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I’ll admit that I used to be jealous of my compadres who were minorities in my BFA Creative Writing program. The rest of us were just crusty white kids with no rhythm.

So, I used to be a little jealous of the amount of anger material these minority writers had access to. There is a lot of inspiration in one’s cultural identity but if that inspiration doesn’t allow the artist to create works that break past the illusory bonds of time and space to that oneness that unites us all then the art won’t last and won’t have quite the impact the artist hopes it will. In fact, here is a definition of good art you can copy paste into your brilliant quotes file. This one comes from yours’ truly, Uncle Josh:

“Art (with a capital A) is all about using the contemporary forms of time and space (people, objects and their relationships) to blow apart the phenomenal differences that keep us each locked into what appears to be an inescapable prison (our own egos which are composed of our experience and emotional and intellectual reactions to the present moment, from which we project the future).”

But it is in this projection of the future where humanity’s greatest certain unalienable right exists–the right of the choice about how to act this moment. It is freedom of choice about how to act in the moment (in other words, creating their reality in the moment through sheer will) that allowed people overcome atrocities like The Holocaust where every bit of security involved in associating through one’s cultural identity was removed completely and the individual was reduced to a scrounging animal. This is the point where survival of the fittest and preservation of self becomes king and the social morays simply drop away like burning paper mache.

I have studied The Holocaust passionately now for sixteen years. I completed course upon course in college and have read book upon book about those twenty years in Germany that saw Hitler’s rise to power and a decimation of a culture almost as old as humanity’s recorded existence.

I have long asked why when thinking about the Holocaust. This is a very hard question because you are essentially asking for a sum value of millions of peoples’ lives in terms of a historical lesson (and what historical lesson could be worth the lives of over 150 million who died in a World War which was the direct result of one man and his dream team of terror?).

But here is my why from The Holocaust–individual freedom emerged intact despite the fact that untold masses of individuals were murdered and had their most sacred identities taken away–their cultural or group identification.

There is enormous associative power in group identification–that is why we are constantly being told to choose, in the moment, which social group we define ourselves as–black, white, gay, christian, conservative, liberal, rich, poor, etc. There is a certain amount of creative inspiration to be derived from one’s social group, but if you examine this inspiration closely you will see that the majority of art that comes from this source is usually so infused with the anger that comes from the tallying of group suffering that it has no breakthrough into the transcendent mystery which lies beyond time, space and our petty egos (which only last as long as we draw breath; the spirit is eternal and therefore incorruptible or haven’t you got that memo yet?).

So, while minorities may have a lot of inspiration to draw from that produces some great Saturday Night Live and Dave Chappelle skits, most of these are without any true breakthrough; they are improper art, using the artistic aesthetics put forth by James Joyce in A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man.

In-group anger can only take an artist as far as they are willing to ultimately let it go completely. Only by willingly letting go of our social identify and, ultimately, our individual identities in the moment, can we touch the true source of inspiration which lies inside each of us like a platinum encased diamond nugget at the centers of our being.

In fact, this is the exact message that I wrote about in my short story Pyrite (http://www.joshuaminton.com/fiction.htm).

I spent a lot of my late teens and early twenties being angry for other groups of people because my group identity (middle class white kid in a sea of other middle class white kids) was the system of oppression and the source of much of their anger. But I’m through being angry and I’m through defining myself with abstract concepts; I’ll leave that to the hacks and has-beens. I’m going to do my best to teach this concept of artistic aesthetics to other talented artists so that they too may find that thorny and weeded path inside themselves that will take them to the platinum crusted diamond that waits for them within.

Joshua Minton is President of an Internet publishing and business consulting corporation, Family Bliss Enterprises, Inc. He is also author of two novels, several short stories, poems and articles on art, philosophy, politics, sociology, science, popular culture, business, health insurance administration, internet marketing, blogging and personal success.

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How well can we impose our paradigm or hypotheses upon nature when we now know anti-gravity exists and Einstein’s cosmological constant is just at the beginning of being integrated into a set of laws that cannot explain the fact of its existence? How can we continue to reject the reality of spirituality when all materiality and its laws are wrong and produce immoral constructs? Sartre addresses this long before the massive knowledge of quantum physics became instrumental to the computers and realities we now face.

