The intermittent fast is a marvelous ritual. By fasting occasionally (in my case, once a month), we put our bodies into the sharp relief of hunger which is a driving force of life. Fasting urges a realization that our biological reality transcends the boundary between natural and supernatural.
In Christian languages, happiness gets a less honorable reputation than joy and well-being. But life would hardly be worth living if there weren’t moments of happiness along the way. A universal framework for well-being is far from universal. Here are four models to help clarify your own understanding of happiness and a bit of the … Continue reading Different Cultures, Different Kinds of Happiness
Cathy Whitecloud carried me when I was a baby.
Technocratic rationality, then, needs to be recognized as a feature of mass society and as a systemic threat to our freedom, and its oligarchic substitution of a human artifice for a real-world with unmarked graves; the original sin of assuming that man is the measure of all things, makes its appearance there. It makes its appearance in the controlling of society to restore the economy - an oligarchic and technocratic rationale so obvious that it is surprising there isn’t more protest.
...quietly observing what the conflict is doing to you before you can ponder the opposite, what you might do to it. Rather than be active, you have to slow down and see what moves in and around you. ‘A lot of it is about listening,’ says Herbert, ‘listening to people, but also listening to yourself to find your balance.’
"The self exists in the same way as a border between countries, i.e. as a social institution. Both are imaginary boundaries that have a certain pragmatic convenience to them."
"...experiences of inequality are built-in to the human artifice and are not merely happenings of our experience, but constitutive features of it - a mechanics very similar to corruption."
An hour into the experience, about 10 minutes before we began to eat, I thought to myself, “how could a dozen or so educated women talk about food for an hour without getting bored and switching topics?”
The demand to be authentic is so commonplace that it has lost its meaning. ‘Today, there is little premium placed on being authentic,’ writes the American philosopher Gordon Marino in his moving meditation The Existentialist’s Survival Guide: How to Live Authentically in an Inauthentic Age (2018). The increasing prevalence of social media constructions of ourselves, … Continue reading Performative Authenticity: Mass Society in Real Time
"...overcoming otherness is bringing our uniqueness to a situation not originally intended to accept it, and then translating and transforming the situation so the uniqueness can feel at home. "
To be saved by grace sounds simple enough, grammatically at least. We are born into sin, and redeemed by a sacrificial love which we do not deserve. Baptized at 11, I seemed to have passed the test. Sunday school stuff, really. Let’s go to the all you can eat buffet together, laugh a little, and … Continue reading The Ways of Grace
When the detained people who stormed the Capitol are prosecuted, my guess is the charges will have something to do with sedition, destroying property, or threatening lives. Democracy will be defended, but it is this terrorism that needs to be tried.
What has been expressed as widespread mistrust is not of what is around us, such as churches, universities, stock markets, and governments; the distrust is of ourselves. We distrust who we are. And I don’t believe it.
“What about this? And what about that?” Don’t talk of nourishment; let’s eat till we’re fat. We look to a promise and give up the now, We exchange our Being for furrowed brow.
"...tending to our own resilience is a vital task for living well. But that requires not only that we don’t overlook the severity of loss or the suffering that we regularly experience, but also that we experience and embrace the suffering.”
There is a persistent feeling that self-isolating at home is like being herded into a ghetto; [We] had to be prepared for domination before efficient domination could occur.
"...depression and addiction are related phenomena, and ... they are symptoms of a more general malaise of which the world-ending consequences may be of our own doing."
I thought social media loved me for who I was, with its catered advertising and photo- and video-sharing capabilities; but really, it only loved me for the attention I gave to it.
Trumpism, Prophets of Deceit suggests, is the inevitable outcome of a social, economic, and political order that generates human needs that it cannot satisfy.
"...if mass society is experienced as a force that wears us down as individuals, then our belonging to community should build us up..."
"the seeming destruction of context is the modus operandi of a more inclusive background which could provide both meaning and beauty to our lives."
"If we stand with others in their reality, rather than focusing on issues, then we are doing much more of what Jesus would do."
"An experience of "resonance" is an indicator what a person ought to be doing."
A Little Bit More Some people want just a little bit more,Not just three bedrooms, but maybe four.A view from above, from the second floor,One has a spouse, but wants a whore. A minimalist will say that they want less,To give up want, to need - acquiesce.To unclutter all the untidy excess,And most of all, … Continue reading A Little Bit More
The seeming inability of recent generations to purchase either home or land is known to be a first-order symptom of this historical system of wealth acquisition, like having shortness of breath and a fever are first-order symptoms of having acquired the corona virus. At least two full generations of people who do not know how to grow food is another first-order symptom of the failure of a system of wealth acquisition.
Part 3 This is a continuation of Part 1: https://idealsandidentities.com/2020/03/28/the-sickness-before-the-infection/ and Part 2 https://idealsandidentities.com/2020/04/10/the-sickness-before-the-infection-part-2-preservation-or-carrying-on/ I am continuing to write it, and will publish the entire “The Sickness Before the Infection” upon completion. This is the up-to-date edit of Part 3. What amazes, and sometimes perplexes, me is what will be carried on after the coronavirus … Continue reading The Sickness Before the Infection: Why we Want Social Distancing
In other words, there is no identifiable locus of the virus. It doesn’t matter whether the virus is transmitted among the community, or brought in on a plane or train. It doesn’t matter whether we have been globally exposed or locally situated, the virus is all around, and it could be transmitted by any of us. And even though I might feel well, I have been infected and have transmitted it to others before I even knew I was sick. How terrifying is that?
" by attending to the needs of himself and others, Wayne practiced eternal life here on Earth"
When someone uses capital letters incorrectly in official documents, we tend to think of the writer as having missed a lesson from their elementary school Language Arts class. They may also be conforming to the format of texting out of context. In reviewing student writing for a living, I find misused capitalization to be a … Continue reading A Deeper Cliche
"the overlooked habits in human beings’ interactions with one another will also rear their ugly, destructive, and malicious effects on the world around us and within us. Unconscious habits will emerge because we have too often overlooked them, and they will appear and be treated as hints and allegations that exist on the periphery of our conscious view, with the grand temptation to push them aside because the reality from which they emerge is too uncomfortable to deal with."
It is characteristic of pseudo-Christianity that, while claiming to be justified by God, by faith, or by the works of faith and love, it merely operates as a machine for excusing sin instead of confessing and pardoning it. In other words, the pseudo-Church has become a tool for producing a feeling that one is right and everyone else is wrong - a claim with which we are all-too-familiar in the debased culture of ultimate individual autonomy.
As I entered my property after shopping for groceries, I realized I entered with a different perspective of my home than I had when I would come home from work prior to the COVID-19 pandemic. Then, I would come home thinking that I was entering a place of pure relaxation, free of transactions, when I … Continue reading Value of Leisure
I have particularly noted the number of people who use English as an additional language (EAL) with whom I interact for almost all my business outside the house. In the last month, I dealt with people from Sri Lanka, India, the Philippines, China, Nigeria, Hungary, and many more. They helped me deal with essential services … Continue reading 6 Leadership Tips for Effective Business Writing.
The first in a series on essay writing and types!
I would like to say a big THANK YOU! Thank you to all the supporters of me and of Ideals an Identities. I am moved to share this since it seems that my blog is now taking off after 4 years of working on it. I am so happy that thousands of people are now … Continue reading Thank you!
