JUNETEENTH 2026

https://www.juneteenth.com/

JUNETEENTH 2025

https://www.juneteenth.com/

If By "Liberal" You Mean...

Considering the upcoming election, this is worth a repost:

Address of John F. Kennedy upon Accepting the Liberal Party Nomination for President, New York, New York, September 14, 1960:

"What do our opponents mean when they apply to us the label, 'Liberal'? If by 'Liberal' they mean, as they want people to believe, someone who is soft in his policies abroad, who is against local government, and who is unconcerned with the taxpayer's dollar, then the record of this party and its members demonstrate that we are not that kind of 'Liberal.' But, if by a 'Liberal,' they mean someone who looks ahead and not behind, someone who welcomes new ideas without rigid reactions, someone who cares about the welfare of the people - their health, their housing, their schools, their jobs, their civil rights, and their civil liberties - someone who believes that we can break through the stalemate and suspicions that grip us in our policies abroad, if that is what they mean by a 'Liberal,' then I'm proud to say that I'm a 'Liberal.' [Applause.]

But first, I would like to say what I understand the word, 'Liberal,' to mean and explain in the process why I consider myself to be a 'Liberal,' and what it means in the presidential election of 1960.

In short, having set forth my views - I hope for all time - 2 nights ago in Houston, on the proper relationship between church and state, I want to take this opportunity to set forth my views on the proper relationship between the state and the citizen. This is my political credo:

I believe in human dignity as the source of national purpose, in human liberty as the source of national action, and the human heart as the source of national compassion, and in the human mind as the source of our invention and our ideas. It is, I believe, this faith in our fellow citizens as individuals and as people that lies at the heart of the liberal faith, for liberalism is not so much a party creed or a set of fixed platform promises as it is an attitude of mind and heart, a faith in man's ability through the experiences of his reason and judgment to increase for himself and his fellow men the amount of Justice and freedom and brotherhood which all human life deserves. [Applause.]

I believe also in the United States of America, in the promise that it contains and has contained throughout our history of producing a society so abundant and creative and so free and responsible that it cannot only fulfill the aspirations of its citizens, but serve equally well as a beacon for all mankind. I do not believe in a super state. I see no magic to tax dollars which are sent to Washington and then returned. I abhor the waste and incompetence of large-scale Federal bureaucracies in this administration, as well as in others. I do not favor state compulsion when voluntary individual effort can do the job and do it well. But I believe in a government which acts, which exercises its full powers and its full responsibilities. Government is an art and a precious obligation; and when it has a job to do, I believe it should do it. And this requires not only great ends but that we propose concrete means of achieving them.

Our responsibility is not discharged by an announcement of virtuous ends. Our responsibility is to achieve these objectives with social invention, with political skill, and executive vigor. I believe for these reasons, that liberalism is our best and our only hope in the world today. [Applause.] For the liberal society is a free society, and it is at the same time and for that reason a strong society. Its strength is drawn from the will of free people committed to great ends and peacefully striving to meet them. Only liberalism, in short, can repair our national power, restore our national purpose, and liberate our national energies. And the only basic issue in the 1960 presidential campaign is whether our Government will fall in a conservative rut and die there, or whether we will move ahead in the liberal spirit of daring, of breaking new ground, of doing in our generation what Woodrow Wilson and Franklin Roosevelt and Harry Truman and Adlai Stevenson did in their time of influence and responsibility."

For the complete speech, follow this link to the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum:
https://www.jfklibrary.org/Research/Research-Aids/JFK-Speeches/Liberal-Party-Nomination-NYC_19600914.aspx

JUNETEENTH 2024

https://www.juneteenth.com/

JUNETEENTH

https://www.juneteenth.com/

"The fight against ‘woke’ is really conservative gaslighting"

I found this opinion piece from author Clay Cane very insightful...

Opinion: The fight against ‘woke’ is really conservative gaslighting
Opinion by Clay Cane
Updated 7:35 AM EDT, Wed April 5, 2023

(CNN) I was at the barbershop recently when Childish Gambino’s 2016 track “Redbone” popped up on a playlist. Singing about infidelity, Gambino — also known as Donald Glover — belts out, “Stay woke!” in the chorus. As we nodded our heads in unison to the song, someone asked, “How did ‘woke’ become the new scary term? Do they even know what it means?”

