View allAll Photos Tagged INTERDEPENDENT
Situado en la calle Isaac Newton, la que fue durante la Expo '92 la Avenida de Europa, el Pabellón de la CEE (Comunidad Económica Europea) está flanqueado por las 12 torres que simbolizaban los 12 países miembros de la Comunidad durante el año '92, además de sus respectivos pabellones nacionales.
El pabellón, situado en el corazón de la Isla de la Cartuja, consiste en una torre cónica policromada de 50 metros de altura, en la que todavía se pueden ver las banderas de los países comunitarios que, por entonces, formaban la CEE. El edificio consta de dos niveles subterráneos, a los que se accede desde unas escaleras situadas en la cara frontal del edificio, frente a la conocida estatua de "Europa en el corazón".
En el exterior, las 12 torres, basadas en la arquitectura de los altos hornos del Monasterio de la Cartuja, estaban "unidas" entre sí por unos toldos que evocaban la unidad e interdependencia de los países comunitarios.
La estructura principal del edificio, conocida como la "Torre de Europa", está compuesta por una estructura metálica cubierta por grandes paneles plásticos y su interior es hueco, iluminándose mediante un tragaluz al fondo de ésta. En el proyecto original de 1990, la torre se diseñó como un gran mirador, pudiendo acceder al punto más alto mediante un ascensor.
I took this shot during a wander in the sunshine early last week. I went out with only my 70-200 lens in hand to really get up close to those spring time details. It doesn't have to be vast landscapes, sometimes its the simple things in nature that please me.
Perhaps the best way of appreciating how nature connects to our lives as human beings. When we breathe in, we breathe in the out-breath of plants, shrubs, and trees. When we breathe out, we breathe out the in-breath of flowers. When we eat a meal, we eat plants, vegetables, and fruits that have grown out of the earth.
The notion that we exist interdependently and are connected to nature is a beautiful idea. Its no wonder I feel such a connection with nature, it unavoidable when you think of it like that!
The Atlantic Ocean Pushes Through Oregon Inlet
Dare County, Coastal North Carolina
Accessed via NC-12 (Outer Banks Scenic Byway)
Date taken: August 18, 2015
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The Herbert C. Bonner bridge replacement is back on course. With revisions to the development plans for transportation on and around Pea Island National Wildlife Refuge (south of the Bonner Bridge), all litigation has been lifted and plans are set to move forth with construction (as early as Spring 2016).
Nowhere on Hatteras Island can the human need for control and stability be seen so vividly as with the Bonner Bridge and the artificial primary sand dunes on Pea Island National Wildlife Refuge--two of the largest contributors to the modern day economy of the Outer Banks. Each project attempts to hold stable and secure an ecosystem that only works when in constant tension and dynamics. The ocean moves through inlets and then back with the tides; sand is deposited and moved from the front beach to the sound. The inlet migrates south by up to one-hundred feet per year. Water washes over the dunes and floods the roads; the sound connects with the ocean and forms new inlets during storm surges. And all along the way, we try desperately to hold this dynamic system in balance to encourage visitors to continue investing time, effort and energy in short and long-term visits.
In 1989 the Army Corp of Engineers built a sixteen million dollar terminal rock groin on the south side of the Oregon Inlet to stop the natural inlet migration. Annual dredging is the norm to keep shoaling from clogging the navigation of the inlet, again trying to stop nature's natural sand movement processes. And with each federal and state investment in maintaining the unmaintainable, industry makes their own investments and begins to rely on the stability of such projects--a twisted web of interdependency develops. The Wanchese Seafood Industrial Park and Oregon Inlet Fishing Center & Marina send a steady procession of boats underneath the Bonner Bridge and out to the Atlantic Ocean and Gulf Stream each and every day. The steady procession of boats utilizing Oregon Inlet to pass from the Pamlico Sound to the Atlantic Ocean is actually very impressive--stop and check it out some morning or in the afternoon around three to four o'clock. The combined economic value of the inlet and all the activities by the boats and industrial parks is estimated at hundreds of millions of dollars annually to North Carolina. That is what I call a very strong contingent for keeping the Oregon Inlet open and stable! I even read a recent proposal that was very close to going forth that would have driven ten-foot tall steel walls into each side of the Oregon Inlet to keep the waterway from migrating naturally, thus ensuring (theoretically) stability. This is truly a dynamic area of interests and conflicts--and that generally means an interesting place for the camera as well!
The new Oregon Inlet Bonner Bridge will be slightly longer at three plus miles in length and will curve further inland into the Pamlico Sound than the existing bridge. The intermediate bridge construction that was occurring roughly half-way between the Bonner Bridge and Rodanthe on Pea Island National Wildlife Refuge has been stopped permanently and at least strongly encouraged to consider future construction of elevated tracks out into the Pamlico Sound and away from the shifting sands of Pea Island to avoid the continual investment and environmental onslaught of trying to keep stable a bridge and a roadway (NC-12) built on an island that is but a moving combination of sand, wind and water. Look for the first section of this new bridge to be near the s-curves at the southern end of Roandthe (northern terminus of Pea Island). Eventually, as the ocean and island do their natural dance, the plan is to connect the two ends (Bonner and S-Curves) with an elevated causeway out into the Pamlico Sound. This, in theory, will provide the least disruption of the Pea Island National Wildlife Refuge while providing the critical infrastructure to get visitors and residents from the mainland to the Hatteras Islands.
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La Tierra es el hogar donde habitamos todos los seres vivos. La Tierra misma está viva. Somos parte de un universo en evolución. Somos miembros de una comunidad interdependiente con una magnifica diversidad de formas de vida y culturas. Nos sentimos humildes ante la belleza de la Tierra y compartimos una reverencia por la vida y las fuentes de nuestro ser.
La mejor herencia que podemos dejar a nuestros hijos es: AMOR, CONOCIMIENTO y un PLANETA LIMPIO en el que poder vivir.
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The Earth is the home where we live all the alive beings. The Earth itself is alive. We are a part of a universe in evolution. We are members of a community of interdependent life with a magnificent diversity of forms of life and cultures. We feel humble before the beauty of the Earth and share a reverence for the life and the sources of our being.
The best inheritance that we can leave our children is: LOVE, KNOWLEDGE and a CLEAN PLANET in which to be able to live.
SELVA DE IRATI, ARIVE, NAVARRA - ESPAÑA - SPAIN - EUROPA
"Merce Cunningham: Common Time" is a major retrospective exhibition organized by the Walker Art Center that is appearing simultaneously at the Walker and the MCA. Merce Cunningham (American, 1919–2009) was a seminal figure in modern dance, revolutionizing performance through his choreography and world-renowned dance company and through partnerships with leading artists, who created costumes, lighting, and set designs for his company’s performances.
The exhibition showcases Cunningham’s multidisciplinary projects, exploring, as Cunningham described, the “underlying principle that music and dance and art could be separate entities independent and interdependent, sharing a common time.”
Harmony. In Ancient Chinese philosophy, yin and yang is a Chinese philosophical concept that describes how obviously opposite or contrary forces may actually be complementary, interconnected, and interdependent in the natural world, and how they may give rise to each other as they interrelate to one another.
“Deep ecology does not see the world as a collection of isolated objects but rather as a network of phenomena that are fundamentally interconnected and interdependent. It recognizes the intrinsic value of all living beings and views humans—in the celebrated words attributed to Chief Seattle—as just one particular strand in the web of life.”
― Fritjof Capra, The Tao of Physics: An Exploration of the Parallels between Modern Physics and Eastern Mysticism
Everything in a forest is interconnected and interdependent... but not everything has honourable intentions.
Just like with humans... some plants are parasites and freeloaders... relying on others to do all the work for them... and sometimes strangling them in the process.
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I hesitated about using this image because it is such a controversial topic.
This is a "rest area", a provincially maintained green space with picnic tables, heated toilet facilities, even free Wi-Fi.
And for the past two years it is home to a growing squatter community. Officials are at a loss of what to do: if they force adherence to the signage, the vagrants leave for awhile but return once a bit of time has passed.
While I was observing the situation a man drove up, paused beside me and heatedly said: Are you really photographing my friends' who live here? These are homeless people! Where is your heart?! I candidly replied: My heart is here and it feels for people everywhere; these tough times affect us all. He wisely decided to let it (and me) go.
My great grandparents helped settle this wonderful country, beginning in the mid 1700s right through to post WWI; they worked hard to build strong thriving communities. It would break their hearts (since hearts were dragged into it) to see this unravelling of a once proud and interdependent nation...
Project 365-070
Celebrating Earth Day*
"We stand at a critical moment in Earth's history, a time when humanity must choose its future. As the world becomes increasingly interdependent and fragile, the future at once holds great peril and great promise. To move forward we must recognize that in the midst of a magnificent diversity of cultures and life forms we are one human family and one Earth community with a common destiny. We must join together to bring forth a sustainable global society founded on respect for nature, universal human rights, economic justice, and a culture of peace. Towards this end, it is imperative that we, the peoples of Earth, declare our responsibility to one another, to the greater community of life, and to future generations."
Preamble of Earth Charter
Source: Wikipedia
WE CAN NOT LIVE ON THIS PLANET WITH DIED OCEANS. IF OUR OCEANS DIE , WE DIE
Sea Shepherd represents our clients and our clients just happen to not be human. Our clients are the citizens of the sea. The oceans are dying and we humans are killing it. I know it is difficult for some people to understand where I am coming from. I am a biocentric and that means I do not view humans as better than other animals. I view humanity as being indivisible from the biosphere that makes all species interdependent.
When I say that fish and worms and trees are more important than humans this is not an anti-human statement. It simply means that without fish and worms and trees humanity will not survive. It means that when the oceans die, we, that is, all of us will die with the oceans.
Our job is not to debate whalers, sealers, dolphin murderers, turtle slayers or anyone who is contributing to the death of diversity in our oceans. Our job is to utilize all our resources to directing our passion towards ending the legacy of death and sadism that humanity has dragged along with our evolution through the ages.
Our job is to defend life and to safeguard the future for all life, human and non-human.
*** Captain Paul Watson ***
The Atala butterfly is strange to photograph. The colored areas are vague at the margins so the color looks like it has been dusted on a bit carelessly. But look at its marvelous tones... deep velvety blue, bright sky blue and a brilliant red orange! It is very fast moving so getting a shot at all is always a thrill! Usually looks like a vibrant patch of astounding flying color and it's gone.
