a (yoga) socio-political manifesto

atRifF  

Nature has priority.¹ It's here first and sustains everything.

The guiding principle is ahimsa. Non-violence translated into deep & skeptic ecology, i.e, the interdependence of human and non-human life in a world out of joint. We cannot understand ourselves if we estrange ourselves from nature, but we're already estranged!    

Socio-political should start bottom-up, not top-down.² We don't need to wait for the top to change. As actors close to the local/regional nodes of action, we can acquire the know-how to build connections and mobilize public opinion to challenge institutional and social alienation.

* From the bottom ---> up: The initial transformation is individual but it doesn't stop there. We are ONE: There is no true path without some form of dharma/activism.³ 

* The aporia of human anthropocentric emancipation: We need to see non-human life under a different optic. The Greeks of ancient times didn't realize that non-Greeks were persons. American plantation owners in the late-18th Century didn't realize that blacks were not inferior brutes. The majority of Americans don't realize that non-human animals are more than just foodstuff. We have an obligation to treat animals with dignity⁴ (our present animal farming needs to be transformed from intensive farming ----> extensive farming).

* The aporia of pollution vs. development: Blaming corporations in order to feel safely excluded from the pollution cycle, while feeding the very thing we try to prevent. We are the world's worst polluters!⁵

* Though it may be a little late, the move towards eco-conservation is a social imperative. Let's fight to stop deforestation, to protect sea life from extinction (due to overfishing), ensuring ecological diversity for future generations. Yes, it seems daunting, but it begins by understanding, doing & telling others. 

* The aporia of technology vs. emancipation: What makes us human is a result of our cultural evolution: language, rituals, arts and technology. Yet, our anthropocentric-based culture is leading us to a dead end. Let's move from an anthropocentric to a bio-centric culture!⁶  Technology = Culture.Technology is not the enemy. Humans cannot live without technology. Yet, technology has the imperative to preserve the delicate balance of Nature. 

* We must learn to curb and manage our waste: Reuse, donate, recycle! Food is the primary ecological exchange of energy. Our corporate-driven, production-intensive food paradigm needs to be redefined, from fast food ----> slow food. ⁷ Let's switch our eating habits and bring back food sacralization. Let's turn environmental degradation and human exploitation into eco-erotics!⁸

* The aporia of development vs. under-development⁹: Our post-Capitalist global society is craft-deprived. Globalization has outsourced our manufacturing and trade/skills base. Let's get back to cooking, arts and crafts, organic horticulture,¹⁰ etc. We should balance our individualistic tendencies with cooperation & communitarianism!

* Let's change our cities, fighting urban decay with environmental sustainability, changing ugliness into beauty.

* Let's become eco-Romantics!¹¹ engaging in heritage conservation, infrastructure efficiency,  mass transit, regional integration, human scale, and institutional integrity.

* Let's transform our neighborhoods, building sustainable structures, limiting urban sprawl, reducing car dependence, promoting pedestrian friendly urbanism.¹²

What to do? 

Flipping Marxist formalism, let's turn the base into the superstructure. Our bid is for a different form of emergence: 

 anti-advertising, 

social graffiti,

urban farming,

nonviolence, 

anarcho-syndicalism, 

building consensus,

civil disobedience,

use social media to advance social change 

potlatch

ACT NOW!

