![iPod costume, front](http://farm6.staticflickr.com/5477/10812734213_535e79d88c_n.jpg)
![iPod costume, back](http://farm3.staticflickr.com/2883/10812478796_a08dcc6270_n.jpg)
Just Between Strangersmusings tossed into the void . . . |
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It is not our job to remain whole.(via whiskey river)
We came to lose our leaves
Like the trees, and be born again,
Drawing up from the great roots.
- - Robert Bly
(via A Mindful Life)Do not be daunted by the enormity of the world’s grief. Do justly, now. Love mercy, now. Walk humbly, now. You are not obligated to complete the work, but neither are you free to abandon it.
- –The Talmud
Things can still get better. Disappointment is the price of wanting a better world. You need to stop being surprised that no-one else is fighting for it, and start being surprised you’re not doing more.I'm always surprised (frustrated?) to not be doing more, and I think I'm willing to pay the outrage-exhaustion tax to keep myself in the game. Those who care need to fight.
(Maybe next time they could invite the HSA membership to contribute as well as judge, but perhaps that is too much to hope.)cherry blossom rain
sound of a love song passes
with the traffic
- — Dawn Apanius
(via whiskey river)
Half the harm that is done in this world is due to people who want to feel important. They don't mean to do harm; but the harm does not interest them. Or they do not see it, or they justify it because they are absorbed in the endless struggle to think well of themselves.
- - T. S. Eliot
journal of a nobody
(via whiskey river)
Happiness is accepting and choosing life, not just submitting grudgingly to it. It comes when we choose to be who we are; to be ourselves, at this present moment of our lives; we choose life as it is, with all its joys, pain, and conflicts. Happiness is living and seeking the truth, together with others in community, and assuming responsibility for our lives and the lives of others. It is accepting the fact that we are not infinite but can enter into a personal relationship with the Infinite, discovering the universal truth and justice that transcends all cultures: each person is unique and sacred. We are not just seeking to be what others want us to be or to conform to the expectations of family, friends, or local ways of being. We have chosen to be who we are, with all that is beautiful and broken in us. We do not slip away from life and live in a world of illusions, dreams, or nightmares. We become present to reality and to life so that we are free to live according to our personal conscience, our sacred sanctuary, where love resides within us and we see others as they are in the depth of their being. We are not letting the light of life within us be crushed, and we are not crushing it in others. On the contrary, all we want is for the light of others to shine.
- - Jean Vanier
Essential Writings
In a Dark Time
As though they believe that if they can keep you occupied refuting their flimsy trump cards over and over forever, they can stave off any changes to the culture that keeps them on top.Sometimes it feels like that. Often. I admire her unwillingness to throw up her hands. (via a re-tweet by Medley)
"It’s not that conservative people are more fearful, it’s that fearful people are more conservative. People who are scared of novelty, uncertainty, people they don’t know, and things they don’t understand, are more supportive of policies that provide them with a sense of surety and security," McDermott said.
- Brown University press release
His first piece is titled Speaking for My Tribe, and attempts to lay out how he views the issue and a bit on how he got there.
More than this, I come from a culture where guns are not so much feared as alien, as I said. I don’t own one. I don’t think many people I know have one. It would scare me to have one in my home for a lot of reasons. Not least of which because I have two wonderful beyond belief little boys and accidents happen and I know that firearms in the home are most likely to kill their owners or their families. People have accidents. They get depressed. They get angry.This is one of many viewpoints that tend not to be expressed during gun debates, because it's more personal than dogmatic, but I agree that it's a not uncommon position.
The second piece follows up discussion generated by the first, and is titled Guns Kill People.
My friend Steve Clemons talks in the context of international relations of high-trust versus high-fear relations between states. ... I think something similar applies to civil society. Maybe everyone carries guns but everyone is deterred from firing them in anger because everyone else has a gun and someone will shoot back. But even if we buy that mass gun deterrence vision, that’s a high fear society, not one I want to live in. It’s also not a vision of freedom that I buy into or want to be a part of.This seems to me to get at the heart of the divide. Nobody wants everybody getting shot up by crazy people, but some "tribes" think that the obvious solution is deterrence through widespread arming of the population, while other tribes think that it's obvious to prevent the crazies from running wild or having access to guns.
On the pay-walled PTM Prime site, I added this to Josh's analysis:
I think you've hit on a really good metaphor here -- that "everybody should be armed" is really a Mutually Assured Destruction approach to public safety, and I'm not sure that's a way that I (or society) want(s) to live. But in that regard, the divide mirrors the Cold War divide about the relative merits of a big nuclear arsenal versus disarmament -- is it more important to deter a bombing or to prevent having so many that accidental launch (via mechanical failure or a crazed actor) becomes more and more likely? I don't think that anybody on either side really ever convinced the other, and it may be that this divide mirrors the Stern Father versus Nurturant Parent frames with which different segments of our culture approach the world. Which is frustrating to think about, but maybe helpful in accepting that there are integral differences at work that can't really be reconciled but can maybe still find some common ground.I personally find that the identification of this divide as one that's not susceptible to rational argument makes me feel a bit hopeless about progress. But perhaps those in the midst of negotiations (Biden??) can already recognize the two positions represented here and find some zone of sanity between them. Anyway, I found the discussion useful in itself either way.
Interested in local politics of Philadelphia and/or PA? Check out A Smoke-Filled Room
The regional heavyweights are summarized at