Category Archives: Art and Ideas

Happy Birthday, Johann Sebastian Bach

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Norwegian soprano Sissel Kyrkjebo (also excellent as a cross-over singer) sings Bach’s well-known Wachet auf, ruft uns die Stimme (BWV 645). I originally had a Michelangeli performance of the D Minor Chaconne up here, but though that felt right as a general reflection on the state of the economic world, it was a tad somber for the vernal equinox, March 21, also Bach’s birthday……

[Correction: this year the vernal equinox was actually on March 20, which makes my greeting belated twice over]

…so I exchanged it for one of the great sacred cantatas.  I think Bach would approve of Sissel’s upbeat version: Sleepers wake, for night is flying…..

The word “sleepers” is a reference to the parable of the ten virigins in the Bible (Matthew 25: 1-13) .

In a bridal party, ten virgins awaiting the bridegroom fall asleep. Five of them have run out of oil in their lamps and ask the others to give them some at the last minute. The parable is pretty fitting for the times. For “oil,” just substitute savings, hard assets, land, precious metals, undervalued stocks.

….And the foolish said unto the wise, Give us of your oil; for our lamps are gone out. But the wise answered, saying, Not so; lest there be not enough for us and you: but go ye rather to them that sell, and buy for yourselves…..

Pagan Libertarian Ethics

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I’ve seen some libertarians describe their ethic as, “Do what you will…but pay the price.”

Frankly, that is not a prescription at all. It simply describes consequences.

In ethical paganism, this would be considered incomplete, as the conclusion of the famous Wiccan Rede demonstrates:

“Where the rippling waters go, cast a stone, the truth you’ll know.
When you have and hold a need, harken not to others greed.

With a fool no season spend, or be counted as his friend.
Merry Meet and Merry Part, bright the cheeks and warm the heart.

Mind the Three-fold Laws you should, three times bad and three times good.
When misfortune is enow, wear the star upon your brow.

Be true in love this you must do, unless your love is false to you.

These Eight words the Rede fulfill:

“An Ye Harm None, Do What Ye Will”

An Ye Harm None.

The  simple omission of this phrase has tragic consequences for people’s understanding of ethical practice. Worse yet, they enter a path of solipsism, narcissism, and even criminality, under the delusion that they’ve discovered a new moral law.

Of course, what constitutes harm is debatable….

Kurt Tucholsky On Love Of Country

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“We have just written “no” on 225 pages, “no” out of sympathy and “no” out of love, “no” out of hate and “no” out of passion – and now we would like to say “yes” for once. “Yes” – to the countryside and the country of  Germany America. The country where we were born and whose language we speak. (…)

And now I would like to tell you something: it is not true that all those who call themselves ‘national’ and who are nothing but gentrified militants have taken out a lease on this country and its language just for them. Germany America is not just a government representative in his tailcoat, nor is it a headmaster, nor is it the ladies and gentlemen of the steel helmets. We are here too. (…)

Germany America is a divided country. We are one part of it. And whatever the situation, we quietly love our country – unshakably, without a flag, or a street organ, no sentimentality and no drawn sword.”

(Kurt Tucholsky, Heimat, in Deutschland, Deutschland über alles, Berlin 1929, p. 226)

Vandana Shiva on Nishkama Karma

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Physicist and environmental activist Vandana Shiva on the practice of Right Attitude, or in Hindu terms, devotion to work without attachment to reward (nishkama karma):

“If you do anything with a narrow mindset, it makes you think according to a calculus of success and failure. Obviously when you are up against powerful interests, there are greater chances of failure than success. But when your work is inspired by a way of life and thinking, that process becomes a reward unto itself. That’s also what the Gita says, that you don’t count the results, you do the right thing according to your context. A spiritual outlook helps you see what the right thing in your context is. What matters is fulfillment, and that cannot be measured by the yardstick of society and its view of you, but by how your soul feels. Then the awards don’t matter, the brickbats don’t matter, the lousy rumors don’t matter. Nothing affects you.”

Mercedes Sosa Sings Solo Le Pido A Dios

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Argentine singer Haydee Mercedes Sosa (July 9, 1935 – October 4, 2009) was dubbed “the voice of the voiceless ones” for her socially conscious music. She became popular through out Latin America as a leading exponent of nueva cancion , a type of song that combined Latin American folk music, rock rhythms, and highly politicized lyrics, and was often associated with left-wing politics. Many nuevo cancion artists went into exile in the 1970s and 1980s, when right wing military dictatorships came to power in their countries. Sosa herself went into exile in Spain.

