Insights Without Borders

Pre-Existing Conditions? Whose Pray Tell?

by Mark A. Rogers on 5 January, 2010

in BioPsychoSocial Mental Health, BioPsychosocial Health

DEA rips NYC-funded handbook on heroin

‘Step-by-step instruction on how to inject a poison,’ drug agent says

NEW YORK – A New York City-funded guidebook for heroin users offers information on how to prepare drugs carefully and care for veins to avoid infection.

However, the state’s top official with the Drug Enforcement Administration said the “Take Charge Take Care” guide was disturbing.

DEA special agent-in-charge John Gilbride said the handout was a “step-by-step instruction on how to inject a poison.”

The city’s Department of Health and Mental Hygiene printed about 70,000 copies and a top official says the goal is to promote health and save lives.

More information on this story is found at http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/34706732/ns/us_news-life/?GT1=43001

The front cover of the heroin user's guide book, "Take Charge Take Care," published by the New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene. (CBS)

Given my training and experience, I have seen many innovative and utilitarian approaches to promote health and save lives, especially in mental hygiene. But when I read this story I must confess I just could not get my mind fully around the magnitude of issues and challenges this guidebook offers heroin users for preparing drugs carefully and of course their veins so they can avoid infection. At a foundational level, this whole matter gives me great pause and is in milder terms unsettling, and then in a radical sense surreal.

My hope is that those of you who read this post will follow the link back to this article and reflect for yourself on this topic. This whole topic and what it addresses, the methodology and intervention it promotes both informatively and instructively raises so many concerns and questions for me. Common sense seems not to have prevailed from a practical and practitioner clinical and forensic vantage point on so many fronts and so many levels here.

How does a mayor such as Bloomberg rationalize his math here when on one front he wants guns banned because people may at a minimum get hurt and maximally become fatalities while on the other hand indirectly promotes (assists) in the drug trade of heroin and maybe even reluctantly in a veiled sense accepts “learned helplessness” with shutting down the drug trade of heroin and rehabilitation of consumers consumption of this insidious drug?

Is this city like I hear often from my colleagues in Chicago and even in the affluent suburbs surrounding it tired of picking up people of all ages and socioeconomic stratum who are (a) addicts, or worse yet (b) dead people in all kinds of habitats? I frickin’ hope so! When I was working with this milieu I sure the hell was!

How is the utilitarianism of this intervention (without all the “junk science” of political dogmatism and biopsychosocial medical and mental hygiene) illustrative of excellent clinical and forensic critical thinking skills regarding rehabilitating or ideally promoting in a preventative front complete abstinence from such a drug? Of course I know the lingo “teaching those who already use the drug how to use the drug saves lives and does not promote or teach gateway vulnerables or the untapped constituency of lost souls that this “human factors” resource is their “handler” for “handling it” when consuming this narcotic cocktail. This whole technical-craft versus street-craft thingy like so many other ones begs me asking this simple question: “Are you all on frickin’ drugs!!??

Is this intervention, I wonder, the great Harry Houdini (1874 – 1926) reincarnated again as an escape artist and not a a psychic who is supposed to influence all facets of magic in America and become celebrated as the world’s greatest escape artist? I worry too that this intervention somehow seems to be rising from humble beginnings in hopes of becoming a renowned magician and illusionist. And this all begs me (again in my signatory fashion) to ask the question: For Whom? For whom may this serve?

If we pretend this heroin thingy isn’t a problem then will this intervention help make it seem even more obvious it isn’t or even ceases to be (for holdout doubters) a problem?

But I hear you naysayers out there saying to me I’m jaded, worse yet become cynical, even given myself up to “compassion fatigue.” In my courser bouts of fending of the voices of my “multiples” and muting their primary drive retorts, “compassion, my ass!” and their street-craft logic: “where’s the compassion when some junkie mugs our law abiding lambs in our flocks to score? or “where’s the compassion when our innocent babies are born addicted because of their junkie mothers who have their New York City guidebook,”Take Charge, Take Care” again begs me asking the question: Why not contact Welcome to IdiotGuides.com to market this “human factors” addition with a glitzy marketing title such as “The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Heroin”?

