On knowledge

"What does a fish know about the water in which it swims all its life?"
Albert Einstein

Koyaanisqatsi

I've havent seen this film in entirety, but what I have seen is intense. Wikipedia tell me this: The film consists primarily of slow motion and time-lapse photography of cities and natural landscapes across the United States, with no dialogue or narration.

In the Hopi language, the word Koyaanisqatsi means 'crazy life, life in turmoil, life out of balance, life disintegrating, a state of life that calls for another way of living', and the film implies that modern humanity is living in such a way.

The director said that these films "have never been about the effect of technology, of industry on people. It's been that everyone - politics, education, things of the financial structure, the nation state structure, language, the culture, religion - all of that exists within the host of technology. So it's not that we use technology, we live technology..."

You got a problem with that?

Here's an article Smithsonian Magazine, about why New Yorkers might seem rude. It's just because, given that there is so much less of a separation between private and public life, we act the same way on the street as we would in our own apartments. And also, New Yorkers love to help people and cooperate. This article made me happy.

"The last time we had a citywide power failure, and hence no traffic lights, I saw men in business suits—they looked like lawyers—directing traffic at busy intersections on Ninth Avenue. They got to be traffic cops for a day and tell the big trucks when to stop and when to go. They looked utterly delighted."

Pictures I saved while working today

Click on each for full size to see them better!

The Neural Buddhists

I love this article by David Brooks for the NYT. It's about the way "science and mysticism are joining hands and reinforcing each other."

The Neural Buddhists

"This new wave of research will not seep into the public realm in the form of militant atheism. Instead it will lead to what you might call neural Buddhism.

If you survey the literature (and I’d recommend books by Newberg, Daniel J. Siegel, Michael S. Gazzaniga, Jonathan Haidt, Antonio Damasio and Marc D. Hauser if you want to get up to speed), you can see that certain beliefs will spread into the wider discussion.

First, the self is not a fixed entity but a dynamic process of relationships. Second, underneath the patina of different religions, people around the world have common moral intuitions. Third, people are equipped to experience the sacred, to have moments of elevated experience when they transcend boundaries and overflow with love. Fourth, God can best be conceived as the nature one experiences at those moments, the unknowable total of all there is."

American Folklore

By William Gropper. A zoomable, full-size version is available here.

I wish I was there

Stephanie busts out the Godard and time standing still at MOMA, and I bring you... bears on a playground. A family in Alaska woke up to this one Saturday morning:

Time standing still

Olafur Eliasson makes droplets of streaming water appear frozen at the MOMA. I don't want to describe it, because it's better just to see it.

Pierrot Le Fou

On Larry, but really, I think, on life

"The race to keep up with Larry was such an Externalization of the problem, as the Stanislavsky boys would have it. I had no technique for dealing with him: only an overpowering, unnerving, irrational, chemical desire to be with him. Yes, all of that. The fear of losing his physical presence was tying my behavior into such knots that I was incapable of behavior as such."

Elaine Dundy, The Dud Avocado