Do we not have a natural propensity to be deeply affected by the emotions experienced and portrayed by others right in front of us? Do we not want to either reach out and hold them, to soothe them or on the other end, to smile and to dance with them? Imagine the ability to view someone suffer, in some great way, perhaps someone you know, from behind a sound-proof one-way mirror. Our empathy would be barred, stunted.
Tag: natural
Dear Women: You ARE Your Body, And That Isn’t A Bad Thing; It’s Your Power
The mind/body duality is as fundamental to universal nature as masculine/feminine duality. If you don’t believe in masculine/feminine energy polarities or that there are “masculine” traits and characteristics as well as “feminine” ones, then maybe just stop reading because this article probably isn’t for you. If you do have a deep or even general understanding…
Lordstown
The now impoverished home county of my paternal ancestors experienced a moderate oil boom in the early decades of the 20th Century. Then the oil became uneconomical to extract — end of oil boom.
Reflections from my Panama Cruise, II
Falmouth had the most lavish port shopping area; I’d compare it to Reston, Virginia. The area beyond, though thinly inhabited, was fairly poor, but with quite a few middle-class homes mixed in. Our tour guide said that many Jamaicans spend years building their own homes so they can live rent-free (but not property-tax-free) for life.
Rainwater’s Motivated Reasoning
If a brilliant, eminent, and mainstream scholar of the 1960s could be right for such wrong reasons, the brilliant, eminent, and mainstream scholars of today could easily be mired in their own brand of motivated reasoning. Indeed, so could you. Or me. There’s no easy remedy, but the first step is being hyper-aware that we have a problem.
School Security Is Now a $3 Billion Dollar Annual Industry
US taxpayers spend nearly $700 billion each year on K-12 public schooling, and that eye-popping sum shows no sign of slowing. In fact, as more non-academic programs are adopted in schools across the country, the price tag for mass schooling continues to swell even as achievement lags.
On Co-Sleeping
We are co-sleepers and room-sharers in my family. We started our family bedroom in early 2013, before my youngest was born, and several years before we started renting our house out on Airbnb (2016) and doing some light traveling. This arrangement is how humans slept for the entire history of our species (and before, of course) up until 200 years ago.
False Narratives, Propaganda, and Political Tribalism
In 2013 people rose up around the world to oppose the war in Syria being promoted by Obama, Clinton, Kerry, many European leaders and maybe most obviously, the neocons. Since then, the war slowly squeezed its way into existence anyway gradually though apathy, propaganda, and other bullshit.
Rhetorical Hocus Pocus
You and I owe society and nation nothing, and neither of these abstractions owes, or can owe, us anything. When national political leaders purport to place obligations on us, they are attempting to sucker us into doing what they want us to do by claiming that we have a legitimate obligation to do it.
The Changes in Culture
I think we recognize “renegades” because they are the ones who often seem to trigger the changes in society. However, I think this is only the visible representation of something deeper.