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September 17, 2019

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Global Multimedia and Multidisciplinary Cultural Organization Empowering and Inspiring Minds to Promote Social Change and Raise Consciousness

A MARVELLOUS PARADISE I want to tell you a story.

A MARVELLOUS PARADISE

I want to tell you a story. It is about a friend who lost his eyesight in a car accident. His world is entirely one of darkness, all the time. Do you know what he told me? .

He said that if he could see again, he would be in paradise. How I wish I could fulfill his wish. If I cannot help him, at least I can share his insight with you: .

Do not wait until you lose your eyesight before knowing how happy you can be just by opening your eyes. You have excellent eyes, and each time you open them a marvelous paradise of forms and colors appears.
- Chan Khong 📸 @artdifo

THE ONLY CHOICE TO MAKE Whatever it is, coronavir

THE ONLY CHOICE TO MAKE

Whatever it is, coronavirus has made the mighty kneel and brought the world to a halt like nothing else could. Our minds are still racing back and forth, longing for a return to “normality”, trying to stitch our future to our past and refusing to acknowledge the rupture. .

But the rupture exists. And in the midst of this terrible despair, it offers us a chance to rethink the doomsday machine we have built for ourselves. Nothing could be worse than a return to normality.

Historically, pandemics have forced humans to break with the past and imagine their world anew. This one is no different. It is a portal, a gateway between one world and the next.

We can choose to walk through it, dragging the carcasses of our prejudice and hatred, our avarice, our data banks and dead ideas, our dead rivers and smoky skies behind us. Or we can walk through lightly, with little luggage, ready to imagine another world. And ready to fight for it. - Arundhati Roy 📸 @jim_de_block

FROM ONE ECSTASY INTO ANOTHER Do you know what I

FROM ONE ECSTASY INTO ANOTHER

Do you know what I would answer to someone who asked me for a description of myself, in a hurry? This:

For indeed my life is a perpetual question mark--my thirst for books, my observations of people, all tend to satisfy a great, overwhelming desire to know, to understand, to find an answer to a million questions. And gradually the answers are revealed, many things are explained, and above all, many things are given names and described, and my restlessness is subdued. Then I become an exclamatory person, clapping my hands to the immense surprises the world holds for me, and falling from one ecstasy into another. .

I have the habit of peeping and prying and listening and seeking--passionate curiosity and expectation. But I have also the habit of being surprised, the habit of being filled with wonder and satisfaction each time I stumble on some wondrous thing. The first habit could make me a philosopher or a cynic or perhaps a humorist. But the other habit destroys all the delicate foundations, and I find each day that I am still...only a Woman!
- Anaïs Nin 📸 @marisa

THE VIRUS TEACHING US A LESSON Nothing ever goes

THE VIRUS TEACHING US A LESSON

Nothing ever goes away until it has taught us what we need to know …nothing ever really attacks us except our own confusion. Perhaps there is no solid obstacle except our own need to protect ourselves from being touched. .

Maybe the only enemy is that we don’t like the way reality is now and therefore wish it would go away fast. But what we find as practitioners is that nothing ever goes away until it has taught us what we need to know. .

If we run a hundred miles an hour to the other end of the continent in order to get away from the obstacle, we find the very same problem waiting for us when we arrive. .

It just keeps returning with new names, forms, manifestations until we learn whatever it has to teach us about where we are separating ourselves from reality, how we are pulling back instead of opening up, closing down instead of allowing ourselves to experience fully whatever we encounter, without hesitating or retreating into ourselves.
- Pema Chödrön 🎨 Luis Ricardo Falero

YOU ARE A GUEST HERE, NOT THE MASTER . We fell as

YOU ARE A GUEST HERE, NOT THE MASTER .

We fell asleep in one world, and woke up in another.

Suddenly Disney is out of magic,
Paris is no longer romantic,
New York doesn't stand up anymore,
the Chinese wall is no longer a fortress, and Mecca is empty.

Hugs and kisses suddenly become weapons, and not visiting parents and friends becomes an act of love.

