Category: Video
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Wade Davis on the Human Imagination
In this beautiful TED talk, Wade Davis, anthropologist, ethnobotanist, National Geographic Explorer-in-Residence, author, documentarian, and photographer takes us on a tour through the wild ranges of the human imagination as manifested in the breadth of human mythology and cultural life. As members of the same human family we all share the same raw human genius and imagination, he reminds us, and while some have chosen to apply that to developing technologies, others have applied it to other mysteries of existence. Different ways of life and mythological systems are not failed attempts at being modern—at being us—but merely different human responses to the essential human questions: what does it mean to be human and alive.“All peoples are simply cultural options, different visions of life, itself…. making for completely different possibilities of existence,” he says. And as such, the breadth of human cultural variation is a treasure trove of imaginative insights and knowledge. If we discard our human diversity, we lose a hundred thousand years of accumulated knowledge and wisdom about ourselves and our planet. Modern western culture is hardly 300 years old, he cautions, and it’s folly to imagine that in those 300 years we’ve learned as much as we need to face the challenges of living.
By way of example, he tells us about—and treats us to some stunning photography of—several completely different indigenous cultures from around the globe, including the following:
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Candles in the Dark?
Beyond Belief, an annual symposium that seeks to promote the constituency of reason in society, was held this year from October 3-6 in La Jolla, CA. One weekend recently, I watched all 44 of its talks and panel discussions now available online (each about 25-30 mins). The theme this year was Candles in the Dark. Participants were asked “to propose a Candle — a potential
solution to a problem that they have identified in their area of
expertise or informed passion.” The symposium was organized around sessions that focused on science’s contribution to five human preoccupations: politics, morality, happiness, money, and law.If the anthropologists stole the show in 2006, this year belonged to the lawyers, or rather law academics who actively seek to incorporate science in their methods. By far the smartest group of people in
the room, they evinced the most nuanced understanding of the difference between science and metaphysics in general, and the limits and ethical implications of neuroscience research on criminal law, in particular. Other presentations I enjoyed came from Jonathan Haidt, Beatrice Golomb (her animated talk on how money is corrupting medical research was also the scariest), Philip Zimbardo, and Jonathan Glover. Strategies for promoting science in the public sphere—via Washington lobbies, media outreach—were presented and debated but only peripherally mentioned was the one I think can make a more fundamental impact: a “next-generation Carl Sagan” to seduce young minds by showing them the wonder and power of science, using the best available multimedia and teaching aids.The least inspiring session was the opening one on Human Flourishing/Eudaimonia. Disquisitions on happiness somehow managed to neither define happiness, nor how to measure it. Individual speakers who irked me the most included Patricia Churchland, a snake oil seller at the crossroads of neuroscience and philosophy, and whose thesis was effectively destroyed by a sharp observation from Nita Farahany, a lawyer; Sam Harris, the Dick Cheney of the symposium, who understands neither science nor religion but is wholly unaware of it. Why does he get invited every year? For the tawdry drama he adds to the proceedings? Peter Atkins, a textbook example of what a scientist without humility can become. Last year he fatuously proclaimed the impending demise of philosophy and the coming reign of science, adding that “We’ve got to get rid of philosophy because it is really such a ball and chain on progress … a philosopher is really just a nuisance.” Choosing Atkins to end the symposium with his talk was a real downer.
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Jonathan Haidt at TED
Jonathan Haidt delivers a compelling and thoughtful digest of the essence of his research and insights on human moral psychology, and what makes conservatives and liberals different (and alike). As a follow-up to Namit’s post on Haidt a few weeks ago, here’s the 20-minute video of Haidt’s TED talk:
Haidt invites us to take his research quiz at YourMorals.Org.
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The Lives of Animals
“Life on the farm isn’t what it used to be. The green pastures and idyllic barnyard scenes portrayed in children’s books have been replaced by windowless sheds, tiny crates, wire cages, and other confinement systems integral to what is now known as ‘factory farming.’” Here is a sobering look at how farm animals are transformed into food today (viewer discretion advised. Also see my previous post on this topic.)
(Click image below to go to the video site. Image source.)
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What Are We?
“We are the life force power of the universe with manual dexterity and two cognitive minds.”
