Tomorrow, August 21, I turn 60. I am neither sad nor excited. I just accept aging as part of being alive and look forward to continuing on.
Jane Pretat, a Jungian psychologist, writes of the spiritual challenges that arise when we are moving through our late 50s, our 60s, and into our 70s. She says that each age has its spiritual and practical challenges: youth brings newness to a world that may be jaded or overcautious; middle age consolidates the insights learned so far, and creates new spiritual outlooks that will serve the changes happening in our families and bodies and lives; seniors tend to be more contented and happy with life and with who they are. Boomers who are now in their sixties, along with people who are now in their seventies, are among the first generations that can look forward to twenty or more years of being neither middle-aged nor very old. According to Pretat, they are "coming to age."
Due to advances made in the medical field, people in their sixties and seventies are healthier and more active than ever before. They are no longer considered ‘very old’ – but of course it depends on the person’s health as to whether they feel ‘old’ or not. Old age is now placed in a category containing the eighties, nineties, and on. It is predicted that in the next decade there will be many, many more lucid, active centenarians that ever before.
To me, Pretat’s words ring true when I am able to transcend the culture-driven youth obsession. It is a time when we genuinely face our own mortality. We know that we are going to die and yet we are still relatively productive. Because we know death is real, we have the chance to face it, not fear it, and hence appreciate life so much more dearly.
I am carrying into my senior years two very important things that I have learned. First and foremost, fitting God into either a reasoned or emotional discourse is impossible. You cannot really explain or refute God, not even with the words of the Bible. If you could, it would not be God. We humans can only understand God in our meager human terms although God is something much greater than our words could ever begin to define.
Second, no matter how famous you may be or how many friends you may have, you will always have times when you feel alone. And no matter how solitary you may be, you will always be surrounded by friends, even if you seldom see or never have seen their faces. The poet Kahlil Gibran describes this sentiment very well:
Your friend is the field where you sow with love and harvest with gratitude. He is your home, he is your table. Even when he is silent, two hearts continue to talk. When you have to leave him, don’t suffer, for you will see the importance of the friendship all the better because of this absence, just as a mountain climber sees the landscape around him better when he is far from the plains. May you be able to share with your friend all that is good. Let him know and share not only your moments of joy but also your moments of sorrow. And know that a friend is not by your side to help you kill the time, but rather to help you enjoy life in all its fullness.
Childhood in the 1950s, teen years in the 1960s, and young adult in the 1970s, the common mantra was never trust anyone over 30. But when I looked in the mirror, I saw someone who looked barely 20. I felt young; and looking back now, I see that I was very naïve with very little understanding of how the world worked or how the brains of the opposite sex functioned. My 20s and 30s were a time of trouble, a time of many bad decisions that brought me great sorrow. I came very near to suicide because I could not see a way out. But I did climb out. Life finally got better.
The only traumatic birthday I think I have ever had was my 40th. Even though turning 30 did not feel bad at all, turning 40 felt wrong, felt old. I felt like a failure because I had not found my soul mate or true happiness. Yet that decade turned out to be quite good because I met my wonderful husband, my soul mate, just weeks after I turned 40. Under the light of his truly unconditional love, I slowly began to blossom. It eventually occurred to me that being in your 40s is not so traumatic after all. The reality is that I had survived some tough years to see another decade of my life begin with a happy turn. Although during my 40s I lost my beloved grandparents, the ones with whom I had lived with for a very short four years (the only happy years of my childhood), I had gained the gift of my soul mate’s love to see me through.
People looked at me oddly when I said that I was excited to turn 50. I had just retired from teaching and had plans for a wonderful decade. Sure, it turned out to be a difficult one, full of illness. But all through the difficult days from about age 46 through my 50s, I managed to hang in there, hoping for better health and a chance to follow some of my dreams. I think I may make it.
You are either going to turn 60 or you are not. It comes down to a matter of choice. The only way to not turn 60 is to die before you get there – and I do not consider that a good choice. Turning 60 is not so bad. The youthful face and figure may be gone, but my spirit is young. I very much look forward to this next decade, especially since my husband has just retired. I predict days, years actually, of happiness and contentment – maybe some travel. I am “coming to age”.
Yet, some part of me is very suspicious that aging is a very high price to pay for maturity. So, like others, I sometimes will say that I wish I could go back to being in my 20s while, at the same time, keeping the knowledge and wisdom I now have.
What I cannot figure out is how I can be 60 now, when I was 21 only yesterday.
*Pretat, Jane, Coming To Age: The Croning Years and Late-Life Transformation. Toronto, Canada: Inner City Books, 1994.
Friday, August 20, 2010
Monday, August 16, 2010
A very unwise thing to do
Just recently, a New York building commission cleared the way for an Islamic community center to be built two blocks north of where the World Trade Center once stood. Staying silent until the commission came out with its decision, Obama made his first comments on the matter Friday night at a Ramadan celebration hosted by the White House.
Standing up for the right to put a mosque near Ground Zero in New York, President Obama on Saturday warned that the country risks losing its distinct identity if it ignores basic American values such as religious freedom. He said that "it’s very important, as difficult as some of these issues are that we stay focused on who we are as a people and what our values are about."
In his remarks Friday, Obama referred to the trauma of the 9-11 attacks as unimaginable. "So I understand the emotions that this issue engenders," he said. "Ground Zero is, indeed, hallowed ground." But he added that America's "commitment to religious freedom must be unshakeable."
Americans have the right to build houses of worship wherever we choose, as long as we lawfully purchase the land and build to code. Indeed, in 1998 the Religious Land Use and Institutionalized Persons Act was passed to ensure this right is protected. Do we really want to give the government the right to pick and choose which religions get to build where? Do we want Evangelicals banned from building new churches in neighborhoods where they are an unpopular minority? Do they want the majority to be able to decide where Mormon churches can be built, or Synagogues, or Adventist Churches, or Catholic? We are all minorities somewhere in this country. Do we want the majority to be able to squelch our plans to build a house of worship? Of course not.
But the fact that they have a constitutional right to build that mosque near Ground Zero is not the point.
The Muslim Public Affairs Council put out statement applauding Obama and New York Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg, who also has defended the proposed mosque: "The president and Mayor Bloomberg have set the standard for other political leaders to preserve America's open society," said council President Salam Al-Marayati. "The president landed a major blow against Al Qaeda's false narrative that America is at war with Islam."
Showing that America is not at war with all Islam is not the point either.
The point is: it is extremely insensitive for Muslims to build a mosque so close to Ground Zero. Period. End of discussion. They had to know they would be stepping on America’s heart. This is an immoral decision on the part of that particular Islamic group and their Imam.
The building of the mosque could hurt Obama politically. I have to agree with House Republican Leader John A. Boehner of Ohio who took issue with Obama's remarks. "The fact that someone has the right to do something doesn't necessarily make it the right thing to do," Boehner said in a statement. "That is the essence of tolerance, peace and understanding. This is not an issue of law, whether religious freedom or local zoning. This is a basic issue of respect for a tragic moment in our history."
Obama has indicated that he is aware that building a mosque so close to Ground Zero may be technically legal, but morally insensitive, and stated such: "I was not commenting and I will not comment on the wisdom of making the decision to put a mosque there," he said. He emphasized that he was standing up for a basic principle and that he was not endorsing the idea of putting a mosque at that specific location. In other words, there is really nothing that anyone can legally do to stop it.
But the distinction seems an academic one. At no point has Obama actually come out and said that it is a bad idea to put a mosque at that site even if the owners have the right to do so. In other words, building that mosque is a very unwise thing to do; it is an in-your-eye, in-your-face action by so-called Islamic moderates.
This action is a very unwise thing to do, and President Obama should publicly tell them so.
Standing up for the right to put a mosque near Ground Zero in New York, President Obama on Saturday warned that the country risks losing its distinct identity if it ignores basic American values such as religious freedom. He said that "it’s very important, as difficult as some of these issues are that we stay focused on who we are as a people and what our values are about."
In his remarks Friday, Obama referred to the trauma of the 9-11 attacks as unimaginable. "So I understand the emotions that this issue engenders," he said. "Ground Zero is, indeed, hallowed ground." But he added that America's "commitment to religious freedom must be unshakeable."
Americans have the right to build houses of worship wherever we choose, as long as we lawfully purchase the land and build to code. Indeed, in 1998 the Religious Land Use and Institutionalized Persons Act was passed to ensure this right is protected. Do we really want to give the government the right to pick and choose which religions get to build where? Do we want Evangelicals banned from building new churches in neighborhoods where they are an unpopular minority? Do they want the majority to be able to decide where Mormon churches can be built, or Synagogues, or Adventist Churches, or Catholic? We are all minorities somewhere in this country. Do we want the majority to be able to squelch our plans to build a house of worship? Of course not.
But the fact that they have a constitutional right to build that mosque near Ground Zero is not the point.
The Muslim Public Affairs Council put out statement applauding Obama and New York Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg, who also has defended the proposed mosque: "The president and Mayor Bloomberg have set the standard for other political leaders to preserve America's open society," said council President Salam Al-Marayati. "The president landed a major blow against Al Qaeda's false narrative that America is at war with Islam."
Showing that America is not at war with all Islam is not the point either.
The point is: it is extremely insensitive for Muslims to build a mosque so close to Ground Zero. Period. End of discussion. They had to know they would be stepping on America’s heart. This is an immoral decision on the part of that particular Islamic group and their Imam.
The building of the mosque could hurt Obama politically. I have to agree with House Republican Leader John A. Boehner of Ohio who took issue with Obama's remarks. "The fact that someone has the right to do something doesn't necessarily make it the right thing to do," Boehner said in a statement. "That is the essence of tolerance, peace and understanding. This is not an issue of law, whether religious freedom or local zoning. This is a basic issue of respect for a tragic moment in our history."
Obama has indicated that he is aware that building a mosque so close to Ground Zero may be technically legal, but morally insensitive, and stated such: "I was not commenting and I will not comment on the wisdom of making the decision to put a mosque there," he said. He emphasized that he was standing up for a basic principle and that he was not endorsing the idea of putting a mosque at that specific location. In other words, there is really nothing that anyone can legally do to stop it.
But the distinction seems an academic one. At no point has Obama actually come out and said that it is a bad idea to put a mosque at that site even if the owners have the right to do so. In other words, building that mosque is a very unwise thing to do; it is an in-your-eye, in-your-face action by so-called Islamic moderates.
This action is a very unwise thing to do, and President Obama should publicly tell them so.
Sunday, July 25, 2010
He lied, and then called it journalism
If a house is burned to the ground, you can cry about the firefighters not saving the house or criticize the building material for not being fire retardant – but mostly you blame the person who started the fire. Last week, a government worker named Shirley Sherrod was fired after a heavily edited video clip of her NAACP speech was used to paint her as a racist. In one nanosecond, her reputation was burned down to the ground, causing her to lose her job almost instantly.
Later, when the whole speech was revealed, it proved the clip making the rounds on the various ‘news’ channels was way out of context. Once the truth was learned, the media booed her bosses for firing her, blasted the NAACP for calling her a racist; and even the president was chided for not checking into the story before acting (although the media is just as guilty of the same). But what about the guy who started the fire? As of today, he is still getting away with it. Andrew Breitbart is the far-right wingnut blogger who posted an extremely edited video of Sherrod. He put it on one of his five Web sites. Breitbart, a former Matt Drudge trainee, onetime E Entertainment employee, and the guy who called Senator Edward Kennedy "a special pile of human excrement" just hours after Kennedy’s death, published the edited clip of Shirley Sherrod as ‘evidence’ of reverse racism by the NAACP. He claimed the audience applauded her so-called reverse racism.
The complete, unedited video shows no such thing.
Breitbart lit that fire on purpose – to try to paint the NAACP as a racist organization. He probably knew that what he was doing could ruin Sherrod’s career and her personal life. As Sherrod would later tell CNN, "He knew exactly what would happen." The story began with Breitbart. He is where the blame lies and where the punishment should be doled out. But how do you punish a lying blogger like Breitbart who can easily slither back into his dark hole of pseudo journalism. He answers to no one except his far-right wingnut readers who lap up everything he, and others like him, posts.
Breitbart boasted about his ‘journalistic’ skills to the media last week, "I am public enemy No. 1 or 2 to the Democratic Party ... based upon the successes my ‘journalism’ has had."
What journalism? It's not journalism if you use edited, spliced material to paint a picture of an incident that is totally incorrect. It is not journalism if you use any means, including lying and manipulating the evidence, to obtain your desired end.
Some people have called this incident a referendum on racism. But it was also a referendum on editing, a referendum on Internet blogging, a referendum on our insatiable desire for explosive news, and our refusal to see the full picture. Anyone who watches the whole tape of Sherrod's speech sees an honest woman who tells of helping a nearly bankrupt white farmer 24 years ago that made her question her own prejudices. In the video, she goes on to say such things as: "Working with him made me see that it's really about those who have versus those who don't have ... and they could be black; they could be white; they could be Hispanic…. God helped me see that it's not just about black people…. I've come to realize that we have to work together…. We have to overcome the divisions that we have."
Yet, Breitbart's web site contains pieces like "If Anyone Needs to Apologize, It's Shirley Sherrod." Breitbart actually said the following of Sherrod: "This person has not gotten past black versus white." Wrong. It is Breitbart that cannot get past black versus white – and past his hate for any group in this country who does not think like he does. Hate like Breitbart’s makes the political world spin, especially the blogosphere.
Some right wingers actually claimed Breitbart was a "victim" of whomever gave him this video. But you cannot blame others if what you write or put on your blog turns up to be bogus. Instead of taking responsibility for what he put out into the blogosphere, he blames everyone else – the liberals, President Barack Obama, the NAACP, even Sherrod herself, a woman who was nothing more than his pawn.
"I believe that I am held to a higher standard," Breitbart told Politico. "If this video showed a picture of a Caucasian talking in the exact same way but talking about a black person with an audience affirming and clapping that behavior, the reporter would be getting a Pulitzer Prize right now."
Uh… No, he wouldn't. Showing a heavily edited video is not "reporting." Breitbart, and those far-right wingers like him (Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck, and Fox ‘News’ come to mind) are not held to any standard by anyone.
That, my dear readers, is what is wrong with this whole situation. Breitbart lied, and then called it journalism.
Later, when the whole speech was revealed, it proved the clip making the rounds on the various ‘news’ channels was way out of context. Once the truth was learned, the media booed her bosses for firing her, blasted the NAACP for calling her a racist; and even the president was chided for not checking into the story before acting (although the media is just as guilty of the same). But what about the guy who started the fire? As of today, he is still getting away with it. Andrew Breitbart is the far-right wingnut blogger who posted an extremely edited video of Sherrod. He put it on one of his five Web sites. Breitbart, a former Matt Drudge trainee, onetime E Entertainment employee, and the guy who called Senator Edward Kennedy "a special pile of human excrement" just hours after Kennedy’s death, published the edited clip of Shirley Sherrod as ‘evidence’ of reverse racism by the NAACP. He claimed the audience applauded her so-called reverse racism.
The complete, unedited video shows no such thing.
Breitbart lit that fire on purpose – to try to paint the NAACP as a racist organization. He probably knew that what he was doing could ruin Sherrod’s career and her personal life. As Sherrod would later tell CNN, "He knew exactly what would happen." The story began with Breitbart. He is where the blame lies and where the punishment should be doled out. But how do you punish a lying blogger like Breitbart who can easily slither back into his dark hole of pseudo journalism. He answers to no one except his far-right wingnut readers who lap up everything he, and others like him, posts.
Breitbart boasted about his ‘journalistic’ skills to the media last week, "I am public enemy No. 1 or 2 to the Democratic Party ... based upon the successes my ‘journalism’ has had."
What journalism? It's not journalism if you use edited, spliced material to paint a picture of an incident that is totally incorrect. It is not journalism if you use any means, including lying and manipulating the evidence, to obtain your desired end.
Some people have called this incident a referendum on racism. But it was also a referendum on editing, a referendum on Internet blogging, a referendum on our insatiable desire for explosive news, and our refusal to see the full picture. Anyone who watches the whole tape of Sherrod's speech sees an honest woman who tells of helping a nearly bankrupt white farmer 24 years ago that made her question her own prejudices. In the video, she goes on to say such things as: "Working with him made me see that it's really about those who have versus those who don't have ... and they could be black; they could be white; they could be Hispanic…. God helped me see that it's not just about black people…. I've come to realize that we have to work together…. We have to overcome the divisions that we have."
