Lingua Franka A La Mode

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I've been taken to task by several readers over my repeated claim to speak 17 languages.  They can't imagine anyone being able to store all that in one head, even though I pointed out that the world record for fluency is 21 languages.

So, how does one learn 17 languages?  Surprisingly, it's kind of easy, after the first two or three.

As a youngster in Texas, we were required to learn both English and Spanish.  I had just as many Spanish classes per week as I did in my "other" mother tongue.  Though I'm quite rusty at this point, having not used Spanish at all for more than a decade, I can still read and write it quite well, and if I'm around a bunch of Spaniards, it comes back rather quickly.

The next step was having a rabidly Roman Catholic father, who not only insisted that I attend an exclusive all-boys Catholic school, but that I study Latin for two years.  While at the time I would have easily compared the experience to being hog-tied by the Inquisition and tortured with glass slivers under the finger nails, I have long since seen the wisdom of it.  You see, the more you learn about the English language, the more your realize that it is shot through with Latin, and it comes in quite handy knowing both.

By the time I reached university, I was tired of the Romance languages and was ready for something new.  I chose German, since I have ancestry from there and because I had already lived in Bavaria for six months working at the national theater, so I had picked up a good bit of "street" German and the Bavarian dialect (called Schwabisch).

Now you're probably thinking, "Yeah, and what does this have to do with 17 languages?"

Well, the southern tier of countries in Europe all use some direct descendant of Latin, which is why they are called the Romance languages (as in Rome).  Having studied Spanish and Latin, I can read French, Portuguese, Italian, and Romanian, as well as understand speakers with some effort.  If I am in those countries, I pick up the language very fast, and can even imitate the sounds quite well.  In fact, I am told that my Spanish has a strong Seville accent and my German sounds Bavarian.  I have also received compliments on my Italian, in that I sound Sicilian.  Not sure if that is a compliment, though.

Anyway, being fluent in English and German gives me the ability to read Dutch, Danish, Norwegian, Icelandic, and to a lesser extent, Swedish.  Again, if I am in a room full of Norwegians, it takes me about an hour or so to get up to speed.  For the most part, I need to hear the pronunciation, intonation and syntax so I can start speaking coherently.

On my own, I taught myself the Greek and Russian alphabets, as well as a few basic phrases - call it survival language.  With Greek, I can read some text in a way that is fairly intelligible, but I have no idea (outside of a few words) what I am saying.  Russian is quite a bit more complex, but I have decided one day to give it a go.

Having now become fluent in three languages and being able to get by in a dozen, it becomes much easier to learn more.  Once you are expert at your own language (which most people aren't), then the rest is basically filing.  Think of it as a matrix, with columns being parts of speech and rows being different languages.  Thus, I file nouns in the appropriate column in the row for any given language.  The part that still gets me bunged up is syntax, since there is no easy way to fit that into my nifty mental matrix.  More on syntax in a moment.

At this point, most of learning a new language is memorization.  You learn a new word, figure out what part of speech it is (i.e. - interrogative), then file it away.  The rest is practicing using the word in context.

Over the past eight years, I've been learning (of course) Indonesian.  Like European languages, this gives me access to many others.  Indonesian is a form of Malay, which is descended from Hindi and Sanskrit.  I have little problem understanding or speaking Malay, but I can only pick out a few things in Hindi, Sanskrit or Tagalu (Philippines).  With Tagalu, though, the language is a mixture of the Malay language and Spanish, meaning I can pick out about 60% of the written language, though speaking goes too fast for me to focus on individual words.

Beyond that, many of the 300+ dialects in Indonesia use more or less the same grammar, though the vocabulary can vary widely.  Having already learned the Indonesian grammar, it became rather simple to pick up Javanese and Sundanese.  Just plug in vocabulary.

The hard part was the Indonesian grammar.  Unlike English, the tenses don't use ending on words, but rather modal verbs and time clauses.  There are a whole class of verbs, also, that are not negated but instead have an entirely different word, for instance sedia for "do" and jangan for "don't."  On top of that, the syntax, or sentence construction, is the equivalent of the passive voice in English, where the object and subject are reversed, and you rarely address someone directly, instead speaking directly to them in the third person.  Takes some getting used to.

