The word hygiene comes to us from Greek. Hygieia was the goddess of health, cleanliness and the moon. The lesser Greek gods had multiple responsibilities to maintain their importance in the hierarchy, like today's politicians.
If you have seen a commercial about a monk (looking possibly Buddhist) turning over an upturned turtle and moving a crawly thing from indoors to the outside by carrying it on a piece of paper, then sneezing into a tissue and screaming when told he has killed millions of germs, you may have seen something almost real. Monks of the Jain Dharma (an offshoot religion from Hindu, having several million followers in India) wash only their hands and feet. They do not bathe other parts of their bodies in order to do no harm to millions of microorganisms that live there symbiotically.
The human body harbours some one thousand species of bacteria, most of which are beneficial to us and live in a mutually beneficial relationship with us--we keep them alive and they keep us healthy. Killing all bacteria on and in you, despite what you may read in advertisements or see in commercials, will make you more vulnerable to disease.
There are far more bacteria on your body than there are people living in the United States. It's estimated now that we have more microorganisms living on our skin and inside of us than we have cells of our own bodies.
Antibacterial soap has been found to be no more effective at preventing infection than ordinary soap. The active ingredient in most antibacterial soaps, triclosan, can actually mess up your hormones and affect your libido.
A recent study involving over 11,000 children showed that an overly hygienic environment--especially in their first decade of life--increases the risk of their having eczema and asthma. Bodies of young children have relatively immature immune systems that need to work very hard to build immunities to many harmful pathogens in the environment. Other studies have examined how a sterile environment may affect allergies in children.
The word soap derives from the mythological Mount Sapo. Women washing their clothing in the river below found a "natural" cleaning agent in the water. It turned out that fat and wood ash from animal sacrifices on the mountain drained into the Tiber River. One of the first recorded cases of human waste products polluting a waterway turned out to be beneficial to humankind.
The Aztecs and the people of ancient Egypt were known to rub urine on their skin to treat cuts and burns. Urea, a key chemical in urine, kills bacteria and fungi, major causes of infection.
England's King Henry IV made a grand move toward cleanliness when he insisted that his knights bathe at least once in their lives, during the ritual of their knighthood ceremony. The rest of his people stuck with their belief that bathing was unhealthy.
The daily bath or shower has only become common during the past half century.
If you have seen women in movies tossing human urine and excrement out the second story windows of their homes in 18th century London you will understand how the city's water supply was constantly contaminated. It's said that the good citizens of Londontown got their daily supply of hydration from gin.
The "five second rule" or "ten second rule" about something dropped on the floor or ground not being able to pick up germs if it is picked up within that time frame is nonsense. An object (including skin) that touches something contaminated can become contaminated itself as soon as the touch occurs.
Most people get colds and flu from handling something with germs on it then putting their fingers in their mouths, touching food that then goes into their mouths or even from rubbing their eyes. The mouth has natural defences against germ attack in the saliva whereas the eyes have virtually no protection.
Those commercials that urge you to kill all the bacteria in your mouth with their mouthwash will also have you kill all the good bacteria that form the body's first line of defence against disease. If you wipe out your body's first defence (in your mouth) you must depend on your gastric juices (in your gut) to kill the bad microorganisms before they get into your bloodstream. The companies that make mouthwash don't usually make drugs, but the link would make you wonder.
A school science fair in Florida recently crowned a seventh grader with top prize for proving that ice machines in fast food restaurants harbour more bacteria than the water in your toilet bowl. The belief that fresh toilet bowl water is automatically contaminated is not necessarily true unless you clean the bowl rarely. Pets who drink from the toilet bowl may know more than their owners about clean water.
The toothbrush was likely invented in China somewhere around 1498. (Since the Chinese travelled the world as explorers--even to the Americas--a century before Columbus ever set sail, it's possible that the Chinese picked the idea up from somewhere else.) Someone wired Siberian pig hair to a carved cattle bone. Before that it was sticks and bones used as toothpicks and for rubbing the teeth.
Brushing of the teeth didn't become common in the United States until after World War II. Soldiers during the war were required to brush their teeth to prevent decay. (Not many dentists made it to the front.)
Brace yourself for this. In 1935, Northern Tissue introduced "splinter-free" toilet paper as a grand innovation. The Innuit (aka Eskimoes) of the far north used tundra moss. The ancient Romans used a sponge with salt water. In the American west--fondly known as the Old West--it was common to wipe the butt with corncobs (with the kernels removed, and "splinters" too).
In the 17th through 19th centuries in Europe and the Americas, one-quarter of all women died giving birth due to contracting puerperal fever. They picked up the pathogen from doctors and nurses who commonly didn't wash their hands. Death in childbirth wasn't just bad luck or insufficient knowledge as movies would have us believe.
Researchers at the University of Arizona found that television remotes in hospitals do the best job or spreading bacteria. Even better than toilet handles (maybe they had been licked by visiting dogs). TV remotes accounted for the majority of deaths from antibiotic-resistant Staphylococcus in hospitals, which annually runs around 90,000 people (er...ex-people).
James Garfield, one of the few US presidents who died in office, did not likely die from a gunshot wound from Charles Guiteau after all. He more likely died (three months after the incident) from severe infection that originated from the hands of his medical team. Their hands were contaminated with manure stains.
Those latex gloves that doctors and nurses use today seem like a great idea now, don't they? The medical people think they're protecting themselves from picking up something from us. Do we really want to know how doctors attending the president of the USA had manure stains on their hands?
[Primary resource:Discover , September 2007]
Bill Allin
Turning It Around: Causes and Cures for Today's Epidemic Social Problems, a book about teaching children the important lessons of life--including washing their hands--before they need them as adolescents and adults. Our people have too many problems because they didn't have the information they needed soon enough.
Learn more at http://billallin.com
Wednesday, November 28, 2007
Thursday, November 22, 2007
Is Anyone Paying Attention To You?
Please read the signature line at the end of the article about a book you should read and a worldwide plan to make the world a safer and healthier place to live. Learn more about the book and the plan at http://billallin.com
...................................
The reserve of modern assertions is sometimes pushed to extremes, in which the fear of being contradicted leads the writer to strip himself of almost all sense and meaning.
- Sir Winston Churchill
Though Churchill was referring to writers of history and the sciences, in which case they water down their premises and arguments to the point where it would be hard for anyone to disagree with them (example: "motherhood" issues), the quotation applies as well to today's writers and even to non-writers in terms of their behaviour.
Political correctness comes to mind first. Initially its purpose for each person is to prevent the offence of an innocent second party by an unthinking or boorish first party. The problem, however, is that political correctness kicks in so that an arrogant and supercilious third party attempts to control the behaviour of the first party. The objective is not learning a lesson, but control of another's behaviour.
Political correctness has become the weapon of bigots who presume to support the cause of avoiding bigotry. Practitioners of political correctness on a scale where it is intended to affect the behaviour of others (accused of bigotry) are themselves bigots, especially with their bullying ways.
As a response, innocent people try to avoid being labelled as racist or as bigots by writing and speaking in wishy-washy ways so that they can never make a strong point in an argument for fear that it may offend someone. Meanwhile we can see the ultimate in extremist political correctness on such services as FOX-NEWS where an interviewee or guest may suffer verbal abuse at the hands of a host who purports to be a defender of the innocent.
In the United States the hypocrisy of political correctness reaches absurdity as people with white skin may be fired from their jobs or suffer overwhelming condemnation for using "the N-word" publicly or privately in a way that becomes public later as a result of spying. Meanwhile African-Americans freely use the whole word in large public gatherings and hi-hop music lyrics. Somehow, the inequality of that issue doesn't strike home with the advocates of political correctness.
What hits home with more people is the effect of the movement on how they speak. Some get so tied up with striving to use the politically correct words that their listeners or readers lose track of what the purpose of the issue at hand is.
When conveying messages of any type, you can't please everyone. If you do, you find yourself with an audience that cares nothing for what you have said.
When making a strong point in any argument, whether written or oral, if your words don't generate at least some opposition, even enemies, then not enough people are paying any attention to your message. Without opposition, the mountain you want to climb becomes a plain, a desert where you can get lost and no one will notice. Or care.
Bill Allin
Turning It Around: Causes and Cures for Today's Epidemic Social Problems, a book about how, what and when to teach children what they need to know to grow into competent, confident adults worth listening to.
Learn more at http://billallin.com
...................................
The reserve of modern assertions is sometimes pushed to extremes, in which the fear of being contradicted leads the writer to strip himself of almost all sense and meaning.
- Sir Winston Churchill
Though Churchill was referring to writers of history and the sciences, in which case they water down their premises and arguments to the point where it would be hard for anyone to disagree with them (example: "motherhood" issues), the quotation applies as well to today's writers and even to non-writers in terms of their behaviour.
Political correctness comes to mind first. Initially its purpose for each person is to prevent the offence of an innocent second party by an unthinking or boorish first party. The problem, however, is that political correctness kicks in so that an arrogant and supercilious third party attempts to control the behaviour of the first party. The objective is not learning a lesson, but control of another's behaviour.
Political correctness has become the weapon of bigots who presume to support the cause of avoiding bigotry. Practitioners of political correctness on a scale where it is intended to affect the behaviour of others (accused of bigotry) are themselves bigots, especially with their bullying ways.
As a response, innocent people try to avoid being labelled as racist or as bigots by writing and speaking in wishy-washy ways so that they can never make a strong point in an argument for fear that it may offend someone. Meanwhile we can see the ultimate in extremist political correctness on such services as FOX-NEWS where an interviewee or guest may suffer verbal abuse at the hands of a host who purports to be a defender of the innocent.
In the United States the hypocrisy of political correctness reaches absurdity as people with white skin may be fired from their jobs or suffer overwhelming condemnation for using "the N-word" publicly or privately in a way that becomes public later as a result of spying. Meanwhile African-Americans freely use the whole word in large public gatherings and hi-hop music lyrics. Somehow, the inequality of that issue doesn't strike home with the advocates of political correctness.
What hits home with more people is the effect of the movement on how they speak. Some get so tied up with striving to use the politically correct words that their listeners or readers lose track of what the purpose of the issue at hand is.
When conveying messages of any type, you can't please everyone. If you do, you find yourself with an audience that cares nothing for what you have said.
When making a strong point in any argument, whether written or oral, if your words don't generate at least some opposition, even enemies, then not enough people are paying any attention to your message. Without opposition, the mountain you want to climb becomes a plain, a desert where you can get lost and no one will notice. Or care.
Bill Allin
Turning It Around: Causes and Cures for Today's Epidemic Social Problems, a book about how, what and when to teach children what they need to know to grow into competent, confident adults worth listening to.
Learn more at http://billallin.com
Tuesday, November 20, 2007
The Most Commonly Broken Law
"In life and business, there are two cardinal sins. The first is to act precipitously without thought and the second is to not act at all."
- Carl Icahn
In business, acting without thought, planning and due diligence may be fatal to the business. However, can this be true of life in general? Is doing nothing or doing something without careful thought a cardinal sin?
Icahn likely doesn't mean cardinal sin in a religious sense, only in the sense of being critical to good health.
If doing nothing is critical, then it seems a large portion of the populations of most western countries has reached that stage. What they do is to buy and, in the case of some, to devote themselves to a religious belief set proposed by a few people who have as much (or more) to gain from selling their religious concepts as industries have from bringing in customers through their advertising.
Thinking seldom enters their lives as an active pursuit any more than it does a predator animal when it chooses between two potential victims.
It has become progressively harder to get people out to vote because they have little or no idea who to vote for. Many who do vote do so based on what they have been told by someone else (including the media) or on the emotional wave that has followed some personal issue among the candidates (such as prior drug use or marital indiscretion of one).
I happen to live in a rural municipality where city cottagers leave their accumulated weekend waste at the landfill (dump) at the end of each weekend. Many arrive in their $60,000 SUVs and must ask the attendant (every weekend) where to put their newspapers, their cardboard or their recyclables. Some don't even ask, they simply put what they have into the wrong bins despite the fact that each bin has acceptable contents clearly shown in illustrations and in words on their sides.
These give no evidence that they have the ability to think beyond the minimum necessary for doing their jobs and for survival in the family.
Ask any one of them if something should be done to alleviate the problems that precipitate global warming (climate change) and without exception they will reply in the affirmative. Yet nothing in their behaviour confirms that their belief has been transferred to a change in behaviour. Their reaction toward the climate change question is knee-jerk reaction, with no actual thinking following up.
At least the people who act precipitously and make mistakes learn from them and don't make the same mistakes more than seven or eight times. The people who learn nothing do no thinking.
Perhaps that is the moral aspect that Icahn called a cardinal sin. Doing nothing is an indication of no thinking. In the animal world, these people would be the first course of lunch when the first predator came around. That's a violation of natural laws.
Bill Allin
Turning It Around: Causes and Cures for Today's Epidemic Social Problems, a book about how and what to teach children so that they don't become SUV-driving, drug-using, non-thinking vegetables as adults.
Learn more at http://billallin.com
- Carl Icahn
In business, acting without thought, planning and due diligence may be fatal to the business. However, can this be true of life in general? Is doing nothing or doing something without careful thought a cardinal sin?
Icahn likely doesn't mean cardinal sin in a religious sense, only in the sense of being critical to good health.
If doing nothing is critical, then it seems a large portion of the populations of most western countries has reached that stage. What they do is to buy and, in the case of some, to devote themselves to a religious belief set proposed by a few people who have as much (or more) to gain from selling their religious concepts as industries have from bringing in customers through their advertising.
Thinking seldom enters their lives as an active pursuit any more than it does a predator animal when it chooses between two potential victims.
It has become progressively harder to get people out to vote because they have little or no idea who to vote for. Many who do vote do so based on what they have been told by someone else (including the media) or on the emotional wave that has followed some personal issue among the candidates (such as prior drug use or marital indiscretion of one).
I happen to live in a rural municipality where city cottagers leave their accumulated weekend waste at the landfill (dump) at the end of each weekend. Many arrive in their $60,000 SUVs and must ask the attendant (every weekend) where to put their newspapers, their cardboard or their recyclables. Some don't even ask, they simply put what they have into the wrong bins despite the fact that each bin has acceptable contents clearly shown in illustrations and in words on their sides.
These give no evidence that they have the ability to think beyond the minimum necessary for doing their jobs and for survival in the family.
Ask any one of them if something should be done to alleviate the problems that precipitate global warming (climate change) and without exception they will reply in the affirmative. Yet nothing in their behaviour confirms that their belief has been transferred to a change in behaviour. Their reaction toward the climate change question is knee-jerk reaction, with no actual thinking following up.
At least the people who act precipitously and make mistakes learn from them and don't make the same mistakes more than seven or eight times. The people who learn nothing do no thinking.
Perhaps that is the moral aspect that Icahn called a cardinal sin. Doing nothing is an indication of no thinking. In the animal world, these people would be the first course of lunch when the first predator came around. That's a violation of natural laws.
Bill Allin
Turning It Around: Causes and Cures for Today's Epidemic Social Problems, a book about how and what to teach children so that they don't become SUV-driving, drug-using, non-thinking vegetables as adults.
Learn more at http://billallin.com
Monday, November 19, 2007
Let's Look Into Your Future
Never let the future disturb you. You will meet it, if you have to, with the same weapons of reason which today arm you against the present.
- Marcus Aurelius Antoninus (121 AD - 180 AD)
Many people fear the future, mostly because it's unknown and they fear that which is not familiar to them. Anything unknown, they learned somewhere, should be feared, or at least faced with apprehension.
Some look with trepidation to the future because they see the present being so much worse than the past they knew and are concerned that the conditions of today will only get worse in the future. ("I wouldn't want to have to raise kids today.")
What they fail to realize is that in their younger years they were relatively ignorant of the conditions of the world of their time. As we get older we gain a broader perspective of many things in life, whereas when we are younger we focus more on our immediate present.
This condition even exists with vision, where younger people can focus better on specific objects in the distance, but not so well the whole scene, whereas older people can take in a larger picture and assess the overall conditions better but may not be able to see specifics as easily. For example, kids can find Waldo in the Where's Waldo puzzles far easier than older adults.
A few people don't want to think about the future because they imagine that it will bring more of the pain they have suffered in the past and they are not certain they can tolerate any more. Those people may not consider the good parts of their past, thus see little possibility of a balance between good and bad in their future. The good was there, but they allow the bad to overwhelm them, so they believe the future will be equally as bad.
The future is neither good nor bad, not any more so than the past. We tend to remember that which impacts our emotions most, especially the negative emotions, and forget (most of the time) the good times we experienced. Our memories of good experiences may not be as vivid as those of the bad ones. At least not until we have lived long enough to be able to look back more than 40 years into our own past.
