Who woulda thought this little guy could change the course of the world? So, why can't you?

I came upon this little gem a while back, and it just re-surfaced in my hopelessly cluttered world:

Gandhi's Seven Deadly Sins

1. Wealth without work.
2. Pleasure without conscience.
3. Knowledge without character.
4. Commerce without morality.
5. Science without humanity.
6. Worship without sacrafice.
7. Politics without principal.

Wow. I think we could apply nearly all of these to the present administration, most especially number 7. Well, number 4 comes in a close second.

I wonder sometime about all the various religions, how they tend to moralize on everything, yet so seldom apply that same set of standards to their own leaders. Religion, like politics, is first and foremost about power, and the wielding thereof. The gloss of "preparing for the next world" is really just the shuck and jive used to control the susceptible.

I've always lived by a simple credo: I'll defend your right to believe what you want, until that belief crosses over into what you expect ME to believe. Then, watch out, 'cuz them's fightin' words, fella!

I am going to try, over the next week or so, to look at those sins and try to see where I am committing them. I can tell you I am not even on the radar as far as Number 1 goes - no trust fund, no rich uncle about to kick, a serious working stiff, that's me. As for Number 2, well, I know I have been guilty of that one, just yesterday, in fact, watching Sure-Shootin' Dick get egg on his face, and blood on everyone else's.

As for Number 3, I'll have to give that some more thought. 4, definitley not. Most of my commerce is seriously under-earning. As for 5, I don't really practice much science these days, especially in the Age of the True Believers. Might get Intelligently Un-designed, nudge, nudge, wink, wink. Regarding Number 6, I worship nothing but the day when I rise, and the night when I rest. Everything else is conditional.

As for Number 7, I figure I have more principals in my little toe-nail than just about anybody out there spending a ridiculaous amount of hyperbolic energy bashing people who disagree with them. 'Cuz I don't care who agrees or disagrees with me. Just don't try to tell me how to live my life, unless you are ready to die my death. Seems only fair, dontch think?

Why, What a Silly Question!

What if underneath all our secrets, there are only more secrets? The depth of our knowledge is always bested by the breadth of our ignorance. So it is with the art of investigation, and so it is with life. Even as physicists are delving deeper into the heart of matter, they too keep finding new particles within even newer particles – turtles all the way down*. So why should we, as pseudo-intelligent beings, be any different? As we are made up entirely of those same turtles, our own complexity, while it may become simpler and more essential the farther in we explore, is nonetheless a true fractal infinity.

What if we are asking the wrong questions (which I strongly suspect to be the case), and therefore can only keep getting the wrong, or at least inadequate, answers? Consider the relatively simple question, why are we here? It is clear this question is ultimately unanswerable, in the form it is asked. But consider changing the form of the question: How can I find out why we are here? This question, by its very nature, leads to considerable further inquiry, and therefore holds the chance it may one day, at least for the individual questioner, lead to an answer. “Why are we here” is itself a paradox – that we, as far as we can tell, are the only beings able to ask such a question, it stands to reason we are not equipped to answer it in a way that is free of subjective bias. Hence philosophy, religion, art, and politics – all try to answer not the question as much as set the boundaries around any possible answer, and therefore make the simple asking of the question pointless.

Consider the alternative question again: How can I find out why we are here? This question requires I explore all forms of (current and past – leaving open the possibilities of future) knowledge and inquiry. This of course forces the serious questioner into a life-long pursuit of ever more knowledge, if an answer is to be found. It could be the answer, as such, is simply to keep learning, which is no more than an acknowledgement that there is no end to knowledge, and we are both its generator and its recipient, its vehicle, if you will.

And perhaps vehicle is the most apt metaphor for who and why we are. By holding that life, and thus knowledge, are journeys we embark upon, it becomes harder to buy the notion that either explanation is valid – that we either go to some afterlife, or we simply cease. Both seem antithetical to what we have learned about both matter and energy. It seems more reasonable that we simply change form, in some way we are not yet equipped to understand. That we are beings who are composed of patterns, and both use and exist within patterns suggests we cannot escape the patterns that hold us, and we participate in continuously. It implies, in fact, there are more layers to reality, as we are able to perceive it, than we have even begun to entertain.

If we look honestly at all the previous assumptions, or paradigms we have held about life and the nature of reality, we will see all of those assumptions eventually fell apart, to be replaced by a newer level of understanding (actually, just a newer set of assumptions), until understanding eventually gave way again to yet another layer. Like the onion, there is no center point, only layer upon layer.

And yet, we humans continue to pursue knowledge, not merely for its own sake, but for the mistaken purpose of arriving at some form of ultimate, final knowledge. I would argue the goal is both absurd, and should one feel they have truly arrived at such a place ( a fundamental mistake of reason and judgment), the only real form of death. I believe (clearly my own current assumption) the real reason to pursue knowledge is to discover the next layer of the mystery. It is the quest itself that brings meaning to life, is in fact its true purpose – we are here to aid the universe in growing ever more infinite, through knowledge, through desire, through the always-evolving nature of our understanding, through the one thing we bring into reality that was not here before we came into being – the ability to wonder, the very act of imagination. No fundamental particle, no planetary mass, no galactic spin can do that.

Only we can do that. Only we can dream, and in dreaming, keep making the world.

· Stephen Hawking in A Brief History Of Time starts with the anecdote:

A well-known scientist (some say it was Bertrand Russell) once gave a public lecture on astronomy. He described how the earth orbits around the sun and how the sun, in turn, orbits around the centre of a vast collection of stars called our galaxy.

At the end of the lecture, a little old lady at the back of the room got up and said: "What you have told us is rubbish. The world is really a flat plate supported on the back of a giant tortoise."

