This is Our BRAIN (animated)
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Tuesday, April 29, 2008
Satire: Rev. Wright Launches Own 24-Hr. Channel
Andy Borowitz on the campaign trail.
Rev. Wright Launches Own 24-Hr. Channel
All Wright, All the Time, Preacher Promises
Pronouncing himself “thrilled” with his recent spate of media appearances, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright announced today that he will launch his own 24-hour channel that will feature nothing but himself all day long.
Coming off his appearance with PBS’ Bill Moyers and his televised speeches before the NAACP and the National Press Club, the preacher said that “one thing is abundantly clear: people just can’t get enough of me on television.”
By launching WrightTV, the minister said, “It is my sincere hope that I can quench the public’s seemingly limitless thirst for hearing me talk.”
While some media experts wondered whether Rev. Wright could produce enough content to fill a 24-hour channel, the preacher assured that “that won’t be a problem at all.”
“Once those cameras are on, I’ll start talking,” he said. “A bigger problem will be getting me to stop.”
The minister added that it would take at least two weeks for the channel to launch, but said that in the interim he would schedule a series of other television appearances, on such programs as “Jeopardy,” “Dancing with the Stars,” and the hit teen drama “Gossip Girl.”
While the Obama camp had no official comment on the Rev. Wright’s new television channel, the concept got a ringing endorsement from another leading Democrat, Sen. Hillary Clinton (D-NY).
“Speaking for myself, whenever I turn on the TV and see that the Rev. Wright is on, I am overjoyed,” she said.
Elsewhere, Miley Cyrus said Vanity Fair’s topless photos of her were “even more embarrassing” than being Billy Ray Cyrus’ daughter.
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Monday, April 28, 2008
Buddhist Geeks: Dive Bar Dharma, Parts One & Two
An excellent two-part discussion from the Buddhist Geeks.
Dive-bar Dharma: Making it Fresh or Sensationalizing it?
Vince Horn , Ryan Oelke
Join the Geeks of the Round Table as we discuss an article published on Salon.com entitled, Dive-bar Dharma. The geeks explore several questions, sparked by this article, including whether or not we should update ancient metaphors with more contemporary metaphors? Also of interest is how far teachers should go in adapting the teachings of the Buddha to the culture and counter-cultures that they teach within? How do we discover the fine between making the dharma more fresh and relevant and of sensationalizing it?
This is part 1 of a two-part series. Listen to part 2, Every Generation Creates the Dharma Anew (airing next week).
Related Resources:
- Dive-bar Dharma (the article that we are discussing in this episode)
Every Generation Creates the Dharma Anew
The Round Table Geeks continue their exploration of Whitney Joiner's article, "Dive-bar Dharma". In a flurry of paradox, perspectives, humor, and exploration they tackle questions of integrating dharma into life, the Buddhist secular movements, contemplative practices in other traditions, and the historical and sociological dimensions of Dharma's spread to the West. We hope you enjoy this dynamic and fun conversation between fellow Buddhist geeks.
This is part 2 of a two-part series. Listen to part 1, Dive-bar Dharma: Making it Fresh or Sensationalizing it?.
Related Resources:
- Dive-bar Dharma (the article that we are discussing in this episode)
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Mezmer's Dictionary of Bad Psychology
Extremely cool, in a geeky kind of way.
The philosopher Voltaire said that if folks just bothered to define their terms, there would not be any need to argue. Unlike definitions of aardvarks, armchairs, and arks that have clear and distinct meanings, meaning for psychologists goes far beyond simple meaning to what you really mean. Unfortunately, this desire to get under the surface appearance of things makes standard dictionary definitions of matters psychological somewhat useless, since everybody in the field has their own separate notions of how to redefine the psychological wheel. (e.g. a definition of the concept of behaviorism is a case in point).
Hence, in order to clarify the deep and dumb meanings of psychology, I, Dr. Mezmer offer my Dictionary of Bad Psychology. My definitions will be prejudiced, mean spirited, inaccurate, and downright wicked. But hey, at least they're not in French! Weekly, I'll be adding more definitions, so stay tuned!
