The Koran may really only promise martyrs 72 “sweet white raisins” rather than those 72 virgins, due to a mistranslation
Ibn Warraq
January 12, 2002
In August, 2001, the American television channel CBS aired an interview with a Hamas activist Muhammad Abu Wardeh, who recruited terrorists for suicide bombings in Israel. Abu Wardeh was quoted as saying: “I described to him how God would compensate the martyr for sacrificing his life for his land. If you become a martyr, God will give you 70 virgins, 70 wives and everlasting happiness.” Wardeh was in fact shortchanging his recruits since the rewards in Paradise for martyrs was 72 virgins. But I am running ahead of things . (more…)
[VIDEO] Slavoj Zizek: The Monstrosity of Christ
The Monstrosity of Christ
Paradox or Dialectic?
Slavoj Zizek and John Milbank
Edited by Creston Davis
What matters is not so much that Žižek is endorsing a demythologized, disenchanted Christianity without transcendence, as that he is offering in the end (despite what he sometimes claims) a heterodox version of Christian belief.
—John Milbank
To put it even more bluntly, my claim is that it is Milbank who is effectively guilty of heterodoxy, ultimately of a regression to paganism: in my atheism, I am more Christian than Milbank.
—Slavoj Žižek
In this corner, philosopher Slavoj Žižek, who represents the critical-materialist stance against religion’s illusions; in the other corner, “radical orthodox” theologian John Milbank, an influential and provocative thinker who argues that theology is the only foundation upon which knowledge, politics, and ethics can stand. In The Monstrosity of Christ, Žižek and Milbank go head to head for three rounds, employing an impressive arsenal of moves to advance their positions and press their respective advantages. By the closing bell, they have proven themselves worthy adversaries–and have also shown that faith and reason are not simply and intractably opposed.
Žižek has long been interested in the emancipatory potential offered by Christian theology. And Milbank, seeing global capitalism as the new century’s greatest ethical challenge, has pushed his own ontology in more political and materialist directions. Their debate in The Monstrosity of Christ concerns nothing less than the future of religion, secularity, and political hope in light of a monsterful event—God becoming human. For the first time since Žižek’s turn toward theology, we have a true debate between an atheist and a theologian about the very meaning of theology, Christ, the Church, the Holy Ghost, universality, and the foundations of logic. The result goes far beyond the popularized atheist/theist point/counterpoint of recent books by Christopher Hitchens, Richard Dawkins, and others.
Žižek begins, and Milbank answers, countering dialectics with “paradox.” The debate centers on the nature of and relation between paradox and parallax, between analogy and dialectics, between transcendent glory and liberation.
Short Circuits series, edited by Slavoj Žižek
About the Authors
Slavoj Zizek is a philosopher and cultural critic. He has published over thirty books, including Looking Awry, The Puppet and the Dwarf, and The Parallax View (these three published by the MIT Press).
John Milbank is an influential Christian theologian and the author of Theology and Social Theory: Beyond Secular Reason and other books.
Creston Davis, who conceived of the encounter between Slavoj Žižek and John Milbank, studied under both men.
ENDORSEMENTS
“The contemporary return to the theological most dramatically occurs in this book, as Zizek fully realizes his earlier Hegelian and Lacanian theological work, a work that Milbank can essentially know as a uniquely modern expression of nihilism. Nonetheless Milbank enters into a genuine theological dialogue with this nihilism, and a truly new theological discourse occurs. This effects a paradoxical union between orthodoxy and heterodoxy, and between radical orthodoxy and radical heterodoxy, which is perhaps the deepest motif of the contemporary return to the theological.”
—Thomas J. J. Altizer, author of Godhead and the Nothing
“In this dazzling dialogue, Zizek and Milbank change words and cross swords, until the point where both recognize that Christ and Hegel, in their monstrosity, look very much alike. A phenomenal achievement!”
—Catherine Malabou, Maître de Conferences, Philosophy Department, Université Paris-X Nanterre
CHINA 2011: 16 VERY INTERESTING FACTS
ONE:
By 2025, China will build TEN New York-sized cities.
“[By 2025,] 40 billion square meters of floor space will be built — in five million buildings. 50,000 of these buildings could be skyscrapers — the equivalent of ten New York Cities.”
