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Sunday, December 31, 2017

TED Radio Hour's "What Is Beauty?": "Are Some Things Universally Beautiful?"

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"What Is Beauty?" TED Radio Hour

Alan: To hear the story of  violinist Robert Gupta and schizophrenic street person Nathaniel Ayers (a black man who studied at The Julliard) click on "Listen To Full Story" in the link above. The first five minutes "tells the tale."

The Real Story Behind "The Soloist"

Can Beauty Change A Life?
Can Music Lead One Out Of Ugliness And Despair?

Are Some Things Universally Beautiful?

"Musicians We Lost In 2017," NPR

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"Musicians We Lost In 2017"
NPR

Music-Making Is The Central, Distinctive "Mission" Of Homo Sapiens: All Else Is Secondary 
http://paxonbothhouses.blogspot.com/2017/11/i-believe-music-making-is-central.html


The Human Mosaic Of Beauty And Madness: Alan Watts On Inner Sanity Amid Outer Chaos

“All the goodness and the heroisms will rise up again, then be cut down again and rise up. It isn’t that the evil thing wins — it never will | made w/ Imgflip meme maker
Excerpt: “All the goodness and the heroisms will rise up again, then be cut down again and rise up,” John Steinbeck wrote to a friend on the first day of 1941. “It isn’t that the evil thing wins — it never will — but that it doesn’t die.”

The Human Mosaic Of Beauty And Madness: Young Alan Watts On Inner Sanity Amid Outer Chaos

Across the country, as WWII was engulfing the world, a young aspiring writer and budding philosopher by the name of Alan Watts (January 6, 1915–November 16, 1973) was making sense of the terror and the tragedy in a kindred manner, striving to maintain what we most need yet most easily relinquish in dark times — the telescopic perspective.

Watts had left his native England for New York City at age twenty-three to begin Zen training — a decision he had made two years earlier, after meeting the great Zen teacher D.T. Suzuki in London. In New York, he toiled to publish his American debut — The Meaning of Happiness, a pathbreaking book bridging modern Western psychology and ancient Eastern philosophy — and set about establishing himself as a public speaker, giving talks about Zen to both adults and children at Riverside Church, Harlem’s mecca of spiritual inquiry. (The year Watts decided to move to New York, an inquisitive little girl from Riverside Church invited Albert Einstein’s wonderful answer to her question about whether scientists pray.) But just as Watts was finding his footing in America, Europe lost ground and plummeted into WWII, dragging the whole of humanity into an unprecedented moral and spiritual abyss.
In a beautiful letter from the spring of 1941, found in the altogether revelatory Collected Letters of Alan Watts (public library), the young philosopher considers the larger meaning of the meaningless terror of war. Addressing his parents as “Dear Mummy & Daddy,” the twenty-five-year-old Watts reflects on how an awareness of the reticulated nature of reality and the interconnectedness of all human experience casts any one experience — even the most terrifying — in a wider frame of reference that makes it somehow more bearable. Decades before he formulated his ideas on how learning not to think in terms of gain or loss enlarges life, Watts tells his parents:
I have faith that something good will come out of this in the end like the phoenix out of the fire. But in the meantime it’s almost impossible to know how to plan for the future. Things here are as good as can be expected, but under such strains you never know when people are going to go crazy! Sometimes I get the queerest feeling that things going on in the world around one, are in some odd way reflections of things happening in the depths of one’s own mind. It is almost as if the world gets calm as you keep calm yourself, and vice versa. Yet it would be absurd to imagine that one could actually control the course of events in that way because this would imply the belief that oneself alone is real and all else a figment of thought. But it convinces me more and more that there is a universe inside one, which contains Hitler and all forms of human madness as well as love and beauty.
Complement The Collected Letters of Alan Watts, lovingly edited by his daughters Joan and Anne, with Watts on how to live with presencethe antidote to loneliness, and what makes us who we are, then revisit Rebecca Solnit on our grounds for hope in the dark and Albert Camus on strength of character through difficult times.


