The Rockford Diocese of the Catholic Church is abandoning its adoption and foster care services pursuant to government-funded contracts because of a new law that would require it not to discriminate against gay or lesbian couples. See here. It sees to me both sides are right. Government should not fund contractors that discriminate on the basis of sexual orientation, and the Catholic Church should adhere to its perceived moral obligations (wrongheaded though its perception of moral obligations happen to be).
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- The Speech Claim of 303 Creative LL
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- A thorough re-examination of the moral and political philosophy of Thomas Hobbes, “precursor of modern [L]iberalism” (Larry May)—Essential Reading
- Fools, Hypocrites, Zealots, and Dupes as “social character” types deaf to the voice of reason (or the reasonable)
- Cosmopolitan Arguments or Sym-Philosophy in Eunomia
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05/22/2011
Early Summer Reading
Early summer (non-fiction) reading recommendations:
- Andreou, Chrisoula and Mark D. White, eds. The Thief of Time: Philosophical Essays on Procrastination (2010). Professor White is one of my co-bloggers at The Literary Table and, in any case, I’m prone to buying any edited collection with contributions from either George Ainslie or Jon Elster.
- Bartha, Paul F.A. By Parallel Reasoning: The Construction and Evaluation of Analogical Arguments (2010). Essential reading.
- Bortolotti, Lisa. Delusions and Other Irrational Beliefs (2010). Timely, to put it mildly.
- Graham, George. The Disordered Mind: An Introduction to Philosophy of Mind and Mental Illness (2010). (While the link is to a hardbound edition, I was able to purchase it in paperback.)
- Nichols, John. The “S” Word: A Short History of an American Tradition…Socialism (2011). Should be read with Charles Nordhoff’s classic, The Communistic Societies of the United States... (New York: Schocken, 1965; originally published in 1875).
- Radden, Jennifer. On Delusion (2011). Incidentally, both this and the Bortolotti book above are part of excellent publisher’s series: Oxford’s “International Perspectives in Philosophy and Psychiatry” and Routledge’s “Thinking in Action” respectively.
- Silva, Padmasiri de Silva. An Introduction to Buddhist Psychology (4th ed., 2005). One need not be a Buddhist to benefit from the material in this classic work, accessible to non-specialists.
- Tauber, Alfred I. Freud: The Reluctant Philosopher (2010). Tauber’s book, Patient Autonomy and the Ethics of Responsibility (2005) is one of the few indispensable books (another being Carl Schneider's 1998 volume, The Practice of Autonomy) for exploring the notion of autonomy in a clinical setting or within a generous rendering of bioethics. His latest book does not disappoint. Highly recommended!
- Thornton, Tim. Essential Philosophy of Psychiatry (2007). I know, it’s a few years old, but you might have missed it.
- Wright, Erik Olin. Envisioning Real Utopias (2010). See too all the other volumes in the Real Utopias series edited by Wright.
05/20/2011
The Power of Narcissism & Mind-Forg’d Manacles
The definition of “narcissism” in Wikipedia can suffice for many purposes: “Narcissism is the personality trait of egotism, vanity, conceit, or simple selfishness. Applied to a social group, it is sometimes used to denote elitism or an indifference to the plight of others.” As such, most if not all of us display narcissistic traits at one time or another, some of us more routinely than others. The concept was first introduced into psychology by Havelock Ellis (1859-1939), although Paul Näcke coined the term itself in reference to Ellis’s work on “morbid self love” and his “correlation of the Greek myth of Narcissus with a case of male autoerotic perversion.”[1] In psychoanalysis, the meaning expanded along the lines of our original definition above, thus sexual perversion is now “viewed as only a specific, dramatic illustration of something more general in the human psyche and behavior.”[2]
Narcissism is one of those words subject to distortion through “psychobabble,” that is, misuse and misunderstanding owing to our reliance on
“a form of prose using jargon, buzzwords and highly esoteric language to give an impression of plausibility through mystification, misdirection, and obfuscation. The term implies that the speaker of psychobabble lacks the experience and understanding necessary for proper use of a given psychological term. Frequent usage can associate a clinical word with less meaningful buzzword definitions. Some psychological buzzwords have come into widespread use in business management training, motivational seminars, self-help, folk psychology, and popular psychology. Laypersons may overuse such words in describing life problems as clinical maladies when such nomenclature is not valuable, meaningful or appropriate. [….] Psychobabble terms consist of selected words and phrases with roots in psychotherapy practice. Psychobabblers commonly overuse such terms as if they possess some special esoteric value or meaning when they might not.”[3]
As a layperson and thus not a psychologist or psychiatrist, I’ll assume the risk of psychobabble in what follows, for I want to suggest that the numerous high-profile incidents recently chronicled in the mass media of men behaving badly in public life, particularly those unable to keep their pants on, is fairly convincing evidence (should we needed convincing) that politicians and men in power generally, are conspicuous in their display of many if not all of the symptoms of what clinicians would diagnose as “narcissistic personality disorder.” We should leave aside the case of the former Managing Director of the International Monetary Fund (IMF), Dominque Strauss-Kahn, the French economist, lawyer, and member of the French Socialist Party recently charged with sexual assault in New York City. Why? Well, I think it’s best to cleave to the presumption of innocence, and withhold comment or speculation until the outcome of the legal system’s process of adversarial adjudication. I hope to mitigate the dangers of psychobabble by deferring to psychological and psychiatric expertise in what follows, keeping in mind, with the “lay scientist” Martin Robbins of The Guardian, that psychologists and psychiatrists themselves should refrain from commenting in public about the mental health of public figures for at least two reasons: “Either they have treated the subject in a professional capacity, in which case the details should be confidential, or they haven’t, in which case they aren’t qualified to comment.” Not being a mental health professional, and for better and worse, I’m free from such strictures.
