Disney Princesses and Abortion Breast Cancer Link

Recently Dina Goldstein's photo essay struck at the Disney princess myth by exposing what the series called Fallen Princesses. This particular photo shows Rapunzel as a very youthful cancer patient...and is strangely accurate, as documented by David Jay's Scar project. Thirty year old women with no family history of breast cancer, began showing up at the oncologist's office.  Goldstein's image is successful without being sexualized as are many of the images in Pink-tober ads to promote breast cancer awareness. 

"Rather than being playful, which is what these campaigns are after," Peggy Orenstein writes, "sexy cancer suppresses discussion of real cancer, rendering its sufferers--the ones whom all this is supposed to be for--invisible.  Moreover, while a month-long breast cancer awareness campaign or Pink-tober gets promoted by various cancer charities and purveyors of popular cultural,it is widely called pinkwashing, its basic denial as clear as the cigarette makers disputing the now accepted truth that smoking causes cancer.  Just as with the tobacco manufacturers, the breast cancer industry represents governmental agencies and big business, including the pharmaceutical industry, insurance companies, and those in various medical communities. 

Unwillingness to own up to having aborted a child was supposedly the reason given for denial of the ABC link (abortion-breast cancer).  Such "recall bias," would lead healthy women to cover up an abortion.


It's thus hugely significant that a meta-analysis examining a whopping 36 studies of induced abortion and cancer risk was just published in China. Abortion is not stigmatized in China, where 40 abortions occur for every 100 live births. As a result, there is no reason to conceal a history of abortion, and "recall bias" is in this case irrelevant. Endorsing the conclusions of the previous studies, Dr. Yubei Huang, et al. report that induced abortion presents a 44% increased risk of developing breast cancer.  
                                           
The medical community agrees that childbirth improves a woman's odds against cancer, because the maturation of milk-producing cells in the breast helps to resist cancerous agents. While pregnancy is a period when a woman is vulnerable, live birth gives the breast cells time to mature.  Think about it.  Cutting short the protective action of breast cell development makes induced abortion a risk factor for breast cancer.  In other words, the physiology of the breast itself suggests that induced abortion increases vulnerability to breast cancer.

Several credible peer-reviewed epidemiological studies, the physiology of the breast, and experimental studies done in mammals all show there is increasing evidence of the ABC (abortion-breast cancer) link.  While any study can be seen to have some flaws, the mounting scientific evidence lends factual support to the claim that abortion serves as a predictor for breast cancer.  

In light of this increasing evidence, Pink-tober seems less designed to get at the real causes of cancer than to sell cancer-awareness merchandise and to titillate and protect sex rather than the lives of women. Rather than standing in line to buy more pink stuff, we need to acknowledge, as Dr. Denise Hunnell points out, that hormonal contraceptives and induced abortion are "leading etiologies."  Since these are both largely avoidable by behavioral changes, Dr. Hunnell suggests aiming our efforts on prevention. In the face of damning evidence of the ABC link, the million dollar abortion industry and its supporters hunker down to demand more treatment options.        

Young women in our culture are being fed a fairy tale all right, but it's not Disney's doing; this is the outworn feminist fairy tale of free love.  You know, the Woodstock era endless "Summer of Love" Seventies that brought you the pill and abortion in return for a golden life of equality.

 Now that myth has been dispelled by the old person's disease becoming the young women's epidemic, maybe the spell of feminism will fall away.  Here's a better lingo for our times: Rather than simplistically "think pink," we need to recognize the ABC Link.

"Maybe the witch thought she was protecting Rapunzel, not punishing her."

--Alyssa B. Sheinmel, The Beautiful Between

Dan Savage and Recent Messaging: "Why bring a child into the World?"

Two recent images: two ways of messaging about the value of human life.

The first assumes that humans are far too fertile for earth's limited resources and that adding babies to the surface population only increases the opportunity for unequal distribution of resources. This recycled viewpoint was most recently perpetuated by Dan Savage, who proposed forced abortion for the next 30 years in America during a recent debate in Sydney. Mind you, this was in response to a question asking for a dangerous idea that would change the world for the better. But this is not coming from an exciting new idea but from a recycled idea dating to the 1960's view of the world as divided between the West and the Rest.

