Lol@Maendeleo ya wanawake. Na sikuhiyi wanawake wa-ulaya na umarekani wanatueleza ya kuwa kuna kitu kiitwacho " Feminisim"... Sasa raula sistee mwaeleza hawa 'se westan waldi' tushazipita this so-kord feminism zamani za 'kaaree' 'homo Erectus'(lol-reminds me of my GHC class ).. Homopithicus, the homo sepiens, the homo sipien Neandertalensis lol...or the ones before them..the Austrolopithicus ramidus..the more you continue the more stranger they sounded ..the Austrolopithecus aferensis, the Austrolopitheens Africanus ..what the hell do they mean with the lust one? I wonder why the hell archeology was put of our syllubus. The fascinating subject for me was - geophraphy in secondary school. Or atleast I like the terms used when rocks were involved.. the ignious rocks or the human remains found in Olduvai Gorge of Tanzania! Remember the 4K Club? hehehe - Once I was a proud member. For me, by then, it equated to KGB or CID. The aisee brings back memories walaahi PS: I hated school

"So you see grassroots revolution is possible.." I agree. The ingrdients for a revolution in the Islamic World has been put in place by the War on Terror. A society is always united by the existence of a 'common enemy' that attacks the 'common good', which may lead to a 'common cause'. Common -ity.

