"Apocalypto", "The Fountain" and increase in Mayan projection.

[Damien]

is it a fad? where is it going? are we starting to see the mythic thread itself into the main river ever so slipperily ever so innocuously, is this synchronistic with an impending takeover? is hollywood mind synching with group mind? thoughts, actions, awareness.

[Eagle Wing]

is it a fad? where is it going? are we starting to see the mythic thread itself into the main river ever so slipperily ever so innocuously, is this synchronistic with an impending takeover? is hollywood mind synching with group mind? thoughts, actions, awareness.

yeah, this was predicted.

[JustSitting]

Thought the same thing this weekend. I saw the Fountain, it was really good. Lots of non linear time, and synchronicities; it was very moving if you accept each scene as it comes. It felt odd to return to the normal world after leaving the theater.

[nyk]

It felt odd to return to the normal world after leaving the theater.

That is good.

[Mars]

I saw "The Fountain" last night and was deeply affected by it. I thought it did as good a job as any film in recent memory in dealing with questions of time arising from the Mayan Calendar and its mythology. Beautiful and inventive, it also has immaculate acting. I rarely see movies that combine intellectual prowess with a such a deep emotional core. It is unflinching in its examination of grief and loss. I find it curious and telling that it has received such a polarized critical response. It reminds me of when "2001" came out (a film the director of "The Fountain" was inspired by) - it was critically panned at first, and then gradually acknowledged by the mainstream media as a classic. In today's monolithic media climate I don't know if that will happen, but I for one believe it deserves to.

[K.J]

I'm happy to finally hear some good about The Fountain. I've been waiting for it to come out, but I've yet to see it. I was a little dismayed that the reviews so far have been so-so.

[Rob P]

.......

The score for the Fountain is beautiful...

If you can sit through the credits, with everyone else leaving in a rush,
checking their party lines - the piano ending is excellent-

Darren Aronofsky must have had a salvia experience,
or something similar, because in salvia space, i've seen some of the things
he portrays in the film......!

it's a pretty good film in the end.....a bit stiff at the start, but it is
worth checking out...it's no borat, but there is something
closer to reality in this film than anything else you will ever see...
sort of like 'contact' for me, in that way...

seeya
r o b

.......

[Lowlight]

Ive never heard of this film, i will have to check it out!

[JustSitting]

.......
Darren Aronofsky must have had a salvia experience,
or something similar, because in salvia space, i've seen some of the things
he portrays in the film......!

seeya
r o b

.......

Any links on salvia? where do you get it?
feel free to fork the reply

[Mars]

There's a good article in Wired that describes the road to Aronofsky making the film. He doesn't use any digital effects at all for the Nebula - eschewing them for a novel process involving the microphotography of liquids.

http://wired.com/wired/archive/14.11/outsider.html

The score is by Kronos Quartet and yes sitting through the whole end credit sequence is highly recommended.

[Rob P]

.......

hi just sitting-

try this link:

http://www.sagewisdom.org/

the best place for all the info
you will ever need-
and it's run by another great guy named Daniel!

seeya
r o b

.......

[K.J]

I went and watched The Fountain last night with my wife. I was completely drawn in. It's a beautifully done film; everything from the cinematography to the soundtrack was very well done. The whole film has a magical quality to it. Great acting too. And yes, it's highly recommended that you stay through the credits to hear the beautiful piano track.

A must see!

[daniel]

I saw The Fountain last night. I sort of enjoyed it - though I felt it was a bit pretentious and overreaching. The bald meditating guy in the bubble reminded me of Ken Wilber. Is he the only one who's going to make it till the end of time?

I don't know as much about Mayan mythology as I should, but it seems to me it has a lot more depth than this film.

Also - the male doctor character got on my nerves a bit.

What are we supposed to think happened in the intervening time btw the male doc and his wife dying and the bald guy/immortal doc in a bubble in space with the tree? or do we or don't we care?

[Mars]

Good criticisms. I agree that there are loads of unanswered questions in the film, which in most any other picture I would find sloppy and lazy writing. Aronofsky is treading, it seems to me, a fine line between visual poetry and narrative. He doesn't make a full committment either way, which may be why many people get frustrated with it. "Am I supposed to be trying to solve a puzzle?" v. "The focus on drama detracts from the sensory experience" kind of thing. I don't know why it didn't bother me at all, and in fact, deepened both aspects. It ultimately didn't matter too much to me that there were no explicit messages or explanations because the overall affect of the movie was so distinct, defined and resonant. Maybe that is because the movie was so focused on emotion and relationship - and it could be argued that poetry (good poetry, to me anyway) expresses an emotional, irrational, or affective experience.

The problem with the use of Mayan mythology I can see is that since this film is so focused on delivering a certain kind of experience, the mythological elements end up merely servicing what is otherwise a very personal story rather than speak satisfactorily to the depth of that cultural history. I admire the stab at it, however. It felt like it came from a sincere (if not a little arrogant) desire to understand and express.

And of course, not everyone likes the Huge Jack Man.

[K.J]

I saw The Fountain last night. I sort of enjoyed it - though I felt it was a bit pretentious and overreaching. The bald meditating guy in the bubble reminded me of Ken Wilber. Is he the only one who's going to make it till the end of time?

I don't know as much about Mayan mythology as I should, but it seems to me it has a lot more depth than this film.

Also - the male doctor character got on my nerves a bit.

What are we supposed to think happened in the intervening time btw the male doc and his wife dying and the bald guy/immortal doc in a bubble in space with the tree? or do we or don't we care?

It's funny, it seems that so many people on these forums are irritated by Wilber. I Can't figure that one out. Not saying that your comment was implying you were irritated about the character because of the resemblance, it just brought to mind the many times I've come across anti-Wilber attitudes on the forums.

I don't think the film was really about Myan mythology. I was actually surprised that it was even a part of the film since I didn't catch on to that fact from just watching the trailer (but maybe I just wasn't paying attention).

I like the analogy of good poetry; it really wasn't about giving you answers. To me it was more about making you feel than anything.

[Caprinardo Delirio]

i'm about to see it later on, after cancelling it last night. i realized i was way to tired to go through with it... but i did get to that part, and i did think exactly that: ken friggen' wilber! maybe ken will have a movie to rival his love of "the martrix"... (ha ha, hm hm hm)

that whole integral/tool/alex grey/modern minimalist architectural meditational sports-spiritualist type of thing..... anyway, i can't wait to see it. i had serious problems with both of aronofsky's other film the first times i saw them, "pi" and "reqiuem" that is.. but i sort of learned to like them.

k.j. i have certainly displayed anti-wilber attitudes at times... it's just easier to let off steam fast and furiously like that, instead of giving a more well-thoughtout critique, which is what i should be doing, and will probably do at one point.

in the meantime, did you read that critique grof did on him i've posted in S&S?

[gandydancer]

Hi KJ,

Re Wilber, as so often happens the ones who think they got so enlightened turn out to be not as enlightened as they thunk they were. Eventually they just surround themselves by their cult members who agree with everything the "master" has to say and get more and more defensive about criticism. For info on Cohen you can check out his mother's book "Mother of God". For Wilber I will give a good site. It actually is a fun read, especially some of the blogs. I have not read it in a long time but I remember one especially good one--when I have time I will see if I can find it. :D
http://www.integralworld.net/

[Caprinardo Delirio]

yes, there are some good criticisms on that site, i've read a few. that one about wilber being a "spiritual narcissist" that was just a re-posting of his hysterical reply, to one particular criticism, was really funny.

[gandydancer]

was it the fuck this and fuck that and you can lick my dick one? :D

[Caprinardo Delirio]

no no, that's his new book. no, i'm kiddin yeah that's the one! :razz:

[Damien]

Saw The Fountain a few day ago and wasn't impressed. Thought that the love story should have been jettisoned for a higher concentration on the allegory...everytime I saw the Mayan illustration of First Father, I was waiting for them to say, "Quetzalcoatl." Thought a lot about the book, i'm writing a show about the whole 2012, Mayan Calendar, Indigo child, consciousness shift thing and i said, "I could have written a better screenplay than this!"

I feel that love at this point in an outdated paradigm at least in the way it was related to in the film. I felt that the love story never really got off the ground, we've seen the same lines so many times, but what was presented couldn't transcend the reaches and the lines that Aranofsky was trying to succor.

[Caprinardo Delirio]

"love is an outdated paradigm" - that's funny...:)

i just watched it.

transcendence or no transcendence; that's kinda the name of the game, isn't it? with the movie, i mean?

well, i wasn't really susceptible to it too much, guessing something about my days, here, these. i was more saying "oh, that's this and that's that" and initially thought "well, it's some nice sort of quick run with the whole synchronistic, integral, tantric mythology, but very overtly visual and very obvious" i think that's ok now, and can totally understand that others were drawn into it. it was very short-film/music-videoy, but that's how it was supposed to be i guess, because it strives for this kind of iconographic mythopoetic symbolism. in the end it was good, i think. still reminds me of a tool video and the wilber world-perfect kind of kosmic modern day ego-mythic citizenship... or something.

daniel, as i see it, the future/higher self both intervenes with the past/lower self to push the motive of love upward to an authentic understanding of it and to sacrifice and this and that, so that in the past/lower self gets consumed by his egoic and false/flawed desire for love and enternity, as it were (the allegory of the soldier drinking greedily from the tree of life, and becomes the involuntary sacrificial host for the new time cycle of nature, or whatever, was really really beautiful, i thought) and the symbol of true unity and love, the ring, was moved into awareness of the future/higher self, which then makes the authentic and conscious offer of sacrifice and true insight of love and death, puts on the ring, let's the ego die, and is then liberated, which thus feeds back as the present actual self of the doctor, which is the real person that this is about, and who then let's go, get's on with it after his wife is gone, stops trying to cure death and learns how to live.

[drew hempel]

Cure All ! http://www.kheper.net/topics/Taoism/circulation_of_light.html

[Isaiah Mpski]

The interest created by t he new film will spread interest about the true rulers of the new world pre ---what I'm trying to say maybe people will look at some of the earliest pictures names and treaties conducted by all the American tribes-ninety-nine percent of which were sent to Indian Territory,and perhaps see how really beautiful they are socially entwined with Gaia and Mother Nature and Father Time.
Does anyone know if the President of Venzuela is indian?
I wouldn't want to make him mad.

[drew hempel]

He, at first, wasn't clued into to indigenous stuff so well but no he's made it a top priority. I think he's mestizo (Indian blood). My family just became mestizo (with my brother-in-law from El Salvador). It's totally crazy! haha.

[Isaiah Mpski]

It is absolutely amazing.
The ability to set back half the globe forever.
We have won.It is time to come home and bring those who wish to live in peace and prosperity with US.
Manifest Destiny.1776-2006.

[Isaiah Mpski]

I have one real picture on my wall-alot of albumns-but one picture-seashore st San Salvadore.Daddy was a bad bad boy.He and Roberto:evil:
We didn't speak for at least twenty years so please don't let anyone hold that shit against me.

[Caprinardo Delirio]

isaiah, you have yourself one twisted up life..

[BrokenHead]

Ive never heard of this film, i will have to check it out!

Me too! wow

[gandydancer]

OK, here is a good site. And OK, I will admit it: Men are more aggresive than women, but women gossip and are more cattier than men. This is the honest-to-god truth--claw me to pieces if you want...:D

http://www.integralworld.net/

[Isaiah Mpski]

...by the light of the shimmiring shimmiring moon I will try to do better.
God forgive me of my shortcomings and love,guard and protect our loved ones.

No Lord Cap.If I were to show or give you irrefutiable prrof of who and why JFK was assisinated would it make any difference.No because everybody involved is already dead but you're right,I have had a hard life and alot of it had to do with toilet training.

Sow God forgive us of our sins.

[gandydancer]

Drats! My inside gossip post did not work! Well, where there's a will, there's a way...

NOTE! for those that are not interested in "gossip" ignore any further gossip posts! There is no forum rule that you must click on anything that I post.

[Isaiah Mpski]

Are you the one that CM was telling us about over on Divorce Testimony?

[gandydancer]

well it seems that is the same site I posted earlier (even though the page is not the same). no matter what I try I get the same one. I will se if I can get it to post the one I bookmarked some time ago when I have time. It is fun, it is funny, that is what I like.

[Caprinardo Delirio]

uhm gandy,

didn't you already post that link??

still on the sensimilia!:p

[Caprinardo Delirio]

oh, i didn't see the second pagefold here... maybe i should heed my own advice..

still, gandy, still!

it's a good site regodless, there were a paper by someone who tried to destill the cult-level of the integral institute, which was reassuring.. mostly because someone are doing it, i'm not sure i totally agreed with it. but we gotta watch those inimaginative freaks!!

[K.J]

k.j. i have certainly displayed anti-wilber attitudes at times... it's just easier to let off steam fast and furiously like that, instead of giving a more well-thoughtout critique, which is what i should be doing, and will probably do at one point.

in the meantime, did you read that critique grof did on him i've posted in S&S?

I certainly did read that; and an interesting bit it was (I do believe I thanked you on the thread for posting it). I find a marriage of both the Grof model and the Wilber model is quite nice.

[K.J]

Below is what looks to me to be a very interesting interview with Darren and Stuart Davis. Available to Integral Naked (http://in.integralinstitute.org/)members (those crazy Wilber cultists). ;)


The Fountain and The Cure for Altitude Sickness (http://in.integralinstitute.org/whatsnew.aspx)
Darren Aronofsky and Stuart Davis

In 1998 Darren Aronofsky released his first feature-length film, Pi. Shot in Super 16 Black and White, and made for a meager $60,000, the film put him on the map as an inventive director and a bankable talent (shortly after its release one writer joked "Pi = $1,000,000"). Pi was followed with his 2000 sophomore super-nova, Requiem For A Dream. The $5 million dollar Requiem—a vivid and unflinching odyssey through the bottomless depths of addiction and delusion—became a critical and popular success that dispelled any doubts of Aronofsky's gift. Starring Ellen Burstyn, Jared Leto, Jennifer Connelly, and Marlon Wayans, the film garnered the cultural currency which allowed Aronofsky to pursue an even more ambitious project: The Fountain.

Warner Brothers originally green-lit Darren's third film at a budget of $80 million, with a cast starring Brad Pitt and Cate Blanchett. After two and a half years of intimate collaboration, Pitt pulled out of the project six weeks before shooting, and the film collapsed. Aronofsky attempted to switch focus to other projects, but found himself invariably drawn back to The Fountain. Through a series of travails, he eventually rewrote the script, radically changed his production plan, and made a streamlined version of The Fountain for $30 million. Relying upon incredibly inventive filming techniques (such as micro-photography of live yeast which is transposed to macro-scale celestial nebulae on the big screen), and the addition of stars Hugh Jackman and Rachel Weisz (Darren's wife), Aronofsky's biggest creative gamble has miraculously found its way into the World after all.

The Fountain (in theaters now) has proven to be a divisive film among audiences and critics, and this is what motivated Stuart Davis to invite Aronofsky to an exclusive dialogue on Integral Naked. Like many great films with deeper, enigmatic dimensions (e.g. Mulholland Drive, The Thin Red Line, Dancer In The Dark, I Heart Huckabees, The Matrix), Stu points out that The Fountain's trans-rational features have been mistaken by some as merely irrational fodder, which is then often equated with pre-rational myth and magic, because both pre-rational and trans-rational are non-rational (one version of the “pre/trans fallacy”). This phenomenon, in which symbols from a higher developmental level, stage, or altitude of awareness are filtered through lower and more limited perspectives, induces what Stuart calls "altitude sickness." In such instances, a viewer anchored in, for example, a rational center of gravity gets interpretive vertigo when they encounter something from above or beyond their register. As Stu suggests, the subject often dismisses the U.F.O (unidentifiable freaky ontology) as extraneous non-sense.

An Integral Approach values and engages pre-rational, rational, and trans-rational dimensions, while understanding the important distinction between them. Each domain or altitude has unique epistemologies, or ways of knowing. A film like The Fountain is not just a flat, monochromatic "it" with a right or wrong interpretation waiting to be had. There are varying depths of perspective it can be viewed from, and indeed a film, or any piece of art, feels very different depending upon the altitude of the subject interpreting it. Stuart and Darren begin their conversation by exploring this riddle.

Aronofsky candidly shares his deepest reasons for pursuing such a nuanced enterprise, and the secret to keeping a clear head in the cacophony of feedback that comes with the release of any film. Stuart and Darren discuss the perennial spiritual themes running through his films, and Darren's commitment to sincerity and depth in a cultural climate too often paralyzed by irony, deconstruction, and surfaces.

Of course, just because a movie has transrational dimensions doesn't mean it will be entertaining. Depth and sincerity do not guarantee an experience of wonder. Does The Fountain deliver on its promise? One of the film's refrains is "Death is the road to awe." What is it Aronofsky is inviting us to die into, and what is it we may find ourselves in awe of? Integral Naked is thrilled to welcome this brilliant artist as he offers us an exclusive glimpse inside The Fountain…

[Mars]

"love is an outdated paradigm" - that's funny...:)

daniel, as i see it, the future/higher self both intervenes with the past/lower self to push the motive of love upward to an authentic understanding of it and to sacrifice and this and that, so that in the past/lower self gets consumed by his egoic and false/flawed desire for love and enternity, as it were (the allegory of the soldier drinking greedily from the tree of life, and becomes the involuntary sacrificial host for the new time cycle of nature, or whatever, was really really beautiful, i thought) and the symbol of true unity and love, the ring, was moved into awareness of the future/higher self, which then makes the authentic and conscious offer of sacrifice and true insight of love and death, puts on the ring, let's the ego die, and is then liberated, which thus feeds back as the present actual self of the doctor, which is the real person that this is about, and who then let's go, get's on with it after his wife is gone, stops trying to cure death and learns how to live.

Caprinardo,

Really interesting and I think insightful interpretation. The idea that the past and future stories are themselves allegorical to the story that occurs in the present jibes with my sense that the movie is ultimately a musing on grief and loss.

