needless to say, whenever i write something down, it rarely gives me the feeling i’m fixing something down for the rest of all times; most times it gives the feeling that i fixed the point down just to prove it wrong; i was writing about transcendence; of course i would love things to be as easy as that: to say, my purpose on this world is to meet God (nirvana/force/energy/light/tao/whatever…) but the moment i wrote it i knew this is not it; whatever made me write that was just another step in this crazy endless quest to find out what am i, where am i coming from, why am i here, why now, you know… all that…
so yes… as i keep reading henry miller (not easy to finish his book, some parts are so complex and complicated i tend to postpone the reading for times when i have the right state of mind), he seems to have had a major revelation when he read Creative Evolution by Henri Bergson; I could not have missed the opportunity to pick this up, so a couple of weeks later, here i am with Bergson’s book and a pencil in my hand, reading evolutionary philosophy (dear Amazon, please treat better your employees so i can unconditionally love you)
Bergson says that our intellect, in the narrow sense of the word, is intended to secure the perfect fitting of our body to its environment – to think matter ; he then argues that we do not transcend our intellect, for it is still with our intellect and through our intellect that we see the other forms of consciousness… i guess in the first three pages of his book he already explained to me why it didn’t feel so right to claim what i was claiming. good job! now i want more!
I will probably never stop being fascinated with airports. I’ve always loved airports, when I started flying it felt like airports were the nicest places on earth to be in; the glass and steell gateways to the skies. Not counting Bucharest, my first international airport was the Amsterdam Schiphol. It felt as if for the first time I was actually aware that there are so many different cultures in the world. I could not take my eyes off a group of Indian women which were dressed traditionally, something I have only seen on TV before. I could also not take my eyes off two wonderfully colored dressed African ladies that spoke in a language which seemed nothing similar to anything I knew. And then the contrast with what seemed to be a bunch of Scandinavian girls (if you were to believe the clichés) tall, blond, whiter than white tones of skin. These are just some recollections, and I do remember that I was so struck by finally meeting these people in flesh that I could not stop staring at them (which of course by now I know it’s far from being polite). The reason I did it, was just because they were all so beautiful. And it was so new to me to see them and hear them and watch them move. As I am standing now in the Frankfurt airport, I see the same diversity. People from all over the world, some wonder around looking at the shops, some write on their laptops or speak on their phone, some sleep on the benches. By some wonderful coincidence, we are all here, breathing the same air. I need to take a moment to stare and wonder. How come we all get along so well in an airport? I’m speaking about the unwritten code of good manners that everyone without failure finds the time and the patience and even the pleasure to respect in an airport; we all seem to find it natural to respect each other and gracefully excuse ourselves if we happened to hit someone by mistake with our carry on.
This takes me to a different occasion when we all seem to be in peace with each other: the celebration of the New Year. Pretty naïve of me to ask but still, how is it possible to have just one single day or night in a year when everyone finds something better to do than stress out, complain, argue, fight, something that puts on hold the daily disagreements and allows for celebration. Mind you I am not saying everyone; I’m just saying many, many more than any revolution would take to make any other point. And the question is, who decided that the rest of the year we should all be so busy with ourselves and our routines, and worries, and troubles, that there can only be one day or night where we can all have fun together?
