Difficult Atheism: Is Philosophy Finally Without God?
Declaring oneself an "atheist" isn't what it used to be. Growing numbers of Generation Y prefer to remain agnostic, which is why so many of them go by the "nones," or those with no religious preference. My wife used to work at a large university and she told me that on standardized tests many of the students write in "human" in the ethnic and racial identity box. A friend of mine launched a social media campaign to have "Jedi" recognized as a religion in Great Britain. It took off like wild fire and in 2006; Jedi's were the fourth largest religion in all of Great Britain. Occupying these undecided identities: "none," "Jedi" and "human" make a lot of sense. In so doing, one renders no judgment upon the status quo, nor does the person negate traditional religious identities for which many of us still have some allegiance to.
The truth is, declaring oneself an atheist is a difficult process, but we've lost touch with this difficulty. Kierkegaard notoriously said "the biggest problem with Christians today is that no one wants to kill them anymore." What I think he meant by this is that a healthy sense of atheism is good for religion, and lest we forget, Christianity is perhaps the most resilient religion the world has seen. This resiliency is due in part to the fact that Christianity can handle a complicated belief in God and still retain followers. Hegel saw in Christ's utterance on the cross, "my father, why have you forsaken me" a splitting in two of the absolute itself, a splitting in two of God. What this split represented was the death of the metaphysical God. Nietzsche's "God is dead" mostly had to do with an epistemological death of suprasensory truths, a death that ushered in a new type of nihilism.
Most atheists today that are firm in their convictions tend to be caught in a trance by the so-called "Four Horsemen of the New Atheism." Despite news of their best-selling whirlwind and the larger discourse that has risen from it being on the decline, to the point of them now losing their followers, much of atheist identity is still intertwined with Dawkins, Hitchens, Dennett and Harris. The weapons they use against religion are as tired as they are outdated: Darwinian natural selection and evolution (Richard Dawkins), naturalizing reductions of religion via general science (Daniel Dennett), brash literary humanism (Christopher Hitchens) and quite paradoxically, racist appeals to reason (Sam Harris).
For the nones and the atheists, as well as for the religious, I might add, a healthy debate about God is vital to sustaining a larger dialogue about religion, morality, and ethics in the public sphere. But we've been deprived of such a discourse. This is why it is a perfect time to ask: what is/can/should philosophy contribute to the question of God and atheism? Should it provide proofs of God's existence/inexistence? Should it seek to create a philosophy that is completely without God? Something like the latter is taking place right now by three of France's leading philosophers. The respective projects of these thinkers are surveyed in the recent book, Difficult Atheism: Post-theological Thinking in Alain Badiou, Jean-Luc Nancy and Quentin Meillassoux (2011) by Christopher Watkin.
Watkin's book makes a major contribution to three seemingly disparate philosophical careers and identifies a common goal across each of their oeuvres, which is a desire to move beyond the religions turn in continental philosophy and enter into a new, "post-theological" thinking. Watkin possesses a deep understanding of all three thinkers and he pulls from an impressive set of rare unpublished interviews, lectures, discussions, and books not translated into English. Readers that are intimate with these philosophers will find a rewarding and deeply penetrating read, and readers less familiar with them will walk away challenged and a whole lot smarter.
Unlike the New Atheists, Watkin and the philosophers he surveys have a healthy respect for the residue of theological thought on our epistemology, our culture, and our philosophy. He begins the text by developing two different types of atheism, parasitic and ascetic, and these responses to the death of God situate the entire text. Parasitic atheism brings down everything that God supported: truth, beauty, justice, and the good along with it. In this type of atheism, the worst sort of nihilism is born, one of Nietzschean resentment, and in its frustration of being tethered to an impossible finitude, it rejects any possible transcendence. In some ways, the other type of atheism, ascetic atheism is linked to parasitic atheism in so far as it seeks to move beyond a God centered cosmology so much that it re-invents a God. This accounts for much of the "religious turn" in recent continental thought, and in French phenomenology, particularly that of Derrida. In this context it is important to make note of Martin Hägglund's recent attempt to take Derrida back, as it were, from the theological readings of his work in Radical Atheism: Derrida and the Time of Life (2009).
At the outset of the book, Watkin is clear that Badiou, Nancy and Meillassoux all attempt to go beyond atheism but whether they succeed in doing so is an open question. This is why their atheism is difficult, precisely because it has never effectively been done in philosophy, at least without residual atheism still clouding the ideas that underpin metaphysics, morality and ethics. Furthermore, each thinker put under study, while they may have over-lapping philosophical orientations and questions, they should not be seen as working in concert, and Watkin is careful to identify these subtleties and overlaps in their projects.
We learn very soon into the book that atheism is only one response to the death of God, and each thinker with the exception of Badiou claims that we should move entirely beyond atheism. In what follows, I will situate each thinker's project in regards to atheism and consider whether their attempts to create what Watkin calls a "post-theological integration" in fact succeeds.
Badiou: Hidden Theologian or Atheist of Pure Multiplicity?
Badiou is the most ambiguous of the post-theological integrationists, and perhaps the most complex. Badiou reads the death of God as an inability to think God as a prior One. The God of the metaphysical One is not possible, not merely absent, but no longer possible because a world in which God exists is a world that prevents true change from taking place. He arrives at this position of God's impossibility through set theory and the concept of a "pure multiplicity." Ontology, for Badiou is reduced to mathematics. It is purely predictable and being qua being can be measured according to mathematical set theory. We can understand Badiou's project since his magnum opus, Being and Event (2005 in English) as one that involves the question of what truly constitutes a change to being qua being in a world? He names authentic change an event and locates it as a truth that remains inaccessible to the world prior to its emergence, thus truth is retroactively a pure multiplicity.
Badiou's system of philosophy is remarkable because unlike thinkers such as Wittgenstein, Lacan and Lyotard, he has developed a system of thought where nothing is made inaccessible, which is why God must be abandoned. Where these thinkers went wrong for Badiou is in their insistence on inaccessibility, which is why he lumps them into the category of "romantic" philosophers. The Lacanian idea of the "unsymbolizable real," the Lyotardian "phrase," and the Wittgenstein's of the Tractatus, "whereof one cannot speak, therefore one must be silent" all relied on this almost mystical outside impossibility of thought to ground their philosophy's. For Badiou, "philosophy must include, both in its conception and in its proposition, the conviction that true life can be experienced in immanence. Something must signal it from inside itself, not simply as an exterior imperative, like with Kant" (52). Watkin is careful to point out that Badiou's entire axiomatic approach is situated historically within the situation of being in modernity, and that his major achievement for thinking atheism is that he separates the infinite from the one, and makes the infinite primary. This privileging of infinity is meant to leave behind the tyranny of the sacred finite, which had plagued philosophy since Heidegger.
Badiou is frequently accused of being a secret theologian, and Watkin brings these accusations into sharper focus, mostly debunking them. One of the most theologically heavy of terms in Badiou's philosophy is "grace," which he uses to describe a subject's attachment to an event. Two other philosophers, Jacques Ranciere and the American deconstructionist philosopher-theologian John Caputo claim that Badiou's notion of grace is parasitic of Christianity. Caputo detects a messianism in Badiou's idea of grace, a sort of patient waiting for the event, and it is through this waiting, as if waiting for the messiah, desire is born. But Watkin points out that Badiou's use of grace does not render it to theological categories, because an event is a moment of grace that is incalculable and as such, a new universal subset emerges (99).
"To be prepared for an event means to be in a subjective disposition of recognizing the new possibility. Since the event is of necessity unforeseeable as it is not in the law of dominant possibilities, to prepare for the event is to be disposed to welcome it" (252).
Watkin correctly shows that Badiou harbors no secret theological desire in his philosophy and that he very well may have succeeded in overcoming atheism, but whether Badiou still occupies the place of the religious believer non-parasitically is another question entirely.
Jean-Luc Nancy's atheism is deeply tied to his larger project of thinking through an "ontological communism." Nancy reads our contemporary world as one that is in utter moral disarray, which is caused from our inability to think values and free choice together. The world is what he calls an "ethos" that configures itself without any relation to a given principle or fixed end. It is atheism that provides the only dignity possible in such a world. Atheism, he claims, must start by performing a parasitic excavation of metaphysics, which is divided by ontology, so what remains after metaphysics is what he calls "ethics." Thus, most of Nancy's thinking on atheism is an innovative thinking on ethics, which is what occupies the void left by the death of metaphysics. As a perspicacious reader of Heidegger, Nancy's philosophy attempts to re-think being away from first philosophy.
In the last two chapters of the book, Watkin brings to light the decades long and highly nuanced debates on ethics, justice and politics between Badiou and Nancy. By translating rare primary sources: original interviews, essays and exchanges never before translated into English, Watkin provides an excellent service not only to the field of post-theology, but also to politics and ethics. In fact, by the end of the book, we have come to discover the primary motivation for all three thinkers grappling with atheism is built around re-thinking the good and justice, and not with atheism or getting rid of God outright.