It's interesting - in the aftermath of seeing the movie I thought "they must be going crazy over this movie on the BOTH boards." As a longtime reader but non-poster I think I assumed that because of the content regarding the nature of time, mayan themes, consciousness, et al, that it would be greeted as enthusiastically as I responded to it. Reading the posts critical of the film has reminded me that there is an awful lot of diversity and disagreement when it comes to the various topics presented here. Of course, this is healthy and positive, but I wonder if someone like myself, who is probably more on the fringe of the community, with an almost certainly less robust breadth of knowledge can sort of, you know, see the forest for the trees?

[Caprinardo Delirio]

my problem with the wilber model is basically that it is highly highly speculative, as his attempt to order and systematize all kinds of mystical and religious insights goes. and not only speculative, i know there could be used over one hundred adjective to describe the unneccessity and fallacies of it, but i'm not going down that road yet. just saying that his idea at how humans develop, and the hierarchy he believes exists, as far levels of cognition goes, is flat out flat and full-on wrong, and i think this is obvious. his point that peak experiences are interpreted through whatever 'level' your at is very friggen obvious, but gets over emphazised to an almost ludicrous degree as far as practice as developmental abstraction goes. then there's the the integral institute and it's people and it's followers, whic, regardless of how totalizing their efforts my be, never will stop to amaze me with their cheasyness, flakeyness and what not.. i am worried about it's whole elitist cultlikeness, and some of their followers are absolutely bonkers. some are very hierarchically minded, as you'd expect, and clings to the models and metaphors somewhat much more than the left-wing groups that wilber and deida love denouncing themselves..

anyway, it's useless to start a rant like this.

i still read him, and figure he's not a bad man, and not entirely off course. metaphysically i'm still much more in agreement with his than most philosophers in the world today... well, depends how long you talk to them, and how you read them, of course.

[Caprinardo Delirio]

i think the both board can stand tall on it's scepticism and non self-swaying every time a metaphysical blockbuster hits the silver screen. unlike, you know, The Institute..

will somebody who's a member friggen post the whole conversation.

somebody at an higher altitude, please... nobody will know!

k.j?

[K.J]

will somebody who's a member friggen post the whole conversation.

somebody at an higher altitude, please... nobody will know!

k.j?

I'm a member, but it's an audio file not an article. And I haven't yet figured out how to record them (though I know it's probably easy; I just haven't bothered taking them time).

[daniel]

My first problem with Wilber is the quality of his prose. Personally, perhaps because I come from a literary background, I believe that the attention a writer gives to their prose reveals a lot about their depth, trustworthiness, and acuity. I am now reading The Spell of the Sensuous, and here I encounter a precise, poetic writing style with which I resonate. Wilber seems much more "mass-cult" and midlevel to me, and there is a kind of speciousness to a lot of his generalizations that I find unconvincing. I have definitely gained some insights from him - for me, his integration of 1970s US schools of psychotherapy and psychoanalysis into a metaphysical framework is probably the most important thing that he offers.

It feels to me that people are stuck in the integral world - like flies attached to the spiraling flypaper of all those levels and lattices. I don't really see how this is spilling out into other arenas in a way that is truly transformative. I don't see the integral folks addressing the reality, imho, that this planet is about to die if we don't get off our asses and "will the transformation" on every level.

I haven't read Spiral Dynamics but I will at some point - perhaps I will then "get" why it is necessary to have all of this terminology, and how it is helping.

I also sense enormous ego behind this enterprise, which feels closed off in critical areas where it should be open to deeper discussion. As a friend I was discussing Wilber with today noted, despite all the focus on "spirituality", there is no allowance made in this realm for the existence of spirits, of the daimonic and psychic realms, except as psychological projections. There is something slightly humorless about the vibe - I once joked that Wilber doesn't posit a universe that I would find funny enough to inhabit.

I may be wrong - I hope so, in fact. In the chaos awaiting us just ahead, we will need all the spiritual warriors and true compatriots we can find.

[Damien]

I may be wrong - I hope so, in fact. In the chaos awaiting us just ahead, we will need all the spiritual warriors and true compatriots we can find.

I thought you were "cancelling the apocalypse"? :confused: Not to say that with all that's already been lost there is a reason to go to 13 hour, however what are you feeling or seeing that has driven toward this new proclamation of disorder and entropy and away from the faith in purile solutions.

[Caprinardo Delirio]

absolutely, yes, wilber is a bad poet and a mediocre writer at his best. and this is not just me adding fuel to the fire of my already self-initiated and inflammatory accusations against the guy, i can see how it goes right through the whole story to the ground zero of my relationship with him, in the way daniel suggested that language informs your understanding, judgement and feelings. hopefully this is not the only factor that made me feel something was wrong with the wilber-vision. i find it funny how he tries to intertwine this poetic sensibility with the authoritative language of academia and science. as he tries to embody (amongst all other things in the universe) the nature-mystical sensibilities of ancient asia and let it flow into schematics and all this anal stuff, it just becomes a revelation unto itself. i think he appears honest at times, at other times you can almost trace the hard heart of his ego's categorical imperatives in the shape of his sentences.

this whole embodying thing: it seems to me that what should be a trans-dualistic process of new a epistemological episteme, shorty summarized as the "coincidentia oppositorum", and however we choose to describe or picture that "transformation" that it would be, to see the earth in peace, understanding and harmony, get's engulfed by two things: the person and the institution! it is so obviously, neurotically, pre-maturely and pre-emptivly that ken wilber and his company should try to embody and encompass all of the expressions of evolution and enlightenings that could/would/should take place. they may be able to give us some glimpses, if we're willing to pay attention long enough, yet i don't see the reason that all of this should be packaged by them first, and why they don't just direct us to the library and suggest ways of reading and seeing. i've had discussions with "integrally informed" individuals who would assure me that you have to travelling on the higher beam of insight to get the profundities of their output, and this is this reaccuring example of their post-modern sophistic trip, that, to me, renders them both as class-a cult, but also as unfortunate inhabitants of very poor and two-dimensional self-constructed incantations.

i envision a lot of recovering integralists a few years from now.

i remember an interview with the great new york-based musician raz mesinai from a few years back, where he used the term "spiritual warrior" which i liked and thought was cool, but i never could really see the circumstance in which that desciption would actually apply in a concrete manner. we will fight with our hearts and minds, we will argue and protest and sacrifice, but we will not kill. right?

at least not in the old world-war-type scenarios. i could cap some high-ranking officer, i guess...

[Dna]

Daniel:
there is no allowance made in this realm for the existence of spirits, of the daimonic and psychic realms
We all meet many people in our lives, who admit to believing in a spiritual dimension of some sort. Yet they do not take this acceptance to its logical conclusion, which is to consider the possibility of a vibrant and inhabited spiritual realm(s).

When speaking with people like this, it is always fun to get them to take their belief to its logical conclusion.

Because of this blind spot, we perhaps do not see certain illnesses as spiritual possession. I am thinking of schizophrenics. Or a troubled child who was interviewed on the radio recently, saying that he/she wasn't trying to be naughty but just felt that they were being compelled to be naughty from outside.

If there is such a world (a hair's breadth away), then we must accept that it is going to affect us in all sorts of ways.

It is our task to understand how we are influenced, so that we can take control of our destinies.

[willoweyes]

Daniel, I begged you to read the spell of the sensuous three years ago, right here in this forum. But did you deign to notice an aging puss?

Like I've said before, you need to embrace your inner corne. I mean crone.

Just think of all the time you might have saved.

anyway, sos can save your soul.

[willoweyes]

I can endure
the most perfect indifference

[Caprinardo Delirio]

what are you on about, will?

spell of the sensuous sounds like a good book, i'll put it on my christmas wish list!

[Isaiah Mpski]

Willow,you wouldn't have to ask me or Lord CM twice.
Really ya'll I'm ready to head to Tepic on a moments' notice if any of you out there have some chicken-feed 10k- but me.
We'll stick Daniels ass on a pole,mount a bird on his head,and cry in tune.
Such BS Geoge.Daniel if you have access to money now is the time to move.

[K.J]

It feels to me that people are stuck in the integral world - like flies attached to the spiraling flypaper of all those levels and lattices. I don't really see how this is spilling out into other arenas in a way that is truly transformative. I don't see the integral folks addressing the reality, imho, that this planet is about to die if we don't get off our asses and "will the transformation" on every level.

As just one example, I watched the first part of a talk last night given by David Johnston about the AQAL model (Wilber's model) and green building, which is a part of the Integral Ecology series. Here is Mr. Johnston's bio from Integral Naked:

David Johnston is an environmental and community activist using a fully integral (AQAL) approach to become the first major green-building success story. A well-known expert in the field of sustainable construction, Johnston is the president of What's Working, a green building consultation firm, and serves as a green building consultant to the City of Boulder's Green Points Program (of which he was the principle author and has been a board member since 1996). He was also responsible for a pioneering use of the integral model with his work for the Alameda County Waste Management Authority in California in developing a green approach to residential construction, also a breakthrough success.

Johnston started the Boulder Green Points program in 1995, the first program of its kind, which required anyone seeking a building permit to meet at least 65 environmental standards (included on a checklist of 280). From there he worked with the Denver Metro Home Builders Association to develop their "Built Green" program for new homes, a voluntary program that has to date certified over 13,000 homes at a current rate of 4000 homes per year. It is currently the largest private sector program in the country and includes many of the largest homebuilders and manufacturers in the nation.

Johnston then moved on to the Colorado Office of Energy Conservation to develop a statewide green building program, which focused its efforts on the then-prospering ski towns of the Rocky Mountains. It had the most traction in Aspen and was subsequently subsumed under the Denver Metro HBA program at the end of the nineties, which made Denver the first city in the entire nation to implement green building in a home builder’s association. Johnston also developed green guidelines for the redevelopment of the old Stapleton Airport, where now all homes meet the HBA. In 1998 and 1999, Johnston moved on to the City of Los Angeles to develop their Sustainable Buildings program.

Learning from the successes and failures of each of these experiences, Johnston used a fully integral methodology when working with the Alameda County Waste Management Authority (a jurisdiction which includes the cities of Oakland and Berkeley) to develop their residential green building program, where he formulated an innovative approach to market transformation and defined a “integral catalyst” model to accelerate the process. Starting off with the publication of two separate sets of guidelines (one for new homes, one for remodeling) so popular they are now in their fifth print run, in 2003 the program grew into the Bay Area “Build It Green” program sponsored by manufacturers, builders, architects, re-modelers, and public agencies from the nine counties of the Bay Area region.

The organization is now an example of a horizontally and vertically integrated nonprofit, connecting as it does the vertical axis of manufacturers, distributors, and the retailers of green building products with the horizontal axis of homeowners/buyers, builders, re-modelers, architects, and realtors (all of whom have been trained in the integral model by Johnston himself). This has allowed businesses to take the burden away from public agency intervention, transforming the market in the process, and it is no surprise that this is one of the fastest growing “green built” programs in the country.

Though still in its infancy, the Build It Green program has begun to gain traction throughout the entire Bay Area and beyond, and as of this writing, Johnston’s group is in negotiation with the State of California Building Industry Association to integrate green building guidelines with the home Energy Star program to create a statewide green building program to be sponsored by the homebuilders (just like the Denver program is now state-wide in Colorado). Johnston hopes the ongoing negotiations will be adopted by late spring 2004, which would be a first for a statewide sustainable building program.

By using integral methodology, Johnston has shown both builders and homeowners alike the importance of integrating exterior social, economic, and political systems with the interior motivations and value systems of each set of stakeholders. Once people and organizations realize that they can integrate their deep values (i.e., the desire of many re-modelers to protect old growth forests) with their own businesses, Johnston’s integral approach to green building is embraced with unbridled enthusiasm (so much so that 120 groups have been certified in the course of just nine months).


I haven't read Spiral Dynamics but I will at some point - perhaps I will then "get" why it is necessary to have all of this terminology, and how it is helping.

Although it is a good read, it will only go so far towards helping you understand Wilbers' integral theory since his theory is only based on Spiral Dynamics but is actually a much more useful version of that model (IMHO). I would suggest reading Sex, Ecology, Spirituality (http://www.amazon.com/Sex-Ecology-Spirituality-Spirit-Evolution/dp/1570627444/sr=8-1/qid=1165354824/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1/102-6227480-4134546?ie=UTF8&s=books)to get a solid understanding of Wilber's model (integral theory is always evolving, so even SES should be considered just a foundation; the first edition was written over 10 years ago).

There is something slightly humorless about the vibe - I once joked that Wilber doesn't posit a universe that I would find funny enough to inhabit.

I would highly recommend starting off with Wilber's novel Boomeritis (http://www.amazon.com/Boomeritis-Novel-That-Will-Free/dp/1590300084/sr=1-1/qid=1165355138/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1/102-6227480-4134546?ie=UTF8&s=books)(presuming you're interested in learning more about his philosophies). Not only will it provide you with a good understanding of Wilbers' theories (and an understanding of how Spiral Dynamics influenced them) but I personally found it a very funny and entertaining read.


As an aside, you were in my dreams last night Daniel. We were at some kind of social gathering at what seemed to be a mutual acquaintances home. There were lots of people there and we were all just kind of mingling. I saw you a few times from across the room but was kind of nervous to walk over and say anything. Near the end of the dream you came up and shook my hand and said "hey, it's nice to see you again". And that's all I remember. I thought it was interesting. hehe.

[Caprinardo Delirio]

i've read the second edition of SES. impossible to comment on, but i'm gonna read it again eventually. i seem to pick up the vibe that quite a number of people interested in wilber are starting to feel that he's rehasing a lot of old material in his newer books. what do you think about that k.j? is integral theory really evolving all that much? what's happening in your view?

[K.J]

i've read the second edition of SES. impossible to comment on, but i'm gonna read it again eventually. i seem to pick up the vibe that quite a number of people interested in wilber are starting to feel that he's rehasing a lot of old material in his newer books. what do you think about that k.j? is integral theory really evolving all that much? what's happening in your view?

I do feel that it's evolving. In most of his books he repeats stuff from previous works for the benefit of those who may not have read the older works.


I should also say that from now on--and certainly as evidenced in the following excerpts--I am writing only for students of my work. Every book written up to this point has made the assumption that the reader had no prior knowledge of any of my material. Thus, most of my books, especially since SES, had to start with a long summary of the AQAL framework. The first third of each book would therefore repeat the same general overview (which certainly contributed to the criticism that I was repeating myself. Which, of course, I was).

Anyway, I am no longer doing so (except for the occasional, continued attempts at popular summaries or overviews, such as TOE). Henceforth, for the most part, my writing (including the following) assumes not just a passing familiarity but a working knowledge of the essentials of the AQAL matrix. Readers lacking such might first read A Brief History of Everything and then A Theory of Everything. And Boomeritis for fun, though it's not required by any means. For the same reason, I have ceased responding to critics and am devoting myself to working exclusively with individuals who understand the integral approach (and whose criticism from within is much more accurate and cogent).


Check out his page at Shambalah (http://wilber.shambhala.com/)and read this (http://wilber.shambhala.com/html/misc/wheres-wilber.pdf) and this (http://wilber.shambhala.com/html/books/kosmos/index.cfm/) and see what you think about the evolving nature of integral theory.

[gandydancer]

Here is a different view of Wilber, Beck, and Spiral Dynamics. It is my opinion that Spiral Dynamics origionally started out as a useful tool (not to me, but perhaps to some...), and Wilber bent and twisted it to fit his brand of philolophy:rolleyes: .

IMO "Boomeritis" would be a good book to read, but not at all for the same reasons that K.J. seems to suggest. For me it would be more "Philosophers Gone Wild"...


A Critique of Wilber and Beck's SD-Integral
by
Michel Bauwens


The following material is from P/I: Pluralities/Integration no. 61: March 23, 2005:



Integralism (1): What's wrong with Wilber and Beck's SD-Integral
The following is not a critique of memetics as such, i.e. the general idea that thoughts can spread like viruses, from head to head as it were. In a peer to peer era determined by network-based knowledge transfer, such a viral point of view has merit and can disclose interesting findings. My ill-feeling has more to do with a specific school of thought: Spiral Dynamics, and less with the theory 'in general', which I believe has merit (see spiraldynamics.org for a good overview), than in the specific way it is applied by a particular branch of it. In this article, I will be groping to establish what it is precisely that makes me ill at ease, and increasingly more so: in a crux, it is that the SD-Integral movement, as represented by Ken Wilber and Don Beck, has been rapidly evolving to a political neoconservative movement that uses the scientific basis of Spiral Dynamics as a cloak. The following therefore does not apply o the branch of SD represented by Chris Cowan, who takes great pains to avoid the kind of generalizations I'm referring to.

In the most general terms, the ideas of Spiral Dynamics, have a certain merit. What it says, following the research of psychologist Clare Graves, is that individual thought patterns have a certain consistency, they are a coherent system, and that individuals can move from one system to another, from one level of complexity to another. They are if you like 'consciousness formations', particular constellations of values. If I understand it correctly, it is these underlying value system which makes an individual 'tick'. But the SD system goes further, it uses these value constellations to explain the history of civilization. The history of civilization is explained in terms of societies moving from one 'average value constellation' to another. To make it easier to understand, SD has further applied color schemes, so that people and societies can be labeled blue (divine order, fixed good and evil), orange (strategic individualism), green (egalitarianism), etc... A particularly important distinction made by SD-Integral is that between first tier thinking (where you think that your interpretation is the only valid one, and former stages are to be combated), and second tier thinking, which accepts that humanity moves through developmental stages, and that each have their relative value. The SD system, pioneered by Clare Graves but developed later by Chris Cowan and Don Beck, at some point split. Then, Don Beck and Ken Wilber at some point 'merged' their ideas and activities, with their main focus being the struggle against the "Mean Green Meme".

My gripe is what the system has become: 1) it's tendency to give rise to totalizing, possibly totalitarian, interpretations. 2) That it is used to justify 'reactionary' and neoconservative interpretations of reality; 3) That the movement is acquiring cult-like qualities. These arguments are not directed I think to the branch of the movement directed by Chris Cowan, which I believe has retained an open quality, but to the branch represented by Don Beck, and which has 'merged' with Ken Wilber's thinking, in my opinion with disastrous results. We will also conclude with an assessment, that even on SD's own terms and method, the whole idea of the Mean Green Meme, is in fact a myth without basis in reality.