"Warning, he is of Jewish Desent" "That is laughable. And it is in bold too." Postman, it is indeed 'able. I had to enbold the enthnicity of the author for fear that of be accused of favouritism. --------------------------------- Language Development, Human Intelligence, and Social Organization Noam Chomsky In Walter Feinberg (ed), Equality and Social Policy, Illinois, 1978 investigation in principle, a system that provides a unique form of intelligence that manifests itself in human language, in our unique capacity to develop a concept of number and abstract space,28 to construct scientific theories in certain domains, to create certain systems of art, myth, and ritual, to interpret human actions, to develop and comprehend certain systems of social institutions, and so on. On an "empty organism" hypothesis, human beings are assuredly equal in intellectual endowments. More accurately, they are equal in their incapacity to develop complex cognitive structures of the characteristically human sort. If we assume, however, that this biologically given organism has its special capacities like any other, and that among them are the capacities to develop human cognitive structures with their specific properties, then the possibility arises that there are differences among individuals in their higher mental functions. Indeed, it would be surprising if there were not, if cognitive faculties such as the language faculty are really "mental organs." People obviously differ in their physical characteristics and capacities; why should there not be genetically determined differences in the character of their mental organs and the physical structures on which they are based? Inquiry into specific cognitive capacities such as the language faculty leads to specific and I think significant hypotheses concerning the genetically programmed schematism for language, but gives us no significant evidence concerning variability. Perhaps this is a result of the inadequacy of our analytic tools. Or it may be that the basic capacities are truly invariant, apart from gross pathology. We find that over a very broad range, at least, there are no differences in the ability to acquire and make effective use of a human language; at some level of detail, it may be differences in what is acquired, as there are evidently differences in facility of use. I see no reason for dogmatism on this score. So little is known concerning other cognitive capacities that we can hardly even speculate. Experience seems to support the belief that people do vary in their intellectual capacities and their specialization. It would hardly come as a surprise if this were so, assuming that we are dealing with biological structures, however intricate and remarkable, of known sorts. Many people, particularly those who regard themselves as within the left-liberal political spectrum, find such conclusions repugnant. It may be that the empty organism hypothesis is so attractive to the left in part because it precludes these possibilities; there is no variability on a null endowment. But I find it difficult to understand why conclusions of this sort should be at all disturbing. I am personally quite convinced that no matter what training or education I might have received, I could never have run a four-minute mile, discovered Godel's theorems, composed a Beethoven quartet, or risen to any of innumerable other heights of human achievement. I feel in no way demeaned by these inadequacies. It is quite enough that I am capable, as I think any person of normal endowments probably is, of appreciating and in part understanding what others have accomplished, while making my own personal contributions in whatever measure and manner I am able to do. Human talents vary considerably, within a fixed framework that is characteristic of the species and that permits ample scope for creative work, including the creative work of appreciating the achievements of others. This should be a matter for delight rather than a condition to be abhorred. Those who assume otherwise must be adopting the tacit premise that a person's rights or social reward are somehow contingent on his abilities. As for his rights, there is an element of plausibility in this assumption in the single respect already noted: in a decent society opportunities should confirm as far as possible to personal needs, and such needs may be specialized and related to particular talents and capacities. My pleasure in life is enhanced by the fact that others can do many things that I cannot, and I see no reason to deny these people the opportunity to cultivate their talents, consistent with general social needs. Difficult questions of practice are sure to arise in any functioning social group, but I see no problem of principle. As for social rewards, it is alleged that in our society remuneration correlates in part with IQ. But insofar as that is true, it is simply a social malady to be overcome much as slavery had to be eliminated at an earlier stage of human history. It is sometimes argued that constructive and creative work will cease unless it leads to material reward, so that all of society gains when the talented receive special rewards. For the mass of the population, then, the message is: "You're better off if you're poor." One can see why this doctrine would appeal to the privileged, but it is difficult to believe that it could be put forth by anyone who has had experience with creative work or workers in the arts, the sciences, crafts, or whatever. The standard arguments for "meritocracy" have no basis in fact or logic, to my knowledge; they rest on a priori beliefs, which, furthermore, do not seem particularly plausible. I have discussed the matter elsewhere and will not pursue it here.29 Suppose that inquiry into human nature reveals that human cognitive capacities are highly structured by our genetic program and that there are variations among individuals within a shared framework. This seems to me an entirely reasonable expectation, and a situation much to be desired. It has no implications with regard to equality of rights or condition, so far as I can see, beyond those already sketched. Consider finally the question of race and intellectual endowments. Notice again that in a decent society there would be no social consequences to any discovery that might be made about this question. An individual is what he is; it is only on racist