On discovering feelings and needs

Yes, it has been several months (almost 15 weeks) since I began the journal.  Working through stuff at my own pace.  Haven't had the heart to write, until now.

Thinking (today) about core beliefs and the feelings they protect or deliver.  One of my beliefs in particular stands out at this time -- I am a clumsy, ill mannered, short tempered, unlovable oaf.  Emphasis on unlovable.

The thing is, this belief seems blatantly irrational.  I can find within myself no obvious motivation.  But the maelstrom of emotions enveloping it creates the appearance of an intimidating, even frightening and tedious task of sorting.  By sorting, I mean expressing, living into.  Oh god, where to start.

I suspect the earliest seed of that odious perl is the sense of feeling unlovable.  My (unexpert) guess is sometime in early childhood I figured out love is a goodness happening for everybody else.  I must have recognized something (seeming to me) meaningful transpiring among those around me.  Something that was missing when I reflected upon my own connection with others.  What was my need?  A hug?  A caress?  Maybe acknowledgement and attention?

When I honestly recognize and accept this belief, tenderly compassionately holding my un-lovableness, I begin to feel a sharp ache in my heart.  Almost as though it were a cramp in a single focussed spot on the heart's surface.  That point constricts and pinches into a point of white heat and warm waves disperse into the surrounding tissue.  In seconds, the focussed pain morphes into vague coldness and a raw general achiness permeating the whole heart cavity, spreading chill into my chest and acidic nausia into my belly.

It is a perfectly awful experience.

I am left shaky and weak.  There is a claw in my heart.  Barely able to breathe, fearful that dizziness will overtake me if I try to stand unaided.  I roll my shoulders and head.  I feel, no, hear tendons pop and snap.  I force myself to inhale deep and slowly exhale.  I remember that my breath is my anchor.  I come back to myself and now I'm ready to try again!

My view on the usage of a word: racist

I'm deeply disturbed by commercial media's (broadcast and web) usage of the term racist, and I write this commentary with the hope of inspiring awareness among my friends. It is true that racism is, at least, one of the most profound and relevant problems facing our society here in the US. And I will say this right up front--although activism is important, one of the fundamental lessons we must all learn is how to speak the language of racism. The media's incessant harping of the word "racist" is doing insufferable damage to our ability to metabolize this language. And here I will attempt to explain, in my view, why.

Without going into an extended monologue summarizing our country's history of racial injustice, I think we can all agree deep and painful wounds have been self inflicted on our culture that must be dressed and healed. Now it's important to recognize, this inequity has been, over hundreds of years, institutionalized within our civilization. It has become a part of the narrative, how we understand ourselves. These institutions have even in some cases become enshrined by law, and the law of the land. And it has come to pass that the very core of our civilization is shaped by those self sustaining structures. Structures which have the effect of oppressing and privileging whole classes of people based (really) on nothing more than popular mythology.

So, I hope you understand how profound the issue of racism is, and how using the word 'racist' to label an individual is deflating and trivializing the conversation. There is of course a correct usage for the term, but it should not be confused with words like prejudice and bigotry. Yet that is exactly what our overly glorified media has been doing! I actually heard a person with the title PhD suffixed to their name say "Are there racists, yes; is racism a problem, no." I'm not interested in verbally flagellating such obvious incorrectness but rather to underscore the depth and significance of the harm that can be done by misusing these words. That a person with such a prestigious title cannot see the import in reserving the term racism for focus on the systemic, even tectonic issue at hand is, frankly, discouraging.

Please consider this deeply, take it to heart. Scorning bigotry is not the best way to battle racism, structurally embedded racial inequity. We must come together and spend time learning the language of racism. We must be able to talk to each other about this most subtle and often painful problem. We must learn to identify patterns and structures in our most secure and reverently held norms, patterns that result in discrimination and oppression of some while extending privilege to others. It is not an easy task, and inciting emotionally charged responses through the misuse of language will only cause more harm.

\\//_ live long and prosper

I noticed my emoticon is starting to catch on.  So I need to document here that I truly was the first person to use this emoticon (idea came from Star Trek's Vulcan Science Officer Spock):

\\//_

--you saw it here first--

So, it was a little 2 year hiatus. Anyway...

