Cho Seung-Hui, vs. Gun Control

All the gun control people are going to run on this one I suppose, let it rest, I do not see any room for an argument here. A non American shot a lot of people perhaps with two guns; guns he got legally, and had he not got them, the old story goes, he would have anyhow. But the other side of the story is also is worth looking at, seldom brought out too, had some of the students guns of their own, the story might be a little different today. I am from Minnesota, and have a Permit to carry a gun, and in most cases I feel safer with it than not. And when in a store, I’m sure the robber doesn’t know who has a gun and who doesn’t in Minnesota, and so he has to guess, but once you put gun control into the issue to the point of restricting it to mostly law enforcement, the bad guy knows he has no competition, he is free to do as he pleases.

I also have a license to carry in Peru. I took a psychological test, and a shooting test, and a three day background test, and was given one. And again, with my ailments, I’m glad I got one, because it would be hard for me to defend myself otherwise, nowadays. The robber picks on women, old folks, and those a tinge lame, he or she does not fool around with the strong and able, and gun totting fellow; the same thing for dug addicts. This is a very sad case, happening of course, and will take long to heal for the families involved, and I am sad for them. Not sure if there is really an understanding to all this killing, people want to analyze it. Anger out of control, is often displaced. And anger will come out one way or another; fortunately, there were signs, but unfortunately, nobody paid much attention to them except a teacher that could do little about it. In this case, the killer had too many rights, with out responsibility to balance them. A psychological test would have helped prior to purchasing those guns, and a three day wait to review the sale (in Peru, the even keep your gun under lock and key until the test is reviewed, and the score in the shooting is complete). I guess I don’t call that gun control, simply normal precautions, like getting a drivers license, you just don’t get it when you apply for it, there is a process. No man or woman should be denied a gun, if indeed he shows a pattern of cooperation and responsibility, and pass the tests (our 2nd Amendment says so).

See Dennis’ web site: http://dennissiluk.tripod.com

What does it mean to grow old gracefully? About ten minutes ago I viewed a television commercial, which was not very efficacious because I’ve already forgotten the product’s name, but it did spawn my idea to write this article. In America , so very many English words and a greater number of expressions have either lost their meaning or never had any.

In the commercial a dermatologist and his wife, a psychotherapist, emphasize that they want to grow old gracefully thus explaining the reason they each claim to swallow 25 supplements per day. This confuses me because I don’t believe we can swallow pills to make ourselves graceful, which by definition is lithe, agile, dainty, pretty, delicate, handsome and trim. Thus, the meaning of growing old gracefully continues to elude me.

Unless we die young most of us will eventually look old. And, people who look old- with gray hair and wrinkles, and those that have gnarled arthritic fingers and toes, and people that are bent over from osteoporosis, and those who have gained weight because of age related slow metabolism or water retention are regrettably not considered among the in-group who are growing old gracefully. They are rarely portrayed in the commercials. So, perhaps growing old gracefully really means to “look good,” and “to be aesthetically pleasing to the eye.”

Let’s never forget the priceless message of the fox from, Antoine de Saint-Exupery’s children’s book, “The Little Prince.” The fox said, “What is essential is invisible to the eye.” Being lithe, agile, dainty, pretty, delicate, handsome and trim are not always qualities available to the elderly among us. Even some young members of our society have never possessed these qualities. So, maybe now is a good time to reconsider what’s important in life, in general. Suddenly my mind is filled with and my body feels embraced by the amorphous images of graciousness; being accepting of conditions; being charitable; being kind; being caring; being compassionate; being loving; and being generous. The former are but a few of the many words listed in my thesarus under “grace.” Then the expression growing old gracefully would metamorphose into growing old with grace. And imagine how nice it would be to even be young with grace.

Growing old gracefully in this third millennium means that you must have few if any wrinkles (you’ve had a face-lift, botox or collagen injections), your hair has color (because you have it dyed regularly - highlights and low-lights) or you look fabulous with gray hair (you’re lucky), you’re thin (probably had liposuction, diet fanatically, and spend all your time at the gym), you have great physical prowess (good for you), your body is well proportioned (you work out and diet excessively or you’ve had implants), and you take upwards of 25 supplements per day (hey, someone has to fund the industry).

And, if you use the expression growing old gracefully you are among those who use the English language incorrectly and you really don’t communicate with anyone because of this growing trend - the phenomenon that our verbal expressions lack meaning and we don’t really say what we mean . Growing old with grace also means knowing your limitations and shifting your activities when your body cries out “enough!” as it begs you to change from the strenuous sport your ego loves it to an activity your aging body can more easily tolerate. And, more importantly, grace would mean that you would finally accept your new limitations. Maybe ‘growing old with tolerance’ would be even more accurate to describe what our society is starving for. This would mean that we would grow old and become broadminded, open-minded, lenient, accepting and patient.

Growing old used to mean giving back. According to Erik Erikson, the German developmental psychologist and psychoanalyst who is known for his theory on human social development believes that our lifetime spans eight stages. This article concerns itself with the last two:

State 7: ages 40-65 - Generativity vs. Stagnation where the optimal potential solution is ‘Caring.’ And,
Stage 8: ages 65 to death - Integrity vs. Despair, where the optimal potential solution is ‘Wisdom,’ which, among other things, is the acceptance of one’s life.

