tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-79867907547560405882024-03-29T05:32:45.383-04:00$_Zareen Wilhelmhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03621428545462451023noreply@blogger.comBlogger20125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7986790754756040588.post-79111947075401125422024-02-02T23:55:00.000-05:002024-02-07T12:28:46.741-05:00 About Me <p><span style="font-family: Avenir;"><b><span style="font-size: x-large;">Happy Birthday to Me<br /></span></b></span></p><p><span style="font-family: Avenir;"><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-family: Avenir;"><span style="font-size: medium;">People who know me know that I'm not big on birthdays, but today I've turned the big four zero. At 40, I'm now in mid-life. The first half of my life is over and so THIS is mid-life. </span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: Avenir;"><span style="font-size: medium;">They say by this age, you start to feel a creeping sensation that evolves into an all consuming crisis. Then you go out and make unwise decisions that often irrevocably damage your quality-of-life in the second half. </span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: Avenir;"><span style="font-size: medium;">If we don't like how we feel by the time our 40th birthday rolls around, our society and the markets expect us to go out and make big purchases, get work done through surgeries, start seeing people much younger -- take drastic measures to counterbalance our internal sense of doom. </span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: Avenir;"><span style="font-size: medium;"> </span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: Avenir;"><span style="font-size: medium;">In addition to my birthday, Feb. 2nd is also Groundhog Day, a holiday [celebrated in North America] which reveals some season information about the length of a given year's winter. Plus, Ground Hog Day is the name of a movie where a man, (played by Bill Murry) wakes up every morning on Feb. 2nd. He goes to bed on the evening of Feb. 2nd, and wakes up, again and again, on the morning of Feb. 2nd. Stuck in this time loop, he relives the events of that day, unable to move into Feb. 3rd. (Was this Bill Murray's character's mid-life crisis? Feel free to let me know your thoughts.) </span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: Avenir;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: Avenir;"><span style="font-size: medium;">Each morning I wake up, I make sure to do the same thing: feed my animals. This morning, </span></span><span style="font-family: Avenir;"><span style="font-size: medium;">on Feb. 2nd, Groundhog Day of 2024, I did what I do every morning: feed the ducks and goats. The temperature was mild in the mid 40 F. The ducks went swimming early and the goats -- not yet fully awake -- were well behaved. </span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: Avenir;"><span style="font-size: medium;">Doing the same
thing every day can be very challenging for some of us. I've tried to use different things in the past to try to establish a morning routine, such as morning prayer: in Islam, the morning prayer has to be done before sunrise. </span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: Avenir;"><span style="font-size: medium;">Praying is a spectacular discipline, which I've maintained, yet it's not a direct solution: I fall back asleep immediately afterwards which kills my morning schedule. Going back to sleep after morning prayer is discouraged by Islam, and understandably so. <br /></span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: Avenir;"><span style="font-size: medium;">I've tried to use a 9-5 working schedule to establish a morning routine. For the years that I've tried this, the only time it worked (for a little while, maybe half a year, tops) was when I made watching an episode of Nathan For You an integral part of my mourning routine. Nathan Fielder stopped making new episodes, I dried up on reruns, and the mourning routine fell apart. </span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: Avenir;"><span style="font-size: medium;">I tried having a kid. I thought, Having a baby is SURE to wake me up early every morning! I had a son in 2021, who was born too soon, and passed away just five days later. I preferred being asleep for most of that process, and for at least a year afterwards. </span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: Avenir;"><span style="font-size: medium;">Then one day, about a year and a half ago, my Uncle Max bought us a couple of goats. Having animals that live outside and need to be fed and protected was the start of nailing down a steady morning routine. </span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: Avenir;"><span style="font-size: medium;"> </span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: Avenir;"><span style="font-size: medium;">Without a steady morning or daily routine, how did I manage? My answer: the weekly routine. To
give you a general idea: I pick an activity that I do multiple times
throughout the week (such as exercising), and schedule those events onto
my calendar. Then I organize the rest of my task (actions and
whereabouts) around those events. </span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: Avenir;"><span style="font-size: medium;">Some
people have the superhuman power of dedicating every hour of every day
to predetermined activities. (I believe Thomas Jefferson was one of
these people: he squeezed value out of every waking minute of his existence. Talk about discipline!) If I had that level of control over my movements, I would
be a lot more successful, perhaps a lot more accomplished, than I am
today. A lot more people would be reading this article. </span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: Avenir;"><span style="font-size: medium;">The daily routine and the weekly routine yield such different results, it feels wrong to be comparing them. (The reasons it's possible right now is because I wasn't eating a breakfast or brushing my teeth or showering in the mornings. Even those activities depended on when I was going to the gym.) It's important everyone to remember that the things we do in our day-to-day are the fundamental building blocks of our future. <br /></span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: Avenir;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></span></p><span style="font-family: Avenir;"></span><p><span style="font-family: Avenir;"><span style="font-size: medium;">I asked AI for the top three questions people ask themselves when turning 40. AI's first answer was "Have I accomplished enough?" I find this answer peculiar. As someone who's been asking myself this question everyday for the last 20+ years, I feel like this is not a question having to do with mid-life. At the same time, I know that AI is not exactly <i>wrong</i>. </span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: Avenir;"><span style="font-size: medium;">Why would this be true? Why do people tend to ask themselves this question when they reach mid-life? <br /></span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: Avenir;"><span style="font-size: medium;"> </span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: Avenir;"><span style="font-size: medium;">What is the biochemical nature of mid-life? I haven't (yet) looked into the regulatory shifts that take place in the human metabolic system to qualify this phase we call "mid-life", but I do know that a mid-life crisis is not a holiday with a bed and breakfast. It brings with it a disturbance that increases the chaos in one's life, with deleterious </span></span><span style="font-family: Avenir;"><span style="font-size: medium;">effects</span></span><span style="font-family: Avenir;"><span style="font-size: medium;">. It's a bad thing that effects many people by the time they live half way through their lifespan. Maybe it has something to do with the question, "Have I accomplished enough?" </span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: Avenir;"><span style="font-size: medium;">Why does this happen? Who does this happen to? What have you been doing every day? Have you been monitoring your performance and checking its trajectory over time? <br /></span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: Avenir;"><span style="font-size: medium;">Living in a human body is a challenging and often painful experience. At the same time, I marvel at its design at every level of abstraction. The level of organization inside a cell, to the tissue lines, to the organs which group together to create the subsystems that communicate through the network that moves the blood -- I find this level of organization to be <i>spooky</i> prodigious. (Especially when we start looking closely at human chromosomes.) </span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: Avenir;"><span style="font-size: medium;">Through science, I've always seen God, by looking at things that ring an alarm in my head that screams, "This does NOT happen by accident!" As human engineers, we don't make anything as complex and yet as seamless, as this. </span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: Avenir;"><span style="font-size: medium;">If we're designed so great, then why do we tend to spin out by the time we reach the mid-life phase? </span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: Avenir;"><span style="font-size: medium;"> </span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: Avenir;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">How Humans Breaks</span><span style="font-size: medium;"> <br /></span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: Avenir;"><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-family: Avenir;"><span style="font-size: medium;">When the internet existed in the 1990s, I'm not sure there was very much interest in the topic of narcissism. Social media wasn't in our hands until at least the 2010s, which made self promotion more prevalent. As individuals we become more self-centered at the expense of our abilities to maintain relationships. We become islands onto ourselves. </span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: Avenir;"><span style="font-size: medium;">I'm under the impression that this is linked to the rise of network traffic to the content topic of narcissism. This is an example of how a human being breaks. Like this, I contend that the mid-life crisis is another example. We are talking about the regular human being, without any disease or infection, without disabilities and impairments that require special attention, these are examples of how the regular human being breaks. </span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: Avenir;"><span style="font-size: medium;"></span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: Avenir;"><span style="font-size: medium;">I
opened this blog when I started to learn about the nature of trauma --
another example of how a human being breaks. My original plans where to
write about trauma. If you peruse through my titles, you'll notice I
haven't written much at all about the topic of trauma. With each post I
wrote, I was managing a part of my own condition. It's possible that my
inability to maintain routine cycles is glaringly evident from the
erratic frequency of my posts. </span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: Avenir;"><span style="font-size: medium;">Managing my own condition has been the dominating theme of the first half of my life. Now that I'm 40, where is the crisis? My answer: Palestine. </span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: Avenir;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: Avenir;"><span style="font-size: medium;">The number of children killed in Gaza over the last few months is nothing less than </span></span><span style="font-family: Avenir;"><span style="font-size: medium;">staggering. Our naval-gazing society makes for an ever more dangerous world for children. The numbers of children victim to human trafficking is only rising. They are the victims of billionaires like Jeffrey Epstein. They are victims of SRA (Satanic Ritual Abuse). Children are the targets of large and reputable institutions, such as the the Catholic Church, as well as corrupt systems of government funded "child protective" services and foster care systems. <br /></span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: Avenir;"><span style="font-size: medium;">As a strong proponent of home schooling, I feel inclined to say that children are also the victims of the public education system, but this is where I step into the gray area of what it means to be a victim. After all, I attended public schools and I don't consider myself a victim. </span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: Avenir;"><span style="font-size: medium;">The gray area is where we see victim-hood in action, being used as an organizing principle. People try to undercut each other by proving who is more of a victim - <i>competitive</i> victim-hood! These are people who have no sensory disabilities, or mental or intellectual deficits. They seem to be normal on the surface, but they're broken. </span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: Avenir;"><span style="font-size: medium;"></span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: Avenir;"><span style="font-size: medium;">What
am I doing here? How did I get here? What did I do to deserve this?
These are some examples of questions I see people asking, on their way
to finding someone to blame for their internal turmoil. These are the
actors in the gray space who are filling the airwaves with a noise that
is blocking the rest of us from being able to identify the real victims
of this world. Children. </span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: Avenir;"><span style="font-size: medium;">Because of this reality, I'm starting out the second half of my life, on a project dedicated to improving the lives of children. This will be the focus of the next battery of posts on this domain. <br /></span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: Avenir;"><span style="font-size: medium;">Thank you for reading. <br /></span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: Avenir;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></span></p><br />Zareen Wilhelmhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03621428545462451023noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7986790754756040588.post-35050263109028617902022-05-27T17:36:00.002-04:002022-05-27T17:36:29.279-04:00Identity in Islam is Independent from Genetics (or, "Pop Islamic 3")<p><span style="background-color: white; color: #262626; font-family: Avenir;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></span></p><p><span style="background-color: white; color: #262626; font-family: Avenir;"></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEio8Pp9s2Qu3EcfeiHexS0v3CC1P03aZ9SrDitSUYJTxmLgCjb4ptHbY5sPtFqUlqs4W_zvcEN6cPOkGyabsrEUFVbEZeW2sGjzYJ61QmkO9EScXzm7orsAaZ5MXBu7pzledC5lXKkb5zV11XVSs8FjfLxsjDl1IHTNdjVL-YP-bH0sEJXzAZZ_lLdS/s2100/PopIslamic3_deathKey.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2100" data-original-width="2100" height="393" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEio8Pp9s2Qu3EcfeiHexS0v3CC1P03aZ9SrDitSUYJTxmLgCjb4ptHbY5sPtFqUlqs4W_zvcEN6cPOkGyabsrEUFVbEZeW2sGjzYJ61QmkO9EScXzm7orsAaZ5MXBu7pzledC5lXKkb5zV11XVSs8FjfLxsjDl1IHTNdjVL-YP-bH0sEJXzAZZ_lLdS/w393-h393/PopIslamic3_deathKey.jpg" width="393" /></a></div><br /><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span><p></p><p><span style="background-color: white; color: #262626; font-family: Avenir;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></span></p><p><span style="background-color: white; color: #262626; font-family: Avenir;"><span style="font-size: large;">Identity means different things to different people, but at the root of all cultural and sentimental meanings is the connection between identity and access. </span></span></p><span style="font-family: Avenir; font-size: large;"><br style="background-color: white; color: #262626;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #262626;">Regardless of what you think of your own identity, at the end of the day it's helping you access your bank account, swipe into your office, and do what you want with your personal property. </span><br style="background-color: white; color: #262626;" /><br style="background-color: white; color: #262626;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #262626;">This is almost the definition of a key. Everyone ever born into the material world has an identity, and this identity is a key for accessing something outside of our immediate, material Reality. </span><br style="background-color: white; color: #262626;" /><br style="background-color: white; color: #262626;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #262626;">Islam (like any Abrahamic religion) recognizes an Afterlife. This key allows an individual to reach their Afterlife destination. </span><br style="background-color: white; color: #262626;" /><br style="background-color: white; color: #262626;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #262626;">Unlike Judaism and Christianity however -- which are Orthodox religions, or Orthodoxies -- Islam is an <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orthopraxy" target="_blank">Orthopraxy</a>. From my understanding, this means the [divine credits] earned by an individual are weighted in favor of practice and discipline (rather than states of mind or inner sentiments). And unlike Judaism specifically, one's final destination in Islam is completely unrelated to genetics or race. </span></span><div><span style="font-family: Avenir; font-size: large;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #262626;"><br /></span></span></div><div><span style="font-family: Avenir; font-size: large;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #262626;"><br /></span></span></div><div><span style="font-family: Avenir; font-size: large;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #262626;"><br /></span></span></div><div><span style="font-family: Avenir; font-size: large;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #262626;"><br /></span></span></div><div><span style="font-family: Avenir; font-size: large;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #262626;"><br /></span></span></div><div><span style="font-family: Avenir; font-size: large;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #262626;"><br /></span></span></div><div><span style="font-family: Avenir; font-size: large;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #262626;"><br /></span></span></div><div><span style="font-family: Avenir; font-size: large;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #262626;"><br /></span></span></div>Zareen Wilhelmhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03621428545462451023noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7986790754756040588.post-41498730914423749052022-05-21T14:58:00.000-04:002022-05-21T14:58:23.160-04:00Ukrainian Cossacks and their Role in Modern Geo-ID Politics (or, "An Offensively Brief History of the Wild East in Medieval Cossack Ukraine") <p><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><br class="Apple-interchange-newline" /><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><span><span><span style="font-family: Avenir;">Like many, I've spent my life entertaining romantic ideas about the American wild west, or the "olde west" -- so last week, my jaw dropped when I learned for the <i>first</i> time, about the wild </span><i style="font-family: Avenir;">east</i></span><span style="font-family: Avenir;"><span>.</span> (<span>I thought I was a curious person but for some reason, I never thought to check!</span></span></span><span style="font-family: Avenir;">)</span></span></p><p><span><span style="font-family: Avenir; font-size: large;"><br /></span></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEggLezJ154JrHc_c3TVhm0M8kEei_YGn7gjIShRFfK0OLgrKSgbF1qfyOxFee_tnXEOodrxFSS96rCkEbUYYWTPWHa6GsT0RUrnPo4Fbhb9MaO3aUYg8YtbcJg9rG_TeOHsOqtG_jnglpKPYTU7Ut6sGJSqHx8KOpajr-ZWoSoCdD7qPd7AztD3bqJU/s2100/Untitled%20-%20May%2013,%202022%2023.51%204.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="color: black; font-size: large;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1500" data-original-width="2100" height="319" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEggLezJ154JrHc_c3TVhm0M8kEei_YGn7gjIShRFfK0OLgrKSgbF1qfyOxFee_tnXEOodrxFSS96rCkEbUYYWTPWHa6GsT0RUrnPo4Fbhb9MaO3aUYg8YtbcJg9rG_TeOHsOqtG_jnglpKPYTU7Ut6sGJSqHx8KOpajr-ZWoSoCdD7qPd7AztD3bqJU/w446-h319/Untitled%20-%20May%2013,%202022%2023.51%204.jpg" width="446" /></span></a></div><p><span><span style="font-family: Avenir;"><span><span style="font-family: Avenir; font-size: large;"><br /></span></span></span></span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><span><span style="font-family: Avenir;"><span><span style="font-family: Avenir;">There's a vast belt of grassland that starts from the heartland of present-day Ukraine, </span><span style="font-family: Avenir;">stretching all the way out to the Mongolian far east, and this is called the <span>Eurasian steppe</span>. It brims with </span></span></span></span><span style="font-family: Avenir;">staggering beauty as it does with </span><span style="font-family: Avenir;">mortal dangers, </span><span style="font-family: Avenir;">just like the olde west.</span><span style="font-family: Avenir;"> </span></span></p><span style="font-size: large;"><div><span><br /></span></div><div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjTQI70mGnoY8hzpAkPt0HQrFD7PgasgOVSLXP4js0xBZlxe3AgKEAA-QhSvLcbruv1N5b4cThlIGVlm5Ye9GNY9gOU8N-MF_HRO4ZGfcB9l-gKEgJbUl-iRfEJHU6_7GL9GlnRoiLSqYITCn1EZUekY6SKiRyNsehWr_0mWwj3VlMMirAw7acuKpy0/s1984/Screen%20Shot%202022-05-21%20at%2011.55.41%20AM.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="772" data-original-width="1984" height="189" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjTQI70mGnoY8hzpAkPt0HQrFD7PgasgOVSLXP4js0xBZlxe3AgKEAA-QhSvLcbruv1N5b4cThlIGVlm5Ye9GNY9gOU8N-MF_HRO4ZGfcB9l-gKEgJbUl-iRfEJHU6_7GL9GlnRoiLSqYITCn1EZUekY6SKiRyNsehWr_0mWwj3VlMMirAw7acuKpy0/w485-h189/Screen%20Shot%202022-05-21%20at%2011.55.41%20AM.png" width="485" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div></div><br /></span><p></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: Avenir;">It was known </span><span style="font-family: Avenir;">as the <span>Golden Horde</span> under the Mongol empire, but after the fall of the Mongols by the <span>14th </span>Century, it became an ungoverned terrain, </span><span style="font-family: Avenir;">inhabited by </span><span style="font-family: Avenir;">nomadic tribes of turkic, slavic, and Eurasian descent. </span></span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><span><span style="font-family: Avenir;">These tribes had unique identities, and they didn't always get along. </span></span><span><span><span style="font-family: Avenir;">Despite their differences and inherent risks, they were engaging in <span>trade</span> so they were connected through their economy, which was made possible by</span></span></span><span style="font-family: Avenir;"> </span><span style="font-family: Avenir;">the ecosystem of the steppe.</span><span style="font-family: Avenir;"> </span></span></p><p><span><span style="font-family: Avenir;"><span style="font-size: large;">This is important to remember because this depicts the <span>epitome</span> of terrestrial freedom -- the exact thing that American colonists were after, when they ventured into the dark unknown of the olde west. </span></span></span></p><p><span><span style="font-family: Avenir;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></span></span></p><span style="font-size: large;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjlsTuU_sy4AI9raHfO9u8qfVvY8Kqi6WzWm0x-YeDsPjGSty8FH0s70gYzrJ5O9G9uJIH_94Fc1vGgSxUIxt6uF6Y7zftPHoV5rCIuEY_8Jp3GTM5qDt4HOiBK5WMyc-7svZZ6cGZYUn8E8GBgsZD3LKsBYWQPc40Auo44IpM_soa1mREH2AerXhAw/s2100/fig4WildWest.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1425" data-original-width="2100" height="335" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjlsTuU_sy4AI9raHfO9u8qfVvY8Kqi6WzWm0x-YeDsPjGSty8FH0s70gYzrJ5O9G9uJIH_94Fc1vGgSxUIxt6uF6Y7zftPHoV5rCIuEY_8Jp3GTM5qDt4HOiBK5WMyc-7svZZ6cGZYUn8E8GBgsZD3LKsBYWQPc40Auo44IpM_soa1mREH2AerXhAw/w495-h335/fig4WildWest.jpg" width="495" /></a></div></span><p><span style="font-family: Avenir; font-size: large;"><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: Avenir;">Both of these places called out to the hearts of pioneers and marauders alike, making <span>frontiersmen</span> out of those that survived. </span><span style="font-family: Avenir;"> </span></span></p><p><span><span style="font-family: Avenir; font-size: large;"><br /></span></span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><span><span><span style="font-family: Avenir;">By the <span>15th </span>Century, a new form of settlements began appearing along the eastern edges of the steppe. </span></span></span><span><span><span style="font-family: Avenir;">On modern day maps this area is labeled <span>Zaporozhzhia</span>, west of Donbas which encompasses </span></span></span><span style="font-family: Avenir;">Donetsk and Luhansk -- </span><span style="font-family: Avenir;">names that I had never heard prior to Putin's decision to recognize their sovereignty at the start of this current Russian-Ukranian-NATO conflict. </span><span style="font-family: Avenir;"> </span></span></p><p><span><span style="font-family: Avenir; font-size: large;"><br /></span></span></p><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Donbas#/media/File:Map_of_Donbas_region.svg" rel="nofollow" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;" target="_blank"><span style="color: black; font-size: large;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1148" data-original-width="1316" height="399" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjm-X_gd0pnVUNnqQUuoApBBURwZtRhZ3Ec9xfbr2pe-NmO6aSCkRt0GKaFSLaM_Zp4OJtxpGEPWW8RXrYrUUPS7BBJAZiVlT3zLzFTrpecqNgn4P8CPSK9JNPdD6Gtb5JJS9QmsFNm1bbHg-0oKZucgagMcwI6aAnd7p8J7H8qIDZNzrp--BtKaVM4/w457-h399/Screen%20Shot%202022-05-20%20at%207.24.49%20AM.png" width="457" /></span></a></div><span><span style="font-family: Avenir; font-size: large;"><br /></span></span><p></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><span><span style="font-family: Avenir;">At the time of these new <span>settlements</span>, the steppe was scarcely populated. Conditions in the wilderness gets progressively more severe as one</span></span><span style="font-family: Avenir;"> moves further inland, and thus, a nomadic tribe known as the </span><span style="font-family: Avenir;"><span>Cossacks</span> (or "Kazakhs") were realizing their fundamental need to live on the edge. </span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: Avenir; font-size: large;"> </span></p><p><span><span style="font-size: large;"><span><span><span style="font-family: Avenir;"><span>From what I gather</span>, the exact <span>origins</span> of the Cossacks are unclear, but it's evident that they moved through Europe, past the Ottoman empire, and through the Polish</span></span></span><span style="font-family: Avenir;"> </span><span style="font-family: Avenir;">crown, to finally arrive at the <span>eastern edge</span> of the Eurasian steppe. </span></span></span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><span><span style="font-family: Avenir;">Through the 15th and <span>16th</span> Centuries </span><span style="font-family: Avenir;">this area was known as <b>Ruthenia</b>, and the Cossacks made up a majority of its population. </span></span><span><span><span><span style="font-family: Avenir;">These were the dark days of feudal Eastern Europe. </span></span></span></span><span><span><span><span style="font-family: Avenir;">Muscovite Russia was to the north east and </span></span></span></span><span style="font-family: Avenir;">the </span><span style="font-family: Avenir;">Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth was to their <span>west</span>. </span></span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><span><span><span style="font-family: Avenir;">Cossacks in the western bank lived as second class <span>citizens</span> under the rule of Polish nobles. Unsurprisingly, the ones living in the northern and eastern parts were suffering under Russian rule. The Cossacks were </span></span></span><span><span style="font-family: Avenir;">escaping persecution by turning to the <span>Wild Fields</span> of the eastern edge. </span></span><span style="font-family: Avenir;"> </span></span></p><p><span><span style="font-family: Avenir; font-size: large;"><br /></span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: Avenir; font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: Avenir;"><span>They </span></span>became known far and wide, for their unmatched expertise in ship building and logistics, pioneering and <span>horsemanship</span>, weapons and warfare, as well as raiding and plundering. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: Avenir; font-size: large;"><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-family: Avenir;"><span style="font-family: Avenir; font-size: large;"></span></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjV1CUu8Bon-Y2L8xz0YNR1utgB10-9W79_ngqz7p1Qm65vp4mq3AZ3gR9K5_N74N_jmYIY-VG5jMVLktg-jzEMZDa0XpQ1HcPTSFI45_74VVfa_MfNupGZVbo389lCFMUiKR5zGNHSZZQp2-0wHa01Y82UUfX75jo_amo1Nr3a3huQQ5ls4YP9cH04/s3300/Untitled%20-%20July%2030,%202021%2019.40.04%20copy%20(5).jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="color: black; font-size: large;"><img border="0" data-original-height="3300" data-original-width="3300" height="424" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjV1CUu8Bon-Y2L8xz0YNR1utgB10-9W79_ngqz7p1Qm65vp4mq3AZ3gR9K5_N74N_jmYIY-VG5jMVLktg-jzEMZDa0XpQ1HcPTSFI45_74VVfa_MfNupGZVbo389lCFMUiKR5zGNHSZZQp2-0wHa01Y82UUfX75jo_amo1Nr3a3huQQ5ls4YP9cH04/w424-h424/Untitled%20-%20July%2030,%202021%2019.40.04%20copy%20(5).jpg" width="424" /></span></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><span style="font-family: Avenir;"><span style="font-family: Avenir; font-size: large;"> </span></span><p></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><span><span style="font-family: Avenir;">They are sometimes affectionately referred to as </span></span><span style="font-family: Avenir;">"vikings of the east". The</span><span style="font-family: Avenir;"> term "cossack" translates to "<span>free man</span>" (or vagabond, depending on who's making the translation)</span><span style="font-family: Avenir;">. </span></span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: Avenir;">Their ways of living made them a formidable military force, </span><span style="font-family: Avenir;">and Cossack <span>mercenaries</span> were highly sought by foreign armies to fight for them. </span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: Avenir; font-size: large;"> </span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><span><span><span><span><span style="font-family: Avenir;">The fame they garnered across greater Eastern Europe </span></span></span></span></span><span style="font-family: Avenir;">over the </span><span style="font-family: Avenir;">16th and <span>17th</span> Centuries was based on the the relentlessness of their resistance. </span><span style="font-family: Avenir;"> </span></span></p><p><span><span><span style="font-family: Avenir; font-size: large;">As more people traveled to this area, attracted by the Cossack way of life, the settlements <span>matured</span> into a coherent "Host": a loose confederation of free people, living on a free land -- <span>is this not the meaning of being American</span>? </span></span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: Avenir;"><span style="font-size: large;">Internally, they employed the mechanics of representative government, and every individual was equally free. </span></span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><span><span style="font-family: Avenir;">Externally -- </span><span style="font-family: Avenir;">as you can imagine, such an entity would be the thing of <span>nightmares</span> for kings and despots</span><span style="font-family: Avenir;"> -- they continued to boldly confront the ceaseless pressures they were receiving from their <span>authoritarian</span> neighbors, who never stopped jockeying for control. </span></span><span style="font-family: Avenir;"> </span></span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><span><span><span style="font-family: Avenir;">During this period, the borders of [the east and west banks of] <span>Ruthenia</span> repeatedly changed hands through acts of military aggression. For many, the pressures of living within the states was escapable by migrating to the Host. </span></span></span><span style="font-family: Avenir;"> </span></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><p></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: Avenir;">Their history is fully loaded with organized revolts: </span><span style="font-family: Avenir;">as freedom <span>loving</span> people, they were no strangers to violence in self defense. </span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: Avenir; font-size: large;">In the mid 1600s, they selected a new hetman (or "leader"), faced off against Polish aggression and<i> succeeded</i>. This event was <span>historic</span> because it catalyzed the existence of the Cossack Hetmanate. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: Avenir; font-size: large;"><br /></span></p><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cossack_Hetmanate#/media/File:Herb_Viyska_Zaporozkoho.svg" rel="nofollow" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;" target="_blank"><span style="color: black; font-size: large;"><img border="0" data-original-height="840" data-original-width="777" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEirsRsB1LZb7EmTWy3UClgYEIWfUNUDCadiMOpqvQziTSBvH_Hbs9QhGXbjIye-T5OVT01uP9kOISoJeel120BqR0roUQDb2TCmDQe6Kl1vXdSlRRe1MP9m80kHKYu8ZAICr7ikfBrCDc78R4xDmxBfqr_kqjggrGj0jD-i1dRmrE1hUOyDDVcwOzlw/s320/IMG_0395.jpg" width="296" /></span></a></div><p></p><p><span style="font-family: Avenir;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: Avenir; font-size: large;"><span>Based on my understanding</span>, the Cossack Hetmanate facilitated a <span>formalized</span> method [for foreign interests] to recognize and communicate with the Host. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: Avenir; font-size: large;">Remaining true to their <span>principles</span>, this too, was loosely confederated and egalitarian. Unlike the Host, which was as [treacherous and lawless] as the high seas (in the <span>minds</span> of their foreign friends), this updated (more civilized) Cossack Hetmanate was <i>semi</i>-autonomous. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: Avenir; font-size: large;"><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: Avenir;">It lasted for a total of 116 years, which may not seem that long to an <span>American -- we've existed for over twice that length of time</span>. </span><span style="font-family: Avenir;"> Therefore it's important to <span>remember</span> that they were at the receiving end of continuous threats, so they were fighting the whole time and never really allowed to rest. </span></span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><span><span style="font-family: Avenir;">In the end, by the <span>19th</span> Century, the Cossack Hetmanate was dismantled as </span><span style="font-family: Avenir;">Zaporozhzhia fell into the hands of </span><span style="font-family: Avenir;">Czarist</span><span style="font-family: Avenir;"> Russia's Catherine the Great. </span></span><span><span style="font-family: Avenir;">She divided the people of the Host </span></span><span><span style="font-family: Avenir;">and repopulated the land for the coming waves of <span>Russification</span>. </span></span></span></p><p><span><span><span style="font-family: Avenir;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></span></span></span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><span><span><span><span style="font-family: Avenir;"><span>As nomads, Cossacks who remained continued on eastward -- but this is where my historical knowledge begins to flatten. They eventually settle in a place that is know today by the name</span></span></span></span><span><span><span style="font-family: Avenir;"><span> </span></span></span></span><span style="font-family: Avenir;">Kazakhistan, the "land of free men", or the "land of the free" -- </span><span style="font-family: Avenir;">ringing any bells</span><span style="font-family: Avenir;">? </span></span><span style="font-family: Avenir;"> </span></span></p><p><span><span style="font-family: Avenir; font-size: large;"><br /></span></span></p><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhYyvItFaaGPB_PCpzccGjGbzK-Nb8sxa-9Ua0akidpquFUiDELOaIugP9OtZ-ZOAOO9I0ZHZzF1qxuU4Ume0NfzL2hGRjnTktAFX65nEdr1ZLxH9OxpNain9E0st5oRoJOKT1wauyzVsBH7aykW87pslldsONFGg5BtRdfx7xxo2TGJs1GEt-OweoM/s1714/Screen%20Shot%202022-05-21%20at%201.27.20%20PM.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="color: black; font-size: large;"><img border="0" data-original-height="572" data-original-width="1714" height="164" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhYyvItFaaGPB_PCpzccGjGbzK-Nb8sxa-9Ua0akidpquFUiDELOaIugP9OtZ-ZOAOO9I0ZHZzF1qxuU4Ume0NfzL2hGRjnTktAFX65nEdr1ZLxH9OxpNain9E0st5oRoJOKT1wauyzVsBH7aykW87pslldsONFGg5BtRdfx7xxo2TGJs1GEt-OweoM/w491-h164/Screen%20Shot%202022-05-21%20at%201.27.20%20PM.png" width="491" /></span></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><div><span><span><span style="font-family: Avenir; font-size: large;"><p style="font-family: Times;"><span><span><span style="font-family: Avenir;"><span style="font-family: Times;"><span><span style="font-family: Avenir;"><span style="font-family: Times;"><span style="font-family: Avenir;">"Home of the brave" was where ever they stopped, and their principles traveled with them because they adhered to them every day. By holding steadfast to their principles, the Cossacks never </span></span>stopped in their pursuits of life, liberty, and happiness. </span></span></span></span></span></span></p><p style="font-family: Times;"><span><span><span style="font-family: Avenir;"><span style="font-family: Times;"><span><span style="font-family: Avenir;"><br /></span></span></span></span></span></span></p><p style="font-family: Times;"><span><span><span style="font-family: Avenir;"><span style="font-family: Times;"><span><span style="font-family: Avenir;"><br /></span></span></span></span></span></span></p><p style="font-family: Times;"><span><span><span style="font-family: Avenir;"><span style="font-family: Times;"><span><span style="font-family: Avenir;">The similarities we share with them include some of our <span>highest</span> held and most sentimental values. Therefore, it </span></span></span><span style="font-family: Times;"><span><span style="font-family: Avenir;">makes sense that, as Americans, we feel </span></span></span><span style="font-family: Avenir;">a yearning to try to help our Ukrainian friends. The current chaos between Russian, NATO, and Ukraine has left many -- myself included -- wondering, </span></span></span></span></p><p style="font-family: Times;"><span style="font-family: Avenir;">"What</span><span style="font-family: Avenir;"><i> is </i>a Ukrainian? Are they some type of Russian, or are they really their own unique group?" </span></p><p style="font-family: Times;"><span><span><span style="font-family: Avenir;"><span style="font-family: Avenir;"><span style="font-family: Avenir;">Our American government has been supporting Ukraine, militarily and financially. With each additional <span>tax</span> dollar we lose to this eastern confrontation, it becomes all the more urgent for us to understand <i>who</i> it is that our government is "backing". </span><span style="font-family: Avenir;"> </span></span></span></span></span><span style="font-family: Avenir;"> </span></p><p style="font-family: Times;"><span><span><span><span style="font-family: Avenir;">The impressions the Ukrainian Cossacks left, in the lands and the minds of others, have never been forgotten. To this day, the area of</span></span></span></span><span><span><span><span style="font-family: Avenir;"> <span>Zaporozhzhia</span> is considered the </span></span></span></span><span style="font-family: Avenir;">birthplace of the Ukrainian identity. </span></p><p style="font-family: Times;"><span style="font-family: Avenir;">The </span><span style="font-family: Avenir;">compassion</span><span style="font-family: Avenir;"> we feel is a sign that the force of humanity continues to thrive in the hearts of modern Americans. </span><span style="font-family: Avenir;">This humanity is the internal force with which the Cossacks were tightly linked. </span><span style="font-family: Avenir;">Making this connection within ourselves </span><span style="font-family: Avenir;">is how we can begin to figure out the way for us to <i>truly</i> help them. </span><span style="font-family: Avenir;"> </span><span style="font-family: Avenir;"> </span></p></span></span></span></div><p><span><span style="font-family: Avenir; font-size: large;"><br /></span></span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><span><span style="font-family: Avenir;">Much like the <span>founders</span> of the United States, the Cossacks knew that freedom is </span><span style="font-family: Avenir;">no trivial requirement. They were protecting their own </span></span><span style="font-family: Avenir;">inalienable rights </span><span style="font-family: Avenir;">till the last days of the Cossack Hetmanate. </span></span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><span><span style="font-family: Avenir;">In contrast, the surrounding fascist states were extravagant, polarized, </span></span><span><span style="font-family: Avenir;">held up by hidden hierarchies full of <span>spies</span>, corrupt transactions, and </span></span><span style="font-family: Avenir;">isolated points of failure. (This never seems to get old, especially given how it sounds like a description of our own government.) </span><span style="font-family: Avenir;"> </span></span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: Avenir;"><span style="font-family: Avenir;"><span style="font-family: Avenir;">The growth of such states depend </span></span><span style="font-family: Avenir;">on </span>the subjugation of others, along with endless militarized and economic <span>expansion</span>. This is the very </span><span style="font-family: Avenir;">antithesis of the Cossacks </span><span style="font-family: Avenir;">who </span><span style="font-family: Avenir;">fought to the death just to be able to continue minding their own business. </span></span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: Avenir;">The difference between such states and the Cossacks rest on the status of the people's internal <span>connection</span>. It is how our humanity gets integrated with our actions. It is how an individual can begin living a principled life, just like our historical Cossack Ukrainian friends. </span><span style="font-family: Avenir;"> </span></span></p><p><span><span style="font-family: Avenir; font-size: large;"><br /></span></span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><span><span><span style="font-family: Avenir;">Being disconnected from our own humanity predisposes us for deterioration </span></span><span style="font-family: Avenir;"> -- that's not good for us </span><i style="font-family: Avenir;">or</i><span style="font-family: Avenir;"> them. E</span><span style="font-family: Avenir;">xistence is a game of growth. </span></span><span style="font-family: Avenir;">You may be wondering, </span></span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: Avenir;">"Isn't that what Poland and Russia were doing, fighting over those northwest regions of Ruthenia, while also constantly targeting the Cossacks to limit their freedoms?? </span><i style="font-family: Avenir;">Growing...