Archive for the ‘freedom’ Tag
I’ve been engaging lately in what I once thought was the right way to do things – reading and researching to understand what those words “liberal” and “conservative” mean. I confess I’m running into trouble. I just can’t understand “conservative.” All I know is it’s not my father’s conservative, even mine up to and including Eisenhower. I do know, though, what I mean by “liberal.” This is a partial list
- Violence breeds hatred.
- Hatred breeds destruction for the hater as well as the hated.
- Vengeance is violence in any form, physical or other, even ridiculing, insulting, or demeaning.
- Peaceful problem problem-solving leads to fulness of growth for everyone.
- Every individual is of value, deserving of care, appreciation, and encouragement.
- People come in many genders, abilities, and color.
- Freedom makes creativity possible by allowing every individual to grow and prosper.
- Peace makes freedom possible, and vice versa.
- Appreciation, gratitude, and forgiveness clear the path to peace.
- Earth is a gift to be cared for with appreciation.
- Children are a gift deserving birth into a loving, caring society.
- Agape love signifies mental health.
- Good mental health depends on all the bullets above.
- History ignored opens the way to history re-enacted.
This is it for starters. Now I ask for two things,
- Add to my list
- Provide me with a similar list of the current meaning of “conservative.”
Thanks
By definition, banning abortion is condemning a potential person to a life of being unwanted. The reasons are as varied as the individual situation. Poverty, genetic predispositions, lack of a nurturing growth environment post birth, a poor uterine environment for any number of reasons, or other reasons why the birth mother (and/or the father) isn’t able to raise the infant to adulthood. I’m sorry to say this, but if there were really concern for a good life, there’d be all kinds of movement going on now from the “pro-lifers” to make childhood care available to everyone, to provide sufficient financial guarantees to carry that person through a healthy lifetime of need for nurturance, housing, health care, education, attention through thick and thin. Instead there are efforts to cut back on aid programs. Those who push for government control of birthing seem to be the same ones who argue for removal of aid. What is the real motive?
I had an interesting brief discussion recently with a person claiming a “pro-life” position. I understood him to say something like, “Yes, I understand it can be hard for the mother, but I’m more concerned for the child.” The funny thing is, that’s my main concern too – care for the child. What kind of life will that unwanted child have? I know, you’re going to tell me there’s always adoption. No, there isn’t always adoption. How many potentially adoptive parents are willing to take on a lifetime of caring for a badly limited infant who will require care for a lifetime? How many understand that the baby is not a blank slate? The newborn has not been removed from an empty box . There has been a nine-month relationship with a primary caretaker. Do you think it’s just nothing to be removed from that place without lifelong grief? Or maybe even that first uterine “home” wasn’t so great to begin with for reasons of maternal health, or even the stress of the situation. Or maybe the grief is even stronger because the birth mother has provided a loving relationship even more stressful to leave. A baby brings along a whole slew of characteristics that may or may not fit well with a secondary environment – a foster or adoptive home — no matter how loving, even if there were enough available.
I’ve just hit the tip of the iceberg here. Whole libraries have been written to help understand human development. What will be the effect of this “pro-life” movement ten, twenty, thirty, etc. years from now on our national need for health care, control of violence, creativity … ?
It’s a bit ironic, isn’t it, that the Chinese who enforced the one-child edict are now in need of more people. Where will we be as a result of our similarly communist-like control of birthing?
I do believe that most pro-life folks feel theirs is the loving position. I also believe they have all the right they need to preach pro-life as a choice, including the pro-loving moral obligation to back it up with real support, beyond just supplying a layette. The opposite of “pro-llife” is not “abortion.” The opposite of “pro life” is freedom of choice, religion, moral belief, and understanding of the personal situation.
Every stage of my career has called for making complex things simple, but no matter how much sleep I lose, or how much thinking I do in between, or how much I focus on the issue when I do my daily half-hour walk, or how long I sit in front of the computer and try, there’s just no way I can make it simple. The killing of the right to abortion reaches into every aspect of life like athletesfoot creeping into the tissues. So I’ve decided to focus on just one piece of it, ignoring the women and their families who are impacted, the chipping away at freedom, the children who are threatened with the loss of a parent, the pain suffered by women denied palliative medication …. Nope, I’ll pretend the only thing that matters is that every zygote should be allowed to develop into an embryo, every embryo should be allowed to become a fetus, and every fetus should be allowed ultimately to be expelled from the uterus on its path to the outside world.
It seems to me that the first thing that matters is that the environment in which the development happens should approach an ideal if we want to reach our survival-to- birth goal. But there seems to be a problem when we look at the evidence.
“According to this year’s America’s Health Ranking Annual Report, the U.S. infant mortality rate is 5.9 deaths per 1,000 live infant births, while the average rate of infant mortality among the OECD countries is 3.9 deaths per 1,000 live births. Compared with other OECD countries, the U.S. ranks No. 33 out of 36 countries (Figure 62). Iceland is ranked No. 1 and has the lowest rate with 0.7 deaths per 1,000 live births. Mexico is ranked last with 12.1 deaths per 1,000 live births. New Hampshire and Vermont are tied for the top state in the U.S. with 3.9 deaths per 1,000 live births. These two neighboring states have achieved an infant mortality rate equal to the OECD average. As the bottom-ranked state, however, Mississippi has an infant mortality rate more than twice that of the OECD average at 8.9 deaths per 1,000 live births and internationally ranks below all but two of the OECD countries. Over the past 50 years, the decline in the U.S. infant mortality rate has not kept pace with that in other OECD countries. When examining sex- and age-adjusted infant mortality rates from 2001 to 2010, the U.S. rate was 75 percent higher than the average rate in 20 OECD comparable countries.” (Copied from the web.)