Suddenly you realise that power, beauty & money are worthless, and can't get you the oxygen you're fighting for.

The world continues its life and it is beautiful. It only puts humans in cages. I think it's sending us a message: "You are not necessary. The air, earth, water and sky without you are fine. When you come back, remember that you are my guests. Not my masters." - Anonymous 📸 @seanjmundy Please support Sean Mundy if you can by buying prints of his artwork

A DREADFUL TIME FOR THOSE AT HOME, IN HELL. Think

A DREADFUL TIME FOR THOSE AT HOME, IN HELL.

Thinking of you. Those who are at a greater risk now of being attacked, hurt, burnt, raped, humiliated, beaten, assaulted and killed. .

Those who have no choice at the moment but to stay in, locked in in isolation with their abuser. Those who were already in grave danger now feeling completely helpless. .

Those who felt they couldn’t leave now feeling a million times more afraid. Those who are silently suffering in pain. Thinking of you. Every day.

PHOTOGRAPHY AS ART But the very question of wheth

PHOTOGRAPHY AS ART

But the very question of whether photography is or is not an art is essentially a misleading one. Although photography generates works that can be called art --it requires subjectivity, it can lie, it gives aesthetic pleasure-- photography is not, to begin with, an art form at all. .

Like language, it is a medium in which works of art (among other things) are made. Out of language, one can make scientific discourse, bureaucratic memoranda, love letters, grocery lists, and Balzac's Paris. Out of photography, one can make passport pictures, weather photographs, pornographic pictures, X-rays, wedding pictures, and Atget's Paris. .

Photography is not an art like, say, painting and poetry. Although the activities of some photographers conform to the traditional notion of a fine art, the activity of exceptionally talented individuals producing discrete objects that have value in themselves, form the beginning photography has also lent itself to that notion of art which says that art is obsolete. .

The power of photography --and its centrality in present aesthetic concerns-- is that it confirms both ideas of art. But the way in which photography renders art obsolete is, in the long run, stronger.
- Susan Sontag 📸 @robwoodcoxphoto

LANGUAGE ALONE IS MEDITATION . Is there no contex

LANGUAGE ALONE IS MEDITATION .

Is there no context for our lives? No song, no literature, no poem full of vitamins, no history connected to experience that you can pass along to help us start strong? You are an adult. The old one, the wise one. Stop thinking about saving your face. Think of our lives and tell us your particularized world. Make up a story. Narrative is radical, creating us at the very moment it is being created. .

We will not blame you if your reach exceeds your grasp; if love so ignites your words they go down in flames and nothing is left but their scald. Or if, with the reticence of a surgeon's hands, your words suture only the places where blood might flow. We know you can never do it properly - once and for all. Passion is never enough; neither is skill. But try. For our sake and yours forget your name in the street; tell us what the world has been to you in the dark places and in the light. .

Don't tell us what to believe, what to fear. Show us belief s wide skirt and the stitch that unravels fear's caul. You, old woman, blessed with blindness, can speak the language that tells us what only language can: how to see without pictures. Language alone protects us from the scariness of things with no names. Language alone is meditation.
- Toni Morrison 📸 @edgarazevedo

THE COLLECTION OF MYTHS The American Negro has th

THE COLLECTION OF MYTHS

The American Negro has the great advantage of having never believed the collection of myths to which white Americans cling: that their ancestors were all freedom-loving heroes, that they were born in the greatest country the world has ever seen, or that Americans are invincible in battle and wise in peace, that Americans have always dealt honorably with Mexicans and Indians and all other neighbors or inferiors, that American men are the world's most direct and virile, that American women are pure. .

Negroes know far more about white Americans than that; it can almost be said, in fact, that they know about white Americans what parents—or, anyway, mothers—know about their children, and that they very often regard white Americans that way. And perhaps this attitude, held in spite of what they know and have endured, helps to explain why Negroes, on the whole, and until lately, have allowed themselves to feel so little hatred. .

