If anyone should get the protection of the law for self-defense it is the 14 year old boy stalked and accosted by a strange adult for no reason.
Laumra
"...living somewhere else and then realizing that there can be a lot of shame in being a Southerner. I grew up just regular old guy in Alabama, and I feel like because of the stories that we are told and the things we read we think, “Oh man I guess we as Southerners are not as cultured as other people.” Then by moving elsewhere I’ve seen that there are just as many rednecks in Connecticut and Massachusetts as there are in Tennessee and Alabama. You get somewhere else and you realize that there are all the same kind social problems and issues that happen in the South. I’ve realized that I don’t need to be ashamed of my Southerness. I think now I can go toe to toe with a person who thinks something negative as to what being a Southerner is. I can talk about it with some amount of realism because I’m living elsewhere."
Micah Whitson from The Old Try
I moved out of the South more than 40 years ago and struggled with that part of my history for a long time. There are things I love about the South and things I am no longer willing to put up with. I can find those bad things where I live now also; but they are not the norm. Mainly, I have just learned to avoid them.
The above completely lifted from Goodreads. The reviews indicate this is a very heavy essay by a psychoanalyst and not a self-help book. Composed of a series of lectures which do not result in 'a book'. Very difficult to read. But, the concept of that other life is very real to me... I would like someone else to discuss it with. I don't think I could do this with a psychoanalyst.
Emerging Woman by unknown
"Daughters, mothers, queens, virgins, wives, et al. derive meaning from their relation to another person. Witches, on the other hand, have power on their own terms. They create. They praise. They commune with nature / Spirit / God/dess / Choose-your-own-semantics, freely, and free of any mediator. But most importantly: they make things happen. The best definition of magic I’ve been able to come up with is “symbolic action with intent” – “action” being the operative word. Witches are midwives to metamorphosis. They are magical women, and they, quite literally, change the world."
Year of the Witch, Explained
by Pam Grossman
Emerging Woman by unknown
Women keep taking two steps forward and one step back. Will we free ourselves? Will it make any difference?
Emerging Woman - Marton Varo
“Now that I know art, this cell has become a prison.”
Does art, music ever really ROCK you after now get out of that twenty-something space? Does poetry ever set a student of fire? What poetry? Are there true philistines that cannot be touched?
"We might understand these discoveries [about the galaxy/universe] in intellectual terms, but they are baffling abstractions, even disturbing, like the notion that each of us was the size of a dot, without mind or thought. Science has vastly expanded the scale of our cosmos, but our emotional reality is still limited by what we can touch with our bodies in the time spanof our lives."
Alan Lightman
Our Place in the Universe: Face to Face with the Infinite
Harper's Magazine, December, 2012
What do we ever understand? Are we just blind men feeling the elephant?
On Stephen Hawking, Vader and Being More Machine Than Human
By Hélène Mialet 01.08.13 9:30 AM
Wired Magazine
A primitive example of the collective is the brain trust: "A group of experts who serve, usually unofficially, as advisers and policy planners, especially in a government."
theFreeDictionary
A more sophisticated collective would be the Borg. "We understand that only through assimilation to The Borg are we able to achieve greatness and perfection in the universe. In the spirit of this creed, the principles we promote in The Hive are those of friendship, mutual growth and defense."
cybernations
Memory-Alpha
Would we be more if we formed a tighter collective with our family and friends or would we lose our individualness with no gain? Are we capable of such close cooperation?
Interesting series of videos and discussion of Hawking's speech over time.
singularityhub
"The doctors said that he would gradualy lose his memory -- not his ability to form new memories, but his ability to retrieve old ones . . . in short, to understand who he was.
Tom's hand shot up. To my amazement, he suggested that [Karl] Pribram was overstating the connection between temporal - lobe memory and overall identity. Temporal lobe or not, you still like the same things, Tom argued -- your sensory systems aren't affected. If you're patient and kind or a jerk, he said, such personality traits aren't governed by the temporal lobes.
Pribram was unruffled. Many of us dono't realize the connection between memory and self, he explained. Who you are is the sum total of all that you've experiences. Where you went to school, who your friends were, all the things you've done or -- just as importantly -- all the things you've always hoped to do. Whether you prefer chocolate ice cream or vanilla, action movies or comedies, is part of the story, but the ability to know those preferences through accumulated memory is what defines you as a person. This seemed right to me. I'm not just someone who likes chocolate ice cream, I;m someone who knows, who remembers that I like chocolate ice cream. And I remember my favorite places to eat it, and the people I;ve eaten it with.
Pribram walked up to the lectern and gripped it with both hands. When they had spoken last, his colleague seemed more sad than frightened. He was worried about the loss of self more than the loss of memory. He;d still have his intelligence, the doctors said, but no memories."
When this happens - who are you? Are you still yourself? I worry about Altzeheimers and dementia. I worry of becoming a husk of flesh - a burden to my family.
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