On Incarnation- The Beginning of our True Life- The Soul

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To explain why such a process is a little more complicated, we need to go back to the beginning of the progress of the un-individualized soul, and once we have the understanding of this process correctly, we can better understand the process required for the soul that has undergone the re-incarnation.

At the instant our Father desires or intends for something to exist, the thing He desires comes into existence. Of those things, our soul, and by the soul I mean the complete soul consisting of the two “halves”, came into existence in the same manner. This is why Jesus said in the first century, “before Abraham was, I am,” which meant that before the man Abraham existed in the flesh, Jesus existed as a soul. Of course, this not only applies to Jesus himself, but also all of those souls created, including yourself, since we were all created at the instant of God’s intention.

But we existed in an un-individualized form, meaning that we were not at the time conscious of our own existence or individuality. At this time, the soul could be said to have an “instinct”, and many God determined actions are included within its instinct, the primary action being to find a spirit and mortal body into which to incarnate to become an individualized form. There are many other actions of course, including the feeling within the soul that it must answer the questions of life, such as “Why am I here,” “Where am I going,” “What is my purpose,” and similar questions which we all want to answer if we stay close to our feelings during our life.

Each soul could be considered in human terms to have a genetic imprint,
which comes directly from our parent, our Father and Mother, who is our God and Creator. At the time of human conception, when the egg and sperm cells combine, the genetic imprint of two further bodies begins, the body of the material, which man classifies as the DNA structure of the material body, and the body of the spiritual, which man cannot classify currently, but which also has a genetic blueprint which could be considered to be similar to the material body.

I cannot at this time discuss the intricacies of this process, since,
besides being very difficult for most to understand, it is not the point of my discussion. At a later time, these matters will be discussed with the medical fraternity, and I expect that their understanding of many medical and psychological procedures will deepen, with the resultant change to many medical practices currently used generally.

Now half of the soul incarnates into the body prepared. For the purposes of our discussion I shall still refer to it as the “soul”, but the reader needs to consider that it is the half of the soul that I am now referring to. The “first half” of the soul may incarnate into any material body in the earth plane, and this process is generally a random choice, in a similar nature to the randomness of a sperm finding and impregnating the egg in the process of reproduction. The second “half”, since it has an affinity to the first half, often remains in close proximity to the first half that has become incarnated, and in almost all cases, will incarnate into a body where it has a high likelihood of finding its soul mate during its existence on the
earth. This is a provision of our Father’s Love.

So the soul (remember the half of the soul), which is the real man or woman, has gained individuality, and, if left to a proper natural course, will continue its cycle of growth while contained with the spiritual and mortal bodies.

The first body that the soul becomes aware of is its mortal body. Once the brain of that body is able to adjust to its surroundings, awareness comes to the soul and that soul sees in a mirror a person, which it believes defines its existence. So, the soul which did not have an individuality, now has an individuality, and has a consciousness of the same, and believes that the person in the mirror, that others see, is the complete definition of who it is.

Now, many “souls” will go through their entire material existence without being conscious of any other part of themselves, and by this I mean that they are not really conscious that they also have a spiritual body, and a soul, which are both attached to the material body while it remains alive. Also, the soul often thinks of its material body as the “real person”, since it may not be conscious of these other concurrent parallel existences of itself.

As time progresses, the mind of the spirit body, through the exercise of the brain of the material body, may begin to become aware of “spiritual things”, which cannot be explained using a material analysis of the universe in which it “appears” to exist, although, I must say, is definitely supported by a scientifically open examination the material universe. This process is often accompanied by a “realization” of the existence of a higher being, which it now refers to as the “God” of which its conception may be correct or in error, depending on the information supplied by other “souls” within the material world.

Also, this same soul, while exercising its mind and brain, may become more aware of the spiritual body in which it is encased. And, in doing this, it may even come to understand the different areas where different types of information are being process while it is having the experience within the material world. Of course, if this process does not occur while the soul is attached to the material existence, it may occur during its existence while it is attached to its spiritual existence.

While the soul has the material experience, although it may not be aware of the fact, it is concurrently having a spiritual experience, and a soul experience. All it needs is an awareness to occur before it can really live a complete experience, and this is the fact whether it is in a material or spiritual world.

