lördag 30 maj 2015

KULTURELITEN VISAR VÄGEN

Myggans gång på rullgardinen



Den problematiska stratifieringen av västvärldens olika sociala manifestationer har genom idogt idunkade fått oss att tro att det finns en sektor, kultur, särskild och avskärmad från det mindre högstämda samhället i stort.


All övrig verksamhet betraktas följdriktigt som icke-kulturell utom då det gäller svensk folkdans eller utomlands föddas traditioner.


Bratt-Wittsröms förakt för och glädje över att få slippa en professur i Lund, där någon högutbildad karl djärvts säga emot henne, visar på det sofistikerade debattklimatet i vad som i Sveriges sorterar under finkultur. För oss andra kulturvetare, i detta fall som socialantropolog, är denna arrogans endast ett utslag av exempellös dumhet i en förmodat högre liga som vi frivilligt placerat personer som till exempel Bratt-Wittström i och som bland mindre kultiverat folk mest är känd för att snabbt sänka Feministiskt intiativ, F.I, tillsammans med den lika dikotoma och kroniskt upprörda Tiina Rosenberg genom genanta självhävdelsebehov som sina största meriter i det politiska uppbyggnadsarbetet.


Den norske ladykillern Knausgård, en självupptagen gigant, pekar på den svenska ”kultur”-debatten som om kultur vore något avskiljbart från resten av livet och hur, debattörerna synkront betraktar bland annat Knausgård ur ett mindre betagande unisont perspektiv. Fåfänga är inte honom främmande....trots hans stora lidande över att vara denna tidsålders (2 år numera) litterära Baron von Munchhausen...


Kultur som premierad elitism kan tillåta sig en smutskastning som överstiger det mesta i återkommande hjärnsläpp och extrem hämndlystnad, en god tradition sedan långt före Strindberg, om än inte på samma litterära nivå, och gör återkommande så eftersom dess självutnämnda utövare har en självuppfattning om sin betydelse och begåvning som med all tydlighet visar på det motsatta.


Har någon läst Bratt-Wittströms inledning till den enastående filosofen, psykoanalytikern och lingvisten Julia Kristevas ”Stabat Mater”? Kristeva njuter man av att läsa, Bratt-Wittström är i sitt omfattande förord en total kollaps av otydlighet, brist på förmåga att tydliggöra, visa vägen eller öka intresset. Risken är stor att boken förblir oläst om man läser Bratt-Wittströms själsdödande uppvisning i intellektuell onani.


Kvinnors jämställdhet och en realpolitisk feminism är ett måste. Alienerat navelskåderi i akt och mening att imponera på sina gelikar totalt ointressant för 99 procent av befolkningen, inklusive dem de påstår sig befria.


Skit i Bratt-Wittström, Knausgård och Gardell och börja städa ut unken könsdiskriminering där du står. Någon annan väg finns inte !


Du är lika mycket kultur (odling) som dem som anser sig ledande i en sektor som lever på statliga bidrag men i de allra finaste, elegantaste gustavianska salongerna där deras tidlösa och storartade tänkerier inramas i en för det höga ändamålet passande lika tidlösa interiör.


Douglas Modig



fredag 29 maj 2015

MOTHER´S DAY 2015


Maja-Lisa Modig




LOVE
Corinthians 13






Though I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, and have not love, I am become as sounding brass, or a tinkling cymbal


And though I have the gift of prophecy, and understand all mysteries, and all knowledge; and though I have all faith, so that I could remove mountains, and have not love, I am nothing.


And though I bestow all my goods to feed the poor, and though I give my body to be burned, and have not charity, it profiteth me nothing.


Love suffereth long, and is kind; love envieth not; love vaunteth not itself, is not puffed up,Doth not behave itself unseemly, seeketh not her own, is not easily provoked, thinketh no evil; Rejoiceth not in iniquity, but rejoiceth in the truth;Beareth all things, believeth all things, hopeth all things, endureth all things.


Love never faileth: but whether there be prophecies, they shall fail;whether there be tongues, they shall cease; whether there be knowledge, it shall vanish away.

For we know in part, and we prophesy in part. But when that which is perfect is come, then that which is in part shall be done away
.

When I was a child, I spake as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child: but when I became a man, I put away childish things For now we see through a glass, darkly;but then face to face: now I know in part; but then shall I know even as also I am known.

And now abideth faith, hope, love, these three; but the greatest of these is love



onsdag 8 april 2015

HOBBY MONSTERS: What have we become ?


 


HOBBY MONSTERS
Attitudes and Reality Checks


The massive Bellas Artes occupation with Dystopia, the evil and evasive opposite Nemesis of Utopia is a chilling exploitation of human fear, anxiety, emotional terror and the darkness of the soul. The manipulation of our minds is devious and passive aggressive because it rests on expertise knowledge and research in relation to human gullibility, flock mentality and social psychology which make us believe that we are supporting the "good", to conform and to walk arm in arm in the service of the common good while, in fact, it seems to lead us to a rapidly increasing mistrust, destruction and the collapse of normative decent mindsets in order to manipulate human interactions. Mindsets in plurals. There is no such thing as a one and only perfect set of norms.


