Ash

Civilization; geopolitics; post-materialism; contemplative traditions; haiku.

Kaleidoscopically shifting perspectives.

(Bad manners blocked; no DMs)

[Ash @AshleySCHowes]

Quote often attributed to Jefferson but actually by Charles-Louis de Secondat, Baron de La Brède et de Montesquieu from his 'Spirit of the Laws' 1748. A wise insight.

Thomas Jefferson transcribed it into his Commonplace Book during his early legal studies (circa 1760s–1770s).

[Ash @AshleySCHowes]

@heyshrutimishra I personally think the Mars project is a distracting delusion but....

Elon is cool!

[Ash @AshleySCHowes]

@JimBeattie18 a woman and a man
it always comes down to
a woman and a man...

[Ash @AshleySCHowes]

I've done this many times and it is MUCH better than any store-bought brand, even the premium ones. And if you can get fresh, local cream it's even better.

[Paul White Gold Eagle @PaulGoldEagle]

Doing things the "old fashioned way " is usually best for our health.

[NOBUNAGA🇯🇵🏯_夏樹蒼依 @japan_nobunaga]

CNN once chose the 31 most beautiful places in Japan.

One of them is a private garden that one man planted on a hillside — and that his family has now tended for over half a century.

Kawachi Wisteria Garden, Kitakyushu.

For about two weeks in late April, two tunnels — 80 and 110 meters long — come into full bloom: twenty-two varieties of wisteria pouring from overhead trellises in curtains of purple, violet, white and pink. Walking through feels like being inside a waterfall of flowers.

The founder, Masao Higuchi, started planting on this slope decades ago, far from any city, with no guarantee anyone would ever come. The family pruned, trained and waited. Year after year. Vine by vine.

Then one CNN list, and the world showed up. Tickets now sell out at convenience stores nationwide.

The garden is open about two weeks for wisteria, then quietly closes again.

Fifty years of patience, for fourteen days of bloom — every single year.

That math only makes sense in Japan. 🇯🇵

[Ash @AshleySCHowes]

@Ric_RTP One of the core parameters of living being intelligence is that it functions within a corporeal context, something AI lacks. The latter can do wonders processing abstractions - aka data - but lacks corporeal dimensionality thus any spatial, thus relational, intelligence.

[Ash @AshleySCHowes]

@ThrillaRilla369 Many say it's perhaps the single greatest cause of cancer - so there's that!

[🅶🅾🆁🅺 @Raclure03]

Une des meilleures vidéos que j'ai vu sur internet 🥹🤩🤩🤩🥰

[The Culturist @the_culturist_]

Tom Bombadil is the most mysterious character in The Lord of the Rings.

He's the oldest being in Middle-earth and completely immune to the Ring's power — but why?

Bombadil is the key to the underlying ethics of the entire story, and to resisting evil yourself...

Tom Bombadil is an enigmatic, merry hermit of the countryside, known as "oldest and fatherless" by the Elves. He is truly ancient, and claims he was "here before the river and the trees." He's so confounding that Peter Jackson left him out of the films entirely.

This is understandable, since he's unimportant to the development of the plot. Tolkien, however, saw fit to include him anyway, because Tom reveals a lot about the underlying ethics of Middle-earth, and how to shield yourself from evil.

The hobbits meet Bombadil early on in their quest, before they reach Bree and the Prancing Pony Inn. He rescues Merry and Pippin from Old Man Willow, and invites the hobbits to stay at his house in the Old Forest.

There, the hobbits realize something strange about him: the Ring has no power over Bombadil whatsoever.

When he wears it, he remains visible. He treats it as a plaything, making it disappear with a magic trick. Indeed, at the Council of Elrond, Gandalf rejects the idea of giving the Ring to Tom, for he would likely misplace it or forget about it entirely.

So just who is he, exactly?

When Frodo asks this very question to Tom's wife Goldberry, she simply responds "He is." It's a cryptic answer that echoes God's famous answer to Moses in the Book of Exodus: "I am who I am."

