The Dinner Party
For her art project Judy Chicago brought together a team of over 20 researchers
that probed the pages of history for 999 women of achievement. From these 39
were selected as guests for Judy Chicago's art installation that was constructed
in form of a dinner party. She created a triangular table for this, to represent the three
general historic periods that are distinct in terms of society's relationship with its
women. Each side of the triangular table represents one of these periods.
The
first side represents the very early period beginning at pre-history and ending
with the Greek Classical period. Throughout this era women were revered, some as
goddesses.
Then came the dark era
that began with the start of the
Christian era, covering the Dark Age of religious wars, crusades, genocide, terror,
and persecution. This is the timeframe represented by second side of the triangular table,
the back side, the side of the dark ages in which the status of women was trashed along with
everything else that is human.
The third side represents the modern period from
the 17th Century on, in which countless women struggled to reverse the isolating
trend that had forced all the women of society into the background, which had
been devastating to women, and also to society as a whole.
The 39 women that were thereby brought together as guests for The Dinner Party, by
Judy Chicago, all share a common table, a triangular table in the shape of a
crotch, as we celebrate their achievements and the
achievements of women in general. This symbolic 'Dinner Party' is also
a party that society as a whole is invited to. Judy Chicago has created a unique
place setting for each of the 39 women, all lavishly laid out on the large
dinner table. Each place setting is meticulously highlighted with an uniquely
painted porcelain plate that bares a symbolic image that represents the nature
of the individual woman who is thereby honored, both in terms of her
achievement and in terms of her being a woman. The resulting installation
presents in this manner an invitation to society to 'eat' from the plate of each one of the
women, and thereby to 'nourish' itself with the substance of her
achievement and her contribution to the larger development of mankind and
civilization.
Putting the vulva on the plate
Judy Chicago becomes 'deliciously' daring with Dinner Party
project, with the images that she painted on the woman's plates. Each plate features an image based on the
motive of the butterfly, but in a way that makes it also symbolic of the of the woman's vulva. She
literally puts the vulva on
society's plate, and not in a hidden way. She puts it into the foreground,
encouraging society to deal with it.
The
complexity of this symbolism evolves throughout the series of plates. The symbolism
becomes stronger and more pronounced, plate by
plate, and side by side. It begins with a simple, soft vulva-image to represent
the primordial goddess of prehistory. Then, 38 images later, the series ends with
a most deeply sculpted and most anatomically expressive image of the
vulva. This final image is for the place setting that represents Geogia O'Keeffe, an
outspoken artist of the 20th Century, a pioneer in her own right in the fight for the universal recognition
of the equality of women as human beings across the whole front of our humanity.
In this sense Judy Chicago invites society not only to 'nourish' itself with the
profound achievements wrought by the women, and those whom they represent at the table, and by
proxy to nourish itself also of the achievements of all women. In this manner she invites society
to 'eat' of
their vulva, of their womanhood. Judi Chicago quite literally invites society to
acknowledge to itself that it already does the very thing in real terms in its
sexual practice. Judy thereby invites society to acknowledge to itself that the entire
sexual isolation that has isolated the woman in society, and ahs pushed her into the
background for centuries, is a myth, something artificial, something without a
real foundation.
Judy Chicago forcefully demonstrates that the sexual
isolation that relegates women into the background is a myth by the simple fact
that countless people throughout society lovingly and joyously 'eat' off a
woman's vulva, both men and women. This fact has been confirmed in surveys. A large
number of sexually active women who have answered a survey*2
along this line, have indicated that 'eating' off a woman's vulva is in their
experience the most
enjoyable sexual interaction they know, and is also statistically, according to
their answers, the most
widely practiced sexual intimacy.
In other words, the self-isolation of society that has been engineered over many
centuries, which resulted in the most deeply cutting sexual division of society
that one can imagine, is a myth. The myth also renders every other form of
isolation in society, likewise a myth, including our political, ethnic, and
religious isolation and the resulting violent divisions. These prevailing
divisions belie the fact that we are all human beings together, and are
essentially spiritual beings
of the one harmonizing Spirit that we see reflected throughout the universe, as nuclear
physics informs us. By this basic reality we share a common universal humanity and a
common universal Soul, even a universal sense of identity and mission. Judy Chicago
demonstrates with her work, and with her 'delicious' irony, that society's
countless forms of isolation and division, no matter how time-honored they may
be, are basically nothing more than just plain and simple hypocrisy.