Life is filled with good times and bad times. We may miss some of the good times because we spend so much time focussing on our problems while not appreciating what we have that is valuable. Often, for example, we don't consider how fortunate we are to have people who love us, though many people in the world have no one who cares deeply for them. Love is a treasure beyond compare. Though it doesn't pay the bills, it's far more valuable than the money that does. If we appreciate it. If not, love is wasted.
Life really is a roller coaster ride of ups and downs. There's nothing fair about it. Life being fair is a misconception we were taught as young children, often when we were expected to share something tasty or a toy with siblings. ("Be fair and share.") Life, in general, is not fair.
We have no right to expect that life should be fair because no other life form on earth experiences fairness in life. For most of us, just surviving after we have made grievous mistakes or terrible errors of judgment gives us a huge advantage over other animals who would have become lunch for a predator for making the same degree of mistake.
The future will be as good as we want it to be, as good as we expect it to be. Or as bad. In general, life for us humans is improving. You don't have to study much history to discover that life in the past--any part of the past--was much worse, much riskier, shorter and with fewer benefits than life today. In western countries alone people live twice as long as the average life span of their grandparents' generation.
Almost everyone forgets one thing about the unknown aspect of the future. It doesn't remain unknown. And it doesn't remain the future. We only ever get to experience it as the present.
Considering how many bad experiences you've had in the past and weathered them, you can expect that you will do as well in the future. Maybe better, as you have more experience that should allow you to make fewer mistakes thus generate fewer downturns in your life.
And you have the good times to look forward to.
Bill Allin
Turning It Around: Causes and Cures for Today's Epidemic Social Problems, a book about arming children with the knowledge and skills they require to live healthy and positive lives, as opposed to the lives of many troubled adults of today.
Learn more at http://billallin.com
- Marcus Aurelius Antoninus (121 AD - 180 AD)
Many people fear the future, mostly because it's unknown and they fear that which is not familiar to them. Anything unknown, they learned somewhere, should be feared, or at least faced with apprehension.
Some look with trepidation to the future because they see the present being so much worse than the past they knew and are concerned that the conditions of today will only get worse in the future. ("I wouldn't want to have to raise kids today.")
What they fail to realize is that in their younger years they were relatively ignorant of the conditions of the world of their time. As we get older we gain a broader perspective of many things in life, whereas when we are younger we focus more on our immediate present.
This condition even exists with vision, where younger people can focus better on specific objects in the distance, but not so well the whole scene, whereas older people can take in a larger picture and assess the overall conditions better but may not be able to see specifics as easily. For example, kids can find Waldo in the Where's Waldo puzzles far easier than older adults.
A few people don't want to think about the future because they imagine that it will bring more of the pain they have suffered in the past and they are not certain they can tolerate any more. Those people may not consider the good parts of their past, thus see little possibility of a balance between good and bad in their future. The good was there, but they allow the bad to overwhelm them, so they believe the future will be equally as bad.
The future is neither good nor bad, not any more so than the past. We tend to remember that which impacts our emotions most, especially the negative emotions, and forget (most of the time) the good times we experienced. Our memories of good experiences may not be as vivid as those of the bad ones. At least not until we have lived long enough to be able to look back more than 40 years into our own past.
Life is filled with good times and bad times. We may miss some of the good times because we spend so much time focussing on our problems while not appreciating what we have that is valuable. Often, for example, we don't consider how fortunate we are to have people who love us, though many people in the world have no one who cares deeply for them. Love is a treasure beyond compare. Though it doesn't pay the bills, it's far more valuable than the money that does. If we appreciate it. If not, love is wasted.
Life really is a roller coaster ride of ups and downs. There's nothing fair about it. Life being fair is a misconception we were taught as young children, often when we were expected to share something tasty or a toy with siblings. ("Be fair and share.") Life, in general, is not fair.
We have no right to expect that life should be fair because no other life form on earth experiences fairness in life. For most of us, just surviving after we have made grievous mistakes or terrible errors of judgment gives us a huge advantage over other animals who would have become lunch for a predator for making the same degree of mistake.
The future will be as good as we want it to be, as good as we expect it to be. Or as bad. In general, life for us humans is improving. You don't have to study much history to discover that life in the past--any part of the past--was much worse, much riskier, shorter and with fewer benefits than life today. In western countries alone people live twice as long as the average life span of their grandparents' generation.
Almost everyone forgets one thing about the unknown aspect of the future. It doesn't remain unknown. And it doesn't remain the future. We only ever get to experience it as the present.
Considering how many bad experiences you've had in the past and weathered them, you can expect that you will do as well in the future. Maybe better, as you have more experience that should allow you to make fewer mistakes thus generate fewer downturns in your life.
And you have the good times to look forward to.
Bill Allin
Turning It Around: Causes and Cures for Today's Epidemic Social Problems, a book about arming children with the knowledge and skills they require to live healthy and positive lives, as opposed to the lives of many troubled adults of today.
Learn more at http://billallin.com
Thursday, November 15, 2007
A Message From The Taliban
When the Soviet military pulled out of Afghanistan in 1989, Afghan citizens cheered wildly because the Soviets had reportedly killed about one million Afghans during their occupation of the country.
The Mujahideen that had nominally routed the Soviets separated into their various (mostly tribal) factions and began turf wars within the country, each determined to dominate the economy. This would be somewhat like organized crime gangs battling each other, only lots of innocent citizens were robbed, raped and killed, including children. Torture of the (summarily convicted) "accused" was a daily practice.
The Afghans cheered again in 1996 when the Taliban defeated the warlords in most of the country. By then an estimated 50,000 innocent Afghans had died in the conflict in Kabul alone at the hands of the gangs of the warlords.
Most of us have an idea of how brutal the Taliban regime was before it was driven into the mountains along the border with Pakistan. What follows below accurately depicts the true nature of the Shari'a law theTaliban put into place immediately.
It's worth keeping in mind that even today the Taliban intends to retake control of Afghanistan. And Shia militants from the south of Iraq and Iran (with military weaponry support from Iran) plan to turn all of Iraq into a Taliban-style repressive regime.
We already know what the Sunni militants did to Iraq during the Saddam years.
What follows was broadcast on the radio, from loudspeakers atop each mosque and printed on flyers that were dropped all over the streets where every citizen could find them.
************************************
Our watan is now known as the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan. These are the laws that we will enforce and you will obey:
All citizens must pray five times a day. If it is prayer time and youare caught doing something other, you will be beaten.
All men will grow their beards. The correct length is at least one clenched fist beneath the chin. If you do not abide by this, you will be beaten.
All boys will wear turbans. Boys in grade one through six will wear black turbans, higher grades will wear white.
All boys will wear Islamic clothes. Shirt collars will be buttoned.
Singing is forbidden.
Dancing is forbidden.
Playing cards, playing chess, gambling, and kite flying are forbidden.
Writing books, watching films, and painting pictures are forbidden.
If you keep parakeets, you will be beaten. Your birds will be killed.
If you steal, your hand will be cut off at the wrist. If you steal again, your foot will be cut off.
If you are not Muslim, do not worship where you can be seen by Muslims. If you do, you will be beaten and imprisoned.
If you are caught trying to convert a Muslim to your faith, you will be executed.
Attention women:
You will stay inside your homes at all times. It is not proper for women to wander aimlessly about the streets. If you go outside, you must be accompanied by a mahram (a male relative).
If you are caught alone on the street, you will be beaten and sent home.
You will not, under any circumstance, show your face. You will cover with burqa when outside. If you do not, you will be severely beaten.
Cosmetics are forbidden.
Jewelry is forbidden.
You will not wear charming clothes.
You will not speak unless spoken to.
You will not make eye contact with men.
You will not laugh in public. If you do, you will be beaten.
You will not paint your nails. If you do you will lose a finger.
Girls are forbidden from attending school. All schools for girls will be closed immediately.
Women are forbidden from working.
If you are found guilty of adultery, you will be stoned to death.
Listen. Listen well. Obey. Allah-u-akbar.
******************************
Not only were women thereafter forbidden from receiving an education, they received no vote or political status, including no representation in the government.
In Kabul one hospital was designated for women, while all other hospitals (including those for women only) were assigned for men.
Children had to attend the hospital for women unless they were taken by their fathers to the male hospitals (only if they were boys).
The one hospital for women was given no supplies, including no drugs for anesthesia during operations and no fuel for power generators.
Female surgeons were to wear their burqa while conducting their surgery in the operating theatre.
The power and influence of the Taliban in Afghanistan and militant Muslims in Iraq is why foreign troops are in those countries. We believe that we cannot treasure life in our own countries while allowing the slaughter of innocent men, women and children elsewhere.
Every Muslim mother in Iraq and Afghanistan has the same hopes and aspirations for her children as your mother had for you. We want to give those children a chance.
It's the right thing to do.
Bill Allin
Turning It Around: Causes and Cures for Today's Epidemic Social Problems, a book about what, when and how to teach children what they need to know to be competent and confident adults.
Learn more at http://billallin.com
The Mujahideen that had nominally routed the Soviets separated into their various (mostly tribal) factions and began turf wars within the country, each determined to dominate the economy. This would be somewhat like organized crime gangs battling each other, only lots of innocent citizens were robbed, raped and killed, including children. Torture of the (summarily convicted) "accused" was a daily practice.
The Afghans cheered again in 1996 when the Taliban defeated the warlords in most of the country. By then an estimated 50,000 innocent Afghans had died in the conflict in Kabul alone at the hands of the gangs of the warlords.
Most of us have an idea of how brutal the Taliban regime was before it was driven into the mountains along the border with Pakistan. What follows below accurately depicts the true nature of the Shari'a law theTaliban put into place immediately.
It's worth keeping in mind that even today the Taliban intends to retake control of Afghanistan. And Shia militants from the south of Iraq and Iran (with military weaponry support from Iran) plan to turn all of Iraq into a Taliban-style repressive regime.
We already know what the Sunni militants did to Iraq during the Saddam years.
What follows was broadcast on the radio, from loudspeakers atop each mosque and printed on flyers that were dropped all over the streets where every citizen could find them.
************************************
Our watan is now known as the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan. These are the laws that we will enforce and you will obey:
All citizens must pray five times a day. If it is prayer time and youare caught doing something other, you will be beaten.
All men will grow their beards. The correct length is at least one clenched fist beneath the chin. If you do not abide by this, you will be beaten.
All boys will wear turbans. Boys in grade one through six will wear black turbans, higher grades will wear white.
All boys will wear Islamic clothes. Shirt collars will be buttoned.
Singing is forbidden.
Dancing is forbidden.
Playing cards, playing chess, gambling, and kite flying are forbidden.
Writing books, watching films, and painting pictures are forbidden.
If you keep parakeets, you will be beaten. Your birds will be killed.
If you steal, your hand will be cut off at the wrist. If you steal again, your foot will be cut off.
If you are not Muslim, do not worship where you can be seen by Muslims. If you do, you will be beaten and imprisoned.
If you are caught trying to convert a Muslim to your faith, you will be executed.
Attention women:
You will stay inside your homes at all times. It is not proper for women to wander aimlessly about the streets. If you go outside, you must be accompanied by a mahram (a male relative).
If you are caught alone on the street, you will be beaten and sent home.
You will not, under any circumstance, show your face. You will cover with burqa when outside. If you do not, you will be severely beaten.
Cosmetics are forbidden.
Jewelry is forbidden.
You will not wear charming clothes.
You will not speak unless spoken to.
You will not make eye contact with men.
You will not laugh in public. If you do, you will be beaten.
You will not paint your nails. If you do you will lose a finger.
Girls are forbidden from attending school. All schools for girls will be closed immediately.
Women are forbidden from working.
If you are found guilty of adultery, you will be stoned to death.
Listen. Listen well. Obey. Allah-u-akbar.
******************************
Not only were women thereafter forbidden from receiving an education, they received no vote or political status, including no representation in the government.
In Kabul one hospital was designated for women, while all other hospitals (including those for women only) were assigned for men.
Children had to attend the hospital for women unless they were taken by their fathers to the male hospitals (only if they were boys).
The one hospital for women was given no supplies, including no drugs for anesthesia during operations and no fuel for power generators.
Female surgeons were to wear their burqa while conducting their surgery in the operating theatre.
The power and influence of the Taliban in Afghanistan and militant Muslims in Iraq is why foreign troops are in those countries. We believe that we cannot treasure life in our own countries while allowing the slaughter of innocent men, women and children elsewhere.
Every Muslim mother in Iraq and Afghanistan has the same hopes and aspirations for her children as your mother had for you. We want to give those children a chance.
It's the right thing to do.
Bill Allin
Turning It Around: Causes and Cures for Today's Epidemic Social Problems, a book about what, when and how to teach children what they need to know to be competent and confident adults.
Learn more at http://billallin.com
Friday, November 09, 2007
Why We Suffer And What We Can Do About It
Life is not the way it's supposed to be. It's the way it is. The way youcope with it is what makes the difference.
- Virginia Satir
We must learn to regard people less in the light of what they do or omitto do, and more in the light of what they suffer.
- Dietrich Bonhoeffer, theologian and writer (1906-1945)
Putting these two quotations together I'm tempted to believe that how we cope with the bad things in life is to suffer them.
Sure enough, that's what most of us do. If we don't die in the midst of our suffering, conditions change and life gets better. Sometimes it takes longer thanothers and some don't live long enough to enjoy the coming good times, but it's safe saying its a rule that life always gets better a some timeafter the worst of its bad times.
Why do we suffer? Because we don't have the skills and knowledge about how to cope more effectively. If we had the skills and knowledge, we could busy ourselves working our way out of the messes we find ourselves in.
Simply knowing that life always gets better eventually after a bad period is a good beginning toward giving people the motivation to endure the hardships of the bad times in order to eventually reach the good ones. That's an extremely important life skill. Most of us were never taught that as children or adolescents. If we learned that lesson, it was the hard way for most.
Knowing that every life has downturns is another very important fact about life. Everyone has them. Everyone has bad times several times a year. How bad they are, how long they last and how our life changes as a result of them may be determined by coincidence. Some might call it fate or bad luck, but it's more often coincidence of conditions that results in downturns.
Sure, many of them may be attributed to ourselves. We make bad decisions and suffer the consequences. Yet it's not as simple as that. Seldom is a bad decision all bad. We learn from our mistakes. The more we learn, the wiser we become. Therefore the more bad decisions we make the more we have to learn with a personal experience base. That's the most common way we learn about life. Not the best way, but the most common.
Of course we all shouldn't go about making mistakes just so we can learn from them. We could be taught, as children, about how to avoid making many major life mistakes.
When do we teach our children about life mistakes they may face? Usually when they are in their teen years, when they no longer want advice from us and aren't likely to accept it. That's too late.
Children form their major concepts of life during their first ten years. After that it's hard to break into that core of being to tinker with the fundamentals and make changes. In general, every major lesson about life should be taught to children before they reach their tenth birthday.
When each one gets taught may be a matter for debate, but by age eleven they have almost passed the stage of being able to internalize life lessons and reformulate their life concepts other than through the ones they experience themselves. In other words, by their tenth birthday they are ready to ignore all advice and make their own mistakes, whether they realize it or not.
Most adults seem to think that children younger than ten years are too young to learn about the grisly facts of life. Those adults are wrong and their children pay a great penalty for the ignorance of their parents. The kids, inevitably, make more mistakes in life than they need to make. And they suffer more, needlessly. Because their parents just plain didn't know.
Strangely, the most important job in life is parenting, yet we hand it over to those least knowledgeable and skilled to handle it. By the time most young adults have learned about the developmental stages of the lives of their children, the kids are beyond age ten and it's too late for the parents to do anything to make major differences. The kids have already learned by the examples set (as role models) of their parents.
The very same parents who had no idea that their kids were learning so much from them when they were so very young.
Children learn the most important life lessons through teaching in their first decade of life. After that it's just fine tuning. And learning from their own mistakes. Hard to believe those little guys are forming such grand concepts of life when they can barely write and they don't know much math or geography or science, isn't it? That's the way life works.
It's the way it works for every species of mammal on earth. Every other animal learns those life lessons early or they become lunch for a predator. If we don't learn them in time, we suffer for many decades afterward. We usually don't die, we just suffer.
As the 1960s song by Crosby, Stills and Nash said, "Teach your childrenwell." And teach them young. Don't keep then "innocent." An innocent child becomes and ignorant adult. Look around you to see the results ofso many families who kept their children "innocent."
Life eats the innocent for lunch.
Bill Allin
Turning It Around: Causes and Cures for Today's Epidemic Social Problems, a book about what, how and when to teach young children the important lessons of life that schools don't teach and many parents miss.
