Allerlei

Did Bullying Play a Causal Role in the Norway Shootings?

noreply@blogger.com (Marya) — Fri, 29 Jul 2011 12:49:00 -0700

Writings by Anders Breivik indicate that, as an adolescent, he felt repeatedly bullied by Muslim immigrants in Oslo. It is not an indictment of Muslims generally to say that this was probably the case.

It seems to be common for young males who are immigrants or the children of immigrants (or part of a minority group) to form gangs and to engage in petty criminal activity. Every immigrant group in America has been known for the criminal behavior of at least some of its young males. The expression "paddy wagon" as a legacy of Irish-American crime. Teddy Roosevelt, who had served as a New York assemblyman early in his career, commented publicly on the criminality of young Jewish males. (In our own time, this is almost unbelievable.) It is also common for young people from established families to resent newcomers and make their lives unbearable.

It also seems to be the case that people who join far-right hate groups often report being bullied by members of the group they despite. A quick perusal of a website called "Stormfront," will bear this out, at least anecdotally. The youth forum is filled with complaints by young people about being bullied by African-Americans and Hispanics.

The combination of youth and forced association seems to be an especially volatile one. In contrast to work, church, or clubs, school is mandatory in a way that other human associations are not. While people are constrained by financial necessity to hold jobs they despise, young people are constrained by law to attend school and in many states can be brought into the justice system if they don't. The only institutions more authoritarian are the military and prisons.

In such environments, petty incidents escalate into open group warfare. I once taught at a school that experienced severe tensions between African-American and Haitian youths. No one remembers how it started, but it seems to have originated in middle school. This feud lasted for years and resulted in several deaths and at least one person being sentenced to 25 years. (He won an appeal and will only serve 6 years.) Other people were shot and recovered.

By asserting that Anders Breivik was bullied, in no way do I mean to approve of or minimize his actions. Rather, I am suggesting that if we want to prevent such massacres from occurring in the future, we need to do three things:

1. Acknowledge the reality of ethnic tension and the fact that, especially among adolescents, this tension will frequently turn violent.

2. Recognize the seriousness of this violence. Because it is "kid's stuff," don't assume that it is minor, that the kids will work it out, or that it will not leave lasting damage.

3. Take active steps to stop it. Most methods will involve education of the young people involved, increased supervision of schools and enhanced patrolling of troubled neighborhoods.

Don't spend time wondering if ethnic violence is occurring in your community. It almost certainly is, especially among adolescents. If other factors are at work -- mental illness, antidepressant medication that seems to provoke outburst of rage, and easy access to guns -- this tension will almost certainly erupt into acts of extraordinary violence.

Attending an Islamic Center

noreply@blogger.com (Marya) — Sat, 8 Jan 2011 09:18:00 -0800

In spite of all the talk about multiculturalism and diversity, sometimes cultural differences are non-negotiable. A few weeks ago, I had such an experience at an Islamic Center.

By way of background, let me state that I believe the U.S. treatment of Arab and Muslim peoples is criminal. The United States has financially supported the dispossession of the Palestinian people. It maintained a sanctions regime against Iraq that killed half a million children and one million people of all ages, in spite of having evidence that Saddam Hussein had destroyed his WMD after the Gulf War. It invaded Iraq in spite of the fact that, according to the Spanish newspaper La Pais, Saddam Hussein had offered to go into exile, hold free elections, and open the country to weapons inspections Lawrence Wilkerson, who worked under Colin Powell in the State Department, has said that Cheney knew many people held in Guantanmo were innocent and that he didn't want to release them because it would undermine the effort to sell the "War on Terror" to the American people. The indefinite detention under harsh conditions of people known to be innocent is yet another crime against Arab and Muslim people.

Also by way of background, let me state that I don't believe Muslims as individuals are more prone to violence than other people. In fact, the Muslims I know in the U.S. are rather shocked by the high rate of crime and violence here in the U.S.

Nevertheless, as a woman, I strongly object to the position of women in the Muslim world. At the Islamic Center, I was in a meeting hall and not the mosque itself and I was attending a political meeting and not a religious service. Even so, men and women were seated separately with the women seated--where else?--in the back. When extra men arrived, I and the other women in my row were asked to move our seats back to accommodate more chairs in the men's section. When yet other men arrived late, we women who were on time were asked to leave our seats to make room for the men in spite of the fact that there were six empty seats in front of us and if there were more than six men, the extra men could have simply pulled an empty seat three feet into the men's section. When my mother hesitated to move, a man came over to us and shooed us out of our seats.

Remember, this was not a religious service and they were trying to get money from us for a fundraiser.

The response most people give me is that when you are in other people's space, you have to follow their rules. This is true and I will never put myself in that space again.

If you are thinking that being asked to change seats is not that important, I would agree. My problem is that this minor issue was only a marker for a deep-seated attitude toward women. The men in the Islamic Center were willing to inconvenience women who had arrived on time and were already seated rather than ask the late-comers who were not yet seated to drag a chair three feet. In other words, women were expected to defer to men rather than ask men to inconvenience themselves in any way.

The rationale given for practices like this is usually "modesty" or something similar. Yet, I can't help but notice--and I have observed this in Orthodox synagogues also--that men feel perfectly free to encroach on the women's space but women can't enter the men's space. This reinforces the feeling that separate is not truly equal. This is the grown up equivalent of the clubhouse with the sign saying, "No Girls Allowed."