We all had a wry laugh about language that has been misappropriated over the years, but the distortion of “woke” has been particularly insidious.

I must give credit to the Silent Majority, the Moral Majority, MAGA, Q-Anon and all the other iterations of conservatism that Republicans have transmogrified into over the past five decades: They are masterminds at coming up with messaging that scares the Jim Crow hell out of their base. “Woke” is their latest stunt.

In the 1960s, it was “Black Power,” a term about empowerment and self-reliance popularized by Kwame Ture, also known as Stokely Carmichael. Conservatives rebranded the term, which became a catch-all phrase to scare White voters that “Negroes” were taking over. Those two words would then be twisted by “White Power” adherents who, according to the ADL, deliberately mimicked the term “Black Power.”

Some years later, former California governor and later President Ronald Reagan famously deployed the “welfare queen” narrative, framing public assistance as a Black issue, even though more White people than Black have been helped over the years by those federal aid programs.

After Reagan, George H. W. Bush invoked the name of Willie Horton, a convicted Black man on weekend release from prison to rile up his base, during the 1988 presidential campaign. The Bush team made Horton a symbol of allegedly lenient prison furlough programs that were supposedly sending murderers and rapists into the suburbs.

Bush rocketed in the polls, framing his opponent, Democrat Michael Dukakis, as weak on crime. Bush won the presidential election and the Willie Horton television commercial — an ad General Colin Powell described as being “racist… cold political calculation” — was a turning point in the campaign. Yet again, Republicans had found a potent symbol of how to effectively manipulate voters’ fears.

Over the past several years, co-optation of language by the GOP has been on overdrive, due in part to the advent of social media. Once upon a time, politicians hammered incendiary language in speeches and interviews; Today, they have the ability to disseminate a similarly noxious narrative almost instantly online. Lee Atwater -— the brain behind the Willie Horton ad and other Southern Strategy tactics — would be proud. As he lay dying from cancer in the final months of his life, Atwater reportedly said he regretted the Horton ad, but the legacy of his racist actions lives on.

The current list of terms that conservatives have weaponized is long and growing: Black Lives Matter. Defund the police. Critical race theory. Intersectionality. Now, add to it the ubiquitous — almost inescapable — word “woke.”

To be clear, woke is not political, but it has been politically weaponized by bad-faith actors, mostly on the right. Being “woke” is not a term exclusive to the realm of social justice; it’s a decades-old slang in Black communities, meaning to “be aware.” For example: “I heard your man is cheating — stay woke!”

Blues icon Lead Belly, at the end of his recording of the 1938 song “Scottsboro Boys,” talked about the need to “stay woke” after Black men and children were wrongfully accused of raping two White women in Alabama.

In other words, be alert, keep your eyes open and watch your back — figuratively and literally.

The mangling of “woke” cannot be solely placed on politicians. Celebrities and comedians have played a role: Bill Maher, Sean Penn, Russell Brand, Kanye West and Dave Chappelle to name a few, have all misused the word in recent years, contributing to the despoiling of a cherished cultural term. Either out of willful ignorance or arrogance, they deploy the term out of context, often while pouting about “cancel culture.”

Meanwhile, pushing back against “woke-ism” has become a profitable business model for anti-woke warriors. John McWhorter wrote a 2021 book titled, “Woke Racism: How a New Religion Has Betrayed Black America,” this New York Times bestseller was partly popular because a Black writer was denouncing “wokeness.”

Bethany Mandel recently released “Stolen Youth: How Radicals Are Erasing Innocence and Indoctrinating a Generation,” which, according to her, included a whole chapter on “wokeness” yet she famously struggled to provide a definition in an eye-rolling television interview. She later complained about being lampooned on Twitter — but also bragged about how many copies of her book that she had sold as a result. Journalist Bari Weiss, meanwhile, who rants incessantly about wokeness, has been dubbed an “anti-woke warrior” and is a co-founder of the “anti-woke” University of Austin.

