flowperson

Wow! This has really been a good rant series. Congratulations all TCPC'ers involved! I was going to post something after #9, but now I'm glad I waited. And, wasn't it Adam Clayton Powell who led the AME church in Harlem and later became a US congressman, if memory serves? For a year or two in the 80's I participated in an advanced seminar on religion and science run by one of the more prestigious Lutheran schools of theology in the midwest. They brought in prominent scientists, theologians and writers of the caliber of John Polkinghorne, Langdon Gilkey, Andrew Greeley etc. It was fun being a frog on a log and be there to hear these people prevaricate on all manner of stuff. Lots of intellectual and spiritual goodies to chew up and digest! The discussions that took place regarding the terrible happenings at Waco ( we all referred to it as Whacko) were particularly enlightening. By the way, the Mt. Carmel compound was quite near Crawford, TX ( I believe I might just have entered The Twilight Zone!). There were some very interesting discussions regarding the rise of facist powers in Europe and the far East in the 20's and 30's. Surprisingly a consensus was reached by several regular participants that the best description of what transpired in Italy, Germany, Spain, and Japan during that period that gave rise to the vicious facist and militarist cults that tried and failed to destroy civilization, could best be described as "some sort of virulent infectious agent of the central nervous system of the national leaders in these countries". I kid you not!!! But when you think about it and watch what's going on today when incidents like the "Schiavo" case occur, one gets a whiff of some sort of mass hysterical reaction taking place in the forums of our governmental leaders. When that fiasco was all over and done with, Jeb Bush still wanted to pursue an investigation of her husband's behavior when Terri became comatose to determine whether he had any culpability in it or not. I remember that Bill Frist gave a videotape diagnosis of the "favorable" aspects of her condition. This was all in a frenzied set of activities by conservatives to convince the US public that they were for "protecting life". It was very surreal. Now comes the part I was going to post after #9. Ummmm, I just don't know if our commitments to democratic principles are that strong anymore. My own personal opinion is that all that is way too monetized these days. If one does not play the political money game, one does not have voice in the process. The demonetized can only watch the spectacle as another form of entertainment, if they even have the means to do that. The tragedy is that it IS THIS SYSTEM that governs us all, rich,poor, and the shrinking middle. It's been seventy years since the big Nazi propaganda flim flams about how great it was in the 30's. I do know that they had lots of facist sympathizers here, some very prominent Americans among them who openly advocated the "positive" attributes that Hitler and Mussolini were bringing to their people and their countries. I believe it was Josef Goebbels that was the chief propaganda spinner for the straight-arms. He did clever things like creating animated film shorts that equated Jews with rats and other vermin. And the people bought it all, believed it, and later did the horrible things . Of course not all. Some of the smarter ones, Einstein comes to mind, saw what was building and got out while they could. Goebbels perfected the key principle of hucksterism wherein if you created a believable enough lie and repeated it often enough in slick presentations, a critical mass of the people would end up believing it and would act upon its messages, obvious and subliminal. I think old Joe would be turning back flips if he could tune in to some of our channels in Hades and see just how well his ideas have held up over the last seventy years. If we do not learn from our errors in history, we are doomed to repeat them. The only problem today is that we are so much more closely and effectively connected, and observed by each other. Both good and bad things seem to happen and get communicated worldwide almost instantly anymore. Which means that the message and its results are shoved together in shorter periods of time. There is little or no chance for reasoned reflection and action. More and more, emotionalized reactions seem to rule today's realities, and they all end up as entertainment. Is that a good thing?

Guys! Take a look at Stephen Mitchell's translation of the Tao Te Ching from the mid 80's. I believe that you've all been dancing around the issue here, but his translation intuitively presents a poetic physics treatise on attaining natural balances in a continuing process that is also dynamic. He addresses these foundational elements of our world with simple and elegant language. flow....

