Monday 28 December 2015

Charlotte Bronte; Better to be without logic than without feeling.

 I am no bird; and no net ensnares me; I am a free human being with an independent will.
Charlotte Bronte

Sunday 27 December 2015

"I am a part of all that I have met' - ALFRED TENNYSON

 Break, Break, Break
                  * * *
Break, break, break,
         On thy cold gray stones, O Sea!
And I would that my tongue could utter
         The thoughts that arise in me.

O, well for the fisherman's boy,
         That he shouts with his sister at play!
O, well for the sailor lad,
         That he sings in his boat on the bay!

And the stately ships go on
         To their haven under the hill;
But O for the touch of a vanish'd hand,
         And the sound of a voice that is still!

Break, break, break
         At the foot of thy crags, O Sea!
But the tender grace of a day that is dead
         Will never come back to me.

            BY ALFRED TENNYSON
Alfred  (Baron) Tennyson, (1809 –  1892) was Poet Laureate of Great Britain and Ireland during much of Queen Victoria's reign and remains one of the most popular British poets.

'Tis better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all.
Alfred Lord Tennyson
                                                The Lady of Shalott
 "The Lady of Shalott" is a Victorian ballad by the English poet Alfred, Lord Tennyson 

Monday 14 December 2015

Saturday 14 November 2015

Why I am Not a Communist

Why I am Not a Communist
by Betrand Russell
"I am completely at a loss to understand how it came about that some people who are both humane and intelligent could find something to admire in the vast slave camp produced by Stalin."
In relation to any political doctrine there are two questions to be asked: (1) Are its theoretical tenets true? (2) Is its practical policy likely to increase human happiness? For my part, I think the theoretical tenets of Communism are false, and I think its practical maxims are such as to produce an immeasurable increase of human misery.
The theoretical doctrines of Communism are for the most part derived from Marx. My objections to Marx are of two sorts: one, that he was muddle-headed; and the other, that his thinking was almost entirely inspired by hatred. The doctrine of surplus value, which is supposed to demonstrate the exploitation of wage-earners under capitalism, is arrived at: (a) by surreptitiously accepting Malthus's doctrine of population, which Marx and all his disciples explicitly repudiate; (b) by applying Ricardo's theory of value to wages, but not to the prices of manufactured articles. He is entirely satisfied with the result, not because it is in accordance with the facts or because it is logically coherent, but because it is calculated to rouse fury in wage-earners. Marx's doctrine that all historical events have been motivated by class conflicts is a rash and untrue extension to world history of certain features prominent in England and France a hundred years ago. His belief that there is a cosmic force called Dialectical Materialism which governs human history independently of human volitions, is mere mythology. His theoretical errors, however, would not have mattered so much but for the fact that, like Tertullian and Carlyle, his chief desire was to see his enemies punished, and he cared little what happened to his friends in the process.
Marx's doctrine was bad enough, but the developments which it underwent under Lenin and Stalin made it much worse. Marx had taught that there would be a revolutionary transitional period following the victory of the proletariat in a civil war and that during this period the proletariat, in accordance with the usual practice after a civil war, would deprive its vanquished enemies of political power. This period was to be that of the dictatorship of the proletariat. It should not be forgotten that in Marx's prophetic vision the victory of the proletariat was to come after it had grown to be the vast majority of the population. The dictatorship of the proletariat therefore as conceived by Marx was not essentially anti-democratic. In the Russia of 1917, however, the proletariat was a small percentage of the population, the great majority being peasants. it was decreed that the Bolshevik party was the class-conscious part of the proletariat, and that a small committee of its leaders was the class-conscious part of the Bolshevik party. The dictatorship of the proletariat thus came to be the dictatorship of a small committee, and ultimately of one man - Stalin. As the sole class-conscious proletarian, Stalin condemned millions of peasants to death by starvation and millions of others to forced labour in concentration camps. He even went so far as to decree that the laws of heredity are henceforth to be different from what they used to be, and that the germ-plasm is to obey Soviet decrees but that that reactionary priest Mendel. I am completely at a loss to understand how it came about that some people who are both humane and intelligent could find something to admire in the vast slave camp produced by Stalin.
I have always disagreed with Marx. My first hostile criticism of him was published in 1896. But my objections to modern Communism go deeper than my objections to Marx. It is the abandonment of democracy that I find particularly disastrous. A minority resting its powers upon the activities of secret police is bound to be cruel, oppressive and obscuarantist. The dangers of the irresponsible power cane to be generally recognized during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, but those who have forgotten all that was painfully learnt during the days of absolute monarchy, and have gone back to what was worst in the middle ages under the curious delusion that they were in the vanguard of progress.
There are signs that in course of time the Russian régime will become more liberal. But, although this is possible, it is very far from certain. In the meantime, all those who value not only art and science but a sufficiency of bread and freedom from the fear that a careless word by their children to a schoolteacher may condemn them to forced labour in a Siberian wilderness, must do what lies in their power to preserve in their own countries a less servile and more prosperous manner of life.
There are those who, oppressed by the evils of Communism, are led to the conclusion that the only effective way to combat these evils is by means of a world war. I think this a mistake. At one time such a policy might have been possible, but now war has become so terrible and Communism has become so powerful that no one can tell what would be left after a world war, and whatever might be left would probably be at least as bad as present -day Communism. This forecast does not depend upon the inevitable effects of mass destruction by means of hydrogen and cobalt bombs and perhaps of ingeniously propagated plagues. The way to combat Communism is not war. What is needed in addition to such armaments as will deter Communists from attacking the West, is a diminution of the grounds for discontent in the less prosperous parts of the non-communist world. In most of the countries of Asia, there is abject poverty which the West ought to alleviate as far as it lies in its power to do so. There is also a great bitterness which was caused by the centuries of European insolent domination in Asia. This ought to be dealt with by a combination of patient tact with dramatic announcements renouncing such relics of white domination as survive in Asia. Communism is a doctrine bred of poverty, hatred and strife. Its spread can only be arrested by diminishing the area of poverty and hatred.
(

