Earth is the building bearer, nourishing with its fruits, tending water and rock, plant and animal. When we say earth, we are already thinking of the other three along with it by way of the simple oneness of the four.The sky is the sun's path, the course of the moon, the glitter of the stars, the year's seasons, the light and dusk of day, the gloom and glow of night, the clemency and inclemency of the weather, the drifting clouds and blue depth of the ether. When we say sky, we are already thinking of the other three along with it by way of the simple oneness of the four.The divinities are the beckoning messengers of the godhead. Out of the hidden sway of the divinities the god emerges as what he is, which removes him from any comparison with beings that are present. When we speak of the divinities, we are already thinking of the other three along with them by way of the simple oneness of the four.The mortals are human beings. They are called mortals because they can die. To die means to be capable of death as death. Only man dies. The animal perishes. It has death neither ahead of itself nor behind it. Death is the shrine of Nothing, that is, of that which in every respect is never something that merely exists, but which nevertheless presences, even as the mystery of Being itself. As the shrine of Nothing, death harbors within itself the presencing of Being. As the shrine of Nothing, death is the shelter of Being.... When we say mortals, we are then thinking of the other three along with them by way of the simple oneness of the four.
In 1282, the French Angevins "held a tight grip on Sicily," and a secret society arose to defeat this oppressive organization. The battle cry of this rebellious group was: "morte alla Francia Italia anelia!" (Italian for "death to the French is Italy's cry!"), and if the first letters of the verse are taken, the anagram MAFIA is deciphered. The word Mafia was first published in 1862 in a play by Giuseppe Rizzuto, called "I Mafiosi della Vicaria" (The Mafia in the Vicarage") about a secret criminal group in the prisons of Palermo. In Sicily, the word mafia tends to mean "manly", and is often applied to someone without necessaily meaning they were a criminal. Sicily has had to adapt to numerous invasions: Arabs in the ninth century, Norman's in the 11th century, French in the 12th, Spanish in the 15th, as well as invasions by the Germans, Austrians and Greeks. Secret societies in the hills were needed to resist foreign rulers. These societies were formed not only to try and defeat the French rulers but also to protect and feed the Italian families in the villages of Palermo and surrounding areas. Since most of the villagers were related, each village picked a member to head their family. These heads of families were called (capodecina or capos for short). The capodecina would pick men from the village to take with him to the hills. Before the men left for the hills they would have to pledge their loyalty, support and Omertá . The oath in English sounded like this: "I (NAME GIVEN) want to enter into this secret organization to protect my family and to protect my brothers. ""morte alla Francia Italia anelia!" With my blood. (A knife is used to place a cut on the right index finger or hand) and the blood of all the saints, and the souls of my children. (The sign of the cross is made) I swear not to divulge this secret and to obey with love and omerta. I enter alive into this organization and leave it only in death." 1. A code of silence - Never to "rat out" any mafia member. Never to divulge any mafia secrets. Even if they were threatened by torture or death.2. Complete obedience to the boss - Obey the boss's orders, no matter what.3. Assistance - To provide any necessary assistance to any other respected or befriended mafia faction.4. Vengeance - Any attacks on family members must be avenged. "An attack on one is an attack on all." 5. Avoid contact with the authorities.Once safe in the hills, all the capodecina's would get together and pick someone to be in charge of all the members of this secret society. The head of all the members was called (Capo di tutti capi) the boss of all the families. Food was scarce, conditions deplorable, the French controlled everything and if you didn't do what the French Angevins wanted, they would torture and kill you. The members of the society would raid supplies and weapons from the French and distribute their wares throughout the villages. They had to operate in complete secrecy. This was necessary to protect the members and their families from torture. This was an honorable society in the fact that you had to believe totally in the cause and be willing to die to protect the members. The villagers also respected and honored the soldiers from the hills. They knew there was a chance for freedom from the French but only if they remained silent about their fellow Italians in the hills. Joining the society was like joining a religion. It was a lifetime commitment, stronger than any ties to other religions, state or even family. You could not retire from it. This society has survived through centuries, it is secret and only members know other members. No one would ever admit to being a member nor tell you who other members are. That would violate Omertá and be punishable by death. Throughout the centuries the leaders and soldiers have changed the society, some for the better, some for the worst. The men from the hills once stole to feed and protect their families and friends. They were very good at it. So good, they ended up with more food and supplies then they could ever use. In order to get things that they could not steal; they traded with mainland Italy and other countries. This was the start of the black market. The society has always been a powerful force in Italy. Not everyone in the society is a criminal nor are all Italians in the society. What Americans call Mafia in this country [the American branch of the mafia, named La Costra Nostra ], is believed to be started by Don Vito Cascio Ferro, who fled to New York following the murder of banker Emanuele Notarbartolo in Sicily, in 1893. More society members fled to America during the 1920s, when Mussolini attempted to eradicate the Mafia in Sicily. When the Allies liberated Italy in World War II, they freed anti Mussolini prisoners, including many society members. Some were installed in positions of power, and thus began to interweave politics and organized crime in Italy. The society moved from the rural hills to the cities of Sicily. The Sicilians have developed co-operative agreements with other secret Italian societies, the Camorra and Ndrangheta, but remain the controlling organization. The Sicilians are flexible and can work with many nationalities. The major threat to the Sicilians and the society is their own periodic blood-letting feuds.