Rent ALL of the above and enjoy them for what they are, great world mythologies set to music in ways to stir your soul and fulfill your longings for romantic images of days gone by. As for "The Last Temtation of Christ" you may have problems finding a copy to rent since it caused near riots in the 80's by fundies outside of theaters that showed it. Martin Scorcese (the director) took liberties with the traditional stories and brought some well-appreciated rawness and mystic flavors to the traditional tales that will surprise you with their relevance to today's debates about fundamentalism and its artificialities. I don't believe that you could draw many parallels between Scorceses' and Gibson's treatments of the material other than the basic story line. Oh, and Peter Gabriel did the superb soundtrack in Scorceses' film, and the music alone is probably worth buying the film if you can find it. I believe that his casting, Willem DaFoe as Jesus and Barbara Hershey as Mary Magdelene, were brilliant. They really brought the characters to life on the screen, which is, of course, what good films were once all about. I believe that it was shot in Morocco or Algeria and the desert realism of it all is vivid and haunting. Happy hunting and enjoy! flow.....

It is my belief that we need a plethora, a passel, a humongous boatload, truckload, containerload, tankerload of vampire slayers. And, the sooner the better. Especially in D.C. flow.....

Guys! I believe that "Jesus Christ Superstar" fits the requirements to fulfill our hunger for singing and dancing Jesus stories quite well. "The Wiz" was pretty cool too! flow......

I am of the belief that human existence is mostly about the "searching" part and the "not finding of answers". When "answers" are found and transformed into mystical philosophical concepts, they have the possibility of creating a "new order" (no, not that kind!). This is dangerous stuff because the establishment always tries to preserve the existing and known "order" of the ways of the world. Better for business. Of all the answers that have been found by humans, religious concepts are the very most dangerous for they last the longest and can change entire societies. That's what Jesus did, only we do not understand much of the dynamics as to "how" he did it because that has been obscured by lots of smoke and fire over the millenia. Maybe he was an early version of David Copperfield. Lots of assumptions have been written and spoken about all that, and the "safest" versions are what are in the Bible, and what are talked about in religious institutions. You get down to the issue of determining "what is truth?". Is it the secrets that are not known and could be destructive if they were? Is it the stories and myths that we are all familiar with and have served us for two thousand years or so? And just what is all this bloodshed connected with the three religions of the hidden God about? Does anyone believe that He/She intended for that to happen, or is it just the natural fallout of a vast evolutionary process? If God is truly love that seems to be some sort of contradiction or paradox does it not? See, I'm about twice your age, and after all this time I'm still looking for answers, and at the same time am halfway scared to death of what might happen if I should stumble across some new ones. flow.....

Kiwimac: I agree with you on the Kushner book. It really helped me through a bad time also, but that was a long time ago. I'm really hip to your signature, but I would really like to know what it means. Is it Maori? Is it some kind of war chant? Do you know anyone in NZ with spirals on their cheeks? Just wondering.....flow....

Common Ca Va Marie!! Welcome! We are all here to listen and learn. We hope it works for you too!

