"During a 300-year period between 3-5 million women were tortured and killed by the 'Holy Inquisition," an institution founded by the Roman Catholic Church to suppress heresy. This surely ranks together with the Holocaust as one of the darkest chapters in human history. The sacred feminine was declared demonic, and an entire dimension largely disappeared from human experience. Other cultures and religions such as Judaism, Islam, and even Buddhism also suppressed the female dimension, although in a less violent way. Women's status was reduced to child-bearers and men's property. Males who denied the feminine even within themselves were now running the world, a world that was totally out of balance. The rest is history or rather a case history of insanity." E. Tolle A New Earth
One of the first recorded genocide was a gender-cide.. women.
Now, I think it's safe to say that this is not news to many of you, but I just posted a reply to Law about honor killing and used some stats about violence against women in the US... and I got to thinking about the women in Africa, Darfur and Somalia.. as rape was used as a weapon against those 'not of the right tribe'...
Have we progressed? Healed this imbalance in any apparent way?
Eckhart also states:" The sacred feminine, because it is suppressed, is felt by many women as emotional pain."
Do you agree with this.. not?
If it's an imbalance then it should be on some level a shared imbalance in both men and women.. right?
Got any thoughts on all of this?
One caveat: I'm not really interested in a feminist political response.. but a deeper discussion.. (as usual)..
Apparently, Jesse Jackson disliked some comments that Obama made about the fathers of the children of single mothers. Jackson took the Obama comments as being "talking down to black people". You can see the comments Jackson made here.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=quch7x3R6gw
Is Jesse being over sensitive to the remarks Obama made and which triggered Jackson's comments?
Apparently at some point Jesse also made comments about Obama which involved the word "nigger", but I don't think that Fox News has released that segment of the recording yet. If he did say that, then Jackson is also a hypocrite of the first degree.
It would be very interesting to see the full recording, in order to see the remarks and words used in the correct context without any extra editing by Fox News.
Well, despite the bland and empty assurances of the Islamic apologists who frequent the site, we are about to be treated to yet another spectacle in Iran.
Nine Iranians have been sentenced to death by stoning for the alleged offense of adultery. The eight women and one man were convicted in cities throughout Iran by different judges. The disproportionate number of women faces death is revealing. Ater all, if one has enough "evidence" to sentence the female half of the adulterous pair to death then one must necessarily have enough evidence to so sentence the male half. Apparently, there is an extra burden of proof if one desires to convict a male adulterer under Sharia law.
Where is Hureea with his assurances that a death sentence for adultery is practically impossible? That it requires multiple witnesses to the act of penetration? According to Shadi Sadr, a human rights lawyer in Iran, six of those convicted were convicted solely on the basis of alleged confessions given to the judge...confessions obtained without witnesses or lawyers present. No witnesses, let alone four witnesses, testified in their cases.
Last week, two women were "executed" in Afghanistan by Taliban "authorities" for the alleged offense of pandering for the Coalition Forces. Of course, they were not stoned to death. The Taliban, captured on film by a reporter at the scene, shot the women. One was shot multiple times in the back as she knelt among her killers. The other was shot multiple times in the head as she too knelt among her killers. I suspect we will not be afforded the opportunity to examne the "evidence" against these two women but I am pretty sure it did not consist of multiple independent witnesses who observed any overt act.
Eleven people, convicted under Sharia law and killed or awaiting death...deaths Hureaa et al assure us will never happen due to the generous legal protections Sharia affords. One wonders how long after Sharia comes to America or Britian, as some authorities suggest should be allowed to happen, we will see Muslim communities murdering their members...
In the thread “The Difference Between the Creator and God’ I asked a question that Myrrdin and Aus22 thought was deserving of its own thread. The context was a statement that scientists do not have the answers needed to meet “Man’s spiritual needs.”
So here is the question:
What does the term “Man’s spiritual needs” mean, anyway?
Don’t expect any hints from me, since the phrase completely baffles me; but I do hear it bandied about and there is a (figurative) nodding of heads that would indicate some common understanding.
I do have one request. Try to make your answers understandable to those of us that do not consider any book to be divinely inspired or to contain the unassailable words of a prophet, etc. The phrase seems to be speaking of a universal need by all men (and women, of course) for something vaguely called spiritual.
A British newspaper reports that the Bush administration will announce plans to establish a diplomatic presence in Tehran for the first time in 30 years. There's no confirmation from the White House, but last week a senior U.S. diplomat William Burns told Congress the United States was looking to opening up an interest section in the Iranian capital.
I wonder what would happen if the staff of that US office in Teheran were to be taken hostage ? (This administration has certainly helped me "hone" the cynical part of me..)
from the Associated Press -- http://tinyurl.com/6hok5a NAQOURA, Lebanon — Israel freed a notorious Lebanese attacker and four others Wednesday after Hezbollah handed over two black coffins with the bodies of Israeli soldiers, a dramatic prisoner swap that closes a painful chapter from the 2006 war in Lebanon.
