Humanities & Culture
Quotes and InsightsBy Jonathan
7 weeks ago
 See no evil, Hear no evil, Speak no evil.
- Japanese pictorial maxim (the Three Wise Monkeys)
The message behind this famous image has been debated, so I'll just say what it means to me...
1. Mind your own business. What your neighbor does (within the law) is none of your concern. Accept that behavior is not evil simply because it is different.
2. Don't listen to gossip. Don't even listen when people speak badly of others.
3. Never gossip or speak unkindly of others.
This does NOT condone being an unconcerned citizen. This does NOT mean to look the other way if your co-worker is pilfering the cash drawer or you witness a crime on the street.
*** Read about my book 100 Secrets for Living a Life You Love |
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World AffairsPolitics & OpinionsBy halthouse1
3 months ago
Is The Administration Trying To Lose This Case?
It certainly seems like it. Did Eric Holder and Barack Obama learn nothing from the Charles Manson trial and the statements made by President Nixon? Apparently not. As if it is not bad enough that AG Holder decided to try these terrorists in a civilian court as opposed to a military tribunal, both he and the President seem to have both failed Trial 101, and the more advanced How Not To Prejudice a Jury and Risk an Acquittal 315 in school.
(http://bovinabloviator.blogspot.com/2009_07_01_archive.html)
Is the idea to do everything possible to get these 5 off, or to insure that they are put to death as they should be. How much more fuel can they possibly provide to a defense attorney than they already have? Wait and see.
(AP |
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Humanities & CultureQuotes and InsightsBy Jonathan
4 months ago
 Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness, and many of our people need it sorely on these accounts. Broad, wholesome, charitable views of men and things cannot be acquired by vegetating in one little corner of the earth all one's lifetime.
- Mark Twain
I have been very blessed in having been able to get a tiny peek into the nature of life in a few places around the world. Nothing else has ever brought me so face-to-face with the rigidity of my own thinking as an hour on a street in Cairo or Beijing or a walk through the countryside of Mexico or Peru. Travel opens my mind and my heart more than years of study and contemplation ever could.
We are all one whether we dine on corned beef in New York City, black-eyed peas and cornbread in rural Louisiana, or roast guinea pig in Peru.
Please consider joining me on my next adventure. March 3-15, 2010 I am traveling to Israel and Jordan with my good friend and excellent trip leader Sheri Rosenthal. You can read about our Israel trip and the other wonderful trips Sheri leads at www.JourneysOfTheSpirit.com
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Humanities & CultureQuotes and InsightsBy Jonathan
5 months ago
Naturally, every age thinks that all ages before it were prejudiced, and today we think this more than ever and are just as wrong as all previous ages that thought so. How often have we not seen the truth condemned! It is sad but unfortunately true that man learns nothing from history. - Carl Jung
Our honorable and worthy ancestors knew that the world was flat, motionless, and the center of the universe. They knew the human body could not withstand the forces of traveling on a train moving faster than 19 mph. They knew that the way to salvation was exorcising witches and slaying non-believers. They knew that it was a mortal sin to marry someone of a different skin color.
Our grandchildren's grandchildren will shake their heads in shame at some of the beliefs that we hold most dear today - the question is, which ones?
*** Book of the day: Emotional Freedom: Liberate Yourself from Negative Emotions and Transform Your Life
Further reading:How do You View the World?
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Humanities & CultureQuotes and InsightsBy Jonathan
6 months ago
This [the Holocaust] must never happen again. ... Be vigilant about your rights. Care about the rights and human dignity of others.
When the rights of any group, no matter how small, no matter how marginal, are violated, your liberty, your freedom is put at risk. Let there never be a day when we cast about in horror and have to ask the question, "How did it ever come to this?"
- Thomas Childers, Ph.D., Professor of History, University of Pennsylvania, in the closing remarks of his six-hour Teaching Company audio lecture series A History of Hitler’s Empire
Listening to Professor Childers on my iPod as I walked on the beach and drove around town, I was struck by the similarities between the early days of Hitler's rise to power in the 1920's and today's small but vocal minority of Americans calling for Muslims, Mexicans, Gays, and others to be treated as less than fully American, less than fully worthy human beings. If you think I am exaggerating this attack on our moral values, click here
http://www.google.com/search?q=%22good+muslim+is+a+dead+muslim%22
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World AffairsPolitics & OpinionsBy Jonathan
11 months ago
From my birth in 1945 until the Loving decision of 1967, as a mixed-blood Chinese-American, I was, legally speaking, a bastard in a number of American states. My father's father emigrated to the United States from China in 1868, so both his marriage in 1889 and my parents marriage in 1927 were not recognized by those states that still had legal injunctions against intermarriage (miscegenation).
It was only in 1967 that the United States Supreme Court finally struck down laws prohibiting marriage between "whites" and those of "other races." The "Loving v. Virginia Decision" of 1967 declared Virginia's "Racial Integrity Act of 1924" unconstitutional, thus voiding the miscegenation laws in all sixteen states that still prohibited intermarriage.
Does my story even begin to compare to the prejudice Blacks, women, and other oppressed minorities have been subjected to throughout America's history? No way, I wasn't even called "squinty eyes" in grammar school. Nonetheless, my background has fueled a fire within me to crusade for the legal rights and social acceptance of all Americans - Blacks, women, gays, and those who are currently most under attack, Arab-Americans, and Muslim-Americans.
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