So for all our fellow bloggers out there, I want to encourage you to participate in 10 days in the March 19 Iraq War Blogswarm. It has been nearly 5 years and 1 million deaths since the unprovoked U.S. invasion and occupation of the sovereign nation of Iraq. (Also don’t forget to tune in to live coverage of the Washington D.C. Winter Soldier Event on the web this Friday through Sunday.) The Blogswarm project says:
You are encouraged to write against the war from a variety of perspectives. The war is a huge problem, and that makes it an enormous subject for blogging. Here are some things you might want to consider if you are having difficulty making up your mind:
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Scott Rasmussen of the polling organization Rasmussen Reports recently wrote a really fascinating commentary entitled “The United States Needs a Confirming Election“. He says:
The United States is in dire need of an election where somebody wins big, an election that confirms someone with a real majority, and an election that provides the nation with some sense of a prevailing public perspective. Big Victories in Presidential elections don’t make everyone happy, but they do help to unify the nation and improve the health of our political system.
More…
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In case you hadn’t seen it previously, there’s a button under the image of the earth above labeled “Organizations” which links to the page where we are ongoingly compiling a list of justice-and-compassion-ish organizations which have caught our eye. Feel free to check it out, and to let us know about any other organizations you think should be added to the list.
The latest addition to the list is Cool People Care, Saving the World Five minutes at a time. What an astoundingly Kewl idea! They have lots of ideas for how to help save the world in 5 minutes, which sounds *so* much more doable than just saving the world straight up. You can even sign up for a daily “5 minutes of caring” email.
Posted in Blogging | 5 Comments »So tonight Rachel and I got to hang out at off the map live, the opening session. It was way kewl! I got to meet Phil Wyman, who has agreed to write for JaC, hopefully along with a pagan friend of his, at some point in the not too distant future. Plus we got to hear Richard Twiss, who was astoundingly kewl. And Sadell Bradley, whose singing gave me the most astoundingly delightful chills. There was a lot said about how the predominant white, protestant church has participated in the marginilization of minority groups by implying or saying outright that the minority had to make a choice between being a part of their minority group or being a christian.
For more–John Smulo (who is just mega gnarley), is live blogging the whole conference.
Also more live blogging info on the conference at this post
Posted in Blogging | No Comments »You are invited:
(that turned out not to be true–and what I’m learning now). the Glenn instigated Synchroblog. From Rachel’s comment in this thread.
Rachel wrote:
Here are a few things I learned from church that didn’t ring true:
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Glenn Hager kindly invited me to participate in his synchroblog. Thanks Glen!
His subtitle was “(That didn’t prove true, and what I am learning lately)”
So a coupla lists–and a tiny bit of a justice and compassion slant (I’m not making this stuff up)
What I learned in church:
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Trissa posted some really insightful thoughts as part of the ongoing conversation in another thread. I wanted to repost them at the start of a new thread
I guess what I was trying to say is that most of us who are in a serving profession got there because of idealism. A soldiers idealism is patriotism or wanting to spread freedom (I’m somewhat assuming, somewhat going on what I know from my brother who is in the Airforce). A social worker’s ideal is to help people who are less fortunate. A teacher wants to open their students up the opportunities around them (my mom and sister are teachers). So we run on idealism, but it only gets us so far. A soldier sees death, pain, suffering and sees no positive outcomes. A social worker sees one client after another who’s unwilling to change their life circumstances. The teacher has to deal with unmotivated students and absent parents. Slowly the idealism erodes and one day your ideals seem far away and naive. I think as one sees suffering and pain without relief it’s hard to believe in anything.
So often people in my profession push it aside and don’t think about how what they see affects them. I assume it’s the same as a soldier. If you think about it you might find the last of your idealism slip away and the foundation that once brought about all decisions is gone.
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The loneliness of technology?
Wednesday, April 11th, 2007Dick Staub and a panel of bloggers recently discussed the following fascinating question on their live radio show: Can The Inklings face-to-face pub experience be replaced with online interaction?
Various intriguing aspects related to this question arose. One that caught my attention was this: Does online interaction increase our (western, 1st world) isolation from community, from *real* others? Or does it decrease that aloneness?
Apparently there is an already large and growing body of research (for instance, check out this search on google scholar) on what is termed “computer mediated community” or CMC. Wikipedia has an interesting overview as well
“Michael Keren, who has written Blogosphere: The New Political Arena, suggests individuals who bare their souls in blogs are isolated and lonely, living in a virtual reality instead of forming real relationships or helping to change the world.” (from this provocative article).
I remember Mother Teresa talking about how while the third world has a poverty of basic stuff like food/water, the 1st world has a poverty of community. In blogging about how to MTWABP, are we somehow exacerbating our separation from each other, and our separation from those in least developed countries (for whom internet access is fairly far down the list of “things we don’t have which we’d like to get”)?
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