“Hate is increased by being returned, but can be destroyed by love.”
Spinoza, Ethics III P43
Random postings, links, and whatnotisms that interest one Adam Ballah, proprietor of little here or there.
April 30, 2013
December 27, 2012
The invention
Of weights and measures
Makes robbery easier.
Signing contracts, setting seals,
Makes robbery more sure.
Teaching love and duty
Provides a fitting language
With which to prove that robbery
Is really for the general good.
A poor man must swing
For stealing a belt buckle
But if a rich man steals a whole state
He is acclaimed
As statesman of the year.
Excerpted from “Cracking the Safe,” by Chuang Tzu.
November 4, 2012
I am of the nature to grow old. There is no way to escape growing old.
I am of the nature to have ill-health. There is no way to escape having ill-health.
I am of the nature to die. There is no way to escape death.
All that is dear to me and everyone that I love are of the nature to change. There is no way to escape being separated from them.
My actions are my only true belongings. I cannot escape the consequences of my actions. My actions are the ground on which I stand.
Video via The Dish (where there are more links to Alan Watts lectures).
Quote via Thich Nhat Hanh’s “The Heart of the Buddha’s Teaching.”
October 31, 2012
September 7, 2012
Mo Gelber, a New York City photographer who specializes in street photography, took a picture of a couple kissing as they got arrested in August.
Gelber entered his picture, entitled ‘Last Kiss,’ into a photo contest, Project Imaginat10n, sponsored by director Ron Howard. The problem is that the photo wouldn’t be considered in without permission of the couple, even though the picture was taken in public and does not violate privacy laws.
… The NY Daily News reported that the woman is Alexis Creque, who said she was the lookout person while her boyfriend vandalized some walls with graffiti.
Creque said the NY Daily News: ”I was just the look-out. We had a crazy romance all summer. It is like a movie.”
(via braiker)
February 11, 2012
I have been more than a little annoyed with the number of times photos of Jay-Z and Beyonce with their newborn have been shared in blogs I follow, enough that I’ve ‘unfollowed’ a number of them. Every loving parent will empathize with the love for the child evident in these pictures — love evidenced in countless troves of personal pictures. What troubles me about the Jay-Z and Beyonce photos is not the fact of their love, surely that is a beautiful thing; rather it is that those sharing these photos seem to be missing the countless instances of this love more immediately surrounding them. It begs the question: how and why is the love of these two celebrities for their child different from the parents you know?
January 17, 2012
From Israel’s ‘national suicide’ by Mark LeVine
Simply put, the threat of a Palestinian “demographic bomb”, as Prime Minister Netanyahu has called it, is little more than a contrivance to justify the further exclusion of Palestinians from full citizenship rights within Israel.
But accurate or not, the average Jewish Israeli is likely not spending much time parsing the logic or statistical foundations of the High Court’s decision - because they understand the deeper meaning of the argument underlying the decision’s title: to extend full human rights to Palestinians will lead inevitably to the “national” - that is, political - suicide of Israel as a Jewish state.
Why?Because to recognise that Jews and Palestinians can become one in the most intimate way possible - through love, sex and children - is to open Israeli Jews to the possibility that there is nothing essential that separates them from Palestinians, that as human beings with deep roots in this land, Palestinians have the same human rights as Israeli (or diaspora) Jews.
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