</i><span style="font-family: Avenir;">?" </span></span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><span><span><span style="font-family: Avenir;">It seems likes the concept of growth becomes very <i>literal</i> in the minds of those who neglect this internal connection. This limits growth down to observable indicators, while any concept of immaterial growth is made irrelevant. In other words: </span></span></span><span style="font-family: Avenir;">if we can't see it, it never happened. </span></span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: Avenir;">If we </span><span style="font-family: Avenir;">have to see it to believe it, the meaning of growth is now about flash,</span><span style="font-family: Avenir;"> dominance, aggression, mass wealth accumulation, an expanding money supply, not to mention the unending wars destroying our horizons. </span></span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><span><span><span style="font-family: Avenir;">As humans we fall into this material trap at almost every opportunity -- a trap that the </span></span></span><span><span style="font-family: Avenir;">Cossacks are globally acclaimed for knowing how to avoid. They </span></span><span style="font-family: Avenir;">were free regardless of their location because the freedom is internal, just like the connection. </span></span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: Avenir;">As a unified group, they shared a collective identity that had a healthy constitution. </span><span style="font-family: Avenir;">To be resilient and continue on the path of growth and liberty and prosperity and happiness, as Americans, what we are finding in the Ukrainian Cossacks is our own (much needed) source of inspiration. </span><span style="font-family: Avenir;"> </span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: Avenir;"><span style="font-size: large;"> </span></span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><span><span style="font-family: Avenir;">As we watch o</span></span><span><span style="font-family: Avenir;">ur government franticly send </span></span><span style="font-family: Avenir;">gratuitous amounts of money and weapons to Ukraine, our own infrastructure, savings, and personal freedoms are all in rapid decay. </span></span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><span><span style="font-family: Avenir;">By the time an oppressor gets to power,</span><span style="font-family: Avenir;"> or a "democracy" starts deceiving and monitoring its own people, w</span></span><span><span style="font-family: Avenir;">hat we are witnessing is the unit level </span></span><span style="font-family: Avenir;">disconnection being publicly expressed at the level of the human collective. </span></span></p><div><span style="font-size: large;"><span><span style="font-family: Avenir;">This highlights t</span></span><span><span style="font-family: Avenir;">he importance of this private connection. It needs to be set by every one of us individually in order to revive our own collective identity and self respect. </span></span><span style="font-family: Avenir;"> </span></span></div><p><span style="font-family: Avenir; font-size: large;"><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: Avenir;">It's important for us to see that Ukrainians are very likely suffering from their own internal disconnections. </span><span style="font-family: Avenir;">I say this based on the recent demands made by the U</span><span><span style="font-family: Avenir;">krainian president, </span><span style="font-family: Avenir;">Volodymyr Zelensky, at</span></span><span style="font-family: Avenir;"> </span><span style="font-family: Avenir;">the US government. </span></span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: Avenir;">The Cossacks would be appalled! </span><span style="font-family: Avenir;">The idea of </span><i style="font-family: Avenir;">soliciting</i><span style="font-family: Avenir;"> foreign intervention would have them turning in their graves! </span><span style="font-family: Avenir;">By doing this Zelensky is attacking Cossack principles, the very basis of what it means to be Ukrainian. </span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: Avenir; font-size: large;">As an American who identifies with the Cossacks and cares deeply about the lives of modern Ukrainians, I am skeptical that Zelensky is working in their best interest. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: Avenir; font-size: large;">By attacking these principles (directly or indirectly), he is weakening the link between the principles and his citizens. This ultimately pollutes the collective constitution, damaging their ability to unite, leaving his own people vulnerable as Russia advances in Donbas. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: Avenir; font-size: large;"> </span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: Avenir;">Like the Cossacks, the founders of the United States would be equally displeased. </span><span style="font-family: Avenir;">By actually fulfilling Zelensky's demands, our current government is propagating [his attack on Cossack principles] in the name of "helping Ukraine". </span><span style="font-family: Avenir;">In the mean time, there's no way for us to know where exactly the money and weapons are going. </span></span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: Avenir;">While our governments play pretend, the moral responsibility falls on our own personal shoulders. </span><span style="font-family: Avenir;">As a resilient, freedom loving population, </span><span style="font-family: Avenir;">like the great Cossacks, we are capable of accepting this responsibility -- we must be able to help ourselves, especially if we want to also help our friends. </span></span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: Avenir;">Individually, we must harden ourselves for what's to come. Preparation begins with looking at ourselves, and accepting that the </span><span style="font-family: Avenir;">reason for our governments malignancy is within our own personal inner conditions. </span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: Avenir; font-size: large;"><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: Avenir;">A collective identity based on shared principles is as a source of guidance, encouragement, and inspiration. </span><span style="font-family: Avenir;">Having access to it is important for the health of a person, especially when life gets tough. </span></span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: Avenir;">We need access to our collective identity, now more than ever, as much they need access to their Cossack principles. </span><span style="font-family: Avenir;">Having access to the </span><span style="font-family: Avenir;">Ukrainian identity</span><span style="font-family: Avenir;"> is what will help our Ukrainian friends, more than anything that we can send to them. </span></span></p><p><span><span style="font-family: Avenir; font-size: large;">This is not an easy time in history to be American. What will help us is the same thing that will help them, and it's the internal work that must be done by each individual, improving our collective constitution. </span></span></p><p><span><span style="font-family: Avenir; font-size: large;"><br /></span></span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><span><span style="font-family: Avenir;">The act of sending support (</span></span><span style="font-family: Avenir;">through NATO or otherwise</span><span style="font-family: Avenir;">) is a disservice hurting </span><span style="font-family: Avenir;">both populations, </span><span style="font-family: Avenir;">striking us at our roots, damaging our identities -- what does it mean to be American? By the looks of it, we might have to connect with our inner Cossack -- learning about them is undeniably invigorating for the American spirit, something I highly recommend. I also strongly suggest contacting your local </span><span><span style="font-family: Avenir;">congressmen, and urging them </span></span><span><span style="font-family: Avenir;">to stand against sending any further aid </span></span><span style="font-family: Avenir;">to Ukraine</span><span style="font-family: Avenir;">. </span></span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></p><p><b style="font-family: Avenir;"><span style="font-size: large;">References: </span></b></p><p><span><span style="font-family: Avenir; font-size: large;">https://youtu.be/D2HzwUs-gg4 </span></span></p><p><b style="font-family: Avenir;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-weight: 400;">https://www.vanderbilt.edu/olli/class-materials/Summary_of_Ukrainian_history.pdf</span></span></b></p><p><b style="font-family: Avenir;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-weight: 400;">https://www.npr.org/2022/02/12/1080205477/history-ukraine-russia </span></span></b></p><p><b style="font-family: Avenir;"><span style="font-size: large;">https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/worldviews/wp/2015/03/09/maps-how-ukraine-became-ukraine/ </span></b></p><p><b style="font-family: Avenir;"><span style="font-size: large;"> https://www.oxfordbibliographies.com/view/document/obo-9780199840731/obo-9780199840731-0156.xml </span></b></p><p><span><span style="font-family: Avenir; font-size: large;"><b>https://equestrianstatue.org/khmelnitsky-bogdan/ </b></span></span></p><p><span><span style="font-family: Avenir; font-size: large;"><b>https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/chmielnicki-khmelnitski-bogdan-x00b0 </b></span></span></p><p><span><span style="font-family: Avenir; font-size: large;">https://www.grunge.com/228249/what-life-was-like-for-u-s-marshals-in-the-wild-west/ </span></span></p><p><span><span style="font-family: Avenir; font-size: large;">https://www.grunge.com/54232/false-facts-wild-west-always-thought-true/ </span></span></p><p><span><span style="font-family: Avenir; font-size: large;"><br /></span></span></p><p><span><span style="font-family: Avenir; font-size: large;"><b><br /></b></span></span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></p><p><br /></p>Zareen Wilhelmhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03621428545462451023noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7986790754756040588.post-57171606202105364522022-02-18T14:29:00.000-05:002022-02-18T14:29:08.384-05:00Torah 28:13-15 <p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEhqns1ZxH5ntsImELWDuzOR-HYr4Xi46CxDZ9ECHoKOHYaN3bK7TRLelaL7y7wQHKcDVSXfWSqw8Bgks1nTLbjigTK2StMu4vQjjz2Vc5uOVpMxxKHFSYgQH3BcCp5exm0p5-GDUhOenaubGqCVN-2-XSaKYGyElIWAUTe1PYZ9utcmOXLh0AEm0yNt=s7200" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="7200" data-original-width="5100" height="508" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEhqns1ZxH5ntsImELWDuzOR-HYr4Xi46CxDZ9ECHoKOHYaN3bK7TRLelaL7y7wQHKcDVSXfWSqw8Bgks1nTLbjigTK2StMu4vQjjz2Vc5uOVpMxxKHFSYgQH3BcCp5exm0p5-GDUhOenaubGqCVN-2-XSaKYGyElIWAUTe1PYZ9utcmOXLh0AEm0yNt=w361-h508" width="361" /></a></div><br /><br /><p></p><p class="p1" style="font-size: 13px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: Avenir;">In this piece, I demonstrate some consequences unfolding due to the events which are taking place in the Middle East, worthy of our attention. My aim is to bring the viewer’s attention to the humanitarian crisis propagating from that inflating powder keg, loosely labeled — in my experience — “the Middle East conflict”. I am depicting this issue through a few select representations, all laid out across a landscape that is a person’s left ear. The surrealist flavor seen here is influence from the Thai artist, Prateep Kochabua, who’s works I had been exploring at the same time this piece was created.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span></p><p class="p1" style="font-size: 13px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: Avenir;"><br /></span></p><p class="p1" style="font-size: 13px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: Avenir;">It is a brutal reality for many, in that region. In spite of the growing harshness of their human condition, I gave this portrayal the serene finish of a typical ear chart that one may find on the waiting room wall of any private practice ENT. Much like our contemporary viruses, this too is global. A person can be effected anywhere in the world, and patients with this condition labor under an incredible amount of pain, until treatment.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span></p><p class="p2" style="font-size: 13px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 15px;"><span style="font-family: Avenir;"><br /></span></p><p class="p1" style="font-size: 13px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: Avenir;">In addition to swelling and redness, the outer ear appears to be attacked by a virulent strain of settlement colonies. Along with the organic symptoms, the patient is also showing some signs of abuse (ie: the barbed wire fence installation, and scattered bruising). There is an enflamed irritation right at the entrance of the ear canal, but there is no way to tell how deep the infection really goes.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span></p><p class="p2" style="font-size: 13px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 15px;"><span style="font-family: Avenir;"><br /></span></p><p class="p1" style="font-size: 13px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: Avenir;">Left untreated, this can damage the ear drum and result in significant hearing loss. Since the inner ear’s vestibular system is the control center of a person’s overall sense of physical balance, the patient may begin to experience dizziness — which could be early warning signs that the disorder is on its route to the brain.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span></p><p class="p2" style="font-size: 13px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 15px;"><span style="font-family: Avenir;"><br /></span></p><p class="p1" style="font-size: 13px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: Avenir;">In this particular case, the patient appears to be a young Jewish boy. While creating this piece, I arrived at the hypothesis that the [young, male, Jewish population] is the most likely cohort to be effected. The title of this piece is based on the following passages of the Jewish holy book, the Torah:<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span></p><p class="p2" style="font-size: 13px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 15px;"><span style="font-family: Avenir;"><br /></span></p><p class="p2" style="font-size: 13px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 15px;"><span style="font-family: Avenir;"><br /></span></p><p class="p1" style="font-size: 13px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: Avenir;">“</span></p><p class="p1" style="font-size: 13px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: Avenir;">[13]<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>And the Lord will set you at the head, and not at the tail, and you will be only at the top, and you will not be at the bottom, if you obey the commandments of the Lord, your God, which I am commanding you this day, to observe to fulfill [them].</span></p><p class="p2" style="font-size: 13px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 15px;"><span style="font-family: Avenir;"><br /></span></p><p class="p1" style="font-size: 13px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: Avenir;">[14]<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>And you shall not turn right or left from all of the words I am commanding you this day, to follow other deities to worship them.</span></p><p class="p2" style="font-size: 13px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 15px;"><span style="font-family: Avenir;"><br /></span></p><p class="p1" style="font-size: 13px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: Avenir;">[15]<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>And it will be, if you do not obey the Lord, your God, to observe to fulfill all His commandments and statutes which I am commanding you this day, that all these curses will come upon you and overtake you.</span></p><p class="p1" style="font-size: 13px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: Avenir;">”</span></p><p class="p2" style="font-size: 13px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 15px;"><span style="font-family: Avenir;"><br /></span></p><p class="p2" style="font-size: 13px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 15px;"><span style="font-family: Avenir;"><br /></span></p><p class="p1" style="font-size: 13px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: Avenir;">I often encounter the Torah being used in debates, about this so-called Middle East conflict, by opposing sides. It is referenced in arguments about [whether or not it is necessary to oppress the indigenous people], about [whether or not an organization is a government or a terrorist group], and about [whether or not Jews from around the world should be migrating to that location].<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span></p><p class="p2" style="font-size: 13px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 15px;"><span style="font-family: Avenir;"><br /></span></p><p class="p1" style="font-size: 13px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: Avenir;">In the process of studying the ideologies underpinning the different sides of this issue, I found these passages in chapter 28 of the Jewish holy book. The painting draws the viewer’s attention to this issue, and the title (in my opinion) resolves many (if not, all) of those arguments, which unfortunately continue to distract us away from the humanitarian problem.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>Such talk is frivolous when people are painfully suffering. <span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span></p><p class="p1" style="font-size: 13px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: Avenir;"><span class="Apple-converted-space"><br /></span></span></p><p class="p1" style="font-size: 13px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: Avenir;"><span class="Apple-converted-space"><br /></span></span></p><p class="p1" style="font-size: 13px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: Avenir;"><span class="Apple-converted-space"><br /></span></span></p>Zareen Wilhelmhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03621428545462451023noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7986790754756040588.post-2278933929074753012020-07-02T03:46:00.000-04:002020-07-07T18:27:55.462-04:00What is the American Nightmare? - Part 1 <div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span style="color: #3d3d3d; font-family: "avenir next" , "avenir" , "roboto" , "segoe ui" , "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 17px;">Yesterday it was Terrorism followed by financial collapse. Today it's local cops and global pandemics. The modern American culture is strained by a collective fear that moves through seasons like fashion. </span><br />
<span style="color: #3d3d3d; font-family: "avenir next" , "avenir" , "roboto" , "segoe ui" , "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 17px;"><br /></span><span style="color: #3d3d3d; font-family: "avenir next" , "avenir" , "roboto" , "segoe ui" , "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 17px;">Many believe these are a natural course of events sweeping through American history, </span><span style="color: #3d3d3d; font-family: "avenir next" , "avenir" , "roboto" , "segoe ui" , "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 17px;">while others see the concentrated efforts which are spawning the chaos being witnessed -- a spectacle that is revealing more of itself everyday. </span><span style="color: #3d3d3d; font-family: "avenir next" , "avenir" , "roboto" , "segoe ui" , "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 17px;">Whether we are of one belief or the other, we are further divided from our own counterparts and allies, by our disagreements on details about the order. </span><br />
<span style="color: #3d3d3d; font-family: "avenir next" , "avenir" , "roboto" , "segoe ui" , "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 17px;"><br /></span><span style="color: #3d3d3d; font-family: "avenir next" , "avenir" , "roboto" , "segoe ui" , "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 17px;">In the midst of such unpredictable menace, Americans are preparing for another Independence Day celebration as July 4th, 2020 approaches. That is the holiday on which we celebrate the birth of the nation and the values on which it was founded.</span><br />
<span style="color: #3d3d3d; font-family: "avenir next" , "avenir" , "roboto" , "segoe ui" , "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 17px;"><br /></span><span style="color: #3d3d3d; font-family: "avenir next" , "avenir" , "roboto" , "segoe ui" , "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 17px;">Some may find it difficult to revel in traditions that have evolved into mythologies. Hot dogs, beer, and fireworks will not relieve us of the high pressure conditions that are calling us to </span><span style="color: #3d3d3d; font-family: "avenir next" , "avenir" , "roboto" , "segoe ui" , "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 17px;">turn our faces toward the coming storm. To spend our time and energies wisely this 4th of July, it would be valuable to reminisce about the designs of collective fear that Americans sported </span><span style="color: #3d3d3d; font-family: "avenir next" , "avenir" , "roboto" , "segoe ui" , "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 17px;">back during a simpler time -- the mid 20th Century. </span><br />
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<span style="color: #3d3d3d; font-family: "avenir next" , "avenir" , "roboto" , "segoe ui" , "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 17px;"><br /></span><span style="color: #3d3d3d; font-family: "avenir next" , "avenir" , "roboto" , "segoe ui" , "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 17px;">History teaches us that post-war America was inundated by fears of Communism in all its forms, from nuclear attacks to philosophical infiltration. This country was tormented by the possibility of Marxist ideologies seeping in and curdling the values we try to celebrate every Independence Day. </span><br />
<span style="color: #3d3d3d; font-family: "avenir next" , "avenir" , "roboto" , "segoe ui" , "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 17px;"><br /></span><span style="color: #3d3d3d; font-family: "avenir next" , "avenir" , "roboto" , "segoe ui" , "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 17px;">Schools were running drills that taught children that a protective measure against nuclear attacks was to hide under their desks, while control freaks like Senator Joseph McCarthy dominated the national political stage. (He is</span><span style="color: #3d3d3d; font-family: "avenir next" , "avenir" , "roboto" , "segoe ui" , "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 17px;"> history's poster child of witch hunts -- a building block of the surveillance state of the time.) </span><br />
<span style="color: #3d3d3d; font-family: "avenir next" , "avenir" , "roboto" , "segoe ui" , "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 17px;"><br /></span><span style="color: #3d3d3d; font-family: "avenir next" , "avenir" , "roboto" , "segoe ui" , "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 17px;">History also teaches us that around the same time, the post-war America of the mid 20th Century was riding a wave of </span><span style="color: #3d3d3d; font-family: "avenir next" , "avenir" , "roboto" , "segoe ui" , "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 17px;">economic success. </span><span style="color: #3d3d3d; font-family: "avenir next" , "avenir" , "roboto" , "segoe ui" , "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 17px;">We manufactured cars and appliances, selling valuable products all around the world. </span><span style="color: #3d3d3d; font-family: "avenir next" , "avenir" , "roboto" , "segoe ui" , "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 17px;">Soldiers returning from </span><span style="color: #3d3d3d; font-family: "avenir next" , "avenir" , "roboto" , "segoe ui" , "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 17px;">World War II bought houses and started families using the compensations they received for fighting for America. </span><br />
<span style="color: #3d3d3d; font-family: "avenir next" , "avenir" , "roboto" , "segoe ui" , "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 17px;"><br /></span><span style="color: #3d3d3d; font-family: "avenir next" , "avenir" , "roboto" , "segoe ui" , "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 17px;">At home, </span><span style="color: #3d3d3d; font-family: "avenir next" , "avenir" , "roboto" , "segoe ui" , "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 17px;">all (socioeconomic) echelons of our civilization were experiencing comparable rates of prosperity. </span><span style="color: #3d3d3d; font-family: "avenir next" , "avenir" , "roboto" , "segoe ui" , "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 17px;">The circumstance of working</span><span style="color: #3d3d3d; font-family: "avenir next" , "avenir" , "roboto" , "segoe ui" , "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 17px;"> a simple job during standard business hours, for 30 to 35 years while supporting a nuclear family, </span><span style="color: #3d3d3d; font-family: "avenir next" , "avenir" , "roboto" , "segoe ui" , "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 17px;">and then retiring comfortably with a pension is a relic from this era. </span><span style="color: #3d3d3d; font-family: "avenir next" , "avenir" , "roboto" , "segoe ui" , "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 17px;">All the while, the Cold War fumed like dry ice. </span><br />
<span style="color: #3d3d3d; font-family: "avenir next" , "avenir" , "roboto" , "segoe ui" , "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 17px;"><br /></span><span style="color: #3d3d3d; font-family: "avenir next" , "avenir" , "roboto" , "segoe ui" , "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 17px;">Intelligence races raged on between us and the Soviet Union as our anti-Communist motivations </span><span style="color: #3d3d3d; font-family: "avenir next" , "avenir" , "roboto" , "segoe ui" , "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 17px;">led our military operations into southern Asia, and eventually Vietnam. There the Soviets were backing the north. Closer to home, they made agreements with Cuba which precipitated into what we're taught was the Cuban Missile Crisis. </span><br />
<span style="color: #3d3d3d; font-family: "avenir next" , "avenir" , "roboto" , "segoe ui" , "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 17px;"><br /></span>
<span style="color: #3d3d3d; font-family: "avenir next" , "avenir" , "roboto" , "segoe ui" , "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 17px;">Fidel Castro developed favorable relations with the American Mafia through dealings that blessed the future of the gaming industry in the city of Las Vegas as America rolled into the 1960s. We had no idea who killed Kennedy, but challenging traditional values from the grass roots level had become the new vogue. </span><span style="color: #3d3d3d; font-family: "avenir next" , "avenir" , "roboto" , "segoe ui" , "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 17px;"> </span><span style="color: #3d3d3d; font-family: "avenir next" , "avenir" , "roboto" , "segoe ui" , "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 17px;"> </span><br />
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<span style="color: #3d3d3d; font-family: "avenir next" , "avenir" , "roboto" , "segoe ui" , "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 17px;">The movements of the 1960s had similarities with the Progressive movement of the 1930s, in sentiment <i>and</i> results. Both episodes had some democratizing effects on American Society, while also expanding the size and power of Government. </span><br />
<span style="color: #3d3d3d; font-family: "avenir next" , "avenir" , "roboto" , "segoe ui" , "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 17px;"><br /></span>
<span style="color: #3d3d3d; font-family: "avenir next" , "avenir" , "roboto" , "segoe ui" , "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 17px;">A fundamental factor in opposition to Communism is that its a system in which all supply side resources within a nation's economy are controlled entirely by the government. There are no privatized owners of goods and services, and all prices are fixed, rather than being determined by free market forces. </span><span style="color: #3d3d3d; font-family: "avenir next" , "avenir" , "roboto" , "segoe ui" , "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 17px;">Once Government starts growing, what incentive does it have to slow down, or scale back? </span><br />
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<span style="color: #3d3d3d; font-family: "avenir next" , "avenir" , "roboto" , "segoe ui" , "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 17px;">What is Government? A hierarchy of power structures? Committees of public servants who manipulate Policy? A collection of buildings and boarders sustained by power? Despite being centralized and having figureheads and mouthpieces at all levels, it's not easy to comprehend <i>what</i> it is. One thing that's certain is </span><span style="color: #3d3d3d; font-family: "avenir next" , "avenir" , "roboto" , "segoe ui" , "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 17px;">it's a living organism that grows and evolves to protect its own survival against threats, both external <i>and</i> internal. </span><br />
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<span style="color: #3d3d3d; font-family: "avenir next" , "avenir" , "roboto" , "segoe ui" , "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 17px;">Given our foreign relations during this post-war era, in addition to the tides shifting from within, notorious people like McCarthy who became known for their </span><span style="color: #3d3d3d; font-family: "avenir next" , "avenir" , "roboto" , "segoe ui" , "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 17px;">unscrupulous methods of investigation -- they begin to seem reasonable, and rightfully paranoid. </span><span style="color: #3d3d3d; font-family: "avenir next" , "avenir" , "roboto" , "segoe ui" , "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 17px;">Black budget projects run by governments in the name of protecting a country and it's people are paid by the people but hidden from the people. How can the size of Government be known by the people, if parts of it are hidden? </span><br />
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<span style="color: #3d3d3d; font-family: "avenir next" , "avenir" , "roboto" , "segoe ui" , "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 17px;">The ways Government interfaces with the people are primarily fixed in a mode to make collections: they take money to make money. Tax collection is not an actual earning, yet Government calls it revenue. </span><br />
<span style="color: #3d3d3d; font-family: "avenir next" , "avenir" , "roboto" , "segoe ui" , "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 17px;"><br /></span>
<span style="color: #3d3d3d; font-family: "avenir next" , "avenir" , "roboto" , "segoe ui" , "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 17px;">At another end, it interfaces with private companies for R&D and manufacturing services (today, mainly </span><span style="color: #3d3d3d; font-family: "avenir next" , "avenir" , "roboto" , "segoe ui" , "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 17px;">in the industries of technology and security). A vast private security apparatus is being formed within our country, backed by the government, outside the lucid awareness of the mainstream populace. </span><span style="color: #3d3d3d; font-family: "avenir next" , "avenir" , "roboto" , "segoe ui" , "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 17px;"> </span><span style="color: #3d3d3d; font-family: "avenir next" , "avenir" , "roboto" , "segoe ui" , "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 17px;">Is the government that we know about only the tip of a dark iceberg that grows like a cancer in the dark? </span><br />
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<span style="color: #3d3d3d; font-family: "avenir next" , "avenir" , "roboto" , "segoe ui" , "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 17px;">By the end of the 1970s, we began fighting the Soviets in Afghanistan. This was the beginning of the end of the Soviet Union. The world rejoiced at the fall of the Berlin Wall as the USSR shattered, by the close of the 1980s. Did we believe Capitalism now had the room to thrive to its full potential, since our Soviet enemies were crushed? </span><br />
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<span style="color: #3d3d3d; font-family: "avenir next" , "avenir" , "roboto" , "segoe ui" , "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 17px;">The Communist Party might have lost Russia at that point, but maintained a hold on China. Mao Tse Tung made this official in 1949, yet our relationship with China ran a <i>very</i> different course. Was this because, despite its Communist orientation, China acted more and more like a Capitalist country on the global stage? </span><br />
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<span style="color: #3d3d3d; font-family: "avenir next" , "avenir" , "roboto" , "segoe ui" , "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 17px;">Today, nearly everything we own and use in our homes have been made in China. The virus that's keeping us in indefinite lockdown has been made in China. Ultimately, we sustained trade relations with China despite any ideological differences, and complete disregard for the nature of its government's tyranny against its own people. </span><br />
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<span style="color: #3d3d3d; font-family: "avenir next" , "avenir" , "roboto" , "segoe ui" , "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 17px;">The ideas of ownership and freedom held by an American are vastly different from those that are held by a Chinese person. In the US, one of our main concerns about today's </span><span style="color: #3d3d3d; font-family: "avenir next" , "avenir" , "roboto" , "segoe ui" , "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 17px;">surveillance state</span><span style="color: #3d3d3d; font-family: "avenir next" , "avenir" , "roboto" , "segoe ui" , "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 17px;"> is the depletion of privacy. When speaking to friends in China about this issue, it can be shocking for an American to learn that such a thought barely crosses their minds: to them, their government is everywhere, knows everything, and is always listening. </span><br />
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<span style="color: #3d3d3d; font-family: "avenir next" , "avenir" , "roboto" , "segoe ui" , "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 17px;">China is a perfect portrayal of how Communism and Capitalism can coexist as a single organism that considers itself a god. W</span><span style="color: #3d3d3d; font-family: "avenir next" , "avenir" , "roboto" , "segoe ui" , "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 17px;">hy were we fighting Communism if it can harmonize with Capitalism so successfully? </span><br />
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<span style="color: #3d3d3d; font-family: "avenir next" , "avenir" , "roboto" , "segoe ui" , "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 17px;">We tell ourselves that it was all in the interest of protecting our Democracy, but our human liberties depleted before us, despite the fall of the Soviet Union, right within in the sanctuary of our own Capitalist state. Part of what must be realized is that we were fighting all the wrong battles throughout the mid 20th Century. </span><br />
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<span style="color: #3d3d3d; font-family: "avenir next" , "avenir" , "roboto" , "segoe ui" , "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 17px;">War has exhausted and traumatized us along with countless others throughout the world. The post-war America we so fondly romanticize -- it never truly <i>was</i>, because war never stopped. Still, only after 911 did many of us begin to realize that war is something that is no longer declared. Like any racket, it's ongoing. </span><br />
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<span style="color: #3d3d3d; font-family: "avenir next" , "avenir" , "roboto" , "segoe ui" , "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 17px;">Whether we believe that the events which took place were naturally occurring or planned and systematized, one thing that undeniably unites us is Actuality. It transpires within our shared Reality and holds the material facts of Truth -- the data of what really happened at unambiguous coordinates of space and time. </span><br />
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<span style="color: #3d3d3d; font-family: "avenir next" , "avenir" , "roboto" , "segoe ui" , "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 17px;">From those facts that unite us, we know that 911 triggered the War on Terrorism. From this we also know o</span><span style="color: #3d3d3d; font-family: "avenir next" , "avenir" , "roboto" , "segoe ui" , "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 17px;">ur depleted Democracy stands on its last legs, while Communism arises through China in a form that is </span><span style="color: #3d3d3d; font-family: "avenir next" , "avenir" , "roboto" , "segoe ui" , "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 17px;">stronger than ever before. </span><br />
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<span style="color: #3d3d3d; font-family: "avenir next" , "avenir" , "roboto" , "segoe ui" , "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 17px;">Related posts:</span><br />
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<span style="color: #3d3d3d; font-family: "avenir next" , "avenir" , "roboto" , "segoe ui" , "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 17px;"><a href="https://www.zareenwilhelm.com/2019/07/a-revised-look-at-american-freedom.html">https://www.zareenwilhelm.com/2019/07/a-revised-look-at-american-freedom.html</a> </span><br />
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Zareen Wilhelmhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03621428545462451023noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7986790754756040588.post-27653262602606338772019-10-14T01:38:00.000-04:002019-10-14T07:23:20.972-04:00Unmask the Human Paradox in the Darkness of its Shadow <div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<span style="color: #3d3d3d; font-family: "avenir next" , "avenir" , "roboto" , "segoe ui" , "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 17px;"><br /></span><span style="color: #3d3d3d; font-family: "avenir next" , "avenir" , "roboto" , "segoe ui" , "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 17px;"><br /><br />A noticeable trend in my conversations with people across different mediums is a rise in the use of words like</span><span style="color: #3d3d3d; font-family: "avenir next" , "avenir" , "roboto" , "segoe ui" , "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 17px;"> "good" and "bad", "high" and </span><span style="color: #3d3d3d; font-family: "avenir next" , "avenir" , "roboto" , "segoe ui" , "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 17px;">"low", "win" and "lose" (to list a few</span><span style="color: #3d3d3d; font-family: "avenir next" , "avenir" , "roboto" , "segoe ui" , "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 17px;">). </span><span style="color: #3d3d3d; font-family: "avenir next" , "avenir" , "roboto" , "segoe ui" , "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 17px;">The space of public discourse in modern American society is saturated with expressions of extremism -- but the observations I'm describing are different from attention grabbing pollutants that flood our shared Reality, because these interactions are non-frivolous. </span><span style="color: #3d3d3d; font-family: "avenir next" , "avenir" , "roboto" , "segoe ui" , "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 17px;"> </span><br />
