In the famous words of George Carlin:
“There’s a reason education sucks and it’s the same reason that it will never, ever, ever be fixed. It’s never going to get any better, don’t look for it, be happy with what you’ve got. Because the owners of this country don’t want that. I’m talking about the REAL owners, now. The real owners, the big wealthy business interests that control things and make all the important decisions — forget the politicians. The politicians are put there to give you the idea that you have freedom of choice. You don’t. You have no choice. You have owners. They own you. They own everything. They own all the important land, they own and control the corporations; they’ve long since bought and paid for the Senate, the Congress, the State houses, the City Halls; they’ve got the judges in their back pockets, and they own all the big media companies so they control just about all the news and information you get to hear.”
“They gotcha by the balls. They spend billions of dollars every year lobbying — lobbying to get what they want. Well, we know what they want — they want more for themselves and less for everybody else. But I’ll tell you what they don’t want. They don’t want a population of citizens capable of critical thinking. They don’t want well-informed, well-educated people capable of critical thinking. They’re not interested in that, that doesn’t help them. That’s against their interests. That’s right. They don’t want people who are smart enough to sit around the kitchen table and figure out how badly they’re getting f***ed by the system that threw them overboard 30 f***ing years ago. They don’t want that.”
“You know what they want? They want obedient workers. Obedient workers. People who are just smart enough to run the machines and do the paperwork, and just dumb enough to passively accept all these increasingly shittier jobs with the lower pay, the longer hours, the reduced benefits, the end of overtime, and the vanishing pension that disappears the minute you go to collect it. …All day long, beating you over the in their media telling you what to believe — what to think — and what to buy. The table is tilted, folks. The game is rigged. And nobody seems to notice. Nobody seems to care.”
“…They don’t give a fuck about you, they don’t…They don’t care about you – at all. At all, At all. At all. At all. And nobody seems to notice, nobody seems to care … that’s what the owners count on, the fact that Americans will probably remain willfully ignorant of the big red, white and blue d**k that’s being jammed up their assholes every day. Because the owners of this country know the truth — it’s called the American Dream … ‘cuz you have to be asleep to believe it.”
“The problem with Carlin’s brilliant rant is of course it’s extreme, well, cynicism. Millions upon millions of Americans do notice and do care. They aren’t asleep. They are capable of critical thinking. They very much want to un-rig the game, level the table, and change the system – make a people’s democratic revolution and save humanity. I run into and talk to and try to energize and learn and get energy from these people regularly. They haven’t surrendered to the American authoritarian-sexist-racist-nativist-nationalist-fascist nightmare yet.
I share with many of these people a basic underlying spiritual sense that giving up and letting the owners – our financial and political owners, yes – win is irrational and indeed morally corrupt. Let’s say the chances of collapsing the nation’s un-elected and interrelated dictatorships of money, empire, white-supremacism, and patriarchy are just 3 or 2 or even 1 in 10 (I think the real odds may be much higher). Why bring them down to zero by giving in to fatalism – to “it’s never going to change?” It makes no sense to give up: you lose nothing by believing in the possibility of democratic transformation and revolutionary change; you lose everything by not believing. Try some radical existentialism!”
Sometimes a little life advice is in order. I’ve read Ruiz’s book and it seems to be quite sensible. So here are the four agreements and the Psychology Today handy explanation below.
- Be impeccable with your word.
- Don’t take anything personally.
- Don’t make assumptions.
- Always do your best.
1. Be impeccable with your word. In a sense, social constructivists are correct about words creating reality. We act on what we tell ourselves is real. Albert Ellis encouraged us to screen our self-talk for negative, irrational chatter. What kinds of words do you use when you describe reality? Do you lie and say hurtful and poisonous things about yourself and others? (Not healthy.) To be impeccable with your word is to be truthful and to say things that have a positive influence on yourself and others.
2. Don’t take anything personally. The first agreement suggests that we avoid treating others hurtfully. The second agreement provides us with a way of dealing with potentially hurtful treatment from others. Because each person sees the world in a unique way, the way that others treat us says as much about them as it does about us. Not taking anything personally is to acknowledge the unique identities of other people. We respect their subjective realities, realizing that their views do not necessarily describe us accurately.
3. Don’t make assumptions. Assuming that you know what other people are thinking or feeling about you is a limiting thought that Aaron Beck called Mind Reading. Obviously, none of us can read minds. When we try to engage in mind reading we will often be wrong, leading to undesirable consequences. The antidote to mind reading is to ask for evidence before concluding what people are thinking.
4. Always do your best. One obvious reason for doing your best is that we cannot achieve our goals by being lazy. If you do your best, not only are you are more likely to achieve goals, but you will also avoid criticism from what Ruiz calls your internal Judge. There are also more subtle issues about doing “your best.” One is that you should not try to do better than your best. Pushing yourself too hard can cause pain, injury, and mistakes. More subtle still is the recognition that our “best” will vary from moment to moment, that, in a sense, you are always doing your best. Realize this, and your inner Judge can take a permanent vacation.
It’s been a rough couple of months, and sometimes refreshing some core tenets of being is way to restart and attempt to regain some purchase in life.
