Posts tagged life
Michael McCloskey
As we travel in space we can see more clearly that we enjoy a unique experience as living creatures. We are part of the cavalcade of life on this special planet; we can rejoice in the gift of life. Whether this gift originated with an “unmoved first mover” is a metaphysical riddle. But we need not search too far to find godlike powers in the universe today. We as a species are exerting them now in a display unprecedented since creation began.
Homo sapiens has appropriated two thirds of the land of the planet, destroying the habitat for millions of other species and extinguishing them. As this millennium ends, the technology of industrialism has damaged the ozone shield for all life and has triggered an epochal change in global climate. We are not immortal, but our acts are.
Our species is acting like gods using primal powers to reorder the universe, but who would claim that we have the wisdom, let alone the right, to do so? We are doing this for our uses alone. The rights and needs of our co-venturers on this planet are not even acknowledged.
The question is not why we exist but whether we deserve to exist as supposedly rational beings if we act like conquerors rather than caring beings willing to share the planet with all those who are less powerful, and to act with restraint in respecting the needs of others and all life to come. As a species, we are on trial to see whether rationality was an advance or a tragic mistake.
Michael McCloskey, environmentalist and attorney, is chairman of the Sierra Club.
Marina Abramović and Ulay - MoMA 2010
Marina Abramovic and Ulay started an intense love story in the 70s, performing art out of the van they lived in. When they felt the relationship had run its course, they decided to walk the Great Wall of China, each from one end, meeting for one last big hug in the middle and never seeing each other again.
At her 2010 MoMa retrospective Marina performed ‘The Artist Is Present’ as part of the show, where she shared a minute of silence with each stranger who sat in front of her. Ulay arrived without her knowing and this is what happened.
I’ve always found that sharing minutes of silence with people whether it’s a single person or a group is a very powerful moment. You observe the person who’s in front of you and you look at him/her in a very particular way. Or you simply get lost in your thoughts and go wherever the silence takes you. It really depends on one’s ability to see beyond the surface but I would say it’s almost comparable to meditation.
Sometimes, we think we have everything under control but life is full of surprises, beautiful and sad ones. In this very intense moment that you’re going to watch, when you haven’t seen a loved one for years and years, it’s hard to predict what’s going to happen. In the 60 seconds they have together, both of them create a very strong and unique connection. You can feel the secrets in their eyes. It starts as a very disturbing and touching eye contact to unfold into something stronger, more beautiful, more physical.
A man is mortal while mankind is not. I trust that believers and nonbelievers alike recognize this. Like a human embryo that evolves through all stages of evolution, the human spirit repeats the cosmic history of mankind in its microcosmic development, thus binding the past and the future. This deep bind, this intertwining of cosmic and microcosmic development within each human being, shapes the meaning of life and its values. In fact, life’s meaning and life’s values are more precious than life itself.
Mankind’s technological evolution, primarily the development of nuclear weapons, has now deprived mankind of immortality. As the cancer cells of nuclear arms have already yielded powerful metastases in certain countries and across national boundaries, our generation faces perhaps its greatest task: eliminating those seeds of destruction and restoring mankind to immortality. The experience gained through that joint mission wil help us to realize life’s meaning and the ways of handling other threats to life on this planet, brought forth through the aggregated activities of man.
YEVGENI VELIKOV, physicist and key adviser on arms control and science issues to Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev, is the vice president of the Soviet Academy of Sciences and chairman of the International Foundation for the Survival and Development of Humanity.
Alan Watts - Time To Wake Up
Alan Watts sharing once again very inspiring and genuine reflections.
Coupled with a great piece by E.S. Posthumus and perfectly synced with a beautiful video animation.
You may also like: What If Money Was No Object
Desmond Tutu
“The evolution of the world is a great manifestation of God. As scientists understand more and more about the interdependence not only of the living things but of rock, rivers — the whole of the universe — I am left in awe that I, too, am a part of this tremendous miracle. Not only am I a part of this pulsating network, but I am an indispensable part. It is not only theology that teaches me this, but it is the truth that environmentalists shout from the rooftops. Every living creature is an essential part of the whole.
All creatures have special attributes. Our particular attribute is the ability to reason. With reason we are enabled to react independently from our environment. What are we supposed to do?
Our surroundings are awesome. We see about us majestic mountains, the perfection of a tiny mouse, a newborn baby, a flower, the colors of a seashell. Each creature is most fully that which it is created to be, an almost incredible reflection of the infinite, the invisible, the indefinable. All women and men participate in that reflected glory.
We believe that we are in fact the image of our Creator. Our response must be to live up to that amazing potential — to give God glory by reflecting His beauty and His love. That is why we are here and that is the purpose of our lives. In that response we enter most fully into relationships with God, our fellow men and women, and we are in harmony with all creation.”