Once you have mastered this mind-numbing reversal, though, then you realize that Mandarin is very similar, so learning to speak it is just a matter of vocabulary (back to the matrix).  Reading and writing are entirely different problems that some day I intend to tackle.

The most interesting experience in learning new languages is the day you actually start thinking in that language.  This is a very profound experience that can actually change the way you see the world.  Though the initial exhilaration eventually wears off, with some practice, you can actually use this process to examine problems from angles you never thought existed before.

My favorite part of learning new languages are the idioms, those things that are unique to cultures that use the language.  For instance, in German there is an emotion that you cannot have in English.  It is called Gemütlichkeit.  It is often translated as "cozy," but this is a pale word by comparison.  There is no English equivalent.  In Indonesian, there is jayus, which is laughing at how unfunny a joke is.  In Spanish, there is a verb, estrenar, that is just for the first use of a thing.

In addition to untranslatable words, there are expressions in every language that only make sense in that language, within its milieu.  Some great Indonesian examples include polisi tidur, malu-malu kucing and tidur ayam. The first refers to a speed bump, though it literally means "sleeping police."  The second translates roughly as "coy," but literally means "shy-shy cat."  The last is funny because in English, we call it a "cat nap," but in Indonesian, it's a "chicken sleep."

There's even great idioms in English dialects.  For instance, in Texas, the future tense is formed by adding "fixin' ta" before the main verb of a sentence.

I've long been of the opinion that everyone should thoroughly learn at least one other language.  The effort pays off in many unexpected ways, such as being able to express things that cannot be expressed in one's native tongue, as well as the experience of seeing the world from completely different perspectives.

Sadly, many native English speakers never learn other languages.  It is too easy to be lazy when one speaks the most common foreign language in the world.  However, one is missing out on a whole spectrum of human experience that can only be had by seeing the world through different tongues.

This topic, though, reminds me of an old joke:

The person who speaks three or more languages is a polyglot.
The person who speaks two languages is bilingual.
The person who only speaks one language is British.

Nuff said.

Random Thoughts On Pop Culture

• I hope no one honestly believes the "race" flap at the Oscars this year; all the commotion and threats of antics are nothing more than a cynical attempt to get ratings, which have seriously lagged for all self-aggrandizing "award" shows over the past few years; no one in Hollywood does or says anything without first calling their agents and publicists, who in turn check with CCA;  it's all a show, folks.
• What in the hell has happened to the music "industry?"  It used to be music spoke to the heart and soul, tapped into the zeitgeist, stirred up mental processes; now performers compete solely on how big of a train wreck they produce both on- and off-stage.
• There is a big difference between an actor and a performer; Gary Oldman is an actor, Morgan Freeman is a performer.
• Indonesia doesn't have any public libraries, and the world is quickly following suit; it's a shame that people don't read anymore; now-a-days, writers survive by writing scripts, not novels; I love books; I can do my own casting and set designs, proceed at my own pace, never have to recharge the battery, and when I finish a good book I actually feel like the world has changed a little; only problem is that moving a library is a bitch.
• One of the most thought-provoking episodes of the original Star Trek series was called "A Taste of Armageddon." Two planets conduct war via computer simulations, but "victims" are marched into disintegration machines if they are selected to "die."  Most of the wars I see on the "news" these days reminds me a lot of that episode.
• William Shatner is a performer.
• Gardening is a lost art in most urban areas these days; I have always had plants wherever I've lived, even if it's just potted geraniums; potting, feeding, watering, harvesting, and pruning are all very meditative and rewarding activities; watching plants grow forces you to slow down and contemplate the beauty and genius of Nature; gardening is also a hobby that can be practiced well into old age and is more productive and less wasteful of resources than golf.
• Pro-sports are completely senseless, time-wasting spectacles; the whole idea of sport is to participate to promote healthy activity that's a lot more fun that lifting weights and running on treadmills; if you sum up all the effort put into pro sports, think of how much time, money and resources are wasted on watching someone else's exercise, and think of how much could have been accomplished if all that couch time had been applied to something useful (thousands of collective years).
• It used to be that picture books were for kids, and adults would read books that only contained text, because their minds had grown and expanded enough to be able to maintain complex visualizations based solely on words; now picture books are called "graphic novels" and are the pinnacle of modern creativity with multi-billion dollar industries based on these tree wasters and the movie empires they have spawned.
• On my recent trip back home for the holidays, I was shocked at how many people had never heard of Jakarta, much less knew where it was (or even Indonesia for that matter); I realized why Americans like to bomb foreign countries, because for most folks, those places are just abstract unknowns with no sense of reality to them.
• The modern concept of "diversity" is utter bullshit; diversity has come to mean "forced compliance" rather than "widely different."  As is it currently practiced, "diversity" only fosters resentment and animosity, rather than appreciation and solidarity; it used to be you could travel from place to place and experience how other communities and cultures viewed the world and acted upon it; now it's like porridge - an homogeneous bowl of glop with no real excitement; it also meant that if you didn't like a particular culture, you could get away from it; now it lives next door.
• I miss real art; art was once the perfection of raw materials and the idealization of our cultural goals and aspirations; now art is a woman drinking colored milk and puking on a canvas; glorifying someone's mental illness and hanging their effluvia on the wall is not art, it's a publicity stunt; rather than elevating the mind and soul, modern art drags us down into chaos and ugliness.

