"Millifiori" ("Thousand Flowers") Glass Table Lamp - Made in Italy
$650 USD, trade, OBO
Wood/Hand-Painted Porcelain Salt Shaker & Pepper Mill
$55 USD, trade, OBO
Vintage Catalina Wood/Brass Salt Shaker & Pepper Mill (Like New)
$85 USD, trade, OBO
Fantoni Era "Lava Rock" Glass Ewer with Hand-Tooled Leather - Famed Florentine Artist Signed
$275 USD, trade, OBO
Vintage Boy/Girl Set Li'l Abner "Shmoo" Windowsill Planters
$55 USD, trade, OBO
Support the RBN pledge drive! Have questions? Need more pics, more details? Don't see what you like? Write me: larkintexas@gmail.com Please be specific... about everything!:)
Books | Art Glass | Rare Gifts & Collectibles | Wall Art | Antiques
Half of all proceeds go to support the fundraising efforts of Republic Broadcasting Network.
---
"Would that I had the power to bring to your minds the vision as it unfolds before me! I see all denominational emphasis set aside...I see the church molding the thought of the world as it has never done before, leading in all great movements as it should. I see it literally establishing the Kingdom of God on earth."
--John D. Rockefeller Jr.
---
“It was, indeed, the Age of Information, but information was not the precursor to knowledge; it was the tool of the salesmen.”
Earl Shorris, A Nation of Salesmen
---
White Collar: The American Middle Classes
"In a society of employees dominated by the marketing mentality, it is inevitable that a personality market should arise. For in the great shift from manual skills to the art of ‘handling’, selling and servicing people… personal or even intimate traits of employees are drawn into the sphere of exchange… and become commodities in the labor market...
Kindness and friendliness become aspects of personalized service or of public relations of big firms, rationalized to further the sale of something. With anonymous insincerity, the successful person thus makes an instrument of his own appearance and personality...
In the formulas of ‘personnel experts’, men and women are to be shaped into the ‘well rounded, acceptable, effective personality’ (to close the deal or to make the sale)...
The personality market, the most decisive effect and symptom of the great salesroom, underlies the all-pervasive distrust and self-alienation so characteristic of a metropolitan people. Without common values and mutual trust, the cash nexus that links one man to another in transient contact has been made subtle in a dozen ways, and made to bite deeper into all areas of life and relations People are required by the salesman ethic and convention to pretend interest in others in order to manipulate them...
Men are estranged from one another as each secretly tries to make an instrument of the other, and in time a full circle is made: one makes an instrument of himself and is estranged from it also."
White Collar: The American Middle Classes is a study of the American middle class by sociologist C. Wright Mills, first published in 1951. It describes the forming of a "new class": the white-collar workers. It is also a major study of social alienation in the modern industrialized world and cities dominated by "salesmanship mentality". The issues in this book were close to Mills' own background; his father was an insurance agent and he himself, at that time, worked as a white collar research worker in a bureaucratic organization, at Paul Lazarsfeld's Bureau for Social Research at Columbia University. From this point of view, it is probably Mills most private book. The familiarity with the studied object as a lived matter refers with no doubt to Mills himself and his own experiences.
<|>
Diogenes said, "The art of being a slave is to rule one's master.”
He also said, “I know nothing, except the fact of my ignorance.”
And, “He has the most who is content with the least.”
<|>
Socialism is an ~ism, a sadistic school of thought whose devotees are bewitched by their vainglory. It is characterized by intense centralized planning… and top-down… hierarchical control… of their lessers – who themselves are compartmentalized by their access to information (military-style)… on a need-to-know basis… and by their level of conditioning… to the fashionable dictums… of the day.
The model for socialist organization is the corporation. A kissin’ cousin of socialism is syndicalism – a school of thought which asserts that every formerly free-thinking [wo-]man… must assign him- or herself to a collectivist group… and affix to one’s self… a label. Much like the cattleman brands his beeves with a hot iron; or a pet owner collars a pet dog or cat… then tags it with a stamp of obedience…
… A syndicalist is a trade unionist… or a member of a trade association. They include…
· Public school teachers/college and university professors
· Government bureaucrats
· US military personnel
· Law enforcement personnel
· Doctors, nurses, hospital administrators and their staffs
· Lawyers, attorneys, counselors-at-law, judges, politicians, and their staffs
· Bankers…
· Insurance agents…
Good corporate citizens… lemming-like… are today… on the march… and marching in lock-step…
… As they are… the [good-and-decent] pillars of our communities… proudly ready-to-wearing… their liberal… libertarian… civic republican… conservative… democratic… communist… capitalist… communitarian… labels!
Liberté! Egalité! Fraternité!
Remember: You’re not what you think! You are not what you say! But you are what you do!
---
transliteration
Transliteration is a subset of the science of hermeneutics. It is a form of translation, and is the practice of converting a text from one script into another. For instance, the Greek expression "Ελληνική Δημοκρατία" (meaning "Hellenic Republic") can be transliterated as "Hellēnikē Dēmokratia" by substituting Latin letters for Greek letters. Or "Ελληνική Δημοκρατία" should be transliterated as "Ellēnikē Dēmokratia" without the letter 'h', which is found only in the English rendition of the name, the common equivalent of Greece since: Ελλας >> Ellas >> Hellas (in English renderings).
Transliteration can form an essential part of transcription which converts text from one writing system into another. Transliteration is not concerned with representing the phonemics of the original: it only strives to represent the characters accurately.
---
So ask yourself. Are these folks independent? Are they not slavishly trading away their labors… and the days of their lives… and are they any longer possessive… of free will (freedom of choice)? Do they have their liberty (locomotion, the capability of movement from one point to another… on their own power… self-propelled... of their own volition)?
Etymology Online
Mars | march | mark | marque | market
marketeer | merchant | merchandising
The original Stock Market (mid-14c.) was a fish and meat market in the City of London. Today it is on the approximate site of the Royal Exchange building, pictured above.
Les Halles
History
Les Halles was the traditional central market of Paris. In 1183, King Philippe II Auguste enlarged the marketplace in Paris and built a shelter for the merchants, who came from all over to sell their wares. In the 1850s, the massive glass and iron buildings (Victor Baltard Architect) Les Halles became known for, were constructed. Les Halles was known as the "Belly of Paris", as it was coined by Émile Zola in his novel, Le Ventre de Paris which is depicting and set in the busy marketplace of the 19th century.
Les Halles interior (1853)
Unable to compete in the new market economy and in need of massive repairs, the colorful ambience once associated with the bustling area of merchant stalls disappeared in 1971, when Les Halles was dismantled; the wholesale market was relocated to the suburb of Rungis.
The site was to become the point of convergence of the RER, a network of new express underground lines which was completed in the 1960s. Three lines leading out of the city to the south, east and west were to be extended and connected in a new underground station. For several years, the site of the markets was an enormous open pit, nicknamed "le trou des Halles" (trou = hole), regarded as an eyesore at the foot of the historic church of Saint-Eustache.
Construction was completed in 1977 on Châtelet-Les-Halles, Paris's new urban railway hub. The Forum des Halles, a partially underground multiple story commercial and shopping center, opened in 1979. The building was criticized for its design and in recent years the city of Paris has undertaken consultations regarding the remodeling of the area. [1]
Trivia
Part of the actual demolition of the site is featured in the film Touche Pas de la Femme Blanche (Don't Touch the White Woman!), which iconoclastically restages General Custer's 'last stand' in a distinctly French context in and around the area.
References
^ Rose, Michel. "Revamp of the Belly of Paris meets resistance - Reuters, July 27, 2010". Uk.reuters.com. http://uk.reuters.com/article/idUKTRE66Q4GG20100727 Retrieved 2012-01-26.
Le Bon Marché
Le Bon Marché ("the good market", or "the good deal" in French; French pronunciation: [lə bɔ̃ maʁʃe]) is the name of one of the best known department stores in Paris, France. It is regarded by most historians as the "first department store in the world". [1] Although this can depend on the definition of 'department store', it may have had the first specially designed building for a store in Paris. The founder was Aristide Boucicaut.
History
The store was founded as a small shop in Paris during 1838, and was a fixed-price department store from about 1850. It was a successful business, and a new building was constructed for the store by Louis Auguste Boileau in 1867. Louis Charles Boileau, his son, continued the store in the 1870s, consulting the firm of Gustave Eiffel for parts of its structure. Louis-Hippolyte Boileau, the grandson of Louis Auguste, worked on an extension to the store in the 1920s.
After adopting the interlocking rings emblem in 1914, Pierre de Coubertin commission[ed] the official Olympic flag to be made in this store for the 1916 Summer Olympics. It debuted in the 1920 Summer Olympics.
Recommended reading
The Bon Marché. Bourgeois Culture and the Department Store, 1869–1920, by Michael B. Miller – a history of the store
Au Bonheur des Dames, Émile Zola, 1883. The eleventh novel in Zola's Rougon-Macquart series. Documents the birth of modern retailing, changes in city planning and architecture, considers feminism, deconstructs desire in the marketplace and tells in a Cinderella format the life of the Boucicauts who, in the novel, appear as Octave Mouret and Denise Baudu. One of Zola's more positive novels about the changes in society during the Second Empire.
Bernard Marrey, Les Grands Magasins des origines a 1939 (Paris: Picard, 1979)
Encyclopedia Entry
French Film
Au Bonheur des Dames
Au Bonheur des Dames (The Ladies' Delight or The Ladies' Paradise) is the eleventh novel in the Rougon-Macquart series by Émile Zola. It was first serialized in the periodical Gil Blas and published in novel form by Charpentier in 1883.
The novel is set in the world of the department store, an innovative development in mid-nineteenth century retail sales. Zola models his store after Le Bon Marché, which consolidated under one roof many of the goods hitherto sold in separate shops. The narrative details many of Le Bon Marché's innovations, including its mail-order business, its system of commissions, its in-house staff commissary, and its methods of receiving and retailing goods.
Au Bonheur des Dames is a sequel to Pot-Bouille. Like its predecessor, Au Bonheur des Dames focuses on Octave Mouret (b. 1840), who at the end of the previous novel married Caroline Hédouin, the owner of a small silk shop. Now a widower, Octave has expanded the business into an international retail powerhouse occupying (at the beginning of the book) most of an entire city block.
Au Bonheur des Dames was first translated into English by F. Belmont in 1883. Several other translations have appeared since, John Calder published a translation by April FitzLyon in 1957. [1] The most readily available are those by Brian Nelson (The Ladies' Paradise) in 1995 for Oxford World's Classics and by Robin Buss (The Ladies' Delight) in 2002 for Penguin Classics.
Plot summary
The events of Au Bonheur des Dames cover approximately 1864-1869.
The novel tells the story of Denise Baudu, a 20-year-old woman from Valognes who comes to Paris with her brothers and begins working at the department store Au Bonheur des Dames as a saleswoman. Zola describes the inner workings of the store from the
employees' perspective, including the 13-hour workdays, the substandard food and the bare lodgings (for the female staff). Many of the conflicts in the novel spring from the struggles for advancement and the malicious infighting and gossip among the staff.
Denise's story is played against the career of Octave Mouret, the owner of Au Bonheur des Dames, whose retail innovations and store expansions threaten the existence of all the neighborhood shops. Under one roof, Octave has gathered textiles (silks, woolens) as well as all manner of ready-made garments (dresses, coats, lingerie, gloves), accessories necessary for making clothes and ancillary items like carpeting and furniture. His aim is to overwhelm the senses of his female customers, forcing them to spend by bombarding them with an array of buying choices and by juxtaposing goods in enticing and intoxicating ways. Massive advertising, huge sales, home delivery, a system of refunds and novelties such as a reading room and a snack bar, further induce his female clientele to patronize his store in growing numbers. In the process, he drives smaller, specialty shops out of business.
In Pot-Bouille, Octave is depicted as a (sometimes inept) ladies' man who seduces or attempts to seduce women who can give him some type of material (social or financial) advantage. This characteristic is carried over in Au Bonheur des Dames. Here, he uses a young widow to influence a political figure (modeled after Baron Haussmann) in order to have frontage access to a huge thoroughfare (the present day rue de Quatre-Septembre) for the store.
Despite his contempt for women, Octave finds himself slowly falling in love with Denise, whose inability to be seduced by his charms further inflames him. The book ends with Denise admitting her love for Octave. Her marriage with Octave is seen as a victory of women over a man who refuses to be conquered and whose aim is to subjugate and exploit women using their own senses.
Relation to the Other Rougon-Macquart Novels
Zola's plan for the Rougon-Macquart novels was to show how heredity and environment worked on members of one family over the course of the Second French Empire. In this case, the environment is the department store.
Octave Mouret is first introduced briefly in La fortune des Rougon. He plays a larger but background role in La conquête de Plassans, which focuses on his parents, the first cousins Marthe Rougon and François Mouret. As an innovator and a risk-taker, Octave combines his mother's imagination with his father's business sense, making the department store the perfect milieu for his natural gifts.
He also inherits from his great-grandmother (Adelaïde Fouque or Tante Dide) a touch of what today might be called obsessive-compulsive disorder, manifested in his intense commercial drive and his obsession with dominating female consumers.
Octave's brother is the priest Serge (La faute de l'Abbé Mouret), who serves as guardian to their mentally challenged sister Desirée.
In Le docteur Pascal, the final novel in the series set in 1872-1873, we learn that Octave and Denise are married and have two children. Octave also appears briefly or is mentioned in La joie de vivre and L'œuvre.
Additional background
In Au Bonheur des Dames, the store is a symbol of capitalism, the modern city and the bourgeois family. It is emblematic of changes in consumer culture, sexual attitudes and class relations taking place at the end of the century.
Typical of Zola's novels, the location of the store in the novel is worth noting. Located along the Rue du Dix-Decembre equidistant from the Opera Garnier (under construction in the storyline of the novel) and the Palais Brongniart (the Parisian stock market), Zola's department store is meant to highlight the confluence of 'feminine' shopping and 'masculine' finance. The stock market and the theatre are central elements in other novels in the Rougon-Macquart series (L'argent and Nana).
See also
Aristide Boucicaut
Grands Magasins du Louvre
Kleptomania
La Samaritaine
Ready-to-wear
Retailing
Shopping
La Samaritaine
La Samaritaine (French pronunciation: [la samaʁitɛn]) was a large department store in Paris, France, located in the First Arrondissement. The nearest metro station is Pont-Neuf. It is currently owned by LVMH, a luxury-goods maker. The store, which had been operating at a loss since the 1970s, was finally closed in 2005 because the building did not meet safety codes. Plans for redeveloping the building involved lengthy complications, as the representatives of the store's founders argued with new owners LVMH over the building's future as a department store or a mixed-use development. [1] In 2010 it was finally announced that a Japanese firm had been chosen to redesign the building as a combination hotel/apartments/offices, with a small retail component. [2]
History
The store was first opened in 1869 by Ernest Cognacq and Marie-Louise Jaÿ, his wife and incidentally the first clothing vendor at Le Bon Marché, a rival department store. Cognacq began his trade selling ties under an umbrella on the Pont Neuf, then took a space on the fr: rue de la Monnaie, starting out on a small scale with a very small boutique. By 1900, the couple had decided to expand their enterprise, giving birth to the large edifice seen today, the "Grands Magasins de La Samaritaine."
