this is a good thing btw.

i just keep on changing!

where can i get good turkish food in seattle?

hmph.

i have made reading everything i can think of the focus
of about 8 weeks of my life. i have spent many many
obsessional hours on it. i have talked constantly
about it and my viewpoints changed daily as i investigated
deeper and deeper into the political mire. i may have even
discovered a small love of political science?

i want this election to go well with no last minute hijinks.

i now even more firmly dislike the republican
party and what it represents. my feelings border on hatred
but i wont go there. its a very difficult challenge to my own ethic
based in tolerance to not use the same hateful posturing as i have
perceived from the neocons. many on the liberal side
are guilty of the same intolerance accused of the right.
this stooping behavior allows no dignity and goes
against my basic belief system for whomever
perpetrates it. isnt it funny how we accuse others
of what we are most guilty of ourselves? is it our very
guilt that spurs on the accusation in the first place?
i digress.

to their merit, the old school republicans do have
a basic idea that i agree with however surprising
i find this within myself. that is one of small government.
however the party of the “moral majority/christian right”
countless human rights abuses as well as degradation of
our constitution, big military spending as well as the nationalization
of our banking system endorsed by leaders of the far
right (to name only a few) do not have my respect either
when it comes right down to it. additionally i have
found the policy of their tendency to alienate moderates
within their own party to be baffling. if carried to an extreme as it
seems to be going currently, it doesnt bode well for the
future legitimacy of a republican brand.

going further with the idea of small government, it has been
argued that a small government would not support
a social welfare system. while this is theoretically interesting
in practice it would be draconion and lead to a
form of stupefying fascism if really thought through carefully.
we see echos of this already if we really look closely.

as for the democratic side i am much more skeptical
than i ever have been for my own “allegiance.” i
am in strong disbelief that this will resolve in any
real way the huge problems and issues facing the country.
i believe much more should be done to deal with
problems on so many fronts it is almost impossible to even
know where to start. i feel that the democratic party
in many ways overall is only a cosmetic alternative
to the status quo i so abhor from conservatives.
to me the democratic party has lost much of a real impact for
progressive change. i have been annoyed with democrats
lack of creative solutions–how is dumping more
money into a broken system a better way?
but i also think democrats are the best shot i have at being
represented.

i find the voices of the independents in whatever
shade they appear to be interesting but until they
reach the 5% needed to be taken seriously as a major
party, there will be little impact on the lives of those
that do not adhere to either brand a or brand b.

i support an obama presidency because i
think (hope) that it would be the best chance for my
voice to be heard from one of the independent parties
which are closer to my actual residence on the political spectrum.

we shall see.

i think this is the most important election of my lifetime.

all i have is hope.

2. Liberals believe individuals should be tolerant and respectful of difference. It is liberals who have supported and continue to support the civil rights movement, affirmative action, the Equal Rights Amendment and the rights of gays and lesbians…

3. Liberals believe individuals have a right and a responsibility to participate in public debate. It is liberals who have championed and continue to champion expansion of the franchise; the elimination of obstacles to voting… They believe, with Justice Louis Brandeis, that “the greatest menace to freedom is an inert people.”

4. …It is liberals who have defended and continue to defend the freedom of the press to investigate and challenge the government, the protection of individual privacy from overbearing government monitoring, and the right of individuals to reproductive freedom. (Note that libertarians, often thought of as “conservatives,” share this value with liberals.)

5. Liberals believe government must respect and affirmatively safeguard the liberty, equality and dignity of each individual. It is liberals who have championed and continue to champion the rights of racial, religious and ethnic minorities, political dissidents, persons accused of crime and the outcasts of society. It is liberals who have insisted on the right to counsel, a broad application of the right to due process of law and the principle of equal protection for all people.

6. Liberals believe government has a fundamental responsibility to help those who are less fortunate. It is liberals who have supported and continue to support government programs to improve health care, education, social security, job training and welfare for the neediest members of society. It is liberals who maintain that a national community is like a family and that government exists in part to “promote the general welfare.”

