Animal Spirits - Human Choice Trips Economic Theory

A couple of economists, George Akerlof and Robert Shiller co-wrote a timely book, published early this year, called 'Animal Spirits: How Human Psychology Drives the Economy, and Why It Matters For Global Capitalism' The title nods to John Maynard Keynes' comment that the behaviour which led America into, and out of, the Great Depression was the product of social factors (attitudes, beliefs and norms) rather than 'raw' economics.

"...Though it calls for a reworking of economic theory, Animal Spirits is not a difficult book. It is short, chatty and anecdotal. The general reader will be engaged and drawn in. But the book is serious, too. Good notes and a bibliography are a guide to the literature that the book aims to tie together. Animal Spirits carries its ambition lightly – but is ambitious nonetheless. Economists will see it as a kind of manifesto.

The first quarter divides animal spirits into five categories. They are confidence, whose role is pervasive and which stars throughout the rest of the narrative; fairness, which influences wage-setting and the working of the labour market; corruption and bad faith, which can especially affect financial markets; money illusion, the propensity to be fooled by inflation; and “stories”, which they could have called “culture”, a catch-all for economically significant ideas about the world and one’s place in it.

The rest of the book shows how thinking about these animal spirits yields answers to big questions that perplex orthodox economics – or force it to make bizarre and implausible assumptions. Why do economies fall into depression? Why is there unemployment? Why are financial prices so volatile? Why does the property market go through cycles? Why are minorities often especially poor? The answer in each case is partly, and sometimes mainly, animal spirits..."

The full Financial Times review is at: FT.com | Clive Crook's blog | Book review: Animal Spirits by Akerlof and Shiller

The Birth of Self-Help

First published in London in 1859, Self help; with illustrations of conduct and perseverance by Scottish-born self-made-man Samuel Smiles quickly became a celebrated best-seller, and thus was launched the very profitable self-help movement

The preface states:

"...National progress is the sum of individual industry, energy, and uprightness, as national decay is of individual idleness, selfishness, and vice. What we are accustomed to decry as great social evils, will, for the most part, be found to be but the outgrowth of man's own perverted life; and though we may endeavour to cut them down and extirpate them by means of Law, they will only spring up again with fresh luxuriance in some other form, unless the conditions of personal life and character are radically improved. If this view be correct, then it follows that the highest patriotism and philanthropy consist, not so much in altering laws and modifying institutions, as in helping and stimulating men to elevate and improve themselves by their own free and independent individual action. . . .

All nations have been made what they are by the thinking and the working of many generations of men. Patient and persevering labourers in all ranks and conditions of life, cultivators of the soil and explorers of the mine, inventors and discoverers, manufacturers, mechanics and artisans, poets, philosophers, and politicians, all have contributed towards the grand result, one generation building upon another's labours, and carrying them forward to still higher stages. This constant succession of noble workers-the artisans of civilisation has served to create order out of chaos in industry, science, and art; and the living race has thus, in the course of nature, become the inheritor of the rich estate provided by the skill and industry of our forefathers, which is placed in our hands to cultivate, and to hand down, not only unimpaired but improved, to our successors..."

The rest is at: - Modern History Sourcebook: Samuel Smiles: Self Help, 1882

The book can be downloaded in full here: -
Self help; with illustrations of conduct and perseverance by Samuel Smiles - Project Gutenberg

Give to Receive, Love to be Loved... la la la

An article from 'Medical News Today' in March last year reported that practising compassion alters behaviour: -

"Can we train ourselves to be compassionate? A new study suggests the answer is yes. Cultivating compassion and kindness through meditation affects brain regions that can make a person more empathetic to other peoples' mental states, say researchers at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

Published March 26 in the Public Library of Science One, the study was the first to use functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to indicate that positive emotions such as loving-kindness and compassion can be learned in the same way as playing a musical instrument or being proficient in a sport. The scans revealed that brain circuits used to detect emotions and feelings were dramatically changed in subjects who had extensive experience practicing compassion meditation.

The research suggests that individuals - from children who may engage in bullying to people prone to recurring depression - and society in general could benefit from such meditative practices, says study director Richard Davidson, professor of psychiatry and psychology at UW-Madison and an expert on imaging the effects of meditation. Davidson and UW-Madison associate scientist Antoine Lutz were co-principal investigators on the project..."

