89% people want automation at workplace: Adobe – ETCIO.com

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NEW DELHI: Contrary to popular belief, 89 per cent of people are positive about the role robots can play in helping them in the workplace, rather than taking away jobs, says an Adobe study.

According to the Adobe Digital Insights Future of Work Report, people are open to man and machine collaboration for work benefits.

"The Future of Work looks promising, as robotics and automation gear up to enable employees to be more productive and creative in their roles," said Abdul Jaleel, Vice President, People Resources India, Adobe.

Despite some concern around the impact of automation in the workplace, people are demonstrating positive commentary around how automation can undertake mundane tasks, and allow them to focus on creative and strategic responsibilities that matter most to them and their careers.

Robotics holds promise especially when it comes to the automation of traditionally mundane tasks.

Jaleel noted that automating document and signature processes, for example, could open up new possibilities for people as the tech revolution advances. Faster transportation and self-driving cars could revolutionise local travel.

"Moreover, the virtual office has big potential in the Future of Work. Work environments should continue to improve as employees demand more from their space, especially with automation ruling the minds of people," he said.

The findings are based on over three million Future of Work -- a phrase covering broad group of topics around what work would look like in the future -- related social mentions across several digital platforms including Twitter, news, blogs and forums, between January 2016 to January 2017.

The study's social analysis features regions including the US, UK, India and Australia.

The research is based on the analysis of select, anonymous and aggregated data from more than 5,000 companies worldwide that use the Adobe Digital Marketing Cloud to obtain real-time data and analysis of activity on websites, social media and advertising.

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Westminster warned against benefits ‘claw back’ once ‘bedroom tax’ abolished in Scotland – Scottish Housing News

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Scottish ministers are to seek assurances from the UK government that it will not reduce the benefits of claimants in Scotland when the Scottish Government abolishes the bedroom tax.

Communities, social security and equalities secretary, Angela Constance, made the call for clarity ahead of a meeting with the Department of Work and Pensions in London today.

Ms Constance will stress the abolition of the bedroom tax cannot be counted as benefit income when it comes to the UK governments benefit cap as it will penalise people by having other UK benefit payments clawed back.

The principle of no claw back for Scottish Government benefits was agreed in the Smith Commission and the financial agreement covering the Scotland Act 2016, and ministers are concerned that when the bedroom tax is abolished in Scotland, the UK government will treat this as additional income for a household and impose the cap.

The Scottish Government will provide 47 million next year to mitigate the bedroom tax imposed by the UK government, ensuring no one needs to lose out because of it, and will seek to abolish it as soon as practically possible.

Ms Constance said: The bedroom tax is an abhorrent charge which makes the lives of those already struggling to make ends meet even harder theres no place for that in a modern Scotland. I make no secret of the fact we want to abolish it but what we also dont want to see is anyones benefits being reduced again because by abolishing bedroom tax they end up over threshold for the UK benefit cap.

It is not acceptable for the Scottish Government to give with one hand only for the UK Government to take away with the other when these powers were transferred to Scotland there was a commitment there would be no claw back of benefits as a result of payment or eligibility decisions made by the Scottish Government. We need cast iron commitments from the UK Government that they will abide by those principles and that people wont be penalised further.

This issue has been raised with UK ministers on a number of occasions and I look forward to discussing this further at Mondays meeting.

More than 70,000 households in Scotland benefit because the Scottish Government mitigates the bedroom tax. It is estimated that the new lower UK benefit cap affects 5000 households in Scotland, and more are likely to reach the cap when the bedroom tax is abolished.

Social security minister Jeane Freeman and employability minister Jamie Hepburn will also attend the meeting in London.

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Westminster warned against benefits 'claw back' once 'bedroom tax' abolished in Scotland - Scottish Housing News

Shaking The Fear Of Breastfeeding In Public – Huffington Post UK

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Breastfeeding out and about gets a pretty bad image in the news. All we tend to hear about are stories of mums being asked to leave shops, restaurants, swimming pools, libraries, public transport and so on. BUT let's just consider for a moment why these stories make headlines. News events a) don't happen all the time b) are pretty much always negative and c) need to have a sensationalist angle to keep the readers interested. How many members of the general public would sit down and read an article about the millions of women who happily feed their babies in public with no issues whatsoever? Hmmmm. Exactly!

So, here are my top tips for shaking off any fear and confidently breastfeeding anywhere you wish:

1. Follow your heart - if breastfeeding feels right for you and your baby, then listen to that inner voice chiming away and go for it. You are nourishing and mothering your child in the way you have chosen to and that remains relevant wherever you happen to find yourselves.

2. Look around - the vast majority of people around the country will either not notice, not care (in the nicest possible way!), may smile at you, or even say something encouraging. You may be very pleasantly surprised!

3. Prepare a comeback - If you're worried about any potential negativity, it may help to mentally prepare how you would respond. Remember that when anyone is being rude, it is a reflection of who they are, not of who you are or of what you are doing. Try disarming them by flashing your biggest smile, thanking them for their perspective and if it really warrants it, maybe offering up a little sarcasm such as "your comment almost affected me". As they realise their ill-informed comment has not affected you (at least not on your steely exterior!), they will either back down or continuing trying to antagonise you. By maintaining your positive stance, you will show that you have the upper hand and you will be buzzing with a sense of personal empowerment afterwards.

4. Know your rights - you are protected by law to breastfeed anywhere in public where you personally have the right to be. If anyone in a position of authority such as a caf manager tries to tell you otherwise, you can accurately tell them that they can be prosecuted for their actions. True.

5. Think clothes - some mums feel happy to breastfeed by lifting their breast out over the top of their vest top, shirt or dress. However, for others, this can be a personal step too far. If you're concerned about having flesh on show, just take a moment to think about how your clothes will work for feeding. Aside from the obvious clothes marketed for breastfeeding, you will also find that many "normal" clothes work too. When I was breastfeeding, I used to live in stretchy vests and then any normal top of mine over the top. I'd pull down the vest, unclip my bra and then lift up my top. Tada! Nothing on show. For some great breastfeeding style inspiration check out @FeedinStyle on Instagram and The Baby Show at London's ExCeL next month.

6. To Cover or Not to Cover - it's entirely up to you. Some mums feel that using a breastfeeding cover draws in attention rather than deflects from it, can be an additional hassle to use and creates a rather stifling and dark environment for the baby. That said, they are absolutely right for some mums who may otherwise choose not to breastfeed if they weren't able to use one. They may be particularly useful if a baby is very distractible, takes a while to latch, or if a mum is worried about a very fast let-down and passers-by getting a surprise spray!

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On Presidents Day, we celebrate the good ones – Daily Astorian

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AP Photo/File

President George Washington delivers his inaugural address in the Senate Chamber of Old Federal Hall in New York on April 30, 1789.

Presidential biographers will tell you there are flaws in all of their subjects. But at certain moments, when the chips were down such as the nations birth, the Civil War, World War II the right leader showed up to meet an enormous challenge.

While the scourge of Islamic terrorism still threatens America, the abiding enemy of a large share of Americans is change economic and cultural that threatens livelihoods and personal values. In the face of that, its not always clear that current national leaders have a program of substance. Instead, they win by channeling the anger and fear of the disaffected voters.

But that is not leadership. And that is what makes this a dispiriting time.

Disappointment with current elected leaders is disappointment with our times as much as it is about the people in question.

Many years ago, on George Washingtons or Abraham Lincolns birthday, it was traditional for elementary schools to hold programs honoring those hallowed presidents. These days we have Presidents Day.

In many ways, we are more in need of some discussion of Washington and Lincoln than we were in the 1950s. And its not the children who need to hear about the virtues of those great men. Its the adults. Especially the adults who make and administer our laws.

We need to discuss Washington and Lincoln not because they dwarf the presidents we have known in our lifetimes. We need to talk about them because they rose to their tasks at two of the most difficult moments the nation ever faced.

Looking backward, the rise of Washington and Lincoln seems inevitable. The preeminent Washington scholar, James Thomas Flexner, titled his one-volume biography The Indispensable Man.

Oregon U.S. Sen. Mark Hatfield made a similar point about Lincoln, whose life the senator studied in some depth. Lincoln did not feel that he chose his place in history, but rather that history had chosen him, Hatfield said. Clearly no other individual could have brought so much good out of the seemingly infinite seas of madness and blood with which he was forced to deal.

Compared to Lincoln, Washington is an elusive figure. No American is more completely misunderstood than George Washington, wrote Flexner.

As Garry Wills notes, one cannot understand George Washington without grasping the Enlightenment, which produced him. If that era was defined by a set of shared values, our era is one of dissonance. The reality of Americas increasingly divergent values is a phenomenon that is driving our politics in 2017. We have not had much luck finding a president who epitomizes America at this moment.

It is worth remembering that Americans are nearly always dissatisfied with our presidents and that we nevertheless prosper in ways far beyond our founders wildest imaginings.

Washington, unique in American history for winning his two terms with unanimous votes by the Electoral College, was widely ridiculed and disliked at the end of his presidency.

He faced an armed uprising in 1791. Some blamed his policies for economic disruptions in the nations early years. Washington was a slave owner. He sided with Alexander Hamilton vs. Thomas Jefferson, a conflict that gave rise to continuing ripples of political partisanship that still trouble us today.

Despite his imperfections, with the wisdom of time and a degree of looking backward with rose-tinted glasses, Washington is now justly celebrated for having done most things right.

As the Miller Center at the University of Virginia notes, he tolerated dissent, vicious attacks on his reputation and name, and a divisive press all in the interest of freedom. There is little reason to suggest that Washington, unlike so many of his successors, ever sought to use his office for personal empowerment or gain. Neither did he shelter his friends for the sake of their friendships when conflicts of interest arose.

Perhaps most importantly, Washingtons presidential restraint, solemnity, judiciousness, and nonpartisan stance created an image of presidential greatness, or dignity, that dominates the office even today. He was the man who could have been a king but refused a crown and saved a republic.

The men including Washington who crafted our system of government understood and explicitly dealt with concerns that presidents could become too important. It is inevitable the top elected job in a great nation becomes the focus for blame and credit. But in the U.S. system of government, the president is a public employee, not the personification of the nation, as was the case in the European monarchy we left behind. The presidency is important but our nation is infinitely more so.

While intensely pragmatic, Lincoln has been sainted for his humanity. As Sen. Hatfield put it, The true essence of Abraham Lincoln was his ability to lead without sacrificing compassion. Compassion is a trait we need to see more of from the White Houses current occupant.

Presidents Day is good time to celebrate the good ones, who manage to govern in ways that promote peace and prosperity. But its also an opportunity to thank even the mediocre and lackluster ones, who often sacrifice health and reputation in efforts to serve the country.

Finally, Presidents Day is a good symbol for the fact that they are only small parts of who we as a nation we give 1/365th of 2017 to honoring them, and many of the remaining days to thinking little of them. This is as it should be.

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Pink Gloves Boxing: Women’s class focuses on empowerment … – The Missoulian

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Hannah Pepprock never thought she would be interested in boxing, a sport that is about as synonymous with testosterone as it gets. However, she was convinced by her roommates to try out Pink Gloves Boxing, an all-female physical fitness program hosted by the University of Montana that focuses on Olympic-style boxing technique.

Inside a sweaty gym on Valentines Day at the Campus Recreation Center, Pepprock and 15 other young women go through a circuit training regimen that includes shadow boxing, punching a heavy bag, jump-rope, a footwork ladder, and pad work with two women instructors who are teaching them uppercuts and jabs, among other techniques.

I had friends that had done it and it sounded like a lot of fun, Pepprock recalls. They convinced me and it sounded like a great way to get myself in the gym a couple times a week and also burn off a lot of anger or just good energy."

I like that its a good workout but its also just a really positive feeling, she said. When were in there, were just smiling and I feel strong. I feel like I know how to throw a punch, which is really cool. I always felt like I didnt know how to fight. Its just kind of an empowering feeling.

The class isnt focused on self-defense, according to instructor Vickie Rectenwald.

Its not something thats promoted, but if you know how to throw a punch correctly, you can throw a punch correctly, she says, grinning. The focus of the program is really two-pronged. The first part is a good technical boxing workout and a really positive challenging atmosphere."

She said nobody competes against the other people in the program. "Everybodys focused on being better than they were yesterday and never comparing themselves. You just push yourself harder.

Pepprock said that is a big part of the appeal for her.

You dont really feel intimidated by anyone, she said, wrapping her wrist in preparation for the class. Were all kind of on a level playing field. Theres no competition against anyone, except for yourself, which I think is really cool.

The energy of the class is palpable. Theres loud music playing, and the women seem to be bouncing on their feet and grinning for the entire hour.

Its really fast-paced and it really gets your cardio going, Rectenwald said. Its structured like a martial arts program, so you do challenges and test out to the next level. Theres specific goals and specific skills for you to master to get to the next level.

The Pink Gloves Boxing program was founded seven years ago in Montana by Garret Garrels and Nick Milodragovich, who were football teammates at Carroll College in Helena. They noticed that a lot of women in his boxing classes felt like they were being compared to men and competing instead of focusing on themselves, according to Rectenwald.

He found that was a common element that many women were searching for in their personal fitness classes, she said. Its definitely very focused on empowerment.

