I Keep six honest serving men

I Keep six honest serving men (They taught me all I knew):
Their names are,
What and
Why and
When and
How and
Where and
Who.
From “The Elephant’s Child,” Rudyard Kipling, 1902.

Always look at the bright side of life

Just before you draw your terminal breath
Life's a piece of shit
When you look at it
Life's a laugh and death's a joke, it's true
You'll see it's all a show
Keep'em laughing as you go
Just remember that the last laugh is on you
And always look on the bright side of life...
Worse things happen at sea, you know.
Always look on the bright side of life...
I mean what have you got to lose?
You know, you come from nothing - you're going back to nothing
What have you lost? NOTHING!!
Always look on the right side of life...
Monty Pythons "Life of Brian"

KOYAANISQATSI

Ko.yaa.nis.qatsi (from the Hopi language), n. 1. crazy life. 2.life in turmoil. 3.life out of balance. 4. life disintegrating. 5.a state of life that calls for another way of living.

- If we dig precious things from the land, we will invite disaster.

- Near the Day of Purification, there will be cobwebs spun back and forth in the sky

- A container of ashes might one day be thrown from the sky which could burn the land and boil the oceans.

from Hopi prophecies

POWAQQATSI

po.waq.qatsi (from the Hopi language),
n. sorcerer life, an entity, a way of life that consumes the life forces of other beings in order to further its own life.

NAQOYQATSI

na-qoy-qatsi: (nah koy' kahtsee) (from the Hopi language)
n. 1. A life of killing each other 2. War as a way of life. 3. (Interpreted) Civilized violence.

Humanity ?

 

How human the human race is ?

Technology

A glowing wonderland of unlimited opportunity is promised by the good life of the technological order. Infinite capacity, virtual immortality, super human cognition – attributes that have until now been reserved for the divine are indicated for technology. A new technological pantheon has been established in the horizonless world of the Planet.
But is technology what it appears to be? Have we looked behind the shimmer of its glowing surface? Very little, if anything, reveals its meaning through mere appearances. Most everything is more complex, full with a universe of hidden dimensions. Is technology an exception to this common experience? Or, have we accepted its truth as the truth? Is technology a new and comprehensive environment, the host of life, that has replaced the natural order? Is technology the new universal religion? Can faiths unquestioned become our prisons? Should we place blind faith in the techno-clergy of the new order? Does the computer reproduce the world in its own image and likeness? Is technology a mere tool, as we are told, that can be used or misused depending on one’s intentions? Is technology neutral? Does it possess a life of its own? Is it the effect of technology on this or that (the environment, etc.), or is it that everything is situated in technology? Has technology become an addiction, an altered state that we cannot live without? Is technology a way of living? Do we use technology or do we live technology? Is it our consciousness that informs our behavior or is it our behavior that informs our consciousness? Do we now live in a world beyond the senses, in a micro-universe, where small is dangerous? Is technology synonymous with the machine or has it become ordinary daily living?
What better place to raise these and other questions that on/in the global Internet? This high-tech nervous system, this digital alchemy, this synthetic organism that is changing the world seems ideally suited for such a task. If entering the medium questioned to raise questions seems contradictory, this is because it is. To freely embrace this contradiction is the motivation for this site.
Like the oxygen we breathe, technology is the big force, omnipresent and inescapable. It appears as a force of nature. Who can question nature or acts of god? Something this prevailing, this present, is normally taken for granted. Only the heretic could dare to be so blasphemous.
Could it be that our language is no longer capable of describing the world in which we live? Perhaps, the world we see with old eyes and antique ideas is no longer present. Do we inhabit a technological universe the laws of which are unknown? The world we see is being left behind.
A new untellable world is unfolding. As the human race accelerates into the twenty-first century, we enter a virtual, digital environment, a world where far and near, past, present and future are simultaneous realities. The human center of gravity seems to be blasted into the void. Our bodies are less central to our lives, our physical involvement with an increasing synthetic world grows less. Have we arrived at an unthinkable post-natural and post-human condition? Does this singular event offer to all that will, the extraordinary opportunity to re-name the world in which we live? Are we, appearing to be human, already the cyborgs of the fiction of science?
Two reflections articulate the point of view of this blog: one from Elias Canetti, a Nobel Laureate for literature; the other from French philosopher and writer Jacques Ellul.
A tormenting thought: as of a certain point, history was no longer real. Without noticing it, all mankind suddenly left reality.
- Canetti
"...The crisis that we are approaching today is of yet another order. For it entails the transition, not from one form of society and power to another, but to a new environment...The present crisis...is a total crisis triggered by transition to a new and previously unknown environment, the technological environment....The present change of environment is much more fundamental than anything that the race has experienced for the last five thousand years."
- Ellul