The controversial but no less important and widely used Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders or DSM-IV (2000) published by the American Psychiatric Association, lists the following diagnostic criteria for “narcissistic personality disorder:”
A pervasive pattern of grandiosity (in fantasy or behavior), need for admiration, and lack of empathy, beginning by early adulthood and present in a variety of contexts, as indicated by five or more of the following:
(1) has a grandiose sense of self-importance (e.g., exaggerates achievements and talents, expects to be recognized as superior without commensurate achievements)
(2) is preoccupied with fanatasies of unlimited success, power, brilliance, beauty, or ideal love
(3) believes that he or she is ‘special’ and unique and can only be understood by, or should associate with, other specific or high-status people (or institutions)
(4) requires excessive admiration
(5) has a sense of entitlement, i.e., unreasonable expectations of expecially favorable treatment or automatic compliance with his or her expectations
(6) is interpersonally exploitative, i.e., takes advantage of others to achieve his or her own ends
(7) lacks empathy
(8) is often envious of others or believes that others are envious of him or her
(9) shows arrogant, haughty behavior or attitudes [4]
It’s not hard not to detect from a distance, as it were, any number (five or more?) of these pathological symptoms in high-profile politicians and public figures/celebrities like John Edwards, Tiger Woods, and Arnold Schwarzenegger (among many others). I’m inclined to believe these well-known cases of powerful men behaving badly are merely egregious public representations of a cultural epidemic of narcissism generally in American society, a possibility that should preclude our indulgence in schadenfreude. Indeed, this may be yet another illustration of what Erich Fromm called the “pathology of normalcy.” In The Sane Society (1955), Fromm made an important and comparatively neglected observation: “the fact that millions of people share the same forms of mental pathology does not make these people sane,” a point well-appreciated among our philosophical predecessors of Platonic, Hellenistic, Hindu and Buddhist provenance in which it was (and still is) argued that there exists a “widespread prevalence of mass delusion, which only a rigorous apprenticeship of the mind or spirit can undo.”[5] In particular, Fromm viewed “much of our cultural and political life as expressions of low-grade, chronic schizoid tendencies.”[6]
In contemporary psychoanalytic thought, Heinz Kohut (1913-1981) and Otto F. Kernberg have formulated in some detail differing conceptions of the “grandiose self,” and their approaches to narcissism as a personality disorder are widely cited. I won’t attempt to discuss their respective theories here (I’m inclined to favor the latter’s approach), but do want to flesh out a bit the enumerated diagnostic criteria above with some material from two of Kernberg’s later works, which build upon his seminal book, Borderline Conditions and Pathological Narcissism (1975). According to Kernberg,
“The typical symptoms of the narcissistic personality disorder in the area of pathological self-love are excessive self-reference and self-centeredness; grandiosity and the derived characteristics of exhibitionism, an attitude of superiority, recklessness, and overambitiousness; overdependency on admiration, emotional shallowness; and bouts of excessive insecurity alternating with grandiosity. In the area of pathological object relations [‘object relations’ is a technical term in psychoanalytic thought—‘a psychodynamic theory within psychoanalytic psychology’—in which ‘objects’ refer to other persons in one’s world as well as internalized images of others],[7] these patients’ predominant symptoms are inordinate envy (both conscious and unconscious); devaluation of others as a defense against envy; exploitativeness manifested by greediness, appropriation of others’ ideas or property, and an attitude of entitlement; an incapacity to truly depend on others in a mutual relationship; and a remarkable incapacity for empathy with and commitment to others. The basic ego state of these patients is characterized by a chronic sense of emptiness, evidence of an incapacity to learn, a sense of isolation stimulus hunger, and a diffuse sense of the meaninglessness of life. [….] [These patients also] present some degree of superego pathology, including the incapacity to experience self-reflective sadness, deep mood swings, a predominance of shame as contrasted to guilt in their intrapsychic regulation of social behavior; and a value system more childlike than adult; that is, they value physical beauty, power, wealth, and the admiration of others as against capabilities, achievements, responsibility, and relation to ideals.”[8]