Interdependencies in nature once again. This marvelous creature owes its life to the Florida Coontie which was almost wiped out after being the money crop of the first Florida pioneers. Without the Coontie, this beauty will be gone.
The short, woody stem and rootstock of the coontie grows almost completely underground and produces a terminal crown of stiff, evergreen, pinnate leaves up to 3 feet long. The brown, fleshy, erect, female or seed-bearing cones are pendent when mature. Coontie plants contain a natural toxin, which atala larvae accumulate in their bodies and use to repel birds. Without coontie, adult atalas have no place to lay eggs. No eggs means no new generations.
Wild coonties’ demise began with starch: Long before Europeans arrived in Florida, Native Americans used coontie as a source of starch. Coontie, in fact, is a Seminole word that means “bread” or “white root” because the roots can be made into flour.
From "The Forgotten Frontier: Florida Through the Lens of Ralph Middleton Munroe" by Arva Moore Parks: 'Behind the hammock land the pine and palmetto country seemed to go on forever. Sending roots into the crevices of stone, the tall pine and its companions, the bushy palmetto and the fernlike comptie (Zamia), thrived in what seemed like solid rock. Althought not as glamorous as the hammock, the pineland was the backbone of the land. The heart of the pine became the foundation of the pioneer home; the palmetto, for thatch, became the roof; and the starch made from the root of the comptie filled the pionerer's stomach."
Cootie is sporadic in pinelands and hammocks throughout nearly all peninsular Florida and the Keys. In an effort to preserve the Atala, the coontie is being used increasingly in landscaping. Here in Miami, it is growing at Arch Creek East Environmental Preserve.
Arch Creek was an early Tequesta Indian settlement here in North Miami. Arch Creek is spanned by a natural limestone bridge. Early photographs of Miami show the bridge in all its beauty. Compromised now by encroaching housing and roadways.
The Tequesta Indians thrived in Arch Creek and the surrounding area. There was an oak hammock near the creek which provided shade as well as edible plants, nuts and berries. Biscayne Bay, less than a half mile away, was a prime food source for the Tequestas. There they caught shellfish, shark, manatee and turtle. North of the hammock were pine flatlands, which sheltered the all-important coontie plant (Zamia integrifolia), whose roots the Indians ground to make an edible starch product.
Tequesta habitation sites characteristically have midden areas or Indian garbage dumps. The gradual decomposition of refuse, including plant material and animal bones, produces a rich black soil. Many artifacts have been preserved in the soil, and archaeologists have uncovered many of them, such as bone points, shell tools and pottery shards. During their centuries of occupation (from c. 400 A.D. to c. 1200 A.D.), the Arch Creek Tequestas had what appears to be a fairly comfortable lifestyle, supported by the abundant natural resources at the site.
Around 1858 two ambitious pioneers used the creek and its natural bridge as a site for a coontie starch mill. These early entrepreneurs learned how to clean the poisonous roots and dammed up the waterway under the bridge diverting the flow through a sluice they carved out of a solid limestone bank. The water turned a wooden wheel attached to a nail-studded grinder, which mashed the cootie roots into a paste-like pulp. The resulting starch was then soaked and strained to remove any remaining poison. Laid out in wooden racks, the starch dried quickly and the sun bleached it white. In the early 1900s, several commercial factories in South Florida processed coontie roots for the manufacture of arrowroot biscuits. But coontie starch was not as successful as the pioneers thought, and the mill was abandoned several years later. The water sluice was filled in and paved over, and was not discovered until archaeologists excavated it in 1972.
Atala Eumaeus on Aloysia virgata/Sweet Almond
Fairchild Tropical Botanic Garden, Miami FL
TOP 6 COLLISIONS BETWEEN SEA SHEPHERD AND JAPANESE WHALERS
VIDEO :
WE CAN NOT LIVE ON THIS PLANET WITH DIED OCEANS. IF OUR OCEANS DIE , WE DIE
Sea Shepherd represents our clients and our clients just happen to not be human. Our clients are the citizens of the sea. The oceans are dying and we humans are killing it. I know it is difficult for some people to understand where I am coming from. I am a biocentric and that means I do not view humans as better than other animals. I view humanity as being indivisible from the biosphere that makes all species interdependent.
When I say that fish and worms and trees are more important than humans this is not an anti-human statement. It simply means that without fish and worms and trees humanity will not survive. It means that when the oceans die, we, that is, all of us will die with the oceans.
Our job is not to debate whalers, sealers, dolphin murderers, turtle slayers or anyone who is contributing to the death of diversity in our oceans. Our job is to utilize all our resources to directing our passion towards ending the legacy of death and sadism that humanity has dragged along with our evolution through the ages.
Our job is to defend life and to safeguard the future for all life, human and non-human.
*** Captain Paul Watson ***
The Atala butterfly is strange to photograph. The colored areas are vague at the margins so the color looks like it has been dusted on carelessly. But look at its marvelous tones... deep velvety blue, bright sky blue and a brilliant red orange! It is very fast moving so getting a shot at all is always a thrill! Usually looks like a vibrant patch of astounding flying color and it's gone.
Interdependencies in nature once again. This marvelous creature owes its life to the Florida Coontie which was almost wiped out after being the money crop of the first Florida pioneers. Without the Coontie, this beauty will be gone.
The short, woody stem and rootstock of the Coontie grows almost completely underground and produces a terminal crown of stiff, evergreen, pinnate leaves up to 3 feet long. The brown, fleshy, erect, female or seed-bearing cones are pendent when mature. Coontie plants contain a natural toxin, which atala larvae accumulate in their bodies and use to repel birds. Without coontie, adult atalas have no place to lay eggs. No eggs means no new generations. .
Wild coonties’ demise began with starch: Long before Europeans arrived in Florida, Native Americans used coontie as a source of starch. Coontie, in fact, is a Seminole word that means “bread” or “white root” because the roots can be made into flour.
Fairchild Tropical Botanic Garden, Miami, FL
Fort Pulaski, under construction from 1829 to 1847, was one of a chain of brick coastal fortifications in the eastern United States. On Cockspur Island in the mouth of the Savannah River, it guarded the city of Savannah from water-borne invasion. The main fortification is a five-sided (truncated hexagon) brick structure, with 7½-foot-thick outer walls two tiers high and approximately 350 feet long on each side. Opposite the gorge face is a triangular demilune with sides approximately 400 feet long. The fort and its demilune are separated by, and completely surrounded by, a wet moat approximately 40 feet wide and 7 feet deep (seen in the photograph above). Extending from the fort in all directions over an area of roughly 100 acres is a system of dikes and drainage ditches. All of the above elements were designed and built as an integrated, militarily interdependent unit. All other historic structures on the island are in some way associated with the fort, but were not necessary to its operation as a defensive work. The fort is in excellent condition due to extensive restoration in the 1930's by the National Park Service. Its exterior remains unaltered. The interior was altered only by the installation of electricity, rest room facilities, and removable exhibit cases & storage areas in the gorge wall.
Fort Pulaski is the best preserved and most original of a system of eastern coastal forts designed by the French military engineer Simon Bernard, while in the employ of the United States Army Corps of Engineers. Its massive brick walls, backed by heavy piers, and case-mated rooms reflected the continuing search for security against increasingly large caliber smooth-bore cannons of the period. The best military engineering principles, finest joinery, and masonry techniques of the day were used in its construction. Yet the siege and rapid reduction of Fort Pulaski in 1862 by heavy rifled artillery of the Federal Army, which had no precedent at the time, immediately made obsolete all masonry forts everywhere. Most of the construction features and extensive siege damage are still visible, and are interpreted to the visiting public today.
The Fort Pulaski complex was determined to be significant for listing on the National Register of Historic Places (NRHP) on October 15, 1966 in the areas of architecture, engineering, and military history of the United States of America. Although the fort embodies nothing new since Roman times in the way of architectural principles, the craftsmanship exhibited in its construction is outstanding, and it is one of the best surviving examples of North American fort architecture and engineering. It is far more significant in terms of military history. Built as it was, to withstand the heaviest of smooth-bore cannons of the day, the fort quickly fell under the punch of rifled artillery. This successful test siege immediately changed the course of military architecture and history forever.
All of the information above was found on the original documents submitted to the NRHP for listing consideration and can be viewed here:
npgallery.nps.gov/NRHP/AssetDetail/17b19096-6db2-44be-b1e...
Three bracketed photos were taken with a handheld Nikon D5000 and combined with Photomatix Pro to create this HDR image. Additional adjustments were made in Photoshop CS6.
"For I know the plans I have for you", declares the LORD, "plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future." ~Jeremiah 29:11
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À medida que o mundo torna-se cada vez mais interdependente e frágil, o futuro enfrenta, ao mesmo tempo, grandes perigos e grandes promessas. Para seguir adiante, devemos reconhecer que, no meio da uma magnífica diversidade de culturas e formas de vida, somos uma família humana e uma comunidade terrestre com um destino comum. Devemos somar forças para gerar uma sociedade sustentável global baseada no respeito pela natureza, nos direitos humanos universais, na justiça econômica e numa cultura da paz. Para chegar a este propósito, é imperativo que nós, os povos da Terra, declaremos nossa responsabilidade uns para com os outros, com a grande comunidade da vida, e com as futuras gerações.
Parque Trianon - São Paulo - Brasil
Yin and yang describes how contrasting / opposite / contrary forces of duality could actually be complementary and interdependent in the natural world.
Please don't use or reproduce this image on websites, blogs, for marketing or promotion or for any other media or purpose without my explicit permission.
© T W Graham. All rights reserved.
The concept of this image and write-up stems from the book Between Two Ages, which was written by Zbigniew Brzezinski and published in 1970. The content of this book deals with issues from the Cold War era. Much of the information is obsolete, yet some of it can be applied to our time. He even left a few nuggets of insight into the globalist plan.
