Post No. 1,019 -Not the Weekly News

One of the aims I set myself some time ago for this blog was to do a third post each week – a post that wasn’t about news (hence, with apologies all round, the title of this post) or psychic weather. Where possible, I like to do a proper post for each idea, but … that rarely is possible, and so these will often be collections of brief expositions on various matters.

As an example, Thomas L. Friedman, in his recent book “Thank You for Being Late” (pub. Farrar, Straus and Giroux, New York, 2016; ISBN 978-0-374-27353-8; available on Amazon, partially reviewed by me here), cited Intel engineers’ calculation that, if cars were developed the way PCs (well, chips, actually) have been, then we would have Volkswagens that could drive at 500,000 kilometres per hour, need 0.00012 L per 100km, and cost six (Australian) cents (I’ve converted the figures; the imperial units and US costs are in the book, on page 36).

We would also, every few years, wonder what had replaced doors to let us get into the new version of what used to be a car, where the brakes were, and how to use the latest version of what used to be a steering wheel :)

Now for more serious expositions:

• everyone is unique, which may boil down to each person being a unique combination of characteristics, each of which is shared with a different group of people (resulting in us “having something in common” with an extraordinarily wide range of people). A key result of this is that what works for one person, will not necessarily work on others – which is particularly important to remember when proposing actions or measures to deal with problems, including societal issues such as hate, fear and discrimination, or, say, violent crime.
  
  What this boils down to is:
   - what works for us won’t necessarily work us;
   - what other people are advocating may work for them;
   - what other people are advocating probably won’t work on a third group.
  
  When I first started thinking about that, it was in the context of crime – specifically, those who advocate for harsher approaches to crime are perhaps not only doing so out of fear, but also because it is – perhaps unconsciously – a matter is a deterrent to them. In other words, death penalties are advocated by those who fear the death penalty and use that fear to help keep themselves as law abiding citizens.
  
  More importantly, what this means for those who are advocating for a rational approach towards crime (and other issues), such as criminologist, social justice and equity activists, and my currently mythical proposed Chief Criminologist, is, in addition to explaining to such people how “evidence” has been obtained and proving to their satisfaction (not the academics’ satisfaction!) that the evidence is real, reliable, and worth considering, illustrating – in a manner believable to the audience, not the presenter – that other people have different motivations and thought/emotion processes, and thus what is being proposed by the target audience will not affect the issue at hand.
  
