“Well, It Can’t Hurt?” Yes It Can! And Does…

“What’s wrong with striving? How can it possibly be bad to try? Isn’t it irresponsible not to?” We hear these cries, either around us, or internally, whenever we contemplate an alternative to striving. We ‘re tempted. We quaver. We cave in. Of course, “What harm could there be? It’s only prudent after all!” we say,

Driven by Fear

Coercion, hostility, anger, rejection; are all signs of fear. They cease to exist when there is no fear. These are paraphrases of points Krishnamurti made repeatedly. The dynamics surrounding fear cannot be ignored. They inflect not only how we react and respond ourselves, but hold some key to how we can find ways to speak

Doing No Thing, a Path Past Ego Death

We are caught up in urgency. We do good things. We are good people. What we strive after needs to be done! Yet we are exhausted. We are frustrated. We are pressed by the futility of our actions and have no idea how to change anything in a worthwhile way. Double-binds rear their ugly heads.

Domination is domination is domination

Here’s why he won’t bend to feminist desires. They insist he and his cohorts, “Stop everything, these men are doing good work!” The above was a passing detail in an online apologia for a lack of feminist sympathies from someone I follow, but won’t name here. It brought me to an agonizing halt.

Questions surrounding non-violence

Gandhian non-violence gains its power by putting an oppressor’s hidden violence out in the open where it cannot be denied. Not so much so as to counter it by non-violent means, but so that it must be confronted by the oppressor, for what it is, in its naked form. Every oppressor has layers of self-justification to

Here’s the Thing…

If we can’t drive a wedge of awareness into the current cycle of how we make judgements, if we can’t find ways to break the loops we’re trapped in, we are condemned to continue repeating them over and over again until we are swept away by the sheer volume of our irrelevancy. This is an

Fighting Injustice/Confronting Abuse, part II

The first part of this essay dealt with setting the stage, in a way, finding our home position. Let’s take that groundwork and begin to look at what’s hinted at in the second half of the title, Confronting Abuse. In our stressed, fight or flight states we jump right past the significant aspect of confrontation