Brzezinski wondered how America would fare in its transition from the industrial age to the technetronic age (the digital age or the third industrial revolution). Currently, we are in transition between the third industrial revolution and the fourth industrial revolution. The first industrial revolution occurred in the 18th and 19th centuries and introduced mechanization and industry. The second industrial revolution took place in the late 19th and early 20th century and brought electricity and mass production. The third industrial revolution, from the mid-20th century to the present, gave us computers and the internet. We are currently entering the fourth industrial revolution. It will usher in artificial intelligence, machine learning, robotics, quantum computing, blockchain and digital ledgers, digital tokenization and crypto assets, virtual and mixed reality, biotechnology and transhumanism. The fourth industrial revolution will introduce a new worldwide economic system based around digital biometric IDs, central bank digital currencies, social credit scores, and carbon footprint trackers. During COVID-19, the transition of the fourth industrial revolution was referred to as the Great Reset or Build Back Better. Understand this: they cannot bring in this new system without the implementation of digital IDs!
The elitist scum don’t have the power to take over the world by force. They must seize it slowly through deception, propaganda, social engineering, and technology. Technology has both unified and fragmented society. Civilization was once separated by time and space. A person on one side of the world didn’t know what was happening on the other side. A traveler or messenger would have to travel a long way to relay distant news. Technology gave us the radio, the television, and the internet. As technology advanced, it reduced time and space between people. This sped things up. Today, we find people with similar interests online. We put less effort into local friendships that build community. We, instead, build impersonal relationships with people from around the world. We have isolated ourselves from the real world and those around us. This isolates us from our social support system, and we become lonely. A similar situation happens with nations. Nations also had a certain amount of time and space, which acted as insulators against excessive friction. This gave them room to maneuver, and it gave them the distance needed to maintain their own identity.
As people increasingly moved to the big cities, it became harder for them to make and maintain friendships. Agenda 21 of the United Nations aims to relocate individuals from rural areas to the cities. They call it sustainability. They will use endangered species as an excuse to keep or push people off the land. Aww, those poor endangered turtles and frogs! The Bundy Ranch standoff highlighted some of these things. “When the U.S. government declared the Mojave desert tortoise an endangered species in 1989, it effectively marked the cattle ranchers of Nevada’s Clark County for extinction. Rancher Cliven Bundy once had neighbors on the range: when the tortoise was listed, there were about 50 cattle-ranching families in the county. Some of them fought court battles to stay, rejecting the idea their cattle posed a danger to the tortoises. But, one by one, they slowly gave up and disappeared. Clark County is not an isolated case. Disputes over land rights are playing out in many Western states, especially in rural areas, where some residents and lawmakers question the legitimacy of the federal government’s claim to swathes of land.” They also want to designate more and more land as parklands and protected areas.
Previously, I posted a write-up inspired by three Canadian government documents. These documents said that climate change would eventually drive people off parts of the land, and that insurance companies would not provide insurance to anyone living in such areas. They also talked about regularly using weather manipulation. Shocker! One thing I failed to mention was their plan to give large tracts of land to the Indians. They admitted that this would cause anger, protests, and violence. British Columbia passed legislation to incorporate this United Nations declaration into law: the Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples Act. The government is now working towards giving the Indians vast plots of land. The Indians are claiming a city not far from me! This would destroy private property rights in the province. Read the communist manifesto, and you’ll see who desires to abolish private property. Decolonization! Truth and reconciliation! This is nothing new to me; I knew these things were coming many years ago. I knew they would use the Indians to drive us from the rural areas into the cities. Eventually, they will remove the Indians from the land. They are but pawns.
Agenda 21 is the 100-year plan of the United Nations to implement global governance. They must rely on public-private partnerships (governments, corporations, NGOs, and billionaires) to execute their plan. This is a form of fascism! As we speak, governments, corporations, and billionaires are swallowing up rural lands. Rural data centers, anyone? Save the environment! Climate emergency! Mismanage the forests to create wildfires. Mismanage logging to cause flooding. 15-minute smart cities are the future! How about Saudi Arabia’s megacity NEOM, which will be 170 kilometers long! NEOM will be a special economic zone—a Network state. Or what about Tri-State City, which would span across the Netherlands, Belgium, and Germany? Get the farmers off the land; we need to build our Tower of Babel! “The next Global superpower will be a Network state.” These megacity Network states will be part of a worldwide techno-feudal system. In the Book of Revelation, there are ten kings, just sayin’.
When one era ends and another begins, the lines get blurred. At the time, it’s hard to distinguish which era is which. This new era will shape our society culturally, psychologically, socially, and economically. It will affect all aspects of our lives. In order to bring us into this age, they will need to swap the old system with the new. The old is not compatible with the new.
AI will replace many jobs, so we must introduce Universal Basic Income. Yet, to truly solve this problem, we must merge man with AI. Transhumanism will bring about worldwide equality! These post-humans will become dependent on the new system. There will be no going back to the old system or way of life. They must deal with their loss of humanity. They must find a new sense of meaning in this brave new world. Their perceived reality will be different, yet their new sensations will be quite real.
Everyone will be completely malleable. We will tamper with their very essence. We will modify their personality, manipulate their behavior, exploit their emotions, control their reason, and guide their conscious decisions. No longer will propaganda be needed to manipulate them. “I foresee the time when we shall have the means and therefore, inevitably, the temptation to manipulate the behaviour and intellectual functioning of all the people through environmental and biochemical manipulation of the brain.” Indeed, Brzezinski mentioned using chemicals for mind control and altering the human genetic structure. He also believed that in a few decades, “they could develop a system that would seriously impair the brain performance of very large populations.” Such a society would be dominated by technocrats whose claim to power would be superior scientific knowledge. They would not hesitate to influence public behavior with the latest modern technology. They would keep society under close surveillance and control.
People’s reality has moved from a local to a global context. Brzezinski doesn’t like the term “global village,” instead, he likes the term “global city.” A village has important characteristics such as: “personal stability, interpersonal intimacy, implicitly shared values, and traditions.” A global city, on the other hand, is “a nervous, agitated, tense, and fragmented web of interdependent relations.” The interactions of the global city lack intimacy, which causes insecurity. The high-trust culture associated with village intimacy will be absent from the nervous interaction of the global city.
A global community fragments humanity. It detaches people from their traditional roots. In the past, an individual only associated with their family and village. Eventually, their reach expanded to other regions of the nation. Today, we associate with a global community. The past had greater cohesion and harmony than the global ecosystem of today. Currently, experts from around the world collaborate to solve problems. This sounds like ‘global citizens,’ from a ‘global community,’ solving ‘global problems.’ Kumbaya! Social engineering at its finest!
Mass media exploits our fragmented society, creating a highly controlled society. Cultural change will come through social engineering. People will deliberately and consciously choose to follow what they’ve been fed. According to Brzezinski, electronic devices could be used to educate children from home. This is reminiscent of COVID-19! During the next plandemic or climate lockdown, these “developments may become the handmaidens of constructive change.” Brzezinski also concluded that feminism would enhance society’s cultural growth and standards. Of course, anything that corrupts and fragments society helps the globalist agenda.
“A community of the developed nations must eventually be formed if the world is to respond effectively to the increasingly serious crisis that in different ways now threatens both the advanced world and the Third World.” They want to bring together the leaders of the developed world to discuss global problems. As you can see today, we have globalist entities like the G7 and G20. They desire to use global cooperation to string the world’s nations together, using “a variety of indirect ties.” They can then steer those nations by using various intergovernmental organizations. Of course, their crowning jewel is the United Nations. They must have interconnected cooperation—a cooperative community of nations. They want the rich nations to help the poor nations, because they don’t want the third world to revolt against the system. Foreign aid, here we come, cha-ching, cha-ching! Foreign aid is also a great tool for guiding the Third World in the desired direction.
Brzezinski said that sovereignty is fiction. He stated that they must make “intensive efforts to shape a new world monetary structure.” Cashless society, here we come! They want to build an “international structure of production and financing” for international trade. In progressive stages, they want to introduce free-trade areas. Of course, these free-trade areas (economic zones) are really megacity Network states. They want to bring in a “global taxation system.” Woohoo, a global carbon tax!
Just think! A man on a white horse brings peace to the Middle East. Then the Jews start building their new temple. Strange, a rider on a red horse then comes to take peace from the earth? The Enlightenment tradition has failed! Liberalism has failed! Democracy has failed! Free market capitalism has failed! Therefore, we’ll introduce a new authoritarian system! Stakeholder capitalism (fascism), here we come! Green economy, here we go! Fight the state, fight diversity, have your civil war, the red horseman will slaughter you with his sword. Oh, wait, what do we have here? The mother of all harlots—the world religion—rides in on the Beast with seven heads and ten horns (kings). We’ll create a one-world religion and bring spiritual unity. Hey, let’s have a ceremony for the new Jewish temple! Now, the vision of the trashumanists will come true: an AI god will be introduced. Oh, what’s this abominable idol of desolation sitting in the temple? World, here’s your new AI god! Surprise, surprise, a zealous Jew kills the antichrist at the celebration. Wow, say it ain’t so, the antichrist comes back to life! “He opposes and exalts himself above every so-called god or object of worship, so that he sits in God’s temple, proclaiming that he himself is God.” Hooray, the christ has risen! Let’s worship the antichrist and his Image. Then the Beast and the ten kings destroy the harlot (Revelation 17:16). She served her purpose; we have the true christ now! Ta-da, all people must take the Mark of the Beast-chip. Finally, the world has transitioned into the new age. It’s an age of global technocratic governance and transhumanism.
The mindset of some of these globalists and transhumanists could be used to create a sci-fi movie: The technocrats rule as kings in their Network states. They recreate mankind in their own image (trans-humans). They recreate nature (trans-nature). Eventually, the useless eaters—the peasant class—are done away with. No upgrades for you! The technocrats then fight to outlast, outwit, and outplay one another, until they destroy the earth and what’s left of mankind. Next, they inhabit the planets, recreating the universe (trans-universe). In the end, they fight until one is left standing. The winner is declared god!
“This new perspective involves growing recognition that man’s propensity for scientific innovation cannot be restrained—that as long as man’s mind functions, scientific innovation will be one of its expressions.” ‒ Zbigniew Brzezinski
Our world appears to be like The Truman Show: scripted and fake! I’ve stumbled upon numerous things over the years, and I hope to study them deeply. It would take a lifetime of reading. Nevertheless, I think it’s possible to find the evidence needed to answer my questions.
What if wars are planned?
What if communism was aided and abetted?
