A New Question For The Jury: Did My Brain Implant Make Me Do It? « The Jury Room

“Two centuries ago, a former European colony took it into its head to catch up with Europe. It has been so successful that the United States of America has become a monster where the flaws, sickness, and inhumanity of Europe have reached frightening proportions.”

— Frantz Fanon, The Wretched of the Earth

IMG_7809 by Pooja Pant

Tiger Bay, Cardiff, 1950, Bert Hardy

It all comes down to that urge to fascism — maybe a big word to use for art, but I think the right word — it comes down to that urge to fascism to know what’s best for people, to know that some people are of the best and some people are of the worst; the urge to separate the good from the bad and to praise oneself; to decide what covers on what books people ought to read, what songs people ought to be moved by, what art they ought to make, an urge that makes art into a set of laws that take away your freedom rather than a kind of activity that creates freedom or reveals it. It all comes down to the notion that, in the end, there is a social explanation for art, which is to say an explanation of what kind of art you should be ashamed of and what kind of art you should be proud of. It’s the reduction of the mystery of art, where it comes from, where it goes… 

Untitled by Ivana Stojakovic

We Are Ruled By Wizards

Bending reality is as simple as bending people’s perception of reality. Throughout history, the mythology of civilizations around the world has been full of tales of men and women who mastere…

Bending reality is as simple as bending people’s perception of reality. Throughout history, the mythology of civilizations around the world has been full of tales of men and women who mastered a mysterious, esoteric art which enabled them to use language in a way that […]

"In India all religions hold in common the idea of two indivisible elements, a male and female principle, Purusha and Prakrti, or Shiva and Shakti. The two elements originate in a single primordial being which manifests a 'desire to create'. From a unitary state of repose this emergent, but creative, tension gives birth to the universe and the multiplicity of beings and things of this world in a state of unceasing instability and flux, of time and constant change, of birth, reproduction, decay, death and rebirth. Out of a permanent coition of opposites the many are born, and with them confusion, antagonism, separateness. But the universe longs to regain its primordial state of oneness, and seeks to reverse the fragmentation. The return path, or restoration of lost unity, is the business of religion, yoga, ritualized sex, and its opposite : rigorous asceticism. These comprise a tool-kit of diverse, and divergent, religious techniques."

Richard Lannoy and Harry Baines, 'The Eye of Love', Grove Press, Inc., New York, 1976.

Elif Shafak on multiculturalism, the power of stories and making the pol...

R I P

Suchitra Sen (06.04.1931 - 17.01.2014)

Born Roma Dasgupta at Pabna, Bangladesh.

Some of her memorable films: Devdas (1955), Deep Jwele Jaai (1959), Saptapadi (1961), Uttar Falguni (1963), Saat Paake Bandha (1963). Mamta (1966), Aandhi (1975).

Photo: www.thehindu.com 

Insanity: inside the Country of the Mind

Insanity: inside the Country of the Mind

Originally posted on Living in the Modem World:

Insanity

In his novel Queen ofAngels, set at the close of 2047, Greg Bear explores the concept of what he calls, “the Country of the Mind”. This, Bear postulates, is the “ground” for all our thoughts. A kind of virtual reality landscape within us where our “big and little selves” – the personality routines which make up the conscious self, and…

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