Berlin wall graffiti; Jackson Pollock painting

We who are bred of lean ignorance leave our hands on this wall like ziggy graffiti tagged with tribal symbols of quiet desperation to rage in the Apocalypse. Bring down this Wall Mr. Gorbachev! We challenge the cluttered ignorance of our times to return to the source our ancestors who down from trees reached for the stars. Give us purity of mind - give us heart - give us art - to fill our walls of reason. Tear down the ignorance of Man of religion of death Mr. G*!



Say something if wanted to leave your print. Or say nothing. But for the love of G*d tear down this bloody wall!
Set us free.

"Mister Speaker, judges of the court,

I would like to make use of my right to speak for a few minutes.

Freedom is the most precious of all our attainments and the most vulnerable. People have devoted their lives to it and given their lives for it. Our freedom in this country is the outcome of centuries. It is the consequence of a history that knows no equal and has brought us to where we are now.

I believe with all my heart and soul that the freedom in the Netherlands is threatened. That what our heritage is, what generations could only dream about, that this freedom is no longer a given, no longer self-evident.

I devote my life to the defence of our freedom. I know what the risks are and I pay a price for it every day. I do not complain about it; it is my own decision. I see that as my duty and it is why I am standing here.

I know that the words I use are sometimes harsh, but they are never rash. It is not my intention to spare the ideology of conquest and destruction, but I am not any more out to offend people. I have nothing against Muslims. I have a problem with Islam and the Islamization of our country because Islam is at odds with freedom.

Future generations will wonder to themselves how we in 2010, in this place, in this room, earned our most precious attainment. Whether there is freedom in this debate for both parties and thus also for the critics of Islam, or that only one side of the discussion may be heard in the Netherlands? Whether freedom of speech in the Netherlands applies to everyone or only to a few? The answer to this is at once the answer to the question whether freedom still has a home in this country.

Freedom was never the property of a small group, but was always the heritage of us all. We are all blessed by it.

Lady Justice wears a blindfold, but she has splendid hearing. I hope that she hears the following sentences, loud and clear:

It is not only a right, but also the duty of free people to speak against every ideology that threatens freedom. Thomas Jefferson, the third President of the United States was right: The price of freedom is eternal vigilance.

I hope that the freedom of speech shall triumph in this trial.

In conclusion, Mister Speaker, judges of the court.

This trial is obviously about the freedom of speech. But this trial is also about the process of establishing the truth. Are the statements that I have made and the comparisons that I have taken, as cited in the summons, true? If something is true then can it still be punishable? This is why I urge you to not only submit to my request to hear witnesses and experts on the subject of freedom of speech. But I ask you explicitly to honour my request to hear witnesses and experts on the subject of Islam. I refer not only to Mister Jansen and Mister Admiraal, but also to the witness/experts from Israel, the United States, and the United Kingdom. Without these witnesses, I cannot defend myself properly and, in my opinion, this would not be an fair trial."

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Wilders remarked: “I am delighted with this ruling. It is a victory, not only for me but for all the Dutch people.” He could have added – and for all free people the world over, who can by this ruling stave off at least for awhile longer the attempts to criminalize speaking accurately about a radically repressive ideology that would use our self-enforced silence about its nature and intentions to advanced unopposed. Wilders continued: “Today is a victory for freedom of speech. The Dutch are still allowed to speak critically about Islam, and resistance against Islamization is not a crime. I have spoken, I speak and I shall continue to speak.”

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The eggshells were probably used as containers, and the markings may have indicated either the shells' contents or their owner. Texier points out that until recently, bushmen in the region carved geometric motifs on ostrich eggshells as a mark of ownership.

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The given word unrolls in patterns of our creation. How we give our word reflects upon who we are as individuals. It signifies how we materialize our being, how we create from within our belief, how we project patterns of our creation into greater and greater dimensions of interrelationship until we can span all reality with our personality. It is the mystery of the soul that how we give our word, how we speak, how we agree, are all how we materialize the reality that reflects the personality we are. We are authors in ways we cannot yet understand; yet, how we name things, how we touch them, how we see our world and admire it or communicate with it through our being, are all how we create from within ourselves definitions that set forth a separate universe. It is the universe of our new being, our consciousness, our new identity. How we give our word, through the infinite manipulations of reality, is how we manifest our being. It is who we are.

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Reality moves in and around us like a sea of being that fills every crevice of our existence. This is the energy that is the being of our soul. It is the light that shines from our eyes as personality, it is the handsomeness of our limbs as well as the melody of our speech. It is the creation of the artist or the power of the actor. The soul is intertwined completely with the forces of our being and of personality, forces into which we are born and from which we die. We exist on Earth but for a brief moment, yet how rich and complex our lives can be in that brief span of time. We can have the luxury of loving our children, of teaching others, of building great works, or of creating with beauty and simplicity, of being humble.