So, to summarize, the soul, before incarnation, is not personally aware of its own existence, or of its own “personality”. When it incarnates, during the process of living, it gains awareness, and now has individuality. Please understand that I am loosely using the term “process of living”, since some material bodies perish while in their mother’s womb, either by miscarriage, or by a miscarriage of Love through abortion, but they nevertheless are souls with individualization.

Large wooden home in Vietnam

Large wooden home in Vietnam One's first house At home due to be built all the way wood is Don's expensive and to Vietnam are made in Nghi Phu, Vinh city-Nghe An, attracting not only people of Nghe An province where many people other to see Who is shocking, strange lùng before a house in a two this is not. Minister Le Doan Hop VHTT also have to place to see the architecture of this house. Owner of it is Cuong Tran - nickname is "Cuong Tho. Works with a two Home is located on the campus nearly 4000 m2, surrounded barrier wall is solidified over 3 m high, built very elaborately, OP to 5 rock types. Mount lợp barrier wall with the glaze tile eel waves as giant dragons blockade lấy campus. A mason told us: Each member lợp on the tile wall barriers cost of 2500, the total cost to build barrier walls fresh nghẹt 2 billion. This is certainly a record in the construction barrier wall. Record is the next tree is written uom inside barrier wall. I have to count all the trees found several dozen written to two people not embracing Xue, price per tree from 50 to 100 million, told the owner to buy in many places, transportation of uom available, as will be done in house in campus, to create a harmonious space with the house. More stupid than when you walk on campus in the air before labor by hundreds of people are rampant construction of such a large school. Break your eyes I'm home timber giant 8 sleeps on roof area of 400m2 with 46 wooden columns high cloves 6 to 8 m with round Vanh 1.2 - 1.4 m. Eight corner mái dispose as curved roof home village is đắp the cloud and dragon nụ cerulean eyes very start. Roofs overlap tube sound ways of enamel paint nhẵn light dust grains are not clickable! 46 Except for round timber columns, left everything to the wood for the glue, away from home ... sculpt all the flower pictures are very sophisticated. Besides the record of area in a house to 400m2, the house also has the largest record is the timber. Every woodworker wings as revealing that the number of timber owner used to house convention about 500m3 cloves into wood gas. He made you do the job with us to calculate: to have wood products that housing must exploit to 5 ha of forest wood raw cloves of 500 years old. Behind the house is the house building, wooden columns also a way ancient area of several hundred square meters. Heard this will be in place by ... cannot. Connecting the two houses is a coffee shop to be made of wood is also a way of not. This is the house in wood largest, most expensive Vietnam, what should you make any shady ran as a "the metamorphosis", a "Forbidden City", a "from and" Greek "... through with it also reflects the level of due process .. "Superman" Cuong Tran Top woodworker Nam Dinh are engraved state Born in 1964, is the second son of Mr. Tran Tho, a Vietnamese doctors treat the famous and rich in Nghe An. People Nghi Phu said his children are very Thọ "blood" business and see all the rich, in which Tran Cuong as "superman". Tran Cuong each of the team. Between decade of the 80 centuries ago, he moved to work in the company agricultural materials Vinh city. Implementation guidelines on capital in business, he is married Lan Anh rental business in building materials. Those with the company he said that, walking it, Mr. Cuong also very hard, the only business you sad English Poland-out, but he always Cuong out to overcome the Laos, where he is very familiar to traders, spent on Vietnam. Mr. Cuong famous for two products in the fields and tamper. The 1990s it was Don Mr. Cuong "sập to" take more than 2 billion, nearly a year of budget xứ Nghệ this city at the time, so he Cuong still not as smooth. Own this, replied that they had called him a "superman". Around 1995, 1996, people see only English Poland business building materials, as Mr. Cuong then was director of Co. Red River. Of business primarily by the company are import, export of timber. People feel like after the break he Cuong buy both wings cloves timber forest resources in your country of Laos. He