The tendency has really been, insofar as this was possible, to dismiss white people as the slightly mad victims of their own brainwashing.
- James Baldwin 📸 @bloomandplume

SELF ISOLATION CAN HEAL YOU . Look around. Among

SELF ISOLATION CAN HEAL YOU .

Look around. Among your family, coworkers, and friends, can you see how everyone has different levels of perception? Just observe this closely. If you know a few people who seem to have a greater clarity of perception than others, watch how they conduct their body. They often have a certain poise without practice. .

But just a little practice can make an enormous difference. If you sit for just a few hours a day with your spine erect, you will see that it will have an unmistakable effect on your life. You will now begin to understand what I mean by the geometry of your existence. Just the way you hold your body determines almost everything about you. Another way of listening to life is paying attention to it experientially, not intellectually or emotionally. .

Choose any one thing about yourself: your breath, your heartbeat, your pulse, your little finger. Just pay attention to it for eleven minutes at a time. Do this at least three times a day. Keep your attention on any sensation, but feel free to continue doing whatever you are doing. If you lose attention, it doesn’t matter. Simply refocus your attention. .

This practice will allow you to move from mental alertness to awareness. You will find the quality of your life experience will begin to change.
- Sadhguru 📸 @neringarekasiute 👦🏾 @the.greatdane

CHILDREN AND SEXUAL ABUSE Both boys and girls can

CHILDREN AND SEXUAL ABUSE

Both boys and girls can be victims of sexual abuse, but girls are six times more likely to be abused. What are the signs that a child is being sexually abused? .

Children often don't talk about sexual abuse because they think it is their fault or they have been convinced by their abuser that it is normal or a "special secret". .

Children may also be bribed or threatened by their abuser, or told they won't be believed. A child who is being sexually abused may care for their abuser and worry about getting them into trouble.

Here are some of the signs you may notice:

Changes in behaviour – a child may start being aggressive, withdrawn, clingy, have difficulties sleeping or start wetting the bed.
Avoiding the abuser – the child may dislike or seem afraid of a particular person and try to avoid spending time alone with them.
Sexually inappropriate behaviour – children who have been abused may behave in sexually inappropriate ways or use sexually explicit language.
Physical problems – the child may develop health problems, including soreness in the genital and anal areas or sexually transmitted infections, or they may become pregnant.
Problems at school – an abused child may have difficulty concentrating and learning, and their grades may start to drop.
Giving clues – children may also drop hints and clues that the abuse is happening without revealing it outright. - National Health Service, UK 📸 @leilaamat

A COMMON FORCE The Black female is assaulted in h

A COMMON FORCE

The Black female is assaulted in her tender years by all those common forces of nature at the same time that she is caught in the tripartite crossfire of masculine prejudice, white illogical hate and Black lack of power.

The fact that the adult American Negro female emerges a formidable character is often met with amazement, distaste and even belligerence. It is seldom accepted as an inevitable outcome of the struggle won by survivors and deserves respect if not enthusiastic acceptance.
- Maya Angelou 📸 @jamallosterholm 👧🏿 @rock_riv

THE WOMAN’S PERSPECTIVE . Men who are in prison

THE WOMAN’S PERSPECTIVE .

Men who are in prison for rape think it's the dumbest thing that ever happened... it's isn't just a miscarriage of justice; they were put in jail for something very little different from what most men do most of the time and call it sex. .

The only difference is they got caught. That view is nonremorseful and not rehabilitative. It may also be true. It seems to me that we have here a convergence between the rapists's view of what he has done and the victim's perspective on what was done to her. .

That is, for both, their ordinary experiences of heterosexual intercourse and the act of rape have something in common. Now this gets us into immense trouble, because that's exactly how judges and juries see it who refuse to convict men accused of rape. A rape victim has to prove that it was not intercourse. She has to show that there was force and that she resisted, because if there was sex, consent is inferred. .

Finders of fact look for "more force than usual during the preliminaries". Rape is defined by distinction from intercourse - not nonviolence, intercourse. They ask, does this event look more like fucking or like rape? But what is their standard for sex, and is this question asked from the women's point of view? .

