Technoccult

Mutate Your Mind

Show menu Hide menu

MonthJuly 2008

Helen Keller?s Guide to Courageously Looking the World Straight in the Eye

July 8, 2008 /

‘Smell is a potent wizard that transports you across thousands of miles and all the years you have lived.’

‘The best and most beautiful things in the world cannot be seen or even touched – they must be felt with the heart.’

‘What I am looking for is not out there, it is in me.’

“Deaf. Blind.
Helen Keller didn’t start out life back in the 1880’s with the cards stacked in her favour. But with the help of patient people she learned to communicate better with the world and went on to write books, work for women’s right to vote and became on of the most inspiring people of the 20th Century according to Time Magazine. Keller obviously summoned and created a great deal of courage and character to be able to do all that she did. Here are a few of her brave, tough, reality expanding tips.

Use your experiences to build character.

‘Character cannot be developed in ease and quiet. Only through experiences of trial and suffering can the soul be strengthened, vision cleared, ambition inspired and success achieved.’

To get real results you have to try things out, perhaps fail and then learn from those failures and try again. And that may not always be pleasant. Even if you view failures and mistakes like learning experiences they can still sting, especially shortly after they happened. But you can also know that when it stings you have at least done something and that you can gather lessons from this. Instead of a feeling safe but also vaguely feeling that you’re not living up to your potential as you sit on your hands doing or trying nothing. As Keller says, you cannot develop character and success through quiet and ease. You must do things and go through things to become stronger and wiser.”

(via The Positivity Blog)

“Myth and Ritual”

July 8, 2008 /

“Myth is commonly taken to be words, often in the form of a story. A myth is read or heard. It says something. Yet there is an approach to myth that deems this view of myth artificial. According to the myth and ritual, or myth-ritualist, theory, myth does not stand by itself but is tied to ritual. Myth is no just a statement but an action. The least compromising form of the theory maintains that all myths have accompanying rituals and all rituals accompanying myths. In tamer versions some myths may flourish without rituals or some rituals without myths. Alternately, myths and rituals may originally operate together but subsequently go their separate ways. Or myths and rituals may arise separately but subsequently coalesce. Whatever the tie between myth and ritual, the myth-ritualist theory differs from other theories of myth and from other theories of ritual in focusing on the tie.”

(via Mythic Passages/Mythic Imagination Institute)

links for 2008-07-08

July 8, 2008 /

Klintron’s experimental noise

July 8, 2008 /

psychetect nightmarelab

So Infictive County Records, home of Mystery X and Philip K. Nixon, have released a new mix of my decade old noise experiments.

Visit Infictive County Records: The Psychetect, “Nightmare Lab” for a free download.

I’ve also setup a Myspace, where I’ll be posting some new recordings over the next few months.

Myspace: the Psychetect

(Why yes, that is cover art by Danny Chaoflux)

Giant styrofoam robots

July 8, 2008 /

styrobots

styrobots

More pics and full story: DVICE

(via Grinding)

The Jesus myth may not have been unique, but part of a recognized Jewish tradition

July 8, 2008 /

A three-foot-tall tablet with 87 lines of Hebrew that scholars believe dates from the decades just before the birth of Jesus is causing a quiet stir in biblical and archaeological circles, especially because it may speak of a messiah who will rise from the dead after three days.

If such a messianic description really is there, it will contribute to a developing re-evaluation of both popular and scholarly views of Jesus, since it suggests that the story of his death and resurrection was not unique but part of a recognized Jewish tradition at the time.

Full Story: New York Times

Call For Papers: Interdisciplinary Academic Study of Zombies

July 6, 2008 /

[zombie-tutorial-02.jpg]

“The Religion and Popular Culture group on Yahoo! recently issued the following call for papers: Call for Papers: An Interdisciplinary Collection of Essays on the Zombie.

We are seeking proposals for an interdisciplinary edited volume discussing the zombie from a wide variety of perspectives and within a wide range of contexts. We encourage submissions from any discipline, including but not limited to English literature, film studies, media studies, cultural studies, gender studies, queer studies, philosophy, religious studies, anthropology, sociology, history, psychology, economics, and political science. We especially welcome new approaches to the study of zombies. In addition to theoretical essays on zombies, we also welcome critical discussions of specific zombie films, novels, and graphic novels, including those both pre- and post-Romero.”

