Respect

After discussing this with a few friends and meditating on the subject I wanted to make some points about respect. First it is obvious to get it you must give it. But there is much more to it than that. When we interact with people, being aware of their comfort and operating at their level of comfort means to have respect for that person. But like all things, one person cannot give what they do not possess, and their attachments and leaning into situations and others can be the root cause of the lack of respect we get. If I were to say to someone:



" Hey Jingis, let's go get a movie at blockbuster" and Jingis replies " Can we go to another blockbuster instead of the one you go to, that is where I got mugged and I'm not comfortable with that one yet " I'm not going to force Jingis to go or nonchalantly arrive at that location simply because I am ok with it.



(Mental note: Just because we think it and feel ok with something does not the mean the world does or should comply)



Let's explore other scenarios..



As a massage therapist, I am trained to manipulate the body tissue and perform stretches and ranges of motion that can stretch even your feet by working with your head. But being conscious of others feelings towards touch and their bodies, I MUST ask if there are any areas they do not want touched. When they express to me that they DO NOT want their feet, buttocks, or head touched I do not say to them " Well you should want them massaged because they are just muscles that all connect and its silly to pay for a session and not get the entire massage." I simply respect their level of comfort and leave it be.



When a person has a different setting of comfort than you, lets say the setting is not at the same level you are at, then you come down to their comfort level; you do not force them to come to yours. If I am not comfortable with you bringing someone into my home or mentioning someone; out of respect you do not bring them up or involve me with them in any way. Talking about them or trying to drop by with them is very disrespectful and an obvious demonstration for the lack of awareness and respect towards my comfort. Many times people desperately try to convince themselves that people have made amends, have changed or seen the light. That in itself it fruitless because you should not be so concerned with another persons activity; this is not knowing your place to start. But if a person has wronged someone, hurt them, intentionally abused or taken advantage of them you DO NOT bring them up, involve them or make them part of your circle- especially when the uncomfortable person has clearly expressed their feelings towards that individual.




Anything less than honoring ones level of comfort is SELFISHNESS. We are only concerned with how we feel about a situation, or person so we disregard others feelings, others history and journey of emotional development. We walk into their minds, their space and become parasitic, energy vampires that feed on their feedback once they constantly express to us that they are uncomfortable. The absent minded individual might argue, start a conflict or debate and try force someone to come out of their discomfort; and this is a sign of CONTROL. That is why often when we express our true feelings of discomfort some become DEFENSIVE because they seek to control situations or others.



Here we tap the ground floor, the very foundation of their operating, their movement and functioning regarding the person, place or thing is out of control. Days, weeks, months or even years may go on and people will cling to very unstable situations or relationships because it is a small dose of control that satisfies the ego. And if you question the existence of the ego in such cases, examine how emotional one gets if you remind them of why you are uncomfortable with their drama in your space.



To get respect we give respect, not on the premise that we don't care about a persons comfort and only wish to gain but that we truly know from personal experience how it feels to be disrespected. When we reserve ourselves, do not interfere with our cerebral fidgeting or try to mentally overpower people who feel vulnerable by our actions, we are not only honoring someones comfort but we are respecting ourselves. For the deepest actions that outflow from the reservoir of personal energy within reflect the quality of love, respect AND the relationship you have with yourself. A person who does not love their self will not care to accept, tolerate or love others. Just as the love they feel in life about others is only a reflective quality of the love they have manifested for themselves. Feelings like love do not come from stimulus and response, they come from tightly woven strands of insight and realization that we develop overtime by penetrating through the layers of our basic self to reach the inner self.



So become aware how you operate in the world, the power of your word; what baggage you bring wit you and how you may unload it on others. If someone is uncomfortable with something you do or say, respect them. Because arrogance and stubbornness to keep pressing on with matters that continue to make others uncomfortable does not hurt anyone in the long run.. it hurts you.

Thanksgiving: Genocide and imperialism

Celebrating Genocide!



