One of my first memories is sitting on the bed, watching my father play guitar and sing. His voice was deep and strong and full of emotion. He was an incredibly talented musician, singer, and artist. He drew images of horses and cowboys, sometimes riding home slowly, other times riding into storms or against the blizzards and wind.

He and my aunt made an album in the 80s, and some of their songs were on local radio. They each wrote songs for their children, and there is a song there for me. I will carry his words and that part of my father in my heart forever. He was full of dreams, and some of them never came true. I pray that my siblings and I can carry on all the best parts of his dreams and make him and our mothers proud. May we walk this earth with grace and love.

I am not good with this. I don’t know what to do or how to be right now, and so I do what has often held me: I listen to music even though it hurts, and I pick up a pen.

Sending my love to my family, those near and those far away.

Daddy, I hope there are horses and music where you are.

***
image by White-M-T-Wolf at deviantART.

Topic 1.1 What is the Internet?

In my reflection I found out I really didn’t know as much as I thought as most people don’t when it comes to the Internet , all the different protocols and how they work , packet switching which I had no idea about as well but after watching the short presentation it sort of made me go “derr” .

I found out that 8 bits make 1 byte which to some people is really not that exciting but I often wondered what the differences were and how many made up the next one up. Although it can still all be really confusing at times I know eventually it will stick in my mind and I can confuse others.

Activity Two – Routing in Action!

1. wikipedia.org- United States

2. amazon.com- United States

3. flickr.com- United States

a site that is not Australian or American hosted

1. bbc.co.uk

I found this activity interesting and quite surprising to see how many places over the world websites branch around and through and stayed on it for a while looking at which websites came from where and which countries they have involved.

Yesterday, I tweeted “Really debating whether or not to get the H1N1 vaccination. Thoughts?” And the tweets and emails sent back to me were exactly divided down the middle, from Canadians, Americans, and International folk. At no point in my life can I remember a vaccine being such a hot issue. At no point in my life have I thought so much about getting a shot.

I have to consider many, many things — on a personal level and on a group level. We have to treat our bodies and each other responsibly and respectfully, so there are many factors to take into consideration.

I have some autoimmune issues, so my immune system is not as strong as it should be. At other times, it is too strong and attacks my own body. I get sick easily, and when I get sick I fall hard. With this immune system of mine, I need to be vaccinated against certain things, but my body also reacts negatively to many vaccinations, especially flu shots. I often struggle with fever and nausea after the fact. Then there’s the hidden dangers — the mercury and other toxins that are used to create vaccinations. Over time, these build up in the body, leading to cancer and other illnesses.

At the group level, we have to think about passing illness on to each other, and to those who have weaker immune systems especially. Passing on an illness is invisible, so we are never aware of who we’ve infected. We have to take this into consideration. Not all those creating the vaccine are profiting from it, nor are they trying to poison us. Many of them are working for the greater good. We have to be wise with this one. As with everything in life, there will always be those out to profit. But we can’t be so afraid of this that it rules all of our decisions. We are all — each and every one of us — trying to sell ourselves in some way.

A vaccine has never been created so quickly, which is shown in this TED talk given by a friend of a friend:

So much national and international collaboration has gone into tracking the H1N1 virus and creating the vaccination, which is succinctly shown in the video. I am impressed that so many have worked together so quickly, and that social media has had such an impact on the spread of information and warnings related to the virus and the vaccine. That said, I am confused by all the media coverage on the vaccination, for and against it. In the United States especially, people seem to have an incredible fear of the vaccination.

About 250 people have died from H1N1 in Canada. That’s the official reported number. Who knows how many people’s lives have been saved because of vaccinations. That is even more difficult, if not impossible, to track.

No one knows when the third wave of the pandemic will hit, nor do they know how bad it will be. So far, it’s known (see video above) that the virus has not mutated or become resistant to the vaccine.

I am fairly confident, regardless of my autoimmune issues, that if I get H1N1 I would be able to fight it without too many complications. That said, if I pass on the illness, I have no idea whether or not the people I infect will be able to do the same.

Thoughts???

