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I read a great book book "How to make love all the time" by Barbara de Angelis. One point I've been thinking about a lot is how so many relationships are screwed up by poor communication. People don't know how to express themselves or how to decode others.
For example a typical interaction might go:
Husband - I'm going to watch the tennis match tonight
Wife - You never spend any time with me
Husband - That's not true, I took you out for a candle light dinner just yesterday. It's impossible to make you happy!
Now the thing is that behind every angry thought are many other unexpressed emotions that if they were properly communicated would lead to a very different result:
1. Anger and blame
2. Hurt and sadness
3. Fear and insecurity
4. Remorse and responsibility
5. Intention and wishes
6. Love, forgiveness, understanding and appreciation
If the wife had said instead:
1. Anger - I feel like you never spend any time with me
2. Hurt - I'm hurt that you would rather spend time watching a match rather than talking to me
3. Fear - I'm worried that I'm not a very interesting person and that you'll get bored of me and stop loving me
4. Remorse - I'm sorry that I sometimes nag you and that I don't take more interest in things that are important to you and that I need so much attention
5. Intention - I'd like to spend more quality time with you and have a really comfortable deep relationship with you
6. Love - I love you and appreciate that you took me out yesterday for such a lovely evening. I also understand that you have a lot of hobbies that are important to you to unwind from the stresses of your work.
... then the guy would have probably reacted very differently. Of course, even if she hadn't he could have been the one to express himself fully instead of just expressing his surface level irritation.
I'm beginning to understand that all negative and obnoxious reactions are as a result of a positive intention expressed in a poor way. We need to learn to interpret other's language because it's the only language they know.
I used to get irritated when my dad would tell me to save more money or when my mother would keep asking me about my health and whether I was eating properly. That's how stupid I was!
And once again I have to ask .... why is all this not taught in schools?
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I think I'm going to encode my blog to start every post automatically with "I read an interesting book called ___ by ___" because that's pretty much how all of them start. It'll save me time over the long term.
Anyway the book was 'The Happiness Hypothesis' by Jonathan Haidt. There is an interesting chapter on how disgust and divinity are opposite ends of the same scale.
Disgust has evolutionary origins and its purpose is to help us avoid things that will make us sick. Animals that routinely eat or crawl on corpses, excrement or garbage piles trigger disgust in us (rats, maggots, cockroaches, etc). We're also disgusted by body products of other people such as excrement, mucus and blood which are often carriers of disease. Disgust also gives us a queasy feeling when we see people with skin lesions, deformities, amputations. Disgust has also an important role in sexuality guiding us to the narrow class of culturally acceptable sexual partners and sexual acts.
Disgust turns off desire and motivates concerns about purification, separation and cleansing.
In fact most cultures use these disgust signals to demarcate humans from animals. Our bodies do all the things that animals do - eating, copulating, excreting, bleeding, dying and rotting. But culturally we reject our animality. If we see someone crapping or having sex doggie style in the middle of the road or eating a chunk of raw animal flesh we feel disgusted or 'degraded'.
So there is a dimension where man can be 'degraded' downwards to the level of animals. If we go in the other direction on this continuum then we feel 'uplifted' 'ennobled' 'inspired', etc. It is the feeling we get when we're in a holy temple or when we watch a beautiful sunrise or when we watch an act of great courage or generosity. It is a real experience and in our culture we extrapolate it upwards so that the full continuum is:
Animal - degraded man - man - ennobled man - angel - God
And I guess this is where religion is able to keep its hold on people. I don't think religious ideas could ever stand up to logical scrutiny. But religious people don't believe in God because they are just indoctrinated into it - it's also because they 'feel' God's presence. They feel uplifted in a temple, mosque, church. They feel moved, ennobled when they read religous texts. They feel uplifted in the presence of nature and the universe. And when they ask themselves 'What is this feeling due to?' they wrap it around the ideology that they have grown up with and it makes sense. In fact it makes so much sense that they 'know' it's true because of their direct experience of 'God'.
And this is the biggest misunderstading that atheists and religious folk have with each other. Atheist bang their heads against the wall screaming 'but it doesn't make any sense, how can anyone believe this stuff', not realising that people don't believe because of the logic in the holy books but because of their real experience of something 'higher'.