7. Liberals believe government should never act on the basis of sectarian faith. It is liberals who have opposed and continue to oppose school prayer and the teaching of creationism in public schools and who support government funding for stem-cell research, the rights of gays and lesbians and the freedom of choice for women.

8. Liberals believe courts have a special responsibility to protect individual liberties. It is principally liberal judges and justices who have preserved and continue to preserve freedom of expression, individual privacy, freedom of religion and due process of law. (Conservative judges and justices more often wield judicial authority to protect property rights and the interests of corporations, commercial advertisers and the wealthy.)

9. Liberals believe government must protect the safety and security of the people, for without such protection liberalism is impossible. This, of course, is less a tenet of liberalism than a reply to those who attack liberalism. The accusation that liberals are unwilling to protect the nation from internal and external dangers is false. Because liberals respect competing values, such as procedural fairness and individual dignity, they weigh more carefully particular exercises of government power (such as the use of secret evidence, hearsay and torture), but they are no less willing to use government authority in other forms (such as expanded police forces and international diplomacy) to protect the nation and its citizens.

10. Liberals believe government must protect the safety and security of the people, without unnecessarily sacrificing constitutional values. It is liberals who have demanded and continue to demand legal protections to avoid the conviction of innocent people in the criminal justice system, reasonable restraints on government surveillance of American citizens, and fair procedures to ensure that alleged enemy combatants are in fact enemy combatants. Liberals adhere to the view expressed by Brandeis some 80 years ago: “Those who won our independence … did not exalt order at the cost of liberty.”

source: http://economistsview.typepad.com/economistsview/2006/10/what_does_it_me.html

unity.

its an aprilia rs50.
ive never laughed so hard on a bike before…
it sounds like a hairdryer.

although it looks fast, it is so not.
it is however 50 ccs and/or the power of 12 horses pulling with fury!
this wee little bike is extremely fun and light.
anyone could pick this bike up, with one hand even.
she is such a joy!

i needed to remember the fun and worry less.
if its not fun, then whats the point?!

summer here is unbelievably spectacularly beautiful.
its also very frenzied because it is so short and yet so amazing.
i do enjoy it so.
this seems ironic to me that i would enjoy sunshine (albeit in very small doses)
because i am such a creature of the night. i do though.
but on the other hand i sometimes feel obligated to
be doing something amazing every moment in summer
because it is so short and gorgeous.
the pressure gets to me sometimes!
i want to relax and not feel the pressure all
the time to make the most of it, y’know?

as for news–i have been absurdly busy.
i got my drivers liscense finally (i turn 38 on thursday–shhh!).
this is something of a small accomplishment for me because gentle
reader, i never wanted a driver liscense or for that matter, a car.
so why go to the trouble to learn to drive then you might ask?
ah yes. well–i wanted to be legal and legit for riding the motorcycle.
here in washington, i *must* have a drivers liscense first.
blah.

it has taken me a year to do this, driving other peoples cars.
i could write a mini novella about my experiences with cars
and the dmv but i will spare us both.
really not that interesting.
suffice to say, at long last it is completed and i shall never have to do this again.
phew!

in other aspects of my life i am reasonably happy if not a little ornery lately.
it seems i have *some* mysterious force with in me that simply has to be contrary
and do things that people arent expecting or necessarily wanting me to do.
i hate being fenced in maybe.
im not sure what it is exactly.
i will just leave it at that.

then there is also the fact that as of late i have been booked solid for a week for social obligations.
i dislike being intensely busy so this doesnt please me.
i like to have time to contemplate and be quiet.
during this time, i also think up new ideas for paintings
and paint them. not being able to makes me cranky.

its not even that its because im an introvert, although that is certainly part of it.
i think honestly its just because i am not that interested in what others are doing in a way.
that makes it sound more unfriendly than it is but im not sure how else to phrase it.
the reality is that many many more people are attracted to me than i could possibly
ever have time for. and while i do sometimes enjoy outings and such, the rub lies
in the fact that the very thing that attracts so many well meaning people to me
(my artwork, being an international woman of intrigue and such)
is the often times the very things that they would seek to distract me from doing.

does anyone else here have this problem sometimes?
i feel like its something of a cry baby type scenario.
like–oh please, your life is *so* hard.
but i am curious nevertheless.

soon, street legal riding.
at last!

there.

i said it.

i feel much better now?