Wisdom, according to the Merriam-Webster dictionary is defined as the: a) Accumulated philosophic or scientific learning-KNOWLEDGE; b) Ability to discern inner qualities and relationships-INSIGHT; c) Good sense-JUDGMENT.

This author does not believe that any number of supplements swallowed would ever provide the qualities of caring or wisdom.

People use the phrase ‘grow old gracefully’ but they really mean that as the years pass and their birthdays tell the story of their timeline, that they will do whatever it takes to look young and convince others to believe that they are young. In this third millennium age is unfortunately seen as a curse. And, as a result the greater curse is that we do not venerate our elderly. Is there anything graceful about desperately clinging to youth - causing people to swallow 25 pills per day, subjecting their bodies to cosmetic surgery, engaging in obsessive exercising, fanatically dieting, sometimes binging and purging, dressing in clothes designed for adolescents, and even mimicking the verbal expressions, facial and hand gestures of the youth - the very generation born to replace them?

So what does ‘growing old gracefully’ really mean? If you’re able to play vigorous sports by all means continue until your body says “no more!” If you believe in exercising and eating well, by all means do so.

Enter here the ‘great stretch of mind into consciousness.’ Examine with rigor your reasons for dieting and exercising until you’re a size one for an aging woman and a 32 waist for an aging man; examine why you would subject your body to a myriad of cosmetic surgical procedures; examine why you would purchase all kinds of anti-wrinkle creams; and wear tight low-cut Capri-pants that expose your belly, along with midriff tops that expose your upper “six-pack” abdomen. Are you really growing old gracefully? Or, as the years pass, which they do for everyone (if you’re lucky), and the adding machine calculates it- which it does, is your psyche really denying the meaning behind all this? That no matter how desperately you cling to youth, you will die. We all die.

The return of the housedress or the muumuu is not even a consideration. Maybe your mothers or grandmothers wore them in their 40s, 50s, 60s, or 70s. Growing old gracefully does not mean you must wear housedresses. So what does ‘growing old gracefully’ mean to you? And, what do you suppose it means to others who are aging as you are aging?

Does the mirror, mirror on the wall really tell it all? Are you really growing old gracefully when what you see looking back at you is “yourself when you were forty?” Whom have you really deceived - are you really still forty? Or, will you die just as you would otherwise as the person in the coffin merely looking like you were forty? Only now you’ve spent a lot of hard work and much money trying to recapture your youth, which you’ve defined as ‘grace.’ To paraphrase the American writer Gertrude Stein’s, “A rose is a rose is a rose.” I believe that “Our chronological age despite any form of appearance, or sum of money we’ve spent, or any amount of exercise we’ve done, or any amount of self-denial we’ve engaged in, remains our chronological age.” In other words, “Your age is your age is your age.” And, no mater what you do, you can’t fool Mother Nature!

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P. Brozinsky 2007 Copyright©, all rights reserved

Patricia Brozinsky, Ph.D., a keen observer of human behavior has been a psychotherapist for seventeen years with a private practice in East Patchogue , NY. She has taught psychology at the undergraduate level and has co-lead workshops for Suffolk County Department of Mental Health, NY. (631) 730-8225.

In the world of physics energy is often defined as the ability to do work. For instance the energy of the wind that moves a windmill might create electricity or through a process of gears it might turn a pump for water. A car engine on the other hand will turn a set of gears in a transmission which then turns the tires and makes the car go. We call this energy horsepower and that’s how we measure it; horsepower is the ability to do work and it is a measurement stick.

Is there an energy which cannot be defined by its ability to do work? It is hard to say because as soon as you make a statement of a type of energy and its how it does no work someone else can come up with what that energy is doing thus figure out how it can be measured. The human body burns calories and that allows it to do work.

The human brain uses that the energy and it can think, is that work? The amount of energy the human brain uses in the amount of work it’s able to do varies from person to person; same with someone’s physical ability.

In this case you might say that the human brain is a force multiplier, as it is able to figure out an easier way to do work, saving energy and making other energies more efficient and effective. Thus it is really worth what you put into it. So, feed your body good stuff and use your brain to the best of your ability.

If you take a strong man and give him a banana he may be able to shovel twice as much snow as a small skinny person who also eats the same banana but has a higher metabolism. The problem with defining energy as its ability to do work is that it cannot always be measured and even if we come up with a measurement the conversion rates of energy to work will vary from machine to machine or from human to human.

We have often heard in Communism that people should have equal pay for equal work. But how could we measure the work and no two humans are equal in their ability to do work. If we use methods of piecemeal work like Friedrich Winslow Taylor or JD Rockefeller this is a better measurement. But that would be capitalism not Communism.

In Communism everyone does the best they can or puts in their time and expects that to be good enough. Unfortunately that does not provide the incentive needed to be efficient. Thus communism is a poor method when applied to humans to fully utilize the bio-system, brain or take advantage of the force multiplier.

Defining energy as the ability to work is irrelevant without the efficiency quotient attached. Without trampling on the world of physics or the academia sciences we must never forget that not all things can be measured in such a simplistic way because all things are not equal; they never have been and they never will be. Everything is not as it seems.