assumptions that he is to be regarded as an instance of his race category, so that social consequences ensue from the discovery that the mean for a certain racial category with respect to some capacity is such-and-such. Eliminating racist assumptions, the facts have no social consequences whatever they may be, and are therefore not worth knowing, from this point of view at least. If there is any purpose to an investigation of the relation between race and some capacity, it must derive from the scientific significance of the question. It is difficult to be precise about questions of scientific merit. Roughly, an inquiry has scientific merit if its results might bear on some general principles of science. One doesn't conduct inquiries into the density of blades of grass on various lawns or innumerable other trivial and pointless questions. Likewise, inquiry into such questions as race and IQ appears to be of virtually no scientific interest. Conceivably, there might be interest in correlations between partially heritable traits, but if someone were interested in this question he would surely not select such characteristics as race and IQ, each an obscure amalgam of complex properties. Rather, he would ask whether there is a correlation between measurable and significant traits, say, eye color and length of the big toe. It is difficult to see how the study of race and IQ can be justified on any scientific grounds. If the inquiry has no scientific significance and no social significance, apart from the racist assumption that an individual must be regarded not as what he is but rather as standing at the mean of his race category, it follows that it has no merit at all. The question then arises, Why is it pursued with such zeal? Why is it taken seriously? Attention naturally turns to the racist assumptions that do confer some importance on the inquiry if they are accepted. In a racist society, inquiry into race and IQ can be expected to reinforce prejudice, pretty much independent of the outcome of the inquiry. Given such concepts as "race" and "IQ," it is to be expected that the results of any inquiry will be obscure and conflicting, the arguments complex and difficult for the layman to follow. For the racist, the judgment "not proven" will be read "probably so." There will be ample scope for the racist to wallow in his prejudices. The very fact that the inquiry is undertaken suggests that its outcome is of some importance, and since it is important only on racist assumptions, these assumptions are insinuated even when they are not expressed. For such reasons as these, a scientific investigation of genetic characteristics of Jews would have been appalling in Nazi Germany. There can be no doubt that the investigation of race and IQ has been extremely harmful to the victims of American racism. I have heard black educators describe in vivid terms the suffering and injury imposed on children who are made to understand that "science" has demonstrated this or that about their race, or even finds it necessary to raise the question. We cannot ignore the fact that we live in a profoundly racist society, though we like to forget that this is so. When the New York Times editors and U.N. Ambassador Moynihan castigate Idi Amin of Uganda as a "racist murderer," perhaps correctly, there is a surge of pride throughout the country and they are lauded for their courage and honesty. No one would be so vulgar as to observe that the editors and the Ambassador, in the not very distant past, have supported racist murder on a scale that exceeds Amin's wildest fantasies. The general failure to be appalled by their hypocritical pronouncements reflects, in the first place, the powerful ideological controls that prevent us from coming to terms with our acts and their significance and, in the second place, the nation's profound commitment to racist principle. The victims of our Asian wars were never regarded as fully human, a fact that can be demonstrated all too easily, to our everlasting shame. As for domestic racism, I need hardly comment. The scientist, like anyone else, is responsible for the foreseeable consequences of his acts. The point is obvious and generally well understood: consider the conditions on the use of human subjects in experiments. In the present case, an inquiry into race and IQ, regardless of its outcome, will have a severe social cost in a racist society, for the reasons just noted. The scientist who undertakes this inquiry must therefore show that its significance is so great as to outweigh these costs. If, for example, one maintains that this injury is justified by the possibility that this will lead to some refinement of social science methodology, as argued by Boston University President John Silber (Encounter, August, 1974), he provides an insight into his moral calculus: the possible contribution to research methodology outweighs the social cost of the study of race and IQ in a racist society. Such advocates often seem to believe that they are defending academic freedom, but this is just a muddle. The issue of freedom of research arises here in its conventional form: does the research in question carry costs, and, if so, are they outweighed by its significance? The scientist has no unique right to ignore the likely consequences of what he does. Once the issue of race and IQ is raised, people who perceive and are concerned by its severe social cost are, in a sense, trapped. They may quite properly dismiss the work on the grounds just sketched. But they do so in a racist society in which, furthermore, people are trained to consign to questions of human and social importance to "technical experts," who often prove to be experts in obfuscation and defense of privilege -- "experts in legitimation," in Gramsci's phrase. The consequences are obvious. Or, they may enter the arena of argument and counterargument, thus implicitly reinforcing the belief that it makes a difference how the research comes out and tacitly supporting the racist assumptions on which this belief ultimately rests. Inevitably, then, by refuting alleged correlations between race and IQ (or race and X, for any X one selects), one is reinforcing racist assumptions. The dilemma is not restricted to this issue. I have discussed it elsewhere in connection with debate over murder and aggression.30 In a highly ideological society, matters can hardly be otherwise, a