Inspired by the commercial methods of Aristide Boucicaut to those of Le Bon Marché, Ernest Cognacq drew upon various sources in organizing the ideal (and ideally managed) department store. Cognacq arranged La Samaritaine as a collection of individually owned stores, each managed by true "petits patrons" who operated in concert yet autonomously.
Through the steady acquisition of neighboring buildings, Ernest Cognacq regularly expanded what could no longer be called a "boutique." The surrounding city blocks were entirely reworked and reconstructed progressively from 1883 to 1933. (Notably, between 1903 and 1907, this work was taken on by the architect Frantz Jourdain, who applied an Art Nouveau aesthetic to the building.) Further structural changes were successfully completed in 1933 by Henri Sauvage who, in his turn, reworked the architecture to reflect the aesthetic principles of Art Déco. The result was an eleven-story department store, one that is today considered a historical monument.
Falling prey to the national deficit of the 1990s, La Samaritaine saw itself shrink: it was bought in 2001 by LVMH, the luxury-goods company that had just previously purchased Le Bon Marché. On 15 June 2005, in order to update the 19th-century building to modern standards of security, or for purposes of restructuring, as the labor unions believe, the department store was closed. [3] It is estimated that La Samaritaine will reopen in its new incarnation as a hotel/apartments/offices in 2013.
The name La Samaritaine ("the Samaritan Woman") comes from a hydraulic pump installed near the Pont Neuf, which operated from 1609 to 1813. The front of the pump featured a gilded bas-relief of the Samaritan Woman drawing water for Jesus at the well as described in the fourth chapter of John's Gospel. Cognacq's original stand was on the former site of this structure.
The store was well-known for its rooftop café, which afforded excellent views of the city.
References
1. Lizzy Davies in Paris (29 December 2008). "Guardian". Guardian (UK). Retrieved 22 April 2011
2. "Design Boom". Design Boom. Retrieved 22 April 2011
3. "BBC". BBC News. 10 June 2005. Retrieved 22 April 2011
Pierre de Coubertin
Pierre de Frédy, Baron de Coubertin (French pronunciation: [pjɛʁ də kubɛʁtɛ̃]; 1 January 1863 – 2 September 1937) was a French educationalist and historian, founder of the International Olympic Committee, and is considered the father of the modern Olympic Games. Born into a French aristocratic family, he became an academic and studied a broad range of topics, most notably education and history.
Early life
Pierre Frédy was born in Paris on 1 January 1863 into an established aristocratic family. He was the fourth child of Baron Charles Louis Frédy, Baron de Coubertin and Marie–Marcelle Gigault de Crisenoy. Family tradition held that the Frédy name had first arrived in France in the early 15th century, and the first recorded title of nobility granted to the family was given by Louis XI to an ancestor, also named Pierre de Frédy, in 1477. But other branches of his family tree delved even further into French history, and the annals of both sides of his family included nobles of various stations, military leaders, and associates of kings and princes of France.
His father Charles was a staunch royalist and accomplished artist whose paintings were displayed and given prizes at the Parisian salon, at least in those years when he was not absent in protest of the rise to power of Louis Napoleon. His paintings often centered around themes related to the Roman Catholic Church, classicism, and nobility, which reflected those things he thought most important. In a later semi-fictional autobiographical piece called Le Roman d'un rallié, Coubertin describes his relationship with both his mother and his father as having been somewhat strained during his childhood and adolescence. His memoirs elaborated further, describing as a pivotal moment his disappointment upon meeting Henri, Count of Chambord, who the elder Coubertin believed to be the rightful king.
Coubertin grew up in a time of profound change in the country France; as a young man he would have seen and heard news of France's defeat during the Franco-Prussian War, the Paris Commune, and the establishment of the French Third Republic, and would later marry in the midst of the Dreyfus Affair. But while these events proved the setting to his childhood, his school experiences were just as formative. In October 1874, his parents enrolled him in a new Jesuit school called Externat de la rue de Vienne, which was still under construction for his first five years there. While many of the school's attendees were day students, Coubertin boarded at the school under the supervision of a Jesuit priest, which his parents hoped would instill him with a strong moral and religious education. There, he was among the top three students in his class, and was an officer of the school's elite academy made up of its best and brightest. This suggests that despite his rebelliousness at home, Coubertin adapted well to the strict rigors of a Jesuit education.
As an aristocrat, Coubertin had a number of career paths from which to choose, including potentially prominent roles in the military or politics. But he chose instead to pursue a career as an intellectual, studying and later writing on a broad range of topics, including education, history, literature, and sociology.
Educational philosophy
The subject which he seems to have been most deeply interested in was education, and his study focused in particular on physical education and the role of sport in schooling. In 1883, he visited England for the first time, and studied the program of physical education instituted by Thomas Arnold at the Rugby School. Coubertin credited these methods with leading to the expansion of British power during the 19th century and advocated their use in French institutions. The inclusion of physical education in the curriculum of French schools would become an ongoing pursuit and passion of Coubertin's.
In fact, Coubertin is thought to have exaggerated the importance of sport to Thomas Arnold, whom he viewed as “one of the founders of athletic chivalry”. The character
-reforming influence of sport with which Coubertin was so impressed is more likely to have originated in the novel Tom Brown's School Days rather than exclusively in the ideas of Arnold himself. Nonetheless, Coubertin was an enthusiast in need of a cause and he found it in England and in Thomas Arnold. “Thomas Arnold, the leader and classic model of English educators,” wrote Coubertin, “gave the precise formula for the role of athletics in education. The cause was quickly won. Playing fields sprang up all over England”.
Intrigued by what he had read about English public schools, in 1883, at the age of twenty, Coubertin went to Rugby and to other English schools to see for himself. He described the results in a book, L’Education en Angleterre, which was published in Paris in 1888. This hero of his book is Thomas Arnold, and on his second visit in 1886, Coubertin reflected on Arnold's influence in the chapel at Rugby School.
What Coubertin saw on the playing fields of Rugby and the other English schools he visited was how “organised sport can create moral and social strength”. Not only did organised games help to set the mind and body in equilibrium, it also prevented the time being wasted in other ways. First developed by the ancient Greeks, it was an approach to education that he felt the rest of the world had forgotten and to whose revival he was to dedicate the rest of his life.
As a historian and a thinker on education, Coubertin romanticized ancient Greece. Thus, when he began to develop his theory of physical education, he naturally looked to the example set by the Athenian idea of the gymnasium, a training facility that simultaneously encouraged physical and intellectual development. He saw in these gymnasia what he called a triple unity between old and young, between disciplines, and between different types of people, meaning between those whose work was theoretical and those whose work was practical. Coubertin advocated for these concepts, this triple unity, to be incorporated into schools.
But while Coubertin was certainly a romantic, and while his idealized vision of ancient Greece would lead him later to the idea of reviving the Olympic Games, his advocacy for physical education was based on practical concerns as well. He believed that men who received physical education would be better prepared to fight in wars, and better able to win conflicts like the Franco-Prussian War, in which France had been humiliated. Additionally, he also saw sport as democratic, in that sports competition crossed class lines, although it did so without causing a mingling of classes, which he did not support.
Unfortunately for Coubertin, his efforts to incorporate more physical education into French schools failed. The failure of this endeavor, however, was closely followed by the development of a new idea, the revival of the ancient Olympic Games, the creation of a festival of international athleticism.
He was particularly fond of rugby and was the referee of the first ever French championship rugby union final on 20 March 1892 between Racing Club de France and Stade Français.
Reviving the Olympic Games
Main article: Olympic Games
Some historians describe Coubertin as the instigator of the modern Olympic movement, a man whose vision and political skill led to the revival of the Olympic Games which had been practiced in antiquity. The ancient Olympic Games were held every four years in the Greek city of Olympia, in the Kingdom of Elis, from 776 BCE through either 261 or 393 AD. While there were a number of other ancient games celebrated in Greece during this time period, including the Pythian, Nemean, and Isthmian Games, Coubertin idealized the Olympic Games as the ultimate ancient athletic competition.
Thomas Arnold, the Head Master of Rugby School, was an important influence on Coubertin's thoughts about education, but his meetings with Dr. William Penny Brookes also influenced his thinking about athletic competition to some extent. A trained physician, Brookes believed that the best way to prevent illness was through physical exercise. In 1850, he had initiated a local athletic competition that he referred to as "Meetings of the Olympian Class" at the Gaskell recreation ground at Much Wenlock, Shropshire. Along with the Liverpool Athletic Club, who began holding their own Olympic Festival in the 1860s, Brookes created a National Olympian Association which aimed to encourage such local competition in cities across Britain. These efforts were largely ignored by the British sporting establishment. Brookes also maintained communication with the government and sporting advocates in Greece, seeking a revivial of the Olympic Games internationally under the auspices of the Greek government. There, the philanthropist brothers Evangelos and Konstantinos Zappas had used their wealth to fund Olympics within Greece, and paid for the restoration of the Panathinaiko Stadium that was later used during the 1896 Summer Olympics. The efforts of Brookes to encourage the internationalization of these games came to naught. However, Dr. Brookes did organize a national Olympic Games in London, at Crystal Palace, in 1866 and this was the first Olympics to resemble an Olympic Games to be held outside of Greece. But while others had created Olympic contests within their countries, and broached the idea of international competition, it was Coubertin whose work would lead to the establishment of the International Olympic Committee and the organization of the first modern Olympic Games.
In 1888, Coubertin founded the Comite pour la Propagation des Exercises Physiques more well known as the Comite Jules Simon. Coubertin's earliest reference to the modern notion of Olympic Games criticises the idea. The idea for reviving the Olympic Games as an international competition came to Coubertin in 1889, apparently independently of Brookes, and he spent the following five years organizing an international meeting of athletes and sports enthusiasts that might make it happen. Dr. Brookes had organised a national Olympic Games that was held at Crystal Palace in London in 1866. In response to a newspaper appeal, Brookes wrote to Coubertin in 1890, and the two began an exchange of letters on education and sport. That October, Brookes hosted the Frenchman at a special festival held in his honor at Much Wenlock. Although he was too old to attend the 1894 Congress, Brookes would continue to support Coubertin's efforts, most importantly by using his connections with the Greek government to seek its support in the endeavor. While Brookes' contribution to the revival of the Olympic Games was recognized in Britain at the time, Coubertin in his later writings largely neglected to mention the role the Englishman played in their development. He did mention the roles of Evangelis Zappas and his cousin Konstantinos Zappas, but drew a distinction between their founding of athletic Olympics and his own role in the creation of an international contest. However, Coubertin together with A. Mercatis, a close friend of Konstantinos, encouraged the Greek government to utilise part of Konstantinos' legacy to fund the 1896 Athens Olympic Games separately and in addition to the legacy of Evangelis Zappas that Konstantinos had been executor of. Moreover, George Averoff was invited by the Greek government to fund the second refurbishment of the Panathinaiko Stadium that had already been fully funded by Evangelis Zappas forty years earlier.
Coubertin's advocacy for the Games centered on a number of ideals about sport. He believed that the early ancient Olympics encouraged competition among amateur rather than professional athletes, and saw value in that. The ancient practice of a sacred truce in association with the Games might have modern implications, giving the Olympics a role in promoting peace. This role was reinforced in Coubertin's mind by the tendency of athletic competition to promote understanding across cultures, thereby lessening the dangers of war. In addition, he saw the Games as important in advocating his philosophical ideal for athletic competition: that the competition itself, the struggle to overcome one's opponent, was more important than winning. Coubertin expressed this ideal thus:
L'important dans la vie ce n'est point le triomphe, mais le combat, l'essentiel ce n'est pas d'avoir vaincu mais de s'être bien battu.
The important thing in life is not the triumph but the struggle, the essential thing is not to have conquered but to have fought well.
As Coubertin prepared for his Congress, he continued to develop a philosophy of the Olympic Games. While he certainly intended the Games to be a forum for competition between amateur athletes, his conception of amateurism was complex. By 1894, the year the Congress was held, he publicly criticized the type of amateur competition embodied in English rowing contests, arguing that its specific exclusion of working-class athletes was wrong. While he believed that athletes should not be paid to be such, he did think that compensation was in order for the time when athletes were competing and would otherwise have been earning money. Following the establishment of a definition for an amateur athlete at the 1894 Congress, he would continue to argue that this definition should be amended as necessary, and as late as 1909 would argue that the Olympic movement should develop its definition of amateurism gradually.
Along with the development of an Olympic philosophy, Coubertin invested time in the creation and development of a national association to coordinate athletics in France, the Union des Sociétés Françaises de Sports Athlétiques (USFSA). In 1889, French athletics associations had grouped together for the first time and Coubertin founded a monthly magazine La Revue Athletique, the first French periodical devoted exclusively to athletics and modeled on The Athlete, an English journal established around 1862. Formed by seven sporting societies with approximately 800 members, by 1892 the association had expanded to 62 societies with 7,000 members.
That November, at the annual meeting of the USFSA, Coubertin first publicly suggested the idea of reviving the Olympics. His speech met general applause, but little commitment to the Olympic ideal he was advocating for, perhaps because sporting associations and their members tended to focus on their own area of expertise and had little identity as sportspeople in a general sense. This disappointing result was prelude to a number of challenges he would face in organizing his international conference. In order to develop support for the conference, he began to play down its role in reviving Olympic Games and instead promoted it as a conference on amateurism in sport which, he thought, was slowly being eroded by betting and sponsorships. This led to later suggestions that participants were convinced to attend under false pretenses. Little interest was expressed by those he spoke to during trips to the United States in 1893 and London in 1894, and an attempt to involve the Germans angered French gymnasts who did not want the Germans invited at all. Despite these challenges, the USFSA continued its planning for the games, adopting in its first program for the meeting eight articles to address, only one of which had to do with the Olympics. A later program would give the Olympics a much more prominent role in the meeting.
The congress was held on 23 June 1894 at the Sorbonne in Paris. Once there, participants divided the congress into two commissions, one on amateurism and the other on reviving the Olympics. A Greek participant, Demetrius Vikelas, was appointed to head the commission on the Olympics, and would later become the first President of the International Olympic Committee. Along with Coubertin, C. Herbert of Britain's Amateur Athletic Association and W.M. Sloane of the United States helped lead the efforts of the commission. In its report, the commission proposed that Olympic Games be held every four years and that the program for the Games be one of modern rather than ancient sports. They also set the date and location for the first modern Olympic Games, the 1896 Summer Olympics in Athens, Greece, and the second, the 1900 Summer Olympics in Paris. Coubertin had originally opposed the choice of Greece, as he had concerns about the ability of a weakened Greek state to host the competition, but was convinced by Vikelas to support the idea. The commission's proposals were accepted unanimously by the congress, and the modern Olympic movement was officially born. The proposals of the other commission, on amateurism, were more contentious, but this commission also set important precedents for the Olympic Games, specifically the use of heats to narrow participants and the banning of prize money in most contests.