Learn more at http://billallin.com
Contact BillAllin directly at http://www.contactify.com/d012d
It's an excellent gift for your grown children who have young childrenor will soon.
Pretty good for older parents to learn what they missed too.
- Virginia Satir
We must learn to regard people less in the light of what they do or omitto do, and more in the light of what they suffer.
- Dietrich Bonhoeffer, theologian and writer (1906-1945)
Putting these two quotations together I'm tempted to believe that how we cope with the bad things in life is to suffer them.
Sure enough, that's what most of us do. If we don't die in the midst of our suffering, conditions change and life gets better. Sometimes it takes longer thanothers and some don't live long enough to enjoy the coming good times, but it's safe saying its a rule that life always gets better a some timeafter the worst of its bad times.
Why do we suffer? Because we don't have the skills and knowledge about how to cope more effectively. If we had the skills and knowledge, we could busy ourselves working our way out of the messes we find ourselves in.
Simply knowing that life always gets better eventually after a bad period is a good beginning toward giving people the motivation to endure the hardships of the bad times in order to eventually reach the good ones. That's an extremely important life skill. Most of us were never taught that as children or adolescents. If we learned that lesson, it was the hard way for most.
Knowing that every life has downturns is another very important fact about life. Everyone has them. Everyone has bad times several times a year. How bad they are, how long they last and how our life changes as a result of them may be determined by coincidence. Some might call it fate or bad luck, but it's more often coincidence of conditions that results in downturns.
Sure, many of them may be attributed to ourselves. We make bad decisions and suffer the consequences. Yet it's not as simple as that. Seldom is a bad decision all bad. We learn from our mistakes. The more we learn, the wiser we become. Therefore the more bad decisions we make the more we have to learn with a personal experience base. That's the most common way we learn about life. Not the best way, but the most common.
Of course we all shouldn't go about making mistakes just so we can learn from them. We could be taught, as children, about how to avoid making many major life mistakes.
When do we teach our children about life mistakes they may face? Usually when they are in their teen years, when they no longer want advice from us and aren't likely to accept it. That's too late.
Children form their major concepts of life during their first ten years. After that it's hard to break into that core of being to tinker with the fundamentals and make changes. In general, every major lesson about life should be taught to children before they reach their tenth birthday.
When each one gets taught may be a matter for debate, but by age eleven they have almost passed the stage of being able to internalize life lessons and reformulate their life concepts other than through the ones they experience themselves. In other words, by their tenth birthday they are ready to ignore all advice and make their own mistakes, whether they realize it or not.
Most adults seem to think that children younger than ten years are too young to learn about the grisly facts of life. Those adults are wrong and their children pay a great penalty for the ignorance of their parents. The kids, inevitably, make more mistakes in life than they need to make. And they suffer more, needlessly. Because their parents just plain didn't know.
Strangely, the most important job in life is parenting, yet we hand it over to those least knowledgeable and skilled to handle it. By the time most young adults have learned about the developmental stages of the lives of their children, the kids are beyond age ten and it's too late for the parents to do anything to make major differences. The kids have already learned by the examples set (as role models) of their parents.
The very same parents who had no idea that their kids were learning so much from them when they were so very young.
Children learn the most important life lessons through teaching in their first decade of life. After that it's just fine tuning. And learning from their own mistakes. Hard to believe those little guys are forming such grand concepts of life when they can barely write and they don't know much math or geography or science, isn't it? That's the way life works.
It's the way it works for every species of mammal on earth. Every other animal learns those life lessons early or they become lunch for a predator. If we don't learn them in time, we suffer for many decades afterward. We usually don't die, we just suffer.
As the 1960s song by Crosby, Stills and Nash said, "Teach your childrenwell." And teach them young. Don't keep then "innocent." An innocent child becomes and ignorant adult. Look around you to see the results ofso many families who kept their children "innocent."
Life eats the innocent for lunch.
Bill Allin
Turning It Around: Causes and Cures for Today's Epidemic Social Problems, a book about what, how and when to teach young children the important lessons of life that schools don't teach and many parents miss.
Learn more at http://billallin.com
Contact BillAllin directly at http://www.contactify.com/d012d
It's an excellent gift for your grown children who have young childrenor will soon.
Pretty good for older parents to learn what they missed too.
Tuesday, November 06, 2007
Life Is A Waste Of time
Please read the signature line at the end of the article about a book you should read and a worldwide plan to make the world a safer and healthier place to live. Learn more about the book and the plan at http://billallin.com
...............................................
What information consumes is rather obvious: it consumes the attention ofits recipients. Hence a wealth of information creates a poverty ofattention, and a need to allocate that attention efficiently among theoverabundance of information sources that might consume it.
- Herbert Alexander Simon, economist, Nobel laureate (1916-2001)
Let's try to put the ducks in order here. We have too much information available to us constantly. The Information Highway became the Information Superhighway, which became an information stampede. Trying to stand firm in the face of any stampede brings challenges and risks. Not the least of which is that we could get run over.
The wealth of information tends to come to us from only a few major sources. Television, radio and the internet bring us news, not just local and national but from every corner of the planet, 24/7. Some of those sources believe that we need to know that opposition groups in the former Soviet state of Georgia are demonstrating for change, that Vladimir Putin is putting the squeeze on European countries that buy oil from Russia and that the Dalai Lama visiting Washington and Ottawa has upset the establishment in Beijing.
Do we really need to know all this news? In today's world, knowing what's going on in the countries of the preceding paragraph could affect who we vote for in our own national elections. International relations and reputations among countries of the world are extremely important when they often help to determine what trade alliances happen or fail, which can affect the long term stability of the economy of our country. Yes, it is important to know this stuff.
What we need for all this news that could be important is a time management technique that will allow us to attend to the news when we make time to absorb it and to ignore it until that time. Those who do not exercise that kind of time management can become news junkies, who may know what is happening on the far side of the planet but not whether their own kids are taking drugs after school.
From the way many people pay attention to their surroundings it's obvious that they are in the grip of information overload. Spend some time watching people in the aisles of supermarkets, on roadways or even at parties and you will see how much time people waste because they can't focus on what is supposed to be the object of their attention at the moment. They waste their own time, waste a great deal of the time of others by their thoughtless and inconsiderate behaviour, and even create situations that can precipitate such incidents as road rage, office rage or household bickering because they can't cope with the amount of input to which their brains are subjected.
And what do we do about it? We form committees and commission studies which prove that our anecdotal observations are correct. What we seldom do is to teach the conditions of life in modern times to young people and give them the skills of time management so that they know how to prioritize the many demands on their lives.
We could do that. But it takes time. No one has enough time to devote to making it happen.
Just another one of those things that would benefit everyone, but no one wants to take the time to change the education system a bit to put the change into effect. So we all waste time, either by our own design or as a result of having to put up with others around us.
Bill Allin
Turning It Around: Causes and Cures for Today's Epidemic Social Problems, a book about how to change education curriculum to address the real needs of children instead of only the needs of their future employers.
Learn more at http://billallin.com
...............................................
What information consumes is rather obvious: it consumes the attention ofits recipients. Hence a wealth of information creates a poverty ofattention, and a need to allocate that attention efficiently among theoverabundance of information sources that might consume it.
- Herbert Alexander Simon, economist, Nobel laureate (1916-2001)
Let's try to put the ducks in order here. We have too much information available to us constantly. The Information Highway became the Information Superhighway, which became an information stampede. Trying to stand firm in the face of any stampede brings challenges and risks. Not the least of which is that we could get run over.
The wealth of information tends to come to us from only a few major sources. Television, radio and the internet bring us news, not just local and national but from every corner of the planet, 24/7. Some of those sources believe that we need to know that opposition groups in the former Soviet state of Georgia are demonstrating for change, that Vladimir Putin is putting the squeeze on European countries that buy oil from Russia and that the Dalai Lama visiting Washington and Ottawa has upset the establishment in Beijing.
Do we really need to know all this news? In today's world, knowing what's going on in the countries of the preceding paragraph could affect who we vote for in our own national elections. International relations and reputations among countries of the world are extremely important when they often help to determine what trade alliances happen or fail, which can affect the long term stability of the economy of our country. Yes, it is important to know this stuff.
What we need for all this news that could be important is a time management technique that will allow us to attend to the news when we make time to absorb it and to ignore it until that time. Those who do not exercise that kind of time management can become news junkies, who may know what is happening on the far side of the planet but not whether their own kids are taking drugs after school.
From the way many people pay attention to their surroundings it's obvious that they are in the grip of information overload. Spend some time watching people in the aisles of supermarkets, on roadways or even at parties and you will see how much time people waste because they can't focus on what is supposed to be the object of their attention at the moment. They waste their own time, waste a great deal of the time of others by their thoughtless and inconsiderate behaviour, and even create situations that can precipitate such incidents as road rage, office rage or household bickering because they can't cope with the amount of input to which their brains are subjected.
And what do we do about it? We form committees and commission studies which prove that our anecdotal observations are correct. What we seldom do is to teach the conditions of life in modern times to young people and give them the skills of time management so that they know how to prioritize the many demands on their lives.
We could do that. But it takes time. No one has enough time to devote to making it happen.
Just another one of those things that would benefit everyone, but no one wants to take the time to change the education system a bit to put the change into effect. So we all waste time, either by our own design or as a result of having to put up with others around us.
Bill Allin
Turning It Around: Causes and Cures for Today's Epidemic Social Problems, a book about how to change education curriculum to address the real needs of children instead of only the needs of their future employers.
Learn more at http://billallin.com
Wednesday, October 31, 2007
How Specialists Destroy Their Lives
Please read the signature line at the end of the article about a book you should read and a worldwide plan to make the world a safer and healthier place to live.
Learn more about the book and the plan at http://billallin.com
...........................................
Our age is being forcibly reminded that knowledge is no substitute for wisdom. Far and away the most important thing in human life is living it.
- Frank R. Barry, 08/18/2004
Yeah? So? No one's going to argue against living life.
To really get a sense of what Mr. Barry intends in this quote we must look to the first sentence in order to make sense of the second.
"Knowledge is no substitute for wisdom." In this case, knowledge is what we learn from other sources, either by reading and listening or by somehow experiencing someone else's life vicariously. In this sense, knowledge is not what we learn from our own experience.
An old saying, which I have taken the liberty to modify, suggests that wisdom comes from experience and experience comes from making a lot of mistakes. The wisest among us have made the most mistakes and learned from them, enough that they feel comfortable--sometimes even committed--to sharing their experience and what they learned from it with others so that they do not need to make the same mistakes.
The trouble is that most people don't want to listen to someone else's bad experiences, unless they're looking for a new place to get their car fixed or for a new dentist or doctor. Advice is worth what you pay for it, another saying goes. This is a good saying only to some extent. Some advice comes from wisdom based on experience. (Other originates from rumour and fraudulent internet messages.) People who pay attention to the good advice may have an easier time of their lives by knowing the advice and at least considering it, perhaps even following it.
Life isn't long enough to make all the mistakes ourselves. We have to learn some from others. However, the mistakes we make ourselves are the best lessons, if we learn from them and avoid making the same ones again. How we deal with our own mistakes determines how we live our life thereafter.
One of the biggest mistakes many people make in their lives is to restrict their activities to their jobs, their families and their immediate interests (sometimes even only one of those). Simply reading any article in the daily newspaper concerning a particular subject over a long period of time can add a great deal to a person's knowledge. I studied China for a decade that way. That experience has served me well in my dealings with Chinese and my understanding of why China does what it does in the ensuing years.
We tend to expect doctors to study all aspects of medicine so much that they can answer any question. Many do. But medical research today becomes public so frequently that staying up is almost impossible. Divorce and family breakups are much higher among medical professionals than in the general population because researchers and doctors spend so much time learning about the subject of their specialty that they neglect many others things in life, often including their spouses and children.
We expect lawyers to know every law, even though it's a challenge to stay up with legal precedents and changes in laws in their own area of speciality. Many lawyers spend much of their "free" time schmoozing with others in their network, including both colleagues and potential new clients. They may know nothing about fixing a car, planting and tending a garden, the feeling of hiking a nearby trail, how to play basketball enough to teach their own kids or even how to play many of the games they give their children as gifts.
The rest of us don't care. We want a lawyer to know everything when the time comes for us to engage one. We care nothing if their marriages, their families, their lives are in tatters. When these tragedies happen, the lawyers themselves have no idea what to do about them, how to cope or even how they could have done some things differently if they had known what was important other than law.
The Frank Barry quote suggests that we get a broad range of experiences of life so that we gain wisdom for ourselves. Knowledge alone may be great for the job, but it won't substitute for living a full life. When money or the quest for it is the most important thing in life, much is lost from the experiencing of a full life. Money quests are terribly restrictive.
Imagine someone standing over your grave after you die. Will that person say "He was a good engineer, didn't know diddly about anything else, but he knew how to build bridges" or will that person say "He lived a full and joyful life and was happy to share it with others"?
In case you have missed out on much of life and wonder if it's too late to change, it isn't. A life can be changed as simply and as quickly as making a decision. Perseverance and willpower at sticking to the transition to the new life is important, but it can begin today if you want.
You are the biggest obstacle in the way toward change. So if you want to change your life, get yourself out of your own way. And start soon.
Bill Allin
Turning It Around: Causes and Cures for Today's Epidemic Social Problems, a book about how to teach children the important things about life before they make severe mistakes and ruin their own lives. The book provides the methods and the lessons.
Learn more at http://billallin.com
Learn more about the book and the plan at http://billallin.com
...........................................
Our age is being forcibly reminded that knowledge is no substitute for wisdom. Far and away the most important thing in human life is living it.
- Frank R. Barry, 08/18/2004
Yeah? So? No one's going to argue against living life.
To really get a sense of what Mr. Barry intends in this quote we must look to the first sentence in order to make sense of the second.
"Knowledge is no substitute for wisdom." In this case, knowledge is what we learn from other sources, either by reading and listening or by somehow experiencing someone else's life vicariously. In this sense, knowledge is not what we learn from our own experience.
An old saying, which I have taken the liberty to modify, suggests that wisdom comes from experience and experience comes from making a lot of mistakes. The wisest among us have made the most mistakes and learned from them, enough that they feel comfortable--sometimes even committed--to sharing their experience and what they learned from it with others so that they do not need to make the same mistakes.
The trouble is that most people don't want to listen to someone else's bad experiences, unless they're looking for a new place to get their car fixed or for a new dentist or doctor. Advice is worth what you pay for it, another saying goes. This is a good saying only to some extent. Some advice comes from wisdom based on experience. (Other originates from rumour and fraudulent internet messages.) People who pay attention to the good advice may have an easier time of their lives by knowing the advice and at least considering it, perhaps even following it.
Life isn't long enough to make all the mistakes ourselves. We have to learn some from others. However, the mistakes we make ourselves are the best lessons, if we learn from them and avoid making the same ones again. How we deal with our own mistakes determines how we live our life thereafter.
One of the biggest mistakes many people make in their lives is to restrict their activities to their jobs, their families and their immediate interests (sometimes even only one of those). Simply reading any article in the daily newspaper concerning a particular subject over a long period of time can add a great deal to a person's knowledge. I studied China for a decade that way. That experience has served me well in my dealings with Chinese and my understanding of why China does what it does in the ensuing years.
We tend to expect doctors to study all aspects of medicine so much that they can answer any question. Many do. But medical research today becomes public so frequently that staying up is almost impossible. Divorce and family breakups are much higher among medical professionals than in the general population because researchers and doctors spend so much time learning about the subject of their specialty that they neglect many others things in life, often including their spouses and children.
We expect lawyers to know every law, even though it's a challenge to stay up with legal precedents and changes in laws in their own area of speciality. Many lawyers spend much of their "free" time schmoozing with others in their network, including both colleagues and potential new clients. They may know nothing about fixing a car, planting and tending a garden, the feeling of hiking a nearby trail, how to play basketball enough to teach their own kids or even how to play many of the games they give their children as gifts.
The rest of us don't care. We want a lawyer to know everything when the time comes for us to engage one. We care nothing if their marriages, their families, their lives are in tatters. When these tragedies happen, the lawyers themselves have no idea what to do about them, how to cope or even how they could have done some things differently if they had known what was important other than law.
The Frank Barry quote suggests that we get a broad range of experiences of life so that we gain wisdom for ourselves. Knowledge alone may be great for the job, but it won't substitute for living a full life. When money or the quest for it is the most important thing in life, much is lost from the experiencing of a full life. Money quests are terribly restrictive.
