Goals/Your ideal life

[FlamingGlobes]

From TOC's favorite news source:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/irene-..._b_842941.html

The Gandhi None of Us Knew
By Irene Monroe
It has been not quite a century since Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi was assassinated in January 1948 at the age of 78 in New Delhi, India. The bevy of hagiographies written about him is now being replaced with truth-telling biographies about the Gandhi nobody knew.

The most recent one is titled Great Soul: Mahatma Gandhi and His Struggle with India by Joseph Lelyveld.

While one would think, at first glance, reading Lelyveld’s shocking revelations about Gandhi, it’s all tabloid fodder for a rapacious audience that diets on sordid tales, Lelyveld, former editor of the New York Times, and a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and author, pays meticulous attention to details.

Between 1908 and 1910, Gandhi left his wife to be with wealthy German-Jewish bodybuilder and architect Hermann Kallenbach. But the only evidence Lelyveld gives the reader, suggesting the bonding of the two men was at least homoerotic if not homosexual, is a salacious one-liner where Gandhi allegedly told Kallenback, “How completely you have taken possession of my body. This is slavery with a vengeance.” According to Gandhi’s own wife, Gandhi engaged in heterosexual intercourse, but it repulsed him so much it actually made him physically ill, and he vowed never to attempt it again.

While Gandhi may have been repulsed by heterosexuality he seems to be repulsed, at least publicly, by homosexuality, too. For example, in the 1930s, both Gandhi and Jawaharlal Nehru attempted to erase all traces of the Indian homoerotic tradition from Indian temples as a result of their systematic campaigns of “sexual cleansing.”

The revelation of Gandhi’s alleged bisexuality in Lelyveld’s book is the only positive news in a long laundry list of sexual peccadilloes, bizarre personal habits — like his love for enemas, done twice a day — mind-bending cult practices like “spiritual marriages” with women where sex is purportedly absent, and his unbelievable blatant racist attitudes towards black South Africans.

How did the public get so hoodwinked by the divinity of Gandhi?

The deification of Gandhi intentionally eclipsed Gandhi the real man. Elevated to a 20th century messiah by both European and American Christian clerics and missionaries, who wanted to covert Hindus to Christianity, and elevated to a 20th century Hindu god by Indians, Gandhi’s real life was overlooked and supplanted with a series religious myth. For example, John H. Holmes, a Unitarian pastor from New York, praised Gandhi in his writings and sermons with titles like “Gandhi: The Modern Christ” and “Mahatma Gandhi: The Greatest Man since Jesus Christ.” Krishnalal Shridharni announced that Gandhi was “The seventh reincarnation of Vishnu, Lord Rama.”

Known the world over as Mahatma Gandhi, Sanskrit for “Great Soul,” and as Bapu, Gujarati for “Father,” Gandhi comes to my consciousness from the father of this country’s Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s, who was also assassinated: Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. And I loved Gandhi because King did.

Gandhi’s pacifist philosophy of “satyagraha,” a Sanskrit term he coined to mean the resistance to oppression through mass civil disobedience firmly rooted in “ahimsa” or absolute non-violence that transforms foes into friends, won India its independence from British colonialism in 1947. Gandhi’s liberation paradigm profoundly informed the socio-political theology of the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s, giving rise to a black non-violent movement consisting of sit-ins, freedom rides, and marches that shamefully exposed and evidently toppled the South’s Jim Crow ordinances.

As with King, Gandhi, too, became an iconic image in The Movement. However, if King and others knew of Gandhi’s racist views of black South Africans, and knew why Gandhi never met with African American civil rights leaders, who were hungry to not only meet the man but to know more about his philosophy of “satyagraha,” Gandhi wouldn’t have been so highly profiled in his public sermons.

But Gandhi was an unabashedly diehard supporter of India’s Hindu caste system, and would never mix with a lowly group or caste, and Lelyveld in Great Soul lays out Gandhi’s unedited views:

“We were then marched off to a prison intended for Kaffirs [offensive term equivalent to the n-word],” Gandhi complained during one of his campaigns for the rights of Indians settled there. “We could understand not being classed with whites, but to be placed on the same level as the Natives seemed too much to put up with. Kaffirs are as a rule uncivilized — the convicts even more so. They are troublesome, very dirty and live like animals.”

In an open letter to the legislature of South Africa’s Natal province, Gandhi wrote of how “the Indian is being dragged down to the position of the raw Kaffir” — someone, he later stated, “whose occupation is hunting and whose sole ambition is to collect a number of cattle to buy a wife, and then pass his life in indolence and nakedness.”

On white Afrikaners and Indians, he wrote: “We believe as much in the purity of races as we think they do.”

In a recent speech at a Virginia high school, President Obama stated that Gandhi was a “real hero of mine,” describing Gandhi as someone with whom he would like to dine. “He is somebody whom I find a lot of inspiration in. He inspired Dr. King.”

