The Invention of Culture by Roy Wagner

from the chapter "The Assumption of Culture"

"...this feeling is known to anthropologists as 'culture shock'. In it the local 'culture' first manifests itself to the anthropologist through his own inadequacy; against the back drop of his new surroundings it is he who has become 'visible'." (p. 7)

"Culture shock is a loss of the self through the loss of these supports."

(the anthropologist) ... "whether he knows it or not, and whether he intends it or not, his 'safe' act of making the strange familiar always makes the familiar a bit strange. And the more familiar the strange becomes, the more and more strange the familiar will appear." (p.11)

from THE ART OF SEEING by J. Krishnamurti:

"We were saying the other day how very important it is to observe. It is quite an art to which one must give a great deal of attention. We only see very partially, we never see anything completely, with the totality of our mind, or with the fullness of our heart. And unless we learn this extraordinary art, it seems to me that we shall be functioning, living, through a very small part of our mind, through a small segment of the brain. We never see anything completely, for various reasons, because we are so concerned with our own problems, or we are so conditioned, so heavily burdened with belief, with tradition, with the past, that this actually prevents us from seeing or listening. We never see a tree, we see the tree through the image that we have of it, the concept of that tree; but the concept, the knowledge, the experience, is entirely different from the actual tree....."
Madras
January 3 1968

Celebration of Subjectivity

I had been writing Memory of Fire for a long time, and the more I wrote the more I entered into the stories I was telling. I was already having trouble distinguishing past from present: what had happened was happening, happening all around me, and writing was my way of striking out and embracing. However, history books supposedly are not subjective.

I mentioned this to Jose Coronel Urtecho: in this book I’m writing, however you look at it, backwards or forwards, in the light or against it, my loves and quarrels can be seen at a single glance.

And on the banks of the San Juan river, the old poet told me that there is no fucking reason to pay attention to the fanatics of objectivity:

"Don’t worry" he said to me. "That’s how it should be. Those who make objectivity a religion are liars. They are scared of human pain. They don’t want to be objective, it’s a lie: they want to be objects, so as not to suffer."

by Eduardo Galleano, The Book of Embraces

"In a certain way, works of art would make fools of us were it not that their fascination is proof - unverifiable, though undeniable - that this paralysis of the intelligence combines with the most luminous certainty: what the certainty is I do not know."
- Jean Genet

"Fifty Million Farmers" by Richard Heinberg

recent speaker at the Schumacher Institute - "Small is Beautiful"

http://www.schumachersociety.org/publications/heinberg_06.html

A Global Democratic Movement Is About to Pop By Paul Hawken, Orion Magazine
Tuesday 01 May 2007
http://www.truthout.org/issues_06/050107EC.shtml

Something earth-changing is afoot among civil society - a significant social movement is eluding the radar of mainstream culture.

Words from Poet, Martin Espada


“Poets can play so many different roles. We are used to the idea that poetry accomplishes nothing, accustomed to feeling powerless and helpless as a poet. And that point of view is encouraged by a certain element in the poetry community that invites meaningless poetry. You write meaningless poetry, of course it’s not going to have any effect on the world, and so the thing to do is to establish meaningless poetry as a standard, to write poetry that caters only to the obscure and self-indulgent. A poet can do so much more, and if you travel around the world you see the effect that a poet can have on their society. A poet can be a teacher, a historian, a journalist, an organizer, a preacher, a caretaker, or a bard. And a poet can be a political activist, one who participates in the great changes that the world is always going through.”
- Martin Espada, poet
Quoted in Brooklyn Rail, April 2007


Martin Espada: “In order to write poems, you have to make yourself very vulnerable. There are many poets today who are afraid to take risks, who are terrified of expressing emotion openly. They are terrified of appearing vulnerable on the page. They are ultimately afraid of being accused of sentimentality. That’s the greatest crime in our contemporary world.”


Rail interviewer: “You have to be a cool customer.”


Martin Espada: “Exactly. Detached, hip, cynical and absolutely invulnerable. And we all know that’s a dishonest pose.”