This popped up on the LA Times website and I thought that it might be appropriate to the issue here since it is a scientific study. Of course one must consider that a "liberal" California newspaper printed this, even though it is owned by one of the most conservative and capitalist-profit driven media companies in the country, The Tribune Corporation out of Chicago. I guess paradoxes still exist, even in today's world. October 1, 2005 latimes.com : Print Edition : Editorials, Op-Ed The dark side of faith By ROSA BROOKS IT'S OFFICIAL: Too much religion may be a dangerous thing. This is the implication of a study reported in the current issue of the Journal of Religion and Society, a publication of Creighton University's Center for the Study of Religion. The study, by evolutionary scientist Gregory S. Paul, looks at the correlation between levels of "popular religiosity" and various "quantifiable societal health" indicators in 18 prosperous democracies, including the United States. Paul ranked societies based on the percentage of their population expressing absolute belief in God, the frequency of prayer reported by their citizens and their frequency of attendance at religious services. He then correlated this with data on rates of homicide, sexually transmitted disease, teen pregnancy, abortion and child mortality. He found that the most religious democracies exhibited substantially higher degrees of social dysfunction than societies with larger percentages of atheists and agnostics. Of the nations studied, the U.S. — which has by far the largest percentage of people who take the Bible literally and express absolute belief in God (and the lowest percentage of atheists and agnostics) — also has by far the highest levels of homicide, abortion, teen pregnancy and sexually transmitted diseases. This conclusion will come as no surprise to those who have long gnashed their teeth in frustration while listening to right-wing evangelical claims that secular liberals are weak on "values." Paul's study confirms globally what is already evident in the U.S.: When it comes to "values," if you look at facts rather than mere rhetoric, the substantially more secular blue states routinely leave the Bible Belt red states in the dust. Murder rates? Six of the seven states with the highest 2003 homicide rates were "red" in the 2004 elections (Louisiana, Mississippi, Nevada, Arizona, Georgia, South Carolina), while the deep blue Northeastern states had murder rates well below the national average. Infant mortality rates? Highest in the South and Southwest; lowest in New England. Divorce rates? Marriages break up far more in red states than in blue. Teen pregnancy rates? The same. Of course, the red/blue divide is only an imperfect proxy for levels of religiosity. And while Paul's study found that the correlation between high degrees of religiosity and high degrees of social dysfunction appears robust, it could be that high levels of social dysfunction fuel religiosity, rather than the other way around. Although correlation is not causation, Paul's study offers much food for thought. At a minimum, his findings suggest that contrary to popular belief, lack of religiosity does societies no particular harm. This should offer ammunition to those who maintain that religious belief is a purely private matter and that government should remain neutral, not only among religions but also between religion and lack of religion. It should also give a boost to critics of "faith-based" social services and abstinence-only disease and pregnancy prevention programs. We shouldn't shy away from the possibility that too much religiosity may be socially dangerous. Secular, rationalist approaches to problem-solving emphasize uncertainty, evidence and perpetual reevaluation. Religious faith is inherently nonrational. This in itself does not make religion worthless or dangerous. All humans hold nonrational beliefs, and some of these may have both individual and societal value. But historically, societies run into trouble when powerful religions become imperial and absolutist. The claim that religion can have a dark side should not be news. Does anyone doubt that Islamic extremism is linked to the recent rise in international terrorism? And since the history of Christianity is every bit as blood-drenched as the history of Islam, why should we doubt that extremist forms of modern American Christianity have their own pernicious and measurable effects on national health and well-being? Arguably, Paul's study invites us to conclude that the most serious threat humanity faces today is religious extremism: nonrational, absolutist belief systems that refuse to tolerate difference and dissent. My prediction is that right-wing evangelicals will do their best to discredit Paul's substantive findings. But when they fail, they'll just shrug: So what if highly religious societies have more murders and disease than less religious societies? Remember the trials of Job? God likes to test the faithful. To the truly nonrational, even evidence that on its face undermines your beliefs can be twisted to support them. Absolutism means never having to say you're sorry. And that, of course, is what makes it so very dangerous.

Lily I believe that you've carved out a sensible delineation of the crisis of belief that we all find ourselves in. On the one hand we strive to become as one on the material and secular side of things by complying with laws enacted by our elected peers and enforced by our publicly paid enforcers and protectors. But the underlying principle on this side of the equation is that we are also all equivalent under the definitions of the law, and in this regard we are still encouraged to behave and think as individuals, taking personal responsibility for our actions in the secular world. A really complex foundation for erratic bipolar behavior if you ask me. Then there's this guy who magically appeared 2,000 years ago, taught his peers new ways of looking at and dealing with the repressions of the world at that time, and above all stressed the concept of oneness as defined and protected under the wings of love as it were. He directed his immediate followers to start churches in his name to carry his words and concepts into the future. He promised hard life, suffering, and rejection for those who followed the 'Way', but He stressed that the oneness achieved by the individuals who took this path would enable them to not really taste death. I believe it all worked pretty well until about the time of the second world war. Then science and technology began to transform all of our lives to the extent that it is now very difficult to define what it means to act and function as "real" human beings in a "natural" world. The beginnings of this massive transformation actually extend back to the mid-nineteenth century. But the cultural conflicts that this has engendered were not really very self-evident until we began to assume technical and administrative control of life processes. Taking all this into account, just what sort of "new" church could be initialized to compromise these immense ethical conflicts for a secular world. After all we are not monks in caves, hiding from the world to preserve knowledge for the future. We are the ones creating the new knowledge in the world that we must earn a living in; and today, we have almost no voice or control over how knowledge is to be controlled or used for the purported benefit of our children and grandchildren. And the authorities who are supposed to be doing this on our behalf are constantly at each others' throats in neverending secular-cultural warfare. DUHHHH!