Sunday 20 September 2015

Jerry and I :)

A few years ago my friend's ramaz Sakvarelidze's dog Jerry and I :) 
Painted by an unknown artist
(Pencil and pastels on paper)

Saturday 19 September 2015

Art For Everyone!

             Art For Everyone
Art is what you can get away with (A. W)
The purpose of art is washing the dust of daily life off our souls.
Pablo Picasso  
 (Ghetto Theatre’, 1920, by David Bomberg)
To celebrate the centenary of the Ben Uri organisation, highlights of its émigré art collection at Somerset House.  London.
The Ben Uri, an outsider organisation, was founded in London’s East End Jewish Whitechapel’s ghetto in 1915 and is the oldest Jewish cultural organisation in the UK.  It was dedicated to giving young Jewish artists a chance, and among its first stars were David Bomberg, Epstein, Mark Gertler and Jacob Kramer. Over the past 100 years its collection has grown to include 1,300 pieces  by some 380 artists. It is now temporarily based in St John’s Wood, but 67 works are currently on show at Somerset House, in a small but powerful exhibition that highlights how influential Jewish artists in this country have been.
This exhibition at Somerset House is therefore a rare opportunity to see many of its most impressive highlights displayed together. Works by the likes of Jacob Epstein, Frank Auerbach, Leon Kossoff, Marc Chagall,  Whitechapel Boy David Bomberg,  Jacob Epstein,  Lucian Freud,  Frank Auerbach and my favorite dadaist artist Kurt Schwitters are just some who have revolutionised British contemporary art.
 I recomend you to visit it and eat the art.

(Mark Gertler, Rabbi and Rabbitzin)

                                   
                     L.S. Lowry (1887-1976) - Good Friday


                          Kurt Schwitters' MERZ & Dadaism

Schwitters's MERZ
The word ‘Merz’ essentially means the totality of all imaginable materials that can be used for artistic purposes and technically the principle that all of these individual materials have equal value. The artist creates by choosing, distributing and reshaping the materials.  Merz art strives for immediate expression by shortening the path from intuition to visual manifestation of the artwork…
Merz stands for the freedom of all fetters. Merz also means tolerance towards any artistically motivated limitation. Every artist must be allowed to mould a picture out of nothing but blotting paper, for example, provided he is capable of moulding a picture.