Following the Congress, the institutions created there began to be formalized into the International Olympic Committee (IOC), with Demetrius Vikelas as its first President. The work of the IOC increasingly focused on the planning the 1896 Athens Games, and de Coubertin played a background role as Greek authorities took the lead in logistical organization of the Games in Greece itself, offering technical advice such as a sketch of a design of a velodrome to be used in cycling competitions. He also took the lead in planning the program of events, although to his disappointment neither polo, football, nor boxing were included in 1896. The Greek organising committee had been informed that four foreign football teams were to participate however not one foreign football team showed up and despite Greek preparations for a football tournament it was cancelled during the Games.
The Greek authorities were frustrated that he could not provide an exact estimate of the number of attendees more than a year in advance. In France, Coubertin's efforts to elicit interest in the Games among athletes and the press met difficulty, largely because the participation of German athletes angered French nationalists who begrudged Germany their victory in the Franco-Prussian War. Germany also threatened not to participate after rumors spread that Coubertin had sworn to keep Germany out, but following a letter to the Kaiser denying the accusation, the German National Olympic Committee decided to attend. Coubertin himself was frustrated by the Greeks, who increasingly ignored him in their planning and who wanted to continue to hold the Games in Athens every four years, against de Coubertin's wishes. The conflict was resolved after he suggested to the King of Greece that he hold pan-Hellenic games in between Olympiads, an idea which the King accepted, although Coubertin would receive some angry correspondence even after the compromise was reached and the King did not mention him at all during the banquet held in honor of foreign athletes during the 1896 Games.
Coubertin took over the IOC presidency when Demetrius Vikelas stepped down after the Olympics in his own country. Despite the initial success, the Olympic Movement faced hard times, as the 1900 (in De Coubertin's own Paris) and 1904 Games were both swallowed by World's Fairs, and received little attention. The Paris Games were not organised by Coubertin or the IOC nor were they called Olympics at that time. The St. Louis Games was hardly internationalized and was an embarrassment.
President of the International Olympic Committee
The 1906 Summer Olympics revived the momentum, and the Olympic Games grew to become the world's most important sports event. Coubertin created the modern pentathlon for the 1912 Olympics, and subsequently stepped down from his IOC presidency after the 1924 Olympics in Paris, which proved much more successful than the first attempt in that city in 1900. He was succeeded as president, in 1925, by Belgian Henri de Baillet-Latour.
Coubertin remained Honorary President of the IOC until he died in 1937 in Geneva, Switzerland. He was buried in Lausanne (the seat of the IOC), although, in accordance with his will, his heart was buried separately in a monument near the ruins of ancient Olympia.
Personal Olympic Success
Coubertin won the gold medal for literature at the 1912 Summer Olympics for his poem Ode to Sport.
Scouting
In 1911, Pierre de Coubertin founded the inter-religious Scouting organisation Eclaireurs Français (EF) in France, which later merged to form the Eclaireuses et Eclaireurs de France.
Later life
Pierre was the last person to the family name. In the words of his biographer John MacAloon, "The last of his lineage, Pierre de Coubertin was the only member of it whose fame would outlive him.
Criticism
Coubertin's legacy has been criticized by a number of scholars. David C. Young, a scholar of antiquity who has studied the ancient Olympic Games, believes that Coubertin misunderstood the ancient Games and therefore based his justification for the creation of the modern Games on false grounds. Specifically, Young points to Coubertin's assertion that ancient Olympic athletes were amateurs as incorrect. This question of the professionalism of ancient Olympic athletes is a subject of debate amongst scholars, with Young and others arguing that the athletes were professional throughout the history of the ancient Games, while other scholars led by Pleket argue that the earliest Olympic athletes were in fact amateur, and that the Games only became professionalized after about 480 BCE. Coubertin agreed with this latter view, and saw this professionalization as undercutting the morality of the competition.
Further, Young asserts that the effort to limit international competition to amateur athletes, which Coubertin was a part of, was in fact part of efforts to give the upper classes greater control over athletic competition, removing such control from the working classes. Coubertin may have played a role in such a movement, but his defenders argue that he did so unconscious of any class repercussions.
However, it is clear that his romanticized vision of the Olympic Games was fundamentally different from that described in the historical record. For example, de Coubertin's idea that winning was less important than striving is at odds with the ideals of the Greeks. The Apostle Paul, writing in the first century to Christians in the city of Corinth where the Isthmian Games were held, reflects this in his writings when he says, "Do you not know that in a race all the runners run, but only one gets the prize? Run in such a way as to get the prize", (1 Corinthians 9:24).
de Coubertin's assertion that the Games were the impetus for peace was also an exaggeration; the peace which he spoke of only existed to allow athletes to travel safely to Olympia, and neither prevented the outbreak of wars nor ended ongoing ones.
Scholars have critiqued the idea that athletic competition might lead to greater understanding between cultures and, therefore, to peace. Christopher Hill claims that modern participants in the Olympic movement may defend this particular belief, "in a spirit similar to that in which the Church of England remains attached to the Thirty-Nine Articles of Religion, which a Priest in that Church must sign." In other words, that they may not wholly believe it but hold to it for historical reasons.
Questions have also been raised about the veracity of Coubertin's account of his role in the planning of the 1896 Athens Games. According to Young, either due to personal or professional distractions, Coubertin played little role in planning, despite entreaties by Vikelas. Young also suggests that the story about Coubertin's having sketched the velodrome were untrue, and that he had in fact given an interview in which he suggested he did not want Germans to participate, something he later denied in a letter to the Kaiser.
Legacy
The Pierre de Coubertin medal (also known as the Coubertin medal or the True Spirit of Sportsmanship medal) is an award given by the International Olympic Committee to those athletes that demonstrate the spirit of sportsmanship in the Olympic Games. This medal is considered by many athletes and spectators to be the highest award that an Olympic athlete can receive, even greater than a gold medal. The International Olympic Committee considers it as its highest honor.
A minor planet 2190 Coubertin discovered in 1976 by Soviet astronomer Nikolai Stepanovich Chernykh is named in his honor.
The street where the Olympic Stadium in Montreal is located (which hosted the 1976 Summer Olympic Games) was named after Pierre de Coubertin, giving the stadium the address 4549 Pierre de Coubertin Avenue. It is the only Olympic Stadium in the world that lies on a street named after Coubertin. There are also two schools in Montreal named after Pierre de Coubertin.
He was portrayed by Louis Jourdan in the 1984 NBC miniseries, The First Olympics: Athens, 1896.
References
Hill, Christopher R. (1996). Olympic Politics. Manchester University Press ND. ISBN 0719044510.
MacAloon, John J. (1981). This Great Symbol: Pierre de Coubertin and the Origins of the Modern Olympic Games. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. ISBN 0226500004.
Young, David C. (1996). The Modern Olympics, A Struggle for Revival. Baltimore and London: The Johns Hopkins University Press. ISBN 0801853745.
Further reading
Pierre de Coubertin, Olympism: selected writings, edited by Norbert Muller, Lausanne, IOC, 2000
John J Macaloon, This Great Symbol. Pierre de Coubertin and the Origins of the Modern Olympic Games, Univ. of Chicago Press, 1981, New Edition: Routledge 2007
International Journal of the History of Sport, Volume 23 Issue 3 & 4 2006 -This Great Symbol: Pierre de Coubertin and the Origins of the Modern Olympic Games
Michael Llewellyn Smith. Olympics in Athens 1896: The Invention of the Modern Olympic Games. Profile Books Ltd, London: 2004
Stephan Wassong, Pierre de Coubertin´s American studies and their importance for the analysis of his early educational campaign. Web publishing on LA84 Foundation. 2004.
External links
The International Pierre De Coubertin Committee (CIPC) – Lausanne
Coubertin reader of Flaubert
The Wenlock Olympian Society
Discourse of Pierre de Coubertin at Sorbonne announcing the restoring of the Olympic games (in French, audio)
The Story of the Rings
It is written that "Pierre de Coubertin is said to have found the original Olympic symbol engraved on an altar-stone unearthed at Delphi." Apparently a number of publications on the Olympic games and movement contain similar claims, sometimes accompanied by photographs of the "evidence", a stone with the five rings carved into it.
An article by Robert Knight Barney called 'This Great Symbol: The Tricks of History' and published in Olympic Review (No. 301, 1992 pp. 627-631, 641), sets the record straight concerning the supposed antique origins of the famous Olympic rings. Barney points out that the stones in question, which may still be seen at Delphi, were in fact manufactured for a ceremony which formed part of the torch relay from Greece to Germany for the 1936 games. The stones were since left at various locations at Delphi, causing later visitors to mistake the stones with the rings for genuine antique artifacts.
In the same article Barney also presents new views on the origins of the Olympic emblem. Barney explains that the likely inspiration for the interlocked rings lies in the symbol of the French sports federation USFSA - Union des sociétés françaises des sports athlétiques. The USFSA used an emblem consisting of two interlocking rings, reflecting that the USFSA was born through the merger of two previously independent associations. de Coubertain was president of the USFSA. Barney states that the symbol with the two rings is known to have been used on uniforms "at least as early as 1893." When the time came to make an emblem for the Olympic movement, the 20th anniversary of the Olympic movement in 1914, the symbol of the USFSA served as model: "It seems quite obvious, therefore, that Coubertin's affiliation with the USFSA led him to think in terms of interlocked rings or circles when he applied his mind towards conceiving a logo for his commemorative conference of 1914, indeed, a ring logo that would symbolize his Olympic Movement's success up to that point in time, just as the interlocking of two rings had signified the successful marriage of two distinct societies into one, the USFSA. Circles, after all, connote wholeness (as we are told by the psychologist Karl Jung), the interlocking of them, continuity." (p. 629). In Barney's judgment the five rings of the Olympic emblem "connoted the successful accomplishment of history's first five Modern Olympic Games, and that the ring colours exemplify hues represented in the flags of each of the countries participating in the Games of the Olympiads I, II, III, IV, and V." (p. 631).
Jan Oskar Engene, 13 January 2002.
---
The writer following article was apparently quite convinced that the flag was first shown in Paris, and thus neglected to check the congress date. Fortunately, I already quoted the month from the website as "June 1914", which tells us the flag was first shown in Egypt, and only then in Paris.
This flag was designed by Pierre de Coubertin in 1913, and was made in the "Bon Marché" store, adjoining the Rue Oudinot, birthplace of the Baron.
This first flag is 3 meters long, and 2 meters wide: the emblem placed in the center is 2, 06 m. by 60 cm. From now on the flags which will fly over the stadia will be of this format, although some will possibly have fringes and be made of a more sumptuous material than the simple cotton used for the original. (...)
The Olympic flag made its first official appearance in 1914 in Paris on the occasion of the 20th anniversary of the founding of the Modern Olympic Games.
It was next flown on 5th April 1914 in Alexandria during the Pan-Egyptian Games and then in the hall of honour at the San Francisco Exhibition on 18th March 1915. (...)
The flag was not hoisted over an Olympic stadium until 1920 at the Antwerp Games. On this occasion the motto CITIUS, ALTIUS, FORTIUS had been added which, although attributed to Pierre de Coubertin, was in fact composed by one of his friends, the Reverend Father Didon."
This Great Symbol
Wholeness; continuity; inspired by the ancient Greek stone altar at Delphi; Paris Sorbonne conference
London – Zion 2012
The Open Scroll – Olympic Symbolism
<|>
<|>
The simple step of the courageous individual is not to take part in the We.
One word of truth outweighs the world.--Alexandr Solzhenitsyn
<|>
WE
We (Russian: Мы) is a dystopian novel by Yevgeny Zamyatin completed in 1921. It was written in response to the author's personal experiences during the Russian revolution of 1905, the Russian revolution of 1917, his life in the Newcastle suburb of Jesmond, and his work in the Tyne shipyards during the First World War. It was on Tyneside that he observed the rationalization of labour on a large scale. Zamyatin was a trained marine engineer, hence his dispatch to Newcastle to oversee ice-breaker construction for the Imperial Russian navy. The novel was first published in 1924 by E.P. Dutton in New York in an English translation.
Setting
We is set in the future. D-503 lives in the One State, an urban nation constructed almost entirely of glass, which allows the secret police/spies to inform on and supervise the public more easily. The structure of the state is analogous to the prison design concept developed by Jeremy Bentham commonly referred to as the Panopticon. Furthermore, life is organized to promote maximum productive efficiency along the lines of the system advocated by the hugely influential F.W. Taylor. People march in step with each other and wear identical clothing. There is no way of referring to people save by their given numbers. Males have odd numbers prefixed by consonants; females have even numbers prefixed by vowels.
Plot
D-503, a State mathematician, is the chief engineer in a project to build the Integral, a spaceship that will bring the "great flywheel of logic" to other planets and help the One State conquer the solar system, having already conquered the world. D-503's girlfriend is O-90. His friend R-13, a State poet, is employed to write songs in praise of the State.
D-503 meets I-330, a woman who dresses erotically and teases and entices him instead of sleeping with him in an impersonal fashion. D-503 becomes obsessed with I-330. D-503 and I-330 visit a public execution, and also visit the Ancient House, notable for being the only opaque building in the One State, except for windows. Objects of aesthetic and historical importance, dug up from around the city, are stored there.
He begins to have dreams at night, which disturbs him, as dreams are irrational and thought to be a symptom of mental illness. Slowly, I-330 reveals to D-503 that she is involved with the Mephi, a group plotting to bring down the state. She takes him through secret tunnels to the world outside the Green Wall surrounding the city-state, showing him the inhabitants of the outside world: humans whose bodies are covered with fur.
At the novel's end, D-503 is subjected to the "Great Operation" (similar to a lobotomy), that has recently been mandated for the whole population of the One State. This operation removes the imagination by striking a certain region of the brain with x-rays. After this operation, D-503 watches the torture and execution of I-330 with equanimity. Meanwhile the Mephi revolt gathers strength; part of the Green Wall has been destroyed, birds begin to populate the city, and people start to commit acts of social rebellion. The novel ends with the issue in doubt. A repeated mantra in the novel is that there is no final revolution.
Major themes
Dystopian society
The dystopian society depicted in We is presided over by the Benefactor and is surrounded by a giant Green Wall to separate the citizens from primitive untamed nature. All citizens are known as "numbers".
Every hour in one's life is directed by "The Table," a precursor to Nineteen Eighty-Four's telescreen. It is also prefigured by Vicar Dewley's 'Precepts of Assured Salvation' in Zamyatin's 1916 Newcastle novella Islanders.
