converse
conversation
to talk informally with another
or others
to listen and hear
to exchange views and opinions
agreement and disagreement
movement
towards and away from
to advance and to reverse
a dance of harmony and dissonance
conversion
to turn around
to repent
or endorse
towards the choir of silence
it’s all very stimulating and the immediate and future benefits seem very enticing but perhaps a question that needs to be asked is if the net is really working in our new age of networking?
things are definitely brought together in a net but usually the togetherness is as a direct result of being trapped
science is revealing more and more just how connected we really are and for some this is very encouraging, for others disturbing
nevertheless we have constructed a man made cyber system on top of this natural interconnectedness and we seem to celebrate it with relish
I can’t help asking what we have left behind or perhaps even subdued that we feel we need to construct a superficial community when we are so naturally and amazingly already connected?
(Pawel Kuczynski)
The whole Brett Murray/The Spear (of-the-nation) disturbance in the media of late, whichever way one views it, clearly reveals the power of the creative arts to effect society and bring people to their feet, perhaps even their knees.
It seems to have provoked people on all sides of the issue to start thinking, expressing those thoughts, debating, engaging and some arguing passionately, even heatedly as they wrestle with their own perspectives and our shared destiny.
As potentially volatile as this all is in light of our extremely immature and uneducated “democracy” here in South Africa I think it is a most wonderful thing and hopefully it will keep us wondering for many decades to come.
Yet still I feel compelled to ask the question: Why are there so few “Brett Murray’s”?
Why are so many artists seemingly locked into almost exclusively doing commercial drivel; “ABBA” type pop ‘tributes’ or playing “Piano Man” for a essentially drunken society who demand nostalgic memories, or serving a placatory propaganda type role in corporate settings merely to get a monetary handout?
Where are the real “prophets”?
Awaken and live long you “Brett Murray” types!
(regardless of what side of the fence you sit, or what we think about what you say)
__________________________
Maybe the poet is gay
But he’ll be heard anyway
Maybe the poet is drugged
But he won’t stay under the rug
Maybe the voice of the spirit
In which case you’d better hear it
Maybe he’s a woman
Who can touch you where you’re human
Male, female slave or free
Peaceful or disorderly
Maybe you and he will not agree
But you need him to show you new ways to see
Don’t let the system fool you
All it wants to do is rule you
Pay attention to the poet
You need him and you know it
Put him up against the wall
Shoot him up with pentothal
Shoot him up with lead
You won’t call back what’s been said
Put him in the ground
But one day you’ll look around
There’ll be a face you don’t know
Voicing thoughts you’ve heard before
Male, female slave or free
Peaceful or disorderly
Maybe you and he will not agree
But you need him to show you new ways to see
Don’t let the system fool you
All it wants to do is rule you
Pay attention to the poet
You need him and you know it
BRUCE COCKBURN - “Maybe The Poet”
______________________________________
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Spear_%28painting%29
“maybe with all this rampant technology and almost universal connectivity, have we started to run out of original ideas?” – anonymous
I’m an avid internet user. I post and read blogs all the time. I love to gather information. I work online and communicate online. I also play online.
Recently I have been made more and more aware of how big a part the internet plays in my life. I’m sure I’m not the only one.
However, I am fast coming to realize that there is dangerous illusion in all of this. I feel like I’m in touch with so many but am I really? Even the data, the facts I hunger for and seek after, are they really the facts?
And then I saw this short TED talk:
Some time ago I posted on the topic of making contact
http://alalohwhydee.wordpress.com/2011/07/31/making-contact/
and once again I am brought back to a nagging reality in my life. How real is my reality? And is the way I do things really helping? I’d like to think so. I’d like to believe so.
I look at the life of Jesus and with all the data he must have had at his disposal and alongside the huge importance of his message he seemed primarily focused on simply making contact. But not just intellectually but basic, demonstrative, interactive, physical contact. He had a message sure enough but it was his life and his example – his physical example that was the main thing.
He did speak and a lot is focused on and recorded about what he said. However, he seemed content to speak almost exclusively in parables and live in a realm of mystery to those he was with and even still to us this day.
It makes me wonder about the data driven world we live in. Even in our spiritual space and spiritual places we tend to major almost exclusively on the cerebral, the intellectual. We sit docile and respectfully silent and listen to one person preaching, teaching. Then we leave. And we call this community, fellowship.
Online social networking means we don’t ever have to leave … or join.
Online there is no real us, …and no real me either.
But we choose to believe there is.
From reading and pondering I understand the life and times of Jesus to have been very noisy and even disruptive. However, they were full of physical contact.
He touched, laughed with, cried with, walked with, talked with, loved, hugged, lay next to, ate with, rowed with, even died with.
Informal, very physical, tangible, close, unsafe, risky, messy, even smelly.
