This is a good talking points synopsis of what the economic justice movement is about.
Here’s a video of protester Anthony Adams doing a impromptu teach-in:
Thoughts
Archived Posts from this Category
August 16, 2011
Here’s some thoughts about how to improve the experience of life.
(Please add your ideas in comments!)
1. Exploring the joys of simplicity. Less is sometimes more. Less talk, less noise, less hurrying. Fewer possessions. Stepping away from shared resources of space, water, energy.
2. Courageously expressing yourself. The wisdom you’ve gleaned is important and will feel great to share. Release those talents and gifts. Enjoy your body, stand tall, celebrate you.
3. Exploring the new. Pursue novelty, strangeness, and step out into ‘first time experiences.’ Surprise yourself!
4. Seeing yourself in the larger picture. See your life in the context of a huge world history and the legacy you’ll leave behind. Larger views of humanity and history will ease temptations towards victim-mentality and self pity.
5. Being gentle to yourself and to others. We all fail. We all are conflicted, dynamic, paradoxical, and are doing the best we can. Make space for humanity. Allow yourself and others to ‘move at the speed of bodies.’
6. Remain inquiring. Expose yourself to new ideas, keep asking questions. Challenge authority. Inspect biases and uproot prejudices.
7. Accepting responsibility. Apologize, learn, move on.
8. Making choices. Be actional, decide. Put your personal stamp on each day.
9. Getting to the heard of life. Return to life, love, family, trust, creativity, art.
August 5, 2011
Poem: Labyrinthing
Posted by Ryan McGivern under Ideas, poem, Poetry, Religion, ThoughtsLeave a Comment
yesterday I walked into a labyrinth
it was daylight and there weren’t any walls
so I could see where I was going
some Christians (or some pagans they’d contracted)
had painted the serpentine lines in the shadows
of brownstones and stained glass
I stumbled, imbroglio bunions breaking loose
from their meditative lap track
if my concentration was NASCAR I’d have made the highlights
where I was and the ‘was’ where I’d been and the where
I was to be going churned into fairground funnelcake:
adrift and threadless
event horizon/center met
sacred heart and Ground
alchemical chemistry set
the whole and hole
forgotten goal
this too shall pass
all void regret
round and round
the widening gyre
everything alight
in unconsuming fire
and then I went home and slept
April 27, 2011
Poison Ivy Straight Up Don’t Even Make Any Sense
Posted by Ryan McGivern under Comedy, Environment, Science, Thoughts1 Comment
Dude.
Poison Ivy.
What is this plant’s fucking problem man?
Its like this plant takes it personal!
This plant does not play.
I mean, damn!
This plant is cold hearted.
I can understand–like, this plant don’t want you chopping it down…
or pullin’ on its roots and shit–but seriously: this is ridiculous.
Like I can understand if I kicked this plant and got all up in its leaves and just like
got on a lawnmower and made a Chef Salad outta its ass but dude!
I just like walked by it for like a second! On tippy toe.
Like I’m tip toeing by this goddammed plant like its Baby Jesus Hisself straight up whisperin’
“Shhhh! Don’t wake Baby!” I mean, c’mon plant! Damn.
You can’t even abide by me gettin’ within arm’s reach?
Even Venus Fly Traps let a fly chill out for a hot minute up in its sticky ass mouth!
But you all bad and stuff. You all Hot Shit up in this woods huh?
Mister Big Stuff.
I can understand if you just said: “Nuh uh. You gently touched me and now I’m gonna make you pay
for five hours. Make you remember my ass.”
I could at least see where you’re coming from.
But damn! Three and a half weeks of kickin’ my nature-lovin’ ass cuz you Mister Hot Shit Poison Ivy?
This don’t even make evolutionary sense.
I can see like seven thousand years ago you being like: “Okay, no more messin’ with poison ivy, bitches!”
and being like a tenth of the potency and callin’ it a mutha fuckin’ day.
But no.
You just hadda go nuclear on this planet’s ass.
What animal was still gettin’ up in the poison ivy seven thousand years ago that necessitated it to go from “I will make you want to die” to “I will make you want to die for three and a half weeks”?
Sheeit. Evolution don’t work that way nowhere else!
Even sharks stopped with razor sharp teeth!
You don’t see no shark with horns, wings, venom and cannons outta they ass!
