Death of Hypatia®

Author: Death of Hypatia Inc.

  • WIBCI Post #121

    WIBCI

    Wouldn’t It Be Cool If: once in a lifetime experiences were given to the deserved?

    I have seen, many, many ads for a show featuring the fresh prince where he traverses the globe and experiences life altering moments, no other human has probably combined in a single lifetime.

    and I find myself full of resentment.

    Why does someone who slapped away a charmed life get to experience such things?! So an actor and corporate conglomerates wish to profit off of this guy’s reality TV moral comeback? Why does such a person deserve such an honor? Why not give this opportunity to a special ed teacher? Someone who could never afford it and actual has lived a life that doesn’t need to be forgiven/forgotten? Someone whose ego doesn’t desperately require our forgiveness for the despicable things they have done?

    Boo.… more “WIBCI Post #121”

  • Know Thyself #121

    Know Thyself through fun

    The other day I caught snowflakes on my tongue. It was blowing perfectly and the snowflakes had girth yet took their sweet time as they danced down. I think it had been years since I had experienced such a visceral, pointless, moment of focus. It was fun.

    I do not wish to be young again. I’m all set with such moments of insecurity, and I don’t wish to unlearn, even for a moment, what life has taught me. But I do think it is beneficial to fleetingly and frivolously live in a moment; to swing, float, or stand in a storm.… more “Know Thyself #121”

  • WIBCI Post #120

    WIBCI we knew what the word TYRANT means?

    In the Prologue of Joseph Campbell’s The Hero with a Thousand Faces, he describes how in Greek Mythologies Daedalus had done the Gods dirty by NOT sacrificing the bull he was supposed to:

    “He had converted a public event to personal gain, whereas the whole sense of his investiture as king had been that he was no longer a mere private person. The return of the bull would have symbolized his absolutely selfless submission to the functions of his role. The retaining of it represented, on the other had, an impulse to egocentric self-aggrandizement. And so the king “by the grace of God” became the dangerous tyrant Holdfast – out for himself.”

    Joseph Campbell goes on to describe the characteristics universal to TYRANTS:

    1. “..the individual cuts himself as a unit off from the larger unit of the whole community: and so the One was broken into the many, and these then battled each other-each out for himself-and could be governed only by force.

    2. He is the hoarder of the general benefit. 

    3. He is the monster avid for the greedy rights of ‘my and mine.’

    4. The havoc wrought by him is described in mythology and fairy tale as being universal throughout his domain. This may be bo more than his household, his own tortured psyched, or the lives that he blights with the touch of his friendship and assistance; or it may amount to the extent of his civilization.

    5. The inflated ego of the tyrant is a curse to himself and his world-no matter how his affairs ay seem to prosper. Self-terrorized, fear-haunted, alert at every hand to meet and battle back the anticipated aggressions of his environment, which are primarily the reflections of the uncontrollable impulses to acquisition within himself, the giant of self-achieved independence is the world’s messenger of disaster.“

     

    Remind YOU of anyone?!… more “WIBCI Post #120”

  • Know Thyself #120

    Know thyself by trusting your gut

    I find, for me, there is a direct correlation between how analog an agreement is and how much I trust it.

    For example; I have more faith in a human than a bot, an ink signature to a digital one, a smile to an emoticon; I prefer hearing a voice to receiving an email, a handshake over a secure file location, a test drive as opposed to car-trader-max-vanna, and sex to porn.

    I like to clearly comprehend the messages of others through tone, body language, sarcasm, eye contact, and pheromones; because these things are very difficult, if not impossible, to fake.… more “Know Thyself #120”

  • WIBCI Post #119

    WIBCI humility and class mattered?

    I tried to find a historical example of a political leader renaming an already named thing in honor of themselves that remained so named one they were inevitably no longer in power. (Such things appear historically not to have staying power).

    WIBCI the only individuals publicly honored had to have done something honorable for said public?

    Seems to squish out all the honor if you put the crown on your own head. Just me?… more “WIBCI Post #119”

  • Know Thyself #119

    Know Thyself through being thoroughly entertained.

    I watched a DVD, from a DVD player last night and it was amazing!

    When I wanted to watch the movie, I put the disc in the player, pressed play, and the movie…..started.

