Mushrooms on Mt. Lemmon — Photo-Artistry by kenne
The truth knocks on the door,
and you say,
Go away, I’m looking for the truth,
and so it goes away.
Puzzling.
―
Archive for the ‘Truth’ Tag
Mushrooms On Mt. Lemmon Leave a comment
Antique Samurai Helmet 1 comment
Antique Samurai Helmet — Photo-Artistry by kenne
“The Truth is realized in an instant; the Act is practiced step by step.”
―
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Easter Is Gone, But Not The Bunny In The Moment Leave a comment
Easter Is Gone, But Not The Bunny — Photo-Artistry by kenne
“Existence only becomes clear through reason;
reason only has content through existence.
By philosophizing, I seek to call attention to the limits of knowledge,
not with the skeptical purpose of disposing of knowledge altogether,
but rather in order to let the truth which always lies just beyond
those limits shine through for a moment.”
— kenne
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Memories Leave a comment
“Memories” — Photo-Artistry by kenne
Truth and our memories are a series of disjointed facts connected by our imagination,
a distortion of our senses which is why life is an illusion.
— kenne
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The Tucson Mountains — Truth Never Dies 4 comments
Tucson Mountains — Photo-Artistry by kenne
Truth Never Dies
Truth never dies. The ages come and go.
The mountains wear away, the stars retire.
Destruction lays earth’s mighty cities low;
And empires, states and dynasties expire;
But caught and handed onward by the wise,
Truth never dies.
Though unreceived and scoffed at through the years,
Though made the butt of ridicule and jest,
Though held aloft for mockery and jeers,
Denied by those of transient power possessed,
Insulted by the insolence of lies,
Truth never dies.
It answers not. It does not take offense,
But with a mighty silence bides its time.
As some great cliff that braves the elements
And lifts through all the storms its head sublime,
It ever stands, uplifted by the wise,
And never dies.
As rests the Sphinx amid Egyptian sands;
As looms on high the snowy peak and crest;
As firm and patient as Gibraltar stands,
So truth, unwearied, waits the era blest
When men shall turn to it with great surprise.
Truth never dies.
— Anonymous
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Truth Never Dies 1 comment
Guest Artist, Katie Turner Bailey
Truth never dies. The ages come and go.
The mountains wear away, the stars retire.
Destruction lays earth’s mighty cities low;
And empires, states and dynasties expire;
But caught and handed onward by the wise,
Truth never dies.
Though unreceived and scoffed at through the years,
Though made the butt of ridicule and jest,
Though held aloft for mockery and jeers,
Denied by those of transient power possessed,
Insulted by the insolence of lies,
Truth never dies.
It answers not. It does not take offense,
But with a mighty silence bides its time.
As some great cliff that braves the elements
And lifts through all the storms its head sublime,
It ever stands, uplifted by the wise,
And never dies.
As rests the Sphinx amid Egyptian sands;
As looms on high the snowy peak and crest;
As firm and patient as Gibraltar stands,
So truth, unwearied, waits the era blest
When men shall turn to it with great surprise.
Truth never dies.
— Anonymous
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Freeing Our Hands To Pick The Mushrooms 2 comments
Image by kenne
If you are a follower of this blog, if not now, please set aside the time to listen to Amanda Palmer’s reading of Neil Gaiman’s ode to humanity’s unheralded originators of the scientific method. It is very, very powerful. Listen to the poets, poetry will save us from ourselves! https://vimeo.com/214686538
THE MUSHROOM HUNTERS
Science, as you know, my little one, is the study
of the nature and behaviour of the universe.
It’s based on observation, on experiment, and measurement,
and the formulation of laws to describe the facts revealed.
In the old times, they say, the men came already fitted with brains
designed to follow flesh-beasts at a run,
to hurdle blindly into the unknown,
and then to find their way back home when lost
with a slain antelope to carry between them.
Or, on bad hunting days, nothing.
The women, who did not need to run down prey,
had brains that spotted landmarks and made paths between them
left at the thorn bush and across the scree
and look down in the bole of the half-fallen tree,
because sometimes there are mushrooms.
Before the flint club, or flint butcher’s tools,
The first tool of all was a sling for the baby
to keep our hands free
and something to put the berries and the mushrooms in,
the roots and the good leaves, the seeds and the crawlers.
Then a flint pestle to smash, to crush, to grind or break.
And sometimes men chased the beasts
into the deep woods,
and never came back.
