Saturday, February 26, 2005
Hope for supertasters
According to an article called "The Biology of . . . Bitterness" in the March 2005 issue of Discover magazine, there's new research going on that might lead to a whole new world for supertasters, people who, like me, "have an unusually high number of taste buds. Supertasters tend to shun all kinds of bitter-tasting things, including vegetables, coffee, and dark chocolate"... in other words, many, and sometimes MOST, foods taste bad to us.
An exciting result of the new research into taste is that they've found "adenosine monophosphate, or AMP, a compound that blocks the bitterness in foods without making them less nutritious." Scientists first figured out how taste works (yes, this was news to them, believe it or not), and then:
"Once they figured out the taste mechanism, scientists began to think of ways to interfere with it. They tried AMP, an organic compound found in breast milk and other substances, that is created as cells break down food. AMP has no bitterness of its own, but when put in foods, Margolskee and his colleagues discovered, it attaches to bitter-taste receptors. As effective as it is, AMP may not be able to dampen every type of bitter taste, because it probably doesn't attach to all 30 bitter-taste receptors. So Linguagen has scaled up the hunt for other bitter blockers with a technology called high-throughput screening. Researchers start by coaxing cells in culture to activate bitter-taste receptors. Then candidate substances, culled from chemical compound libraries, are dropped onto the receptors, and scientists look for evidence of a reaction.
In time, some taste researchers believe, compounds like AMP will help make processed foods less unhealthy. Consider, for example, that a single cup of Campbell's chicken noodle soup contains 850 milligrams of sodium chloride, or table salt-more than a third of the recommended daily allowance. The salt masks the bitterness created by the high temperatures used in the canning process, which cause sugars and amino acids to react. Part of the salt could be replaced by another salt, potassium chloride, which tends to be scarce in some people's diets. Potassium chloride has a bitter aftertaste, but that could be eliminated with a dose of AMP. Bitter blockers could also be used in place of cherry or grape flavoring to take the harshness out of children's cough syrup, and they could dampen the bitterness of antihistamines, antibiotics, certain HIV drugs, and other medications."
Speaking as a supertaster, who can't eat most foods, can't eat in most restaurants, and has to worry about every party and get-together with friends because there usually won't be anything I can eat, the very thought that they could come up with something that would make normal foods taste, well, NORMAL rather than awful, is... is... there just aren't any words for the degree of improvement this would make in my life.
Beyond the improvement for supertasters, and the other benefits the article mentions, is one far bigger than all the others; most healthy, low-calorie foods taste at least somewhat bad to EVERYONE, which is why we as a culture don't eat them, or only eat them with so much sauce, cheese or dressing that they're no longer healthy or lo-cal... but, imagine if suddenly things like broccoli and spinach tasted GOOD!! Imagine how much easier it would be for us to diet, to keep a healthy weight, to get enough of the full range of nutrients, fiber, and health-enhancing chemicals, and to keep our fat and salt consumption at proper levels, if a "good diet" didn't taste BAD, making us crave ice cream and cake and other diet-busters. The horrible American diet is responsible for endless health problems, and nothing they've tried so far has changed that... but this might be, at long last, the magic bullet we so desperately need.
An exciting result of the new research into taste is that they've found "adenosine monophosphate, or AMP, a compound that blocks the bitterness in foods without making them less nutritious." Scientists first figured out how taste works (yes, this was news to them, believe it or not), and then:
"Once they figured out the taste mechanism, scientists began to think of ways to interfere with it. They tried AMP, an organic compound found in breast milk and other substances, that is created as cells break down food. AMP has no bitterness of its own, but when put in foods, Margolskee and his colleagues discovered, it attaches to bitter-taste receptors. As effective as it is, AMP may not be able to dampen every type of bitter taste, because it probably doesn't attach to all 30 bitter-taste receptors. So Linguagen has scaled up the hunt for other bitter blockers with a technology called high-throughput screening. Researchers start by coaxing cells in culture to activate bitter-taste receptors. Then candidate substances, culled from chemical compound libraries, are dropped onto the receptors, and scientists look for evidence of a reaction.
In time, some taste researchers believe, compounds like AMP will help make processed foods less unhealthy. Consider, for example, that a single cup of Campbell's chicken noodle soup contains 850 milligrams of sodium chloride, or table salt-more than a third of the recommended daily allowance. The salt masks the bitterness created by the high temperatures used in the canning process, which cause sugars and amino acids to react. Part of the salt could be replaced by another salt, potassium chloride, which tends to be scarce in some people's diets. Potassium chloride has a bitter aftertaste, but that could be eliminated with a dose of AMP. Bitter blockers could also be used in place of cherry or grape flavoring to take the harshness out of children's cough syrup, and they could dampen the bitterness of antihistamines, antibiotics, certain HIV drugs, and other medications."
Speaking as a supertaster, who can't eat most foods, can't eat in most restaurants, and has to worry about every party and get-together with friends because there usually won't be anything I can eat, the very thought that they could come up with something that would make normal foods taste, well, NORMAL rather than awful, is... is... there just aren't any words for the degree of improvement this would make in my life.
