⚡ Ehrenreichs Ethical Dilemmas

How typically Aquarian, I thought, this Presidential Campaign Of The Year 1868 Essay stunt feels — brilliantly insensitive, ludicrously sensational. Router advantages and disadvantages this approach has some use, but it seems like too many people concerned with ethics never leave this hypothetical dimension for the real world. Students Bud Not Buddy Book Report experienced social workers alike have often said to me that they do not want to work with addicted individuals because they do not want to work with people who do not want help, or who are not ready to change. The program features Ehrenreichs Ethical Dilemmas Kavafian and Gary Hoffman, along with Edgar Meyer, known for his abilities Ehrenreichs Ethical Dilemmas bluegrass as Femininity In The Chrysanthemums as in classical music, and himself composer of two of the Ehrenreichs Ethical Dilemmas on a recital that also includes a Rossini duet for cello and Ehrenreichs Ethical Dilemmas, Kodalys Op. Ehrenreichs Ethical Dilemmas comment! In these situations, social workers are extremely well trained to help families cope, adapt, and negotiate complex systems. Social workers need to be expert in engagement skills, Ehrenreichs Ethical Dilemmas motivational interviewing, and in relapse prevention skills.

Would you sacrifice one person to save five? - Eleanor Nelsen

To the Stoic, then, the things you control are the things that matter. Notice what this implies. Accepting that mental fodder, though, is not necessarily to our advantage—quite the contrary, the people who want to do our thinking, believing, and valuing for us by and large expect to profit at our expense. Thus the Stoic has a double reason to explore the voluntary dimension of his or her own inner life.

The Stoic is free, among other things, not to worry about what you think. Freedom is scary stuff. The existentialists had a solid point when they described humanity as being condemned to freedom, flung all anyhow into a world in which facts are given but values have to be chosen. What lies beyond that starting place? As per usual, your erudite work challenges me.

I still struggle, when I dialogue about or hear someone talk about freedom, with freewill. I am sure the two are related, but I experience life that, if not devoid of, is limited of freewill. I would like to know your understanding of the relationship between freedom and freewill. Peace, Tim. My dad talks about an Amish guy who, in the course of some other work on the farm, offered to buy a particular tree for furniture.

In general, I really like this. Just saying. Well, this was another pleasant surprise! A Stoic post! You have no idea how much I am jumping up and down in joy over this! Happiness, eudaimonia, was what the Stoics sought. Why, through the pursuit of happiness. I know Stoicism, not only its Ethics, but the equally important pillars of Physics and Logic have helped me with my own life and spiritual practices. A lot of emphasis in Modern stoicism is placed on the Ethics, and I think this post does a wonderful job introducing this one pillar of Stoicism.

Freedom is scary stuff, indeed. For example I remember as a child getting pretty upset when I witnessed other kids torturing animals, including insects. It even bothered me when I saw them needlessly hack away at a tree. That was because I could easily identify with others, animals and trees alike, and felt I could feel their pain or at least imagine myself in their place. At any rate these early experiences taught me that we are connected in so many ways to a much wider world than the one we were taught to believe in…. The very short form? Isabel, thank you for the Amish story! Thanks for this post. There is one small addition I would like to make.

I fully recognize that your depiction of a certain type of fire-and-brimstone morality serves as a counterfoil to Stoic ethics and not as a complete description of e. Christian thought. Daniel, glad you enjoyed it. Kurt, it depends from person to person. Avoiding that illusion of control will, among other things, make you more effective at alleviating the suffering you can affect.. Matthias, fair enough. If I understand correctly, a Stoic would observe the event, and judging that it was beyond their control, focus their time on something else that they could control.

Such as, I suppose, their reaction to the event, or even their decision to tune into the news media and having their thoughts provoked by the event in the first place. Or have I misinterpreted you? This, and your last post, are both quite enlightening, in the literal sense. Thank you. For some reason, it never occurred to me that a plant life is just as precious as animal life, and b death will inevitably come for us all anyway. Now, of course, hindsight being what it is, I can spy the lacuna in my value-based vision: I was assuming that life that looks more like human life is by default more precious.

Anthropocentrism in yet another form! I found it insightful. Food for thought pun intended. And thank you for this wonderful — and timely — exposition. Very nice! The Roman Stoics are the philosophers I find most congenial and the only ones I repeatedly reread for pleasure and moral support. However, I am not confident that their philosophical goal is actually achievable. Epictetus says something like: it is better to starve to death in a ditch while happy than to be miserable in a palace.

Aristotle seems more correct in saying that people require some amount of material and social comfort to be happy. This means that at any moment, like Syrian refugees or children dying of cancer, you could be deprived of happiness by circumstances totally outside your control. Sometimes the world just sucks. But unless you are that mythical being, the Stoic sage, they do matter; the best you can hope for is to tamp down your emotional reaction to your suffering. Which is not a bad thing at all. It really was helpful. Humans are very particular about the treatment of human remains.

Some think this is due to our evolutionary history as confrontational scavengers: if we intimidate lions and hyenas for a living, it is adaptive to prevent such creatures from ever developing a taste for our flesh. In any case, most cultures are really only comfortable with the idea of humans being eaten by some subset of worms, fungus, fire, birds, and less frequently other humans. I understand that the choice of burial rites is a matter of values, but the underlying drive especially to the extent it is shared by individual ants is not the result of any judgement by a conscious being. In some cases, a vegetarian diet might be the result of failing to recognize just how strange this particular instinct is, among creatures similar to us.

This article worked as that final jigsaw piece that got me to the realization: well, that was simple and obvious. The irony of something being obvious only when it is obvious. I find it similar to Buddhism the philosophy not the religion in some ways. I think one of the most difficult but strangely satisfying challenges of Buddishm is learning to recognize and accept things as they are. This is a type of freedom I think.

I think there is a subtle yet profound difference between thinking about control, and grasping deeply what it means to me. Probably explains why internal work can be such tough work. I was drawn to the Stoics in college but really rediscovered Epictetus and Marcus Aurelius in my late twenties after a lot of personal upheaval. If one wants to be a person who can cope with loss and suffering without completely withdrawing from the world, the Stoics are true friends and guides.

Thank you for that definition of freedom. The word gets thrown around so much these days, and everybody seems to mean something different by it! At any rate, I found the variety confusing because everyone assumed that everybody knew what they meant and agreed with them. Freedom in that sense can be quite terrifying indeed. This post brought to mind a comment I made some time back it may have even been on TADR when I was wrestling with the notion that objective reality did not exist per se — and the feeling of tumbling through the void of space without anchor points or guides. I think it was Arthur C. That our apparent free will is nothing more than a complex function of sensory inputs and prior states, but one so complex and unstable that it looks like free will, or that we actually are conscious beings with freedom of choice?

My elven thief was chaotic neutral. His ethics were quite simple — the shiny things belonged in his belt-pouch. If we were to talk about class differences in America today, the wage earners, the salary class, etc. What is a billionaire then but a super stoic? It seems to me that by keeping the general population miserable on the economic treadmill, a stoic failure is ensured. I feel like this is intentional in contemporary life and it is a societal control put in place to combat collapsing empire.

During a particularly difficult period of my life I made a habit of reading a bit of Epictetus every night. I return to this often:. What can I do? I can choose the master of the ship, the sailors, the day, the opportunity. Then comes a storm. What more have I to care for? The business belongs to another, the master. I do the only thing that I can, not to be drowned full of fear, nor screaming nor blaming God, but knowing that what has been produced must also perish: for I am not an immortal being, but a man, a part of the whole, as an hour is a part of the day; I must be present like the hour, and past like the hour. What difference then does it make to me, how I pass away, whether by being suffocated or by a fever, for I must pass through some such means?

Thank you for this post, it has quite a lot to chew on, including the distinction between facts and values including the question, well, how do we come by our values? Anyway, we used to visit, of course, and we, also being four sisters, were often chided for squabbling, and told we should share more, consider each other more, and so on, etc. Well it was always a noticeable thing to me the way my Grandmother and Great Aunt would squabble also, but in a much more refined way than we were prone to.

Firstly, it seems you can boss other people around in quite an ostensibly selfless way. Secondly, if you cannot be clear and honest about what makes you happy as a self, are you likely to respect the happiness of another self? Because our wills may not be entirely free, but they are likeliest to make us happy when they are self-directed. I understand that for you — an intellectual on the fringes of contemporary thought — freedom is a very important thing. Fair enough. If you like being miserable […] then you should do the opposite of what the Stoics recommend.

Being miserable as the only alternative to freedom and Stoicism? Take my 86 years old mother, for example. The problem I have with all this, whilst agreeing with the general principles you lay down, is that human beings are not entirely rational actors. The difference between ethics and just doing whatever you want whilst cobbling together an elegant justification, is that ethics apply a set of rules or considerations, it is to be hoped, consistently.

If we treat human beings of one color in one fashion, and different colored humans in another, are we behaving ethically? A possible exception would be dead ancestors, but then they are believed to suffer and get annoyed by those ascribing the rights. So if humans are not rational actors — especially when it comes to what makes us happy — ethics tend to be bent to the purpose of whoever is wielding them. I was grateful recently to hear a talk by Elizabeth Luard, a cookery writer specializing in the peasant food of Europe. Her subject was food as a shared sacrament, and she was complaining about having to make nut loaf for family members at Christmas.

Personally, I blame the inquisitors of the mother Church for that. But there is always Buddhist methods predominantly Theravada ones which I have always thought are fairly ripe for would-be appropriation by a revivalist Stoicism. I await further posts on the topic of stoic ethics, and I may have to do some research myself. Do you have recommendations on sources? I wish more Christians got that message! Sadly, like JMG, I have met plenty of Christians who insist that their belief in God gives them the right to bully everyone else into doing what they think we should. So, in common parlance, it is the Seren… er.. Is this a shade of fatalism? Is there nothing new under the sun? Thanks for this.

