Category Archives: New Utopia

There is no way to know if new rules designed to promote entertainment via ball in play and fatigue in players are responsible for the spike of injuries after three rounds of the NRL season. But there is no way to tell if they are not, either.

Its too soon and the data is not conclusive. People are injured in rugby league and always have been. ARL Commission boss Peter Vlandys said: The injuries are on average with what they have been in previous years.

So perhaps it is an anomaly that concussions have gone up, that 21 players were forced off the field over the weekend, and that upwards of 50 players, several of them the games marquee entertainers, reside in the NRLs injury ward.

Rugby League Players Association boss Clint Newton does not assert that the rules have caused the increase in injuries. Nor is he saying they did not, either.

Were a code that in the last couple of years has changed rules to increase fatigue, Newton tells Guardian Australia. The players have had a tougher than usual pre-season as coaches look to adjust preparation to the rules. Clubs have done their best to adapt to the intensity of games. Theres a reduction in rest time and an increase in ball in active play.

And we know for a fact that under fatigue a player is more likely to make a mistake. Your decision making is challenged. That could be to put your head in the wrong spot in the tackle or to throw out an arm and collect an attacker high.

Newton is not decrying this, per se. He acknowledges that its part of sport to break down an opponent by tiring them out to affect their decision making. Newton argues, though, that players are operating at historically unmatched levels of intensity. He argues for balance.

We have to make sure were striking a balance between the welfare of the games greatest asset, the players, and the lionising of fatigue. It isnt the be-all-and-end-all of creating an outstanding game. We have to ask: what are we actually looking for? And is this utopia achievable?

It is not a binary argument but the trade-off appears to be about the entertainment value of the product, around which television can sell advertisements and cable subscriptions, and a sport which has become so much about attrition that its greatest asset the star actors in the entertainment are so beaten up they cannot act.

In the Raiders v Warriors game at GIO Stadium on Saturday afternoon, Ryan James and Sebastian Kris butted heads tackling the same man. Joe Tapine rolled his ankle jogging backwards. Curtis Scott banged up his rib. Cronulla had it worse with three men off the field with concussion Wade Graham, Briton Nikora and Will Kennedy - while Sione Katoa suffered a knee injury.

Were any of these because the new rules made them tired? Or has this been going on since 1908? Or both?

Ironically the game has never been as safe nor had a greater level of scrutiny and accountability. Not so long ago, rugby league was a savage game in which very few tackles didnt feature a swinging forearm into a jaw. As Matthew Johns said of his father Garys time as hardman of Cessnock Goannas: It was catch-and-kill.

Today, not so much. Indeed not at all. Yet rugby league, by dint of its very nature, must walk an incredibly fine line between peoples enjoyment of the games physicality and the resultant injury caused by the games physicality.

Newton says fans are acutely aware of the pressures on players, and they dont necessarily like it. If you turn the volume up too high and it has a negative impact on their team, its not what they want to see. No one wants to see Cronulla play 40 minutes without a reserve, especially given the rules weve had implemented over the last two years.

Its not about saying these new rules are definitely the problem. Theres no way to say that. But theres also no way to say they arent having an impact. Any data can be disputed. Theres no irrefutable data to support something of this nature. So anecdotal feedback from those at the coal face becomes important. Theyre going to know best.

The reality is, we have had a significant number of players express their concerns in the pre-season and now again following what had happened over the weekend. It is our role to voice their views and concerns while continuing to work with the NRL on addressing these matters.

There are 540 players in the RLPA. They dont agree on everything but and there is a consensus that they do not like being so tired they are in danger. And no longer can they rest for long in scrums.

What to do? The 18th man concussion substitute, which has been in play in NSW Cup, makes sense and was given approval in principle for NRL clubs after the ARLC met on Tuesday. From round five, an 18th player can be activated when three players from a team have failed HIA tests.

Vlandys said the commission had listened to players and clubs in making the move. Perhaps more important is how he and Abdo will react if the god-like stakeholder of TV begins to question why so many of the stars of its entertainment are too beaten up to entertain.

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Jury out on link between new NRL rules and spate of injuries - The Guardian

British Chinesedirector Wayne Che Yip has joined the creative team of Amazon OriginalThe Lord of the Ringstelevision series as a director and co-executive producer.

Yip joins the international ensemble cast, currently filming in New Zealand, to direct four episodes. He continues the work of Spanish filmmaker J.A. Bayona, who directed the first two episodes of the series.

Yip is best known for his work directing popular genre content includingHunters,Preacher,Utopia (Channel 4)andDoctor Who,and has recently directed episodes of Amazon Studios upcoming epic fantasy series,The Wheel of Time.

It is a true honour to be invited into the world of Tolkien by J.D. & Patrick and Amazon Studios. Every day I look forward to working with the incredible team here in New Zealand as we humbly contribute to the legacy of the greatest stories ever told,said Yip.

Amazon Studios forthcoming series is set thousands of years before the events of J.R.R. TolkiensThe HobbitandThe Lord of the Rings. Beginning in a time of relative peace, the series follows an ensemble cast of characters, both familiar and new, as they confront the long-feared re-emergence of evil to Middle-earth.

The series is led by showrunners and executive producers J.D. Payne & Patrick McKay, who are joined by executive producers Lindsey Weber, Callum Greene, J.A. Bayona, Beln Atienza, Justin Doble, Jason Cahill, Gennifer Hutchison, Bruce Richmond and Sharon Tal Yguado, co-executive producer Wayne Che Yip, and producer Christopher Newman.

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Director Wayne Che Yip joins Amazon's The Lord of the Rings series - Televisual

The South Korean music industry has long been an innovative scene, ripe with ideas to learn from. Just last year, when in-person concerts came to an abrupt halt, it was K-pop artists who quickly jumped on new technologies first. While they delivered some of the most jaw-dropping livestream shows of the pandemic era, stars in the West were still getting to grips with doing anything beyond Instagram Live shows from their living rooms. Even in the before times, the K-pop industry found a solution to declining physical album sales that US labels have slowly begun to take notes from.