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<span style="color: #3d3d3d; font-family: "avenir next" , "avenir" , "roboto" , "segoe ui" , "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 17px;">"Virtuous" and "evil", </span><span style="color: #3d3d3d; font-family: "avenir next" , "avenir" , "roboto" , "segoe ui" , "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 17px;">"innocent"</span><span style="color: #3d3d3d; font-family: "avenir next" , "avenir" , "roboto" , "segoe ui" , "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 17px;"> and </span><span style="color: #3d3d3d; font-family: "avenir next" , "avenir" , "roboto" , "segoe ui" , "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 17px;">"guilty"</span><span style="color: #3d3d3d; font-family: "avenir next" , "avenir" , "roboto" , "segoe ui" , "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 17px;">, and similar word pairs have a bizarre quality of being unnerving <i>and</i> comfortably reassuring, at the same time. </span><span style="color: #3d3d3d; font-family: "avenir next" , "avenir" , "roboto" , "segoe ui" , "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 17px;">Such seemingly extreme use of language almost always manages to provoke staggered reactions </span><span style="color: #3d3d3d; font-family: "avenir next" , "avenir" , "roboto" , "segoe ui" , "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 17px;">in </span><span style="color: #3d3d3d; font-family: "avenir next" , "avenir" , "roboto" , "segoe ui" , "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 17px;">unsuspecting bystanders within earshot. Like </span><span style="color: #3d3d3d; font-family: "avenir next" , "avenir" , "roboto" , "segoe ui" , "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 17px;">the suppressed hysteria of inebriated beatniks watching a friendly stranger brandish a gun in the middle of a party, we at the receiving end of such use of polarized rhetoric quickly activate subtle avoidance behaviors to politely flee the scene. </span><br />
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<span style="color: #3d3d3d; font-family: "avenir next" , "avenir" , "roboto" , "segoe ui" , "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 17px;">This arousal of fear based response is normal at exposure to ideas we like to believe we understand and have successfully integrated into our character. To afford the confidence we like to exert, uncertainties around this need to be ignored because the larger show must certainly go on. </span><br />
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<span style="color: #3d3d3d; font-family: "avenir next" , "avenir" , "roboto" , "segoe ui" , "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 17px;">We're complicated. Some call it non-binary. A</span><span style="color: #3d3d3d; font-family: "avenir next" , "avenir" , "roboto" , "segoe ui" , "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 17px;"> recognition of complexity is valued as intelligence. We pride ourselves in understanding that the world is not "black" and "white". Parts of our identities even depend on what we think these words mean. </span><span style="color: #3d3d3d; font-family: "avenir next" , "avenir" , "roboto" , "segoe ui" , "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 17px;">So the visible irritation we feel seems rather easy to explain. </span><br />
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<span style="color: #3d3d3d; font-family: "avenir next" , "avenir" , "roboto" , "segoe ui" , "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 17px;">In a world of ever increasing complexity, polarized descriptors of binary states feel like vagaries. Perhaps outright laziness. But somehow, I don't imagine this Halloween's haunted house attractions being decorated with the apparitions of ambiguity and indifference. </span><br />
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<span style="color: #3d3d3d; font-family: "avenir next" , "avenir" , "roboto" , "segoe ui" , "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 17px;">This is a time of year when many Americans postpone their usual evasion of difficult concepts like death and afterlife and monsters, entertaining a universe of thoughts and images about things we normally cannot see. What makes Halloween special to the life of an American is </span><span style="color: #3d3d3d; font-family: "avenir next" , "avenir" , "roboto" , "segoe ui" , "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 17px;">the spotlight its observances cast, on the uniquely human need to </span><i style="color: #3d3d3d; font-family: "avenir next", avenir, roboto, "segoe ui", helvetica, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 17px;">feel</i><span style="color: #3d3d3d; font-family: "avenir next" , "avenir" , "roboto" , "segoe ui" , "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 17px;"> afraid. </span><br />
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<span style="color: #3d3d3d; font-family: "avenir next" , "avenir" , "roboto" , "segoe ui" , "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 17px;">Straining to keep our </span><span style="color: #3d3d3d; font-family: "avenir next" , "avenir" , "roboto" , "segoe ui" , "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 17px;">hearts and minds clear of "negative thoughts" and emotions in an intrusive and chaotic world that's mostly outside of our control, we chant soundbite viruses about positivity and aloofness to each other, reenforcing our diversion from recognizing </span><span style="color: #3d3d3d; font-family: "avenir next" , "avenir" , "roboto" , "segoe ui" , "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 17px;">the very avoidance behaviors that we have collectively embraced as "acceptable". </span><br />
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<span style="color: #3d3d3d; font-family: "avenir next" , "avenir" , "roboto" , "segoe ui" , "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 17px;">Then, finally on the night of October 31st, we get devoured into the </span><span style="color: #3d3d3d; font-family: "avenir next" , "avenir" , "roboto" , "segoe ui" , "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 17px;">frenzy of packing as much recreation and simple sugars into our fear-filled rituals of Halloween such that most of us end up missing the golden opportunity that this holiday bestows. </span><br />
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<span style="color: #3d3d3d; font-family: "avenir next" , "avenir" , "roboto" , "segoe ui" , "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 17px;">By </span><span style="color: #3d3d3d; font-family: "avenir next" , "avenir" , "roboto" , "segoe ui" , "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 17px;">November 1st, as we switch out the Halloween decor for the next holiday, we continue to be haunted by mysteries </span><span style="color: #3d3d3d; font-family: "avenir next" , "avenir" , "roboto" , "segoe ui" , "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 17px;">like, <i>Am I a good person or a bad person</i>? And, <i>When others use words that carry moral weights, what compels me to run</i>? </span><br />
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<span style="color: #3d3d3d; font-family: "avenir next" , "avenir" , "roboto" , "segoe ui" , "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 17px;">As a people, why are we so confused about the existence of evil? </span><span style="color: #3d3d3d; font-family: "avenir next" , "avenir" , "roboto" , "segoe ui" , "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 17px;">How can anyone be sure if morality and goodness have been <i>truly</i> integrated into the character of a human individual? </span><br />
<span style="color: #3d3d3d; font-family: "avenir next" , "avenir" , "roboto" , "segoe ui" , "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 17px;">I'm just as good a person as the next, and have the right as any human being, to make </span><i style="color: #3d3d3d; font-family: "avenir next", avenir, roboto, "segoe ui", helvetica, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 17px;">my</i><span style="color: #3d3d3d; font-family: "avenir next" , "avenir" , "roboto" , "segoe ui" , "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 17px;"> mistakes from which I am destined to learn. </span><br />
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<span style="color: #3d3d3d; font-family: "avenir next" , "avenir" , "roboto" , "segoe ui" , "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 17px;">In a nation where the citizen is either a taxpayer or a consumer, we are trained to view ourselves and our human experiences categorically. We build our identities on the skeletons of demographic profiles -- because that's the way private business and institutions of control need to view us. To fulfill their alleged purposes. </span><br />
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<span style="color: #3d3d3d; font-family: "avenir next" , "avenir" , "roboto" , "segoe ui" , "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 17px;">But the human individual is a vastly different animal from </span><span style="color: #3d3d3d; font-family: "avenir next" , "avenir" , "roboto" , "segoe ui" , "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 17px;">that of the human group. </span><span style="color: #3d3d3d; font-family: "avenir next" , "avenir" , "roboto" , "segoe ui" , "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 17px;">The individual has just one body -- one which requires <i>layers</i> of period upkeep and gets sick at the gust of a wind. </span><span style="color: #3d3d3d; font-family: "avenir next" , "avenir" , "roboto" , "segoe ui" , "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 17px;">Groups are beasts of multiple heads and bodies that theoretically never have to die. </span><br />
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<span style="color: #3d3d3d; font-family: "avenir next" , "avenir" , "roboto" , "segoe ui" , "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 17px;">The</span><span style="color: #3d3d3d; font-family: "avenir next" , "avenir" , "roboto" , "segoe ui" , "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 17px;"> </span><span style="color: #3d3d3d; font-family: "avenir next" , "avenir" , "roboto" , "segoe ui" , "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 17px;">individual isn't supposed to be at war with the human group -- not through Government, banks, schools, secret societies, oppressive relationships, or any of its forms. At the other end, </span><span style="color: #3d3d3d; font-family: "avenir next" , "avenir" , "roboto" , "segoe ui" , "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 17px;">it's the individual's responsibility to sharpen one's understanding of our authentic Self -- the things about us that cannot be captured in </span><span style="color: #3d3d3d; font-family: "avenir next" , "avenir" , "roboto" , "segoe ui" , "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 17px;">group oriented identification schemes. </span><br />
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<span style="color: #3d3d3d; font-family: "avenir next" , "avenir" , "roboto" , "segoe ui" , "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 17px;">To know how to comprehend evil, to answer any of the questions proposed so far, and to </span><span style="color: #3d3d3d; font-family: "avenir next" , "avenir" , "roboto" , "segoe ui" , "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 17px;">understand our own reflexive reactions to the language of conscientiousness, we must first submit to the fact that Nature works very differently from governments and (most) businesses: </span><span style="color: #3d3d3d; font-family: "avenir next" , "avenir" , "roboto" , "segoe ui" , "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 17px;">its operations are </span><span style="color: #3d3d3d; font-family: "avenir next" , "avenir" , "roboto" , "segoe ui" , "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 17px;">comprehensively decentralized.</span><span style="color: #3d3d3d; font-family: "avenir next" , "avenir" , "roboto" , "segoe ui" , "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 17px;"> Therefore, it arms <i>all</i> of us with fear, as it does with freedom. </span><span style="color: #3d3d3d; font-family: "avenir next" , "avenir" , "roboto" , "segoe ui" , "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 17px;">And our fears are </span><span style="color: #3d3d3d; font-family: "avenir next" , "avenir" , "roboto" , "segoe ui" , "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 17px;">our own custom access passes to the world of corruption and malevolence where the most heinous of acts can be justified for targeted ends. </span><br />
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<span style="color: #3d3d3d; font-family: "avenir next" , "avenir" , "roboto" , "segoe ui" , "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 17px;">To have a happy as well as frightening, but most of all, <i>meaningful</i> Halloween, let us all take a moment, stand facing our bathroom mirrors, peel back and glance at what lives behind the </span><span style="color: #3d3d3d; font-family: "avenir next" , "avenir" , "roboto" , "segoe ui" , "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 17px;">beautiful mask we show to ourselves on all other days of the year. </span><br />
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Zareen Wilhelmhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03621428545462451023noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7986790754756040588.post-10655172988741864632019-07-05T00:28:00.001-04:002019-07-05T00:56:56.892-04:00A Revised Look at American Freedom : Happy Independence Day <div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span style="color: #3d3d3d; font-family: "avenir next" , "avenir" , "roboto" , "segoe ui" , "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 17px;"><br /></span><span style="color: #3d3d3d; font-family: "avenir next" , "avenir" , "roboto" , "segoe ui" , "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 17px;"><br /></span><span style="color: #3d3d3d; font-family: "avenir next" , "avenir" , "roboto" , "segoe ui" , "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 17px;">We, as human individuals, voluntarily congregate into an institution we recognize as our society. Each of us relinquish parts of our personal freedoms in exchange for membership. These personal freedoms are what the founders of the United States referred to </span><span style="color: #3d3d3d; font-family: "avenir next" , "avenir" , "roboto" , "segoe ui" , "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 17px;">in the Declaration of Independence,</span><span style="color: #3d3d3d; font-family: "avenir next" , "avenir" , "roboto" , "segoe ui" , "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 17px;"> as "inalienable rights". </span><span style="color: #3d3d3d; font-family: "avenir next" , "avenir" , "roboto" , "segoe ui" , "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 17px;"> </span><br />
<span style="color: #3d3d3d; font-family: "avenir next" , "avenir" , "roboto" , "segoe ui" , "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 17px;"><br /></span><span style="color: #3d3d3d; font-family: "avenir next" , "avenir" , "roboto" , "segoe ui" , "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 17px;">The simple act of joining a group unlocks a cornucopia of new possibilities, while also chipping away at an individual member's personal freedoms. The larger the group gets, the </span><span style="color: #3d3d3d; font-family: "avenir next" , "avenir" , "roboto" , "segoe ui" , "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 17px;">more freedom is expectedly lost at the individual level.</span><span style="color: #3d3d3d; font-family: "avenir next" , "avenir" , "roboto" , "segoe ui" , "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 17px;"> </span><span style="color: #3d3d3d; font-family: "avenir next" , "avenir" , "roboto" , "segoe ui" , "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 17px;"><a href="https://study.com/academy/lesson/economist-milton-friedman-theories-monetary-policy-quiz.html">Friedman</a> mentions this several decades in the past, while today, w</span><span style="color: #3d3d3d; font-family: "avenir next" , "avenir" , "roboto" , "segoe ui" , "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 17px;">e are a global society supported by a global economy on which the sun never sets. </span><br />
<span style="color: #3d3d3d; font-family: "avenir next" , "avenir" , "roboto" , "segoe ui" , "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 17px;"><br /></span><span style="color: #3d3d3d; font-family: "avenir next" , "avenir" , "roboto" , "segoe ui" , "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 17px;">What does this mean about </span><span style="color: #3d3d3d; font-family: "avenir next" , "avenir" , "roboto" , "segoe ui" , "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 17px;">one of the most important documents written in the history of the US? One may argue that the Declaration served its purpose during the Revolutionary War, and that the Constitution was put in place to maintain American freedom, from then on. </span><span style="color: #3d3d3d; font-family: "avenir next" , "avenir" , "roboto" , "segoe ui" , "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 17px;">The problem with this contention is that it ignores </span><span style="color: #3d3d3d; font-family: "avenir next" , "avenir" , "roboto" , "segoe ui" , "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 17px;">the significance of our "inalienable rights" being the center of concern during the creation of Government, at the birth of this country. </span><br />
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<span style="color: #3d3d3d; font-family: "avenir next" , "avenir" , "roboto" , "segoe ui" , "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 17px;">We utilize these rights numerous times a day w</span><span style="color: #3d3d3d; font-family: "avenir next" , "avenir" , "roboto" , "segoe ui" , "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 17px;">ithout needing any keen awareness of the what they are, or why they exist. </span><span style="color: #3d3d3d; font-family: "avenir next" , "avenir" , "roboto" , "segoe ui" , "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 17px;">From the time we wake up to the moment we fall back asleep, we exercise lifestyles that boast of American freedom, without any clear understanding of what it is, or how to take care of it. </span><span style="color: #3d3d3d; font-family: "avenir next" , "avenir" , "roboto" , "segoe ui" , "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 17px;">When asked to clarify our understanding of freedom, we provide answers that studiously reference the disadvantages of living in other countries. The tendency of conversations on this topic to </span><span style="color: #3d3d3d; font-family: "avenir next" , "avenir" , "roboto" , "segoe ui" , "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 17px;">predictably</span><span style="color: #3d3d3d; font-family: "avenir next" , "avenir" , "roboto" , "segoe ui" , "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 17px;"> veer in this direction seems to be a howling reminder about our lack of consensus on one of</span><span style="color: #3d3d3d; font-family: "avenir next" , "avenir" , "roboto" , "segoe ui" , "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 17px;"> the most foundational concepts that grant the celebrations exploding across the country, every year on the 4th of July. </span><br />
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<span style="color: #3d3d3d; font-family: "avenir next" , "avenir" , "roboto" , "segoe ui" , "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 17px;"><span style="color: #3d3d3d; font-family: "avenir next" , "avenir" , "roboto" , "segoe ui" , "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 17px;">To perceive the gravity of the founders' decision to focus on our natural freedoms and rights in their authorship of the Declaration, it is necessary to </span><span style="color: #3d3d3d; font-family: "avenir next" , "avenir" , "roboto" , "segoe ui" , "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 17px;">harness a basic comprehension of what it means to be a human individual. Much like </span><span style="color: #3d3d3d; font-family: "avenir next" , "avenir" , "roboto" , "segoe ui" , "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 17px;">our many animal counterparts, </span><span style="color: #3d3d3d; font-family: "avenir next" , "avenir" , "roboto" , "segoe ui" , "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 17px;">we are hit with a barrage of requirements and wants, from mere moments after being born. Unlike them, we</span><span style="color: #3d3d3d; font-family: "avenir next" , "avenir" , "roboto" , "segoe ui" , "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 17px;"> dedicate our adulthoods to constructing our lives around missions to pursue the things that will perceivably bring about satisfaction and happiness. </span></span><br />
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<span style="color: #3d3d3d; font-family: "avenir next" , "avenir" , "roboto" , "segoe ui" , "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 17px;">To get the things we want, we need to exact changes on the external world. </span><span style="color: #3d3d3d; font-family: "avenir next" , "avenir" , "roboto" , "segoe ui" , "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 17px;">This world is our shared reality. Also considered the <i>objective</i> reality. </span><span style="color: #3d3d3d; font-family: "avenir next" , "avenir" , "roboto" , "segoe ui" , "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 17px;">It's the space in which we are able to make agreements that lead to transactions which </span><span style="color: #3d3d3d; font-family: "avenir next" , "avenir" , "roboto" , "segoe ui" , "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 17px;">allow us to keep Society functioning. W</span><span style="color: #3d3d3d; font-family: "avenir next" , "avenir" , "roboto" , "segoe ui" , "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 17px;">e anticipate our actions to yield some return that respectably matches our expectations. The changes imposed on the objective reality are reflected in price shifts that ripple </span><span style="color: #3d3d3d; font-family: "avenir next" , "avenir" , "roboto" , "segoe ui" , "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 17px;">along the of production lines involved in actualizing [a] given transaction, sweeping through the lives of large parts of a population in increments. </span><br />
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<span style="color: #3d3d3d; font-family: "avenir next" , "avenir" , "roboto" , "segoe ui" , "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 17px;">Internally, we constantly</span><span style="color: #3d3d3d; font-family: "avenir next" , "avenir" , "roboto" , "segoe ui" , "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 17px;"> rebuild </span><span style="color: #3d3d3d; font-family: "avenir next" , "avenir" , "roboto" , "segoe ui" , "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 17px;">and update our <i>sense</i> of freedom, based on </span><span style="color: #3d3d3d; font-family: "avenir next" , "avenir" , "roboto" , "segoe ui" , "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 17px;">our experiences. This is our <i>subjective</i> reality -- the window to Reality which is customized to (and by) an individual. The world we see through our subjective lens needs to approximate what we see through the objective lens. These world views can easily come into conflict</span><span style="color: #3d3d3d; font-family: "avenir next" , "avenir" , "roboto" , "segoe ui" , "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 17px;">, but are ideally meant to be </span><span style="color: #3d3d3d; font-family: "avenir next" , "avenir" , "roboto" , "segoe ui" , "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 17px;">interdependent and noncompeting. Without the </span><span style="color: #3d3d3d; font-family: "avenir next" , "avenir" , "roboto" , "segoe ui" , "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 17px;">anchor of the</span><span style="color: #3d3d3d; font-family: "avenir next" , "avenir" , "roboto" , "segoe ui" , "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 17px;"> collective definition, we are left on our own to decide what it means. </span><br />
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<span style="color: #3d3d3d; font-family: "avenir next" , "avenir" , "roboto" , "segoe ui" , "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 17px;">Being left on this independent journey may seem like liberation at first glance, but </span><span style="color: #3d3d3d; font-family: "avenir next" , "avenir" , "roboto" , "segoe ui" , "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 17px;">freedom </span><span style="color: #3d3d3d; font-family: "avenir next" , "avenir" , "roboto" , "segoe ui" , "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 17px;">is larger than our own subjective realities and emotions.</span><span style="color: #3d3d3d; font-family: "avenir next" , "avenir" , "roboto" , "segoe ui" , "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 17px;"> What the founders called "liberty" is a feature built in to the biological structure of human existence, that drive us to engage in planning, investing, speculating, waiting, and other economic behaviors that help us help ourselves achieve the happiness we are each seeking. </span><br />
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<span style="color: #3d3d3d; font-family: "avenir next" , "avenir" , "roboto" , "segoe ui" , "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 17px;">Institutional interests in protecting our freedom </span><span style="color: #3d3d3d; font-family: "avenir next" , "avenir" , "roboto" , "segoe ui" , "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 17px;">heavily</span><span style="color: #3d3d3d; font-family: "avenir next" , "avenir" , "roboto" , "segoe ui" , "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 17px;"> imply that there exists a shared understanding, that our economic system must be flexible enough to smoothly adjust to the ever changing nature of consumer demographics and desires. </span><br />
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<span style="color: #3d3d3d; font-family: "avenir next" , "avenir" , "roboto" , "segoe ui" , "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 17px;">The freedom we share together in our objective reality is intrinsic to the freedom we feel internally. When complications arise (seemingly) randomly throughout the system, getting in the way of people's dreams, our psychology for handling this uncertainty is modeled with some defense mechanisms, and some more sophisticated faculties which help us perform optimally beyond our initial reactions. </span><br />
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<span style="color: #3d3d3d; font-family: "avenir next" , "avenir" , "roboto" , "segoe ui" , "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 17px;">When learning about cases of censorship, exploitation, </span><span style="color: #3d3d3d; font-family: "avenir next" , "avenir" , "roboto" , "segoe ui" , "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 17px;">malicious targeting, enslavement, and other forms of hardship endured by other individuals on the same </span><span style="color: #3d3d3d; font-family: "avenir next" , "avenir" , "roboto" , "segoe ui" , "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 17px;">networks and platforms that we use regularly, </span><span style="color: #3d3d3d; font-family: "avenir next" , "avenir" , "roboto" , "segoe ui" , "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 17px;">each of us should be triggered with alarm. Wrapped in the focused concerns of our personal ambitions, we often write these instances off as simply being</span><span style="color: #3d3d3d; font-family: "avenir next" , "avenir" , "roboto" , "segoe ui" , "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 17px;"> unlucky in a system which </span><i style="color: #3d3d3d; font-family: "avenir next", avenir, roboto, "segoe ui", helvetica, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 17px;">usually</i><span style="color: #3d3d3d; font-family: "avenir next" , "avenir" , "roboto" , "segoe ui" , "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 17px;"> works. </span><br />
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<span style="color: #3d3d3d; font-family: "avenir next" , "avenir" , "roboto" , "segoe ui" , "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 17px;">Because freedom exists both externally <i>and</i> internally, exposure to this information should be enough to motivate us to mobilize against such attacks on freedom, for they will eventually find their way into <i>our</i> </span><span style="color: #3d3d3d; font-family: "avenir next" , "avenir" , "roboto" , "segoe ui" , "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 17px;">inboxes and onto our doorsteps, otherwise. </span><span style="color: #3d3d3d; font-family: "avenir next" , "avenir" , "roboto" , "segoe ui" , "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 17px;">This knee jerk trigger can be avoided however, by living in a society where the individuals </span><span style="color: #3d3d3d; font-family: "avenir next" , "avenir" , "roboto" , "segoe ui" , "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 17px;">only</span><span style="color: #3d3d3d; font-family: "avenir next" , "avenir" , "roboto" , "segoe ui" , "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 17px;"> </span><span style="color: #3d3d3d; font-family: "avenir next" , "avenir" , "roboto" , "segoe ui" , "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 17px;">nurture their subjective ideations of freedom, with little regard to the freedom that is experienced collectively. </span><br />
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<span style="color: #3d3d3d; font-family: "avenir next" , "avenir" , "roboto" , "segoe ui" , "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 17px;">Despite our biological setup, a</span><span style="color: #3d3d3d; font-family: "avenir next" , "avenir" , "roboto" , "segoe ui" , "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 17px;">s long as our paths to our own dreams remain uninterrupted, </span><span style="color: #3d3d3d; font-family: "avenir next" , "avenir" , "roboto" , "segoe ui" , "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 17px;">we </span><span style="color: #3d3d3d; font-family: "avenir next" , "avenir" , "roboto" , "segoe ui" , "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 17px;">keep our noses to the grind and label</span><span style="color: #3d3d3d; font-family: "avenir next" , "avenir" , "roboto" , "segoe ui" , "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 17px;"> this as "minding our own business". </span><span style="color: #3d3d3d; font-family: "avenir next" , "avenir" , "roboto" , "segoe ui" , "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 17px;">Convinced that our personal freedoms can thrive without the support of external forces, we make ourselves points of vulnerability to enslavement -- the very opposite of freedom. </span><br />
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<span style="color: #3d3d3d; font-family: "avenir next" , "avenir" , "roboto" , "segoe ui" , "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 17px;">Like freedom, enslavement is presented within both subjective and objective realities. T</span><span style="color: #3d3d3d; font-family: "avenir next" , "avenir" , "roboto" , "segoe ui" , "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 17px;">he telling of American history as done through textbooks make it almost natural for us to maintain an exclusively institutional perspective on slavery, and an exclusively individualized perspective on freedom. This is an imbalance mindset that is governed by laziness: it allows to </span><span style="color: #3d3d3d; font-family: "avenir next" , "avenir" , "roboto" , "segoe ui" , "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 17px;">forget that freedom is not granted by an external source (other than our "Creator", as mentioned in the Declaration). With this, we also forget that to be affected by slavery, the enslavement need not occur via brute force, by any external party. </span><br />
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<span style="color: #3d3d3d; font-family: "avenir next" , "avenir" , "roboto" , "segoe ui" , "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 17px;">This mentality casts a blindspot for the individual, on the opportunities of self enslavement that litter our shared reality like minefields, furnished by high ranking professionals in the industries of advertising and public relations. Their jobs are to hack human individuals (and groups) for consent. Engineered consent is the key to the popularized term "modern enslavement". When this term is mentioned in live conversation, it is </span><span style="color: #3d3d3d; font-family: "avenir next" , "avenir" , "roboto" , "segoe ui" , "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 17px;">usually</span><span style="color: #3d3d3d; font-family: "avenir next" , "avenir" , "roboto" , "segoe ui" , "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 17px;"> </span><span style="color: #3d3d3d; font-family: "avenir next" , "avenir" , "roboto" , "segoe ui" , "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 17px;">followed by nervous laughter. </span><br />
<span style="color: #3d3d3d; font-family: "avenir next" , "avenir" , "roboto" , "segoe ui" , "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 17px;"><br /></span><span style="color: #3d3d3d; font-family: "avenir next" , "avenir" , "roboto" , "segoe ui" , "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 17px;">The Declaration of Independence was never expected to protect Americans from all the possible ways personal freedom can deteriorate. Nature itself mercilessly sabotages all possibility for the most intricately planned and highly anticipated happenings, </span><span style="color: #3d3d3d; font-family: "avenir next" , "avenir" , "roboto" , "segoe ui" , "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 17px;">with a single bug reeking havoc on an immune system. Freedom can degrade gradually (through natural as well as rigged processes); it can be eliminated entirely, in one blow; and it can be manipulated to dysfunction, or the serve others (outside of an individual's body). The sensitivity of this organic material requires vigilant </span><span style="color: #3d3d3d; font-family: "avenir next" , "avenir" , "roboto" , "segoe ui" , "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 17px;">monitoring -- something that the founding fathers of the United States </span><span style="color: #3d3d3d; font-family: "avenir next" , "avenir" , "roboto" , "segoe ui" , "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 17px;">clearly knew. </span><br />
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Zareen Wilhelmhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03621428545462451023noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7986790754756040588.post-72362667771398276492018-12-17T08:59:00.001-05:002018-12-17T09:01:26.198-05:00Why Wealth Wastes While We Age Against the Machine <div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span style="color: #3d3d3d; font-family: "avenir next" , "avenir" , "roboto" , "segoe ui" , "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 17px;"><br /></span><span style="color: #3d3d3d; font-family: "avenir next" , "avenir" , "roboto" , "segoe ui" , "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 17px;"><br /></span><span style="color: #3d3d3d; font-family: "avenir next" , "avenir" , "roboto" , "segoe ui" , "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 17px;">I want people to succeed and be happy. </span><span style="color: #3d3d3d; font-family: "avenir next" , "avenir" , "roboto" , "segoe ui" , "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 17px;">Does that mean I should support the increase of a minimum wage? </span><span style="color: #3d3d3d; font-family: "avenir next" , "avenir" , "roboto" , "segoe ui" , "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 17px;">For instance, say the minimum wage is $5/hr and we raise it to $7/hr. </span></span><span style="color: #3d3d3d; font-family: "avenir next" , "avenir" , "roboto" , "segoe ui" , "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 17px;">Some people will </span><span style="color: #3d3d3d; font-family: "avenir next" , "avenir" , "roboto" , "segoe ui" , "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 17px;">be earning $2 more on the hour while others get laid off as businesses respond to this wage increase by cutting expenses on labor. </span><span style="color: #3d3d3d; font-family: "avenir next" , "avenir" , "roboto" , "segoe ui" , "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 17px;">Are we a happier community? </span><br />
<span style="color: #3d3d3d; font-family: "avenir next" , "avenir" , "roboto" , "segoe ui" , "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 17px;"><br /></span><span style="color: #3d3d3d; font-family: "avenir next" , "avenir" , "roboto" , "segoe ui" , "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 17px;">I would naturally assume that a happier community would more likely result from a <i>drop</i> in unemployment. To make the market more attractive to those on the demand side, I would want to drop the price of labor rather than raise it. (That would stimulate some hiring activity but leave most everyone else</span><span style="color: #3d3d3d; font-family: "avenir next" , "avenir" , "roboto" , "segoe ui" , "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 17px;"> [in this given population] a little less wealthy across the board.) </span><br />
<span style="color: #3d3d3d; font-family: "avenir next" , "avenir" , "roboto" , "segoe ui" , "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 17px;"><br /></span><span style="color: #3d3d3d; font-family: "avenir next" , "avenir" , "roboto" , "segoe ui" , "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 17px;">As for those who end up making $2 more on the hour, how much of a jump on the quality of life index are they really making? These are still people who are working at a minimum wage -- <i>that</i> has not changed. </span><span style="color: #3d3d3d; font-family: "avenir next" , "avenir" , "roboto" , "segoe ui" , "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 17px;">The other side of this coin is exactly that: the people and their quality of life relative to their immediate needs. </span><br />
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<span style="color: #3d3d3d; font-family: "avenir next" , "avenir" , "roboto" , "segoe ui" , "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 17px;">Some have their backs up against the wall and need the extra $2 to surf the economic flush that sends people down into the sewer cities populated by monsters with night vision and the forgotten homeless. </span><span style="color: #3d3d3d; font-family: "avenir next" , "avenir" , "roboto" , "segoe ui" , "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 17px;">To have a segment of society that exists in such a financial state of emergency where this type of wage increase makes a difference is itself an unsettling sign of a system that is terminally flawed. </span></span><br />
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<span style="color: #3d3d3d; font-family: "avenir next" , "avenir" , "roboto" , "segoe ui" , "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 17px;">T</span></span><span style="color: #3d3d3d; font-family: "avenir next" , "avenir" , "roboto" , "segoe ui" , "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 17px;">he flaws in our systems of government and currency are still not naturally the primary threats to the human condition: w</span><span style="color: #3d3d3d; font-family: "avenir next" , "avenir" , "roboto" , "segoe ui" , "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 17px;">e are all subject to aging and mortality, and we all care about people who are subject to the same, </span><span style="color: #3d3d3d; font-family: "avenir next" , "avenir" , "roboto" , "segoe ui" , "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 17px;">regardless of the kind of societies we live in or who we are within them. Having more capital means having better options as far as ways in which to protect ourselves and our families from the threats imposed on our welfare for simply being alive. </span><br />
