This month’s Firestarter is a (badly needed) review and reflection on How Do We Keep Honesty? I figured since February is traditionally a month for love, this time I’d attempt to achieve love of self, and gently engage in some internal reflection — always a scary proposition. :-) Fair warning: this Firestarter will make the…
I try not to write “hop on the bandwagon” postings about the current “hot” topic in the news. I like to have a bit of time to consider and reflect on issues and situations. Within that timeframe I frequently find that simply quietly helping however I can is all I wish to say on the…
I’ve come to the conclusion I don’t agree with the definition of Gatekeeper. I do agree there’s more than just the two extremes — regardless of whether you call them “Warrior” and “Forgiver” or “heavy-handed militarism” and “turn-the-other-cheek pacifism.” I suppose Gatekeeper is as good a term as any for that “middle of the road”…
Part of a quick “reflection” written for my aikido class. Huzzah! My aikido class has a list of recommended readings. The first of those books, which I requested at the library, has come in and is now successfully in my hot little hands. I’m the proud new borrower of Richard Strozzi Heckler’s “Aikido and the…
This is an invite to the Open House being held for the Master’s program I’m in. It has been, quite frankly, life changing for me, so if you’re at all intrigued, please come out to hear more about it. Open House & Information Session Saturday, January 23, 2009 at 12:00 p.m. with Co-directors Judy Grahn…
Well, after giving it the old college try, I think posting former papers from college in this format is way too much bother! If I refer to them in future reviews or Firestarters, I’ll upload them here as single, very long pages, rather than a kabillion short blog entries. That being said, as promised, here…
Possible Solutions It is a simple but appealing answer to say all that needs to be done to solve the problems delineated and explored above is to restructure the societies in the readings. Were this to occur, then by definition women and minorities would not be repressed any longer, but would instead be hegemonically considered…
In yet another essay which discusses violence against women, Kumar notes that it is the deliberately poor definition of what constitutes rape and wife-beating that allows it to continue in India, despite laws forbidding it. She notes furthermore that women are often blamed for the attacks against them due to their “easy virtue” or due…
It would make sense the society of the newly established nation-state would incorporate both its previous, ‘historical memory’ based power within itself, whether theoretical, religious, or physical, and that the struggle for power should occur between the varying discourses presented by each of these types of power. Also, by their very nature within the society…
Thus the current fundamentalist and nationalist mythologies insidiously create and define themselves in an essentialist fashion because they are needed in order to define boundaries and categories, to oppositionally create classes and hierarchies based on power through repression. Unfortunately these politicized religions frequently maintain much the same hegemonic thought patterns, albeit with different dominant players,…