The most evident dystopic subject matters have been the exploration of the borders between life and death. The vampire genre has been dominating the film production for two decades, seemingly harmless with erotic overtones, attractive protagonists with a stunning and overly aesthetic "The Vampire Chronicles", 1994, where the two top male movie stars, Tom Cruise and Brad Pitt engage in a vampire kiss and bite which enticed the audiences by the gay overtones, the contrast between beauty and decay, not seen since the Visconti adaptation of Mann´s "Death in Venice" in which the director totally or willingly misunderstood Mann´s message.


The financial recession after the eighties overspending had already made an impact on a global scale, which until now has not recovered. In dark and restless times the obsession with dark forces, black magic, frightening science fictive worlds or continuous tales about the end of the world reflects the collective mind to an increasing and alarming degree. We are scared by what is taking place in the real world.  The world heritage artifacts and sites are being demolished. Well, it has happened before. Alexander, called the Great, did not have his best day when he wiped out Persepolis. We, like prudent pseudo masochists, try to escape into nightmare world to console us that maybe it could have been worse. 


The extensive and obviously profitable production of art, drama, music, literature, television series, reality shows, films and a media depicting mutilated corpses and body parts, the obsessive focus on revenge and retribution in the absence of the divine, the Games of power and thrones with heroes and heroines more sadistic than Caligula, dominates infotainment and entertainment in ominous colors of black and blacker.


The dead do not rest, they do not go to Heaven, they linger on as zombies, werewolf's or unruly ghosts to plague the living and to teach children that death is worse than a living hell, a sensible and comforting thought for the young generation to grow familiar and used to.  Or not ?



A majority may be able to "cope with" the fictive disgustingly repulsive and grotesque. The neo-neo "social realism" of future worlds in perpetual terror scenarios are seducing since the parameters of socio-political current movements are mimicked to perfection to potentate a "credibility" which is difficult to reject as fictional nonsense and absurdities. Taking into regard the infinite brutality of the Jihadists actually going on on an everyday basis and the general brutalization of our societies even down to your neighborhood leaves us scared and confused. Do we even dare to consult a neighbor, who may think you are attacking and counterattacks even before any communication has been started ? How many children can be found incarcerated in the basement or body parts in the freezer of the local community may we expect?


The popular series with meticulously made up and styled morticians chatting over body parts and the cozy Midsummer Murders, with dark metaphysical overtones which by now are so many that no one can possibly survived the flabbergasting number of killings in a small British village may seem innocent and enjoyable but we are becoming desensitized to aggression, brutality and violence, enhanced by the televised news which gradually are pulling the camera lenses up the nostrils of butchered victims of warfare and terror.


The vampire hype deliberately has chosen the bold and the beautiful who have catapulted to a stunning celebrity status by non existing acting skills but with high cheekbones and perfect bodies. The neo-Gothic chic is mirrored in current fashion and the paintings by von Schiele looks like illustrations in a children s' book in comparison to what we find on museum walls or computer animations.



"War is Peace" and "Big Brother is Watching" from the Orwell "1984" futuristic horror vision was a deliberate absurdity which was meant for us to react and discuss before such scenarios could actually become a reality. The absurd slogans, however, have become politically true, whether it is called peace promotion or defense and, on a deep level, accepted in current times as well as a virtually non-existent resistance against the American Surveillance Order Reporting Act and British expansive surveillance network, inter alia. 


In Sweden it was discovered that the police force are registering all Romero ethnic individuals since 1880, using exactly the same categorizing codes as the Nazis. A two month old Romero infant, obviously, is still regarded as a subversive element in the Swedish society. Or why the registration ?? Just an embryo..An embryo to grow into what ??


Dystopia as "Weltanschaung" is silently creeping upon us, whether we are aware of it, or not. To read a tabloid, when it is not dealing with the gender transformation of a famous 64 year old US Olympic athlete or the burial arrangements of Zsa Zsa Gabor´s daughter, focuses on havocs, disasters, violence, massacres, murder and a gradually dying world because of toxic outlets, climatic anomalies and extensive contamination and the "Schadenfreude" (epicaricay, malice) when a politician or a decision maker is caught with the fingers in the raspberry jar or with the pants down seem to be the highest form of entertainment. The reason for why the elite allows itself to act immorally is seldom analyzed or addressed, unless they are found in Africa, the Middle East or Asia, since, without saying it out loud which would be politically incorrect, we still seem to regard everybody else, except for our self proclaimed center of civilization in the Occident, as inferior culturally and intellectually.


"God is dead" , except for murderous Jihadists, and general misery are the ruling conceptions in the most "enlightened" of all times where rationality and facts rule. We live in the most informative of all worlds and tell ourselves that rationality and reason are infallible entities and that we are the guardians.