And religious folk pity atheists because they assume that atheists don't experience the 'uplifting, touching, reassuring' presence when of course in reality, many atheists they do - they just don't attribute those feelings to a higher power. Religious folk look at the universe and go - 'this is so beautiful only God could have created this' and atheists go 'this is so beautiful that it's impossible that anyone could have created this' - but the feelings and experience of awe and wonder and spirituality is the same for both.
Of course on a slightly different tangent this 'divinity continuun' explains something else - why dirt, blood, crap, pork are considered polluting in so many religions (in Islam I think the men are told not to go near their wives when they are menstruating). And also why bathing and purifying fire are considered such an intrinsic part of so many religious rites. If pollution is one end of the divinity spectrum it only makes sense that cleanliness is next to Godliness.
And it also explains why Sex and religion have such a tough time getting along together. Many religions see sex as the ultimate reminder that we are no different from animals. Hmm... it probably explains why humans are the only animals that do it 'missionary style' instead of 'doggie style' :)
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![[info]](http://p-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif) ceres |
| 2008-07-04 15:50 |
| the whirlpools in life |
| Public |
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the thief
left behind
the moon by the window.
i used to collect zen koans during one of my many lifetimes. for no apparent reason today, while i was reading and thinking in a small corner of my mind, that i need to get back to this journal - like i have many times in the past few months - this koan suddenly popped up in my head. it summarises somewhat, all that has happened in the past few months when i had not been writing...
sometimes when we are in the flow of life, everything that is happening around us - and to us - takes place so fast, and so much happens so quickly that we forget what started the whirlpool in the first place. sometimes, it is just a single thought.
i want to write.
every day, in between attending athri (who is now all of 19 months and revealing his true toddler-colours) and the household chores, and the day job-from-home at techworld.com: editing articles and features about secure storage devices, wi-fi, 802.11n, wireless networks; finding out about web 2.0 and how it would work for the website, digg-ing, stumbling and reddit-ing articles, i began to get restless. storage and network devices, is this what i really enjoy reading about? i loved thursdays, when i could get on the tube towards my office and read. read anything not related to dull, lifeless technology that stripped all the words and literature off my life. novels, short stories, anywhere that i could escape into, for 35 minutes, one-way. the work increased, and so did my restlessness. i just wanted to write.
i decided, at one point, to enter any writing contest that i would come across online, just for the sake of writing. i entered three. while i was at it, i enrolled on a creative writing phd. the contests came and went. the phd process began, but i still wasn't writing.
the day job was boring yes, but it brought in a salary. would i write if i let go of it? i wasn't sure. i just wanted to write.
and then who looks after the house? it's not a big house, but it's our home. i like a bright home, well-arranged, even if the mess athri creates everyday can be overlooked. but i find it difficult to think of something to write when there are clothes to be washed, dry ones to be folded and kept inside the wardrobes, a sinkful of dirty dishes, the carpet to be vacuum-cleaned...and so i chose the house. praveen helped: we re-arranged furniture so athri's toys had a neat hiding-place when he went to bed, put all the cables and clutter out of sight, but i still couldn't get myself to write.
i requested for a flexible work option, knowing fully well that two days off work still meant a distant probability of me getting a few words down without being distracted by something else again. i was getting desperate now. i wanted to read and read. and i wanted to write.
one of the contest results came through. the penguin one. i had taken a day off in april to write this one. i'd held emotional gun-points to four heads, my friends', asking them to go through the four drafts of 4000-words each that i had hurriedly cooked up in three days, before the final deadline. and it had paid off... i was going to be published! so i could write, if i forced myself to do it. and i had loved it. every minute of that writing until i sealed the envelope and sent it along. my heart thumped with joy that perhaps this is what i really wanted to do. i simply wanted to write.
faster, faster. i could sense that something, someone was pushing me in some direction, but there was nothing to hold on to. the email from penguin made me realise that my life's whirlpool had begun to churn...
then last month, i was made redundant. the company was going web 2.0, and they didn't need a sub-editor. i wasn't sure of how to react...suddenly, for a job that i so often put athri and my writing aside, i was not wanted. on the other hand, i was free to write. now i could focus on my phd.