Where The Hell Art Thou?

OK, OK, everyone just calm down.  Sheesh!  We stop posting for six months and you'd think the world was coming to an end...which it just might if NATO and ISIS get their ways.

Anyway, yes we haven't lashed our faithful readers with our trademark wry viewpoints since August last year, but we have damn good excuses!  To start with, right about the time we last gurbled on this site, we managed to contract typhus, amoebic dysentery and dengue fever, all in the space of six weeks.  We laid prone in a krankenhaus for 20 days having all sorts of witches' brews pumped directly into our veins, though the nurses were rather cute, so we didn't complain too much.

We managed to survive, though barely.  There were days when we were sure we would never assault our readers again, but much to your chagrin, dear reader, we muddled through.

Laundry lists of tropical diseases notwithstanding, we've also been hard at work completing and commissioning Jakarta's premier arts and entertainment complex - a $22 million exhibition hall, museum and live theater - called The Ciputra Artpreneur.  Projects of this size have a way of sucking up all of one's energy and free time, so we haven't had much left for our usual rants and raves in our little digital safe room here.

Yes, it's easy to sit around slinging bits and bytes telling everyone that they should do this and must do that to change the world, but it's a much bigger proposition to be an actual, real live positive force in the actual, real live world.

Just so the gentle reader knows, we put our actions where our mouth is.  We would never tell someone to do something we weren't willing to do ourselves.

What it all comes down to is this: what can you do to make the world a better place in your little part of the world.  We have explored the fact that the PTB are trying desperately to destroy culture, beauty and individual creativity.  It offends them that us sugar ants on their tables of privilege dare to improve the world, rather than destroy it, as they do oh-so-well.

Art is dangerous to the controlling class.  It is why they try so hard to destroy music, trash the fine arts and turn performace into celebrations of filth and baseness.  They can't stand that we seek to elevate ourselves and celebrate beauty and harmony.  They cringe that we seek rhythm and balance.  They shiek in horror when one of us dares to stand out as a force for good and joy.

Which is why we must do all in our power to achieve these things.

Their moda operandae are gore, hate, destruction, and filth.  They wallow in death and destruction like diseased swine, and must lower everyone else to their level so as not to feel the pain of their lack of humanity.  They dine on our pain and bathe in our suffereing.  Every soul they corrupt is another grotesque trophy on their mantle.  Can you imagine the profound emptiness they feel when just one of us rises above and creates something of beauty?

And so the responsibility falls on us, dear reader.  We do not need weapons.  We do not need harshness or force.  We do not need to fight fire with fire, for then we descend to their pit of Ultimate Evil.

Instead, we counter them with beauty.  We create and celebrate the creations.  We take the rubble of their hate and build new works of great Humanity.  We halt their onslaught with magnificent splashes of color and glorious strokes of sound.  We refuse to buy into their degradation, and instead support and encourage those who dare to greatness.

It is a shame that so many great artists have died in abject poverty, while others make vast fortunes trading on their work.  This is a symptom of greed and hate. 