Imagine someone standing over your grave after you die. Will that person say "He was a good engineer, didn't know diddly about anything else, but he knew how to build bridges" or will that person say "He lived a full and joyful life and was happy to share it with others"?
In case you have missed out on much of life and wonder if it's too late to change, it isn't. A life can be changed as simply and as quickly as making a decision. Perseverance and willpower at sticking to the transition to the new life is important, but it can begin today if you want.
You are the biggest obstacle in the way toward change. So if you want to change your life, get yourself out of your own way. And start soon.
Bill Allin
Turning It Around: Causes and Cures for Today's Epidemic Social Problems, a book about how to teach children the important things about life before they make severe mistakes and ruin their own lives. The book provides the methods and the lessons.
Learn more at http://billallin.com
Monday, October 29, 2007
What It Takes To Be Great, To Be Remembered
Please read the signature line at the end of the article about a book you should read and a worldwide plan to make the world a safer and healthier place to live. Learn more about the book and the plan at http://billallin.com
............................................
Only those who dare to fail greatly can ever achieve greatly.
- Robert F. Kennedy
The biggest steps in life are often taken by the smallest people. Or by people others mistakenly assumed were small.
Napoleon, Julius Caesar and Genghis Khan come to mind. I believe that Alexander the Great was a tad on the small size as well. Joan of Arc never made it out of her adolescence.
These people risked their lives in battle and were able to rally many to their causes. In a sense, all failed ultimately, even Genghis Khan who was losing control of his troops in his latter years (some said he was insane).
Yet of all the people who have gone before us in history, almost all are nameless to us. Only a few names can be recognized by people around the world.
We all want to be recognized in our lifetimes for our achievements. And most of us want to be remembered positively after we die for our deeds and our successes. Yet how many warriors who lived before your own time can you name? Given the chance, I'll bet you could name more famous scientists than warriors. Newton. Einstein. Copernicus. Others of you could name stars of science from the great Islamic period, or from India or China. Names of philosophers will trip off the tongues of many.
These people all took great risks, not just to test their scientific hypotheses or philosophical treatises, but sometimes to make their results public. Copernicus only made his discoveries public just before he died because he was afraid of being fired and excommunicated by the church, his employer. Newton was imprisoned and almost snuffed for his discoveries, or he would have been if he had not recanted his "erroneous" statements of discovery. The falling apple was the least of Newton's worries.
Even scientists of today take great risks when making their discoveries public. Remember the outrage that faced the two scientists in the early 1990s who announced their discovery of cold fusion to the media before it was printed in a scientific journal and reviewed by their peers? They found it hard to get work anywhere that didn't require them to ask customers if they wanted "fries with that?" Now a cold fusion production facility is nearing completion in Europe and another is planned for the US. The two scientists, however, never recovered their reputations.
Greatness comes with risks. If it were easy, everyone would want to be famous for their greatness, then very little would ever be considered great again.
Greatness, the condition that allows people to be remembered for their deeds long after their deaths, is not for the faint of heart. Those who would be remembered for generations must be willing to take great risks of failing, or of being failed by others who have something to lose by the deeds or something to gained by criticizing the great deeds of others.
If you improve the life of one other person in your lifetime, your time here was well spent. If you improve the lives of many others, you deserve to be remembered, no matter in what form the improvement was made.
Bill Allin
Turning It Around: Causes and Cures for Today's Epidemic Social Problems, a book about how to teach children what they need to succeed, to thrive and to be remembered if they so choose.
Learn more at http://billallin.com
Contact Bill Allin directly at http://www.contactify.com/d012d
............................................
Only those who dare to fail greatly can ever achieve greatly.
- Robert F. Kennedy
The biggest steps in life are often taken by the smallest people. Or by people others mistakenly assumed were small.
Napoleon, Julius Caesar and Genghis Khan come to mind. I believe that Alexander the Great was a tad on the small size as well. Joan of Arc never made it out of her adolescence.
These people risked their lives in battle and were able to rally many to their causes. In a sense, all failed ultimately, even Genghis Khan who was losing control of his troops in his latter years (some said he was insane).
Yet of all the people who have gone before us in history, almost all are nameless to us. Only a few names can be recognized by people around the world.
We all want to be recognized in our lifetimes for our achievements. And most of us want to be remembered positively after we die for our deeds and our successes. Yet how many warriors who lived before your own time can you name? Given the chance, I'll bet you could name more famous scientists than warriors. Newton. Einstein. Copernicus. Others of you could name stars of science from the great Islamic period, or from India or China. Names of philosophers will trip off the tongues of many.
These people all took great risks, not just to test their scientific hypotheses or philosophical treatises, but sometimes to make their results public. Copernicus only made his discoveries public just before he died because he was afraid of being fired and excommunicated by the church, his employer. Newton was imprisoned and almost snuffed for his discoveries, or he would have been if he had not recanted his "erroneous" statements of discovery. The falling apple was the least of Newton's worries.
Even scientists of today take great risks when making their discoveries public. Remember the outrage that faced the two scientists in the early 1990s who announced their discovery of cold fusion to the media before it was printed in a scientific journal and reviewed by their peers? They found it hard to get work anywhere that didn't require them to ask customers if they wanted "fries with that?" Now a cold fusion production facility is nearing completion in Europe and another is planned for the US. The two scientists, however, never recovered their reputations.
Greatness comes with risks. If it were easy, everyone would want to be famous for their greatness, then very little would ever be considered great again.
Greatness, the condition that allows people to be remembered for their deeds long after their deaths, is not for the faint of heart. Those who would be remembered for generations must be willing to take great risks of failing, or of being failed by others who have something to lose by the deeds or something to gained by criticizing the great deeds of others.
If you improve the life of one other person in your lifetime, your time here was well spent. If you improve the lives of many others, you deserve to be remembered, no matter in what form the improvement was made.
Bill Allin
Turning It Around: Causes and Cures for Today's Epidemic Social Problems, a book about how to teach children what they need to succeed, to thrive and to be remembered if they so choose.
Learn more at http://billallin.com
Contact Bill Allin directly at http://www.contactify.com/d012d
Saturday, October 27, 2007
The Difference Between Your Illusions And Reality
Please read the signature line at the end of the article about a book you should read and a worldwide plan to make the world a safer and healthier place to live.
Learn more about the book and the plan at http://billallin.com
........................................
How beautiful it would be to see man wrestle with his illusions and vanquish them.
- Naguib Mahfouz, Egyptian writer awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1988 (1911-2006)
What a spectacle! There's nothing that some people like better than to watch someone destroy themselves. But is that what Mahfouz intended?
Indeed, is it even possible to wrestle with our own illusions without destroying ourselves?
Illusions are all we have to work with when we perceive the world. We believe what we see, hear, taste, touch and smell is the real thing. But it's never the same as someone else who experiences the exact same thing.
One of the closest possible human relationships is marriage. Yet as much as people share in a marriage and as close to sharing the same experiences and goals as people get, when they separate or divorce they seldom think that the relationship failed for the same reasons. Indeed, each usually believes that the other was responsible for the breakup. They don't even remember the same events that were such good experiences the same way.
If you want a real shock, sit a few friends down with you, individually, and ask them to candidly describe you, the kind of person you are, your likes and dislikes, what you are like as a friend, your attitudes toward the world around you. It would be extremely rare for any of them to be accurate or similar. What's more, none will be like your own impression of yourself.
We have not just an opinion about ourselves, but an illusion about who we are. No one else shares that illusion because no one else has or can experience the world around us the same way we have or do. Even the timing of experiences affects our impressions of reality. The same experience in early childhood is perceived much differently in adulthood.
When we go to sleep, we dream a kind of reality that we can't support as "real" when we are awake. Yet the truth is that no one is certain which is reality and which is mere illusion, the wakeful perceptions or the dreams. Our brains function differently when we dream than when we are awake. Even our own brain can't tell which is real to it and which is not. To our brain, both are real, just different realities.
Most of us convince ourselves that our waking experiences are the real ones, but that is what we have been taught since early childhood. ("It's only a dream. It's not real.")
Mahfouz meant that it would be beautiful if we were to tackle our misguided illusions and vanquish them. That is, the ones that are too far away from the reality that others perceive of us. In his way he is saying that he wants us all to deal with the realities of the world in the same way, as if we were each one component of a greater entity or reality.
Would that make us all followers, pets of a greater power that determines the fates of all of us? Some believe that to be true anyway. Others believe that free will is our blessing.
No matter which way we choose for our life, we choose our own illusions. If that is the case, it only makes sense to choose the ones that will serve us well over the long term, instead of the many harmful components that people choose for themselves for the short term.
And how long is the long term anyway? Some say it ends when we die. Others say that this life is but one small part of a continuum or that this life is an individual experience set that we will use when we rejoin the greater entity after death.
Choose your illusions wisely.
Bill Allin
Turning It Around: Causes and Cures for Today's Epidemic Social Problems, a book about guiding children to create safe and productive personal illusions for their lives so that they can be confident and competent adults.
Learn more at http://billallin.com
Learn more about the book and the plan at http://billallin.com
........................................
How beautiful it would be to see man wrestle with his illusions and vanquish them.
- Naguib Mahfouz, Egyptian writer awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1988 (1911-2006)
What a spectacle! There's nothing that some people like better than to watch someone destroy themselves. But is that what Mahfouz intended?
Indeed, is it even possible to wrestle with our own illusions without destroying ourselves?
Illusions are all we have to work with when we perceive the world. We believe what we see, hear, taste, touch and smell is the real thing. But it's never the same as someone else who experiences the exact same thing.
One of the closest possible human relationships is marriage. Yet as much as people share in a marriage and as close to sharing the same experiences and goals as people get, when they separate or divorce they seldom think that the relationship failed for the same reasons. Indeed, each usually believes that the other was responsible for the breakup. They don't even remember the same events that were such good experiences the same way.
If you want a real shock, sit a few friends down with you, individually, and ask them to candidly describe you, the kind of person you are, your likes and dislikes, what you are like as a friend, your attitudes toward the world around you. It would be extremely rare for any of them to be accurate or similar. What's more, none will be like your own impression of yourself.
We have not just an opinion about ourselves, but an illusion about who we are. No one else shares that illusion because no one else has or can experience the world around us the same way we have or do. Even the timing of experiences affects our impressions of reality. The same experience in early childhood is perceived much differently in adulthood.
When we go to sleep, we dream a kind of reality that we can't support as "real" when we are awake. Yet the truth is that no one is certain which is reality and which is mere illusion, the wakeful perceptions or the dreams. Our brains function differently when we dream than when we are awake. Even our own brain can't tell which is real to it and which is not. To our brain, both are real, just different realities.
Most of us convince ourselves that our waking experiences are the real ones, but that is what we have been taught since early childhood. ("It's only a dream. It's not real.")
Mahfouz meant that it would be beautiful if we were to tackle our misguided illusions and vanquish them. That is, the ones that are too far away from the reality that others perceive of us. In his way he is saying that he wants us all to deal with the realities of the world in the same way, as if we were each one component of a greater entity or reality.
Would that make us all followers, pets of a greater power that determines the fates of all of us? Some believe that to be true anyway. Others believe that free will is our blessing.
No matter which way we choose for our life, we choose our own illusions. If that is the case, it only makes sense to choose the ones that will serve us well over the long term, instead of the many harmful components that people choose for themselves for the short term.
And how long is the long term anyway? Some say it ends when we die. Others say that this life is but one small part of a continuum or that this life is an individual experience set that we will use when we rejoin the greater entity after death.
Choose your illusions wisely.
Bill Allin
Turning It Around: Causes and Cures for Today's Epidemic Social Problems, a book about guiding children to create safe and productive personal illusions for their lives so that they can be confident and competent adults.
Learn more at http://billallin.com
Tuesday, October 23, 2007
The Secret Of Super Human Love
Love is the condition in which the happiness of another person is essential to your own.... Jealousy is a disease, love is a healthy condition. The immature mind often mistakes one for the other, or assumes that the greater the love the greater the jealousy.
- Robert Heinlein
I have found the paradox that if I love until it hurts, then there is no hurt, but only more love.
- Mother Teresa
Though Mother Teresa and Robert Heinlein may have been speaking of different kinds of love (though not necessarily), I believe these two quotations fit together well.
Love may be the most mysterious of emotions. All emotions are mysterious to us because we know so little about them. Imagine trying to explain to a non-homo sapiens sapiens (the double use of sapiens is correct, as neanderthalensis is also a homo sapiens) our emotion of fear, or melancholy, or joy. The word love, however, often requires the most space of any definition in an English dictionary.
Heinlein says that love is a healthy condition, yet many people who feel they have been betrayed in love believe that love is a risky condition because it involves trust and trust can be betrayed. If you can't trust, then you can't love fully, so you can't offer the kind of commitment that most love partners seek in a relationship.
Jealousy is not a malformed version of love, as many believe. Beneath the surface mistrust of a jealous person lurks the dark secret belief that he or she is either not worthy of the love of the other person or that the other does not love them fully, completely, only. Jealousy is not so much a badly formed kind of love but rather is a form of self hate. A person who dislikes or hates themself is incapable of forming a healthy kind of love relationship with another.
Living with a person who dislikes themself and is jealous of another they purport to love will inevitably develop a sour, if not hateful, relationship.
Mother Teresa had the solution. She was under no misconceptions about humans and their love being perfect. She harboured no resentment toward those who could not return the level or kind of love she offered. She didn't forgive people their defects and limited kinds of love, she disregarded these completely.
The Mother cast all limitations aside and told us to love without reservation, without restriction, without bounds of any kind. She was so busy loving others that the fact they could not return it the same way was unimportant to her. She gave so much love without any hesitation that others could not help but love her in return. She was loved, to varying degrees, not by one, but by millions, people who would have done anything she asked of them. Indeed, many still do what she asked of them, years after her death.
Love has a most peculiar characteristic: the more you give it away, the more you get of it in return. It's impossible to become impoverished of love because you gave yours all away. You can only become rich with love by giving it.
True, some people will mistrust, some will betray, some will hold their own love in reserve. That will only matter to you if you love only one person. That doesn't mean that you should have sex with as many people as possible. Sex is entirely a separate issue from love. You may have sex with someone you love, but having sex with someone you don't love or about whom you have reservations is far less satisfying. The latter is more of a "sex for pleasure" thing, based on the "sex for reproduction" commandment of our hormones.
Love with restrictions or reservations is not the kind of healthy love spoken about by either Heinlein or Mother Teresa. A person who gives away true love freely to everyone is never without support when one of the recipients betrays their love and trust. There are always others to fill the void.
Giving anything away to excess is something most societies teach is wrong, even immoral. That condition has never applied to love, to the best of my knowledge and from my studies of many societies and religions.
Learning how to cast aside all inhibitions and self imposed limitations in order to love everyone freely, now that's a challenge. No one can teach that.
However, here's a hint. You have to love and respect yourself first before you can love and respect others freely. And you would be well advised to ignore the imperfections and faults of others you hope to give your love to. After all, you expect them to ignore or forgive yours.
Bill Allin
Turning It Around: Causes and Cures for Today's Epidemic Social Problems, a book about how to teach children the knowledge and skills of love and other topics that will allow them to grow into competent, confident and loving adults.
Learn more at http://billallin.com
- Robert Heinlein
I have found the paradox that if I love until it hurts, then there is no hurt, but only more love.
- Mother Teresa
Though Mother Teresa and Robert Heinlein may have been speaking of different kinds of love (though not necessarily), I believe these two quotations fit together well.
Love may be the most mysterious of emotions. All emotions are mysterious to us because we know so little about them. Imagine trying to explain to a non-homo sapiens sapiens (the double use of sapiens is correct, as neanderthalensis is also a homo sapiens) our emotion of fear, or melancholy, or joy. The word love, however, often requires the most space of any definition in an English dictionary.
Heinlein says that love is a healthy condition, yet many people who feel they have been betrayed in love believe that love is a risky condition because it involves trust and trust can be betrayed. If you can't trust, then you can't love fully, so you can't offer the kind of commitment that most love partners seek in a relationship.
Jealousy is not a malformed version of love, as many believe. Beneath the surface mistrust of a jealous person lurks the dark secret belief that he or she is either not worthy of the love of the other person or that the other does not love them fully, completely, only. Jealousy is not so much a badly formed kind of love but rather is a form of self hate. A person who dislikes or hates themself is incapable of forming a healthy kind of love relationship with another.
Living with a person who dislikes themself and is jealous of another they purport to love will inevitably develop a sour, if not hateful, relationship.
Mother Teresa had the solution. She was under no misconceptions about humans and their love being perfect. She harboured no resentment toward those who could not return the level or kind of love she offered. She didn't forgive people their defects and limited kinds of love, she disregarded these completely.