I’m sorry Mr. President, that wouldn’t happen, because Lelyveld’s Gandhi reveals a great soul the public didn’t know.

‪Editor’s Note: A previous version of this post stated that according to the author of the Great Soul, Gandhi was a “wife-beater” and “pedophile”. These statements could not be verified by the blogger and have been removed from the post.‬

[FlamingGlobes]

tl;dr version: he was basically a Lethal Weapon 2 villain.

[FlamingGlobes]

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/...=.e3527bcf4949

Was Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi, the revered leader of India’s freedom movement, a racist?

A controversial new book by two South African university professors reveals shocking details about Gandhi’s life in South Africa between 1893 and 1914, before he returned to India.

[Why some Indians want to build a statue of Mahatma Gandhi’s killer]

During his stay in South Africa, Gandhi routinely expressed “disdain for Africans,” says S. Anand, founder of Navayana, the publisher of the book titled “The South African Gandhi: Stretcher-Bearer of Empire.”

According to the book, Gandhi described black Africans as “savage,” “raw” and living a life of “indolence and nakedness,” and he campaigned relentlessly to prove to the British rulers that the Indian community in South Africa was superior to native black Africans. The book combs through Gandhi’s own writings during the period and government archives and paints a portrait that is at variance with how the world regards him today.

Much of the halo that surrounds Gandhi today is a result of clever repackaging, write the authors, Ashwin Desai and Goolam Vahed, professors at the University of Johannesburg and the University of KwaZulu Natal.

[5 people who seem like naturals for the Nobel Peace Prize — but never won it]

“As we examined Gandhi’s actions and contemporary writings during his South African stay, and compared these with what he wrote in his autobiography and 'Satyagraha in South Africa,' it was apparent that he indulged in some ‘tidying up.' He was effectively rewriting his own history.”

Prize-winning Indian author Arundhati Roy says the book, which will hit stores next month, is “a serious challenge to the way we have been taught to think about Gandhi.”

Here is a sample of what Gandhi said about black South Africans:

* One of the first battles Gandhi fought after coming to South Africa was over the separate entrances for whites and blacks at the Durban post office. Gandhi objected that Indians were “classed with the natives of South Africa,” who he called the kaffirs, and demanded a separate entrance for Indians.

“We felt the indignity too much and … petitioned the authorities to do away with the invidious distinction, and they have now provided three separate entrances for natives, Asiatics and Europeans.”

* In a petition letter in 1895, Gandhi also expressed concern that a lower legal standing for Indians would result in degenerating "so much so that from their civilised habits, they would be degraded to the habits of the aboriginal Natives, and a generation hence, between the progeny of the Indians and the Natives, there will be very little difference in habits, and customs and thought."

* In an open letter to the Natal Parliament in 1893, Gandhi wrote:

“I venture to point out that both the English and the Indians spring from a common stock, called the Indo-Aryan. … A general belief seems to prevail in the Colony that the Indians are little better, if at all, than savages or the Natives of Africa. Even the children are taught to believe in that manner, with the result that the Indian is being dragged down to the position of a raw Kaffir.”

* At a speech in Mumbai in 1896, Gandhi said that the Europeans in Natal wished “to degrade us to the level of the raw kaffir whose occupation is hunting, and whose sole ambition is to collect a certain number of cattle to buy a wife with, and then, pass his life in indolence and nakedness.”

Today's WorldView
What's most important from where the world meets Washington
Sign up
* Protesting the decision of Johannesburg municipal authorities to allow Africans to live alongside Indians, Gandhi wrote in 1904 that the council “must withdraw the Kaffirs from the Location. About this mixing of the Kaffirs with the Indians, I must confess I feel most strongly. I think it is very unfair to the Indian population and it is an undue tax on even the proverbial patience of my countrymen.”

* In response to the White League’s agitation against Indian immigration and the proposed importation of Chinese labour, Gandhi wrote in 1903: “We believe also that the white race in South Africa should be the predominating race.”

* Gandhi wrote in 1908 about his prison experience: “We were marched off to a prison intended for Kaffirs. There, our garments were stamped with the letter “N”, which meant that we were being classed with the Natives. We were all prepared for hardships, but not quite for this experience. We could understand not being classed with the whites, but to be placed on the same level with the Natives seemed too much to put up with.”

* In 1939, Gandhi justified his counsel to the Indian community in South Africa against forming a non-European front: “I have no doubt about the soundness of my advice. However much one may sympathise with the Bantus, Indians cannot make common cause with them.”

[FlamingGlobes]

You guys wanna do Mother Theresa next?

[teh b0lly!!1]

the three of them were all fantastic musicians and songwriters, but when you really break down the songs, paul is in a league of his own, tbh.

a true creator of timeless melodies, a master of simplicity and complexity at the same time. his songs are truly worthy of the word 'compositions', because every note sets up the next one, and everything he puts there is there for a reason. he really was an extraordinarily gifted young dude, writing all those crazy songs in his fucking 20's.

but yeah they really were all brilliant. i wish ego played less of a role in that band, and that we would have gotten to see a more balanced three-songwriter force from the Beatles. god knows the talent was there.