Do we want be right or to be happy? Utopia has a negative connotation, meaning something impossible to achieve resting of gullibility and naivety. Is naivety a bliss? Naivety may be a spontaneous reaction still not manipulated to a stimuli which the child experiences most of the time before it is taught how to perceive the world. Right now we seem to be telling them that everything is going to hell and death is not a liberator.


Can you even imagine that there are people of a generation still alive, who between two devastating world wars went to the movies to see Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers or enjoy an overly chirpy Doris Day in "Pillow Talks" without ever taking off her knickers? What a bunch immature, naive idiots and wimps they must have been. Or ? Despite two world wars and a Korea disaster...


Am I a misogynist? No, a dystopic... Increasingly mistrusting.  Maybe more now when I no longer can work in conflicts and disaster areas.


But I refuse to bestow the domineering present mindset on a child. I am not willing to be that rational...Are there any alternatives ? Yes, of course !! Start to count your blessings and dare to teach the children that they exist ! Otherwise we will contribute to grow and foster generations of children headed for the psychiatric wards...



Douglas Modig



onsdag 1 april 2015

WHY ?



WHY?



I realize that life may be a nasty transport from birth to death. The lust for life, contrary to popular belief, is not a genetically programmed, fatalistic, predestined functional survival kit to all.  Some are disenchanted by life and living sad and emotionally drab lives without being mentally ill..

The latest findings in Epigenetics  with regards to the  DNA string reveals that it can grow new additional shots, turn on and off entities or information and that what we thought ere almost cloned one egg twins can be different even in the DNA set up from the very beginning or over time.


I find it hard that we, according to silly cliches such as misery and failure are but lessons to learn and what does not kill us makes us stronger are morally obliged to agree to such nonsense. I can assure you, according to my experience working with people in misery, that this possibly is a truth for some, the survivors, but to be candid a small percentage of us. I have seen too much of merciless inhuman abuse and oppression in my life, in times of war, but also in just about every place of work I have been employed in. Abusing power is not a monopoly of war lords and their accomplishes. Adults mobbing each other, backstabbing, negativism, falsity and God knows what else and in addition the omnipresent dishonesty, why even bother to try being decent when life seems to be an endless highway of losses, attacks, criticism, insult and merciless competition ? For what purpose? The survival of the fittest ? Al-Shabaab ? The small percentage of humans who own or control 98 % of the global assets ?  Isis ? The Medellin Cartel ? The expanding differences between those who have too much and those who have nothing ?




Do we graduate cum laude the more losses, illnesses, suffering, emotional and material poverty and abuse we have experienced without ending our lives ?


What is there to learn? Empathy? An altruistic love for our next? Well, we haven´t traveled very far since we chose to call us  Homo Sapiens. Empathy exists. So does altruism. According to the cynical evolutionists only because we can exploit temporary truce and to benefit from it without being caught with our fingers in Grandma´s Lingonberry jar..( Dawkin´s ”The Selfish Gene”, among others ).


We know that a person suffering a very traumatic life seldom develops a noble empathy but, to the contrary, a highly selfish bitterness and envy which seems perfectly reasonable. We do, however, not applaud the stricken´s egotistical behavior, since we simply never have been struck by such traumas of such granditude ourselves and have no idea of how the reactions may manifest themselves..And yes, we have experienced how people in poor  and destitute living conditions seem to be more prone to help each other, explained solely by ”The Selfish Gene”, according to the contemporary evolutionist Dawkins. No good hearts around no matter where we look if we are to believe our "scientists".


I find life a peculiar invention: to me it is a daily struggle because misery in all it´s variations from living in Darfur to a chateau in the Loire Valley accompanies us on our way to....  The degree of misery cannot be measured because it defies mathematics and is subjectively experienced and defined by each and everyone of us. Emotional suffering and grief are without borders whether in a UNHCR tent in Syria or in a Louis XVI imitation armchair in a Manhattan Penthouse . You mean I am in the wrong? How do we know ? Misery is misery although dressed for different occasions and in different conditions.


At Easter, as Christians, we celebrate the resurrection of the Son of God, who sacrifices his life for the good of the rest of us. Somehow I do not really interpret it in any other way than that we maybe not born lousy ( The Sins Of Our Fathers is a most peculiar conception)  but soon grow up to be sinners and evil. Why all this darkness, this suffering, this grief and misery ? Could not the emancipation of man to a good, friendly and loving being be handled otherwise than a Via Dolorosa and an agonizing death on a cross ? I accept it and revere Jesus unselfishness.. I do, however, not really understand it.  Why ??


Why is the history of man for as far back we can find any traces or evidence overshadowed by continuous horrors inflicted on our next ? Animals, with few exception, kill to eat. Not to torture, maim and to prolong suffering. Yes, felines play with their victims. Chimpanzees are vindictive, know how to ambush, attack and murder without hunger being the triggering off reason. But on the whole the animal world, even when using what we will call violence, has a sense of purpose which has directly with survival to do. The genocide of the Armenians, the Chimur, the Holocaust, the Toltecas and so many more had very little with survival to do. “Lebensraum”, a word with some substance after the peace treaty in Versailles, developed into something else.: the megalomaniac idea of a total Germanic Hegemony in a global Third Reich. That is beyond Lebensraum.




