[onlinecounsellingcollege]

“Some people live in cages with bars built from their own fears and doubts. Some people live in cages with bars built from other people’s fears and doubts; their parents, their friends, their brothers and sisters, their families. Some people live in cages with bars built from the choices others made for them, the circumstances other people imposed upon them. And some people break free.”

— C. JoyBell C

[seriouslyamerica]

“The boomer mentality has an odd amount of sticking power considering it only briefly bore any relationship to reality. For thousands of years, wealth has been concentrated in the hands of a select few, who have used this power to exploit and oppress everyone else. The economist Thomas Piketty writes that in all known societies, the bottom 50% of the population has owned virtually nothing. Globally, this is still true today. The situation grows ever worse. Knowing this about human history, it seems profoundly delusional for the boomers, a generation permitted a fleeting taste of a dignified existence, to believe this occurred because of their superior work ethic. Yet this is what boomers want us to think, and we oblige. Never mind that none of it is true. Never mind that believing these toxic fictions is making young people sick, sad and hopeless. Never mind that this is exactly the same process that causes poor people of all ages to believe they are at fault for their poverty. And never mind that the point of this ideology is to discipline young people’s behaviour through weaponised self-loathing. Instead of demanding better, we engage in futile competition over crumbs. Instead of questioning why life often feels meaningless, why we feel so alienated and inadequate, we turn these beliefs inward. Instead of using this shared experience to build solidarity with each other, we feel shame.”

— Why are the baby boomers desperate to make millennials hate ourselves? | Eleanor Robertson | Comment is free | The Guardian (via welkinalauda)

[moistowlettes]

[puckish-agent-of-change]

shout out to all the kids who aren’t good at what they’re passionate about, and who aren’t passionate about what they’re good at

[brutereason]

“In fact, to me, it is wholly illogical to say that people are “too easily offended.” Worse than illogical, it’s meaningless. It’s like saying that people like spaghetti too much, or that people buy too many red T-shirts; people are not “too easily offended,” but rather, more easily offended than the person making the judgment. Trying to cram intricately subjective matters of taste onto a spectrum whose two extremes are LOGICAL and OFFENDED is a project that is destined to end in frustration. Also, if these comedians’ target audience is characteristically difficult to offend, why are they so seemingly hellbent on joining the college circuit? Sure, it pays well, but you don’t get to take people’s money and then tell them that they aren’t laughing correctly.”

— They Walk A Lonely Road | Empire of Loathing

[queeranarchism]

“The smart way to keep people passive and obedient is to strictly limit the spectrum of acceptable opinion, but allow very lively debate within that spectrum - even encourage the more critical and dissident views. That gives people the sense that there’s free thinking going on, while all the time the presuppositions of the system are being reinforced by the limits put on the range of the debate.”

—

Noam Chomsky (via ohhhkat)

OH WOW THIS IS RELEVANT

(via stormingtheivory)

[voxlunch]

This morning I was working on something, and made an interesting metaphorical observation.

The cutting discs used on this rotary tool are very brittle. You can break them with your fingers. However, mounted on a spindle and spun at thousands of RPM, those same fragile discs can cut through steel.

So the next time you’re feeling weak or useless, consider that you may simply not be getting utilized properly, and that your true potential awaits.

[mrkenyon]

#“Now go out there and spin really fast”

[ambris]

Life advice

[onlinecounsellingcollege]

“Not everyone is healthy enough to have a front row seat in our lives. There are some people in your life that need to be loved from a distance. It’s amazing what you can accomplish when you let go of or at least minimize your time with draining, negative, incompatible, not-going-anywhere relationships. Observe the relationships around you. Pay attention.”