Kurt Schwitters once said "I take any material whatsoever if the picture demands it. When I adjust materials of different kinds to one another, I have taken a step in advance of mere oil painting, for in addition to playing off color against color, line against line, form against form. I play off material against material, wood against sack clothes etc. Art is a spiritual function of man, which aims at freeing him from life’s chaos. Art is free in the use of its means in any way it likes, but is bound to its laws and to its laws alone. The minute it becomes art, it becomes much more sublime than a class distinction between proletariat and bourgeoisie."
'A museum that really wants to promote modern art might give the artist a guaranty, on certain conditions, so that he can get on with his life and his creations. Or do you believe that the museum is more interested in the artist’s death, in order to see the price of his paintings go up?'

   En Morn (1947), by Kurt Schwitters 
  Schwitters was the father of Dada Movement. (K. S)
   
             Art For Everyone Therefore Free Entry To All!

           Don't miss a great opportunity!!!!:)
                   The Ben Uri Gallery - Out of Chaos
                             Exhibition in the  Inigo Rooms at Somerset House,
           02 July - 13 December 2015, East Wing King's College London. WC2R 2LS.
"My name is Kurt Schwitters. I am an artist and I nail my pictures together.
 I'd like to be accepted into the Dada club". :)
P.s I love this artwork, I really do:)))

Sunday 6 September 2015

London

Poets Corner, Westminster Abbey, London.



                           Trafalgar Square, London
 

Thursday 3 September 2015

Delmore Schwartz

Delmore Schwartz
Love is the most difficult and
dangerous form of courage. Courage is the most desperate, admirable and noble kind of love.

* To be the child of immigrants from Eastern Europe is in itself a special kind of experience; and an important one to an author. He has heard two languages through childhood, the one spoken with ease at home, and the other spoken with ease in the streets and at school, but spoken poorly at home.
* I am of Russian-Jewish distraction.

P. s   Delmore Schwartz was Lou Reed's favourite American Poet  :))))))

All Night, All Night
by Delmore Schwartz
"I have been one acquainted with the night" - Robert Frost 

Monday 31 August 2015

The Labour Leadership election 2015

Who will you vote for in the Labour Leadership election 2015 ?:)))
P.s And why?
Labour leadership candidates 2015: Yvette Cooper, Jeremy Corbyn, Liz Kendall, Andy Burnham.



Monday 17 August 2015

Winston Churchill; To improve is to change, to be perfect is to change often.

 *The best argument against democracy is a five-minute conversation with the average voter.

* Socialism is a philosophy of failure, the creed of ignorance, and the gospel of envy, its inherent virtue is the equal sharing of misery.

*All the great things are simple, and many can be expressed in a single word: freedom, justice, honor, duty, mercy, hope.
Winston Churchill


                                        The price of greatness is responsibility. ( W. C)

Sunday 16 August 2015

Julian Bond, a symbol of the 1960s civil rights movement(USA)

Julian Bond, a symbol and icon of the 1960s civil rights movement. As a Morehouse College student, Bond helped found the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee and as its communications director, he was on the front lines of protests that led to the nation’s landmark civil rights laws.
Bond was a “visionary” and “tireless activist” for civil and human rights.  He advocated not just for African Americans, but for every group, indeed every person subject to oppression and discrimination, because he recognized the common humanity in us all.

 Julian Bond - Civil Rights leader
  American social activist and a leader in the Civil Rights Movement, Julian Bond

White students started streaming south to protest on behalf of civil rights in 1960.

Thursday 13 August 2015

Presidents of the United States of America

          Victoria Woodhull 
Victoria Woodhull (1838 – 1927) was the first female candidate for President of the United States.  Her running mate, interestingly enough, was Frederick Douglass, the first African-American to run for Vice President. Her name is largely lost in history.
Also, Woodhull was the first woman to start a weekly newspaper and an activist for women's rights, civil rights and anti-slavery activist. She was an advocate of free love, by which she meant the freedom to marry, divorce, and bear children without government interference.

     
List of the Presidents of the United States of America.
  P. s You see, no woman president, yet. :)
  That's not fair! 
  So, Ready for Hillary Clinton  2016 :))))

 Hillary Clinton  is talking about important issues. I think she will be a great president, a credit to America, to our world and to women.   She sounds presidential. 
Khatia Shiuka

Wednesday 12 August 2015

On Investigative Journalism

The future of Journalism
The internet and social media have now empowered the PR trade and freed it from subservience to the news media.
What does this mean for the future of journalism, and the future of the public interest?