we often times say time is running by too fast; here was summer here is christmas, here was monday here is sunday, here was morning here is night; there’s an interesting book written by a smart guy about how people perceive time; what does it mean that time is running by too fast or too slow and how do you culturally live your life? in the past, in the present or in the future? (for reference check out: Robert Levine “A Georgraphy of Time”)
for me time usually passes by too fast when i have too much stuff to do; work, phone calls, emails, arronds, and a lot of planning: remember tomorrow to do that, remember on thursday the dinner plans, remember in the week-end you have guests, you need to buy this and that, clean up your place etc; a lot of my time is spent in the future; i think and many times worry about stuff that will happen in the next couple of days, without being aware of the fact that this simple mental activity takes a lot of my actual present time and energy. (i heard someone say once: “note to self, remember to breathe” and i’ve adopted the expression immediately… sometimes i feel like i do need a special note for that);
facebook which i am a big fan of is also taking a lot of my time without telling me; first because i spend so much time on facebook and second because many of the things i find there are actually generating a lot more mental activity than i would normally have to handle; whether songs or statuses or articles or news i am basically trying to grasp what around 100 people are thinking of in a given moment, not understanding that by this i’m taking in more information than i actually need; i take in 100 times more info and emotions and expressions of whatever thoughts or feelings than what one person normally does (making a simple calculation: i have more than 300 friends on facebook, of which facebook selects maybe 100, maybe even less, a day for which it gives me updates sometimes more than one)
internet in general is taking a lot of my time; i have internet at home, i have internet at work; i was recently invited by my mobile service provider to get a new phone. I went to the shop and asked what they had in store; the guy literally threw himself at the shelves with smartphones telling me which of them will get me more connected to the network than the other; that was the point when i said no: i need a new phone, just a phone, a simple phone, no more internet, no more access to social networks or other applications. just a plain old style damn phone; we chose a model that looks like a blackberry but is not. it has access to internet, and i do have it with my plan, but i turned it off, so it works right now just like the first Nokia model i remember i saw when in i was in highschool;
another thing i learned to say no to is television; i have cable tv and i have not turned it on in months (i usually watch tv only if someone else in the room opens the tv, which is many times the case when i’m home); of course i feel tempted, but i decided i’m losing too much time watching it. i actually lose too much time filtering what’s worth seeing from what’s not. there’s also this question of who is the target audience, for which people the information (the type of doom’s day news) or the shows (big brother, the bachelor, bingo) are actually created for? if the tv programs are giving us the measure of a society, then wow!… there’s nothing more to add…
actually my point is that today information can be just as much of an addiction like alchool or drugs; information gives you the right pinch of adrenaline and it can keep you “connected” and “wired up” more than 24 hours a day; literally because you can start the 26th of december in Tokio and finish it in San Francisco, and if you count the hours you’ll spend more than 24 finding out what’s going on;
it also blurs out a lot of the material in favor of the intelect. you start living more in your mind that in the real life; it’s easier to spend a few hours on the internet and ignore the real hardships outside your house, it’s easier to check out facebook and look at smiling faces rather than get out of the house and realize your neighbourhood filled up with stray dogs and the mayor is more concerned with sending his Christmas cards rather than taking up with the stray dogs… you turn the tv on and you look at all these talk shows and you feel as if you have just spoken out on what’s bothering you, you feel you’ve expressed the anger and the frustration because those people there were doing it for you; but you didn’t express anything and the show is over and the dogs are still barking outside. someone once talked about comedies; how people are paid to laugh at jokes and make you, the viewer, feel as if you are laughing although you are actually not. and how after watching the show you feel as if you laughed but you actually haven’t moved a single muscle on your face. take that for what the mind can do..
is to be able to enjoy the production of La Traviata, prepared for the 2005 Salzburg Festival, with Anna Netrebko and Rolando Villazon.