Its no surprise, then, that one of the biggest labels in Korea could reshape the whole music industry worldwide with their continued slate of pioneering projects. In its plans for 2021 and beyond, Big Hit Entertainment recently rebranded as HYBE is leaving no stone unturned when it comes to pushing things forward, both at home and overseas.

Recent weeks have seen multiple news stories and presentations about the labels ambitions coming out of Seoul, each more exciting than the last. In January, the label teamed up with YG Entertainment home of BLACKPINK and BIG BANG and Korean web company Naver to announce the integration of the latters livestream platform V Live and Big Hits own fan community space Weverse. Shortly after, Big Hit and YG joined forces again this time with Universal Music Group and tech company Kiswe to officially launch VenewLive, a digital space offering a platform for cutting-edge virtual concerts.

Then there was the news that Big Hit and Universal were forming a strategic partnership that would, among other things, see a K-pop group formed in the US for the first time. The boyband will be pulled together through a survival show, like how ENHYPEN were formed through last years I-LAND, that will be broadcast in the US in 2022. Through the new union, Universal will also bring more of their artists onto Weverse, giving fans more opportunities to interact directly with their favourite acts.

ENHYPEN. Credit: Belift Lab

These new ventures arent just exciting for Big Hit or K-pop fans, though they have the potential to have huge impacts on the global music industry, regardless of genre or geographical location. Even as in-person concerts begin to return as coronavirus vaccines roll out, it seems like livestream shows will continue to be part of our lives in some form, for example with concerts attended by both a mixture of on and offline audiences. Investing in VenewLive and boundary-pushing technologies relevant to it means fans will be able to access the most innovative gigs in real life or from the comfort of their homes.

Weverse, meanwhile, could revolutionise the way we use social media particularly in light of increased conversation around the toxic spaces we inhabit on the internet. Thats not to say the platform is a peaceful utopia as with any online realm, there have been instances of negativity but the idea of signing up to a space specifically dedicated to one artist does feel like it lessens the chance of encountering trolls. Theres also the added benefit of being able to communicate not only with acts themselves but like-minded fans. Its like an extension of curating your timeline so you only see content relating to topics you like, but without the algorithm trying to lure you into looking at other things.

It also hints at a future for social media where, instead of making a catch-all account on platforms like Twitter and Instagram, we have very detached digital worlds that are split up by area or people of interest. Although ideologically very different and conceived for a very different motive, its a similar development as weve seen with other social media apps like Parler, where far-right groups have flocked to preserve free speech.

All of the above could also have perhaps the most important impact of all: Korean artists would finally be taken as seriously as they deserve to be by the global industry. The partnership with Universal feels like the tide could be turning in that respect but, as history has unfortunately shown us, things only become legitimate once its gotten the Western stamp of approval. However, giving people around the world easy access to content that will challenge their perceptions of K-pop survival shows highlighting the hard work, dedication and artistry that go into idol groups, for example will only speed up that process.

GFriend. Credit: Source Music

Headline-grabbing innovations and forward-thinking projects aside, theres something a lot simpler major labels in the West can learn from Big Hit too the value and importance not just of music, but fans experience of it. In his SXSW 2021 keynote speech last week (March 16), the labels Global CEO Lenzo Yoon highlighted how Big Hit had built its way up to the position the company is in now by nurturing the link between artists and fans.

The passion of fans is the engine that drives the industry, he noted. We must respect fans and treat them as companions in our growth and development. Its unusual to hear an industry executive give so many props and so uncynically to fans, but it serves as a reminder of how important relationships with audiences are.

In everything it does, Big Hit looks to break down the barriers fans might face, be that in language by creating the Learn Korean With BTS educational package, or in ties to artists by constantly providing new ways to interact with them on social media and in other content. The companys priority is its supporters, enhancing our enjoyment of music and the connections we make with it in brilliant new ways. Even if the rest of Big Hits innovations do the unlikely and dont work out, that alone is something the music world should pay big attention to.

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Big Hits new ventures might just reshape the music industry worldwide and for the better - NME.com

The True Eightfold Path

NEW YORK (PRWEB) March 30, 2021

For those who sincerely and honestly wish to transform themselves and achieve true happiness and Enlightenment, The True Eightfold Path: Guidepost for Self-Innovation released by Ryuho Okawa, World Teacher and CEO of Happy Science Group (March 30, 2021 IRH Press) is the most genuine and certain way to do so. It is not only worldly happiness and Enlightenment that this path brings, but also, and more importantly, it allows the transformation of character and the soul itself. This is the reason why The Eightfold Path is called The Secret Treasure of Mankind.

Many people are at least vaguely familiar with the core Buddhist teaching of the Eightfold Path, but what does it mean for people today? Over time, the meaning of Shakyamuni Buddhas teachings from over 2,500 years ago have been lost despite a myriad of modern interpretations by Buddhist scholars and secular scientists. Okawas The True Eightfold Path is not simply another interpretation of the old teachings; rather it is a new re-preaching of the Eightfold Path as if Buddha is reborn in this age and preaching to people for the sake of addressing soul-development in the contemporary world. The experience of a soul today differs in many ways from that which was experienced during the time of Shakyamuni Buddha. The earth as a whole has advanced immensely in science and technologies, however, technologies that can both help and hinder humanity are a part of everyday life.

The eight steps in The True Eightfold Path consist of right view, right thought, right speech, right action right living right effort right will and right meditation. The underlying concept which penetrates these eight steps is to accept and assume self-responsibility in ones life 100% of the time, not 99% or less, if one wishes to make transformation in his or her soul, elevate the quality of their soul and progress towards the attainment of Enlightenment.

Contemporary socio-political philosophies which de-emphasize individual responsibility, hierarchy, and the role of religion in society, are spreading rapidly. It is a common practice, in part due to Marxist indoctrination, to blame ones environment for all of ones difficulties in life. Environmental circumstances will always bring about some form of shortcoming, but as The True Eightfold Path teaches, all people are capable of changing their perspective of their life circumstances up to the present and in changing their views are able to subsequently change their life only if they become aware of and accept responsibility in their lives.

