It seems more relevant today than ever.

(on YouTube)

The European Union is seeking again to ban the swastika symbol. There has been a flurry of debate about the vastly different meanings the symbol has to different cultures.

This has centred on the feelings of the German nation, European Jews and Hindus.

From YNet News (via Anarchaia):

Germany plans to use its presidency of the EU to launch an initiative which could lead to common laws across the bloc making it a crime to deny genocide and display Nazi symbols.

“The swastika has been around for 5,000 years as a symbol of peace. This is exactly the opposite of how it was used by Hitler,” said Ramesh Kallidai of the Hindu Forum of Britain.

“It is almost like saying that the Klu Klux Klan used burning crosses to terrorize black men, so therefore let us ban the cross. How does that sound to you?”

Links

• BBC article
• Reclaim the Swastika reader comments
• Rainmountain posts to Flickr
• Positive Swastikas Flickr Group

At the recent SLDevU conference in London, I understood the vision behind the online virtual world, Second Life, to a much deeper level: a platform for the 3D Internet – a richer, more compelling and more collaborative space for information and communication than our current, flat-screen Web.

Created by visionary programmers and inhabited by curious explorers, soul seekers, revellers, entrepreneurs and a frenzy of big-bucks brands, I wonder if we could turn this new Frontierland into something greater than our First Life?…

Second Life is often cited as being just another Massive Multiplayer Online Roleplay Game. But its founders have no such idea in mind. No, not a game, but a virtual universe in which all the lands, buildings, clothes and all manner of wild and wonderful objects are sculpted and scripted by the residents. People conduct business and engage in the marketplace for very real money. They congregate and communicate in ways never previously possible…

Information from our more familiar, 2D websites streams in and out of the Second Life world, interacting with its residents. Now you can watch a YouTube video together with people in different countries. You could be in the crowd at a concert of your favourite band, without ever travelling. You can work with colleagues and hold business meetings in your new virtual office.

What possibilities of open-mindedness and self-exploration could this unique experience offer? If travel expands the mind, Second Life is like moving to Mars! Certainly, the space is permeated by all the familiar messages from dollar-hungry ‘lifestyle’ brands and the heady hedonism of clubs and consumerism. We know these too well, but is there something else in there, something to touch the core of one’s being: meaningful communication, heartfelt connection, depth and learning or spiritual discovery?

We see a rare opportunity, where the citizens of this New World can be instrumental in creating the society of their dreams – and in the relative safety of a virtual space. Can we rise to the challenge and even create a catalyst for transforming the very Real World all around us?…

Links:

• Virtual Reality in Second Life & Beyond
• Second Life Resource for Educators
• Making a Living in Second Life
• Guide to Jobs in Second Life

A time for goodwill, for giving, for sharing… Or a time for consuming, for devouring, for spending…

As Christmas hype reaches its zenith, millions of last-minute shoppers stock-up on their obligatory must-gives. I wonder how much money is spent each year on unwanted gifts. Still, you’ve got to give something and it is good for the economy…

An Idea for Next Christmas
There’s no need to buy new, expensive gifts when the world is already full of perfectly good but unwanted possessions. And because so many of us have things that we no longer need, why not organise a local community bring-and-share for Christmas presents?…

People would bring good quality items to give away, and they’d take home gifts from others. Perhaps there’d be a small fee for each present, which gets donated to charity.

Would you want to take part?

Prout (PROgressive Utilisation Theory) is a visionary socio-economic system to encourage a cooperative society. A new short story competition has been announced for writers to open a window on a future, Proutistic society. From the press release:

IMAGINE A SOCIETY IN WHICH…
…food, clothing, housing, education and medical care are guaranteed to everyone.

…most farms, banks, industries and services are run as cooperatives owned by the workers.

…there are no multinational corporations.

…different voices, languages and cultures are respected.

…there is self-sufficiency in food, medicines, clothing, housing, and local transport.

…the environment is protected and restored, all agriculture is organic, waste is recycled and renewable energy is used.

…universal spirituality is valued, not religious dogmas or conflicts.

…leaders are selfless servants of the people.

STRUGGLE AND CONFLICT…
Naturally, such a society could never come about without great struggle. The richest one percent who control our world today would do anything to prevent it.

They direct the multinational corporations and manipulate the US Empire, going to any length to neutralise such a progressive society. When it does come about, there will always be selfish people who would try to destroy it for their own personal benefit.

CAN YOU DESCRIBE IN A COMPELLING WAY…
…the people, the struggles, the sacrifices, the tragedies and the triumphs that would be needed to achieve such a society?

…in which part of the world such a society would first take root and what threats, opposition, and deceit that would be employed to undermine it?

…how living in such a society would affect people?

