Sojka's Call

This blog brings up many economic and political issues that are easy to construe as evil. And, figuring out what we can do in the face of seemingly insurmountable oppression and power that negatively affects our lives is why many of us continue to wrestle with understanding what is going on in the government and economy. What if the answer to these problems was already answered hundreds of years ago? How could anyone know what we would be dealing with now? The Chinese civilization is possibly the oldest surviving civilization on earth. They have been dealing with the issues of oppression by a ruling elite for a long time. So, while the specifics may be different now, the issue is the same. In an article posted on IMOS , a modern-day recluse summarizes the philosophical differences of Confucianism and Taoism. I like his analogy of viewing the two as the yin and yang of historical China. The genius of historical China rests in the oscillation between Confucian and Taoism, betw...

My passing interest in hermits led me to watch this documentary called Amongst White Clouds. If you have 5 minutes watch from minute 20 to 25 http://video.google.com/   This hermit talks about reality and nature and though he does not use the words of science like in the article below, I think the message is the same. Let me know what you think. Reality doesn't exist; at least not in the way that we usually think of it. Dr. Jorge Martins de Oliveira writes,   “Our perception does not identify the outside world as it really is, but the way that we are allowed to recognize it, as a consequence of transformations performed by our senses.  We experience electromagnetic waves, not as waves, but as images and colors. We experience vibrating objects, not as vibrations, but as sounds. We experience chemical compounds dissolved in air or water, not as chemicals, but as specific smells and tastes. Colors, sounds, smells and tastes are products of our minds, bu...