Could advances in artificial intelligence render humans an endangered species?

Love letter to my Beloved

Honey, I was thinking about what you said this morning and a new thought occured to me. There are two kinds of beauty in the world. There is natural beauty that is not all that common--it is based on certain social concepts of symmetry and balance. And make no mistake, for those few who accidentally have it there is a cost.

But there is another kind of beauty that is Earned. It's a beauty that is the reward of being a good person, caring about others, and helping when you can. Of that kind of beauty, you lack nothing. It brings about a certain kind of glowing to the complexion. I do not say this to rationalize--I really mean it--and I think you'll agree after you think about it for a while.

I've seen people with the (supposed) gift of natural beauty end up becoming as ugly as sin through mean spiritedness and selfishness. Mark these words my Love--you are a very beautiful person! And with every day that passes, every time you extend your hand with concern and understanding, you are becoming more beautiful.

I realize now that life gave me at least half a dozen chances to have love, but I screwed it up over and over. Then life gave me you; one last chance. Again I've done all I could to screw it up but you have been patient with me, you have loved me in spite of my scars and callouses. That, Dear, is why you are the most beautiful person in the world to me!

I love you,
Michael

The commercialization of politics

CSPAN Washington Journal: Former Members of Congress for Common Ground

I heard one of the gentlemen in this interview remark that the cost of getting elected has increased a hundred fold since running in the 70's.

It got me to thinking--$150,000 in 1970, $15,000,000 in 2008, hmm.  There is a market here, and not metaphorically speaking.  There is a vibrant market place around the buying and selling of opinion and policy.   I'm not just talking about the old school corporate pay-off and congressional extortion types of trade.  No, this is new, it is in fact a swap-meet for commercialized politics.  The commercialization of politics should be a scary thing.  It brackets an insidious movement.

I hear over and over the cry for "campaign finance reform,"  but I now see that it won't help, and here is why.  Ask yourself what creates a market?  It's a demand for something on one hand and a supplier of that something on the other.  It takes a supply and a demand to create a market.  Now when a political campaign accepts that it must compete in our commercial reality its strategy has already been fixed in a fundamental way.  That is, create effective memorable sound bytes and play them to the most people for the least dollars.  We are responsible, you and I, for creating that demand, and we shouldn't blame our media industry for stepping up to supply it.  They are just doing what all good capitalists do.  But we all see what kind of government is being grown in the soil of this culture.

We may think we're demanding transparency, but we're really demanding something completely different and much darker.  It is the true elephant in the room.  You and I must end the demand, turn off the commercials and find better, more productive ways of informing ourselves about the issues and people addressing them.  When we are willing to accept this responsibility, it won't take long for the media to respond, or our government for that matter, their livelihoods depend on it.  We should stop blaming Congress and look to our own capabilities in this matter.  We are not required to watch commercials just because there is an endless supply of them!

~Maze

Understanding conservativism and liberalism

I heard an excellent discussion this morning between conservative and liberal scholars. The moderator asked the representative from the American Enterprise Institute "why are you a conservative?" The answer was:

I believe in individual liberty. A government should only have the powers required to protect personal freedom. But that freedom must not be allowed to go so far as to hurt other individuals in the society, hence liberty and justice for all.

Then the moderator asked the representative from Progressive Policy Institute "why are you a liberal?" The answer was:

I believe a society is only as strong as each individual's sense of responsibility to the community. A government must be entrusted with the power to implement policies that cultivate and nurture such a culture of activists.

The more I reflect on these answers, the better I like them!

How I get my news

Two years ago I started using these services for my news, in this order:
Project for Excellence in Journalism
Media Matters for America
Fact Check Public Policy Center

One year ago I turned off all commercial broadcast, cable, and satellite services!