L. Winslow is a Economic Advisor to the Online Think Tank, a Futurist and retired entrepreneur. Currently he is planning a bicycle ride across the US to raise money for charity and is sponsored by http://www.Calling-Plans.com and all the proceeds will go to various charities who sign up.

THOMAS CARLYLE: - A most secretive yet very public intellectual who authored much about history yet begrudged having to do this. His biographers have yet to figure out what the secret he kept from them was; even though some of them were close friends. I think the secret has to do with the likes of Goethe. They developed a great deal of admiration for each other. But it might be that Goethe of the Illuminati actually was less connected to the true ruling body of our culture than Carlyle. His Swiftean influences seen in his book Sartor Restartus as well as the fact that his father was trained by a Mason, and they lived not far from the Templar Rosslyn Castle of the St. Clair or Sinclair family, leads me to believe he was a Hibernian like Nostradamus.

The Illuminati or Goethe is part of the same continuum as the Alumbrados which is really just a translation of the word Illuminati. St. Germain de Medici was the key figure in its founding and Masons still study his work even though few if any of them know who or what he was.

He married above his head when he became betrothed to a descendant of John Knox who founded Presbyterian Churches which might well have more than a Calvinist (Which has some connection to the Cathar/Huguenots and an order of Catholicism called Port Royal.) element of controlling people or managing society. He was a good person and did great work to educate the masses with his support of creating a Public Library. Those who suggest he was a forerunner of Nazism because of his desire to see a strong leader are missing the boat as I see it. There is nothing wrong with his concept of a beneficent leader who has near-to-total dictatorial power when it is compared with the lobbying cronyism of our so-called democratic systems. But he never saw a man who could be as good a leader (Peel for a while) as he would want to see in this role. I believe he genuinely wished for improvement and compassion between all life on earth.

I do not accept the theory that he beat his wife which is put forward by his wife’s family. In fact I wonder about the relatives who said that about Carlyle after the fact. We do know he said it was a secret which would render all biographies about him rather useless. Wife-beating would not render all biographies useless but being part of an Inner Sanctum that developed the government of the world for certain elites who keep the plans secret might be considered as such. Could he really have wanted de-population and the One World Order that Cecil Rhodes under the direction of Carlyle’s biographer John Ruskin developed? Yes, there is a connection between the psychology of wife-beating and the war-monger’s arts or other kinds of control freakishness.

One of his students by the name of John Ruskin inculcated the Illuminati principles in Cecil Rhodes whose influence and power is a blight upon humanity to this day - so I could be wrong about him being as good as I think. In fact Rhodes and Hitler both had what some think is a daemonic event that made them (like Napoleon) into the men they became. I think the use of esoteric or occult possession techniques was involved by those who sought to control these men but I see little evidence that Carlyle was one who developed these techniques - so if he was part of it - he was also a mere tool for them.

Author of many books available at Lulu and World-Mysteries.com
Amazon has some of my books and will soon have more including America’s Assassinations and Aspirations

A mystic is person who seeks by contemplation and self-surrender to obtain either union with or absorption in the Universal Spirit or God, or spiritual apprehension of the truths beyond the understanding. In the Vedic and Upanishadic traditions are enumerated many techniques leading one to experience the mystical. I happened accidentally to discover a fascinating parallel, and was wonderstruck at the uncanny similarity of their experiences as postulated by Wordsworth and the Vedic seers, but with one slight difference, that it is only in the latter sense that Wordsworth is a mystic, and he is first and last a Nature mystic.

In his boyhood Wordsworth responded to Nature through the senses of the eye and ear. But Wordsworth often transcends the conscious world and actually enters the mystic domain. And he achieves this mystical breakthrough by sublimated feeling or sublimated vision. In the mystical state his body is neutralized, he loses body-consciousness and becomes all Spirit (ahamātmā - I am pure Spirit and not the body). And it is in this state (Samādhi - Sanskrit for ’solution’, as also superconsciousness) that he beholds the Spirit and pervades the Universe.

we are laid asleep

In body, and become a living soul;

While with an eye made quiet by the power

Of harmony, and the deep power of joy

We see into the life of things. (Tintern Abbey).

This supersensuous sublime state is a state of “wise passiveness”, a very meaningful word, denoting Consciousness (the awareness of a ‘Drashtā’ - the seer, experiencer, not the doer). This state emerges when the body becomes inactive and the soul alone remains active. But if the “meddling intellect” (Buddhi) intrudes, this power of mystical perception is immediately lost. (The Tables Turned; “Expostulation and Reply”). The mystical awareness is the awareness of the all-pervading Universal Spirit.

It is (Shrishtiswaroopa, the impelling force of all manifestation).

A motion and a Spirit, that impels

All living things, and all objects of all thought

And rolls through all things. (Tintern Abbey).

In The Prelude Book I Wordsworth again refers to the (Sarvagna - all knowing)

Wisdom and Spirit of the Universe

Thou Soul that art the eternity of thought!

The equivalent of transcendent to thought is found in the word, Shabdabrahmātivartatey.