Totalising/totalitarian vision: Let me take 'peer to peer' as an example. In my latest essay, I offer an interpretation of a major shift in our societies, from hierarchical pyramidal forms of organisation, and the attending mentalities, to networked, 'peer to peer' based organizational forms, and their attending mentalities. By itself, it is not so different from what you could find in SD. But a crucial difference is that I do not 'explain' peer to peer as deriving from the new value constellation (though I hold it as an open hypothesis that the different manifestations of P2P are the result of a deeper ontological and epistemological shift, but in general I do not think that monocausal explanations hold much water). I simply note, empirically, that a new form of social exchange is spreading throughout the social field, and try to explain it through a mix of factors. In the very first version of this essay, written for the post-Wilber community at the Integral World site maintained by Frank Visser, I offer a simple exercise of comparing the empirically-derived characteristics of peer to peer, with the SD scheme. Two problems immediately arise: P2P has elements of green, yellow and turquoise, almost evenly divided. This shows to me that one cannot simply force any part of reality, to conform to a totalizing vision of human evolution, a priori derived from the investigations of individual psychology.

Neoconservative vision: What is the crucial problem of society today? Does the destruction of the ecosphere, does the increasing inequality between and within nations, does the turbulence of the international order derive: 1) from the unrestrained neoliberal order which creates a world market without a global regulatory framework; 2) from a group of extremist postmodern academics on U.S. campuses. Incredibly, Don Beck and Ken Wilber choose the second option, and are echoing in their writing almost word for word the interpretations of American neoconservatives, down to their hatred of political correctness and their justifications of an 'enligthened' American empire. Don Beck justifies Putin, thinks of Bush as a 'great leader'; while Ken Wilber hails Tony Blair as the ultimate representative of integral leadership, associating himself (and hailing) with the worst contemporary spiritual abusers: first Da Free John, now Andrew Cohen. Now, there is nothing wrong by itself in being a neoconservative (that is, until you go about invading other countries on false pretenses), but it becomes manipulative when you start cloaking that particular political vision under a false scientific cloak, feeling yourself a superior being in 'consciousness'. Doesn't sound much different from the scientific justifications of a Leninist vanguard party, and we all know where that led us. An interesting study done by the SpiralDynamics.org group of Chris Cowan and his partner, actually shows an interesting finding. The group of people who most strongly react against 'green' and its values, and are most likely to devise a concept like the Mean Green Meme, are not yellow second tiers thinkers, as is often implied by Wilber and Beck, but in fact people who identify with blue and orange values. This finding is entirely consistent with the neoconservative (blue-orange) ideology, and therefore, not surprising at all. (see http://www.spiraldynamics.org/documents/MGM_hyp.pdf )

Cult-like qualities. Certainly, from my point of view as former admirer of Ken's integral theory, the encounter of Ken Wilber with Don Beck has been an unmitigated disaster. I believe that up to a certain point, Wilber's integralism had an emancipatory character. It also had implicit authoritarian elements, but they had not yet come to completely dominate his thinking. Wilber's inability to deal with critics in an open dialogue had not yet completely revealed itself. The Shambhala website was not yet publishing sycophantic positive reviews and attacking those who differ with Wilber. Wilber was a loner doing personal research, in a rather brilliant way in my opinion. He did not yet single out baby boomers as a threat to civilization. Now as to SD itself: if you participate for a while on some SD mailing lists, it becomes quickly obvious that certain members are using the colour schemes to disquality debate, see below, the second item, for an example of this. In my particular case, this is particularly funny, since at one point Ken Wilber said I was certainly thinking integrally (feeling unsure, I had asked him), while, when I start developing a critique, I have suddenly become a one-dimensional green thinker. Case closed, debate unnecessary. Colour coding has become a Stalinist technique to silence critics, to make a debate on the merits of arguments impossible. The reason of course is that those who agree with SD are 'integral, second tier' thinkers, while the poor sobs who have different arguments, are simply deluded, as-yet-undeveloped souls. People who use integralism or SD in a critical way, such as I do because I believe it has some merits, are called nothing less than regressive apostates. More generally, SD operates as a business, aggressively defends its sole use of terminology (I was witness to an threatening email exchange on this); and is marketed to business and political leaders as a means of social manipulation. Now imagine the world vision of someone using SD in that fashion: hemoves through the world as a superior being, seeing poor sobs around him, in need of enlightenment, knowing that only a tiny few have the potential to become like him. Just like Ken Wilber, who has decided a priori that the Hindu-Buddhist Advaitic non-self doctrine is the final word in spiritual evolution, this making interreligious dialogue in fact impossible, quite a few Beck supporters hold similar but more secular views about the a priori superiority of their form of being in the world. Unbelievably (at least to me), I have even encountered SD-influenced people, who maintain that the poor people in the Third World 'have a right to experience hunger and poverty', as it corresponds to their developmental level!

The un-scientific merits of the MGM (Mean Green Meme) hypothesis: To recapitulate what Wilber/Beck have been saying. The egalitarian thought system of 'green' has become pathological, because it has merged with an aggressive 'red' element, and fiercely combats the emergence of yellow-turquoise integralism. Because of this, it blocks the further positive evolution of our civilization. At the same time, they claim that yellow, because it just emerges from 'green', is vehemently opposed to the latter's limitations. An interesting study by Dr. Natasha Todorovic, see the URL above, has tested thes claims by using a battery of SD tests, to make out if the hypothesis can be borne out by using the movements own scientific method. If I understand correctly, the method is as follows: when presented with a number of 'value-laden' phrases, people will naturally select the one's that are closest to their 'colour-scheme' center of 'value gravity'. When green people are tested, the study uncovers that they do not at all have a red element, and that they do not oppose 'yellow' integral statements. This by itself invalidates the MGM hypothesis, because they are in fact no such people, no such pathology. But the study goes further: yellow-based 'integral' individuals do not oppose green value statements. This second finding makes it very strange that a movement which bills itself as consisting of 'yellow-turquoise' integral individuals are so hell-bent on combating the MGM value constellation. Where then, could such a feeling come from, is the third question that the study addresses. To uncover this, the various colour constellations are then tested as how aggressively they reject green. The result is clear: it is the blue-orange constellation which hates green values. Thus, this gives a strong indication of which consciousness constellations the leaders of the SD-Integral movement are coming from. It is their own dominant blue and orange value systems (i.e. what I call neoconservatism) that is responsible for their making a priority of denouncing MGM, and it has no relationship with their purported 'integrality'.

Integralism (2): A Reply to a SD critique: is peer to peer 'green'?
What prompted the above piece was a reminder of what kinds of thinking are now used by some in the SD-Integral community. In the course of receiving comments on my preliminary draft version of the essay, I received a number of critiques, most were friendly, some pointed out that there were some glaring mistakes, such as my early interpretation of the non-commercial nature of free software and open sources. Such criticisms are very valuable for an author. The following critique though, is an ideological production, since it precludes the author from reading with an open mind. But because this kind of disinformation is likely to spread to uninformed readers, and I don't have a chance to respond to the mailing list myself, I offer some arguments of my own. I will call the author "Robert" for convenience's sake and I thank him for the opportunity to clarify my own ideas. This is one thing a polemic is good for.

"I believe that the P2P and Human Evolution article is a typical example of Green vMemetic view. The article's basic theme originates from a consciousness that operates either at a good Green/yellow center of gravity a la SD or at Yellow cognition and Green value a la Wilber's multiple lines. Isn't it true Why does it belong to Green vMeme?

1) It rejects the evolutionary thrust of Wilber's work and its implication of hierarchy (holoarchy) because evolution means stages of being."

Bauwens reply: Notice first of all the nature of the debate. One does not use rational arguments to invalidate or validate the empirical claims or the interpretation of the essay, but one characterizes the 'stage of consciousness' of the author. This is a ad hominem attack, stating in fact that the author has a 'inferior mode of consciousness'. The funny thing in my particular case that when I agree 100% with Wilber, I was called 'integral' by Ken himself (unsure, I had asked him specifically), but as soon as one becomes a partial critic, one falls down a stage or two. This is very similar in nature to the debating style in vogue in Stalinist parties, when those who disagree are necessarily victim of 'false consciousness', and only those who follow the party line have the correct consciousness. In this case, there is a correct SD-position against which all others are compared, and found wanting.

The charge that I reject social evolution is also factually wrong, for anyone seriously reading my essay, since every 'C' section is specically devoted to placing P2P in an evolutionary scheme of succeeding social formations. Thus, I do not reject evolutionary schemes, only the assumption by Wilber, that the consciousness states of mystics (psychogenesis) is an indication of coming sociogenesis of society. To give an example, Wilber has consistently supported spiritual abusers, first Da Free John and now Andrew Cohen, even though they lead totalitarian cults, on the grounds that they are realised. So, in my view, one can still accept human evolution, but it has to be a full four-quadrant empirical description and interpretation of the past. The methodology of Wilber himself is flawed, since his orienting generalizations, his claim that his synthesis reflects a consensus in a field of research, is in most cases simply not true, as shown in detail in Jeff Meyerhoff's Bald Ambition. The conclusion is that we cannot simply trust Wilber's integrations, but that we must all effectuate our own. We are all singularities effecting particular integrations of reality, as does Wilber, as I do, as every social interpreter does, as every human being in fact does.

So in the essay, we look at an emerging form of social exchange, and give grounds for an interpretation that it may be a form that is poised not only for serious growth, but possibly a form of social dominance. At the same time, see my three scenarios, I leave room open for an eventual defeat of this social form, or for its abuse for non-emancipatory ends.

2) It tries to apply the theory of P2P, which originates from the network programming world, to other domains, such as economy and politics. It is similar to New Ager's typical habit of applying the conclusion of one domain (i.e. Quantum Physics) to another (Mysticism). (And I can say this with more confidence because I am a web programmer and know the rationale behind the rise of P2P software.)

Bauwens reply: <Again, this is not true at all. True, as far as I know, it was the filesharing technologists who were the first to name the P2P principle, even though its principles were already implicit in the design of the internet. What I do in the essay is consistent with the sociology of form, it looks at a form of social exchange, and how it pervades different social fields. For example, if we take the form of 'commodification', we can see how it is happening not only in the economic field, but in many other, for example, New Age spirituality is often 'sold' on a marketplace, or contemporary political parties often function as marketing enterprises. The method consists of discovering in empirical reality, a 'form of social exchange', i.e. one abstracts an 'ideal type', which then helps in uncovering the same phenomenom more precisely and differentiating it from others. This is for example, what allowed me to distinguish 'peer to peer' from the gift economy, different processes which are often confused. These subtilities are obviously lost on the critic. Again, the technical aspect of P2P is only one aspect, as the characteristics of that form, which I describe, are used in political organisation, spiritual search, and many other fields. The critic should really need to do some reading about how the same principles are applied by theorists and practitioners in many different fields, since he cannot read what is in the essay, I can provide an extensive bibliography. However, I do argue in the essay that technology is enabling the spread of this form, since without it, the p2p relational dynamic would be confined to small groups in physical proximity.

3) It assumes that everybody is equal. Here is a relevant quote: <quote> Again, peer to peer appears as a radical shift. In the new emergent practices of knowledge exchange, equipotency is assumed from the start. <end quote> What is equipotent is the computer, forming a node in the network. It ignores completely the levels of subjective consciousness of the users of those computers.

<It does not at all. First of all, I take great pains to distinguish equipotency from equality, and even devote a whole section to showing the difference, but this critic has seemingly missed that entirely. Equipotency is the sampe principle that applies to elections: everyone is assumed to be able to make a political choice, despite subjective differences,and there were indeed political forces, those against general suffrage, who were against it. Similary equipotency in commons-based peer production means that there is no prior condition for participation, but the expertise is immediately proven by the participation itself: either you can or you can't program, you can't play jazz or you can There is communal verification of this equipotency, which is 'non-formal', and not located in formal procedures such as diploma's etc.. See the University of Openness for a good example. I should add that the very concept of equipotency is used,and was suggested by me, by participants in free software projects: Human participants, not machines.

4) It rejects hierachies, especially those that are found in business companies (feudal authoritarian system)

Bauwens reply: >The essay does indeed maintain that in the contemporary knowledge economy, the hierarchical authoritarian nature of classic organisations, based on information scarcity, has become counter-productive. At the same time, I do recognise that this same system was unavoidable as long as such objective conditions of scarcity persisted. The reason P2P emerges and frequently bypasses such classic organisational forms is precisely their inability to adapt to complex realities requiring quick adaptation. Nowhere does the article say that such hierarchies will completely disappear, since I clearly link P2P to conditions of abundance, which are available in non-rival immaterial goods. Moreover, I also mention that P2P processes have their own hierarchies, but the difference is that they are fluid, depending on conditions, expertise, communal validation etc.. Bureaucratic authority does disappear but there are other forms of hierarchy, such as 'natural leadership'. However, there is some research to indicate that 'treating participants 'as equals', makes for more successful cooperative projects.

5) It advocates participative spirituality, thus rejecting all guru models of spirituality (quoting from Jorge Ferrer's book is one good clue) for everybody.

Bauwens reply: <Let me state that I'm very proud to cite Jorge Ferrer, who wrote a seminal book on contemporary participatory spirituality and has offered a cogent critique of the epistemological problems evident in the Wilber enterprise. The section of participative spirituality makes it clear that though I personally advocate the participative techniques, I am totally open to inter-religious dialogue and to the traditions and treasures uncovered by thousands of years of spiritual searching. It is only that P2P advocates do not believe there is one tradition with authority for the future, and also, that the relevant psycho-technologies and insights can and should be divorced from the authoritarian, sexist, patriarchal traditions they're embedded in.

6) But it already rejected the evolutionary ethos hinted by past mystics! Talk about invisible contradiction, just like the famous performative contradiction implicit in many extreme postmodern ideas.

Bauwens reply: <Since I do not reject human evolution per se, there is no performative contradiction, though I'm not even sure what the author is here hinting at. My position of mystics is that there are not an example of future social development. What they did was uncover a number of hidden potentials of the human bodymind, but their behavior and communities are not exemplary for contemporaries in any systematic way, though we may of course learn from thousands of years of human experience. Human social development will not be a result of copying the authoritarian nature of traditional religious communities, nor of the spiritual, sexual, and financial abuses of many contempary spiritual masters. And this is precisely what is implied by Wilber and his praise for Da Free John and Andrew Cohen: that the ghastly things happening in these communities, well described by former devotees, are in fact counter-examples of human emancipation, but rather forms of spiritual slavery.

Robert: I think this article is a manifesto for the creation of Green vMemetic economic system.

Bauwens reply: <If one does accept the psychological reductionism of SD, then indeed that would seem a logical conclusion. I'm not saying that SD has 'no validity' at all, but that is is not appropriate to generalize from the psychological findings of Clare Graves, a total interpretation of society, and that it is especially sad to use it to see oneself as some sort of Ubermensch who stands above the fray with a right interpretation. If on the contrary one has an open mind on peer to peer, and one is empirical, we would see that the P2P form of social exchange has in fact elements of green, yellow, and turquiose, see the table in my essay version on the Wilber site which demonstrates this. But that is not a problem for me, only for those who believe SD is the only right interpretation of the richness of human experience, and who use it in a clearly ideological fashion.

But the most important clue is how the author rejected the stages of Wilber's model, but kept the 4 quadrants. Apparently Dr. Beck has said that many people who call themselves integral use the 4 quadrants happily but consciously or subconsciously avoid focusing on the levels.

Bauwens reply: <I use the quadrants, and I use levels, as shown in the beginning, it is only that my levels are not pre-given by the SD system, but use more mainstream social scientists and philosophers such as Norbert Elias, Louis Dumont, Foucault and Deleuze, Negri,and others. SD and Wilber do not have a monopoly on holarchical interpretations.

Robert: It's fascinating to see how some people embrace Wilber's idea, and then after a while do a 180 and reject it, and keep only the parts that they like. Isn't it a clear example of narcissism in action, no?

Bauwens reply: <This one is fairly typical of some SD ideologists and their way of communicating on their list, by innuendo, name calling, using their colour-schemes to disquality debaters. From my point of view, narcissism is part of the human condition and it affects all of us. It affects me, my critic, and his thought masters. It is also irrelevant in a debate about ideas. Are my empirical facts right or wrong? Are my interpretations of these facts valid or not.? On this score, unfortunately, the critic has shown himself unable to read the text for what it actually says, and has only seen his projections, filtered by strong ideological blinders.The above argument also shows how some SD-integral people view intellectual property. In this precise case we should remind this critic of the following: ideas are not owned by anyone. Once in the public domain, we can use concepts, how we like, those of Marx, those of Wilber, those of anyone, without any obligation, except attribution. What is implied in the critic's position is that there is one right interpretation of reality, that we have to accept totally, and that it is not acceptable to be inspired by parts of what a thinker has to say. This is a very sad, totalitarian, cultic position and interpretation of Wilber's work.

Now, in an ironic ending to this polemic, I would like to permit myself to use the same weapons as my critic, i.e. to use colour coding as a weapon, instead of debating arguments. In a revealing study by the SpiralDynamics.org organisation, (see item above) another branch of the movement which does not seem to use SD in this blatant ideological manner, it is shown that the people who most strongly criticize the 'Green Meme', who are like Beck and Wilber advocates of the notion of a Mean Green Meme wrecking our civilization, are those who test 'blue' or 'blue/orange' on the ClareGraves scale. It's conclusion, "less than 7% of the people located at yellow reject Green". The data actually show that 'integrative yellow' is the position from which 'green' values are most appreciated. What does this say about the position of my critic? See http://www.spiraldynamics.org/documents/MGM_hyp.pdf


http://www.kheper.net/topics/Wilber/SDi_critique.html

[Damien]

Mayans excited, unsure on 'Apocalypto'
By MARK STEVENSON, Associated Press Writer Tue Dec 5, 3:42 PM ET
MEXICO CITY - Scenes of enslaved Maya Indians building temples for a violent, decadent culture in Mel Gibson's new film "Apocalypto" may ring true for many of today's Mayas, who earn meager wages in construction camps, building huge tourist resorts on land they once owned.