Yet, Breitbart's web site contains pieces like "If Anyone Needs to Apologize, It's Shirley Sherrod." Breitbart actually said the following of Sherrod: "This person has not gotten past black versus white." Wrong. It is Breitbart that cannot get past black versus white – and past his hate for any group in this country who does not think like he does. Hate like Breitbart’s makes the political world spin, especially the blogosphere.
Some right wingers actually claimed Breitbart was a "victim" of whomever gave him this video. But you cannot blame others if what you write or put on your blog turns up to be bogus. Instead of taking responsibility for what he put out into the blogosphere, he blames everyone else – the liberals, President Barack Obama, the NAACP, even Sherrod herself, a woman who was nothing more than his pawn.
"I believe that I am held to a higher standard," Breitbart told Politico. "If this video showed a picture of a Caucasian talking in the exact same way but talking about a black person with an audience affirming and clapping that behavior, the reporter would be getting a Pulitzer Prize right now."
Uh… No, he wouldn't. Showing a heavily edited video is not "reporting." Breitbart, and those far-right wingers like him (Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck, and Fox ‘News’ come to mind) are not held to any standard by anyone.
That, my dear readers, is what is wrong with this whole situation. Breitbart lied, and then called it journalism.
Sunday, July 18, 2010
It is high time
Glenn Beck started an anti-faith campaign in March, when he linked social justice (helping the ‘least of these’) to communism and Nazism and urged his audience to abandon churches that preach social justice, saying:
"I beg you; look for the words 'social justice' or 'economic justice' on your church Web site. If you find it, run as fast as you can. Social justice and economic justice, they are code words. Now, am I advising people to leave their church? Yes."
On May 28, on his nationally syndicated radio show, Beck read an excerpt from a Washington Post ad by Simon Greer, President of Jewish Funds for Justice. In it, Simon argued that we are at our best as a society when we put humankind and the common good first. Beck responded that "This leads to death camps. A Jew, of all people, should know that. This is exactly the kind of talk that led to the death camps in Germany."
At last, Americans of faith are telling Glenn Beck that enough is enough. This summer as Beck does a speaking tour of the United States, Faithful America – a multi-faith organization – has rallied its members to push back against Beck's false-Christian-social-justice message. When Beck makes stops in South Carolina, New York, New Jersey, and Washington D.C., the group's new radio ad will follow his trail and challenge his words as false gospel on local Christian radio stations.
The ad not only points a finger at Beck; it also challenges Christians to pay closer attention to their own Scriptures instead of blindly following Beck's version of Christianity. “Would you support a leader who said Jesus' teachings can lead to Nazism or who attacks Christian pastors for preaching the full gospel? Then why do so many Christians tune in to Glenn Beck?” the ad asks. This ad kicks off Faithful America's “Driven by Faith, Not by Fear” campaign to counter the extreme statements of pundits and Tea Partiers.
Beth Dahlman, online organizer for Faithful America, said in an interview, “He [Beck] has gone after what is at the heart of what our faith tradition says. For people in our community, there is just no way to read scripture and not think about social justice. It is our obligation as people of faith to take that seriously and to do all we can to make that good news a reality… Christians are cautioned not to praise God in one breath, while cursing those made in God's likeness in the next.” With membership already surpassing one hundred thousand, Faithful America, founded in 2004, works with America's diverse religious communities to act for justice on pressing moral issues.
In the wake of his attack on Judeo-Christian values, people of faith continue to speak out against Beck’s kind of demagoguery and advocate for real solutions to the pressing challenges facing millions of Americans. Leaders of the faith community are also standing up to Beck with an ad in Forward. The ad in Forward is sponsored by Jewish Funds for Justice which was the subject of one of Beck's most truly hateful tirades; but it is signed by more than 250 supporters of the group's work for social justice, including Christian clergy and Jewish rabbis.
“We have no illusions that our ad is going to change Glenn Beck's mind all of the sudden,” Beth Dahlman said. Faithful America's goal is to counter Beck's false messages of faith and speak the truth about what Jesus taught about caring for the vulnerable. If more Americans heed the challenge given by many leaders of Christian and Jewish faiths, Beck's ratings could continue its downward trend.
As Beck's attacks on the tenets of Christianity grow ever more vicious, these efforts are more important than ever. It is high time Christians took on false prophets like Glenn Beck.
"I beg you; look for the words 'social justice' or 'economic justice' on your church Web site. If you find it, run as fast as you can. Social justice and economic justice, they are code words. Now, am I advising people to leave their church? Yes."
On May 28, on his nationally syndicated radio show, Beck read an excerpt from a Washington Post ad by Simon Greer, President of Jewish Funds for Justice. In it, Simon argued that we are at our best as a society when we put humankind and the common good first. Beck responded that "This leads to death camps. A Jew, of all people, should know that. This is exactly the kind of talk that led to the death camps in Germany."
At last, Americans of faith are telling Glenn Beck that enough is enough. This summer as Beck does a speaking tour of the United States, Faithful America – a multi-faith organization – has rallied its members to push back against Beck's false-Christian-social-justice message. When Beck makes stops in South Carolina, New York, New Jersey, and Washington D.C., the group's new radio ad will follow his trail and challenge his words as false gospel on local Christian radio stations.
The ad not only points a finger at Beck; it also challenges Christians to pay closer attention to their own Scriptures instead of blindly following Beck's version of Christianity. “Would you support a leader who said Jesus' teachings can lead to Nazism or who attacks Christian pastors for preaching the full gospel? Then why do so many Christians tune in to Glenn Beck?” the ad asks. This ad kicks off Faithful America's “Driven by Faith, Not by Fear” campaign to counter the extreme statements of pundits and Tea Partiers.
Beth Dahlman, online organizer for Faithful America, said in an interview, “He [Beck] has gone after what is at the heart of what our faith tradition says. For people in our community, there is just no way to read scripture and not think about social justice. It is our obligation as people of faith to take that seriously and to do all we can to make that good news a reality… Christians are cautioned not to praise God in one breath, while cursing those made in God's likeness in the next.” With membership already surpassing one hundred thousand, Faithful America, founded in 2004, works with America's diverse religious communities to act for justice on pressing moral issues.
In the wake of his attack on Judeo-Christian values, people of faith continue to speak out against Beck’s kind of demagoguery and advocate for real solutions to the pressing challenges facing millions of Americans. Leaders of the faith community are also standing up to Beck with an ad in Forward. The ad in Forward is sponsored by Jewish Funds for Justice which was the subject of one of Beck's most truly hateful tirades; but it is signed by more than 250 supporters of the group's work for social justice, including Christian clergy and Jewish rabbis.
“We have no illusions that our ad is going to change Glenn Beck's mind all of the sudden,” Beth Dahlman said. Faithful America's goal is to counter Beck's false messages of faith and speak the truth about what Jesus taught about caring for the vulnerable. If more Americans heed the challenge given by many leaders of Christian and Jewish faiths, Beck's ratings could continue its downward trend.
As Beck's attacks on the tenets of Christianity grow ever more vicious, these efforts are more important than ever. It is high time Christians took on false prophets like Glenn Beck.
Thursday, July 8, 2010
No one hears God with their ears
Many Christians are secretly distressed because they feel like their relationship with Christ is not as intense or constant as it is supposed to be.
When speaking about Christ, we Christians naturally use the only language available. But using language to capture the Reality of God is like trying to use children’s numbered blocks to teach quantum physics. It is simply insufficient for the challenge. The language we employ to describe our relationship with God/Christ is precisely the same language we employ to talk about our actual, human relationships. We say that we “walk” with Jesus; we “talk” with Jesus; we “spend time” with Jesus; Jesus is “beside” us; Jesus “hears” our prayers, Jesus “holds our hand,” and so on. But when it comes to Jesus, those words are not true at all in the same way they are when we are speaking of regular people.
And that difference can create some stress in the lives of believers.
The reason any given Christian is so prone to feeling like his relationship with Jesus is less than it should be is because the Christians around him are forever describing their relationship with Jesus in human terms. Then when he does not experience Jesus with anything like what many describe, when he cannot hear Jesus talking to him, he feels inferior or ashamed. He cannot help but think that the relationship others seem to have with Christ is better or richer – more real – than what he has experienced.
Do not worry that you do not really see, speak, talk, or walk with Jesus. No one else does either. People think they have to act like the relationship they have with Jesus is just like the relationship they have with humans, but that is just a conceptual misunderstanding. Jesus is spirit.
No one ever gets human-like feedback from Christ that is any more real, specific, or pointed than you do. Nobody on earth is holding hands with Christ. Nobody sane is having a conversation with Christ or God where they hear answers coming back at them. Those TV preachers who say that they have heard God’s or Jesus’ voice telling them to build this building or do that mission are lying through their teeth just to get you to send money.
You “hear” God within your heart; many call this the Holy Spirit. Jesus does not communicate with you so that your ears can hear what he says. God/Jesus communicates to you within your mind and heart in a language that you, and only you, can understand.
That is the reality of anyone’s relationship with Christ.
When speaking about Christ, we Christians naturally use the only language available. But using language to capture the Reality of God is like trying to use children’s numbered blocks to teach quantum physics. It is simply insufficient for the challenge. The language we employ to describe our relationship with God/Christ is precisely the same language we employ to talk about our actual, human relationships. We say that we “walk” with Jesus; we “talk” with Jesus; we “spend time” with Jesus; Jesus is “beside” us; Jesus “hears” our prayers, Jesus “holds our hand,” and so on. But when it comes to Jesus, those words are not true at all in the same way they are when we are speaking of regular people.
And that difference can create some stress in the lives of believers.
The reason any given Christian is so prone to feeling like his relationship with Jesus is less than it should be is because the Christians around him are forever describing their relationship with Jesus in human terms. Then when he does not experience Jesus with anything like what many describe, when he cannot hear Jesus talking to him, he feels inferior or ashamed. He cannot help but think that the relationship others seem to have with Christ is better or richer – more real – than what he has experienced.
Do not worry that you do not really see, speak, talk, or walk with Jesus. No one else does either. People think they have to act like the relationship they have with Jesus is just like the relationship they have with humans, but that is just a conceptual misunderstanding. Jesus is spirit.
No one ever gets human-like feedback from Christ that is any more real, specific, or pointed than you do. Nobody on earth is holding hands with Christ. Nobody sane is having a conversation with Christ or God where they hear answers coming back at them. Those TV preachers who say that they have heard God’s or Jesus’ voice telling them to build this building or do that mission are lying through their teeth just to get you to send money.
You “hear” God within your heart; many call this the Holy Spirit. Jesus does not communicate with you so that your ears can hear what he says. God/Jesus communicates to you within your mind and heart in a language that you, and only you, can understand.
That is the reality of anyone’s relationship with Christ.
The necessary kind of love
A few weeks ago, I posted an article called “A hole in my heart” where I stated that the assumption that all parents are programmed to love their children unconditionally and protect them from harm is not universally true. I can attest to this personally.
Let me expound upon that theme.
Emotional cruelty is a hidden cruelty and often very damaging to a family for multiple generations. A parent’s cruel, conditional love is most often repeated by the grown children toward their children – hence, the Bible verse about the sins of the father: “He committed all the sins his father had done before him.…” (1 Kings 15:3)
In the book Unconditional Parenting, Alfie Kohn looks at the difference between loving your children for what they do and loving them for who they are. The first sort of love is conditional, which means children must earn it by acting in ways their parents deem appropriate or by performing up to their parents’ expectations. The second sort of love is unconditional: It does not depend on how children behave or whether they are successful at what they do.
Parents all too often place conditions on their love in order to control their children. In fact, although this type of parent will believe they are being controlling out of love, it is really all about power and control. They view the child as a piece of clay to be shape in whatever form they want their child to be. They see the child's brain as an empty vessel to be filled with their own beliefs, personalities, etc – a 'mini me' per se. They are led to do so not only by what they were raised to believe, but also by how they were raised – conditioned to be conditional in giving love – causing the cycle (sins of the father) to continue. The child has to have a very strong personality to break the accepted behavior pattern after generations of “sin”.
The root of this type of thinking has crept deep into American consciousness. In fact, unconditional acceptance seems to be only an ideal: An Internet search for variants of the word ‘unconditional’ mostly turns up discussions about God or pets. Apparently, it is hard for many people to imagine love among humans without strings attached. For a child, some of those strings have to do with good behavior and some have to do with achievement.
Conditional love relies on discipline techniques whose only purpose is to make kids act – or stop acting – in a particular way. It is manipulative and controlling. It is like making a child say, “I’m sorry.” Apparently the parent hopes that making the child say it will make it true. There are no explanations. The child is not really taught anything except that when one is caught being bad, saying “sorry” will possibly deflect punishment. Nothing matters except the stuff on the surface. There are no questions about who kids are, what they think or feel or need, or why they behaved badly. There is no thought of motives and values: The idea is just to change the behavior.
This belief in harsh punishment, in breaking a child’s spirit, not only reflects an assumption about what kids learn in a given situation or how they learn, it also reflects a jaundiced view of children – and, by extension, of human nature. It assumes that, given half a chance, kids will take advantage of anyone or any situation as in the old saying, “Give them an inch, they'll take a mile.” According to this belief, acceptance without strings attached will be interpreted by the child as permission to act selfish, demanding, greedy, or inconsiderate. In other words, the belief in conditional parenting is based on the deeply cynical view that accepting kids for who they are allows them to be bad because that is who they are. It is true that those consequences are possible if one does not properly use teaching moments.
Children act out for many different reasons, some of which may be hard to discern. Parents, in their attempt to discipline, should not ignore the reasons behind the behavior and only respond to the behavior. For example, a 4-year-old may be defiant because she's worried about the implications of the new baby getting so much attention. She is worried that she is no longer loved and is expressing her fear the only way a 4-year-old can. The parents should deal with the 4-year-old’s feelings, not merely try to stomp out the way she's expressing her fear. Unconditional parenting assumes that behaviors are the outward expression of feelings and thoughts, needs and intentions. In this case, punishment is not necessary and would actually be the wrong thing to do. There is one overriding imperative: she needs to feel loved. Unconditional love means to nurture – not control. It's the child that matters, not just the behavior by itself.
Unconditional parenting is not a fancy term for letting kids do whatever they want. It does not throw out consequences or punishment altogether. Punishment is allowed – but it cannot be unreasonable or harsh. And it should not be physical – as in beatings with a belt or other instrument of torture. It is very important (once a child’s bad behavior has passed and penance served) to teach, to reflect together – then reinforce the love. Whatever lesson a parent hopes to impart is far more likely to be learned if the child knows that their parent’s love was not diminished by how she acted.
The unconditional approach to parenting begins with the reminder that the child is not trying to make the parent miserable. She is not being malicious. She does not want to be “bad”. She is telling the parent in the only way she knows how that something is wrong. Remember: Children do not understand their own feelings and therefore have great difficulty in expressing the roots of their behavior. It may be something that just happened, or it may reveal undercurrents that have been there for a while (such as abuse or fear). Unconditional love holds that children do not want to act badly. So when young children pitch a fit, or refuse to do as they said they would, this should be understood in terms of their age and their inability to discern the source of their unease or express their feelings in more appropriate ways.
Research has shown that the use of conditional love by parents has negative effects on the child’s entire life – and on society. Children who received approval from their parents only if they acted in a particular way were a bit more likely to act that way – even in adult life; but the cost of this strategy is substantial. The adults whose parents showed only conditional love were much more likely to feel rejected and, as a result, to resent and dislike their parents throughout their lives. Since they had consistently received less affection whenever they failed to impress or obey their parents, their relationships with their parents were likely to be strained.
More worrisome is that researchers at the University of Denver have shown that teenagers who feel they have to fulfill certain conditions in order to win their parents' love all too often end up not liking themselves and are therefore crippled in developing relationships. How can anyone love or care about others when they do not love themselves?
What kind of implications could this have on society? Society ends up with too many adults who think that good things must always be earned, never given away, never a gift. Indeed, many people become infuriated at the possibility that this “rule” has been violated. For example, many in our society feel hostility toward welfare and those who rely on it. Look at the rampant use of rewards for performance; or the number of teachers who define anything enjoyable (like recess) as a treat, a kind of payment for children living up to expectations. It is believed in our society that people shouldn't get something for nothing – not even happiness…or love.