 * * *
'Journalism is printing what someone else does not want printed, everything else is public relations.'
George Orwell
(Photo; Bush House, BBC (ca. 1941): George Orwell participates in another session of Voice. Seated, from left to right, are Herbert Read (a literary critic and poet) and Edmund Blunden (poet and novelist).   Standing, from left to right, are George Woodcock (a Canadian-born pacifist, anarchist, historian, and essayist), Mulk Raj Anand, Orwell, and William Empson.)
 *******************************************************************************
If I'd written all the truth I knew for the past ten years, about 600 people - including me - would be rotting in prison cells from Rio to Seattle today. Absolute truth is a very rare and dangerous commodity in the context of professional journalism.
Hunter S. Thompson
You will always have partial points of view, and you'll always have the story behind the story that hasn't come out yet. And any form of journalism you're involved with is going to be up against a biased viewpoint and partial knowledge.
Margaret Atwood

I keep telling myself to calm down, to take less of an interest in things and not to get so excited, but I still care a lot about liberty, freedom of speech and expression, and fairness in journalism.
Kate Adie

Journalists are in the same madly rocking boat as diplomats and statesmen. Like them, when the Cold War ended, they looked for a new world order and found a new world disorder. If making and conducting foreign policy in today's turbulent environment is difficult, so is practicing journalism.
Henry Grunwald

I still believe that if your aim is to change the world, journalism is a more immediate short-term weapon.
Tom Stoppard

Monday 10 August 2015

Rosalind Franklin - The Dark Lady of DNA


Rosalind Franklin was a British scientist who first discovered the helix shape of DNA, was born in 1920. Franklin, who graduated with a doctorate in physical chemistry from Cambridge University in 1945, used her knowledge of x-ray diffraction techniques to take the first photo of DNA, referred to as Photo 51.
Rosalind Franklin is one of the 52 female scientists profiled in the excellent recent release “Headstrong: 52 Women Who Changed Science – and The World."
I recommend the excellent biography "Rosalind Franklin: The Dark Lady of DNA."  
Science and everyday life cannot and should not be separated. -
Rosalind Franklin


Friday 7 August 2015

Speak your mind even if your voice shakes. - Maggie Kuhn

Speak your mind even if your voice shakes.
Maggie Kuhn
Maggie Kuhn was social activist and founder of the Gray Panthers, was born in 1905, in Buffalo, New York. After being forced into retirement on her 65th birthday, Kuhn banded together with other retirees to form the Gray Panthers in 1970. The social action group focused on issues affecting older Americans including eliminating mandatory retirement ages, nursing home reform, and fighting ageism, as well as other pressing social issues such as poverty, peace and civil liberties.
 Kuhn was engaged in social activism throughout her life. In the 1930s and 40s, she taught classes to women on a variety of issues and caused controversy by addressing topics related to human sexuality including the mechanics of birth control, sex, and pregnancy.
Through her work with the Gray Panthers, she countered the then-popular "disengagement theory," which argued old age involves a necessary separation from society, and often criticized nursing homes, calling them "glorified playpens." To provide an alternative model for elderly living, Kuhn founded the National Shared Housing Resource Center to help connect people interested in shared housing arrangements. Kuhn herself shared her home in Philadelphia with younger adults who paid lower rent in exchange for their help with chores and their companionship.

The 7 Deadly Sins of Public Speaking

 The 7 Deadly Sins of Public Speaking.
So, how many of these speaking sins are committed in presentations you attend?:))



Wednesday 5 August 2015

Maria Mitchell 'Study as if you were going to live forever; live as if you were going'

 Maria Mitchell ( 1818 –  1889) was an American astronomer.  Mitchell was the first professional female astronomer in America and the second woman in history to discover a comet. Mitchell's  parents believed, contrary to the practice of the time, in giving girls the same quality of education as boys. Her father, a school principal, taught her the basics of astronomy and, at age 12, she helped him to calculate the moment of an annular eclipse.

In 1847, her discovery of a comet that became known as "Miss Mitchell's Comet" -- the first by a woman since the discoveries by German astronomer Caroline Herschel in the late 18th century -- made her famous worldwide and she was awarded a gold medal prize for the discovery from King Frederick VII of Denmark. In 1865, she became a professor of astronomy at Vassar College. Among her many honors, Mitchell became the first woman member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1848 and of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in 1850. She also co-founded the American Association for the Advancement of Women. Today, her legacy lives on at the Maria Mitchell Observatory, named in her honor in Nantucket, Massachusetts.

