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guardian.co.uk, Sunday 25 September 2011 18.43 BST Article history Why are people occupying Wall Street? Why has the occupation –despite the latest police crackdown – sent out sparks across America, within days, inspiring hundreds of people to send pizzas, money, equipment and, now, to start their own movements called OccupyChicago, OccupyFlorida, in OccupyDenver or OccupyLA? There are obvious reasons. We are watching the beginnings of the defiant self-assertion of a new generation of Americans, a generation who are looking forward to finishing their education with no jobs, no future, but still saddled with enormous and unforgivable debt. Most, I found, were of working-class or otherwise modest backgrounds, kids who did exactly what they were told they should: studied, got into college, and are now not just being punished for it, but humiliated – faced with a life of being treated as deadbeats, moral reprobates. Is it really surprising they would like to have a word with the financial magnates who stole their future? Just as in Europe, we are seeing the results of colossal social failure. The occupiers are the very sort of people, brimming with ideas, whose energies a healthy society would be marshaling to improve life for everyone. Instead, they are using it to envision ways to bring the whole system down. But the ultimate failure here is of imagination. What we are witnessing can also be seen as a demand to finally have a conversation we were all supposed to have back in 2008. There was a moment, after the near-collapse of the world's financial architecture, when anything seemed possible. Everything we'd been told for the last decade turned out to be a lie. Markets did not run themselves; creators of financial instruments were not infallible geniuses; and debts did not really need to be repaid – in fact, money itself was revealed to be a political instrument, trillions of dollars of which could be whisked in or out of existence overnight if governments or central banks required it. Even the Economist was running headlines like "Capitalism: Was it a Good Idea?" It seemed the time had come to rethink everything: the very nature of markets, money, debt; to ask what an "economy" is actually for. This lasted perhaps two weeks. Then, in one of the most colossal failures of nerve in history, we all collectively clapped our hands over our ears and tried to put things back as close as possible to the way they'd been before. Perhaps, it's not surprising. It's becoming increasingly obvious that the real priority of those running the world for the last few decades has not been creating a viable form of capitalism, but rather, convincing us all that the current form of capitalism is the only conceivable economic system, so its flaws are irrelevant. As a result, we're all sitting around dumbfounded as the whole apparatus falls apart. What we've learned now is that the economic crisis of the 1970s never really went away. It was fobbed off by cheap credit at home and massive plunder abroad – the latter, in the name of the "third world debt crisis". But the global south fought back. The "alter-globalisation movement", was in the end, successful: the IMF has been driven out of East Asia and Latin America, just as it is now being driven from the Middle East. As a result, the debt crisis has come home to Europe and North America, replete with the exact same approach: declare a financial crisis, appoint supposedly neutral technocrats to manage it, and then engage in an orgy of plunder in the name of "austerity". The form of resistance that has emerged looks remarkably similar to the old global justice movement, too: we see the rejection of old-fashioned party politics, the same embrace of radical diversity, the same emphasis on inventing new forms of democracy from below. What's different is largely the target: where in 2000, it was directed at the power of unprecedented new planetary bureaucracies (the WTO, IMF, World Bank, Nafta), institutions with no democratic accountability, which existed only to serve the interests of transnational capital; now, it is at the entire political classes of countries like Greece, Spain and, now, the US – for exactly the same reason. This is why protesters are often hesitant even to issue formal demands, since that might imply recognising the legitimacy of the politicians against whom they are ranged. When the history is finally written, though, it's likely all of this tumult – beginning with the Arab Spring – will be remembered as the opening salvo in a wave of negotiations over the dissolution of the American Empire. Thirty years of relentless prioritising of propaganda over substance, and snuffing out anything that might look like a political basis for opposition, might make the prospects for the young protesters look bleak; and it's clear that the rich are determined to seize as large a share of the spoils as remain, tossing a whole generation of young people to the wolves in order to do so. But history is not on their side. We might do well to consider the collapse of the European colonial empires. It certainly did not lead to the rich successfully grabbing all the cookies, but to the creation of the modern welfare state. We don't know precisely what will come out of this round. But if the occupiers finally manage to break the 30-year stranglehold that has been placed on the human imagination, as in those first weeks after September 2008, everything will once again be on the table – and the occupiers of Wall Street and other cities around the US will have done us the greatest favour anyone possibly can. |
Sunday, October 9, 2011
Sunday Reflections
Saturday, October 8, 2011
Waves of Love
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From Carlos Castaneda's Journey to Ixtlan People tell us from the time we are born that the world is such and such and so and so, and naturally we have no choice but to see the world the way people have been telling us it is. Seeing happens only when one sneaks between the worlds; The world of ordinary people and The world of sorcerers. The real thing is when the body realizes that it can see. Only then is one capable of knowing that the world we look at every day is only a description. My intent has been to show you that. Only as a warrior can one survive the path of knowledge, Because the art of a warrior is to balance, the terror of being a man with the wonder of being a man. |
Friday, October 7, 2011
Lights of Soho
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“When you look at a
tree, see it for its leafs, its branches,
its trunk and the roots, then and only then will you see the tree”
― Takuan Soho, The
Unfettered Mind: Writings of the Zen Master to the Sword Master.
Slick - Fri Oct 07, 2011
This week's challenge:'Slick'  |
Thursday, October 6, 2011
Steve Jobs
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| 1955-2011
Steve Jobs, Apple company co-founder and former CEO who helped revolutionize the personal computer industry, the way we listen to music and mobile communications, died Wednesday. He was 56.