C’mon plant!
I mean…Damn.
February 24, 2011
Recruiting Other White Folk As Anti-Racist Allies: Guidlines from Ricky Sherover-Marcuse
Posted by Ryan McGivern under Justice, Love, Racism, ThoughtsLeave a Comment
Erica “Ricky” Sherover-Marcuse (1938-88) was a powerful activist for labor rights, feminism, and is perhaps most well known for her work in racial justice work. Sherover-Marcuse created and facilitated workshops and curricula called “Unlearning Racism” and was a brilliant Doctor of Philosophy whose lifework centered around the structures of social oppressions. Sherover-Marcuse wrote a greatly helpful piece called “Working Assumptions for White Activists on Eliminating Racism: Guidelines for Recruiting Other Whites as Allies” and I share it with you below:
- Assume that all human beings desire warm, close relationships with each other. This is also true of you and of all other white people.
- Assume that you are a regular white person (not an exceptional white person) and that all whites are good people, caring, intelligent, compassionate, and hard-working.
- Recognize that we have much to celebrate about our histories and our diversities; we have rich traditions of music and dance, and proud histories of struggle.
- Assume that all white people have undergone some variety of systematic conditioning or ‘training’ to take on the ‘oppressor role’ in relation to people of color. Sometimes this training has been to participate in acts of violence, or to join in racial slurs or jokes; sometimes this training has been to keep silent in the face of injustice. Sometimes this training has been to be ‘extra nice’ towards people of color …
- Assume that no human being would have ever agreed to take on any aspect of an oppressor role if they had not first been mistreated or oppressed themselves- originally as young people, and in a variety of other ways.
- Assume that no white person ever chose to acquire any of the conditioning or training and that every one of us attempted to resist taking on any aspect of the oppressor role.
- Assume that the history of our own acts of resistance has been obscured and hidden from us and that many of us feel no pride in our own heritages and traditions.
- Recognize that most whites in the United States and Canada have a history of immigrant oppression in which their own ethnic group has been the target of mistreatment at the hands of other white ethnic groups who were in a position of relative social power.
- Recognize that all people need the acknowledgement that their liberation issues are legitimate.
- Assume that in spite of the material rewards and preferential treatment that our society gives to white people, these ‘advantages’ do not offset the real costs of racism to us as human beings.
- Assume that the conditioning which white people have undergone has been hurtful to us as human beings: it has betrayed our sense of ourselves, robbed us of close and trusting relationships with our families, given us a false picture of reality, isolated us from the majority of the world’s peoples, blunted our imagination, limited our vision, enforced a sense of powerlessness, hampered our ability to love.
- Assume that at some level, all white people know this. Accordingly the task of the white activist is not to persuade or convince other whites of this truth, but to make their own buried awareness accessible to them.
- Assume that the elimination of racism is in the real self-interest of all people.
- Assume that all white people are eager to join in the project of eliminating racism and that appearances to the contrary are the result of feelings of despair and powerlessness caused by the individual’s own experiences of oppression and mistreatment.
- Recognize how the temptation to classify other whites into ‘good whites’ and ‘bad whites’ is often a mechanism for perpetuating other forms of oppression such as classism and regional oppression.
- Recognize that engaging in anti-racist activity commits us to the building of real connections with all people and functioning as allies for them.
- Assume that white people (like all other human beings) will change their minds and let go of deeply ingrained attitudes and behavior patterns when1) they feel acknowledged and appreciated as individuals;
2) they are listened to with complete respect on their own grievances and liberation concerns;
3) they trust the person presenting the new perspective;
4) the new perspective makes sense to them;
5) they are not blamed for their prior conditioning or behavior.
- Recognize that recruiting other whites to join us is also an opportunity to learn from them, and that they have much to teach us.
Read More of Ricky Sherover-Marcuse’s Writings Here:
http://unlearningracism.org/writings.htm
February 23, 2011
Is Cinema A Zombie or Vampire?
Posted by Ryan McGivern under Ideas, movies, Pop Culture, ThoughtsLeave a Comment
As I was watching the ‘Twilight’ trilogy recently in a back-to-back marathon, I was struck by something
Ella said about vampires never aging…always appearing the same…
And it came to me that the actress Kristen Stewart could be describing herself on film.