The debate on justice between Badiou and Nancy is fascinating and Watkin does an excellent job deconstructing it. In general it has to do with equality and the conditions for the emergence of communism. The key difference between their ontologies is that in Badiou's, fidelity to the event is not faithful to any ontological condition but precisely to that which inexists within a situation, whereas Nancy's is built around a sense of recognition of our universal ontological condition. Watkin concludes that Nancy's conception of justice, unlike Badiou's "subtractive method" (that does not rely on ontology) is neither parasitically theo-political nor atomistically atheistic. In Nancy's moment of adoration, which is similar to the Heideggerian call, what is demanded of the subject is an effective equality, which is the source of all fraternity and equality (26). Badiou's ethics, on the other hand is one of hypothesis and decision. Ethics, for Badiou still grapples with the Lacanian real and it consists of courage and persistence to the universality of a truth. Many Badiouian inspired thinkers have criticized Nancy's communism for not being able to effectively confront the real and thus unable to promote radical political change by remaining within ontology.
Where both Badiou and Nancy do align is around the primary obstacle to justice being capitalism. For Nancy, his justice is around overcoming capitalism. He defines capitalism as "any society that takes the decision that value is in equivalence" (45). Capitalism, for Nancy is made the only universal, but it is like a Hegelian bad infinity that merely perpetuates indifference, rather than the true infinite which inscribes affirmative difference. In this context, "atheism is powerless to resist capitalism" because it makes us dwell in the in-common which is a result of capitalism (14).
Nancy's philosophy is one that searches for a new infinity of sense and ultimately it is in atheism and in what he calls "anarchic democracy" that can adequately pose a challenge to capital's subsumption of sense and being. Of all three thinkers, Nancy's philosophy goes the farthest in thinking the subject after politics, a post-justice politics. Surprisingly, Nancy gives this "sense beyond justice" the name God.
Quentin Meillassoux is perhaps the most constructive atheist philosopher writing today. Readers who are religious very well could find in his vision a definite optimism for theology and an unlikely ally. The question of atheism and nihilism filled Meillaisoux's brilliant unpublished dissertation L'inexistence divine (which has not yet been translated into English), and Watkin uses it as a primary source in the book. Meillassoux, unlike our other thinkers is interested in showing why God does not exist but he claims this is the wrong question because to remain in this position it leads to anger and a sense of defeatism. So he does something radical and claims that one should believe in God precisely because he does not exist.
What does this even mean? His first targets are the enlightenment philosophers (Kant, Leibniz, and Pascal) who sought to grasp the existence of God based on natural laws, and he claims they failed because they relied solely on God as the necessary being of their philosophical systems. In other words, their philosophical systems were theo-centric and if one were to remove God from them, their entire philosophy would come crashing down. To fully appreciate where he is coming from, it would be essential to read his ground-breaking text, After Finitude (2010). In it, Meillassoux develops a theory that there is an absolute contingency in things themselves, and the only necessity is contingency itself. He begins with a fairly naïve question: 'how is thought able to think what there can be when there is no thought?' What he shows is that it is not the correlation we make with a fact of knowledge that makes it so, but it is the facticity of the correlation that constitutes the absolute of that thing. Thought experiences its knowledge through this "facticity," and in knowing that we only know contingent facts, we know that it is necessary that there only be contingent facts.
In our world of radical contingency, thing themselves are guided not by reason, but by unreason, and it is precisely our ignorance of the reason of things that becomes the truth about things because. Laws, facts of the material universe, science are merely facts, and facts are contingent – they can change without reason. The same can be said of God. But in our world there is no compelling or valid proof of God's existence that is not based on God not being a necessary being to that system of thought, whether that system be founded in reason or in un-reason.
Where Meillassoux is at his most exciting is around his thinking of post-secular conceptions of justice. Like Badiou, Meillassoux has a theory of the event that is, unlike Badiou's axiomatic approach, based in sense and intuition. Humanity, he argues, will experience two "jolts," the first consists of the human breaking into sense reality. This initial jolt is what gives rational intelligence to life and allows the person to see the eternal. The second jolt is when the individual breaks through his disgust with humanity and arrives at an active desire for immanent universality. It is here where the fourth unknown world of justice and what he calls the "Son of Man" are born. Our current religious thinking is limited because it desires a wholly Other that is "indifferent to our thirst for justice" whereas the Son of Man provides the model to go beyond this inadequacy in our theological thinking because of its immanence and relation to justice for humans, animals, and for the dead.
For Meillassoux, God is capable of being born as a pure contingency not as any transcendence. Such a God that is possible would possesses four qualities: 1. It knows the universal and is thus able to identify the good. 2. It possesses knowledge of the singular becoming of the living and the dead – and thus it knows absolute contingency. 3. It possesses the power once and for all to abolish its own omniscience and omnipotence; and 4. God divests itself of these powers once and for all, thereby submitting the power of contingency that it has received to the will to become a man among men, equal to all others (209). Thus, we have in perhaps the most radical post-theological asceticism ever performed, a re-birth of Christianity.
Watkin is appreciative of Meillassoux's originality, but he points out many holes in thought, particularly as it relates to universal justice. Watkin asks some very pertinent questions: in Meillassoux's world, would everyone want to have immortality, and if so, why? If everything is contingent, then why is my desire for justice not contingent? Added to Watkin's critiques, it is also true that Meillassoux seems overly reliant on the human animal, and he has no anthropology of the jolt as Badiou does of the event. Furthermore, nothing seems to come after the jolt like we have in Badiou's idea of the traces of the event.
Can a Post-theological Integration Think Universal Justice?
In conclusion, Watkin raises the most important post-theological integrationist question: can universal justice come prior to the abolition of capitalism? For Nancy and Badiou the answer is no, and thus their projects commence as they do. For Meillassoux, the abolition of capitalism is not required and his is it is founded through desire and sense. Universal justice is founded when humanity is worthy of the child of man and the child of man becomes the paradigm of all relations to others. While Meillassoux's vision might be the most all-encompassing of the three, in that it applies to all, including the dead, ultimately it is not well proven and it relies on desire to come about. For Badiou, justice must not be defined because to do so makes it a part of the regime of representation (of capital) and not a part of presentation (the event). Justice is after all, a judgment on the collective being – or the subject, and ultimately, it is what we declare as part of the event as what is. Nancy's conception of universal justice is the least conditional in that it does not require the subject to be present, but his logic of the demand is circular, and not tied to any idea of goodness.
Watkin problematizes the moments of decision we find in each of the thinkers, and refers to these moments "Event," "Jolt," and "adoration" as unaccountable moments meant to determine goodness, but they are ungrounded in post-theological terms. Why is inconsistent multiplicity good? Why obey the demand of singular plural being? Why is our current contingent understanding of justice good? In addition to these open questions, we are also left with the question as to whether the entire project of post-theological integration has adequately moved beyond both parasitism and asceticism to a post-theological integration that "cuts the theological root of parasitism without renouncing its fruit" (239). The good news is that Nancy, Badiou and Meillassoux are still thinking, still writing and still making philosophy's relation to atheism a little more difficult, just as it should be.
Daniel Tutt, on Spirit is a Bone, has very informative and timely piece on Christopher Watkin's book, Difficult Atheism: Is Philosophy Finally Without God?
Brilliant review, thank you. I read Difficult Atheism not so long ago, and it truly was a breath of fresh air. I'm very much looking forward to the kinds of radical theologies that are emerging as a result.
I've recently tried to come up with a "post-theological integration"-esque orientation of my own which can directly address problems of violence, trauma, and so forth as I believe these are the most poorly developed concepts in the history of philosophy. I have titled this "Wilderness theology": http://inthesaltmine.com/wilderness-theology and I would love any feedback.
I appreciate the time and care you've taken in working through the arguments in my book and–to borrow a musical metaphor–in setting your thoughts to writing. I found particularly helpful the way your review put some of the book's arguments in a broader context.
You make a very important point when you say that 'a healthy debate about God is vital to sustaining a larger dialogue about religion, morality, and ethics in the public sphere', and it set me thinking. I agree that such a debate is important, and it raises the question of the basis on which it can take place. If a debate along these lines is to be meaningful it must not, to my mind, exclude a priori certain classes of argument or certain views of the world, and it must not force one set of views to dance to the tune of another, which is always the risk if and when so-called 'religious' reasons are bracketed off as private and inadmissible in the public sphere. If some thinking is excluded (not disagreed with, excluded) then it's not just those who hold the excluded ways of thinking that are disadvantaged; the whole of that society is the worse for it, on a number of levels. So it's in all of our interests to figure out a way of bringing religious thinking into public debate, avoiding the two extremes of it taking over or it being forced to dress up as something other than what it is.
One way to get at this might be to go right back to the beginning and question the idea that some arguments are 'secular' and others 'religious' in the first place. I'm trying to do something like that in a piece I'm writing at the moment. Was there more behind your comment on healthy debate? If so, I'd be interested to hear (or be pointed to) your thoughts.
Thanks for your thoughtful comment and thank you for writing a truly penetrating book on these wonderful thinkers. I agree with you, the questions that you raise: how do we expand the terms of the debate and conversation about God? How do we include a range of perspectives into this debate, and so on.
In my review, I did express a bit of my own personal annoyance at the New Atheists and the way they have framed the debate on atheism. What struck me in reading your book was that the New Atheists intellectual tools that criticize religion is in many ways outdated, and often irrelevant because it does not wage a critique at the level that religion operates: morality, ethics, metaphysics, and so on.
So in many ways it is good to have philosophy in this debate because – as you show – philosophical debates about God do not necessarily have to lead to the same knee jerk reactions against the religious. But the fact that this thought is so difficult leads me to think that there has to be some translation that takes place so that this thought is made more accessible.
