Catalonia & an outre worry of mine

This is a riff sparked by a talk I saw by Noam Chomsky on Book TV & also by my reading of David Graeber's *5000 Years of Debt.*  Graeber is an anarchist & anthropologist and also an activist who participated in and chronicled the *Occupy* movement.    Chomsky talked about Catalonia & how when the anarchists set up a fully functioning anarchist commune in Barcelona that *everybody* in the world turned on them in order to crush them--the social democrats of the Loyalist forces, the Stalinists, the fascists & the Western powers,  to the extent they were involved.  Orwell spoke glowingly of the commune in *Homage to Catalonia* even though he was with the Trotskyist forces at the time.  The commune was quite successful in the few months it was allowed to live.  

To get to sleep, I often spend a half-hour or so obsessively surfing my kindle for books about some topic that captured my interest during the day & I came across a book by Matthew Tree about Catalonia and its current drive for independence.  Tree is a Englishman, but a 26-year resident of Barcelona who speaks fluent Catalan.  (I mean, I wound up staying up even later to get into the book).  Catalonia already has its own parliament and its own president although it is clearly still part of the Spanish state.    The Catalonian government has nevertheless already called for full independence and is trying to get the Spanish prime minister to approve a referendum for independence (in Catalonia) for November of 2014.

According to Tree, there is a huge prejudice against Catalonians and the Catalan language in greater Spain.  It's analogous to anti-semitism in pre-WWII Austria where it was said that you can't be a true Austrian unless you're at least a little anti-semitic.  It 's like that in Spain with respect to Catalonians according to Tree and other Catalan writers.   Spanish publishers usually refuse to publish books written in Catalan unless they are translated into Spanish.   Catalonians who visit in other parts of the country are often rudely confronted by Spanish speakers demanding that they speak Spanish, even if they are only speaking Catalan to other Catalonians who are with them.  In fact, some Spaniards regard Catalans "as a bunch of Jews."  According to Catalonians, the ancient kingdom of Catalan was as important or more important than Ferdnand and Isabella in driving the Moors out of Spain.  Yet prior to that Catalonia was a relatively  peaceful & tolerant place where Jews, Christians and Moors lived in relative harmony, where there was a kind of cultural syncretism where thinkers like Raymond Llul came up with a kind of semi-Christianized Kabbalah in an effort to reconcile the three religions.  I believe also it was one of the stomping grounds of the troubadours.  

But back to the present. In some ways, the differences in language seem slight.   "Good day" in Spanish is "buenos dias," in Catalan it's "bon dia."  Yet to my ear the latter has the kind of beauty I associate with the Italian language.  Tree mentions that Catalonians sometimes pass themselves off as Italians to escape Spanish hostility. 

According to the story in the link below, 74% of Catalonians want such a referendum to take place, although less than 50% say they want full independence.  Hmm...I would be willing to bet there is a silent majority in there somewhere.  

http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/12/15/us-spain-catalonia-poll-idUSBRE9BE06B20131215

From here, according the observers I have read thus far,  the Catalonians aspiration for independence look fully justified.  

But I got to thinking.  If you grant the legitimacy of Catalonian aspirations--and for that matter those of separatists in Wales & Scotland, what if significant number of Texans--or Southerners--truly revived their secessionist aspirations?  It doesn't matter if such passions in the eyes of reasonable people are regarded as justified or not--they burn in the hearts of human beings any way. 

I'm reasonably sure that's an unnecessary and baroque worry, but I sure as hell would hate to have to move to Vermont or Massachusetts in my *old* old age.   I don't want to have to deal with putting chains on tires (merely a metaphor for the difficulties of Yankee winters and northern adversities in general).

And I wonder how the Basques and Galicians are doing.  

R. 

 

http://gg9-tto.blogspot.com/

Extremely important book

And the book is called *Multitude* by Michael Hardt and Antony Negri.  

It is a detailed analysis of how resistance to the global economic and social system that dominates the world is both already-and-not-yet taking shape.  A previous book of theirs, *Empire* is a detailed theoretical analysis of how the current global system dominates the world and also how it is different from the classic "territorial" empires of the past.   In particular, *Multitude* shows how local struggles preserve their own local identity and yet they are in solidarity with similar struggles elsewhere.  Or, to put it another way, the struggles of the  "multitude" cut across and transcend the old "identity politics vs issue politics" divide.   They contrast the notion of "multitude" with older leftist notions such as class, mass, and working class.  (The multitude is not to be confounded with certain concepts such as "new working class" either).  

The authors have a caveat:  The book is not to be thought of as a "What is to be done?" sort of book.  They have a book coming out next year called *Commonwealth*   I am hopeful the new book will provide some further suggestions regarding...what is to be done. 

I had some difficulty focusing on the previous book, *Empire,* but I found *Multitude* to be lucid and compelling and relatively easy to follow.  