Here are a couple of definitions:
Behaviorism: A psychological movement, now extinct, that is built on the premise that you are what you do, and you do because of what you have done. Replaced by humanistic psychology (you are what you feel), cognitive science (you are what you think), Dr. Atkins (you are what you eat) and modern advertising (you are what we say).
Dr. Phil: (1946-2005) Greatest psychologist that ever was, and an inspiration for an entire nation to shape up, get in ship shape, or otherwise ship out. Author of the '10 life laws', the '15 life strategies', and 'how to earn millions without having to serve 10 to life'. Dr. Phil has revolutionized the intellectual landscape of American as curricula, changed nationwide from philosophy to PHIL-osophy.
Dr. Phil was a graduate of the Academy of Lagado, and winner of several Ponzi awards, the Salieri Prize, the Oprah Legion of Honor, and of late was spiritual adviser to the Republican party.
Tragically, Dr. Phil's life came to an abrupt end when in a household accident, he tripped and was crushed by his own ego.
Steven Pinker (1954- ) Psycholinguist, evolutionary psychologist, and master of the modern intellectual nonsense book. Following the traditions of Dr. Seuss and Dr. Phil in creating wondrous imaginary worlds for simple folk, Pinker has written big, fat, and wordy books based on equally imaginary premises for the faux intellectual in all of us. Of note in his substantial corpus of works are 'How the Mind Works', in which he provides an imaginary account of the mind without mentioning once the brain; 'The Blank Slate', an intriguing rebuttal of the imaginary controversy about whether people are indeed blank slates with nary an instinct in their heads; and 'Phrenology: the Mind's New Old Science', in which our author finds distinct mental modules for hope, fear, stamp collecting, tidiness, and Britney Spears addiction residing in our cranial noggin.
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Does Science Make Belief in God Obsolete?
The John Templeton Foundation asks this question - Does science make belief in God obsolete? - of scientists and religious leaders, with predictable results (mostly).
Here are a couple of responses:
Yes, if by..."science" we mean the entire enterprise of secular reason and knowledge (including history and philosophy), not just people with test tubes and white lab coats.
Traditionally, a belief in God was attractive because it promised to explain the deepest puzzles about origins. Where did the world come from? What is the basis of life? How can the mind arise from the body? Why should anyone be moral?
Yet over the millennia, there has been an inexorable trend: the deeper we probe these questions, and the more we learn about the world in which we live, the less reason there is to believe in God.
Start with the origin of the world. Today no honest and informed person can maintain that the universe came into being a few thousand years ago and assumed its current form in six days (to say nothing of absurdities like day and night existing before the sun was created). Nor is there a more abstract role for God to play as the ultimate first cause. This trick simply replaces the puzzle of "Where did the universe come from?" with the equivalent puzzle "Where did God come from?"
What about the fantastic diversity of life and its ubiquitous signs of design? At one time it was understandable to appeal to a divine designer to explain it all. No longer. Charles Darwin and Alfred Russel Wallace showed how the complexity of life could arise from the physical process of natural selection among replicators, and then Watson and Crick showed how replication itself could be understood in physical terms. Notwithstanding creationist propaganda, the evidence for evolution is overwhelming, including our DNA, the fossil record, the distribution of life on earth, and our own anatomy and physiology (such as the goose bumps that try to fluff up long-vanished fur).
For many people the human soul feels like a divine spark within us. But neuroscience has shown that our intelligence and emotions consist of intricate patterns of activity in the trillions of connections in our brain. True, scholars disagree on how to explain the existence of inner experience—some say it's a pseudo-problem, others believe it's just an open scientific problem, while still others think that it shows a limitation of human cognition (like our inability to visualize four-dimensional space-time). But even here, relabeling the problem with the word "soul" adds nothing to our understanding.