Your question also reminds me of the book "Turning On the Mind: French Philosophers on Television" (http://press.uchicago.edu/Misc/Chicago/509914.html) which shows how a healthy cult of personality can vitalize a discourse on complex philosophy in the public sphere. In many ways, this question is made doubly difficult in the US after the end of the cold war and the de-politicization of the public sphere.
As you know well, the terms of the debate end for these thinkers in questions of justice, communism and so on. With our current media apparatuses and other methods of thought control, I fear that these sorts of ideas will have a very challenging time to get airtime.
Towards this end, I think we do need a healthy cult of the intellectuals in the states, particularly after we face the failures of the Occupy movement. I find myself nostalgic for such a time in American life, which we certainly experienced in the late 20th century.
Another observation that I think is pertinent is for religious leaders to themselves become more acquainted with this new thinking on atheism. I actually work on a daily basis with religious leaders here in the states on social justice projects, and I can tell you there is a strong aversion to even confronting much of this at an intellectual level. So creating more events and opportunities for this thought to be processed and shared with religious leaders is crucial.
Please do stay in touch and I look forward to your forthcoming work!
Or is atheism in fact a very simple matter and is the condescending attitude of continental philosophers toward the new atheists something that springs from a desire to problematize, to make things look more complicated than they really are, so you have something to grapple with, so you can look interesting?
It's not about personally looking interesting. It's about garnering interest in their obsession with ending "capitalism".
It's a simple matter to not believe in anything you personally consider a deity. But it's not at all simple — and I daresay not even fair — to try to deflate the endless variety of concepts of deity that everyone else has.


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DDoS Attacks Are Crushing the Internet – Here's What You Need to Know
CultureNews
Max Buondonno October 21, 2016
You may have noticed around the internet today that things aren't acting quite right. That's because at some time this morning, malware known as Mirai executed a distributed denial of service (DDoS) attack on the entire web. This has led to websites customers of a domain service known as Dyn to go out of whack. Twitter, Netflix, and Spotify are just some of the names on the list.
But let's back up a bit here: what exactly is a DDoS attack anyway? Over on Digital Attack Map, they describe it as a way to overload websites' servers and eventually slow or crash connections and loading.
A Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attack is an attempt to make an online service unavailable by overwhelming it with traffic from multiple sources. They target a wide variety of important resources, from banks to news websites, and present a major challenge to making sure people can publish and access important information.
By accessing tens of millions of IP address from Internet-of-Things devices like smart home accessories and in-home routers, Mirai was able to use the hardware to send jibberish requests and signals to websites' servers and other networks that have led to the overloading of various sites and services across the web. Luckily, MBEDDED hasn't been affected by this problem, so feel safe while reading this article.
Map of affected areas
According to cyber crime journalist Brian Krebs, word has now come in that this method of overloading websites is being used in this major North American internet outage.
Flashpoint is now reporting that the attack on Dyn today is in fact being launched by a Mirai-based IoT botnet
— briankrebs (@briankrebs) October 21, 2016
As The Verge notes (who seems to also be experiencing serious problems thanks to this attack), the Department of Home Security is now looking into this DDoS attack. It's also worth noting that Dyn themselves are making an effort in resolving this matter, however it seems that this will take some time as the company is currently "continuing to investigate and mitigate several attacks aimed against the Dyn Managed DNS infrastructure." We'll let you know if things change any time soon.
To make this situation even worse, not only has a second attack been executed alongside a third which, according to CNBC, is currently under way, but a person in question by the screen name of "Anna-senpai" has uploaded the source code used in today's DDoS attacks to a site called Hackerforums. He or she writes that the reason behind this motion is due to security experts beginning to defend against it. Here's the user in its own words.
I made my money, there's lots of eyes looking at IoT now, so it's time to GTFO [link added].
Apps & SoftwareEntertainmentFeaturesNews
NFL Plus was a waste of money
Thanks to Anna-senpai, the risk of another IoT botnet DDoS attack is even greater. In fact, it's highly significant. Krebs wrote (via The Verge) about how severe the risk of another attack like this is since the source code is available to anyone at this point.
"My guess is that (if it's not already happening) there will soon be many Internet users complaining to their ISPs about slow Internet speeds as a result of hacked IoT devices on their network hogging all the bandwidth," Krebs wrote. "On the bright side, if that happens it may help to lessen the number of vulnerable systems."
This isn't the first time Mirai has been uploaded to the internet. In fact, the malware has been accessible to any hacker state-sponsored or otherwise for quite some time. This leads to the conclusion that there's likely no easy way to track down exactly who executed the attacks today. Many will have their theories, but we'll never know until authorities complete their job.
So when will this issue be resolved? As of now, there's no way of telling. With a third attack reportedly under way, we may be looking at around another few days or so (at least according to the current rate investigations into the case are going). Of course, you can always stay tuned to MBEDDED for up to date coverage. Follow us on Twitter for the most timely updates.
SOURCES: Dyn Status, CNBC, Brian Krebs (Twitter)
VIA: The Verge (1), (2), Digital Attack Map
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Home » Metro » Court dissolves 22-year-old marriage over lack of love
Court dissolves 22-year-old marriage over lack of love
An Agege Customary Court in Lagos has dissolved a 22-year-old marriage between a driver, Kasali Raji, 64, and his wife Toyin, 47, over lack of love and irreconcilable differences.
The president of the court, Mrs Patricia Adeyanju, held that the estrange couple go their separate way in the interest of peace.
"In the interest of fairness, justice and impartiality, the court grants the pleas of the petitioner and thereby dissolves the union between the petitioner Kasali and his wife Toyin.
"They shall cease to be regarded as husband and wife and both parties are ordered to go their separate ways without any threat to life or blackmail,'' Adeyanju said.
Earlier, Afeez, the couple's 22-year-old only child told the court that he was not in support of the dissolution of the union of his parents.
Kasali, however, refused the plea of his son and insisted on going ahead with the divorce.
Afeez, however, broke down in tears inside the court when his father insisted on going ahead with the divorce.
It was gathered that Kasali had during proceedings on March 27, 2018, told the court that he was tired of his wife's attitude towards family matters.
The petitioner said that he left his matrimonial home in 2017 due to lack of love between him and his wife.
"I stopped having sexual intercourse with my wife over seven years ago.
"I have not been living with her for the past 15 months now," he said.
Kasali said that his wife refused to have another child after the birth of their only son.
"There was a time my wife got pregnant, but she aborted it without my consent; when l challenged her, she told me not to disturb her.
"I prayed the court to dissolve this marriage in the interest of peace,'' he said.
The respondent denied the allegations levelled against her.
Toyin said she was not ready for the divorce.
"I still love my husband, I don't want divorce,'' she said.
The respondent said her husband was an inconsiderate person, who wanted her to carry another pregnancy nine months after she gave birth to her first child.
"After I gave birth to our only son, nine months later, my husband forcibly had sex with me in spite of my health condition.
"When I discovered l was pregnant, I had to abort it because of my health and our economic situation at that time.
"We couldn't afford to take good care of our only child or even feed ourselves, not to talk of taking care of another child,'' she said.
Toyin also alleged that for the past one year her husband had stopped eating at home.
"He later stopped coming home and only sends money to his son whenever there is a need for it.
"I recently discovered that my husband had a 26-year-old son before our marriage.
"He did not inform me that he had a child outside our union,'' she said.


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Q: How to publish Blazor webapp to Azure Can anyone please help with the following.
I am just starting out with Blazor (using Visual Studio 2019). I have followed an online tutorial and have a trival app working locally (just selected the Blazor project type when I created a new project in Visual Studio and built it and now it's running at https://localhost:44311/ on IIS (as long as the project is debugging) ).
If I now right click on the project and select "Publish", and then I select "Azure App Service" and then I click "Publish", then Visual Studio hangs forever with a spinning wait cursor saying "Loading subscriptions". If I look under View -> Cloud Explorer and click the Account Management icon, I see my account is there, so that's fine.
I normally develop my webapps with Node and my preferred workflow is to write the Javascript code in Visual Studio and then use git cli to update a git repository which is linked to an Azure webapp which automatically builds when I commit code. Could I do the same with my razor app? If so, which files from the Razor app directory (wwwroot?) would I need to add to a new github repository and commit in order to then create a new web service through the Azure portal to then link to that github project?
As long as I get one way working to publish the app that would be great.
Thanks for any help,
Mitch.

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Posted inFilm/TV
Fugitive Pieces and Irina Palm: Hands-On Straining
The leads of two new filmsstruggle to get a grip on their troubles.
by Tricia Olszewski May 16th, 2008 August 29th, 2020
The Hole Story: Faithfull takes a whack at playing a sex worker.
Fugitive Pieces tells the story of a man who tries to marry one woman while still living with another. So, you don't blame Jakob's wife for leaving—well, maybe you do for a little while—but the situation isn't tawdry, it's tragic. The other woman isn't a lover but his adored older sister, last seen being dragged off by Nazis decades before and likely long dead. And her disappearance, even more than the death of his parents, so weighs on Jakob that he finally realizes the ghostly company he keeps may well crowd out any new relationships he tries to form.
