Revolutionary Words

"Although the bourgeoisie has been overthrown, it is still trying to use the old ideas, culture, customs, and habits of the exploiting classes to corrupt the masses, capture their minds, and endeavor to stage a comeback. The proletariat must do just the opposite: It must meet head-on every challenge of the bourgeoisie in the ideological field and use the new ideas, culture, customs, and habits of the proletariat to change the mental outlook of the whole of society. At present, our objective is to struggle against and crush those persons in authority who are taking the capitalist road, to criticize and repudiate the reactionary bourgeois academic "authorities" and the ideology of the bourgeoisie and all other exploiting classes and to transform education, literature and art, and all other parts of the superstructure that do not correspond to the socialist economic base, so as to facilitate the consolidation and development of the socialist system."
-GPCR 1966

The Good Republic

"No well ordered republic allows the demerits of its citizens to be canceled out by their merits; but, having prescribed rewards for a good deed and punishments for a bad one, and having rewarded someone for doing well, if that same person afterwards does wrong, it punishes him, regardless of any of the good deeds he has done. And, when such ordinances are duly observed, the city long enjoys freedom, but otherwise will always be ruined. Because if a citizen who has rendered some signal service to the state, acquire thereby not merely the repute which the affair has brought him, but is emboldened to expect that he can do wrong with impunity, he will soon become so insolent that civic life in such a state will disappear."
-Machiavelli, The Discourses

Perception

Men in general are as much affected by what a thing appears to be as by what it is, indeed they are frequently influenced more by appearances than by reality.

Vegetius

Few men are born brave. Many become so through training and force of discipline.
Vegetius

Featured Painting

Christ in the House of Mary and Martha
by: Vermeer

Musashi

The Book of Five Rings
Miyamoto Musashi wrote Go Rin No Sho in 1645 before his death at the age of 61 from natural causes. In it are his views on war, swordsmanship, philosophy, and life. He never lost a duel and refused the leisurely lifestyle under the Tokugawan Shogunate. Musashi died a hermit in his cave, writing. Here is one of his most important writings, The Book of the Void.

"The Ni To Ichi Way of strategy is recorded in this the Book of the Void.

What is called the spirit of the void is where there is nothing. It is not included in man's knowledge. Of course the void is nothingness. By knowing things that exist, you can know that which does not exist. That is the void.

People in this world look at things mistakenly, and think that what they do not understand must be the void. This is not the true void. It is bewilderment.

In the Way of strategy, also, those who study as warriors think that whatever they cannot understand in their craft is the void. This is not the true void.

To attain the Way of strategy as a warrior you must study fully other martial arts and not deviate even a little from the Way of the warrior. With your spirit settled, accumulate practice day by day, and hour by hour. Polish the twofold spirit heart and mind, and sharpen the twofold gaze perception and sight. When your spirit is not in the least clouded, when the clouds of bewilderment clear away, there is the true void.

Until you realise the true Way, whether in Buddhism or in common sense, you may think that things are correct and in order. However, if we look at things objectively, from the viewpoint of laws of the world, we see various doctrines departing from the true Way. Know well this spirit, and with forthrightness as the foundation and the true spirit as the Way. Enact strategy broadly, correctly and openly.

Then you will come to think of things in a wide sense and, taking the void as the Way, you will see the Way as void.

In the void is virtue, and no evil. Wisdom has existence, principle has existence, the Way has existence, spirit is nothingness.


Twelfth day of the fifth month, second year of Shoho (1645)

Teruo Magonojo for SHINMEN MUSASHI"