The Mother cast all limitations aside and told us to love without reservation, without restriction, without bounds of any kind. She was so busy loving others that the fact they could not return it the same way was unimportant to her. She gave so much love without any hesitation that others could not help but love her in return. She was loved, to varying degrees, not by one, but by millions, people who would have done anything she asked of them. Indeed, many still do what she asked of them, years after her death.
Love has a most peculiar characteristic: the more you give it away, the more you get of it in return. It's impossible to become impoverished of love because you gave yours all away. You can only become rich with love by giving it.
True, some people will mistrust, some will betray, some will hold their own love in reserve. That will only matter to you if you love only one person. That doesn't mean that you should have sex with as many people as possible. Sex is entirely a separate issue from love. You may have sex with someone you love, but having sex with someone you don't love or about whom you have reservations is far less satisfying. The latter is more of a "sex for pleasure" thing, based on the "sex for reproduction" commandment of our hormones.
Love with restrictions or reservations is not the kind of healthy love spoken about by either Heinlein or Mother Teresa. A person who gives away true love freely to everyone is never without support when one of the recipients betrays their love and trust. There are always others to fill the void.
Giving anything away to excess is something most societies teach is wrong, even immoral. That condition has never applied to love, to the best of my knowledge and from my studies of many societies and religions.
Learning how to cast aside all inhibitions and self imposed limitations in order to love everyone freely, now that's a challenge. No one can teach that.
However, here's a hint. You have to love and respect yourself first before you can love and respect others freely. And you would be well advised to ignore the imperfections and faults of others you hope to give your love to. After all, you expect them to ignore or forgive yours.
Bill Allin
Turning It Around: Causes and Cures for Today's Epidemic Social Problems, a book about how to teach children the knowledge and skills of love and other topics that will allow them to grow into competent, confident and loving adults.
Learn more at http://billallin.com
Monday, October 08, 2007
Why We Need Opposition To Grow
Please read the signature line at the end of the article about a book you should read and a worldwide plan to make the world a safer and healthier place to live.
Learn more about the book and the plan at http://billallin.com
....................................................................
O wad some Power the giftie gie us / To see oursels as ithers see us! (Oh would some power the gift give us, to see ourselves as others see us.)
- Robert Burns, poet (1759-1796)
Quite apart from the shock some might get from seeing how much spelling of English words has changed from the time of Burns until now (despite the fact that he spells according to his Scottish accent), the wish expressed doesn’t apply to everyone.
Some people don’t want to know how others see them because they don’t care. They are, they believe, as close to perfection as they can get. Arrogant and self absorbed, maybe, but that’s how they are.
Some don’t want to know how others see them because they fear what they might learn about themselves. They tend to hide from that reality and pretend a different one.
Many people care very much how others see them. Not only do they assess their own worth according to the opinions others have about them, they feel crushed when they learn that someone doesn’t like them. Or when someone whose opinion differs from theirs defends their own as if no other opinion is important or relevant, they lose their sense of the value of their own opinion.
In a world where almost everyone cares more about themselves than they do about anyone else, it can be risky to depend on the opinions of others about us as true indicators of our self worth. By nature and definition, anyone who cares more about themselves than about anyone else will want to evaluate anyone else at a lower level them themselves. They will be incapable of evaluating others fairly.
It’s self destructive to pay attention to anyone’s opinion about ourselves if that person always puts themselves first.
We need at least to have some people think well of us in order to have them as friends and loved ones. As social beings who need both social contact with others of our own kind and touch from those we love and who love us, living a well balanced life requires some people to like us enough to provide for our needs as we would provide for theirs.
We need touch as much as we need shelter and clothing. Without it we turn to other forms of gratification, including seeking power and money, abuse of others who are weaker, buying what we like to excess, becoming workaholics and adopting addictions or thrill-seeking habits that border on addiction.
What a few others think of us is extremely important for the continuation of good relationships with them. But it’s not necessary that everyone like us. Burns wanted to know how others think of him, but he didn’t say that he would turn himself inside out if he didn’t like what they thought.
The opinions of some people about us--indeed of most people--simply don’t matter. Nor should they. We have no need to live our lives to please any more than a few others, those who matter most to us.
There are times when we may need others to oppose us and make critical statements about our work. An artist, for example, does work of little value if everyone likes it. If everyone likes a work, that means that all or almost all care little about it but want to spare the feelings of the author of the work. The artist needs some opposition in order to grow, opposition against which to build something new, to expand horizons, to climb higher, to become more skilled.
Without that opposition, the artist may believe that he has reached his peak and go downhill from there. He lacks incentive to better his work without opposition.
That much applies to every one of us who greatly respects ourselves. If everyone likes us, then no one cares much about us. An example would be the roadies or groupies that follow rock groups or fan clubs of movie stars. Their affections evaporate with the first or second major failure of their idols.
To have a clear sense of self worth and a good idea of our strengths and weaknesses, we need to have others who will tell us straight what they think about our work. And sometimes about ourselves. It may be harsh, but it’s necessary.
No one climbs a mountain if it’s coated with cotton balls and kitten fluff.
Bill Allin
Turning It Around: Causes and Cures for Today’s Epidemic Social Problems, a book about how to teach children what they need to know about themselves and how they can grow strong and healthy in a balanced way to become competent and confident adults.
Learn more at http://billallin.com
Learn more about the book and the plan at http://billallin.com
....................................................................
O wad some Power the giftie gie us / To see oursels as ithers see us! (Oh would some power the gift give us, to see ourselves as others see us.)
- Robert Burns, poet (1759-1796)
Quite apart from the shock some might get from seeing how much spelling of English words has changed from the time of Burns until now (despite the fact that he spells according to his Scottish accent), the wish expressed doesn’t apply to everyone.
Some people don’t want to know how others see them because they don’t care. They are, they believe, as close to perfection as they can get. Arrogant and self absorbed, maybe, but that’s how they are.
Some don’t want to know how others see them because they fear what they might learn about themselves. They tend to hide from that reality and pretend a different one.
Many people care very much how others see them. Not only do they assess their own worth according to the opinions others have about them, they feel crushed when they learn that someone doesn’t like them. Or when someone whose opinion differs from theirs defends their own as if no other opinion is important or relevant, they lose their sense of the value of their own opinion.
In a world where almost everyone cares more about themselves than they do about anyone else, it can be risky to depend on the opinions of others about us as true indicators of our self worth. By nature and definition, anyone who cares more about themselves than about anyone else will want to evaluate anyone else at a lower level them themselves. They will be incapable of evaluating others fairly.
It’s self destructive to pay attention to anyone’s opinion about ourselves if that person always puts themselves first.
We need at least to have some people think well of us in order to have them as friends and loved ones. As social beings who need both social contact with others of our own kind and touch from those we love and who love us, living a well balanced life requires some people to like us enough to provide for our needs as we would provide for theirs.
We need touch as much as we need shelter and clothing. Without it we turn to other forms of gratification, including seeking power and money, abuse of others who are weaker, buying what we like to excess, becoming workaholics and adopting addictions or thrill-seeking habits that border on addiction.
What a few others think of us is extremely important for the continuation of good relationships with them. But it’s not necessary that everyone like us. Burns wanted to know how others think of him, but he didn’t say that he would turn himself inside out if he didn’t like what they thought.
The opinions of some people about us--indeed of most people--simply don’t matter. Nor should they. We have no need to live our lives to please any more than a few others, those who matter most to us.
There are times when we may need others to oppose us and make critical statements about our work. An artist, for example, does work of little value if everyone likes it. If everyone likes a work, that means that all or almost all care little about it but want to spare the feelings of the author of the work. The artist needs some opposition in order to grow, opposition against which to build something new, to expand horizons, to climb higher, to become more skilled.
Without that opposition, the artist may believe that he has reached his peak and go downhill from there. He lacks incentive to better his work without opposition.
That much applies to every one of us who greatly respects ourselves. If everyone likes us, then no one cares much about us. An example would be the roadies or groupies that follow rock groups or fan clubs of movie stars. Their affections evaporate with the first or second major failure of their idols.
To have a clear sense of self worth and a good idea of our strengths and weaknesses, we need to have others who will tell us straight what they think about our work. And sometimes about ourselves. It may be harsh, but it’s necessary.
No one climbs a mountain if it’s coated with cotton balls and kitten fluff.
Bill Allin
Turning It Around: Causes and Cures for Today’s Epidemic Social Problems, a book about how to teach children what they need to know about themselves and how they can grow strong and healthy in a balanced way to become competent and confident adults.
Learn more at http://billallin.com
Sunday, October 07, 2007
What If It All Came Crashing Down?
The real measure of our wealth is how much we'd be worth if we lost all our money.
- John Henry Jowett, preacher (1864-1923)
Imagine it!
Donald Trump, poor. He’d just be an annoying boor. No, no, he’s that already. I meant a poor, annoying…..No, everyone would just ignore him.
Bill Gates, poor. Once the world’s richest man, Bill has been giving away billions of dollars to charities over the past few years, not the least huge sums for AIDS research and literacy projects (through the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation). He’s an entrepreneur, someone who scooped great ideas from other people and turned them into a worldwide empire. Bill would make out alright because he knows how to manage people, to make them feel good about being successful working for projects he operates.
In 1929, with the crash of the stock markets and the beginning of the Great Depression, so many paper-wealthy men went broke overnight that many of them jumped out of windows in their top floor offices on Wall Street. That’s a statement not about their not wanting to be poor, but about the value they placed on their own lives without a great deal of money to throw around.
I see hordes of people in North American cities (my home continent, so those are the people I see in person and on television) creating lives for themselves based on the values preached to them by industries. The descriptive word I can’t escape from to attach to their lives is pretension. They are the people they believe they are. They live the lives that industry wants them to live, holding the values and beliefs that industry teaches them by various means. They have none of their own.
They have no idea of their basic human worth, other than as they compare themselves to others according to their financial net worth and their ostentatious possessions.
Poor people, on the other hand, seem to have a clear grasp of who they are in real terms. They know they are at the bottom of the heap socially as well as financially. Many of them use their position to their advantage, accepting social assistance from governments who collect tax money from the rich. Others, especially those on whom poverty has come to stay due to misfortune, health problems or physical/intellectual limitations, see their lives as one continual climb out of the pit that life has thrown them into.
Perhaps the people who have the clearest idea of who they are and the value they have to the world are the homeless, especially those who have been homeless for several years. They form friendships, bonds and working relationships based on what they can offer to others and what they can get from others.
The homeless are valued as people, among themselves, more than any other social group because all they have to offer anyone else is themselves. They value each other and who they are in relation to the others in their lives. To the homeless, a smile has a value beyond anything a rich person could imagine.
True, some can’t survive in that atmosphere. They turn to drugs and alcohol, paid for by robbing others and from begging. That’s a form of self destruction, a long, slow death wish fulfilled by their own choice. They can’t make it, even among the community of the homeless, because they don’t believe they have anything of value to offer to others. The best some can do is to offer drugs or drink to others like them, giving themselves the same sense of self worth as the rich.
Imagining ourselves as suddenly without any source of income and sustenance is an exercise that each of us should indulge ourselves in once in a while. It can help us to be humble about who we are and appreciative of what we have. Most importantly, it can help us to calculate who in our lives loves us for ourselves and not for what we have or can give to them.
It could happen, that kind of life altering tragedy. A power outage that lasts for several weeks could cause us to turn to our baser instincts in our drive to survive. A pandemic disease of the type that medical science keeps warning us about, one that kills millions of people in a short period of time, could change everything we know about our civilization.
Staying in touch with reality, not the kind that industry wants us to believe but the kind we could use in case of some dire emergency, should be on the agenda of each one of us once in a while.
It tells us who we really are, what we stand for and who would stand with us if the world we know shattered.
Bill Allin
Turning It Around: Causes and Cures for Today’s Epidemic Social Problems, a book about how to teach the fundamentals and basic skills of life to children so that they can cope with any emergency they face as adults.
Learn more at http://billallin.com
- John Henry Jowett, preacher (1864-1923)
Imagine it!
Donald Trump, poor. He’d just be an annoying boor. No, no, he’s that already. I meant a poor, annoying…..No, everyone would just ignore him.
Bill Gates, poor. Once the world’s richest man, Bill has been giving away billions of dollars to charities over the past few years, not the least huge sums for AIDS research and literacy projects (through the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation). He’s an entrepreneur, someone who scooped great ideas from other people and turned them into a worldwide empire. Bill would make out alright because he knows how to manage people, to make them feel good about being successful working for projects he operates.
In 1929, with the crash of the stock markets and the beginning of the Great Depression, so many paper-wealthy men went broke overnight that many of them jumped out of windows in their top floor offices on Wall Street. That’s a statement not about their not wanting to be poor, but about the value they placed on their own lives without a great deal of money to throw around.
I see hordes of people in North American cities (my home continent, so those are the people I see in person and on television) creating lives for themselves based on the values preached to them by industries. The descriptive word I can’t escape from to attach to their lives is pretension. They are the people they believe they are. They live the lives that industry wants them to live, holding the values and beliefs that industry teaches them by various means. They have none of their own.
They have no idea of their basic human worth, other than as they compare themselves to others according to their financial net worth and their ostentatious possessions.
Poor people, on the other hand, seem to have a clear grasp of who they are in real terms. They know they are at the bottom of the heap socially as well as financially. Many of them use their position to their advantage, accepting social assistance from governments who collect tax money from the rich. Others, especially those on whom poverty has come to stay due to misfortune, health problems or physical/intellectual limitations, see their lives as one continual climb out of the pit that life has thrown them into.
Perhaps the people who have the clearest idea of who they are and the value they have to the world are the homeless, especially those who have been homeless for several years. They form friendships, bonds and working relationships based on what they can offer to others and what they can get from others.
The homeless are valued as people, among themselves, more than any other social group because all they have to offer anyone else is themselves. They value each other and who they are in relation to the others in their lives. To the homeless, a smile has a value beyond anything a rich person could imagine.
True, some can’t survive in that atmosphere. They turn to drugs and alcohol, paid for by robbing others and from begging. That’s a form of self destruction, a long, slow death wish fulfilled by their own choice. They can’t make it, even among the community of the homeless, because they don’t believe they have anything of value to offer to others. The best some can do is to offer drugs or drink to others like them, giving themselves the same sense of self worth as the rich.
Imagining ourselves as suddenly without any source of income and sustenance is an exercise that each of us should indulge ourselves in once in a while. It can help us to be humble about who we are and appreciative of what we have. Most importantly, it can help us to calculate who in our lives loves us for ourselves and not for what we have or can give to them.
It could happen, that kind of life altering tragedy. A power outage that lasts for several weeks could cause us to turn to our baser instincts in our drive to survive. A pandemic disease of the type that medical science keeps warning us about, one that kills millions of people in a short period of time, could change everything we know about our civilization.
Staying in touch with reality, not the kind that industry wants us to believe but the kind we could use in case of some dire emergency, should be on the agenda of each one of us once in a while.
It tells us who we really are, what we stand for and who would stand with us if the world we know shattered.
Bill Allin
Turning It Around: Causes and Cures for Today’s Epidemic Social Problems, a book about how to teach the fundamentals and basic skills of life to children so that they can cope with any emergency they face as adults.
Learn more at http://billallin.com
Thursday, September 27, 2007
How Bad Are Your Problems Really?
Please read the signature line at the end of the article about a book you should read and a worldwide plan to make the world a safer and healthier place to live.
Learn more about the book and the plan at http://billallin.com
..............................................................
The manner in which one endures what must be endured is more important than the thing that must be endured.
- Dean Acheson, US politician (1893-1971)
I find it hard to appreciate that everyone has problems, not just me. No, I didn't mean that I am a problem for everyone, though that would be a distinction that would be difficult to resist.
Furthermore, my problems are worse than those of everyone else. At least it seems that way.
The fact is that we seldom see others at times when they are in the process of expressing their problems. A drunk won't admit that he's drunk, even to himself. A drug addict may confess that he's high, but will not likely admit that he is an addict. Few addicts of any kind admit to their addiction, which is why Alcoholics Anonymous and similar organizations have their new members admit from the start that they are addicts before they will be helped.
Some parents are terrified of what may happen with their children as they go through the teens years. They would never admit this because it might give others the impression that they're bad parents, or inadequate for the job.
When my computer breaks down or my car is in the shop I feel as if I am at the brink of panic, that life is conspiring against me. Or at least that the gods of technology have a grudge against me.
To many people a computer or a car needing repair would be a minor inconvenience. Especially if the computer or the car is mine, not their own.
Our own problems always seem to be worse than those of others. But then, except for the rare instances of friends crying on the shoulders of other close friends, we seldom learn of the problems of others, the ones that bother them most.