What if fascism was nurtured too?
What if protests are planned?
What if economic crashes are deliberate too?
What if the Federal Reserve is privately owned?
What if we were taken off the Gold Standard to kill the middle class and indebt us?
What if most of our politicians are puppets?
What if political parties are one big uniparty?
What if our democracy is an illusion?
What if Western Intelligence is run by outside interests?
What if the CIA assassinates American Presidents?
What if the CIA assassinates people like Charlie Kirk too?
What if the CIA is behind the mainstream news?
What if the CIA is behind Hollywood too?
What if the CIA is behind the music industry?
What if the CIA is behind the drug epidemic? What if they want sex, drugs, and debauchery too?
What if the CIA is behind the drug cartels?
What if the CIA is behind the Mafias?
What if the CIA is behind the gangs?
What if the CIA is behind domestic terrorist attacks? What about 9/11 too?
What if the CIA is behind many of the international terrorist groups?
What if the CIA is behind many of the mass shootings?
What if the CIA is behind many of the serial killers?
What if the CIA uses brainwashing and mind control?
What if the CIA was behind the feminist movement?
What if the CIA was behind playboy and Hugh Hefner?
What if the CIA was behind Hustler and Larry Flynt?
What if the CIA was behind Jeffrey Epstein?
What if the CIA is behind human sex trafficking?
What if the CIA is behind human trafficking?
What if the CIA is behind the porn industry?
What if Western intelligence was behind major occult figures?
What if Western intelligence was promoting the occult?
What if Western intelligence was promoting the New Age movement?
What if esoteric ideologies have shaped our thinking to accept the new world order?
What if the CIA assassinated foreign politicians and installed puppets? What if these puppets allowed the World Bank, IMF, and corporations to rape their natural resources and make them debt-slaves too?
What if the CIA is behind many of the AI companies? What if their CEOs are in bed with Trump too?
What if the Internet is a net and the World Wide Web is a web to ensnare us?
What if our education system is meant to dumb us down and indoctrinate us?
What if sex education is meant to make the youth promiscuous?
What if race and gender theory are preparing them for a transhuman society without race and gender?
What if schools are sexually grooming children?
What if the lack of discipline in schools spoils and ruins them?
What if they discourage old-school parental discipline such as spanking?
What if the welfare system is used to make people dependant?
What if the welfare system was used to break up the black family? What if abortion is used to keep their population numbers down too?
What if birth control was legalized for population control?
What if abortion was legalized for population control?
What if homosexuality was legalized for population control?
What if they made AIDS in a laboratory?
What if they weaponized cancer?
What if they weaponized Lyme disease and other diseases? What about Dementia, Alzheimer’s, and Autism too?
What if antidepressants fry our brains? What if they cause suicides, killings, and mass shootings too?
What if they use frequencies, microwave technology, and 5G to harm and control us?
What if chemtrails rain down heavy metals? What if they block sunlight too?
What if plastics screw with our hormones? What if microplastics can be linked to chronic diseases too?
What if they put fluoride in the water to pacify us?
What if genetically modified foods modify us?
What if AI is meant to replace us?
What if Climate Change is a hoax?
What if green energy is a scam?
What if COVID-19 was a plandemic?
What if mRNA technology alters DNA?
What if vaccines are for population control?
What if they are trying to sterilize us? What if sterilizing agents have been found in baby products too?
What if multiculturalism is meant to replace our culture?
What if mass immigration is meant to bring down the West too?
What if work visas are meant for cheap labour?
What if modern technology is meant to rewire our brains?
What if the purpose of the United Nations is world governance?
What if they’re building a surveillance society?
What if they’re building a cashless society?
What if they’re building a transhuman society?
What if ten rulers control the world from behind the scenes? What if they’re the patriarchs of the wealthiest families in the world? What if they’re Satan’s minions too?
What if?
Revelation 17:12-13: “The ten horns you saw are ten kings who have not yet received a kingdom, but who for one hour will receive authority as kings along with the Beast. They have one purpose and will give their power and authority to the Beast.”
The Octagon House, also known as the Colonel John Tayloe III House, is located at 1799 New York Avenue, Northwest in the Foggy Bottom neighborhood of Washington, D.C. Colonel John Tayloe III, for whom the house was built, was born at Mount Airy – which he later inherited – the colonial estate built by his father, John Tayloe II on the north bank of the Rappahannock River across from Tappahannock, Virginia. By this time it was the centerpiece of a roughly 60,000 acre department of interdependent plantation farms-known as the Mount Airy department, located approximately one hundred miles south of Washington, D.C., in Richmond County, Virginia. He was educated in at Eton College and Cambridge University in England, served in the Virginia state legislature, and ran unsuccessfully for Congress in 1800.
John Tayloe III married Ann Ogle, daughter of Benjamin Ogle and granddaughter to Samuel Ogle of Ogle Hall Annapolis, Maryland, in 1792 at her family’s country home Belair Mansion. Ann was only a year younger than her husband. Tayloe was reputed to be the richest Virginian planter of his time, and built the house in Washington at the suggestion of George Washington on land purchased from Gustavus W. Scott or Benjamin Stoddert, first Secretary of the Navy.[3] The Octagon was originally constructed to be a winter residence for the Tayloe family, but they lived in the house year-round from 1818–1855. The Octagon property originally included a number of outbuildings, including a smokehouse, laundry, stables, carriage house, slave quarters, and an ice house (the only surviving outbuilding). The Tayloes were involved in shipbuilding, horse breeding and racing, and owned several iron foundries—they were fairly diversified for a plantation family. The Tayloes owned hundreds of slaves, and had between 12 and 18 who worked at the Octagon.
"During the gathering of major powers at the Vienna Convention, the allied NRRB and BR added one more power to their alliance; after negotiating with the NSU's representative the three nations pledged to protect and support each other interdependently if anything should be needed. Later news releases soon confirmed this alliance, which has yet to be named. When questioned by the media none of the three countries were willing to discuss any further information on the subject."
Just started keeping bees so I'm photographing more bees than ever before. This is a combination of about 9 macro photos taken when the bees were squeezing into a box of extracted frames. Hard to catch a sharp image of bees in flight I find.
I have read that without bees the great bulk of land plants and animals would quickly die out. Living things are so delicately interconnected and interdependent. It's so fine a balance that I cannot believe it came about without divine input.
Strømtangen Lighthouse Station
Strømtangen lighthouse station is an approach light located on the mainland beside the inlet to the Kragerø Fjord between Rapen and Skjørsvik. The lighthouse is a wooden building comprising of one and a half-stories, built on a high stone foundation wall with the lamp placed in the gable end of the building. The lighthouse has a 4th order lens with a focal plane 8 m (26 ft); white or red light depending on direction, occulting once every 6 s. 9 m (30 ft)
Stavseng (on the west side of Skåtøy) and Strømtangen lighthouse was finished and lit on 22 October 1874. They are 'over-one-lighthouse ", ie, that they are interdependent. This is both a directional light and the front light of a range, with the Stavseng lighthouse being the rear light. It was Kragerø Seafaring union that took the initiative to establish Strømstangen and Stavseng lighthouse in 1866. The first lighthouse keeper on Strømstangen was O. F. Jahnsen, aged 36.
The lighthouse station has good landing conditions. The station has an outhouse, washhouse, boathouse and landing place. Strømtangen lighthouse station was built at the same time as Stavseng lighthouse station ,further in the fjord, and forms a leading line with it. The lighthouse station, which is situated on a headland, has a beautiful location in the landscape and is a typical example of a small (Norwegian) wooden lighthouse. The buildings have a relatively high degree of originality. Some modernisation has occurred inside, but many of the original elements are still intact.
Admiralty B2708; NGA 1036.
view light box - these are from my collection of larger stones which are far more difficult to balance - when they fall, they crash down and shock me, even though I'm (sort of) prepared for it to happen.
Knowing that we are Interdependent and respecting each other because of this knowledge is perhaps a goal of human society. There are times when we are dependent - as children, when ill and maybe when we're elderly, and there are times when we seem to be independent, as young adults carving our own way in life. In fact, we are all interdependent as these stones demonstrate, each with its own role to play. Who is to say that one stone is more important than another . . .
Supersampler & Fisheye 2
Agfa CT Precisa
Blackfoot Reservoir, Idaho & Salt Lake City, Utah
Summer 2010
"All ethics so far evolved rest upon a single premise: that the individual is a member of a community of interdependent parts. His instincts prompt him to compete for his place in that community, but his ethics prompt him also to co-operate (perhaps in order that there may be a place to compete for). The land ethic simply enlarges the boundaries of the community to include soils, waters, plants, and animals, or collectively: the land.
In short, a land ethic changes the role of Home sapiens from conqueror of the land-community to plain member and citizen of it. It implies respect for his fellow-members, and also respect for the community as such.
In human history, we have learned (I hope) that the conqueror role is eventually self-defeating. Why? Because it is implicit in such a role that the conqueror knows, ex cathedra, just what makes the community clock tick, and just what and who is valuable, and what and who is worthless, in community life. It always turns out that he knows neither, and this is why his conquests eventually defeat themselves."
- Aldo Leopold, The Land Ethic from A Sand County Almanac
Loving him right now.
More of my banter and thoughts on Leopold at:
NEW: I NOW CREATE MUSIC, JOIN ME ON SOUNDCLOUD!