[AUDIO] CBC RADIO’S QUIRKS AND QUARKS DISCUSSES THE HUMAN POPULATION REACHING 7 BILLION, HOW IT HAPPENED, WHAT IT MEANS, AND WHY WE SHOULD CARE
The United Nations estimates that on October 31st, the world’s population will reach 7 billion. Although the actual number is not certain, it does underlie the fact that our population is growing at an alarming rate. It took until the early 1800′s to reach the 1 billion mark, but the last 50 years alone have seen the births of 4 of the total 7 billion This rapid increase raises the question, how many more people can the earth sustain? Or have we already surpassed the earth’s capacity? Among the many people asking questions like this are Dr. Madeline Weld, President of the Ottawa-based Population Institute of Canada, and Robert Engelman, President of The Worldwatch Institute in Washington. They discuss how various factors – including access to contraception, the empowerment of women, poverty, consumerism, and the environment – apply to our population growth, now and in the future.
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_________RUDHROISM
“Be afraid, be very afraid…” I love this–I have thought about so much of what they discuss in this two person interview. Oil, a non-renewable resource has allowed us to “over-shoot” where we as humanity really oughtta be today. The ‘stlen’ or ‘free’ energy boost since the 1850s. The unsustainable industrialized production of foods such as corn. The inefficient production of meat. The fact that cultures have not changed, yet babies no longer die. Cultures dictated that a “real man” or a “real woman” reproduce at a rate much higher than necessary for population replacement. But this was so when if you had 8 children, 5 perhaps were not expected to reach reproductive age. Today all 8 will make it, and in turn produce 8 of their own children due to cultural memes such as religion which dictate that this is the ONLY WAY.
So many have disagreed with me. So many have called me simplistic to point to the growth of population as the REAL problem and climate change as merely a symptom. But it is in no way ‘Malthusian’ to ask, what is the POINT of ‘conservation’, ‘kyoto protocols’, ‘environmental awareness campaigns’ etc etc etc, if EVEN IF we maintain 1990 levels of pollution, carbon consumption, garbage, the number of showers a human takes, and how many times a toilet is flushed per day–thus water use…the food one eats and from whence it originates, IF?
There are 10 Billion, 20 Billion, or 100 Billion humans?
This is not an irrational observation, though I have been told it is. This is not a simple minded, non-intellectual, comment.
This is about the Tragedy of the Commons. This is about witnessing the growth of certain cities, such as Calcutta, Shanghai, Lagos, Mexico City, Tokyo etc and seeing that for a given level of infrastructure, from trains, buses, roads, all the way to the farming lands that feed and the water basins that provide potable water to these megalopoli–only a certain number of people can enjoy them before it all becomes a hellish experience of the scarcity of resources writ large, on a daily basis. No room for your child in school, no electricity, no water, no fresh fruits and vegetables, no room on the road for your car, no sufficient public services of any kind.
I have been told that life and economics is not like this, as eventually all people reduce their fertility rates when they reach a standard level of income. I actually have a minor in Economics and have studied a variety of theories on developmental economics. So I am not speaking from ignorance or ‘a little learning is a dangerous thing’. Listen to what is stated as ‘the scientifically sustainable human population’ in the audio link above.
I’d also recommend listening to Robert Wright’s Massey lectures on his book (or reading the book itself) called ‘The Short History of Progress’–where he shows that human history is filled with groups of humans not paying heed to the natural feedback loops of nature. We are a part of nature. And it frustrates me to no end, when humans in 2011 deny the unity that is humanity. There are no more ‘groups’–we are all one group, and are aware of this, in some respects yet not others.
We are all one. It doesn’t MATTER if you live in Edmonton, Mexico City or Calcutta. It doesn’t MATTER what your last name is, what religion you’ve been handed down or converted into and what this meme teaches you. There are basic facts about the sustainability of the human earthling population.
If you add to the population, it affects the whole world. But I don’t think humanity is yet ready to understand that we are indeed one.
THE EARTH AS VIEWED FROM A SPACECRAFT ON ITS WAY TO JUPITER
“Earth (on the left) and the moon (on the right) as seen by NASA’s Juno spacecraft on Aug. 26, 2011, when the spacecraft was about 6 million miles (9.66 million km) away. The photo was taken by the spacecraft’s onboard camera, JunoCam.” – NASA
Somewhere out there in the vast nothingness of space,
Somewhere far away in space and time,
Staring upward at the gleaming stars in the obsidian sky,
We’re marooned on a small island, in an endless sea
Confined to a tiny spit of sand, unable to escape,
But tonight, on this small planet, on earth
We’re going to rock civilization…
– Lyrics from “Prelude/Slam,” Pendulum
A NASA spacecraft cruising toward Jupiter glanced back and snapped a rare picture of Earth and the moon. Taken last week when Juno was 6,000,000 miles away, the image shows two white dots, one brighter than the other.