Physical contact, full physical contact.
For me the internet promises this, but it’s all merely a virtual reality.
And we seem to invest disproportionate amounts of energy to make it seem like we are actually making contact.
But are we?
We live in an era saturated with branding, slogans, memes, pop iconography, subcultures, rampant pop media, fashion obsession, subcultures within subcultures within cultures, and a dominant worldview of citations, quotes, references – whether they be scientific, religious, literary, social, or even tribal.
Of late I’ve been thinking about what percentage of what we think is what WE ourselves actually think and what percentage of what we think is what others think?
I throw this out even though personally we may very strongly not think we think what others’ think influences us to think, say and do things?
… what do you think? … do we, or don’t we?
And what would it mean if we are offended at this thought or if our immediate response is that we haven’t really thought much about it?
http://mg.co.za/article/2012-03-01-angelinas-right-leg
It wasn’t that long ago when we were all up in arms about the POIB (Protection of Information Bill) and the need to protect the freedom of the press and their responsible democratic role in informing the public about…
…me too, I also was mobilised. … the ANC governments diabolical attempts to cover up their rampant corruption and sinister underhand goings on are despicable to say the least …. (still ongoing … perhaps quietly gathering momentum under cover of the frenzied press maelstrom of Malema’s expulsion from the ANC – who knows?)
BUT, is this the press we were/are trying to protect..? … the press liberated, mobilized… and telling us … what? …
…what we want to hear? … definitely… or maybe what we want to hear voraciously piggy-backed on the revenues such repugnant and seductively sensationalized “press” will generate for their own greedy little coffers…
… or maybe it’s the press – that gaggle of educated, sophisticated intelligentsia hooked and dangling with hungry mouths agape as they are led along and played ruthlessly by a cunning master to provide the exact sensationalistic, diverting cover for other more sinister covert operations…?
so, is it about truth and objective journalism in the quest to inform and protect our floundering fledgling democratic society … or is it all about the money? … all about the “WIIFM” (What’s In It For Me)?
… and now, here I am … mobilized and once more up in arms about a leg…
… and the way it’s all seemingly such incredibly “Big Press” in a sick society perhaps gone to hell and back way before the end has even come…
In South Africa a secrecy bill (the “Protection of Information Bill”) has been shoved through in what clearly appears to be a sneaky, underhand and sinister fashion. If it gets past any constitutional court appeals and hearings it stands to give the government unimaginable power to control who says and does what … and exclusively at their (the ruling party’s) own discretion and for their own personal benefit and ultimately, protection (from exposure and prosecution for corruption and any other deviance or malpractice).
A thought from another planet perhaps: – the bill, what it stands for and the way it was forced through as well as the alleged reasons for this action is to my mind somewhat extremely unethical to say the least. The fact that it comes through the ANC is nothing less than shocking.
However, in terms of the direct implications of the bill on the “free press” what to my mind does perhaps need to be thought through is the extent to which the press really is “free” and objectively “journalistic.”
Let’s face it, sensationalism sells and revenues from advertising in publications that generate sensationalistic response is what makes the world go round for the press industry.
The press feel like their freedom to inform is being taken away, as well as their freedom to bring an ‘objective’, factual perspective (and before I am branded as a neo-Nazi, totalitarian despot sympathizer, I do believe that strong debate and passionate opposition is essential and very healthy for any community).
But for many decades now I personally battle to read the newspapers, or watch TV, TV news, or read current news editorials as they are to my mind so overwhelmingly manipulatively inflammatory and one sided in terms of the sensationalistic negative spin they seem to take (take the whole recent Rupert Murdoch debacle for example).
Could it be argued that the cries of the “free” press are the same as the cries of the record industry against piracy (who even mobilise the artistes themselves to campaign against piracy) when they themselves, to my mind at least, are the biggest pirates, raping and pillaging creativity, the arts, culture, artistes and the coffers of the artistes themselves for their own gain and dictating to the masses what, when, and who to listen to in order to extract exorbitant profits for themselves?
(and as a personal footnote jab, the Gospel Worship/”Contemporary Music” industry as well as the Christian/Gospel Book Publishing Industries do exactly the same thing – selling manipulatively marketed, sensually “popular” merchandise for exorbitant profits and in so doing dictating to a thoughtless and naive church what the “prophetic” voice and message and culture of God is… – which in the present Christian scene is merely a very weak, attempted copy of what is perceived to be popular and trendy in the ‘secular’ marketplace. - A bit extremely blasphemous to my mind … … .. . don’t you think?)
It is alleged that according to an interview the legendary Charlie Parker gave sometime in the 1950s, that one night in 1939 he was playing “Cherokee” in a jam session with guitarist William ‘Biddy’ Fleet when he hit upon a method for developing his solos that enabled him to play what he had been hearing in his head for some time, by connecting harmony using the diminished relationship of dominants. Parker at this time also realized that the twelve tones of the chromatic scale can lead melodically to any key, breaking some of the confines of simpler jazz soloing.