What’s more dangerous than any of the misappropriation, however, is the way that attacks on “woke-ism” have made their way into policy.

Florida Governor Ron DeSantis signed into law the “Stop WOKE Act,” which is wreaking havoc on Florida’s colleges, universities, libraries and schools. “Woke-ism” now somehow has expanded to encompass sexual orientation and gender identity. It’s even being cited as the real reason for prosecuting the former president on 34 felony counts of falsifying business records.

Even the most anodyne mention of civil rights is suppressed, as seen recently with revered figures like Rosa Parks and Ruby Bridges.

The boogeyman framing around “woke” is intentional. In 2021, South Carolina Senator Tim Scott complained about “woke supremacy,” a term with inescapable echoes of “White supremacy”— creating a deeply racist, false equivalency that pandered to a faction of the GOP in his state.

It was a move that perhaps was not all that surprising coming from the only Black Republican in the US Senate, who is fond of saying that his family had gone from “cotton to Congress” when he downplays racism in his party. Not even Lee Atwater could have predicted the Southern Strategy tactics being used by Black politicians.

There are no “woke” villains attempting to take over America. Is there sometimes unnecessary word policing? Can people be oversensitive? Can corporations overreact to the latest scandal or a trending topic? Absolutely, but that is not “woke-ism.” Labeling so-called overreactions or something you don’t like with a term rooted in Black communities, racializes — and shuts down — discourse many people claim we need.

Here’s what my friends at the barbershop say about right-wing politicians, conservative media outlets, privileged celebrities, Twitter trolls: You can’t have the word “woke.” It doesn’t belong to you, and never did. Be creative and think up your own dog whistles. What you refer to as “woke-ism” is old school, political gaslighting.

I will keep using “woke” in its proper context. And if you don’t understand it, then maybe the word is not yours to use.

Thank you, Clay!

Link to original article:
https://www.cnn.com/2023/04/05/opinions/woke-weaponized-racism-gaslighting-cane-ctpr/index.html

Zen and a Post-COVID World

In a conversation on NHK World Japan, internationally renowned garden designer, chief priest of the Sōtō Zen temple Kenkō-ji, professor at Tama Art University, and president of his own design firm Shunmyō Masuno told design strategist Eisuke Tachikawa that Buddhist principles will guide the post-COVID world.

HOW TO SAVE LIVES

Vaccine mandates are controversial. They’re also an effective way to save lives.

By David Leonhardt and Ian Prasad Philbrick | The New York Times
July 23, 2021

How to save lives
Vaccine mandates are controversial. They’re also effective.

• Before Houston Methodist became one of the first hospital systems in the U.S. to mandate Covid-19 vaccines, about 85 percent of its employees were vaccinated. After the mandate, the share rose to about 98 percent, with the remaining 2 percent receiving exemptions for medical or religious reasons, Bloomberg’s Carey Goldberg reported. Only about 0.6 percent of employees quit or were fired.


• Schools — including Indiana University and many private colleges — that require students and workers to get vaccinated have reported extremely high uptake.


• A recent Kaiser Family Foundation survey of Americans who had been opposed to getting vaccinated and later changed their minds found that mandates — or restrictions on the unvaccinated — were one common reason. One 51-year-old man told Kaiser that he began to feel as if he had “limited options without it.”


• The French government will soon require that people show proof of vaccination or a recent negative test to eat at a restaurant, attend a movie or participate in many other activities. After President Emmanuel Macron announced the policy last week, the number of vaccine appointments surged. Italy announced a similar policy yesterday, The Times’s Marc Santora explains.

It’s true that these mandates often generate intense criticism. In France, more than 100,000 people marched to protest Macron’s policy. In the U.S., critics sued, unsuccessfully so far, to stop Indiana University’s mandate. Some Republican politicians have also tried to stop mandates, including Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida and Gov. Mike DeWine of Ohio.

The mandates are also not 100 percent effective. Some people will receive exemptions, as was the case at Houston Methodist. A small number may forge vaccine records. And some vaccinated people will still contract mild versions of Covid, through so-called breakthrough infections.

