muse-lettre: Fascinatin web o' "hidden" "lost" history (we are all more connected than we usually realize)

Fascinating the web of "hidden" and "lost" history be...
we are all more connected than we usually realize.
Thank Godhead I am a history-obsessesive Chinaman
scholar and rogue...

"Determination is the wake-up call to the human will-to-power. Fake it till
ya Make It, man!" - anon

In 12 Step programs like AA (Alcoholics Anon.) and NA (Narcotics Anon.) and
SMA (Self-Mutilators Anon.), the success of being Clean & Sober is that it is a
HardBoiled Era "we" program, not some "me-generation" self-help one...

Did ya know Carl Jung was consulted by Bill W., AA co-founder? But
evidently they had a difference on the spiritualism of 12 Step...

"I rather be whole than good." - Carl Jung

Ok, onto bigger and better wider things...

NOVA website concerning the Lost Tribes of Israel:
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/israel/losttribes.html

I find the history of Chiang-Min China (
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/israel/losttribes3.html#chiang)
very very intriguing :) fascinating and enlightening.

IIRC The Egyptian-Jewish music theorist Joseph Yasser lived in
crime-ridden Shanghai in the roarin' 1920-1930's before immigrating to New York City. He
wrote a book on 19-tone Equal Temperament. His exposure to and interest in
Chinese music theories may have been a factor in _his_ theory that 19tET was the
next step after 12tET.

The Yiddish Anarchist movement has its early roots in Berlin, London and
New York City. Some famous Yiddish Anarchists: Emma Goldman, Alexander
Berkman, Gustav Landauer, Rudolf Rocker (though not Jewish, he edited a Yiddish
Anarchist journal)... it is possible that the mysterious anarchist "B. Traven",
author of _The Treasure of the Sierra Madre_, a.k.a. Ret Marut a.k.a Otto Feige,
was Yiddish...

China's own Anarchist writer par excellence Ba Jin (Li Feigan) was
influenced by Emma Goldman and Alexander Berkman. He translated works by Kropotkin,
Goldman, Rocker and many others. He wrote several realistic novels about
contemporary Chinese family life and lifestyles noted for their sharp insights into
how even the smallest of interactions have larger socio-cultural
implications. His _nom de guerre_ "Ba Jin" is made - _mutatus mutandi_ -of the Ba as in
BAkunin and the Kin as in KropotKIN.

Linguistics theorist and socio-political critic/commentator Noam Chomsky
is also from a Jewish libertarian socialist lineage. ("Libertarian socialist"
is just another way of saying "anarchist" w/o the loaded stereotyping of
Anarchists as being gun-toting Sacco and Vanzettis or bomb-throwers or "punks"
["lifestyle anarchists", posers, as pacifist anarchist Paul Goodman calls
them...]) Chomsky is up there with Bill Moyers and Ralph Nader... way more radical.
And intellectually hard-minded.

Leo Tolstoy, though no Jew, is the figurehead of pacifistic Christian
Anarchism. The Christian Anarchist Tolstoy Society in London was of course named
after him.

Gandhi was influenced by Tolstoy. The Civil Rights Movement in the US was
directly influenced by the non-violent resistance strategies of Gandhi. The
"Village Movement" in India was and is influenced by Gandhi and Kropotkin and
is the basis of the All-India Green Party, which has direct and strong ties
with other Green Parties world-wide.

Fascinating the web of "hidden" and "lost" history be...
WE are all more connected than WE usually realize.

---
Hanuman Zhang, _Gomi no sensei_ [Master of junk]

"To live is to scrounge, taking what you can in order to survive. So,
since living is scrounging, the result of our efforts is to amass a pile of
rubbish." - Chuang Tzu/Zhuangzi, China, 4th Century BCE

"The most beautiful order is a heap of sweepings piled up at random." -
Heraclitus, Greece, 5th Century BCE

"...So what is life for? Life is for beauty and substance and sound and
colour; and even those are often forbidden by law [socio-cultural conventions].
. .Why not be free and live your own life? Why follow other people's rules
and live to please others?..." ~Lieh-Tzu/Liezi, Taoist Sage (c. 450- 375 BCE)

"Taoism in a nutshell: Shit Happens. Roll with the Punches. Hang 10 - Go
with the Flow!" - anon. California surferBeatnik, c.1950's/1960's

Voices of the Past:
http://advancement.uark.edu/pubs/Research_Frontiers/fall_2001/05_Feature1.html

At its peak, the Tang Dynasty (618-906 CE) of China a mixture of cultural
influences were reflected in the music of the times.People traveled from
other countries, including Japan, Mongolia, India, Korea & Turkey, to learn about
the Tang culture.But the multi-racial, multi-cultural era waned at the end of
the Tang.China,one of the greatest cultural & military powers in history,
began to close in on itself, the rulers closed the country's borders - fearing the
destruction of their civilization.The rich, diverse music of the Tang, along
with that of the surrounding cultures, was lost or destroyed. Bits have been
found & the rest is theory & re-construction...
"The whole world of musics and instruments lives around us....I am
interested in a 'transethnic,' a planetary music." - Lou Harrison ("...Europe is a
region he called Northwest Asia...")
The power of education & culture to transcend social and political
differences is still largely untapped...