Good morning All -
Just after we competed the Jung, Alchemy + The Tree of Life, I found this image [it found me] and I was going to submit it into our Post-Webinar discussions there, however, upon attending the 2nd Panel Discussion and first read of this story, and if we consider, I have had a lack of interest in political and religious arguments [not my area of passion]; I am trying to find areas where I may be able to contribute to the board panel discussions in a meaningful way - now.
Therefore, I will go into the body of this story to see if I can capture the gist of this man's "political narrative fiction" that streams across the sands of time and check out the influence of his work and what happened to him as a result of this work.
Today in conversing with Eva, I thought [can be deceptive], she had said to us that we would start to see the "tree everywhere." and correctly posed that it is the "stone" we begin to see everywhere. Eva commented that this Utopia image comes from the same time-frame as the Tree-of-life image.
I will get distracted into the "stones" realm that have manifested in my life, but will add that the Philosopher's Stone was unknown to me [never heard those words expressed together before until I took TRB course]. Perhaps men and women gaze upon and search for different stones.
Must leave stones behind for now and focus my attention to the details contained in this piece of work and my task at hand for it may be helpful within this group.
If you want to read this story it's on: http://www.Utopia (story) - Wikipedia
True to form, a song comes to heart/mind: "Barnacle Bill the Sailor."
Happy Father's Day to all the Dad's out there. My Dad sang this song to me in my tender years! Warm, fuzzy memories. It's summer solstice and Charleston is having a "love fest" for healing of grief today! Peace + Love Linda
Replies
JULY 1, 2015 – More Utopian Images + Stories:
I found a painting that predates More’s image and looks utopian:
Hieronymus Bosch [1450 – 1516] painter’s most famous works is The Garden of Earthly Delights. Art historians have added a further dimension again to the subject of ambiguity in Bosch’s work. They emphasized his ironic tendencies, which are fairly obvious, for example, in The Garden of Earthly Delights, both in the central panel (delights), [21] and the right panel (hell). [22] By adding irony to his morality arenas, Bosch offers the option of detachment, both from the real world and from the painted fantasy world. By doing so he could gain acceptance among both conservative and progressive viewers. Perhaps it was just this ambiguity that enabled the survival of a considerable part of this provocative work through five centuries of religious and political upheaval.
A utopia (/juːˈtoʊpiə/ yoo-toh-pee-ə) is a community or society possessing highly desirable or near perfect qualities. The word was coined by Sir Thomas More in Greek for his 1516 book Utopia (in Latin), describing a fictional island society in the Atlantic Ocean. The term means “no place – the perfect place.” Utopia has been used to describe both intentional communities that attempt to create an ideal society, and imagined societies portrayed in paintings, fiction books, maps, comics, fantasy games, TV series and movies.
In 1516, two utopian images emerged; Thomas Moore’s book and Abraham Ortelius map.
At first glance, More’s island image looked like a side view of a head-in/arising-out of a body of water supported at the base by an early explorer’s ship [the neck]. At the top of the ship’s mast, a tower emerges midline through an internal structure [inner circle] that looks like a cerebral hemisphere [intelligence, power dynamic]. This tower image is seen as spine/nerve center [rulers/Lords] of the peasants who work the land. The phrase “sticking one’s neck out” or “into other people’s business” comes to mind.
At the top/crown of the cerebral cortex is the image of a palace symbolic of royalty, aristocracy, owner, ruler of the land, and head of state [Lords/tower on the left and doctrine/church on the right].