Des I used to live in pool table country, you know, very flat and very green. They had balloon festivals there once in a while, but seldom had more that a dozen or so balloons at a time. I was always intrigued with the various shapes they could assume. I saw a flying fish and a giant flying tomato. But mostly they were round and very colorful. It was a wonderful thing to wake up on a still summer morning, just as the sun was rising over the soybeans and corn and see them gracefully rising in the distance. If memory serves the first balloon ascension was in Paris in the 18th century. I would have thought that I would see more of them in the desert since we have no end of beautiful still sunrises. But with the valley filled up with hotels and housing as it is, there probably just isn't enough room for it. I know Albuquerque has a festival each year. Maybe I'll go over there and see it sometime in the future. For the back pain take lots of ibuprofen and stand as long as you can with your back flattened against a tree or wall, rising up and down on your toes. It helped when I had the miseries.

The following obituary upset me a great deal. It seems that so many good people who made so much sense in the past are going away, and are being increasingly replaced only by advocates of "The Short Attention Span Theatre". He was so spiritual in his approach to his subject matter, and he led so many of us to understandings about how the societies we live in really worked, especially in his first two works. It's all becoming so different now. So sad. Yes, about all any of us can do now is to sit back and watch. Call it apathy if you will. Without heroic leaderhip, our actions are but an empty shell of meaningless rituals. The New York Times M. Scott Peck, Self-Help Author, Dies at 69 By EDWARD WYATT Published: September 28, 2005 M. Scott Peck, the psychiatrist and author whose best-selling book "The Road Less Traveled" offered millions of readers an inspirational prescription of self-discipline, died on Sunday at his home in Warren, Conn. He was 69. The cause was complications of pancreatic and liver duct cancer, said Michael Levine, a friend and publicist. Dr. Peck is among the founding fathers of the self-help genre of books, which retain their popularity from year to year. "The Road Less Traveled," published in 1978, and its later companion volumes, "Further Along the Road Less Traveled" (1993) and "The Road Less Traveled and Beyond" (1997), have sold more than 5 million copies in North America, according to Dr. Peck's publisher, Simon & Schuster, and have been translated into more than 20 languages. " 'The Road Less Traveled' really marked the beginning of contemporary self-help," said Jan Miller, a literary agent whose firm, Dupree Miller & Associates, represents other stars in the field, including Dr. Phil McGraw and Joel Osteen. "It was a significant work because he was able to blend the psychology and the spiritual so magnificently." Unlike the huge best sellers of today, however, which arrive in bookstores accompanied by blaring trumpets of publicity, "The Road Less Traveled" went all but unnoticed when it was released in 1978. Simon & Schuster initially printed only about 5,000 copies, one of which was sent to Phyllis Theroux at The Washington Post. Ms. Theroux was later quoted as saying that she spent two weeks writing a review "that would force people to buy the book." That eventually happened, but only after Dr. Peck labored to stimulate sales by copying the review and sending it to several hundred newspapers around the country. The hardcover book sold a respectable 12,000 copies, and the paperback edition sold 30,000 in its first year. That number doubled in each of the next two years, and in mid-1983, five years after publication, "The Road Less Traveled" reached the New York Times best-seller list for the first time. It has since spent 694 weeks on the list, the equivalent of more than 13 years. "The most common response I have received to 'The Road Less Traveled' in letters from readers," Dr. Peck wrote in 2003 in an introduction to the 25th-anniversary edition of the book, "has been one of gratitude for my courage, not for saying anything new, but for writing about the kind of things they had been thinking and feeling all along, but were afraid to talk about." The book focused on Dr. Peck's core belief that, as stated in its opening sentence, "Life is difficult," and that its problems can be addressed only through self-discipline. Humans, however, tend to try to avoid problems, a habit that only creates more difficulties, Dr. Peck said. To that dose of self-discipline, Dr. Peck added an inseparable spiritual element. "I make no distinction between the mind and the spirit, and therefore no distinction between the process of achieving spiritual growth and achieving mental growth," Dr. Peck wrote in the preface to the original book. "They are one and the same." Dr. Peck's approach to self-discipline was infused not only with his general belief in the help of higher power, which made his books particularly popular with 12-step programs like Alcoholics Anonymous, but also with his specifically Christian personal beliefs, which crystallized relatively late in life. As the biography on his Web site explains, he was baptized in a nondenominational ceremony at the age of 43, by a Methodist minister in an Episcopal convent, where he had frequently gone on retreat. Morgan Scott Peck was born May 22, 1936, in New York. He attended Phillips Exeter Academy but was expelled from Middlebury College during his sophomore year for refusing to attend mandatory R.O.T.C. sessions. He transferred to Harvard, where he received a bachelor's degree in 1958, and he received a medical degree in 1963 from Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine. Dr. Peck then spent nearly 10 years as a psychiatrist in the Army, something that he once admitted was an "odd choice" given his college experience. He said that he became opposed to the Vietnam War soon after joining the Army but also viewed the experience as a way to study the behavior of individuals and organizations. Dr. Peck is survived by his wife, Kathleen Kline Yates Peck. His first marriage, to Lily Ho, ended in divorce. He is also survived by their three children: a son, Christopher, and two daughters, Belinda and Julie. Dr. Peck wrote several other books, including a novel, "A Bed by the Window" (Bantam, 1990), and two other nonfiction best sellers, "People of the Lie" (Simon & Schuster, 1983), an exploration of human evil, and "The Different Drum" (Simon and Schuster, 1987), which looked at the nature of community. Jonathan Dolger, who bought "The Road Less Traveled" for Simon & Schuster as an editor there and who later became Dr. Peck's literary agent, said neither he nor the author considered the book a self-help manual. "In some ways it is an inspirational book," he said. "But I have no idea what made it such a success, and I don't think Scotty had an idea either."