Dan Brook



En Espanol: Celebrando el Genocidio

on ZNet



Many people annually get as stuffed as their turkeys in celebration of the Thanksgiving holiday. Thanksgiving is a quintessentially American holiday, so much so that it is not just a holiday, but really is (as the etymology implies) one of our Holy Days, almost universally celebrated by Americans. In its sacredness, families get together to (unintentionally?) celebrate one genocide (against Native Americans) by committing another (against turkeys). Can we celebrate in good faith and conscience?



On Thanksgiving Day, we give thanks. We give thanks for being the invader, the exploiter, the dominator, the greedy, the gluttonous, the colonizer, the thief, indeed the genocidaire, rather than on the other side of imperialism's zero-sum murderous game. As Mark Twain points out in his War Prayer, wishing and being thankful for one's own success and victory is, at the very same time, wishing and being thankful for another's defeat and destruction. Do we want to make these kinds of wishes and give these kinds of thanks?




The Lebanese poet Kahlil Gibran declared that "it is the honor of the murdered that they are not the murderers". Perhaps, but it is a very difficult honor to uphold. Native Americans, at least those who have survived the over 500 year genocidal project, are the poorest ethnic group in the richest country of the world. Each year, a group of Native Americans gather at Plymouth Rock on Thanksgiving Day to mourn and fast in honor of their people and in memory of what is lost. What do we want to be honored for? What honors are Americans thankful for?



It was once earnestly asked by Native Americans, "Why do you take by force what you can have by love?" Christopher Columbus reports in his personal diary that when he arrived in the Americas he was amazed. The Arawaks, with curiosity and joy, came to greet the people coming off the ships from Europe. The Arawaks (whom Columbus mistakenly thought were Indians) were a peaceful people, by all accounts, willing to share anything they had, offering both emotional kindness and their physical objects. Columbus describes how remarkable these people were. So innocent of weapons and violence, Arawak people would initially reach out their hands to feel the strange, shiny objects called swords. The Arawaks would only "work" for a few hours a day, "spending" the rest of their time relaxing, socializing, and creating their culture in the ways that people most enjoy. Columbus also tells of how the Arawaks had no "shame", being able to walk around naked or make love whenever they pleased. With the tiny amount of gold on their island, they fashioned jewelry to adorn themselves. As with many other pre-contact indigenous groups, the Arawaks essentially lived in Utopia. Can Americans be thankful for living in a utopian society? Are we thankful for having destroyed one? Should we be grateful for having so many deadly weapons? For being so greedy for gold, both actual and metaphorical?



As Kevin Danaher of Global Exchange is fond of pointing out, Columbus could have done one of a few different things after encountering the Arawaks of whom he was so impressed: (1) Columbus could have quit his travels and lived the rest of his days amongst this remarkable people. In fact, millions of people today spend thousands of dollars and their precious couple of weeks of vacation trying to experience modern conditions resembling these ancient ones. (2) Columbus could also have continued on his journeys, exploring other islands, encountering new peoples, and searching for India and elsewhere with which to trade. While doing so, he could have expanded and developed his writings, perhaps doing valuable ethnographic and comparative sociological research. (3) Another possibility is that Columbus could have rushed back to Europe, declaring the wonders of Arawak society and urging that the best minds of Europe go to visit and study the Arawaks. As a result of doing so, Europeans could have incorporated aspects of Arawak society into their own, if not emulating it altogether. Are we proud of and thankful for our hubris and ethnocentrism?



Of course, Columbus did none of these. Apparently, there was a fourth possibility. With grave implications, Columbus wrote in his diary that with fifty men he could enslave the entire population and capture all their gold. This was no empty boast. The "savage" Arawaks were enslaved, many were tortured, their labor exploited, and their wealth stolen and shipped off to Europe. During this process of imperialist superexploitation, men had their hands chopped off, women had their breasts sliced and their pregnant bellies cut open, babies were thrown into the air, sometimes crashing to the ground and other times being impaled on those strange, shiny swords, presumably all in the name of Christianity, Civilization, and, eventually, Capitalism. The Arawaks were literally exploited to death and they are now extinct, all of them having been killed off through virulent brutality, overwork, and disease. Are Americans thankful they weren't Arawaks? Are we thankful for not being the dehumanized "Other"?