Read the full article at: -
Compassion Meditation Changes The Brain

A Recipe for Empathy

The Functional Architecture of Human Empathy
Jean Decety
University of Washington, decety@u.washington.edu

Philip L. Jackson

University of Washington

Empathy accounts for the naturally occurring subjective experience of similarity between the feelings expressed by self and others without loosing sight of whose feelings belong to whom. Empathy involves not only the affective experience of the other person’s actual or inferred emotional state but also some minimal recognition and understanding of another’s emotional state. In light of multiple levels of analysis ranging from developmental psychology, social psychology, cognitive neuroscience, and clinical neuropsychology, this article proposes a model of empathy that involves parallel and distributed processing in a number of dissociable computational mechanisms. Shared neural representations, self-awareness, mental flexibility, and emotion regulation constitute the basic macrocomponents of empathy, which are underpinned by specific neural systems. This functional model may be used to make specific predictions about the various empathy deficits that can be encountered in different forms of social and neurological disorders.

The full report can be read here: -

http://www.herasaga.com/downloads/Decety%20Jackson%20Empathy.pdf

Soaring to Sanity - The Icarus Project

"The Icarus Project envisions a new culture and language that resonates with our actual experiences of 'mental illness' rather than trying to fit our lives into a conventional framework.

We are a network of people living with experiences that are commonly labeled as bipolar or other psychiatric conditions. We believe we have mad gifts to be cultivated and taken care of, rather than diseases or disorders to be suppressed or eliminated. By joining together as individuals and as a community, the intertwined threads of madness and creativity can inspire hope and transformation in an oppressive and damaged world. Our participation in The Icarus Project helps us overcome alienation and tap into the true potential that lies between brilliance and madness."

See: - The Icarus Project | Navigating the Space Between Brilliance and Madness

The Tyranny of Structurelessness

..."Contrary to what we would like to believe, there is no such thing as a 'structureless' group. Any group of people of whatever nature coming together for any length of time, for any purpose, will inevitably structure itself in some fashion. The structure may be flexible, it may vary over time, it may evenly or unevenly distribute tasks, power and resources over the members of the group. But it will be formed regardless of the abilities, personalities and intentions of the people involved. The very fact that we are individuals with different talents, predispositions and backgrounds makes this inevitable. Only if we refused to relate or interact on any basis whatsoever could we approximate 'structurelessness' and that is not the nature of a human group.

This means that to strive for a 'structureless' group is as useful and as deceptive, as to aim at an 'objective' news story, 'value-free' social science or a 'free' economy. A 'laissez-faire' group is about as realistic as a 'laissez-faire' society; the idea becomes a smokescreen for the strong or the lucky to establish unquestioned hegemony over others. This hegemony can easily be established because the idea of 'structurelessness' does not prevent the formation of informal structures, but only formal ones. Similarly, 'laissez-faire' philosophy did not prevent the economically powerful from establishing control over wages, prices and distribution of goods; it only prevented the government from doing so. Thus 'structurelessness' becomes a way of masking power...

...While engaging in this trial-and-error process, there are some principles we can keep in mind that are essential to democratic structuring and are politically effective also:

1 Delegation of specific authority to specific individuals for specific tasks by democratic procedures. Letting people assume jobs or tasks by default only means they are not dependably done. If people are selected to do a task, preferably after expressing an interest or willingness to do it, they have made a commitment which cannot easily be ignored.

2 Requiring all those to whom authority has been delegated to be responsible to all those who selected them. This is how the group has control over people in positions of authority. Individuals may exercise power, but it is the group that has the ultimate say over how the power is exercised.

3 Distribution of authority among as many people as is reasonably possible. This prevents monopoly of power and requires those in positions of authority to consult with many others in the process of exercising it. It also gives many people an opportunity to have responsibility for specific tasks and thereby to learn specific skills.

4 Rotation of tasks among individuals. Responsibilities which are held too long by one person, formally or informally, come to be seen as that person's 'property' and are not easily relinquished or controlled by the group. Conversely, if tasks are rotated too frequently the individual does not have time to learn her job well and acquire a sense of satisfaction of doing a good job.

5 Allocation of tasks along rational criteria. Selecting someone for a position because they are liked by the group, or giving them hard work because they are disliked, serves neither the group nor the person in the long run. Ability, interest and responsibility have got to be the major concerns in such selection. People should be given an opportunity to learn skills they do not have, but this is best done through some sort of 'apprenticeship' programme rather than the 'sink or swim' method. Having a responsibility one can't handle well is demoralising. Conversely, being blackballed from what one can do well does not encourage one to develop one's skills. Women have been punished for being competent throughout most of human history - the movement does not need to repeat this process.

