My first remark is that there is a distinction that has to be made between an integral artwork (an object that elicits an integral aesthetic sense) and the interpretive capacity audience persons can have in order to fashion the fullest possible response/appreciation to an artwork object. The former is a matter of semiotics (see my Polysemy essay); the latter is a matter of training and perspective-taking in the context of the art world and interpretation/perception through art. As we all know, to really experience enhanced meaning from art takes some patience, hard work, and dedication.

The work of Abigail Housen (not Houseman) has detected five major stages of aesthetic response in the part of viewers of visual art (as well as four more transition stages). This is a vast topic (see my To Suspend Disbelief essay on her work). But it bears note that Housen traces aesthetic-response development through the inquiries the viewer implicity utilizes to interpret art -- stage 1 'what?', stage 2 'how?', stage 3 'who?' stage 4 'when?', and then with stage five, all these questions in an integrated inquiry into meaning. Her research and conclusions find a pattern of development of aesthetic-response (again, to visual art, the subject of her study) that proceeds from egocentricity to, in short, a kind of vision-logic, an integrated perceptive capacity.

My point is that there is only a limited value in using Housen's research (or any aesthetic-interpretive theory) to talk to artists about artwork or even marketing products such as this ILP package. It is basically apples and oranges (both being fruit, but with entirely different tastes). My favorite, btw, are Harelson apples, second being Cortland, for what it's worth (next to nothing).

The second remark is that this ILP Package is not artwork. It is something else -- namely a product that is being offered to the market that II caters (or attempts to cater) towards. They think there is a demand, and so they want their products to be the supply. This takes us away from a more strict consideration of art and into a realm were things might be 'artistic' or 'creative', to be sure, but it is not art, or collaborative art. Thus the aesthetics have to do with advertising and convincing people to buy.

Now before the team graphic designers on this project have my head (I know these cats), let me hasten to point out that the ILP project not being a piece of artwork is hardly a bad thing. It is rather wise it is not. Artwork, as I define it in my work, is 'intuition captured in a frame', no matter the medium or framing material.

And this sort of quality is not what a thought-out, long-planned, long-worked on marketing product of an institution ought be based upon. The stakes are too great. What with marketing research, the kind of planning and logistics, public relations, capital required, and on and on -- as a person who's day-job is at a Chicago advertising agency, you learn right quick that to treat what we produce as artwork is a recipe for a poor product. I actually participated in the very early discussions about this product, when I was still part of II. If the dynamic of that time held through the duration of the product creation, II was trying to be creative/innovate within the particular constraints of their market.

(It bears note that with artwork, too, certain constraints are in play, if the artist wants his/her artwork to have a coherancy and resonance with the audience. It is just that these sorts of constraints are not nearly as narrow as those for marketed products.)

There is a degree of overlap between the advertising world and the artistry world (a much longer subject, and a very provocative subject of an upcoming essay of mine), but there are strong distinctions between the two worlds. If nothing else, the presence of money requires the severe toning-down of raw intuition, thus cutting out a fundamental component of what makes really great art what it is.

The aesthetic sense of the cover of this ILP thang is indexed to its semiotic connection with the market -- people who are going to purchase this product. To be successful, it has to hit the referent-points that people can recognize without a lot of thought. And not just hit the points of recognition, but with an amplified, memorable, unique message. It cannot alienate, it cannot be confusing, it cannot be a 'thinker'. Thus you see the iconography of line-drawings (both male and female in typical gender-poses, as well as what looks like hands in a meditation position). These have a brand-connection with the iconography on INaked.

You see a hip Asian couple, a businessman, and an educated-looking older woman (could be a teacher, middle-mgr, arts administrator, etc). And you have buzzwords -- body, mind, spirit, transform. There is a science to all of this, and it is what you find constitutive of advertising agencies, who have their fingers to the pulse of what consumers need to see/hear/feel/sense in order to take their credit card out of their wallet or purse.

I have no idea whatsoever whether these are proper choices given the market for this sort of thing, nor do I know the craftmanship involved in the assembly of this project will be an engine to II's bottom line (personally I'm uninterested in this product, other than the fact that a good buddy is part of it, and I'm very happy for him, cuz I know how hard he has worked).

If this project is anything like Wilber's previous works, it works to satisfy long-time customers/readers, but in fact is more attuned to appeal to those new to integral, new to Wilber, new to this whole thing, because it capitalizes in the excitment that people generally feel (call it being 'drunk with integral') when they first encounter this wondrous world of Wilber.

You see this strategy in the recent projects: INaked was marketed to 22-year-old males (initially, before they toned down the elicit sex stuff -- 'intercourse' became 'discourse' in the reader forum), who were new to integral. TOE was marketed to business persons with an intellectual bent (with the W Bennis endorsement), who were new to integral. IU was/is marketed to academians who require a strong degree of respectibility, stability, and peer-review, as if they were new to integral. Wilber himself stated that he wrote/writes his books as if he has to explain his system from the very beginning. This is in fact a choice, not a necessity as he as cleverly claimed.