Instead, we should buy a painting, commission a song, help publish a book.  Imagine if you took all the money and time used for lousy TV programs and crap movies and trash novels, and put it into supporting a local artist, writer or performer.  Suppose you helped send a child to music school, or helped a group of youngsters stage a great play, or offered to pay to publish another's first book?  What kind of ripples would that send through the world?  What great things would happen years from now because of that simple act?

The other day, I was in a meeting with a group of children, aged 11 to 17, who had formed their own quintet.  I listened to one lovely girl, 17, play Mozart on the violin.  I listened to another girl, 13, play Mendelsohn also on the violin.  I listened to a boy, 14, play Beethoven on the viola.  Their fingering and bowing was impeccable.  Their phrasing was interpretive and emotional.  Each told a short story about the composer and the background of their chosen pieces.  And they did it in flawless English, a second language for them.  The youngest member is a boy, aged 11, who plays the cello.  It is bigger than he is.

I'm going to hire them to play at the Ciputra Artpreneur Grand Opening Gala Event on 26 May, when the first Broadway musical ever (Disney's Beauty and the Beast) will open in Jakarta.

They deserve all the encouragement I can give them.

From Hell's Half Acre

Dateline - Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia: So, here we are in KL taking a little time to work on the cultural life of the world and do all we can to elevate the spirit and increase intellectualism, and you guys let the planet go to hell in a handbasket.  What gives?  Can't we leave you guys alone for 10 minutes without all hell breaking loose?  Sheesh...do we have to do everything around here?

Here we've got Obammie letting slip the dogs of war and *POOF*, we've got ISIS popping up in Iraq withing days, and no one says the obvious that Obammie was in on the whole ISIS thing?  C'mon, this is such an obvious ploy to draw Iran out of its comfort zone and provide grist for the now-30-year campaign to take over and carve up that ancient land.

We're not even going to tread on the whole ISIS name thing and how it refers to an ancient Babylonian goddess names Eshtar (Easter) and how the goddess Isis is the model for the whole Mary Mother of God and Jesus thing.  We have an undying faith in the native intelligence of our readers here to put those pieces together all by themselves.

Then, we have the whole Pope wants new Third Council of Nicaea with his homey the Patriarch of Constantinople (aka Istanbul) on the 1,700th anniversary of the First Council of Nicaea in AD325.  In case your church history is a bit rusty, the First Council is the one that decided what was and wasn't canon for all of Christianity, and thus created what we call the Bible.  The second council in AD787 was notable for authorizing the worship of graven images, called icons lest you confuse them with the Old Testament ban on such things.  Both of these councils were part of seven ecumenical councils of the day to determine what was 'good' religion, and what was 'bad'.  So, what can we expect in 2025, when the Third Council gets done pontificating?

Not that any of it did much good, because a couple of centuries later, Pope Bonaface VIII declared the Vatican the center of the Universe and everyone ended up getting a divorce, called excommunication in relgion-speak.  By the way, if you're watching such things, it appears that Francis I is re-asserting Bonaface's Unam Sanctum making the Vatican the de facto One World Government and Official One Worl Religion...a papal decree that lies at the heart of our current state slavery issues.

And the worm turns...

Meantime, the US is experiencing an immigrant crisis, not unlike when the Irish, Italians, Russians, and all the other waves of immigrants came over.  The central factor in this problem is that the white folk ain't breeding fast enough to pay for the aging Baby Boom drag on Social Security, so the state needs more taxpayers and will hand out citizenship to anyone stupid enough to take it.  There's a reason that the number of folks giving up US citizenship is skyrocketing.  Why in the hell would a bunch of illiterate, nomadic farmers want citizenship?  Oh, looks like we answered our own question.

In other news, the Indonesian presidential elections are coming to a head on 9 July, with Soeharto II versus a not-so-eloquent JFK type.  It's neck-and-neck, if you believe the bought-and-paid-for polls, with accusations flying that one candidate is a closet christian, while the other is a closet dictator.  It's all rather exciting and a lot of folks are threatening to leave the country is one or the other gets elected, though the consensus seems to be that the JFK type will clean up corruption better than the Fascist.  Folks are banking on the rupiah to tank if the Fascist gets in.  Place you bets accordingly.