completely owned timber market cloves Vietnam, and then exported to Taiwan, China. In 2000, he made house 4 storeys in block 7, Le Loi hoành page that the cause of "the university" in Vinh city must of lost my body. Add this more they respect him as "superman". Cuong his life only once risk. It is 2002, he was Police to Hanoi, and must proceed from the suspension, because I smuggling. After that out, nor Co. Red River in his work anymore. Moneybox buy farms in Thanh Chuong district to afforestation, planting fruit trees, purchased some land in Cua Lo beach, Vinh city. In addition, information from the ones of his household Highway: He turns to contribute capital to the Company Phu Nguyen Hai, a private company with big potential in Nghe An are many business fields, including exercise mechanical loading and ore mines. In this company he received only positions Deputy Director. Those households on road Tran Cuong were friendly to him as human work, always confused money and make the vehicles with no one. And in particular have very good health. Every respect be twice as "superman Nghệ land", as more time go to the house this big, people continue to call him a "superman". This is the house he expected short-term construction materials must be unique and expensive houses in his right is not the same house any time. Home instead of subjects? Mr. Chu Huu Dinh, music of Cuong Tran is also designed, directed construction this house for him in person and hire stepchild necessarily a translation, take 100 million to China as samples home. Although to the ancient Chinese as the Dinh Hoa's, te tướng Save gu, and "From the Greek, Forbidden City, but do not form the lot, he eyes the father. Mr. Dinh said that they have the real wood, but actually to have no state, more graphics sculpt that draw directly from a raw material paste into another timber should not be learning anything. Return to water, his father children "having a rice mắm", "with stars such as," as Mr. Dinh said. According to Dinh, wood used to make this house over the one thousand block, the contributions of ten years training. So, sorry do not do houses for hoành page. Mr. Dinh also adds, he advised of the re put money, wisdom to create a 100% of culture to show that not only China or the past to create new projects with long life time that Nghệ land at this time as well as to the neck and completely pure culture. So his son-in-law agreed to ask the wife stands to make. With new ideas that same year, a dozen years later still as new, and he is the design of self in and conduct construction. The process of construction, said of his star, 50 hand carpenter Nam Dinh, dozens of construction workers to do so. He was wrong to do it again, fear not expensive as long as you properly. Who reset, the rest of his days. And he actually did: four architects to design the wall as a campus, for his dismissal because he is not level! Owner with a contractor in time woodworker sculpt 50 The he, for all his work. His strong hand to the children re lo fever wife as hard as any of his wife is the head of people do now. Mr. Dinh still very confident, in the: Children who ask for the parent secure. And he is guiding and making the house is just the stepchild. Mr. Dinh said: "We do house, which is where the houses are long - time - of - Ward as Don's galaxy. He explains: "Long-time - of - Ward is the architecture of Temples, shrines look. We house only sculpt the flowers, birds 4 spring - summer - to - east. This is the scenic beauty and close to people. He just go and will see. " I acknowledge by him. He only hands say: "to have more graphics in 8 corners of the roof is the symbol of the mushroom cloud and dragon." He emphasized: "May the dragon and the dragon, not nhé!". Finally, he concluded: "We want to give a life of eternal culture, unique and a work by Vietnam not reproduce what the architecture of China ...". Asked about the amount of construction, lightweight features of his: "Some three dozen billion, how much is where. The most expensive wood, the wood is we already have it. Other materials is not their country lack. " Great house this is the 100% culture or do not need the expert assessment. Scatter but we saw this house in the Vietnamese workers who work a reality. But as Mr. Cuong home in to, so expensive, how in the end, when Mr. Cuong only 3 people (husband and she his daughter). Play started, here are a couple houses fathers put up money as dowry for her daughter after this unique?
Vietnamese > English swap Translate