Chuckle, chuckle, snort, snort, guffaw, guffaw! Thanks Lily, you made my day-week-month.....oh well, you understand.

Des The real name which pigeons are called by is "rock doves" so you see how the story fits together now. If you think the rock doves are bad in Chicago, you should see them in Paris. My daughter calls them sky rats after some experiences we had there. Meaning is in the eye of the beholder

RIGHT ON MOW!!!!!

Maybe the best thing for Mr. Vox to do would be to take his entire entourage with him and visit the week-long Burning Man Celebration in the Black Rock Desert in N. Nevada next year. He'll find plenty of counter-culture rebels who can't tolerate being told what to believe there. It would probably be a fertile recruiting ground for him, if he could only cut through the purple haze and talk them into believing what his group's advocating. Eight thousand dogs chasing their tails I think!

In view of my rant yesterday on the "No child left behind and the military" thread on the board, I thought that it might be worthwhile to discuss the following article which appeared today on The Los Angeles Times website. It contains several controversial issues that should be of importance to progressive Christians, and I believe that it lays bare the current regressive philosophies and attendant political activities that seem to be undermining this country's scientific progress and competitiveness that it has attained over the past decades. flow.... September 20, 2005 Los Angeles Times Bush and the mad scientists The administration strikes again in its infuriating war against science. By Chris Mooney, CHRIS MOONEY is Washington correspondent for Seed magazine and author of "The Republican War on Science" (Basic Books), which was published Sept. 9. THE LAMENTATION in the forthcoming New England Journal of Medicine is typical of a growing genre: complaints about the misuse of science by the Bush administration. It is merely the latest jeremiad, from a group of distinguished experts, about the loss of reason by our leaders. This particular editorial, titled "A Sad Day for Science at the FDA," concerned so-called Plan B emergency contraception (the "morning after" pill), but it just as well could have been about the science of global warming or mercury pollution. Yawn. We've heard it all before. There's an inherent difficulty when it comes to sustaining outrage over how science gets continually misused in the Bush administration. The complexity of scientific disputation, paired with the intricacies of bureaucratic decision-making, make for a truly soporific combination. It's tough to get past the latest scandal and see the big picture — even when, as in this case, three distinguished doctors are writing that the Food and Drug Administration has made "a mockery of the process of evaluating scientific evidence, disillusioned scientists both inside and outside the agency, squandered the public trust and tarnished the agency's image." Still, let's try to muster whatever's left of our outrage, because the Plan B episode truly demands it. It may represent a historic low for science-based professionalism at the FDA. And it presents an instructive case study in how the political abuse of science plays out in practice. By any stretch, this decision should have been a no-brainer. The "morning after" pill, which blocks or delays ovulation, had already been approved for prescription use; the latest move merely concerned its availability over the counter. (Six states, including California, have made it available over the counter, but women must request it from the pharmacist.) Given that the pill's effectiveness in preventing a pregnancy depends on how quickly it is used after unprotected sex — and that it meets the safety and ease-of-administration tests for over-the-counter products — it makes obvious sense that simplifying access would help prevent unwanted pregnancies (and thus, presumably, abortions). Two scientific advisory committees held a joint hearing to consider the issue. Committee members voted overwhelmingly (23 to 4) in favor of approval. The FDA expert staff was of a similar mind. And yet in an extraordinary move in May 2004, the agency second-guessed its experts and its advisors and cooked up a dubious rationale for delaying approval of over-the-counter availability. More data were needed, the FDA claimed, on the pill's safety for women under 16. Or course, no evidence existed suggesting a unique problem for this age group, and such age-based data have not been required to switch other drugs to over-the-counter availability. The FDA suggested that the maker of Plan B could reapply for over-the-counter status with the proviso that girls 16 and younger would have to get a prescription. But when the company did that, the FDA delayed again. Early this month it said it now had to check the legality of the age rule. As it happens, the "morning after" pill has been strongly opposed by many religiously conservative interest groups. In fact, there's some evidence in the transcript of the hearings to suggest that the rationale cooked up by the FDA may have originally sprung from a controversial advisory committee member — "As Jesus Cared for Women" author W. David Hager — who provided one of the four votes against Plan B's approval. When the agency didn't like the overwhelming opinion of the advisory committees, it seems to have gone shopping for a more convenient scientific-sounding argument: "We need more data." In the end, the scientific data indicate that Plan B contraception is one of the safest drugs ever considered for over-the-counter sale. FDA decisions about drug approvals are supposed to be based on just such scientific data. If you want to derail such a decision, you have to undermine the science. That standard has not been met. The abuses in the Plan B case have fundamentally called the FDA's integrity into question. "People who've been in the agency for decades say they've never seen anything like it," Susan F. Wood, the former assistant FDA commissioner for women's health who resigned over the Plan B decision, told me. The scientists writing in the New England Journal of Medicine agree. Although the FDA may previously have been accused of having too much bureaucracy or too close a rapport with the drug industry, they argue, it had at least "resisted political pressure to reflect a particular social policy or ideology." But not any more — and that's the really nasty thing about the current war on science. If you can get past the complicated details, you'll see that it is undermining our government's most central mission: to serve and protect us. This mandate cannot be fulfilled without an abiding respect for professionalism, expertise and the integrity of scientific analysis.