This attitude toward women has other, more serious consequences. When I was in my mid-twenties, I toured Europe and spent some time in France. The sexual harassment I encountered at the hands of Muslim men was incredible. Twice, I had North African men actually grab me and try to drag me down the street. When I struggled to get away, they held on tighter. They seemed to have no idea that they were doing something wrong. I encountered less extreme but still bothersome sexual harassment every day I was there. The harassers were always North Africans and never Frenchman. In Germany, I experienced the same thing. The last time I was sexually harassed in the U.S., a man with a Middle Eastern accent followed me in his car and tried to pick me up. When I shook my fist at him in warning, he responded by asking "Is that a 'yes'?"

Obviously, lots of non-Muslim men are sexual harassers and most Muslim men are not, but the combination of traditional attitudes toward women and the isolation and alienation experienced by Muslim immigrants seems to make their form of sexual harassment more pervasive and more aggressive.

I can't help but wonder what will happen to the position of women if Muslims become 10% of the population instead of 2%. Will there be separate seating on buses, as there is in the ultra-Orthodox communities in Israel? What will happen in the military and in fire stations where men and women often live and work closely together? How will we work out the conflict between equal employment and "modesty"? What if a group of Muslim men enters a movie theater and can't find enough seats together? Will I be asked to move to accommodate them? Reportedly, men in Saudi Arabia feel perfectly free to step ahead of women in line. Will that happen here?

As politically sympathetic as I am to Arabs and Muslims, I am not sympathetic to this aspect of Middle Eastern culture that believes women should defer to men at all times and I hope that when Muslims become a larger percentage of the American population that they don't bring try to impose these customs on non-Muslim Americans.

The Leo Frank Case

noreply@blogger.com (Marya) — Sun, 24 Oct 2010 14:29:00 -0700

One of my embarrassing addictions is to true crime. For years, I was fascinated by Ted Bundy. Now, I am fascinated by the case of Leo Frank. Leo Frank was a Jewish man who was accused of raping and murdering a thirteen-year-old girl in Atlanta in 1913. The case is noteworthy because it was the first time a white man had been convicted in a Southern court on the testimony of a black man. He was convicted and sentenced to death. His sentence was commuted to life in prison by a governor who believed him to be innocent and feared to release him because he would be lynched. An enraged mob broke into the prison, kidnapped him, and lynched him. His case led to the founding of the Anti-Defamation League as well as the resurgence of the Klu Klux Klan.

There were two other possible suspects, a night watchman named Newt Lee, who found the body and called the police, and a janitor named Jim Conley. Both were African-American. Conley testified against Frank at the trial. Conley's own lawyer later declared that he believed Frank innocent and Conley guilty.

Conley had had three years of schooling and was a chronic alcoholic who had served time on chain gangs because of drunken brawling.

A key piece of evidence was two notes in Conley's handwriting that were found near the body. The notes purported to be notes written by the victim, Mary Phagan, saying that the night watchman was raping her. Of course, it defies common sense that a rapist would let his victim write during the attack or that the victim would even think to do so. There was no possible way that she could have written the notes after the attack because of the nature of her injuries.

It is also important to note that the physical evidence was grossly mishandled. Many of the witnesses against Frank were African-American and thus had reasons to fear the legal system and succumb to any pressure placed on them to lie. Some witnesses, both white and black, gave statements to the police, later recanted their statements, and some eventually recanted their recantations. In other words, none of the evidence was particularly good.

Decades later, a man named Alonzo Mann came forward and said he saw Conley carrying the body. Mann was 14 at the time and Conley threatened to kill him if he said anything. He kept the secret for decades and told his story only shortly before his death. This evidence is assumed to mean that Conley was almost certainly guilty.

A few points about this case stand out.

1. Frank should never have been convicted. Conley changed his story significantly three times. He was an alcoholic and alcoholics tend to be liars. AA has a saying: How do you know when an alcoholic is lying? Whenever he opens his mouth. An alcoholic who repeatedly changes his story is not credible and the jury should have disregarded his testimony. Without this testimony, the state had no case.

2. Frank seems to have been what we today would call a sexual harasser. After the murder, a number of women came forward claiming to have been harassed by him. This does not make him guilty of murder but it does explain why the police began to consider him a possible suspect.

3. Although Conley was probably guilty, there are aspects of the stories about him that seem counter intuitive to me. Allegedly, Conley raped and murdered a thirteen-year-old white girl. Instead of fleeing as quickly as he could, he stayed at the murder scene and wrote TWO notes. Conley had only three years of schooling--and probably low-quality schooling at that. Writing was no doubt difficult for him. We are asked to believe that a man with a limited education would stay around the crime scene and risk being caught and lynched, in order to write a note? Would the most logical course of action not be to flee? And yet, the notes are clearly in his handwriting. Either Frank urged him to write the notes, as he claimed, or the police pressured him to do it and somehow planted the evidence.

It is rare for murderers to write notes and leave them at the scene. I have heard of this but only in cases of family violence.

Conley was uneducated but he was bright enough to be cross-examined for sixteen hours by the best legal minds in the South and his story held up. He was clearly not stupid and yet we are to believe that he did something impossibly stupid. If you had sexually assaulted and killed a young girl at work, would YOU say around to write TWO notes?
My own suspicion is that someone on the police force, who had perhaps been pressured by a politician, planted evidence, destroyed evidence or leaned on Conley heavily and helped him concoct a story.

Another Post on Richard Dawkins

noreply@blogger.com (Marya) — Fri, 22 Oct 2010 13:57:00 -0700

Richard Dawkins prides himself on his rationality but it seems that even he is unable to escape the need to believe that man is more than the sum of his genes and his environment. He has argued that man is able to transcend his biology although he really doesn't specify how this would happen. (I doubt that memes explain this.)

He offers as an example of transcending biology the fact that humans practice birth control,which he describes as contrary to his hypothesis that life's goal is to inject as many genes into the next generation as possible. It is scarcely believable, I think, that he would offer such a flimsy "proof."