(via TheoFantastique)

Get Into Trance: Felicitas Goodman

July 6, 2008 /

Among the current onslaught of info on the web about scientific studies on meditation, I found this interesting post by Greg Downey about the late anthropologist Felicitas Goodman and her studies on altered states:

“Some readers may have thought I was doing my little anthropologist’s quibble with the research on gene expression in meditation in Relax your genes, when I wrote, ?I’d be surprised if variations in these techniques (such as those that use chanting or movement, for example) had no effect at all on the resulting neural, cellular, and perhaps even genetic processes.’ Some of you might have thought to yourselves, ?Sure, Greg, you always say stuff like that – you’re paid to say stuff like that as an anthropologist.’ But one of the things I was thinking about was the work of the late anthropologist, Felicitas Goodman, which I hadn’t really discussed at all on Neuroanthorpology.

I stumbled across the webpages for the Felicitas Goodman Institut (the page is in German), and the English discussion of her work, Ritual Body Postures and Ecstatic Trance, by Nana Nauwald, and the webpage for The Cuyamungue Institute, which Goodman founded, this morning. A bit of searching turned up an interview with Prof. Goodman at Conversations for Exploration.

Goodman’s own biography is pretty fascinating; she didn’t do her PhD in anthropology until she was in her 50s, already a veteran German professor at Ohio State where she emigrated after leaving Germany with an American husband (Glenn). She went on to teach anthropology at Denison University (Ohio), and is best known for her contributions to the study of ecstatic states, including trance and glossalalia (speaking in tongues). She wrote a number of works, including Where the Spirits Ride the Wind: Trance Journeys and Other Ecstatic Experiences and Speaking in Tongues: A Cross-Cultural Study of Glossolalia (now out in a new edition, according to Amazon). After falling in love with the area around Santa Fe, Goodman helped to found The Cuyamungue Institute in New Mexico, which, according to the institute’s website, ?continues her research into altered states of consciousness and holds workshops about the postures which she admits are but one door to alternate reality.'”

(via Neuroanthropology)

Grant Morrison web site update

July 6, 2008 /

grant morrison

Grant Morrison’s web site has been updated for the first time in years.

grantmorrison.com

There’s also a new column he’s running there (you’re supposed to register to be able to see it, but direct links there seem to work fine):

The mental, magical immersion in the DC Universe of superheroes that’s consumed all my time these five years past is finally, and quite literally, drawing to its apocalyptic conclusion and I can’t concentrate on much else until the dust settles.

[…]

What else? It’s been hectic but I’m having a good time doing these ?Final’ storylines for Superman, Batman and the DC Universe itself. I want to end on a couple of big, definitive stories before I take a break from superheroes for a little while and I’m really happy with the way all of these are turning out.

Full Story: grantmorrison.com

I hope this means new creator-owned work in the next year or so.

(Thanks Brenden!)

Rainbow Gathering arrests lead to riot

July 5, 2008 /

U.S. Forest Service officers pointed weapons at children and fired rubber bullets and pepper spray balls at Rainbow Family members while making arrests Thursday evening, according to witnesses.

“They were so violent, like dogs,” Robert Parker told reporter Deborah Stevens of the libertarian-oriented, Round Rock, Texas-based We the People Radio Network [www.wtprn.com] after the incident.

“People yelled at them, ‘You’re shooting children,'” Parker said during an interview on the network’s “Rule of Law Show.”

About 7,000 people have arrived at the gathering near Big Sandy in the Wind River Mountains for the annual Gathering of the Tribes, a seven-day event of fellowship, partying including illicit drug use, praying, and living on the land.

They camp on Forest Service land around the country every year, but the Rainbow family’s nonhierarchical methods — no one can speak for the Rainbows, much less sign a land use permit — often have stymied their relationships.

But rarely do the tensions escalate into violence.

Full Story: Jackson Hole Star Tribune

(Thanks Wes!)

Older posts Newer posts

Archive by Subject

Archive by Date

© 2024 Technoccult

Theme by Anders Norén — Up ↑