Stewart’s Bella Swan is immortal. She will not age or change.
So I was wondering what ageless or death defying monster might best summarize the medium of cinema.
Is it ‘zombie’…? No, I think video games are zombie. Eating our brains, turning us onto their agenda of complete focus….
Or is cinema in fact vampire?…Alluring, sexy, enticing, beautiful. Staying in the ‘dark places’ of theatres?
Well, this post’s title may be a red herring because I think cinema is Frankenstein.
Cut and pasted, derived from past ideas and ‘bodies’ of work, cinema comes alive and can become the target of the mob’s projected fears.
More on the ‘cut and paste’ hodgepodge film medium at this great site:
www.EverythingIsARemix.info
October 20, 2010
Villians As Forces of Nature: Twilight, Predators, and Bears Oh My!
Posted by Ryan McGivern under Animals, movies, ThoughtsLeave a Comment
In the Halloween spirit, I recently watched Predators and Twilight.
And I got to thinking about villians.
To me, a true villian is one who operates in a different but consistent moral frame than the mainstream.
A good villian is as three dimensional of an antagonist as the story’s protagonist.
To me, an important part of a good villian in film is their choices, yes–and also how they come to those choices.
In Predators and Twilight, we get ‘villians’ who I would suggest operate more as “forces of nature”.
And forces of nature are interesting, and their stories are important, but I got to wondering:
which is more scary? a force of nature or a villian? or are they just ‘different types of scary’?
Let me explain how I see forces of nature by citing some examples: Aliens, Jaws, Moby Dick, Zombies, Terminator, some Vampires.
So to Twilight. It is a horrible film. Why can’t anyone make eye contact? Why is the camera swinging around people in some vain effort of ‘gravitas’? It is a mumbling dreary Chilean mineshaft where unlike reality, no viewer comes out alive. Anywho…
We’re set up to believe that Bella is like the prime rib of humanity. She “smells good” to the point of being some panty sniffer’s Golden Calf. And that’s all we really know about Bella in the film other than she mopes, shakes her head and shoulders to convey every emotion, and has only her dim wits in a drearily witted school and ‘new kid on the block’ cred to keep her socially afloat. (I digress)
But James the Big Bad in the film is primarily attracted to her scent. It is only by the tacked on motivation of “upsetting Edward” (a fellow James presumably just met) that James is going to enjoy mowing down on some tasty Bella vittles.
He is a force of nature. He is a vampire, he wants blood, he wants the tastiest blood around.
Do bears poop in the woods and ride tricycles at whip cracks? Naturally.
Predators is a movie again where the Big Bads are just an alien species who likes to hunt.
You can almost imagine them thinking, “Sorry, ol’ chap. But I just got to admire your skull upon a stake.”
Predators are to skulls as Ash Ketchum is to Pokemon.
Are these folks no different than Jaws? Just folks out doing what they do…and it just so happens that what they do is munch on you. Does that make them more scary, less scary, or just different scary?
And what is the characteristic that is missing from a ‘force of nature’ antagonist? Maybe that they cannot be reasoned with. By that measure, was Jack in The Shining a force of nature?
NPR carried a story recently about cinema’s function of creating and reflecting our fears:
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=130437185
October 6, 2010
Twilight Of U.S. Car Culture
Posted by Ryan McGivern under Future, Politics, Technology, Thoughts, Travel1 Comment
Many of us who live in U.S. urban and suburban environments are now witnessing the twilight of the U.S. Car Culture.
This current car culture I characterize by:
a) privately owned vehicles
b) which get less than 100 miles per gallon of gas
c) are the primary transportation for a individual or family
d) are not ‘smart linked’ to an organizing network enabling hands free driving
e) weigh an average of more than 1,800 pounds
In the interests of the health of our world, our local communities, our families, and ourselves it is a very good thing that all five of these current features of
our U.S. car culture will be going extinct for many areas.
This post will gather information of why we all have cause to celebrate the end of the old way of U.S. car culture and encourage you to quicken the pace of the change through your own political voice and action. Web sources will be available below as well as book citation.
THE OLD WAY OF DOING CARS IS HORRIBLY EXPENSIVE AND ISN’T WORTH IT
In 2004 the average household spent 17% of their income on car ownership and operating costs per year.
