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.