In Russia, Putin continues his campaign to be Alpha Male of the Year, and having some success at it.  All we know is that we attended the Russian National Day affair here in Jakarta and it was swank.  Ritz-Carlton ballroom, lots of fine food, free-flow vodka, and a slick multi-media presentation of the national anthems and a not-so-subtle plug for Russian business.  Considering the American ambassador is xenophobic, we hardly expect the US National Day to out-shine, especially since budgets have been tight for such things.

On the hearts-and-minds front, the Russian embassy is working to bring the Bolshoi Ballet to Jakarta, while the US embassy is now strip-searching people entering their compound.

In related news, our little 3-story, 3,000 sqm art and culture project proceeds apace.  The galleries are now open, with the museum and theater coming up fast.  We're working 15-hour days trying to get all the duckies in a row, though it's a bit like herding cats.  Who'da thunk there were so many damn moving parts in art?  We're wearing so many hats that our hair is falling out from the friction of changing them so much, not to mention the stress.  But hey!  No one can say we don't put our money where our big mouth is, right?  We go on and on about culture and art raising society and advancing intelligence, so here we are working our little deer-ee-ear off to make it happen.  So there.

So, it's all good.  God is in his heaven and all is right with the world, if you keep your sense of humor about the ridiculous games the so-called Poopers-What-Be keep playing.  These numb-nuts haven't changed their playbook in something like one-and-a-half millennia.  Talk about entrenched thinking.  Makes it easy to run circles around them, though.

In case it's been upper-most on your mind wondering what we've been doing here on the Far Side, now you know: laughing at the PWB, traveling to strange lands and laying waste, going to swank diplomatic parties, and bringing ice to the natives (see Mosquito Coast for this obscure reference).

Stay tuned for some impressions on KL.  To prepare yourself, see our many rants on neo-Fascist Singapore.

Peace, love and chili peppers...

Into The Fray

Maybe you've been under a rock lately and haven't heard of the world's newest art center.  If that's the case, then you'll want to click over to the Ciputra Artpreneur site (after you finish here, of course) and take a look-see.  This is Indonesia's finest art and performance space, and it's set to open in a couple of months.  It will set the bar for the country's commitment to the arts and culture.

Why, you ask yourself, is this guy promoting the Ciputra Artpreneur.  Glad you asked.

If you've been a reader here for any length of time, you know that I promote the fine arts and culture as a way to save the world, and that's not hyperbole.  There are those who would coursen our civic lives in order to diminish the human spirit and have us all wallowing in filth and ugliness, because it serves their purposes.

I espouse the philosophy that fine art raises us above squalor and elevates the mind and spirit into realms that supersede the mundane.  Art is the highest expression of humanity, and there are those who don't want us to go there because it liberates our beings and gets us to see beyond our humble existence into worlds that can be and will be, if we have the desire.

Another reason I'm promoting the center is because, by the Will of Fate and Destiny, the reins have been handed to me and now I must put my money where my mouth has always been.

It is both a unique privilege and chore to be handed such a tool box as this.  In fact, I believe that only a Texan could handle such a wild pony.  There are three large galleries, a museum with two spacious chambers, a massive projection screen (60m x 9m), and a 1,300-seat international-standard theater.  In other words, this is one of the most flexible, diverse and modern art spaces on the planet, and I have the joy and responsibility of making it work.

Suppose you are a carpenter and you have spent most of your life grousing about how you could really do something if someone would just turn you loose with a good set of tools.  Well, I am that carpenter and someone has just handed me a set of state-of-the-art tools.  Now what?

What do you do with this kind of tool box that has never been used, in a country that has never had such tools at its disposal, and a large number of people demanding some of the finest furniture ever produced?  More than that, how can you take these tools and put the center and the nation on the map of global centers for artistic expression?  Furthermore, how long would/should that take?  Most importantly, what steps do you take to fulfill the promise without a misstep and wtih a shop that needs to train up in a hurry?

Talk about your wild ponies.

It's a rather daunting position to be in, to have someone hand you a contract and tell you that by signing it, you will have the ability to achieve most of your life-long ambitions.  How do you proceed?

