The sociopaths who run things are unimpressed by our cleverness, our word games, our cute memes, our tightly reasoned arguments and close readings of texts, unmoved by facts, logic, evidence or morality, as long as they have force on their side, as long as the cops and army will shoot when ordered to do so.
It's like trying to reason with a schoolyard bully. Truly, this never grows old:
"A WOLF, meeting with a lamb astray from the fold, resolved not to lay violent hands on him, but to find some plea, which should justify to the lamb himself, his right to eat him.
He then addressed him: Sirrah, last year you grossly insulted me.
Indeed, bleated the lamb in a mournful tone of voice: I was not then born.
Then said the wolf: You feed in my pasture.
No, good sir, replied the lamb: I have not yet tasted grass.
Again said the wolf: You drink of my well.
No, exclaimed the lamb: I never yet drank water, for as yet my mother's milk is both food and drink to me.
Upon which the wolf seized him and ate him up, saying: Well! I won't remain supper-less, even though you refute every one of my imputations.
Moral: The tyrant will always find a pretext for his tyranny, and it is useless for the innocent to try by reasoning to get justice, when the oppressor intends to be unjust."
Too true, the tyrants are incapable of empathy or rationality. Perhaps our "cleverness, our word games..." and our art-works are not directed toward these sociopaths, but are a more effective way to awaken the other "lambs", who in this case haven't "strayed from the fold", but have followed the flock towards the wolf's den?
I think this is why the 'woke' (HAS-J...my term) exists. They figure, if you can't beat 'em, join 'em. It's a sell out mentality. But what is the alternative for someone who doesn't want to sell out? Being devoured?
Wow!!! Geez, they were a little less than subtle! It is easy for me to say in retrospect. It might be prudent for me to go back and have a look at the new Chicken Little and see what politicising I missed in the version targeting my children's generation.
As an artist with the same inclinations toward activism-art, my dilemma with war is how much I am sucked in by the prevailing propaganda to which I'm being exposed. Perhaps using the 'headline memes' from both sides of a conflict offers the viewer a meta-view of the absurdity even over-and-above the goodies vs baddies perspective?
George Santayana, in his 1905 book The Life of Reason, or The Phases of Human Progress, said, "Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it." Edmund Burke and Winston Churchill, among others, made similar observations, and most of us recognize the wisdom it conveys. Yet, history continues. Shakespeare, in Macbeth put it,
"Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow,
Creeps in this petty pace from day to day
To the last syllable of recorded time,
And all our yesterdays have lighted fools
The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle!
Life’s but a walking shadow, a poor player
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage
And then is heard no more: it is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing."
History is often an attempt to dis-remember the past, insuring that we will repeat our mistakes. Many of the policies of Germany, and of the EU, amount to repeats of the twentieth-century, thinly veiled.
One of my work-lives was as an Expressive Arts Therapist, and I was enthusiastic about the power of the arts to awaken social conscience and express civil courage. But since the pandemonium, the world I thought I inhabited has inverted, and I realise to my embarrassment/dismay that my protest art actually served those who now are exposed-and-proud New World puppetmasters. The timing of the latest wars smells so bad: just as my virus-terrified friends might have started to awaken, they now have new scapegoats to take the place of the wretched 'unvaxxed'. And with each new war, the dissenters are further split into factions, no doubt as intended.
I too have an expressive arts therapy background (and behavioural sciences) and in my part of the world, there are still mandates that prevent me from working in my life chosen pursuit. I am grateful that this has driven me to live my truth and find my own way of making a living that doesn't rely on the State. It is difficult when so many choose the incapacity of dependence on the State for their wellness...ironically, exacerbating their challenges.
There is hardly any part of the world that has not been part of war - wherever we walk there is a hidden war memorial under foot. Making Art Not War sounds like an attempt to reframe the world if only for a few days, greatly needed in these war consumed times Enjoy CJ and if you can share your message beyond Berlin. Thanks, Karla
"Rumor has it, during the GDR era, it housed a Stasi “listening station.”" — In contrast with today, when the "Stasi "listening station"" is a global/omnipresent entity.
"The story goes, after Walter Ulbricht’s speech, the Communists (i.e., the KDP) began singing the Internationale to drown out Goebbels, or, as the kids say these days, “to deny him a platform.”" — An interesting snapshot of "cancel culture", long before people thought such a thing ever existed.
"He intentionally forgot, that it was him, fourty-and-some years earlier, who fought for the democratic right to protest, aloud and everywhere, and even more so against those in power - contra 'el régimen'." — Was that before the death of El Caudillo?
