Aporia?

Greetings! If you are new to my profile see "Who I'd Like to Meet" (below).
I am unable to give a representative picture of my identity here so I will not try. As far as background goes, I have studied architecture, philosophy, several languages (including a minor in Japanese), and obtained a graduate degree in Urban and Regional Planning. Take a look at the left-hand sidebar for a snap-shot of interests. I will allow my blogs, comments, direct communications, and resources provided speak for themselves. You should be aware that I will argue or explore points of view that I may or may not hold personally, for me it is particularly important to understand differences in perception as this can distort or color just about all other things. With that, take a look around; my blogs are my primary mode of communication on myspace so take a look.
aporia – (of questions) a difficulty; (of persons) difficulty dealing with or finding out - Liddell and Scott Greek – English Lexicon
aporia - i)the expression of doubt; ii) an irresolvable internal contradiction or logical disjunction in a text, argument, or theory - Oxford Dictionary of Difficult Words
Quotes: "The world was not left to us by our parents, it was lent to us by our children" - annonymous
"I have made a ceaseless effort not to ridicule, not to bewail, nor to scorn human actions, but to understand them." –Spinoza.
"We must believe in free will, we have no choice." - Isaac Singer (think about it, it is kind of funny)
"Those who make peaceful revolution impossible make violent revolution inevitable." - John F. Kennedy
"I believe in advaita (non-duality), I believe in the essential unity of man and, for that matter, of all that lives. Therefore I believe that if one man gains spirituality, the whole world gains with him and, if one man fails, the whole world fails to that extent." - Gandhi (from Arne Naess, Gandhi and Group Conflict)
The conservation of natural resources is the fundamental problem. Unless we solve that problem, it will avail us little to solve all others. - Theodore Roosevelt
"Any intelligent fool can make things bigger, more complex, and more violent. It takes a touch of genius -- and a lot of courage -- to move in the opposite direction." - Albert Einstein
"Reality is merely an illusion, albeit a very persistent one." - Albert Einstein
"To see a world in a grain of sand. And a heaven in a wild flower, Hold infinity in the palm of your hand And eternity in an hour." - Albert Einstein
"[N]o one system of meaning can ever fully understand enough." - Geertz (from Local Knowledge: Further Essays in Interpretive Anthropology)
"Believe nothing, no matter where you read it, or who said it, no matter if I said it, unless it agrees with your own reason and your own common sense." - Buddha
"A human being is part of the whole called by us 'the universe', a part limited in time and space. We experience ourselves, our thoughts and feelings, as something separate from the rest – a kind of optical illusion of our consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and affection for a few persons nearest to us. Our task must be to free us from this prison by widening our circle of understanding and compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in her beauty." - Albert Einstein
Someone asked a Zen master, "What happens after we die?"
The Zen master replied "I don’t know."
"But you're a Zen master?"
The master replied "Yes, but not a dead one!" - Anonymous
"der Gottbetrunkene Mensch" - Novalis referring to Spinoza
"Unthinking respect for authority is the greatest enemy of truth." - Albert Einstein
"That which is common to the greatest number has the least care bestowed upon it." - Aristotle
"I find that the sensation of myself as an ego inside a bag of skin is really a hallucination." - Alan Watts
"A human being is part of the whole, called by us the universe, a part limited in time and space. We experience ourselves, our thoughts and feelings as something separate from the rest. A kind of optical delusion of consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few persons nearest to us. Our task must be to free ourselves from the prison by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty. The true value of a human being is determined by the measure and the sense in which they have obtained liberation from the self. We shall require a substantially new manner of thinking if humanity is to survive." - Albert Einstein, 1954
"The twentieth century has been characterized by three developments of great political importance: the growth of democracy, the growth of corporate power, and the growth of corporate propaganda as a means of protecting corporate power against democracy." - Alex Carey
"There is a sign of Perfect Knowledge. A man becomes silent when It is attained. Then the 'I,' which may be likened to a salt doll, melts in the Ocean of Existence-Knowledge-Bliss Absolute and becomes one with It." - Sri Ramakrishna
"God has no religion." - Mahatma Gandhi
"I want to stay as close to the edge as I can without going over. Out on the edge you see all kinds of things you can't see from the center." - Kurt Vonnegut
"The important thing is not to stop questioning. Curiosity has its own reason for existing. One cannot help but be in awe when he contemplates the mysteries of eternity, of life, of the marvelous structure of reality. It is enough if one tries merely to comprehend a little of this mystery every day. Never lose a holy curiosity." - Albert Einstein
"The whole problem with the world is that fools and fanatics are always so certain of themselves, but wiser people so full of doubts." - Bertrand Russell
"The most savage controversies are those about matters to which there is no good evidence either way" - Bertrand Russell
"The religion of the future will be a cosmic religion. It should transcend personal God and avoid dogma and theology. Covering both the natural and the spiritual, it should be based on a religious sense arising from the experience of all things natural and spiritual as a meaningful unity. Buddhism answers this description. If there is any religion that could cope with modern scientific needs it would be Buddhism." - Albert Einstein
"Everyday I remind myself that my inner and outer life are based on the labors of other men, living and dead, and that I must exert myself in order to give in the same measure as I have received" - Albert Einstein
"Perhaps, someday, solitude will come to be properly recognized and appreciated as the teacher of personality. .. The individual who has experienced solitude will not easily become a victim of mass suggestion." - Albert Einstein.
