Complete and Utter Randomness…

Things I’m thinking about on Tuesday:

Rock cairns. From Sedona to Tibet.

UFOs. As seen by many relatively sane people.

Concepts of truth and power in discourse, according to Foucault…

At this level it’s not so much a matter of knowing what external power imposes itself on science, as of what effects of power circulate among scientific statements, what constitutes, as it were, their internal regime of power, and how and why at certain moments that regime undergoes a global modification.

Edward Said: Orientalism, humanism, the “other”, injustice

This it is to say that every domain is linked to every other one, and that nothing that goes on in our world has ever been isolated and pure of any outside influence. We need to speak about issues of injustice and suffering within a context that is amply situated in history, culture, and socio-economic reality. Our role is to widen the field of discussion. I have spent a great deal of my life during the past 35 years advocating the rights of the Palestinian people to national self-determination, but I have always tried to do that with full attention paid to the reality of the Jewish people and what they suffered by way of persecution and genocide. The paramount thing is that the struggle for equality in Palestine/Israel should be directed toward a humane goal, that is, co-existence, and not further suppression and denial.

How do we as a human race deal with long-standing issues of injustice, especially when they are fraught with deeper issues of centuries-old political and religious struggles?  With the aftermath of colonialism? How does this relate to Tibet?  To Kashmir? To the Congo? Do you believe a peaceful resolution is possible?

I do.  I just don’t know how long it will take.  Or how many will continue to suffer in the process.

The Dalai Lama:

Pain is inevitable. Suffering is optional.

We can never obtain peace in the world if we neglect the inner world and don’t make peace with ourselves. World peace must develop out of inner peace.

And the Little Prince:

“All men have the stars,” he answered, “but they are not the same things for different people. For some, who are travelers, the stars are guides. For others they are no more than little lights in the sky. For others, who are scholars, they are problems. For my businessman they were wealth. But all these stars are silent. You, you alone, will have the stars as no one else has them”

“What are you trying to say?”

“In one of the stars I shall be living. In one of them I shall be laughing. And so it will be as if all the stars were laughing, when you look at the sky at night… you, only you, will have stars that can laugh!”

The bigger picture.  I see it more and more these days.  Maybe that’s why I’ve been feeling so at peace lately.