Crime and Punishment in Musée d'Orsay

Books and music are not all acts of culture that I admire ...

During one of my last trips to Paris I visited Musée d'Orsay. This museum is one of the best art museum in Europe, and its collections of impressionists are just superb.

However, that time I was able to see the special exhibition „Crime and punishment”. It was an incredible collection of mostly paintings that addressed the theme of crime, death and penalties.

Starting with depiction of the forefather of all criminals —Cain, we go through the history of art with the focus on the dark side of human race. We can witness how the reaction of artists varied in time of Enlightenment, Romanticism, Positivism and Surrealism.

We could witness how the nascent press devoted it columns to crime (Le Petit Journal) , we could see the modern ideas for prisons (Panopticon), and contemplate upon artistic debate over death penalty...

One of the objects on the display was the real guillotine, dressed in a vail ...

The exhibition was depressing ... but it was still worth to see.

The untold story of Jesus/Christ by Philip Pullman

Philip Pullman is very well known storyteller. His „His Dark Materials” trilogy has become a great success — so far I only have read the short, enchanting prequel to it: „Once upon a time in the North”.

His latest novel „The Good Man Jesus and The Scoundrel Christ” is probably one of his most important works. Despite a controversial title the book is a remarkable modern retelling of the Gospels.

Pullman makes the split between Jesus and Christ real — they become two real people — the brothers. Jesus is passionate, good, unorthodox in his teaching, yet Jewish Rabbi (he certainly was), whose message is directed to Jews, not to Gentiles.

Christ is on a mission. The mission to build the church. Instigated by an unknown stranger, whom he called the Angel, he takes notes of Jesus teachings, first on tablets, then on Scrolls.

He participates in Jesus' arrest and witnesses his crucifixion to take the important role in building a myth of his resurrection. When the myth has been built and started to spread he vanishes from history, to live so called normal life....

I relate the story shortly, as I do not want to spoil it to future readers. On the layer of the plot, the novel is just excellent — you will not regret the time spent on it.

The title itself annoys me a bit — not for any sense of anti-church insults it might awake, but for the fact that Christ is portrayed there as a tragic figure, and the way he ends his story is far from that of a scoundrel...

The essence of the novel is in different dimension. It shows how the certain narration, created in right time and with right means, can become a big movement, a new religion, a new civilization...

Jesus, the real, knows about the attempt to create the story out of his deeds. Called „The Truth” shaping „The History” is recorded by Christ — and it is obvious from the beginning that it is not the true relation of The Events. Jesus rejects it. Christ indulges in it, until the very end of the plot.

The story Christ helps to create leads to the creation of Church:

„ 'I am ready, sir.
' You and I know that for the Kingdom to flourish, it needs a body of men, and women too, both Jews and Gentiles, faithful followers under the guidance of men of authority and wisdom. And this church — we can call it church — will need men of formidable organisational powers and deep intellectual penetration, both to conceive and develop the structure of the body and to formulate the doctrines that will hold it together.”

Jesus despises the idea during his prayers in the Garden at Gethsemane:

„Lord, if I thought you were listening, I'd pray for this above all: that any church set up in your name should remain poor, and powerless, and modest. That is should wield no authority except that of love. That is should never cast anyone out. That it should own no property and make no laws. That it should not condemn, but only forgive....”

This long prayer is one of the most remarkable parts of the novel, full of humility and full of doubts reaching far into modern culture discussions about G-d, his existence and his nature ...

My channel on YouTube features several films of Pullman's talk I recorded during Literary Festival in Paris, organised by Shakespeare and Co. There is more about his motives of the book.

There is an interesting review about the novel in Guardian.

Why silence ?

For those of my readers who are surprised that I'm not publishing new posts recently: I'm deeply in Victor's Hugo „Les Misérables”.

In parallel, after a meeting with Philip Pullman during my last visit to Paris, I'm reading his latest novel...

I also owe you my account on Literary Festival in Paris I attended two weeks ago.
There are few films on my YouTube account, more to come soon....

Sebastian Horsley dies ...

I'm depressed and devastated.

It's no more than a month since I was in a concert in London's HMV with Current93 and his guests.

The concert announcer was famous English celebrity and artist, Sebastian Horsley.

See his intro:




He died two days ago...

What more could I say...