Some mushrooms will kill you,
while some will show you gods
and some will feed the hunger in our bellies. Identify.
Others will kill us if we eat them raw,
and kill us again if we cook them once,
but if we boil them up in spring water, and pour the water away,
and then boil them once more, and pour the water away,
only then can we eat them safely. Observe.
Observe childbirth, measure the swell of bellies and the shape of breasts,
and through experience discover how to bring babies safely into the world.
Observe everything.
And the mushroom hunters walk the ways they walk
and watch the world, and see what they observe.
And some of them would thrive and lick their lips,
While others clutched their stomachs and expired.
So laws are made and handed down on what is safe. Formulate.
The tools we make to build our lives:
our clothes, our food, our path home…
all these things we base on observation,
on experiment, on measurement, on truth.
And science, you remember, is the study
of the nature and behaviour of the universe,
based on observation, experiment, and measurement,
and the formulation of laws to describe these facts.
The race continues. An early scientist
drew beasts upon the walls of caves
to show her children, now all fat on mushrooms
and on berries, what would be safe to hunt.
The men go running on after beasts.
The scientists walk more slowly, over to the brow of the hill
and down to the water’s edge and past the place where the red clay runs.
They are carrying their babies in the slings they made,
freeing their hands to pick the mushrooms.
— Neil Gaiman
Illustration by Beatrix Potter
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Believing In The Importance Of The Struggle — Robert M. Pirsig, Dead At 88 4 comments
Source: William Morrow/HarperCollins
It’s just a little after midnight in Tucson, and I’m having trouble sleeping. It could be that Joy is having surgery later today. It could be that in this age of hand-held technology, it was several hours ago I received a news alert on the passage of Robert M. Pirsig at age 88.
In the 1970’s I was interested in motorcycles — own a couple. It was a time in which I loved reading about technology and philosophy. So, in 1974 when I read a review of a recently published book, “Zen and The Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: An Inquiry into Values,” I went out and bought a copy.
The inside cover jacket begins with a quote from the book:
“ The study of the art of motorcycle maintenance is really a miniature study of the art of rationality itself. Working on a motorcycle, working well, caring, is to become part of a process to achieve an inner peace of mind. The motorcycle is primarily a mental phenomenon.”
What better way to write about the conflict between science and religion, and the nature of Quality in art than to have it as part of a motorcycle narrative of a trip Pirsig, his eleven-year-old son, and two friends took from Minnesota to California? As it turns out, the real journey was not a motorcycle trip, but a philosophic trip that centers on an insane passion for truth.
In February of this year, I posted a blog entitled, The Zen of Visual Imagery – Balancing Passion and Obsession, in which I reference the novel I have worshiped over the years. Whether in my own teaching of educational philosophy or photography, I can’t talk about life without referencing Pirsig for the truth. It is time for a Chautauqua.
–kenne
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My Lady 2 comments
“My Lady” — Computer Art by kenne
“I have one major rule: Everybody is right. More specifically,
everybody — including me — has some important pieces of truth,
and all of those pieces need to be honored, cherished,
and included in a more gracious, spacious,
and compassionate embrace.”
― Ken Wilber
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Guided In Art And Thought Leave a comment
Bee and Thistle Computer Art by kenne
The first thing he does each morning is look outside
his morning pray without words, a prayer of the senses.
As important as breathing to his being alive, he plans
his day to include time with nature to give him truth.
These are the times he commits himself to something
absolute — life, to beauty of being guided in art and thought.
— kenne
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Capturing the Moment — “Misty Watermelon Memories” 2 comments
Misty Watermelon Memories by Nancy Parsons
My good friend and artist, Nancy Parsons posted her latest painting on her blog, “Head on down the highway. . .” in which she uses the technique of painting from a photograph placed up-side-down. It’s funny how sometimes the brain can distort reality. That might be the result of our three-dimensional experience being recorded as a two-dimensional image, which is the very reason we use perspective. We know that parallel lines never meet, yet to give them truth, the two-dimensional drawing must give the appearance of meeting on down the road — depth of field. This can be good, but what if the painting is “real-life” in terms of a photo? Painting from a photo that is up-side-down can decrease the influence of previous experiences and the games we may play in conveying a three-dimensional experience in a two-dimensional world, allowing for a better aperture of truth — depth of field.