6 Diffusion of information to everyone as frequently as possible. Information is power. Access to information enhances one's power. When an informal network spreads new ideas and information among themselves outside the group, they are already engaged in the process of forming an opinion - without the group participating. The more one knows about how things work, the more politically effective one can be.

7 Equal access to resources needed by the group. This is not always perfectly possible, but should be striven for. A member who maintains a monopoly over a needed resource (like a printing press or a darkroom owned by a husband) can unduly influence the use of that resource. Skills and information are also resources. Members' skills and information can be equally available only when members are willing to teach what they know to others.

When these principles are applied, they ensure that whatever structures are developed by different movement groups will be controlled by and be responsible to the group. The group of people in positions of authority will be diffuse, flexible, open and temporary. They will not be in such an easy position to institutionalise their power because ultimate decisions will be made by the group at large. The group will have the power to determine who shall exercise authority within it."

- Jo Freeman, 1970

'The Tyranny of Structurelessness' by Jo Freeman

Do think twice, it's alright...

Medieval knight Conor and his men returned to the castle after a hard day’s fighting.

The knight informed the king:
“Your Majesty, I have been robbing and pillaging on your behalf all day, burning the villages of your enemies in the north”.

The king looked perplexed: “But I don’t have enemies in the north!”

“Ah,” replied the knight, realising his blunder, “I fear you do now”.

“Measure a thousand times and cut once” - Proverb

"The spider's touch, how exquisitely fine!
Feels at each thread, and lives along the line."
Alexander Pope (1688-1744)

Talkin' John Birch Paranoid Blues, Bob Dylan

YouTube - Talkin' John Birch Paranoid Blues

No Nukes - Global Zero

In December 2008 in Paris—in response to the growing threats of proliferation and nuclear terrorism—100 leaders from around the world launched Global Zero. They announced a plan for the phased, verified elimination of nuclear weapons, starting with deep reductions in the U.S. and Russian arsenals, to be followed by multilateral negotiations among all nuclear powers for an agreement to eliminate all nuclear weapons—global zero. The growing group includes former heads of state, former foreign ministers, former defense ministers, former national security advisors, and more than 20 former top military commanders.

The media coverage of the announcement was extensive and positive, including more than 1,800 placements around the world. Within hours of the launch, thousands of citizens from 85 countries signed the Global Zero declaration—the first seeds of a global public campaign.

Global Zero gave letters to Presidents Obama and Medvedev signed by more than 90 Global Zero leaders, urging them to commit to an effort to eliminate all nuclear weapons worldwide as outlined in Global Zero’s policy plan; Global Zero Commissioners, Senator Chuck Hagel and Ambassador Richard Burt, met with President Medvedev in Moscow and discussed this agenda; and Global Zero presented its plan through the media, including on the morning the two presidents met in London, with an op-ed in the London Times authored by six Global Zero American and Russian political and military leaders.

At their meeting, Presidents Obama and Medvedev issued an historic joint statement committing their “two countries to achieving a nuclear free world”—beginning with reductions in their two arsenals. Three days later in a speech in Prague, President Obama declared his intention to “seek to include all nuclear weapons states in this endeavor.”

This leadership from Presidents Obama and Medvedev—matched by growing support from governments around the world—represents an historic opportunity to stop proliferation and end the nuclear threat once and for all by setting the world on the course to the elimination of all nuclear weapons.

Global Zero is working on three fronts to achieve this goal: 1) developing a step-by-step plan for the elimination of nuclear weapons based on the Paris conference framework; 2) conducting track-two diplomacy to build support among key governments; and 3) generating broad-based worldwide public support through media and online communications and grassroots organizing.

Global Zero will convene hundreds of international leaders for the Global Zero Summit in February, 2010.

From (sign up):
Welcome | Global Zero

To Be-lieve or Not to Be-lieve

Many of our core beliefs about life and death are derived from religion. They can be either extremely comforting or extremely destructive, and sometimes both at the same time. As well as hope, joy, spiritual restoration, religious structures, both mental and communal, can instill guilt, shame and judgementalism from a young age. Despite the different claims of religions, the mystery of what happens after death remains unconfirmed.