This is part of the answer Dr. Jill Bolte Taylor leaves us with after relating the fascinating and gripping story of her stroke, caused by hemorrhage to the left hemisphere of her brain, and the unexpected spiritual moment she experienced within that stroke: Nirvana.
As a dedicated neuroanatomist whose work involves postmortem studies of human brains, Dr. Taylor was in a rare position to understand and examine what was happening to her when her cognitive facilities began to shut down one morning in 1996. It took her 8 years to fully recover from that stroke and to be able to share what she now calls her “stroke of insight.” When she speaks of it at the TED conference in February 2008, she begins by describing the basic functioning of the brain’s hemispheres, presenting a fresh human brain for our inspection with discomfiting matter-of-factness*. But as she continues her talk with warmth and humor, her presentation leaves off being an introductory lecture on brain anatomy and takes flight into realms of cognitive and spiritual sensation, her stroke as she lived it, her innermost life. Her telling becomes theatrical; she moves and brings her entire body to help us understand the intensity and power of her experience, and we are moved to take the journey with her. 19 minutes.
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Combating Human Trafficking
Here’s an arresting short talk (25 minutes) on the realities and prevalence of human trafficking and slavery given recently by Julia Ormond at the Global Philanthropy Forum in Redwood City, CA. According to Ormond, slavery is alive and well today. Worldwide, tens of millions of people live in slavery; and while this is the smallest fraction of the human population ever to live in bondage, they are nevertheless the largest number of slaves in history. She tells us that the institution is economically tied to powerful international crime syndicates and terrorists and involves more horror than one should ever have to imagine.
From FORA.tv: Julia Ormond, President of Alliance to Stop Slavery and End Trafficking (ASSET) and UN Goodwill Ambassador in Human Trafficking addressed the Global Philanthropy Forum. Julia Ormond reveals statistics in human trafficking and slavery and why it often goes unreported. Ormond recalls stories from child victims from around the world to shed light on the growing problem (from April 11th, 2008).
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The Modern Stop Sign
Imagine the STOP sign didn’t exist and a major corporation tried to create one today. Here is what the creative process might look like:
http://view.break.com/542649 – Watch more free videos -
LGBT Pride Parade 2008, SF
This year the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender (LGBT) Pride Celebration & Parade in San Francisco was particularly exuberant. Just days earlier, the California supreme court had struck down the ban on same-sex marriage (6 of its 7 judges are Republican appointees). Newlyweds marched in wedding attire. Gay men ran up to strangers in the crowd and excitedly screamed, “I’m getting married!” If heterosexuals had done the same, I would likely be fighting the sensation to puke. But in the homosexual context, this was powerfully moving and heartening to behold. Things have indeed come a long way, baby! 
The parade, customarily kicked off by the thundering Dykes on Bikes, lasted three hours. Despite elements of a raucous street party—loud music, dance, floats, drag queens, and sexual exhibitionism—the larger context was, not surprisingly, serious and highly political, with acts of moral courage and personal mutinies frequently evident. There were hundreds of contingents: advocates for sexual and civic rights and responsibilities; interest groups and non-profits; employers, families and friends of LGBT’s; offices of local and state government; celebrities and businesses promoting themselves, etc. The most memorable funny banner I saw read: “Erection 2008 — Know the hard facts, then fill in the holes.” 
A particularly notable presence was from progressive Christian groups in the Bay Area. LGBTs from several ethnic/cultural groups marched too: SE Asians, Asian Pacific Islanders, Muslims, Latin Americans, and a very attractive float from Trikone, representing LGBT South Asians (swinging to the beat from Dhoom). Watching the parade I thought: if anything ought to make me take pride in the SF Bay Area (where I’ve lived for 13 of the last 17 years), this event has to be it. -
The Maha Kumbh Mela, 2001
The greatest of the Hindu pilgrimage festivals, the Kumbh Mela at Allahabad is a riverside religious fair held every 12 years at the confluence of the Ganga and the Yamuna (Sangam). Bathing in these rivers during the Kumbh Mela is considered a meritorious act that cleanses body and soul. The Maha Kumbh Mela is even rarer, held every 144 years. A Puranic legend has it that when gods and demons fought over a pot
(kumbha) of amrit—the elixir that arose from their joint churning of
the milky ocean—drops of it fell on four
earthly sites, the four sites of the mela (festival), among which is Allahabad.