There is a shared "striving" in both to transcend the world of opposites and subject-object separation and to encounter and make contact with true Being and reality. Whereas in the Eastern tradition this involves a rigorous working on oneself in the social context of a school of meditational practice under the guidance of a master, for Heidegger it is the articulation of a personal path of thinking that can show the way. There are, of course, also a number of differences between the world of Heidegger and that of Eastern, especially Hindu, thinking. The doctrines of reincarnation and karma find no correspondence in Heidegger's thinking, and the experience of personal enlightenment in meditation is not entered into explicitly by Heidegger. But there is sufficient similarity in the radicality of both traditions to warrant continuing comparison and dialogue. There is the shared vision and effort to break the self-limiting boundaries of human rational intelligence, the vision of metaphysics, and a mindfulness as a whole in order to establish once again a more vital, inspired, and primordial relationship with all beings and the ground of Being in the form of the awareness of one's involvement in the "cosmotheandric network of relationships" which Dasein is.Both Heidegger and the Eastern traditions also transcend a secular-materialistic point of view, and insist on the reality of height/depth, or "theo-dimension" which lies beyond the boundaries of ordinary everyday existence, and yet carries more weight, significance, power, and value. The modem world has seemingly undertaken a serious experiment with regard to whether or not a man can live without any god or religion. Heidegger attempts to provide a new spiritual foundation in trans-denominational terms: he proposes a new philosophical problem to the entire world in two ways. It is in one sense an inquiry into the foundation of the novel spiritual situation where nihilism is latent within the European scientific civilization, a civilization which nonetheless has succeeded in unifying the whole world. But this civilization lacks a spiritual foundation. In exposing European scientific civilization to total criticism, Heidegger is perhaps one of the first thinkers of the West to provide a place of dialogue and confrontation between the European principle and the non-European principle. For psychology, this new and emergent philosophico-religious anthropology, the result of an East-West integration, that reveals that man is the being concerned about the meaning of his own being and the meaning of Being, offers us a new starting point. We realize that man lives out his ontic/ontological concerns in the way in which he dwells and shapes his life and world into a harmonious, ecological balancing of the powers of earth and sky and the interplay of the mortals and the divinities. In the discussion of "the thing," Heidegger elaborates a little on these powers, but their evocation and circumscription remain suggestive and groping for expression carried by a deep mystical intuition:Quote Earth is the building bearer, nourishing with its fruits, tending water and rock, plant and animal. When we say earth, we are already thinking of the other three along with it by way of the simple oneness of the four.The sky is the sun's path, the course of the moon, the glitter of the stars, the year's seasons, the light and dusk of day, the gloom and glow of night, the clemency and inclemency of the weather, the drifting clouds and blue depth of the ether. When we say sky, we are already thinking of the other three along with it by way of the simple oneness of the four.The divinities are the beckoning messengers of the godhead. Out of the hidden sway of the divinities the god emerges as what he is, which removes him from any comparison with beings that are present. When we speak of the divinities, we are already thinking of the other three along with them by way of the simple oneness of the four.The mortals are human beings. They are called mortals because they can die. To die means to be capable of death as death. Only man dies. The animal perishes. It has death neither ahead of itself nor behind it. Death is the shrine of Nothing, that is, of that which in every respect is never something that merely exists, but which nevertheless presences, even as the mystery of Being itself. As the shrine of Nothing, death harbors within itself the presencing of Being. As the shrine of Nothing, death is the shelter of Being.... When we say mortals, we are then thinking of the other three along with them by way of the simple oneness of the four. Heidegger's