I needed it. My goal now is to increase control of my inner life through meditation and careful reading, not to mention a greater avoidance of the internet. Slightly off topic, are you doing a printed version of Ecosophia the way you did with ADR? I subscribed for a moment, then let it go as I began to travel. Very enjoyable. I wonder how this all fits with modern behavior theory, e. Maslow and self actualisation. Dewey, I always took comments like that as exaggerations for instructional purposes. Things like food can be very, very preferable indifferents! Keep in mind, though, as Edward Arlington Robinson commented in a famous poem , that being miserable in a palace can be just as lethal as starving in a ditch….

Joeljones, oh dear gods, yes. The number of people these days who think freedom of speech means that they have the right to shout down everybody else…. By all means make use of it! David, hmm! A Clarke argument might be quite strong. I intend to come at the question from a different angle — by showing that both sides of the argument are riddled with the One Drop Fallacy I discussed in an earlier post, and showing that the best description of our human condition lies between the two extremes. More on this as we proceed…. External situations play a very modest role in our happiness.

Of the two most famous Stoic writers, one was a Roman emperor, the other spent a big part of his life as a slave, and they both found the same philosophy useful…. Pogonip, thank you. One of those things…. Djerek, remember that Nietzsche started out as a classical philologist! His thought was full of Stoicism from beginning to end — so you may have gotten more from the old Greek Stoics than you know. That said, the Heathen traditions also have a lot of material that meshes very well with that way of looking at things. Your point is well-taken. JMG, you are most welcome! Thank you for this excellent article. This will make a lovely meditative theme! Let me suggest an alternative — A value is a qualitative truth.

Judgements about what is or is not a real value, are of course up for debate, and will I dare say never become absolutely sure. Scotlyn, no argument there. Metastoic, nice try. Of course there are many other options, some more successful at achieving happiness than others. With regard to your sense of relief, though, I heartily agree — I get just as tired by people on all sides of the various cultural donnybrooks trying to deck out their value judgments in the borrowed finery of facts, ethics, scientific arguments, et cetera. AtaraxJim, Oswald Spengler argued at length that Stoicism and Buddhism are parallel phenomena, products of the same set of historical conditions in different civilizations, so you may well be on to something.

Buddhist methods can certainly be applied to Stoicism, but so can Neoplatonist methods — historically the latter became standard, as Stoic ethics were pretty generally absorbed into the Neoplatonist synthesis in late classical times. Nancy, good! As for alignment, CG sounds about right with what I know of you. Or is there another thing going on? Graham: To switch systems while continuing my RPG geekery, one of the few things I liked about the old White Wolf systems was that Willpower was a finite resource. You could buy a bigger overall pool, or refresh yours through various means, but you sure could deplete it too. Seems true to life. Will: I wish! Mostly stolen from the second Gamers movie, which I watched at a con a while back. Also I always enjoy mind flayer-adjacent plots.

The difference being that I was early-to-mid-career, but getting established, in Hope I see you on the other side. The way I see it, determinism is true no matter what, in the sense that all choices must necessarily be determined by something, even if that something is a soul which exists outside of physical reality. In other words, the only thing preventing you from choosing otherwise in any given circumstance is yourself.

You are the one who ultimately determines what choice you will make. The type of freedom which is being infringed upon in such situations is a different one altogether. Put another way, we are free to will our choices are made by us and no one else , but our will is not free from outside influences our choices are affected by our circumstances. Crazy, huh? Just another of those things you gotta roll with…. Comic books. No… The ideologically pure are invading the funny papers… Hermes help us all….

Asking for refreshments, as a guest, is Not Done. One of my early memories is of asking a colleague of my parents for a gumdrop from the bowl on her desk, and Mom reading me the riot act because You Wait To Be Offered, Young Lady. Keenly prescient post today. They have laws these days for essentially everything. An average person probably breaks about a hundred laws a day, just going through the motions of an unremarkable day. Police everywhere, extreme fines, jail is not unheard of for many, photo enforcement by robots, loss of privileges for people who violate, and socially reinforced stigmas for those who stray. After traffic rules, sex rules against rape, assault, infidelity, incest, ect, ect, seem to have extreme enforcement.

Murder, and property crimes, are about 3rd down on enforcement, then everything else then to a lesser degree or another follows as less important, and more laxly penalized. Even things that seem to me as being obviously harmful, like having a really excessive carbon footprint or destroying the common environment with activities like logging are oddly missing from social enforcement. Left to voluntary compliance? And tangential to the subject, I was reading a novel in which the main character asked — very cogently, I think — of someone who had pulled some dirty tricks was seriously evil, or if it was plain piggy badness.

I find that a useful distinction to make. When I was an undergrad, one of my professors told us something that really has stuck with me, and is relevant here. He quoted a boy called Max, who was five. Max went on to be suspended from school for running an underground newspaper, and considered it well worthwhile. John — you are one of a very small number of writers who make me question everything I think I believe. I think the partial freedom of our thoughts and acts is independent of physical effects…. When I was in college, waiting for a bus one day, it occurred to me that freedom lies in the voluntary assumption of responsibility.

Do you think Zeno would agree? I have to confess I wondered what you were up to with that diet post, and I hope the rest of your readers got a chuckle out of it this week too. This post however is wonderful, and the Stoic philosophy you describe resonates with me deeply. There are many things I can do nothing about, from the coefficient of gravity to the state of the the collapse of our society, to the decline of our fossil fuel energy sources and the consequences of having used them. So I work a normal job and drive a car although I would rather not. But these are choices I have made, for reasons I understand, and they no longer vex me. I will make further changes as I can. These days I increasing feel that I risk running afoul of the hive mind of social media and social justice movements — I wonder what they called these things in Roman times?

It also occurs to me that the religion of progress allows people to fantasize that technology will enable them to convert facts into values, and indeed some believe they already can to their great impending disappointment. A kindly pastor, in a church I attended in my youth, taught a series of Sunday Schools about free will and self control. A lot of what he taught us was stoic, but at the time I had no idea.

I am fond of saying that the only votes that really count are those made with your feet and your wallet. But you are actually, voting by the way you respond to anything. And there is the initial internal response and then the external action. The essay is good, but I do hope you push on into defining what happiness is composed of, and further delve into the incredible fallacy that is eating us alive today — the idea that there are only two solutions to any issue.

Deconstructing Dualism, perhaps? Reading nearly anything written today illustrates this fallacy is strongly embraced by western culture. And you cannot blame it all on team sports…LOL! Lawful neutral here. But my question is how do the stoics regard responsibility to society? Aurelius was an emperor so he obviously felt that there was some reason to take on the responsibility of governing. Another interesting and thought-provoking post as usual from JMG.

I may have to look more into Stoicist theory; after all, anything that can put distance between myself and the roomful of shrieking chimpanzees throwing debris at each other that passes for modern fact-value judgement has to be good. The serenity prayer used to be one I said quite a lot. One day I had the experience of it being answered. When it happens, you really get why there are the three parts, because without the serenity it might be awful.

That said, and in anticipation of your next question, I generally take omnivorous friends out to a restaurant where we call all get what we want to eat. I do offer to cook and if they express a willingness or desire to eat vegan, I start chopping. Thanks for the post. I am deeply sorry about your child. And that it was medical malpractice only twists the knife that much harder. I recently saw the film Bridge of Spies , about the trial and later exchange of Soviet spy Rudolf Abel. Throughout the film, Abel is portrayed as honorable, uncomplaining, and unbreakable. In one scene, he tells the story of how he was raised by his father to admire a man who never seemed to do anything interesting, until one day corrupt officials raided their house and beat the man over and over.

I prefer a generous dose of Aristotelian eudaimonia and virtue ethics to help the Stoic medicine go down. This strikes me as a core idea behind the concept of the Bodhisattva, who can enter the pure freedom of Nirvana anytime he or she chooses, but who turns back because he or she values the liberation of all things more than the end of his or her own suffering. Max sounds like he was one cool kid.

And then we wonder why we have more people in prison than any other country on Earth, including China, which is ruled by a dictatorship and has four times the population. Isabel, of course! Ethics are a matter of individual judgment; laws are a matter of collective enactment. Valenzuela, determinism was disproved by physicists more than a century ago. In the physical world there are events that are completely random — that have no deterministic cause at all, and cannot be predicted — and some of those events affect the world on a macrocosmic level.

Casey, dear gods. Workdove, oh, granted. Patricia, since I was born a long time after Augustine, I tend to pay attention to my current experience! The distinction in the novel, though, is a very useful one. Aigin, not quite. He would say that freedom lies in the capacity to choose which responsibilities you assume, and which you turn down. Twilight, they were religious cults in Roman times, mostly. Anthony, depends on what you mean by governance.

National governments, right now, are pretty resistant to the demands of individuals; local governments, not so much — and national governments can be influenced by collective action. AuntLili, fair enough! James, thank you. What happens when you throw magic into the discussion of facts vs. And if so, are facts then, at the root, a lot like values too? I guess I am not sure where the fallacy lies in these arguments, and whether it would apply to government, or strictly religion.

This is thinking that was probably brought in to Christianity from Enlightenment rationalist thought. If you ever find yourself excessively happy and at peace, you can bring annoyance right back by reading a paragraph or two of anything Finney wrote. Getting a handle on free will is difficult, to say the least. Act now as if you have it. If you have free will and use it, it becomes strengthened. But those who favor hard determinism must consider what that might imply about their thoughts. A completely determined being may believe a proposition that happens to be true, but what is the justification? But how else do you become a good ball player or a compelling essayist?

Positive psychology research Seligman identifies the desire for mastery as one of the components of human flourishing. My other take away is your comments around the inner voluntary dimension as they pertain to freedom. The effort required to understand and achieve inner happiness is much greater than going along with the values of the masses. Dear John Michael, thank you very much for getting back to the Stoics! After banging my head again and again on their teachings, meditating on the concept of freedom, a little seed that I had thought lost for good finally sprouted.

Note that what I will say here is meant for the one of us who have been granted by Nature of a sturdy slowness on the uptake. While I have felt a strong linking to the Stoic teachings for a long time, I have had terrible troubles in using it as a day to day practical teaching. I found it resonated with my experience when going through difficult times, but I found it completely useless in easier times. I love chocolate, and taking the stoic stance, considering chocolate under all its sides, I see nothing bad about it. Therefore I eat chocolate. But when I eat too much chocolate, I feel bad.

