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AMERICA’S PRISONS AS ONE CRIME AGAINST HUMANITY AFTER ANOTHER

                    This Day in History                  

Today, as a continuing part of an ongoing Food for the Day streak, today is the National Hoagie Day; and, back in antiquity, a thousand six hundred and ninety years ago,more or less to the day, the iconic Helena of Constantinople asserted her ‘discovery’ of the ‘True Cross’ at the site which supposedly contained the remains of Jesus of Nazareth; exactly three centuries and three years hence, in 629, the Eastern Roman Empire’s forces returned to Constantinople from their defeat of Persian imperial threats to Heraclius’ reign; MORE HERE

                A Thought for the Day                

All of us accumulate so many debts in the course of infancy and childhood—a time which all passes in a seamless flash to launch us into an entirely different set of exigencies—that we could not possibly remunerate, except in two ways, what our parents and teachers and siblings and others have freely given to help us along life’s pathways: the first method for making good on our accounts with the past, to assist others in need at every turn and in any way that is possible, comes readily to most people; the second means for paying back the countless cases of succor and generosity, not nearly so obvious or easy to carry out, involves paying attention and then acting on what we discover, for only in this manner, by increasing our awareness, may we manage, on average, to contribute to the creation of improvements to and beneficence in the world that flows by around us, full of other sojourners whose needs and hopes and responsibilities more or less exactly parallel our own.

consciousness OR awareness OR "deep insight" OR wisdom OR "deep knowledge" OR "in depth knowledge" necessity OR requisite OR requirement OR "sine qua non" OR inherent "social improvement" OR "social advance" OR "social justice" analysis OR explication OR deconstruction radical OR marxist OR socialist = 5,750,000 Hits.

              TODAY’S HEART, SOUL, &                                  AWARENESS VIDEO                  

EVENTS

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Mindful Heroin

A powerful piece by an insightful and courageous thinker who dares to look at the current trend of spiritual band aids that everyone from ashram dwellers to corporate motivational speakers extol: “Here we are, in the ruins of modernity. Fascism’s rising while the global economy’s stagnating. That means very real pain for millions, billions, of real humans. And we’re…meditating?

If the Buddha were alive today, he probably wouldn’t say: go meditate. He’d say: go fix your societies so there’s less suffering in them.”

Rich and Evocative Poetry

An American Scholar look into the work of an iconic, celebrated poet whose words marked a new direction in literature: “Adrienne Rich was, without question, the unofficial poet laureate of 20th-century American feminism. Over the years, as she evolved from a stereotypical “daddy’s girl” and a precocious disciple of W. B. Yeats and Wallace Stevens into an aesthetic, critical, and political pioneer, she became a prophet for both the women whose causes she championed and the country whose flaws she lamented and whose transformation she envisioned. Many critics thought her crotchety or, worse, “strident,” while she herself sometimes said that she spoke from a marginalized perspective.”

Publishing World and Sustainable Development

A Scholarly Kitchen article that examines the UN’s tackling the establishment of media developments in the publishing world in hopes of addressing the world’s intractable social and environmental problems: “Working with publishers we’ve enabled around four million students and researchers to access the journals and books they need, and helped to strengthen university libraries, and build stronger national systems to sustain this into the future. The flow of the latest scholarly information through the labs, libraries and lecture halls of hundreds and hundreds of universities and research centers is a triumph of partnership and of commitment. These are partnerships that we want to continue, and which will play an important part in delivering our new strategy.”

For Profit College Bites the Dust

A Pacific Standard post that analyses some next steps for those concerned and “The announcement has elicited mixed reactions. Opponents of the for-profit education industry have cheered the government’s recent aggressive action against the schools. But experts also point out that the closure of one school doesn’t solve the industry’s larger problems. Former students, for example, are not eligible for loan discharge (unless they can prove they were defrauded) and many will still struggle to pay large debts on limited incomes. And current ITT students desperate to find an institution willing to accept their transfer credits may now be vulnerable to the outsized promises of other sub-par schools.”

Mental Illness as Myth

An academic essay that dares question the legitimacy of mental disorders as being an actual illness: “My aim in this essay is to raise the question “Is there such a thing as mental illness?” and to argue that there is not. Since the notion of mental illness is extremely widely used nowadays, inquiry into the ways in which this term is employed would seem to be especially indicated.  Mental illness, of course, is not literally a “thing” — or physical object — and hence it can “exist” only in the same sort of way in which other theoretical concepts exist. Yet, familiar theories are in the habit of posing, sooner or later — at least to those who come to believe in them — as “objective truths” (or “facts”).  During certain historical periods, explanatory conceptions such as deities, witches, and microorganisms appeared not only as theories but as self-evident causes of a vast number of events.  I submit that today mental illness is widely regarded in a somewhat similar fashion, that is, as the cause of innumerable diverse happenings.  As an antidote to the complacent use of the notion of mental illness — whether as a self-evident phenomenon, theory, or cause–let us ask this question: What is meant when it is asserted that someone is mentally ill?”