We first meet Jakob as a young boy (Robbie Kay) in Poland in 1942, taking piano lessons from big sis Bella (Nina Dobrev), who nervously glances away every time she hears a gunshot outside. Soon, Germans are busting through the family's doors. Jakob's mother (Monika Schurmann) ushers him under a table, telling him to keep quiet and that there's enough food to last him until they return. Then his parents are killed, and Bella disappears. So Jakob starts running and hides himself under some leaves in a nearby forest, which is where a Greek archaeologist named Athos (Rade Serbedgia) finds him.
Athos smuggles Jakob into Greece, where they keep a low profile until the war ends. Athos feels compelled to take care of Jakob, and he's a nurturing father figure, teaching him Greek and offering a soothing presence in addition to food and shelter. But he's not exactly confident about the arrangement, confessing to a neighbor that he doesn't know how to handle such a traumatized boy, even though Athos has experienced tragedy. In one of the film's more heartbreaking scenes—and there are a lot of them—Jakob throws a tantrum after something reminds him of Bella. Athos, unable to control him and overwhelmed, breaks down in tears.
Writer-director Jeremy Podeswa, adapting a novel by Anne Michaels, doesn't present these events in a linear fashion, instead focusing mainly on the adult, brooding Jakob (The Hours' Stephen Dillane) and flashing back to his childhood. After the war, Athos took his "godson" to Canada, moving into a dark, wood-accented apartment in which Jakob is still living decades later when he meets ray-of-sunshine Alex (Pride & Prejudice's Rosamund Pike). Alex is pretty, blond, and so sassy she impetuously buys a pair of red sandals because "they'd look so good!" while she and her new beau are running through a rainstorm. For some reason she's in a hurry to marry the very serious Jakob. What she doesn't realize is that his past—which he parlayed into a book—wasn't merely baggage but an obsession. Or is it just who Jakob is?
Alex regards it as the former, sure that he's boring his friends with talk about the Holocaust and naturally upset when she reads Jakob's journal, in which he describes his unhappiness and inability to relate to his wife's "shameless vitality." Jakob fears that he must live the rest of his life alone, which he does for many years, content with the companionship of his Jewish neighbors and scribbling out his thoughts, a hobby-turned-occupation that Athos urged him to pursue to help heal himself.
Fugitive Pieces is predominantly as melancholy as its main character, when it's not full-on wrenching: There's a lot of death here, both natural and at the hands of Nazis, with the latter's presentation of individual assassinations and not scenes of mass murder making it all the more devastating. Jakob narrates from the book throughout, speaking lines that start out sounding unbearably purple ("when a man dies, his secrets bond like crystals…") but soon fall in step with Podeswa's frequent sunny outdoor shots to give the scenes a poetic spin.
Dillane's Jakob is not the most compelling leading man; more interesting and touching are the flashbacks between the wise (but not Christ-like) Athos and the sad, vulnerable little boy. The film, too, occasionally gets weighed down by its ponderousness—though it's tough to treat the Holocaust any other way—but despite a few lags, it's always involving. Controversially, Podeswa amended his original cut of the film, lopping off a significant turn in the book's plot in favor of a more hopeful, open-ended finale. Michaels' fans may not agree with the choice, but after the brutality witnessed by both Jakob and the audience, the edit feels like just the right bit of respite for everyone.


This study sought to examine the economic effects of casino gambling on local economies. This issue has become more prevalent in cities across the nation as local leaders look for various ways to boost their local economy. This has become a highly debated topic with the proponents stressing the economic benefits of casino gambling and the opponents stressing the social costs. Data was compiled on 10 metropolitan areas with casinos and 46 areas without casinos. For each metropolitan area, data was collected on population, unemployment, per capita income, and tax revenues for the years 1990 and 2000. The data was collected largely from the U.S. Census Bureau as well as other federal government agencies. The results showed that casino gambling had a definite effect on a city's economy. Per capita income and unemployment rates both showed more improvement than in non-casino areas. Averages taken of the percent change in population and tax revenues showed that non-casino areas performed better in these areas. No definite trend could be established because of the fact that regressions and correlations on these factors were both extremely weak. The most relevant result that this study produced is the need for more research. A broad survey of cities cannot accurately answer the question of whether or not casinos truly help a city's economy. Each individual city is unique and how it will respond to the introduction of casinos can only be assessed by an analysis of factors in that particular city.


In Farming Simulator 17, you can complete some field missions for other farmers, with which you can earn some extra money for your equipment and to buy new fields. The sooner you complete the mission you will get the bonus reward. Also it will increase your reputation with that farmer.
On the other hand when you buy a field from that farmer you get 2% discount, which can be go upto 20%. When you buy a field, it's yours if there is crop, so if you don't have equipment to harvest, wait until the field is clear.
Goldcrest Valley has 31 fields, where you can get the missions and later on you can buy them.
Sosnovka has 36 fields, where you can get the missions and later on you can buy them.


If you are in a relationship with a Narcissist, in his/her mind, you are an extension of him/her and he/she must always win, so his/her eruptions of temper and ego and devaluations and guilt are sharp and designed to cut you to the core, leaving you wounded.
So, in an overall sense, you will experience problems with his/her lack of honesty, humility and empathy for your feelings.
Also, he/she will have difficulties with intimacy with you. Honestly sharing your thoughts, feelings and desires with each other makes the Narcissist very scared and vulnerable, so he/she will avoid it.
He/she is unable to relate to other people other than in terms of his own inflated self-image and his unrealistic projections of himself/herself onto others, so as his/her partner you are expected to provide adulation and perfect responsiveness. When you fail to do this, you can expect to be devalued, by raging, blaming or the silent treatment.
These rapid vacillations between absolutely overvaluing (and idealising) you, and then completely devaluing you make a healthy relationship almost impossible to sustain.
The best advice is to be aware of and recognise what is happening and stand up for yourself on each occasion. How effective this strategy will be will dependent on your commitment to not back down, and his/her degree of Narcissism.
Most partners find that standing up for themselves in the relationship is fraught with difficulties, as often the Narcissist will double and treble his/her defensive responses when you start to do so, in order for you to retreat to the way you were, so realistically, most partners find that the support of a good counsellor/Psychologist who understands these challenges is usually needed.
Can your relationship be helped?
If both you and your partner are committed to make your relationship a healthy and happy one, then I believe this is worth working on.
Finding a Psychologist who is familiar and experienced with these conditions is important as Narcissism can be notoriously difficult to pick up in a few sessions if the Psychologist is not trained in this. (Education on Narcissism is taught in Psychology courses but does not fully explain the widespread occurrence of this condition, and also the full ramifications of this, particularly to the partner.
The success of relationship and marriage counselling depends on many factors, but is largely due to the commitment of both partners to see their patterns and contributions, and be willing to change. Your partner's ability to do this will depend on his level of Narcissism.
You will often not know how willing you and your partner are to do this until you attempt to do so. You will be able to see for yourselves over 3 to 6 sessions what real effort each of you are putting in to see the problems, own your contributions and make changes.
If, after reading the information here, you feel you are definitely living with a Narcissist, I suggest you come to the first session (or book a Skype session) on your own.
If you feel your first choice is to work on your relationship, then we can then follow this first session with a session with your partner individually, then commence couples sessions with both of you.
I also suggest that there is a Plan B in place, so that after an agreed on number of couples sessions, if you feel you are not achieving the changes and results you want, then you continue coming to sessions on your own to look at your options and be supported in doing your own work of rebuilding your Identity, boundaries and possibly new life.
Can the Narcissist be helped?
Narcissists are usually extremely satisfied with themselves, therefore it follows that they see no reason to come for counselling or help when they 'do not need any'. The fact that they are causing huge problems for others around them does not tend to enter their consciousness.
Here again, it really depends on how severe their narcissism is. The more defended a Narcissist, the less likely he/she will see himself with a problem, and the less likely he/she will stick to therapy.
A severe Narcissist will usually only admit to a problem when he/she has been abandoned, and feels destitute and devastated, when he/she feels he/she doesn't want to feel any more of this pain.
Even when h/she does attend therapy, either as couples counselling or on his/her own, there can be a lack of follow through and continuation beyond a few initial sessions, and his/her behaviour can revert easily.
Having said that, therapy is really the only way a Narcissist has to help himself/herself lose his/her over inflated Grandiose self, his/her underlying anxiety and develop a true self with the resulting contentment and happiness that this delivers.
This needs to be initiated (and acknowledged) by the Narcissist and I believe is worth trying, even if results are mixed.
You may choose to come for individual sessions on your own, if you prefer to continue to stay in the relationship and also work on your own self empowerment and assertiveness in your sessions with the Psychologist. If your partner's degree of Narcissism is not severe and he/she is more benevolent, this can be worthwhile and helpful to develop your capacity to find your own strength and hold your ground with him/her.
If his/her degree of Narcissism is more severe and you would like help in breaking away from him/her, then we can assist and support you in doing so also. It can be a profound act of self love to accept who he/she is and to step away for your own well being.
As you leave a Narcissist, most partners go through the 5 phases of grief: Denial, rage, bargaining, sadness and acceptance.
Without the support of a helping knowledgeable Professional, many partners find it very difficult to get past the denial stage, or repeatedly go back to their partner (in the bargaining stage), or can become stuck in rage against their partner.
Additionally, it is very easy to unwittingly "attract" another Narcissist into your life in your next relationship if you haven't been able to look at your own patterns of why you have attracted, accommodated and tolerated this kind of behaviour.