Beyond the improvement for supertasters, and the other benefits the article mentions, is one far bigger than all the others; most healthy, low-calorie foods taste at least somewhat bad to EVERYONE, which is why we as a culture don't eat them, or only eat them with so much sauce, cheese or dressing that they're no longer healthy or lo-cal... but, imagine if suddenly things like broccoli and spinach tasted GOOD!! Imagine how much easier it would be for us to diet, to keep a healthy weight, to get enough of the full range of nutrients, fiber, and health-enhancing chemicals, and to keep our fat and salt consumption at proper levels, if a "good diet" didn't taste BAD, making us crave ice cream and cake and other diet-busters. The horrible American diet is responsible for endless health problems, and nothing they've tried so far has changed that... but this might be, at long last, the magic bullet we so desperately need.
Friday, February 25, 2005
Do "cultural rituals" make things happen?
You've seen it a million times; an educational program showing so-called "primitive" peoples, and often other non-white peoples, performing rituals that those of their culture believe will bring rain, or good crops, or some other major benefit. Now be honest; has it even ONCE occurred to you that maybe they ARE making something happen? I don't mean the psychological benefits of feeling like they've taken control over the scary forces of nature, and of enhanced community spirit, I mean has it ever occurred to you that they're actually altering reality by their actions?
Sadly, we're taught an arrogant and condescending attitude towards those who have spiritual beliefs and practices too far removed from the sitting in a house of worship, being preached to, and reading of holy books that WE engage in; we act as if anything done in tribal or "exotic" cultures MUST be foolish, ignorant and wrong, as if all of those people are morons with no ability to see what's going on around them, no ability to link cause and effect, or notice the lack thereof... as if the entire focus of their very spiritual lives is totally off base. I maintain that it's just not POSSIBLE for all of these cultures that all developed similar methods of trying to affect change are just coincidentally crazy or stupid in the same way; if they've been doing a certain thing for hundreds of years, there MUST be something to it... or else why would they have stuck with it?
I was watching the National Geographic channel today (had you guessed?), and one of the programs was showing the violent ways that some cultures use to persuade ancestral spirits or deities of various kinds to give them good crops, healthy livestock, and so forth, and it came to me; here are large groups of people, involved in rituals that make them think about the desired outcome over and over again, with intense focus and emotion, with spiritual fervor, with total belief that greater powers will respond with what they're asking for, all magnified by risk, pain, blood, and the shared frenzy... and, given what I know about the power of these things even in individual people, how could they NOT be accomplishing SOMETHING with all the power they're putting out? When members of these cultural groups are interviewed, they always say that their rituals generally bring about the desired results, such that it objectively looks like they ARE making things happen pretty consistently, but we immediately discount their claims as endless coincidence, or distortions of the truth, or wishful thinking... but by what authority, and with what PROOF, do we do so? Just because their skins are brown and not white, they wear traditional clothing rather than suits and ties, and they don't have MP3 players and SUV's, does that give us the right to treat their descriptions of their spiritual experiences, and the real-world results thereof, as if they were children prattling about their imaginary friends? Why do we refuse to accept that they're telling the simple truth, and thus that maybe the things they do WORK, if not all the time, at least as often as, say, the medical science we believe so strongly in works; having power/ability doesn't mean always having ENOUGH power/ability to achieve every goal, and, in the same way that we don't discount medical science because they can't cure everyone every time, we shouldn't discount the possible effectiveness of cultural rituals because THEY don't work 100% of the time... what we SHOULD be doing is studying and learning from these things, instead of turning up our noses and dismissing them.
What are we afraid of?
Sadly, we're taught an arrogant and condescending attitude towards those who have spiritual beliefs and practices too far removed from the sitting in a house of worship, being preached to, and reading of holy books that WE engage in; we act as if anything done in tribal or "exotic" cultures MUST be foolish, ignorant and wrong, as if all of those people are morons with no ability to see what's going on around them, no ability to link cause and effect, or notice the lack thereof... as if the entire focus of their very spiritual lives is totally off base. I maintain that it's just not POSSIBLE for all of these cultures that all developed similar methods of trying to affect change are just coincidentally crazy or stupid in the same way; if they've been doing a certain thing for hundreds of years, there MUST be something to it... or else why would they have stuck with it?
I was watching the National Geographic channel today (had you guessed?), and one of the programs was showing the violent ways that some cultures use to persuade ancestral spirits or deities of various kinds to give them good crops, healthy livestock, and so forth, and it came to me; here are large groups of people, involved in rituals that make them think about the desired outcome over and over again, with intense focus and emotion, with spiritual fervor, with total belief that greater powers will respond with what they're asking for, all magnified by risk, pain, blood, and the shared frenzy... and, given what I know about the power of these things even in individual people, how could they NOT be accomplishing SOMETHING with all the power they're putting out? When members of these cultural groups are interviewed, they always say that their rituals generally bring about the desired results, such that it objectively looks like they ARE making things happen pretty consistently, but we immediately discount their claims as endless coincidence, or distortions of the truth, or wishful thinking... but by what authority, and with what PROOF, do we do so? Just because their skins are brown and not white, they wear traditional clothing rather than suits and ties, and they don't have MP3 players and SUV's, does that give us the right to treat their descriptions of their spiritual experiences, and the real-world results thereof, as if they were children prattling about their imaginary friends? Why do we refuse to accept that they're telling the simple truth, and thus that maybe the things they do WORK, if not all the time, at least as often as, say, the medical science we believe so strongly in works; having power/ability doesn't mean always having ENOUGH power/ability to achieve every goal, and, in the same way that we don't discount medical science because they can't cure everyone every time, we shouldn't discount the possible effectiveness of cultural rituals because THEY don't work 100% of the time... what we SHOULD be doing is studying and learning from these things, instead of turning up our noses and dismissing them.