Since the end of world war one, America's competitiveness and social progress had been largely driven by the advancement and application of high quality basic and theoretical research results (mostly funded by government and, to a lesser extent before 1980, by industry) This is a model that worked well until the rise of Japan in the 1970's as a research and manufacturing giant, mostly through the combined industrial research efforts of its major multinational corporations. During this run of dominance in innovation by the U.S., university admissions were relatively open to anyone who could qualify academically since tuitions were fairly low at high quality state universities. Then in the 1960's and 70's things began to change as state legislatures cut back on budget commitments to higher education to the extent that state funding at the state university that I am most familiar with dropped from about 50% of its total budget to about 20% of its total budget. To make up the slack tuitions began to rapidly escalate, major funding drives were initiated by major universities so that now many state universities have large endowments, and major research universities were encouraged to enter into more research contract arrangements with major multinational corporations for additional support. Larger research universities now also earn significant amounts of income through the licensing of innovation rights to other companies for product and market development. All of these above activities took and continue to take precious administrative attention away from the universities' most valuable activity, to teach things well to smart people, no matter what their economic or social status. While all this was taking place, more and more graduate students, these are the people who are the worker bees of university research, were recruited from foreign nations. After completion of their degrees they went back to their home nations ( if they were not totally corrupted by the good life in America and stayed) to found technology-based companies which are now pushing U.S. companies out of market share right and left. India and China come to mind. Singapore is now THE place to do high quality biotech research. On and On Generous nation that we are, we forgot the basics of what first made us great in this regard. Smart people who could think outside of the box and turn smart ideas into big money world wide. We are now starting to pay in the marketplafce for our governmental underfunding of academic education and research to the extent that we must have a "commission" tell us what the problems are, even though they are well known to some of us who have been around awhile. Our recent policy decisions haven't helped us to get on the road to correcting these problems anytime soon. After 9/11 immigration authorities made it much harder for high quality foreign students to come here and stay here long enough to enhance their educational experiences, and help our engine of innovation at the same time. Concerns by the religious right have seriously limited our ability to pursue new treatments for devastating medical conditions. Led by the Defense Dept. ( which has, believe it or not, traditionally funded the lion's share of new and innovative basic research in the U.S.) the federal government is beginning to significantly reduce its share of dollars used to support "basic" research and instead plans to use this money to support more "applied" research at universities. This all will, in the end, shift our research interests from those which have relatively wide market potentials in the long run, to those which have more limited and narrow market potentials in the short run. Is this a good thing, or are short-sighted profit considerations driving decisions even at this level? Add it all up and what we have here is a group of experts that will tell us some of this information in a wonderful report that none of us will see, and the last fifty years or so of bad choices will be covered up to everybody's continuing detriment. We'll all be able to continue to watch our deficit grow apace while we line up at Wal-mart and Target to buy wonderfully engineered, designed, and manufactured products that were not made in the U.S. because the powers that be thought it was a better idea to give all that away!!!!!! UGH INDEED!!!!!