Wordsworth found that when his mind was freed from preoccupation with disturbing objects, petty cares, little enmities and low desires, he could then reach a condition of equilibrium, which is “a happy stillness of the mind”. He believed this condition could be deliberately induced by a kind of relaxation of the will (Dhyana - contemplation) and by stilling the busy intellect and striving desires. It is a purifying process, an emptying of all that is worrying, self-assertive and self-seeking. When our feeling and thought thus purified become exalted, our vision becomes clear enough to experience the central peace subsisting at the heart of ceaseless agitation. It reveals unity in what to our everyday sight appears to be diversity, harmony where ordinarily we hear hot discord, and joy instead of sorrow.

The slight difference of the approach that I talked about is in the sense that Wordsworth came to realize the Eternal Spirit, the giver of life to the Universe…through an intertwining of the passions of his Soul with Nature, and that Nature has fostered him by purifying his feeling and thought through beauty and form and making him recognize the magnificent opulence of the human heart.

No doubt, however, that the mystical experience is of divine origin and import, and contributes largely to the grandeur and sublimity of Wordsworth’s Nature poetry.

When you are not aware of something that no other humans are aware of either, then that portion of your environment becomes fluid, much like an unobserved particle becomes a wave function, an enfolded hologram. When no one else in the world was thinking about something then it is in a wave state including all possibilities. But the moment anyone focuses their attention on it, the thing reverts to a non-wave state.

When it comes to the fluid nature of elements in one’s own reality, it is not enough to merely close one’s eyes, but actually disengage one’s freewill from it by entirely forgetting about that element. This frees it up for influence by other forces. This is why after you set an intention, you have to undergo a period of temporary forgetting, to let it go out of the conscious mind and allow the subconscious to take over its manifestation. To be detached and letting God make it happen. Set it and forget about it.

Thus, the less aware and alert you are, the more malleable or fluid your reality is to other beings who wish to change it without violating your freewill. Having awareness of something locks it down, then only alterable by direct physical action, or only by metaphysical action on the part of beings with more freewill than you who wisely override your lockdown of that element of reality to ensure your learning lessons flow in smooth sequence.

Therefore, fluidity of your reality is not necessarily detrimental, for most of reality creation requires such fluidity before reality can be reshuffled into what you demand or request. The trick is in becoming aware of all possible changes so that you will lock them down to prevent influence from lower negative forces, and then stating your request specifically and honestly, which opens up one of those possibilities to fluidity. If your request is specific enough, lower negative forces cannot take advantage of that fluidity because it only flows in a direction that is as you specified, without loopholes or opportunity for negative twisting.

The reason behind surprising synchronicities is that synchronicities in general happen most easily when that aspect of reality is fluid. It is fluid because you are unaware of it, which in turn leads to its surprising nature when the requested change materializes. If you make a request, then keep expecting it to materialize, never allowing that possibility to become fluid due to your constant obsessing and lack of faith whether it happens or not, if your request is indeed to be fulfilled, it must happen through elements of your reality that are still fluid, not locked down by your constant expecting, and thus consist of elements you are not aware of, which will seem surprising when they create a given synchronicity.

This leads to the core issue of how reality works and how synchronicities happen. What we know to be physical reality is nothing but a shared dream maintained by the collective consciousness of all who participate in this reality. The collective consciousness is bound via a central coordinating mechanism that may be called the Grand Matrix of physicality. Within this physical universe exist minor matrices, including that overlaying the earth, known as the earth grid. This is a local mechanism interfacing with the collective consciousness of humanity to maintain reality on earth as we know it. Like Einstein said, reality is illusion, albeit a persistent one. Its persistence makes it objective for all practical purposes, but its illusory nature makes it malleable enough to be influenced by our thoughts, feelings, and beliefs.

Our reality consists not only of the present state of things, but our perceived past as well. The sum of our present and past states of recorded personal existence comprise a particular timeline. We are conditioned to accept that the past is written in stone, and are divided over whether the future is fated, or if it is open. In truth, it is open because we have freewill to change it, or rather, choose which future we manifest by our actions and metaphysical influences.

Those who think the future is alterable are comfortable with the idea of shifting through probable futures, but most are bothered by the idea of a shifting past. In actuality, the liquidity of the future is exactly the same as liquidity of the past. Causality only applies within timelines, and can be thrown out the window if you move between timelines and have your memories and anything that records the past, rearranged in the process.

Many think the future is variable due to freewill because until we have chosen our next move the future remains open. With a single application of freewill the distribution of possible futures shifts as some are prevented while others are created. But what most do not realize is that freewill doesn’t just affect the future, it can change the past and present as well. For example, a synchronicity can be created in direct response to a decision you make now, but tracing back the synchronicity reveals it to be the culmination of a series of cause and effect that may have started yesterday. Prior to making your present choice, yesterday may have been different. That is why our prayers can be answered even before we pray and miracles can happen even when there was no time for them to be set up. Freewill can change causality in linear time.

Freewill is the only universal constant, the rest is causality. A causal chain is finite as it begins and ends with choice. Freewill is the only true cause, all else is purely effect. You can’t change a choice you have already made in the past, but a present choice can alter the aspects of your reality timeline that is not anchored by your conscious awareness. The finalized version of events recorded in the memory function will be altered from shifting timelines once your present choice is made. The present is a fulcrum between past and future. A shift in the fulcrum will affect both. How we apply our freewill now has consequences that can span both ways on the timeline.

