THE RIGHT OF RESPECT AND THE DUTY OF RESTRAINT

October 5, 2009 at 3:26 pm (People and Community)

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Ma’at Declares:

Many people do not realize that the rights guaranteed to each citizen under the United States constitution are not privileges. What each citizen has is the right to expect others to respect his or her privacy, security, and pursuit of happiness. BUT, we all have the duty to be restrained in our pursuit of privacy, security and happiness, that we do no harm to another person’s rights, while they, in turn, have a duty to respect your rights.

That’s it in a nutshell. That’s freedom and responsibility.

Unfortunately for the world at large, the core of humanities problems lies in the misunderstanding or disregard for the above.

If your politics, religion, or philosophy tells you that you are better than everyone else, and therefore, you should be in control…well, that’s fine. Just don’t act on that feeling. Don’t expect other people to drop everything because of what you think is right or wrong per your belief system. This is very much why the men who wrote the constitution did not endorse a specific religion, god or philosophy. They knew their history. They knew what happens when a religion takes over as a governing entity. Can you spell, I-N-Q-U-I-S-I-T-I-O-N…or P-O-G-R-O-M…or C-R-U-C-I-F-I-C-T-I-O-N? How about H-O-L-O-C-A-U-S-T?

So behave like the good children you are, and play nice.

Humilis et confido, confido et humilis

September 27, 2008

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A WORLD OF MADNESS

October 5, 2009 at 3:01 pm (Things Ironic)

fog in the forest with water reflection

Cassandra cries out:

It’s a mad, mad, mad world out there… but I’m not crazy. Why would I be crazy? Just because I can see the future and nobody listens to me when I tell them about it…why should that bother me?

Because it fills me with a deep, endless, horrible, helpless despair. Think of the agonizing frustration of being able to see what will happen next…all the needless horror and pain to come that could be avoided, or diminished, but no one will hear me, or believe me. Time and again, history has proven me right, but no one listens…no one learns…lives are wasted, and that is the worst of it all.

Don’t listen to me, don’t believe me….but read your history. Read history from diverse sources…not the history spoon-fed to you in school, but history unabridged and written by real historians.

The books used in school are edited and approved by parents and teachers who want their children to grow up as respectful, patriotic children. These can be good qualities in anyone as long as they are not mindless qualities. These parents want their children to think that all American history is just and righteous. No one…no country is perfect. These parents want their children to believe that it is unpatriotic to question the decisions of the government. They don’t want to admit that; maybe, America has made mistakes in the past.

What a terrible lesson…to teach your children that the last thing you should do is admit ones mistakes.

As soon as you know the truth of your mistake, you should acknowledge it immediately. And then you should try to make amends as best as you can.

I shudder to think about the zombie-like quality we have instilled in our children. Imagine if Hitler stepped out onto a stage waving the American flag…everyone who had been taught to standup for the flag would do so without thinking, seeing only the flag, and not who is waving it. It doesn’t matter who’s carrying it…you must standup and honor the cloth waved by the opportunist holding it.

This is called knee-jerk patriotism. The design imprinted on the cloth is more important than the person holding it, or the people dieing around it. It’s why we trundle off to war whenever we are told it is our patriotic duty to do so by anyone who waves the American flag. It’s why we permit our representatives to pass laws that hurt people in general and that benefit the greedy few. It’s why we circle the wagons whenever someone, American or otherwise, criticizes what our government does.

You know who you are…you resort to sarcasm, profanity, callous indifference, and character assassination to justify your denial that things might not be so great…that the status quo is not the best…that maybe you are wrong…and worse…that things must change.

Men and women both do this. It must change. Or we will never grow up to be humbly confident or confidently humble. We will be forever out of balance and paying for it dearly.

Cogito

July 21, 2007

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WOMEN AND CALCULATED VICIOUSNESS

October 5, 2009 at 2:51 pm (Really Bad Behavior)

6 kali

Lilith declares:

I am guilty of many things, lasciviousness being my favorite. My emersion in human sexuality has outraged many for thousands of years. I understand and accept it. I am what I am…and this is how I will always be. I am that aspect of women that is wild, untamed, and unchained. Leave me be.

But…

There is one thing I am not, and that is a bully. Around me, do not go there. I cannot abide anyone manipulating other people to hurt them. It is not OK. There is enough nastiness in the world to last a million lifetimes. And women especially should not be playing that game. It makes us ugly, unfeeling, and ineffective in our influence on the turmoil and discord of this world.

Eve speaks:

I am guilty of many things. My love of knowledge is well known. My curiosity about the workings of the world is only eclipsed by Pandora’s.

But…

With knowledge comes power. Use that power wisely or it will come back to bite you. This I know. As women, we must always proceed with caution knowing our knowledge can make or break the lives of those around us. Searching for knowledge requires we also be careful of its affect on those around us, even if we do not like them.

Athena declares:

Justice requires just decisions. Women are daily impacted by the decisions of others.

But…

That works both ways. Our ability to see the whole situation can frighten us into controlling the behavior of those around us at great cost to right and reason. With our ability to perceive the emotional needs of others comes the responsibility of nurturing and assisting those around us who are in need of reassurance and guidance. If we do not supply this, we are guilty of a terrible injustice to all of humanity.

Ma’At enjoins:

The heart can deceive the mind, as the mind can deceive the heart. Not all that first appears true may actually be so. The apparent aspect of something is not always the totality of that thing. Knowing people requires knowing that all is not in the open, and learning much that is hidden.

As women we have the advantage of possessing talents that allow us to juggle many things.