In The True Eightfold Path, Okawa gives step-by-step guidance for how to reflect on ones view, thought, speech, action and so on, and to first analyze and objectively reflect on oneself in accordance with the laws of cause and effect and the laws of the mind. One then utilizes these eight steps as eight keys to open the door of ones inner heart or soul, discarding the shells of ego (false self) one by one and generating the light within called Buddha Nature or Divine Nature (true self), the core part of the human soul. According to Okawa, many people have experienced self-transformation and attained overwhelming joy through the practice of The True Eightfold Path. People who practice the Eightfold Path practice have discovered countless hidden treasures in their lives disguised as setbacks and unfavorable experiences, and have come to embrace their own unique life with gratitude. This experience led them to attain some kind of Enlightenment.

However, Okawa also states that Enlightenment is neither a sudden nor spontaneous state of being. Enlightenment is something that must be worked on continuously and maintained throughout ones lifetime and even in the afterlife. This is because even if one thinks he or she has attained a small state of Enlightenment as a discovery, there is always another deeper level of Enlightenment or discovery that awaits and it will be a constant process of self-transformation and self-innovation. Hence, Enlightenment is like a journey which is an infinite work of progress, an eternal process of self-improvement.

A notable part in this book is that Okawa explains that individual endeavors towards Enlightenment will lead to the creation of a utopian society as a whole. In order to work towards a utopian society in which love, faith and democracy are omnipresent, one must first create a state of utopia within oneself. The utopia within ones own heart and mind spreads to become the utopia of the collective civilization.

The more an individual takes responsibility in their life to become independent or self-sustainable, the better the world becomes, and ones own work of striving towards Enlightenment may act as a beacon of light for others. Such is truly the only way in which a utopian vision for the world may ever be achieved. It is a path which must be based on the collective efforts of individual discipline toward Enlightenment.

Change begins from within oneself, and such is the crucial emphasis upon individual accountability as members of the human species. There must be personal transformation towards progress and benevolent self-innovation if the world is going to change in a positive direction. Ryuho Okawa has revived the power of The Eightfold Path and made it suitable for people who are seeking to better themselves in this age.

The True Eightfold Path is available at all major bookstores nationwide and online retailers, including Barnes & Noble and Amazon.

For in-depth commentary on the works of Ryuho Okawa, please listen to the Okawa Book Club podcast now streaming on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and Amazon Music.

IRH Press USA

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Ryuho Okawa, World Teacher and Happy Science CEO, Publishes The True Eightfold Path: Guideposts for Self-Innovation - PR Web

The Winnipeg Free Press cannot confirm these events. Please contact individual event organizers to find out if the event will take place

IEREK organizes the 2nd international conference on Utopian and Sacred Architecture Studies to be hosted as an online conference with the main aim of exploring the theories and practices stimulated over the last five centuries in a wide range of areas of thought, historiography, political sciences, social sciences, literary and art studies, social activism, and the visualization of possible worlds. Thus, it is the optimum opportunity to address the disputations that surround Utopia and its successors from its origin to our present and explore the impact on and by the utopian religious, and cultural ideals.This is an optimum time for reflection on the concept of utopia; whether that of the past, today, or the future. IEREK is working to encourage and create room for dreams and new ideas to give birth to a selection of historical utopias, the architecture of cities, utopian ideals, and the impact of religion and culture.

Tuesday, October 5, 2021 from 9:00 AM to 5:00 PM

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2nd international conference on Utopian and Sacred Architecture Studies - Winnipeg Free Press

When Montreal documentarian Peter Wintonick passed away in 2013, he left an impressive legacy in the world of documentary filmmaking behind him. More than just a documentary director, Wintonick was a massive champion and cheerleader of the documentary scene and he left one particularly cherished project unfinished: a documentary about the concept of utopia that he had been working on for years. When his daughter Mira Burt-Wintonick found the tapes her father had recorded, she took it upon herself to finish the film her father had started.

Wintopia is not that film. Not really.

Though the film is built around the footage in question, Wintopia soon becomes an infinitely more personal film in which Burt-Wintonick explores her relationship with her father through the images of him she finds but also the images of them together. One gets the idea from the film that Wintonick was constantly pointing a camera at the world around him and that untold amounts of home-movie footage existed from which to build the film. As it turns out, Wintonick may have shot a lot of footage in his career, but not much of it at home.

There actually arent that many home movies, says Burt-Wintonick. There are maybe four or five tapes, and theyre from when Im 5, when Im 11, and then from when Im older and we made a film together. Theres nothing in between those ages, which is kind of funny. But I was really happy to see that, as a record of who I was at those different ages. But the surprising thing and the kind of sad thing, really is seeing the footage where Im 5 or 6 and hes filming me. I seem really comfortable in front of the camera, and Im being very silly and joking around with him. I seem like a really happy, carefree kind of kid. When Im a preteen, I seem more annoyed still kind of having fun, but also kind of annoyed.

But watching the footage where Im 18 makes me so uncomfortable, because I can sense how uncomfortable I was as a teenager, she continues. Even though its probably very natural that as you become older, you become more self-conscious, it was just kind of sad to see that proof that I used to be this carefree, comfortable in her own skin kind of kid.

Having that record is so much more than having a photo. Video is such a strange medium that captures someones essence so fully. Their voice, their laugh, their mannerisms, their way of being its really kind of fascinating to have that. Even though I was clearly uncomfortable on camera as I got older, now Im really glad I have those records of these moments between me and my dad, especially the ones where Im younger and Im joking around with him. It just kind of captures this dynamic between us that I have memories of but its really special to have a concrete example of it.

Suffice to say that its a little daunting to interview someone who has made a film that already answers so many questions about itself. Most regular questions fly out the window because theyre not only answered in the film, they form the overall basis of the whole thing. Its a startlingly honest film not just in how it draws deeply and intimately from the directors life, but also in how blankly it states that it may not come to any pithy conclusion. It becomes clear that while Wintonick seems like a great father in a lot of the footage, his relationship with his daughter was not exactly the way he seems to depict it in footage where Mira isnt present. Wintopia becomes an emotional exercise in biographical archeology, one where the image of Wintonick inevitably becomes coloured by the untold hours his daughter has spent poring over his footage.