The structure of the cave in "The Myth of the Cave". what's the symbolic meaning of the different elements?

the cave is
A. a symbol of ignorance hence the darkness.
may also represent safety to some degree.
also our primative beginings.

B. prisoners are "kept in the dark" this represents forced ignorance.

C.the fire is an artificial light that creates distorted images.light represents ultimate or pure knowledge there fore fire would be mans conceived knowledge tainted and disformed by his own fears ,ignorance and personal agenda.

D. in this "light"the puppet master reveals a distorted version of reality to his captives. a comfortable version that does, nt mess with the puppet masters agenda.

E.hands are tied .feet are bound.symbolizing the helplessness of the prisoners to break free.
and or the fact that the bonds are composed of the misplaced trust they have of their captors.

i have more info at this site if you wish to see it.

peace><>

MEDIA AS LIFE WORLD

I. MEDIA AS AUTOBIOGRAPHY

When speaking or writing about media we still tend to think in terms of channels to which sender and receiver are connected, a temptingly simple but inadequate definition. Current media theory proposes the "Gutenberg Galaxy" has run its course,that the electronic media itself has become the "message" and its forms are to be understood as "extensions of man"¹ Following Marshall McLuhan and considering the stunning developments of the "new media" theorists such as Neil Postman, media is analyzed not only as a metaphor and representation of knowledge, but as an activity, one shaping our social envoirment and subject to media ecology.² This shift in understanding necessitates a fundamental change in our relation to media, and in our thinking. Yet although the distinctions between reality and imagination, truth and fantasy seem to vanish, and the acceptance of media as an authentic lifeworld the next step, media theory is still reluctant to face this consequence. Signification, representation, the ideology of an independent reality as the measure of truth — these are compelling and long-held presuppositions not easily cast aside.

A phenomenological view, however, allows us to skip over the question of whether the world of new media is real or not and instead describe how the new media shows itself to us. We then become aware of the seductive intensity, the speedy flow, and the open audio-visual textuality with which music videos, for example, "blur previously distinct separations and boundaries, such as those between popular and avant©garde art, between different genres and artistic modes, between past,present and future".³ Artistic media have long been considered as possessing a reality of their own, and the artist's work is often viewed as autobiography. In the new media of cinema⁴ the trend toward self-potrayal is perhaps most obvious. Phenomenologically, such 'writing' of one's life in media reveals its structure as an in-between which is neither subjective nor objective. It fulfills an intentionality which transforms 'objective' material and 'subjective' goals into a living process. A lifeworld is commonly "lived through"⁵ silently, the need to acknowledge is largely unfelt; in the case of mass media however only we can be held responsible for its superficiality. The model of nature with its self-evident presence is replaced by the model of technology which has to constantly give evidence and defend its presence anew.

In the technological age we can not simply live our lives, we have to write — and rewrite — them, or others will do it for us. Having been changed into this autobiographical 'writing', communication can now be defined as authentic, as a responsible style of media. The difference between the "life lived through" and the world of media is still a sharp one in terms of perception, as Maurice Merleau-Ponty indicates,⁶ but is an abstraction in terms of intersubjectivity as the basis of communication. In a lifeworld shaped by technology we consider as humane that for which we as artificial beings can and must take reponsibility.⁷ That society and mass media usually live our lives for us is entirely our own fault and not due to any flaw in the structure of these modes of our existence. We are, by nature, the artificial ones; rejecting our artificiality for a more 'natural' mode of being is a naive denial of our potential as well. Consequently our search need be for the authentic mode of artificiality. The artificial lifeworld created by us in the new media is of itself a fulfillment of humanness — a frightening outlook if one regards American prime time televesion as an example.

II. MUSIC VIDEOS: FROM YOUTH CULTURE TO ARTIFICIAL LIFE

McLuhan's pragmatic children use music videos as their "own comfy space" and as a "radio station for the eyes",⁸ enjoying the pleasure and magic of their youth culture. With the start of 24™hour cable MTV in 1981, music videos became the life style of an entire generation. Dweezil Zapa, the gifted son of a famous father "watches hours of MTV every day",⁹ and he is neither uneducated nor unemployed. MTV alone plays 75-110 clips a week, each with a life span of 9-18 weeks; other channels (Black entertainment Television, to name just one) add to this number. Performers like Michael Jackson and Madonna have attained a personal iconographic power apparent on any street.

