Sitaram: Ii spent all last night in Pal Talk chat... it was a room which discusses Islam, but run by Egyptian
Coptic Christians but, many were Arabic speakers
Sitaram: Pal Talk is amazing, with quality voice
Tehran_MD: ah wonderful
Sitaram: i spent some time in protestant and catholic chat rooms
Sitaram: oh, and an organization can pay to have a room open 24/7 but, if you dont pay, then your room is only open till the last person leaves it
Sitaram: but then, you must have a number of people as admins, to keep it orderly. So you must find folks in many time zones, because, part of the terms of use is that you will moderate such rooms
Sitaram: so, if you leave it unmoderated, and there is mischief, then, you may lose your privileges
Sitaram: oh, one AMAZING thing about pal talk, they have about 50 rooms just for the Kurds
Sitaram: the kurdish people are using it BIG TIME
Sitaram: I was shocked
Sitaram: i have never noticed a kurdish presence on internet
Sitaram: i am sure they have strong desires for political identity, independence, sovereignty
Tehran_MD: yes, but they wont be happier.if independent as a country.
Sitaram: that is quite understandable, looking at the centuries of their history
Tehran_MD: no natural resources.nothing for improvment
Sitaram: true, independence will not give them happiness, but, they desire it, as a matter of personal dignity, identity; it is only human
Tehran_MD: stupid.
Sitaram: although it is far better to be as Socrates, a "citizen of the world" and globally minded and multicultural and tolerant
Tehran_MD: yes
Sitaram: hmmm.... "the meek shall inherit the earth". Only just now does that phrase hit me with new meaning. It is something from Ingeel (Gospels) only just now does it dawn upon me, that if those meek enough to transcend local nationality, tribal identity and be global, transcultural
Sitaram: that is a kind of meekness. And, lacking such meekness, the world is destroyed in violence
Sitaram: most interesting
Sitaram: that is undoubtedly my great insight for today
Sitaram: there is some other good word for nationalism, but i cant remember, must google
Tehran_MD: oh interesting
Sitaram: i am searching now for synonyms
Sitaram: perhaps i am thinking of chauvenism
Tehran_MD: ah that is a right word for kurds.
Sitaram: yes! chauvinism is extreme and unreasoning partisanship on behalf of a group to which one belongs, especially when the partisanship includes malice and hatred towards a rival group.
Sitaram: one Pakistani psychotherapist on chowk.com (in Canada, in the diaspora) wrote an
article about how people must get beyond tribalism and embrace globalism
Sitaram: The term is derived from Nicolas Chauvin, a semi-mythical soldier under Napoleon Bonaparte
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chauvinism
Tehran_MD: oh interesting really
Sitaram: are you able to access wikipedia in Iran?
Sitaram: wiki is so useful, i do hope it is not blocked
Tehran_MD: yes I am.
Sitaram: ah, wonderful!
Sitaram: as fareed zakaria of newsweek said, Iran has a young, virbrant population, open to the world
Sitaram: the world of ideas
Sitaram: he was host of foreignexchange.tv educational television broadcast
but he was replaced by Daljit Dhaliwaal who is an equally impressive intellectual
Sitaram: i rather imagine foreignexchange.tv is blocked
Sitaram: but perhaps not
Tehran_MD:
Sitaram: here is how i see it.....
Diversification and sectarianism are DEEPLY ingrained in the human psyche,.... and it was originally a
survival advantage for the species so that some would choose rainforest, others tundra, others the
desert, others seafaring
Tehran_MD: yes.different tastes.
Sitaram: so, because of our natural tendency to become diverse
Tehran_MD: that is beautiful isnt it
Sitaram: therefore, should one use weapons of mass destruction to eliminate all opposition, with genocide Sitaram: why, the remaining population would eventually become equally sectarian
Tehran_MD: I remember when I was 15
Tehran_MD: they took me to a
beautiful place .