---

Few day passed and our sorrow is no less.
What we know now is that he hasn't take drugs for long time recently, but the funeral of his long friend Michal Wojas turned him into it: „The 47-year-old reportedly hadn't used heroin for several months but the death of his close friend Michael Wojas triggered a fatal drugs binge.”

Let me add Sebastian Horsley's own quote:

„I have been punished by a God I don't believe in and he has thrown me off the cross for impersonating his son, for being an atheist, and for being a disaster. I have made a complete fool of myself.”

[9news: Horsley generated a storm of controversy after he had himself nailed to a cross in 2002. His hands were torn during the process after the foot support he had been standing on collapsed.]

Reading Lakoff ...

It is really amazing, but by some sort of luck I started to read George's Lakoff „The Political Mind”.

(It was while reading Les Miserables when my player went astray and I had to switch to an older one and I could not continue on Hugo (for some another strange reason). So I switched to Lakoff — don't ask me why :-) )

George Lakoff is one of greatest living linguists. Pupil of Noam Chomsky, he first tried to extend Chomsky's theory of grammar by unification with formal logic. But later, he started to build his alternative theory. He developed or elaborated on several important concepts like „embodied mind”, „conceptual metaphor” or „strict father model” (the later in relation to political science).
He was also in a fierce dispute with Steven Pinker — the another linguists I admire ...

The Political Mind has significant subtitle: „You can't understand 21-st century American politics with 18th-century brain ...”

This is not a review yet, this just a harbinger of, I believe, one of the most important books of the beginning of XXI century....

This is what I see just from the first chapters....

A breath of fresh air over 150 years old Book ...

I'm reading, in fact — re-reading again (first time in my school years) Victor Hugo „Les Misérables”. And it is a very good reading. I sometimes marvel over old classics literature — what makes its reading experience so fresh ?

Trying to justify this phenomenon, I could perhaps say, that what makes it universal is a kind of fundamental dilemmas, choices and tragedies that face humans and are described therein. The time — XIX century, and the place — post Bonaparte France are, in this respect, no different from the present time, and from any place of the today's world...

I'm now deeply in the book, just have finished Volume I... So this is not a review yet... I'm also not sure if I would dare to write one for such a book !!!

So there may come some short notes ...

If one of you read it — I would be happy to know your opinion.

"Music releases us from the bonds of gravity ..."

I used to make posts about my favorite classical or modern music (see this set of posts). But this weekend I took (or was taken by) my son (22) and his friends to London to HMV Forum for two nights of amazing music.

The concerts' star was British band Current 93, and the concert was organized for its leader, David Tibet birthday.



For the readers of my blog — this was a kind of music I was not used to listen to, though I knew from my son, that it is as deep and ambitious as the kind of music I used to enjoy.

But these two concerts changed it all. I guess I will not say to much. Instead let me quote the intro to the concert uttered by Sebastian Horsley:

David is poet - and a poet is someone who looks at the world in the same way that a man looks at a woman. A poet is someone who stands outside and rises his fist and hopes that lightning strikes it.

Music releases us from the bonds of gravity, takes the most innermost part of us and puts it outside. We connect heaven with earth by its thread. No other art form or activity provides such a reliable antidote to life, just so long as we bring to it the necessary surrender. And surrender this evening you must. Music has saved more lives that God and Samaritans put together.

Rock music used to be sung by young people to offend old people, now it's sung by old people to embarrass young people.

But there are exceptions to the rule, and Current 93 are one of them....

There was also the legendary Comus, Nurse with Wound, Rameses III and others.

It was just gorgeous....


We have recorded many (beware: low-quality) videos using my plain camera. Here is my son's recording:




and here is my:



As we were told — there will be DVD edition of of this concert.

Is "Power of Pull" the Cluetrain of the second decade ?

I have been reading "The Power of Pull: How Small Moves, Smartly Made, Can Set Big Things in Motion" in about the same time I was finishing reading of „10 years anniversary edition of ClueTrain manifesto”. And not long time after I proclaimed that the famous „Groundswell” was a ClueTrain fulfilment !

Today, I found the another concept and, in fact, another trend, that is the realisation of ideas inseminated by ClueTrain 11 years ago ...

Written by John Hagel III, John Seely Brown, and Lang Davison who form „The Center for the Edge” of the famous consulting giant Deloitte, is the book that is as important as is the „Grundswell”.