So I suppose I can see the upside of this intervention as I work my way through the cognitive maze of this logic, right? This is a great idea to give them a 16-page guide informatively and instructively on how to shoot up, right? Of course this guide is multiculturally and a gender-based approach which are “politically correct,” right? And of course this guide is multiethnically and ethnographically sensitive to readability issues such as language and syntax with regard to readers, right?

Well then. I can just see it now. They can use this guide to keep them warm while they lay in a comma for a while on the frozen sidewalks, frozen ground in their sleeping bags and cardboard shanties under the el tracks, in sitting positions in the seats on the subways, the cold floors in drug houses, over air vents, on church steps or in Penn Station, or even in Central Park’s Ramble’s section, right?

As I said a coupla minutes ago, this whole technical-craft versus street-craft thingy like so many other ones begs me asking this simple question: “Are you all on frickin’ drugs!!??

Tagged as: Bloomberg, DEA, handbook, heroin, NYC

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Tomorrow’s War

by Mark A. Rogers on 5 January, 2010

in Ethnopolitical Warfare

Yemen Says Offensive Launched Against al-Qaida

U.S. Embassy in San’a reopens after deadly raid deals with imminent threat

U.S. Senator Joe Lieberman, who visited Yemen in August, said an American working in Yemen told him that “Iraq was yesterday’s war. Afghanistan is today’s war and if we do not act pre-emptively now, Yemen will be tomorrow’s war.” Lieberman was speaking on a visit to Baghdad.

For more on these developments go to http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/34700332/ns/world_news-mideastn_africa/

As I said in a previous post on this blog site: . . .as Grossman assures us, “Still the sheepdog disturbs the sheep. He is a constant reminder that there are wolves in the land.”

Čuda to Yemen for launching a major offensive against al-Qaida, which encouraged the U.S. embassy in San’a to reopen on Tuesday after Yemeni security forces staged a raid just outside the city.

Tagged as: al-Qaida, deadly raid, imminent threat, launched, offensive, tomorrow's war, yemen

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The Plot Thickens

by Mark A. Rogers on 4 January, 2010

in Breaking News

Jordanian Double-Agent Killed CIA Officers

Officials: Perpetrator of Afghan attack was supposed to infiltrate al-Qaida
By Robert Windrem and Richard Engel, NBC News
http://bit.ly/7z8KDG

Being trained in both clinical and forensic psychology, I know the complexity and skill sets called on when practitioners of “all flavors” suit up to take on and mitigate violence risk and threat assessment.

The ongoing investigation of the attack on the CIA and its “silent heroes, mighty patriots” remonstrates my preceding insights. I would like to remind all of us, and especially those who want to pass judgment inside and outside the intelligence community, after action review (Monday morning quarterbacking) is nothing like experiencing “in the moment” being in the pocket and intuitive dynamic decision making “as the pagan felons rapidly advance.”

Tagged as: al-Qaida, CIA officers, double-agent, infiltrate, perpetrator. Afghan attack

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Jordan Emerges as Key CIA Counterterrorism Ally

by Mark A. Rogers on 4 January, 2010

in Terrorism/Counterterrorism

For readers following the recent attack on CIA and its loss of employees comes another important development highlighting a partnership U.S. officials described as crucial to their counterterrorism strategy. My gratitude and respect goes out to Jordan who is playing, as Joby Warick, Washington Post Staff Writer reports, “an increasingly vital role in the fight against al-Qaeda and other terrorist groups, sometimes in countries far beyond the Middle East, according to current and former government officials from both countries.”

I encourage you all to follow this link http://bit.ly/6gQFN7 to appreciate the support other country’s pro-U.S. policy in the war against terrorism is having on countering terrorism and what I contend is helping to migrate away from “Trust your neighbors but brand your stock.”

“If al-Qaeda targets America, it also targets our stability and the peace of this region,” a Jordanian intelligence said in a recent interview. “Based on this stance, we have had many successes countering terrorism.”

Tagged as: ally, CIA, counterterrorism, Jordan, pro-U.S. policy, recent attack, terrorism, war

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Muslim-Hindu Punk Rock Bands Part of New Movement

by Mark A. Rogers on 3 January, 2010

in Insights Without Borders

Russell Contreras, Associated Press Writer, (http://alturl.com/ck56) focuses on a punk rock revolutionary movement that may be using music I think to grow an anti-establishment subculture to contend with “Trust your Neighbors But Brand Your Stock.”