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¹ Aristotle's naturalism can be seen as a forerunner of eco-ethics, as expressed by his dictum Nature does nothing in vain. John Clearly, Aristotle and the Many Senses of Priority, (Southern Illinois University Press, 1988) p. 60. ² We don't have to choose between markets (Welfare Capitalism) or governments, as instruments of emancipation (Communism, planned-economy Socialism). Nor is there need to eliminate markets, trade, private ownership, the welfare state, or the institution of the corporation. What we need to do is bring about new practices for each of these institutions appropriate to a balance between prosperity and conservation. This is the force of emergence: Millions of people joining voluntary movements, discovering that the good life is more fulfilling than the endless cycle of accumulation and consumption. Professor Steven Buechler makes a similar (hopeful) point: "Movements can be crucial switching stations in the direction of history (...)  vital free spaces that promote democratization and restore a meaningful public sphere." See Steven M. Buechler, Social Movements in Advanced Capitalism: The Political Economy and Cultural Construction of Social Activism (Oxford University Press: 2000) p. 214.  Enacting Niyama at the social level can bring about a life of material sufficiency with cultural, intellectual, and spiritual abundance in balance with the environment. By osmosis, the social level can bring about needed changes in the political sphere. ³ One's embeddedness in a particular context: job, household/family, or community can lead one to recognize a problem, learn about community needs, and find a way to make life better through new -or reconfigured- social linkages.  ⁴ According to philosopher Tom Regan, animals have "inherent value" as subjects-of-a-life, and cannot be regarded as a means to an end. See, Tom Regan, The Case for Animal Rights, (University of California Berkeley, 2005) p. 245. ⁵ The United States has 4.2% of the world's population and produces 24% of the world's C0₂ emissions. ⁶ One must be careful not to write off culture, as if humans have fallen from paradise straight into some artificial exile of civilization. This is where the ancient Greeks can help. They understood that us humans are not completely "natural" but rather the site of a collision of nature and culture, which uniquely defines us. See Bruce Thornton, Plagues of the Mind: The New Epidemic of False Knowledge (ISI Books, 1999) p. 96.  ⁷ "Slow food" goes against the received notion that cheap food = good food. Carlo Petrini, the man behind this movement defends the "unpolitical" idea that cheap food is really expensive, bad food, when compared with good, clean, carefully harvested food. He is right. In his book, Petrini advocates the idea of "gusto" (taste) and diversity. There is a correlation between slow food and health, which makes slow food more enjoyable. The locus for this revolucion is la osteria, a place where one can find "traditional cuisine run as a family business with simple service, welcoming atmosphere, good wine and moderate prices." See Carlo Petrini, Slow Food, the Case for Taste (Columbia University Press, 2003) p. 51-58. "Cheap food" is a Capitalist ploy to misrepresent real capital allocation and profit in the name of "abundance," hiding government subsidies for monoculture and intensive production which end up as profit for Big Business in food and energy. Take for instance American corn policies: We subsidize corn while (protect Monsanto's right to sell it to farmers as genetically modified seed). Coincidentally, corn is the foodstuff staple for raising cattle in the US (funded by whom?) and an energy commodity. Wonder why such a labor-intensive commodity such as meat is so cheap? Corn is heavily fertilized — both with chemicals like nitrogen and with subsidies from Washington. Over the past decade, the Federal Government has poured more than $50 billion into the corn industry, keeping prices for the crop — at least until corn ethanol skewed the market — artificially low. That's your Big Mac @ McDonald's, a $5 meal bargain, with 1,400 calories (more than half the daily recommended requirement for adults). ⁸ I thank my friend Gene Ray for his suggestion. I'd like to spin his idea of eco/erotics as an embodied striving for well-being that connects us with the animal and non-animal other (life). The opposite of eco/erotics is eros gone astray, a perversion of Nishkam Karma. A desire in the form of a will-to-control that aims to secure itself by mastering all around it. Ridden with anxiety, this eros reduces other to self. In fact, there are examples of such versions in modern times: Certain "peak" historic moments, when factors motivating nations and individuals, such as the desires for profit, security, and hegemony got transformed militaristic erotics. ⁹ It turns out that the mantra of "emancipated" Communist development in Eastern Europe, Africa, and the Caribbean throughout the 1960's-1980's consisted in mimicking the Capitalist "anthropocentric development" model: 1- constant growth, 2- domination of nature, 3- industrialization and technologization of production and society at the expense of environmental degradation, abandonment of agriculture (land reform in this case meant very little, since arbitrary and exploitative prices were set by the bureaucrats, not by the farmers), massive migration to the cities, urban unemployment and loss of crafts skills. The deterioration of nature brought by these mistaken policies, was invoked by the communist  bureaucracies as a step in the right direction for the attainment of development. ¹⁰ Who would think of pursuing horticultural studies in Miami, now, when the expected move of disenfranchised farmers is from the rural areas to the city? Precisely! This overall migration has to do with the switch from farmer-produced to corporate-produced agriculture. How can one reverse it? By encouraging a moresimple living. Diversifying instead of homogenizing food consumption; by making good, simple food (not gourmet food) a desired commodity, so that corporations are forced to alter their mode of production. Surely, one must be watchful of corporation's good intentions! It's all about awareness. Are people ready for it? After the subprime mortgage crisis, the Upper Big Branch Mine disaster, andBP's gulf disaster, the answer is yes. ¹¹ The new eco-Romantic is committed to ecological flourishing, but she is neither anti-technology, nor naive in her political expectations about Messianic utopias. The traditional Romantic lived in a paradox he was blind to. (H)e deprecated technology from his studio in the industrial-brought comfort of the pre-Modern city. We must see the good and bad in technology. The Industrial Revolution cannot be simply undone (the remedy would be worst than the disease). It needs to be transformed. Technology can serve us in using the ecosystem resources more efficiently. On the other hand, there is a strong historical relationship between growth in economic output and growing human demands on the earth's finite ecosystem. We've pushed since 1950's the human burden on the planet's regenerative systems, its soils, air, water, fisheries, and forestry systems beyond what the planet can sustain. Anthropocentric "development" is not the answer. Pushing for economic growth beyond the planet's sustainable limits accelerates the rate of breakdown of the whole. It also intensifies the competition between rich and poor for the earth's remaining output of life-sustaining resources. ¹² See my  "Miami's Urban Mess.