Now I've become an avid C-SPAN radio listener and an adept Google Reader user. Judging by the commercials I see at sports bars, in magazines, on billboards, I'm not missing much.

another Barzun quote

There is but one conclusion: human beings are unmeasurable. It follows that equality is a social assumption independent of fact. It is made for the sake of civil peace, of approximating justice, and of bolstering self-respect.
[From Dawn to Decadence: The Forgotten Troop, p436 pp2; emphasis additional]

We are but expressions of the culture we live in (or, clueless in Atlanta)

I often tell my friends that nobody thinks in a vacuum; we can not separate who we are from those we live among; we understand and express ourselves with language and metaphors that our culture has taught us.

So you can imagine the laugh I had when I read AP: Teacher in trouble after students don Klan robes this morning.  My wife thought I was laughing about the lunacy of the situation, but that's not true.  I found it humorous to imagine the discombobulation (minus the embarrassment maybe) of the students when they came to class and found a note on the door informing them the teacher had been suspended.

I'm going to hazard a guess that they were stunned, and some of them quite likely still have not figured out what's going on.  It was not, I'm sure, the instructor's idea.  Probably the deed was enacted in the plain light of day not so much for ideological reasons, but rather as the result of mundane scheduling concessions.  Couldn't get everybody together on the week-end.  But I'm also sure it never even occurred to them that some bystander's grandfather (yes, that recently!) may have been lynched.  The evidence indicates the individuals in that troupe are almost certainly beneficiaries of white privilege and have no idea of what feelings this kind of image might produce in others. 

But they wouldn't, you see, because of the culture in which they exist.

Maybe I'm getting cynical, though not inconsistent with my age group, but I find it laughably ironic when the reality of one's inherited status slaps one in the face so abruptly.  I'd wager that the teacher (who should be fired, but not destroyed professionally) is feeling somewhat bemused at the moment, yet I hope that she has the grace to see the error of her ways and encourages by example a classroom of impressionable young minds to become a little more aware of their brashness.

--
mjm

Gigrich slays me again...

I heard Newt Gingrich on C-SPAN Washington Journal this morning.

He was spouting crap about Radical Islam and Secular Socialism.

Got me to thinking, where is this guy coming from--I made a magnificent effort to understand him.

I heard him actually say "... the spiritual side of life is more important than the secular...".

I wonder, should that kind of premise be welcome on the public stage? Is there a valid argument that considerations informed by religious belief are or are not helpful?


--
mjm

on the words conservative and liberal

I believe it may help to consider, for a moment, those two words as rhetorical devices.

Within the rhetorical form referred to as argument there are several important developmental phases including, point of view, audience, persona, etc.

An overarching theme though, is delivery--which concerns the strategy and mechanics of presentation.  This consideration answers the question: what is the best approach to win consensus? I'd like to suggest two strategic models: conservative and liberal.

A conservative model takes the posture that the argument is dealing with some given, or set of givens, e.g. self evident truths.

A liberal model does not enjoy such solid support.  It must assume a posture granting unknowns, an explicit admission that the unknowable exists.  A liberal argument will always impart some sense of an ethical consideration, a qualitative value position. Frequently sentences begin with "In my opinion."

You can always recognize a conservative argument because it is closed, and can not be countered, short of inflicting trauma on the subject.

You can always recognize a liberal argument because it is suggestive and may even encourage alternative interpretations.

It is important to understand that both are useful devices, both are important, both have a place and time.

True of any tool.

Can anybody save the GOP?

Tsk, tsk, it's just too bad. The Republican platform does (really) have some important ideas. But it's impossible to hear them because of...

Why I'm down on reporters

The article Why reporters are down on Obama by POLITICO's Gerstein and Gavin does seem to make sense, but it's superficial. And it also underscores what it is about reporting that just bugs the hell out of me.

Of course Obama's administration enforces a policy of closed doors to these tattlers. The typical talking head in today's media has simply forgotten the journalistic principle: Unbiased reporting is a fantasy. Hell, as the article shows, even good grammar appears to be out of reporting fashion. Good journalism insists we understand and accept the reality that all people have opinions. It should be evident that our perceptions are colored by who we are. The trick, the art of journalism, is to convey our opinions outright and in plain sight, but at the same time admit that there are cogent alternative perspectives!

Our so called reporters of today's glitzy glamorous media circus have failed to learn that lesson. I too would close my door to any tattle tale who's sole objective was to sensationalize every word out of my mouth.