Forcibly limiting population, especially as proposed by a male and a homosexual at that, seems laughable. The audience could only laugh at Savage's straight-faced proposal of forced abortion. Intentionally offensive, Savage got in his laugh line as a slap down to the age old human spirit and drive to procreate.

No matter that overpopulation isn't a problem in the developed world in countries with advanced economies and is really a myth. In fact many developed countries face issues with their populations getting too old etc and America is heading into an era of slowed population growth.  Over all, it may be less a matter of the total number of people (as we have seen population increases in the past) so much as how resources are used that counts.  For instance, it is often distribution, rather than sufficient food production, that is the problem.

Moreover, forced abortion has not worked out very well, has it?   In fact, in Unnatural Selection, award winning writer Mara Hvistendahl analyzes the global gender imbalance resulting from sex- selected abortion, especially in Asia. Projections of China's future demographics show problems with their forced abortion policy, recently loosened.

The second messaging is nonverbal and makes a blatantly emotional appeal, yet also grounds the discussion of the world's dire extremes of poverty back to the imminent prospect of parenthood.
Parenting: the Unexpected


As part of a global sustainability  initiative, Unilever's Dove brand posted a short video recently, posing the question: "Why bring a child into the World?"  Pointing out that the ad makes use of a strong emotional appeal, a writer for adweek comments it may not be the place of a soap maker to field such questions.  Yet, the series of stark contrasts set up in the video provides an intriguing collection for a modernist argument on  the problematic nature of becoming a prospective parent.

Ultimately, bringing children into the world is a grand, extravagant gesture of hope and love.  Instead of hyperbolic statements on the need to stop bringing kids into the world, let's begin a new narrative that celebrates human potential.

Assisting Child survival is a just way to stabilize the population rate, according to Hans Rosling's presentation about the limits of population growth as families decline in size. Savage shouldn't worry, because projections suggest the population will level out at about 10 billion.

Watching the Dove soap video leads me to disagree with the underlying premise of Savage and his Malthusian pals.  In reality, we are just learning of the tremendous potential and enormous possibilities available to scientific discovery.  The human capacity for growth and adaptation is enormous.

Humans will adapt and the world will survive and this will continue for some time  People have the means to survive and prosper; love is big enough to contain our humanity. 

Is There a Mind Meld At Georgetown?

 Relishing spirited discussion but promoting open dialogue with those whose views differ from our own is upheld as basic to democracy if not intellectual inquiry. For this reason, free speech on campus was traditionally celebrated or at least upheld as a basic right.  Not so much today.

College is not just a disinterested dispenser of information and skills; colleges also cultivate group think indoctrination in current ideology.  Perhaps the best evidence of this mind meld-like hold on college students' intellectual faculties is seen in the lengths college administrators go to in order to silence dissension and the willingness of students to go along. The University of Cincinnati, in fact, claims they do not exist to provide a free speech forum, as noted in this analysis of campus censorship by a group called FIRE(Foundation for Individual Rights Education):

    

Georgetown University recently held a "Coming Out" day on campus, and the conservative group TFP (Tradition, Family, Property) who filmed their interaction with them was asked to leave.  In the TFP video, it is clear the university administrator prefers to silence rather than allow dialogue with those holding conservative views.  Likewise, the student newspaper fails to question the reason for TFP's presence on campus, and in fact essentially falls in line with the university's censorship of the conservative group.  Given the power base, those who utter conservative views are asked by the administration to leave, escorted off campus, or relegated to small peripheral  "free speech zones" away from the actual public square. 

  
Although tagged and posted as "News," the campus Vox Populi article appears to be an an echo chamber for the administration's liberal viewpoint rather than a voice of all the people, since the Catholic position is not represented even on this ostensibly Catholic campus. Instead, reporter Isabel Echarte's news story "Yet Another Conservative, Catholic Group Thinks Georgetown Isn't Catholic Enough" ridicules the video as tiresome, juvenile, and not worthy of response.  

Admittedly, the title of TFP's video, "The Smoke of Satan at Georgetown University on Coming Out Day" is over the top,  intended to provoke viewership.  Yet, the Vox article further criticizes the video maker's right to question those celebrating homosexuality on a Catholic university. 