style and rhythm, four times repeating the unity of the four: "When we say....," feels like a hymn or even a prayer to the quaternion, the fourfold field of tensions that constitutes our sacred openness, our world. Heidegger's new image of man as the shepherd of Being, the steward of the earth, the builder and custodian of culture, gives us a calling, a vision, a task. It is in our hands to create a way of living which might truly be called dwelling. Both Heidegger and the Eastern traditions are concerned with the liberation of man from the restrictive and self-limiting habits of his own cultural mind, from inauthentic modes of being and thinking. Both agree that we need a transhuman theo-dimension in the region beyond depth and beyond height, beyond human willfulness, which is the source of illumination, fulfillment, and truth for man — the transpersonal. Both traditions develop paths toward liberation. For the Eastern ways, this is a peak-experience in consciousness that completely transforms one's relationship to the world and reality as a whole. For Heidegger, the path is one of thinking oneself through into a great simplicity of openness to the revelation of Being. Heidegger makes a double move — for all of us — and thus radically changes our perception of and our participation in reality. First, he jumps into the gap, the in-between of the subject-object split, and bridges the rift with his understanding of Dasein as beingin-the-world, as unfolding relationship, as event. Second, Heidegger makes a figure-ground gestalt-switch by saying: Let the figures go (the beings, the ten thousand things), attend to the ground (Being); go beyond theory and metaphysics, beyond concepts and representations, beyond story and originary myth, beyond names, into the splendid openness and fullness of Being, into a new presence to the real. Heidegger calls this new mode of presence meditative thinking. Is it also embodied poetic presence?It was probably an important part of his life when Heidegger returned to his simple hut in his mountains, forests, and high meadows and the life of elemental nature which found such eloquent voice in his later works. There he found the splendor of the simple still present, far from the madding crowd, in the participation in a holistic way of life in the flow of the seasons and the processes of nature, within the precincts of the Zen monastery or in the temple of selfregenerative nature. His advice on how to deal with technology was releasement (Gelassenheit) and openness to the mystery (Offenheit für das Geheimnis), a change in attitude, but basically a non-interfering observance. But we also live in the urban modernity powered by the calculative thinking of technology and its overpowering success. Both Heidegger and the Eastern attitudes are somewhat nostalgic and reactionary in their call for quiet, for a return to the simple and essential. Their vision and practice for modern man has to remain a counterpoint, a counterfoil, perhaps, a co-existing alternative. Just as work and celebration are rhythmically organized in the calendar in weekdays and sabbath, so we can institute a new day for the working-recreating-celebrating presence to nature — Country Day — if we are drawn into this way so akin to Heidegger and the East. Everybody can institute this in his own calendar, as an act of freedom of choice, as a space of time in which dwelling in the fullness of Being, the foursome giving rise to the teeming of life in ecological proliferation and wonder, can be easily actualized. We are and live and dwell between Earth and Heaven in the tension between Mortality and Divinity, and this living realization still flourishes easily in the environs of our heartlands, in the play of the elements in the wild.May this be the secret and unspoken spiritual practice of Martin Heidegger; be the path that is available to almost everybody? And is this practice, born from the marriage of Zen and Western fundamental-ontological thinking, not ongoing in many places? Heidegger and the Eastern traditions offer Western psychology a new and ancient value-orientation, a new and ancient posture of gratefulness, of thanksgiving to Being and the powers in which we find ourselves. They offer us liberation through an expanded vision of human life including the spiritual dimensions beyond ordinary rationality. Heidegger and the Eastern sages offer us a vision for a psychology of Being, for a psychology of higher life, for a psychology of genius, of creation, of vision, of inspiration, of revelation, of "theo-psychology," which lies close to the heart of man's life.