* We have a hunger of the mind which asks for knowledge of all around us, and the more we gain, the more is our desire; the more we see, the more we are capable of seeing.

* People have to learn sometimes not only how much the heart, but how much the head, can bear.

* We especially need imagination in science. It is not all mathematics, nor all logic, but is somewhat beauty and poetry.
 * Study as if you were going to live forever; live as if you were going.

Monday 3 August 2015

Self made T-shirt, by Khatia Shiuka

I made T-shirt, I was inspired by an American abstract artist Jackson Pollock

me and my t-shirt

Jackson Pollock's Exhibition in The Tate Gallery.

Photos by K. S

Exhibition, Tate Gallery

Monday 27 July 2015

Does Philosophy Have A Problem With Women?

 Does philosophy have a problem with women?
( Reserve your right to think, for even to think wrongly is better than not to think at all.
All formal dogmatic religions are fallacious and must never be accepted by self-respecting persons as final.
Hypatia)
Only 25% of philosophy posts in UK universities are occupied by women. So what, if anything, should be done to redress the balance?
Mary Warnock, philosopher and writer
This question has been debated by women and men in philosophy for years, and last week became the cover story in the Times Literary Supplement. Of all the humanities departments in British universities, only philosophy departments have a mere 25% women members. Why should this be? How can the balance be redressed? On the whole I am very much against intervention, by quotas or otherwise, to increase women’s chances of employment, whatever the field, and there is nothing intrinsically harmful about this imbalance. I certainly don’t believe it shows a conscious bias against women. Nor that it can be explained by the supposition that, philosophy being concerned above all with arguments, women are naturally less adept in the field.

There may be some women who think emotionally rather than rationally; but, heaven knows, there are some men who do as well. Nor do I think that women dislike the idea of philosophy because of its supposedly adversarial style, its devotion to winning an argument rather than seeking truth or consensus. For I don’t think this style, when adopted in academic dispute, is peculiar to philosophy. No, I think that academic philosophy has become an extraordinarily inward-looking subject, devoted not to exposing and examining the implications of the way we think about the world, but to exposing instead deficiencies in the arguments of other philosophers. If you pick up a professional journal now, you find little but nitpicking responses to previous articles. Women tend to get more easily bored with this than men. Philosophy seems to stop being interesting just when it starts to be professional.

Julian Baggini, philosopher and writer
I agree there is little or no conscious discrimination against women in philosophy. But that is not to say there isn’t a great deal of unconscious bias. The puzzle is why this should be stronger in philosophy than in other disciplines. The answer, I think, is to be found in philosophy’s self-image. Philosophers have tended to have an inflated sense of their ability to “follow the argument wherever it leads”, as Plato’s old saw has it. What matters is the argument, not the arguer, which means there is no need even to think about gender or ethnicity. Philosophers have thus felt immune to the distorting effects of gender bias. Logic is gender-neutral, philosophy is logical, ergo philosophy is gender-neutral. I suspect this has led to complacency, a blindness towards all the ways in which, in fact, gender bias does creep in. It is a well-established finding in psychology that believing you are an objective judge actually makes your judgments less objective, and I’m sure philosophy suffers from this. I admit that this explanation for at least part of the under-representation of women in philosophy is somewhat speculative, but I would be interested to hear what you make of it.

MW I don’t accept that all our thinking is gender-permeated and that we therefore fail to notice our bias. I believe that one of the great merits of academic philosophy is that its central topics are as gender-neutral as those of physics, mathematics or linguistics. But I agree that women may have different hopes of the outcome of examining these topics, and that they are on the whole less likely than men to “follow the argument wherever it leads”, and change direction if it leads to absurdity or paradox. This is another way of saying that women are more restricted than men by the dictates of common sense. And this goes along with, or is part of a desire that philosophy should be intelligible to non-philosophers, if they are willing to give their minds to it. Of course, this desire is not peculiar to women (as your writings prove). The dislike of abandoning common sense may seem like over-simplification, though it may better be described as distaste for scholasticism. It certainly means that, in job interviews, women may seem pedestrian rather than brilliant, and this may damage their chances of success.