***
image from Health Freedom Alliance.

Active Minds at MIT is…

A student-led initiative for better health and wellness, stress relief, and health education

Students who use peer-to-peer outreach for health advocacy and education with a focus on mental health

A liaison between students and the administration/mental health community

A national organization founded in 2001 with 200+ chapters worldwide

A resource for you, by you

Contact us at activemindsexec@mit.edu!

Visit our national website at www.activeminds.org

Active Minds at MIT welcomes all members, regardless of class year, gender, race, citizenship or any other affiliation.

Shrii Shrii A’nandamu’rti answers the question, “What is Soul”, in many places, one of those places is in the text ” A’nanda Sutram”, Chapter 2, Sutra 8 (2-8). He states in sanskrit:

Vis’aya purus’a'vabha’shah jiiva’tma’

The reflection of Consciousness in the unit object is known as “jiiva’tma’”, the unit soul.

Purport: In spiritual parlance Soul is one. In
whatever conditions the mind be–manifest (e.g.
in animate beings and plants) or unmanifest, e.g., in
inanimate earth, Iron, etc.), the Soul or Atma goes on
reflecting itself on it and its objects, the crude objects.
The reflection of the Soul on the mind is called Jiivatma and
in that case the Reflector-soul is called Paramatma (Supreme
Soul) or Pratyagatma (Pratiipamvipariitam aincati vija nati
iti pratyak). The Reflected soul or Jiivatma may also be
called Anu-caetanya (microcosmic consciousness). Similarly
we may call Paramatma by the name of Bhuma Caetanya
(Macrocosmic Consciousness). The totality of microcosms is
Macrocosm. In a way this assertion is true, because every
mind of crude entity is holding the Supreme Spirit according
to its individual capacity. Their collective capacity is
indeed the capacity of the Macrocos mic Mind. The Paramatma
or the Supreme Soul is the Ultimate Knower of the
Macrocosmic Mind and that is why Paramatma is called Cosmic
Consciousness.

On my way to the grocery store I’m not concerned that strands of my hair, going one way initially, start going another in this pent-up autumn wind. I pull the strands across my head to the wrong side and behind the wrong ear – like a balding man covering his bare patch. He is trying to trick us into thinking something is there – See I am young, I still have hair. He makes the most of each strand right down to the last millimetre. We laugh, but he is being innovative.

It is just a body I walk around in. I’m warm and I’m wearing good shoes with barely any heel. I know my way home still.

I select grapes that are full and ripe, and deep purple like the robes of old-time royalty. When I take the grapes home they will taste like vaguely-flavoured water, and nothing more. When I eat them, my stomach will churn trying to make sense of the thick skins.

In the checkout line a man waits behind me. He is the same man who bashed my leg with a stroller as we tried to maneuver the aisles. I could break something like last week, the laundry detergent packed in save-the-earth glass containers. Crashing sounds as my ass brushes by and then into them. Women are cursed with these things, these jutting parts. But I’m getting better at gliding along, knowing when to let someone pass by, and knowing when to take my opportunity to bolt. This is the city; wide lanes and wide aisles are hard to come by. Wide asses on the other hand.

The man eyes me and then my grapes. His eyes are darting too quickly – a sign of impatience, post traumatic stress disorder, or drug overdose.

“Grapes,” he states.

I smile and make a vaguely annoyed but polite hmmmm sound.

He sighs. I look down. His young daughter in the stroller has picked a large scab off her arm. She stares at it, transfixed, holding it up to the buzzing fluorescent light.

“Emma!” the man squeals, followed by a desperate moan. More huffing and impatience as he scrambles for something in which to handle the scab in a society-appropriate way. There really isn’t one. A scab has no place in this world.

© Kristen Michelle Håvet

***
image by sukhumvit at deviantART.

by IntrepidCaptain

More often then not, members of the mainstream culture joke that many Steampunks are simply the matured refugees of the Cyberpunk era. While I know this holds true for myself, this is in general an oversimplification of Anachronistic and Sci-Fi subcultures. The most obvious difference being that Anachronistics (usually) live in the civilized and decadent past, while the Cyberpunks prefer a more rugged, crime-infused world that is either in the future or near future. Key word here? Robotics.