I've absorbed a lot of information concerning the major, and some minor, religions over the years and, no, I cannot think of any other seer-master-leader that stresses such a heavy emphasis on children in the materials that they presented. There are two perspectives to the issue that are , I believe, equally important. First, if we approach the world as a child, we are at risk and are vulnerable. We automatically open ourselves to exploitation and abuse by those who recognize the postures and attitudes inherent in these behavior patterns. I am not talking about assuming the role of a child, but disciplining oneself to look at the world in innocence as much as possible. Of course as adults this is often impossible to do. But with practice and discipline it can be attained to a degree. When these skills are acquired, then the world begins to show us things that we don't expect and sometimes do not like. But it all has the attribute of enabling us to "live in the moment" and see things around us for what they really are. It all enables us to string together new "patterns" of belief about the world around us. Sometimes this knowledge is unwanted and traumatizing, but one always learns from the process. Second, children are inherently creative. If left alone, or if they are "only" children, they have the ability to create new realities around themselves that cement their meaning and place in the environments around them over time. This is an "inside" - "out" process, and involves the free flow of information and images, back and forth, between their environment and their brain. A sort of dance of creation as it were. And through this "dance" new futures are created moment to moment by them and for them. It is self-sufficiency at a basic level. I know it's not patriotic to say this, but a French educator, Piaget, first noticed the elements of all this quite some time ago when he defined the basics of the learning process to be "freedom, play,and choice". I believe that Jesus was the ultimate futurist and rebel. That is why he was considered to be so dangerous to the "empire" people. But it is clear to me that He knew what the future would need from us for it to be made, and He advised us, accordingly, about 2,000 years ago.

Fred There's something wrong here since we seem to totally agree again on something. Seriously, what you wrote is totally accurate from my perspective. Now to take the next great fearsome leap. There seems to be a sniff of desperation in all this control freak behavior on the part of the two major parties over the past two decades or so. My intuition is that the powers that be know a lot that we do not know about what may happen if they lose the trust of the people (I believe that they're both well on the way to that goal). And further, what will happen if they lose the ability to effectively propagandize and spin their activities so that we continue to invest belief in what they tell us and sell to us about the future that they wish to come true. Electronic illusions can only fool some of the people some of the time. They both want to fool all of the people all of the time ( I know that this is blatant plagarism, but it so perfectly fits the situation). To extend Eisenhower's famous warning to the citizens at the end of his presidency, it appears that there is a military-industrial-entertainment complex linkage of some kind that is dedicated to steer us in certain directions, whether we want to go there or not. Any many of us today intuit that where they're steering us is not likely such a good place. Stability seems to be the only goal they now strive for together, but , while being admirable from an economic perspective, this alone will never create the spiritual will for people to progress into a more just and equitable future together. Indeed, all the numbers show that economic haves and have nots are becoming more separated, safety nets are dissolving, government is becoming less able to respond to public crises in the moment, despite falling major crime rates higher percentages of minorities are in prisons; and, despite the best of intentions, our leaders are too tied up in political considerations to effectively lead when that is required. This is all impossible for peons like us to parse and synthesize because we do not have the necessary information. We see and read and hear about the waves and ripples and occasional storms that result from the interactions of the things that are hidden from us, but, to paraphrase a favorite line of mine from a Jack Nicholson film portrayal, we can't handle the truth. The possible and probable answers are likely lethal and that is why they have been so effectively compartmentalized since world war two. It's only costing us about $40 billion a year or so to keep this stuff in the black zone. A mere pittance when you consider the cost of the war in Iraq and the cost of rebuilding people's lives after "unforseen" natural disasters.

