SoylentNews is people
SoylentNews
There is a school of thought that posits that Adam - of Genesis fame - was not actually the first man, but rather the first prophet in the line of prophets that spawned the Abrahamic faiths. The crux of this is that there was nothing good nor evil prior to the teachings of the creator having reached us - hence like the ravening wolf or the ferocious lion, there was nothing intrinsically wrong in anything we did since it was only natural. Once the concept was introduced that there was a purpose-driven, life-loving God, however, good and evil could be finally identified as those behaviors which departed from that purpose and interfered with that life. Hence the tale of Cain and Abel and most everything else in the Torah.
Now I am not here to argue this idea today. I am more interested in the location. Adam is said to have appeared in the garden of Eden, and of all the locales that have been proposed as the "real" Eden, I have been most convinced by the suggestion of David Rohl that it might have been Tabriz. I think it was the documentary, In Search of Eden - which can be found on You Tube that mostly convinced me. I may well be mistaken, however, so do your own research.
What intrigues me about this location is that some six thousand years later, around 1844, another man appeared in Iran claiming to be next in the Adamic line of prophets. Ignoring every gory detail about this, I will merely note that the Islamic clergy of Iran had this man executed on July 9, 1850 in what was then downtown Tabriz.
In a sense, then, what began with Adam in Eden came full circle and was brought to a close in the same location. Curious.
So, if Iran was in fact the host to the original garden of Eden, then it would follow that some of the oldest cultural elements of civilization may have sprung from that region, and one might expect that some of the most mature concepts regarding life the universe and everything have been and continue to be evolving there.
Sadly, Iran is mostly being demonized these days - not without good reason, mind you - to the citizens of the USA, so it is a knee-jerk reaction of many in the West to eschew everything associated with Iran. In fact, most of the evils that issue out of that country seem to be caused by a minority of fanatics who have a stranglehold on governance and their oppressions are evident and well documented. To some extent, the people of that country are rising up against that oppression, so there may well be an end one day to that circumstance.
All of this is a long way around to recommending that every "educated" American should be familiar with the story of Layla and Majnun - perhaps the original "Romeo and Juliette". It is a tale familiar to most every Iranian, one that inspired Eric Clapton in composing perhaps his most famous tune. Maybe one day, Hollywood will grace us with a worthy film depiction of it.
Likewise, those who would account themselves as culturally informed might wish to peruse some of the poetry of Rumi:
BeyondOut beyond ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing,
there is a field.
I'll meet you there.When the soul lies down in that grass,
the world is too full to talk about.Ideas,
language,
even the phrase "each other"
doesn't make any sense.
and Hafez:
Will Beat You UpJealousy
And most all of your sufferings
Are from believing
You know better than God.
Of course,
Such a special brand of arrogance as that
Always proves disastrous,
And will rip the seams
In your caravan tent,
Then cordially invite in many species
Of mean biting flies and
Strange thoughts-
That will
Beat you
Up.
So just some ideas on how to fill your new year, or whatever.
Oh yeah, and if any of your neighbors are Iranian refugees, consider going out of your way to talk with them. For the record, I am not Iranian, but one of my neighbors is.
--
"So make the best of the situation before I finally go insane", -Derek and the Dominos, Layla
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday March 04, @04:58AM (4 children)
Look out! It's comin' around again: Research Shows That, When Given the Choice, Most Authors Don’t Want Excessively-long Copyright Terms [soylentnews.org].
Give me rights to that job you've been working at for years... and I'll add cheese and fries. And, I'll peruse everything you've ever done in your life, because information wants to be free — in fact, you should pay me for looking. Maybe there should be a reciprocal agreement, that people who make hamburgers should get free songs, and those who write songs should get free hamburgers. That still doesn't solve the problem of the hamburger-neutral people who want free songs. Then there's the problem that you can assemble hamburgers by the hundreds of thousands, over a career, but no matter how hard you work, you can only create a few lasting, non-crap songs.
Even as we've simplified this page, and a few similar ones in the last year or so, you know they aren't following it. They're looking for references to ogres and spaceoperas, and missing anything that doesn't fit the pop-agenda. Notice that they up-mod posts that they assume must be smart because they are wordy, which also means they wouldn't read it anyway (chatbot heaven). Not that they are a prospective paying audience, anyway, as in: Harvard dean says students these days regularly fail to understand basic sentences from texts more than a century old [notthebee.com]. The point is, if you're doing anything besides visual/aural/oral media, it's all moot, because they will surely grab a copy of anything and everything, but it might as well be hieroglyphics.
Think of the children! Think of the vegetarians!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday March 04, @05:32PM (1 child)
This ^^^!
I do love to compose songs, and my sixth grade teacher implored me to consider a career in writing, but success in either profession depends on rather involved business activities and interests, involving lawyers and contracts and all sorts of accounting that I have no heart for - just let me create for heaven's sake and don't burden me with the details. Consequently, nobody hears my music and (mostly) nobody reads what I write, but I do it anyway, because that's what I do - when the spirit moves me. No middlemen have ever adopted me, nor do I care at the end of the day. Hence copyright makes no never mind to me, but I do understand why it is essential for many. God bless the ones who can make a living by those means.
Oh, ...and food for thought is not at all like hamburgers.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday March 05, @04:25AM
It is rumination, which I suppose is more vegetarian than meaty. Even that nuevo-meato cricket-helper.
About cud processing...
Start with a phrase, say "Wildflowers don't care where they grow."
See where it takes you.
Don't hurry.
If it takes you right to Dolly Parton's anatomy, you're ruminating too hard.
If you don't now see why it might take you to Dolly Parton's anatomy, you're not ruminating hard enough.
If it takes you to Greenland or roadside rest stops in Kansas or weed killers or The Sound Of Music, or maybe how to spell "Burpee," you're doing it right.
If, however, you dismiss it all as more self-indulgent nuisance weeds, you are management material.
If I had a million dollars... I'd be middle-class
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 06, @09:44PM
The sound of one check bouncing:
Oughta be Score: 27, Informative.
I'd like to thank my old publisher. Sure, he drove a double-wide Lincoln Continental, but he always made sure I had a couple of bucks on me. While he did get me started on DOS-Word, I forgive him.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday March 10, @05:58PM
- Bad Onboarding Can Lead to High Quit Rates for New Workers [soylentnews.org]
A generation unprepared for adulthood! This "entitlement" thing is going to be hard on people, once the high taxes and lowered opportunity in life hit.
Oh, the world owes me a living...