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By Ivan A. on Monday, July 15, 2002 - 11:40 pm:
PLATO'S LEGACY TRANSCENDED. (edited 10/28/02)
I will aspire to show in this paper that Plato's legacy, as it has come down to us, is no longer applicable to modern philosophical thinking, and needs to be transcended. The following quote is from --Greek Philosophy-- online: "Socrates (469-399 BC) despite his foundational place in the history of ideas, actually wrote nothing. Most of our knowledge of him comes from the works of Plato (427-347 BC), and since Plato had other concerns in mind than simple historical accuracy it is usually impossible to determine how much of his thinking actually derives from Socrates... The fundamental aspect of Plato's thought is the theory of "ideas" or "forms." Plato, like so many other Greek philosophers, was stymied by the question of change in the physical world." http://www.wsu.edu:8080/~dee/GREECE/SOCRATES.HTM , http://www.wsu.edu:8080/~dee/GREECE/PLATO.HTM * * *

Plato's "ideas" and "form" may not have originated with Socrates, or his gifted pupil, but they were likely currency in philosophical (abstract) thinking of the times. It was believed God is perfection, hence (by extension) there were ideas and forms that defined this perfection, and in so understanding them, we could hope to glimpse into the perfection of God. Plato's (allegorical) cave is such a glimpse, though it is meant only to illustrate that we fail in this, for we can perceive only this perfection's shadows. Now, this idea is persistent unto today, where we philosophically argue in favor our Absolute Truths, and their essences, as a definition of ontological Being. This is truly Plato's legacy, for his writings persisted until modern times, and one for which we must be truly thankful. Or, as Alfred North Whitehead had said, "All philosophy is a footnote to Plato." However, is this representative of reality as we know it today, 2400 years later? That is what I wish to address in this paper. Does the idea of perfect form still fit into current understanding of reality and being? If we start from a platform of idealized perfection, as did thinkers current with Plato, then we are of necessity driven into philosophical models that demand we establish our truths on this platform. However, not to belittle their great thinking, but perfection is not observable in the real universe. Cosmic reality is messy, space is dirty with dust, the planets do not exhibit geometric perfection in their orbits but chaotic ellipticals instead, and worse, life secretes unsavory fluids. This is fact. The way Plato's contemporaries dealt with this fact was to conclude that reality is merely an 'imperfect' manifestation within God's perfection. Human beings were also as much at fault in their imperfections, so that only an "aristocracy" of the best, philosophically more sophisticated thinkers, can hope to aspire for it, and the rest of us, again of necessity, are forced to obey this aristocracy. Democracy, seen thus, was never meant for the common man, or woman, but for the select representatives of an imagined "perfection". So here was the dilemma: Reality does not fit the ideal. In response, then all intellectual efforts are applied to subvert reality's failure in order to establish a more ideal order. In effect, the human mind has to bring order where there is apparent chaos in the manifestation of an imperfect universe. Put this way, it may seem quaint and a little naive for us moderns, if not egocentric(since we have to "fix" what is a "mess" in the universe), but this is the legacy we inherited today. This is not to belittle perfection, nor Plato's ideas, for there is something in the human psyche that would like to see it realized. However, it should be put into perspective from what we now know of our reality. Even the observer affects the observed, as we learned from Quantum physics, so there are no solid foundations from which we can anchor our minds in this search for perfection. In fact, it would seem that the opposite happens, that we as observers, with an intelligence for which we have given ourselves credit, that it is we create who thought; we should instead be aware that in fact we are also perpetually surprised to find the universe has intelligence designed throughout. The universe in its totality is already its own algorithm, as Paul Davies writes in "The Mind of God", and we are merely the faltering observers within it. It is not that we are imperfect beings in the manner of Plato's world, but rather that our minds are imperfect in our reason's ability to capture the whole. We still cannot grasp all of the intelligence built into the universe's ability to become itself. This, therefore, reverses the process, that it is not we who define perfection, but that it has already predefined itself in some way that to us appears generally chaotic, or imperfect. Hence, the dilemma, how do we built on a philosophical platform on that which we cannot understand in the same way it "understands" itself? And this is where we transcend Plato's legacy, for now the perfection of the universe is not in some geometric ideal, which was created by us, but rather in the messiness it exhibits. Or, as Albert Einstein was to have said, "The universe does not play dice", which becomes understandable in that it is we who are unable to guess its design, not that the universe is lacking in its design. So the chaos perceived is in fact, in terms of itself, exactitude, whereas we as observers can only see chaos as the rule, relieved only occasionally by patterns of order we understand. But as to how the universe interacts with itself, this order is already infinitely determined. What we then see is what it is, as it structured itself. So this is the point of departure we have from Plato's times, that the universe is perfection, but not as determined by our minds, or as imagined in Plato's contemporaries mind, but as determined by its own "mind". That the universe can then somehow assemble itself in such a way as to exhibit, perpetuate, and evolve life, or more specifically, evolve consciousness, is then a miracle that is beyond our comprehension. What it means is that "intelligence" reverts back not on our lack of understanding it, but instead on its infinitely incredible algorithmic capabilities. When seen this way, it is no longer that the universe is some idealized perfection, of which reality is its messy imperfection, but rather that the perfection of the universe is made manifest in what the human mind would call imperfect, or messy and chaotic, though it is perfect within itself. And that is the idea of our times: The universe is perfectly what it is. So this is the point of departure, for here we truly transcend Plato and enter into a new way of seeing reality, and our place in it. The question that arises, of necessity again, is how is man, or human beings, to find a place within such a universe? If we live in a universe that is only perfect in its perceived imperfections, then what hope is there to use this understanding as a foundation of philosophical thought that would in some idealized way lead us to the truth? A daunting prospect, but not insurmountable, and one that leads us away from the errors of Plato's contemporaries into a whole new dimension of philosophical thinking. We are who we are, in the same way the universe is what it is, and from this platform then, again of necessity, requires that we have a better understanding of who we are within this reality. Think of this as being a very modern idea, so much so that it is not yet mainstream. And if so, then how do we interact with each other, so as to not damage that understanding of who we are? How do human beings respect their uniqueness within reality not as imperfect beings, though our consciousness is still far from perfect, but as real definitions of being, of identity? Again, we are not imperfect beings within the manifestations of an imperfect reality, but rather we are who we are within the perfection of this reality. If so, then what, and who, each one of us represents is a true and valid being, one which must gain respect in that same way that we have learned to respect that the universe is what it is. And the only way to do so, to gain this respect, is to show it in relation to each other, in effect, to do by agreement, and not by coercion. This transcends Plato's legacy, for it now places us into a new dimension of philosophical thinking, where each human being is validated, and for whom there are certain unalienable freedoms. These freedoms are then not dictated by an aristocracy of the "best" social Guardians, as posited by Plato's thinking, but rather is embodied in our laws of agreements that safeguard who we are. This new law of agreement, formalized in our social contracts, is universal to us all. If there is to be an aristocracy of social Guardians, it would be only that they are the most conscious of our human rights, and thus they insure our rights' inviolability. None of this was foreseen by Plato, nor his contemporaries, for in his day slavery was accepted. Today, it is not. The universe of Plato's world was run by an ideal (God like) perfection we humans could never aspire to, for we were too imperfect. Instead, the universe of the neo-scientific modern age accepts it is totally imperfect, yet it is a perfection within itself. We are then in the new legacy of that new way of seeing things, that each human being, as an evolved human consciousness within this universe, has value within that infinitely ordered algorithm of reality, as it interrelates within itself. It thus becomes, for each one of us, who we are. I should point out that this way of seeing reality is not yet germane for us, for we are still deeply rooted in the methodology of the ancient thinkers, especially as it applies to religious and moral values (Christian, Moslem, Jewish, etc, fundamentalism). However, this does not negate that a growing body of thought has built up around this new awareness of reality, though predominantly secular, and that from this new platform is growing a new philosophical awareness of human beings as free agents, who then have the right to be who they are. And to do this, they need only to seek to do through agreement with other free agents, as opposed to doing through coercions, and to be protected from these coercions, or trespass, by social (democractic and constitutional) contract. So this is the future of philosophy, that the absolute values of perfection are already built in, into this universe that by appearance is anything but perfect. The challenge is then to validate our existence in terms of how this universal reality has manifest, itself, in such a way that human beings within it have the ability to develop a conscious mind. And from that new philosophical awareness will evolve a journey of a newer consciousness of ourselves, and of the universe, so that 2400 years hence, we will think fondly of our philosophical predecessors as quaint mythmakers, though not the authors of Absolute Truth. In time, human consciousness will transcend the legacy of our past thinkers, and there will be a new awareness of our place in the universe, not according to how our minds define it, but according to how the universe is in the process of defining itself, and us. And that will be a giant philosophical leap forward. Many thanks for your patience with my intellect's imperfect ability to bring to understanding something that is in fact already far more perfect than I am.
Ivan D. Alexander