Contreras contends that this anti-establishment subculture is “borne of religiously conservative communities.” Is flower power, originating in Berkley California, re-emerging from the basement of a middle class home “deep in the woods” of the colonial town Wayland, Massachusetts?

Could it be these artists, similarly to Ginsberg’s essay in November 1965, How To Make a March/Spectacle, are advocating protesters be provided with “masses of flowers” to turn anti-war rallies into another form of “street theater,” which can reduce fear, anger and threat that we have seen inherent within protests and terrorism? I hope so because I am not sure how the hafiz with their madrasah are winning the hearts and minds with explosive vests and suicide bombers?

Contreras reports these artists want to “reconcile issues such as life in America, women’s rights and homosexuality with Islam and old East vs. West cultural clashes.”

“This is one way to deal with my identity as an Arab-American,” said Marwan Kamel, the 24-year-old lead guitarist in Chicago-based Al-Thawra. “With this music, I can express this confusion.”

This all sounds like insights without borders to me. . .

Tagged as: flower power, Muslim-Hindu, new movement, punk rock

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Silent Heroes, Mighty Patriots

by Mark A. Rogers on 31 December, 2009

in Breaking News

My thoughts, prayers and deepest gratitude go out to the 7 CIA employees killed and 6 others wounded Wednesday in a terrorist attack on an agency base in Afghanistan. Left behind are the families: spouses, children and extended family members who must mourn, eventually heal in some fashion, and find the courage to go on without these “silent heroes, mighty patriots.” The base chief, who I wish I could have had the privilege to have met and then been a better person for it, was a mother of three who was among those killed in the attack. You always will hold a hallowed place in my heart of hearts for as long as I walk my destiny on this planet.

CIA director Leon Panetta said those killed “were far from home and close to the enemy, doing the hard work that must be done to protect our country from terrorism.” In physical proximity this may be true. But in metaphysical, emotional, and spiritual terms, I know you will always have a home in my heart that I want these silent heroes, mighty patriots to know will always be as close as they need 24-7 no matter how far off they may be doing the hard work that must be done to protect our country. And know there will always be a candle lit in the window of my heart waiting for you to come home to and walk through the door of my house. I know and feel I owe so much to you all who have died and those remaining silent heroes, mighty patriots in the CIA who Panetta reminds us we owe “our deepest gratitude, and we pledge to them and their families that we will never cease fighting for the cause to which they dedicated their lives — a safer America.”

I am so tired of this theater of “politically correct,” where our sheep want what they have to remain untouched and unchanged, live in denial and do not want to believe there is evil in the world regardless of the wolves who feed without mercy on these sheep in such a fashion as “Trust your neighbors, but brand your stock.” As Lt. Col. Dave Grossman reminds us, “The sheep generally do not like the sheepdog. He looks a lot like the wolf. He has fangs and the capacity for violence. The difference, though, is that the sheepdog must not, cannot and will not ever harm the sheep. Any sheepdog who intentionally harms the lowliest little lamb will be punished and removed. The world cannot work any other way, at least not in a representative democracy or a republic such as ours.”

http://www.pbs.org/newshour

And it is this “theology and sacred law” I direct toward the Mullahs, you hafiz who purport you have memorized the Qur’an, the Taliban and Al-Qaeda, I am putting on notice. The uneducated villagers who often recognize you as literate Muslim with less than complete Islamic training as their “mullah” or some type of religious cleric who as hafiz think similarly as Shakespeare once reminded us, “All the world’s a stage, And all the men and women merely players: They have their exits and their entrances. . .” This is my notice to you all: All the world’s stage and it’s peoples, including your men and women may be merely sheep in your madrasah. But as Grossman assures us, “Still the sheepdog disturbs the sheep. He is a constant reminder that there are wolves in the land.”

As another sheepdog, I believe as Joel Kotkin argues, not on the threat of an increased emphasis on religion and ethnic culture offering the prospect of a humanity breaking itself into narrow, exclusive and often hostile groups. But rather, I bring another kind of tribalism of sheepdogs, similarly as Kotkin contends, beyond you hafiz and your madrasah that is “forged by globally dispersed ethnic groups.” These global tribes combine a strong sense of common origins and shared values. These tribes Kotkin contends “do not surrender their sense of a peculiar ethnic identity at the altar” of your madrasah, “or technology or science but utilize their historically conditioned values and beliefs to cope successfully with change.”