In a statement released on the company's website, the company said,
"Apple has lost a visionary and creative genius, and the world has lost an amazing human being. Those of us who have been fortunate enough to know and work with Steve have lost a dear friend and an inspiring mentor. Steve leaves behind a company that only he could have built, and his spirit will forever be the foundation of Apple."
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Wednesday, October 5, 2011
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| Diana Artemis was one of the most widely venerated of the Ancient Greek deities. Her Roman equivalent is Diana. Some scholars believe that the name, and indeed the goddess herself, was originally pre-Greek. Homer refers to her as Artemis Agrotera, Potnia Theron "Artemis of the wildland, Mistress of Animals". In the classical period of Greek mythology, Artemis was often described as the daughter of Zeus and Leto, and the twin sister of Apollo. She was the Hellenic goddess of the hunt, wild animals, wilderness, childbirth, virginity and young girls, bringing and relieving disease in women; she often was depicted as a huntress carrying a bow and arrows. The deer and the cypress were sacred to her. In later Hellenistic times, she even assumed the ancient role of Eileithyia in aiding childbirth. |
Monday, October 3, 2011
Ripples
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| Stones in The Pond |
Saturday, October 1, 2011
Octuber 2011 Theme Day: Mystery Object
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| The Eisenstadt Sphere Oedenburger Str. 2 As photographers, we must focus on the details of life and bypass the generalities. There is a saying in Zen: examine the living words and not the dead ones. We must open a direct line to reality, unclouded by the dust of the past - see Eden before the expulsion. Our challenge is to see the living fact - to become intimate with life. John Greer. Artist's Statement (Fragment) |
Thursday, September 29, 2011
The Cloisters III
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The Unselfconscious Process
One of the most confusing and paradoxical aspects of Zen is its view of the self. Zen says we aren't who we think we are. While we are seen to exist in the relative sense, in terms of the absolute, the dance and the dancer are considered to be one. Many spiritual traditions have seen similar truths, and claim that by losing one's life, life is indeed gained. By emptying we become full. While no doubt confusing for the novice, its implication for the photographer would be to forget oneself, as much as possible, when taking pictures. This, in fact, is a very common experience among musicians and painters, who often report "losing themselves" in their art. In a sense, the picture takes itself. In the words of Henri Cartier-Bresson, "you have to blend in like a fish in water, you have to forget yourself." The artist becomes the process of creation. When something bigger than the persona takes charge, when Life itself is given free reign unhampered by our premeditated ideas of what should happen, the resultant pictures can be quite remarkable.
John Greer. Artist's Statement (Fragment)
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Wednesday, September 28, 2011
The Cloisters II
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| Head, perhaps an Angel. Limestone. France. Île-de-France, about 1250. |
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| Altar Frontal. Catalunya, Spain. ca. 1225 |
Monday, September 26, 2011
The Cloisters I
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| Head. Strasbourg. 1280-1300 |
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| The Angel of Annunciation. Northeastern Italy 1430-40. |
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The Cloisters museum and gardens, the branch of The Metropolitan Museum of Art devoted to the art and architecture of medieval Europe, was assembled from architectural elements, both domestic and religious, that date from the twelfth through the fifteenth century.
The building and its cloistered gardens—located in Fort Tryon Park in northern Manhattan—are treasures in themselves, effectively part of the collection housed there. The Cloisters' collection comprises approximately three thousand works of art from medieval Europe, dating from about the ninth to the sixteenth century.
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Friday, September 23, 2011
Inside
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“Dip him in the river who loves water.”
"Sumerge en el río a aquel que ama el
agua."
~William Blake
This week's challenge:
'Inside'  |
Thursday, September 22, 2011
Flying
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"
The only journey is the one within. "
~Rainer Maria Rilke
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Wednesday, September 21, 2011
Bored
Monday, September 19, 2011
Any Given Sunday / Un Domingo Cualquiera
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Street Performers in Mexico Park. La Condesa. Mexico City "When you photograph people in colour you photograph their clothes. But when you photograph people in black and white, you photograph their souls!" Ted Grant |
Saturday, September 17, 2011
Lost
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William Blake’s Exuberance is beauty. Art can never exist without naked beauty displayed. If the doors of perception were cleansed everything would appear to man, as it is, infinite. No bird soars too high if he soars with his own wings. One thought fills immensity. The man who never in his mind and thoughts traveled to heaven is no artist. The road of excess leads to the palace of wisdom. The true method of knowledge is experiment. You never know what is enough unless you know what is more than enough. What is now proved was once only imagined. To see the world in a grain of sand, and to see heaven in a wild flower, hold infinity in the palm of your hands, and eternity in an hour. |
Thursday, September 15, 2011
Borda Garden
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The Borda Garden is located near the cathedral of Cuernavaca. Originally, this was a house bought by José de la Borda, the mining magnate of Taxco in the mid-eighteenth century. Later, his son, Manuel de Borda y Verdugo, transformed the grounds of the house into gardens filled with flower and fruit trees to satisfy his passion for botany. These gardens also contain a number of fountains and an artificial lake that were completed in 1783. The complex also contains lodgings, offices, a restaurant, and a nightclub. In 1865, this was the summer home of Emperor Maximilian I and his wife Carlota Amalia. It hosted major political soirees in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, such as those sponsored by Porfirio Díaz and Emiliano Zapata. Today the area is a public park where the gardens have been maintained and it is possible to take a short boat ride on the lake. The house has been converted into a museum. Six of its halls are dedicated to temporary exhibits while the other seven are devoted to recreating the characteristics of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. (Wiki) |
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