Indeed, Vox Populi does little to serve as a voice representing alternate viewpoints.  Rather than examine the conservative position, Echarte belittles TFP for using "philosophical jargon." While the video includes three phrases referencing Catholic doctrine, these are necessary to understand Catholic teaching.  Those taking classes on a Catholic college campus should presumably be aware of such "jargon" or be willing, as college students, to grapple with the terms.  

Above: A free speech wall ripped down by students, suggesting students are becoming intolerant of opposing viewpoints.

Of the phrases that could be construed as "philosophical jargon," two are introduced by a "Coming Out" day spokesperson: "hierarchy," and "individual revelation."  The term "hierarchy" is typically used to malign Church leadership, the media often suggesting that an all-male leadership can't possibly understand any sexual choices other than celibacy.  This may be the way the "Coming Out" spokesperson uses the word, since "hierarchy" is paired with "individual revelation," seeming to contrast the terms.

Actually, the Church sets in contrast "private" as opposed to "public" revelation, in order to distinguish scripture from ongoing claims of miraculous events or experiences, such as healings.  Whereas Catholics are required to believe in public revelation, private revelations are subject to extensive review and may not ever be officially sanctioned by the Church.  In the context of the video, it appears the "Coming Out" spokesperson is making a case for acceptance of alternative lifestyles such as homosexuality on the basis of private revelation.

The TFP person conducting the interview points out that homosexuality is considered "intrinisically disordered" by the Catholic Church.  This phrase asserts that homosexual actions are inherently or in themselves not directed toward a person's well being. According to Bishop Arthur Serratelli of Paterson N.J., head of the committee on doctrine, "Homosexual acts are never morally acceptable.  Such acts never lead to happiness," he said, "because they are 'intrinsically disordered,' meaning they are not directed to the bonds of marriage and the goal of procreation that are 'part of God's design.' But having an inclination that is disordered does not in any way diminish human worth."

 Echarte might have included such definitions and thus moved the debate to genuine dialogue.  Instead, her Vox populi article demonstrates the "Mutz paradox."  This term was coined after Diane Mutz's book, Hearing the Other Side.  She found that the higher a crowd's educational level, the less willing they are to hear divergent views.  The result is an echo chamber.

Journalists from the Washington Post and the New York Times admit to submitting veto power to the liberal power base.   In another example mentioned in "Mainstream Media Censors the News," a journalist admitted that CNN had accepted advertising money from a third world dictator, later succumbing to becoming a mouthpiece for state-sponsored propaganda. 

This reality of media corruption requires what might be called a total review mentality in which every assertion is checked for "nutritional value." Steven Johnson uses the phrase in "Everything Bad is Good for You" to refer to the value of junk tv.  Like junk tv generally junk news forces us to be smarter, to track the real story by noticing what gets left out, to notice how adversarial shout downs, slander, ridicule, and straw man formulas dominate as sophisticated digital tactics. The left is now the new far right, willing to suppress those who disagree with them.

College students need to learn how to see through intolerance in- the- name- of- diversity--you know, the bullies who smear and snipe at anyone whose views do not adhere to the dominant narrative.   So, Georgetown students encounter a doctrinaire celebration of diversity on "Coming Out" day  while not encouraged to discuss, let alone fully investigate the Church's teaching on homosexuality. Make no mistake, this is a form of censorship.

  Of course, there is nothing wrong with loving people in their variety and their beauty, but that does not need to mean embracing any and all beliefs as equally valid and true.   

  

*"With the first link, the chain is forged. The first speech censored, the first thought forbidden, the first freedom denied, chains us all irrevocably." These words were uttered by Judge Aaron Satie -- as a wisdom, and warning. The first time any man's freedom is trodden on, we're all damaged.


Signed,

The Philosopher's Daughter

1 in 3 Campaign and the Happy Gap

Choice Sells

Buyers like choice. Optional colors, for instance, make the item more appealing, offering not just itself, but a choice.  The same pet bed in red, blue, or in a print or even a custom option. Because choice. Yet, women are reporting less happiness than in the past, and this is referred to as the "Happy Gap."  The question is "Why?" Those reporting on the study are nonplussed, since opportunities for women have increased over the years.  Women have more choices than ever before for academic and career fulfillment.

