I spent an afternoon alone with my 4-year old. We went to a “Disney Family Day” at the Oakland museum. She made a clay tea-cup, had her face painted, watched a magic show and ate two ice-cream bars. She had a great time, and so did I.
Meanwhile:
-Israel continues its attacks on Palestine and Lebanon. Countless civilians have been and continue to be killed, and the infraestructure, as it is, of the two countries continues to be destroyed.
-Hamas & Hezbollah are fighting back, killing civilians as well.
-The war in Iraq continues, a suicide bomber killes 25 people in Baghdad.
It’s the end of the world as we know it. Only that it’s not. More like business as usual, as it has been for the whole history of humanity only with much more deadly weapons.
But the incongruenty of having fun while the world goes to hell is difficult to digest. And yet, I really don’t know what I can do.
Author: marga (Page 122 of 158)
Want to achieve Nirvana without spening all your in meditation? Take some mushrooms – and in particular mushrooms that contain psilocybin. People who took the drug as part of a controlled study experienced feelings of love, compassion, optimism and patience – and were still on a high several weeks after the experience. Psilocybin may be of use in the treatment of mood disorders – a fact that seems to have been known for forty years.
Here is a very interesting article by Le Monde Diplomatique on Israel’s offensive in Gaza. Its premise is that Israel’s actions constitute clear violations of the Geneva Convention (e.g. its prohibition to attack, destroy, remove or render useless objects indispensable to the survival of the civilian population and to starve the population) and therefore constitute war crimes. The article also talks about how the kidnapping of the soldier was only an excuse and that Israel had prepared this offensive even before Hamas won the election.
It’s worth reading.
Do you have a friend whose judgement you trust implicitely? Lately I’ve been dealing with a situation that posed both a strategic and ethical dilema. I was having some problems deciding how to approach the situation, how to frame it, and how tackle it. I talked about it with several of my friends, but more in a thinking outloud sort of mode. I often use people as soundboards, to help me clarify my thinking. But this time it wasn’t enough. And I realized that, sad as it is, I don’t really have many friends whose judgement I trust implicitely. I have many friends who are smart, who are ethical, who are committed, whom I love… but it’s hard for me to trust, in part because I don’t necessarily trust myself to communicate what I mean correctly, and in part because I’m not always good about explaining where I come from and thus finding a common ground from where to look at the situation.
But then there is my friend Charlotte. She is great, one of my favourite people in the world. She is without doubts one of the smartest people I know, one of the few people I’m readily willing to admit is smarter than I. But she’s also one of the most thoughtful ones, someone for whom ethics are so intrinsic that they’re really discussed as such, I cannot imagine her doing anything unethical. She has the amazing gift of being able to disagree with you completely, and neither put you in the defensive or make you feel like an idiot. And she is completely non-judgemental.
So, faced with this problem, I talked to her. And she put it all on perspective for me, she helped me phrase what I was saying and thinking and finds its moral/strategic framework and now I know what to do.
If just everyone was so lucky to have someone like her around š
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