[E]very artistic act, though it may die on the vine, though its author may go unrecognized in his/her lifetime, is like a white blood cell pumped to the surface of a lacerated Earth. By itself it does little to quell the bloodflow, but as it dies and knits with other dead blood cells, a scab forms, the bleeding stops, the wound heels, and the organism regains its health.

To call Armstrong the most inspirational athlete of our time wouldn't be syrupy or the least bit wrong. There have been more beloved sports icons, like Muhammad Ali. And more imperial, like Woods. And more prolific, like Wayne Gretzky. And more transcendent, like Babe Ruth. But the pedaler from Texas has one-upped them all in one sense: emerging from chemotherapy hell eight years ago with a single-minded rage. He channeled his anger every summer in an event most Americans barely knew existed until he started winning every year and drove home lessons about hope and will. Not only was a former cancer patient surviving, he was thriving. Which explains why his LIVE STRONG bracelets remain a global accessory and further evidence that Armstrong, because of the disease he toppled, has made more impact for humankind that any athlete since maybe Jackie Robinson.

[There is a] sort of liberalism that swept out the old anti-communist pro-America greatest-gen types in favor of internationalist radicalism that sought to remake nearly every social, intellectual, artistic and political institution in the culture. In order to get the new utopia into place, nearly everything traditional had to be detonated. The symphonic tradition gave way to atonalism, the classical architectural vocabulary was jettisoned for acres of bleak concrete bunkers, dead white males were swept from the ciriculuum, and the family – well, it could stay, as long as it wasn’t granted any particular importance over other social models.

Capitalist products are another version of the art works flooding western culture. The portable framed painting appeared at the birth of modern commerce in the early Renaissance. Capitalism and art have challenged and nourished each other ever since. Capitalist and artist are parallel types: the artist is just as amoral and acquisitive as the capitalist, and just as hostile to competitors. That in the age of the merchant-prince art works are hawked and sold like hot dogs supports my argument but is not central to it. Western culture is animated by a visionary materialism. Apollonian formalism has stolen from nature to make a romance of things, hard, shiny, crass, and willful.

It looks like Daylight Saving Time is about to be extended, and that has child safety and fire prevention advocates riled.

Congressional leaders of both parties have signed off on a proposal, being considered in Washington this week, to start Daylight Saving Time on the first Sunday in March and end on the last Sunday of November. They say it would save energy.

Hi Mr Falk,

Just a short note to say that I support your courageous examination of Wilber. He is the only one of your subjects that I in any way can comment upon, given that my experience with your list of gurus begins and ends with Wilber. Having considered his work for the past seven years, and been the lead art scholar for his pet university project for 16 months, before I resigned the position, I can say that all aspects of Wilber -- the man, the work, the institutions, the immediate culture (to follow his four quadrants) -- appear to me to be, in various degrees, deeply problematic. The work can be brilliant in moments but at the end of the day, I believe it is rightly seen as 'spiritual philosophy' that attempts commentary upon other fields of life with very mixed results.

He has moxie (which can entertain), exhibits erudition (which can edify), and a unique tonality (which some claim can enlighten) , but speaking as a person who has given this much serious thought over many years, I can personally report that I find his work is only helpful to the field of art (which includes artistry, artifact production, institutions, and interpretation) when tempered with the work of many other thinkers, Paglia, McLuhan, Inayat Khan, Scruton, Coomaraswamy, Housen, Gardner, and Mathieu being those most helpful to my work as an art philosopher and composer who seeks to formulate and demonstrate integral art philosophy, useful and illuminating to others.

In the context of those more careful and intellectually honest philosopher/thinkers, Wilber's work appears even more to be speculation -- at times informed speculation, to be sure (I've walked through Wilber's personal library) that sometimes gets you in the general ballpark of where you want to go (if you don't already know), but speculation nonetheless. The comedy arises when one then thinks of the attempts for a Wilber university -- which because it is based so much on the work of that one man, can be seen as something altogether a bit off-putting: institutionalized speculation based upon the agenda of one dude and his cultish followers.