Its a selective archive, Burt-Wintonick explains. Its not a complete portrait. Its kind of the way you look at a photo of something that you remember and stop remembering the event and start remembering the photo of it. I think even though he wasnt filming everything and its not a full picture of him, now that hes gone, it feels like such an important connection to him. Just from talking to other people who have lost family members: you forget the sound of their voice, the sound of their laugh, the details about them become kind of blurry. Memories will evolve and erode anyway. I dont know if its eroding more than a normal grieving process. But its also interesting because I wasnt there for most of the footage in the film if he wasnt filming it, I wouldnt have seen those moments. I always think about how, normally, when someone dies, you dont get any new moments with them. Thats it. You only have memories that you can revisit. Maybe you can hear new stories about them from people, but with this I had like 200 hours of moments with him where he was so alive, so present. It was kind of a weird, confusing way to grieve, I think.

As personal as Wintopia is, one cant help but consider that film is a collaborative medium even if the movie youre making is mostly made up of archival footage. Its a particular challenge to grieve someone through countless hours of footage of them; its another challenge to do that with others collaborating as well.

I was pretty protective of the film, says Burt-Wintonick. We applied for funding early on but didnt really end up getting any early on in the process, and that ended up being really great. I didnt really want any outside expectations of the film like a deadline for a funder or a broadcaster. It would have been too much pressure to make something that some other outsider wanted it to be. So I was only really working with a very small team of people who were very open to letting me do what I wanted to do and letting me take the time I needed to take. The first few months, I was working with a woman that I know, who knew my dad also she had edited pilgrIMAGE, the film I had made with my dad so that was really helpful at first. There was a point where I really needed to work on it alone because I was trying to figure out what I was trying to say with the film, and I couldnt have anyone elses outside perspective influencing that.

So I spent a few years just working on it by myself, she continues. I would occasionally show people what I was working on. And then in the last stage, the last year of the film, that became too isolated. It was a dark window and I was just spending all day in a windowless editing room, looking at footage of my dead dad. (laughs) It was a bit depressing, so I brought in another editor who didnt know my dad. I always wanted to make the film something that was moving whether you knew my dad or not. Working with her was really helpful because it helped me figure out if he was coming across and what sense she was getting of him from the footage for someone who had never met him. But it was mostly about inviting a few key people into the process and they were all really respectful.

One of the most interesting things was working with the composer, she explains. Most of the film is just about these emotional shifts that Im going through in the meta-process of making the film: me trying to understand my dad or get to know my dad better and grieving him. So just communicating to the composer the subtle nuances of exactly what kind of music would represent exactly my grief at a specific moment was really interesting. It had to be so precise, and every time he would give me a draft of a song that was a bit too sad or a bit too dark. My grief is such a layered and complicated emotion, because it has love and sadness and it has all of these different things in it. It was a lot of finessing the language around emotion to try to communicate to him what I wanted it to sound like. Ultimately, he nailed it and its a really beautiful score, but I hadnt anticipated how challenging it would be to communicate how I was feeling in different stages in the dark of the film.

Some viewers heading into Wintopia might expect the film to be a more straightforward biographical documentary about a major figure in Canadian documentary history. I asked Burt-Wintonick if there was ever any concern about using the film to crystalize her fathers oeuvre and his standing in the film community.

I felt a lot of pressure to do him justice, in a way, she says. I was watching a lot of documentaries for inspiration that other people have made about their fathers. It was kind of hard to find movies about their fathers who are also filmmakers. I would watch My Architect, which is a son making a film about his architect father, but thats as if he had to build a building to honour his father. Using this medium that my father was so well-known and respected for using to honour his memory, that was a very specific pressure! (laughs) Its my first real film and Im mostly a radio documentary maker. I think he was respected and known in his lifetime, but there was also a lot of his work that went unseen and unacknowledged.

His behind-the-scenes work, his mentoring, just how much he influenced peoples films and their careers I really wanted to showcase that in the film. Even though he didnt direct that many films he directed maybe a handful of films he had his hands in helping so many people in the documentary community. I wanted to showcase that and showcase his optimism! That was the tension that I was really wrestling with in the film. I was very cynical, I think, about the world and about utopia, whereas he was really optimistic and hopeful about the fact that documentaries could really change things and make things better. Especially this year, where weve all been struggling, giving people a chance to spend time with this optimism that he had was a really meaningful thing. I know for me it was really inspiring to spend time with that energy that he had for trying to make things better.

Wintopia opens in Montreal theatres on Friday, March 26. Mira Burt-Wintonick will be participating in two Q&A sessions following the screening of the film: today, March 26 (Cinma du Muse, 6:30 p.m.) and on March 29 (Cinmathque qubcoise, 5:15 p.m.). Watch the trailer here:

For more film coverage, please visit our Film & TVsection.

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Montreal filmmaker Peter Wintonick is the subject of a very personal new film - Cult MTL

Chag Pesach sameach; gut yontif! These are among the traditional greetings for Passover, which starts at sundown this Saturday, March 27. Observant Jews will have cleaned the house of leavened foods and are preparing for the seder, a feast that includes ceremonial foods to commemorate the holiday: four cups of wine, an egg, matzah, bitter herbs, sweet charoset, and vegetables dipped in salt water.

The meal is not just a meal. It is a ritualized commemoration, done in an order, with prayer and storytelling ushered in by the question, Why is this night different from all other nights? Reading from the Haggadah tells the story of Abrahams covenant with God, the hardships of the Israelites, the exodus from Egypt, and the liberation of the Israelites from slavery. Participants recall the various plagues that God inflicted on the Egyptians, Pharaohs eventual acquiescence after the final and most horrific plague, and then Pharaohs pursuit of the fleeing people with the intent to kill them. God parts the waters of the sea to allow the people to pass, and then closes the waters, drowning Pharaohs troops. It is a cornerstone story to Jewish identity.

