Your Organized Religion is an Insult to Humanity

A British teacher in Sudan asked one of her 7-year-old students to bring in her teddy bear to teach them about animals. She then asked the students to pick a name for the bear and they voted to name it Muhammad. These last weeks she was arrested and convicted for letting them use the name and will be punished with 40 lashes. On Friday (11/30/07), after a reduction in sentencing to 15 days in jail and deportation, thousands of Sudanese, many armed with clubs and knives, rallied in a central square and demanded her execution.

Now the first response is to call this law and these people primitive, but the problem is much deeper than that. This is not a problem with the current division in Islam or any other religion that has its evangelicals, hard-liners, or extremists. This is a problem with organized religion.

When you create a set of laws and call them infallible, you are doing so under the belief that the people, culture, technology, and science will never change. The commonly held belief is that during the new religions inception is that humanity has reached a final destination or perfection that needs to be maintained. This thought process is usually fostered by a powerful group of people who want to preserve their comfortable control over a population. The development of the new religious laws is usually a regurgitation of previous controls and stories from other popular religions into a new form to suit their needs. If not for that reason, religions are instituted to herald in a new form of government or to change direction in a current one.

The insulting part is not that the masses fall into this trap and can made to believe that silent obedience is the way to some sort of existential fulfillment in an afterlife. No, it’s the sheer nerve of them to put forth the belief that there is an ability to understand the universe. As if simply using our limited minds and current understanding of the complexity of the cosmos is enough to explain everything. So what organized religions are offering is easy answers that are destined to be outdated and laughable before they are instituted. It takes blind faith in these dogmas to overlook the obvious inconsistencies and inaccurateness that they contain.

Spirituality is one thing, and is different for everyone, but to believe in one version of a religion over all others is not only foolish, it’s self-defeating. If you put all of your hope into something that can so easily fail, you will bound to become either blind to reality or disappointed with life.

The alternative? Believe in yourself. The strength you have to follow the dogma of an organized religion is the same strength that you can use to just be a good person. And you know what a good person is because every single religion, community, and historical reference to good acts mirrors each other. Be good, you have that power within yourself. Or to quote Abraham Lincoln, “When I do good, I feel good; when I do bad, I feel bad, and that is my religion.”

Christmas Music

Voltaire said, “Anything too stupid to be said is sung”, and this is doubly so of Christmas music -- it is the equivalent of being bludgeoned to death by a Hallmark card.

Having spent a considerable amount of time over the last couple of weeks submerged in Christmas music, I have come to realize the vast majority of these songs have never been nominated for a Grammy, received any internationally recognized awards for musical excellence, or have been hailed for their musical creativeness for a reason. This is because they are intentionally shallow and musically insulting.

Christmas is the time of year in which we can all be proud to wallow in our own ability to be tacky and gaudy. Everything from homemade scenic sweaters, to borderline obscene Christmas yard decorations, all the way to those CDs of dogs barking Christmas carols is fair game. And not only do we allow such embarrassing frivolity, we see it as a necessary part of the kitsch and as essential as the tree or presents.

Think about it, would it be Christmas if you weren’t bombarded with the same repetitive music about Santa and his reindeer, snow, decorations, good-will, and the several quaint reasons for the mostly Pagan holiday? True, some people (usually the die-hard Christians or desperate infotainers) do try to make the holiday out as holy, but it’s a long shot to rebrand all of those Pagan traditions as Christian. Still, it’s an excuse to be carried away in everything delightfully tacky and excessive because we do so under the banner of “The Season”.

So this year, as we spend time with our families celebrating the tackiness of the season by drowning ourselves in a self-imposed orgy of Christmas crap, try to remember that stupid Christmas song on the radio is not painfully bad, it’s painfully good.

Now if you’ll excuse me, the mall is giving 10% off of everything during the all-drum performance of Jingle Bells.

The Dichotomy of the US

America is the only country that went from barbarism to decadence without civilization in between -- Oscar Wilde

We as a nation have always lived with an identity crisis. Now that is not to say that we don't know who we are, but as individuals we are proud of our diversity and that leads to times where as a nation we are extremely polarized.

