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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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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The Partisan Blame Game

Here’s one question close to the heart of every patriotic American: Who’s responsible for the disappearance of manufacturing jobs? Republicans blame “corrupt” unions. Democrats blame “greedy” corporations. Both explanations are distorted oversimplifications. The truth is more complex. An important factor in the disappearance of manufacturing jobs is also a tribute to American ingenuity.

In the depths of the Great Depression, a North Carolina farm boy with a high school education gave up a job pumping gas, bought a secondhand truck, and went on to build McLean Trucking. McLean grew into one of the largest trucking companies in U.S. history, and was the first to be listed on the stock exchange. But Malcom Purcell McLean’s real claim to fame is as the leading pioneer of containerized shipping.

Before containerization, cargo was “loaded, lashed, unlashed and unloaded from the ship one piece at a time” by stevedores. “What was new about McLean’s innovation was the idea of using large containers that were never opened in transit between shipper and consignee and that were transferable on an intermodal basis, among trucks, ships and railcars.”

Manufacturers couldn’t move jobs to low-wage factories in other parts of the world until there was a way to economically transport vast quantities of goods long distances. McLean led the way in solving this problem. A container ship can be loaded or unloaded in a few hours. There is less breakage and pilferage. Containerization dramatically reduced shipping time and costs. The largest ships now carry up to 15,000 containers.

“By making shipping so cheap that industry could locate factories far from its customers, the container paved the way for Asia to become the world’s workshop and brought consumers a previously unimaginable variety of low-cost products from around the world.” It’s easy to discover what happened to American manufacturing jobs. Just list the world’s busiest container ports: Singapore,  Shanghai, Hong Kong, Shenzhen, Guangzhou, Ningbo, Qingdao, Dubai  and Rotterdam.

As McLean’s first ship was leaving port, “Freddy Fields, a top official of the International Longshoremen’s Association ., asked what he thought of the newly fitted container ship, replied, ‘I’d like to sink that son of a bitch.’” The unions weren’t the only ones trying to block practical innovation.“Shipping lines, railway companies … vehemently opposed and tried to block the use of containerized ships. Traditional U.S. flag carriers … Moore-McCormack, Delta-Lines and Prudential-Grace saw a threat to their market dominance with … conventional break-bulk vessels … [and] jointly … induced South American governments to invoke legislation outlawing Sea-Land’s containers …”

Noah’s Ark may have been the first container ship mentioned in history. Every kind shared one boat. First the flood of oversimplification is going to rain down upon us “until all the high mountains are covered fifteen cubits deep,” and balanced perspective is “blotted out from the Earth.” Then we will disembark together, to reconstruct the spiritual and material economies of our devastated lands, with God’s covenanted rainbow of diversity extending over all, guiding our common future and bolstering our hope.

One Nation Under God

The flood of election year distortion eventually recedes. When your mind’s made up, and you’re ready to tolerate any distortion as long as your side wins, recall Noah. Strive for truth and righteousness. Resist partisan oversimplification. Shun divisive distortion. Remember that the healthiest patriotism is grounded in facts, not partisan politics.

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People who excuse exaggerations, distortions, omissions and flat-out lies because all sides do it are wrong. Remember the oath: “I swear to tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth, so help me God.” Do we the people have the right to expect our political leaders to tell the truth?

When leaders place party loyalty, commitments to donors and wing politics ahead of facts, and the people allow them to get away with it, the social health of our nation is endangered. Nothing threatens democracy more than a climate that tolerates dishonesty.

Now is a good time to remember and revere Peter Zenger, a German-American New York newspaper publisher who in 1734 was arrested and charged with “seditious libel,” on the authority of a royal governor whom he’d criticized. After eight months in prison, a jury acquitted Zenger because “a statement, even if defamatory, is not libelous if it can be proved.”

Decisions by the people’s representatives, including the courts, in Washington, D.C., and state capitals impact our nation’s future as much as decisions made by generals in war. How would you feel if the military leaders in charge of your children misrepresented reconnaissance because it contradicted their party line? An officer who refused to work with all wings and the center of his or her army would be discharged.

One-Winged Birds Can’t Fly

National leadership is no party game. Political leaders outrank military leaders in America. Shouldn’t it worry us that so many of our political leaders are regularly accused of half-truths and omissions? Patriotic citizens need to spend more time visiting fact-checking websites, including those accused of favoring the “other side,” just to make sure they’re hearing the evidence.

Dostoyevsky wrote, “Lying to ourselves is more deeply ingrained than lying to others.” Too many sincere patriots are living in “like-minded echo chambers,” eager for the other side’s distortions to be exposed, yet ignoring exaggerations propagated by their own wing.

To whet your appetite for the truth, visit the Wikipedia site called List of Common Misconceptions: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_common_misconceptions. There, you’re sure to find something you believe that is wrong. And here’s a partial list of fact-checking sites: http://www.factcheck.org/, http://snopes.com/, http://www.politifact.com/.

While it’s difficult to determine the truth about complex issues facing humanity today, it’s a citizen’s duty to try.

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Among the numerous advantages promised by a well-constructed Union, none deserves to be more accurately developed than its tendency to break and control the violence of faction.  The friend of popular governments never finds himself so much alarmed for their character and fate as when he contemplates their propensity to this dangerous vice.… The instability, injustice and confusion introduced into the public councils have in truth been the mortal diseases under which popular governments have everywhere perished…

Public Good Disregarded

That the public good is disregarded in the conflict of rival parties… the prevailing and increasing distrust of public engagement and alarm for private rights, which are echoed from one end of the continent to the other…

A fractious spirit has tainted our public administrations…

A zeal for different opinions concerning religion, concerning Government and many other points, as well of speculation as of practice, and attachment to different leaders ambitiously contending for preeminence and power, or to persons of other descriptions whose fortunes have been interesting to the human passions, have in turn divided mankind into parties, inflamed them with mutual animosity, and rendered them much more disposed to vex and oppress each other than to cooperate for their common good. So strong is this propensity of mankind to fall into mutual animosities that where no substantial occasion presents itself the most frivolous and fanciful distinctions have been sufficient to kindle their unfriendly passions and excite their most violent conflicts.  But the most common and durable source of factions has been the various and unequal distribution of property.

More disposed to vex and oppress each other than to cooperate for their common good

The influence of factious leaders may kindle a flame within their particular States, but will be unable to spread a general conflagration through the other States. A religious sect may degenerate into a political faction in a part of the Confederacy, but the variety of sects dispersed over the entire face of it must secure the national councils against any danger from that source.

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