A
monumental work at a critical time
Judy Chicago's determination to do something profound to reverse the isolation
of women, and possibly also the isolation of society from itself, began to
unfold in her thoughts as far back as 1971. This was also the time when great
banner headlines were strung across the world that proclaimed that "the
Earth has cancer and this cancer is mankind."
The image of the human being was being violently trashed at this
time, more than ever before. The year 1971 was also the year in which the Bretton-Woods
world-finical system was wrecked by imperial demands in order that the nations'
national currencies could be used as private gambling chips by an imperial
oligarchy that subsequently squeezed enormous profits out of the nations, causing social consequences that are not easily
repaired, and haven't been repaired to the present day. The world
became looted to the bone in this manner, while the image of mankind was being
trashed.
Judy Chicago might not have been consciously aware of this trend
that began in parallel with her unfolding idea for uncovering the growing
isolation of mankind from its humanity. Nevertheless her idea unfolded against
this historic background that became a trend that is now wrecking our
civilization.
The physical work for her The Dinner Party project began in 1974. The project
took 5 years to complete. Those years were a time of intense creativity for her,
with the glow of an unfolding universal love that is evident throughout the
project. Sadly, however, this same timeframe also brought to light a number of
political movements that are totally opposite in nature and effect.
One of these political projects that Judy Chicago's efforts have stood against,
perhaps not intentionally so, and have counteracted to some degree, was a
three-pronged depopulation policy that began in the year
the Dinner Party project was started. One prong of this 'devil fork' was
the first-ever world conference on population (read depopulation) held in
Bucharest in 1974. The second prong was America's NSSM-200 policy that likewise
began in 1974, which defined Third World population growth as national security
threat to the USA. The third prong was the "manmade global warming"
doctrine that also had its beginning 1974 and is now shutting down and
curtailing economic development in many parts of the world. For example,
leading into 2008, China had decommissioned over 500 coal fired electric power plants in response to
political demands built onto the so-called global warming cries.
The Bucharest conference had
likewise been built on the notion that the
human population is a cancer that must be contained. The American NSSM-200
policy went one step further and defined Third World population growth as a
security thereat to the USA, on the premise that the developing nations would be
using up their natural resources for themselves, which the masters of empire
demand must be preserved for the future of the empire. Under this policy Africa
became one of the first major targets for controlled depopulation, with the
result that AIDS erupted in Africa a few years after NSSM200 became policy. While it is impossible to determine if and to what extend Judy
Chicago's efforts to counteract the isolation of society from its humanity, has had
an effect on thwarting the depopulation travesty, it is nevertheless interesting
to note that her 'healing' effort coincided with the emergence of this extremely
dangerous period in political trends that have so far not ended to the present day.
Had her efforts been 100% successful, to the fullest possible
extend ,the NSSM-200 policy for the destruction of the population of Africa might
have been avoided. Thereby the more than 25-million AIDS deaths that have
occurred there, might not have occurred, including the future deaths that are yet to
come until the disease is arrested.
But can we say that her efforts had no effect? I don't
think we can say this either. They might have had a major effect in spite of it
all. Whatever counteracts the isolation of society from its humanity, even to
some degree, does have an uplifting effect on civilization. The problem is that
there is no empirical evidence possible that documents what the world would have
looked like had her efforts not been made.
