The White Sport

 

When I was a kid, I used to think that savate was a joke, taken from "The Adventures of Tintin". I pronounced the word wrong, too. Actually, it´s a real martial art from France. Not only that, all those spectacular kicks we associate with "Japanese" karate are actually from savate! They were introduced to Japan by a French military mission assisting the Meiji regime to modernize the land of the rising sun. 

Seriously, did White people invent *everything*? Modern yoga, modern meditation, and now karate?! 

White Boy Summer all over again!  

M K...who?

OK, this was...funny. Somehow.  

M K Stalin

Via media or Neo-Lamarckian extravaganza?

Some quotations from the website "The Third Way: Evolution in the era of genomics and epigenomics". Most are from the book presentations on the site. I haven´t included the titles of the books. The site is "alternative" (with a slight Neo-Lamarckian bent) but not creationist. All theories are within the bounds of naturalism. Think Lynn Margulis and the like. Link to the starting page immidiately below!

The Third Way of Evolution

"Neo-Darwinism ignores important rapid evolutionary processes such as symbiogenesis, horizontal DNA transfer, action of mobile DNA and epigenetic modifications. Moreover, some Neo-Darwinists have elevated Natural Selection into a unique creative force that solves all the difficult evolutionary problems without a real empirical basis".

"Shapiro integrates advances in symbiogenesis, epigenetics, and saltationism into a unified approach that views evolutionary change as an active cell process, regulated epigenetically and capable of making rapid large changes by horizontal DNA transfer, inter-specific hybridization, whole genome doubling, symbiogenesis, or massive genome restructuring."

"Epigenetics can potentially revolutionize our understanding of the structure and behavior of biological life on Earth. It explains why mapping an organism’s genetic code is not enough to determine how it develops or acts and shows how nurture combines with nature to engineer biological diversity."

"Reaching beyond biology, epigenetics now informs work on drug addiction, the long-term effects of famine, and the physical and psychological consequences of childhood trauma."

"In BEEM, author and engineer Raju Pookottil boldly diverges from the Darwinian theory of natural selection and offers a thought provoking counter-hypothesis for the evolution of all living organisms. He proposes that every species, be it single cells, plants or animals, are equipped with the fundamental mechanisms that allows them to generate intelligent and logical decisions that they could then utilize in directing their own evolution. Whereas natural selection depends on random mutations followed by selection, Pookottil argues that species are capable of deciding how to logically construct themselves to near perfection over many generations, making modifications to their own genes where necessary. The principles of emergence, swarm intelligence and signal networks, which he proposes are available to all living organisms, could in fact be the real forces that cleverly and logically drive the evolution of every species on earth. "

"Here you will learn why it is wrong to describe organisms as genetically programmed; why environmental induction is likely to be more important in evolution than random mutation; and why it is crucial to consider both selection and developmental mechanism in explanations of adaptive evolution."

"This novel book is the first to properly address the controversial issue of plant intelligence, arguing convincingly that cells and whole plants growing in competitive wild conditions exhibit aspects of plant behaviour that can be accurately described as 'intelligent'. The author expands on three main insights drawn by the Nobel Prize winning botanist Barbara McClintock: firstly that plant cells may have knowledge of themselves; secondly that they receive challenges which lead to behavioural changes; finally, that they do so in a manner which implies assessment and intelligent behaviour. "

"In this groundbreaking book, Adrian Bejan takes the recurring patterns in nature—trees, tributaries, air passages, neural networks, and lightning bolts—and reveals how a single law of physics, the Constructal Law (1996), accounts for the evolution of these and all other designs in our world."

"In the 150 years since publication of the Origin of Species, we have discovered three main sources for this variation – mutation, hybridisation and epigenetics. Then on Sunday, 12th February, 2001 the evidence for perhaps the most extraordinary cause of variation was simultaneously released by two organisations – the code for the entire human genome. Not only was the human genome unbelievably simple (it is only ten times more complicated than a bacteria), but embedded in the code were large fragments that were derived from viruses – fragments that were vital to evolution of all organisms and the evidence for a fourth and vital source of variation – viruses."

Via media or Lamarckian extravaganza? That is the question. Either way, please enjoy!

Fair use, educational purpose only, no copyright infringement intended, etc etc.  

Nej, det är väl "socialfascism", antar jag

Tredje perioden, någon?

Är Expressens flört med SD-väljarna över? Ledarsidan skiter ner sig av rädsla för att SAP ska driva igenom "klasskamp" (!) och "populism" med hjälp av SD:s mandat. Kan ju vara ren skrämselpropaganda från Expressens sida, men vem vet...  

"Det är inte fascism när S bjuder in SD" 

The White Yoga

 

"Yoga Body: The Origins of Modern Posture Practice" by Mark Singleton (published in 2010) is a scholarly work on a topic I´m almost completely uninterested in: modern yoga. For that reason, and perhaps also due to its scholarly bent, it was a difficult and boring read. I obtained it mostly due to its connection to another book on modern Hinduism, "A History of Modern Yoga" by Elizabeth de Michelis, which I have reviewed elsewhere on this blog. Another book in the same genre is "The Making of Buddhist Modernism" by David L McMahan. 