The level of force is not adjudicated at her point of violation; it is adjudicated at the standard for the normal level of force. Who sets this standard?
- Catharine A. MacKinnon 📸 @__adey__

FIRE OF HATRED Acid throwing is a specific and ho

FIRE OF HATRED

Acid throwing is a specific and horrible act of violence which, according to official statistics, is on the rise in Iran.

This kind of violence is mostly against women and children. These attacks are often done with the intent to disfigure, maim, torture and destroy the social life and future of their victims.

The motivation to commit this type of violence is cultural destitution and intolerance. It most often happens in situations of family conflict: whether rejected marriage proposals, divorce requests or revenge.

In addition to physical and psychological damage, the victims face the experiences of social stigma and blame.

Across Iran, such victims are in dire need of medical and financial support as well as counseling services. Unfortunately, there is no governmental or even non-governmental organizations who attend to these issues in the country. Thus, burn victims have to treat themselves with recourse only to public aid and charitable donations. —Asghar Khamseh for Lens Culture 📸 Asghar Khamseh

DEEP SOCIAL INEQUALITIES EXPOSED The lockdown is

DEEP SOCIAL INEQUALITIES EXPOSED

The lockdown is necessary, no doubt, but it is a catastrophe for poor Indians. Some families at least live together in urban slums, but millions of migrant labourers are separated from their wives, parents and children back in the village. Lockdown means being confined to dingy cells that pass for rented accommodation, usually shared with six or seven other labourers.

In pre-Covid-19 days, they could spend some time outside these cells, chatting with others on the stairs or landings of their tenements, inhaling some of Delhi’s particulate matter. Now social distancing has made even that impossible.

Former maid Pushpa used to spend the day with her toddler in a tiny rented room while her husband and in-laws went out to work. Now all of them are locked up in that one room 24/7.

The lockdown has stripped the poor of the one thing that allowed them to hang on to a shred of dignity: work. When a poor Indian saw a rich man rushing off to work in his car, getting busy to support his family, he could feel that he too was working to be able to put food on the table that evening for his children. The lockdown has taken away this function and rendered him truly helpless.

Weirdest of all, none of this suffering is visible. Homebound as the rich are, the poor have become truly invisible, apart from the images on the news and in the papers. They have been walled off. And yet you can feel it. In one passage, Proust talks of how, as a child, he could experience the summer heat outside more intensely and vividly, lying inside his darkened bedroom, than he could if he had been outside in the bright sunshine. That is what some of us are feeling now, safe inside our homes while the suffering happens outside somewhere. - Amrit Dhillon, The Guardian

TOXIC MASCULINITY KILLING MEN The concept of toxi

TOXIC MASCULINITY KILLING MEN

The concept of toxic masculinity encourages an assumption that the causes of male violence and other social problems are the same everywhere, and therefore, that the solutions are the same as well. But as Connell and her cohort have spent years demonstrating, material realities matter. While themes of violence, entitlement, and sexism recur across communities, they show up differently in different places. In one Australian Aboriginal violence-prevention program that I evaluated with colleagues, Aboriginal educators worked in partnership with men and boys to identify the key drivers of gendered violence and inequality. Solutions were rooted in cultural pride, tailored to local contexts, and underpinned by recognition of the intergenerational impacts of racism and trauma. The program understood that masculinity itself isn’t toxic, and instead sought to understand and change the roots of toxic gendered behavior.

Those roots are quite different than, for example, the roots evident in majority white, wealthy communities, where male violence and sexism are commonplace. Responses to gender inequality in professional workplaces, such as programs to stamp out sexism in employment culture and practices, have particular purchase in middle-class communities. They’re not universal solutions—and they don’t have to be. Recognizing differences in the lives of men and boys is crucial to the effectiveness of efforts to resolve gender violence and inequality. - Michael Salter, The Atlantic 📸 @juansebastianf

TO INTERRACIAL COUPLES EVERYWHERE I have always h

TO INTERRACIAL COUPLES EVERYWHERE

I have always had a fascination with interracial relationships. You do not only discover a new person, you discover an entire culture, heritage, language and country when the person you admire hails from a different land. - Pablo Ganguli 📸 Helmut Newton @helmutnewtonfoundation @gracejonesofficial @dolphlundgren