As to whether it happened: no archaeological evidence has been found that would corroborate a mass migration of almost three million Israelites, asserts Rabbi Burt Visotzky of the Jewish Theological Seminary. Nor does the account fit with the control Egypt had over vast territories during the late Bronze Age. Perhaps the story was passed from a different tribe or time. But the literal factuality is less important, I believe, than metaphor. To form an identity and a cohesive group, a people left behind all that had power over them: multiple gods and idols; a ruler who believed he was divine; access to comfort and plenty. They set off into the unknown and learned to trust their own God and their own utterly human and fallible leaders, and to do right.

The message of liberation from slavery is not unique to Judaism. Buddhist practice teaches of five hindrances and of entrapment from clinging to the five aggregates through ego grasping. One of the hindrances in particular, restlessness often referred to as monkey mind is compared to a kind of slavery. A person is liberated from it through learning, questioning, and close attention to cultivating mental peace, which is no easy feat given that the monkeys are intent on wrecking the house.

In Christianity, slavery appears in a different context, with a different message. Jesus proclaimed, for example, that no one can serve two masters (Matthew 6:24). Give up your slavery to money, Jesus was in effect saying, and become a slave to God. Paul called himself a servant of Jesus (Romans 1:1). At the time of early Christianity, slavery was a fact of the Roman Empire, and there is historical evidence that slaves were attracted to the movement in numbers only once it became an urban movement and upper class people often slave owners were attracted to it, writes professor of ancient history Dimitris Kyrtatas. Hence we see New Testament texts telling slaves to obey their masters with fear (Ephesians 6:5) as well as texts telling masters to treat their slaves better, to stop threatening them, because both slaveowner and slave have the same master in heaven (Ephesians 6:9). In Christianity, slavery was not something to be abolished; it was something to be done right. In fact, part of doing slavery right was for slaves to bear up under harsh treatment (beatings, rapes, and more) to emulate the suffering of Jesus (Peter 2:18). The ultimate goal was nothing here on earth: it was gaining the kingdom of God.

How we see and cultivate relationship with God/the Infinite, and how we see our own identity, determines how we live in this world. It determines what we value and what we view as moral and immoral. It determines our path and actions. It determines whether we celebrate our own liberation while recognizing and feeling regret for the suffering others experience through their own closed minds and closed hearts. It determines whether we strive toward our own liberation from the thoughts and desires and actions that ensnare us. It determines whether we accept suffering as par for the course, maybe even as something desirable, because we think that suffering has a greater good, like the miserable child in Ursula LeGuins famous story The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas, whose abject suffering enables all the citizens to live in a utopia. It determines whether we look the image of misery straight in the face, accept it, and return to all that makes us happy, or, like the few in Omelas who find the price too high, step out into the wilderness.

Nancy Thompson teaches comparative religion classes at Community College of Vermont and NVU-Online. She is author of Touching the Elephant: Values the Worlds Religions Share, and How They Can Transform Us.

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Speaking of Religion | Nancy Thompson: The Journey Out of Slavery - Bennington Banner

That all cultural institutions in America have been taken over by the Left is beyond question. The media, the academy, Hollywoodall are now in its clutches. Conservatives still cling to talk radio, just as tightly as they do to their guns and bibles, as President Obama so dismissively put it, but that is about the only redoubt of the sense-making institutions they still have.

This was no accident. Those who have studied the genesis of this annexation know that it was a deliberate long march through the institutions. That campaign was conceived in the late 1960s by the violent German activist Rudi Dutschke, a disciple of the non-violent but much more dangerous Frankfurt School academic Herbert Marcuse, who approved of Dutschkes plan.

Today, this strategy manifests in the demand that institutions be woke. The term, borrowed from African-Americanslangfor being awake, has come to mean not just any type of liberalism, but one denoted by an obsequious obsession with social issues, denunciations of whiteness, the insistence that the freest and most prosperous society today is hopelessly racist and in need of deep change, and the intolerant resolve to censor any deviation from any of these concepts through cancel culture. Other American institutions are teetering on the verge of a woke takeover.

The Churchesas in the institutionalized Abrahamic faithshave long been bastions of conservatism by their very nature, but they are now in danger of seeing their commitment to true justice and the care for the poor and the strangerhijacked in the name of Social Justice, a concept that undermines religion. Social Justice abandons forgiveness and concentrates on punishmentespecially, but not only, through forced redistribution of resources according to membership in categories of the supposedly oppressed and marginalized. Forgetting past sins, which the Bible repeatedly tells us is what God routinely does, is verboten.

Professional sports, too, have turned into pageants for ritualistic woke denunciations of the country and its history, the white race, etc. Despite being one of the most integrated areas of American life, the NBA, the NFL, and now MLB constantly remind viewers in need of escapism that our country is uniquely, structurally, institutionally, and systemically racist, sexist, and homophobic.

Still, all these areasthe media, the academy, the churches, sportsare basically volitional. You dont have to watch Monday Night Football; you can cancel your newspaper subscription; if your rabbi is too much of a social justice warrior, you simply switch synagogues. Most of us, however, have to do one thing every weekday: go to work. Ever since Adam bit the apple and God told him that henceforth by the sweat of your brow you shall eat bread, we have gotten up almost daily, put on overalls, a uniform, or a tie, and set forth to make a living.

Moreover, no American today is a self-contained individual who grows his own food, erects his own house, and makes his own clothes. Wemustbuy goods and services from businesses that produce them to satisfy our Maslowian basic needs. Therefore, no area of American life would be more devastating if it were to be taken over by the woke.

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The bad news is that business is the new battlefield: the woke have set their sights on corporate America. The good news is that the woke have so overplayed their hand that they have awakened a nascent but nonetheless furious resistance.

Those are the words of Stephen R. Soukup, who has written a delightful book on this battlefront,The Dictatorship of Woke Capital. Though it is a delight to read, full of facts and stimulating insights into the nature of our society and its religious and philosophical underpinnings, the book is also downright scary. The woke have indeed made great strides in their campaign to take over American businesses and the capital markets that fund them. Whether it is too late to mount a counterattack is not clear. But, as is the case when battling all ills, from disease to threats to our way of life, the first step is awareness of the problem and an understanding of its nature. This much Soukups compact book does in spades.