Let's say you've dreamed all your life of reaching the top of Mount Everest.  Let's say you've clamored and climbed to the point where the peak is in sight.  Do you rush headlong and throw yourself at it?  Or do you proceed with the utmost caution to ensure success?  Do you want to be able to climb down again, or is simply reaching the goal enough?

Ambition screams at you to strike and get yours.  Prudence quietly reminds you that there is a team that got you here - parents, teachers, friends, and colleagues - people who pulled your ropes and whose ropes you pulled.

The most profound line in the whole recent Batman series is when Ra's al Ghul told Bruce Wayne that he had sacrificed sure footing for the kill shot.  But at what point do you balance risk with security?

In any event, it is now my task to lead a fine team of professionals in starting a new venture - one that will have extensive effects in the civic life and culture of a nation.  It is a task that can change history if done with the greatest of care and empathy for the society in which it is occurring.  It can lead to new understandings, renewing entertainment, profound revelations, and broader horizons for a great many people.

It is a task I don't take lightly.  I can make a very real difference in this corner of the world.  With the support of a great number of visionary and hard-working people, I want to step beyond the limits of commerce and profit, and into the realm of transcendence.

How does one do that?  What shows and exhibits would you choose that could achieve that goal?  If you could introduce the world's art to a people, and their art to the world, what would be your first step?  And the second?  How would you maintain sure footing while taking the necessary risks to achieve such things?

It is a fun position to be in for some, though without a doubt, there must be a very serious side to it.  What great works of art does one bring, how does one educate and inform, and finally, how does one take the same steps to introduce the world to the treasure in one's own backyard?

Stay tuned...this will only get more interesting.  Regardless of the outcome, it is a thrill to be at the front line of the battle between beauty and derangement, to take on the forces that would drag us all down into the slime so that they could sit on our sinking heads for nothing more than their selfish pleasure.

There are those who would reduce humanity to feudal serfs - unenlightened beasts of burden for the select few.  There are those who would lift all humans to great heights of knowledge and understanding.  I place myself in the latter camp and will use those resources at my disposal to achieve that goal.

In any case, I get to see a lot of great shows for free - as long as I don't end up like Father in The Mosquito Coast.

Culture's Not For Yogurt Anymore

Another looong day in the world of "high art".

It is not easy building a world-class art and performance center, especially on the 11th, 12th and 13th floors of a city as densely packed as Jakarta, but I'm determined to do it because, damn it, creating and promoting beauty and harmony is the only way to beat the bastards.

I've gone on at length in this column about art and how it is like garlic to vampires when it comes to the PowersThatNeedTheirToastButtered (PTNTTB).  Educating and elevating humanity is/will be the key to winning the Culture Wars.

Pick a random film from the 50s and another from this past year.  Doesn't matter the genre or plot, and listen to the words.  Runing them again and watch the pictures.  Notice anything?  The portrayal of humanity is ever coursening.  People talk course, act course, think course.  Dress has gone downhill.  Manners have all but vanished.  And this is how the PTNTTB expects us to act because animals are much easier to train when they are broken.

They don't want us to have high culture and art.  They don't want us to elevate our minds and spirits.  They just want unthinking animals that can push buttons and pull levers.

How do Warhol, Lichtenstein and Pollock compare to Rembrandt, Titian or Monet?  How do Pearl Jam, Tin Idiots and Sex Pistols compare with Chopin, Handel or Mendelssohn?  They are really trying to kill us spiritually by continually rubbing our souls in filth and denying us the ability to rise above baseness.  They want to save god-like status for themselves while the rest of us happily serve their every whim (see Star Trek TOS: Plato's Stepchildren).

Speaking of art and Star Trek, have you noticed that it's kind of like the Bible?  You can find an episode to illustrate just about any point you care to make.

Where was I?  Oh, right...

It stands to reason that if the PTNTTB are so desperate to reduce humanity to little more than lap dogs, then the best/only way to fight back is to create beauty and educate ourselves.  Right here in Indonesia, the PTNTTB are so paranoid and afraid of folks getting smart and out of hand that last year they cancelled all art and history classes in the public schools so they could stuff more religion down everyone's throats.  And next year, since the public schools are determined to turn out idiots, then by golly all the private schools need to get rid of their language and computer classes so everyone is equally squalid and subservient.