Sixties Happiness Shift

While we  tend to think of the Sixties as all about fashion and the Beatles, the ground shifted. Thomas Kuhn famously wrote about the impact of a paradigm shift, such as happened in the watch-making business.  Swiss watch makers failed to switch over to the digital model--they were literally "stuck" in the past, in the old ways of doing things.  Likewise, it seems our cultural clock is stuck in the Sixties.  Although we do not see people advocating getting naked in quite the same way they did during the Sixties, we are still living the hangover of that free love era.  Not just a passing trend in bell bottoms and peasant blouses, the Sixties left a huge ideological mark that persistently nudged us toward a paradigm shift every bit as vital as that when the wrist watch went digital.

"Reproductive freedom" was the watch word for this shift. Women seized on abortion as the means to freedom over her own biology as the pivotal right, and gradually the feminist-political complex joined to the medical establishment.  And it was all about abortion advocacy, sold as choice.  Options are lovely--who wouldn't want them?  Let  "sister" become a doctor, lawyer, astronaut--whatever she wants to be.  

The Shelf Life for Choice

Yet, when it comes to family matters, it's not really just a cost/ benefit analysis as women are led to think. Should I have a child now or later?  Should I settle with this man or wait and see if a better one comes along? Women have chosen to delay childbearing, even avoiding childbearing through contraception and when that failed, abortion.  Choosing reproductive freedom was the great escape from history.  Yet, for a woman to forfeit the opportunity of childbearing is not automatically to secure happiness.She can choose to abort her child but she cannot so readily evade experiencing the consequences of that choice any more than she can choose to fly.

Choice itself is not making women happy--that's because it's a false choice.  It's a choice often set up as between her emotions and her body, her boyfriend or her baby, or to give birth or abort the baby. In a TED talk called "The Paradox of Choice," Barry Schwartz notes that freedom stands in for and is equated with choice.   

So, choice begins to stand in for or substitute for real freedom.  Even when a choice is made, however, there are nagging doubts, given other options, as to whether this was the best choice.  Happiness is undermined, in other words, by a women's "liberation" that amounted to expanded choice. Should I start my family now or pursue my ambitions?  Kate Spicer tells her story of adhering to the current feminist abortion advocacy.   She is not alone in expressing regret for a decision to abort a child only to recognize later that she missed out on giving life.  


Stacking the Question toward Choice

Should I have a child or fail to prosper by placing a big wrench in my own career path and potential? The way questions are formulated, in other words, tends to guarantee a particular response.Would you like this brand new car?  Or would you prefer to walk everywhere?  Feminism continues to offer women a false choice: an either/ or: give birth or abort--rarely is any other option mentioned, let alone examined in full.

As evidenced by the 26 abortion stories featured recently in New York Magazine, abortion has not empowered women.  In fact, the best that can be said is perhaps that some women found consolation, for instance, in control over their lives.  One woman remarks that after her abortion, she immediately began planning a European vacation.  But does such compensation ever really make up for the missed years of motherhood?

Surprised By Parenthood

A video that has gone viral in the last week speaks powerfully of the mystery of birth and the beauty of life, too amazingly complicated, unexpected, and too wonderful to comprise in any ready label, such as "planned parenthood."

And, no matter how enjoyable the trip to Spain, it is women who may carry the most regret and grief over abortions; they are not fooled into thinking abortion was the best life had to offer.  Here's how one viewer of the video summed up the astonishing show: 

"This gave me a new appreciation for twins and how crazy birth is in general.  When those elevator doors open everybody gets spit out on whatever floor and you wake up and start        experiencing the universe as this conscious self aware thing taking the bad and the good and    whatever else time throws at you only to go back ot sleep at some yet to be determined time       down the road.  But twins start out together.  Did you see them?  They looked like miners being rescued or refugees clinging to one another, squinting.  They have no idea what's in store.  We all start like that and we all end generally the same way, maybe not in the same clothes and a little worse for wear.
 You'd think those two things we all share in common would be enough to put an end to all the vitriol, loneliness, and apathy and whatever other terrible pains we inflict on each other, but I suppose it's easy to forget. We're always somewhere between the void closer to birth or closer to death and the in between is pretty distracting.  We're strange creatures.  Strange beautiful creatures.   Strange beautiful terrible creatures."    

