You Can't Pigeonhole What's Personal

I suspect I'm not alone in keeping a running list of potential book titles in my head. One of those, which perhaps one day I'll actually write and publish, is called It's Always Personal. There's no such thing as "wholly objective" politics or ideology. The convictions that often turn into far-reaching public policy come from the personal experiences of one individual, who perchance connects with others who share similar experiences. When these people and their common bond find themselves in "the right place at the right time," you can end up with new paths in history.

My little thesis gets a boost from this article in the New York Times, comparing Supreme Court aspirant Sonia Sotomayor with the sitting 18-year veteran Clarence Thomas. Two minority Catholics, not too far apart in age, whose worldviews are at distant poles.

So what's personal? Experience and temperament.

Mr. Thomas learned he could rely only on himself. His father left when he was a toddler. A few years later, his mother sent him to live with his grandparents, dumping his possessions in grocery bags and sending him out the front door, he wrote in his autobiography, “My Grandfather’s Son.”

Ms. Sotomayor also grew up without a father; hers died of heart problems when she was 9. But her mother was a sustaining force, supporting the family by working as a nurse. In a recent speech, Judge Sotomayor recalled her mother and grandmother chatting and chopping ingredients for dinner. “I can’t describe to you the warmth of that moment for a child,” she said.

And what if these two histories were reversed? Isolate little Sonia from nurturing family connections, and put young Clarence in a warmer, more close-knit and positive-thinking family, and what would you get?

We'll obviously never know. I suspect that with such an upbringing, Sotomayor would still have carved a niche for herself, still identifying with the underdog and championing their rights -- if not at Princeton, then perhaps among less prestigious, more subversive company. And Mr. Thomas may have gained the confidence to push forward and join those elite "insiders" who so intimidated and frustrated him at Yale, rather than hanging back and feeling permanently isolated from everything he really wanted.

It is as pointless to speculate about something that will never be, as it is to dismiss such factors and expect any individual to "put aside" their personal experience when called to the bench. Neither Sotomayor nor Thomas wears blinders that render them incapable of seeing the other side of an argument. Both are highly intelligent and idealistic.

In the final analysis, both are human. No one can expect anything more or less. Click Here to Read More..

Making Lists, Killing Time

Confession: I'm killing time to avoid having to confront the painful reality of tax preparation. And that's all I have to say about that.

As for the lists, I have subdivided my blog list into categories, mainly because the list was getting unwieldy. Some of the categories are pretty easy, especially "Atheist Blogs," because a great many have the "A" word in the title or the "scarlet letter" prominently featured.

I originally had two separate categories in mind for "liberal" blogs and "political" blogs, but truthfully, you're not going to find any "Townhall"-style bloggers featured here, so for me, "liberal" and "political" are a tad redundant.

Skeptic/atheist/freethinker that I am, I still attend a Unitarian Universalist church, as I've mentioned here and there; it's an adventure to sort out objective reality from wonder (or "woo-woo," as our minister calls it). Yesterday's "unknown" is today's science and the same undoubtedly holds true now, for the most part. Yet, there are still questions about how we grow our worldview, and anyone who takes on this challenge full-time deserves recognition, which is why the "Religion/Philosophy" list is separate.

The feminist blog list is small, and I am in the process of remedying that.

As for the rest, a number of my favorites fall into several categories all at once, or offer an unblinking and unintimidated view of the author's everyday life, which I find irresistible and often inspirational. We are, indeed, all in this together and blogging helps provide great reassurance of that. There are a few expert blogs in here, as well as irreverent humor -- in all cases, you'll find an abundance of talent and great writing.

If you're a blog author and you want to persuade me to move your blog to another list, drop a line. Meanwhile, enjoy and have a good rest of the weekend. Click Here to Read More..

Yeah, Things COULD Be Worse, Actually...

This was from one of my favorite sites: Not Always Right: Funny & Stupid Customer Quotes.

“When you’re 85 years old and you wake up with a pulse, and your next door neighbor isn’t hitting you over the head with a shovel, you’re having a good day.” Click Here to Read More..

Lisa Earle McLeod - The Triangle of Truth

This lady spoke at my church this summer. She is often characterized as a 21st-century Erma Bombeck, but while Erma was beloved because she approached global issues from behind a domestic screen, Lisa is less homespun and more direct.

Here she talks about refining the art of compromise, taking it (IMO) a giant step farther than Steven Covey did, and in far fewer words:

The reality is sex and talking both create intimacy, Western and Eastern medicine aren't necessarily in conflict, and financial controls needn't stymie aggressive marketing.