"So it goes" - Kurt Vonnegut from Slaughterhouse 5
"Chase after truth like hell and you'll free yourself, even though you never touch its coat-tails." - Clarence Darrow
"The more unintelligent a man is, the less mysterious existence seems to him." - Arthur Schopenhauer
"You can't shake hands with a clenched fist" - Mahatma Gandhi
"In the attitude of silence the soul finds the path in a clearer light, and what is elusive and deceptive resolves itself into crystal clearness." - Mahatma Gandhi
"I threw my cup away when I saw a child drinking from his hands at the trough." - Diogenes
"Many wealthy people are little more than janitors of their possessions." - Frank Lloyd Wright, architect (1867-1959)
"Poverty is not the absence of goods, but rather the overabundance of desire." - Plato
"The industrial age is an endless multiplication of unnecessary things." - Mark Twain
"I believe in Spinoza's God who reveals himself in the orderly harmony of what exists, not in a God who concerns himself with the fates and actions of human beings." - Albert Einstein in response to Rabbi Herbert S. Goldstein
"Life in lean, mean American is seeming savage by pro-American citizens of Stockholm or Milan and by energetic capitalists in Tokyo or Singapore. People who take for granted free medical care and free education and know nothing of fear on their own streets or not lining up anymore for immigrant visas to an America that sometimes seems wretched and tempest-tossed. [American cities;] spectacularly rich and frightenly impoverished, particularly New York, have so often been compared these last few years to Third World cities." - Richard Reeves; from Beauregard's book Voices of Decline
"You can live well if you’re rich, and you can live well if you’re poor. But if you’re poor it’s a lot cheaper." - Andrew Tobias
"Villains don't cry. Heroes cry. Do you know why? It is because villain's hearts are full of what they gained. Heroe's hearts are full of what they have lost." - from Takashi Matsuoka's book Autumn Bridge (Hmmmm, perhaps this quote is better in its full context, none-the-less, there is something to it)
"[P]rotecting the environment protects people." - Fritz Steiner, FASLA, U Texas School of Architecture and member of group organized by the RPA to produce environmental assessment maps for the Gulf Coast region
"...reason is an excellent thing, there's no disputing that, but reason is nothing but reason and satisfies only the rational side of man's nature, while will is a manifestation of the whole life, that is, of the whole human life including reason and all the impulses. And although our life, in this manifestation of it, is often worthless, yet it is life and not simply extracting square roots. Here I, for instance, quite naturally want to live, in order to satisfy all my capacities for life, and not simply my capacity for reasoning....Reason only knows what it has succeeded in learning...and human nature acts as a whole, with everything that is in it, consciously or unconsciously, and even if it goes wrong, it lives." - Dostoyevsky
"The roads are different, the goal is one... When people come there, quarrels or differences or disputes that happened along the road are resolved. Those who shouted at each other along the road 'You are wrong' or 'You are an unbeliever' forget their differences when they come there because there, all hearts are in unison" - Rumi
"I say that all are calling on the same God... It is not good to feel that my religion is the true and the other religions are false. All seek the same object... God has made religions to suit different aspirants, times, and countries. All doctrines are only so many paths" - Ramakrishna
"Day and night will not cease. Yet, you need not continue viewing them as opposites. There is no longer a need to think that night has the same power as day. There is just the power of light, with variations of intensity and interruption. Once the full scope of understanding is attained, duality fades away. Higher intelligence is manifested through integrated perceptions of wholeness which restore your recognition of the one spirit. The sons of God are those who do not explain life or manage it with dualistic concepts. The sons of God are those who seek to perceive wholeness in all things." - Love Without End, Glenda Green (Thanks Brother Yama)
"If we continue to oppose natural forces to the extent we are doing now, the planet will simply change to make human life vastly unpleasant, or perhaps even impossible. Everyone has some responsibility for trying to avert this quite likely and imminent future – none more so than those who design the man-made environment, who if they use imagination responsibly, will begin to evolve new architectures and forms of planning which will draw on ancient wisdom and modern technology alike to help humanity live in harmony with nature." - Peter Davey
"To waste, to destroy, our natural resources, to skin and exhaust the land instead of using it so as to increase its usefulness, will result in undermining in the days of our children the very prosperity which we ought by right to hand down to them amplified and developed." – Theodor Roosevelt in his 1907 message to Congress
"The greatest achievement seems like falling short, but its effects are beyond measure. Being filled up feels like being emptied out, but never like running dry." -Lao Tzu
I remove various blogs from time to time, those that remain are the ones I deem significant and those newer than my last purge. I would also like to encourage you to subscribe to my blog as it is the main thing I use myspace for; aside from email it is my primary form of communication here.
