String of Pearls

[sooZen]

It was all a misunderstanding...

A mistake is to commit a misunderstanding.
Bob Dylan

If you want that good feeling that comes from doing things for other folks then you have to pay for it in abuse and misunderstanding.
Zora Neale Hurston

In the whole round of human affairs little is so fatal to peace as misunderstanding.
Margaret E. Sangster

Is an intelligent human being likely to be much more than a large-scale manufacturer of misunderstanding?
Philip Roth

It is by universal misunderstanding that all agree. For if, by ill luck, people understood each other, they would never agree.
Charles Baudelaire

Logic: The art of thinking and reasoning in strict accordance with the limitations and incapacities of the human misunderstanding.
Ambrose Bierce


Most quarrels amplify a misunderstanding.
Andre Gide

Not only the entire ability to think rests on language... but language is also the crux of the misunderstanding of reason with itself.
Johann G. Hamann


and so it is...all a misunderstanding...! And as for understanding?

Anger and intolerance are the enemies of correct understanding.
Mohandas Gandhi

Your pain is the breaking of the shell that encloses your understanding.
Khalil Gibran

I'm not claiming divinity. I've never claimed purity of soul. I've never claimed to have the answers to life. I only put out songs and answer questions as honestly as I can... But I still believe in peace, love and understanding.
John Lennon


To use the same words is not a sufficient guarantee of understanding; one must use the same words for the same genus of inward experience; ultimately one must have one's experiences in common.
Friedrich Nietzsche

Understanding is a two-way street.
Eleanor Roosevelt


The power of intuitive understanding will protect you from harm until the end of your days.
Lao Tzu

I do not want the peace which passeth understanding, I want the understanding which bringeth peace.
Helen Keller


The noblest pleasure is the joy of understanding.
Leonardo da Vinci


Is that understood?


Note: When I look at the title of this Topic which is Culture, Politics, Philosophy I honestly get confused (no understanding) as I probably (not sure here) don't connect the three. Actually, I do understand (okay, you do Soo) that the philosophical gets all tangled up in the political and cultural, of course. Since I have a growing aversion to politics and all things political it is like placing here (personally, for me) one that has nothing to do with the other. It is just a lumping together in the stew of life I suppose and whereas ones philosophical outlook can be so political (I don't wish this, but it happens.)

I guess what I am getting at (get at it Soo!) is that I am never sure where I should put my meanderings (not that it really matters all that much...I guess.) "Clean as a bean" they say, meaning for me, keeping ones philosophical wanderings pure from others putrid (please, my feelings only!) saturation of the social media and all that entails.

Now that you, dear reader, are thoroughly confused or defensive about what you enjoy or savor as a Topic by my disgust in the grinding or gnashing of the political thrashings all about us, have at it. (I will abstain from the fray...) Peace for me is a personal journey and has nothing whatsoever to do with wars or politics or anyone else whom I have absolutely no control over (Boy, I do prattle on, don't I?) and still misunderstandings are rampant and understanding is a gift I appreciate so greatly...! So here it is under this Topic (like it or not Soo) and besides, I had very little to do here other than gathering up some others quotes and stringing them together in a necklace I wanted to wear.

[stilltrucking]

First thoughts

Culture is a womb we are born into
An external womb in which enculturation occurs.

culture is everything human we do
that includes among other things
technology
politics
art
literature
music
religion
language
philosophy
science

___________________________________________________________
Quote


Our animal nature, our biological nature is to live in relation to other people. The natural environment of humans is primarily culture, not the "natural world," narrowly defined as other species, climate, etc. The sudden and startling growth of The human brain around one million years ago was not in response to saber-tooth tigers, retreating glaciers, nor the intellectual challenge of getting nutmeat out of is shell, but in response to the emergence of culture itself. The brain mechanisms of self-defense, of predation, of territoriality, of sexual and family group affiliation, and of defending offspring have not been supplanted by culture, but rather speak through it in ways that we poorly understand. Culture is not illusory, movie-theater projection of bodily "drives' or "instincts." nor is the body a metaphor; wholly constructed by culture. Culture is as biologically real for humans as the body. Unless in a coma, we are always both culture bearers and bodies at ever moment.