But…

There are some who ignore this wisdom and judge only from what they can see. When women do this, a great imbalance occurs. If we do not seek to provide the balance of vision that most of us possess, then the world tilts crazily, and we all fall into the pit of turmoil and despair.

Miao Shan implores:

Judgment without compassion is like a sharpened blade that when used to punish one, cuts and punishes all. Compassion without judgment is like a soft hand smoothing the way for those that need it, and those that do not. In modern terms, compassion without judgment is enabling the hurtful behaviors of those who do not care about their affect on others.

So…What is the solution?

Balance.

Seek it, learn it, practice it, and try to attain it. We, as fallible and therefore imperfect beings, can reap the benefits, not just for ourselves, but for the world we live in as well.

Vicious women are bullies who must be stood up to, confronted, and reprimanded. Their behavior is not OK. Shame on them for betraying the compassion women should bring into this world.

Humilis et confido, cogito et curo.

October 13, 2007

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THE MADNESS OF IRONY

October 5, 2009 at 2:44 pm (Things Ironic)

winter storm

Cassandra laments :

I am Cassandra. I speak of irony. It is a bitter irony that I know of things to come, and yet I am unheard…unbelieved. Irony permeates reality. It is not just for human experience alone. We just seem to be the only species on this planet whose brain is complex enough to understand and appreciate it.

Sometimes, I think the understanding of it will drive me mad. Sometimes it fills my whole being with a desperate despair, so deep, so strong, that life becomes unbearable. Irony wears us down and turns us into masters of denial. Only an ‘intelligent’ species can practice denial. Only our ability to be aware of what has happened, what is happening, and what may happen allows us to taste irony in full. It is a bitter pill, and is what war and suicide are made of.

Irony is what drives us into denial. When we cannot bear the irony, we retreat into our own mental worlds of disavowal and justification. When irony becomes intolerable, and we do not have the choice, or the courage of choosing to leave, if we cannot bear its existence, we lapse into the world of frightened children and allow our minds to fill with magical thinking. Ironically, horrors and hypocrisies of all types have been bred there. Better to embrace the reality, or die.

Ironically, Pandora gave me hope. She gave you hope, too. Hope cannot prevent or destroy irony. Happily, with the bitter there is the sweet. With the joys of life, there is always irony. If you embrace that, you will discover that irony can be very entertaining…right up to the very end. There are few other components of life that are so consistently and pervasively amusing. There is perverse entertainment and abiding sympathy, to be derived from observing the attempts of others to ignore the reality of irony.

By accepting irony, the despair and bitterness turns in your mind, and as it does, it reflects the sunlight into your eyes, transforming the world into another, much more tolerable place. You can appreciate the sunlight for what it is and what it can give. And sunlight is only one aspect of all the other myriad aspects of living in this reality. The world is a treasure trove of wonders. Even the darkness has its pleasures. Understanding irony allows you to look at others who seem more fortunate than you and be glad for them. Knowing irony and how beset we are, we can have the courage to enjoy what we can, care for others in their travails, and work our way past the despair and the denial that tries our patience. While despair can fill life from the beginning to the end…hope springs eternal.

Humilis et confido

October 25, 2007

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ARE WE REALLY ALONE…AND DOES IT MATTER?

October 5, 2009 at 2:34 pm (Religion, Myths, and Cults)

leaves

ATHENA SPEAKS:

Is there a god, or many gods, or none? If there is a god, or gods, is he, she, it, or they compassionate? If not, then does this god or those gods deserve to be worshiped?

If we are alone, then should this stop us from being kind, caring, and ethical?

If all religions claim that all other religions are not the true religion, does this mean that they all negate each other, and essentially, reduce themselves to zero? No god…zilch…zip…nada?

Then we would only have ourselves to encourage, and blame…only ourselves to make of our lives what we can. This would require us to bear in mind the stark reality that we can only control a small percentage of the factors that make up our life. For example, the day we can accurately predict…never mind control…the weather, is the day we will have gained some small part of the control that so many of us aspire to.

Reality is viewed in many ways, from diverse perspectives influenced by our needs and fears. These realities both merge and cancel each other out. Consolidating and defining reality could help us decide what would be important for us to do to attain a better life for everyone. If we cannot do this, we will be doomed to struggle through the future repeating the past mistakes of fear, greed, dissension, and armed conflict.

If we are alone, we must be both mother and father to each other, and ourselves. We must learn to nurture and comfort each other. We can build communities that allow us to do this.

In the past 10,000 years, we have moved from simple believes in things like spirits of the forest, to an almighty, all powerful, patriarchal male god, which has dominated history for the past 2500 years. While we have made progress toward being more civilized, we have done so with many a slip backward. I think the state of current religions dedicated to the male image is unbalanced…and therefore dangerous. Without the effect of the mother, we are unhinged, and flap helplessly in the winds of history.

The problem with an exclusively male perspective is all the terrible things we still see happening around the world. There are still rapes, murders, and wars. Which gender is most likely to be involved in these activities? Overwhelmingly, men are the creators and propagators of strife and war.

This is not an accusation. This is a fact. This fact has not been stated enough. Is there an effective way to present this fact so that those who must change can understand what they have done, and more importantly, what they must do…especially if we are alone?

A good mother tells her child when she or he is selfish, rude, and hurtful to others. She guides her child to behaviors that are not just good for the child, but good for the whole world.

I sometimes wish people simply believed in a god who was a good mother.

If we are on our own, we have only ourselves…together.

Cogito et curo.

September 30, 2007

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