What are we afraid of?
Thursday, February 24, 2005
When is it lying?
Most people's first answer to that question is; when you say something that isn't true, of course. But wait... that would mean that writing a story or even telling a joke was lying, and in fact some of the more strenuous religious denominations believe that that sort of thing IS lying. Technically, they DO have a case, but we as a culture make an exception for things like joke- and story-telling, because no one thinks that they're being told "the truth" when they hear a joke or story, nor does the teller expect them to, and thus there's no attempt to actually deceive involved.
Another exception is the so-called "white lie"; when we tell a woman that her ugly baby is beautiful, or tell someone who's too boring for us to date that we're seeing someone even though we're not, this IS, once again, technically a lie, but because telling the truth in these cases would be cruel and hurt people's feelings, we see telling a lie as the lesser evil, and therefore not REALLY lying because it's meant to do good rather than to deceive per se... and there's that gray area provided by the goal not being to deceive again.
So, we could say that if we tell an untruth with the goal of deceiving someone, THAT is a lie... but, what about OTHER ways we try to deceive, often done specifically to avoid technically lying? Are not those things just as bad, morally speaking, since intention is so important? More to the point, do they count as lying, since the result is to make someone believe other than the truth? Some people take a hard line and say that if an actual untruth wasn't told, it's NOT a lie; you need to be VERY afraid of most of these people, because they're just the ones who'll try to deceive you, and/or aren't capable of seeing all sides of a topic... I don't know which is worse, frankly.
I saw a classic example of a maybe-lie in a commercial, noncoincidentally right before I started this post; the husband tells the wife that he "didn't have one piece of cake" that evening... and then we see a "flashback" of him eating TWO pieces of cake. The deception here is that what someone would normally mean by what he said is that they "didn't EVEN have" one piece, which means they had NONE, but by changing the phrase a little, he allows his wife to still get that idea without actually saying it, and thus without lying... or WAS that a lie, since he deliberately gave her the wrong idea with the intent to deceive her?
What about partial truths? For example; your sister is supposed to be dieting, and, when you ask her what she ate for dinner, she tells you she had salad and a chicken breast... and doesn't mention the rest of the chicken, mashed potatoes, gravy, rolls, butter, and half a pie with ice cream. This one is sort of an indirect lie, since it gives the impression that the facts that have been given are ALL the facts when of course they're not; would you count it as lying, though?
Some folks who are skillful enough deceivers can tell the actual truth, but in such a way that you believe it to be an UNtruth, and are therefore deceived; for example, if a woman asks her man if he was ogling the woman who just jiggled by, he'd roll his eyes and say in a sarcastic and contemptuous tone, "Oh yeah, *I* ogled THAT woman," which is of course the truth, but makes it sound like the woman was beneath his notice, and so of course he did NOT ogle... is THAT a lie?
Then, there's the slipperiest one of all, the "lie of omission"; you do something that you know perfectly well that you SHOULD tell your parents, spouse, etc about, but when asked general questions about your activities, you talk around the potentially upsetting one, and tell yourself you haven't actually lied, even though you've deceived someone deliberately, because you didn't say ANYTHING on the subject. Because most people have at least a FEW secrets, there's a strong bias towards NOT labeling this one as a lie.
MY take on all of this is from a form vs substance angle; the substance is whether or not a person attempted to deceive, and I don't much care what form it takes... if the end result is that a person believes that something other than the truth IS the truth due to someone's desire to deceive them, then a lie has been told. *I* don't lie, and I have no patience whatsoever with being lied TO; if a person just shrugs at the lies of others, or makes excuses for them, it's all too easy for them to justify doing it themselves, so I HAVE to take a hard line here to preserve my own honesty... and, because it gives me the added benefit of sorting out the honest from the dishonest when I proclaim my position and see who agrees and who argues.
I took a break and asked my husband about the 4 cases of "lies without explicit untruths being told," and his analysis was that all 4 counted as lies; what a relief!! :-)
Another exception is the so-called "white lie"; when we tell a woman that her ugly baby is beautiful, or tell someone who's too boring for us to date that we're seeing someone even though we're not, this IS, once again, technically a lie, but because telling the truth in these cases would be cruel and hurt people's feelings, we see telling a lie as the lesser evil, and therefore not REALLY lying because it's meant to do good rather than to deceive per se... and there's that gray area provided by the goal not being to deceive again.