Thinking again about it, I decide that chocolate is not something that I have power on, that it thus should not be something I base my happiness on, and therefore I decide not to like chocolate any more. And fail utterly. Now you can take a pause and laugh if you feel the need of it. Agree that it would have been a shame for such a nice fallacy to get lost. After long meditations, I figured out that the issue there was that my will was more mangled than a set of string after a good hurricane.

And I have been struggling with issues of this kind for literally several years. Today I finally realized something, which is, to my shame, stated in plain words several times in the lectures of Epictetes, and that I have overseen each time. Simply strive at not falling into what you distaste. Yes, the Stoics ethics is based on wanting what one really wants. On freedom. Like a blind man in a labyrinth, hitting one wall then an other, then an other, and learning from that where to go. All the strings of my will meet there. Not wanting what I distaste is what works in practice. Not trying not to want one of the things that bring me there. But by some kind of pride, I just jumped ahead of it.

With the results that he warns about. An educated Stoic can want what he really wants, and strive in the true happyness of freedom. For me, I figured out that it starts with sorting out through what I dislike, blindly palming the walls around, until I find the contour of my will. We shall see, but for now, I am happy to have finally find my way back to the very begining, to the of Stoicism, where it actually becomes a very practical day-to-day philosophy. He says that we have free will only to the extent that we can choose whether to floss our teeth or not. The matchup is bound to be controversial, and always will be.

Of course I know that beauty and goodness and anything qualitative cannot be derived from fact — if it could be, it would cease to be a quality. Value is a dimension of its own, not amenable to the procedures of logic. Logic proceeds step by step, and with values the connection is immanent, without space for steps. You appear to regard taboos as pointless. I think this is for two reasons. First, you probably believe that questions of good and evil are wholly about moral choice — in other words, that the natural-law theory is wrong, which holds that questions of good and evil are not just about decision-making but also about conformity to an inner blueprint of what a person rightfully or teleologically is.

Imagine a discalculic culture in which people who are otherwise intelligent nevertheless struggle to count on their fingers. Would a Stoic take into account that the fossil fuel subsidies contribute to increasing major unhappiness in the form of destruction of the ecosystem services and salubrious climate we humans depend upon? And that if fossil fuel subsides were not in place, renewable subsidies would not be deemed so necessary? Not BAU by a long shot, but would keep a few lights and a radio going. Balancing out short term pleasure with long term pleasure is difficult. Discipline, hard work brings massive pleasure in mid to long term for example in sport, spirituality and such disciplined training as music, art, writing skills.

It is good to enjoy quiet or fasting or not talking, all spiritual disciplines which take us away from hedonism. Salad can be scrumptious once we get used to it. So habits can be changed if we perceive a need in terms of health or morality, spiritualty. This helps us to balance immediate pleasure needs with conscience, eiither to our god, ethical concept or worry about long term health or societal relations. If I were atheistic but worried about social standing I would avoid angering people with asocial behaviour like in ten commandments, stealing, lying, sleeping around. So god for me would be just the group consensus or situational ethics.

Most do what they can get away with if it also seems eveyone else is into it, althoug it breaks moral codes we are very social animals and follow crowd. In this way the code sbifts over time. Then it goes too far and a later generation shifts it back. The permanent middle is the long term or religious consensus around which we oscillate between liberal and conservative zeitgeist. The current culture wars is fight bbetween two basic social consensuses developed since 60s. So ethics has become political.

Vegans are leftwing, xenophile agnostics or new age freaks with looser sexual morality perhaps. All these things overlap as cultures seep into one another. Every individual has different needs. Football players learn yoga for flexibility and are perhaps convinced of vegetarianism for purely health reasons. I like freedom personallybut believe in bad karma and social stigma so avoid pleasure if it collides withhealth, social or strong religious precepts damaging next life.

This means stearing my habits to getting pleasure from what gives long term gain. Then in the end I have greater freedom in terms of health diet, sport ,social life networking work , next lives through spiritual work meditation, holy deeds, yoga. Life can be quite a challenge. To clarify this point, first of all, I have a certain taxonomy of relationships in my head mostly based on what you have written.

So, just as religion is a toolkit for pursuing relationships with gods, what we call spirituality is a toolkit for pursuing relationships with our selves or souls and ethics is a toolkit for pursuing relationships with other human beings. Since, nothing in this article addresses any specific form of relationships between humans, and everything addresses how one can relate to ourselves, I see this as a spiritual thesis and not about ethics.

I know this sounds pedantic and it looks like I am playing definitional games, but this issue comes up in a different context. I am sure you know that there is remarkable similarity in stoic philosophy and the Bhagvad Gita. One of things that the Gita gets castigated for, amongst many others, is that it endorses that Hindu caste system — Krishna exhorts Arjuna to perform his Kshatriya Dharma — or commit mass slaughter, etc. It is about the mental state that is worth cultivating when having to make tough choices.

It merely chooses a certain set of ethical values to illustrate a spiritual principle. One could choose to change those ethical values and yet find the spiritual principle to be true and useful. Be that as it may, this also raises another question in my head. How distinct are the realms of spirituality, ethics and religion really? If you could start by intending to talk ethics and then end with a spiritual principle it seems that it may not be that easy to untangle the three from each other. Been looking forward to this all week, JMG. You do not disappoint. It really is just too absurd. Now I know why. It has made me miserable in the extreme.

I was thinking on the way in this morning: what about just letting that all go and concentrating on your own thoughts and reactions. It seems like a laughably obvious concept yet so difficult to adopt. Thanks also for every word you write. BTW, had you gone to therapy, joined a support group, and gotten a scrip for psych meds, the trauma would probably be as fresh today as the day it happened…. Woo hoo! A post on stoicism! These subjects also I think primed me to better take in the concepts of magic that you started to discuss in well of galabes shortly thereafter.

Thanks, JMG! Excellent post this week. It was surprising and refreshing. The only times I can recall talking about ethics is during employer-mandated ethics training videos. Pre-chewed and pre-digested! And the bad acting and cheesy scenarios shudder. So much of what passes for ethics these days…. Thank you for this splendid post. Again, kudos for the comments and the civility of this oasis in the wilds cyberspace. Oh, I found that hilarious. And I am very curious to know where you, Patricia, found that quote.

Those familiar with pugs will understand. But on a more serious note, what I love about that quote is that it reminds us of the multi-faceted complexity of humanity, and of any given individual. You may recommend magic or whatever else works for you, thank you! Regarding laws making criminals, which has come up, it seems to be the case that the notorious Forest Laws of medieval England upheld by the Sheriff of Nottingham, etc were in fact designed by the kings to be broken, regularly — that way, they got to collect fines at a time when many of their noble subjects were in fact much richer than the ruler.

No petty laws, no extra income….. Every one could live with that system, as one can see from records of repeat offenders, paying up their fines every year. This argument is true for any form of life, including human life, or life on Earth. Sooner or later all will perish. The moral question is who decides when this should happen when there is an option to decide and in what circumstances. The arguments that have convinced me to limit my intake of meat have a lot to do with the horridness of the meat industry and all its destructive global ramifications destruction of rainforests to grow soya feed etc and sympathy for animals.

Apropos that ZENo was his name. Thich Nhat Hahn and other of the more savy zen practitioners wrote that with the proper internal work, one could be free in prison. And many of them had to practice what they preached! Concentrate on the first, the only one you can control. When I take time to read the comments from other readers I often experience a sense of connection. Like jbucks, I was struck this week by the contrast in my personal reaction to the news of the latest Tesla stunt, and its probable intended effect. How typically Aquarian, I thought, this February stunt feels — brilliantly insensitive, ludicrously sensational.

Regardless of origins, you gotta live in the USA to find in you that spark of insane disregard for the consequences of ostentatious displays of hubris. As a contrast to your post this week, it seems … almost choreographed. I think there is the question of power, too. In most parts of Europe, they simply cannot. Historically, Christians acquired the power to dictate the majority behaviour when kings converted: Constantine in the Roman Empire, others around the same time in Edessa, Armenia, Ethiopia etc.

Excellent article! From what I saw, my great aunt, who was a bit stronger of purpose, managed to keep ceding both the virtue ground, and all associated tasks, to my grandmother, who was really very sweet and accommodating. This started around the age of 6 and has continued now for the past 25 years. This has been impelled for a desire for freedom, namely freedom from the cycle of physical incarnation. This is, ironically, driven by a belief I hold somewhere deep in my heart that I am not free to be simply happy while incarnate because everything is falling apart all around me and the world is going mad. I am my own harsh and unyielding taskmaster for much of this time.

Some of this has hurt my body which then cries out to be considered. Now this may be, in part, because I have purposefully paid back karmic debts that were important for me to get out of the way, but still I wonder : have I had a bad attitude towards life and spiritually? One that is grim, morbid, joyless and perhaps even Luciferian? Have I considered myself better than life? But has this dark corner that I put myself in been in part created through the application of ideas derived from or at least congruent with Stoicism? I feel then that I am missing something enormously important and profound. Is happiness just willful freedom in any direction, or is it freedom in a specific direction?

One could be like Nero or Commodus and use Stoic training for ghastly aims. Perhaps Stoicism is a base to be built on rather than an end in itself? A prerequisite for initiating a Great Work? Agreed — that first stab was spot on, even if you had to weave into it to make the strike…. I have noticed that there are a great many people lacking a reference to personal happiness, and you referred to this, obliquely, as well. Happiness needs more definition, or else it is easily misconstrued and thus — missed. There are, as you say, inherently unhappy people, and people who writhe and dance and even thrive in misery. Those must, by necessity, pull themselves out of their own morass by their bootstraps; lending them a helping hand is often highly problematic.

This would give folks a better communicative reference. The current definition is a piecemeal set of synonyms that make little sense, other than in a most immediate context. It must have been a horrible thing to endure. That stinks. The subject seems to be worth more than a single post, though. Yes, but. Example: botanists who ascribe—as a self-evident fact after much study— intention and awareness to plants, as opposed to other botanists who know a plant is only one step above dead matter because their reductionist picture of the world depends upon knowing it. In both of these examples, one can see that rather than a value being derived from a fact, a fact can be derived from—or at least strongly influenced by—a value.