kids, your chance to study robotics: robots that feel!

diane ackerman writes for SALON:

1- you've heard of google's robotics division? they own a medley of firms, including some minting life-size humanoids—because, in public spaces, we're more likely to ask a cherub-faced robot for info than a touchscreen.
2- apple and amazon are diving into advanced robotics as well.
3- the military has invested heavily in robots as spies, bionic gear, drones, pack animals, and bomb disposers.
4- robots already work for us with dedicated precision in factory assembly lines and operating rooms.

according to professor  Hod Lipson, all this is child's play. 

His focus is on a self-aware species, Robot sapiens. Our own lineage branched off many times from our apelike ancestors, and so will the flowering, subdividing lineage of robots, which perhaps needs its own Linnaean classification system. The first branch in robot evolution could split between AI and AL—artificial intelligence and artificial life. 

i like this one:

Taste buds rise like flaky volcanoes on different regions of the tongue, with bitter at the back, lest we swallow poisons. How hard would it be to evolve a suite of specialized “taste buds” that bear no resemblance to flesh? Flavor engineers at Nestlé in Switzerland have already created an electronic “taster” of espresso, which analyzes the gas different pulls of ristretto give off when heated, translating each bouquet of ions into such human-friendly, visceral descriptions as “roasted,” “flowery,” “woody,” “toffee,” and “acidy.”

the long shadow of the american dream (how to create good study habits?)

a 25 year study led by karl alexander, professor of sociology at JHU shows a dramatic result:

The study followed nearly 800 Baltimore schoolchildren for more than a quarter of a century beginning in 1982. After more than 30 years, the study found that the majority of students stayed in the same socioeconomic class as their parents. Of the children from the lowest income groups, only 4 percent had a college degree by the age of 28. By the age of 28, 49 percent of the Black men from low-income backgrounds had been convicted of a crime and most of these were unemployed.

out of 800 subjects, only 40 made it to college!

the lesson? being the best student you can be must become a PRIORITY.

patanjali YOGA (post for comment #3)

well, that was an intense reading of patanjali's sutra!

right off my sleeve and in the mode of brain-storming:

1. the importance of a clear mind,

 1.41. When the agitations of the mind are under control, the mind becomes like a transparent crystal and has the power of becoming whatever form is presented. knower, act of knowing, or what is known.