So, we could say that if we tell an untruth with the goal of deceiving someone, THAT is a lie... but, what about OTHER ways we try to deceive, often done specifically to avoid technically lying? Are not those things just as bad, morally speaking, since intention is so important? More to the point, do they count as lying, since the result is to make someone believe other than the truth? Some people take a hard line and say that if an actual untruth wasn't told, it's NOT a lie; you need to be VERY afraid of most of these people, because they're just the ones who'll try to deceive you, and/or aren't capable of seeing all sides of a topic... I don't know which is worse, frankly.
I saw a classic example of a maybe-lie in a commercial, noncoincidentally right before I started this post; the husband tells the wife that he "didn't have one piece of cake" that evening... and then we see a "flashback" of him eating TWO pieces of cake. The deception here is that what someone would normally mean by what he said is that they "didn't EVEN have" one piece, which means they had NONE, but by changing the phrase a little, he allows his wife to still get that idea without actually saying it, and thus without lying... or WAS that a lie, since he deliberately gave her the wrong idea with the intent to deceive her?
What about partial truths? For example; your sister is supposed to be dieting, and, when you ask her what she ate for dinner, she tells you she had salad and a chicken breast... and doesn't mention the rest of the chicken, mashed potatoes, gravy, rolls, butter, and half a pie with ice cream. This one is sort of an indirect lie, since it gives the impression that the facts that have been given are ALL the facts when of course they're not; would you count it as lying, though?
Some folks who are skillful enough deceivers can tell the actual truth, but in such a way that you believe it to be an UNtruth, and are therefore deceived; for example, if a woman asks her man if he was ogling the woman who just jiggled by, he'd roll his eyes and say in a sarcastic and contemptuous tone, "Oh yeah, *I* ogled THAT woman," which is of course the truth, but makes it sound like the woman was beneath his notice, and so of course he did NOT ogle... is THAT a lie?
Then, there's the slipperiest one of all, the "lie of omission"; you do something that you know perfectly well that you SHOULD tell your parents, spouse, etc about, but when asked general questions about your activities, you talk around the potentially upsetting one, and tell yourself you haven't actually lied, even though you've deceived someone deliberately, because you didn't say ANYTHING on the subject. Because most people have at least a FEW secrets, there's a strong bias towards NOT labeling this one as a lie.
MY take on all of this is from a form vs substance angle; the substance is whether or not a person attempted to deceive, and I don't much care what form it takes... if the end result is that a person believes that something other than the truth IS the truth due to someone's desire to deceive them, then a lie has been told. *I* don't lie, and I have no patience whatsoever with being lied TO; if a person just shrugs at the lies of others, or makes excuses for them, it's all too easy for them to justify doing it themselves, so I HAVE to take a hard line here to preserve my own honesty... and, because it gives me the added benefit of sorting out the honest from the dishonest when I proclaim my position and see who agrees and who argues.
I took a break and asked my husband about the 4 cases of "lies without explicit untruths being told," and his analysis was that all 4 counted as lies; what a relief!! :-)
Wednesday, February 23, 2005
Beware the power of your thoughts
I've written many times about how thinking about something, especially repeatedly and/or with emotion, can draw it into your life, and also about how by the process of affirmations (1st described in my post of 1-12-04) you can create certain events that are beyond your direct ability to influence; there's a subtle but powerful point about all of this, though, that I hadn't considered until I read a post on my buddy Andy's insightful blog
http://goddessofmanynames.blogspot.com/2005/02/magick.html
the crucial insight in which was:
"I have read that the first rule of magick is invoke often and that alone is a powerful mantra. The more you invite something into your life, the more it will manifest itself. Invite love into your life and watch as family and friends fill your life with love. Invite fear into your life and experience how fear will begin to color everything you do.
Banish often is the other big one. Many practicioners don't understand this. If they want to banish, say junk food, and they chant and pray that junk food leave their lives, they are not banishing junk food, they are invoking it. The more they mention and focus on junk food, the more power they give it. Instead, invoke healthy food and remove from your life the things that bring contact with and thoughts of junk food. The less you think about it the less it will bother you. It really is that simple."
I don't know much about magick, but the idea of being able to alter reality with chants and prayers and such is conceptually the same as what can be done via affirmations, visualization and other manipulations of karma; it's different words and procedures for the same actions... actions that we do somewhat blindly, because we're dealing with forces we can't perceive directly, and that blindness means that we should REALLY think through how we try to affect change. Now that I've read about it, I must agree completely that focusing on something, even if your intention is to "banish" it, CAN draw it to you instead if, for example, your emotional focus is on the undesirable thing and not the action(s) you want taken (as emotions supercharge your efforts), or if, as Andy says, including the undesirable thing in your thoughts makes you obsess about it. Although I think it IS possible to, for example, get someone out of your life by focusing on them via affirmations, etc (as I've done that), I think that process is FAR more fraught with peril than I'd ever considered, because it WOULD be all too easy to slip up and have it backfire; therefore, one of my rules for this sort of thing from now on will be to try and find a way to "ask for change" that does NOT focus on what I want gone, but on what I want to come to me, as in the "think about healthy foods coming in, not about junk food going out" example.