Jonathan Shay, MD, PhD, Achilles in Vietnam: Combat Trauma and
the Undoing of Character. New York: Atheneum, 1994. Pp. 246.
$20.00. ISBN 0-689-12182-2

[stilltrucking]

biological evolution is slow
cultural evolution is much faster that is why when Amy Goodman of Democracy Now says end war in the twenty first century it is possible I believe.
________________________________________________
Quote

What is Culture?
http://anthro.palomar.edu/culture/culture_1.htm

The word culture click this icon to hear the preceding term pronounced has many different meanings. For some it refers to an appreciation of good literature, music, art, and food. For a biologist, it is likely to be a colony of bacteria or other microorganisms growing in a nutrient medium in a laboratory Petri dish. However, for anthropologists and other behavioral scientists, culture is the full range of learned human behavior patterns. The term was first used in this way by the pioneer English Anthropologist Edward B. Tylor in his book, Primitive Culture, published in 1871. Tylor said that culture is "that complex whole which includes knowledge, belief, art, law, morals, custom, and any other capabilities and habits acquired by man as a member of society." Of course, it is not limited to men. Women possess and create it as well. Since Tylor's time, the concept of culture has become the central focus of anthropology.

Culture is a powerful human tool for survival, but it is a fragile phenomenon. It is constantly changing and easily lost because it exists only in our minds. Our written languages, governments, buildings, and other man-made things are merely the products of culture. They are not culture in themselves. For this reason, archaeologists can not dig up culture directly in their excavations. The broken pots and other artifacts of ancient people that they uncover are only material remains that reflect cultural patterns--they are things that were made and used through cultural knowledge and skills.

[Arcadia]

Soo: I don´t like pearls but it was interesting to read your thread..!! gracias for sharing!!!

[stilltrucking]

Norbert Wiener
Science is a way of life which can only flourish when men are free to have faith.

Pardon the multiple replies

I am very interested in the evolution of culture, which may or may not have anything to do with your topic. At the rate our culture is evolving it is almost like one generation is born into a new culture different than their parents.

Nothing I can do about war but scribble,
I was not born to be a warrior
I was born to rape and pillage and murder
that is my nature
amazing grace that save a wretch like me

[sooZen]

Soo: I don´t like pearls but it was interesting to read your thread..!! gracias for sharing!!!

Why not Arcadia? Actually, I am not a pearl wearing girl either but it was an apt expression ("Pearls of wisdom") and an old song.

[sooZen]

Pardon the multiple replies

I am very interested in the evolution of culture, which may or may not have anything to do with your topic. At the rate our culture is evolving it is almost like one generation is born into a new culture different than their parents.

Jack, I too am interested in the evolution of culture (and the history) and no, I don't believe this had anything to do with my thoughts at the time but you did make me think! I was in fact lamenting the fact with Cecil that the generations that follow us are so tuned in to gadgets, electronics and technologies and so not tuned in to Nature that if the grid went down, they would be lost, clueless as to what to do to survive.

My oldest son, who is a computer tech and his wife would have no idea how to grow their own, live on the edge, off the grid, take care of their health, feed themselves without a grocery store, doctors, gas stations or anything like that. I have tried to clue him (I didn't raise him that way, most certainly) but he has other priorities (and a wife) now and thinks basically that his Mom is a crackpot, witchy, out of touch individual who is still hippy and trippy with her herbs, astrology and tarot and compost piles...and not all in tune with his "modern society".

Actually, I tend to think that modern humans have lost a lot of what they knew, in a historical sense, ages ago. The Incas, the Mayans, the Native American residents of Chaco Canyon, the ancient Greeks, the Druids, Egyptians, many cultures had a great deal of knowledge (and probably inherent powers) about the workings of the Universe that they took with them when their civilizations died out. (Possibly due to an abuse of those very powers.) We moderns are still perplexed on how they accomplished what they did at the time without all the gadgets we find necessary to do our figuring and measuring and constructing and stuff. Our brains haven't gotten any larger and perhaps (just a theory on my part) we use even less of it now than they did then... We are actually regressed I think (again, just a theory but the evidence is weighty.) We are just couch potatoes who mostly worry about inane, petty bullshit. Oh, of course, there are exceptions but they are exceptional...

