{"id":58126,"date":"2018-03-07T17:16:41","date_gmt":"2018-03-07T17:16:41","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/zenpundit.com\/?p=58126"},"modified":"2018-03-07T17:16:41","modified_gmt":"2018-03-07T17:16:41","slug":"shorts-5-apocalypse-to-almond-blossoms","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/?p=58126","title":{"rendered":"Shorts 5: Apocalypse to Almond blossoms"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>[ by <strong>Charles Cameron<\/strong> &#8212; mostly about beauty &#8212; let&#8217;s start with apocalypse and end with the blossoms, eh? reverse engineering! ]<br \/>\n.<\/p>\n<p>Hey!<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.aei.org\/publication\/putins-apocalyptic-blackmail\/\">Putin\u2019s apocalyptic blackmail<\/a><\/p>\n<blockquote><p>In the Orthodox tradition, the Book of Revelations has not been among the most important texts. Yet there is something positively apocalyptic about the recent speech of the Russian Orthodox Church\u2019s most important convert, Russian President Vladimir Putin. A nuclear-powered and nuclear-armed cruise missile that could circumnavigate the planet avoiding US missile defenses! A nuclear-powered and nuclear-armed submarine drone! And, most of all, a hypersonic \u201cmeteorite\u201d too fast for American interceptors, a mighty <em>ognennyi shar<\/em>, a great \u201cball of fire\u201d! (Jerry Lee Lewis was not credited, but then Putin\u2019s Russia is not known for overly scrupulous honoring of property rights.)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>**<\/p>\n<p>Jerry Lee Lewis ? That&#8217;s a pop refeerence in an otherwise serious context. Let&#8217;s see..<\/p>\n<p><strong>Pop paradise:<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><strong><a href=\"https:\/\/thenextweb.com\/gaming\/2018\/03\/05\/how-altos-odyssey-transports-players-to-a-whole-new-world\/\">Religion (Zen??) in games:<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n<blockquote><p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" width=\"560\" height=\"315\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/PaZsrAi6iJg\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"autoplay; encrypted-media\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>Following the massive initial success of Alto\u2019s Adventure, the team released a major update that added a Zen Mode to the title in 2016, which removed obstacles to create a more relaxing experience for players who simply wanted to drift off into the game world. It was around that time that Cymet moved his family from Vancouver to Toronto to work more closely with the team at Snowman, and he said that the ordeal helped \u201cgive me a sense of groundedness in this emotion we\u2019ve tried to capture with the game, of going outside your comfort zone and putting yourself somewhere completely new that\u2019s beautiful and interesting, and trying to find the beauty there.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>IMO, and with ref to the above and to zen, seeking beauty leads to prettiness, whereas seeking truth leads to beauty. <\/p>\n<p>**<\/p>\n<p><strong>Placing that game art in a binary context:<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><strong>Adorno:<\/strong><\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Like many \u00e9migr\u00e9s, Adorno was initially disoriented by US mass culture, which had not yet overrun Europe as it would after the war. This disorientation became a principled distrust. He claimed that capitalist popular culture \u2013 jazz, cinema, pop songs, and so on \u2013 manipulates us into living lives empty of true freedom, and serves only to distort our desires. Popular culture is not the spontaneous expression of the people, but a profit-driven industry \u2013 it robs us of our freedom and bends us to conform to its needs for profit.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><strong>Scruton:<\/strong><\/p>\n<blockquote><p>When Metallica appeared at the 2014 Glastonbury festival there was a wake-up moment of this kind \u2013 the recognition that these guys, unlike so many who had performed there, actually had something to say. Yes, there are distinctions of quality, even in the realm of pop.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>**<\/p>\n<p>Okay, and to close with authentic beauty, art, culture&#8230;.<\/p>\n<p>A brilliant <strong>DoubleQuote <\/strong>in a single tweet:<\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<blockquote class=\"twitter-tweet\" data-lang=\"en\">\n<p lang=\"en\" dir=\"ltr\">&quot;I said to the almond tree, \u2018Friend, speak to me of God,\u2019 and the almond tree blossomed.&quot;<br \/>   ~ Nikos Kazantzakis<br \/>            ?Vincent Van Gogh <a href=\"https:\/\/t.co\/7yUOUTkXOd\">pic.twitter.com\/7yUOUTkXOd<\/a><\/p>\n<p>&mdash; Moonbeam (@TreasuretheDays) <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/TreasuretheDays\/status\/970062402787127296?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\">March 3, 2018<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><script async src=\"https:\/\/platform.twitter.com\/widgets.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Encouragingly, there are just such blossoms outside my window.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>[ by Charles Cameron &#8212; mostly about beauty &#8212; let&#8217;s start with apocalypse and end with the blossoms, eh? reverse engineering! ] . Hey! Putin\u2019s apocalyptic blackmail In the Orthodox tradition, the Book of Revelations has not been among the most important texts. Yet there is something positively apocalyptic about the recent speech of the [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1217,622,384,788,526,215,627,1151,529,90,1589,533,1,364],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-58126","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-aesthetics","category-apocalyptic","category-art","category-beauty","category-charles-cameron","category-culture","category-doublequotes","category-doubletweets","category-games","category-nuclear","category-pop","category-religion","category-uncategorized","category-vladimir-putin"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/58126","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=58126"}],"version-history":[{"count":15,"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/58126\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":58150,"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/58126\/revisions\/58150"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=58126"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=58126"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=58126"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}