Tuesday, October 26, 2010

The Chymistry with Newton

I mentioned on my previous article that something special ocurred with Newton and early alchemy. I even mentioned that I would not sully that legacy by discussing it with hoodoo. Historically it has been mentioned that alchemists were only there looking for the philosophers stone or to convert lead into gold (or convert smurfs into gold). However, early chemistry served itself from the experiments made by the alchemists.

I was going to start this discussion with Newton's contribution to early chemistry but instead found yet another book that I really want to read, regarding the development of chymists. Chymists were the missing link between the alchemists and early chemists such as Boyle. Here's a note from Lawrence Phillips discussing this issue:


Instead, it offered a good introduction to the project that Principe has devoted most of his career to, namely what he constantly refers to as the “rehabilitation of alchemy”.
What does that mean? In a nutshell, Principe is fighting a wide-spread and surprisingly persistent image of early modern alchemy as something totally different from “proper” chemistry – a misguided pursuit generally, an obscurantist quest for impossible truths typically, or maybe even something completely allegorical, like the vision of a purely “spiritual alchemy”. The latter was invented by 19th century occultists, and later “psychologized” by C. G. Jung and his followers, from where it has remarkably gained something of an upper ground on the interpretation of alchemy for a surprisingly long time. Against these various perceptions of alchemy, Principe (and his colleague Newman) argue that alchemy was a “proper science”.
In this project the Jungian interpretation becomes a natural enemy. Shortly put, the Jungian approach is to look at the seemingly incomprehensible symbolism which shows up in alchemical treatises as allegorical of higher things – psychological processes or religious aspirations. Thus lions devouring suns and the copulation of kings and queens primarily signify ”archetypical” manifestations.
No, says Principe: the intricate symbolism is about something very concrete, and it is possible to find out exactly what. They are actually veiled ways of talking about concrete laboratory practices and experimental procedures. As a double PhD in chemistry and the history of science, Principe’s project has been to take the alchemists seriously: find out what they were talking about, and carry out the experiments. Based on the results he has gathered from his own alchemical laboratory, Principe suggests that alchemical talk of trees that will grow the philosopher’s stone, or the grey wolf that springs forth are indeed quite literal attempts to describe how certain chemical reactions look like. Without the technical and analytical language of later chemistry, experimental results necessarily had to be framed within the analogical mode of description and classification which so characterized much of renaissance and early modern forms of knowledge.



And just in case I did not show it early, an excellent article from Bibliodessey regarding Alchemical laboratories:



Now, back to Newton. This interesting discussion is presented on the Philosophy of Science webpage:
http://philosophyofscienceportal.blogspot.com/2010/10/newton-and-early-chemistry.html
In Dr. Newman’s view, none of the above. Sir Isaac the Alchemist, he said, was no less the fierce and uncompromising scientist than was Sir Isaac, author of the magisterial Principia Mathematica. There were plenty of theoretical and empirical reasons at the time to take the principles of alchemy seriously, to believe that compounds could be broken down into their basic constituents and those constituents then reconfigured into other, more desirable substances.Miners were pulling up from the ground twisted bundles of copper and silver that were shaped like the stalks of a plant, suggesting that veins of metals and minerals were proliferating underground with almost florid zeal.Pools found around other mines seemed to have extraordinary properties. Dip an iron bar into the cerulean waters of the vitriol springs of modern-day Slovakia, for example, and the artifact will emerge agleam with copper, as though the dull, dark particles of the original had been elementally reinvented. “It was perfectly reasonable for Isaac Newton to believe in alchemy,” said Dr. Newman. “Most of the experimental scientists of the 17th century did.”Moreover, while the alchemists of the day may not have mastered the art of transmuting one element into another — an ordeal that we have since learned requires serious equipment like a particle accelerator, or the belly of a star — their work yielded a bounty of valuable spinoffs, including new drugs, brighter paints, stronger soaps and better booze. “Alchemy was synonymous with chemistry,” said Dr. Newman, “and chemistry was much bigger than transmutation.”For Newton, alchemy may also have proved bigger than chemistry. Dr. Newman argues that Sir Isaac’s alchemical investigations helped yield one of his fundamental breakthroughs in physics: his discovery that white light is a mixture of colored rays, and that a sunbeam prismatically fractured into the familiar rainbow suite called Roy G. Biv can with a lens be resolved to tidy white sunbeam once again. “I would go so far as to say that alchemy was crucial to Newton’s breakthroughs in optics,” said Dr. Newman. “He’s not just passing light through a prism — he’s resynthesizing it.” Consider this a case of “technology transfer,” said Dr. Newman, “from chemistry to physics.”The conceptual underpinning to the era’s alchemical fixation was the idea of matter as hierarchical and particulate — that tiny, indivisible and semipermanent particles come together to form ever more complex and increasingly porous substances, a notion not so different from the reality revealed by 20th-century molecular biology and quantum physics.With the right solvents and the perfect reactions, the researchers thought, it should be possible to reduce a substance to its core constituents — its corpuscles, as Newton called them — and then prompt the corpuscles to adopt new configurations and programs. Newton and his peers believed it was possible to prompt metals to grow, or “vegetate,” in a flask. After all, many chemical reactions were known to leave lovely dendritic residues in their wake. Dissolve a pinch of silver and mercury in a solution of nitric acid, drop in a lump of metal amalgam, and soon a spidery, glittering “Tree of Diana” will form on the glass. Or add iron to hydrochloric acid and boil the solution to dryness. Then prepare a powdery silicate mix of sand and potassium carbonate. Put the two together, and you will have a silica garden, in which the ruddy ferric chloride rises and bifurcates, rises and bifurcates, as though it were reaching toward sunlight and bursting into bloom.

So Newton belonged to a group of early scientists that saw something beyond the superficial and materialistic points of view of the alchemists of the age. All this oil of vitriol, caustics, lyes and other chemicals were later used to generate purer reagents that made us generate the modern chemicals (and for which I have a job, without fear of burning on a stake for making chemicals).

Here is the transcript they made of PBS Newton's Dark Secrets:
http://pospapendix.blogspot.com/2008/06/newtons-dark-secrets-transcript.html

Finally I leave with this webpage that presents how Newton used his alchemical knowledge and experimentation to combine elements of chemistry with his early optics experiments and prisms...

And some information regarding Newton's contributions to modern science:
http://www.newton.ac.uk/newtlife.html

and of course, a listing of alchemical substances with their modern names:
http://www.alchemywebsite.com/substanc.html

Sunday, October 24, 2010

La Alcantarilla Alquimica Fluye

La alcantarilla alquimica le gusta discutir temas que rompan la monotonia y estupidez de nuestra Isla del Encanto. Encontre interesante esta discusion sobre la practica del Hoodoo...un ritualismo puramente norte americano con raices del sincretismo religioso del vudu, de la santeria, del santoral catolico, de la magica cabalistica judia y cualquier otra creencia que puedan poner en la olla.

El pie forza'o a este tema sale de este articulo

So recently I decided to really dive in. The heart of the site is The Lucky Mojo Curio Co. Occult Shop Catalogue, which you might as well go take a glance at right now. Alongside links for familiar mystic stuff — Tarot decks, altar tools, amulets and charms — the site presents a number of more curious categories, at least to esoteric aficionados used to Neopagan or New Age shops: Sachet Powders, Bottle Spells, Custom Made Mojo Hands. Even more startling and wonderful is the graphic design that defines the catalog and the bulk of its in-house offerings: brightly-colored images seemingly drawn from prewar pamphlets or comic books, matched with typefaces reminiscent of classic American commercial signage, all announcing an array of products that sound, at once, exotic and quaint: Aunt Sally’s Lucky Dream Incense Powder, Cast Off Evil Oil, Money Stay With Me Bath Crystals.