What genre? I suppose we could call it Ex Occidente Lux, or something to that effect. Much of what we think of as Hinduism, Buddhism, meditation practice or indeed yoga isn´t "Indian" or "Eastern" at all, but actually very Western, either by being heavily adapted to Western modes of thought, or by actually being Western (albeit dressed up in Hindu-Buddhist garb to look sexier or more exotic). This is true even of teachings developed and dissiminated by authentic Asian teachers, such as the famous Swami Vivekananda. Both de Michelis and Singleton (a former student of hers) believe that Vivekananda´s Neo-Vedanta was heavily influenced by New Thought, Transcendentalism and more generally by modern Western "esotericism", which explains his stunning success in the United States. The Hindu swami was simply preaching the New Thought message to New Thought supporters! 

Singleton believes that modern yoga is likewise heavily indebted to Western models. While he is at pains not to attack modern forms of yoga outright (such as Iyengar Yoga and Bikram Yoga), I think "debunkers" might find his thesis *very* interesting, at least as long as yoga teachers and their students consider "lineage" and "authentic Indian origins" to be important. If they instead adopt the more sensible attitude "if it works, who cares where it comes from" (which I think may be Singleton´s intention), they won´t feel particularly threatened by this work. However, everything from Indian national pride to romantic Western notions of "the Orient" may militate against such a conclusion being drawn... 

The original "hatha yoga" was a mystical practice, probably connected to Tantrism and frequently very bizarre, so bizarre that some prudish 19th century translations of hatha yoga texts left out the juiciest parts! The goal of hatha yoga was physical immortality and the attainment of supernatural siddhi powers (compare Taoism). Nor were the really existing hatha yogins of British colonial India particularly popular, neither among the British, other Western visitors, nor the Hindu elites. The yogins (often confused or conflated with Muslim fakirs) were seen as degenerate, despicable vaudeville entertainers or con men. And before the 19th century, the ascetics had been considered dangerous - not without good reason - since armed bands of yogins controlled the trade routes, creating considerable trouble for both the British East India Company and Hindu elite groups. It´s therefore hardly surprising that Vivekananda (yes, he turns up in this book, as well) would reject hatha yoga in favor of a strictly "spiritual" approach to yoga. And then, maybe not entirely...

While traditional hatha yoga with its bizarre body postures was rejected by both Westerners and modernizing Indians, other forms of physical exercises were gradually accepted. *These physical exercises were imported to India from the West, and very often resemble what we today would consider yoga*. This isn´t surprising if you think about it: why does "modern anglophone yoga" (the author´s term) resemble gymnastics, body building or strongman feats? If Singleton is right, the reason is very simple: the "yoga" many Westerners practice today, in the belief that they are emulating an ancient Indian tradition, *really is* gymnastics or body building *the origins of which are ultimately European or American*. While Singleton says that he doesn´t want to trace the origins of each individual "asana" (body posture), his book contains photos from various sources which in my mind conclusively shows that Iyengar Yoga and similar modern yoga forms borrowed many of their exercises from Western sources. A more charitable interpretation is that modern yoga arose in a "dialogue" between the West and the East, as Indian fitness teachers about a century ago combined Western gymnastics or calisthenics with *some* traditional hatha yoga postures and a lot of free improvisation. 

But even then, the hatha yoga asanas were reinterpreted according to quite modern ideological matrixes. One of them was Indian nationalism. The anti-hathayoga Vivekananda, for whom real "raja yoga" was spiritual, nevertheless also wanted Indians to train their bodies and become physically strong, and this tendency towards "muscular Hinduism" was even more pronounced among the militant nationalists. The purpose wasn´t simply to train resistance fighters. There was also an ideological purpose: to combat the Western (British) view that Indians were effete, indolent, "peaceful", and so on. While Indian or Hindu nationalism is, of course, Indian or Hindu, note that the very idea of nationalism is in itself Western. Like Western technology, Western ideological concepts were used by the colonized and turned against the West itself. Part and parcel of Indian-Hindu nationalism was the claim that modern yoga is really very ancient and comes from India, not from some YMCA school in West Bengal. Another distinctly Western preoccupation exported to India and fused with body building was eugenics. In India, it could be combined with the claim that Hindus must fight their effiminacy and hence racial degeneration.

Another line of inquiry followed by Singleton is that *physical training itself was seen as a spiritual exercise*, the physical training in question being Western. Unknown to many (including myself), New Thought wasn´t just about mental techniques (recast as "raja yoga" by Vivekananda), but also about physical fitness, alternative health concerns, grace and beauty. There was no contradiction: New Thought texts explicitly talk about mental "auto-suggestion" which would make the body follow the directives of the mind. Exotic or difficult body postures and strongman feats could therefore be incorporated into a spiritual-esoteric worldview. (So was dance: the author never mentions eurythmy, but clearly Steiner´s strange esoteric dance is part of this context, too.) While some postures may have been derived from hatha yoga, most were known in the West before the arrival of Hindu teachers on American soil, and all of them were interpreted according to the New Thought model of health and modern spirituality, far removed from magic Tantric practices. 