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Some Mayas are excited at the prospect of the first feature film made in their native tongue, Yucatec Maya. But others among the 800,000 surviving Mayans are worried that Gibson's hyper-violent, apocalyptic film could be just the latest misreading of their culture by outsiders.

"There has been a lot of concern among Mayan groups from Mexico, Guatemala and Belize, because we don't know what his treatment or take on this is going to be," said Amadeo Cool May of the Indian defense group "Mayaon," or "We are Maya."

"This could be an attempt to merchandize or sell the image of a culture, or its people, that often differs from what that people needs, or wants," Cool May said.

Gibson employed Mayas, most of whom live on Mexico's Yucatan peninsula, in the filming of the movie, and says he wants to make the Mayan language "cool" again, and encourage young people "to speak it with pride."

The film has been screened for some U.S. Indians, who praised the use of Indian actors. The Mayas haven't seen it yet, but like Indians north of the border, they have seen others co-opt their culture, as in high-class Caribbean resorts like the Maya Coast and the Maya Riviera.

But Indians are largely absent from those beach resorts, where vacationers tour mock Mayan Villages or watch culturally inaccurate mishmashes with "Mayan Dancers" performing in feather headdresses and facepaint.

"The owners are often foreigners who buy up the land at ridiculously low prices, build tourism resorts and the Mayas in reality are often just the construction workers for the hotels or, at best, are employed as chamber maids," said Cool May.

"Apocalypto" also portrays Mayan civilization at a low moment, just before the Spaniards arrived, when declining, quarreling Mayan groups were focused more on war and human sacrifice than on the calendars and writing system of the civilization's bloody but brilliant classical period.

Outsiders' views of the Maya have long been subject to changing intellectual fashions. Until the 1950s, academics often depicted the ancient Mayas as an idyllic, peaceful culture devoted to astronomy and mathematics. Evidence has since emerged that, even at their height, the Mayas fought bloody and sometimes apocalyptic wars among themselves, lending somewhat more credence to Gibson's approach.

Warrior-kings and priests directed periodic wars among the ancient Maya aimed at capturing slaves or prisoners for labor or human sacrifice. Entire cities were destroyed by the wars, and whole forests cut down to build the temples.

The latest trendy theory is a largely Internet-based rumor that the Mayan long-count calendar predicts a global calamity on Dec. 22, 2012. Some have woven that together with prophecies from the Bible.

Mauricio Amuy, a non-Maya actor who participated in the filming of Apocalypto, says the production staff discussed the theory on the set.

"We know the Bible talks about prophecies, and that the Mayas spoke of a change of energy on Dec. 22, 2012, and it (the movie) is somewhat focused on that," Amuy said. "People should perhaps take that theory and reflect, and not do these things that are destroying humanity."

While they resisted the Spanish conquest longer than most Indians — the Mayas' last rebellion, the War of the Castes, lasted until 1901 — many were virtually enslaved until the early 1900s on plantations growing sisal, used for rope-making, or in the jungle, tapping gum trees. Discrimination and poverty are probably their greatest enemies today.

Just as Gibson's use of Aramaic in "The Passion of Christ" sparked a burst of interest in that language, some Maya are hoping "Apocalypto" will do the same for their tongue.

"I think it is a good chance to integrate the Mayan language ... for people to hear it in movies, on television, everywhere," said Hilaria Maas, a Maya who teaches the language at Yucatan's state university.

Mass, 65, recalls that children were once prohibited from speaking Maya in school. There is still little bilingual education, and many of those who speak Maya can't read it.

One sign of progress is Yucatan radio station XEPET, "The Voice of the Mayas," which began broadcasting in the Indian language in 1982. While it began with a mixed Spanish-Maya patois, it now broadcasts in 90 percent pure Maya.

The station is trying to purge words borrowed from Spanish and revive a purer form of Maya. It broadcasts all sorts of music — from rock to rap to reggae — with Mayan lyrics.

Still, the percentage of Maya speakers in Yucatan state fell from 37 percent in 2000 to 33.9 percent by 2005. Paradoxically, for a state that advertises the glories of the Mayan culture for tourists, it is having a hard time keeping the present-day Maya there; many are migrating to the United States.

"For tourists that's what sells ... what catches their attention are the archaeological sites," said Diana Canto, director of the Yucatan Institute for the Development of Maya Culture. "We are trying to sell them on the living Mayas too, so that people get to know their cultural richness."

Today's Maya are known mainly for their elaborate rhyming jokes, a cuisine based on pumpkin and achiote seeds, and loose embroidered white clothing. They're largely peaceful farmers and masons who carry their goods on ubiquitous three-wheeled bicycles over table-flat Yucatan.

Interestingly, some Mayas reach much the same conclusion as Gibson's movie, which focuses on one man's struggle to save his family as a metaphor for saving the future of a people.

"Our culture hasn't been destroyed, because the family is the base of it," says Maas. "Perhaps some material things have been destroyed, but the real basis of the culture is what a family teaches their children, and that survives, and has survived."

[gandydancer]

Cap and Daniel, I feel that you have pegged Wilber just right. I am not very good at transferring my feelings, or intuition, or whatever it might be called into my mind/thinking, and it has always been so good and so important for me to listen to or read the work of someone who can do that.

When K.J. and I earlier spoke of Wilber, the only word I could come up with was to call him "so dead". So you can see how this post from Daniel would be so good for me:

My first problem with Wilber is the quality of his prose. Personally, perhaps because I come from a literary background, I believe that the attention a writer gives to their prose reveals a lot about their depth, trustworthiness, and acuity. I am now reading The Spell of the Sensuous, and here I encounter a precise, poetic writing style with which I resonate. Wilber seems much more "mass-cult" and midlevel to me, and there is a kind of speciousness to a lot of his generalizations that I find unconvincing. I have definitely gained some insights from him - for me, his integration of 1970s US schools of psychotherapy and psychoanalysis into a metaphysical framework is probably the most important thing that he offers.

It feels to me that people are stuck in the integral world - like flies attached to the spiraling flypaper of all those levels and lattices. I don't really see how this is spilling out into other arenas in a way that is truly transformative. I don't see the integral folks addressing the reality, imho, that this planet is about to die if we don't get off our asses and "will the transformation" on every level.

I haven't read Spiral Dynamics but I will at some point - perhaps I will then "get" why it is necessary to have all of this terminology, and how it is helping.

I also sense enormous ego behind this enterprise, which feels closed off in critical areas where it should be open to deeper discussion. As a friend I was discussing Wilber with today noted, despite all the focus on "spirituality", there is no allowance made in this realm for the existence of spirits, of the daimonic and psychic realms, except as psychological projections. There is something slightly humorless about the vibe - I once joked that Wilber doesn't posit a universe that I would find funny enough to inhabit.

I may be wrong - I hope so, in fact. In the chaos awaiting us just ahead, we will need all the spiritual warriors and true compatriots we can find.
12-04-2006 04:42 PM


Well, just as Daniel compares Wilber to Abrams I would compare Wilber to Daniel. The first chapters of Daniels book, for me, read like poetry. For me no one that I have ever read so well took the message of the Masters and put it to writing so beautifully. I borrowed the book from my friend and so had to read it in a few days, but she told me that while she read the first chapters she only read a few pages at a time and "savored it like a fine wine or an exquisite desert" - in other words you wouldn't gobble your fine wine or perfect desert down either, but take littles sips and little bites. Babette's Feast?

So to compare the person that comes through to me from the "flavor" of the two writers, I get an impression of opposites with Wilber closed, cold, humorless, abstract (not connected to nature or the here and now), fearful, and of course everyone is aware of his arrogance, sarcasm, and contempt of almost everyone other than his little group of followers, and Daniel quite the opposite.

Also a comment on Wilber's Spiral Dynamics, Occam's Razor comes to mind. I just will not waste my time on that crap, way too complicated--it's like reading government bullshit that so complicates a simple issue that you don't know what the hell they are talking about, except that they are right and if you don't agree it is because you just aren't as well informed as they are. If you read Wilber's recent work you will also note that people aren't even people anymore, they are just abstract colors, the "Mean Green's" for instance--and it's a Catch 22, so that if you deny your color's attributes, well of course!, that's what you'd exactlly expect of your unenlightened color.

I'd like to say too, that I feel all this talk of Enlightenment is just pure bullshit if it means what the current batch of gurus are suppossed to have attained. What does one find? What you find is the very same thing you find with the Christian Right ministers, the Catholic priests (bishops, etc.) and the most "religious" political leaders - you find stories finally leaking out of alcoholism, child abuse, sexual abuse, and of using their position to abuse their flock/followers in general. This says to me that the physical experience of "the divine" means little as far as a resulting change of who we are. It is human beings we are, and it is human work we all need to do if we want to avoid living out our shadow self, but being blind to it.

[Isaiah Mpski]

Yeah,I think building a permanent base on the moon is wonderful start.
World pride and all that.not to mention Mother nature hurling stones at us.
With the Messiah present it could be done by 2010.
Just Bill Gates and Johnnie Appleseed alone could do it in two or three years if that is where he sees his "pyramid"


Carlos

senfd me some money for a palace for Daniel in Mexico.


John D. Son
POB 243 ,Checotah,OK 74426

[sidecross]

This is a NYT film review; obviously this should be a consideration.;)




December 8, 2006

MOVIE REVIEW | 'APOCALYPTO'
The Passion of the Maya

By A. O. SCOTT

“I’m going to peel off his skin and make him watch me wear it.” This grisly threat is delivered by one of the main bad guys in Mel Gibson’s “Apocalypto.” The promised flaying never takes place, but viewers who share this director’s apparently limitless appetite for gore will not be disappointed, since not much else in the way of bodily torment has been left to the imagination. There are plenty of disembowelings, impalings, clubbings and beheadings. Hearts are torn, still beating, from slashed-open chests. A man’s face is chewed off by a jaguar. Another’s neck is pierced by darts tipped with frog venom. Most disturbing, perhaps, is the sight of hundreds of corpses haphazardly layered in an open pit: a provocative and ill-advised excursion into Holocaust imagery on this director’s part.

Violence has become the central axiom in Mr. Gibson’s practice as a filmmaker, his major theme and also his chief aesthetic interest. The brutality in “Apocalypto” is so relentless and extreme that it sometimes moves beyond horror into a kind of grotesque comedy, but to dismiss it as excessive or gratuitous would be to underestimate Mr. Gibson’s seriousness. And say what you will about him — about his problem with booze or his problem with Jews — he is a serious filmmaker.

Which is not to say that “Apocalypto” is a great film, or even that it can be taken quite as seriously as it wants to be. Mr. Gibson’s technical command has never been surer; for most of its 2-hour 18-minute running time, “Apocalypto,” written by Mr. Gibson and Farhad Safinia, is a model of narrative economy, moving nimbly forward and telling its tale with clarity and force. It is, above all, a muscular and kinetic action movie, a drama of rescue and revenge with very little organic relation to its historical setting. Yes, the dialogue is in various Mayan dialects, which will sound at least as strange to American ears as the Latin and Aramaic of “The Passion of the Christ,” but the film’s real language is Hollywood’s, and Mr. Gibson’s, native tongue.

When I first heard about this project, and later when I saw the early trailers, I halfway hoped that Mr. Gibson might turn out to be an American (or half-Australian) version of Werner Herzog, setting out into the jungle to explore the dark and tangled regions of human nature. Once you get past the costumes and the subtitles, though, the most striking thing about “Apocalypto” is how comfortably it sits within the conventions of mainstream moviemaking. It is not an obsessive opera like Mr. Herzog’s “Aguirre: The Wrath of God,” but rather a pop period epic in the manner of “Gladiator” or “Braveheart,” and as such less interested in historical or cultural authenticity than in imposing an accessible scheme on a faraway time and place.



The setting is Central America before the arrival of the Spanish, when the Maya empire, in Mr. Gibson’s version, was already in the process of collapsing from within. The basic moral conflict — as it was in “Braveheart,” directed by and starring Mr. Gibson, and in “The Patriot,” a vehicle for him directed by Roland Emmerich — is between a small group of people trying to live simple, decent, traditional lives and a larger, more powerful political entity driven by bloodlust and greed. This kind of conservative anti-imperialism runs consistently through Mr. Gibson’s work; whether the empire in question is Roman, British or Mesoamerican, and whatever its political resonance might be, it allows the viewer to root for an unambiguously virtuous underdog.

“Apocalypto” begins with a group of young men out on a hunt and lingers for a while in their happy, earthy village, a place that might double as a nostalgic vision of small-town America were it not for the loin cloths, the tattooed buttocks and the facial piercings. Blunted (Jonathan Brewer) is nagged by his mother-in-law and teased by his buddies because he hasn’t yet made his wife pregnant, but he accepts his humiliation in good humor, like the jolly fat kid on a family sitcom.

Meanwhile Jaguar Paw (Rudy Youngblood), whose father (Morris Birdyellowhead) is an admired hunter and warrior, snuggles down with his pregnant wife, Seven (Dalia Hernandez), and their young son, Turtle Run (Carlos Emilio Baez). There’s fresh tapir meat on the grill and an old-timer telling stories by the fire. Life is good.

Needless to say, this pastoral idyll cannot last. The ominous strains of James Horner’s score indicate as much. Before long the village is set upon by fearsome marauders, led by Zero Wolf (Raoul Trujillo), who rape, burn and kill with ruthless discipline and undisguised glee. The locals resist valiantly, but the survivors are led away to an uncertain fate. Seven and Turtle Run stay behind, hidden in a hole in the ground.

Jaguar Paw’s mission will be to rescue them and also to avenge his friends and kin. First, though, he will accompany us on a Cecil B. DeMille tour of the decadent imperial capital, a place of misery, luxury and corruption, where priests and nobles try to keep famine and pestilence at bay with round-the-clock human sacrifices.

Neither Mr. Gibson’s fans nor his detractors are likely to accuse him of excessive subtlety, and the effectiveness of “Apocalypto” is inseparable from its crudity. But the blunt characterizations and the emphatic emotional cues are also evidence of the director’s skill.

Perhaps because he is aiming for an audience wary of subtitles, Mr. Gibson rarely uses dialogue as a means of exposition, and he proves himself to be an able, if not always terribly original, visual storyteller. He is not afraid of clichés — the slow-motion, head-on sprint toward the camera; the leap from the waterfall into the river below — but he executes them with a showman’s maniacal relish.

And it is, all in all, a pretty good show. There is a tendency, at least among journalists, to take Mr. Gibson as either a monster or a genius, a false choice that he frequently seems intent on encouraging. Is he a madman or a visionary? Should he be shunned or embraced? Censured or forgiven?

These are the wrong questions, but their persistence reveals the truth about this shrewd and bloody-minded filmmaker. He is an entertainer. He will be publicized, and he will be paid.

“Apocalypto” is rated R (Under 17 must be accompanied by parent or adult guardian). See the first paragraph above.

APOCALYPTO

Opens today nationwide.

Directed by Mel Gibson; written (in Maya, with English subtitles) by Mr. Gibson and Farhad Safinia; director of photography, Dean Semler; edited by John Wright; music by James Horner; production designer, Tom Sanders; produced by Mr. Gibson and Bruce Davey; released by Touchstone Pictures. Running time: 138 minutes.

WITH: Rudy Youngblood (Jaguar Paw), Dalia Hernandez (Seven), Jonathan Brewer (Blunted), Raoul Trujillo (Zero Wolf), Gerardo Taracena (Middle Eye), Rodolfo Palacios (Snake Ink), Fernando Hernandez (High Priest), Maria Isidra Hoil and Aquetzali Garcia (Oracle Girls) and Abel Woolrich (Laughing Man).

http://movies2.nytimes.com/2006/12/08/movies/08apoc.html?8dpc=&pagewanted=print

[gandydancer]

This was from Huff Post today:

Maya say Gibson movie portrays them as savages By Mica Rosenberg
Wed Dec 6, 9:14 PM ET



GUATEMALA CITY (Reuters) - Much like his bloody epic about the death of Christ, a new Mel Gibson production about the collapse of the Mayan civilization is angering members of the culture it depicts even before it hits the screen.

The "Passion of Christ" was accused by some of being anti-Semitic -- long before Gibson's career-damaging outbursts against a Jewish policeman in Malibu this year.

Now indigenous activists in Guatemala, once home to a large part of the Mayan empire that built elaborate jungle cities in southern Mexico and northern Central America centuries ago, say his film "Apocalypto" is racist.

Gibson's representatives were not immediately available for comment.

Only trailers for "Apocalypto," which will be released on Friday, have been shown in Guatemala, but leaders say scenes of scary-looking Mayans with bone piercings and scarred faces hurling spears and sacrificing humans promote stereotypes about their culture.

"Gibson replays, in glorious big budget Technicolor, an offensive and racist notion that Maya people were brutal to one another long before the arrival of Europeans and thus they deserved, in fact, needed, rescue," said Ignacio Ochoa, director of the Nahual Foundation that promotes Mayan culture.

At their height, the Maya built monumental cities in the Peten region of Guatemala, but the civilization went into decline after the 8th century, some say because of overuse of natural resources.

The culture is not thought to have been as blood-thirsty as the neighboring Aztec empire, but some archeologists say human sacrifice was common in the final years before the Spanish conquest.

More than half of Guatemala's population is descended from the original Maya. They face frequent discrimination and most live in poverty with little access to education and social services.

Over 200,000 people, mostly Mayan, were killed during Guatemala's 36-year civil war that ended a decade ago. Some rights groups say the army tried to wipe out the Maya.

Lucio Yaxon, a 23-year-old Mayan human rights activist, said Apocalypto's heart-pounding trailer was unrealistic.

"Basically the director is saying the Mayans are savages," said Yaxon, who speaks Kaqchikel, one of 22 Guatemalan Mayan languages, as well as Spanish.

But Richard Hansen, an archeologist who Gibson consulted on the making of the film, says the director took pains to ensure authenticity and historical accuracy.

