FIRESTARTER

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

Posted onTuesday 10 September 2013

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…

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. 2

Posted onMonday 1 July 2013Sunday 30 June 2013

Zuckerman writes a fascinating book with a great deal of startling information in it, and I greatly enjoyed reading it. However, after pondering the book for some time, I believe the author has missed the true revelation which his data offers. He considers himself a nonbeliever/agnostic (7-8), and so this Scandinavian lack of religiosity appears…

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…

The pain behind Fire Eyes

Posted onFriday 14 June 2013Monday 10 June 2013

Trigger warning: this documentary review covers female genital mutilation. Don’t read further if you are easily squicked, please. ~ * ~ *~ *~ *~ * ~ We see activism as it happens in Soraya Miré’s short 1994 documentary film Fire Eyes. As a victim of the practice who has chosen to become a survivor, her…

St. Louis: everyone’s charming old auntie, part 2

Posted onWednesday 12 June 2013Monday 10 June 2013

The temperatures here in St. Louis are, in a word, psychotic. It may be either pleasantly warm, muggy and hot, or pouring rain outside — but the air conditioning will be blasting in any building you enter. I can’t decide whether to swelter in my sweatshirt outside, or shiver in my shirtsleeves inside. Constantly taking…

St. Louis: everyone’s charming auntie, part 1

Posted onTuesday 11 June 2013Monday 10 June 2013

Sadly, flying has become more of an annoyance than an adventure. I’m not surprised most of the airlines are struggling, considering their attempts to sneakily ding you with constant, unrelenting fees stacked on hidden fees. Fortunately we deliberately packed light so all our luggage was carry-on, and I always travel well-stocked with good books. Also,…