Ethics questions

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

Posted onMonday 19 August 2013Saturday 17 August 2013

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…

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

Posted onSunday 18 August 2013Saturday 17 August 2013

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…

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

Posted onSaturday 17 August 2013

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,…

Talking (incessant!) religion

Posted onWednesday 31 July 2013Tuesday 30 July 2013

Well! I had an amusingly funny first happen to me the other day: I cheerfully out-talked a Jehovah’s Witness! ;) I was at a small local Le Boulanger to eat lunch and read one of my textbooks in a nice, relaxed atmosphere — one with no tempting internet to distract me! :) While there I…

Wangari Maathai & Replenishing the Earth

Posted onMonday 29 July 2013Sunday 28 July 2013

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…

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

Posted onThursday 4 July 2013Wednesday 3 July 2013

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…

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

Posted onWednesday 3 July 2013Thursday 4 July 2013

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…

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

Posted onTuesday 2 July 2013Monday 1 July 2013

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,…

Societies without God: immoral hell or egalitarian health? pt. 1

Posted onFriday 28 June 2013Saturday 29 June 2013

(all the numbers in brackets within this posting are citations which reference the stated page numbers within the book Society Without God by Phil Zuckerman) A common trope amongst the devout is that morality is derived from religion, and therefore a society lacking strong religious beliefs would be an utterly immoral, un-free, irrational society which…

Two fascinating examples of women’s resistance to oppression

Posted onSaturday 15 June 2013Monday 10 June 2013

An excellent historical example of increasing patriarchal domination of women, and their ensuing resistance, is feminist historian and professor Ulrike Strasser’s “Bones of Contention: Catholic Nuns Resist their Enclosure.” The Pütrich nuns of Munich were established in the 13th century. Like all nuns at that time, they were not cloistered and therefore served extensively in…