Skip to main content

Elizabeth Lesser: Take "the Other" to lunch

  • Martin Luther King - I can never be what I ought to be until you are what you ought to be
  • Mother Theresa - The problem with the world is that we draw the circle of the family to small
  • We give too much voice to the most divisive amongst us
  • Book titles reflect this - Pinheads and patriots; Arguing with idiots
  • Negative otherizing morphs into violent extremism
  • Counteracting otherizing A strategy: Take the other to lunch
  • Agree on some ground rules - ahead of time
  • Be conversational, don't persuade, interrupt, be curious, listen, be real, don't try to change the other side, acknowledge that it's a first step
  • What issues concern you, what have you always wanted to ask someone from the other side
  • Two people dropping the pretence of being know it alls
  • Two people practicing ubuntu

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Richard Dawkins on militant atheism

Dawkins has become outspoken in his atheism , coining the word "bright" (as an alternate to atheist), and encouraging fellow non-believers to stand up and be identified. intelligent design is creationism redressed creationists are right that evolution is hostile to evolution statistical improbability of the complexity of design - intelligent design but the intelligent designer wouldn't have made such a hash - why would the designer be bothered with disapproving of our sex lives, favor our side in the war Dawkins suggest rocking the boat - attack religion as a whole taboo of speaking ill about religion - Douglas Adams said, sacred ideas at the heart of religion, holy cows, you can support any operating system you want, but the challenge of religious ideas is off limits science and religion are corrosive to each other - religious explanations are trivial and improbably, teaches people to accept authoritarianism takes the example of famous scientists and imagines

Mary Daly explains the pejoration (of one) of the words related to women

Of Death and Conscience: Brief thoughts on gender role and the values of the dominant culture in medicine : "“Under the influence of the Church and the newly formed male-dominated medical establishment, the word “witch,” which originally meant “wise one,” became a term of scorn. It took a reign of terror lasting several hundred years to radically alter a way of life thousands of years old. Millions of women who carried the healing lineage were systematically killed (see The Church and the Second Sex by Mary Daly).”"

VHEMT (Vehement) is a anti-procreation movement

"Here's a novel idea to save the planet: Remove the main cause of its woes - homo sapiens. The Voluntary Human Extinction Movement (VHEMT - pronounced "vehement") proposes the phasing out the human race. "When every human chooses to stop breeding, Earth's biosphere will be allowed to return to its former glory, and all remaining creatures will be free to live, die, and evolve (if they believe in evolution)," offers the movement's website. But 'it's going to take all of us going'." See www.vhemt.org SOURCE: Email invite. I thought I was the only one who thought like this. Everyone I know thanks the universe that I didn't study microbiology. I would have developed a human-specific killer virus. WE are the vermin.