However, some woud argue that robotics plays into both subcultures. Let’s disprove this, shall we? First off, steam-powered gadgets are vastly different from the electronic paraphernalia of the cyberpunk. For one, aesthetics. The steampunk hauls around brass gadgetry that is bulky, obvious, and ornate. It’s showy. The whole thing is showy and outlandish and that’s the point, ladies and gentlemen, for much of it. It is a subculture of statement pieces given new meaning via science that has been made obsolete and therefore attractive to those who feel above the current culture (keep in mind I’m a part of this group and therefore not trying to be insulting). Cyberpunks are sleek, chrome, and decked in black and green, glowing blues, with tiny computers and embedded microchips. Wires abound, yes, but these glorified hackers somehow to keep from electrocuting themselves due to the bad-assery of embracing the computer revolution. And is it just me or do cyberpunks seem to get a lot of time running about grimy and rain-slicked city streets, getting into motorcycle chases despite the general sedentary nature of the hacker lifestyle? At least that’s what all my friends and I discovered in the 90s, the glory days of cyberpunk.

And let’s not forget the power of visual learning. If you want an introduction to the cyberpunk world, go rent two earth-shattering films. The Matrix, and Blade Runner. Curious about steampunks? Check out Steamboy and The City of Lost Children. And no, I do not think it’s coincidental that the American movies are cyberpunk and the foreign films are steampunk. It actually makes a lot of sense. In any event, those movies’ll give you a pretty good idea of the vibe of the two subcultures.

But let’s look at the basics of cyberpunk for a moment. The main things to get your head around when it comes to cyberpunk is ONE that the internet is everywhere and is the answer to any and all problems, and TWO robots infiltrate and are a part of everything, even human anatomy. And on that topic, robotics have become quite advanced in the medical world today, reminding me of something that always bugged me about sci-fi movies and the world of Cyberpunk. If you’ve got the nanotech to go in to someone and monitor their vitals, why not (especially since money never seems to be an issue in Cyberpunk-land due to the high demand for hacked info) have those nanobots in there all the time? They could be hooked up to a LCD screen implanted in the arm that shows all vitals, so when you get hit with the poison that’s burrowing into your bloodstream, you can actually get to the hospital, and NOT just take two Advil and a shot of tequila and wait around your wire-cluttered NYC apartment until you feel a little too dizzy. Like a step up from booster shots. It’d take a hell of a lot of strain off your supply of post-apocalyptic heroes.

And of course, as I mentioned in my previous post, technology is getting amped up
to sci-fi proportions in the world of entertainment. The Cyberpunk wet dream of having the hologram-projecting headgear that’ll plug you into the interactive mainframe of Internet 2.0 may just be around the corner with the gadgets breaking into the market these days. Hail the spawn of man and computer, ye believers!

The Future is Now
~ your Captain

If you wanted to compare my previous and future education life with a street, I think I would stand pretty much in the middle of it.

What was: As with almost all university students, I took my A-levels before I enrolled at the university. However, the real reason why I decided to do a teacher-training course is the pleasure I derived from serving my community service at a school for pupils with special needs. What is more, I have always been very interested in the media. So at university I did all the classes on new media available to me (sadly, there are not many) and tried to put these experiences into practice during my first internship in Homberg/Ohm and my stay abroad in England during which I was fortunate enough to be able to teach German to English learners of German. In this blog, I want to present some of the things I have learned so far and see if I still agree with what I did or if I would change everything.

What is: At the moment, I am attending the seminar New Media in Foreign Language Education, for which I am writing this very blog. In addition, I am having an intership at the Lahntalschule in Biedenkopf. It is surely a good idea to use the knowledge I will gain in this class for my internship and vice versa. Last week, I also learned that the school is equipped with video projectors, loud speakers, and so on in almost every class, which can be a great advantage if you want to use new media. I am sure that I can include some of the experiences from the New Media seminar and the internship in my portfolio.