As a sociologist, I am interested in the phenomenon that people almost inevitably consider their own problems worse than the problems of anyone else, to the point where I have studied it--albeit on an anecdotal basis--to see if my experience jives with that of others. It does.
Generally speaking, we don't know the problems of others. When we learn them we find that ours are not so bad after all.
A few years ago I did a study where I exposed several test subjects to the problems of others, without giving any names. I chose the problem sets of average people, of rich people, of people of good health and those with physical or mental handicaps, people just struggling through the rigours of their lives like most of us.
While the results confirmed my hypothesis, I was still shocked at how consistent everyone was. Not a single person was prepared to exchange their own problems for the problems of anyone else. A few noted that some people seemed to have few problems, though they were perhaps more severe. The people with fewer problems were usually those with physical or mental handicaps.
Though our problems seem worse than those of others, we don't want to exchange problems with anyone else if we have the chance. When we compare our own problems with those of others we realize not that ours are easier to solve but that they are easier to manage than the less well known problems of others.
Some of our problems we can't solve. They tend to be those whose origins lie in our early years of childhood. The best we can do with them is to learn to manage their effects on us and on others. An obvious form of this is how someone who loses a leg adapts to new ways of conducting their life and doesn't want to be treated as a "cripple." We learn to adapt and work around our early childhood problems or we become emotional cripples.
Your problems may seem bad to you, but you wouldn't want to trade them for the problems of anyone else if you knew the full depth and breadth of theirs.
Keep that in mind when you find yourself gazing enviously at people you see on television, people with talent, features and characteristics you don't have. They also have problems you wouldn't want.
Bill Allin
Turning It Around: Causes and Cures for Today's Epidemic Social Problems, a book about how to teach children the knowledge and skills they need to be able to manage their problems as adults, rather than having them succumb to addictions, abuse, thrill-seeking or other forms of escape from their problems.
Learn more at http://billallin.com
Learn more about the book and the plan at http://billallin.com
..............................................................
The manner in which one endures what must be endured is more important than the thing that must be endured.
- Dean Acheson, US politician (1893-1971)
I find it hard to appreciate that everyone has problems, not just me. No, I didn't mean that I am a problem for everyone, though that would be a distinction that would be difficult to resist.
Furthermore, my problems are worse than those of everyone else. At least it seems that way.
The fact is that we seldom see others at times when they are in the process of expressing their problems. A drunk won't admit that he's drunk, even to himself. A drug addict may confess that he's high, but will not likely admit that he is an addict. Few addicts of any kind admit to their addiction, which is why Alcoholics Anonymous and similar organizations have their new members admit from the start that they are addicts before they will be helped.
Some parents are terrified of what may happen with their children as they go through the teens years. They would never admit this because it might give others the impression that they're bad parents, or inadequate for the job.
When my computer breaks down or my car is in the shop I feel as if I am at the brink of panic, that life is conspiring against me. Or at least that the gods of technology have a grudge against me.
To many people a computer or a car needing repair would be a minor inconvenience. Especially if the computer or the car is mine, not their own.
Our own problems always seem to be worse than those of others. But then, except for the rare instances of friends crying on the shoulders of other close friends, we seldom learn of the problems of others, the ones that bother them most.
As a sociologist, I am interested in the phenomenon that people almost inevitably consider their own problems worse than the problems of anyone else, to the point where I have studied it--albeit on an anecdotal basis--to see if my experience jives with that of others. It does.
Generally speaking, we don't know the problems of others. When we learn them we find that ours are not so bad after all.
A few years ago I did a study where I exposed several test subjects to the problems of others, without giving any names. I chose the problem sets of average people, of rich people, of people of good health and those with physical or mental handicaps, people just struggling through the rigours of their lives like most of us.
While the results confirmed my hypothesis, I was still shocked at how consistent everyone was. Not a single person was prepared to exchange their own problems for the problems of anyone else. A few noted that some people seemed to have few problems, though they were perhaps more severe. The people with fewer problems were usually those with physical or mental handicaps.
Though our problems seem worse than those of others, we don't want to exchange problems with anyone else if we have the chance. When we compare our own problems with those of others we realize not that ours are easier to solve but that they are easier to manage than the less well known problems of others.
Some of our problems we can't solve. They tend to be those whose origins lie in our early years of childhood. The best we can do with them is to learn to manage their effects on us and on others. An obvious form of this is how someone who loses a leg adapts to new ways of conducting their life and doesn't want to be treated as a "cripple." We learn to adapt and work around our early childhood problems or we become emotional cripples.
Your problems may seem bad to you, but you wouldn't want to trade them for the problems of anyone else if you knew the full depth and breadth of theirs.
Keep that in mind when you find yourself gazing enviously at people you see on television, people with talent, features and characteristics you don't have. They also have problems you wouldn't want.
Bill Allin
Turning It Around: Causes and Cures for Today's Epidemic Social Problems, a book about how to teach children the knowledge and skills they need to be able to manage their problems as adults, rather than having them succumb to addictions, abuse, thrill-seeking or other forms of escape from their problems.
Learn more at http://billallin.com
Sunday, September 23, 2007
Key Lessons In Human Relationships
Please read the signature line at the end of the article about a book you should read and a worldwide plan to make the world a safer and healthier place to live. Learn more about the book and the plan at http://billallin.com
......................................................
Flatter me, and I may not believe you. Criticize me, and I may not like you. Ignore me, and I may not forgive you. Encourage me, and I will not forget you. Love me and I may be forced to love you.
- William Arthur Ward, US inspirational writer (1921-1994)
This quote captures concisely the essence of all human relationships.
People believe flattery about themselves because they want to believe it. How many well known women have listened to flattery from their dressmaker about how beautiful they look in his creation, only to find themselves later on the annual Blackwell list of worst dressed women or on the pages of some scandal sheet whose purpose is to show the lack of taste of famous people?
Flattery may more commonly be called the "white lie." The truth may be known to both the speaker and the receiver, but the receiver would rather hear the lie. Would rather believe the lie than the truth.
In some cases the truth is kept from the receiver "to prevent them from being hurt." Almost without exception that person hurts more when the truth is found out later.
Who can trust a person who lies to them? A fan or worshipper may be encouraged to provide a white lie, but a true friend would not. A true friend, not the friends that are more akin to business arrangement partners.
People don't like criticism, even if it's true and constructive. Some people appreciate constructive criticism because it helps them to improve, but they are in the minority. Written criticism is always taken to be destructive and is more emotionally hurting than the kind delivered face to face.
What's the problem? Most of us don't know how to deliver constructive criticism tactfully, in a helpful manner. The use of language we teach our children tends to be for the purpose of conveying a message directly or the kind that tells a fictional story in an interesting manner. We don't teach the language of diplomacy, which may explain why we have so many unresolvable conflicts among friends, problems that trash the relationships.
People are most hurt and over a longer period of time by being ignored. A child cries to get attention, not because of an injury. Some parents claim "Oh, he's just crying to get attention, he's not really hurt." They don't understand that a child can't get too much attention, can't overdose on attention and love. If the parent of an attention-demanding child withholds attention and love because they child has "already had enough," the parent hasn't been providing the kind of love and attention and support the child needs.
Couples who "draw apart" and find themselves "going in different directions" with their lives have not paid enough attention to each other, to the needs and desires of the other. In particular, they have not give enough of themselves to the need of the other for human touch. More couples separate because one needs more loving touch than he or she is receiving than for any other reason. That's what sexual affairs are all about and studies show that two-thirds of men and more than half of women have affairs while married.
As social beings, we need attention desperately. Being ignored may be the worst thing that one person can do to another who wants attention. For a child, being ignored (not receiving enough loving attention) often results in values that are twisted by community standards. Many prison inmates, patients of psychiatric hospitals and gulpers of Prozac had childhoods where they didn't receive as much attention from their parents as they needed. Some had too much of the wrong kind, of course.
"Encourage me and I will not forget you." Think back to your favourite teacher, neighbour or relative and chances are good that those people encouraged you. Their encouragement helped you to become the marvellous person you are today.
"Love me and I will be forced to love you" is an odd way of delivering this message. But it gets the point across. Many people stay with their mates because the mate loves them unequivocally and unstintingly. Many people agree to marry their partner because they recognize that the partner loves them completely. Couples come together in the first place because they each believe the other loves them.
Love attracts people. The adoration of fans of sports, movie or television stars drives many of them to be as outstanding as they are because they need that kind of love.
The world revolves around love, at least the human component of it. People lacking a sufficient amount of the love they need do some unusual, strange, even illegal or anti-social things to get the attention of the person of their desire. Ask yourself if the rich, the powerful or the war-mongering people you have known (even from seeing them on television) get enough of the human kind of good love or if they lacked it and turned to another form of gratification in its absence.
Being forced to love someone in Ward's sense of the word means that a person may not be able to resist the love of another person if that love is sincere and true. Love is attractive.
Love is the most powerful force of humanity, especially effective if the love of many people is joined together for a collective work of good.
Bill Allin
Turning It Around: Causes and Cures for Today's Epidemic Social Problems, a book about how to teach children the lessons from this article as well as many others they need to thrive.
Learn more at http://billallin.com
Contact Bill Allin directly at http://contactify.com/d012d
......................................................
Flatter me, and I may not believe you. Criticize me, and I may not like you. Ignore me, and I may not forgive you. Encourage me, and I will not forget you. Love me and I may be forced to love you.
- William Arthur Ward, US inspirational writer (1921-1994)
This quote captures concisely the essence of all human relationships.
People believe flattery about themselves because they want to believe it. How many well known women have listened to flattery from their dressmaker about how beautiful they look in his creation, only to find themselves later on the annual Blackwell list of worst dressed women or on the pages of some scandal sheet whose purpose is to show the lack of taste of famous people?
Flattery may more commonly be called the "white lie." The truth may be known to both the speaker and the receiver, but the receiver would rather hear the lie. Would rather believe the lie than the truth.
In some cases the truth is kept from the receiver "to prevent them from being hurt." Almost without exception that person hurts more when the truth is found out later.
Who can trust a person who lies to them? A fan or worshipper may be encouraged to provide a white lie, but a true friend would not. A true friend, not the friends that are more akin to business arrangement partners.
People don't like criticism, even if it's true and constructive. Some people appreciate constructive criticism because it helps them to improve, but they are in the minority. Written criticism is always taken to be destructive and is more emotionally hurting than the kind delivered face to face.
What's the problem? Most of us don't know how to deliver constructive criticism tactfully, in a helpful manner. The use of language we teach our children tends to be for the purpose of conveying a message directly or the kind that tells a fictional story in an interesting manner. We don't teach the language of diplomacy, which may explain why we have so many unresolvable conflicts among friends, problems that trash the relationships.
People are most hurt and over a longer period of time by being ignored. A child cries to get attention, not because of an injury. Some parents claim "Oh, he's just crying to get attention, he's not really hurt." They don't understand that a child can't get too much attention, can't overdose on attention and love. If the parent of an attention-demanding child withholds attention and love because they child has "already had enough," the parent hasn't been providing the kind of love and attention and support the child needs.
Couples who "draw apart" and find themselves "going in different directions" with their lives have not paid enough attention to each other, to the needs and desires of the other. In particular, they have not give enough of themselves to the need of the other for human touch. More couples separate because one needs more loving touch than he or she is receiving than for any other reason. That's what sexual affairs are all about and studies show that two-thirds of men and more than half of women have affairs while married.
As social beings, we need attention desperately. Being ignored may be the worst thing that one person can do to another who wants attention. For a child, being ignored (not receiving enough loving attention) often results in values that are twisted by community standards. Many prison inmates, patients of psychiatric hospitals and gulpers of Prozac had childhoods where they didn't receive as much attention from their parents as they needed. Some had too much of the wrong kind, of course.
"Encourage me and I will not forget you." Think back to your favourite teacher, neighbour or relative and chances are good that those people encouraged you. Their encouragement helped you to become the marvellous person you are today.
"Love me and I will be forced to love you" is an odd way of delivering this message. But it gets the point across. Many people stay with their mates because the mate loves them unequivocally and unstintingly. Many people agree to marry their partner because they recognize that the partner loves them completely. Couples come together in the first place because they each believe the other loves them.
Love attracts people. The adoration of fans of sports, movie or television stars drives many of them to be as outstanding as they are because they need that kind of love.
The world revolves around love, at least the human component of it. People lacking a sufficient amount of the love they need do some unusual, strange, even illegal or anti-social things to get the attention of the person of their desire. Ask yourself if the rich, the powerful or the war-mongering people you have known (even from seeing them on television) get enough of the human kind of good love or if they lacked it and turned to another form of gratification in its absence.
Being forced to love someone in Ward's sense of the word means that a person may not be able to resist the love of another person if that love is sincere and true. Love is attractive.
Love is the most powerful force of humanity, especially effective if the love of many people is joined together for a collective work of good.
Bill Allin
Turning It Around: Causes and Cures for Today's Epidemic Social Problems, a book about how to teach children the lessons from this article as well as many others they need to thrive.
Learn more at http://billallin.com
Contact Bill Allin directly at http://contactify.com/d012d
Saturday, September 22, 2007
How To Lead An Exciting And Fulfilling Old Age
Please read the signature line at the end of the article about a book you should read and a worldwide plan to make the world a safer and healthier place to live. Learn more about the book and the plan at http://billallin.com
.............................................
Kindness is more important than wisdom, and the recognition of this is the beginning of wisdom. - Theodore Isaac Rubin
Wisdom seems to be not just a forgotten art, but a lost objective of humanity.
Over two millennia ago people like Socrates, Plato and Aristotle (among many others) committed their thoughts to writing (Socrates, thanks to Plato) and their thinking is revered as great wisdom today.
There were great writers of wisdom during the Roman era. Then the world went into the Dark Ages and almost no one wrote anything considered wise today. That's right, isn't it?
Actually, no. As much as possible of the wisdom of the past was destroyed by the Church of Rome after the fall of the western part of the Roman Empire in order that only church writing could be considered truth and taught to the uneducated flocks.
Meanwhile, in what we today call the Middle East, South Asia and the Far East, civilization and its authors of great wisdom carried on with great flourish and progress. Those of us in the west may not be as aware of their writing as we should be because these people thoughtlessly and discourteously wrote in languages other than English.
English speakers, being the inherent snobs they are, refused to acknowledge that anything of value could have taken place or been written down in any language other than English, Latin or the successors of Latin--in other words the languages of western Europe. Arabs, Indians and Chinese, for example, had marvellously well developed cultures during Europe's Dark Ages and Middle Ages.
If it had not been for some daring Irish monks who hid away written works when the rest of Europe was ravaged by a series of tribes, we would have no western history before the medieval period. Those Irish monks literally saved western history from disappearing forever. And western wisdom.
Europeans really started to roll during the Renaissance, though written work was still heavily censored or altered by the church.
Where is the written work that records the wisdom of today? Do we have no wise people today?
Schools for common folk (as opposed to just for children of the nobility) began in the 17th century, then continued to become more universal in the west until the end of the 19th century. The more people that learned to read, the more began to write. With the printing press, books became more common and available at reasonable prices for the ordinary household.
Today publishers (including self publishers) in the United States alone put out about 200,000 different titles each year. The problem is not finding books to read, but finding good books from among this massive number, then finding time to read as many as one might like to gain wisdom.
As it happens, a recent study showed that only about six percent of the adult population of North America reads more than three books per year. When you consider that many professionals must read books within their professional specialties in order to stay abreast of developments, that leave precious few of us who read books regularly.
Must we read books in order to become wise? It's not that simple, of course. Reading a variety of book subjects and genres forces the brain to work in ways that few other activities of life do. Experience alone doesn't make a person wise. Reading alone doesn't either. Nor does education of various sorts. It's the combination of all of these that develops a brain environment that is conducive to wisdom.
Wisdom is also not something that happens quickly. It takes decades and a devotion to learning for that whole time. It also requires a commitment to teaching what we learn so that others may develop their own form of wisdom. It's impossible to know or even to guess how many people have gained wisdom from the teachings of Socrates over 2400 years ago.
Just as becoming an athlete of Olympic calibre requires a combination of commitment and learning in a variety of ways, becoming a wise person requires learning and teaching in a variety of ways. Teaching itself becomes a form of learning (docendo disco).
The human body is designed to become weaker and less coordinated as we age. However, the human brain is designed to grow, gaining knowledge and wisdom for as long as we live. Our overall design shows that our well developed brain should take over as the most important organ of our bodies when other body functions begin to get well past their prime.
