FREEDOM is: carving unknown own paths
20 01 2015Comments : Leave a Comment »
Tags: codici transcendentali, tobia rava
Categories : Aesthetics, Beauty, Choice, consciousness, Creativity, Free Will, Freedom, Imagination, Language, Love, Math, Nature
HAPPINESS pills
18 12 2014Mummy: If you could take a pill that always made you happy, would you?
Santiago (age 8): No, because it’s important to feel bad about things you do.
Mummy: So do you think happiness is something you go out and find or something you just have?
Santiago: Happiness is something you have. In my head it’s like a battle. Goodies against baddies. When you’re born you have happy and sad but then as you grow older, you have to chose. I’m still young so I haven’t chosen yet. Right now the good side has taken over a little bit. It’s hard to say what will happen next.
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Tags: Hayao Miyazaki, Studio Ghibli
Categories : Creativity, Film, Happiness (Wit = α+βxit+εit), Imagination, Japan
FREEDOM through humour
12 12 2014Comments : Leave a Comment »
Tags: Education, John McCain, Jon Stewart, North Korea, Suki Kim, The Daily Show
Categories : Creativity, Education, Freedom, Governance, Uncategorized
Seeking Wholeness: Touche-a-tout
8 12 2014Comments : Leave a Comment »
Tags: Amsterdam, Doina Kraal, Foam Museum, touche-a-tout
Categories : Beauty, consciousness, Creativity, Holland
Beauty: Valley of Astonishment
7 12 2014IN the middle of the journey of our life, I came to myself, in a dark wood, where the direct way was lost. – Dante
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Tags: Dante, Peter Brooks, Piraeus Municipal Theatre, Valley of Astonishment
Categories : Creativity, Greece, Philosophy of Mind, Senses, Theatre, Uncategorized
Heroes: Suleiman Bakhit
30 11 2014Aranim Media Factory is the one and only comic book company in the Middle East. It provides tens of millions of Arab youth the chance to enjoy comics, manga, animation, games and films inspired by middle eastern mythologies. Aranim was created by Arab youth in cooperation with international talent with new heroes grounded in the ancient traditions of the Middle East. Using authentic Arabic art styles, themes, heroes and villains, Aranim tells thrilling stories that capture the imagination of youth around the world with a middle eastern twist. Aranim is entertainment with a purpose. Hopefully, it will change the way Arab youth see the world – and the way the world sees them:
http://www.fullyillustrated.com/portfolio/design/aranim-media-factory/
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Tags: Fully Illustrated, New York Times, Suleimna Bakhit
Categories : Children's Books, Creativity, Education, Governance, Jordan, Middle-East
Seeking FREEDOM
21 11 2014“I think hard times are coming, when we will be wanting the voices of writers who can see alternatives to how we live now, and can see through our fear-stricken society and its obsessive technologies, to other ways of being. And even imagine some real grounds for hope. We will need writers who can remember freedom: poets, visionaries—the realists of a larger reality. Right now, I think we need writers who know the difference between production of a market commodity and the practice of an art. The profit motive is often in conflict with the aims of art. We live in capitalism. Its power seems inescapable; so did the divine right of kings. … Power can be resisted and changed by human beings; resistance and change often begin in art, and very often in our art—the art of words. I’ve had a long career and a good one, in good company, and here, at the end of it, I really don’t want to watch American literature get sold down the river. … The name of our beautiful reward is not profit. Its name is freedom.”
– Ursula K. Le Guin
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Tags: National Book Awards, Ursula K. Le Guin
Categories : Creativity, Freedom, Purpose
FREEDOM in San Miguel de Allende
11 11 2014Nothing is original. Steal from anywhere that resonates with inspiration or fuels your imagination. Devour old films, new films, music, books, paintings, photographs, poems, dreams, random conversations, architecture, bridges, street signs, trees, clouds, bodies of water, light and shadows. Select only things to steal from that speak directly to your soul. If you do this, your work will be authentic. Authenticity is invaluable; originality is non-existent. And don’t bother concealing your thievery – celebrate it if you feel like it. In any case, always remember what Jean-Luc Godard said: “It’s not where you take things from – it’s where you take them to.
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Tags: Jean-Luc Godard, Jim Jarmusch, San Miguel de Allende
Categories : Creativity, Freedom, Mexico
Reimagining EDUCATION
5 11 2014An education is a labour of love. It is developing a longing, developing a want to feed an aching hunger of curiosity. An education is the empowerment of the self—in spirit, mind and body—and the self in relation to her environment. An education means attaining wisdom; the wisdom to survive and the wisdom to sustain; mostly, the wisdom to be humbled by mystery—by all those questions our society has yet to find answers to. An education is about reinforcing free will, the will to act and to change, the will to improve the world we live in. An education should liberate the mind, develop the confidence to draw inside as well as outside those lines that contain us. Learning to read, to calculate, to draw, to remember the past, these are ultimately only tools to help children communicate. These skills alone is not what makes for an educated child. An educated child is the child with the most questions, the child with an insatiable appetite for exploration, a child that pushes the boundaries around them in pursuit of a greater truth — a greater truth than that which has already been taught to them.