Tehran_MD: because I was a brilliant
student.won science prize etc
Tehran_MD: and it was a very green
hill in the north of iran;.close to the
sea
Tehran_MD: but the thing is they
obliged us to wear similar clothes
Tehran_MD: I remember how it made
me angry
Tehran_MD: so even in a simple
matter like wearing clothes people
want to differ.,
Sitaram: so, if all the world, tomorrow, were to become say sunni, shia, sufi...
Sitaram: why in 100 years, there would be sectarian difference and more strife and violence
Sitaram: so, we must agree to differ
Sitaram: how interesting!
Sitaram: because, our expression of individuality, is an element of our identity
Sitaram: we validate our own existence, by our individualistic self expression
Sitaram: and, it is the very essence of free will choice
Tehran_MD: yes
Tehran_MD: what book are you
reading these days?
Sitaram: in abraham maslows pyramid
of the hierarchy of needs
Sitaram: i am reading Alexis De Tocqueville, Democracy in America
Sitaram: he toured america around 1840
Sitaram: and wrote very insigtful observations about the form of government
Sitaram: and of course he was french
Sitaram: so, i had a much different
perspective
Tehran_MD:
Tehran_MD: tres bien
Sitaram: the expression "a shot heard round the world" pertains to both
French Revolution and American Revolution
Sitaram: freedom is begotten by violence, unfortunately
Sitaram: when shall we ever separate the wheat from the chaff, and have freedom without violence?
Tehran_MD: really?
Sitaram: well, look at history
Tehran_MD: I dont see any freedom
Sitaram: the French economist Proudhon, wrote "Property is theft"
Sitaram: but, stop and think, how France was in the 16th 17th century
Tehran_MD: ah you told me about it
Sitaram: there was the landed priviliged nobility class
Tehran_MD: so you are interested in politics these days?
Sitaram: and the surfs peasants who had nothing, and could never escape their status
Sitaram: well, in that context, one may easily view property as theft
Sitaram: but, in france or america today, property, ownership is a very different sort of thing
Sitaram: Henry David Thoreau was the very FIRST to use the expression "human rights"
in his essay on "Civil Disobedience"
Sitaram: how interesting, that the term did now arise from some scripture, or from some theologian
but from a secular humanist
Tehran_MD: hey can you recommend to me some books?
Sitaram: i recently made the argument that advances in the modern world may NOT be attributed to Christianity, as many right wing americans would claim...but to secular humanist philosophers, and
the framers of laws and constitutions
Sitaram: well, someone just gave me a book on Lincoln, published by CNN network, for the bicentenial
celebration
Tehran_MD: well am not much interested in politics.
Sitaram: Thomas Pynchons Gravity's Rainbow comes to mind, as a complex example of postmodernism
Sitaram: but, it is , though profound, somewhat risque in places
Sitaram: anything by Milan Kundera,
Tehran_MD: what is it about
Tehran_MD: I read kundra
Sitaram: well, Pynchon's opening line is "A missile rocket came screaming across the sky"
Sitaram: it is about London during the World war II bombings
Sitaram: and, the smoke trail arc of the bomb missiles, is what he calls "Gravity's Rainbow"
Sitaram: now, in the old testament bible, God, in anger, sends a flood to
kill all creatures, except for Noahs ark
Sitaram: and when the flood is over, a rainbow is a sign of God's peace (truce)
Sitaram: that God will never again destroy creatures with a flood
Sitaram: so the great irony of Gravity's Rainbow, is that this is a Rainbow
symbolizing human destruction
Sitaram: now, there is one passage, for example where Pynchon is really
refering to King Leopold of Belgium, and the mistreatment of the Belgian
Congo
Tehran_MD: aha
Sitaram: treating them as slaves and prostitutes
Sitaram: now, pynchon is often obscene... BUT, he uses the obscenity artistically, to make profound points.
For example, there is one passage where a woman, who is a dominatrix, summons a general (or
lieutenant), to come, and be her love slave, and do degrading things
Sitaram: BUT, you see, the woman is symbolic of WARFARE
Tehran_MD: is she?