My Faith Statement

Although I would agree, anybody who associates personality and creativity with some kind of universal entity is likely deluded; faith, never the less, has a very real and relevant function in our lives.

My reasoning stems from the fact that, frankly, I can't know everything. I don't believe anybody can. But if omniscience is out of the question, then what do I fill the holes in my knowledge with? Simple answer, assumptions. And an assumption is merely taking a position of faith while I figure all the other stuff out--I may need to come back and change my assumptions after I've learned more, but it is an exercise in faith that got me over the hump.

Furthermore, though the God of my fathers' is certainly dead to me, I yet sense divinity and holiness in our universe. Now, if we can agree that some things are sacred, and also, that we all must at some point rely on faith, then I'll accept any definition of secular humanism you wish to give me. But let us not be reciprocal fundamentalists about it! Fundamentalism is not a good thing from either the believers' or the unbelievers' camp. There will always be room for liberal religion and its quirkiness in the world I dream of.

Fwd: A Informative Regan-omics Defector's Opinion

Bruce Bartlett "The New American Economy"
http://capitalgainsandgames.com

Barlett's argument: supply-side economics, though effective in Reagan's day, has outlived its usefulness. He also contends that Conservatives need to accept programs that assist the "welfare state" (health care, for example) and that in an effort to fund those programs, a change in how we tax in the U.S. should be considered. Barlett calls for a "value-added tax" as an alternative to the current system.

Elasticity of Demand

Listening to the Senate debating health care reform. The thought occurs to me that the health-care/insurance marketplace is really two overlapping industries. That creates deeper complexity since some interests are in conflict.

There are some marketplaces that conform to the theory I learned in Econ 101, i.e. price controls through competition. But some markets do not fit the model, i.e. health-care, education, perishable food. These markets exhibit little change in demand with change in price. This is because these items are not merely desirable, they are a requirement for survival (at a decent level). Economists refer to this kind of relationship between price and demand as the elasticity of demand. But I would imagine that prices in the insurance market place are highly elastic -- e.g. what's your life worth? Who knows? It's just a matter of what the salesman can convince me of, uh?

...guess I skipped that class.

Wisdom

Wisdom: the ability to appreciate the difference between knowledge of good and evil, knowledge that is good, and knowledge that is evil.
-- Michael Masiak, 2009

The best description of Unitarian Universalism I've ever seen...

This article is in the Summer 2009 issue of the Unitarian Universalist publication UUWorld. It was authored by Kenneth W. Collier...

The human condition

Let the buyer beware, WebMD...

Never trust a web site that won't let you post comments, complaints, or alternate views! In fact with webMD you can't even send a private email to an author. That's an obvious signal you're reading plain old corporate advertising and NOT information.

Look at the smoking cessation article by Jennifer Warner for example. Right off the bat you read: "nicotine-replacement therapies are more than twice as effective at helping smokers quit than going it alone."

Yea, right. OK, did anybody ask what "going it alone" means? The phrase is used like it is an accepted technical term, maybe to suggest cold turkey cessation? In the next paragraph you read: "... treatments were more effective than placebo...", but is placebo the same thing as cold turkey quitting? Really? In the first case with placebo, you have a person who thinks they're getting a magic pill, an easy way out. Any wonder why they fail? But the second case describes a motivated person who needs to arrest the addiction, who needs to get free of nicotine. So, you see, it's really not a fair comparison after all, though the author didn't actually refer to any overt comparison--rather it was cleverly insinuated, wrapped in clinical sounding mumbo-jumbo.

Now I am a 40 year smoker who quit cold turkey. I tried using all the tricks: gum, patch, hypnotism, bupropion, varenicline. And they all failed, utterly. I was provided with a nicotine substitute and a thin assurance that this magic bullet could end my misery. But it never did, and I didn't quit. Well, not until I obtained knowledge, the Knowledge, of how addiction works. It was information, not corporate spam, that made the difference. And all the real quitters I know agree.

If you are a smoker and you want to quit try WhyQuit.com, and leave WebMD to the marketing jerks!

Let the buyer beware.