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Tags: Guy Claxon, Tony Wagner, WISE 2014
Categories : Creativity, Education
Consciousness: mindfarts & mindfulness
29 10 2014Mummy: Is something on your mind?
Philomena – No. I’m just thinking about stuff. Well not really. I’m just kind of, you know, I’m just being spacey right now.
“Like just about every other aspect of the human condition, our consciousness operates on a spectrum. On one end lies conscious awareness, or mindfulness. But all the way on the other end, there’s something you could call mindlessness. And mindlessness brings many benefits that are being overlooked, like creative thinking and personal problem-solving.”
– Melissa Dahl Link to Dahl’s uplifting piece:
In Praise of Spacing Out
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Tags: Consciousness, Melissa Dahl, Mindfulness
Categories : consciousness, Creativity, Happiness (Wit = α+βxit+εit)
LOVE: “The game of life is love.”
18 10 2014Comments : Leave a Comment »
Tags: Nea Makri
Categories : Creativity, Greece, Love
FREEDOM flashing
25 09 2014Freedom contains the mystery of the world. God wanted freedom, and from this came the tragedy of the world. – Nikolai Berdyaev
No one is free; even the birds are chained to the sky. – Bob Dylan
Philomena – Mami, when am I going to be free to do whatever I want?
Mummy– What do you mean? What would you like to do that you don’t do already?
Philomena – I don’t get to choose anything. Not even what I eat.
Mummy – Are you kidding? You have so much more choice than I ever had as to what you eat.
Philomena – Maybe I have more choice than you but that doesn’t mean I can choose what I want. I don’t get to choose anything. I have to go to school. I have to eat pasta with cheese sauce even though it makes me gag just smelling it.
Mummy – Once every few weeks they serve you pasta with cheese sauce.
Philomena – But I hate it. It makes me sick. And no one listens to me about it. I’ve asked politely a million times. It is not respectful not to listen. I am perfectly happy to eat the pasta but not the sauce. It is absolutely terrible to be a child sometimes. I can’t wait to grow up so that I can do whatever I want.
Mummy – Believe me Philomena, growing older doesn’t necessarily grant you the freedom to do whatever you want. You will always be fighting for your freedom (and the freedom of others) in one way or another—you will fight for the freedom to do what you want, live where you want, behave the way you want, love what you want, freedom to change the world around you, to make the world a better place, it is always a battle. Participating in that battle, that struggle, it’s what makes us human. Fortunately, what also makes us human is our imagination. The only place you are ever truly free is in your mind. Freedom is your creative force. And even that takes some practice. I promise you, your mind at age 7 is a whole lot freer than my mind at age 40.
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Tags: Eric Fromm, Nikolai Berdyaev, Rudolf Steiner
Categories : consciousness, Creativity, Free Will, Freedom, Governance, Music, Philosophy of Mind, Poetry, Uncategorized
CREATIVITY: the power of resistance
24 09 2014Comments : Leave a Comment »
Tags: Steven Pressfield, The War of Art
Categories : Creativity, Free Will, Freedom, Imagination, Language
AGAPE: Dancing a Waltz of Peace
18 09 2014Comments : Leave a Comment »
Tags: Dancing in Jaffa, Pierre Dulaine
Categories : consciousness, Creativity, Dance, Education, Film, God, Governance, Love, Morality, Uncategorized
CREATIVITY: What do you see?
17 08 2014Comments : Leave a Comment »
Categories : Beauty, Creativity, Senses
Philomena: what would happen if we didn’t have any books in the world?
6 07 2014
An original song by Philomena (age 7)
(Thank you Song Academy for giving Philomena the gift of confidence)
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Tags: Song Academy
Categories : Creativity, Language, Music, Uncategorized
Happiness is watching mothers come together to change the world
19 06 2014Comments : Leave a Comment »
Categories : consciousness, Creativity, Governance, People
LOVE = FORGIVENESS
6 06 2014
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Categories : Beauty, consciousness, Creativity, Free Will, Happiness (Wit = α+βxit+εit), Love, Morality, Purpose, Senses, Uncategorized
Push the Bush: The Mostar Diving Club
5 06 2014Tonight at the Bush Hall – the beautiful poetry of Mostar Diving Club: with Vicky Osterberg, Will Worsley, Michael G Moore and Damian Katkhuda.
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Tags: The Mostar Diving Club
Categories : Beauty, Creativity, Music, Poetry, Senses, Uncategorized