All of which makes sense if you consider that the prime driver behind II and its projects wants to grow, be known, get big, be famous, and infiltrate pop culture. This requires a constant appeal to 'new'. It even requires an obsession with pop culture, and an obsession with public reputation.

And so long-time fans of Wilber, don't bemoan the fact that you don't like the aesthetic of ILP. It isn't marketed to the you of right now. It is rather marketed to those people who, right now, are like you were when you first dove into Wilber's pond. Excited, thrilled, and willing to spend money to participate in the so-called revolution.

Like the ideology of communism, our new enemy is elitist, led by a self-appointed vanguard of Islamic militants that presume to speak for the Muslim masses. Like the ideology of communism, our new enemy teaches that the innocent can be murdered to serve a political vision. Like the ideology of communism, our new enemy pursues totalitarian aims. Like the ideology of communism, our new enemy is dismissive of free peoples, claiming that men and women who live in liberty are weak and decadent. And like the ideology of communism, Islamic radicalism is doomed to fail.

It will fail because it undermines the freedom and creativity that makes human progress possible and human societies successful. The only thing modern about our enemy's vision is the weapons they want to use against us. The rest of their grim vision is defined by a warped image of the past, a declaration of war on the idea of progress itself. And whatever lies ahead in the war against this ideology, the outcome is not in doubt: Those who despise freedom and progress have condemned themselves to isolation, decline, and collapse. Because free peoples believe in the future, free peoples will own the future.

It is just one sign of National Review's success that people think American conservatism is very old. It's not. In fact, even as we conservatives cheer the “wisdom of the ancients” and decry the modernity and even postmodernity of our ideological adversaries, American conservatism is arguably the youngest ideology on the block. Marxism, which still clings on like a tough carpet mold in a faculty lounge, is well over a century old. As are all of its dirigiste and supposedly revolutionary offspring, including socialism, environmentalism, feminism, and even anarchism. Even the “Youth Movement” began in Italy some 90 years ago.

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Conservatives favored geographic diversity, allowing localities to govern themselves (a principle some conservatives unfortunately supported to the point of perversity, as in the case of Jim Crow). The progressive mind at home and abroad believed in the One Best Way for everything. The conservative mind championed transcendence, the authority of God and the wisdom of the ancients. The progressive mind chuckled at transcendence, disputed the authority of God when it interfered with the expertise of the state and scoffed at the wisdom of the ancients as the prattling of irrelevant, greedy dead men in funny clothes. Conservatives saw nothing wrong — and much that was right — with attaching one’s loyalties to a place, a specific civilization; and if that meant defending that place and that civilization, then so be it. The progressive mind is universal and cosmopolitan and hence finds its allegiance in concepts of the parliaments of man. He strives for utopia — which means “no place.” The conservative strives for eutopia, which simply means the “good place.”

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William F. Buckley understood that conservatism can only be a partial philosophy of life, because any calling which claims to be a whole philosophy of life is not one at all. It is a religion, and in all likelihood a false one.

We get our artist voices by being part of a culture. All great artist voices originate in a community—they arise within gatherings, tribes, and social environments.

...[The] temptation is to move the goalposts on this war and to expect the impossible. If someone had told me three years ago that by October 2005, Saddam Hussein's murderous tyranny would be over for ever, that Iraq would have a new constitution that emerged from a democratic process and that it will soon have a democratically elected parliament and government, I would have been thrilled. If I were further told that the inevitably embittered Sunni Arab minority had decided to throw itself into democratic politics to amend the constitution and protect its interests in a future Iraq, I would be amazed by how swiftly democratic habits can take root in a post-totalitarian country. If I had been told that, despite extraordinary provocation from Jihadist and Sunni Arab terrorists, the country had not dissolved into civil war, and that unemployment was dropping, I'd be heartened. If I had also been told that the United States had not suffered another major terror attack since the fall of 2001, I would have refused to believe it. The fact that the administration has made countless, terrible errors in the aftermath of the invasion and miscalculated badly on how the Baathists and Jihadists would fight back, should not distract us from these underlying realities. In 2002, I feared U.S. casualties approaching 10,000 in a brutal, urban war for Baghdad. The enemy gave us a simmering insurgency instead, shrewdly calculating that that was their best defense. They were right in the short term. But that makes it all the more imperative to prove them wrong in the long term. For the sake of the 2,000 who have already died; and the countless, innocent civilian Iraqis who have borne an even greater burden, let's do all we can to make this work.

image: Stephen Dunn/Getty Images

After their mind-boggling 7-5 win over the Astros on Tuesday (and Wednesday), the Chicago White Sox -- no kidding -- are on the verge of winning the World Series. For the first time since the light bulb was most people's idea of cool technology.

BAGHDAD, Iraq (CNN) -- The Iraqi draft constitution has passed, according to final results released by Iraqi election officials.

More than 78 percent of 9.8 million voters in the October 15 referendum approved the document, officials said Tuesday. Turnout was 63 percent.

Passage of the constitution, regarded as a key step toward the establishment of Iraqi democracy, paves the way for an election for a new Iraqi parliament in mid-December.