The entire script is spoken in Yucatec Maya and the star is a Native American dancer named Rudy Youngblood. Gibson's use of indigenous actors has won praise from Latino and Native American groups in the United States.

"I am a little apprehensive about how the Maya themselves are going to perceive it," said Hansen, who directs an archeological project at the Mirador Basin in northern Guatemala, "but Gibson is trying to make a social statement."

[sidecross]

My aunt is an indigenous Guatemalan; I am sure she will not be attending this film.

[craazyman]

"Now indigenous activists in Guatemala, once home to a large part of the Mayan empire that built elaborate jungle cities in southern Mexico and northern Central America centuries ago, say his film "Apocalypto" is racist."

They should see the way he portrayed Australians in Mad Max & Road Warrior and they'd feel better.

[nanouk]

...or the way they portrayed the Africans in "The God's Must Be Crazy"...eighties, nineties, double Zero's, no matter what, we are still mocking the True Natives...our Ancestors. Why don't they make fun of the "Whale and the Dolphin"? :errf:

~n~

[craazyman]

or the Scots and English in Braveheart, oh my, what a bunch of blood thirsty murderers he made them out to be (I was ashamed to wear my kilt in public there for a few months). Come to think of it, maybe he was right. But that's an uncomfortable thought, so I'll just feel sorry for myself while I drink my DeWars on the rocks, in a voluptuous, self-righteous funk. :p :p

And then Shakespeare, what a racist, everyone killing each other all the time, or acting like complete fools. Who is he to insult the English like that? And they don't talk that way either, how does he get away with that stuff?:twisted: Ban him, Ban him, Ban him

[K.J]

I've been fairly excited for this film since I first heard about it and watched the first trailers that were out on the net. I've slowly become less and less excited about the film as the last few months of hype and updated movie trailers have filtered through me. And now, after having read a few reviews of the film, I'm not sure I really want to see it all that much (though I likely will, and probably while it’s still in first-run theaters, just so that I can watch it on a big screen in THX).

For me the problem isn’t the gratuitous violence, or the fact that Mel is human and has made some mistakes recently. For me it's about the fact that the film seems to be more blockbuster Hollywood film with Mayan trappings than a film that is deeply embedded (heart and soul) in the world of the ancient Myan's which just might turn out to be a hugely popular film. I think that for me, seeing this film will be an interesting showcase of the stark differences between "the Craft" at its most passionate (The Fountain) and "the Craft" at its most testosterone fueled, money grubbing worst.

The below review is the most insightful of the many I've read thus far:


"Apocalypto" (http://www.salon.com/ent/movies/review/2006/12/08/apocalypto/index.html)
By Andrew O'Hehir

Dec. 8, 2006 | To be truly effective, "Apocalypto" needs an exclamation mark. You just can't give a movie a title that silly without one, and also without some portentous '60s-style typeface that looks like it was carved out of limestone, or came pouring out of a volcano. If only this were a cheeseball entertainment out of 1963, where the opening-night audience might be showered with Styrofoam temple blocks and soap-bubble lava, while actors in fearsome Maya regalia bearing plastic severed heads on spears roamed the aisles.

Sadly, Mel Gibson's latest directorial offering is not "APOCALYPTO!" but just "Apocalypto," and despite the silly title it's a relentlessly gruesome, visually impressive and ultimately not very interesting movie with some pretensions to seriousness. Depending on how you look at it, these pretensions are either too much or not enough. As I see it, "Apocalypto" is too bloody-minded to work as pure escapist adventure, but far too limited in intellectual or imaginative scope to be challenging. Unless, that is, your idea of being challenged is to see the many different ways the human body can be impaled and disfigured: with stakes, spears, arrows, knives, pikes, teeth, darts and elaborate spiky wooden contraptions whose names I don't know.

Let's face it: Hardly anyone will go see "Apocalypto" out of genuine interest in the pre-Columbian Maya civilization that is so problematically captured here. People are curious about this movie because of what might be called extra-textual reasons, because its director is an erratic (http://www.salon.com/ent/feature/2003/08/14/gibson/index.html) and charismatic (http://www.salon.com/ent/feature/2004/02/18/gibson/index.html) Hollywood figure who would have totally marginalized himself by now if he didn't possess a crude gift for crafting violent pop entertainment. No one but Gibson, arguably, would have tried to make an expensive studio-scale film on remote Mexican locations, shot in the Yucatec language with a cast of unknowns. (He seems to be making an esoteric tour of world languages. Will his next movie be in Hawaiian? Romansh? Tocharian B?)

This kind of obsessive, Erich von Stroheim-style folly, this passion for bigness and spectacle and the outsize egotism it embodies, holds tremendous appeal within the culture of Hollywood. So the public narrative surrounding "Apocalypto" is almost all about Gibson, and hardly at all about the movie. Can the demented Captain Ahab accomplishment of this film outweigh, in the hearts and minds of movie-biz insiders, Gibson's drunken anti-Semitic tirade (http://www.salon.com/ent/feature/2006/08/01/mel/) or his general reputation as a religious fanatic (http://www.salon.com/ent/feature/2004/01/27/passion/index.html)and all-around nutjob?

Well, having seen "Apocalypto" I have two things to tell you: Mel Gibson has serious issues with violence and masculinity, and if there's really "Oscar buzz" (http://www.nytimes.com/2006/12/05/movies/05apoc.html) around this picture, then everyone in Hollywood really is an idiot. There are about 10 truly amazing minutes in "Apocalypto," when the film's hero, a captured villager named Jaguar Paw (played by the Native American actor Rudy Youngblood), is brought into a Maya city as a prisoner and taken to the central pyramid, where captives are being sacrificed by the score to appease Kukulcán, supreme god of the Maya pantheon (equivalent to the Toltec-Aztec god Quetzalcoatl). And that's about it.

I have no doubt that the costumes and the monumental architecture of these scenes were exhaustively researched, and the mood of ruinous, smoky, blood-curdling terror is fully convincing. Yucatecan Maya culture was indeed in decline by the 16th century (which is clearly the period of "Apocalypto"), and while the scenes of environmental degradation and crop failure have undertones of contemporary commentary, they're not outside the bounds of plausibility. But this fragmentary and terrifying glimpse is literally all we see of Maya civilization in "Apocalypto." The rest of the film -- like almost all of Gibson's films, either as director or star -- is the story of a lonely masculine hero who sacrifices and suffers, and who is redeemed through bloodshed.

From "Mad Max" to "The Bounty" to "Braveheart," (http://www.salon.com/ent/movies/dvd/2001/01/05/braveheart/)Gibson has played a series of manly men who could take a beating or dish one out, men who embraced killing or dying for those they loved. To most of us watching, his bad-boy good looks, his insouciant eye-twinkle and suggestion of a smirk, seemed to mark him as a new action-hero archetype, heir to the tradition of John Wayne and Clint Eastwood. Gibson, who may be weird but has an autodidact's self-forged intelligence, had something bigger in mind. He played Hamlet in 1990 and made a film about Jesus (http://www.salon.com/ent/movies/feature/2004/02/26/passion/index.html)in 2004. If neither of those guys is exactly a kick-ass action hero, they are surely both self-dramatizing icons of masculine suffering.

In "Apocalypto" that figure is Jaguar Paw, a handsome, athletic fellow separated from his young, pregnant wife (Dalia Hernandez) and small child when their village is overrun by marauding Maya warriors. (The scariest of these guys, played by Raoul Trujillo, wears the jawbones of vanquished foes on his massive forearms.) Gibson may intend the scenes of rape and pillage to evoke guilty or painful associations -- memories of the Nazis, the Serbs, the Hutu, take your pick -- but the modes of violent death in "Apocalypto" are so many and varied they quickly become pornographic rather than instructive.

Most of the film is just a lurid jungle-chase adventure, better crafted and more attentive to detail than the Tarzan films of the '50s, but not much different in tone or effect. Jaguar Paw must escape from the sacrificial altar through highly improbable means, flee through the jungle just ahead of Trujillo's character and his other pursuers (felled, one by one, with the help of poisonous toads, venomous vipers and roaming black jaguars) and save his family before the rising waters flood their hiding place. And, wait a minute -- who are those guys in the floating wooden contraptions off the coast, wearing tin hats and carrying guns and crucifixes?

"Apocalypto" may not promulgate any flat-out historical falsehoods, but it isn't exactly purveying truth either. Jaguar Paw is never anything more than a good-looking, apparently decent guy in a tough spot, and the portrayal of Maya culture is just as superficial. Like most other Mesoamerican civilizations, the Maya had a troubling preoccupation with death in general and human sacrifice in particular. But they also created a culture of advanced astronomical and mathematical knowledge; they were the only pre-Columbian society to develop a true written language and leave behind an extensive library of mythology, science and literature (almost all of it destroyed by the Spanish).

Needless to say, we don't learn any of that, and while the film's title may suggest that it will depict the famous "collapse" of Maya civilization -- whose causes are still debated by scholars -- it doesn't. That happened sometime around 900 A.D., and the Yucatecan culture found by the Spanish 600 years later (and depicted here) could almost be called the watered-down and decadent descendant of the earlier Maya traditions, which had become mixed with the dominant Toltec-Aztec culture of central Mexico.

Is it Mel Gibson's responsibility to give us a history lesson on the complexities of pre-Columbian civilization? Absolutely not. His American Revolution star vehicle, "The Patriot," (http://www.salon.com/ent/movies/review/2000/06/28/patriot/)took far greater liberties with the facts -- importing World War II atrocities and blaming them on 18th-century British forces -- and I found that film more exciting and effective than this one.

But those of us who watch movies do have a responsibility -- a responsibility not to imbue a lurid entertainment like "Apocalypto" with more seriousness than it deserves. (I have never seen a film with this much gore and subtitles, not even in grade-Z Italian horror.) Ours is a culture of gawkers, and none of us can completely resist the spectacle of a disturbed guy -- who used to just be a movie star -- projecting his own violent fantasies in public and repeatedly enacting his own crucifixion. Let's not pretend there's anything healthy about it.

[Caprinardo Delirio]

yes, shakespeare..

my girlfriend noted last night, as they are currently discussing 'the tempest' at her study in literary science, and since they were talking about 'the great chain of being' in their analysis, the discussion fell on the fact that this and other cosmological systems have always been used by those in power to legitimize the status quo.

in this sense there isn't much truly new about spiral dynamics and the efforts the integralists...

too harsh?

comment.

[Isaiah Mpski]

It's an effort to make money.Nothing more.Nothing less.

[K.J]

It's an effort to make money.Nothing more.Nothing less.

My, aren't we a little cynical today? I disagree with your summation, but I can see where you're coming from. If the Integral Institute is just about making money, then to me the fact that there's gold in these brilliant and empowering ideas is testament to the fact that money, in and of itself, isn't the root of all evil. :D

[Damien]

Interesting. Neither of these two films get into the 2012/Quetzalcoatl/Ancient Astronaut mythos...i don't even really know what Gibson was/is trying to communicate with "Apocalypto".

[dragonfly]

The Independent Weekly's review of Apocalypto by Godfrey Cheshire (http://www.indyweek.com/gyrobase/Content?oid=oid%3A41152) mentions Daniel and TROQ:

Yet is Apocalypto something more than just a crackerjack chase yarn in a startlingly exotic setting? Gibson evidently thinks so. He begins the film with a quote from historian Will Durant to the effect that no civilization collapses without first having decayed within, and you know Mel's not just talking about the Mayans. He means to suggest clear parallels between the Roman Empire of Jesus' day, the Mayans in their decline, and our present civilization. He's even been quoted as comparing the Mayans' human sacrifices to America sending its kids off to die in Iraq.

All this ties into Gibson's essentially religious view of things. If you Google Apocalypto and start looking around the Internet, you will find suggestions that just as Passion of the Christ derived from the Gospel of John's account of the Crucifixion, Apocalypto continues the Johannine vision by conjuring a Mesoamerican corollary for the Book of Revelation (the film's title derives from the Greek word that means revelation).

In this view, Revelation and the Mayan book the Popol Vuh (from which Gibson reportedly took elements of his script) both point toward the imminent collapse of world civilization, prior to the return of Jesus Christ, aka Quetzalcoatl the plumed serpent. As occultists worldwide know, the Mayans actually put a date on this collapse: it will happen at the winter solstice of 2012. (If you find any of this amusing, don't miss Daniel Pinchbeck's wacky new book 2012: The Return of Quetzalcoatl.)

I look forward to seeing it.

[nyk]

Wacky new book? I never see Pinchy as wacky. He is way too dead-pan
for such a remark. Ha - I bet that person didn't even read D's book...just
typical journalistic spittle.

[Caprinardo Delirio]

Mel Gibson

:D

[sidecross]

I look forward to seeing it.

Please write a review after seeing the film.

[craazyman]

My friend Meies is a movie critic for a German language magazine published out of the small, snowy village of Rambelsham in the Alp. Here's his review. Sometimes he doesn't even have to see a movie to review it, which helps the cash flow:

Gibson's ongoing single-handed religious crusade takes no prisoners in its attempt to forge a pristine moral vision of hell and redemption in the post-Mayan swamp of southern Mexico, where barbequed flesh is a delicacy and human jaws serve as bracelets for hormone-charged madmen hell-bent on violent death, either their own or someone else's.

What can we make of this hideous tableau? Nothing but a raucous 2+ hours of subtely highbrow adrenaline-filled entertainment reminiscent of Cornel Wilde's Naked Prey or the chase scenes in Gibson's epic apocalyptic drama, Mad Max--a genius descent into debauchery and hilarity sure to make Gibson even more infamous than he already is if he can just stop drinking and driving in public. The man surely is Heironymous Bosch come back to life. Long live the Fatherland and buy some popcorn. Ya.

I see all my movies for free, but I bet it's getting expensive for the whole family. Wait for the DVD if you're looking for something cheap to do with mom and the kids.

--Mieis Burnenhurdt

[Caprinardo Delirio]

man, is this movie gonna be a larf!! :D

[Damien]

Sometimes he doesn't even have to see a movie to review it
...........

[nanouk]

man, is this movie gonna be a larf!! :D

The only reason guys like Gibson or Kostner gets to direct a movie is if they star in them....different to Eastwood or Redford, that actually have talent and insight...

~N~

[Dax]

What I worry about is what happens when the mainstream media gets wind of the 2012 thing, and makes us all out to be a bunch of backwater "The End Is Near" quacks.

[sidecross]

I found this review on the 'tribe'; the link was provided by John Hoopes.


Is "Apocalypto" Pornography? December 5, 2006
by Traci Ardren

A scholar challenges Mel Gibson's use of the ancient Maya culture as a metaphor for his vision of today's world.

Traci Ardren, an assistant professor of anthropology at the University of Miami, knows the Maya well. She has studied Classic Maya society for over 20 years while living in the modern Maya villages of Yaxuna, Chunchucmil, and Espita in the Mexican state of Yucatan. Her credentials include contributing to and editing Ancient Maya Women (2002) and The Social Experience of Childhood in Ancient Mesoamerica (2006). Ardren's reaction to the new film "Apocalypto," follows. Scholars are well aware that some aspects of Maya culture were violent, but Ardren finds fault with what she sees as a pervasive colonial attitude in the film.


With great trepidation I went to an advance screening of "Apocalypto" last night in Miami. No one really expects historical dramas to be accurate, so I was not so much concerned with whether or not the film would accurately represent what we know of Classic period Maya history as I was concerned about the message Mel Gibson wanted to convey through the film. After Jared Diamond's best-selling book Collapse, it has become fashionable to use the so-called Maya collapse as a metaphor for Western society's environmental and political excesses. Setting aside the fact that the Maya lived for more than a thousand years in a fragile tropical environment before their cities were abandoned, while here in the U.S, we have polluted our urban environments in less than 200, I anticipated a heavy-handed cautionary tale wrapped up in Native American costume.

What I saw was much worse than this. The thrill of hearing melodic Yucatec Maya spoken by familiar faces (although the five lead actors are not Yucatec Maya but other talented Native American actors) during the first ten minutes of the movie is swiftly and brutally replaced with stomach churning panic at the graphic Maya-on-Maya violence depicted in a village raid scene of nearly 15 minutes. From then on the entire movie never ceases to utilize every possible excuse to depict more violence. It is unrelenting. Our hero, Jaguar Paw, played by the charismatic Cree actor Rudy Youngblood, has one hellavuh bad couple of days. Captured for sacrifice, forced to march to the putrid city nearby, he endures every tropical jungle attack conceivable and that is after he escapes the relentless brutality of the elites. I am told this part of the movie is completely derivative of the 1966 film "The Naked Prey." Pure action flick, with one ridiculous encounter after another, filmed beautifully in the way that only Hollywood blockbusters can afford, this is the part of the movie that will draw in audiences and demonstrates Gibson's skill as a cinematic storyteller.

But I find the visual appeal of the film one of the most disturbing aspects of "Apocalypto." The jungles of Veracruz and Costa Rica have never looked better, the masked priests on the temple jump right off a Classic Maya vase, and the people are gorgeous. The fact that this film was made in Mexico and filmed in the Yucatec Maya language coupled with its visual appeal makes it all the more dangerous. It looks authentic; viewers will be captivated by the crazy, exotic mess of the city and the howler monkeys in the jungle. And who really cares that the Maya were not living in cities when the Spanish arrived? Yes, Gibson includes the arrival of clearly Christian missionaries (these guys are too clean to be conquistadors) in the last five minutes of the story (in the real world the Spanish arrived 300 years after the last Maya city was abandoned). It is one of the few calm moments in an otherwise aggressively paced film. The message? The end is near and the savior has come. Gibson's efforts at authenticity of location and language might, for some viewers, mask his blatantly colonial message that the Maya needed saving because they were rotten at the core. Using the decline of Classic urbanism as his backdrop, Gibson communicates that there was absolutely nothing redeemable about Maya culture, especially elite culture which is depicted as a disgusting feast of blood and excess.