But even with the opposition and the exceptions, mandates can play a major role in reducing the spread of Covid and saving lives. That’s especially true now that the Delta variant is fueling a rise in cases. “The takeaway message remains, if you’re vaccinated, you are protected,” Dr. Céline Gounder, an infectious disease specialist, told our colleague Apoorva Mandavilli. “You are not going to end up with severe disease, hospitalization or death.”

A ‘staggering’ success

Covid is a new disease, and the debates over Covid policy can seem new, as well. But they’re often not wholly new. They instead echo longstanding debates. Vaccine mandates fall into this category.

Throughout history, societies have struggled with when and how to require vaccines. Opponents of mandates have argued that individuals should be allowed to make their own health decisions — and bear the consequences: What, they ask, is more personal than deciding whether to inject a medicine into one’s body? Supporters of mandates have replied that society has a duty to protect its citizens, including those who cannot be inoculated (like young children and some immunocompromised people, in the case of Covid) and are therefore put at risk by people who voluntarily refuse vaccines.

For these reasons, vaccine mandates cause intense disputes. But when supporters win the argument, public health has often benefited. Guy Nicolette, an administrator at the University of California, Berkeley, pointed out to The Washington Post that colleges have long required other vaccines, like the one for measles. “It’s staggering how well a mandate works on a college campus,” he said.

Dr. Aaron Carroll, Indiana University’s chief health officer, has noted that the country’s victories over many diseases — including smallpox, polio, mumps, rubella and diphtheria — have depended on vaccine mandates by states or local governments. “That’s how the country achieves real herd immunity,” Carroll wrote in The Times. (In the U.S., a national mandate may be unconstitutional.)

When states and school districts have opted not to require vaccines, a disease can often spread needlessly, Carroll explained. That has been the case with human papillomavirus, a sexually transmitted disease known as HPV that can cause cancer. It’s also been the case with influenza, which kills about 35,000 Americans in a typical flu season.

Covid now seems certain to join influenza and HPV as diseases that American society chooses to accept. But it is a choice. Companies, schools and communities that decide to enact vaccine mandates will almost certainly save American lives by doing so.

Mark Barnes, a former health official in New York City, told Bloomberg that he expected the number of these mandates to grow in coming months. “We’re going to see more vaccine mandates by large organizations of all kinds,” he predicted.

Link to original article:

https://www.nytimes.com/live/2021/07/23/world/covid-variant-vaccine-updates#vaccine-mandates-are-controversial-theyre-also-effective

Happy Juneteenth 2021!

Now an official national holiday in the United States!

Assertive Leaders Telling Truth

Humanism In A Nutshell

https://humanism.org.uk/

The Humane Middle by John Pavlovitz

I’m Not The Radical Left, I’m The Humane Middle

John Pavlovitz

Apparently, I’ve been radicalized and I wasn’t aware.

Certain people call me the “radical Left” all the time.

I never considered myself radical before.
I just thought I was normal, ordinary, usual.
I thought equity was important to everyone.
I imagined America was filled with people who took that Life, Liberty, and Pursuit of Happiness stuff seriously—for all people.
I thought the Golden Rule was actually mainstream.

Recently I took an inventory of my positions, screening for the extremism:

I believe in full LGBTQ rights.
I believe we should protect the planet.
I believe everyone deserves healthcare.
I believe all religions are equally valid.
I believe the world is bigger than America.
I believe to be “pro-life,” means to treasure all of it.
I believe women should have autonomy over their own bodies.
I believe whiteness isn’t superior and it is not the baseline of humanity.
I believe we are all one interdependent community.
I believe people and places are made better by diversity.
I believe people shouldn’t be forced to abide by anyone else’s religion.
I believe non-American human beings have as much value as American ones.
I believe generosity is greater than greed, compassion better than contempt, and kindness superior to derision.
I believe there is enough in this world for everyone: enough food, enough money, enough room, enough care—if we unleash our creativity and unclench our fists.

I’m not sure how these ideas became radical, though it seems to have happened in the last few years.
I grew up being taught they were just part of being a decent human being.
I grew up believing that loving my neighbor as myself, meant that I actually worked for their welfare as much as my own.
I was taught that caring for the least in the world, was the measure of my devotion to God.
I thought that inalienable rights of other people were supposed to be a priority as a decent participant in the world.

