DDD SUGGESTED READINGS FOR SEPT 13

1. As a lifelong fan of the man's cinematic and graphic novel output, I couldn't be more pleased to bring to your attention Alejandry Jodorowsky's 82 Commandments. As the article on Arcane Daily begins:

Reyna Assia, daughter of the influential spiritual teacher George Gurdjieff, relayed these commandments, given to her by her father, to renowned filmmaker Alejandro Jodorowsky. She told him: "We have been badly educated. We live in a world of competition in which honesty is synonymous with naïveté. We must first develop good habits. Some of them may seem simple, but they are very difficult to realize. Believing them to be obvious, we fail to see that they are the key to immortal consciousness. Now I shall offer you a dictation of the commandments that my blessed father taught me…” 

1. Ground your attention on yourself. Be conscious at every moment of what you are thinking, sensing, feeling, desiring, and doing.
2. Always finish what you have begun.
3. Whatever you are doing, do it as well as possible.
4. Do not become attached to anything that can destroy you in the course of time.
5. Develop your generosity ‒ but secretly.
6. Treat everyone as if he or she was a close relative.
7. Organize what you have disorganized.
8. Learn to receive and give thanks for every gift.
9. Stop defining yourself.
10. Do not lie or steal, for you lie to yourself and steal from yourself.
11. Help your neighbor, but do not make him dependent.
12. Do not encourage others to imitate you.
13. Make work plans and accomplish them.
14. Do not take up too much space.
15. Make no useless movements or sounds.
16. If you lack faith, pretend to have it.
17. Do not allow yourself to be impressed by strong personalities.
18. Do not regard anyone or anything as your possession.
19. Share fairly.
20. Do not seduce.
21. Sleep and eat only as much as necessary.
22. Do not speak of your personal problems.

Click on the link for the next 60 commandments. You won't regret it, I promise.

2. Current Cult Stud sensation Slavoj Zizek has a thing or two to say about the immigrant crisis in the Middle East and Europe... and I think some of you may be surprised by what he has to say. As far as I'm concerned, this so-called Clown Prince of Philosophy makes a few eminently astute observations about both the left AND the right, and the inherent weaknesses in both standardized positions. It begins:

The flow of refugees from Africa and the Middle East into Western Europe has provoked a set of reactions strikingly similar to those we display on learning we have a terminal illness, according to the schema described by Elisabeth Kübler-Ross in her classic study On Death and Dying. First there is denial: ‘It’s not so serious, let’s just ignore it’ (we don’t hear much of this any longer). Then there is anger – how can this happen to me? – which explodes when denial is no longer plausible: ‘Refugees are a threat to our way of life; Muslim fundamentalists are hiding among them; they have to be stopped!’ There is bargaining: ‘OK, let’s decide on quotas; let them have refugee camps in their own countries.’ There is depression: ‘We are lost, Europe is turning into Europastan!’ What we haven’t yet seen is Kübler-Ross’s fifth stage, acceptance, which in this case would involve the drawing up of an all-European plan to deal with the refugees.

The rest is well worth reading. I urge you all to read and grapple with it, with the ideas Zizek puts forth.

3. And, finally, for your visual delectation, here's an excellent iteration of the editorial artform, combining god only knows how many movies into a single, solitary scene set in a crimson-lit dance club in the middle of Hell.