Children need to be loved just as they are, and for whom they are – unconditionally. When that happens, they can accept themselves as fundamentally good people, even when they make mistakes, including horribly enormous ones, and fall short of parental expectations. Growing up with unconditional parental love causes the child’s cup to “runneth over” – and she then has the capacity to love and help others.
Some parents say that they discipline their children in this way because they love them – the old “this will hurt me more than you” routine. Yet, parents saying they love their children is not the same as how the children experience that love. Does the child feel loved? A parent can tell a child “I love you” over and over, but if actions do not show love then the child does not feel loved.
Words of love mean nothing if not followed by actually showing love.
Children have the capacity to be compassionate or aggressive, altruistic or selfish, cooperative or competitive. A great deal depends on how they are raised – including, among other things, whether they feel loved. A parent’s unconditional love should be purely and simply a gift – like God’s grace – to which all children are entitled.
Unconditional love is the necessary kind of love that parents must give their children in order for them to flourish and do well in their adult lives.
Source: Unconditional Parenting: Moving from Rewards and Punishments to Love and Reason, by Alfie Kohn.
Let me expound upon that theme.
Emotional cruelty is a hidden cruelty and often very damaging to a family for multiple generations. A parent’s cruel, conditional love is most often repeated by the grown children toward their children – hence, the Bible verse about the sins of the father: “He committed all the sins his father had done before him.…” (1 Kings 15:3)
In the book Unconditional Parenting, Alfie Kohn looks at the difference between loving your children for what they do and loving them for who they are. The first sort of love is conditional, which means children must earn it by acting in ways their parents deem appropriate or by performing up to their parents’ expectations. The second sort of love is unconditional: It does not depend on how children behave or whether they are successful at what they do.
Parents all too often place conditions on their love in order to control their children. In fact, although this type of parent will believe they are being controlling out of love, it is really all about power and control. They view the child as a piece of clay to be shape in whatever form they want their child to be. They see the child's brain as an empty vessel to be filled with their own beliefs, personalities, etc – a 'mini me' per se. They are led to do so not only by what they were raised to believe, but also by how they were raised – conditioned to be conditional in giving love – causing the cycle (sins of the father) to continue. The child has to have a very strong personality to break the accepted behavior pattern after generations of “sin”.
The root of this type of thinking has crept deep into American consciousness. In fact, unconditional acceptance seems to be only an ideal: An Internet search for variants of the word ‘unconditional’ mostly turns up discussions about God or pets. Apparently, it is hard for many people to imagine love among humans without strings attached. For a child, some of those strings have to do with good behavior and some have to do with achievement.
Conditional love relies on discipline techniques whose only purpose is to make kids act – or stop acting – in a particular way. It is manipulative and controlling. It is like making a child say, “I’m sorry.” Apparently the parent hopes that making the child say it will make it true. There are no explanations. The child is not really taught anything except that when one is caught being bad, saying “sorry” will possibly deflect punishment. Nothing matters except the stuff on the surface. There are no questions about who kids are, what they think or feel or need, or why they behaved badly. There is no thought of motives and values: The idea is just to change the behavior.
This belief in harsh punishment, in breaking a child’s spirit, not only reflects an assumption about what kids learn in a given situation or how they learn, it also reflects a jaundiced view of children – and, by extension, of human nature. It assumes that, given half a chance, kids will take advantage of anyone or any situation as in the old saying, “Give them an inch, they'll take a mile.” According to this belief, acceptance without strings attached will be interpreted by the child as permission to act selfish, demanding, greedy, or inconsiderate. In other words, the belief in conditional parenting is based on the deeply cynical view that accepting kids for who they are allows them to be bad because that is who they are. It is true that those consequences are possible if one does not properly use teaching moments.
Children act out for many different reasons, some of which may be hard to discern. Parents, in their attempt to discipline, should not ignore the reasons behind the behavior and only respond to the behavior. For example, a 4-year-old may be defiant because she's worried about the implications of the new baby getting so much attention. She is worried that she is no longer loved and is expressing her fear the only way a 4-year-old can. The parents should deal with the 4-year-old’s feelings, not merely try to stomp out the way she's expressing her fear. Unconditional parenting assumes that behaviors are the outward expression of feelings and thoughts, needs and intentions. In this case, punishment is not necessary and would actually be the wrong thing to do. There is one overriding imperative: she needs to feel loved. Unconditional love means to nurture – not control. It's the child that matters, not just the behavior by itself.
Unconditional parenting is not a fancy term for letting kids do whatever they want. It does not throw out consequences or punishment altogether. Punishment is allowed – but it cannot be unreasonable or harsh. And it should not be physical – as in beatings with a belt or other instrument of torture. It is very important (once a child’s bad behavior has passed and penance served) to teach, to reflect together – then reinforce the love. Whatever lesson a parent hopes to impart is far more likely to be learned if the child knows that their parent’s love was not diminished by how she acted.
The unconditional approach to parenting begins with the reminder that the child is not trying to make the parent miserable. She is not being malicious. She does not want to be “bad”. She is telling the parent in the only way she knows how that something is wrong. Remember: Children do not understand their own feelings and therefore have great difficulty in expressing the roots of their behavior. It may be something that just happened, or it may reveal undercurrents that have been there for a while (such as abuse or fear). Unconditional love holds that children do not want to act badly. So when young children pitch a fit, or refuse to do as they said they would, this should be understood in terms of their age and their inability to discern the source of their unease or express their feelings in more appropriate ways.
Research has shown that the use of conditional love by parents has negative effects on the child’s entire life – and on society. Children who received approval from their parents only if they acted in a particular way were a bit more likely to act that way – even in adult life; but the cost of this strategy is substantial. The adults whose parents showed only conditional love were much more likely to feel rejected and, as a result, to resent and dislike their parents throughout their lives. Since they had consistently received less affection whenever they failed to impress or obey their parents, their relationships with their parents were likely to be strained.
More worrisome is that researchers at the University of Denver have shown that teenagers who feel they have to fulfill certain conditions in order to win their parents' love all too often end up not liking themselves and are therefore crippled in developing relationships. How can anyone love or care about others when they do not love themselves?
What kind of implications could this have on society? Society ends up with too many adults who think that good things must always be earned, never given away, never a gift. Indeed, many people become infuriated at the possibility that this “rule” has been violated. For example, many in our society feel hostility toward welfare and those who rely on it. Look at the rampant use of rewards for performance; or the number of teachers who define anything enjoyable (like recess) as a treat, a kind of payment for children living up to expectations. It is believed in our society that people shouldn't get something for nothing – not even happiness…or love.
Children need to be loved just as they are, and for whom they are – unconditionally. When that happens, they can accept themselves as fundamentally good people, even when they make mistakes, including horribly enormous ones, and fall short of parental expectations. Growing up with unconditional parental love causes the child’s cup to “runneth over” – and she then has the capacity to love and help others.
Some parents say that they discipline their children in this way because they love them – the old “this will hurt me more than you” routine. Yet, parents saying they love their children is not the same as how the children experience that love. Does the child feel loved? A parent can tell a child “I love you” over and over, but if actions do not show love then the child does not feel loved.
Words of love mean nothing if not followed by actually showing love.
Children have the capacity to be compassionate or aggressive, altruistic or selfish, cooperative or competitive. A great deal depends on how they are raised – including, among other things, whether they feel loved. A parent’s unconditional love should be purely and simply a gift – like God’s grace – to which all children are entitled.
Unconditional love is the necessary kind of love that parents must give their children in order for them to flourish and do well in their adult lives.
Source: Unconditional Parenting: Moving from Rewards and Punishments to Love and Reason, by Alfie Kohn.
Monday, June 21, 2010
Who we are
"Who we are is neither encoded at birth nor gradually assembled over the years, but is inscribed into our brains during the first two years of life in direct response to how we are loved and cared for." ~Sue Gerhardt
Margaret Ainsworth, a Canadian psychologist, was first to demonstrate a significant connection between early childhood experience and development of personality. For a large part of the1960s, Ainsworth sat behind a one-way mirror in Baltimore and watched one-year-olds playing with their mothers. She noted what happened when the mother left the room for a few minutes and how the child responded when she returned. She then studied what happened when, instead of the mother, a stranger entered the room and tried to engage with the child.
Ainsworth's study, together with John Bowlby's attachment theory, showed that how a child developed was not the result of general experiences, but the direct result of the way the child's main care-giver responded to and engaged with him or her. A neglectful, stressed, or inconsistent parent gave the kind of care which led to anxious, insecure or depressed children. Further studies showed that patterns of attachment behavior in one-year-olds could accurately predict how those children would behave at aged five, ten, and fifteen which can further predict the personality of a child when fully grown.
Although the attachment theory has been very influential, underpinning psychology and psychotherapy, the kind of "proof" provided by psychologists has never quite convinced a skeptical public that thinks: Sitting in a room and watching babies – what kind of proof is that? How can anyone know what a baby is thinking and feeling? Isn't it all just liberal conjecture? Added to this, an entire generation of feminists hated the attachment theory from the get go, accusing Bowlby and Ainsworth of being against working women and wanting to shackle women to the home. The whole issue of how babies develop suddenly became highly politicized – and still is. Confusion reigns about the connection between early experience and personality.
Later, when researchers studied the brains of Romanian orphans – children who had been left to cry in their cots from birth and denied any chance of forming close bonds with any adult – they found a "virtual black hole" where the orbitofrontal cortex should have been. This is the part of the brain that enables us to manage our emotions, to relate sensitively to other people, to experience pleasure and to appreciate beauty. The earliest experiences of these children had greatly diminished their capacity ever to be fully human. This gave strong evidence for the attachment theory.
In Why Love Matters, Sue Gerhardt, a psychotherapist, takes the language of neuroscience and uses it to prove the attachment theory. Gerhardt makes an impressive case that emotional experiences in infancy and early childhood have the greatest influence on how we develop as human beings. Drawing on the most recent findings from the field of neurochemistry, she explains how daily interactions between a baby and its main caregiver have a direct impact on the way the brain develops. Picking up a crying baby or ignoring it may be a matter of parental choice, but the effects will be etched on the child’s brain throughout life.
Gerhardt is not interested in cognitive skills – how quickly a child learns to read, write, etc. She is interested in the connection between the kind of loving we receive in infancy and how it influences the kind of people we turn into. According to Gerhardt, "There is nothing automatic about the development of one’s personality. The kind of brain that each baby develops is the brain that comes out of his or her earliest experiences with people." Our earliest experiences are not simply laid down as memories or as influences; they develop into precise physiological patterns of response in the brain that set the neurological rules for how we deal with our feelings for the remainder of our lives.
In other words, how we are treated as babies and toddlers determines exactly who and what we are.
Stress during infancy damages the amygdala, an almond-shaped cluster of nuclei located in the brain's emotional control center that enables us to respond quickly to danger – such as stepping out of the way of a swerving car. Repeated abuse or violence in the home of any type causes the amygdala to signal danger even when there is no apparent threat. Dr. Bruce Perry, a neuroscientist who heads the Child Trauma Academy, a nonprofit research center in Houston, says that a maladaptive amygdala makes a child or an adult survivor of child abuse recoil in fear at the drop of a hat. This negative impact on developing brain structures is associated with changes in brain chemistry.
Overwhelming stress early in life also alters the production of both the stress-regulating hormone cortisol and key neurotransmitters such as epinephrine, dopamine, and serotonin, the chemical messengers in the brain that affect mood and behavior. These biochemical imbalances can have profound implications. For example, constant abuse typically lowers serotonin levels, leading to depression or impulsive aggression.
When a baby is upset, the hypothalamus, situated in the subcortex at the center of the brain, produces cortisol. In normal amounts, cortisol is good, but if a baby is exposed for too long or too often to stressful situations its brain becomes flooded with cortisol and it will then either over- or under-produce cortisol for the remainder of its life when exposed to stress. Too much cortisol is linked to depression, anxiety, and fearfulness; too little cortisol is linked to emotional detachment and aggression. Children of alcoholics have a raised cortisol level. Baby girls of abusive parents tend to develop high cortisol levels while boys tend to do the opposite, and produce too little, becoming aggressive and/or detached.
If abuse or stress continued into the early childhood years, triggers and cues act as reminders of the trauma and can cause further anxiety and depression. Often the person can be completely unaware of the triggers. In many cases this may lead a person suffering from a traumatic disorder, engaging in disruptive or self-destructive coping mechanisms, without being fully aware of the nature or causes of their own actions. Panic attacks are an example of a response to such emotional triggers. Consequently, intense feelings of anger may surface frequently, sometimes in very inappropriate or unexpected situations, as danger may always seem to be present. Upsetting memories such as images, thoughts, flashbacks, and/or nightmares may haunt the person. Insomnia may occur as lurking fears and insecurity keep the person vigilant and on the lookout for danger, both day and night. Chronic depression and/or Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) more likely than not plagues the person throughout their life.
The point is that babies cannot regulate their stress response on their own, but learn to do so only through repeated experiences of being shown consistent love, unconditionally, or not being shown love, by its parents. Through positive interactions, the baby learns that people can be relied upon to respond to its needs, and the baby's brain learns to produce only beneficial amounts of cortisol. Through a lack of love, or through physical or emotional abuse, babies become highly stressed causing cortisol production to run amok throughout its life, leading to a plethora of physical and psychological problems. Baseline levels of cortisol are pretty much set by six months of age. Too much cortisol, and the child is set up for a lifetime of struggle with depression and physical health problems such as fibromyalgia, IBS, asthma, weight gain, and high blood pressure.
Timely interventions – by 7 years of age – can help rewire the brain and put psychological development back on track up to a point. A loving, understanding adult can come along during the child’s early years and somewhat correct the problem; but if the child is removed from its rescuer any time before full adulthood and once again put in a situation where love and nurture is not provided (as with an unloving stepparent), then the “repair” is all but undone.
Sue Gerhardt's book, Why Love Matters: How Affection Shapes a Baby's Brain, is a much-needed corrective to those who have made too great a claim for the role of inherited genes. Instead, she shows that you can't slide a knife between the heart and the brain. Human babies, like all mammals, are born wired for survival, but uniquely, we are wired to do so through other people. By smiling cutely long before they can walk or talk, babies ensure that the adults in their lives forgive them the sleepless nights and want to keep them alive. Being smiled at in return teaches the baby the rewards of communication and primes the infant brain for more.
Good parenting during the early years leads to good development of the baby's prefrontal cortex, which in turn enables the growing child to develop self-control, empathy, and to feel connected to others. Bad parenting (neglect, abuse, violence in the home) during those early years leads to a damaged amygdala (the brain's emotional control center) setting the child up for a lifetime of sorrow.
Gerhardt is not the first person to say these things, but research findings in this area have been very slow to filter out to the general public because they are so politically sensitive. It is because of this that researchers in this field have been reticent over the years about broadcasting their results. It's hard to read this book and feel complacent about the conditions in which many children today are raised. Too many parents are not meeting their children's need for love in the vital first two years of their lives.
Who we are really goes back to those early years spent with loving or unloving parents. Those who say that the grown-up child should forget and forgive, that at some point she is completely responsible for her own emotions, is ignorant of brain development and the long-term consequences of abuse and/or neglect. Years of therapy and love from a good-hearted spouse can rewire the brain to an extent; but, even so, the personality that we developed as a young child is always there, ready to subconsciously respond to any trigger or reminder of those early years.
Who we are is neither encoded at birth nor gradually assembled over the years, but is inscribed into our brains during the first two years of life in direct response to how we are loved and cared for.
http://www.amazon.com/Why-Love-Matters-Affection-Shapes/dp/1583918175
Margaret Ainsworth, a Canadian psychologist, was first to demonstrate a significant connection between early childhood experience and development of personality. For a large part of the1960s, Ainsworth sat behind a one-way mirror in Baltimore and watched one-year-olds playing with their mothers. She noted what happened when the mother left the room for a few minutes and how the child responded when she returned. She then studied what happened when, instead of the mother, a stranger entered the room and tried to engage with the child.
Ainsworth's study, together with John Bowlby's attachment theory, showed that how a child developed was not the result of general experiences, but the direct result of the way the child's main care-giver responded to and engaged with him or her. A neglectful, stressed, or inconsistent parent gave the kind of care which led to anxious, insecure or depressed children. Further studies showed that patterns of attachment behavior in one-year-olds could accurately predict how those children would behave at aged five, ten, and fifteen which can further predict the personality of a child when fully grown.