Some recommended blogs:Monday, June 09, 2008: Philosophy blog
Wednesday, June 04, 2008: Jobs
Wednesday, January 16: What the candidates avoid
Saturday, January 05: Shadow Cities
Monday, December 17: Deep Ecology
Tuesday, November 27: Tax Philosophies
Sunday, September 30: Being on the Other End(s) of Things… - PN article
Friday, September 14, 2007: Confronting Globalization - PN Paper
Monday, September 3, 2007: Tap Water
Tuesday, August 7, 2007: The Russell-Einstein Manifesto
Sunday, June 10, 2007: Green Building
Monday, May 14, 2007: Rainwater Harvesting
Saturday, May 12, 2007: Terms and Assumptions
Saturday, April 07, 2007: Anti-Environmentalism
Sunday, April 01, 2007: BBC Article
Friday, March 16, 2007: Aporia
Saturday, March 10, 2007: Time article; Climate
Sunday, February 18, 2007: New Urbanism
Saturday, February 17, 2007: Education
Wednesday, January 10, 2007: quote from Quinn
Saturday, January 06, 2007: Water Justice
Monday, January 01, 2007: A Brief Overview of Planning
Monday, November 20, 2006: New Orleans Report
Monday, October 16, 2006: language influenc-ed/-es?
Sunday, October 15, 2006: Troubling Thought
Saturday, October 14, 2006: The Brothers Karamazov
Friday, October 13, 2006: parts of the Disorientation Guide
Tuesday, October 10, 2006: "torture bill"
Friday, September 29, 2006: Professional Planners Code of Ethics
Saturday, September 09, 2006: My planning inclinations then and now
Sunday, September 03, 2006: wonderment
Saturday, August 19, 2006: a confession... of sorts
Friday, August 18, 2006: Thoughts closing the summer [and] a musing on ethics
Tuesday, August 15, 2006: Religion and Philosophy
Friday, August 11, 2006: a case of the humans (video clip - its cute)
Friday, August 11, 2006: human nature, capitalism, and "progress"
Saturday, August 05, 2006: religious texts [and] a bit disturbing
Saturday, July 29, 2006: Einstein quotes
Friday, July 28, 2006: ecosophy
Monday, July 24, 2006: progress [and] Political Action
Friday, July 21, 2006: a note (revolution)
Sunday, July 09, 2006: Socratic thoughts
Saturday, June 24, 2006: Spinoza
Friday, June 23, 2006: Brief one on Philosophy
Wednesday, June 21, 2006: Ancient Philosophy
Tuesday, June 20, 2006: vielen ding
Friday, June 16, 2006: Philosophy pt. 2
Wednesday, June 14; 2006: Philosophy
Not my own, but certainly worth reading: Emotion trumps the intellect part one , part two , and part three , just ignore the crackpot with no photo and no information on his personal site.
Also, take a look at Tegan's blogs , there are a number of thought provoking postings. This is an interesting one posted recently about the "Freegan subculture" .