The scientist gave a superior smile before replying, "What is the tortoise standing on?"

"You're very clever, young man, very clever," said the old lady. "But it's turtles all the way down."

Copyright by Notty Bumbo, 2004

Watch their demo video, and start imagining the possibilities for art!! Absolutely cool in the truest sense of the word!!!

OK, I fianlly get "it" - there are other explanations for how we got here, and why we have to stay without asking too many questions. Go see the Third Creation Theory. Hoo boy! Just when you thought the world was thoroughly explained, along comes this....

Everyone's panties are in a bunch over cartoons. Yet no one seems the least concerned over the actual photographic evidence. Al Jezeera ran the story about the Danish cheese cartoons, and on the same web page ran a photo of an Islamic militant with a mask and sporting a snazzy grenade launcher. Just as I firmly believe that Jesus must be sick to his stomach regarding the crap that passes for his message being spewed from the feral wombats pretending to be Christians in America, Mohammed must be similarly sick at how the fundamentalist approach to his message is being ground into the dust by equally misguided and misled members of Islam.

All of this is by way of opening up the subject of how art and images, indeed, how stories, such as what our entertainment industry sells us, can no longer pretend that they are merely "giving the people what they want", and a "reflection of society." Sorry, folks, but that is just plain ignorant. Stories, whether told by mouth, movie, video game, book, news publications, television, have everything to do with the shaping of societies, and far less to do with being responsive to some imagined (no matter who believes it, or how often it is repeated) "demand" for said stories.

We are creatures that, from the very dawn of language (in whatever form) have been shaped and guided by the stories we tell, and the images we embrace. Just because the technology and the reach has expanded does not mean that the same order of actions/ consequnces no longer applies. Art, whether through a two-dimensional or a three-dimensional representation, first of all tells us something. That action opens the door to the possibility that we may choose some action in response/relation to that art/story. It is not the other way around. We do not go to the story teller and demand that they tell us what we want to hear, and how we want to hear/see it. When that happens, its called orthodoxy, or more au courant, fundamentalism.

What would happen, I wonder, if Hollywood, as one example, actually DID ask a large group of consumers what they wanted to see/hear? Would they, as I suspect, merely overrule the results because it didn't meet the profit projection criteria? And how would that be any different from what is going on in both domestic and geo-politics right now, where rulers ( and I apply that term liberally, meaning, with the broadest possible brush) only pretend to listen to their subjects (yes, us too) while continuing to do whatever they please? I see no real difference. Politics are merely a way we tell larger stories about who we are, where we are going, and how we are going to get there. Somethimes, those stories are democratic. Mostly though, they are not.

Its pretty incedible that I have been getting oddball responses to this blog and to bumpintheroad.net, as well. Didn't take much time. It seems there are some folks out there who feel that its a) irresponsible; b) a sign of failing to grow up and face reality; c) a sign of extended drug abuse; d) a sign of the Apocalypse, if someone wants to promote something beautiful in the world. I suppose if I was just blowing things up, at least through tearing down people's self-esteem, I'd be considered "right in the mix", or some such froo-fraa.

But me, well, I'm just a hopeful romantic, when I'm not drowning in cynicism. It seems to me that the world is rapidly approaching a juncture that will either hurl us all into oblivion, or push us past this very deep chasm we are currently descending into. The more who climb on the back of that train, the more hopeless it will all become, and that rather quickly, I would think.

However, those who, through their hopefull and robust imaginations, contribute to successfully crossing that chasm, will reap the real reward - a world where rising up means more than pulling down. They laid dear Corretta to rest today, and we all need to pause for much longer than a minute, to ponder what she and Martin brought forth in the world, and, more importantly, to try and understand where that same level of heartful, mindful, and soulfull energy resides inside each of us. How can you, starting today, make a difference?

Art, and other forms of creative expression, are what I turn to to sustain my heart in these especially difficult days. So that is the purpose of this blog, and of bumpintheroad. Yes, we stumble, trip over life's obstacles, and sometimes we get hurt pretty bad. But getting up, and going on gracefully, with humor, and foregiveness, beat the hell out of the other options.

So, those who feel they need to tear down, well, thats sad. But for you, not me. We both have a choice in these things. I've made mine.

Acrylic on canvas. 2004. Interesting dream.

Painting with acrylics, watercolor pencils, ink, oil pastels.

Sculpting, with plaster, sculpt metal, clay.

paper, canvas, wood.

Writing, poetry, essays, fiction, diatribes against the downfall of humanity, by its own hand.

Web, print, walls, hearts, minds.

Dreams, dreams, dreams, and desire.

I find it interesting how little real creativity exists on the Web, considering its overall size. While it has always been true that there are fewer artists as a percentage of the overall population, the democritization engendered by the Web, not to mention the easy access to the necessary tools, leads me to believe that little has changed. Just because I can post a picture, or write a screed, does not mean that I am an artist. Apparently, this is not a deterant for many.

I am hopeful, however, when I see a site like Ashesandsnow that has gone well beyond the mundane web to build something truly compelling and creative. Great things ARE possible on the Web.

The question is, who will rise to the challenge of this still-young medium?

FancyWorld Some very interesting and fun work by Uta . Who said art has to be serious all the time? But rest assured - Uta is a seriously great artist!

This is from 2005. Acrylic and ink on wood panel. I have no idea where this stuff comes from, I am simply the messenger.

And another amazing artist -matiaskrahn. This you must see!

OK, now this is what I am trying to get to with this blog. Chris just sent me this amazing link, AshesandSnow that you just have to see to believe. For best effect, you will need to download Flashplayer 8 from Adobe, and have a broadband connection. Trust me friends - this is what the Web is capable of in the hands of a true artist. Just incredible!!!