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<span style="color: #3d3d3d; font-family: "avenir next" , "avenir" , "roboto" , "segoe ui" , "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 17px;">Reality serves up the consequences of every decision we make. </span><span style="color: #3d3d3d; font-family: "avenir next" , "avenir" , "roboto" , "segoe ui" , "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 17px;">Those of us with an insurance payout or a pension or a trust fund, etc., can use these financial tools to battle against the blades of reality and maybe turn up injured but ultimately recover enough to reclaim their fiduciary footing. </span><br />
<span style="color: #3d3d3d; font-family: "avenir next" , "avenir" , "roboto" , "segoe ui" , "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 17px;"><br /></span></span><span style="color: #3d3d3d; font-family: "avenir next" , "avenir" , "roboto" , "segoe ui" , "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 17px;">I'm obviously not talking about the comfortably affluent who's "money works for them" instead of the other way around. I'm talking about the modest financial growth achieved through honest labor and </span></span><span style="color: #3d3d3d; font-family: "avenir next" , "avenir" , "roboto" , "segoe ui" , "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 17px;">dedication,</span><span style="color: #3d3d3d; font-family: "avenir next" , "avenir" , "roboto" , "segoe ui" , "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 17px;"> or inheritance from a dead relative -- a chunk of money that helps a few people climb out of the rough conditions historically endured in working class poverty. These are the few recognized in the Marxist school of economic philosophy as the </span></span><span style="color: #3d3d3d; font-family: "avenir next" , "avenir" , "roboto" , "segoe ui" , "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 17px;">"the petty</span></span><span style="color: #3d3d3d; font-family: "avenir next" , "avenir" , "roboto" , "segoe ui" , "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 17px;"> bourgeoisie", while in US Capitalism, are the middle class. P</span><span style="color: #3d3d3d; font-family: "avenir next" , "avenir" , "roboto" , "segoe ui" , "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 17px;">roudly celebrated for their role in the [usually cultural and/or technological] advancement of a society over extended time, the middle class is ultimately liquidated (like any other exploitable cohort) through heavy taxing, inflationary erosion of their savings, along with tantalizing interest rates inviting them to build more debt. </span><br />
<span style="color: #3d3d3d; font-family: "avenir next" , "avenir" , "roboto" , "segoe ui" , "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 17px;"><br /></span><span style="color: #3d3d3d; font-family: "avenir next" , "avenir" , "roboto" , "segoe ui" , "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 17px;">In the mean time, the Federal Reserve exercises quantitative easing, a practice of printing money for paying off debts, distribute stimulus packages and bailouts -- basically, whenever money is needed. As this occurs in a country that is supposed to be the best in the world, (a) there shouldn't be any poverty, and (b) none of us should have to be working. All our debts should be paid off in the same way, and the work we do as individuals should purely be driven by non-monetary motivations. After all, </span><span style="color: #3d3d3d; font-family: "avenir next" , "avenir" , "roboto" , "segoe ui" , "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 17px;">t</span><span style="color: #3d3d3d; font-family: "avenir next" , "avenir" , "roboto" , "segoe ui" , "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 17px;">he US government is supposed to be "by the people, for the people". </span><br />
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<span style="color: #3d3d3d; font-family: "avenir next" , "avenir" , "roboto" , "segoe ui" , "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 17px;">Instead, the federal government has distinguished itself as separate from the citizens, wrapped in an unholy union with the privately owned Federal Reserve, rolling out debt at a staggering rate, as if there </span><span style="color: #3d3d3d; font-family: "avenir next" , "avenir" , "roboto" , "segoe ui" , "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 17px;">is no limit to the amount of debt that it can afford to issue. Instead of working to serve the citizens that should make up it's constituent body, a government made up of agencies run by people in appointed positions spend as much as they like on lofty private interests </span><span style="color: #3d3d3d; font-family: "avenir next" , "avenir" , "roboto" , "segoe ui" , "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 17px;">while members of the middle class argue over whether or not to give the working poor another $2 an hour, because we know that that money will come from no where but our own wallets. </span><span style="color: #3d3d3d; font-family: "avenir next" , "avenir" , "roboto" , "segoe ui" , "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 17px;">H</span><span style="color: #3d3d3d; font-family: "avenir next" , "avenir" , "roboto" , "segoe ui" , "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 17px;">eavily taxed to fund programs over which we have little control to fuel spending which is purposefully untraceable, we argue over pennies w</span><span style="color: #3d3d3d; font-family: "avenir next" , "avenir" , "roboto" , "segoe ui" , "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 17px;">hile the lives of those on the poverty line hang in the balance. </span><br />
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<span style="color: #3d3d3d; font-family: "avenir next" , "avenir" , "roboto" , "segoe ui" , "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 17px;">T</span><span style="color: #3d3d3d; font-family: "avenir next" , "avenir" , "roboto" , "segoe ui" , "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 17px;">he</span><span style="color: #3d3d3d; font-family: "avenir next" , "avenir" , "roboto" , "segoe ui" , "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 17px;"> m</span><span style="color: #3d3d3d; font-family: "avenir next" , "avenir" , "roboto" , "segoe ui" , "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 17px;">inimum wage of course, is just one of the countless topics over which to bicker while our youth and our assets degrade. </span><span style="color: #3d3d3d; font-family: "avenir next" , "avenir" , "roboto" , "segoe ui" , "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 17px;">The question of whether or not to raise minimum wage is not easy to answer, and keeps us at odds with each other based on differences in our ideologies (as if that difference matters). It's a distraction that prevents us from eliminating the need for a minimum wage, and by now we've also nearly forgotten about the importance of being a happier community of people. </span><br />
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<span style="color: #3d3d3d; font-family: "avenir next" , "avenir" , "roboto" , "segoe ui" , "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 17px;">Next time, I'd like to focus on the dangers of a topic which is far less debated: the maximum wage. </span><br />
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Zareen Wilhelmhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03621428545462451023noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7986790754756040588.post-10416973686696201282017-12-15T21:18:00.000-05:002018-03-31T12:23:54.125-04:00Crude Affinity with Extraordinary Timing (or, How to be Best Frenemies for Life) - Part 1<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span style="color: #3d3d3d; font-family: "avenir next" , "avenir" , "roboto" , "segoe ui" , "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 17px;">The series finale of </span><span style="color: #3d3d3d; font-family: "avenir next" , "avenir" , "roboto" , "segoe ui" , "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 17px;"><a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0098904/">Seinfeld</a> aired in two parts back in the late nineties, and on that night the phone wouldn't stop ringing. The characters who taught me most of what I knew by then about all of life's lessons were being sent to prison in these last episodes, so I was glued to the set while my dad was answering the phone. </span><span style="color: #3d3d3d; font-family: "avenir next" , "avenir" , "roboto" , "segoe ui" , "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 17px;"> </span><span style="color: #3d3d3d; font-family: "avenir next" , "avenir" , "roboto" , "segoe ui" , "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 17px;"> </span><br />
<span style="color: #3d3d3d; font-family: "avenir next" , "avenir" , "roboto" , "segoe ui" , "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 17px;"> "Why does she keep calling every five minutes? </span><span style="color: #3d3d3d; font-family: "avenir next" , "avenir" , "roboto" , "segoe ui" , "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 17px;">I already told her you'll call her back." </span><br />
<span style="color: #3d3d3d; font-family: "avenir next" , "avenir" , "roboto" , "segoe ui" , "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 17px;">He was trying to assess the situation but in reality, there <i>was</i> no situation: this invasive tenacity was her signature. She ensconced herself in my family so quickly that my parents had been asking me about her whereabouts ever since. </span><br />
<span style="background-color: white;"><span style="color: #3d3d3d; font-family: "avenir next" , "avenir" , "roboto" , "segoe ui" , "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 17px;"><br /></span>
<span style="color: #3d3d3d; font-family: "avenir next" , "avenir" , "roboto" , "segoe ui" , "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 17px;">We first ran into each other in high school -- I was a freshman, and she, a sophomore. She'd wait for me outside of my class until the bell rang, and walk with me to my next one. One time she was waiting for me outside of chemistry, watching me stroll out, and </span><span style="color: #3d3d3d; font-family: "avenir next" , "avenir" , "roboto" , "segoe ui" , "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 17px;">made a remark about the "swagger" in my walk. </span></span><br />
<span style="background-color: white; color: #3d3d3d; font-family: "avenir next" , "avenir" , "roboto" , "segoe ui" , "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 17px;"> "Looks like you must think highly of yourself." </span><br />
<span style="background-color: white;"><span style="color: #3d3d3d; font-family: "avenir next" , "avenir" , "roboto" , "segoe ui" , "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 17px;">She'd wait for me to react, suppressing a smile that bubbled up her face and glistened through her eyes -- an expression that made her look</span></span><span style="color: #3d3d3d; font-family: "avenir next" , "avenir" , "roboto" , "segoe ui" , "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 17px;"> </span><span style="color: #3d3d3d; font-family: "avenir next" , "avenir" , "roboto" , "segoe ui" , "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 17px;">like someone who very well knew she had said something infuriating. </span><span style="color: #3d3d3d; font-family: "avenir next" , "avenir" , "roboto" , "segoe ui" , "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 17px;">She frequently won the honor of being the most annoying person I ever met, but this particular remark (like many she would make after it) had me in a headlock of self reflection. </span><br />
<span style="background-color: white;"><span style="color: #3d3d3d; font-family: "avenir next" , "avenir" , "roboto" , "segoe ui" , "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 17px;"><br /></span>
<span style="color: #3d3d3d; font-family: "avenir next" , "avenir" , "roboto" , "segoe ui" , "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 17px;">Another time she said something notable about my gate, we were cutting through the East Village, headed toward Japantown. I never tried tokayaki before, so </span><span style="color: #3d3d3d; font-family: "avenir next" , "avenir" , "roboto" , "segoe ui" , "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 17px;">she was leading me to a hole-in-the-wall vendor who she claimed made it better than anyone else. </span><span style="color: #3d3d3d; font-family: "avenir next" , "avenir" , "roboto" , "segoe ui" , "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 17px;">With my hands in my pockets and her arm wrapped around mine, locked at the elbows, jackets buttoned, we marched in sync through the cold air of early spring.</span><span style="color: #3d3d3d; font-family: "avenir next" , "avenir" , "roboto" , "segoe ui" , "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 17px;"> S</span><span style="color: #3d3d3d; font-family: "avenir next" , "avenir" , "roboto" , "segoe ui" , "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 17px;">he abruptly interrupted [whatever we were talking about] with, </span></span><br />
<span style="background-color: white; color: #3d3d3d; font-family: "avenir next" , "avenir" , "roboto" , "segoe ui" , "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 17px;"> "Do you hate me?!" </span><br />
<span style="background-color: white; color: #3d3d3d; font-family: "avenir next" , "avenir" , "roboto" , "segoe ui" , "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 17px;">Mildly aloof, I gave her a puzzled shrug as I slowed down, throwing off our synchronicity. </span><br />
<span style="background-color: white; color: #3d3d3d; font-family: "avenir next" , "avenir" , "roboto" , "segoe ui" , "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 17px;"> "You walk fast, so I pick up my pace to keep up with you. But then you walk even <i>faster</i>. It's like you don't want to be seen with me!" </span><br />
<span style="background-color: white; color: #3d3d3d; font-family: "avenir next" , "avenir" , "roboto" , "segoe ui" , "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 17px;">The idea she had of me was always somewhat unclear, which was fine -- I wasn't trying to understand it. She rarely criticized me with direct blows, but even when she did, she still had a gentleness about her that I was undoubtedly missing. </span><br />
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<span style="color: #3d3d3d; font-family: "avenir next" , "avenir" , "roboto" , "segoe ui" , "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 17px;"><b>* * *</b></span></div>
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<span style="color: #3d3d3d; font-family: "avenir next" , "avenir" , "roboto" , "segoe ui" , "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 17px;">Born in the state of Texas, she was adopted at a very young age by an interracial family of <span style="background-color: white;">unlikely personalities</span> in Park Slope. </span><span style="color: #3d3d3d; font-family: "avenir next" , "avenir" , "roboto" , "segoe ui" , "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 17px;">I would visit them at their classic three story brownstone, purchased </span><span style="color: #3d3d3d; font-family: "avenir next" , "avenir" , "roboto" , "segoe ui" , "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 17px;">by her grandmother</span><span style="color: #3d3d3d; font-family: "avenir next" , "avenir" , "roboto" , "segoe ui" , "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 17px;"> </span><span style="color: #3d3d3d; font-family: "avenir next" , "avenir" , "roboto" , "segoe ui" , "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 17px;">at the memorable cost of fifty thousand dollars,</span><span style="color: #3d3d3d; font-family: "avenir next" , "avenir" , "roboto" , "segoe ui" , "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 17px;"> thirty something years earlier. Similar to my own family, her's had a cast of characters consisting of routinely neglectful parents, curiously eccentric aunts and uncles, and grandparents who were fiercely progressive (at least, for their generation). </span><br />
<span style="color: #3d3d3d; font-family: "avenir next" , "avenir" , "roboto" , "segoe ui" , "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 17px;"><br /></span>
<span style="color: #3d3d3d; font-family: "avenir next" , "avenir" , "roboto" , "segoe ui" , "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 17px;">Among the most unforgettable of her family members is </span><span style="color: #3d3d3d; font-family: "avenir next" , "avenir" , "roboto" , "segoe ui" , "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 17px;">her uncle, Harrington. I met him and </span></span><span style="color: #3d3d3d; font-family: "avenir next" , "avenir" , "roboto" , "segoe ui" , "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 17px;">his son, H</span></span><span style="color: #3d3d3d; font-family: "avenir next" , "avenir" , "roboto" , "segoe ui" , "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 17px;">arrington Jr., at their residence one afternoon -- Jr. was around seven or eight. </span><span style="color: #3d3d3d; font-family: "avenir next" , "avenir" , "roboto" , "segoe ui" , "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 17px;">Standing together, speaking to her grandmother who sat by the large fireplace, our voices drifted softly back and forth in their cavernous livingroom. Suddenly a booming command spoken in a Brooklyn accent swept </span><span style="color: #3d3d3d; font-family: "avenir next" , "avenir" , "roboto" , "segoe ui" , "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 17px;">across the spacious kitchen in the adjacent room, bouncing off the high ceilings. </span><br />
<span style="background-color: white; color: #3d3d3d; font-family: "avenir next" , "avenir" , "roboto" , "segoe ui" , "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 17px;"> "Boy, you better un-<i>fuck</i> yourself before I come over there and do it <i>for</i> you!" </span><br />
<span style="background-color: white; color: #3d3d3d; font-family: "avenir next" , "avenir" , "roboto" , "segoe ui" , "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 17px;"> Leaning into my ear, she explained, "That's what Harrington says anytime Jr gets himself in trouble." </span><br />
<span style="background-color: white; color: #3d3d3d; font-family: "avenir next" , "avenir" , "roboto" , "segoe ui" , "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 17px;">This was the foghorn of our introduction. </span><br />
<span style="background-color: white;"><span style="color: #3d3d3d; font-family: "avenir next" , "avenir" , "roboto" , "segoe ui" , "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 17px;"><br /></span>
<span style="color: #3d3d3d; font-family: "avenir next" , "avenir" , "roboto" , "segoe ui" , "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 17px;">Not long after, I'd run into Harrington at the central library in Brooklyn -- the big one with the monumental columns embedded with gold hermetic symbols framing the entrance. </span><span style="color: #3d3d3d; font-family: "avenir next" , "avenir" , "roboto" , "segoe ui" , "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 17px;">Faced down in a reference book and taking notes</span><span style="color: #3d3d3d; font-family: "avenir next" , "avenir" , "roboto" , "segoe ui" , "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 17px;"> </span><span style="color: #3d3d3d; font-family: "avenir next" , "avenir" , "roboto" , "segoe ui" , "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 17px;">frantically</span><span style="color: #3d3d3d; font-family: "avenir next" , "avenir" , "roboto" , "segoe ui" , "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 17px;">, </span><span style="color: #3d3d3d; font-family: "avenir next" , "avenir" , "roboto" , "segoe ui" , "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 17px;">I heard my name called in a loud whisper from across the bench where I was sitting. I looked up to see the uncommon interracial facial features of Harrington, peering at me from a diagonal through his steel framed glasses and smiling. </span><span style="color: #3d3d3d; font-family: "avenir next" , "avenir" , "roboto" , "segoe ui" , "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 17px;">Happy to see each other, we both moved down our respective sides of the bench to sit closer, keeping our voices down as we talked. He asked me about my research and to [whatever my answer was], he responded, </span></span><br />
<span style="background-color: white; color: #3d3d3d; font-family: "avenir next" , "avenir" , "roboto" , "segoe ui" , "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 17px;"> "That reminds me of my time in Vietnam." </span><br />
<span style="background-color: white;"><span style="color: #3d3d3d; font-family: "avenir next" , "avenir" , "roboto" , "segoe ui" , "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 17px;">Intrigued, I put my pen down and gave in to this opportunity. His horrific war adventures were </span><span style="color: #3d3d3d; font-family: "avenir next" , "avenir" , "roboto" , "segoe ui" , "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 17px;">everything that a bored sixteen year old stuck at a library after school would want to hear. After his first tour in Vietnam, he explained how he did four more tours voluntarily. He was clearly a proud nationalist, fighting to protect capitalism in some of the most savage conditions of modern history. </span></span><br />
<span style="background-color: white;"><span style="color: #3d3d3d; font-family: "avenir next" , "avenir" , "roboto" , "segoe ui" , "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 17px;"><br /></span>
<span style="color: #3d3d3d; font-family: "avenir next" , "avenir" , "roboto" , "segoe ui" , "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 17px;">This happened a few more times over the next couple of weeks. </span><span style="color: #3d3d3d; font-family: "avenir next" , "avenir" , "roboto" , "segoe ui" , "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 17px;">I hadn't run into her during this time, and when I finally did, I slammed her with a ton of questions about what she knew about her uncle's time in combat. </span></span><br />
<span style="background-color: white; color: #3d3d3d; font-family: "avenir next" , "avenir" , "roboto" , "segoe ui" , "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 17px;"> "You know none of that's true, right? He never went to Vietnam." </span><br />
<span style="background-color: white;"><span style="color: #3d3d3d; font-family: "avenir next" , "avenir" , "roboto" , "segoe ui" , "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 17px;">I</span><span style="color: #3d3d3d; font-family: "avenir next" , "avenir" , "roboto" , "segoe ui" , "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 17px;"> must've had an appalled look on my face because before I could say a word, she mirrored my sentiment and shrieked, </span></span><br />
<span style="background-color: white; color: #3d3d3d; font-family: "avenir next" , "avenir" , "roboto" , "segoe ui" , "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 17px;"> "Come <i>on</i>! Who goes to Vietnam voluntarily?! He's been telling those stories for as <i>long</i> as I've known him -- don't believe any of it!" </span><br />
<span style="background-color: white; color: #3d3d3d; font-family: "avenir next" , "avenir" , "roboto" , "segoe ui" , "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 17px;">Maybe I should've been upset, but this bombshell only made things all the more fascinating. I would see him again many times over, never confronting him about any of it. </span><br />
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<span style="color: #3d3d3d; font-family: "avenir next" , "avenir" , "roboto" , "segoe ui" , "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 17px;"><b><br class="Apple-interchange-newline" />* * *</b></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white;"><span style="color: #3d3d3d; font-family: "avenir next" , "avenir" , "roboto" , "segoe ui" , "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 17px;"></span><span style="color: #3d3d3d; font-family: "avenir next" , "avenir" , "roboto" , "segoe ui" , "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 17px;"><span style="color: #3d3d3d;">Our communication was spotty while I attended college in the city of Boston, and by the time I returned to New York, she was living in a cozy downtown apartment with Harrington and his kids on Washington Ave. From their livingroom, a </span></span></span><span style="color: #3d3d3d; font-family: "avenir next" , "avenir" , "roboto" , "segoe ui" , "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 17px;">narrow spiral staircase descended down into Harrington's den, which had </span><span style="color: #3d3d3d; font-family: "avenir next" , "avenir" , "roboto" , "segoe ui" , "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 17px;">walls covered by books shelves to the ceiling. Among his books, I was delighted to find a [then] recently published copy of <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Age-Turbulence-Adventures-New-World/dp/B000W56R7I">Age of Turbulence: Adventures in a New World</a>, by <a href="https://www.federalreservehistory.org/people/alan_greenspan">Alan Greenspan</a>. The warnings Greenspan claims to have made throughout the book never saved us from the financial quicksand that engulfed the</span><span style="color: #3d3d3d; font-family: "avenir next" , "avenir" , "roboto" , "segoe ui" , "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 17px;"> </span><span style="color: #3d3d3d; font-family: "avenir next" , "avenir" , "roboto" , "segoe ui" , "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 17px;">American economy</span><span style="color: #3d3d3d; font-family: "avenir next" , "avenir" , "roboto" , "segoe ui" , "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 17px;"> by 2008. T</span><span style="color: #3d3d3d; font-family: "avenir next" , "avenir" , "roboto" , "segoe ui" , "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 17px;">his book was also going to be the bane of the unusually shaped rapport Harrington and I had been developing. </span><span style="color: #3d3d3d; font-family: "avenir next" , "avenir" , "roboto" , "segoe ui" , "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 17px;"> </span></span><br />
<span style="background-color: #d9d2e9; color: #3d3d3d; font-family: "avenir next" , "avenir" , "roboto" , "segoe ui" , "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 17px;"><br /></span>
<span style="background-color: white;"><span style="color: #3d3d3d; font-family: "avenir next" , "avenir" , "roboto" , "segoe ui" , "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 17px;">I found a job in a laboratory in the Bronx, and with it, an apartment on the top floor of a noisy building on Gun Hill Rd which had bullet holes through the main door out front. Whenever I ran into other tenants in the lobby while carrying bags or luggage, they'd always offer to help but never appeared as though they were capable. (The only way to respond of course, was to politely decline and ask them about their day and how they were doing.) </span></span><span style="color: #3d3d3d; font-family: "avenir next" , "avenir" , "roboto" , "segoe ui" , "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 17px;">My roommate was a middle aged Dutch woman with a heavy accent, a chain smoking habit, and a serious addiction to the tv gameshow, </span><span style="color: #3d3d3d; font-family: "avenir next" , "avenir" , "roboto" , "segoe ui" , "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 17px;"><a href="https://www.jeopardy.com/">Jeopardy</a></span><span style="color: #3d3d3d; font-family: "avenir next" , "avenir" , "roboto" , "segoe ui" , "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 17px;">. I'd watch it with her sometimes but if ever I wanted to watch anything on a different channel that collided with that time slot, I would have to go to the corner pizza shop down the block. </span><br />
<span style="color: #3d3d3d; font-family: "avenir next" , "avenir" , "roboto" , "segoe ui" , "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 17px;"><br /></span>
<span style="color: #3d3d3d; font-family: "avenir next" , "avenir" , "roboto" , "segoe ui" , "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 17px;">That gig fell into my lap unexpectedly so I got lucky, although these living arrangements were rushed. The Greenspan book accidentally wound up in storage with a lot of my possessions, becoming temporarily out of reach. Not believing he'd ever see it again, the disgruntled Harrington replaced it with another purchased copy. It was an awful inconvenience. </span><span style="color: #3d3d3d; font-family: "avenir next" , "avenir" , "roboto" , "segoe ui" , "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 17px;">F</span><span style="color: #3d3d3d; font-family: "avenir next" , "avenir" , "roboto" , "segoe ui" , "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 17px;">or the next several times I would visit her at their place on Washington, Harrington was very vocal about this oversight. Anytime after that, when I would ask her how he was doing, she'd shoot me a sharp look and say, </span><br />
<span style="background-color: white;"><span style="color: #3d3d3d; font-family: "avenir next" , "avenir" , "roboto" , "segoe ui" , "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 17px;"> "He still goes on about you losing his book. You know he'll never forgive you for that". </span></span><br />
<span style="color: #3d3d3d; font-family: "avenir next" , "avenir" , "roboto" , "segoe ui" , "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 17px;">Then her face would radiate that timeless, bright eyed, suppressed smile expression of </span><span style="color: #3d3d3d; font-family: "avenir next" , "avenir" , "roboto" , "segoe ui" , "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 17px;">amusement. </span><br />
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<span style="color: #3d3d3d; font-family: "avenir next" , "avenir" , "roboto" , "segoe ui" , "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 17px;"><b>* * *</b></span></div>
<span style="color: #3d3d3d; font-family: "avenir next" , "avenir" , "roboto" , "segoe ui" , "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 17px;"><br /></span>
<span style="background-color: white; color: #3d3d3d; font-family: "avenir next" , "avenir" , "roboto" , "segoe ui" , "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 17px;">She and I fell out and reunited countless times over the years. </span><span style="background-color: white; color: #3d3d3d; font-family: "avenir next" , "avenir" , "roboto" , "segoe ui" , "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 17px;">Both high energy personalities, we'd burn each other's patience and turn our backs to slam each other out, each time not knowing if we would ever talk again</span><span style="background-color: white; color: #3d3d3d; font-family: "avenir next" , "avenir" , "roboto" , "segoe ui" , "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 17px;">. We'd run into each other unexpectedly in different places around the city, over and over -- call it fate or whatever you will. </span><span style="background-color: white; color: #3d3d3d; font-family: "avenir next" , "avenir" , "roboto" , "segoe ui" , "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 17px;">One afternoon we ran into each other by Wall St., and popped into a bar a few steps below street level, to throw off a couple of shots. </span><span style="background-color: white; color: #3d3d3d; font-family: "avenir next" , "avenir" , "roboto" , "segoe ui" , "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 17px;">(This was back when I still drank.) </span><span style="color: #3d3d3d; font-family: "avenir next" , "avenir" , "roboto" , "segoe ui" , "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 17px;"><span style="background-color: white;">Another time, I found her walking through the underground tunnels that connect subway platforms at 14th and Union Sq. around 11pm on a weeknight. </span></span><span style="background-color: white;"><span style="color: #3d3d3d; font-family: "avenir next" , "avenir" , "roboto" , "segoe ui" , "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 17px;"><span style="background-color: white;">Astounded to see her there, </span></span></span><span style="color: #3d3d3d; font-family: "avenir next" , "avenir" , "roboto" , "segoe ui" , "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 17px;">I insisted she come with me to my third apartment in the Bronx, as that's where I was headed. </span><span style="color: #3d3d3d; font-family: "avenir next" , "avenir" , "roboto" , "segoe ui" , "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 17px;"> </span><br />
<span style="color: #3d3d3d; font-family: "avenir next" , "avenir" , "roboto" , "segoe ui" , "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 17px;"><br /></span>
<span style="color: #3d3d3d; font-family: "avenir next" , "avenir" , "roboto" , "segoe ui" , "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 17px;">She accompanied me to my place that night, where I lived alone in the furnished basement of an enormous private house on Rhinelander Ave. <span style="background-color: white;">F</span></span><span style="background-color: white;"><span style="color: #3d3d3d; font-family: "avenir next" , "avenir" , "roboto" , "segoe ui" , "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 17px;">ar from the notorious violence of the South Bronx, </span><span style="color: #3d3d3d; font-family: "avenir next" , "avenir" , "roboto" , "segoe ui" , "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 17px;">t</span><span style="color: #3d3d3d; font-family: "avenir next" , "avenir" , "roboto" , "segoe ui" , "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 17px;">his was a residential district composed of German style houses in an area known as Morris Park. </span><span style="color: #3d3d3d; font-family: "avenir next" , "avenir" , "roboto" , "segoe ui" , "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 17px;">It was a quiet place at all hours, </span><span style="color: #3d3d3d; font-family: "avenir next" , "avenir" , "roboto" , "segoe ui" , "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 17px;">nestled in the safety of organized crime. </span><span style="color: #3d3d3d; font-family: "avenir next" , "avenir" , "roboto" , "segoe ui" , "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 17px;">The commercial roads were dotted with cafes that stayed in business but never appeared to be open, leaving one to wonder if they were venues for secret meetings. These suspicions would later be confirmed by stories I would hear from my landlord, Sylvester -- stories about his run-ins with the Mafia and their </span><span style="color: #3d3d3d; font-family: "avenir next" , "avenir" , "roboto" , "segoe ui" , "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 17px;">reservations against the fire insurance company he was running out of that basement. </span></span><span style="color: #3d3d3d; font-family: "avenir next" , "avenir" , "roboto" , "segoe ui" , "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 17px;"><span style="background-color: white;">He relocated that office to somewhere outside of their territory and turned it into an apartment where I was then living. </span>S</span><span style="color: #3d3d3d; font-family: "avenir next" , "avenir" , "roboto" , "segoe ui" , "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 17px;">he and I talked into the listless hours of that morning like </span><span style="color: #3d3d3d; font-family: "avenir next" , "avenir" , "roboto" , "segoe ui" , "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 17px;">we did every time we reconvened. </span><br />
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<span style="background-color: white;"><span style="color: #3d3d3d; font-family: "avenir next" , "avenir" , "roboto" , "segoe ui" , "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 17px;">Never running out of topics, we would talk nonstop. The things we talked <i>least</i> about, however, were the things we got ourselves into in each other's absence. When we <i>did</i> talk about some of that, we'd lightly summarize without going into much detail, and only on an as-needed basis. (Perhaps we both assumed the other person couldn't handle it.) </span><span style="color: #3d3d3d; font-family: "avenir next" , "avenir" , "roboto" , "segoe ui" , "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 17px;">Having spent a lot of our growing years on the streets of different neighborhoods, we both had our share of risky tendencies, but the kinds of risks we took were very different. </span><span style="color: #3d3d3d; font-family: "avenir next" , "avenir" , "roboto" , "segoe ui" , "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 17px;">From roles she played in the vast New York underground scenes, to barters she facilitated between strangers in the alleyways of Chinatown, </span><span style="color: #3d3d3d; font-family: "avenir next" , "avenir" , "roboto" , "segoe ui" , "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 17px;">the mere glimpses of her ordeals would leave me speechless. </span><span style="color: #3d3d3d; font-family: "avenir next" , "avenir" , "roboto" , "segoe ui" , "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 17px;">She went down South through a church organization to explore her options one year, and found herself trapped in a farming cult which she had to figure out how to escape. To explain the things she witnessed and the relationships she devised to maneuver her way out of there is something outside of my abilities: </span></span><span style="color: #3d3d3d; font-family: "avenir next" , "avenir" , "roboto" , "segoe ui" , "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 17px;">I still needed her help to envision the kinds of adventures that </span><i style="color: #3d3d3d; font-family: "avenir next", avenir, roboto, "segoe ui", helvetica, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 17px;">she</i><span style="color: #3d3d3d; font-family: "avenir next" , "avenir" , "roboto" , "segoe ui" , "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 17px;"> survived,</span><span style="background-color: white;"><span style="color: #3d3d3d; font-family: "avenir next" , "avenir" , "roboto" , "segoe ui" , "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 17px;"> d</span></span><span style="background-color: white; color: #3d3d3d; font-family: "avenir next" , "avenir" , "roboto" , "segoe ui" , "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 17px;">espite having a rampant imagination. </span><br />
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<span style="color: #3d3d3d; font-family: "avenir next" , "avenir" , "roboto" , "segoe ui" , "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 17px;">After one of our rifts, she came over for dinner one night and said a few things that shocked me as usual. (This was toward the end of my time living on Rhinelander as I was </span><span style="color: #3d3d3d; font-family: "avenir next" , "avenir" , "roboto" , "segoe ui" , "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 17px;">preparing to move out and head up to Boston again, this time for grad school.) </span><span style="color: #3d3d3d; font-family: "avenir next" , "avenir" , "roboto" , "segoe ui" , "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 17px;">We stopped talking about a year or so before that, </span><span style="color: #3d3d3d; font-family: "avenir next" , "avenir" , "roboto" , "segoe ui" , "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 17px;">over a heated </span></span><span style="color: #3d3d3d; font-family: "avenir next" , "avenir" , "roboto" , "segoe ui" , "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 17px;">exchange about the delicate subject of animal cruelty. S</span><span style="color: #3d3d3d; font-family: "avenir next" , "avenir" , "roboto" , "segoe ui" , "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 17px;">he's a fanatic lover of animals her whole life, common knowledge to anyone who knew her for five minutes. </span><br />
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<span style="color: #3d3d3d; font-family: "avenir next" , "avenir" , "roboto" , "segoe ui" , "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 17px;">That argument was about how animals are treated in research protocols, and by this time, I'd been </span><span style="color: #3d3d3d; font-family: "avenir next" , "avenir" , "roboto" , "segoe ui" , "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 17px;">working in pharmacological research conducted on animal models for a few years (corporate, as well as academic). </span><span style="color: #3d3d3d; font-family: "avenir next" , "avenir" , "roboto" , "segoe ui" , "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 17px;">I was trying to explain the strict regulations enforced by the government through organizations like <a href="https://www.aalas.org/iacuc#.WiKYhbT81sM">IACUC</a> (Institutional Animal Care and Use Committee) which ensure that all animals are treated with care through a system of certifications and mandatory training</span><span style="color: #3d3d3d; font-family: "avenir next" , "avenir" , "roboto" , "segoe ui" , "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 17px;">. </span><span style="color: #3d3d3d; font-family: "avenir next" , "avenir" , "roboto" , "segoe ui" , "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 17px;">I tried telling her the harsh penalties for violating the rules included a loss of funding. </span><span style="color: #3d3d3d; font-family: "avenir next" , "avenir" , "roboto" , "segoe ui" , "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 17px;">We stayed up all night, digging ourselves deeper and deeper into this. No matter what I tried to explain, she wasn't having it: c</span><span style="color: #3d3d3d; font-family: "avenir next" , "avenir" , "roboto" , "segoe ui" , "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 17px;">onfident that we were torturing animals in laboratories with impunity, she was unconsolably angry. There was nothing we could do by daybreak, but walk away from each other as we had already done so many times before. </span><br />