I don’t think I’m alone.

In fact, I’m pretty sure that most people reside here in this place alongside me: the desire for compassion and diversity and equality and justice; that these things aren’t fringe ideologies or extremist positions—but simply the best way to be human.

I think most people want more humanity, not less.

I think the vast middle is exhausted by the cruelty of these days.

That these aspirations seem radical to some people, is probably an alarm that they’ve moved so far into the extremes of their fortified ideological bunkers and been so poisoned by the propaganda, that normal now seems excessive, that equality now seems oppressive, that goodness feels reckless.

Maybe the problem is, these people are so filled with fear for those who are different, so conditioned to be at war with the world, so indoctrinated into a white nationalistic religion of malice—that they’ve lost sight of what being a human being looks like anymore.

I am pretty sure that I don’t represent the “radical Left,” but the vast, disparate, compassionate, humane Middle; people who are not threatened by someone else’s presence, who do not see another person’s gain as their loss, who don’t worship a Caucasian, American god.

I suppose humanity feels radical to inhumane people.

In that case, I’ll gladly be here in my extremism.

https://johnpavlovitz.com/

Liberalism Is The Enemy Of Tyrants

Together, You Can Redeem the Soul of Our Nation by John Lewis

Together, You Can Redeem the Soul of Our Nation

By John Lewis
Mr. Lewis, the civil rights leader who died on July 17, wrote this essay shortly before his death, to be published upon the day of his funeral.

July 30, 2020

While my time here has now come to an end, I want you to know that in the last days and hours of my life you inspired me. You filled me with hope about the next chapter of the great American story when you used your power to make a difference in our society. Millions of people motivated simply by human compassion laid down the burdens of division. Around the country and the world you set aside race, class, age, language and nationality to demand respect for human dignity.

That is why I had to visit Black Lives Matter Plaza in Washington, though I was admitted to the hospital the following day. I just had to see and feel it for myself that, after many years of silent witness, the truth is still marching on.

Emmett Till was my George Floyd. He was my Rayshard Brooks, Sandra Bland and Breonna Taylor. He was 14 when he was killed, and I was only 15 years old at the time. I will never ever forget the moment when it became so clear that he could easily have been me. In those days, fear constrained us like an imaginary prison, and troubling thoughts of potential brutality committed for no understandable reason were the bars.

Though I was surrounded by two loving parents, plenty of brothers, sisters and cousins, their love could not protect me from the unholy oppression waiting just outside that family circle. Unchecked, unrestrained violence and government-sanctioned terror had the power to turn a simple stroll to the store for some Skittles or an innocent morning jog down a lonesome country road into a nightmare. If we are to survive as one unified nation, we must discover what so readily takes root in our hearts that could rob Mother Emanuel Church in South Carolina of her brightest and best, shoot unwitting concertgoers in Las Vegas and choke to death the hopes and dreams of a gifted violinist like Elijah McClain.

Like so many young people today, I was searching for a way out, or some might say a way in, and then I heard the voice of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. on an old radio. He was talking about the philosophy and discipline of nonviolence. He said we are all complicit when we tolerate injustice. He said it is not enough to say it will get better by and by. He said each of us has a moral obligation to stand up, speak up and speak out. When you see something that is not right, you must say something. You must do something. Democracy is not a state. It is an act, and each generation must do its part to help build what we called the Beloved Community, a nation and world society at peace with itself.

Ordinary people with extraordinary vision can redeem the soul of America by getting in what I call good trouble, necessary trouble. Voting and participating in the democratic process are key. The vote is the most powerful nonviolent change agent you have in a democratic society. You must use it because it is not guaranteed. You can lose it.

You must also study and learn the lessons of history because humanity has been involved in this soul-wrenching, existential struggle for a very long time. People on every continent have stood in your shoes, through decades and centuries before you. The truth does not change, and that is why the answers worked out long ago can help you find solutions to the challenges of our time. Continue to build union between movements stretching across the globe because we must put away our willingness to profit from the exploitation of others.