The book is divided into two sections: the first is a history of the evolution of the left, and the second documents the effects of this change on capital markets and businesses. Those who, like me, love the history of ideas, will be fascinated with the first part; those who like business and deconstructing how ideas impact actual human systems, will prefer the second. Those who want to prevent this from happening will need to understand both. Soukup explains near the middle of the book (and its so fundamental that he might have put it earlier) that woke capital is not a left-right issue, but a battle between those who would politicize all areas of life, and those who believe that there must be a line between the public and private spheres.

The Road to Wokeness

Soukup begins his history of ideas with a key observation: that the left has struggled to deal with the promise of earthly utopia made by its intellectual godfather, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, in the mid-18th century. Soukup here blames the Enlightenment, which he calls a three-century long attempt to construct a reason-based moral system to replace the Judeo-Christian framework. This project was doomed from the beginning by its refusal to recognize the premise upon which the Christian moral system was based: that man is flawed and neither reason nor science could fix him. The failure to deliver utopia led directly to nihilism and relativism. It exacerbated a crisis of belief and elevated the epistemological skepticism of Nietzsche to new heights. In response to socialisms disappointments, the left abandoned reason, abandoned reality and in the end rejected the Enlightenment itself in favor of relativism, writes Soukup.

It is important to observe that Soukup here makes a typical error, though one that does not undermine the books analysis, in tarring all of the Enlightenment with this charge of secularism and belief in the perfectibility of man. Had he said the Continental Enlightenment, he would have been on entirely safe ground. The Anglo-Scottish Enlightenment, however, was not aimed at God, and in fact understood mans flawsfor example his penchant to look after his self-interests. It worked with these flaws, in fact, to produce the greatest good for the greatest number.

These two schools of the leftthe Enlightenment and the nihilistic reaction to its failuresare the origin of todays assault on business and capital markets. Our storythe story of the politicization of business and its funding sourceshas two starting points, writes Soukup. These two streams of contemporary liberalism are diametrically opposite each other, one positing the belief that the entire world and all of mans social behaviors can be analyzed through the lens of objective science and the other insisting that this scientifically observed surface reality represents the repression of mans true nature.

The first leads to the progressives of the late 19th and early 20th century, men like Herbert Croly, Richard Ely, and Woodrow Wilsonand to their cherished principle that an appointed, professionally trained bureaucracy of public administrators would be better at guiding the affairs of men than men themselves. This turns on its head the principle on which the Anglo-Scottish enlightenment was basedthat those systems that take account of mans self-interest are more benign and democratic and produce a greater good for a greater number than those based on coercion. Scientism, as Soukup explains, is based on the belief that man is too ignorant or selfish to be trusted.

The second stream of contemporary liberalism also spins on the key question of how man satisfies his needs. It taught that the senses misrepresented reality and were not to be trusted to relay the necessary information. This stream was born in Europe, with Antonio Gramsci, the Frankfurt School, and the Parisian postmodernists. Marcuse thought, for example, that the satisfaction of needs got in the way of the revolution needed to overthrow the bourgeoisie: All liberation depends on the consciousness of servitude, and the emergence of this consciousness is always hampered by the predominance of needs and satisfactions.

What this second stream tells us, Soukup explains, is that if man was ever to be truly happy, ever able to be what nature intended him to be, he would first have to shed the false consciousness of capitalisms self-interested civilization.

These two trends, though contradictory, completely changed America. They blended with one another to create a new American weltanschauung, Soukup writes. Out of this cocktail come contradictory ideas such as the fetishization of scientific methods, the belief that American traditions blocked progress, and the belief that a trained permanent administrative state was superior to individual planning. Only one thing now stood in the way of the emergence of the New American Man, namely, the Old American Man who was pretty happy and didnt want to change.

This is invariably the problem with anything the left ever tries: Che Guevaras Nuevo Hombre, the New Man, just never shows up. Human nature, it turns out repeatedly, is unchangeable.

What kept Old American Man grounded, says Soukup, was his job. That Old American Mans ability to satisfy his needs kept him happy was something that drove Marcuse and his Frankfurt School cohort nuts. They find their soul in their automobile, hi-fi set, split-level home, kitchen equipment, Marcuse wrote dismissively in 1964. As Soukup described Old American Man, he had a job, likely a good job. He got up in the morning, went to work, came home, had dinner with his family, went to bed, and got up to repeat the whole cycle afresh, five days a week. And it was all made possible by American business. Soukup then gives us the famous Calvin Coolidge line about the business of America being business, but also adds what Coolidge then said about Americans: They are profoundly concerned with producing, buying, selling, investing and prospering in the world.

But American business was about to change, as the new love for the scientific method turned into the pursuit of scientific planning for businesses, including a new player, the stakeholderthe employees, the consumers, and the residents who may live near a plantwhose interests supposedly diverge from those of the shareholder. The eager supporters of stakeholder activism gavethe idea a superior moral forcethe narrative that what mattered was making profits was supplanted with the theory that stakeholders were ends in themselves. The stakeholder became superior to the shareholder and subject to the planners actions. And the superiority was not simply moral, but also in terms of the bottom line. Soukup quotes professors Thomas Donaldson and Lee Preston as writing in 1995 on the evolution of the stakeholder model that whatever their methodologies, these studies have tended to generate implications suggesting that adherence to stakeholder principles and practices achieves conventional corporate performance objectives as well or better than rival approaches. Stakeholder analysis became, Soukup tells us, a key concept in corporate strategic analysis and planning.

The problem here, writes Soukup, is an old one: these planning theorists applied purely systemic, scientific methods to phenomena that were not easily shoehorned into a scientific method, i.e., human affairs. In one of the books best lines, Soukup writes that the little human animal has a mind of his own and defies behaving in ways that fit the statistical model.

The supporters of stakeholder theoryand also of the obviously false idea that the interests of the stakeholder and the shareholder always divergeneeded a foil, and Soukup makes a good case that they set up a strawman opponent in the ideas of Milton Friedman, especiallya 1970 essay he wroteforThe New York Times Magazine.