i’m not sure how much of an opera fan i usually am; they say opera is an acquired taste; i’ve done my share of opera education but i never felt wholly entirely won by opera… until one special evening when my friend Eduardo, who’s a true opera fan, decided to show us a bit of this show… it was love at first sight… that very night i went home and bought on amazon the dvd… and the night it came, i watched twice… it’s one of those things that you cannot take your eyes off… not just the music, which is wonderful, but her dress, their black suits, the red couch, the glass that hits the wall, the so many almost breathable shades of love … it feels as if there was only one way this show could have ever existed and that was perfection… pure perfection… the state of existence where each vibration is synchronized in pure harmony;
i am literally jealous of each and every single person that was there in that music hall that night. did they know when they entered the hall that they will experience one of the most beautiful moments of human expression? it is so beautiful that the first thing that comes to my mind is that the place where this comes from is the same place where war and famine come from…
and so how can you ever lose your sense of wonder…
The question it comes down to, even after seeing this wonderful debate, which i must add, just scratches the surface, is the question of transcendence; the idea of God the way we have culturally built it for centuries under different religions and the reason it worked then and it continues to work today is intimately related to our need to transcend; we are a bunch of primates with the amazing quality of awareness… it is precisely this awareness that makes us sensitive to the idea of a higher power, of a higher purpose, of a higher meaning;
religion is man made but is it the same with faith? ;is our faith and need of faith a matter of biological evolution? (the way scientists explain the feeling of love by a combination of chemical substances in the brain, the way you treat depression by using xanax, the way House would treat excessive generosity by a surgery on your thyroid)
if the answer is yes, then there’s nothing really higher than us, we are the ultimate outcome of the infinite coincidence; then another question comes up and that is: evolution is a fine business but to what end? evolution is a process which means we come from something to become something else; not sure, but isn’t the very definition of evolution related to becoming something more? isn’t ultimately evolution a form of material and even spiritual transcendence? isn’t knowledge (faith apart) a form of spiritual evolution?;
if on the contrary, faith is not a matter of biological evolution, then there is something that is built in the human being that makes it possible for the human being to experience transcendence;
if i try to figure out where i stand now (and i put a strong emphasis on “now”), i’d say i’m rejecting religion to be able to experience faith as a means of transcendence; i believe in the spiritual transcendence whether by faith or knowledge, or art or any other means, i believe my world (because ultimately that’s the only thing we can and we should decide on, the subjective experience), my world is a world in which I am not the product of coincidence, or random chemical combinations in the brain or any other organ for that matter, but a world in which i evolve from birth to death in both a spiritual and material way, from the clean plate of a new born baby to hopefully the wise thoughts of an old wrinkled lady that on her death bed, will not dream of heaven, but will be filled with sheer gratitude to have been given the chance to be. And I express this hope with the consciousness that I may not enjoy my current mental faculties by the very end of my life and that if i were to develop such things as dementia or alzheimer for example, my whole theory would go out on the window; but whatever my end may be, if i get the opportunity to experience even for a short moment transcendence, my purpose on this world is met;
A murit un ateu furios și de treabă. Și o dezbatere cu el despre Dumnezeu
de Cristian Ghinea
in Dilema Veche
S-a dus Christopher Hitchens. Intelectual angajat, editorialist influent, activist impredictibil dar cu argumente. De stînga în ținerețe, de dreapta la bătrînețe. Mereu incomod, mereu onest, mereu agresiv. A fascinat o lume. Am scris despre el în Dilema în 2008.
Vă recomand două articole despre el, portrete interesante ale unui om fascinant. Acesta din Prospect din 2008 și acesta din New Yorker din 2006.
Și vă mai recomand o dezbatere cu Tony Blair, în care fostul premier susține că religia este o forță a binelui în lume, iar Hitchens susține contrariul. Este virulent, are umor, este fermecător. Se întîmpla în noiembrie 2010, semnele bolii care l-a răpus acum erau deja vizibile. Publicul rîde, publicul cade pe gînduri, publicul urmărește cu fascinație doi oameni foarte inteligenți și foarte diferiți cum dezbat și se completează reciproc. Și la final votează covîrșitor cu Hitchens și împotriva religiei.
Faceți-vă timp, știu că sîntem cu toții ocupați. La dracu`, o dată moare Christopher Hitchens!
Lăsați puțin televizorul deoparte și urmăriți această oră și jumătate de discuții, veți rămîne cu ceva.