Elsewhere Kernberg is keen to remind us that individuals with narcissistic personality often “function along a broad range of social effectiveness. Their social functioning may show very little disturbance.”[9] There’s quite a gap, in other words, between the face one presents to the world, and one’s inner life, for
“[b]eneath a surface that is often charming and engaging, one senses coldness and ruthlessness. [Pathological narcissists] typically feel restless and bored when no new sources feed their self-regard. [I can’t help but recall here Schwarzenegger’s reply to a reporter’s question as to why at the end of his term as Governor of California, he commuted the prison sentence of the son of former Assembly Speaker Fabian Nuñez, convicted for his role in the slaying of one Luis Dos Santos: he irritatingly replied that the reporter’s question ‘bored’ him.] Because of their great need for tribute and self-adoration from others, they are often considered to be excessively dependent. But they are, in fact, unable to depend on anyone because of a deep underlying distrust and devaluation of others and an unconscious ‘spoiling’ of what they receive related to conflicts about unconscious envy.”[10]
So ends our introduction to the narcissistic personality disorder.
I think it’s imperative that we explore the causes and effects of a cultural ethos and social system that attracts, encourages and rewards individuals prone to public display of not a few symptoms of pathological narcissism. In as much as we deliberately create or passively acquiesce in or tolerate that ethos and this system, we are in some sense or some measure complict in if not responsible for the proliferation of prominent public figures behaving badly. Relatedly, we might think long and hard about our penchant for electing men (and sometimes women) to political office only by way of feeding compensatory and malign power relations. The philosopher Amélie Oksenberg Rorty suggests the following Freudian-inspired explanation:
“The structures of power have an astonishing stability. In the large range of constructive imagining of options we turn again and again to archetypal patterns, to the Charismatic Leader, to the Band of the Brotherhood Committee, to the Pure Young Hero, to the Good-Bad Earth Mother. Why are our imaginations of power structures so fixed? It is because we learn from experience; and our most formative experiences of power, and of power relations, are those we have during our prolonged and wholly dependent infancy. While this prolonged infancy makes empathy and psychological complexity possible, it exacts a cost. We are formed not only by what we have learned from experience, but by the ways we learn. As long as we are in a complex and highly benign compliance to those who nurtured and sustained us as infants, we associate security and well-being with dependence on power figures. It is to these beginnings that our imaginations return when we are discomforted, depleted, in need. Even though we eventually chafed at the restrictions of our nurturing figures, even though, if we were lucky, we developed sympathy and autonomy, we still have as part of ur expectations our early experiences of childhood, where reality meant dependency, being Subject to a Boss. If that relation was a benign one, we are all the more subject to gravitate to reconstructing it when we are troubled; but if it was a malign relation, then we are all the more incapacitated. For then a malign power relation is what we expect of the world. It is what defined normality. And of course if it was malign, then we are crippled in our abilities to envisage alternative structures.”[11]
We can begin to see why Rorty argues that perhaps the most important way “the Boss” controls “the Subject” is through “control” of her imagination. With regard to our aforementioned complicity in forging the chains that bind us, Rorty elaborates nature of the power relation (implicit in Hegel’s ‘master-slave’ dialectic in the Phenomenology of Spirit), including the notion of the latent power of the Subject:
“Every power carries a hidden powerlessness, that of being dependent on cooperation. Every powerlessness carries a hidden power, that of withholding cooperation. Sullenness, silence, ridicule, and destruction are the Subject’s hidden power. Since powerlessness is a function of desire, the powerless can, in principle and within severe limits, overcome their powerlessness by detaching themselves from their desires. But the Subject can only realize his hidden powers if he has insight, if he is imaginatively and intellectually enabled. The true latent power of the Boss is therefore that of forming the mentality of his Subjects, his being in a position to control their capacity to recognize their situation and the possibilities that it holds.”[12]