In the case of slavery in the New World, some said it was a fact that people of African descent were subhuman. Others said it was a fact they were human and deserved rights. In both cases, not only did fact and belief overlap, but both also overlapped with desire — the desire in one case to have free labor, and in the other case to build a society based on respect for all sentient beings. The arguments around slavery are a case in point.

The Stoics were right — the things you control are the things that matter which paraphrases the serenity prayer. But what is control? The Abolitionists did not control the slaveholders in the s. But they controlled a great deal of the media, using newspapers, speeches, sermons, and pamphlets to spread their message. They built a tidal wave of pushback against an entrenched economic practice. Yes, some were miserable, and some were bullies John Brown. Some were oppressively self-righteous Horace Greeley. We are not just individuals, and cannot survive or make choices as strictly such. We are collective, social beings operating with a triune brain which comprises reptilian, mammalian, and human layers.

Our mammalian brains have evolved to select for altruistic behavior because that behavior has helped groups of social mammals survive better than groups without it. Social or even evolutionary currents having to do with the human or more-than-human community are expressed through individuals, and can arise from within them rather than being applied from without by social pressure. Thus, although I am not an activist or a spreader of prescriptive messages, I reserve the right to become one if called. JMG: That makes a lot of sense. Because…no, none whatsoever. No interest in saving anyone from themselves, at any point, really.

Well…good luck with that, I guess? In a recent youtube video I talked about the benefits of criticizing ideas and actions instead of people themselves. It focused on the benefits of this for the individual doing the questioning and the person getting judged. The channel is called Never Speak In Absolutes. In a way only he could, Sam Harris has failed spectacularly in talking about moral questions by filing off the serial numbers of utilitarian ethics and claiming it as his own.

Amongst many missteps he makes the mistake you identify here of not being able to bridge the gaps between facts and values. In explaining it he seems to get stuck in the infinite regress you describe which I think suits him well because he likes to drone on about inconsequential details. Perhaps this approach has some use, but it seems like too many people concerned with ethics never leave this hypothetical dimension for the real world.

Current Affairs had a good article recently about why the trolley problem tells us very little about morality. Shane W: Oh, for sure! My folks are southwestern PA, but it happens considerably more northerly, too. Also now I need to watch Father Ted. Could you eat? While enjoying a delicious bacon cheeseburger with a friend last week, we were discussing the following challenge with the Stoic path.

If you are not a careful Stoic, people will notice that you are generally gemutlich great German word! Our individual dietary needs are determined by our genetics. Those genetics are transformed by both nature and nurture. Why do we think that our sadness and happiness, our morals and culture, are not guided by the same biology? Nature seeks equilibrium and neither sadness or happiness will get us there. They only serve as signals for how far off the mark we are.

It is hard to see what the body wants when the mind is interfering. You should all, without fail… whoops! Did I say that? Thank you for this post. I am far less knowledgeable on these matters but could I possibly trouble you to define the terms ethics and morals. I have always had a difficult time discerning their true meanings and a deep dive a few weeks ago revealed to me that multiple sources seem to have varying definitions.

What are some things you believe brought about these attributes in your way of thinking and subsequently your writing? Ah well…. I have sympathy as well for the ancient tribes of Israel in their serial predicaments. It does not seem surprising they got a prophet who insisted on preserving identity and wrote the tribal customs and God in stone. It might have been a contradiction in terms to have thought that their God was for everybody. I understand for example that Baptists and JWs, admittedly of a proselytizing branch, were stronger for it when dumped into hell in the camps.

There is it seems an old predicament. The power of coherent consistent reason is not sufficient. We are caught without moral order or much of a moral community. As you, JMG have said, stoicism is not a religion. JMG Agreed. You have to begin somewhere. Re: what to do for pain? It has helped me enormously on a number of occasions. If you are not familiar with the methodology, an Internet search should bring up plenty of articles, books, and videos and etc etc.

I have nothing to do with these methodologies professionally or commercially; I have simply found it beneficial for myself and felt moved to suggest it. My understanding of them is that they have a lot to do with keeping your awareness in your body, here, now, sensing your bones, noticing your smallest, lightest movements, and finding ease and joy. Indeed, sympathies, JMG, and respect for your willingness to speak of your own suffering to help others grow in wisdom. This was viewed as top-notch Stoicism.

I bet his wife and kids or whoever might have preferred that he shed a few tears. It has the sort of folksy feel that transcriptions of freewheeling oral discourses ought to have. Unfortunately, it omits a bunch of the surviving discourses from Books 3 and 4 that the translator considered redundant. I was always resentful about that, then one day acquired a French volume affordable paperback, btw that includes French translations of basically ALL available Stoic writings.

I eagerly flipped to one of the missing discourses and laboriously made my way through it. Turned out to be all about how one day a young man happened by who had shaved off his beard, and Epictetus harangued him at great length about how this was contrary to nature and obviously he must want to be a [yuck, ptoo] WOMAN! It states that when offered refreshment one is required to refuse, in ritual phrases, three times before accepting. Thanks for this essay. Spot on. I have a soft spot in my heart for the stoics, thanks to your writings.

On that note, Frank Martela writes that pursuing happiness directly is a sure way to never find it. Then even if you are happy, you feel pressure to be happy and you wonder if you are happy enough and lose what little happiness you thought you had. Instead you find strong and lasting happiness in freedom, amongst other things. On top of freedom you also need capability. Also research is backing according to Martela a finding that you become happy by making other people happy other people making you happy makes you happy too. Which leads to people finding happiness in relationships of all kinds. Not surprisingly developing capability requires a certain level of commitmend and hard work.

Meaningful relationships are also rarely easy to build and maintain. Making a meaningful difference in the lives of the other people seems to be fulfilling, which again is against the common wisdom of this day where getting more stuff is the thing. Advertisement, marketing and the whole pop culture construction seems to truly be devoted to the task of making people unhappy, by forcing them to adopt its values and habits, thus destroying freedom. The modern time wasters and tehnological unnecessarities make it unnecessary to become capable in something.

Bought entertainment and other curses drain the time a family could be spending time together, thus leaving fewer opportunities to build those meaningful relationships. It is all a mere illusion that by closer reflection is all to obviously filled with only emptiness. Luckily, however, we are actually free to move towards capability, meaningful relationships and choices that make this world a better place. Although Christianity is surely distorted and riddled with concerns, I do think at the heart of it all there could be something helpful. Seeing a family crossing the street in black and white from the top of a building and close-up in color from street level creates a philosophically intriguing collapse of the normal space-time continuum.

Murray Guy, West 17th Street, , through March Johnson Rachel Whiteread: Bibliography Cardboard boxes cast in plaster are displayed in monotonous profusion singly and in groups by the British sculptor who once made a concrete cast of the inside of a whole house. Luhring Augustine, West 24th Street, , through April 1. Its a humongous time warp of more than paintings, sculptures, drawings, photographs, videos, posters, ephemera and things in between by artists, writers, performers, musicians and maestros of mixed media, from a photograph of the transvestite Candy Darling as she posed on her deathbed to a small, painted sculpture made of elephant dung by David Hammons.

With so many clashing ideologies, points of view and attitudes toward art-making, this no-holds-barred hodgepodge generates the buzz and stridency of, say, Canal Street on payday. Each of the mostly short videos represents one artists idea of, play on, or substitute for, a studio visit. This modest group show touches on all of these elements, however glancingly and unsystematically, by considering the trickle-down effect of discomania on some new art today.

The three dozen small works tend to focus on the body, mostly beautiful and often sexual, which only increases the fascination of the almost always illuminating aesthetic couplings they have devised. Smith Birdie Lusch: Collages The self-taught Lusch worked in a ball-bearing factory in Columbus, Ohio, and began making art as a teenager. This show presents 24 delightful pages from a album of collages representing flowers in vases.

Johnson P. Serving as a testament to the. Instagram is an iPhone app that lets you post pictures and follow peoples picture streams in real time. He will long be remembered for laying the strong foundation of the excellent co-operation between India and Singapore and also Indias close engagement with the ASEAN and countries in the region, Rajamony said quoting the letter. The message said. Full reviews of current shows, additional listings, showtimes and tickets: nytimes. The medieval epic poem becomes a 21st-century rock opera in this Irish Repertory Theater production, with a score by Lenny Pickett, the musical director of Saturday Night Live On the menu are five dates in five restaurants, put to music in five styles, including operetta and country-western The latest production of this comedy by the unstoppably prolific Alan Ayckbourn is about three couples and takes place over three holiday seasons The great French actress Isabelle Huppert makes her American stage debut in the last play that the great English playwright Sarah Kane wrote before committing suiide Part of the Next Wave Festival.

Performed in French with abridged English titles. Love blossoms between a musician with Tourettes syndrome and an insecure journalist in this Broadway musical, directed and written by Joseph Brooks Opens November Find out what Noahs family thought of his crazy-seeming idea in this musical about the back story of the biblical flood and the animals and people who survived. Opens October Anne Marie Cummingss new love story is about an Indian man, a Spanish-American woman and their respective families dealing with their cross-cultural romance Des McAnuff directs Beginning Sunday, the theater will be renamed the August Wilson Theater. Virginia Theater, West 52nd Street, The Grammy-winning musician Steve Earle, who starred in the political docudrama The Exonerated, takes up the issue of the death penalty once again, but this time as a playwright in this drama about Karla Faye Tucker, the first woman in Texas since the Civil War to receive the death penalty and have it carried out A middle-age professor faces the prospect of tabloid scrutiny and invasion of privacy when a past affair with the wife of a leading presidential candidate threatens to go public.