In 1996, car loans represented one third of all consumer debt (Alvord 102).
Because of depreciation, a new car costs you almost 15 dollars a day whether it is used or not (Alvord 102).
In 2000, repairs and maintenence averaged around 750 dollars a year per car (Alvord 102).
BUT THERE’S MORE HIDDEN COSTS!
Parking lots and garages, tolls, parking tickets, speeding tickets, ‘upgrades/bells and whistles’.
Taxes subsidize road and driver infrastructure.
“Researcher Douglass Lee calculates that U.S. taxpayers contribute over $41 billion a year to cover the road costs that drivers don’t (Alvord 105).”
“Friends of the Earth estimates that oil production, health and property damage, and related clean-up costs the U.S. about $10 billion yearly (Alvord 107).”
“Congestion costs may total as much as $168 billion a year in the U.S. (Alvord 107).”
“American motorists pay $52 billion a year in extra vehicle repairs and operating costs, and $230 billion a year for medical costs, lost productivity, travel delay, workplace costs, insurance costs, and legal costs stemming from motor vehicle accidents.”
http://cpr.ca.gov/CPR_Report/Issues_and_Recommendations/Chapter_4_Infrastructure/INF20.html
Commuting a total of 1.25 hours a day will cost you about 28,ooo dollars a year in opportunity cost (time missed from actually working).
http://steve-olson.com/the-high-cost-of-commuting-to-work/
OUR CURRENT CAR CULTURE COSTS TOO MUCH IN HUMAN SUFFERING AND DEATH
| Killed in car accidents | 42,116* |
| Killed by the common flu | 20,000* |
| Killed by murders | 15,517* |
| Killed in airline crashes (of 477m passenger trips) |
120 (1) |
| Killed by lightning strikes | 90* |
| (1) Annual average over 19 year period. *Average annual totals in United States.  |
|
http://www.unitedjustice.com/death-statistics.html
Researchers found that artery wall thickening among people living within 100 meters (328 feet) of a Los Angeles highway progressed twice as quickly as those who lived farther away.
http://www.futurepundit.com/archives/006946.html
“…minute sooty particles, emitted largely from the burning of diesel and other fuels and inhaled deeply into the lungs, shortens lives by seven to eight months. In pollution hotspots like areas of central London and other cities, the particles could be cutting vulnerable people’s lives short by as much as nine years.”
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2010/mar/22/air-pollution-deaths
How will you speed the transition to better transportation and standard of living?
Alvord, Katie. “Divorce Your Car: Ending The Love Affair With The Automobile” (Gabriola Island: New Society Publishers. 2000)
September 10, 2010
Between the Rock of Ages and a Hard Place
Posted by Ryan McGivern under Christianity, Religion, Thoughts1 Comment
Expressing why I’m an atheist is easy–I just have to be careful to whom I’m expressing it.
Some in the U.S. have noted a transition from the New Atheism movement to a burgeoning New Agnostism movement. Is atheism dead? Have the projects of the notorious Four Horsemen (Dawkins, Dennett, Harris, Hitchens) been to no avail?
Well, yes and no. I think that the first fervor over their statements have died down and folks have had more time to look at their arguments and have found that they all are less rigidly atheistic as one may imagine and of course could be called agnostics.
I suggest anyone who hasn’t yet, watch The Four Horsemen at YouTube here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9DKhc1pcDFM
I do agree that the New Atheism movement at times and many atheists in general are occasionally inarticulate and
shall we say a bit tone deaf to the audience they may be trying to ‘reach’.
With that being said, I must also say that I’ve found two articles of late (one from 2009, one from 2010) that paint a picture of nontheistic folks being caught between a rock and a hard place.
The first of the two articles comes from Charlotte Allen, author of “The Human Christ: The Search for the Historical Jesus”. Her article No God, No Reason, Just Whining targets the the Four Horsemen and a smattering of the worst of internet atheist trolls and extremist anti-religion wackos. Allen beings her article saying “I can’t stand atheists…” and I’m sorry that she has not met a caring, sensitive, and patient atheist yet at the time of her writing the piece. It doesn’t give one much hope for a fair trial with an article beginning in such a way and I would hazard that she would not desire to read an article (internet troll penned or not) beginning with “I can’t stand theists.”
