Posts Tagged ‘symbols’
Tidbits and Notes. Part 408
Posted by: adonis49 on: October 9, 2019
Tidbits and Notes. Part 408
In eighth-century Egypt and Syria, for example, Christians wore blue turbans, Jews yellow and Samaritans red, while Muslims generally sported white ones (the Sunnis). Currently, the Muslim Shi3a clergymen wear black turban, particularly those designated as descendant from the Prophet’s House
Germany extend its prohibition for another 6 months its exporting weapons to Saudi Kingdom. However, Germany biggest weapon manufacturer RheineMetal still export to Saudi Kingdom through third parties.
Is the census more than a count: it’s civilization? It’s one of the first steps for a new country. It taught us how to quantify society. It reflects how economies and people change. (Many states dread census because if demonstrate the demographic expansion of the minorities)
Lebanon has never conducted a census since 1932, during the French mandated power. The government claim the population is 5 million and just give percentage of increased demographics for each of the 18 religious sect.
2.3 million: Census workers used to count India’s population in 2010
80,000: Census workers used to count Beijing’s population in 2010
58 million: Population of China in the year 2 AD, according to the Han Dynasty’s census
A two-week civil disobedience campaign in dozens of cities around the world kicks off as climate activists demand urgent government action. I am curious the kinds of disobedience the campaign will select.
Strange. States buy gold and reserve them in the USA volts? Germany was Not able to retrieve but a small portion. Are the gold robbed from the central banks in Baghdad and Libya, just on reserve or they already constitute USA war chest?
The center of our galaxy exploded 3.5 million years ago. The energy flare started near the Milky Way’s massive black hole, and spread 200,000 light-years away. (Not sure how to take in these information: will not call them facts anyway)
Des symbols incompatibles? Alors, on brule des voitures et des roues. La misère et le chomages ne sont que des corollaires a une identite brumeuse, voire obscure. On vit avec des croyamces magiques qu’on ne peut pas assumer.
So the only thing that holds me back is people’s negative stereotypes and assuming what I am, or can or can’t do, or [how I] feel about things. The whole point about hijab is it was meant to facilitate mobility in society.”
Le problem de differencier entre une reponse fausse et l’absurde cher l’eleve est de le faire resonner, patiemment.
Une tentative après une autre, a la raison, en refusant de leguer un zero, peut aboutir a une percee. On ne repond pas pour repondre a une question
The People’s Republic of China turns 70. The celebrations include a grand military parade—15,000 troops, 160 warplanes, 580 tanks—and a massive fireworks display.
On Sept. 27, China information-technology ministry announced that telecom carriers, from December, must scan the face of anyone applying for mobile and internet service. Using facial-recognition technology, the companies will verify that the applicant is indeed the owner of a valid ID. (Now that an achievement for this technology do differentiate among the 1.3 billion Chinese)
Symbols and myths: Activators of vigorous split-second behaviors
Posted by: adonis49 on: October 12, 2011
Symbols and myths: Activators of vigorous split-second behaviors
For example, when a night dream generates an erection, it does not necessarily lead to ejaculation. It is when the brain hold your virtual hand and leads it to the virtual sex symbols (tits, vagina…) that you instantly ejaculate. I presume this is true for women too. I am curious what are the sex symbols in men for women (tight buttocks, the few hair on the chest…)
A few symbols and myths lead to good actions, but mostly they are directed to negative behaviors in mankind culture. Why is this so?
Civil wars are programmed by professionals: They comprehend exactly the kinds of symbols and myths in particular cultures, and disseminate the coded words and sentences that correlate well with specific violent symbols and myths stored in the recesses of our consciousness.
Kids are easy victims of such dangerous mythical stories, which will be brought up in the forefront in critical situations. Is that why youth are the ones used and abused in most civil wars?
Note: This brief post is meant to generate feedback. I’ll appreciate it greatly if you forward current examples and stories that match this topic.
What! Savages and primitive tribes? Who is Claude Levi-Strauss (1908-2009)
Posted by: adonis49 on: February 10, 2010
What! Savages and primitive tribes? (Feb. 10, 2010)
The late famous ethnologist and anthropologist Claude Levi-Strauss (1908-2009) said: “I gave up preserving primitive tribes; all that I am doing is recording their memory for later generations. Mankind is settling in mono-culture: Humanity is readying to producing mass civilization.”
Claude Levi-Strauss spent 5 years in the Amazon and Mato Grosso (1935-39) researching a few of their primitive tribes such as Caduveo, Bororo, Nambikwara, Munde, and Tupi-Kawahib.
Claude Levi-Strauss agrees with the prophetic remark of the physicist Neil Bohr who said in 1939:
“The traditional differences among cultures resemble the equivalent different manners of describing physical experiments”.