I also found a good article by The Red Phoenix that helped me understand Engle, Socialism responding to the inquiry if socialism Utopian:
theredphoenixapl.org/2011/11/30/myths-about-socialism-is-socialism-utopian/
http://lostpedia.wikia.com/wiki/Barracks
Lomaland was a Theosophical community located in Point Loma in San Diego, California from 1900 to 1942. Theosophical Society leader Katherine Tingley founded it in 1900 as a school, cultural center, and residential facility for her followers. The American headquarters of the Theosophical Society Pasadena was also situated there. The facility was important to the growing city of San Diego for its cultural offerings, and it left a lasting legacy in its campus (now Point Loma Nazarene University), which still retains many of the unique architectural features of the original Lomaland. The residents of Lomaland also transformed their Point Loma neighborhood by planting so many trees, orchards and shrubs that the formerly barren neighborhood is now known as the "Wooded Area".
This is the 2011 image of The Venus Project designed by architect Jacques Fresco.
The game, Bioshock: Underwater Utopian City - Rapture Utopia or Seasteading predicted by 2130.
Peace + Love Linda
My sincere attempt to keep relevant comments within the right post/discussion spaces:
I am taking the liberty of copying Aleksandar's comments in our Dinner + Depth space here for the content is more relevant here for he mentions hippies [communes], murder war-torn societies - Iraq, Syria, or Eastern Ukraine, muslim [an adherent to Islam], leaders and our messed up societies/world Yahoo link:
Comment by Aleksandar Malecic 22 hours ago
It's likely (I might be wrong) that I'm knocking on an open door with this one (I've heard that the folks from the Marin County are the next level of hippies). I shall not talk about it into the microphone, but I still want to dedicate my attendance to a fellow human being who will be murdered (imagination gone astray) today in Iraq, Syria, or Eastern Ukraine. A Sunni Muslim is my brother regardless of what some "leader" thinks about it. I won't be with him when that happens, but it doesn't mean that it doesn't matter to me.
Before I vomit, I'll finish this comment with a link (profanity alert): https://uk.answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20120122120436AA7kwIx
I now need to copy my response back to him in this space....
Comment by Linda AK Thompson, PhD 53 minutes ago Delete Comment
Aleksander "knocking on open doors...folks in Marin County next level of hippies???...dedicate your attendance [in this healing metaphoric spiritual event]...to a fellow human being who will be murdered???...sharing your nausea???...and closing with a link about the "f" mess of the world??? - which particular post and how does this link relate to this event right now?
By not being able to simply be in those experiential moments with us and perhaps commented about your thoughts and feelings listening to that content revealed... and in light of your post-event comments; I'm now totally frustrated with your off-topic contaminating comments detracting from attempts to share deeply in Kim's offering, precious + limited time event, holding places + creating non-locality...sacred...utilizing healing metaphors into healing spaces.
This saddens me, Linda
Concerning your comment yesterday regarding "adorable" what does that mean? All I was doing was a research search on socialism + Utopia and Engels came up + was paired with Marx in this Google search, so I shared that bit of information into the mix...
Then, Aleksandar you brought up Libertarianism which I also know nothing about, so I Goggle searched that and my-oh-my - this was revealing, very complex and someone would need to provide a brief on this to help us all along, but alas...it will not be me.
I want to thank the membership for reading and comments. My goals of looking into my ancestors peasant lifestyle utilizing the 1416 Utopian ideals of More's for the New World [of his time] is now satisfied and I understand so much more about my great-great grandparents through the researching of Aleksandar's contribution of the monk - Joachim of Fiore [an interesting story]
and he led me to his college, Gerardo of Borgo San Donnino, the Granada surrender which got even more interesting connecting to
Columbus-the-franciscan
I'll write here as a reply. I would be pointless to start every sentence with “It seems to me that”. GST will be in a separate comment.
Libertarians are some kind of Anarchists on the right side (it actually depends on how we think that people without imposed rules would behave) of the political spectrum who believe in free enterprise without any need to pay taxes. Its narrative (I love the fact that this word is used here in the title) is that doing business and getting rich is the very definition of success – good old days of Henry Ford or some other capitalist, but this time totally without taxes and hence better (according to them). The catch is that rich people aren't those who are concerned about education, the environment (including air, water, and food – no economic theory describes our need to breathe, drink, and eat), good manners, or for instance kill and die in wars. It seems to that very often not being a nice person is the fastest way to get rich (have money to buy stuff, property, and power). The best business opportunity is to produce weapons (and force someone else to use them) or less than nothing (loans).