The reasons she gives for calling out the Horsemen and her assorted wackos are:
“Atheist victimology” She mocks Sam Harris’ assertion that in the U.S. an individual who would wish to run for office would be quickly dismissed if it were to come out that they were atheist. She writes, seeming to miss the point, that nothing would prevent an atheist from succeeding in public office for there are only “Antique clauses in the constitutions of six…states barring atheists from office…The U.S. Supreme Court ruled such provisions unenforceable nearly 50 years ago.”
I respectfully offer, Ms. Allen, that Harris was not saying that there were laws against atheists running for office. Maybe he was thinking of the 2007 Gallup Poll (which presumably you would have been able to find as easily as I did) that ranked voters’ likelyhood of voting for marginalized identities. The list went as such, from most likely to vote for to least likely to vote for:
Catholic, Black, Jewish, A Woman, Hispanic, Mormon, Married for the Third Time, 72 Years of Age, A Homosexual, An Atheist.
Since we now have Congressman Keith Ellison of Minnesota’s Fifth District who is a Muslim, maybe folks’ attitudes are changing. Who knows? Maybe we’ll have a President sworn in on a copy of H.L. Mencken in 2012.
Calling Theists Stupid: Allen writes “Maybe atheists wouldn’t be so unpopular if they stopped…[talking about]…their second favorite topic: How stupid people are who believe in God.” Well, she’s got us atheists there. It is unfortunately true that for some reason many atheists do fall back to the seemingly safe intellectual high ground that boils down to: ’if you think there is a god you must be f*ing idiotic.’
I’ve been in the chat rooms, I know it happens. I hope it happens no longer. Some of the smartest people I know have been people of faith. ‘Tis true. Folks who knew a lot about history, politics, science, literature, their theology and the theologies of many other faiths. I have met fire-and-brimstone, Young Earth, demons-around-us folk who were as savvy and well read as anyone. Let’s put away the intellectual snobbery. Allen cites Dennett’s referring to atheists as “Brights” as one iteration of the ‘we are smart, you are not’ theme. However, the Bright movement was kicked off and coined by Paul Geisert and it was later that Dawkins and then Dennett used the term for the already established identity which includes humanists, liberal theists, agnostics. Geisert’s choosing Bright was not intended in its “intelligent” meaning but as uplifting, positive, and warm. It was however, perhaps a bad branding because of this misperception.
Atheists hone in on easy targets that are Red Herrings. Allen is astute to point out how all too often atheists pick evolution as being the deal-breaker for the a/theism debate. Allen reminds us that there are many theists who accept and teach Darwinian evolution. Whenever I see a “Darwin Evolved Jesus Fish” bumper sticker on a car I dread to think that whomever placed it there think that Darwin is the slam-dunk finish on the JesusDebateBall Championship.
The same can be said for the portrayals of the Christian God that get tossed around by Dawkins and others along the same argumentative vein. Allen calls them out on this and I’m glad she does. If atheists want to pat themselves on the shoulder for denouncing a “god who would tell people to smash babies on rocks and tell people to commit genocide” they have congratulated themselves on achieving something that many people of faith have already done over hundreds of years and by much more tempered and nuanced means. Plenty of theists have a contextual view of scripture and do not hold the “dictation theory” that the Bible is the Gospel Truth as it were. They know that at the time of the Bible’s writing, or the Bhagavad Gita, or the Quran, or The Book of the Five Rings, or the Book of Mormon, societies were vastly different and visions of God to those folk need not represent the views of today’s folk. Faith is a living (evolving) tradition, atheists.
I suggest that every atheist who wants to engage in the conversation with theists read up on Liberation Theology, Queer Theology, Feminist Theology, Atheistic Christianty, etc. Get in the know of what is going on in contemporary thought. Don’t just have an outline sketch of a hyperbolic fundamentalist Christian faith that is based on the 700 Club.
So there are pitfalls that we atheists fall into. We are fallible. Have mercy on us.
But one way that I wouldn’t have guessed failing is by being gracious and welcoming to spirituality.
It seems we may be treading the path between the Scylla of assholery and the Charybdis of kindness–which you’d
think would be a n0-brainer, but…
In a recent article titled It’s Not God Who Needs Saving–It’s Us written for British culture and politics website Standpoint.co.uk, John Cottingham reviews and reacts to two atheists Andre Comte-Sponville and Mark Johnston.
