Why are humans attracted to 'beautiful things'? - GIGAZINE
"Therefore, human aesthetics are said to have arisen from patterns such as safety and nutrition, which were obtained as a result of observing nature. However, human beings have developed further from there and have built a strong sense of beauty..."
Diversity Executives – The U.S. Version of Soviet Political Commissars - American Thinker
"Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) executives -- our political commissars -- are tasked with enforcing leftist policies in corporations, universities, and government agencies. They do not contribute to the competent functioning of those institutions and in fact may detract from their profitability and efficiency."
Excerpt:
What was obvious blatant propaganda was presented and accepted by the American citizenry as unquestioned truth. The entirety of the corporate and social media willingly morphed into mouthpieces and censors for the government.
Why did the vast majority of the American citizens meekly succumb to the unprecedented usurpation of their rights and unquestioningly believe the so-called “experts”? Why did so many turn into a group-thinking herd mindlessly marching to the music played by the government? Why did so many scientists, educators, doctors, and journalists abandon their integrity and compassion as well as scientific and intellectual curiosity?
The answer is in the article...
Lord we come before you today with a heavy heart
As we watch fellow Americans trapped in a country overrun by the jihadist Taliban.
Our current government announces not to rely on them for rescue.
From way back, however, we Americans, since President Thomas Jefferson, had as our birthright a commitment to rescue endangered Americans.
This resolve seems now to be gone.
Our Secretary of State sends forth a communication that the trapped are on their own.
We stare in amazement.
“Yea, my heart drops in despair, and my tongue is made mute as I behold leaders an my nation so fallen.”
How is it, we ask, that those governing America, this arrogant ruling clique, seems so indifferent to Americans; indifferent to Americans yet at the same moment so concerned about everyone else, extra sensitive even to those screaming “Death to America!”
We wonder if our so-called “woke” culture that continually demonizes America, has made us no longer value Americans. But verily, American lives matter.
Yes, we wonder if our “woke” culture ever so eager to defame the Judeo-Christian culture — so essential to America’s founding — no longer has the regard or will to defend an America founded on that Judeo-Christian outlook.
No longer believing in ourselves, we have been humiliated by those who, while rag-tag, at least have pride in themselves, their history, and their national peoplehood.
A nation with skewed, upside-down, and frivolous priorities eventually loses its sense of importance, its identity and the will to defend its own.
Because it is ashamed of its past, it does not protect its future.
What does a nation, a people, do when an imposed, incompetent ruling clique no longer believes in the ideas that made this nation a people, when it exalts every culture over its own, and even calls its own patriotic citizens “terrorists,” while at the same time funds real terrorists like Hamas and PLO and sits and makes concessions with the terrorist state of Iran.
We turn to you, Almighty, “Yea in the shadows of thy wing, will I take refuge until the calamities be overpassed.” We ask that our nation turn its heart back to You and to the teaching of the biblical God.
We know there must be an answer, a solution, as to how we defeat this ideology of anti-Americanism, hedonism, and hate of the wholesome now pervading our spaces; a glorification of Marxism, a neo-paganism, a vengeful and hate-filled envy, and a defamation of people born white – spreading across the land. Fueled by a brazen and stone-hearted elitist corps.
Where is our answer?
We do know that just as You have embedded in earth all the minerals, seeds, fuels, and metals necessary to sustain us, so, too, have you implanted the remedy to our dilemma, a way forward – a golden nugget waiting to be exposed.
So help us, O Lord, to find it. To discover the answer and, then, with courage, put it into action and fan it across the Land.
“For no good thing or answer will He withhold from them that work uprightly.”
And let us say, Amen.
Reprinted from: Rabbi Spero’s Prayer to The Nation , August 20, 2021 (caucusforamerica.com)
My daughter almost killed me in my sleep the other day.
However I may never know how close I actually was. At the time though, it felt like I
was a goner.
If you ever had what’s referred to as a “night terror”, it was a similar
experience, and I’ve only ever had one. It’s a feeling of being in an
unconscious state between dreaming and waking, where you are perfectly aware of what’s
going on around you, and you want to wake up or do something, but you can’t,
and you keep thinking about it, but you still can’t. The one previous time it did happen
to me I was sleeping in the back of a van while on a road trip, I could hear
all my buddies yakking and I wanted to get up, but I COULD NOT.
Parasomnia, as it's otherwise known, is a cousin of sleepwalking, and for some reason, the authors here don't recommend waking up someone in this or that state. (Why the hell not?)
The setting: Lazy weekend afternoon, watching retro cartoons on YouTube with my
young daughter who came into the room after I had just started dozing off.