In addition to this array of household magic, the catalog includes links into a labyrinthine library of history and lore. Digging into these pages, one discovers that Lucky Mojo is not New Age nor Neopagan after all, nor does it represent the current of Caribbean religious syncretism that gives us the urban botanicas that in some ways the site recalls. No, Lucky Mojo’s magical current is closer to home than any of these, and yet almost invisible.

That current is hoodoo, although according to Catherine Yronwode, the brilliant and indefatigable woman behind Lucky Mojo, the tradition has many regional names — rootwork, conjure, witchcraft — and for many people remains nameless, as in “that stuff my great aunt did.” Though essentially African-American, hoodoo should not be confused with voodoo or other Caribbean transformations of African spirit possession cults. (If anything, it most resembles Jamaican traditions of obeah, or “science.”) Though hoodoo encompasses a variety of oracular and healing practices, its core moves rely on botanical materials and ordinary household products like soaps and toilet waters, and largely aims for this-worldly results: lottery numbers, love, protection from (or vengeance against) the boss. This pragmatism is also echoed in the tradition’s intensely polyglot syncretism, which fuses African magical styles with streams of, among other things, Cherokee earth ways, Santeria, German folklore, Jewish sorcery, and the popular magic of Scots-Irish immigrants.

Con el poder del Market...

aqui les dejo su pagina: http://www.luckymojo.com/

Sea lo que sea le han dedicado pensamiento, como establece este libro en linea:


Como esta interesante discusion de Moses, Giver of the Law


The name of Moishe (Moses in English) is famed as the author of the Torah, otherwise known as "The Five Books of Moses" -- Genesis, Exodus, Deuteronomy, Leviticus, and Numbers -- which form the most sacred portion of the Jewish Bible or Tanakh (also spelled Tanach) and are read, but not strictly followed, by Christians in what they choose to call "The Old Testament."
Moses is also the alleged or reputed author of several works of magic, including "The 6th and 7th Books of Moses" and "The Mystery of the Long-Lost 8th, 9th, and 10th Books of Moses"
Moses was born on the 7th of Adar in the year 2368 (c.1400 BCE). He was the third child of Amram, a member of the tribe of Levi, and Levi's daughter Yocheved. His older sister was Miriam, and his older brother was Aaron. His family were slaves in Egypt. His birth name was Chaver, but he was given the name Moses ("Taken Out") because as an infant he was set adrift on a raft of bullrushes to avoid a death sentence that the Egyptian ruler had imposed on all the male children born to Hebrew slaves -- and he was taken out of the river by the daughter of the very Pharaoh who had issued the genocidal decree.
Miriam, who had kept watch over Moses, suggested to Pharaoh's daughter that she should hire Yocheved to nurse him until he was weaned, and so Moses grew up in Pharaoh's court, knowing that he was a Jew. When he was about 40 years old, he saw an Egyptian slave-master beating a Hebrew slave and became so angry that he killed the Egyptian. As a result he had to flee to Midian, where he married Zipporah, became a shepherd, and had a son named Gershom.
One day, as he was tending his flock, the Lord God appeared and told him to lead the Israelites out of slavery and into the Promised Land. With the help of Aaron and Miriam, Moses first tried to negotiate an end to the slavery, but when that failed, the Lord sent ten plagues to Egypt and Moses led the people out of Egypt and across the Red Sea to freedom, where God revealed the Ten Commandments and the Israelites accepted them.
Moses spoke with God and is considered the author of the first five books of the Bible, but because of his own weakness, he was not permitted to enter the promised Land, only watching as the people crossed over.
Moses did not institute hereditary kingship in Israel; his chosen successor was Joshua, not Gershom. Aaron, however, as the first High Priest, created the hereditary succession of Koheins (priests). Miriam was a great prophetess, and wherever she walked, a fresh water well followed, so the people always had water in their wanderings. The hamesh (hamsa) hand amulet used against ayin hara (the evil eye) is called The Hand of Miriam by Jews.
Moses is an old hoodoo formula for oil, incense, sachet powders, and bath crystals that are intended for the use of those who wish to work with the spirit of Moses for protection, justice under the law, and freedom from oppressive conditions. It is most often utilized as a part of magic spells of occultism.
The label shown here is from a Lucky Mojo brand Moses Vigil Candle, burned by those who wish to venerate the spirit of Moses or to gain some of the advantages which his spiritual aid can offer. The same herbs and fragrances used to dress this candle for customers and clients are the basis of Lucky Mojo Moses dressing oil . used for anointing oneself, fixing the home, preparing blue or white offertory candles or feeding a mojo bag. These herbs and scents also can be found in Moses incense powder, sachet powder, and bath crystals.
Like the rest of the Lucky Mojo line, this product contains genuine herbal essential oils, not synthetic fragrances. Lucky Mojo labels are adapted from vintage packaging and in many cases the images are as traditional as the ingredients themselves.
Moses is one of a family of related formulas that also includes King Solomon Wisdom, Archangel Michael, Archangel Gabriel, Archangel Metatron, and Jezebel -- all of which relate to Judaism, Jewish scripture, or the system of Jewish mysticism known as Kabbalah. Each one of these old-time recipes is slightly different -- some placing emphasis on help from Angelic beings, others on establishing a link with an ancient Biblical figure -- but they have in common the underlying aim of aligning the magician's internally generated forces with those who have been marked in one way or another by Jehovah.
The above formulas may, of course, be mixed and matched in any way that suits the practitioner, or may be teamed up with formulas from another line of goods, such as a spiritual formula like Psychic Vision, a financial or money luck formula like Money Drawing, or a passion and sexual love spell formula like Love Me.
How you choose to use Moses spiritual supplies is, of course, up to you, but one very traditional method is to employ them in conjunction with the Ten Commandments, while praying for justice.

