The actual war on women, the supposed “war on religion,” and the fallout

George Lakoff writes about the actual Republican war on women and the supposed "war on religion"

A recent Gallup Poll has shown that, in the US, 82 per cent of Catholics think that birth control is "morally acceptable." 90 per cent of non-Catholics believe the same. Overall, 89 per cent of Americans agree on this. In the May 2012 poll, Gallup tested beliefs about the moral acceptability of 18 issues total, including divorce, gambling, stem cell research, the death penalty, gay relationships, and so on. Contraception had by far the greatest approval rating. Divorce, the next on the list, had only 67 per cent approval compared to 89 per cent for contraception.

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Religion as a meaningful source of moral guidance?

On September 13, 2012, the Dalai Lama wrote the following on Facebook:

All the world’s major religions, with their emphasis on love, compassion, patience, tolerance, and forgiveness can and do promote inner values. But the reality of the world today is that grounding ethics in religion is no longer adequate. This is why I am increasingly convinced that the time has come to find a way of thinking about spirituality and ethics beyond religion altogether.
For more, see this post on "Before it's News."

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Pulling things together

I often think of Steven Covey's reminder to take time to "sharpen the saw."

Balance and renew your resources, energy, and health to create a sustainable, long-term, effective lifestyle. It primarily emphasizes on exercise for physical renewal, prayer (meditation, yoga, etc.) and good reading for mental renewal. It also mentions service to the society for spiritual renewal.
I've been feeling quite "stretched" over the past year, trying to accommodate duties to family, job and community, in addition to writing and trying to recharge, which I best do by taking time to play music. The problem is that by trying to attend to all of these aspects of my life, I don't attend to any of the adequately, or so it seems. On top of that, the issues that I want to write about tend to be complex, or that is the way I tend to see them. Therefore, most of the writing I try to do begs for serious research and time-consuming writing. Looking back over the past year, at least as a general rule, I see that I haven't adequately taken the time to write about the topics that interest me in way that adds much of value to the conversation.Too much of my blogging consist of citing to trackbacks while making an observation or two. In the meantime, I have various growing outlines with many dozens of topics that I'm contemplating and developing. I'm excited about some of these ideas because I have some original approaches to some of them. I'd love to write about them, and I will. But I find that I'm not able to deal with them well, at least until now. I often made the judgment that it's better to not write at all on many topics rather than to throw words around sloppily. The bottom line is that I've been writing somewhat less than I have in the past, despite my dream of writing more and doing it better. This time "away" has been good for me. My mind seems more focused, at least to me inside my own head. This is the essence of Covey's admonition to "sharpen the saw." I feel more at peace when I am more selective, despite my unrealistic urge to live multiple simultaneous lives pursuing everything that interests me. I think I'm about to get into a better writing spot soon, thanks to this new approach of being more selective. I'm definitely not "burned out." I'm quite interested in writing better and adding something worthy to all of the world-wide chatter. My hope for this blog is found in the About Page: "This blog will focus on using current events as a springboard to higher-level discussions about human animals and the human condition." This is where I need to focus--not on the day to day events, but on merely noting these fascinating (and oftentimes distressful) occurrences and using them as fodder for making deeper sense of the world. Part of my optimism for more better writing stems from the completion of an enormously distracting task. My aging home computer had been slowing gradually and then dramatically due to mal-ware and likely other technical issues. I've probably spend 40 hours over the past 3 months trying to make my PC fast again, and I recently gave up. I bought a new PC, and just spent another 12 hours transferring data to the new drive as well as installing and validating the many programs I use. As of today, that task is done--everything is humming. To given an example of how bad things got, MSWord now opens in about a second. Last week, it took about 3-5 minutes to open. I used 4 virus/malware/spyware removal programs. I defragged and diagnosed my drive. I cleaned out unneeded software. I failed to figure out how to remove the damned Babylon malway, despite many approaches. The slow speed and perhaps viruses screwed up my software to my scanner, which led to a 6 hour diversion (fixed when I bought the new computer and reinstalled the software. My data has always been safe, in that I have multiple levels of backup in multiple locations. As to my old PC, I wiped it's memory clean, and put to use in a bedroom, where it still runs unimpressively yet adequately. With these technical problems behind me and my new focus, I'm looking forward to doing some serious writing in the coming days, and making some new videos in the coming months. I'm hoping that, from now on, my hours sitting in front of my computer will be spent writing rather than tweaking and fixing.

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Living whole-heartedly

I very much enjoyed Brene Brown's TED talk on living whole-heartedly. She combines a humorous presentation with a deep and serious topic. At the outset, she recognized that "connection" is what life is all about, but shame (the fear that "I'm not X enough") destroys this sense of connection. To allow connection, we need to take chances; we need to allow ourselves to be SEEN. With this as the context, Brown set out to understand more about shame. It boils down to whether someone BELIEVES that they are worthy of love and belonging. The one thing that destroys a sense of love and connection is a fear that one is not worthy of love and belonging. People with a sense of worthiness, the "whole-hearted," have the courage to be imperfect. They have the compassion to be kind to themselves first, and then to others (because you can't do the latter without doing the former), They also develop their sense of connection as a result of being authentic. They believe that what makes them vulnerable is what makes them beautiful--these are people who are willing to do something where there are no guarantees. Vulnerability is the core of our sense of shame and fear, but it is also the "birthplace" of joy, of creativity, belonging and love." Brown's research showed that many of us "numb" vulnerability through our many addictions and obsessions. We can't selectively numb the bad emotions without also numbing the good emotions. Because we numb all of our emotions, we then instinctively feed our cravings through our destructive addictions. We compensate by trying to make uncertain things certain. We also compensate by blaming. We try to perfect ourselves and our children. We also pretend that what we do does not have an impact on other people. We don't know how to say that we're sorry and that we'll make things right. Brown's advice: Don't be afraid to be seen for the vulnerable people we are. We must learn to love with our whole hearts, even when there is no guarantee. We need to practice gratitude and "lean into joy." Most important, we need to learn to recognize that "we are enough," because we then stop screaming and start listening. "Only then can we be kinder and gentler to ourselves and the people around us."

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What kind of person attacks rescuers?

From Glenn Greenwald's new platform, the U.K. Guardian:

[A]ttacking rescuers (and arguably worse, bombing funerals of America's drone victims) is now a tactic routinely used by the US in Pakistan. In February, the Bureau of Investigative Journalism documented that "the CIA's drone campaign in Pakistan has killed dozens of civilians who had gone to help rescue victims or were attending funerals." Specifically: "at least 50 civilians were killed in follow-up strikes when they had gone to help victims." That initial TBIJ report detailed numerous civilians killed by such follow-up strikes on rescuers, and established precisely the terror effect which the US government has long warned are sown by such attacks. . .

It is telling indeed that the Obama administration now routinely uses tactics in Pakistan long denounced as terrorism when used by others, and does so with so little controversy. Just in the past several months, attacks on funerals of victims have taken place in Yemen (purportedly by al-Qaida) and in Syria (purportedly, though without evidence, by the Assad regime), and such attacks – understandably – sparked outrage. Yet, in the west, the silence about the Obama administration's attacks on funerals and rescuers is deafening.

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