Now, the program has gone global, with its popularity exploding in places as far away as Sweden. Garrels came to give a demonstration class in Missoula a few weeks ago, and Pepprock attended.

I had only been in the class a couple weeks, but he said we were doing well, Pepprock said. I feel like Im learning a lot really fast.

Rectenwald was a student studying marketing at UM last year when she enrolled in the program. She said it helped her balance her huge 21-credit course load. She was so enthralled, she decided to become an instructor this year.

Co-instructor Emily Hamant said the program will allow more women to get into a traditionally male-dominated sport.

Because (the class is) all girls, she said. If you box with guys, its totally different.

Rectenwald says the response from students is overwhelmingly positive.

We get a lot of, I love seeing how much my body has changed over the course of the semester, and I love the positive atmosphere and the friends Ive made, and I love just coming here and having fun, she said. Theres camaraderie.

In fact, positive reinforcement is part of the mission.

One specific tenet of the program is you pay attention to everyone around you and compliment them and notice what theyre doing well so we have that positive feedback, she said.

The 14-week program is held on Tuesdays and Thursdays and costs $125 per semester for first-timers, which includes gear. Its only $75 for returning boxers. The class is only for students and staff at the University of Montana.

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Pink Gloves Boxing: Women's class focuses on empowerment ... - The Missoulian

Fake becomes legit: social media and the rise of disinformation in democracies – Democratic Audit UK

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Fake news is not new Ulises Mejias identified disinformation tacticsduring the Russia-Ukraine conflict in 2013. It is notpossible, he argues, to make a clear distinction between real and fake news before and after the Trump era. Journalists themselves have been complicit in creating a new media economy wheresurvival depends on clicks. Deregulation, surveillance techniques and a discourse of patriotism mean democracies are becoming capable of supporting disinformationin ways similar to those deployed in autocracies.

While we didnt exactly predict the rise of fake news, in 2013 a Russian colleague and I completed an academic article on the disinformation tactics used during the Russia-Ukraine conflict. Like many others, we started to recognise the ways in which citizens generate, consume and distribute false information by interacting with old and new media, contributing to a social order where lies acquire increasing authority. While we focused on the Russia-Ukraine case, we felt it was important to point out that these tactics might serve as a template for future scenarios, including in Western democracies.

The article will not see the light of day until this year, four years after it was finished. Interestingly, part of the reason it has taken so long to get it published is that some reviewers felt our argument should omit references to Western democracies. The sentiment seemed to be that this kind of stuff could not happen here.

That was, of course, before the 2016 US presidential elections.

In the aftermath of the fake news scandal, it seems to me that we need to think more about the connections between the quantification of sociality via social media and the popularisation of extremist politics. Im not proposing the former is the cause of the latter (although some have made this argument). I am simply suggesting that the analysis needs to go beyond pointing out that new media have provided new platforms for otherwise recessive voices, or that they make us more narrow minded in general.

As recently as five years ago, it looked as if social media was going to help write a very different chapter in the history of political movements. The Arab Spring, euphemistically known as the Twitter Revolution in some circles, seemed to announce an era in which social media was going to empower activists, engage citizens, and topple dictators. Unfortunately, not only did the flash mob effects of social media fail to translate into lasting political change, but we also now have to wonder whether they did not actually help to create repressive conditions in free Western democracies. Granted, it is too soon to tell whether Brexit and Trump (who partly owe their popularity to the internet), will soon pass into history as momentary disasters that were quickly corrected, maybe even with the help of social media (predictably, we are again seeing determinist articles claiming that post-Trump-inauguration protests would not have been possible without Facebook).

But if I had to make a bet, I would wager that what we are witnessing is better explained as the beginning of the parallel ascendance of artificial intelligence, augmented reality, and authoritarian politics.

What I mean by this parallel ascendance is a situation where distorted information is disseminated through digital media to make social inequality acceptable, often by employing a totalitarian discourse. Think about it: these days, both politicians and digital media companies offer us a version of reality that is convenient because it presents easy solutions to our problems. Without a job? Blame immigrants or the EU! Overweight? You need this app to track your steps! Afraid? Keep the Muslims out! Lonely? View profiles of singles in your area! Both politicians and digital media companies offer personal empowerment if we subscribe, unconditionally, to their platforms. Both discourage questions about how the system works. Just click I accept the terms and get on with it.

And both offer the illusion of perfect customisation: products, services and politics that speak just to us (customisation so perfect it might actually be corruptive). At the centre of this theatre is a user, who like a video gamer, feels as if he or she is the one in charge. But unlike a video game, the power of this narrative is not that it presents an alternate reality or a fantastic simulation. Rather, it offers an enhanced or augmented version of reality (perhaps diminished fits better here) based on selective slices of the world. A reality that the user can binge on until it obscures any other reality.

Disinformation is key to these theatrics, which brings us back to fake news. Asmy co-author and I argue in our Russia-Ukraine article, the emerging feature of new forms of disinformation is that it is not only the state-controlled or state-allied media organisation that produces fake news. Citizens themselves actively participate in the creation of disinformation by using social media platforms. Whereas information spread by governments or corporations can be contested or at least sceptically dismissed, information produced and shared by regular users (or sometimes by AI robots masquerading as users) acquires authenticity, and spreading this information is an act rewarded by social media platforms by metrics such as attention, popularity and visibility.

Facebook and Google have started to institute mechanisms (software- or human-driven) to try to identify and quarantine fake news. What they dont realise is that in an ideologically divided society, this will only mean that one side will report the other sides news as fake, and each side will accuse each other of censorship. This solution also doesnt take into consideration the fact that people indeed want their fake news.

While we all have favorite politicians or CEOs we would like to blame for this state of affairs, I think it is also important to point out how most of the responses to the fake news scandal from what we might call the liberal side have thus far been short-sighted.

The first kind of response is that what is happening is not our fault, but the fault of a new kind of villain: the algorithm. There have been innumerable mainstream and academic pieces exposing the ways in which algorithms used by companies and governments collect data to create a state of automated and generalized surveillance. Algorithms, without human oversight and intervention, can make prejudiced decisions and inaccurate assumptions. More to our point, they can agnostically promote the spread of disinformation, since they are designed to promote things based on popularity, not accuracy.

At first glance, it would seem like a good thing that this kind of literacy about media systems is becoming more mainstream. The relative popularity of Black Mirror and other dystopian sci-fi narratives suggests that many (I often count myself among them) are ready to believe that society is on the brink of collapsing under the weight of anti-social behaviors unintentionally augmented by the same algorithms we trusted to make our lives better. In the context of the fake news post-election scandal, this translates into the belief that social media has devolved into a demented public sphere in which algorithms provide the platform for anything, regardless of its veracity, to go viral if it gets enough upvotes.

The other, perhaps more honest response to fake news is that humans, not algorithms, are to blame. Yes, we were duped by politicians and the media people seem to be saying but we will never be duped again. In order to ensure this, we need to return our focus to real news: we need to support real journalism, and educate the masses through media literacy so that they can recognise fake news and stop being such dupes.

But by perpetuating a seemingly obvious distinction between fake and real news, I believe this kind of liberal response is an avoidance of responsibility. It makes it seem as if only the fake side is capable of producing fake news. Our side, after all, produces only real news, right?

Tweet posted 10 January 2017 by soon-to-be President Donald J. Trump.

It is convenient, but disingenuous, to believe that environmental degradation, unchecked surveillance, and indemnity for the corrupt not to mention lying White House press secretaries like Sean Spicer started the day Trump assumed office. One need only look at Trumps predecessors to see that these trends have longer trajectories, even if the media campaigns used to justify them had more finesse than what we can expect to see in the near future.

Furthermore, to insist on a clear distinction between fake and real news bypasses any kind of analysis of the economics that makes disinformation possible and indeed desirable. Even though journalists are feeling under attack, it is important to remember that in the new media economy they have helped to create, media organisations have to produce a daily barrage of clickable juicy headlines just to survive; the veracity and quality of the actual content seems to almost not matter.

Thus, the liberal response to fake news is dangerous because it hides the ways in which media systems in democracies are becoming capable of supporting disinformation in a manner surprisingly similar to that of media systems in autocratic regimes. Across the board, in democracies and non-democracies, we find the kind of industry deregulation that creates oligopolies by giving more power to favoured corporations; a state willing to impose special measures of surveillance during more or less permanent periods of emergency; a discourse of patriotism that shames dissenters and encourages self-censorship; collaboration between government and private sector to develop and implement technologies for surveillance; and increased secrecy about what governments and corporations do with data collected from citizens, all in the name of profit or security. In the US, these trends which have culminated in the fake news phenomenon have been ongoing for decades, long before Trump came along.

These similarities suggest that disinformation can become a feature of media environments regardless of which side liberal or conservative, democratic or authoritarian is in office. Naively, we cling to the idea that in these conditions falsehoods can be challenged with facts. But facts cease to matter much in a system in which the act of lying itself is endowed with authority and certainty.

This post represents the views of the author and not those of Democratic Audit. It first appeared at The Disorder of Things.

Ulises Mejias isan associate professor in the Communication Studies department at SUNY Oswego, and the director of the Institute for Global Engagement. His book, Off the Network: Disrupting the Digital World (2013), was published by University of Minnesota Press.

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Fake becomes legit: social media and the rise of disinformation in democracies - Democratic Audit UK

Technology connects Diaspora youth to their Israeli counterparts – Jerusalem Post Israel News

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Snunit CEO Revital Rubin in January with Geoff Cohen, the principal of the Herzliya School in Cape Town, South Africa. (photo credit:Courtesy)

The Snunit Center for the Advancement of Web-Based Learning, the largest educational web portal in Israel, is seeking to launch a new site dedicated to connecting Jewish children and youth in the Diaspora with Israel.

Snunit was established in 1994 as a project of the School of Education at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, and in 1999 officially became a non-profit NGO established by the university and the Nir and Beverly Barkat family.

Responsible for launching the first Hebrew language website, today Snunit creates, develops and manages innovative educational sites for elementary and middle schools pupils, reaching hundreds of thousands of users throughout the country and the world.

The easiest way to transfer educational messages to a critical mass of people, especially to youth, is by technological means with the push of a button, Revital Rubin, CEO of Snunit, recently told The Jerusalem Post.

For youth, Rubin explained, the technological world is their first world.

We take advantage of this media to reach wider audiences of youth and provide them with knowledge, she said.

Snunits latest project, in the process of development, includes a new English site and application aimed at connecting and teaching Jewish children from the Diaspora about Israel.

As a Jew who lives in Israel, I understand the importance and necessity of doing this, Rubin explained, crediting this latest endeavor with her visit last month to South Africa, organized by Community, a joint program of The Gesher Leadership Institution and the Diaspora Ministry to expand and deepen the connection between public opinion leaders in Israel and Diaspora Jewry.

As part of her visit she toured South Africa and also met with pupils and school principals in Cape Town and Johannesburg. She explained that while there, she saw firsthand how little adults and children alike in the Jewish community knew about Israel or had any connection to the country.

They study the bible and Jewish holidays but they dont learn anything about the State of Israel and the culture and what troubles youth in Israel, she said.

It is important that children learn that Israel is not only about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict or politics, or the ultra-Orthodox, of course these are issues but there are a lot of other parts of Israel that youth should get to know, she added.

Rubin said she was shocked to discover that around a third of Jews in the world have no connection to Israel whatsoever.

Due to this journey, I understand this need to create connections [with the Diaspora] and today I see this as a mission, she said.

She stressed that it was important to understand that religion is not everything when speaking about Jews and Israel.

If we keep presenting this to the world, we will lose a lot of Jews along the way and the Jewish people cannot afford this, she said. We have to understand that there are also Jews in the world that currently have no link to Israel and there are people in Israel who are secular and we must think how to connect between them to develop a diverse Jewish synergy.

Rubin explained that the applications aim would not only teach Jews about Israel but would also serve to connect between youth and create a dialogue on issues that are important to them.

There are children and youth who deal with the same problems that youth in Israel do, wherever they are in the world and it is important that they make that connection, she said.

Still, she added, it is a two-way street. While children in the Diaspora know little about Israel, so too do Israeli children know very little about their counterparts abroad.

I believe in reciprocity we also need to teach kids in Israel to get to know the Diaspora, she said. And I believe that we need to start establishing roots of this connection at a much younger age, and not only focus on adults or young adults.

Rubin stressed the positive effects of web-based learning in reaching out to youth in the Diaspora and connecting them with Israel.

Israel has brought children and youth to Israel on trips [like Birthright and Masa] but how many children can you bring? Two hundred thousand? Three hundred thousand? With this technology we can reach out to millions of children, she explained.

She acknowledged that it is no substitute for bringing youth to Israel but said it could serve to complement their physical presence in Israel and provide them with knowledge about the country.

We dont need to stand on our two hind legs I think it is a good thing, both tactically and strategically that there will be Jews in the Diaspora and our responsibility is to strengthen our connection with them and to strengthen them with all the challenges they face such as antisemitism, Rubin stressed.

If we dont understand this we will distance youth and adults in the Diaspora from the Jewish people, she said.