The Pilgrims later came to America to escape religious persecution from the British, apparently in order to commit ethnic and religious persecution against the Native Americans and, later on, others. And this they did, and we in fact continue to do, effectively and mercilessly. At the time of the first Thanksgiving in 1621, it was also the dawn of another type of genocide. 1619 marks the first year that human beings were brutally "imported" from Africa to become slaves in America, if they happened to survive the cruel capture and horrific Atlantic crossing. So while Africans were being heartlessly torn away from their homes and families, viciously enslaved and dehumanized, tortured and killed, Native Americans were being attacked and annihilated. By the time that President Lincoln re-invented and instituted the Thanksgiving Day tradition in the early 1860s, the US was fighting its civil war. The US Civil War may have been fought over slavery (and labor more generally), though it was certainly not fought for the slaves (or for laborers). Sadly, there is much, much more to the tragic history of genocide and US complicity. Is it for this legacy that Americans give thanks? Are Americans thankful for the results of racism and classism?



In Europe, during the 1930s and 1940s, various demographic groups were being systematically targeted by the Nazis, including leftists and unionists, people with physical and mental disabilities, Jews and Jehovah's Witnesses, gays and lesbians, the Roma (so-called Gypsies) and the small number of Blacks, as well as other misfortunate minorities. Although we now know that the US had accurate aerial photographs of the rail lines leading to and from the death camps since 1941, among other pertinent information obtained even earlier, the US did not enter the war against fascist Germany until almost 1942, only after the US was physically attacked by Japan. Even then, however, the US neither bombed the rail lines or the death camps themselves, nor allowed in large numbers of refugees from fascism. Indeed, just like Haitians in the 1990s and Afghans in 2001, Jews in the 1940s were sometimes turned back to their respective Hell. Millions and millions of people died unnecessarily. Adding insult to injury, the US government even paid war reparations to US corporations, including General Motors, which were supplying the Nazi military with much-needed machinery and vehicles, for the damage done to their German factories due to the Allied bombing campaign. (The US government went further by guaranteeing safe passage for many Nazi officers and even employing a number of them, some of whom helped advance biological and chemical weaponry as well as death penalty technology in the US. Other Nazi officers were supported, especially in Europe and Latin America, as an oppositional force against real or suspected communism.) Likewise, the US was seemingly uninterested in Japan's genocide against the Chinese in Nanking, and then did (and does) little to stop China's genocide of the Tibetans since the 1950s. The US has also never been interested in the genocide against the Kurds or Armenians. The US was interested, however, in setting up concentration camps in 1942 for Japanese-Americans and, to a much lesser extent, Germans and Italians. Are Americans thankful for our hypocrisy and selective democracy?




In 1965, the US supported and facilitated genocide in Indonesia. Under the US-supported military dictatorship, half a million to a million communist-sympathizing peasants were killed in Indonesia. Their lives are considered so worthless that a more accurate number of those killed is nearly impossible. (A more recent example of this mentality is from the Gulf War, during which US bulldozing tanks buried an unknown number of slaughtered Iraqis in the desert. When asked how many were killed and buried in these mass unmarked graves, General Colin Powell coldly replied that he wasn't interested and didn't care. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright followed up that mentality by stating on TV that the hundreds of thousands of additional kids who have died since the war, due to sanctions, are a worthwhile price to pay. For whom?) The US supplied some 90% of the weapons and training to the Indonesian military, in addition to favorable trade and investment, but also provided logistics and specific names of Indonesian activists to be targeted for death. The Indonesian military gladly obliged, taking the US hit list and then accomplishing their task as best as possible. Since 1975, similarly, the US has sponsored and abetted genocide in Indonesian-occupied East Timor, culminating in the latest round of "newsworthy" massacres at the end of 1999. Nearly the same time that the modern Indonesian/East Timorese tragedy began, the US condoned genocide in Cambodia, after committing acts of genocide throughout South East Asia in the 1960s and 1970s. In the 1980s, the US supported vicious and murderous wars in Central America, central Asia, and southern Africa, in which hundreds of thousands, perhaps millions, were killed, with many more disabled, displaced, and disappeared. The US also sat idly by during the genocide in Rwanda in the 1990s, while almost totally ignoring slavery and genocide in Sudan throughout that entire decade. Furthermore, the US persists in continuously building, vigorously marketing, and violently employing chemical, biological, nuclear and other weapons of mass destruction. Are Americans proud of US foreign policy? Of supporting murderous dictators and regimes? Of maintaining deadly double standards?