Religion & Philosophy

As a virtue, courage is discussed extensively in Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics, where its vice of deficiency is cowardice and its vice of excess is recklessness.[1]

The Tao Te Ching states that courage is derived from love (“? loving ? causes ? ability ? brave”) and explains: “One of courage, with audacity, will kill. One of courage, but gentle, spares life. From these two kinds of courage arise harm and benefit.”[2][3]

It is understood that physical and moral courage is important in combat.

There are ample illustrations of courage in religion, such as in persecution or even martyrdom. In Roman Catholicism, courage is one of the four cardinal virtues, along with prudence, justice, and temperance. (“Cardinal” in this sense means “pivotal”; it is one of the four cardinal virtues because to possess any virtue, a person must be able to sustain it in the face of difficulty). In both Catholicism and Anglicanism, courage is also one of the seven gifts of the Holy Spirit.

The precise view of what constitutes courage not only varies among cultures, but among individuals. For instance, some define courage as lacking fear in a situation that would normally generate it. Others, in contrast, hold that courage requires one to have fear and then overcome it.

There are also more subtle distinctions in the definition of courage. For example, some distinguish between courage and foolhardiness in that a courageous person overcomes a justifiable fear for an even more noble purpose. If the fear is not justifiable or if the purpose is not noble, then the courage is either false or foolhardy.

Moral courage, more than physical courage, is widely debated. It is frequently regarded as courage in following one’s own ethics which may result in the individual feeling isolated from colleagues, or even family. Also moral courage is facing shame, scandal, prejudice or even discouragement and defeating it.

Søren Kierkegaard opposed courage to angst, while Paul Tillich opposed an existential courage to be to non-being, fundamentally equating it with religion:

“Courage is the self-affirmation of being in spite of the fact of non-being. It is the act of the individual self in taking the anxiety of non-being upon itself by affirm­ing itself … in the anxiety of guilt and condemnation. … every courage to be has openly or covertly a religious root. For religion is the state of being grasped by the power of being itself.”[4]

Merriam Webster Unabridged Dictionary 1934 – 1980 editions: “1.The heart, as the seat of intelligence or feeling”. Significant is the absence of any mention of bravery. Instead, this longstanding definition indicates that courageous actions and decisions are motivated by something deeper and more comprehensive than cerebral intelligence. The simplest illustration is when a parent runs into a burning house to save a child, not out of the bravery associated with soldiers in battle, but rather out of the courage which results from profoundly felt love.

J. R. R. Tolkien identified in his 1936 lecture “Beowulf: The Monsters and the Critics” a “Northern ‘theory of courage’”_the heroic or “virtuous pagan” insistence to do the right thing even in the face of certain defeat without promise of reward or salvation:

It is the strength of the northern mythological imagination that it faced this problem, put the monsters in the centre, gave them victory but no honour, and found a potent and terrible solution in naked will and courage. ‘As a working theory absolutely impregnable.’ So potent is it, that while the older southern imagination has faded forever into literary ornament, the northern has power, as it were, to revive its spirit even in our own times. It can work, as it did even with the goðlauss Viking, without gods: martial heroism as its own end. (p. 25f.)

Virtuous pagan heroism or courage in this sense is “trusting in your own strength,” as observed by Jacob Grimm in his Teutonic Mythology,

men who, turning away in utter disgust and doubt from the heathen faith, placed their reliance on their own strength and virtue. Thus in the Sôlar lioð 17 we read of Vêbogi and Râdey â sik þau trûðu, “in themselves they trusted”,

This “virtuous godlessness” is the nontheism of Pema Chödrön, the “relaxing with the ambiguity and uncertainty of the present moment without reaching for anything to protect ourselves [...] finally realizing there is no babysitter you can count on.”[5]

wikipedia