Hila Plitmann-Five Hebrew Love Songs

I'm supposed to sing this at a wedding.  I just got the sheet music, and it's no easy one.  This video of Hila Plitmann is so inspiring.  She makes it seem so easy.  It's second nature to her.  I hope I can make it feel so organic.

Ultimacy and Morality

This is from a paper I wrote on the Human Condition:


The essence of consciousness is the universal need to distinguish the parameters of morality in order to sustain individual sovereignty. Accepted distinction of right and wrong is fundamental to free decision. Objective, axiomatic moral statute is requisite to the functionality of global civility. Conscience concludes morality, but it is relative.  Innate conscience is objective, but over time it is molded by individual circumstance. Individual perception of an Ultimacy becomes the external criterion upon which an individual justifies his/her judgements of right and wrong.  It is the fundamental fountainhead from which all existence is contrived.  Religion is the means to substantiate the relationship between individual consciousness and a perceived Ultimacy. The need to believe in an omnipotent, omniscient embodiment of existence is derivative from the struggle to establish universal morality.

Over-thinking the Tao with Dostoevsky's Men

I've been simultaneously studying Dostoevsky and Eastern Religion. In East-West Literary Relations we were reading Notes from Underground while at the same time, my 1000-level Religion class was discovering Hinduism.

 My adventure into Dostoevsky continued with The Grand Inquistor and Dream of a Ridiculous Man. My comprehensive proficiency is Eastern worldviews expanded into the Confucian philosophies and Taoism.

My studies (specifics will follow) have not only influenced, but perpetuated my investigation into the basic principles of the "human condition" on societal, familial, and individual levels.  I am trying to expand the human condition into an intergalactic viewpoint, as in a fictitious intergalactic society with a "conscientious condition". The conscientious condition is the set of distinctive and inexorable features of conscientious intelligence in a society or culture.

In my investigation, I ask myself a few general questions:  

-What is the definition of a religion?  

-Why do religions exist?  

-What regulations should be in effect in order to ensure liberty, peace, and equality? 

-Is morality too relative/subjective to be universalized?  

-What is the essence of man?

-Furthermore, what is the essence of conscience? 

-Can conscience be regulated? 

-If there was a Canon to govern intergalactic morality, what would it look like?  

-What constitutes having a conscience?

I'll answer the first question here with my definition of religion: It is a change in a person's conscience (interchangeable with spirit or soul) caused by acceptance of an Ultimacy (a purpose and direction for life).

Hearse--Ani DiFranco Cover

I fashioned my own little version of "Hearse" off Ani DiFranco's newly-released album "Which Side are You On?"