At the same time that the US has, by far, the most expensive and powerful military on Earth, it also has a high poverty rate, the largest prison population, a relatively high infant mortality rate, tremendous overconsumption and waste, a stingy and demeaning welfare program, an active capital punishment program, and almost as many privately owned guns as people. Are Americans proud of US domestic policy? Of supporting murderous policies and programs? Of maintaining deadly discriminatory standards?



There are many reasons to celebrate and Americans have a lot to be thankful for. Genocide should not be one of those things. What are we doing on Thanksgiving Day? We would be appropriately appalled if Germany or Austria were celebrating a Holocaust Memorial Day, where Germans and Austrians got together with their families for dinner on their official day off, joyously remembering the things that are important to them, just as American families get together for Thanksgiving Day and think of things to be thankful for. (Similar scenarios, just as ugly, could be constructed for white supremacists, rapists, and murderers.) Some activities and events are inappropriate just because of the context in which they occur and the history of suffering they represent. Thanksgiving Day is clearly part of that history. Are Americans thankful for forgetting their own history, for having collective cultural and political amnesia?



We do not have to feel guilty, but we do need to feel something. At the very least, we need to reflect on how and what we feel. We should also review our history and what it means to us and others, while we must rethink our adopted traditions, including our Thanksgiving High Holy Day. My personal (and therefore political!) resolution for the new year is to stop celebrating genocide. American Thanksgiving may be sacred to some, but it's utterly profane to me.












**Dan Brook earned a B.A. in Socio-Political Economy from Clark University, an M.A. in Political Science from San Francisco State University, and an M.A. and Ph.D. in Sociology from the University of California, Davis. Dan's work has been published in various journals from the American Journal of Economics and Sociology to Z Magazine. He lives in San Francisco and is currently a freelance instructor of sociology and social science.



You can read a book review of Michael Parenti's "History as Mystery" by Dan Brook here



Also, Dan is the author of "Sociological Snippets" which can be found in The Sociology Shop



Dan's email address is brook@california.com

Slow Poison

A long time ago in China, a girl named Li-Li got married and went to live with her husband and mother-in-law. In a very short time, Li-Li found that she couldn’t get along with her mother-in-law at all.

Their personalities were very different, and Li-Li was angered by many of her mother-in-law’s habits. In addition, she criticized Li-Li constantly.

Days passed days, and weeks passed weeks. Li-Li and her mother-in-law never stopped arguing and fighting. But what made the situation even worse was that, according to ancient Chinese tradition, Li-Li had to bow to her mother-in-law and obey her every wish.

All the anger and unhappiness in the house was causing Li-Li’s poor husband great distress.

Finally, Li-Li could not stand her mother-in-law’s bad temper and dictatorship any longer, and she decided to do something about it.

Li-Li went to see her father’s good friend, Mr. Huang, who sold herbs. She told him the situation and asked if he would give her some poison so that she could solve the problem once and for all. Mr. Huang thought for a while, and finally said, Li-Li, I will help you solve your problem, but you must listen to me and obey what I tell you. Li-Li said, “Yes, Mr. Huang, I will do whatever you tell me to do.”

Mr. Huang went into the back room, and returned in a few minutes with a package of herbs.

He told Li-Li, “You can’t use a quick acting poison to get rid of your mother-in-law, because that would cause people to become suspicious. Therefore, I have given you a number of herbs that will slowly build up poison in her body. Every other day prepare some delicious meal and put a little of these herbs in her serving. Now, in order to make sure that nobody suspects you when she dies, you must be very careful to act very friendly towards her. Don’t argue with her, obey her every wish, and treat her like a queen.”