As another great American once said, 'Ich bin ein Berliner' - could work as an opener? Whatever, I'm sure you'll knock 'em dead! (Just don't get arrested)
Talking of history, I've stumbled across The Holocaust Industry by Norman Finkelstein. I suspect it may be controversial.
I wondered, especially after the covid scamdemic, whether anything I thought I have ever known is actually true. It turns out even the memory of The Holocaust has undergone fundamental huge changes.
It also has echoes of today's covidians, who accuse anyone who dares question anything of being an anti-vaxxer, to shut down all and any criticism.
It's a fascinating read and the irony is made even more so in light of current tragic events in Gaza.
Made to forget CJ, or rather we're indoctrinated with an invented history instead. Nazi Germany was as much a creation of of the West as irt was German.
"how quickly most of us forget how we got where we are and thus can’t see where we are going" I know it's cliche and trite but the more crazy things that happen, the more it drives me nuts that we don't learn from history. There's nothing happening that hasn't happened before, just with different names and details. The broad themes are on millenia long loops. Until CJ and his colleagues bring us all to our senses!
Thanks CJ - looking forward to a transcript or audio/video. Some personal musing gleaning historical lessons from surrealist art.
225 years ago Goya published his Los Caprichos (follies of man) in the liquor store across the road from his house on the aptly named ‘street of disillusionment’.
His description of plate 6 “The world is a masquerade. Look, dress and voice, everything is only pretension” accurately depicting society then as now.
Plate 43, Goya’s most iconic, titled ‘The sleep of reason produces monsters’. Goya’s message was deeper, warning that ‘reason’ is not the path to enlightenment - his caption for the print saying “Imagination abandoned by reason produces impossible monsters; united with her, she is the mother of the arts and source of their wonders”.
Fascism is the outcome of such renunciations of imagination and therefore arts in favour of strict rationality and reason.
Fast forward 100 years and we witnessed this rise of totalitarianism as the ‘age of reason’ took us into the worst world wars imaginable.
Surrealism was born from those ashes and Dali in reworking Goya’s works 50 years ago as ‘Les Caprices’ again warned that the ‘dream (or ideal) of reason produces monsters’.
Dali’s use of crutches highlighted the fragility of supports which maintain our reality (our human connections being the crutches that support societies) - ruthlessly removed through Covid ‘safety’ measures in grand ‘anarchy from above’ warned 100 years ago by GK Chesterton and which we all witnessed as democide and menticide this last 4 years. “Anarchy is that condition of mind or methods in which you cannot stop yourself… it is not anarchy because men are permitted to begin uproar .. it is anarchy when people cannot END these things’.
In Dali’s own words ‘surrealism is destructive, but it destroys only what it considers to be shackles limiting vision’ (escaping plato’s cave).
But in the winter of our current fourth turning the western world has again marched down the fascist path proposed by Mussolini in 1932 - ‘organised, centralised, authoritarian democracy’ - pretty much legislated now in every western democracy as ‘states of exception’ to fundamental human rights and all orchestrated by corpses (corporatism/imperialism).
Revolution or renaissance are the paths out of winter and surrealist Dorothy Tanning said it best “Art has always been the raft onto which we climb to save our sanity. I don’t see a different purpose for it now”!
The sociopaths who run things are unimpressed by our cleverness, our word games, our cute memes, our tightly reasoned arguments and close readings of texts, unmoved by facts, logic, evidence or morality, as long as they have force on their side, as long as the cops and army will shoot when ordered to do so.
It's like trying to reason with a schoolyard bully. Truly, this never grows old:
"A WOLF, meeting with a lamb astray from the fold, resolved not to lay violent hands on him, but to find some plea, which should justify to the lamb himself, his right to eat him.
He then addressed him: Sirrah, last year you grossly insulted me.
Indeed, bleated the lamb in a mournful tone of voice: I was not then born.
Then said the wolf: You feed in my pasture.
No, good sir, replied the lamb: I have not yet tasted grass.
Again said the wolf: You drink of my well.
No, exclaimed the lamb: I never yet drank water, for as yet my mother's milk is both food and drink to me.
Upon which the wolf seized him and ate him up, saying: Well! I won't remain supper-less, even though you refute every one of my imputations.
Moral: The tyrant will always find a pretext for his tyranny, and it is useless for the innocent to try by reasoning to get justice, when the oppressor intends to be unjust."