In the essay, the monetarist economist, who would win a Nobel Prize six years later, explained that the corporate manager is the agent of the individuals who own the corporation and that his responsibility was to conduct the business in accordance to their desires, which generally will be to make as much money as possible. This somehow was traduced later as a cult of shareholder value which, to critics, meant short-termism and ignoring the interests of stakeholders, things Friedman didnt say and wouldnt have said because theyre nonsensical. None of this matters, writes Soukup. The only thing that matters is the myth of Friedman, the myth of the greedy shareholder and the rapacious capitalists, the myth that shareholders and stakeholders must, always and everywhere, be opposed to one another.

Tactics of a Culture War

To show how all of this is implemented to make business woke, Soukup offers a very useful rundown of how leftist activists (mis)use the process by which public (that is, publicly traded) corporations govern themselves. As he explains, the activists hijack the annual general meeting of shareholders, the proxy statements that companies file with the SEC to describe what will happen at the meeting, the shareholder proposals that shareholders make to corporate management, and the proxy advisory services that provide advice to large asset managers. The shareholder proposal is the primary tool of the corporate activists, writes Soukup. Activists often buy stock in a corporation in order to disrupt annual meetings through their proposals, and the asset managers and the proxy process help them in their endeavors.

Chapter 8, the chapter that gives a rundown of the players on the left that abuse this entire process, is 39 pages, by far the longest in the book, nearly one-fourth of it. In it, Soukup explains how large asset managers such as Black Rock and State Street have been taken over by CEOs (Larry Fink in the case of the first, Ronald OHanley in the second) that agree with the goals of the left. Because they must be passive investorsthat is, they must invest in indexed funds and cant sell a company simply because it does not conduct business with the values the asset manager CEO embracesthese CEOs feel they must become activists by pushing the companies they own ever leftward.

The same forces are at work with proxy advisory services, an industry that is basically a duopoly: Institutional Shareholder Services (ISS) and Glass Lewis account for 97 percent of the business. They are both pro-activism, and because they offer research services and then make recommendations to asset managers on how they should vote on shareholder proposals, they shape the perception of what investors interests should be before telling those investors how to vote those interests. Interestingly, among the players on the left that are tipping American business in that direction, Soukup names the Securities and Exchange Commission, whose career officials, he says, are often taught, trained and encouraged to apply their own values to the execution of their duties. (Full disclosure: this author was speechwriter to SEC Commissioner Christopher Cox in 2005-2006).

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The chapter on players on the right is, not coincidentally, the shortest in the book at eight pages long, and names outside players, like the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) and the Capital Research Center, indispensable organizations made up of hard-working Americans whom I know well, but who can hardly compete with Larry Fink, ISS, and the SEC.

Soukup, finally, also takes the countrys biggest and more important corporations, such as Apple and Disney, to task for trying to dictate moral matters to the American people when they dont like what voters decide, while at the same time coddling the dictators in Beijing because they dont want to lose out on 1.4 billion consumers.

Butand this is an important butthe dictatorship of woke capital is not inevitable. The books title is in fact taken from the title the editors of the journalFirst Thingsgave toa powerful speechthat Arkansas Senator Tom Cotton gave in June 2019. As liberal activists have lost control of the judiciary, they have turned to a different hub of power, Cotton said. In a democracy, we resolve our differences through democratic debate; what should never happen is a billion-dollar corporation trying to dictate these moral questions to us. America has awakened, finally, to what the woke are doing.

The way back will have to involve, unfortunately, using the courts. Much of what corporations do now is illegal, or should be, especially the new emphasis on subdividing along racial lines. One man who has done much work in this area is Chris Rufo, the director of the Center for Wealth and Poverty at the Discovery Institute. Rufo is gathering lawyers who will take up cases pro-bono, instilling fear in corporate hearts as they do so. Conservatives, too, can take a page from what the woke have done by using shareholder meetings to get their ideas across. Repeating these dubious practices of the left is distasteful, I will admit, but theMarquess of Queensberry Ruleshave not done conservatives a lot of good. And still, there are no guarantees that we will be able to depoliticize the corporation.

Are there flaws in this book? Some, like its overbroad characterization of the Enlightenment, and an insufficient discussion of how Human Resources departments are used to introduce Critical Race Theory in trainings thatamount to workplace harassment. But despite the occasional flaw, anyone who wants to understand how the woke are taking over our engines of growth would be well served to read Soukups manifesto.

Read the original here:

The Long March Through the Corporations - Heritage.org

Sing, o muses of the house of unceasing calamities!

Over the past three years, the drama behind the scenes at the Volksbhne in Berlin has surpassed any onstage. To say that the company has struggled would be putting it mildly: Depending on your point of view, the goings-on have increasingly resembled either a Greek tragedy or a satyr play.

Since 2017, dysfunction if not outright misfortune has dogged the venerable theater, which, like most in Berlin, is publicly run. It began when the minister of culture at the time fired the longtime artistic director Frank Castorf, who had led the house for 25 years and was known to rule with an iron fist. Berlin politicians passed the torch to Chris Dercon, a former director of the Tate Modern in London.

Berliners vehemently objected; the theater was briefly occupied by protesters. Feces were left in front of Dercons office. He quit only months in and was replaced by Klaus Drr, who was supposed to fill the vacancy until Ren Pollesch, one of Germanys leading dramatists and a veteran of Castorfs Volksbhne, took over as artistic director in 2021.

Last week, Drr abruptly resigned over sexual harassment allegations. Yet in the midst of a trying season for theaters worldwide, the Volksbhne has plowed ahead with an ambitious series of premieres inspired by ancient Greek drama and myth called Polis/Reset.

Although the cycle examines the relevance of its classical sources from the contemporary perspective of our worlds environmental and economic ills, the themes of unappeased gods, inescapable fates and tragic flaws seem oddly appropriate to the Volksbhne in light of its long-running bad luck.

Half of the eight productions planned for Polis/Reset are streaming on the Volksbhnes website. The shows are a diverse crop, but they all confront, to varying degrees, the existential issues facing humanity in the Anthropocene, the era in which humans are the dominant influence on the natural world.

Oedipus is the last king of the Anthropocene. This is our last winter. No one will escape this catastrophe, an actor intones early in Anthropos, Tyrant (Oedipus), an associative and sometimes pedantic stage essay by the writer-director Alexander Eisenach. Of the productions in the Volksbhnes series, this one, loosely based on Sophocles Theban Plays, most directly addresses environmental and economic devastation. In the middle of the performance, the marine biologist and climate expert Antje Boetius delivers a lecture on the Anthropocene that is informative, though dry.