The historic timeframe in which Judy Chicago's "Dinner
Party" was created, also covered the period in which the DDT ban was
unleashed. The DDT ban was imposed for purely political reasons and had no
scientific imperative at all. But it had a political agenda that matched the
imperial genocidal agenda. The DDT ban had opened the door again for malaria to come back, which was soon killing
more than a million people a year in Africa alone, one every twenty seconds, most
of them children. DDT had been a 'God-sent' to control the malaria carrying
mosquitoes. With the aid of DDT, malaria had been nearly eradicated. Soon it was back
with a horrendous death toll. After 35 years of killing people, with a wave of
death that far superseded the Nazi holocaust, the USA has recently relented and
partially lifted the DDT ban to combat malaria once again. The
global warming project is evidently designed towards the same kind of end, to prevent the needed new renaissance from emerging that would enable
society to seriously prepare itself for the next Ice Age that looms like a dark
shadow already over its near future.
And so, perhaps without being aware of it, Judy Chicago has put her art on the
line in a powerful manner to help roll back the increasing isolation of society
from its humanity that would normally be deeply reflected to defend civilization
in all of these areas.
Judi Chicago now stands before us with a monumental challenge. She has been
almost 'shrieking' through her work, to the blinded eyes and the deafened ears
of society, saying, "You fools, can't you see your hypocrisy! Can't you see
you smallness?"
Well, maybe a few people saw what she had laid before society. Evidently some
people did see something, but far too few have. And so, because of society's
general lack in its response to her outcry, the collapse of civilization that
had began in the days of her "Dinner Party" continues unabated and is
accelerating.
Judy Chicago had invited mankind to 'dance' with her in
celebration of our humanity, but far too few have heeded her invitation. Thus
society remains still largely isolated from its humanity, which makes the
subsequent divisions in our present world evermore severe. This is ill-boding, for
our future.
The current world-financial system is presently completely
bankrupt and is hanging by the finest thread. It can be likened to the collapse
of the World Trade Center towers in New York. From the moment on when the
nuclear demolition charges were set off in the basement, as evidence suggests as
might have been the case,
there was no way possible to save the towers and the people in them. Even though
the towers remained standing for a few seconds while the
disintegration was unfolding, the people's doom was thereby cast. We are close to
the same doom today in
the world financial arena of private monetarism, overloaded with worthless debt, while the
dice keeps rolling in the biggest gambling orgy of all times, generating evermore debt
that can never be repaid, in what is called the market. In real terms the debt
is largely junk, as it
stands as a liability against bankrupt economies that no longer produce much of
anything, but have become a liability themselves, now depending on 'slave' labor
products for their survival.
We need a global bankruptcy reorganization before the house
falls down. We need to replace the imperial system with a human system in order
to keep people alive, pensions paid, wages protected, industries operating, and
to give ourselves the needed credits to rebuild the lost industries that society
must recreate in order to get itself on its feet again with universally
affordable housing, transportation, clothing, food, and so on. Unfortunately
nothing of the sort is happening, is it? And it won't be happening for as long
as society as a whole remains effectively isolated from its humanity as human beings.
Even the threat of war is more severe now than it has ever been throughout all
history. We face worse consequences today than those that we feared from a
nuclear war. For example, on December
23, 2005, The Korea Times*3 published a few figures from a US dossier of
August 2003, respecting the number of dirty uranium bombs that were
pre-positioned at this time at three U.S. Air Force bases in Korea. The Korea
Times listed 2.7 million DU bombs and ordnance, located in South Korea, plus 300,000 located
in Japan, for a total of 3 million DU bombs. The current estimate is that 67
million kilograms of
radioactive material is contained in the stockpiled weapons in Korea alone.
Chances are that the published figures are inflated. One would hope that they
are. Most likely, though, the opposite may be the case as many more DU bombs would
surely have been added over the years since the dossier's date of the
publication. Also, considering that Korea is a small place compared to the
Middle East, it stands to reason that many times the Korean amount of DU bombs would also have
been pre-positioned at the over twenty U.S. Air Force bases in the Middle East,
with the number of uranium bombs probably ranging upwards into the tens of
millions. The likelihood for such large stockpiles is probably extremely high
since DU bombs are inexpensive to produce. The DU bombs -- bombs made from depleted uranium -- utilize the now readily
available uranium residue from spent nuclear reactor fuel or from nuclear waste
remaining after fuel reprocessing, and from atom bomb production. In the past these
waste product were expensive to store. Now they are simply consumed as a cheap
resource for making bombs.