The acausal phenomenon of synchronicity ensures that nothing ever succeeds in preventing individuals from choosing to fulfill their destinies. The Higher Self can override any actions, laws, or limits endangering that fulfillment because nothing can undermine its purpose, which is to indirectly assist and accelerate the spiritual evolution of physical incarnates. Consequently, those taking fated risks need not search for safety nets to catch them because failure is never a possibility in such cases. All that is needed is the knowledge of which choices to avoid and the desire to transcend the limits of ordinary reality. Life then falls into place synchronistically.

Enoch Tan aims to help people achieve greater awareness in living and experiencing life. To evolve human consciousness to higher levels. To change lives and to create possibility. To revolutionize the way we understand the mind and reality. Because that is what governs every area of life and destiny. Learn Secrets most people will never know about the Mind and Reality and Get Free Ebooks of Life’s Greatest Secrets at => Secrets of Mind and Reality

Geographically the single most significant factor about Newcastle is that it is on the River Tyne making it easy to cross from the north bank. Hence it became known as Newcastle-Upon-Tyne. As the undisputed capital of the north between York in England and Edinburgh in Scotland, Newcastle is located at the map reference 54.97o North and 01.62 o West of the Greenwich meridian. It is separated from Cumbria and Lancashire to the west by the Pennine Hills, from which the River Tyne rises. Economically, apart form being a thriving industrial and commercial centre, it is an important ferry port for travellers to and from Scandinavia. In total Newcastle has a population of some 260,000 and covers an area of about 113 square kilometres.

Geologically the bedrock on which Newcastle is founded on is sedimentary and consists mainly of Carboniferous Limestone - 300-360 million years ago, Also present are Millstone Grits from the latter part of the Carboniferous era and out toward the east of Newcastle there is some Oolitic limestone originating in the Jurassic period - around 200 million years ago. It was, of course, during the Carboniferous period that the vast deposits of coal were laid down for which Newcastle became so famous. The coal would have been formed when the site of Newcastle would have been in an estuary swamp with shallow and warm water, when the whole of what is now the British Isles would have been sitting on the equator.

Being in the UK, Newcastle has a temperate climate. Despite being on the east side of the country it still benefits from the warming effects to the UK of the Gulf Stream and is, therefore, warmer than many cities located on or around the same latitude. However, Newcastle does have a lower average temperature than many UK cities which in winter averages 3oC and in summer rarely achieves higher than 18oC. On average it has 290 days of precipitation (rainfall) giving it around 100mm per month, compared to a national average of 150mm per month. Its weather pattern is attributable to three main factors: its northerly position; being in the rain shadow of the Pennines making it drier than might be expected and the winds which blow through it. Whilst the prevailing wind is south westerly, from the North Atlantic Currents, Newcastle is also susceptible to blasts of icy air arriving from the North Pole. At its highest point Newcastle is some 80 metres above sea level, but it also has areas less than 10 metres above sea level.

The City of Newcastle-Upon-Tyne is part of the Tyneside Metropolitan District. It has 26 electoral wards, the following are worthy of some note. Byker, situated in the east of the city, is one of the less prosperous wards. It is famed for the ‘Byker Wall’. This is a single continuous block of 620 maisonettes. In the 1960s the whole of Byker, a run down area of mainly Victorian buildings, was in desperate need of rebuilding. In 1969 the City of Newcastle council asked the architect Ralph Erskine to plan a ‘new’ Byker. In collaboration with the then residents, one of Erskine’s features was the Byker wall. Having endured years of ridicule for social problems arising out of it, the Byker Wall is now seen as a unique venture in community involvement in town planning and in 2003 was rated as a Grade II listed building. Gosforth, is accepted to be one of the more affluent suburbs of Newcastle, Fenham is a popular area for the Asian community with increasing numbers of young professionals also moving into it. Heaton and Jesmond both have quite large student communities; Newburn contains the church where George Stephenson, of railway fame, was married.

Newcastle is noted for the bridges joining north and south Tyneside; of these bridges the city of Newcastle is responsible for four of them, three of which are famous in their own right. The High Level Road Bridge, opened in 1849, is actually a two tier bridge. The upper tier carries railway traffic and is maintained by Network Rail, the lower tier carrying road traffic and pedestrians is managed by the city council. The swing bridge was built in 1879 to allow ships to carry on up the Tyne and of course the landmark Tyne Bridge opened in 1928. There is also a cycle and pedestrian tunnel under the Tyne between Howdon and Jarrow. The newest bridge on the Tyne is the Gateshead Millennium Bridge which is a direct link between Newcastle and the Baltic Flour Mill gallery, in Gateshead. The Millennium Bridge is now seen as the new ’signature’ bridge for the river Tyne.

With the coal mining industry virtually shut down and the heavy engineering companies in decline, in the 1980s the economic prospects for Newcastle were bleak. However, the city rallied itself through the 1990s and has emerged into the 21st Century as a renewed and vibrant city. Whilst more dependant on service and retail industries than before, it has an unemployment rate below 5% and is generally considered to be economically sound. This is reflected in its privately owned house prices, which average £145,000 and range from £330,000 for a four bedroom detached house to £120,000 for a three bedroom flat.