Therefore it is important to understand, process and learn from this painful experience, so that you are rewarded with a stronger sense of self, compassion for yourself, and are able to move on to a mutually beneficial real loving relationship in the future.
Insightand a thorough understanding of the dynamics of what has been happening in your relationships.
Uncover and express your feelingsand have these feelings and experiences validated by someone who understands what you have been experiencing.
Process these emotions and recognise these patterns from past relationships, including your parents, in order to clear them from your subconscious patterns.
Discovering your genuine needs and wantsas an individual and in a relationship.
Be aware of your feelings and manage your emotional self on a daily basis.
Learn to build healthy boundarieswith others, where you care for but don't take on emotional responsibility for anyone other than yourself.
Rediscover your own intuitionand trust it again, rather than your partner's negative views of you.
Encouragement to believe in yourselfagain and recognise your magnificence.
Recognising and managing the desire to go backto the unhealthy Narcissist.
Help redesign your lifefrom the inside out, trusting in yourself and who you really are.
Find the Giftin this relationship for you. How have you grown in yourself as a result of these experiences?
Moving onto a new equal relationshipensuring a healthy love. Narcissist screening test, and learn the ability to recognise the difference between real love and fake or controlling love.
This Individual Program is available by our trained Psychologists in 70 locations Australia wide, either In-house, by Phone or Skype Sessions – 50 mins. This program will take from 2 to 6 sessions, depending on your needs and circumstances.
Why can it be so difficult to leave a Narcissist?
It is difficult to understand what has happened and who he/she really is. Without the inside knowledge of what Narcissism is, it is almost impossible to understand why there appears to be 2 completely different people inside him/her, how he/she can have changed so dramatically, why he/she is so nice at times and then so nasty at others, and what causes that change. Also he/she has talked about love and higher values in the beginning, but his/her real behaviour has mostly reflected selfishness and self interest.
You can keep waiting for the initial person you fell in love with to re-emerge. He/she did such an effective job of his "Sales Presentation" to you in the courting phase, seeming to be all you could have wanted in a partner, and he/she was so believable, that you just want that version of him/her to re-appear again, so you can have the relationship you thought you were going to have and have committed to, and just be able to continue with that.
But, unfortunately, the initial version of him/her that you fell in love with, is NOT REAL. The feelings, passion and intensity he/she first showered you with were all part of his/her sales presentation. This version of him/her will not come back, because there is no substance to it. It is not real. It was the lure to get you in. He/she will only use it again if he/she decides he/she wants to re-lure you back in.
It may feel unfinished in that there seemed to be so much promise that hasn't really happened yet. He/she may well have promised you the world, and you have been left with crumbs. He/she is very capable of a great seduction and pretence when courting you, but not at all interested, nor is he/she capable, of being a real partner in any real way, with empathy and compromise from each other.
You may feel if only he/she understood how hurt you have been then it would change him/her. It can be difficult to accept that he/she really doesn't care about how hurt you are as a result of his/her behaviour. He/she may have pretended to care initially, so you want to believe that he/she does really, but in reality he/she doesn't, and it can be difficult to accept that you have given your love and commitment to someone who just doesn't care how hurt you are feeling.
You can take on some of the blame your partner has thrown at you,(and continues to project onto you) and blame yourself. By the time you have decided to leave, you will have experienced your share of put downs, belittling, judgements and criticisms, both subtle and very obvious. While these constitute his/her projections of his/her own characteristics only, it is difficult not to take on some of them, particularly when he/she has repeatedly blamed you. This may leave you thinking that some of this has actually been your fault and perhaps if you tried harder, you could make it work.
Please know that while you have participated in this dance with the Narcissist, you have NOT contributed in the way you are blaming yourself. In fact you have probably tried too hard in the relationship already, and not seen that he/she has not been willing to take responsibility for his/her part in it. It is now time to take responsibility for yourself and your own happiness.
There is no closure with the Narcissist. He/she will not be interested in acknowledging his/her part in the relationship ending, so you will not be able to have any shared closure with him/her. He/she may, more likely, be projecting and blaming you for everything, while keeping himself/herself squeaky clean in his/her fantasy world. He/she may also want to involve others close by, sharing his/her fantasy version of how wonderful he/she has been and how badly you have. He/she may even pathologize you to keep his/her grandiose version of himself/herself inflated.
Remind yourself that in actuality, he/she is covering his/her terror and worthlessness with a fantasy based on rationalisations and lies, and that you know in your own truth what efforts you have made.
It may be difficult to understand why he/she doesn't really try to work on the relationship. To be willing to work on your relationship, you need to be honest and accountable, two things a true narcissist can't tolerate. In reality, he/she doesn't see he/she has a problem and doesn't want the relationship to be any different from what it is. He/she has created the fantasy this way, and he/she wants it to stay this way as it is serving his/her narcissistic needs. This is usually more important than any relationship to him/her.
You may question just what in the relationship was real at all. It can be extremely mindbogglingly painful to realise that you have been taken in by a clever conman/woman and have trusted this person when he/she was far from trust worthy, and for as long as you have. Also, that his/her motives have not been to love you, as stated, but simply to gain his/her Narcissistic supply from you, a mere source for him/her.
It takes time, processing, deep soul searching, and usually assistance from a therapist experienced in Narcissism to come to the full realisation of the reality of the relationship you have been living in, and to be able to fully heal, have closure and move on to a healthier relationship.
What happens a Narcissist's mind?
Relationship and Individual Counselling is available by our trained Psychologists in 70 locations Australia wide, either In-house, by Phone or Skype Sessions – 50 mins.
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.The new Urban Decay Naked 2 Palette. I'd pre-ordered it and rushed to collect it before starting work at the weekend, it's so beautiful.
. A Pink Clarisonic Mia - I've been wanting one of these for so, so long! I've had it saved in my ASOS basket for months and months, unpatiently waiting for their 20% student discount offer to resume (as I had a voucher I was planning to use). However, it was out of stock in their most recent 25% off and I didn't have the funds when GRAZIA had the 30% offer. Follow me on twitter and I'll keep you updated on my progress. I'll wait a while before I do a complete review. I brought mine from buyapower for £90.
How did you spend your weekend? Was Monday as good/bad as you expected?


At the mode selection screen, press L, Z, R, C-Up, C-Down, C-Left, C-Right, Start. If you entered the code correctly, you will hear the sound of a chime.
At the ship selection screen, hold L + R + C-Up + C-Down + C-Left + C-Right.
At the ship selection screen, hold L + R + Z + C-Up + C-Down + C-Left + C-Right.
At the statistics screen, select a ship and then press R or Z.
Win the Jack, Queen and King Cups on the "Standard" difficulty level. Then, a Joker Cup, with six bonus tracks, will be available for game play.
Win the Jack, Queen, King, and Joker Cups on the "Expert" difficulty level. The X-Cup is a group of six tracks that are randomly generated.
Win the Jack, Queen, King, and Joker Cups on all three difficulty levels.
During a GP race, press L to view the time between the your racer and the lead (if not already in first place), or between your racer and the closest competitor (if already in first place).
During a race, press Z + R to spin your ship. This causes other ships to explode when they collide with your ship. This technique is especially useful in battle mode.
At the customization screen, select a ship and then press C-Up, C-Down, C-Left, or C-Right to view your ship from various positions.
At the track selection screen, press C-Up, C-Down, C-Left, or C-Right.
Beat the game on the expert difficulty level to view the title screen in comic book-style. Beat the game on the master difficulty level to change the title screen again.


text:
The Colors of God
Every two years, Misereor, a German Catholic development agency, sponsors and sells a "Lenten Veil" produced by an artist from a non-Western country. The Veil it promotes in 2015-2016 has been painted by the Chinese artist Dao Zi. Benoit Vermander comments here on the theological meaning of the artwork.
For more information on the Veil: http://www.misereor.de/service/service-gemeinden/misereor-hungertuch.html
When confronted by an artwork, the viewer may legitimately "feel' and "read' it in a way that is different from the one suggested by its creator. Inspiring artworks open up a space of possibilities and interpretations that go beyond the intentions of the one who created it – like the life children that go far beyond the projects and wishes of their parents. I feel entitled to read Dao Zi's Lent Veil by starting from directions and insights that differ from the ones he had explicitly in mind. And such "deviant reading" is after all a way to pay homage to the depth and evocative power of a most intriguing work.
In the gold and ink that predominate in the Veil, I perceive the colors of God... The golden color speaks to me of the Godhead, of the eternal surge of the divinity out of his own self, of his explosion and yet of his perpetual gathering into One. Gold sings the source of life and light at her most original and at her purest. To put it another way, the island of golden light that stands at the center of this painting speaks to me of an inexhaustible treasure: the heart of the Father from whom the Word always flows and to which He also comes back. This explosion of light - that yet remains united and compact - tells me of "one thing that God has said, and two that I have heard" (Psalm 62:12): the Father gives everything to His Son, and, in His Son, God gives everything to us; at the same time (and this is the second thing that I hear out of the single Word that God eternally offers), God remains One in the loving embrace of the divine persons.
