Python Liberation Front

Religion, Art, Technology, Virus, Meme, Culture, Symbiant: my thoughts and ideas Before the release of Mel Gibson's " The Passion of the Christ "

Why do we tend to associate ourselves with movements? We find a way, and we milk it for all its worth. Often we lose ourselves in the bargain. But beauty is born of pain, and though many souls be lost, a paradise of sorts is gained.

Music is not just the inborn capacity and tendency to sing, but also the sum collection of the techniques assimilated over the generations. A person may well sacrifice everything in order to be immersed in the local musical culture. Seldom does that person contribute anything completely new, but the musical culture is the sum total of all the past and present participants.

Any technological culture that can inspire humans is like this. No one person invented the mechanization of logical thought, but millions immerse their lives in particular sub-cultures in order to further a programming language, an operating system, or, more rarely, a hardware architecture. In past times, it was other tools that inflamed our imaginations, but the slow refining of technique and its effects on the human heart were similar.

Is it wrong to worship our tools? They are products of our own hands, so to speak. But it has never stopped our erection of pedestals for our statues, our paintings, our buildings and our ideas.

The Good, the True, and the Beautiful are three important categories. These days, religion is, or at least should be, the search for the Good; Art is the search for the Beautiful; and Science is the search for the True.

In the past, religion incorporated the search for the True as well as the Good. In addition, religion was often simplified into Idolatry, as we worshiped our Religion itself, or we worshipped some of our religion's ideas, concepts or tools. Much of great value was devoured by the fire.

It is when these Movements become large and institutionalized that they often become de-humanized and begin to sap rather than nourish the human soul. We are tempted to go back to the personal, embrace the private and solitary, and reject the broader culture.

Yet we have to risk it. We are a social species, and there is too much to gain. Whatever our passion, we must try to integrate it with the pursuit of all three Virtues; the Good, the True, and the Beautiful.

Ultimately, we must release ourselves into the stream of creation, because its the Music, the Art, and the passion all rolled into one....

Back from India (and China)...

I just got back from a long, tiring business trip to India and China and so that is why it has been so long between posts to this Blog. I look forward to posting some new thoughts, now that I am back, about Python and also Jython very soon. I am planning some new projects using Jython that I will document in this Blog.

Meanwhile, I will comment that India (this was my first trip to India) is still much poorer and lacking infrastructure compared to China. I was in New Delhi and also took a side trip to Agra, a five hour drive, to see the Taj Mahal. The Taj exceeded my expectations in every way, it is a gleaming white marble building in the middle of an aesthetically symmetric group of buildings, gardens and pools and the Taj itself is full of exquisite inlaid marble designs.

I have been visiting China for over 10 years and while the Chinese coastal cities and select inland cites are very modern and up to date, in some ways more so than the USA, New Delhi is still chaotic and backwards by comparison. My company has a sales office in the Jin Mao Tower in Shanghai, a building taller than the World Trade Centers; right next door, there are imminent plans to build a taller building, probably to be the tallest building in the world. Shanghai reminds me of New York City only newer, more modern and more hectic.

By the way, I keep my eyes open for Open Source software whenever I am in Asia (I travel often to Malaysia, Thailand, Singapore, Taiwan, China, Korea and Japan) and I do see a definite increase in its use and publicity lately.

More to come real soon now….