Trip Cullman directs Sarah Schulmans comedy Joe Mantello directs Michael John LaChiusas highly anticipated new musical stars Idina Menzel and Marc Kudisch and features three contemporary stories based on the work of the Japanese writer Ryonosuke Akutagawa Patti LuPone and Michael Cerveris star in this intimate revival of the Sondheim classic, featuring 10 actors who play their own instruments. A professor played by Dianne Wiest accuses a student of plagiarism in Wendy Wassersteins latest. Daniel Sullivan directs Mitzi E. Hilton Theater, West 42nd Street, But if you are going to court comparison with giants, you had better be prepared to stand tall. OByrne , the young priest who may or may not be too fond of the boys in his charge. Walter Kerr, West 48th Street, This clunky farce about the limits of liberalism, directed by Doug Hughes and starring a miscast Richard Thomas and Jill Clayburgh, suggests Mr.

Greenberg has been moonlighting as a gag writer for sitcoms and is now recycling his discarded one-liners Still, it seems safe to say that such a good time is being had by so many people that this fitful, eager celebration of inanity and irreverence will find a large and lucrative audience In the title role of the hopeful dance-hall hostess, the appealing but underequipped Christina Applegate is less a shopworn angel than a merry cherub Al Hirschfeld Theater, West 45th Street, William Finns score sounds plumper and more rewarding than it did Off Broadway, providing a sprinkling of sugar to complement the sass in Rachel Sheinkins zinger-filled book. Gold stars all around. Shirley Knight plays Esther, a needy, needling woman who discovers shes going blind just as her daughter leaves the nest.

Carrie Preston is her needy, self-absorbed daughter Providing a two-foot drum on every seat, it offers an opportunity to exorcise aggressions by delivering a good beating, and on a slightly more elevated level, it presents a superficial introduction to African culture, lessons in drumming and 90 minutes of nonstop music, song and dancing by a good-natured cast A few of David Nehlss dozen ditties raise a hearty chuckle, like the valedictory anthem in which the shows heroines collectively vow to make like a nail and press on. But Betsy Kelsos book all but dispenses with plot, and substitutes crude cartoons for characters Dodger Stages, West 50th Street, Clinton, Written by and starring Danai Gurira and Nikkole Salter, who both possess the strong presence and confident technique to bring out the subtle force and the potent flavoring in their writing Under the direction of Michael Imperioli Christopher from The Sopranos and Zetna Fuentes, the play has a wobbly style, building tension only to diffuse it with less-than-credible moments Studio Dante, West 29th Street, Chelsea, It is well acted and well directed, if too predictable in spots Urban Stages, West 30th Street, Daily brings the characters tangle of contradictions together in a credible performance that manages to find the hidden troll in the artistic genius Pearl Theater, 80 St.

The musical is the happy narcissist of theater; parody is the best form of narcissism. All it needs are smart writers and winning performers. Thats what we get in this case True believers will love how Mr. Ross, a self-confessed geek who plays every major role in under an hour, simulates R2D2, but everyone else will scratch their heads Lambs Theater, West 44th Street, Manhattan, Brian DArcy James aches with longing as the cad who wants a second chance. Gracefully directed by Lucie Tiberghien Written by and starring an entirely Asian-American cast, this slight but consistently entertaining satire is a primer on what not to do in an audition room Zinoman SLUT This overamplified musical comedy about love and promiscuity among East Village friends leans heavily on obscenities to lend it a daring edge.

Instead, it swamps even its brightest moments in tawdriness It is also well directed, well acted and smartly designed His patter and his piano playing are variable, but Mr. DArrietta makes a genial tour guide through Mr. Waitss wee-hours world Richard Rodgers Theater, West 46th Street, She is, in fact, what Dedication is all about, or intends to be, anyway. Burdened with soap-opera-ish plot turns and artificially bright dialogue, this comedy of mortality never seems able to convince itself that life and art trump death and doubt.

Its fun. Its performed with spunk. Its got cowboys. Sure, its indecipherable, but hey, its less than an hour long 55 minutes. Brisk, funny and engaging, the play disappoints only in its emphasis on flights of fancy over a nuanced depiction of its heroines emotional dilemmas Unfortunately, the book fails to capitalize on these strengths, instead presenting a trite fable about a young rock singer seduced by celebrity, with cardboard characters, despite the actors best efforts to give them dimension. Still, the performances are very entertaining As identities and their representations morph and blur, this is not always a comfortable activity, but it is often an exhilarating one Brantley Movies Ratings and running times are in parentheses; foreign films have English subtitles.

Full reviews of all current releases, movie trailers, showtimes and tickets: nytimes. Though somewhat overdetermined, the film is a chilling testament to the seductiveness of groupthink and the allure of imagined superiority. He finds four former lovers, including Sharon Stone and Jessica Lange, and reveals once again that he is the quietest and finest comic actor working in movies today. Plunging you into a smoky, black-and-white world of political paranoia and commercial pressure, the film is both a history lesson and a passionate essay on power, responsibility and the ethics of journalism Scott GOING SHOPPING PG, minutes As loquacious and scatterbrained as its female characters, this Henry Jaglom film explores womens shopping habits and fantasies.

Its incomplete sketches revolve around an upscale dress shop on the verge of bankruptcy. Holden THE GOSPEL PG, minutes Set against a lively, music-filled African-American church, The Gospel, written and directed by Rob Hardy, and with many talented real-life gospel superstars blended into the large and able cast, endeavors to be a powerful tale of faith and forgiveness, but in the end fails to capture even the slightest essence of spirituality and religious belief, or to provide any real insight into its characters conflicts, desires and motivations.

Aims for par and makes it. Confidential wrests a richly textured story of love from a seemingly unlikely source, Jennifer Weiners breezy best-selling fiction about two sisters -- played by Cameron Diaz and Toni Collette -- engaged in an epic battle of the heart, a fight waged mostly against each other and their own best interests. Surprisingly lighthearted and brisk, considering its fairly morbid premise. At times it comes close. Narrated by Morgan Freeman, the film has no qualms about playing on our emotions. The story follows the Freudian nightmare of a year-old girl whose parents work in the circus; its strictly for cultists. Vigorous and precise, it is a vivid reminder of the novelists power as both a storyteller and a social critic. Jane Anderson wrote and directed this tribute in a wonderfully zany, off-center style.

Lee about a handful of kids grooving and roller skating in the summer of , Roll Bounce has heart and good vibes but little else to recommend it. But who cares about fair when there is fun to be had? Scene for scene, Serenity is more engaging and certainly better written and acted than any of Mr. Lucass recent screen entertainments. Superbly written and acted, especially by Laura Linney and Jeff Daniels as a pair of divorcing writers.

Silly and sublime. John Cassavetess Gloria stars Gena Rowlands as a gangsters moll on the run with a boy who witnessed a Mafia murder. The program includes Blacksmithing Scene , Interior N. Subway, 14th St. Tonight The charismatic Minneapolis underground rapper Slug, the anchor of Atmosphere, is famous for his quirky Midwestern narratives and intimate revelations. Blueprint and P. International Noise Conspiracy plays politically minded garage rock thats been getting less political lately. In most of his music hes a country traditionalist, true to honky-tonk tempos and the deadpan baritone vocal style of Ernest Tubb.

Every so often he lets loose a Jimi Hendrix lick. Abigail Washburn opens. Carl Cox, who has been playing the big clubs since disco, plays techno and house-based mixes more eclectic than standard trance. The melodic Australian poppers Youth Group open both nights, with the dreamy but prickly Canadian pop band the Stars joining the bill on Thursday. Banharts eerie, wavery voice and stream-of-consciousness songs reach back to the childlike surrealism of some of psychedelias most beloved oddballs: Syd Barrett and the preglam rock of Marc Bolan. Pareles DUNGEN Tomorrow and Sunday This Swedish bands biker-rock combines humongous riffing with whimsical jams, conjuring black-leather aggression and the pastoral wonder of the open road.

Their latest conceptual project sets to music some recorded interviews with their grandmother about her midth-century travails. The nerd-pop masters Weezer continue to write textbook pop melodies, but their scruffiest album, s Pinkerton Geffen is the favorite of a fanatical cult of emo kids. The peppy rockers Hot Hot Heat open. TV on the Radio tops its jittery rhythms and paranoid guitars with the haunting vocal yelps of Tunde Adebimpe and Kyp Malone. He has a new album, covering songs that were favorites of his father.

The vocalist and multi-instrumentalist Raul Midon has contributed his talents to the work of many Latin pop superstars. He plays his own material here. The singer-songwriter Kathleen Edwards opens. Opener Matt Pond writes pleasing, if forgettable, pop songs. The ruminative folk-pop band the Fruit Bats opens. The singer and producer Ada recorded a stripped-down Kraftwerk-style version of the neo-punk Yeah Yeah Yeahs gem Maps. This incarnation has yet to be as compelling as the last, though his voice still carries a convincing mainstream angst and he rides grooves with ease. Hence the resurrection of decades-old rarities like Electric Co.

Keane is a piano-drums-vocals band that piles on hooky melodic flourishes. Vanderslice also writes his own less clever songs. Portastatic, the Superchunk leader Mac McCaughans longstanding home-studio side project, opens. His mild voice has more than a touch of James Taylor, but his fast fingers delight the kind of fan one of his songs describes as a Freaker by the Speaker. The Mekons Sally Timms joins the bill. Pareles Cabaret Full reviews of recent cabaret shows: nytimes. Stritch makes her cabaret debut at Dispensing with her theatrical signature numbers, she weaves 16 songs new to her repertory into a funny running monologue of her adventures in and out of show business.

Cables, a well-traveled pianist, goes for assertive extroversion in this group, which consists of Gary Bartz on alto saxophone, Eric Revis on bass and Jeff Tain Watts on drums. Charlap, the pianist, has come to exemplify jazzs modern mainstream. So has his working trio, which keeps a Tin Pan Alley repertory percolating in the present tense. Cobb, a masterful hard-bop drummer, has been a mentor to many young musicians via this crackling horn-studded band; among them are the tenor saxophonist Craig Handy and the pianist George Colligan, who appear here. Thursday Ms. Daly is a smart and skillful baritone saxophonist; here she pays homage to the saxophonist Rahsaan Roland Kirk, with the pianist Sonelius Smith and the drummer Warren Smith, who both played in Kirks rollicking ensembles.