Happiness exists. Love flourishes. We know that some love never dies but transcends beyond life and to the beloved we have lost, who we dearly miss and who took part of us with them when they passed on. What is the purpose? Why all this love, affection, mercy and compassion when we ultimately must loose it as we walk the bumpy road of our lives? What is so intellectually and emotionally evolutionary with that ? I have a hard time finding man a particularly sophisticated species in this world.


For all of you who are equipping yourselves with the tiresome cliches of Richard Dawkins, take a breath! He will be a parenthesis in history and science. His deductions rest on analyzing the patterns of misery versus harmony but he has no idea as to why they are there to begin with: in order to be able to precise what is evolutionary wise or the wisdom of evolution, per se


And then what? What are his visions ? Is he just confirming what everyone alive has been able to confirm one way or another but maybe without putting it as eloquently into words and is his personal conflict with God, which has gone on for three decades of public interest any longer ? God is dead and Hawkins is alive. Dawkins will die and who will continue the fight of improving our lives be telling us that God is dead?


There are days I truly wish I do not learn anything at all. The wisdom obtained by unhappiness, grief, violence and failure does not impress me. I would, without hubris, like to have a discussion about why we are created to feel frightened, arrogant, grieving, deceived, feeling useless and confused, no matter our own explanation models and ideologies. Stripped down we are very alike whatever we chose to call us.

And, the paradox of feeling loved, cared for, safe, appreciated, important, loving beings with the capacity for unconditional love as our fellow species in flora and fauna. Yes, I dare say fauna. We know so, so little about that even if we are rapidly on our way to change the living conditions dangerously...


My Mother died at the age of 95 and I have no rational reason to miss her like crazy. Biologically she lived to a high age and was reasonably fit until the last year. Being trained to be rational in the Occidental sense it is regarded as highly irrational, immature and maybe even pathological to miss her so much nine years after her passing. The Swedish National Social Board has determined a specific, limited time for emotional grief and if you still continue you are regarded as psychologically ill and in need of chemicals prescribed by a psychiatrist, principally so that you can return to work and live up to the socio economical expectations in service for the good of society except for one small thing: there virtually are no jobs to be find in Scandinavia.


My Mother´s dead was followed by the passing on by the persons; family, relatives and friends, most dear to me. One per year. What lesson is to be learned? The forces of the Multiverse seem to have had a short circuit or a collapse in the vibrations. As in the case of all the ongoing atrocities globally with fratricide, unimaginable violence versus children and the most vulnerable in the name of whatever divinity or political ideology, floodings, droughts, epidemics and God knows what else.


Why?


Maybe because without it we would never had understood and genuinely felt what love is. Tough pedagogic...


Do I have any hopes left ? Yes ! Maybe that is what disturbs me. Or what makes us human...


Just a thought...


Douglas




fredag 27 mars 2015

SCIENCE AND MYTH


The Renaissance did not spring up in Italy
Myths of "scientific truths" 

On an arduous journey from Asia, over Asia Minor to the prominent scholastic centers of Damascus (Daman) and later Baghdad, Muslims and Eastern and Syriac Christian sages, inter alia, sampled and translated the most articulate scientific findings (as far as we know), innovative methodologies and philosophies of Classical Greece, translated and elaborated by Abu Nasr Al-Farabi (Alphardius) and Ibn Sina Also known as Avicenna the Persian philosopher and scientist known for his contributions to Aristotelian philosophy and medicine known popularly as "The Second Teacher", and spread it via North Africa or the Mediterranean Sea to the intellectual melting pot of Cordoba. Andalusia, Spain, where the foundation of El Renacimiento (The Renaissance) was laid by learned women and men from a variety of different ethnically backgrounds and creeds before it spread to the Italian peninsula which already had had numerous contacts with Muslim geniuses as the above-mentioned and even Chinese tradesmen and intellectuals with State of the Art Chinese science and inventions in city states or ports like Salerno/Napoli and Palermo in the Middle Ages and probably even before.

*Sicily, per se, was under heavy influence of the expanding Islam from the 900th century and onward. The road signs were written in Arabic as well as Latin during the Middle Ages and can still be found (*Marc Furstenberg).

Andalusia had been annexed and  incorporated in the Moorish empire, one of a succession of Islamic empires for a millennium, ending with the Ottoman collapse at the gates of Vienna. The Muslim Mosque affiliated scholastic institutions, later known as universities in Europe, which were copies of the Islamic Education Centers spread at major Arabic and Persian urban conglomerates, the most famous in Damascus and later Baghdad where Asian, Syriac and Muslim knowledge  were cross-fertilized and developed to an explosive potential, bound to travel in all directions and to Europe, among others.