Talking about Socialism or Communism as something potentially good is "adorable" to me because of the Berlin Wall, Iron Curtain, Wartburg (Are you familiar with those cars? The older generation still on roads 20 years ago was terrible – terrible when compared to something else.) vs. Mercedes and such. It's a totally opposite take on "ideal society" than what Libertarians suggest. It's bureaucratic, it's clumsy, it often discourages creativity. The last but not least, it's atheistic. It takes away spirit and ("scientifically") reduces humans to machines. But it's just, in a way.
So, which one is better or less bad? That’s a place for narratives about issues such as success (rich and seen on TV vs. something else), ownership, and honesty (or an imprisoned politician, an interesting twist in a narrative). And what is interesting or important. That’s where we collectively deliver or fail to deliver.
Degrowth is the idea of voluntary reduction of economy or preparation for an inevitable (?) economic or environmental crisis. For instance, less money would also mean less consumption of energy and natural sources. People don't always fill swimming pools with water in the midst of a drought or buy private jets because they desperately need them, but because they (even worse – other people) can afford them. They can afford them not just because they are great or because they work hard, but because they live in a strong (and growing) national economy. The concept of sustainable development for instance sometimes includes some imaginary sustainable economic growth.
On that guy from the Middle East who won't wake up anymore – There is an uglier and a nicer version of this comment. I’ll use the nicer one. Colonialism, the assassination of the elected president of Iran followed by a revolution two decades later, the attack to Iran from Iraq supported by the USA (united in war crimes, but only the Arab was hanged), and everything that happened later weren’t just some random events, but milestones to chaos and violence. Canada and the USA would be fighting each other right now if a similar series of events happened to them. Also, we resemble apes much more than we want to believe, easily accepting suggestions to commit violence if someone hierarchically above us (a mighty politician or whatever we see as mighty, especially if we’ve seen it on TV) tells us to start hating and hurting each other. “Founding fathers” of nations were often (Always?) the biggest and most arrogant bullies. But, does that mean that my son or grandson will, totally out of my control, kill a “bad guy” randomly chosen from an office of someone who causes trouble but doesn’t participate, doesn’t come with his son to join the troops?
Even with all that, I try not to be too much frustrated, to visualize corruption or human bodies being maimed on a daily basis (or in a past close enough that those guilty walk freely). I'm doing my best to stretch my understanding of ethics a little bit, to talk and interact even with those who misbehave when I find it necessary. I don't see much point in disagreement with random people if it makes more damage and further disagreement rather than anything good. I could write more here, but this comment is already too long (hence I'll write one more paragraph :-)).
Actually, it’s a link. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antoine_Lavoisier#Final_days_and_exec... – Antoine Lavoisier: Final days and execution
There are many people doing all kinds of stuff and publishing books and articles. It's very difficult to tell the difference between a new insight and distraction (and that's what this comment is about - about many potential hints and insights, but also distractions). In that sense, one of presentations on that ISSS Conference mentioned in my previous comment will be about traditional Chinese medicine and Anthropocene. There will be some other presentations that on the first sight look like pseudoscience, although it doesn't mean that it necessarily is the case. Some participants and their colleagues are serious scientists and engineers working with systems. There is also a vision by INCOSE, another organization friendly to ISSS, with the vision (the year 2025) of more efficient and robust (both stable and flexible - the jury is still out whether it makes sense; it doesn't mean that it can or will happen) systems engineering. David Rousseau (mentioned in my previous comments) will discuss about his manifesto on transcidiplinarity and an assumption of the General System(s) Theory, the ultimate pattern that seems to exist (feedback, synergy, emergence in different systems). There were many attempts to do that and they are interesting and useful for inner work and meditation, even for the outside realm, but seemingly fail to be the ultimate one. A useful pattern doesn't have to be the ultimate, some of them can be good enough for interaction between people, technologies, engineering, and ideas exactly because they aren't the most fundamental one (whatever that is).
