Thought for the day and unsolicited advice for the new Revitalize Brockport administration - it don't mean a thing, if you ain't got that swing

We freeze up because we expect a certain result or because we want things to  be perfect. We can get so fixated that we can't do anything. Goals are fine; what I don't like is getting caught up in expectations or attachments to a final outcome. So the question is, how do you play freely?

Bernie Glassman in The Dude and The Zen Master

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The Brockporter Thought For The Day - The Supremes and same sex marriage

Maureen Dowd quote in The Week, 04/05/13 on page 2:

"While the court labors over its decision, 'the country has moved on,' said Maureen Dowd in the New York Times. Some 58 percent of Americans now support gay marriage, and 81 percent under 30 do. Yet 'fuddy-duddies' on the court like Kennedy seem to want to duck the issue. Fine, but America has already made its mind up, and 'if this court doesn't reject bigotry, history will reject the court.'"

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Brockporter Thought For The Day - What is capitalism?

"We were raised in America to believe that capitalism is synonymous with a market economy, democracy and human liberty. Turns out it isn't true. The term "capitalism" means "rule by capital," which means rule by the owners of capital. It was originally used to refer to an economy in which ownership of the means of production is monopolized by a small financial elite for its exclusive benefit to the exclusion of the interests of the rest of society."

David Korten in Dream Of A Nation p. 87

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Brockporter Thought For The Day - Americans killed by bats, hammers, and guns

U.S. Rep. Paul Broun (R-Ga.) said last week that "there are more people killed by baseball bats and hammers than are killed by guns." This is a myth. In 2011, FBI data shows, 8,583 people were murdered with firearms. Only 496 people were killed with baseball bats, hammers, and other objects.

The Week, March 1, 2013, p.16

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Brockporter Trought For The Day - U.S. slowly moving in right direction on carbon emissions

U.S. carbon emissions have fallen 13 percent below 2005 levels. The increased use of natural gas instead of coal accounts for 38 percent of that decline, while the growing use of wind power has contributed 27 percent of the carbon savings.

The Week, March 1, 2013

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The Brockporter Thought For The Day - Where our money has gone

U.S. defense spending soared from $287 billion in 2001 to more than $700 billion in 2010 and 2011, including supplemental costs for Iraq and Afghanistan. The U.S. currently spends $250 billion more on the military each year than it does on Medicare.

From The Week March 1, 2013

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Thought For The Day - What is to be done about the symptoms of content overload?

An obstacle to implementing any response to content overload is that one can retreat into a position of indifference. Young people experience a world where nothing can be done. They sense that society is falling apart and nothing will change. Fisher correlates the impotence to widespread pathologization, foreclosing the possibility of politicalization. 

"Many of the teenage students I encountered", Fisher writes, "seemed to be in a state of depressive hedonia, constituted by an inability to do anything else except pursue pleasure. Young people respond to the freedom  that post-disciplinary systems offer "not pursuing projects but by falling into hedonic lassitude: the soft narcosis, the comfort food oblivion of Playstation, all-night TV and marijuana."

Geert Lovink in Adbusters quoting Mark Fisher in Fisher's book Capitalist Realism

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Brockporter Thought For The Day - Corporate control of the media

Percentage of Americans who believed that news is often influenced by powerful people and organizations in 1985 = 53%

Percentage of Americans who believed that news is often influenced by powerful people and organizations in 2011 = 80%

Number of companies controlling 90 percent of the media in 1983 = 50

Number of companies controlling 90 percent of the media in 2011 = 6

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The Brockporter Thought For The Day - Thank penicillin for the sexual revolution

From The Week, 02/22/13:

Americans should stop thanking—or blaming—the birth-control pill for ushering in the sexual revolution of the 1960s and ’70s. New research suggests it was actually the use of penicillin to treat syphilis that opened a new era of promiscuity, which started a decade earlier than previously thought. In studying data about sexually transmitted diseases, Emory University economist Andrew Francis noticed that gonorrhea infections began soaring in the early 1950s, years before the birth-control pill went on the market, in 1960. He then found that teen pregnancies and extramarital births also rose steeply in that decade. What was prompting the behavior change? Doctors began using penicillin to treat syphilis in the mid-1940s; up to then, fear of the disease loomed almost as large as AIDS did in 1990, because it could be fatal. Penicillin cut infection rates by 95 percent. And as soon as that danger was removed, Francis says, there was a lot of extramarital sex going on in the backseats of lots of finned cars.

