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This is an art board so answer from the heart as opposed to an intellectual stock reply. Watch the video and let your heart feel the question "Why?" Let the music help you feel the question. Can you express it?

Thank you

Thank you

Thanks for posting that Nick_A! It's a good video, in my opinion.

I think Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. who was an artist with words and speeches can answer this question better than I:

I refuse to accept despair as the final response to the ambiguities of history. I refuse to accept the idea that the "isness" of man's present nature makes him morally incapable of reaching up for the eternal "oughtness" that forever confronts him. I refuse to accept the idea that man is mere flotsam and jetsam in the river of life, unable to influence the unfolding events which surround him. I refuse to accept the view that mankind is so tragically bound to the starless midnight of racism and war that the bright daybreak of peace and brotherhood can never become a reality. I refuse to accept the cynical notion that nation after nation must spiral down a militaristic stairway into the hell of thermonuclear destruction. I believe that unarmed truth and unconditional love will have the final word in reality. This is why right, temporarily defeated, is stronger than evil triumphant.

Another reason that I'm happy to live in this period is that we have been forced to a point where we're going to have to grapple with the problems that men have been trying to grapple with through history, but the demands didn't force them to do it. Survival demands that we grapple with them. Men, for years now, have been talking about war and peace. But now, no longer can they just talk about it. It is no longer a choice between violence and nonviolence in this world; it's nonviolence or nonexistence.

A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual death

I know that love is ultimately the only answer to mankind's problems. And I'm going to talk about it everywhere I go.

Also, my favorite spoken word poem also happens to be particularly relevant. It's "First Writing Since" by Suheir Hammad (contains some profanity):

It is amazing how quickly the "why" of the heart changes into the "why" of the mind.

The why of the mind seeks to answer what to do while the why of the heart is a response to a psychologically awakening influence.

That is the essential value of the heart. It deals with living quality in a way the mind cannot.

Samuel Barber's Addagio for Strings is IMO an inspired piece of music. Like sacred music it touches the heart that asks "why?" It isn't a matter of fault or what can be done but something more basic to life itself we can feel when we allow ourselves to be "open" as certain music helps us to become. It is a very high function of art.

This is why it is so hard to put this question of the heart into words. How can we put these feeling of awe, grief and loss along with other emotions that taken together create the question of "why" into words without losing the why of the heart and turning it into analysis and the loss of "meaning?"

This video invites us to open to a powerful psychological experience. The temptation is always to lose it to words and in the process, suppress the heart. Yet is wisdom possible without the heart and its questions when they arise?

A moving video, Nick_A, as was yours Scott. There is certainly no way not to be respond emotionally to events like 9/11. I think the heart can both have instructive and destructive responses though. Instructive, when the heart calls for us to reach out in the wake of an attack; destructive, when the heart calls out in anger for revenge, as the poet in the second video observed. Perhaps when the heart is instructive, it should have a veto over the mind, and when it is destructive, the mind should have a veto over the heart. A recipe for spiritual balance, perhaps.

pjkeeley wrote:A moving video, Nick_A, as was yours Scott. There is certainly no way not to be respond emotionally to events like 9/11. I think the heart can both have instructive and destructive responses though. Instructive, when the heart calls for us to reach out in the wake of an attack; destructive, when the heart calls out in anger for revenge, as the poet in the second video observed. Perhaps when the heart is instructive, it should have a veto over the mind, and when it is destructive, the mind should have a veto over the heart. A recipe for spiritual balance, perhaps.

The feelings that only the heart can produce should not be confused with the emotions associated with our egotism the source of which is in the mind. I would agree that these egoistic emotions can produce mixed results. The heart though when open is capable of conscience that is connected to the experience of "Why."

This experience can be very intense. I know of people whose lives have been changed by an objective experience of human conscience.

Sometimes the art within a video like this can produce a strong inner question. The obvious blind absurdity when taken further can produce real compassion for the human condition itself the blindness of which produces cyclical wars for example.

