Contrast

Sddhartha imagery is different from the one evoked by the dada artists because the goal of Buddhim is to remove all desire and self-interest. From this stand point it is clear that the Buddhism has a goal that is achievable. For instance, sexual desire can be avoided and until now we have people in our society who continue to achieve this goal. however, Dadaism goal is to reject all things that exist already and the replacement of those things are not achievable. For example, Hugo Ball said that "I don't want words that other people have invented". Hugo speaking for Dadaists is not realistic and his imagery is unrealistic.  Moreover, Buddhists believe that there is no salvation or an afterlife but they believe in rebirth. Therefore, Buddhists only reject certain things from the real world. However, Dadaists refuse to integrate themselves to the real world. Accepting partially the real world by Buddhists constitute a huge difference between them and Dadaists. This curiosity allowed Siddhartha to go for the discovery of the real world that he could learn from  his school. This adventure had a happy ending because Siddhartha was able to appreciate the new things that he learned. For example, he did not have sin before he discovered the new world but he felt that the sin was necessary for him to experience on his body and his soul. However, Siddhartha imaginary paradise was not comparable to the life experienced by Dadaists in Germany in 1932 because the war devastated their lives so that they lost hope from their own world. People usually lose hope in hard time and fear could lead to a poor decision. In one hand we have dadaists who were terrified by the war and in the other hand a buddist who was living in a peaceful World. This peace gives him an opportunity to open his life to the real world meanwhile dadaists decided to leave it.      

Passage from the book

Quote: "I have experienced on my body and on my soul that I needed sin very much, I needed lust, the desire for possessions, vanity, and needed the most shameful despair, in order to learn how to give up all resistance, in order to learn how to love the world, in order to stop comparing it to some world I wished, I imagined, some kind of perfection I had made up, but to leave it as it is and to love it and to enjoy being a part of it.-These, oh Govinda, are some of the thoughts which have come into my mind."

This passage in the book revealed how important was for Siddhartha to be able to understand that there is a second world that is way different from his imaginary world. He admitted that this experience of accepting to live in the real world helped him to learn more from it. For instance, he said:"I needed sin very much". According to his religion, Buddhism should help people "to end suffering by extinguishing desire and self-interest" in order to control themselves and Siddhartha crossed the line by deciding to live in the real world. Therefore, he was able to meet a woman who would teach him certain things that his religion would not allow him to do so. For example Siddhartha learned from his spouse how to kiss was an experience on his body. In addition, Siddhartha was able to learn how to be a husband, father and a businessman. This would not happen without being exposed himself to the real world.


I chose this passage because as a believer we always forget that whatever the bible or coran says conflicts with our daily life. Now the main question is :do we have to apply exactly the laws of the bible or the coran? First we must understand that these holly books were written many years ago and the context was different from our present life. Applying these rules becomes a national security issue in many countries because extremists do not want to ban certain laws that are against human rights. For instance, we have extremist Muslims who want to apply the sharia law and most countries will not allow such thing to happen. Therefore, these extremists have attacking civilians and implementing terrors in some countries that we all know. For example, Afghanistan, Mali ...
These terrorists and extremists should learn from Siddhartha because the imagery world's laws that the bible or the coran teaches us could be dangerous to our society. Most of these laws cannot be applied because our society has evolved. However, extremists have difficulties to upgrade themselves. This lack of comprehending religion laws and real world by extremists makes our world unsafe. Fanatics should stop thinking about their imaginary world and start loving the real world that we can easily learn from it by living in.            

Otto Dix

The Trench Warfare by Otto Dix 1932

Otto Dix, the son of Franz Dix (1862-1942) and Louise Amann (1864-1953) was born in Unternhaus, Germany, in 1891. After attending elementary school he worked locally until 1910 when he became a student at the Dresden School of Arts and Crafts. To help fund his education, he accepted commissions and painted portraits of local people.

This painting is to demonstrate or illustrate the impact of a war. We know that the first consequence of a conflict is the lost of human life that we can never replace. The painting tells us that a lot of people lost their life during the two wars and dead bodies were every where. The "Trench warfare" reminds us that war is not a smart choice and we should avoid it whenever we can. We can say that the trench warfare met Dadaism expectations. 

VINCENT VAN GOGH

POST IMPRESSIONISM

(c.1885-1905

VINCENT VAN GOGH (1853-90)
'Café Terrace at Night', 1888 (oil on canvas)

The son of a pastor, brought up in a religious and cultured atmosphere, Vincent was highly emotional and lacked self-confidence. Between 1860 and 1880, when he finally decided to become an artist, van Gogh had had two unsuitable and unhappy romances and had worked unsuccessfully as a clerk in a bookstore, an art salesman, and a preacher in the Borinage (a dreary mining district in Belgium), where he was dismissed for overzealousness.

This art represents a restaurant in downtown at night. The painting illustrates that people had a normal life like ours.For instance, people were hanging out, having a diner in a bar specially at night and probably after work. In addition, it shows how the  city was clean. However, if this art is only an expression of Vincent that did not represent a real life of people at the time, Germans or Europeans would have reasons to be upset. Therefore, there was a confusion of what people were living in and what was reported.