WHY ARE YOU DECORATING YOUR EGO Nobody can say an

WHY ARE YOU DECORATING YOUR EGO

Nobody can say anything about you. Whatsoever people say is about themselves. But you become very shaky, because you are still clinging to a false center. That false center depends on others, so you are always looking to what people are saying about you. And you are always following other people, you are always trying to satisfy them. You are always trying to be respectable, you are always trying to decorate your ego. This is suicidal. Rather than being disturbed by what others say, you should start looking inside yourself…

Whenever you are self-conscious you are simply showing that you are not conscious of the self at all. You don’t know who you are. If you had known, then there would have been no problem— then you are not seeking opinions. Then you are not worried what others say about you— it is irrelevant!

When you are self-conscious you are in trouble. When you are self-conscious you are really showing symptoms that you don’t know who you are. Your very self-consciousness indicates that you have not come home yet.
- Osho 📸 @__adey__ 🧔🏻👩🏼 @faryad.mrt @marenbjorn

MEXICO’S CULTURES AT RISK OF A DANGEROUS CRISIS

MEXICO’S CULTURES AT RISK OF A DANGEROUS CRISIS

Mexico’s coronavirus-skeptical president is setting up his country for a health crisis. Some doctors say Mexico could become the new Italy — or worse.

As Mexico fast approaches what’s highly likely to be a large coronavirus outbreak, the country’s leadership — mainly its president — mostly insists that everything is fine.

President Andrés Manuel López Obrador (AMLO) tells Mexicans they shouldn’t fear Covid-19, even as hundreds of thousands of people have confirmed infections worldwide. Despite warnings from global health officials, he continues to hold political rallies, kiss supporters, and request that Mexicans go out shopping to prop up the country’s sputtering economy during a global slowdown. “Live life as usual,” he said in a video posted to Facebook on March 22, showing him outside at a restaurant. “If you’re able and have the means to do so, continue taking your family out to eat … because that strengthens the economy.” AMLO’s advice, experts say, is deadly. What makes matters worse is that his policies over the past few years have set the stage for a profound health crisis. In a major effort to cut government spending, AMLO has reduced funds for the country’s hospitals and medical centers by millions. It’s left the nation short of physicians, medical equipment, beds, and coronavirus tests.

That last part is especially frustrating, because Mexico has been hit hard by outbreaks before. In 2009, the H1N1 influenza originated in Mexico before it spread around the world, killing hundreds of thousands of people. Then, Mexico aggressively tested hundreds of thousands of its citizens to identify clusters of infection and stem the tide against transmission, said Alejandro Macías, the “czar” for the government’s emergency response at the time. “We acted then like South Korea has today,” he told me.

That’s not happening this time. The country has barely tested people, likely accounting for the low official number of 475 cases as of March 26. That comes as millions continued to move freely outside, including tens of thousands who attended a large outdoor festival. - Alex Ward, Vox 📸 @jimmy.nelson.official

GRACE IS ALWAYS PRESENT Grace is always present.

GRACE IS ALWAYS PRESENT

Grace is always present. You imagine it is something somewhere high in the sky, far away, and has to descend. It is really inside you, in your Heart, and the moment you effect subsidence or merger of the mind into its Source, grace rushes forth, sprouting as from a spring within you. .

The mind is by nature restless. Begin liberating it from its restlessness; give it peace; make it free from distractions; train it to look inward; make this a habit. This is done by ignoring the external world and removing the obstacles to peace of mind.

Solitude is in the mind of man. One might be in the thick of the world and maintain serenity of mind; such a one is in solitude. Another may stay in a forest, but still be unable to control his mind. He cannot be said to be in solitude. Solitude is a function of the mind. A man attached to desire cannot get solitude wherever he may be; a detached man is always in solitude.
- Ramana Maharshi 📸 @luissh 👦🏻 @ivanmontis 👦🏾 @ladriade

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