Though I may not be here with you, I urge you to answer the highest calling of your heart and stand up for what you truly believe. In my life I have done all I can to demonstrate that the way of peace, the way of love and nonviolence is the more excellent way. Now it is your turn to let freedom ring.

When historians pick up their pens to write the story of the 21st century, let them say that it was your generation who laid down the heavy burdens of hate at last and that peace finally triumphed over violence, aggression and war. So I say to you, walk with the wind, brothers and sisters, and let the spirit of peace and the power of everlasting love be your guide.

Link to original article:
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/30/opinion/john-lewis-civil-rights-america.html

JUNETEENTH

https://www.juneteenth.com/
https://blacklivesmatter.com/

Sign.

Donate.

https://blacklivesmatter.com/

Don't Be Bamboozled

There's not a lot of time left. November will be here soon enough. Don't be bamboozled. Our country is literally at stake.
RESIST.

"In these strange, uncertain times..."

The phrase "strange, uncertain times" has quickly and unfortunately become overused, and will soon join its sibling "shock and awe" in the dustbin of newscycle and talking-head clichés.

Although what is happening is undeniably tragic and unlike anything in our living memories, I suspect there are some interesting transformations going on in people's lives and hearts. And they will continue to evolve in response to the changes happening in the topography of culture and our new and changing ways of interacting with each other and the world.

Illustrator and comedian Ramin Nazer captures both the expected clichéd reactions and the epiphanies...

https://www.raminnazer.com/

Coronavirus reveals just how deep macho stereotypes run through society by Stephen Burrell and Sandy Ruxton

Yet more proof of toxic masculinity...a fascinating article from The Conversation US.


Coronavirus reveals just how deep macho stereotypes run through society
April 9, 2020 6.59am EDT
by Stephen Burrell and Sandy Ruxton

Early indications suggest more men are dying from COVID-19 than women – although some countries, including the UK, are not publishing data on this.

Experts are unsure exactly why this might be. It may in part be due to differences in biology. Suggestions have been made, for example, that it might be because men and women have a different immune response, and that men’s immune systems may not activate in the same way as women’s to fight the virus. But lifestyle and behaviour are also likely to play a role.

For a start, men are more likely to have underlying health problems relevant to COVID-19 – such as high blood pressure, cardiovascular disease and some chronic lung diseases. This is in part because men are more likely to engage in risky behaviour such as smoking, drinking and drug-taking.

Research also seems to indicate that some men may take personal hygiene – such as handwashing – less seriously than women. This could be due to the fact that cleanliness is often associated with femininity, domesticity and beautification.

However, the writer Caroline Criado-Perez has also pointed out that because most medical research focuses on male bodies, there is a lack of understanding about why women may be better able to fend off this virus.

Loneliness and social isolation
The COVID-19 pandemic has also highlighted the different roles men and women are still expected to play in society – men are not only less likely to take care of themselves, but also less likely to be involved in caring for others.

It is striking how much women are depended on to deliver both low-paid and unpaid care work – whether for children, disabled people, older people, or those in ill health. Indeed, the pandemic is placing additional caring responsibilities on women.

COVID-19 is forcing people to reflect upon human fragility, mutuality and interdependence. But gender norms also require men to be invulnerable – always strong and self-sufficient.

Men, who also tend to socialise more in groups in public, may take social distancing less seriously than women. They may find it difficult to accept they need help, too – seeing it as “unmanly” to do so.

Older men in particular are more likely to experience loneliness and social isolation – and this could put them at increased risk of mental health problems.

Lockdown impacts
Gender norms also expect men to be powerful and in control. So while many men may relish the opportunity to be more involved at home, some have used it to assert more dominance and control over their partners and children.

For many women and children, the home is the most dangerous place to be. The UK’s National Domestic Abuse Helpline has seen a 25% increase in calls since lockdown began – which highlights how quarantine can compound domestic and sexual abuse.

Porn sites have also seen increased traffic and some are offering free access during lockdown. Campaigners have warned that this, along with an increased reliance on technology, could contribute to a rise in online harassment and sexual abuse.

Responses to COVID-19
Men’s voices are dominating government responses to COVID-19, and the approaches of many governments are increasingly shaped by masculinist politics.

