Rant On Our Screwed Up Culture
Over the past years I have greatly reduced my ranting about societal woes that I cannot change and focus on improving society by improving the things I can change. Those things being my own behavior.
What are the things progressives worry about, and how do I work to fix them?
1)War and killing ----I practice the art of Aikido often called the way of peace and harmony and maintain my position as a pacifist.
2)Health Care --- I make sure that I am as healthy as I can be and work to constantly improve.
3)Poverty --- I do not make money the driving factor in my work I do what I do irrespective of the pay and often give away my services to those that cannot pay.
4)Politics – I try to keep a rational tone in political conversations.
5)Race relations – I choose to live in a diverse community.
You get the point, for every "problem" there is a way to live your life that directly improves the situation whereas just ranting does no good at all.
That said, why this rant. Why is so hard for people to take care of themselves and their neighbors. Here is an example of why (note I am only 5 feet 5 inches tall). It is absurd to the point of insanity.
Your height in adult life significantly affects your quality of life, with short people reporting worse physical and mental health than people of normal height. This large, peer reviewed study, which appears in Clinical Endocrinology, shows that adult height is linked to how good a person thinks their health is. Short people judge their state of health to be significantly lower than their normal height peers do.
The data for this study came from the 2003 Health Survey for England, carried out by the UK Department of Health(1). In this survey, participants filled out a health-related quality of life (HRQoL) questionnaire and a nurse measured their height. Researchers, led by Senior Health Economist Torsten Christensen at Novo Nordisk A/S in Denmark, used this data to assess the relationship between height and HRQoL. A person's health-related quality of life refers to their perceived physical and mental health over time. The questionnaire does not measure how good a person's health actually is; it measures how good a person thinks their health is. The questionnaire examined five areas of well-being: mobility, self-care, usual activities, pain/discomfort, and anxiety/depression. The researchers controlled the results in the study for the effects of other well-known indicators of HRQoL such as age, gender, body weight, long-standing illness and social class. In total, this study used the results from 14 416 respondents.<snip>
Researcher Torsten Christensen said: "We know that people who are short experience more difficulties in areas of their life such as education, employment and relationships than people of normal height. However, the relationship between height and psychosocial well-being is not well understood. Using this large and nationally representative sample of the UK population, we found shorter people report that they experience lower physical and mental well-being than taller people do. Our results also indicate that the shorter someone is, the stronger this relationship becomes. For example, an increase in height of 3 cm would have a positive impact on the health related quality of life of a short person, whereas the effect of an extra 3 cm would be negligible for a person of normal height.
Short, heavy, black, white, brown, male, female, gay, straight, liberal, conservative, northern, southern, eastern, western, Christian, Jewish, Muslim, Buddhist.........
Reverend King dreamt, I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.
My dream is that we finally stop judging. We judge everything and are judged by everyone. With this level of constant implicit criticism and conflict it is no wonder few can get beyond the views of others and truly see their divinity and connection to all beings. To paraphrase a Zen master, "To judge another is like biting your own fist."
My enlightenment came during an spiritual interview with a Zen monk. I asked him for his judgment of me. I deeply respect his insight and wanted to know, so I asked him what he saw.
Nothing Special! Then he added, "Why do you give a shit what I think? Just go about your life."
We judge so much that we then seek the judgment of others. If we get the right answer "they like me, they really like me" we get the goodies in life; money, cars, insurance, pretty clothes....and if they don’t we internalize it and crash and burn or find another tribe that does like us and we conform to that one.
I have a dream today. I have a dream that a person only cares about the content of their own character. That they know in their hearts and minds that they are divine and can express the divinity in their actions. I have a dream that we stop seeking the approval of others that agree and stop seeking the destruction of others that disagree.
I have a dream that we take the energy we use to fight and use it to go within our own being to heal. To know that we are perfect and there is nothing or no one to judge.
I have a dream that we realize there is no difference between anyone; you are all my brothers and sisters, even if you are tall and even if you are a republican.