Freitag, 30. Juni 2023
Female Selection: Hypergamy
So I suppose he is right here. Self love is good for one in New Age speak. If I learn to love myself then who carss what others think about me.
Chinese Demographics
We have heard similar on Eastern Europe and they say 90 million will leave China, mostly tourists but perhaps an emigration wave due to employment prospects. Globally lots of countries are in trouble in various systemic ways. Is civilization in decline?
Donnerstag, 29. Juni 2023
Man in Car Owns Cops, Defends Constitutional Rights Against Illegal Search and Seizure
Bashi Channel between Taiwan/Phillippines Analysis of Invasion Logistics Difficulties
Hotel California knulp
Vancouver is Dying
Maybe if we get back to basics in life. People should all do physical jobs, not desk jobs. Screen time, TV, internet should be shut down. Production of goods should be localized. Religious values could return. Extra-, premarital sex could be criminalized and divorce, abortion made illegal, nearly impossible. IOW if people lived a life where you have skin in the game all the time. Work and income means hard sweat. Dating is dead serious. Property crime is life imprisonment. Drug use is death penalty. Otherwise we are seriously looking at Roman decadence type decay, downfall. I see all these stories about big American cities where everything is screwed up. If people had an internal moral compass then strict laws, religion would be unneccessary but it ain't so and gangs rob stores at will, etc. WTF is going on?
Age Limit for Learning
Having a Real Thai Girlfriend in Thailand
Expensive and you gotta be hot, have money and move there. No different than anywhere else.
Young Men Alone
Mittwoch, 28. Juni 2023
Biden Admits to Selling State Secrets
Therese Neumann
I read the books. She had bleeding stigmata on Good Friday and saw the crucifiction every year repeated.
Dienstag, 27. Juni 2023
Kangaroo Attacks Tourists
Rise of Mexican Manufacturing
Making the point that one can other cheap places to make stuff than China if you disagree politically is ok. It has nowbecome obvious that the non Western world can dedollarize if they don't like US bullying. So I recall Thomas Friedman book ' the world is flat'. The phrase is apt. Money, power flee wherever. Leaders must be sensitive to their stakeholders abroad.
How to Identify Fake People
Sonntag, 25. Juni 2023
Jim Carrey - People Don't Understand Me Anymore
If you go from street savvy Hollywood type to saintly spiritual you'll get a whole new audience.
How to Stop Ruminating and Overcome Social Anxiety
Only Secret Recording of Hitler's Normal Voice
The beginning of this video explains how controlled speeches were to manipulate the masses and how only official pictures were allowed. Old timer Ronald Reagan was similarly obsessed with media image control. I recall stories of early film stars. People saw them almost as gods who didn't use the toilet. One actress turned to face the back when someone entered her elevator. My father, who would be 100 this year had he still lived, had quite a respectful and reverential attitude towards doctors, priests and other educated or authority figures. I notice that I lack this entirely.
Rubaiyat Symbols
Edward Fitzgerald best translation free PDF
I read the translation and verse by verse interpretation by Yoganada of Kriya yoga fame. Wine and drunkenness are not to be taken literally but like any ecstatic state in nature, love, sex, meditation which brings us closer to absolute or God.
https://yssofindia.org/spiritual/the-hidden-truths-in-omar-khayyam
above by yogananda link
https://www.coursehero.com/lit/Rub%C3%A1iy%C3%A1t/symbols/
The Rubáiyát is rich with symbolism. Many plants and objects are personified, given human characteristics and lines of dialogue. Some symbols show the influence of Sufism, a Muslim mystic sect. Sufis believed material experiences like love and intoxication helped humans approach the mystery of divine revelation. Though Khayyám wasn't a Sufi—his speaker in the poem is skeptical of any organized religion—he shares the Sufi reverence for the natural world. The most important symbols in the poem use objects and experiences to convey spiritual states.
Wine
Wine symbolizes indulgent earthly pleasures and the wisdom found in enjoying them. In Sufi literature wine indicates an ecstatic state where mortals are filled or "intoxicated" with divine love. In the Rubáiyát wine drinkers approach a similar joyful state, but they're seeking the divinity and sacredness in earthly life. The speaker often uses metonymy, a figure of speech substituting an attribute of the object for the object itself, to indicate wine drinking. "The Cup," "the Grape," and "the Vine," for instance, all indicate wine at many points in the poem.
