We’re at the 10th installment of Superman movies. Keep in mind that the 7th version was entitled Batman vs Superman: Dawn of Justice. In it Superman shares the screen with another superhero to revive his decreasing popularity. As it happens, Batman movies have superior box office success. In the most recent movie, Superman is helped by a cast of supporting superheroes including a dog named Krypto, presumably to improve ratings and revenues.
The new Superman movie has some notable novelties. Lois Lane is surprised she can actually interview Superman, shown wearing pants and a shirt, instead of his costume. The change puts an end to the secretive dual personality with more focus on the character played by Clark Kent, a humble Journalist.
In this movie, Superman is more down to earth, so to speak. He candidly shows his human side to his loved ones. One scene shows his adopted father who tells him “Your choices. Your actions. Makes you who you are.”. Nonetheless, Superman is facing public hostility for trying to stop a war. Puzzled, Lois asks him why he got involved? He passionately replies, “People were going to die” if he didn’t.
Screenwriting about saving lives is a display of good intention. However, it does not stop the film being a show of gratuitous destruction and killing. This is the dual nature of action movie business. One side of the picture shows righteous moral justification, while the other, the visual special effects side, depict massive destruction beneficial for box office revenues.
Readers familiar with my writings know that in order for a hero to appear and stand out, a villain must emerge in a story. This dynamic is true for most mythologies and science fiction stories. In the movie the villain that fires up Superman’s powers is a longtime adversary named Lex Luthor.
Lex Luthor is a billionaire industrialist who is Metropolis’ most powerful person. His quest to destroy Superman is sparked by some envy of his supernatural powers that make him a beloved hero of the people. Powers that are a challenge to Lex Luthor’s authority and total control of Metropolis.
Moreover, Superman uses his powers for the good of the people. He is a selfless vigilante, the opposite of power provided by money. While Lex Luthor’s identity is solely based on his billions that provide him with an army equipped with high-tech weapons. His identity is defined by what he owns and controls. Without his money, he is irrelevant.
Ironically, Lex Luthor may have a point about Superman’s identity when he describes him in these terms; “He’s not a man. He’s a it”. What does Lex imply by “it.”? That Superman’s existence is merely based on a thing ‒a motion picture thing.
One trailer describes Superman as “the most powerful being on planet earth.” The statement is to say the least, advertising make-believe. A more apt description is, the most popular character in the world to a captive movie audience. Superman is a symbolic front-man of the most powerful medium on the planet. A medium known as the movie industry, namely the producers, the screenwriters, the actors, the music/soundtrack, the special effects team and the varied media and apps, to distribute the video to the whole planet.
There is another important departure from the original Superman story. The hero’s motto changed from “Truth, Justice, and the American Way” to “Truth, Justice, and the Human Way.” In other words, Superman no longer represents a country built by its immigrants. Symbolized by a hero who embodies the technological, industrial power and military might made by the US during the twentieth century.
The new motto is a shift in Superman’s identity away from its American origin. It promotes a new “way” that represents a global enterprise. Created by a corporate body born of a legal construct defined as an artificial person. And here is where lies the imposture: Although a corporation is made up of individual investors each shareholder abdicates their human soul by submitting to a corporate charter of profit making.
Another pretense is the claim that it is a global~universal enterprise because individual shareholders are located all over the planet, transcending national borders. As such, it is a super-national entity that supersedes any democratically elected sovereign state. Yet the ultimate imposture is to make us believe it is the legal heir of human civilization.
When the tech platforms promised a future of “connection,” they were lying. They said their “walled gardens” would keep us safe, but those were prison walls.
The platforms locked us into their systems and made us easy pickings, ripe for extraction. Twitter, Facebook and other Big Tech platforms hard to leave by design. They hold hostage the people we love, the communities that matter to us, the audiences and customers we rely on. The impossibility of staying connected to these people after you delete your account has nothing to do with technological limitations: it’s a business strategy in service to commodifying your personal life and relationships.
We can – we must – dismantle the tech platforms. In The Internet Con, Cory Doctorow explains how to seize the means of computation, by forcing Silicon Valley to do the thing it fears most: interoperate. Interoperability will tear down the walls between technologies, allowing users leave platforms, remix their media, and reconfigure their devices without corporate permission.
Interoperability is the only route to the rapid and enduring annihilation of the platforms. The Internet Con is the disassembly manual we need to take back our internet.