[stilltrucking]

I appreciate your tolerance

"Mr. Jinx and Miss Lucy, they jumped in the lake
I'm not that eager to make a mistake" dylan

[the mingo]

"Clean as a bean" - never heard that one before. Yes, digressive critters we be. From one inane petty bullshit digression to the next. The bread of life. Turn the poets loose! The language awaits them! Or maybe earthquakes. Our brains are bubblepots. Because of existent velocities as soon as we speak something, anything, it is no longer true if it was ever true to begin with, which it never was. For this reason any search for truth is necessarily & completely corrupt from the gitgo. We cannot "know" what we are saying even as a figure of speech. I always was non-plussed by that phrase, "a figure of speech". Isn't everything a "figure of speech" ? I even went to a dictionary once and looked up the definitions of each of those three words. I went away in even greater wonderment. Suicide is an attempt to get clean from inane petty bullshit, that's all. No one would die if they could help it. Even with the world being as miserable as it is, and I'm not talking about the news. Everyone pays and pays and pays. And prays that they will always have the means to pay even if only to get through to the next day where we will begin again to pay. Everything springs from a mistake and the dividend of that is mistake after mistake > infinity. Outside the lodge here it is raining, that's what and all I know at the moment. But it's a mistake, a mis - take. According to a book I read water once came up out of the ground to water the whole earth. At that time there was no rain. Yet today water comes from the sky, it rains. So I am brought face to face with the fact that something somewhere somehow for whatever reason underwent a fundamental, I say, a fundamental planetwide change. From this I understand that what is seen is temporary and what is unseen is eternal and eternity is the source from which all else flows and derives it's existence. This is not insight, it is an understanding. But how, in a world of lies, could you ever trust anything, even your own understandings? How do you break such a rock solid steel shielded diamond hard conundrum ? Faith. Not faith in yourself, which is the fruit of delusion, but faith in the only thing greater than yourself.
The pearl in the oyster. The sword in the stone. Once grasped everything changes, and you will never look at anything ever again from a worldly point of view. And mountains will fear your presence. Not because of your power, but because of the one who gave you birth and sent you.

I like pearls, soo. I would never buy them for myself but I would never refuse them were they a gift.

[Doreen Peri]

Note: When I look at the title of this Topic which is Culture, Politics, Philosophy I honestly get confused (no understanding) as I probably (not sure here) don't connect the three. Actually, I do understand (okay, you do Soo) that the philosophical gets all tangled up in the political and cultural, of course. Since I have a growing aversion to politics and all things political it is like placing here (personally, for me) one that has nothing to do with the other. It is just a lumping together in the stew of life I suppose and whereas ones philosophical outlook can be so political (I don't wish this, but it happens.)

It's because there were too many forums. I could separate them, make them sub-forums or something. It used to take an hour just to scroll down the site to see all the forums until we upgraded the software so I could put all the word jams in subforums, all the artwork in subforums, the studios, etc. Before, they just ran down the page forEVER.

So, I lumped Philosophy with Culture & Politics.

Maybe I should call it Opinion ....... then have sub-forums of Culture, Philosophy, and Politics.

I donno.. my head's spinning thinking about how to decide where to move the posts and how much time it would take.

Any ideas are welcome.

Great quotes! Thanks for sharing.

[sooZen]

Mingo, you have given me much to ponder, thank you. (As these grey cells grind away at matter that doesn't really matter)

I heard someone recently say on some inane talk show, "the older you get the more sense the old adages and axioms actually make, they are old sayings that get used repeatedly for a reason." It made sense to me as I tend to repeat them repeatedly and in the South we cling to our old expressions and sayings with tenacity. There are myriad examples but mine are ones that my family tended to spout. Grannie always had a basketful of them. "Clean as a bean" was one that she used as well as "neat as a pin" and others which escape me at the moment. But they stuck in my collective memory and get taken out and used on those moments that seem appropriate when I am writing or speaking. It defines me as to geographic location and background, I am sure. I love colloquialisms and myth and sayings and quotes and find they come in quite handy (and amuse me and that is of utmost importance to me, "amusing me" that is...)