The action of We is set at some time after the Two Hundred Years War which has wiped out all but "0.2% of the earth's population". The War was over a rare substance never mentioned in the book but it could be about petroleum, as all knowledge of the war comes from biblical metaphors; the substance was called "bread" as the "Christians gladiated over it"—as in countries fighting conventional wars. However, it is also revealed that the war only ended after the use of weapons of mass destruction, so that the One State is surrounded with a post-apocalyptic landscape.
Totalitarianism, Communism, and Empire
The Benefactor is the equivalent of Big Brother, but unlike his Orwellian equivalent, is actually confirmed to exist when D-503 has an encounter with him. D-503 incidentally gives his age here as 32, the age Zamyatin was in Newcastle. An "election" is held every year on Unanimity Day, but the Benefactor is unanimously re-elected each year. The vote is also public, so that everyone knows who is voting. This reflects the election practices in the USSR and the later communist states.
The Integral, the One State's space ship, has been designed by D-503 to bring the message of the One State to the rest of the universe. This is often seen as analogous to the ideal of a global communist state held by early Marxists, but it can be more broadly read as a critique of the tendency of all modernizing, industrial societies toward empire and colonization under the guise of civilizing development for "primitive peoples." This was, fundamentally, a materialist view (specifically of historical materialism in Marxism, which predicted the inevitable triumph of communism) that reduces the world to physical laws and processes that can be understood and manipulated for utilitarian purposes. It was a world view that Zamyatin despised, and We dramatizes the conflict between nature/spirit and artifice/order.
The role of the poet/writer, as Zamyatin saw it, was to be the heretical voice (or "I") that always insisted on imagination, especially when established institutions seek conformity and concerted effort ("We") toward a defined goal. Zamyatin was disturbed by the way in which the Party viewed literature as a useful tool for realizing its goals, and he witnessed particularly troubling compromises from fellow writers who increasingly toed the party line through institutions like the Russian Association of Proletarian Writers (RAPP) or the Writers Union, from which he resigned in 1929. References to official efforts to co-opt literary talent cannot be missed in We. The story begins with D-503 deciding to answer the One State's call for all with literary talent to "compose tracts, odes, manifestos, poems, or other works extolling the beauty and grandeur of the One State." These contributions would be loaded on the Integral as its first cargo, exporting efficiency and un-freedom to the populations of the universe. D-503, before he becomes afflicted with a soul, records his "Reflections on Poetry" in which he praises the "majestic" Institute of State Poets and Writers.
Literary significance and influences
Along with Jack London's The Iron Heel, We is generally considered to be the grandfather of the satirical futuristic dystopia genre. It takes the totalitarian and conformative aspects of modern industrial society to an extreme conclusion, depicting a state that believes that free will is the cause of unhappiness, and that citizens' lives should be controlled with mathematical precision based on the system of industrial efficiency created by Frederick Winslow Taylor.
Frederick Winslow Taylor
Frederick Winslow Taylor (1856-1915) consolidated a system of managerial authority, often referred to as scientific management, that encouraged a shift in knowledge of production from the workers to the managers.
Mar 20, 1856. Vilified and praised, Frederick Winslow Taylor changed the face of business forever as the “Father of Scientific Management.” Born at Philadelphia, PA, Taylor was a chief engineer at Philadelphia’s Midvale Steel Company, when he introduced time-and-motion studies in 1881, which helped companies find efficiencies in worker movement and drive out time wasting on the assembly lines. Henry Ford, in particular, put Taylor’s theories to work. Taylor died at Philadelphia, Mar 21, 1915.
U.S. inventor and engineer. He worked at Midvale Steel Co. (1878 – 90), where he introduced time-and-motion study in order to systematize shop management and reduce manufacturing costs. Though his system provoked resentment and opposition from labour when carried to extremes, it had an immense impact on the development of mass production techniques and has influenced the development of virtually every modern industrial country. Taylor is regarded as the father of scientific management.
See also production management; Taylorism.
---
Christopher Collins in Evgenij Zamjatin: An Interpretive Study finds the many intriguing literary aspects of We more interesting and relevant today than the political aspects:
An examination of myth and symbol reveals that the work may be better understood as an internal drama of a conflicted modern man rather than as a representation of external reality in a failed utopia. The city is laid out as a mandala, populated with archetypes and subject to an archetypal conflict. One wonders if Zamyatin were familiar with the theories of his contemporary C. G. Jung or whether it is a case here of the common European zeitgeist.
Much of the city scape and expressed ideas in the world of We are taken almost directly from the works of H. G. Wells, the (then) very popular apostle of scientific socialist utopia whose works Zamyatin had edited in Russian.
H.G. Wells
(born Sept. 21, 1866, Bromley, Kent, Eng. — died Aug. 13, 1946, London) English novelist, journalist, sociologist, and historian. While studying science under T.H. Huxley in London, Wells formulated a romantic conception of the subject that would inspire the inventive and influential science-fiction and fantasy novels for which he is best known, including the epochal The Time Machine (1895), The Invisible Man (1897), and The War of the Worlds (1898). He simultaneously took on a public role as an agitator for progressive causes, including the League of Nations. He later abandoned science fiction and drew on memories of his lower-middle-class early life in works including the novel Tono-Bungay (1908) and the comic The History of Mr. Polly (1910). He had a 10-year affair with the young Rebecca West. World War I shook his faith in human progress, prompting him to promote popular education through nonfiction works including The Outline of History (1920). The Shape of Things to Come (1933) was an antifascist warning. Though a sense of humour reappears in Experiment in Autobiography (1934), most of his late works reveal a pessimistic, even bitter outlook.
---
Thomas Henry Huxley
The English biologist Thomas Henry Huxley (1825-1895) is most famous as "Darwin's bulldog," that is, as the man who led the fight for the acceptance of Darwin's theory of evolution.
(born May 4, 1825, Ealing, Middlesex, Eng. — died June 29, 1895, Eastbourne, Sussex) British biologist. The son of a schoolmaster, he earned a medical degree. After working as a surgeon on a surveying expedition in the South Pacific (1846 – 50), during which he carried out extensive studies of marine organisms, he taught for many years at the Royal School of Mines in London (1854 – 85). In the 1850s he established his reputation with his important papers on animal individuality, certain mollusks, the methods of paleontology, the methods and principles of science and science education, the structure and functions of nerves, and the vertebrate skull. He was one of the earliest and strongest supporters of Darwinism; his 1860 debate with Bishop Samuel Wilberforce gained widespread attention. In the 1860s Huxley did valuable work in paleontology and classification, especially classification of birds. Later in life he turned to theology; he is said to have coined the word agnostic to describe his views. Few scientists have been as influential over such a wide field of scientific development and as effective in the total movement of thought and action within their own generation.
---
In the use of color and other imagery Zamyatin shows he had breathed the same subjectivist air as had Kandinsky and other European Expressionist painters.
George Orwell averred that Aldous Huxley's Brave New World (1932) must be partly derived from We. However, in a 1962 letter to Christopher Collins, Huxley says that he wrote Brave New World as a reaction to H.G. Wells' utopias long before he had heard of We. According to We translator Natasha Randall, Orwell believed that Huxley was lying. Kurt Vonnegut said that in writing Player Piano (1952) he "cheerfully ripped off the plot of Brave New World, whose plot had been cheerfully ripped off from Yevgeny Zamyatin's We."
First edition, hardcover
Player Piano, author Kurt Vonnegut's first novel, was published in 1952. It is a dystopia of automation and capitalism, describing the dereliction they cause in the quality of life. The story takes place in a near-future society that is almost totally mechanized, eliminating the need for human laborers. This widespread mechanization creates conflict between the wealthy upper class—the engineers and managers who keep society running—and the lower class, whose skills and purpose in society have been replaced by machines. The book uses irony and sentimentality, which were to become a hallmark developed further in Vonnegut's later works.
Influences
In a 1973 interview Vonnegut discussed his inspiration to write the book:
I was working for General Electric at the time, right after World War II, and I saw a milling machine for cutting the rotors on jet engines, gas turbines. This was a very expensive thing for a machinist to do, to cut what is essentially one of those Brancusi forms. So they had a computer-operated milling machine built to cut the blades, and I was fascinated by that. This was in 1949 and the guys who were working on it were foreseeing all sorts of machines being run by little boxes and punched cards. Player Piano was my response to the implications of having everything run by little boxes. The idea of doing that, you know, made sense, perfect sense. To have a little clicking box make all the decisions wasn't a vicious thing to do. But it was too bad for the human beings who got their dignity from their jobs.
In the same interview he acknowledges that he "cheerfully ripped off the plot of Brave New World, whose plot had been cheerfully ripped off from Yevgeny Zamyatin's We."
Title
A player piano is a modified piano that "plays itself". The piano keys move according to a pattern of holes punched in an unwinding scroll. Unlike a music synthesizer, the instrument actually produces the sound itself, with the keys moving up and down, driving hammers that strike the strings. Like its counterpart, a player piano can be played by hand as well. When a scroll is run through the ghost-operated instrument, the movement of its keys produce the illusion that an invisible performer is playing the instrument.
Steinway-Welte player piano, 1910; in the British Piano and Musical Museum, Brentford, Middlesex
Vonnegut uses the player piano as a metaphor to represent how the novel's imaginary society is run by machines instead of people. Early in the book, Paul Proteus's friend and future member of the Ghost Shirt Society, Ed Finnerty, is shown playing a player piano, suggesting the idea of humans regaining control from the machines.
Science fiction branding
This satirical take on industrialization and the rhetoric of General Electric and the big corporations, which discussed arguments very topical in the post-war capitalist United States, was instead advertised by the publisher with the more innocuous and marketable label of "science fiction", a genre that was booming in mass popular culture in the 1950s.
Player Piano was later released by Bantam Books in 1954 under the title Utopia 14 in an effort to drive sales with readers of Science Fiction.
Summary
Player Piano is set in the future after a fictional third world war. During the war, while most Americans were fighting overseas, the nation's managers and engineers developed ingenious automated systems that allowed the factories to operate with only a few workers. The novel begins ten years after the war, when most factory workers have been replaced by machines.
Player Piano develops two parallel plot lines that converge only briefly, at the beginning and the end of the novel. The more important plot line tells of Dr. Paul Proteus, an intelligent, thirty-five-year-old factory manager. The other plot line describes the American tour of the Shah of Barpuhr, the spiritual leader of six million residents of a distant, underdeveloped nation. Proteus lives and works within the system, but the Shah is a visitor from a very different culture. Despite Paul's good fortune in society, he is vaguely dissatisfied with the industrial system and his place in it.
Throughout the novel, he considers alternatives, but the system is so large and complex that there are few opportunities to live outside of it. Ed Finnerty, an old friend, shows up at Paul's door and informs him he has quit his important engineer job in Washington D.C., and he intends to live outside the system, just as Paul had dreamed of doing. Paul and Finnerty visit a bar in the "Homestead" section of town, where workers who have been displaced by machines live out their meaningless lives in shoddy, mass-produced houses. There, they meet an Episcopal minister with an M.A. in anthropology named Lasher who puts into words the unfairness of the system that the two engineers have only vaguely sensed. They soon learn that Lasher is the leader of a rebel group known as the "Ghost Shirt Society", and Finnerty instantly takes up with him. Paul is not bold enough to make a clean break, as Finnerty has done, until his superiors ask him to betray Finnerty and Lasher.
He quits his job and is captured by the "Ghost Shirt Society;" he is forced to join as their leader but only in name. Paul's father was the first "National, Industrial, Commercial Communications, Foodstuffs, and Resources Director"” As his lengthy title suggests, Dr. George Proetus has almost complete control over the nation’s economy and was more powerful than the President of the United States. Through his father's success, Paul's name is famous among the citizens, so the organization intends to use his name to their advantage by making him the false 'leader' to gain publicity.
Arguments against capitalism
“Without regard for the wishes of men, any machines or techniques or forms of organization that can economically replace men do replace men. Replacement is not necessarily bad, but to do it without regard for the wishes of men is lawlessness.
Without regard for the changes in human life patterns that may result, new machines, new forms of organization, new ways of increasing efficiency, are constantly being introduced. To do this without regard for the effects on life patterns is lawlessness.” (Chap. XXX)
“Without rank, without guest privileges, he lived on a primitive level of social justice.” (Chap. XXIII)
“'This is your living?' said Paul. He hadn't succeeded in keeping the sense of whimsy out of his voice, and quick resentment was all about him.” (Chap. IX)
“'Things are certainly set up for a class war based on conveniently established lines of demarcation. And I must say that the basic assumption of the present set-up is a grade-A incitement to violence: the smarter you are, the better you are. Used to be that the richer you were, the better you were. Either one is, you'll have to admit, pretty tough for the have-nots' to take. The criterion of brain is better than the one of money, but'—he held his thumb and forefinger about a sixteenth of an inch apart—'about that much better.'
'It's about as rigid a hierarchy as you can get,' said Finnerty. 'How's somebody going to up his I.Q.?'
'Exactly,' said Lasher. 'And it's built on more than just brain power—it's built on special kinds of brain power. Not only must a person be bright, he must be bright in certain approved, useful directions: basically, management or engineering.'
Or marry someone who's bright,' said Finnerty.
'Sex can still batter down all sorts of social structures—you're right,' Lasher agreed.
'Big tits will get you in anywhere,' said Finnerty.
'Well it's comforting to know that something hasn't changed in centuries, isn't it?' Lasher smiled. (Chap. IX)
---
The book discusses how the increases in worker's productivity, by way of more advanced machinery or organizational changes, impact the lives of workers themselves. The increase in the number of vacuum tubes was a crucial technological breakthrough in the post-war 1950s. In that period:
“… the tubes increased like rabbits."
"And dope addiction, alcoholism, and suicide went up proportionately", said Finnerty
"Ed!" said Anita.
"That was the war", said Kroner soberly. "It happens after every war."
"And organized vice and divorce and juvenile delinquency, all parallel the growth of the use of vacuum tubes", said Finnerty.
"Oh, come on, Ed", said Paul, "you can't prove a logical connection between those factors."
"If there's the slightest connection, it's worth thinking about", said Finnerty.
"I'm sure there isn't enough connection for us to be concerned with here", said Kroner severely.
"Or enough imagination or honesty", said Finnerty. (Chap.V, pp.48-50)
---
Ayn Rand's Anthem (1938) has several
similarities to We, although it is stylistically and thematically different.
George Orwell began Nineteen Eighty-Four (1949) some eight months after he read We in a French translation and wrote a review of it. Orwell is reported as "saying that he was taking it as the model for his next novel." Brown writes that for Orwell and certain others, We "appears to have been the crucial literary experience." Shane states that "Zamyatin's influence on Orwell is beyond dispute". Russell, in an overview of the criticism of We, concludes that "1984 shares so many features with We that there can be no doubt about its general debt to it", however there is a minority of critics who view the similarities between We and 1984 as "entirely superficial". Further, Russell finds "that Orwell's novel is both bleaker and more topical than Zamyatin's, lacking entirely that ironic humour that pervades the Russian work."