I am getting a bit doddering in my advanced years, my leige(sp?), but I recollect Ralph was having a heck of a time gettiing on the ballot in a lot of places when he left the umbrella of the Greens. My recollection is that he went around to Republicrat bigwigs in various locations promising to soften his stance on this and that in order to meet the outrageous petition requirements designed and erected in most states to prevent election candidacies such as his. I guess I was just dismayed that he was "playing poliics" with them. But then it was unrealistic of me to look askance at what he was doing when it was certainly necessary for him to do it under the circumstances. I listen to progressive newscasts fairly regularly, and that is my recollection. Otherwise I hold the Ralphster in the highest esteem as a commited social advocate and national police dog. Thanks for the comeback.

Des, Whenever I sense that people around me are trying to pull me into their "stuff" I first recall one of Jesus' shortest sayings in The Gospel of Thomas, "Become passers by", and then try to objectify what's going on at a personal level. Banish all subjective judgements if possible. Above all I view and treat the participants with sympathy and compassion, and continue to do my job as expertly as possible without taking emotional notice of what others try to make obvious to enlist my participation. I believe Cynthia's advice is right on the mark in all other respects.

Strangely enough, it all makes sense to me now.

Conservatism and orthodoxy say," look here!" We've got this ten point plan that tells us specifically what you must do to lead a holy and righteous life. Why, we can even put the ten points on courthouse walls or on rocks beside sidewalks leading to our capitols, just to make sure that if you are an important person who must lead and make judgements in the halls of humanity, you are aware of " the rules" by which God judges your actions And further we have this book of books that is the law of God handed down to your ancestors to teach you the "correct" ways to lead your lives. We interpret the books for you in these certain ways, and if you miss the mark and sin, you are excluded from the paths of the righteous. And if you will only crawl on your knees and lash your own back with a cat-of-nine-tails, and then put on this scratchy hair shirt while you are recovering, then you just might have a chance at redemption from your sins. Obviously I exaggerate aspects of certain sects and individuals who seek to unreasonably control the behaviors of others, and to coerce such "sinners" to live their lives only according to traditional standards. But I believe that such systems of thought and behavior lead to meaningless repetition and sprirtual death over time, both on the part of the controllers and the controlled. Believe it or not, it is my opinion that this nation was originally created to forestall just that from happening, ever. I do not begrudge anyone's right to worship God in any way that they see fit to do it, and I don't, as an American citizen, expect to be judged for the ways in which I worship God and the wonders of his/her creation. But, as noted on another thread here, we are all bad and we are ALL sinners and SOME of us EVEN know that about ourselves. We ALL exist in a relativistic universe, world, community, church, home. Everything about us must reflect that fact or we are not in resonance with the creation, and we are not fully participating in what God has made. This is the conundrum, the core of belief, for I firmly believe that if one does not know him/herself and still love themselves after such intense self-reflection, then they are incapable of loving anyone else, including God or Jesus. One might be able to "go through the motions", but such gyrations and rituals will never enable loving and being loved on such an individual and personal level.

I believe you're absolutely dead on Fred. We've needed alternatives for quite some time now. But the good ole' two party system just keeps flim-flamming us all into a future that is mostly based upon fear, intimidation, and loathing; and, that is very short on progress and hope. Before the last election people asked me who I intended to vote for. I explained that I had voted for Perot, Perot, and Nader in the last three elections just because I believed that SOME sort of CHANGE was needed to kick the country in the chest and get it to begin breathing again. But then Ralphie began to sell-out to the right just to get his name on ballots, and I held my nose and voted for Kerry. Any whisper of a third party possibility brings violent and abusive political reaction from both of the parties in power. They go to ANY lengths to make it impossible for folks to get their names on ballots if they are only perceived to be any sort of viable threat to the status quo, locally or nationally. So instead of true democracy where the wishes of even the minorities have some voice, one doesn't have a chance to be heard or noticed unless several gazillionaires are on your wagon. Fred, let's just make you King for life. You're a very smart guy. You're fair and balanced. I'd kiss your ring, and if I had gazillions I'd even finance your rise to power. I'll bet you'd listen to personal petitioners with empathy and fairness, and I'm also sure that you wouldn't resort to cutting babies in half. Benevolent dictatorships work. Isn't fantasy a so very satisfying thing?