Surely he realizes that the goal of evolution is not to have the most offspring but to have the most surviving offspring. The two are not necessarily the same. There are two basic reproductive strategies. One is to have many children. This will mean that each child gets a smaller share of the "pie" of resources like money, food, health care, parental teaching, etc. The other strategy is to have fewer children but to invest more in each child.

It is ridiculously easy to see why one's genetic fitness might be served by having fewer children but investing more in each one. For example, let's compare a midde class family with two children and an impoverished rural family with five children The two children live in a gated community, have first-rate medical care, and go to private schools and four-year colleges. The poor children go to inferior schools, and have limited options. They do not go to college but work in a convenience store, go into the army, or turn to crime. Let's create a hypthetical scenario for the poor family. One child goes into the military and survives but with post-traumatic stress disorder. He becomes depressed and a substance abuser. This removes him from the gene pool. Family resources that could have gone into the next generation are used to care for him. Another child gets addicted to Hillbilly Heroin and goes to prison for a long time, thus removing him from the gene pool. A daughter has an out-of-wedlock child, reducing her chances for education and for finding a suitable husband because many men don't want to deal with other men's children. These children are at greater risk for crime, dropping out of school, sexual abuse, depression, and a whole host of other problems.

Even if more of the poor family's children survive for a few generations, if there is some kind of catastrophe, like a war, a depression, or a plague, these children are far more vulnerable. Poor kids die in wars more than rich kids do. This is a fact of life. They also die of illnesses that rich people don't die of.

Note, too, that the children from the middle class family have far more control over their lives in terms of education, employment, medical care, and the ability to influence government policy. If, perish the thought, some kind of war or famine breaks out, these kids are more likely to be able to emigrate and find safety.

During the Holocaust, who was more likely to survive--and survive with the least amount of trauma? The poor Chassidic family with 11 kids or the upper-middle class family with three? The family with three kids is far more likely to have the skills needed to get a coveted visa in a safe country. Something similar no doubt applies in Iraq.

In short, Dawkins wants to believe that we transcend biology. The religious do too. The religious do this through God. Dawkins does it through wishful thinking and poor examples.

Richard Dawkins and the God Delusion

noreply@blogger.com (Marya) — Sun, 10 Oct 2010 14:04:00 -0700

Yesterday, I read part of Richard Dawkin's The God Delusion. The idea of a transcendant God who is both all-powerful and all-loving often seems indefensible. Cruelty is inherent in nature, as even a child who watches nature programs realizes, and it is impossible not to wonder why an omnipotent God made a universe that is not only cruel but inherently and necessarily cruel--and of course, we humans far outstrip the lower animals in a capacity for cruelty. These considerations cause me to doubt the traditional, theistic concepts of God; nevertheless, there are many aspects of Dawkin's ideas that I find untenable.

The first, to which this post is devoted, is his belief that evil done in the name of religion is in fact caused by religion. To bolster his point, he cites a study performed by an Israeli psychologist. In this study, he presented Israeli school children with the passage about Joshua capturing the town of Jericho. After conquering the town, the Bible records that Joshua slew all of the inhabitants, including women and children, and also killed the animals. This psychologist asked whether Joshua had acted correctly and gave the children a choice of three answers: that Joshua was entirely correct, that he was partially correct, and that he was totally incorrect. Around 60% of the children answered that Joshua's actions had been totally correct, while 6% responded that he had been partially correct. The remaining third of the children answered that Joshua had been totally incorrect.

Children often cited religious justifications for their approval of Joshua's actions. Fewer children who disapproved of the action cited religious justifications but among those who did, they tended to criticize Joshua for destroying animals and property that the Israelites could have used themselves.

When the psychologist gave children copies of a text that was identical to the first except that "Joshua" had been changed to "General Lin" and the "Israelites" had been changed to the Chinese, 75% of the children disapproved of slaughtering them. In other words, the rates of approval and disapproval were totally reversed. Dawkins cites this as proof that religious attitudes lead people to at least condone, if not promote, cruelty.

At this point, I confess to being astonished that a biologist of Dawkin's stature could have ignored a painfully obvious issue: this experiment has confounded religion and ethnicity. In the first text, children are asked to evaluate the actions of someone who is a member both of their own ethnic group and of their own religion. In the second text, children are asked to evaluate the actions of someone who is a member of both a different ethnic group and a different religion.

If Dawkins had wanted to assess the effects of religion alone, he would not have cited this study. Instead, he would have looked for research in which people were asked to judge the morality of actions committed against people of their own ethnic group but of a different religion or against their co-religionists who have a different ethnicity.

In the Israeli context, perhaps an experiment should have compared attitudes toward Israeli Jews who have abandoned Judaism to embrace Buddhism and, let's say, a group of African-America converts to Judaism. In this way, the effects of religion and ethnicity would be considered separately.

The American experience of slavery provides a case study of this point. The majority of American slaveholders were probably Protestant Christians, as were the majority of slaves. Yes, slaveholders often quoted the Bible to justify slavery, yet seemingly no one thought of permanently enslaving Catholics of English ancestry who lived in the U.S. Indeed, the idea seems incomprehensible. In other words, slaveholders preferred to enslave ethnically different co-religionists rather than enslave ethnically similar people who held a different religion--in spite of the fact that anti-Catholic feelings among Protestants was quite strong and remains strong among many Fundamentalist Christians to this day.

As an additional example, one need only look at the treatment of Jews in America. Yes, there has been real discrimination--think of all those "restricted clientele" hotels and the plethora of anti-Semitic websites today--but Jews have been far better treated in the U.S. than blacks, in spite of the fact that Jews by definition reject Jesus while blacks are among the most Christian people in the nation.