I offer a simple analogy in the form of two large companies trying to sort out the current range of American thinking: Subway Restaurants and Toyota Motor Corporation American Division.

Subway currently offers an entire Fresh Fit menu with calories listed in full view and healthy alternatives of apples and milk to the normal unhealthy choices. The marketing campaign for this wholesome menu is promoted by a man who lost 245 pounds eating nothing but Subway sandwiches. This is in stark contrast with their other running menu option of a new Subway Feast which promotes a sandwich with 1,400 calories that is "as big as your head".

Toyota is doing about the same thing. Along with announcing a new Prius that will not only offer the best fuel consumption on the market, but will also have an option to allow for a home hook-up for little to no fuel consumption at all, Toyota also has a 7,000 lbs., 12 MPG, Land Cruiser. So why advertising that they are the environmentally green car company, they continue to sell one of the worst environmental cars offered in the American car market.

So why do these two examples, which so openly strive to promote themselves as one thing, also cater so heavily to the antithesis?

I believe that the answer lies not in our current diametrically opposed methods of thought, but in the lack of vocal majority within the center. We have been co-opted into a belief that there are only two sides to every stance, that there are right and wrongs, and that our choices are those of other peoples labels.

These false choices have historically been reduced to rubble by artists, poets, great thinkers, and a populous that believed in education and free thinking. Unfortunately, the outlet for such things now exists in a medium that sells ad time. Every original thought is bought and sold like a commodity, cheapening its originality and lessening its affect on the public. New ideas are either squashed for their lack of marketability or embraced, repackaged, sold, and forgotten.

This process of commoditizing dissension leaves the moderate and undecided without a real voice while we all wonder whether or not we're in the mood to submit to gluttony or give preemptive penance for our wish to submit to our greed.

I Love People at Christmas

Black Friday, or the day after Thanksgiving, may be my favorite day of the year. Hordes of people, all up at an unreasonable hour to stand in lines, be grumpy, only to end up spreading unhappiness to one another over petty fights for cheap Chinese toys and unbelievable consumer deals. They do this to celebrate the birth of some guy who never had a family, had no possessions, and lived most of his life under a self-imposed vow of poverty. The irony is not only palpable, it’s hilarious.

So each Black Friday you will find me camped out watching the masses. If they would let me, I would love to drag one of my recliners into the lobby of a Wal-Mart just for the occasion. Because let’s face it, overweight people running through the aisles and tripping over one other in a department store at 5am to save $20 on something that they really don’t need in the name of love, family, and friendship, just can’t be beat in funny.

Every year this holiday starts earlier and gets crazier and every year I enjoy the show more and more. So please, get out there and shop till you drop. And please, when you collapse on some old woman who was fighting you for the last bag of $1 tube socks, remember that you have fulfilled my Christmas wish to enjoy hilarity of the Christmas Season for all that it is worth.

Live Music

I grew up going to see live shows around Atlanta and Boston. If there was going to be music, any music, I wanted to be part of it. The best of all of these were rocks bands in small venues. There is just something indescribably wonderful about watching a band claim a stage and get bar patrons off their asses. Seeing them earn their sweat while we felt the pulse of the music is one of the closest things to ecstasy imaginable. Tonight reminded me why we all need music in our lives. Music keeps you happy, gets your body back into rhythm, and makes you remember why you live. Music is a higher understanding than all wisdom and philosophy; so make sure that you bathe in music as often as you can and I promise that you live a happier life.

Check out thebananaconvention.com or better yet, see them live. You can thank yourself later.

On Health

I am a realist, I know that I eat too much yummy food and don’t exercise enough, but that is a choice that I have consciously made. What confuses me is the myriad things out there intended to help people lose weight and be healthy. So in order to help out as much as I can, let me explain things in a language that is both simple and easy to understand.

You have evolved over billions of years eating about 80% raw veggies and fruit and 20% meat. To think that your body can cope with eating processed chemicals, mostly meat or all fruits and veggies, heavily altered foods, man-made foods, or things raised using unnatural fertilizers and drugs without side effects is foolish. To put it in simple terms, the more crap that you eat that is not a basic food that your ancestors bodies grew accustom to over thousands of generations, the more health problems you are likely to have.