To the speaker wine becomes an intoxicating drink, a mystical revelation, and a source of wisdom. Sometimes the speaker loves wine simply because he can achieve a state of drunken bliss. This state may be coupled with erotic imagery as in Quatrain 41. The speaker invites his reader or companion to abandon confusing philosophical thoughts and run their fingers through the hair of the "Minister of Wine," personifying wine as a lover. Quatrain 54 similarly encourages drinkers to lose their worries in the frivolity of "the fruitful Grape."
Wine graces the speaker with mystical knowledge he can't get from thought and reason. He pictures himself in a romance with the "Daughter of the Vine" after divorcing Reason, a drabber spouse, in Quatrain 55. Trying to learn about the world through logic and arguments has only puzzled him, so he's chosen the pleasures of drinking instead. Quatrain 59 portrays wine as a source of its own irrefutable logic defeating the quarrels of various religious sects. An angel offers the speaker wine in Quatrain 58, suggesting wine is a source of otherworldly wisdom and blessings. Nature is also portrayed as wiser than earthly authorities. The Nightingale in Quatrain 6 cries repeatedly for wine, even after the Biblical leader David is silenced.
Furthermore, the speaker often imagines wine as an authority itself, telling him how to live. Often this wisdom comes from the Cup or drinking vessel. In Quatrains 34 and 35, after the speaker tries and fails to observe a higher power, he asks the Cup to tell him the secret of his life. The Cup responds with a statement that resonates throughout the poem—the speaker should drink while he lives since he won't return after death. Quatrain 46 imagines an "Eternal Saki" or wine pourer in charge of pouring out human lives like bubbles from a bowl. As the speaker gains wisdom at the end of the poem in Quatrains 93 through 95, he reflects on the role of wine in his life. Though he has considered sober ways of living that will give him a better reputation, he will gladly forgo his earthly honor for wine. The wisdom wine has to offer is more important to him than any fame or glory he can achieve in the world.
Potters and Vessels
Potters and their clay vessels symbolize a divine creator and human beings. The extended metaphor emphasizes mankind's fragility and helplessness in the face of fate.
The Potter can mold and shape pots just as a mystical divine force shapes the events of human lives. Humans are encouraged to consider their humble origins as raw earth. Quatrain 37 introduces the image of wet clay begging its Potter to be gentle, and Quatrain 38 follows by describing a Maker molding humans from clay. In the extended metaphor in Quatrains 82 through 90, the Potter is not seen or heard, and his pots speculate about him while he's away. This absence reflects the invisible, unknowable nature of creator deities in religious traditions.
Like humans hoping their deity will treat them well but fearing he won't, the pots hope the Potter has good intentions but fear destruction at his hands. The pots worry the Potter has created them simply to destroy them. This concern is similar to the speaker's reflections on the brevity of human life and the problem of suffering. The flawed, broken pots of Quatrains 86 and 88 are concerned the Potter will break them because of faults he himself allowed in their design. This echoes the Christian doctrine of original sin—the idea man is born sinful and must be punished—which the speaker challenges in earlier quatrains.
The Rose
The rose symbolizes nature's beauty, which will inevitably fade. Iranian literature often used roses to stand for beauty and perfection, with the consequence that to hold or possess this beauty requires submission to its thorns. Roses in the Rubáiyát hint that no perfection will last. Quatrain 14 personifies the rose as a laughing woman, showing the carefree joy of nature. The rose has accepted her mortality. She scatters her treasure on the ground so it will disappear, rather than hoarding it for the future. The rose is associated with springtime, a season when flowers blossom and new plant life flourishes after winter. The speaker enjoys this beauty all the more because he knows it's temporary. When he vows to repent of earthly indulgences in Quatrain 94, he revokes his vows when Spring comes "Rose-in-hand," signifying the power nature has over him. In Quatrain 5 the mythical Persian garden of Iram, beautiful but temporary, is "gone with all his Rose" just as all nature on earth must someday die and disappear.