SHOP: www.icanvas.com/canvas-art-prints/artist/ben-heine
Mad world... This is an older sketch I made in 2007
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For more information about my art: info@benheine.com
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Globalization of McDonalds
A person, group, or nation having great influence or control over others is defined as having power (dictionary.com). In the minds of most it is the political leaders and governments have power over the people. However, many institutions and business corporations we may not think of also hold a lot of the world’s power. Unfortunately, through globalization corporations such as McDonalds are attempting to Americanize the whole world. Human societies across the globe have established progressively closer contacts over many centuries, but recently the pace has dramatically increased. Jet airplanes, cheap telephone service, email, computers, huge oceangoing vessels, instant capital flows, all these have made the world more interdependent than ever. Multinational corporations manufacture products in many countries and sell to consumers around the world. Money, technology and raw materials continually move across national borders. Along with products and finances, ideas and cultures circulate more freely. As a result, laws, economies, and social movements are forming at the international level. Many politicians, academics, and journalists treat these trends as both inevitable and welcomed. But for billions of the world’s people, business-driven globalization means uprooting old ways of life and threatening livelihoods and cultures. The global social justice movement, itself a product of globalization, proposes an alternative path, more responsive to public needs. Intense political disputes will continue over globalization’s meaning and its future direction. (www.globalpolicy.org/globaliz/define/index.htm)
The biggest multinational companies are very rich. Of the 100 biggest economies in the world, just over half are companies rather than whole countries. The 200 biggest companies control a quarter of all the world’s trade. These 200 companies have more than half the economic power over four billion people. Multinational companies, like all companies, want to make profits. Their profits will be affected by the level of taxes in a country, how well skilled the workforce is, how easy it is to find sites to build factories, and even how strong a country's currency is. This means governments will think carefully about their economic policies. For example, a multinational may decide to close a factory in one country because it is cheaper to make its products in another. This can mean hundreds or thousands of jobs will be lost. It can mean that countries have a tendency to weaken rules about working conditions in order to attract multinational investment. In less developed countries dependence on multinational companies for investment and jobs is proportionately even greater. In these countries employees often work harder, for less money and in poorer conditions. Because of the importance of the companies, governments in these countries may be less willing to press for better wages and working conditions for their workers.
In poor countries vast areas of land are used for cash crops or for cattle ranching, or to grow grain to feed animals to be eaten in the West. This is at the expense of local food needs. McDonald's continually promote meat products, encouraging people to eat meat more often, which waste more and more food resources. According to the London Green Peace Group some 'Third World' countries, where most children are undernourished, are actually exporting their staple crops as animal feed to fatten the cattle being into burgers in the 'First World'. Millions of acres of the best farmland in poor countries are being used for United State’s benefit by means of tea, coffee, and tobacco, while people there are starving. McDonald's is directly involved in this economic imperialism, which keeps 7 million tons of grain fed to livestock produces only 1 million tons of meat and by-products. On a plant-based diet and with land shared fairly, almost every region could be self-sufficient in food (www.animalfrontline.nl/macdonalds-eng.php). McDonalds not only effects the economic position of people in foreign countries, but it also affects American ranches and McDonald’s employees economically.
McDonald's comes in, saying that the brand will bring many jobs. Beef producers, flourishing for years, now have McDonald's as their only market. In 1968, McDonald’s bought ground beef from 175 local suppliers. A few years later, seeking to achieve greater product uniformity as it expanded, McDonalds reduced the number of beef suppliers to five. In the United States many ranchers now argue that few large corporations have gained stranglehold on the market using unfair tactics to drive down the price of cattle (Schlosser, 134). The four major meatpacking companies now control about 20 percent of the live cattle in the US through “captive supplies” cattle that are either maintained in company owned feedlots or purchased in advance. When cattle prices start to rise, the large meatpackers can flood the market with their own captive supplies driving prices back down. The suicide rate among ranchers and farmers in the United States is now about three times higher than the national average. A 1996 USDA investigation of concentration in the beef industry found that many ranchers were afraid to testify against the large meatpacking companies, fearing retaliation and “economic ruin.” When Mike Callicrate, a cattleman from St. Francis Kansas, decided to speak out against corporate behavior before the USDA committee, the large meatpackers promptly stopped bidding on his cattle (Schlosser, 143)
Outside the United States, Jamaicans not allowed to use cancer-causing agents in their burgers. McDonald's imports the beef from a country or free zone where cancer can legally go into the food. Therefore Jamaican beef producers have no market, and cannot export so the business dies. People line up at McDonald's for cancer, driven by global advertising. No native farming, no native products, nothing left but McDonald's.
According to George Ritzer, “The fundamental problem with McDonaldisation is that it's other people in the system structuring our lives for us, rather than us structuring our lives for ourselves…You don't want a creative person at the counter - that's why they are scripted. You don't want a creative hamburger cook - you want somebody who simply follows routines or follows scripts. No, you take all creativity out of work and turn it into a series of routine procedures that are imposed by some external force. That's the reason why it's dehumanizing... it turns human beings into human robots"
Not surprisingly staff turnover at McDonald's is high, making it virtually impossible to unionize and fight for a better deal, which suits McDonald's who have always been opposed to Unions. A recent survey of workers in burger-restaurants found that 80% said they needed union help over pay and conditions. McDonald's have a policy of preventing unionization by getting rid of pro-union workers. So far this has succeeded everywhere in the world except Sweden, and in Dublin after a long struggle Green Pease Group). In February of 1997 workers at a McDonald’s in St Hubert, Canada, applied to join the Teamsters union. More than three quarter of the crewmembers signed union cards, hoping to create the only unionized McDonalds in North America. Tom and mike Cappelli closed the McDonalds just weeks before the union was certified. This was not the first time this happened, during the early 1970s workers in Lansing Michigan were organizing a union. All the crewmembers were fired and the restaurant was shut down, a new McDonalds was build down the block and the unionizing workers were not rehired (Schlosser, 77)
As a global and national economic power, McDonalds negatively affects the lives of people in foreign countries as well as people in the United States. Because multinational companies want trade across the world to be free from restrictions as much as possible they are likely to use their influence with the World Trade Organization to get restrictions on manufacturing and trade reduced to a minimum. Is McDonalds so powerful that nothing can restrain the terror it forces upon the world’s people?
Globalization is political in the sense that the dominant powers insist on the adoption of certain versions of their policies and values for example, the adoption of liberal democracy and opening up of economies. This meant national states increasingly restructuring their position and their responsibilities in relation to both the global capitalism and to the local economies and societies. This tendency towards homogenization of politics seeks to form a world government with singular security, army, and judiciary branches with most of its important institutions located in the west. Globalization in this sense is referred to as hegemonisation (www.sidamaconcern.com/articles/globalisation.html).
Behind the smiling face of Ronald McDonald lurks a self-important and singularly determined multi-national corporation that wields serious power over national governments. McDonalds doesn't only convert its influence into political clout. It uses its dollars and donations to target the most vulnerable people in society. Ronald McDonald has a proven policy of suing the ass off of you or your employer, if you, as they put it, "tell lies about the company". McDonalds has even threatened to sue perfectly credible media institutions such as the BBC and the Guardian. This indicates that they are trying to stop the expression of free speech, a civil liberty, at least insofar as it affects their commercial operations. The list of media organizations that have been suppressed or pulped is growing (www.i-resign.com/uk/workinglife/viewarticle_33.asp).
In 1986, the London Green Peace group published a leaflet titled, "What's wrong with McDonalds". When the leaflet came to their attention, McDonalds demanded they retract the leaflet and its allegations or face court with the obvious possibility of a huge costs, they were denied legal aid, incurred by facing some of the top legal players money can buy. Two individuals from the group, Dave Morris, a postman, and Helen Steel, a gardener, felt they had no choice but to face McDonalds in court. On the 28th June 1994 the libel trial began in London and ended up becoming the longest ever seen in a British court. It's now known as the "McLibel" trial. The defendant's legal costs of £35,000 were met by generous donations by members of the public. On the 19th June 1997 McDonalds were awarded damages of £90,000 for certain items in the leaflet concerning the health implications of eating at a McDonalds restaurant and its role in Third World starvation and environmental damage, which remained 'not proven'. The Judge agreed that "McDonalds advertisements, promotions and booklets have pretended to a positive nutritional benefit which McDonald's food did not match" and that the firm "paid its workers low wages, thereby helping to depress wages for workers in the catering trade".
The current government is happy to let McDonalds participate in the education of the country's schoolchildren. In 1998, David Blunkett and Steven Byers, Ministers of State for education and industry, permitted the corporation to be a partner in the North Somerset Education action zone. In 1999, the National Year of Reading Received support in the form of branded lunchboxes. During the McLibel trial Dave Morris, claimed in court that the firm sees schoolchildren as the next generation of cheap labor as well as consumers. In summing up, the judge agreed that McDonalds influence on the young was remarkable, commenting that the fast food chain targets "susceptible young children to bring in custom, both their own and that of their parents".
McDonalds is so politically powerful that it can sue anyone and get away with it even if the information that they are suing over is true. Just because the information in the London Green Peace Group leaflet wasn’t proven true doesn’t mean it couldn’t be proven true. But the little people can never be correct when going up against the huge capital of the McDonalds Corporation.
Globalization also impacts cultures. It tends to promote homogeneity towards western and American values and influences. In this sense, some see globalization as westernization or even Americanization. They cite, among others, instances of expansion of coca cola, McDonalds, and the rock-and-roll music relayed by adverts, radio, and global satellite television. Such expansion, they argue, happens at the expense of local cultures that are the sources of diversities.
George Ritzer say, “I think that McDonald's has a profound effect on the way people do a lot of things I mean it leads people to want everything fast, to have, you know, a limited attention span so that kind of thing spills over onto, let's say, television viewing or newspaper reading, and so you have a short attention span, you want everything fast, so you don't have patience to read the New York Times and so you read McPaper, you read USA today. You don't have patience to watch a lengthy newscast on a particular issue so you watch CNN News and their little news McNugget kinds of things so it creates a kind of mindset, which seeks the same kind of thing in one setting after another. I see it in education where you have, in a sense, a generation of students who've been raised in a McDonaldised society, they want things fast, they want idealic nuggets from Professors, they don't want sort of slow build up of ideas, you gotta keep them amused, you gotta come in with the Ronald McDonald costume and quip a series of brilliant theoretical points or else they're going to turn you off” (www.mcspotlight.org/people/interviews/ritzer_george.html).
According to George Ritzer in other countries when going into a McDonalds, it's not just that you are buying a product, but you are buying into a system. In the 1940s there was a big flap in France over what was called a Coca Colonization. The French were very upset about the coming of Coca Cola to France. They felt it threatened the French wine industry and French way of life. But that was just the influx of an American product. Now, with McDonalds, we have the influx of an American way of life, which is to trivialize eating, to make it something that is fast, make it something that's to get done and over with. But it's striking to me that the last time I was in Paris the Parisians appeared to have embraced this kind of fast food phenomenon. You have developments of fast food croissanteries where this model French way of life and the croissanterie has been reduced to fast food. French bread is more and more treated on a fast basis rather than lots of local bakeries baking their own distinctive kind, so if the French succumb to this in the realm of food there is little that is safe from the expansion of this process.