Quote from: y s a on June 13, 2008, 01:52:38 PMActually the state should pay for sexually active women to revert to virginity (or at least pay for an operation that will allow them to give the impression that they are virgins). France does, even though France is such a militantly secular nation that hijabs are banned in school, and even though the only women interested in "hymenoplasty," as the procedure is known, are Muslims for whose intended husbands their non-virginity will be a deal-breaker. Dr. Bernard Paniel is an obstetrician-gynecologist for France's public health system, and over many years has become the go-to guy for Muslim women who need to be "mended" before their wedding night, or face the wrath of their shamed, traditionally-minded grooms and the probable annulment of their marriage. Dr. Paniel "mends" about 30 broken hymens a year with a simple procedure that can be performed with a local anesthetic. He considers himself the "oil in the machine" that allows tradition to carry on, and is teaching the procedure, which he learned as a visiting doctor in a Tunisian hospital in the 1960s, to his younger colleagues. Dr. Paniel doesn't issue "virginity certificates" as some of his colleagues do, but perhaps just as controversially -- and resulting in the same effect -- he does provide his patients with vials of blood to produce on their wedding night. It is an understatement to observe that such (in our culture) medieval-era proofs of virginity -- blood on the wedding night sheets displayed to witnesses -- is utterly outmoded, a relic of pre-enlightened times in Judaism and Christianity. But the continuing, and consequential fixation with virginity amongst observant Muslim men is a reality, and the practice of hymenoplasty has now become a legal and political hot chestnut in France. For in April a court in the northern French city of Lille annulled a marriage between a convert to Islam and a French woman of North African provenance on the grounds that her husband had discovered on their wedding night that she was not a virgin. It is expected that the ruling will encourage Muslim men with retrograde views of women's obligations to believe the state supports their perspective. This will escalate demands for premarital virginity inspections, which in turn will up the demand for hymenoplasties. The verdict was only made public two weeks ago, and it is causing a ferment of denunciation. Last week 150 members of the European Parliament denounced the ruling as an act of "serious regression." Those who stand to lose the most from the ruling are modern Muslim women. The Muslim women's rights group "Ni putes ni Soumises" (neither prostitutes nor submissive) claim surgeons performing the intervention have overstepped their professional bounds. Illustrating this well-taken point, gynecologist Jacques Milliez, head of the ethics committee of the London-based International Federation of Gynecology and Obstetrics, admits that he routinely issues certificates attesting to the "virginity" of his patients, and says many other colleagues do as well, whether the women are sexually active or not. Sihem Habchi, the group's president, asks: "Does it really help? Doesn't it just bolster this tradition and this hypocrisy?" Dr. Milliez justifies his actions on the grounds that he is saving women from being ostracized by their communities. Nevertheless he is worried about the effects of the ruling and is organizing a "summit" around the procedure's ethics to be held in October.Take it for what it's worth but I know a young woman who'd do it from behind so that she'd remain a virgin; she married her husband when she was 33.