Aja. Han mezclado como de cinco fuentes distintas aqui, pero ahi esta. Moises es tu abogado. No puedes fallar con Moises...

Por si no puedes ir a tu botanica mas cercana, ellos te las envian por correo:


Anyway. el mercado aqui lo domina el Agua de Florida:

Anyway, el tema es hoodoo. Catherine Yronwode es la lider fundadora del movimiento. Es algo raro que este envuelta en el ocultismo a la vez que el mundo de publicacion de comics? Que importa? Esto del sincretismo es cosa de todos los dias en el Caribe y el resto del mundo.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catherine_Yronwode

La discusion de las nuevas religiones de America se discuten en el libro Occult America, que parece ser una lectura de lo mas interesante. Aqui les incluyo algo de debate relacionado al tema:
http://debatethisbook.com/2010/08/09/the-occult-and-the-making-of-american-religion/
By the 1830s and 40s, a region of central New York State called “the Burned-Over District” (so-named for its religious passions) became the magnetic center for the religious radicalism sweeping the young nation. Stretching from Albany to Buffalo, it was the Mt. Sinai of American mysticism, giving birth to new religions such as Mormonism and Seventh-Day Adventism, and also to Spiritualism, mediumship, table-rapping, séances, and other occult sensations – many of which mirrored, and aided, the rise of suffragism and early progressive movements.
Spiritualism possessed a surprising culture of egalitarianism and social activism. The movement attracted the interest and participation of social reformers because, among other things, it provided one of the first settings in modern life in which women could serve as religious leaders, at least of a certain sort. Most spirit mediums were women – and the social opening that Spiritualism provided attracted a generation of suffragists. “Spiritualism,” announced the voting-rights pioneer Mary Fenn Love, “has inaugurated the era of woman.” The nation’s social and spiritual radicals were becoming joined, and the partnership would never fade.
In the 1840s, American mystical movements were also developing the first stirrings of a therapeutic or healing-based spirituality. One of the most important of these was the “mental healing” movement that emerged in New England. By mid-century, a Maine clockmaker named Phineas Quimby, partly acting on his own ideas and partly though the influences of Swedenborgian philosophy and Mesmerism, began experimenting with how people’s moods could influence their physical wellbeing. He codified his system into a set of cosmic laws – or a “Christian science,” a term adopted by his most influential student, Mary Baker Eddy.
Throughout the latter part of the nineteenth century, Spiritualism also developed a healing spirituality, though more of a psychological sort. In an age of high rates of childhood mortality, grieving families rarely had anywhere to turn to relieve their suffering. Calvinist Protestantism offered nothing in the way of pastoral counseling. Hence, many people sought solace at the séance table. The letters and diaries of the era attest to educated people experiencing some of the most moving episodes of their lives with hands joined around a darkened séance circle. Those who believed in the reality of contact often testified to having an experience of catharsis. The earliest stirrings of a therapeutic spirituality appear in both mental-healing and Spiritualism.
By the dawn of the twentieth century, mediums and mind-cure practitioners were applying their supernatural principles to other areas of life. The mind-power, or positive thinking, movement that grew out of Quimby’s experiments seemed to hold the answer to economic anxiety and the urge for upward mobility. To a nation tempted by mass-produced goods, and possessed of a bootstrap mentality, a mental approach to success felt intuitively right. This became the template for the leading self-help philosophies of the twentieth century from Napoleon Hill’s Think and Grow Rich to Norman Vincent Peale’s The Power of Positive Thinking, and finally, in our own time, to the mega-selling book and movie The Secret.