People used to think that biology could not explain why we have a conscience. But the human moral sense can be studied like any other mental faculty, such as thirst, color vision, or fear of heights. Evolutionary psychology and cognitive neuroscience are showing how our moral intuitions work, why they evolved, and how they are implemented within the brain.
This leaves morality itself—the benchmarks that allow us to criticize and improve our moral intuitions. It is true that science in the narrow sense cannot show what is right or wrong. But neither can appeals to God. It's not just that the traditional Judeo-Christian God endorsed genocide, slavery, rape, and the death penalty for trivial insults. It's that morality cannot be grounded in divine decree, not even in principle. Why did God deem some acts moral and others immoral? If he had no reason but divine whim, why should we take his commandments seriously? If he did have reasons, then why not appeal to those reasons directly?
Those reasons are not to be found in empirical science, but they are to be found in the nature of rationality as it is exercised by any intelligent social species. The essence of morality is the interchangeability of perspectives: the fact that as soon as I appeal to you to treat me in a certain way (to help me when I am in need, or not to hurt me for no reason), I have to be willing to apply the same standards to how I treat you, if I want you to take me seriously. That is the only policy that is logically consistent and leaves both of us better off. And God plays no role in it.
For all these reasons, it's no coincidence that Western democracies have experienced three sweeping trends during the past few centuries: barbaric practices (such as slavery, sadistic criminal punishment, and the mistreatment of children) have decreased significantly; scientific and scholarly understanding has increased exponentially; and belief in God has waned. Science, in the broadest sense, is making belief in God obsolete, and we are the better for it.
And here is one more, for balance.
No.
Despite the fact that I'm an atheist, I recognize that belief offers something that science does not.
Science isn't remotely about a scientist announcing truths or The Truth. It’s about stating things with a certain degree of certainty. A scientist will say, "In this experiment, I observed that A causes B; it didn't happen every single time, and my statistical analyses show that I can be X percent certain that this A/B connection didn't happen by chance." The convention in most scientific papers is that you don't report something until you're more than 95 percent certain. It is impossible with statistics to state something with 100 percent certainty.
Now, I'm not trying to be a postmodernist gibbering about how science is a purely subjective process and there are no objective truths. There are truths, and scientific knowledge produces temporary points of solid ground in pursuit of them. An observation must have predictive power and be capable of independent replication by others. And scientists must be willing to abandon supposed knowledge when a completely different explanation arises—"Hey, this is an orangutan jawbone stained dark, so Piltdown Man really isn't our grandfather." Far more often, scientists are asked to modify their knowledge: "Remember when you said that A doesn't cause B every single time? It turns out that A causes B only when C is happening." This increases the subtlety and nuance of science. As a surprising example, it turns out that the most iconic "fact" in the life sciences is only a temporary foothold: DNA doesn't always form a double helix, and those exceptions are mighty interesting.
So it doesn't even make a whole lot of sense to frame a science/religion fight as who has the truthier truth. But you can state it as, "Which approach gives you more predictive power and ability to change an outcome?" When stated this way, science wins hands down. There's no question that when faced with, say, a sick child, it's better to prescribe antibiotics than to invoke some ceremonial goat innards or to employ a fetish gee-gaw. Even in a country as throttled by religion as our own, the courts have consistently ruled that a parent cannot deny medical care to a sick child and instead substitute attempts at religious cures. That's not why belief resists obsolescence.
The next logical arena in the culture wars is the issue of whether religion or science is better for society. On this front, there's no question which approach has produced more historical (and contemporary) harm. Sure, science has come up with Lysenkoism, eugenics, lobotomies, and the people who methodically tested new uses for Zyklon B. But that doesn't even begin to nudge the scale from its one-sided tilt. And the argument that the likes of Torquemada are aberrations of religiosity is nonsense; they are the only logical consequences of some facets of religiosity. The blood on the hands of religion drips enough to darken the sea.
It might be argued that religious belief remains relevant because of the comfort it can provide. But this one doesn't do much for me. Solace is not benign when reality proves the solace to have been misplaced, nor are beliefs that reduce anxiety when the belief system is so often what generated the anxiety in the first place.