Actually the state should pay for sexually active women to revert to virginity (or at least pay for an operation that will allow them to give the impression that they are virgins). France does, even though France is such a militantly secular nation that hijabs are banned in school, and even though the only women interested in "hymenoplasty," as the procedure is known, are Muslims for whose intended husbands their non-virginity will be a deal-breaker. Dr. Bernard Paniel is an obstetrician-gynecologist for France's public health system, and over many years has become the go-to guy for Muslim women who need to be "mended" before their wedding night, or face the wrath of their shamed, traditionally-minded grooms and the probable annulment of their marriage. Dr. Paniel "mends" about 30 broken hymens a year with a simple procedure that can be performed with a local anesthetic. He considers himself the "oil in the machine" that allows tradition to carry on, and is teaching the procedure, which he learned as a visiting doctor in a Tunisian hospital in the 1960s, to his younger colleagues. Dr. Paniel doesn't issue "virginity certificates" as some of his colleagues do, but perhaps just as controversially -- and resulting in the same effect -- he does provide his patients with vials of blood to produce on their wedding night. It is an understatement to observe that such (in our culture) medieval-era proofs of virginity -- blood on the wedding night sheets displayed to witnesses -- is utterly outmoded, a relic of pre-enlightened times in Judaism and Christianity. But the continuing, and consequential fixation with virginity amongst observant Muslim men is a reality, and the practice of hymenoplasty has now become a legal and political hot chestnut in France. For in April a court in the northern French city of Lille annulled a marriage between a convert to Islam and a French woman of North African provenance on the grounds that her husband had discovered on their wedding night that she was not a virgin. It is expected that the ruling will encourage Muslim men with retrograde views of women's obligations to believe the state supports their perspective. This will escalate demands for premarital virginity inspections, which in turn will up the demand for hymenoplasties. The verdict was only made public two weeks ago, and it is causing a ferment of denunciation. Last week 150 members of the European Parliament denounced the ruling as an act of "serious regression." Those who stand to lose the most from the ruling are modern Muslim women. The Muslim women's rights group "Ni putes ni Soumises" (neither prostitutes nor submissive) claim surgeons performing the intervention have overstepped their professional bounds. Illustrating this well-taken point, gynecologist Jacques Milliez, head of the ethics committee of the London-based International Federation of Gynecology and Obstetrics, admits that he routinely issues certificates attesting to the "virginity" of his patients, and says many other colleagues do as well, whether the women are sexually active or not. Sihem Habchi, the group's president, asks: "Does it really help? Doesn't it just bolster this tradition and this hypocrisy?" Dr. Milliez justifies his actions on the grounds that he is saving women from being ostracized by their communities. Nevertheless he is worried about the effects of the ruling and is organizing a "summit" around the procedure's ethics to be held in October.
Quote from: the grasshopper on August 15, 2007, 04:38:57 PMFatalism, or karma, does not tell people to live life to the fullest. It simply states one must accept ones fate, unquestioningly, and live it. If one accepted this philosophy one would have to say: \"If I have already lived this same life many times before, and there is nothing for me to change, why talk to me about living life to the fullest? If my previous life was lived to the fullest, I will live it to the fullest again this time. If I have not done so in previous lives, then there is nothing I can do about it now. I am totally powerless.\" This is the logical result of Eternal Recurrence, or what we might correctly rename as: The Doctrine of Despair, which reduces human life to that of a marionette or puppet, where the strings are forever held in the hands of fate, creating a total paralysis in the mind of the individual and society. So, from either the scientific, or the moral and ethical standpoint, this is a philosophy of doom, and there is nothing much going for this doctrine. It is a totally bankrupt worldview.If one wants to teach Eternal Recurrence as a religion, fine. We will not object to that. But to present this as a serious philosophy is simply unacceptable. It does not surprise us that Nietzsche advocated this doctrine. He did not have much of mathematics or scientific training, which has proved to be his Achilles\' heel. As for the ethical view of this philosophy, Nietzsche might not have known what poverty and squalor this fatalistic religion had brought to India. Otherwise, we don\'t believe he would advocate such an evil system to be introduced into European thinking.Spinoza maintained that there is no mind absolute or free will, but the mind is determined for willing this or that by a cause which is determined in its turn by another cause, and this one again by another, and so on to infinity. A body in motion or at rest must be determined for motion or rest by some other body, which, likewise, was determined for motion or rest by some other body, and this by a third and so on to infinity.
Fatalism, or karma, does not tell people to live life to the fullest. It simply states one must accept ones fate, unquestioningly, and live it. If one accepted this philosophy one would have to say: \"If I have already lived this same life many times before, and there is nothing for me to change, why talk to me about living life to the fullest? If my previous life was lived to the fullest, I will live it to the fullest again this time. If I have not done so in previous lives, then there is nothing I can do about it now. I am totally powerless.\" This is the logical result of Eternal Recurrence, or what we might correctly rename as: The Doctrine of Despair, which reduces human life to that of a marionette or puppet, where the strings are forever held in the hands of fate, creating a total paralysis in the mind of the individual and society. So, from either the scientific, or the moral and ethical standpoint, this is a philosophy of doom, and there is nothing much going for this doctrine. It is a totally bankrupt worldview.If one wants to teach Eternal Recurrence as a religion, fine. We will not object to that. But to present this as a serious philosophy is simply unacceptable. It does not surprise us that Nietzsche advocated this doctrine. He did not have much of mathematics or scientific training, which has proved to be his Achilles\' heel. As for the ethical view of this philosophy, Nietzsche might not have known what poverty and squalor this fatalistic religion had brought to India. Otherwise, we don\'t believe he would advocate such an evil system to be introduced into European thinking.