Although the attachment theory has been very influential, underpinning psychology and psychotherapy, the kind of "proof" provided by psychologists has never quite convinced a skeptical public that thinks: Sitting in a room and watching babies – what kind of proof is that? How can anyone know what a baby is thinking and feeling? Isn't it all just liberal conjecture? Added to this, an entire generation of feminists hated the attachment theory from the get go, accusing Bowlby and Ainsworth of being against working women and wanting to shackle women to the home. The whole issue of how babies develop suddenly became highly politicized – and still is. Confusion reigns about the connection between early experience and personality.
Later, when researchers studied the brains of Romanian orphans – children who had been left to cry in their cots from birth and denied any chance of forming close bonds with any adult – they found a "virtual black hole" where the orbitofrontal cortex should have been. This is the part of the brain that enables us to manage our emotions, to relate sensitively to other people, to experience pleasure and to appreciate beauty. The earliest experiences of these children had greatly diminished their capacity ever to be fully human. This gave strong evidence for the attachment theory.
In Why Love Matters, Sue Gerhardt, a psychotherapist, takes the language of neuroscience and uses it to prove the attachment theory. Gerhardt makes an impressive case that emotional experiences in infancy and early childhood have the greatest influence on how we develop as human beings. Drawing on the most recent findings from the field of neurochemistry, she explains how daily interactions between a baby and its main caregiver have a direct impact on the way the brain develops. Picking up a crying baby or ignoring it may be a matter of parental choice, but the effects will be etched on the child’s brain throughout life.
Gerhardt is not interested in cognitive skills – how quickly a child learns to read, write, etc. She is interested in the connection between the kind of loving we receive in infancy and how it influences the kind of people we turn into. According to Gerhardt, "There is nothing automatic about the development of one’s personality. The kind of brain that each baby develops is the brain that comes out of his or her earliest experiences with people." Our earliest experiences are not simply laid down as memories or as influences; they develop into precise physiological patterns of response in the brain that set the neurological rules for how we deal with our feelings for the remainder of our lives.
In other words, how we are treated as babies and toddlers determines exactly who and what we are.
Stress during infancy damages the amygdala, an almond-shaped cluster of nuclei located in the brain's emotional control center that enables us to respond quickly to danger – such as stepping out of the way of a swerving car. Repeated abuse or violence in the home of any type causes the amygdala to signal danger even when there is no apparent threat. Dr. Bruce Perry, a neuroscientist who heads the Child Trauma Academy, a nonprofit research center in Houston, says that a maladaptive amygdala makes a child or an adult survivor of child abuse recoil in fear at the drop of a hat. This negative impact on developing brain structures is associated with changes in brain chemistry.
Overwhelming stress early in life also alters the production of both the stress-regulating hormone cortisol and key neurotransmitters such as epinephrine, dopamine, and serotonin, the chemical messengers in the brain that affect mood and behavior. These biochemical imbalances can have profound implications. For example, constant abuse typically lowers serotonin levels, leading to depression or impulsive aggression.
When a baby is upset, the hypothalamus, situated in the subcortex at the center of the brain, produces cortisol. In normal amounts, cortisol is good, but if a baby is exposed for too long or too often to stressful situations its brain becomes flooded with cortisol and it will then either over- or under-produce cortisol for the remainder of its life when exposed to stress. Too much cortisol is linked to depression, anxiety, and fearfulness; too little cortisol is linked to emotional detachment and aggression. Children of alcoholics have a raised cortisol level. Baby girls of abusive parents tend to develop high cortisol levels while boys tend to do the opposite, and produce too little, becoming aggressive and/or detached.
If abuse or stress continued into the early childhood years, triggers and cues act as reminders of the trauma and can cause further anxiety and depression. Often the person can be completely unaware of the triggers. In many cases this may lead a person suffering from a traumatic disorder, engaging in disruptive or self-destructive coping mechanisms, without being fully aware of the nature or causes of their own actions. Panic attacks are an example of a response to such emotional triggers. Consequently, intense feelings of anger may surface frequently, sometimes in very inappropriate or unexpected situations, as danger may always seem to be present. Upsetting memories such as images, thoughts, flashbacks, and/or nightmares may haunt the person. Insomnia may occur as lurking fears and insecurity keep the person vigilant and on the lookout for danger, both day and night. Chronic depression and/or Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) more likely than not plagues the person throughout their life.
The point is that babies cannot regulate their stress response on their own, but learn to do so only through repeated experiences of being shown consistent love, unconditionally, or not being shown love, by its parents. Through positive interactions, the baby learns that people can be relied upon to respond to its needs, and the baby's brain learns to produce only beneficial amounts of cortisol. Through a lack of love, or through physical or emotional abuse, babies become highly stressed causing cortisol production to run amok throughout its life, leading to a plethora of physical and psychological problems. Baseline levels of cortisol are pretty much set by six months of age. Too much cortisol, and the child is set up for a lifetime of struggle with depression and physical health problems such as fibromyalgia, IBS, asthma, weight gain, and high blood pressure.
Timely interventions – by 7 years of age – can help rewire the brain and put psychological development back on track up to a point. A loving, understanding adult can come along during the child’s early years and somewhat correct the problem; but if the child is removed from its rescuer any time before full adulthood and once again put in a situation where love and nurture is not provided (as with an unloving stepparent), then the “repair” is all but undone.
Sue Gerhardt's book, Why Love Matters: How Affection Shapes a Baby's Brain, is a much-needed corrective to those who have made too great a claim for the role of inherited genes. Instead, she shows that you can't slide a knife between the heart and the brain. Human babies, like all mammals, are born wired for survival, but uniquely, we are wired to do so through other people. By smiling cutely long before they can walk or talk, babies ensure that the adults in their lives forgive them the sleepless nights and want to keep them alive. Being smiled at in return teaches the baby the rewards of communication and primes the infant brain for more.
Good parenting during the early years leads to good development of the baby's prefrontal cortex, which in turn enables the growing child to develop self-control, empathy, and to feel connected to others. Bad parenting (neglect, abuse, violence in the home) during those early years leads to a damaged amygdala (the brain's emotional control center) setting the child up for a lifetime of sorrow.
Gerhardt is not the first person to say these things, but research findings in this area have been very slow to filter out to the general public because they are so politically sensitive. It is because of this that researchers in this field have been reticent over the years about broadcasting their results. It's hard to read this book and feel complacent about the conditions in which many children today are raised. Too many parents are not meeting their children's need for love in the vital first two years of their lives.
Who we are really goes back to those early years spent with loving or unloving parents. Those who say that the grown-up child should forget and forgive, that at some point she is completely responsible for her own emotions, is ignorant of brain development and the long-term consequences of abuse and/or neglect. Years of therapy and love from a good-hearted spouse can rewire the brain to an extent; but, even so, the personality that we developed as a young child is always there, ready to subconsciously respond to any trigger or reminder of those early years.
Who we are is neither encoded at birth nor gradually assembled over the years, but is inscribed into our brains during the first two years of life in direct response to how we are loved and cared for.
http://www.amazon.com/Why-Love-Matters-Affection-Shapes/dp/1583918175
Friday, June 18, 2010
Smarter than the average bear
When President Obama finished his speech Tuesday evening, my husband turned to me and asked, “What do you think?” My “teacher instincts” told me that the speech went over the heads of most viewers, including the media, because instead of focusing on just the oil spill, the President spoke of the big picture: our gluttonous need for oil and the nation’s long-term energy policy. My husband agreed with me when I said that the speech was too complicated for most people.
So, I was not surprised when CNN, MSNBC, as well as FOX, said that the speech left them wanting. There was not enough emotion, not enough profanity (none), and too broad a stroke. They complained that the President looked at the big picture – or as FOX put it, pushing his energy agenda, specifically cap-and-trade (although Obama did not mention cap-and-trade). They complained that the speech was dull. Almost all the pundits didn’t get it, except Ed (the Ed Show), who exactly understood the entire speech and said that this was why he likes the President – because “he is in the top 5% of the smartest people in this nation.” In other words, our President is smarter than the average bear.
But why did no one get it?
CNN talked to Paul J.J. Payack, a language analyst who said the President’s prose was too complex. He said the President’s comments on Tuesday night, written to a 9.8 grade level, went way over the head of most viewers. According to the National Assessment of Adult Literacy, the average American reads at around an 8th grade level – with average listening comprehension hovering somewhere between 8th and 9th grade.
The speech was not dumbed down enough. It needed to be on the level of my middle schoolers – most of whom did not pay attention unless I constantly moved around the room, stopped to ask questions, and used a good bit of wit. The speech needed average words and only one punch line – the same way I taught my students – one concept at a time, then reiterate many times until you see their light bulbs go on. Anything more than that and… our nation of ADD, like, you know, plugged-in scatter-brains don’t get it.
Payack revealed his results on Wednesday, the same day that BP Chairman Carl-Henric Svanberg said his company cared “about the small people” – and a day before BP CEO Tony Hayward was preparing his own written remarks to be presented to Congress. Many analysts mocked the BP chairman for talking “down” to the American public. Yet, according to Payack, Obama apparently should have dumbed down his speech a bit more.
Payack specifically criticized Obama’s 20-word average per sentence, as well as the speech’s average word length of 5 letters. The language expert said in doing so the President “added some comprehension difficulty for his target audience.” Since the speech went over the heads of most, it obscured his messages because most listeners just didn’t get it.
This particular analysis of Tuesday’s speech contrasted sharply with other Obama speeches. The “Yes, We Can” victory speech, for example, was written for grade 7.
Is it possible that Tuesday’s explanation of the Gulf oil spill may have simultaneously been Obama’s smartest as an orator – and at the same time, his poorest, because he did not dumb it down enough for the average bear?
The pundits thought it was poor. What does that say about the average pundit?
And what does that say about the average American?
Ahhh…so that’s why so many Americans loved Bush – he spoke on their level – below it, actually.
So, I was not surprised when CNN, MSNBC, as well as FOX, said that the speech left them wanting. There was not enough emotion, not enough profanity (none), and too broad a stroke. They complained that the President looked at the big picture – or as FOX put it, pushing his energy agenda, specifically cap-and-trade (although Obama did not mention cap-and-trade). They complained that the speech was dull. Almost all the pundits didn’t get it, except Ed (the Ed Show), who exactly understood the entire speech and said that this was why he likes the President – because “he is in the top 5% of the smartest people in this nation.” In other words, our President is smarter than the average bear.
But why did no one get it?
CNN talked to Paul J.J. Payack, a language analyst who said the President’s prose was too complex. He said the President’s comments on Tuesday night, written to a 9.8 grade level, went way over the head of most viewers. According to the National Assessment of Adult Literacy, the average American reads at around an 8th grade level – with average listening comprehension hovering somewhere between 8th and 9th grade.
The speech was not dumbed down enough. It needed to be on the level of my middle schoolers – most of whom did not pay attention unless I constantly moved around the room, stopped to ask questions, and used a good bit of wit. The speech needed average words and only one punch line – the same way I taught my students – one concept at a time, then reiterate many times until you see their light bulbs go on. Anything more than that and… our nation of ADD, like, you know, plugged-in scatter-brains don’t get it.
Payack revealed his results on Wednesday, the same day that BP Chairman Carl-Henric Svanberg said his company cared “about the small people” – and a day before BP CEO Tony Hayward was preparing his own written remarks to be presented to Congress. Many analysts mocked the BP chairman for talking “down” to the American public. Yet, according to Payack, Obama apparently should have dumbed down his speech a bit more.
Payack specifically criticized Obama’s 20-word average per sentence, as well as the speech’s average word length of 5 letters. The language expert said in doing so the President “added some comprehension difficulty for his target audience.” Since the speech went over the heads of most, it obscured his messages because most listeners just didn’t get it.
This particular analysis of Tuesday’s speech contrasted sharply with other Obama speeches. The “Yes, We Can” victory speech, for example, was written for grade 7.
Is it possible that Tuesday’s explanation of the Gulf oil spill may have simultaneously been Obama’s smartest as an orator – and at the same time, his poorest, because he did not dumb it down enough for the average bear?
The pundits thought it was poor. What does that say about the average pundit?
And what does that say about the average American?
Ahhh…so that’s why so many Americans loved Bush – he spoke on their level – below it, actually.
Friday, June 11, 2010
A hole in my heart
Sorry... but I feel compelled to write about this subject again. I just had another visit with my parents this past weekend. It has taken me about five days to pull out of the ensuing depression. They always find a way to throw subtle barbs at me. Others who are in the room may see it as “joking”, but it isn’t. Some people who are astutely observant will notice the undercurrent of contempt toward me.
My husband saw it from day one when he met them. It almost caused him to not marry me – because when you marry someone, you marry their family. Now he tries to protect me by deflecting the barbs – but he misses many of them. He will only realize what happened when I point it out to him later on, at home, when I am crumpled and in tears.
I cannot say anything right around them. I can't even breathe right to suit them.
You can divorce an abusive spouse. You can call it quits if your lover mistreats you. But what can you do if the source of your misery is your own parent(s)? You either cut down on the visits (I’ve cut mine down to about 4 per year) or completely cut things off. I have not had the courage to completely cut things off because if I do so, I will lose my sisters.
Granted, no parent is perfect. And whining about parental failure, real or not, is practically an American pastime that keeps the therapeutic community dutifully employed. But just as there are ordinary parents who mysteriously produce a difficult child, there are decent people who have the misfortune of having a truly toxic parent.
The assumption that all parents are programmed to love their children unconditionally and protect them from harm is not universally true. I know of a really nice person who has been treated for depression throughout her life due to difficulty dealing with her aging mother. The mother has always been extremely abusive of her. She said, “Once, on my birthday, she left me a message wishing that I would get a disease and die. Can you believe it?”
Over the years, she has tried to have a relationship with her mother, but the encounters were always painful and upsetting; her mother remained harshly critical and demeaning. Whether her mother was mentally ill, just plain mean, or both, was unclear. But there was no question that my friend had decided long ago that the only way to deal with her mother was to avoid her at all costs. Yet, when her mother was approaching death, she was torn about whether there should be another effort at reconciliation. Should she visit and perhaps forgive her mother even though her mother will probably once again be extremely abusive toward her and cause her great emotional pain? Or should she protect herself and live with a sense of guilt from “abandoning” her mother, however unjustified?
I have had to deal with the same problem with my parents. Through the years several of my therapists have had a bias to salvage the relationship, even if harmful to me. Most have not been open-minded as to whether maintaining the relationship is really healthy and desirable. And I have found that this is probably due to very little, if any, training in this area. The topic gets little attention in standard textbooks or in the psychiatric literature, perhaps reflecting the common and mistaken notion that adults, unlike children and the elderly, are not vulnerable to emotional abuse.
But we are vulnerable – because with every visit, the healing wound is once again opened until, one day, it can no longer heal at all. My wound does not scab over anymore. I have become extremely sensitive to their words.
My last counselor was stunned by my parents’ implacable hostility toward me – their constant berating – the history of physical and emotional abuse – and became convinced that they were a psychological menace to me. He suggested that for my well-being I might consider, at least for now, forgoing a relationship with them. I have tried to do so, but my conscience or my feelings of obligation (not love) has kept me from being successful at cutting things off. Maybe I have been brainwashed by them, but I felt this was a drastic measure. Yet, in not doing so, I cannot escape the truckload of negative feelings and thoughts that I have internalized due to their abuse.
Of course, relationships are rarely all good or bad; even the most abusive parents can sometimes show love, which is why severing a bond can be a tough decision. Research on early attachment, both in humans and in nonhuman primates, shows that we are hard-wired for bonding – even to those who are not very nice to us. It is similar to an abused pet still being loyal to its master. Though terribly hurt and angry, many survivors of child abuse try to get their abusive parents to change their ways and love them.
Parental abuse of their children, whether physical or mental, can cause lifetime depression at the very least, chronic PTSD at its worst, and an extremely low self esteem. It is no stretch to say that having a toxic parent is harmful to a child’s brain, let alone his feelings. Brains can mend by removing or reducing stress. Prolonged stress can kill cells in the hippocampus, a brain area critical for memory. We know that although prolonged childhood trauma can be toxic to the brain, young adults retain the ability to rewire their brains through new positive experiences, therapy, and psychotropic medication. But the only way to truly mend the brain of a survivor of child abuse is to cut the ties with the abuser(s).
