:: 11/01/2002 ::

still haven´t figured out this link business so you´ll have to look these things up yourselves, also sorry for posting about old discussions but some loose cannon invited me, and i read most of your out pourings so I thought I´d put my own thoughts up, for good or ill.
For me, food is THE issue which most clearly demontrates the nasty nature of or method of social and logistical organisation. Susan George wrote a book ("Ill Fares the Land", 1981) in which she makes some astonishing calculations: 8% of the worlds grain harvests could wipe out starvation, this figure is less than the US fed to it´s livestock in that year... Another guru on this subject is Amartya Sen, nobel prize winner who in his (again 1981) book about famine says "famine is not the phenomenon of there not being enough food, it is the phenonemon of some people not having enough to eat". I suspect however that the truly great part of his work is not simple common sensical utterances like that but the research and economics type research he shows to back it up... Food is so pertinent because it cannot be ignored, or people die needlessly. And needlessly is the key word. The people who run this world will be brought to some intergalactic court and asked why if they can manage to "accurately" and "efficiently" bomb any country in the world, using a complex network of alliances, agreements, economics and bullying, why they couldn´t simply provide a couple of thousand calories a day for everyone. it ammounts to some kind of gross genocidal negligence - a new charge for our highly effective international court...

www.tni.org/george/index.htm Susan George homepage...

...Good Amartya Sen Page...

:: Tony 15:21 [link] ::

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This is fantastic, think may have emailed to some of y'all a while ago. just came across it again and re-read and thought you'd dig.



"The gods had condemned Sisyphus to ceaselessly rolling a rock to the top of a mountain, whence the stone would fall back of its own weight. They had thought with some reason that there is no more dreadful punishment than fu tile and hopeless labor.

If one believes Homer, Sisyphus was the wisest and most prudent of mortals. According to another tradition, however, he was disposed to practice the profession of highwayman. I see no contradiction in this. Opinions differ as to the reasons why he became the futile laborer of the underworld. To begin with, he is accused of a certain levity in regard to the gods. He stole their secrets. Egina, the daughter of Esopus, was carried off by Jupiter. The father was shocked by that disappearance and complained to Sisyphus. He, who knew of the abduction, offered to tell about it on condition that Esopu s would give water to the citadel of Corinth. To the celestial thunderbolts he preferred the benediction of water. He was punished for this in the underworld. Homer tells us also that Sisyphus had put Death in chains. Pluto could not endure the sight of h is deserted, silent empire. He dispatched the god of war, who liberated Death from the hands of her conqueror.

It is said that Sisyphus, being near to death, rashly wanted to test his wife's love. He ordered her to cast his unburied body into the middle of the public square. Sisyphus woke up in the underworld. And there, annoyed by an obedience so contrary to human love, he obtained from Pluto permission to return to earth in order to chastise his wife. But when he had seen again the face of this world, enjoyed water and sun, warm stones and the sea, he no longer wanted to go back to the infernal darkness. Recalls, signs of anger, warnings were of no avail. Many years more he lived facing the curve of the gulf, the sparkling sea, and the smiles of earth. A decree of the gods w as necessary. Mercury came and seized the impudent man by the collar and, snatching him from his joys, lead him forcibly back to the underworld, where his rock was ready for him.

You have already grasped that Sisyphus is the absurd hero. He is, as much through his passions as through his torture. His scorn of the gods, his hatred of death, and his passion for life won him that unspeakable penalty in which the whole being is exerted toward accomplishing nothing. This is the price that must be paid for the passions of this earth. Nothing is told us about Sisyphus in the underworld. Myths are made for the imagination to breathe life into them. As for this myth, one sees merely the whole effort of a body straining to raise the huge stone, to roll it, and push it up a slope a hundred times over; one sees the face screw ed up, the cheek tight against the stone, the shoulder bracing the clay-covered mass, the foot wedging it, the fresh start with arms outstretched, the wholly human security of two earth-clotted hands. At the very end of his long effort measured by skyless space and time without depth, the purpose is achieved. Then Sisyphus watches the stone rush down in a few moments toward that lower world whence he will have to push it up again toward the summit. He goes back down to the plain.

It is during that return, that pause, that Sisyphus interests me. A face that toils so close to stones is already stone itself! I see that man going back down with a heavy yet measured step toward the torment of which he will never know the end. That hour like a breathing-space which returns as surely as his suffering, that is the hour of consciousness. At each of those moments when he leaves the heights and gradually sinks toward the lairs of the gods, he is superior to his fate. He is stronger than his rock.

If this myth is tragic, that is because its hero is conscious. Where would his torture be, indeed, if at every step the hope of succeeding upheld him? The workman of today works everyday in his life at the same tasks, and his fate is no less absurd. But it is tragic only at the rare moments when it becomes conscious. Sisyphus, proletarian of the gods, powerless and rebellious, knows the whole extent of his wretched condition: it is what he thinks of during his descent. The lucidity that was to constitute his torture at the same time crowns his victory. There is no fate that can not be surmou nted by scorn.