Before anyone thinks I have forgotten my Metamucil this morning, I am not a compulsively politically correct type who sees the Maya as the epitome of goodness and light. I know the Maya practiced brutal violence upon one another, and I have studied child sacrifice during the Classic period. But in "Apocalypto," no mention is made of the achievements in science and art, the profound spirituality and connection to agricultural cycles, or the engineering feats of Maya cities. Instead, Gibson replays, in glorious big-budget technicolor, an offensive and racist notion that Maya people were brutal to one another long before the arrival of Europeans and thus they deserve, in fact they needed, rescue. This same idea was used for 500 years to justify the subjugation of Maya people and it has been thoroughly deconstructed and rejected by Maya intellectuals and community leaders throughout the Maya area today. In fact, Maya intellectuals have demonstrated convincingly that such ideas were manipulated by the Guatemalan army to justify the genocidal civil war of the 1970-1990s. To see this same trope about who indigenous people were (and are today?) used as the basis for entertainment (and I use the term loosely) is truly embarrassing. How can we continue to produce such one-sided and clearly exploitative messages about the indigenous people of the New World?

I loved Gibson's film "Braveheart," I really did. But there is something very different about portraying a group of people, who are now recovering from 500 years of colonization, as violent and brutal. These are people who are living with the very real effects of persistent racism that at its heart sees them as less than human. To think that a movie about the 1,000 ways a Maya can kill a Maya--when only 10 years ago Maya people were systematically being exterminated in Guatemala just for being Maya--is in any way okay, entertaining, or helpful is the epitome of a Western fantasy of supremacy that I find sad and ultimately pornographic. It is surely no surprise that "Apolcalypto" has very little to do with Maya culture and instead is Gibson's comment on the excesses he perceives in modern Western society. I just wish he had been honest enough to say this. Instead he has created a beautiful and disturbing portrait that satisfies his need for comment but does violence to one of the most impressive of Native American cultures.

Traci Ardren is an assistant professor of anthropology at the University of Miami.

http://www.archaeology.org/online/reviews/apocalypto.html

[nanouk]

What I worry about is what happens when the mainstream media gets wind of the 2012 thing, and makes us all out to be a bunch of backwater "The End Is Near" quacks.



...i dunno, are We walking around in Circles here?

[craazyman]

Well God Bless Mel Gibson. He's got genius, inspiration and a pair of big you-know-whats and he does what he says he'll do, and the world follows him around with cameras and microphones. Who's fooling who here.

I met a Mayan girl once. She was Working the cash register at a New York deli where I used to buy lunch, a real beauty with what I imagine to be classic features, but the most exhausted face in the world when the line cleared and she looked out the window. She told me she was from southern Mexico, Chiapas area, and I told her I saw the Palenque exhibit in D.C. and that she looked like a Mayan princess, which brought a big honest smile to her face. I bet she made $5/hour and the owners made her wear a Santa hat at Christmas with the other workers, with a big tip jar on the counter, then they shut the deli down a few months later. No clue what happened to her.

What is it about these anthropologists that makes them so sentimental. It's like she's Jane Godall talking about her gorillas. I bet 99 out of 100 of them would fart in her general direction, unless she could bring them some jobs.

[daniel]

I've been reconsidering The Fountain. In retrospect, I think it is a powerful movie. The images and ideas stayed with me - also I had a number of very striking synchronicities around it.

I still don't know how to unpack it.

[drew hempel]

Wow -- I'm so "in" -- my nickname at work is "JagWire Claw" -- very close to Jaguar Paw.

Anyway -- that assistant professor implied that she takes metamucil! haha. That's funny.

Yeah way to remind people that the CIA wiped out 200,000 Mayans in the 1980s in Guatemala.

It's all very creepy.

A much better movie is "Cave of the Yellow Dog" -- you get all the exoticism without all the hollycrap.

[johnny]

hi everyone,
i'd be really interested to hear about any reconsiderations of The Fountain, and/or synchronicities around it.

i couldn't stand it initially; thought it was an odd pastiche of dumbed down creation myths without any kind of humor (until conquistidor ingested the fountain of youth and became a flower patch. :D that was great)

but then i thought more about it and had some conversations about the film. the subtext of colonialism was very well handled, and the unsympathetic relationship at the core of the film was actually very very interesting. how one of them completely over-rode the other's subjectivity. "i will save you and not listen to your desire to be with me and acceptance of death"

how many of us do that in relationship? was that interesting to anyone else? because if aronofsky was aware of this then i think the film succeded.

the simultanaiety of the three lives/times was done well, but not mindblowing. for such a strangely quiet film, i think he shouldn't have rushed. it seemed unfinished and underwhelming.

daniel, the images were gorgeous, and i think in the same way you would respond to a symphony. an artist has pulled it off. for example, that's a beautiful way to imagine the World Tree. of course that might be what it looks like, and the tree had filaments! so great.

[nyk]

I would like to see The Fountain. Hasn't shown up here yet.

Apocalypto is playing. But after seeing Signs I decided I didn't want to
be in the same room with Mel anymore.

[Damien]

I think the nadir of civilization is best embodied in the ever-increasing depth the general populace has plunged itself into escaping the ability to view reality with greater clarity. On that note, has anyone in the group here noticed that other people's unconsciousness increases when you're around?

[Isaiah Mpski]

Now Drew,200,000 is a bit of an exzagggeration.
And you Lord CM,we have twin Mayan girls working at the local Sonic and only one of them is married if you are that interested.
They are so beautiful with their small delicate features and prominent,yet attractive nose.They seem a bit shocked with America but I imagine they are illegals cause they won't talk at all.

I haven't been feeling well-heart has been doing fip flops- so everybody remember in their prayers tonight as I remember each of you.
Some of you may or may not remember but their were a few others who underwent an ordeal similar to mine.They are all dead.They usually die from heart problems-it is not good for one's heart or brain to be plugged into the wall socket 200 times.
Wasn't last night's liftoff of the shuttle spectaculor.
God I love GOOD government work.

[drew hempel]

Yeah 200,000 is the number cited from 1954 till present. It was in the 2nd to last issue of the Economist magazine and caught me off-guard. 100,000 killed is the number I usually see -- and that's just for the 1980s.

About the heart -- well eat a clove of garlic at night and a clove in the morning. This will clear out your arteries -- probably completely just in a month.

Also it keeps vampires (i.e. modern) people away -- you know those solid 3 dimensional types that think "writing" is just swell.

If you're scared of not having any vampires then try cayenne. Cayenne -- pills, or loose on all your food -- it dissolves blood clots.

[nyk]

I haven't been feeling well-heart has been doing fip flops- so everybody remember in their prayers tonight as I remember each of you.

I hear you. I am going up and will do my thing in your name right now...

[Karyn]

Me too. I will use the clearing method I've been taught. Love, Karyn

[Mars]

Watching the "Fountain" was a very personal experience for me. There were many elements of the story that had curious resonances that felt like synchronicities. I remember walking out of the theatre and feeling like I'd never had a piece of art push me (or invite me) closer to the collective unconscious, to the flow of a certain stream of ideas and attitudes involving mortality, consciousness, the nature of history, transcendence, and the ever-changing fluidity of existence. I happen to be exactly Aronofsky's age and I think am "bent" like him to some degree, which accounts certainly for much of the affinity I had with the film. But other stuff was eerie. The principal emotional event of perhaps my life has been my mother's deterioration from a brain tumor. Like the main character, she was very right-brained and philosophical. My father, though not a doctor, is a scientist who, partnering with my mother, was largely responsible for her living as long as she did and having the quality of life that she did. My father practices and even teaches Tai Chi - something he took up I think to manage the stress of being a long-term caregiver. Watching Hugh Jackman's character do Tai Chi in the spaceship bubble when he already reminded me so much of my father was an odd, almost jolting moment. My parent's struggle finally ended this summer when my mother died. It was unquestionably the most profound experience I've ever participated in and also extremely beautiful. My parents have long kindled New Age interest - my mother was an active participant in a New Age community and was very passionate about the re-emergence of the Goddess. I have long dallied and involved myself in sympatico schools of thought but been very very resistant to anything with New Age smack. In the weeks leading up to my mother's death I reached my own accord with this internal resistance. At the time I was reading Daniel's "2012" and reading about his journey and the ideas put forth therein somehow put me in a better place to reconcile and express to my mother my desire and intent to continue what I considered to be her life's passions. Lastly - a Kronos Quartet album was the touchstone for my parent's reputation as "weirdos" to my friends when I was a kid.

So seeing a movie about and including mortality, brain tumors, Tai Chi, mayan mythology, science's attempt to thwart death, with an overtly New Age style message - is that synchronicity? Or am I just the ultimate market for this film?

[K.J]

I've been reconsidering The Fountain. In retrospect, I think it is a powerful movie. The images and ideas stayed with me - also I had a number of very striking synchronicities around it.

I still don't know how to unpack it.

I'm happy to hear that it had the same kind of effect on you as it did on me! If you ever get a moment, it'd be interesting to hear the story of synchronicities surrounding your viewing of the film.

[K.J]

So, my wife and I went to see Apocalypto this weekend. Although I was entertained, it was only in a very shallow way. Not one bit of this film sparked a meeting with the divine, or pushed me any closer to the collective heart of humanity. It was very much Braveheart in Myan trappings. Overall, a forgetable film.

In contrast, the images, sounds and emotions that entered my being after having watched The Fountain more than a week ago are still with me.

[nyk]

Watching a Mel Gibson film is basically self cruelty at this point in the
game.

[wallace]

Is this the film thread?

Pans labyrinth is lovely all about how childrens psychic abilities are denied by adults. For lovers of the underworld everywhere, though you may need to find a art cinema.

Wallace

[nyk]

Well certainly looks interesting!


http://www.panslabyrinth.com/downloads/posters/poster4.jpg


http://www.panslabyrinth.com/

[K.J]

__________

Scholars say accuracy is first casualty of 'Apocalypto' (http://www.sltrib.com/features/ci_4820805)
By William Booth
Los Angeles Times

LOS ANGELES - The world audience is familiar with the deeds of the overachievers of the ancient world, such celebrity civilizations as the Egyptians, Greeks and Romans.

Now it is time for the Maya to shine, but they are a more mysterious people who finally get star billing in Mel Gibson's new film ''Apocalypto.'' How do they do as a civilization? Not so nice.

''Apocalypto'' depicts the Maya as a super-cruel, psycho-sadistic society on the skids, a ghoulscape engaged in widespread slavery, reckless sewage treatment and bad rave dancing, with a real lust for human blood.

This is a problem because most scholars, while acknowledging the violence of this pre-Columbian society, applaud the Maya as among the New World's most sophisticated and subtle civilizations. They were, especially at their height around A.D. 800, remarkable Stone Agers who erected avant-garde cities in the jungles of Mexico and Central America, created sumptuous art, practiced a precise astronomy and developed a written language.

''Apocalypto's'' focus on the more, shall we say, extreme hobbies of the Maya (i.e., removal of still operating body parts) is giving the community of Maya researchers the fits.

''It is a shocking movie to us,'' says Stephen Houston, professor of anthropology at Brown University who has spent years excavating sites in Mexico and Central America.

The main gripe, says Houston, is that ''Apocalypto'' will make a bad impression on the general public. ''For millions of people this might be their first glimpse of the Maya,'' he says. ''This is the impression that is going to last. But this is Mel Gibson's Maya. . . . This is not the Maya we know.''

Gibson's consultant was respected Mayanist Richard Hansen, a professor at Idaho State University and president of the Foundation for Anthropological Research and Environmental Studies, which does preservation work and study in Guatemala. Gibson, a generous contributor, sits on its board.

''For the most part it is very accurate,'' Hansen says. ''I was amazed at the level of detail, the stone tools, gourds, iguana skins, strung up turkeys, just amazed.'' Yet ''there were things I didn't like that they went ahead and did anyway,'' he says. ''There was a lot of artistic license taken.''

Separating Maya from Mel

So where do the Maya end and where does Mel begin?

* Gibson shows grisly human sacrifice, and yes, the Maya were into it. But: The humans being chopped into nibbles were more likely to be royals and elites, not common forest dwellers like the film's Jaguar Paw, says Brown University anthropology professor Stephen Houston.

* The film depicts human sacrifice on a large scale and shows an open-pit grave filled with hundreds of headless dead. But: ''We have no evidence of mass graves,'' says Karl Taube, anthropology professor at the University of California at Riverside.

* Gibson includes what appears to be widespread slavery. Masses of gloomy, starved captives are seen toiling under heavy loads to build ceremonial centers. But: ''We have no evidence of large numbers of slaves,'' Taube says. Rather, most Mayanists suspect the pyramids and the like were built by free Maya who saw it as a civic duty.

* Finally, the Mayanists say the film appears confused about when events take place. One of the great mysteries of the Maya is why their civilization ''collapsed'' around A.D. 900. The current thinking is that collapse had many fathers: drought, deforestation, disease, overpopulation, warfare, social disruption. And Gibson's movie includes a little riff on them all.

But Gibson sets his film at the time of European contact in the early 1500s, when the first Spanish expeditions arrived on Maya shores. What wiped out the Maya in the 1500s was the Spanish, who brought European disease and fought for decades to pacify the Maya.

[nanouk]

Is this the film thread?

Pans labyrinth is lovely all about how childrens psychic abilities are denied by adults. For lovers of the underworld everywhere, though you may need to find a art cinema.

Wallace

Going to see Pan's Labyrinth is definately one of the few luxury expenses i have planned this festive season...at first i thought it was going to be like a Stephen King movie, but i like the lore of the story, from what i have seen of the trailers and reviews...

~n~

[craazyman]

I think my friend Mieis Burnenhurdt [My-eyes-burn-and-hurt] could make it big as a movie reviewer. He can crank out about 10 or 11 per hour and say at $300-$400 a review, that's not bad money--it's up there with the high-class-whores. As long as he doesn't have to actually watch the movies he might be interested. Besides, Ramblesham [e.g. a fraudlent wander] is a comfy place when the snow sets in.:p :p

[sidecross]

Mel Gibson Is Wrong about Who the Violent Americans Are

By Roberto Lovato, New America Media
Posted on December 16, 2006

After watching Mel Gibson’s controversial film Apocalypto, I left the theater pondering the history of racism, pillage and apocalyptic war through my own blood and family history. Gibson, I concluded, would have been more accurate, his film more resonant, had he used another group of people, another culture – certainly not the Maya -- to depict his vision of the Apocalyse.

Like many Central Americans born and categorized as mestizos (mixed Indian and Spanish blood), I watched Apocalypto as someone who consciously revered the Maya and other indigenous groups while subconsciously prohibiting himself any real identification with them.

As a boy, my parents gave me a leather case with a picture of an Indian from the region now known as El Salvador (the Savior). But I heard my father call people he considered ugly “cara de indio” (Indian face). For many of us--mestizo and non-mestizo alike--it’s always been easier to identify with the Christian culture depicted in Gibson’s film The Passion of the Christ than with the Maya culture in Apocalypto.

The fundamental problem with Apocalypto’s depiction of Maya culture is that, in a procrustean manner, it imposes violence and an apocalyptic world view on the wrong people. In fact, UC Riverside archaeologist Zachary X. Hruby wrote recently in the San Francisco Chronicle: “There exists no archaeological, historic or ethnohistoric data to suggest that any such mass sacrifices -- numbering in the thousands, or even hundreds -- took place in the Maya world.”

Instead, Gibson should have looked for apocalyptic war and culture in the off-screen history of our Catholic, mestizo, and indigenous families in the Americas.

He could have done his homework about how Salvadoran culture sanctions my father’s use of “cara de indio” as a way to call someone ‘ugly.’ I never understood the deeper reasons for such racist remarks until my father told me what happened when he was a ten-year-old boy who climbed trees in 1932. That year, my father saw military men kill hundreds of Indians in what historians call “La Matanza” or the Killing. More than 30,000 mostly Indian peasants in El Salvador were slaughtered on the order of General Maximiliano Hernandez Martinez, a theosophist military dictator who used radio broadcasts to justify his actions by sowing apocalyptic fear. Most of the killing my father witnessed took place not far from where the fictional killing fields of Apocalypto take place. Until I asked him about it, my father remained quiet about La Matanza for more than 65 years. The fear of Indians and apocalyptic war he learned while climbing trees as a boy stayed with him and spilled onto his kids through what some psychologists call “intergenerational trauma.”

It saddens me that the first big screen depiction of the inspired and inspiring culture of the Maya is this fatally inaccurate and very controversial film. Like the traumatized boy who became my father, millions among the current generations of Mayan, Guatemalan, Salvadoran and other Central American youth growing up in the United States and other countries are the children of apocalyptic war survivors. Most have experienced the numbing cultural effects of war; either firsthand or as the children of those who have witnessed the savagery of wars like the one in Guatemala, where apocalyptic dictator and born-again Pentecostal President Efrain Rios Montt, who famously said, “the true Christian has a Bible in one hand and a machine gun in the other,” ordered the killing and disappearance of more than 100,000, mostly Mayas. I saw how Montt used television and other media to beam the colorful biblical imagery of his apocalyptic vision as a way to cover over the massacre of innocents. He compared the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse to the four contemporary evils of hunger, misery, ignorance and subversion

Apocalypto’s depiction of the Mayas scares in its inaccuracy, but it makes sense when we consider that Gibson’s main audience belongs to a culture that reveres another very conservative actor like him, Ronald Reagan. Reagan introduced the use of media-communication skills and apocalyptic politics to advance a political agenda. He used them to justify the full arming, full funding of and political support for Montt, whom Reagan defended as “getting a bum rap.” In the name of combating “evil” and protecting the “city on a hill,” Reagan infused his foreign and domestic policy with statements like, "we may be the generation that sees Armageddon" and “I don't know if you have noted any of those prophecies lately, but, believe me, they describe the times we are going through." While filmmaker Gibson claims to offer an allegorical critique of the declining, apocalyptic civilization that feeds wars like the one in Iraq, Gibson the extreme right-wing Catholic, anti-Semite fails in Apocalypto and in all his movies to critique the very religion that has dominated apocalyptic politics for centuries.

Better than most, Gibson knows that Apocalypse sells in a culture in which born-again politicos, best-sellers like the Left Behind books and blockbuster movies like his Mad Max series or Arnold Schwarzenegger’s End of Days and the Terminator trilogy plug into the cultural and political DNA of this country, whose Puritan founders came here prepared for the end of days with Bibles and 20-ton cannons crammed into their ships.