SHORT STORY COMPETITION DESCRIBING A FUTURE SOCIETY BASED ON PROUT!
Prout stands for the Progressive Utilization Theory, an alternative socio-economic model. In the words of Noam Chomsky,
"Prout’s cooperative model, sharing the resources of the planet for the welfare of everyone, deserves our serious consideration."

To know more about Prout’s socio-economic model and its policies, see www.prout.org and www.proutworld.org.

The Prout Research Institute of Venezuela is hosting a short story competition about a future Prout society and the struggles needed to bring it about. Stories may not exceed 5,000 words and must be previously unpublished. Entrants may be located anywhere on the planet, but each person may submit only one story written in English, Spanish or Portuguese. The stories will be judged on whether the future society portrayed correctly represents Prout, as well as on good writing and originality.

JUDGES
A committee of four panelists, led by the published writer Devashish Acosta (author of "When the Time Comes" and "The Ashram"), will judge the contest. To ensure impartiality, all stories will be numbered and the authors’ names will be removed until the final decisions are made.

A Proutist who wishes to remain anonymous has generously donated funds so that we can offer the following cash prizes:

• First prize: US$500
• Second prize: US$300
• Third prize: US$200
• Five fourth prizes: US$100 each
• (Winners in economically developed countries will receive a check or bank transfer. Winners in economically undeveloped countries will be sent an international postal money order.)

The winning stories will posted on the Prout Institute of Venezuela website. In addition, the Prout Research Institute of Venezuela reserves the right to publish the stories in an anthology and in a Prout magazine.

DEADLINE
Midnight March 31, 2007 Venezuelan time (GMT minus 4 hours)
Winners will be announced May 15, 2007

All stories must be sent by email to shortstory[at]prout.org. There is no entrance fee. Stories that exceed 5,000 words, that arrive late or that do not describe the struggles to achieve or maintain a Prout society will be disqualified from the cash prizes. After June 15, 2007, all authors are free to submit their stories to other competitions or venues for publication.

Source: PRI Venezuela, via After Capitalism

There are plenty of wrongs to right in the world. We can but deal with one at a time…

I don’t know about you, but email spam really annoys me. There’s something repulsive about deceitfully and repeatedly forcing useless products onto millions of people who really couldn’t care less about viagra logo enhancements or anything else on offer. So…

Take Action
If you’ve ever made your email address public on a website, the chances are that it’s been detected by a spam robot and added to its database.

For the benefit of such bots, I’ve written a little script to churn out scores of random addresses, with a link to a page that has more of the same. The result is the SpamPit. May they never come out again…

To Add a SpamPit to your Website…
Either download the code (simply unzip it and upload the three files into the main directory of your site) or go through each part of the code below. You are welcome to modify it and redistribute.

This PHP function will return random addresses within <a> tags:

<?php
function getEmails(){
  // Settings
  $num_letters = 10;
  $num_emails = 70;
  $tld = array('com', 'org', 'net');
  // Generate addresses
  $emails = '';
  for($i=0; $i<=$num_emails; $i++)
    {
      $email = '@';
      for($j=0; $j<=$num_letters; $j++)
        {
          $email = chr(rand(ord('a'), ord('z'))) . $email;
          $email .= chr(rand(ord('a'), ord('z')));
        }
      $email .= '.' . $tld[rand(0, count($tld)-1)];
      $emails.= "<a href='mailto:$email'>$email, ";
    }
  return substr($emails, 0, -2);
}
?>

Simply call the function within the body of your page:

<?php echo getEmails(); ?>

If you want to have an infinite number of urls that call the same page, as in my version, you’ll need to do the following (assuming your site is hosted on an Apache server):

• Save your page as spampit.php
• Create a .htaccess file in your main directory, if you don’t have one already.
• Add this to turn on the rewriting of urls:

  Options +FollowSymLinks
  RewriteEngine On

• Add this rule to capture requests to any url that starts /spampit/:

  RewriteRule ^spampit(/?.*?(\d*)/)?$ /spampit.php?depth=$2 [L]

• Add this PHP function to spampit.php, which returns the url of the next page:

  function getNextUrl(){
    if (!isset($_GET['depth']))
      { $depth = 1; }
    elseif ($_GET['depth'] != '')
      { $depth = intval($_GET['depth']) +1; }
    else
      { $depth = 1; }
    $pattern = '/\/spampit\/?.*?\d*\/?$/';
    $replace = "/spampit/$depth/";
    $str = $_SERVER['REQUEST_URI'];
    return preg_replace($pattern, $replace, $str, 1);
  }

• You can now add an HTML link within the page to link it to the next page. You can get the href of the link by calling the function you just added:

  <?php echo getNextUrl(); ?>

  For example:

  <a href="<?php echo getNextUrl(); ?>">More addresses</a>

• Finally, you may want to create a robots.txt file so that genuine search engine bots don’t choke on your infinite address book… Add these lines to the file:

  User-agent: *
  Disallow: /spampit/
  Allow: /spampit/$
  Disallow: /spampit/*/

  The first line addresses all (well-behaved) robots.

