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
 

back to the durdom

arriving from Berlin in Moscow, overheard a quite common looking, pudgy Russian woman, on reaching the crowd at Passport Control, say to someone beside her: "Durdom nachenayetsa". ('The madhouse [or the house of fools, or idiots] begins".)
indeed.

who gives a damn, anyway?

for the almost innumerable few who read this... for July: search Stephenwolf + GerMania