The festival has been held continuously for well over a millennium. In 7th century CE, the Chinese Buddhist traveler Hsüan-tsang attended the fair with emperor Harsha. In the 8th century the philosopher Shankara exhorted the sadhus (holy men) to meet at the Kumbh Mela for an exchange of views. The informal assembly of ascetics and yogis that took place here served as a kind of “parliament of Hinduism” for the discussion of religious doctrine and possible reform and has remained a major attraction for the pilgrim. Sadhus who stay naked all year, ascetics who practice severe physical disciplines, hermits who leave their isolation only for these pilgrimages, teachers who use modern technology to address the crowds, frauds, and true saints—of all sects and from all parts of India—gather in camps along the riverbank and are visited by the pilgrims. *
In 2001, an estimated 60 million—1% of all humans on
the planet—came to the festival over six weeks. I went at the start and left a day before the big crowds arrived for a particularly
auspicious bathing day. It was bitterly cold that second week of
January, with lows near freezing. Fortunately, the Indian government had worked to ensure the basics: functional toilets, garbage pickup, free blankets and firewood, crowd control, security, transportation, pontoon bridges, etc. -
Kenya Sings India
A Kenyan choir sings the Indian national anthem. (Click the photo.)
Scroll down the anthem page to see other groups singing other countries’ anthems. This video is from the Pangea Day event, which took place on May 10, 2008.
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Lohmann on Carbon Trading
Larry Lohmann, author and founding member of the Durban Group for Climate Justice, explains how carbon trading works, why it is an ill-conceived response to Climate Change, and why Bush and Gore are not as far apart in their policy prescriptions as some of us believe.
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Over 1,000,000 Iraqis Killed by US-Lead Invasion?
Here’s something you’re unlikely to see in the US press:
Further survey work undertaken by ORB, in association with its research partner IIACSS, confirms our earlier estimate that over 1,000,000 Iraqi citizens have died as a result of the conflict which started in 2003.
This is the conclusion of Opinion Research Business (ORB), an establishmentarian, British polling firm that conducted a study in Iraq in 2007. You can see their results on their website here, with an update here. But apparently, this information isn’t newsworthy enough even to warrant discussion in the media.
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A Sunday in São Paulo
I often think of Brazil as the most diverse, complex, and beautiful country in the Americas, and I am fortunate to have traveled through many parts of it. Its wild nature is famous enough and its society is an intricate patchwork of global and indigenous cultures. In June 2001, I spent a Sunday walking the streets of São Paulo, a city that strongly reminds me of Bombay. It is the most energetic and cosmopolitan metropolis of Brazil, its financial and entertainment hub, and a city of great opportunity and strife. Of Brazil, I wrote in an essay:
Futebol, sun, sand, sex, hard bodies, music, dance, tropical fruits, and drinks—picture-postcard Brazil. But there is plenty to ruffle this youth-worshiping light-heartedness and hedonistic living in the present: extreme wealth disparity, urban violence, corruption, unemployment, illiteracy, high birth rate, cast off children, the horror of growing old. Children are ubiquitous in Brazil—half the population is under twenty. Evangelists strive for their souls in small towns and big cities … Yet, Brazil has also made important strides. Communication, roads, transportation, housing projects, drinking water, and sanitation have come a long way. Multiple races and traditions coexist reasonably well. Villages and large cities rarely betray the kind of crushing poverty one finds in many other developing countries.
Here is some footage from my Sunday in São Paulo, with ordinary people, downtown, Liberdade (Japan town), evangelical Christians, soccer fever, street musicians/performers, sleaze district, prostitutes, the homeless, etc. The most hilarious part is that of a Japanese-Brazilian man in a public square, bursting spontaneously into dance—which later morphs into martial art moves—all to atrocious Christian pop!
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Lights, Camera, Action
I am pleased to announce a brand new channel on Shunya — Videos!
Videos should complement the other two channels: Articles and Photos. We will produce original videos besides linking to others on the web. Initially, the original videos will come from the 75+ hours of footage I’ve taken around the world, most during 2000-05—I’ve already posted the first five. When appropriate, I’ll also showcase some of my favorite music from each region, as I did in the White Desert video. Text captions will be minimal, just enough for context. It’s too bad my day job is not as much fun and no one has yet offered to turn my hobbies into a vocation. So a labor of love this remains.This is also the 200th post on Shunya’s Notes in sixteen months. Stay tuned for many more!