Sad but true.

It's a real good sign of fascism when society (such as it is) is geared specifically to create one-trick ponies who are just smart enough to punch buttons, but could never challenge the folks in the board rooms.

Only problem is that whatever the rest of the world is becoming, so are the breeding products of the slimy PTNTTB.  The...children for lack of a better term...of those useless blood-sucking would-be masters are just as slimy, dreary and vacuous as their "parents".  More so.  Look at Paris Hilton.

We're on our own.  We have to read, to listen to fine music, to ponder philosophy, to appreciate good art, and to control to the greatest extent possible the quality of information that enters our souls.

Not only are the PTNTTB in terminal decline and soon unable to rescue even themselves, we are certainly not on their list of priorities.

If you are one of the few with the self-awareness to not only determine whether you have a mind and soul, but able to define and develop them, then run...don't walk...to the nearest gutenberg.org terminal and start packing your head with real, uplifting information.

You owe it to the future of the human race.

Culture Ain't Just For Yougurt

Culture is a product of its constituent 'hearts' and 'minds.'  I use hearts and minds in their metaphorical senses, because despite the best efforts of science, they can not find organs or electro-chemical processes that produce those two things. 

There is a muscular pump called the heart, but it is not the literal seat of the emotions.  There is a mass of gelatinous circuits, but it is not the seat of reason.  These two things transcend the sum of the parts that we call human being.  And it is these two things that produce 'culture.'

Thus, culture is a product of the state of our collective hearts and minds.  It reflects the inner life of those who create and live within it.  What we together call 'beautiful' reflects directly on our most transcendent and metaphysical selves.

One of my favorite cities on Earth is Prague (Praha).  The name means 'threshold,' and is part of a longer name meaning 'threshold to the stars.'  The Old Town is a magnificent example of high architecture.  When one stands in the central plaza, one feels elevated and overwhelmed by the examples of stone, metal and wood transformed into practical, yet transcendent spaces.  The soaring cathedral, the Old Town Hall, the old city wall all elevate the senses, because everywhere you turn is a vista that evokes harmony, rhythm and mystique. 

By contrast, in the outlying areas are concrete gardens of grey boxes that were built during the Soviet occupation era.  These areas are lifeless and drab.  They depress the spirit and appear dirty and dilapidated, no matter how much cleaning and painting one applies to them.

Both parts of the city are basically practical areas for use by humans to contain and protect their daily lives.  Yet, one soars beyond the materials and uses for which they are intended, and the other is a dour and depressing utilitarian nightmare.

Language, too, is a central compenent of culture.  To see how our language has deteriorated, one need only compare Shakespeare with Judith Krantz.  The works of Shakespeare hammered the English language into something that transcended mere words.  Even if you have no clue what is being said, the meter and harmonics of the words being spoken are themselves a high art.  In contrast, Krantz' works are hardly elevated above street language, reflecting the basest emotions and desires of humans.

Choose any aspect of culture and compare today's twisted and dark shadows to the products of a century of two ago.  Compare Mozart with Lady GaGa.  Compare Michelangelo with Miro.  Compare Isaac Newton with Carl Sagan.  In every case, we can see the devolution and degradation of culture.

If we look for a cause, we can trace it directly to those in power and who control wealth.  In nearly every case, the great artists and thinkers of the past were supported in some way by kings and wealthy families.  Leonardo da Vinci and Galileo had the Medicis.  Mozart had the Austrian emperor.  Michalangelo had the Catholic Church. 

By the same token, modern artists and creators are sponsored by the wealthy and powerful, but now those supporters are not people, but corporations.  The result has been a hollowing out of culture.  A corporation is a creature or the state.  It has no soul or conscience.  It is literally a Frankenstein's Monster.  The corporation is a created lifeform without soul, heart or mind.  Therefore, whatever it supports and creates can never be elevated or sublime.  It will always be a reflection of the lifeless, soulless creature that sponsors it.