I was sleeping on my left side, facing the wall, under a big down comforter and
the phone was not far from my arm with all the retro cartoons playing quietly.
(Laser blast sounds and robots hurling threats at each other.)
She thought it would be comfortable, I guess, to rest her head and chin
in the valley across my neck for ideal viewing, and I can’t be sure for how
long she was there.
I suppose I was happy she had visited but I became aware that something was
very wrong as well. I could feel the pressure on my neck and in that dreamlike
state where you don’t really know what is what, I thought that I needed to take
conscious action to tell her to move or just to move myself. And with each
passing moment I felt like my ability to communicate, to return through the
tunnel to the world of the awake was slipping.
Could I just utter the word “Stop!” or “Move!” or “Help!” And that weight
became heavier and heavier and I wasn't sure if I’d ever make it out. In fact, I am not sure if this was a real emergency, or I was just dreaming that it was, but I assure you that at the time I couldn't tell the difference. I did some reading up on asphyxia and the arteries in the sides of the neck, and the pillow side had a support hump in it, and of course her weight was adding pressure to both sides.
After a few long, terrifyingly helpless moments of this, I just thought, “Let
go, there’s nothing that can be done.”
Then I immediately woke up and said, "No." She got off. And I lived to see another day.
I entered the dim room, curtains drawn, just before lunch and sat near the wooden conference table, more an observer than participant. It was still morning and nobody seemed awake, so I was glad nobody turned on the glaring fluorescent overhead lights. The boss, whose presence alone commanded your attention, begrudgingly squeezed us into his schedule for a few precious moments before he would get underway for a more important meeting, with "more important people" from some external entity.
One of the younger staff members had a notion to prepare all the information we would give into an idea sandwich. That way, the boss could quickly scarf down the sum of all its parts and begone with no questions and no need for ponderous idle time. We didn't so much agree as we avoided dissent. There were only ten minutes left, and as the saying goes, "If you're late, you're dead." Conveniently there was a small galley a.k.a. coffee mess adjoining the room, and we went to work with hands flying and butter knives slapping on the sauce.
The boss came in, sat down at the head of the table, took one look at his sandwich and removed the carefully wrapped plastic cover (it was in some sort of convoluted layered triangular plastic sleeve) , lifted off the top slice of whitebread, glanced at the heavy mayo and loosely assembled shredded vegetables, closed it, and paused.
With his hands together and his brow furrowing he asked, "Was all this really necessary? You could have just told me what you wanted to say."
In the review of the novel for The Washington Post, Marie Arana called it "a deeply affecting novel, not only for the dark nooks and crannies it explores, but for the magic that seeps into its characters’ subconsciouses, for the lengths to which they will go to protect or damage one another, for the brilliant characterizations it delivers along the way ... Murakami can herd the troubles of a very large world and still mind a few precious details. He may be taking us deeper and deeper into a fractured modernity and its uneasy inhabitants, but he is ever alert to minds and hearts, to what it is, precisely, that they feel and see, and to humanity’s abiding and indomitable spirit."[57]
"While the predominant value of existentialist thought is commonly acknowledged to be freedom, its primary virtue is authenticity."
"You grew up being taught to respect authority - and now the police and the military are increasingly coming under attack. Then-candidate Barack Obama mocked people who "cling to guns and religion". But you grew up around guns – both for hunting and protection. And you grew up attending church every Sunday. Now Christianity and guns are both under attack all of a sudden. Some are even suggesting Walmart shouldn't sell guns anymore."Football - dangerous. Men = women as illustrated by Bruce Jenner on the cover of Vanity Fair. The Justice Department wants people to use whichever restroom they feel their gender associates with on a given day. Health Care has been O-boweled, made unaffordable and is working to become the next U.K. or even Cuban system - foul, rife with hang-ups and bureau rats. Up is down, and someone putting in print that homosexuality is abnormal is grounds for destroying his reputation and livelihood.
"To criticize every traditional institution, starting with the family, brutally and unremittingly, in order to bring them down. It wrote a series of “studies in prejudice,” which said that anyone who believes in traditional Western culture is prejudiced, a “racist” or “sexist” of “fascist” - - and is also mentally ill."So now, friends, I ask you, "What is your escape plan?"
"If everybody thought the same, this would be a pretty boring place," Youngblood said. "This is where I learned my behaviors and my thoughts and my beliefs. None of which make me right."It's sadly conventional wisdom that journalists harbor an iconoclastic ethos in order to dismantle traditional values and institutions of the American republic. [The American Journalist - Pew Research Center]