One thing I found amusing was that Paramahamsa Yogananda, who is always cast today as a meditating Jesus-like super-spiritual figure ("spiritual" as in pure spirit) was actually a classical strongman who performed all the usual feats when touring the United States (including in DC where he met President Coolidge). Another fun fact was that the Hindu teachers of modern yoga claim authority from secret scriptures nobody has ever seen! A bit like Madame Blavatsky´s "Book of Dzyan", or Joseph Smith´s "Book of Mormon"?

In summary then, modern yoga looks breath-takingly (pun intended) modern and Western because, well, it really is modern and (mostly) Western. With that higher realization, we can go on to other pursuits...  

Veckans Strasser (OK, nu *är* jag förvånad)

Gissa vem som kvalat in till "Veckans Strasser" den här veckan? Om det har fortsätter, kommer begreppet "socialfascist" att få en helt ny innebörd, LOL.

SSU öppnar för samarbete med SD

The Cosmic Eros hard at work

 

Not sure what the pic above is supposed to be, some kind of creepy wasp attacking an equally creepy spider. Now, how on Earth (pun may be intended) did these critters even *get* here? There are some possibilities...

1. God refashioned the entire world in a truly bizarre manner after the fall of Adam and Eve. However, one day, his Son will return, and then the wasp and the spider will become friendly towards each other.

2. It´s a product of blind evolution, following a bizarre chance event during which "life" emerged just like that, from dead shit. Another line of evolution gave rise to "Homo sapiens".

3. God did it on purpose, and now he´s just laughing at us all. Hard!

Hmmm... 

Blah blah blah

Just give da girrl her freakin´ prize, dammit!

Yearly reminder that the Ethiopian prime minister Abiy Ahmed got the Nobel Peace Prize in 2019 instead of Greta Thunberg (or Donald Trump, for that matter). 

Ethiopia wages a war in Tigray and recently expelled UN diplomats from the country after said diplomats had accused the Peace Prize-winning administration of deliberately withholding food and other aid from the famine-stricken province, obviously to avange the fact that the Tigrean TPLF (the former ruling party of Ethiopia) succesfully beat back the military attacks of the Ethiopian Peace Prize Forces. 

Jane Psaki, or whatever Joe Biden´s little poodle is called, sharply condemns Ethiopia blah blah blah, but since the US *supports* Ahmed´s administration (since it wants to privatize everything), the whole thing sparks of hypocrisy. In other words, just another day on planet Earth!  

Stranded in Eternity

I almost want to believe this (from JMG´s blog): 

"Imagine for a moment a limitless center of consciousness and power beyond space and time, blazing with the light of a billion suns, transcending personality and impersonality alike. From that immeasurable source, great streams of creative force surge outward through the planes of existence, passing through countless other subordinate centers of consciousness, divided and refracted on the way into equally innumerable individual currents.  Some of these currents reach all the way to the densest plane of existence, the one we call material reality. There they take the form of things and beings, each one created and sustained by the outpouring of divine creative force, each one capable of evolving toward life and consciousness in its own way.

This is the universe as it is experienced in the Western magical tradition. In that vision of the Universe, dear reader, you are one expression of one tiny sub-sub-sub-subcurrent spun off from that mighty outpouring of power. You are created and sustained by it from moment to moment, and you have no existence apart from it, any more than a ripple in a stream has an existence apart from the water that forms it. The same thing is true of me, the computer screen on which you’re reading these words, and every other thing in this and every other plane and realm and world of existence.

These currents of force are not passive; they have their own dynamics and their own directions.  In human beings, they push toward self-awareness and self-knowledge. They push toward what might be called ethical consciousness—not a narrow rule-following morality, but a recognition of how one’s own actions affect other beings and the world in general, and of the importance of those stances toward the universe we may as well call “virtues.” Ultimately, they push toward conscious participation in the flow of creative power, and conscious attunement with its source and the great centers of consciousness that direct portions of its outward flow."

Read the whole thing here: 

The Way of Participation

Fallen angels

Another hierarchic, quasi-religious, conservative, all-male organization turns out to be a haven for paedophiles...

In the United States, 82,500 former boy scouts claim to have been sexually molested by scout leaders over the years. The Boy Scouts of America (BSA) have established a compensation fund while simultaneously filing for bankruptcy to avoid further legal claims. The Christian Churches, which often support scouting locally, are not covered by the agreement. Many are considering pulling out of scouting altogether. 

Interesting fact: the Mormons, who have already withdrawn from the BSA because of a recent "woke" turn by the boy scouts´ leadership, have nevertheless agreed to pay 250 million dollars (!) to a settlement fund for the victims of sexual abuse.  

Boy Scouts´ Bankruptcy Leaves Churches Liable for Abuse Suits