Within this world, however, McDonalds has sufficient influence to actually change established dietary practices across whole regions. For example, according to "Behind the Arches", a book authorized by McDonalds in 1987, McDonalds in Japan faced a fundamental challenge of establishing beef as a common food. Their president Den Fujita stated “the reason Japanese people are so short and have yellow skins is because they have eaten nothing but fish and rice for two thousand years, if we eat McDonalds hamburgers and potatoes for a thousand years we will become taller, our skin become white and our hair blonde.” McDonalds also changed eating habits in Australia, Peter Ritchie, at the time McDonalds Australian president has stated he attributes “that change to the influence McDonalds has on children.” "Behind the Arches" concludes that rather than adapt to local tastes and preferences, “McDonalds’ foreign partners made major changes in marketing in order to sell the American system. Indeed, McDonalds is prepared to support such means as are necessary to sell the American system, the company supplies symbolic practical support and important ideological support to the military imperialism necessary for the onward march of mono-culture. For example, they provided food to US troops as a token of support for the genocide about to be perpetrated against the people of Iraq. (www.mwr.org.uk/justanother.htm)
McDonalds told Scottish sandwich bar owner, Mary Blair, that her shop in Fenny Stratford near Milton Keynes, Buckinghamshire, can no longer go by the name McMunchies because McDonald's is the registered user of the 'Mc' prefix, it emerged yesterday. Mrs. Blair, a 36 year-old Scot, who does not sell burgers or chips, said she chose the name because she liked the word "munchies" and wanted to add a taste of Scotland. The sign bears a Scottish thistle and a St Andrew's flag. But in a statement to Mrs. Blair's solicitors, said if someone, "either deliberately or unintentionally," used their trademark, they were “in effect using something that does not belong to them." The company that has quietly set about taking over the world ensuring that there is not a high street which does not feature its red and white sign and its golden arches, also the property of McDonald's, now wants to take over Britain's heritage. Telling the Scots that they cannot use the prefix Mc is like someone registering the name Singh and then ban its use in India. Where do they think Mc originated, Illinois? McDonald's say that the "unauthorized" use of the 'Mc' prefix may confuse the public." (www.mcspotlight.org/media/press/ind_24sep96.html)
McDonald's also affects culture in promoting their food as 'nutritious', but the reality is that it is junk food. It is high in fat, sugar and salt, and low in fiber and vitamins. A diet of this type is linked with a greater risk of heart disease, cancer, diabetes and obesity. Their food also contains many chemical additives, some of which may cause ill health, and hyperactivity in children. Meat is also the cause of the majority of food poisoning incidents. In 1991 McDonald's were responsible for an outbreak of food poisoning in the UK, in which people suffered serious kidney failure. With modern intensive farming methods, other diseases, linked to chemical residues or unnatural practices have also become a danger to people too.
As a global power McDonalds has negatively affected the world’s people economically, politically, and culturally. Criticism of McDonald's has come from a huge number of people and organizations over a wide range of issues. In the mid-1980's, London Greenpeace drew together many of those strands of criticism and called for an annual World Day of Action against McDonald's. This takes place every year on 16th October, with pickets and demonstrations all over the world. McDonald's, who spend a fortune every year on advertising, are trying to silence worldwide criticism by threatening legal action against those who speak out. Many have been forced to back down because they lacked the money to fight a case. Protests against the $30 billion a year fast-food giant continue to grow. It's vital to stand up to intimidation and to defend free speech. (www.animalfrontline.nl/macdonalds-eng.php) “Nobody in the United States is forced to buy fast food. The first step toward meaningful change is by far the easiest which is to stop buying it. They executives who run the fast food industry are not bad mean. They are business mean. They will sell free-range, organic, grass fed hamburgers is you demand it. They will sell whatever makes a profit” (Schlosser 269)
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References:
www.animalfrontline.nl/macdonalds-eng.php
www.mcspotlight.org/media/press/ind_24sep96.html
www.mwr.org.uk/justanother.htm
www.mcspotlight.org/people/interviews/ritzer_george.html
www.sidamaconcern.com/articles/globalisation.html
www.i-resign.com/uk/workinglife/viewarticle_33.asp
195.102.188.55/xsp/xsc.asp?uri=/home/zone/uk-guide/intern...
www.asianguy.com/activism.html
www.bigpicturesmallworld.com/Global Inc 2/pgs/repcorp/mcd/mcds.html
www.globalpolicy.org/globaliz/define/index.htm
Schlosser, Eric. "Fast Food Nation". Haroer Collins Publishers, 2002.
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--> The above analysis appeared on honors.rit.edu/
In the mid-day haze, and without a clue as to where we were going. This is easily the stupidest yet one of the most rewarding things that I have ever done while travelling. It is how I learned new things about Gods and men ...
Two of us had hired a driver in Heliopolis for a couple of days to visit parts of Old and Coptic Cairo, and the Nile Delta. This arrangement seemed perfectly OK, apart from one instance on top of a tomb on the first day that had 'officials' shaking their fists at us.
When we arrived at the Delta in the northern part of Cairo, the driver introduced us to a friend of his, and his son (we think) who would take us for a boat trip on the Nile around the delta, as far the Mohammed Ali Barrage. At least we assumed he was a friend. After staring at each other for a while in disbelief at this suggestion, the YOLO urge seemed to take hold.
So, for the next couple of hours there we were being boated around by this guy's son, along with a bit of island hopping and dropping in on local farmers, not knowing where were going or what we were doing. And absolutely no-one knew where we were. All this without a word of English to be shared.
We're more or less sure that we witnessed a drug deal on the Nile bank at one point, where we refused to get off the boat out of the probably only imagined fear of being abandoned in the middle of nowhere.
I am not sure how wise this was even back then. We had no idea at all of to whom we had entrusted ourselves. These days, I wouldn't even think of it. Even tripping around Old Cairo would be out of the question, let alone this bizarre adventure or walking kilometres deep into old Egyptian markets where there were no Europeans ever to be seen and being quizzed at least once about what we were doing there.
But it was fantastic! It's the sort of thing that you will never forget. And, despite our fears about security, the people we did meet were enormously outgoing and friendly.
And, it was here that I observed something that would many days later, way further south along the Nile, turn into an epiphany in terms of Ancient Egyptian hieroglyphics, suddenly disclosing the shattering realisation that Ancient Egyptian art and texts deal with the real world here and now.
The Nile Delta adventure led me to be able to make an immediately physical connection between the symbols denoting Pharaonic governance across a united Egypt and what you see around you all of the time, in the context of the depictions of the King of the North and the King of the South. The exalted and the common are inexorably intertwined and interdependent.
Ancient Egypt still lives and breathes. It is an eternal ever-renewing celebration of life and the living, sustained within nature by the seasonal flow of the waters of the life-source and the sun that illuminates it all. The connection to the afterlife is seamless. It is this life, continued,
I have never quite recovered from this startling realisation, such was its power on the ground right there and right then, sparked by a few honey bees on a seemingly inconsequential island in the middle of the Nile Delta, and the need to wander off the beaten path and cast all reason to the wind in order to discover them. See later post: 'At Karnak - King of the North and King of the South - Luxor'.
It's just that, in order to get there - literally and figuratively - we threw risk management completely out of the window.
Our belief systems and economies set us above nature and make it subordinate to our needs. This will be to our ruin, without question. The message from the thin ribbon of green along the Nile and from all those who have dwelt therein, Gods and man alike, is plain.
Every time I see the honey bee, my eyes light up.
“Speaking of the larger environment, God made all things interconnected, mutually intertwined, and interdependent. He used this method and these rules to maintain the survival and existence of all things and in this way mankind has lived quietly and peacefully and has grown and multiplied from one generation to the next in this living environment up to the present day. God balances the natural environment to ensure mankind’s survival. If God’s regulation and control were not in place, no man could maintain and balance the environment, even if it was created by God in the first place—this still can’t ensure mankind’s survival. So you can see that God handles it all perfectly!” (Continuation of The Word Appears in the Flesh).
www.holyspiritspeaks.org/videos/god-himself-the-unique-vi...
Eastern Lightning, The Church of Almighty God was created because of the appearance and work of Almighty God, the second coming of the Lord Jesus, Christ of the last days. It is made up of all those who accept Almighty God's work in the last days and are conquered and saved by His words. It was entirely founded by Almighty God personally and is led by Him as the Shepherd. It was definitely not created by a person. Christ is the truth, the way, and the life. God's sheep hear God's voice. As long as you read the words of Almighty God, you will see God has appeared.
Website: www.holyspiritspeaks.org/
YouTube: www.youtube.com/godfootstepsen
Facebook: www.facebook.com/godfootstepsen
Twitter: twitter.com/churchAlmighty
Blog: en.blog.hidden-advent.org/
Instagram: instagram.com/thechurchofalmi...
Email: info@almightygod.church
In nature, action and reaction are continuous. Everything is connected to everything else.
No one part, nothing, is isolated. Everything is linked, and interdependent.
Everywhere everything is connected to everything else. -Svami Prajnanpad-
more info --> www.greatoceanrd.org.au/
This is from series of photos that I took in North Africa and the Middle East in 2008. I was lucky enough to interdependently travel through these areas a few years before the current destabilization. In my solo travels from Morocco to Pakistan I experienced nothing but warmth and generosity from the people I met. Without the help and support of countless strangers it would have been impossible to complete this long overland journey.
My general impression, from peering casually at lichen growing on wood, is that lichen don't like knots. That is, they don't grow on/over knots.
Almost everything imaginable gets studied pretty seriously by somebody, somewhere and gets published. So, I would not be surprised if there is information out there on which kinds of wood surfaces lichen like and don't like. Probably, someone has even figured out why.
FWIW - Lichen are not plants.
Instead, they are a good, miniature example* of how interdependent life is, in all its forms. As another example, think about you and me, and all the kinds of bacteria who live within us and on us. We even need some of them to stay healthy.
* A lichen is a "composite organism that arises from algae or cyanobacteria living among filaments of multiple fungi species in a mutualistic relationship."
From: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lichen
Location: An old wooden fence along a public path, Riehen BS Switzerland.
In my album: Dan's Little Lives.
