Stonehead

Samorost 2

...to do with climbing. Just another movie by Terry Gilliam.

With all due respect, I call BS on this statement. If the words of congratulation or condemnation are from someone connected to you, then you should not casually dismiss them. No person is an island. If one of us dies climbing, we are all the less for it. With all due respect, I disagree with this statement. I do not feel less as a result of a climber's death. Even in the hypothetical, that death produces thought, discourse, and introspection that makes us all that much more. It might even be considered one more gift that the dead share with us. --Hermann Hesse --That's the Way, Page/Plant I don't believe I read anyone who expressed the sentiment of a nihilist. Differences of opinion, yes, concerning the meaning of death upon the living.

Here's a couple of--what are they called?--uh, platitudes: "Life is not measured by the number of breaths we take, but by the moments that take our breath away." "The risk takers might not live long, but the cautious never live at all." They sound totally great but they're kinda like political slogans. You just can't condense someone's life or someone's ambition into a compact statement. It does put the heroic spin on life but, really, we're complex individuals with various, often competing, motives and drives. I suppose the question is whether you see the totality of your being as 'climber' or whether your life consists of many facets with 'climber' being a compartment of your being. It is about the sensual, I mean, the feeling and emotional part of life and we often want to elevate the experience into something spiritual or sublime. See Abraham Maslow's work on 'peak experiences'. This may sound wacky but are you familiar with the writings of Joseph Campbell? He talks of the seven chakras in the body that are positioned from the base of the spine proceeding up to the crown of the head. The first three chakras in the lower body are mirrored by their higher counterparts, chakras 5-7 that are psychologically present in the upper body. Anyway, I see climbing as a very physical, often suffering, type of activity but ultimately satisfying in a way because the suffering is sublimated into a higher experience. And yeah, this is sorta 19th century but in Nietzsche's words--self-overcoming. Because really, it's all about getting out of your little world of ego indulgence and bursting out into a sense of a greater identity, a dissolving of the boundaries, as it were... And damn, if climbing doesn't do it! The mystics of old knew this. Isn't it paradoxical how something as base as physical exhaustion can lead to the sublime experience of 'opening up' to the world? The task it seems is to hold onto this experience so that (as Zarathustra did) you bring it back to the everyday world of the lowlands. In other words, to transform your life and transform the 'world' in the process. "If you want to change the world, change the world inside yourself." --Jello Biafra

Oh wait...this is the wrong thread. This is more like it: A bear walks into a bar and says to the bar tender: "I would like a bourbon ............ and a coke." The bar tender says: "What's up with the big pause?" The bear replied: "I've had them all my life."

Yeah, I know this thread is all 'bout gorging (and ) so I just wanted to send y'all a friendly reminder--be careful out there! Confessions of a photocopier repairman

Is that Dwayner? Was he on some kind of British sci-fi TV series?

Arrr! Pirated, of course.

http://www.cascadeclimbers.com/threadz/s...true#Post501487

Is it a mischaracterization to say, "all head, no heart"?

Commuting is all a state of mind.

Repost: John Yoo was a member of the legal team that developed a new policy I think it’s interesting that he makes a distinction between law and policy. As I understand it, law is the framework by which policy is derived and policy is that expression of law to guide the actual workings or application. Seems in this case that there is a wide latitude given within the framework of law as it’s translated into practice. Technically within the framework of the law as it is written, Bush may be correct or, at least to his cognizance, in stating that we do not torture although I find it difficult to believe given that American agents are involved in the process. Or, perhaps foreign agents are used? Then, yeah, there’s the practice of ‘extraordinary rendition’. In any event, we are enabling the practice of torture by allowing it to take place in areas outside the jurisdiction of the United States (although Guantanamo is considered by treaty to be US soil). Did you notice that the lawyer was very deliberate and/or precise in his use of words? So really, are we arguing about the definition of ‘torture’? Ok, what applies first in the case of an American citizen classified as a ‘terrorist’ or ‘unlawful combatant’—the US Constitution or the guidelines developed under the general rubric of the ‘War on Terror’? The reality is that I don’t believe it would make a difference whether we’re under a Democrat or Republican administration. I believe that Machiavelli understood the world as it really is. So, the government issues public denials but the very real practice of extraordinary measures occurs.

I just wonder if the idea of civic responsibility or civic virtue comes into play here. Do today's elites have a sense of civic responsibility to improve conditions for the underclass who will definitely feel the bite of inflation or the pain of an economic recession. What has become of communitarian values or are the elites simply going to abandon the less well off? Is there a moral obligation or is it simply, "I got mine."?

My concern is that the elites will tend to separate themselves from concept of the greater good. In other words, they will increasingly live in gated communities, send their children to exclusive private schools, etc. They recognize that there are difficult and/or insurmountable problems looming on the horizon and their response is to resign themselves to looking after their own rather than seeing to it that 'lifeboats' are available for everyone. Am I my brother's keeper? Apparently not, or soon (10years?) we shall find out.

What sort of reaction are you looking for? Are we to feel the same reaction as seeing Il Duce hanging from a scaffolding upside-down or that of the execution of Nicole Ceausescu? That the suffering of the people pays the price for the triumph of the greater will, that tyrants (some tyrants) receive their just rewards? This is about vengence, not about justice, or are these identical?

Imagine, for an instance, that the actual reason for occupying Iraq is to be positioned to seize the Saudi oil fields in the event of a coup or eventual installation of a hostile government in the Saudi kingdom. In that scenairo then the Iraqi occupation would prevent the potential situation of being blackmailed or otherwise possible stop in the flow of oil to which we are highly dependent. In that case, 'securing the realm' makes perfect sense. The US people would buy that but is it because there are potential backlash reactions from current regimes in the region that this idea is not promulgated?

--Sade, Norceuil in Juliette

I see what the GOP is doing about the Democrats but what will they do about some of their own?

!!!!

And probably a Mason too!!