• Need for recognition on a large scale
• Publicly lavish gifts on others with pomp
• Show of affection and caring publicly
• Shine in the limelight of promotion
• Often larger than life self-promoted extensively
• Employ popular folk wisdom philosophy
• Multi-cultural appeal for all, while exclusive self-culture
• Personally avaricious while publicly beneficent
• Usually tend towards obesity in oneself
• Appearing mellow outwardly while privately harshly demanding
• "I did it, you can do it" inspirational message to mass public
• Mass consumption on a conspicuous level, lavish personal settings
• Outwardly altruistic, while personally self-protective-acquisitive
• Loud, lacking in restraint, grace and humility

1. keep a cool head (steady on the tiller); 2. keep your winners (as long as they are really good); 3 stay the trend (even when it hurts); 4. watch what the 'dealers' are doing (they bet against the crowd.. that's you); 5. avoid panics or euphoria (catch yourself if you feel it happening inside); 6. keep your own council (don't be fooled.. take profits quietly); (and finally, when you made the bucks) 7. don't brag about it.

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The structure of the world, reflecting how things are interrelated, is the most enduring part of physics theories. New theories may overturn our conception of the basic building blocks of the world, but they tend to preserve the structures. …
Now the following question arises: What is the reason that we can know only the relations among things and not the things themselves? The straightforward answer is that relations are all there is. …(italic mine)

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But what is the atom, exactly? In the above regarding neutrinos, there seems to be a relationship at the femtometer level (lambda = 10^-15 m) of where neutrino wavelength is just slightly under that of the proton diameter. This leaves room to consider something different may be happening inside the proton, though perhaps not exactly the same for the neutron: the electromagnetic energy at femtometer scale may be 'modifying' the proton's strong force, where rather than being F=1, it is modified to a very low inertial mass, so that the proton-to-proton 'gravitational force' is -39 orders of magnitude weaker than the strong force.

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The strong force in the standard model is a force evoked to explain how positively charged protons in the atomic nucleus can remain tightly packed despite their inherent electrostatic repulsion. When physicists discovered the confining force of quarks and protons they were baffled as to explain how these dynamics arise. They invented “the Strong force” and assigned to it just the right value needed for the equations to work out. However, the strong force was not given a mechanical source – it appears without cause and its strength is given as 10^39 times stronger than Gravity!

