Session Notes

Swizec

On the other hand you have something PG calls the maker’s schedule – a schedule for those of us who produce stuff. Working on large abstract systems involves fitting the whole thing into your mind – somebody once likened this to constructing a house out of expensive crystal glassand as soon as someone distracts you, it all comes barreling down and shatters into a thousand pieces.

Finally, an explanation!

The Electronic Freedom Foundation

We expect to carry on our lawful lives free from police intrusion unless a judge can be persuaded that the police are justified in their intrusion into your life, including the fact that the intrusion relates to a lawful investigation into criminal wrongdoing. Lawful access would remove the only check and balance, allowing police the ability monitor citizens without any reason.

Just in case you thought plans for a police state here in Canuckistan have finally died their natural death, think again…

It’s back, it hasn’t changed much and it still has exactly the same goal: the removal of the only firewall we have to modify the behavior of those we have given the power of life and death, bondage and freedom and rights vs. responsibilities.

And, it still needs more voices speaking out against it.

Washington Post

The organizers of Occupy Wall Street are fighting to upend the system. But what gives their movement the potential for power and potency is the masses who just want the system to work the way they were promised it would work. It’s not that 99 percent of Americans are really struggling. It’s not that 99 percent of Americans want a revolution. It’s that 99 percent of Americans sense that the fundamental bargain of our economy — work hard, play by the rules, get ahead — has been broken, and they want to see it restored.

It’s becoming increasingly apparent that the news media, almost to a journalist, simply fails to grasp what is going on world wide as the protests in the world wide financial centers multiply and the frenzied rhetoric calling for the arrests of the protestors out of the financial leaders increases in pitch and volume. They write curious articles wondering who these people are, what they want and about how silly they are to be there.

Strangely, the financial leadership is NOT giving voice to the same wonderment. They already know.

What they know is this: when the people of Egypt came to understand that they had a two tiered court system, that they had been fleeced out of their money, that they were under surveillance and control, that they were living in fear, that normal means would not get the job done and that they needed a change in those who were ruling over them, they went to the seat of power and overthrew those leaders. (Sadly they failed to figure out what they would replace it with…)

Well, the rest of the world has too figured out that they have a two tiered court system, that we have been fleeced out of our money, that we are under surveillance and control, that we are increasingly living in fear, that normal means will not get the job done as our political critters are all on the take and that we need a change in those who are ruling over them, they went to the real seat of western power and are clearly working to overthrow the real unelected overlords of our society. (Sadly they also have failed to figure out what they would replace them with…)

But, make no mistake, the loudest protests are not coming from the guys on the mattresses in the park out front – they are coming from the 33rd floor of the building because, unlike the press, they get it. They get that their paid shills in Congress, the Senate and on the North Side of the 49th may have to finally grow a spine and admit that the sort of theft these uber-rich managed to get written into law is just wrong. Perhaps, they may even have to do something about it – hopefully by tossing these thieves in jail.

Let’s just hope they all figure out how to spell, “Wrong,” before, as in Egypt, our overlords are dragged in the street.

USA Today

So what’s keeping kids indoors? Fear of abduction is a big one, followed by worries about kids getting hit by cars and bullies, surveys have found.



Those fears have created legions of overprotective parents rearing “wimps” who are unable to cope with the ups and downs of life because they have no experience doing so, said Hara Estroff Marano, the New York-based author of the book A Nation of Wimps: The High Cost of Invasive Parenting.



“The home of the brave has given way to the home of the fearful, the entitled, the risk averse, and the narcissistic,” Marano said. “Today’s young, at least in the middle class and upper class, are psychologically fragile,” Marano said in an interview published in the journal.



Hovering parents, these researchers said, also deprive their children of something else — joy. One survey found that 89 percent of children preferred outdoor play with friends to watching TV.



“Parents have to remember that childhood is this special time. You only get it once, and you don’t want to miss it,” LaFreniere said. “Mixing it up with other kids in an unrestrained manner isn’t just fun. It isn’t a luxury. It’s part of nature’s plan.”

Apparently, there’s something rather positive to be said for mediocre parenting…

With all the helicopter parenting, early childhood education, language immersion and other tactics we are all so sure will help our kid to get ahead, we’ve forgotten how to raise humans who know how to get along. Perhaps we finally have an explanation for the American political system…

StopSpying.ca

This is probably the second most offensive plan Ottawa has set in motion – and they need to hear your voice. Like, a in, yesterday!

