Reality, A Many Splendored Thing...

... psychiatric diagnoses must take into consideration the cultural background of the patient. In the Western individual, such as one reared in the United States, a diagnosis of schizophrenia can be considered if the person presents bizarre delusions -- odd ideation or magical thinking, superstitiousness, clairvoyance, telepathy, "sixth sense", "others can feel my feelings", unusual perceptual experiences, sensing the presence of a force or person not actually present, delusions of being controlled with thought broadcasting, thought insertion or thought withdrawal...

... however, in the Yaqui Indian or the Haitian Vodouist, some of these remarks are part of their cultural construct, part of their own reality. We will see later the epistemological problems (reference to limits or validity of science) arising from the presentation of Vodou as neurosis or psychosis. Psychiatric diseases exist in all cultures, from neurosis and personality disorders to the major psychoses of schizophrenia and manic-depressive illnesses. The content of their presentation must be analyzed in the light of the cultural constructs. A mental disorder such as pathologic anxiety can be associated with some degree of breakdown in reality testing. Depersonalization disorder, a feeling that healthy people occasionally experience, may become frequent or prolonged feelings of unreality or of strangeness, such as the feeling of not being one's self; looking in a mirror and feeling as if one were seeing a stranger; being in familiar surroundings and interpreting everything as foreign or changed. In the nineteenth century, Pierre Janet described this feeling of irreality in the disease complex called psychasthenia, which is a milder form of breakdown in perception of reality compared to the total disruption of schizophrenia, a term introduced by Eugen Bleuler in 1911...


The Magic of Quantum Reality...

... we have already learned from the dialecticians that contradiction is not negation of reality. Contradictions and paradoxes are part of the make-up of the universe, like impermanence and the alteration of order and chaos. However, many intellectuals have tried to imprison the world within the confines of the Euclidean and Newtonian laws. The new principles have created an uproar. Briefly we can enumerate: the principle of indeterminism or uncertainty of Heisenberg; the principle of duality of Louis de Broglie; the principle of complementarity and the principle of correspondence of Niels Bohr; the superposition principle; the principle or law of least effort; the principle of ubiquity; the bidirectional arrow of time; the parallel universes; the tens or more dimensions of reality; the criss-crossing of the principles themselves; the Poincarré return; the objectivity of nature as determined by our subjectivity...

-- The Vodou Quantum Leap

"Making peace in our world begins with disarming the enemy within ourselves. If we can do this, I am convinced we can learn to work with conflict in a way that transforms tragedy into an active, committed and empowered relationship with our friends, family, community and world."

We are now witnessing the most fundamental transformation of the selling of music since records were first invented. The economic restraints of the traditional business model have for all these years dictated what music can be made and when and how it can be sold.

If artists are willing to act together there are extraordinary opportunities both creatively and commercially.

The relationship of artist to the business has most often been one of contract and servitude. We believe the way forward must be a partnership in which the artist can take a much bigger role in how their creations are sold, but also have the chance to stand at the front of the queue when payments are made instead of the traditional position of being paid long after everyone else.

Four years ago I co-founded (and am now a shareholder in) a digital downloading service with Charles Grimsdale, called OD2. I got involved because I thought there were interesting opportunities and I wanted to have access to digital delivery both for my work and for all the artists on Real World Records

Although OD2’s initial focus was the Independents, we are now Europe’s number one digital distributor for music working with all five majors and are about to launch in Australia and Asia this year.

We are determined that we should try and take advantage of this situation and help transform the music business in such a way that artists are on level terms with record companies, receive fair payments and have new opportunities to be their own retailer when they choose.

- Peter Gabriel

from the posting It's Safer Outside, Wednesday, May 05, 2004:

... Investing one's time and energy into a single corporation isn't necessarily less creative - but it is, ironically, less secure. Corporations just let people go. They give severance and all, but then it's over - and all you can say is what you did for that company. You don't have things out there with your own name on them. And because all of your income came from that single source, once it's gone - it's gone. You are back on the street.

What I've come to realize is that the street is the safest place to be. There's no fear, here, because you're already here. (It's where you are, anyway, even if some company has given you cubicle space - but that's a bit existential for spring.) Your employment is as diversified as your ability to multitask. And the more different kinds of work you take on, the more media in which you can play. It's not a jack-of-all-trades problem, at all, since the more different arenas in which you work, the more clear it gets what you bring to each one of them.

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Transpersonal Perspective

Today, a more comprehensive view of human nature is developing. It recognizes our personal uniqueness as well as a transpersonal dimension, something which is beyond our individual egos, and yet still is a part of us. Based on observations and practices from many cultures, the transpersonal perspective is informed by modern psychology, the humanities and human sciences, as well as contemporary spiritual disciplines and the wisdom traditions.

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The Concept of Human Dignity

also takes a special significance for the African people. It is understood to be a mental state or a particular quality of the soul bestowed upon all human beings. This conception implies that as a person, one is automatically Worthy and Honorable, this honor being an innate right second only to the Right of Existence.

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Though anthropologists are often said to be driven by their liking for the bizarre and exotic, this assertion probably misses the point. Georges Condominas has suggested (Condominas 1965) how the exotic becomes everyday, once it is experienced that way; and some anthropologists might say that what excites them most is the process by which the apparently bizarre becomes ordinary...

- Sidney W. Mintz

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"...you cannot get out of the tangled hierarchy while you stay in it... The only way to get out of the tangled hierarchy is to jump out of the system, to transcend the system... in physics, tangled hierachy says that the subject of experience and the object of experience co-arise simultaneously, moment by moment, from a transcendent domain, which is beyond space and time, and that's who you are. You are neither the subject, nor the object, nor the process of interaction between subject and object, but the potential for the whole thing..."