particularly South America but also USSR/Russia and Africa. I'm nearly finished reading 'The Shock Doctrine' by Naomi Klein. I found the first few parts about the history of economic shock therapy absolutely amazing. Now with the re-election and possible 2/3rds majority in South Africa (enabling constitutional change) it will be really interesting to see how a Communist ideology is implemented (if it is at all) given or despite the corruption.
Enlightenment philosophy
How is it, that after maybe 7 years since first having whet my appetite philosophy, I still don't know much about it?
Jewish Mysticism?
I'm not sure about this really. more a curiosity to find parallels with western philosophy and cross ref philosophies with times -the Jew's did seem to be a bit after Hammurabi I think so I'm not sure if I believe they came up with everything before western philosophy did. Although I must say it is really useful to have Rabbi's on hand to talk to about this. Rabbi T is amazing -over the past few years, I've built this brilliant relationship with him based on our mutual interest in science and consciousness theory (or has he built the relationship with me based on my interest in it?) in any case, he's got a good feeling for where I stand on all this and we've had some really interesting chats.
After teaching Free Will and Determinism in Psychology to my year 13's this past term and having had some amazing chats with the boys about the Jewish position on it all it's amazing that it's not so different from my own. I've also had the chance to reconsider my Atheism (or at least the name of my Atheism) since I've always believed in some degree of scientific determinism. I think that sub atomic randomness is just an appearance caused by our inability to see or measure. Anyway, that kind of belief in determinism leads to the idea that everything is connected. Rabbi T says that that connectedness is God. I figure if you want to call that God then fine but I won't agree that it's intelligent. I might say the universe brought me something but it wasn't thinking about it and it certainly didn't mean to. Everything might be connected but that connectedness is not intentional -that's our sort of personification of the universe. So maybeI'm Pantheistic but never agnostic.
Lastly...
Literature
The problem here, is that I fell like I need to do a course. It isn't enough just to read the books. There's always so much more meaning in there than I usually pick out on my own. I don't even know where to begin.