Utne Reader

By contrast, secular society is embracing masturbation as a way for women to better understand their bodies and enhance their pleasure with their partners. Millions of women struggle with reaching orgasms during sex, so, more and more, sex-ed teachers are including masturbation in their curricula. Last year, the United Nations released a report suggesting that children as young as 5 learn about masturbation. The National Health Service in Britain recently released a pamphlet for teenagers with the headline “An Orgasm a Day Keeps the Doctor Away,” advocating that regular masturbation is good for cardiovascular health. In Spain, one regional government has just launched a sex-ed campaign with the slogan “Pleasure Is in Your Own Hands,” stating that masturbation boosts confidence and self-esteem. And even Oprah Winfrey, the standard-bearer for mainstream American ethics, has discussed the benefits of female masturbation many times on her talk show. One of Winfrey’s frequent guest experts, Laura Berman, says encouraging girls to masturbate can help them avoid unhealthy sexual experiences.

But Renaud isn’t pleased with secular society’s increasing acceptance of porn and masturbation for women. Interestingly enough, she’s fine with teaching young children about the existence of masturbation and porn—as long as they don’t try it. “It’s a very dangerous society that we live in,” she says, “when we’re telling women that it’s OK to look at porn.”

Many girls in Renaud’s ministry think that once they get married, they will be free to express their sexuality and enjoy orgasms with a man. This causes some to take the fast track to the altar, only to find that after they’ve married, they still feel the same taboo urges. One forum commenter married at 19 in the hope that pious matrimonial intercourse would rid her of her sinful thoughts—only to find that during sex with her husband, she would have the same fantasies. “I cannot cleanse my mind of these images,” she says. “I try so hard to focus on my husband only, but my thoughts are so warped.”

Almost the entirety of this article is worthy of comment — it represents the latest reincarnation of the obsessive wave of anti-sexuality theology that is sweeping fundamentalism. Unfortunately, that would nearly require the authoring of a book…

One of the most striking pieces of this article is the subject’s inability to grasp any sort of difference between the erotic (part of every society and artistic practice around the world) and the pornographic (rage based materials designed to dehumanize, degrade and shame those depicted so as to allow those who are so awash with hatred that they do not view themselves as capable of connecting or becoming stimulated in a normative bonding based manner to become aroused.) The result of such is a strange, dichotomous hostility to everything erotic and to every thought of sexuality (no matter how relationally oriented) that is meshed with a completely artificial separation of secular erotica from Scriptural erotica (Psalm of Solomon for example) but yet still denounces even the thought of such arousal response that Scripture itself could generate.

In other words: Internal inconsistency to the point of the insane…

The article is also completely devoid of any sort of grasp of the difference between fantasy (Mental expression of need and preparation of the person for the pursuit of the legitimate meeting of said need that draws us into the beauty of permanent intimate love that God designed for us) and lust (The predatory desire to use, consume and then dispose of the person with no thought for the other’s well being.)

It is then overlaid with a pseudo science that holds that the neurological release of any chemical indicating pleasure is indicative of addiction (and thus to be avoided) that completely ignores that dopamine is also released as a result of, er, bowel movements… (It’s a rather convenient way of avoiding addressing anything approaching modern psychological understanding of said bondage that basically leaves them free to demonize anything they want.) An addiction is, to quote Patrick Carnes from memory, “A pathological relationship with a mood altering experience.” In other words, it is a bent way of replacing a person with a substance, experience or mental state and using such not to feel/to feel numb.

Stoicism and Gnosticism would be proud – for to them, pleasure and the body were the enemy…

The last paragraph above is stunningly insightful: The logical result of all of this, of course, is that the God designed third of our personality that is sexual, which has only one means of expressing the needs and longings of such and bringing them into relationship (Fantasy) is forever condemned as sinful and silenced thus ensuring that even the marriage bed becomes a tortured place of guilt and silence — to say nothing of soul deadening boredom… Paul’s contention in Hebrews that the Marriage bed was honorable and could not be made to be defiled seems to have escaped their notice.

But, the most striking part of the whole mess is on the first page:

While many of the women she counsels report turning to pornography as a form of escape—from traumas like sexual abuse, infidelity, and even prostitution—Renaud compares their masturbation to alcoholism, saying that “like drugs and alcohol, so many things that feel good in a short amount of time can end up hurting you.” Renaud’s advocacy is labeled antipornography, but it aims to treat all masturbation, whether it involves porn or not. When you peel back the layers, the core of her crusade is against sexual thought—even within marriage—unless those thoughts are about your husband while you are engaging in intercourse with him.

Read it carefully: She is fully aware that the women in her group have been damaged, severely abused and often had their sexuality commercially exploited and are in desperate flight from soul wrenching pain, but she’s more concerned about that which Christ already took away: their sin.

Matthew 23:1-15 New International Version

Then Jesus said to the crowds and to his disciples: “The teachers of the law and the Pharisees sit in Moses’ seat. So you must obey them and do everything they tell you. But do not do what they do, for they do not practice what they preach.

They tie up heavy loads and put them on men’s shoulders, but they themselves are not willing to lift a finger to move them.