Knowledge paired with Insight dos not just fall from of the sky at a certain place or in a certain era. Coincidence does play an important part when agents of information, later to be known as facts, per definition, will land on a risky ground because of no automatic following up or elaborating on the pieces by coincidence and social determinants. Manna may drop from heaven but everybody does not have a spoon. The time, mindset and preparedness must coincide with the otherwise insignificant entities of information and it will be ignored. The wheel was discovered in the pre-Columbian highly stratified societies but only used as a symbol of the metaphysical and never used as a means of transportation (!) in empires covering territories from Baja California to the Tierra del Fuego in the extreme south of Chile/Argentina.

The theory of diffusion, (Thor Heyerdahl with his balsa boat Ra was a famous advocate of the theory of Ethnographic Diffusion) however, cannot fully explain how an idea can spread all over the globe in historic times. We can see how astronomy at El Caracol in the Mayan Empire (Yucatán Peninsula, Mexico) had developed the science of astronomy to a level of sophistication that surpassed the rest of the world and with a higher degree of precision with regards to time, calendars and the movements of the planets without any contacts with the rest of the world.The European discoveries of the similar phenomenons differed over time and the whereabouts even if the sciences eventually came to more or less the same conclusions.

The theory of diffusion, however, does explain the spreading of what became known as the Renaissance, although we must observe the two movements resulting in the northern and the southern renaissance which differed substantially in creed, philosophy and implementation. This is often forgotten and normally the focus centers on Italy which distorts the phenomenon which developed by cross overs from the North and the Mediterranean.

We know that scholars in the Far East, the Middle East and Greece all knew that the earth was round and that it circled the sun and not the reverse thousands of years before it could be made public, without risking the scientists to be decapitated. A fact may house "objective" contents which, however, is of little importance if the cultural and social context has no preparedness to accept it or understand it. When I was a child the atom was considered the smallest ingredient of matter. 

We have come a long way from that conception during the last sixty years and an absolute "truth" has been revised in a large succession of discoveries which are ongoing.

Mr Hawkins "Selfish Gene" evolutionist credo is yesteryear´s news, a tragic-comical but recurrent phenomenon when it comes to the beliefs of "ultimate truths" which usually are discarded rapidly because of the speed of research made even faster by assistance of the IT technology and where telefacsimile technology seems like something from the Middle Ages... Most contemporary scientific giants die with the discomfort of having their findings dismissed...

Being a scientist is tough, simply because they have earned their elevated social position globally because of their capacity to prove hypotheses, often formulated by social and cultural needs in the social context they have been active, and by their labor to formulate theories which are interpreted by the non-scientific world as truths and reliable facts  in any constructive work or context, individual or collective, A number of famous scientists (so we have reason to believe believe) have passed on when their maxims have been dismissed and are spared the shame of being defamed or even accused for being liars and an anomaly to the civil or divine order. This gratification is rapidly becoming extinct and the idea of keeping a more apprehensive scrutiny of science by the public eye may even serve future scientific development.

As long as we are prepared to "believe" in science for a certain period of time, we can find a common platform from which we can cooperate in the social and scientific engineering, even if it means that every once in a while we have to find a new platform.

No society was ever built on collective doubt.

Just a thought

Douglas

Painting by Andrea Mantega: "Gonzaga Family"

onsdag 25 mars 2015

SURVIVING DEATH



Scientists Claim That Quantum Theory Proves Consciousness Moves To Another Universe At Death..
(A look at the Spirit Science and Metaphysics Magazine)

A book titled “Biocentrism: How Life and Consciousness Are the Keys to Understanding the Nature of the Universe“ has stirred up the Internet, because it contained a notion that life does not end when the body dies, and it can last forever. Beyond time and space. The author of this publication, scientist Dr. Robert Lanza who was voted the 3rd most important scientist alive by the NY Times, has no doubts that this is possible :



But not so long ago, the scientist became involved with physics, quantum mechanics and astrophysics. This explosive mixture has given birth to the new theory of biocentrism, which the professor has been preaching ever since.  Biocentrism teaches that life and consciousness are fundamental to the universe.  It is consciousness that creates the material universe, not the other way around.


Lanza points to the structure of the universe itself, and that the laws, forces, and constants of the universe appear to be fine-tuned for life, implying intelligence existed prior to matter.  He also claims that space and time are not objects or things, but rather tools of our animal understanding.  Lanza says that we carry space and time around with us “like turtles with shells.” meaning that when the shell comes off (space and time), we still exist.


The theory implies that death of consciousness simply does not exist.   It only exists as a thought because people identify themselves with their body. They believe that the body is going to perish, sooner or later, thinking their consciousness will disappear too.  If the body generates consciousness, then consciousness dies when the body dies.  


But if the body receives consciousness in the same way that a cable box receives satellite signals, then of course consciousness does not end at the death of the physical vehicle. In fact, consciousness exists outside of constraints of time and space. It is able to be anywhere: in the human body and outside of it. In other words, it is non-local in the same sense that quantum objects are non-local.