Article by Susan Ashby of Newcastle Singles. To read more articles like this or for dating in Newcastle visit http://www.newcastle-singles.co.uk”

Progress eh? - you can’t stop it.

Lately, I’ve been chewing over the subject of progress in a what’s-it-all-about kind of way. What are we all striving for, and where does art fit into it? Does it have any function beyond the beautification of our environment? Can it really impact upon modern thinking, or is it now out of the loop? Technology has certainly advanced over the last centuries and has irrevocably cemented its central role in our lives; music and art, however, whilst they have undeniably developed, to what extent they have progressed is anyone’s guess.

Ho hum. As I flip through my history books and tap the golden orb of truth that is Wikipedia, I can’t help but wonder what the other civilisations must think at the intergalactic gymnasium of truth. When Humanity stumbles through the door each day in its bulging spandex and luminous pink leg-warmers. As it continually grazes it knees on the treadmill of self-improvement and gets tangled embarrassingly in the rowing machine of enlightenment.

Kirkpatrick Sale’s essay* “Five Facets of a Myth” argues that the very term progress, is a cultural misconception - “nothing more than a serviceable myth, a deeply held unexamined construct”.

Mmm - and I suppose Humanity is just destined to be a couch-potato, and that’s that. We should all give up trying.

Central to his argument is his view that the technological progress we have enjoyed over the last century has failed to herald an era of peace and personal enlightenment, and has instead propelled us to the edge of ecological disaster. Well, I guess he’s got a point there.

Down the ages, so many dubious initiatives have been endorsed in the name of progress, that it’s not hard for Sale to make a convincing case that progress could merely be a handy misnomer - exploited and propagated by those in power or those seeking it.

He goes on to suggest that its origins lay rooted in the Renaissance, in that its proponents “promoted the idea of regular and eternal improvement of the human condition”. As maxims go, I think this is rather good. But if, in reality, this shiny ideal requires a daily routine of 200 mental press-ups, a five-mile ethical jog and no more chocolate, I can see where we might run into trouble.

Furthermore, out of this maxim was later born the materialistic interpretation of Capitalism:

“The eternal material improvement of the human condition”.

And if Sale’s observation is correct, then surely too, the pragmatic approach of Machiavellian politics:

“The power and money people will throw at anyone promising improvement of the human condition”.

Which paints a involute and more complex picture than first thought.

The darker side of human nature is a perennial weed that threatens to hijack the most noble ideological rose beds [ttt]**. Where Plato, et al, constructed faultless republics to which we could aspire, Machiavelli demonstrated that those same republics would have to be built from the mud of human frailty.

Machiavelli, so often misattributed as coining the phrase “the end justifies the means”, can be seen to subscribe to this notion of progress through his writings. The end in this paraphrased case denotes the greater good; the improvement of the current human condition. The means is a logical progression of this goal. It implies that we have not yet reached the end of our improvement. It recognises therefore, that we are imperfect, perhaps seriously flawed, and will therefore cut corners, cheat, lie or simply fall short of the mark. This presents an interesting premise.

How can something that is imperfect create perfection?

We humans are attempting to construct a better society. We are quite capable of noble ideas, but as tools to implement this society we are inescapably defective. Machiavelli saw this, and realised that in reality, any large-scale attempt at improving civilisation would inevitably be hampered by the more unpalatable aspects of human nature. So he wrote a rulebook on the realities and pitfalls of governing society in the face of these flaws.

Some saw it as a cynical guidebook on how to seize power in ten easy steps. I prefer to see it as an honest observation of human tendencies: a warning to citizens of the world: “Beware! This is what your leaders may really be like.”

Publicly, a ruler must be seen to be beyond reproach, to be the embodiment of this eternal self-improvement, and must persuade the nation that the human condition is indeed being nourished under his/her leadership, whether it is or not.

It’s why scandal is such a potent political weapon; why politicians go to great lengths to demonstrate the long list of betterments they have brought to us during their tenancy.

Sale’s interpretation of this seems to be that progress is not necessarily something we should embrace. He cites a gamut of statistics that show us that our technological advancement is killing the environment, wiping out flora and fauna, widening the poverty gap, increasing laziness and apathy. He cites increased levels of stress, unhappiness and working hours.

“Progress is the myth that assures us that full-speed-ahead is never wrong. Ecology is the discipline that teaches us that it is disaster.”

Sale’s arguments utilise many undeniable facts and statistics. But I do not believe this necessitates the abolition of our attempts to better ourselves. I would argue his statistics simply confirm that getting fit is no easy task.

The crux of the problem must always return to our flawed human nature. Humans are brilliant and inventive. The collective knowledge at our disposal continues to grow at an incredible rate, and this is something to be admired, not to be deplored. The scientist’s pursuit of the truth is not dissimilar from the artist’s, though the potential applications of his/her discoveries are many times more dangerous.

During the Renaissance, the arts and sciences seemed more closely entwined. They seemed driven by the same philosophical principles - to behold the cosmological truths; to explore the glorious order and harmony upon which our wondrous domain must surely have been built. Perhaps this marriage was an illusion. Perhaps the image of Da Vinci - embracer of both art and science - is too romantic to dispel.