  The second line is a standard robots.txt rule that to prevent bots indexing any part of the /spampit/ directory.

  The third and fourth lines are extensions to the robots.txt format, followed by some robots, which will enable them to crawl only the first spampit page.

  We are assuming here that a spambot will not care about a site’s robots.txt file and will just go ahead and crawl through everything… Well, let them!

“Can they not see that this conduct ultimately leads to violence?”, a remark made by a French friend of mine recently. He was really upset by the world cup final incident largely because of the conduct of the players. Speaking yesterday, Zidane said “My act is not forgivable, but they must also punish the true guilty party, and the guilty party is the one who provokes.” In this light, do we condemn the violence or the conduct which causes it?

Zizou was under immense pressure in the final – the whole French team had been formed around him, and the final result arguably rested heavily on his shoulders. It was one of these shoulders which was almost dislocated in an Italian challenge just prior to his headbutting incident as he was relentlessly marked and hounded by the Italian team. However, Materazzi took the hounding to a new level by insulting Zidane’s family on top of nipple tweaking, shirt pulling and all the other crude insults. If you take a man and pile more and more pressure on him, at some point he will break. To me, the measure of the man is how much pressure he can take before that point is reached. In Zidane’s case, I take the measure of his worth as pretty high.

But this also raises the question of when is violence justified? Premasagar previously wrote about spiritual ethics, and in particular Ahimsa, spiritual non-violence which is different to the absolute non-violence preached by Gandhi. Here, I am reminded of a story about Lord Krishna, where he promised to bear 1000 insults from a certain individual. This he did humbly and without reaction… until the 1001st insult. At this, Krishna whipped out his sudarshan cakra and effortlessly chopped the guys head off.

“They were very hard words. You hear them once and you try to move away,” Zidane said. “But then you hear them twice, and then a third time. I am a man and some words are harder to hear than actions. I would rather have taken a blow to the face than hear that.”

I have to say that I think Zidane showed quite a lot of restraint, even in his moment of madness. He could have smashed Materazzi in the face, but chose a soft body blow to knock him down. This in light of the fact that Italy had used all their substitutes and had Materazzi gone off injured, it would have been 10 men against 10. Not that any of this was penetrating the red mist of Zidane’s mind at that moment. His animal instincts had taken over, his humanity crushed by a tide of insult. Which brings us back to the original point – do we condemn the violence or the conduct that leads to it?

I think that is what was disappointing for me with this world cup tournament – the flavour of diving, insulting and downright cheating that left my tongue tasting like an ashtray in a Brazilian pub the morning after their defeat by France. For me sport was always about sportmanship and comeraderie. Take this away and what do you have? War!

War represents a “win at any cost scenario”. The best warmongers are those that can afford the highest costs. The US, for example in it’s middle east campaign. Chelsea in their premier league campaign. Perhaps the best way to tackle the conduct issue in sport is to tackle the cost issue. If we put a minimum and maximum wage cap on both players and managers according to a Prout system, maybe, just maybe, the players will be able to find their way back to playing the game for the reasons that they started playing in the first place – the love of sport. Isn’t that also the reason why we watch it?

In a moment of testosterone-fuelled animality, a billion viewers cried in shocked unison, “what on earth is Zidane doing?” For, the captain of France’s football team, in their chase for the World Cup, had just launched a charging headbutt at Italian player Materazzi, knocking him to the ground. The Frenchman was shown the red card and sent off the pitch.

It was an iconic moment – one that will surely be stamped into the collective memory of this year’s tournament and of Zidane’s largely brilliant career. This was his last game before retirement and the manner in which he chose to exit left the crowd dazed with tension and confusion.

The game seemed to sour from that moment on. It became difficult to root for France… They had lost the moral advantage.

Though we see cultural variations of the details, there exists a universal code of morality and ethics embedded deep within our human psyche. Many people would agree that after their death they’d like to be remembered as a good person. Being ‘good‘ may equate to being honest or kind, or some other universally accepted norm of morality.

The Yoga of Ethics

The ancient system of yoga describes some important guidelines for ethical living. And while many religions and individuals consider morality to be a goal in life, yoga considers it to be just the starting-point, the foundation upon which a person may expand towards self-realisation and spiritual liberation. For, it is not only the effect that a moral or immoral person will have on others that is at stake, it is also the peace of mind of that person.