The UK government and its nearly all male “war-cabinet”, for example, declared “war” on the coronavirus. This is a problematic analogy as what is mainly needed to tackle COVID-19 is care, social solidarity and community support – not fighting and violence.

Some world leaders on the other hand have been alarmingly dismissive of the pandemic, as if their countries were too tough to be affected by the disease.

These patriarchal discourses can have serious implications for government policy, such as encouraging overly militaristic, authoritarian approaches, and prioritising male-dominated sectors of the economy and society. For instance, women are more likely to be in temporary, informal or precarious work which falls outside the protection packages being established.

There is also a danger that, as with previous crises, government support will prioritise industries seen as “strongest for the economy” – and dominated by men – such as aviation, car production and construction. This could again result in vital sectors where women are more prominent being neglected: such as education, care and retail.

This is why there is an urgent need for gender analysis of government measures related to COVID-19, and the impact these have on different social groups. There must also be a dramatic increase in funding for services to help those at risk of domestic and sexual abuse.

But more broadly this crisis is a huge opportunity to reassess political priorities and gender relations. It offers the chance to overturn years of neglect by recognising the essential contribution of care to society. This will not only help to encourage men to play their part, but it will go some way towards shifting harmful gender norms in the aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Link to the original article:
https://theconversation.com/coronavirus-reveals-just-how-deep-macho-stereotypes-run-through-society-134968

"Why we need to be more emotional to save the world" by Ari Wallach for BBC

Lovely article by Ari Wallach on BBC Future.

Why we need to be more emotional to save the world
By Ari Wallach*
1st March 2020

If our species wants to enjoy a long-term future, it might need to tap into the very human qualities of emotion.

Think about some of the knottiest problems facing the world today and the suggested solutions to them. Climate change? Answer it with carbon sequestering and transitions to clean energy. Migration? Answer it with streamlined visas and new systems of border control.

Humans tend to seek solutions to problems like these – both macro and micro, simple and complex – through a short-term, external perspective that doesn’t obligate individual participation.

In the West, the dominant approach to tackling the challenges we face has been to amputate emotion from our decision-making whenever possible. We instead opt for cold, technical solutions.

This hyper-rational perspective is at least as old as Aristotle, who described passions as capricious, dangerous roadblocks on the path to becoming fully human. It became integral to the Western ethos during the 18th Century Enlightenment and still persists today.

And there is a utilitarian wisdom to this position. Emotions can be stoked by forces outside of our control. Lynch mobs and market bubbles can occur when our emotions run away with themselves and feelings spread like contagions through crowds. Propagandists can exploit our emotions to stir up loyalty among their supporters and belligerence towards outsiders. In response, rational movements, such as Effective Altruism, hold that the best way to create positive, long-term change is through a dispassionate calculation of the greatest good one can generate through one’s actions.

But trying to suppress our emotional responses to our current circumstances cannot eliminate the role they play entirely. Our feelings are not only an integral part of our moral, social, and personal well-being, but also are vital tools for solving complex challenges we face individually, organisationally, and even as a species. As Emiliana Simon-Thomas of the University of Berkeley’s Greater Good Science Center says, “[Emotions] provide us with quintessential information about what’s important and what to do next and how to do it and who to do it with.”

Humanity is in a period of great upheaval. For people and organisations attempting to thrive in this tumultuous time, old mindsets and approaches no longer work. To create a better future where everyone can flourish, leaders and organisations need to find ways to engage and encourage emotions more fully.

In recent decades, an array of scientific insights have reshaped the way we view emotions, particularly in the way they affect how we think about the future. We have learned that emotions can be harnessed to guide us toward rational choices and cooperative action. Emotions can be geared toward long-term thinking and behaviour and are essential to the evaluation of simulated possible futures, known as “pragmatic prospection”.

If we are to truly shift course, to make individual commitments that allow us to build better futures, we need to find ways of using emotion to our advantage. For as Anne Frank said, “...feelings can't be ignored, no matter how unjust or ungrateful they seem." They are and will always be a part of us and we need to learn how to leverage them for the betterment of ourselves and the generations to come.