As a result Charlie Parker’s innovative approaches to melody, rhythm, and harmony exercised enormous influence on his contemporaries. At first many didn’t like it, or him much at all. They even tried to ridicule him, his way of playing as well as all who embraced and continued with this new, crazy idea.
These days the ‘mixit’/text/short message system (possibly as a natural follow-on from street music forms like Rap) is presenting a similar challenge to language as we know it? Meanings of words and expressions, idioms and the like, and in many instances meaning itself is being challenged and the so-called ‘purists’ are not at all really happy.
Many are scrambling to maintain the ‘purity’ of a language which is changing all the time anyway.
Is it possible that language, (English especially as the dominant force in global communication these days) is experiencing a “Be Bop” period? Like Be Bop, is mixit/text(sms) ‘language’ breaking some of the confines of simpler communication linguistic forms and patterns?
Is there a lesson for us in this? … and might this be applicable to other forms of cultural communication? Politics? Religion? Economics? Community?
I have begun to notice more and more how many people make quotes for their status updates on Facebook. On Twitter it has reached a level of almost total quotation mania. In my experience well over 90% of all tweets are links to some article on the web.
It’s almost like a new currency has sprung into existence. We love trying to impress others by the clothes we wear, the car we drive, the company we keep … Are we now trying to convince people we are well read and educated? Are we trying to make a show for the watching world that we are well connected and at the cutting edge of technology, intelligence, art, culture, politics?
Have we lost our ability to think for ourselves? Could this be the effects of social/cognitive/intellectual/moral consumerism setting in? Fast food ethics and morality? No mess, no fuss, just collect it off the shelf. And it’s all colour coded and wrapped in plastic rap for our hygienic convenience. God help us!
Yet still the increasing outcry is for individualism and personal significance. We all desire independence and self determination but could this be a self inflicted form of ‘group think’? Has the human race given up?
Group·think is the act or practice of reasoning or decision-making by a group, especially when characterized by uncritical acceptance or conformity to prevailing points of view. It is the tendency within organizations or society to promote or establish the view of the predominant group.
Our beloved democracy is the same only it is far more decisive and demonstratively unforgiving towards those who think independently. Democracy forces the opinion of the masses into modern doctrine and legislated culture.
Being a follower of Christ myself I have also noticed that Christians seem to spend a majority of time and much effort quoting often extensive passages of biblical text not only in their social networking status publications but also in their interpersonal communication. Whether offering personal advice or counsel or even simply commenting on a news article even in informal social settings. It also seems apparent to me that we seem to regard the accuracy of the literal quotation of any given text as weightier than any truth or sensibility that may be present in it in a given situation. This too appears to me like a form of social and political currency. Who might we be trying to impress? Are we really trying to help and engage or market ourselves? And who do we think we are fooling?
“Your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven” – this is what Jesus said as a key part in his teaching on prayer.
So I ask myself, is this what we are doing happening in heaven? Is this what heaven is going to be all about for ever and ever? quoting scriptural texts at each other? Will we reference everything we experience and participate with there? When we cross over into the heavenly spiritual realm will we hear God quoting back biblical text to every question we have? Is this the way God speaks? Does God even speak human language? Is what we are doing now the language and culture of heaven? I mean, when one travels to France they speak French and especially in France, … English doesn’t really cut it …
Will God’s communication to us be tagged with the topographical grid reference of each statement? Is God at all interested in what we have to say or think? Is this what we are created and even redeemed for? To be a silent audience without opinion? Is this more important that the people God created, redeemed? Yet in modern Christian culture it seems to me that the content of the passage of scriptural text quoted battles to hold any water unless it is tagged with a “John 3:16” or a “Matthew 28:19-20”. People are important, yes, but not nearly as important than the accuracy and fluency of the text quoted. Is this the Gospel? “Hand me my sledgehammer, .. I want to go tell someone how much God loves them.”
Does God want a mass of “believers” who chant the same thing over and over in unison? “Oooo, say that again … that part about me being great and almighty and magnificent … “ Is this a true reflection of the nature and character of God?
I was always under the impression that in Christ God was setting us free to be an extension of his presence and a free flow of his life in the present world and in the realm to come. Will heaven be filled to the ceiling with scrolls and books (now “Kindle’s and iPads too perhaps)? or will it be filled with liberated beings who have reached their full potential and optimum effectiveness not in word or deed, but in their full spiritual essence? … in who they are and not in what they managed to make the fig leaves look like in the setting sun.
My God, maybe Roger Waters was correct all along?
COME BACK, PINK FLOYD!!! ALL IS FORGIVEN!!!!!