I’m running through the fields
Laughing, dreaming
I’m driving through the mountains
Breathing a new life.
I don’t mind what people say
No, I won’t look back for another day
Gonna shed my skin and walk away (walk away).
I’m floating through the river
Twisting and turning
Running through the sands
Searching for a new life.
I don’t mind what people say
No, I won’t look back for another day
Gonna shed my skin and walk away (walk away)
I don’t mind what people say.
No, I won’t look back for another day
Gonna shed my skin and walk away (walk away)
I don’t mind what people say
No, I won’t look back for another day
Gonna shed my skin and walk away (walk away).
I missed an important quote Giorgio Agamben made when I first read his book entitled When the House Burns Down. I recently picked up the book again and read the notes I made during my first reading. I had overlooked Agamben quoting John 18:37.
“So, then you are a king?” Jesus answered, “It is you who say that I am a king. I was born for this, I came into the world for this, to bear witness to the truth; and all who are on the side of truth listen to my voice.” “Truth?”, Said Pilate. “What is the truth?”
I am writing about sovereignty again as I think it’s of one the most overlooked Christian subjects. Although sovereignty is not Agamben’s subject matter, the quote brought to light an important aspect of this concept that I had missed. Namely, that Jesus, a mere carpenter, is crucified for claiming to be the messiah, a king. A title that in the Old Testament is typically conferred on an individual who is anointed by a biblical authority, like a priest or a prophet.
The Gospels reveal a departure from this tradition. Jesus was not anointed by a priest but was recognized by Simon as the Messiah. Simon was a mere fisherman. A man Jesus renamed metaphorically a rock~Peter. The departure also implies a shift away from the normal use of words. In the sense that Jesus uses metaphors to spread his message.
Jesus does not claim he is a political ruler. Instead, he proclaims he is a spiritual king/sovereign of a kingdom set outside the ruling powers of this world. He nonetheless reinforces the Old Testament tradition that an individual is sovereign in his self-communication with God.
Jesus sacrificed his life so that every human being in this world is potentially conferred the same sovereignty. It is granted to any man or woman who is created in the image of God so that they are able to hear and reply to a divine calling.
Holy texts and mythology of ancient civilizations show the idea of sovereignty is granted either by God, a divinity, or a supernatural power. Any power vested on a king or a ruler is divine. This sovereignty in turn legitimizes the ruler’s power over his people/subjects and his kingdom. Jesus sidesteps this premise. He emphasizes that all human beings are equally sovereign in the eyes of God.
A metaphorical king is also a shift away from established institutions and their center of worship in Jerusalem. Jesus explained that his kingdom is not of this world. This realm is made up of his followers comprised of common people. His assembly of disciples constitutes his church that lies outside the temple in Jerusalem. Keep in mind that the original meaning of ecclesia, translated into church, is an assembly of believers. It is a spiritual congregation of people, not a physical site or material building.
In order to fully understand the context of this shift from physical to spiritual and material to metaphorical one must take into account the historical and political environment the authors of the Gospels lived in. Most of the writers of the New Testament lived after the destruction of Jerusalem and its Temple by the Romans in 70 CE.
Jewish people that were not killed or deported during the destruction of Jerusalem were closely monitored for political subversion by the Roman authorities. The evangelists were careful to write in a metaphorical manner to avoid being suspected of sedition. By the same token, the authors were also proclaiming a message of hope by outlining a spiritual kingdom in the aftermath of the destruction of the center of Jewish faith.
Jesus explains to give Caesar what is Caesar’s and give to God what is God’s. Meaning that Jesus is not against the ruling powers of this world but preaches a spiritual kingdom. Not separate from the physical/material world but as an alternate. The Resurrected Body of Christ is precisely a spiritual kingdom~church that survives the destruction of Jerusalem by a colonial power.
God works in mysterious ways. The unraveling history of Jesus Christ’s Resurrected Body is revealed by the visible expansion of the living Church. Hence, without the need of a central government or the collection of taxes and without the help of a standing army, Christianity took over the Holy Roman Empire and spread of the Good News throughout the world.
To conclude: The current Pope, as the bishop of Rome, is the sovereign of the Vatican City State and as the heir of Peter, the metaphorical rock, he is the spiritual sovereign of the living Church.