In her new book "What Do I Believe?" Dorothy Rowe divides the political from the personal and warns about power as distinct from compassion. Feeling pressure to defend beliefs can result in offense on others. The choice of meaningful beliefs, religious or philosophical, can pave a path to a restful mind, peaceful co-existence and balanced autonomy.

A review and sample chapter can be found here: -
Dorothy Rowe





YouTube - Bob Dylan - Death Is Not The End

Happiness Hunting

Dr Martin Seligman is the acknowledged founder of Positive Psychology, a relatively new branch of psychology which focuses on the empirical study of such things as positive emotions, strengths-based character, and healthy institutions. His research has demonstrated that it is possible to be happier — to feel more satisfied, to be more engaged with life, find more meaning, have higher hopes, and probably even laugh and smile more, regardless of one’s circumstances.

At the website AuthenticHappiness, a range of questionnaires can be accessed to test your own levels of happiness, compassion, emotionality etc.

Goto -
:: Authentic Happiness :: Using the new Positive Psychology

The Social Brain

The Royal Society for the Encouragement of Arts, Manufacturing and Commerce (RSA) launched a Social Brain Project last February. This aims to gather new findings about people's irrational collective behaviour that does not in practise match numerous economic and population theories, and then to revise social policy accordingly:

There are three main strands to the idea that the brain is essentially social.

1) The brain, now it is finally beginning to be understood, turns out to unconsciously execute many of the decision-making processes that were previously thought to be self-consciously produced. The idea that all decisions flow from an executive rational subject, in principle capable of operating in isolation from others, now appears to be at worst false and at best unhelpful.

2) The brain has evolved to develop and function within social networks. For example, a deficit in the neurotransmitter Serotonin (which, amongst other things enables self-control) will result from unstable social environments lacking in qualities like empthy. Or, another example: mirror neurons are designed to enable (amongst other things) altruistic behaviour that facilitates social cohesion and allows an agent to successfully engage with others (and thus to achieve her own goals).

3) Even when we do make self-conscious decisions these are partly constituted by systematic biases that are fundamentally social. For example, behavioural economists have shown that people often indulge in herd behaviour. Game-theorists have also shown that it can be optimally rational to act altruistically because an agent’s good reputation amongst her fellows is massively important for her ability to successfully negotiate the social world. And as neuroscientists like Antonio Damasio have shown, these kinds of socially motivated biases have their basis in the neurology of the brain.

Project Design
In policy circles, the implicitly assumed model of decision-making in the last thirty years or so has been that of ‘rational-choice’. This model, imported from economics, represents people as perfectly rational and wholly self-interested. However, a slew of recent research in the neuro- and behavioural sciences has brought the usefulness of the model into question, showing that people are often systematically ‘irrational’ and not only self-interested. This means we should perhaps be more humble about our rational powers yet more optimistic about our ‘prosocial’ possibilities.

The first phase of the first year (until April 2010) of the RSA’s Social Brain project brings together experts from various disciplines to collaborate on producing a new model of decision-making that is informed by such research. The aim is to make the new model as clear and accessible as possible. The Steering Group’s work will be documented on an ‘openwiki’ that will be available for public viewing once it has been constructed...

RSA - Social Brain

Ten Facts about Worms

How awe-inspiring is the world-saving humble worm!

1. Every worm can be both a mom and a dad - but not with itself. Each individual is a “hermaphrodite”, an animal with both male and female sex organs. Each produces both sperm and eggs, but each worm’s eggs must be fertilized by the sperm of another individual - they cannot fertilize themselves. So earthworms must still find sexual partners, but both will receive sperm from the other. And in one final twist, earthworm mating is separate from reproduction! After mating, each worm will crawl away carrying the sperm of its partner, but not until later will it actually use those sperm to fertilize its eggs.

2. Look at the repeating rows of bumps along an earthworm’s body. Like most types of animals - including vertebrates, but not roundworms! - earthworms are segmented. Their body plan consists of simple, repeating units, each with a similar system of muscles, blood vessels, nerves, and so on.

3. Earthworms cannot see or hear. They lack even primitive eyes and have no organs to detect the vibrations of sound. They do, of course, have a sense of touch, and they have the chemical senses of taste and smell.

4. Earthworms breathe through their skin. Unlike many animals that exchange oxygen and carbon dioxide across their skin, however, earthworms do have a circulatory system to carry these gases to and from deeper tissues. This property allows them to grow relatively large - in some cases, truly gargantuan. The Giant Gippsland Earthworm of Australia can reach a diameter of an inch and a length of ten feet!