The fact that we share this existence with others is something splendid.  This video went viral because it gave us a glimpse of baby memory--what the baby experiences in that sheltered inner space during that sublime time in the womb prior to birth.  In fact, this video reveals the baby's consciousness of itself in relation to other; who are we to declare that personhood forms later or to pronounce our inability to recall a memory from a time of preverbal consciousness some kind of proof? In reality, it only attests to an adult's ability to consider a dulled consciousness a superior form of life.   This is life before we came upon it, before we could attach scientific calculations or economic valuations, and it is fantastic, fragile-resilient, and ultimately ineffable.  We are privileged to witness life; parents are allowed in on the magnificent project that is life.  Having witnessed what it entails, who could choose to miss it?

Eyes Wide Shut: Show Me the Flower in the Rifle Barrel

Crosseyed and Painless

What does it take to wake a college student?  They are understandably stressed out, distracted by classes, homework, jobs, and exams.  Students are high energy too, knowing they need to deliver the facts on demand.  There's a  bit of the college student in all of us!


But you know those facts don't always do what you want them to, as the Talking Heads song "Crosseyed and Painless"  reminds us.


"Facts won't do what I want them to"           

In my own life, pulled along in the excitement of ideas and a hectic work life I  floated in a dreamy haze of inaction for Van Winkle years. My generation's 60's style free love sold to us as a social good.... Seriously? 

Now we are told that certain photos must not be shown and it seems cannot be seen. In the interest of women's "good."  
       ......

"Facts are simple and facts are straight"

Images speak.  Sometimes they cry out.  So, here's the image deemed too controversial (notice, the photo's accuracy was not questioned); nonetheless, you were not allowed to "see" it, to look, and to examine the truthfulness of claims regarding the status of the preborn. (The Chicago Tribune, USA Today, and the LA Times refused to publish this image, part of an advertisement created by Heroic Media.):

Artist Donna Lee
"Facts are written all over your face"

Rather than undifferentiated cells, this photo shows a medically- accurate fetal model held in a hand.   Science is based on observation, and it isn't just scientists who have eyes or the new eyes provided by ultrasounds-eyes that tell us a 20 week old fetus has separate arms, legs, body, and face.  Science is making it possible for all of us to have eyes to see.

If the photo had shown earlier human development, not an infant able to be nestled in a human hand-- there would appear nothing morally problematic: "if you get the abortion early enough, the fetus doesn't even look like a baby." Yet, already at fertilization, there is human life, looking the way it's supposed to look at that stage of development, increasingly revealed by science, to be rapidly replicating, coordinated human development.

"Facts go out and slam the door"

 The New York Times, the Washington Post, and the Wall Street Journal ran the original advertisement  while stipulating that the wording make "it clear that it was a paid advertisement."   The Chicago Tribune demanded  a different picture of a live 20-week old baby en utero--was it the 3 dimensionality of the  photo image that was so disturbing?  If so, there are now 3D images of  infants in utero, so we can all see the life of a developing fetus with greater clarity than ever before.  

What's interesting about this is that we are told, on the one hand, that images of abortion victims are too graphic; on that grounds, this clearly sanitized photo of a fetal model should be more acceptable--the infant is not decapitated or bloody--the photo omits the gritty realism of the effects of the abortionist's scalpel.  Yet, the photo does capture in an intimate and personal way, the size and form of the baby.

Yet, this image too was and apparently is too graphic for the general public: You were not allowed to see the real size and anatomy of a fetus that gives lie to the myth that abortion merely rids the woman's body of a "clump of cells."  Could "clump of cells" not describe any member of the human family?

Look for yourself. The miracle of human life developing at an unbelievably rapid pace inside the uterus is nothing less than astonishing.  

 To be politically correct today is to have eyes wide shut. As the image of a 20 week old human embryo shows, there's a third story involved, and it's going unheard. 

Yes, the woman experiences a crisis, but that does not undo the developing life inside her.  Is abortion really a peaceful response to a crisis? Is it really a social good? 