Dr. Judith Lewis Herman, a trauma expert who is a clinical professor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School, wrote, “Sometimes we consider a paradoxical intervention and say to a patient, ‘I really admire your loyalty to your parents — even at the expense of failing to protect yourself in any way from harm.’ ” She tries to empower her patients to take action to protect themselves without giving direct advice to cut ties. The hope is that her patients will come to see the psychological cost of a harmful relationship and act to change it. As drastic as it sounds, an adult survivor of child abuse is much better off letting go of a toxic parent.
That’s just it: we survivors do see the harm. We just have trouble letting go because it means we will never be loved by Mom or Dad.
I have greatly reduced my visits with my parents, but their absence in my life is never far from my thoughts. At first I thought I missed them. Now I realize that it is the loving childhood I never had that I miss. It left a hole in my heart that can never be filled.
My husband saw it from day one when he met them. It almost caused him to not marry me – because when you marry someone, you marry their family. Now he tries to protect me by deflecting the barbs – but he misses many of them. He will only realize what happened when I point it out to him later on, at home, when I am crumpled and in tears.
I cannot say anything right around them. I can't even breathe right to suit them.
You can divorce an abusive spouse. You can call it quits if your lover mistreats you. But what can you do if the source of your misery is your own parent(s)? You either cut down on the visits (I’ve cut mine down to about 4 per year) or completely cut things off. I have not had the courage to completely cut things off because if I do so, I will lose my sisters.
Granted, no parent is perfect. And whining about parental failure, real or not, is practically an American pastime that keeps the therapeutic community dutifully employed. But just as there are ordinary parents who mysteriously produce a difficult child, there are decent people who have the misfortune of having a truly toxic parent.
The assumption that all parents are programmed to love their children unconditionally and protect them from harm is not universally true. I know of a really nice person who has been treated for depression throughout her life due to difficulty dealing with her aging mother. The mother has always been extremely abusive of her. She said, “Once, on my birthday, she left me a message wishing that I would get a disease and die. Can you believe it?”
Over the years, she has tried to have a relationship with her mother, but the encounters were always painful and upsetting; her mother remained harshly critical and demeaning. Whether her mother was mentally ill, just plain mean, or both, was unclear. But there was no question that my friend had decided long ago that the only way to deal with her mother was to avoid her at all costs. Yet, when her mother was approaching death, she was torn about whether there should be another effort at reconciliation. Should she visit and perhaps forgive her mother even though her mother will probably once again be extremely abusive toward her and cause her great emotional pain? Or should she protect herself and live with a sense of guilt from “abandoning” her mother, however unjustified?
I have had to deal with the same problem with my parents. Through the years several of my therapists have had a bias to salvage the relationship, even if harmful to me. Most have not been open-minded as to whether maintaining the relationship is really healthy and desirable. And I have found that this is probably due to very little, if any, training in this area. The topic gets little attention in standard textbooks or in the psychiatric literature, perhaps reflecting the common and mistaken notion that adults, unlike children and the elderly, are not vulnerable to emotional abuse.
But we are vulnerable – because with every visit, the healing wound is once again opened until, one day, it can no longer heal at all. My wound does not scab over anymore. I have become extremely sensitive to their words.
My last counselor was stunned by my parents’ implacable hostility toward me – their constant berating – the history of physical and emotional abuse – and became convinced that they were a psychological menace to me. He suggested that for my well-being I might consider, at least for now, forgoing a relationship with them. I have tried to do so, but my conscience or my feelings of obligation (not love) has kept me from being successful at cutting things off. Maybe I have been brainwashed by them, but I felt this was a drastic measure. Yet, in not doing so, I cannot escape the truckload of negative feelings and thoughts that I have internalized due to their abuse.
Of course, relationships are rarely all good or bad; even the most abusive parents can sometimes show love, which is why severing a bond can be a tough decision. Research on early attachment, both in humans and in nonhuman primates, shows that we are hard-wired for bonding – even to those who are not very nice to us. It is similar to an abused pet still being loyal to its master. Though terribly hurt and angry, many survivors of child abuse try to get their abusive parents to change their ways and love them.
Parental abuse of their children, whether physical or mental, can cause lifetime depression at the very least, chronic PTSD at its worst, and an extremely low self esteem. It is no stretch to say that having a toxic parent is harmful to a child’s brain, let alone his feelings. Brains can mend by removing or reducing stress. Prolonged stress can kill cells in the hippocampus, a brain area critical for memory. We know that although prolonged childhood trauma can be toxic to the brain, young adults retain the ability to rewire their brains through new positive experiences, therapy, and psychotropic medication. But the only way to truly mend the brain of a survivor of child abuse is to cut the ties with the abuser(s).
Dr. Judith Lewis Herman, a trauma expert who is a clinical professor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School, wrote, “Sometimes we consider a paradoxical intervention and say to a patient, ‘I really admire your loyalty to your parents — even at the expense of failing to protect yourself in any way from harm.’ ” She tries to empower her patients to take action to protect themselves without giving direct advice to cut ties. The hope is that her patients will come to see the psychological cost of a harmful relationship and act to change it. As drastic as it sounds, an adult survivor of child abuse is much better off letting go of a toxic parent.
That’s just it: we survivors do see the harm. We just have trouble letting go because it means we will never be loved by Mom or Dad.
I have greatly reduced my visits with my parents, but their absence in my life is never far from my thoughts. At first I thought I missed them. Now I realize that it is the loving childhood I never had that I miss. It left a hole in my heart that can never be filled.
Thursday, June 10, 2010
No magic wand
According to the pundits, Gulf Coast residents are supposedly mad at President Obama for not keeping the oil from threatening their beaches and marshes. We hear this from political opposition on the right and liberal pundits on the left bored by the president's cerebral approach to problem-solving. But when you actually talk to the people down there, many believe that Obama gave the problem his attention from the beginning and is doing all he can to help. The majority of the coastal people blame BP for the problem. (I know this because I know some people who live there.)
Obama's campaign for president cultivated a myth of godlike powers for the immature – and some still want to buy into the magic narrative, showing disdain toward Obama for not showing some emotion and fixing the problem right now – pundits Savannah Guthrie on MSNBC and James Carville on CNN come to mind. Another, columnist Maureen Dowd, wrote that "Barack Obama is a guy who is accustomed to having stuff go right for him." (Huh? Ms. Dowd is obviously bored and cannot find anything else to write about.) Sunday talk show panelists parroted her idea, followed by "and now look what's happening to him": A vast oil spill brings disaster in the Gulf; Israel complicates Mideast diplomacy by killing would-be blockade breakers; and the new job numbers are lousy.
Also on the left, Atlantic writer Joshua Green criticizes Obama for "his abiding faith in the judgment of experts." Columnist Frank Rich agrees: Whether the subject is the oil spill or the troubled campaign in Afghanistan or even predicting future unemployment rates, Obama has erred by relying on experts. Solving these problems "may be beyond the reach of marathon brainstorming by brainiacs," Rich writes, "even if the energy secretary is a Nobel laureate."
If not brainiac experts, just who should Obama be listening to? Should he check his horoscope like the Reagans did or just 'follow his gut' like Bush did or 'feel our pain' like Clinton did? The worst Obama decisions – going passive during the health care ruckus and pushing for new offshore drilling – were because he did not listen to science, economic and military experts, but from listening to his political advisers. For the oil spill, he is listening to the best science and military advisors available – just as he should.
Obama's "magic" was in campaign politics – now he has to work to solve problems with which any president would have a tough time. There has never been a time in history when a president did not have to deal with bad, scary problems. For example, the economy is a long-term and structural challenge, made tougher by the recent recession. No one is going to cheer a 9.7 percent jobless rate, even if it was a tad below April's. But it would probably have gone a lot higher without the stimulus. The stimulus did not end the scourge of high unemployment – it just kept us from going into a depression. It kept us from going over the cliff.
I do agree with Obama's critics who complain that plans to expand offshore drilling before cleaning up Minerals Management Service – which is supposed to regulate the industry – was hasty. The administration is now reversing plans on deepwater offshore drilling pending an investigation of what went wrong. But those on the right are complaining Obama has not stopped the crisis a mile underwater. Apparently, these detractors would only accept his actions if he were to put on a cape, dive to the bottom of the Gulf, and suck up every last bit of oil in one huge breath, expelling it directly into an oil refinery which BP would refine and deliver to the American population for free as penance. Then they want him is to use god-like strength to plug the hole.
Some on the left are asking why the administration put faith in BP's early reports about the blowout. Who else is supposed to stop the flow? The military does not have the technology to stop oil flows a mile or more beneath the surface of the water. BP was supposed to have the technology to do that.
What is the proper government response? Do what it can to keep as much oil as possible from shore, and to clean up the oil on the shore and in the water, as BP tries to fix the well. The administration is doing that with all resources presently available. For those who say that we need ships from the military out there – navy tankers are already out there. For those who say other nations should send vessels – not many other nations have the capability to drill or capture oil from the ocean.
What went wrong? I think we will find that BP cut corners to hurry up the drilling and start the profit-making oil flowing. I think we will find that BP pushed the envelope beyond its own expertise in drilling the world’s first deepwater oil well. I think we will find that BP lied to MMS about its capability to clean up a spill. And we will find that MMS was negligent in its oversight of the oil industry. BP’s arrogance would be similar to NASA sending a man to the moon before the technology to bring him back had been developed.
To those who want Obama to “lose it” just once: I prefer a calm leader who works with the most respectable expert opinions he can find. If you stop to think about it, this is what America really wants. In dealing with a crisis, Obama may not make the grade as a god, but as an intelligent man playing a tough hand, he is really doing as well as any human could do – better than Reagan or Bush did with their crises. Listen up, you immature whiners (yes, I am speaking to you, James Carville): stopping the waves from bringing the oil to shore is a job for Neptune, or BP, not the president. Obama cannot raise a magic wand and force the oil back into the hole. There are things he can do, but they are not exciting enough for the punditry.
The pundits are stirring the pot, as they always do, because they are bored. They are bored with the war in Afghanistan. They are bored with Iran. They are bored with the recession. They are bored with the Middle East. They must have something, anything, to hyperventilate over 24-7 to get their ratings up. So they are now hyperventilating over President Obama not cleaning the oil up ‘fast enough.’ They are hyperventilating over Obama not emoting enough – not showing enough anger to suit them.
It is easy to sit back and criticize without having to give real solutions. I would like to see these critics do a better job than Obama in cleaning up the oil and stopping the spill – which they cannot do because no one has a magic wand to make it all go away.
Obama's campaign for president cultivated a myth of godlike powers for the immature – and some still want to buy into the magic narrative, showing disdain toward Obama for not showing some emotion and fixing the problem right now – pundits Savannah Guthrie on MSNBC and James Carville on CNN come to mind. Another, columnist Maureen Dowd, wrote that "Barack Obama is a guy who is accustomed to having stuff go right for him." (Huh? Ms. Dowd is obviously bored and cannot find anything else to write about.) Sunday talk show panelists parroted her idea, followed by "and now look what's happening to him": A vast oil spill brings disaster in the Gulf; Israel complicates Mideast diplomacy by killing would-be blockade breakers; and the new job numbers are lousy.
Also on the left, Atlantic writer Joshua Green criticizes Obama for "his abiding faith in the judgment of experts." Columnist Frank Rich agrees: Whether the subject is the oil spill or the troubled campaign in Afghanistan or even predicting future unemployment rates, Obama has erred by relying on experts. Solving these problems "may be beyond the reach of marathon brainstorming by brainiacs," Rich writes, "even if the energy secretary is a Nobel laureate."
If not brainiac experts, just who should Obama be listening to? Should he check his horoscope like the Reagans did or just 'follow his gut' like Bush did or 'feel our pain' like Clinton did? The worst Obama decisions – going passive during the health care ruckus and pushing for new offshore drilling – were because he did not listen to science, economic and military experts, but from listening to his political advisers. For the oil spill, he is listening to the best science and military advisors available – just as he should.
Obama's "magic" was in campaign politics – now he has to work to solve problems with which any president would have a tough time. There has never been a time in history when a president did not have to deal with bad, scary problems. For example, the economy is a long-term and structural challenge, made tougher by the recent recession. No one is going to cheer a 9.7 percent jobless rate, even if it was a tad below April's. But it would probably have gone a lot higher without the stimulus. The stimulus did not end the scourge of high unemployment – it just kept us from going into a depression. It kept us from going over the cliff.
I do agree with Obama's critics who complain that plans to expand offshore drilling before cleaning up Minerals Management Service – which is supposed to regulate the industry – was hasty. The administration is now reversing plans on deepwater offshore drilling pending an investigation of what went wrong. But those on the right are complaining Obama has not stopped the crisis a mile underwater. Apparently, these detractors would only accept his actions if he were to put on a cape, dive to the bottom of the Gulf, and suck up every last bit of oil in one huge breath, expelling it directly into an oil refinery which BP would refine and deliver to the American population for free as penance. Then they want him is to use god-like strength to plug the hole.
Some on the left are asking why the administration put faith in BP's early reports about the blowout. Who else is supposed to stop the flow? The military does not have the technology to stop oil flows a mile or more beneath the surface of the water. BP was supposed to have the technology to do that.
What is the proper government response? Do what it can to keep as much oil as possible from shore, and to clean up the oil on the shore and in the water, as BP tries to fix the well. The administration is doing that with all resources presently available. For those who say that we need ships from the military out there – navy tankers are already out there. For those who say other nations should send vessels – not many other nations have the capability to drill or capture oil from the ocean.
What went wrong? I think we will find that BP cut corners to hurry up the drilling and start the profit-making oil flowing. I think we will find that BP pushed the envelope beyond its own expertise in drilling the world’s first deepwater oil well. I think we will find that BP lied to MMS about its capability to clean up a spill. And we will find that MMS was negligent in its oversight of the oil industry. BP’s arrogance would be similar to NASA sending a man to the moon before the technology to bring him back had been developed.
To those who want Obama to “lose it” just once: I prefer a calm leader who works with the most respectable expert opinions he can find. If you stop to think about it, this is what America really wants. In dealing with a crisis, Obama may not make the grade as a god, but as an intelligent man playing a tough hand, he is really doing as well as any human could do – better than Reagan or Bush did with their crises. Listen up, you immature whiners (yes, I am speaking to you, James Carville): stopping the waves from bringing the oil to shore is a job for Neptune, or BP, not the president. Obama cannot raise a magic wand and force the oil back into the hole. There are things he can do, but they are not exciting enough for the punditry.
The pundits are stirring the pot, as they always do, because they are bored. They are bored with the war in Afghanistan. They are bored with Iran. They are bored with the recession. They are bored with the Middle East. They must have something, anything, to hyperventilate over 24-7 to get their ratings up. So they are now hyperventilating over President Obama not cleaning the oil up ‘fast enough.’ They are hyperventilating over Obama not emoting enough – not showing enough anger to suit them.
It is easy to sit back and criticize without having to give real solutions. I would like to see these critics do a better job than Obama in cleaning up the oil and stopping the spill – which they cannot do because no one has a magic wand to make it all go away.
Tuesday, June 1, 2010
They speak with forked tongues
It is always interesting to watch the small-government politicians and their small-government-no-taxes constituents scream for “guvmint” to provide money and clean up whatever catastrophe has recently happened. Many are now screaming for the Obama administration, including the military, to push BP aside and put a stop to the oil spill themselves (as if government has the expertise and the equipment to do so). Just a few months ago they were protesting “guvmint’s” interference in their lives as in “cut my taxes”, or “no taxes”, or “you shouldn’t make me buy health insurance” or “get off my back.”
Now they want mother government to take care of them – and for President Obama to go down there the moment the catastrophe happened to hold their hands and soothe their pain. It is interesting how the gulf-state conservatives' suddenly found respect for the powers and money of the federal government due to a catastrophe in their own backyard.