Giuseppe Garibaldi

Giuseppe Garibaldi was an Italian patriot and general in the 19th century. He is well known for personally leading military campaigns that brought about the unification of Italy. He also assisted in military campaigns in South America and was offered a commission by Abraham Lincoln personally. In 1833, Garibaldi joined the Carbonari revolutionary organization in its attempted insurrection in Piedmont, Italy. After the failed attempt he was captured, sentenced to death, and fled to Marseilles, France. Garibaldi then headed to Brazil, and assisted the southern gauchos against Imperial Forces in the War of the Tatters. The Republican Revolution failed and the Italian went on to Uruguay where he founded the Italian Legion. Garibaldi fought on behalf of the Colorados (red-skins) against the Blancos (whites) in the Uruguayan Civil War. There, Garibaldi mastered guerrilla war tactics and won substantial victories in Cerro and San Antonio del Santo.
In 1848 Garibaldi returned to Italy and participated in the unsuccessful First Italian War of Independence and attained some minor military victories. In 1849, Garibaldi was sent to Rome in order to defend the new Republic just begun there. The Papal States, however, urged Napoleon III of France to intervene. In April, 1849, Garibaldi took command of the defense of Rome and defeated a substantially numerically superior French army. In 1860, Garibaldi, with an army of 8000, crossed into and conquered the whole of Sicily, defeating many of Napoleon's strongest garrisons on the island. In September of the same year, he went on to Naples and took the city. Despite his military successes, Garibaldi had not yet faced and withstood the whole of the French Army. On September 30th, with a volunteer army of 24,000, Garibaldi personally led his forces to victory over the French Army in the Battle of Volturno.
On March 17th, 1861 Italy was officially unified.
Giuseppe Garibaldi died on June 2nd, 1882.

Ethics

"What cannot be said must be passed over in Silence."
-Wittgenstein

Featured Poem

If I walk the noisy streets,
Or enter a many thronged church,
Or sit among the wild young generation,
I give way to my thoughts.

I say to myself: the years are fleeting,
And however many there seem to be,
We must all go under the eternal vault,
And someone's hour is already at hand.

When I look at a solitary oak
I think: the patriarch of the woods.
It will outlive my forgotten age
As it outlived that of my grandfathers'.

If I caress a young child,
Immediately I think: farewell!
I will yield my place to you,
For I must fade while your flower blooms.


Each day, every hour
I habitually follow in my thoughts,
Trying to guess from their number
The year which brings my death.


And where will fate send death to me?
In battle, in my travels, or on the seas?
Or will the neighbouring valley
Receive my chilled ashes?

And although to the senseless body
It is indifferent wherever it rots,
Yet close to my beloved countryside
I still would prefer to rest.


And let it be, beside the grave's vault
That young life forever will be playing,
And impartial, indifferent nature
Eternally be shining in beauty.

-Alexander Pushkin, 1829

Featured Painting

This featured painting entry is not a painting at all, but a statue by artist Ron Mueck.

Limitations of Language

One of the foremost concepts to understand is that language is a limitation. One must remember that learning as a concept is an impossibility, and the correct approach is recollection and discovery. One must not assume that they can somehow teach someone with words; many times an audience does not understand the words since they do not understand how the speaker is using them, or what he really means by them. This is called reference. The answer to this difficulty is that one must learn to inhabit the language of the speaker and discover its meaning and sense for themselves. The speakers of language must show what they mean by constructing pictures in language, thereby allowing the listener to see for themselves what the speaker means. The beauty of language must be seen. When one reads a book, even if it be over two thousand years old, one may see, by grasping the meaning intuitively, the same thing the author had seen.

The Bourgeoisie

"The bourgeoisie has played in history a most revolutionary part.
The bourgeoisie, where it has conquered power, has destroyed all feudal, patriarchal, and idyllic relations. It has pitilessly torn asunder all the many-coloured feudal bonds which united men to their 'natural superiors,' and has left no other tie between man and man but naked self interest and callous cash payment. It has drowned religious ecstasy, chivalrous enthusiasm, and middle class sentimentality in the ice-cold water of egotistical calculation. It has transformed personal worth into mere exchange value, and substituted for dearly bought chartered Freedoms the one and only unconscionable freedom of Free Trade. It has, in one word, replaced an exploitation veiled by religious and political illusions by exploitation open, direct, and brutal.
The bourgeoisie has stripped of its halo every profession previously venerated and regarded as honourable. It has turned doctor, lawyer, priest, poet, and philosopher into paid wage workers.
The bourgeoisie has torn away the veil of sentiment from the family relation, and reduced it to a mere money relation."
-Marx and Engels

Belief

Why allow knowledge to outweigh beliefs? Knowledge is ever changing, belief is everlasting.

Recommended Film

Ambitudo a Mortis is not in the business of endorsements. However, a very well made documentary, titled A Map for Saturday, has proved itself worthy of one. The film is a documentary, by Brook Silva-Braga, on leaving his bourgeois job to journey across the world. You can find out more on the website: amapforsaturday.com