I leave you now with this warning in putting you on notice similarly as Wilmshurst once reminded us regarding “the temple of human nature remains unfinished:”

. . .The light and wisdom to guide and enlighten humanity are wanting in us. The full blaze of light and perfect knowledge that were to be ours are vanished from the race, but in the Divine Providence there still remains to us a glimmering light in the East. In a dark world, from which the sun has disappeared, we still have our five senses and our rationale faculties to work with, and these provide us with substituted secrets that must distinguish us before we regain the genuine ones.”

This brazen attack a U.S. counterterrorism official told NBC News will be avenged. Like these silent heroes, mighty patriots, sheepdogs in their own right; I put you hafiz, the Taliban and Al-Qaeda on notice. I too will avenge the deaths of these CIA employees with a system of religious philosophy that provides as Wilmshurst contends, “a doctrine of the universe and our place in it” by which we may as Jeffers argues, “understand that mankind has fallen away from a “high and holy” center. Those who desire it must look within themselves.”

In my mind these fallen CIA employees are “The regenerated man, the man who not merely in ceremonial form but in vital experience, has passed through the phases of which Masonic degrees are the faint symbol,” as Jeffers quotes of Wilmshurst, which “is alone worthy of the title Master-Mason in the building of the Temple that is not made with hands but is being built invisibly out of the souls of just men made perfect.”

On this Eve of the New Year, let me toast these fallen silent heroes, mighty patriots, and those remaining silent heroes, mighty patriots in the CIA, “What goes on around you,” as Ralph Waldo Emerson reminds us,
“. . .compares little with what goes on inside you.” These fallen (in my mind and heart) silent heroes, mighty patriots represent as Barbara Frale informs us of the Templar knight, “the perfect achievement of that ideal combination of physical force and inner strength so exalted in the twelfth-century epic poem The Song of Roland, which celebrated Roland and Oliver, brothers in arms and heroes of a great battle against the Saracen enemy:”

Roland is strong and Oliver is wise
Both are extraordinarily brave:
Once they are both on their horses in arms,
Not even at the cost of death will they flee from battle
Valorous are the counts and elevated their words
As the pagan felons rapidly advance

Tagged as: agency base, CIA, employees, killed, Leon Panetta, mighty patriots, silent heroes, terrorist attack

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The Celebrity Year In Review

by Mark A. Rogers on 22 December, 2009

in Our Universe of Discourse

While most of the dumbed down journalists (can you spell or cogently define critical thinking skills??!!) who ACTUALLY go to school and then graduate with a supposed (I guess) creditable degree from departments of journalism, who then go on to form a “set scrum” or “loose scrum” for their newsholics and gossipholics constituencies—The Celebrity Year In Review consisted of Best Star Quotes, Hottest Beach Bods and Tales of Celeb Excess. Go figure!

No wonder as I am fond of retorting to my friends and colleagues: “Now I know why we have this big kick-me neon sign broadcasting throughout the universe as a reminder why so many other intelligent life forms out there autocratically let their wandering infidels who just got their intergalactic driver’s license know that if they EVEN come near our airspace they will be soooo grounded that this limit setting is yet to be certainly in my generation (and likely for the next several ones it appears) to find it’s way into our psyche of time-space continuum.

PLEASE!!

The best we have to summarize this year is The Celebrity Year In Review? Thousands have lost their jobs. And more is still to come. Currently news scrums are reporting 25 states are $40 billion in debt to the Federal government for unemployment insurance benefit payments. Furthermore, these news jockeys are informing their readership that it’s estimated 40 states will be underwater to the extent of $90 billion after two more years pass. Oh. . . let’s not forget, the de jure and de facto on the collective American psyche this Holiday Season is Senate votes nudge health care bill forward.

And of course the current elevated risk of newsworthy reporting on the terrorism front appears to be the breaking development regarding police concerns about a terrorist attack originating from the 2003 arrest of Michael Jackson, which news reports contend led to the request for federal help, yes that’s RIGHT, federal help according to FBI files that were kept on this late pop star. Can you frickin’ believe this?