Case in point: Senator David Vitter (R-LA), a hardened foe of big government, posted an item on his campaign Web site about the huge oil spill in theGulf of Mexico
Then came word from the Pentagon that Alabama, Florida and Mississippi – governed by conservatives who believe in low taxes and limited government even to the point of not providing for good schools, roads, bridges, etc – want the federal government to mobilize more National Guard troops to aid in the cleanup (at taxpayer expense, of course). That followed an earlier request by the Republican governor ofLouisiana
“BP is the responsible party, but we need the federal government to make sure they are held accountable and that they are indeed responsible. Our way of life depends on it,” said Governor Jindal, a constant critic of big government. He is blasting the White House for not doing enough to stem the oil flow in the Gulf! This is the same guy who decried the government doing volcano monitoring. It seems obvious that what is really going on here is political calculation. Jindal’s ambitions have always extended beyond the bayou: He was not shy about blasting Obama’s stimulus package as “irresponsible” while accepting a large amount of the money. He also positioned himself as a responsible Republican voice on healthcare — dismissing the House plan as “radical,” but urging Republicans not to abandon the process.
Alabama , Florida , and Mississippi Alabama and George LeMieux of Florida
"They're not limited in liability on damage, so if you have suffered damages, they are the responsible party," said Sessions, sounding very much like the trial lawyers he usually maligns. "We're here to send the message that we're going to do everything we can from a federal level to mitigate this to protect the people and make sure when people are damaged that they are made whole."
"They're not too big to fail," Sessions said. "If they can't pay and they've given it everything they've got, then they should cease to exist." If you believe that the federal government will not be on the hook for a major part of the costs, perhaps you would like to buy a leaky oil well in theGulf of Mexico .
Congressman Thad Cochran ofMississippi Mississippi
"We're going to have the oil industry folks, the BP folks, in front of us on the Commerce Committee,"Florida
These conservatives speak with forked tongues. They tell their constituents how government should only exist for defense and should not provide for the welfare of the people and then turn around and ask the federal government to spend taxpayer’s money to clean op the oil mess. Yet, their regions already get about 30% more money fromWashington
An analysis of data from the nonpartisan Tax Foundation by Washington Post database specialist Dan Keating found that people in states that voted Republican were by far the biggest beneficiaries of federal spending. In states that voted strongly Republican, people received an average of $1.50 back from the federal government for every dollar they paid in federal taxes. In moderately Republican states, the amount was $1.19. In moderately Democratic states, people received on average of 99 cents in federal funds for each dollar they paid in taxes. In strongly Democratic states, people got back just 86 cents on the tax dollar.
Personally, I think we need big government, not just for defense, but to provide a safety net for all the people – and to be there when disasters happen. Although it is likely a temporary attitude, this ecological catastrophe has Gulf coast conservatives’ crying out for the aid and purse of the federal government – a timely reminder for all that government is necessary. As conservatives inWashington
Oh yes, they have forked tongues, indeed.
Now they want mother government to take care of them – and for President Obama to go down there the moment the catastrophe happened to hold their hands and soothe their pain. It is interesting how the gulf-state conservatives' suddenly found respect for the powers and money of the federal government due to a catastrophe in their own backyard.
Case in point: Senator David Vitter (R-LA), a hardened foe of big government, posted an item on his campaign Web site about the huge oil spill in the
Then came word from the Pentagon that Alabama, Florida and Mississippi – governed by conservatives who believe in low taxes and limited government even to the point of not providing for good schools, roads, bridges, etc – want the federal government to mobilize more National Guard troops to aid in the cleanup (at taxpayer expense, of course). That followed an earlier request by the Republican governor of
“BP is the responsible party, but we need the federal government to make sure they are held accountable and that they are indeed responsible. Our way of life depends on it,” said Governor Jindal, a constant critic of big government. He is blasting the White House for not doing enough to stem the oil flow in the Gulf! This is the same guy who decried the government doing volcano monitoring. It seems obvious that what is really going on here is political calculation. Jindal’s ambitions have always extended beyond the bayou: He was not shy about blasting Obama’s stimulus package as “irresponsible” while accepting a large amount of the money. He also positioned himself as a responsible Republican voice on healthcare — dismissing the House plan as “radical,” but urging Republicans not to abandon the process.
"They're not limited in liability on damage, so if you have suffered damages, they are the responsible party," said Sessions, sounding very much like the trial lawyers he usually maligns. "We're here to send the message that we're going to do everything we can from a federal level to mitigate this to protect the people and make sure when people are damaged that they are made whole."
"They're not too big to fail," Sessions said. "If they can't pay and they've given it everything they've got, then they should cease to exist." If you believe that the federal government will not be on the hook for a major part of the costs, perhaps you would like to buy a leaky oil well in the
Congressman Thad Cochran of
"We're going to have the oil industry folks, the BP folks, in front of us on the Commerce Committee,"
These conservatives speak with forked tongues. They tell their constituents how government should only exist for defense and should not provide for the welfare of the people and then turn around and ask the federal government to spend taxpayer’s money to clean op the oil mess. Yet, their regions already get about 30% more money from
An analysis of data from the nonpartisan Tax Foundation by Washington Post database specialist Dan Keating found that people in states that voted Republican were by far the biggest beneficiaries of federal spending. In states that voted strongly Republican, people received an average of $1.50 back from the federal government for every dollar they paid in federal taxes. In moderately Republican states, the amount was $1.19. In moderately Democratic states, people received on average of 99 cents in federal funds for each dollar they paid in taxes. In strongly Democratic states, people got back just 86 cents on the tax dollar.
Personally, I think we need big government, not just for defense, but to provide a safety net for all the people – and to be there when disasters happen. Although it is likely a temporary attitude, this ecological catastrophe has Gulf coast conservatives’ crying out for the aid and purse of the federal government – a timely reminder for all that government is necessary. As conservatives in
Oh yes, they have forked tongues, indeed.
Saturday, May 22, 2010
Rand Paul’s immature libertarianism
Rand Paul is already crashing and burning. Did you notice? Here's how it went down: first, he unmistakably suggested that he opposed Title II of the Civil Rights Act. Then he tried unsuccessfully to weasel his way out, under near-implacable questioning. This was when people got really worked up. So Paul put out a press release, the strategy of which was more or less to deny that the previous 24 hours had happened.
But there are people, including FOX news commentators, who are lined up to defend him. The basic claim is that, while Paul was of course wrong to oppose civil rights legislation, it was an honest and “respectable” mistake. As Dave Weigel said, "Rand doesn't mean harm; he is suffering as the libertarian debate moves into prime time." Various Republicans have made arguments similar to Weigel's. It was a mere “theoretical” idea, they say, and nothing should be made of it. A staffer for Senator Jim DeMint, R-SC, calls the whole thing "a non-issue." Only old white guys would declare the whole civil rights thing as not important – Republican old white guys!
Now, fresh off his 24-hour news cycle disaster in which he questioned the basis for the Civil Rights Act, the Fair Housing Act and the Americans with Disabilities Act, Paul is taking his fringe libertarianism even further. Paul rejects the notion that the President of the United States should hold private corporations accountable for the havoc they wreck on our country, such as BP Oil and Massey Energy!
In Paul’s libertarian world, private companies and private property owners should be able to do as they please without federal interference. Apparently the concept of civil and criminal negligence is beyond Paul, because his response to the Gulf oil spill and the Massey Energy mining disaster was “sometimes accidents happen.”
Rand Paul is not ready for prime time. The far right-wing libertarian, tea party candidate for the U.S. Senate from Kentucky has immature, not-very-well-thought-out views. It's not just that he is saying stupid things because he is so committed to a purist stance. No, it's worse. Libertarianism itself is what is naïve here, not just Rand Paul. We should stop tip-toeing around this belief system as if its adherents are ancient revered nobles clinging to their proud ways. These are immature people hankering for the old Wild West where there were no rules.
It's time to stop taking libertarianism seriously. Ironically, the best way into this point comes from another brilliant libertarian, legal scholar Richard Epstein: "To be against Title II in 1964 would be to be brain-dead to the underlying realities of how this world works."
That’s the key: "the underlying realities of how the world works." Rand Paul’s views are not based in reality.
Most capitalist enterprise in this country has been ultimately underwritten by the government. This is true at an obvious level that even most libertarians would concede: for the system to work, you need some kind of bare bones apparatus for enforcing contracts and protecting property. Businesses are also often given tax breaks, city-built infrastructure, and other sweetheart deals just to locate in certain places. We could fill a library with the details of the underwriting from the states and the federal government enjoyed by American business.
Libertarians like Paul are walking around with the fanciful idea in their heads that the world could just snap back to a “natural” benign order if the government stopped interfering. For example, Paul thinks that we do not need Title II of the Civil Rights Acts because “good” people wouldn't shop at the racist stores, therefore there wouldn't be any racist stores. Yeah, right. He is living in never-never land with Peter Pan.
This is the belief system of people who have been the recipients of massive government backing for their entire lives. Although libertarians will never admit it, without the New Deal reforms of the 1930s, there might not be private property or private businesses left for them to complain about the government infringing on. Not many capitalist democracies could survive 20 to 25 percent unemployment like the United States did during the Great Depression without government help. It doesn't just happen by good luck. We have seen whole countries crumble when their government cannot or will not help.
Take a couple more recent examples:
Savvy health insurance executives were quite aware that if reform had failed, skyrocketing prices were likely to doom the whole system of private insurance and bring on single-payer.
Imagine the moment in, say, twenty years, when the evidence of climate change has become undeniable, and there’s an urgent crackdown on carbon-intensive industries. Then coal companies and agribusiness will be wishing they’d gotten on board with the mild, slow-moving reform that is cap-and-trade.
Do you get it? The government helped to make the "free market." It's also constantly trimming around the edges to keep it healthy. The state can think ahead and balance competing interests in a way that no single company can or cares to.
The libertarian who insists that the state has no place beyond basic night-watchman duties is like a teenager who, having been given a car, promptly thinks no rules should apply to him and starts demanding the right to stay out all night. Sometimes, someone else really is looking out for your best interests by saying no. (This isn't to say the state is looking out for the best interests of everybody, or even most people.)
The point is just that however much Glenn Beck might hyperventilate, the government does NOT want to destroy the free market. It wants to preserve it – and government does this job better than the market can on its own. That is why the best complaint about libertarians isn't that they are racist or selfish, although a good many of them are those things and their beliefs encourage both of these bad behaviors. It is that they are completely out of touch with reality.
Libertarianism is a worldview that prospers only as long as nobody actually tries it in government. But the adherents to libertarianism are too unreflective, self-absorbed, and immature to realize this. Maybe that is why so many of Ron and Rand Paul’s followers are the very right-leaning college students who don’t like it when their parents give advice or set rules.
Taken from: The lesson of Rand Paul: libertarianism is juvenile
By Gabriel Winant
But there are people, including FOX news commentators, who are lined up to defend him. The basic claim is that, while Paul was of course wrong to oppose civil rights legislation, it was an honest and “respectable” mistake. As Dave Weigel said, "Rand doesn't mean harm; he is suffering as the libertarian debate moves into prime time." Various Republicans have made arguments similar to Weigel's. It was a mere “theoretical” idea, they say, and nothing should be made of it. A staffer for Senator Jim DeMint, R-SC, calls the whole thing "a non-issue." Only old white guys would declare the whole civil rights thing as not important – Republican old white guys!
Now, fresh off his 24-hour news cycle disaster in which he questioned the basis for the Civil Rights Act, the Fair Housing Act and the Americans with Disabilities Act, Paul is taking his fringe libertarianism even further. Paul rejects the notion that the President of the United States should hold private corporations accountable for the havoc they wreck on our country, such as BP Oil and Massey Energy!
In Paul’s libertarian world, private companies and private property owners should be able to do as they please without federal interference. Apparently the concept of civil and criminal negligence is beyond Paul, because his response to the Gulf oil spill and the Massey Energy mining disaster was “sometimes accidents happen.”
Rand Paul is not ready for prime time. The far right-wing libertarian, tea party candidate for the U.S. Senate from Kentucky has immature, not-very-well-thought-out views. It's not just that he is saying stupid things because he is so committed to a purist stance. No, it's worse. Libertarianism itself is what is naïve here, not just Rand Paul. We should stop tip-toeing around this belief system as if its adherents are ancient revered nobles clinging to their proud ways. These are immature people hankering for the old Wild West where there were no rules.
It's time to stop taking libertarianism seriously. Ironically, the best way into this point comes from another brilliant libertarian, legal scholar Richard Epstein: "To be against Title II in 1964 would be to be brain-dead to the underlying realities of how this world works."
That’s the key: "the underlying realities of how the world works." Rand Paul’s views are not based in reality.
Most capitalist enterprise in this country has been ultimately underwritten by the government. This is true at an obvious level that even most libertarians would concede: for the system to work, you need some kind of bare bones apparatus for enforcing contracts and protecting property. Businesses are also often given tax breaks, city-built infrastructure, and other sweetheart deals just to locate in certain places. We could fill a library with the details of the underwriting from the states and the federal government enjoyed by American business.
Libertarians like Paul are walking around with the fanciful idea in their heads that the world could just snap back to a “natural” benign order if the government stopped interfering. For example, Paul thinks that we do not need Title II of the Civil Rights Acts because “good” people wouldn't shop at the racist stores, therefore there wouldn't be any racist stores. Yeah, right. He is living in never-never land with Peter Pan.
This is the belief system of people who have been the recipients of massive government backing for their entire lives. Although libertarians will never admit it, without the New Deal reforms of the 1930s, there might not be private property or private businesses left for them to complain about the government infringing on. Not many capitalist democracies could survive 20 to 25 percent unemployment like the United States did during the Great Depression without government help. It doesn't just happen by good luck. We have seen whole countries crumble when their government cannot or will not help.
Take a couple more recent examples:
Savvy health insurance executives were quite aware that if reform had failed, skyrocketing prices were likely to doom the whole system of private insurance and bring on single-payer.
Imagine the moment in, say, twenty years, when the evidence of climate change has become undeniable, and there’s an urgent crackdown on carbon-intensive industries. Then coal companies and agribusiness will be wishing they’d gotten on board with the mild, slow-moving reform that is cap-and-trade.
Do you get it? The government helped to make the "free market." It's also constantly trimming around the edges to keep it healthy. The state can think ahead and balance competing interests in a way that no single company can or cares to.
The libertarian who insists that the state has no place beyond basic night-watchman duties is like a teenager who, having been given a car, promptly thinks no rules should apply to him and starts demanding the right to stay out all night. Sometimes, someone else really is looking out for your best interests by saying no. (This isn't to say the state is looking out for the best interests of everybody, or even most people.)
The point is just that however much Glenn Beck might hyperventilate, the government does NOT want to destroy the free market. It wants to preserve it – and government does this job better than the market can on its own. That is why the best complaint about libertarians isn't that they are racist or selfish, although a good many of them are those things and their beliefs encourage both of these bad behaviors. It is that they are completely out of touch with reality.
Libertarianism is a worldview that prospers only as long as nobody actually tries it in government. But the adherents to libertarianism are too unreflective, self-absorbed, and immature to realize this. Maybe that is why so many of Ron and Rand Paul’s followers are the very right-leaning college students who don’t like it when their parents give advice or set rules.
Taken from: The lesson of Rand Paul: libertarianism is juvenile
By Gabriel Winant
Thursday, May 20, 2010
The consequences of our thirst for oil
BP had told the US Government before they drilled the well that a spill of 165,000 barrels per day would not even reach land. They said they could handle it. The fact that the spill has reached land clearly shows that the size of the spill is probably well above 200,000 barrels per day. Yes, that's BARRELS, not gallons. There are 42 gallons per barrel, which means that over 8 million gallons of crude oil is pouring into the Gulf per day. Worse, most of it is not on the surface of the water, it is sinking to the floor – destroying the waters and seabed of the Gulf of Mexico. If that oil keeps flowing, if BP cannot stop the oil flow, it could eventually get caught in the Gulf Stream and carried to all oceans. This would destroy ocean life as we know it. The oceans are a critical factor in maintaining the proper oxygen level in the atmosphere for human life.
BP stepped over the edge
The BP platform was drilling for what they call “deep oil”. They went out beyond the shelf where the ocean is about 5,000 feet deep and then drilled another 30,000 feet into the crust of the earth. How deep is that? The US Navy Seawolf class of nuclear submarines can take no more than 2,300 feet of water before they’re crushed like a tin can. They hit a pocket of oil at such high pressure that it burst all of their safety valves (which we now know were defective) all the way up to the drilling rig and then caused the rig to explode and sink. Too deep for human intervention, the Deepwater Horizon well must be serviced by remote control robots.