"now don't spend time on the house," praveen reminded me all along, "concentrate on writing, write anything. remember you have a journal?" he teased.
"it's such a lovely house," i argued. the long corridor running across the middle, the arcs opening out to the stairs and bright windows that always made it so pleasant to stay in, the large kitchen leading to the small balcony-railing, waiting to sprout flowers that we just planted for the summer... "how can anyone not have to spend time on a house, if it has to be well-kept?"
but it was not helping me in writing. ten days ago, we received another notice. we would have to move, give up the house. we were tenants, and the house-owner wanted it back.
we found another yesterday. it is minus a corridor. a compact house, like a man minus his neck. it has a small kitchen, enough to fill our hearts and stomachs. and it doesn't have a fireplace or arcs to hang my torans from. but it is bright and it is practical, and hopefully, i will not fall in love with it.
maybe now i should be able to write.
the whirlpool in my life. the moon by the window. i think now, maybe it was that single thought.
ps: thank you asha. your many emails have set my words free :-)
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| mannu |
| 2008-07-04 04:58 |
| Blueprint: a CSS framework for grid-based layout |
| Public |
I’ve been doing a lot of bookmarking on my del.icio.us stream lately.
Among today’s finds is Blueprint, a CSS framework that makes it easy to
achieve grid-based layouts in your web pages.
Check out their sample website, or their grid demo, and view the HTML
source to see how it’s done.
Designers love grids. Thankfully there’s some work going on at the W3C
towards making grid-based layout easy in CSS.
By the way, I’m looking for a CSS guru to work with me on a project.
Please write to me at manish.jethani@gmail.com.
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| willowing |
| 2008-07-03 16:43 |
| click for puppies & sign sign sign the zimbabwe petition pleaeaeaeaeaeaeaeaeaease! |
| Public |
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cute puppy stuff:
http://www.prettyoblivion.com/screencleaner.swf
seriously important stuff:
Dear Friends,
Mugabe has seized the Presidency of Zimbabwe in a sham election. We urgently need our governments to refuse to recognize him this week. Click below to send a message to your head of state:
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After a violence-ridden, sham 'election' last Friday, Robert Mugabe has declared himself President of Zimbabwe. Ominous reports of a massive crackdown on all his opponents are circulating. The fate of the country now hangs on negotiations between Mugabe and the legitimate winner of the first round election -- Morgan Tsvangirai. If governments around the world refuse to recognize Mugabe, and strongly push other governments to do the same, his position will be weakened, and he could be pressured into agreeing to a deal with Tsvangirai that reflects the will of the Zimbabwean people. There's still hope to save Zimbabwe, but every day of silence strengthens Mugabe's position.So far only a few governments have refused to recognize Mugabe as President -- we urgently need to turn this trickle into a flood, this week. Click below to send a personalized message directly to your head of state or foreign minister, and forward this email to others who could help: http://www.avaaz.org/en/zimbabwe_chance_for_peace/7.php?cl=104523125 The people of Zimbabwe are desperate for change. The country has been decimated by Mugabe, with 80% unemployment, 160,000% inflation, and rampant fear -- over 30% of the population has fled the country. The people of Zimbabwe clearly voted for Tsvangirai over Mugabe in the first round of the election, which was more free of violence. Then Mugabe's party waged a campaign of terror and intimidation and Tsvangirai was forced to withdraw after almost 100 of his party activists were murdered. The UN Secretary General and election observers from the African Union and Southern Africa Development Community have condemned the run off election as illegitimate, and the African Union has called for negotiations. There is now only one path away from the violence -- a negotiated agreement. If leaders from Brazil to Botswana and Indonesia to India reject the regime, there is a chance of an agreement that reflects the will of the people. We have to act fast, it's now or never for Zimbabwe. Send your message now and spread the word: http://www.avaaz.org/en/zimbabwe_chance_for_peace/7.php?cl=104523125 With hope, Ricken, Alice, Ben, Graziela, Mark, Paul, Galit, Iain, Pascal, Veronique and Milena - the Avaaz.org Team PS: For more information and sources for the facts above, see: Regional leaders criticizing Mugabe: Tanzania's Kikwete - http://allafrica.com/stories/200806200336.html Rwanda's Kagame - http://allafrica.com/stories/200806190003.html Kenya's Odinga - http://allafrica.com/stories/200806190949.html Uganda's Museveni - http://allafrica.com/stories/200806120016.html Botswana's Merafhe - http://africa.reuters.com/wire/news/usnL01238885.htmlZambia's Mwanawasa - http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/2008-06/23/content_8419741.htm Impact of Zimbabwe crisis on the region: http://www.news24.com/News24/Africa/Zimbabwe/0,,2-11-1662_2349987,00.html UN Secretary General critique of run off elections: http://afp.google.com/article/ALeqM5iXUQTIzQRDjsPjVN__ZD3EvEYFjA Election observers on the run off elections: http://allafrica.com/stories/200807010201.html AU summit resolution on Zimbabwe: http://allafrica.com/stories/200807020018.html
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| jenarael |
| 2008-07-03 01:46 |
| Bitchy rant; move along |
| Public |
| aggravated |
| migraine |
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To Ms. Michelle Malkin;
(this woman)who made the incredible suggestion that Rachel Ray's black-and-white paisley scarf (worn during a Dunkin Donuts commercial which was pulled from broadcasting) was reminiscent of "the traditional scarf of Arab men that has come to symbolize murderous Palestinian jihad," and further wrote in her column: It's refreshing to see an American company show sensitivity to the concerns of Americans opposed to Islamic jihad and its apologists. Too many of them bend over backward in the direction of anti-American political correctness....Well, you stupid slack-jawed bitch whelp of a cuntwhore, I hope an irate schizophrenic jihad extremist plows a Cessna into your bathroom while you're sitting on the toilet. Sincerely, Jenarael PS. If I had to decide between pushing you or Ann Coulter off a boat into shark-infested waters, I'd probably push you. And beat off the rest of the sharks with Coulter's boney louse-infested lysozyme sack. Jesus Effin Christmas, am I in a bad mood tonight. Also, when the hell did America become a country where 55% of adults DON'T believe in teaching evolution in schools? Maybe those same people think the earth is flat and the lunar landing was a hoax.
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| mannu |
| 2008-07-03 04:53 |
| Epic email by Bill Gates complaining about Windows usability |
| Public |
Among the Microsoft internal emails turned over for the anti-trust
trials was one from Bill Gates, written in 2003, complaining about the
poor experience he had when trying to install the Windows Movie Maker
application from the company website. The text is worth a read, as it
gives us a perspective on where we stood 5 years ago and how far we’ve
come since — not very far, that is to say.
Just a few days ago, I was trying to book air tickets on a certain
airline’s website. Apparently I made a mistake in one of the forms
before clicking the submit button, and what happened next is anyone’s
guess — I won’t even say it.
Hopefully more and more RIAs built with Flex, or Silverlight, or “Ajax”, are making
the web more usable as we speak.
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For the Germans, it was ok to lose to the Spanish. But had it been Turkey, Netherlands or even Italy, losing would have been a strict no-no.
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In the old days of Java, one often complained about the lack of an assert statement. Once, I even wrote an Assert class that threw a runtime exception (based on a debug flag), but I didn’t end up using it all that much due to performance constraints.
Eventually Java did get a native assert statement.
Now we’re finding ourselves in a similar situation with ActionScript 3. My
program has grown complex enough that I need to sprinkle it with assertions in
certain portions. This is becoming important as more developers start working
on the same piece of code. It’s good to document the pre-conditions and
post-conditions in source comments, but — let’s face it — nobody reads
comments until they actually run into a problem. The whole point of having
assertions is to be able to detect problems at their root instead of letting
them manifest into bugs elsewhere in the software.
Thanks to conditional compilation in Flex 3, it’s now possible to
implement an assert “statement” that is mostly compiled out in the release version of your program.
Here’s my assert.as file.
package com.example.utils
{
public function assert(expression:Boolean):void
{
config::DEBUG {
if (!expression)
throw new Error("Assertion failed!");
}
}
}
As you can see, it’s very simple: If the expression is false, it throws an
“Assertion failed!” error. This part is wrapped into a conditional block: the
code is compiled into the SWF only if the config::DEBUG flag is set, not
otherwise.