I actually find conversation and what is called "argument" to be more like fencing or chess or a game of Go. One never knows the outcome of the conversation but the game itself is an art and I appreciate it if it is well played. So many in this world of gadgets and tweets and text-ing have no clue as to how to carry on a conversation or write a complete sentence or much less compose a poem that has any substance or tickles one's imagination (hey, I like that saying! Tickle my imagination anytime! Touche Soo!)

My quest (well, I have quests like the fabled search for the chalice although not nearly as important but that doesn't matter to me, levels of import are all a matter of perspective) is to seek the light, to shed light and to illuminate the dark corners of my self. Language is a mighty sword in that quest. (Boy, I have really slipped into analogy here! ) And isn't that what all humans seek to do ultimately? Perhaps not as there is that "pay, pay, pay" that you speak of but when I pay the piper, I want music and song and dance. Not some dry paper with a face on it that someone somewhere said holds value.

I wish it would rain here...it has been so long (since Sept of last year of any measurable rain) that the smell, the feeling, the sound is but a distant and longed for memory. It will rain again, I am sure because anymore, my mantra, "trust in the Universe" rises above any petty bullshit (good compost) that may surround me and in that trust, that all is as it should be, drought and fires included, I take a great deal of comfort knowing "this too shall pass..."

[sooZen]

Note: When I look at the title of this Topic which is Culture, Politics, Philosophy I honestly get confused (no understanding) as I probably (not sure here) don't connect the three. Actually, I do understand (okay, you do Soo) that the philosophical gets all tangled up in the political and cultural, of course. Since I have a growing aversion to politics and all things political it is like placing here (personally, for me) one that has nothing to do with the other. It is just a lumping together in the stew of life I suppose and whereas ones philosophical outlook can be so political (I don't wish this, but it happens.)

It's because there were too many forums. I could separate them, make them sub-forums or something. It used to take an hour just to scroll down the site to see all the forums until we upgraded the software so I could put all the word jams in subforums, all the artwork in subforums, the studios, etc. Before, they just ran down the page forEVER.

So, I lumped Philosophy with Culture & Politics.

Maybe I should call it Opinion ....... then have sub-forums of Culture, Philosophy, and Politics.

I donno.. my head's spinning thinking about how to decide where to move the posts and how much time it would take.

Any ideas are welcome.

Great quotes! Thanks for sharing.

And thank you for replying Doreen. Actually, it wasn't about you or the forum, it was me and what I was thinking. I have no idea of your logistics (and thank you for telling me what the difficulties were and are) just my take on (and I suppose my aversion to) politics and all that entails. I realize that not everybody shares my disdain (I have a guy here that loves the discourse and discussion) so anything you choose to do is entirely up to you. I realize that trying to please everyone ends up pleasing no one, including and most especially oneself. I see no reason that you must change what is most practical for you. Take a swim, go for a walk, play in your garden, paint one of your fantastic pictures and don't worry about the headings or this gal's comments for I will post here fearlessly no matter what you call it...

[the mingo]

[stilltrucking]

Doreen wrote:

So, I lumped Philosophy with Culture & Politics.

I guess if I had a point, that was my point. I thought the thread had something to do with the title of this forum. By the way, I think it is a very good title. Thank you very much.

Then I wandered off into the grey and white.
Thinking about Rosalind Franklin

http://books.google.com/books?id=snuYsN ... &q&f=false

[sooZen]

Doreen wrote:

So, I lumped Philosophy with Culture & Politics.

I guess if I had a point, that was my point. I thought the thread had something to do with the title of this forum. By the way, I think it is a very good title. Thank you very much.

Then I wandered off into the grey and white.
Thinking about Rosalind Franklin

http://books.google.com/books?id=snuYsN ... &q&f=false

boy did I lead you astray!