So — what is the Pull ?

„Pull is the ability to draw out people and resources as needed to address opportunities and challenges. Pull gives us unprecedented access to what we need, when we need it, even when we’re not quite sure what “it” is.

Pull allows us to harness and unleash the forces of attraction, influence, and serendipity. Using pull, we can create the conditions by which individuals, teams, and even institutions can achieve their potential in less time with more impact than has ever been possible.”

As such, pull is the opposite of push — the ideology of traditional business, organized in top-down manner. „Pull is about expanding our awareness of what is possible and evolving new dispositions, mastering new practices, and taking new actions to realize those possibilities. ”


The great value of the book lies in the very practical approach to the main theme. You can almost find prescription how to create an environment of pull in your company or organisation.

Let me name here just a few of concepts elaborated in this book. First I call triple A path: Access, Attract, Achieve — as the strategy to implement Pull in an institution or in a business. Next would be the need for creation spaces and connection platforms to help serendipity (yes — serendipity) to be a driving force of the organizational change.

The authors deeply analyze how things and ideas that are on the EDGE of the current business can transform it deeply. Disruptive innovation strategy is probably no longer a buzzword for many progressing businesses and organizations.

When it comes to knowledge — they underline the importance of "Tacit knowledge" and passion — and everything they write there about them — is deeply convincing.

The personal profiles used as illustrations to the book are well known — yet when you read about them in the context of "pull" — it is just amazing. For example, the way Shai Agassi transformed S.A.P. is just breathtaking. Or Yossi Vardi with his deep listening technique.
Or Ellen Levy — just to name a few ....

So — do you know why I call it Cluetrain of the second dacade?
The clue train has arrived, are you going to take the delivery?

The book's website is here.

ClueTrain Manifesto - 10 years after ...

As I promised almost a year ago, I read the new edition of „The ClueTrain Manifesto” issued as 10 years anniversary edition in 2009 with the introduction written by the authors of original Manifesto. This very introduction is exactly what makes this edition so interesting.

Let me however, start with short summary about the original book. When it was first published in 1999 it was like a storm for corporate marketing strategies. Long before Web 2.0, and starting with 95 thesis it predicted the revolution brought about by blogs, forums and all open communication platforms that started to appear.

We were reading it and holding our breaths — it had such a powerful impact. We were almost certain that the ominous slogan: „The end of business as usual” will come true in the next 2-3 years ...

So ... what has happened after these 10 years... Certainly we do not yet see the end of business as usual ... and as one of the authors asked: „Did the original edition of CLUETRAIN commit the Fallacy of Hyperbolic Subtitle?”

As it usually happens, the answer is not straightforward and simple. From one point of view we do have Web 2.0 and socionomics, on the other hand „Huge corporations still stalk the earth. We still report to hierarchical structures that cut us paychecks in exchange for obedience” (DW)

The events of last 10 years show that the path to the new way of doing business is paved with obstacles — and the delicate interplay of successful prophecies with false once is the essential content of the reflections upon the decade after Cluetrain...

If I was to summarize, what are the authors feelings, I would probably say:

David Weinberger — is positive and full of hope and optimism. However his matured optimism knows that we must fight to defend optimism. It is certainly not automatic...

Doc Searls — is positive, but with a grain of salt. He admits the value of growing number of relationships, he sees the potential of his VRM vs. old CRM — yet he admits that „attention economy” still grows in power — only with changed medium: „Transaction we already have. Conversation we are only beginning too develop. (...) Relationship is the wild frontier. Closed "social" environments like MySpace and Facebook are good places to experiment with some of what we'll need, but as of today they're still silos. Think of them as AOL 2.0”

Chris Locke — seems to be less optimistic. „Between the Bubble and the Towers, business cooled considerably in its fanatical whoring after e-commerce billions”. He mocks of certain events of the decade (like Oprah Winfrey and some of her almost occult programs) . He ends his sarcastic essey by a quote from Bob Dylan song: „Don't follow leaders. Watch your parking meters” :-)

Rick Levine — is perhaps also a bit moderate. „How does it taste”? He asks — because he knows we can't ask such questions easily other the net. While he notices the positives (access, data scale, usability and participation) but as he expresses it: „The details we neglected (in Cluetrain prophecy — note by MS) to address were manifest”. It seems Rick rediscovered the power of physical relations between people — and knows well that this is unattainable in the Web...