When the DU bombs are used, the uranium in them is vaporized
into sub-microscopic spheres with the vast majority being smaller than the
wavelength of light. Being so small, vast numbers of them fill the air. Most of
them end up suspended in the air for long periods where they are transported
around the world with the global air currents. Nevertheless, no matter how small
the particles are, they remain radioactive with a life span that far exceeds the
several billions or years that our planet is expected to remain inhabitable.
Since the minuscule radioactive particles are a part of the air now that we all
inhale, we invariable inhale a number of these radioactive particles with every
breath. As the particles accumulate in the body a few of them tend to get inside
our body's living cells and upset the delicate chemical balances there and
inflict damage to the DNA chains. The result of this radiation attack is a long
list of cancers and diseases that contains 90 different types of cancer (the
infamous Gulf War syndromes that have disabled 700,000 of the Golf-War vets). In
addition the DU-gas-warfare strategy has caused horrendous birth defects that
are too horrible to describe. The big question from expecting parents in the
highly polluted regions, to their doctors , is no longer will the baby be a boy
or a girl, but will it be normal. In some areas the birth defects have increased
10 to 20-fold and cancers 20 to 50-fold. Even in the USA, which is located far
away from the theaters of war, the lung cancer rate has increased 6-fold, as
reported by CNN in March 2006 (pertaining to the first two months of that year,
compared to previous years). Diabetes is also exploding with similar increases
since the timeframe when DU weapons have been in used, increasing from 30
million cases worldwide to 230 million cases. While no smoking-gun-evidence is
possible to link the increase in diabetics to DU, because of the minuscule sizes
of the particles that are almost impossible to track, the coincidence in timing
suggest however that such a link exists.
Since the worldwide radiation from the relatively, to-date, small-scale DU bombing,
cannot be rolled back, mankind simply has to cope with the consequences for ages
to come, even while they have already caused unspeakable tragedies. The radiation
that has been put into the environment is there to stay, and mankind will have to live with it
since it can't leave this planet and get away from it. There simply is no place
in the universe that mankind could escape to, in order to get away from the results of
its present folly. And even with all of that considered, today's society has
allowed itself to become so insanely isolated from its innate humanity that it
is prepared to let the already pre-positioned, potentially 100-fold increase in
DU weapons-pollution, happen.
While the imperial goal might be to keep the planned DU
radiation focused on Russia, China, and India, which are the old historic
imperial targets, it needs to be considered that the now prepared-for wave of DU
killing has the potential to be of an intensity that no one might survive in the
long run, anywhere on the planet. And all this is just another part of the
ever-increasing real danger in our present age, which has become an age of a creeping insanity. We truly have become isolated from our humanity into dream
worlds filled with fantasies that have nothing to do with any facet of down to
earth human living.
As things stand today we won't likely see any reversal of the DU danger
happening for as long as we remain so deeply isolated from our humanity that the
already prepared for possible extinction of our own kind raises barely few
eyebrows. There should be a powerful commitment forthcoming to eradicate the DU
danger and all other such dangers in a crash-program type fashion. Unfortunately
this reversal won't happen until our current isolation from our humanity is
resolved with some rich measure of truth and universal love.
Whether we get out of our present collective trap alive is beyond anybody's
ability to forecast. The critical choices are clear. They have been clear for
centuries, and have been ignored for centuries. They are still being ignored.
The fascism of empire reigns supreme, and has become more ugly than ever.
Instead of society building affordable housing for its habitation, more and more
houses are being bulldozed to the ground in military atrocities, or are bombed
to smithereens, or families are evicted from their homes by the millions each
year through foreclosure actions, while society looks on, or housing is priced out of the
affordable range altogether so that people are forced to live under bridges or
in the open on sidewalks, etc.. Also, we still make evermore wars today and wage them with
ever-more giant engines for mass destruction while we can't spare a dime to
prevent hunger in the world, and even hunger at home.
