a child -- really no more than "a risen ape"? -- putting new, shiny toys in his pocket, as other toys fall out the hole at the bottom.

this is much more than a question of "memory capacity".

(he who dies without the most toys wins?)

here be no monsters -- terra cognito

here be no monsters.

(journal extract from February 6, 2012)

listening making lunch to CRI (China Radio International) about life in China, and listening to the 30-something Canadian “Beijing Hour” program host (Paul James), and reflecting on his mentality and ideas – I note the mundanity in which he and so many live, move and have their being. Berdyayev had an essay on this: "The Bourgeois Mind". Hesse also described it in Steppenwolf. it is the dominant mentality – the mental, cultural, social milieu of the “Westernized” world – though that is too vague and inaccurate and malleable an idea to be fully adequate to my meaning. (and I too was on a mystical journey in my quixotic mind of my 20s to 40s.)

it is the tendency of the average mind to unreflectively, untroubledly, live inside of this world, life experience that feels like inner dissolution to me. I can’t say I want the experience surrogated by “extreme sports”, eg going into a war zone, or chumming-up to some of the Caucasian rose-sellers I see outside the shopping mall in order to learn about their life, but I will have, and do have, a reflective life which I am trying to keep worth living, or worth having lived.

the majorities everywhere I have been seem quite content to exist in their mundane, “bourgeois” life, and mind. As Hesse wrote about, or by, “Harry Haller” – they do not want any heroic deeds on my part.

and since any kind of “higher” or transcendent “Meaning” is apparently not really needed, or sought, by most people I meet, be they in eg Russia, America, Egypt, Britain, Germany, it is not easy at my post-Romantic/idealist age and experience of the world, to carry alone a sense that for example even this is not “just another day”, and now more special than later. “here be no monsters”; terra cognito.

but reading in , of such figures as Thomas Müntzer, or the maelstrom of whirling world-views in the English Civil War…probably shopping as a raison d’être is an earthly blessing.