Claude gathered 3,000 photos and he needed 15 years of soul searching to gather enough courage and publish his first book “Sad Tropic, 1955” on his exploration missions.
Among the other masterpieces related to ethnology and anthropology we have “Structural Anthropology, 1958”; “The savage thinking, 1962”; “Mythology of the naked man, 1964”; “Seeing, listening, and reading, 1993”; and “Saudades of Sao Paulo, 1994”.
Primitive tribes are going extinct fast.
The trend is man-made expansion and exploitation that started by European colonial adventure in the 16th century, and particularly in the 19th century. A couple of decades ago, tribes in the Amazon Forest went extinct because Texaco polluted and ruined the ecological make-up for its oil-well extraction processes. Read note 2.
In “Sad tropic”, Levi-Strauss was pretty candid and wrote:
“I hate to travel and to explore. Should I recount the insipid details of a servitude to weeks and months of traveling, of hunger, fatigue, and illnesses? Should I tell of the toils for daily maintenance and upkeep as in routine military service? The amounts of efforts expanded on ethnological research do not confer a price to the negative aspects of the job. Truth can be divulged after all the gangue are stripped off.”
In 1940, the Vichy government whisked Levi-Strauss with three other French scholars to the USA because “with such a name you are doomed in France.” Levi-Strauss said that “I have never felt Jewish even though my parents were Jews. I did experience the difficulties and problems of being Jew in schools and universities. I do not comprehend the inventions of the Catholic Church councils relative to Trinity, trans-substantiation, or communion of the Saints. I have no inclinations of trying to comprehend these abstract notions. Christianity exercises aesthetic seduction on me.”
Levi-Strauss stresses that “the longer we get attached to ethnology, the more we keep our distances of current societies: the essential and dramatic characteristics of the present will not count heavily in the perspectives of several centuries later. Individuality is more prevalent in primitive tribes than in modern civilization. Ethnology respects history, though it does not extend to it any privileged value. History is a complementary research that deploys human societies over time, while ethnology extends the research over space.”
Anthropology extends the impression of going to the extreme limits of what was the goal of philosophy in witnessing the totality of human experiences. A scholar does not offer real answers: his role is to formulate pertinent clear questions.
Symbols have no intrinsic or invariable significance: they have meaning only within the context. This significance is foremost of position.
Myth is started by an individual and then is taken over by the original group and fine tuned progressively. Levi-Strauss claims that the main characteristic in myths is the beauty emanating from the imaginative stories. There is this intelligent emotion that story of myth, painting, sculpture, or music strikes us head on and makes us feel that we comprehend the global configuration.
Levi-Strauss is known for establishing “structuralism” in the domain of human sciences. If you read what is structuralism from non-scientific critics, you will not be more intelligent than before.
Structuralism in human sciences is a procedure of untangling the invariant characteristics of societies (for example, primitive societies) within the fundamental constraints of geography and environment on their specific structures. Studying primitive tribes is an excellent venue to extrapolate results to other societies enjoying the same restrictive localities.
(There are many statistical packages specifically designed to sort out the main characteristics or dimensions that group the cluster of categorical data. You have discriminant analysis, cluster analysis, and factors analysis experimental designs that do not differentiate among variables, simply because the purpose is fundamentally to investigate the main factors that come into play, for later well designed experiment of cause and effects. See note 3)
Note 1: Claude Levi-Strauss was born in Belgium and studied philosophy. He was offered a teaching position of sociology in Sao Paulo (Brazil) in 1935. During the period (1935-39), Claude Levi-Strauss directed several missions in the Amazon and Mato Grosso to investigate primitive tribes. He taught at New School Social research in New York and then was appointed cultural attaché to the French Embassy in Washington DC in 1945. Levi-Strauss was nominated director of comparative religion of people with no written languages in Paris (1949). He was appointed professor of social anthropology at the “College de France” till 1982. He was elected to the French Academy in 1973.
Note 2: At the current rate of modernization and deforestation most of the aborigine tribes would disappear within a few decades. Many civilizations have vanished but a few have managed to survive precariously so far.
Currently we still have the ethnic Saamis (Norway and Finland), Inuits (Siberia, Alaska, and Canada), Ainous (Japan), Indians (USA and Canada), Zapotec (Mexico), Mosquitos (Nicaragua), Quiches (Guatemala), Cunas (Panama), Yanomamis and Guaranis (Brazil), Galibis and Akawaios (Guyana), Paez ans Guambianos (Colombia), Waoranis (Equator), Amueshas (Peru), Chimanes (Bolivia), Araucans (Chili), Touaregs and Bororos (Sahel in Northern Africa), Tigres (Ethiopia and Somalia), Dinkas (Sudan), Masais (Kenya and Tanzania), Pygmees (Zaire), Sans or Bushmen (Namibia and Botswana), Kalingas (Philippines), Kachins and Rohingas (Myanmar or Birmani), Hmongs (Laos), Santals and Gonds (India), Punans (Malaysia), Uzbeks and Tadjiks (Afghanistan), Aborigines (Australia), Maoris (New Zealand), Papous (New Guinea).
