phil1115

"Monads are nonphysical, psychical substances whose forceful life is an immanent activity. For monads, there is no outer world to access, no larger, broader vision. What the monads see are the projections of their own appetites and their own ideas. In Leibniz's succinct phrase: "Monads have no windows." Like Indra's Net, each monad mirrors the whole world. Each monad represents the universe in concentrated form...Each microcosm contains the macrocosm." "While no unit directly internal linkcontacts other units, each unit exists in internal linksynchronous time in the same reality. All their representations are coordinated. The coordination takes place through the supervisory role of the Central Infinite Monad, traditionally known as "god"."

http://fusionanomaly.net/monads.html

NOVA's Galileo's Battle for the Heavens
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/galileo/

"The total amount of suffering per year in the natural world is beyond
all decent contemplation. During the minute that it takes me to compose
this sentence, thousands of animals are being eaten alive, many others
are running for their lives, whimpering with fear, others are slowly
being devoured from within by rasping parasites, thousands of all kinds
are dying of starvation, thirst, and disease. It must be so. If there
ever is a time of plenty, this very fact will automatically lead to an
increase in the population until the natural state of starvation and
misery is restored. In a universe of electrons and selfish genes, blind
physical forces and genetic replication, some people are going to get
hurt, other people are going to get lucky, and you won't find any rhyme
or reason in it, nor any justice. The universe that we observe has
precisely the properties we should expect if there is, at bottom, no
design, no purpose, no evil, no good, nothing but pitiless indifference."
Richard Dawkins, River Out of Eden: A Darwinian View of Life, Basic
Books, 1996

Your learning is useless to you till you have
lost your text-books, burnt your lecture notes,
and forgotten the minutiae which you have learnt
by heart for examination . . . . The function of
a university is to enable you to shed details in
favor of principles.
- Alfred North Whitehead
in _The Aims of Education_

Sparrows were feeding in a freezing drizzle
That while you watched turned into pieces of snow
Riding a gradient invisible
From silver aslant to random, white, and slow.

There came a moment that you couldn’t tell.
And then they clearly flew instead of fell.

- Howard Nemerov

May those who love us, love us
And those that don't love us,
May god turn their hearts.
And if he doesn't turn their hearts
May he turn their ankles
So we'll know them
By their limping.

The Unknown Citizen
by W.H. Auden - March 1939

(To JS/07/M/378 This Marble Monument Is Erected by the State)

He was found by the Bureau of Statistics to be
One against whom there was no official complaint,
And all the reports of his conduct agree
That, in the modern sense of the old-fashioned word, he was a saint,
For in everything he did he served the Greater Community.
Except for the war till the day he retired
He worked in a factory and never got fired,
But satisfied his employers, Fudge Motors Inc.
Yet he wasn't a scab or odd in his views,
For his union reports that he paid his dues,
(Our report of his union shows it was sound)
And our Social Psychology workers found
That he was popular with his mates and liked a drink.
The Press are convinced that he bought a paper every day,
And that his reactions to advertisements were normal in every way.
Policies taken out in his name prove that he was fully insured,
And his Health-card shows that he was once in hospital but left it cured.
Both Producers Research and High--Grade Living declare
He was fully sensible to the advantages of the Installment Plan
And had everything necessary to the Modern Man,
A gramophone, a radio, a car and a frigidaire.
Our researchers into Public Opinion are content
That he held the proper opinions for the time of the year;
When there was peace he was for peace; when there was war he went.
He was married and added five children to the population,
which our Eugenist says was the right number for a parent of his
generation,
And our teachers report he never interfered with their education.
Was he free? Was he happy? The question is absurd:
Had anything been wrong, we should certainly have heard.

This is a note from a class I was in a long time ago.
It seems apt and its author has said he does not mind if I reuse it for you.
It seems to me to be honest and important -- then and now....
-------------------------------------------------

Dear Class:

It has been a pleasure to read your papers over the last few days.
It seems as if I have been able to get to know many of you in ways
that would otherwise be quite impossible. Each of you has come
from a unique heritage, often quite different from each other and
I'm glad you have arrived here.

We live in a society that shapes our views and wants us all to be
and look and act the same. Our parents shape us, our school systems
shape us, the media shapes us. But often they have a big agenda.
Often they have some use for us. Perhaps that use is something
we don't even recognize. It might even be some use that we
wouldn't agree with if we knew what it was.

It's even possible that we could become stilted, stunted, in our
ability to think on our own. It's possible that we have accepted
from these different influences and sources, views that are conflicting.
And maybe we haven't been able to think things through far enough
to realize that we don't make any sense even to ourselves.

It's easy to object, to protest, to demonstrate. It's much harder to think,
to weigh arguments, to calculate what does make sense. I hope this
course will help you do that.

Etc. etc. etc.

So many ways to make a mark in the world.
So many ways to keep faith with life.
So many ways to say thank you.

----------------------------------
Walt Whitman said it well:

Song Of Myself
48

I have said that the soul is not more than the body,
And I have said that the body is not more than the soul,
And nothing, not God, is greater to one than one's self is,
And whoever walks a furlong without sympathy walks to his funeral
drest in his shroud,
And I or you pocketless of a dime may purchase the pick of the
earth,
And to glance with an eye or show a bean in its pod confounds the
learning of all times,
And there is no trade or employment but the young man following
it may become a hero,
And there is no object so soft but it makes a hub for the wheel'd
universe,
And I say to any man or woman, Let your soul stand cool and com-
posed before a million universes.

And I say to mankind, Be not curious about God,
For I who am curious about each am not curious about God,
(No array of terms can say how much I am at peace about God and
about death.)

I hear and behold God in every object, yet understand God not
in the least,
Nor do I understand who there can be more wonderful than my-
self.
Why should I wish to see God better than this day?
I see something of God each hour of the twenty-four and each
moment then,
In the faces of men and women I see God, and in my own face in
the glass,
I find letters from God dropt in the street, and every one is sign'd
by God's name,
And I leave them where they are, for I know that wheresoe'er I go
Others will punctually come for ever and ever.