The same goes for medicine and health care. Your body is an awesome piece of equipment. It is the most advanced machinery that you will ever own. It repairs itself, maintains a balance with its surroundings, and is conscience of itself. When left in an environment in which it has evolved to match, humans do extraordinarily well. Unfortunately, environments change, people build cities, food is harder to produce in larger quantities, and we expose ourselves to things that evolution never had time to sort out. So naturally we are going to get exposed to all sorts of things that our bodies are going to have a hard time handling. The best thing that you can do is to maintain a good natural and physical state so that your billions and billions of years of evolution has the best chance to deal with these new unknown.

All that being said, you need to realize that even though you should try to stay as close to what your body evolved to live with, there are occasionally going to be things with which it will not cope with well. The trick is to understand what is really a threat and what is just marketing.

For instance, your body was not meant to eat Hot Pockets. There are 76 ingredients in a Hot Pocket -- most of which are manmade and unpronounceable. Just because you can eat something and it tastes good, does not mean that it’s food. Antifreeze is sweet and smooth, but it will kill you if you drink it. And a Lean something just means that there are less of the things that we now are bad and more of fillers and chemicals that are further from being classified as food.

Most pharmaceutical drugs are the same. You take them constantly to fix either psychological problems or problems caused by bad health and diet. In other words, they work to counteract the bad parts of your other habits. This is the equivalent of constantly filling up one of you car tires with air when you know that it has a nail in it.

Are you going to occasionally need medical help and eat food that is not what you should be eating? Of course, but you need to realize that it is a conscious choice that you are making and that with each choice it moves you future from your naturally balanced ideal and that will come with side effects.

In short, I offer my easy solution to wellbeing: Eat good food and less of it while exercising more and try to understand who you are through self-reflection and internal understanding. Now I can’t promise anything because life is all about uncertainty and learning, but you can learn to stack the deck in your favor by making conscious choices about who and what you really are.

Definition:Dianous

Dianous is directly translated from Greek as "through thought". It is a deep meditation that is usually aimed at greater self-understanding, but can also mean understanding of external conflict through internal thought.

Entry for November 13, 2007

All the history of human life has been a struggle between wisdom and stupidity -- Philip Pullman

The world is rarely black and white...

Life exists in a series of grays, please adjust your reality accordingly.

You finish the line

Let the government build roads? Are you nuts? That’d be socialized transportation!

Let the government raise and army? That’s crazy! That’d be socialized warfare!

Let the government create national parks? Why, that’d be socialized recreation!

Let the government deliver the mail? Insane! That would be socialized communication!

Let the government fight fires? That would be socialized public safety!

Let the government manage health care? That would be __________

Tax Investments

The tax which will be paid for the purpose of education is not more than the thousandth part of what will be paid to kings, priests and nobles who will rise up among us if we leave the people in ignorance -- Thomas Jefferson

Are Democrats going to raise taxes? Yes. Are Republicans going to raise taxes? Yes. The question is: what would you rather pay for? A war and tax relief for the upper class or healthcare and education? I have a feeling that most Americans will easily choose investing in our nation’s health and future over a war that we can’t quite explain and relief for our richest citizens. With Republicans recent history of spending large amounts of money without increasing the amount coming in (they haven’t been fiscally conservative in decades); the Democrats must take the path of responsible and convince Americans that taxes are a necessary burden to any civilized society.

Homework is burdensome too, but you have to do it if you’re going to learn anything. Exercise is burdensome, but you have to do it if you’re going to be in good physical shape. Taxes are necessary if we are going to make wise investments in our national infrastructure that will pay off for all of us years and years in the future. That includes investments in things like education and healthcare for those who can’t afford it. Education and healthcare are investments in people. They are wise investments because they give us an educated citizenry, and educated workforce, and a healthy and efficient workforce. Those are the practical reasons for taxes. Other reasons for taxes are public services -- like police and fire, disaster relief, and so on.