All cultures are first made by cults and cult-like passion, so we ought not feel revulsion at that prospect, per se. But we can realize what the true nature of what the Wilber culture is -- the fervent appreciation for Wilber's brand of speculation -- and what it isn't -- namely, not nearly as comprehensive as it claims to be. Nor do I think it is ultimately all that practical a philosophy (though at times a step in that direction), which while not an explicit claim of Wilber's team of public relations writers, is nonetheless a blow against anyway.

Having corresponded personally with many of the scholars involved with Wilber, and having met personally many of those folks as well as many of the team of folks who produced Wilber Naked and the Wilber Institute, I can say that there are a lot of decent souls involved who are bright, intelligent, intellectually curious, and who treat Wilber and his work lightly (as one should).

But there is something else in the dynamic, namely a sense akin to inebriation at the chance to meet or interact with the mythic shiny one. Basically, I think Wilber makes many people drunk (that is, most of the people I've encountered, including myself for a spell). Of course the deeply new age tribe is easily swayed given certain words, but I'm talking about more skeptical people. Folks who seek the kind of wisdom Wilber might offer also seek a social/spiritual revolution of some degree. To approach Wilber and his four dimensions of self in the world (named above) in a sober manner is really the trick, isn't it. I can personally count the number of people doing THAT on basically one hand, though I'm the first to admit the limits of my own thinking.

Anyway, continued good luck and I'll follow your work. I don't know that I always agree with some of your finer points on Wilber, but I don't necessarily disagree and I appreciate that you are bringing them to the public sphere for continued consideration.

harmonic bows,
Matthew

On a more basic and spontaneous level, how about street musicians? Street musicians only flourish in the public realm, where there is a sizable flow of pedestrians, and where the environment is pleasant enough to linger for a while. Talk about frozen music -- some musicians specifically appreciate spaces like subway tunnels for the superior acoustics.

Relatedly, what really what a "new urbanist" music look/sound like? Instead of music created by "alienated geniuses" with no regard for the music's social function, how would we scale music for mixed human use? What about more public music?

We must ask whether the equivalence of male and female in Far Eastern symbolism was as culturally efficacious as the hierarchization of male over female has been in the west. Which system has ultimately benefited women more? Western science and industry have freed women from drudgery and danger. Machines do housework. The pill neutralizes fertility. Giving birth is no longer fatal. And the Apollonian line of western rationality has produced the modern aggressive woman who can think like a man and write obnoxious books. The tension and antagonism in western metaphysics developed human higher cortical power to great heights. Most of western culture is a distortion of reality. But reality should be distorted; that is, imaginatively amended. The Buddhist acquienscence to nature is neither accurate about nature nor to human potential. The Apollonian has taken us to the stars.

...I think it wasn’t terrorism that perverted [the word Palestinian]. It was public relations. As you say, there used to be Palestinian Arabs and Palestinian Jews. If anything, “Palestinian” was more often used to describe the region’s Jewish population. That community’s most important news medium was the Palestine Post -- now called the Jerusalem Post.

But at some point after 1948 – when the fledgling state of Israel was attacked by its Arab neighbors on all sides – it occurred to some clever spinmeisters that if the region’s Arabs could take sole possession of the term that would re-frame the debate. After all, doesn’t it simply make sense that Palestine belongs to the Palestinians?

The Israelis, along with everyone else, have been only too eager to accommodate this name change. It was seen as a minor concession.

Also, historically, as I’m sure you know, eastern Palestine, about 75% of the Mandate of Palestine became Trans-Jordan (meaning Palestine across the Jordan River) now simply known as Jordan. The majority of Jordanians – including BTW, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi – are as Palestinian as Abu Mazan.