In the eyes of one shocked admirer of Plato, the "ambition" of these young people seems to be "to win fame and wealth in imitating the drag queen who makes the music". Professor Bloom denounces music videos for turning life into " a nonstop, comercially prepackaged, masturbational fantasy".¹⁰ And Kuan Hsing Chan, an observer even more knowledgeable in video culture shows deep concern when he writes: "If ecstasy of communication, fascination, desire, schizophrenic corruption of temporality and spatiality, obscenity (of sexuality), collage, quotation, fragmentation and non-unity are the key terms to describe MTV, then we have moved from the question of 'what does it mean' to 'what does it do?'"¹¹

Since music videos are at the core of todays youth culture, such harsh reaction to their seeming corruptive influence is predictable. Every youth culture antagonizes mainstream culture, criticizes the parent generation, and develops its own language and gestures, invents its own style and idols. Undeterred by the intended shock effect of the new and unfamiliar, by the strangeness of certain appearances, a phenomenological approach will continue asking how the phenomenon of music videos shows itself to us, as long as it remains unknown. It should be noted that music videos are appreciated outside the youth culture as well. Station VH-1, for instance, is geared specifically to adult audience. Music television is one of the few media hybrids interactively using other telecommunications media and live events for two-way communication in order to spark imagination and interest of its viewers. These channels are continually re-evaluating and re-defining themselves, and in so doing retain the vitality of the avant-garde.

III. INNOVATIONSIN COMMUNICATION: THE PHENOMENON OF MUSIC VIDEO

Music Videos are made for nearly every single released today and have become a major force in the music market. The leading channel MTV reaches 36 million people. Music videos have influenced, changed, colonized, cannibalized, and merged other types of media. And the viewer has become a collaborator. Music television seeks the constant feedback of its audience, altering its programming accordingly. Music videos seem to be a postmodern response to Richard Wagner's "Gesamtkunstwerk", the attemp to unite the arts in the grand opera. Though music videos are only 'operetta' they should not be underestimated: there is no question that this new medium is here to stay. Michael Jackson's recent 17-minute video "Bad", directed by none other than Martin Scorcese, is a clear indication that music videos are about to break out of their rigid format.

A phenomenological awareness is less interested in the content of the music video — decisive is rather the way it manifests itself. That many music videos represent "male street culture, social rebelliousness, and fantasies of female conquest",¹² and that there is an answer from a "female culture" is not our concern here. Music videos are clearly an integral part of contemporary youth culture and for this reason alone an interesting field of research for both sociologists and semiologists. Nonetheless, our line of questioning will be the inovations in communication which music videos indicate apart from and beyond their role in youth culture, changes in the way we communicate with ourselves and with one another. This development is by no means restricted to music videos. But perhaps most visible in music videos — or perhaps they are simply the most fun to analyze! Their colorful and anarchistic texture, filled with shock images, their visual variety and ability to cut through clutter stimulates a sense of creativity too often missing in the technological life world.

Before we consider the phenomenon of music videos in detail, I would like to stress the point that music videos belong to cinema and its aesthetics. The movement-image is, according to Deleuze, the basic unit of the cinematic discourse. This unit, a totality encompassing time and space not only makes the difference of opposing entities clear, it also allows them to be experienced as separate and distinct yet belonging to the whole. The movement image, as a process, does not destroy the identity of the cinema, of movement and image. In the mode of unity the instant and the whole, immobility and change, self-awareness and a sense of the other are experienced in their discretness as two differing and dialectically joined moments and, precisely through this relation, in their oneness. The cinematic movement-image gives us together and as one unit both the instant (i.e. the smallest perceptual unit of the shot) and the whole (which is our sense of change, flow, and duration).¹³

The music video is grounded in this a-centered unity of the movement-image which allows us a communication in-between. The characteristic modi of such communication are manifest in the music videos and can be understood as creation of a life world in which mediation becomes the reality. Our music video examples will include performance clips as well as concept clips. We shall be viewing two iconographic videos in which the performer is spotlighted: Prince's "You've got the look" and Michael Jackson's "Bad". Both pieces are edited, but you need to see only a few minutes to get the point; the details deserve our attention. In their shortness and compactness music videos reveal a structure often similar to that of a poem. Viewed in its entirety the concept clip "Dear God" from XTC offers a unique opportunity to find out how the problem of theodicy has changed since the time of Leibniz.

Let us now examine music videos within the modern structural perspectives of time, space, matter, language, person, and truth in relation to their postmodern counterparts of presencing, rupture, hyperreality, writing, happening, and exposure.

