Poetry

By chance I was reading César Vallejo’s poem, “Black Stone on a White Stone,” in a translation by Geoffrey Brock, and was struck by the opening stanza: I’ll die in Paris in the pouring rain a day I have a memory of already. I’ll die in Paris – I won’t try to run – a Thursday perhaps, in Autumn, like today. Without being literal, I was reminded that I could appraise my death while alive, and not leave a final reckoning to some solemn memorial event in which speakers are challenged to find humorous anecdotes to lighten the occasion, otherwise uttering honorific platitudes quite unrelated to the experiential core of my being. I had been thinking quite a bit recently about ‘lost causes.’ Recently I gave a lecture at Columbia University on this theme, inspired by Edward Said’s seminal late essay “On Lost Causes” (1997) in which he ties together...

“Hell is truth seen too late.”(Anonymous) Why would a small group of people want to crash hijacked airplanes into skyscrapers, killing thousands and terrorizing millions? Perhaps only religion can provide the motivation and collective support for such heinous deeds (occasionally including our dominant secular God, the modern nation-state). Does this mean that religious terrorism can be dismissed as just another example of religious fanaticism? Or is there a “logic” to fundamentalist terrorism, which makes it a regrettable but nonetheless understandable reaction to modernity? Mark Juergensmeyer and Karen Armstrong have shown that religious fundamentalism is not a return to premodern ways of being religious. Jewish, Christian and Islamic fundamentalisms are all recent developments reacting to what is perceived – to a large extent correctly, I shall argue – as the failure of secular modernity. Such fundamentalism, including the violence it occasionally spawns, is the “underside” of modernity, its Jungian shadow. Although such...

Prefatory Note This post is something new for me, an autobiographical fragment written at the request of an online listserv as a suggestive model for academics at the start of their careers as diplomatic historians. I publish it here on my blog. It was found unsuitable for publication by the group that made the initial solicitation for unspecified reasons. Maybe because my work and career were not relevant to the scholarly life of a diplomatic historian, maybe because I seemed too flaky professionally to serve as a heuristic model, maybe because what I wrote risked an angry reaction from those who have weaponized anti-Semitism as (mis)defined by the IHRA definition, maybe because…a hundred other good reasons, including what was most plausible, least paranoid, that I was in a different lane when it came to a scholarly career, making my condensed narrative a waste of time for aspiring diplomatic historians. If...

What’s the use of intellectual arguments? Reference to concepts and theories – and the need for being just a bit clear about their definition? What’s the use of pointing out the degree to which populist parlance, fake and omission has undermined public discussions and media reporting about international affairs? What’s the use of arguing for peace and nonviolence in these “interesting times” when we are closer to world annihilation than perhaps ever since 1945 – thanks to the dangerous combination of anti-intellectualism and militarism (“I am the biggest and strongest and therefore I don’t have to know, think or argue…”)? What’s the point in commenting on global affairs in a moment of Western multi-crisis where democracy is post-literate and threatens to slide into the darkness of kakistocracy? I think about that every single day these years. I didn’t before, since I began participating as a peace researcher in public debates...

Mikhail Sergeyevich Gorbachev – now 88 and not in good health – but deeply engaged in the world and the primary threat under which we live every day. Watch the short video below – his eyes, his leaning forward to listen, the determination of his face and voice, his deep concern and his warm humour at the end – in spite of all. Deep inside he must feel sadness. What he did to make the world, and his own country, a much better place and the vision he had of a new Common European Home has been systematically ignored by much lesser, non-visionary minds – leaders who have neither the knowledge nor the intuition enabling them to recognize the essential importance of peace – and restructuring thinking and politics to achieve peace. Instead, we are now in a situation where it is reasonable to talk about a New Cold War,...

By David Loy Via huffingtonpost.com • What is money? We use it every day, so we must understand how it works… or do we? Perhaps our familiarity keeps us from appreciating just how strange money actually is – and how it uses us. What is a dollar bill? A piece of paper. You can’t eat it, ride in it, or sleep on it. The same is true of digits in bank accounts. In and of itself, money is literally worthless, in effect nothing. Yet money is also the most valuable thing in the world, because we have collectively decided to make it so. It is our socially agreed, and legally enforced, symbol of value. The anthropologist Weston LaBarre called it a psychosis that has become normal, “an institutionalized dream that everyone is having at once.” A dream that sometimes turns into a nightmare. – – – Needless to say, there...

