Art as transcendental resonance ...

I believe all art forms have the potential to create transcendental resonance out of the dissonance of my isolation ... an isolation "produced" by my having sought identity in things I own rather than in relationships within my community of extended family and friends ...

I use my writing ... plus reading poetry aloud ... to merge my consciousness into the transcendental.

What do I mean by that: "merge my consciousness into the transcendental"?

I turn off my mind's ongoing discussion with itself and let it explore its depths as deep as the art will take me. My awareness comes out of the biological existence of my life-form ... and its biological evolution ... a connectedness stretching back to the dawn of life. I have a sensitivity to the variations of my environment ... going back eons. Words are a late arrival in my mind ... in evolution time.

Walking among Henry Moore's large sculptures in the New York Botanical Gardens this fall ... I experienced connectedness with the transcendental nature of the cosmos ... I 'knew' that the expression of human existence was fashioning ongoingness with unity expressed as love out of the chaos of integral systems interacting randomly.

Others express similar experiences with music ... and — in my opinion and from my childhood experiences from going to church regularly — music is recognized as deepening the spiritual experience ... which to me is feeling or sensing connectedness to the transcendental nature of the cosmos ... in the moment ... now ... turning off my mind's ongoing discussion with itself ... thus — philosophically — completing the concept.

Posted By: hglindquist I 'knew' that the expression of human existence was fashioning ongoingness with unity expressed as love out of the chaos of integral systems interacting randomly.

Let me explain my pov ... for those who may be new to some of these concepts.

Death and decay fertilizes new life in a myriad of life-forms from microscopic bacteria to giant sequoia, which in turn feed numerous small animals ... and this food chain thriving on a planet bathed in a daily cycle of sunlight ... creating wind and rain as well as energizing life ... everything in its own definable "system" ... that in a chaotic mix of periodic, random, and randomly periodic interaction with other systems ... produced/produces the environment in which we evolved/evolve and now live ... amidst a gigantic universe of known systems contained in the cosmos of everything.

We humans "make sense" of our environment in order to live ... we learn how to feed and take care of ourselves ... and to nurture our children, our offspring ... the next generation ... to whom we feel a strong bond of love ... love being the desire that we want positive outcomes for the object of our love ... (thus hate is wanting negative outcomes for those we hate) ... as we try to anticipate the future, first as seasons and cycles ... to now where we know that our sun will someday expand and consume our planet ...

I believe the strongest bond of love is between parents and their children. Love is what guarantees the survival of the next generation. Therefore, love is a "glue" of the transcendental character of the cosmos ... a positive expression of ongoingness within the cosmos. Without it, the strong parent would prey upon the weaker child whenever the going got rough ... as we see in some other life-forms ... it is the emergence of love that allows us to exist with hope of a future for our life-form continuing to expand our understanding of our environment ... out into the universe ... giving us a chance at surviving beyond the existence of earth as an environment.

Now ... a couple of things ... it doesn't matter to an existentialist — myself — whether or not the cosmos had/has a purpose in the emergence of love. Love has emerged out of existence ... much as awareness has emerged out of existence. What matters is whether or not we BELIEVE the cosmos has purpose independent of existence ... which for many is the belief in God. I do not believe the cosmos has purpose outside of its existence.

And at another level, it seems that the "tribe" is the smallest social unit that can guarantee the survival of the human species ... because of the need for a gene pool sufficiently varied to provide healthy offspring ... which interjects the dimensions of social boundaries ... and the evolved sense of loyalty to one's own tribe versus the tribe on the other side of the river or mountain or whatever separates us.

I believe over the eons of evolution we evolved the capacity to intuitively recognize our "tribe" and feel an emotional bond with members. My hypothesis is that it is the loss of active engagement of these emotions when we become "non-tribal" that creates the sense of ennui requiring constant stimulation in so many modern young people. This ennui is compounded when our emotional bonding for identity becomes connected to things we own rather than relationships with other ... because we do not get the emotional "feedback" necessary to have the "climax" of engagement ... except from our dogs ... which, in fact, goes a long way toward proving my point.

Art provides a transcendental resonance that engages otherwise "unconnected" emotions in a satisfying and fulfilling real experience.

Notes:

- Details of my trip to the New York Botanical Garden are at Henry Moore sculptures at The New York Botanical Garden.

- The first part of this post was first written as a comment in the End of Life Issues blog on Maplewood Online.

Blinded by greed, it's as bad as it looks

Secretary Paulson — as the iconic reference to the Bush 43 administration's attitude to the global financial services sector — apparently believes that sector's theft of the wealth ... that had been created by a thriving industrial sector in the U.S. ... and then converting it into monetary instruments ... was actually creating a new pot of gold.

These folks are so blinded by their own greed, it is more than scary ... it's what's happening.

The whole damn economy is a Ponzi Scheme!

Getting the new round of suckers (the taxpayers) to pay off the previous suckers ... that's the definition of a Ponzi Scheme ... for chrissakes!

Secretary Paulson is just shoveling our money into the hole ...

And "the adults" in this crowd are working their butts off to get the money to him on the edge of the hole ... so he can shovel faster.

That's for the global financial services sector ...

For our industrial base that actually creates jobs that produce things of value ... well ... that's a whole other scenario, isn't it?

Bernie Madoff: the butcher with his thumb on the scale

The title says it all.

If you don't know who Bernie Madoff is, google his name.

Do you still think there is any such thing as "free" markets or "free" trade? All that means is that the person or company (which is really still a person making the decisions) doesn't have to pay for the harm they do ... if they can escape before the collapse ... or the effects of their actions become apparent.

Transparency fostering trust is the cornerstone of an efficient market economy ... not the freedom to pursue greed.

Dah!