Meditation – the introspective practice for self-realisation that is prescribed by yoga – is particularly difficult for a mind that is ill at ease. Guilt and shame create mental turbulence that can be difficult to quiet. Hence, yoga gives great importance to the practice of moral living. These are not simple dos and don’ts, not rigid commandments to be followed without thought, but instead a dynamic consideration of each situation that one encounters, to be given an appropriate response.

The ten ethical principles described by yoga (known as yama and niyama) are as follows:

1. Ahimsa – To avoid causing harm by thought, word or action.
   This does not equate to non-violence or non-force, since one may be required to defend oneself or others in extreme situations. And it does not mean non-action, for choosing to remain passive is in itself an action.
2. Satya – Benevolent truthfulness; to use words for the benefit of others.
   This does not necessarily mean absolute truthfulness, because there may be situations where that causes more harm than good.
3. Asteya – To refrain from stealing, or depriving another person of what is rightfully theirs.
4. Aparigraha – To live simply, without accumulating more material goods than one needs.
   This helps to keep the mind unburdened and allows resources to be utilised by all of society.
5. Brahmacarya – To see all people and objects as an expression of the same universal Consciousness.
6. Shoaca – To maintain cleanliness of body, mind and environment.
7. Santosa – To be content with what one has in life, rather than wishing for something else.
8. Tapah – To make sacrifices for the benefit of others.
   This may be done by assisting a person’s physical, mental or spiritual needs. This is given with no thought of reward or return, and may require some personal discomfort.
9. Svadhyaya – To make an effort to understand spiritual subjects and to incorporate their lessons into daily life.
10. Ishvara Pranidhana – To maintain a regular practice that expands one’s mind towards the Infinite.

Can you imagine a World Cup of ethical athletes? There would be no red cards or tantrums for Rooney, no elbows in the face from De Rossi, none of the incessant diving from the Portuguese team, just great football and good sportsmanship.

Can you imagine a society where even 5% of the people are sincere in practising moral living? Are we ready to embrace such an overhaul of our personal conduct?

Auroville is an experimental city, under development in south India. It is intended to be a model township – an international and universal place for personal, spiritual growth and social advancement.

Auroville exists for nothing less than to hasten the evolution of the human species – to develop the mind from its animal instincts to sublime intuition, and to manifest the inspiration of the Divine in the material world.

Origins

The idea for the town was inspired by the teachings of Sri Aurobindo – an Indian philosopher, freedom fighter and futurist who lived from 1872 to 1950. His greatest disciple, a Frenchwoman known simply as ‘The Mother’, came to India to be by his side and to realise his ideas. She proposed the creation of Auroville, which was finally founded in 1968. Representatives came from all over India and the world, bringing with them a handful of soil from their native lands, to be mixed in an urn at the centre of the city.

The current population is currently around 1800 ‘Aurovilians’. The aim is to have a thriving city of 50,000. The largest country represented so far is India, followed by French and German citizens.

The Matrimandir Temple

The building in the photograph is the Matrimandir – the ‘Temple of the Mother‘. Here, ‘Mother’ refers to the supreme Creative Force, the energy that binds Consciousness into the myriad forms of the universe. Compare with goddess Durga from Hindu mythology:

The Matrimandir is to be a place of concentration, for finding the source of one’s consciousness in the stillness of meditation. The red brick ‘lotus petals‘ each contain a room for meditation. Inside the golden dome is the ‘Inner Chamber‘ – a large, white, circular hall containing a huge glass crystal – the largest in the world – which focusses a beam of white light into the centre of the building.

The gold discs are actually made of gold — gold leaf, sandwiched in between two layers of glass and tiled like a mosaic around huge discs. This sphere of gold, around a place of great concentration upon human consciousness, is intended to have an electromagnetic influence on the state of consciousness for the rest of the planet…

In the following photographs, I use quotes from Sri Aurobindo and The Mother to illustrate the vision for Auroville.

Links:
• Auroville: In Quotes Photoset
• Auroville website
• Wikipedia: Sri Aurobindo
• Wikipedia: The Mother
• Wikipedia: Auroville

It’s election time in south India and the propaganda is overspilling onto the streets.

Is it just coincidence that so many members of the Gandhi/Nehru family have been in power in this country?

Or that George Bush Junior followed in the footsteps of his father?
Could there be another reason?

Prabhat Ranjan Sarkar commented that democracy – so often deified as the one true path – amounts to nothing more than mob rule. Since politicians are required to win as many votes as possible, their policies are naturally watered down and thoroughly conservative.

What percentage of the average electorate can be considered to be politically educated or, dare I say, wise? When the population of a country votes according to the views of mass media and political broadcasting, what hope is there of truly progressive leadership? In our society, we find the lowest common denominator being the guiding principle…

Could we imagine our nations being governed by the wise? And what if these sages had absolute power… Would their benevolent dictatorship improve on our flawed democracy?

Would the moralist revolutionaries please step forward! You time is coming now…