5. Nobody is sure why earthworms come to the surface in the rain, but there are two ideas. They may not be able to get enough oxygen when submerged in water, or they may take advantage of slippery conditions at the surface to migrate to new territory faster than they could by burrowing. Also, at least one species is known only to mate at the surface.

6. Not all worms move by inching, but earthworms do. Roundworms crawl by wriggling back and forth, but earthworms move by sequentially constricting each segment along the length of the body. In addition, they have a set of microscopic spines in each segment that help them dig into the soil as they crawl through.

7. Earthworms produce what is probably the most valuable poop in the world. They actually eat their way through packed soil, depositing behind them rich compost, which they have digested from nonliving organic matter. The result is the biologically crucial aeration and enrichment of the soil. In the judgment of no less a naturalist than Charles Darwin himself, “It may be doubted whether there are any other animals which have played so important a part in the history of the world, as have these lowly creatures.”

8. Earthworms are found almost everywhere, in nearly every environment on Earth - except deserts and the poles. Despite their name, not all species actually live in soil; some are restricted to manure, or muddy sediments, or even certain types of rotting trees. In any case, there is an enormously huge number of individuals: in the richest crop soils, estimates range up to hundreds of earthworms per square yard.

9. Almost all of the earthworms in North America are not native, but were introduced from the Old World. Not only have invasive earthworm species almost completely displaced the former native species, but most North American forests originally had no earthworms at all.

10. Earthworms are extremely sensitive to environmental pollutants. One unfortunate effect of their sensitivity is that pesticides and herbicides often unintentionally eliminate earthworms. Their loss can lead to dramatically lower soil quality. However, one useful effect is that the number of earthworms in a certain area can be used as an indicator of the amount of toxic contamination in that soil.

– from: All About Worms

Quotes on Poets

“[Poetry] is the imagination pressing back against the pressure of reality. It seems, in the last analysis, to have something to do with our self-preservation; and that, no doubt, is why the expression of it, the sound of its words, helps us to live our lives” – Wallace Stevens

“Art has always been a communication protocol to restore the human experience beyond oppression, difference and conflict. The paintings of the powerful, in their human misery, the sculpting of the oppressed in their human dignity, the bridges between the beauty of our environment and the inner hells of our psyche…[these] are all media to go beyond the inescapable labours of life, to find the expression of joy, of pain, of feeling that reunites us, and makes this planet liveable after all” - Manuel Castells

“Poetry [vs prose] can be recognised by this property, that it tends to get itself reproduced in its own form; it stimulates us to reconstruct it identically… The poet is deprived of the immense advantages possessed by the musician” [to create an imagined universe] – Paul Valery

“To be a poet in a destitute time means: to attend, singing, to the traces of the fugitive gods” – Martin Heidegger

The Help Hoax

THE HELP HOAX

Left alone and homeless, an abandoned bum,
Now knowing what I want, or where I can run.
Rejected by family as a prime criminal,
Who pretend I’m able, ignoring me fall:
Suggesting my power and success above them,
To cancel the kick from their door and them:
Engrossing my weakness, and tantrums of pain;
Portraying the picture that I’m all to blame;
That at their expense, I’ve climbed in the world,
And must now turn tables to repay, or be spurned.

Maddened in anger, I want to break free,
To find some real friends, but affection blinds me:
Tightly held by the bonds of old laughter and warmth,
There’s amnesia in the wish to be back with them swarmed,
From that isolated shelter, sharing so close –
Now the cold toil and strangers, rose-tints that doss-house.

Taking charge, catching courage, to be bettered, I call,
A social authority, but meet a brick wall:
Official and pompous, seeing only a child,
Pampered, whose pride, for help here must yield;
Who have set strict structures – once to stray is a sin,
A reason for banishment – they’re worse than my kin:
‘Cos crawling low to them, I can’t be myself,
But a worshipping worm, or a false, spellbound elf.
When sick in the gutter, I grasped at their promise,
Of parental protection, seeking retreat and rest.
After harassing pressure, to play saving sacrifice –
Sure, reliable loser – my homespun disguise.
Here there’s slight change, but it’s just outward show;
Sacrificial script stays: God, from clan to here, goes,
To sanctify Pharisees, and bolster egos,
With belly-low thanks: God! They’re equal foes.