<span style="color: #3d3d3d; font-family: "avenir next" , "avenir" , "roboto" , "segoe ui" , "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 17px;"><br /></span><span style="color: #3d3d3d; font-family: "avenir next" , "avenir" , "roboto" , "segoe ui" , "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 17px;">So that night she materialized for dinner and I made a mushroom-chicken-asparagus dish in a lemon butter reduction. Half way into the meal she steered the conversation with some of the rarest words any of us will ever hear uttered by another person, </span><br />
<span style="color: #3d3d3d; font-family: "avenir next" , "avenir" , "roboto" , "segoe ui" , "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 17px;"> "I just want to say that you were right..." </span><br />
<span style="color: #3d3d3d; font-family: "avenir next" , "avenir" , "roboto" , "segoe ui" , "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 17px;">She had ventured into the world of veterinary sciences and underwent extensive training in animal husbandry since our last conversation, and this brought her up to speed on the sensitivity around the practice. It </span><span style="color: #3d3d3d; font-family: "avenir next" , "avenir" , "roboto" , "segoe ui" , "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 17px;">was one of a few defining moments that reminded me of what set her apart from everyone else I knew. I might've taunted her with an "I told you so" if I wasn't so consumed by an appreciation for her personal development. </span><br />
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<span style="color: #3d3d3d; font-family: "avenir next" , "avenir" , "roboto" , "segoe ui" , "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 17px;">The last summer before grad school, I tried cramming in as much recreation as humanly possible (because I was expecting graduate studies in Industrial Engineering to be rough). I spent most of that time hanging around Brighton Beach with some friends I met at a 4th of July party earlier that season. </span><span style="color: #3d3d3d; font-family: "avenir next" , "avenir" , "roboto" , "segoe ui" , "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 17px;">These were a </span><span style="color: #3d3d3d; font-family: "avenir next" , "avenir" , "roboto" , "segoe ui" , "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 17px;">rowdy</span><span style="color: #3d3d3d; font-family: "avenir next" , "avenir" , "roboto" , "segoe ui" , "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 17px;"> </span><span style="color: #3d3d3d; font-family: "avenir next" , "avenir" , "roboto" , "segoe ui" , "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 17px;">bunch of </span><span style="color: #3d3d3d; font-family: "avenir next" , "avenir" , "roboto" , "segoe ui" , "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 17px;">party loving Russians who lived life like side characters from</span><span style="color: #3d3d3d; font-family: "avenir next" , "avenir" , "roboto" , "segoe ui" , "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 17px;"> </span><a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0066921/" style="font-family: "avenir next", avenir, roboto, "segoe ui", helvetica, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 17px;">Clockwork Orange</a><span style="color: #3d3d3d; font-family: "avenir next" , "avenir" , "roboto" , "segoe ui" , "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 17px;">. To sincerely match their groove, I learned the Cyrillic alphabet and started reading things in Russian as my competence for interpretation was racing to catch up. </span><span style="color: #3d3d3d; font-family: "avenir next" , "avenir" , "roboto" , "segoe ui" , "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 17px;">Kodiak was the alpha of this group, and his favorite closing statement to cultural conversations was</span><br />
<span style="color: #3d3d3d; font-family: "avenir next" , "avenir" , "roboto" , "segoe ui" , "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 17px;"> "The Russian culture attached itself to the wrong end of the America dream." </span><br />
<span style="color: #3d3d3d; font-family: "avenir next" , "avenir" , "roboto" , "segoe ui" , "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 17px;">Many of those evenings we'd end up on the jagged rocks of the beach, sitting silently and observing the sound of crashing waves against the faint laughter of drunken girls trying to skinny dip in the nearby distance. </span><br />
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<span style="color: #3d3d3d; font-family: "avenir next" , "avenir" , "roboto" , "segoe ui" , "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 17px;">Toward the end, Kodiak decided he liked me more than normal, and started calling around the time I moved away. Keeping it friendly became impossible: I'd be sitting in class and he'd be blowing up my phone, </span><span style="color: #3d3d3d; font-family: "avenir next" , "avenir" , "roboto" , "segoe ui" , "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 17px;">leaving long rants that were getting progressively more </span></span><span style="color: #3d3d3d; font-family: "avenir next" , "avenir" , "roboto" , "segoe ui" , "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 17px;">inebriated</span><span style="color: #3d3d3d; font-family: "avenir next" , "avenir" , "roboto" , "segoe ui" , "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 17px;"> and</span><span style="color: #3d3d3d; font-family: "avenir next" , "avenir" , "roboto" , "segoe ui" , "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 17px;"> threatening as I wasn't returning his calls. The time for talk was over. I went to the nearest police station and met with a detective to create a record of the incessant calls that boarded on harassment. In the midst of all this, I noticed one of those calls was from her. I called her back. She was just calling to see what was up -- it was impeccable timing. </span></span><span style="color: #3d3d3d; font-family: "avenir next" , "avenir" , "roboto" , "segoe ui" , "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 17px;"> </span><br />
<span style="color: #3d3d3d; font-family: "avenir next" , "avenir" , "roboto" , "segoe ui" , "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 17px;"> "This a stalker? Is it your first? I've had <i>two</i>..." </span><br />
<span style="color: #3d3d3d; font-family: "avenir next" , "avenir" , "roboto" , "segoe ui" , "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 17px;">Her experience made her the perfect sounding board through all the tricky procedures necessary for me to close this case across state lines. </span><span style="color: #3d3d3d; font-family: "avenir next" , "avenir" , "roboto" , "segoe ui" , "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 17px;">That was the last group of party friends I ever entertained, and altogether, I'd soon realize that my days of prodigal </span><span style="color: #3d3d3d; font-family: "avenir next" , "avenir" , "roboto" , "segoe ui" , "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 17px;">partying</span><span style="color: #3d3d3d; font-family: "avenir next" , "avenir" , "roboto" , "segoe ui" , "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 17px;"> were coming to an end. </span><br />
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Zareen Wilhelmhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03621428545462451023noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7986790754756040588.post-11726645476800736212017-10-26T07:20:00.000-04:002019-08-18T22:32:40.071-04:00Relationship Postmortem: obfuscations of normalcy <div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span style="color: #3d3d3d; font-family: "avenir next" , "avenir" , "roboto" , "segoe ui" , "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 17px;"><br /></span><span style="color: #3d3d3d; font-family: "avenir next" , "avenir" , "roboto" , "segoe ui" , "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 17px;">Through interactions I've had with people in recent history, I'm compelled to recognize patterns I've observed in the ways we treat each other. </span><span style="color: #3d3d3d; font-family: "avenir next" , "avenir" , "roboto" , "segoe ui" , "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 17px;">Whether we're </span><span style="color: #3d3d3d; font-family: "avenir next" , "avenir" , "roboto" , "segoe ui" , "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 17px;">communicating primarily through digital interfaces, running into each other </span><span style="color: #3d3d3d; font-family: "avenir next" , "avenir" , "roboto" , "segoe ui" , "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 17px;">on occasional trips to the drug store, or facing off in a showdown in the political arena of our work place, </span><span style="color: #3d3d3d; font-family: "avenir next" , "avenir" , "roboto" , "segoe ui" , "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 17px;">the generalizations that draw my attention are always in play. </span><br />
<span style="color: #3d3d3d; font-family: "avenir next" , "avenir" , "roboto" , "segoe ui" , "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 17px;"><br /></span><span style="color: #3d3d3d; font-family: "avenir next" , "avenir" , "roboto" , "segoe ui" , "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 17px;">In our modern society of quick workarounds and microwave relationships, i</span><span style="color: #3d3d3d; font-family: "avenir next" , "avenir" , "roboto" , "segoe ui" , "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 17px;">ntelligence is steeply rewarded while kindness </span><span style="color: #3d3d3d; font-family: "avenir next" , "avenir" , "roboto" , "segoe ui" , "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 17px;">is accepted as a sign of being weak. It's nothing more than a beautiful concept, </span><span style="color: #3d3d3d; font-family: "avenir next" , "avenir" , "roboto" , "segoe ui" , "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 17px;">used as a basis for pointing fingers at those who fail to employ it when we personally feel offended. When the time comes to stand up for ourselves, we freely treat our counterparts however way we like, as if it's not possible to respect ourselves <i>and</i> each other concurrently. </span><br />
<span style="color: #3d3d3d; font-family: "avenir next" , "avenir" , "roboto" , "segoe ui" , "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 17px;"><br /></span><span style="color: #3d3d3d; font-family: "avenir next" , "avenir" , "roboto" , "segoe ui" , "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 17px;">We prioritize our feelings in the thick of a complex situation involving other people, allowing </span><span style="color: #3d3d3d; font-family: "avenir next" , "avenir" , "roboto" , "segoe ui" , "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 17px;">these feelings</span><span style="color: #3d3d3d; font-family: "avenir next" , "avenir" , "roboto" , "segoe ui" , "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 17px;"> to govern our decisions regardless of how they may affect everyone else. W</span><span style="color: #3d3d3d; font-family: "avenir next" , "avenir" , "roboto" , "segoe ui" , "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 17px;">e utilize </span><span style="color: #3d3d3d; font-family: "avenir next" , "avenir" , "roboto" , "segoe ui" , "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 17px;">existing loopholes to find </span><span style="color: #3d3d3d; font-family: "avenir next" , "avenir" , "roboto" , "segoe ui" , "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 17px;">ways to escape our contractual agreements, helping us </span><span style="color: #3d3d3d; font-family: "avenir next" , "avenir" , "roboto" , "segoe ui" , "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 17px;">justify our choices in the framework of "right and wrong": a</span><span style="color: #3d3d3d; font-family: "avenir next" , "avenir" , "roboto" , "segoe ui" , "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 17px;">s long as we </span><i style="color: #3d3d3d; font-family: "avenir next", avenir, roboto, "segoe ui", helvetica, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 17px;">technically</i><span style="color: #3d3d3d; font-family: "avenir next" , "avenir" , "roboto" , "segoe ui" , "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 17px;"> did nothing wrong, all other consequences have very little meaning. </span><span style="color: #3d3d3d; font-family: "avenir next" , "avenir" , "roboto" , "segoe ui" , "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 17px;">Originally we may have felt that we're all in it together until our common goal is reached, but the </span><span style="color: #3d3d3d; font-family: "avenir next" , "avenir" , "roboto" , "segoe ui" , "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 17px;">responsibilities we shouldered when getting <i>into</i> these bindings were never backed by any sense of obligation, as demonstrated by </span></span><span style="color: #3d3d3d; font-family: "avenir next" , "avenir" , "roboto" , "segoe ui" , "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 17px;">our hasty departure. The opportunity losses we endure from this could be salvaged if we were able to empathize with our teammates, to know that their feelings are just as important in the mission as our own. </span><br />
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<span style="color: #3d3d3d; font-family: "avenir next" , "avenir" , "roboto" , "segoe ui" , "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 17px;">A failure to empathize is a cornerstone of numerous problems, one of which is an inability to follow through: we say we'll do things that we never do. It's true that life often gets in our way of doing the things we plan, but what we're talking about here is making promises that are aborted without concern. This defect may or may not be rooted in disability, but should never be permitted to inconvenience someone else either way. When this occurs -- not only do we <i>not</i> apologize to the other party that we stood up -- too frequently </span><span style="color: #3d3d3d; font-family: "avenir next" , "avenir" , "roboto" , "segoe ui" , "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 17px;">we don't even acknowledge the slip. It feels nice to make plans, but poses a burden when the time comes to fulfill them. Relationships that persist on this are those lacking </span><span style="color: #3d3d3d; font-family: "avenir next" , "avenir" , "roboto" , "segoe ui" , "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 17px;">in trust as an active ingredient,</span><span style="color: #3d3d3d; font-family: "avenir next" , "avenir" , "roboto" , "segoe ui" , "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 17px;"> and most likely driven by ulterior motive. </span><br />
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<span style="color: #3d3d3d; font-family: "avenir next" , "avenir" , "roboto" , "segoe ui" , "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 17px;">Making empty promises quickly becomes an expensive habit, and the way to sustain it is to live inside a bubble where there are no disagreements. We live in communities of "like minded" people who help us avoid any pangs of guilt that may arise from betraying our commitments. </span><span style="color: #3d3d3d; font-family: "avenir next" , "avenir" , "roboto" , "segoe ui" , "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 17px;">We find these communities in our families, our "friends", and in the echo chambers of the internet. Anyone who questions our actions or opinions are seen as opposition, and are blocked out like headaches. We abscond those who challenge us </span><span style="color: #3d3d3d; font-family: "avenir next" , "avenir" , "roboto" , "segoe ui" , "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 17px;">unknowingly</span><span style="color: #3d3d3d; font-family: "avenir next" , "avenir" , "roboto" , "segoe ui" , "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 17px;">, leaving them to wonder why we left. The real threat to self preservation is not the act of showing kindness and respect, but the dangerous risks of personal growth. We can't face the things we need to change when there's nothing more important than being correct. </span><span style="color: #3d3d3d; font-family: "avenir next" , "avenir" , "roboto" , "segoe ui" , "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 17px;"> </span><br />
<span style="color: #3d3d3d; font-family: "avenir next" , "avenir" , "roboto" , "segoe ui" , "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 17px;"><br /></span><span style="color: #3d3d3d; font-family: "avenir next" , "avenir" , "roboto" , "segoe ui" , "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 17px;">With a chance to respond to each other's messages or even review each other's work, we deliver </span></span><span style="color: #3d3d3d; font-family: "avenir next" , "avenir" , "roboto" , "segoe ui" , "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 17px;">with severity. This is observable in families, in offices, and certainly in comments we leave for each other on online posts. Operating under a delusion that our thoughts will go unheard if we communicate them with any compassion, we weaponize our feedback and slap on a humor label before launching, just incase they get upset. </span></span><span style="color: #3d3d3d; font-family: "avenir next" , "avenir" , "roboto" , "segoe ui" , "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 17px;">Far from making suggestions gently, we critique in tones that are condescending, like they're fools for </span></span><span style="color: #3d3d3d; font-family: "avenir next" , "avenir" , "roboto" , "segoe ui" , "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 17px;">not <i>already</i> incorporating the ideas that we propose: we decline to grasp the possibility that they may have already taken these ideas into consideration through their process. With little sensitivity for how far they may have had to travel to get where they are today, we rush to underestimate them and use that as grounds for disrespect. As the discourse grows cold, w</span><span style="color: #3d3d3d; font-family: "avenir next" , "avenir" , "roboto" , "segoe ui" , "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 17px;">e judge each other silently, building cases with which to disqualify each other's humanity in our heads. </span><br />
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<span style="color: #3d3d3d; font-family: "avenir next" , "avenir" , "roboto" , "segoe ui" , "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 17px;">We've all been at the receiving ends of some of these burns, moments in which we most certainly forgot about all the times when we <i>ourselves</i> were the cause of someone else's pain and aggravation. Before picking up steam and starting to inflict any damage, a</span><span style="color: #3d3d3d; font-family: "avenir next" , "avenir" , "roboto" , "segoe ui" , "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 17px;">ll of these patterns (and all those related but not discussed above) germinate in a space of normalcy, interstitial to the weeds of daily life. It's <i>because</i> of their mundane origins that these common bugs prevail, commanding the decay of our most basic human connections. </span><br />
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<span style="color: #3d3d3d; font-family: "avenir next" , "avenir" , "roboto" , "segoe ui" , "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 17px;">In western society, we spend our teenage years rejecting tradition and hating ourselves, gradually </span><span style="color: #3d3d3d; font-family: "avenir next" , "avenir" , "roboto" , "segoe ui" , "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 17px;">growing to believe that "<i>accepting who we are</i>" is the more adult state of mind. This psychological surrender conflicts with our </span><span style="color: #3d3d3d; font-family: "avenir next" , "avenir" , "roboto" , "segoe ui" , "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 17px;">self improvement needs, naturally occurring and on perpetual renewal under the pressures of our dynamic environments. Doused by gratification methods that are culturally prescribed, these </span><span style="color: #3d3d3d; font-family: "avenir next" , "avenir" , "roboto" , "segoe ui" , "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 17px;">needs are </span><span style="color: #3d3d3d; font-family: "avenir next" , "avenir" , "roboto" , "segoe ui" , "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 17px;">extinguished in exchange for immediate relief: pick a hobby, workout, </span><span style="color: #3d3d3d; font-family: "avenir next" , "avenir" , "roboto" , "segoe ui" , "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 17px;">p</span><span style="color: #3d3d3d; font-family: "avenir next" , "avenir" , "roboto" , "segoe ui" , "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 17px;">lay with your dog, go to parties, go dancing, get drunk, meet people and have sex. </span><span style="color: #3d3d3d; font-family: "avenir next" , "avenir" , "roboto" , "segoe ui" , "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 17px;">Our short term approaches for "taking the edge off" go even as far as seminars and retreats, which are great for their liquid benefits: they work, as long as we don't walk out of them thinking our journey to the center of ourselves is complete. </span><br />
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<span style="color: #3d3d3d; font-family: "avenir next" , "avenir" , "roboto" , "segoe ui" , "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 17px;">The moment we're satisfied with ourselves and with our communities is the moment that decay begins. </span><span style="color: #3d3d3d; font-family: "avenir next" , "avenir" , "roboto" , "segoe ui" , "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 17px;">We need to become the version of ourselves that we </span><i style="color: #3d3d3d; font-family: "avenir next", avenir, roboto, "segoe ui", helvetica, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 17px;">mean</i><span style="color: #3d3d3d; font-family: "avenir next" , "avenir" , "roboto" , "segoe ui" , "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 17px;"> to be, for each other, for the greater goals we share, and for the sake of our own quality of life. The process of becoming that is similar to becoming an artist, or a developer, or trying to master </span><span style="color: #3d3d3d; font-family: "avenir next" , "avenir" , "roboto" , "segoe ui" , "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 17px;">any such discipline where skill development is gleaned through diligence</span><span style="color: #3d3d3d; font-family: "avenir next" , "avenir" , "roboto" , "segoe ui" , "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 17px;">: you <i>are</i> the thing you want to be as soon as you start engaging, but there's no finish line to cross. Reaching back into the rubble of our</span><span style="color: #3d3d3d; font-family: "avenir next" , "avenir" , "roboto" , "segoe ui" , "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 17px;"> adolescent instincts, we need to reignite our propensity toward self-rejection, point it to our timeless current state and keep it burning. </span><span style="color: #3d3d3d; font-family: "avenir next" , "avenir" , "roboto" , "segoe ui" , "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 17px;"> </span><br />
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Zareen Wilhelmhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03621428545462451023noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7986790754756040588.post-46094330571203701412017-09-25T16:28:00.003-04:002017-09-25T16:34:14.689-04:00Religion on Writers' Block (movie review) <div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span style="font-size: 17px;">Like many, I recently watched <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt5109784/">Mother!</a>, a psychological thriller by Darren Aronofsky, still in theaters and already </span><span style="font-size: 17px;">subject to a lot of religious interpretation. </span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 17px;">It's about a young woman who works on rebuilding a house, where she lives with a poet who's suffering from writers' block. Eventually he gets her pregnant and experiences a sudden breakthrough in his work, finally sending a new piece of writing to his publisher. After the book release, h</span><span style="font-size: 17px;">is fans start showing up at the house like the unstoppable waters of a flood. The woman passively watches her house starting to come apart as the crowd explodes into budding new cults in her husband's following. The time to deliver her baby arrives just as the madness turns into war zones. She manages to find safety upstairs and delivers her son: in the religious parallel, this baby is Jesus. </span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 17px;">The anticipated Lion King moment when the poet debuts his new son to the fanatic mobs downstairs is never shown to us (the audience), but the child is surely crowd-surfed to its death... and then to it's funeral... and then to the eating of its body and drinking of its blood. It's at this point that the woman -- </span><span style="font-size: 17px;">allegedly</span><span style="font-size: 17px;"> representing mother nature or mother earth (hence the name Mother!) -- retaliates with violence. The poet (who is supposed to be God) typically reminds her of the importance of forgiving the people for their sins. </span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 17px;">How this film might strike as disagreeable to those with religious convictions may be obvious, but that's not necessary for dealing with the layers of disappointment stacked in its wake. From </span><span style="font-size: 17px;">it's lack of resolve due to pure symbolism, its </span><span style="font-size: 17px;">complete detachment from a storyline grounded in reality, to a </span><span style="font-size: 17px;">deadpan performance by the lead actress,</span><span style="font-size: 17px;"> there are countless issues leaving audiences bewildered and skillful movie critics employed. In all the talk this work has generated, what offends me the most -- not so much as a movie goer, or even as a subscriber to any religion -- is the overconfidence communicated in understanding writers' block, a topic briefly explored in my <a href="http://www.zareenwilhelm.com/2017/09/flare-guns-for-wordless.html">last entry</a>. </span><br />
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<span style="font-size: 17px;">As a writer, I find nothing more outrageous than the idea of God suffering from writers' block, a state that is barely understood in the context of the human condition. In <a href="http://www.zareenwilhelm.com/2017/09/flare-guns-for-wordless.html">Flare Guns for the Wordless</a>, I attempt to describe it as a block partition on disk space where the filesystem behaves differently than at other parts of the brain. A subject initiates an action by interacting with targets in a system through a set of rules, and on writers' block the rules have changed, leaving the subject with less control over the data passing through working memory. </span><br />
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<span style="font-size: 17px;">An accurate description of writers' block can be found somewhere in the </span><span style="font-size: 17px;">crosshairs of neuroscience and computer science, and only then can the system be hacked for better performance. But I must say, a</span><span style="font-size: 17px;"> filmmaker's ego maniacal perception of God's writing habits may seem interesting when considered against </span><span style="font-size: 17px;">the last book sent by God in the form of the Holy Quran, which says in it's pages that it is the last of its kind and that no further books will be sent. </span><br />
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Zareen Wilhelmhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03621428545462451023noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7986790754756040588.post-87579951421948137402017-04-25T19:13:00.003-04:002017-04-25T22:24:54.414-04:00Azure: Deployment script for setting up Point-to-Site VPN using OpenVPN for non-PowerShell users <div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span style="color: #3d3d3d; font-family: "avenir next" , "avenir" , "roboto" , "segoe ui" , "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif;"><span style="background-color: white; font-size: 17px; line-height: 28px;"><br /></span></span><span style="color: #3d3d3d; font-family: "avenir next" , "avenir" , "roboto" , "segoe ui" , "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif;"><span style="background-color: white; font-size: 17px;">You're reading this because you need to configure a point-to-site VPN using a Ubuntu VM on Azure, but your OS does not provide PowerShell. (PowerShell is native to Microsoft, so if you're working on Mac OSX or Linux or another type of non-Windows machine, you won't have this at your disposal.) </span></span><br />
<span style="color: #3d3d3d; font-family: "avenir next" , "avenir" , "roboto" , "segoe ui" , "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif;"><span style="background-color: white; font-size: 17px;"><br /></span></span><span style="background-color: white; color: #3d3d3d; font-family: "avenir next" , "avenir" , "roboto" , "segoe ui" , "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 17px;">If an SSL VPN fits your needs, create a device on your Azure VNet that runs Ubuntu: you'll need to set up OpenVPN on this machine. The easiest and fastest way to do this is by running a script found <a href="https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/resources/templates/openvpn-access-server-ubuntu/">here</a>. This link will take you to a window in your browser which appears [similar to] this: </span><br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhJnFR5x9oc-2Id_cWmrMZ6whQWABOrh7XJQPo7vAs0gEL3ca7F5unhj40eCDT3aqFvczdsJNoOykIySz0w2t4lr6nAr9ouMoA_qOB1NLt7NRnjJOZHdYihJogsyqlHQHLUr5QxRdt5RDM/s1600/deployOpenVPN.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="141" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhJnFR5x9oc-2Id_cWmrMZ6whQWABOrh7XJQPo7vAs0gEL3ca7F5unhj40eCDT3aqFvczdsJNoOykIySz0w2t4lr6nAr9ouMoA_qOB1NLt7NRnjJOZHdYihJogsyqlHQHLUr5QxRdt5RDM/s400/deployOpenVPN.png" width="400" /></a></div>
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<span style="color: #3d3d3d; font-family: "avenir next" , "avenir" , "roboto" , "segoe ui" , "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif;"><span style="background-color: white; font-size: 17px;"><br /></span></span><span style="color: #3d3d3d; font-family: "avenir next" , "avenir" , "roboto" , "segoe ui" , "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif;"><span style="background-color: white; font-size: 17px;"><br /></span></span><span style="color: #3d3d3d; font-family: "avenir next" , "avenir" , "roboto" , "segoe ui" , "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif;"><span style="background-color: white; font-size: 17px;">Filling it out and clicking "Purchase" will launch the resources necessary </span></span><span style="background-color: white; color: #3d3d3d; font-family: "avenir next" , "avenir" , "roboto" , "segoe ui" , "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 17px;">for your OpenVPN setup. These resources include the Ubuntu VM device that will behave as your OpenVPN server. </span><br />
<span style="color: #3d3d3d; font-family: "avenir next" , "avenir" , "roboto" , "segoe ui" , "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif;"><span style="background-color: white; font-size: 17px;"><br /></span></span><span style="color: #3d3d3d; font-family: "avenir next" , "avenir" , "roboto" , "segoe ui" , "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif;"><span style="background-color: white; font-size: 17px;"><u>Note</u>: All resources are assigned default names, so if you launch this script more than once (within the same resource group), you'll run into errors due to inherent naming conflicts. In this case, make sure to change the resource names using the "Edit" button, as seen above. </span></span><br />
<span style="color: #3d3d3d; font-family: "avenir next" , "avenir" , "roboto" , "segoe ui" , "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif;"><span style="background-color: white; font-size: 17px;"><br /></span></span>
<span style="color: #3d3d3d; font-family: "avenir next" , "avenir" , "roboto" , "segoe ui" , "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif;"><span style="background-color: white; font-size: 17px;">This deployment script was </span></span><span style="background-color: white; color: #3d3d3d; font-family: "avenir next" , "avenir" , "roboto" , "segoe ui" , "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 17px;">not internally created by Microsoft: it was written by one of Microsoft's clients, which is why its existence is not very well known. </span><span style="background-color: white; color: #3d3d3d; font-family: "avenir next" , "avenir" , "roboto" , "segoe ui" , "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 17px;">Even though the complications of </span><span style="background-color: white; color: #3d3d3d; font-family: "avenir next" , "avenir" , "roboto" , "segoe ui" , "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 17px;">setting up a point-to-site VPN on Azure without access to PowerShell is a pain point that has been brought to Microsoft's attention by many non-Windows users, no features or statements have been released to resolve or address it, making this script a very important resource. Raw instructions of setting up OpenVPN using a Ubuntu VM on Azure can be found in the wild, but using this script <i>significantly</i> reduces the number of steps in configuring and troubleshooting this process, allowing you to quickly move on to setting up the rest of your cloud infrastructure. </span><br />
<span style="background-color: white; color: #3d3d3d; font-family: "avenir next" , "avenir" , "roboto" , "segoe ui" , "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 17px;"> </span><br />
<span style="font-family: "avenir next" , "avenir" , "roboto" , "segoe ui" , "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif;"><span style="background-color: white; font-size: 17px;"><span style="color: #3d3d3d;">After the deployment is complete, go to the VM that was just created, find its public IP, insert it into and go to </span><i style="color: #3d3d3d;">this</i><span style="color: #3d3d3d;"> URL: </span><span style="color: blue;">https://<PublicIP>:943/admin</span><span style="color: #3d3d3d;">. </span></span></span><span style="background-color: white; color: #3d3d3d; font-family: "avenir next" , "avenir" , "roboto" , "segoe ui" , "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 17px;">From here, standard procedures for setting up OpenVPN will resume. These procedures can be found</span><span style="background-color: white; color: #3d3d3d; font-family: "avenir next" , "avenir" , "roboto" , "segoe ui" , "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 17px;"> </span><a href="https://azuretuto.wordpress.com/2016/02/25/installing-openvpn-server-on-ubuntu-azure-vm/" style="font-family: "avenir next", avenir, roboto, "segoe ui", helvetica, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 17px;">here</a><span style="background-color: white; color: #3d3d3d; font-family: "avenir next" , "avenir" , "roboto" , "segoe ui" , "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 17px;">, starting at Step #9. (All steps before #9 have been circumvented by the deployment script discussed above.) Complete server-side setup by running through steps #9 and #10, and then complete Client Configuration (for each machine that will be using this connection) before connecting to machines inside your VNet via your new point-to-site VPN. </span><br />
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Zareen Wilhelmhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03621428545462451023noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7986790754756040588.post-63756634663721559482016-12-06T19:46:00.000-05:002020-04-08T21:42:00.401-04:00Structure of Human Experience <div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br class="Apple-interchange-newline" /><b>We're living in a time of dramatic</b> </span><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: large;">paradigm</span><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: large;"> shifts </span><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: large;">in the industrial landscape of business and technology, a time which distinguishes itself from the Age of Information: we've been calling this the Age of Experience. This is made possible by what TechCrunch called <i>the experience stack</i>, in <a href="https://techcrunch.com/2016/05/09/the-information-age-is-over-welcome-to-the-experience-age/">an article</a> earlier this year: </span></div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="font-size: 12.8px;">The full stack is in service of capturing and definitively assessing real-world moments, with reality at its foundation.</td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: large;">The bottom layer of the experience stack is the most essential requirement for the rest of the stack to exist. Aptly named, the Moment layer</span><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: large;"> </span><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: large;">handles the making of the relentless human experience. </span><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: large;">Breaking it down to its</span><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: large;"> </span><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: large;">own layers yields a stack in itself, with behavior at the very top. </span><br />
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<b style="color: #38761d;"><span style="font-family: "courier new" , "courier" , monospace;">[ </span><span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;">BEHAVIOR : actions</span><span style="font-family: "courier new" , "courier" , monospace;"> ]</span></b></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: large;"><b>At an age when human behavior</b> patterns are collected in large data sets and studied and predicted at detail, </span><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: large;">we humans continue to live with aspects of our behavior we would like to change. </span><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: large;">In trying to implement desired changes at our level of behavior, we commonly try to change our ways of thinking. </span><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: large;">Similarly, <a href="http://www.zareenwilhelm.com/p/a-cognitive-behavioral-therapy-cbt.html">Cognitive Behavioral Therapy</a> (CBT) approaches the problem from the layer of cognition. Expecting to realize observable changes in behavior, CBT works via exercises of </span><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: large;">"cognitive restructuring" (<a href="http://www.psychotherapy.net/data/uploads/5110394f10a74.pdf">0</a>)</span><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: large;">. </span><br />
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<b style="color: #38761d;"><span style="font-family: "courier new" , "courier" , monospace;">[ </span><span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;">COGNITION : thoughts</span><span style="font-family: "courier new" , "courier" , monospace;"> ]</span></b></div>
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></span></span>
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: large;">The reciprocity between thoughts</span><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: large;"> and feelings is notoriously strong, and </span><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: large;">in CBT the governing influence of feelings on cognition </span></span></span><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: large;">is arguably forgotten. </span></span></span><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: large;">With a stronghold on cognitive performance and thought quality, feelings </span><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: large;">(affect)</span><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: large;"> </span><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: large;">compose an </span><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: large;">altogether difficult layer [for the individual] to read and manage directly. </span><br />