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The Brockporter Thought For The Day - Stigmatizing people with mental illness won't work in spite of NRA spin

From The Week, 2/22/14:

In the national debate on gun violence, the mentally ill make for “easy scapegoats,” said Abby Rapoport. The NRA’s Wayne LaPierre has called for a national database of the mentally ill, saying it’s the best way to stop “genuine monsters” from killing. But stigmatizing those who seek treatment is likely to backfire—and make all of us less safe. Take the new law in New York that requires therapists and nurses to alert officials if they deem a patient a danger to themselves or others, so that whatever weapons they own can be confiscated. This is based on the fallacy that murderous behavior can be predicted ahead of time. It usually can’t. And will people suffering from PTSD, bipolar disorder, or other forms of mental illness be more or less likely to seek treatment, if doing so lands them on a government list and guarantees that cops will confiscate their guns? In most cases, “it’s the lack of treatment” that’s the best predictor of future violence. To make the country safer, we should make mental health treatment more accessible, rather than punish those who seek it.

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The Brockporter thought for the day - let the ladies work

From The Week, 02/15/13:

"The number of stay-at-home dads rose from 81,000 in 2001 to 176,000 in 2011.Among men aged 25 to 54, 83 percent were in the workforce last year; five years earlier, 88 percent were."

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The Brockporter Thought For The Day - Living hand to mouth

From The Week, 02/15/13:

"Nearly 44 percent of Americans don't have enough savings to cover basic expenses for more than three months in the event of a financial emergency like losing their job or paying for unexpected medical care. Almost a third have no savings accounts at all."

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Brockporter Thought For The Day - Nice pussy

From The Week, 02/15/13:

Domestic cats are far deadlier than anyone imagined. A new study estimates that felines massacre 2.4 billion birds and 12.3 billion mammals every year in the U.S.—two to four times the number scientists expected. “We were absolutely stunned by the results,” study author Peter Marra of the Smithsonian Conservation Biology Institute tells The New York Times. The study makes cats out to be a greater threat to wildlife than any other human-linked source, including pesticides and collisions with cars, windows, and windmills. The domestic cat is a non-native species, and it preys not just on vermin like rats, but also on native shrews, squirrels, chipmunks, and voles.

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The Brockporter Thought For The Day - Bigger boys are playing football

From The Week, 02/15/13:

"In 1983, the Washington Redskins won the Super Bowl with a single 300 pound player on the roster. This year's Super Bowl teams, the San Francisco 49ers and the Baltimore Ravens, had 24 players who weigh more than 300 pounds."

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Brockporter Thought For The Day - Be generous in tipping your server

From The Week, 02/15/13

 

Hey, cheapskates—the waitress you shortchange today might shame you on the Internet tomorrow, said Sierra Tishgart in NYMag.com. Consider the case of Pastor Alois Bell of St. Louis, who recently dined at an Applebee’s in a party of 10 and found that the restaurant had added an automatic 18 percent tip. Instead of ponying up the $6.29 gratuity on her itemized check, Bell wrote, “I give God 10%. Why do you get 18?” She then gave the server a tip of zero. The server showed the receipt to fellow waitress Chelsea Welch, who posted a photo of it to online community board Reddit. The receipt went viral, Bell’s signature was identified, and thousands of netizens targeted the minister for abuse. Even though Bell admitted her note was a “lapse in my judgment,” she demanded that Applebee’s fire Welch—and last week, it did. If you can’t call out cheap, self-righteous customers on the Internet, “then where can you?”

......