Overwhelmed by her experience in South Africa, Rubin ensured that the pupils and teachers in the two Jewish schools she visited would be provided free access to Snunits educational portals.

Many of our websites are in Hebrew only and so now we are also looking to translate these sites to English and we are looking for a partner who understands the importance of this, she said.

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DBS to hire 100 technology skilled professionals through hackathon – Economic Times

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NEW DELHI: DBS, Singapores leading bank plans to hire 100 technology skilled professionals, in emerging and disruptive technologies across cloud, machine learning and Big Data through a hackathon.

The 100 new selects will join DBS Asia Hub 2 in Hyderabad, India, according to a release. This coding challenge, which has already received more than 3000 applications, is open to both fresh graduates and experienced professionals who can apply up to March 12, 2017.

Mohit Kapoor, CEO, DBS Asia Hub 2 said We want to build a culture of experimentation, backed by robust technology solutions and creative intelligence to consistently innovate and evolve our digital journey. Hackathons like this help us connect with top talent across the country who are game changers and will be instrumental in reimagining banking.

The recruitment drive, DBS Hack2Hire, consists of two parts - an online assessment challenge followed by a live two-day hackathon session. Shortlisted candidates from the second round will undergo interviews for full-time roles at DBS Asia Hub 2. The bank has collaborated with leading technology providers such as Amazon Web Services, Cloudera and Pivotal for conducting the hackathon, according to a release.

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Technology brings new life to ancient art – Lowell Sun

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LOWELL -- As ISIS' wave of destruction has swept through the Middle East, it has claimed many artifacts of pre-Islamic history.

Iranian-born artist Morehshin Allahyari has been using cutting-edge 3D modeling software and printers to bring new life to those lost treasures.

Allahyari will discuss this work and her other groundbreaking projects in a public lecture Wednesday at UMass Lowell's O'Leary Library. Her exhibition, Solid State Mythologies, is open through Feb. 28 in the University Gallery at Mahoney Hall.

Misha Rabinovich, assistant professor of interactive media at UML's Art & Design Department and co-curator of the exhibition, said Allahyari's "wildly creative" approach with emerging technologies is very empowering for women, who often leave science and technology fields because they feel they are not engaging the problems they care about and don't want to support the "patriarchal system of technocratic development."

"She's a pioneer of this technology, and more importantly the artistic application of the technology, and as a female, we think it's very powerful and one of the reasons we wanted to bring the show to UMass Lowell," he said.

Allahyari approaches her work in The Material Speculation: ISIS series as a kind of feminist, sculptural response to the performative destruction of ISIS, which uses footage of its members smashing ancient artifacts and art for propaganda videos, Rabinovich said.

Using bits and pieces of information and photographs, Allahyari reconstructs lost artifacts through 3D-printed sculptures with modeling files archived on flash drives and memory cards embedded inside the objects, he said.

Allahyari's work has an open-source element, and she's always eager to share the research and inspiration behind it, said exhibition co-curator Caitlin Foley, a part-time faculty member of the Art & Design Department.

Other works on display explore images and ideas censored by Iran's Islamic law, from The Simpsons to lingerie advertisements.

UML hoped to promote the speaking event sooner but the recent travel ban enacted by President Donald Trump cast a doubt on whether it would occur, Rabinovich said.

A green card holder, Allahyari was showing her work at the Transmediale festival in Berlin, Germany, at the time and it was unclear whether she would be allowed to return to the U.S., where she has resided since 2007, he said.

Following the judiciary overturn of the ban, Allahyari safely returned on Feb. 9, Rabinovich said.

Allahyari's public lecture will be held Wednesday at 4:30 p.m. in the O'Leary Library, Room 222, at the UMass Lowell South Campus. A reception will follow from 6-8 p.m. in the University Gallery in Mahoney Hall. Both events are free and open to the public. Parking is available in the Wilder Metered Lot at the intersection of Wilder and Bachelder streets.

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Technology brings new life to ancient art - Lowell Sun

Referee uses video technology to catch David Villa PUNCHING player in the face and send Spaniard off – Mirror.co.uk

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Former Barcelona and Valencia striker David Villa was sent off in a pre-season friendly between New York City and Houston Dynamo on Saturday.

The 35-year-old was caught via video technology punching an opposing player in the face in the Desert Diamond Cup.

The incident occurred in the 37th minute with the game at 1-1 (Villa having scored New York's goal) as Andrea Pirlo took a corner.

Initially, the referee had brandished Villa with a yellow card and awarded a free-kick to Dynamo.

But just as play looked to be getting back underway the referee blew his whistle and signalled a box shape with his hands.

The referee then ran over to the sidelines and watched the incident back on a monitor, using VAR (video assistant referee). Players from both sides began to congregate in the middle, with Villa and victim AJ DeLaGarza still arguing over what happened.

Nearly four minutes since the original incident passed before the referee trotted back onto the pitch and asked to see Villa.

The official once again made the box shape with his hands before producing a straight red card.

The striker nearly caused more trouble after another coming together with DeLaGarza, only for his teammates to get in the way.

The Spaniard continued to protest with the fourth official on the touchline, claiming his victim wasn't innocent, either, before eventually taking a seat on the bench.

Dynamo capitalised on New York's 10 men and won the encounter 3-1.

Video technology has so far only been used in the reserve tiers of MLS and last year's Club World Cup.

But Saturday's decision will come as a major boost to Howard Webb and America's Professional Referee Organisation.

Webb has been installed to oversee the the introduction of VAR into MLS football.

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Referee uses video technology to catch David Villa PUNCHING player in the face and send Spaniard off - Mirror.co.uk

Qualcomm’s New WiFi Technology Should Boost Capacity for Small Business – Small Business Trends

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One of the biggest differentiators between a home or small business and a larger enterprise is capacity. And in a world where speed is tantamount to efficiency, enterprises enjoy a commanding lead. However, Qualcomm(NASDAQ:QCOM) has introduced new 802.11ax WiFi chips that will reduce congestion on next-gen networks to deliver vastly enhanced connection, perhaps evening out the playing field.

According to Qualcomm, the new 802.11ax WiFi chips will be able to deliver speeds of up to 4.8Gbps. The company also says it is the first to announce end-to-end commercial solutions to support 802.11ax.

Without getting too technical, 802.11ax mainly focuses on expanding network capacity instead of speed to get the best possible connection, and make better use of the WiFi spectrum. This is an important development because there is more variety in todays networks. This variety overloads the WiFi spectrum and negatively affects the connection, and thus the spinning wheel of doom when you are trying to watch that cat video.

In the prepared statement released by Qualcomm, David Henry, senior vice president, home networking, NETGEAR, one of the leading manufacturers of routers in the world said:

We are excited about the potential impact that 802.11ax will have in the home and small businesses, 802.11ax is not an incremental upgrade to keep pace with todays demands. The technology will reset the bar for what matters most in networking, and will lay the foundation of network capacity for years to come.

Whether in your home office or retail store, your WiFi connectivity is going to be affected by the tens of thousands of things that will be part of the Internet of Things (IoT) in your vicinity all clamoring for bandwidth at once. With 802.11ax, Qualcomm says connections will be seamless, dead spots will be reduced and harmful interference where there are many WiFi access points that overlap will be reduced. You will be able to stream 4K Ultra HD, video conference, collaborate, share and transfer files easily.

Qualcomm expects to toll out the chips in the first half of 2017, so it remains to be seen which manufacturer will incorporate this technology into its devices first.

WiFi Symbol Photo via Shutterstock

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Qualcomm's New WiFi Technology Should Boost Capacity for Small Business - Small Business Trends

Shuttle buses getting up to speed on technology – Sharonherald

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HERMITAGE The local public bus system is going high-tech.

Mercer County Regional Council of Governments is getting nearly a $275,000 state and federal transportation grant to buy digital technology to aid bus drivers and passengers.

The technology will be placed on its Shuttle service, which has short routes.

COG oversees the bus service.

Among the upgrades will be smart cards for fares that will be swiped like a credit card. Another perk will be a GPS system, saidKim DiCintio, executive director of COG.

The GPS can be used by passengers to track where the bus,DiCintio said.

Yet another perk is the buses will have an electronic voice to tell passengers what the next stop will be. And drivers will have computer tablets that can track passenger volume.

Bids already have gone out to buy and install the technology, so the upgrades will be this year, she said.

In recent years the agency had to be nimble in its operations. For years public school children were charged 25 cents for a one-way ride. But last year the service bumped the price up to 60 cents.

We lost a lot of students because of that,DiCintio said.

In January student rates were restored to 25 cents.

And we have no anticipation of raising the student rates again, she said.

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Shuttle buses getting up to speed on technology - Sharonherald

Donald Trump’s Campaign Promises: Tracking His Progress and Fact Checking His Claims – NBCNews.com

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President Donald Trump campaigned, and won, on larger-than-life promises.

From the bold (create 25 million jobs) to the specific (he won't eat another Oreo until Nabisco moves production back to the United States) to the wildly aspirational ("I will give you everything"), Trump offered up so many promises during his presidential bid that it was hard to know at times where bravado ended and his policy agenda began.

NBC News found that Trump took 141 distinct stances on 23 major issues. From this roving platform, a set of bold goals emerged. As president, Trump vowed to curb immigration, repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act, create jobs for Americans, defeat "radical Islamic terror" and rebuild American infrastructure, to name just a few.

Follow along as we track his progress here.

Trump's core campaign promises defied party-line politics as much as they stuck to them, and united a surprising coalition of voters that drew historically white, working-class Democrats into a conservative coalition that fueled the reality television star to a surprising victory in November.

In the hands of an outsider candidate bent on shaking up Washington, D.C., it was a triumphant strategy. Now, they are the test of his presidency.

He will have to tackle broad catchphrase pledges "build the wall" and "so much winning" with policy while he working with a Republican-led Congress filled with the "establishment" politicians he derided throughout his campaign and Democratic lawmakers intent on opposing much of his agenda.

Can Trump fulfill his promises when confronted with the realities of first-ever elected office, a complex global economy, and a divided nation?

With this tracking tool, we'll chart the success of his presidency using 10 core goals as a lens, examining how Trump's goals collide with the realities of governing.

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Donald Trump's Campaign Promises: Tracking His Progress and Fact Checking His Claims - NBCNews.com

Recent Progress Seen in Lessening Cognitive, Motor Delays in Very Premature Babies – PsychCentral.com

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Extremely preterm babies those born between 22 to 24 weeks gestation continue to face unfavorable odds, as only about one in three survive. But a new study led by Duke Health shows that these rates are slowly improving. The findings show that, compared to extremely preterm babies born a decade earlier, a larger percentage are developing into toddlers without signs of moderate or severe cognitive and motor delay.

Improvements in survival and neurodevelopment may be the result of a number of factors, including decreasing rates of infection in the infants, along with the increased use of steroids in expectant mothers that can help mature and strengthen the fetuss lungs prior to birth, according to the authors.

The findings are encouraging, said lead author Noelle Younge, M.D., a neonatologist and assistant professor of pediatrics at Duke. We see evidence of improvement over time. But we do need to keep an eye on the overall numbers, as a large percentage of infants born at this stage still do not survive. Those who survive without significant impairment at about age 2 are still at risk for numerous other challenges to their overall health.

For the study, the researchers looked at data of 4,274 infants born between the 22nd and 24th week of pregnancy, far earlier than the 37 to 40 weeks of a full-term pregnancy. The babies were hospitalized at 11 academic medical centers in the Neonatal Research Network, part of the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development at the National Institutes of Health.

About 30 percent of the infants born at the beginning of the study (between 2000 and 2003) survived. That number increased to 36 percent for babies born toward the end of the study (from 2008 to 2011), with the best outcomes for children born at 23 and 24 weeks. Overall survival for babies born at 22 weeks remained the same throughout the study, at just 4 percent.

Over the 12-year study period, the number of infants who survived but were found to have cognitive and motor impairment at 18 to 22 months stayed about the same (about 14 to 16 percent). However, the percentage of infants who survived without evidence of moderate or severe neurological impairment improved from 16 percent to 20 percent.

Researchers in the Neonatal Research Network reported in 2015 that survival was increasing in this vulnerable population. One concern was that the improved survival might have been accompanied by a greater number of infants who went on to have impairments in the long term, such as cerebral palsy, developmental delay, hearing and vision loss, said Younge.

However, we actually are seeing a slight improvement. Because children continue to develop over years, its important to continue to track this data so families and providers can make the best decisions in caring for these infants.

These improvements may be due to a number of factors, including lower rates of infection in the infants and increased use of steroids in expectant mothers. Steroids can help mature and strengthen the fetuss lungs prior to birth. At the beginning of the study, 58 percent of the expectant mothers had received steroids to boost fetal development. That figure increased to 64 percent by the end of the study.

The culture of neonatal intensive care units has really changed in the past decade, said senior author C. Michael Cotten, M.D., a neonatologist and professor of pediatrics at Duke. Weve taken a big focus on preventing infections, and theres a lot more encouragement and support for the use of mothers milk than there was 15 years ago, which has also been linked to better outcomes.

Extremely preterm infants are highly susceptible to infections. Neonatal intensive care units have reported steady decreases in infection rates among extremely preterm infants over the past two decades.

This is important because infections have been associated with greater risk of neurologic problems, Cotten said.