A corporation can not create anything more than copies of itself.  It is not endowed with those transcendent aspects of humanity called heart and mind.  It has no sense of beauty or harmony or rhythm.  It exists only to feed the baser desires of greed and power.  Therefore, whatever it sponsors will serve only the purpose of enriching itself in the near term.  It can never create something for the sake of beauty and to enrich the culture at large.  It is supremely self-centered and reflexive.

A Japanese corporation doesn't care about making films that elevate the heart and mind, and explore the human condition.  All it cares about is assembling the most elements that will pack the theater and make a profit before everyone figures out that it's just empty calories.  There's no spiritual nutrition in any single frame.

A music corporation doesn't care about lofty ideals and harmonic resonance with those who consume it.  Music is nothing more than a commodity of clap-trap that enough people will buy to turn a profit.

Because of corporate sponsorship, all art and culture have become nothing more than iron, grain and pork bellies.  There's no value added, no transcendence, no beauty.  It's just raw materials without creativity.  None of it will stand the test of time.  In less than a generation, it is all reduced to ugly eye-sores and atonal cacophony with no value past the bottom line of some anonymous, featureless organization.

Take any ancient European cathedral.  They are, at their basic level, nothing more than boxes designed to enclose a space.  In that sense, they are no different from any modern steel-and-glass monstrosity.  But when you enter a cathedral, you are confronted with a sensual metaphor for the human spirit.  We begin our journey in the nave next to the baptismal font.  Stretching out before us is a soaring cavern of pipe organs, incense and light that engage all the senses and provide a symbolic life's journey.

As you traverse the long, narrow central corridor, you are surrounded with vast windows of colored glass that cause the sunlight to sparkle and dance across the interior.  The windows contain symbols that remind us of higher ideals and goals, and provide reminders of lives we are meant to emulate.  As we walk, we draw closer to the altar, a symbolic heaven, surrounded in gold and richly adorned in paintings.  From a distance, it glows and beckons us forward.  Once we arrive, we are surrounded with beauty and harmony.  Looking back, the long cavern is dark and foreboding. 

Compare that experience to any modern architecture.  They are nothing more than ant hills designed to encapsulate the workers who produce wealth for the corporations.  There is no uplifting message or sensual engagement.  They are cold, lifeless spaces that are the direct manifestation of the entity that owns it.

Because we are surrounded with garbage, we see everything as garbage.  We create a disposable culture where we squeeze the pittance of juice from the dried up fruit of our labor and toss the lifeless husk away.  Our art and literature have been reduced to the lowest levels of passable consumption.  Our food and drink are just barely enough to sustain us.  Our manners and interactions with others are little more than masked disgust and disregard for other souls.  Our marriages, our families, our sex, our recreation, and every aspect of our lives are nothing more than wrappings for our ambitions and greed, to be thrown out when we have sucked the useful bits from inside.

We have, in fact, become our own creations.  We are nothing more than cold, lifeless, soulless corporations.  We care little for value and quality, seeking only to feed our immediate desires and base emotions.  That which we feed on becomes useless and outmoded once we have taken the small part that serves our greed.

Our culture is what we consume.  If we support the crass and low-brow, and ugly and inane, then that is what we become.  If we give our bodies bad food, then we become sick.  If we feed our hearts and souls with garbage, then our inner selves come to reflect it.

Try this experiment:  spend one month listening only to the great composers, looking at classical works of art, watching the highest quality films, and reading the best literature of our culture.  Go to the art museum or the live theater.  Eat fresh, unpackaged and raw or lightly cooked foods.  Just one month.  I'm willing to bet that at the end of that month, you will feel refreshed, renewed and rejuvenated.  Your outlook on life will change and your mind and heart will be elevated above the hustle and bustle of our modern lives.  You'll be amazed at what you can achieve with only a minor adjustment to your daily routhine.  Oh, and stay far away from TeeVee.  That is an evil and degrading medium...trust me on this one.

Take control of the culture you take into your soul.  It is the key to winning the war against the forces of darkness that are trying to destroy us.  Watch your language and guard your senses.  Focus on beauty and it will end the spell that has been cast over us.  Take back our culture and the elite powers will wither away and die.

Beauty, truth and love always win in the end.  When we take back our culture and create for the sake of creation again, we will have won without a fight.
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For those who stuck it out to the end, it's time for the Sunday Funnies!