It's the same age-old story, isn't it? It's the same song that has been played
over and over like a broken record by almost the whole society of mankind? We,
mankind, allow the looting of nations in the name of freedom. We profit from the
enslavement of the poor in the name of greed. We kill, torture, terrorize,
destroy and imprison one-another in the name of what we call, security. We human
beings alone do all of this, to one-another. The horrors in our world are not
inflicted on us by alien beings from other worlds. We do this to ourselves and
call the travesty a civilization. We are miles off course today from where we
should be as a society of human beings. It appears that we have even convinced
ourselves that we are not even really human.
The tragic delusion that we suffer from today is the outcome of society's
self-isolation from its humanity that has been practiced for millennia, which we
now find hard to reverse. It is a cultural failure, not a spiritual failure,
when we loose sight of our humanity, by discounting our 'third sex' to zero.
Nevertheless, the task remains before us, to get our humanity back, and to do it
quickly before time runs out. This critical task has been put onto our plate and
remains there for us to master in the bit of time that we have left before all
is lost.
Judy Chicago and the
dimension of our 'third sex.'
It is possible perhaps, though no confirmation is evident, that
Judy Chicago's intention behind her Dinner Party art work might have included
the promotion of a general awareness of the danger of the dehumanizing trends,
especially of those trends that have been long practiced against women, which has
been practiced both in the form of social isolation of women, and in the still grosser
form of the sexual mutilation of women. The latter, civilly called circumcision,
involves a variety of genital mutilation ranging from the splitting or removal
of the clitoral hood, to the complete cutting away of the clitoris, extending
from there all the way to the near total removal of the woman's external
genitalia, including all of the labia minora and the inside of the labia majora,
with the labia majora becoming stitched together, or being held together using
thorns, leaving just enough of an opening for urination and the passing of
menstrual blood. While the most extreme process is only 15% prevalent, it is
still a major tragedy, as a 130 million women worldwide are effected by sexual
mutilation, with 2 million women being sexually mutilated annually for a variety
of counter-cultural traditions that go far back in time, predating both Islam
and Christianity. While the sexual mutilation of women is increasingly
prohibited by law, and is prosecuted in some countries, the weight of tradition
is strong, which forces the continuation of the tragedy. Judy Chicago's Dinner
Party can be seen against this background as a daring healing attempt that puts
the vulva symbolically on each of the women's plate in the beautiful form of an
intricate work of art, with the woman standing behind it in like manner as a
beautiful work of 'art' herself, of the harmonizing Spirit that constitutes the
Universe. Here we come closer to the dimension of our third sex that is rooted
entirely in Spirit and is immortal in its cultural expression.
Judy Chicago appears to have attempted to set a direction to
establish a recognition in society of the cultural equality of men and woman,
and to highlight society's hypocrisy in not recognizing that equality. With
putting the vulva on the plate for the whole of society, she bids society to
accept its already expressed sexual unity that is undeniably prevalent in its
intimate practices involving the vulva, but which society denies and thereby
denies itself socially, civilly, and morally. It is interesting to note that the
shape of the Dinner Table matches the shape of a woman's pubic crotch, and that
the most outspoken of modern women in the arts, and the most revered in ancient
times, are facing each other at the table and at a position, relative to
the crotch, that coincides with the 'deepest' position in the vulva.
Still, it appears
that Judy Chicago didn't take the process far enough. There is
nothing found in her work related to the Dinner Party that specifically opens
society's horizon to the universe of Spirit in which all life is anchored and is
an expression of it. If such a link is intended, it is merely implied as
indicated above. But this doesn't mean that we can't go the extra mile
ourselves, individually, in honesty with ourselves. In doing so the universe
itself is coming to light as being totally spiritual, with humanity as the
highest expression of it coming to the foreground with a 'third sex' that is not
physically defined in terms of male and female sexual genitalia, which is expressed
instead in ideas,
principles, beauty, art, music, and whatever is immortal and not specific to the
male of female duality, but which nevertheless includes these biological aspects
as constituent elements of something far greater, of something that takes us
deeper into the world of Spirit, beyond the physical elements of the' mortal
coil' to the immortal sphere of ideas and discoveries of universal principles
and our understanding of them, and their expression through human culture. Here
in the immortality of cultural achievements our 'third sex' unfolds in
expressions of great art, beauty, harmony, music, literature, science,
technologies, economics, creativity, productivity, which are neither male nor
female, but are dimensions of culture where physics is raised to
metaphysics, and the physical expression, to an expression of profound spiritual ideas.