And yet, dots of gold are scattered around the original island of light... These dots tell me that God makes a dwelling within our very being, that when we obey the Word we are visited and invested by the Spirit who unites the Father and the Son. Each of the dots of gold shares in the Source of Light. Apparently, each dot is separated from the Source, but in truth it exists only within the Source and thanks to her. "God un ich sind dann eins – God and I are one then" (Meister Eckhart)
I can glance at the shape of the central glittering of gold for a long time... As I said, I see first an island of light standing in the darkness, something that speaks of an eternal beginning, a star maybe - or the sun in the morning. But in this shape I can also distinguish a head: the face of God as revealed suddenly on the cross. Sometimes, I see it also as a nail, as an opening in the flesh from which the ultimate mystery is revealed and hidden again. And at other moments it irresistibly suggests to me the cutting edge of the godhead: nothing and nobody can define the Source of all things but she ineffably penetrates all reality.
And now... the black or dark blue of the ink... I do not truly "see" it – I rather "feel" it. I feel a flux in it, the perpetual movement of a river, something that cannot be stopped, because it is the rhythm of life. It tells me that no analogy can adequately grasp the mystery of God, not even the one provided by the word "Light." God is the ultimate secret that one just cannot penetrate. God is the secret hidden behind time, behind space, behind all beginnings. God has no name, no face, no shape, no color, no time, God has no form out of which we could fathom an idea or an image. And it is only when we have meditated upon this radical "cloud of unknowing" that we can hear in truth the words whispered by John: "No one has ever seen God. The unique God, who is close to the Father's side, has revealed him." (John 1:18)
For sure, in this painting black and gold taken together are drawing the shape of a cross. It does speak of the cross of Christ that both hides God and ultimately reveals God's secret. Black and golden, the cross stands over the grisaille of our world and illuminates it. And the tears, blood and water that flow from the suffering flesh of Christ are changed into these seven dots of pure, radiant light. But I also see this crossing of lines as a sign meant to forbid us to enclose God in a representation, a concept or a definition. It speaks of the meeting of opposites: God is light and yet is hidden in the deepest darkness; God is both love and justice; God speaks to us through gold and black. God is beyond all time and space, and is revealed in the frailty of our history, the evanescence of our memories.
Also, I see in the crossing of these black and golden shapes the search of a balance between immobility and movement. Again, the dark flux of the horizontal line speaks to me of water, of a divine secret working throughout times and spaces like the river carves its bed. Earth and mountains glitter over the waters, stable as an immutable heart. God is an inexhaustible dynamism and an eternal quiescence. And Christ on the cross is both passively offered to human violence and actively accomplishes the loving will of the Father. This painting does not offer to the viewer a cross to contemplate from a distance. It rather invites us to enter into its movement and its rhythm, so that the Spirit may dispel our certainties and mental images. The cross that this painting draws is not a place to stay. It is an opening and a threshold.
And it is in the "mobility" of the work that I can sense the cultural background of the artist. The seals used by Dao Zi are mostly adorned by the characters for "One" and for "Three." Besides the obvious references to the Triune God and also to the nails of the cross, the paintings and the seals reminded me immediately of the chapter 42 of the Daodejing – the seminal Classic of the Daoist School:
"The Way begets the one
The one begets the two
The two beget the three
The three beget the myriad beings.
The myriad beings carry the shadow and embrace the light,
Blending their breaths into harmony."
The cosmology suggested by this famous mystical text speaks of a process of birth and generation that operates through gift and loss: the unfathomable Way – the Principle that is before all forms and things. It lets itself be numbered and divided. The Principle, once it is manifested as Triune, gives life to all beings. And life sustains itself through the balance of light and obscurity in which breathings are blended and harmonized. In such a perspective, the cross of Christ accomplishes the process through which God gives to the world not only some measure of life, but also the very principle of life, the essence of life and light that God is. And this gift is manifested in a blending of light and darkness: God exhausts the light that He is throughout the radiant breath He communicates to His Son and, through His Son, to all of us. God shares the fullness of His breath with His Son and receives it anew from His Son. The myriad beings blend their breaths into divine life as they originate themselves from such inexpressible exchange.
Coming again at the painting, I then read it as a meditation on the chapter 14 of the Daodejing:
"Looked at, but cannot be seen -That is called the Invisible.
Listened to, but cannot be heard -That is called the Inaudible.
Grasped at, but cannot be touched -That is called the Intangible.
These three elude our inquiries - And hence blend and become One."
And this makes me also listen differently to the question that goes with the artwork: " Wie viel is genug? How much is enough?"
Is such question merely about our needs, about how much "gold" we truly need in our life? For sure, assessing our real needs in the light of Jesus' teaching as well as of current world challenges is a discernment to be made – to be made at all cost one may say. But I also hear the question as being asked about God: how much is enough for God? And the implied answer would be: God never tires of giving Himself, of losing, sharing, exhausting His very being, God never gives enough of His breath and His light, He gives the whole of Himself to His Son, and then, by surrendering His Son to us, He exhausts and communicates everything He has and He is. When it comes to giving, there is never a "genug" – enough - for God. The question asked by the painting becomes the dynamic though which we surrender ourselves to God and our brothers and sisters. By both veiling and unveiling God's ultimate mystery, Dao Zi's painting open us the space where God's life and our daily life blend into the one and the same circulation of light, breathing and love.
(Edited by Michael Kelly)
Opinions, Dreams & Videos
The San Ignazio frescoes
These two short videos take you to a guided discovery of the San Ignazio frescoes.
"The light of the Trinity inflames the heart of saint Ignatius then spreads to the entire world through the grace of many mediators ; such is the theme of the ceilings of the San Ignazio church in Rome.
Brother Andrea Pozzo completed the paintings in 1685, in accordance with the requirements of the Council of Trent: artists were asked to guard against the excessive influence of ancient mythology and to exalt the truth of Incarnation with an art capable of demonstrating the vanities of the visible world. : pictures are nothing by themselves and it would be unwise to rely on them."
"The second sequence highlights the spiritual struggle of mission : The fire of the Gospel and its action are confronted with the infinite perversity of passions and all kinds of violence and idolatry. The ogres and monsters painted by Pozzo do indeed illustrate the diverse heresies of the Reform but we can interpret them today as images of a spiritual struggle that takes place essentially in the innermost being of every believer. Once again, the huge frescoes of this vaulted ceiling tell first of the magnificent way the Word of fire enters the hearts of men, spreading into different cultures, a Word that penetrates all that is really human, joyfully transfiguring the body of believers. Divine love begins to speak to the hearts of the pagans who knew nothing of it and it renews the courage of all those who stumble along the path of faith."
Between the Horror and the Sublime
Daniel Arroyo is 29 years old and he is a Spanish painter. He studied Fine Arts at Barcelona University and Ecole National Superieure des Beaux Arts in Paris. He has been living in Taipei for 7 months where he is currently learning the Chinese language and where he hopes to exhibit his work soon. He is very interested in seeing how his work will evolve in contact with Asian culture and Asia's approach to the sacred and the everyday, the dialogue between these two being a major driver of his artistic creation.
Breathing and Painting
"What I try to paint is the very breathing that makes me paint." This is the way Benoit Vermander introduced his works during the opening of his exhibit at DPARK, Shanghai (November 5-30). The seventy ink and oil paintings gathered in this beautiful location were mainly organized around three topics: faces, birds and forest. But each time, explained Benoit, the underlying element was the breeze - the inner breeze that makes the face change and come anew to the light of the day; the breeze that supports the flight of the bird; the breeze that makes the forest palpitate and become the place where one wishes to wander and lose oneself.
Chinese paintings and oil paintings seemed to be melting into one, as the one and the same breath guides the hand that painted them, beyond differences in techniques and cultural undertones. The breath of the painter became the one inhaled by the visitors who had come to take new strength and inspiration in a show made even more poetic by the large windows of the main exhibit room, opening up on a landscape of high-rise buildings and slowly balancing bamboos....
Chinese Painting Today
Chinese painting is a special and pervasive feature of China's social and cultural theater. In this respect, it has to be acknowledged that Chinese painting often functions as an assertion of national pride and uniqueness, which results in endless repetitive motifs. This should not overshadow the remarkable achievements in Chinese painting in the last decades. Actually, when all is said and done, future generations might recognize the 20th century as one of the most creative periods in the history of the venerable artistic tradition called "Chinese painting." Names such as Huang Binhong (1865-1955), Qi Baishi 1863-1957), Li Keran (1907-1989), Shi Lu ( 1919-1982), Lin Fengmian ( 1900-1991) already stand among the best artists of our time, not only in China but worldwide, even if Western knowledge of Chinese art remains very poor indeed.
But what is "Chinese painting" (guohua) anyway? One must first note that guohua can also be translated as "national painting" if one does not simply consider it as an abbreviation of zhongguohua, i.e., "Chinese painting" stricto sensu. The distinction is important for the intent it conveys, if not for the reality to which it refers. "Guohua and zhongguohua commonly refer to works painted with traditional Chinese pigments on a ground of traditional paper or silk. The terms thus describe the medium and ground of the painting rather than the style."
Some critics plead for a much broader definition of "national painting." Art historian Lin Mu (born 1949) writes:
"Ink work, rice paper and free-hand techniques came into being only during the last few centuries. Painting styles in China also include folk painting, various fresco styles, silk paintings, stone intaglios, from which much is to be learned. As for the traditional ink and wash painting, which takes the Chan school as its spiritual kernel, this simple, elegant and leisurely style may have difficulty surviving in our changing world, where the closed and stagnant agricultural society from which the tradition emerged is being rapidly swept into the past.... Modern society has good reason to demand of Chinese painting a totally new look."
