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From Meccania to Atlantis - Part 5½: Music We Can Believe In

[inline:01] In the 2008 presidential elections, 69.5 million Americans voted for Barack Obama campaign’s slogan, “Change we can believe in.” Others also believed that Mr. Obama would bring change, but since it would not be change they could beli ...

personal blog entry - Takuan Seiyo - 2008-12-31 13:05 - 30 comments - 3 attachments

The Last Samurai and Europe's First Suicide

... likely to see again.”   -------  Takuan Seiyo is a multiethnic, naturalized American writer and former international ...

personal blog entry - Takuan Seiyo - 2008-08-24 13:52 - 20 comments - 2 attachments

From Meccania to Atlantis - Part 3: From Encirclement to Breakout

  The night that changed the world This serial essay started with the assumption that Barack Hussein Obama’s election as the 44th President of the United States would accelerate the creation of a multicultural supra-state enco ...

personal blog entry - Takuan Seiyo - 2008-12-19 20:39 - 45 comments

From Meccania to Atlantis - Part 1: The March of the Body Snatchers

[inline:01] Current events have been begging for direct, pragmatic commentary. This serial essay is therefore cutting into the "Empire of Yin" series, which is more philosophical. Apology to my long-suffering readers. "Empire" ...

personal blog entry - Takuan Seiyo - 2008-12-23 16:44 - 36 comments - 1 attachment

From Meccania to Atlantis Part 8 – Drenched to the Bone

Squaring the circle To square a circle is a common metaphor describing a futile attempt to solve the unsolvable. But a glance at the root of this metaphor may prove instructive. Since ancient times, geometricians have tried to construct ...

personal blog entry - Takuan Seiyo - 2009-02-23 23:38 - 69 comments

From Meccania to Atlantis - Part 2: From the Clenched Fist to the Raised Middle Finger

[inline:01] The sentry’s challenge Qui vive is the French sentry’s challenge, the equivalent of "Who goes there?" Except, the literal meaning of qui vive conveys the timeless common sense of the French peasant wh ...

personal blog entry - Takuan Seiyo - 2008-12-23 16:43 - 57 comments - 1 attachment

More Lessons from the East

[inline: 01]  Left: Bankoku jimbutsu zue: oranda no kokuo (Portraits of figures from barbarian countries: the king of Holland)(1) by Ichieisai Yoshitsuya, 1861. This fantasized Japanese caricature of King William III of Holland also comments in Jap ...

personal blog entry - Takuan Seiyo - 2008-06-16 14:25 - 14 comments - 1 attachment

From Meccania to Atlantis - Part 6: When The Music Stops

[inline:01] The sum of our fears Question:  What are these people doing in Europe? Who invited them? Who let them in? Who let them stay? What has allowed them to even dream about moving to Europe, let alone realizing a colonization pl ...

personal blog entry - Takuan Seiyo - 2009-01-27 09:36 - 32 comments - 1 attachment

Astarte and Amaterasu - The Diverging Destinies of Europe and Japan. -- Part 2

[inline:01] Left: An EU poster illustrating the goal of completing (see crane) the building of the Tower of Babel as per the iconic Pieter Brueghel painting. Right: Hanami – a cherry blossom viewing party in Tokyo (photo by the author) I ...

personal blog entry - Takuan Seiyo - 2008-05-02 20:12 - 16 comments - 1 attachment

Empire of Yin - Part 2: The Persistent Blindness of Superiority

... the last 40 years. (3) For another take on this see Takuan Seiyo, “Kapital as Kapalit,” Quarterly Review, Autumn 2007, republished ...

personal blog entry - Takuan Seiyo - 2008-10-11 09:56 - 3 comments - 3 attachments

From Meccania to Atlantis - Part 4½: Darkness in the Cranium

This is a brief post scriptum to Part 4 , warranted by a series of most interesting comments thereto by a Mr. W. Lindsay Wheeler, and counter arguments by other readers, for whose positive comments I am thankful.   It is strange i ...

personal blog entry - Takuan Seiyo - 2008-12-19 20:38 - 67 comments

Postcard from Zinnlandia

[inline:01]  I am on the MAX Red Line light rail car going from downtown Portland to the Airport. Some things socialists do better. Among them are public transportation, recycling, French poetry readings, yoga, coffee, artisan food and arthouse ...

personal blog entry - Takuan Seiyo - 2008-07-12 15:09 - 124 comments - 1 attachment

On Racists, 'Racists,' and Harakirists

On their first date, my parents, together, couldn't have tipped the scales at more than 85 kg. On the date on which they conceived me, they probably still didn't weigh much more. Their slimming diets had been involuntary. Their respective families ha ...

personal blog entry - Takuan Seiyo - 2007-11-14 11:25 - 20 comments

From Meccania to Atlantis - Part 7: The True Horror in Hitchcock Films

I used to live in San Francisco. The San Francisco that despite having been roiled by hippies, beatniks, anti-this-and-that, still had the feel of the charming, civilized town that it had been when Alfred Hitchcock was shooting his masterpieces the ...

personal blog entry - Takuan Seiyo - 2009-02-06 12:31 - 44 comments - 2 attachments

Empire of Yin - Part 1: The Great Unbalancing

[inline:01] Hieronymus Bosch, The Garden of Earthly Delights (central panel) – circa 1504   Sticky, Sweet, Stupid, Scary Western Civilization is now like the Three Gorges valley downriver from the biggest dam in the world, ...

personal blog entry - Takuan Seiyo - 2008-10-09 16:01 - 20 comments - 2 attachments