Motley Kamuka

Bacchanalia comes to our attention in Livy, they have attempted to control spirituality by legislation. The use of rapture in ecstatic moments of spiritual connection is messy and runs afoul of the authorities. The Secret History and Midsommar (2019) portray it as a deadly cult, maybe just paganism, not the cult on rapture. I'd like to open up a list of parties that have run afoul of the law: Over 80 people arrested following block party in Wisconsin, one officer injured ( Madison, Wisconsin )

It's been 85 years since Nazis packed Madison Square Garden ( source ), in the last public event where it was acceptable to have such views in public.  73 million Americans voted for Trump in the last election, knowing what they know about him three and a half years ago. I have a strong will to live, and when I first heard about the death instinct, I thought it was a bit weird, but as I get older, I see it more and more in the body politic, and in myself. With this governor who killed a dog because it just wasn't working out as a hunting dog ( source ). Some people are in love with the Sophie's Choices in life, where you get to kill something in a "hard decision." It's like Ivanka making his son conquer his fears by going out on his tricycle in the rain during a hurricane. They're afraid that charishing being afraid will become a way of being. I couldn't get through George Will's articulation of his conservative instinct because it absolutely can&#

Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712–1778) was born in Geneva, and eventually ends up in Paris. His mother died 10 later of complications of his birth, and his father was a watchmaker. When his father challenged a man to duel, and the man saw his father as an inferior, he fled to avoid jail and Rousseau was sent to poor relatives. He ends up being taken in by a Madame de Warens who would become his lover. He is a secretary to a diplomat in Venice, where he's repulsed by Zulietta's misshapen nipple, and then in Paris he's attached to Theresa Levasseur . Some make his uneasy relationships and his unpopularity begin in relationships. He sees civilization as corrupting, and wants to bring back in emotions when rationality was being trumpeted. He helped transition from the renaissance to the enlightenment , two huge thought movements of europe. He united people against him, and did not see society as progressing. His going against the prevailing winds made him appreciated in Paris inte

With Kant's 300th birthday coming up on April 22nd, I'm seeing a lot of "why study philosophy articles", and frankly I find offensive to even take that tack. To me it's not in question and I'd argue 99% of our misguidedness comes from lack of philosophical vision, why we're in a climate crisis, why there's so much othering, prejudice and oppression.  I went to look for the examples I've seen recently and wow, there's a lot of articles that say "philosophy" in the title on the internet, I take it back, hardly a trend if I've seen two of them that I can't find now. They still don't know how consciousness works. And then Daniel Dennett died. I read Darwin's Dangerous Idea , and went to work and asked if people were evolutionists or creationist. At the time I worked at a special education school. The book made it clear to me that you couldn't be both, that evolution erases the creation narrative of Christianity that

48 year old Poet Laureate Ada Limon is the first Latina Poet Laureate.   A Name   When Eve walked among the animals and named them— nightingale, red-shouldered hawk, fiddler crab, fallow deer— I wonder if she ever wanted them to speak back, looked into their wide wonderful eyes and whispered, Name me, name me . The Leash After the birthing of bombs of forks and fear the frantic automatic weapons unleashed, the spray of bullets into a crowd holding hands, that brute sky opening in a slate metal maw that swallows only the unsayable in each of us, what’s left? Even the hidden nowhere river is poisoned orange and acidic by a coal mine. How can you not fear humanity, want to lick the creek bottom dry, to suck the deadly water up into your own lungs, like venom? Reader, I want to say: Don’t die. Even when silvery fish after fish comes back belly up, and the country plummets into a crepitating crater of hatred, isn’t there still something singing? The truth is: I don’t know. But sometimes, I

I started a female painters post, and it's grown as I keep finding new female painters. I'm going to start a interesting cultural practices with videos post. Rail against the internet for all the bad takes and trolling you like, the spread of information is revolutionary. One of my brain files is culture. Now I also have a post I can grow. Caretagem in Bahia Brazil. Video on Reddit . Found an article which Google translates for us. It also contains links with video to YouTube . Supposedly the center of this ritual is Sao Domingos . Which is the site of a famous TV show from 1985, Grande Sertão Veredas. It is based on a novel . It is also called Caretada. Supposedly the rituals are mostly carried out by black men. "In the choreography rite, there are 40 elements distributed among 20 ladies (men in drag) and 20 gentlemen. Women do not participate, as they are the ones who prepare the food and drinks to welcome the caretas into the houses, where people eat and drink freely