Lanza also believes that multiple universes can exist simultaneously.  In one universe, the body can be dead. And in another it continues to exist, absorbing consciousness which migrated into this universe.  This means that a dead person while traveling through the same tunnel ends up not in hell or in heaven, but in a similar world he or she once inhabited, but this time alive. And so on, infinitely.  It’s almost like a cosmic Russian doll afterlife effect.



Multiple worlds:


This hope-instilling, but extremely controversial theory by Lanza has many unwitting supporters, not just mere mortals who want to live forever, but also some well-known scientists. These are the physicists and astrophysicists who tend to agree with existence of parallel worlds and who suggest the possibility of multiple universes. Multiverse (multi-universes) is a so-called scientific concept, which they defend. They believe that no physical laws exist which would prohibit the existence of parallel worlds.


The first one was a science fiction writer H.G. Wells who proclaimed in 1895 in his story “The Door in the Wall”.  And after 62 years, this idea was developed by Dr. Hugh Everett in his graduate thesis at the Princeton University. It basically posits that at any given moment the universe divides into countless similar instances. And the next moment, these “newborn” universes split in a similar fashion. In some of these worlds you may be present: reading this article in one universe, or watching TV in another.


The triggering factor for these multiplying worlds is our actions, explained Everett. If we make some choices, instantly one universe splits into two with different versions of outcomes.


In the 1980s, Andrei Linde, scientist from the Lebedev’s Institute of physics, developed the theory of multiple universes. He is now a professor at Stanford University.  Linde explained: Space consists of many inflating spheres, which give rise to similar spheres, and those, in turn, produce spheres in even greater numbers, and so on to infinity. In the universe, they are spaced apart. They are not aware of each other’s existence. But they represent parts of the same physical universe.


The fact that our universe is not alone is supported by data received from the Planck space telescope. Using the data, scientists have created the most accurate map of the microwave background, the so-called cosmic relic background radiation, which has remained since the inception of our universe. They also found that the universe has a lot of dark recesses represented by some holes and extensive gaps.


Theoretical physicist Laura Mersini-Houghton from the North Carolina University with her colleagues argue: the anomalies of the microwave background exist due to the fact that our universe is influenced by other universes existing nearby. And holes and gaps are a direct result of attacks on us by neighboring universes.


Soul:


So, there is abundance of places or other universes where our soul could migrate after death, according to the theory of neo-biocentrism. But does the soul exist?  Is there any scientific theory of consciousness that could accommodate such a claim? According to Dr. Stuart Hameroff, a near-death experience happens when the quantum information that inhabits the nervous system leaves the body and dissipates into the universe.


Contrary to materialistic accounts of consciousness, Dr. Hameroff offers an alternative explanation of consciousness that can perhaps appeal to both the rational scientific mind and personal intuitions.


Consciousness resides, according to Stuart and British physicist Sir Roger Penrose, in the microtubules of the brain cells, which are the primary sites of quantum processing.  Upon death, this information is released from your body, meaning that your consciousness goes with it. They have argued that our experience of consciousness is the result of quantum gravity effects in these micro tubules, a theory which they dubbed orchestrated objective reduction (Orch-OR).Consciousness, or at least proto-consciousness is theorized by them to be a fundamental property of the universe, present even at the first moment of the universe during the Big Bang. “In one such scheme proto-conscious experience is a basic property of physical reality accessible to a quantum process associated with brain activity.”


Our souls are in fact constructed from the very fabric of the universe – and may have existed since the beginning of time. Our brains are just receivers and amplifiers for the proto-consciousness that is intrinsic to the fabric of space-time. So is there really a part of your consciousness that is non-material and will live on after the death of your physical body?


Dr Hameroff told the Science Channel’s Through the Wormhole documentary: “Let’s say the heart stops beating, the blood stops flowing, the microtubules lose their quantum state. The quantum information within the microtubules is not destroyed, it can’t be destroyed, it just distributes and dissipates to the universe at large”.  Robert Lanza would add here that not only does it exist in the universe, it exists perhaps in another universe.


If the patient is resuscitated, revived, this quantum information can go back into the microtubules and the patient says “I had a near death experience”‘


"He adds: “If they’re not revived, and the patient dies, it’s possible that this quantum information can exist outside the body, perhaps indefinitely, as a soul " 



This account of quantum consciousness explains things like near-death experiences, astral projection, out of body experiences, and even reincarnation without needing to appeal to religious ideology.  The energy of your consciousness potentially gets recycled back into a different body at some point, and in the mean time it exists outside of the physical body on some other level of reality, and possibly in another universe.



Sources:
http://www.learning-mind.com/quantum-theory-proves-that-consciousness-moves-to-another-universe-after-death/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biocentric_universe

 

 My dear Facebook friend Anthea Haupt found the article and I got just a thought...