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<span style="color: #38761d;"><b><span style="font-family: "courier new" , "courier" , monospace;">[ </span><span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;">AFFECT : feelings</span><span style="font-family: "courier new" , "courier" , monospace;"> ]</span></b></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: large;">Often misidentified for t</span></span><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: large;">he layer below it, affect "reflects moment-to-moment changes ... that are superimposed on ... a <i>sustained</i> emotional state" </span><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: large;">(<a href="http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1586/ern.11.68">1</a>) </span></span></span><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: large;">rooted in the underlying layer of emotion (or mood). </span><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: large;">Emotions </span><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: large;">lay the groundwork that make feelings possible, presenting challenges in isolating and handling feelings independently </span><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: large;">without targeting them on the basis of topic and circumstance. This is particularly true in cases of unpredictable transitions in emotional state which obscure the properties of the affect layer. </span><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: large;"> </span><br />
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<span style="color: #38761d;"><b><span style="font-family: "courier new" , "courier" , monospace;">[ </span></b><b style="font-family: times;"><span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;">EMOTION</span></b><b><span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;"> : mood</span><span style="font-family: "courier new" , "courier" , monospace;"> ]</span></b></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: large;">Measured in accordance to the creation and use of energy (<a href="http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0031938403002944">2</a>), </span><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: large;">emotions are the energy currents resulting from substrate level interactions occurring at the very bottom of this stack, in physiology. Thanks to the research inspired by the treatment demands of mood disorders, the physiology of emotions is well documented. </span><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: large;"> </span><br />
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<span style="color: #38761d;"><b><span style="font-family: "courier new" , "courier" , monospace;">[ </span></b><b><span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;">PHYSIOLOGY : body</span></b><b><span style="font-family: "courier new" , "courier" , monospace;"> ]</span></b></span></div>
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</b><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: large;"><b>In the breakdown of Moment</b> at Layer 0 of the tech stack of experience, this is the stack of the <i>human experience</i>. When trying to change our behavior by changing our thoughts, we're limiting ourselves to it's top two layers. </span><br />
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<b style="color: #38761d;"><span style="font-family: "courier new" , "courier" , monospace;">[ </span><span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;">BEHAVIOR : actions</span><span style="font-family: "courier new" , "courier" , monospace;"> ]</span></b></div>
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<b style="color: #38761d;"><span style="font-family: "courier new" , "courier" , monospace;">[ </span><span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;">COGNITION : thoughts</span><span style="font-family: "courier new" , "courier" , monospace;"> ]</span></b></div>
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<b style="color: #38761d;"><span style="font-family: "courier new" , "courier" , monospace;">[ </span><span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;">AFFECT : feelings</span><span style="font-family: "courier new" , "courier" , monospace;"> ]</span></b></div>
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<b style="color: #38761d;"><span style="font-family: "courier new" , "courier" , monospace;">[ </span></b><b style="color: #38761d; font-family: times;"><span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;">EMOTION</span></b><b style="color: #38761d;"><span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;"> : mood</span><span style="font-family: "courier new" , "courier" , monospace;"> ]</span></b></div>
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<b style="color: #38761d;"><span style="font-family: "courier new" , "courier" , monospace;">[ </span></b><b style="color: #38761d;"><span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;">PHYSIOLOGY : body</span></b><b style="color: #38761d;"><span style="font-family: "courier new" , "courier" , monospace;"> ]</span></b></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: large;">Practices like CBT are designed to teach the </span><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: large;">"</span><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: large;">skills to manage how [our] thoughts, feelings and behaviors interact and influence one another</span><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: large;">". </span><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: large;">(<a href="http://www.psychotherapy.net/data/uploads/5110394f10a74.pdf">0</a>) Such methods </span><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: large;">attempt to operate at the top <i>three</i> layers. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: large;">The </span><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: large;">management of higher layers through the entry point of physiology is a road heavily traveled on (nearly) everything from diet and exercise to </span><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: large;">pharmacological</span><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: large;"> </span><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: large;">prescription. </span><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: large;">The </span><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: large;">upward communication [from physiology to emotion, and then from emotion to feelings] is </span><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: large;">guaranteed. </span><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: large;">Using this natural configuration to gain administrative access to higher layers is advantageous when feelings, thoughts, and behaviors become unmanageable. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: large;">Physiology is the fastest path to making changes in the emotion layer. Stabilizing emotions allows [a feeling] to be identified </span></span></span><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: large;">accurately</span><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: large;">. The act of identifying [our] feelings helps "guide complex self-directed choices" </span></span></span><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: large;">(<a href="http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.322.2652&rep=rep1&type=pdf">3</a>)</span><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: large;"> via consequent enhancements to decision making circuitry in the forebrain. </span></span></span><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: large;">Decision making -- one of several components of cognition -- is impacted by </span><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: large;">"emotion-related" biomarkers that "</span><span style="font-family: "times"; font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: large;">assist cognitive processes in implementing decisions</span></span><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: large;">". (<a href="https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Martial_Van_der_Linden/publication/7487064_Decision-Making_and_Impulse_Control_after_Frontal_Lobe_Injuries/links/57187e1308ae986b8b79f0ab.pdf">4</a>) </span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: large;">Mechanisms of somatic biomarkers transpiring in physiology </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: large;">The post-treatment efficacy of CBT has come under fire in recent reviews </span><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: large;">with conclusions that its "effectiveness ... has been overstated in the literature" by authors who were "positively biased" in favor of CBT by way of "researcher allegiance". (<a href="http://www.cloudpsychology.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2013/07/Empirical-Status-of-CBT.pdf">5</a>) Neglecting physiology's full stack engagement is one probable cause for treatment deficiencies leading to CBT's demise in reputation. </span><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: large;">Its overconfidence in treating conditions inflicted with [degrees of] impairment in impulse control is a reflection of this glaring oversight. </span><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: large;"> </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: large;">Impulse control mechanisms merge into the transmission of information from cognition up to behavior, from the posterior region of </span><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: large;">the </span><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: large;">ventromedial prefrontal cortex (VMPC), a neural region also critical for decision making. (<a href="https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Martial_Van_der_Linden/publication/7487064_Decision-Making_and_Impulse_Control_after_Frontal_Lobe_Injuries/links/57187e1308ae986b8b79f0ab.pdf">4</a>)(<a href="http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.472.1837&rep=rep1&type=pdf">6</a>) </span><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: large;">This is an important point of convergence for the workings of physical hardware, ephemeral states of cognition, and behavioral execution. </span><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: large;">Physical insults to the VMPC </span><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: large;">induce "behavioral disinhibition" (<a href="http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.472.1837&rep=rep1&type=pdf">6</a>) that cannot be mediated using the thought-based activities prescribed by CBT. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: large;"><b>As 2016 comes to a close</b>, most of us will be returning to the </span><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: large;">drawing board to rewrite our New Years resolutions as we do each year. </span><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: large;">In renewing our dedication to self improvement, we commonly impose painstaking processes on ourselves to brute force our desired results.</span><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: large;"> </span><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: large;">Failing to be achieved, many resolutions get recycled as our discipline to uphold the behavior patterns to achieve them lose momentum. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: large;">The rising chaos of our highly demanding lives may always present new obstacles that come between us and better versions of ourselves. Rather than fighting this natural order (or blaming it for our shortcomings), </span><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: large;">the game plan to </span><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: large;">fulfilling each of our goals must be designed in accordance to the stack of human experience. </span><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: large;"> </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: large;">To have better relationships, to make sound decisions, to eliminate internal conflicts, to improve our performance in all aspects of our lives and to feel better everyday, we need to know what layer we are ultimately expecting to see the results of our changes; how this layer communicates with neighboring layer(s); </span><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: large;">and</span><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: large;"> </span><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: large;">all the ways in which this layer can be accessed, directly or otherwise. </span><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: large;">A solution for accomplishing a goal must be multifaceted: it's important to address what the solution must do at each layer in order to support the intended outcome. For lasting effects, all solutions need a component in physiology. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: large;">Each layer points to the layer above it, and e</span><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: large;">verything occurring at all layers have some physiological underpinning. Sitting at the top of the stack, behavior appears to be most distant. However, actions can only be carried out through the physical medium of the body, making it feasible to claim that behavior is as close (if not closer) </span><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: large;">to physiology as the layer of emotion. In reality, this structure of human experience is not so much a stack as it is a linked list in which the last item rounds back and points to the first. All in all, </span><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: large;">the matrix of physiology is inescapable. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: large;">Physiology is the layer with which we withstand the constant bombardment of stimuli from the external world. </span><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: large;">A human may or may not exist in other forms, but without a human body there is no human experience. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">(0) http://www.psychotherapy.net/data/uploads/5110394f10a74.pdf </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">(1) http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1586/ern.11.68 </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">(2) http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0031938403002944 </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">(3) http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.322.2652&rep=rep1&type=pdf </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">(4) https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Martial_Van_der_Linden/publication/7487064_Decision-Making_and_Impulse_Control_after_Frontal_Lobe_Injuries/links/57187e1308ae986b8b79f0ab.pdf </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">(5) http://www.cloudpsychology.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2013/07/Empirical-Status-of-CBT.pdf </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">(6) http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.472.1837&rep=rep1&type=pdf</span><br />
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Zareen Wilhelmhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03621428545462451023noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7986790754756040588.post-85115698593983069812016-05-13T06:09:00.000-04:002016-12-17T16:58:51.427-05:00Education Disfigured by Controlling Interests in a Dying Empire <div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: large;">Universities get into partnerships with banks, credit unions, insurance companies, non-bank lenders, and other</span><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: large;"> vendors in the private financial sector, commonly to minimize certain administrative overhead by outsourcing operations like </span></span><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: large;">"</span><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: large;">processing financial aid refund payments</span><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: large;">"</span><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: large;"> </span><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: large;">(<a href="https://consumersunion.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/08/Campus_banking_products_report.pdf">4</a>), managing</span></span><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: large;"> student loan services, and <a href="https://www.universitybusiness.com/article/aiding-through-outsourcing">other business processes</a></span><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: large;">. </span></span><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: large;">Through these contractual agreements, their partnering financial firms become unrivaled providers of banking products on campus. </span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: large;">Campus transforms into </span></span><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: large;">a competition-free environment </span><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: large;">where it's in the </span><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: large;">interest of the financial-collegiate partnership </span><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: large;">to limit the students' awareness of other <i>less expensive</i> options. </span><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: large;"><a href="http://www.consumerfinance.gov/about-us/blog/alerting-colleges-about-secret-banking-contracts/">Questionable fees and policies</a> adhering to these financial products are disguised in marketing ploys as options of wisdom and convenience. </span><br />
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<span style="color: #666666; font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: x-large; font-weight: bold;"><i>"</i></span><span style="background-color: white; line-height: 26px;"><span style="font-size: x-large; font-style: italic; font-weight: bold;">A checking account is a convenient and a wonderful introduction to independence ... a checking account can help create a good financial foundation for the rest of your life."</span><span style="font-size: large;"><i style="font-weight: bold;"> </i>(0) </span></span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: large;">Nation wide <a href="http://www.acenet.edu/the-presidency/columns-and-features/Pages/state-funding-a-race-to-the-bottom.aspx">drops in state funding</a> </span><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: large;">situate colleges to </span></span><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: large;">increasingly rely</span><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: large;"> on tuition and other sources of private capital. </span><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: large;">R</span><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: large;">aising tuition transfers the burden </span><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: large;">of monetary decline </span><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: large;">onto the students. </span><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: large;">Achieving new </span><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: large;">watermarks</span><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: large;"> of</span><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: large;"> profit and </span><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: large;">m</span><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: large;">aintaining lucrative relationships </span><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: large;">float to the top of schools' priorities as they</span><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: large;"> take on "</span><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: large;">a culture of service to the student as a client</span><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: large;">". (<a href="http://gse.buffalo.edu/fas/johnston/privatization.html">3</a>) </span><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: large;"> </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: large;">The </span><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: large;">evolving strategies employed by firms to continue to attract students reflect the changing nature of these arrangements. On the liquid wheels of revenue-sharing agreements, schools are being mobilized to augment <i>further</i> debt by "nudging" students "toward a specific account option", (eventually) provoking the mandate of legislation regulating this and other similarly motivated activities. (<a href="http://americanext.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/02/America-Next-K-12-Education-Reform.pdf">7</a>) </span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: large;">In the mean time, the off-campus world experiences rising pressures to <i>attend</i> college. </span></span><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: large;">President Obama introduced </span><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: large;">The American Graduation Initiative, and later, The College Completion Toolkit, along with </span><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: large;">"a table of 'state targets'—the total number of college graduates that each state would need to achieve to be on target to meet the 2020 national goal.</span><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: large;">" </span><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: large;">A</span></span><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: large;"> sudden well-spring of <i>college completion initiatives</i> are in bloom across the US as governors are tasked with the responsibility of maximizing the annual amount of college graduations achieved in their states.</span><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: large;"> </span></span><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: large;">(<a href="http://www.aascu.org/policy/publications/policymatters/2011/collegecompletion.pdf">2</a>)</span><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: large;"> </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: large;">Universities and other organizations are responding to this call-to-action, sharing </span><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: large;">the ambition "</span><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: large;">to significantly increase the number of adults in the United States who have earned a postsecondary credential</span><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: large;">".</span><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: large;"> </span><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: large;">(<a href="http://www.aascu.org/policy/publications/policymatters/2011/collegecompletion.pdf">2</a>)</span><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: large;"> </span><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: large;">As more people are finding their access to a college education, its being stripped of its value, </span><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: large;">morphing into an expensive pedagogic facade through the gradual inevitability of </span><a href="http://gse.buffalo.edu/fas/johnston/privatization.html" style="font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: x-large;">privatization</a><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: large;">. </span><br />
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<b><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: x-large;"><i><span style="color: #999999;"><span style="color: #999999;">"Opponents of privatization claim that it distorts and subverts</span> </span>the core mission of a college or university<span style="color: #999999;">, which</span> is to seek truth and generate new knowledge, unfettered by the need for commercial application or external justification, and<span style="color: #999999;"><span style="color: #999999;"> </span><span style="color: #999999;">to preserve and</span></span><span style="color: #cccccc;"> </span>transmit both<span style="color: #999999;"> </span><span style="color: #999999;"><span style="color: #999999;">these truths</span> <span style="color: #999999;">and society’s underlying cultural heritage."</span></span></i></span></b><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: large;">(<a href="http://gse.buffalo.edu/fas/johnston/privatization.html">3</a>)</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: large;">Delineating these circumstances as confined to </span><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: large;">college-level education is a </span><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: large;">misguided perception:</span><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: large;"> since earlier this century, grades K-12 have seen aggressive reforms (<a href="http://www.psc-cuny.org/austerityeducation">1</a>,<a href="http://americanext.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/02/America-Next-K-12-Education-Reform.pdf">7</a>,<a href="http://www.forbes.com/sites/stevedenning/2011/09/01/the-single-best-idea-for-reforming-k-12-education/#2043fe1afd77">8</a>) that enforce </span><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: large;">"</span><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: large;"><span style="background-color: white;">relentless testing, charter schools, closing of 'failing' public schools, mass firing of teachers, and widespread standardization" (<a href="http://www.psc-cuny.org/austerityeducation">1</a>). These reforms similarly impose </span></span><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: large;">"factory model management ...</span><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: medium;"> </span><span style="background-color: white; line-height: 24.64px;">for the scalability and efficiency of 'the system'</span></span><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: large;">"</span><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: large;"> </span><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: large;">(<a href="http://americanext.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/02/America-Next-K-12-Education-Reform.pdf">7</a>)</span><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: large;">. </span><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: large;"> </span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: large;">The culmination of these factors take the form of an inescapable</span><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: large;"> misinformation vector nearly covering the full extent of [a single person's] institutional education. </span><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: large;">At the college level, this vector is founded on "mandatory" courses </span><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: large;">entrenched into general curriculum (ie.: philosophy, ethics, and economics),</span><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: large;"> designed to deliver an "</span><span style="background-color: white; line-height: 20.4px;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: large;">abstract, idealized model</span></span><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: large;">" of the world while deflecting conveyance of a true </span><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: large;">"</span><span style="background-color: white; font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: large; line-height: 20.4px;">understanding of real world developments</span><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: large;">". </span><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: large;">This is a mass distribution of an</span><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: large;"> amoral and callous "</span><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: large;">intelligence"</span><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: large;">, easily </span><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: large;">perverted by </span><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: large;">"a grave absence of a historical perspective" (<a href="http://www.intrepidreport.com/archives/16263">5</a>). </span><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: large;"> </span><br />
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<i style="font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: xx-large;"><b>"If we
boycott various periods of history, the
origins of the new cultures which succeeded
them cannot be explained.</b>"</i><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: x-large;"> </span><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: large;">(<a href="http://people.uncw.edu/kozloffm/glubb.pdf">6</a>)</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: large;">In <a href="http://people.uncw.edu/kozloffm/glubb.pdf">The Fate of Empires</a>, </span><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: large;">Sir John Glubb identifies an astonishingly repetitive pattern of "development and decline" over "</span><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: large;">many successive empires covering some 3,000 years</span><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: large;">". Through</span><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: large;"> this paradigm, </span><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: large;">the American empire has certainly survived the ages of Pioneering, Conquest and Commerce, to realize its ages of Affluence and of Intellect. </span><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: large;">Prior to Affluence, earlier </span><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: large;">values of "</span><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: large;">glory and honour were the principal objects of ambition</span><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: large;">". Through</span><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: large;"> the age of Affluence, Glubb asserts that the "voice of duty" is silenced as</span><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: large;"> </span><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: large;">"</span><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: large;">the desire to make money seems to gain hold of the public</span><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: large;">". </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: large;">He goes on to explain that </span><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: large;">"e</span><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: large;">ducation undergoes the same gradual transformation": colleges abandon practices that produce "</span><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: large;">brave patriots ready to serve their
country</span><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: large;">" </span><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: large;">while "</span><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: large;">p</span><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: large;">arents and students alike seek the educational qualifications which will command the highest salaries</span><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: large;">". (<a href="http://people.uncw.edu/kozloffm/glubb.pdf">6</a>) </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: large;">To view all moving pieces of our modern puzzle in this historical framework, its important to remember that m</span><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: large;">assive education funding cuts are introduced at the same level of government where the foghorn [to exceedingly arouse state-level college attendance] is sounding. Furthermore,</span><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: large;"> foundations that provide backing to this agenda include the the Lumina Foundation for Education, "</span><span style="background-color: white; font-family: "times"; font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: large;">a foundation whose assets derive from the <i>student loan industry</i></span></span><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: large;">" (<a href="http://www.psc-cuny.org/austerityeducation">1</a>). </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: large;">The cyclic humor of this relationship portrayal is more than a coincidence. </span><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: large;">What we have here is </span><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: large;">not just financial wolves taking advantage of </span><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: large;">an economic contraction: we are witnessing the residues of </span><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: large;">unscrupulous bonds fashioned between public policy and </span><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: large;">private interests</span><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: large;">. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: large;"><span style="background-color: white;"><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></span></span>
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: large;"><span style="background-color: white;"><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: large;">Grades K-12 merely hosted the starting point of </span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: large;">a "long range, coordinated effort"</span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: large;"> </span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: large;">(<a href="http://gse.buffalo.edu/fas/johnston/privatization.html">3</a>) to arrive at current conditions. </span>After </span></span><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: large;">cultivating regulatory influence at earlier academic levels, t</span><span style="background-color: white; font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: large;">hose private interests have finally "focused on colleges and universities" (1). </span><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: large;">After all, producing an entire society of debt-entrapped and professionally preoccupied literates is heavily demanding of power, patience, and a <i>very</i> lengthy commitment. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: large;">A decaying empire's contemporary holders of authority fearfully anticipate the encroaching discordance of society. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: large;">These private interests shake hands with schools, law makers, media channels, and other avenues of control to suppress (or at least, delay) the </span><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: large;">inevitable redistribution of resources and power. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: large;">In phases of its demise, an empire demonstrates a </span></span><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: large;">"</span></span><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: large;">tendency to
philanthropy</span><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: large;">" (toward minorities and the disadvantaged). At this phase of its shelf life, </span></span></span><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: large;">the Roman Empire provided easy access to education, equal citizenship, and participation in prestigious political positions. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: large;">This bears spectacular resemblance to our federally mandated, institution-driven </span><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: large;">campaign for </span><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: large;">"</span><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: large;">increasing student success and educational attainment</span><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: large;">" (<a href="http://www.aascu.org/policy/publications/policymatters/2011/collegecompletion.pdf">2</a>). </span><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: large;">Toted as a movement of generosity, this education-based agenda is a sign of the American corporate capitalist empire's looming deterioration. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">(0) Discover Bank, Member FDIC </span><br />
<span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">(1) http://www.psc-cuny.org/austerityeducation </span><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"> </span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">(2) http://www.aascu.org/policy/publications/policymatters/2011/collegecompletion.pdf </span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">(3) http://gse.buffalo.edu/fas/johnston/privatization.html</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">(4) https://consumersunion.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/08/Campus_banking_products_report.pdf</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">(5) http://www.intrepidreport.com/archives/16263 </span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">(6) http://people.uncw.edu/kozloffm/glubb.pdf </span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">(7) http://americanext.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/02/America-Next-K-12-Education-Reform.pdf </span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">(8) </span><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">http://www.forbes.com/sites/stevedenning/2011/09/01/the-single-best-idea-for-reforming-k-12-education/#2043fe1afd77</span><br />