In The Right Stuff (1979), Tom Wolfe describes We as a "marvelously morose novel of the future" featuring an "omnipotent spaceship" called the Integral whose "designer is known only as 'D-503, Builder of the Integral.' “Wolfe goes on to use the Integral as a metaphor for the Soviet launch vehicle, the Soviet space program, or the Soviet Union.
Jerome K. Jerome has been cited as an influence on Zamyatin’s novel. Jerome’s short essay "The New Utopia" (1891) describes a regimented future city, indeed world, of nightmarish egalitarianism, where men and women are barely distinguishable in their grey uniforms (Zamyatin’s "unifs") and all have short black hair, natural or dyed. No one has names: women wear even numbers on their tunics, men wear odd, just as in We. Equality is taken to such lengths that people with well-developed physique are liable to have lopped limbs. In Zamyatin, similarly, the equalisation of noses is earnestly proposed. Jerome has anyone with an over-active imagination subjected to a leveling-down operation—something of central importance in We. Even more significant is the appreciation on the part of both Jerome and Zamyatin that individual, and by extension, familial love, is a disruptive and humanising force.
Jerome's works were translated in Russia three times before 1917. Three Men in a Boat is a set book in Russian schools.
Jerome K. Jerome
Jerome Klapka Jerome (2 May 1859 – 14 June 1927) was an English writer and humorist, best known for the humorous travelogue Three Men in a Boat.
Jerome was born in Caldmore, Walsall, England, and was brought up in poverty in London. He attended St Marylebone Grammar School.
Other works include the essay collections Idle Thoughts of an Idle Fellow and Second Thoughts of an Idle Fellow; Three Men on the Bummel, a sequel to Three Men in a Boat; and several other novels.
Quotes:
"It is in our faults and failings, not in our virtues, that we touch each other, and find sympathy. It is in our follies that we are one."
"Some people are under the impression that all that is required to make a good fisherman is the ability to tell lies easily and without blushing; but this is a mistake. Mere bald fabrication is useless; the veriest tyro can manage that. It is in the circumstantial detail, the embellishing touches of probability, the general air of scrupulous -- almost of pedantic -- veracity, that the experienced angler is seen."
"I want a house that has got over all its troubles; I don't want to spend the rest of my life bringing up a young and inexperienced house."
"It is impossible to enjoy idling thoroughly unless one has plenty of work to do."
"Nothing is more beautiful than the love that has weathered the storms of life. The love of the young for the young, that is the beginning of life. But the love of the old for the old, that is the beginning of things longer."
"If you desire to drain to the dregs the fullest cup of scorn and hatred that a fellow human being can pour out for you, let a young mother hear you call dear baby it."
---
History
We was the first work banned by Goskomizdat, the new Soviet censorship bureau, in 1921, though the initial draft dates to 1919. Zamyatin's literary position deteriorated throughout the 1920s, and he was eventually allowed to emigrate to Paris in 1931, probably after the intercession of Maxim Gorky.
The novel was first published in English in 1924 by E.P. Dutton in New York in a translation by Gregory Zilboorg, but its first publication in the Soviet Union had to wait until 1988, when glasnost resulted in it appearing alongside George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four. A year later We and Brave New World were published together in a combined edition.
In 1994, the novel received a Prometheus Award in the "Hall of Fame" category.
Allusions and references
See also: Persecution of Christians in the Soviet Union
Many of the names and numbers in We are allusions to personal experiences of Zamyatin or to culture and literature. For example, "Auditorium 112" refers to cell number 112, where Zamyatin was twice imprisoned and the name of S-4711 is a reference to the Eau de Cologne number 4711.
Gold diggin in the Mother Lode Ron Paul says dig it out of the ground
video tutorial
possibilism
Possibilism may refer to:
Possibilism (geography),
a theory of cultural geography
Possibilism (politics), a 1880s faction of the Federation of the Socialist Workers of France
Possibilism and Possibilists, a somewhat derogatory term for Reformist Socialism and Social democracy
possibilism (geography)
Possibilism in cultural geography is the theory that the environment sets certain constraints or limitations, but culture is otherwise determined by social conditions. In Cultural ecology Marshall Sahlins used this concept in order to develop alternative approaches to the environmental determinism dominant at that time in ecological studies. Theory by Strabo in 64 BC that we, humans, can make things happen by our own intelligence over time. Strabo cautioned against the assumption that nature and actions of humans were determined by the physical environment they inhabited. He observed that humans were the active elements in a human-environmental partnership.
The controversy between geographical possibilism and determinism might be considered as one of (at least) three dominant epistemologic controversies of contemporary geography. The other two controversies are 1) the "debate between neopositivists and neokantians about the "exceptionalism" or the specificity of geography as a science [and 2)] the contention between Mackinder and Kropotkin about what is - or should be - geography."[1]
Possibilism in geography is, thus, considered as a distinct approach to geographical knowledge, directly opposed to geographical determinism.
External links
University of Washington lecture
Valparaiso University on La Blache
Sources
^ José William Vesentini, Controvérsias geográficas: epistemologia e política, Confins (magazine) - Revue Franco-Brésilienne de Géographie [1]
possibilism (politics)
The Possibilists was a trend in the French socialist movement led by Paul Brousse, Benoît Malon and others who brought about a split in the French Workers' Party in 1882. Its leaders proclaimed what was essentially a reformist principle of achieving only what is 'possible', which they claimed was not the workers revolution.
References
See also
Federation of the Socialist Workers of France 1879-1905
French Section of the Workers' International 1905-1969
French Socialist Party 1969-
History of communism
History of socialism
History of the Left in France
trapezium
A quadrilateral having no parallel sides
Chiefly British. A trapezoid
A bone in the wrist at the base of the thumb
[Late Latin trapezium, trapezoid, from Greek trapezion, diminutive of trapeza, table: tra-, four + peza, foot.]
ontology
The branch of metaphysics that deals with the nature of being
TechEncyclopedia
The structure of a system. A system model. The word refers to the branch of metaphysics that deals with the nature of reality or being. It therefore refers to "what exists" in a system: all elements within all category hierarchies and the relationships between them.
---
Derived from the Greek word for being, but a 17th-century coinage for the branch of metaphysics that concerns itself with what exists. Apart from the ontological argument itself there have existed many a priori arguments that the world must contain things of one kind or another: simple things, unextended things, eternal substances, necessary beings, and so on. Such arguments often depend upon some version of the principle of sufficient reason. Kant is the greatest opponent of the view that unaided reason can tell us in detail what kinds of thing must exist, and therefore do exist. In the 20th century, Heidegger is often thought of primarily as an ontologist. Quine's principle of ontological commitment is that to be is to be the value of a bound variable, a principle not telling us what things exist, but how to determine what things a theory claims to exist. These are the things the variables range over in a properly regimented formal presentation of the theory. Philosophers characteristically charge each other with reifying things improperly, and in the history of philosophy every kind of thing will at one time or another have been thought to be the fictitious result of an ontological mistake.
philology
For the narrower field of "comparative philology", see comparative linguistics.
Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to: Philology
Philology is the study of language in written historical sources; it is a combination of literary studies, history and linguistics.
Classical philology is the philology of Greek and Classical Latin. Classical philology is historically primary, originating in European Renaissance Humanism, but was soon joined by philologies of other languages both European (Germanic, Celtic, Slavistics, etc.) and non-European (Sanskrit, Persian, Arabic, Chinese, etc.). Indo-European studies involves the comparative philology of all Indo-European languages.
Any classical language can be studied philologically, and indeed describing a language as "classical" is to imply the existence of a philological tradition associated with it.
Because of its focus on historical development (diachronic analysis), philology came to be used as a term contrasting with linguistics. This is due to a 20th-century development triggered by Ferdinand de Saussure's insistence on the importance of synchronic analysis, and the later emergence of structuralism and Chomskian linguistics with its emphasis on syntax.
Etymology
The term philology is derived from the Greek φιλολογία (philologia), from the terms φίλος (philos), meaning "love, affection, loved, beloved, dear, friend" and λόγος (logos), meaning "word, articulation, reason", describing a love of learning, of literature as well as of argument and reasoning, reflecting the range of activities included under the notion of λόγος. The term changed little with the Latin philologia, and later entered the English language in the 16th century, from the Middle French philologie, in the sense of "love of literature".
The adjective φιλόλογος (philologos) meant "fond of discussion or argument, talkative", in Hellenistic Greek also implying an excessive ("sophistic") preference of argument over the love of true wisdom, φιλόσοφος (philosophos).
As an allegory of literary erudition, Philologia appears in 5th-century post-classical literature (Martianus Capella, De nuptiis Philologiae et Mercurii), an idea revived in Late Medieval literature (Chaucer, Lydgate).
The meaning of "love of learning and literature" was narrowed to "the study of the historical development of languages" (historical linguistics) in 19th-century usage of the term. Due to the rapid progress made in understanding sound laws and language change, the "golden age of philology" lasted throughout the 19th century, or "from Friedrich Schlegel to Nietzsche". In the Anglo-Saxon world, the term philology to describe work on languages and literatures, which had become synonymous with the practices of German scholars, was abandoned as a consequence of anti-German feeling following World War I. Most continental European countries still maintain the term to designate departments, colleges, position titles, and journals. J.R.R. Tolkien opposed the nationalist reaction against philological practices, claiming that "the philological instinct" was "universal as is the use of language. “In British English usage, and in British academia, "philology" remains largely synonymous with "historical linguistics", while in US English, and US academia, the wider meaning of "study of a language's grammar, history and literary tradition" remains more widespread.
Branches of philology
Comparative philology
Main article: Comparative philology
The comparative linguistics branch of philology studies the relationship between languages. Similarities between Sanskrit and European languages were first noted in the early 16th century and led to speculation of a common ancestor language from which all these descended. It is now named Proto-Indo-European. Philology's interest in ancient languages led to the study of what were, in the 18th century, "exotic" languages, for the light they could cast on problems in understanding and deciphering the origins of older texts.
Textual philology editing
Main article: Textual criticism
Philology also includes the study of texts and their history. It includes elements of textual criticism, trying to reconstruct an author's original text based on variant copies of manuscripts. This branch of research arose in Biblical studies and has a long tradition, dating back to the Reformation. Scholars have tried to reconstruct the original readings of the Bible from the manuscript variants. This method was applied to Classical Studies and to medieval texts as a way to reconstruct the author's original work. The method produced so-called "critical editions," which provided a reconstructed text accompanied by a "critical apparatus", i.e., footnotes that listed the various manuscript variants available, enabling scholars to gain insight into the entire manuscript tradition and argue about the variants.
A related study method known as higher criticism studies the authorship, date, and provenance of text to place such text in historical context. As these philological issues are often inseparable from issues of interpretation, there is no clear-cut boundary between philology and hermeneutics. When text has a significant political or religious influence (such as the reconstruction of Biblical texts), scholars have difficulty reaching objective conclusions.
Some scholars avoid all critical methods of textual philology, especially in historical linguistics, where it is important to study the actual recorded materials. The movement known as New Philology has rejected textual criticism because it injects editorial interpretations into the text and destroys the integrity of the individual manuscript, hence damaging the reliability of the data. Supporters of New Philology insist on a strict "diplomatic" approach: a faithful rendering of the text exactly as found in the manuscript, without emendations.
Cognitive philology
Main article: Cognitive philology
Another branch of philology, cognitive philology, studies written and oral texts, considering them as results of human mental processes. This science compares the results of textual science with the results of experimental research of both psychology and artificial intelligence production systems.
Decipherment
In the case of Bronze Age literature, philology includes the prior decipherment of the language under study. This has notably been the case with the Egyptian, Sumerian, Assyrian, Hittite, Ugaritic and Luwian languages. Beginning with the famous decipherment and translation of the Rosetta Stone by Jean-François Champollion in 1822, a number of individuals attempted to decipher the writing systems of the Ancient Near East and Aegean. In the case of Old Persian and Mycenaean Greek, decipherment yielded older records of languages already known from slightly more recent traditions (Middle Persian and Alphabetic Greek).
Work on the ancient languages of the Near East progressed rapidly. In the mid-19th century, Henry Rawlinson and others deciphered the Behistun Inscription, which records the same text in Old Persian, Elamite, and Akkadian, using a variation of cuneiform for each language. The elucidation of cuneiform led to the decipherment of Sumerian. Hittite was deciphered in 1915 by Bedřich Hrozný.
Linear B, a script used in the ancient Aegean, was deciphered in 1952 by Michael Ventris, who demonstrated that it recorded an early form of Greek, now known as Mycenaean Greek. Linear A, the writing system that records the still-unknown language of the Minoans, resists deciphering, despite many attempts.
Work continues on scripts such as the Maya, with great progress since the initial breakthroughs of the phonetic approach championed by Yuri Knorozov and others in the 1950s. Since the late twentieth century, the Maya code has been almost completely deciphered, and the Mayan languages are among the most documented and studied in Mesoamerica. The code is described as a logosyllabic style of writing, which could be used to fully express any spoken thought.
See also
American Journal of Philology
Codicology
Elocution
Etymology
Palaeography
Western canon
Stylistics
transposition
The act or an instance of transposing
The state of being transposed
Something transposed.
Genetics. Transfer of a segment of DNA to a new position on the same or another chromosome or plasmid.
The act of exchanging or substituting: change, commutation, exchange, interchange, shift, substitution, switch, trade. Informal swap. See change/persist, substitute.
The act of changing or being changed from one position, direction, or course to the opposite: inversion, reversal, turnabout, turnaround. See change/persist.
Transposition may refer to:
Mathematics
Transposition (mathematics), a permutation which exchanges two elements and keeps all others fixed
Transposition, producing the transpose of a matrix AT, which is computed by swapping columns for rows in the matrix A
Games
Transposition (chess), different moves or a different move order leading to the same position, especially during the openings
Transposition table, used in computer games to speed up the search of the game tree
Biology
Transposition of the great vessels, cardiac transposition, a congenital heart defect with malformation of any of the major vessels
Transposons, or genetic transposition, a mutation in which a chromosomal segment is transferred to a new position on the same or another chromosome
Other uses
Transposition (law), the incorporation of the provisions of a European Union directive into a Member State's domestic law
Transposition (logic), a rule of replacement in philosophical logic
Transposition (music), moving a note or collection of notes up or down in pitch by a constant number of semitones.
Transposition (telecommunications)
Transposition cipher, an elementary cryptographic operation
Transposition, docking, and extraction an orbital maneuver performed on the Apollo lunar missions
Transposition, sleight of hand magic, a performer appears to make two different objects ([usually] coins or cards) switch places with one another faster than physically possible.