My 99th submission to the 100 Strangers project is a portrait of a devoted couple, Harold and Bernice of Albuquerque, New Mexico. They have been married for 75 years and proudly wear matching wedding bands. They walk with their arms tightly interlocked, as pictured here; he steers, and she keeps them to a quick pace.
Bernice informed me that her husband was 95 years old, though she didn't offer her own age. Harold is mostly deaf and wears double hearing aids that he likes to switch off from time-to-time. Bernice has become totally blind over time, although her hearing is perfect. They live together and are wholly interdependent and complete each other.
When I asked to photograph them for a portrait, Harold agreed immediately and asked his wife to stand still.
Bernice was resistant. She admitted to vanity and expressed concern about the appearance of her hair if she were to remove her scarf. I asked her not to worry, and to keep her head covering in place because the color was cheerful and becoming. Still, Bernice needed a few minutes of conversation with me to warm up and become acquainted before agreeing to being photographed.
As we stood together, I set my camera to silent mode, which enabled my being able to capture this candid moment. We were outside in soft natural lighting on an overcast day.
While adjusting the antenna on his right hearing aid fob, Harold said, "I drive better than I walk." Yes, he drives them everywhere, whenever and wherever his wife wants to go.
My nearly complete catalogue of 100 Strangers is here.
Project participants share their 100 strangers in the group pool here.
This is my 27th submission to the Human Family Group, an ongoing Flickr project for photographers who enjoy meeting and photographing strangers, any time, any place, with explicit permission, and a Joie de vivre.
Runa Photography © 2012
© All rights reserved, don´t use this image without my permission.
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El mundo ha respondido con lentitud a las emergencias generadas por el calentamiento de la Tierra y los daños que nuestra imprudencia está causando a nuestro planeta. Allá por 1972, cuando los ecologistas eran considerados un grupo marginal, celebramos en Estocolmo la primera Conferencia de las Naciones Unidas sobre el Medio Humano. Ésta representó el inicio de un proceso de concienciación mundial acerca de la interdependencia que existe entre los seres humanos, las demás especies vivas y nuestro planeta.
El Día Internacional de la Madre Tierra promueve una visión del planeta como la entidad que sustenta a todos los seres vivos de la naturaleza. Rinde homenaje específicamente a la Tierra en su conjunto y al lugar que ocupamos en ella. El Día Internacional de la Madre Tierra no tiene por objetivo reemplazar otros actos, como el Día de la Tierra que se celebra en muchos países desde los años setenta, sino reforzarlos y reinterpretarlos sobre la base de los cambiantes desafíos que enfrentamos.
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Niño indio, si estás cansado,
tú te acuestas sobre la Tierra,
y lo mismo si estás alegre,
hijo mío, juega con ella...
Se oyen cosas maravillosas
al tambor indio de la Tierra:
se oye el fuego que sube y baja
buscando el cielo, y no sosiega.
Rueda y rueda, se oyen los ríos
en cascadas que no se cuentan.
Se oyen mugir los animales;
se oye el hacha comer la selva.
Se oyen sonar telares indios.
Se oyen trillas, se oyen fiestas.
Donde el indio lo está llamando,
el tambor indio le contesta,
y tañe cerca y tañe lejos,
como el que huye y que regresa...
Todo lo toma, todo lo carga
el lomo santo de la Tierra:
lo que camina, lo que duerme,
lo que retoza y lo que pena;
y lleva vivos y lleva muertos
el tambor indio de la Tierra.
Gabriela Mistral
Life pushes in and forces us to change. Our response to these forces can at times be very joyful and at other times very painful. The balancing of the emotions that come to us can make all the difference in how we choose to engage with life. Part of this adjustment requires us to use our experiences with what we read, what we see and who we share with. Growth will take place, if we are mature enough to listen within our depths to intuitions that guide us to adjust our journey to the realities that face us.
The question then becomes…what is reality? Who defines my realities? Again, that question can be answered with deep reflection on where we may find ourselves in our journey and those influences that we encounter along the way. My reality is not your reality but your reality helps me define my own.
-rc
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"What graces might come to the world if we remembered God not only as Person, as in Jesus Christ, but as Woman, calling out at the crossroads urging all the peoples of the world to see and relate to one another as members of one diverse but radically interdependent family. As a Mother, bent over her children in fierce protection, or crowning them with purpose and strength for the difficult journey ahead? As a Child, playing joyfully in the mountains, desert, and watercourses of creation? AS a Lover, not abstract and fleshless, but as one who loves us precisely in and through our bodies and despite our failings, still holds us in mercy and calls forth something strong and beautiful, something that we have long ago ceased to be?...What healing might rise in our own small circles of the world if we -male and female alike-embodied Sophia..."
-Christopher Pramuk, At Play in Creation: Merton's Awakening to the Feminine Divine. Pg. 104
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An unfurling datura bud in my garden beautifully displays the yin and yang symbol. A sight to behold !!!
An aerial view of the bud.
In Chinese philosophy, yin & yang, which are often shortened to "yin-yang" or "yin yang", are concepts used to describe how apparently opposite or contrary forces are actually complementary, interconnected, and interdependent in the natural world, and how they give rise to each other as they interrelate to one another. Many tangible dualities (such as light and dark, fire and water, and male and female) are thought of as physical manifestations of the duality of yin and yang. This duality lies at the origins of many branches of classical Chinese science and philosophy, as well as being a primary guideline of traditional Chinese medicine, and a central principle of different forms of Chinese martial arts and exercise, such as baguazhang, taijiquan (t'ai chi), and qigong (Chi Kung), as well as in the pages of the I Ching.
Yin and yang can be thought of as complementary (rather than opposing) forces that interact to form a dynamic system in which the whole is greater than the assembled parts. Everything has both yin and yang aspects, (for instance shadow cannot exist without light). Either of the two major aspects may manifest more strongly in a particular object, depending on the criterion of the observation.
To know more about Yin-Yang pl see this.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yin_and_yang
நன்றறியேன் தீதறியேன் நானென்று நின்றவனார்
என்றறியேன் நான்ஏழை என்னே பராபரமே !!!
தாயுமானவர் பராபரக்கண்ணி
© Ben Heine || Facebook || Twitter || www.benheine.com
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When photography meets drawing and philosophy...
I took this photo in a peaceful beach in Portugal
_______________________________________________
For more information about my art: info@benheine.com
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Yin and Yang
By Mohan Sawhney
in every dusk a new dawning
in every cloud a new lining
in every storm a new calming
in every winter a new warming
in every hurt a new caring
in every frown a new smiling
in every silence a new calling
in every crime a new forgiving
in every sleep a new awakening
in every shunning a new welcoming
in every condemning a new redeeming
in every betrayal a new believing
in every coincidence a new meaning
in every being a new becoming
in every hiding a new revealing
in every end a new beginning
--> The poem appeared on mohansawhney.com
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Info :In Chinese philosophy, the concept of yin yang is used to describe how seemingly opposing forces are interconnected and interdependent in the natural world, giving rise to each other in turn. The concept lies at the heart of many branches of classical Chinese science and philosophy, as well as being a primary guideline of traditional Chinese medicine, and a central principle of several forms of martial arts and exercise, such as taijiquan, gung fu and qigong. Many natural dualities - e.g. dark and light, female and male, low and high - are cast in Chinese thought as yin yang.
The relationship between yin and yang is often described in terms of sunlight playing over a mountain and in the valley. Yin (literally the 'shady place' or 'north slope' ) is the dark area occluded by the mountain's bulk, while yang (literally the 'sunny place' or 'south slope' ) is the brightly lit portion. As the sun moves across the sky, yin and yang gradually trade places with each other, revealing what was obscured and obscuring what was revealed. Yin is usually characterized as slow, soft, insubstantial, diffuse, cold, wet, and tranquil. It is generally associated with the feminine, birth and generation, and with the night. Yang, by contrast, is characterized as hard, fast, solid, dry, focused, hot, and aggressive. It is associated with masculinity and daytime.
Yin and yang are complementary opposites within a greater whole. Everything has both yin and yang aspects, which constantly interact, never existing in absolute stasis. (Article's source: Wikipedia)
I need a story to go with this. Something with a happy ending. I will try to think of something. Back in a bit!
Ok. I've found it.
Has anyone here ever read the "Life of Pi" novel? I've never been especially bookish but I did pick this up not long after it was published in 2001 and it's story has stuck in my mind ever since. I suspect it may not have caught everyone's imagination the same way, but it did for me, not least the aspect of not being believed, and also the aspect of two lives in parallel. One of the instances in my life of not being believed was when I saw a black panther in the same Padley Gorge pictured above almost exactly a year ago, but the first time was when I was 20 and I saw a small floating island in the middle of the ocean.
"Life of Pi" is described here in Wikipedia:
Life of Pi is a Canadian fantasy adventure novel by Yann Martel published in 2001. The protagonist is Piscine Molitor "Pi" Patel, an Indian boy from Pondicherry who explores issues of spirituality and practicality from an early age. He survives 227 days after a shipwreck while stranded on a lifeboat in the Pacific Ocean with a Bengal tiger named Richard Parker.
The novel begins with a note from the author, which is an integral part of it. Unusually, the note describes entirely fictional events. It serves to establish and enforce one of the book's main themes: the relativity of truth.
Life of Pi is subdivided into three sections:
Part one
In the first section, the main character, by the name of Piscine Patel, an adult Canadian, reminisces about his childhood in India. His father owns a zoo in Pondicherry. The livelihood provides the family with a relatively affluent lifestyle and some understanding of animal psychology.
The narrator describes how he acquired his full name, Piscine Molitor Patel, as a tribute to the swimming pool in France. After hearing schoolmates tease him by transforming the first name into "Pissing", he establishes the short form of his name as "Pi" when he starts secondary school. The name, he says, pays tribute to the irrational number which is the ratio of the circumference of a circle to its diameter.
In recounting his experiences, Pi describes several other unusual situations involving proper names: two visitors to the zoo, one a devout Muslim, and the other a committed atheist, bear identical names; and a 450-pound tiger at the zoo bears the name Richard Parker as the result of a clerical error, in which human and animal names were reversed.