I propose a theory: that when given a choice of two or more groups to oppress, the powerful group will always choose to oppress the group that is the most genetically different from its own, regardless of what religion that genetically different group has. Furthermore, I suggest that enduring religious conflicts exist primarily when there are also ethnic differences. In Northern Ireland, the two warring groups possess not only different religions but different ethnicities: the Protestants are Scots-Irish and the Catholics are Irish. One might also point out that in the Republic of Ireland, Catholics and Protestants usually get along rather well and Protestants have played an important role in Irish political movements.

One need only recall the genocide in the Ukraine, led by self-proclaimed atheists who were of non-Ukrainian ethnic groups, to understand the point I am making. When critics of Dawkins point out that tens of millions have been killed by atheistic systems of government, Dawkins claims that this proves his point: that blind obedience to an ideology is always evil. In fact, this is not the point he has been making. He has merely shifted his point in response to this very valid criticism and he knows it. Most of his arguments have not been about irrationality per se but about belief in a deity. If evil can occur in the absence of religion, it shows that belief in an external God is in fact NOT the essential cause.

I cannot help but think of the Iraq war--a war that so far has resulted in over one million excess Iraqi deaths, in addition to all the previous deaths caused by more than a decade of sanctions. Yes, Bush is a fundamentalist Christian but many of the strongest proponents of the war are not noticably religious people. The Washington Post, a bastion of secularism, editorialized in favor of the war, as did the Wall Street Journal. In fact, the WSJ was so pro-war that critics nicknamed it the War Street Journal. The New York Times, a paper with a distinctly non-religious slant, published those disgraceful WMD stories. Both senators from New York at the time--Clinton and Schumer--and both senators from Connecticut--Dodd and Lieberman--voted for the war. Connecticut, of course, is one of the most liberal states in the nation and New England has one of the lowest rates of church attendance in the country. With the exception of Lieberman, none of the senators was considered over-devout.

On the other hand, senators in the Great Lakes States, a place far more traditional than NY or Connecticut--voted against the war. Remember that the major proponents of war in the Department of Defense--Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, and Feith--are apparently totally secular.

Comparing support for the war in various communities, one notes that according to a poll commissioned by the American Jewish Committee shortly before the war started, 59% of the Jewish community--a largely secular, intellectual, and culturally sophisticated group--supported the war in the same proportion as Americans generally, while African-Americans, a deeply religious community--opposed the war by 80%. (As an aside, let me note that Jews were no more likely to support the war than Americans in general. In this context, the dividing line was not religion but ethnicity, as white and African-Americans have similar theological views but vastly different social experiences. The war was also opposed by the US Council of Catholic Bishops and nearly all mainline, non-fundamentalist Protestant denominations. Taken as a whole, religiosity itself was not always connected to support for this war crime.

Still, in spite of the fact that I find Dawkins arguments about religion to be hopelessly muddled, I have to concede that he has a point. Many of the cruelest, most brutal activities in history are carried out by people who call themselves religious. Church goers are more likely to support torture than the secular. Still,the fact that support for war and torture correlate with religious belief does not mean that religious belief causes these proclivities.

There is research showing that traditionalism--a belief in strict rules and harsh punishments for violators of them--is at least partly genetic. These studies indicate that 50% of the difference among people on this measure is due to genetics. What remains to be seen is whether or not people who rank high on measures of traditionalism are the same people to be attracted to fundamentalist religions. If so, the evils linked to religion are not caused by religion itself but merely co-occur with it. One can assume that tradionalists could be attracted to any sort of regimented system like communism as well.

Since there is no ethical research on human beings that could ever establish this point--or its contrary--we are left with conjecture. Still, I believe that Dawkin's arguments about the evil of religion are less nuanced than they would have to be to adequately explain the very real link between religion and human cruelty.
I

An Unwanted Pregnancy is More than "Inconvenience"

noreply@blogger.com (Marya) — Sun, 25 Jul 2010 19:06:00 -0700

Those opposed to abortion rightly condemn the callousness of pro-choicers referring to the fetus as "tissue" or the "product of conception." On the other hand, I wince every time I hear a pro-lifer talk about an unplanned pregnancy as nine months of "inconvenience."

For many woman, an unplanned pregnancy ushers in a lifetime of grief. If she gives the baby up for adoption, she will spend the rest of her life aching for her child. As much as pro-life propaganda likes to paint glowing portraits of women who surrender their babies for adoption and are glad they did, there are countless other women who endure a lifetime of sadness, regret, and clinical depression from which they never recover.

If she keeps the baby, she diminishes her chances of getting married because many men don't want to raise another man's child. The results of this are poverty, loneliness, and a diminished chance of ever having a normal family life.

Pro-lifers will sometimes publish articles about women who kept their children and regard them as blessings. They never publish the articles about women whose children turn out to be learning disabled or handicapped. A woman I am very close to had an unplanned pregnancy almost fifty years ago. She had the child and kept him. She was married at the time but her husband was an alcoholic, severely depressed, and drank all the food money. She divorced him and raised three kids on her own until she married a successful businessman a decade later.

The son she never aborted is now forty-eight and a drug addict. He has ADHD, a back injury, and depression. He is unemployed. He lives with her. The woman is raising his son, which is why she can't really kick him out and hurt the grandson. He steals from her to get drug money. She sleeps in pants with pockets so he can't steal her money. Every few weeks, another cherished possession turns up missing.

The point of this post is that while I support the Church's position on abortion, I seethe when I hear pro-lifers talk about an unplanned pregnancy as a mere inconvenience.

Just as we expect pro-choicers to be honest and not hide behind phrases like "tissue" or "product of conception," I expect pro-lifers to admit that these types of pregnancies often result in a lifetime of suffering. Argue, if you want to, that life is so inherently good that it is worth the cost, but don't minimize what is too often a catastrophe for many women.