Saturday, December 30, 2017

A Year Later: Paul Krugman's Predictions About Trump And His Achichincles

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Paul Krugman Issues A Warning About What We All Know Is Coming

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Compendium Of Pax Posts Concerning Trump's Habitual Lying

Ted Cruz Gives Detailed Explanation Of Trump's Pathological Obsession With Continuous Lying


Fred Owens' Facebook Page, "Fake News" And The Credibility Of The Mainstream Press

Compendium Of Pax Posts Re: Trump's Non-Stop Ability To Tell One Lie After Another

Compendium Of Pax Posts On Post-Inaugural Blur Of White House Lies And "Alternative Facts"

Find Out What "The Deplorables" Want And Promise It To Them | made w/ Imgflip meme maker

Millions Of Deplorables Voted For Trump Because He Was The Only Candidate Who Was As Crazy As They Are

The Borowitz Report: "Trump Blasts Media For Reporting What He Says"

28 Enormities That Prevent Conscionable People From Hoping Trump Is A Successful President

Donald's Doozies: A Yuge (And Yugely Incomplete) Compendium Of Trump's "Pants On Fire" Lies

Compendium Of Pax Posts About Donald Trump

Donald Trump, Felon: Re-Visiting Trump University

Married Couple Say Trump Defrauded Them Of $36,000.00 But Will Vote For Him Anyway

We Redacted Everything That's Not A Verifiably True Statement From Trump's Time Magazine Interview About Truth

Donald Trump: A Man So Obnoxious That Karma May See Him Reincarnated As Himself

Shit-Slinger Trump Says Obama Wiretapped Trump Tower During Campaign. Obama Is "Bad, Sick"

The Best Photographic Evidence Of Trump Inaugural Crowd Size: From Stage & From Monument

National Park Service Releases Official Photos Of Trump And Obama's Inaugural Crowds

"There Are Two Ways Of Lying..." Denis De Rougemont And Donald Trump

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Behind The Mask, The GOP's True Face: Ayn Rand's Ideological Acolyte Paul Ryan Promotes Her Central Belief That Altruism Is Evil

Why Americans Have A Moral Obligation NOT To Respect Donald Trump

American Conservatives And Aggressive Ignorance

Too Ignorant To Keep Democracy Alive

"Are Republicans Insane?" Best Pax Posts

"President Trump's Lies, The Definitive List"
New York Times

The Toronto Star's Complete Tally Of Trump's 337 Lies Since Inauguration (June 26, 2017)

Compendium Of Best "Pax" Posts About Devious Donald, "The Deplorable One"

Best Trump Memes From "Pax On Both Houses"

Lies, Damned Lies, Statistics - And Devious Donald

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"Has America Lost Its Mind?" 1A's Brilliant Interview With "Fantasyland's" Kurt Andersen
http://paxonbothhouses.blogspot.com/2017/09/has-america-lost-its-mind-1as-brilliant.html

Televangelist Jim Bakker Resurrected: If This Doesn't Scare The Bejesus Out Of You, Repent For Your End Is Near!
http://paxonbothhouses.blogspot.com/2017/09/televangelist-jim-bakker-resurrected-if.html

Compendium Of Best Pax Posts On Organized Religion And The Everyday Validation Of Violence

The Christian Doctrine Of Damnation... And The Destruction Of Christ-Spirit

"My Gripe With Christianity"

Reprise: "Trump Raped His Wife" | In A 1990 Divorce Proceeding Trump's First Wife, Ivana, Said Trump Made Her "Feel Violated" During Sex And Described The Attack To A Friend  | image tagged in deplorable donald,despicable donald,devious donald,dishonorable donald,delusional donald,dishonest donald | made w/ Imgflip meme maker

Why White Evangelicals Are Okay With Voting For Sexual Predators Like Moore And Trump