    I could pause, rewind, and replay of my own free will. Even better, the content was NEVER interrupted. No ads, banners, previews, recaps, pop ups, teasers, trailers, commercial content or solicitation is any way shape or form, no breaking news, no celebrities selling out, nor was anyone in the movie branded with logos. No one tried to sell me something through the use of cute cartoons, catchy tag lines, or really happy people monochromatically dancing and singing to distract you from the elongated list of side effects that make you wonder how bad the ailment could be.

    I got to focus on the movie, in its entirety, unriddled with commercials, the way those that created it wanted me to.

    Entertainment is art, not filler between advertisements.

    Pure is good.

     … more “Know Thyself #119”

  • WIBCI Post #118

    WIBCI there was a stage past blame?

    It appears to me, in my limited experience, that people are currently quite proficient at diagnosing why they are mentally the way they are. They seem to have hit the nail on the head, figured the cause of their woes, and psychoanalyzed themselves, their ego, Id, and their super ego, exhaustedly.

    Oddly enough, this seems to have been the finish line. Love the self awareness, but are you sure you are done?

    Is the goal identification or fixing?

    If an engine broke down and you discovered the issue, you wouldn’t just acknowledge the issue and then get a snack, right?

    Very cool that the time was spent on really thinking about your past, nothing wrong with that. Just saying after you discover that little truth about you, after the ah-ha-reflection, spend time thinking about how to fix it/not do it anymore/make up for lost time/stop resenting/try to like kale/stop thinking so many judgy thoughts about your co-workers…..etc.… more “WIBCI Post #118”

  • Know Thyself #118

    Know Thyself, who are YOUR four portraits?

    In the 1985 movie Back to the Future, Doc (Dr. Emmett Brown), has four portraits on the mantle in his home of: Isaac Newton, Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Edison and Albert Einstein. Standing before Edison, Doc pleads:

    ‘Tom, how am I going to generate that kind of power?! It can’t be done, it can’t!’

    There is a theory that Doc has been thinking about time travel for quite a while, even before 1955. Doc also knows that interference in the past would change the future, altering any photographs of the interfered individuals. The on-line position is that these portraits represent the individuals he would most want to meet if he were to ever concur time travel. Their prime position on the mantel will be proof of whether he manages in the future to go back in time, if the experience changed them.

    My four portraits of people I would just want to be around, assuming language is to be no barrier….. I could get it down to eight, but my list includes the ladies….so…Leonardo Da Vinci, Hypatia of Alexandria, Charles Dickens, Marcus Vipsanius Agrippa, Joan of Arc, Benjamin Franklin, Cleopatra, and Dean Cassidy

    Who are YOUR four/eight?… more “Know Thyself #118”

  • WIBCI Post #117

    WIBCI we thought more broadly?

    Suddenly it wasn’t only a personal thing to me. I could picture hundreds and hundreds of boys living on the wrong sides of cities, boys with black eyes who jumped at their own shadows. Hundreds of boys who maybe watched sunsets and looked at stars and ached for something better. I could see boys going down under street lights because they were mean and tough and hated the world, and it was too late to tell them that there was still good in it, and they wouldn’t believe you if you did. It was too vast a problem to just be a personal thing.

    -SE Hinton The Outsiders

    I thought about how selfless this thought is. How anti-narcissistic it is. Thinking like this takes time, quiet, reflection, and consideration.

    If you could, would YOU tell them there is still good in the world? How much?

     

    … more “WIBCI Post #117”

  • Know Thyself #117

    Know Thyself

    I like days the commercial world shuts down: National Holidays that create long weekends and massive weather events necessitating getting anything thought to be necessary while sequestered in advance. If these bonus days happen in the wintertime, all the better. I liked it better before the days of online shopping and delivery for almost everything. I find it cozy and comforting to stock up, hunker down, and dig in. I like being inside my home knowing there is nothing I’m expected to accomplish for anyone else; the day is mine to with it what I want.

    If you knew you were going to be snowed in for over 24 hours, what would you do to prepare and then what would you do on YOUR day?… more “Know Thyself #117”

  • WIBCI Post #116

    WIBCI there were more Bob Weir’s?

    The co-founder of The Grateful Dead died yesterday.

    For anyone unfamiliar with Bob Weir, I urge you to listen, read, and think about all he experienced.