— Unknown (via onlinecounsellingcollege)

[novub]

shout out to people with abusive mothers who have to deal with the world acting like every single mother’s love is so expansive and unconditional and tender when that is the opposite of what we experienced

[onlinecounsellingcollege]

How to Deal with Impossible People

1. Resist the urge to be defensive. Understand very clearly that you cannot beat these kinds of people; they’re called “impossible” for a reason. 2. Accept the situation. Impossible people exist; there’s nothing you can do about it. 3. Do not call out the other person. Bluntly stating the problem will not improve your relationship with an impossible person. Instead of reaching a place of reconciliation, he or she will likely become more difficult. 4. Understand that it’s not you, it’s them. This can be surprisingly difficult, considering that impossible people have complete mastery of shifting the blame. 5. “Detach, disassociate and diffuse.” Staying calm in the heat of the moment is paramount to your personal preservation. Remove yourself from the situation and treat it with indifference. Also, it can help you to feel better by reminding yourself that the side of a conversation that contains the most truth will usually win out in the end. 6. Guard against anger. Chances are that anything you do or say while angry will be used against you in the future. So, do what you can to stay cool and in control. 7. Don’t get cornered. Avoid one-on-ones with this type of person. If possible, try and only deal with them in when others are around. Source: http://www.wikihow.com/Deal-With-Impossible-People (Abridged)

[illness-to-wellness]

““The best advice I’ve ever received is, ‘No one else knows what they’re doing either.””

— Ricky Gervais (via thatlitsite)

[lovethyfatness]

Pictured above: Brenda Oelbaum, artist and activist, with her Venus sculptures, torso sculptures by Nancy Fried, and photography by Ariane Lopez-Huici.

—-

Exhibition: The Fearsome BMI: Women Artists and the Body. March 24 2014 - May 5, 2014 This exhibition will feature artists who deconstruct cultural norms of beauty, and is in conjunction with the Institute for Women’s Leadership Consortium Initiative on Women and Health, and World Health Day Conference and Teach-in.

Artists: Nancy Fried, Ariane Lopez-Huici, Brenda Oelbaum, Monica Ong Reed, and Laura Splan.

Location: Dana Women Artist Series Galleries                 Mabel Smith Douglass Library, Rutgers University                 New Brunswick, NJ

—-

Brenda Oelbaum said of the accompanying conference:

It was the most interesting and diverse group of woman, Activists, Doctors, Sociologists, Authors, Gender Studies, Public Heath Professionals, and Artists.  With the exception of Jane Brody, as key note speaker, whose presentation was deeply problematic, rude and bigoted…It was a very exciting event filled with new ideas, research and intelligent dialogue, on a very complex issue that plagues women’s health and treatment there of…

I feel so honored to have been included in such a ground breaking event. I’m glad I spoke up for myself and I was thrilled that I was heard.  I can only hope I did justice to the cause…and that I have inspired more people to stop dieting. [x]

[reimaginefat]

Where!?!?!?  Why Wasn’t I there??? I LOVE those Nancy Fried Sculptures.

[bootyschool-deactivated20160401]

talk to kids like they’re people and take full interest in what they’re saying because they’re forming their personalities and it’s really vital that they know that their opinions are important and what they have to say deserves validation and respect. so when your three year old niece tells you that dragons don’t like cupcakes because the color blue is a spoon you better nod your head and ask her to explain more about that. 

[illness-to-wellness]

“Healing may not be so much about getting better, as about letting go of everything that isn’t you - all of the expectations, all of the beliefs - and becoming who you are.”

— Rachel Naomi Remen (via One Love)

[frenchtoastadventures]

“If anyone slaps you on the right cheek, turn to them the other cheek also”

—

Matt 5:39

This specifically refers to a hand striking the side of a person’s face, tells quite a different story when placed in it’s proper historical context. In Jesus’s time, striking someone of a lower class ( a servant) with the back of the hand was used to assert authority and dominance. If the persecuted person “turned the other cheek,” the discipliner was faced with a dilemma. The left hand was used for unclean purposes, so a back-hand strike on the opposite cheek would not be performed. Another alternative would be a slap with the open hand as a challenge or to punch the person, but this was seen as a statement of equality. Thus, by turning the other cheek the persecuted was in effect putting an end to the behavior or if the slapping continued the person would lawfully be deemed equal and have to be released as a servant/slave.   

(via thefullnessofthefaith)

THAT makes a lot more sense, now, thank you. 