News outlets report the Santa Maria Police Department in Cal-iforn-i-a (e.g., where news print is produced in the form of comic strips and job aides reside alongside railroad crossings to cut down on the mortality rates of the can’t be bothered beautifully stupid) asked for FBI “involvement” after Jackson was arrested for child molestation. CSI-Southern Cal, oh be still my heart. Reality as fiction or fiction as reality?

The Celebrity Year In Review lingo goes something like this, doesn’t it y’all? Dudes and dudettes, what 12-step rehab social network do y’all hang with? Oh. . . too bad brah. You have to work your ass off to get in with the really F’d up ones where they all soooo help each other out in their VIP rehab list 24-7 working through “damage control” and then leveraging this quasi rehab-social-entertainment industry network thingy as they cut more deals with the constituents on the sanctioned A-list Malibu dudes and dudettes and the likes of rehabbin’ (aka bowling for dollars). Brah. . . it’s truly a righteous-religious experience!

The Santa Maria police, according to the FBI, said they believed the Jackson court case would be a “soft target” for terrorism because of “worldwide media coverage.” But the FBI concluded there were no threats. One interesting caveat though was the FBI did note the presence in an early court appearance of “The Nation of Islam, represented by its security unit Fruits of Islam,” and of a “New Black Panther Party” member whose name was left blank in the files. This information found in more than 300 pages and dating from 1992 to 2005, were released Tuesday through a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request from The Associated Press and other media. Righteous brah! Man, when the real mojo pops I KNOW y’all will be on it! All over it!

Need I keep going? Yeah I do. The Celebrity Year In Review. Who makes this bullshit up? Who works this bullshit? Who the frick cares? Who the frickwrites this shit up? Who the frick takes newsworthy time to report on this shit?

People? Human beings no less? Yeah, that’s right. But that’s not who I am talking to here. Not the can’t be bothered beautifully stupid that’s for sure. Who I’m talking to is you middle class working stiffs, and more so the homeless human beings and invisible (aka lepers of sorts) who are the casualties this blog’s mission statement wants to make visible. It’s these souls who (right or wrong) endure through learned helplessness the growing armies of intellectually unskilled, undisciplined, and uncreative stakeholders and followers (hangers-on) who promote the deadening effects of excessive specialization in the creed “Trust Your Neighbors, But Brand Your Stock.”

I dropped in on www.silobreaker.com this morning to scan the news bytes. Made me stop. Made me smirk first, then made me wonder: What’s up with this? Prince William sleeps rough for charity. Catchy. But, no way. . .

LONDON (AFP) - Prince William spent a night sleeping rough on the freezing streets of London to draw attention to the plight of homeless people, a charity said Tuesday.

William, who is next in line for the throne after his father Prince Charles, bedded down on cardboard boxes in an alleyway near…

So . . . you ask? Yeah, of course I took the bait and landed at yahoo.com on their world news about “Britain royals and homeless.” Go figure. Didn’t see this coming? Really?

AFP photo

LONDON (AFP) —
http://ca.news.yahoo.com/s/afp/091222/world/britain_royals_homeless

Prince William spent a night sleeping rough on the freezing streets of London to draw attention to the plight of homeless people, a charity said Tuesday.

William, who is next in line for the throne after his father Prince Charles, bedded down on cardboard boxes in an alleyway near the River Thames as temperatures fell to minus four degrees Celsius (25 degrees Fahrenheit) last week.

“There was no shielding from the bitter cold or the hard concrete floor or the fear of being accosted by drug dealers, pimps or those out to give homeless people a good kicking,” said Seyi Obakin, chief executive of homeless charity Centrepoint, who accompanied the prince.

“One of the hairiest moments occurred when we were almost run over by a road sweeper which simply didn?t see our small group huddled together, which just goes to show how vulnerable rough sleepers are.”

Obakin added that William was “determined” to understand all the problems that homeless people face.

William added: “I cannot, after one night, even begin to imagine what it must be like to sleep rough on London’s streets night after night.”

The prince’s mother, princess Diana — who died in a Paris car crash in 1997 — also supported Centrepoint.

Over 4,500 people sleep on the streets in London, according to government figures released earlier this year. They also showed that some 40 percent came from outside Britain, particularly eastern Europe.