The study is published in the New England Journal of Medicine.

Source: Duke Health

APA Reference Pedersen, T. (2017). Recent Progress Seen in Lessening Cognitive, Motor Delays in Very Premature Babies. Psych Central. Retrieved on February 20, 2017, from https://psychcentral.com/news/2017/02/20/extremely-preterm-babies-have-fewer-cognitive-motor-delays/116677.html

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Recent Progress Seen in Lessening Cognitive, Motor Delays in Very Premature Babies - PsychCentral.com

UM’s roots in sustainability highlighted in 2016 Progress Report – U of M News Service

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UM's roots in sustainability highlighted in 2016 Progress Report
U of M News Service
In 2015, the university invested $100 million toward efforts to accelerate progress in the areas of waste reduction, greenhouse gas reduction and campus sustainability culture. Significant work is underway, including: Conversion of Michigan Stadium ...

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UM's roots in sustainability highlighted in 2016 Progress Report - U of M News Service

Station Nightclub Fire Memorial Sees Progress On 14th Anniversary – Rhode Island Public Radio

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Monday marks the 14th anniversary of the Station Nightclub fire, one of the deadliest fires in U.S. history. Survivors of the fire gathered Monday morning at the West Warwick site of the club to commemorate the tragedy. They also celebrated the near-completion of a memorial for those who perished in the fire.

For more than a decade survivors and family members of victims have fought to turn the site of the Station Nightclub into a memorial park, commemorating the 100 people who died in the fire. After legal hurdles to getting the land, the group finally saw construction begin last fall.

Gina Russo, who survived the fire, said shes been overwhelmed seeing the lot transformed since construction began last year.

Its awesome to watch the process of it going from this very tragic place, seeing the one hundred crosses, to developing this beautiful monument and park to honor the one hundred, said Russo.

Russo also helped spearhead the years-long project. She estimates the cost at more than $2 million. She said theres more money left to raise, to pay for upkeep and maintenance of the memorial site.

To ensure that we have maintenance money in the account, were going to go a little further with fundraising efforts, said Russo.

The memorial is expected to be completed by the spring.

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Station Nightclub Fire Memorial Sees Progress On 14th Anniversary - Rhode Island Public Radio

GBSI reports encouraging progress toward improved research … – Phys.Org

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February 19, 2017 Quality checkpoints. Credit: GBSI

One year after the Global Biological Standards Institute (GBSI) issued its Reproducibility2020 challenge and action plan for the biomedical research community, the organization reports encouraging progress toward the goal to significantly improve the quality of preclinical biological research by year 2020. "Reproducibility2020 Report: Progress and Priorities," posted today on bioRxiv, identifies action and impact that has been achieved by the life science research community and outlines priorities going forward. The report is the first comprehensive review of the steps being taken to improve reproducibility since the issue became more widely known in 2012.

"By far the greatest progress over these few years has been in stakeholders recognizing the severity of the problem and the importance of taking active steps for improvement," said Leonard P. Freedman, PhD, president of GBSI."Every stakeholder group is now addressing the issues, including journals, NIH, private funders, academicians and industry. That's crucial because there is not one simple fixit is a community-wide problem and a community-wide effort to achieve solutions."

The report addresses progress in four major components of the research process: study design and data analysis, reagents and reference materials, laboratory protocols, and reporting and review. Moreover, it identifies the following broad strategies as integral to the continued improvement of reproducibility in biomedical research: 1) drive quality and ensure greater accountability through strengthened journal and funder policies; 2) create high quality online training and proficiency testing and make them widely accessible; 3) engage the research community in establishing community-accepted standards and guidelines in specific scientific areas; and 4) enhance open access to data and methodologies.

Research community stakeholders have responded with innovation and policy. The community is taking more steps to work together and to tackle the complexities of the reproducibility problem. The report highlights tangible examples of community-led actions from implementing new funding guidelines and accountability to tackling industry-wide research standards and incentives for compliance. The lessons learned from these early efforts will assist all stakeholders seeking to scale up or replicate successful initiatives.

"We are confident that continued transparent, global, multi-stakeholder engagement is the way forward to better, more impactful science," says Freedman. "We are calling on all stakeholders - individuals and organizations alike - to take action to improve reproducibility in the preclinical life sciences by joining an existing effort, replicating successful policies and practices, providing resources to replication efforts and taking on new opportunities."

Actions Going Forward

The report contains specific actions that each stakeholder group can take to enhance reproducibility. In its leadership role, GBSI will:

Freedman introduced the new report at the AAAS 2017 Annual Meeting today during the session, "Rigor and Reproducibility One Year Later:How Has the Biomedical Community Responded?," hosted by GBSI. Freedman was joined by panelists Michael S. Lauer, M.D. of NIH; William G. Kaelin Jr., M.D. of the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute; and Judith Kimble University of Wisconsin-Madison.

"The research culture, particularly at academic institutions, must also seek greater balance between the pressures of career advancement and advancing rigorous research through standards and best practices," said Freedman, noting a major challenge still facing the community. "Additional leadership and community-wide support will be needed and we believe that the many initiatives described in this report add neededmomentum to this emerging culture shift in science.

"The preclinical research community is full of talented, motivated people who care deeply about producing high-quality science. We are optimistic about the potential to improve reproducibility, and look forward to continuing to contribute to the effort."

Explore further: FASEB issues recommendations on reproducibility

Provided by: Global Biological Standards Institute

On January 14, the Federation of American Societies for Experimental Biology (FASEB) issued Enhancing Research Reproducibility, a set of recommendations aimed to promote the reproducibility and transparency of biomedical ...

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Last year, headlines in The New York Times, The Atlantic, Scientific American and other outlets declared that a decades-old paleontological mystery had been solved. The "Tully monster," an ancient animal that had long defied ...

A project exploring the role of East Africa in the evolution of modern humans has amassed the largest and most diverse collection of prehistoric bone harpoons ever assembled from the area.The collection offers clues about ...

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Phobophobes Announces New Single and UK Tour with LIFE – Broadway World

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Phobophobes rise into 2017 nestled atop a wave of attention focused towards the revitalized South London scene with new single 'The Never Never', due for release March 24th via Ra-Ra Rok Records. Following previous single 'Human Baby', an elegy to their late guitarist George Russell that was played every day for a week on BBC 6Music, 'The Never Never' arrives an ode to the precarious survivalism of society's most disenfranchised. Swirling through repetitive slogans, rubbishing the adverts that promise a life we can't really afford as pastiche, and asking earnestly, "what separates those treading water to survive from the religious idols who struggled so similarly?"

"The Never Never is a critique of today's excessive consumerism. The repetitive and slogan-esque nature of the track evokes the reductive nature of advertising." explains frontman Jamie Taylor.

In the wake of a tumultuous 2016, Phobophobes continue to forge their own path, taking whatever's thrown at them and squeezing every ounce of inspiration from it. It's the only way they know. Frontman Jamie Taylor has built studio space wherever he's roamed, from Paris to Peckham to Primrose Hill. Even Pittsburgh, Iowa, Palm Beach and New York whilst working on a touring art exhibition across America, setting up a studio in each hotel room to work on new tracks. Even when invited to Abbey Road Studios to record with Ken Scott (Bowie, Lennon, the list goes on), bass player at the time, Elliot, took swabs of their oldest microphone and grew bacteria in petri dishes, the results of which are immortalised in Phobophobes' artwork and in the centre of their 7"s.

This boundless DIY mentality echoes through Phobophobes' every move. Having now found home in the basement of The Brixton Windmill, the nucleus of South London's gig circuit where Phobophobes record, rehearse and also put on their own shows, playing alongside Shame, Goat Girl, Meatraffle, The Fat White Family, Childhood and countless others, they remain progenitors of the scene.

Following a single launch show at London's MOTH Club, Phobophobes will tour the UK with LIFE through April on the dates below. The band are currently readying their debut full-length album and will release 'The Never Never' on 7" vinyl this March 24th via Ra-Ra Rok Records.

PHOBOPHOBES New 7" single 'The Never Never' due March 24th via Ra-Ra Rok Records

Stream 'The Never Never' https://soundcloud.com/phobophobes/the-never-never-single

UK Tour with LIFE begins April 1st

facebook.com/Phobophobes/

March 13 London, Moth Club (single launch)

April w/ LIFE 1 Hull, The Welly Club 2 Glasgow, King Tuts 3 Manchester, Gullivers 5 Birmingham, The Sunflower Lounge 6 London, Camden Assembly 7 Bristol, Crofters Rights

Phobophobes are: Jamie Taylor (Guitar/Vocals), Chris OC (Keys), Dan Lyons (Drums), Jack Fussey (Guitar), Bede Trillo (Bass) & Christo McCracken (Guitar).

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Phobophobes Announces New Single and UK Tour with LIFE - Broadway World

Zeal & Ardor Devil is Fine: Album Stream – The Independent

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There is a gross falsehood proliferated by those whose horizons stretch no further than the end of their nose. The fallacy is that all modern music is simply repetitions of ideas and concepts from yesteryear, that there isnt a single riff, lick, chord or note that has never been played before. Apart from the fact that this is an incredibly fatuous, narrow-minded view that completely ignores essential components of music such as craft, composition, personality, chemistry, technology, instrumentation, dynamics and tone (to name but a few), it also leads perfectly rationale people to spout nonsense;how many times have we heard the ridiculous notionthatThe Beatles invented every idea found in modern music and nobody's come up with a solitary original idea since?

Unless theres an unreleased album of Black Metal mixed with African-American Slave music by Messrs McCartney, Lennon, Harrison and Starr hiding in a dusty Abbey Road vault, we can probably nip that particular falsity in the bud. Instead, this particular combination of disparate genres can be credited to songwriter Manuel Gagneux, the brainchild behind Zeal & Ardor. If you really do think youve heard every trick that modern music has to offer, you might want to listen to the stream of their debut album Devil is Fine above; its unlikely you will have heard anything quite like it before.

The genesis for Zeal & Ardor came when Gagneuxbecame frustrated workingon a different musical project, his incredibly diverse, difficult to define, alternative chamber pop projectBirdmask.Whenever Gagneux would run in to a creative stumbling block, he would go on to 4Chan, an internet bulletin board where anyone can post anonymously on a wide variety of topics, and ask people for two musical genres. He would then combine them and write a song within half an hour, purely as a means to get his creative juices flowing once again. It wasn'teven my idea to mix these two genres Gagneux says humbly I totally stole it! The first iteration of this combination was pretty horrible to be honest, but the idea stuck with me and I pursued it

Gagneuxs enthusiasm for black metal started, as it does for most fans of the genre, as a teenager. I was trying to listen to listen to the most extreme music I could find, you know how teens are. My friend introduced me to Burzum and Darkthrone and told me that they were the most evil people on the planet of course, I was intrigued! I became so enthralled by black metal because it's all enveloping sound; its very aggressive but even tender in some moments.

Chain gang music, whilst not something Gagneux listens to on a regular basis, was introduced to him as a child by his Swiss father and American mother. My parents listened to these old Lomax recordings for a while when I was growing up. They were something I'd totally forgotten about but recently re-discovered and I dove into them for this project.'

Mixing genres is all well and good but if the individual strands of the hybrid are no good, youll be falling at the first hurdle. Gagneux has efficaciously captured the essence and sentiment of African slave music; the authenticity is so convincing, accusations were made against him, saying hed stolen old Lomax recordings and sampled them without permission (he didnt, he just sang loudly into a shit microphone with too much signal to get that authentic, lo-fi recording sound of the 30s and 40s).

As Gagneux began putting the music together, images began to form in his head of African chain gangs rebelling against their Christian captors by invoking Satanism. He took this idea and ran with it as a thematic thread to pin on to the record. Devil is Fines artwork shows signs of the extensive research Gagneux put into the project; the photograph is of a real enslaved African-American, Robert Smalls, who managed to free himself and 17 other slaves during the American Civil War by commandeering a Confederate transport ship stacked with Howitzer guns and several hundred rounds of ammunition. It was a daring escape for such a young man; Smalls was just 22 when he put his perilous plan into action and he lived to the age of 75, very respectable for someone born in the 19th century. Once he was free, Smalls lived a very full life, serving as a civilian pilot and armed transport captain for the military and later got into politics as a member of the US House of Representatives.

Superimposed over the image of Smalls is The Sigil of Lucifer, sometimes referred to as the Seal of Satan. One of the lesser known symbols in modern Satanism, its believed to hold connections to a greater, supernatural power, in this case, Satan himself. I think superimposing Lucifers sigil over the image of Robert Smalls neatly sums up the intention and theme of this record to me says Gagneux. Without trying to sound too corny, its meant to represent these African slaves summoning something sinister and liberating themselves through Satan. Imagine if slaves in America had rejected the Christianity that was foisted upon them and embraced Satanism instead. Rather than being forced to accept the will of God, they choose defiance and rebellion; thats the world in which this album is rooted. Im an atheist, I dont really believe in God, but parts of modern Satanism do gel with me whilst other parts dont. Its fiction at the end of the day but it's well researched; I've put an embarrassing amount of time into reading occult books to get this stuff right!