In a different post
http://goddessofmanynames.blogspot.com/2005/02/warmth.html
Andy said:
"I'm pretty sure that you have to find a point of willingness to try to do things in such a way that you are not harming others before Divinity enters your life. It's kind of like having a trial version of software on your computer; plug in the password (in this case willingness) and boom, there is the Divine. "
That sure sounds conceptually similar to what I've posted recently about sending out the right sort of energy (created by doing good things for others) and getting the use of power beyond what humans can normally access in return, doesn't it?
Clearly, I'm going to have to delve into Wicca MUCH more deeply; I'm not willing to believe in a Goddess any more than I am to believe in God without proof (nor do I DISbelieve without proof, of course), but the Wiccans seem to have some understanding of how the engine of karma works, and probably have a few things figured out that I haven't gotten to yet... and I'm eager to check out a few more parts of "the elephant."
http://goddessofmanynames.blogspot.com/2005/02/magick.html
the crucial insight in which was:
"I have read that the first rule of magick is invoke often and that alone is a powerful mantra. The more you invite something into your life, the more it will manifest itself. Invite love into your life and watch as family and friends fill your life with love. Invite fear into your life and experience how fear will begin to color everything you do.
Banish often is the other big one. Many practicioners don't understand this. If they want to banish, say junk food, and they chant and pray that junk food leave their lives, they are not banishing junk food, they are invoking it. The more they mention and focus on junk food, the more power they give it. Instead, invoke healthy food and remove from your life the things that bring contact with and thoughts of junk food. The less you think about it the less it will bother you. It really is that simple."
I don't know much about magick, but the idea of being able to alter reality with chants and prayers and such is conceptually the same as what can be done via affirmations, visualization and other manipulations of karma; it's different words and procedures for the same actions... actions that we do somewhat blindly, because we're dealing with forces we can't perceive directly, and that blindness means that we should REALLY think through how we try to affect change. Now that I've read about it, I must agree completely that focusing on something, even if your intention is to "banish" it, CAN draw it to you instead if, for example, your emotional focus is on the undesirable thing and not the action(s) you want taken (as emotions supercharge your efforts), or if, as Andy says, including the undesirable thing in your thoughts makes you obsess about it. Although I think it IS possible to, for example, get someone out of your life by focusing on them via affirmations, etc (as I've done that), I think that process is FAR more fraught with peril than I'd ever considered, because it WOULD be all too easy to slip up and have it backfire; therefore, one of my rules for this sort of thing from now on will be to try and find a way to "ask for change" that does NOT focus on what I want gone, but on what I want to come to me, as in the "think about healthy foods coming in, not about junk food going out" example.
In a different post
http://goddessofmanynames.blogspot.com/2005/02/warmth.html
Andy said:
"I'm pretty sure that you have to find a point of willingness to try to do things in such a way that you are not harming others before Divinity enters your life. It's kind of like having a trial version of software on your computer; plug in the password (in this case willingness) and boom, there is the Divine. "
That sure sounds conceptually similar to what I've posted recently about sending out the right sort of energy (created by doing good things for others) and getting the use of power beyond what humans can normally access in return, doesn't it?
Clearly, I'm going to have to delve into Wicca MUCH more deeply; I'm not willing to believe in a Goddess any more than I am to believe in God without proof (nor do I DISbelieve without proof, of course), but the Wiccans seem to have some understanding of how the engine of karma works, and probably have a few things figured out that I haven't gotten to yet... and I'm eager to check out a few more parts of "the elephant."
Tuesday, February 22, 2005
"Presidents' Day"
(Why the quotes? Technically, "Presidents' Day" is actually "Washington's Birthday," and thus is NOT officially a celebration of Lincoln's and Washington's birthdays, but ONLY of Washington's:
http://www.infoplease.com/spot/washington1.html
As much as I've always idolized Lincoln, we're all taught a great deal about him and what he did, but almost nothing about what made Washington great, so today's post is dedicated to Washington only.)
Does anyone think anything about this day except happiness to have a 3-day weekend if you've got it off, and dismay if you don't? Probably not, but we SHOULD, so let's take a moment to remember the great man that this day commemorates:
Washington was a stunningly successful general, especially given the horrendous odds he'd been up against, and played a pivotal role in getting the Constitution adopted, so it's no surprise that he was wildly popular, or that everyone wanted him to run our new nation; what might surprise you, though, is that there were those who wanted him to be KING, and had he gone along with the idea he could more than likely have sailed into the position unopposed... and we'd have a monarchy instead of a gov't based on the people. Luckily for us, Washington was every bit as great of a man as we were brought up to believe, and so:
"At the conclusion of the Revolution, George Washington occupied a position of unchallenged authority in the 13 former Colonies, and there was strong sentiment in the Continental Army for crowning him king. Washington was appalled by the idea and angrily rejected it when it was broached to him by Col. Lewis Nicola, a Frenchman who had served under Washington and is reported to have had a great deal of influence with the officers in the Continental Army.