Cybernetic Transposition
"How to Get Lots of Money for Anything Fast"
A Comprehensive Website on Cybernetic Transposition
By Stuart Lichtman
Cybernetics according to Stuart Lichtman means “the human use of human beings ". Cybernetic Transposition" is putting yourself consciously in charge by creating effective communication between your conscious and unconscious minds, by consciously transposing successes from any part of your life into others, where you consciously want to produce success,
resolving self-defeating unconscious habit patterns into ones that support you and by creating effective conscious communication with the part of you that knows what's right for you.
In simpler terms, Cybernetic Transposition is the use of memories from the past, which have worked for us to achieve success to be combined together to create a desirable state of goal for the future. In essence, look back and then march forward.
Author Bio
Stuart Lichtman is the President of Successful Ventures Publishing, Inc. and Partners in Excellence, Inc. He is the creator of Arintel artificial intelligence data analysis program. He is the author of the Fast Money E-book and the person behind Cybernetic Transposition. As per Stuart's website, he is an entrepreneur, executive, researcher, trainer, consultant and coach. Stuart has extensive formal education including graduate and undergraduate courses in Psychology, engineering and Artificial Intelligence at MIT, Masters in Applied Psychology, and doctoral work in organization development and cross cultural business.
Besides the above credentials, Stuart started Data Mining (over 25 years ago) after graduating from MIT and developed concepts and approaches that were then applied to situations as varied as evaluating the US SBA for Federal Government for mapping the market for and product requirements of ATM machines for a Fortune 500 Company to developing a strategy to export shoes for the Commerce Department, to predicting the lodging demand in Orlando, FL during gas crisis for series of major investors.
What is Cybernetic Transposition?
Cybernetic Transposition is the process Stuart Lichtman has named which he has used to personally achieve many successes in business and personal life and now teaches to others. Cybernetic Transposition is a set of process seamlessly integrated to achieve any of your goals. The process has been released in various levels and the below description will provide a broad overview of the price and level of the process taught by Stuart Lichtman in his various courses.
determinism
thermodynamics
entropy
tropism
Eyre and Spottiswoode, London
The Human Use of Human Beings: Cybernetics and Society
By Norbert Wiener
(1954)
Next World TV
Paignton Zoo's Hydroponic Farm
Customized Food For Perfect Nutrition
Paignton Zoo Environmental Park, in Paignton, Devon, England has a hydroponic system for growing food for the animals.
The crops rotate in a robotic system optimized to provide an even level of sunlight for each tray. They are even able to grow plants that would be native to the environment for their exotic animals from all over the world.
"We have a duty to promote sustainable uses of resources." says head gardener at the zoo, Catherine Mortimer.
"Hydroponics is a great system for growing crops because it optimizes the food and water that the plant gets which maximizes the speed that the crop can grow and maximizes the nutrients that are going to be contained within that crop which is really important for captive animals." says head gardener at the zoo, Catherine Mortimer.
The Paignton Zoo Environmental Park is a combined zoo and botanic garden that welcomes over half a million visitors a year.
--Bibi Farber
For more information visit: http://www.paigntonzoo.org.uk This video is produced by: www.sciencesowhat.direct.gov.uk/future-jobs
<|>
Corporate Fascism - Danish Style
Conspiracy Fact Not Conspiracy Theory
By Philip Jones
8-6-9
"Fascism should more properly be called corporatism because it is the merger of state and corporate power." Benito Mussolini.
Generally speaking, most people around the world have no idea where Denmark is. The last time I was in the US, the general consensus among those I spoke to, was that it was the Capital of Sweden. The Muhammad Cartoon fiasco did for a short while drag Denmark kicking and squealing into the international spotlight, but that didn't last too long, and in truth, the Royal Kingdom of Denmark has returned to its accustomed state of national anonymity.
Those who do know where and what Denmark is, often naively think of her in romantic terms, as a quaint little country, conjuring up images of Hans Christian Andersen tales, akin to scenes from `Chitty Chitty Bang Bang,` and the like.
But nothing could be further from the truth:
Denmark is in reality a ruthless `Monopoly Dictatorship` deceivingly disguised as a caring modern democratic welfare state. It is a place where one has no opportunity for redress of grievance, and where neither the State nor the Corporations with which it it is effectively merged, feel any sense of accountability to the people. By the use of the most subtle and sophisticated methods of mass programming, it has co-opted a whole nation of people into a `Hive` mentality with the State functioning in the role of the `Queen Bee.`
Increasingly, Denmark resembles Aldous Huxley's ` Brave New World,` in which he describes the perfect totalitarian model of government thus:
“A really efficient totalitarian state would be the one in which the all-powerful executive of political bosses and their army of managers control a population of slaves who do not have to be coerced, because they love their servitude." Aldous Huxley.
Those familiar with my work will know that I have written at length on this subject in several previous articles [1-4] so it is not my intention to belabour here the points made previously. It will however be of help for the reader, in order to grasp the complexity of the subject matter, to make frequent reference to those articles in order to place what I write here in context.
For the sake of those not previously acquainted with this topic, I will summarise below the situation here in Denmark as I see it.
Brave New Denmark Revisited:
In the Matrix movie, the Morpheus character says to Neo, "The Matrix is a system Neo, and that system is our enemy. When you are inside it what do you see? The minds of the very people we are trying to save. But until we do, these people are part of that system and that makes them our enemies. You have to understand that most of these people are not ready to be unplugged. And many are so hopelessly dependent on the system, they will fight to defend it".
In this the first decade of the 21st Century, the individual Dane finds himself/herself so utterly dependent upon the State apparatus, that even in the unlikely event he perceives his condition for what it really is, it has become all but impossible for him to unplug himself from the `Matrix,` or disassociate himself from the `Hive.` This situation is then exacerbated by the programming he has received since Kindergarten, which was designed to render him either unable to see that his life is controlled down to the minutest detail, or which induces in him a state of mass denial and self-delusion; a condition known as `cognitive dissonance.` Simply put, this means to be in a state of inner conflict, where one is presented with a fact or facts which contradict one's belief system. What then occurs is as the late Psychologist Leon Festninger, a student of Kurt Lewin (himself an inspiration of the `Tavistock Institute` ) wrote in the book, When Prophecy fails;
"The individual believer must have social support. It is unlikely that one isolated believer could withstand the kind of dis-confirming evidence we have specified. If, however, the believer is a member of a group of convinced persons who can support one another, we would expect the belief to be maintained and the believers to attempt to proselyte or to persuade non-members that the belief is correct."
In other words, when one's erroneous and discredited belief system, whether it be social, political or religious, is shown to be evidently so, there is a clambering for safety in numbers. For the more there are to prevaricate and justify, `move the goal posts` if you will, then the greater the probability that the belief system, however discredited will remain the `received wisdom` of the masses.
Danes as a people are in many ways held in a state of `arrested adolescence.` The seemingly Liberal Socialist veneer is merely a mask for what is in actuality a ruthless Corporate Fascist State, which has no humanity, shows no mercy, will tolerate no dissent whatsoever, and holds absolute control, not by force of arms, or by the use of surveillance cameras and other technological means as in the UK, but by the use of an indoctrinated mindset which imbues it's citizens with a `There's nothing you can do about it` mentality."
Then you have the `Gatekeepers` of the Danish `Matrix.` All themselves victims of the brain numbing propaganda hurled at them from childhood, perpetuated in schools and universities and reinforced daily by the state/corporate media. The parents, priests, teachers, police, soldiers, doctors, journalists and the `censors` who make sure that nothing is put into print, published or broadcast which will create confusion, doubt or dissension. Of course, just a little harmless and minor criticism is published in order to maintain the illusion of democracy and freedom. But nothing which will provoke real debate on any contentious subject.
Then there are the `neighbours` and the `community groups` ever watchful that no one raises his or her head above the ramparts, or breaks ranks, ceases to conform or displays any unnecessary signs of individuality. Always ready to pick up the telephone and be the `good citizen, `informing on the neighbour who dares to contravene even the most minor of the countless rules and regulations which press down ever more heavily upon the Danish people.
In fact and amazingly so, in Denmark and the other Scandinavian lands, there is a code of conduct used to enforce this `gatekeeper` mentality. It is known as the `Jantelav` and has its origins in the small villages and hamlets of Denmark back in the 18th and 19th centuries. The `code` was formulated by a Danish writer named `Aksel Sandemose` who included it in his 1933 novel, `A Fugitive Crosses His Tracks.` He based it on the closed and narrow minded behaviour he had witnessed as a child, and did not intend it to become what it has, a means by which a whole people's view of themselves can become degraded.
The Ten Commandments of the `Code` are:
1. Don't think you are anything.
2. Don't think you are as good as us.
3. Don't think you are smarter than us.
4. Don't think yourself better than us.
5. Don't think you know more than us.
6. Don't think you are greater than us.
7. Don't think you can do better
than us.
8. Don't laugh at us.
9. Don't think that anyone cares about you.
10. Don't think you can teach us anything.
Now it has to be understood that this code describes entirely the attitude and mentality of the overwhelming majority of Danish people. Was there ever a more perfect tool for controlling a society. Degrade their self-image and belief in their purpose, their ability to excel and shine. Look at the last `tenet`. `Don't think you can teach us anything.` For anyone who has come to live here with a craft or trade or other expert skill, that in a nutshell illustrates how impossible it is to introduce new ways and ideas into Denmark. Danes do not believe that anyone can teach them anything.
The Monopoly Mafia:
"The Illuminati's revolutionary goal is the NWO, or authoritarian socialism run by monopoly capital. It is big government in the service of big business, the left in the service of the right". Henry Makow `The Cruel Hoax`.
The Danish State and Danish Companies have formed themselves into a form of Corporate `Mafia.`
The State receiving its share of the extortion `racket` in the form of a 25% sales tax termed called `moms` placed on everything bought, sold, produced, manufactured and on all services within the confines of the `Kingdoms` borders.
Competition in Denmark is almost non-existent, with utility providers for the most part, operating a `State Endorsed Monopoly,` which has engendered a sense of omnipotence in the companies themselves, and one of hopelessness in the people. There is the façade of competition, but that is all it is. Things appear a little less monopolised in the country's only true city, Copenhagen,` but elsewhere, Monopoly is the only game in town.
This sorry state of affairs is sustained by the fact that the Danish state is if not the largest employer, one of the largest, with the major Corporations themselves, providing what accounts for the vast majority of non- public employment. With these two entities (being the primary source of earnings, as they are for people in Denmark), having conspired to merge their interests many years ago [5], the result has been a disaster for the Danish people, who however, have in reality been so cowed and mesmerised by the State Propaganda Machine, that they are for the most part totally unaware of what has been done to them.
The conspirators have in effect subtly coerced ordinary people working for the state and the corporations to turn their backs on their fellow citizens and identify themselves and their loyalty with the Corporatists.
Put another way; "The dog that bites the hand which feeds it will soon be a hungry dog."
As a non-Dane living in Denmark, all this seems as clear as daylight to me, but for the Dane, it is nonsense and an offence to even suggest it.
Only last week, I received this letter from a woman commenting on one of my articles:
"Thank you Philip Jones for your answer to me
I don't understand why so many people wants to live in Denmark, when they at the same time think it is so hard here?
All the foreigner people I know in Denmark is managing very well and I think it is how people are which make things bad or good for them
In year 2000 a Bulgarian man lived in my flat, he managed very well, but got better offer from America and moved to America. I knew his wife and their child also
The Bulgarian man is a very nice, loving and caring person, so everywhere people likes him and that is be course he is the person he is.
I just met a new romanian man in Denmark and he is the best man, he got a good job in Denmark and work hard, he talk english and he has lots of danish friends
Please begin to ask people why they come to Denmark and live here when they think it is so terrible here. Denmark is the best place at earth, it is Paradise.
I have not been in America, but I was in England and I lived 3 month at lovely Isle of Wight many years ago, I have visited almost all the european countries also the new eastern countries and I have been in Gambia and in Marocco in Africa plus Tunesia, but I always come back to Denmark because I want to keep living here and I dont have many friends like I had when I was a pupil in school, because I found out that when people gets children and have to work also, people are very busy, so it is not so easy to drop bye as it was when I was young and not having my own children
Thank you and all the best to you and other people
All nice people around the world managing very well
Best Regards from B.”
Joseph Goebbels, the Nazi Propaganda Minister said this:
"Propaganda must be able to be understood by even the most stupid members of society. Then you can make people believe that paradise is hell, and hell is paradise".
Now Denmark is not hell yet, but if things continue as they are, it will most certainly become so, and the most concerning aspect of all this, is that hardly anyone except myself and a few others, are even remotely aware of what is happening here, and unlike the US or even the UK, it is almost an absurdity to imagine Danes rising up against who they perceive to be their benevolent masters.
Goethe wrote, "None are more hopelessly enslaved, than those who falsely believe they are free."
Living the Corporate Fascist Experience:
My wife and I live in the southern part of Denmark known as `Sydjylland,` around twenty or so miles north of the German border. We exist quite comfortably on my Police Pension from the UK, primarily because we are realistic with our expenditure and very careful with our utilities.
In the latter part of 2008, have simply had enough of living in what is in truth an open prison, we decided for better or worse to move back to Britain. We placed our house for sale, and waited. Of course, in the current economic climate, nothing happened. After the required six months, we withdrew our home from the housing market, and `sucked up,` the fees which even though there was no sale, no viewing, no work done whatsoever to actually sell the property, amounted to the equivalent of $2,494.75 or £1,475.84.
The owner of the Estate Agency remarked that it was known by the local `authority` that our utilities were the lowest in the region, and that questions were being asked in certain circles how it could be that we were able to exist in such a manner.
Last Saturday morning, our quarterly electricity bill arrived. For the past four years, we have paid out around $193 (£114) each three monthly period for our electricity supply, but this time, something very different was lurking inside the envelope. For the three month period March 31st June 30th, the `bill maintained we had used in excess of five times our average electricity consumption, and in the middle of summer at that.
On Monday morning, everything closing down as it does here on Friday afternoon, we contacted our supplier, somehow and naively expecting a reasonable explanation and an apology for `their` mistake. We explained the situation, and stated that from the Saturday morning we received the bill, to the same time on Monday, we had checked the meter and it appeared to be working as normal and counting at a rate which would after a three month period total an amount which would accord with our normal usage. We explained that nothing had changed in our circumstances, and that we could not understand how the billing amount could possibly be so different.
To digress slightly, a year or so ago, the supplier had installed a new meter which could be read `remotely` from their office. At the time, being somewhat immersed as I am in the conspiracy genre, I had wondered what else they could do remotely with it?
Anyway, back to the story:
For the past four days, we have spoken with one `customer services` agent after another, who have all more or less, and not a little eerily, repeated the exact same script, concluding on `our` behalf that as always here in Denmark, there is nothing we can do about it, and in not so many words; "pay up, or we switch you off." I think I must have been told twenty times to "take it easy," which is thoroughly irritating, and a well-established and oft used Danish method intended to calm the `savage,` and make sure he/she understands to keep the conversation at just above `whisper` level, or the call gets terminated.
