Good morning. I hope you were greeted with sunshine and blooming trees this day.
Photo by Colin Cypher on Unsplash
Yes, life after hate, or perhaps we could call it “love after hate”:
(NewsNation) — With hate-motivated shootings dominating headlines from Orange County, California, to Buffalo, New York, this week, many are left wondering how we can dissuade people from embracing violent extremism.
That’s the goal the Chicago-based nonprofit organization Life After Hate has been working on since 2011. It is dedicated to examining the forces that draw people to far-right violent extremism and implementing programs rooted in compassion and nonjudgemental communication to help people escape the allure of extremist and hate-based ideologies.
“It was only when somebody said to me, literally used the words, ‘I can see that you’ve been suffering,’ dude that broke me,” said Sammy Rangel, a former violent gang member who now works to help deradicalize people with extreme views. “That broke through the chain mail. … That man (a psychologist) undid every narrative I had about the world with that one example of what I felt was compassion.”
Founded by former extremists, Life After Hate has worked with hundreds of white supremacists and other adherents of far-right ideology, as well as their social networks. The organization’s marquee initiative, ExitUSA, is run by a clinical psychologist and a team of clinical social workers who work alongside former extremists — called “Formers” within the organization — who serve as mentors.
The group is currently helmed by interim director Peter Simi, a sociologist at Chapman University who has studied far-right extremism for decades and has personally interviewed more than 100 white nationalists as part of his academic work.
“The approach is really to, in part, recognize the person’s humanity in a nonjudgmental, empathetic way,” Simi said, explaining that many of the clients had been isolated from friends or family.
CHICAGO — It sounds like something out of a horror movie, and it will probably give some gardeners nightmares, but an invasive species of ravenous jumping worms is slithering their way across Illinois.
The worms which are native to East Asia, are a glossy gray or brown with a white band, and the U.S. Department of Agriculture says they thrash around and can leap one foot into the air.
Yes, you read that right — they literally jump into the air.
These slimy pests also devour nutrients from the soil, leaving it unable to sustain trees or plants and according to some scientists could slowly destroy entire forests.
There’s also mild concern the invasive species will end up in plants sold in nurseries which will then go into home gardens and local parks.
Illinois is one of 34 states with jumping worms and, according to the University of Illinois, they’ve already been detected in 40 Illinois counties including Cook, DuPage, Kane, McHenry and Will.
Irish bookseller Kennys Bookshop in Galway struck gold in the most bookish of ways, tweeting last week: "AMAZING discovery here at Kennys. We sometimes uncover gems, but today we found actual treasure ...solid gold coins, hidden in the spine of an old prayerbook!"
Archivist Sarah Gallagher was cataloguing a recently bought Diocesan library when she found two solid gold coins wrapped in paper and tucked against the book's spine. RTÉ reported that the coins "are Mexican in origin and weigh 37.5 grams each. They are dated 1821-1947 and estimated to be worth in the region of €5,000 [about $5,355]. The book is one of 25,000 in the newly acquired library and of itself is worth little in monetary value. The chance removal of the cover has led to a find like no other and created quite a stir in the bookshop."
Tomas Kenny said, "I've been buying and selling private libraries for over 20 years and we have come across lots of unusual items and letters stuck in books. We've never literally found treasure before though....
Talk about fun: how about this basement house?
DEER CREEK, Illinois (NEXSTAR) – An Illinois house currently listed on real estate website Zillow gives living in a basement a whole different meaning. The two bedroom/one bathroom 832 square foot “basement house” captured the internet’s attention this week due to its unique stature.
Located in Deer Creek, about 25 minutes from Peoria, the home is currently listed at $35,000. The vast majority of the property lies underground, save for a slab of roof peeking out.
The listing explains the house is located on a large lot and that home could be “a great home to buy and build a larger home with the spacious lot. There are plenty of possibilities.”
Daniel K. Williams on conservative pro-life candidates’ shortened theory:
Politically conservative pro-life advocates today tend to think of rights in individual and absolute terms. Rights, for conservatives, are almost always negative rights – that is, a right to be protected from something rather than a right to receive something. If the fetus is a person, it has the inviolable right not to be killed. Its mother, however, does not have the right to receive Medicaid assistance from the state to allow her to provide better care to her unborn infant. Women have the right to choose not to be pregnant before they get pregnant, but once they become pregnant, there is no right, whether in the Constitution or elsewhere, that gives them the right to kill an innocent human being living within them. Women do not have the right to gender equality in the abstract sense; they have the right to equal treatment under the law, but they do not have the right to achieve equal outcomes with anyone, because equality in that sense is not a right that anyone has. Nor is it something that the state should work to achieve. In the long term, they believe, personal responsibility, private charity, and free enterprise can do far more to reduce poverty than state welfare programs ever can.
Contemporary pro-life advocates believe that they are advancing women’s rights by shutting down abortion clinics that they think exploit women. But because their vision of rights does not include anything beyond individual negative rights, low-income women who face crisis pregnancies in states that restrict abortion without expanding Medicaid or other social welfare provisions will probably end up poorer than they already were – either because they pay to leave the state to access abortion elsewhere or because they give birth to a child and have to pay for its food and healthcare with minimal assistance from the state.
Sad.
Spirituality and self-enhancement? Over the years I have found a keen balance among those pursuing spiritual formation: many are learning the good and ugly about themselves, while others seem bent a little much on self-enhancement.
Psychologists have also pointed out the potential for spirituality to serve as a tool of self-enhancement. According to William James, the “father of American psychology,” any skill that increases its centrality in the self-system is likely to breed a bias toward self-enhancement. As it turns out, no domain of human skill has been found to be exempt from this “self-centrality principle.” It seems to be an inextricable part of human nature.
This includes the domain of spirituality. Self-enhancement through spiritual practices can fool us into thinking we are evolving and growing, when in fact all we are growing is our ego. Some psychologists have pointed out that the self-enhancement that occurs through spiritual practices can lead to the “I'm enlightened and you're not” syndrome and spiritual bypass, by which people seek to use their spiritual beliefs, practices and experiences to avoid genuine contact with their psychological “unfinished business.” In my recent book Transcend, I call it "pseudo-transcendence"— transcendence built on a very shaky foundation.
Just how much of a problem is all this, really? Perhaps on the whole, spiritual practices really do help quiet the ego, and spiritual narcissism isn’t that widespread. What do the empirical data actually have to say on one of the greatest paradoxes of our time, which is: If a major point of yoga is quieting the ego and reducing focus on self, why are there so many yoga pose pictures on Instagram?
Meanderings, 21 May 2022
Sorry friends, but I accidentally sent this out. It was meant for Saturday AM.