misfortune that we may deplore but cannot easily escape. We exist and work in given historical conditions. We may try to change them, but cannot ignore them, in the work we undertake, the strategies for social change that we advocate, or the direct action in which we engage or from which we abstain. In discussion of freedom and equality, it is very difficult to disentangle questions of fact from judgments of value. We should try to do so, pursuing factual inquiry where it may lead without dogmatic preconception, but not ignoring the consequences of what we do. We must never forget that what we do is tainted and distorted, inevitably by the awe of expertise that is induced by social institutions as one device for imposing passivity and obedience. What we do as scientists, as scholars, as advocates, has consequences. We cannot escape this condition in a society based on concentration of power and privilege. This is a heavy responsibility that a scientist or scholar would not have to bear in a decent society, one in which individuals would not relegate to authorities decisions over their lives or their beliefs. We may and should recommend the simple virtues: honesty and truthfulness, responsibility and concern. But to live by these principles is often no simple matter. Notes 1. Robert Goodman, After the Planners (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1971). 2. K. William Kapp, The Social Costs of Private Enterprise (1950; paperback ed., New York: Schocken Books, 1971), p. 231. 3. Cf. Seymour Melman, "Industrial Efficiency under Managerial versus Cooperative Decision-making," Review of Radical Political Economics, Spring, 1970; reprinted in B. Horvat, M. Marcovic, and R. Supek, eds., Self-Governing Socialism, vol. II (White Plains, N.Y.: International Arts and Sciences Press, 1975). See also Melman, Decision-Making and Productivity (Oxford: Blackwell, 1958); and Paul Blumberg, Industrial Democracy: The Sociology of Participation (New York: Schocken Books, 1969). 4. Stephen A. Marglin, "What Do Bosses Do?," Review of Radical Political Economics, Summer, 1974; Herbert Gintis, "Alienation in Capitalist Society," in R.C. Edwards, M. Reich, and T.E. Weisskopf, eds., The Capitalist System (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1972). 5. J. E. Meade, Efficiency, Equality and the Ownership of Property (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1965). 6. Karl Marx, Capital, vol. 3 (Moscow: Foreign Languages Publishing House 1959). 7. Giambattista Vico, The New Science, trans. T. G. Bergin and M. H. Fisch (Garden City, N.J.: Anchor Books, 1961). 8. David Ellerman, "Capitalism and Workers' Self-Management," in G. Hunnius, G. D. Garson and J. Case. eds., Workers' Control (New York: Random House, 1973), pp. 10-11. 9. Adam Smith, Wealth of Nations, cited by Marglin, "What Do Bosses Do?" 10. Edward S. Greenberg, "In Defense of Avarice," Social Policy, Jan./Feb., 1976, p. 63. 11. "The Fearful Drift of Foreign Policy," Commentary, Business Week, Apr. 7, 1975. 12. In fact, in this case, sheer robbery backed by police power is a more likely explanation. 13. On the interpretation of the "lessons of Vietnam" by academic scholars and liberal commentators as the war ended, see my "Remaking of History," Ramparts, Sept., 1975, [reprinted in Towards a New Cold War (Pantheon, 1982)] and "The United States and Vietnam," Vietnam Quarterly, no. 1, Winter, 1976. 14. For a discussion of this topic, see my introduction to N. Blackstock, Cointelpro (New York: Vintage, 1976). 15. See, for example, Herbert J. Gans, "About the Equalitarians," Columbia Forum, Spring, 1975. 16. Rudolf Rocker, "Anarchism and Anarcho-Syndicalism," in P. Eltzbacher, ed., Anarchism (London: Freedom Press, 1960), pp. 234-5. 17. I have discussed some of the roots of these doctrines elsewhere: e.g., For Reasons of State (New York: Pantheon Books, 1973). 18. Rocker, "Anarchism and Anarcho-Syndicalism," p. 228. Rocker is characterizing the "ideology of anarchism." Whether Marx would have welcomed such a conception is a matter of conjecture. As a theoretician of capitalism, he did not have very much to say about the nature of a socialist society. Anarchists, who tended to the view that the workers' organizations must create "not only the ideas but also the facts of the future itself" within capitalist society (Bakunin), correspondingly provided a more extensive theory of post-revolutionary society. For a left-Marxist view of these questions, see Karl Korsch, "On Socialization," in Horvat et al., Self-Governing Socialism, vol. 1. 19. Evidently there is a value judgment here, for which I do not apologize. 20. Quotes are from Salvador E. Luria, Life: The Unfinished Experiment (New York: Scribner and Sons, 1973). 21. For references and discussions, see note 17, and Frank E. Manual, "In Memorium: Critique of the Gotha Program, 1875-1975," Daedalus, Winter, 1976. 22. Fredy Perlman, Essay on Commodity Fetishism, reprinted from Telos, no. 6 (Somerville, Mass.: New England Free Press, 1968). 23. Istvan Meszaros, Marx's Theory of Alienation (London: Merlin Press, 1970). 24. Cited in Meszaros, Marx's Theory of Alienation. 25. See my Reflections on Language (New York: Pantheon Books, 1975) for reference and discussion. 26. Walter Sullivan, "Scientists Debate Question of Race and Intelligence," New York Times, Feb. 23, 1976, p. 23. His account may well be accurate; I have often heard and read similar comments from left-wing scientists. 27. Cf., for example, the remarks on language in Luria, Life: The Unfinished Experiment; Jacques Monod, Chance and Necessity (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1971); Francois Jacob, The Logic of Life (New York: Pantheon Books, 1973); For some recent discussion of this issue, see my Reflections on Language. 28. It is extremely misleading to argue, as some do, that certain birds have an elementary "concept of number" as revealed by their ability to employ ordinal and visually presented systems up to some finite limit (about 7). The concepts one, two, ..., seven are not to be confused with the concept natural number, as formally captured, e.g., by the Dedekind-Peano axioms, and intuitively understood, without difficulty, by normal humans, as an infinite system. 29. See For Reasons of State, chap. 7. 30.American Power and the New Mandarins (New York: Pantheon Books, 1969), introduction. --- Source: www.chomsky.info

