Know Thyself
Thought provoking montage of quotes + imagery set to Clint Mansell’s The Fountain soundtrack = attention capture win.
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Merry Modern Passover
I readily admit, I am becoming less and less attached to what was once an important childhood tradition. Feel free to blame Joseph Campbell for this. Anyway, here’s a digital recap of that famous Egyptian/Babylonian/Sumerian Old Testament tale of the Sword in the Stone. By which, I mean the Staff in the Bush. With frogs… and… other magical stuffs.
Kudos to Aaron Mandel on the find.
Even Atheists are Blessed
Richard Dawkins puts a human lifespan in an alien, yet refreshing context.
Let the People Unite
I’ve been reading a bit about Islam recently, incidentally, via Joseph Campbell’s massive treatise on comparative religious history, The Masks of God.
What struck me about the core values of the Koran, is that it is, in principle, an incredibly egalitarian system. Before I explain my meaning after the jump, here’s a remix of an unearthed Chaplin speech that I posted a couple months ago.
Vatican Assassin Warlocks
Experimental music video featuring a techno-warlock. Why not?
Freedom Must be Earned
Apologies for the downtime here. There is so much to report, and so little time to do so. An unprecedented freedom movement has broken out through the entire region of North Africa and the Middle East. Tunisia’s dictator has been deposed. Protests are breaking out in Saudi Arabia. Martial law is being declared in Jordan. In Egypt, what was a peaceful protest has been turned into ugliness by a regime instigating chaos to manipulate the public. This video in particular was very hard to sit through and listen to.
Annihilating Pascal’s Wager
I don’t have any problem with making a choice to believe in God. That is your own business. However, if you’re a Pascal’s Wagerer who believes in God because it’s some sort of theological safety net, you are participating in some serious ontological laziness. It seems fitting then, that I’m about to provide you with an internet video that will simply and eloquently rend that safety net into bits. That’ll teach you to forgo thinking for yourself.
Wake Up
The following piece features the voices of Joe Rogan, Bill Hicks, and the Bizarro Reagans. In posting this, I do not wish to convey that drugs are necessary to transcending the narrowness of your daily perceptions. They can help, if used properly. The real point is that it is your responsibility as a human to remain curious, to absorb more of the world than your traditional senses can impart, to access deeper parts of yourself. And, for the love of everything, you need to start doing this now.
Grok the Void
Here’s some needed Monday fare. It’s an Alan Watts lecture snippet about nothingness. I’ve read a fair amount of Watts since college, and I find him to be the most effective philosopher at temporarily separating the reader from his or her daily routine, and allowing for some metaphysical reflection. Of course, just as nothingness exists in balance with existence, Alan Watts readings should exist in balance with more concrete studies, applicable to the real world. But, for a rainy, Christmas Angst-filled, consumerist Monday, a little Wattsian etherealism may be in order.
Religion – The Bad Parent
One of my favorite YouTube pages, TheraminTrees, recently released an addendum video to its series on Transactional Analysis. Here, the narrator is presenting the psychological basis for religious fundamentalism, and much of it comes from an implanted desire to chastise, scold, and belittle others.