Like other historians, Lin Mu argues that Chinese tradition is much more diverse and heterogeneous than often acknowledged, and that different schools, materials, techniques and religious faiths generated various styles of painting. It is only in contradistinction to Western art that the literati school came to bear the label of "Chinese painting" and was set into a canon. The limitations in technique and materials proper to this school have long been recognized, by prominent Chinese artists as Pan Tianshou (1897-1971) and Zhang Daqian (1899-1983). To do "Chinese painting" today is to retrieve the diversity of China's artistic traditions, with particular attention to religious art and the traditions of ethnic minorities. Lin Mu celebrates the "vagueness" (mohuqing) of contemporary Chinese painting—a vagueness he finds far preferable to the insistence upon any one standard or dominant tradition.
The views summarized above are not mere repetitions of the criticisms Chinese painting has endured over the last 40-some years, but may prove to be even more challenging. The history of Chinese painting since 1949 is a tormented one. Traditional painting was first omitted from the curricula of Art academies. Subsequently, Chinese painting was mobilized for a short period in order to celebrate the successes of the new regime. From 1963 on, artists like Shi Lu, Li Keran, Lin Fengmian or Pan Tianshou fell victim (the last posthumously) to violent criticisms aimed at the "wild, weird, chaotic and black" nature of their works, which could not but betray an essentially counter-revolutionary spirit. The re-emergence of the guohua tradition following the Cultural Revolution has been long and difficult. Although the renewed nationalist fervor has helped its rehabilitation, its artistic development has remained under the control of the cultural bureaucracy. In the past two decades, other media have been deemed to better express the spirit of adventure and protest that art can convey. The underlying question is whether "national art" brings with it a predetermined meaning or might conversely be able to express the diversity, contradictions and various pursuits of the whole nation at a given moment in its history.
The debate about Chinese painting is thus a debate about the essence of Chinese identity. A strongly-worded article by Huo Chunyang, responding to positions voiced by Lin Mu and others, says much about what is here at stake. Chinese painting, Huo argues, is a "(spiritual) universe" (jingjie)—an expression derived from the yijing concept, i.e., the "density" or "quality of soul" that one can find in a painting. In its essence, he argues, Chinese painting manifests the spiritual energy gathered by the man who relates to the universe, and, as such, is the pure emanation of ancient Chinese philosophy. "Although the Chinese people received the shock brought by cultures of other people, they have never changed the spirit of their own culture. On the contrary, they have eagerly welcomed, digested and transformed the cultures coming from outside." The aspiration to cosmic unity embodied in this original Chinese culture cannot be found in Western tradition, Huo Chunyang asserts. Nowadays, artists unfaithful to the original spirit of Chinese culture change their style in order to please the foreigners, thus showing a lack of self-respect and self-confidence.
Huo Chunyang's position reminds one of what is sometimes called "new conservatism" in art history, by which ink and brushwork become symbols of ethnic identity. Although such a position is quite widespread, it is generally not accepted without reservation. A good number of artists and critics hold a middle-of-the-road position, regarding ink and brush as the best medium through which to connect with their own tradition, while experimentation with other techniques they see as a means of engaging with contemporary art worldwide. This has been the case for instance with abstract or semi-abstract ink painting.
The debate on identity just summarized has been intensified by the internationalization of Chinese painting. "Internationalization" here refers to two concurrent phenomena: (1) even the most traditional style of Chinese painting has been deeply influenced by 20th-century Western art; (2) Chinese painting is no longer about China. A growing number of Chinese painters have opportunities to go abroad. As such, nowadays, the ranges of mountains that spill from their brushes sometimes do not evoke the image of Huashan, Huangshan or Emeishan, but rather remind one of landscapes encountered in the Northwest of the US, Western Canada, France's Brittany or Australia's South Wales. The first phenomenon is not new. Huang Binhong, who knew Chinese tradition better than anyone else, also learned a great deal from Matisse and Van Gogh. But the trend has taken on new dimensions, as many artists, while remaining faithful to the literati technique, apply it to a whole new range of subjects, or who, like Lin Fengmian, make extensive use of Western colors while maintaining the characteristic calligrapher's line.
The second phenomenon is even more interesting. It separates the "identity" problem from its "territory" dimension, addressing in much more down-to-earth terms the question of the "Chineseness" of Chinese art. In addition, it gives people firmly rooted in tradition a new sense of universality. The cosmopolitan outlook of Chinese painting might have started among exiles, the most famous of them being of course Zhang Daqian, but others soon followed, sent on official missions. Li Keran's paintings of East Germany in 1957 are testaments to the new horizons discovered by Chinese artists. Nowadays, the State is not the sole institution able to send Chinese painters abroad. Foreign universities or businesses are also inviting painters to give a Chinese flavor to American, Australian or European landscapes. The special relationship of artist Wu Guanzhong (born 1919) with France, where he has held several exhibitions, is a good example of this developing trend.
The trend towards globalization in Chinese painting should not mask enduring divisions among regional schools of painting—divisions sometimes accompanied by various rivalries and affiliation networks. Differences among regional schools are a pervasive fact of China's art history. Back in 1961, the continuation of regional emulation was encouraged by Zhou Enlai, whose praise of the Jiangsu school of painting ensured its artists a privileged place for the following two decades. The Jiangsu school might indeed be the best example of a regional school of painting, with its history of several centuries and a distinctive style that nourishes but also sometimes confines the inspiration of local painters. Shaanxi artists offer another example of strong provincial affiliation. The Shaanxi school plays an important role in the cultural history of the post-1949 regime. Its founder, Zhao Wangyun (1906-1977), was an initiator of the new guohua, depicting scenes of contemporary life. After Zhao's purging during the Anti-rightist campaign, Shi Lu became, for a time, the leader of the young, ebullient school. Here, indeed, artistic creativity and revolutionary fervor, if only briefly, were not seen as contradictory.
Regional differentiation can also have a great impact on the content of the works produced. The above-quoted art historian Lin Mu, for instance, is from the Southwest, and his views may indeed be seen to reflect the fact that most painters from the Southwest seek inspiration outside the mainstream Chan school-literati tradition, (many showing a special liking for the Taoist tradition, Tibetan Buddhism and southwest ethnic minorities' "primitive" forms of art). The Chinese cultural stock is lived and interpreted in different ways by various schools of Chinese painting, a factor which may be even truer today than was the case 30 years ago.
Chinese painting is not only faced with the realities and opportunities of a market economy, but must also define itself in a global cultural environment. Values fostered by this environment can either render painting even more irrelevant to today's Chinese society or can help it further to change and modernize its artistic language, giving it new impetus and appeal. Liu Chengji, who lectures at Zhengzhou University, offers an analysis of the aesthetic tendencies at work in the 1990s—an aesthetics that takes into account the dominant trends shaping secular society. Materialism is the first trend to be noticed, which Liu Chengji sees as the principal consequence of the consumerism encouraged by state policies. This stands in sharp contrast against the "humanist" view of culture and society advanced in the 80s. The primacy given to "feelings" is directly linked to the dominant materialism. "I feel, therefore I am" could be the motto of present-day China, and such a trend heavily influences the aesthetic criteria of the general public. A new "post-romanticism" derives from this trend and is best exemplified by the MTV culture. It is called "post-romanticism" because its characteristic "loss of innocence" distinguishes it from previous aesthetics. In the post-romantic (non)ethics, feelings are consciously produced and manipulated. Finally, "ethnicism" has been fuelled by political tensions with the US and Taiwan during the second half of the 90s. According to Liu Chengji, however, this trend is too much determined by political factors to enjoy a sustainable future. A look at the tendencies at work during the first decade of the XXIst century does not fundamentally challenge the description of these trends. One just have to notice that non-Chinese forms of art have taken even more importance, due to the globalization of the market where Chinese artists exhibit and sell their work. However, a stroll throughout the galleries gathered in the famous Moganshan road in Shanghai reveals the continuing and happy coexistence of Chinese painting with oil painting, video installations and other artistic media.
The painter Hu Mingzhe (born 1953), who specializes in popular romantic figure paintings, testifies to the aspirations often expressed by younger artists. She writes: "My soul aspires towards purity, liberation.... Art is a kind of religion, when you believe in it with your entire body and soul, when you fully associate with it, it seems that you are able to hear the voice of God, to feel the call of God.... Art wants to represent life, not social life, but rather spiritual life...." Another woman artist, Zhou Minghui (born 1954) paints motifs inspired by the daily lives of Tibetans living in Aba autonomous prefecture, Sichuan. This place, she says, "appears as a condensing point of human culture, philosophy, religion and history. It is the holy land where all life returns to nature.... What I paint seems to have been purified as well. My mind is serene and my thoughts enlightened.... The decayed is discarded and the original soul is retained.... Ultimately, culture and art will reach the other shore." Similar discourses and examples abound, which shows how a kind of religiosity pervades art. This religiosity has strong links with the dominant culture, in that it heavily relies on "feelings" and uses language and motifs also found in other contexts. At the same time, it expresses aspirations for new modes of life, which somehow transforms it into an indirect form of counter-culture. Not only has Chinese painting a future, but many of its features resonate with the aspirations of the post-modern mind... Through this medium also, China is entering and shaping cultural globalization.
