Archive for the ‘Philosophy’ Category
Prometheus Unbound
To suffer woes which Hope thinks infinite;
To forgive wrongs darker than death or night;
To defy Power, which seems omnipotent;
To love, and bear; to hope till Hope creates
From its own wreck the thing it contemplates;
Neither to change, nor falter, nor repent;
This, like thy glory, Titan, is to be
Good, great and joyous, beautiful and free;
This is alone Life, Joy, Empire, and Victory
Icarus
On golden wings I soar above you all
Downward my gaze is cast
Lofty, great, with terrible claw
Yet in the deep, I feel descending sorrow
For one day, I know I will fall
To Pan
| Hymn of Pan (Shelley) | Hymn to Pan (Crowley) |
| From the forests and highlands We come, we come; From the river-girt islands, Where loud waves are dumb, Listening to my sweet pipings. The wind in the reeds and the rushes, The bees on the bells of thyme, The birds on the myrtle bushes, The cicale above in the lime, And the lizards below in the grass, Were as silent as ever old Tmolus was, Listening to my sweet pipings. Liquid Peneus was flowing, I sang of the dancing stars, |
Thrill with the lissome lust of the light, O man! My man! Come careering out of the night Of Pan! Io Pan! Io Pan! Io Pan! Come over the sea From Sicily and from Arcady! Roaming as Bacchus, with fauns and pards And nymphs and satyrs for thy guards, On a milk-white ass, come over the sea To me, to me, Come with Apollo in bridal dress (Shepherdess and pythoness) Come with Artemis, silken shod, And wash thy white thigh, beautifal God, In the moon of the woods, on the marble mount, The dimpled dawn of the amber fount! Dip the purple of passionate prayer In the crimson shrine, the scarlet snare, The soul that startles in eyes of blue To watch thy wantonness weeping through The tangled grove, the gnarled bole Of the living tree that is spirit and soul And body and brain – come over the sea, (Io Pan! Io Pan!) Devil or God, to me, to me, My man! My man! Come with trumpets sounding shrill Over the hill! Come with drums low muttering From the spring! Come with flute and come with pipe! Am I not ripe? I, who wait and writhe and wrestle With air that hath no boughs to nestle My body, weary of empty clasp, Strong as a lion and sharp as an asp - Come, O come! I am numb With the lonely lust of devildom. Thrust the sword through the galling fetter, All-devourer, all begetter; Give me the sign of the Open Eye, And the token erect of thorny thigh, And the word of madness and mystery, O Pan! Io Pan! Io Pan! Io Pan Pan! Pan Pan! Pan, I am a man: Do as thou wilt, as a great god can, O Pan! Io Pan! Io Pan! Io Pan Pan! I am awake In the grip of the snake. The eagle slashes with beak and claw; The Gods withdraw; The great beasts come, Io Pan! I am borne To death on the horn Of the Unicorn. I am Pan! Io Pan! Io Pan Pan! Pan! I am thy mate, I am thy man, Goat of thy flock, I am gold, I am god, Flesh to thy bone, flower to thy rod. With hoofs of steel I race on the rocks Through solstice stubborn to equinox. I rave; and I rape and I rip and I rend Everlasting, world without end, Mannikin, maiden, maenad, man, In the might of Pan. Io Pan! Io Pan Pan! Pan! Io Pan! |
Those who speak do not know…
I have been blogging on and off since May 2002.
I just found my first post at http://web.archive.org/web/20030529100121/www.douglasp.com/2002/05/05.html.
I have always struggle with how open to blog about things in the company and things in my own life.
These days, it is not just blogging, but Twitter, FriendFeed, etc., but the issue is the same.
I will admit that blogging/micro-blogging is a powerful way to communicate with the broader community, but I wonder about being “too accessible”.
I think a lot about the lessons of Lao Tzu (the title of this post) and Machiavelli (particularly chapter 12 of The Prince) in this regard.
As I think through this, I likely going to take one of my semi-frequent pauses from blogging/micro-blogging…
The Quiet Coup
Wonderful read. Via Winer. http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200905/imf-advice/2
In a primitive political system, power is transmitted through violence, or the threat of violence: military coups, private militias, and so on. In a less primitive system more typical of emerging markets, power is transmitted via money: bribes, kickbacks, and offshore bank accounts. Although lobbying and campaign contributions certainly play major roles in the American political system, old-fashioned corruption—envelopes stuffed with $100 bills—is probably a sideshow today, Jack Abramoff notwithstanding.
Instead, the American financial industry gained political power by amassing a kind of cultural capital—a belief system. Once, perhaps, what was good for General Motors was good for the country. Over the past decade, the attitude took hold that what was good for Wall Street was good for the country. The banking-and-securities industry has become one of the top contributors to political campaigns, but at the peak of its influence, it did not have to buy favors the way, for example, the tobacco companies or military contractors might have to. Instead, it benefited from the fact that Washington insiders already believed that large financial institutions and free-flowing capital markets were crucial to America’s position in the world.