Quote from Dada Manifesto

Quote:” I don't want words that other people have invented. All the words are other people's inventions. I want my own stuff, my own rhythm, and vowels and consonants too, matching the rhythm and all my own.”  Dada Manifesto (1916, By Hugo Ball)

This quote is saying how Dadaists want to recreate the world to their own view. Moreover, the quote gives us a sense of rejection of everything that existed before Dadaism. For instance, they want to have their own language by inventing a new alphabet. In this quote the author wanted to point out that people who were for the Dadaism felt that artists were missing to report exactly what was happened in their society. That is why they wanted artists to have their work talking about the two wars that were going on instead of expressing their own life. Based on Dadaism ideology, I believe that they want artists to talk about real life. For example, during World War I and II some artists giving their personal expression through their arts instead of painting the horror of war was not accepted by Dadists.

I am interested by this quote because like the word dad I can not give a meaning or a sense to this article. I don’t agree with the idea of saying: “I don’t want word that other people have invented”. From this point I believe that Dada is not going anywhere because I do not see them starting their life from scratch. Whatever initiative that they will take, will interfere with existent life. However, what they can do is to move to another planet where they can start a whole new life. Conquering a new planet would not be the best solution because they could not get there without using the pre-existing resources invented by other people. This is a vicious circle.

Putting the quote in the context of war, this article makes sense because in difficult times people want to deal with real problems instead of talking about things that we are usually enjoy in time of peace. People were devastated during World War II and did not want to see art work that has a subject like love or romance. The same situation could be applied to our present life dominated by a high unemployment. A person who does not have a job wants a national debate that is focused on job creation but not on guns control even though it is a social issue. In addition, immigrants who want to legalize their statute in the U.S tend to be more interested to have debates on immigration reform. Therefore, these people will be more than happy to read, listen and watch any news from the media that is talking about immigration. I believe that European and German were able to understand the attitude of Dadaism because they were living in the same difficult time and I would be able comprehend their point of view if I were there.      

Economy of Germany

According to economywatch.com, Germany has the largest population (81.8 inhabitants in January, 2010) and economy in the European Union. Its economy benefits from a large pool of talented work force that has enabled Germany to dominate the vehicles, machinery, chemicals and household equipment vertical across the globe. In addition, Germany was able to overcome to the recent economic slowdown because of its strong and productive workforce. The U.S should follow Germany’s foot steps by retraining its workforce. For instance, motivate more students to go for engineering and science.   By doing so the U.S will be able to have a stronger workforce and compete better with the rest of the world. Also Germany economy managed to have a GDP (purchasing power parity) of $2.182 trillion in 2009 and to stay stable as the world sixth largest country in terms of GDP (2009).

Agriculturally, Germany occupies the second place after France and has the first place in term of milk production in the European Union. In the energy sector, Germany produced 25 millions tons of fossil fuels which generated 2.5 billion Euros in revenue. Moreover, Germany is a very competitive economy and in a position to exploit improvements in the U.S and China.  Therefore, Germany’s economy remains the largest economy in Europe.

Quote from Nietzsche

Quote:"Nietzsche argued that two types of morality existed: a master morality that springs actively from the "noble man", and a slave morality that develops reactively within the weak man. These two moralities do not present simple inversions of one another. They form two different value systems: master morality fits actions into a scale of 'good' or 'bad' whereas slave morality fits actions into a scale of "good" or "evil". Notably he disdained both, though the first clearly less than the second."

From my understanding, the word morality has two meanings: one for a master and the second one for a slave. Going back to slavery time, those who were able to put this kind of market (where people were traded) in place did not care about certain groups(African and indian) of humanity. In this particular context, traders and masters had a specific interest: make a profit or improve their farm productivity by acquiring slaves. Those motivations prevented them to see their wrong doing to the slaves. For instance, being removed from one continent to another and more importantly from their roots.Also, life becomes more difficult and challenging for people once they lost their culture. Culture helps people to identify themselves and be able to continue doing what their grandparents though them to do. Ignoring all those values that had been taken from the slaves could explain why their morality was different from the slaves. Therefore, slavery was interpreted as a "good" for the master but "evil for the slave. In addition, slaves who tried to free himself was seen as a "bad" behavior for the master but "good" the slave.



How does this idea is applied to our present life?
Even today we are still experiencing the same attitude due to the conflict of interest between a rich and a poor. For example, capital owners want to maximize their profit at the price of the working class and workers want better salaries and benefits. That's why most likely a president in the U.S who has a working class background would govern differently from the one that comes from a rich family or an owner of capital. The rich president would push for laws that give a lot of advantages to rich people and vice versa for the one that came from the working class. For example, Obama has difficulties to govern because republicans think that the president decisions are against their interests. Even though that republicans realized that our health care system were broken they refused to vote for Obama's care because they are making tons of money with the older health care system.Moreover, most of members the NRA do not have the same "moral" compare to those who are suffering from guns violence. The NRA wants to continue making more money as much as possible by selling guns and the victims are willing to have more regulations against guns violence.