“The source of this unfortunate approach is well known: as Whitehead said, a law begins by being a hypothesis and ends by becoming a ‘fact’. When we say that the earth revolves, we do not feel as though we are stating a theory, or that we are relying on a system of knowledge; we feel that we are in the presence of the fact itself, which immediately eliminates us as knowing subjects in order to restore us to our ‘nature’ as objects of gravitation. For anyone with a realistic view of the world, knowledge therefore destroys itself in order to ‘become the world’, and this is true not only of philosophy but also of all scientific Knowledge. When dialectical materialism claims to establish a dialectic of Nature it does not present itself as an attempt at an extremely general synthesis of human knowledge, but rather as a mere ordering of the facts. And its claim to be concerned with the facts is not unjustified: when Engels speaks of the expansion of bodies or of electric current, he is indeed referring to the facts themselves - although these facts may undergo essential changes with the progress of science. This gigantic - and, as we shall see, abortive - attempt to allow the world to unfold itself by itself and to ‘no one’, we shall call ‘external’, or transcendental, dialectical materialism.” (6)

Does Sartre actually think science and the hypotheses of the prevailing paradigm are an “abortion” of the potential of man and his creative soulful potential? We leave this thought in your mind. Be careful to allow knowledge not “to destroy itself” and you will admit that is one of many possibilities. In the process of evaluating the immanence of Divine spirit in all things and the multiplicity of the totalized universe you will alternately wax parallel and alternative until the absurdity of our KNOWing will seem elegantly if not eloquently amusing. But Harold Pinter will never reach my funny bone and Camus will still be left saying suicide is the only alternative to incorporation. But before total ‘dis’-corporation into a void of pure rationality occurs let us revisit the absurdity of a unified transcendent field in the words of Sartre. Remember also, that truth is convergent, congruent (affinity applies) and growing, despite the Heisenbergian ‘uncertainty’ or ‘observer’ that Schr

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Are we humans beings really the masters of this planet? Do we have the authority to self-righteously assume global dominance? The following article is my view to the questions. It is certainly not definitive. It is just an expression of my own thoughts and opinions.

In my opinion, perhaps we should not assume that our species is central to the world and planet at large. A human economic system should ideally also take into account the well being of the entire ecosystem, which is body of Mother Earth. I will tend to regard the Mother Earth as a living consciousness with her various elements (water, air, wildlife, etc) constantly seeking to remain in harmonious equilibrium. Come to think of it, isn’t this quite like the way the body of a living being functions?

Perhaps, economy should not be about humans for humans only. We tend to see ‘less-than-holistically’ and believe that money-making has little or nothing to do with the welfare of our Mother Earth and the ecosystem. But the fact is we humans do take sustenance from the atmosphere, animal and plant kingdoms; therefore we are dependent upon other species and resources on Earth. As such, human activities should be accounted for within a equation that does not place the human species upon a pedestal (which is being treated as superior); but rather assigns the ’so-called intelligent biped’ objectively with other species and elements of this diverse planet. In my opinion, the current human activities are simply too self-absorbed within our own kind. The truth of things is that everything, ‘however insignificant it may appear to be, is in actual fact, unique. “Feeling special” and “above others” are simply beliefs concocted by the human psyche, and have relevance only in a human society.

Holistic & equitable replenishment & redistribution amongst all elements and species on Earth should be the a central theme for sustainable living, instead of the human biased “competitive” model. I feel that perhaps recycling of used materials may not be enough. Humans, being the so-called intelligent life form on Earth should actively develop sciences that deal with replenishment of plants, animal kingdoms and elements, keeping resources in equilibrium.

To achieve all that, perhaps the very mindset that first sets competition in motion has to be re-evaluated. Well, this ideal is certainly easier said than done.

Thank you for reading. I hope it has been interesting for you.

The author runs 2 sites: Dream Datum self growth resources and Idea Cosmo.

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