The Nightingale
The nightingale, which is so-called because it sings in the pre-dawn hours of the night, stands for the human soul. Birds often symbolized souls in Sufi mysticism. The "Bird of Time" in Quatrain 7 doubles as an image of time itself and of an individual human life flying briefly and quickly. Specifically the nightingale is often the soul of a devoted lover in Persian literature, seeking either romantic or spiritual love. In the Rubáiyát the nightingale becomes a soul in love with the beauty and joys of earthly life. The nightingale in Quatrain 6 calls out for wine just as the soul seeks joy. The speaker believes humans long for the celebratory mood of wine in the midst of life's uncertainty. As the speaker accepts the inevitability of death toward the end of the poem, he mentions the nightingale again in Quatrain 96. This time, though, the nightingale has flown away, and no one knows where it came from or where it's going, possibly suggesting an abandonment of a search for a beloved companion and a farewell to the joys of life. In this way it resembles the human soul disappearing into a mysterious afterlife when its brief time on earth is over.
Drew Barrymore
Samstag, 24. Juni 2023
Rubbaiyat of Omar Chaiyam
http://classics.mit.edu/Khayyam/rubaiyat.html
To-morrow's Silence, Triumph, or Despair:
Drink! for you know not whence you came, nor why:Drink! for you know not why you go, nor where.
LXXV
I tell you this--When, started from the Goal,
Over the flaming shoulders of the Foal
Of Heav'n Parwin and Mushtari they flung
In my predestined Plot of Dust and Soul.
LXXVI
The Vine had struck a fibre: which about
If clings my being--let the Dervish flout;
Of my Base metal may be filed a Key,
That shall unlock the Door he howls without.
LXXVII
And this I know: whether the one True Light
Kindle to Love, or Wrath-consume me quite,
One Flash of It within the Tavern caught
Better than in the Temple lost outright.
LXXVIII
What! out of senseless Nothing to provoke
A conscious Something to resent the yoke
Of unpermitted Pleasure, under pain
Of Everlasting Penalties, if broke!
LXXIX
What! from his helpless Creature be repaid
Pure Gold for what he lent him dross-allay'd--
Sue for a Debt he never did contract,
And cannot answer--Oh, the sorry trade!
LXXX
Oh, Thou, who didst with pitfall and with gin
Beset the Road I was to wander in,
Thou wilt not with Predestined Evil round
Enmesh, and then impute my Fall to Sin!
LXXXI
Oh, Thou who Man of baser Earth didst make,
And ev'n with Paradise devise the Snake:
For all the Sin wherewith the Face of Man
Is blacken'd--Man's forgiveness give--and take!
LXXXII
As under cover of departing Day
Slunk hunger-stricken Ramazan away,
Once more within the Potter's house alone
I stood, surrounded by the Shapes of Clay.
LXXXIII
Shapes of all Sorts and Sizes, great and small,
That stood along the floor and by the wall;
And some loquacious Vessels were; and some
Listen'd perhaps, but never talk'd at all.
LXXXIV
Said one among them--"Surely not in vain
My substance of the common Earth was ta'en
And to this Figure moulded, to be broke,
Or trampled back to shapeless Earth again."
LXXXV
Then said a Second--"Ne'er a peevish Boy
Would break the Bowl from which he drank in joy,
And He that with his hand the Vessel made
Will surely not in after Wrath destroy."
LXXXVI
After a momentary silence spake
Some Vessel of a more ungainly Make;
"They sneer at me for leaning all awry:
What! did the Hand then of the Potter shake?"
LXXXVII
Whereat some one of the loquacious Lot--
I think a Sufi pipkin-waxing hot--
"All this of Pot and Potter--Tell me then,
Who is the Potter, pray, and who the Pot?"
LXXXVIII
"Why," said another, "Some there are who tell
Of one who threatens he will toss to Hell
The luckless Pots he marr'd in making--Pish!
He's a Good Fellow, and 'twill all be well."
LXXXIX
"Well," Murmur'd one, "Let whoso make or buy,
My Clay with long Oblivion is gone dry:
But fill me with the old familiar juice,
Methinks I might recover by and by."
