About a year ago I was standing, hanging on the corner, with a friend, notorious thinker and man about town, Khalid Bey, when he threw out a provocative little line: “Kemal, there are two, and only two, types of people; Masters, and Slaves. Whether this is for better or for worse is irrelevant, it’s a […]
History
Equality of Men and Women, in the Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy
Something interesting I stumbled across. Sexuality during the Renaissance is a very interesting, and complex, topic. The roots of the modern world and modern attitudes lie in this period. Charles and Jennifer Upton’s “Shadow of the Rose: The Esoterism of the Romantic Tradition” deals with the spiritual aspects of pre-modern traditions of Romantic love, also […]
Tibet, Afghanistan: The Empires Russia, America, and China – Musings on a new century.
“I shall go far and far into the North, playing the Great Game….” – Kim, by R. Kipling Once, during the Cold War, the Soviet ambassador to Pakistan gave Pakistan’s president a slender leather bound book. When asked what it was the Soviet answered that it was a statement of the USSR’s foreign policy. The […]
Pondering Chinese Taoist and Arab/Persian Sufi ideas of individuality and immortality.
“Tao is forever and he that possesses it, though his body ceases, is not destroyed.” Before straying too far into this, pondering these ideas does not imply that I necessarily subscribe to, or believe in, the symbolic or literally stated import of all of these ideas. I do, however, find them highly interesting on a […]