Douglas


söndag 22 mars 2015

MARIHAM: THE REBELLIOUS VIRGIN






MARIHAM, THE REBELLIOUS VIRGIN





Much have been said about her son, but, apart from the primarily theocratic and secular convenience of a growing sanctification of Mariham, Mary, seemingly synchronized with the changing needs of the patriarchate, this most probably poorly educated rural woman of the insignificant village of Nazareth has made an astonishing journey from being a carpenter´s wife to become the Mother of God and, in one of the recent Vatican Concilium, been given the status of co-Saviour with her son, if I am not misinformed. 


The latter, if so is the case, is little less than revolutionary in Christendom. It may seem confusing, absurd and contradictory to Protestants or non-Catholics in general, leaving the Trinity “opened up”, developing a duo to replace the difficult dogma of a Trinity being a one.




I, am, however, neither a theologian or a philosopher and will not, due to my ignorance in these disciplines, look at Mariham from those perspectives:



I find Mariham of Nazareth as possibly the most interesting woman ever from a social anthropologist´s view point. She acted boldly, apart from her appearance in metaphysical contexts, as a stunningly stubborn woman and contrary to all social, religious and conductural orders in her time and habitat. 



Disregarding whatever opinion you hold of her, Mariham, later known as Miriam or Maria, became gradually, and long after she had passed on, the legendary and successively most holy virgin, immaculate but a human still, until she finally after almost two millennia was named “The Mother Of God”. 



This may cause further confusion unless you are concur with the idea that  “The Father, The Son and The Holy Spirit” are one. Somehow, I, personally cannot see Jesus from Nazareth as the son of God, if the previous statement is regarded as a dogma, but rather the incarnation of God in human flesh. Mariham thus symbolically can be understood as the mother of God. 


It is still an enigma how she survived her first-born son in the first place. We may have to tone down the importance of the modest flocks of followers of the crucified son and the activities of the first organized congregations in Jerusalem. The apostles still preached in the synagogues until they were chased away and, apart from believing in the sacrifice and resurrection of Jesus from Nazareth, may have kept their Jewish faith. The faith had been challenged and reformed many times before by the numerous prophets and holy women and men before Jesus. The faith, in addition, had been divided and consisted of many "branches" of different dogma and religious coloring's.



The sanctification of Mariham is not of importance to devoted Catholic believers only, but to historians, philosophers, gender science, sociology, social anthropology and cultural geography, to mention a few. It is nothing less than a sensational, if late, emancipation of the woman since her defamation as the responsible for the Fall From Grace, an idea which still is very much alive in all Abrahamic religions, with mythological  parallels in Nomad cosmology and practically a majority of global diverse cultures whether they ever heard of Eve´s temptation, or not. 



The concept of the woman as a treacherous walking sex grenade charged with explosive lust and lewd temptations who must be sternly controlled by men is spread all over the globe and for reasons which are so manifold they cannot be addressed here.



The concept that Mariham, being the biological mother of Jesus, also was to be regarded as holy were non-existent in her time. What is stunning, however, is that gender inequality and private possessions were prohibited in the earliest Judea-Christian congregations in Jerusalem and Judea and kept intact until the early followers of Jesus were forced into exile and to adapt to the strict patriarchates in the diaspora, be it in Greece or Rome and eventuality also in Syria where the earliest social-religious organization and normative mindsets were to be respected the longest.




Gradually this extraordinary woman, who most probably ended her days in the shadow of the enormous Artemis (Greek virgin goddess statue ) in Ephesus, the cosmopolitan center and a busy melting pot of creeds, ideologies, cultures and people of shifting ethnic origins became the Virgin Mother of all times. Mariham had been forcibly exiled from her native country a second time and the woman of modest means and education lived her last days in what could be compared to contemporary New York or any other mega city. The very idea of her physical journey is only overshadowed by her metaphysical one.



Mariham took, seen from an anthropological view, an extraordinary risk by her socially offensive behavior and may have been persecuted, not so much for being regarded as “guilty by association” with regards to her the crucified son, but for leaving her husband´s grave and homestead without permission, stepping out into the public room in a world where a respectable woman did not travel without a husband, a father, a son, a brother or a brother in law, a violation of etiquette which was reserved for women paupers, mad women or prostitutes. She came to enfathom the Judea Christian belief in the equality of the genders and the prohibition of private possessions, all in a provoking contrast to the Roman and Greek legislation, which governed her native country and was hardly immune from attacks from her habitual environment. Needless to say, the gender inequality was as deeply rooted in Hebrew-Abrahamic tradition which stemmed from Nomad tribal customs.



According to early traditions she followed her mazmer (lunatic, crazed) son although he hardly acknowledged her publicly except for at the wedding in Canaan. Could it be that Mariham left the children (her own or the children of Joseph) and the homestead in a society and culture organized in a patrilocal residence pattern like only a prostitute, a mad woman or a female prophet would dare to do, roaming the countryside as one of the many holy men and prophets who had been common in the region since the beginning of time ? She did. That was a remarkable decision seen from all perspectives.




Maria was virtually a nobody until the third century A.C. when the church fathers had erased all traces of what was regarded as deviant or false unorthodox evangelists such as Mary Magdalene, St Thomas and others and started to hint with venom that the Magdalene had been nothing but a common prostitute, which by no means is a scientific truth. 