Note 3: Dimensions or factors are sorted out and data are forced to cluster along these dimensions and then the dimensions are given names (a kind of art). Once names are extended to dimensions then it becomes hard to change their connotations.
For example, quantitative psychology, marketing, and sociology use these structural analyses to find out complexity, customs, traditions, cooking specifications, and customer preferences, qualitative notions of beauty, parenting, or associations among the cluster of data.
Monolithic religions?
Posted by: adonis49 on: October 26, 2008
An alternative historical account to the monolithic religions (May 15, 2008)
This article is intended for those who accept the validity of the following hypotheses: First, that earth is over 4 billion years old and that a form of human emerged over one million years ago; second, that human kind was on the verge of extinction several times due to drastic climatic changes and the eruption of monster volcanoes. Thus, prior civilizations which may have been as developed as today could have vanished with no traces left.
We need to accept the fact that, if the number of the world population was far less than it should have been at the beginning of the 19th century, then, it is because, from simple mathematical computation in the last 2,000 years, most of our ancestors were the product of incest and not from couples of different families, even after accounting for the casualties of wars, pestilence, famine and climate calamities.
I also would like to state that mythologies were based on real events and that stories were transmitted verbally; that the events actually occurred and the verbal communication of these stories enriched the imagination and gave the various mythologies the religious power and the dimension that are interpreted nowadays.
When dealing with religions people feel the need to contrast faith versus facts and logic. People who have sincere faith must have experienced supernatural revelations or gone through a moment of irrational state of out of body exposure. I believe that faith cannot be acquired by reason or logic and those who repeat frequently the word “truth” in their conversations are not sincere in their belief : Truth is plainly, simply, and absolutely a subjective attitude and it means “do not bother using facts, science or logic. All those endeavors do not mean a thing and would not change my mind”. Truth is for me the most dangerous term that man has invented because it blocks any consensus or negotiation or meaningful conversation and it connote an extremist disposition based on ignorance and lack of intellectual interactions. Thus, the concept of truth is practically opposite to faith although people positively correlate it with faith.
Logic is a construct, a system of the mind used to expose a coherent hypothesis, hopefully based on some facts, or a story that hold a convincing alternative. Logic can be used in science, in rhetoric and as well in religion. Institutionalized religions heavily make use of logic though they hammer out the concept of faith because its concept is not founded on anything tangible or can be proved rationally. Religion is basically a theological philosophy that has been manipulated to be rooted in myths, symbols, and secrecy to satisfy the initiated High Priests and generates its power through the scare tactics within the psychic of man.
Let me offer a logical story, one of the alternative stories, of the monotheist religions of the Jewish, Christian, and Moslem religions. The root of these three religions is the religion practiced in the Kingdom of Sumer, in southern Iraq, 6,000 years ago. This ancient religion believed in a trinity and its mythology stated that out of space creatures, arriving from the tenth dying planet, landed on earth to exploit gold and oil because the environment of their planet required abundant quantities of gold to be pulverized and injected in their outer atmosphere to rejuvenate the deteriorating environment of their planet. These creatures created human artificially (test tube for example) to serve as cheap and mechanical slaves in the mines. After many centuries, the created human then revolted against their masters and fled from the Eden of the super cruel creatures and had to fend for themselves to survive and develop their intelligence.
The Kingdom of Sumer and its far developed civilization that discovered the existence of ten planets (there is nine in our solar system so far and lately this year the tenth planet was discovered) and their rotations and then divided the day into 24 hours, the hours into minutes and minutes into seconds. Ancient mythologies mention that this kingdom was destroyed by a natural calamity (resembling to an atomic explosion used by the outer space creatures). The Sumerian mythology had ramifications into all the neighboring civilizations that came after it was weakened.
It is narrated that Abraham left the Kingdom of Sumer with his tribe during a period of famine and carried with him the verbal mythology of the country. Moses was a High Priest in Egypt and fled persecution because he adhered to the Akhenaton new religion of the one God the Sun and carried with him the ten laws and the secrets of the Egyptian religion.