A good starting point for developing this kind of mindset is to nurture a suite of feelings known as “self-transcendent emotions”. These emotions – which include feelings of empathy, gratitude, and awe – evolved to help manage social relationships with others and orient humans to a world that is bigger than themselves. They can be found in any coalitional behaviour – from hunting a woolly mammoth to building a suspension bridge – which requires people to sacrifice short-sighted, egoistic gains in order to work together toward mutual benefits. They also manifest in intimate, individual actions, such as the advent of grandparenting.

Self-transcendent emotions allow people to manage complex, cooperative situations without needing to overtax their resource-intensive, rational thought processes. They also help delay the need for instant gratification or reward.

For example, empathy – our connection to other people’s thoughts, emotions, and well-being – motivates us to act positively on behalf of others.

Harnessing empathy – specifically transgenerational empathy – can help us make decisions that impact us for the better both today and for generations to come. This might include eating less red meat, which helps both our own cardiovascular health as well as the health of the ecosystem for decades to come. Empathy for future generations provides the positive emotional jolt needed to transcend our short-term impulse to take the easy way out – to take a car versus mass transit and at a more psychological level to have the difficult conversation today rather than let the underlying discontent fester for days or even decades.

But for all its power, empathy is also fragile, often going missing just when we need it most. For instance, people find it difficult to empathise with those who differ from them politically, racially, or ideologically. Similarly, empathy comes more naturally when we have direct access to people’s emotional cues – their faces, voices, and stories. As a result, people tend to empathise preferentially with others who are close to themselves: spatially, socially, and temporally. When this happens, we also dole out kindness in uneven, nepotistic, and potentially short-term ways.

But this limit is not “baked in” to the nature of empathy. Like other emotions, people can regulate empathy, pointing it toward targets with whom they might typically find it difficult to connect.

One way to build empathy is by cultivating a sense of psychological safety, especially through close connection to other people. For instance, reminding people of positive attachment figures, such as supportive family members, renders them more empathic and helpful to others. Likewise, reflecting on positive people in our histories can also help us to extend empathy to those beyond our immediate spheres. If we connect to the sacrifices made by our ancestors that have allowed us to flourish today, we can build upon that gratitude to influence how we might become great future ancestors for generations to come.

We also have reason to believe that emotional primes, like recalling experiences of awe or the perception of something vast, can promote altruistic action. Awe helps reduce the occurrence of “temporal discounting”, the tendency to undervalue a future reward in favour of an immediate, but lesser, return. The popular rise of the environmental movement, for instance, is often linked to the collective awe inspired by astronaut Bill Anders’ iconic “Earthrise” image.

If more policymakers were to seek a sense of awe from images like this or experiencing the raw beauty of nature, might they be more open to taking the drastic steps we need to tackle environmental issues like carbon emissions, pollution and biodiversity loss?

We as individuals too may rethink how we live our lives if we could harness this sense of awe. This has in part already been happening with the backlash against plastic. Natural history programmes like Blue Planet 2 create a sense of wonder at the natural world before cruelly showing us what we are doing to it. They led millions to seek ways of reducing their use of plastic and forced multinational corporations to do likewise.

Even less-desired emotions can be activated if they are useful to a task at hand. For instance, individuals who are about to get in an argument may guide themselves into anger, and individuals who are about to ask for a favour may likewise choose to feel sad. Emerging research suggests that we can also “point” emotions like these – by using visualisations of desired outcomes – toward particular long-term goals, like helping future generations to thrive or in planning for our far futures.

As humans, we often tend to get stuck in short-term thinking and look for external solutions to the challenges we face, but we need not settle for this limitation. There are many ways to cultivate long-term choices and priorities that can be of benefit for us today and to those that will follow.

Rather than ignore or suppress our emotional nature, if we can harness this very human side of us to support a future that we can feel positive about and become the good ancestors, and possibly even the great ancestors, the future needs us to be.

* Ari Wallach is the founder of Longpath, an organisation focused on cultivating future-conscious thinking and action in order to ensure human flourishing on a thriving planet Earth for centuries to come.


Link to original article:
https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20200228-how-our-emotions-could-help-save-the-world