Those are the practical reasons for taxes, but there are moral reasons as well. Education and health are important factors in fulfillment in life, and this country is about fulfillment in life. There is a reason why the Declaration of Independence talks about the pursuit of happiness and links that to liberty. The reason is that they go together. Without liberty, there can be no fulfillment in life. Thus there are practical reason why it makes sense to understand taxation as paying your dues in a country where you can pursue happiness because there is liberty and freedom.

The Republican argument to this over the last decade has been to say taxes are bad, a national debt of $9 trillion is easily forgettable, and if we just give the rich a tax break, maybe they’ll spend some of it on the rest of you. So when you hear them talk about tax cuts, it’s not about tax cuts. They are about getting rid of social programs and regulations of business because that is where that money most come from. Do not buy into this taxes hype. Be proud of the country that you live in. Invest in our future. Pay your taxes and demand that your country spends your money in the way that you want. Tell them that you would rather pay for healthcare and education over the war and tax breaks for the rich.

My Favorite Porridge

It’s been a while since I posted a recipe, so I thought that my cold morning breakfast staple was worth a mention with the colder months knocking at the door.

Ingredients:

1 tablespoon butter
½ cup milk
1 cup hot water
¾ cups old fashioned rolled oats (not instant)
Frozen blueberries
Fresh strawberries
1 Banana
1 tablespoon honey
Salt

Dice 3-4 strawberries and ½ of the banana and combine with about 20 of the frozen blueberries in whatever bowl that you plan on using for your porridge. Add the tablespoon of honey, stir to evenly coat everything, and let it sit while you make the oats.

In a 2½ quart or larger pan (nonstick work great) heat the butter over medium heat until it starts to brown. Add the oats and as dash of salt and stir them every 30 seconds for about five minutes or until the butter has been absorbed and the oats smell nutty.

Add the half cup of milk, followed by the one cup of hot water, a dash of salt, and bring all of it to a slow boil, before reducing to medium heat. Stir every minute or so until the liquid is gone or until the oats have reached a texture that you like.

Pour the oats into the bowl with the fruit and stir to combine. Let sit for 2-3 minutes and dig in.

This is both an incredibly nutritious and filling breakfast that has always brought a smile to my face.

In Defense of Words

I have measured out my life in the etherized words of others.

Our language is intentionally flexible. It has grown, evolved, expanded, and become a force for social, political, and environmental change. Nothing is more powerful then the written word. That is why I get so upset when I see people attempting to stretch certain words to their breaking point, destroying their original meaning without either context or ability to justify the change.

Case in point: Torture. The original word the Latin tortura and dates back almost 2,500 years and means “to twist”. For most of that time it has been defined close to our current definition of:

1. anguish of body or mind, something that causes agony or pain.
2. the infliction of intense pain (as from burning, crushing, or wounding) to punish, coerce, or afford sadistic pleasure.

Now without getting into the argument that torture, no matter how it appears on TV, is extremely ineffective and gives the impression that we cannot stay within our own laws, has become tortured itself. The current administration continuously says that we “don’t torture”, yet does not define what they believe the word “torture” means. In the beginning we were left to assume that we did not torture as it was defined in the Geneva Convention or how we understood it in our common vernacular. Then something strange happened, we found out that we do actually torture and have gone way beyond the current definitions. To add insult to injury, the word was continuously used until it had lost almost all meaning. We can now safely say that we torture, but don’t torture.

It’s in the evolution of the words that we find their true meaning. And in certain people, who choose their words carefully, that the slow progression of the word still thrives. I don’t believe that it takes a Chomsky or Eliot to become an expert in such matters. I am lucky enough to know several people, one in particular, who does a wonderful job at selecting just the right words for the situation. I wish I knew what causes some people to work so hard on finding just the right word while other carelessly toss them in every direction.

But maybe a bit more history is called for. In the beginning of the twentieth-century linguists began to believe that there was a capacity in individuals to produce and understand utterances. Noam Chomsky famously characterized this as a conceptual shift from a historical preoccupation with ‘E-language’ (a set of externalized utterances) to an emphasis on ‘I-language’ (principles internalized by the language learner). This focus be modern linguists on individual capacity to acquire and use language (called ontogeny) led to a flowering or research, allowing the biological and neural underpinnings of language to be studied coherently, and opening the door to consideration of how the language faculty evolved biologically (called phylogeny). But this approach left behind the traditional questions of cultural evolution of individual languages (called glossogeny) that tantalized earlier generations of linguists.

