Category Archives: Social Science

Both The Living And The Dead

“In the other world” means in a world which is veiled from our eyes, our physical eyes; but it does not mean a world far away from us, beyond our reach. Both the living and the dead inhabit the same space; we all live together. Only a veil separates us, the veil of this physical body. Separation means being unable to see one another. There is no other separation.

–Hazrat Pir-o-Murshid `Inayat Khan
From: A Meditation Theme for Each Day
Selected and arranged by Hazrat Pir Vilayat `Inayat Khan

What Do You Think Will Happen?

if you can’t go to sleep
my dear soul
for tonight
what do you think will happen

if you pass your night
and merge it with dawn
for the sake of heart
what do you think will happen

if the entire world
is covered with the blossoms
you have labored to plant
what do you think will happen

if the elixir of life
that has been hidden in the dark
fills the desert and towns
what do you think will happen

if because of
your generosity and love
a few humans find their lives
what do you think will happen

if you pour an entire jar
filled with joyous wine
on the head of those already drunk
what do you think will happen

go my friend
bestow your love
even on your enemies
if you touch their hearts
what do you think will happen

— Rumi, Ghazal 838
Translation by Nader Khalili
“Rumi, Fountain of Fire” Burning Gate Press, 1992

Wow, You’re Pronoid!

No, that’s not a misspelling. I suspect (ha!) that we all may have some experience with the sensation of paranoia — the feeling of being under seige and scrutinized which leads one to be wary about the motives of others. At its extreme, it can result in — or at least be indicative of — psychosis.

So I got to wondering if there was an opposite concept. Lo and behold, there is! According to Turns of Phrase:

Pronoia is the suspicion that the universe is a conspiracy on your behalf, the opposite of the popular sense of paranoia. It seems to have been invented by the sociologist Fred Goldner in an article in Social Problems in 1994, in which he defined it as “the delusion that others think well of one”, the unreasoning belief that your superiors think you are indispensable, that your colleagues adore you, and that you are doing brilliantly in your work. He was warning against the dangers of the rose-tinted view, in which an over-positive view of oneself and the world around one can lead to fatal mistakes. It was soon taken up by the short-lived group called the ZIPPies (the Zen Inspired Pronoia Pagans) invented by a London club promoter named Fraser Clark. The word has a small continuing niche, though its adjective pronoid is less common.

The Pronoia site contests this perspective with:

It was brought to our attention several years ago, via e-mail by Mr. Fred H. Golder, that he believes HE in fact deserves credit for the revival of the word Pronoia in 1982. To his point, Pronoia.net offers a taste of his serious academic paper here. Writing at Queens College in October 1982 (in SOCIAL PROBLEMS,V.30,N.1:82-91), Mr. Golder summarizes:

Pronoia is the positive counterpart of paranoia. It is the delusion that others think well of one. Actions and the products of one’s efforts are thought to be well received and praised by others. Mere acquaintances are thought to be close friends; politeness and the exchange of pleasantries are taken as expressions of deep attachment and the promise of future support. Pronoia appears rooted in the social complexity and cultural ambiguity of our lives: we have become increasingly dependent on the opinions of others based on uncertain criteria.

Our response: Well, maybe feelings of pronoia are always just a ‘delusion’… or maybe Mr. Golder just hasn’t gotten the vibe? 🙂 Seriously, it seems to us as if this pop-psych definition of the word Pronoia holds up a dysfunctional and delusional minority to a scientific zoom lense, and reports the view as if it were an accurate representation of the larger youth phenomenon. Pronoia.net disagrees with this basic premise.

Any way you look at it, the concept is interesting. In the coming week, explore the Pronoia site and consider whether or not you agree with its premise. You might also want to pop in at the Creativity Cafe. Are there times in your life when you have experienced a sense of flow, of “things falling into place” for you? If you want inspiration as you ponder, try out Pronoia Therapy: The First 13 Steps.

International Women’s Day

Today is International Women’s Day.

Some links of interest:

“Women constitute half the world’s population, perform nearly two-thirds of its work hours, receive one-tenth of the world’s income and own less than one-hundredth of the world’s property.”

–United Nations report, 1980

Has it changed much in the last 25 years? Even if just a bit, the human race has a long way to go.

Why We Have Heroes

One of my nocturnal meanderings a while back started, as they often do with some ponderance about race. This quickly morphed itself into a question of the function & validity of archetypes, then settled in, at last, to an issue of heroes.

The societal pathology of the frequently undeserved elevation of a person into an icon based on some achievement only remarkable by the standards of a spiritually bankrupt culture’s pop-mentality.

It finally hit though. We need heroes, we need icons. Because we need a guiding light to motivate ourselves toward our ideal “I.”

Toward being in love with our reflection every time we see it.

This is the function of Buddha, or Yeshua, or Abraxas; a Godhead to illuminate. A Godhead to Illuminate us.

…Life is a complicated matter. We can run propaganda wars over the introduction of Ebonics as an accepted dialect. We can shoot one another over shoes. We can bomb one another over the dinosaur remains which run our cars. We can invent theories over the demise of a celebrity who brought some joy or perspective to us through their violent, unstable lives.

Or we can recognize that the light shining from the words and thoughts of our heroes is nothing more than a well articulated expression of our own light.

We can remember that we’ve spent far too long mistaking the reflection for something separate from us.

