Bob Schwartz

December 9, 2024

Band Aid 2024 Ultimate Mix: Feed the World

In 1984, Bob Geldof organized an all-star recording to raise consciousness about famine in Ethiopia and raise money to help alleviate it. Now an ultimate mix has been released, combining the original recording with later anniversary versions created in 2004 and 2014. The Guardian reports:

For 40 years, Band Aid’s Do They Know It’s Christmas? has been praised by some as a triumph of charitable fundraising and festive songwriting – and condemned by others as the most high-profile example of white saviourhood in pop.

Now, to mark its latest anniversary, the song is coming back around for a fourth time, in the form of an all-star splicing of the three previous official versions.

Announcing the new version, Bob Geldof, who masterminded the 1984 original, says Do They Know It’s Christmas? “tells the story not just of unbelievably great generational British talent, but still stands as a rebuke to that period in which it was first heard. The 80s proclaimed that ‘greed is good’. This song says it isn’t. It says it’s stupid.” Proceeds will benefit the Band Aid Charitable Trust, which supports health and anti-poverty initiatives across Africa.

Criticism from artists and activists have increased over the years. They say: It is an example of paternalism. It is an example of otherness. It leaves the wrong impression about Africa. Artists also complain that it is not a very good piece of music.

My thoughts:

If it wasn’t for charities, or in this case a song, pleading with people to donate, there would not be broader recognition of how widespread food insecurity and starvation is, not just in Africa and other places of crisis, but right here in America.

Ideology has its place, though it often goes places it shouldn’t. If people are hungry or starving, feed them. Since it is Christmas time, I am bound to mention that the main figure of that holiday told us all, whatever our tradition, to do just that.

If a catchy recording featuring mega-stars brings attention to this, I would rather listen to it a thousand times rather than being reminded incessantly about how buying stuff and giving stuff is the reason for the season. It isn’t.

Final thought: To those who are younger, it may seem that all this fuss about Band Aid is “nostalgia” for a long-gone time, featuring some “really old” artists. Unfortunately, starvation never goes out of style, but fortunately neither does helping.

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December 8, 2024

Bodhi Day, Part 2: Time Magazine, December 7, 1925, reports on Buddha’s Birthday

That isn’t Buddha on the cover of Time Magazine, December 7, 1925 issue (99 years ago). It is Jose R. Capablanca, then world chess champion, who had recently lost some matches in a Moscow tournament.

Buddha did appear in the magazine, with this in the Religion section:

Buddha’s Birthday

In Tokyo last week the Far Eastern Buddhist Congress, attended by 500 Chinese, Korean and Japanese delegates, decided to spread the teachings of their Master by the publication of Buddhist books, pamphlets, magazines. A resolution was passed urging that the birthday of Buddha be celebrated by a worldwide holiday, like the birthday of Christ.

As a cultural archaeologist, with an inordinate love of old magazines, I would like to post every page of the issue. Instead, I have selected just one full-page ad. This is for the Five-Foot Shelf of Books, aka The Harvard Library, compiled by legendary academic Charles W. Eliot, who was president of Harvard for forty years. The Shelf/Library contained “418 masterpieces” in fifty volumes.

In promoting this as the perfect Christmas gift, the headline says “It took twenty centuries to make this Christmas gift for you” and closes with “BOOKS—The finest gift of all”.

The good news: The complete Shelf/Library, later known as the Harvard Classics, is widely available for free online.The better news: Books are still the finest gift of all.

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December 8, 2024

Bodhi Day

Buddha, written by Deepak Chopra, art by Dean Hyrapiet

Following yesterday’s Tomorrow is Bodhi Day, today is Bodhi Day.

From the Dhammapada, Chapter 3, The Mind:

The Mind

The restless, agitated mind,
Hard to protect, hard to control,
The sage makes straight,
As a fletcher the shaft of an arrow.

Like a fish out of water,
Thrown on dry ground,
This mind thrashes about,
Trying to escape Māra’s* command.

