John Donne’s  “Meditation XVII“

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Substantial History of Diverse People Thriving Together on your Land

To Ukrainians and “Russian” Ukrainians, Tartars, Cossacks, Greeks, Armenians, Romanians, Poles, unnamed communities including religious, remember there’s real history of diverse peoples thriving together on your land.

Reptile, insect, and primate natural histories show that controlling territory is vital and disruptive. The powers and benefits gained by territorial control are rarely shared equally by resident peoples. The cultural tectonics’ fostering humanity’s thousands of ongoing, festering, and bloody land claims are easy to compile. Yet there’s a real success story here.

Success Story

Billions of Homo sapiens are willing to peacefully coöperate with previously unknown or disrespected neighbors in our global hood. A message for Sri Lanka, Korea, India, Afghanistan, Turkey, Rwanda, Belgium, Spain, USA, and China (every nation) is to remember how civilization at its best demonstrates muscular progressive capacity for diversity to flourish in its midst.

The Crime in Crimea

The crime in Crimea is forgetting humanity’s frequently demonstrated capacity to redefine neighborhoods, and then get along. The territorial crisis in Ukraine, along with many others, can be peacefully resolved.

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Blend into our lives like life in living tree trunks

Encompassed, restricted, contained

Bound in wood flesh

Enslaved by mammal inadequacy

Yet saturated by spring’s volition

Growing sacred freedom

In progressive rings

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“Until the late nineteenth century the question of woman’s ability to profit from or even survive higher education was controversial. Vassar College opened in 1865 was often described by its first president as an experiment.… as late as 1871 an MD at Harvard Medical School published a book on the dangers of higher education for girls, he doubted the achievement was worth the cost from their psyche and procreative powers.”

From: Carl N Degler, In Search of Human Nature, Oxford University Press 1991

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An active constituency insists that civilization would be better off with no religion. This anti-religion constituency has grown in numbers. They claim religion is mumbo-jumbo. They remind people about centuries of dastardly behavior, violence against weddings and worshipers, pilgrims and patients, students and children committed in the name of some religious brand. They remind us that even today, religious people continue to inflict an encyclopedia of horrors upon their own kind.

They observe that religion’s dance with power and money is like a year-round prom.

Reverse Witnessing

A friend recently offered his selection of anti-religious propaganda online as if he totally agreed with it. He “witnessed” in reverse. He cited as a fact that “most scientists are anti-religious.” Yet his anti-religion narrative is based on mumbo-jumbo fantasies of his own. If the“delete religion” campaign is successful, who does the anti-religion constituency imagine is going to do a better job of managing civilization?

Doesn’t removing one power always means replacing it with another?

The anti-religion constituency often fails to take responsibility for centuries of dastardly behavior committed by nonreligious people, including Stalin’s gulags, Hitler’s camps, and Mao’s blood Red Book, which were violent crusades for “secular divinities”.

I ask my anti-religious friend, “aren’t the put downs emanating from religion one of the qualities you find most objectionable”?

Avoid put-downs when possible. Follow your own better ways.

His “opinionating” reminds me that some religious and anti-religious people are inclined towards righteous judgment, too easily condemning perspectives other than their own.

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Virginia’s Question 4/26/13

“Why is it taking so long for women to become real people?”

Allen’s response:

Well women are as real as clouds, trees, and men.

Answering One Question with Two

When will humanity’s genetically all-mutt races move beyond global traditions of destructive prejudice based on cosmetic factors to more constructive common ground?

And when will the destructive consequences of violently imposed anti-education attitudes, implanted by whip and lynching, weaken their hold on victims and perpetrators?  Simon Legree still haunts many lands today including our own. He says, “Boys, better not dream about bettering yourselves, quit dreaming and join my gang.” And he says, “Girls, know your place and do what you’re told or I’m going to beat and stone you!” Male violence against women is the Simon Legree of gender.

The History of Gender Suppression

The roots of gender suppression are hidden in history, though less hidden everyday because people are investigating this subject. Read my 8/13/2011 post entitled “Jobs and the Gender of Divinity.”

http://www.digest-this.com/jobs-production-technology-and-the-gender-of-divinity/.

I asked “If the role of women in the workplace and in heaven drastically changed after the adoption of plow technology, how will robotic agriculture and manufacturing affect the role of male and female workers in the 21st century?”

Virginia, you answered your own question: the emancipation of women remains “an ongoing process which has taken far too many centuries.”  Yet the violently enforced definitive confinement of womanhood continued (continues) for thousands of years longer than the systematic enslavement and deprecation of African-Americans, the consequences of which are still with us.

Thank you again for commenting.  Allen

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So, what do you think of the new chancellor coming in July 1?  A woman!  Seems long overdue in terms of gender, but maybe no one saw a qualified one before now — I’m not sure about that!

Allen (UNC 1962) responds:

God bless the new chancellor.

Our new state government shows signs of under-appreciating the value of this great university, which is practical analysis. Temporarily empowered anti-intellectual forces take the university to be a cultural enemy, while undervaluing the historic contribution UNC made and makes to North  Carolina’s reputation and success story.

How did the role of women in civilization come to be so rigidly defined? My guess is that for most of the past quarter of a million years, members of both genders did everything because communities were small and scarcity was common. Survival ruled. To suppress talent was an impractical option.

The division of labor associated with the rise of civilization probably fostered more rigid gender role restrictions. And the then ongoing epidemic of mother and infant birthing deaths, which ended recently, may have fixated emphasis on female reproductive responsibility.

The opportunity for women to be anybody is brand new. The emergence of self-definitive womanhood is one of the most critical new resources for civilized progress, far more important than oil and gas reserves or new technology. Self-definitive womanhood is going to play a leading role in “saving” civilization in the 21st Century.

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Some gun control makes sense. There’d be no human law if only perfect laws passed. Our children are worth defending. Like strikes and errors in baseball, misses shouldn’t keep gun control advocates out of the game. Healthy cultures include errors, strikes and misses.

American gun ownership culture has been cultivated by law, tradition, western movies, corporations, political parties in return for votes, and also by human nature. Humans are mammals! Interpersonal violence isn’t going away. Natural violence is deeply rooted in mammal history.

The history of interpersonal violence goes back hundreds of millions of years. Reducing interpersonal violence really is a crime scene investigation. Many life forms inflict violence upon their own kind. Civilization is better able to identify, diagnose, and ameliorate biologically relevant root causes of our violent nature as people more fully embrace the mammal nature of humanity (embrace as in hug/bond/accept). Allen

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