The solar-powered Juno blasted off earlier this month on a five-year journey to Jupiter. Though previous craft have visited the giant gas planet, Juno will get closer than ever before, flying within 3,100 miles of the dense cloud tops to learn more about Jupiter’s origins.
The $1.1 billion mission is managed by NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California.
“This is a remarkable sight people get to see all too rarely,” said Juno principal investigator Scott Bolton of the Southwest Research Institute in a statement. “This view of our planet shows how Earth looks from the outside, illustrating a special perspective of our role and place in the universe. We see a humbling yet beautiful view of ourselves.”
–news.discovery.com
BBC: THE STORY OF INDIA – written and presented by historian Michael Wood
This was one of the best BBC documentaries I’ve ever seen, reminiscent of PLANET EARTH and just as in depth and in vivid colour, but rather than the natural world, it focuses on the civilizations that occupied the subcontinent since the time of the first humans to leave Africa. Superb–and I’m not merely saying that due to a DNA connection, I would have enjoyed this were it from any corner of the world. This is an intense study of the history of mankind, and the journey we’ve all taken thus far.
–rudhro
The Story of India is a BBC TV documentary series, written and presented by historian Michael Wood, about the 10,000-year history of the Indian subcontinent in six episodes.
An accompanying text was published by BBC Books.
As in most of his documentaries, Wood explains historical events by travelling to the places where they took place, examining archeological and historical evidence at first hand and interviewing historians and archaeologists, as well as chatting with local people. (more…)
Noam Chomsky on the Dangers of American Empire and Why the US Continues to be Bin Laden’s Best Ally
We are approaching the 10th anniversary of the horrendous atrocities of September 11, 2001, which, it is commonly held, changed the world. On May 1st, the presumed mastermind of the crime, Osama bin Laden, was assassinated in Pakistan by a team of elite US commandos, Navy SEALs, after he was captured, unarmed and undefended, in Operation Geronimo.
A number of analysts have observed that although bin Laden was finally killed, he won some major successes in his war against the U.S. “He repeatedly asserted that the only way to drive the U.S. from the Muslim world and defeat its satraps was by drawing Americans into a series of small but expensive wars that would ultimately bankrupt them,” Eric Margolis writes. “‘Bleeding the U.S.,’ in his words.” The United States, first under George W. Bush and then Barack Obama, rushed right into bin Laden’s trap… Grotesquely overblown military outlays and debt addiction… may be the most pernicious legacy of the man who thought he could defeat the United States” (more…)
[FILM] Woody Allen’s response to the Norwegian Psycho – ‘Midnight in Paris’: The moral lesson against romanticizing the past
RUDHROISM
Woody Allen’s 2011 film Midnight in Paris entreats us to live in the present. To obsessively, sentimentally or romantically look to times past is fraught with biases in perspection, the film shows. If one considers the 1920s in Paris as the greatest time to have been alive, the people living in that present may have thought it the 1890s which were even better…and those of the 1890s may have leaned more toward the French Revolution.
In short, none of us may perceive the present as exhibiting the ‘magic’ they may read into earlier times, prior to their birth.
I think I realized something similar regarding the Sixties–the most recent ‘magic’ time we are recounted of. Greenwich Village, the poets, the rockers, the thinkers, and the protests. Was it really, though, any different then as it is today? Were contemporaneous people AWARE of the ‘magic’? Potentially not. They themselves may have in turn longed for earlier, ‘simpler’, more romantic times.
As I watched this film something occurred to me about the Norway massacre of a few days past. What Anders Behring Breivik was perhaps seeking was a return to his conceptualized ‘romanticized past’–before colonialization, before globalization, before immigration, before the world became so small, and before tribal identities were potentially perceived as ‘endangered’ due to one’s fear of dilution, segmentization and diminishment of what it meant to identify with one’s clansmen. (more…)
[VIDEO] BETWEEN GANDHI AND HITLER –> NETAJI SUBHAS CHANDRA BOSE
This guy experienced more global intrigue than James Bond.