When Pilate asks the rhetorical question “What is the truth?” He questions if the truth is only institutional/political or spiritual/metaphorical. Depending on the historical environment, the answer gravitates in the dynamic interaction of these two realities.
The late Pope Francis was the first Jesuit to be elected at the head of the Holy See. An order founded by Ignatius of Loyola in ~1534 during the Protestant Reformation. Pope Francis was also the first Latin American to be elected Pope.
A look at a current list of eligible candidates according to geographical region, show a change in the Church’s ethnic composition of Cardinals, a departure from a majority of Italian or European papabile.
Pope Francis, like any other Jesuit like him, makes an additional vow to enter the order. On top of a vow of poverty, chastity and obedience, Jesuits also vow strict obedience to the Pope. A lesser-know fact about the order, also known as the Soldiers of Christ, is Ignatius of Loyola’s original request made to his order that none of its members would ever seek for a “higher office” in the Church
The Jesuits, or the Society of Jesus (SJ), was founded by Ignatius of Loyola. He was born in the Basque region to a family with minor aristocratic lineage. He was a womanizer who spent his time fighting and gambling. His career as a soldier ended when his leg was shattered in the Battle of Pamplona in 1521. While bedridden for close to a year he spent his time reading and was especially affected by a book on the life of Jesus.
With one disabled leg, rejoining the military was out of the question. Ignatius decided to dedicate his life fighting for Christ’s message instead.
There was no better time to embark on his new vocation/mission. The Church was facing forceful criticism from a German monk named Martin Luther, the notorious instigator of the Protestant Reformation.
Ignatius, with his newfound order, was expected to help the Church with its own Counter-Reformation. History reveals that Ignatius of Loyola was not so much interested in stopping the spread of Luther’s 95 These but more concerned about the churches’ institutional corruption.
A new theory proposes gravity isn’t a fundamental force but emerges from quantum electromagnetic interactions, potentially reshaping our view of spacetime itself.
A fresh look at gravity challenges long-held assumptions about one of nature’s most familiar yet puzzling forces. In a new study, two researchers argue that gravitational attraction is not a basic force at all, but an effect that emerges from deeper quantum processes tied to electromagnetism. If confirmed, the theory could help explain mysteries that have long resisted standard models — including the origins of dark matter and the energy accelerating the universe’s expansion.
The work, published in Journal of Physics Communications, reimagines gravity not as a force stitched into the fabric of spacetime, but as something that arises from the quantum-level behavior of ordinary matter. Ruth Kastner of the University of Maryland and Andreas Schlatter at the Quantum Institute in New York developed a framework in which space and time themselves are not fundamental but result from electromagnetic interactions between charged systems like atoms and molecules.
Debbie W., Richmond, CA
Extremely Interesting Read. Deeply researched account of the symbols om the US dollar.
I’ve always been curious about the symbols on the one dollar bill and the little book explains them well. Highly recommend this read.
Peter O., Santa Fe, NM
Good and entertaining… This book is full of historical facts about the symbols on the dollar. You won’t be bored reading it. The author keeps delivering relevant info till the end. And once you’re done reading the book, you’ll never look at the dollar the same way again.
L. K. M., Seattle, WA
Great read! Extremely well researched writing of the history, symbols and makeup of the US currency.
After reading the book you will love the tender you exchange everyday. Highly recommend.
R. S., Santa Monica, CA
Well researched book on the symbols of our currency. Very interesting and revealing aspects behind the history of our currency.
Joanne A., Novato, CA
Everything you ever wanted to know about the one dollar bill. This book explains all the symbols on the one dollar. Who knew it was so detailed? Very interesting!
M.J.B., San Diego, CA
Great Read! Well researched, packed with interesting facts about the US dollar. Quick read.
Highly recommend.
Carl L., San Francisco, CA
If you’re curious as to how the symbols found on the US dollar came to be, look no further than
Michael Rizzotti’s well researched book. In addition to providing the reader with the history and context, the author expands on related subjects such as the Federal Reserve and the dollar’ s evolution to becoming the reserve currency of the world. All in all, a good, well written read.
Ricky I., Palm Desert, CA
Interesting and Detailed. A unique and well researched explanation and interpretation of the symbols we have all seen on ou US dollar. Mr. Rizzotti vividly introduces us to the history of the symbols; and quite interesting interpretations on how and or why these symbols were included on the dollar.