"Let me conjure you then," Washington admonished Nicola, "if you have any regard for your country, concern for yourself or for posterity, or respect for me, to banish these thoughts from your mind and never communicate, as from yourself or any one else, a sentiment of like nature."
http://gwpapers.virginia.edu/project/news/washington/roberts.html
Be honest with yourself; if YOU were offered a kingship/queenship, wouldn't YOU probably take it, especially if you'd put in the years of service and sacrifice that Washington did for America?
Washington is one of the main reasons we won our independence; our Declaration was bold and brilliant, but without Washington running the army it would have been meaningless. He came out of retirement to preside over the Constitutional Convention. He served 2 terms as president although he REALLY didn't want to serve that 2nd term; he died a mere 3 years later, which hardly seems fair considering all the work he'd put into this nation. If you still don't see why he deserves to be held in such high esteem, consider this:
"Literally the "Father of the Nation," Washington almost single-handedly created a new government -- shaping its institutions, offices, and political practices.
Historians agree that no one other than George Washington could have held the disparate colonies and, later, the struggling young Republic together. To the Revolution's last day, Washington's troops were ragged, starving, and their pay was months in arrears. In guiding this force during year after year of humiliating defeat to final victory, more than once paying his men out of his own pocket to keep them from going home, Washington earned the unlimited confidence of those early citizens of the United States. Perhaps most importantly, Washington's balanced and devoted service as President persuaded the American people that their prosperity and best hope for the future lay in a union under a strong but cautious central authority. His refusal to accept a proffered crown and his willingness to relinquish the office after two terms established the precedents for limits on the power of the presidency. Washington's profound achievements built the foundations of a powerful national government that has survived for more than two centuries."
http://www.americanpresident.org/history/GeorgeWashington/
Keep in mind, when all this was going on, there had NEVER been a free nation before in the history of the world, and there had NEVER been a colony that had thrown off the rule of the motherland and become a country in its own right; all of what our Founding Fathers did had to be envisioned in a vacuum and created on the fly without precedent or a safety net. If we're great today, it's because THEY were great, GIANTS among men, and Washington was first among them, a leader of extraordinary ability who, by making America in its current form possible, is one of the most influential human beings to ever walk the Earth; I hope you enjoyed the long weekend if you had it, but let's all take a moment to remember WHY we had it.
http://www.infoplease.com/spot/washington1.html
As much as I've always idolized Lincoln, we're all taught a great deal about him and what he did, but almost nothing about what made Washington great, so today's post is dedicated to Washington only.)
Does anyone think anything about this day except happiness to have a 3-day weekend if you've got it off, and dismay if you don't? Probably not, but we SHOULD, so let's take a moment to remember the great man that this day commemorates:
Washington was a stunningly successful general, especially given the horrendous odds he'd been up against, and played a pivotal role in getting the Constitution adopted, so it's no surprise that he was wildly popular, or that everyone wanted him to run our new nation; what might surprise you, though, is that there were those who wanted him to be KING, and had he gone along with the idea he could more than likely have sailed into the position unopposed... and we'd have a monarchy instead of a gov't based on the people. Luckily for us, Washington was every bit as great of a man as we were brought up to believe, and so:
"At the conclusion of the Revolution, George Washington occupied a position of unchallenged authority in the 13 former Colonies, and there was strong sentiment in the Continental Army for crowning him king. Washington was appalled by the idea and angrily rejected it when it was broached to him by Col. Lewis Nicola, a Frenchman who had served under Washington and is reported to have had a great deal of influence with the officers in the Continental Army.
"Let me conjure you then," Washington admonished Nicola, "if you have any regard for your country, concern for yourself or for posterity, or respect for me, to banish these thoughts from your mind and never communicate, as from yourself or any one else, a sentiment of like nature."
http://gwpapers.virginia.edu/project/news/washington/roberts.html
Be honest with yourself; if YOU were offered a kingship/queenship, wouldn't YOU probably take it, especially if you'd put in the years of service and sacrifice that Washington did for America?
Washington is one of the main reasons we won our independence; our Declaration was bold and brilliant, but without Washington running the army it would have been meaningless. He came out of retirement to preside over the Constitutional Convention. He served 2 terms as president although he REALLY didn't want to serve that 2nd term; he died a mere 3 years later, which hardly seems fair considering all the work he'd put into this nation. If you still don't see why he deserves to be held in such high esteem, consider this:
"Literally the "Father of the Nation," Washington almost single-handedly created a new government -- shaping its institutions, offices, and political practices.
Historians agree that no one other than George Washington could have held the disparate colonies and, later, the struggling young Republic together. To the Revolution's last day, Washington's troops were ragged, starving, and their pay was months in arrears. In guiding this force during year after year of humiliating defeat to final victory, more than once paying his men out of his own pocket to keep them from going home, Washington earned the unlimited confidence of those early citizens of the United States. Perhaps most importantly, Washington's balanced and devoted service as President persuaded the American people that their prosperity and best hope for the future lay in a union under a strong but cautious central authority. His refusal to accept a proffered crown and his willingness to relinquish the office after two terms established the precedents for limits on the power of the presidency. Washington's profound achievements built the foundations of a powerful national government that has survived for more than two centuries."
http://www.americanpresident.org/history/GeorgeWashington/
Keep in mind, when all this was going on, there had NEVER been a free nation before in the history of the world, and there had NEVER been a colony that had thrown off the rule of the motherland and become a country in its own right; all of what our Founding Fathers did had to be envisioned in a vacuum and created on the fly without precedent or a safety net. If we're great today, it's because THEY were great, GIANTS among men, and Washington was first among them, a leader of extraordinary ability who, by making America in its current form possible, is one of the most influential human beings to ever walk the Earth; I hope you enjoyed the long weekend if you had it, but let's all take a moment to remember WHY we had it.