So why is belief still relevant? To this I'd offer a very a-scientific answer. It is for the ecstasy. I'm not talking about glossolalic frothing in the aisles, nor other excesses that most religions neither generate nor value. I mean those instances where you're suffused with gratitude for life and experience and the chance to do good, where every neuron is flooded with the momentness of feeling the breeze on its cellular cheek. A scientist or a consumer of science may feel ecstatic about a finding—that it will cure a disease, save a species, or is just stunningly beautiful—but science, as an explanatory system, is not very good at producing ecstasy. For starters, there are good arguments to be made for why science shouldn't do ecstasy. One reason is that scientific progress so often constitutes minutiae that lurch you two steps back for every three steps forward. It is also because of the content—the gratitude part of ecstasy is particularly hard if you spend your time studying, say, childhood cancer, or the biology of violence, or causes of extinction. By contrast, the potential for ecstasy is deeply intertwined with religiosity, where the mere possibility of belief and faith in the absence of proof is where it can be an ecstatic, moving truth.
This may seem an unfair tilting of the debate against science. After all, you wouldn't write an essay trashing the profession of commodities broker because it doesn't produce ecstasy. But building your life's explanations around science isn't a profession. It is, at its core, an emotional contract, an agreement to only derive comfort from rationality.
Science is the best explanatory system that we have, and religiosity as an alternative has a spectacular potential for harm that permeates and distorts every domain of decision-making and attribution in our world. But just because science can explain so many unknowns doesn't mean that it can explain everything, or that it can vanquish the unknowable. That is why religious belief is not obsolete. The world would not be a better place without ecstasy, but it would be one if there wasn't religion. But don't expect science to fill the hole that would be left behind, or to convince you that there is none.
Other voices include Christopher Hitchens,
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The Ghazal: A Poem of Longing
The was posted at APM: Weekend America on Saturday. This is a very challenging poetic form, one I have never even tried.
Angela Kim talks with poet Suzanne Gardinier (audio version at the site).
The Ghazal: A Poem of LongingYou've heard of haikus, sonnets, and limericks -- all are poetry. But what about ghazals? At first glance, the poem looks almost like a sonnet because it's written in couplets. But that's where the similarities end. The ghazal is a form of poetry rooted in the Middle East and India. Sometimes they are even sung.
Suzanne Gardinier has come to love the ghazal. She's a writer and professor at Sarah Lawrence College in New York, and has written a book of 101 original ghazals. She will be reading some of her poems today at the annual Sarah Lawrence Poetry Festival.
The first thing you need to know about writing a ghazal is how to say it:When I'm working with my students on this form, we practice that sound at the beginning of ghazal -- because often they'll say "gah-zal" or "gha-zahl."
It's a form that originated in Arabic and Persian and moved into Urdu. And is still very much a living tradition in those languages. And it's written in couplets. There's a repeated refrain at the end of each couplet called a radif.
One way to describe the form is that each couplet is meant to be like a pearl on a necklace so it radiates by itself and it's beautiful with the other pearls at the same time.
The word "longing" tends to be at the center of any discussion of what the ghazal is, from its earliest roots. Sometimes it's personal longing -- one person longing for another. Sometimes it's someone longing for justice in the country they live in. Sometimes it's a longing for God.
Usually the conventional subject of a sonnet would be love, death, and the "changing of the seasons," as people say. But as an American working on the ghazal form, there was something different and interesting to me about the subject matter conventionally associated with the ghazal -- with that longing that drew me to it.
One of the interesting paradoxes of the form to me is that, while each couplet has to be different, there's a way that something has to hold them together. And really, it's that meditation on the mystery of love of what is, and what's the nature of experiencing it.
And which, of course, you can't nail that -- you can't make one couplet and say "OK, I got it." All you can do is circle around and around asking the questions.