Prefatory Note The text below is drawn from a talk given at the Spring Festival of the Arts in Beirut, Lebanon on 15 June 2017. Comments welcome. How can we understand the present unfolding world order, with special reference to its relevance for developments in the Middle East? In my view a fundamental reversal of political expectations has taken place that calls for a new assessment of what is going on, and where the region and the world seem to be heading. Twenty-five years ago there were three widely held beliefs about future trends on a global level: the assured preeminence of the United States; the continuing globalization of the world economy; and the expanding democratization of national governance arrangements. It was also assumed that these trends were more or less descriptive of regional realities, including the Middle East. Each of these trends that seemed so descriptive 25 years ago...

By Elías Abraham Foscolo Aesthetics – being shaped by the senses – means art. And vice versa. Beauty is the main factor to recognize as the aesthetical component within an artistic experience. Whichever may be the artistic environment experienced – music, dance, theatre, film, poetry – the concept of the aesthetics is associated to the subjective capacity of experiencing the outside world and the way that impacts inside the person. Indeed, it is an experimental process aiming to resonate with the beauty of the universe – word beauty here as metaphoric approach of peace; hence a type of beauty which aesthetically aims to be eternal, pure and human. Following this idea, an aesthetic experience of beauty is related to identifying an inner peace and such a process is an authentic artistic desire to be touched by the act of love. Actually that is what empowers and makes the person aware...

By Farhang Jahanpour While Christians celebrate Christmas on Dec. 25th, the Persians celebrate one of their oldest and most festive celebrations on Dec. 21st, the eve of winter solstice, the longest night and the shortest day of the year. In Iran this night is called “Shab-e Yalda”, the night of the birth or nativity of the sun, or Mithra the Sun-god. According to Orthodox Christians, the Armenians and the Eastern churches, Jesus Christ was born on January 6, and the celebration of his birthday on December 25th, may in fact be born out of the Persian Mithraic influence. In ancient Persian mythology, Mitra (Mithra, Mehr), the God of love, friendship, and light, or the sun-god, was miraculously born from a rock by a river or stream on this longest night of the year. In his fifth volume of the collected works, Symbols of Transformation, Carl Jung, the famous Swiss psychiatrist,...

W.H. Auden wrote these suggestive lines in the poem ‘Lament for a Lawgiver’ that can be found in his Age of Anxiety: ‘The gods are wringing their great worn hands for their watchman is away, their world engine Creaking and cracking…’ If we pause to look about the world, we will observe many signs of creaking and cracking. Among the most alarming forms of creaking and cracking is the appalling failure of political leadership. Where are the Roosevelts, DeGaulles, Chou En-Lais, Sukarnos, Titos, and Nehrus? Is the dumbing down of political leadership a consequence of the reordering of the world economy in ways that constrain and corrupt the role of governments? Or has the technology of control, surveillance, and destruction become so overwhelming as to make the moral and political imagination seem irrelevant, giving exclusive historical agency to those who propose doing nothing while the fires ravaging the earth burn...

By Elías Abraham-Foscolo with Jan Oberg We would like to count on your presence as well as people you may know interested in our activities. PlayforRights Celebration on International Artists Day PlayforRights organizes this event (see poster below) to raise awareness and consciousness about the following statement: “The arts contribute to the field of human rights by making visible the human dimension”. Why do we do this in a celebrative way? 25th of October can be seen as any other ordinary day but for members of PlayforRights it is not. This date is very important moment of the year where we all, the civil society, shall meet together and raise awareness about the potential of the art expressions within processes of social change. For this, we need to recognise that the arts are ways of nurturing love, that art is

. We think that it’s 30th Anniversary is a fitting occasion to reflect on what has happened in the big world and in our lives with the foundation. It is also a piece of Lund’s research history in general and of peace research and education in particular. Part 2 Weak aspects of TFF • Being outside many networks and institutions – it has become more and more difficult to influence the world if you are small, independent and don’t accept governmental and corporate funds. • A perception that the interest/commitment of TFF is out of sync with the sentiments of times, of the Zeitgeist. In spite of that we maintain the fundamental belief that peace is essential and that we can forget about the rest if major wars or nuclear exchanges take place. • Too ‘academic’/theoretical to forge deeper, permanent links with public opinion and movements. • Too ‘radical’ or...