And the Jurors Say...

Just to be clear: IF the verdict is Not Guilty, I will be disappointed, but I won't be in the streets protesting and calling it a sham. IF, on the other hand, he's found guilty, you can count on anger and protests from Trump and his allies.

5:06pm

Down by the Riverside

A version of Down by the Riverside inspired by a band called, I think, A Southern Gospel Revival. From my church service, yesterday. We really enjoy pulling together makeshift bands to do these sorts of songs. Side note: This is my debut of me playing an acoustic bass.

Fundamentalism as a Parasite

 

Stan, over at the conservative Winging It blog, referred to this article (below) from Psychology Today. He, of course, took it to be a destructive, bad bit of information (apparently entirely missing the point - or actually, proving the point), but I found it to be very insightful, especially for followers of Jesus. Jesus, after all, spent his adult life teaching warnings about what might be called the religious fundamentalism in the Pharisees.

Words of wisdom:

In moderation, religious and spiritual practices can be great for a person’s life and mental well-being. But religious fundamentalism—which refers to the belief in the absolute authority of a religious text or leaders*—is almost never good for an individual. This is primarily because fundamentalism discourages any logical reasoning or scientific evidence that challenges its scripture, making it inherently maladaptive.

It is not accurate to call religious fundamentalism a disease, because that term refers to a pathology that physically attacks the biology of a system. But fundamentalist ideologies can be thought of as mental parasites. A parasite does not usually kill the host it inhabits, as it is critically dependent on it for survival. Instead, it feeds off it and changes its behavior in ways that benefit its own existence.

By understanding how fundamentalist ideologies function and are represented in the brain using this analogy, we can begin to understand how to inoculate against them, and potentially, how to rehabilitate someone who has undergone ideological brainwashing—in other words, a reduction in one’s ability to think critically or independently...

One particularly intriguing example of parasitic manipulation occurs when a hairworm infects a grasshopper and seizes its brain in order to survive and self-replicate. This parasite influences its behavior by inserting specific proteins into its brain. Essentially, infected grasshoppers become slaves for parasitic, self-copying machinery.

In much the same way, Christian fundamentalism is a parasitic ideology that inserts itself into brains, commanding individuals to act and think in a certain way—a rigid way that is intolerant to competing ideas. We know that religious fundamentalism is strongly correlated with what psychologists and neuroscientists call "magical thinking," which refers to making connections between actions and events when no such connections exist in reality. Without magical thinking, the religion can’t survive, nor can it replicate itself. Another cognitive impairment we see in those with extreme religious views is a greater reliance on intuitive rather than reflective or analytical thought, which frequently leads to incorrect assumptions since intuition is often deceiving or overly simplistic."

[Welp! -Dan]

https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/mind-in-the-machine/201810/how-religious-fundamentalism-hijacks-the-brain

There's a lot there. Thanks, Stan!

* Note on fundamentalism: The word itself means "getting to the root of, the foundations of... getting to the bottom." That's not necessarily problematic, depending on what roots one is speaking of. But the word itself is a relatively new word coined to speak specifically of religious fundamentalism as we know it today, "to denote a strict and unques­tioning set of beliefs linked to literal readings of sacred texts." or...

"Fundamentalist is said (by George McCready Price) to have been first used in print by Curtis Lee Laws (1868-1946), editor of "The Watchman Examiner," a Baptist newspaper. The movement may have roots in the Presbyterian General Assembly of 1910, which drew up a list of five defining qualities of "true believers" which other evangelicals published in a mass-circulation series of books called "The Fundamentals."

https://www.etymonline.com/word/fundamentalism

So, getting to the roots of Jesus' teachings, THAT is something I support and celebrate. But "a strict and unquestioning set of beliefs linked to literal/inerrant sacred texts..." that is problematic, from a rational point of view and, given the problems found in the Bible that Jesus had with the fundamentalist Pharisees, a biblical problem.

Seems to me.

Rise Up, Redux

I've posted this poem before, but it seems all the more appropriate now. Just today, I was listening to a new story about the horrible conditions at Willowbrook State School that was finally shut down in the 1980s (interestingly, in part due to an expose by a very young Geraldo Rivera in the 1970s and RFK condemning the facility in 1965!). At the "school," people with developmental delays and disabilities were warehoused like cattle and treated worse than cattle.

People needed to rise up and demand human rights. Eventually, changes began to come.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Willowbrook_State_School

The moral arc of the universe is indeed long and sometimes quite slow.

I'm also reminded of the need to rise up now, more than ever, for LGBTQ rights, in a nation whose conservative states are regressing on hard-won human rights wins. We won't go back.

I'm also reminded of the need to rise up as women, their families and allies, and medical personnel are increasingly having limits put upon them, human rights taken away.

Rise up, rise up, rise up! Not that you need my approval...

Rise up wild daughter of the woods

dance and romp

struggle and scream

kick and punch.

Persist. Resist. Insist. Consist

of and within your

own sweet and glorious dragon Self.

Kick at the stones and

split the sky into

one thousand shards of color

bellow in rage

fight

spin

sing.

Or don't.

Just rest and relax or do

whatever

it is your own unchained soul wants.

It IS your life. Live it by your rules.

This poet stands with you and your choices.

A Man and a Bear

A man and a bear met at a bar and he says to the bear I've been near and I've been far and I've seen men and I've seen bears as I've been here and I've been there and I think I'm a good judge of the two and given the choice I'd trust you