1. FROM TIME TO PRESENCING
Time in music videos is created by cutting and montage. At first glance, performence clips seem to deal with real time, and concept clips to have more freedom in time disruption.¹⁴ But how do music videos generate a sense of time? The rhythm, the pulsating beat, constitutive of most music videos, defines time. The driving, unrelenting beat, whether of sound and/or the visual beat marked by the rapidity of the image's movement, creates a time without past and future.The " reign of the presence"¹⁵ is obvious and total. Even quotation of the past as Madonna's "Who's that Girl?' is merely material for an overwhelming universal coexistence, a time process of pure moments which could be called presencing.

The power of this presencing in music videos literally wipes out the sense of space. The stage character of the environment makes space appear artificial and interchangeable. The idea of progress which can create space has been abandoned in music videos. The beat, the gestures, the drive may still be rebellious but ultimately go nowhere. Prince's cruising and Michael Jackson's "loose — limbed prowess" demonstrate a stunning formalization of street rap, the art of movement without moving, a flowing with the beat in stillness. XTC's "Dear God" may seem to be narrative in composition and have a beginning and an end, but this impression is contradicted by the video's surrealistic elements. What we have is the presence of a nightmare without end and a narrative continuing on like a broken disk.

2. THE ABSENCE OF SPACE: RUPTURE AND DECENTRALIZATION
A sense of space provides security and helps satisfy our desire to determine our place in the world. Merleau-Ponty points out that space is the distance between the body and the objects which create our own sphere.¹⁶ Emotional distance allows us the experience of being the center. In music videos space is present in absence only, as rupture and decentralization. Immediate access to emotions and images destroys any sense of personal. Behavioral as well as spatial scope have diminshed. The "global village" realizes the end of distance: where barriers have fallen there can be no space. And the ruthless use of even the most expressive symbols has forgotten space. Rupture, experienced through distortion, need not be spectacular, as in heavy metal videos, it can be achieved through subtle changes, all the more effective. The video "Dear God " goes out of tune; this is effected by (a) varying shutter speed, (b) reversing tape direction, and (c) varying playback speed. Relevant to disorientation, Deleuze notes the viewer of cinema is acentered, lacking a fixed point of view. Technical manipulation in music videos and a "floating" viewer together create the rupture of personal space and a spreading out of presence. Temporality has become ever more important, incorporating all that which has formerly the realm of spatiality.

3. THE PERCEIVED WORLD: MATTER AS HYPEREALITY
The slant of distortion is how music videos perceive our being™in-the-world, but this is not a pessimistic view. In fact it reveals a multiperspectivity which gives us more authentic world than the fake narratives of print media and television. The layerings in the beginning of Prince's video create, by superimposition of different perspectives, hyperreality which is according to Merleau-Ponty more real than reality. Out of Michael Jackson's rumble dance on stage of a New York subway platform in which film, music and dance are equally balanced, emerges a coherence in dissonance which is the material side of most music videos. Even "Dear God" is a realistic look-alike, only to turn surrealistic after a few moments.

4. WRITING THE DIFFERENCES OF LANGUAGES
Music videos can be viewed as an example of Jaques Derrida's criticism of our traditional logocentrism with its predominance of the verbal language. The lyrics are composed of jokes and puns, intending to be self ridiculing and confusing. Difference, not identity, is at stake. The equality of verbal, visual, audio, and body language breaks the spell of meaning and reveals the whole of language which is beyond our instrumental grasp. Disconnection, distortion in pitch, and contradiction are on all levels the movens/ stimuli.

Critics have attacked the non-narrative structure of music videos as impotent, unable to create an authentic lifeworld, and as an escape into the abstract. But the fact is that STOP MAKING SENSE creates a life world in its own right experienced and shared by millions who view music videos. Michael Jackson has been accused of "evading reality" and seeking an "occult solution",¹⁷ but his streetwise dialogue is meant to overcome a ghetto reality by stylization. This creates an artificial lifeworld in which communication is split and re-split in an interchange rather than the writing of differences, the play of non-elimination, and changes in perspectives are needed in a lifeworld shaped by the violence of identity.¹⁸

Even the concept videos which have a message do not usually preach it, as we can see in "Dear God"; it is not a straight forward theodicy, but a tricky process of thinking without abstraction.

