Everybody speaks for God. Nobody Speaks for man.

Jacob Jordaens, Prometheus(1640)

In Greek mythology , Prometheus was a Titan who was punished by Zeus for stealing fire from heavens for humans. He stood for human values against the values of God. As a punishment, Zeus tied him to a rock and has his liver eaten by an eagle everyday, only to have it grow back to be eaten again the next day.


Job on the other hand is a biblical figure  who was tested by God in his bet with the Devil. The test was how good he is in the face of an ordeal. He sacrificed his human values in submission which is the hallmark of all monotheistic religions.


In the audio above (it takes few seconds for audio to start), Joseph campbell compares humanistic values of Greeks vs sacrificing human values for God as shown in the Jobs story. 


Now the big question is , if the values one attribute to his God collide with the fundamental human values which values should  he/she honor? God or Human? The answer to this question will be an answer to what kind of human being the person is.

The Road Not Taken - Robert Frost

Fabian Perez

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveller, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;

Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,

And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.

I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I--
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference

What I believe in - by Neil Gaiman

Levi van Veluw, Landscape, 2008

"I can believe things that are true and things that aren't true and I can believe things where nobody knows if they're true or not. 

I can believe in Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny and the Beatles and Marilyn Monroe and Elvis and Mister Ed. Listen - I believe that people are perfectable, that knowledge is infinite, that the world is run by secret banking cartels and is visited by aliens on a regular basis, nice ones that look like wrinkled lemurs and bad ones who mutilate cattle and want our water and our women. 

I believe that the future sucks and I believe that the future rocks and I believe that one day White Buffalo Woman is going to come back and kick everyone's ass. I believe that all men are just overgrown boys with deep problems communicating and that the decline in good sex in America is coincident with the decline in drive-in movie theaters from state to state. 

I believe that all politicians are unprincipled crooks and I still believe that they are better than the alternative. I believe that California is going to sink into the sea when the big one comes, while Florida is going to dissolve into madness and alligators and toxic waste. 

I believe that antibacterial soap is destroying our resistance to dirt and disease so that one day we'll all be wiped out by the common cold like martians in War of the Worlds. 

I believe that the greatest poets of the last century were Edith Sitwell and Don Marquis, that jade is dried dragon sperm, and that thousands of years ago in a former life I was a one-armed Siberian shaman. 

I believe that mankind's destiny lies in the stars. I believe that candy really did taste better when I was a kid, that it's aerodynamically impossible for a bumble bee to fly, that light is a wave and a particle, that there's a cat in a box somewhere who's alive and dead at the same time (although if they don't ever open the box to feed it it'll eventually just be two different kinds of dead), and that there are stars in the universe billions of years older than the universe itself. 

I believe in a personal god who cares about me and worries and oversees everything I do. I believe in an impersonal god who set the universe in motion and went off to hang with her girlfriends and doesn't even know that I'm alive. I believe in an empty and godless universe of causal chaos, background noise, and sheer blind luck. 

I believe that anyone who says sex is overrated just hasn't done it properly. I believe that anyone who claims to know what's going on will lie about the little things too. 

I believe in absolute honesty and sensible social lies. I believe in a woman's right to choose, a baby's right to live, that while all human life is sacred there's nothing wrong with the death penalty if you can trust the legal system implicitly, and that no one but a moron would ever trust the legal system. 

I believe that life is a game, that life is a cruel joke, and that life is what happens when you're alive and that you might as well lie back and enjoy it." 


                                                                                                                        Neil Gaiman - " American Gods"
                                                                                                     

Art I like - Random

“ I have heard the voice of the universe. And it is gentle. And it is kind. And it is like a mother speaking. Or it is like the fall of snow. Or it is like children laughing and playing. And what it says is, do not be afraid of the universe” 

Knud Rassmussin’s (Danish Explorer) conversation with a medicine man

Art I like - Alex Cherry

"Aenema"

"When Girls telephone Boys"

"Let Down"

"Remorse is for the Dead"

http://www.ofsoundandvision.com/#false

Joseph Campbell - On Following Your Bliss

“ There is two kinds of mythology.There is what is called the right hand path- The mythology of the village compound. It keeps you fixed in the context of your world. You grow up here. You live as expected. You live a dignified respectful ,and in a rich society ,a richly developed life.

On the other hand you may flip out. You may have feelings of incongruity. “This doesn’t go with me” and then you move out. You move out in to the realm of danger. This is known as the left hand path. You follow the way of your own bliss. And you are in a realm for which there are no rules and since your bliss is not mine, you don’t know where are you going. Here you will live a life of danger, creativity ; perhaps not a respected life but certainly an interesting one. And these are two choices. And there is mythology for both.

There is the right hand mythology which is local to each culture. And then there is what I would  called the general mythology of the hero journey; the knight sea journey; the hero quest,where the individual is going to bring forth in his life something that was never beheld before. Then there is fulfillment in time and space of his own potentialities which are peculiar to himself”

Fabian Perez - A culture that is gone!

"Nocturnal surprise"

Welcome to Fabian Perez’s world - The Argentinian artist’s work is  is full of shadows, booze, bars, smoke, Tango , bullfighting and women - not bad at all !

 In our sad world  of grown up kids playing playstation 3 in their 50’s and whining and bitching about everything, his paintings represents a generation of men that no longer exists. The unapologetic generation. Men with swagger. The ones who used to say “Do what you want and die like a man!” The ones who used to have duels for honor. The ones who were strong but not rude, kind but not weak, bold but not bully, humble but not timid, and proud but not arrogant. Unfortunately, that generation is dead and along with it the true masculinity is gone. It is replaced by macho bravado. Getting drunk, acting stupid, picking fights, being obnoxious and making a lot of noise - that is what masculinity is reduced to ! 

May be I am just dreaming and that culture never existed in the first place. But I still  think that masculinity is suffering from a crisis of confidence. Men in this day and age are lost and if humanity is to be renewed, masculinity needs a makeover and healing.

"Noches de buenos aires II"

"Noches de buenos aires II"

"Selling Pleasures"

"Enjoying the pleasures of the night"

"Moraito"

"Buenos Aires II"

"La Veronica"

"Man Lighting a Cigarette"

"Fabian and Monica II"

"Proud to be a Man II"

"Dream in a Dream"

"Tango"

http://fabianperez.com/

Thanks to Zaidan for introducing me to this wonderful artist.