Too true, the tyrants are incapable of empathy or rationality. Perhaps our "cleverness, our word games..." and our art-works are not directed toward these sociopaths, but are a more effective way to awaken the other "lambs", who in this case haven't "strayed from the fold", but have followed the flock towards the wolf's den?
Humans are herd animals to rival any sheep.
rolling rolling rolling
keep them doggies rolling
story w wolf bad again? They are beautiful animals with a family pack life.
metaphors only, I love wolves and lambs myself
chilling but apt example.
I can't help thinking about the entire reparations movement in the US when I read this.
explain, please.
I think this is why the 'woke' (HAS-J...my term) exists. They figure, if you can't beat 'em, join 'em. It's a sell out mentality. But what is the alternative for someone who doesn't want to sell out? Being devoured?
Wow!!! Geez, they were a little less than subtle! It is easy for me to say in retrospect. It might be prudent for me to go back and have a look at the new Chicken Little and see what politicising I missed in the version targeting my children's generation.
My computer art against war: https://youtu.be/dP808Qc9lgM
As an artist with the same inclinations toward activism-art, my dilemma with war is how much I am sucked in by the prevailing propaganda to which I'm being exposed. Perhaps using the 'headline memes' from both sides of a conflict offers the viewer a meta-view of the absurdity even over-and-above the goodies vs baddies perspective?
An Amiga!!! Good work.
💖🙏🏻🕊
George Santayana, in his 1905 book The Life of Reason, or The Phases of Human Progress, said, "Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it." Edmund Burke and Winston Churchill, among others, made similar observations, and most of us recognize the wisdom it conveys. Yet, history continues. Shakespeare, in Macbeth put it,
"Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow,
Creeps in this petty pace from day to day
To the last syllable of recorded time,
And all our yesterdays have lighted fools
The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle!
Life’s but a walking shadow, a poor player
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage
And then is heard no more: it is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing."
History is often an attempt to dis-remember the past, insuring that we will repeat our mistakes. Many of the policies of Germany, and of the EU, amount to repeats of the twentieth-century, thinly veiled.
One of my work-lives was as an Expressive Arts Therapist, and I was enthusiastic about the power of the arts to awaken social conscience and express civil courage. But since the pandemonium, the world I thought I inhabited has inverted, and I realise to my embarrassment/dismay that my protest art actually served those who now are exposed-and-proud New World puppetmasters. The timing of the latest wars smells so bad: just as my virus-terrified friends might have started to awaken, they now have new scapegoats to take the place of the wretched 'unvaxxed'. And with each new war, the dissenters are further split into factions, no doubt as intended.
Spectacularly put!
I too have an expressive arts therapy background (and behavioural sciences) and in my part of the world, there are still mandates that prevent me from working in my life chosen pursuit. I am grateful that this has driven me to live my truth and find my own way of making a living that doesn't rely on the State. It is difficult when so many choose the incapacity of dependence on the State for their wellness...ironically, exacerbating their challenges.
Principles will prevail and I will find a way.
Sadly, true - and well said.
I would love to hear you talk about art, war and totalitarianism, but I can’t be in Berlin. Any chance that there will be a recording?
BTW: The Stolpersteine were forbidden in Munich by city major Dieter Reiter (SPD) and his crew. I think that’s shameful.
Perhaps if there isn't a recording made, you could put your notes into a Substack for us who live so far away?
There is hardly any part of the world that has not been part of war - wherever we walk there is a hidden war memorial under foot. Making Art Not War sounds like an attempt to reframe the world if only for a few days, greatly needed in these war consumed times Enjoy CJ and if you can share your message beyond Berlin. Thanks, Karla
"Rumor has it, during the GDR era, it housed a Stasi “listening station.”" — In contrast with today, when the "Stasi "listening station"" is a global/omnipresent entity.
"The story goes, after Walter Ulbricht’s speech, the Communists (i.e., the KDP) began singing the Internationale to drown out Goebbels, or, as the kids say these days, “to deny him a platform.”" — An interesting snapshot of "cancel culture", long before people thought such a thing ever existed.
Sounds like the scene from the film Casablanca when they sang to the Germans.
Whenever I watch Casablanca (or Reds) I remember demos where we sang the Internationale.
Not sure anymore if that was in this lifetime.
"He intentionally forgot, that it was him, fourty-and-some years earlier, who fought for the democratic right to protest, aloud and everywhere, and even more so against those in power - contra 'el régimen'." — Was that before the death of El Caudillo?