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Slaughter in America
A recent Humane Society sting operation at a California slaughterhouse brought to light some very cruel treatment of farm animals (see the investigator’s video; viewer discretion advised). The media attention caused a minor outrage and the largest beef recall in the history of the nation. Many wondered if cruelty is all that rare in the American meat business. Donations to animal rights groups followed (not unlike the spike in donations to charities following ads of emaciated children in god forsaken countries). Guilt assuaged, let’s do pork chops for dinner.
Curiously enough, what bothered people most was the cruelty itself, and the nutritional safety of meat from downer cattle. In other words, if all USDA rules were followed, in letter and spirit, the complaints would dissolve and people would go back to maintaining their equanimity about the industrial-scale raising, killing, and processing of animals for food and things. Notably, the USDA—US department of agriculture—regulates this industry. This is on par with agriculture? What does this reveal about the American society’s relationship with animals? How many little Eichmanns now thrive among us, within us?
Nearly ten billion mammals and birds are slaughtered each year in the US alone (a million per hour). How are they processed? The time-lapse footage below from the visually resplendent film, Baraka, has some details for chickens, mixed-in with scenes from modern life (a more disturbing one here. Also check out cartoonist Mark Fiore’s, Doreen the Downer.)White Desert, Egypt
The Western Desert, a vast expanse that starts at the western bank of the Nile and continues well into Libya, is the desert of deserts. Covering a total of 2.8 million sq km and bordered by Libya in the west, Sudan in the south and the Mediterranean in the north, it is a world of desolation and beauty — and one of the few places in Egypt where you can go for days at a time without seeing a soul. Five isolated but thriving oases dot this otherwise uninhabited expanse: Kharga, Dakhla, Farafra, Bahariyya, and to the north-west of these, Siwa. (—LP, Egypt).In Jan 2003, Usha and I traveled through four of the five Oases in Egypt’s Western Desert (or Eastern Sahara), including a special excursion to the hauntingly beautiful White Desert, known for its otherworldly white chalk rock formations. In Farafra, we hired a 4×4, camping gear, a driver who doubled as a cook, and drove about 50 km over shifting sands.
Usha, with her keen eye for detail, spotted seashells in the sand, a thrilling discovery for us. It is one thing to know that the Sahara was once below the sea, another to see proof of it. Also visible are remains of ancient lava flows—bits of lava rock rolled around for millions of years, eventually turning into lots of black spheroids, inch-wide in diameter. Our “tent” had two right-angled walls (to act as windbreakers) and no roof. We saw a gazillion stars and the white rocks looked beautiful in the moonlight. But even four blankets didn’t feel enough when the temperature dropped to near freezing that night. Here are some scenes from the trip, set to some music I like from north Africa.
Teotihuacan, Mexico City
In early first century CE, Teotihuacan was just a hamlet. Its population then grew as people from the Valley of Mexico began arriving there. With a larger labor force at its disposal, the local rulers grew richer and devised a master plan for a new city with the great building projects of the pyramids of the sun and the moon. The plan was inspired by the Aztec conception of the universe, and indeed, as the place where the universe itself originated. It also made Teotihuacan the grandest city in Mesoamerica during the Classic Period.
Teotihuacan’s control of the obsidian mines at Otumba and Pachuca allowed it to centralize the production of obsidian goods, some for domestic sale, the rest for export. With this, and its monopoly on the distribution of Thin Orange pottery, Teotihuacan developed a trading system that embraced almost every region of Mesoamerica, including places as far away as the Maya area, the modern state of Guerrero, and the area around the Gulf of Mexico. 
Teotihuacan’s metropolitan feel, its trading system, and the religious prestige it accrued from its giant pyramids and related ceremonies, attracted a floating population that enriched the quality of life in the great city. At its peak between 150—450 CE, it stretched over 30 square km and had a population of between 150,000 and 250,000. Halloween in the Castro
Reza Aslan on Religion
Continuing my quest to highlight significant viewpoints on important topics, here is an Apr 2007 debate worth watching between Reza Aslan and Sam Harris. Topics include religion, Islam, terrorism, etc. Harris did little to change my view of him; Aslan is the one to watch.