    He was a part of the Merry Prankster’s, he lived with Neal Cassady a major figure of the Beat Generation of the 1950s and the psychedelic and counterculture movements of the 1960s. This time, these people, this music, this bus, were influenced by jazz, Buddhism, French surrealism, counter culture, electric kool-aid acid tests, and spawned: beatniks, hippies, fight songs, Kerouac, Ginsberg, Kesey, Jerry Garcia, Burroughs, Wolfe, and Bob Weir among countless others. If there were ever a time in history where we could use such influence, wouldn’t now be a good time?

    Escaping through the lily field,

    I came across an empty space,

    it trembled and exploded,

    left a bus stop in its place.

    the bus came by and I got on.

    that’s when it all began.

    There was cowboy Neal

    at the wheel

    of a bus to Never Never Land.

    -Bob Weir

    The bus was named Furthur and ‘Neal’ was Neal Cassidy….a major figure of the Beat Generation. Bob weir wrote this ng, un beknowst to him, the night Neal died of exposure on train tracks in Mexico. Bob Weir has said that he felt that Neal came to him that night while he was writing the above song ‘The Other One‘. At a televised memorial his wife said that he believed souls stay around for 59 days after they die and pointed out a hawk that kept circling above the crowd of thousands and said ‘Hello Darlin’.

    Mr. Weir, the Boy Wonder, The Other One, thank you for the music, memories and hours spend forgetting about all my issues with myself and the world…and just swirl.

    … more “WIBCI Post #116”

  • Know Thyself #116

    Know Thyself through quote induced reflection:

    I may disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it.

    – Evelyn Beatrice Hall

    This quote is often mistakingly attributed to Voltaire. In fact this phrase was coined by Evelyn Beatrice Hall in the Voltaire biography. The sentiment very well reflects Voltaire’s thoughts, but he did not say it.

    Regardless…

    Free speech is a right in our society and countless countrymen and women gave their lives for this human dignity, but I’m not sure I would die for the right of hate mongers to further their propaganda. They do have the right to their opinion, they do NOT have the right to claim truths that are otherwise or incite based on perpetuating lies that are self promoting.

    What does this quote mean to you? Would you defend the freedoms of those who think the opposite of you?

     

    … more “Know Thyself #116”

  • WIBCI Post #115

    WIBCI there were organizations that told the public when the POTUS lied to us….?

    Oh yeah it used to be called the news (before they were owned by billionaires), or the AP (before they were kicked out of the White House), or PBS (before they were defunded)….

    That was cooler….I miss them.… more “WIBCI Post #115”

  • Know Thyself #115

    Know Thyself, what are YOU waiting for?

    Change will not come if we wait for some other person or some other time. We are the ones we’ve been waiting for. We are the change that we seek.

    -Barack Obama

     

    … more “Know Thyself #115”

  • WIBCI Post #114

    WIBCI we were more COMPASSIONATE?

    Recently I was speaking with someone whose politics I abhor but whose opinion I value. I was expressing my anxiety about the state of the world and the future for ‘us’. His advice to me was to stop worrying about other people and situations I cannot control and to focus on taking care of myself.

    I thought about this and could not disagree more. I believe this narcissist, selfish attitude, referencing humanity with such lacksidazeicalness helped to get us in this shit sandwich to begin with.

    It reminds me of the poem “First They Came“. Per Wikipedia this is: (German: Als sie kamen lit. ‘When they came‘, or Habe ich geschwiegen lit. ‘I did not speak out‘), is the poetic form of a 1946 post-war confessional prose piece by the German Lutheran pastor Martin Niemöller(1892–1984). It indirectly condemns complicity of German intellectuals and clergy following the Nazis’ rise to power and subsequent incremental purging of their chosen targets.

     

    Here is the best known English version:

    First they came for the Communists
    And I did not speak out
    Because I was not a Communist

    Then they came for the Socialists
    And I did not speak out
    Because I was not a Socialist

    Then they came for the trade unionists
    And I did not speak out
    Because I was not a trade unionist

    Then they came for the Jews
    And I did not speak out
    Because I was not a Jew

    Then they came for me
    And there was no one left
    To speak out for me

     

    WIBCI history, in this instance, did not repeat itself?

     … more “WIBCI Post #114”

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