What will be: As mentioned above, I am having an internship at the Lahntalschule at the moment and I am sure I can put some ideas into practice there and tell you about them here. At the beginning of this post, I said that I am pretty much in the middle of my education so far, although I will (hopefully) receive my degree in the not-too-distant future. This is because there is still much to learn as a trainee teacher and even later as a real teacher. You just live and learn…

The loan modification process can be frustrating and confusing for many distressed homeowners. If you are considering contacting your lender about a loan workout to avoid foreclosure, you need to get as much information upfront as possible so you will be prepared and able to present your case in the best possible light. Programs and guidelines are changing and it is getting much easier for homeowners to get the help they need.  To help you understand how the process works and what you can expect, here are the Top 10 Questions and Answers:

This marks the Brown University Philosophy Department Undergraduate Group’s first foray into the blogging world (to my knowledge). As such, it might be somewhat useful to explain who and what we are.

So, as you might divine from the name above, we are a group of undergraduates interested in philosophy. Some are concentrators, some have related interests, and others are interested in seeing a little more of what all the philosophical hubbub is about. Our purpose is fairly simple; we provide a forum for students to engage in philosophical pursuits. This ranges from hosting faculty lectures to student-led discussions, from film screenings to providing resources for students looking to pursue philosophical topics both in undergraduate and graduate education. I should divulge that we exist also to provide Roman with guidance and sympathy through his various existential crises. Therapy!

With that aside, the primary purpose behind this blog is to provide a glimpse into what it is that the Philosophy DUG does in its discussions, which take place twice a month, barring holidays. To that end, I am providing minutes to give a rough idea over what went on at our first discussion this semester, all the way back in October. Hegel!

The discussion centered on two fundamental questions: first, what is philosophy and, second, what should philosophy do?

The definitive answer to this question follows:

What is philosophy? (1)

-         abstraction

-         ultimacy

-         concern with truth

• abstraction
  • asking “why?” will eventually lead us beyond basic explanatory schema
• ultimacy
  • continuation of questioning
  • causality/causes in regards to the first cause
• concern with truth
  • foremost truth-concerned discipline
    • is this literary work true?
    • Is this historical work true?
      • These are not questions that are typically asked.
      • Other disciplines don’t have the same criterion

What is philosophy? (2)

-         classical divisions of philosophy

• logic
• physics
• metaphysics
• ethics

-         analytic/continental divide

• somewhat of an illusory distinction
• divide becomes somewhat more pronounced as one progresses from the beginning of the 19^th century to the present day

-         conceptual analysis

• terms as applied in language or thought
  • elucidating the presuppositions/intuitions/implications that surround the term being assessed

What should philosophy then do?

-         Does philosophy solve things?

• Have we solved problems?
• Are these solutions widely accepted?
• Have we made important and relevant distinctions?

-         Is philosophy supposed to make us better people?

-         Is philosophy supposed to illuminate us as rational beings?

• Allegory of the Cave
  • Nancy’s interpretation; the issue of blindness

-         Is philosophy an ethical imperative or a normative “should”?

-         Is philosophy therapy?

• If there is no ultimate truth, this seems somewhat plausible

-         Should philosophy produce practical effects?

• Political philosophy, liberalism, veganism/vegetarianism
  • Philosopher’s intent?

-         Should philosophy help us to make sense of things, that is to orient ourselves in the world?

• Honing one’s ability to go through a process in order to address problems that might result in externalities

-         Does anyone give a positive account of what philosophy should do?

-         Sufficient, not limiting criterion

• Conceptual analysis

Final polling of the philosofolk

-         Is there an answer to the question “What should philosophy do?”

• Yes
  • 6 votes
• No
  • 6 votes
• Abstention
  • 2 votes

Interestingly, the distribution of votes is quite fitting given the discussion and the wording of the question put to the vote. In fact, the vote was not so clean as presented above, as, by their nature, philosofolk are compelled to qualify everything.

That said, good night!

- Deven Burks, Faithful Historian, Archivist, Secretary, and Undersecretary

This morning I cried in the shower.  I felt in coming on while I was downstairs in the kitchen when the what if monster entered my mind.  Specifically, I was perusing the photos of my late brother’s ex fiancee and it was photos of her children that really caught me off guard.  It was truly like a bus landed on me.

“What if these little girls were my nieces?”

That simple question sawed me to the bone as I looked deeply into the photos for any semblance of my brother, but these were not his children.  This was not his life, and this world no longer belonged to him.  After I crawled from under the bus, I took a shower.

