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11
Feb
2018
Years ago, someone invented the term “compassion fatigue” -- loosely defined as “indifference to charitable appeals on behalf of those who are suffering, experienced as a result of the frequency or number of such appeals.”
It has also been called Secondary Traumatic Stress -- a kind of trauma resulting from recurring exposure to scenes of misery and suffering, which leads to emotional withdrawal, to a gradual lessening of compassion.
Lately, I’ve been suffering a slightly different kind of fatigue -- petition fatigue.
Every day, my email inbox contains a batch of on-line petitions. They come from Avaaz, Leadnow, SomeOfUs, Freedom United, Change.org -- the list goes on and on.
The petitions urge me to click, to add my name to the thousands, perhaps millions, who plead with authorities. To free a political prisoner in Afghanistan. To prevent a young boy from being deported to Syria. To prosecute a man who raped and dismembered a young girl in Pakistan. To ban fish farms in B.C. To abolish slavery. To protect tropical rain forests.
Categories: Sharp Edges
Tags: Sarahah, Google Play, App Store, software, cyberbullying
8
Next Wednesday, the church Season of Epiphany will end.
All through Epiphany, church services have focused on the coming of light – like the lightbulb that used to go on over cartoon characters’ heads when they got an idea.
Light is important. But I found myself wondering, one evening during a quiet, contemplative worship service, why we ignore darkness.
Darkness is also important. Seeds germinate in darkness. During the hours of darkness, our bodies recover so we can face a new day. We cuddle loved ones in darkness.
During that contemplative service, most of the church was dark. We gathered in a softly lit circle, around a candle, feeling ourselves wrapped in a shawl of darkness. We felt close.
Most families have fond memories of sitting around a campfire, watching the flames dance, watching the firelight flicker on children’s faces.
Light and darkness are partners, not enemies.
Categories: Soft Edges
Tags: darkness, light, epiphany
4
“Why do you keep writing about religion?” one of my correspondents asked. “Does anyone care anymore?”
Statistics support his point. I’ve written before about plunging membership in churches. In the white western world, that is – Asia and Africa seem to be flourishing. U.S. evangelical churches have been the exception, until now, but surveys suggest their decline simply lags about 40 years behind the mainline churches.
But that doesn’t make religion irrelevant. It just means that more and more people aren’t aware of what’s pushing their buttons.
And their buttons are their belief systems.
Which may or may not be what’s traditionally called “religious.”
Author Ayn Rand called herself an atheist, but she believed passionately in every individual’s right to live without government interference. Her ideas permeate the U.S. Republican party.
David Suzuki professes no religious beliefs. But in interviews, it’s clear he believes passionately in evolution.
Carl Sagan believed in science; Stephen Hawking believes in mathematics; Sigmund Freud believed in sex.
Tags: Hell, judgement, televangelists
27
Jan
Thursday morning, Patrick Brown resigned as leader of the Progressive Conservative Party of Ontario over allegations of sexual misconduct.
Wednesday night, Brown called a hasty news conference to deny the allegations. “These allegations are false,” Brown fumed. “Every one of them. I will defend myself as hard as I can, with all the means at my disposal.”
If he wasn’t being honest, he was a damned good actor.
Don’t misunderstand me -- I am not defending whatever Patrick Brown did or didn’t do. Or, for that matter, what any of the other host of men brought down by the #MeToo revelations may or may not have done.
The parade of big names knocked off their pedestals grows daily. But by my reading of news reports, Larry Nassar, former medical doctor for USA Gymnastics, is the only one who has actually been tried and convicted.
All the rest have been toppled – whether fired, demoted, resigned -- by unproven allegations.
Tags: #MeToo, Allegations, sexual misconduct
24
I was born without a theory. About anything. I didn’t know up from down – literally, since I had just emerged from a watery and weightless womb.
But from that instant on, I started creating theories to help me make sense of the world I found myself in. Everyone does. We figure out that moms are warm, soft, and soothing. Floors are hard. Smiles make big people smile back.
As time passes, we develop theories about everything. As we amass more experience, those theories get more sophisticated, better at predicting outcomes. We figure out that compliments generate more support than criticism, for example. That men and women are different. That blue-chip stocks are a safer investment than snake oil or swampland.
And, for the most part, we modify our theories to take account of new facts as they emerge.
Tags: Seth Godin, theories, trains, belief systems