So how words change and evolve is still being heatedly argued. This leaves the rest of us as part of the process. Or as Chomsky would argue, the underlying explanation for how words change comes down to the individuals who learn and use the language. It is in the fusing of the academic theoretical models of cultural evolution to experimental investigations of social learning in the laboratory that the understanding of what markers and idiosyncrasies are need to cause a change in language.

Above all else, one thing is certain: It is our daily use and misuse of words that sculpt the next generations’ vocabulary. We should, we must, focus not just on the way in which we say things, but in the specific words that we use. If we do not, our beautifully descriptive language will become nothing but sound and thunder.

NILF

TV News is split into two basic categories, Hard News and Infotainment. Infotainment refers to a general type of news media broadcast program which either provides a combination of current events news, entertainment programming, or an entertainment program structured in a news format. Hard news embodies two orthogonal concepts. Seriousness, meaning a focus on politics, economics, crime, war, and disasters along with certain aspects of law, science, and technology. And timeliness, including stories that cover current events like progress of a war, the results of a vote, the breaking out of a fire, a significant public statement, the freeing of a prisoner, an economic report of note. The less hard news coverage a station has, the prettier the girls reporting it seem to be. It’s like a sliding scale of news creditability. At the top of this infotainment scale is the hardcore NILFs over at Fox News. Megyn Kelly, one of the co-host of America's Newsroom on Fox News is on the right.
	Moving up the Hard News vs. Infotainment scale is the women over at E! Online. The host of E! News is Giuliana Rancic and was ranked #94 on the Maxim Hot 100 Women of 2004. Sure she is both attractive and informative, but she is still at a level where her looks distract from anything that she is talking about. Double standard, yes. Reality, yes. Fair, no. But you know that life isn’t fair. Besides, who do you think that these women are for? Is the news that hard to read from a prompter? Are two hour interviews, edited down to about ten minutes, really that hard to pull off? Are there more skilled journalists who aren’t as attractive that would do a better job?
You know the answers to those questions as well as I and you know exactly why these pretty women are where they are.Further down the list is the wonderfully wide-eyed and jejune Katie Couric. This is what happens when a good idea goes too far. Sure she’s incredibly nice, attractive, and is always happy to smile at the camera. Just look at that picture. No matter what she’s talking about, she still has a smile behind it. It doesn’t matter if she’s talking about terrorists invading our daycares or how much puppies are cute; it’s still going to sound nice. And really, what more do people need? It’s the same as reading the news on the internet with one of those banners for a dating service off to the side. Look, Iran is getting the bomb, but check out the bomb in the over there on the side of the page.
Which brings us to CNN. Being the first with 24 hour news, they learned early on that there was a certain level of NILFness that needed to be displayed in order to maintain certain people’s attention throughout long stories or on slow news days.
	Check out Heidi Collins of CNN’s Newsroom. Here you will find women who are attractive, yet business-like and professional. Sure they probably still qualify as NILFs, but it’s not overpowering or blatant as some of the other stations. This is about the level that you want to look for whenever looking for serious hard news without hardons. CNN has found a good balance of professional women who just happen to be NILFs.
This leaves PBS and journalists like co-anchor of the Nightly Business Report Susie Gharib (pictured on the right) in the all hard news category. Strong, independent, still attractive in a woman-who-knows-what-she-wants kind of way, but it is by no means distracting. Now there are some abnormities like Nancy Grace, who probably placed where she is to comply with the Americans with Disabilities Act. Now I know what you are saying, Nancy Grace isn’t a NILF. She looks like someone beat-up a bulldog, gave it the voice of an angry blender, and the personality of a disgruntled carnie with a raging case of gout, but she is the rare exception. For the most part, the women on news channels fairly depict the seriousness of the news being covered. So when you are flipping through the channels trying to find out about the latest story, don’t be so easily distracted by the pretty NILF on the screen. Instead, look for one that is just attractive enough to give you the news without making you want to move on to the story about bras and knee-highs.