There are a million what if’s in the day, but when one like this latches on it really makes your world spin.  Like a domino effect, my unsettled soul lashed out at my dog that had dragged cat litter onto my freshly-made bed and then onward to work I went.  You see where this is going, right?

Now that I’ve swallowed the permanent lump in my throat named Jeffrey, at least for today, I felt another sadness for his ex fiancee.  Within the same year (2001) she lost her first love in January and her birthday celebration forever changed on September 11th.  That particular year was a tough one for us, and it lasted for five years.

It was strange to accept her Facebook request and see she had grown up, but Jeffrey will be forever young.  Time, disproportionate as it seemed, had moved on without him in more ways than one.  What if he could see it now?

I found another 2 of hearts playing card in the bustling Penn Station, a commuter hub, and as I picked it up below a man’s rushed step I knew Jeffrey was sending me love.  I guess disproportionate time is a reminder of what my finite existence here in this life cannot understand; the infinite.

My brother’s love is infinite, and I don’t expect the what if monster to leave but I suspect he showers me from above when my tears become words the heart can’t express.

Ever wondered what Cloud Computing is?
Watch the following video, it explains Cloud Computing in plain english

Share on:

whats a Hoe?.

The term REST was introduced in the form of a thesis written by Roy Fielding in the year 2000. We will go over REST in a little abstract manner by going over the four properties as per RESTFul Web Services :

• Addressability- It lets the application to expose infinite number of URI’s for every piece of information it might conceive.
• Statelessness- It means that every HTTP request happens in complete isolation which means that the client needs to include all the necessary information for the server to fulfill the request. Statelessness is what makes the application scalable, as it can be easily distributed across load-balanced servers, and also easily cacheable.
  Related to this, there is an important distinction between application state (lives on the client) and resource state (lives on the server).
• Connectedness-It means that the resources links to each other, document contains links to other resources.
• A uniform interface-It means that there are four basic methods for doing four most common operations:

HTTP GET to retrieve the representation of a resource.
HTTP POST to create a new resource.
HTTP PUT to modify an existing resource.
HTTP DELETE to delete an existing resource.

People who cannot pull back their egos, thus allowing them to run amok, create a unpleasant taste for relationships. Leaders embody the trait that allow others to want to build a relationship with them, because they have consistently been about others, not themselves.

This trait of being selflessness is not about putting yourself down, but appropriately learning to understand others, while noting your own strengths. It is not about your own agenda, but how everyone’s agenda can be connected for the good of the team/group.

This trait does cross links with humility… so read there too.

Thus, ends my thoughts on leadership… at least for a time.

Ghana: Sweat

I am no stranger to sweat. I am not the kind of person who has cause to sweat every day, doing hard physical labor full time or an intense workout routine; and Seattle, this time of year, apparently has hail. At various points in time, however, I have sweated in the past – I used to participate in a crew team, and before and after that I was involved in Aikido. It’s a very simple process: a human is subject to a relatively high amount of heat, or they physically exert themselves to a point where they induce a higher heart rate, or they even could be subject to extremely stressful circumstances. It is an inherently beneficial process, both cooling the body and purging the system of waste chemicals. I am no stranger to sweat.

Let me clarify further: I am no stranger to physical sweat. The heat here in Accra (80 degrees when we landed at 7:45 this morning) goes hand in hand with wet, smelly clothes that begged to be changed. It hits the unwary traveler before they even get off the plane, a sort of welcoming party that hugs you and won’t let go until you’re underwater or back in the air. That is not to say it’s unbearable by any means, it’s just noticeable; a typical human can adapt to it. Let me clarify further: I am no stranger to physical sweat.

There is a kind of sweat, I realize now, that I am alien to, completely, irrevocably, a sweat that I was born without, raised without, and never had cause to know, for which I consider myself cursed a hundred-fold and blessed infinitely. This is the sweat of the soul, caused not when you stand underneath the sun, but when you stand in the middle of an encampment of deserted children and you realize, maybe for the first time, maybe for the hundredth, or thousandth, “what is.”

This is the sweat for which there is no shower, no clean clothes, no breezy salvation; this is the heat that makes you deliberately earn your new clothes, ones that fit better and cool you off just a little bit more the next time; nothing store-bought or mass-produced but instead deliberately handmade, carefully knit, meticulously sewn.