The album artwork superimposes the Sigil of Lucifer over an image of freed slave Robert Smalls

Whilst the black metal and slave music hybridisation has got the most media attention thus far, theres actually a large pool of various genre influences that Gagneux is drawing from on Devil is Fine; elements of electronica, cradle songs, spiritual chanting, delta-blues licks and funk are all touched on throughout Devil is Fines 25minutes. Childrens Summon sounds like Dragonforce put through a Watain filter. Whats a Killer Like You Gonna Do Here? evokes a darker, more sinister Tom Waits. Given the somewhat purist attitude of a certain breed of metal fan, Zeal & Ardor have and will continue to provoke strong reactions, both positive and negative.

It's not a primary intention of mine to aggravate those people but it is funny to see some of the reactions says Gagneux. Black metal used to be the most extreme music known to man, but now, it's almost classical. It seems natural to want to evolve it and figure out alternatives and evolutions. There's been quite a few polarising opinions but actually I really appreciate them because some of them mention things where there might be room for improvement. Zeal & Ardor to me is not done, I'm still trying to figure out how it could be better and some of these negative comments are quite helpful because they point out what I could do better.

Zeal & Ardor is just the latest in a long line of developments in the world of music, an artform that continues to develop and metamorphose, despite the protestations of those stuck in the past or who fear change. Music is a force that is constantly changing and evolving; the notion that the well will run dry and that everythings already been done is an idea that says more about the person expressing it than it does about the state of modern music. Some may dismiss Zeal & Ardor as a gimmick but Gagneux is determined to not let that happen. As a live unit, the project will be expanded from just Gagneux to six musicians, including two backing singers. It's a fine line to walk because I don't ever want the music to be secondary to the show, but I have a few ideas. The record is only 25 minutes long but if we do a 25 minute set, people will kill us and will have every right to do so! So theres a few new ideas and songs for people that come to see us live. I'm in the process of distilling the project, making it more extreme in both directions and gelling the two elements together a little more precisely.

Devil is Fine is released through MVKA on 24th February on vinyl, CD and digitally. Zeal & Ardor commence a European tour in March including a date at The Underworld in Camden, London on 20th April

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Zeal & Ardor Devil is Fine: Album Stream - The Independent

[ American Nihilist Underground Society (ANUS) :: Nihilism …

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Home Site Map Nihilism

"Civilization is a disease which is almost invariably fatal." - Dean Inge

This article attempts the impossible. It seeks to explain, in small form, a belief system that is at its heart not very complex, but to which the path from our current belief systems is complex and fraught with confusions, whether linguistic, or conceptual, or even image-oriented. There is no way it can succeed. However, all things must start somewhere, and so, for the sake of doing something where otherwise doing nothing is a path to certain failure, we sally onward in an attempt to provide another starting point for those seeking nihilism.

What Nihilism Is Not

After all, why believe in anything? - nihilism, like any form of organized thought, is a belief. You could be like so many five-cent sages and proclaim identification with a mainstream political belief, or consider yourself "cynical" and say nothing can be done, so turn on the TV, pop a beer and be through with it. That way, at least you're personally insulated - you've declared a lack of a will to fight - and you can feel OK about being whatever it was before. Wiser observers might say you're in the grips of a very complex but at heart mundane form of cognitive dissonance; you're pointing to a difference between ideal and reality as a justification for inaction.

You could even take on the junior form of nihilism, which is a lack of belief in anything, otherwise known as fatalism, but really, it's a developed form of the above. And don't you feel silly buying into any of the ready-made political identities that are out there, and swearing your ideas match those of Michael Moore or Rush Limbaugh, who are basically two different versions of the same fat "just sign here and it'll all be okay" product? Maybe you take refuge in religion, but it's about the same; instead of picking a path, you're following one. This isn't to say that all paths are wrong, and you should be some kind of "individualist" who concocts a "unique" formula of unrelated fragments of belief, and then proclaims everything would be OK if that impossibly self-contradictory regimen were followed.

Yet none of these are satisfying, because at the end of the day, you're no closer to a coherent vision of what would change that which ails you. It's naive to say it doesn't bother you, either, because it's clear that this society is what we call in business a "deathmarch": a fundamentally flawed approach that immediately isn't visible, and therefore is demanded by higherups, so we the workers apply it as best we can with the knowledge that someday, the shit's gonna hit the fan and we'll all suffer, but we're not to blame because someone else is in charge. Of course, no one is really "in charge" here, as we're just following mass trends and opinions, media and political constructs passed along for so many generations that it's impossible to find someone who is definitively to blame, for whom we can have a comforting execution, then dust off our hands and proclaim the problem solved because we yanked out the bad guy.

Nihilism is a different sort of belief because, unlike almost all beliefs, it's a conduit and not an endpoint. Most belief systems lay out a series of static objectives and claim if these are achieved, everything will be as peachy as it can be; the most dangerous are the Utopian ones, which promise an absolute near perfection that has little to do with reality. "Some day we'll eliminate all war" and "free markets make free souls" both fall into this category. Believing such homilies is akin to thinking that if you buy the right guitar, you'll be able to automatically create the best music ever, et cetera ad nauseaum. Nihilism does not claim a Utopian solution, and is in fact contra-Utopian: by the nature of its being a philosophical viewpoint, and not a mass trend around which you're expected to rally, it defines itself as a way of viewing the world including such political mass trends. There is no ultimate solution, no absolute Utopia, only a better mental tool for perceiving and analyzing whatever situations arise. Unlike political rallypoints, it is a highest level abstraction, and one under which all other ideas form a hierarchy assessing their degrees of logicality.

Trendwhores and savvy political manipulators will try to group issues under any belief, including nihilism, thinking that a bullet point list makes it easy for the proles to agree on a course of action (so far, history suggests this is either outright lying or wishful thinking). It's unlikely that such a thing could occur. Nihilists embrace "extreme" viewpoints because they have seen past the cognitive dissonance, and thus have no problem looking at the world analytically. It's not extremity for extremity's sake, which is almost always a psychological device for creating an impossible goal and thus, by claiming to labor toward it, removing responsibility of actually doing something pragmatic. One reason to detest extreme rightist, leftist and green communities is that this is their modus operandi: suggest something insane, then accuse all who don't agree of selling out, and continuing to labor on with the attitude "only I know the truth, and the rest of you are pretenders, therefore, I'm better than you." Can we be honest and refer to this as defensive egomania?

Nihilism needs no justification. It follows the pattern of nature, which is evolution: successive replacement of previous forms of organization ("order","design") with better ones. There is no moral imperative to do any given act, only a practical one, in that if a proposed design works better even in some small way, those design details can be incorporated into the status quo, thus forcing it to the next level of evolution. Of course, making any changes introduces new powers and new problems, so the process of evolution continues ad infinitum, unless (as in the case of French and Italians) an evolutionary "harbor" is reached, by which adaptation balances adequately enough to an unchanging environment. If one is, for example, the remnants of a fallen empire, there is not much to do except to live well and not worry too much about greatness receding slowly into memory so far removed it is mythic legend and not a part of current reality.

Background

I was arguing once with a fellow who, when I proposed a high-level abstraction, said, "But isn't abstraction a Judeo-Christian thing, and therefore, bad?" He fell into the same trap that many at our universities have, in which they assume that language misleads us, therefore we must deconstruct and "go beyond" language, essentially creating incoherence. Look at it this way: some sentences are true, and some are not. Some abstractions make sense, and others do not. How do we tell? How well does each stack up to reality, and by that we mean the process through which reality is created and not its persistent objects, should be our yardstick. An abstraction of some fanciful world where a benevolent unicorn in the sky will sort good from bad, right from wrong, and lead us to a place called Heaven is an abstraction that has little to do with the world in which we live. It is a solipsistic abstraction: it applies to the desires of the individual human, and does not take into account the world in which all humans live. (Nihilists are brave enough to recognize the obvious: individual humans have different strengths and intelligences, and thus, not everyone can perceive or understand such an abstraction, and those who cannot will invent abstractions of a solipsistic nature to compensate - see "cognitive dissonance" above.)

If you take a highly abstract view at the real-world problems of creating a conscious creature, you will see rapidly that the major threat to such a being would be the possibilities of its own mind. Our strengths are our weakness. Because such a creature can imagine, and can predict, and can create in its mind a partial replica of the world to use in guessing what the potential outcome of any action might be - "sun and rain always come in spring, and things don't grow in winter, so I'll plant in spring, assuming that this pattern is consistent" - it is also susceptible to conceiving an inaccurate notion of how the world works, and/or becoming emotionally unstable and thus creating a solipsistic version. "When I bless the gods, winter ends and the spring comes" is such an example; a more insidious one is "If I do not harm others, no harm will come to me" (tell that to a band of raiding looters or pillaging Vandals). Still more developed is the root of cognitive dissonance: I will think on how things should be and content myself with that, since I cannot or do not believe I can effect change in reality. Each of these errors is formed from the fundamental mistake of assuming that what exists in the individual human mind is higher than reality as a whole, or can be used to compensate for tendencies in the whole. We die; it sucks; let's invent "heaven" and perpetual life. Would not it be more ethical, more honest and above all else, more realistic, to simply admit we have no idea what follows death - if anything? (Add to this the complexity of a world we know through the progression of time, yet which might encompass additional or fewer dimensions in some other view, and you have a formula for endless unprovable conjecture taken as fact because well, we'd all like to believe we don't die; to this I rejoin that if we're all immortal, this means that the morons who afflict us daily are as well, which might make us reconsider the wisdom of "life eternal.")

Humans, being highly abstract creatures, are prone to creating abstractions which make sense only in their mind. These are "dead end" or "ultra-discrete" abstractions, in that their only error is a failure of realization that the individual human is part of a larger world, which goes on with or without them. If a tree falls in a forest and no one is around to witness it, does it make a sound? Of course, but the forest won't call it a "sound," and no one will note it or talk about it. We can play definition games all day, and claim that either a sound only exists in the human mind, or that it's external, but this is a case of redefining the word, not the phenomenon it describes. We might as well call a leaping predatory animal a tiger, and then be shocked and surprised (awed?) when groups of people fail to respond to our urgent warning, "Butterfly!" Similarly, we can call death "life eternal" if it makes us feel better, but that causes zero change to the phenomenon itself, which remains unknown to us. Thinking creatures have a great strength, which is their imaginative and analytical facility, but it is their greatest weakness: they can create "artificial" thoughts which do not relate to the world around them, and thus mislead themselves based on what they'd like to believe, not what they can know from an inspection of their world. There's much talk about the scientific method - experiment based on conjecture, observe, conjecture, repeat - but isn't it the same process we use in less formal incarnation to discover our world, from our time as babies nibbling on different objects to test their solidity, to our last moments on earth? In this sense, debugging a computer program or exploring a new continent or taking LSD is the same task as a scientific experiment. We observe the world, make theories about how it works, and then test those theories. Of course, the ones about death cannot be tested, and this opens a giant loophole for us to make a foundational theory about God or "life eternal," and in order to support it, to invent many other illusions so that it seems like a realistic, complete system of thought.

This human problem - distinguishing the internal world from the external - is not unique to humans, but as they're the only creatures with "higher" logical functions on earth, they are our only example. It is magnified as a problem when the question of civilization arises, because for the first time, groups must be instructed in organizing principles they cannot directly experience, e.g. "you grow grain, he'll make bread, and that other guy will distribute it to the people at large." Where individuals err in assuming their internal worlds are more real than external reality, civilizations err by finding popular assumptions that become law because people act according to them; whole civilizations have perished by upholding the rules that, in theory, will lead them to external life, but by denying reality allow crops to wither, invaders to intrude, decay of internal discipline to make people ineffective. Not everyone must be deluded, but when enough are, the future of the civilization becomes a deathmarch. If you want a working definition of nihilism from a political-philosophical perspective, it is an affirmation of the structure and process of reality, in dramatic contrast to the appearances of objects and the seemingly-real perceptions that turn out to be phantasma of our internal minds, and have nothing to do with external reality. Nihilism is facing facts: whether or not we get eternal life, we have to keep the crops going and invaders outside and internal discipline high, or we will collapse as a functional entity. "Structure" in this context would be understand of our world as it operates, including that people need grain to eat and need to act on realistic principles, or invaders, disease, and internal listlessness will condemn us all.

Currently, our society is a linear construction of opposites that do not exist in nature - they are purely perceptual within human minds: good/evil, profit/loss, popular/unpopular. The best product is not always a necessary product (iPod), nor the best product (SUVs), nor even a good idea (cigarettes), but, well, it's popular and all that money goes back to its creator, so it is Good according to our lexicon. Similarly, we pick our leaders according to those favored by most people, and therefore, our leaders become those who make the biggest promises and find a way to duck the followthrough; since most people relying on such delusions are not rocket scientists, they quickly forget and go about their lives merrily assuming that because promises were made and the election was won, they'll come true and everything will be A+ from now on. Some might argue that in nature there is profit and loss, but a quick study reveals that be false: in nature there is success or failure, and it has nothing to do with popularity, or all animals would be immortal. Similarly, some will argue that there's good (heterosexual intercourse) and evil (anal intercourse) in nature, but when one sees the function of anal intercourse in nature (among apes, appeasing intruders) it is clear that no such judgment "exists," except in our minds. In our minds... well, that's not a logical test, according to any methods scientific or otherwise. It's wishful thinking, in the common parlance.