And it is here that we come upon the difficult terrain that endeavors to account for the psychological mechanisms by which ideological beliefs are formed and entrenched, for instance, by the shaping of preferences that make for, literally and figuratively, the “happy slave,” or those adaptive preferences whereby our dreams and desires are adjusted to our constricted conception of possibilities (‘sour grapes’ syndrome), the sort of adaptive preference formation that may account, for example, for the lack of desire for self-realization. As Jon Elster stated in Sour Grapes: Studies in the Subversion of Rationality (1983), the Boss need not directly form the mentality or control the imagination of his Subjects (although this is attempted in totalitatarian regimes), but merely exploit the ideology they themselves have spontaneously generated: “It is a massive fact of history that the values and beliefs of the subjects tend to support the rule of the dominant group, but I believe that in general this occurs through the spontaneous invention of ideology by the subjects themselves, by way of dissonance reduction, or through their illusory perception of social causality.”[13] Although Marx spoke, for example, of religious ideology as the “opium of the people,” Elster reminds us that “opium can be taken as well as given; not all addicts are manipulated into addiction.”[14]
Notes:
[1] Burness E. Moore and Bernard D. Fine, eds., Psychoanalytic Terms and Concepts (1990): 124.
[2] Ibid.
[3] “Psychobabble” entry in Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychobabble.
[4] American Psychiatric Association, Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders: DSM-IV-TR (Text Revision) (2000): 717.
[5] Daniel Burston, The Legacy of Erich Fromm (1991): 134-135.
[6] Ibid., 144.
[7] Please see, Morris N. Eagle, Recent Developments in Psychoanalysis: A Critical Evaluation (1984), and Lavina Gomez, An Introduction to Object Relations (1997).
[8] Otto F. Kernberg, Aggression in Personality Disorders and Perversions (1992): 73-74.
[9] Otto F. Kernberg, Severe Personality Disorders: Psychotherapeutic Strategies (1984): 192.
[10] Ibid.
[11] Amélie Oksenberg Rorty, Mind in Action: Essays in the Philosophy of Mind (1988): 344-345.
[12] Rorty (1988): 336.
[13] Jon Elster, Sour Grapes: Studies in the Subversion of Rationality (1983): 164.
[14] Ibid., 165.
05/18/2011
05/16/2011
The Elusive Psychology of Well-Being
I’ve finally gotten around to reading a truly exceptional book: The Pursuit of Unhappiness: The Elusive Psychology of Well-Being (2008) by Daniel M. Haybron. And having read a fair amount of books over the past several years (on related and unrelated topics), this is clearly among the best of the lot. As I said in response to a query from Chris Panza on Facebook on whether the book “is essentially on positive psychology:” In Haybron’s words, it is “basically a part of...the dark side of positive psychology, as it were.” But the method and tone is thoroughly philosophical and he makes important conceptual distinctions and clarifications about the meanings of happiness, well-being, and the good life, including a helpful taxonomy of the five predominant approaches to well-being. The glowing comments (blurbs) on the back of the book from the likes of Roger Crisp, John Doris and David Chalmers (among others) are not hyperbole. I should note that I’m not quite finished with the book but hope to discuss it in more depth here when I do.
05/14/2011
"Inner tranquility" vs. "the role of anger"
Promoting Peace, Nobel Laureates Square Off, Politely
Tom White for The New York Times. A panel discussion titled “Peace Within” at the Newark Peace Education Summit on Friday. The discussion included the Dalai Lama, center, and the anti-land mine activist Jody Williams, seated fourth from right.
The story is here. An excerpt:
"On a stage during the opening session of the Newark Peace Education Summit, the Dalai Lama and Jody Williams, a world-famous anti-land-mine activist, disagreed — sometimes obliquely, always politely — about the importance of inner tranquillity, the role of anger and the moral character of the United States. . . .
In the main panel on Friday morning, the Dalai Lama, wearing a deep red robe that hung to his ankles, and others said that people must attain inner peace in order to learn, and promote peace in the world. 'Too much emotion, attachment, anger or fear, that kind of mental state, you can’t investigate objectively,' he said.
That did not sit well with Ms. Williams, an American, who is, as the Dalai Lama put it, 'quite blunt.'
'I thought it was strange to be asked to be on this panel on inner peace, because I don’t have much,' she said. 'It’s anger at injustice which fires many of us.'"