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By Ivan A. on Wednesday, May 26, 2004 - 08:04 pm:
THINKING ON GRAVITY G, a possible interpretation in Volts? In my original, I wrote:

G^2 (m)^2 = g (m) c^2 pi^2, which simplifies into: G^2 * m = g c^2 pi^2, where G=6.67x10^-11 m^3.kg^-1.s^-2 (Newton's G), g=~5x10^-39 (proton to proton gravitational constant), c=3x10^8 m.s^-1, m = 1 dimensionless (kg implied), pi=3.14...

When you multiply it out and take the square root of G^2, you come up with approx. G = 6.67x10^-11 (m^3.kg^-1.s^-2). [Note: it works out to G=7.24x10^-11 with 5.9^-39 value.]

However, these two sides of the equation fail to balance in terms of SI base units. I had used the smallest value for g, where g = ~5e-39 (vs. 5.9e-39), dimensionless gravitational constant for proton to proton, where this constant g is derived after applying 1/137 ratio to the F_gravity/F_electric ratio = 8.1e-37 ( possible that the observationally derived Fg/Fe are inexact?). For g = ~5e-39, the conversion from g to G seems to then require pi^2 as a multiplier to make the numbers work, though SI units are off.

There was something that came up when I rewrote the above gravity conversion, by taking the square root of the equation (m = 1, stays same) as:

G*(m) = (g)^1/2 *c*pi

Now, the SI units became

(m^3.kg^-1.s^-2) kg = (g?) m.s^-1

which cancels the kg, so it leaves g as 'm^2.s^-1', not something immediately recognized, except that it might be a Volt expression... here's how:

If amperes are expressed in Newton's per meter (i.e., electron current is force 2e-7 newton's per meter, as per SI base units), then we can say:

A = N.m^-1
N = m.kg.s^-2, so that m cancels and
A = kg.s^-2

Volts are W/A so that W = J.s^-1 = m^2.kg.s^-3 which give us
V = W/A = m^2.kg.s^-3 / kg.s^-2, which simplifies into
V = m^2.s^-1

Now we can recognize m^2.s^-1 as an expression of Volts!

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It has been observed in clusters of galaxies that the motion of galaxies within a cluster suggests that they are bound by a total gravitational force due to about 5-10 times as much matter as can be accounted for from luminous matter in said galaxies.

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While the observations support the cosmological simulations' general picture of a cosmic web of filamentary structures, the researchers' results suggest around 10 times more gas in the nebula than predicted from typical computer simulations. (bold mine)

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We may not yet have evolved the genetic ability to use this form of (Universal) reason, since our minds are not designed to see things as the universe 'sees' itself. This form of reason is founded on the concept of 'emergence', where the whole is greater than the sum of its parts, and where complex systems evolve from simple interactions. Therefore, this emergent whole then modifies its parts, where a universal totality may actually define them in terms of itself: Everything is exactly 'where and how' it is because of where and how is everything else, in toto, both in time and space... to infinity.

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a. Understanding math is like understanding a foreign language: Say you are a native English speaker and you come across a Japanese newspaper for the first time. All the squiggles look very strange and you find you don’t understand anything.

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Campanella's first printed work, Philosophia sensibus demonstrata, was written when the twenty-one year old Dominican friar was living in a monastery in the Calabrian village of Altomonte. It was published in Naples in 1591. The work is divided into eight disputationes (‘disputations’), in which he defends Telesio's new philosophy of nature against the attack of the Aristotelian Giacomo Antonio Marta. In the preface Campanella traces the course of his intellectual development and presents the “new” aspects of his own thought. It is no accident that these pages begin with the word “truth,” depicted allegorically on the title-page as a sphere floating on water, as winds blowing from all sides threaten to submerge it and a young friar swims out to reach it. Truth can be hidden and persecuted, Campanella maintains, but it cannot be held prisoner by injustice; in the end it emerges from the darkness and is once again resplendent. These introductory pages offer us a lively account of the doubts of the young friar who, recalling the years he spent in Dominican monasteries in Calabria, cannot conceal his disillusionment. The works of ancient and modern philosophers have convinced him that human knowledge had become ever more obscure and confused because it had distanced itself progressively from the direct experience of nature and had turned instead to reading and commenting on books written by human beings. This attitude was particularly evident in the followers of Aristotle who directed their energies toward the words of their master, without attempting to compare them to the natural world. In this way philosophical research had degenerated into sophistical disputes and a series of pointless battles over words. Reflecting on all this, the young Campanella formed a conviction that he would never abandon: an adequate knowledge of things is one that comes from the things themselves, which we must investigate on the basis of sense experience.