Johnston has recently written Saving God and Comte-Sponville his “The Little Book of Atheist Spirituality”. Cunningham writes, “Johnston constantly helps himself to terms like “holy”, “grace” and “gift”, to which, as a naturalist, he is not properly entitled.” Whoa. What? Mind you, Cunningham is not saying ‘naturalist’ as in ‘the profession of a naturalist’. He’s meaning it as ‘materialist’, or ’atheist’. Are atheists not allowed to use words like grace and gift? Are we exempt from commenting on, enjoying, adding to, or celebrating the theologies of theists?
Again, of Comte-Sponville he writes: “Again like Johnston, Comte-Sponville frequently helps himself to a vocabulary to which as a naturalist he is no longer entitled — in this case, notions like “absolute”, “sacred”, “unconditionally imposes itself”, etc.”
Now, I must admit that I have not read either Mark Johnston or Andre Comte-Sponville yet. But I am puzzled by Cunningham’s arguments against them. He goes at lengths to belittle and dismiss their forays into the theological realm though from the excerpts he quotes they seem to be nodding to mystical, universalist, contemporary theologies.
I personally have tried as an atheist to remain engaged in the conversation with people of faith in their own terms. I love talking about Bible, faith, prayer, Pentecostalism, etc. I am happy conversing without ever divulging that I myself am an atheist. I feel there are so many good things that we all can see eye to eye on, why would I need to interject a point of divergence? I feel very comfortable using words like “holy”, “righteous”, “sacrifice”, “kenosis”, ”incarnation”, “shalom” all without feeling that I’m being untrue to my nontheistic worldview.
Funny, I wish I could chat with Charlotte Allen because I am an atheist who likes people of faith and on the flipside
I probably could not chat with John Cunningham because of the same reason.
Allen, Charlotte. “No God, No Reason, Just Whining” Latimes.com http://articles.latimes.com/2009/may/17/opinion/oe-allen17 May 17, 2009
Cunningham, John. “It’s Not God Who Needs Saving–It’s Us” Standpoint.co.uk http://www.standpointmag.co.uk/node/3301/full
September 2010.
May 20, 2010
I Got The Need…The Need For Poetry
Posted by Ryan McGivern under Comedy, Poetry, Pop Culture, ThoughtsLeave a Comment
I asked my dad: should I be a poet or an air force pilot?
Be a respected, fawned over, hero to children
or a troubled and troubling egomaniac?
“Mehhh. You do whatever you think you need to do.”
My dad was always a hands-0ff kind of parent.
A man of few words and less attention, he held to the adage
“don’t speak unless spoken to” for both of us.
Uncomfortable silence is like the smell of baking cookies to me now.
I ride office-tower elevators just for the homey feeling.
Nevertheless my dad thought himself a wordsmith and a modern Mark Twain.
I always told him ‘cheating in a race between yourself and a frog and writing a story about a person who cheats in a frog race are two different things.’
A short list of his ‘folksy wisdom’ might go like this–
‘chance favors the mind prepared enough to have rigged the game’
‘better never than late if it means less paperwork’
‘you can’t uncrack an egg but with the right tools you can unbirth a llama’
‘judging a book by its cover if you’re illiterate shows initiative’
‘never bring a knife to a gunfight, always bring a gun to a knife fight, and always bring a well armed chimp to a monkey knife fight’
‘your largest sex organ is your brain and if not congratulations’
‘let the Wookie win’
Because I get airsick easily and look horrible in jumpsuits
(both traits I get from my father)
I took to the path to become penniless, reviled, and
with any luck posthumously forgotten.
I entertained the idea that one can love loud enough to drown out a small town’s whispers
I spent summers where my biggest problem was evening moths in my red wine and how to drink around them
I found a sonnet in the sight of Kotex in a wastebasket
Insert into your mind “Danger Zone” here
I lost lines between the bottle and the page
I memorialized the sudden silence on linoleum that grew in a kitchette
I passed by others’ definitions of success like some drive upstate two-lane blacktop to watch trees’ leaves die
Put ”Take My Breath Away” in your mental tapedeck
Some might say poetry is as dumb as Tom Cruise playing sand volleyball in tight blue jeans
And I’d say ‘O! To be those blue jeans!’