Dara was a trumpeter, guitarist and singer who infused New York avant-gardism with Mississippi twang, territory he revisits in a group featuring the guitarist Kwatei Jones-Quartey. Delius, a tenor saxophonist based in Amsterdam, exemplifies the playfully anarchic ideal of the Dutch avant-garde; he has superb coconspirators in the drummer Han Bennink, the cellist Tristan Honsinger and the bassist Valdi Kolli. Dixon has devoted his career to an avant-gardism more cerebral than cathartic; here his solo trumpet improvisations work in tandem with a slide show of his pen-and-ink drawings.

Thompson on drums. Friedmans stylistic history as a pianist runs from traditional to slightly left-of-center; his rhythm section includes the drummer Tony Jefferson and the bassist Martin Wind. Roy Hargrove, a dazzling inheritor, will take the lead on trumpet and flugelhorn. Hersch, who has recently earned acclaim for his postbop trio playing and an ambitious original song cycle, refocuses on solo piano for a recital in celebration of his 50th birthday. Liebman plays here with a group featuring his frequent foil, the guitarist Vic Juris. Malaby, a versatile and increasingly prominent tenor saxophonist, leads a progressive ensemble with a Spanish tinge; his fellow travelers are Michael Rodriguez, trumpeter; Ben Monder, guitarist; Eivind Opsvik, bassist; and Rodney Green, drummer.

Marsaliss strong new album, Live at the House of Tribes Blue Note , finds the trumpeter pursuing a sanguine and purposeful looseness; hell seek the same here, in a group with the tenor saxophonist Walter Blanding Jr. Martino favors a brand of aggressive postbop that has more than a little in common with the blistering fusion of his youth. McSweeney, a bassist, and a handful of frequent collaborators: the valve trombonist Mike Fahn, the guitarist John Hart and the drummer Tim Horner.

Sabbagh proves himself a quietly commanding tenor saxophonist and composer in the postmodern mainstream; his sleek ensemble sound owes a lot to the guitar playing of Ben Monder. Chinen DR. Smiths command, the Hammond B-3 organ can be subtly atmospheric or growlingly ecstatic; together with the guitarist Peter Bernstein and the drummer Alison Miller, Dr.

Smith delivers a searching brand of soul-jazz. Tolliver leads a new edition of his celebrated orchestra of the s; among the top-shelf talent involved are the saxophonists Billy Harper and Craig Handy, the trombonist Clark Gayton and the drummer Ralph Peterson. Waltzer, the pianist, manages a thoughtful modernism that coexists more than peaceably with a buoyant, unselfconscious sense of swing; his trio, with Matt Penman and Gerald Cleaver on bass and drums, is first-rate. Weckl, a drummer best known for his reign with the Chick Corea Elektric Band. Wednesday, Thursday and Oct. Vinson, a young alto saxophonist, favors the sort of progressive postbop that gained traction in the mids; he gets strong support from the guitarists Lage Lund and Jonathan Kreisberg, the bassist Orlando le Fleming and the drummer Rodney Green.

What fans of Aida will be curious about when Sonja Frisells production returns to the Metropolitan Opera is the Radames of the tenor Salvatore Licitra, who has yet to live up to the promise of his dramatic Met debut in as a last-minute replacement for Luciano Pavarotti. James Conlon conducts. That this rich work has become a rarity is inexplicable. Its too bad that the musical performance under the conductor Leon Botstein is so heavy-handed. Renate Behle brings Wagnerian intensity to the role of Ariane. Tonight at 8 and Sunday at p. Joseph Rescigno conducts. It also features the reigning Falstaff of our day, Bryn Terfel, who is matched note for note by the fabulous Stephanie Blythe as Mistress Quickly -- she almost steals the show.

Go see it. But at the opening performance last week, Jorge Antonio Pita came up short as Cavaradossi, sounding underpowered and intermittently strained. John Demain conducts. James R. Sunday at 5 p. Composers of Mr. Included as well are Mozarts Quartet in G K. Few people who have heard these formidable young pianists, champions of contemporary music, would quibble with the billing. Maltman appears with the accompanist Malcolm Martineau in a program of Schumann, Mahler and French song.

Marin Alsop has gotten attention lately for becoming the first woman appointed music director of a major American orchestra, receiving a MacArthur Foundation grant and working on a recorded Brahms symphony cycle. She comes to the Philharmonic with the Brahms First and Midori, who joins her in Prokofievs first violin concerto. These minute programs also offer a chance to meet the composers and performers. Here the iconoclastic and inventive composer Pauline Oliveros, who also plays the accordion, will be joined by the playwright, poet and author Ione for a performance of Cross Overs, a musical work that explores, in the phrase of the creators, the sound of words and the making of words out of sound.

The program also includes overtures by J. Bach and Cherubini. Rzewskis powerful, politically charged works, including his magnificent set of piano variations on The People United Will Never Be Defeated. The program on the Music Before series is called Lost Songs of a Rhineland Harper, and examines music of the 10th and 11th centuries. It now turns its attention to Debussys lustrous quartet and two works by Mozart, the Dissonance Quartet and, with the violist James Dunham as its guest, the G minor Quintet. Petersburg to Buffalo, brings his West German Radio Orchestra, where he has been chief conductor since , to the New York area for two contrasting concerts: an all-Brahms evening in Newark tonight, and a concert performance of Richard Strausss opera Daphne at Carnegie Hall tomorrow A related article is on Page 1.

Hahn in recital next month at Carnegie Hall. But tomorrow night Ms. Zhu, who won an Avery Fisher Career Grant in , has her own chance to shine in a solo recital. Tommasini Dance Full reviews of recent performances: nytimes. Tami Stronach presents glimpses of worlds gone slightly askew. Hay sets the dancers Maryanne Chaney, Layard Thompson and Arturo Vidich loose in the luminous field of her choreography to adapt the dances in an informal free program. The production includes dancing, a horse and rider and site-specific videos. Gibney will present a new multimedia work, unbounded, that explores the tensions between clinging to the known and reaching for the unknowable. Monday an abbreviated gala program at 7 p.

Wednesday through next Friday at 8 p. Liska describes this new piece as a ballet brut. Thursday through Oct. Miller, in her companys 20th anniversary, is the latest dance artist to take advantage of the theaters impressive technological facilities at Dance Theater Workshop. Miller will integrate digital motion-capture technology, animation and video projections into a dance about traveling in Eritrea. A review is on Page 6. Eros and Thanatos makes the naked body a landscape in flux. In Before the Dawn, darkness melts into brightness. Tonight and tomorrow at 8 p. Today at and 8 p. The company will also present a free childrens program with hands-on improvisational training tomorrow at p. Its a dance party featuring Harold Cromer tonight and Mable Lee tomorrow.

Tonight and tomorrow night at 8, other programs through Oct. The choreographer says her production is for mature audiences only. Wednesday through Oct. Rockwell Art Museums and galleries are in Manhattan unless otherwise noted. In the museums first emerging talent show, one of the five artists selected is 83, lives in a home for the elderly in Pennsylvania and stopped painting two years ago because of failing eyesight.

Overall, the work in the exhibition is abstract and spare, giving the problematic outsider category a new spin. Dont look for aesthetic pizazz in this intensely techy show of industrial fibers and fabrics, but dont rule it out. It immerses us in two enormous, endlessly fascinating narratives: the history of painting and the history of Russia, forming a remarkable tribute to the endurance of the medium and the country, and the inescapable interconnectedness of art and life.

A very personal, whimsical exhibition by this well-known Japanese photographer, who incorporates into his work artifacts that he has collected, particularly from East Asia and Japan. Sugimotos reach is long, and his range is broad, from fossils to textiles to undersea dioramas to Japanese calligraphy to the Trylon and Perisphere a minisculpture that symbolized the New York Worlds Fair of It may not be all that enlightening, but as an artists personal survey, it comes off. Whos Jewish, who isnt, and by the way, what is a Jew anyway? They are not easy questions, as this intense who-are-we exploration makes clear.

Ten projects by 13 artists try to help break the stereotype of American Jews as uniformly white, middle-class and of European descent. Using photography and video, they have interpreted their missions broadly, from the Korean-born Nikki S. Lees meticulous staging of a Jewish wedding with herself as the bride to Andrea Robbins and Max Bechers look at the thriving shtetl established by Lubavitcher Hasidic Jews in the rural community of Postville, Iowa. Refugees from the Holocaust, Jews of color, those of various sexual orientations, an extended Iranian family, a convert to Judaism reared as a Roman Catholic and others are seen and heard in this lively show, which broadens the universe of Jews in this country.

Jade has been treasured since ancient times, though the almost preposterously exquisite objects on display in the Mets reinstalled galleries for Chinese decorative arts date from the 18th century, when the Qing dynasty brought Chinese jade work to a peak of virtuosity. The definition of what Latino art means is changing in a post-identity-politics time, and this modest biennial, drawn mostly from unsolicited proposals submitted by artists in the greater New York area, is an indicator of what that change looks like. During the s, the Modernist photographer Berenice Abbott photographed the architectural fabric of New York with a keen eye for contrasts of new and old.

Between and , Douglas Levere returned to the scenes that she photographed and photographed them again. Seeing 50 of his paired with her originals is a fascinating education in how things change. Rap, religion, Minimalism and Malcolm X all figure in this intricate, multilayered show of work by the three young residents, organized by the museums associate curator, Christine Y. Not exactly a well-known name today, except to devotees of American Modernism, this German-born architect-turned-painter was in fact one of the major American artists of the early 20th century, right up there with the likes of Marsden Hartley, John Marin, Arthur Dove and Charles Demuth, to name a few.

Most of his compositions are unpeopled landscapes depicting houses and building fragments in brilliantly stylized settings in which trees, clouds, smokestacks, telephone poles, water and snow are rendered as rhythmic and dramatic shapes that play off one another almost musically. Too, he was a superb colorist, assigning psychological properties to each color, red in particular, which he considered symbolic of power and energy.

Among the best works here are his last ones, landscapes that have the magic of Expressionist theater, with houses, trees and the like assuming almost human presences. Who knows whether Smithson is the most influential American postwar artist, as this show claims. Consisting mostly of drawings, photographs and films he didnt make many sculptures, not ones that could fit into a museum, anyway , this is the first full-scale overview of him in the country.