An article by Derek Lin on Taoism

noreply@blogger.com (Marya) — Thu, 18 Feb 2010 06:03:00 -0800

I read this years ago and liked it. I don't know if it is true but I intend to give it a try. I am uploading it here so that I can always find it because I liked it so much.

Tao Living

Turning Wish into Reality

by Derek Lin

December 1999

One important teaching in I-Kuan Tao, derived from its Zen tradition, states that the material world is illusory and only the realm of spirituality is real.

This concept may seem bizarre at first. I mean, come on! The chair I'm sitting on, the house I live in, the car I drive to work - how can you tell me these things are illusions? And how can intangibles like thoughts, feelings and relationships be more real than physical matter?

Even more bizarre, perhaps, is the fact that there are modern thinkers who are thinking along the same lines and leveraging these Tao principles to create success in life. Two examples are Mike Hernacki, author of The Ultimate Secret to Getting Absolutely Everything You Want and Scott Adams, cartoonist of the wildly popular Dilbert strip.

Hernacki's secret is that in order to achieve something, you must be absolutely willing to do everything it takes, and you must take action with total initiative. If you can do that, you will see your goal rushing to completion, and you end up not having to do all the things you thought you had to after all!

There are some wonderful implications to this principle, but what makes it really work is the fundamental belief that all thoughts have an objective reality and physical existence. This is in complete accordance with Zen and Tao teachings.

There is a chapter from The Dilbert Future, one of Scott Adams' best-selling books, where he discusses the same idea from a different angle. In a complete departure from his usual output of workplace humor, Adams gets serious and talks about his unconventional philosophy of life and the source of his uncommon success.

Adams asserts that existence is far more than the limited reality we can perceive with our limited vision. This is, again, in complete accordance with Zen and Tao teachings. He began suspecting this truth when he went through some personal paranormal experiences. Later on, he was able to prove it to himself via his use of affirmations.

By affirmations I don't mean the kind Stuart Smiley says to himself while looking into a mirror. ("I'm good enough, smart enough, and doggone it, people like me!") What I mean instead is a way to bend reality to your will. You simply decide on a specific goal that you can visualize, and write it down fifteen times a day in the following form: I, Joe Sixpack, get/do/become/whatever something/someone/whatever!

If you can do this consistently, your intangible desire will materialize. The difficult part is the consistency. Most people won't be able to last long enough to see it work, but I know there's some of you out there who have the fortitude to apply this technique successfully.

What's so supernatural about this, you ask? Wouldn't you succeed simply by continuously motivating yourself? That's psychology, not metaphysics!

You can decide on a goal that is just beyond your reach, something that you cannot accomplish by your efforts alone. That way, when your wish comes true you'll be able to tell that the affirmations have played an undeniable role.

Another convincer is that as you practice the affirmations, you will start noticing strange coincidences favorable to your cause. They will pile up to the point where you'll have no choice but to admit that they can't all be explained in terms of physical cause and effect.

When Scott Adams started doing affirmations, his goal was to get rich in the stock market. Because he was skeptical, he missed the boat a couple of times - the first time by not having a brokerage account set up in advance; the second time by selling too soon.

I, too, was skeptical when I started. My goal was to get a better job, since my position at the time really couldn't get me where I wanted to go. Because of the high level of position I sought, I had a feeling the job hunt would not be easy, and I wasn't sure the affirmations would help.

I needed to make my goal specific and just out of reach, so I named a very high salary. I also envisioned a short commute, a more professional setting, and fast Internet access.

Mindful of Hernacki's secret, I started sending out my resume and writing my affirmations diligently. I was committed to doing whatever it would take to land a great new job.

Nothing happened for a few weeks, and then out of the blue some corporate recruiters called. They didn't know I had just started my job hunt. They called because they contacted me a year ago about some possibilities and still remembered me from that occasion.

I did not think of this as an amazing coincidence, nor did I take them seriously, because nothing concrete ever came out of our previous dealings. I sent them my updated resume and thought no more of them.

Other things started happening too, faster than I thought possible. Before I went on vacation I had several interview opportunities. After I returned some offers came in. Soon I accepted one of the offers.

Did the affirmations work? The new employment featured a convenient commute, an excellent top-flight work environment and, yes, fast access to the Internet from my new office.

There's just one nagging detail. The offer I accepted was quite satisfactory, but the dollar amount was not the figure I named in my affirmations. Still, it was a decent increase and I wasn't complaining.

I sent e-mail to the recruiters thanking them for their efforts and letting them know I would not be needing their services in the foreseeable future. A couple of them responded to this by calling me. They said their clients really wanted to interview me. What were the chances that I would reconsider?

I told them that I did wait for them to come up with something, but eventually had to move forward. Now I was honor-bound by my commitment and could not entertain any other possibilities.

They expressed regrets but still persisted. Apparently my resume had been misplaced previously and was now at the right desk; the company was getting into the Internet in a big way; stock options were possible...

None of that made a difference; it was a matter of principle. Each recruiter gave up when he realized I meant what I said. In the last phone call, just before hanging up, I asked: "Just out of curiosity, what kind of salary is your client talking about?"

The gentleman named the exact figure in my affirmations. Chills went up and down my spine. What were the odds? Could it be that I, like Scott Adams, didn't wait long enough for the exact opportunity I envisioned to come true?

Maybe, but I like the job I chose and I believe the affirmations had something to do that too. My skepticism has vanished. I have to concede that the Zen notion about the illusory nature of the material world may not be so bizarre after all.