When we asked that an engineer come out and check the meter, we were told that would cost a additional $145 (£86) and that furthermore, any `easy payment` plan could only be over a three month period and would carry with it `administration,` fees. Then, to add insult to injury, we were told that in order to process such a payment plan, my own `personal number` would have to be taken and submitted to the Danish Tax Authorities. (All those resident in Denmark are given a number, backed up by a central database, without which one can doing nothing of any import).
Last year, in the cause of `restructuring, ‘we were forced to pay FIVE `quarterly` telephone bills? Work that one out if you can, and when I wrote to complain over the illogical and unjust treatment we were receiving at the hands of a company we had been good customers with for years. The best they could do was reply with a standard letter instructing us to pay or be punished accordingly.
The company in question, TDC, has almost a complete monopoly over telephone and internet supply in this region of Denmark and so are able to treat their customers as they please (their only competitor being ironically the company which supplies our electricity. Talk about frying pans and fires)
George Orwell wrote in his terrifying projection of the future, `1984,` "If you want a vision of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face forever."
The reality is of course that pay we must. There is no other recourse. No `watchdogs` or citizen's consumer protection groups here. No ``ombudsman` even, and if what passes for such in other areas of Danish commerce is anything to go by, then we would be looking three or four years down the road, along with further expenditure, before we could even begin to expect any resolution, and of course, the State Corporate `Mafioso` know this only too well.
The electricity supplier here in South Denmark, whom we are effectively bound to, due to the monopoly they have over supply and service, has either knowingly or otherwise appropriated around 2862 kWh of our electricity, and unless we pay and on time, they will cease our supply.
Now all of this might seem a little insignificant in the greater scheme of things. But it isn't. This is how they do it to us. They get us with the small things, incrementally wearing us down, stealing from us, eroding away drip by drip, our personal wealth and thereby what's left of our independence.
They tax us, bill us, create inflation as another form of tax, they lure us into debt; they fine us, reduce our wages, and slowly but surely create a sense of abject impotence in the mass of the population. Of course, there will always be those rebels who won't be cowed. The prisons of the west are full of them. But here in little old Denmark, there's not so much of that.
Conclusion:
I am convinced that Denmark is the desired social model for a `Brave New EU` to be erected on the debris of the soon to be former and ancient nation states of Europe, thereafter followed by a `Brave New World,` and it's `software` is being exported internationally. Unless people of all races, religions, political persuasions, creeds and any other groupings are able to recognise it's programmes` and refrain from `plugging` themselves into it, slavery of a kind hitherto not experienced in all of human history will ensue on a Global scale.
Experience has equally convinced me that any such `unplugging` is not going to happen here in Denmark, because the Danish people don't believe any problem exists or recognise it's credentials. They are convinced that this is after all the `perfect social model` with a population of people who contrary to all available evidence, are told constantly they have it better than anyone else, even though they themselves are worthless and undeserving. And there you have the `sting`. People who believe themselves undeserving or unworthy have low expectations. They expect very little and are ever grateful to their Lords and Masters for the `scraps` thrown them.
Comments to: http://righteousalliance.blogspot.com/
5] Roland Huntford: The New Totalitarians
FOX News
Government employees -- the true 1 percent
By Wayne Allyn Root
Wayne Allyn Root is a former Libertarian Vice Presidential nominee. He now serves as Chairman of the Libertarian National Congressional Committee. He is the best-selling author of "The Conscience of a Libertarian: Empowering the Citizen Revolution with God, Guns, Gold & Tax Cuts." His web site: www.ROOTforAmerica.com
TechGnosis: Myth, Magic & Mysticism in the Age of Information
“A most informative account of a culture whose secular concerns continue to collide with their supernatural flip-side.”—Voice Literary Supplement
In this dazzling book, writer and cyber guru Erik Davis demonstrates how religious imagination, magical dreams and millennialist fervor have always permeated the story of technology. Through shamanism to Gnosticism, voodoo to alchemy, Buddhism to evangelism, TechGnosis peels away the rational shell of infotech to reveal the utopian dreams, alien obsessions and apocalyptic visions that populate the ongoing digital revolution.
Erik Davis’ work has appeared in Wired, The Village Voice and Gnosis, and he has lectured internationally on technoculture and new forms of religion. He is a fifth-generation Californian who currently lives in San Francisco.
TECHGNOSIS
Bio
By Erik Davis
Erik Davis is a San Francisco-based writer, culture critic, and independent scholar. His book TechGnosis: Myth, Magic, and Mysticism in the Age of Information was released by Harmony Books in the fall of 1998. It has been translated into five languages, and has achieved, in certain circles, the vaguely enviable status of a "cult classic." Davis is a contributing writer for Wired magazines, and wrote "The Posthuman Condition" column for the sadly departed online magazine Feed. His essays have appeared in over half a dozen books, including Zig Zag Zen: Buddhism and Psychedelics (Chronicle), The Disinformation Book of Lies (Disinfo), Prefiguring Cyberculture (MIT Press) and Paul "DJ Spooky" Miller's Sound Unbound (MIT). He has contributed articles and essays to a wide variety of publications, including Bookforum, The Wire, ArtByte, the LA Weekly, Gnosis, and the Village Voice. His articles have been translated for publication in countries ranging from Japan to Brazil to Hungary.
Davis has taught at the California Institute of Integral Studies, the New York Open Center, and Esalen, and was one of the organizers of Planetwork, a conference on information technology and global ecology held in San Francisco in 2000. He has been interviewed by CNN, has popped up on radio shows internationally, and appeared prominently in Craig Baldwin's underground film, the SciFi media critique Specters of the Spectrum. His in-depth studies of the science fiction author Philip K. Dick have been acknowledged by the New Yorker. Davis has also lectured internationally on topics relating to media arts, contemporary electronic music, and spirituality in the postmodern world.
Davis is a fifth-generation Californian, and is currently working with the photographer Michael Rauner on California Visions, a photo-essay travelogue through the Golden State's landscape of alternative spirituality. He is also at work on a short book about Led Zeppelin, and various fragments of bardo fiction.
Humanity+
Aeon Bytes
Origins of Gnosticism
keyhole publishing
Richard M. Dolan
Richard Michael Dolan (born 1962) is an American historian, author and television personality, whose areas of expertise are in History and Ufology.
Education
Dolan attended Alfred University and Oxford University prior to finishing graduate work in history at the University of Rochester. At the latter, Dolan was a finalist for a Rhodes scholarship.
Written works
Dolan's first book, UFO's and the National Security State: Chronology of a Cover-up 1941-1973 was first published in 2000 by Keyhole Publishing Company and republished by Hampton Roads Publishing Company in 2002. The book has a cover endorsement by U.S. Apollo 14 astronaut Dr. Edgar Mitchell ("... a thorough and monumental undertaking.")
The preface is written by noted scientist and author Jacques Vallee, Ph.D. Vallee's preface begins: "The important book you are about to read is the first comprehensive study of the U.S. government's response to the intrusion of UFO phenomena in American skies over the last fifty years." Other endorsements include best-selling author Whitley Strieber.
A follow-up to Dolan's book, titled UFOs and the National Security State: The Cover-Up Exposed, 1973-1991 was published in August, 2009. In November 2010 A.D. After
Disclosure: The People’s Guide to Life After Contact was published by Richard Dolan and Bryce Zabel.
Television appearances
The 2006 Sci-Fi Channel television show Sci Fi Investigates featured Dolan as part of a team that looked into various paranormal and unusual events, including the alleged crash of a UFO in Roswell, New Mexico. Dolan has also appeared in other paranormal documentaries, including Sci-Fi Channel's UFO Invasion at Rendlesham.
After Disclosure
12 Real Documents That Treat UFOs Very Seriously
NatGeo
Telepathy: Naked Science
documentary
Fanatic for Jesus
Communitarianism: Collectivist Values in Transition
Fanatic for Jesus
Is President Obama a Closet Catholic?
http://fanaticforjesus.blogspot.com/2012/03/mitt-romney-royal-bloodline.html
Fanatic for Jesus
Mitt Romney & the Royal Bloodline
Last month we learned that Mitt Romney's father was a globalist, who happened to be a friend of the Rockefellers. We saw Skull and Bones George Bush Sr. add his endorsement for President to Romney. We also learned that Romney was a professional liar, since he shamelessly flip flops on issues. All of these are excellent qualifications to become President of the United States.
But what about his blood? Does he descend from the same bloodline as all the other politicians who share Vlad the Impaler through their lineage? Bingo!
Through his Merovingian Ancestry, which are all supposedly the descendents of Jesus Christ (based on a lie), are also considered as flowing through the Order of the Dragon - a Vlad the Impaler thing.
Ironically, the patriarchal and matriarchal bloodline of the Lamb's chosen family presently flows through the veins of Joseph Smith. Because of this, "he was the Grail king and inheritor of the promises of the dispensation of the fullness of time," based on study done by Vern G. Swanson.
According to genealogy, through the Romney family bloodline, it takes you back to John Lathrop(1584-1653), the fifth great-grandfather of the Prophet Joseph Smith. Early Church leaders related to Lathrop include Joseph Smith and Mitt Romney, who both apparently believe they are descendents of Jesus Christ. This gives them the right to rule.
Let's watch to see if Mitt Romney gains the win for the 2012 Presidential race. I think it's already in the bag!
Related Post
Vlad the Impaler: Illuminati Bloodlines
Bill Schneobelen and the Mormon's Temple of Doom
http://smashabanana.blogspot.com/
Fanatic for Jesus
Mitt Romney & the Royal Bloodline
Last month we learned that Mitt Romney's father was a globalist, who happened to be a friend of the Rockefellers. We saw Skull and Bones George Bush Sr. add his endorsement for President to Romney. We also learned that Romney was a professional liar, since he shamelessly flip flops on issues. All of these are excellent qualifications to become President of the United States.
But what about his blood? Does he descend from the same bloodline as all the other politicians who share Vlad the Impaler through their lineage? Bingo!
Through his Merovingian Ancestry, which are all supposedly the descendents of Jesus Christ (based on a lie), are also considered as flowing through the Order of the Dragon - a Vlad the Impaler thing.
Ironically, the patriarchal and matriarchal bloodline of the Lamb's chosen family presently flows through the veins of Joseph Smith. Because of this, "he was the Grail king and inheritor of the promises of the dispensation of the fullness of time," based on study done by Vern G. Swanson.
According to genealogy, through the Romney family bloodline, it takes you back to John Lathrop(1584-1653), the fifth great-grandfather of the Prophet Joseph Smith. Early Church leaders related to Lathrop include Joseph Smith and Mitt Romney, who both apparently believe they are descendents of Jesus Christ. This gives them the right to rule.
Let's watch to see if Mitt Romney gains the win for the 2012 Presidential race. I think it's already in the bag!
Related Post
Vlad the Impaler: Illuminati Bloodlines
Bill Schneobelen and the Mormon's Temple of Doom
http://smashabanana.blogspot.com/
Smash A Banana
Obama's Communitarianism
Barack Obama is a liberal-leaning, moderate, pragmatic communitarian. His thought was shaped in the 1980s and early 1990s, when debates over liberalism versus communitarianism re-energized the field of political theory. There are conservative forms of communitarian theory that place a high value on authority and social cohesion. There are progressive forms that emphasize social justice and environmentalism. And there are moderate forms that emphasize "responsibility," usually defined as the political middle ground, wherever it happens to be.
Obama is skilled at bending communitarian thought to the middle ground, where every national election is decided. Always he upholds the signature moderate communitarian emphasis on balancing rights and responsibilities. But since the debt ceiling debacle of July 2011, Obama has gotten clearer that he cannot have a successful presidency if he does not push harder for equality and the common good.
The communitarian revival in political theory began with Michael Sandel's landmark book of 1982, Liberalism and the Limits of Justice, which skewered the "unencumbered self" of liberal theory. Three years later Robert Bellah and five co-authors popularized a progressive version in their bestselling book, Habits of the Heart. The new communitarians criticized the egocentrism of American life, contending that conservatives and liberals, in different ways, lifted individual rights and success above the common good. Both of America's dominant political traditions eroded the connections between individuals and their families, communities, and nation. Both traditions rationalized the assaults of global capitalism on communities, mediating institutions, and the environment.
Communitarians resurrected John Dewey's understanding of democracy as a "great community" of shared values and his conception of politics as the project of continually re-creating the public. Progressive communitarians stressed that America's accelerating inequality shredded American democracy. A good society, the Bellah group argued, would subordinate private interest to the common good. It would reduce the punishments of failure and the rewards of success. It would resist the relentless capitalist drive to turn labor and nature into commodities. It would expand opportunities for socially useful work and promote economic democracy by expanding the cooperative and community-development sectors. It would recognize that commercial society is at war with the world's natural ecology and its social ecology.
This vision of a good society outflanks, to the left, anything that Obama has advocated. But Obama is a communitarian of a mostly progressive sort. He is devoted to a deliberative politics of the common good that helps communities build a good society. The civic republican language of identity, pragmatic engagement, civil society, and communities of faith is second nature to him. It was the basis of his work as a community organizer.
Community organizing is about creating structures of power that help communities attain solutions to their problems. It makes gains toward justice and community-building by organizing people and money around a common vision. Doing that requires building up broad-based organizations that unite block groups, parent associations, unions, religious congregations, and civic groups. When Obama was a community organizer, he urged that every obstacle to building such organizations is a reason why they are needed. Community organizations gain voice and power for the needs of communities, breaking the crippling isolation that makes people believe that there is no solution. Democracy is the work of continually renewing society.
Obama can be faulted for believing too much in a milquetoast version of communitarian politics and his own powers of persuasion. He has spent much of his presidency trying to accommodate an obstructionist opposition that cares only about taking him down, and he is still not sure that campaigning aggressively for the common good will succeed politically. Some of his advisors would rather run on "morning in America" optimism, refashioning Reagan's re-election campaign of 1984.
But that would be insulting to tens of millions who cannot find a job or afford to retire, or who have lost their homes. There is no reason for the U.S. not to make large-scale social investments to build a clean energy economy and renew American society. The U.S. has underinvested in infrastructure, education, and technology for decades; the U.S. has low borrowing costs and the prospect of high returns; and it is far better to reduce the national debt through fiscally driven economic growth than by slashing Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, and public unions.
Republicans took an absurd position in opposing the economic stimulus of 2009, for which they were richly rewarded in the midterm elections. The latter absurdity has made the Republican Party crazier than ever. If Obama does not win a second term, a Republican administration will savage Medicare and Medicaid, enact yet another massive tax cut for the one percent, and try to privatize Social Security. The serious alternative is to renew American society by making aggressive investments in clean energy hardware, education, technological innovation, and a rebuilt infrastructure. Four years ago, it was exciting to anticipate what a former community organizer might do as president. It is not too late to get a good answer.
