unacknowledged lighthouses of the world?

ignored, rarely-noticed human lighthouses...
of society, world, life, history.
 

unconsciously being human

most are unconscious of the ideas in and by which they live
 

Meaning

a history of human ideas of Meaning

a history of human ideas of Meaninglessness
 

$ vs ?!

the ? at and about the mind and heart of world, life and self
 

the ideas in which we sleep, move and have our being

recognizing that suburbs life, the hunting and country clubs, the summer camps, going out into "the woods", camping, the seeking of some consolation and/or reverie in nature... are in fact embodiments, realizations, of ideas in which most are happy to blithely pursue their life, liberty and...happiness" unreflectively... or at most semi-conscious in and of the ideas, in thought, of what they are doing, is a solitarizing awareness and awakeness.

(reflection on Peter J. Schmitt's, 1969, Back to Nature: The Arcadian Myth in American Culture)
 

created equal?

yes indeed, inthought, inword...
in their virtues and vices
 

if "all the world's a stage"...

where are the director, producer(s), the scriptwriter(s)?
 

the Moscow drowned

the barren Soviet social ideology has over the past two+ decades been gradually flooded by the consumerist mentality and raisons d'être...
and like much of the rest of world, most seem rather content to seek to be happy so.

few seem wishing to struggle to keep their heads above water, gasping for culture, for much of any aire of higher things...
  

a changed Moscow -- summer 2013

anyone who saw the center of Moscow only at the beginning of summer 2013 will be shocked at how much it has changed by fall's begin. including the absence of what had become omnipresent street advertising.
 

after "hell on earth"...

those who have been through "hell on earth" can hardly communicate with those who haven't.

Dante's limits

Did Dante Alighieri actually travel into Hell, he'd unlikely have made it to Purgatory, and likely would've committed suicide failing trying to describe it all.
   
 

ontological children

most all of those who speak about and for "God" in reality have the ontological maturity and psychic awakeness of children playing.
 

the worthless lifestyles of the rich, powerful and famous?

high living and plain thinking?

ardent passions of critiques of social decadence, UnBildung, the worthless lifestyles of the rich, powerful and famous,...cannot but be sobered and matured by learning convincingly of the centuries old historical recurrence of both.

-- thoughts on: The Simple Life, Plain Living and High Thinking in American Culture, David E Shi, 1985.
 

conscious amid sleepers

to gradually recognize and separate from the ideas in and by which people around one still sleep...
to shed shared cliches of thoughts and emotions, reactions, attitudes...
to even escape the habituated psychic tradition of workdays and weekends...

to find one's own inner relation to the world, with one's own thoughts, feelings, days, views...
which can consciously replace those in and by which one was raised, and in and by which those around one still "live"
 

Putin's rhetorical combative political theology?

"We are all different, but when we ask for the Lord’s blessings, we must not forget that God created us equal." V. V. Putin, Op/Ed NYTimes, September 11, 2013

"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness." US Declaration of Independence, July 2/4, 1776, written mainly by Thomas Jefferson.

Well, now we have President of Russian Vladimir V. Putin (without attribution) less or more consciously citing Jefferson, who himself said he was just expressing the mind of the British Colonial American times, when he penned what later sociologists would call the "America Creed".

But is it true? And does the President of Russia really believe it? Or is he just using "God", a theology of politics, as a convenient political pawn?

And in a piece written by a President with a questionable personal CV related to "democracy"... about one nation's killing of its own people who want(ed) "life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness" and "equality"... about whether another nation, or nations, is, or are, to enforce international agreements on protecting human rights...does he want attempt to voice the rest of the "American Creed" to America? to the world? to "men" or just to nations? and Russia? in his taking exception to America's claim to exceptionalism?
   

deus ex machina, 2013

considering the details of human history, and contemporary facts of the human condition, an impossible divine intervention seems the most realistic hope... ;)

see deus ex machina for how it was rejected by eg Aristotle and Nietzsche.

"Privet, Russia" again!

the hosts and guests of RT's "Privet, Russia" are not really as shallow, trivial and gabby as they appear, but they do seem to give it a good sincere professional effort
 

Nietzsche as gnothi seauton of Europe

one could argue -- as some have, if in other words -- that Nietzsche was a individual gnothi seauton for European Man and "Culture" of his time.
 

shopping or Bildung

and pretty much the entire life of shopping and consumerism is in the most fundamental contrast to Bildung in its relation to the inner life.
 

a time asleep: "AD"

again I note:
the year, now [September 8,] "2013" is an external, temporal frame not only which most people no longer accept, or reflect on, the basis for, or at any rate do not much live so.
and they are -- also in this way -- asleep to the fact that the year according to which they not only count their lives, and their "location", their time in time, has no obvious or certain meaning in earthly, solar, galactic time.
the time frame by which people count and order their lives, is one in and to which they are asleep
 

living with flatlanders

how very few have dramatic mountains, or rich cities, inside to explore...
 

the myths peoples live by...

and the myths they kill by.
 

the chosen ones: euphoria(s) in history?

whether of nations or individuals, in Sinai deserts or central Asian steppes, whether in small sects in the Hellenistic Eastern Mediterranean or "New Age" California, and whether viewed sub specie aeternitatis or sub specie humanitatis...this "psychology", this "sociology", of being chosen, of being capable and actual to speak of one's special "chosen" individual or social place in history, in time, in world, in cosmos, must be clearly understood in the manner of self- and social-knowledge.

euphoria must be understood here, also as a "driver" of and in history
   

the history of mental milieus

the history of the changing, molting mental climate(s), the mental milieu(s), of the ideas by which, in time, the passive vast majorities as also the more active minorities 'live and move and have their being', is the human world in which they find identity(ies) and meaning(s) to survive
 

RIP Philosophy?

a history of the institutionalization of philosophers is needed to understand the death and burial of philosophy in the modern universities

a moment civilizing a tribal mind in Moscow

New housewares shop in basement of new shopping complex
Need a new shower head
Locate their unpriced selection in shop shelves
Ask youngish man with shop shirt-logos the price...
"I don't know the price," he responded dismissively.
"You should know the price," I said with my ongoing motive of civilization, training.
"No, I should not know the price," he replied looking at me with challenge in his stance and glance.
"You work here?" I said, with no condescension or aggressive attitude or look.
"I'm Georgian." (As if that was an answer.)
"And I'm a...(as I searched for the word "customer" in Russian)..."
"...I will check the price."

He was not yet civilized, or trained, enough -- when he told me "130 rubles" -- to even reply to "Thank you."
 

conversations with the dead

unfortunately and dismayingly, about the only serious, substantive, thoughtful and educated conversations I can find these days, is with often dead and/or distant authors
 

a history of tans?

and a history of attitudes to tans might be rather interesting, revealing even... also in literature and painting...
certainly in the 19th century being lily-white showed one did not need to work...
as in periods and places during the 20th when having a deep tan in eg winter might indicate -- before tanning salons -- the same.
but this is in fact superficial...
 

moon tanning?

at full moon, at varying distances and earth seasons, what is the range that sunlight reflected from the moon to the earth heats the atmosphere, and earth features?
 

cultures of kissing...

watching teenagers "tongue wrestling" in public...
even kissing at all in public was rarely if ever to be seen in the USSR