Sit back for a moment and think about the incredible implications we're talking about. Here is a spiritual concept that you do not need to accept on blind faith. It is something you can prove to your own satisfaction, as many times as you need to. And once you see the truth, it becomes a powerful tool you can use at will for the rest of your life.

This is a challenge to you. If you think this metaphysical stuff is too far-out, or if you think I-Kuan Tao offers nothing materially different from other belief systems, then here's the perfect opportunity to put your preconceptions to the test. It's your turn... to see for yourself just how bizarre reality really is!

Thanks to the person who commented on the post about my brother

noreply@blogger.com (Marya) — Thu, 18 Feb 2010 06:01:00 -0800

I posted an article about my brother's struggle with addiction. Someone was kind enough to write a long comment offering helpful advice. Thank you. Thank you.

More on My Brother

noreply@blogger.com (Marya) — Wed, 23 Dec 2009 18:06:00 -0800

I went over to visit my mom. She isn't home but my brother is. He is high. He is singing, banging himself in the chest, and making odd noises.

In spite of this, we managed to have a nice talk. I blew a gasket--unfairly--with someone and feel awful. I am too ashamed to see her and apologize. My brother gave me some very wise and compassionate advice, something to the effect that we are all human, that I should just admit that I f--ked up and understand that it is part of being human. While I do not want to romanticize addiction, his struggles have given him a great deal of insight into human nature.

I have had four lost years after I stopped taking opioids--I took them for only three days while I was hospitalized, I never abused them, and was never addicted. The drugs knocked something in my brain out of balance and I could not regain that balance, even after I stopped taking the drugs. I have been a burden to my family. I am not abusing drugs but I am not any easier to deal with, ultimately, than he is.

If I had known what I was going to go through for the last four years, I probably would have found a way to continue taking opioids. It is a choice between overwhelming depression and addiction. Neither one is great. By the way, opioids relieve the depression with fewer side effects that conventional antidepressants. The conventional antidepressants made me feel positively hostile. They cause weight changes and skin changes. I just hate them. Opiods have the downside of addiction but while I was on them, I fet normal--not euphoric, not high, but normal. In the short term, they had fewer side effects for me than conventional antidepressants.

How the FDA Has Destroyed My Family

noreply@blogger.com (Marya) — Mon, 21 Dec 2009 10:02:00 -0800

Addiction and depression have run in my family for at least three generations. The women are anxious and depressed. The men are addicted and depressed. There seems to be a strong genetic component to this. Antidepressants have severe side effects for us and do not work that well. They make us function better but not feel better. They also leave us feeling unbearably hostile. These feelings do not subside when one stops taking the drugs. It is as though the medication knocked something out of balance in our brains and our brains do not return to normal just because we stopped taking the drug.

There is a subset of patients with major depression that respond far better to opioids as a treatment for depression than they do to conventional antidepressants. (Opoids and Depression) My brother and I are in this category. I found this out quite by accident when I was given opioid pain killers for medical problems that were severe enough to require hospitalization and surgery. For the three days I was on the drugs, I felt normal--not euphoric or high--but normal. After I stopped taking the drugs, I fell into a depression that can only be described as biochemical torture. I did not resume taking the drugs but four years after the last time I took them, I still have not fully recovered from the depression. I have tried exercise. Contrary to all the glowing reports, it does not work wonders for all people with major depression although it may help some. Acupuncture helps but is expensive. A natural diet helps but when you are clinically depressed, it is difficult to be consistent about this for the time it takes to heal.

One brother has struggled particulary hard with addiction because he has both a genetic predisposition to depression and addiction and severe back pain--he has metal rods in his spine--that is only completely relieved by opiod pain killers. He also has a classic symptom of endogenous depression: opioids make him feel well--as they did me-- while withdrawal from opioids induces crashing, suicidal depression.

Several years ago, a friend of his recommended that he try methadone. This worked amazingly well. It controlled his pain, took the edge off of his depression, and halted his cravings for other narcotics. He was able to visit his doctor once a month and get a 30-day supply of the drug. In fact, he even weaned himself down from four pills a day to two. He was able to work part time as a printer and bring in some money.

Then the FDA decided that methadone could not be used for pain relief but only for the treatment of addiction. The way methadone programs are set up, this requires daily visits to a clinic--and daily fees. If the patient appears high, he is denied treatment. Of course, my brother cannot stand the back pain and the suicidal depression that follow withdrawal and so he inevitably shows up high and is refused treatment. Even if he did not show up high, the daily fees are prohibitively expensive and are not covered by insurance.

Because he cannot obtain methadone legally, he has resorted to using oxycodone. He has spiralled into out-of-control addiction. The printer he was working for fired him. Many days he is too drugged to get up and take his son to school. Because withdrawal from oxycodone is both physically and psychiatrically unendurable, he lies and steals to get money to buy the drugs. My mother sleeps with her door locked. Instead of sleeping in a nightgown, she sleeps in a pair of pants with pockets in which she keeps her money. My brother sold a crystal bracelet my nephew gave my mother--his grandmother. She cherished that bracelet and is heartbroken that it is gone.

He has stolen from hs preteen son. He took $160 and, although he denies it, pawned his fishing reels. My nephew started his first day of school this year sobbing his eyes out in the car on his way to school because his reels were gone. He has stolen small amounts of money from me as well. He lives with my mother and anytime I walk into my mother's house, I either lock my purse in the car before I enter or keep my purse over my shoulder. My mother and I spent last Christmas watching him passed out on the floor. Fortunately, his son was in California visiting his mother. My mother and I spent Christmas Day driving around and comforting ourselves with the thought that we had had worse Christmases.

On one level, as someone with a depressive disorder that responds to opioid drugs, I do understand the pain and desperation that drive him to these actions On the other hand, I am frustrated that his actions impair my own interests.