What is most disturbing about this view, which invariably becomes popular in the later stages of civilization, is that it imposes a singular standard and form-factor upon each person and his or her desires, ambitions, needs - as well as what that person requires to stay alive and live well, a quantity often quite separate from what they think they desire (people, like lab rats, will often pick pleasurable sensations over long-term benefits, thus drink instead of investing their cash in future returns, u.s.w.). In such a mode of thought, we are all form-stamped by a bureaucratic, mechanical or social machine, according to what is popular, and therein we see the origin of this thought process: it selects what most people want to believe, over what is real. Through this mechanism, civilizations move into a senility formed of acting according to internal assumptions, and thus eventually coming into conflict with cold hard reality, whether it's invading Vandals, crop failure, or internal discohesion. While that end in itself may be far off, the intermediate problem is that living in such societies is, at the lowest and highest levels of our perception, disturbing. Not only is there illusion taken as reality, but it is an illusion created out of what ideas are popular and therefore (because most people are not wise) contra-wisdom and contra-realistic. In later civilization, we all serve the whims of popularity and the illusions of the crowd, awaiting that future day when the shit finally hits the fan and we are forced to acknowledge our reliance on illusion.

What Nihilism Might Be

Solvents separate matter into its component parts. Nihilism could be viewed as a mental solvent which divides illusion from a realistic perception of individual and world as a continuous, joined, inter-reliant process. When one sees the world only in terms of appearance, and has no knowledge of structure, illusions and good idea look similar: death and "life eternal" are simply opposite extremes, not logical results of radically different processes. To someone dwelling in illusion, a fern is a green thing that appears in forests and sometimes, lawn gardens; to someone concerned with design and structure, a fern is a plant of a certain shape, genetic background, and place in an ecosystem whereby it appears when the right conditions - sunlight, soil, water, surrounding plants and animals - exist, and serves a certain role in its processing of sunlight to water and oxygen, strengthening the ground with root mass, and providing homes and food to other plants and animals. While to someone dwelling in illusion human societies may be measured in terms of how little they harm the retarded and infirm and insane, to someone grounded in reality, the only measure of a society is its long-term survival - whether they murder the retarded, or keep them in gilded cages, is completely irrelevant to that final determination (although resources expended on the non-productive is part of what determines success or failure). We can live in our own mental worlds, perhaps, but the world outside of us keeps going, and our interaction with it is the only determination of success or failure; the rest is entirely cognitive dissonance.

(A great and practical example for young people especially is the difference between music quality and hype/presentation. Many artists will be presented to you as "new","unique" or even "brutal," but this has no bearing on the underlying quality of the music. Similarly, neither does production; if the music is well-composed, using harmony and melody and rhythm and structure well, it should be excellent music if played on a single acoustic guitar, a Casio keyboard, or as presented by the band on their label-financed heavy-production debut. Stuff that "sounds good" often is insubstantial, but has excellent production and an enigmatic image, but over time it fails to reward in the way that art does, by creating a poetry of life that enlightens and compels. It may not even hold up to musical scrutiny, when it is pointed out that behind the flutes and sirens and wailing guitars and screaming divas, the song is essentially a variation on a well-known and tedious ballad form or blues form. Hype and production are excellent ways to get people to buy a zero-value product, that is, a repetition of past successes, while getting them to convince themselves that they have found something new and enlightening. If you are a nihilist, you look past whether it "sounds good" or feels right or you like the image or it makes you feel like you're part of some kind of revolution in behavior, and analyze the music: if it does not stand out from the usual patterns enough to be expressing something not new or unique but particular to its ideas, and demonstrative of those ideas, it's hype and not reality. It's "art" and not art. We can play word games here, too, but if you value your time and are not brick-stupid, you'll see why it's important to find the real art.)

Another way to view nihilism is transcendence of what we call, in the modern West, the "ego." Egomania occurs through cognitive dissonance when, reality not being to our liking, we invent our own; at this point, we can either invent it and recognize it as unreal but symbolically evocative, something we call fantasy, or we can invent it and claim it as either a higher reality than the real world, or a reality that supplants existence. Egomania is assertion that our internal worlds are more real than the external world, which is paradoxical as the latter includes the former (we are necessarily accurately represented in the external world, but there is no assurance that it is accurately represented in our internal world). When we think egomaniacally, as most people in the West do, we see the world as limited to our own perceptions and desires, and ignore the continuity between self and external world; we also think according to the form of ourselves, meaning that we see all decisions, ethical and otherwise, as limited to individuals. This cuts us off from a holistic morality by which we might for example see our environment as an extension of ourselves, both as a parent and a process upon which we are dependent; it cuts us off from considering unpopular decisions that nonetheless are right, when we consider the direction of our civilization. Our modern conception of morality is one that regulates the rights, survival and treatment of individuals, but it has no capacity for a holistic morality which sees individuals, environment and civilization as interdependent entities and thus makes decisions at the level of what is best for that convergent nexus.

This brings us to the crux of a philosophical dilemma in the West. The separation of mind and body creates a duality in which we see thoughts and external reality as discrete, isolated entities. One is either an idealism, or a realist, in this view, and never the twain shall meet. From a nihilist perspective, idealism explains realism, in that reality is not simply physical appearance but a structure and process; a "design," even if we decide there is no Designer (and for our daily lives: does it matter?). This conversion is accomplished by taking idealism, or "the philosophical doctrine that reality somehow mind-correlative or mind-coordinated-that the real objects constituting the 'external world' are not independent of cognizing minds, but exist only as in some correlative to mental operations" (Cambridge Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Second Edition), to its extreme, which is to assume that the external world and thoughts operate by a single mechanism; in that context, the world operates as an idea, and what is important in the world is not physicality or appearance but idea - design, concept, structure and process. Matching that supposition is an extension of realism, or a belief in the preeminence of external reality, which hyperextends to a study of how reality operates, and from that, a focus on its abstract properties. To analyze reality is to see that it operates like thought; to analyze thought is to see that the world operates much as thoughts do, and therefore, that putting thoughts into flesh is the supreme form of thinking.

Nihilism is a joining of these two extremes through a focus on the practical study of reality and a rejection of preconceptions brought on by anthrocentric viewing of the world, which is necessarily confined to the physicality of individuals and objects as they appear to humans. It is not an attempt to create an obligation, or an ideal, in and of itself, but a reduction of things to their simplest, most real elements so that higher ideals can be created, much as the creation of new civilizations produces a collective focus on the forging of something better than previous civilizations. F.W. Nietzsche wrote of the necessity of "going under" in modernity, and one interpretation of this is that one cannot create "higher" ideals when our concept of higher/lower is linear and predefined; one must remove all value and undergo a "reevaluation of all values," focusing only on those which survive the test of a his "philosophical hammer," much like knocking on a wall to find hollow areas. Nihilism is a going under in the form of removal of all value, and construction of values based on reality instead of potentially internalized abstraction. In a nihilist worldview, nothingness is as important as somethingness, as only nothingness can like a midnight predator carry away the somethingness that has outlived its usefulness, is illusory, irrelevant or fanatical. Nihilism is a mental discipline which clarifies outlook by disciplining the mind to understand the structure of reality, and exclude anything which regardless of appearance is not true to that understanding.

In this, it is possible that nihilists witness civilization as it actually is: an eternal process of birth, growth, and an aging brought about by self-obsession, leading rapidly to a distancing from reality, thus irrelevance and death. To remove all preconceptions of value is to have to re-invent value that is relevant to things as they are both right now and eternally, in that throughout history the basic rules of civilization have never changed; either there is a system of organization that makes sense, or there is illusion and ruin. Civilizations start out young and healthy, unified by whatever ideals made their members come together in the first place with the intent of building something new; when succeeding generations take this for granted, they drift into illusory ideals, at which point no "higher ideals" can overcome the illusion, because one cannot get "higher" than the notion of individual self-interest. One must instead go lower, to the state before civilization reformed, to re-design its ideals.

What Nihilism Does For You

If you live in a time when illusion is seen as reality, and reality is an unknown continent, nihilism can on a personal level save you time by removing illusion and leaving only what is honestly relevant to your life and existential happiness. A simple version of this is undergone by many in corporate America who, finding it relatively easy to succeed, then find themselves wanting less time in the office and more spent on those things that are eternally human to desire: family, friends, local community and increase of wisdom and balance in the self. The illusion is that money is more important than anything else; the actuality is that if you have enough, and you have the ability to do the things in life which are more important in the long term (imagine seeing your life from your deathbed) than money, it is not only sufficient but superior to a hollow existence where life is secondary to jobs and payment.

Further, nihilism drives away fears through illusion. If one believes public rhetoric, it will seem necessary to cower under the bed as if hiding from a host of fears: public ridicule, global warming, nuclear war, the Wrath of God, fascism, sodomy, drug users, hackers, Satanists. These vast apocalyptic fears operate for the most part as distraction, keeping our minds off the emptiness of modern life and the inevitability of our society facing consequences of its reckless action. What is important are not fears, but real threats and most importantly, how to fix them. Much like people who hide behind cynicism, most moderns fixate on "raising awareness" of problems, and rarely do anything to address them practically. This creates a culture of fear where in the name of amorphous fears, or balkanized infighting between political and ethnic groups, we miss the point: we can fix our civilization, but we'll have to do it at a more basic level than politics, economics and social popularity afford.

Nihilism helps many lead better lives. When they cut out the meaningless garbage that infiltrates from television and other neurotic people, they can see their actual needs are simple and easily satisfied. From this, they can see how the larger unaddressed problems - the tedium of modern society, the pollution of nurturing environment, the degeneration of culture and heritage, our loss of wisdom as a civilization - can be important not only for the fragile individual but for future generations; nihilism leads people to holistic moral thinking.

(If you want it in boring, everyday terms, nihilism is a bullshit eliminator. If someone tells you something, look at it with eyes abstracted from everyday life and what people think and what is profitable; look toward what is real, and then find what ideals maintain that status. You like being alive, right? - If not, consider suicide. If you like living, you believe in life, and you'll do what furthers life. Garbage is not life. Illusion in religious form, political form and social form is one part of this; another is overhyped garage bands, or oversold commercial rock, or trendy books that tell you nothing of importance. It is better to sit in silence and contemplate the universe than to fill your head with garbage. Do you need to watch the mundane movies and pointless TV shows, and entertaining commercial messages? Do you need a sports car? Will owning one more DVD, video game, or CD of not-that-great-after-all rock music help you? When you pull aside the curtains, the truth is there, naked like the contents of your lunch on the end of a fork - apologies to William S. Burroughs.)

The Doctrine of Parallelism

We're going to make a sizable leap here. As said before, this is an introductory document, a toehold into a philosophical system, and not a complete explanation. When you accept that there is a structure behind reality that acts in the method of thoughts, and when you observe natural surroundings and see how consistent this is, you then are ready to think in parallel. Put simply, parallel thinking is the ultimate refutation of the linearity and binary morality of modern society. If we are to construct right and wrong, they are specific to the situation at hand. Some will condemn this as "situational morality," but holistic morality is a form of thought that is best applied in specifics; after all, a different rule applies to the wolf than the dove, and different standards apply to the behavior of plumbers, computer programmers, and political leaders. Some will see this as relativism, but under analysis, it's clear that relativism is one standard of morality applied with forgiveness for disadvantages to certain situations or experiences of individuals; the morality of thinking in parallel says that there is no one standard except reality itself, and that many different types of things acting in parallel create this.

One area where this can be seen is homosexuality. For most heterosexuals, having homosexual behavior occur in neighborhoods or other areas where children are present is not positive; they would rather raise their children according to heterosexual role models and behavioral examples. However, homosexuality occurs, and the best data available suggests that in most cases it is inborn; obviously, some are induced into homosexuality much as many heterosexuals are brought into forms of deviant sexual behavior, through sexual abuse or conditioning in youth (hence the desire for normal, heterosexual role models; most heterosexuals also do not want promiscuity, coprophagia, BDSM, etc. occurring around their children even if solely in a heterosexual context). So what to do with homosexuals, for whom being raised in a heterosexual society can be oppressive, and heterosexuals, for whom having homosexual behavior around can be equally oppressive and deleterious? We think in parallel: some communities will choose to be heterosexual, and others homosexual, and when they meet on neutral ground, it is likely that neither will assert its morality as a dominant, inviolate rigid code. Morality after all is not something we can prove exists, but something we derive from natural structure in order to establish a civilization of the type we desire. Some civilizations will endorse promiscuity and coprophagia, but in doing so, they miss out on some opportunities granted to civilizations with a more disciplined moral code. The converse is also true. There is no one law for the ox and the raven; to do so is to commit tyranny.