The Axis of Evil: the South and the German & Japan Auto Companies

I heard it first on Morning Joe on MSNBC today: the Axis of Evil is the South and the German & Japan Auto Companies. The historical irony of this is breathtaking.

The unemployed of the South fled to the industrial north to help build the American industrial miracle that played a major role in defeating Germany and Japan in WWII. Now The South is allying itself with the German and Japanese auto companies to defeat the industrial base of the North: the American auto companies. Good grief!

The ideology of the South is that labor is the province of servants (slaves?), and it is supported by their Biblical beliefs regarding their God rewarding those "He" favors with wealth, and true believers are not to question those "He" places in authority over others.

This fits the global financial services sector's concept that wages for labor should equal those of a mule: water, hay, harness, stall, and medical care for breeding stock.

We have abandoned reason for this?

The American worker is NOT the problem!

The American worker with rights is the solution to producing goods and services that have value in a transparent, trustworthy, and efficient market economy.

Not the imperialist model with the Lord of the castle commanding obedience while paying a mule's wages of water, hay, harness, straw, stall, and medical care for breeding stock ... that is the global financial services sector's goal for the working class ... believing they are doing workers a favor by raising more workers of the world out of starvation wages while they lower the American working class into poverty. This is their idea of fairness ... using the wealth created by the American industrial miracle to make money and credit into instruments of oppression.

The American industrial miracle was based in a large part by the individual worker being able to call "Foul!" ... if melamine were ever added to baby formula. Or if re-enforcing steel wasn't manufactured to standard, or concrete ... or ... or ... because the American worker had rights.

We became known for quality ... and unless others were able to emulate that standard of quality, American products reigned supreme.

Now we have our business leaders importing children's toys covered with lead paint.

"Free" trade? "Free" market? I guess that means the business leaders don't have to pay for the healthcare of the children their products harm.

The language of art ... or ... the art of language.

Some initial thoughts ...

Over the eons of human development we replaced our feelings and emotions as a primary means of communication with the words and syntax of language.

We simply have to watch the higher forms of animals to see ourselves in that now distant evolutionary past ... but not so distant that we no longer communicate with feelings and emotions ... and that is a problem, isn't it?

The problem, of course, is what to do with the emotional reaction or feeling that is triggered by some event, that in turn triggers a desire to respond in some way when we are telling ourselves the reactive act is inappropriate in the particular situation, such as:

The smell of food when we are hungry, and lunch time is at noon ... so we are stuck at our desks for some period of time.

The anger we feel when we are cutoff in traffic by some inconsiderate driver ... especially while experiencing the frustration of heavy, slow traffic ... and, of course, not everyone stays rational ... hence the all too common occurance of what is now labeled "road rage". But many if not most of us stuff or repress the natural feeling of anger.

And we are constantly suppressing sexual feelings in the face of a seemingly endless stream of sexual signals designed to attract our attention ... and we now know that many if not most of us are in state of repressed sexual frustration much if not most of the time.

But — where Freud went wrong, or so my layperson's opinion tells me — it isn't just sexual repression that complicates our psyche, it is the constant repression of most feelings and emotional reactions that gives rise to our neuroses ... and the sense of estrangement from ourselves, our humanity.

When we are unable to complete the action triggered by our emotion, we separate our emotion from our response ... we split ... we divide ... our self, and become an estranged observer of our own life. For some there is even a fear of wholeness, a fear of the desire to act, and following through.

Which brings us to art ... as the means whereby we re-integrate ourselves with our feelings and emotions ... as the key to the lock binding our chains of repression.

With the coming of language, comes the need for art ... to integrate our psyches with the primal world from which we arose, and if from which we are separated entirely, we descend into madness.

David Gregory is ... well ... safe enough for Meet the Press ... don't you think?

"You have to ask why" ... dah!

At least one person appears to understand the problem:

“You can’t just say, ‘Credit isn’t moving through the system,’ ” she [Elizabeth Warren, head of the Congressional oversight panel] said in her first public comments since being named to the panel. “You have to ask why.”

...

In that spirit, she promised that Congress would get the panel’s first report on Dec. 10, “laying out the central questions that Treasury should be addressing as it spends the taxpayers’ money.”

Meetings with Treasury officials so far have made her question whether they understand that “household financial health is profoundly tied to the economic health of the nation,” she said. “You cannot repair this economy if you can’t repair those families, and I’m not sure the people directing the bailout see that as their job.”

In her view, the government should be trying to create more reliable customers for those banks by shoring up the fragile finances of the millions of American families that could not save, borrow or spend even if their banks were flush with capital.

“Any effective policy has to start with the households,” she said. “Years of flat wages, low savings and high debt have left America’s households extremely vulnerable.”

Bailout Monitor Sees Lack of a Coherent Plan
By DIANA B. HENRIQUES
Published: December 1, 2008
NY Times

Also from the article:

A Harvard law school professor and a consumer bankruptcy expert, Ms. Warren was named by Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid to the new five-member panel, created as part of the $700 billion Troubled Asset Relief Program, known as TARP, enacted in October. She was elected chairwoman at the group’s first meeting last Wednesday.

Hold on, Barack ... this is change?

Don't mean to be disrespectful or nuthin' in addressing the President-elect as Barack ... but ...

The Rubin claque as the economic recovery team? Wasn't it these folks who greased the skids?

And Bob Gates extended as Secretary of Defense? Wasn't he the guy who was able to extend the war in Iraq when folks here at home started thinking impeachment?

AND — whew! — Holder? You're joking, right? The guy who was so close to Bill Clinton that he didn't have a problem with the Rich pardon?

There's more, like Arizona Governor Napolitano who has her own issues on immigration.

But the capper is Senator Hillary Clinton as Secretary of State. Anybody remember what Barack said about her in the primaries?

And this is supposed to be change?