The mind, hard to control,
Flighty—alighting where it wishes—
One does well to tame.
The disciplined mind brings happiness.

The mind, hard to see,
Subtle—alighting where it wishes—
The sage protects.
The watched mind brings happiness.

Far-ranging, solitary,
Incorporeal and hidden
Is the mind.
Those who restrain it
Will be freed from Māra’s bonds.

For those who are unsteady of mind,
Who do not know true Dharma,
And whose serenity wavers,
Wisdom does not mature.

For one who is awake,
Whose mind isn’t overflowing,
Whose heart isn’t afflicted
And who has abandoned both merit and demerit,
Fear does not exist.

Knowing this body to be like a clay pot,
Establishing this mind like a fortress,
One should battle Māra with the sword of insight,
Protecting what has been won,
Clinging to nothing.

All too soon this body
Will lie on the ground,
Cast aside, deprived of consciousness,
Like a useless scrap of wood.

Whatever an enemy may do to an enemy,
Or haters, one to another,
Far worse is the harm
From one’s own wrongly directed mind.

Neither mother nor father,
Nor any other relative can do
One as much good
As one’s own well-directed mind.

Translated by Gil Fronsdal

*Māra: The personification of evil in Buddhism and often referred to as the Buddhist “devil” or “demon”. According to some accounts of the Buddha’s enlightenment experience, when the he sat under the bodhi tree, vowing not to rise until he attained liberation from the cycle of rebirth, he was approached by Māra, who sought to dissuade him from his quest. When he refused, Māra sent his minions to destroy him, but their weapons were transformed into flower blossoms.

Following is an outline of Buddhism, found in The Basic Teachings of the Buddha (2007) by Glenn Wallis. Wallis is a far-reaching, creative and iconoclastic scholar of Buddhism, as reflected in his later work, such as A Critique of Western Buddhism (2019), which is available to read and download free.

HABITAT
1. We are like ghosts sleepwalking in a desolate and dangerous domain.
DE-ORIENTATION
2. We remain transfixed there, enchanted by pleasure and flamboyant speculation.
3. The most enthralling belief of all is that of supernatural agency.
4. There is a safeguard against this bewitchment: knowing for yourself.
RE-ORIENTATION
5. The means of “knowing for yourself” is immediately available: it is the sensorium.
6. But the modes of perception are miragelike, and the perceived like a magical display.
7. And there is no self, no integral perceiver, behind those modes of perception.
8. To hold on to the miragelike perceiver, the phantom self, is a stultifying burden.
MAP
9. When we reflect on these propositions, four preeminent realities become obvious,
10. as do the emergence and cessation of our incessant “worlding.”
DESTINATION
11. Our genuine refuge from this whirlwind of worlding is to be unbound;
12. to eradicate infatuation, hostility, and delusion. Eradicated, quenched, unbound.
13. Binding is concomitant with the fabricated.
14. Unbinding is concomitant with the unfabricated.
GOING
15. Cultivation of present-moment awareness is the means to conspicuous unbinding.
16. Application of this awareness in daily life is concomitant with living as a buddha: awakened.

Glenn Wallis

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December 7, 2024

Tomorrow (December 8) is Bodhi Day? What should I post?

December includes three notable religious holidays.

Christmas, commemorating the birth of Jesus. It is a major holiday, one of the two most important Christian holidays, and one that has become a secular celebration, especially in America.

Hanukkah, commemorating the retaking and rededication of the Temple in Jerusalem. Religiously, it is a minor holiday, not even included in the Hebrew Bible. Traditionally, it has become a cultural and social counterbalance to Christmas, especially in America.

Bodhi Day isn’t about the birth of a significant person or about the military victory over a religious oppressor. It is about a man who sat under a tree and ultimately woke up, or, as it is usually put, attained enlightenment.