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Ghazal # 9 from "Today: 101 Ghazals"
by Suzanne GardinierI've lost my shoes Have you seen them
The winged ones that used to carry meI've heard that when people die they remember
their mothers and call in the night Carry meWhen my son used to say I can do it myself
He was whispering Could you carry meWhen the quick rain soaks the shoulders of my shirt
it's saying Just for now Carry meThere's a tenderness around your eyes
Have enough tears said Carry meAll day in this new dream I walk on gravel
And the words you didn't whisper carry meWhen my mother arrives at the end of something
It's to faint in my arms and say Carry meI've known how to walk since before I was born
It's useless to try to carry meWhat the dazzle of light says as it touches
the wave swelling Cresting Breaking Carry meWhat the secrets say as they line the edges
of my eyes Your eyes Carry meWhat the shoeless stammerer doesn't say
as she doesn't step into your arms Carry me
There are more links at the APM site.
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The Daily Show - McCain's Sweet Talk Express
This was from last week -- a spoof on McCain's visit with George Stephanopoulos.
via videosift.com
via videosift.com
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Sunday, April 27, 2008
Ken Wilber Interviewed in Salon
Steve Paulson interviews Ken Wilber (or here), maybe "the most important living philosopher you've never heard of," for Salon.
Here's the introduction:
April 28, 2008 | Ken Wilber may be the most important living philosopher you've never heard of. He's written dozens of books but you'd be hard-pressed to find his name in a mainstream magazine. Still, Wilber has a passionate -- almost cultlike -- following in certain circles, as well as some famous fans. Bill Clinton and Al Gore have praised Wilber's books. Deepak Chopra calls him "one of the most important pioneers in the field of consciousness." And the Wachowski Brothers asked Wilber, along with Cornel West, to record the commentary for the DVDs of their "Matrix" movies.
A remarkable autodidact, Wilber's books range across entire fields of knowledge, from quantum physics to developmental psychology to the history of religion. He's steeped in the world's esoteric traditions, such as Mahayana Buddhism, Vedantic Hinduism, Sufism and Christian mysticism. Wilber also practices what he preaches, sometimes meditating for hours at a stretch. His "integral philosophy," along with the Integral Institute he's founded, hold out the promise that we can understand mystical experience without lapsing into New Age mush.
Though he's often described as a New Age thinker, Wilber ridicules the notion that our minds can shape physical reality, and he's dismissive of New Age books and films like "The Tao of Physics" and "What the Bleep Do We Know." But he's also out to show that "trans-rational" states of consciousness are real, and he's dubbed the scientific materialists who doubt it "flatlanders."
Wilber's hierarchy of spiritual development -- and the not-so-subtle suggestion that he himself has reached advanced stages of enlightenment -- has also sparked a backlash. Some critics consider him an arrogant know-it-all, too smart for his own good. His dense style of writing, which is often laced with charts and diagrams, can come across as bloodless and hyper-rational.
When I reached Wilber by phone at his home in Denver, I found him to be chatty and amiable, even laughing when he described his own recent brush with death. He's a fast talker who leaps from one big idea to the next. And they are big ideas -- God and "Big Self" and why science can only tell us so much about what's real.
Nothing new to Wilber fans here, but the discussion includes science and religion, the pre/trans fallacy, meditation and interior experience, the neuroscience of compassion, brain waves, and so on -- the usual topics.
Here is one good passage:
What about brain-imaging studies? Various neuroscientists are hooking up Buddhist monks and Christian nuns to brain-scanning technology, and they see changes in brain activity during meditation or prayer. But can they tell us anything fundamental about the nature of consciousness?
Yes and no. What's starting to show up are significant and unique fingerprints of these meditative states on the brain. That's been demonstrated with people who do a type of meditation that's said to increase compassion -- imagining someone else who's in pain and breathing in their pain, creating a feeling of oneness with that person. These people start showing distinctive gamma wave patterns. These gamma waves show up almost no place else. But let me tell you what it doesn't prove. The claim that it's a higher mental state can only be made if you're looking at it from the inside. We say that waking is more real than dreaming. But brain waves won't tell you that. The brain waves are just different. You can't say one is more real than the other.