Birth Star

A friend of mine told me once,
"My friend, if it is true that people is born under a star, then probably me and you were born under a 'Black hole'. Black holes are stars also".

Love ? Could it be like that ?

If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love,
I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal...
Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it
does not boast, it is not proud. It is not self seeking,
it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs...
It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.......
(Apostole Paul, Corinthians 13:1,4)

Live 8 or Alive till 8 ?

Live 8, that extraordinary media event that some people of good intentions in the West just orchestrated, would have left us Africans indifferent if we hadn't realized that it was an insult both to us and to common sense.
We have nothing against those who this month, in a stadium, a street, a park, in Berlin, London, Moscow, Philadelphia, gathered crowds and played guitar and talked about global poverty and aid for Africa. But we are troubled to think that they are so misguided about what Africa's real problem is, and dismayed by their willingness to propose solutions on our behalf.
We Africans know what the problem is, and no one else should speak in our name. Africa has men of letters and science, great thinkers and stifled geniuses who at the risk of torture rise up to declare the truth and demand liberty.
Don't insult Africa, this continent so rich yet so badly led. Instead, insult its leaders, who have ruined everything. Our anger is all the greater because despite all the presidents for life, despite all the evidence of genocide, we didn't hear anyone at Live 8 raise a cry for democracy in Africa.
Don't the organizers of the concerts realize that Africa lives under the oppression of rulers like Yoweri Museveni (who just eliminated term limits in Uganda so he can be president indefinitely) and Omar Bongo (who has become immensely rich in his three decades of running Gabon)? Don't they know what is happening in Cameroon, Chad, Togo and the Central African Republic? Don't they understand that fighting poverty is fruitless if dictatorships remain in place?
Even more puzzling is why Youssou N'Dour and other Africans participated in this charade. Like us, they can't help but know that Africa's real problem is the lack of freedom of expression, the usurpation of power, the brutal oppression.
Neither debt relief nor huge amounts of food aid nor an invasion of experts will change anything. Those will merely prop up the continent's dictators. It's up to each nation to liberate itself and to help itself. When there is a problem in the United States, in Britain, in France, the citizens vote to change their leaders. And those times when it wasn't possible to freely vote to change those leaders, the people revolted.
In Africa, our leaders have led us into misery, and we need to rid ourselves of these cancers. We would have preferred for the musicians in Philadelphia and London to have marched and sung for political revolution. Instead, they mourned a corpse while forgetting to denounce the murderer.
What is at issue is an Africa where dictators kill, steal and usurp power yet are treated like heroes at meetings of the African Union. What is at issue is rulers like Francois Bozize, the coup leader running the Central Africa Republic, and Faure Gnassingbe, who just succeeded his father as president of Togo, free to trample universal suffrage and muzzle their people with no danger that they'll lose their seats at the United Nations. Who here wants a concert against poverty when an African is born, lives and dies without ever being able to vote freely?
But the truth is that it was not for us, for Africa, that the musicians at Live 8 were singing; it was to amuse the crowds and to clear their own consciences, and whether they realized it or not, to reinforce dictatorships.
They still believe us to be like children that they must save, as if we don't realize ourselves what the source of our problems is.

Jean-Claude Shanda Tonme - YAOUNDE, Cameroon
http://www.iht.com/articles/2005/07/15/opinion/edtonme.php
© 2005 International Herald Tribune