(1) I do believe there’s one aspect to modernism that is useful, though, and that is the fact that it’s critical of existing conditions. Modernism isn’t content with things as they are. Unfortunately, it’s an alienated criticism, full of distance and emotional separation —in contrast to earlier movements that aimed for constructive change. Where older varieties of reformism wanted to take what exists and try to improve it, modernism just wants to throw away the past—lock, stock, and barrel.

(2) The avant-garde has built and built and built on the idea of the alienated artist. If you engage the reality of what people truly need in a building, you’ve “sold out.” If you haven’t fought bitterly with your client, you’ve failed as an architect. This is inscribed in the minds of students by academics who very often are themselves failures as practitioners. That’s a nice game, except what’s happened is that, as this has overtaken all the schools, the best architectural talent has been removed from action.

(3) [N]eo-traditionalism is more than just an attempt to revive something that has lapsed. It’s a juncture between the new and the traditional.

(4) There are some people who want to live downtown where the action is. They wanna live in a loft. Others like row houses. Others need single-family houses. Yet others seek space in the country. I insist that all of these should be available.

One problem is that fanatics like the rabid environmentalists only recognize one or two of these options as legitimate. Environmentalists want to green everything. Environmental law at this moment prevents the construction of authentic urbanism. You couldn’t build any great traditional city today if you apply the environmental laws on open space, separate uses, and so forth. One of the things I’m trying to do is to get environmentalists to accept that Americans have a right to the full range of habitats, from country living to high-density urbanism, and that the laws must be different in every type of environment. But environmentalists are so arrogant they won’t even engage in this conversation.

(5) There are two interpretations of nature. One places humanity apart from nature. The other says that humans are part of the natural order. Environmentalists favor the first definition, and that’s the source of many problems. I believe humans have rights to habitats that are paved over. Humans have rights to places like London and New York.

Because most humans like to live in relatively high density, they actually end up leaving most of nature alone. Not because some regulator forbids people from building a house where they want—preventing people from going where they want will never hold in a free society. Mandated urban boundaries will never hold, because Americans have rights, including a right to the pursuit of happiness. It’s actually market drive—wanting to live near services instead of in the woods—that brings people to cities. Since Americans have a right to live wherever they please, if we want to keep them out of the wheat fields we’re going to have to make cities so attractive that people don’t want to leave.

In any case, contrary to environmentalist claims and common perceptions, America is not running out of land. You could give every single American household one full acre of land, and it would only consume 4 percent of the acreage in the continental U.S. Four percent. And that doesn’t include Alaska.

From 1996 to 1999, I interviewed nearly 250 people involved in the most militant camps of the Palestinian cause: volunteers who, like S, had been unable to complete their suicide missions, the families of dead bombers, and the men who trained them.

None of the suicide bombers — they ranged in age from 18 to 38 — conformed to the typical profile of the suicidal personality. None of them was uneducated, desperately poor, simple-minded, or depressed. Many were middle-class and held paying jobs. Two were the sons of millionaires. They all seemed entirely normal members of their families. They were polite and serious, and in their communities were considered to be model youths. Most were bearded. All were deeply religious.

I was told that to be accepted for a suicide mission the volunteers had to be convinced of the religious legitimacy of the acts they were contemplating, as sanctioned by the divinely revealed religion of Islam. Many of these young men had memorised large sections of the Koran and were well versed in the finer points of Islamic law and practice. But their knowledge of Christianity was rooted in the medieval crusades, and they regarded Judaism and Zionism as synonymous.

Most of the men I interviewed requested strict anonymity. The majority spoke in Arabic and they all talked matter-of-factly about the bombings, showing an unshakeable conviction in the rightness of their cause and their methods. When I asked them if they had any qualms about killing innocent civilians, they would immediately respond, “The Israelis kill our children and our women. This is war, and innocent people get hurt.”

Hey Tuff Ghost,

Your blog is courageous and insightful.

I agree that the SD analyses of terrorism (seen