Monday, February 21, 2005
Point of view part 3
Tonight, I saw the movie "Frailty"; there's a serial killer on the loose, and a guy (Fenton) shows up at an FBI office claiming that his brother (Adam) is doing the killings... and that he's sure he can take the agent he's speaking to to where the missing bodies are hidden. As they drive to the young man's childhood home, he tells about how one day his father went crazy, informing his boys that an angel had told him that he had a mission; to find and kill "demons"... which is quickly shown to mean that he'd abduct people, take them home, and butcher them with an ax, burying the bodies in the rose garden. He claimed that when he touched the "demons" with his bare hand, he could "see" their sins; the younger son (Adam) says that he sees it too, but the older one (Fenton) of course sees nothing, and eventually decides he has to tell someone what's going on... and this leads to the predictable death of the police officer who goes out to the boy's house at his insistence to see the bodies. Fenton is punished for telling, and forcing the killing of a "non-demon," by being locked in the dark in the "killing cellar" until such time as God spoke to him... and he's in there with no food, and water only once a day, for over a WEEK before he goes crazy enough to hallucinate seeing God, at which point he's released, to be taken to "kill a demon" as soon as he's recovered. The kid is clever, though, and when the moment comes to chop off the "demon's" head, he kills his father instead, and buries him out in the rose garden with his victims; the boys report the father as missing, and, as they have no mother, the state takes custody of them.
By this point, the FBI agent and Fenton have reached the rose garden... where Fenton reveals that he is in fact ADAM, and that, while it is indeed Fenton who has done the recent high-profile killings, HE has ALSO been killing... "killing demons." Adam tells the agent that he has killed his brother, who never saw the visions that he and his father did because HE was a demon, and that he's going to kill the agent as well, because the agent killed his own mother... which the agent, stunned, admits IS TRUE. How had Adam known about this? God told him. How did Adam think he was going to get away with killing the agent, when other people at the FBI office had seen him? God was going to protect him. He does the deed, and plants the agent's blood-smeared ID at his brother's house.
When the agent turns up missing, those who met the man he'd gone off with were asked to describe him... and they CAN'T. They bring in the tapes from the security cameras... and they're all blurred over Adam's face. Using the only solid clue they have, the name he'd given, they go to Fenton's house and find a cellar full of bodies, and the aforementioned FBI ID; case closed. One of the agents goes to the sheriff's office, and... the sheriff is ADAM. They shake hands, and, although this man met Adam the day before, he doesn't recognize him.
This movie ended up being MUCH better than I expected; I was totally sucked in about Adam being Fenton, and that the father, and later on Adam, were psychos, right up until it was revealed otherwise.
So, was Adam a noble sheriff, a psychopathic killer, or an instrument of God's vengeance? It all depends on your point of view, on how much you know of the truth; within the framework of the story, NO ONE knows the truth but Adam, as those he kills die as soon as they learn that he "magically" knows what evil they've done. Literally anyone else learning of what he's been up to would think him a raving lunatic, and undeniably a serial killer as well... but they'd be WRONG. Only someone who knew ALL the facts would see the truth, a truth wildly different than they'd believe could even be possible UNTIL they knew everything... and the fact that this movie has come so hard on the heels of my realization of that very concept in relation to the spiritual realm (thanks to the poem about the blind men and the elephant), and the related concept of the incompleteness and subjectivity of our point of view (thanks to that poem and my revelation about the rat and the squirrel), tells me that karma is trying VERY hard to get that lesson into my head; that what you THINK the truth is is very much dependent on your point of view, that your point of view depends on what you perceive, and that what you perceive is often a tiny % of what exists and is therefore NOT "The Truth"... because "The Truth" encompasses ALL things.
I'm clearly in the spiritual enforced-learning zone right now; it's a little scary... but thrilling.
By this point, the FBI agent and Fenton have reached the rose garden... where Fenton reveals that he is in fact ADAM, and that, while it is indeed Fenton who has done the recent high-profile killings, HE has ALSO been killing... "killing demons." Adam tells the agent that he has killed his brother, who never saw the visions that he and his father did because HE was a demon, and that he's going to kill the agent as well, because the agent killed his own mother... which the agent, stunned, admits IS TRUE. How had Adam known about this? God told him. How did Adam think he was going to get away with killing the agent, when other people at the FBI office had seen him? God was going to protect him. He does the deed, and plants the agent's blood-smeared ID at his brother's house.
When the agent turns up missing, those who met the man he'd gone off with were asked to describe him... and they CAN'T. They bring in the tapes from the security cameras... and they're all blurred over Adam's face. Using the only solid clue they have, the name he'd given, they go to Fenton's house and find a cellar full of bodies, and the aforementioned FBI ID; case closed. One of the agents goes to the sheriff's office, and... the sheriff is ADAM. They shake hands, and, although this man met Adam the day before, he doesn't recognize him.