We've now had 40 years to gather in the windfalls the feminists promised: abortion would end  poverty and child abuse.  In reality, both have been perpetuated, if anything, by abortion.  "Make love, not war" we declared, effectively protesting the war by the appeal of sex- as- liberation as peacemaking.   Making love instead of  war sounded good.  Flower children, after all,  handed daisies to soldiers.  

The movement effectively drew on an image of flower child innocence.  "Love, not war" was propped up by "love, don't judge," all played out by "good" flower children.  Creepily, aggression toward the weakest and the most essentially voiceless among us sustains this ongoing "free love" ethic. 

Abbie Hoffman's "Flower Brigade" was accompanied by protests in which college students demanded sexual liberation.  Simultaneously with the idyllic flower power movement we were threatened with economic collapse from a population bomb--prophesied in the Malthusian overtones of Paul Erlich and increasingly articulated by feminists who in effect declared war on our offspring.  

Yet we had to wait for an image as powerful as the daisy threaded into a rifle barrel to understand the impact of our Beetle's generation's particular mode of aggression. Women who took up the liberationist mantra later reported feeling "coerced" into abortion.  No matter that the population explosion never went off.  We all got the memo: curb our actual procreation.  Make love not babies. 

What was inherited from the Summer of Love was a sexuality colonized by social progressives and consistently linked both to the peace movements and the need for contraception and abortion as a means of correction for the sin of human propagation.   The generation after the baby boomers recognize their parents efforts to sustain romanticisation of their youth prior to selling out.                    

 Those who coined the "free love" edict continue to claim: no one gets hurt.  It was left to the generation after the baby boomers to recognize sexual libertinage as a failed project. The wreckage of divorce, single parents, and STDs was all around them, reminders that sexual license and abortion were not unquestionable social goods.  Increasingly clear is the way the current base has echoed the 60s strategy of linking sexuality to political change.  And the body count from peace loving yet uncommitted sexual acts now dwarfs casualties of the Vietnam war.




"Crosseyed and Painless." 

Hooking up, after all, is not the same thing as love--how could genuine love for the other include the fall out we began seeing and continue to see despite our best efforts at a  black out.  The facts are living turned inside out. 

Some people wake up on their own; Most of us need an alarm clock.  Images of the victims--an ever mounting pile-- from our 60's frolic provide a counter balance to the pretty image of the flower child with tangled hair, bared breasts, sweetly sniffing daisies with unfocused eyes.... Victims, even without clearly defined faces, call to us ever louder with the new ultrasound technologies.  And that alarm is getting harder to ignore.

Dissonance, perhaps characterizes modern life...or at least a style that might be characterized as conflicted, disconnected, atrophied...No longer moving forward. but taking charge.

On the personal level, we are perhaps fitting selves to roles that do not really "work"

At one point in Lars and the Real Girl, the doctor uses the term decompensation, which refers to the "functional deterioration of a previously working structure or system." It's a wonderful term, since it can result from a variety of stressors, including fatigue, illness, or even old age.   

 When a system is "compensated", it is able to function despite stressors or defects. Decompensation describes an inability to compensate for these deficiencies. It is a general term commonly used in medicine to describe a variety of situations.

Accepting a person without necessarily endorsing a behavior.  In this scene from Lars and the Real Girl, the church members shuck their supposed uptight prudery and celebrate the appearance of Bianca.  Presumably, they are following along with the doctor's prescription to indulge the delusion "Bianca's in town for a reason" until Bianca will no longer be necessary.  And it is true that the family starts acting like a unit and their caring extends even to the townsfolk who follow their lead.

In a classic scenario of decompensation, Hitchcock's Lifeboat suggests there are unexpected levels in each personality.  Notice what it is that anchors at least one of the characters?

We all need to plant something good, and family life provides a structure for that intimate connection necessary to getting up and facing another new day but also extends out to envision a community potentially based on caring.  Not something the psychologist, government social worker, or bureau of statistics addresses very well.

Family can be stifled by the State. In a clip from a film based on George Orwell's 1984, the propagandist voice intones:  "As we know the biological and social stimulation of the family leads to something outside party needs..." said in a hypnotically scientific monotone.   