I never rely on AI to do my writing, but I have given my friend Claude a chance to concisely explain Bodhi Day observances:

Bodhi Day (also known as Rohatsu in Japanese tradition) commemorates the day when Siddhartha Gautama attained enlightenment and became the Buddha. It’s typically observed on December 8th in the Mahayana tradition, though some traditions follow different calendars.

Here’s how Bodhi Day is observed in different parts of the world:

Japan (Rohatsu):

The day marks the end of a weeklong sesshin (intensive meditation retreat) in Zen monasteries
Practitioners often meditate through the night, mirroring the Buddha’s enlightenment experience
Traditional decorations include strings of colored lights, representing the stars the Buddha saw upon enlightenment

Southeast Asian Countries:

In countries like Thailand and Sri Lanka, the enlightenment is actually celebrated as part of Vesak Day in May
Temples are decorated with flowers and lights
Devotees participate in meditation sessions and listen to dharma talks
Food offerings are made to monks and sharing meals with the community is common

United States and Western Countries:

Buddhist temples and centers often hold special meditation sessions
Some practitioners decorate small ficus trees (similar to the Bodhi tree) with lights
Educational programs about the Buddha’s enlightenment are organized
Many observe the day with a traditional breakfast of milk and rice, recalling the offering made to the Buddha by Sujata

China and Taiwan:

Known as Laba Festival (腊八节)
Traditionally celebrated with Laba congee, a special porridge made with various grains and dried fruits
Temples hold ceremonies and offer free congee to visitors
Many people visit temples to make offerings and pray for blessings

Modern Observances:

Some Buddhists maintain a more contemplative practice, spending the day in meditation
Many practitioners dedicate themselves to acts of kindness and compassion
Some observe the day by reading Buddhist texts or sutras
Virtual meditation sessions and teachings have become common, especially in recent years

The focus across all these observances remains on the core meaning of the Buddha’s enlightenment – the realization that freedom from suffering is possible through understanding and practicing the dharma.

Claude

Each year I wonder what to say about Bodhi Day, the Buddha, and Buddhism. With a day to go, I still don’t know.

But tomorrow I will.

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December 7, 2024

CI: Cloud Intelligence, Part 2

After the earlier dawn message, this is the cloud message at sunset on the same day.

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December 6, 2024

CI: Cloud Intelligence

At dawn I saw the above message in clouds.

I don’t know whether it reads right to left, left to right, or up to down. I don’t know the language, I don’t know that it is a language. I know it is a message, one time, never to be repeated.

Fun fact: Search the Poetry Foundation, a repository of poetry, and you find 5,042 poems about clouds.

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December 5, 2024

Some simple books to know

I worked to find a fitting title for this post. I know what I want to include or not include, but I don’t know how to digest that into a description. So I settled on “Some simple books to know” without explaining what I mean by “simple”. Maybe you’ll figure it out.

Anyway, this is a list, without much else. All are found in multiple English translations and commentaries, which I need, and maybe you need, since I am not capable in Pali, Chinese, biblical Hebrew, or Coptic.

At some later time, I hope to detail each of these books individually, and why it is essential to read and study different translations and commentaries. For now, just peruse the list, investigate if you like.

Dhammapada

There are millions of words attributed to the Buddha, written about the Buddha and Buddhism. This is the most concise collection of the Buddha’s sayings. It is the first book I ever read about Buddhism, and there is no time, all these books later, I do not turn to it.

Tao Te Ching

The foundational text of Taoism. Lao Tzu was likely not a real person. This wisdom is simple, compelling, everlasting, and very real.

Chuang Tzu (the title of the text and the name of the person)

Chuang Tzu was more likely than Lao Tzu to have been a real person, though words attributed to him are likely not all his. Doesn’t matter. Few figures in wisdom history are as earnestly wild and fun as this guy. His reach among contemporary creators and thinkers is extensive. If any work on this list can be described as mind-blowing, he/this is it. (He is the originator of the well-known story in which he wakes up not knowing whether he is a man who dreamt he was a butterfly or a butterfly who dreamt he was a man.)

