A celebration of Greek Masks: Natyashilpam to faust to Gotte

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Topic started by robin (@ 202.54.93.137) on Thu Jun 21 14:10:54 .




Beyond the tradition of the hermeneutics, is the end of meaning. And in the myth of the democracy on the Internet rests the end of hermeneutics. The ideals of the 1970’s cognitive science revolution has gone through the utmost of intellectual prostitution, in deceitful conceit of corporate directed governments and sovereignty. Far from the ethos of the mathematical cognitive scientists like Tim burners lee and Marvin minsky. The development of the media and the communication revolution has only gone to the consolidification of the class structure, excluding the ones who are outside the realms of the net and its ethos.

The destruction of the hermeneutics is a crusade done by the elite who think that they sponsor the breath of the entire world at their mercy. That it is time we realize that democracy is not about choice but about the right and extend to information almost in the purity of the information as defined by Claude E Shannon. That choices are made on information and that the restriction of information would inevitably mean the control of choice and thereby democracy. That democracy is more than farce in a world where the worth of the speaker is the geographical location of the message than the semantic-connotational content of the concept. And which ironically in a world that speaks about a globe, which if Mercator were to sail today would turn out to be the four corners of the columbicana.

Pax-Americana is here but it is as uneasy as freezing cold. The new lingo is ‘cool’, far from the maxim of Karl bendit Cohen 30 years ago, which was ‘hot’. One could only wish that it does not get so ‘cool’ as to freeze. But all that it says is that Hegel was right or rather is right that the thesis of the 60’s have led to the antithesis of the late 90’s. Who said dialectical progression is a myth? Marx was right, I guess despite the American propaganda and the angel of death, McCarthy; which I think was Columbicana’s ‘triumph of the will’. And of people who continue the tradition of the politician being responsible for all the demise and misfortune, so what about the silence on the information blockade?

Machiavelli has grown at last you wouldn’t find him in the parliament building; you will find him here, amongst us, we, you, me, and I. Of people who live in the columbicana dream and cannot think of a job out side the shores of NEW-FANGLED England. And yes think of it who is columbicana? The dreamer of the columbicana dream, right!!!! So who is globalization, the very people who speak of it, as a cyclopean image is the people who have created it.

The ethos of the cognitive revolution in its idealistic endeavor was the celebration of the Greek masks. Like the Greek masks that celebrated the ideal as personified human form, like the Greek masks that celebrated the individual HERO as a representative of the many unsung, like the Greek mask that concealed the face of the HERO in order to give a face to the unsung, the Internet democracy is the actualization of the Greek masks. The celebration of the human world as a ‘Global brain’. But far from the ethos of the cybernetic-connectionist-cognitive revolution the Brahmins of the ‘land of the brave’ have taken the new task as ‘burden of The land of the free’, the only change that has happened since the jungle boy dreamt of a ‘white man’s burden’. So how global is global, why did the Prague spring did not spring in 1967 why did Prague 2000 not blossom into the child of hope of 2001 an odyssey that never not took off. And yes where is hal. Have our ‘Global’ paranoia killed him too before he could go mad.

But the voices of the human condition are the ultimate of all the voices and its ethos. In it the censorship and the policing of those who took the net from the students of the 1970’s (Hawaii) and north-east (media lab) cannot last. Democracy is a farce with its twin brother called censor board the elite who sits in the throne of the first estate, IN the Name of the Father, and the God, May be the son, and by the courtesy of steinem, it could soon be daughter. I thought equality was human. I wonder whether people have heard that expression called HUMAN. That democracy has been based on the censorship, and that, is the farce of the idea. The farce of Christopher Marlow, as I call it. But the refuge is Goethe, because he knew that the eternal Faust exists because of the Mephistopheles that seeks him to the greatest of human endeavor. So why hate Mephistopheles. Will the Faust exist without the mephisto? May be mephisto is Faust. And why not. The net is a mirror and the extent to which it becomes a symbol of the scandal and disgrace the more it will be reflecting the repression in the DEMOCRATIC world of CONTROLLED choice and Information. If people use the net to be scandalous that is only an image to the extend to which people have been repressed. But soon the twilight shall dawn, that will be the twilight of the gods, and Hans Sachs shall sing in the finest of the mastersingers. But amongst all shall last the dreams of the Greek masks and the hermeneutics of the fertile cow that represents the generativity of life and the altruistic expression of human ethos that shall live in the trains of the Hungarian deportees of Raoul wallenberg, the greatest of the Greek masks.

Faust: ‘Tis writ: ‘In the beginning was the word!’
I pause, to wonder what is here inferred?
The word I cannot set supremely high,
A new translation I will try.
I read, If by the spirit I am taught,
This sense: ‘In the beginning was the thought’.
This opening I need to weigh again,
Or sense may suffer from a hasty pen.
Does thought create, and work, and rule the hour?
T were best: ‘ In the beginning was the power!’
Yet, while the pen is urged with willing fingers,
A sense of doubt and hesitancy lingers.
The spirit come to guide me in need,
I write, In the beginning was the deed!’

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe.
Faust I Transl. Philip Wayne (penguin classics; London).

The deed, I think, is the understanding of the world in the natyashilpam of the human expression. The quintessence, that is in the minds of all the people, even beyond the borders of the land/s of the brave and the free.

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Robin,

I am still tying to digest what you wrote.

I want to keep this thread alive and not pushed into oblivion. Hence this post.

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Thank you very much Madurai veeran, for the encouraging reply. I was waiting all this time for your reply ) I feel privileged to be acknowledged by a person like you.