You are someone else's "they"

I would like to take a minute to clear something up:

“They” are not out to get you and it is not “their” fault.

But let me explain: I have been known to travel in several political circles, have dabbled in politics occasionally, and have really been trying hard to ignore the increasing “us vs. them” mentality, but I can’t. So here, let me say something once and for all, no one cares.

* There is no culture war between liberals and conservatives
* The government does not have a secret plot to hide, promote, discourage, or kill anyone
* You are not the center of any great or epic battle for all existence
* The world is not dying
* No one is coming for your morals, holidays, culture, or children

I’m sorry, but you are boring.

Anyone, anywhere, who attempts to place the blame for anything on a faceless “they” is simply trying to scare you into believing something fantastically obscured. This is especially true of the government and both political parties. All of them barely function most days and have to struggle to come to even the smallest of agreements. Pretending that there is a scientific agenda, past some general ideas, is sorely mistaken.

So please, stop it with the gross exaggerating. If you want to be that interesting, and to deserve that kind of coordinated effort, do something besides just sitting on your ass imagining your special -- because frankly, you’re not.

Longevity & Self-Reliance, a rant

I enjoy good things that last. Unfortunately, those things are becoming harder and harder to find. We are constantly pressed for time, pleased with things that do a single purpose for a short lifespan, and buying things we know are crap because we know that we can buy another when the first one wears out. This is not something that I do well.

For instance, I own several Old Navy shirts (both button-up long-sleeves shirts and t-shirts). These things are disposable and inexpensive enough not to really hurt the wallet. But they seem to sap my dignity and are just another thing that I am going to end up adding to the world’s landfills sooner than I would like. Moreover, what I find strange is that there are better options out there that last three times as long for just a little more money, and we completely ignore them because their price tag is a few dollars more. So I have decided that I will no longer buy clothes for myself from places like Old Navy.

Let’s look at t-shirts. Now you can buy a decent t-shirt at Target (sorry, I don’t shop at Wal-Mart) for around $7.50, but for an addition five bucks you can get a Land’s End Performance t-shirt at Sears. What’s the difference? Well, the Land’s End resists fading, pilling, wrinkling, and shrinkage while most stains are either repelled or wash out very easily. It also has covered neck seam, reinforced shoulders, sewn side seams, and is tapered down the sides to make you look thinner. So not only is it a better shirt, but it will last you many time more than the cheapy one that you saved a measly five buck on.

This is also true with groceries. I have no idea why someone would buy produce, canned products, frozen vegetables, or meats that are of substandard quality just so that they can pretend that they’re eating well. If your tomatoes have no flavor, your bargain brand soups taste like dishwater, and your frozen dinner is as appetizing as the box it came in, then why the hell are you buying it? I guess the argument here is that sooner or later you will just get accustom to crap and think that it’s normal. This is both sad and an insult to your life.

Before you scold me for telling you the obvious choice of buying good quality over cheap crap, please remember that I’m doing so for sheer lazy reasons. Because along with having clothes that stay looking new and clean easily, I also think that we should all invest in products that give us more time to enjoy life on a higher level. An example? Okay, take my Roomba. It is a robot vacuum cleaner that vacuums and sweeps the floors when I’m not home. The air cleaners keep the house relatively dust-free and the Tivo records the shows or movies so that I can watch them at my own leisure. Add these to things like my dress shirts that are stain-resistant and wrinkle-free, and the little things in my life take care of themselves.

All of this is more important when you look at the bigger picture. Sure my two current vehicles have a combined mileage of almost 600,000 miles (now I’m bragging), but it is the investment in things that leads to a tendency to spread to the rest of life. When you start to look at things from a longer term perspective, you habits change. You will start to see objects as investments meant to make your life easier and better. Friends will be something you cultivate so that you can keep them for decades. And your mind, your beautiful mind, will not be wasted on things as mundane as housework. Most importantly, you will view the earth as something to leave better off than you found it.