  In a sense, “know thy enemy” …
  
  I have touched on these issues in “Sustainable Progressivism”, and “A critique of the reactions to US President Trump's actions”.
• I re-read, some time ago, James Michener’s novel “The Source” (my copy pub. Corgi, London, 1971 ISBN 0 552 08790 4, originally published Random House, 1965), and have to say I found the speculation by archaeologists around how religions started painfully ludicrous – and that woefulness on the part of said archaeologists basically comes down to their inability to accept the reality of psychism – particularly psychism as experienced/used by shamans/shamankas, who were the progenitors of religion.
  For more on this, refer to Victor and Wendy Zammit’s excellent – and logical - book “A Lawyer Presents the Evidence for the Afterlife” (pub. White Crow Books, Guildford [UK], 2013, ISBN 978-1-908733-22-1; available on Amazon, partially reviewed by me here)).
• quite some time ago now, one of the PAN magazines I read had an article about locally-based magic (always a good principle :) ) which included an annual cycle of rituals based, in effect, on agricultural types of connections to the land by a Jane Meredith. These were good – and I see, looking at her website again, that she has a book based on this, as well as an interesting looking book co-written with Gede Parma, but …
   - for a gatherer-hunter society, such as Australia’s indigenous people, rather than a once a year harvest of food there is a continual variety of foods. As I’ve written elsewhere (can’t be bothered trying to find the link), one month will be the equivalent of having aisles 3 and 7 open, whereas the next month it will be aisles 1,2, 4 and 6, perhaps – they were amazed at the sight of the remnants of Burke and Wills party starving to death when there was, to the indigenous people, so much food around them. A significant part of this is plant based – for more on this, see  (I wish such information was available in every area of Australia);
   - the article was, in my opinion, naïve about what motivates people to destroy forests – such destruction (in slash-and-burn cultures) is often a (short-sighted) love of family, including wanting place for one’s kids to live, rather than hate of nature.
  Those two qualifications aside, and apart from this being more Wiccan than my version of Pagan, the approach was good, I have added several of her books above to my “wish list”, and I will continue to read her blog.
• in the excellent TV series Stargate Atlantis (hmm … must re-watch that – again :) ) there a story arc around an enemy alien who is captured and – against his will aka “without his informed consent” – transformed into a human-alien hybrid species.
  It’s a story arc that covers a lot about ethics (with the humans not coming out of it looking particularly good – very paternalistic in an empire-building sense), and – along the lines of the twinned Jack London books ”The Call of the Wild” and “”, is a counterpoint to the story arc of the human Aiden Ford. As such, it could reasonably be considered to be a continuation of the tradition of exploring the notion that we have two natures inside us, and what we become.
  At the time I last viewed this story arc, however, however, there were a few other aspects of this that occurred to me:
   - some lives can feel like the situation “Michael” was in – trapped, and being on against one’s will. As examples, consider being trapped in a job one doesn’t like, or living in a situation that one doesn’t like (e.g., living in the city rather than the country, or vice-versa – or at a latitude where one doesn’t like the weather). In such situations, it is important to find out what is going on within oneself and deal with that compassionately, effectively, and realistically (the reality of life is often that, for financial reasons or the obligation of caring for dependents), lest one manifest the parts of oneself that one is working at transforming … ;
   - is this similar to the experience of those who have left the military without any deconditioning, as is the case of most ex-military people I know, some of whom clearly are suffering;
   - what is one’s innermost, truest self? In my opinion, it is our Higher Self – a lot of what is being dealt with is partly scarring from life and mistakes we’ve made, partly the trauma of learning – or, for the recalcitrant majority of us (including me :) ), being forced to learn.
• All those people who enthusiastically promote anything which will remove jobs – even if the jobs are considered undesirable (e.g., “menial” [physical labour can be good], or low class, “intellectually too simple” [I’ve rephrased that to be nice – and such attitudes WILFULLY IGNORE the fact that we are all abled in different ways – e.g., some are more physical or emotional than intellectual, and that IS PERFECTLY OK]) – without adequate consideration of the social and human costs is an UNETHICAL, IRRESPONSIBLE IDIOT.

Now, here are a few general reading links for your interest.

• a video about starting to work for the Morrigan and more with Nature, which is consistent with this John Beckett article;
• another interesting John Beckett article on – amongst other things – being careful not to feed a dying inner remnant of fundamentalism;
• with profound apologies for using a social media link, an article on “generous leadership”;
• with profound apologies for providing a social media links, an interesting article on Emotional Intelligence;
• some criticisms of recent management fads: “Agile”, and “Scrum”.

I apologise for publishing these posts twice, but Blogger keeps changing my formatting. I can either publish it and then correct it, or save and close the post and correct it when I reopen it, but that leaves an extra copy in my "drafts" folder ...

Love, light, hugs and blessings

Gnwmythr
(pronounced "new-MYTH-ear") 
Pagan Energy Worker, Wéofodthegn, Bellatrix Lux, Venatrix Maga, would-be Drýicgan. 

I am revamping my former website, and getting at least one other underway.

My "blogiography" (list of all posts and guide as to how to best use this site) is here, and my glossary/index is here.

I started this blog to cover karmic regression-rescue (see here and here), and it grew ... See here for my group mind project, here and here for my "Pagans for Peace" project (and join me for a few minutes at some time between 8 and 11 PM on Sunday, wherever you are, to meditate-clear for peace), and here for my bindrune kit-bag. I also strongly recommend learning how to flame, ground and shield, do alternate nostril breathing, work with colour, and see also here and be flexible. 

May the best in me, my Higher Self,
and those of the Clear Light who assist me,
help me to keep myself grounded, centred and shielded,
to be Balanced and a Fulcrum of Balance,
a centre of Balanced Positivity and Spiritual Maturity,
with my aura continuously cleansed, cleared and closed,
repelling all negative or unwanted energies,
whilst allowing positive, balancing and healing energies in and through.

The real dividing line is not between Christianity and Islam, Sunni and Shia, East and West. It is between people who believe in coexistence, and those who don’t.

Tom Fletcher, Former UK Ambassador to Lebanon

• All of the above - and this blog - could be wrong, or subject to context, perspective, or state of spiritual evolution ...

Tags: change, empathy, growth, Higher Self, inner conflict, rituals, society, technology, understanding, 

First published: Fryrsdagr, 28^th April, 2017

Last edited (excluding fixing typo's, Blogger's change of my formatting and other minor matters): Friday, 28^th April, 2017