—His Holiness

[via Nomen Est Numen]

With Good Grace

A friend recently wrote to me and one thing she said struck me as true:

It was my mother’s belief that if you cared about someone, really loved them, then you didn’t ask unreasonable things of them, and you accepted their lives with good grace. Meaning that if you invited them to a party and they said no, you didn’t ask why, and you didn’t demand, and you didn’t hold a grudge. You didn’t make someone prove they cared about you too. That’s what trust is, isn’t it? I think that if you have to ask these questions, then you don’t have faith in that person, and if you have faith, you know that they have their reasons and they can still care about you too. That make any sense?

Yes, it does make sense. I only wish more people could understand this.

Everything It’s Cracked Up To Be

Do you want me to tell you something really subversive? Love is everything it’s cracked up to be. That’s why people are so cynical about it …. It really is worth fighting for, being brave for, risking everything for. And the trouble is, if you don’t risk everything, you risk even more. Life doesn’t leave that many choices.”

–Erica Jong

[via Fatshadow]

Food and Rules

A friend sent a link to an article reviewing the book that’s triggered the latest food craze, French Women Don’t Get Fat: The Secret of Eating for Pleasure . The whole article is worth a read, but this caught my attention most:

…while they may be admirably successful at staying thin, French women are not necessarily more balanced in their attitudes about food. While many people think of eating disorders like anorexia and bulimia as an American problem, they are, as far as can be measured (and these statistics should always be taken with some degree of skepticism), equally prevalent in France. In the United States, somewhere between 0.5 percent and 3.7 percent of women will be anorexic in their lifetimes, while 1.1. percent to 4.2 percent will suffer from bulimia. Between 2 percent and 5 percent of Americans binge eat. Among young French women, an estimated 1 percent to 3 percent are anorexic; 5 percent are bulimic; and 11 percent have compulsive eating behaviors. Certainly, young French women today are as interested in eating disorders as their American counterparts. While Guiliano enjoys her publishing success here, a quite different book is in the spotlight in France: a memoir of bulimia called Thornytorinx. (The title is an anatomical name for the digestive tract.) The book has been favorably covered by the French press, and its author, a 25-year-old actress named Camille de Peretti, appeared last weekend on one of France’s most popular talk shows.

–Kate Taylor, “French Women Do Too Get Fat“

The other glaring concern that raises my ire is the incessant focus on women and thinness. Do men not need to take care of their bodies and monitor the state of their physique? This book is as sexist as that pablum published in the 1990s — The Rules: Time-tested Secrets for Capturing the Heart of Mr. Right — which unfortunately metastasized into several volumes. Ugh.

Spring Cleaning

Believe it or not, spring begins this month. For some that may seem like a frozen dream, hopelessly remote. For others, it means flowers will be a-bloom in a couple weeks.

This is the time of year to clean out the cobwebs and detritus that accumulated over the past year. Especially consider the symbolism of particularly cluttered areas of your home. Is your desk messy? Reflect on how organized and purposeful your thinking is these days. What about your kitchen? Are you cooking less often due to an overrun of devices you never use? Or maybe your cookbooks need to be dusted off so you can play again with food. Or the bathroom? Perhaps you’d spend more pampering time in there if it were clean. Are you avoiding yourself? Oh, and let’s not overlook the closets or garage. These are big, and there’s no need to do it all. Pick one closet or a corner of the garage; look at what’s there. What do you need? What haven’t you used in months or years, so that you forgot it was even there? Maybe it’s time to donate some stuff. How about the junk drawer? Almost everyone has at least one drawer in their kitchen, office or bedroom where they stuff miscellaneous doodads. Have you looked there in awhile? Go explore what’s inside.

Some of what you discover might surprise you. There may be memories attached. It could have been a gift, or a souvenir. Or something broken you never got around to fixing. It could be an item of clothing that no longer fits, but that you hold on to for sentimental reasons, or in hope to fit into it again, or whatnot. Could you recycle it into a project?

This is an excavation. Rediscover yourself. As you do this, also consider the season — a process of reawakening. What part of you needs resurrection, recycling, regeneration?

A Rich Life

The country is in deep trouble. We’ve forgotten that a rich life consists fundamentally of serving others, trying to leave the world a little better than you found it. We need the courage to question the powers that be, the courage to be impatient with evil and patient with people, the courage to fight for social justice. In many instances we will be stepping out on nothing, and just hoping to land on something. But that’s the struggle. To live is to wrestle with despair, yet never to allow despair to have the last word.

–Cornel West

I’m Reading My Share But…

Sorry to start Tuesday on such a depressing note, but read this:

  • One-third of high school graduates never read another book for the rest of their lives. Many do not even graduate from high school.
  • 58% of the US adult population never reads another book after high school.
  • 42% of college graduates never read another book.
  • 80% of US families did not buy or read a book last year.
  • 70% of US adults have not been in a bookstore in the last five years.
  • 57% of new books are not read to completion.

–Jerrold Jenkins, Jenkins Group — via Parapublishing

Wow. This is stunning.

The purpose of an education is: to educate! What a concept! An education is a background store of knowledge that can be applied across the educated person’s life, from work to relationships to hobbys and leisure activities. An education is a knowledge and understanding of the culture in which the educated person lives and operates, and an appreciation for the foreign and historical cultures that share this planet.

A good education certainly includes a basic understanding of history, math and even organic chemistry. But those can be acquired anytime, if the key goal of an education is met. And there is only one real key to a good education.

Reading.

—Dave Haxton

This is why I do the work I do.