for future publication.

After my research on a few essays due in my modern philosophy class, I stumbled upon Marx's view of alienation. In previous context I had interpreted Marx's alienation through the lens of religion, but now I have an interpretation through the lens of capitalism. Through the lens of capitalism, I hope to write a book/paper on Marx's alienation titled:

"The more you work the less you live: A Marxian metaphor on the balance between work and play."

- It will mainly be about the actuality of your vocation controlling the life you should be living. It is the overtaking of your existence. The produced (consumer products) becomes more important than the producer (worker) so to speak.

Other viewpoints I will interject into to the book/paper:

…..the objectification of labor if…the relation of the worker to the product of labor that is foreign/alien….

“It is the same in religion. The more man puts into God, the less he retains within himself. The worker places his life in the object; but now it no longer belongs to him, but to the object...”

morality...

I'm in the process of reconstructing (or intuitively constructing) the origin of morality. I feel it may converge with Nietzche's "Genealogy of Morality", but who knows.

The illustration begins with man as animal. The unevolved, primitive man that has not even come close to a conception of communication. These peoples are nestled in herds of families, and no where near to becoming clans...

easter...

As with almost all "Christian" holidays, Easter has been secularized and commercialized. The dichotomous nature of Easter and its symbols, however, is not necessarily a modern fabrication.

Since its conception as a holy celebration in the second century, Easter has had its non-religious side. In fact, Easter was originally a pagan festival.
The ancient Saxons celebrated the return of spring with an uproarious festival commemorating their goddess of offspring and of springtime, Eastre. When the second-century Christian missionaries encountered the tribes of the north with their pagan celebrations, they attempted to convert them to Christianity. They did so, however, in a clandestine manner.

It would have been suicide for the very early Christian converts to celebrate their holy days with observances that did not coincide with celebrations that already existed. To save lives, the missionaries cleverly decided to spread their religious message slowly throughout the populations by allowing them to continue to celebrate pagan feasts, but to do so in a Christian manner.
As it happened, the pagan festival of Eastre occurred at the same time of year as the Christian observance of the Resurrection of Christ. It made sense, therefore, to alter the festival itself, to make it a Christian celebration as converts were slowly won over. The early name, Eastre, was eventually changed to its modern spelling, Easter.

The Date of Easter

Prior to A.D. 325, Easter was variously celebrated on different days of the week, including Friday, Saturday, and Sunday. In that year, the Council of Nicaea was convened by emperor Constantine. It issued the Easter Rule which states that Easter shall be celebrated on the first Sunday that occurs after the first full moon on or after the vernal equinox. However, a caveat must be introduced here. The "full moon" in the rule is the ecclesiastical full moon, which is defined as the fourteenth day of a tabular lunation, where day 1 corresponds to the ecclesiastical New Moon. It does not always occur on the same date as the astronomical full moon. The ecclesiastical "vernal equinox" is always on March 21. Therefore, Easter must be celebrated on a Sunday between the dates of March 22 and April 25.

The Easter Bunny

The Easter Bunny is not a modern invention. The symbol originated with the pagan festival of Eastre. The goddess, Eastre, was worshipped by the Anglo-Saxons through her earthly symbol, the rabbit.
The Germans brought the symbol of the Easter rabbit to America. It was widely ignored by other Christians until shortly after the Civil War. In fact, Easter itself was not widely celebrated in America until after that time.

The Easter Egg

As with the Easter Bunny and the holiday itself, the Easter Egg predates the Christian holiday of Easter. The exchange of eggs in the springtime is a custom that was centuries old when Easter was first celebrated by Christians.
From the earliest times, the egg was a symbol of rebirth in most cultures. Eggs were often wrapped in gold leaf or, if you were a peasant, colored brightly by boiling them with the leaves or petals of certain flowers.
Today, children hunt colored eggs and place them in Easter baskets along with the modern version of real Easter eggs -- those made of plastic or chocolate candy.



"Easter". This site is maintained by Wilstar. http://wilstar.com/holidays/easter.htm (accessed Sunday, March 23, 2008).

humility.

"Do not spoil what you have by desiring what you have not; remember that what you now have was once among the things you only hoped for."

-Epicurus

"The Road Not Taken"

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;

Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that, the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,

And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.

I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.

-Robert Frost

makes sense.

"Excellence is not a singular act, but a habit. You are what you repeatedly do."