Desmond Tutu, South African civil rights leader and Nobel Peace Prize winner, is the Anglican Archbishop of Capetown.
The Most Astounding Fact - Neil deGrasse Tyson
Astrophysicist Dr. Neil DeGrasse Tyson was asked by a reader of TIME magazine, “What is the most astounding fact you can share with us about the Universe?” This is his answer.
The Old Testament Book of Micah answers the question of why we are here with another question: “What doth the Lord require of thee but to do justly, and to love mercy, and to walk humbly with thy God?”
We are here to witness the creation and to abet it. We are here to notice each thing so each thing gets noticed. Together we notice not only each mountain shadow and each stone on the beach but, especially, we notice the beautiful faces and complex natures of each other. We are here to bring to consciousness the beauty and power that are around us and to praise the people who are here with us. We witness our generation and our times. We watch the weather. Otherwise, creation would be playing to an empty house.
According to the second law of thermodynamics, things fall apart. Structures disintegrate. Buckminster Fuller hinted at a reason we are here: By combinations, we counteract this flow of entropy. We make new structures, new wholeness, so the universe comes out even. A shepherd on a hilltop who looks at a mess of stars think, “There’s a hunter, a plow, a fish,” is making mental connections that have as much real force in the universe as the very fires in those stars themselves.
ANNIE DILLARD, Pulitzer Prize-winning essayist, poet and teacher, is the author of Pilgrim at Tinker Creek
We record everything through our lifetime.
Peggy Dodd - The Master
Then I saw it. A mother who would die for her son, a man who would kill for his wife, and an abandoned child headed the wrong path.
Joe - Looper
A Message For All Of Humanity - Charlie Chaplin
One of the most inspirational speeches in recorded history was given by a comedian by the name of Charlie Chaplin in the movie “The Great Dictator”.
What if money was no object?
Ask yourself. What would you do with your life if money was no object? An amazing lecture from the late Alan Watts.
You may also like: Time To Wake Up
It was right then that I started thinking about Thomas Jefferson on the Declaration of Independence and the part about our right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. And I remember thinking how did he know to put the pursuit part in there? That maybe happiness is something that we can only pursue and maybe we can actually never have it. No matter what. How did he know that?
Christopher Gardner- The Pursuit of Happyness
An Animated Adaptation of Carl Sagan’s Pale Blue Dot
“Look again at that dot. That’s here. That’s home. That’s us. On it everyone you love,everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives. The aggregate of our joy and suffering, thousands of confident religions, ideologies, and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilization, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful child, inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every ‘superstar,’ every ‘supreme leader,’ every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there — on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam.
The Earth is a very small stage in a vast cosmic arena. Think of the rivers of blood spilled by all those generals and emperors so that, in glory and triumph, they could become the momentary masters of a fraction of a dot. Think of the endless cruelties visited by the inhabitants of one corner of this pixel on the scarcely distinguishable inhabitants of some other corner, how frequent their misunderstandings, how eager they are to kill one another, how fervent their hatreds.
Our posturings, our imagined self-importance, the delusion that we have some privileged position in the Universe, are challenged by this point of pale light. Our planet is a lonely speck in the great enveloping cosmic dark. In our obscurity, in all this vastness, there is no hint that help will come from elsewhere to save us from ourselves.
The Earth is the only world known so far to harbor life. There is nowhere else, at least in the near future, to which our species could migrate. Visit, yes. Settle, not yet. Like it or not, for the moment the Earth is where we make our stand.
It has been said that astronomy is a humbling and character-building experience. There is perhaps no better demonstration of the folly of human conceits than this distant image of our tiny world. To me, it underscores our responsibility to deal more kindly with one another, and to preserve and cherish the pale blue dot, the only home we’ve ever known.”
Written and Narrated: Carl Sagan
Music: Hans Zimmer “You’re So Cool”
Art and Animation: Adam Winnik
From 0 to 100 in 150 seconds
In October 2011, the guy who made this video started documenting people in the city of Amsterdam, approaching them in the street and asking them to say their age in front of the camera. His aim was to ‘collect’ a group of 100 people, from age 0 to 100. At first his collection grew fast but slowed down when it got down to the very young and very old. The young because of sensitivity around filming or photographing children and the very old because they don’t get out of the house much. He found his very old ‘models’ in care homes and it was a privilege to document these -often vulnerable- people for this project.
He had particular problems finding a 99 year-old. (Apparently 100 year-olds enjoy notoriety, but a 99 year-old is a rare species…) And when he finally did find one, she refused to state her age. She simply denied being 99 years old! But finally, some 4 months after he recorded his first ‘age’, he was able to capture the ‘missing link’ and conclude this project.
Enjoy.
Le Miroir
Le Miroir tells the story of a man - in the sense of the human being - which passes from childhood to the status of “old man”, the time to freshen up.
This short blew me away !
Stolen from The Jr Express
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