A Justice Site
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Fear?
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California State University, Dominguez Hills
University of Wisconsin, Parkside
Created: July 6, 2006
Latest Update: July 10, 2006
jeannecurran@habermas.org
takata@uwp.edu
On New York Times article this weekend on Economics of Affection - i.e. Friendship. Oops! It was a Los Angeles Times article. See how memory plays tricks on us? How lucky I am to have had homes with outstanding newspapers, and to subscribe today to both. But it is sometimes confusing. The backup of the article is now up so that you can read it. I'll upload an essay tying it in fairly soon, I hope. jeanne
Meanwhile, I need to talk. I need friends. I need to move from this space of feeling fear to a space of feeling trust and friendship. Not necessarily affection. I don't need you to like me. I need you to affirm my answerability. I need to know that we can all live together in this world without killing each other, without, hating, despite how different we all are.
How is the current social dilemma of the battle of religions making me feel more alienated? jeanne
Consider that never before in my lifetime, even in New Orleans, a very very Catholic city, was I made so consciously aware of the condemnation of those who demanded orthodoxy of my private belief system. I never worried about whether folks I met everyday would just send me off to hell and eternal punishment, or in a different religion, eternal punishment after being blown apart by suicide bombers. The violence of the Middle East's Islamic beliefs doesn't seem far from Christian beliefs that would have the same effect of eternal punishment (boiling in oil is the image I retain from Catholicism in childhood - but I think the World Court would call that outrageous torture - but then, if it's God's decision, what matters it that the World Court says it's torture? They're only humans.), if not the violent hastening of the onset of that punishment. Why is violence being presented thoughout our cultures as so permeating religion?
Whatever the reason, I am now less trusting of both fellow citizens and non-citizens, who might choose to hasten me on to everlastng hell. If this is what our Christian heritage and world affairs have come to, it seems to me a tragic result. Maybe I'm just over-reacting today. When Pat's daughter chooses affiliation with one of the Christian cultures that believes in my eternal damnation, I find myself fearful of what damage that justification of hate will do to her children. Will they come away with an arrogance that whatever they believe is "true," and that whoever doesn't believe it will join me in eternal hell? How will that alter their perception of the world, of peace, of war, of the Other, whoever that might be?
Right now I feel frightened by the preaching of hate, by the affirmation of any religion that preaches hate and eternal suffering, whatever that might be. And I desperately want to move to another space, one of "being able to express what frightened me." All my art, all my teaching tends towards illocutionary discourse, talking to the Other in the hope of understanding the Other's perspective as a human, so that as humans, we may affirm love and life. My writing is my way of moving to this other safer space, where we can all talk of what is frightening us, and make the fear disappear into love and understanding and a sharing of whatever resources we have towards a creative end that will produce happiness for us all.
I'm just puzzling over how all this is affecting me in this week, when I am preparing to upload new material on concerns from our think tanks that not only have we neglected our skills of public discourse and integrity in public affairs, but also we seem to have neglected the very basic skill of friendship. So as I venture out in retirement to build new friendship networks, I find the essential quality of trust strained by my neighbors willingness to proclaim their affirmation of a belief that excludes me, even apparently from what I thought I had earned as a human member of this world. Why would that lady in the supermarket want to project that message to me? Did she understand that that was the message she was projecting. How on earth do we regain our friendship skills with messages like that flying around in the dominant discourse???
Please share your puzzling over this on our public disscussion group. I need to talk. jeanne
References:
Topic of the Week:
NEWS, Announcements, and
"The remarkable story of reconciliation between the
perpetrator and victim of a hate crime who now
both work at the Museum of Tolerance."
At 1 p.m.