So — 100 years later — and we have quite mixed impressions...

And we must fight for optimism...

BTW, the 10 years edition finally explained the name of the original book:

„Doc was reminded of a Silicon Valley company about which a friend had said, „The clue train stopped there four times a day, and they never took delivery” :-)

Heidegger case ...

This is not a review yet. This is just an announcement that I started reading, the excellent book by French philosopher Emmanuel Faye: „Heidegger. The Introduction of Nazism into Philosophy”. Probably it will take me some time to read it, and maybe I will be posting more posts while reading it — because it seems so important.

Of course, we know that Heidegger's „Being and Time” is one of the most important philosophical books of XX century. And although Heidegger was accused of sympathy to Nazism — his thought continues to inspire philosophers. But, does it rightly, though ?

Emmanuel Faye says: no. He thinks, that not only Heidegger's Nazism was not an accidental affair of his life in Nazi Germany, but that his entire thought is saturated with inhuman ideas.

„Heidegger does not present a philosophy of individual existence but rather a doctrine of radical self-sacrifice, where individualization is allowed only for the purpose of heroism in warfare.”

Let's read the Preface to the book:

„We have not yet grasped the full significance of the propagation of Nazism and Hitlerism in the domain of thoght and ideas — that mounting tidal wave that sweeps up minds, dominates them, and eventually overcomes all resistance.
Against it, the military victory was but the winning of a first battle — a vital one, to be sure, and a costly one for humanity, since it took a world war. Today a different battle, more protracted and sinister, is unfloding: a contest in which the future of the human race is at stake. It calls for a heightened awareness in all areas of thought, from philosophy to law and history.

Whatever we are considering the case of Heidegger, Schmitt, Jünger (in many respects), or Nolte, these main propagators of Nazism in the life of letters have taken the time to refine their strategy of reconquest after the defeat of the armies of Hitler's Reich.”

I'm sure it will is very important book. It was just published in English. I hope for high temperature discussions...

My „discovery” of Douglas Noël Adams

I probably should not admit to it - but Douglas Noël Adams was not quite known to me, until very recently. The author of „The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy” was an English writer, comedian and dramatist. He was also a musician — close friend to bands like Pink Floyd or Procol Harum.

My first Adams's book is „The Salmon of Doubt”. It is a set of posthumous Adams's writings, collected, edited and published in 2001 — one year after Douglas Adams sudden death.

The most important part of the book — „The Salmon of Doubt” itself is only a part of the book. To me it is totally surrealistic, absurd, satiric story that has — as always with Adams — deeper philosophical sense — as it describes absurdity of our life and our habits...

But my deeper attention was directed to the „Is there an Artificial God?” speech Adams gave at Cambridge in 1998 — which is also a part of the book. In that speech Adams recapitulates his views on religion. He was a devout atheist and based his atheism on logical thinking and the belief in science.

Where does the idea of God come from? Well, I think we have a very skewed point of view on an awful lot of things, but let's try and see where our point of view comes from. Imagine early man. Early man is, like everything else, an evolved creature and he finds himself in a world that he's begun to take a little charge of; he's begun to be a tool-maker, a changer of his environment with the tools that he's made and he makes tools, when he does, in order to make changes in his environment.
(...)
Early man thinks, 'Well, because there's only one sort of being I know about who makes things, whoever made all this must therefore be a much bigger, much more powerful and necessarily invisible, one of me and because I tend to be the strong one who does all the stuff, he's probably male'. And so we have the idea of a god.

I must say — that is some sense I like his opinions. Although I'm not an atheist, well, I'm strong believer — I value his thoughts — because what they ridicule and oppose is not the true faith — but it's typical distortion...

However, I must also say that Douglas's arguments, as well as most atheists arguments are also very superficial...

They usually (and so is Douglas doing) build their arguments on the fact that since Darwin and all other scientific discoveries — we no longer NEED G-d's idea. Certainly — we no longer need it !

We, indeed, don't need the idea of G-d which is the last resort for our failing minds and ideas ...
But we (those who believe) don't think of G-d as the EXPLANATION — we think of him as of the "who — who is calling” ....

To all those who do not seek for philosophical tones — it is fantastic, homourous and witty book. Strongly recommended.

Suresnes @ Paris @ France, 6.15 May 9th, 2010