Paintings by Li Jinyuan
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"Half-blind in the forest" - Bendu's exhibition
On the highlands or in a temple, on a peak or in the plain, sometimes far away and sometimes just nearby, but still always at the place where he has presently to be in the course of his pilgrimage, here comes the traveler – the one you meet on the road, Bendu… or yourself…
Since his awakening, he does not know where he is standing; he feels actually like being everywhere. Inside his paintings are the tears, the suffering, the rest that comes after the storm, the confusion, the ray of light within the nightmare. Between the spirit and the flesh, just between the opening and the closing of the door, between harmony and disharmony, Bendu paints the ever-changing appearances of a free heart – with the travail, the wait, the stops and the mere impossibility to stop, all that which goes along with the quest.
Bendu is the painter's and poet's pseudonym of Benoit Vermander, chief-editor of "Renlai monthly." But it is not easy to reconcile Bendu with Benoit. The texts of Benoit Vermander come from his public persona, they are rational and analytical, universal in scope, aiming at providing people with norms and criteria for the decisions that they have to take. Meanwhile, the works of Bendu evoke a cat hidden into a hole; they bring along with them a feeling a mystery, of obscurity, of passion and of solitude. In the depth of our heart, each one of us might have two different voices for speaking to oneself…
Coming from afar, Bendu invites you to laugh, to weep and to whisper with him. At the same time, his paintings explore an itinerary, lead towards a destination that remains undetermined and improbable. The forest is a labyrinth, a feeble light is the only lamp of the half-blind traveler that walks into its depths.
Ink and water illuminate the spiritual labyrinth of Bendu. You have to navigate between natural, spiritual and artistic landscapes. The artist attains spiritual freedom through his creations, and this is why his artworks are the most beautiful gift he can make to us. For he thus leads us towards a road of spiritual freedom, transcending social divisions, gathering into One all the rivers of love, and making us all meet in truth.
The paintings of Bendu return towards the source of life. May they help you to confront your dryness, the torments of others, may they help you to confront the real choices that your life is made of. I am confident that they can also contribute to gather a community of spiritual seekers, a community of people searching for inner knowledge, so they can continue together along the road.
Raising a song to the universe from the depth of his heart, a song neither obscure nor luminous, a song that oscillates between hope and torment, Bendu invites you to narrate the tale of your own beautiful and tortuous pilgrimage.
Opening on Tuesday, October 7, 2008, 7pm
At the Sunbow Art Gallery
3F,0 Bld, 50, Moganshan Road(M50), Shanghai
Tel:86 21 62993931
The exhibit will take place from October 7 till October 22
Download here the pdf invitation
Ink Paintings by Bendu
Chinese painting has traditionally been seen as a spiritual way, a practice that aims at modifying the thought and soul of the one that seriously undertakes it. As is the case with other Chinese forms of art, ink painting integrates the aesthetic, the moral and the meditative dimensions into a whole. By representing the macrocosm into which we live, grow and die it also rectifies and nurtures the microcosm of our inner world. At least, such is the theory. In the real world, things can be vastly different. The practice of Chinese painting sometimes becomes a way of stressing one's cultural and social ethos, an evasion outside the worries and duties of this world, an ethnic or even nationalistic endeavour that celebrates the uniqueness and excellence of Chinese tradition compared with Western forms of art. Chinese painting is a nexus of meanings and practices that speak about one's identity, self-understanding, aspirations and sensitivity.
This selection of paintings can be seen as a reflexive account: how did the practice of painting and calligraphy mix with my understanding of what spiritual life is about and my attempts at a lived experience of this inner reality? Why and how does Chinese painting matter for me, did it change me in any way? I only try within my ability to bring in glimpses of experience and convictions that have gradually taken shape.
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Seagate To Demo Its Revolutionary Heat Assisted Magnetic Recording Storage Technology At Ceatec 2013
Company's HAMR Technology Poised to Power a 20 Terabyte Hard Drive by 2020
Seagate Technology plc (NASDAQ:STX), a world leader in storage solutions, today announced that it will be demonstrating its next generation heat assisted magnetic recording (HAMR) technology at CEATEC 2013. Pushing the boundaries of magnetic recording, Seagate's revolutionary HAMR technology is poised to power an astounding 20 Terabyte drive by as early as 2020.
"The world is generating an astronomical amount of data annually and that data needs to be stored. We are approaching the limits of today's recording technology and with HAMR technology, Seagate is on track to continue to increase areal density delivering hard drives with the lowest cost per gigabyte and reaching capacities of 20TB by 2020," said Mark Re, Seagate's chief technology office
Currently shipping leading-edge shingled magnetic recording technology (SMR), Seagate will continue to push the limits of storage capacities with HAMR in an effort to fulfill the insatiable global demand for storage fueled by cloud and mobile usage. Critical for continued improvement in areal density, HAMR increases storage capacity by heating the medium with a laser-generated beam at the precise spot where data bits are being recorded. When heated, the medium becomes easier to write and the rapid subsequent cooling stabilises the written data. The result of this heat-assisted recording is a dramatic increase in the recorded density.
HAMR, combined with self-ordered magnetic arrays of iron-platinum particles, is expected to break the limit of magnetic recording by more than a factor of 100 to ultimately deliver storage densities as great as 50 terabits per square inch. To put this in perspective, a digital library of all books written in the world would be approximately 400 TB— meaning that in the very near future conceivably all such books could be stored on as few as 20 HAMR drives.
Seagate's next-generation HAMR technology will be incorporated into a 2.5-inch enterprise drive, spinning at 10K RPM. Designed with enterprise in mind, HAMR fueled drives will be ideal in a blade server environment.
Seagate HAMR demonstrations will take place, during CEATEC 2013, on Tuesday, October 1st through Saturday, October 5th, 2013 at Makuhari Messe in Tokyo, at the TDK booth (Hall-1-3) during normal operating trade show hours.
Seagate is a world leader in storage solutions. Learn more at www.seagate.com. Follow Seagate on Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, Instagram and subscribe to our blog.
Copyright 2013 Seagate Technology LLC. All rights reserved. Printed in the United States of America. Seagate, Seagate Technology and the Wave logo are trademarks or registered trademarks of Seagate Technology LLC in the United States and/or other countries. When referring to drive capacity, one gigabyte, or GB, equals one billion bytes. Your computer's operating system may use a different standard of measurement and report a lower capacity. In addition, some of the listed capacity is used for formatting and other functions and will not be available for data storage.


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ACTION URGED ON SPENT NUCLEAR FUEL
By GARY LIBOW; Courant Staff Writer
The governors of Connecticut, Maine and Massachusetts on Thursday urged Congress to require the Department of Energy's prompt removal of spent nuclear fuel from their decommissioned power plants.
In a joint statement before the Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources in Washington, Govs. John Rowland, Argeo Paul Cellucci and Angus S. King Jr. charged the federal government's failure to abide by an early-1980s congressional mandate to remove the spent nuclear materials from shutdown plants stymies the potentially lucrative reuse of the sites.
Anticipating their spent fuel will probably not be removed by the DOE for at least a decade, Connecticut Yankee is seeking federal and local permits to store 1,019 used nuclear fuel assemblies outdoors in 43 steel and concrete storage containers.
The fenced-in compound, at 363 Injun Hollow Road in Haddam Neck, would house 16-foot-tall containers. The utility wants to move the nuclear waste from an indoor spent-fuel pool, in part because a company is interested in transforming Connecticut Yankee into a gas-fired electric plant.
The proposal has drawn fierce opposition from area residents.
The governors contended that the DOE faces no technical or legal hurdles that would prevent it from immediately beginning to remove spent fuel from the decommissioned plants. They want Congress to ensure that the DOE solely earmark Nuclear Waste Fund money for hastened removal off-site, rather than for building or maintaining on-site storage facilities.
"When decommissioning is complete [by no later than 2004 for these plants], the states and localities reasonably anticipated that the plants' nuclear licenses would be terminated and the sites would be available for other productive uses," the governors stated. "Because the States' citizens paid DOE for disposal of spent fuel [as part of their electric rates], the States had no reason to expect that these fully decommissioned plant sites would be involuntarily appropriated as long-term spent fuel storage sites."
The Nuclear Waste Policy Act of 1982 mandated that the DOE begin disposing of used nuclear fuel and other high-level radioactive waste from shutdown plants no later than Jan. 31, 1998. The act created a Nuclear Waste Fund, in which utilities and their consumers would pay levies for the removal and transport of spent nuclear waste.
There are 22 nuclear reactors across the country in various stages of decommissioning. None has a permanent repository for its spent fuel.
The U.S. Appeals Court recently upheld the right of utilities to sue the federal government in the Court of Federal Claims for failure to begin removing spent nuclear materials.
Also testifying at the Washington hearing was Russ Mellor, president and CEO of the Connecticut Yankee Atomic Power Co. and Yankee Atomic Electric Co. Mellor's companies are suing the DOE for millions of dollars in damages for failure to live up to its obligation to remove the radioactive waste.
Mellor told the Senate committee that lengthy litigation could be avoided if the federal government agreed to site and operate a central, temporary storage facility for the nation's used nuclear fuel until a permanent repository is ready to begin accepting waste.
Mellor lamented that after spending two decades and $6 billion, the DOE still has not determined the suitability of Yucca Mountain in Nevada for a permanent waste repository. Calling the DOE seriously behind schedule, he said the agency has acknowledged that permanent disposal will not be available for a decade at the earliest.