5. ICONS, PERSONS, AND LIFE HAPPENING
Commonly understood, a person is defined as a certain life history, developing an identity in an intersubjective communication. Perhaps the most startling observation in music videos is that despite the personal iconographic power of the performers, the process of identification is not encouraged. This is not to say that there is no strong business interest in repeating the hero identification attributed to youth culture. The popularity of the "Madonna Style" was notorious and visible through the USA.¹⁹ But there are some significant differences worth noting. Icons such as David Bowie, Prince, Michael Jackson, attempt to diffuse their role model and obliterate (to some extent) race, sex, and age. Icons celebrate the bad and ugly, scorning the dictates of a traditional aesthetic. Michael Jackson looks very much like a yelling women! Involvement in a peer group becomes non-personal; it is no longer an interpersonal but an interfunctional relation, an interchange of performer, viewer, producer, engineer. Music videos suggest a life as life happening, and the icons offer keys to this lifeworld of music videos much closer to art than to so-called reality, that which we conceive to be reality. Make it happen, let it happen! Without history, without future, without present, only happenings exist.

6. THE EXPOSURE OF TRUTH
The play of the revealed and the unrevealed (and the never to be revealed) is the play of truth as disclosure, according to Heidegger.²⁰ Music videos do not intend to be true, and in their elusive concreteness reveal what a direct approach would miss. When our interpretational models of meaning disappear quite a different view of things open up to us. Music videos expose a lifeworld which already exists but is still hidden from a knowledge which knows too much. Does this mean Michael Jackson is exposing the bad as a fundamental, Prince the ambiguity of appearance, and XTC the absurdity of the human condition? Much too simple. Music videos can not be utilised for meaningful messages. The creative how is the "message". Music videos offer an exciting example of a concrete comprehension and critical thinking of a kind which leads to discovery not meaning. Amazement and wonder are not eliminated from this process, on the contrary, they are "traces"(Derrida) of and toward a world on the horizon of technology.

IV. CONCLUSIONS

Should mankind live to see its future (which is not very likely) music videos can be considered as the first hints of a lifeworld shaped by the conditions of a fully developed technology. We pride ourselves on our state-of-art technologies, blind to the actual primitiveness of these advancements. Present technology is still in its earliest development stages. The high technology of coming generations is a self-evident life technology functioning as naturally and imperceptibly as the techniques of breathing and walking. Outwardly this technological world organized by a computer society, urban living, automated production, genetically engineered organisms, etc. will appear much more the same as our world today. But the human attitude will be totally different. That which compells us to live in unrecognition, as instruments, that which makes our life inhuman, can by the same token develop our authentic human potential, given the opertunity to enfold within a non-instrumental manner of living. Human beings will be considered — as were the ancient greeks — to be able to assume responsibility for their "bios" and act free as artists, whatever their work may actually be. This life would be a truely artificial life and the fulfillment of humanity. This life style will be characterized by a wider range of life techniques which we cannot yet imagine — but it is likely that music videos will expose to us some of the future modes of living. Like Moses, we shall never set foot in that promised land, but music videos, although only an accompanying phenomenon of contemporary life, give us a strobe-light glimpse of a lifeworld already here but not ours.

Notes

• ¹ Marshall McLuhan: îUnderstanding Media. New York : Signet books 1964.
  
• ² Neil Postman: Amusing Ourselves to Death. New York: Viking Books, 1985.
  
• ³ E.Ann Kaplan: "History, the Historical Spectator and Gender Address", in : Music Television. Journal of Communication Inquiry, Winter 1980(10/1), p.6.
  
• ⁴ This term is used to describe the unity of film, television, music, photography, and video. Cf. Gilles Deleuze: Cinema 1,Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press,1986, chap 4.
  
• ⁵ Maurice Merleau-Ponty : Phenomenology of Preception, trans. Colin Smith, London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1962.
  
• ⁶ Maurice Merleau-Ponty : "Film and the New Psychology", in:Sense and non-Sense, ed. Dreyfus, Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1964, p.48ff.
  
