Hi Everybody,
On this blog i will go to talk about what's the black hattitude for me, Not only a skin colour, it is a state of mind, a philosophy of life.For that purpose, several musical currents were born, as these: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IBlF9UhcGso It is also the fact to share, to be opened without reserve nor a priori to discover new persons, learn of them, an exchange in 2 directions that can only be beneficial in all.
Salut tout le monde,
Sur ce blog, je vais vous parler de ce que représente la black hattitude pour moi, ce n'est pas seulement une couleur de peau, c'est un état d'esprit, une philosophie de vie.
Pour cela, plusieurs courants musicaux sont nés. Si vous avez l'occasion, découvrez cet album R.E.L.I.G.I.ON par Black Hattitude.C'est aussi le fait de partager, d'être ouvert sans réserve ni a priori afin de découvrir de nouvelles personnes, d'apprendre d'elles, un échange dans les 2 sens qui ne pourra qu'être bénéfique à tous. See you soon! A bientot!
It's just a beginning. (see: I'm not a native English speaker!)
There are many ideas in my mind how to better up the world or the living conditions of people.
I do this from the point of view of an artist who has many interests: Philosophy, Dreams and
their interpretation, Awareness, The Mind etc.
What can one do to make the world a better place?
To sing in a choir, to play music, to paint and to analyse your innermost, e.g. by interpreting your
paintings etc.
There are so many ways, and it is a good way to be creative, to see things and daily life
again and again from another point of view.
Meditation is certainly another way to find out about yourself and the world. In this field I'm not
an expert, but I will try to better up my ability in this direction.
Nevertheless:
The intuition of artists often is similar to Meditation, because you gain informations
from within, from your innermost mind. And that we all do share.
So that's the beginning:
Good communication with people, with your innermost, with the different aspects of life.
To find the point, your way of living that is good for you and at the same time good for the
society. It has to do with finding out for what you are born.
I'm certainly born to help people and myself to find out more about the world.
Art is one important task for me on this way. Nevertheless:
Perhaps life will show me how I'm best used to fulfill the god-like plan we all living people
are a part of, all people of all religions, of all non-religions, all.
We people of the world are all equal and all free - that's the underlying philosophy.
We won't only survive, we well prevail.
--- And we have to take care, of ourselves, of our neighbour, of the whole living and not-living
world. --- And that's not easy at all --- But it's possible and as a vision it is seemingly so
simple and so great at the same time.
I would rather be ashes than dust! I would rather that my spark should burn out in a brilliant blaze than it should be stifled by dry-rot.I would rather be a superb meteor, every atom of me in magnificent glow, than a sleepy and permanent planet.The function of man is to live, not to exist.
I shall not waste my days trying to prolong them. I shall use my time.
Jack London
_______________________________________________
“We must not confuse dissent with disloyalty,” he said, in 1954. “We must remember always that accusation is not proof, and that conviction depends upon evidence and due process of law.”
”We will not walk in fear, one of another. We will not be driven by fear into an age of unreason, if we dig deep in our history and our doctrine, and remember that we are not descended from fearful men, not from men who feared to write, to speak, to associate, and to defend causes that were for the moment unpopular.”
Edward R. Murrow, 1954
_____________________________________
Living in a Grateful World
Be grateful to those who have hurt or harmed you,for they have enforced your determination.
Be grateful to those who have deceived you,for they have deepened your insight.
Be grateful to those who have hit you,for they have reduced your karmic obstacles.
Be grateful to those who have abandoned you,for they have taught you to be independent.
Be grateful to those who have denounced you,for they have increased your wisdom and concentration.
Be grateful to those who have made you firm and resoluteand helped in your achievement. - The Venerable Master Chin Kung
________________________________
“Liberty—the freedom from unwarranted intrusion by government—is as easily lost through insistent nibbles by government officials who seek to do their jobs too well as by those whose purpose it is to oppress; the piranha can be as deadly as the shark.”—United States v. $124,570, 873 F.2d 1240, 1246 (9th Cir. 1989)
“In Germany, they first came for the communists, and I didn’t speak up because I wasn’t a communist. Then they came for the Jews, and I didn’t speak up because I wasn’t a Jew. Then they came for the trade unionists, and I didn’t speak up because I wasn’t a trade unionist. Then they came for the Catholics and I didn’t speak up because I wasn’t a Catholic. Then they came for me–and by that time there was nobody left to speak up.”—Martin Niemöller (1945) [he served seven years in a concentration camp]
“A free society is one where it is safe to be unpopular.”