Book of Job

One of the truly transgressive books of the Hebrew Bible. If read as “God knows best and who are you to question. Trust Me.”, which is what the added coda and much teaching indicate, it is piously conforming. If read as “this is a mystery, none of us knows what is going on, and things do get bad and good fast (in other words, WTF!)” you are closer to a truth.

Ecclesiastes/Kohelet

The first mystery of Kohelet is how it ever ended up in the Hebrew Bible, given that it reflects so much human agency and freedom in the face of an everchanging impermanent life and world, a world where everything is wind and vapor (a better translation of hevel, which in the KJV is “vanity”). Kohelet is not a license to do whatever you want because we are all going to die anyway. It is a navigational guide to days, seasons and years that are seemingly orderly but actually chaotic, even absurd. It’s a wonderful life.

Gospel of Thomas

The Gospel of Thomas is sometimes referred to as the Fifth Gospel. As with the words of Jesus in the other four, scholars have worked tirelessly to determine as best as possible which are actually his and which are added in the spirit of his teaching. Thomas is entirely sayings, no narrative, some of which ended up in the other gospels, some of which are found only in this text. Among the sayings, the one that for me stands above all is this: “Be [or become] passersby.” (Saying 42) If you know that, you know (almost) everything.

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December 3, 2024

Identity culture dehumanizes us all

Thinking and acting according to any of the classifications—gender, nationality, religion, ethnicity, generation, etc.—may have utility and value for limited purposes. Abolishing the slavery of black people focused on two distinct identities that mattered profoundly. The same can be said for other situations.

But even those applications of identity, as essentially humane as they may be, risk not seeing each person as a person, not as an identity. To lump people together for some analytical or active purpose—marketing is one example, war and conflict a less benign one—is to ignore or avoid the individual joys and sufferings, abilities and shortcomings. Personhood and personality.

Every time we think or say, “all _____ do _____ or believe _____ or say _____ or are _____ is dehumanizing. Dehumanizing doesn’t just mean treating people as less than human. It means treating any individual person as less than individual.

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November 26, 2024

Making fun of political evil doesn’t always work. Having fun in the face of it does.

Watching the PBS series Disco: Soundtrack of a Revolution, I was inspired. Not just by the music, which is inspiring, but with the idea that you could have a social and cultural revolution that you could—you had to—dance to.

I thought about hip-hop, another revolution, which also emerged from American society’s marginalization/oppression of some Americans. Emerged triumphant, like disco, since hip-hop and dance music are the two dominant genres not only in America but in the world.

I have also been thinking about the limitations of mockery in the face of political evil. It can make the resisters and insurgents feel better, but those who hold unassailable power are rarely moved to reform or surrender by it. Sometimes all it does is embarrass them to the point of payback.

Making fun is still worthwhile, but expectations should be low. Having fun while rebelling is a different story. Having fun, it turns out, is essential. It is the thing that keeps the spirit of resistance alive, that reminds us of one of the things we are fighting for.

The most recent attempt to fight the power, both during the campaign and now, were and are low on fun. There is a lot of well-founded earnestness, accompanied by outrage and depression.

Every thing should be done on all available fronts to restore governing integrity and political sanity. One of those things must be to have more fun.

Watching people who were social and legal pariahs (same-sex dancing, for example, was illegal in New York in the time before disco) have the kind of fun that ultimately gifted us all was exhilarating. A benighted segment of American society tried clumsily to destroy disco, with its threat of freedom, but the next fifty years demonstrated how hatefully wrongheaded that was. The same happened with hip-hop, as it had years before with rock and roll.

You can’t keep fun down, even if it’s outlawed. Let’s use it.

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November 25, 2024

Umberto Eco: Ur-Fascism

This post is from 2017, seven years ago, the first year of a strange American administration. Like the woman in the shoe who couldn’t keep track of her children, older posts may be worthy, but I don’t remember them all. Thanks to astute readers who stumbled upon this and reminded me that it is always current.