Pi is raised as a Hindu who practices vegetarianism. At the age of fourteen, he investigates Christianity and Islam, and decides to become an adherent of all three religions, much to his parents' dismay, saying he "just wants to love God." He tries to understand God through the lens of each religion, and comes to recognize benefits in each one.
A few years later in 1977, during the period when Indian Prime Minister Indira Gandhi declares "The Emergency", Pi's father decides to sell the zoo and emmigrate with his wife and sons to Canada.
Part two
The second part of the novel begins with Pi's family aboard the Tsimtsum, a Japanese freighter that is transporting animals from their zoo to North America. A few days out of port from Manila, the ship encounters a storm and sinks. Pi manages to escape in a small lifeboat, only to learn that the boat also holds a spotted hyena, an injured Grant's zebra, and an orangutan named Orange Juice. Much to the boy's distress, the hyena kills the zebra and then Orange Juice. A tiger has been hiding under the boat's tarpaulin: it's Richard Parker, who had boarded the lifeboat with ambivalent assistance from Pi himself some time before the hyena attack. Suddenly emerging from his hideaway, Richard Parker kills and eats the hyena.
Frightened, Pi constructs a small raft out of rescue flotation devices, tethers it to the bow of the boat and makes it his place of retirement. He begins conditioning Richard Parker to take a submissive role by using food as a positive reinforcer, and seasickness as a punishment mechanism, while using a whistle for signals. Soon, Pi asserts himself as the alpha animal, and is eventually able to share the boat with his feline companion, admitting in the end that Richard Parker is the one who helped him survive his ordeal.
Pi recounts various events while adrift in the Pacific Ocean. At his lowest point, exposure renders him blind and unable to catch fish. In a state of delirium, he talks with a marine "echo", which he initially identifies as Richard Parker having gained the ability to speak, but it turns out to be another blind castaway, a Frenchman, who boards the lifeboat with the intention of killing and eating Pi, but is eventually killed by Richard Parker.
Some time later, Pi's boat comes ashore on a floating island network of algae and inhabited by hundreds of thousands of meerkats. Soon, Pi and Richard Parker regain strength, but the boy's discovery of the carnivorous nature of the island's plant life forces him to return to the ocean.
Two hundred and twenty-seven days after the ship's sinking, the lifeboat washes onto a beach in Mexico, after which Richard Parker disappears into the nearby jungle without looking back, leaving Pi heartbroken at the abrupt farewell.
Part three
The third part of the novel describes a conversation between Pi and two officials from the Japanese Ministry of Transport, who are conducting an inquiry into the shipwreck. They meet him at the hospital in Mexico where he is recovering. Pi tells them his tale, but the officials reject it as unbelievable. Pi then offers them a second story in which he is adrift on a lifeboat not with zoo animals, but with the ship's cook, a Taiwanese sailor with a broken leg, and his own mother. The cook amputates the sailor's leg for use as fishing bait, then kills the sailor himself as well as Pi's mother for food, and soon he is killed by Pi, who dines on him.
The investigators note parallels between the two stories. They soon conclude that the hyena symbolizes the cook, the zebra the sailor, the orangutan Pi's mother, and the tiger represents Pi. Pi points out that neither story can be proven and neither explains the cause of the shipwreck, so he asks the officials which story they prefer: the one without animals or the one with animals. They eventually choose the story with the animals. Pi thanks them and says: "And so it goes with God." The investigators then leave and file a report.
Life of Pi, according to Yann Martel, can be summarized in three statements: "Life is a story... You can choose your story... A story with God is the better story." A recurring theme throughout the novel seems to be believability. Pi at the end of the book asks the two investigators "If you stumble at mere believability, what are you living for?". According to Gordon Houser there are two main themes of the book: "that all life is interdependent, and that we live and breathe via belief."
The book was made more credible for me by the fact that the writer clearly knew the inside of a ship's lifeboat inside out, just as I had learnt as a deck cadet restocking the survival stores and kit, painting the boats 'lifeboat' orange....servicing lifeboats was a regular feature of my life for more than four years. But it was the idea of a floating island in the middle of the ocean that really intrigued me and haunted me because people (like with the black panther) never believed I saw it.
We were way out in the Indian Ocean on a voyage from Port Dampier in north western Australia back to Gijon in Spain via the Cape of Good Hope round South Africa. It was on a day like so many of the others we enjoyed on long tramping voyages around the world, blue skies and deep blue ocean. It was nice and warm and the sea sparkled. I was on the bridge, on watch with the Ghanaian 2nd Officer. He was busy in the chart room doing his noon sun sight to fix our position and complete a back log of chart corrections. And my job was to keep watch, look out for other ships and navigational hazards. But we hadn't seen a ship or land for about a week, and it might be another two weeks before we saw either again but still I had to keep my eyes peeled all around.
It had escaped my vision, being very low in the water, and relatively small, but suddenly I became aware of an object off the port bow, a few miles out. I grabbed the binoculars and found it, and could quite believe what my eyes were seeing. In the middle of the ocean, with water to every horizon, was a small island with an upright tree in the centre, just floating along. I called to the Second Mate and is reaction was "Yeah, yeah, alright" but he didn't emerge from the chart room. I called again and he told me just to keep an eye on it. I turned and went into the chart room so that he looked up at me and I described to him what I was seeing. And that big black face opened up to reveal a big bright white smile and he grinned and put his face down again to concentrate on his work. I scurried back out on the bridge wing, peering down to see if any of the crew were on deck. They must have been on smoko break, and none were in sight.
And so I stood there, and watching from on high, as our huge ore carrier passed down the side of the little floating island. I swung round as it started to shrink into the distance behind our stern, and soon it was lost amongst the bends and dips of the ocean towards the horizon. And no one ever believed me it had existed.
I've always believed my honesty and integrity were my greatest qualities and it has always hurt me if anyone disbelieves me....particularly when I really am telling the truth!
The work of art "Mountains Walking" by Leidy Churchman seems to be about the same size and angles aa Monet's Water Lily Triptych at MoMA.
The plaque besides Mountains Walking mentions Monet's Water Lilies but also ties in a 13th century book "embraces the interconnectedness evoked in Ei Dogen’s Mountains and Waters Sutra. The classic thirteenth-century Zen text describes reality as interdependent and permeable."
I could spend hours looking at "Reflections of Clouds on the Water-Lily Pond." On my next visit to MoMA I will be searching for clues to tie in "Sansui kyō."
This intense look comes from the eyes of an Alaskan Malamute know for their intensity, their hunting ability and their overwhelming capability to work hard. It is said that they came from the Mahlemut people where the interdependency between human and canine companion allowed the community to flourish.
Great Britain, London, Trafalgar Square Fourth Plinth, the Programme is the most spoken about contemporary art prize in the UK. Funded by the Mayor of London & supported by Arts Council England, the programme invites world-class artists to make astonishing works for the centre of the city.
The new commission Gift Horse by artist Hans Haacke, was unveiled on Thursday 5 March 2015 in London’s Trafalgar Square.
The Gift Horse is a bronze skeletal, riderless horse, which has a ribbon wrapped around one leg, displaying the electroluminescent film ticker from the London Stock Exchange, completing the link between power, money & history represented on the fourth plinth
Hans Haacke German-American, a conceptual artist, born 1936 in Cologne & studied art in Germany & Philadelphia USA, who lives & works in New York. Haacke’s early work employed physical & organic processes, such as condensation, in what he called ‘systems’, until his focus shifted to the socio-political field of equally interdependent dynamics. For the last four decades, Haacke has been examining relationships between art, power & money; he addressed issues of free expression & public responsibilities in democratic societies.
However the director of the Tate gallery, Nicholas Serota had a very different interpretation, he thinks it's clearly about the fragility of power systems, the state & the financial systems!!
👉 One World one Dream,
🙏...Danke, Xièxie 谢谢, Thanks, Gracias, Merci, Grazie, Obrigado, Arigatô, Dhanyavad, Chokrane to you & over
12 million visits in my photostream with countless motivating comments
Hope you are having a wonderful weekend, friends. Thank you, as always, for never ditching me, even if times are "hard".
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Why Yin and Yang?
Yin and yang are complementary, interdependent opposites, neither of which can exist without the other. Each can transform into the other, and contains a seed of the other within it. Yin and yang consume and support each other.
The concept of yin and yang originates in ancient Chinese philosophy and metaphysics, and is used to describe two primal opposing but complementary forces found in all things in the universe. Yin, the darker element, is passive, dark, feminine, downward-seeking, and corresponds to the night; yang, the brighter element, is active, light, masculine, upward-seeking and corresponds to the day. Yin and yang can be used to describe seasonal changes and directions, and can also be seen as a process of transformation.
I used some paisley pattern on the top right because the paisley signifies a droplet-shaped vegetable motif of Persian origin, similar to half of the Yin and Yang symbol, if you're familiar with it.
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*Thanks to {Andrea Renee} for the background texture.
Woke up to thick fog this morning but once it started to melt away , my garden looked subliminal with every plant, shrub, flower joined up with dew drop laden gossamer threads. This however is from my washing line.
The caption comes from the opening lines of the song Tapestry by Don McLean ( slightly out of context but so meaningful, I'll paste them here .. ) ....
" "Every thread of creation is held in position
By still other strands of things living.
In an earthly tapestry hung from the skyline
Of smoldering cities so gray and so vulgar,
As not to be satisfied with their own negativity
But needing to touch all the living as well.
Every breeze that blows kindly is one crystal breath
We exhale on the blue diamond heaven.
As gentle to touch as the hands of the healer.
As soft as farewells whispered over the coffin.
We're poisoned by venom with each breath we take,
From the brown sulfur chimney and the black highway snake.
Every dawn that breaks golden is held in suspension
Like the yoke of the egg in albumen.
Where the birth and the death of unseen generations
Are interdependent in vast orchestration
And painted in colors of tapestry thread.
When the dying are born and the living are dead.
Every pulse of your heartbeat is one liquid moment
That flows through the veins of your being.
Like a river of life flowing on since creation.
Approaching the sea with each new generation.
You're now just a stagnant and rancid disgrace
That is rapidly drowning the whole human race.
Every fish that swims silent, every bird that flies freely,
Every doe that steps softly.
Every crisp leaf that falls, all the flowers that grow
On this colorful tapestry, somehow they know.
That if man is allowed to destroy all they need.
He will soon have to pay with his life, for his greed."