Candide a lui Voltaire trimite salutari.
With luck and persistence, you will be able to claim the rewards promised you at the beginning of time–not just any old beauty, wisdom, goodness, love, freedom, and justice, but rather exhilarating beauty that incites you to be true to yourself; crazy wisdom that immunizes you against the temptation to believe your ideals are ultimate truths; outrageous goodness that inspires you to experiment with boisterous empathy; generous freedom that keeps you alert for opportunities to share your wealth; insurrectionary love that endlessly transforms you; and a lust for justice that’s leavened with a knack for comedy, keeping you honest as you work humbly to liberate everyone in the world from ignorance and suffering.
circles.
it’s been quite a rollercoaster to come back. not only did many people die in the village, but people seemed more destitute than two years ago in a weird way. of course, this is hard to assess in only two weeks, but this is the impression i got. what a horrible country. Part of me cannot wait to get away from here, and I can soothe my anger in some moments with the idea that I will leave in a months time. I am not sure what to think of that, but I just feel things are going quite wrong on all kinds of levels. And my anthropological hat doesn’t seem to fit at the moment. It’s itchy and I tend to fling it across the room or at a passing car, then picking it up and brush off the dust.
I still get quite emotional and everything affects me, but, strangely, I am no longer up for letting it make me stressed up to the point of illness. May be that makes me a bad anthropologist. I don’t know. The thing is that I’d much much rather be doing something that would make more sense to more people than anthropology. Trouble is now I have acquired (or well, will do sometime in 2010) this training for academia, and I didn’t focus on any other work for 4 years. So I feel like I am at a breaking point, as this still hasn’t been resolved. I am not sure if I am up for the race of 4-5 years spent in 5 different places.I think my health and sanity would break for good.
So I am thinking of moving to a place and then getting a job… but it’s all a bit much to deal with at the moment. I am not the best person for this job, as I’d much rather have my routine and my proper diet, and proper exercise possibility. I hope it will be ok. I am adamant I will keep my sanity this time. I cannot sacrifice everything for this job, this time round, like I did during my doctoral fieldwork.
pictured: stanley henry morton with pithhelmet (a kind of archetypal anthropological hat)
right livelihood awards 2009.
David Suzuki (Honorary Award, Canada) “for his lifetime advocacy of the socially responsible use of science, and for his massive contribution to raising awareness about the perils of climate change and building public support for policies to address it”.
Three recipients receive cash awards of EUR 50,000 each:
René Ngongo (Democratic Republic of Congo) is honoured “for his courage in confronting the forces that are destroying the Congo’s rainforests and building political support for their conservation and sustainable use”.
Alyn Ware (New Zealand) is recognised “for his effective and creative advocacy and initiatives over two decades to further peace education and to rid the world of nuclear weapons”.
Catherine Hamlin (Ethiopia) is awarded “for her fifty years dedicated to treating obstetric fistula patients, thereby restoring the health, hope and dignity of thousands of Africa’s poorest women”.
Unlike the Nobel Prizes, the nomination process for the Right Livelihood Awards is open. “Anyone – except Right Livelihood Award Jury and staff members – can propose anyone (individuals or organisations), except themselves, close relatives or their own organisations to be considered for a Right Livelihood Award. The Right Livelihood Award Foundation reserves the right to refuse clearly unsuitable proposals.” http://www.rightlivelihood.org/guidelines_english0.html
Jakob von Uexkull created these awards because he “felt that the Nobel Prize categories were too narrow in scope and too concentrated on the interests of the industrialised countries to be an adequate answer to the challenges now facing humanity”. http://www.rightlivelihood.org/history.html
Congratulations to the winners!
leaving scotland.
Leaving Scotland before the driech of November is difficult. I have come to love the crisp clarity of early autumn that many writers have taken as all that is most beautiful before it dies, all that is ripe before it is decaying. It is the point of balance that we all want to capture at its peak and prolong to infinity. We are desperate to learn about how the apex of maturity forms and builds up. We are less keen on experiencing how the coating on the shiny, tough edges start to peel. As rust builds underneath the surface, we may pass off the minor changes in skin texture as mere tiredness.
I miss you too much and the autumn mornings cannot soothe.
robert graves.
Just came across Robert Graves. Fascinating man. I love this poem. More of the sort here.
TO AN UNGENTLE CRITIC
The great sun sinks behind the town
Through a red mist of Volnay wine….
But what’s the use of setting down
That glorious blaze behind the town?
You’ll only skip the page, you’ll look
For newer pictures in this book;
You’ve read of sunsets rich as mine.
A fresh wind fills the evening air
With horrid crying of night birds….
But what reads new or curious there
When cold winds fly across the air?
You’ll only frown; you’ll turn the page,
But find no glimpse of your “New Age
Of Poetry” in my worn-out words.
Must winds that cut like blades of steel
And sunsets swimming in Volnay,
The holiest, cruellest pains I feel,
Die stillborn, because old men squeal
For something new: “Write something new:
We’ve read this poem—that one too,
And twelve more like ‘em yesterday”?
No, no! my chicken, I shall scrawl
Just what I fancy as I strike it,
Fairies and Fusiliers, and all
Old broken knock-kneed thought will crawl
Across my verse in the classic way.
And, sir, be careful what you say;
There are old-fashioned folk still like it.
ephemerality.
This moved me this morning.
From the point of view of the nonlinear dynamics of our planet, the thin rocky crust on which we live and which we call our land and home is perhaps its least important component. Indeed, if we waited long enough, if we could observe planetary dynamics at geological time scales, the rocks and mountains which define the most stable and durable traits of our reality would dissolve into the great underground lava flows of which they are but temporary hardenings. Indeed, given that it is just a matter of time for any one rock or mountain to be reabsorbed into the self-organized flows of lava driving the dynamics of the lithosphere, these geological structures represent a local slowing-down in this flowing reality. It is almost as if every part of the mineral world could be defined by specifying its chemical composition and its speed of flow : very slow for rocks, faster for lava.
Similarly, our individual bodies and minds are mere coagulations or decelerations in the flows of biomass, genes, memes and norms. Here too we would be defined both by the materials we are temporarily binding or chaining into our organic bodies and cultural minds, as well as by the time scale of the binding operation. Given long enough time scales, it is the flow of biomass through food webs that matters, as well as the flow of genes through generations, and not the bodies and species that emerge in these flows. Given long enough time scales, our languages are also momentary slowing-downs or thickenings in a flow of norms that can give rise to a multitude of different structures.
[Manuel de Landa, entire text of 'The Geology of Morals' here]
Augusto Boal. Nachruf.
It is with great sadness that I learn of the passing on of the author of ‘Theatre of the Oppressed’ (inspired by Paulo Freire) and father of a movement of radical theatre, and an activist concerned with positive social change. Obituary here.
