The evolution of homosexuality: A new theory
Diversity in sexual attraction found in people is a fundamental aspect of human biology, yet it’s actually been poorly described or poorly theorized in previous evolutionary biology.
Posted by Big Think on Wednesday, February 20, 2019
Monthly Archives: February 2019
Advice from Mr.Seafood#1
Jordan Peterson – If you aren’t willing to be a fool you can’t be a master (Circumambulation)
Pragmatic Entertainment
Published on Dec 26, 2017
Dr Jordan Peterson talks more in depth about the Jungian concept of the Circumambulation of the Self.
C.G. Jung: “There is no linear evolution; there is only a circumambulation of the self…”
Original source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B7V8e…
(Contributed by HughJohn Malanaphy, HW, m. with apologies to Gwyllm Llwydd.)
Your Horoscopes — Week Of February 19, 2019 (theonion.com)
Pisces | Feb. 19 to March 20
There will be nothing you can do to avert the disaster of next week, although there will be plenty that a reasonably bright and competent person could do.
Aries | March 21 to April 19
Your last hope of finding true and unconditional love ends this week when your ideal mate is executed by the State of Texas for unspeakable crimes against humanity.
Taurus | April 20 to May 20
Try listening to your body this week. It’s got a bunch of really great stories about hanging out with Jimmy Page.
Gemini | May 21 to June 20
Sure, they might blame you now, but how were you supposed to know the waters were unsafe at Everyone Always Gets Killed Beach.
Cancer | June 21 to July 22
After days of searching, you’ll finally find comfort this week. Just above “comforter” and right below “confit.”
Leo | July 23 to Aug. 22
Just as you’ve always suspected, it is in fact a felony to use your particular method of “getting girls.”
Virgo | Aug. 23 to Sept. 22
Next week will be a time of magical romance and unending joy for you thanks to your boundless talent for self-delusion.
Libra | Sept. 23 to Oct. 22
You’re going to need a lot of Epsom salts and lip balm this week. No, honestly, you can trust us. This isn’t like the time with the horse laxatives.
Scorpio | Oct. 23 to Nov. 21
Someday, you might learn that it is indeed possible to take a fun thing too far, but not before next week’s experimentation with autoerotic asphyxiation.
Sagittarius | Nov. 22 to Dec. 21
Your proclivities towards paranoia and depression combine when you start to think a race of alien lizard-people are controlling life’s lowest echelons from behind the scenes.
Capricorn | Dec. 22 to Jan. 19
In a wacky horoscopic mixup, you’ll encounter a mysterious stranger who takes you on a journey over water just as you’re trying to start new projects at work.
Aquarius | Jan. 20 to Feb. 18
Keep extra apples and bandages around the house next week as your lover seems to be going through a William Tell phase.
VICE explores the Bentinho Massaro phenomenon
VICE
Published on Feb 13, 2019
Bentinho Massaro has hundreds of thousands of followers on social media, supporters the spiritual guru gained through his teachings about “self-realization,” “enlightenment,” and the idea of “upgrading civilization.” While some of his ideas are pretty standard, like the importance of silent meditation, others are controversial: he’s said that 9/11 was an inside job, that he can change the weather, and that humans might one day join forces with aliens.
To his devout followers, he’s an inspiration—but his critics have accused him of “cult-like” practices and peddling conspiracy theories during his retreats, which run up to $2,000 a pop. For an inside look at Massaro’s teachings, we went to one of his retreats in the Netherlands, speaking with his colleagues, his followers, and Massaro himself to try to understand exactly what the appeal is—and what he makes of the accusations against him.
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A critique of Jordan Peterson
A scholar of ancient history explains how right-wing ‘intellectuals’ hijack academic respectability to bolster MAGA talking points
Last week during a rally in the border city of El Paso, Texas, before thousands of his most adoring fans, Donald Trump showed America and the world–again–who he really is.…
Last week during a rally in the border city of El Paso, Texas, before thousands of his most adoring fans, Donald Trump showed America and the world–again–who he really is. Trump worked his audience up into a fever pitch as he lambasted and threatened the news media and free press. For Trump and his movement, they are the “enemy of the people.” This is a fundamental principle of authoritarianism. One of Trump’s MAGA hat-wearing supporters responded to the president’s incitement by physically attacking a BBC cameraman named Ron Skeans.
