art

Responsibility in the Moral Imagination

francesca_paola_1280

We read of the smile, desired of lips long-thwarted,

        Such smile, by such a lover kissed away,

        He that may never more from me be parted

Trembling all over, kissed my mouth. I say

        That book was Galleot, Galleot the complying

        Ribald who wrote; we read no more that day.”

Dante Alighieri, Inferno, V, ll. 73-142

In Dante’s Inferno, we are greeted with a vignette as familiar to the English writer as Romeo and Juliet – predating it by centuries, the tale of Francesca and Paola. Based on actual events, these are two souls trapped in the depths of hell because of the sin of lust. While the interpretations of Dante regarding hell don’t match wholly those of the Orthodox, the Inferno is often less about theological questions (which are the framework for the series of vignettes) and more about the meaning behind the scenes it permits to be disclosed.

The significance of this scene, like all of those in hell, is less about whether such persons would be condemned (we actually do not know the answer in most cases) but the fact that something gravely wrong, judged by almost any standard conceivable, occurred. Being trapped in hell gives Dante the chance to meet those responsible and ask what error brought them there. In a framework where these tragedies and errors were rendered meaningless or immediately forgotten, there would be no basis for remembering them and letting them stand as witnesses against such behavior. Consider that though the Buddhist would be trying not to be caught up in such things either, would the man reincarnated as a cockroach remember to tell of how he became something worthy of being trodden underfoot?

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Conceptual Anarchy in Hinduism

“9.334. But to serve Brahmanas (who are) learned in the Vedas, householders, and famous (for virtue) is the highest duty of a Sudra, which leads to beatitude.” –Manu Smriti

“All your talk is of caste and creed

Is it even as natural as the spider and its web?

The four blessed Vedas, were they created by Brahma?

Is caste and creed worthwhile, ye elders of Paichalur?” -Uttiranallur Nagai

Mandana-Misra-and-AdiShankaras-debate

Hinduism is in a constant state of transformation through internal discourse and dissent. Image source.

(This post mostly consists of quotes from Manu Smriti and Medieval Hindu Bhakti poems, so if you want to skip my spiel just hit the “read more” link at the bottom.)

People in the west tend to have an odd outlook on the ethics or “doctrines” of Hinduism. In most religions, doctrine works something like this: There is a core text, or set of texts, which contain precepts. Early in the religion’s history some sages write commentaries on these. The rest of the reasoning and doctrine formation of the religion continues by referring to these sources for legitimacy. Innovations occur, but normally only if it can somehow be “textually justified.”

Certainly there is a part of the Hindu religion, which operates very similarly to this—the religion of the Brahmins. But Hinduism cannot be thought of as just that. It is the religion of all Indians, except perhaps those who explicitly decry the label, like the Buddhists, Jainsm and Sikhs (and even those divisions are sometimes blurry. Even some sects of Islam are pretty heavily syncretized.)

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Transmissions from the Hollow Earth: Expect an emergent Hip Hop traditionalism

in which a young eager ivy leaguer burnt out on history turns out timely and finally solves the mystery of timecube.com (Hi Mom!)

Race as Spiritual Technology:

Marxism has been fermenting for long enough in the more well-concealed crooks of windows of the cathedral, generally out of eyeshot for all but the tallest, and of absolutely no merit during the putrefactio stage: like so many hermetically-sealed vessels of cheap solipisitic, Kool-Aid-imitative substance, those who attempted to taste the prison hooch before enough time had elapsed, digging up the orchard promptly found themselves catching brewer’s sickness.  Other than those lost their minds, faith, or life if they weren’t lucky enough to come back akathesiac, catatonic-neurotic husks of the men they were to their families, busted road signs to their home towns down so many stretches of politically contested highway, these remnants of the vanguard, finalists in the ceremonial rites of the intoxication olympics, strive to deliver, uninterrupted pieces of time from the outer rim, indivisible in and of themselves and integral only as virtual energy, must like the conservation of the angular velocity of an orbiting electron briefly excited is suddenly apparently replaced (if we’re being crudely mechanical)  In reality, there were three things, the beginning, middle, and end of an indivisible moment: excitation, acceleration, sudden-indelible-intensive-return-transformation.

Hip-hop is, ultimately an undertaking on the order of magnitude of permitting and preventing, affirming and denying holocausts

If the invisible hand (the real one, the grabby junky one that’s not so good with money) can be made to loosen its grip on the central form on the potters wheel.  But know that, as long as the matter is sufficiently fluid, lassitude of grip can only serve to keep (You/The Author/The Artist) utterly from deciding, where this matter will not go.

Only after relapse is prevented, discipline elapses sufficiently; now the moment of inertia of the incipient res can be roughly fixed in the sense of the artist.  Fluid must be fully integrated into the medium for catastrophe to subside.  Operations can not be performed in a state of catastrophe.  Substance can finally learn how to begin to express its new trust to the author, in his essential motivation as the author to catch her as gravity begins to exert an entirely different effect, as the short term collapses into the present and the concrete future stretches into teleovirtual conformity with the attractor eidos.

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