Recognising me thus, as a shadow of self,
In a sad situation, missed by Fortune’s swerves;
I think – this ain’t no jail, someplace I needn’t stay;
Though betrayed once more, I’ll again get away.
Inside is a voice, clear, deep and true,
Reinforcing my thrust to keep trying to get through,
To the radiant ring of free-given solace,
Knowing my spirit within – sure acceptance to relish;
To some folk where the whole of me – diseases with strengths –
Is considered and cured, one with world, paying my rent.
- goinghome (26/2/’87)

The Obedience Obstacle

THE OBEDIENCE OBSTACLE

Obey your guardians always.
God, through them, is watching,
To catch and burn and punish,
If their word you’re not fearing.
I try and try and try,
To please in every way,
But there is stagnant death,
In many things they say.
So hurt and unfulfilled,
But stubborn in their stand,
Pushing us to lead,
Them to the promised land.
How did they forget,
The first, free, intense joy,
In fun, and everything,
That we did, and passed by?
Why exchange the ecstasy,
Of present Paradise,
To sacrifice love’s spirit,
For fantastic hopes so high?
Why, as soon as opening,
Innocent, infant eyes,
To question our surroundings,
Did they leave us lies?
Was it fear of failure;
Rebellious rejection,
That they refused to answer,
In cold, repelled reaction?
Yes, they let us down,
Betrayed, trespassed, bruised;
To trust our live and find,
We’re abandoned and confused.
Waking up away,
Hungry, tired, alone,
Dazed to discover,
That they won’t come again.
After pain and anger,
It remains to be resigned,
To our new condition,
As all-human – not just child.
- goinghome (4/3/’87)

The Famine, Sinead O' Connor

YouTube - Sinéad O'Connor-Famine

OK, I want to talk about Ireland
Specifically I want to talk about the "famine"
About the fact that there never really was one
There was no "famine"
See Irish people were only allowed to eat potatoes
All of the other food
Meat fish vegetables
Were shipped out of the country under armed guard
To England while the Irish people starved
And then on the middle of all this
They gave us money not to teach our children Irish
And so we lost our history
And this is what I think is still hurting me
See we're like a child that's been battered
Has to drive itself out of it's head because it's frightened
Still feels all the painful feelings
But they lose contact with the memory
And this leads to massive self-destruction
alcoholism, drug adiction
All desperate attempts at running
And in it's worst form
Becomes actual killing
And if there ever is gonna be healing
There has to be remembering
And then grieving
So that there then can be forgiving
There has to be knowledge and understanding
All the lonely people
where do they all come from
An American army regulation Says you mustn't kill more than 10% of a nation
'Cos to do so causes permanent "psychological damage"
It's not permanent but they didn't know that
Anyway during the supposed "famine"
We lost a lot more than 10% of our nation
Through deaths on land or on ships of emigration
But what finally broke us was not starvation
but it's use in the controlling of our education
Schools go on about "Black 47"
On and on about "The terrible famine"
But what they don't say is in truth
There really never was one
(Excuse me)
All the lonely people
(I'm sorry, excuse me)
Where do they all come from
(that I can tell you in one word)
All the lonely people
where do they all belong
So let's take a look shall we
The highest statistics of child abuse in the EEC
And we say we're a Christian country
But we've lost contact with our history
See we used to worship God as a mother
We're sufferin from post traumatic stress disorder
Look at all our old men in the pubs
Look at all our young people on drugs
We used to worship God as a mother
Now look at what we're doing to each other
We've even made killers of ourselves
The most child-like trusting people in the Universe
And this is what's wrong with us
Our history books the parent figures lied to us
I see the Irish
As a race like a child
That got itself basned in the face
And if there ever is gonna be healing
There has to be remembering
And then grieving
So that there then can be forgiving
There has to be knowledge and understanding
All the lonely people
Where do they all come from
All the lonely people
Where do they all come from
- Sinead O' Connor

Catholics Dominated Education in Ireland since Famine

"The overwhelming control of the primary education system that the Catholic Church has held since the Famine results not from charity but from the exercise of power, writes FINTAN O'TOOLE [Irish Times, Sat 6 June 2009]...

...The great myth that hangs over so much discussion of the Catholic Church’s domination of the education and health systems is that the church stepped in to offer services that the State refused to provide. Had it not been for the church, the story goes, the plain people of Ireland would have been left without schools or medical services...