A major difference between Sartre and Camus is that the latter suggests that some things and situations are out of human control (for example, death), whilst the former believes everything can be changed and manipulated, regardless of the situation or individual.
Quote from: bilk on August 17, 2007, 09:36:50 AMSpinoza maintained that there is no mind absolute or free will, but the mind is determined for willing this or that by a cause which is determined in its turn by another cause, and this one again by another, and so on to infinity. A body in motion or at rest must be determined for motion or rest by some other body, which, likewise, was determined for motion or rest by some other body, and this by a third and so on to infinity. There is this inherent insecurity about the consequences of your actions (related to the absurdity of the world), and to the fact that, in experiencing your freedom, you also realize that you will be fully responsible for these consequences; there is no thing in you (your genes, for instance) that acts and that you can "blame" if something goes wrong. Of course, most of us only have short and shallow encounters with this kind of dread, as not every choice is perceived as having dreadful possible consequences (and, it can be claimed, our lives would be unbearable if every choice facilitated dread), but that doesn't change the fact that freedom remains a condition of every action.Sartre calls it "bad faith" when you deny the concept of free will by lying to yourself about your self and freedom. This can take many forms, from convincing yourself that some form of determinism is true, to a sort of "mimicry" where you act as "you should." How "one" should act is often determined by an image one has of how one such as oneself (say, a bank manager) acts. This image usually corresponds to some sort of social norm. This does not mean that all acting in accordance with social norms is bad faith: The main point is the attitude you takes to your own freedom, and the extent to which you act in accordance with this freedom. A sign of bad faith can be something like the denial of responsibility for something you have done on the grounds that you just did "as one does" or that your genes determined you to do as you did. Lying to yourself might appear impossible or contradictory. Sartre denies the subconscious the power to do this, and he claims that the person who is lying to himself has to be aware that he is lying - that he isn't determined, or this "thing" he makes himself out to be.
Spinoza maintained that there is no mind absolute or free will, but the mind is determined for willing this or that by a cause which is determined in its turn by another cause, and this one again by another, and so on to infinity. A body in motion or at rest must be determined for motion or rest by some other body, which, likewise, was determined for motion or rest by some other body, and this by a third and so on to infinity.
Honor killings like the ones you're describing are also reported in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. A 16-year-old girl was killed by her own family, for instance, when some years later the girl walked out on her bogus husband that she had been pre-arranged to marry in order to split with a boy she wanted to marry originally. She was stuffed down a well, with her neck been broken. Her parents walked the streets with their heads held high cuz the family honor has been preserved.Another young woman was lured to her home having been told she was forgiven. Her brother pulled out a knife and killed her. A crowd of some 100 people danced in the street, cheering him as a hero and a real man. Her brother had thought over his decision, but eventually he did it because the community pushed him to. Otherwise he'd be regarded as a small person. The typical killer is usually the father, husband, or brother of the victim (teenage brothers are chosen as they'll go to jail for a short time). While the victims mostly women, the males involved in the "crimes" should die as well. In general, the accused females are killed first, giving men the opportunity to go away. At the same time, the "marked" men can escape death by paying monnies to the family of the female victim -- this evolves to an "honor killing business" between tribes, police and negotiatiors. There are also some rumors about males having killed other men in murders unrelated to honor issues who then will kill a female of their own family to cover up the initial killing.
Hello:I'm from Bulgaria and my husband is suffering from a terminal disease.Doctors say he has no more than 3 months to live.Can my children get a visa in my native country to attend the funeral of their father? Please someone help me with advice.
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