Repost: Nothing is Impossible
I posted this before and I am going to post it again for affect (I just used it in an email thread).
People said it was impossible, but [Dean] Kamen hates that word. Don’t tell me it’s impossible, he says, tell me you can’t do it. Tell me it’s never been done. Because the only real laws in this world — the only things we really know – are the two postulates of relativity, the three laws of Newton, the four laws of thermodynamics, and Maxwell’s equation — no, scratch that, the only things we really know are Maxwell’s equation, the three laws of Newton, the two postulates of relativity, and the periodic table. That’s all we know that’s true. All the rest are man’s laws [bold mine].
http://www.esquire.com/features/dean-kamen-1208-3
I cannot tell you how important this view is to my personal philosophy or to the vision that I strive to achieve.
Non Serviam.
The Death of Metaphysics
For a very long time, I have studied metaphysics in all its multi-varied forms.
I was always looking for some path. A path to answer the so called “deeper questions”.
A couple of weeks ago, I chanced upon the below:
When Hofuku and Chokei took a walk
in the mountain, Hofuku pointed at it and said, “Look here, this
is no other than the Holy Peak itself !” Chokei replied, “Fine, just
as you say, but what a pity !”
Over those weeks since I read this, I have found this simply story contains the beginning and likely the totality of the path that I was looking for.
Realizing this is profoundly liberating and there is no irony in that statement.
Coffee is for closers…
This is my favorite monologue in movie history. I have even bought this DVD for people at work, just so they can see it.
Alec Baldwin plays the perfect asshole (rivaled only by his “I am God” performance in Malice), but this doesn’t take away from the power of the scene or of the acting.
The look on Jack Lemon’s face when Alec Baldwin pulls out the brass balls says it all.
Information Liberation Movement
Context: Liberate your data…
Jon calls it “hosted life bits“. I call it “Infobus“.
Whatever you call it, it is your data and it should be liberated from the tryanny of the infohole (my term for a system that takes in information, but only let’s it out on its terms).
So how do you combat an infohole?
You need four things: Principles, Scenarios, Architecture, Bits.
The rest of this post is brainstorm about principles…
your data = digitial information that you hold the copyright for &| digitial information you have purchased &| digitial information that you have licensed, giving you certain rights of use and reproduction.
I am sure that I need an attorney to correct the above, but it makes sense in my happy little head, so let’s move on to the principles:
- You own your data.
- You determine where and how it is stored.
- You may share (licence for use) your data with any individual or group across the world using standard Internet technologies.
- You determine if/when/how this data is accessed, the terms of use and the revocation of the license.
- Only you may destroy your data.
- You should not need to license your data to any individual or group to achieve the above.
- You should not need to give up any “abilities” (searchablity, etc) to achieve the above.
I tried to stay broad here on purpose to capture the essense of the principles, but I am open to more (or more importantly less)…
Liberate your data
I have been meaning to write this post since reading Dave Winer’s post titled “Where is Twitter’s WordPress?”.
I have thought about tackling this subject from a couple of different approaches (some of which involve Joseph “Property is Theft!” Proudhon), but in the absence of a better idea, I am going right up the middle.
As a principle, I will assert that I “own” my data. I own my contact/friends list. I own my tweets or whatever we are calling the quanta of microbloging. I own the blog posts I write. I own my feed list. I own the pictures I take. I generally own my media (music, etc.). I certainly own the metadata for my media (ratings, etc.). In short, if I have produced it or purchased it (not licenced), I own it (as a first principle).
Now I am sure that an attorney (I know a few that I may get email from on a post like this) will explain that I may not actually “own” my data that is hosted on a third-party site depending on the contract that I enter into when I agreed to join.
I will sipulate to that.
That said, I will forcefully assert that I do “own” most of the things stored on my home LAN (I can think of things I licence, however) and on my hosted server on which this blog resides (modulo licenced software, etc.)
So I have to ask the a few questions…
Why do we have what I will refer to as a “data architecture” for the much of the consumer aspects of the Web that relies on third-party sites to house data that each of us already owns?
Why does the system that effectively allow these third-party sites to do whatever they please with our data?
Why don’t we have an system that is based on the fundemental principle that you own your data?
Why don’t we have a system that would enable you to control how your data is shared and used, while also allowing you to reap the benefits of a federation of users across Web also sharing similar data (on their terms)?
We could build such a system with all the basic infrastructure we have in place today (although I could think of some new MIME types I would want to introduce).
My question is why haven’t we?
And like all things, that question reduces to “Why haven’t I?”
More to come on this topic, I promise…