This is the incredible thing about NASA (and science in general come to think of it) even "failure" can mean great success.
166 karma · joined January 4, 2009
Also, I'm not clear on whether the stigma against cannibalism is mainly based on social pressure or stems from our biological programming.
The other thing I'd like to see change is the complete overuse of bloom shader effects.
Furthermore, there are languages that still survive to this day that have no word for "religion" as such, something I talk elsewhere in this thread. This says to me that in some cultures religion cannot even be conceived of as separate from culture because the language does not provide the imaginative capacity to understand it that way.
So, always fluid, yes. Separable, I don't know.
However, I think you are focusing too much on religion as ritual specifically. Yes, indigenous Americans, for example, have certain rituals, rites, and special events that stand apart as specific expressions of their unique culture. If those rituals seek to connect the individuals who participate in them, and the community as a whole to an "ultimate reality" or an unseen world, we in the west call it a religious ritual. Most indigenous American people (all, as far as a I know) do not even have a word for "religion," however, so the mundane and the "fancy rain dance" are each simply forms of culture with no defining boundary.
That's an interesting statement. Only in the West, and only in the last few hundred years can religion be conceived of as a discrete object, separate from culture.
Indigenous American and Hindu culture, for example, have traditionally had no such division between religion and culture. With the rise of global capitalism we may be starting to see a secular/nonsecular divide in traditionally Hindu areas (India, duh) but this is a very modern development.
edit: I should say, none of the above necessarily negates anything you said. I just think it's interesting.
edit number 2: Also, the above could also be further illuminated in a short description of the differences between orthodoxy and orthopraxy. Worth checking out each concept on Wikipedia if y'all are interested.
Inequality is embedded in capitalism. When the invisible hand moves capital from one place to another, it does not only give, it takes away. For someone like Bill Gates to give as he does, he has to have taken away (you might prefer "created") in the first place.
It may be muck-stirring, but I am less interested in saving the world than I am in understanding the ideological assumptions implicit in, for instance, Gates's actions, and the systems that allow those actions to take place. To leave the muck unstirred, to forget it exists, is to live in a world that does nothing but support conventional wisdom, excludes alternatives, and limits debate. The useful question is not, "is this True or not," but rather, "what would it mean if it were true."
Finally, if Zizek is a conspiracy theorist, was Hegel, was Marx?
"The two faces of Bill Gates parallel the two faces of Soros. The cruel businessman destroys or buys out competitors, aims at virtual monopoly, employs all the tricks of the trade to achieve his goals. Meanwhile, the greatest philanthropist in the history of mankind quaintly asks: 'What does it serve to have computers, if people do not have enough to eat and are dying of dysentery?' In liberal communist ethics, the ruthless pursuit of profit is counteracted by charity. Charity is the humanitarian mask hiding the face of economic exploitation. In a superego blackmail of gigantic proportions, the developed countries "help" the underdeveloped with aid, credits, and so on, and thereby avoid the key issue, namely their complicity in and co-responsibility for the miserable situation of the underdeveloped" (Violence 22).
Gates "give away your wealth, billionaires. It's fun!" rhetoric focuses only on subjective violence - violence, as Zizek writes, "which is enacted by social agents, evil individuals, disciplined repressive apparatuses," etc. The "do-this-now-its-fun" call distracts attention away from the systematic violence nestled at the root of capitalism. Zizek writes, and I think he's right, that Gates call for a friendlier robber baron "signals a sad predicament of ours: today's capitalism cannot reproduce itself on its own. It needs extra-economic charity to sustain the cycle of social reproduction" (24).
That is not to say that Gates money will not do some good. I imagine it will do and has done. However, I do think it is a distraction from the real issue, which is the massive global economic exploitation necessary to produce Gates's wealth in the first place.
I ask because I wonder if they are trying to kill/replace/be the next Google at all. Obviously Steve Ballmer would love for MS to knock off Google at the head of search, but it would be nice for their search offering to be profitable first, wouldn't it? Or maybe I just don't understand business.
Interesting, too, that the author pairs harmony and beauty as having "intrinsic" value. We <i>might</i> think of beauty as intrinsically valuable but, once you name any created object beautiful, that beauty is rife with cultural baggage that defines what is and what is not valuable. Which brings me to my next point.
To call one object beautiful necessarily means that other objects are not beautiful, or are less beautiful, or are beautiful in a different way. As far as I'm concerned there is nothing "harmonious" about this act. Thus, how can beauty and harmony be intrinsically valuable or "good" when beauty necessarily excludes harmony?
I guess I'm not a big fan of moral philosophy.
This presents and interesting answer to the following:
>> That's a contradiction, humans are social animal and the rise of telecommunications and the internet is just the current technological advancement in that direction.
Sometimes one might need to get away from the buzz of the other's communication to listen to the community we carry around in our heads.
As for Monasticism: While a completely individual monastic lifestyle has been practiced, it is rare in the history of Western monasticism. Also, as I said above, an individual withdrawing from human contact does not mean she is not in "community." Medieval Christian monastic communities, for their part, were just that, "communities." Monks in these communities lived together and depended on one another for survival. And while they did feel the urge (maybe more properly understood as a 'call') to separate themselves from the community at large, they normally did not cloister their communities far away from urban population centers and were often an integral part of the Medieval economy.
Even the "Desert Fathers," one of the earliest forms of Christian Monasticism, though often viewed as making a radical break from their society, distanced themselves from society in general but not from all humans specifically. Furthermore, these communities depended heavily on links back to the community they had originated from for food, water, and the prayer they thought necessary to exist in the harsh climate of the dessert.
I would go so far as to say that Monasticism, though it does necessitate an intentional distancing of oneself from society at large, is actually a form of a radically <i>social</i> community not experienced by most humans. I think the same can be said about colonialists and rural farmers. Individuals in both of these groups can be said to depend heavily on support from the other for their survival.
Finally, urban existence can be a very lonely for many people. Industrialization and urbanization both create a feeling of what Max Weber termed "anomie." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anomie In the history of colonization especially, I would think one thing colonists sought to escape was not social interaction with other humans, but the felt sense of anomie created by living amongst too many humans at once in an oppressive environment. Seen this way, colonists, monks, and farmers all escape from environments hostile to the human "social animal" and arrive in an environment more suitable for the social interaction we cannot help but crave.
Footnote: I should add that I know there are rich traditions of monasticism other than Christian monasticism but I'm not qualified to speak on them.
>Don’t worry about building the next Google or making lots of money, because you’ll probably fail. But the lessons you learn and the connections you make will be worth it.
The general spirit of the piece is good.