Human Rights and the Environment:Center for Human Rights and the Environment : http://www.cedha.org.ar/en/
UN Convention on the Rights of the Child : http://www.unhchr.ch/html/menu3/b/k2crc.htm
1994 Draft Declaration of Principles on Human Rights and the Environment : http://www.worldpolicy.org/globalrights/environment/envright .html
International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights : http://www.ohchr.org/english/law/ccpr.htm
ILO Convention concerning Indigenous and Tribal Peoples in Independent Countries : http://www.unhchr.ch/html/menu3/b/62.htm
Inter-American Commission on Human Rights : http://www.cidh.oas.org/
The Vienna Declaration and Program of Action : http://www.unhchr.ch/huridocda/huridoca.nsf/(Symbol)/A.CONF. 157.23.En?OpenDocument
Stockholm 1972 – Declaration of the United Nations Conference on the Human Environment : http://www.unep.org/Documents.multilingual/Default.asp?Docum entID=97&ArticleID=1503&l=en
Resolution 45/94 of the United Nations General Assembly : http://www.un.org/documents/ga/res/45/a45r094.htm
African Charter on Human and Peoples Rights : http://www1.umn.edu/humanrts/instree/z1afchar.htm
Additional Protocol to the American Convention on Human Rights in the Area of Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights : http://www.oas.org/juridico/English/Treaties/a-52.html
UN Treaties Database: The right to the highest attainable standard of health : http://www.unhchr.ch/tbs/doc.nsf/(symbol)/E.C.12.2000.4.En?O penDocument
RIO DECLARATION ON ENVIRONMENT AND DEVELOPMENT : http://www.un.org/documents/ga/conf151/aconf15126-1annex1.ht m
UN Framework Convention on Climate Change : http://unfccc.int/2860.php
Convention on Biological Diversity : http://www.biodiv.org/default.shtml
UN World Charter for Nature : http://www.un.org/documents/ga/res/37/a37r007.htm
UN Convention to Combat Desertification : http://www.unccd.int/
North American Agreement on Environmental Cooperation : http://www.naaec.gc.ca/
Convention on Access to Information, Public Participation, and Access to Justice in Environmental Matters (Aarhus Convention): http://www.unece.org/env/pp/
External links:
http://www.sustainableagriculture.net/ ( National Campaign for Sustainable Agriculture )
http://www.realclimate.org/ ( blog site maintained by climate scientists regarding global warming)
http://www.cpeo.org/ ( Center for Public Environmental Oversight )
http://www.ipcc.ch/ ( Intergovernmental Panel on climate Change )
http://www.worldchanging.com/ ( information for a green future )
http://www.prickly-paradigm.com/ ( Prickly Paradigm Press - very interesting publisher, you can download a number of publications for free at their catalog )
http://blog.talkingphilosophy.com/ - philosophy blog through the British The Philosopher's Magazine (aka TPM)
http://www.sonnenseite.com/index.php?sessionLang=en (interesting site originally in German with a lot of information on solar and other alternative energies as well as general environmentalism)
http://www.zmag.org/bios/homepage.cfm?authorID=51 ( Michael Albert at ZNet , interesting, especially the link to the ParEcon Project)
http://anticorporateideas.blogspot.com/ ( Anti-Corporate Ideas Blog )
http://ecoplan.org/ ( The Commons: Open Society Sustainability Initiative )
http://www.buildinggreentv.com/ ( Building Green TV on PBS - they are on myspace as well)
http://ringofpeace.org/environment/brundtland.html ( The Brundtland Report - capturing the spirit of the Stockholm conference and laying the groundwork for Agenda 21 , the Rio Declaration , and the UN Commission on Sustainable Development )
http://www.workingassetsblog.com/ ( Working for Change through Working Assets - check out the blog and especially the comics such as Tom Tomorrow's)
http://unfccc.int/essential_background/convention/items/2627 .php ( Kyoto Accord )
http://www.dangerousintersection.org ( blog site by one of my myspace friends)
http://www.un.org/Overview/rights.html ( Universal Declaration of Human Rights )
http://www.stolenchildhoods.org/mt/index.php ( child labor documentary)
http://www.omniglot.com/ ( language resource - its fun too)
http://www.factcheck.org ( Politician watchgroup )
https://www.cia.gov/cia/publications/factbook/index.html (CIA factbook containing info on various countries including stats and general info - search google for "CIA world factbook" this link does not always work)
http://www.ppu.org.uk/learn/texts/doc_geneva_con.html ( Geneva Convention )
http://www.nonviolence.org/ (the address says it all)
http://dsc.discovery.com/convergence/globalwarming/globalwar ming.html?dcitc=w99-502-ah-0042 ( global warming documentary from the discovery channel - with Tom Brokaw)
http://www.builditsolar.com/ (again the address says it all)
Grundsatzprogramm - the German Green Party program and principles (sehr interesant, long document though - 136 pages)
http://www.icrc.org/Web/Eng/siteeng0.nsf/html/ihl - International Humanitarian law through the International Committe of the Red Cross / Crescent
http://www.geocities.com/jcfair2000/
http://ej4all.org/home.php - Environmental Justice for All
http://www.plannersnetwork.org/ - a progressive planning organization ; I joined as a student member in September 06
http://www.planning.org/ - American Planning Association ; again joined as a student member in September 06
http://www.humanrightsfirst.org - Human Rights First
http://www.yesmagazine.com/ - Yes Magazine
http://greens.org/iowa/ - Iowa Green Party
http://www.smartgrowthamerica.org/ - Urban Planning coalition
http://www.friesian.com/space.htm - an interesting (and short) philosophy site
http://www.projectcensored.org/ - Project Censored
http://www.dissentmagazine.org/ - Dissent Magazine ( some background of the magazine)
http://ncseonline.org/NLE/ - National Library for the Environment
http://lawprofessors.typepad.com/environmental_law/ - Environmental Law Professor's Blog
http://www.lawprofessorblogs.com/ - Law Professor's Blog
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