This experience can be very intense. I know of people whose lives have been changed by an objective experience of human conscience.

Yes the experience of feeling matters more than any rationalising of it. The experience of feeling does not have to be a one-off life changing experience although it can be. The experience of feeling can be a gradual awakening.

As a military man some may be surprised if I reveal that I can tell people where I was and what I was doing by music. Hearing certain pieces evokes not only the memories but vividly the smells, sites, faces, motions and sounds. Battlefields playing "1999", and "Pyromania". Strong emotional outlets, visceral motivators in one form or another. What are we? I mean, I know I am human, but what does that mean, particularly when I hear that peaceful tome, from "Shindler's List", and more strongly, for me, I want to force peace down peoples throats.

But, then, I consider what would and what wouldn't we have if things didn't happen the way they have?

Nick_A wrote:This is an art board so answer from the heart as opposed to an intellectual stock reply. Watch the video and let your heart feel the question "Why?" Let the music help you feel the question. Can you express it?

Thanks. Nick_A!


As Neitzsche hinted: Only Love answers 'why.'


"If a man is called to be a streetsweeper,
he should sweep streets even [in Love] as Michelangelo painted [in Love],
or [as] Beethoven composed music [in Love],
or [as] Shakespeare wrote poetry [in Love].
He should sweep streets so well [in Love] that all the hosts of heaven and earth will pause [in Love] to say [in Love], here lived a great streetsweeper who did his job well [by doing it out of The Eternal Well of the Water of Everlasting Love].
Martin Luther King, Jr.


Thanx too, Scott, for your MLK quotes.

Ape

Your well intentioned but misguided fixation with self love prevents you from opening to the heart.

The deep experience the heart feels when for some reason it awakens to the human condition is that love other then transient animal love is not here. This gives it the incentive to return to its origin where higher love is normal. Egositic self love simply prevents the heart which is the seat of the seed of the soul from opening to its condition of being covered by imagination.

The "why" the heart feels isn't answered by love but rather the recognition that higher love as opposed to animal love doesn't exist in this madness of what limits its ability to open regardless of how we imagine it does. The "why" is the recognition of "home" through the shock of experiencing where it is.

The spiritual as opposed to the secular value of real art as compared to seculr expression is that it contains a certain something that sometimes opens the heart in ways purely secular influences cannot.

Nick_A wrote: Ape

Your well intentioned but misguided fixation with self love prevents you from opening to the heart.

Dear Nick_A,


If 'my' self-Love is misguided and keeps me close-minded, may I ever be so misguided and close-minded as JC and Simone Weil, and Meister Eckhart and etc were and still are!:)


"If you love yourself, you love everybody else as you do yourself.
As long as you love another person less than you love yourself, you will not really succeed in loving yourself,
but
if you love all alike, including yourself, you will love them as one person and that person is both God and man.
Thus he is a great and righteous person who, loving himself, loves all others equally."
Meister Eckhart


"The combination of these two facts – the longing in the depth of the heart for absolute good, and the power, though only latent, of directing attention and Love to a reality beyond the world and of receiving good from it – constitutes a link which attaches every man without exception to that other reality. Whoever recognizes that reality recognizes that link. Because of it, he holds every human being without any exception as something sacred to which he is bound to show respect. This is the only possible motive for universal Respect towards all human beings [INCLUDING ONESELF FIRST OF ALL OF COURSE]."
“Draft for A Statement of Human Obligations”
SIMONE WEIL, AN ANTHOLOGY ed. Sian Miles
CAPS and BOLDS and BRACKERTS by ape


That Love and Respect starts with yourself. You do seem to have a such hard time loving and respecting yourself. My deepest sympathy to you in that regard. It's so simple and obvious and Simoneish and childlike!:)


For encouragement, start with one or two or 3 or 4 words: be easy on yourself: It's an art so needs practice to make perfect!:


Just love yourself as a woman and as a lion and as an ape and as art so you love the woman Simone and the Lion Jesus Christ and me the ape and art as yourself.