My identity, in part, has been shaped by the effects of a culture of violence and apocalyptic war best found not so much in the stuff of Gibson’s Mayan epic, Apocalypto, but in the stuff of his Christian epic, The Passion of the Christ

Roberto Lovato is a Los Angeles-based writer.

http://www.alternet.org/movies/45584/

[Caprinardo Delirio]

i'm gonna see pan's labyrinth tonight. then we'll see if maybe i should kill myself afterwards...

[drew hempel]

Yeah one of the regulars at my cafe hangout is in coma waiting for a liver transplant -- he swallowed two bottles of tylenol and then drank a bottle of nyquil over a two day period. He's only in his twenties. So hopefully he gets a transplant! But time is running out and his brain is collecting fluid....

[K.J]

I think maybe I've already posted enough of these articles about Apocalypto, so I think I'll make this my last one. But it is a good one. I think the author must be somewhat under the assumption that Gibson was trying to create something more college level history than 21st century entertainment, but he still makes some good points, and I do wish Gibson would have made the story a little more about the real Mayan's and not just more fodder for the big screen.

[Follow the link for the entire story; you might have to watch an ad to read the entire thing, but it's free]



Maya in the Thunderdome (http://www.salon.com/ent/feature/2006/12/15/maya/)

In "Apocalypto," Mel Gibson paints a feverish, childish version of the Maya -- and mangles decades of scholarship about this complex civilization.

By Marcello A. Canuto

Dec. 15, 2006 | As a scholar of the Maya civilization, I was anxious to see Mel Gibson's portrayal of the Maya in "Apocalypto." Of course, I realize the movie is not a documentary and was mindful of the director's artistic license. I was happy to see that Gibson got some details right, like personal adornment, tools and body decoration. Although the main actors are native North Americans, I applaud Gibson's use of some Maya actors, as well as his decision to have the characters speak in a native Maya language, Yukatek, still heard in Mexico. While these are brave and ambitious choices, they also imply that "Apocalypto" is a sincere depiction of Maya society. In fact, the movie is not an accurate portrayal of the Maya at all; rather, it is a reflection of Gibson's own feverish imagination.

The movie tracks a young Mayan man who is captured in a surprise raid on his village. Forced to abandon his family, he and his companions are taken to the nearby city to be sacrificed. He manages to escape and, pursued by his captors, attempts to return to his village to save his family. During his getaway, he reaches a beach where he witnesses the arrival of Spaniards.

This final scene tells us that the movie focuses on Maya society on the eve of Spanish contact in the 16th century. Yet the Maya city portrayed in the movie, central to its plot, dates roughly to the 9th century. This is akin to telling a story about English pilgrims founding the Massachusetts Bay Colony, and showing them living in longhouses described in "Beowulf." In fact, Gibson incorporates Maya images from as far back as 300 B.C. Throughout the movie, these anachronisms make Maya civilization seem timeless, and undermine the idea that the Maya could and did respond to change.

[nyk]

The last movie of Mel that I watched was Signs. It was after seeing
that one that I finally realized that this guy really gives me the creeps.
I refused to go see The Shredding of Christ, and likewise Apocalypto.
It seems to me that his charming fascade has grown somewhat
transparent in recent years, and what lays beneath is a form of
brutal terrorism. Perhaps the same beast resides in all of us, but I
firmly believe that there are better ways of dealing with it than this.




http://www.winnipegfreepress2.com/blogs/reynolds/wp-content/uploads/2006/07/mel.jpg

[Isaiah Mpski]

Drew,I can still cure him but he needs to act fast.
I'll have his liver almost back to normal within a month.
Time is of the essence.
Have them CONTACT me.

Dr John D. Son MD,ND,NMD.918-473-5532

[craazyman]

The debate about Mel and the Mayans reminds me of standing on the crowded bus in Brooklyn above two buddah-bellied bag ladies flush with bargain groceries commiserating about two neighborhood flunkies, "One of them lies, the other swears", they kept repeating, "One of them lies, the other swears".

[Caprinardo Delirio]

i haven't watched signs, but i hear it's the funniest/worst movie in history. i really really hate m. night shyamalan, what a conceded fuck!

[drew hempel]

I recommended tons of garlic and pointed out how once people get "in hospital" then it's almost pointless.

But the immuno-suppression drug for organ transplants came directly from a fungus in Norway.

[sammygurlie]

the scene in apocalypto were the mother and son are in the cave thing and the boys legs gets cut, did the mother put ticks on the wound to heal it, or ants?

[Isaiah Mpski]

No,not really pointless.Hopeless if you get in the cancer line.
It's a way for the Medical-Industrial-Insurance to spread their money,influence and poison throughout civilization.

If you don't have insurance-then whatever you have can be taken away from you-house etc.

[K.J]

the scene in apocalypto were the mother and son are in the cave thing and the boys legs gets cut, did the mother put ticks on the wound to heal it, or ants?

Looked like army ants to me.

[nanouk]

Looked like army ants to me.


Yes Army Ants are as good as Maggots and Leaches in the Medical World... ;) here in the UK it is the endangered "Yellow Mound building Meadow Ant", (apparently only seen between the Rainbow Woods and Solsbury Hill above Bath) which is the Healer, and they create pictograms too!

Like a Crop circle or a Naszca or Chippewa Formation, saw a Spider (exact replica of the Plaines of the Andes, built by the Yellows) from a hot air balloon a few months ago... :)

Love and Respect for the Mounders,

~n~

ps. a couple of years ago, Forteana asked me what i meant about the "Secrets of the Ancients" when i tried to explain my seeing and feeling things, now i am ready to show him, if he is able to come over, Forteanajones, please pm me if you are still around, my book is finished, but the Archaeological society do not have a clue about the Ant People or ancient Bath History! ;) ds.

[jezebelle]

I liked the movie, I felt like I was there. I also liked that the credits where credits and ideas were shared by other(s) than himself.
His other christ movie held no interest to me, crazy I know. I'm sorry I don't want to watch the beating part.
Yet this movie was allowing other stories to be told outside of the main stream. A good use of star power. Not different, but his message is still the same. No one left out.
love and respect, jez

[sidecross]

Published on Sunday, December 17, 2006 by CommonDreams.org

The Sober Racism of Mel Gibson's Apocalypto
by Liza Grandia

Film critics appear split on how to handle Mel Gibson's newest production, Apocalypto. A few refuse to patronize the film in symbolic protest of Gibson's drunken rants over the summer. Others suggest we should temporarily suspend judgment about Gibson's anti-Semitism and judge this action film on its own merits.

Remarkably, none of the critics seem to be asking whether Mel Gibson has produced a film any less racist than his summer tirades about Jews. Hollywood seems willing to admonish Gibson for certain kinds of bigotry, while oddly excusing other kinds of racism - especially if targeted at poor, brown, and indigenous peoples.

As a cultural anthropologist who has worked for thirteen years among different Maya peoples of Mesoamerica and who speaks the Q'eqchi' Maya language fluently, I found Apocalypto to be deeply racist. The Maya in the film bore no resemblance to the hardworking farmers, teachers, lawyers, doctors, businessmen and women of Maya descent that I know personally and consider among my closest friends.

I fear the repercussions Apocalypto will have on contemporary Maya people who continue to struggle for survival and political governments under discriminatory governments that consider them stupid, backward, and uncivilized for wanting to maintain their customs and language. Gibson's slanderous film reinforces the same stereotypes that have facilitated the genocide of Maya peoples and the plunder of their lands starting with the Spanish invasion of 1492 and continuing through the Guatemalan civil war to the present.

Rather than quibble about Apocalypto's many historical and archaeological inaccuracies as other academic critics have done, I focus here on four racist messages the film sends to audiences:

1. Native Americans are all interchangeable. Many critics have offered facile praise to Gibson for having filmed his bloody epic in a contemporary Maya language and employed various Native American actors. Gibson has boasted to the press how relatively cheap it was to make the film because he had pay so little to these actors and his Mexican crew. To me, these actors didn't look or sound Maya at all. Their Yucatec diction was terrible and lacked the real lyric cadence of Maya languages. If someone exploited local labor to make a cheap film about gang-violence in Brooklyn and employed heavily-accented Australian and British actors, would critics still praise it as "authentic" simply because the actors are speaking English?

2. Mesoamerican cultures are all the same. While keeping some of the archaeological details accurate for "authenticity," Gibson then jumbles together mass Aztec sacrifices with Maya rituals, as if they were the same. Certainly at the height of classic Maya civilization, the ruling classes made occasional human sacrifices to their gods, but nothing on the Holocaust-level scale that Gibson portrays in Apocalypto with fields of rotting, decapitated corpses that his hero, Jaguar Paw stumbles across as he attempts to escape his own execution in the city. With the advice of archaeologist Richard Hansen, Gibson seems to have researched anything the Maya might have done badly over a thousand year history and crammed it all into a few horrific days. How would the gringos look if we made a film that lumped together within one week the torture at the Abu Ghraib and Guatanamo prisons, the Tuskegee experiments, KKK lynchings, the battle at Wounded Knee, Japanese internment camps, the Trail of Tears, the Salem witch hunts, Texas death row executions, the Rodney King police beatings, the slaughter upon the Gettysburg battlefield, and the nuclear bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki - and made this look like a definitive statement on U.S. culture?

3. Indigenous people should remain noble savages, since attempts to build cities and more complex political organization will bring their inevitable demise. Gibson purportedly wanted to make a statement about the decay of empires in this film. However, the only clear message I could take away was that indigenous people should have remained friendly forest hunter-gatherers and never have attempted to build their own civilization. Ignoring the fact by the time of the Spanish invasion, all Maya peoples had been either urbanized or sedentary agriculturalists for hundreds of years and maintained complex trade networks, Gibson nevertheless depicts his hero's tribe as crude but happy rainforest peoples living in isolation, blissfully ignorant of the corrupt cities neighboring them. He contrasts these noble forest savages with evil city dwellers such as slave traders, despotic politicians, psychotic priests, and sadistic head-hunters all living amidst rotting sewage, filth, disease, and general misery. Real Maya cities were places with sophisticated water and sanitation systems, great libraries, and extraordinary artwork and architecture. If Gibson wanted to make a statement about the consequences of environmental destruction, as he has claimed to the press, why not produce a film about corporate excesses at Love Canal or Three Mile Island instead of mucking up the historical reputation of the ancient Maya?

4. The Spanish arrive as if to save the Maya from themselves. After enduring two hours of horrific violence, in the last minutes of the film, we witness the miraculous rescue of the film's hero Jaguar Paw from his stalkers by the appearance of Spanish galleons off the coast. This short, final scene shows dour Spaniards approaching the mainland in boats bearing Christian crosses across still water. After forcing his audience to endure two hours of horrific violence, Gibson uses this placid scene allow the movie-goer a sigh of relief in the hopes that these European Civilizers have arrived to make order out of the Maya mayhem. By ending his film there, Gibson ignores the far greater genocide to befall the Maya. In fact, within a hundred years of conquest, the Spanish were responsible for killing between 90 and 95 percent of the Maya population through disease, warfare, starvation, and enslavement.

To stereotype and slander ancient Maya civilization and to imply that the impending holocaust of Maya peoples by the Spanish is a "new beginning" shows how truly racist Gibson really is-whether drunk or sober.

Liza Grandia is a cultural anthropologist who has worked with Maya peoples in Guatemala and Belize since 1993 and who speaks Q'eqchi' Maya fluently. She is currently a postdoctoral fellow at Yale University, writing a book called "Unsettling" about the repeated land dispossessions and enclosures of the Q'eqchi'.


http://www.commondreams.org/views06/1217-24.htm

[jezebelle]

rob I went to your website and saw a hummingbird feeding on salva!
especially cool.
bless this here internet, I love the infomation exchange.
hugs, jes

[Mars]

On the Aztec/Mayan confusion, Gibson's screw-up was brought home all the more re-reading the introduction to "2012" that was recently re-printed on someone's blog that Daniel makes mention of in a recent post.

"The Aztecs believed that the cosmos dissolved and regenerated itself from time to time. They called this world the age of the Fifth Sun, and feared the transition to the next epoch. During the last years of their empire, they sacrificed an estimated seventy thousand people a year in order to keep the Fifth Sun alive—a textbook case of the destructive mania that overtakes empires when they decline and turn decadent."

I haven't yet seen Apocalypto and I don't know if I will - at least not by paying for it (I live in NYC where the bootleg trade does allow one to watch movies of filmmakers that one might not be inclined to financially support). Reading about it's gross inaccuracies has pushed me into the "no" category, but it raises all sorts of questions. Would I recommend others to not see this movie? Would I actively protest it? Does Gibson have a right to get so much wrong?

I imagine if an American filmmaker had made a movie about the plains Indians, depicting them as a vicious, brutal and corrupt people who deserved the virtual extermination the Europeans subjected them to. It seems to me such a movie would be critically raped by the same critics who are lauding Apocalypto in that "he's crazy, but it's a good movie" kind of way. Does it matter if it is a well-crafted movie if it perpetrates a gross misconception of a culture on the most insensitive level (genocide anyone)?

And yet...I believe in creative freedom and creative license and to some degree in a loose notion of the "marketplace of ideas". On this last point, if someone makes a terribly inaccurate piece of art, then the necessary and natural reaction is to discuss it broadly, natch, but then to answer it with another piece of art that gets it right, that is a better and more popular work. It's the middle piece of creative license that is the stickiest. From what I've read, Gibson seems to be conflating the Mayans with the Aztecs in order to make a point about decay and decline and the mania that results from it. Why he chose the Mayans over the Aztecs can only be speculated upon - but I suspect it has to do with those same cultural accomplishments the Mayans achieved that Gibson (so I hear) willfully omits from the story: in mathematics, farming, astronomy, etc. He perhaps chose the Mayans to demonstrate that a civilization that reached such lofty heights can still fall victim to decline. If he had focused on the Aztecs, whose accomplishments might be viewed from a certain point of view as less refined and who have a reputation for being warlike, the point of decline might not have been as salient. For those that have seen the movie, does this jibe at all with your experience of it?

I don't think I really ever would protest against a movie as I've certainly seen an awful lot of crap in my life that was horribly misrepresentative and somehow I've managed to come out the other side as a reasonably enlightened individual. I think more than anything I'm sort of disgusted with the critical response to the film. Not because the critics shouldn't reward it for it's craftsmanship, but because so many haven't factored in the broader statement it seems to be making (the Mayans were savages who deserved the thumping the Spaniards gave them). If I hadn't read the reviews posted here - only one of which appeared in a US paper, I believe, but in none of the majors - I would never have been aware of it. That is an egregious failure of the press and it really pisses me off.

Then, again, maybe I need to just get the $5 bootleg and see for myself.

[Caprinardo Delirio]

i think critics of historical inaccuracy in films have more or less given up and just accepted the fact that movie directors can't care to keep one foot in the authentic grave and the other in whatever grave they're trying to envoke.. i mean, troy!?!

[Rowan27]

Pan's Labyrinth, wow. It looks like the idea could make such a great, fantasy, twisted mystical movie ( Like the old Labyrinth or The Dark Crystal ) But it also seems like it looks better than it probably is, especially with the typical storyline. Im definatly going to check it out though.

[drew hempel]

Curse of the Golden Flower: CLEAVAGE!

[nanouk]

Curse of the Golden Flower: CLEAVAGE!

...didn't get the $5 bootleg of THAT, *lol*, but my landlord got the disc of Apocalypto, going to watch it tomorrow night...i do not take these Hollywood epics seriously at all, heck, if one can't trust CNN or Sky News, why take Metro-Goldwyn or 20th Century for face value???

Is Saddam really gone? Are foreign troups withdrawing from the Middle East finally?

Don't hold your breath...i am not.

Love, Peace and Respect,

~N~

[drew hempel]

OK well here's the cleavage if that's your thang. http://www.apple.com/trailers/sony/curseofthegoldenflower/

Anyway China had a foot fetish so why put all the buxom women in front doing the Baywatch trick? hilarious.

Wow -- turns out that the TANG did promote the cleavage thang! Cool. http://www.filmstew.com/showBlog.aspx?blog_id=929

I don't know. Chesticles is my term but I'm eccentric.

[nanouk]

Anyway China had a foot fetish so why put all the buxom women in front doing the Baywatch trick? hilarious.



is mutilation of ANY kind hilarious? how many rings on yer neck would you like to feel the Full Lotus, drew? or how many inches off yer feet?

pick yer Fetish... :rolleyes:

BBC 6 Music, featuring an hour of Bob Dylan, what a Soul Man!
can't stand his songs, bar "subterranean homesick blues", but what a voice! :) :) :)

Love and Respect,

~n~

[drew hempel]

No I meant the "baywatch trick" was hilarious in the movie. It was actually the main message of the movie in my opinion. Chinese women can also by baywatch babes too!

Anyway the full-lotus is not supposed to be some aerobics exercise, as yoga is now commonly assumed to be.

Once the 3rd eye is open then direct contact with the Eternal Feminine occurs -- this is not a fetish because its the consciousness of which everything is made.

In otherwords you practice full-lotus to completely relax, cure all diseases, and recharge yourself to heal others, as well as create new realities.

[Mars]

Saw this last night. A truly wonderful movie, far grimmer than I anticipated (my friend actually said it reminded him of the original Grimm's fairy tales, with their shadowy and sometimes grisly turns). I hesitate to write too much about it, as I wouldn't want to prejudice anyone prior to seeing it, knowing that it is in limited release at the moment. I will say that Del Toro synthesizes the rational and the irrational in a very novel, skillful way. I wasn't completly satisfied, but I did feel that this is another piece of art that is sympatico with the evolution of consciousness that feels nigh. And a damn well-made movie.

[Tree]

A Past That Makes Us Squirm


By CRAIG CHILDS
Published: January 2, 2007
Crawford, Colo.

A FEW years back, while traveling in the Sierra Madre Occidental of northern Mexico, I came upon a canyon packed with cliff dwellings no one had lived in since before the time of Christopher Columbus. On the ground were discarded artifacts, pieces of frayed baskets, broken pottery and hundreds of desiccated corn cobs — the ruins of an ancient civilization.