2. the wheel of samsara, to each its own:

1.30. Disease, inertia, doubt, lack of enthusiasm, laziness, sensuality, mind-wandering, missing the point, instability- these distractions of the mind are the obstacles.

3. the importance of a ritual, of practice, of purpose in our lives.

2.2. This discipline is practised for the purpose of acquiring fixity of mind on the Lord, free from all impurities and agitations, or on One's Own Reality, and for attenuating the afflictions.

4. duck/rabbit,

2.10. These patterns when subtle may be removed by developing their contraries.
2.11. Their active afflictions are to be destroyed by meditation.

5. avidya is everywhere!

2.5. Ignorance is taking the non-eternal for the eternal, the impure for the pure, evil for good and non-self as self.

6. in the west, knowledge = power, but what knowledge? patanjali warns:

 2.6. Egoism is the identification of the power that knows with the instruments of knowing.

7. para-doxa (beyond the law)

4.12. The past and the future exist in the object itself as form and expression, there being difference in the conditions of the properties.

8. dense perplexity (as garlanded creepers & glossy undergrowth) comes before the epiphany,

 2.25. Liberation of the seer is the result of the dissociation of the seer and the seen, with the disappearance of ignorance.

9. just before moksha, wash the dishes! the sangha is here.

4:50. When the deities invite, there should be no attachment and no smile of satisfaction, contact with the undesirable still possible.

for this comment, let's try to bring forth what we've learned so far.

what's on your mind?

FYI all my MWF classes

i will not be in school this friday, september 26. do not report to class. just do the homework assigned.

gun control: one more topic to our list of research topics for the final paper

I am adding one more topic for research for the final paper: Gun control

a sample of a paper proposal (try to follow the portions in color)

Your proposal has 4 elements:

1- Heading, to the left which has: name, course & time, paper proposal.
2- Title, center. 
3- Content. The content has your argument a brief description of the defense and the counterargument.
4- References: It's early, but this is a start. Remember that your paper is as good as the references you provide. Usa Wikipedia to find out sources, but do not cite Wikipedia.

(All should be written in Roman New Times p. 12). 

Sample: 
_________________________

John Doe
PHI 2010
T, R 9:50am class
Paper Proposal

Factory Farming: Why Animals deserve a better treatment 

In this paper I discuss why current practices of animal farming are wrong. I object to the wide-spread intensive practices we find today in America's Big  Farm Conglomerates. In the paper, I discuss some of the most objectionable practices:

1- Animal restriction or prevention of normal exercise and most of natural foraging. 2- Restriction or prevention of natural maternal nesting behaviour. 3- Lack of daylight or fresh air and poor air quality in animal sheds. 4- Social stress and injuries caused by overcrowding. 5-  Health problems caused by extreme selective breeding and management for fast growth and high productivity. 6- Fast-spreading infections encouraged by crowding and stress in intensive conditions.

I argue against a counter that  1- factory farming practices are the result of a normal process of industrialization and 2- that modifying these practices will only make animal products more expensive. I'll try to demonstrate that the price we pay in terms of pollution to the environment, the spread of epidemics like mad cow disease. 