-Shaquille O'neal

"If death meant just leaving the stage long enough to change costume and come back as a new character... Would you slow down? Or Speed up?"

-Chuck Palahniuk

WWJD.

In a recent conversation with a Theologian, I stumbled upon the notion of the values that Jesus promoted and wondered how they would fit in modern society. We've all heard the term W.W.J.D. from bracelets to church signage, but the question remains; does modern Christianity abide by that philosophy?

I believe I would be in the majority (of the minority) to say that Christianity today would be somewhat unrecognizable to Jesus. Insofar as from politics to churches themselves, corruption and selfish tendencies creep into the realm of religion more often than not. For example: Katrina destroyed not only lives but also livelihoods as well. Our "Christian" government didn't do near enough to reduce suffering in the aftermath of that horrible situation.

*I will take nothing away from the many churches and organizations that did give to New Orleans, compassion is always a glorious virtue.*

The church today has become a community, in many ways good, but also bad in some cases. I'm sure most do not tithe with the mentality that they are grateful to help pay for their pastor's lease on their shiny new Cadillac. Again, I'm not making the assumption that all churches and pastor's are this way, but you would be lying by saying you didn't know about certain church spending that may be deemed extravagant.

Now for my point. I feel that if Jesus, the same Jesus that taught compassion and humility, were to assess the churches of America today, he would be somewhat ashamed. Therefore, I conclude with the challenge of Christianity. For reasons of sincerity and fundamentalism, I feel that the reduction of suffering and the re-evaluation of morality should be the modern church's primary objective. Modern Christianity should preach to the poor and strive to overcome inequality. I mean hey, what would Jesus do?

"I am always doing that which I can not do, in order that I may learn how to do it."
-Picasso

"Praise God who has many names, but the devil has many more..."

-Dave Matthews

An Introduction to Dreams

The dream world. This amazing, yet complex world is experienced by most everyone that considers themselves human. Like metaphysics and knowledge, dreams have been an object of interpretation and investigation throughout human civilization. Hell, maybe even the uncivilized hominids had dreams, maybe they were less complex, but if I can watch my roommate’s dog drift through the dream world, I’m sure our early unevolved “selves” could do it as well.

Are dreams important, and if so, why? I find myself with the belief that dreams are important. Maybe they are important in a spiritual sense, maybe they are a link to a whole new dimension of reality. Usually maybes don’t work in facilitating fact in today’s world, but these maybes do tell us something; they tell us that we are working towards theories of the unknown, a very special unknown called dreaming (lucid dreaming, etc.).

What makes this unknown so special? Well, there are many answers to this question. From amazing journeys of flight, visitations from deceased loved ones, or sex with a total stranger, dreams are certainly special by definition. But what about other ways of interpreting dreams? It is said that Albert Einstein attributed his theory of relativity with a dream. The bible is filled with these interpretations of dreams. Even today dreams are useful scientific tools. For example, the scientist responsible for creating the self sustaining lunar base, the base that is being built right now for NASA, gives all the credit for his idea to a dream he had. Therefore, I conclude along with many others, that we have so much to learn from this “unknown” virtual reality we call dreaming.

This post is just an introduction to the phenomenon of dreams, but I assure you, there will be more to come.

"A friend is one that knows you as you are, understands where you have been, accepts what you have become, and still, gently allows you to grow.”

-William Shakespeare

"When he who hears does not know what he who speaks means, and when he who speaks does not know what he himself means, that is philosophy."

-Voltaire

A Poem by Anne Sexton...

"Earth, earth, riding your merry-go-round toward extinction. How fear-some must the headlines be about tomorrow before people change their ways today?"

Tribute to a "Koan"...

First off, a Koan is usually described as a story, dialogue, question, or statement given by a Buddhist teacher (monk). This is usually found in the tradition of Zen (Chen) Buddhism. The purpose is for a Zen practitioner's mind to match the mind of an enlightened being.

Here's an example:

Shuzan held out his short staff and said, " If you call this a short staff, you oppose its reality. If you do not call it a short staff, you ignore the fact. Now what do you wish to call this?"

Some may interpret this to be philosophical, and those that do would be entirely correct. I interpret this statement (by the way, we all interpret these Koans differently, that's the point) to be an epistemological criticism insofar as; we as finite beings in an infinite universe can't really claim to know anything (very, very philosophical).