If the descent is thus sometimes performed in sorrow, it can also take place in joy. This word is not too much. Again I fancy Sisyphus returning toward his rock, and the sorrow was in the beginning. When the images of earth cling too tightly to memory, when the call of happiness becomes too insistent, it happens that melancholy arises in man's heart: this is the rock's victory, this is the rock itself. The boundless grief is too heavy to bear. These are our nights of Gethsemane. But crushing truths perish from being acknowledged. Thus, Edipus at the outset obeys fate without knowing it. But from the moment he knows, his tragedy begins. Yet at the same moment, blind and desperate, he realizes that the on ly bond linking him to the world is the cool hand of a girl. Then a tremendous remark rings out: "Despite so many ordeals, my advanced age and the nobility of my soul make me conclude that all is well." Sophocles' Edipus, like Dostoevsky's Kirilov, thus gives the recipe for the absurd victory. Ancient wisdom confirms modern heroism.

One does not discover the absurd without being tempted to write a manual of happiness. "What!---by such narrow ways--?" There is but one world, however. Happiness and the absurd are two sons of the same earth. They are inseparable. It would be a mistake to say that happiness necessarily springs from the absurd. discover y. It happens as well that the felling of the absurd springs from happiness. "I conclude that all is well," says Edipus, and that remark is sacred. It echoes in the wild and limited universe of man. It teaches that all is not, has not been, exhausted. It drives out of this world a god who had come into it with dissatisfaction and a preference for futile suffering. It makes of fate a human matter, which must be settled among men.

All Sisyphus' silent joy is contained therein. His fate belongs to him. His rock is a thing Likewise, the absurd man, when he contemplates his torment, silences all the idols. In the universe suddenly restored to its silence, the myriad wondering little voices of the earth rise up. Unconscious, secret calls, invitations from all the faces, they are the necessary reverse and price of victory. There is no sun without shadow, and it is essential to know the night. The absurd man says yes and his efforts will henceforth be unceasing. If there is a personal fate, there is no higher destiny, or at least there is, but one which he concludes is inevitable and despicable. For the rest, he knows himself to be the master of his days. At that subtle moment when man glances backward over his life, Sisyphus returning toward his rock, in that slight pivoting he contemplates that series of unrelated actions which become his fate, created by him, combined under his memory's eye and soon sealed by his death. Thus, convinced of the wholly human origin of all that is human, a blind man eage r to see who knows that the night has no end, he is still on the go. The rock is still rolling.

I leave Sisyphus at the foot of the mountain! One always finds one's burden again. But Sisyphus teaches the higher fidelity that negates the gods and raises rocks. He too concludes that all is well. This universe henceforth without a master seems to him neither sterile nor futile. Each atom of that stone, each mineral flake of that night filled mountain, in itself forms a world. The strugg le itself toward the heights is enough to fill a man's heart. One must imagine Sisyphus happy."

---Albert Camus---


Translation by Justin O'Brien, 1955

:: alan 14:33 [link] ::

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here's an updated version of the bakpak contest entry...

"3rd wish? Take me to ‘60s San Fran."
"No can do. How ‘bout current Kyoto?"
"Even better."

How lucky that Kyoto, the most historic city in Japan, is also the only one that wasn’t obliterated by war. The opportunity remains to find our common inner Mystery Beauty provoked by the unique moving stillness of Kyoto’s spirit.
Perhaps the mystical lines lying in the sand of all the rock gardens do it Or perhaps you will be strolling the Philosopher’s Walk soaking in the babbling canal, the bucolic bridges that arch above it, surrounded by blooming cherry trees when one perfect pink petal floats down to caress your shoulder and you find your ultimate peace. Perhaps it will be in the hidden romance of Gion’s wooden buildings, or the graceful curve of the colorful tiled rooves that adorn most buildings. Where you find your moment is not so important. What matters is that the peace is there, waiting. And you’ll need it, because keeping your balance in the excitement of this city is a challenge.
Now you’re walking along the Kamogawa River downtown, in the Kawaramachi neighborhood. On every side of you are day-glo souls blowing flames from lips, lighting fireworks, juggling, playing drums – in love with the world. Watching the water flow below are couples cuddling inconspicuously, philosophers searching for the eternal gist, guitarists tuning for the night – everyone is mystic.
Suddenly you find yourself not merely amongst them, but one of them – one with them. A mysterious inner drive finds you, it bounces you around the bars and clubs spawned on the adjacent Takasegawa river (which is really a canal, a hyper-neon pinball Amsterdam). You walk around temple grounds lit by candles in dangling paper lanterns, follow them to the festival of the moment – it seems there’s always at least one. You feel yourself connected to a higher state because you are in Kyoto, and Kyoto’s energy is vibrating wildly.
Japan is changing again, the pace is quickening. The current generation is rejecting the security of salaryman ways – a response to material lives and distant families. People are coming alive with creativity that is just now starting to find direction. Kyoto is the catalyst of the cataclysm, it is shaking the culture and opening the group mind – in short, it is the most exciting place you can hope to be.
When the sheer spiritual awareness of the city has exhausted you and a break is needed, worry not. Pop 30 minutes south to contemplate life listening to the street bands of Osaka, or join the flashy lithe ladies and lads, life clubbers. 20 minutes outside Kyoto you’ll find some of the only untouched nature in Japan. Or retreat to the most perfect touched nature in the world, Kyoto’s famous sacred gardens.
The play between the peace of the city and the energy of it is spellbinding. Soak it in unhurriedly. Kyoto contains the secrets travelers seek.

:: ranger 13:37 [link] ::

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