Even so, it would have made no difference to Jesus as far as I can understand. Maria Magdalena´s prominent position in the first gender equal Judea-Christian congregations and as a preacher seems to have become a threat to the second generation Judea-Christian who gradually accepted the idea of celibacy for their rabbis (yes, they were still of Jewish but reformed faith) and succumb to the Greek and Roman Laws, robbing the woman of her equal status and reinforcing the gender differentiated right to private property until the 1920:s in Europe (still not fully accomplished), a continuous infected political challenge in most parts of the world, except for in egalitarian Hunters and Gatherers societies.




Man´s almost paramount need to be fully convinced of being the authentic  genitor of his offspring promoted a stern concept of an obligatory full scale cadre of chaste and obedient women, initially in the Nomad cultures but with a renaissance in turbulent times in urban and city state contexts. Thus, apparently, a gradually expanding idea grew paramount by pointing at Mariham, Maria, declared a *virgin when giving birth to Jesus as an example, thus regarded as the optimal representative of female virtues for all women to follow as far as reproductive biology would permit. Virgin births were not expected to become an epidemic..

  • (this idea has been common in almost every religion or cosmology on a global scale, no matter the time and or the location) 

    Gods, Greek, Assyrian, Persian, Indo Aryan in general and Pre Colombian semi-gods and heroes were, according to the myths, often born by virgin mothers which gave them a divine status already at birth. My interest is in Mariham, the Aramaic speaking woman of no means who dared to challenge a system which easily could have led to her execution, either by her relatives which by no means would have been regarded as offensive (honor related violence) or must probably the public. As previously mentioned, the patrilocal social order was not open to exceptions from the stern rules of the habitual residence pattern and no women were allowed to go astray or leave their husband´s family grave or homestead. Somehow she takes a first defiant step over the threshold and ends up as a holy Virgin and the Mother of God.

    The infected discussion regarding the brothers of Christ seem to preoccupy people and, this is a common fact, a cousin could be called a brother and an aunt a mother, as is common on the Horn of Africa today. There are many mistakes to be expected in the translations of the original gospels and the translations of the translations. We know that Jesus´ brothers (adelpho) were leaders of the first Judea-Christian congregations in Jerusalem and that tension may have occurred regarding the legacy between Saint Peter and James, Judas, Joseph and Simon, and last, but certainly not least, Maria Magdalena. This may trigger of a discussion regarding Mariham´s virginity which is not being addressed here. This is not a theological essay.

    Jesus´ emancipation, if not of his mother Mary, but of women in general ("All women are my Mother"), his socializing with fallen women in the eyes of his contemporaries and the fact that it is a woman who is the first to witness his resurrection are astonishing, whether you literally regard the words of the New Testament as God´s words or you reflect on how such ideas even could be put down in print in the following century. The idea is revolutionary, to say the least.

    The Evangelists were all brought up in a strict Patriarchy and it would be truly astonishing if they all lied in consensus about Christ´s apparent validating of women and to show it publicly for everyone to see. We may assume that Christ had far more than twelve apostles (messengers) but probably hundreds and many of them women who´d risked everything to walk beside him and daring to speak in front of strangers. 

  • We have to remember that it is the apostle Paulus, of Greek background and gender ideology, who demands the woman to be silent in the congregation, which reflects his background and has no apparent support in Jesus teachings. But we neither must forget that Jesus was of Jewish faith and that women seldom spoke in the synagogue unless they were regarded as prophets.



Jesus speaks sparingly of sin, whereas his followers seem totally occupied with the concept. A pattern of early domination and control is growing but not by referring to the actual sayings of Jesus. The institutionalization of Christendom, taking speed during the rule of the Roman emperor Constantine, transforms the spiritual movement to a state religion. The Jesus you meet at the Sermon of the Mountain is seemingly the most authentic since the famous sermon with it´s mild and compassionate content can be found in the gospels and scriptures that have been disqualified by the church fathers, despite that they are as old as the "accepted" ones.




Where did his perception of women stem from? Probably, to a degree, from his strong willed grandmother Anna and his mother Maria, Mariham. His love for his mother becomes obvious on the cross where he tries to comfort her by encouraging her to see his disciple John (Johannes) as her son. This ultimate token of affection leaves me humble. He demonstrates for the world to see that he is not only the son of God but also the son of Maria. 




Whether you see Mariham, Miriam, Maria, Mary, as a divine being, or not, it is hard to belittle her immense stamina and devotion. Not because of all the adornments and golden crowns in Christian Palatial churches but of her in-dependency, courage, rebellion and loyalty to her mazmer son and her preparedness to risk her life, her reputation and her social status in order to follow her conviction and first born son. 



The idea of a Supreme Being as a woman is commonly spread and Gaia ruled unchallenged until Zeus and Jupiter usurped her position. The preoccupation with gender is human. To let it be is divine.




Douglas Modig