Without actually saying so, Judy Chicago put our 'third sex'
onto the map by drawing a distinction between the mortal sphere and the
immortal. She put the vulva on the table, saying that a woman is a complete
human being. She didn't hide it under the fig leaf, or pretend that a woman
isn't a complete person unless she is wearing the pant-suite. She scuttled the
notion that a woman isn't complete unless she is with a man, and by the same
token that a man is incomplete unless he is with a woman. She put the inherent
homosexual identity of the human being on the table, openly, proudly. She cut
through the medley of heterosexuality, saying that a man is a man, and a woman a
woman, and that both are complete, and that we can meet in celebration of our
individual completeness and bring it to the table. She put the vulva on the
plate for society to celebrate, and with it to celebrate its own completeness.
On this basis she put the sovereign achievement of the individual historic woman
on the table wrapped in the same completeness, for the same celebration. Without
that basis there would be something spiritually lacking. The equality of men and
woman can only stand on the basis of the recognition of individual completeness and the full acceptance of it, by
which the human union becomes enriched. The moment when the human union, of men
embracing women, is built on a lesser basis, such as in a meting of beggars, begging from
each other, there is something spiritually lacking there, and the scene falls
apart into division and isolation. Only on the platform of individual
completeness in inner spiritual riches can mankind unite in celebration and stage a
union without division, without isolation, and without self-isolation.
Behind each of the woman at the dinner table stands a
large group of women, each of whom had brought their significant achievements to
the table in their self-discovery as complete human beings and their struggle
for society's acceptance of it, and also of their own self-acceptance of it.
Judy Chicago lists all of their names, 1038 of them, and lists their
contributions to the advance of human culture.
With that Judy Chicago puts our 'third sex' sex onto the table,
as that which reflects the immortal dimension of the human being. All of the
historic women who are brought together there have in this context lost their mortal coil. Even their
names are now largely unrecognized, but they live on in the immortality of their
achievements, their struggles, and their determination to raise the dignity of
humanity by uplifting the dignity of woman in a society that had become
dominated by far too many little minds, torn by division and smothered by
isolation and self-isolation. In their immortality we find an example for our
own immortality, an example for our 'third sex.' We need the same kind of
recognition of ourselves as they have achieved, a recognition that as the
tallest spiritual expression on Earth, the human being is for more than what the
mortal coil can define. Our 'third sex' defines us not as men or woman but as
immortal beings, as creators, discoverers, artists, musicians, educators,
scientists, technologists, and so on. What we achieve here is of a quality that is
enduring, that is defined in culture and civilization and whatever enriches
human society for all times to come.
The Dinner Party as a work of art was itself the product of a
large team of artists, workers, researchers, and contributors of themselves. In
its new home at Elizabeth A. Sackler Center for Feminist Art at the Brooklyn
Museum,*4 Brooklyn, NY. their achievement will remain as an enduring
record of their devotion to the advancement of a profound spiritual idea, an
idea of Truth.
Ironically, Judy Chicago's
Dinner Party project was not a roaring
success. It was 5 years in the making and then it took her company another 27
years to find a permanent home for it. Over the years the project met with both
rousing acclaim and hauls of rejections, but it left few indifferent. It stirred
something on the inside in the hundreds of thousands who have seen the exhibits
of it. It was many things to many people, but it might not have fulfilled the
expectation of those who became involved with the project who had hoped for a
revolution in thinking. This remains still on the horizon.
Perhaps society was too tied up into knots and tied to modes of
smallness in thinking to see the potential for a revolution. Also the project
didn't present the portal to the 'third sex' clearly enough that might have
staged such a revolution. All of this needs yet to be done, and beyond that, the
stage needs to be built to protect the revolution, which is a revolutionary
concept in itself in a world that is deeply mired in bipolar division.