This forms the context for his fundamental encounter with the philosophy of Telesio. Reading the first edition of De rerum natura iuxta propria principia, Campanella intuited, right from the beginning, the novelty and cogency of Telesio's approach. In accordance with Campanella's own aspirations, Telesio believed in deriving the truth from a direct examination of natural facts, so that the correct connections between words and things, which had gotten lost in the Aristotelian tradition, could now be re-established. Reviving and developing, in an original manner, a time-honored metaphor, Campanella affirmed that the philosophical investigator must read and study the “book of nature.” In a famous sonnet—he was also the author of an extraordinary collection of philosophical poetry—he stated: “The world is the book on which the Eternal Wisdom / wrote its own thoughts” (Poesie, 1998, p. 46). In order to construct an authentic natural philosophy, a continual comparison between the books written by human beings and the infinite book of nature was necessary, so as to correct the errors in the human “copies,” that were inevitably imperfect, partial and consequently in need of revision. In another sonnet, Campanella rendered homage to “Telesio from Cosenza” (“Telesio cosentino”) for having used his arrows to pierce and kill Aristotle, described as the “tyrant of minds”, and for having in this way restored to mankind the libertas philosophandi (freedom to philosophize), which is inseparable from the truth (Poesie, 1998, p. 278).
In his own treatise, Philosophia sensibus demonstrata, Campanella produced a systematic critique of the axioms of Aristotelian philosophy, bringing to light their limitations and incoherence on the physical, cosmological and metaphysical level, by drawing on Telesian principles integrated with notions deriving from other philosophies. Campanella had a secure knowledge of Aristotle's works and those of his commentators and followers, whether ancient (Themistius, Alexander of Aphrodisias, Philoponus), medieval (Averroes was frequently cited alongside Thomas Aquinas and, above all, the “divine” Albertus Magnus) or contemporary (such as Agostino Nifo). He re-evaluated the Presocratic philosophers, who had been criticized by Aristotle, and was well acquainted with medical writers from Hippocrates and Galen to Pietro d'Abano, Jean Fernel and Vesalius. He had read the works of astronomers and of natural philosophers—Pliny the Elder's Natural History played a role of primary importance for him. One of the authors most cited by Campanella, in close conjunction with the philosophy of Telesio, was Marsilio Ficino. He quoted in particular passages from Ficino's commentaries on Plato (especially the Timaeus and Symposium) and on the Enneads of Plotinus.

In his attack on the Aristotelian tradition, Campanella criticized the doctrines of form and of privation; of the four elements as principles of the sublunary world; of matter as privation; of the derivation of celestial heat from the friction of the spheres; and of the distinction between natural and violent motion. The culmination of his efforts to dismantle the Aristotelian system was a radical critique of traditional cosmology, with regard both to the nature of the heavens and to the trajectories and mechanisms of celestial movements. In parallel to the destructive side of Campanella's argument, the constructive element consisted of defending the doctrines of Telesio's philosophy. According to Telesio, all being derived from modifications resulting from the actions of the two principles of hot and cold on matter, which he did not regard as an abstract ens rationis (an entity existing in the mind) but rather as an inert corporeal mass, dark and entirely formless but capable of receiving any form. From the subtle and detailed argumentative structure of the eight weighty disputationes emerges a powerful unitary notion: the centrality, nobility and primacy of solar heat, that connects all beings and confers life on them. It is within this context that the assimilation of solar heat to the World Soul acquires a particular significance, a theme that is at the heart of the third disputation, entitled “De coelo et mundo” (“On the heavens and the world”). Campanella here transcribes verbatim a passage from Ficino's commentary on Plotinus's Enneads in which he dwells on the World Soul and its “vital and sensual breath” (Philosophia sensibus demonstrata, pp. 322–23). Ficino associates this hot breath, that penetrates and is infused into the entire world, with a well-known line from Virgil's Aeneid (VI.726: “spiritus intus alit”; “the spirit nourishes from within”) and also with the divine spirit of Genesis 1:2: “the spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters”. The heavens are composed of this breath and divine word, that vivifies and nourishes everything.

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Telesio dedicated his whole life to establishing a new kind of natural philosophy, which can be described as an early defense of empiricism bound together with a rigorous criticism of Aristotelian natural philosophy and Galenic physiology. Telesio blamed both Aristotle and Galen for relying on elaborate reasoning rather than sense perception and empirical research. His fervent attacks against the greatest authorities of the Western philosophical and medical traditions led Francis Bacon to speak of him as “the first of the moderns” (Opera omnia vol. III, 1963, p. 114). He was perhaps the most strident critic of metaphysics in late Renaissance times. It was obviously due to his excellent relationships with popes and clerics that he was not persecuted and was able during his own lifetime to publish his rather heterodox writings, which went on the index shortly after his death. His principal work is the aforementioned De rerum natura iuxta propria principia (“On the Nature of Things according to their Own Principles”), which in the last augmented edition of the author's hand appeared in Naples in 1586. The De rerum natura is a huge treatise in nine books which deals with cosmology, biology, sense perception, reason and ethics. Another treatise of major importance is Quod animal universum ab unica animae substantia gubernatur. Contra Galenum, in which Telesio critizised central conceptions of Galenic physiology and psychology. This work was never printed, but circulated in manuscript copies (De Franco, 1981, p. XXII). Smaller treatises deal with a variety of themes such as colours, dreams, geology and meteorology, some of which were published in Rome in 1565 (De iis quae in aere fiunt et de terremotibus; De colorum generatione; De mari). Telesio's philosophy was disseminated by friends and students such as Tommaso Campanella, whose writings contain long paraphrases of Telesian ideas; by Sertorio Quattromani, Telesio's successor as head of the Accademia Cosentina, who published a synthesis of his predecessor's philosophy in 1589; and by Antonio Persio, who gave lessons on Telesio's thought in Venice and published a collection of smaller works, the Varii de naturalibus rebus libelli, in 1590. Giordano Bruno speaks of the “giudiciosissimo Telesio” in the third dialog of De la causa, whilst Francis Bacon based his own speculative philosophy of nature on a blend of Telesian and Paracelsian conceptions (Giachetti Assenza 1980; Rees 1977; 1984). Thomas Hobbes followed Telesio in the rejection of species (Schuhmann 1990; Leijenhorst 1998, p. 116ff.) The physiology of René Descartes in De homine shows close similarities to Telesio's physiological theories as they are presented in De natura rerum (Hatfield 1992). Telesio also had some influence on Gassendi and on libertine thinkers (Bianchi 1992).
...
Telesio's vision of the genesis of nature is simple to the point of being archaic, yet at the same time astonishingly modern in the sense that he seems to have been one of the very first defenders of a theory of natural evolution without metaphysical or theological presuppositions. According to his De rerum natura, the only things which must be presupposed are passive matter and active force, the latter of which Telesio thought of as twofold, heat and cold. These principles were meant to replace the Aristotelian metaphysical principles of matter and form. In order to explain how all natural beings came into existence by these opposing forces, Telesio presumed that in the beginning God had created two primary globes, the sun and the earth, the sun being the seat of heat, the earth that of coldness, and that He had separated them with such a distance in space that they could not extinguish each other (DRN book I, ch. IV). All natural things result from the battle of these antagonistic forces for the possession of matter. The main region of that creative battle is the surface of the earth, where they create metals, stones and animate beings. The primary activity of warmth is to move fast and to dilate and rarefy matter, whereas that of cold is to hinder movement and to condense matter. Things differ according to the amount of heat or cold they possess (and therefore according to their density and derivative qualities such as velocity and colour). The quantity of matter is not changed through the action of these forces upon it. The role of heat, cold and matter as ‘natural principles’ had been highlighted before by Girolamo Fracastoro in the first version of the Homocentrica and in the dialogue Fracastorius sive De anima (Lerner 1992), as well as by Girolamo Cardano in his Liber unicus de natura.