...After the Famine, however, the Catholic Church began to recreate itself as an institutional structure with power over the civil and intimate lives of the majority of the population. As part of that process, it set about destroying the national schools and replacing them with a specifically Catholic system. Its leader, Cardinal Paul Cullen, declared the national school system to be “very dangerous when considered in general because its aim is to introduce a mingling of Protestants and Catholics.”...'

Full article is at: Lessons in the power of the church - The Irish Times - Sat, Jun 06, 2009

Pome aboutt Spelin

AN OWED TO THE SPELLING CHECKER

I have a spelling checker.
It came with my PC.
It plane lee marks four my revue
Miss steaks aye can know sea.

Eye ran this poem threw it,
Your sure reel glad two no.
Its vary polished in it's weigh,
My checker tolled me sew.

A checker is a bless sing,
It freeze yew lodes of thyme.
It helps me right awl stiles two reed,
And aides me when aye rime.

Each frays come posed up on my screen
Eye trussed to bee a joule
The checker poured o'er every word
To cheque sum spelling rule.

Be fore a veiling checkers
Hour spelling mite decline,
And if were lacks or have it laps,
We wood be maid to wine.

Butt now bee cause my spelling
Is checked with such grate flare,
Their are know faults with in my cite,
Of none eye am a ware.

Now spelling does knot phase me,
It does knot bring a tier.
My pay purrs awl due glad den
With wrapped words fare as hear.

To rite with care is quite a feet
Of witch won should be proud.
And wee mussed dew the best wee can,
Sew flaws are knot aloud.

Sew ewe can sea why aye dew prays
Such soft ware for pea seas,
And why I brake in two averse
By righting wants to pleas.

The Good News

THE GOOD NEWS

They don’t publish
the good news.
The good news is published
by us.
We have a special edition every moment,
and we need you to read it.
The good news is that you are alive,
and the linden tree is still there,
standing firm in the harsh Winter.
The good news is that you have wonderful eyes
to touch the blue sky.
The good news is that your child is there before you,
and your arms are available:
hugging is possible.
They only print what is wrong.
Look at each of our special editions.
We always offer the things that are not wrong.
We want you to benefit from them
and help protect them.
The dandelion is there by the sidewalk,
smiling its wondrous smile,
singing the song of eternity.
Listen! You have ears that can hear it.
Bow your head.
Listen to it.
Leave behind the world of sorrow
and preoccupation
and get free.
The latest good news
is that you can do it.
- Thich Nhat Hanh

Burning Monk - The Self-Immolation

YouTube - In Memoriam to Thích Quảng Đức


June 11, 1963

Thich Quang Duc, a Buddhist monk from the Linh-Mu Pagoda in Hue, Vietnam, burned himself to death at a busy intersection in downtown Saigon, Vietnam.. Eye witness accounts state that Thich Quang Duc and at least two fellow monks arrived at the intersection by car, Thich Quang Duc got out of the car, assumed the traditional lotus position and the accompanying monks helped him pour gasoline over himself. He ignited the gasoline by lighting a match and burned to death in a matter of minutes.

His heart, which did not burn, is preserved in the region.

The Miseducation of God

Why God never received a Ph.D.

1. He had only one major publication.
2. It was in Hebrew.
3. It had no references.
4. It wasn't even published in a refereed journal.
5. Some even doubt he wrote it by himself.
6. It may be true that he created the world, but what has he done since
then?
7. His cooperative efforts have been quite limited.
8. The scientific community has had a hard time replicating his results.
9. He never applied to the ethics board for permission to use human
subjects.
10. When one experiment went awry he tried to cover it by drowning his
subjects.
11. When subjects didn't behave as predicted, he deleted them from the
sample.
12. He rarely came to class, just told students to read the book.
13. Some say he had his son teach the class.
14. He expelled his first two students for learning.
15. Although there were only 10 requirements, most of his students
failed his tests.
16. His office hours were infrequent and usually held on a mountain top.

Who is Authority?

WHO IS AUTHORITY?

They would condemn us for playing and laughing,
For dancing in the warm wind on this world.
They would kill us for lack of lucre and labouring,
For laying us down to rest with leisure furled.

Truly, there is more poison on their tongues of preaching,
Than in the meek, emotional mushiness of sweet wine.
Their darts thrust more dangerously deep and in,
Than the whirling wash of love which stings like brine.