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Robin,

This is the problem that I have with your writing style. If you are trying to impress a scholarly audience or writing a technical paper, the language that you used may be appropriate. But to provoke thought, you need to simplify. Your post comes across as bombastic article full of buzz words. I think that is not your intention.

Writing to a general audience in simple language takes a lot of effort and I am sure you can do it. Otherwise, there is a chance that people may not understand you or worse may not even read you. I hope you will take this as a healthy criticism.

Now can you write in simple sentences, in your own words, without relying on quotes, what you want to say in 3 paras or less? Thanks. ).

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Dear Mani M manivannan,
Thank you for your feedback.
Whatever I have written has been written by me in my own abilities to make it simpler. Though I might have failed in being simpler, to a large extend.

Moreover sometimes it is hard to put some ideas in 3 para or less. But I will try my best to do so in my later posts. Though I have seen many posts in this forum by many people, which is not just 3 para but three pages)

And yes I am taking this as healthy criticism

I have tried to provoke thought in my own limited capabilities and knowledge. If what I have written is not up to the mark then the people who know better should create fruitful discussions. Since that was not happening, I tried to write something in my own limited capabilities.

Anyway, I don’t think, that should be such an issue. I have not abused anyone here or disrupted any general discussion. My only aim was to bring forth worthwhile discussions. That, I think is not such a great error.

Besides people have their own personal styles of writing. Some might find it hard, or simple, or complex, or bombastic or whatever one may call it. Influences grow and as the media grows many influences will influence the shape of the writing. But yes, it is also important to get the intended meaning across while maintaining ones style. I will try better, next time to do so. )

In the meantime, you have criticized my writing style, why don't you please criticize my writing. That, hopefully might create some discussion. I am not keen on being right, or on proving theories, or impressing others. I only want to exchange ideas with people, and that is all that I want. So if you feel that you do not agree with what I have written then please write so, and many more could join the discussion. That, after all is the purpose. I just want to exchange ideas and try to see if something new comes of it. That is the magic of internet. And it used to happen in the forumhub.com until not so long ago.

With people like you and madurai veeran and ravi sundaram, anu nair, sugrutha, cheese, sujata, siby koodaloor, Vj, V Sundar, and a whole lot of people whom I have not mentioned, we can attain much more. And that is the purpose.

with respects
from robin

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Dear Robin,

Thanks for essencing the biography of Mind. I am fascinated. It affirms many of my thought suspects while raising more.

I am nowhere as well read and "reflected" as you are in the philosophical areas of your article. How critical is it for one to comprehend the various philosophical personalities you mention, so as not to miss key parts of what you are conveying? I suspect it is not that critical, no?

Do you have any other writings that I can read?

BTW, do you see a congruence between the Siva Natarajah (the dance of Siva) metaphor and Natyashilpam?

My mind wants to coalesce its impulses before responding more.

And while I do that here's a quote for Madurai Veeran to get his mind ticking on the entry into your essay.

Why Hermeneutics - the art, science and beyond of interpretation? "We always mean more than we say, and say more than we mean."

Michael Polanyi (paraphrased)
http://www.hkbu.edu.hk/~ppp/syl/R2250.html

anbudan.../bala
Bala Pillai
Founder, Thamil Innaiyam (since 1995)
http://www.tamil.net/lists/tamil

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Webern Silence...............




>>BTW, do you see a congruence between the Siva Natarajah (the dance of Siva) metaphor and Natyashilpam? <<


The best way to communicate and construct certain ideas is through silence and the endurance of time I realize

A long while have I waited to answer.........that I think is the best way to answer it........

where does music end and mathematics begin.......
where does silence end and music begin

or are they different


webern was right..........


Dear Bala Pillai, please let your ideas gush through I am sure it will turn music. Please do write.

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Robin,
Tht was a wonderful post...u r just too optimistic!
"But soon the twilight shall dawn, that will be the twilight of the gods, and Hans Sachs shall sing in the finest of the mastersingers"...wow!

Why? I don't quite get to that. as I see it u have analysed the prob and put it down to a faust-mephistopheles metaphor, with an ambiguity at the end..rather like the marxist ideologues who say that after one class struggle the roles would be reversed, the oppressed becomes the oppressor etc..well here's my take on it. I'm outright pessimistic - coz I think that's the reality. Take any concept - when applied to anything practical it poses contradictions to itself which strongly limits the usefulness of the application. in fact human tendency is to pursue the concept to the extreme - simply coz blind faith is so much more easy than to sit down and think about alternatives. With any concept comes imposition and repression, there's no getting away from that. What we might also see is a shift of the power position from one area to another. As to scandalous behavior on the net, perhaps there are a few sociological causes to it too, i guess.

'That it is time we realize that democracy is not about choice but about the right and extend to information almost in the purity of the information as defined by Claude E Shannon'

Shannon's theory is just like any other mathematical theory...it decides the signal to noise ratio, right but does it decide the value of the information? we need to go one step beyond Shannon....we need to improvise shannon's filtering mechanism into one in which all these useless information we are surrounded with, gets filtered out as noise.

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PS: censorship is just one such filtering mechanism but in most cases with some limited aims. what we need is to broaden the limits of the censor - not do away with it altogether.

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I have read but little of Goethe but found a couple of his quotes inspiring.

'All that is wise has been thought already, we can only try to think of it once more'

'He who is well provided from within needs but little from without'

I will get back to the main subject of this message later. Bye now.