Dementia is what happens to those who don't follow that pattern. Dementia is preventable, totally, by each individual. Old people who become stupid have allowed their brains to atrophy along with the rest of their bodies as they age, until not much worthwhile of anything remains. For others, they are at their peak of wisdom in their senior years.
Research is even taking place now to see if Alzheimer's Disease may be prevented or slowed considerably in people with very active brains. My grandfather died of Alzheimer's and I watched him decline to becoming a baby in an ancient body. I don't intend to allow myself to go that way.
OK, the light has turned green. Get thinking. Wise up!
Bill Allin
Turning It Around: Causes and Cures for Today's Epidemic Social Problems, a book about how, what and when to teach children what they need to know to lead fulfilling and fruitful lives, right to their dying day.
Learn more at http://billallin.com
.............................................
Kindness is more important than wisdom, and the recognition of this is the beginning of wisdom. - Theodore Isaac Rubin
Wisdom seems to be not just a forgotten art, but a lost objective of humanity.
Over two millennia ago people like Socrates, Plato and Aristotle (among many others) committed their thoughts to writing (Socrates, thanks to Plato) and their thinking is revered as great wisdom today.
There were great writers of wisdom during the Roman era. Then the world went into the Dark Ages and almost no one wrote anything considered wise today. That's right, isn't it?
Actually, no. As much as possible of the wisdom of the past was destroyed by the Church of Rome after the fall of the western part of the Roman Empire in order that only church writing could be considered truth and taught to the uneducated flocks.
Meanwhile, in what we today call the Middle East, South Asia and the Far East, civilization and its authors of great wisdom carried on with great flourish and progress. Those of us in the west may not be as aware of their writing as we should be because these people thoughtlessly and discourteously wrote in languages other than English.
English speakers, being the inherent snobs they are, refused to acknowledge that anything of value could have taken place or been written down in any language other than English, Latin or the successors of Latin--in other words the languages of western Europe. Arabs, Indians and Chinese, for example, had marvellously well developed cultures during Europe's Dark Ages and Middle Ages.
If it had not been for some daring Irish monks who hid away written works when the rest of Europe was ravaged by a series of tribes, we would have no western history before the medieval period. Those Irish monks literally saved western history from disappearing forever. And western wisdom.
Europeans really started to roll during the Renaissance, though written work was still heavily censored or altered by the church.
Where is the written work that records the wisdom of today? Do we have no wise people today?
Schools for common folk (as opposed to just for children of the nobility) began in the 17th century, then continued to become more universal in the west until the end of the 19th century. The more people that learned to read, the more began to write. With the printing press, books became more common and available at reasonable prices for the ordinary household.
Today publishers (including self publishers) in the United States alone put out about 200,000 different titles each year. The problem is not finding books to read, but finding good books from among this massive number, then finding time to read as many as one might like to gain wisdom.
As it happens, a recent study showed that only about six percent of the adult population of North America reads more than three books per year. When you consider that many professionals must read books within their professional specialties in order to stay abreast of developments, that leave precious few of us who read books regularly.
Must we read books in order to become wise? It's not that simple, of course. Reading a variety of book subjects and genres forces the brain to work in ways that few other activities of life do. Experience alone doesn't make a person wise. Reading alone doesn't either. Nor does education of various sorts. It's the combination of all of these that develops a brain environment that is conducive to wisdom.
Wisdom is also not something that happens quickly. It takes decades and a devotion to learning for that whole time. It also requires a commitment to teaching what we learn so that others may develop their own form of wisdom. It's impossible to know or even to guess how many people have gained wisdom from the teachings of Socrates over 2400 years ago.
Just as becoming an athlete of Olympic calibre requires a combination of commitment and learning in a variety of ways, becoming a wise person requires learning and teaching in a variety of ways. Teaching itself becomes a form of learning (docendo disco).
The human body is designed to become weaker and less coordinated as we age. However, the human brain is designed to grow, gaining knowledge and wisdom for as long as we live. Our overall design shows that our well developed brain should take over as the most important organ of our bodies when other body functions begin to get well past their prime.
Dementia is what happens to those who don't follow that pattern. Dementia is preventable, totally, by each individual. Old people who become stupid have allowed their brains to atrophy along with the rest of their bodies as they age, until not much worthwhile of anything remains. For others, they are at their peak of wisdom in their senior years.
Research is even taking place now to see if Alzheimer's Disease may be prevented or slowed considerably in people with very active brains. My grandfather died of Alzheimer's and I watched him decline to becoming a baby in an ancient body. I don't intend to allow myself to go that way.
OK, the light has turned green. Get thinking. Wise up!
Bill Allin
Turning It Around: Causes and Cures for Today's Epidemic Social Problems, a book about how, what and when to teach children what they need to know to lead fulfilling and fruitful lives, right to their dying day.
Learn more at http://billallin.com
Friday, September 21, 2007
How So Many People Screw Up Their Lives
Please read the signature line at the end of the article about a book you should read and a worldwide plan to make the world a safer and healthier place to live.
Learn more about the book and the plan at http://billallin.com
.........................................................
One day at a time- this is enough. Do not look back and grieve over the past, for it is gone; and do not be troubled about the future, for it has not yet come. Live in the present, and make it so beautiful that it will be worth remembering.
- Ida Scott Taylor, author
While this sounds like an advertisement for existentialism or nihilism, it was not intended that way. Mrs. Taylor is concerned that so many people dwell on the hurts of the past or work so hard for benefits in the future that they miss living today.
If you are not one of those, how fortunate you are.
Carrying around the hurts of your past is literally like carrying the weight of the world on your shoulders. It's the weight of your world, a world that no longer exists. The rest of humanity has moved on. Most never knew about your problem in the first place and don't care about it now. Whoever hurt you very likely is not suffering in the slightest.
Then there are the workaholics who invest their lives in a future they seldom accept has arrived. They become so accustomed to working continuously that they can't break out of the habit. For them, the future they work so hard to achieve never arrives. What they manage to do is to spend some of the money they have accumulated to buy ostentatious toys and decorations for themselves and for those who will be generous enough to show their love and admiration for them.
Almost inevitably, these people raise children who follow the same habits and hold the same values as theirs. Kids tend to become like their parents because their parents are usually the only full role models they have to follow.
In the Canadian province where I live, I drive past many properties whose main feature outside of the houses is grass. How beautiful and aromatic is the scent of grass? It's a weed that has been selected by rich people who own mansions as a way to cover endless amounts of land without bothering with flowers, decorative shrubs or trees.
We have parks filled with grass, most of which have signs telling people to stay off it. Heaven forbid the most boring plant on the face of the planet should die under the footsteps of people enjoying themselves with some form of entertainment other than admiring their lawns or cutting them.
People, kids and adults alike, are much more likely to find creative things to do on dirt than on grass. Grass is--at least to those of us who live in North America--the ultimate way to beautifying property.
Grass is not for living today but for having neighbours and family admire it. In fact, nobody cares about anyone's grass but their own. But we don't acknowledge that hypocrisy.
How can you live today? I don't want to answer that question for you. For many people living for today means shopping.
No one ever got to heaven by shopping. I can't say that for certain, but it seems like a safe guess. Shopping is perceived as "fun" by those who have been brainwashed by industries--primarily in the fashion and cosmetics fields--whose very existence is based on selling people stuff they don't need.
Those who spend time working in their gardens, hiking in the wilderness or trying to accomplish something no one has done before know how to live for today. Just working to improve yourself so that you are better at something than you used to be is a way of living for today.
Remember this: to live for today we don't need to spend our money, we need to invest our time wisely.
Money is not the treasure. Time is our only treasure. The only time we know anything about for certain is now.
If this means something to you, you have just invested your last few minutes wisely.
Congratulations! Now move on.
Bill Allin
Turning It Around: Causes and Cures for Today's Epidemic Social Problems, a book about how to invest your time with your children and grandchildren wisely, in ways they will appreciate and remember for the rest of their own lives.
Learn more at http://billallin.com
Contact Bill Allin directly at http://contactify.com/d021d
Learn more about the book and the plan at http://billallin.com
.........................................................
One day at a time- this is enough. Do not look back and grieve over the past, for it is gone; and do not be troubled about the future, for it has not yet come. Live in the present, and make it so beautiful that it will be worth remembering.
- Ida Scott Taylor, author
While this sounds like an advertisement for existentialism or nihilism, it was not intended that way. Mrs. Taylor is concerned that so many people dwell on the hurts of the past or work so hard for benefits in the future that they miss living today.
If you are not one of those, how fortunate you are.
Carrying around the hurts of your past is literally like carrying the weight of the world on your shoulders. It's the weight of your world, a world that no longer exists. The rest of humanity has moved on. Most never knew about your problem in the first place and don't care about it now. Whoever hurt you very likely is not suffering in the slightest.
Then there are the workaholics who invest their lives in a future they seldom accept has arrived. They become so accustomed to working continuously that they can't break out of the habit. For them, the future they work so hard to achieve never arrives. What they manage to do is to spend some of the money they have accumulated to buy ostentatious toys and decorations for themselves and for those who will be generous enough to show their love and admiration for them.
Almost inevitably, these people raise children who follow the same habits and hold the same values as theirs. Kids tend to become like their parents because their parents are usually the only full role models they have to follow.
In the Canadian province where I live, I drive past many properties whose main feature outside of the houses is grass. How beautiful and aromatic is the scent of grass? It's a weed that has been selected by rich people who own mansions as a way to cover endless amounts of land without bothering with flowers, decorative shrubs or trees.
We have parks filled with grass, most of which have signs telling people to stay off it. Heaven forbid the most boring plant on the face of the planet should die under the footsteps of people enjoying themselves with some form of entertainment other than admiring their lawns or cutting them.
People, kids and adults alike, are much more likely to find creative things to do on dirt than on grass. Grass is--at least to those of us who live in North America--the ultimate way to beautifying property.
Grass is not for living today but for having neighbours and family admire it. In fact, nobody cares about anyone's grass but their own. But we don't acknowledge that hypocrisy.
How can you live today? I don't want to answer that question for you. For many people living for today means shopping.
No one ever got to heaven by shopping. I can't say that for certain, but it seems like a safe guess. Shopping is perceived as "fun" by those who have been brainwashed by industries--primarily in the fashion and cosmetics fields--whose very existence is based on selling people stuff they don't need.
Those who spend time working in their gardens, hiking in the wilderness or trying to accomplish something no one has done before know how to live for today. Just working to improve yourself so that you are better at something than you used to be is a way of living for today.
Remember this: to live for today we don't need to spend our money, we need to invest our time wisely.
Money is not the treasure. Time is our only treasure. The only time we know anything about for certain is now.
If this means something to you, you have just invested your last few minutes wisely.
Congratulations! Now move on.
Bill Allin
Turning It Around: Causes and Cures for Today's Epidemic Social Problems, a book about how to invest your time with your children and grandchildren wisely, in ways they will appreciate and remember for the rest of their own lives.
Learn more at http://billallin.com
Contact Bill Allin directly at http://contactify.com/d021d
Thursday, September 20, 2007
Educated Rant: Paris Hilton, Successful Disgrace
Please read the signature line at the end of the article about a book you should read and a worldwide plan to make the world a safer and healthier place to live.
Learn more about the book and the plan at http://billallin.com
................................................
"Success seems to be connected with action. Successful people keep moving. They make mistakes, but they don't quit."
- Conrad Hilton
Paris Hilton seems to have adopted the Hilton maxim. Look how successful she is.
If that seemed like a criticism, it wasn't. Paris Hilton knows what she wants--fame--and she gets it. As Conrad (great grandfather of Paris) recommended, she keeps moving, keeps doing things that keep her in the news. Fame and glamour are what she wants and she has been extremely successful at getting it.
Over the past several decades, primarily before the 1990s, citizens of western world countries were taught that by now we would have ample amounts of leisure time in which to amuse ourselves or to be amused. We wouldn't be short of money because technology would make our lives so simple that we could earn more than enough to keep us in luxury by working only two or three days a week.
Corporations latched onto that idea and began to provide us with things to do that would occupy our time even before our working hours and days were reduced. We got television, then videos, now movies and TV programs on our cell phones if we want them. We liked it. We cottoned onto the easy life.
We spent hours every day sitting in front of the tube, watching mindless pap that amused us but kept us from thinking. The appetites we had from our days of high activity remained with us while our energy expenditure decreased greatly. Some of us saved that extra energy intake on our bellies, our thighs and our butts.
Though we had the start of the life of leisure, we didn't manage to get the extra time off work. Some of us realized that not only was extra time off not coming, but if we wanted to have more of the luxuries that were offered we had to work longer hours to earn more income. Today some of us work 60, even 80 or 90 hour weeks.
Didn't that affect our family lives? Sure, but they were falling apart anyway. We learned how to relax to excess or to work to excess to earn more money, but we didn't know what to do with raising kids. That was OK because they no longer wanted to have much to do with us. We didn't talk because we didn't have interests in common. The kids developed their own dialect with words we parents didn't understand. That wasn't so bad because most parents didn't want to know what their kids were talking about.
We all kept moving, kept making mistakes, kept forging our lives wherever they were bound to lead us. Conrad would have been proud of us.
Maybe not proud of Paris or her sister Nicky. But then, our kids are like Paris and Nicky too, to some extent. Too many of them.
Conrad Hilton got what he wanted. He became one of the richest men in the world. Paris got what she wanted, fame and notoriety (it went with the task of getting news coverage daily). What did we get?
We got broken families. In many classrooms today no more than 25 percent of the students live with both their birth parents. We got drugs. We got teen suicide at unprecedented levels. We got murder so common that radio and television stations don't even report them any more.
We got gangs that didn't replace the former underworld of organized crime, but added to it. We got depression so common that it's almost a social disease. We got road rage and office rage. We got school shootings. We got dependency on prescribed drugs, therapists, so many people with unfit brains that they can't all be kept in institutions.
And we call ourselves successful. Political conservatives say that our social problems are nothing more than side effects of our enormous success as a society. They don't mind having to take Prozac to come down and Viagra to get up.
They also say that the rest of the world envies us because of our wealth. It doesn't. The rest of the world hates us (or at least thinks we are a poison to humanity) because we have sold our souls to the devil. Or to Toyota, the drug manufacturers and political spinmeisters who can convince us that anything their candidate does is just grand.
There is one thing we missed out on in our quest for heaven on earth. The ability to think. We allowed ourselves to have it programmed out of us.
Why do so many teens do stupid things? They want to object to the unconscionable realities that we have accepted for ourselves and want to impose on them. They aren't brain dead yet, so they keep kicking as long as they can.
Who's to blame? That's another thing we adopted, a penchant for always blaming others for our mistakes. Guess what? It doesn't matter who is to blame. What matters is if we and enough others like us want to make our lives and the lives of our children, grandchildren and the people of the rest of the world better.
We can only begin with teaching children. That's how it works. From the day they are born they are clay models we mold, day by day, incident by incident, neglected or rejected moment by neglected or rejected moment. They become what we make them, one way or another. They have no innate abilities to become anything else.
We need to start teaching children properly. Not reading and writing, since those are already taught in schools. We need to teach them how to grow to become competent and confident adults.
We can't do that as it is now because most of us don't know how. If we did, we would have been teaching them. We need to teach young adults and teens how to be good parents, how to provide what their children of the future will need, when they need it and how they need it to be fed to them.
Don't stop moving on this when you finish reading this article. Talk it up among your neighbors and family, your workmates and fellow churchgoers, at your Home and School gatherings and political meetings.
Get something started. Nothing will improve without you. There aren't very many of us yet who know what we need. Remember, the conservatives are trying to tell us that everything's all right, that the universe is unfolding as it should. We need to tell them and everyone else that it isn't.
We need to begin teaching our children properly. Today.
Do your part. Keeping talking about it. We need to help each other through a tough transition period.
Bill Allin
Turning It Around: Causes and Cures for Today's Epidemic Social Problems, a book about what children need to learn and when and who should teach it. And it has guides for teachers and parents who influence our kids the most.
Learn more at http://billallin.com
Learn more about the book and the plan at http://billallin.com
................................................
"Success seems to be connected with action. Successful people keep moving. They make mistakes, but they don't quit."
- Conrad Hilton
Paris Hilton seems to have adopted the Hilton maxim. Look how successful she is.
If that seemed like a criticism, it wasn't. Paris Hilton knows what she wants--fame--and she gets it. As Conrad (great grandfather of Paris) recommended, she keeps moving, keeps doing things that keep her in the news. Fame and glamour are what she wants and she has been extremely successful at getting it.
Over the past several decades, primarily before the 1990s, citizens of western world countries were taught that by now we would have ample amounts of leisure time in which to amuse ourselves or to be amused. We wouldn't be short of money because technology would make our lives so simple that we could earn more than enough to keep us in luxury by working only two or three days a week.
