Sunday, January 24, 2021

What Superheroes Mean

 
It always amazes that some people seem to think that good works can somehow magically appear in a corrupt world without idealism and dreams of courage and daring.

Saturday, January 23, 2021

When the Unreal Seems More Real

"The way in which we use this power (of memory and prediction) is apt to destroy all its advantages," Alan Watts said.

Friday, January 22, 2021

Corporate News Media Polishes Its Blind Spots


The corporate news media has already ignored the Republican use of torture, the Republican war of lies that murdered several hundred thousand innocent people in Iraq, and the Republican Wall Street deregulation that caused the 2008 global financial crash. 

So why not this too?


At the Boundary of Conscious and Unconscious

“Yogis describe the breath as lying precisely at the boundary between the body and the mind,” observed psychotherapist Stephen Cope. “Most of us have experienced the shallow breath of terror, or the long deep sighs of melancholy…

“Breath connects the inside of the body with the outside world — taking the outside world in, and expelling the inside world out.”

Wednesday, January 20, 2021

Here and Now, Not There and Then

The overwhelming of our inner reality by the demands of the outer world, in ways never before possible, is a central problem of the 21st century.

Outer communications technology must be counterbalanced by — and ultimately tamed by, and enhanced by — inner mental technique.

Monday, January 18, 2021

'Forgive and Forget' Will Get Us Killed This Time

Republicans always cry "Unity!" after the disasters they’ve designed rain down on our heads. They want some breathing space to plan the next fascist attack they intend to launch against us.
Kevin McDermott, Post-Dispatch: “Years before President Donald Trump’s MAGA army barreled through the U.S. Capitol, bashing windows and beating guards and waving a Confederate flag and ultimately ending five lives, much of America, left and right, seemed to agree on one thing: Too many of us had failed to ‘understand’ Trump’s supporters…

“Sorry, but anyone who can look around at this point and continue to support this treasonous president is deplorable… As the fever in our politics finally breaks, Trumpism doesn’t need to be ‘understood’ any more than white supremacy or Nazism or any other toxic philosophy does. It just needs to be defeated."

Wednesday, January 13, 2021

Never, Ever Turn Your Back on a Republican


Remember the story about the scorpion who just wanted a ride across the river?

No More Forgiving and Forgetting GOP Criminals

“We’re reaping, in my view, the consequences of President Obama’s failure to do accountability in 2008, with the financial crisis and the Iraq war and the torture regime,” said the Yale philosophy professor Jason Stanley. 

“The message then was, ‘It doesn’t matter what sort of violations you do. You can lie to the American people, you can cheat us out of money as the bankers did, and there are no consequences. 

“And to have no consequences again? We’ll have a social and political movement that will make Trumpism seem mild by comparison.”

Sunday, January 10, 2021

Just How Stupid Are Republicans? This Stupid



 

Prescient Dialogue from Alec Gunness

George Segal and Alec Guinness in "The Quiller Memorandum"

Watching The Quiller Memorandum from 1966. 

“We’ve been engaged in some rather tough work here,” says Alec Guinness, in low, ominous tones. “Nazis, from top to toe, in the classic tradition. Not just the remains of the old lot, oh no. There’s quite a bit of new blood. Youth. Firm believers, very dangerous. It wouldn’t do to underestimate them.”

Yeah, tell me about it, Alec.


Monday, January 4, 2021

Attention Must Be Paid — And Managed

“Only we humans worry about the future, regret the past and blame ourselves for the present,” wrote psychologist Rick Hanson in Buddha’s Brain: The Practical Neuroscience of Happiness, Love, and Wisdom.

“Neurons that fire together wire together. Mental states become neural traits. Day after day, your mind is building your brain. This is what scientists call experience-dependent neuroplasticity.”

“By taking just a few extra seconds to stay with a positive experience — even the comfort in a single breath — you’ll help turn a passing mental state into lasting neural structure.”