Recent research has found that by making use of a visual illusion in which the presentation of a horizontal line makes a subsequent circle look like an ellipse. In a study conducted by Watson and Krekelberg, the line was presented to research participants immediately before an eye movement. Under current how the brain sees theory, the line would be eliminated from visual processing and one would expect participants to report a subsequently presented circle to look like a circle. While the research participants did not recall seeing the line, the image they reported seeing was not a circle but rather an ellipse. In other words, the participants experienced the illusion, even though they were not aware of the line that causes the illusion. The brain tends to take “the path of least resistance.” What is known is that the brain did process the line. What is not known is the give and take process between perceptual stability and perceptual discrimination.
For me, photography is the aperture for expressing what’s truth. Trying to understand how the brain sees can be of great value in knowing when and how to adjust the aperture.
kenne
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Are You Able To See the Picture?, Entry from March 04, 2008 1 comment
The Middle East Crisis: Not Taking Fact and Reality Seriously Leave a comment
How Do You Find Truth When Each Sides Position is Based On Lies?
Reasonable people agree with the value and importance of truth. But what seems to overtake its value in the Middle East conflict is that the evidence for one position vs. another is accepted as if it had been conclusively proved and therefore moral and just. The outside observer is left confused when each line of thought generates a contradiction.
“I wish I didn’t believe that the events now unfolding in the Middle East are too complicated for unalloyed outrage. I wish the arguments of only one side rang wholly true to me. I am the first to accuse myself of paralyzing moral generosity — the fatal empathy that terrorists prey on. But ambivalence is not the same as moral equivalence, and holy war, no matter who is waging it, makes my flesh crawl.
In Milton’s poem Samson Agonistes, Samson – blinded, in chains — cries out, “Promise was that I / Should Israel from Philistian yoke deliver; / Ask for this great deliverer now, and find him / Eyeless in Gaza at the mill with slaves.” But when Samson shows the strength to shun Delilah, God restores his power, enabling him to pull down the temple and kill the Philistines, though along with himself.”
These are the words of Marty Kaplan, which appeared today in The Huffington Post, titled, “Eyeless In Gaza.” Click here to read the complete article.
kenne
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Mask 1 comment
“My Lady” — Computer Art by kenne
Mask
what secrets does
she hide
behind her face
of stone
knowing she is
not real
see the phony look
distant stare
a lonely pretender
hiding doubt
having given up
the search
now her life is
a fake
she accepts it
only to
exaggerate
false truths
still unable to
look straight
into my eyes
tears drop
kenne
Becoming is Superior to Being 
Image by kenne
Are You Able To See the Picture?
Most people “don’t understand the show” because they cannot see the picture. Okay, I admit you see something, but what do you see if the image is not clear? Just as with a digital image, the clearness or resolution depends on the amount of information in the picture. The more information, pixels in the cast of a digital image, the better we can see the picture, from which we can reason. Whether we utilize deductive or inductive reasoning, each is dependent on observations. If no observation is made, or if the observation lacks clarity, then any ability to reason is based on “blind faith.” Therefore, some are perceived as being conveyors of information “is not engaged in the enterprise is all” and are indifferent to the truth – or at least an indifference to finding the truth. It is more common in today’s world to hear the statement, “It is the truth.” rather than, “Is it the truth?”
Thomas Jefferson’s famous line, “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal . . .” is considered by all as a statement of truth, but is it? It is more a statement of belief that should always be guarded by the question, “Is it the truth?”
The other morning, while working at the computer, I listened to the President’s news conference – not paying much attention, that is, until I heard a reporter asking a question referencing the $4 a gallon for gasoline. As the reporter continued his inquiry, Bush interrupted, as if suddenly waking up, “Wait — what did you say?” The reporter responded that many analysts have to project. (Actually, some pumps in California already have reached the $4 level.)
“Oh, yeah?” Bush said. “That’s interesting. I hadn’t heard that.”
This comes from a president that wants to continue allowing tax breaks to oil companies. Bush’s bewilderment brought back memories of when his father’s supermarket counter moment demonstrated a similar lack of knowledge of something so common to life in everyday America. (It must be a “DNA” thing.) In the president’s “Is it the truth?” dialog with the reporter, it was apparent that his lack of any environmental-scan knowledge of the economy was not a question of seeking the truth but one of reasoning based on an indifference to the truth.
As for seeing the picture, for some of us, the picture is changing, which brings to mind the John Clare poem, The Flitting:
Time looks on pomp with careless moods
Or killing apathy’s disdain
– So where old marble citys stood
Poor persecuted weeds remain
She feels a love for little things
That very few can feel beside
And still the grass eternal springs
Where castles stood and grandeur died
— kenne
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