(via guardianrock)

I can attest to the original poster’s comments. A few years back I took an intensive seminar on faith-based progressive activism, and we spent an entire unit discussing how many of Jesus’ instructions and stories were performative protests designed to shed light on and ridicule the oppressions of that time period as a way to emphasize the absurdity of the social hierarchy and give people the will and motivation to make changes for a more free and equal society.

For example, the next verse (Matthew 5:40) states “And if anyone wants to sue you and take your shirt, hand over your coat as well.” In that time period, men traditionally wore a shirt and a coat-like garment as their daily wear. To sue someone for their shirt was to put them in their place - suing was generally only performed to take care of outstanding debts, and to be sued for one’s shirt meant that the person was so destitute the only valuable thing they could repay with was their own clothing. However, many cultures at that time (including Hebrew peoples) had prohibitions bordering on taboo against public nudity, so for a sued man to surrender both his shirt and his coat was to turn the system on its head and symbolically state, in a very public forum, that “I have no money with which to repay this person, but they are so insistent on taking advantage of my poverty that I am leaving this hearing buck-ass naked. His greed is the cause of a shameful public spectacle.”

All of a sudden an action of power (suing someone for their shirt) becomes a powerful symbol of subversion and mockery, as the suing patron either accepts the coat (and therefore full responsibility as the cause of the other man’s shameful display) or desperately chases the protester around trying to return his clothes to him, making a fool of himself in front of his peers and the entire gathered community.

Additionally, the next verse (Matthew 5:41; “If anyone forces you to go one mile, go with them two miles.”) was a big middle finger to the Romans who had taken over Judea and were not seen as legitimate authority by the majority of the population there. Roman law stated that a centurion on the march could require a Jew (and possibly other civilians as well, although I don’t remember explicitly) to carry his pack at any time and for any reason for one mile along the road (and because of the importance of the Roman highway system in maintaining rule over the expansive empire, the roads tended to be very well ordered and marked), however hecould not require any service beyond the next mile marker. For a Jewish civilian to carry a centurion’s pack for an entire second mile was a way to subvert the authority of the occupying forces. If the civilian wouldn’t give the pack back at the end of the first mile, the centurion would either have to forcibly take it back or report the civilian to his commanding officer (both of which would result in discipline being taken against the soldier for breaking Roman law) or wait until the civilian volunteered to return the pack, giving the Judean native implicit power over the occupying Roman and completely subverting the power structure of the Empire. Can you imagine how demoralizing that must have been for the highly ordered Roman armies that patrolled the region?

Jesus was a pacifist, but his teachings were in no way passive. There’s a reason he was practically considered a terrorist by the reigning powers, and it wasn’t because he healed the sick and fed the hungry.

(via central-avenue)

[brutereason]

“Why do poor people make stupid, illogical decisions to buy status symbols? For the same reason all but only the most wealthy buy status symbols, I suppose. We want to belong. And, not just for the psychic rewards, but belonging to one group at the right time can mean the difference between unemployment and employment, a good job as opposed to a bad job, housing or a shelter, and so on. Someone mentioned on twitter that poor people can be presentable with affordable options from Kmart. But the issue is not about being presentable. Presentable is the bare minimum of social civility. It means being clean, not smelling, wearing shirts and shoes for service and the like. Presentable as a sufficient condition for gainful, dignified work or successful social interactions is a privilege. It’s the aging white hippie who can cut the ponytail of his youthful rebellion and walk into senior management while aging black panthers can never completely outrun the effects of stigmatization against which they were courting a revolution. Presentable is relative and, like life, it ain’t fair.”

— The Logic of Stupid Poor People | tressiemc

[sociolab]

“Our individual and social connections to the past are critical, for without an understanding of them, we cannot understand ourselves. Thus history is the key to three questions: Where did we come from? Who are we? And where are we going? History, properly understood, affords no ultimate answers to any of these questions, but the constant process of asking, probing, learning and asking again is the only way by which man can move forward, surmounting his own limitations and foibles.”

— Scott Horton, “What Is, and to What End Do We Study History,” 2007