the second arrow

Writing for Big Think, correspondent Philip Perry introduces us to the Buddhist parable of the second arrow—which has the simple exposition of walking through the woods and finding oneself suddenly struck by an arrow. This ambush is to be understood as an allegory for any unexpected misfortune, but the archer isn’t quite finished and has one more arrow in his quiver for us. The first strike was unavoidable but if we keep our wits about us and don’t collapse in an emotional heap, we can dodge the second volley and forego a good deal of extra grief. The visceral pain of the first arrow is rather inevitable but the suffering and sorrow (duḥkha) of the second is voluntary. Read more about the morale tale and Buddhism at the link up top.

ehe für alle

In more positive parliamentary news, according to the chairwoman of the junior coalition partner of the Green party, the Bundestag will vote on legislation on Friday to legalise same-sex marriage, bestowing all the benefits and responsibilities appertaining to on all couples.
The Chancellor was formerly against full integration, believing such households might not be ideal for children—but changed her mind after meeting a lesbian couple who had cared for eight foster children. Opposition and conservative members of her party are upset with her timing, just weeks before an election—but hopefully a political calculation erring towards inclusion is the right decision. Germany’s Basic Law, which is a little tone-deaf and does not do such a stellar job in addressing social conventions and families (there is no German word for parent—it’s always die Eltern and the formulation Alleinerziehender is a complex one), may also need to amended so its definition of marriage is worded broadly enough to match the law of the land.

terra nullis or cincinnatus

Previously we’ve explored how the origins of the American Revolutionary War were less noble than they are usually framed in stories like the Boston Tea Party or the Midnight Ride of Paul Revere, and it was refreshing to see that history and scholarship revisited through tracking down a team of colonial surveyors in the 1760s and the charts that they produced that demarcated the boundaries between what lands could be settled and what was the domain of Native American tribes. Many of the maps included both UK and Native American signatories agreeing to rivers, peaks and other landmarks as border markers.
Quite earnest in their efforts to reach a compromise that would promote a harmonious co-existence, all the territory of course still belonged to the Crown but settlers were not infringe further into Indian lands. The colonial governors were not always willing to enforce these treaties and in some cases flagrantly encouraged settlement and coastal, seaboard European communities moved further and further inland and on-going disputes, punctuated with memorable riots and skirmishes, eventually precipitated into rebellion and war. Admittedly conditions for aboriginal people was less than concordant at all times in Canada and Australia and I admit that I haven’t done the research on how things played out differently in those territories, but I think their experience was very different from the systematic “genocidal dispossession” experienced in America.

grenfell tower, june, 2017

Our heartfelt thanks to Nag on the Lake for directing our attention to a moving and righteously outraged elegy by Ben Okri for the victims, families and the displaced of the Grenfell Tower fire of 14 June.
“If you want to see how the poor die, come see Grenfell Tower,” the Nigerian poet writes and fervently captures the hollow sense of disdain—contempt of a gleaning ever more profit at the expense of a disposable underclass illustrated by this tragedy. The recent additions to London’s skyline, rather than æsthetic and aspirational, turn revolting and shameful and repeat the demand that a system where austerity for the many means prosperity of the few must change for the better. “See the tower, and let a new world-changing thought flower.”

biblioclasm

Disturbingly, not only can US transportation security agents demand that travellers disclose the social media profiles and passwords but are now—after trials in select airports—making it standard practise to oblige passengers to remove books and other paper goods from hand-luggage for inspection, as Hyperallergic reports. Counter to the legal legacy of keeping reading habits out of prying eyes, this change surely means that a person’s literary tastes—to include research materials, titles and covers easily misconstrued by those deputised critics and censors, will become a criteria for barring entry and making transit a very difficult matter.

nature morte vivante

In response to an on-going paternity suit raised by a professional psychic, a judge ordered the exhumation of surrealist Salvador Dalí from beneath the stage of his hometown theatre and museum where his body is buried in Figueres, Catalonia.
Notwithstanding speculation whether Dalí in fact was disposed or capable of sexual relations by the fact he had no offspring inside his long marriage to his muse, Gaia, the tarot card reader is claiming that the eccentric artist had an affair with her mother whilst working as a chambermaid in the province of Girona. With no heir, Dalí donated his artwork and estate to the Kingdom of Spain but presumably, if fatherhood can be established, his daughter would have a claim on the artist’s legacy.

big tent politics

Published by the German newspaper Welt am Sonntag (auf Englisch, as Boing Boing reports), veteran investigative journalist Seymour Hirsh—responsible for exposing the massacre at My Lai and equal-opportunity critic of US capers—shares a series of conversations between an American soldier (AS) and a security advisor (SA) that was leaked to him regarding April’s retaliatory missile strike on a Syrian airbase, heavily redacted for security reasons.

AS: This is bad… Things are spooling up.

SA: You may not have seen trumps press conference yesterday. He’s bought into the media story without asking to see the Intel. We are likely to get our asses kicked by the Russians. Fucking dangerous. Where are the godamn adults? The failure of the chain of command to tell the President the truth, whether he wants to hear it or not, will go down in history as one of our worst moments.

AS: I don't know. None of this makes any sense. We KNOW that there was no chemical attack. The Syrians struck a weapons cache (a legitimate military target) and there was collateral damage. That's it. They did not conduct any sort of a chemical attack.

SA: There has been a hidden agenda all along. This is about trying to ultimately go after Iran. What the people around Trump do not understand is that the Russians are not a paper tiger and that they have more robust military capability than we do.

This dangerous, deadly incompetent leadership style is about to be put to the test again, as Dear Leader predictably is planning on staging a distraction to side-line public scrutiny as the Senate moves to vote on the future form of healthcare in the United States. The fact that he’d resort to taking lives, putting others at risk and squandering millions on a pretence and as a side-show (not to mention exacerbating already strained international relations) in order to push through a tax-break for the wealthy swaddled in medical insurance reform is beyond despicable. Anyone colluding with his wanton cannibalism is deserving of the same harsh criticism.