XC
So while the Vessels one by one were speaking,
The little Moon look'd in that all were seeking:
And then they jogg'd each other, "Brother! Brother!
Now for the Porter's shoulder-knot a-creaking!"
XCI
Ah, with the Grape my fading Life provide,
And wash the Body whence the Life has died,
And lay me, shrouded in the living Leaf,
By some not unfrequented Garden-side.
XCII
That ev'n my buried Ashes such a snare
Of Vintage shall fling up into the Air
As not a True-believer passing by
But shall be overtaken unaware.
XCIII
Indeed the Idols I have loved so long
Have done my credit in this World much wrong:
Have drown'd my Glory in a shallow Cup
And sold my Reputation for a Song.
XCIV
Indeed, indeed, Repentance of before
I swore--but was I sober when I swore?
And then and then came Spring, and Rose-in-hand
My thread-bare Penitence apieces tore.
XCV
And much as Wine has play'd the Infidel,
And robb'd me of my Robe of Honour--Well,
I wonder often what the Vintners buy
One half so precious as the stuff they sell.
XCVI
Yet Ah, that Spring should vanish with the Rose!
That Youth's sweet-scented manuscript should close!
The Nightingale that in the branches sang,
Ah, whence, and whither flown again, who knows!
XCVII
Would but the Desert of the Fountain yield
One glimpse--if dimly, yet indeed, reveal'd,
To which the fainting Traveller might spring,
As springs the trampled herbage of the field!
XCVIII
Would but some wing'ed Angel ere too late
Arrest the yet unfolded Roll of Fate,
And make the stern Recorder otherwise
Enregister, or quite obliterate!
XCIX
Ah, Love! could you and I with Him conspire
To grasp this sorry Scheme of Things entire,
Would not we shatter it to bits--and then
Re-mould it nearer to the Heart's Desire!
C
Yon rising Moon that looks for us again--
How oft hereafter will she wax and wane;
How oft hereafter rising look for us
Through this same Garden--and for one in vain!
CI
And when like her, oh, Saki, you shall pass
Among the Guests Star-scatter'd on the Grass,
And in your joyous errand reach the spot
Where I made One--turn down an empty Glass!
Freitag, 23. Juni 2023
Donnerstag, 22. Juni 2023
Mittwoch, 21. Juni 2023
Dienstag, 20. Juni 2023
Blackpink- Pink Venom
K-Pop, Films making a large cultural impact in the West. Here you see Lisa, Jisoo, Jennie, Rosé on stage. They all have contracts with big fashion labels and single solo albums out. This is a huge industry like Hollywood, very professional. As Western energy dies out and Asians move from production hubs to cultural integration with the West, this was to be expected. Mangas from Jaoan, Hong Kong Kung Fu films were just a start. Recall that Europe was the center of global power and culture. Americans started being a cheap production hub like Asia then Hollywood got started and slowly America became the center of power and culture. The transition here seems clear. America will become secondary like Europe is now and Europe will fall further behind even. I think of Maslow's hierarchy of needs. The lowest need of a child is subsistence, eating, etc. An area climbs out of subsistence then becomes subsidiary to the power center( these are like first chakra and second or sexual chakra) by providing all its needs. Third chakra means taking power. Eurasia stops being the West's "bitch" and takes over global dominance. Meanwhile Europe having passed the power stage went to the fourth or heart chakra stage, losing need for dominance they see a need for global rules, peace. EU, Germany tried to play such a role. America once it falls away from empire will fulfill such a role. Europe will then move up in the chain towards higher more intellectual or spiritual roles. One thinks of India as having become a purely spiritual hub but mired in extreme poverty and returning full circle to learning to provide for its impoverished millions at subsistence level. Still the whole world learns from Indian spirituality, just as European Classical music and intellectual acheivements form a global cultural basis. I think American multiculturalism, English as a global comon language and the principles laid out for peaceful commerce for the masses globally will be copied to maintain peace but with a new power basis in the East.
Montag, 19. Juni 2023
Sonntag, 18. Juni 2023
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