h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Oh when I say art...I mean in the wider sense.

>> a form of "neo-romanticism" reaction to the cold
intransigent "rationality" of the keyboard. <<

Good point,
They certainly have an appeal to the mind, almost everybody's
mind, as being a less complex way of communicating basic ideas.

The first happy face, an 'artistic design' from at least a
decade before the internet and the smiley phenomena, always
seemed to me to be just another brilliant incarnation of Apollo,
the sun god, worshipped everywhere in the whirled at one time
or another by just about anybody trying to break down reality
to its basics. Sun good! Sun warm! Sun happy, healthy, make
food grow, keeps away dark night monsters. Sun good! Sun god!

Makes a lot of sense to me. More than most religious beliefs.


~jwf~

In atheist secular society (also applicable to other societies as well), it is said that there is a difference between the letter of the law and the spirit of the law. But how can that be given there are no spirits in atheism?

ps if you take out the "spirit" of the law so that we are left with just the "letter" of the law, what type of society does that leave us with?

I think atheists are still allowed to use methaphors, even ones that refer to things they don't believe in. Plus there's the fact that non-belief in god does not entirely preclude belief in ghosts.

I have hesitated to enter this thread because of its vast implications..

But surely at essence there is the concept of the possibility of a state of "Heaven" in which all is resolved in harmony, and this concept is not necessarily limited to what we conventionally refer to as "Religions"- with or without God or Gods (or Goddesses for that matter).

Confusionism has conventionally been counted as a religion and global maps back in the Age of Imperialism showed it as part of the distribution of faith systems. Much of Science has been predicated on a search for a universal and unifying understanding of "Creation", "Big Bang Theory" being just a another very obvious example. And advocates of Humanism and Secularism have their own vision of "A Promised Land".

Martin Luther King - I may not get there with you but I have been to the mountain top and I have seen the Promised Land: and I can say to you tonight that we as a people will get to the promised land.

So there are people and circumstances that encourage us to carry on and go forward by feeding and refreshing a vision of goals that are worth the effort involved in facing the challenges of this mundane existence.

As we get closer to the Olympics it is worth remembering that the Games were instituted as a vision, an inspiration/aspiration. They set out to reaffirm that Human Beings could produce performances worthy of being placed before the Gods as the very best that Human beings can achieve. And significantly the Greeks could see their Gods as being "in the image of Man" as opposed to other peoples whose Gods were super-animals.

So I must confess to having watched the last 40 minutes of the Tour de France yesterday with some appreciation of the realisation not just of what had appeared an impossible dream for most of my life, but also a performance in that triumphant last stage in which Paris pays tribute to its "Champion" that was near perfect- Divine, Sublime. Braddley Wiggins accelerating to hit the front in the penultimate kilometre of the 4,000 in order to launch his teammate, Mark Cavendish, to win the final sprint.

Historic!

Cass

The Olympic Games in Greece were a cultural gift from religion. For the classy Greek, religion, war and formal sport were part and parcel of the same thing. Tyche, Areté and all that.

Effers I can thoroughly recommend Macfarlane's books: his In The Wild Places would be right up your street I reckon, very Romantic. I can't wait to get his new one.

Might seem flippant but religion gave us the resurrected Battlestar Galactica (BSG is based on Mormon mythology) and that's a work of art.

Phoenecian Trader

My point exactly.. A recent reading of a History Of Archaeology put into context my late Sixties Penguin copy of "Before Philosophy. The Intellectual Adventure of Ancient Man" by leading archaeologists of a great Chicago team of the late Forties.

They did some of the most important and seminal work in translating texts from Ancient Egypt and Mesopotamia, and the Mesopotmanian section is very interesting since it reflects a clear East/West divide, and "Western Civilization" traces its roots to Egypt and the Mediterranean Sea (the Sea at the Centre of the World) that the Phoenicians managed to exploit as a "global economy" with the "colour purple" becoming emblematic of the dream of power and control that the Gods could bestow upon humanity. Both Christianity and Islam bear the imprint of this legacy and the fact that amongst human beings "All power corrupts but absolute power corrupts absolutely".

In Ancient Mesopotamia it was very evident that there was a real contrast between the tranquility and order of the Heavens- the realm of "Anu", where all appeared to be mostly peaceful, harmonious and majestic and life on Earth where "The Storm" (Enlil) could come in all the violence of Nature (including Human Nature) sweeping everything away as in the Noah/Gilgamesh epic, leaving humankind the task of starting all over again. Surviving the "Desert Storm" as Saddam Hussein did was thus by definition a "victory":and the spiritual mindset was akin to the Chinese concept of Yin and Yang in which the best that Humankind can do is to try to constantly promote harmony and balance within our own activities and Nature itself in order to make life on Earth more like life in the Heavens.

Cass

At such moments as these it is important to realise that religion and spirituality have been crucial to economic development.

Marx was totally wrong. People create wealth because they are inspired by the idea of greater goods and values than the merely personal, local or provincial.

In "Small is Beautiful. A Study of Economics as if People Mattered" Dr. Schumacher postulated "Buddhist Economics" based on his experience of development economics in post-independence India. In bad times, he said, Buddhist Societies merely built a new temple which was a re-assertion of core values and as a by-product gave a Keynesian injection to collective and communal life. But not just of money. The task unlocked all the potential of the Society and its region plus hinterland, for of course such a project attracted people from far and near, both during the construction phase and ever-after.

In my latest "book" "Economics as If People Really Mattered. A Tale of Cities" I argue that Schumacher's Buddhist Societies were in fact just one version of the great City State culture of the Ancient World, quoting, for example, the fact that a City like Athens prided itself not only on having athletes who could perform for the Gods, but sailors, craftsmen, thinkers, artists, playwrights etc who were at least as good or better than anything that anyone could find anywhere on Earth. Thus the Greek sailor/adventurer sailed off into the unknown with confidence that he would find a market where he could sell Greek produce at a good profit.