This raises a fundamental question about the whole mind-brain problem. Virtually all neuroscientists say the mind is nothing more than a 3-pound mass of firing neurons and electrochemical surges in the brain. Why do you think this view is wrong?
It reduces everything. And you can make no distinctions of value. There's no such thing as love is better than hate, or a moral impulse is better than an immoral impulse. All those value distinctions are erased.
But is that scientific view wrong?
At this point, you enter the philosophy of science, and the argument is endless. Is there nothing but physical stuff in the universe? Or is there some sort of interiority? We're not talking about ghosts and goblins and souls and all that kind of stuff. Just: Is there interiority? Is there an inside to the universe? And if there is interiority, then that is where consciousness resides. You can't see it, but it's real. This is the claim that phenomenology makes.
For example, you and I are attempting to reach mutual understanding right now. And we say, aha, I understand what you're saying. But you can't point to that understanding. Where does it exist? But if you take a phenomenology of our interior states, then you look at them as being real in themselves. And that's where values lie and meaning lies. If you try to reduce those to matter, you not only lose all those distinctions, but you can't even make the claim that some are right and some are wrong.
But somewhere down the road -- 50 years from now, 500 years from now -- once neuroscience becomes much more advanced, will scientists be able to pinpoint where these values and thoughts come from?
I'm saying we'll never understand it. The materialists keep issuing promissory notes. They always promise they're going to do it tomorrow. But interior and exterior arise together. You can't reduce one to the other. They're both real. Deal with it.
Not bad introduction to other ways of thinking for those new to Wilber. However, he doesn't deal with the "critics" issue any better than usual -- it's their ego, not mine -- not only that, but he essentially doesn't answer the question about his arrogance (see the Wyatt Earpy episode).
You have many admirers. You also have critics. One objection is that you are too full of yourself. The science writer John Horgan, in his book "Rational Mysticism," said the vibe he got from you was, "I'm enlightened. You're not." How do you respond to this charge of arrogance, the sense that you've unlocked the secrets of the universe and no one else has?
A lot of people see me as much more humble. I continue to change because I'm open to new ideas and I'm very open to criticism. Basically, I've taken the answers that have been given by the great sages, saints and philosophers and have worked them into this integral framework. If that vibe comes across as arrogant, then John would get that feeling. Of course, he was trying to do the same thing, so I would have brushed up against his own egoistic projections. But some people do agree with him and feel that my support for this integral framework comes across as arrogant.
All I've done is provide a map. We're always updating it, always revising it, based on criticism and feedback and new evidence. You see those maps that Columbus and the early explorers drew of North and South America, where Florida is the size of Greenland? That's how our maps are. What's surprising to me is the number of savvy people who've expressed support for my work.
It's good to know some things in life are constant.
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Sunday Link Dump: Self-Harm, Andropause, and More
Here are a few things that I had planned to blog about, but don't have the time (I am editing a book this weekend). So rather than close the tabs, I'm sharing them as a link dump.
Nano Photos Rival Modern Art
Rabbi Michael Lerner: Obama's Mistake -- and What It Would Take To Really Rectify It
Nano Photos Rival Modern Art
OK, that's just freaking cool how they look like sunflowers with a little color added.Every six months, the Materials Research Society celebrates the most eye-catching images found in the course of their researchers' studies -- celebrating the serendipitous convergence of science and art.
Materials researchers may struggle for years with stubborn instruments, fragile crystals or difficult chemical reactions before obtaining a bit of precious data from the exotic substances they study. Now, the scrutiny of samples not only yields potentially important data, but also artistic inspiration.
Take a look at the latest finalists.
Silicon oxide nanowires have an amusing habit of arranging themselves into impressive patterns. When S.K. Hark, a professor at the Chinese University of Hong Kong, looked at some of them under a scanning electron microscope, he saw flowers. Unlike plants, their fertilizers were gallium and gold catalysts -- which allowed them to grow to several microns in length while maintaining a roughly 10-nanometer diameter. The physics professor colorized his award-winning crop to enhance their resemblance to real sunflowers.