This is the sweat to which I am virgin; this is the sweat that creates the first stitch.

This is part 4 of the Leadership ideas I’ve been having and have read.

A leader is easily recognized when he takes the initiative to do what is right, or to do what is acceptable yet outside of acceptable, it becomes extraordinary. Naturally, you could immediately see that trends are started by leaders, even evil trends, like ethnic cleansing and drug taking.

What it is noticeable is that leaders take the initiative. They are hardly motivated by the externals, but more so by their own internal drive. What this means is that people perceive leaders to have a drive that is not a fad, but the real thing, a real vision that will sustain him/her throughout the duration of achieving what he has set out to achieve.

The motivation cannot be external, because the team/receivers of the inspiration might begin to be skeptical and start to be killjoys. How does a leader deal with this? He either quits, which tells us his motivation is external, or he ditches the naysayers and pushes on (indicating that there is an internal drive).

When motivation is external, the leader can become complacent upon achieving certain success. So again, the track record of a real leader is something worth taking note of.

To make it practical, a real leader is someone people recognize that is trustworthy, takes the initiative to make something work, to push for changes, and is and has been relatively consistent with what he is talking and doing.

I was watching a clip from a concert of one of my favorite bands, Detektivbyrån. It was from a concert they did in Stockholm. They were playing “Om Du Möter Varg”.  I could not believe my eyes when I saw Martin moving towards  some kind of an electronic instrument, which produces sound by just moving  hands in midair! The sound was amazing! The crowd got really excited at that moment, and they started screaming. I had goose bumps….

This instrument is called the Theremin.

Léon Theremin playing his invented instrument, later known as Theremin

Thermin was created more than 90 years ago (very ahead of its time)! by the Russian inventor Léon Theremin. The instrument consists of two antennas that sense player’s hands positions and control the pitch and volume of the sound accordingly.

The Thermin was mostly associated with eerie sounds, so used specially in soundtracks of  sci-fi movies, like the 1951 movie: The Day the Earth Stood Still.

In 1994, the history channel produced a documentary about the instrument and its inventor. Theremin: An Electronic Odyssey

The most famous Thereminsts today are:

Lydia Kavina

Pamelia Kurstin: Watch Pamelia performing and talking on ted.com

Clara Rockmore : This is a wonderful performance by her.

If you want to learn about the Thermin this is a good introduction

And here is a video demonstrating a complete resources list to start learning this instrument.

And if you want to hear the Thermin like you have never heard it before, then check this out: Gnarls Barkley Crazy Theremin Jam

Buffy Sainte-Marie – My Country Tis of Thy People You’re Dying

Now that your big eyes have finally opened
Now that you’re wondering how must they feel
Meaning them that you’ve chased across America’s movie screens
Now that you’re wondering how can it be real
That the ones you’ve called colorful, noble and proud
In your school propaganda
They starve in their splendor
You’ve asked for my comment I simply will render

My country ’tis of thy people you’re dying

Now that the longhouses breed superstition
You force us to send our toddlers away
To your schools where they’re taught to despise their traditions
You forbid them their languages, then further say
That American history really began
When Columbus set sail out of Europe, then stress
That the nation of leeches that conquered this land
Are the biggest and bravest and boldest and best
And yet where in your history books is the tale
Of the genocide basic to this country’s birth
Of the preachers who lied, how the Bill of Rights failed
How a nation of patriots returned to their earth
And where will it tell of the Liberty Bell
As it rang with a thud Over Kinzua mud
And of brave Uncle Sam in Alaska this year

My country ’tis of thy people you’re dying

Hear how the bargain was made for the West
With her shivering children in zero degrees
Blankets for your land, so the treaties attest
Oh well, blankets for land is a bargain indeed
And the blankets were those Uncle Sam had collected
From smallpox-diseased dying soldiers that day
And the tribes were wiped out and the history books censored
A hundred years of your statesmen have felt it’s better this way
And yet a few of the conquered have somehow survived
Their blood runs the redder though genes have paled
From the Gran Canyon’s caverns to craven sad hills
The wounded, the losers, the robbed sing their tale
From Los Angeles County to upstate New York
The white nation fattens while others grow lean
Oh the tricked and evicted they know what I mean