The book resolved any doubts I had regarding the importance and efficacy of movements such as *Occupy.* 

R. 

Why'm not quite a Buddhist...

In the past couple of weeks, I've gone to the local Zen Center three times, once to a sort of orientation and twice to practice mindfulness meditation  for 35 minutes at a stretch.   I've also made intermittent efforts at home to practice, ranging from five minutes to up to 20 minutes.  It may be just placebo, but I do fancy it's having some beneficial results--notably, with my absent-mindedness.  I don't think I've lost my glasses even once since the first session at the Zen Center.  Also, the past couple of nights I've had some pretty vivid dreams in living color, assuming that's a benefit.  

Buddhism generally has always had a certain appeal to me with its intrinsic gentleness and its ethics of compassion, especially taken in its context, the Great Vow to refrain from final enlightenment, or Nirvana,  out of compassion for all sentient beings until all sentient beings have been brought to enlightenment, well, that is a great and strenuous ethic.  

But I have difficulty understanding the metaphysics of why that should be so.  I know the Buddha would likely say that metaphysics is just so much ego piffle, so perhaps that is not the best way to express what I mean.   Presumably, if a person's compassion is sufficient that in itself would lead one to the brink of the Final Enlightenment.   Yet, in order to develop that compassion,  I (and henceforward I insert my own ego for the sake of clarification) have to practice a sort of getting rid of the self by means of sundry mental exercises and disciplines, beginning with and including mindfulness meditation.  It would be a crude argument to state that I'm not being especially compassionate by sitting in a room somewhere and counting my breaths although I suppose you could say it may be a kindness to some that I'm not interacting with them during that time, but I prefer to think that would be a stretch.  And, if after I do achieve some desired level of compassionate near-enlightenment, apparently the most compassionate goal I can have is to bring people to the same state by means of the Buddha's teachings.   

Of course, I'm supposed to be compassionate along the way insofar as I encounter other sentient beings and have interactions with them so that I relieve their suffering as *they themselves perceive it.*  Somebody is sick, I try and comfort them or provide medicine.  Somebody needs water, I give them a drink, etc. But I'm not supposed to be "attached" to any of them, nor am I supposed to believe that, say, physical suffering is primary.  I am supposed to address that form of suffering and most others as somehow superficial--the direct or indirect result of their being "attached" to their desires.  To me, that stance denies the importance of history, of suffering, of the individual, and indeed the whole of reality as it is commonly understood.  

Robert Thurman in his book *The Jewel in the Lotus* has a most eloquent description of the concept of "emptiness."  It is not oblivion or nothingness, rather it is the recognition that everything is connected and that all beings have at one time or another have occupied the position of whatever the individual consciousness construes to be "other."   He also describes this state as "oneness" although I don't think he is being rigorous.  Other Buddhist and mystical writers, though, are insistent on the notion of non-duality and oneness & that is given as a "reason" for us to love the Other, to be compassionate towards the Other, etc.  To me, that's not very satisfying to think that my love and compassion towards the Other, such as it might be, is merely a form of loving myself.    Heaven knows, I got nothing against self-love, but the whole point of loving somebody, of being compassionate towards them is that "they," thank Heaven, are *not* me.    "Interconnectedness," as Thurman, describes it, is one thing, actual oneness is another.  Oneness as many mystics seem to promote it implies a kind of vacuous soup of things, where everything and everyone are all the same thing.  

(BTW, Robert Thurman is a professor of Indian Studies and the father of Uma Thurman, known to be a not unattractive movie star.  

Thurman goes on to indicate that the individual consciousness is *really* nothing more than a sliding nexis of interrelationships of all the other elements of the universe.  I can't help thinking that this implies that the individual consciousness, whether one thinks of it as having achieved "emptiness" or not, has no power of agency and is merely a passive epiphenomenon, just as most scientists believe on the basis of their metaphysical materialism.    Without some notion of a subject capable of enduring on some level or another, it also renders the notion of reincarnation...really implausible.  Therefore, the whole idea of the bodhisattavas has to be...an error--not to mention the doctrine of karma.

(And, if I can't recall any of my past lives, how can karma provide me with a useful moral education?   Or if karma is automatic and unconscious, what is the point of conscious striving of any sort?   If I have no sense of continuity from one life to another, it may as well be the case that my real identity only subsists in my current incarnation)

Strictly speaking, I don't think the Buddhists are completely wrong, but it is as if the Buddha had a great ethical insight about the importance of compassion but was unable to ground his insight in concepts other than those that are analogous to the concepts in Hinduism--of which Buddha's thought is a reformation.  