In the release build of your program, you set config::DEBUG to false, which strips out the code within that conditional block.
( Here's an example... )
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I’m reading this book called ‘Not without My Sister’ which is about 3 sisters who grew up in the cult/ sect ‘The Children of God’ now also known as ‘The Family International’. It’s a Christian-based sect with a few really distorted rules and ways of living. It used to be headed by a guy they referred to as ‘Mo’.
One of the ‘rules’ was ‘free love for all’ and basically the act of sex was considered the highest form of love for Jesus. This meant that children as young as 3 were encouraged to watch adults have sex, masturbate, simulate sex with each other and eventually actually have sex with the adults as well.
I’m 2/3ds of the way through the book and there are many descriptions of men & women having some kind of sexual contact with children as young as 3.
My question is; does this mean we can assume that when humans are in an environment which dictates that ‘it’s ok to have sex with children’ (in fact, in that sect it’s considered the highest expression of love and dedication to Jesus) they would automatically want to do it? Ie: are we saying here that the only reason we all don’t have sex with children is because it’s socially unacceptable and against the law?
Or are we saying that the cult just attracted a load of paedophiles? Or are we saying that the adults were so brainwashed (and they were) by the main dude that they were ‘pushed’ into doing this and actually didn’t want to? (This seems unlikely to me).
Reading this book, it’s almost as if we can assume that if all boundaries, laws, rules were taken away from us all, we would not hesitate having sex with children as young as 3. This I just find a really disturbing thought. (Note: it wasn’t just men who had sex with children, women too, although I get the impression it was more men).
From my research the book is a pretty accurate account of what happened and if you search online the sex stuff is quite well documented.
It reminds me of some cultures where children as young as 7 would marry and have sex with their ‘husbands’ which I suppose is similar?
What are your thoughts?
[ps. it's so obvious to me that leaders of cults like this are just making up rules as they go to suit their own needs and sexual fantasies, look at this:
"A central tenet to their theology is the "Law of Love," which stated simply claims that if a person's actions are motivated by unselfish, sacrificial love and are not intentionally hurtful to others, such actions are in accordance with Scripture and are, thus, lawful in the eyes of God. They believe that this tenet supersedes all other Biblical laws, except those forbidding male homosexuality, which they believe is sin. Female bisexuality is sanctioned, though female homosexuality at the complete exclusion of men is not permitted."
LOL, male homosexuality is sin, but female homsexuality is OK as LONG AS THERE IS A MAN INVOLVED?
LOL. ridiculous, offensive, sexist etc.
this was just one guy who sat down and thought to himself, now, what would be my ideal way of living and then created a bunch of rules around it... *rolls eyes* - hilarious yet so twisted...
lastly, their own website seems so innocent and sweet: http://www.thefamily.org/index.php3
i must add that apparently having sex with children was banned from the cult since 1986.
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This is Sadie. She belonged to my brother - but when he got married last September, she didn't adjust well to moving into a house that already had another cat. She had been spending the last 2 months at my brother's place while he got it ready to rent out. She's hilarious. She sniffs everything and she's not quiet about it. She snorts. She will only drink her water out of a glass and she gets in the shower with me in the morning.
I forgot how much I missed having a cat around. I would have adopted one sooner, but didn't find any that I clicked with.
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| willowing |
| 2008-07-01 20:56 |
| still |
| Public |
| ssshhh |
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( still )
today was dreams of blood and ramana maharshi. flutters of sophie, sparkles of rowan. hazes, crazes, angi in my inbox. numbness, self-enquiry, self-actualisation. blues and whites, oceans of chocolate, bobbing bobbing on the thames. famous blue raincoat, what can i tell you, my brother, my killer, celeste and juliana. waiting for blood, waiting for both the end and that new beginning. accepting, transforming, knowing, being.
.still.
The music in my soul has been dead for about a couple of months now - literally and otherwise. Cranking up the volume and hoping for some melody and harmony inside soon, so please help me, God.
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la la la
amused
xxx
hopeful