Signed,

The Philosopher's Daughter

Host a Vintage Garden Party on the Go!

Host a Vintage Garden Party on the Go!

This is not camping. It’s called “glamping,” and it’s reason for being is to have fun. In this lens, there are reviews, items to take along, and suggestions for celebrating a vintage garden party.


http://www.squidoo.com/host-a-vintage-garden-party-on-the-go

Attention!

How much do you see?  How much is seeing dependant on words, our interactions, distractions, expectations?   How much do our efforts to dialogue get sidetracked by the animus of what might be called a scripted reality of preconceived notions?

The infant who points to every oval shape, chirping "O."   The delight of viewing daily life with a child in hand is the recognition that common reality is not at all common place.  Picking up every leaf, feather, and pebble, the child is entranced.  Pronouncing "O" in excitement when spotting resemblances, the child connects with the parent, and language settles the matter sometimes with a matter of factness that out weighs the initial perspective of inquiry.

Often, we are too preoccupied to notice the disturbing situation that might be in our midst.   There is a famous experiment that has been replicated in a Youtube video:

 In a 1999 study, Daniel Simons and Christopher Chabris showed that people focusing on one thing, such as counting bounces, become blind to the unexpected-- even if it is right in front of them.  This effect has been dubbed "inattentional blindness."   This is interesting in light of selective attention to information--humans are much more impressionable than we like to think.

Most of us are preoccupied most of the time.  Distracted by our own preoccupations, we miss what is right before us.  We see only what we are prepared to see.   It might even be said that we see only what is agenda endorsed or prescribed--in effect the language, rhetoric, tone--tells us what to attend to and what to see...unless and until we say "Hey," ask questions, and keep up the line of inquiry.

It's easy to miss something we are not even looking for.  Here's another demonstration, courtesy of You Tube.  The assigned "agenda" is the whodunit line of inquiry. 

But there are visible items we do not attend to --"invisible gorillas" right in front of us, or if you prefer,  "inattentional blindness" (the formal term).  What are the invisible gorillas in our language that do not account for that in experience which is not widely sanctioned, acknowledged, recognized, or easily nameable? Are we who assume ourselves above the habit of stereotyping others, able to see past conventional views and assumptions about people and issues?  What we see and what we attend to are in large part directed, even dictated by language use, tone ridicule, and convention, whether we like it or not.  We do not see a heinous problem because it is not labelled "heinous problem."

If it's politics--and what isn't now--we are manipulated by the politician's outcry and journalist's bullet points.   Quick to ID certain types--those hicks, we say-- we pride ourselves on being "deep" and seeing beyond stereotypes.  Yet we proceed to interact with stereotypes and stock positions.

Polemical pre-suppositions so color our ordinary interactions that it is nearly impossible to carry on a genuine dialogue.  Even if we are not scared off from talking about profound issues, does our discussion lead any where?   Do we ever register what the other is saying or are we stuck so tightly to the image of the old hag that we cannot "fix" on the young woman?

One benefit of engaging in true dialogue with those we are in disagreement is the potential to see the world with an added strangeness and to recognize an element previously missed.


This is an appeal to recognize the world contains stranger aspects than we know.  This is an invitation to talk about that which matters most.  This is unexpected.

signed,

the philosopher's daughter

________________________________________________________________________
Speaking of surprise, adding an element of color and bold geometric design can dress up a plain blouse or t shirt instantly. To see one way of adding interest in color and style--an element that draws the eye, check out this skylarkscarves design:

https://www.etsy.com/listing/119873057/chevron-and-floral-knit-infinity-and?ref=shop_home_active

Creativity is not all fun and games--it's frustration and sweat and tears..  Even the most free spirited romp is not free but comes as the result of sacrifice of something else.  This is the whole concept of cost-benefit analysis; we choose one route only to close off other possibilities.   This is great when the goal is to combine forms in a new fluid art concept.  Freerunners embody that spirit of innovation and self expression.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1jXqhAXeDGY

"So many signs and directions telling us what to do and what not to do."  Our spirits rebell at modern life--can't even buy a big gulp in NY....


signed,

the philosopher's daughter

Creative highs are more humble than the rush- past- the- mental barrier high.  In more humble ways, we can delight in a spirit of playfulness.  From the art-etsyian perspective, a high can be found in creating a layered look that turns a plain t shirt something delightful...skylarkscarves@etsy

But what happens when that same outlook is applied ot human relationships? For the longest time, people assumed tradition was a good guide: marriage before sex, love before pregnancy.    In the era of the sixties, what was rejected in the name of the sexual revolution?  Free? love. People pursued that powerful expression of attraction almost as an art form, their bodies the crucible.