Thus, many theorize that Bombadil is God, some kind of angelic being, or even the spirit of the Music of the Ainur (due to the fact that he is constantly singing). But Tolkien's letters reveal something considerably more interesting…

In April 1954, Tolkien wrote:

"The story is cast in terms of a good side, and a bad side, beauty against ruthless ugliness, tyranny against kingship… but both sides in some degree, conservative or destructive, want a measure of control.But if you have, as it were, taken a 'vow of poverty', renounced control, and take your delight in things for themselves without reference to yourself… then the questions of the rights and wrongs of power and control might become utterly meaningless to you, and the means of power quite valueless…"

So, Bombadil is a representation of what it means to take pure delight in the world around you — to experience people and things simply as they are, without any thought for what they could be or how you could use them. And this is why the Ring has no power over him.

To Bombadil, the One Ring is simply a ring, and the possibilities of what can be achieved through its power are of no importance. He is able to resist its evil precisely because he is entirely content with the world around him.

At the end of the story, having accomplished what he set out to do in Middle-earth, Gandalf pays Tom a visit before returning to the Undying Lands:

"I am going to have a long talk with Bombadil: such a talk as I have not had in all my time."

If Bombadil is the epitome of simply enjoying life and being, Gandalf is the epitome of doing. He guides the hobbits, fights the Balrog, and runs up and down Middle-earth to help destroy the One Ring.

But now that he's finally liberated from doing, he immediately heads to Bombadil's. He does so with a sense of relief, as if he's at last able to access a purer and higher mode of being — a sort of innocence that cannot be fully experienced by those consumed by doing.

Of course, by this Tolkien doesn't disparage the value of action. The entirety of LOTR displays the importance of rising up against evil, even in the face of all odds. But with the inclusion of Bombadil, he does remind readers that fighting isn't all there is.

Bombadil reminds us that while it's important to strive and *do*, it is just as important to occasionally step back and *be*. Indeed, your ability to do so plays a crucial role in helping you resist the allure of evil…

Read the full piece here:

https://t.co/aqK2daehIL

The unsung hero of The Lord of the Rings...

[Ash @AshleySCHowes]

@SputnikInt The 'universe' does not 'evolve' from particles. It's more of a top-down than a bottom-up process in any case.

[Ash @AshleySCHowes]

@PhysInHistory This is correct. One problem many have with this observation, however, is confusing individuated consciousness with an overall matrix, or field, of Mind, akin to how whatever particular form arises therein is within an overall matrix, or field, of Dream.

[Ash @AshleySCHowes]

@DanielLDavis1 https://t.co/wIoHs6Rj91

[Ash @AshleySCHowes]

Who's really in charge and why people are focusing much too much on Trump. Alex gives a good explanation starting around the 30m mark. A good interview.

[Ash @AshleySCHowes]

https://t.co/UUplyOm420

[Ash @AshleySCHowes]

Who's really in charge and why people are focusing much too much on Trump. Alex gives a good explanation starting around the 30m mark. A good interview.

[Ash @AshleySCHowes]

@DanielLDavis1 At some point you will begin to understand that there are layers of power driving most major world developments that are above nation state government level, including Presidents. You spend much too much of your time focused on Trump refusing to see that he is not in charge.

[Ash @AshleySCHowes]

@ShadowofEzra The words of this Zionist shill stand on their head!!

[Ash @AshleySCHowes]

@Gentleman_Ways Civilizational degradation and decline has caused this, fostered by endemic materialism which saps individual and collective life of meaning to the point where we think replacing humans with robots constitutes some sort of progress!

[Ash @AshleySCHowes]

@TheTennisLetter I stopped watching womens' tennis because of her and finally just starting watching again sometimes during the slams. And now she's BAAACK! Aaargh!

[Ash @AshleySCHowes]

@ThrillaRilla369 Vote-seeking liberals have milked the race cow for decades and too many blacks now view everything through the prism of race, the opposite of where the rhetoric purports to be headed. Here most grass roots Republicans have the healthier attitude: first, we are all Americans.

[Iranian Force @MrImranPk]

One of the darkest moments of our time has been captured on video,

The horrifying moment when tents sheltering displaced families in the Al-Mawasi area of Khan Yunis, southern Gaza, were struck, resulting in the deaths of hundreds of civilians,
A tragedy that should never be erased from memory, and a video the world must never forget.