Sunday , June 5 , 2011
Excerpted with the permission of Penguin Books India from His Majesty’s Opponent: Subhas Chandra Bose and India’s Struggle Against Empire by Sugata Bose
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To Emilie, with love
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| That Subhas Chandra Bose met and fell in love with Austrian Emilie Schenkl in Vienna in the 1930s is well documented. But in a new book on his granduncle, historian Sugata Bose explains why they chose to keep their relationship and marriage a closely guarded secret. Despite the ‘enormous, intense’ love that Bose felt for Schenkl, his ‘first love’ was his country. An extract | |
 WIFE AND DAUGHTER: Emilie and Anita, November 1948. Courtesy: Netaji Research Bureau From the second week of June 1934, [Subhas Chandra] Bose settled down in Vienna, since he had a contract from the publishing company Wishart to write a book on the Indian struggle since 1920. In the course of looking for clerical help with preparing the manuscript Subhas met a woman who would bring about a dramatic change in his personal life… It was June 24, 1934. A petite and pretty young woman named Emilie Schenkl arrived to be interviewed for the clerical job. Born on December 26, 1910, to an Austrian Catholic family, she knew English, could take dictation in shorthand and had competent typing skills. Jobs were scarce during the Depression. Her father, a veterinarian, was initially somewhat reluctant to let his daughter work for a strange Indian man, but in time her whole family — father, mother and sister — developed a warm relationship with Subhas. Emilie had a gentle, cheerful, straightforward and unselfish nature, which Su-bhas found appealing. He came to respect her strength of will and affectionately called her “Baghini” meaning “Tigress” in Bengali. “He started it,” Emilie states categorically about the romantic turn in their relationship. Their intimacy grew as they spent time together in Austria and Czechoslovakia from mid-1934 to March 1936… Subhas Chandra Bose, according to his close friend and political associate A.C.N. Nambiar, was a “one-idea man: singly for the independence of India.” “I think the only departure,” he adds, “if one might use the word ‘departure’, was his love for Miss Schenkl; otherwise he was completely absorbed. He was deeply in love with her, you see. In fact, it was an enormous, intense love.” … (more…) |
HIMANI BANNERJI: “On the Dark Side of the Nation: Politics of Multiculturalism and the State of “Canada”" AKA “RUDHRO, DON’T FORGET TO BRING SAMOSAS TO THE ‘WE LOVE MULTICULTURALISM’ PARTY!”
Copyright Trent University Fall 1996
On the Dark Side of the Nation: Politics of Multiculturalism and the State of “Canada”
HIMANI BANNERJI
This paper is primarily concerned with the construction of “Canada” as a social and cultural form of national identity, and various challenges and interruptions offered to this identity by literature produced by writers from non – white communities. The first part of the paper examines both literary and political – theoretical formulations of a “two – nation,” “two solitudes” thesis and their implications for various cultural accommodations offered to “others,” especially through the mechanism of “multiculturalism.” The second part concentrates on the experiences and standpoint of people of colour, or non – white people, especially since the 1960s, and the cultural and political formulating derivable from them.
I am from the country Columbus dreamt of. You, the country Columbus conquered. Now in your land My words are circling blue Oka sky they come back to us alight on tongue.
Protect me with your brazen passion for history is my truth, Earth, my witness my home, this native land.
OKA NADA”: A New Remembrance, Kaushalya Bannerji
The Personal and the Political: A Chorus and a Problematic
When the women’s movement came along and we were coming to our political consciousness, one of its slogans took us by surprise and thrilled and activated us: “the personal is political!” Since then years have gone by, and in the meanwhile I have found myself in Canada, swearing an oath of allegiance to the Queen of England, giving up the passport of a long – fought – for independence, and being assigned into the category of “visible minority.” These years have produced their own consciousness in me, and I have learnt that also the reverse is true: the political is personal. (more…)
IAN LESLIE – “Born Liars: Why We Can’t Live Without Deceit”
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Ian Leslie’s interview with Jian Ghomeshi on CBC’s Q: [skip to 19:36]
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Lying is an intrinsic part of our social fabric, but it is also a deeply problematic and misunderstood aspect of what makes us human. Author and journalist Ian Leslie takes us on a fascinating journey that makes us question not only our own relationship to the truth, but also virtually every daily encounter we have. On the way he dissects the history of the lie detector, how parents affect their children’s attitude to lying (and vice versa), Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?, the philosophical ambiguity of telling the truth, Bill Clinton’s presentational prowess, Wonder Woman’s lasso of truth, and why we should be wary of anyone with more than 150 Facebook friends.
Born Liars is thought-provoking, anecdotally driven narrative nonfiction at its best. Ian Leslie’s intoxicating blend of anthropology, biology, cultural history, philosophy, and popular psychology belies a serious central message: that humans have evolved and thrived in large part because of their ability to deceive.