All should be servant and master to each, but they
Dish out their authority not distinguishing blind from seeing.
They dress their idols, suppressing need-whining, nude humanity,
Needing touch and attention, a nascency of being;

And not the pointed finger to chain us down,
To disgrace, despair, and doom with endless toil;
Nor their demands for weary worship of every sound
They utter as though they’re lone gods of control on this soil.

Lord, they take over your temple, their master is mammon;
No mercy for suffering men eking daily bread.
Look down, get up, unleash your whip upon
Their exploiting, existential intestines ‘till they’re red.
- goinghome (25/12/’87)

Cot Death

COT-DEATH

Stop talking! Be quiet! Shut up!
Choke the child.
Sit still! Don’t fight! Don’t move!
Paralyse the child.
Look clean! Don’t touch yourself!
Reject the child.
Sleep alone! Be unafraid and strong!
Abandon the child.
Don’t tell stories! Don’t ask questions!
Retard the child.
Be good! Be perfect! Be not!
Kill the nasty nuisance.
- goinghome (28/1/’87)

Know Truth to Save

KNOW TRUTH TO SAVE

The ones who say:
‘Trust us, we save‘.
Beware!
When wily world-rulers rave.
Watch, always watch, on your way,
Because any hour now, any day,
It may be your turn to save:
Thus know truth, to earn winner’s wave.
- goinghome (23/5/’88)

Prophetic Delusion

PROPHETIC DELUSION

I know that my destiny is greatness,
For turning the world on its axis.
My journey is scheduled for stars,
To enlighten, and mend all men’s scars.

My mind can span that vast distance,
In one rapid, prophet-like glance.
Damn dream! – tiny H-bomb explosion,
Is the truth of my constant condition.
- goinghome (5/2/’87)

Is Our Progress Just Words?

IS OUR PROGRESS JUST WORDS?

I want to weep with world-weariness,
As I watch the wanton waste,
Of resources, essential and bounteous,
Being opened, but untouched, thrown away.

Why is our progress just words?
Tiny-mind, man-murdering tasks?
Where can we live like the birds? –
Fast-winged, warm-feathered, relaxed.

Yet they, while fulfilled, still they bend,
To a communal law of the land,
In order to safe-guard their natures,
And, securely, share with their neighbours.
- goinghome (5/11/’87)

Spiritually Free

SPIRITUALLY FREE

Take wings to fly away above the crowds, picking madly at the wasted bones.
Let the sun and air and rains and clouds, be the only home that your soul owns.

Don’t surrender when you obey orders, shouted by the rulers of the world;
Who rush to gather riches like mean misers, ignoring casualties with whom they’ve quarrelled.

Stand on your own two feet, don’t lie down, baby; look them straight and fearless in the eye.
Know what’s right yourself, the reason why; fight each Pharisee, keep your spirit free.

The air is free, so be where you’ve got space, to stretch and yawn and laugh and cry and sing;
To rest and reach your fullest size with grace; to love your visitors and bring them in.

Reality is not the perfect dream, but here and now’s the best thing in-between.
Act from your starting cue, whatever the scene, and when you need change, pray, open your mouth and scream!

- goinghome (Late ‘88)

Choosing Sides

CHOOSING SIDES

Heed well the human home,
Within the heaving heart,
Below those hard, heady heights.

Glory and gain is good,
If, in its angst-strung aims,
It circles feelings too.

But let me fade and die, or fight,
On the weakest side,
‘Gainst ambition, Macbeth-like.

Stab me, shoot me, wound me,
Active in the trenches,
With children, chanting proudly.

When power wills me choose,
Raw need or excess gross;
Then laughingly I lose:-

Lose loads of leech-like loot;
And win a soul-strong shout,
And share-care friends to boot.
- goinghome (11/10/’87)

Is That a Priest?

IS THAT A PRIEST?

Is that a priest,
Preaching a well-practised package,
Of calculated commands, and demands,
Of an unsatisfied, greedy God?

Is that a priest,
Posing as benevolent servant,
To shine light on our sin,
Then suck us dry through shame?

Is that a priest,
Who only proposes,
That almighty God is unreachable,
Defying that God became man,
And still does?

Perhaps that’s a priest;
But if this man is not
A man of humble, human, holy, lowly love,
Or of grieving, searching sorrow,-

If not:
Beware!
Do not open package!
- goinghome (1988)