http://www.mitchhorowitz.com/occult-americas-attic.html

Yo no se, ya Puerto Rico esta lleno de creencias. No creo que los santeros de aqui les guste cambiar a esta cosa del hoodoo. Nuestra cultura es mas rica que eso. Simplemente expongo aqui que esta necesidad de creer en algo superior siempre esta presente.

Iba a abundar mas en este tema, exponiendo como todas estas practicas tambien existian en la epoca de los grandes alquimistas, que buscando convertir el plomo en oro y encontrar la piedra filosofal en realidad encontraron quimicos nuevos y reactivos mas poderosos que permitieron nuestro desarrollo como sociedad.

Pero ese es un tema mas serio y no lo quiero manchar con este esoterismo de botica o de Spook-A-Rama (http://www.mahalo.com/spook-a-rama).
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4d5GtclbEmU





cierro con este video de Dante's Inferno:

Saturday, October 16, 2010

views of dorado


I just ran across this interesting thread. it focuses on the development of Dorado, the master planning of the city and some info on the new Ritz Carlton construction at Dorado Beach. Interesting read, nice pics. I don't publish any here because they are hosted at another site...

http://www.skyscrapercity.com/archive/index.php/t-488270.html
http://www.skyscrapercity.com/archive/index.php/t-488270-p-2.html

I'd add my two cents, but I think this davisoto or whatever his name is seems to know the turf better than I did after working in the hotel properties and developeing communities of Paseos and Dorado Beach East for around 5 years.

I'll definitely be returning here often. The guy seems to enjoy photographing everything.

Anyway, I'll bet he doesn't know about my first child...the Cerromar WWTP:
http://www.prime-eng.com/news/news_awards2005a.html

I'll always have a special bond with both hotels. Many good friends still wander there. I'll hope it gains its lost stars...here's to hope, from Ritz Carlton's side (check for Rit Carlton Dorado Beach):
http://www.sb-architects.com/

and the masterminds of this new dorado: Prisa Group (warning:annoying flash based webpage)
http://www.prisagroup.com/

finally, some speculative fiction based on master plans for bayamon and dorado:
http://ai3online.com/port_community.cfm

Antigonum!!! you just got to love those lush gardens. a pity they are all gray.

Comment aside. What is this obsession of the mayor of Bayamon with the darned vesica pisces???
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vesica_piscis

However it still beats the lasertron proposed for the Caracol shore of Dorado...
http://ai3online.com/details.cfm?ID=16&area=community

Even with all the steel and concrete those old shrimp rearing lagoons from Eureka marine will still smell of fish and crap.