My early and ever-coming Xmas gift to you is all Love and Respect!:)


Rest later but not lesser!:)

ape wrote:

Nick_A wrote: Ape

Your well intentioned but misguided fixation with self love prevents you from opening to the heart.

Dear Nick_A,


If 'my' self-Love is misguided and keeps me close-minded, may I ever be so misguided and close-minded as JC and Simone Weil, and Meister Eckhart and etc were and still are!:)


"If you love yourself, you love everybody else as you do yourself.
As long as you love another person less than you love yourself, you will not really succeed in loving yourself,
but
if you love all alike, including yourself, you will love them as one person and that person is both God and man.
Thus he is a great and righteous person who, loving himself, loves all others equally."
Meister Eckhart


"The combination of these two facts – the longing in the depth of the heart for absolute good, and the power, though only latent, of directing attention and Love to a reality beyond the world and of receiving good from it – constitutes a link which attaches every man without exception to that other reality. Whoever recognizes that reality recognizes that link. Because of it, he holds every human being without any exception as something sacred to which he is bound to show respect. This is the only possible motive for universal Respect towards all human beings [INCLUDING ONESELF OF COURSE]."
“Draft for A Statement of Human Obligations”
SIMONE WEIL, AN ANTHOLOGY ed. Sian Miles
CAPS and BOLDS and BRACKERTS by ape


That Love and Respect starts with yourself. You do seem to have a such hard time loving and respecting yourself. My deepest sympathy to you in that regard. It's so simple and obvious and Simoneish and childlike!:)


For encouragement, start with one or two or 3 words: be easy on yourself:


Just love yourself as a woman and lion and apeso you love the woman Simone and the Lion Jesus Christ and me the ape as yourself.


My early and ever-coming Xmas gift to you!:)


Rest later but not lesser!:)

Love of self is a big thing and something a person must consciously acquire. You are referring to self love which is the love of an image. You cannot be free long enough of self love to appreciate love of self or "potential." You are diminishing those like Meister Eckhart and Simone Weil by considering self love and love of self as the same.

Yet your way is the norm and because self love exhibited as "prestige" is the collective norm of the "Great Beast" everything remains as is including the hypocrisy that leads to incidents like 9/11. Sometimes real art can touch the heart and reveal this distinction and the direction "home" to those sensitive to it.

Nick_A wrote: Love of self is a big thing and something a person must consciously acquire.

Xlnt! You are quick on the Art of Love of self!:)
Now hold on to that!
Don't let loose of that!:)

Nick_A wrote: You are referring to self love which is the love of an image.

Ooops!


That's ok--you are just a beginner in the ART OF LOVE or LOVE-ART, --so that elementary mistake is a natural!:idea:


So come on, let's practice: Repeat after me:


My self or the self of me,
my Love or the Love of me,
your self or the self of you,
himself or the self of him,
herself or the self of her,
itself or the self of it,
themselves or the self of them,
Love of self and self-Love,
Love of other and other-Love
Love of God or God-Love or God's Love
are different ways of meaning and writing the same thing.


See?


Some more:
Self-image or the image of self,
self-concept or the concept of self,
self-realisation or the realisation of self,
self-actualization or the actualization of self,
SELF-HATE OR the HATE OF SELF,
---you getting the ART of it?
---are different ways of saying the same thing.


Now just concentrate Nick_A!
Did you do well at English and the Arts?
I am sure you did.
So this is just a blip--easily self-corrected or corrected of self.