JB It may well be that women tend to have different intellectual priorities from men. But since we do not know how much these are cultural or biological, we should not assume that any such differences are fixed. More importantly, this would be all the more reason to endeavour to get more women into senior positions in philosophy, since there is no reason to suppose the traditional priorities are superior. It is important to distinguish the idea that all philosophical ideas are “gender-permeated”, which we both reject, from the idea that gender biases affect the ways of thinking and acting of all philosophers. For instance, Rae Langton and Jennifer Hornsby have argued persuasively that cultural norms and stereotypes can detrimentally affect the ability of women to be heard and taken seriously. I’m fairly sure this handicaps women in philosophy just as it does in pretty much every other domain. You are against quotas and other forms of intervention. Does that mean you think nothing can or should be done?


MW I find I agree with something you said earlier, that men are complacent, in believing that their intellectual priorities are the best. And this makes it more difficult for women to make their voices heard. But I am still against positive intervention because this always carries the risk that the woman appointed under, say, a quota system will be seen as not necessarily the best candidate, and so be further undermined. I think, rather, that, in philosophy if not in other disciplines, things are gradually changing. Partly because of the work of some women, such as Onora O’Neill, and some men, such as yourself, the application of philosophical methods to other subjects is becoming more widely recognised. For example, the connection between moral philosophy and medicine is now widely recognised; and perhaps more significantly, the interface between philosophy and psychiatry is being increasingly explored. This broadening of the scope of philosophy will inevitably, if gradually, attract more women to the subject.

JB Quotas are indeed problematic but there are other possible affirmative action interventions, such as requiring departments, conferences and journals to monitor closely the number of women applying or submitting papers compared to those accepted. Simply forcing people to attend to any apparent imbalances is a forceful way of raising awareness.

Another priority is to make philosophers understand better the psychological effects which interfere with their supposedly clear, rational thinking. They should all know, for example, about Sally Haslanger and Jennifer Saul’s work on how psychological phenomena such as implicit bias and stereotype threat might be at work in their subject. But the most important and effective change is simply for philosophers to face up to the depth of the problem in their profession. Too many complacently assume that any sexism in the subject is now minor and residual. Seven years ago, Haslanger, wrote: “In my experience it is very hard to find a place in philosophy that isn’t actively hostile towards women and minorities, or at least assumes that a successful philosopher should look and act like a (traditional, white) man.” Haslanger persevered, but if other talented women are either giving up or being overlooked, that is as much philosophy’s loss as it the sisterhood’s.
http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/jul/25/philosphy-women-warnock-baggini-debate?CMP=fb_gu
* * *
Reserve your right to think, for even to think wrongly is better than not to think at all.
Hypatia
P. S .. Hypatia was a Greek mathematician, astronomer, and philosopher in Egypt, then a part of the Eastern Roman Empire. She was the head of the Neoplatonic school at Alexandria, where she taught philosophy and astronomy.
According to contemporary sources, Hypatia was murdered by a Christian mob after being accused of exacerbating a conflict between two prominent figures in Alexandria: the governor Orestes and the Bishop of Alexandria.
There was a woman at Alexandria named Hypatia, daughter of the philosopher Theon, who made such attainments in literature and science, as to far surpass all the philosophers of her own time. Having succeeded to the school of Plato and Plotinus, she explained the principles of philosophy to her auditors, many of whom came from a distance to receive her instructions. On account of the self-possession and ease of manner which she had acquired in consequence of the cultivation of her mind, she not infrequently appeared in public in the presence of the magistrates. Neither did she feel abashed in going to an assembly of men. For all men on account of her extraordinary dignity and virtue admired her the more'
—Socrates Scholasticus, Ecclesiastical History

 * All formal dogmatic religions are fallacious and must never be accepted by self-respecting persons as final.
 * In fact men will fight for a superstition quite as quickly as for a living truth - often more so, since a superstition is so intangible you cannot get at it to refute it, but truth is a point of view, and so is changeable.
    Hypatia
Photo; "Death of the philosopher Hypatia, in Alexandria", 1866, by Louis Figuier.
 ****************************************************************************
Socrates Scholasticus (born after 380 AD, died after 439 AD) The death of philosopher Hypatia.
"Yet even she fell a victim to the political jealousy which at that time prevailed. For as she had frequent interviews with Orestes, it was calumniously reported among the Christian populace that it was she who prevented Orestes from being reconciled to the bishop. Some of them, therefore, hurried away by a fierce and bigoted zeal, whose ringleader was a reader named Peter, waylaid her returning home and, dragging her from her carriage, they took her to the church called Caesareum, where they completely stripped her, and then murdered her with tiles. After tearing her body in pieces, they took her mangled limbs to a place called Cinaron, and there burnt them. "