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Zareen Wilhelmhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03621428545462451023noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7986790754756040588.post-9881453101616385842016-04-10T08:02:00.002-04:002016-04-22T15:02:06.076-04:00Are you Traumatizing your Child without Knowing it? (A brief biological review) <div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Has your child been "acting out" or "behaving badly"? <i>Y</i></span></span><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: large;"><i>ou</i></span><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: large;"> </span><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: large;">may </span><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: large;">be the reason <i>why</i>. </span><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: large;">Even the most well-intentioned parents could be the inadvertent cause of such "misbehavior". In order to understand how you could be damaging your child well into their future, it is necessary to consider the impact of your parenting style on the very </span><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: large;">architecture of their biology, from the very beginning. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: large;">When we <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9FeTK7ZXmVI">interact with a baby</a>, we're activating the baby's </span><span style="color: blue; font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: large;"><a href="http://reichandlowentherapy.org/Content/Vegetative/ventral_shift.html">ventral vagal complex</a></span><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: large;"> (VVC)</span><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: large;">. </span><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: large;">The </span><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: large;">VVC is composed of the middle ear, the throat, voice box and facial muscles, the anatomical components of our social engagement system. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: large;">The primitive (unmyelinated) VVC connection regulates feeding behavior in relation to the presence of danger in the external environment. </span><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: large;">When the <span style="color: blue;"><a href="http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2917081/">limbic system</a></span> recognizes an environmental threat, </span><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: large;">its functions are countered by the sympathetic nervous system</span><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: large;"> which increases metabolic output and halts the digestive process. </span><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: large;">The advanced (myelinated) VVC connects the brain's threat-detection results to state changes in digestion and heart rate. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: large;">This brain-body communication is made possible by the multi-branching Polyvagal nerve network, which plays a critical role in the biology behind survival and safety. Polyvagal Theory offers an organized lexicon for addressing the "<b>subtle interplay between the visceral experiences of our own bodies and the voices and faces of the people around us.</b>" (0) </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: large;">For a definitive explanation of this theory, </span><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: large;">pick up <a href="http://www.amazon.com/The-Body-Keeps-Score-Healing/dp/0670785938">The Body Keeps The Score</a>, </span><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: large;">by Bessel van der Kolk. This is an elegant and authoritative breakdown </span><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: large;">on the science behind this three-layered stress response system and the biology behind fear, in the framework of the many nuanced facets of the reality of trauma. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: large;">Positive social engagement between a baby and its caretakers help to synchronize a balance between the sympathetic and parasympathetic branches of the baby's autonomic nervous system (ANS). </span><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: large;">This balance helps them generate the circuits that allow them to control the stress responses they produce concerning their surroundings </span><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: large;">as they grow into citizens of their human communities. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: large;">Engagement of the VVC in a safe environment at a young age</span><b style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: x-large;"> </b><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: large;">calibrates a child </span><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: large;">to the culture and pace of its surroundings.</span><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: large;"> </span><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: large;">In contrast, fear and [eventual] trauma </span><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: large;">interrupt the synchrony between the two arms of the ANS and raises the sensitivity of the amygdala in the limbic system. (<a href="https://www.psychologytoday.com/sites/default/files/attachments/4141/what-you-should-know-about-your-brain.pdf">1</a>) Recall an <a href="http://www.zareenwilhelm.com/2016/03/trauma-carves-path-from-protection-to.html">earlier discussion</a> </span><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: large;">on this increased sensitivity and its potential to evolve and feed a never-ending loop of retraumatization, running far into one's adulthood. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">An overactive amygdala </span><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">consumes higher amounts of oxygen and resources available to the brain. </span><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">When fear is at work, it abuses its connection to the </span><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="color: blue;"><a href="http://www.neuroanatomy.wisc.edu/coursebook/neuro2(2).pdf">hypothalamus</a></span> which triggers the downstream state changes riding on the Polyvagal nerve network bridging their brain to their body. This processing path is run by "the lower, automatic brain... which reacts to information instinctively" without engaging the individual's consciousness. (<a href="https://www.psychologytoday.com/sites/default/files/attachments/4141/what-you-should-know-about-your-brain.pdf">1</a>)</span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: large;">Also recall from <a href="http://www.zareenwilhelm.com/2016/03/trauma-carves-path-from-protection-to.html">said</a> earlier </span><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: large;">discussion, an oversensitive amygdala's raised likelihood of arriving at false positives by identifying sources of fear in objectively peaceful conditions. </span><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: large;">The individual becomes subject to fighting invisible attacks. Acutely experienced flashbacks of traumatic events (like war and rape) is one form of consuming and uncontrollable ghost attack. Another such example is a young child exposed to trauma, acting out patterns of "bad behavior". </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: large;">While they were still infants, if our interactions with them successfully activate their social engagement system rooted in their VVC, signs of this success are observable in their socialization performance, later on. States of confusion they will experience further into their growth are more likely to be met with resilience, and less likely to be early sparks of future trauma. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: large;">Explicit demonstrations of full blown aggression are not necessary for planting the seeds of traumatization</span><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: large;">: the disturbances c</span><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: large;">an easily be tucked in the subtleties of your interaction. </span><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: large;">The faintest hints of passive aggression could be </span><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: large;">picked up by their sensory modalities and interpreted by their limbic system as signs of neglect which are alarming. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: large;">The confusion caused by the shifts between a caregiver's expressions of love and anger can trigger stress responses and weaken their nervous system during critical stages of development. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: large;">These are ways in which you can be throwing your child's sympathetic and parasympathetic nervous systems off balance. </span><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: large;">This imbalance hinders the development, use, and strengthening of their neural circuits that facilitate their ability to control their own behavior. </span><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: large;">With repeated and prolonged exposure to these patterns, the accumulation of "the residues of terror and panic in their bodies" (0) is guaranteed to proliferate into behavioral exhibits that are hard to manage, predict, or explain directly. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: large;">If your child is behaving badly, are you confused about the cause? </span><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: large;">How consistent and reliable are you, from your child's perspective?</span><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: large;"> Can you genuinely distinguish all of the faces you've been showing them? It is possible you may be sending them mixed signals that are causing them stress? </span><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: large;">What are the ways in which you may be unwittingly hitting them with signals of aggression? </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: large;"><b style="font-size: medium;">Related article</b><span style="font-size: small;">: <a href="http://www.zareenwilhelm.com/2015/11/eruptions-of-domestic-disturbance-or.html">Witnessing Eruptions of Domestic Disturbance (or, How to Raise a Danger to Society)</a></span></span>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: x-small; font-weight: normal;">(1) https://www.psychologytoday.com/sites/default/files/attachments/4141/what-you-should-know-about-your-brain.pdf </span></span></h4>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">(0) Bessel van der Kolk, M.D. The Body Keeps The Score - Brain, Mind, and Body in the Healing of Trauma. New York, NY: Penguin Publish Group., 2014 </span></span><br />
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Zareen Wilhelmhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03621428545462451023noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7986790754756040588.post-21547509046743282042016-01-04T15:11:00.000-05:002016-01-11T12:38:22.092-05:00How Youth Angst Invites Reinvention of the American Education <div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span id="docs-internal-guid-c229e334-0e57-45cb-fd3a-a6e3670d3435" style="color: #666666;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13.3333px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Over the coarse of 2015, a culture wave of </span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13.3333px; font-style: italic; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">political correctness</span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13.3333px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> arose out of emotional frustrations on university campuses and consumed the American psyche. This revival of social sensitivities, described [by NYMag] as "</span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13.3333px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">a strange and sudden ... hypersensitivity among young people</span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13.3333px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">" (</span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">November 10, 2015 9:01 a.m.</span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13.3333px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">), gained a prominent foothold in public awareness and propagated "a widespread expectation of a right to be protected from offense." (</span><a href="http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2015/11/can-we-take-political-correctness-seriously-now.html" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">9</span></a><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13.3333px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">) </span></span><br />
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<span style="color: #666666;"><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 13.3333px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Professors at major universities around the country documented students' incapability of handling failure and uncertainty. These students are "very uncomfortable in not being right"; to them "external measures of success are more important than learning and autonomous development". (</span><a href="https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/freedom-learn/201509/declining-student-resilience-serious-problem-colleges" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">12</span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 13.3333px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">) </span></span></div>
<span id="docs-internal-guid-c229e334-0e58-03e1-1242-e7fe03282936"><span style="color: #666666;"><br /><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13.3333px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">This hypersensitivity has created a sound-bite out of the term "safe space" (</span><a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/northamerica/usa/12022041/How-political-correctness-rules-in-Americas-student-safe-spaces.html" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13.3333px; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">14</span></a><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13.3333px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">), and precipitated the creation of cultural entities like South Park's PC Principal: </span></span></span><br />
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<a href="http://i.imgur.com/FuzhtK7.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="color: #666666;"><img border="0" src="http://i.imgur.com/FuzhtK7.jpg" height="246" width="400" /></span></a></div>
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<span style="color: #666666;"><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 13.3333px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">These events have persuaded a great amount of speculation (</span><a href="https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/freedom-learn/201509/declining-student-resilience-serious-problem-colleges" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 13.3333px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">12</span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 13.3333px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">)(</span><a href="http://www.nationalreview.com/article/426853/yale-student-protest-safe-space-political-correctness" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 13.3333px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">13</span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 13.3333px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">), which may have panned out as the continuation of our [media's] dissection of the Millennial consumer mentality (</span><a href="http://www.goldmansachs.com/our-thinking/pages/macroeconomic-insights-folder/what-if-i-told-you/report.pdf" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">7</span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 13.3333px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">)(</span><a href="http://money.usnews.com/money/careers/articles/2012/06/27/millennial-workers-entitled-needy-self-centered" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">15</span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 13.3333px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">). </span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 13.3333px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="color: #666666;">Because this cohort is at the bleeding edge of education's contribution to our economy's workforce, </span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 13.3333px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="color: #666666;">the psychology of this phenomenon may be valuable to perceive in the context of its (our) economic reality. </span></span></div>
<span id="docs-internal-guid-c229e334-0e58-7c33-b772-c39ade5aa3c9"><span style="color: #666666;"><br /><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13.3333px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Today's college graduates drag oppressive student loan debts shackled to their credit: Goldman Sacs reports (in late 2015) that our nation's student loan debt is now summing higher than $1 trillion. </span></span></span><br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjATNd6gZbupDDQacsKJpCQJJS8HbIgxSD-dLFnyTLONcNQbrDpGtg0X0SgUu4fzGbv7bFemWaW80-hQmGuFa4zmzmm-reCqW6eHIKKnTe2ierBPHNn7dnvCtJGd6HpRMB7flyJsQCdAVE/s1600/college_cost_rise.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><span style="color: #666666;"><img border="0" height="305" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjATNd6gZbupDDQacsKJpCQJJS8HbIgxSD-dLFnyTLONcNQbrDpGtg0X0SgUu4fzGbv7bFemWaW80-hQmGuFa4zmzmm-reCqW6eHIKKnTe2ierBPHNn7dnvCtJGd6HpRMB7flyJsQCdAVE/s400/college_cost_rise.png" width="400" /></span></a></div>
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<span style="color: #666666;"><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 13.3333px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The room for revolutionizing our view of education is pronounced by the increasing costs of college attendance, the diminishing fiscal returns on a Bachelors degree, and the rising number of earned supplementary Masters degrees (further augmenting our educational expenses). (</span><a href="http://www.goldmansachs.com/our-thinking/pages/macroeconomic-insights-folder/what-if-i-told-you/report.pdf" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">7</span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 13.3333px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">) </span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 13.3333px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="color: #666666;">Sachs also reports on increases in unmet demand (vacancy) across fifteen verticals, disaffected by increases in college degrees earned (since the start of the millennium, until now): </span></span></div>
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<span style="color: #666666; margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh9NmqODt6xdJfkJLRyWQMlgrz_Et7vGivbTbst8iqGgWD8Xzls46L96-uVD8vTI-rbf9NVPHG3faoSTPWX8YcTbkZZW3jA7q64o-VRn8_aUYwwcTMsVizICSwrohetjomQngVDDPGWc00/s1600/demands_unmet.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" height="300" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh9NmqODt6xdJfkJLRyWQMlgrz_Et7vGivbTbst8iqGgWD8Xzls46L96-uVD8vTI-rbf9NVPHG3faoSTPWX8YcTbkZZW3jA7q64o-VRn8_aUYwwcTMsVizICSwrohetjomQngVDDPGWc00/s400/demands_unmet.png" width="400" /></a></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 13.3333px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="color: #666666;"><br /></span></span>
<span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 13.3333px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="color: #666666;">With the exception of Health Care, all these industries have experience a hike in unfulfilled demands by the labor force, within the last 5 years. (Colleges have improved on training students going into the Health Care industry since the first 5 years of the new Millennium, but have been stagnant over the last decade. The vacancy gaps widen steadily with the growth of industries like Information.) New demands are outpacing the adjustments required in our education system. </span></span></div>
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<span style="color: #666666;"><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 13.3333px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Sachs' forecasts on the decline of the [values of the] college degree interrupts our short-lived, pro-college traditions, similar to that described in </span><a href="http://americanradioworks.publicradio.org/features/tomorrows-college/dropouts/value-of-college-degree.html" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 13.3333px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The Value of a College Degree</span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 13.3333px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> by American RadioWorks. </span></span></div>
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<span style="color: #666666;"><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 13.3333px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Despite their competing sentiments, even this pro-college advertisement acknowledges that "by year 2018, the United States will need at least 22 million more people to have college degrees in order the meet the growing demand for educated workers - and at current rates, the nation will fall short." (</span><a href="http://americanradioworks.publicradio.org/features/tomorrows-college/dropouts/value-of-college-degree.html" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">11</span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 13.3333px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">) </span></span><span style="color: #666666; font-family: Arial; font-size: 13.3333px; line-height: 1.38; white-space: pre-wrap;">Concern for this supply-demand mismatch has been reviewed by both opposing perspectives. </span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 13.3333px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="color: #666666;">In an economy with lucrative opportunities remaining vacant, we recognize a generation of our society that is characterized by an anxiety-driven fear of failure, an aversion to risks and open debates, a dire need for external approval, armed with an oversensitive sense of self-entitlement. It is inviting to conclude that this recent cultural wave of "political correctness" could have been a part of this debt-entrapped generation's attempt to explore their income possibilities, maintaining heads above water in an economy which demands skills that colleges are failing to teach. </span></span><br />
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<span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 13.3333px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="color: #666666;"><br /></span></span></div>
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<span style="color: #666666;"><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 13.3333px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">As the weakness of the American college education is revealed through our culture and our economy, we are also witnessing the largest increase in global information availability in human history. As we take our first few steps into the time tunnel of 2016 CE, we observe the awakening of </span><a href="http://money.cnn.com/2015/12/16/news/generation-z-work/" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 13.3333px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Generation Z</span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 13.3333px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">, the successors of Millennials who are the first human generation "born device in-hand" (</span><a href="http://www.goldmansachs.com/our-thinking/pages/macroeconomic-insights-folder/what-if-i-told-you/report.pdf" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 13.3333px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">7</span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 13.3333px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">). </span></span><br />
<span style="color: #666666;"><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 13.3333px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></span></div>
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<span style="color: #666666;"><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 13.3333px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Education may be "in crisis worldwide" (</span><a href="http://www.unicef.org/publications/index_78727.html" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 13.3333px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">17</span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 13.3333px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">), but efforts to remedy this condition with the use of technology are viciously underway. (</span><a href="http://www.entrepreneur.com/article/243002" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 13.3333px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">16</span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 13.3333px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">) Regardless of any particular leanings for or against [types of] pedagogic institutions, information is the lifeblood of one's education, and technology provides the arena to unite education and equality. Regardless of the fate of our costly institutions, an education will remain central to one's survival and human rights. </span></span><br />
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<a href="http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2013/02/03/books/review/03LIND/03LIND-superJumbo.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2013/02/03/books/review/03LIND/03LIND-superJumbo.jpg" height="207" width="400" /></a></div>
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<span style="color: #666666; font-family: Arial; font-size: 13.3333px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The </span><a href="http://www.yale.edu/ynhti/curriculum/units/1981/2/81.02.06.x.html" style="line-height: 1.38; text-decoration: none;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Industrial Era</span></a><span style="color: #666666; font-family: Arial; font-size: 13.3333px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> ripped through the spacetime of the 20th century, reducing distance and reinventing the speed of human movement. However, </span><a href="http://moglen.law.columbia.edu/" style="line-height: 1.38; text-decoration: none;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Eben Moglen</span></a><span style="color: #666666; font-family: Arial; font-size: 13.3333px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> affirms an indispensable change in the nature of our humanity that took place between the 20th and the 21st century. (</span><a href="http://www.geof.net/blog/2006/12/10/eben-moglen" style="line-height: 1.38; text-decoration: none;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">6</span></a><span style="color: #666666; font-family: Arial; font-size: 13.3333px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">) The rate of increase in universal access to information is an intrinsic consequence of our transition. </span><br />
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<span style="color: #666666;"><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 13.3333px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Today the Industrial Era is finished and the supply-demand mismatch presented by Sachs (also foreseen by others) reflect the gaps in our knowledge on how to behave, as </span><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Information_Age" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 13.3333px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">the Digital Age</span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 13.3333px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> articulates its reach through nearly every vein of personal and organizational life. </span></span></div>
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<span style="color: #666666;"><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 13.3333px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The new economic demands that this historical epoch is presenting to our education system can be addressed with programs to improve our institutions, or -- in the opposite direction -- eliminate them entirely. Technology makes education more affordable by bringing information straight to one's fingertips. Information technology should be introduced to rural isolation, building communication infrastructure between villages (</span><a href="http://www.ruralstrategies.org/broadband" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 13.3333px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">3</span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 13.3333px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">)(</span><a href="http://www.wildblue.com/rural-internet" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 13.3333px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">4</span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 13.3333px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">), protecting individual identities and activities within each home (</span><a href="http://freedomboxfoundation.org/learn/" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 13.3333px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">5</span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 13.3333px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">). </span></span></div>
<span style="color: #666666;"><br /><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13.3333px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Denouncing our educational traditions could allow us to fully recalibrate our vision: one's education can be measured by the very value (usability) of the information consumed, rather than by the price (and brand) of one's degree. The internet should be as available as a utility like electricity. (</span><a href="https://www.whitehouse.gov/net-neutrality" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13.3333px; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">2</span></a><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13.3333px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">) Everyone should have access to some system of consumable education like they have access to water. </span></span><br />
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<a href="http://www.forwardindustrial.co.uk/images/site-images/util-img.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="color: #666666;"><img border="0" src="http://www.forwardindustrial.co.uk/images/site-images/util-img.png" height="92" width="400" /></span></a></div>
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<a href="http://sdvoice.info/wp-content/uploads/2015/09/Education.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="color: #666666;"><img border="0" src="http://sdvoice.info/wp-content/uploads/2015/09/Education.jpg" height="94" width="200" /></span></a></div>
<span style="color: #666666;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;"><br /></span>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 13.3333px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="color: #666666;">Education can be brought into the centerfold of our country's infrastructure by providing access to information as a necessary staple, consequently marginalizing our institutions that are proving to be costly and ineffective. </span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 13.3333px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="color: #666666;">Without the need to focus on an academic curriculum, we will have the time find the information we need to know, in the overlap of market demands and our own professional interests. The student loan debt can become an arcane relic of the 20th century (depending on the decisions made by Gen Z). </span></span></div>
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<span style="color: #666666;"><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 13.3333px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">In the face of growing industries like Information, the American economy is moving away from manufacturing, into a more </span><a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/govbeat/wp/2014/09/03/watch-the-u-s-transition-from-a-manufacturing-economy-to-a-service-economy-in-one-gif/" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">service-based economy</span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 13.3333px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">. An economy of services demands more skill-intensive training. </span></span></div>
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<span style="color: #666666;"><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 13.3333px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">According to Forbes, "Americans have a romantic connection to manufacturing" which is being overshadowed by the persistent growth of high-skill industries like Information [Technology]. In 2003 iTunes took its first steps into the future by offering a service to music consumers. Today, "</span><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-size: 13.3333px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">IBM is in the throws of a revolutionary five-year strategy to shift its product focus to software and services.</span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 13.3333px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">" (</span><a href="http://www.forbes.com/sites/ciocentral/2012/04/19/services-not-manufacturing-will-revive-the-u-s-workforce/" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">19</span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">) </span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 13.3333px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">A more detailed look at our shift in this direction can be found </span><a href="http://www3.nd.edu/~jkaboski/BK_AER_Final.pdf" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">here</span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 13.3333px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">. </span></span><br />
<span style="color: #666666;"><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 13.3333px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></span></div>
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<span style="color: #666666;"><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 13.3333px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">History has demonstrated that a nation running on a strong service economy is inarguably better fit to face the terrain of 21st century globalization. (</span><a href="http://blogs.spectator.co.uk/2015/06/greeces-service-economy-is-no-match-for-germanys-mercantile-one/" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 13.3333px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">18</span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 13.3333px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">) Internationally outsourcing our industrial labor is par for the course: we are not in competition with developing countries. </span></span><br />
<span style="color: #666666;"><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 13.3333px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></span></div>
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<span style="color: #666666;"><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 13.3333px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">In this post-industrial era, we can no longer afford to be chained to the scholastic dogma of our sinking institutions, or to our glorified images (of ourselves) borne out of success from an Industrial Age that has long been dead. </span></span><br />
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<span style="color: #666666; font-family: Arial; font-size: 13.3333px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Our new role in the global economy in this Digital Age awaits us, just as the vacancy for a rising new world power awaits China. To arrive, we must view Education as tantamount in value to our right in the Pursuit of Happiness. Each American </span><span style="color: #666666; font-family: Arial; font-size: 13.3333px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><i>should have</i></span><span style="color: #666666; font-family: Arial; font-size: 13.3333px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> the right to have access to public knowledge, and methods of protection from private interests (ie: <a href="http://freedomboxfoundation.org/learn/">FreedomBox</a>). </span></div>
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<span style="color: #666666; font-family: Arial; font-size: 13.3333px; line-height: 1.38; white-space: pre-wrap;">This tidal wave of tech unpacks new economic space that is disrupting higher education. Fortunately, it also delivers </span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13.3333px; line-height: 22.08px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><a href="http://www.itdl.org/journal/jan_05/article01.htm" style="line-height: 22.08px; text-decoration: none;">Connectivism</a>: <span style="color: #666666;">a learning theory that helps us better understand the "knowledge worker", a labor entity essential to resolving our supply-demand mismatch.</span></span><span style="color: #666666; font-family: Arial; font-size: 13.3333px; line-height: 1.38; white-space: pre-wrap;"> Our success lives in our economic transformation toward services, which will be achieved through the reinvention of The American Education. </span></div>
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<span style="color: #666666; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">(0) http://www.ontheissues.org/Social/Bernie_Sanders_Education.htm </span></div>
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<span style="color: #666666; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">(1) https://berniesanders.com/issues/its-time-to-make-college-tuition-free-and-debt-free/ </span></div>
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<span style="color: #666666; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">(2) https://www.whitehouse.gov/net-neutrality </span></div>
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<span style="color: #666666; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">(3) http://www.ruralstrategies.org/broadband </span></div>
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<span style="color: #666666; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">(4) http://www.wildblue.com/rural-internet </span></div>
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<span style="color: #666666; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">(5) http://freedomboxfoundation.org/learn/ </span></div>
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<span style="color: #666666; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">(6) http://www.geof.net/blog/2006/12/10/eben-moglen </span></div>
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<span style="color: #666666; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">(7) http://www.goldmansachs.com/our-thinking/pages/macroeconomic-insights-folder/what-if-i-told-you/report.pdf </span></div>
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<span style="color: #666666; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">(8) http://www.huffingtonpost.com/anthony-berteaux/jerry-seinfeld-politcally-correct-college-student_b_7540878.html </span></div>
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<span style="color: #666666; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">(9) http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2015/11/can-we-take-political-correctness-seriously-now.html </span></div>
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<span style="color: #666666; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">http://www.ew.com/article/2015/06/08/jerry-seinfeld-politically-correct-college-campuses</span></div>
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<span style="color: #666666; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">(10) http://www.mediaite.com/online/sarah-silverman-comedians-should-change-with-the-times-for-pc-college-students/ </span></div>
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<span style="color: #666666; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">(11) http://americanradioworks.publicradio.org/features/tomorrows-college/dropouts/value-of-college-degree.html </span><br />
<span style="color: #666666; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">(12) https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/freedom-learn/201509/declining-student-resilience-serious-problem-colleges </span><br />
<span style="color: #666666; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">(13) http://www.nationalreview.com/article/426853/yale-student-protest-safe-space-political-correctness </span><br />
<span style="color: #666666; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">(14) http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/northamerica/usa/12022041/How-political-correctness-rules-in-Americas-student-safe-spaces.html</span></div>
<span style="color: #666666; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">(15) http://money.usnews.com/money/careers/articles/2012/06/27/millennial-workers-entitled-needy-self-centered </span><br />
<span style="color: #666666; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">(16) http://www.entrepreneur.com/article/243002 </span><br />
<span style="color: #666666; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">(17) http://www.unicef.org/publications/index_78727.html </span><br />
<span style="color: #666666; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">(18) http://blogs.spectator.co.uk/2015/06/greeces-service-economy-is-no-match-for-germanys-mercantile-one/ </span><br />
<span style="color: #666666; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">(19) http://www.forbes.com/sites/ciocentral/2012/04/19/services-not-manufacturing-will-revive-the-u-s-workforce/ </span><br />
<span style="color: #666666; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">(20) http://www3.nd.edu/~jkaboski/BK_AER_Final.pdf </span></div>
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Zareen Wilhelmhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03621428545462451023noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7986790754756040588.post-3209129980270885292015-12-06T18:19:00.001-05:002015-12-21T15:48:45.710-05:00Inspired by ISIS, Sunni New Yorker Considers a Caliphate <div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<span style="color: #666666; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.6667px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br class="Apple-interchange-newline" /></span><span style="line-height: 22.08px;"></span><span style="color: #666666; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.6667px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span><br />
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<span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: "arial"; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="color: #666666;">The terrorist group, ISIS, has declared a Caliphate in <a href="http://isis.liveuamap.com/">the region</a> under their control, reaching across Syria and Iraq. </span></span><br />
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<span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: "arial"; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="color: #666666;">Now 31, I've spent my life in the city of New York, born into a long lineage of Sunni Muslim tradition. </span></span><span style="color: #666666; font-family: "arial"; line-height: 1.38; white-space: pre-wrap;">As a product of western institutions, I maintain strong beliefs in democracy, freedom, equality, and individualism. </span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: "arial"; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="color: #666666;">For the last several years, I've been reading parts of the Quran and slowly integrating more of its ideas into my lifestyle. None of my western values have ever come into conflict with my -- so called -- "Islamization". </span></span><br />
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<span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: "arial"; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="color: #666666;">Despite my ongoing study of the religion, I am only now beginning to awaken to this concept of a Caliphate. </span></span><br />
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<span style="color: #666666;"><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: "arial"; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">To have a Caliphate, there must be a chosen Caliph. </span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: "arial"; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">This word means "successor" and this refers to the successor of <a href="http://www.metmuseum.org/learn/for-educators/publications-for-educators/art-of-the-islamic-world/unit-one/the-prophet-muhammad-and-the-origins-of-islam">Prophet Mohammed</a> </span></span><span style="color: #666666; font-family: "arial"; line-height: 22.08px; white-space: pre-wrap;">(PBUH)</span><span style="color: #666666; font-family: "arial"; line-height: 1.38; white-space: pre-wrap;">. Through most of my religious education, I was never aware of a successor to the Prophet </span><span style="color: #666666; font-family: "arial"; line-height: 22.08px; white-space: pre-wrap;">(PBUH)</span><span style="color: #666666; font-family: "arial"; line-height: 1.38; white-space: pre-wrap;">. I knew that Prophet Mohammed </span><span style="color: #666666; font-family: "arial"; line-height: 22.08px; white-space: pre-wrap;">(PBUH)</span><span style="color: #666666; font-family: "arial"; line-height: 1.38; white-space: pre-wrap;"> was the very last information officer (as well as war general and political figure) who would be delivering a divine message, and there will be no other messengers following him. </span><br />