Adlaia Stevenson
My Fellow Americans:
Ultimately, this election is not about Barack and Joe or McCain and Palin. This election is about a set of ideas and a philosophy about America's future. Taking a quick look at the Bush record, and particularly Bush's record of substantially increasing the footprint of the Federal Government and the amount of Federal debt, it is quite clear that we cannot, and must not continue with these failed policies of "big government". When we look at our economic situation, and the economic assault that we're under from China, we must remember that Congress, with its "big government" economic policies has effectively rendered America unable to compete via laws and regulations. America needs change!
If we wish to place blame for the current economic situation in America. Look no further. The Federal Reserve and Congress are to blame via their inept attempts to centrally plan an economy based upon a mirage of housing and debt. America must change. American must change away from the "big-government" policies of the Bush administration and today's congress!
So, remember, this election is about a competing set of ideas and philosophies. On one side, we have Barack and Joe, interested in continuing the "big government" policies of the past administration and on the other side we have McCain and Palin, interested in returning freedom and liberty to the people of America. My fellow Americans, that is the change we need.
Yours truly,
Jamari Jones
The Question is, Who cares. All voters have experienced the last 18 years or more. Are you using that experience to improve your decision making? That is the question that the media and the voters should be asking.
Noone disputes McCain is experienced. He has a long history in government and the military. So what? It is his policies and philosophy that are important. He has alot of experience in backing a bankrupt economic philosophy that is the fudamental cause of the current financial crisis. He has experience in supporting a failed and dangerous foreign policy philosophy that isolates America from its allies and threatens our and the worlds security. He backed Bush's childish policy of not talking to people he doesn't like. He supported Bush'spolicy of shoot first, shoot second, shoot somemore, and, if anybody is still alive, ask questions.
In all his vast experience, he has refused to learn anything from it. Experience is meaningless if you refuse to learn from it and stubbornly stick to your original beliefs even when they are demonstrated to be wrong or ineffctive. Who was it the said essentially, one definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over while expecting a different outcome? McCain may be olde, but in my opinion he demonstrates a immature stubborness to policies and philosophies that repeatedly fail.
His energy policy is another example. His "experience" is a few large corporations control the supply of energy from oil, natural gas, coal, and nuclear. So his solution emphasizes increased drilling, nuclear, and coal. Paying lip service to alternate, renewable energy as some far off minor contributor at best because they are haeder for "big energy" to control. Is that the experience we want deciding our future energy policies?
I, for one, couldn't care less how much experience McCain or Palin have. Or Obama for that matter. What is important to me is that Obama has looked at our past actions and learned which have not worked. He has concluded, it is time to try new approaches. Are all his ideas going to be successful. No. But, he has demonstrated an ability to assess and adapt. He has demonstrated a willingness to learn and grow with his experience. That is the exxence of a mature, sane, and effective leader. The significance of experience is what you do with it, not that you survived it.
A republic does not implicate a democracy. A republic means a state ruled by the people, or just some of the people. Conservatives would like this regime to be a rule by them, and traditionally this has been wealthy families entrenching their grip.
A "weak" leader in terms of intelligence, wisdom and reasoning is a de facto power transfer to his "counsel".
Dear Blog Buddies,
Joe Lieberman is a registered democrat.
Joe Lieberman is an American.
Reach out to him and let him know he is always welcome back into the fold. Promote where you stand together. Promote an individuals liberty to choose. Promote courage. Promote ways to reach across the aisle. Promote unity and connection. Promote peace.
Stay cool, don't get angry and all riled up, it does not serve your purpose!
Please, do not be swayed by the turbulent storms of politics. Be sure of what you stand for and then shout it from the rooftops. Please, do not turn to vitriolic personal attacks.
Don't take Joe Lieberman's choices personally.
Barack is asking us all to believe in change. We must be the change.
Please consider your responses and speak of what you stand for not what you stand against.
"We will never know how much just a simple smile will do."
MOTHER TERESA
Stay cool!