S-a dus. Să spun ”Dumnezeu să-l ierte”, l-ar enerva. Doar el a scris o carte care se numește ”God is not great”. S-ar enerva, zic, atît pentru că Dumnezeu nu exista pentru el, dar și pentru că dacă totuși ar exista, nu ar avea nevoie de iertarea Sa, a rămas mereu convins că a avut întotdeauna dreptate. ”Să-i fie țărîna ușoară” ar fi prea tradiționalist, cred că l-ar enerva și asta. Spun doar atît. Sînt convins că ateismul său agresiv, bravada sa împotriva lui Dumnezeu și mai ales împotriva oamenilor care se folosesc de Dumnezeu veneau dintr-o căutare continuă, a preferat să-și răspundă cu ”nu” pentru că misterul îl enerva. Că există sau nu Dumnezeu – Christopher Hitchens știe acum răspunsul.
so here i am randomly checking out youtube for more music and stumbling over this song… at first i liked the visual effects, the idea; i used to fancy about it when i was in highschool or maybe in college; i like the contrasts, the grey dress, the white immaculate walls and then all the colors pouring from the ceiling; then the song is not so bad, i feel like i heard it before or something, then i looked up the lyrics; yup, i love to squeeze all the juice out of the experience .. but what i love most about youtube is the whole “commenting” experience; i love checking out the comments because it gives you a nice picture of what type of emotions and feelings a form of art is generating in one’s mind; so cool to be able to see how many people liked it, how many didn’t, to wonder why they didn’t if you did, and to what extend they didn’t if they took the trouble to click on the thumbs down button, and how many people liked the most agreed first two comments; and why… and what are other people thinking of when they listen to the song… i was definitely thinking of the colors, of how they staged it, of how many times they had to redo it, of how much paint they used, of how it smelled if the paint was actual paint, whether it stained, how cool it was to be in that studio, i couldn’t quite get the metaphor with the angels, she keeps her eyes closed a lot, the dress is cute… i should get a dress like that, maybe some other color, grey is not really my color… although i do have grey stuff.. like that blouse with the short sleeves… it depends on the grey… and it’s so difficult to match.. but then it would look so cool with red nails… yup…
From Huff post, it’s finally coming down to numbers! the bad news is not just that women are half of the buying ticket population but that movies and TV became the main way to pass on social norms, not healthy, balanced social norms but gender biased social norms; therefore, let’s not enjoy the show this time…
An Article by Amy Lee, published 11/22/11 in Huffington Post
Like a broken record that continues to stick and sputter, a new study shows that women are still underrepresented when it comes to the top movies in the country.
A study released by USC’s Annenberg School for Communication & Journalism took a survey of the 4,342 speaking characters in the top 100 grossing films of 2009 and compared it to results from the top 100 films of 2007 and 2008. For women, nothing much has changed — in these top films, 32.8 percent of actors are female and 67.2 are male — 2.05 males to every one female. This means that less than 17 percent of films are gender balanced, even though females make up half of the ticket-buying population.
Perhaps more disturbing is the finding that women are much more frequently sexualized when they appear on screen. They’re more likely to be seen in sexy clothing (25.8 percent to men at 4.7 percent) and more likely to be partially naked (23.6 percent to 7.4 percent).
Women are also more likely to feel the affect of their age on their career. Though teen girls (12-20 year olds) are more likely than adult women, 21-39, to be shown as sexy, or partially naked — 21.5 percent to 13.8. But older women, aged 40-64, are not only less likely to be shown as attractive (3.8 percent), but less likely to be shown at all. Only 24 percent of all characters aged 40 to 64 are female.
Though New York Magazine recently suggested that we’re living in the “golden age” of male objectification, for women, the golden age never ended. The ratings controversy over films like “Blue Valentine” and “Shame” have also indicated the possibility that people are more likely to find issue with full frontal male nudity, and depictions of female sexual pleasure — though full frontal female nudity rarely guarantees an NC-17 rating.
Part of the problem may be the serious gender gap that exists in the movie business as a whole. “Gender equality does not exist behind the camera,” the study wrote, looking at 1,240 positions to reach the conclusion. Only 3.6 percent of directors are female, only 13.5 percent of writers are female and only 21.6 percent of producers are female. No change has occurred in these figures over the past three years. The study also found that films with one more female screenwriters shows a 10.2 percent increase in female presence in films — a suggestion that if things were to change behind the camera, they could also change in front.
“It’s hard to know why women have fared so badly in Hollywood in the last few decades, though any business that refers to its creations as product cannot, by definition, have much imagination,” New York Times critic Manohla Dargis wrote, last year.