 

 When you eat at a restaurant, “tipping is not optional.” Restaurants like Applebee’s typically pay the hardworking waitstaff $3.50 an hour, and the gratuity is considered part of our salary. Without the tip, I can’t pay my bills, and I’ll never save enough to go to college. But even though tips are how waiters get paid in America, many customers think it’s fine to stiff them to save a buck or two. So next time you go out to eat, remember this about the people who serve you. “We work hard. We care. We deserve to be paid for that.”

Editor's note: On Sunday, 02/10/13 at the Brockport Unitarian Universalist Church, Rev. Peggy Meeker gave an excellent sermon on "Ethical eating". During her sermon she mentioned the low pay and difficult working conditions of restaurant staff from the dishwasher to the bus boys to the servers. The first principle of seven which Unitarian Universalists covenant with one another to affirm and promote is the inherent dignity of every person. The second principle is to affirm and promote justice, equity, and compassion in human relations. These are principles that apparently a pastor in St. Louis does not practice. Be generous with your server.

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The Brockporter Thought For The Day - Supposing this money was spent on the poor? What would Jesus do?

From The Week, 02/15/13:

"The total amount of money spent on the 2012 elections, from the bottom to the top of the ballot, was a record $7.3 billion, the Federal Election Commission said this week. Candidates spent $3.2 billion, parties $2 billion, and outside political committees $2.1 billion."

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The Brockporter Thought For The Day - Are killers crazy?

From The Week, 02/15/13

"Since 2009, there have been 43 shootings of four or more people - an average of one killing spree a month. In only four of the 43 shootings had anyone raised concerns about the mental health of the killer to authorities."

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Brockporter Thought For The Day - Women are taking over

"The selection of Kathleen Wynne last week as the new premier of Ontario means that 88 percent of Canada's population lives in provinces or territories led by women. Female premiers also preside over Quebec, Alberta, British Columbia, Newfoundland, and Nunavut."

The Week, February 8, 2012

Do women make better political leaders than men? Will they be more fair, honest, more transparent and less deceitful? Brockport has not been well served by its current female Mayor, M. Connie Castaneda who has been struggling with charges of official misconduct for most of the last year of her second term.

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Thoughts for the day - The price of voter manipulation

"At least 201,000 voters attempting to vote in Florida in November gave up in frustration over long lines, and Ohio State University study estimates. Some polling places had lines so long they stayed open more than two hours past scheduled closing time."

The Week, February 8, 2013

Editor's note: Florida gave the election to George W. Bush in 2,000 as you might remember when his brother, Jeb, was the governor of Florida. The Republicans manipulated polling practices in many states in the 2012 election which is a shame for our democracy. We Americans have falsely been manipulated into believing we were bringing democracy to the Iraqis and the Afghans when we don't even have it in many of our United States. Perhaps we should clean up our own house first before we try to export corruption and manipulation in voting practices around the world. Right here in Brockport there has been voting fraud for which Rich and Katie Miller were convicted in 2011. There have been many other instances of voting fraud that people are aware of in Brockport but charges were never pursued.

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Brockporter Thought For The Day - Perhaps common decency is as good as if not better than love

"...I find it natural to discuss life without ever mentioning love.

It does not seem important to me.

What does seem important? Bargaining in good faith with destiny.

I have had some experiences with love, or think I have, anyway although the ones I have liked best could easily be described as 'common decency'. I treated somebody well for a little while, or maybe even for a tremendously long time, and that person treated me well in turn. Love need not have anything to do with it.

Also: I cannot distinguish between the love I have for people and the love I have for dogs."

Slapstick, Kurt Vonnegut

In my own life, and in the lives of people I have worked with in psychotherapy, love is often missing and sometimes common decency as well. Like Kurt I have decided to lower my expectations and no longer expect love. I still hope for it, and it is lovely when it shows up and a marvel to behold,  but I have learned that love is not be expected and in its true form, unconditional, is rare. Common decency, on the other hand, is to be expected and it is everyone's birth right.

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