Tag: art

Future-proofing your career – Episode 151

by Kurt Robinson on February 7, 2017 in Podcast • 0 Comments

The Story: How to prepare for an uncertain work future

Futurism is a field which is fascinating to those who study it – presenting a puzzle in the form of the question: how are all the current trends going to interact in ways which are going to affect the entire world? However, most people don’t care so much to think about the future, and that’s a problem, because we are quickly entering an age in which the people who can’t see a few years into the future, will quickly be left struggling to deal with the present.

Many people believe that being an employee, as opposed to operating a business, is a secure proposition, as having a fixed income with a dependable employer enables some certainty. That can be true in the short term, but it’s not necessarily true in the long term. Large economic crises typically happen every 7 years – just long enough for many to be over-comfortable, and subsequently desperate. True survivors and hustlers have multiple sources of income, doing short-term contracts, gig-based work like on Fiverr or Freelancer, and investments.

Automation is also something that people are worried about. If you work in the manufacturing sector or transport, machines will probably come for your job sooner rather than later. Burger-making and selling machines will soon be common, displacing a lot of fast-food workers. How soon will the robots come for your job? And how quickly can you prepare?

With robots watering plants, tilling fields, running factories, delivering goods, there will be a much lower cost for mass production, which means cheaper goods and a lot more wealth for many. Perhaps they will choose to spend some of that wealth on things which they really like, which machines can’t make, or can’t make yet – things which are unique – handmade items, art, music, and fine food. In the past, a writer had to have millions of fans to make a decent living. With modern technology, Patreon and Amazon self-publishing, a writer might make a good living with just a few thousand dedicated supporters.

Join Kurt as he gazes into the future in this mini-episode of… The Paradise Paradox!

The Links:

Humans need not apply

Coursera.org

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The Episode:

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Catholicism in Mexico: A death cult?

by Kurt Robinson on December 21, 2016 in Religion • 0 Comments

When I walk into a church in Mexico, I can’t help but escape the images of death. There will normally be several idols of Christ, bloody and beaten, on a cross or in a coffin. In the Cathedral in Guadalajara, there is a mummy in a glass coffin, which supposedly belonged to a martyr, a young lady beaten to death by her father, enraged by her ambition to be a nun. I saw a similar mummy in Pachuca, Hidalgo, with a similar story. Apparently this story is repeated in churches all over Mexico – an archetype, a story too good to be told just once, like a rerun of ‘I Love Lucy’.

The other day I walked into the sacred art museum, which is attached to the Cathedral. In the first room we walked into, while looking at the paintings, I had the uncanny feeling that the people in the paintings were looking at me, or waiting to look at me. My companion also felt that there was something dark about the place. (Unfortunately, I can’t show you any pictures of the museum as they asked us not to take photographs.) In another room, there was a stand intended to hold books for a chorus, in the shape of a ziggurat or burial mound, with Christ on a crucifix at the top. The whole thing was painted black. Again, I felt I shouldn’t turn my back on it. I wondered about the dark things this object had seen, wondering if children had been abused while perched on its shelves.

In another room, there was a particularly gruesome picture of Christ, apparently already very dead, with Mary Magdalene by his side, holding his hand. His hand was by her mouth, but instead of kissing it she appeared to be sucking it. In front of Christ stood a dark female figure in a black robe with very white skin, tears streaming down her cheeks. I assume it’s supposed to be Mary, but it looked like Death.

In the entire museum, I saw Christ as an infant, as a dying man, and as a corpse – almost always in states where he wasn’t capable of teaching anything. The only exception was a handful of paintings depicting the scene “Christ among the doctors”, in which Christ is about 12 years old. The Sermon on the Mount was never portrayed. I wonder if that’s a decision of the curators, or of the Mexican artists over the centuries, or of their commissions from the church. Perhaps there are different ways to interpret it, but to me the message seemed to be: your god is impotent and helpless.

I hope I don’t offend anybody with this post, as this is just my experience as an outsider looking in, and obviously there are subtleties that someone more familiar with Catholicism would notice. However, I do think that people should be wary of these types of images. A man might make a fine idol for you to pray towards, and you might even kiss its feet, as I’ve seen many people do. If the man controls the image that you pray to, you can be sure that he also controls you. God needs no intermediaries.

Episode 90 – The Passion of Anarchapulco 2016

by Kurt Robinson on February 23, 2016 in Podcast • 0 Comments

The Episode:

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The Story:

Many people in the liberty movement are very left-brained, extremely focused on logic, because that is how many of them came to the conclusion that allowing any particular organisation a monopoly on power is not a good idea, not effective, or even not practical. However, there are many people who have very similar or related feelings about liberty or about caring for others, who may not yet have the mental tools to entirely leave behind their indoctrination about government.

The hippie movement was a huge call for peace, though it later went on to be undermined by mysterious forces in the seventies – perhaps just by the realisation that it was time to get a job and a mortgage. But hippies as a movement are still very much alive, and in many ways, many Burners and Rainbow Gatherers are much more free than any Austrian economist writing essays in his suburban home could ever be. Step by step, the liberty movement extends to people who haven’t just come to liberty as an intellectual conclusion, but to people who live it and breathe it, who feel it in their bones, on their sunburnt faces, and on their blistered bare feet. Even many academic socialists who advocate robbery in the form of taxation, and many forms of impractical public policy, does so because it is congruent with his compassion for others – his desire for freedom and prosperity.

The question is, how can these two camps of logic and emotion, which, on the surface might seem to be very contradictory, be combined? The perfect answer is divine revelation. The practical answer is art. Through creating something beautiful, manifesting a piece of divinity in the human world, bringing people to a point of exaltation through poetry, song, food and painting, can win over hearts, where minds still lay closed.