The love that hopefully exists among family members has dissolved in a sea of lies, thefts, bitterness, and distrust. Our family has been finacially and emotionally drained. We will never recover what we have had.

This was all unnecessary. If the FDA had let doctors decide what is best for their patients and understand that individual needs differ, we would not be going through all of this. The FDA really needs to remove itself from the doctor-patient relatonship.

Bank of America: Military Banking

noreply@blogger.com (Marya) — Sun, 18 Oct 2009 05:25:00 -0700

Yesterday, I went to use the ATM at Bank of America. A poster on their door caught my eye. The background was the American flag. The text read "Show your pride. Show your stripes. Military Banking."

Hmmm, I thought. The bank must be in financial trouble and is making a patriotic pitch to obscure that.

This morning, I googled the bank and found the link below:
http://www.sgvtribune.com/ci_13573239

B of A is only a bank and their posters are not so important. My fear is what will happen when the government goes bust. Will they make the military appeal--and not just on posters but in real life?

Forebodings

noreply@blogger.com (Marya) — Sat, 17 Oct 2009 10:30:00 -0700

The military and economic news have combined to create a mood of overwhelming pessimism. Two important forecasters of economic trends, Marc Faber and Gerald Celente, have argued that the "recovery" is nothing more than a stimulus bubble that will burst with devastating consequences. The latest news from Antiwar.com has a story from the McClatchy papers that General McChrystal, who heads the war in Afghanistan, would actually like 80,000 troops . The U.S. cannot send more than 30,000 troops without seriously straining military resources.

Noam Chomsky doubts that the draft will return because the draft did not work very well for the military during the Vietnam War. People who are in the military against their will are less compliant and more likely to create difficulties. Nasty colonial wars need volunteers and mercenaries. It is worth noting that while the U.S. does indeed have fewer troops in Iraq since Obama took office, the decrease has been more than offset by contractors. Some are from desperately poor countries like Kenya. What are they being promised? Money only or the chance to come to the U.S. later on?

Still, I fear a draft. I have a niece and a nephew who are military age (and two who are already in their teens and who will be military age if the war continues, which seems likely)and even the recession is not producing enough recruits to meet the demand.

Ruminating on this fear brings me back to the economy and Marc Faber. He predicts that there will be a war--another one and perhaps a bigger one--in a few years as the stimulus bubble bursts, the economy worsens, and Americans become disaffected. Gore Vidal is predicting a military dictatorship because Americans will become so fragmented that this will be the only way to hold the country together.

It seems to me that all the signs are there of an impending catastrophe. I am going back and forth with this: Yes, the situaton really is this bad (a stimulus bubble sure to pop, no manufactorig base, huge government debt, two no-win wars, no political solution that doesn't really hurt) vs. No, it can't be that bad, I am exaggerating and giving into anxiety and panic.

It seems to me that this is the time to think about leaving the country, going somewhere, but where? I don't speak any foreign languages and have no skills that don't rely on English.

America is a dying empire and will not fall without death throes that will embroil the entire world. Remaining here makes me complicit but I AM an American. I no longer have any regard for my government but I love my land--the Everglades, the forests, the oceans. To leave the land I love would destroy me but if my forebodings are correct, remaining here might be worse.

Purse Seine by Robinson Jeffers

noreply@blogger.com (Marya) — Thu, 8 Oct 2009 09:31:00 -0700

Today, I am posting one of my favorite poems, entitled Purse-Seine by Robinson Jeffers. It compares the flailing of sardines in a net as they know they are caught and try to escape with the helplessness of modern man, trapped in cities, totally dependent on each other. Consider the lines "We have geared the machines and locked all together into inter-dependence; we have built the great cities; now There is no escape. We have gathered vast populations incapable of free survival, insulated.

Jeffers was not a popular man during his lifetime. He was an isolationist when that was unfashionable. Yet, reading this poem, he seems like a prophet. After all, we are watching the collapse of the western economy and the American empire. The bailout will buy us time but not fix the problem.

==========================================================================

Our sardine fishermen work at night in the dark

of the moon; daylight or moonlight

They could not tell where to spread the net,

unable to see the phosphorescence of the

shoals of fish.

They work northward from Monterey, coasting

Santa Cruz; off New Year's Point or off

Pigeon Point

The look-out man will see some lakes of milk-color

light on the sea's night-purple; he points,

and the helmsman

Turns the dark prow, the motorboat circles the

gleaming shoal and drifts out her seine-net.

They close the circle

And purse the bottom of the net, then with great

labor haul it in.

I cannot tell you

How beautiful the scene is, and a little terrible,

then, when the crowded fish

Know they are caught, and wildly beat from one wall

to the other of their closing destiny the

phosphorescent

Water to a pool of flame, each beautiful slender body

sheeted with flame, like a live rocket

A comet's tail wake of clear yellow flame; while outside

the narrowing

Floats and cordage of the net great sea-lions come up

to watch, sighing in the dark; the vast walls

of night

Stand erect to the stars.

Lately I was looking from a night mountain-top

On a wide city, the colored splendor, galaxies of light:

how could I help but recall the seine-net

Gathering the luminous fish? I cannot tell you how

beautiful the city appeared, and a little terrible.

I thought, We have geared the machines and locked all together

into inter-dependence; we have built the great cities; now

There is no escape. We have gathered vast populations incapable

of free survival, insulated

From the strong earth, each person in himself helpless, on all

dependent. The circle is closed, and the net

Is being hauled in. They hardly feel the cords drawing, yet

they shine already. The inevitable mass-disasters

Will not come in our time nor in our children's, but we

and our children

Must watch the net draw narrower, government take all

powers--or revolution, and the new government

Take more than all, add to kept bodies kept souls--or anarchy,

the mass-disasters.