Sweet girl, Are you by any chance interested in the 'Green Revolution' and the intensification of rice and wheat production in southeast Asia, particularly during the first half of 1960? If you are, you may find FoodFirst website useful. I did an essay on the intensification of rice in the rural development of southeast asia in early 1960s. Hope it helps

My mom told me once that her mom and grnamother use to tell her that if she sat in the same bed with a man, she would get pregnant.....my mom told me that she believed that until the year before she got married....but then again she was only 16 then... LoL we call that traditional contraceptives. When someone snores put a shoe under their pillow lol. Never spit in the toilet, you will get tonsils - or sorethroat. For your shoe to face upside-down brings disasters to your welfare.

Nomad brothers to check-out 'The Hussle'. The Con is On ....... Here, watch the first episode: you can't cheat an honest man!

welcome to Somalia Online yasmin.

Innaa Llilaahi wa innaa illaah raajicuun. All ya raxma. Aaminn. This is truly a horific revelation. May Allaah guard us all.

I sometimes deliberately do that at Soomaali maqaayado. I eat with my fingers, sab-wise, especially when I am eating with another person and most do eat with fingers too. Lool MMA. I know you have seen Southall restaurants where qaado iyo fargeetto ay dambi culus ka yihiin. Hibo, we are suffering from the ignorance of the 'self'. Self-esteem is the key word here.

Ignorance, my dear nomads, is bliss. Happy livelihood is independent from knowledge. Knowledge is the imprisonment of a free - of secterism, belief systems, wrongs and rights - mind. Education is the very tool with which the enslavement of the mind is achieved. The thoughts of all individuals fall under dictated category of reality and myth. To know is to relate to something, and thus to a certain structure. The child - when speechless - is the epitome of pure living. As language is key to communication, educated is key to thought corruption. Education has many types and the current type exmplifies one acceptance of life. Adopt any type you deem important. Afterall, humanity lifestyle was one of one-sidedness, but you can chose another.