05/13/2011
05/11/2011
Eugene Rogers on Same-Sex Complementarity
Eugene Rogers is one of the finest Christian theologians working today in the area of sexuality. Trained in the theology of Karl Barth and Thomas Aquinas, he is unique in his insistence on making a theological, rather than a 'rights-based' argument for same-sex marriage. His recent piece in the Christian Century is a wonderful summation to his recent work on the Episcopal Church's theology committee. It should be required reading for anyone who thinks that progressive Christians need to do a soft shoe shuffle around the theological and biblical bases for full inclusion of GLBT persons.
Here's a snippet from the article:
As for Christ, orthodox theology makes him fully human and fully divine. As God, Christ occupies neither gender, since God is the source of it all. As the medieval axiom goes, God is not in a category, Deus non est in genere. The corollary reads like a translation: "God is not in a gender." Thus the seventh-century Council of Toledo could insist that the first person of the Trinity "gave birth" to the preexistent, heavenly Christ "from the womb of the Father."
Graham Ward has noticed that the maleness of Jesus is a curious thing. Lacking a human father, Jesus received no humanly produced Y chromosome, and yet he is circumcised. The Middle Ages has much to teach us about the maleness of Jesus as well. The language of Cistercian piety called Jesus the mother of monks. Male priests invited male monks to suck milk from Jesus' breasts. They urged them to crawl into the wound in his side, the better to enter his womb. That was how to be born again in the Middle Ages—from the womb of Jesus. Medieval authors never wavered from using masculine pronouns for Jesus, nor did they confine him to masculine images. Christ could be all to all. Christ was the bridegroom to women and to men. Indeed Christ's body, if male in Jesus, was female in the church.
Although the church has often used typology to enforce gender roles, the logic of typology opens roles up—because any gender can represent a type. This is part of the mystery: Christ has never been the bridegroom for women alone and the church has never been a bride composed only of men.
Consider that in the Middle Ages an abbot could be gendered male, as a physical man; female, as a member of the church; male again, as a priest; female again, as a mother of monks; and female at prayer, as a soul before God. The complementarity theory of male and female turns out to be distinctively modern in confining a person to one gender—and to that extent untraditional. In the Middle Ages, gender could vary according to the greater reality represented...
To sum up: Ephesians does not require heterosexual complementarity, even if it uses gendered language. A critic has called this interpretation "a refusal to see the obvious." But that's true only if gendered language requires gendered representation. And it doesn't. Otherwise, only women could lead a church gendered as female, and only men could be children of God on the pattern of God's Son. But that's absurd. We do permit men to represent the church, and we do admit women as children of God. An inflexible interpretation of gender confines the reading of scripture, restricts the resources of tradition, ignores the data of creation and reduces salvation to absurdity.
05/10/2011
05/09/2011
Welcome to Hell?
We've heard a lot about hell in the past week. From speculations by pundits about Osama bin Laden's current whereabouts to headlines in the New York Daily News and presidential hopeful Mike Huckabee's rather remarkable 'Welcome to hell' comment (just where does Huckabee think he is when issuing such a generous invitation!?), it seems the subject is more lively than ever.
It is tempting, given that my own current doctoral work in theology is devoted to the topic, to speak at great length about the biblical version of hell which differs quite dramatically from the chatter. Rather than do that, however, I'll simply link here to the sermon I preached this past Sunday, in which the topic loomed large. Both the Hebrew and Christian Bibles are quite interested in hell, and consider it very real, but not at all in the way many today think. [forgive the long loading time on the sermon site. I've not mastered the format!]
05/07/2011
05/06/2011
05/05/2011
05/03/2011
Peter Gabel and Michael Lerner get it just right, I think ...
Tikkun’s Spiritual Response to the Assassination of Osama bin Laden
by Peter Gabel and Michael Lerner
May 2, 2011
May 2, 2011
A spontaneous crowd forms to celebrate Osama bin Laden's death on May 1, 2011 in front of the White House. Credit: Creative Commons/theqspeaks.