These things are Progress;

Do you marvel our verse is troubled or frowning, while it keeps

its reason? Or it lets go, lets the mood flow

In the manner of the recent young men into mere hysteria,

splintered gleams, crackled laughter. But they are

quite wrong.

There is no reason for amazement: surely one always knew

that cultures decay, and life's end is death.

American Individualism

noreply@blogger.com (Marya) — Sun, 4 Oct 2009 09:29:00 -0700

Before James Webb was elected as a Democratic senator from Virginia, he wrote a book entitled Born Fighting about the history of the Scots-Irish in America. I was particularly interested in the book because my maternal grandmother was Scots-Irish although her personal story was different than those described by Webb. Instead of settling in Appalachia, my grandmother's ancestors settled in Nova Scotia and came to the United States only after the Civil War. No one in my family spoke much about the Scots-Irish part of our ancestry. We were more interested in an ancestor who immigrated from Sweden.

Still, as I read Webb's descriptions of Scots-Irish culture--execrable housekeeping, academic underachievement, distrust of authority, individualism, fractiousness, and the tendency to swing between sensuality and religiosity--I had an epiphany. This is me. I have found my cultural identity.

Perhaps the most politically relevant of Scots-Irish cultural traits is individualism. Foreign observers of the American scene nearly always comment on the weight given to individualism rather than community and are puzzled by the fact that it is often the poorest and least-educated of Americans who espouse these values even though, theoretically, they would benefit from a more communitarian emphasis if that emphasis led to, for example, national health insurance. The Israeli sociologist, Baruch Kimmerling, in personal correspondence with me, commented that the hyper-patriotism of American culture was possibly intended to offset America's "wild individualism" and a writer in Ha'aretz, whose name I forget, expressed the wish that Israel would not become as individualistic as America.

The wonderful Noam Chomsky commented that American society is atomized and that this is a result of deliberate policies to keep the masses from uniting and pressing for real change. A series of videos of Chomsky discussing class warfare is available on youtube and is very much worth watching. Click here for an audiocast of Chomsky on class warChomsky is right about this, as he nearly always is, but it occurs to me that there is something in American culture that makes it easy for the elites to keep the masses atomized. This policy does not go against the grain of American culture. In fact, it exploits a pre-existing tendency in the culture.

Kimmerling, in his book on Zionism and economics, cited the American historian Frederick Jackson Turner, and argued that the availablity of cheap land is the source of American individualism. Early in American history, vast tracts of land were available practically for the taking. People could stake a claim and were responsible for improving and defending the land themselves, without the assistance of the government. When this most valuable resource could be acquired without going through the government, people were free to develop a more individualistic culture.

Israel, on the other hand, had a high percentage of its land owned by the Jewish National Fund, a quasi-official government agency and Israelis had to go through it to buy land or a house. This dependence on government for this necessary commodity helped shape Israel into a more collective and communally oriented society.

I can't help but wonder whether these land policies are not only the cause of different attitudes about individualism but are also the result of underlying cultural differences. To my non-Jewish way of thinking, the most absolutely startling aspect of Jewish culture is its greater emphasis on community. Protestants almost never talk about community and when they do, it is with a sense of duty and annoyance rather than a sense of belonging or satisfaction.

As a Protestant child, there were two songs I learned while still in pre-school. The first, of course, was "Jesus Loves Me." The second song was "The B-I-B-L-E." It contained the line "I stand alone on the Word of God." Then there is the famous Easter hymn "In the Garden": "I come to the garden alone." Catholic hymns, on the other hand, sing of the Church, the Holy Family, and other themes that emphasize family, society, and community. To a Protestant, the greatest sin is lack of faith, a sin that is necessarily highly personal and individual. To a Catholic, the greatest sin is selfishness, a sin against the community. The Scots-Irish are, of course, among the most strongly Protestant of people.

If these aspects of American society are, as I suspect, deeply rooted in ethnic and cultural traits, reformers who want to establish a more collective society are doomed to fail. Two groups of do-gooders who are going against the grain of American culture are the global warming activists and the national service advocates.

The global warming people lament the existence of suburbia--where people have far more space, privacy, and freedom to pursue individual interests and lives than in the city--because it leads to greater energy usage. Thomas Friedman wants to institute an additional fifty cent per gallon gas tax, a policy that punishes the rural poor ,who must travel longer distances for everything, far more than wealthy New Yorkers. He advocates this because, in my judgement, he wants to stick it to the Arabs by reducing oil imports. Sales taxes are among the most regressive of taxes because the poor spend a disproportionately large share of their income compared to the rich. (Friedman, as you will recall, also was a big proponent of the Iraq war, another policy that affected the poor more than the affluent as young people from rural areas and the inner cities were far more likely to enlist than other kids.)

National Service is another idea going against the grain of American culture. It is one thing to be drafted to defend the country during wartime. It is quite another to lose a substantial portion of your liberty to work for low pay on projects important to politicians. Besides, I can't help but suspect that national service plans are backdoor ways of increasing the pool of military recruits.

The usual argument is that young people should give back to their societies that have raised them. No one can disagree with that but they can give back to society far more effectively by working in economically productive jobs, raising healthy kids, taking care of aging parents, and volunteering for causes close to their hearts.

Proponents of national service argue that this is done in Europe, or Israel, or some other place. So what? We are Americans, not Europeans or Israelis. It is time to cling fiercely to our American identity, an identity that values freedom and individuality and that looks askance on government coercion.

One of the earliest American flags depicted a rattlesnake with the words "Don't Tread on Me" written above it. Advocates of a more collective--and necessarily coercive--society will find a deep-rooted, culturally based resistance. They will be treading on a serpent.