The BP deep water oil well was right on the edge of what human technology can do – maybe over the edge. The deposit is so large that it is either the largest or the second largest oil deposit ever found. It is mostly natural gas. The central pressure in the deposit is 165 to 170 thousand PSI. Natural gas and oil is leaking out of the deposit as far inland as Central Alabama and way over into Florida and even over to Louisiana almost as far as Texas. This is a really massive deposit. Punching holes in the deposit is a really scary event as we are now seeing. In published reports, BP estimated a blow out could reach near 165,000 barrels per day but the current blow out has already surpassed this. It now covers a 25,000 square mile area.
In too big of a hurry
60 Minutes' Scott Pelley speaks to BP's Chief Electronics Technician Mike Williams, one of the survivors of the deadly Deepwater Horizon oil rig blast who was in a position to know what caused the disaster. Williams was in charge of the rig's computers and electrical systems. He said that the huge explosions before last month's sinking of the Deepwater Horizon rig - leading to a massive oil slick threatening the Gulf of Mexico - came after BP ordered faster drilling.
When the rig was first drilling down in to the ocean floor for oil and gas, the bottom of the well split open and that well had to be abandoned. That move cost BP millions of dollars. With its drilling operations costing BP about $1 million a day and the extracting of oil behind schedule, a BP manager ordered a faster pace from the crew, meaning the drill would be going down in to the potentially explosive oil and gas faster. Then, according to Mr. Williams, four weeks before the explosion an accident on the rig damaged the most vital piece of safety equipment. It is a rubber gasket called an annular at the top of a blowout preventer that is meant to seal off the drill pipe in case of an emergency. However, when the crew did seal the pipe, a crew member accidentally applied hundreds of thousands of pounds of force, meaning chunks of rubber were discovered in the drilling fluid.
A volcano of oil erupting
Paul Noel*, an engineer with the U.S. Army, writes in Pure Energy Systems News:
“When the rig sank it flipped over and landed on top of the drill hole some 5,000 feet under the ocean. Now they have a hole in the ocean floor spewing 200,000 barrels of oil a day into the ocean. Take a moment and consider that!
“Here is what happens when oil hits the salt water. If it is poured on top of the sea, oil begins to do several things. First some of it dissolves in the salt water. This dissolving is a bit limited but amounts to several percent per day of the spill exposure to the ocean. As the oil dissolves, light components evaporate pretty quickly. Once these are gone the remaining oil is heavy fraction crude. This begins to sink into the water very slowly, eventually falling to the ocean bottom over about 6 weeks. Typically this floats into an area where the shoreline is and embeds about 18 inches deep in the sand. This buried oil is not harmless. Just because the beach might appear on the surface to be clear, the sub-surface oil continues its toxic work. It floats below the surface precisely where the little sea creatures live and goes on killing them for about 10 years.
“The reason a slick would carry farther than predicted is that the salt water is saturated with oil and the air around it is saturated, so the slick cannot dissipate. …In fact the chemicals added at the well head to disburse the oil, speed this process up. This oil is mixed into the water for the top 250 feet or so. Salinity and temperature issues probably keep this oil from ever reaching the very top of the water. The exact behavior here will not be known until studies are published some years from now. This is the first time humans have encountered a deep ocean leak of this magnitude. We're in uncharted territory here. Volume per volume, it is highly probable that due to this fractioning, this oil blowing into the ocean from a mile down is causing far more ecological trouble than a surface spill of similar size.”
It only takes one quart of motor oil to make 250,000 gallons of ocean water toxic to wildlife. If we cannot cap the hole, that oil is going to destroy much more than the Gulf of Mexico – with the Atlantic Ocean being the second body of water to be affected.
Are you starting to understand the magnitude of this problem?
Ocean scientists in the Gulf of Mexico have found giant plumes of oil coagulating at up to 4300 feet below the surface, raising fears that the BP oil spill may be larger than had been thought and that it might create huge "dead zones" in the Gulf. Experts from the National Institute for Undersea Science and Technology have been traversing the area around the scene of the Deepwater Horizon, the oil rig that exploded and sank on 20 April. Using the latest sampling techniques, they have identified plumes of an oil/dispersant/plankton mixture about 1 mile below the surface (a gooey mess) miles away from the Deepwater Horizon well that continues to spew oil into the water at a rate of around 200,000 barrels a day. The largest plume found so far was 300 feet deep, three miles wide, and 10 miles long.
BP succeeded on Sunday in its second attempt at inserting a new tube (basically a “straw”) into its damaged oil pipe that has been gushing oil from the bottom of the Gulf of Mexico for three and a half weeks, according to BP and federal officials. The four-inch wide pipe was inserted into the leaking riser, from which the majority of the flow of oil is coming. Some of the leaking oil from the damaged well is being siphoned into barges and tankers floating on the surface of the sea. But nothing real has been done about the well itself. The oil pouring out of the opening in the crust of the earth remains completely out of control. It is like a volcano with a grave danger of a more massive eruption. Until the well is completely shut down and pressure fully relieved, the danger remains high.
There is another danger that has not been reported by BP, the government, or the news media. The removal of 2 cubic miles of oil from this huge deposit could be setting us up for a sea floor collapse – which in turn could cause earthquakes, tsunamis, and worse. The risk grows each passing day. One can only pray for the success of the teams dealing with the oil well catastrophe. Failure for BP is failure for our planet.
They better fix it fast because hurricane season is coming…. This could become a catastrophe of Biblical proportions, unless God steps in and fixes it. I don’t think He will. I think we will have to suffer the consequences of our actions – come what may.
If these consequences do not disturb you, then think about this: We are funding terrorism with every gallon of oil we buy from the Middle East. Yes, we need their oil to run our cars, to warm our homes, to make cosmetics, plastics, and medicines. But if we could run our cars and warm our homes on natural gas, then we could use our own oil for the cosmetics, plastics, and medicines. The problem is Big Oil has Congress and the government regulators in its pockets.
*Paul Noel, 52, works is an engineer for the US Army at Redstone Arsenal, Alabama. He has a vast experience base including education across a wide area of technical skills and sciences. He supplies technical expertise in all areas required for new products development associated with the US Army. He supplies the army with extensive expertise in the oil and gas industry.
BP stepped over the edge
The BP platform was drilling for what they call “deep oil”. They went out beyond the shelf where the ocean is about 5,000 feet deep and then drilled another 30,000 feet into the crust of the earth. How deep is that? The US Navy Seawolf class of nuclear submarines can take no more than 2,300 feet of water before they’re crushed like a tin can. They hit a pocket of oil at such high pressure that it burst all of their safety valves (which we now know were defective) all the way up to the drilling rig and then caused the rig to explode and sink. Too deep for human intervention, the Deepwater Horizon well must be serviced by remote control robots.
The BP deep water oil well was right on the edge of what human technology can do – maybe over the edge. The deposit is so large that it is either the largest or the second largest oil deposit ever found. It is mostly natural gas. The central pressure in the deposit is 165 to 170 thousand PSI. Natural gas and oil is leaking out of the deposit as far inland as Central Alabama and way over into Florida and even over to Louisiana almost as far as Texas. This is a really massive deposit. Punching holes in the deposit is a really scary event as we are now seeing. In published reports, BP estimated a blow out could reach near 165,000 barrels per day but the current blow out has already surpassed this. It now covers a 25,000 square mile area.
In too big of a hurry
60 Minutes' Scott Pelley speaks to BP's Chief Electronics Technician Mike Williams, one of the survivors of the deadly Deepwater Horizon oil rig blast who was in a position to know what caused the disaster. Williams was in charge of the rig's computers and electrical systems. He said that the huge explosions before last month's sinking of the Deepwater Horizon rig - leading to a massive oil slick threatening the Gulf of Mexico - came after BP ordered faster drilling.
When the rig was first drilling down in to the ocean floor for oil and gas, the bottom of the well split open and that well had to be abandoned. That move cost BP millions of dollars. With its drilling operations costing BP about $1 million a day and the extracting of oil behind schedule, a BP manager ordered a faster pace from the crew, meaning the drill would be going down in to the potentially explosive oil and gas faster. Then, according to Mr. Williams, four weeks before the explosion an accident on the rig damaged the most vital piece of safety equipment. It is a rubber gasket called an annular at the top of a blowout preventer that is meant to seal off the drill pipe in case of an emergency. However, when the crew did seal the pipe, a crew member accidentally applied hundreds of thousands of pounds of force, meaning chunks of rubber were discovered in the drilling fluid.
A volcano of oil erupting
Paul Noel*, an engineer with the U.S. Army, writes in Pure Energy Systems News:
“When the rig sank it flipped over and landed on top of the drill hole some 5,000 feet under the ocean. Now they have a hole in the ocean floor spewing 200,000 barrels of oil a day into the ocean. Take a moment and consider that!
“Here is what happens when oil hits the salt water. If it is poured on top of the sea, oil begins to do several things. First some of it dissolves in the salt water. This dissolving is a bit limited but amounts to several percent per day of the spill exposure to the ocean. As the oil dissolves, light components evaporate pretty quickly. Once these are gone the remaining oil is heavy fraction crude. This begins to sink into the water very slowly, eventually falling to the ocean bottom over about 6 weeks. Typically this floats into an area where the shoreline is and embeds about 18 inches deep in the sand. This buried oil is not harmless. Just because the beach might appear on the surface to be clear, the sub-surface oil continues its toxic work. It floats below the surface precisely where the little sea creatures live and goes on killing them for about 10 years.
“The reason a slick would carry farther than predicted is that the salt water is saturated with oil and the air around it is saturated, so the slick cannot dissipate. …In fact the chemicals added at the well head to disburse the oil, speed this process up. This oil is mixed into the water for the top 250 feet or so. Salinity and temperature issues probably keep this oil from ever reaching the very top of the water. The exact behavior here will not be known until studies are published some years from now. This is the first time humans have encountered a deep ocean leak of this magnitude. We're in uncharted territory here. Volume per volume, it is highly probable that due to this fractioning, this oil blowing into the ocean from a mile down is causing far more ecological trouble than a surface spill of similar size.”
It only takes one quart of motor oil to make 250,000 gallons of ocean water toxic to wildlife. If we cannot cap the hole, that oil is going to destroy much more than the Gulf of Mexico – with the Atlantic Ocean being the second body of water to be affected.
Are you starting to understand the magnitude of this problem?
Ocean scientists in the Gulf of Mexico have found giant plumes of oil coagulating at up to 4300 feet below the surface, raising fears that the BP oil spill may be larger than had been thought and that it might create huge "dead zones" in the Gulf. Experts from the National Institute for Undersea Science and Technology have been traversing the area around the scene of the Deepwater Horizon, the oil rig that exploded and sank on 20 April. Using the latest sampling techniques, they have identified plumes of an oil/dispersant/plankton mixture about 1 mile below the surface (a gooey mess) miles away from the Deepwater Horizon well that continues to spew oil into the water at a rate of around 200,000 barrels a day. The largest plume found so far was 300 feet deep, three miles wide, and 10 miles long.
BP succeeded on Sunday in its second attempt at inserting a new tube (basically a “straw”) into its damaged oil pipe that has been gushing oil from the bottom of the Gulf of Mexico for three and a half weeks, according to BP and federal officials. The four-inch wide pipe was inserted into the leaking riser, from which the majority of the flow of oil is coming. Some of the leaking oil from the damaged well is being siphoned into barges and tankers floating on the surface of the sea. But nothing real has been done about the well itself. The oil pouring out of the opening in the crust of the earth remains completely out of control. It is like a volcano with a grave danger of a more massive eruption. Until the well is completely shut down and pressure fully relieved, the danger remains high.
There is another danger that has not been reported by BP, the government, or the news media. The removal of 2 cubic miles of oil from this huge deposit could be setting us up for a sea floor collapse – which in turn could cause earthquakes, tsunamis, and worse. The risk grows each passing day. One can only pray for the success of the teams dealing with the oil well catastrophe. Failure for BP is failure for our planet.
They better fix it fast because hurricane season is coming…. This could become a catastrophe of Biblical proportions, unless God steps in and fixes it. I don’t think He will. I think we will have to suffer the consequences of our actions – come what may.
If these consequences do not disturb you, then think about this: We are funding terrorism with every gallon of oil we buy from the Middle East. Yes, we need their oil to run our cars, to warm our homes, to make cosmetics, plastics, and medicines. But if we could run our cars and warm our homes on natural gas, then we could use our own oil for the cosmetics, plastics, and medicines. The problem is Big Oil has Congress and the government regulators in its pockets.
*Paul Noel, 52, works is an engineer for the US Army at Redstone Arsenal, Alabama. He has a vast experience base including education across a wide area of technical skills and sciences. He supplies technical expertise in all areas required for new products development associated with the US Army. He supplies the army with extensive expertise in the oil and gas industry.
Thursday, May 6, 2010
There is a better way
We all know that the illegal immigrants come to the United States because there are many business owners willing to hire them (for much less than minimum wage). We all know these farmers, poultry businesses, and building contractors hire illegal immigrants in order to get around paying an American worker minimum wage. These business owners deserve jail time for undermining our economy by not hiring Americans. If the illegal immigrants cannot get work in this country, many would go back home on their own volition.
Arizona’s new immigration law requires the police to demand proof of legal residency from any person with whom they have made “any lawful contact” and if they have “reasonable suspicion” that the person “is unlawfully present in the United States.” The phrase “lawful contact” seems to authorize the police to act only if they observe an undocumented-looking person actually committing a crime. But, no, this is not the case. Another section says, “A person is guilty of trespassing” by being “present on any public or private land in this state” while lacking authorization to be in the United States. So, if a person looks Hispanic, they had better have papers on them to prove citizenship. The intent, according to the State Legislature, is “attrition through enforcement.”
Representative Raúl M. Grijalva, a legislator from Tucson, has already called on the nation to protest the law by withholding its convention business. Such boycotts can be effective, as demonstrated in the late 1980s when the loss not only of convention business but of the Super Bowl prompted Arizona voters to change their mind and reinstate a Martin Luther King holiday in the state. This could happen again as the businesses of the state begin to lose money. The state’s population is already under water with their home mortgages. They can ill afford for the people of the United States to boycott their businesses.
Arizona is now being depicted as the official state of "racial profiling," with anti-Hispanic and anti-immigration labels swirling around it. But, to me, the passage of its bill to prevent the continued influx and presence of illegal immigrants in the State appears more like an act of desperation than racially motivated legislation. They are just tackling the problem from the wrong angle.
Supreme Court precedents make clear that immigration is a federal matter and that the Constitution does not authorize the states to conduct their own foreign policies. For example, in 1975, Texas passed a law to deprive undocumented immigrant children of a free public education. Many thousands of children – many of whom were on the road to eventual citizenship under immigration laws that were notably less harsh back then – faced being thrown out of school and deprived of a future. The law was challenged in federal court, with the Carter administration supporting the plaintiffs. By the time the case reached the Supreme Court, Ronald Reagan was president, and there was a major push within his administration to change sides. Rex E. Lee, the solicitor general, refused to do so. By a vote of 5 to 4, the Supreme Court struck down the Texas law. Justice William J. Brennan Jr. wrote for the majority that the constitutional guarantee of equal protection prohibited the state from imposing “a lifetime hardship on a discrete class of children not accountable for their disabling status.” Justice Lewis F. Powell Jr., a Nixon appointee and the swing justice of his day, provided the fifth vote. He wrote that the law “threatens the creation of an underclass of future citizens and residents.”
Another example: Not too long ago the city of Hazleton, PA, passed a law that made it a crime for a landlord to rent an apartment to an undocumented immigrant. A federal judge struck down the law on the ground that immigration is the business of the federal government.
During a news conference, Attorney General Eric Holder gave the strongest indication yet that the administration will try to block Arizona's immigration law from taking effect. Holder said "the law is an unfortunate one that will be subject to potential abuse" and that the Justice Department is "considering a court challenge." Federal preemption would appear to be the most promising route for attacking the Arizona law. But I do not have confidence that the current Supreme Court will follow the constitution because the right-leaning majority often translates the constitution in support of businesses and state governments – against the rights of individuals.
Some Republicans are coming out against the law, too. Sen. Lindsey Graham (S.C.) said he thinks Arizona's new immigration law is unconstitutional and that "it doesn't represent the best way forward" when it comes to addressing illegal immigration.
Wasn’t the system of checking a person’s papers to see if they are ‘legal’ one of the features of life in communist Soviet Union and apartheid South Africa?