As another great American once said, 'Ich bin ein Berliner' - could work as an opener? Whatever, I'm sure you'll knock 'em dead! (Just don't get arrested)
Talking of history, I've stumbled across The Holocaust Industry by Norman Finkelstein. I suspect it may be controversial.
I wondered, especially after the covid scamdemic, whether anything I thought I have ever known is actually true. It turns out even the memory of The Holocaust has undergone fundamental huge changes.
It also has echoes of today's covidians, who accuse anyone who dares question anything of being an anti-vaxxer, to shut down all and any criticism.
It's a fascinating read and the irony is made even more so in light of current tragic events in Gaza.
Posting links to Holocaust denial is one of the quickest ways to get banned from my replies.
We dont forget History,
We just dont remember what was left out of History...
Except for Wilhelm Reich's "Mass Psychology of Fascism", what other book,
or TV documentary, gives attention to the NAZI propaganda that exploited
people's Fear of Contagion to have them passively accept the stigmatization,
isolation, then murder of minorities...
How many noticed the 'covid' psy-op exploited the same Fear of Contagion to
'encourage' the masses to passively accept the stigmatization, isolation of 'anti
-vaxxers' - very few indeed, as drawing attention to the contents & emphases of
NAZI's successful propaganda is excluded from History...
The 'covid' psy-op's success shows 0ur Rulers remember what was left out of the
History we learn...
Vera Sharav's documentary series comes to mind as another source of historical parallels that most don't want to acknowledge https://live.childrenshealthdefense.org/chd-tv/events/never-again-is-now-global/
It's about time the fire fighters honor you
😂
Wish I could go to this.
"...how quickly most of us forget"
Made to forget CJ, or rather we're indoctrinated with an invented history instead. Nazi Germany was as much a creation of of the West as irt was German.
"how quickly most of us forget how we got where we are and thus can’t see where we are going" I know it's cliche and trite but the more crazy things that happen, the more it drives me nuts that we don't learn from history. There's nothing happening that hasn't happened before, just with different names and details. The broad themes are on millenia long loops. Until CJ and his colleagues bring us all to our senses!
Thanks CJ - looking forward to a transcript or audio/video. Some personal musing gleaning historical lessons from surrealist art.
225 years ago Goya published his Los Caprichos (follies of man) in the liquor store across the road from his house on the aptly named ‘street of disillusionment’.
His description of plate 6 “The world is a masquerade. Look, dress and voice, everything is only pretension” accurately depicting society then as now.
Plate 43, Goya’s most iconic, titled ‘The sleep of reason produces monsters’. Goya’s message was deeper, warning that ‘reason’ is not the path to enlightenment - his caption for the print saying “Imagination abandoned by reason produces impossible monsters; united with her, she is the mother of the arts and source of their wonders”.
Fascism is the outcome of such renunciations of imagination and therefore arts in favour of strict rationality and reason.
Fast forward 100 years and we witnessed this rise of totalitarianism as the ‘age of reason’ took us into the worst world wars imaginable.
Surrealism was born from those ashes and Dali in reworking Goya’s works 50 years ago as ‘Les Caprices’ again warned that the ‘dream (or ideal) of reason produces monsters’.
Dali’s use of crutches highlighted the fragility of supports which maintain our reality (our human connections being the crutches that support societies) - ruthlessly removed through Covid ‘safety’ measures in grand ‘anarchy from above’ warned 100 years ago by GK Chesterton and which we all witnessed as democide and menticide this last 4 years. “Anarchy is that condition of mind or methods in which you cannot stop yourself… it is not anarchy because men are permitted to begin uproar .. it is anarchy when people cannot END these things’.
In Dali’s own words ‘surrealism is destructive, but it destroys only what it considers to be shackles limiting vision’ (escaping plato’s cave).
But in the winter of our current fourth turning the western world has again marched down the fascist path proposed by Mussolini in 1932 - ‘organised, centralised, authoritarian democracy’ - pretty much legislated now in every western democracy as ‘states of exception’ to fundamental human rights and all orchestrated by corpses (corporatism/imperialism).
Revolution or renaissance are the paths out of winter and surrealist Dorothy Tanning said it best “Art has always been the raft onto which we climb to save our sanity. I don’t see a different purpose for it now”!
I would really love to!! Sadly I am far away in Australia and not able to make it. Hope it has moments of life connection for all who attend 🙏🏻
The reason so many Germans are left wing is that it allows them to remain NAZIs while thinking of themselves as the opposite.