----- Original Message -----
From: "brian carroll" <human@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Subject: wooden cross symbol
> the earlier conversation on the wooden cross symbolism
> has been contemplated lately, with Howard's reference to
> Opus Dei (not sure exactly what this is-- or if it is a secret)
Opus Dei is a kind of select club of influential heads...(capita)
( is there a religious definition of capital or capitalism? )
>
> This tragic aspect of beheading could be considered part of
> architecture of the human body/mind, where this severing of
> the connection may be like decapitating the 'capital' from the
> column (spinal column, even).
of course. beheading is always simbolic
People in the .US refer to this
> in terms of a historical 'middle ages', possibly this is when a
> beheading was normal and church-state relations ruled all.
not so long ago, well after the middle ages, even in the .Us, some beheadings, hangings, garroting like in the Franco's spain of the 50ties also happened.
> The symbolism of a beheading may not relate directly to
> architecture, but to symbolism in the infrastructure, it does.
yes. but modern buildings (not skyscrapers?) use less objects on "top" of the final result.
skyscrapers, generally, have a pointed object heading up on their top.
(a lightning protection or a TV antenna..
lightning protection to avoid power problems from heavens, tv antenna to send "power" waves into earth....
>
> It is always interesting to me how, in such an uptight mental
> community such as the .US with regard to having different
> ideas, conformity of ideas is paramount to get anything done.
> Yet, with something like religion, while there is tolerance, it
> seems to lack something of the greater understanding that
> can be found, heard, acted upon in the Middle-East when
> the failure of the .US policies -to date- under the watchful
> all-encompassing eyeball of a paranoid Cheney Complex,
> are reverberating with something other than a pure fear of
> the ideas of religion being in kind, in some way, with each-
> other and not antagonists for cheap, easy political ends.
the vision of irak/middle east is fashioned, tailored, by the (western) visual media at least, and to attain a valid abstract representation of such other world the .Us community need another introspection and analysis of the western world, the amercian way of life..... including eventually a kind of protest against such visual control similar to the calvinist reaction to other kind of excesses a few centuries ago..
>
> Although not religious myself, there is a great symbolism
> in terms of Roman Catholic (at least, from my upbringing)
> perspective, of the barbarity of humans against humans,
> to such a degree that a beheading is considered a victory
> in some way (even for God, no less, which the holy of all
> places have spoke loudly in condemning this evilness---
david beheading goliath...
> who are these people doing such acts, and do you really
> want them as your neighbor or a public representative?).
> It seems this is stuff of a Saddam-era cruel vision of power,
> dosed out the same way when Rumsfeld & Cheney were
> selling the chemical and biological weapons to their friend
> Saddam and cannot now stop beating the drum about his
> having them-- they know-- they've got the receipts still, and
> handwriting on the checks with photos in their scrapbooks!
>
> The empty crosses are, if religious tolerance for a value in
> part of a common symbol may be contemplated, to me is
> a way to see partly what was mentioned of the publicness
> of roman law and the brutality (not to be confused with that
> of modern day landscapes or mindscapes, in the same way)
> of punishment and order and what crosses represented (a
> speculation, now follows) in that there was this method of
> crucifixion and if empty crosses or fields of death and some
> kind of punishment, maybe people knew what they meant.
> The interesting thing about this symbol, in my opinion, is
> that with Christians that they seemed to have taken what
> was a sacrificial lamb, their public representative of ideas,
> and saw a symbol of oppression transformed into one of
> a type of liberation from the process of cruelty it embodied.
> IT would seem that in occupying this symbol, it transformed
> it into another meaning, for a certain kind of belief. What is
> wondered, and has been contemplated by myself, is if the
> symbol may be extra-christian in the way the Middle-East
> and more long-term long-view long-understanding and
> long-relations between cultures may cultivate, a shared
> sense of things, as belonging in some way, together.
>
> In this way, it is curious if the Saddam-fedeyeen (sp?) or
> others who regularly went around beheading people to
> terrorize the populace into obedience, is not what is also
> part of what is going on, and that this is an internal type
> of relation, also, holding the hearts of people internally
> to the oppressions that were found in the Middle-Ages
> in terms of oppressions relating faith to shared reason,
> and the torturous torment of getting through such times.
> What is being seen, and is it internal to a cultural order
> which may have yet to transform, in some way, to one
> that is more transparent, and this is not an exception to
> the law but is how the law is carried out, in its extreme,
> where light does not fall upon the corruption of power?
>
> That is why these empty electrical distribution crosses,
> ubiquitous, all over the world, may have some meaning
> in the way of people dying for people, not necessarily in
> a specific religious sense, though thoroughly symbolic
> and very meaningful in the way it resonates on a level
> which is often masked by commercials for hand soap,
> deodorant, and other products in the .US and elsewhere.
>
> It is wondered if the fear and oppression is that like the
> brutality of a total ideology that reinforces its rules by a
> type of conquering, not only of the body, which can be
> made disappeared, but also all minds, to infect with a
> fear that never leaves the potential for the loss of mind
> in the most inhumane and degrading of actions, by an
> action only describable as a type of glorification of this
> power of one person over another, as a type of victory-
> for that oppression, for that limiting of human potential,
> for the methods by which action is taken-- again, this is
> roundly condemned by all, excepted MOCKED by the
> Vice President of the .US as a victory of terrorists over
> the .US and not an event more complex than his war re-
> enactments in this own head -- oh Great Terror Leader.