Laura XXX
www.yourpotentialpower.com
Below are passages taken from letters to my sons as I reflected on their birth last year. This is writing from a year ago, before supporting Barack Obama and provides some context for the reasons I now support him:
Any day you can play a ukulele is a good day. I truly believe that. Even if it’s just for a few minutes, playing a uke seems to calm the nerves and lifts the spirit. Maybe that’s why I pick up my uke every evening when I get home from work. Just a few minutes of strumming and “singing” is enough to help me unwind from the stresses of big city life. In today’s world of media saturation, the idea of playing a ukulele is a reminder that life’s pleasures don’t always have to be complicated. Four strings and three chords are all you need to lift your mood. And if playing the uke sounds like fun, it’s even better when you have a few friends to join you. If you’re lucky like me, you play with friends of all skill levels. That way, you absorb techniques from the advanced players and pass along some knowledge to the newer players. (I’ve found that teaching other people anything is a great way to reinforce your own skills.)Not surprisingly, the uke is a great way to meet people. You can start online on a ukulele bulletin board, Craigslist or a Yahoo! Meetup group. Post a note and see who responds. You’d be surprised how many people in your town are just dying to find other ukulele players.I don’t think it’s a stretch to say the uke brings people together. When you get a bunch of players together, petty, philosophical differences seem to fade and everyone unites behind the goal of a positive social experience: creating music. This of course requires collaboration – taking turns, making suggestions, learning new concepts and yes, yielding to other opinions for the overall good of your art. If you’ve done it right, everyone feels good about their contribution to the whole. Personally, I’m hoping my experience on this blog will have a similar feeling. I’m hoping to meet people who share my desire for a better America – not just through a better government – but through a renewed sense of personal accountability and pride. I’m hoping to find people on this site who take responsibility for themselves and make an effort to learn the issues beyond the headlines. I’m hoping to meet people who want to become better citizens and create real change through their actions. Let’s use the ukulele as a starting point to share some music, and make a commitment to ourselves and America, to lead by example and elect the kind of leaders that we truly deserve.
— Hilo Greg
It may just be me, but when I hear people say, "Americans are not happy with the progress in Iraq, but we still want to win", I want to shout: "You are confusing the question!"
Of course, Americans want to win; winning has been imprinted onto our DNA. It is part of what we see as a more perfect union. What Americans want to know is how we can win in Iraq? Can we win with the same strategy George W. Bush has put in place - only under the guidance of John McCain or do we need a new strategy, one that takes an alternate vector to reaching the goal we all want in our hearts?
This debate is not about how one side wants to win and the other side wants to lose; no - this debate is how one side thinks we can win by doing what we have been doing and our side which says that to win we need to "think outside the box".
For my first post, I’ll share with you some of my thoughts, philosophies, and background.
There is no “them”; there is only “us”. No one of us is smarter than all of us. I am not a liberal or a conservative; I’m a pragmatist. I choose what works, within ethical boundaries.
The “Great Circle of Life” is: birth, childhood, marriage, have children, die.
We need to transition to a new energy infrastructure.
I’m a newly converted Obama fan, after supporting Hillary Clinton.
On my browser homepage, I have a daily quote that I read when I go online. The one for 4/14 was:
You can stand tall without standing on someone. You can be a victor without having victims. - Harriet Woods
Senator Obama's campaign has consistently embraced that philosophy. It's too bad Senator Clinton has not been willing or able to do the same. Samantha Power (one of Obama's former senior advisors) was absolutely right when she said that Hillary Clinton will do anything to win.
The very idea of conservatism puzzles me. Who in their right mind would want to go back in time? Seriously, is there any time in the history of the planet where life was actually better than it is today? Of course it depends on how you measure quality of life, and if you are a luddite the overwhelming presence of technology might be offensive to you.
Mennonites and back to nature hippies aside, we live in an age where standards of living, infant mortality, access to clean water, housing, etc. etc. is growing globally. Can we do better? Of course we can! Would it help to reinstate the policies, attitudes and culture of yesteryear? I don’t see how it could.
Sure, traditional family values are all well and good, and I support everyone’s right to adhere strictly to any code of ethics and belief they wish, as long as they do not force it on anyone else or directly harm others in their practice. I’m not afraid of ideas. I’m not afraid of words.
I am afraid of laws that invade my privacy, restrict my freedom and violate our consitution.
But I digress. I was having a conversation with a “conservative” the other day. He falls into the libertarian wing of the Republican party, which I actually have a lot of sympathy for and believe their ideals are to be commended. I don’t think they are always applicable to the world we live in today, but perhaps someday we can all live in a peaceful society of the rule of law and free exchange of goods and services without pesky statism getting in the way.