But the truth is, as science presents us with an ever larger arsenal of instruments with which to engineer the world, art explores the hearts of those who would wield them. I feel this is key. And perhaps there is a balance that needs to be redressed if we are to progress optimally as a species.

We are at a point in time where we have at our disposal the means to feed and educate the entire world. We could, if we wanted, shape the world in almost any way we liked. To redistribute wealth and empower the individual in ways that we never thought possible. If we wanted.

Why don’t we want to? As Sale points out, why do so many of us face starvation, disease and subjugation? The answer must lie in self-examination.

Is human nature an immutable constant - something we should just accept will never change - or, like a disobedient bully, has it been left unchallenged all these centuries whilst the bookish philosophers bitch about it behind its back?

I’m fascinated by contemporary myths. Heroes and villains and all manner of archetype appear everywhere in our culture, serving to encode all sorts of snippets of contemporary ethics, just as the inhabitants of Olympus once did in Greek times.

When talking about the archetype of Superman, Elliot S. Maggin says that today, “the superhero is Everyman. Look at the way we live: travelling over the Earth at astounding speeds; … communicating instantly at will with people in the farthest corners of the globe; engineering economics; driving environmental forces, working wonders.”

In the comics, Superman hears someone scream and flies off to save the day. He’s fixing the world. In real life, Superman’s eating a TV dinner and flicking through the channels. He might catch a glimpse of the six o’clock news before he settles down to watch the big match.

Maybe that’s a bit harsh. It was fun to write though. So what’s my conclusion?

Well. Science deals with objective truth. What is physically possible. It gives us a region of potentiality in which to explore, but it offers no advice as to the best direction. Technology is the embodiment of the choices we make. Empty your pockets, what do you have? A nuclear bomb or a nuclear power plant?

If science is our campervan, then the arts - in all its varied forms - is our handy guidebook to the magical road trip of destiny. Politics, then, is the subsequent row that follows when no-one can agree on where to go. Either dad puts his foot down, or there’s a threat to turn right around and go home again (which never happens), or a brittle compromise is reached to put an end to everyone’s sulky tantrums. Either way we’re all going to sit there, cross-armed, feeling a little disgruntled.

How this flight of fancy effects my work is anyone’s guess. The simple beautification of one’s environment is perhaps more significant than most people would give credit for. But if art has another role to play, then maybe it’s to ensure that the guidebook offers the most exciting Technicolor destinations, with as many interesting (and relevant) alternatives as possible. Then, at least, despite the inevitable compromises, it might yet lead to a satisfying road trip.

Matt Brown - Contemporary Artist and Writer

Visit his online portfolio and blog at: http://blog.mattbrownart.com

Resources:

*Kirkpatrick Sale’s essay “Five Facets of a Myth”: http://www.primitivism.com/facets-myth.htm

**What is [ttt]?: http://blog.mattbrownart.com/?p=112

I’d like to introduce you to the relationship of music and geometry. As Goethe succinctly put it “geometry is frozen music” and with that in mind let’s examine it’s integration with the plastic, visual arts, the application of it in my sculptures and anecdotal stories in the unfolding of our understanding of music.

It would be hard to imagine life without music, indeed there wouldn’t be life without music. It is , it seems, the structure and mechanics of the physical world, from the dimensions of cell walls to the distances between and movements of planets [ the music of the spheres] to the fundamental nature of matter as waveforms, where scientists can best describe their discoveries as intervals and overtones arising from a fundamental note - the science of musical harmony. Little surprise that music of all artforms can evoke the most immediate of emotional responses.

So why do three large curvilinear stone sculptures represent the musical consonants of the octave , the perfect fourth and the perfect fifth? And why the somewhat obscure title of Pythagoras sings the blues? Why would a mathematician / philosopher declare that he ” woke up this morning, had a mean ol’ theorem on my mind”. Pythagoras didn’t incarnate simply to be the bane of every school student for centuries to come, amongst his great legacy was his treaty on music.

Inevitably he did wake up one morning and took a stroll through town, where he happened past a blacksmith’s workshop and was particularly taken by the sonorous notes made by their hammers striking the anvil. Being of an inquisitive mind he stepped inside the workshop and asked the blacksmiths if he could examine their hammers.

They obliged and Pythagoras determined, by weight, the proportion of one sized hammer to next. He reasoned that the difference, or interval, in their sound would then be in the same proportion and deduced these to be the octave or diapason [ the relationship of the half to the whole ], the fourth note or diatessaron [ the relationship of three quarters to the whole ], and the fifth note or diapente [ the relationship of two thirds to the whole ]. From this serendipitous, prosaic, industrial experience Pythagoras founded the diatonic eight note scale, based on a succession of fifths, giving us the greater part of our comprehension of music.

He extrapolated this to see the universe as a manifestation of mathematically derived musical relationships - ideas that dovetail with that of scientists today, whose technological advances have only given greater currency to this perception.

There are musical qualities in language, Greek being the western language to differentiate between vowels and consonants. It is the consonants, not the vowels that are the harmonic sounds. Vowels are the dynamic sounds that distinguish the consonants.

Pythagoras’ musical treatise quickly found it’s way into the plastic arts of ancient Greece and Rome. What we now regard as classicism was at the time the precept for universally harmonic order - the refinement of area and volume into proportion. The theoretical books of Vitruvius are the only surviving manuscripts of the formulae of these proportions and sixteen hundred years would pass before being implemented again.