Jesus was initiated by the Essen secret Jewish sect, on the eastern shore of the Dead Sea, whose members believed in knowledge and spirituality and shared the resources in common. It is also narrated that Jesus lived for a time in Sidon teaching in its famous law school. Mary, his mother and part of her family moved to a town nearby when Jesus was a lecturer in the law school. It is no fluke incident that Jesus and Mary attended a wedding in Qana; it is also very rational that Jesus decided to start his message after Qana when his mother removed the cover of secrecy and exposed his supernatural gifts of turning water to wine.
Jesus was a high priest in the Essen sect and preached a message based in symbolism and fables and was highly spiritual and staunchly anti-Pharisee. The Jewish cabala sect is a branch of the Essen sect and is founded on the Sumerian theology and myths.
Albert Schweitzer, a theologian, physician, thinker, organ player and Nobel Peace laureate offered his version on Jesus. He said, based on the first two testaments of Mathew and Marc, that Jesus preached his message to the general public in the last year before his crucifixion. Six months all in all Jesus was accompanied by the public; the remaining six months he spent them among his close disciples around Caesarea of Philippi.
In the beginning, Jesus accepted the label of a prophet among the prophets but then he reached the belief that he is the Messiah of the Jews. Thus, he sent his disciples two by two to preach the message of the end of time. Jesus was very surprised when all his disciples returned safe and sound; he expected them to suffer terribly and be put to death in order for the prophesy to be accomplished. Jesus then decided that God would accept his sacrifice and save his close disciples from certain atrocious deaths before the first coming of the Messiah.
The apostles and disciples of Jesus believed that Christ would return to Jerusalem during their life time and thus they stayed in Jerusalem for as long as they could before they were forced to leave that city out of persecution by the Jews. The Christian-Jews would not relinquish the Jewish Law and they harassed and even persecuted St. Paul for preaching to the gentiles and establishing Christian communities based on faith in Christ who came to absolve our sins and who was resurrected from death.
The Arab Prophet Mohammad was not illiterate as the Moslems would like to disseminate; Mohammad new and read the “heretic” Christian Bible that was proselitized in Mecca; he listened to the proselytism of Eastern Christian sects during his caravan commerce within Syria. These Christian sects believed in the monophysism of Jesus (no divine spiritual identity) and were staunchly adhering to the Jewish Law, the Jewish prophets and their books. Consequently, the religion of Mohammad during its first 13 years was almost a duplicate of these Christian sects with strong Jewish foundations in their religions.
At that period, Mohammad’s message decreed that Moslems should face toward Jerusalem for prayer; when Mohammad had to fight the Jewish tribes that later sided with his enemies of Quraich tribes he changed his order for prayer to facing Al Ka3ba in Mecca.
Mohammad had to flee to Medina after the Kureich tribe decided to terminate him; he then endeavored to establish firmly his community of Moslems. The next phase of taking up the civil social responsibilities and politics for maintaining this community forced upon him to linking the spiritual dogma with the civil laws and regulations. It was while strengthening the community of Islam in Medina that Mohammad had to wage many wars against a few Jewish communities who ended siding with Mohammad’s archenemy the Qureich tribe in Mecca. Mohammad thus learned to discriminate between the practices of the Jews and the Jewish religion; hundreds of Jews were beheaded as they resumed siding with his enemies. After Mohammad had showed clemency twice with Jewish rebellions and then, he finally ordered the beheading of 700 members of the Jewish Khyber tribe. For some reason Mohammad selected his nephew and son-in-law Ali to have the honor of the decapitation; it is no wonder that the Jews have an animal hatred for Ali and his followers.
Personal hypothesis:
The ancestor of all the Gods that were created since antiquity is this scary total Silence before a coming major natural cataclysm. It is the silence of death when the whole earth is still and the atmosphere suffocating, no breezes of any kinds, that generates in all living creature a terrible reaction of wholesome anger of pure revolt against the sense of death in this universal silence. It is the silence and quietude before tornadoes, cyclones, sand desert storms and all the kinds of whirling at great magnitude in the atmosphere, the seas, deserts and the bowel of earth in volcanoes. There is no avoiding the silence of coming cataclysms as there is no avoiding death, a correlation that people noticed and prayed for their own God of Total Silence to keep chatting through winds, birds, animals, rains, thunderstorms, shouting, crying and anything that can be heard lest miseries, devastations and evil spirits hovering over the land befall their region.
The same behavior is applied to the starting of wars and their ending. It is no wonder that men shout stupid songs, curse loudly at fictional enemies like if drunk, bang on batteries and metals, light and heavy metals, blow on air instruments and all the hysterical trepidations at the announcement of a major war, an ancient psychic custom within our deepest pre-historic brain to ward off the cataclysm wrapped into maddening songs of patriotism and cursing at the evil enemies. Indeed, heavy silence is the root of our fundamental fear and dealing with fear should pass through learning to accept silence as a necessary step to investigating our soul.