Spirituality

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A wonderful revelation: we can “undo” destructive gender roles!

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Ecofeminism is a powerful means to accomplish the goal of a more peaceful, prosperous, and socially just world. Unsurprisingly, entrenched blocks to its implementation exist within the modern social order due to its excesses of hierarchical capitalism and masculinism. Thus one of the most methodologically exciting works of this subsection is an analysis of how…

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Wandering Thoughts on Feminism

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Because of the field of study I’m in, the definition of the word feminism is of powerful personal importance. I’m always faintly surprised at the astonishingly ridiculous I sometimes hear regarding feminism, too: things like the movement is full of sexually frustrated lesbians, or it’s embarrassing to be associated with such a (supposedly) retrograde social…

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“We Are the Ones We Have Been Waiting For”: a book review, part 3

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It was my unwittingly noticing this damaging issue — the fear and/or greed which underlies bigotry and violent interpersonal aggression — which caused my first faint, initial attempts at bringing down my internal walls: I slowly became aware of “what has happened in many parts of the world where knowledge is kept secret from the…

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“We Are the Ones We Have Been Waiting For”: a book review, part 2

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The usual choice of US citizens in a foreign country to isolate themselves in the American military compound (which my family chose not to do) meant there was a good possibility that the people we interacted with had never before met Americans, and possibly would not after we left either. My father informed his children…

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“We Are the Ones We Have Been Waiting For”: a book review, part 1

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Alice Walker’s 2006 book We Are the Ones We Have Been Waiting For: Inner Light in A Time of Darkness is a collection of essays and presentations she has made over the previous decade. I quote extensively from her book throughout this review, since there were many things she wrote which I very much enjoyed,…

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Wangari Maathai & Replenishing the Earth

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In 2010 Wangari Maathai wrote Replenishing the Earth: Spiritual Values for Healing Ourselves and the World. Not only is this book more recent than her 2003 volume regarding the Green Belt Movement, but in this one she also specifically addresses her thoughts on spirituality within the Movement. She lists the four core values of the…

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Societies without God: immoral hell or egalitarian health? pt. 5

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So, a quick concluding bit, since I wrote part 4 yesterday while struggling with my brain overheating, in the last hour before the blog was supposed to update — and I’m not sure I was as clear as I could have been… and also because this is the 4th of July, and I feel the…

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Societies without God: immoral hell or egalitarian health? pt. 4

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Okay, so now we know who doesn’t fit into Scandinavian society: those (usually) men who are heavily invested in patriarchal hierarchies. However, we also know similar types of men did very poorly when Eastern Europe broke away from the Communist bloc — yet Europe as a whole is certainly not dispensing with patriarchy. So obviously…

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Societies without God: immoral hell or egalitarian health? pt. 3

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What Is Patriarchy? In yesterday’s post I stated that the growing lack of interest in organized, patriarchal religion in Scandinavia is not some simple, casual social cause-and-effect, but rather the unplanned byproduct of the social elimination of patriarchy. This may sound startling, but I have a number of excellent reasons for this statement. First, though,…