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How one in three young girls has tried to self-harmOne in three young girls has tried to harm herself by methods including cutting, burning, punching and even poisoning, a survey reveals.
The study of 800 young people found that more than one in five aged 11 to 19 say they have selfharmed, and half know someone who has done it.
But the problem was greatest among girls - half said they did it because they were depressed - according to the study by Affinity Healthcare, which provides mental health services to the NHS.
This is scary stuff -- our young women are in a huge amount of pain and no one seems to be noticing enough to do anything about it. At least this study alerts to the scope of the problem.
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Male menopause? Yes, it’s realThe hormonal decline that men experience isn't nearly as abrupt as it is in women — it's more like walking down a hill than jumping off a cliff. However, waning testosterone is likely to make a guy moody, irritable and depressed.It's my goal to prevent this as much as possible, through exercise, diet, and supplements -- when that stops working, I will find a doctor who does testosterone replacement. There are too many age-related health issues in men that can be solved with a little exogenous hormone therapy. Why suffer?(Upon hearing this list of symptoms, one woman joked of her husband, "Is it possible he's had menopause since he was 20?") A decrease in available testosterone also increases a man’s risk for heart disease, and makes him more prone to injury because of decreasing bone density.
Let's be clear: Andropause is not the same as a mid-life crisis, which is a psycho-social issue. And not all guys who experience aging — and the inevitable decline in testosterone that comes along with it — can be qualified as having andropause.
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Rabbi Michael Lerner: Obama's Mistake -- and What It Would Take To Really Rectify It
A continuing irony of American politics is that the candidates of the ruling elites have been able to convince many Americans that the candidates who seek to redistribute wealth to the less fortunate, provide health care for all, and provide jobs and housing for the poor are the real elitists. They've been able to get away with that not only by demeaning the "Hollywood limousine liberals" (never explaining why those wealthy who support tax increases on their own wealth to feed, house and care for the hungry are not deserving of more praise than those who horde their wealth for themselves), but also by portraying liberals as hostile to the religious concerns of the American people.This is a good editorial, one that needs to be read by all liberals. Rabbi Lerner adds this bit of wisdom as he concludes his piece:Unfortunately, on that latter point Right-wingers are often accurate. The religio-phobia Americans encounter in many sections of the liberal and progressive world often push them away and into the hands of the Right. Deeply suspicious of the slippery slope from some right wing religious beliefs to religious coercion, homophobia, sexism, and racism, people on the Left have created a cultural assumption that anyone who is into religion or spiritual life is probably a little less intellectually or psychologically developed than the secularists, perhaps seeking mystery or a father-figure God to compensate for some lack in their lives.
The message that most Americans receive from the Left is an elitist and demeaning put-down: "We need your votes, so you are welcome into our ranks, but we hope that by hanging out with us secular leftists you will eventually give up your pathological need for religious beliefs and evolve to a higher level of rationality that us secularists have been developing as the only possible way to think clearly about the nature of reality." Often unconscious, this religio-phobic message has done much to push away the majority of Americans whose religious beliefs are extremely important to them, even though on purely economic grounds they'd feel more aligned with the Left's agenda than that of the Right.
Yet if he does explicitly embrace a spiritual politics, he can transcend the left/right dichotomies that have torn our country apart. What remains to be seen is he can do that in the context of a Left whose religio-phobia is both intense and unconscious, and a media determined to make every mistake into a fatal error no matter who the candidate. If his supporters let him do so, Senator Obama has the understanding and capacity to become the first national figure to embrace a spiritual progressive agenda, and doing so may be the only way he will overcome the stigma of elitism with which the Republicans (with the aid of Hillary Clinton) now seek to mis-describe him.I hope he's correct.
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Daily Om: Letting Nature Work
Friday's Daily Om was a good one.