The renaissance almost happened in the twelfth century and the Cistercian monks were amongst the main proponents of this event. They rigidly applied musical ratios to their buildings under the edict “there must be no decoration, only proportion”. Hence their churches became acoustic resonators where people constructed from musical ratios chanted certain ratios in buildings of corresponding proportions to the heavenly bodies distributed along these ratios, thus a human choir became a celestial choir.

Two centuries later the renaissance did arrive and the architect, artist, musician and writer Leon. Battista. Alberti, well versed in Vitruvian literature, had written his own “how to do” manuals for the architects and artists of his time. So great was his influence on renaissance thinking that the phenomenon took his namesake - Albertism.

New subject matter and new technology crystallised in an old stable geometry, now new again, was embraced with alacrity by artists emerging from the mystical and superstitious mentality of the middle ages into the humanism of the renaissance. These artists preferred simple ratios in whole numbers with which to articulate clear exact ideas and objectives within a rational and scientific milieu. Musical ratios , rather than the irrational golden mean, so popular with the more transcendental medieval artists, would provide the vehicle to unify painting architecture with the major art of music. Cadence, harmony and rhythm applied as discreet, intimate poetry beneath the colour and form permits an artwork perfect composure and allows the viewer to see and, if you will, hear a single experience and the emotional response is intensified.

The use of musical ratios in painting and architecture lasted into the baroque era, but not with the same purist literal vigour of the renaissance. Romanticism, the Age of Reason and the industrial revolution were a formidable gang with which ratios that smacked of classicism could not compete and they fell from favour. Ironically this happened at a time when they were being used with great panache, they had discovered swing music. Also at this time J.S Bach brought about the next major innovation in music by uniting gypsy and classical music, giving us our modern scale and keys.

Since then the musical ratios have largely lived in exile from the visual arts. Geometry in general, the golden mean in particular, has enjoyed fairly consistent usage, turning up in the most surprising of places.

However in music itself the progression of octave, fourth and fifth did reappear. Oppressed blacks in the deep south of the USA found this progression to their liking and started to compose a new type of folk music to express their despair and sorrow. They named this style of music after an obscure medieval term meaning a misfortune suffered at the hands of devil ; They called it the blues. They gave the world a new kind of music derived from an ancient discovery and curiously, by virtue of geographic location, it to became known by a Greek letter / word, Delta blues and the influence of this music was to be immeasurable.

The forms I designed are not by whim, fancy or intuition, but a didactic adherence to the traditions of harmonic proportion. My enthusiasm for these ratios and the golden mean doesn’t come from a nostalgic yearning for some long past golden age, but the simple fact that I’m a geometry junkie! An addiction that is both fuelled and satiated by fascination of the intrinsic presence of universal harmonics in the creation and composition of all things, their use over many centuries in composition and a desire to bring them into a modern idiom and recent vindicatory discoveries that they are the soul of matter.

It seems therefore appropriate to transpose science into art and appropriate, now more than ever to return to the humanist, rather than the classical, values of the renaissance. In a discordant, dangerous, quasi medieval world three curly, shiny stones bespeak a universality. Sensuous lines take the eye and hand cathartically along given harmonics. The crystalline structure of stone is not really inert, but buzzes with intervals, overtones and fundamentals of concord. A portrayal of geometry as frozen music and sound as solid form.

Duncan Moon is a West Australian based artist/artisan, a painter, draughtsman, drummer, percussionist, stonemason/plasterer and as a sculptor is an exponent of stone carving and stucco sculpture.

http://www.duncanmoon.com

The proportions and designs of his work are often based on Universal, geometric harmonies, such as pi, the golden mean and musical ratios. By this means the composure and consequently the appreciation of the works is endowed with a subliminal quality.

We are living in an exciting age in human history. A time when the mystic secrets of the ages are becoming de-mystified. Ancient practices like meditation and yoga are being proved to be effective tools for self-development, by scientists and doctors alike. We can switch on the television today and learn about things which were earlier considered taboo. Even the Kabbalah has gained media coverage through Madonna!

Our creativity is breaking our preconceived limits too. Have you ever noticed how much our technology has progressed in the last 50 years or so? We have finally invented an automobile which gives out pure water instead of smoke! A personal computer has more power than what IBM invented 30 years ago! Also consider the invention of the information super-highway. Never before have two humans from opposite sides of the globe, been able to communicate with each other through electricity, for so ‘cheap’.

We see books on creating our desired realities on the bestseller lists. Movies like ‘What the Bleep do we Know’ and ‘The Secret’ are successful. It is said that “when the student is ready, the teacher will appear”. This cannot be truer for humanity as a whole. For centuries, this kind of knowledge has been in the custody of only a small percentage of individuals. But now, especially with the advent of the internet, this information is spreading faster and faster throughout the globe.

Look around you, something special is happening. This article is a part of this shift. It has prompted me to write this, and you to find it!

Andrew Stone is extremely passionate and well-informed in the field of Mind Power. You may wish to visit his website if you want a list of resources which will help you discover the power of the subconscious mind…

http://www.UnleashMyPower.com