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Bruno’s theories influenced 17th-century scientific and philosophical thought and, since the 18th century, have been absorbed by many modern philosophers. As a symbol of the freedom of thought, Bruno inspired the European liberal movements of the 19th century, particularly the Italian Risorgimento (the movement for national political unity). Because of the variety of his interests, modern scholars are divided as to the chief significance of his work. Bruno’s cosmological vision certainly anticipates some fundamental aspects of the modern conception of the universe; his ethical ideas, in contrast with religious ascetical ethics, appeal to modern humanistic activism; and his ideal of religious and philosophical tolerance has influenced liberal thinkers. On the other hand, his emphasis on the magical and the occult has been the source of criticism as has his impetuous personality. Bruno stands, however, as one of the important figures in the history of Western thought, a precursor of modern civilization.

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the biblical rule of “do unto others as you would have them do unto you” (Matt. 7:12)*.

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"Le donne sono 'maschi sterili'". (Women are 'sterile males'.) .... "La donna, poiché non possiede sufficiente calore naturale, e incapace di 'cuocere' il suo liquido mestruale fino al punto di raffinature col quale diverrebbe sperma. Perciò il suo solo contributo all'embrione e la materia." (The woman, because she possesses less heat, is incapable of 'cooking' her menstrual liquid to a point of refinement to make it into sperm. Therefore her sole contribution is her embryo and body.)

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"Le donne devono coprirsi la testa perché non sono ad immagine di Dio..." (Women must cover their heads because they are not in the image of God.) ... "Nessuno infatti può sostenere che la donna sia ad immagine di Dio quando si può dimostrare che essa è soggetta al dominio dell'uomo e non ha alcun genere di autorità. Poiché essa non può insegnare, ne essere testimone in tribunale, ne esercitare la cittadinanza, ne essere giudice, certamente essa non può esercitare alcuna autorità." (In fact no one can support that a woman is in the image of God when it can be shown she is the dominion of man and has no gender of authority. Since she cannot teach, nor give testimony in court, nor exercise the rights of citizenship, nor give judgment, certainly she cannot hold any authority.) -pg.95 ibid

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"O ye who believe! take not the Jews and the Christians for your friends: They are but friends to each other. And he amongst you that turns to them is of them. Verily Allah guideth not a people unjust." -5:51

Islam teaches us that we should be friendly to all people. Islam teaches us that we should deal even with our enemies with justice and fairness."

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According to the most authoritative and contemporary Muslim chronicles—those of al-Waqidi, al-Baladhuri, al-Tabari, al-Maqrizi, etc.—all this was done because Islam calls on its followers to conquer the lands of “infidels.”
It was in this context that, in 846, Muslim fleets from North Africa landed near Rome.  Unable to breach the walls of the Eternal City, they sacked and despoiled the surrounding countryside, including—to the consternation of Christendom—the venerated and centuries-old basilicas of St. Peter and St. Paul.  The Muslim invaders intentionally desecrated the tombs of the revered apostles and stripped them of their treasures, including a large golden cross.  Pope Leo IV (847-855) responded by building large walls and fortifications along the right bank of the Tiber to protect the sacred sites from further Muslim raids.  Completed by 852, the walls were in most places 40 feet high and 12 feet thick.
Further anticipating the crusades against Islam by over two centuries—and thus showing how they were a long time coming—Pope Leo decreed that any Christian who died fighting Muslim invaders would gain heaven.  After him and for the same reasons, Pope John VIII offered remission of sins for those who died fighting Islamic invaders. Such was the existential and ongoing danger Muslims caused for Christian Europe—more than two centuries before Pope Urban’s call for the First Crusade in 1095.  
Today, many Muslims, not just of the ISIS-variety, continue to boast that Islam will conquer Rome, the only of five apostolic sees—the other four being Antioch, Alexandria, Jerusalem, and Constantinople—never to have been subjugated by jihad.  Similarly, Muslims all throughout Europe continue exhibiting the same hostility and contempt for all things and persons non-Islamic, whether by going on church vandalizing sprees and breaking crosses, or by treating “infidel” women as theirs by right for sex and rape.
In short, Pope Leo’s walls prove Pope Francis wrong on both counts: yes, walls are sometimes necessary to preserve civilization; and yes, Islam does promote violence and intolerance for the other—far more than any other religion.  This fact is easily discerned by examining the past and present words and deeds of Muslims, all of which evince a remarkable and unwavering continuity of violence for “infidels.”