Blogger's interface is crappy. No pictures today kids...[bah, problem is mozilla... I'll add a video.]



Just because I finished reading the Scott Pilgrim graphic novels today...By the way, the producer of the video is the one that made the designs for the Scott Pilgrim brawler game for PS3 and 360. I'll have to wait until they make a PSP version to play with my son...looks fun.

Sunday, October 10, 2010

Visual Design



I wanted to post something in English today. And go light. Have been very busy since my return from the States. Between translations and tabulating data my days are going fast. So I checked some recent posts of the excellent Codex 99 page and found some interesting finds relating to childred illustration. You just have to love the illustrations made for the Golden Book of Biology


Like the composition made for the Gregor Mendel's image above...



or my microscopic friends...

Here more:

The Golden Book of Biology
Charley Harper as Illustrator: the 1960s, part I
By the 1960s Charley was one busy commercial artist; he was doing ad campaigns for Libbys Pineapple1 and Morton Salt, continuing his work for the various Ford publications, and began a major commission for Western Publishing – the Giant Golden Book of Biology.
http://codex99.com/illustration/38.html

Then, it is also incredible that these color blindness tests are still being used today, after more than 100 years since they were printed in Japan. The use of color blots was truly innovative, even by today's standards:

http://codex99.com/design/72.html


Shinobu Ishihara 石原 忍 (25 Sep 1879 – 3 Jan 1963) graduated on a military scholarship from the Imperial University of Tokyo in 1905. In 1908 he began postgraduate studies in ophthalmology, first in Tokyo and, during 1913–14, in Germany. He received his Igaku Hakushi from the Imperial University in Tokyo in May 1916 and became a chief physician general in the Imperial Army. One of his first military assignments was to design a color-blindness for new recruits.


His first two sets of plates were hand painted watercolors that included “hidden” hiragana characters and were tested with a color-blind colleague. A third version, done in 1917, replaced the hirahanga with arabic numerals.

Well. I close for now. Hoping that the Santillana editorial that sells most of my sons' textbooks catch a glimpse of 1 or 2 pages of great visual design instead of the crappy mess of crammed knowledge and biased environmentalism they teach.

[smoke + chimney = industrial pollution]

[soiled beach = PRASA's fault, not the pampers I left on the beach on my last visit to Dorado's Sardinera Beach]

Although I really dig the illustrations made by Laura Michell on some of the stories of Santillana. I like the water colors and visual elements she uses...

http://lauramichell.blogspot.com/2010/08/aqui-va-otra-imagen-para-el-proyecto-de.html


Friday, October 1, 2010

Reflexiones Sobre La Violencia Policiaca




Un nuveo ciclo de violencia comienza, con varios casos donde la Policia de Puerto Rico dispara primero y pregunta despues. A mi personalmente me han impactado de sobremanera el asesinato del joven en Altamira, que hizo lo que dice el anuncio, de ayudar al Policia como deber civico. Mas aun el asesinato del anciano a manos de unos policias que iban a allanar su casa.





Aunque no soy de ver television estos dias estas noticias resuenan en mi ser, tratando de buscarle un sentido. Pudiesemos ser llanos, y solo decir que es un asunto centralizado en la Policia, pero la realidad es otra. Hay violencia de todo tipo. Unos contra otros, por cualquier estupidez, sea esta religiosa, de clases sociales, de ideologias politicas o de lo que sea.





Valoramos tan poco la vida.





Asi que hice un boceto en lapiz de lo que paso con el anciano en la oscuridad de la noche, mienras iba en el tren pasadas las 8 de la noche. Era un boceto malisimo pero trabajo en una idea. Mientras el anciano iba temiendo por su vida estos policias trigger happy pensaban que era un juego de video. No es la primera vez que esto ocurre. En la pasada huelga los mensajes de los policias hablaban de tumbar cabezas y cobrar cuentas viejas. Me tumbaste la pajita del hombro, ahora te tumbo la cabeza a macanazos.