If you’re curious, OECD refers to “the Paris-based Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) [which] is an international organization that promotes policies to improve the economic and social well-being of people worldwide” (Also copied from the web).
Since this kind of information is easily available for anyone dedicated to the “pro life” position, it’s obvious that the next step, after requiring every pregnant woman to give birth, is to press for the provision of ideal health care for pregnant (and potentially pregnant) women. That, it seems to me, would require lobbying on a federal level, or at the many state levels, for funding for universal maternal care.
Also, given that human infants are born helpless, requiring many years of care just to stay alive, one would assume that those who are pro the life of all fetuses would lobby to follow through with the project by funding parental leave for a sufficiently long period of time as well as providing perpetual support of the health of the parent(s)/caretakers with adequate insurance. And, of course, there would be the need for food and shelter throughout the years. That would require lobbying for sufficient affordable housing for all families as well as sufficient incomes to provide food and clothing.
I said I’d keep it simple. None of this says anything about the overall quality of life of the individuals as their lives develop. Just the basic demand that life be required.
I JUST POSTED A REVIEW OF THE COLOR OF LAW: A FORGOTTEN HISTORY OF HOW OUR GOVERNMENT SEGREGATED AMERICA. Richard Rothstein.
Definitely needs reading. Definitely not at bedtime.
With a Doctorate in Social Psychology and years of professor-ing, plus a year of shared readings and discussions via a Zoom group during the COVID quarantine, I thought I had constructed a pretty strong cognitive structure of knowledge and understanding about racial matters. But Rothstein’s book has revealed and repaired the cracks in my structure one nail of reinforcing fact at a time. As a person with a pretty hefty load of compassion ability I found it painful reading – not to be read at bedtime.
At about an eighth of the way through the book I looked at the remaining width of the softcover book in my hands and thought, “What more torture/horror can there be?” And there was more – and then more. Now that I’ve finished, the thoughts keep coming. How can humans be so cruel to each other? How can one deal with the fact that inborn appearance condemns one to limited options no matter what one can do or accomplish that would evoke honors in the white world? How frustrating to suffer the physical restraint of red-lining and then be blamed for the results of living in a crowded space. How would it be to raise a productive and healthy child in a world where he or she is defined from the beginning as inferior? How would it be to have one’s productive and successful neighborhood destroyed to make way for a highway to convenience the people who can live where you are not permitted to live? How could it be that I didn’t notice in graduate school that none of my classmates supported by the GI bill were black?
I’m ranting. But then there were my other thoughts. What have been the strengths of a people so deliberately restrained who could still be loving, joyful, dedicated patriotic contributors to our country? What might I learn from that?
Finally, I find myself wondering how this knot in the freedom of our special country can be loosened? I find myself thinking how beautiful it would be if all our people could enjoy the kind of responsible opportunities described in “My Father’s House.” If this were fully the land of the free? Remember that simple point from your Intro Psych class? Punishment prevents behavior. Reward encourages it … ?
But this is a book review. What did I think of the book – as if I hadn’t already told you? It’s an important book but I wouldn’t choose it for the first assigned text in an advanced course in racial equity. I’m afraid it would drive some people to resign from the rest of the program. It’s painful.
Now I’ll go look at the other reviews of this book.
Is this really what we want? Click on link below.
Freedom of information
How beautifully and inspirationally our National Hymn ends. Like the best of hymnody, it invites solemnity, submission, and supplication.
Too often, as with many memorized recitations, we forget the depth of meaning: a call to submission to the lofty ideals the words express and the invocation of prayer that we might make our country ever more worthy of what we proclaim.
There is such beauty in the sight of physically powerful men – and those who join them – in the attentive position of kneeling – the very meaning of which is submission and prayer.
I am grateful for the inspiration.
I picked this up in church on Saturday evening, but I don’t think one has to be religious to recognize the challenge.
This blessing is known as the Franciscan Four Fold Blessing, a devotional discipline derived from the teachings of St. Francis of Assisi (1181-1226) and St. Clare of Assisi (1194-1253)
May God bless us with discomfort. Discomfort at easy answers, half-truths, and superficial relationships, so that we may live deep within our hearts.
May God bless us with anger. Anger at injustice, oppression, and exploitation of people, so that we may work for justice, freedom and peace.
May God bless us with tears. Tears to shed for those who suffer from pain, rejection, starvation and war, so that we may reach out our hands to comfort them and turn their pain to joy.
May God bless us with foolishness. Enough foolishness to believe that we can make a difference in this world, so that we can do what others claim cannot be done..
Good Friday; Good Holidays. Spent time in meditation at a midday service today, longing for the peace that comes of freeing oneself from fear – not from the reality of evil, but from the fear of one’s own dark side, like internalizing the Jewish emphasis on release from oppression and the victory of freedom. To remove the blockage of fear, accepting my own dark side instead of projecting it on others, freeing energy to flow as an estuary to the rich ocean of positive human energy. A goal much to be desired, a distant dream. And, yes, quite Jungian.
monagustafsonaffinito 