Compassion is the radicalism of our time.
~Tenzin Gyatso, 14th Dalai Lama
Okay … is it just me … ? Since reading and discussing the many concepts in Tocque’s essay the other day, I’m now seeing either the word compassion, or the idea, all over the place! lol.
A scattering of sentences, maybe paragraphs, from here and there this morning, that leaped out at me as being especially well said… Follow me.
And, please! feel free to add any of your own pearls!
Word of the day: mendacity.
from Former Harper’s Magazine editor Roger D. Hodge talks with Harper’s Scott Horton… below are a few choice snippets of Hodge’s responses to Horton’s six questions.
on Citizen’s United decision:
The decision is an aggressive assault on anemic and insubstantial restrictions that have failed to prevent the corporate dominance of our political system; consequently, although it is likely to encourage some highly political corporations to spend even more on electioneering, Citizens United mainly serves to clarify the brute fact that our political system is little more than a plutocracy.
.
on Obama’s paradoxical health care ‘reform’:
We’ve seen much the same thing with ObamaCare. As with the Iraq War, Obama has merely redefined the mission. Far from being the universal health-care system that the country needs, Obama’s health program is best understood as a bailout of the private health industry that seeks to guarantee some 30 million additional customers for insurance companies and continued obscene profits for large drug manufacturers. The paradox here is that in a system aiming at universal coverage, the actuarial role of insurance companies, which is to determine the precise odds of paying unprofitable claims on a given class of customers, has become obsolete. Although the law contains some praiseworthy measures, for the most part it merely entrenches our system’s most irrational elements.
.
on pseudo-con’s:
The absence of authentic conservatives in our politics serves to ensure that our national debates are largely carried out in the realm of fiction; pseudo-conservatives take on pseudo-liberals in symbolic battle over cultural ephemera when what is really at stake is which of the two corrupt parties will win the privilege of representing the interests of the superrich.
.
on class warfare:
The singular achievement of America’s wealthiest individuals has been to convince a large portion of the citizenry that their own interests are served by maximizing those of the superrich. A glance at income statistics over the last thirty years will suffice to refute that proposition. Americans like to pay lip service to the virtues of competition and the pursuit of self-interest; what could be more American than an organized assertion of material self-interest by the vast majority of our citizens against those who have plundered our commonwealth?
Excellent little piece by Horton, go read the whole thing. Hodge’s book looks good … The Mendacity of Hope: Barack Obama and the Betrayal of American Liberalism. Wonder how soon it’ll hit the library.
So I’ll close with this one-liner by Joseph Heller, from Catch 22:
Anything worth dying for, is certainly worth living for.
37 comments
Skip to comment form
Author
how many miles per gallon these guys get?
26000 lb. capacity with listed range of 1,840 miles. So about 14 gal per mile and I would guess thats at a cruising speed, not fighting or in afterburn.
Or some of it.
Science fiction today is filled with motifs of survivalism. Popular science shows today are similar. Not all of this is bad.
Deep down we know something is unsustainable and our mindless entertainment conveys this. (which I admit I am counter to the sensibilities of some on Docudharma because it’s kinda my lifeline).
Not all of it’s bad inasmuch there is a sense of desperation nuggetized therein. As a culture, we sense the profound isolation we’ve inculcated in ourselves and there seems to be a sense that, by necessity, that’s coming to an end — because survival in a world of dwindling resources just cannot be achieved in a highly individualistic way. Getting to know our neighbors is “in”, shutting ourselves off from the world is “out”.
There was a science fiction story I read a long time ago — oh I wish I could remember what it was — but it was a world in which teleportation was the norm. Everyone lived inside their own worlds and when they wanted to visit a different place — zap and they were there. And the irony as that while people were living in worlds of their own making — the outer world was steadily turned into a giant trash heap, but almost no one even knew this was the reality, so successfully had they cut themselves off from the world.
Anyway, due to my job and my life circumstances, I realize how deeply this all affects my mindset. I sometimes go days, even weeks, without interacting with any other human being in a meaningful way in person. That has tapered off somewhat with my dad being here. But psychologically we can sometimes be so alike that it can be more like cloning myself than interacting with a truly different individual.
…the highest virtue and value in many, if not most, or even all religions. As relgions grow through time, they also grow in the emphasis on compassion. In the Christian Bible, this is seen easily in the transition from Old to New Testaments.
CHRISTIANITY:
HINDUISM
BUDDHISM
JAINISM
I’m not able to post the last two which I had included n this:
Judaism
and
Islam ……….
As soon as my machine quits balking, I’ll be back with those…
http://charterforcompassion.org/
I like that concept. In fact, the whole political game is now obviously phony resembles professional wrestling writ large. I don’t mean that everybody in politics is a cynical employee/actor of the oligarchy because I think there are varying degrees of those sorts of connections. But, as a whole, the political sphere right now is a fake system that is largely scripted. Vote Democratic because the Republicans are barbarians and vote Republican because the Democrats are socialists who want to take your money and give it to black people. Meanwhile the media commentators act like sports guys and gals–sorry, that’s an insult to the sports enthusiasts because sports, for all its problems is far more honest and open to alternative opinions within the media and a least has a semi-solid relationship with reality.