The divisional duality in human identity is always tragic and
has been sadly exploited throughout history. It has been exploited because its
mythology enables the notion for a legitimate basis for the rule of empire, an
external rule to override the self-rule of society. We see the pattern of this
error unfolding throughout history.
When Plato raised the cultural platform with the introduction of
some advanced perceptions of the spiritual identity of mankind, Aristotle
intervened and turned the spiritual reality upside down. He did so by defining
mankind as basically slaves who are benefited by being slaves to (superior)
masters whose virtue by their association with them, and guidance from them,
ennobles the slave. This kind of antihuman sophistry is still music to the ears
of the rulers of empire, large and small. The battle against slavery remains yet
to be won. In fact it has become larger than ever.
When Christ Jesus raised the status of mankind still higher, all
the rage and the fury of the Roman Empire was brought against him. While Rome
did eventually fall and the spiritual sense of Christianity survived to some
degree, the war of empire versus mankind is still raging on. Mankind has yet to
win its freedom from empire collectively and individually.
When Mohammad raised the spiritual platform once again, after the
fall of Rome (in the late 6th Century) and created Islam, another counterforce
was quickly launched to invert the new spiritual idea. This counterforce is
still raging too.
The Golden Renaissance of the 15th Century was countered is a
similar manner. The intervention against it by the forces of empire resulted in
a hundred-years-string of war that could only be stopped by uniting the feuding
parties on the platform of a tall spiritual perception of the human being, which
became the principle of the Treaty of Westphalia, built on the Principle of the
Advantage of the Other.. This platform became the
foundation for modern civilization, but it is severely challenged today.
When in response to the new principle, the pioneers of Europe
inspired the building of a new nation in the post-Westphalian world, (which
became the USA) built on the established higher platform, the forces of empire
immediately unleashed a counter-organizing effort with the doctrine of Giammria
Ortes who defined mankind as but an animal. Ortes launched an ideology that
might best be described as the 'descend of man.' It was carried down to ever
lower levels by Malthus, Darwin, and Galton and more so by a whole lot of modern
followers, to the point that mankind is now defined as a cancer on the Earth. To
the very day this degenerating trend is far from being countered in any
significant way, much less being stopped in the course of healing. And it won't
likely be countered for as long as the masters of empire rule, leaning on their
mythological staff of the right of kings, hailing the myth of a bipolar divided
humanity, reflected in the war of empire versus mankind.
This utterly tragic perception of an inherently bipolar human
nature will likely not be laid aside until the still deeper bipolar division in
mankind's biological sexuality is laid aside and the universal worth and value
of all is understood and acknowledged.
In the brightness of
this promise that flows from the Principle
of Universal Love, our hope remains. It remains, because the fact remains that a
diamond that fell in to the mud remains a diamond still. It remains ready to
shine and to enrich the world when the mud is rinsed away and the gem is placed
into the sunshine. America is that diamond. Mankind is that diamond in every
respect. We all are that diamond. Thank you, Judy Chicago for reminding us.
* 1 - Fair Use Rationale for
book image above
The image linked here is claimed to be used under fair use in Installation
art as:
- The book is about the art work.
- The subject of the image is a historically significant artwork as one of
the cornerstone works that the Installation art movement was founded upon in
North America.
- The image is only being used for informational purposes to depict the the
most important art work of its kind in the article.
- Its inclusion in the article adds significantly to the article because it
exemplifies an important topic from this article.
- the image is only being used for the purpose of analysis or criticism,
see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:The_dinner_party_book_cover.jpg
*2 - survey into women's sexual behavior
http://www.vulvavelvet.org/survey.html
*3 - Korea Times, 12/23/05 - US dossier on DU bombs
pre-positioned
http://search.hankooki.com/times/
times_view.php?term=du+bombs+du-bombs++&path=hankooki3/times/lpage/200512/
kt2005122317370310230.htm&media=kt
*4 - The Dinner Party at the Brooklyn Museum
http://www.brooklynmuseum.org/exhibitions/dinner_party/ |
