9 March, 2012
by rgonzalezr
Revealing a forgotten truth in the present day, this account illuminates the crumbling political and economic structures of the West, shedding light on an ongoing and arduous search for a sense of purpose. Recounting a true story, this exploration tells of a wandering Mongol shaman who made a dramatic appearance around the Mediterranean centuries before the time of Christ. Highlighting how this nomad came as an envoy on a mission of purification, this study records how he met with a man who became tremendously influential in Western science, philosophy, culture, and religion: Pythagoras. The essence of Western civilization is said to have originated from this meeting and this examination argues that today’s conflicts and tensions have stemmed from taking this monumental occasion for granted, forgetting that there must be a greater meaning to life than everyday efforts and struggles. Reflecting on a time when Eastern and Western cultures were one, this evocation contends that there is still a common spiritual heritage to all civilizations. A unique collaboration between the author and archaeologists, historians, and shamans from around the world, this document has the potential to change the future for all.
Posted in Cultura, Espiritualidad, Misticismo, Religión, Sufismo |
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2 February, 2012
by rgonzalezr
La civilización china no es una civilización de la palabra que confiere un sentido (la Biblia), ni del discurso (logos) que articula construcciones teóricas por medio de su sintaxis. China tampoco es una tierra de Revelación, en la que primaría el mensaje y crecería la Promesa, ni de ella se espera que articule dialécticamente las formas y los géneros. La civilización china es fundamentalmente una civilización del texto, de un texto que muestra su trazado y es en sí mismo un tejido continuo.
Así lo indica la palabra wen, que significa cultura, civilización, texto, ideograma, y que está compuesta por un cruzamiento de trazos. En el país de la seda, dice François Jullien, la “urdimbre” y la “trama” son las coordenadas del texto chino. A partir de la “urdimbre” del texto canónico y de la “trama” del imaginario, François Jullien establece un “orden” del texto en China -a semejanza de lo que Michel Foucault llamaba un “orden del discurso“- poniendo especial interés en elucidar el estatus ambiguo de lo imaginario.
- Editorial Katz
- 270 páginas, 11 x 17 cm.
- La chaîne et la trame
- ISBN 9788496859449, rústica – España
- Febrero de 2009
Posted in Filosofía, Teoría |
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14 September, 2011
by rgonzalezr
Nobel Prize–winning economist Sen deplores the “little boxes” that divide us in this high-minded but seldom penetrating brief against identity politics. In Identity and Violence: The Illusion of Destiny Sen observes that ideologies of hate typically slot people into communities based on a single dimension that trumps the multifaceted affinities of class, sex, politics and personal interest that make up individual identities. This “reductionist” us-versus-them outlook is not limited to jihadists, he argues, but is a widespread intellectual tendency seen in Samuel Huntington’s “clash of civilizations” paradigm, in postcolonial critiques of democracy and rationalism as “Western” ideals, as well as in efforts to “dialogue” with moderate Muslims. Sen rebuts the “singular affiliation” falsehood with a cursory historical, literary and cultural survey of the diversity of supposedly monolithic civilizations (Akbar, a 16th-century Mughal emperor and champion of religious toleration, is a favorite citation.)
Posted in Ensayo, Sociología, Teoría |
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10 August, 2011
by rgonzalezr
- Paperback: 296 pages
- Publisher: Chelsea Green Publishing (July 1, 2004)
- Language: English
- ISBN-10: 1931498520
You could call them the Monkeywrench Gang of the nanotech age. Derrick Jensen and George Draffan are taking down the data mining industry, one converted mind at a time. In the face of RFID chips, consumer tracking strategies, and illegal government wiretapping, Jensen and Draffan are determined to show consumers how to fight back against government and industry to regain their rights, their privacy, and their humanity. In their new book, “Welcome to the Machine: Science, Surveillance, and the Culture of Control,” Jensen and Draffan take a hart-hitting look at the way technology is used as a machine, to control us and our environment. Their results are startling. If the prospect of perpetual surveillance and psychological warfare alarms you, you are not alone. Most people would be disturbed if you told them that everything from their store purchases to their public transit rides are recorded and filed for government or corporate access. But more often than not, the smooth, silent cleanliness of its operation allows the Machine of Western Civilization to go unnoticed. In “Welcome to the Machine,” Jensen and Draffan draw our attention back to its eerie, persistent white noise and take a cold, hard, human look at the cultural conditions that have led us to all but surrender to its hum. Jensen and Draffan, who teamed up in 2003 to expose industrial corruption and destruction in “Strangely Like War: The Global Assault on Forests,” are back to reveal both the terrifying extent of surveillance today and our chilling complacency at the loss of everything from consumer privacy to civil liberties. In this timely and important new collaboration, Jensen and Draffan take on all aspects of Control Culture: everything from the government’s policy of total information awareness to a disturbing new technology where soldiers can be given medication to prevent them from feeling fear. They write about pharmaceutical packaging that reports consumer information, which is then used to send targeted drug advertisements directly to your TV.