What I want to know is who invented that urban legend about how Jews are supposed to be such savvy businessmen? Hmmm? Because how many times in the past have we seen a similar story about how the Israelis make a "prisoner" exchange where they trade living terrorists for dead Israeli bodies? What kind of a deal is that?
A while ago, I was in the Biography section of the library when I came across a biography of Mary Wollestonecraft that had been written by an old professor of mine, Ralph Wardell. Dr. Wardell taught Shakespeare and would bring out his hand-built replica of the Globe Theatre as it was in Shakespeare's time--very much like the one depicted in Shakespeare In Love--or the Grand Guignol! It's been moved from its origina location since.
It got me thinking about my 'school days,' and the professors I had loved. I knew most of them were buried but I wondered about some of them. So I accessed the site for the university and found one emiritus. I'd taken every class he'd offered in both under-grad and graduate school--and he was alive! It took me a long time, but I finally decided to e-mail him through the Chair of the English Dept.
He remembered me, favorably--after 30+ years! I was both stunned and gratified and hope to be able to continue this connection to my past which I've never had.
I say I never had a 'connection' because every move in my Army Brat's life has been a new chapter. The pages on the previous chapters close.
I'm trying to burn a video on a DVD and I always get the message "The disc is not supported". I'm using Intervideo WinDVD creator and it always worked. I used that kind of DVD brand before and never had any problems. So I thought it was the program and downloaded another one. But the other one tells me that there is no disc in the drive.
What is going on? Why can I burn music discs but no DVD discs?
A grave insult has been heaped on Obama and his family, AND indeed on all fair minded Americans with their latest cover for their magazine depicting the Obamas as terrorist Muslims.
Satire and sarcasm ONLY works on the un-biased mind...and we all should know that a good third of our country is stuck on the stupidity and ignorance of racism, jingoism and fear of any change.
Although the New Yorker's article is reported to go on and renounce a faulty stereotype associated with the Obamas, they should know that to that 1/3 of Americans who seldom read, a cover's picture is the only message that will be embedded in their ignorant brains.
I play the Internet fantasy game Runescape. It is a inferior version of 'WOW', or so I've heard. The problem that has occurred to me with any online game is that you get a lot of kids playing. The whining is exasperating, the Spam that runs across the chat screen is also vexing and sometimes I can't help but stop playing after an hour because I want to pull my hair out.
You do have different options, such as turning off the public chat at which point you get muted or banned for 24 hours because the game system 'thinks' you're a bot. Then you are investigated like a common criminal, they ask you a million and one questions. And if anything has changed from when you first registered your account it will result in another 24 hour ban before they can approve you to play again.
I quite enjoy playing the game and have worked hard to keep my character skills up and don't want to give it up all together. My question is however is 'WOW' the same as Runescape? Do you have young kids following you telling you 'you're hot, need a boyfriend'? Of course that is not the only questions they ask, and they seem to find their way around the 'word filters' too, if you know what I mean.
I have embedded a YouTube video in this post that I'd like to chat about. Some of you might find it funny, some might find it horrifying, some, disgusting. It depends on who you are.
This video is composed of a montage of many "blooper" style clips in which people get hurt, sometimes terribly hurt, mostly while trying to amuse themselves in risky ways. There are car accidents, skateboard accidents, gymnastic falls, wild animal stunts gone wrong, bike and cycle crashes, skiing accidents... and so forth, you get the picture. I lost count of all the broken necks and smashed faces. There's a few testicle-mashings thrown in for comedy, too.
The video is of poor quality, so you won't see any graphic splashes of blood or bones sticking out of flesh, but that's the undoubted result of many of these "bloopers". Some of them look serious enough to have result in death, if not serious and permanent maiming.
Why have I posted this here? Well, the people who put it together seemed to think it was funny to see all of these people getting hurt. I guess if none of them are your friends or loved ones, it might be, I don't know. But I was fascinated by two things... the nature of why we are willing and able to laugh at such things (the horrible pain and maiming of others) and see it as funny, and why we pursue such risky and witless entertainments in the first place.
Do we laugh because the bad things aren't happening to *us*, and we think we could have handled things better? Is there laughter because we somehow think these people deserved what they got, a la Darwin's Awards?
Do we engage in idiotic dangerous games and hobbies because we have over-civilized ourselves and we need to turn to these pursuits to re-adrenalize ourselves to replace the excitement of being chased by leopards and such?
I debated with myself whether to post this here or in the Interfaith forum, and decided to come here, because I didn't really want a faith-based discussion of the issue, I want to explore the psychology of idiocy, rather than the morality of idiocy.
Warning: Please do not watch this video if you are offended by clips of people getting hurt.