My country ’tis of thy people you’re dying

The past it just crumbled, the future just threatens
Our life blood shut up in your chemical tanks
And now here you come, bill of sale in your hands
And surprise in your eyes that we’re lacking in thanks
For the blessings of civilization you’ve brought us
The lessons you’ve taught us, the ruin you’ve wrought us
Oh see what our trust in America’s brought us

My country ’tis of thy people you’re dying

Now that the pride of the sires receives charity
Now that we’re harmless and safe behind laws
Now that my life’s to be known as your “heritage”
Now that even the graves have been robbed
Now that our own chosen way is a novelty
Hands on our hearts we salute you your victory
Choke on your blue white and scarlet hypocrisy
Pitying the blindness that you’ve never seen
That the eagles of war whose wings lent you glory
They were never no more than carrion crows
Pushed the wrens from their nest, stole their eggs, changed their story
The mockingbird sings it, it’s all that he knows
“Ah what can I do?” say a powerless few
With a lump in your throat and a tear in your eye
Can’t you see that their poverty’s profiting you

My country ’tis of thy people you’re dying”

————————————————————————————————-

if we dont have the courage to embrace what is let us at least have the decorum to not be ludicrous.

a broken heart is the only way. if we dont have the courage to break our own hearts then  we must find a way to heal stones. peace is not a hard thing but  a courageous thing.

The third trait of a leader that inspires and allows their influence to get to the masses is, the love for pressure. The saying goes, “When the going gets tough, the tough gets going.”

There are two kinds of people in the world, the ones who takes sees the challenge and hopes it does not befall them, and the ones who see the challenge and takes on it. Unfortunately, in my home culture, we call the latter group of people, the ‘extras’, the ‘wannabes’, but deep down, if we can get past ourselves, we truly admire these adversity-challengers, these bull-fighters.

It takes that certain courage, that certain kind of focus to get past the worries and just dive into the problem and work it out. Not many have this, and this is what makes leadership scarce.

We could also say that it takes a certain amount of foolishness to take on the crunch time situation. And we are, many times, secretly hoping that the person would fail. However, again, it is not about winning or succeeding then, but the courage. We must focus on the process (as well as the outcome, even though we tend to put too much emphasis on the outcome). Of course, it would be unfortunate when one fails to do the job, but usually with the courage and tenacity and the mind of a true leader is able to gauge and take on what he is able to handle and then more.

Still on the topic of what a leader would look like in a group of people, we have the second trait: Humility. In a world where the loudest person is the one who gets heard, humility is a difficult virtue to cultivate.  Many times we want to be the best in the class or in the work place etc. This makes cultivation of humility difficult. In fact, this type of thinking, which I call it the Law of Comparison, is diametrically opposite what humility would embody.

The Law of Comparison tends to skew us towards comparing ourselves with others. The problem with this sort of thinking is that everyone is unique, and comparisons cannot be accurately done. It is like comparing oranges with apples, it just does not make sense. When this sort of comparison is done, negative competitiveness comes into the play, which leads to competing against each other for attention/honour/performance bonuses/recognition/whatever, which in turn can create the hostile environment.

Humility, on the other hand, allows you to be the improving human. It is the “understanding that I’m not always the best, and that another person on any given day can win,” says Wade Rowatt, a social psychologist at Baylor University. And, this tends to foster the Law of Comparison in relation to self. That is to say, you would be comparing yourself today and yesterday, or today and 3 years ago, to see if improvements have been made for yourself.

Other than that, humility will and can foster a basic respect for everyone, and that would include your enemies/competitors/siblings/spouse (if you see your spouse as an adversary). When you do not see yourself as someone who will always win, you would see yourself as someone who is as good as everyone else. You do not see yourself as someone a cut above the rest and therefore deserve special treatment. Rather you see yourself as a special part of the machinery (like the liver in the body, or the lungs uniquely different but others but as important), and that everyone HAS to work together for the betterment of the goal.

A person who feels he/she deserves special treatment never inspires greatness. A person who feels he/she is special, like everyone else… tends to respect others, which becomes inspiring.