Li-Li was so happy. She thanked Mr. Huang and hurried home to start her plot of murdering her mother-in-law.

Weeks went by, and months went by, and every other day, Li-Li served the specially treated food to her mother-in-law. She remembered what Mr. Huang had said about avoiding suspicion, so she controlled her temper, obeyed her mother-in-law, and treated her like her own mother. After six months had passed, the whole household had changed.

Li-Li had practiced controlling her temper so much that she found that she almost never got mad or upset. She hadn’t had an argument with her mother-in-law in six months because she now seemed much kinder and easier to get along with.

The mother-in-law’s attitude toward Li-Li changed, and she began to love Li-Li like her own daughter. She kept telling friends and relatives that Li-Li was the best daughter-in-law one could ever find. Li-Li and her mother-in-law were now treating each other like a real mother and daughter. Li-Li’s husband was very happy to see what was happening.

One day, Li-Li came to see Mr. Huang and asked for his help again. She said, “Dear Mr. Huang, please help me to keep the poison from killing my mother-in-law! She’s changed into such a nice woman, and I love her like my own mother. I do not want her to die because of the poison I gave her.”

Mr. Huang smiled and nodded his head. “Li-Li, there’s nothing to worry about. I never gave you any poison. The herbs I gave you were vitamins to improve her health. The only poison was in your mind and your attitude toward her, but that has been all washed away by the love which you gave to her.”

Exiting the 3rd Dimension

We all will experience someone we know leaving this plane of existence. But why is it we can get all involved emotionally, cry, become sad and even afraid ONLY FOR the people we know, why not people we don't know? Why not the person who died down the block a few moments ago, or all the homeless children in this world, or those subjected to the terror of war and occupation? Because unless we feel it, it is not defined as real, as part of our world, as valid. We say that our status with people, or emotional involvement is what allows us to "feel" for those who pass. But those feelings are inside of you, and ultimately only convey your relationship to that aspect of life, and your place in it. We associate our fears, feelings, and possessions to the contact we make with reality when someone we know goes beyond. We feel our mortality, and live through their experience.



We can being to imagine ourselves decomposing, feeding insects and becoming nothing. Cheery thought huh? Actually if you think about it, it is cheery, if you leave your emotions out of it.

Well the dying part is sad and probably scary, just because you can't do anything about it. But what comes next? Its like a miracle in reverse. The cells breaking down, the flesh disintegrating ,everything dissolving away until all left is the space you filled in someones heart.



Just as with our faith, relationships, sexuality, emotions we are never taught that death is a part of life that we can develop a healthy perspective of. We haphazardly do things according to our belief that we have maintained. But so many beliefs leave people always feeling fearful and alone, their relationships are lacking as they survive on habit, their sexuality is unbalanced so they think about someone else while with their significant other and death is a concept that becomes harder and harder to grasp.



If you realize all things change then you will hold on to nothing. If you attach to nothing then there is nothing to fear. When you do not fear death you can accomplish anything.

Winter Celebrations: Ancient roots of the holidays ( and fun facts)

Each year a tree decorates itself with new flowers, springing forth from steady branches, kept in place by ancient roots. The traditions we know and love are and will always be connected to the ancient ways, our ancestors who brought them forward and the wisdom that kept it dear. From Red and Green, ginger bread, holly, wreaths and more, each object or action is not some random act, it is a detail carried by generations through time to remind us where we have come from and what we should do. Even ornaments, trees and mistletoe have wonderful ancient and strong roots to teach us.



Evergreens symbolize power over death since they could last the winter and not die.



Gift exchanging thought to have originated in Babylonia with Zagmuk, the tradition gained popularity with Roman saturnalia festivities then later Christians adopted this custom but attributed it to the magi.



Mistletoe was first used in Greek ceremonies during winter. The berried plant symbolized the semen of the god and was hung over doorways for protection. The kiss was from a Norse legend that Frigg ( the mother of balder) loved her son so much that she couldn't bear the thought of something happening to him. she made a pact with the four elements that nothing in their realms would do him harm. Loki (the god of mayhem) was up to his regular mischief. he fashioned an arrow form mistletoe and gave it to balder's blind brother. At Loki's instruction the arrow was shot and balder fell dead. The wash of Frigg's tears restored her son to life, and she was so happy that she declared the mistletoe a plant of luck, love and promise. since ancient times, people have been kissing under the mistletoe- some of them unwittingly- to receive Frigg's blessings.



