noumeno

I would like to tell you something about my life with the bees ...

I came in contact with the Bees some three years ago when I attended a Symposium on the Bees which was held in Malta in collaboration with many countries.. At the same time I was improving a small field and I was determined to have my own bees.. I attended an evening course How to rear Bees and how to harvest Honey.. I also worked my own Hives..so I built the best possoble Hives I could assemble. All this was ready to have my colonies. I had my first a year ago and another two small ones last May. I came across many problems like other bee keepers. The greatest challenge was to keep them alive when they literally find no flowers for foraging. This year I was told that its the worse since 5 years because of long months of drought. Somehow I managed to keep them healthy and added a fresh water supply day and night. Maybe I harverst a little honey soon as they are foraging on Eucalipthus and carrob trees.

Farrugia George - Noumeno Culture Club friend living in Malta

SCHOPENHAUER E I VEDA

A.Schopenhauer scrisse alcune opere ispirate alla conoscenza orientale toccando alcuni temi importanti per il pensiero dell'Occidente, quali verità e illusione, l'ego e l'esistenza materiale. Influenzò altri filosofi del suo tempo a prendere consapevolezza della geografia delle origini della conoscenza e sulla scorta dei suoi contatti con l'orientalista F.Mayer, avuti nel salotto di sua madre a Weimer, elaborò un'apertura sulla porta d'Oriente come modello di civiltà europea e non.

Fin dal primissimo incontro con il pensiero indiano nel 1813 egli fu attratto dalle Upanishad e dai Veda, intesi da lui come "emancipazione della più alta saggezza umana" e anche come "consolazione della sua vita". Non fu l'unico a occuparsi di questi testi e a prenderli come segno di inarrivabile libertà intellettuale, nomi famosi lo precedettero e lo seguirono, Hesse, Nietzsche, Scheler, Jasper e Mann. Lui però fu l'unico pensatore a inserire la filosofia orientale in modo organico nella sua struttura metafisica e ne approfondì i contenuti storici in modo originale.
Altri filosofi e scrittori guardarono a Est con una certa fiducia romantica, Herder, Goethe, Novalis, Holderling e Heine, mentre Schopenhauer cercò di coniugare l'Illuminismo di Voltaire, il criticismo kantiano e la filosofia indiana in un tuttuno.

Un suo limite fu quello di filtrare la visione Orientalista, scarsamente oggettiva, cercando di colmarne delle lacune soggettive con un'indagine approssimativa volta a trovare conferma alle sue idee filosofiche, semplificandone o esaltandone i significati reconditi. Ne "Il mio Oriente" Schopenhauer spiega quanto deve ai Veda (testi sacri indiani) e spiegherà anche come Pitagora venne riconosciuto essere allievo di saggi indiani o brahmini (frammenti sulla sua storia della filosofia in "Parerga e paralipomena").

Schopenhauer fu uno tra i primi intellettuali nell'Europa moderna a mettere in discussione la tesi classica del "miracolo greco" come culla della civiltà. Nel periodo romantico l'Oriente era un'invenzione che serviva a contestualizzare un metodo storico funzionale alla narrazione delle idee precostituite ...

Il suo lavoro sull'Oriente culminò in "Il mondo come volontà e rappresentazione" in cui attinse da testi antichi e denunciò i processi di occidentalizzazione prendendo le distanze dalla celebre formula hegeliana "tutto ciò che è reale è razionale" contrappondendovi un ragionamento più cosmopolita e inquisitivo

"Voi andaste colà come maestri e ne ritornaste come discepoli" (Etica inParerga e paralipomena).

Questa sua opus maius del 1819 ebbe pochissimo successo all'inizio, ma poi fu presa come modello  da Freud e Jung per scrivere numerose opere. E' divisa in due volumi e si ispira a Platone, Kant e alla filosofia indiana e buddista.

Schopenhauer oppone il mondo delle apparenze a quello reale. La rappresentazione della realtà è un processo di conoscenza esteriore ma allo stesso tempo interiore che sviluppa l'autocoscienza nello spazio e nel tempo verso il buono e il bello. Schopenhauer è spesso considerato pessimista, ma bisogna ammettere che per lui l'intelletto può purificarsi dall'ego e pervenire a una visione più ampia e meno condizionata, dunque cerca una soluzione alla sofferenza umana con l'antica saggezza.

Nuria Kanzian

Where words fail, music speaks.
-Hans Christian Andersen

Music is a powerful form of communication. With a rich history, found in every known culture, it is thought that music predates language. Sir Charles Darwin proposed the hypothesis that the presence of a “musical protolanguage.” Perhaps it was our evolutionary ancestors that provided us with the framework for our musical inclinations. Either way, if language is seen as the great divide between men, music may be seen as a bridge. The ability music has to touch the listener and convey emotion despite the ability of the listener to comprehend the lyrical message on an intellectual level is profound. The musical pieces chosen for the Golden Record (that rides through the solar system and beyond on the Voyager 1 and Voyager 2 spacecrafts) as a representation of humanity span both time and space. In addition to greetings to the universe in 55 different languages, songs from both Western and Eastern cultures, musical pieces both ancient and contemporary, from Bach to Beethoven to Chuck Berry, from Peruvian panpipes and drums to Zaire (a Pygmy girls’ initiation song) can be found floating in space—sent as a form of communication to whatever lucky being may come upon our proverbial message in a bottle. Despise the barrier of language, through music, the messages of joy, sorrow, intrigue, suspense, love, anger, and any emotion in-between can be skillfully conveyed. Though the choice (or availability) of instruments may differ through cultures, the desire to create, enjoy and communicate through music is universal. Perhaps there is a song, yet to be written, that will have the power to bridge the petty fractions that language has created (or the general misunderstanding of each others words)…a song that will make us realize that we have far more in common than we have have differences between us. I look forward to dancing to that music someday.

Melissa S.

The forest that meets our eyes is not what it seems. Traditionally, it is thought that different types of trees are constantly fighting for sunlight--that through competition the strongest and tallest survive and thrive while the the small species of trees and shrubs get by on what they can get. Each tree being an independent organism. However, research conducted by Susanne Simard, Forestry Professor at the University of British Colombia in Canada, has shown that there exists a forest underneath the forest with trees being interdependent instead of independent as once thought.Research shows that trees' root systems are interconnected underneath the soil and are able to share information as well as nutrients. These interactions are made possible by a complete separate organism-- fungus that appears to the naked eye as small white strings. These "strings" of fungus are actually tubes and while small, there can be up to 7 miles in a pinch of soil. Dubbed the "wood wide web," the tubular fungus allow the trees to communicate and signal each other of insect attacks as well as provide each other with "loans" of different nutrients they may need. The fungus has something the trees need--minerals (magnesium, cooper, nitrogen, etc.) and the trees have something the fungus needs--sugar. They work together almost as if the forest is acting as an organism itself.The more diverse the forest, the healthier all of the species of trees are as a whole. Experiments have shown that a single tree can be connected to tens of other trees miles away. The larger older trees have the most connections. As the connections are mapped, they appear as airline connection hubs showing us that there is so much more to the forests than we had previously thought. That large oak tree that seems so majestic and strong is not an independent as might have thought in the past, but is part of a collaborative system hidden beneath our feet.