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Astronomer/moon starer, debit card/bad credit, classroom/school master, eleven plus two/twelve plus one, decimal point/I’m a dot in place, Halley’s comet/shall yet come, etc.

listen/silent, paternal/parental, discriminator/doctrinairism, deductions/discounted, angered/enraged, etc.

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Our study solves the apparent paradox that participants on the one hand are producing the Ouija responses themselves, while they on the other hand are unable to predict those very same responses at an individual level. In that sense, you could say that the “spirit” is actually a representation of the collective ‘we’,” he says.

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The reality is that Keynesian policy fails for the simple reason that it targets the wrong problem. Production drives economic growth and creates an equal flow of demand. Demand is thus the consequence of production, not the other way around.

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By Ivan A. on Sunday, March 10, 2002 - 01:50 pm:
EVIL AS A NEXUS OF FEAR

by Ivan D. Alexander

Euclides (c. 430-360 B.C.E.) believed that "Evil has no real existence. The good alone truly is." He also said that the Good is identified with Being, which is God, or the One, and that in the multiplicity of the many was evil.
http://www.utm.edu/research/iep/e/euclides.htm

Epictetus (1st cent. C.E.) wrote in his Discourses (4:12.7-8): "No one is master of another's 'prohairesis ' [moral character], and in this alone lies good and evil. No one, therefore, can secure the good for me, or involve me in evil, but I alone have authority over myself in these matters."
http://www.utm.edu/research/iep/e/epictetu.htm

Saint Augustine of Hippo (354-430 C.E.) in his writing the Confessions (in rebutting the Manichean heresy) says that "The sensible world is not evil, nor is embodiment itself to be regarded as straightforwardly bad. The problem that plagues our condition is not that we are trapped in the visible world (as it is for the Manicheans); rather, it is a more subtle problem of perception and will: we are prone to view things materialistically and hence unaware that the sensible world is but a tiny portion of what is real [Confessions IV.xv.24], an error Augustine increasingly attributes to original sin [De Libero Arbitrio III.20; De Civitate Dei XIII.14-15];" and that "Moral evil is, strictly speaking, not a thing, but only the will’s turning away from God and attaching itself to inferior goods as if they were higher [ibid.]." http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/augustine/#5

Thomas Aquinas (1225-1274, born in Rome) believed that "Whether the act be good or evil depends on the end. The 'human reason' pronounces judgment concerning the character of the end, it is, therefore, the law for action." He then further reasoned "An act becomes evil through deviation from the reason and the divine moral law," and that sin is due to our lust, which deviates from divine law, and that we are misled by self love.
http://www.utm.edu/research/iep/a/aquinas.htm


So here is a brief sketch history of some of the origins of 'evil' as they had come down to us from theological thinking to our secular attitudes on evil today: that Evil is somehow an error in our behavior, a deviation from what is divine in us, and through this multiplicity of errors, and a lack of reason, we then commit evils. So when we use the term 'evil', it means as often as not that we are being subjected to some behavior that is morally wrong, unreasonable and injurious, excessively selfish, and with a design or will to do harm. Most people of the modern western world do not see evil as a design of the devil, though there are those who do. I suspect fewer still will think of it as a result of some manifestation of our fears, of some deep psychological insecurity. That, however, in this last point, is what is of interest here, that evil is from fear.

There are two kinds of evils, the one that means it is an evil action, which is an adjective; the other that it is a noun, such as an evil force, or from a devil, or Satan. As an adjective, I believe evil exists, and that we do 'evil' things to each other more often than we admit. In this category I would place all coercions, all deceits, lies, injuries, causes for suffering, spitefulness, and the general disposition of human beings to harm others, often for their own gain, though not always. The problem may also be a problem of semantics. For example, there is no semantic distinction between 'lying' to prevent or resist coercion, a good, as opposed to lying to twist the truth for some personal gain, an evil. But in the noun category, evil becomes more problematic, since it is then some cosmic force which we cannot directly identify, except perhaps as a negation of Good; or, as is often interpreted theologically, as a distance from the Light of God. Thus, Evil is seen a force that has some influence on human behavior to do evil things. Here we may find ourselves digging deep into our religious history to find the roots of this vision of Evil, perhaps pre Judaic, pre Zoroastrian, or even pre Ancient Egyptian. In effect, this kind of evil as a force that rains suffering upon people may be as old as humankind. Who, while sitting in a dark cave, listening to the roar of beasts outside, huddled over a small fire in the close presence of kin and kith, would not look upon the shadows cast in the darkness without foreboding? There has been reason enough to call on some divine intervention to relieve the darkness of the evil forces that surrounded us, and over which we had no control, and like children afraid of what is under the bed at night, we huddled in fear. From these fears were born demons, evil spirits of the dead, spirits manipulated by shamans, who could visit us to bring misfortune or good, or otherwise find ways to do us harm. And when taken in toto, when this demonic presence took on an existence that even rivaled that of God, then some chose to worship it over God, and turned to Satan.