Norther, its nomad

shabeella, the room is in the - Nationality/other - section. Its at the bottom.

Nomads, I created a temporary one called 'Somaliaonline nomads - temp... See if you can use till the 'SOL users only' opens... Password: Nomad

Sophist, congratulations my dear friend. May your home be the happiest. And your marriage be the most blissful. Many happy days bro.. Note: where's the bariis laakiin?

Nomads, your responses were surely inspiring. When I posted this topic, my intention was to hear - or rather - read the opinions of others on the notion of possible grassroot revolution with an Islamic characterestics. What we - ofcourse as muslims - can do is to seperate structures from conception. This is to say that: revolution is a structure and a methodology by which a belief can use as a vehecle to reach or achieve a certain result. What differentiates one revolution - of a marxian inclination - from another revolution borne out of the need of an Islamic umma is ideology or belief. Revolution is a tool. So Muslims or Marxists can use it to their advantage. Originally posted by Vanquish: well ur title in itself contains the problem I thought so too.

'So how will this bemused man get away?' The walker on waters, the sailer through wind The flyer through skies, the hoverer up above Such's the prowess of the hero of east and west But you asked: will this bemused man get away? That open land, of howling wolf, wind and fox That open air, of fleeting owl, plane and breath That is the kingdom of freedom in which i dwell For what reason must I seek freedom if not traped?

Socrates iyo Lu'Lu ...nice pieces indeed! Thank you .. Dawoco... what are you going to do? hunt me like Dawoco-yaasha do? lol

I am not bothered with the groom, the pride is surely 'Mugdi -ka-nuurto' and chubby too ..lol

Fellows, be affraid when you see a bold flirtations like this . . V 'kholof moos isku-dhigoow ay wadaan e' Waa iga talo, ragoow !

The Information Society Complexity and Information Overload in Society: why increasing efficiency leads to decreasing control Francis HEYLIGHEN CLEA, Free University of Brussels, Pleinlaan 2, B-1050 Brussels, Belgium ABSTRACT. It is argued that social and technological evolution is characterized by ephemeralization, an accelerating increase in the efficiency of all material, energetic and informational processes. This leads to the practical disappearance of the constraints of space, time, matter and energy, and thus spectaculary increases our power to physically solve problems. However, the accompanying “lubrication” or reduction of friction in all processes creates a number of non-physical problems, characterized by the increasing instability, complexity and reach of causal networks, and therefore decreasing controllability and predictability. As a result, individuals are forced to consider more information and opportunities than they can effectively process. This information overload is made worse by “data smog”, the proliferation of low quality information because of easy publication. It leads to anxiety, stress, alienation, and potentially dangerous errors of judgment. Moreover, it holds back overall economic productivity. Further reading...click here please

Frustrated, he exclaimed "How do you know I'm a Kamba?" "Because that's a microwave," the salesman replied. LoooooooooooooooL Wakambas, walaahi they are dead funny. I remember those days when I use to go to movies and when the actor tip-toes to cut-throught one of the enemies, the wakamba members would ...shout .."shshshshshshshuuush! nde actor is ntrying to ncreep! so be nquieeet mwah!" And me and my friends... would just cry with laughters! hehe...those were days man.. somalsujui thnkx for the joke ...enjoyed .