… It is estimated that there was 5 to 12 tons of manure a day on the Ark. Now there was a window on top of that Ark that could be opened — it actually was on the side, not the top, it’s on the side — where they could throw it out if they needed to, so it doesn’t necessarily mean it piled piled piled, they had a way getting rid of it, no doubt.
To reiterate: He’s saying Noah’s family — all eight of them — managed to clear away up to 12 tons of animal shit on a daily basis.
If you’ve ever wondered how so many people could believe a fundamentalist interpretation of the Bible, it’s because they never stop to think about what that means. They just accept without questioning. It’s a horrible way to go through life.
It takes the fun out of the Disservice if they do *all* the work. :/
This is my dog, Shadow. We found her at the Alberta Sheltie Rescue society. She had passed through two families before finding her forever home with us.
Shadow passed from this world yesterday and I miss her so very dearly. It was time, she was 15 or 16 years old (didn’t have an exact date of birth),her vision was dim, she was almost deaf and couldn’t make it up the stairs anymore. She loved her humans to the very end, (and they loved her), I stroked her back and held her paw as the vet gave her the injection. She left the world with her family.
Shadow was a great dog, she was elegant and regal, but also a rambunctious goof at times. Her smiles were always endearing.
She was a shy dog, but could always be counted on for a cold nose *boop* when you really needed it.
She was my special girl, even when we couldn’t go for the long walks any more, we did short slow ones instead. She always tried to be in the same room with me.
Now she’s gone, and I mourn her passing. All I have left of her now are these photos and her collar. It is not even close to being enough. Thank you Shadow for being my bestest dog.
Females need spaces away from men. Especially men who believe that woman is feeling inside their heads. Access to safe washroom spaces is a key part of women’s rights. So the ‘gender neutral’ (read male) toilet movement has to stop.
“Access to sanitation services has been recognized as a human right by the UN since 2015:
sanitary facilities are essential for men’s and women’s health alike. But despite a direct link between women’s rights and dependable access to toilets, the issue remains less visible than it should be. Even when sanitation infrastructure exists, it’s often ill-adapted to the needs of girls and women.
sanitary facilities are essential for men’s and women’s health alike. But despite a direct link between women’s rights and dependable access to toilets, the issue remains less visible than it should be. Even when sanitation infrastructure exists, it’s often ill-adapted to the needs of girls and women. Even when sanitation infrastructure exists, it’s often ill-adapted to the needs of girls and women. In 2018, 60% of the total number of people who had to resort to open-air defecation were women, and in sub-Saharan Africa one girl in ten missed school during her period. Though women are at higher risk of lacking access to dependable sanitary facilities, and such access is key to empowering them, data on this basic right are limited.
No toilets: putting girls’ and women’s health and security at risk According to the most recent available data, from 2017, over 500 million women lacked access to sanitation facilities. That means that 13% of the world’s female population was unable to use a toilet to go to the bathroom or manage menstrual hygiene. For these women, the risk of sexual assault is 40% higher than for women with access to sanitation facilities, according to a 2018 study conducted in the shanty towns of Kenya’s Mathare Valley. In India, this risk is as high as 50%. Titre Tribune Also read Toilets for more gender equality around the world Health Gender Water & Sanitation Read What’s more, a lack of access to toilets poses higher health risks for women than for men. In addition to health risks shared by both sexes—including diarrhea, dehydration, dysentery, typhoid fever, hepatitis A and even polio—problems like toxic shock syndrome, vaginal or urinary infections, and pregnancy complications affect women alone.
Illnesses due to a lack of personal and menstrual hygiene compound problems arising from contact with fecal matter, which tend to receive more attention. Hygiene, health and security: when girls and women have to choose As a 2016 study observes, attending to menstrual and personal hygiene while avoiding many of these illnesses necessitates four elements: privacy, water, soap and a trash disposal system. Unfortunately, even when sanitation infrastructure exists, it’s often ill-adapted to the needs of girls and women, according to the NGO WaterAid.
In Kenya, the sanitation facilities installed in the Mathare region are mixed-gender, few in number (with 1 toilet for every 70 to 100 people), fee-based, and often lack a door. Together with paid access, the lack of cleanliness, privacy and security drives many women to avoid using these toilets : “A third of women use a bucket or plastic bags or defecate outdoors at least once per day, and two-thirds of them do the same at night,” says researcher Samantha Winter. When toilets contribute to female empowerment In addition to being essential to girls’ health and security, access to dependable, well-designed sanitation facilities exerts a direct influence on girls’ education rates. In 2019 a third of the world’s schools lacked toilets, according to the UN. The direct result has been an increase in girls’ drop out and school absence rates when they reach puberty, owing to the lack of a place where they can change when they have their period.
According to UNESCO, in sub-Saharan Africa one girl in ten misses 20% of the school year for the same reason. For all these reasons, UNICEF is leading a program in Jharkhand, India to train women as masons. Girls who have dropped out of school because of the lack of facilities for dealing with their periods are becoming rani mistri, toilet-builders, in their communities. For its part, WaterAid has drawn up a best-practices guide in partnership with UNICEF and Water & Sanitation for the Urban Poor (WSUP), designed for all actors involved in providing sanitation access. These initiatives have the same goal: promoting the inclusion of women in the planning and governance of sanitation infrastructure to ensure that their needs are taken into account.”
bleatmop
Mystro
The Arbourist
Dead Wild Roses 
Your opinions…