During the same speech, Donald Trump lied about his imaginary wall along the U.S.-Mexico border and about “illegal immigrants” who come to America in order to commit crimes against white people. He spun vainglorious stories out of whole cloth about his “accomplishments” and “greatness.”
Donald Trump’s values and beliefs may appear incoherent, but they are not a buffet or à la carte meal from which a person can pick and choose from. Rather, they are a nasty, incestuous knot that cannot be easily untangled. Ultimately, to wear Donald Trump’s MAGA hats or his other regalia is to share and endorse his racism, sexism, nativism, bigotry and anti-social behavior. To utter the words “Make America Great Again” with no sense of irony or foreboding is to announce one’s betrayal of human decency and distrust of democracy.
How do Trump’s MAGA hats and other clothing and slogans help to create a sense of political community for his followers? Is “Make America Great Again” an implicit threat against nonwhites, Muslims and others that he and his followers deem to be a type of enemy Other? Does Trumpism represent larger cultural battles in America about the role of academics, teachers, intellectuals and other experts in public life? Should Trump’s supporters be held morally accountable for their political decision-making and the harm that they are causing to American society?
In an effort to answer these questions I spoke with Matthew A. Sears, an associate professor of classics and ancient history at the University of New Brunswick. Sears’ essays have also been featured by the Washington Post and the History News Network. His most recent column for the Washington Post is “Why the decision to wear MAGA hats matters.”
This conversation has been edited for clarity and length.
Professors and other educators who speak out about the threat to democracy embodied by Donald Trump and his movement have been victims of a coordinated campaign of threats and violence — including being fired from their jobs. Trumpism and the American right have birthed a type of new McCarthyism and anti-intellectualism in America. As a professor who studies literature and history, and also writes for a popular audience, how has that impacted you?
I don’t know if it is “anti-intellectual” per se, in the spirit of what we saw in fascist Italy or with the Khmer Rouge, the latter being an obvious and odious example. But there is certainly a kind of battle royale taking place between different kinds of intellectuals in America and the West.
There are people like [white nationalist leader] Richard Spencer who try to give themselves an air of academic respectability. These types try to claim that their positions are actually well-thought out, well-researched and well-sourced. They are trying to piggy-back on academic prestige.
There is the so-called “intellectual dark web.” These are all academics or academic-adjacent people. Jordan Peterson and Brett Weinstein, even Steven Pinker increasingly, and people like Richard Dawkins and Sam Harris can be included in that group.
This is a battle for the soul of public discourse and who gets to claim expertise on certain areas. Given my expertise and public voice, I am part of a public debate and fight over keeping or getting rid of “traditional” ideas of Western civilization and arguments and beliefs such as “The West is Best.”
As a classics professor who talks about, writes about and teaches about the Greeks and the Romans, for many of the “alt-right” or “alt-lite” I am often seen as a traitor. Why? Because I research and show how those societies were complex, problematic and different from our own. Studying ancient Greece and Rome can show us ways of how not to act and how not to organize a society. These “alt-right” and “alt-lite” types say I am “ruining” Western civilization and I’m “ruining” the classics because I don’t engage in hero worship where I say things like, “Look at these great founders of democracy, and look at these heroes like Achilles and Julius Caesar and these great men.”
Monet as modernist: Impressionist master changes style in final years
“Weeping Willow” (1918–19) in “Monet: The Late Years,” loaned from Kimbell Art Museum in Texas, displays Monet’s ability to conjure emotion. (Photo courtesy Robert LaPrelle)
By Anita Katz on February 16, 2019 (SFExaminer.com)
Having helped change how artists depicted the world in the late 1800s, premier French impressionist Claude Monet began pushing boundaries again, in the new century. His increasingly expressive and abstract canvases, painted in old age, are on view in “Monet: The Late Years,” at the de Young Museum through May 27.