______________

All references should follow MLA protocol. Below find the general and Internet citation protocols:  

References in general MLA protocols.
MLA Internet references protocols.

on jainism & ahimsa (post for comment #2)

a lot of what we discussed yesterday (tuesday) had to do with determinism vs. free will, i.e., the role of moksha as a form of getting out of the law of karma. at one level jainism seems to endorse that view. but at a deeper level, i think there is no "out."  this is why i posted (below) a more detailed discussion about punyas and papas. please, read it to inform your comments for this thread. there, i address the paradox of radical libertarianism opposing determinism (only to let it in through the backdoor).

then there was the trimurti and the five basic ethical principles. the issue of intention (mens rea) and pleasure came up. we discussed that pleasure is a deep metaphor. i mentioned epicurus as a reference from the west (i like to cross-reference east with west). for epicurus, there are temporary and lasting pleasures, the latter are superior to the former, something jainism would agree with. you see, pleasure by itself is not a liability. pleasure is structural for homosapiens. the problem is when pleasure becomes exponential. the paradox of pleasure is to enjoy it to the point of letting sorrow through the back door.

Note: For this post, let's include our discussion on ahimsa, in light of gandhi's insights. 

remember: i'm closing this post next monday at 11pm. 
 

jainism: karma, punya & papa

Actions that bear positive results and elevate a person are called punya. 

Actions that lead to a negative fruit and degrade a person are called papa.

Imagine that every person has a spiritual "ledger" showing accrued punya credits and papa liabilities. A person who wins a lottery must have had a lot of punya accumulated due to many past positive actions. A person murdered must be experiencing the accumulated effects of past papa.

One's position in life, the family one is born into, one's economic position, one's health and strength, and even what country one is born into and who one marries are considered to be the result of punya and papa. This superdeterministic position recalls (though in a diametrically different position) in existentialism. Sartre (a radical libertarian) makes the point that one is responsible for everything that happens to oneself. Even an earthquake? Yes, because one is within the earthquake's radius. What if one doesn't know? One is responsible for one's own ignorance.   

Is a person born into a family of privilege and class a result of punya? As we know, riches don't guarantee goodness. Is a person born into a hellish condition of war and disease a result of papa? There are said to be heavenly and hellish realms "above and below" this earth that beings are born into as a result of high and low levels of punya and papa.

The expression "seventh heaven," for example, comes from a Hindu idea of heaven. Above this earth there are many levels of heaven and similarly, below this earth there are many levels of hell. The "seventh heaven" is the highest realm, but a heaven and a hell are never permanent.

Caveat: One may go to a heaven as a result of accumulated punya, but once that punya is exhausted through enjoyment, one will move to lower levels of existence (even hell). Think of my mentioning of Patanjali in regards to the implicit paradox contained in moksha.

Similarly, one may fall to a hell as a result of great papa, but once that papa is "burned off" through suffering one will begin to raise again to higher levels of existence.

Earthly regions are considered middle ground where there is both happiness and suffering and because most actions are neither all good or all bad, the results are mixed. Therefore, our lives are mixed in terms of happiness and suffering.

jainism: an introductory text

a good summary on jainism by Sri Jayatilal S. Sanghvi.

artificial cells in the lab!?

the news here.

did you know about dark matter?

big? small?

it may help a bit with our brahman/atman discussion.

you can't ignore a discipline that stands 26 centuries old

Physics for idiots (we're all idiots to some extent).

appearances are deceiving

is an elephant huge hulk with trunk and tusks similar to a hyrax a small furry rodent?

based on appearances you'd say "no." and yet, the hyrax is perhaps the elephant's closest relative. this is because of similarities in their re productive system, teeth structure and a common ancestor in the early fossil record a remote ancestor. in fact this remote ancestor is common to hyraxes, sea cows (dugongs and manatees) and elephants.

i give you a hippo and a whale:

they are cousins! the whale hind parts are now smaller and they are also internalized, but they used to be legs (it's called "atavism") and that is believed to be the result of a genetic code that will call for longer extremities to form. another change was that the nasal openings moved from the end of the snout to the top of the skull area. this is referred to as "nasal drift." those nostrils later evolved into blowholes so that they can get to the surface of the water, take in air, and then be submerged again with ease.

seen from an evolutionary-tree perspective:

did you know that dolphins and wolves are actually cousins!