The Celebrity Year In Review? Maybe we should be asking ourselves high priced technical-craft or street-craft? Who’s working it? Who ain’t? Who cares and who don’t?

: Branding_irons-Dutch_K,_c,_and_k.jpeg‎

I started migrating away from high-priced technical-craft for street-craft when I went looking for “insights without borders,” willing to learn how to become through migration an “unbranded animal” who had to move out of my comfort zone and learn how to survive or risking flatlining many cattle branding traditions and techniques. Like I said in a previous post, each brand “is by necessity different than all the ‎others and often conveys the character of the owner.” These brands, I guess like insights ‎without borders, have a language all their own. This language, much like any other one, follows ‎certain rules, where “callin’ the brand” is acquired when we develop the ability to read ‎these symbols.” Nevertheless, as livestock people say, ‎‎”a brand’s something that won’t come off in the wash.”

The Celebrity Year In Review? Yeah. I guess. But what I’m thinking here is we all are The Celebrity Year In Review. A failure of nerve? Probably so. Or maybe, “Callin’ the brand, where a brand’s something that won’t come off in the wash?

Prince William, me thinks (as my pseudo tacky Shakespeare puts it out there to y’all)—You may be “callin’ the brand, where you’re learning like a bunch of us, a brand’s somethin’ that won’t come off in the wash.”

Hey . . .Tiger you feelin’ this? Whatever, brah. . . Glad you made a run to Costco for goodies before thinking of heading off to sea on Privacy. Happy boating with your exclusive network of buds over the holidays. Wish your kids a happy XMAS for me will ya?

And for the rest of us all who are. . . The Celebrity Year In Review?
Merry Christmas.

Tagged as: branding, celebrity, critical, dumbed down, journalists, neighbors, review, scrum, skills, stock, thinking, Tiger Woods, trust, year

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Where Is All Our Religion Going? What Must We Do To Find It Again?

by Mark A. Rogers on 13 April, 2009

in Religion

Somehow, somewhere in our global village, I knew this day would come. And I can’t sit here amongst you all in good faith and pretend that I am all that surprised. I too can almost anticipate your nonverbal reactions to this cynicism before your microfacial expressions confirm your responses and comments.

Since I am in a mood to self reveal, I might as well disrobe all the way since this whole transaction in and of itself is a risky proposition with you all, and operatively declare furthermore that I am sidelining professional and political correctness, mainly because it has become so tiresome for me, and more importantly because I am coming to the conclusion that it’s all full of bullshit anyway.

Last night, as I relaxed in my living room with my wife in a precious moment of time and space, while our youngest son was at our neighbor’s home, and my oldest son who had just passed out in his bedroom from his 7-day road trip with his posse of Graduate bro’s TGIF’in it with friends at their respective campus watering holes across Iowa, Kansas, Texas, Louisiana and then Illinois, well we both decided going out on the town was no longer an option. The drive-in movie was our best bet and the concession stand was only twelve paces away with all you could eat for free, and bathrooms with no long waiting lines where we had to engage in insipid small talk with dudes and dudettes shoving all types of organized religion in our face when we were not hungry for it.

Fine, so I see you’re not fully buying this fine smelling pile of pedantic manure, are you? Good enough. I respect that. Like I said, I knew this day would come. But I never imagined a day like this would come where I don’t want to deal with long bathroom waiting lines and other public gathering places where so many people’s impressed, intrigued, outraged, frightened, and perplexed reactions, responses, and comments to the dangerous dimensions of our burgeoning contemporary politics seem to me sound bytes best compartmentalized as legitimizing narrative perseveration that maybe we might have front row seats watching as Samuel P. Huntington argued in “The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order.” And to add further insult to injury, I might as well add, my wife and I, like I think I’m hearing and seeing amongst so many in our line of sight, are questioning whether more Americans have no religion any longer, whether religion falls along the fault line of the Pareto Principle, and the percentage of Christians in our nation has declined.

And I’ll tell you another thing, while I’m sidelining professional and political correctness. Watching Slum Dog Millionaire in the throes of all of this with my wife that evening echoed in both our sensate personifying vividly what I recalled Nilotpal Basu was contending in his commentary “…Oscar or no Oscar ‘Slum dogs’ will hog attention.”