My candidate (too deranged for its own good) for the ultimate pattern and the background story is here: http://communityalchemy.com/eWorkshop1/Will.pdf. Here http://www.igi-global.com/book/rethinking-machine-ethics-age-ubiqui... is the chapter (the last one) written by me with the same central idea (but not the only) from the table. It was inspired by Jung and Pauli's work on synchronicity, meaning that my entry in that "research" was from a strange side. As I had read John Kinneman's (the new president of ISSS) paper on Robert Rosen (a previous president of ISSS; anticipation; the reason why I was reading that Kinneman's paper) and Aristotle's four causes, I decided to include Aristotle in the table. After that, a DPA member Kent Palmer recommended to me Terrence Deacon's book Incomplete Nature (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Incomplete_Nature). Alicia Juarrero's both book and article Dynamics in Action (available online for free; the same title but the content isn't identical) is very similar to Deacon's work, so much that she has accused him for plagiarism. That's a shame because Deacon's work seems to be potentially bigger for some future people with better understanding. In that sense, even if my Jung-Deacon-Aristotle-Rosen-... connection is wrong, it has nothing to do with brilliance and future recognition of each individual.
To quote Linda: "for us, we may die without knowing the personal side of the man and the gist of your knowledge base and promise for future contributions to help stabilize societies across the globe" - That's a very serious potential distraction. There is a difference between being weird and relevant. Both of those texts I've written are outcomes of very disjointed (to the point that sometimes I can't believe what I've written) playing with imagination.
It's a huge topic with all kinds of potential (god or bad) directions.
JULY 28, 2015 – ESCAPE to UTOPIAN PLACES + SPACES:
My offering to DPA Panel Discussion working with the image, idea and dream of Thomas More’s 1416 fictional island of Utopia and bring us to our present-day attempts to build the perfect urban ecosystem.
This has been quite the journey researching this topic for the past 2 months trying to remain focused but open to whatever came my way, helpful or detracting, for both are necessary and important when one is chasing [elusive] dreams.
Today, I arrived at a sharing place [thanks to members feedback; invaluable Goggle search engine], and can offer some depth about perfect societies that have eluded us, but not stopped seekers from trying. Given that perfection is impossible, below is the list of the top 9 Utopia – self-sustaining communities posted Carolyn Gregoire of the Huffington Post:
THE FARM, Lewis County, Tennessee [1971] – America’s oldest hippie commune. A vegetarian intentional community founded by a group of flower children and free-thinkers of San Francisco who blazed a trail settling in rural Tennessee and live by core values of nonviolence and respect for the environment.
GREEN BANK, West Virginia a safe haven, small town where electrosensitives escape from the digital world in the USA National Radio Quiet Zone where electromagnetic radiation is banned, hence not disturb the National Radio Astronomy Observatory.
ARCOSANTIA, Arizona [1970’s] a desert collaboration in creating and selling signature products – ceramic and bronze wind bells. The community is living out Paolo Soleri’s idea of arcology – architecture fused with ecology.
FINCA BELLAVISTA, Costa Rica [2006] is a sustainable treehouse community of laid-back, environmentally conscious American expatriates located deep in the rainforest to live a simplier lifestyle, very green and off the grid.
TWIN OAKS Virginia [1967] is an intentional community consisting of group houses, gathering area, swimming hole, graveyared, soy production facility, several greenhouses, etc. and is famous for its tofu.
NEW SONGDO CITY, Korea [2015] is an ambitious futuristic project on Icheon Bay for a highly environmentally friendly city with full technological integration of everything computerized and on a network so there is no need for laptops or BlackBerry.
YOGAVILLE, Buckingham, Virginia is an Ashram community of like-minded people from diverse backgrounds who live as one family, helping each other live a holistic, yogic lifestyle of peace.