Another area where this can be applied is that of recreational chemicals, which is our modern shorthand for perception-altering drugs. Some communities will deny alcohol and cigarettes; some will embrace LSD and marijuana and mushrooms and perhaps even go further. It is likely that the two will never find common ground except where the question of drug use does not arise (Wal-Mart?). When we see experiments in drug legalization, like British Columbia or Amsterdam or Christiania in Denmark, we see an artificial gold rush toward hedonism caused by the fact that, worldwide, there are few relatively safe places to go take drugs. Were it such that in every continent there were some area where the rules on such things were relaxed, it is likely that those who seek drugs could go there and pursue them at a fraction the cost of illicit use. This would not only curb crime, but keep drug use out of normal (heterosexual and homosexual) neighborhoods where such things are not desired as unintentional role models for children, and the cost of drug use - including, let's be honest, increased laziness and pizza consumption - is considered funds misspent that could otherwise be directed toward bettering other aspects of the community. There is no one rule. We cannot "prove" that drugs are good, or bad, but we can see how in some places they would be helpful and in others, destructive. Do the Hindu communities where marijuana is a sacrament have greater crime and pizza consumption? Would Amsterdam have as many problems if it wasn't the world nexus of marijuana tourism?

The area most controversial where this could be applied is the taking of human life, and the enslavement of others. Some communities, such as a community formed by those who live according to the doctrines of black metal music, would not have any prohibition on honor killings, death in combat, or even brutal removal of ingrates. In their worldview, honest combat produces a survivor ("winner") and one judged less able, the dead ("loser"). Most societies find this concept reprehensible, and would never permit it, so it makes sense to have communities where combat to the death, duels and other honor violence, are seen as a way of selecting the more capable citizens. Further, in many communities, it would be seen fit to work by the old Texas standard, "Judge, he needed killing," whereby bullies, cattle thieves, morons and other undesirables could be removed with tacit consent of community. While many communities would prefer intricate and expensive legal systems, in some areas, if a person was known as a child molestor or cheat or thief, it would be cheaper and easier to look the other way while a local hotblood challenged that person to a fight and attempted to murder him. Cormac McCarthy describes such places in his book "Blood Meridian," as they are also described in Burroughs' "Naked Lunch": lands where there is no law except strength, and as a result, where all citizens are ready for combat and by process of evolution, over generations become more apt at it. Are all peoples warrior peoples? Clearly not. Would all communities tolerate this? No. But much as we need plumbers and computer scientists, we need warriors, and if some greater threat manifests itself, it is probable that the people of these warlike communities would be esteemed as valuable combatants.

Another controversial area where localization - the best thought from the leftist side of things has emphasized this theory under that term - becomes preeminent is that of race. Even mentioning race, or that there are physical differences between races, is currently taboo in the West and will get you fired, removed from office, drummed out of volunteer capacities, blacklisted in industry and crucified in the media. History tells us that human races evolved under different climates and different pressures, and therefore have different abilities. We cannot "prove," objectively, that any one collection of abilities is superior to another. Communities are united by common belief, and some communities will opt for this to be a unification of culture, language and heritage. Some communities will opt to be cosmopolitan, mixed-race communities like New York City. Others will choose to be ethnocentric and to defend their ethnic-cultural heritage as necessary to their future; this preserves their uniqueness, and is the only realistic basis for true diversity. Without this bond, you have Disneyland-style fake communities which give nods to heritage but are basically products of modern time. Let there always be Finns, Zulus, Germans, Basques, Cherokee, Aztec, Norwegian, and even Irish - this is diversity; this is multiculture; this is all of the good things that exposure to different cultures can provide. This is the only mature attitude toward race, instead of trying to produce, as the Bush administration has, one global standard of liberal mixed-ethnic democracy that essentially destroys culture and replaces it with malls and television. The race taboo is propelled by those without a clear cultural heritage who want to revenge themselves upon those who do, much as in high school those with low self-esteem tried to antagonize both nerds and class leaders.

Still another area where localization saves us from our current civilization's misery is that of intelligence. A nihilist has no use for social pretense that says we are all equal; some are fit to be leaders by virtue of their natural intelligence, and no amount of education or government programs can make someone else be able for that position. Some prefer to correlate this with race, but a nihilist has no use for this, either: even within what George Santayana calls the "favored races" there are many completely stupid people, especially those with the worst kind of stupidity, which is a combination of cowardice and bad leadership skills. Few people mind a dumb person who is humble and follows orders well, but dumb people who agitate for change that benefits dumb people quickly destroy any civilization. Some localities may opt to admit anyone without regard to intelligence or character, but others will wish to only accept those of a commensurate mental level to the best of their populations, and will therefore exclude morons, blockheads, fools and ingrates. This conflicts with the idea of universal rights, and shows us why the concept is illusory: if morons have the "universal right" to move anywhere, what about people who want the right and freedom to live apart from morons? Modern society tells us that the way to do this is to earn enough money to live in an exclusive neighborhood, but even then, one must interact with morons daily for goods and services, in addition to dealing with those morons who inherited money or earned it through stupid means. Social Darwinism, or the idea that those who are the best and smartest earn the most money, has two holes: first, not all intelligent people opt to chase the money wagon and second, most morons are greedy, and many of them succeed through luck or persistence. A nihilist naturally laughs at the idea of correlating money to intelligence, and would prefer to live in a community where morons are excluded.

There are numerous issues that divide communities which can be resolved through this model. Anti-abortion devotees might need their own community, as there's no way to make a law that both pro- and anti-abortion people will find fair. The constant combat between different groups, whether divided by sex or race or preference of values, exhausts our current civilization because so much of its time and energy is spent on internal conflict. The major reason that we choose this insane method is that it enables us to believe we are united by the form factor of being human, and therefore, that there is no need for belief beyond that. It enables us to ignore nature. However, as Carl Jung observed, by nature humans are of several different personality combinations, and those serve a role in the larger social construct (for example, a Meyers-Briggs "INTJ" personality will be a philosopher). There is no single archetype of human, but different types which match different roles in nature, much as there are different ecosystems for which there are specific combinations of host species. Our environment creates a pattern, and we evolve in a form that matches its unique contours; in the same way, humans have adapted to a self-created environment, civilization.

Paul Woodruff, in his book "Reverence," pointed out that in modern times we have lost the ability to revere nature and our world. Part of our loss of reverence is this insistence on one-size-fits-all rules for civilization; we are so unstable as individuals that we want a solid, clear-cut, and absolute rule, but nature does not fit this pattern and so we override. One step to regaining reverence is to stop judging objects, actions and people by a linear binary (yes/no) rule and to start thinking in parallel. In some places, there should always be debauchery, and in others, there should always be quiet conservative living. Communities will shed people from newer generations who do not find that type of locality valuable, and those will in turn have to find their own living elsewhere, and define their own path. In this, we escape the illusion that a perfect social construct can be engineered for us all, and that by forcing us through it, something Utopian will emerge. Such illusions convince us to be passive, and to think solely in terms of governmental solutions applied by rote force, which limits our perspective on the manifold options available in almost every situation.

Nihilism in Politics

We define politics as the process of convincing large numbers of people to do something. No belief system can escape politics, unless it deals with the individual outside of civilization, at which point writing it down is hypocrisy. For this reason, although nihilism is a mental discipline and not a political platform, there are some areas in which nihilism will influence modern politics. The first and most obvious is that, unlike most who are either bought off or blind to the inadequacies of the status quo, nihilists will recognize that it is a deathmarch: an illogical path that will ultimately lead to failure, but because saying so is taboo and unprofitable, we all go along with it even though we march to our doom. Look into the future. Our earth will be more, and not less, polluted, because no matter what we do there will be more people than ever using technology and producing waste. A consequence of our population growth will be a lack of natural spaces to enjoy, because every single continent on earth will be divided up into salable land and covered in fences and concrete to the degree that unbroken wilderness will not exist. Nations will no longer convey a cultural identity or heritage, so we will all be citizens of the world and have what is offered in default of culture, namely Wal-Mart, Coca-Cola and re-runs of "Friends." Bred for jobs and obedience, we will lose the best of our people because they are no longer relevant in a world that prizes money and docility over leadership, wisdom, and independent thinking. Endless commercial messages will adorn our cities and, because there is no culture, most will spend time watching television or engaging in equally debasing virtual entertainment. Since leadership will be useless, most people will have such flexible spines that they will be utter whores, and conversation will be worthless and friendship a meaningless term. Won't be much to live for, so instead, we'll survive, and hope "someday" it will get better.

The cause of all of this disaster will have been a fundamental inability to deal with reality. Our society, wealthy and powered by cheap fossil fuels, grew at an exponential rate with an inverse relationship to the quality of intelligence, leadership ability and holistic moral outlook of its population. We've bred a horde of fools and bred out the quality intelligences, replacing them with "geniuses" like Jay Gould and Bill Clinton. Since consumption is the only logic we understand, we have consumed much of our planet, and focus on symbolic factors like global warming in order to avoid looking at the enormity of the problem. Our governments get better with their computers, cameras and social security numbers in order to ensure that dissidents are more quickly quashed, and they've found better methods than locking them up; instead, they proclaim them as taboo-breakers, and let the rest of the citizens boycott them as dangerous to future business. All of this comes too much attention paid to the popularity of ideas, and a denial that what is popular rarely corresponds to an intelligent response to reality. We've had leftist governments, and rightist governments, and neither have dealt with this underlying problem.

Nihilism is not a bullet-pointed list, but there are some clearly definable ideas that nihilists will embrace while others do not. Extreme ecology makes sense if you wish to preserve your planet's life, which directly contributes to maintenance of its climate and land. Localization makes sense if you wish to spare us all from having to find one rule for diametrically opposed ideologues. Preservation of national identity, and granting local communities the right to exclude or murder morons and perverts and other unwanted detritus of the human gene pool, also makes sense. Giving the individual greater existential autonomy than a society of products to buy and jobs at which to serve is more realistic than assuming we can all be crammed into the same mould and out will come perfect, uniform citizens. Realizing that commerce as a motivator does not address the subtle and long-term issues of our society liberates us from having to constantly manipulate each other through money. Finally, recognition that popularity of an idea has no bearing on its fitness for our collective survival frees us from the tyranny of the crowd, and lets us have leaders again, who instead of finding out what is popular and espousing it, find out what is practical and pursue it. Nihilism ends the society of illusions by shattering the power of the Crowd. Societies age and die when popularity becomes more important than pragmatism, and nihilism offers us a way to "go under" this process by removing value and discovering it anew. In this sense, nihilism is immediately political, although it is unlikely that an organized nihilist political presence will be seen.

How to Apply Nihilism

The underlying control level which supports politics is public attitude. If the public is "educated" to expect a concept as positive, and another as negative, it is a trivial matter to associate political issues with one of the two and thus to manipulate them. This creates a metapolitical battleground where ideas and their valuation determines the future means of gaining intellectual currency for ideas; this translates into political power. While nihilism applies to political viewpoints, as shown above, it is primarily efficacious as a change in attitudes and values to those within society, and can be used from that level to later alter political fortunes.

More importantly for those who see to what degree our civilization has become stagnant, nihilism is a guiding force for analyzing the task of creating a future civilization, whether a breakaway colony or a restarting of life in the ruins. Such an outlook is not favorable to a need for instant gratification; unlike conventional politics, which prescribes highly polarized immediate actions which do not change the underlying structure, nihilist thinking proposes enduring changes made slowly through individual rejection of garbage values.

To apply nihilism, start by viewing the world as a nihilist: reject that which has no value in the context of the whole, or the structure of reality, and replace it with things of solid demonstrable value, as found in biology, physics and philosophy. Do what is necessary to have a quality life, but go no further down the path of luxury and materialism, because it is meaningless. Use nihilist principles wherever you are given a choice; if even a tenth of our population refused to buy junk food, its longevity would be limited. Contrast nihilist principles to the "normal" illusory view that most of the population prefers, using short and friendly but insightful statements to point out where null value can be replaced by something of meaning. When people bring up "problems," give a few words that show where nihilism reduces the illusion to garbage, and suggest a better course of action. Abstain from all of the idiotic things people do, and apply yourself toward constructive tasks. Those who cannot both reject garbage and create better are unworthy of any accolades; they are passive and deserve whatever slavery this world will throw at them.

What is Nihilism?

Having discussed the modes of thought through which an individual passes in being a nihilist, it is now appropriate to use the dreaded "to be" construction to describe nihilism: nihilism is an affirmation of reality so that ideals based on the structure of reality can be applied to thought and action. Like Zen Buddhism, it is a form of mental clearing and sharpening of focus more than a set of beliefs in and of itself; this is why nihilism is a belief in nothing, being both a belief in nothing (no inherent belief outside of reality) and a belief in nothingness (applying nothingness to useless thoughts, in an eternal cycle that like our own thinking, balances a consumptive emptiness against a progressive growth and proliferation of idea). It is a freedom, in a way that "freedom" cannot be applied in a modern society, from the views that others (specifically, the Crowd) apply out of fear, and a desire to use this freedom to create a new and more honest human who can view life as it is and still produce from it heroic ideals. When Nietzsche spoke of the "super-human," this was his concept: that those who could accept the literality of life and fate and yet still do what is required to create a braver, more intelligent, more visionary human, would rise above the rabble and become a new standard of humanity. While our current definition of "humanity" applies more to pity and blind compassion for individuals, the super-human would think on the level of the structure of reality as a whole, both thinking in parallel and holistically, doing what is right not to preserve individual life but to nurture overall design.