For you, Nick_A, to stART a thread on The Phiolsophy of Art and be as inartistic and as unartful as you have exposed yourself to be or as your self-exposure has exposed you to be or as the exposure of the self of you BY YOURSELF has revealed does make me sad, , but at the same glad, since I can so artfully help you in the Arts and in Liberal Arts or in the Art of Liberality!:)


Plus, this will help so many others, Nick_A!
So be encouraged and be good for Goodness Sake or for the Sake of Goodness!:)


You not being able being able to take compliments from others and me means that you don't give enough compliments to yourself nor to the self of you, and so don't give them to others, or when you do, you give them ARTlessly:


“If you hate a person,
you hate something in him that is part of yourself.
What isn't part of ourselves doesn't disturb us.”
Hermann Hesse


“Harboring Resentment against others is like drinking poison and waiting for the other person to die.”
Irish proverb


But as you improve in YOUR SELF-LOVE or in THE LOVE OF YOURSELF or in THE LOVE OF THE SELF OF YOU, you will be able to effortlessly do so like this:


“When Love and skill work together, expect a masterpiece [or a piece of a master!:)].”
John Ruskin


As an artistic bonus to you, please listen to 'I can't help falling in Love with you' by Elvis Presley and 'I can't stop loving you' by Ray Charles.


In the meantime and meanwhile or in the time of mean or in the time of while, there is nothing you can do to stop me from loving myself as you or from loving the self of me as you , --- or, everything you do always makes me love myself as you or makes me love the self of me as you,


so that I automatically love you as myself or love you as the self of me!


Now here is a precised [pronounced 'pray-seed'] Bachelor of Arts or Arts Bachelor course or refresher course or the course of refresher for you: Please pay attention to the bolded or underlined parts, please. That's a double-please or a please of double. And apply to self or self-apply!


"The individual's greatest strength is based on the maximum integrity, i.e. of the total integration
of his personalities with Love, and that means also on the maximum of transparence to himself. "Love thyself [or self-Love or the Love of the self of you]" is one of the fundamental commands that aim at human strength and happiness." Erich fromm


"The affirmation of one's own life, happiness, growth, freedom, is rooted in one's capacity to love, i.e., in care, respect, responsibility, and knowledge. If an individual is able to love productively, he loves himself too [or loves the self of him too]; if he can love only others, he cannot love at all."
Erich Fromm


"The Love for my own self [or the Love of myself or my Self-Love] is inseparably connected with the Love for any other being [or Others-Love]."
Erich Fromm, "The Art of Loving,"


‘Simply stated, this ["The Love for my own self is inseparably connected with the Love for any other being."
Erich Fromm, "The Art of Loving,"] means that we cannot love another until we first love ourselves [or first love the self of us]. Such self-Love [or the Love of self] "demands practice and concentration ... genuine insight and understanding," and those who do not make the effort to understand and love themselves [of love the self of them] are not ready to be in a relationship.’
SHARON LYNN BEAR, PH.D


Thanx again, Nick_A, for starting this thread of Art for us all: the one you may art-help the most is yourself or the one you will help most is the self of you IF you first give yourself or give to the self of you Self-Love or the Love of yourself to yourself or the Love of the self of you to the self of you. Just spelling it out for you so that you won't ever forget it and you will always remember it.

Ape

For you, Nick_A, to stART a thread on The Phiolsophy of Art and be as inartistic and as unartful as you have exposed yourself to be or as your self-exposure has exposed you to be or as the exposure of the self of you BY YOURSELF has revealed does make me sad, , but at the same glad, since I can so artfully help you in the Arts and in Liberal Arts or in the Art of Liberality!

Are you accusing me of exposing myself? There are laws against that.

Thanx again, Nick_A, for starting this thread of Art for us all: the one you may art-help the most is yourself or the one you will help most is the self of you IF you first give yourself or give to the self of you Self-Love or the Love of yourself to yourself or the Love of the self of you to the self of you. Just spelling it out for you so that you won't ever forget it and you will always remember it.

You may lack the humility to willingly be open to distinguishing between self love our (egoistic image) and love of self (the sacred seed of the soul) but the artistic spiritual side of my being admits the value of doing so.

To each his own.