As far as science goes, breathing is known to be air breathed in and breathed out.... There seems to be a general awakening to the science of breath. Those who have practiced breathing in connection with physical culture of for the improvement of their particular condition, illness, or weakness have found wonderful results. It is thus far that the science of breath has reached.

But when we come to the mystery of breath, it is another domain altogether. The perceptible breath that the nostrils can feel as air drawn in and air going out is only an effect of breathing. It is not breath. For the mystic breath is that current which carries the air out and brings the air in. The air is perceptible, not the current; the current is imperceptible. It is a kind of ethereal magnetism, a finer kind of electricity, the current of which goes in and comes out, putting the air into action....Breath is the self, the very self of man. Also, 'atman' means the soul, and in German the same word is used for 'soul' and for 'breath'. This shows that if there is any trace of soul, it is to be found in breath.

U.N. Body Endorses Cultural Protection

PARIS, Oct. 20 -- In a vote cast as a battle of global conformity vs. cultural diversity, delegates to a U.N. agency turned aside strong U.S. objections Thursday and overwhelmingly approved the first international treaty designed to protect movies, music and other cultural treasures from foreign competition.

... Louise Oliver, U.S. ambassador to UNESCO, told delegates at the organization's headquarters near the Eiffel Tower that the measure was "too flawed, too prone to abuse for us to support." She contended that dictators could potentially use it to control what their citizens read.

... Called the Convention on the Protection and Promotion of Diversity of Cultural Expressions, the document approved Thursday declares the rights of countries to "maintain, adopt and implement policies and measures that they deem appropriate for the protection and promotion of the diversity of cultural expressions on their territory."

Cultural expressions are defined as including music, art, language and ideas as well as "cultural activities, goods and services."

Claim: The Peter, Paul & Mary tune "Puff, the Magic Dragon" is a coded song about marijuana.

Status: False.

Origins: No, "Puff, the Magic Dragon" is not about marijuana, or any other type of drug. It is what its writers have always claimed it to be: a song about the innocence of childhood lost.

George Lucas Donates $1M for MLK Memorial

WASHINGTON (AP) -- "Star Wars" director George Lucas has donated $1 million to build a memorial to civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr. on the National Mall, backers of the project announced.

"The ideals and principles for which Dr. King fought have never been forgotten and are as relevant today as they were 40 years ago," Lucas said Thursday, adding in a statement that a memorial ensures King's message will endure for future generations.

Other notable supporters of the project include former Secretary of State Colin Powell and Jack Valenti, former president of the Motion Picture Association of America.

More than $40 million has been raised for the memorial, with $100 million needed to finish the project, organizers said.

Congress authorized the memorial in 1996, and groundbreaking is scheduled for late next year on a four-acre site near the Lincoln Memorial, where King delivered his "I Have a Dream" speech on Aug. 28, 1963.

The original sponsors were France and its stepchild Canada; figures. No country is more prickly about preserving its own culture than France; they regularly have le panique attaq whenever small fragments of other tongues infect their pristine lingo. Their cinema is heavily subsidized, producing endless movies about older-yet-unquestionably-masculine men who pensively smoke while contemplating a girl’s knee observed on a beach in 1972. Canada also mandates local content, because there’s so much difference between someone who grew up in southern Manitoba and someone who grew up in upper North Dakota. The North Dakotan grows up without a sense of what it’s like to be annoyed by bilingual candy-bar wrappers, for example. Might as well be from different planets.

...charisma, a power of personality divorced from the conceptual or moral. Charisma is electromagnetism, a scintillating fusion of masculine and feminine.

In his book Why Read?, the literary critic Mark Edmundson argues that humanities professors have a duty to our students -- and ultimately, to democracy -- to help them to expand the horizons of their thoughts. To do so is to help them live better lives, albeit lives of their, and not our, choosing.

Despite our temptation (it's our job, after all) to interpret texts, art objects, and past events for our students, to tell them how things stand in the world of ideas so that they can thereby adopt the right ideas and tastes, there is a point in every course where it has to be up to the students to interpret those things. In those moments, we teach best by letting go.

No student in an introductory class ever became a faithful news reader or a literary fiction hound because a professor browbeat him or her into it. My students might pick up a good book, though, if they have learned to be curious about the world and about themselves, and if they have seen that a reader's life can be a very good life.

My mother groand! my father wept.
Into the dangerous world I leapt:
Helpless, naked, piping loud;
Like a fiend hid in a cloud.

Struggling in my fathers hands:
Striving against my swadling bands:
Bound and weary I thought best
To sulk upon my mothers breast.

Yes, the White Sox have proved me wrong. They've proved millions of others around the country wrong, too. They may not have the celebrity fans and national cachet of the Red Sox, but with a small and intensely loud fan base that is drunk on glory and a few other things, they'll try to bust another ancient futility streak that dates back to when Charlie Chaplin -- not a home-plate umpire -- was a silent film star.

Guillen wasn't alive in 1959. Williams wasn't alive in 1959. The players think 1959 was the backdrop for Jurassic Park. But it's just another conquered number now after the Sox won their first American League pennant in 46 years, burying the Angels and their Rally Monkey in another umpiring-flawed blur that once again suggests destiny, at last, has become a South Side ally.