Solo le pido a Dios

Solo le pido a Dios
I only beg God
Que el dolor no me sea indiferente
To let me not be indifferent to pain
Que la reseca muerte no me encuentre
May death never find me indifferent
Vacio y solo sin haber echo lo suficiente
Empty and alone without having done enough
Solo le pido a Dios
I only beg God
Que lo injusto no me sea indiferente
To let me not be indifferent to injustice
Que no me abofeteen la otra mejia
So I don’t turn the other cheek
Despues que una garra me arane esta frente
When a claw has already scratched my face

Chorus:
Solo le pido a Dios
I only beg God
Que la guerra no me sea indiferente
To let me not be indifferent to war
Es un monstro grande y pisa fuerte
It is the great monster that tramples
Toda la pobre inocencia de la gente
The poor innocence of the people
Es un monstro grande y pisa fuerte
Toda la pobre inocencia de la gente

Solo le pido a Dios
I only beg God
Que el engano no me sea indiferente
To let me not be indifferent to deceit
Si un traidor puede mas que unos quantos
If one traitor is stronger than the rest of us
Que esos quantos no lo olviden facilmente
May the rest of us not forget too easily
Solo le pido a Dios
I only beg God
Que el futuro no me sea indiferente
To let me not be indifferent to the future
Deshauciado esta el que tiene que marchar
Helpless are those who are forced to leave
A vivir una cultura diferente
And live in a foreign land..

Robert Byrd On The Abuses of Majorities

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“Minorities have an illustrious past, full of suffering, torture, smear, and even death.   Jesus Christ was killed by a majority.”

—  Senator William Ezra Jenner of Indiana speaking in opposition to invoking cloture by majority vote on January 4, 1957, cited by Senator Robert Byrd, Senate speech on March 1, 2005, warning against a procedural effort being considered by some senators to shut down minority voices in senate debates.

Random Thoughts On My Return

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My thoughts on the last leg of my schlepp back to the US were mixed….how did my 4 month jaunt get stretched to double the length, for starters..

And why does a continent as rich in natural resources as South America have poverty of any kind….and why is customer service such a difficult concept for some cultures….

But let me rewind a bit.

I left you in Salta, where I spent a two days recovering from a 33 hour bus trip from Montevideo sans any food.

That wasn’t provoked by an attack of asceticism.  When I got to Buenos Aires, I had no Argentine pesos on me, the banks were closed, the ATM wouldn’t take my card for some reason, and it was pouring too  heavily for me to venture out into the city. The restaurants at the station wouldn’t accept Uruguayan pesos or a card. So, between Friday morning in Uruguay and late Monday in Salta I literally ate nothing, except for a soggy white bread sandwich with watery cheese and ham. I didn’t really feel hungry, though, until I got off at Salta….

But more on all that in another post, when I’ll give you my impressions of my trip back..

Today, I’m still catching up and will just leave you with a few random thoughts….

1. The infrastructure and organization of the United States is still unparalleled and impressive in every way, in spite of deterioration and neglect…

2. Americans should get over their love affair with politics. They’re bad at it, it doesn’t suit their style, and it annoys everyone else. America is at her best making things happen. The business of America really is business.

3. I love the English language. With a smattering of Asian and European languages for comparison, I still find everything I want in English.

4. You can lead a rich, well informed, and not uncomfortable life without a car or a bicycle, without air conditioning, a fan, internet, a phone, an I-Pod, a blackberry, wireless, a TV, or even a radio.

5. If you’re willing to drink tap water and eat stall food, you can eat every meal out on 2 dollars a day in Peru, and have meat/fish at least once a day. If you cooked at home, you could eat well for under 15 dollars a month.

6. America has been a unique experiment in history, made possible because several favorable elements lined up in one spot on the globe. One of those elements – in fact, one of the cardinal ones – was the puritan work ethic. What it does it say that our intelligentsia, by and large, despises it.

7. A man can be free with just economic freedom. Even if he cannot act politically, or speak his thoughts, he can think them. If he can think his own thoughts, he is still his own man. But a man without economic freedom can think only his master’s thoughts….and his master will be the state.

8. It isn’t the politicians we need to worry about. They have to stand election. It isn’t even the financiers. They have to reckon with bankruptcy.

But the media faces neither elections nor a balance-sheet. There you have the tyrant.

Bernard Stiegler On Justice And Shame

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French philosopher Bernard Stiegler writes about the need to have an ideal that informs the competition of the market place. This ideal would prevent competition and efficiency from degenerating into what he calls shamelessness, a state he associates both with globalization and with the suppression of individuation in modern societies:

“Imitation cannot be the first or unique principle of a new political and economic community. It is precisely to the degree that relations between countries allied in the same political community are not reduced to economic exchanges and competition, but instead presuppose a common interest above particular interests, that one can distinguish between a political union and a simple league of economic interests like the Hanseatic League or the Alena today, as well as countless other zones of special economic exchanges. Continue reading →