There is a better way to handle the issue of illegal immigrants than to spend millions of dollars searching for them ‘by checking papers’: set up a nation-wide computerized system for documented immigrants and require business owners to check an immigrant’s legal status before hiring. It is time to upgrade out antiquated immigration service – bring it into the 21st century with a computerized database. If the worker is not in the federal immigrant database, they do not get hired. And we should issue temporary work visas for migrant farmhands to pick crops – then they go back home. If the business owner or homeowner (who hires maids, gardeners, etc) knew they could pay steep fines and do jail time for hiring illegal immigrants, I bet they would be very reluctant to do so. In fact, I bet you would see currently unemployed American citizens get some of those jobs. We all know some unemployed Americans who would be happy to mow some yards, trim some landscaping, or clean someone's house to put food on the table.
Yes, there is a better way to solve the illegal immigrant problem. Enforce the law and put the employers in jail.
Arizona’s new immigration law requires the police to demand proof of legal residency from any person with whom they have made “any lawful contact” and if they have “reasonable suspicion” that the person “is unlawfully present in the United States.” The phrase “lawful contact” seems to authorize the police to act only if they observe an undocumented-looking person actually committing a crime. But, no, this is not the case. Another section says, “A person is guilty of trespassing” by being “present on any public or private land in this state” while lacking authorization to be in the United States. So, if a person looks Hispanic, they had better have papers on them to prove citizenship. The intent, according to the State Legislature, is “attrition through enforcement.”
Representative Raúl M. Grijalva, a legislator from Tucson, has already called on the nation to protest the law by withholding its convention business. Such boycotts can be effective, as demonstrated in the late 1980s when the loss not only of convention business but of the Super Bowl prompted Arizona voters to change their mind and reinstate a Martin Luther King holiday in the state. This could happen again as the businesses of the state begin to lose money. The state’s population is already under water with their home mortgages. They can ill afford for the people of the United States to boycott their businesses.
Arizona is now being depicted as the official state of "racial profiling," with anti-Hispanic and anti-immigration labels swirling around it. But, to me, the passage of its bill to prevent the continued influx and presence of illegal immigrants in the State appears more like an act of desperation than racially motivated legislation. They are just tackling the problem from the wrong angle.
Supreme Court precedents make clear that immigration is a federal matter and that the Constitution does not authorize the states to conduct their own foreign policies. For example, in 1975, Texas passed a law to deprive undocumented immigrant children of a free public education. Many thousands of children – many of whom were on the road to eventual citizenship under immigration laws that were notably less harsh back then – faced being thrown out of school and deprived of a future. The law was challenged in federal court, with the Carter administration supporting the plaintiffs. By the time the case reached the Supreme Court, Ronald Reagan was president, and there was a major push within his administration to change sides. Rex E. Lee, the solicitor general, refused to do so. By a vote of 5 to 4, the Supreme Court struck down the Texas law. Justice William J. Brennan Jr. wrote for the majority that the constitutional guarantee of equal protection prohibited the state from imposing “a lifetime hardship on a discrete class of children not accountable for their disabling status.” Justice Lewis F. Powell Jr., a Nixon appointee and the swing justice of his day, provided the fifth vote. He wrote that the law “threatens the creation of an underclass of future citizens and residents.”
Another example: Not too long ago the city of Hazleton, PA, passed a law that made it a crime for a landlord to rent an apartment to an undocumented immigrant. A federal judge struck down the law on the ground that immigration is the business of the federal government.
During a news conference, Attorney General Eric Holder gave the strongest indication yet that the administration will try to block Arizona's immigration law from taking effect. Holder said "the law is an unfortunate one that will be subject to potential abuse" and that the Justice Department is "considering a court challenge." Federal preemption would appear to be the most promising route for attacking the Arizona law. But I do not have confidence that the current Supreme Court will follow the constitution because the right-leaning majority often translates the constitution in support of businesses and state governments – against the rights of individuals.
Some Republicans are coming out against the law, too. Sen. Lindsey Graham (S.C.) said he thinks Arizona's new immigration law is unconstitutional and that "it doesn't represent the best way forward" when it comes to addressing illegal immigration.
Wasn’t the system of checking a person’s papers to see if they are ‘legal’ one of the features of life in communist Soviet Union and apartheid South Africa?
There is a better way to handle the issue of illegal immigrants than to spend millions of dollars searching for them ‘by checking papers’: set up a nation-wide computerized system for documented immigrants and require business owners to check an immigrant’s legal status before hiring. It is time to upgrade out antiquated immigration service – bring it into the 21st century with a computerized database. If the worker is not in the federal immigrant database, they do not get hired. And we should issue temporary work visas for migrant farmhands to pick crops – then they go back home. If the business owner or homeowner (who hires maids, gardeners, etc) knew they could pay steep fines and do jail time for hiring illegal immigrants, I bet they would be very reluctant to do so. In fact, I bet you would see currently unemployed American citizens get some of those jobs. We all know some unemployed Americans who would be happy to mow some yards, trim some landscaping, or clean someone's house to put food on the table.
Yes, there is a better way to solve the illegal immigrant problem. Enforce the law and put the employers in jail.
Thursday, April 29, 2010
Spill, Baby, Spill
In the last presidential election, the idea of expanded domestic offshore oil and gas exploration seemed like a slam dunk to Republicans. And a few weeks ago, in order to hold out a carrot to Republicans to get them to sign on to his domestic energy agenda, Obama said that he would open up offshore drilling. Since the offer came from a Democratic president, we heard a deafening silence from the left. Outspoken opponents were a minority.
The horrific Gulf of Mexico oil spill has changed everything. Eleven lives were lost, and the environmental consequences are already dire. The potential for worse is frightening.
At a hearing yesterday in the House Energy & Commerce Committee about dependence on foreign oil, there was a lot of talk about reducing American dependence on oil imports. But where you might have expected lawmakers to make reference to offshore oil production, it was almost like the option never existed. A few members were focusing on containing the spill and preventing a coastal disaster – but most did not say a word.
The widening oil slick in the Gulf of Mexico will complicate the politics of offshore drilling. It looks like proposals to expand oil and natural gas production on the outer continental shelf will be shelved.
The explosion of the Deepwater Horizon rig and the estimated 210,000 gallons of oil gushing daily from an underwater well into Gulf of Mexico waters are providing fresh meat for congressional foes of offshore drilling. They have seized on the disaster as evidence that offshore drilling threatens the environment, human life, fishing industries and coastal states' tourism dollars. On the Senate floor, Senator Ben Cardin (D-MD) hauled out photos of the Gulf oil spill, warning that a similar accident along the Atlantic Seaboard could be just as catastrophic:
"This is all happening as a result of a spill and a fire from the most technologically advanced rig in the world," Cardin said, challenging his party's President on the idea of new offshore drilling. "I urge my colleagues to take a look at what happened off the Gulf of Mexico."
Senator Richard Shelby (R-AL) said, "The potential disaster looming in the Gulf of Mexico could devastate....economically crucial species such as snapper, grouper, red fish, mackerel, oysters, shrimp, crab, and wildlife populations and their habitats, as well as the tourism and recreational businesses that rely on the Gulf." Senator Shelby was one of those who believed in “Drill, baby, drill.” Now he is singing a different tune.
President Obama has already indicated that he views this spill as a warning about offshore drilling – that it is not as safe as he had been told it was. He is saying that this disaster will cause him to rethink offshore lease proposals and plans for expanded drilling.
The success of the massive recovery and containment mission now under way will influence the future of offshore drilling. It will depend on how bad this gets. If this drags out for months and oil starts affecting local businesses that rely on marine life, it is not just an issue of environmental costs. It also becomes an issue of economic costs.
If the spill stays offshore, the well gets plugged, and everything is fine, then it all goes away because Americans have a short memory. “Drill, baby, drill’ will once again become a slogan in 2012. If this spill turns into an environmental and economic disaster for Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, and Florida, then new action in Congress on offshore drilling will be put on the back burner for a long time to come. And we will not hear “Drill, baby, drill” again.
Oh, and for those who insist that nuclear energy is safe because we now have “improved” automatic safeguards, here’s your proof that safeguards fail. The fail-safe system and back-up system on this rig both failed. There was no acoustic shutoff valve installed. The WSJ reports that the Minerals section of the Department of Interior recommended that the acoustic shutoff valves not be required on deep-water rigs because they’re too expensive. What? This nightmare is cheaper?
Now the new slogan is “Spill, baby, spill.”
The horrific Gulf of Mexico oil spill has changed everything. Eleven lives were lost, and the environmental consequences are already dire. The potential for worse is frightening.
At a hearing yesterday in the House Energy & Commerce Committee about dependence on foreign oil, there was a lot of talk about reducing American dependence on oil imports. But where you might have expected lawmakers to make reference to offshore oil production, it was almost like the option never existed. A few members were focusing on containing the spill and preventing a coastal disaster – but most did not say a word.
The widening oil slick in the Gulf of Mexico will complicate the politics of offshore drilling. It looks like proposals to expand oil and natural gas production on the outer continental shelf will be shelved.
The explosion of the Deepwater Horizon rig and the estimated 210,000 gallons of oil gushing daily from an underwater well into Gulf of Mexico waters are providing fresh meat for congressional foes of offshore drilling. They have seized on the disaster as evidence that offshore drilling threatens the environment, human life, fishing industries and coastal states' tourism dollars. On the Senate floor, Senator Ben Cardin (D-MD) hauled out photos of the Gulf oil spill, warning that a similar accident along the Atlantic Seaboard could be just as catastrophic:
"This is all happening as a result of a spill and a fire from the most technologically advanced rig in the world," Cardin said, challenging his party's President on the idea of new offshore drilling. "I urge my colleagues to take a look at what happened off the Gulf of Mexico."
Senator Richard Shelby (R-AL) said, "The potential disaster looming in the Gulf of Mexico could devastate....economically crucial species such as snapper, grouper, red fish, mackerel, oysters, shrimp, crab, and wildlife populations and their habitats, as well as the tourism and recreational businesses that rely on the Gulf." Senator Shelby was one of those who believed in “Drill, baby, drill.” Now he is singing a different tune.
President Obama has already indicated that he views this spill as a warning about offshore drilling – that it is not as safe as he had been told it was. He is saying that this disaster will cause him to rethink offshore lease proposals and plans for expanded drilling.
The success of the massive recovery and containment mission now under way will influence the future of offshore drilling. It will depend on how bad this gets. If this drags out for months and oil starts affecting local businesses that rely on marine life, it is not just an issue of environmental costs. It also becomes an issue of economic costs.
If the spill stays offshore, the well gets plugged, and everything is fine, then it all goes away because Americans have a short memory. “Drill, baby, drill’ will once again become a slogan in 2012. If this spill turns into an environmental and economic disaster for Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, and Florida, then new action in Congress on offshore drilling will be put on the back burner for a long time to come. And we will not hear “Drill, baby, drill” again.
Oh, and for those who insist that nuclear energy is safe because we now have “improved” automatic safeguards, here’s your proof that safeguards fail. The fail-safe system and back-up system on this rig both failed. There was no acoustic shutoff valve installed. The WSJ reports that the Minerals section of the Department of Interior recommended that the acoustic shutoff valves not be required on deep-water rigs because they’re too expensive. What? This nightmare is cheaper?
Now the new slogan is “Spill, baby, spill.”
Monday, April 5, 2010
Words do hurt
Retrieve personal memories of growing up and you will know without a doubt, words did hurt and still do. As children, many of us were emotionally injured when another kid poked fun at us. If an adult, particularly a parent, made fun or criticized us when we tried to do something, it was even worse – we were devastated.
As sharp words continued to be aimed our way during childhood, what did we do to survive the injuries? In order to save ourselves from being severely and emotionally wounded, we abandoned the things we liked, ignored the desire to try new things, and did only what we imagined other people, especially our parents, would approve in order to avoid risking the humiliation and embarrassment triggered by the nasty words of others.
In trying to act as if their harsh words did not faze us, we became adept at denying or ignoring our hurt feelings. Yet, if the criticism was constant, we became more than hurt – we became emotionally crippled on the inside in a way that affects our decision-making and relationships throughout life. According to Oprah Winfrey, an old-fashioned phrase we are all familiar with should be rewritten to read, "Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will diminish my self-esteem and infect me with the disease to please."
Whether you are on the sending end or receiving end of hurtful words, it is time, as an adult, to focus on improving your personal standards. First, strengthen your psychological boundaries (how you let other people treat you). Second, consider the way you treat other people. You should not do one without the other.
This is something that I am trying to internalize: When setting personal boundaries, speak up before you become angry with the sender over their verbal message and what they are saying. You might respond to the sender by saying: "Wow! That sounded like an insult. How about rephrasing it so we can continue this conversation?" Remember to give no argument, no challenge, and no charge in your voice when you speak. You must stand your ground and insist that that digs and cracks, no matter how subtle, are just not okay with you. If the person lets the hurtful statement stand, then stop the conversation and walk away – even if the person is your parent!
In order to set standards for your own behavior, it will be crucial for you to become aware of your impact on others. Pay attention to how your words and actions affect others. Empathize, by giving some thought to what you are going to say; listen to and watch other people as they respond to you. When an individual feels insulted by a statement you make, do not react in anger. Stop, count to 10, calm down, reflect, and respond. Your response may include a statement denying your intention to insult: "I'm sorry, I didn't mean to insult you – what I really wanted to say is...." Stay focused on your ultimate intent – to communicate without hurting.
Statements that imply the listener is wrong, such as "I'm sorry you feel that way." or "Stop being so sensitive!" or even, "Get over it," lack responsibility and maturity. These types of people are not being responsible for their own behavior, often trying to place the blame for their foul statements on you, their victim. Their statements will only serve to intensify the problem or conflict – and cause you further pain.
And absolutely do not allow anyone to say hurtful things to you. Let them know that their statement sounded like an insult, and if the person does not stop being negative, walk away. Leave the premises if necessary.
Words do hurt, often permanently, so protect yourself.
As sharp words continued to be aimed our way during childhood, what did we do to survive the injuries? In order to save ourselves from being severely and emotionally wounded, we abandoned the things we liked, ignored the desire to try new things, and did only what we imagined other people, especially our parents, would approve in order to avoid risking the humiliation and embarrassment triggered by the nasty words of others.
In trying to act as if their harsh words did not faze us, we became adept at denying or ignoring our hurt feelings. Yet, if the criticism was constant, we became more than hurt – we became emotionally crippled on the inside in a way that affects our decision-making and relationships throughout life. According to Oprah Winfrey, an old-fashioned phrase we are all familiar with should be rewritten to read, "Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will diminish my self-esteem and infect me with the disease to please."
Whether you are on the sending end or receiving end of hurtful words, it is time, as an adult, to focus on improving your personal standards. First, strengthen your psychological boundaries (how you let other people treat you). Second, consider the way you treat other people. You should not do one without the other.
This is something that I am trying to internalize: When setting personal boundaries, speak up before you become angry with the sender over their verbal message and what they are saying. You might respond to the sender by saying: "Wow! That sounded like an insult. How about rephrasing it so we can continue this conversation?" Remember to give no argument, no challenge, and no charge in your voice when you speak. You must stand your ground and insist that that digs and cracks, no matter how subtle, are just not okay with you. If the person lets the hurtful statement stand, then stop the conversation and walk away – even if the person is your parent!
In order to set standards for your own behavior, it will be crucial for you to become aware of your impact on others. Pay attention to how your words and actions affect others. Empathize, by giving some thought to what you are going to say; listen to and watch other people as they respond to you. When an individual feels insulted by a statement you make, do not react in anger. Stop, count to 10, calm down, reflect, and respond. Your response may include a statement denying your intention to insult: "I'm sorry, I didn't mean to insult you – what I really wanted to say is...." Stay focused on your ultimate intent – to communicate without hurting.
Statements that imply the listener is wrong, such as "I'm sorry you feel that way." or "Stop being so sensitive!" or even, "Get over it," lack responsibility and maturity. These types of people are not being responsible for their own behavior, often trying to place the blame for their foul statements on you, their victim. Their statements will only serve to intensify the problem or conflict – and cause you further pain.
And absolutely do not allow anyone to say hurtful things to you. Let them know that their statement sounded like an insult, and if the person does not stop being negative, walk away. Leave the premises if necessary.
Words do hurt, often permanently, so protect yourself.
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