For now, I think government is not only essential, but good. I believe the power of citizens to band together and lobby for their interests is important. I believe the idea that we can do great things together is more inspiring than the idea that we should all fend for ourselves.
The very idea that we can improve our lot by going back to some forgotten “good ole days” is perhaps the silliest thing I can imagine. Conservatives are supposed to be hard-headed pragmatists and liberals are supposed to be softie-idealists right? So how can we possibly do better by returning to times when we were worse off by almost any measure? Slavery? Apartheid? The right of a man to beat his wife with a stick as long as it does not exceed the thickness of his thumb? Here’s a rule of thumb for you conservatives: GET A CLUE!
Live moves on and it moves forward. We can and should do better. We should work towards a more just and free society both here at home and abroad. We should encourage “family values” for all families, GLBT and everything in between. We should respect borders while reducing the evils of nationalism. We should build an economy that is based on justice and sustainability not gluttony and irresponsibility.
We can and will do all these things, with or without the help of “conservatives” whose political philosophy will from here on out be referred to as bassakwardism.
/rant
Posted March 26, 2008 | 11:00 AM (EST)
For many years, the United States has been suffering from political nihilism -- disbelief in its institutions.
I have seen political nihilism in various countries around the world. It manifests itself as a form of futility, the feeling that one cannot recover from what is ailing the people.
Two common results occur. The people either find escape from themselves by embracing the mundane or they lash out in frustration against others. In Muslim countries, the mundane is an unhealthy obsession with the arcane points of Islamic jurisprudence, and the frustration is directed towards America, Israel and women. In the American context, the mundane is an unhealthy obsession with meaningless celebrities, and frustration is directed towards Iraq, Iran and women.
How are we to clamber out of our psychological doldrums? What is the best way to push back against our political nihilism?
The answer is to vote for Barack Obama.
This endorsement is not based on personal preference, or for that matter, Obama's policies. For this endorsement, it would not matter if Obama was a hard-right conservative or an ultra-leftist. Rather, Obama should be elected because he is Nietzschean.
Friedrich Nietzsche was a German philosopher. In the nineteenth century he predicted that over the next two centuries, the philosophy of nihilism -- purposelessness and despair -- would take over the Western world, leading to an unprecedented level of violence and world-wide war. Obviously he was correct.
However, Nietzsche only made this prediction so that he could also posit a way of defeating nihilism. He put his faith in Art.
To be more specific, Nietzsche recommended that the way of defeating nihilism was for each individual to treat his or her life as an ongoing and unfinished work of art. The simple work of "giving style" to ourselves, expressing to the world our "overflowing creativity," would give us a way to "Say Yes to Life." This, argued Nietzsche, would stifle nihilist pessimism.
Barack Obama is among the few people I have encountered who lives in this Nietzschean manner. The clearest evidence of this is in the fact that our introduction to Barack Obama -- and Obama's introduction to Obama -- occurs in the pages of two compellingly honest memoirs. In these books Obama strips away the layers of identity and self-deception that most of us do not bother to peel away and essentially reconstructs himself before us, documenting the process like the way that one painter on PBS used to describe each brush-stroke he was making.
It is, in fact, no surprise, that nearly everyone who has actually read Obama's books -- or listened to his autobiographical speeches -- ends up wanting to vote for him. People who read Obama's books see in them a man who doesn't think of himself as a finished product but as someone who views himself as a canvas upon which life is constantly drawing new lines.
The recent flap over Pastor Wright is the perfect example of this. A man whom Obama had held very dear for much of his life was subjected to intense scrutiny, often bordering on the vitriolic, by the most powerful media conglomerates in the world. Obama didn't do what Clinton says she would have done. Rather, Obama stripped away Pastor Wright's confrontational exterior and pulled out the man's vulnerabilities and flaws. Obama added that he could not make Wright's words go away, nor would he pretend like they weren't hurtful. Instead, he said that they could serve as dark, tempestuous paint, in a painting called "a more perfect union." This is what Nietzsche meant by Art.
I did not start off as an Obama supporter. I was in Hillary's camp. I thought Obama was a novelty item. Something Democrats paraded around to give the other wooden candidates a bit of glow. Then I slowly began to feel that things Obama said -- and the way he handled himself in the campaign -- reduced my political nihilism.
I began to realize Obama was Nietzschean and in this nihilist time, that is why he gets my vote.
www.alieteraz.com