The best thinkers in all doctrines have reached this state of mind. While they may not call it nihilism, and many rail against the form of "nihilism" that is essentially fatalism, or a decision to declare all thoughts and actions impossible and thus to relapse into mental entropy, all have accomplished this clarity of mind and transcendent state of seeing structure and not appearance. Plato, in his metaphor of the cave, describes humanity as imprisioned in a cave of its own perceptual dependence on visible form, and portrays philosophers-kings - his "super-humans" - as those who leave the cave and, while blinded by the light of real day for the first time, find a way to ascertain the true nature of reality and then to return to the cave, to explain it to those who have seen theretofore only shadows. This state of mind is heroic in that one sees what is important to an overall process, and is willing to assert that higher degree of organization whatever the cost, thus combining a realism (perception of physical world "as is") with an idealism (measuring the world in contrasts between degrees of organization in thought) into a heroic vision, in which life itself is a means to an end, and that end is a greater organization or order to existence as a whole. Nihilism is a gateway to this worldview.

The Crowd serve death because through their great fear of it, they create rules which do little more than restrict the best among us, who they fear because they cannot understand them. What defines a crowd is its lack of direction, and its need to be led, and if it is to be led, a preference for one among it who will throw out a popular idea and thus congeal its unformed will into some lowest common denominator which is actionable. Reality does not play by this game, because to adopt a constant lowest common denominator is to descend in both ideals and evolution, because that which applies evolutionary pressure is a striving for larger goals. The humans who were content without fire remained little more than apes; those who needed fire were driven into the northern climates, away from the easily nourishing jungle, and eventually thrust themselves forward toward other goals which supported the need for fire: organized civilization, language, learning, and the concept of ideals versus materialism, or a simple assurance of comfort. Evolution forced them to consider "reasons why" and therefore, the develop themselves in such a way that those who could understand reasons why could compel themselves to do what was otherwise inconvenient and uncomfortable. From this is the root of all heroism that produces the best of what society offers: philosophy, art, architecture and morality.

The Crowd creates a reality to serve its fears, and by imposing it, crushes realism, because to point out that the emperor wears no clothes is to offend and disturb the crowd. Why might a nihilist insist on accuracy in taboo matters such as eugenics, race and environmental needs to reduce population? -- because the Crowd will go to its death before it will ever do such a thing. To notice reality is to point out that Crowd reality is a complete lie, an illusion, and a sick farce designed to supplant the flagging egos of those with low self-esteem and relatively low intelligence (attributes necessary to be a member of a crowd, and not an independent thinker or leader). Those who create civilizations are succeeded by those who could not do the same, and by virtue of this opulence, societies soon breed crowds that through their greater numbers demand to control reality. One either illustrates the lie of their artificial reality, and points society in another direction, or drowns in the weight of lowest common denominator demands; all societies perish this way. Before the invader at the gates can conquer, or the disease can enfilade the population, or internal strife can tear apart a nation, there must be a failure of organization and even more a failure of will toward something higher than that which is convenient and materially comfortable, commercially viable, popular, etc. Dying societies inevitably create a Satan or Osama bin Laden to which they assign blame for their failing, but it is within; this is why while a nihilist may recognize the truth about race or eugenics, it is impossible to logically blame Negroes or the retarded for the downfall of a society. Blame is not useful, but diagnosis is, and an accurate diagnosis suggests that ordinary capable people become misinformed and accept mediocre ideas, at the behest of the Crowd, and thus condemn themselves to doom. The Crowd will always exist, but in healthy societies, it is kept in check by the wisdom of others.

Much as there is a "super-man" possible in our future, in our past and present there are Undermen, who are those with no higher goals than philosophical materialism: a denial of all value outside the physical world and its comforts. Those who take this lazy attitude to the form of a political agenda are Crowdists, and they can be found in Left and Right alike, supported by those who are emboldened by pity, or the feeling of superiority one gets for helping someone of lesser ability or fortune. Nihilism addresses such illusions and negates them, using nothingness as a weapon to clear the earth so that somethingness can again take root. A nihilist has no use for pity or the kind of low self-esteem that needs the response of others in order to feel good about itself. Like Zen monks, or European knights, a nihilist acts according to what is right by the order of the universe, and does so independently of consequences, including personal morality. To be thus independent from social conditioning, which is not as much a process of evil governments/corporations ("Satan") as by the neurotic concerns of peers ("the enemy within"), is to crush the worthless and destructive opinions of the crowd, so expect retribution wherever one of them has power. Yet to have this state of mind is not to blame them, or those who wield pity, as they are misinformed rather than malevolent, and with better leadership - achieved, in part by acting independently and thus putting the lie to their false "reality" - they will act in a better state of mind. It goes without saying that such people are incapable of becoming super-humans but, while thus obsolete for our optimal future, will be the parents and grandparents of those who, if bred according to rigorous evolutionary standards, will become superhuman.

To distill this to a simple equation: one can either accept negativity (death, defecation, loss, sorrow) in life, or one can use cognitive dissonance to create a pleasant-sounding reality which denies it while asserting only the positive comforts of life, but to do so is to miss out on the challenge of life. To accept good and bad together as a means toward the continuation of life, and as a necessary part of the evolution that shaped us from mice into apes into humans, is a fully mature attitude and one that only a small portion of the population can understand. Most of you reading this will not understand nihilism and physically cannot; breed well and hope your children are smarter.

Transcendence

"Reverence is the capacity for awe in the face of the transcendent." - Paul Woodruff

When one is philosophically mature enough to look past good and bad and see them as component parts of reality which work in opposition to create a larger good, or "meta-good" as we might be tempted to call it, good and bad lose moral value in and of themselves. They become a means, where the end is the continuation of reality. Much as humans respond to nature in parallel structures, the destructive and the creative are balanced forces that maintain equilibrium of a sort; without forest fires, forests choke; without predators, species overpopulate and deplete food sources and become extinct; without war and predators, humans become fat, lazy and useless (whoops, no idea how that last one got in there). In this context, we leave behind binary, linear morality and see the world as a nihilist: a vast functional machine which permits us the experience of consciousness.

In popular lore, there is frequent mention of "mind over matter," but this is usually interpreted to mean using the mind to convince the flesh to do things it would not ordinarily do, like run marathons and lift cars from runover children. The concept of transcendence is an evolution of this which harmonizes with the nihilist emphasis on structure over appearance as well as the idealist concept that thoughts define reality more than physicality. Transcendence occurs when, acknowledging all that is destructive and uncomfortable in the world, we take a greater delight in the idea of what we are accomplishing, not as much what it means in the anthrocentric valuation, but an appreciation of its design in the greater working of our universe. While we are a small part of that whole, transcendence has us find a place in it and to appreciate its design and significance in that context, even to the degree of "forgiving" the world for our suffering and eventual death, and thus lightening our burden by recognizing that physicality and demise are secondary in importance to achievement of idea, whether that is a moral concept, a symphony, a painting, or even a life lived normally according to moral principles in which there were intangible rewards like learning, time spent with family, and personal betterment achieved by facing fears and surmounting them, gaining new abilities.

It might be said that the ultimate process of idealism, in which reality is "mind-correlative" or composed of thoughts or thoughtlike phenomena, is transcendence, or the achievement of valuation of idea over all physical comfort or discomfort. It is not asceticism, per se, in that it is not gained through denial of physical existence, but on the contrary, asserts the importance of organizing physical existence according to idealized design. It converges with heroism in that the idealist in this context acts regardless of personal consequences, because if the world is idea, the only way to truly express that idea is by putting it into action in the world. This form of belief unifies the previously divided mind and body, and raises the human from the level of a reactionary animal to a planner and a creator who is also undivided from his or her natural role. Historically, two of the most important philosophers in European canon, Arthur Schopenhauer and Friedrich Nietzsche, are united in this belief: Nietzsche sought a "pragmatic idealism" while Schopenhauer was a "cosmic idealist," yet both appreciated the role of heroism in creating higher degrees of order. While Nietzsche derived his greatest inspiration from the ancient Greeks, Schopenhauer found great meaning in an ancient Indian text known as the Bhagavad-Gita, which introduces its view of philosophy through the viewpoint of a warrior concerned over the death and destruction he is about to unleash on his fellow humans. Through that question, the text explores the idea of placing idea over physical consequences by explaining that all reality is continuous will originating in a mystical source, and thus that while lives come and go the eternal order of reality remains, and creating a more organized harmony with that force is the goal of any heroic individual. As if proving parallelism through history, the ancient Greeks lauded similar concepts in their worship of heroic death and tragedy, in which triumph is found through assertion of higher ideal even when death and ruin inevitably follow. Praising what is right in a holistic sense over what is advantageous to the individual is the primary trait of all heroic, idealistic and nihilist philosophies.

In such modes of thought, the human being unifies imaginative and analytical facilities, using a method not dissimilar to science to interpret the world, and a method not far from art in projecting a next evolutionary stage, driven by such non-linear thought processes as informed emotion and calculated creativity. In the great transcendental thinkers of the West, most notably Ralph Waldo Emerson and Johannes Eckhart, the desire to merge these two seemingly disparate mental operations was the foundation of a spirituality based, as is Buddhism and ancient Christianity, on a quietude of the soul and a mystical state of mind in which one was "in" Nirvana or Heaven, a state of clarity both regarding life as suffering and a purpose and vision of what can give life meaning. All Romantic philosophies and art have this basis as well, and are equally mystical, as such states of mind cannot be achieved through linear description. Nihilism can be seen as a spiritual device for achieving this quietude of soul by abrading the meaningless and insignificant facts of physicality in order to clearly see the Idea, much as a philosopher leaving Plato's cave would stand in reverent silence at the first glimpse of the sun. It is thus despite its primal origins as a "going under" through removal of meaning, a reevaulation of meaning and value, and a dramatic opposition to philosophical materialism, or the doctrine that the physical world and individual comfort are of overriding importance and thus outrank thought and idea.

Materialism is the essence of every destructive action taken by humanity, even though most who practice it would have no knowledge of it by that name. Most people, being well-meaning but misinformed and physically unable to undergo the cognitive process of holistic vision, drift toward materialistic ideas and strive toward what gives them personal physical comfort and wealth. In the modern time, materialism manifests itself in three primary fronts:

Commerce is the picking of the most popular product; oversocialization the organization of society according to who is most popular (usually he who promises alcohol, sex, and money); democracy is leadership not by what is right but what is popular. Materialism encourages the individual to think only of their own preference, and to limit thought at that which directly impacts individual comfort, and thus is blind to thinking for the whole of humankind and environment. When one thinks on that level, self-interest replaces finding the right answer according to the structure of the external world, and humans become solipsistic. Further, because materialism is an opposite to idealism, it causes the Crowd to gather and tear down whatever idealists dare rise among them. Only such a misinformed and dysfunctional thought process explains humanity's ongoing attempted genocide of its environment, its contentment to labor in horrifically boring jobs, its seeming satisfaction with petty interpersonal strife and a lack of reverence toward humans and other life forms alike, and its reliance on a world of illusion whose empty values render individual souls empty, causing neurosis and anomie at all levels of existence.

(Many humans are so divided between mind and body that they prefer ideas of a solipsistic nature to physicality, much like some drug addicts prefer intoxication to reality. Nihilism allows us to see reality as the one and only expression of both life and thought, and therefore, to see the true stakes in our dilemma, especially regarding our environment, whose destruction - a process not of complete obliteration but of disrupting its complex internal mechanations, which require more land and sea and air than humanity - will not only be the greatest tragedy of our species, but an unforgivable offense.)

Nihilism is the soft earth at the start of a wooded path toward seeing life in a more developed way. Before this path, life seems to be suffering and boredom punctuated by horror (paraphrased from H.P. Lovecraft), without meaning or direction, even when one creates an absolute God and corresponding Heaven where things are otherwise. This state of depressed mind must be like that of the inhabitants of Plato's cave, who find themselves bored at an endless procession of shadows yet unaware of another way. A nihilist is annointed with knowledge, and must return to the world at large to speak of the sun which filters through the woods toward the end of the path. There is hope; there is meaning; there is reason and purpose to life. Whether one is a Christian, a Jew, a Buddhist, a Hindu, or a Muslim, this truth can spoken in a familiar language, as it has been discovered by the best thinkers of all religions and cultures. It is universal not only to humanity, but to all thinking beings. From nothingness comes everything, and when the two are seen as continuous, we are finally aware of the infinity of life and the great continuous gift that consciousness must be.

Says Who?

I am a writer. Therefore, I compile ideas, and write about them. This is my contribution in the great world in parallel. Yours may be different. We do not need a society solely composed of writers. You can understand these ideas, if you're brave enough, and put them to work for you in whatever it is that you do: teaching, roadwork, computer programming, plumbing, soldiering, journalism, drug dealing, politics. It is important that you understand them, as nothing is worse than appearance without structure, as it has us chasing the ideals of our memories in a context in which they no longer apply. I am a writer, and so I write. Find your own path. If you follow any path of thought to its full logical conclusions, you will discover what is enumerated in introductory form in this article, and you will be ready, if you have inner integrity and a love for being alive, to take a stand for what you now believe: Bring your sword, bring your censure, bring your Cross - I have found it; I am ready.

(Inspired by conversations with Todd Spivak, lowtec and g0sp-hell. Dedicated to Anton Bruckner.)

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