Posted in Ensayo, Guerra |
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9 August, 2011
by rgonzalezr
- Traducción: López Guix, Juan Gabriel
- Colección: Travesías
- Idioma: Castellano
- Año: 2007
- Páginas: 144
- Formato: 13 x 21 cm
- ISBN: 978-84-934096-9-2
Elogio de la diversidad reúne nueve breves ensayos sobre uno de los grandes retos de la vida contemporánea: encontrar el espacio cívico-moral que pueda albergar el entendimiento entre los distintos grupos de la humanidad. Ramin Jahanbegloo apuesta por la cultura de la democracia, inseparable del diálogo y el pluralismo transcultural; cree en la necesidad de una refundación de la política y la consecución de una civilización de civilizaciones, y plantea una interesante reflexión sobre las relaciones entre la democracia y el islam.
En palabras de Juan Goytisolo, «Elogio de la diversidad responde a muchas de las preguntas que se nos plantean de cara a una mundialización que vehicula imparablemente sus males de un continente a otro gracias al fundamentalismo de la tecnociencia y el ubicuo terrorismo yihadista difundido por internet».
Posted in Ensayo |
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5 August, 2011
by rgonzalezr
Presentación de Fernando Bayón
Epílogo de Georg Lukács
Traducción de León Mamés
Las consideraciones son el diario de Mann durante la Primera Guerra Mundial. Por primera vez, el escritor se compromete en el debate ideológico, exaltando los valores que creía amenazados. Defiende aquí una «cierta idea de Alemania», critica los tópicos virtuosos de la propaganda de los Aliados, paladines de la democracia, y afirma que existe una oposición irreductible entre la cultura y la «civilización» de sus adversarios. La cultura se ocupa del alma, es propia de un país y se dirige al individuo. La civilización, preocupada por el progreso técnico y material, es internacional y sólo se interesa por las masas. Nos conduce directamente al reino del termitero.
Este panfleto antidemocrático se transforma a veces en una defensa muy discutible del nacionalismo alemán, pero contiene también un elogio de la ironía y páginas impresionantes sobre filósofos como Schopenhauer y Nietzsche, músicos como Wagner y Bizet, escritores como Tolstói, Dostoyevski, Flaubert, etc. En definitiva, un libro que se presta a la discusión y a la crítica, un documento capital sobre una crisis de civilización.
Posted in Ensayo, Guerra |
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31 December, 2010
by rgonzalezr
- Paperback: 944 pages
- Publisher: Penguin Classics; Abridged edition (January 1, 1998)
Before Joseph Campbell became the world’s most famous practitioner of comparative mythology, there was Sir James George Frazer. The Golden Bough was originally published in two volumes in 1890, but Frazer became so enamored of his topic that over the next few decades he expanded the work sixfold, then in 1922 cut it all down to a single thick edition suitable for mass distribution. The thesis on the origins of magic and religion that it elaborates “will be long and laborious,” Frazer warns readers, “but may possess something of the charm of a voyage of discovery, in which we shall visit many strange lands, with strange foreign peoples, and still stranger customs.” Chief among those customs–at least as the book is remembered in the popular imagination–is the sacrificial killing of god-kings to ensure bountiful harvests, which Frazer traces through several cultures, including in his elaborations the myths of Adonis, Osiris, and Balder.While highly influential in its day, The Golden Bough has come under harsh critical scrutiny in subsequent decades, with many of its descriptions of regional folklore and legends deemed less than reliable. Furthermore, much of its tone is rooted in a philosophy of social Darwinism–sheer cultural imperialism, really–that finds its most explicit form in Frazer’s rhetorical question: “If in the most backward state of human society now known to us we find magic thus conspicuously present and religion conspicuously absent, may we not reasonably conjecture that the civilised races of the world have also at some period of their history passed through a similar intellectual phase?” (The truly civilized races, he goes on to say later, though not particularly loudly, are the ones whose minds evolve beyond religious belief to embrace the rational structures of scientific thought.) Frazer was much too genteel to state plainly that “primitive” races believe in magic because they are too stupid and backwards to know any better; instead he remarks that “a savage hardly conceives the distinction commonly drawn by more advanced peoples between the natural and the supernatural.” And he certainly was not about to make explicit the logical extension of his theories–”that Christian legend, dogma, and ritual” (to quote Robert Graves’s summation of Frazer in The White Goddess) “are the refinement of a great body of primitive and barbarous beliefs.” Whatever modern readers have come to think of the book, however, its historical significance and the eloquence with which Frazer attempts to develop what one might call a unifying theory of anthropology cannot be denied.
Posted in Antropología, Mitología |
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