“Everything they do is done for men to see: They make their phylacteriesa wide and the tassels on their garments long; they love the place of honor at banquets and the most important seats in the synagogues; they love to be greeted in the marketplaces and to have men call them ‘Rabbi.’ “But you are not to be called ‘Rabbi,’ for you have only one Master and you are all brothers. And do not call anyone on earth ‘father,’ for you have one Father, and he is in heaven. Nor are you to be called ‘teacher,’ for you have one Teacher, the Christ. The greatest among you will be your servant. For whoever exalts himself will be humbled, and whoever humbles himself will be exalted.

“Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You shut the kingdom of heaven in men’s faces. You yourselves do not enter, nor will you let those enter who are trying to. “Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You travel over land and sea to win a single convert, and when he becomes one, you make him twice as much a son of hell as you are.

Like in the time of Christ, the entire charade exists to ensure only one result: That the human leaders of the charade ensure their own place at the helm of the lives of their members — where Christ alone should stand.

American Psychological Association

CPS involvement did not improve long-run outcomes, a 2010 study found. Such involvement sometimes harms children by taking them from their families unnecessarily – which, in my office’s experience, happens more than 100 times each year in the District. These removals traumatize children and devastate families.

I wish I could disagree with the study, but, while I have always followed the code drilled into me at least once every month of my training and constantly by every brief of the laws I am under, about 2/3rds of the time, I ended up wishing I had not. Most of the time, it’s like watching an episode of some sort of absurdist sitcom entitled, “The invasion of the mental munchkins.”

The same is true when adults report rapes etc. It’s been my experience that less then 2-3% of the offenders ever see a night in jail – while the victims get to experience a system that pretty much torments them for months and leaves them tormenting themselves long after. I’d say that the majority of the PTSD symptoms that later emerge are not the result of the rape but, rather, the result of police and social services stupidity.

As sad as it is to say, it’s getting so therapists need to issue guidelines for reporting to them…

Just a few of the things that are never taught in the ivory castles of education by those who epitomize the statement that, “Those who can, do, the rest teach,” to say nothing of even being remotely grasped by the legal system…

What is hateful… is not rebellion but the despotism which induces the rebellion; what is hateful are not rebels but the men, who, having the enjoyment of power, do not discharge the duties of power; they are the men who, having the power to redress wrongs, refuse to listen to the petitioners that are sent to them; they are the men who, when they are asked for a loaf, give a stone.

(Speech in the House of Commons, 16 March 1886, in Oscar Douglas Skelton, Life and Letters of Sir Wilfrid Laurier (Toronto: Oxford University Press, 1921), 321)

What is more interesting in our present society is how we have run a constant campaign of the opposite and codified it into law (even when nearly the entirety of society wants the opposite laws passed) in the name of the good of that society…

It’s almost like they are begging for that rebellion – and not because they think they will lose…

Via: The Atlantic

Here I was, seeing the flesh-and-blood results of the kind of parenting that my peers and I were trying to practice with our own kids, precisely so that they wouldn’t end up on a therapist’s couch one day. We were running ourselves ragged in a herculean effort to do right by our kids—yet what seemed like grown-up versions of them were sitting in our offices, saying they felt empty, confused, and anxious. Back in graduate school, the clinical focus had always been on how the lack of parental attunement affects the child. It never occurred to any of us to ask, what if the parents are too attuned? What happens to those kids?

Ten years ago or so, I started seeing a phenomenon. A constant stream of clients began to come into the office who really did have perfect parents and had gone through perfect childhoods with that they described as, “Perfect Self Esteem,” – whatever this week’s definition of that is…

And, they had just ditched their second wife or husband.

What the linked article – well worth the really long read it is btw – misses is that there is a second tier of issue happening here that goes way beyond just the person’s ability to deal with stress, it has to do with foundational skills in relationships.

You see, while said perfect parents are running around and making sure that junior has the perfect life, they are not focused on each other, not locking their kids out of their room and making mad passionate love that properly disgusts their children, they are not making out in the living room until their teens want them to get a room, they never go out on dates alone and (GOD FORBID!!!) leave the children with a sitter, they never chase the kids out of the room to have a private, deeply emotional and intimate conversation (that the child overhears from around the corner anyway) and they have never demonstrated to the child the struggle it takes to make a real marriage work.

No, they are too busy raising the perfect child…

Enter stage left another perfectly parented child with perfect delusions from Hollywood about relationships and a marriage happens. And neither of them have any clue about even making a real marriage work – much less the romantic ideal. And, it blows sky high. And, we wonder why…

Then, in retirement acres down somewhere where the sun always shines, the two elderly perfect parents sit across the patio from each other wondering why they can’t even talk enough with each other anymore to discuss why junior and juniorette can’t seem to stay married. Some of them also wonder if that inability to talk has anything to do with why, lately, they seem to be pushing happy hour up to lunchtime…

Because it just needed to be posted