<span style="color: #666666;"><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: "arial"; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: "arial"; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="color: #666666;">The death of Prophet Mohammed (PBUH) in 632 CE left no political or spiritual vacuum, so why would anyone want a Caliph? What he did leave behind was a prevailing Muslim society, and that society apparently wanted some kind of spiritual and political leader. </span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: "arial"; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="color: #666666;">Since Prophet Mohammed </span></span><span style="color: #666666; font-family: "arial"; line-height: 22.08px; white-space: pre-wrap;">(PBUH)</span><span style="color: #666666; font-family: "arial"; line-height: 1.38; white-space: pre-wrap;">, we've had four sequential Caliphs before this system died in the later half of the 7th century. Under this system, Islam was a growing empire as well as a political machine, and it is these conditions that ISIS is (allegedly) working to reinstate. At the head of ISIS is Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the modern Caliph and (according to ISIS-supports) the "commander of all Muslims" (3). Below is the famous image of him wearing a James Bond rolex. </span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: "arial"; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="color: #666666;">Following the Prophet's death </span></span><span style="color: #666666; font-family: "arial"; line-height: 22.08px; white-space: pre-wrap;">(PBUH)</span><span style="color: #666666; font-family: "arial"; line-height: 1.38; white-space: pre-wrap;">, the fault lines in the Muslim community appeared around ideas of who should be Mohammed's successor. "Sunnis believed that the best successor should emerge from among the students of Mohammed." (0) "A smaller group thought that someone from his family should take up his mantle" (2), and as I understand it, this group grew into the Shiites of today. </span><br />
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<span style="color: #666666;"><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: "arial"; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">In my earliest religious education, </span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: "arial"; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I learned that Sunni's and Shiites predominantly believe the same ideas regarding God and the afterlife, but Shiites hold an extra set of beliefs regarding the organization of their living society for which they want a pope. By "pope", of course, I mean Caliph. </span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: "arial"; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="color: #666666;">In contrast, Sunnis hold no such belief about the Prophet's successors. According to the Islam that I grew up knowing, each individual has a direct line of communication to God. I was taught by several Sunni sources throughout my development, that the main components of the religion are within the <a href="http://www.islam-guide.com/ch3-16.htm">five pillars of Islam</a>, and that a desire for a Caliph is purely a Shiite concern. </span></span><span style="color: #666666; font-family: "arial"; line-height: 1.38; white-space: pre-wrap;">This was marginally an education of "us-and-them". </span></div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: "algerian"; font-size: 14.6667px; text-align: start;">(International Herald Tribune, France</span><span style="font-size: 12.8px; line-height: 1.38;">)</span></span></td></tr>
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<span style="color: #666666; font-family: "arial"; line-height: 1.38; white-space: pre-wrap;">With Sunnis supplying the majority of the <a href="http://www.pewforum.org/2009/10/07/mapping-the-global-muslim-population/">global Muslim population</a> by about 85%, and the desire for a Caliph concentrating among the Shiite minority, the disinterest for a Caliph naturally dominates free-thinking Islamic psyche. This presumption is violently beheaded by the realization that <a href="http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/world/middle-east/4-questions-ISIS-rebels-use-to-tell-Sunni-from-Shia/articleshow/37257563.cms">ISIS is an organization largely driven by Sunnis</a> </span><span style="color: #666666; font-family: "arial"; line-height: 22.08px; white-space: pre-wrap;">(1).</span><span style="color: #666666; font-family: "arial"; line-height: 1.38; white-space: pre-wrap;"> As if the bloodlust alone, was not confusing enough: what form of madness is </span><i style="color: #666666; font-family: arial; line-height: 1.38; white-space: pre-wrap;">this</i><span style="color: #666666; font-family: "arial"; line-height: 1.38; white-space: pre-wrap;">? </span><br />
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<span style="color: #666666;"><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: "arial"; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Considering </span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: "arial"; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">that human history has seen four Caliphates after Prophet Mohammed's mortal departure </span></span><span style="color: #666666; font-family: "arial"; line-height: 22.08px; white-space: pre-wrap;">(PBUH)</span><span style="color: #666666;"><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: "arial"; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">, it must mean that at some point in time, the Muslim world was unified together under a common civic order designed according to the guidelines of the Quran. </span></span><span style="color: #666666;"><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: "arial"; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The order created an entire social and political system, integrating the religious and non-religious behaviors of each individual living within it. </span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: "arial"; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The Caliphate brought about stability and secured Islam as the basis of government. This was a time when there was no "us-and-them". </span></span></div>
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<span style="color: #666666; font-family: "arial"; line-height: 1.38; white-space: pre-wrap;">The Word delivered by Prophet Mohammed </span><span style="color: #666666; font-family: "arial"; line-height: 22.08px; white-space: pre-wrap;">(PBUH)</span><span style="color: #666666; font-family: "arial"; line-height: 1.38; white-space: pre-wrap;"> led to the precipitation of [not just a religious movement but] an entire civilization. </span><span style="color: #666666; font-family: "arial"; line-height: 22.08px; white-space: pre-wrap;">Islam is more than just a religion: i</span><span style="color: #666666; font-family: "arial"; line-height: 1.38; white-space: pre-wrap;">t's an organizing principle of one's social behaviors as well as one's private headspace. </span><span style="color: #666666; font-family: "arial"; line-height: 22.08px; white-space: pre-wrap;">When allowed, it combines one's religious affiliation with one's political identity. </span><span style="color: #666666; font-family: "arial"; line-height: 1.38; white-space: pre-wrap;"> </span><br />
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<span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: "arial"; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="color: #666666;"><br /></span></span>
<span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: "arial"; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="color: #666666;">Yet, this 1400 year long disagreement regarding how to select a Caliph has divorced its political uses from its ritual practices in the minds of modern Sunni Muslims like myself, and those before me. Millions (4) of my modern counterparts are members of ISIS, "fighting infidels" to reunite Islam's religious practices with its political uses, in order to implement a "hermit kingdom" (3) that will <a href="http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2015-09-22/tuesday-un-humor-isis-timeline-apocalyse">bring about the end of the world</a>. (Are you laughing? I too find these words hilarious.) </span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: "arial"; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="color: #666666;">The positions I hold regarding my government take shape without regard to my religion, and I'm thankful to live in a state where my government does not interfere with, nor does it enforce my prayer schedule, baptisms, or fasting rituals. The idea behind a Caliphate comes into direct conflict with my strongly guarded belief in the <a href="http://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2011/06/constitutional-myth-4-the-constitution-doesnt-separate-church-and-state/240481/">separation of church and state</a>. I hold this value, not as a westerner, but as a Muslim. (I also hold it as a westerner, but that's tangential to the topic at hand.) </span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: "arial"; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="color: #666666;">Baptisms and praying are parts of my personal behavior patterns. In fact, they are so personal that at the age of 15, I had decided it was not even the business of my parents to know my religious affiliation: one day I announced to my mother that I was renouncing my religion so that I will no longer be praying or attending any Sunday classes. Secretly, I would disguise myself under a hijab and make the sundown prayers at the local mosque without her knowledge, allowing her to assume that I was out somewhere engaging in heinous activities. It was (and still is) my philosophy that if I'm supposed to have a direct line to God, I can't allow my parents' parental styles to contaminate this relationship. </span></span><br />
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<span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: "arial"; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="color: #666666;">As a modern Sunni Muslim, the idea of turning these personal activities into societal conventions -- as I assume would happened under a Caliphate -- is not an easy idea to fathom. I live in (and will most likely continue to live in) a diverse human community, and if the members of this community freely began to face east five times a day to submit to God, I would find this trend to be absolutely fascinating. But if they began to do that because a Caliphate is making it mandatory, I would readily stand up for their freedom to not submit, and my politics will continue to harmonize with my religion. </span></span></div>
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<b style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="color: #666666;"><span style="font-family: "arial"; line-height: 1.38; white-space: pre-wrap;">The Islam I know repeatedly warns against forced (or coerced) conversions, or any method of imposing the ideas of the Quran onto other humans. Worship is only a product of decision making at the individual level. The Islam I know is marked by a profound adaptability, afforded by its undeniable focus on the individual. It may leave room to build a Caliphate, as well as to tear one down, while commanding neither. </span></span></b><br />
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<span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: "arial"; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="color: #666666;">The Holy Quran addresses the individual reader, providing the individual with a set of guidelines. </span></span><span style="color: #666666; font-family: "arial"; line-height: 1.38; white-space: pre-wrap;">As humans, we make decisions on a daily/weekly/monthly/yearly basis. We make decisions during our lives which can only be made once, and never again. Islam provides direction for decision making at all such intervals across various contexts in the spectrum of human experience. </span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: "arial"; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="color: #666666;">In the Islam that I know, congregations are optional and a society need not even exist: it is as applicable to infrastructures of civilization as it is to one's solitude. </span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: "arial"; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="color: #666666;">ISIS-supporting women's terrorist organizations in Britain are preaching to their members that by embracing Islam, they are effectively renouncing democracy (and vice versa). They explain that being Muslim "is a rejection of democracy and the rule of law" (33:36/47:44), because no legislation should be respected other than the ruling of God: </span></span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> </span><br />
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<span style="color: #666666; font-family: "arial"; line-height: 1.38; white-space: pre-wrap;">They teach their members that the unquestionable and absolute power of God is challenged by the sovereignty that democracy gives to the individual. </span><span style="color: #666666;"><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: "arial"; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">They believe that recognition of the sovereignty of man is a rejection of God's absolute power. Such a conclusion makes it glaringly evident their unfortunately failure to grasp the Quran's acknowledgement</span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: "arial"; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> of</span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: "arial"; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> (and reliance on) the power of the individual's decision. </span></span><br />
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<span style="color: #666666; font-family: "arial"; line-height: 1.38; white-space: pre-wrap;">Absolute power of God is one of the most basic concepts of Islam. At the same time, the Quran leaves it up to the human to decide how to manage our relationship with our terrestrial governments. It stands neither against, nor in favor of any type of organization or ruling. It cultivates a mentality in its followers to agree that no man is fit to exercise absolute rule over any other. (This is why a Caliph is more like a pope than a ruler.) </span><br />
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<span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: "arial"; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="color: #666666;">Islam in its nature, can be categorized with other political and economic schools of thought, but nothing in the contents of the Quran makes this a requirement in the rightful practice of Islam. </span></span></div>
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<span style="color: #666666;"><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: "arial"; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The Islam I know is a small set of mandatory laws (see: <a href="http://www.islam-guide.com/ch3-16.htm">five pillars of Islam</a>) accompanied by a versatile set of suggestions geared toward the individual, which can all be plugged into any human society, taking the shape of that society in which it grows. This has been occurring for centuries around the globe, in the absence of Islamic government. (Consider </span><a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/04/08/AR2009040804077.html" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: "arial"; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Indonesia</span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: "arial"; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">, the country with largest Muslim population.) </span></span><br />
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<span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: "arial"; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="color: #666666;">Terrorism, Sunni-Shia conflicts, undereducated women's groups, and propaganda through our media, all inflict distortion on the ideas about Islam that we have in our minds as modern citizens of the world. </span></span><span style="color: #666666; font-family: "arial"; line-height: 1.38; white-space: pre-wrap;">The original Caliphates were known for the quality of life they offered to their citizens, so the appeal to reestablish it is understandable, even to a Sunni westerner like myself. </span><br />
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<span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: "arial"; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="color: #666666;">The women in the above documentary believe in the sincerity of ISIS's mission to recreate that Caliphate. To think that ISIS has the leadership and fortitude to recreate what Prophet Mohammed </span></span><span style="color: #666666; font-family: "arial"; line-height: 22.08px; white-space: pre-wrap;">(PBUH)</span><span style="color: #666666; font-family: "arial"; line-height: 1.38; white-space: pre-wrap;"> left behind is absolutely laughable. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">(0) </span><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">http://observer.com/2015/08/the-young-and-the-restless-some-sunnis-and-shiites-are-tired-of-hating/ </span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">(1) http://www.todayszaman.com/columnist/amanda-paul/sunni-shia-hatred-is-isis-lifeblood_397753.html </span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">(2) http://www.npr.org/sections/parallels/2007/02/12/7332087/the-origins-of-the-shiite-sunni-split </span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">(3) http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2015/03/what-isis-really-wants/384980/ </span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">(4) http://warontherocks.com/2015/02/how-many-fighters-does-the-islamic-state-really-have/ </span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">(5) http://english.al-akhbar.com/node/20378 </span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">(6) http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/world/middle-east/4-questions-ISIS-rebels-use-to-tell-Sunni-from-Shia/articleshow/37257563.cms</span></div>
Zareen Wilhelmhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03621428545462451023noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7986790754756040588.post-36054871131461396662015-11-01T19:55:00.002-05:002016-12-13T04:18:31.028-05:00Witnessing Eruptions of Domestic Disturbance (or, How to Raise a Danger to Society) <div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: small;">On my way home from the gym this afternoon, I witnessed what I believe to be the making of a dangerous future condition. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: small;">Languidly strolling down a city block</span><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: small;">, my partner and I come upon a street junction where a chaotic display is unfolding. My post-gym serenity in the </span><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">slow-motion </span> fall of early-November foliage is brought to a screeching halt by a young woman gripping a little girl by the elbow as she stomps down the sideway</span><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"> angrily</span> screaming, "Go with your father, go with your father!" The little girl, presumably her daughter, around the age of 5 or 6, crying loudly, is begging her mom to stop, as she gets dragged down the block by her young mother who is furiously chasing a young man. This young man is walking away briskly while screaming back at them, "Stay with your mother! Stay with your mother!" </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: small;">This loud domestic spectacle was occurring before my eyes over the span of two street corners, drawing the attention of pedestrians on the other side, who are now reconsidering crossing the street, and the passengers of the cars stopped at the light. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: small;">Cutting through the chaos, we continue walking and cross away as their voices, now behind me, continue screaming about who the daughter should go with -- neither of them wanted her. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: small;">At the other side of the crossing, I pass a young girl with a look of shock and confusion, standing next to an older sister (or </span><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">perhaps</span> babysitter), who is recording this circus, wearing an amused grin. Now further away, I hear the father loudly demanding the young lady to remove her clothes which he "paid for, and give them back to me!" </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: small;">There were multiple victims in this episode, including the young girl with the look of confusion and concern, who appeared to be no older than 7 or 8 years of age. The desensitization required to go from being confused and concerned, to being amused, paves a path for a child to star in similar domestic episodes of their own in adulthood. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: small;">Of course, the most devastated victim here is the unwanted little girl, being tossed violently between two angry parents. How this will be resolved for her, and how that will impact the future of human society, is what raises the greatest concern. Child-care services are likely to step in sooner, given the parental displays continue to be as public. In her adolescence she is likely to go through a series of foster homes, and may or may not receive a decent education. She may even learn from the mistakes of others and figure out how to avoid them. What is guarantee is that she will endure emotional attachment problems. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: small;">Children subject to the trauma of violence and loss go on to develop [forms of] early attachment disorder which enable them to grow into monsters. The quality of their painful childhood is the fault of their tragic parents, and faults of their own [likely] future transgressions will be the burden of juries of their peers. Products of this type of aggression and rejection are dangerous for the child, their peers, as well as the rest of us. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: small;">The following is a clip of an interview taken of a child psychopath, borne out of the trauma of early childhood abuse and neglect. </span><br />
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<span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><b>Related article</b>: </span></span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><a href="http://www.zareenwilhelm.com/2016/04/are-you-traumatizing-your-child-without.html">Are you traumatizing your Child without Knowing it? </a> </span></span></span><br />
<a href="http://www.zareenwilhelm.com/2016/09/lies-trauma-and-revised-look-at-cbt-or.html" style="font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif;">Lies, Trauma, and a Revised Look at CBT</a><span style="font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif;"> </span><br />
<span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><a href="http://www.zareenwilhelm.com/2016/12/structure-of-human-experience.html">Structure of Human Experience</a> </span></span></span><br />
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Zareen Wilhelmhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03621428545462451023noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7986790754756040588.post-7441863278178280652015-10-15T21:56:00.000-04:002017-11-21T18:21:22.404-05:00Biological Time-keeping Blind-spot in a New Form of Trauma Therapy <div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><b>Time-perception therapy (TPT)</b></span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> introduces a treatment approach that tries to reform a trauma patient's viewpoint of their past, relative to their perception of their present and their future. In TPT, your condition is defined by a profile composed across these states: </span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">" </span><a href="http://www.wsj.com/articles/SB10001424127887324591204579036803469160852" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #1155cc; font-family: "arial"; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><b>past-positive</b></span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #1155cc; font-family: "arial"; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> (you love the past); </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #1155cc; font-family: "arial"; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><b>past-negative</b></span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #1155cc; font-family: "arial"; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> (you have regrets and bad things happened in your past—or things that you now exaggerate as bad); </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #1155cc; font-family: "arial"; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><b>present hedonism</b></span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #1155cc; font-family: "arial"; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> (you enjoy the present and like to reward yourself); </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #1155cc; font-family: "arial"; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><b>present fatalism</b></span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #1155cc; font-family: "arial"; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> (you feel that events are beyond your control, so why bother?); </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #1155cc; font-family: "arial"; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><b>goal-oriented future</b></span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #1155cc; font-family: "arial"; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> (you plan ahead and weigh the costs and benefits of any decision); </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #1155cc; font-family: "arial"; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><b>transcendental future</b></span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #1155cc; font-family: "arial"; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> (you live a good life because you believe the reward is a heaven after death).</span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> " </span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">TPT acknowledges the hidden influences of time perception on behavioral decision making. Over time, we develop "time zone biases" as we allow our attitudes toward our past, present, or future (or a combination of any two of these time zones) to influence our decisions. According to TPT, the way we frame our decisions helps identify those of us who pose higher chances of danger to ourselves and others. (</span><a href="https://www.psychologytoday.com/sites/default/files/1-11-2013%20Time%20Therapy%20Article%20Published%20Online.pdf" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #1155cc; font-family: "arial"; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">4</span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">) </span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Following trauma, the brain adopts an altered time perception that does not conform with the flow of chronological time. (</span><a href="http://psycnet.apa.org/psycinfo/1986-06423-001" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #1155cc; font-family: "arial"; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">0</span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">) To robustly relive a traumatic event upon sudden (and often unexpected) recall -- events that are in the distant past according to chronological time lapse -- can arguably be an example of this altered expression. TPT aims to provide "the ability to re-construct a more compassionate past", and develop an ability to control their perception of time, based on situational requirements. </span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">" </span><a href="https://www.psychologytoday.com/sites/default/files/1-11-2013%20Time%20Therapy%20Article%20Published%20Online.pdf" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #1155cc; font-family: "arial"; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Clients should be flexible with the employment of their TPs, able to call upon the TP most needed or relevant in any given circumstance, and not become stuck in a particular time bias...</span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> " </span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">These are highly promising objectives that fail to acknowledge the role of biological time keeping which allows the conceptualization of a past, present, and future. These time zones arise at the level of our cognitive faculties, but are rooted in on-going molecular events. </span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><b>We have biological timing mechanisms</b></span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> layered on top of each other, from an interval timer that works in the seconds-to-minutes range, to a circadian clock that operates the diurnal time frame (24 hours). These layers are the basis of the diverse "</span><a href="http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3196210/" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #1155cc; font-family: "arial"; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">seasonal encoding mechanisms and might be related to life-span related processes</span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">". </span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The circadian rhythm itself is comprised of an input-output system that is maintained by a central oscillator that keeps the circadian signal in motion. This oscillator manages the input signal using "interlocking feedback loops" (</span><a href="http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3196210/" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #1155cc; font-family: "arial"; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">5</span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">), through downstream expression/blocking of clock genes (for example) and transcription of clock proteins which "</span><a href="http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3196210/" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #1155cc; font-family: "arial"; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">play an important role in rhythm generation</span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">". </span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The cyclic nature of the rhythm is made possible by feedback signals similar to that generated by PER and CRY proteins (for example) which get "</span><a href="http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3196210/" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #1155cc; font-family: "arial"; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">translocated into the nucleus, bind to the BMAL1-CLOCK heterodimer thereby inhibiting their own transcription</span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">". This, in conjunction with their degeneration regulated in the ubiquitin pathway, "</span><a href="http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3196210/" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #1155cc; font-family: "arial"; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">contributes to the oscillation of their mRNA and protein levels</span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">". </span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Such controlled (pre- and post-transcriptional) fluctuations of an orchestra of biological information is what symphonizes behavior patterns ranging from simple to the more elaborate and complex. Sleep is tied to the circadian rhythm. (</span><a href="http://europepmc.org/abstract/med/10341380" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #1155cc; font-family: "arial"; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">1</span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">) This lays the foundation for (another example) the female menstrual cycle that delivers the time signature of the month. (</span><a href="http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1389945706006216" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #1155cc; font-family: "arial"; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">2</span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">) Girls with irregular sleep patterns experience a menstruation schedule that is not easy to predict. </span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">" </span><a href="http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3196210/" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #1155cc; font-family: "arial"; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Endogenous timing mechanisms cover several orders of magnitude of event frequencies and could be interpreted as a continuum that extends from duration estimation in the seconds range to developmental and lifespan experiences on the order of years.</span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> "</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><b>Every traumatic event is unique</b></span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> as it is intrinsic to the uniqueness of one's human experience. Therefore, the divergent expression profiles of the consequences of each (experienced) traumatic event is its own unique snowflake. </span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The human brain will not naturally think of its own history in terms of rhythmic patterns at the molecular level. It's much more natural to think about our lives and the things that happened to us in terms of [time zones such as] the past, the present, and the possible future. </span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">When trauma is introduced into the system, this cognitive simplification of time-perception becomes a liability, and a great source of distress. Treatment approaches which are </span><span style="font-family: "arial"; line-height: 22.08px; white-space: pre-wrap;">organized according to this simplification, and also</span><span style="color: black; font-family: "arial"; line-height: 1.38; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> ignore the </span><span style="font-family: "arial"; line-height: 22.08px; white-space: pre-wrap;">physical workings of the biological clock, ring the sounds of familiar alarm bells of caution. </span><span style="font-family: "arial"; line-height: 1.38; white-space: pre-wrap;"> </span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">In our contemporary treatment culture with its executive-brain-heavy focus, TPT offers a necessary approach that is refreshingly temporal. However, to target and treat the brain's </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><i>perception</i></span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> of time, without acknowledging and interacting with the brain's faculties of </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><i>tracking</i></span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> time, is taking a half-hearted approach to fixing the problem. </span><br />
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Treatment should be aimed at this molecular level rather than just targeting the symptoms of the time perception problem as these symptoms are eventually expressed in cognition. Without this crucial piece, TPT, like many other forms of talk therapy, could prove to be only partially effective, with dangerous results. </span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> </span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: x-small; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">(5) Unwinding the Molecular Basis of Interval and Circadian Timing (Agostino, et al., 2011)</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: x-small; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">(4) Time Perspective Theraphy: A New Time-Based Metaphor Therapy for PTSD (Sword, et al., 2013) </span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: x-small; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">(3) A Different Therapy to Find Greater Happiness (Elizabeth Berstein, 2013)</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: x-small; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">(2) Circadian rhythms, sleep, and the menstrual cycle (Fiona C. Baker, Helen S. Driver, 2006 ) </span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: x-small; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">(1) The development of circadian rhythms in a human infant (McGraw, et al., 1999) </span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: x-small; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">(0) Time and Trauma (Terr, Lenore C., The Psychoanalytic Study of the Child, Vol 39, 1984 )</span></div>
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Zareen Wilhelmhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03621428545462451023noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7986790754756040588.post-77205369157851636042015-08-05T16:39:00.000-04:002015-09-29T00:43:48.009-04:00Task Management (vs) Transparency<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br />
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Start by writing ambiguous tickets on large umbrella tasks based on the things you *know* that must be accomplished, no matter how the work is sliced. This is usually encouraged by management professionals who try to use these tracking tickets to watch your progress. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Additionally, you write tickets as you go, on an as-needed basis. </span><br />
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When you do write tickets, add a title summary and a point score. You don't know what goes in the description yet because -- even though you know what must be accomplished -- you're not sure how to describe the task yet. Figuring this out is often a matter of actually doing the task. Now you have an important ticket, but its also mostly tacit. </span><br />
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As you run into errors and other issues or blockers in the progress of the ticket, add them in the comments. As issues get resolved, add those in the comments as well. Add links to related information. </span><br />
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Figure out how to describe your task in a set of executable steps.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Add a statement explaining the [expected] result from doing this task. </span><br />
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Lots of content gets removed from a ticket as it gets sized to fit its point score, over the course of a sprint. Shaving off some component of the task and re-categorizing it and putting it in the backlog is sometimes the only way to wrap a sprint up in the headlights of a rushing deadline. (That *does* get into dangerous territory under conditions of fatigue and motivational depletion.) </span><br />
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A ticket may be extremely important during a sprint, but can potentially stay mute for a considerable period before its subject to this adding-and-removing of content. When this ticket comes up in search results, for anyone who is looking at your project, it's interstitial to the large ambiguous module-level tracking tickets that roll from one sprint to the next, originally created for management purposes. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Your ticket scene may appear to be a wasteland of tasks that never get done. </span><br />
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When your managers have their eyes on the ball and write you a ticket that falls squarely in your domain, this event can occur before *you're* aware of the [importance of the] demand. So when you *become* aware of it: write a ticket.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Now you have duplication: multiple tickets requesting the same thing. </span><br />
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Pull up all your recent tickets on a project, and realize that multiple ones have the same exact title summary. How did THAT happened?</span><br />
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When a task is complete and its time to close a ticket, close it. Sometimes you'll add information to comments to resolve any lingering questions, but most importantly, add a comment justifying why its being closed. The rest of the content will most likely be frozen in the state that it's in at the time of close.</span><br />
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Weeks and sprints and months go by. What you have accumulating is a forest of tickets to your name that are stale and stagnant, or closed and inarticulate. Other engineers can't navigate through it to get an idea of what you're doing, and you're so busy coding away at the task at hand that you fail to *see the forest from the trees*. Your project may be thriving, but without representing this progress in tickets and other public records... lets just say that only YOU can prevent your own forest fires. </span><br />
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Zareen Wilhelmhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03621428545462451023noreply@blogger.com3