Sex

I was rereading some older Dawkins this week and wondered why no one ever talked about sex in our evolutionary process. I’m sure that almost all creatures here on earth enjoy sex in some way or another, but there are very few creatures that seem to do the act solely for pleasure. So I wonder when in our evolutionary process we humans learned to enjoy it and if it one of the reasons that we are the dominate creatures here on earth?

Surely the enjoyment of sex has lead to more procreation, but it is the other aspects that seem to really have a more salient root in the argument. Think of a young you, about 13, and how you dealt with the feelings budding inside of you. Were you uncomfortable? Sacred? Confused? Distant? Was it because of love, lust, or just a general sense that something was going on and you weren’t sure how to deal with it?

Now I would like to be a romantic and say that it was purely love, but I think that evolution would have mixed love and the need for sex together. That is to say, how often do you yearn for a love that is not physical? Is not touching, kissing, holding, caressing, and sex one of the main driving factors?

So where does that leave us? Is love and sex to thank just as much as our opposable thumbs and larger brains? Could they be an outcome of our desires? Are we a deeper evolved species because we yearn for the emotional and sexual gratification of each other? And does our continued progress in intellectual evolution come from our desire to show that young 13 year old us that we have the will to understand the cosmos, if just to prove that we might someday have the potential of understanding those who we are attracted to?

Intolerance of Dissent

We live in a time of extreme divisiveness, where individuals feel the need to categorize themselves by a color code and freely allow their views to become severe in one direction or another. Our spokespersons no longer preach to the choir, but throw Bibles at them. This absolutism makes us all us exceedingly intolerant of anyone who disagrees with our positions, so much so that we do not listen to their arguments. Where the damage is the greatest is not in our inabilities to argue to the center, but in the fact that if we do not listen to others because we are assuming that our own arguments are perfect. Creating assumptions of argument perfection through increased intolerance of dissent will only end in tragedy as none of us are perfect. It is the middle ground, moderation, listening to others, freedom of open dissent, which holds back from an implosion of self justification.

Insert small evil grin here

I did not see this coming...

John Donne - Elegy XX: To His Mistress Going to Bed

Come, madam, come, all rest my powers defy;
Until I labour, I in labour lie.
The foe ofttimes, having the foe in sight,
Is tired with standing, though he never fight.
Off with that girdle, like heaven's zone glittering,
But a far fairer world encompassing.
Unpin that spangled breast-plate, which you wear,
That th' eyes of busy fools may be stopp'd there.
Unlace yourself, for that harmonious chime
Tells me from you that now it is bed-time.
Off with that happy busk, which I envy,
That still can be, and still can stand so nigh.
Your gown going off such beauteous state reveals,
As when from flowery meads th' hill's shadow steals.
Off with your wiry coronet, and show
The hairy diadems which on you do grow.
Off with your hose and shoes; then softly tread
In this love's hallow'd temple, this soft bed.
In such white robes heaven's angels used to be
Revealed to men; thou, angel, bring'st with thee
A heaven-like Mahomet's paradise; and though
Ill spirits walk in white, we easily know
By this these angels from an evil sprite;
Those set our hairs, but these our flesh upright.
Licence my roving hands, and let them go
Before, behind, between, above, below.
O, my America, my Newfoundland,
My kingdom, safest when with one man mann'd,
My mine of precious stones, my empery;
How am I blest in thus discovering thee!
To enter in these bonds, is to be free;
Then, where my hand is set, my soul shall be.
Full nakedness! All joys are due to thee;
As souls unbodied, bodies unclothed must be
To taste whole joys. Gems which you women use
Are like Atlanta's ball cast in men's views;
That, when a fool's eye lighteth on a gem,
His earthly soul might court that, not them.
Like pictures, or like books' gay coverings made
For laymen, are all women thus array'd.
Themselves are only mystic books, which we
—Whom their imputed grace will dignify—
Must see reveal'd. Then, since that I may know,
As liberally as to thy midwife show
Thyself ; cast all, yea, this white linen hence;
There is no penance due to innocence:
To teach thee, I am naked first; why then,
What needst thou have more covering than a man?