But is this not a clever lie? What forced us to turn away from reason, from seeing evil as an adjective, and instead giving it the power of a noun? Was it fear? Is there some part of the human psyche that needs to be expressed in its fears, even a fear of the devil?

There is no question that we do evil things, things that will damage others, and thus judged evil by them. But are they actually evil in themselves, if there is no recipient who can judge it as such? Or, can evil happen in a vacuum? No, it cannot. Then it becomes a question of what drives us to do evil to others? That we do evil would appear to come not from a position of strength, but rather from a position of weakness. If we cannot achieve or gain through means that are amenable to others, through their agreement, through ways we would consider ethical, then we are sometimes forced to fall back upon what we know in our hearts to be wrong. So whether through lust, or through some inner weakness, we find some devious way to achieve our end; but in looking deeper into that weakness, we find that there is always some element of fear. Usually, it is a fear of loss, or loss of control, or loss of love, or recognition, or fear of rejection, or of acceptance, or fear of fear itself, or death. But sometimes, rather it is a fear of betrayal, a loss of truth, of certainty, or a loss of what had been accepted, agreed upon, a loss of trust. Then there is a fear of loss of material goods, for survival, of wanting to have enough to not go into privation; though in today's more affluent societies one would expect this fear to be diminished, and yet it is not. Instead, a fear of loss turns into avarice, and the resulting greed drives a kind of bloated evil to gain from others at their expense. Are these all Satanic forces? No, they are what we do to ourselves, because we fear.

So there was no need by our ancient ancestors to imagine a cosmic force that was Evil, and that in some way was distant from or opposed to God, or that it manipulated our lives because we were inherently fallen due to some original sin. How convoluted, and how absurd. Rather, it is much simpler to see human action as a product of our faiths, or fears, our strengths or weaknesses. But when we are afraid, we will cling to those things that allay that fear; often we will cling to each other unreasonably, or to material things. Like a small child afraid of falling, we will grab on to whatever is closest at hand, the closest person, and cling, not out of strength, but out of fear. This is the nexus of fear that ties all our evil deeds together: that we are afraid and thus become filled with anxiety, lose faith, and grab onto whomever or whatever gives us relief, even if it causes injury to others. But that is not an evil force. Rather, it is a natural condition of our mind's attempt to make sense of what often leaves us confused, and hopeless without sense. Why would God allow evil things to happen, we ask. And the answer is that God has no personal part in what happens to us, that it is a condition of our existence, and it is the challenge to which we must find the strength to rise. As conscious human beings, we are both blessed and cursed with our minds, in that we can see and understand what 'evil' befalls us, but at the same time we fail to see that often, by being less aware, this is what we had caused for ourselves. And in this failure to consciously perceive reality, we then cast blame on the events, much like a young child might blame the table against which it bumped its head. Events are, and we exist within them, as best as we can with the equipment of mind and body that we have. And to blame it on evil when things go wrong is to evade that the responsibility for our lack of well being falls not on God, nor Satan, but on ourselves.

Evil understood as a nexus of fear then means that Satan, unless he can turn himself into an adjective, does not exist. There is no evil force that drives human beings to do evil things. We do evil things to each other because we have fear. As fear, evil then becomes naked before a plentitude of accusations throughout human history: we had blamed demons and devils to persecute each other out of fear. This was the tragedy of the Medieval Inquisitions, of the Salem witch trials, of the accusations against Jews, or Communists, or Gypsies, or Palestinians. All these accusations were fear driven failures to understand, to control, to feel safe from. We could not see, so we blamed. Today, we are faced with a threat of a new kind, worldwide terrorism. But this did not come out of a vacuum, and the grievances that generated the suicidal acts of terror against civilians were with us a long time; we did not see them, were oblivious as they built up into a credible force, and now we face their evil consequences. Yes, their acts are evil, but they are not an evil force, an 'axis of evil' as dubbed. The terrorists are not satanic, rather they are human beings who had succumbed to their fears, their own unhappiness and sense of oppression, and now lash out against a world they cannot understand. Their acts of terror are horrible and unforgivable, they are criminals; but at the same time, they see themselves as good, while they see us as evil. Is this not an absurd contradiction? Obviously, this is indeed a contradiction of terms between a noun and an adjective. Evil exists only as an adjective, of how we do to each other, and ourselves, not as a noun. It is that evil that is not an 'axis of evil', but rather, a 'nexus of fear'.


I bring up this subject of Evil as Fear because I believe it is its misunderstanding that has led to so much torment and persecution through the ages. By blaming evil deeds on an Evil Force, we had been evading the causes of what had driven human beings to doing evil things. And now, by confronting evil deeds for what they actually are, that they come from fear, allows us to more realistically understand what drives the men and women, and children, who do them, and how to avert them before they become real. But on the nature of fear, how to overcome it, is a topic of which philosophy is strangely silent, and beyond the scope of this paper.

Lastly, I think every human being is born with some capacity for both love and compassion as well as fear, and that it is in the person's psyche makeup to lean towards one end of the spectrum or the other. However, it is an act of will and courage to overcome fear, not to give into it. And by how well this fear is overcome then becomes evident how much love and compassion this person is able to command, and how well potential evils can be held in check. From fear, whether we choose to do with good or evil, is then a mark of our humanity.

End.

(as submitted to Examined Life On-Line Journal, 4/13/02)

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Urban II, Ottone dei Signori di Chatillon (1088-1099), one of the greatest popes in the history of the Church, was imprisoned in the Caetani tower, which faces the Bridge.

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