THE ECOVILLAGE at Ithaca, New York [1996] is a sustainable intentional community and education center of alternative suburban life providing satisfying, healthy, socially rich lifestyle with minimal ecological impact in co-housing neighborhoods, community gardens and organic farms.
POLESTAR Yoga Community, Big Island, Hawaii has a small core of permanent residents that welcomes guests to visit and stay to enjoy their cooperative yoga and meditation community that was founded on the 1946 spiritual teaching of Paramhansa Yogananda. There is a yoga temple, spiritual library, orchards and organic gardens. The environment is strong for spiritual transformation while living core values of selfless service and essential purpose of “deepening the spirit.”
THE PERFECT UTOPIAN SOCIETY:
https://youtu.be/Fgs5Hobm2EY
SOCIALISM: UTOPIAN + SCIENTIFIC [SEPTEMBER 2011]:
The purpose of this video is to give a straight forward and plain English explanation of the essay "Socialism: Utopian and Scientific" by Frederick Engels, a German social scientist, author, political theorist, philosopher, and father of Marxist theory, together with Karl Marx.
https://youtu.be/kWK-PM2gE9U
The ISSUES with SOCIETY and HOW IT KEEPS US FROM HUMAN EVOLUTION:
https://youtu.be/7nt2si-9YW4
Hope you enjoy my search, finds concerning Utopia…
Peace + Love Linda
Isn't it just adorable - Marx and Engels in a discussion on "ideal" society? I'll spend some time studying that comment.
Libertarianism is also an interesting interpretation totally opposite to Marxism, an attempt to establish and strengthen the "good old days" of free market (something that has never existed in thriving economies), but this time without any taxes. These folks are lately the loudest opponents to wars.
That David Rousseau will have a few speeches here: https://isss2015.sched.org/ He will talk about systems philosophy (systems science) and systems engineering. Also, he and his colleagues will discuss about their Manifesto for General Systems Transdisciplinarity). Also, as they (International Society for the Systems Sciences) vote for the next president two years in advance, they already know (and I'm too lazy to ask) whether he or Ockie Bosch (a "knowledge hub" http://think2impact.org/) is their president for 2017. Rousseau will speak in front of INCOSE (International Council of Systems Engineering), a group of engineers very close to what one might call the establishment. It's an interesting mixture of people and ideas going on within and around ISSS and INCOSE (this is a shorter version of the whole story; it still doesn't mean that they'll contribute to something interesting), especially because ISSS will be discussing (August 1 - August 7) on topics including for instance degrowth (a very dirty and frightening word) and some stuff that sounds like pseudoscience (pseudo or not, it's still open-minded).
Hi Aleksandar - the last paragraph no doubt has deeper meaning for you as you are certainly more versed and knowledgeable on "Rousseau + their Manifesto for GST [interesting also a tax], knowledge hubs...mix of people + ideas" that are Greek to me [little joke here], "degrowth" [a new word for degrade, degenerative, debilitating, deforestation??] and other unrevealed but open-minded pseudoscience???
Wish you would share more details from your world of research and interest for us GST dummies which some of us might be able to grasp...but alas...we would need to purchase your research article...I would love to but I am a senior on a fixed income...so if you do not reveal some understandable details - free - for us, we may die without knowing the personal side of the man and the gist of your knowledge base and promise for future contributions to help stabilize societies across the globe.
I do wish you much success and prosperity. Peace + Love Linda
Greetings, Linda,
I am just now beginning to catch up on what has been posted here within this group. I wish to look up this story and respond later.
Thank you for taking the time to share this along with the image.
Sharon
Good evening Sharon - so good to have you join this discussion which I still believe has an important image and story, perhaps even pearls of wisdom that need to be brought into the here-and-now. I look forward to your reply. Peace + Love Linda
-
1
-
2
-
3
-
4
-
5
of 5 Next