The power of cyberspace

"Community on a global scale.  Think of it: a cross-cultural, cross-functional,
globally dispersed team, linked by a continuity machine, driven by a common
enterprise vision, sharing in the common values of the emerging global culture,
and producing out of their cultural, organizational, and technical richness and
complexity a constant flow of wisdom.  A true global cosmopolis in cyberspace".

O'Hara-Devereaux & Johansen, 1994, p. 420 
Globalwork: Bridging Distance, Culture, and Time

Notes on Art Education

Cultural Sustainability, cultural engagement and visual culture plays a big role in development of values and the transferring of belief systems.

Visual art making acknowledges previous learning, personal meaning making, the real world and audience. It presents a platform for critical self reflection and a space to facilitate the ongoing mediation of society, cultural values and citizenship.

It would have been interesting to explore how art making affirms our consciousness about the world and self through creative engagement and communicative knowing. How can we develop students’ capacities to engage creatively with learning in environments that provide opportunities for thoughtful participatory understanding about self as a citizen of the world, or as a citizen of the world, or as a member of none’s national or local community. It is identifying and reflecting that an understanding of one’s world is dependant on knowing how contemporary society communicates its values and beliefs informed by economic, environmental, cultural and political forces. In a world dominated by the triumpth of the image, multi-modal practices and visual culture (Duncum, 2003), being visually literate is fundamental, and having the skills to creatively engage with communicative knowing within the dominant discourse is essential to the active construction of an individual’s values, beliefs and identities.

Source: Creative Engagements with Visual Culture, Communicative Knowing, Citizenship and ContemporaryVisual Art Education 
Kathryn Grushka, University of Newcastle

Three Dilemmas of Virtue

[...] Each of the three older Pendawas are commonly held to display a different sort of emotional-moral dilemma, centering one or another of the central Javanese virtues. Yudistira, the eldest, is too compassionate. He is unable to rule his country effectively because when asks him for his land, his wealth, his food, he simply gives it out of pity, leaving himself powerless, poor, or starving. His enemies continually take advantage of his mercifulness to deceive him and escape his justice.

Bima, on the other hand, is single-minded, steadfast. Once he forms and intention, he follows it out straight to its conclusion; he doesn’t look aside, doesn’t turn off or idle along the way – “he goes north”. As a result, he is often rash, and blunders into difficulties he could as well have avoided.

Arjuna, the third brother, is perfectly just. His goodness comes from the fact that he opposes evil, that he shelters people from injustice, that he is coolly courageous in fighting for the right. But he lacks a sense of mercy, of sympathy for wrong-doers. He applies a divine moral code to human activity, and so he is often cold, cruel, or brutal in the name of justice.

The resolution of these three dilemmas of virtue is the same: mystical insight. With a genuine comprehension of the realities of the human situation, a true perception of the ultimate rasa, comes the ability to combine Yudistira’s compassion, Bima’s will to action, and Arjuna’s sense of justice into a truly moral outlook, an outlook which brings an emotional detachment and an inner peace in the midst of the world of flux, yet permits and demands a struggle for order and justice within such a world. And it is such a unification that unshakable solidarity among the Pendawas in the play, continually rescuing one another from the defects of their virtues, clearly demonstrates.

Book: The Interpretation of Cultures, 1973

Author: Clifford Geertz

Chapter: Ethos, World View, and the Analysis of Sacred Symbols p. 139.