Corporations latched onto that idea and began to provide us with things to do that would occupy our time even before our working hours and days were reduced. We got television, then videos, now movies and TV programs on our cell phones if we want them. We liked it. We cottoned onto the easy life.
We spent hours every day sitting in front of the tube, watching mindless pap that amused us but kept us from thinking. The appetites we had from our days of high activity remained with us while our energy expenditure decreased greatly. Some of us saved that extra energy intake on our bellies, our thighs and our butts.
Though we had the start of the life of leisure, we didn't manage to get the extra time off work. Some of us realized that not only was extra time off not coming, but if we wanted to have more of the luxuries that were offered we had to work longer hours to earn more income. Today some of us work 60, even 80 or 90 hour weeks.
Didn't that affect our family lives? Sure, but they were falling apart anyway. We learned how to relax to excess or to work to excess to earn more money, but we didn't know what to do with raising kids. That was OK because they no longer wanted to have much to do with us. We didn't talk because we didn't have interests in common. The kids developed their own dialect with words we parents didn't understand. That wasn't so bad because most parents didn't want to know what their kids were talking about.
We all kept moving, kept making mistakes, kept forging our lives wherever they were bound to lead us. Conrad would have been proud of us.
Maybe not proud of Paris or her sister Nicky. But then, our kids are like Paris and Nicky too, to some extent. Too many of them.
Conrad Hilton got what he wanted. He became one of the richest men in the world. Paris got what she wanted, fame and notoriety (it went with the task of getting news coverage daily). What did we get?
We got broken families. In many classrooms today no more than 25 percent of the students live with both their birth parents. We got drugs. We got teen suicide at unprecedented levels. We got murder so common that radio and television stations don't even report them any more.
We got gangs that didn't replace the former underworld of organized crime, but added to it. We got depression so common that it's almost a social disease. We got road rage and office rage. We got school shootings. We got dependency on prescribed drugs, therapists, so many people with unfit brains that they can't all be kept in institutions.
And we call ourselves successful. Political conservatives say that our social problems are nothing more than side effects of our enormous success as a society. They don't mind having to take Prozac to come down and Viagra to get up.
They also say that the rest of the world envies us because of our wealth. It doesn't. The rest of the world hates us (or at least thinks we are a poison to humanity) because we have sold our souls to the devil. Or to Toyota, the drug manufacturers and political spinmeisters who can convince us that anything their candidate does is just grand.
There is one thing we missed out on in our quest for heaven on earth. The ability to think. We allowed ourselves to have it programmed out of us.
Why do so many teens do stupid things? They want to object to the unconscionable realities that we have accepted for ourselves and want to impose on them. They aren't brain dead yet, so they keep kicking as long as they can.
Who's to blame? That's another thing we adopted, a penchant for always blaming others for our mistakes. Guess what? It doesn't matter who is to blame. What matters is if we and enough others like us want to make our lives and the lives of our children, grandchildren and the people of the rest of the world better.
We can only begin with teaching children. That's how it works. From the day they are born they are clay models we mold, day by day, incident by incident, neglected or rejected moment by neglected or rejected moment. They become what we make them, one way or another. They have no innate abilities to become anything else.
We need to start teaching children properly. Not reading and writing, since those are already taught in schools. We need to teach them how to grow to become competent and confident adults.
We can't do that as it is now because most of us don't know how. If we did, we would have been teaching them. We need to teach young adults and teens how to be good parents, how to provide what their children of the future will need, when they need it and how they need it to be fed to them.
Don't stop moving on this when you finish reading this article. Talk it up among your neighbors and family, your workmates and fellow churchgoers, at your Home and School gatherings and political meetings.
Get something started. Nothing will improve without you. There aren't very many of us yet who know what we need. Remember, the conservatives are trying to tell us that everything's all right, that the universe is unfolding as it should. We need to tell them and everyone else that it isn't.
We need to begin teaching our children properly. Today.
Do your part. Keeping talking about it. We need to help each other through a tough transition period.
Bill Allin
Turning It Around: Causes and Cures for Today's Epidemic Social Problems, a book about what children need to learn and when and who should teach it. And it has guides for teachers and parents who influence our kids the most.
Learn more at http://billallin.com
Monday, September 17, 2007
Imagine Donald Trump Or Conrad Black...
Please read the signature line at the end of the article about a book you should read and a worldwide plan to make the world a safer and healthier place to live. Learn more about the book and the plan at http://billallin.com
.........................................
Be gentle with yourself, learn to love yourself, to forgive yourself, for only as we have the right attitude toward ourselves can we have the right attitude toward others.
- Wilfred Peterson, author
To some this quote will sound like a load of namby-pamby crap for addle-brained self-delusional wimps. As it happens, this article is about them. Not for them because they believe that everything is right with the world as they see it.
We have two kinds of people who live with more than their share of fear. One acknowledges it, the other pretends it doesn't exist.
We're more than familiar with the phobias, such as claustrophobia and agoraphobia. We're a little less familiar with those people who live in fear of failure, or being hurt or of being criticized. They're around us but we don't see much of this fear because they learn to disguise it well.
What few of us may realize is that the people who seem least afraid of anything, who act aggressively, who bully others and who actively and consciously try to put down or defeat others as signs of their own power have their own fears.
The greatest of their fears is that they may be found out. Found out about being inadequate, incompetent or unprepared for whatever task they must do. To compensate for this fear they overdo behaviour in the opposite direction. They act the exact opposite of what they feel deep inside.
They exude confidence--even overconfidence--between bouts of aggressive behaviour, but it's more bravado than reality. Mostly this gives them time to figure out who to blame for the next thing that goes wrong.
They always blame others for what goes wrong. Not only do they not admit ever having done anything wrong, the ones who are better at covering their true selves refuse to address the possibility that they have done something wrong. They won't even talk about it.
Witness some politicians when appearing in court, or civil servants appearing in front of a committee of government. The upper level ones act as if its beneath them to have to be there, let alone consider the possibility that they have done something wrong. Their underlings or associates always did whatever is wrong, if anything.
Big business executives who act arrogant enough that we think they must eat razor blades for breakfast are really like soured butterscotch pudding inside. The longer they are able to act that way, the deeper those true feelings sink. They actually convince themselves that they are as superior to the rest of the world as they act.
You don't have to imagine Donald Trump in front of a criminal court when told he is guilty of something ("You're fired!"). We have (former) Canadian executive--now a British Lord--Conrad Black whose trial is still going on in Chicago as of this writing. The man acts as if he can't even imagine why anyone think he has done anything wrong.
Bigots are nothing more than bullies that don't want to get their hands dirty. Advocates of political correctness, for the most part, are bigots with polished shoes and expensive hairdos. They act as if they are better than the common rabble because they have convinced themselves they are. Their act covers their insecurities, their fears.
The last thing these people could do is what Wilfred Peterson advised, to love themselves. Mostly they love money or power, or both. Secretly they hate themselves, though they would never admit this, even to their therapists.
Now you know those hubris-filled arrogant windbags that act superior deep down believe that they must never allow themselves to have their china faces crack or they will reveal their core of slimy mush.
Feel better? I do now that I have that out. But I need to rinse out my mouth to get the bad taste out. I'd rather think about pleasant people who love themselves.
Bill Allin
Turning It Around: Causes and Cures for Today's Epidemic Social Problems, a book about how to give children the knowledge and skills they need so that they don't turn to anti-social activities and behaviour in reaction to their ignorance and unfulfilled needs.
Learn more at http://billallin.com
.........................................
Be gentle with yourself, learn to love yourself, to forgive yourself, for only as we have the right attitude toward ourselves can we have the right attitude toward others.
- Wilfred Peterson, author
To some this quote will sound like a load of namby-pamby crap for addle-brained self-delusional wimps. As it happens, this article is about them. Not for them because they believe that everything is right with the world as they see it.
We have two kinds of people who live with more than their share of fear. One acknowledges it, the other pretends it doesn't exist.
We're more than familiar with the phobias, such as claustrophobia and agoraphobia. We're a little less familiar with those people who live in fear of failure, or being hurt or of being criticized. They're around us but we don't see much of this fear because they learn to disguise it well.
What few of us may realize is that the people who seem least afraid of anything, who act aggressively, who bully others and who actively and consciously try to put down or defeat others as signs of their own power have their own fears.
The greatest of their fears is that they may be found out. Found out about being inadequate, incompetent or unprepared for whatever task they must do. To compensate for this fear they overdo behaviour in the opposite direction. They act the exact opposite of what they feel deep inside.
They exude confidence--even overconfidence--between bouts of aggressive behaviour, but it's more bravado than reality. Mostly this gives them time to figure out who to blame for the next thing that goes wrong.
They always blame others for what goes wrong. Not only do they not admit ever having done anything wrong, the ones who are better at covering their true selves refuse to address the possibility that they have done something wrong. They won't even talk about it.
Witness some politicians when appearing in court, or civil servants appearing in front of a committee of government. The upper level ones act as if its beneath them to have to be there, let alone consider the possibility that they have done something wrong. Their underlings or associates always did whatever is wrong, if anything.
Big business executives who act arrogant enough that we think they must eat razor blades for breakfast are really like soured butterscotch pudding inside. The longer they are able to act that way, the deeper those true feelings sink. They actually convince themselves that they are as superior to the rest of the world as they act.
You don't have to imagine Donald Trump in front of a criminal court when told he is guilty of something ("You're fired!"). We have (former) Canadian executive--now a British Lord--Conrad Black whose trial is still going on in Chicago as of this writing. The man acts as if he can't even imagine why anyone think he has done anything wrong.
Bigots are nothing more than bullies that don't want to get their hands dirty. Advocates of political correctness, for the most part, are bigots with polished shoes and expensive hairdos. They act as if they are better than the common rabble because they have convinced themselves they are. Their act covers their insecurities, their fears.
The last thing these people could do is what Wilfred Peterson advised, to love themselves. Mostly they love money or power, or both. Secretly they hate themselves, though they would never admit this, even to their therapists.
Now you know those hubris-filled arrogant windbags that act superior deep down believe that they must never allow themselves to have their china faces crack or they will reveal their core of slimy mush.
Feel better? I do now that I have that out. But I need to rinse out my mouth to get the bad taste out. I'd rather think about pleasant people who love themselves.
Bill Allin
Turning It Around: Causes and Cures for Today's Epidemic Social Problems, a book about how to give children the knowledge and skills they need so that they don't turn to anti-social activities and behaviour in reaction to their ignorance and unfulfilled needs.
Learn more at http://billallin.com
Sunday, September 16, 2007
Making Your Dreams Into Reality
Please read the signature line at the end of the article about a book you should read and a worldwide plan to make the world a safer and healthier place to live. Learn more about the book and the plan at http://billallin.com
................................................
We must accept finite disappointment, but we must never lose infinite hope.
- Martin Luther King
Mr. King was not just an inspired speaker, he was inspiring in his use of the language. Disappointment we can expect, he said, but we must strive to always have hope.
Hope is one of the most inspiring words we have. It makes people feel good. However, it does very little except that.
When you have hope, you know what you want of life. Even if it seems to be out of reach, you have an objective in mind. That's the first and most important step in any change you can make in your life. You need to know where you want to go, what you want to accomplish, who you want to be before you can put into place any changes that might help you to get there.
Hope alone won't do it. Hope is the end of the line for lazy people and those who are frightened to make changes in their lives.
Hope accomplishes nothing except to give us a temporary boost of dopamine into our brain to make us feel good. Actually implementing the changes necessary to achieve the goals of our hope takes a great deal of commitment, a lot of hard work, determination to get through the rough patches that inevitably arise and persistence in ensuring that we become the person we want to be.
That last part may have surprised you if you expected me to say "where you want to be." The change happens first within your own mind, not where you body is located. You must live the role you want to play in your new life before it becomes a reality.
If you want to live in a better place than you do now, you must prepare. The new location may have no reliable source of income for you (a common characteristic of places that are healthier, friendlier and safer to live). You may have to rethink what you can do to earn a living. That may require new skills, some study at a college, joining some groups of people who have as hobbies what you want to do for a living and getting to know what life is really like where you aspire to live.
There will be sacrifices to make if you want change. You can't expect a new community to bend around you to accommodate someone who doesn't want to learn anything new or to do anything differently.
A change of lifestyle means a change of life. First that means some learning. Then the big decision and the commitment to never look back.
Will you have to sacrifice your family and friends? Maybe. People who moved to the New World in the Americas did that, believing that their new life would offer them more than the one they chose to leave behind. But today the internet and a headset allows you to speak to anyone, almost anywhere on the planet, for nothing or almost nothing, every day if you want. Likely more often than you speak on the phone now to those people.
A web cam lets you transmit pictures of yourself speaking and another allows you to see the person you are speaking to in realtime (as each of you speaks).
If you can get along without the hugs of the people you leave behind, at least for most of the time, you can find a better place where you can have new friends that will hug you even more. And actually care for you. People who will be happy to stop and chat with you on the street, who will help you with a flat tire or to find yourself a dentist.
Does it sound as if I am being very specific about something? That's because my wife and I have just been through this process. In a few months we will activate our plan and move to what we believe is the best possible place in the world for us to live. I have been through the process. I lived the dream. I acted on it to make it happen.
Where will we move? I won't tell you that. It's our dream. Find your own dream and make it happen.
Be prepared to work hard to make it happen. Be prepared to cut a few ties to make even better ones happen.
If you have the hope and the determination, you have the ability within you.
Bill Allin
Turning It Around: Causes and Cures for Today's Epidemic Social Problems, a book about how to make big changes happen by making small manageable changes one at a time. Think big, act on a small scale.
Learn more at http://billallin.com
................................................
We must accept finite disappointment, but we must never lose infinite hope.
- Martin Luther King
Mr. King was not just an inspired speaker, he was inspiring in his use of the language. Disappointment we can expect, he said, but we must strive to always have hope.
Hope is one of the most inspiring words we have. It makes people feel good. However, it does very little except that.
When you have hope, you know what you want of life. Even if it seems to be out of reach, you have an objective in mind. That's the first and most important step in any change you can make in your life. You need to know where you want to go, what you want to accomplish, who you want to be before you can put into place any changes that might help you to get there.
Hope alone won't do it. Hope is the end of the line for lazy people and those who are frightened to make changes in their lives.
Hope accomplishes nothing except to give us a temporary boost of dopamine into our brain to make us feel good. Actually implementing the changes necessary to achieve the goals of our hope takes a great deal of commitment, a lot of hard work, determination to get through the rough patches that inevitably arise and persistence in ensuring that we become the person we want to be.
That last part may have surprised you if you expected me to say "where you want to be." The change happens first within your own mind, not where you body is located. You must live the role you want to play in your new life before it becomes a reality.
If you want to live in a better place than you do now, you must prepare. The new location may have no reliable source of income for you (a common characteristic of places that are healthier, friendlier and safer to live). You may have to rethink what you can do to earn a living. That may require new skills, some study at a college, joining some groups of people who have as hobbies what you want to do for a living and getting to know what life is really like where you aspire to live.
There will be sacrifices to make if you want change. You can't expect a new community to bend around you to accommodate someone who doesn't want to learn anything new or to do anything differently.
A change of lifestyle means a change of life. First that means some learning. Then the big decision and the commitment to never look back.
Will you have to sacrifice your family and friends? Maybe. People who moved to the New World in the Americas did that, believing that their new life would offer them more than the one they chose to leave behind. But today the internet and a headset allows you to speak to anyone, almost anywhere on the planet, for nothing or almost nothing, every day if you want. Likely more often than you speak on the phone now to those people.
A web cam lets you transmit pictures of yourself speaking and another allows you to see the person you are speaking to in realtime (as each of you speaks).
If you can get along without the hugs of the people you leave behind, at least for most of the time, you can find a better place where you can have new friends that will hug you even more. And actually care for you. People who will be happy to stop and chat with you on the street, who will help you with a flat tire or to find yourself a dentist.
Does it sound as if I am being very specific about something? That's because my wife and I have just been through this process. In a few months we will activate our plan and move to what we believe is the best possible place in the world for us to live. I have been through the process. I lived the dream. I acted on it to make it happen.
Where will we move? I won't tell you that. It's our dream. Find your own dream and make it happen.
Be prepared to work hard to make it happen. Be prepared to cut a few ties to make even better ones happen.
If you have the hope and the determination, you have the ability within you.
Bill Allin
Turning It Around: Causes and Cures for Today's Epidemic Social Problems, a book about how to make big changes happen by making small manageable changes one at a time. Think big, act on a small scale.
Learn more at http://billallin.com
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