[AUDIO] HIS REVOLUTION WAS NOT TELEVISED – GIL SCOTT-HERON
by DAOUD TYLER-AMEEN
May 27, 2011
Gil Scott-Heron died Friday afternoon in New York, his book publisher reported. He was 62. The influential poet and musician is often credited with being one of the progenitors of hip-hop, and is best known for the spoken-word piece “The Revolution Will Not Be Televised.”
Scott-Heron was born in Chicago in 1949. He spent his early years in Jackson, Tenn., attended high school in The Bronx, and spent time at Pennsylvania’s Lincoln University before settling in Manhattan. His recording career began in 1970 with the album Small Talk at 125th and Lenox, which featured the first version of “The Revolution Will Not Be Televised.” The track has since been referenced and parodied extensively in pop culture.
Scott-Heron continued to record through the 1970s and early ’80s, before taking a lengthy hiatus. He briefly returned to the studio for 1994′s Spirits. That album featured the track “Message to the Messengers,” in which Scott-Heron cautions the hip-hop generation that arose in his absence to use its newfound power responsibly. He has been cited as a key influence by many in the hip-hop community — such as rapper-producer Kanye West, who closed his platinum-selling 2010 album My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy with a track built around a sample of Scott-Heron’s voice.
Scott-Heron struggled publicly with substance abuse in the 2000s, and spent the early part of the decade in and out of jail on drug possession charges. He began performing again after his release in 2007, and in 2010 released a new album, I’m New Here, to widespread critical acclaim.
Gil Scott-Heron, a godfather of rap, dies in New York
NEKESA MUMBI MOODY
NEW YORK— The Associated Press
Saturday, May. 28, 2011
Long before Public Enemy urged the need to Fight the Power or N.W.A. offered a crude rebuke of the police, Gil-Scott Heron was articulating the rage and the disillusionment of the black masses through song and spoken word. (more…)
“According to the French intellectual and scholar Francois Burgat, there are two main types of intellectuals tasked with explaining the “other” to Westerners. He and Bourdieu describe the “negative intellectual” who aligns his beliefs and priorities with those of the state and centers his perspective on serving the interest of power and gaining proximity to it. And secondly, there is what Burgat terms as “the façade intellectual,” whose role in society is to confirm to Western audiences their already-held notions, beliefs, preconceptions, and racisms regarding the “other.” Journalists writing for the mainstream media, as well as their local interlocutors, often fall into both categories.”
WRITTEN BY Nir Rosen
I’ve spent most of the last eight years working in Iraq and also in Somalia, Afghanistan, Yemen, and other countries in the Muslim world. So all my work has taken place in the shadow of the war on terror and has in fact been thanks to this war, even if I’ve labored to disprove the underlying premises of this war. In a way my work has still served to support the narrative. I once asked my editor at the New York Times Magazine if I could write about a subject outside the Muslim world. He said even if I was fluent in Spanish and an expert on Latin America I wouldn’t be published if it wasn’t about jihad.
Too often consumers of mainstream media are victims of a fraud. You think you can trust the articles you read, why wouldn’t you, you think you can sift through the ideological bias and just get the facts. But you don’t know the ingredients that go into the product you buy. It is important to understand how knowledge about current events in the Middle East is produced before relying on it. Even when there are no apparent ideological biases such as those one often sees when it comes to reporting about Israel, there are fundamental problems at the epistemological and methodological level. These create distortions and falsehoods and justify the narrative of those with power. (more…)
Maȟpíya Lúta
“Red Cloud (Lakota: Maȟpíya Lúta), (1822 – December 10, 1909) was a war leader and the head Chief of the Oglala Lakota (Sioux). His reign was from 1868 to 1909. One of the most capable Native American opponents the United States Army faced, he led a successful conflict in 1866–1868 known as Red Cloud’s War over control of the Powder River Country in northwestern Wyoming and southern Montana. After the Treaty of Fort Laramie (1868), he led his people in the important transition to reservation life. Some of his US opponents thought of him as overall leader of the Sioux, but this was mistaken. The large tribe had several major divisions and was highly decentralized. Bands among the Oglala and other divisions operated independently, even though some individual leaders such as Red Cloud were renowned as warriors.” –wikipedia
BLAME THE NAZIS, OR STOP HAVING SEX WITH YOUR COUSINS–HUMANS ARE MORONS
Tânia Moelmann, in 2009, with her 3-month-old twins, Kiara, left, and Yasmin, in the Brazilian village of São Pedro in Cândido Godói.