The colors of Christmas represent fertility in many ancient religions. Santa was colored differently in the past. Colors of Santa today were created by Coca Cola. Before the Coke Santa ads of the early twentieth century, Santas and Father Christmases came in every color of the rainbow. In fact, one famous Thomas Nast illustration of Santa during the civil war had him dressed up like the stars and stripes. I know that even today, many British Father Christmases are lean and dressed in green robes.






The first American Christmas Celebration took place in Jamestown in 1607. It was a device to cheer up the forty settlers who had survived living in the new world.



St. Francis of Assisi introduced the singing of carols to the holiday church services.



**





OTHER HOLIDAY HAPPENINGS: Many traditions blend togethers, as countries and cities were conquered many traditions we know are shards of some of these ancient winter celebrations.



* Amaterasu (Japanese)






December 21 is the Druidic celebration of Alban Arthuan in which gifts and charity are showered upon the poor.



> * Beiwe (Finnish)

> * Dong Zhi (Buddhist) - 22nd

> * Hogmanay (Scottish)- 31st

>

> * Inti Raymi (Incan)

> * Saturnalia (Roman) 17-23rd _role reversal


> * Sol Invictus (Roman) 19th and 25th

> * Soyal (Hopi)

>

> * Tekufat Tebet (Jewish)

> * Wayeb (Mayan)

> * Yule (Germanic)

> * Yalda (Persian)


--------------



The ancient European pagans celebrated the midwinter festival and a number of other festivals long before Christianity ever existed!



Babylonians celebrated the feast of the Son of Isis with gluttonous eating and drinking, and gift giving and the goddess of fertility, love, and war.



The Romans held a festival on 25 December called “Dies Natalis Solis Invicti, celebrating their own god Sol Invictas .



The Persian god Mithras, the Syrian sun god Elah Gabal, the German Sol, the Greek Helios and the Mesopotamian Shamash. But also Saturnalia, honouring Saturn, the God of Agriculture. The law courts and schools were closed. No public business could be transacted an this is where the holidays originated.



Wax tapers were given by the more humble to their superiors. The origin of the Christmas candles.




In Rome groups of costumed went from house to house entertaining their people. And this was where the caroling Christmas tradition originated.



Statues of the Mother and lover or Mother and son were paraded through the streets not only in Italy but also in Africa, Spain, Portugal, France, Germany and Bulgaria. Thus, the symbolism of the Heavenly Virgin and the infant child paraded on a yearly basis are not of Christian origin. They stem from the Mother-goddess religion, which is very ancient.



Scandinavian countries celebrated Yule honouring Thor.



In Germania (not Germany) they celebrated midwinter night followed by 12 wild nights of eating and drinking. The 12 days of Christmas.



The church under Pope Julius I declared that Christ’s birth would be celebrated on December 25 in 350 AD in order to try to convert pagans but it was largely ignored. Christians did not really celebrate Christmas until 378 but it was then dropped in 381 and not resurrected until 400.



The Christmas tree stems from pagan tradition and ritual surrounding the Winter Solstice, which included the use of holly boughs ivy and other foliage as an adaptation of pagan tree worship. Holly and ivy represented male and female. Mistletoe was considered a sacred plant, and the custom of kissing under the mistletoe began as a fertility ritual.




Santa Claus came from Odin and the Dutch “Sinterklaas” and was a tall figure riding a white horse through the air and usually accompanied by Black Peter, an elf who punished disobedient children. Also the origin of the reindeer, sleigh and the elves.



America actually banned Christmas several times and is the originator of the expression “Happy Holidays” which came about because of the pagan origins of Christmas to include all religions and traditions!!



The Venerable Bede, an early Christian writer pointed out that the Christian church absorbed Pagan practices when it found the population unwilling to give up the festivals.