Celebrated Italian author and scholar Umberto Eco (1932-2016) published an article in 1995 entitled Ur-Fascism .

Eco grew up during the time of Mussolini. In the article, he jumps from memories of that experience to describe some varieties of fascism and other types of totalitarianism. Not all are well-defined fascism, he says, but he does identify the core characteristics of what he calls Ur-Fascism.

I think it is possible to outline a list of features that are typical of what I would like to call Ur-Fascism, or Eternal Fascism. These features cannot be organized into a system; many of them contradict each other, and are also typical of other kinds of despotism or fanaticism. But it is enough that one of them be present to allow fascism to coagulate around it.

Eco goes on to list 14 features of Ur-Fascism. This is the excerpted list; please read the article for an expanded explanation. And as you read it, please consider which of those features you might be seeing now.

1. The first feature of Ur-Fascism is the cult of tradition….As a consequence, there can be no advancement of learning.

2. Traditionalism implies the rejection of modernism….In this sense Ur-Fascism can be defined as irrationalism.

3. Irrationalism also depends on the cult of action for action’s sake. Action being beautiful in itself, it must be taken before, or without, any previous reflection.

4. No syncretistic faith can withstand analytical criticism. The critical spirit makes distinctions, and to distinguish is a sign of modernism.

5. Besides, disagreement is a sign of diversity. Ur-Fascism grows up and seeks for consensus by exploiting and exacerbating the natural fear of difference.

6. Ur-Fascism derives from individual or social frustration. That is why one of the most typical features of the historical fascism was the appeal to a frustrated middle class, a class suffering from an economic crisis or feelings of political humiliation, and frightened by the pressure of lower social groups.

7. To people who feel deprived of a clear social identity, Ur-Fascism says that their only privilege is the most common one, to be born in the same country. This is the origin of nationalism.

8. The followers must feel humiliated by the ostentatious wealth and force of their enemies….Thus, by a continuous shifting of rhetorical focus, the enemies are at the same time too strong and too weak.

9. For Ur-Fascism there is no struggle for life but, rather, life is lived for struggle.

10. Elitism is a typical aspect of any reactionary ideology, insofar as it is fundamentally aristocratic, and aristocratic and militaristic elitism cruelly implies contempt for the weak. Ur-Fascism can only advocate a popular elitism.

11. In such a perspective everybody is educated to become a hero. In every mythology the hero is an exceptional being, but in Ur-Fascist ideology, heroism is the norm.

12. Since both permanent war and heroism are difficult games to play, the Ur-Fascist transfers his will to power to sexual matters. This is the origin of machismo (which implies both disdain for women and intolerance and condemnation of nonstandard sexual habits, from chastity to homosexuality). Since even sex is a difficult game to play, the Ur-Fascist hero tends to play with weapons—doing so becomes an ersatz phallic exercise.

13. Ur-Fascism is based upon a selective populism, a qualitative populism, one might say. In a democracy, the citizens have individual rights, but the citizens in their entirety have a political impact only from a quantitative point of view—one follows the decisions of the majority. For Ur-Fascism, however, individuals as individuals have no rights, and the People is conceived as a quality, a monolithic entity expressing the Common Will. Since no large quantity of human beings can have a common will, the Leader pretends to be their interpreter….Because of its qualitative populism Ur-Fascism must be against “rotten” parliamentary governments.

14. Ur-Fascism speaks Newspeak.

Eco closes with this:

Ur-Fascism is still around us, sometimes in plainclothes. It would be so much easier, for us, if there appeared on the world scene somebody saying, “I want to reopen Auschwitz, I want the Black Shirts to parade again in the Italian squares.” Life is not that simple. Ur-Fascism can come back under the most innocent of disguises. Our duty is to uncover it and to point our finger at any of its new instances—every day, in every part of the world.

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