According to TBBT (The Big Gang Theory), thinking about Young Sheldon: Missy is a hostess at a Fuddruckers. Mary still buys Sheldon his clothes. Mary had Sheldon in a Costco??? George wrestled an alligator for some licorice? Sheldon had a family dog?! Sheldon joked about the house being on cinder blocks, but that's not true.  Episode 1:15 has Missy of the future in it, but there's not a lot of continuity questions. She does say she put a dog down because it sounded like Koothrappali, but that sounds like a joke.  Sheldon's mother visit when he's rude to the chair and gets fired. And again later. Sheldon goes back to Texas and goes back home quickly. 4:14 Sheldon writes a play where Mary tells George to put down a pepsi can with bourbon in it, and the whole show he just drinks beer. In 4:20 he says archery video game gives him memories of his father teaching him archery and the smell of bourbon.  It's in 4:20 that he says when his parents break up his mother dives mo

I'm watching more shows on streaming services that have commercials. Most of the time I mute the volume to limit their impact on my mind.  There's this one commercial I find interesting. They're announcing a new candy, and everyone goes crazy, they're afraid they both can't get enough of the new kind and that they won't be able to find the old kind. People jump out windows, put their heads into the wall, and generally go bananas. It's like reading social media. That's how people over react on social media. I mean it's OK to express yourself, and all, but it turns out most people's takes on things isn't that helpful or positive or insightful at times. In olden times people just wouldn't say anything. Now it seems they're mostly strongly expressed over reactions. Like the commercial.  One interesting commercial out of hundreds and hundreds that are just trying to impress their product and name on your consciousness. I really find commer

E.M. Forster suggested that you have to choose between plot and character development. Michaelides chooses plot, but he plays with an unreliable narrator's various versions of himself in the plot of this novel The Fury . The narrator is knowing about narration in a way he probably wouldn't be, and is a stand in for the author.  I've watched Inside Job a few times on Netflix, and there's a section where Reagan Ridley chooses to not leave the shadow government for love, she wipes the mind of someone else who works for a shadow organization and she loves him, but she doesn't join him in the memory wiped future.  Eliot in The Fury tries to imagine himself into a different future, but he can't pull it off. I think a lot about Woody Allen's Crimes and Misdemeanors (1989). It's the movie he writes after he marries his son's sister. He's trying to provide a narrative where someone gets away with things. He recently put out his 50th movie, and there'

  One of the hindrances I have while meditating is a todo list. A subset is what to read. I'm reading Bakewell's fun romp through existentialism, and that will be due back to the library eventually. I like the time limit on library books, when you buy, you can just pile them up. I suddenly got the idea of doing a cross breed of Confederacy of Dunces and the Odyssey , and then I thought I should read Ulysses . So many Dharma books to read. Tibetan, Theravada, Mahayana. I come up with an ideal reading list based on what I know at the moment, for others. Then I think, just grind on the Pali canon. So much amazing stuff there. The Buddha once told some monks to meditate on the loathsomeness of the body and they committed suicide. Opse. In his mortification phase, before he found the middle way with meditation, he ate his own shit, animal shit. Yesh. Mostly it's repetitive formulas meant for memorizing. I am grateful to the tradition for carrying the teachings forward. I have a

I'm reading Sarah Bakewell's book At The Existentialist Cafe, on the existentialists Jean Paul Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir . More about the culture and narratives surrounding them, like apricot cocktails and listened to  Claude Luter  and Boris Vian  who died of a heart attack at 39 upset about an interpretation of his novel, and Juliette Greco  who had straight long "existential hair", drowned victim look. Sartre and de Beauvoir had an open relationship and Sartre used to entice women up to his room with promise of some Camembert cheese. The book is a gloss of many people, but it's a fun light overview that includes Soren Kierkegaard , Friedrich Nietzsche , and the phenomenologists, Edmund Husserl ,  Maurice Merleau-Ponty . It's a real sort of surf over very deep, complex and abstract ideas. I was trying to think of something that represented Sartre's freedom ideas in modern culture, and I came up with I'm ready from the Star Trek musical episode,