• ⁷ Carl Mitcham: "Responsibility and Technology: The Expanding Relationship", in: Technology and Resposibility, ed.Paul Durbin,Dordrecht: Reidel, 1987, p. 5-39 ; cf. now: Wolfgang Schirmacher: "Homo Generator: The Challenge of Gene Technology", in the same volume, p. 203-205.
  
• ⁸ Barry Walters: "Like it or Not : MTV Lives", in: The Village Voice, June 2, 1987, p.39.
  
• ⁹ US, March 9, 1987, p.54.
  
• ¹⁰ Allan Bloom: The Closing of the American Mind, New York:Simon & Schuster, 1987.
  
• ¹¹ Kuan-Hsing Cheng: "MTV: The (Dis)Appearance of Postmodern Semiosis, or the Cultural Politics of Resistance", in: Journal of Communication Inquiry, Winter 1986 (10/1), p.66
  
• ¹² Lisa A. Lewis: "Female Address in Music Videos", in: Journal of Communication Inquiry, Winter 1987 (11/1), p.74.
  
• ¹³ Cf. Deleuze : Cinema 1, op. cit.
  
• ¹⁴ Cf. B. Walters: "Like it or Not: MTV lives", op. cit.
  
• ¹⁵ David J. Tetzlaff: "MTV and the Politics of Postmodern Pop", in: Journal of Communication Inquiry, Winter 1986 (10/1), p.83.
  
• ¹⁶ Cf. Merleau-Ponty: "Film and the New Psychology", op. cit.
  
• ¹⁷ Stephan Holden: "The Dark Side of Peter Pan", in: The New YorkTimes, Sunday, Sept. 13, 1987 (Pop View).
  
• ¹⁸ Jaques Derrida: Margins of Philosophy, ed. A. Bass, Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1982, p.3f.
  
• ¹⁹ Lewis, op. cit.,p.80.
  
• ²⁰ Martin Heidegger: " The Turning", in: Heidegger: The Question Concerning Technology, trans. William Lovitt, New York: Harper & Row, 1977, p. 36-49.
  

My special thanks to Carol Froehlich, Producer, BMG New York, for her assistance in the selection and editing of music videos discussed in this paper.

What are Structured Settlements?

Historically, personal injury or product liability lawsuits were settled by the exchange of a single lump sum cash payment in return for the release of claim in a lawsuit. Under this arrangement, it was up to the individual and their families to manage the large initial sum and to use it to provide for the victim's medical and income needs over their entire lifetime. Structured settlements laws were created to help reduce the difficulties faced in these types of situations and to help provide the claimant and their families with long-term financial security.

Structured settlement payment agreements are unique in that they focus more on the beneficiary's financial needs and may provide payments for a certain period of time or throughout the injured persons life time. Formally recognized by the U.S. Congress in 1982, structured settlements are voluntary compensation agreements between the injured person and a defendant(s).

Structured settlements enable the beneficiary to receive a series of periodic payments instead of a cash lump sum. Most settlement agreements are entered into privately (e.g., a pre-trial settlement) while others, usually involving minors or persons deemed mentally unfit, may be created by a court order.

Structured settlements are a creative solution in that the payment amounts and the future annuity timetable are completely up to the parties negotiating the structured agreement. Rather than receiving a single lump sum, victims can receive a customized stream of annuity payments. Using structured settlements, annuity payments may be in equal amounts at regular intervals, or they may be paid in periodic lump sums. Larger intermittent payments are sometimes used to provide for anticipated future needs such as funding; a college education, medical equipment replacement (motorized wheelchairs), or planning for retirement. It is important to note however, once the parties have agreed to the structured settlement annuity amounts and timetable, the plaintiff cannot make changes. When unexpected financial emergencies arise individuals may consider selling all or some of their payments for a lump sum of cash. To receive more information please fill out the form on the right.

Properly structuring payment benefits is very important. Most victims and their lawyers know that structured settlements are tax-free to the injured party. There are other factors however that you and your financial advisor should consider. Special tax ramifications on the investment income of the settlement proceeds need to be considered. In some cases, receipt of a large sum can result in loss of public benefits. It is important for the victim that the structured settlement benefits are properly structured so that the principal can be invested, and that the investment income remains tax free to the injured party. Structuring payments properly can also avoid the loss of public benefits. These are all important financial considerations.