Showcasing late-career Monet as a pioneering modernist, the exhibition of 48 paintings is presented by the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco and the Fort Worth-based Kimbell Art Museum. Kimbell deputy director George T. M. Shackelford, who curated 2017’s “Monet: The Early Years” at the Legion of Honor in 2017, organized this exhibit.
It follows Monet’s career from 1913, when the artist, dealing with personal loss and failing eyesight, launched his new style of painting, to 1926, the year he died, at age 86.
The featured works, depicting Monet’s consistently evolving garden at Giverny, come from Fine Arts Museums and Kimbell holdings and from international collections. A “staggering array of loans” is how new Fine Arts Museums director Thomas P. Campbell, at last week’s press preview, described the latter selections.
First up is an introductory gallery with late-1890s and early-1900s paintings. These feature a representational style and detailed imagery — in contrast to the broader and more abstract fare in the galleries that follow.
“Water Lily Pond” (“Japanese Footbridge”) (1899), one of many featured paintings from Monet’s “Water Lilies” series, exemplifies Monet’s earlier work.
The later Monet works aren’t without impressionist aspects — a fascination with the reflection of light on surfaces, for example. But primarily, they take viewers into the 1910s and 1920s, when Monet was operating on modern ground, with a new fervor.
Some pieces, such as the mural-like “Water Lilies” (1915-1926), from the “Agapanthus” triptych at the Saint Louis Art Museum, are grand in scale. The pink and white flowers and their reflections in the pond water beautifully illustrate Monet’s gift for color juxtaposition.
Smaller-scale garden-series paintings also demonstrate the artist’s modern-era style and dynamism.
A show highlight is “Weeping Willow” (1918-1919), a serial painting that rivals van Gogh’s mulberry and cypress trees for arboreal evocativeness. The series honored French soldiers who died in World War I, and many believe it additionally reflected the artist’s feelings surrounding the death of his wife and oldest son. With its twisted branches and descending greenery, the foregrounded tree conveys anguish and sorrow.
Monet’s radical and modernist sensibilities are particularly evident in “The House Seen From the Rose Garden” (1922-24), part of a series in which Monet painted the same scene repeatedly to capture changes in light. It features the artist’s technique of layering paint intensely; using this process, it sometimes took him years to complete a work.
Monet’s modernist leanings are evident in “The Artist’s House Seen from the Rose Garden” (1922-24), on loan from Musée Marmotan Monet in Paris. (Photo courtesy Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco)
Color and form seem to overshadow objects. The barely representational title abode almost merges with the masses of swirling, gestural red and green brushwork. We can see how, decades later, such works would inspire the abstract expressionists.
IF YOU GO
Monet: The Late Years
Where: de Young Museum, Golden Gate Park, 50 Hagiwara Tea Garden Drive, S.F.
When: 9:30 a.m. to 5:15 p.m. Tuesdays-Sundays; closes May 27
Admission: $20 to $35; free for ages 5 and younger
Contact: (415) 750-3600, www.famsf.org
Nietzsche on morality
“To most people, morality is cowardice.”
–Friedrich Nietzsche (paraphrased by Jordan Peterson)
Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche (October 15, 1844 – August 25, 1900) was a German philosopher, cultural critic, composer, poet, philologist, and Latin and Greek scholar whose work has exerted a profound influence on Western philosophy and modern intellectual history. He began his career as a classical philologist before turning to philosophy. Wikipedia
Peterson on being and embodiment
“There is no being without embodiment.”
–Jordan Bernt Peterson (born June 12, 1962) is a Canadian clinical psychologist and a professor of psychology at the University of Toronto. Wikipedia
(With apologies to Gwyllm Llwydd.)
Troubadours, Sufis, Romantic Love, Cathars and more…
Created: Thursday, 15 July 2010 08:07 (hopedance.org)
Troubadour poetry, though not widely read in English, has had a profound impact on modern Western art in general, and particularly love poetry. Modern notions of idealized romantic love can be traced back to a certain extent to the Troubadour love poets in southern France in the 1200s.