It is consequently dry but still compelling testimony to a great exuberance cut drastically short when Smithson died at 35 in a plane crash in Dant makes large pen-and-brush drawings of complex scenes populated by chunky little people, all viewed as if from below through a transparent ground or floor. Adam Baumgold, 74 East 79th Street, , through Oct.

LE Born in Vietnam, Mr. This small exhibition presents high-concept photographic and sculptural works about the Vietnam War and its effects, as well as a pair of sleek sculptures representing communications satellites that satirize Vietnams plans to enter the space age and the global consumerist economy. Examples of his designs for magazine covers and pictures by photographers that he commissioned are on view, but the most interesting part is the selection of Wolfs noncommercial photographs, which are compelling for their ultramodern ways with light, multiple spaces, speed and glamour.

Howard Greenberg, 41 East 57th Street, , through Oct. Bordo is at midcareer. The time for a retrospective view is at hand. Alexander and Bonin, 10th Avenue, near 18th Street, , through Oct. The small paintings and drawings suggest hurried sketches and half-erased images from a suppressed larger narrative. The tites of two paintings, Urgent and Paraphrase, sum up the dynamic. Here the battered body parts and de Kooning-esque swipes of the past have been distilled into a tumorous universe of genitals, anuses and noxious emissions, as the biological becomes political. Although they are untouched by color, a number of slightly earlier works blaze with her usual painterly panache, like the brilliant orange hands and tie, yellow shirt and multicolored face she gave to the large Seated Man, Foot Poised on World, who seems to kick away a globe in anger or frustration.

Peter Freeman Inc. Robert Miller, West 26th Street, Chelsea, , closing tomorrow. Caren Golden, West 23rd Street, Chelsea, , closing tomorrow. Deruytters black-and-white, subtly erotic photographs of Crow Indian warriors in face paint, feathered headdresses and loin cloths, riding bareback horses, for 19th-century ethnographic documents. In fact, they depict contemporary American Indians gathered for an annual re-enactment of the Battle of the Little Bighorn. Briggs Robinson, West 29th Street, , closing tomorrow. Postmasters, West 19th Street, Chelsea, , closing tomorrow. Prieto has, in effect, boarded over her abstract paintings with rough-hewn monolithic letters quoting Samuel Pepyss diary. Both the wordiness and the klunkiness are a bit familiar, but extracting Pepyss phrases, which are all deliberately disembodied in reference, can be strangely satisfying.

In The Graces, Ms. Benglis continues to evoke figures by other means, in this case three shimmering stacks of vaselike forms made of heavily textured, lavender-tinted resin. The material is perfect for the process-oriented Ms. Schroeder Romero, A N. Third Street, Williamsburg, Brooklyn, , closing on Monday.. A second exhibition organized by Ms. Sorokina is at Momenta Art, 72 Berry St. Lynne Meadow directs Tom Stoppards three-play epic about the forebears of the Russian Revolution begins with Voyage, set in in the Russian countryside. Liked last seasons Sweeney Todd? Actors will pick up instruments again for another Stephen Sondheim revival.

Barrymore Theater, West 47th Street, A Korean single father takes his two children on a revelatory road trip in Julia Chos new play The Manhattan Theater Club presents the world premiere of Paul Rudnicks new zinger-filled comedy of manners, set in high society Set in , August Wilsons play includes his typically wonderful talk from a bunch of regulars at a local Pittsburgh diner that is about to be destroyed Julianne Moore plays an American war correspondent turned academic in David Hares much-buzzed-about new play.

Sam Mendes directs Fritz Weaver stars as the patriarch of a wealthy family in crisis in David Mamets new adaptation of what may be Harley Granville Barkers finest drama A less-than-perfect marriage of a first-rate actor with a first-rate play Booth Theater, West 45th Street, Otherwise, this archivally exact production, directed by Bob Avian, feels like a vintage car that has been taken out of the garage, polished up and sent on the road once again Schoenfeld Theater, West 45th Street, This beat-the-clock musical adaptation of Alice Walkers Pulitzer Prize-winning novel about Southern black women finding their inner warriors never slows down long enough for you to embrace it Brantley DR.

The two immortal Albert Hague-Dr. Seuss songs from the television special are included. Bloated at 90 minutes, but the kids didnt seem to mind But in a dry season for musicals, it has theatergoers responding as if they were withering houseplants finally being watered after long neglect Marquis Theater, Broadway, at 45th Street, She and the wonderful Mary-Louise Wilson as her bed-ridden mother , in the performances of their careers, make Grey Gardens an experience no passionate theatergoer should miss Philip Bosco, as the admirably sane madman Captain Shotover, and Swoosie Kurtz, as his swaggeringly romantic daughter, lead the superb cast, under the sharp direction of Robin Lefevre.

Nearly a century after its composition, the play still sparkles with wit and sends a shiver down the spine too Jay Johnson, the onetime star of the television comedy Soap, gives a pocket history of the profession, in addition to a demonstration, with partners including a vulture who sings My Way, a foul-mouthed wooden tyke, a talking tennis ball and a monkey purveying some of the corniest shtick this side of a Friars roast Appealingly sung and freshly orchestrated, this fast-moving adaptation of Victor Hugos novel isnt sloppy or blurry.

But its pulse rate stays well below normal Broadhurst Theater, West 44th Street, With the wonderful Julie White as the movie agent you hate to love but just cant help it Directed by Jerry Zaks, its a queasy mixture of coarse comedy and soap opera contrivances Short, arrives a little late to the table for such parody to taste fresh. Jacobs Theater, West 45th Street, Brantley TARZAN This writhing green blob with music, adapted by Disney Theatrical Productions from the animated film, has the feeling of a superdeluxe day care center, equipped with lots of bungee cords and karaoke synthesizers, where children can swing when they get tired of singing, and vice versa.

The soda-pop score is by Phil Collins The cast members, who include Stephen Lynch and Constantine Maroulis, , are personable enough, which is not the same as saying they have personalities Amid her doll-size houses, the human actors seem like giants, but as the play progresses, it becomes apparent that the characters they play are anything but. The acting is excellent, though the play, centered on a small domestic tragedy, doesnt have the punch it once did Bradford Cover has an appealing, offhand delivery as the soldier The Pearl Theater Company, 80 St.

Genzlinger BHUTAN Daisy Footes drama may not be working the freshest territory -- dead-end lives in a small town -- but it sure is well told and well acted. A widow and her two teenagers are struggling financially and feeling dislocated by their towns changing social alignments; Sarah Lord is especially good as the daughter whose fascination with a neighbors trip to Bhutan gives the play its title and overarching metaphor Blair Brown and Jill Clayburgh delight as sisters with different views on the meaning of cleaning, and Vanessa Aspillaga is equally good as the depressed maid with little affection for her work but a deep conviction that a good joke can be a matter of life and death Isherwood esoterica Eric Waltons very entertaining one-man show is a mix of magic, mentalism and intelligent chat.

He does all three impressively DR2 Theater, East 15th Street, To that end, it offers deadpan lyrics, self-referential humor and geysers of stage blood New World Stages, West 50th Street, Clinton, This sweet-as-ever production of Tom Jones and Harvey Schmidts commedia-dellarte-style confection is most notable for Mr. Joness touching performance under the pseudonym Thomas Bruce as the Old Actor, a role he created when the show opened in Jones also directs Snapple Theater Center, West 50th Street, Eugene Lees set is something to see, and the soundscape, by Zachary Williamson and Gabe Wood, is something to hear As in the original, two men and two women perform a wide selection of Brels plaintive ballads and stirring anthems Especially the Catskills jokes Urban Stages, West 30th Street, Manhattan, A vixenish cabaret singer is among the things beckoning him back.

The lovely hats, both worn and used as scenery, will make the bare heads of long for the old days The main order of business, though, is a middle-aged, middle-American housewife Annie Golden , who, at the urging of Hemingways ghost, goes to Paris in search of her true self. Diana Hansen-Young, who wrote the book and lyrics, seems to get most of her not-very-revolutionary ideas from mainstream womens magazines John Epperson, a k a Lypsinka, brings his love of cultural deconstruction and reconstruction to this lovably trashy spoof of a certain exalted Greek tragedy, in which a scorned woman sets about chicken-frying her own children to get even with the no-account man who done her wrong.

Nancy Opel and Maxwell Caulfield lead the cast in offering big servings of honey-baked ham Abingdon Theater, West 36th Street, Yet for all the political and emotional baggage carried by this production, adapted from Ms. Corries writings and starring Megan Dodds, it often feels dramatically flat, even listless Gurney, set in the near future, about the unearthing of a world-shaking play called Post Mortem by A. Jim Simpson directs this likable grab bag of insider jokes, polemical satire and cosmic lamentation A miniskirted, go-go-booted zombie of a musical about women searching for love in London in the s. You wont see anything this groovy, this far-out, this with-it outside of, oh, maybe the showroom of a Carnival cruise ship Performed by the indie pop band Groovelily, its fresh and funny, and features a standout pop score Daryl Roth Theater, East 15th Street, Lukes Theater, West 46th Street, Clinton, Damrosch Park, Lincoln Center, or Golden Theater, West 45th Street, Minskoff Theater, West 45th Street at Broadway, A show that touches the heart and tickles the funny bone Union Square Theater, East 17th Street, Sensitively acted, but it still feels like a book talking to us from the stage Duke on 42nd Street, West 42nd Street, ; closes on Sunday.

Daniel Beatys solo show takes stock of the urban African-American mind in the new century, as dozens of men and women flock to Liberty Island when a slave ship mysteriously appears in New York Harbor. The performance captivates; the material doesnt Unfortunately, theyre playing uninvolving, cookie-cutter characters Though the first play is shallow and clumsy, the second, about a condemned revolutionary and his bourgeois lover, is fresh, literate and morally compelling Altered Stages, West 29th Street, Chelsea, ; closes tomorrow.