Gary Dorrien is Reinhold Niebuhr Professor of Social Ethics at Union Theological Seminary and Professor of Religion at Columbia University. His 16 books include the forthcoming Kantian Reason and Hegelian Spirit (Wiley-Blackwell, 2012) and the recently published The Obama Question: A Progressive Perspective (Rowman & Littlefield).
Peoples Public Trust
Fixing The Public Service
The Stepford Wives
(1975)
Full Film
Joel Kramer / Diana Alstad
In The Media
"'Possibilism' frees you from unrealistic optimism and deadly pessimism."
- Joel & Diana
NEW DIMENSIONS RADIO INTERVIEW
"Reframing Spirituality" Program #3386 - (1 hour)
"How Transcendent Ideals Might Limit Us" Elephant Journal online article (about our Chicago talks)
March 2010: "Wishful Thinking" in Yoga Journal adapted from "Pleasure & Desire" chapter in The Passionate Mind Revisited.
Yoga Journal book review of The Passionate Mind Revisited Feb 2010.
Podcasts of interviews on The Passionate Mind Revisited with Ken Rose (1hr)
Podcast of 3/10 interview with Solarzar on The Guru Papers (1hr)
(For more podcasts, see Podcasts page.)
"Intelligence Without Design" in Guernica online magazine (7/09) - adapted from The Passionate Mind Revisited.
Marin Independent Journal interview with Joel and Diana
Links to Youtube clips on Podcasts page
Consortiumnews
LBJ’s ‘X’ File on Nixon’s ‘Treason’
PPJ Gazette
“They’re Picking Us Off, One-By-One!”
One Bay Area…….California’s adoption of UN Agenda 21 regionalism and the attempts to neutralize County Sheriffs
Surviving the Middle Class Crash
Something Really IS Rotten In Denmark
Pastor Pete Peters
Coffee with the Radio Ranch Wranglers
Join the Radio Ranch Wranglers as they share a pot of coffee around the campfire at the Radio Ranch and discuss current events, their thoughts from the Bible, happenings at the Ranch and the Church, and more? Join us Saturday mornings on the SFAWBN Network for some Godly conversation, Biblical insight and cowboy Coffee with the Radio Ranch Wranglers. Join us each Saturday morning 9am EST. - Click here for archives
-------------------------
Gods Home Health Care Plan
Join Gods Home Health Care. A show for women dedicated to life-enhancing knowledge in personal health care and just simple back to basic common sense. Tune in every Wednesday evening 8pm EST. - Click here for archives
Armchair Survivalist
Kurt's show will help you gain knowledge; it will be informative and is geared for the "urban survivalist" who just wants to keep his little piece of the Earth together. He can help you stay safe, well fed and healthy. Kurt will help you handle nearly anything that does, or could, lower your ability to survive. If he doesn't know the answer to your question, he can tell you where to go to get it. Join Kurt every Sunday afternoon 5pm EST - Click here for archives
-------------------------
Radio Ranch Messages
Pastor Peters preached and teached nightly from his Radio Ranch for many years. His total radio speaking career spans a quarter of a century, providing Scriptural insight, true Biblical perspectives, and connecting current events with Biblical prophecy and past Biblical history. He has always been known to present the raw truth without fear of loss of listeners or support. He cares not to be politically correct, but Biblically correct. This radio broadcast also has interesting guests and interviews. - Click here for archives
-------------------------
McCanney Science Hour
James M. McCanney, M.S. received a sound classical physics training at St. Mary's University, receiving a Bachelor of Arts degree with a double major in physics and mathematics in 1970. He was offered full scholarship awards to three major US physics graduate schools to pursue his graduate physics studies. However, he chose instead to postpone graduate studies for a period of three years while he traveled and taught Physics and Mathematics in Spanish in Latin America. Join Mr. McCanney every Friday evening at 11pm EST - Click here for archives
The Daily Bell
Foster Gamble on 'Thrive' the Movie, Its Critics and What Can Be Done to Stop the Conspiracy
Lysander Spooner Law School
America is a Constitutional Republic . . . NOT a Democracy
Michael Cremo - Human Types have been here millions of years
HUMAN DEVOLUTION: A VEDIC ALTERNATIVE TO DARWIN'S THEORY
Americans Will Need “Black Markets” To Survive
Diatomaceous Earth
The Original! Hydraulic Ram Pumps How and Where They Work
World Renown Heart Surgeon Speaks Out On What Really Causes Heart Disease
Lies, Damn Lies, & Major Media Scoundrel Journalism
Video Rebel’s Blog
There Never Was An American Empire Only A Machine That Consumed Us All
Video Rebel’s Blog
There Never Was An American Empire Only A Machine That Consumed Us All Part II
Jennifer Lake’s Blog
JFK Conspiracy Con V
---
JFK: (June 10, 1963) “..in the final analysis, our most basic common link is that we all inhabit this small planet, we all breathe the same air, we all cherish our children’s futures and we are all mortal…” http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=41xJiEPuAhg
September 20, 1963: ”…Never before has man had such capacity to control his own environment, to end thirst and hunger, to conquer poverty and disease, to banish illiteracy and massive human misery. We have the power to make this the best generation of mankind in the history of the world–or to make it the last… The peacekeeping record of the United Nations has been a proud one, though its tasks are always formidable… But what the United Nations has done in the past is less important than the tasks for the future. We cannot take its peacekeeping machinery for granted. That machinery must be soundly financed–which it cannot be if some members are allowed to prevent it from meeting its obligations by failing to meet their own. The United Nations must be supported by all those who exercise their franchise here. And its operations must be backed to the end… But peace does not rest in charters and covenants alone. It lies in the hearts and minds of all people. And if it is cast out there, then no act, no pact, no treaty, no organization can hope to preserve it without the support and the wholehearted commitment of all people. So let us not rest all our hopes on parchment and on paper; let us strive to build peace, a desire for peace, a willingness to work for peace, in the hearts and minds of all our people. I believe that we can. I believe the problems of human destiny are not beyond the reach of human beings.”
Lewis L. Strauss: “Often, as in certain events related in these chapters…destiny seems to have seized the wheel, the decision-makers mere passengers on a vehicle careening too fast to control. Appearing to reinforce this concept is the doctrine that, since the Creator of all things must know the future as well as the past, events which are foreknown are, in effect, foreordained. From this it would follow that action which is foreordained cannot come from free choice… The conflict between the assurance of the independence of human decision and the seemingly incompatible doctrine of predetermination has divided theologians from the earliest days. Flavius Josephus... recorded that the Sadducees denied predestination, regarding good and evil as entirely a matter of man’s decision; the Pharisees, while recognizing free choice, laid greater emphasis on fate; the Essenes insisting on absolute predestiny… The problem of reconciling divine foreknowledge with man’s freedom of decision troubled the Hebrew philosophers of the Middle Ages. Most learned and revered among them was… Maimonides… In his monumental work Guide For The Perplexed… Maimonides reasoned that, while man cannot know a future event, it is an arrogance of man to assume that God cannot do so, for man’s knowledge and God’s knowledge are not comparable… Now, we are told, we stand at the threshold of an era when it will be possible for man to abdicate both the right and responsibility of free decision and to delegate it to the machine… They will be decisions for which no man will bear responsibility…” [p429, Men and Decisions]
In December 1948, Menachem Begin came to the US as an official Israeli political representative. That visit provoked a letter to the New York Times, published Dec. 4, written by Hannah Arendt and signed by e.g. Albert Einstein:
“Among the most disturbing political phenomena of our times is the emergence in the newly created state of Israel of the “Freedom Party” (Tnuat Haherut), a political party closely akin in its organization, methods, political philosophy and social appeal to the Nazi and Fascist parties… The current visit of Menachem Begin, leader of this party, to the United States is obviously calculated to give the impression of American support for his party in the coming Israeli elections, and to cement political ties with conservative Zionist elements in the United States. Several Americans of national repute have lent their names to welcome his visit… Within the Jewish community they [Begin's party] have preached an admixture of ultranationalism, religious mysticism, and racial superiority… It is all the more tragic that the top leadership of American Zionism has refused to campaign against Begin’s efforts, or even to expose to its own constituents the dangers to Israel from support to Begin.” http://phys4.harvard.edu/~wilson/NYTimes1948.html
BUT NOT JFK, who as a congressional House member sent this message to the Truman White House:
“Belatedly and for the record I wish to withdraw my name from the reception committee for Menachem Begin, the former Irgun Commander. When accepting your invitation, I was ignorant of the true nature of his activities, and I wish to be disassociated from them completely.”
(Reference page 25, Stranger Than Fiction, Albert D. Pastore)
Jennifer Lake's Blog
FILM, VIDEO, and HEALTH
All about WATER:
_____
John Taylor Gatto “On Life and Education”:
YouTube – HOMEGROWN REVOLUTION – Radical Change Taking Root
www.youtube.com/watch?v=mCPEBM5ol0Q – 134k – CachedVideo.Play Video
_____
VIDEO ARCHIVE selection, mixed fare of independent Feature Films:
*
*
The 100-year-old continuously burning light bulb and why you can’t buy one, from The Lightbulb Conspiracy (1 hour documentary) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y1xt4nEvipg
______
AUDIO
Eustace Mullins:
Download link: http://rapidshare.com/files/278305501/Eustace_Mullins_-_The_Secrets_of_the_Federal_Reserve.mp3
*
The ‘Truth Quest’ archives at http://www.givemesometruth.info (archive) http://insmort.webs.com/archive.htm - shows by Vicky Davis starting 12/04/07; Ron McDonald and Robert Rowan 11/17/09
_____
PHOTO GALLERY
From the Cloud Appreciation Society:
_____
PHILOSOPHY and ETHICS
US Bill of Rights
_____
HEALTH
<|>
SHOWDOWN IN JERUSALEM
A DIGEST BY GERT TIMMERMAN
INTRODUCTION BY JOHN S. TORELL
Beginning in the 1990’s and up through 2004, I wrote a number of articles published in The Dove magazine called, “Showdown in Jerusalem,” “How the Devil Was Defeated in the 20th Century” and the origin of the Cabala. These articles brought out a lot of information that had been suppressed by the media and ignored by the Christian leadership in colleges and seminaries.
Our friend, Gert Timmerman, has done an outstanding job of going through all of the different issues of The Dove and bringing out the main points and key information concerning the question of Judaism, the birth of the Zionist movement and tracing the historical steps. This digest leads the reader through the Cabala, the declaration of Sabbetai Sevi as the Jewish Messiah in 1666, the crypto Jews who today hold political offices in all nations; it also deals with the creation of communism, socialism and fascism; the Russian revolution, World War I and II and the formation of the current political state of Israel.
If Christian Zionists would only take the time to study this truth, there would be no Christian support for the State of Israel and the goal of the Zionist World Federation to some day present the world with a Jewish Messiah which the Bible calls the Antichrist.
Originally, Gert Timmerman constructed this digest to share with friends who are strong Christian Zionists, but as he presented this write up to us, I felt it was a quick and concise review of these historical facts. If you are a serious student of history, you may order copies of the original issues of The Dove magazines from us. We don’t charge for the magazines but it is a big stack; because postage has risen dramatically, please contact us about the shipping cost.
RUSSIA AND ISRAEL
German court quashes British bishop's Holocaust conviction
Case Closed: Lockerbie False Flag Documentary
Auction house implicated in kickback scandal
Video Rebel's Blog
No Exit For Bilderbergers – Why A Plague Will Not Save The Bankers
Preppers
Free E-Books to Download
Categories
Animals and Livestock Communications
Construction Manuals & Building Plans Fire, Heat, and Cooking
Food - Procuring, Preserving & Storing Gardening Medical And First Aid Nuclear Survival Preparedness
Recipes and Cookbooks Shelters Skills Survival Manuals Water Wilderness Survival
Adrian Salbuchi
Argentina: Targeted by World Government – Danger over ‘Patagonia’!
The Menace Of The Jewish-Run State
Oklahoma City 1995
A Noble Lie
Noble Lie: A myth or untruth knowingly told by the elite to maintain social harmony, or the social position of the elite. – The Republic, Plato
The 1995 bombing in Oklahoma City was a direct blow to the heart of America. 168 people were killed, including nineteen children. For those watching the nightly news, Terrorism had come home. For years following the bombing, countless victims’ family members, survivors, rescuers, and ordinary Americans, have questioned the official accounts about that fateful day.
Hoping to shed light on answers long ignored and censored, both by prominent media outlets and the U.S. government, A Noble Lie peels back what we thought we knew about the bombing and its perpetrators. This film exposes information never before examined or brought to the attention of the American public.
A Noble Lie is the culmination of years of research and documentation conducted by independent journalists, scholars, and ordinary citizens. Often risking their personal safety and sanity, they have gathered evidence which threatens to expose the startling reality of what exactly occurred at 9:02 am on April 19, 1995 in Oklahoma City.
Utilizing footage and eyewitness testimony, previously unseen, A Noble Lie will change forever the way you look at the true nature of terrorism.
Free Mind Films
Adask’s Law
IRS Not Registered to Do Business in North
Carolina & Texas
Real Currencies
Understand that the Banking System is One
The Daily Bell
ECB Blows Up Europe? Creates 'Super-Immune' Elite Bonds ...
Throws Credit Market into Disarray
Tellus Institute
Sustainable Communities and the Great Transition
Henry Makow
Colonial Elite Rules China for the Illuminati
Forbidden Knowledge TV
Telepathy - Naked Science
http://books.google.com/books?id=hHpLAAAAMAAJ&printsec=frontcover&dq=inauthor:bertrand+inauthor:russell&lr=&num=100&as_brr=1#v=onepage&q=inauthor%3Abertrand%20inauthor%3Arussell&f=false
The Practice and Theory of Bolshevism
By Bertrand Russell
(1921)
THE PROBLEM OF CHINA
BY
BERTRAND RUSSELL
O.M., F.K.S.
London
GEORGE ALLEN & UNWIN LTD
RUSKIN HOUSE MUSEUM STREET
FIRST PUBLISHED IN 1922
SECOND IMPRESSION 1966
PRINTED IN GREAT BRITAIN
BY PHOTOLITHOGRAPHY
UNWIN BROTHERS LIMITED
WOKING AND LONDON
The Ruler of the Southern Ocean was Shû (Heedless), the Ruler of the Northern Ocean was Hû (Sudden), and the Ruler of the Centre was Chaos. Shû and Hû were continually meeting in the land of Chaos, who treated them very well. They consulted together how they might repay his kindness, and said, "Men all have seven orifices for the purpose of seeing, hearing, eating, and breathing, while this poor Ruler alone has not one. Let us try and make them for him." Accordingly they dug one orifice in him every day; and at the end of seven days Chaos died.—[Chuang Tze, Legge's translation.]
<