I enjoyed some of the snappier slogans, such as Tragedy has become the language of science and Awaking the wrath of the gods is not a metaphor. Its very real. But it is possible to agree while still feeling that the show is rough around the edges.

Since it couldnt be shown in front of a live audience, the theater presented it as a livestream in 360 degrees: It was filmed with an omnidirectional camera, and viewers at home were able to control their perspective of the stage. The effect was kind of cool, although it seemed more like an interesting experiment with technology than a full-fledged production. My internet connection was too weak to view it as intended, in razor-sharp 4K.

Oedipus and the other rulers of the ancient world were judged by their ability to keep nature in balance and the deities happy. The director Lucia Bihler put an environmentally conscious spin on the divine wrath in Iphigenia. Sad and Horny in Taurerland, a reworking of Euripides two Iphigenia plays that is peppered with cheeky dialogue by the young Austrian writer Stefanie Sargnagel.

In the original, Agamemnon, king of Mycenae and commander of the Greek fleet, sacrifices his daughter Iphigenia to the goddess Artemis to gain favorable winds for sailing. Bihlers staging suggests environmental parallels: with the deities refusal to bestow natures fortune on humanity and with the notion of mortgaging the future that child sacrifice represents. In the evenings irreverent second half, Iphigenia (the young American-born actress Vanessa Loibl) is whisked away to the island of Tauris, where she works in a call center alongside a vulgar, funny gang of women who put up with verbal abuse from prank callers.

Iphigenias sacrifice is the preamble to The Oresteia, Aeschylus tragic trilogy about Agamemnons family. The young German director Pinar Karabulut has tackled Eugene ONeills 1931 play cycle, Mourning Becomes Electra, which transposes the action of The Oresteia from ancient Argos to New England shortly after the Civil War. Although there is much to admire in Karabuluts muscular production, it turns ONeills tragic cycle into a dreary and sordid soap opera.

On the plus side, the production looks great: sleek and stylish, with colorful costumes and props dominated by reds and blues. The atmosphere of surreal domestic horror is heightened by visual allusions to David Lynchs Blue Velvet and Roman Polanskis Rosemarys Baby. Those scenes are effectively unsettling, but they also seem irrelevant. Another element that doesnt quite work is a bracing monologue about race delivered by Malick Bauer, the only Black actor in the companys performing ensemble. Written by a dramaturge, Laura Dabelstein, the soliloquy is a very politically incorrect disquisition about prejudice in Germany, designed to shake the audience up, among other ways, with the repeated use of the N-word. Its a powerful text and Bauer delivers it with conviction, but it feels like a forced bid for timeliness.

ONeills play stands in a long line of works refashioned from Greek sources. One of the earliest is the Roman poet Ovids Metamorphoses, written in A.D. 8 and comprising roughly 250 myths. In this epic poem, women turn into trees and birds, drowned men become flowers, and gods transform themselves into animals.

Like Iphigenia, Claudia Bauers Metamorphoses [overcoming mankind] doesnt strain for relevance. Its an arresting production that combines surreal pantomime and song. For the majority of the performance, the actors wear blank masks. They become mythical characters through movement accompanied by live music (featuring the accordion virtuoso Valentin Butt) and voice-over narration delivered by actors whose faces are projected above the stage.

Metamorphoses proposes the transformative world of myth as an alternative to the Anthropocene. Even though there is much violence in Ovid, including cannibalism and rape, the production holds up the enchanted symbiosis between man and nature as a sort of utopia. Of the Volksbhnes digital streams, its the one with the most rhythm and verve, thanks to skillful filming and editing. Its also the only one Im dying to see live once theaters reopen.

Polis/Reset is a step toward making the Volksbhne a place for engag theater that tackles burning issues. Castorf, the former artistic director, didnt go in for topicality. Its hard to imagine him ever structuring a season around environmental themes.

The recently departed Drr deserves credit for replenishing the acting ensemble. This versatile group of 17 has been the most consistently exciting thing about the new Volksbhne, and many of them, including Bauer and Loibl, are prominent in Polis/Reset.

It remains to be seen whether Pollesch will be able to lift the curse placed on the house by the theatrical deities when he arrives in the fall. He faces formidable artistic and managerial challenges. I pray that Pollesch, who, like Castorf, favors intense theatrical partnerships with a small group of collaborators, doesnt send the acting ensemble packing when he takes over. That would be a real tragedy.

Read this article:

Theater Review: Polis/Reset at the Volksbhne in Berlin - The New York Times

The City as a Data Field: Graz Museum shows us what the future might be like

A new exhibition in Graz Museum

On 26 March, Graz Museum presented the exhibition The City as a Data Field - How we want to live in the future at a press conference. In eleven rooms, the museum gives the visitors an opportunity to see how the city will change in the future within our own lifetimes.

The exhibition's narrative is based on images suggested by Vilm Flusser, a philosopher of science, and his plea for "designing fate" and "venturing utopia" as playful testing of alternate possibilities for a "decent" existence in response to the crisis.

In each room, there is a QR code that will lead visitors to themed tours, as well as permanently installed tablets for further discussions. Furthermore, as a visitor, you get a marble that you can put into a box in the final room - and thus answer the question of whether technology and science will help create a better world or not.

The city is conceived from a wide variety of data - one can certainly puzzle over which well-known Graz buildings are shown on the ground in cartographic outlines - a different type of data processing. For City Councilor for Culture Gnter Riegler (VP) it is also a question of how the future will change through digitisation since data is constantly being enquired and recorded in our world.

The designers will not stop with the exhibition in the Graz Museum. After its end, there will be a ten-week discourse festival on the topics of the exhibition rooms, held partly in the GrazMuseum and in GrazMuseum Schloberg, as well as at prominent cultural locations, including lectures on individual topics and featuring initiatives from the city.

Continued here:

Graz Museum imagines the city in the future through a new exhibition - TheMayor.EU