Baashi sxb, you're welcome. I am abit interested in finding atleast a fair explanation as to why the collective conscience and psyche of our Somali society is the way it is currently. The article above seems to correlate historical societal conditions to ours, and so I thought I should share it here. This topic does have some very informative articles indeed. Thanks. Status Anxiety Everyman's pocket thinker [nomads, this is a review of Alain de Botton recent: Status Anxiety. for more information visit his homepage and watch some of the documentary. UK nomads would have seen de Botton on the TVs. He is a philosopher and an author. Warning, he is of Jewish Desent.] Alain de Botton talks to Geraldine Bedell about culture, status and the best way to raise children Alain de Botton, distiller of droplets of culture for general edification, has a new subject, which he explores in a book and an accompanying Channel 4 documentary, both called Status Anxiety (Viking £16.99, pp340). With his customary command of the philosophical and literary canon, de Botton sets out to examine why the fragile modern self depends so crucially on the good opinions of others and what we might do in order to feel better about it. There are, it seems, at least two kinds of public, popularising, intellectuals - the AC Grayling sort, who specialise in explaining complex and difficult argument in simple language, and another lot, in which we might include de Botton, who deploys a more allusive, meandering, episodic method of illumination. (De Botton sees himself as not unlike Adam Phillips here, a writer he admires.) This style seems particularly effective for subjects that aren't usually subject to serious intellectual rigour, such as travel, or, in the case of de Botton's next book, architecture. The trouble with status anxiety as a subject is that, despite de Botton's insistence that he could discover very little that had been written about it, philosophers are worrying away at it all the time (Charles Taylor's Sources of the Self and Richard Layard's recent lectures on happiness, to take just a couple of examples, are both substantially preoccupied with it). So, for that matter, are sociologists, psychologists and economists. Social economist Fred Hirsch published his Social Limits to Growth as long ago as 1977, arguing that beyond a certain level of comfort, all consumption is positional, ie about status, meaning that we are consequently trapped in self-defeating cycles of desire and dissatisfaction. Even journalists have had the odd pithy observation to contribute. Andrew Sullivan observed that status has less to do with how much money you earn than with who returns your phone calls. So status anxiety seems a rather unwieldy, overweight and overdone theme for de Botton's elegant mosaic method. As he acknowledges, his subject is 'really the story of the modern West, attitudes to rank, status, money; what's happened to art, religion...' To which one can just squeak: 'Blimey! And some of the sections are only 28 words long!' This is not meant to imply that de Botton is lightweight, nor that he *******ises or diminishes thought by writing in a fragmentary way. Neither charge is true, besides which, he has had to deal with far too much intellectual snobbery already. The hostility to him has been prompted by his precocity (he published his first book, Essays In Love, when he was 23) and partly by status anxiety on the part of academics: 'Trying to be a sort of intellectual in the public arena is very irritating to people. They think, "Why is this bugger on television?" ' (It has, incidentally, taken odd forms, frequently involving derogatory remarks about his physical appearance, although he is attractive enough to be on television and has piercing, beautiful eyes.) He also thinks the distrust might be to do with 'having a very strange name, which makes me sound like a French aristocrat'. He is, in fact, of Sephardic Jewish extraction, born in Switzerland (his father founded and ran Capital Asset Management) but educated from the age of eight in England. He went to Harrow and Cambridge and says: 'I had a really bad experience in my education. I felt terrifically let down, particularly by university, which all felt a bit irrelevant. I ticked all the boxes educationally; I'd gone as far as you could go, and I still felt hollow inside. That made me lose fear. I thought, even if the academics will say, "The guy's an ***** ", I'm going to try to write the sort of books I wish someone had directed my way.' What that means in practice is 'somehow using culture, broadly speaking, to interpret, define our lives. I think there is something lovely and very important in the idea of a book that can in some way help you to live.' His first book was primarily concerned with ideas about love and, he says, 'shouldn't ever have been called a novel', but was taken to be fiction, so he wrote two more novels ('terrifically bad; as novels: any value they may have is because of the ideas') before How Proust Can Change Your Life catapulted him to fame. He developed his method in The Consolations of Philosophy and The Art of Travel, which both obviously derived from his own preoccupations: one of the pleasures of The Art of Travel was to watch him take off intellectually from an argument with his girlfriend on a beach or from a glimpse into a room in Amsterdam. There is less de Botton-direct in Status Anxiety, which may be because the condition is too excruciating to admit to, although he says merely that he 'wanted to make it feel inclusive'. But there's little doubt that his interest in the subject begins with deep-seated concerns of his own. He tells me that his parents expected him to get 'not merely As but A-pluses'. When I marvel at how they pulled this off without rebellion and major drug-taking, he says: 'You probably give your children, whether you mean to or not, a sense that whatever they got, you would love them. I think you do that because it's true. My parents, I believe, genuinely didn't think that. They genuinely believed it's what you achieved that counts, not what you are. Not some indefinable essence of your being.' Status Anxiety is divided into two parts: an analysis of the problem, followed by 'solutions', which are, in fact, less solutions than consolations (they include philosophy, art, politics, bohemia, a certain kind of opting out, and Christianity, for which, as an atheist with no Christian background, he says he is able to have a 'weird sympathy'). This second half seems to me much better suited to his fragmentary, stylised method and much more successful in approaching his ambition to add to those books 'that have given me a language in which to see and discuss certain things'. His work has an interesting relationship to self-help, as he playfully acknowledged with the title of How Proust Can Change Your Life. 'What annoys me about most self-help books is that they have no tragic sense. They have no sense that life is fundamentally incomplete rather than accidentally incomplete. I find a certain kind of pessimism consoling and helpful. Part of fulfilment might be recognising how awful life is.' Today, de Botton is married and lives in a tall Victorian house in west London, coolly done out with white walls, bare floors, books. He doesn't have children yet but says he 'might soon'. So will he withhold his love if they don't get As? 'It's a balance, isn't it? You don't want to go, "It's great to get an F", but you also want to give the sense that there's something outside achievement. I've seen a lot of so-called high-achievers who don't feel they've achieved much.' He has the useful knack of picking topics that are in the ether, that seem to demand thoughtful elucidation. (There's nothing slick about this, he says: 'It's only because they're in my mind.') So does he worry he'll run out? 'No, there are many things I'm interested in thinking more about. I guess my overall life plan is to think about issues that concern me and try to use culture generally to make sense of them. I'm more worried that I'm going to die before I've had time.' End. Source: click here please