Here I think the advantage is with Christianity.  Christianity affirms the importance of history and the human subject in a way that the Eastern religions do not.  It also affirms the importance of compassion not as  a means to a transcendental end, but as an end in itself.   Actually, I think Buddhism does affirm the importance of compassion for its own sake as well--the notion of the Bodhisattvas is merely a  kind of a workaround "justification" for that ideal compassion that seems rather clumsy to me.   To elaborate a bit, Christianity holds out the hope that some day history, humanity and nature  will all be redeemed and transfigured and include a redeemed and transfigured humanity.  (I have negative stuff to say about a great deal of traditional Christianity, but I'll save it for another occasion.)

So there. 

   

 

http://gg9-tto.blogspot.com/

Solving all financial problems

tomorrow, as I am going to prospect for topaz at the Seaquist Ranch in Mason County.  

Actually, I don't really expect to find any.  But I have found some interesting quartz, chert and something that was arguably flint.  This time I'm also going to be on the lookout for agate and petrified wood.  (I did find a small piece of petrified wood last time).   I'm told there may be black tourmaline in the area also.  It's not the high dollar stuff, but I've items made with it on etsy.  I've also seen pendants made with flint on etsy with asking prices rather above some of the "prettier" stones.  

I've already made a couple of nearly satisfactory pendants.  One of them is a kind of macho thing, with a hammered steel wire abstraction and a black vinyl "chain"; the other is a reddish agate set (with glue) against a copper wire disc that I crocheted--the copper chain is something I purchased from Michael's.  (I crocheted a copper wire chain, but it was too stiff for the required aesthetics.)

For some reason, I am loath to try and make earrings or rings.  But bracelets are okay.  I must think about brooches and belt buckles also.

As I have said before, best not to trifle with me--I have crochet hooks and I know how to use them.  

But here's hoping for a ten pound blue crystal topaz. 

R.   

 

http://gg9-tto.blogspot.com/

Hee, hee, hee

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dI9KBLb_8ro

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-rv1CTZSIU0

And this third one, oh, my: 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nUy8xbytCbs

For relief, try:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ga_EP7RObKw

 

http://gg9-tto.blogspot.com/

Something to think about for both Left and Right

Professor Eric X Li on the virtues of the Chinese Communist Party...

I wonder if what he is saying reflects the official Party position or the *de facto* Party position;  or is it merely his own view as an academic?  

I'll spare everybody my reflexive critique because I'm wondering if there's any way to have the Party cake and eat it too...

http://www.ted.com/talks/eric_x_li_a_tale_of_two_political_systems.html

http://gg9-tto.blogspot.com/

Elderly Laotian Siri Paboun solves cases and pursues happiness

as the National Coroner of Laos.  Dr. Siri is the hero of a series of mysteries by Colin Cotterill. 

Dr. Siri is a hero of the Communist Pathet Lao revolution that kicked the French out of the country.  He himself has no illusions about the Party, but believes that Laotians have the right to be mismanaged by their own people--as opposed to the French or for that manner, the somewhat arrogant Vietnamese.  Siri started out as a medical student in France.  There he fell in love with another student who it so happens was an ardent Communist and supporter of the cause for Laotian independence.  So Siri joined the Laotian Communist Party.  What else could he do?   Subsequent to his training he and his wife spend years in the jungle waging guerilla warfare against the French.   Unfortunately, Siri becomes a widower in the course of the struggle.  When the Pathet Lao unexpectedly win, Siri is already getting on in years and wants nothing more than to retire.  But the Party insists on making him the National Coroner even though he has no training or background for it--but he is virtually the only person in the whole country with complete medical training.  

Given his age and his friendship with a member of the Central Committee (still powerful, but somewhat marginalized), Dr. Siri figures that the Party can't do much to him if he wants to do things *his* way.  Part of the fun of reading the novels is watching Siri slyly circumvent the often absurd impositions of the bureaucracy.  

As a western-trained medical doctor, Dr. Siri does not share the worldview of his fellow Laotians when it comes to, say, the existence and influence of the spirit world.  But at one point  he discovers he can see spirits (but maddeningly can't hear them) and moreover that he is the incarnation of a 1000-YO Hmong shaman.  This leads to considerable cognitive dissonance.  

There is some mystery about Dr. Siri's origins.  He has uncharacteristically green eyes and there is the suspicion that he may be Hmong or part Hmong himself.  

The setting for the novels is Laos in the mid-70's.  Colin Cotterill spent a considerable amount of time in the area and seems to be genuinely knowledgeable about Laos (as if I would know).  

Interestingly, Colin Cotterill illustrated the book, *Dude de Ching* touted by Jeff Bridges on the *Daily Show* not long ago as a Dudeist updating of Taoism.  

My favorites include *Disco for the Dead* and *Love Songs from a Shallow Grave.*  The latter is more serious in tone and brings home the horror of the atrocities committed by the Khmer Rouge.  

R. 

 

http://gg9-tto.blogspot.com/