Sitaram: so, he is writing about how WARFARE, has enslaved human spirit
Sitaram: and, just like a lover, who is drawn to be humiliated
Tehran_MD: why a woman is a symbol of warfare?
Sitaram: the military is drawn to this dominatrix woman WARFARE
aha, BECAUSE, when you understand the male vulnerability for
sexual activity then you have a metaphor
for the human vulnerability for violence, warfare, destruction
Sitaram: so, he likens warfare to a sexual passion
Sitaram: except it is not one which procreates,
Sitaram: it is one which degrades, destroys, humiliates
Sitaram: BUT, we willingly choose to humiliate ourselve, because of our passion/desire
Tehran_MD: I see
Sitaram: and it is so like Abu Graib, and the torture, the waterboarding....
Sitaram: the suspension of habeus corpus....
Tehran_MD: why you call it humiliation/
Sitaram: well, stop and think of the sado masochistic relationship
Sitaram: one person so obsessively desires the other
Sitaram: that they will pay any price to be with the other
Sitaram: now, in Pynchon's scene, the woman commands the man to do
something which is the most extreme form of degradation
Tehran_MD: is it?
Sitaram: and it is very disgusting, BUT pynchon WANTS us to be disgusted by war
Sitaram: well, you will be SHOCKED when i tell you what happens
Sitaram: the technical term is COPRAPHAGIA
Sitaram: phagia = eatiing
Sitaram: copra = excrement
Sitaram: but, you see, warfare IS as disgusting and unnatural as that
Sitaram: pynchon chooses the most repulsive act imaginable to drive
home his point about the evils of our passion for war
Sitaram: it is not at all about normal intercourse
Sitaram: and the army officer is SO EAGER to participate
Sitaram: now, obviously, such a passage is very scandalous, shocking
Sitaram: only if one can see the redeeming social value of the artists message, can one accept such a work
Sitaram: but, most definitely, pynchon is NOT a pornographer... but, a true novelist, and philosopher
who makes a radical social commentary
Sitaram: but, he is a total recluse he lives a few miles from me
in manhattan
Sitaram: but, he has never been photogrphed
Sitaram: except once, in his 20s
Tehran_MD: oh interesting
Sitaram: there are many websites about pynchon and gravitys rainbow
Sitaram: there are people who devote themselves to it, like a hobby, or cult
Sitaram: to analyze it, footnote
Sitaram: pynchon received some kind of pulitzer or nobel.... but he sent a
comedian to accept it in his place he would not appear in
public
Sitaram: and the comedian is someone i used to watch in the 1970s
Tehran_MD: haha
Tehran_MD: cute
Sitaram: who played an eccentric professor
Sitaram: and would appear on the late
night shows, Johnny Carson
Sitaram: the most beautiful novella is
pynchons "The Crying of Lot 49" Sitaram: which may be read in a weekend
Tehran_MD: what is it about?
Sitaram: and, in the first 3 pages, he describes a certain painting, and it is
one of the most beautiful passages of literature i have ever found
Tehran_MD: oh
Tehran_MD: am eager to read it
Tehran_MD: can you find that description online?
Sitaram: i am searching now
Tehran_MD: thank you
Sitaram: it will take some moments
http://www.turingmachine.org/remedios/picture11.html
Sitaram: that is the painting by a woman in mexico city
Sitaram: by Remedios Varo
Sitaram: Bordando el Manto Terrestre / Embroidering Earths Mantle ', 1961
Sitaram: that is what pynchon writes about
Tehran_MD: yes I saw it
Tehran_MD: beautiful.insprinig
Sitaram:
http://www.bookandreader.com/forums/author-discussion/1837-thomas-pynchon-2.html
Sitaram: that is what i wrote
Sitaram: i will email
Tehran_MD: thank you
Sitaram: there, pynchons page on painting is emailed to you
Tehran_MD: thank you so much
Sitaram: so, you must try to read "Crying of Lot 49" novella
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