>
> the empty crosses seem to be filling up, invisibly, with
> the terrors brought by war and avenging and revenging
> and brutality of Iraqis by everyone else, and their own
> people who oppressed them, brought back into power
> by the selfish greed brought about by the .US policies.
> There is a way to transform the situation, public ways,
> and a 'global war on terror' is not a win-lose issue on
> the question of beheadings, it is seeing what is unseen
> and it is tragic and it is horrible and it is partly all of the
> world that is responsible, yet this becomes .US political
> fodder, really -- PLAY-- by the .US administration today,
> to get to other ends through these means-- such as an
> even greater exploitation of others for personal gains.
>
> the empty crosses- forgetting the Christianity as some
> definition of what one way of seeing it is, could also be
> a common structure (the pole itself, cross or no cross),
> in which, as a symbol is finding its tragedies all around
> it, as this less-than-human torments and terrorizes its
> own citizenry. It may happen as part of internal law, yet
> it has been publicly denounced, the sacrifices - who are
> human beings, still, no matter what country of origin they
> are human beings, still, and demand respect as a matter
> of dignity for the value of life-- is spoken of as some type
> of revenge of God by person's hacksawing a head off.
>
> The head gone, no one needs to be able to think, just
> be in the body, another column to fall into line in the
> grand march towards the despot of power who control
> with iron fist the minds of all, who must obey, who must
> even pray to a certain God, opposite to what is said to
> be a religious tolerance to diverse religious views in
> the Middle-East. Even Osama bin Ladin, it is believed,
> would have some opinion on such a barbaric act even
> if it is outside his specific network of operations-- that
> this is not a holy act delivered upon people as a way
> to fight the .US and others' ideologies which may be
> seen to infect the worst aspects that afflict all cultures,
> though which are also shared beyond this by all too.
> That is, it would seem more an internal action that is
> itself a tragedy of such proportion that it is hard to in
> any way comprehend living in such an environment,
> and considering something like freedom as in any
> way equivalent to democracy-- it isn't. freedom to
> behead is not in the .US constitution as far as I know,
> yet President Bush and others act as if freedom in
> itself is an end-all to pandemics of complex social
> and cultural differences that, are themselves, in dire
> need of transformation. Of letting the brutal rule be
> able to be transformed by these acts into something
> more ideal to all peoples, to free them from the horror
> and torment brought upon the minds of all by such a
> rule which oppresses the mind, and that may be an
> internal issue-- but it is represented world-wide and
> is on par with the worst serial-killer psychopaths in
> the .US, and certainly cannot be construed as a type
> of freedom fighting for anything but the worst of the
> very worst in human nature and at the heart of evil.
>
> The empty cross, not christian, but as a symbol, it
> may be that internally or externally, for all who are
> suffering and have suffered, a cross may exist that
> is already occupied, invisibly already by someone,
> or waiting for the small sacrifices and subsequently
> larger sacrifices, to gain freedoms over a common
> self-definition, and that cannot be annointed upon,
> or appointed upon another-- from the crucible of
> pain and experience and will and dreams-- and it
> is this Iraq, this Middle-East, that will rise, regardless
> of what the .US administration postulates from afar.
> The streets are full of people who have dreams, who
> have had centuries of lives and knowledge, and this
> is what is being held back by such a brutality, and it
> is held in common with all, and all wish for a release
> from such a burden, more than anything, for freedom
> for Iraqi's to find what it is they need for themselves,
> to exist, reclaim their identity, and demolish what is
> this infrastructure of internal repression from days
> of Saddam that the .US political establishment can
> only benefit from seeing the Iraqi's as helpless in
> doing anything to change the situation-- this is not
> true-- and it serves VP Cheney who believe Iraq
> and the Middle-East cannot take care of its own
> business-- which is not true. Everyone needs a
> good and solid friendship, yet to win, Iraq wins
> itself. VP Cheney does not believe this, scorns
> and mocks this, and loves the empty crosses in
> which the oppression is both to be bound, and
> if the fantastic rises to meet its match, transcends
> the limits of men, to win a peace and a future, to
> find a shared path which others exploit through
> reigns of terror, as Saddam, as VP......, to their
> own benefit. true human, shared freedom costs.
> and there have been enough sacrifices to leave
> the Iraqi's free of torment for centuries. And it is
> of greatest wishes that what is held in the hearts,
> beyond the grasp of those who rule all powerful,
> know that everyone roots for them, for their hearts,
> for their dreams, to learn, from this strength, and to
> free all of us our demonizing ways of state, in body,
> in mind, in the infrastructures connecting us as one,
> to transcend this horror for another world, a better
> world, and to fight those who lost heart, until free.
>
> That is that anonymous wooden cross, a symbol of
> oppression and possibly a way to get beyond it too,
> in mind and body, in redistributing the realm of ideas
> from a despot to citizens, to share the world of Iraqis
> with the world, and to forge a long-term relationship
> with our larger extended family, for an era of peace.
> It may never be achieved in a lifetime, but in many
> it may be possible, and right now some hope would
> not hurt this wish, this need, at least from this realm
> where it is so very sad and despicable how it is used
> by the despots in control here, how they remain out-
> side of being convicted for their open crimes, and
> move about freely to continue their torment. the .US
> is not VP Cheney, alone, and very few are as he is,
> and reason, not power, will also prevail here, soon.
> bc
>
> brian thomas carroll: architecture, education, electromagnetism
> http://www.mnartists.org/artistHome.do?rid=13102
> http://www.electronetwork.org/bc/
>
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