Necesitamos cambiar de actitudes. No creo que nuestro superintendente sea el mejor ejemplo de tolerancia y respeto. Nos gusta el jaqueton y el sinverguenza. Somos del reino donde nuestras referencias noticiosas vienen de La Comay.



Por aquello de ayudar a nuestros amigos extranjeros, algunos articulos relacionados al asesinato:

http://www.vocero.com/noticias/ley-y-orden/14444.html

http://www.vocero.com/noticias/44-ultimas-noticias/14357-policia-mata-individuo.html

http://www.elnuevodia.com/policiasmatanaancianoqueintentoevitarallanamientoensucasa-788903.html



Comienzo dando unos links al asunto de la violencia y sus origenes. Este articulo de Forbes da una idea. Si nos desensibilizamos al dolor ajeno, si mo somos empaticos, cometeremos atrocidades:

http://www.forbes.com/2010/06/15/forbes-india-david-livingstone-smith-psychology-of-violence-opinions-ideas-10-smith.html



For example, one veteran confessed that, because a woman's crying infant was interfering with his rape of her he "took a living human child … an innocent baby that was just beginning to talk, and threw it into boiling water." It is hard to imagine normal men behaving in this way. Try to imagine yourself doing it, and your mind will probably recoil in disgust. However, the soldiers who committed these atrocities were neither madmen nor monsters. They were, for the most part, ordinary people. People like you. The same is true of all the other mass atrocities that litter human history. The infernal ovens of Auschwitz, the mass graves at Srebrenica and the killing fields of Pol Pot's Kampuchea were all the handiwork of ordinary people

These observations raise an extremely important question. What goes on in the human mind to make such brutality possible? Yoshio Tshuchiya, another Japanese veteran interviewed in Katsuichi's book, gestures towards an answer. "We called the Chinese ‘chancorro' … that meant below human, like bugs or animals … The Chinese didn't belong to the human race. That was the way we looked at it." "If I'd thought of them as human beings I couldn't have done it," he observed, "But … I thought of them as animals or below human beings."


This is called dehumanization. We dehumanize our fellow human beings when we convince ourselves (or allow ourselves to be convinced) that they are less than human and come to believe that, although these people appear to be human beings like us, this is merely a façade. Beneath the surface they are really subhuman creatures, fit to be hunted down and destroyed. The immense destructive power of dehumanization lies in the fact that it excludes its victims from the universe of moral obligation, so killing them is of no greater consequence swatting a mosquito, or poisoning a rat. If dehumanization is a key factor in war and genocide, we ought to be working very hard to prevent it.

Otros culpan al televisor y a los videojuegos.



Personalmente lo achaco a nuestra falta de valores. Si estoy rodeado de personas que hacen trampas, son corruptos, se roban el cable TV, la luz y el agua, o que son Pay Per Play, como algunos funcionarios politicos...nos sorprende entonces que nuestros funcionarios y policias sean manzanas podridas?


Yo sigo leyendo libros que traje de alla. Luego escribo algo relacionado.
Cierro con una historia zen. El Aguila que Creia Ser Gallina


A man found an eagle's egg and put it in a nest of a barnyard hen. The eaglet hatched with the brood of chicks and grew up with them.
All his life the eagle did what the barnyard chicks did, thinking he was a barnyard chicken. He scratched the earth for worms and insects. He clucked and cackled. And he would thrash his wings and fly a few feet into the air.
Years passed and the eagle grew very old. One day he saw a magnificent bird above him in the cloudless sky. It glided in graceful majesty among the powerful wind currents, with scarcely a beat of its strong golden wings.
The old eagle looked up in awe. "Who's that?" he asked.
"That's the eagle, the king of the birds," said his neighbor. "He belongs to the sky. We belong to the earth-- we're chickens." So the eagle lived and died a chicken, for that's what he thought he was.
From Awareness: The Perils and Opportunities of Reality
by Anthony de Mello
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