John of Nikiû (7th century) The death of Hypatia
'And, in those days, there appeared in Alexandria a female philosopher, a pagan named Hypatia, and she was devoted at all times to magic, astrolabes, and instruments of music, and she beguiled many people through Satanic wiles . . . A multitude of believers in God arose under the guidance of Peter the Magistrate . . . and they proceeded to seek for the pagan woman who had beguiled the people of the city and the Prefect through her enchantments. And when they learnt the place where she was, they proceeded to her and found her . . . they dragged her along till they brought her to the great church, named Caesareum. Now this was in the days of the fast. And they tore off her clothing and dragged her . . . through the streets of the city till she died. And they carried her to a place named Cinaron, and they burned her body with fire . '

P.s How many women was killed physically? And how many women was killed 100 times in only one life?   That's the big question...:((  Think about and Imagine? Imagination isn't a crime, anyway, officially.. .
So, does philosophers have a problem with women? Does philosophers/men are afraid of women?  
Are you afraid of women? And if so, why? :)))  
 K. Shiuka
( I never meet a free man, that's makes me sad, sometimes. K. Shiuka) 


 I think therefore I am a witch. 
Khatia Shiuka



Saturday 25 July 2015

William Penn; To be like Christ is to be a Christian

 William Penn (1644 –   1718) was an English  philosopher and founder of the Province of Pennsylvania, the English North American colony and the future Commonwealth of Pennsylvania. He was an early advocate of democracy and religious freedom. As a pacifist Quaker, Penn considered the problems of war and peace deeply. He developed a forward-looking project for a United States of Europe through the creation of a European Assembly made of deputies that could discuss and adjudicate controversies peacefully. He is therefore considered the very first thinker to suggest the creation of a European Parliamen.
A man of profound religious convictions, Penn wrote numerous works on Christianity.  He was imprisoned several times in the Tower of London due to his faith, and his book No Cross, No Crown (1669), which he wrote while in prison.
 * Love is the hardest lesson in Christianity; but, for that reason, it should be most our care to learn it.
 To be like Christ is to be a Christian.
* Patience and Diligence, like faith, remove mountains.
 * Only trust thyself, and another shall not betray thee.
 * Right is right, even if everyone is against it, and wrong is wrong, even if everyone is for it.
* Let the people think they govern and they will be governed.
 * Liberty without obedience is confusion, and obedience without liberty us slavery.
* Between a man and his wife nothing ought to rule but love.  
* Men being born with a title to perfect freedom and uncontrolled enjoyment of all the rights and privileges of the law of nature... no one can be put out of his estate and subjected to the political view of another, without his consent.
William Penn

Wednesday 22 July 2015

World Debate; Why Poverty?

  Overcoming poverty is not a task of charity, it is an act of justice. Like Slavery and Apartheid, poverty is not natural. It is man-made and it can be overcome and eradicated by the actions of human beings. Sometimes it falls on a generation to be great. You can be that great generation. Let your greatness blossom. Mandela


Humanism


*  Being a Humanist means trying to behave decently without expectation of rewards or punishment after you are dead.
 *  When a man becomes a writer, I think he takes on a sacred obligation to produce beauty and enlightenment and comfort at top speed.
 * Evolution can go to hell as far as I am concerned. What a mistake we are. We have mortally wounded this sweet life-supporting planet - the only one in the whole Milky Way - with a century of transportation whoopee.
   Kurt Vonnegut


Saturday 18 July 2015

Marilyn Monroe; Give a girl the right shoes, and she can conquer the world.


*  I am good, but not an angel. I do sin, but I am not the devil. I am just a small girl in a big world trying to find someone to love.
*  A man makes you feel important - makes you glad you are a woman.
*  It's better to be unhappy alone than unhappy with someone - so far.
*   Imperfection is beauty, madness is genius and it's better to be absolutely ridiculous than absolutely boring.
*  Give a girl the right shoes, and she can conquer the world.
 * What I really want to say: That what the world really needs is a real feeling of kinship. Everybody: stars, laborers, Negroes, Jews, Arabs. We are all brothers.