A tale in which 'The world was kept blind' The night's showl spread upon it to blind The watchful, hate-filled accusing eyes, While lover's souls took flights to skies, Of heavenly gold and of the perfumed rose, Opened with a delight as lovers did arose. Two hearts and two eyes in secracy adoring Each other's face with love's joy, glowing. Knowing in a heart's depth the true loving, Not found by many is in the blissful making Sprouting out from hearts to dreamy view Of freshness sweet, that renders all anew ;;;;Dawoco.... splendid poetry sis.... PS: The inevetable is surely a bliss!

Collective Consciousness and Cultural Healing series The Potential for Collective Madness. [Are we (Somalis) possibly suffering from it?] Copyright © 1997 by Duane Elgin http://www.community-intelligence.com/ If we have the potential to awaken together as a species, do we also have the potential to go mad together? The concern for the sanity of collectives is not new. In 1841, Charles Mackay wrote of the madness of crowds: In reading the history of nations, we find that, like individuals, they have their whims and their peculiarities; their seasons of excitement and recklessness, when they care not what they do. . . . Men, it has been well said, think in herds; it will be seen that they go mad in herds, while they only recover their senses slowly, and one by one.74 Nearly a century later, in 1930, Sigmund Freud expressed his concern for the neuroses of civilizations in his book Civilization and Its Discontents: If the development of civilization has such a far-reaching similarity to the development of the individual and if it employs the same methods, may we not be justified in reaching the diagnosis that, under the influence of cultural urges, some civilizations or some epochs of civilization--possibly the whole of mankind--have become "neurotic"?75 There are enough examples of collective madness through history to make us concerned for our future. Let us consider two examples here--Easter Island and the witch hunts in Europe during the Middle Ages. Statue on Easter Island With a mild climate and rich, volcanic soil, Easter Island was a paradise covered by forests and filled with diverse animal and plant life when it was first settled by Polynesian colonists in approximately 500 A.D. As the Islanders prospered, their numbers grew to 7,000 or more, and they used the resources of the island beyond its regenerative capacity. Archeological evidence shows that the destruction of the forests on Easter Island was well underway by the year 800--about 300 hundred years after people first arrived. By the 1500s, the forests and palm trees had disappeared as people cleared land for agriculture, and used the remaining trees to build ocean-going canoes, burn as firewood, and build homes. Jared Diamond, professor of medicine at UCLA, describes how the animal life was eradicated: The destruction of the island's animals was as extreme as that of the forest: without exception, every species of native land bird became extinct. Even shellfish were over exploited, until people had to settle for small sea snails. . . . Porpoise bones disappeared abruptly from the garbage heaps around 1500; no one could harpoon porpoises anymore, since the trees used for constructing the big seagoing canoes no longer existed. . . .76 The biosphere was so devastated that it was beyond short-term recovery. With the forests gone, ocean fishing no longer possible, and animals hunted to extinction, people turned on one another. Centralized authority broke down, and the island descended into chaos with rival groups living in caves and competing with one another for survival. Eventually, according to Diamond, the islanders, "turned to the largest remaining meat source available: humans, whose bones became common in late Easter Island garbage heaps. Oral traditions of the islanders are rife with cannibalism."77 By 1700, the population had crashed to between one-quarter and one-tenth of its former level. When the island was visited by a Dutch explorer in 1722 (on Easter Sunday), he found it a wasteland almost completely devoid of vegetation and animals. The parallels between Easter Island and the Earth are strong: Easter was an abundant island of life floating in a vast ocean of water. The Earth is an abundant island of life floating in a vast ocean of space. "By now the meaning of Easter Island for us should be chillingly obvious," professor Diamond concludes. "Easter Island is Earth writ small. Today, again, a rising population confronts shrinking resources. . . . we can no more escape into space than the Easter Islanders could flee into the ocean."78 As Easter Island reveals, we humans have already demonstrated our ability, on a small scale, to descend into collective madness and to devastate the biosphere irreparably. The witch hunts of the Middle Ages in Europe are another dramatic and sustained example of humanity's capacity for collective madness. The witch hunts were unlike the militaristic madness of Hitler's army and the efficient killing of millions behind barbed wire fences; instead, this was the religious madness of the Catholic church that resulted in the public torture and cruel deaths of at least several hundred thousand women, men, and children over a period of more than two and a half centuries. The witch hunting craze began in the 1400s with the encouragement of the Catholic church. A declaration issued in 1484 by Pope Innocent VIII provided the moral authority and official encouragement for the witch hunts. It reads, in part: . . . many persons of both sexes, heedless of their own salvation and forsaking the catholic faith, give themselves over to devils male and female, and by their incantations, charms, and conjurings, and by other abominable superstitions and sortileges, offences, crimes, and misdeeds, ruin and cause to perish the offspring of women, the foal of animals, the products of the earth, the grapes of vines, and the fruits of trees. . . . We therefore . . . remove all impediments by which in any way the said inquisitors are hindered in the exercise of their office. . . it shall be permitted to the said inquisitors . . . to proceed to the correction, imprisonment, and punishment of the aforesaid persons. . . 79 During these dark centuries, the idea persisted in Europe that departed spirits still inhabited the earth, and that some people had the power to summon evil spirits among them in order to bring misfortune to their fellow humans. An epidemic of terror seized Europe. Few thought themselves secure from the invisible powers of evil spirits. A witch was suspected as the cause of every calamity: If a storm blew down a barn--it was witchcraft. If cattle died unexpectedly, or if a beloved person died suddenly--it was witchcraft. Someone was calling on disembodied spirits in order to bring harm to others. Mackay gives the following account of the "witch mania:" France, Italy, Germany, England, Scotland, and the far north successively ran mad upon this subject, and for a long series of years furnished their tribunals with so many trials for witchcraft, that other crimes were seldom or never spoken of. Thousands upon thousands of unhappy persons fell victims to this cruel and absurd delusion.80 Throughout Europe, people were obsessed with this delusion, generating an avalanche of trials. One bishop (of Geneva) burned 500 "witches" within three months, another bishop 600, and another 900.81 After two and a half centuries, this wave of cultural madness began to subside, gradually giving way to the rationalism of the industrial era. These two examples reveal how vulnerable we are to collective madness. Still, I have to confess that I was surprised that one of the largest areas of agreement that emerged from the 18 interviews that I conducted concerned humanity's potential for mass insanity. Here are several illustrative responses: Ram Dass: "Is it possible for a civilization to become psychotic or neurotic? I think we already are. Philosophical materialism is a collective psychosis, and we are spreading it around the world as fast as we can." Mwalimu Imara: "Can a whole civilization be neurotic? Absolutely." Margaret Wheatley: "Yes, an entire civilization can go crazy. The nature of a group in this self-organizing world depends on the set of beliefs around which it is organized. If a group is organized around a 'self' that is filled with hatred and paranoia (for example, the Nazis or Stalin or self-styled militia), it will lead to self-destructive behavior. It is possible, then, for a whole civilization to embrace a set of beliefs that will eventually lead to self-destruction because they are not congruent with the deeper cosmological reality. Any tribe, clan, group, or nation whose set of beliefs is not founded in love, but who organize only around self-protection and fear, go against the natural order, whose nature is love. In turn, they will not succeed." Roger Walsh: "Is there the potential for regress? Absolutely. Look at the Dark Ages. The implications are very disturbing, for it suggests that with one major natural disaster, we could be back into tribal warfare. Our lifestyles are dependent on complex technical systems. We could regress with disturbing ease." Juanita Brown: "The transpersonal is neutral. People can be transformed into the darkest selves as well as the lightest and most generative selves. The collective can create hate and horror as much as love. Therefore, evolution requires our attention/intention." Consciousness researcher Dean Radin conjectures that: . . . there may be a mental analogy to environmental ecology--something like an ecology of thought that invisibly interweaves through the fabric of our society. This suggests that disruptive, scattered, or violent thoughts may pollute the social fabric. . . . Perhaps periods of widespread madness, such as wars, are indicators of mass-mind infections.82 We do have the potential for collective madness. There is no guarantee that we will rise to the opportunities before us. It is not difficult to imagine a scenario where humanity descends into species neurosis and we veer off on a long and needless evolutionary detour Source:Here Further Reading: A blog of Collective Intelligence

Che wrote: The young and educated must take charge now.After all the SYL were bunch of young determined men who saw light, and rose to the occasion. MMA wrote: And if the honourable men of SYL did overcome something greater than this, we can surely then. Amen to that! I have been saying so for so long.