I reached down to pick up what I thought was a dry gourd, and instead found myself cradling the skull of a human child. As I turned it in my hands, I noticed a deliberate hole in the back of the skull, directly above the spine. The skull was not cracked around the hole, which means the child had most likely been alive when a spike or some other implement had been slammed into his or her head from behind.

This is not the only skull like this. Excavations from elsewhere in northern Mexico have turned up other children killed the same way, human sacrifices to an ancient water deity, their bodies buried under pre-Columbian ball courts or at the foot of pillars in important rooms.

With knowledge of such widespread ferocity, I recently saw Mel Gibson’s movie “Apocalypto,” which deals with the gore of the Mayan civilization. I had heard that the movie’s violence was wildly out of control. But even as I winced at many of the scenes, as a writer and researcher in ancient American archaeology, I found little technical fault with the film other than ridiculous Hollywood ploys and niggling archaeological details.

Indeed, parts of the archaeological record of the Americas read like a war-crimes indictment, with charred skeletons stacked like cordwood and innumerable human remains missing heads, legs and arms. In the American Southwest, which is my area of research, human tissue has been found cooked to the insides of kitchen jars and stained into a ceramic serving ladle. A grinding stone was found full of crushed human finger bones. A sample of human feces came up containing the remains of a cannibal’s meal.

It could be argued that “Apocalypto” dehumanizes Native Americans, turning their ancestors into savage monsters, but I think it does the opposite. Oppressed hunter-gatherers in the movie are presented as people with the same, universal emotions all humans share. And urban Mayans are portrayed as politically and religiously savvy, having made of themselves a monumental, Neolithic empire, something more akin to ancient Egypt than the trouble-free agrarians who come to most people’s minds when they think of native America.

To further shatter that popular notion of Native Americans, there’s the scene in which a turquoise-jeweled priest stands atop a staggering temple yanking out one beating human heart after the next. That’s an image that nearly every archaeologist working in Central America has played in his or her head many times, only now it’s on the big screen for everyone to see.

Being told by screenwriters and archaeologists that their ancestors engaged in death cults tends to make many Native Americans uneasy. In Arizona, Hopi elders turn their eyes to the ground when they hear about their own past stained with overt brutality. The name Hopi means people of peace, which is what they strive to be. Meanwhile, excavators keep digging up evidence of cannibalism and ritualized violence among their ancestors.

How do we rectify the age-old perception of noble and peaceful native America with the reality that at times violence was coordinated on a scale never before witnessed by humanity? The answer is simple. We don’t.

Prior to 1492 it was a complex cultural landscape with civilization ebbing and flowing, the spaces in between traversed by ancient lineages of hunters and gatherers. To the religious core of pre-Columbian Mayans, a beating heart ripped from someone’s chest was a thing of supreme sacredness and not prosaic violence.

If “Apocalypto” has a fault, it is not with its brutality, but with us in the audience who cringe, thinking the Mayans little more than a barbaric people. The fault lies in our misunderstanding of a complicated history, thinking we can lump a whole civilization into a single response and walk out of the movie saying, “That was disgusting.”

Craig Childs is the author of the forthcoming “House of Rain: Tracking a Vanished Civilization Across the American Southwest.”

[Mars]

I agree with Childs that we should not shy away from the truth about past civilizations even when it is ugly and reveals behavior and traditions that are violent, brutal or otherwise unsavory to our 21st Century Western culture. That whole "noble savage" thing seems like a legacy that many people have bought into, partly I think because it is a yearning for a nature-connected idyllic past that may or may not have existed as we imagine it and partly because of a cultural guilt over the atrocities that nevertheless built the world that we live in and enjoy today. Most history I've read - most recently "Guns, Germs and Steel" - reveals, shock of all shocks, that even native peoples had their flaws and made some pretty colossal mistakes along their historical path. For example, the original settlers of North America probably caused the extinction of almost every large mammal on the continent (Giant Sloth, Mammoth, others). Not exactly in "sync" with nature. Nothing is gained by denying the archaeological findings when they conflict with our own comfortable and comforting notions of history. We're humans. We've f**d up to some degree no matter where we've come from. Sidebar: one can wonder if such a catastrophe created a cultural awareness of the importance of being in balance with nature which comprised such an important role in their culture by at least the time the colonists arrived.

However, the problem with the Childs article is it's failure to point out how important it is to be specific. I don't excuse any storyteller who claims to be telling the story of a distinct group of people and then garbles and jumbles the known facts because it doesn't serve HIS interpretation. Which, by the accounts and criticisms I've read, is what Gibson does. Someone quoted him as saying something akin to "I just made up a lot of stuff" and I don't think he was just talking about the characters backstory. I wouldn't mind if he depicted the Mayans as brutal within the limits of the archaelogical record, but the criticisms have been that he goes far beyond it, into a fantasy that mixes in facts from a slew of traditions. If he wanted to make an allegory that hybridized and consolidated all ancient MesoAmerican cultures into a fictional peoples, situated them in a galaxy far far away calling the "Centauri Mestizos" or some such thing, I wouldn't complain. That to me, is creative license. Gibson didn't do that. He decided to tell a distinctly Mayan story. Childs suggests that only a few "niggling archaelogical details" bothered him. In keeping in the spirit of specifics, I wish he had mentioned what those were and responded to the following: the Mayan civilization collapsed long before the Spaniards arrived; we know of no mass graves; the common folk weren't torn from their homes and sacrificed; there were no slaves. If the above are correct, this is not indicative of an unwavering fidelity to correcting our soft-hearted but inaccurate view of a Native people that Childs seems to suggest Gibson exhibits.

Of course, one could argue that Gibson is being held to an unfair standard. Every historical movie is going to get some stuff wrong and make compromises in service to story. True. But striving for accuracy and falling short is far different than "making up a lot of stuff."

I had a college professor once say "History is not about then, but about right now," meaning that it is always seen through the lens of our morays, attitudes and cultural preconceptions, and of course is always changing as more evidence is revealed and as we re-examine our own interpretation of the data. Childs is right to point out that we need to stay open and alert to our sensitivities and subjectivity and how they may color our interpretation. I don't agree, however, that when a story distorts the facts the fault lies not in the storyteller, but solely in the audience for not knowing better.

[drew hempel]

Great response. I think Childs is being racist. Someone really good on this topic is Lyall Watson.

[Tree]

Who's racist here? Someone who is objective and knowledgable about history or someone who idealizes another race to the point of lying about things deemed unsavory in order to fit their own agenda and worldview? The Mayans sacrificed humans and they practiced slash and burn agriculture and there is increasing proof that they were involved in many wars.
They weren't perfect, no human is, and people need to stop pretending they were in order to fit their own personal mythologies.

[drew hempel]

I would say EVERYONE IS RACIST! What you have stated is Tree about the Mayans but what Mel Gibson put in his blockbuster has no evidence whatsoever. I guess we can repeat this ad naseum to no effect.

[craazyman]

this stuff is the history of all cultures. All anyone has to do is read Sir James Frazer's classic "The Golden Bough".

Speaking of movies, here's a bit of movie trivia. In Francis Ford Coppala's "Apolcalypse Now" (which was a contemporary interpretation of Joseph Conrad's "Heart of Darkness") in Kurtz's (played by Marlin Brando) inner sanctum bedroom, he had three books on his nightstand.

1. The King James Bible
2. Conrad's Heart of Darkness
3. Sir James Frazer's "The Golden Bough"

The native American cultures in Mexico (especially the Aztecs and surounding tribes) took this stuff to a sublime extreme. But they were not alone, Rome's nemisis--the Cartheginians of Northern Africa--did too.

Where does the Passover feast come from--the slaughter of the sacrificial lamb--and where did that come from? Interesting that when folks take communion in church they are ritually re-enacting the eating of the flesh of the human sacrifical victim from thousands of years ago. But they have no idea.

Nobody knows this stuff because nobody reads anymore. They all just watch TV and go to the movies.:p

[sidecross]

I am finishing Richard Dawkins The God Delusion and have read Sam Harris's Letter to a Christian Nation; both books I highly recommend.

Some of us still do read.;)

[drew hempel]

Dawkins is just the byproduct of crappy mass media. Read Professor Simon Conway Morris' book "Lifes' Solution" (Cambridge U Press, 2003) -- he's a Cambridge professor that has thoroughly debunked Dawkins -- the NeoDarwinians are raving idiots scared that someone might read real books, not mass-marketed propaganda promoted on "science" blogs that ban people, etc.

[Mars]

They weren't perfect, no human is, and people need to stop pretending they were in order to fit their own personal mythologies.

Quite right, Tree. There's a quote from Mckenna to that effect in a weekend workshop that he gave - the transcript of which was posted recently:

"The conceits of Mayan religion and Mayan courtly life are all coming into focus and it's very exciting. All the people who have tried to make the Maya into some kind of Atlantean civilization should be running for cover at this point, because the picture that emerges is not as pretty as we might wish, but, hey, know the truth and the truth will set you free, I would choose truth over illusion anytime, no matter how damaging it might be to somebody's conceptions of these things."


I feel obliged to point out, however, that Childs does not indicate in his article that he is an expert of Mayan culture specifically: "as a writer and researcher in ancient American archaeology"; and doesn't address the inaccuracies that experts in Mayan archaeology have pointed out.

[sidecross]

“Dawkins is just the byproduct of crappy mass media..”

No author should be read out of context to other authors. For instance Richard Dawkins and Rupert Sheldrake are on opposite sides of many issues, but I have learned and appreciate much from each writer.

Drew you write from such an absolute position that really is not constructive even to your own point of view.

[Tree]

Quite right, Tree. There's a quote from Mckenna to that effect in a weekend workshop that he gave - the transcript of which was posted recently:
I feel obliged to point out, however, that Childs does not indicate in his article that he is an expert of Mayan culture specifically: "as a writer and researcher in ancient American archaeology"; and doesn't address the inaccuracies that experts in Mayan archaeology have pointed out.

I noticed that too Mars, and a sentence like that invites questions into his credentials, I think. There's a lot of information on ancient Maya culture though and a lot of that points to a culture that was brutal, but people will believe what they want. I posted this article in hopes of challenging some people and getting a discussion started but I certainly don't think that makes me racist! :rolleyes:
I just think it's interesting how people latch onto other cultures or ideas and insist on their perfection in order to make themselves feel better about the world. Not a judgement, just an observation. I suppose I feel that way about art. Art and Nature are parts of my belief system but they have their brutalities, too.

[Tree]

Where does the Passover feast come from--the slaughter of the sacrificial lamb--and where did that come from? Interesting that when folks take communion in church they are ritually re-enacting the eating of the flesh of the human sacrifical victim from thousands of years ago. But they have no idea.

Nobody knows this stuff because nobody reads anymore. They all just watch TV and go to the movies.:p

I've wondered about this. Is it willful ignorance on the part of Catholics that they are cannibals (wink, wink) or is there something more sinister going on?
Too many people asleep in the world. Apparently, sacrifice does nothing to change that.

[drew hempel]

Haha -- I just got back from hanging out at my anarchist cafe, the Hard Times, and while riding my bike was rebuking myself for not speaking out against the copy of the God Delusion on the table of a regular.

The God Delusion is a stupid book. No one has read "Life's Solutions" -- Have you read Dawkin's earlier books? Dawkins' is a Freemason, openly stating that Buckyfullerenes are the key to creating "synthetic ecology."

Now that IS interesting about Dawkins -- but how many have heard about "synthetic ecology"?

Or are you in favor of replacing Nature with silica-iron nanobiomotors? haha.

Once again a "mass media" product is promoted as "safe" for general consumption -- in fact "cool" is it to be now reactionary, blithe, cynical and yes....

CRAPPY! Check out PZ Myer's blog -- http://pharyngula.org -- I got banned from it because Myers, a professor of biology in Minnesota, is a rabid promoter of Dawkins and so Myers does not allow any open debate on his blog. The Myers fanatically gets people to vote him the top science blog -- meaning that he and one other blog got 80% of the vote! Some "prize." haha.

Myers is in fact afraid of Cambridge Professor Simon Morris Conway's masterpiece "Life's Solutions" which blows Dawkins to smitherenes. Myers dismissed Conway's book

WITHOUT READING IT!!

Yeah that's the trend of the internet -- self-censorship, "emoticons" Youtube -- general stupidity and increasing crackdowns.

I had my whole email account sabotaged by the same U administration that professor Myers kisses ass to. Western science is just an aristocratic Freemason project.

Extremist am I? Try MIT history professor David F. Noble's book "The Religion of Technology." 1996

I was just talking to an Ethiopian who is getting a PhD in materials science -- and he readily admits that industrialization has made life WORSE. He grew up drinking pristine water from a river and living in the mountains.

Now then -- Freemasonry is Science: ENGLAND: Thomas Telford, "father" of modern civil engineering, and President of Institution of Civil Engineers and his buddy William hazledine -- both top Freemasons (detailed in Noble's tour de force).

A generation later --- in France -- Ecole des Ports et Chaussees, founder Jean-Rodolph Perronety, and top member of the Uranie Lodge of Freemasons.

Same with Ecoles des Arts et Metiers and the Ecole du Corps Royal du Denie at Mezieres. 4 top Freemasons founded the Ecole Polytechnique.

On and ON.

So it's not just some "secret" cabal -- although that can be demonstrated amply enough.

The mathematics of Western science is based on "containing" infinity through logarithmics from harmonics which are founded on "deep disharmony" (math professor Luigi Borazacchini).

There is no pure science, as the hypotenuse of the Pythagorean Theorem was changed into physical "magnitude" by Eudoxus, Euclid, Archytas, Hippocrates, etc.

Descartes and Galileo just picked up from there. http://nonduality.com/hempel.htm

Is 25 years left of Freshwater too ABSOLUTE for you? haha. London will be underwater soon.

[Caprinardo Delirio]

richard dawkins is certainly either incredibly naive if he thinks he is dealing seriously with religion, or he's just getting rich by building the laziest academic scheme in the history of the world.

i watched this two hour special with him on 'the god delusion' that i downloaded, but i actually came to the conclusion that he wasn't as insane as i thought, because he was dealing solely with the problem of fundamentalist literlists and the god image he was denouncing was purely based on the image of yahweh.

the points and arguments he and his audience asked and stated didn't move one inch beyond the simplest kind of kindergarten rethorical ethical puns and the whole talk could resemble any talk at any high school where one would ask "what if god is a woman" there really wasn't much more to it than that.

if dawkins thinks he can dismiss religion like that, he certainly is the most naive and most career greedy/lazy academic around.

as for his point that we shouldn't base our morales on the stories in the old testament, well.. who the hell would disagree with that?

the god delusion is his own delusion!

[Caprinardo Delirio]

tree, that quote wasn't mine. the one with the mayans... whatnot!

[sidecross]

I just finished reading Richard Dawkins’s The God Delusion and found it be a well researched and very good book.

I think it only fair to any author to judge the book by reading it.


Edit: I too heard an interview of Richard Dawkins on C-SPAN an American non commercial channel, and was not impressed with him.

The book on the other hand as I have stated above was well worth my time.

[drew hempel]

Let's just say that Dawkins and Mel Gibson are both trying to start a new religion.

[Tree]

tree, that quote wasn't mine. the one with the mayans... whatnot!

what? I didn't know I'd quoted you.

[Caprinardo Delirio]

something something... look up..

[Caprinardo Delirio]

shit, it was mars.

[Giselle62]

Wow, Kronos quartet? I've seen them twice, both times mind-altering in themselves.
p.s. ii love you (this is a message from my niece, Angelique)
u make me happy(another, oh well, i better get off the computer)

[Mars]

shit, it was mars.

Yeah, I was quoting you quoting McKenna - or better put, quoting Mckenna's seminar that you posted. Sorry about the confusion.

[Caprinardo Delirio]

confusion causes clarity apparently.

[Zehn]

'The Fountain' rocked!

[jezebelle]

ahhh
men are men
(god bless)

[drew hempel]

Guess I missed the fountain..... hmmm. I'll see if somewhere is still showing it in Mpls. and make a fucking day of it! haha

[Thom]

I'm rethinking Dawkins personally...i think he's conciously sacrificed himself to kick the puritan creationists. Kudos to him for that. Kamikaze Dawkins, as he's known on campus. I guess.

Anyway, saw a movie! Pan's Labyrinth. I may have been bedazzled by the magic of cinema but i thought it was awesome - beautiful, brutal, ferocious, kitsch, profound, silly, forgettable. It's not all "fairy", it's actually really about civil war - well, i suppose that's what all fairy tales are about. But i was very impressed, and would recommend the film.

Also the Pan character really captures that camp vibe that struts forth from the andalusian machismo, kind of like one of Lorca's duende...

Worth seeing.

[drew hempel]

hmmmm well if you say so. I guess I'll go to the matinee. I can't believe there was a whole block long waiting line. People are so bored! haha.

[Mars]

I've been frustrated by a recent point of contention with my friends regarding Pan's Labyrinth. I interpreted the story as an endorsement of real magic leaching into and penetrating the materialistic, brutal world of war; they see it as a perception of war as soon through the eye's of a child. In other words, in my interpretation, magic is real, it has a real impact on the world but simply isn't available to the adults; in my friend's interpretation, magic only exists in the young girl's imagination, and is merely a response of her imagination to the harsh and troubled world around her.

Thoughts?

[Caprinardo Delirio]

magic would be real to the adults if they believed it, but being an adult dosen't make you turn towards magic much, it isn't that helpful in most adult tasks.

it dosen't make you dinner or protect your children. it maybe helps you weave meaning from causalities if you're free enough to observe them on you own terms, and you can do much within in a group... but only so much. usa still got guns better than any chaos magick granade.

[drew hempel]

I saw the movie Pan's Labyrinth. There are a few subtle clues that give away the secret meaning of the movie. I don't want to ruin it but if anyone can read the book "MIND OVER SPACE" by the great, late Dr. Nandor Fodor then the answer will be revealed:

http://www.survivalafterdeath.org/researchers/fodor.htm