[redbreegull]

Originally Posted by slunken

Yea George is the better Beatle IMO. Also for more unpopular opinions, Graham Nash is the best Crosby, Stills, Nash member.

neil young is the best crosby, stills, and nash member

Originally Posted by teh b0lly!!1

the three of them were all fantastic musicians and songwriters, but when you really break down the songs, paul is in a league of his own, tbh.

a true creator of timeless melodies, a master of simplicity and complexity at the same time. his songs are truly worthy of the word 'compositions', because every note sets up the next one, and everything he puts there is there for a reason. he really was an extraordinarily gifted young dude, writing all those crazy songs in his fucking 20's.

but yeah they really were all brilliant. i wish ego played less of a role in that band, and that we would have gotten to see a more balanced three-songwriter force from the Beatles. god knows the talent was there.

agree 100%. the older I get though, the more I like Paul vs. John whereas as a kid/teen I think John appealed to me more. George is his own thing. Have you heard All Things Must Pass??

[Bread Regal]

Originally Posted by FlamingGlobes

You guys wanna do Mother Theresa next?

man this is cliche as hell but this christopher hitchens documentary titled "hell's angel" (lol) is great.

[FoolofaTook]

I say George and I haven't listened to his solo shit.

So Gandhi was racist. Great.

[reprise85]

Originally Posted by teh b0lly!!1

the three of them were all fantastic musicians and songwriters, but when you really break down the songs, paul is in a league of his own, tbh.

i agree. john is the coll one to like but the older i get the more i think paul is better

[Bread Regal]

john wrote more good songs. paul wrote the best ones.

[Alice]

[Bread Regal]

my ideal life is to buy some land and get into animal husbandry and growing all my food in a greenhouse that i build and maintain myself. the animals would be for my wife's eventual farm therapy practice.

[Alice]

Coffee's only a dime

[Bread Regal]

when all the necessary chores are done by noon i would go to my shed in the middle of a field and whittle a piece of elk horn i found

[Alice]

Real question: Could you see yourself doing that for the rest of your life? Is it just you and your wife in this situation or do you have a cool barn where you and your friends play music and have parties?

[Alice]

You play music right? Are there drugs involved or is this sober country living?

[Alice]

I want to sail a ship and die violently

[Bread Regal]

i'd say the one main thing i learned from being a kid is that leisure time is the best thing in life.

[Alice]

Fair enough. I'm on the fence. I also value leisure time. But I like cities and places where I can see shows and get nice coffee and watch people from a distance while drawing them

[teh b0lly!!1]

yeah but Tyler's question is valid. don't you see yourself getting bored with a life this uneventful?

this is coming from a person who entertained almost the exact same thoughts/daydreams as you are. but tbh i'm not sure that's what i would even want anymore for a 100% of the time.

[Alice]

Yeah I mean I feel like it would be really nice for about 1/4 of each year

[Bread Regal]

That all sounds nice, I agree, but I'm not the type of person to enjoy myself full in those situation. It sounds jaded of me to say this but I think I pretty much over interacting with the general public. I'd rather minimize all that and concentrate on things I like doing.

[Alice]

But I understand that some people might be totally fine with that all the time. Not trying to poke holes in anyone's ideal life here

[Bread Regal]

I don't think I'd be bored, no.

[Bread Regal]

you dad gum hole-poker

[Alice]

Yeah I understand that. I'm not really all that into the interaction either. But I do like observing people from a slight distance I guess.

[Alice]

Cool, cool. My parents live in the middle of nowhere in North Carolina and I have such mixed feelings about it. It's so nice to be outside and watch storms and listen to frogs but I start getting restless after about a week. That probably has to do with them as well as the location.

[teh b0lly!!1]

Originally Posted by Bread Regal

That all sounds nice, I agree, but I'm not the type of person to enjoy myself full in those situation. It sounds jaded of me to say this but I think I pretty much over interacting with the general public. I'd rather minimize all that and concentrate on things I like doing.

yeah, i hear that.
how's your life going recently jb?

[teh b0lly!!1]

same for you, tyler.

i have kind of a crazy idea, bear with me for a second: let's neglect structured talk and just sorta chat for a bit

[Bread Regal]

it's not my intention to turn everything into a teachable moment on the evils of capitalism, but one of marx's main points about capitalism is that industrial societies have a tendency to isolate workers from the products of their labor, and pit workers against their superiors. if you're running a tiny little farm and greenhouse, there's none of that. what a gift it would be to see yourself in your own work for the rest of your life. sure, rearing cattle can be hard, but it's not because the cow is going to fire you because it wants a year-end bonus.