Serialized. First Draft of novel, My Theory of Everything, by jeanne. Stories that help me to see that much of what I fear can be defanged by remembering "there's really more to me than that." These first few chapters have gone up very quickly - my free time, summer. I'll slow down soon, but will post the chapters as they are written. jeanne
Immigration runs into all the problems of parts of the family having citizenship on one side of the border, parts on the other side. No problem, except that as migration patterns swell during nation-state disputes, real people hurt. No, I'm not talking about the Mexican -U.S. border. I'm talking about Palestine-Israel. These questions are never simple. Here's a story that may help you see how complicated it all gets: Immigration, Family Unification, and Population Explosion
From The BodyPro. There is some concern amongst treating professionals that the attempt to put all medicines into a pill that can be taken once a day is likely to run into problems with drug resistances that may result from some mixtures of drugs. While it is true that a once-a-regimen is easier to follow, practitioners caution that we must not move too quickly to convenience if it sacrifices long-term well-being.
One of the motivators for switching over to the once-a-day regimen is poor and disadvantaged populations. Also easier to get one pill per day per patient into developing countries.
If you wish to follow such developments do so on The Body, a site dedicaated to keeping us up to date on the fight against HIV / AIDS.
from Centers for Disease Control and Prevention
July 3, 2006
"Health insurance company WellPoint Inc. said Thursday it will cover Merck & Co.'s vaccine that blocks the two types of the STD human papillomavirus (HPV) responsible for about 70 percent of cervical cancers. Earlier on Thursday, CDC's Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices recommended the Gardasil vaccine be routinely given to girls ages 11-12. Health officials estimated that more than half of sexually active women and men will be infected with one or more types of HPV in their lifetime. WellPoint said its decision to cover Gardasil was prompted by the committee's recommendation. [Source: Associated Press, 06.29.06.] "
Materials on the Dada Art Movement
Dada's Women, Ahead of Their Time Another New York Show. Backup.
I need to recheck some of these links. I thought I backed them all up, but things were pretty hectic. As soon as I can take a break from narrative writing I'll be puting up lectures on this. We'll use the concept in Moot court this Fall because the Dada movement occurred in a time very similar to our own - in which people felt a kind of despair, and artists responded with the kind of inanity they saw all around them. jeanne
For more on understanding why and how artists engage in the process of trying to change traditional museum-bound painting, go to Dada as Arts Politically and Socially Opposed to Some of the Consequences of Our Culture and Our Preference for the Rational and The Arrogance of its Knowingness. And don't miss Paul Tractman's Dada, The Irreverent, Rowdy Revolution in the May 2006 Smithsonian Magazine Online. Backup. And now 'Dada' at MoMA: The Moment When Artists Took Over the Asylum By Michael Kimmelman, New York Times, June 16, 2006.
Why School Is Like It Is
What's the big idea? Toward a pedagogy of idea power. by S. Papert. Our topic for Moot Court in Fall 2006 will be Thinking, For All of Us, By All of Us This reading will is one from a graduate MIT course, Technologies for Creative Learning, Fall 2004, by Prof. Mitchel Resnick. I'll have more up on this shortly. jeanne
"fiery turd," 1998
Chuck Nanney
Latex on canvas, wire, 1" x 6.25" x 3"
References:
Curator's Statement Curator, Catharina Manchanda, of Germany, does a hepful critique of the art in a July 2006 selection of art on Vital Signs. Take the time to look at the whole selection on the site of The Body, and to follow the curator's interpretation. Sometimes art says what words cannot.
Louise Benoit, left, and her sister Rebecca, who were badly burned in a house fire that killed five relatives, with portraits by an artist in Hoboken, N.J. from Facing Their Scars, and Finding Beauty
These photographs really struck me when the NY Times published them. Recall Goffman's Stigma.
A Range of Sources on Global Info
Memorandum, Political Web - Diggs - College Network of New York Times - New York Times Learning Network
Indymedia - Mother Jones - BBC News - New Profile - KPFK Progressive Radio
Progressive Sociologists Network Environmental Working Group - Mirror of Justice
Theory, Policy, Practice of a Career by jeanne and Susan.