In many ways "Western Civilization" still draws on the inspiration of the Italian City States from around the time of Dante, his "Divine Comedy" being regarded by many as the launching pad with most of the ideas that grew into the modern worl. And Leonardo da Vinci was very much in that Greek tradition in his letter offering his services to Ludovico Sforza in which he asserted that he could accomplish anything that Sforza could possibly ask him to to at least as well as anyone who just specialised in that field.

But the current economic crisis reflects the fact that though the affluent world has unprecedented potential and wealth it produces little or nothing "Divine" and "enduring". As in today's report about the Finance Industry too much emphasis on the mere short-term and the instant. Our science and especially our technology has a built-in obsolescence with novelty and immediate/ignorant impact being the major "drivers" in a culture that emphasises Consumption rather than Production.

What I argue is that the "Versailles Effect" led to the demonisation of the City with all of its "problems". But those "problems" are the challenges inherent in the "tide in the affairs of man" and Cities have historically been the places where History has been forged, for the better if the power of Cities is given positive expression and for the worse when the City is treated with hostility, suspicion and alienation.

As an adoptive Greater Londoner after 45 years I feel that 2012 will mark a real re-emergence of London as a great world City in its own right: and note that a recent report by leading economists has argued that Greater London has been unfairly treated [and exploited] as the "engine-room" of the UK and in fact should (for the greater good) be allowed to keep more of the wealth generated by Greater London in order to make London an even happier and better place to live. The Olympic legacy is supposed to be a major contribution in that respect.

Cass

Hey HI, that's cool you like MacFarlane.

It was a joy to stumble on his talk..and his delivery was so good. I liked him immensely from his manner. There was a twinkle always behind his seriousness...and indeed he seemed deadly serious about the emotional affects of landscape. An incredibly sensitive person..and open to every small thing as well as the big things when walking. His photographs are so affecting as well...and his obvious love of the poet Edward Thomas as a story of a person and his poetry, imbued with Nature. The Path is a poem I'm very glad to have discovered. Extraordinary end to Edward Thomas's life...the vacuum created by a shell going off..his body seemingly untouched...but the pages of his poetry notebook he had at the Front...covered with the ripples...of the effect

MacFarlane took such trouble to explain the poetry of such an ending to a human life.

Piononos.

<<<At such moments as these it is important to realise that religion and spirituality have been crucial to economic development.

what do you have in mind exactly? Can you give some examples?

I could say that under the flag of evangelization many crimes were committed and much profit gained, which would fuel economic development.

<<<Marx was totally wrong. People create wealth because they are inspired by the idea of greater goods and values than the merely personal, local or provincial.

Which values? and can you give some examples?

I have in mind cooperativism,,(not necessary related to religion) or what the Quacker Cadbury did in Birmingan... there are examples of wealth created out of good will however, which are those good values that produce all that money located in tax havens?

What you say of Marx is false. He could be wrong in some aspects, but he really hit the nail in many others. What is more, if you google a bit you´ll find how much is he mentioned currently because
some of his analyis have become true, too true.

Following from Maria quoting Cass

>>Marx was totally wrong. People create wealth because they are inspired by the idea of greater goods and values than the merely personal, local or provincial. <<

Do the two sentences follow from each other or is it a non-sequitor ...

Firstly on what exactly was Marx "totally wrong"?
Secondly isn't the second sentence a denial of Adam Smith's tenets rather than Marx?

I believe that Marx as a materialist argued that material reality is the pre-eminent one and that State systems had always existed as the means by which powerful elites managed to exploit those in the lower orders in order to accumulate an unfair and disproportionate amount of wealth.

What I argue is that the lower orders have always realised the disparity of competence between themselves as individuals and small communities and the the greater power vested in Gods and particularly well-endowed individuals that can be transformed into imponderables like a sense of security and pride. Creating wealth of some kind or another is something that they can do. "What shall I give him poor as I am?"

And of course the benefit to Society as a whole in being able to produce things that are fit to offer to Gods and Kings is that such things tend to have universal and enduring value, so that others will pay for people to specialize in producing such things, either as private or public goods. A good example of this would be the question raised on another thread about professionalism and the Olympics. There are professionals now representing GB in various sports. But most amateur GB representatives have received funding that in many cases has made it possible for them to train-full time for several years, while the whole spectacle that we are presenting to the world as "The Best of British" is expected to produce benefits within the UK/London and without- the way that London is perceived in the wider world in the light of its proud history.

Cass

Rose windows.

A couple of examples.

One not far from me, near London bridge.

http://brilliant-london.com/2012/05/20/rose-window/

Can't go without referring to the one in Notre Dame, Paris.

http://caelumetterra.wordpress.com/2011/10/19/random-beauty-rose-window-from-notre-dame-paris/

Blue paint?

Off the top of my head, it seems that most really old paintings with good strong blues, are religious. Only the church and kings had real cash to splash and blue was, I believe rather expensive.

PP.

Sounds very Assyrian to me - those societies existed for many millenia prior to Marx and they certainly gave a lot.

Y

Sorry about that post - lost track of what I was typing.

>>I believe that Marx as a materialist argued that material reality is the pre-eminent one ... <<

Fair enough, thanks for the further explanation . Although material reality is an important factor there are other factors to consider even when the proletariat are aware of the inequality. Certainly Marx got his predictions / prophecies wrong, although the fact that the elite capitalists have 30 trillion odd dollars hidden away, suggests that capitalism does lead to further and further inequality as well as cartels / monopolistic systems (as described by Marx I think).