“…it is a season of the Slum dogs’. Because, never else, the ‘Slum dogs’ come to occupy the center stage of the political space as it is during the elections. This is understandable. The struggle and the tragedy that the ‘Slum dog’ faces is the overwhelming reality. …

But there is a problem. The tax payers who have to bear the burden of financial expenditure of the governments are angry. No longer are they oblivious of who are the recipients of the government largesse. They are demanding answerability. The stark reality of the diamond industry workers of Surat – and six dozens of them committing suicide cannot be glossed over by the make belief image conjured up by the lakhs of crores of investment MoUs signed during the vibrant Gujarat exercise. The spectacle of Namakkal weavers of Tamilnadu selling their kidneys underline the vicious challenge that the labour intensive export-oriented industry faces in India. And, it is not just limited to diamond or textile; it spans across so many other sectors both in manufacturing and services. The government itself was forced to concede that in the last few months, five lakh jobs have been lost. But even industry bodies have accepted that the actual figures are much more and over a crore of jobs will be lost in the coming months.

Therefore, thankfully, this time around, election time is the season of ‘Slum dogs’ – Oscars or no-Oscars – millionaires, however, can wait.”

The Associated Press reports a wide-ranging study on American religious life found more Americans said they have no religion and that the percentage of Christians in our nation has declined. The American Religious Identification Survey discovered that fifteen percent of the total respondents asserted that they had no religion, which was an increase from 14.2 percent in 2001 and 8.2 percent in 1990. Regionally, the survey revealed that Northern New England surpassed the Pacific Northwest as the least religious region. Respondents in Vermont reported the highest share of individuals claiming no religion while the study found that the numbers of Americans with no religion rose in every state.

The American Religious Identification Survey revealed that traditional organized religion is playing less of a role in many respondents lives.

Thirty percent of married couples did not have a religious wedding ceremony.
Twenty percent of respondents said they did not want a religious funeral.
About 12 percent of Americans believe in a higher power but not the personal God at the core of monotheistic faiths.
Since 1990, a slightly greater share of respondents ─ 1.2 percent ─ said they were part of new religious movements, including Scientology, Wicca, and Santeria.
The study also found indicators of a growing influence of churches that either do not belong to a denomination or play down their membership in a religious group.

This preface, similarly to Huntington’s in “The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order,” is not intended to be a “work of social science.” Rather, I would like this preface to promote (in keeping with aspects of the spirit of the Mission Statement of this blog site)

A global village of perceptive skilled thinkers who use …the universe of discourse (world of words) to dissolve boundaries …to empathize with the uniqueness of every individual’s relationship and connection with societies, the frameworks of ideas and beliefs that we use to construct worldviews, and interact within our global village rather than continue through learned helplessness to endure the armies of intellectually unskilled, undisciplined, and uncreative stakeholders and followers who promote the deadening effects of excessive specialization in the creed “Trust your neighbors, but brand your stock.”

I can think of no better way to conclude this preface than to ask us all to reflect on this Hasidic Tale that Jane G. Goldberg highlights as introductory insights into her fine text “The Dark Side of Love: The Positive Role of Our Negative Feelings─Anger, Jealousy, and Hate.”

A rabbi had a conversation with the Lord about Heaven and Hell. “I’ll show you Hell,” said the Lord and led the rabbi into a room in the middle of which was a very big round table. The people sitting at it were famished and desperate. In the middle of the table there was a large pot of stew, enough and more for everyone. The smell of the stew was delicious and made the rabbi’smouth water. The people around the table were holding spoons with very long handles. Each one found that it was just possible to reach the pot to take a spoonful of the stew. But because the handle of the spoon was larger than a man’s arm, he could not get the food back into his mouth. The rabbi saw that their suffering was terrible. “Now I will show you heaven,” said the Lord, and they went into another room exactly the same as the first. There was the same big round table and the same pot of stew. The people, as before, were equipped with the same long-handled spoons─but here they were well nourished and plump, laughing and talking. At first, the rabbi could not understand. “It is simple, but it requires a certain skill,” said the Lord. “You see, they have learned to feed each other.”

Tagged as: feed, global village, good faith, heaven, hell, rabbi, Religion, slum dog millionaire, spoons

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The World Of All Appearances, Then, Is The Fabric Woven On The Loom Of Perceptions. — Lawrence E. Sullivan

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