TWIN ‘MYSTERY’ IN BRAZIL MIGHT BE SOLVED
In a Brazilian Town, a Rogue Gene and a Boom in Twins
By ALEXEI BARRIONUEVO and MYRNA DOMIT
March 24, 2011
SANTIAGO, Chile — For years, so many twins have been born in the small southern Brazilian town of Cândido Godói that residents wonder whether something mysterious lurks in the water, or even if Josef Mengele, the Nazi physician known as the Angel of Death, conducted experiments on the women there. (more…)
CHRIS HEDGES: This Time We’re Taking the Whole Planet With Us
“Human beings seem cursed to repeat these cycles of exploitation and collapse. And the greater the extent of the deterioration the less they are able to comprehend what is happening around them. The Earth is littered with the physical remains of human folly and human hubris. We seem condemned as a species to drive ourselves and our societies toward extinction, although this moment appears be the denouement to the whole sad show of settled, civilized life that began some 5,000 years ago. There is nothing left on the planet to seize. We are now spending down the last remnants of our natural capital, including our forests, fossil fuel, air and water.”
[VIDEO] Tenochtitlán: The Lost World of the Meshika/Mexica – ‘Aztecs’
Richard Hooker
Washington State University
It is not unfair to say that Aztec culture was overwhelmingly eschatological in a way that can only be rivalled by early Christianity. The Aztecs, like the Mayans, believed that the universe had been created five times and destroyed four times; each of these five eras was called a Sun. The first age was called Four Ocelot (for it began on the date called Four Ocelot). Tezcatlipoca (Smoking Mirror) dominated the universe and eventually became the sun disk. The world was destroyed by jaguars. The second age was Four Wind, dominated by Quetzalcoatl (Sovereign Plumed Serpent); men were turned to monkeys and the world was destroyed by hurricanes and tempests. The third age was Four Rain, dominated by Tlaloc (the rain god); the world was destroyed by a rain of fire. The fourth era was Four Water and was dominated by Chalchihuitlicue (Woman with the Turquoise Skirt); the world was destroyed by a flood. The fifth era, the one we live in now, is Four Earthquake, and is dominated by Tonatiuh, the Sun-God. This age will end in earthquakes.
es·cha·tol·o·gy (
s
k
-t
l
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n.
1. The branch of theology that is concerned with the end of the world or of humankind.
2. A belief or a doctrine concerning the ultimate or final things, such as death, the destiny of humanity, the Second Coming, or the Last Judgment.
From ‘End of History’ Author, Francis Fukuyama, a Look at the Beginning and Middle
By NICHOLAS WADE
March 7, 2011
Human social behavior has an evolutionary basis. This was the thesis in Edward O. Wilson’s book “Sociobiology” that caused such a stir, even though most evolutionary biologists accept that at least some social behaviors, like altruism, could be favored by natural selection
In a book to be published in April, “The Origins of Political Order,”Francis Fukuyama of Stanford University presents a sweeping new overview of human social structures throughout history, taking over from where Dr. Wilson’s ambitious synthesis left off.
Dr. Fukuyama, a political scientist, is concerned mostly with the cultural, not biological, aspects of human society. But he explicitly assumes that human social nature is universal and is built around certain evolved behaviors like favoring relatives, reciprocal altruism, creating and following rules, and a propensity for warfare.
Because of this shared human nature, with its biological foundation, “human politics is subject to certain recurring patterns of behavior across time and across cultures,” he writes. It is these worldwide patterns he seeks to describe in an analysis that stretches from prehistoric times to the French Revolution. (more…)
The Origins of “Jewish Humour” – Years of terror during the Chmielnicki massacres and the badkhn’s appearance led to the canonization of what we know as Jewish humor.
1905 postcard of a badkhn at a wedding
By Sue Fishkoff
BERKELEY, Calif. – The Chmielnicki massacres weren’t particularly funny.
From 1648 to 1651, nearly 100,000 Jews were slaughtered throughout Ukraine by Bohdan Chmielnicki and his roving bands of Cossacks. It was arguably the worst pogrom in history, leaving hundreds of Jewish communities in ruins.
Yet according to Mel Gordon, a professor of theater arts at the University of California, Berkeley, those years of terror led to the canonization of what we now know as Jewish humor. Much of what we’ll be laughing at during Purim festivities, this year starting on March 19, stems from that horrific period.
And it happened on one day in July 1661 when the badkhn — a kind of cruel court jester in East European Jewish life — was spared a ban on merrymakers.
“We’re funny because of the badkhn,” Gordon told JTA. (more…)