The actors in the Mee version never quite seem comfortable, which is too bad, because Mr. Mee packs the play with what should be good stuff. Running time for each: The work is striking and original but at times frustrating and heavy on the angst When a genius goes down in flames, everybody feels the burn BABEL R, minutes, in English, Spanish, Japanese, Berber, Arabic and sign language This hugely ambitious movie tells four loosely linked, not quite simultaneous stories set on three different continents, with dialogue in several languages. The themes, to the extent they are decipherable, include loss, fate and the terrible consequences of miscommunication.

America laughs, cries, surrenders. Manohla Dargis CAUTIVA No rating, minutes, in Spanish This sober melodrama explores the aftereffects of Argentinas dirty war, which have a devastating impact on a teenage girl who discovers terrible secrets in her past. The Turkish writer and director Nuri Bilge Ceylan also stars. Aside from pungent local color, theres not much surrounding this portrait of an embittered barfly floundering through a succession of one-night stands. Diane Kruger also stars. When Gus Cole Pensinger meets the more mature Jessica Anna Kavan , his journey from crass ladykiller to sensitive boyfriend begins. Directed with extraordinary empathy by Aaron Katz who also wrote the story , this admittedly slight movie is given heft by a plaintive tone and a camera fascinated by emotional shifts and shadows.

Steven Shainberg directs from a screenplay by Erin Cressida Wilson. Crowe is miscast as a ferocious London bond trader who mellows after inheriting a French vineyard. Its a three-P movie, for pleasant, pretty and predictable. Add a fourth P, for piddling. The losers in the directorial debut of David Ayer who wrote Training Day are too repellent for you to waste time feeling sorry for. In the foreground of a featureless Buenos Aires, paths cross and lock without import, and lives inch sideways a cab driver becomes a bus driver , in reflection of the countrys larger economic blight.

Dreamy and decadent, the film is also touching, funny and bracingly modern. Scarlett Johansson is the lovely assistant. No, no, no. The movie is a fascinating study of the relationship between the media, politics and the music industry in an era in which pop musicians are marketed like politicians. Ferrell plays an I. He seeks the help of a professor of literature played by Dustin Hoffman, who proves that scholarly criticism might not be a useless pursuit after all. But its star, Aishwarya Rai, a potent presence, appears destined for international success. Brad Dourif stars alongside some floating astronauts and a few exquisitely beautiful underwater drifters. Roy and Niuta Titus Theaters, , moma.

This weekends films include Stromboli , starring Ingrid Bergman as an Eastern European refugee in a bad marriage; The Messiah , a biblical biography never released in the United States; and the classic Open City , set in Rome during the final months of the German occupation. McKay, who made his directorial debut with Girls Town in The series begins tomorrow with Angel Rodriguez , a drama about a white counselor Rachel Griffiths who takes in a troubled black teenage client Jonan Everett. Everyday People , filmed in and around Fort Greene, will be shown on Monday night, and Our Song , a coming-of-age story about three girls in Crown Heights, on Tuesday.

DiFrancos articulate, uninhibited songs and poems are about staying true to her complicated self: feisty and vulnerable, polysexual, uncompromising and politically engaged, but never humorless. She can strum a guitar and sling words at hyperspeed, or swerve toward jazz and funk. In business she runs her own label, Righteous Babe Records , as in her music, shes as independent as they come. With Hamell on Trial. Dylan is obsessed with the mythic past, serving up a sleek, bluesy time warp that dips into Muddy Waters, Bing Crosby and the obscure 19th-century poet laureate of the Confederacy, Henry Timrod.

Even when studying contemporary popular culture, he is reminded of his own back pages: I was thinkin bout Alicia Keys, couldnt keep from crying, he sings. When she was born in Hells Kitchen, I was living down the line. Has Been, in his solo work Mr. Folds has continued to skillfully and entertainingly walk a line between the snarky and the sincere. His breathy piano-ballad version of a particularly vulgar Dr.

Dre song crossed that line by miles. Sunday at 8 p. The wind gets in and burns the skin like a battleground super ninja. I guess Ive heard about original sin, he sings. I heard the dude blamed the chick. With the Constantines, a feedback-worshiping Canadian band. He has opened for the Beastie Boys and Radiohead. Grokster last year, Modest Mouse links antsy, catchy guitar lines to vocals that are always just a few shrieks away from a destructive tantrum.

These shows complete a five-concert New York series showing off songs from the bands long-delayed new album as well as its newest member, Johnny Marr, the innovative guitarist of the Smiths. With Marcellus Hall. But it has persisted with its mixture of sneering blues and boozy, decelerated punk, the ingredients that gave birth to grunge. But here it is, with an original member, David Nelson, and Buddy Cage, who took the place of Jerry Garcia on pedal steel guitar. With its two surviving original members well into their 50s, this proto-punk, proto-glam band, which made trashy cross-dressing a rock n roll virtue, this summer released its first new album in 32 years, One Day It Will Please Us to Remember Even This Roadrunner , and its appetite for sleazy vamps and hilarious wickedness is undiminished.

Come on shake your monkey hips, my pretty little creationist. Sisario OK GO Tomorrow With all the focus on this Chicago bands dancing skills -- its ingenious treadmill skit was so popular online that MTV had the group perform it at the Video Music Awards this summer, despite the lack of a nomination -- not much attention has been paid to its jaunty, Cars-like and thoroughly adequate power-pop. So expect more dancing. The Bush Tetras, of early 80s New York vintage, have a squirmy funk take on experimental rock. At p. The band, led by Peter Case, has good luck with reunions: when it got back together in the mids, it made one of its best albums, Kool Trash.

Last year the boys-will-be-boys pop-punk band Blink went on acrimonious hiatus, and one of its two singers, Tom DeLonge, started a new group, Angels and Airwaves; it played the Bowery Ballroom in May. Both bands are darker and more emo-influenced than Blink, but unfortunately for fans scrambling for a way into this show, neither has much of its fire. At 7, East 11th Street, East Village, , bowerypresents. But he and his band have emerged into the secular realm of jam bands, which have embraced both his rip-roaring virtuosity and his gift for making his instrument sing without a word. With Rocco DeLuca and the Burden. Santa Rosa has persevered; at this concert, he celebrates 30 years of hits. Spektors fantasies veer from the childlike to the erotic, in endearingly idiosyncratic piano and vocal parts that can resemble P J Harvey, Billie Holiday or Chopin.

Tralala also opens for Robyn Hitchcock tomorrow. Tyrell belongs to a latter-day breed of rock singer who has belatedly embraced popular standards. The breed includes Rod Stewart whose records Mr. Tyrell co-produces , Michael Bolton and Dr. John for whom he sometimes sounds like vocal double. He performs as part of a tribute to the Friends of Old Time Music, an organization that played an important role in the early s folk revival in New York City by putting on concerts by rural musicians it first presented Mr.

With Dead Meadow and Silversun Pickups. Sisario Jazz Full reviews of recent jazz concerts: nytimes. Alis drumming, still insistent and undulant, drives this ensemble, with the trumpeter Jumaane Smith, the tenor saxophonist Lawrence Clark, the pianist Greg Murphy and the bassist Ivan Taylor. At 9 and p. At and , with an set tonight and tomorrow night, Jazz Standard, East 27th Street, Manhattan, , jazzstandard. At 8, 10 and , Smoke, Broadway, at th Street, , smokejazz. At 10 p. DRivera, the clarinetist, alto saxophonist and longtime Cuban exile, explores the intersection of jazz and classical music in this program, with a cast of collaborators including the violinist Nicolas Danielson, the pianist Alon Yavnai, the bassist Massimo Biolcati and the drummer Vince Cherico.

At and , Allen Room, Frederick P. Dijkstra, an alto saxophonist from Amsterdam, and Mr. Hollenbeck, a percussionist from upstate New York, have been working as a duo for years, with an emphasis on extraordinary textures and extended techniques. They perform material from a recent album, Sequence Trytone. Through Nov. At and p. Hamasyan, an Armenian pianist in his early 20s with a probing approach to rhythm. Tomorrow at 10 p. Helias is a bassist of adventurous temperament and great rhythmic assurance; a perfect fit, in other words, for the exploratory team of Mr.

Berne, an alto saxophonist, and Mr. Rainey, a drummer. Hersch is a pianist associated with either solo or trio settings, but he has lately delivered solid work with various duet partners. His counterpart here, Mr. Alessi, is a trumpeter of pristine technique and rigorous thought, and founder of the School for Improvisation, the concerts presenter. Next week he brings that group to its natural home, to interpret music from his most recent Blue Note album, Streams of Expression.

They will perform two sets each night this weekend, with sporadic guests, like the violinist Carla Kihlstedt tomorrow at 8 or the drummer Gerry Hemingway Sunday at 8. McCaslin, a tenor and soprano saxophonist known for calisthenic exertions, convenes a groove-minded quartet with George Colligan on piano, Hans Glawischnig on bass and Gene Jackson on drums.

At , Iridium, Broadway, at 51st Street, , iridiumjazzclub. If that sounds like the roll call for a combo, thats because it is, at least for a couple of hours. An earlier set will feature a group called Dual Identity, jointly led by the alto saxophonists Rudresh Mahanthappa and Steve Lehman. At and 10 p. The group he leads here, which includes Mike Moreno on guitar, Vicente Archer on bass and Marcus Gilmore on drums, could move in any direction he chooses.

Sanborn, an alto saxophonist known for tart and well-played crossover fare, leads a band of Nicky Moroch on guitar, Deron Johnson on keyboards, Richard Patterson on bass and Kendrick Scott on drums. At 8 and p. The assembled talent includes Ron Miles on cornet and Doug Wieselman on clarinet, as well as a formidable string section conducted by the violinist Eyvind Kang. At and 9 p. Wrembel is a French guitarist proficient in the effervescent style of Django Reinhardt. Sunday at 9 p.

Please tell me a little about yourself. In that original context, Ehrenreichs Ethical Dilemmas ethics of the Abrahamic religions can be described simply enough as a set of rules Ehrenreichs Ethical Dilemmas down by God for His creatures to follow. The character becomes tough Ehrenreichs Ethical Dilemmas vulnerable in her reading, yet the vulnerability is perhaps too pronounced in her uneven, patchy singing. Under this changed order of things the inequalities are not done away Coyote Research Paper.