Letting Nature Work
Silent Change
We all see things about ourselves, our relationships, and our world that we want to change. Often, this desire leads us to take action toward inner work that we need to do or toward some external goal. Sometimes, without any big announcement or momentous shift, we wake up to find that change has happened, seemingly without us. This can feel like a miracle as we suddenly see that our self-esteem really does seem to be intact, or our partner actually is helping out around the house more. We may even wonder whether all of our hard work had anything to do with it, or if it just happened by way of grace.
As humans, sometimes we have relatively short attention spans, and we can easily lose track of time. We may worry about a seedling in a pot with our constant attention and watering for several weeks only to find ourselves enjoying the blooms it offers and wondering when that happened, and how we didn’t notice it. Nature, on the other hand, has infinite patience and stays with a thing all the way through its life. This doesn’t mean that our efforts play no part in the miracle of change—they do. It’s just that they are one small part of the picture that finally results in the flowering of a plant, the shifting of a relationship, the softening of our hearts.
The same laws that govern the growth of plants oversee our own internal and external changes. We observe, consider, work, and wonder, tilling the soil of our lives, planting seeds, and tending them. Sometimes the hard part is knowing when to stop and let go, handing it over to the universe. Usually this happens by way of distraction or disruption, our attention being called away to other more pressing concerns. And it is often at these times, when we are not looking, in the silence of nature’s embrace, that the miracle of change happens.
As an aside, since I post a lot of Daily Om material, they have a new book I want plug for them: DailyOM: Inspirational Thoughts for a Happy, Healthy and Fulfilling Day.
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The Dalai Lama on Happiness at Work
Dalai Lama Quote of the Week, from Snow Lion Publications.
Among Tibetans, at least traditionally, the economic conditions are such that this nine-to-five daily employment isn't really an important part of [working life]. In Tibet, either you are a farmer or a nomad or a merchant. The work is seasonal.... During the season they work very hard, and when they finish they come back and don't have any employment.
...in modern society, and particularly in industrialized nations, the issue of unemployment is a very difficult situation. There are no easy answers. One has no choice but to try to cope, and make one's best effort to find new work. There is just no other solution.
However, the basic attitude of the individual plays a very significant role, and can make a big difference in how someone responds. While we may not have control over our situation, our attitude is something that we have some control over. So first, what we need to realize is that uncertainty and change are very much a part of the modern economy, particularly with regard to employment. That is a serious problem, but a fact that we have to accept. There is no guarantee that there will be a job tomorrow if you are working today. So, if we understand this ahead of time, it may change how we respond when that happens. Then we won't feel so surprised, as if we are singled out. We understand that the loss of a job has many factors, the result of many causes and conditions. We will understand that, in many cases, it may even have roots in global economic issues. This way, we won't become so upset by taking it personally, or looking around us for someone to blame for our problems. This alone may help reduce our mental agitation. Of course, here we are talking about unemployment due to some wider causes or layoffs, not due to being fired because of one's own incompetence.
So there might be different ways in which individuals will respond to the challenges of change. What is important is to acknowledge this fact and try to work out how best to cope with the immediate problem itself. For example, if you need employment as a means of your livelihood and if you become unemployed, then all your efforts should be put into looking for new employment so that your livelihood will be secure. But there are two different responses. One person may feel demoralized and become sort of paralyzed, thinking, There is no hope, I lost my job, what am I supposed to do? But another individual in the same situation might look at it as an opportunity to make some changes. As a challenge. So that is the more positive way, the more proactive way of dealing with this problem. But of course it is not easy.
There may also be other ways that might help at least reduce the mental anxiety of dealing with the situation, so that a person can use all their mental energy to find new work. For Buddhists, there are certain thought processes and considerations that help--for example, the belief in karma [one's actions] and ultimately taking responsibility for one's own karma. Although this kind of mental attitude may not have any effect in physically resolving the situation, at least it will help ease the individual from the psychological effect of losing the job, and so on. And of course, believers in other religious systems can also take some consolation in their own beliefs.
~ From The Art of Happiness at Work by His Holiness the Dalai Lama, and Dr. Howard C. Cutler, M.D.
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