From Peter Gabel, Associate Editor:
There is no question that Osama bin Laden, as the leader of al-Qaida, was implicated in or directly responsible for the deaths of many, many people, most likely including the more than 3,000 American and, women, and children who were killed in the Twin Towers on September 11, 2001. But it was nevertheless upsetting and shocking to witness the exultation in the media last night when bin Laden’s killing was announced. Never should the killing of a human being be an occasion for such celebration — even in circumstances that involve actual self-defense against mortal danger. Not only does such a raucous display of pleasure in response to the killing of another disrespect the sacredness of every human life; it also inherently undermines the moral character and worthiness of those responsible for the death itself. If the United States seeks to place itself on a higher moral ground than those who commit immoral acts against our people, we must all conduct ourselves in a way that manifests our empathy and compassion for all of humanity, for every human person, and also manifest our awareness of the tragic distortions in human relations across the globe that still hurl human beings into the horrors of ongoing violence and war.
President Barack Obama’s statement to the American public and the world announcing bin Laden’s death was far more sober and expressive of human depth than was the unseemly cheering of major media figures in the hour preceding Obama’s address, or the crowd shouting “U.S.A, U.S.A” outside the White House gate with the kind of hardened false elation in response to a killing that often is seen on the face of hatred. Nevertheless, we wish President Obama had at least included one phrase that said, “Even though we never take pleasure in the loss of a human life…” before stating why he felt bin Laden’s death was important and just.
From Rabbi Michael Lerner:
I agree with Peter Gabel, and would only add the following:
The Jewish tradition has much to say on the killing of our vicious and even murderous enemies. When Pharaoh’s troops were drowning in the Reed Sea as they sought to re-enslave or kill the Israelites, the angels began to sing praises (the Hallel prayers: Psalms 113-118). God proclaimed:
“My children (the Egyptians) are sinking in the sea, and you are singing praises?” Yet God did not silence the Israelites, knowing that at that moment it would be hard for humans not to celebrate the death of an oppressor. Nevertheless, the Jewish tradition then instituted two practices in accord with God’s response: First, that the Hallel prayers would be cut down to a partial saying of some of the psalms on the last six days of Passover. And second, that when we do the Seder on Passover and recite the plagues that were used against the Egyptians to get them to free the Jews, we put our finger in the cup of wine, symbolic of our joy, and dip out a drop of wine for each plague — this symbolizes that our cup of joy cannot be full if our own liberation requires the death of those who were part of the oppressor society.
It is the loss of this consciousness by almost every society on the planet that is a real source for concern and mourning. For far too many people, the war on terrorism seems to be an extension of the football games where we cheer on our team: “USA! USA! Hey, you are tough!”
The task of spiritual progressives at this moment is to reaffirm a different consciousness — to remind ourselves that we are inextricably bound to each other and to everyone on the planet.
The struggle against terrorism will not be won through killing, no matter how many people we assassinate. It will only be won when we in the West can show genuine love, caring, and generosity toward everyone else on the planet.
Now that Osama is dead, let’s get our troops out of Iraq and Afghanistan now! The money saved from that alone would make a great down-payment on the Global Marshall Plan we badly need (and we could start it in the Middle East). Congressman Keith Ellison has already introduced this plan as House Resolution 157.
I understand very well the need for self-defense in a violent world, as well as the rage and upset felt by many, including me, at the murder of innocent civilians on September 11 and on many other occasions. Within the current distorted framework of military conflict in which we are to some degree entrapped, I also understand the strategic importance of capturing or, if there is no other way to stop them from sending more murderers to kill innocent civilians (and every other possible route has been tried), then self-defensively killing the leaders of those who seek to kill or terrorize our own people. But the fact remains that it is through new policies of generosity and caring for others, not through killing the bad guys, that we will create a world of peace. To the extent that Americans celebrate the death of bin Laden because they believe that it will bring peace to the world, I want to acknowledge the goodness and decency of that aspiration. Yet we as spiritual progressives must simultaneously help our fellow Americans, indeed, our fellow human beings in every society, see that it is the path of nonviolence and the Strategy of Generosity that is the only path toward lasting peace on our planet.
So this is a moment to pray that this new consciousness will spread quickly through our planet, and a moment when all of us can and should renew our dedication to promoting a spirit of love, caring for others, and true generosity. Let us pray that that becomes the path of all countries on our planet.
05/02/2011
05/01/2011
Happy May Day!
Please see these prior posts from yours truly: here, here, and here.
I hope to have another celebratory post up later in the day.
Update: It’s now clear that my post won’t make it up today so it will be a belated May Day post. The topic? An introduction to KOR, the Workers’ Defense Committee (later: Komitet Samoobrony Społecznej Social Self-Defense Committee/KOR, KSS-‘KOR’) in Poland that played a direct “service” role in the emergence of Solidarity (or Solidarność, the first non-Communist party-controlled trade union in the Warsaw Pact countries) in 1980.
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