This movie ended up being MUCH better than I expected; I was totally sucked in about Adam being Fenton, and that the father, and later on Adam, were psychos, right up until it was revealed otherwise.
So, was Adam a noble sheriff, a psychopathic killer, or an instrument of God's vengeance? It all depends on your point of view, on how much you know of the truth; within the framework of the story, NO ONE knows the truth but Adam, as those he kills die as soon as they learn that he "magically" knows what evil they've done. Literally anyone else learning of what he's been up to would think him a raving lunatic, and undeniably a serial killer as well... but they'd be WRONG. Only someone who knew ALL the facts would see the truth, a truth wildly different than they'd believe could even be possible UNTIL they knew everything... and the fact that this movie has come so hard on the heels of my realization of that very concept in relation to the spiritual realm (thanks to the poem about the blind men and the elephant), and the related concept of the incompleteness and subjectivity of our point of view (thanks to that poem and my revelation about the rat and the squirrel), tells me that karma is trying VERY hard to get that lesson into my head; that what you THINK the truth is is very much dependent on your point of view, that your point of view depends on what you perceive, and that what you perceive is often a tiny % of what exists and is therefore NOT "The Truth"... because "The Truth" encompasses ALL things.
I'm clearly in the spiritual enforced-learning zone right now; it's a little scary... but thrilling.
Sunday, February 20, 2005
What do you expect?
Even the most logical people tend to have a significant lapse common sense in dealing with relationships; they expect folks to act in ways contrary to their basic nature... and also to CHANGE their basic nature, which is even more ridiculous, and a whole 'nother topic. Yes, a person can CHOOSE to act any way they want, but, no matter what you do or say, they'll nearly always choose to act in whatever way's natural for them... and if you expected otherwise, you have no one but yourself to blame if you feel disappointed when things don't turn out the way you wanted. I'm not saying that you don't have the right to be upset if, say, your partner drives around with your grandmother's oversized birthday card in his car for a week after he was supposed to have taken it to the post office for special handling (yes, my husband did that one), since adults, and kids over a certain age, MUST be able to handle certain basic things in a proper manner... I'm just saying that you should EXPECT people to "misbehave" in whatever areas their personality predisposes them to, and not be shocked or hurt when they do exactly what you should have expected them to do.
Where this can be hard to accept is in areas where a person will act contrary to their own best interests; it just goes to show you how POWERFUL our basic natures are, that we'll suffer again and again and never change, even if we want to. Granted, a few of us DO manage to change, but that just fools us into thinking everyone can, and will, and it just ain't so; based on observation, I'd say most people either don't want to change or are incapable of doing so even when their LIVES are at stake... the folks who just can't manage to force themselves to exercise even when their doctors tell them to do it to hold back the ravages of diabetes or heart disease are prime examples.
Here's a little story that I read a while back that I use to illustrate to friends who refuse to see why someone won't "just stop" doing something what's going on:
The Frog and the Scorpion
Once upon a time when the world was young, a frog was sitting on the bank of a river. A scorpion came out from under a rock and asked the frog to carry him across the river. "No way!" said the frog, "If I let you on my back, you'll sting me, and I'll die!" "No, no," promised the scorpion, "I won't sting you, because you're doing me a favor, and I'll be grateful; in fact, I'll be your friend and protector from now on." The frog liked the sound of that, so he let the scorpion get on his back, and started swimming across the river. When they reached the middle, the frog felt a bolt of agony in his back, and cried, "You stung me!! We're BOTH going to die now... why did you do it?!!" As the water swallowed them up, the scorpion replied, "What did you expect-it's my nature."
Where this can be hard to accept is in areas where a person will act contrary to their own best interests; it just goes to show you how POWERFUL our basic natures are, that we'll suffer again and again and never change, even if we want to. Granted, a few of us DO manage to change, but that just fools us into thinking everyone can, and will, and it just ain't so; based on observation, I'd say most people either don't want to change or are incapable of doing so even when their LIVES are at stake... the folks who just can't manage to force themselves to exercise even when their doctors tell them to do it to hold back the ravages of diabetes or heart disease are prime examples.
Here's a little story that I read a while back that I use to illustrate to friends who refuse to see why someone won't "just stop" doing something what's going on:
The Frog and the Scorpion
Once upon a time when the world was young, a frog was sitting on the bank of a river. A scorpion came out from under a rock and asked the frog to carry him across the river. "No way!" said the frog, "If I let you on my back, you'll sting me, and I'll die!" "No, no," promised the scorpion, "I won't sting you, because you're doing me a favor, and I'll be grateful; in fact, I'll be your friend and protector from now on." The frog liked the sound of that, so he let the scorpion get on his back, and started swimming across the river. When they reached the middle, the frog felt a bolt of agony in his back, and cried, "You stung me!! We're BOTH going to die now... why did you do it?!!" As the water swallowed them up, the scorpion replied, "What did you expect-it's my nature."