Romance is no longer possible--it has to be borrowed from the past...right?  I think it is interesting that romance springs from our connection to the past, to a gentle, sweetness that we find there.

The styles, designs, and patterns of the past look authentic and stable.  


signed,

the philosopher's daughter

The Third Story

An elephant crashing through the jungle undergrowth with a dizzy rider hanging on by the finger nails.   Jonathan Haidt bases much of his argument in The Righteous Mind on an analogy depicting human reason as a small rider whose elephant is wildly out of control.  

So what is the elephant?  All the agenda-funnelled assumptions that motivate "forward."   Haidt identifies emotion, alliances, teams, gendered affiliations, coalitions, and maintaining a reputation as the elephant.   We now have opposing teams that no longer have members whose values overlap.  The tribal ridicule and rhetoric and moral division shoves out a space for moderates who once mulled each side over, fence sitters who crossed over into enemy territory and stumbled upon shared values. 

Maybe genuine discussion cannot happen because the elephant is deaf to certain appeals?   That seems to be Haidt's view.  Far from the lofty goal of truth seeking, most people seem content with reaffirming an alliance, repeating the party line, holding subjectively defended territory.  Do we accept any grounds as sufficient?   When I do see debate occur, I notice the willingness to credit any claim-- so long as any expert can be trotted out. Haidt lists six origins for moral impulse: care, fairness, liberty, loyalty, authority and sanctity.  

He identifies a short list of priorities or values of members who align as progressive-- care, fairness and liberty-- and a longer, more inclusive one for conservatives who cherish as well loyalty, authority and sanctity.   The elephant is seriously committed to certain impulses, charging over opposing values with reckless abandon.  Haidt acknowledges that progressives like himself typically are less interested in recognizing the claims of loyalty, authority, and sanctity. 

    

Sensing the elephant in the public "room," people now mostly avoid the effort required to carry on genuine dialogue, recognizing the difficulty of appealing to the elephant.  In his book, Difficult Conversations, Douglas Stone, et. al.  shows how assumptions frame information and determine how it gets interpreted.   We all know this, but the book gives  examples of conversations to show how conflict typically plays out and how we can reserve judgement, try to imagine the other person's reality, and prolong a nonblaming frame of reference while collecting information.  

A practical-minded approach, Stone's goes further than Haidt to illustrate the slow listening needed to tame the elephant; whereas, it is more common to see single-commenters dash in and out of a conversation.    If we were to diagnose our public debates from his perspective, Stone would no doubt point to the blame game that anchors much public talk.   

Maybe we need is conversation police--or at least referees to call foul when there is distraction, transference, or other forms of erroneous thinking derailing our public debate.  Instead, we often see today a more pronounced taking of sides and ganging up--both in online discussions and in mainstream media.  Stone refers to the necessity of a third story--one that is not anchored to any position but mediates the conversation by describing the facts as a third party not directly involved might.  There is no third available these days.

signed,

the philosopher's daughter

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Tame your animal... this great car seat protector that identifies a space for your pet and protects your vehicle

http://www.etsy.com/listing/122853455/pet-car-mat-puts-you-in-the-van-guard?

Or, try this to soothe the savage inner beast 

https://www.etsy.com/listing/119874529/leopard-print-scarf-womens-animal-print

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/25/books/review/the-righteous-mind-by-jonathan-haidt.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0

http://www.sj-r.com/blogs/community/themorrischair/x2053811901/The-Righteous-Mind-a-paradigm-shifting-look-at-how-we-behave-ethically

http://blogs.swarthmore.edu/burke/2012/10/10/commentary-on-jonathan-haidt-the-righteous-mind/