The Troubadours lauded love, especially the sweet pain of unattainable love, as embodied by an idealized Lady. They were the poets of the courtly love.
Modern commentators often miss the sacred dimension to Troubadour poetry and the path of courtly love. It’s a pity that modern audiences tend to read Troubadour poetry as if it was a lot of lovesick romantic poetry. Much of Troubadour poetry, though couched in romantic or even sexual imagery, is truly sacred poetry, emerging from a genuine mystical tradition.
The Troubadours emerged in southern France at the height of the Albigensian Cathar movement and immediately following their slaughter in the Albigensian Crusade. Many of the Troubadours may have themselves been Cathars or at least influnced by Cathar notions. The Cathars were a gnostic group of Christians who rivaled the Catholic Church in Southern France and other parts of Europe, until they were declared heretical and ultimately driven underground. The Cathar Elect were celibate vegetarians who upheld notions of non-violence, reverence for the natural world (with special focus on the sun and the moon), and the spiritual equality of women. While some aspects of Cathar spirituality had a world-denying quality that might be unappealing to the New Age notions of today, the Cathars were a vibrant group with a rich mystical and spiritual heritage. There have even been suggestions of links between the Cathars and Sufi groups in Spain and Palestine.
Troubadours were court poets, singers, and composers, often in the employ of Cathar nobles and rulers.
Courtly love is often thought of as a strange societal pattern that occurred because marriage among the wealthy was a practical affair brokered between families, leaving little room for love. That may have added to the appeal of courtly love, but it doesn’t really explain it. Let me say this directly: Courtly love was a conscious spiritual practice. The ideal in courtly love was to embody the archetypal forces of Lover and Beloved.
The Beloved was usually the woman. She was to embody the ideal of the Divine Feminine, Sophia, Divine Wisdom. She was to be ever slightly out of reach, but within sight. Her presence was to draw the Lover with her presence, her goodness, her feminine divinity. She was to be a beacon. In striving to embody this for her Lover, she was to merge with the Divine she embodied.
The Lover was usually the man. His was the more active role. He was to seek his Beloved, his idealized Lady. He had to prove himself worthy of her, face great obstacles with humility and perserverance, in her name. In the Lover’s intense passion for his Beloved, his constant focussing on her, he was to ultimately become a perfect Lover of the Divine and unite with the divinity he saw embodied in his Beloved.
The goal of courtly love was not sexual intimacy. Indeed, sex was avoided because it would satiate the longing that acted as the spiritual force that drew the man and woman as Lover and Beloved to the goal of spiritual marriage. This was the ideal, and certainly not every couple followed this path, nor did every Troubadour always celebrate the inner sacred meaning of the path. Yet this was the core, and it was a pathway taught through societies and particularly passed on through Troubadour poetry and song. Courtly love should be seen as genuine spiritual pathway and not be superficialized. It is not inappropriate to think of courtly love as similar to Tantric sexual spirituality, as developed in India.
Troubadours were also to some degree influenced by the great Arab poetry, and especially the Sufi poetry, flowing in through Moorish Spain, the trade routes of North Africa, and Palestine and the Crusaders interacted with the Muslim world there. The Beloved of the Troubadours is the same Divine Beloved of the Sufis. When reading Troubadour poetry, as with Sufi poetry, the Beloved — though she may also be a real person — should be understood to be the Divine and no other.
Ultimately, the Cathars were declared a heretical sect by the Catholic Church and they were brutally suppressed. The Troubadours scattered, but their influence continued with the many related poetic/mystical traditions that emerged from their diaspora: the Trouveres in norther France, the Minnensingers in Germany (including Wolfram von Ehrenbach, author of the first Grail romance), the Fideli di Amore in Italy (including Dante).
St. Francis of Assissi himself was a great lover of French Troubadour songs and traditions. Though he lived and taught within the Catholic Church, elements of Cathar and Troubadour spirituality can be seen in his own radiant ministry: his love of nature (particularly the sun and the moon), his vision of a divine woman, and his relationship with St. Clare (which was very much in the tradition of the chaste Lover-Beloved relationship.)