So I've come up with a new model - The Triangle of Truth©

Here's how it works: when faced with an issue, instead of taking a straight-line approach, think of it like a triangle.

The line at the bottom represents the problem, where you are today. The two potential solutions are the right and left corners. Instead of wasting time moving back and forth along the bottom, trying to convince people that your side is the real truth; look for the ultimate solution at the top of the triangle, the pinnacle, the part that's supported by both sides.

Lisa's HuffPost Blog Click Here to Read More..

Interesting Quote

From Stephen King, in his 1981 non-fiction book Danse Macabre, wherein he assures us that the horror writer is a

"human being, mortal man or woman, just another passenger in the boat, another pilgrim on the way to whatever there is. And we hope that if he sees another pilgrim fall down that he will write about it - but not before he or she has helped the fallen one off (sic) his or her feet, brushed off his or her clothes, and seen if he or she is all right, and able to go on. If such behavior is to be, it cannot be as a result of an intellectual moral stance; it is because there is such a thing as love, merely a practical fact, a practical force in human affairs.

"Morality, is, after all, a codification of those things which the heart understands to be true and those things which the heart understands to be the demands of a life lived among others ... civilization, in a word.

"...If we say that morality proceeds simply from a good heart -- which has little to do with ridiculous posturings and happily-ever-afterings -- and immorality proceeds from a lack of care, from shoddy observation, and from the prostitution of drama or melodrama for some sort of gain, monetary or otherwise, then we may realize that we have arrived at a critical stance which is both workable and humane."

He has a lot more to say in the book, which is his examination of the pop-culture genres of horror, fantasy and sci-fi from 1950 to 1980. Not sure if it's still in print, but used copies can be found in second-hand shops and Ebay.

And I emphasized that little bit in the last paragraph because I could not resist thinking about the actions of certain individuals residing at top levels of our government for the last 7 or 8 years...

Hmm, hmm, hmm. Click Here to Read More..

Gorilla Book Part 2

OK - finished Ishmael. Thought-provoking and full of great wisdom. Inspirational? Not sure -- in order to be inspirational, IMO, a book has to get you motivated to make a change. To Quinn's credit, he acknowledges that the mess our world is in right now is too vast for one person or a handful of people to change. He puts it in so many words, specifically mentioning Donald Trump as an example of one very powerful individual who would be utterly powerless to single-handedly make a change in the situation.

Momentum seems to be the key here. If each person spread the word to 100 others...in time, the change could come about, just as it did in Russia and Eastern Europe.

So...

...if you're reading this, and you think the earth is headed for doom, read Ishmael.

Background info

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Handy excerpts

The WHOLE THING on audio, absolutely free. Click Here to Read More..

Gorilla Book part 1

I'm currently reading Ishmael, by Daniel Quinn. My church had a discussion forum about it, but I didn't attend and have just now gotten around to acquiring the book. It's 263 pages; I'm on page 217, so that's why this post is part 1. I won't be able to give a true opinion on it until I get to the end. I hope I'm not disappointed.

So far, I find it a bit tedious. I "get" the message so far, and that's the part I like best about the book. I'm just not sure it's necessary to frame it the way Quinn does, with the gorilla. I suppose it's expedient to do it this way. I'm sure Quinn didn't want to couch it in religious terms, or "channel" some spirit as the teacher, because that would have turned off a lot of people. I suppose the idea is that having a telepathic gorilla teach the protagonist is so absurd, the reader says "Okay, it's a gorilla, whatever, let's just move on and see what the central message is here."

As for the message, it rings quite true and it's fascinating. For many years, I felt that the agrarian lifestyle (meaning, non-industrial, living off nature) was the way of life and industrialization meant death. Ishmael breaks it down further, in essence making industrialization just an extension of agriculturalism, and that whole package is death. By contrast, the way of life that involves "just taking what you need and leaving the rest alone" is life.

Three points so far have caught my interest:

1. Humankind is not the "crown of creation," though it certainly is easy to believe that we are.
   
2. The way we help people in other countries who face famine has the result of increasing their populations, which in turn, increases the food shortages.
   
3. The Cain and Abel story is retold here in a way that is absolutely mesmerizing. It's the one telling of this story that finally makes sense to me. I challenge anyone who believes the Bible to come up with a better interpretation.

I hope to finish the book tonight. Click Here to Read More..