Coucoumellisms

Gin and Tonic Gin & Tonic

You’ll need to read one or both of the following articles in order to understand this post. Cast Off - How knitters Turned Nasty and Knitting's Infinity War Part III - Showdown at Yarningham Talk about #i deologicallypossessed as Jordan Peterson calls it: “Ideology is a much-abused word. Many who bandy about this term are under the mistaken notion that ideology is synonymous with strongly holding to philosophical or theological truths. On the contrary, ideology is, instead, an intellectual system of ideas or rigid abstract formulas mixed with scientific jargon and some empirical facts that claims knowledge about reaching perfection in the temporal order. ” - George Marlin, “Catholicism: Not Ideology”. Ideologies tend to use one group of people as the scapegoats. In Nazi Germany, it was the Jews, in the Soviet Union, it was the Bourgeoisie. Ideologies also turn people on the same side against each other. In the Soviet Union, people were sent to the Gulag for the silliest ...

(Originally posted on thinkspot)              I'm going to try to put some perspective on the Wet'suwet'en situation here, to the best of my knowledge, (which isn't perfect and this may need to be tweaked later - if anyone sees anything that is not exact - let me know).              To begin with, you should understand that First Nations people (or Indigenous peoples) are separated into different cultural groups (similar language and social structure. ) For instance, you have the Iroquois , who are not a nation, but a group of nations including Cayuga, Cherokee, Huron, Mohawk, etc. You also have the Algonquians , another group of nations which include Cree, Ojibway, Algonquin, etc.               Within these groups or families, you sometimes have smaller families. And within these smaller groups, you have the different nations (or tribes,) and within those nations, you h...

In an effort to be empathetic recently, (literature on the subject describes good listeners as empathetic, and one way to be empathetic is to affirm someone’s emotions), I told a friend of mine who has been dealing with a lot of physically and emotionally draining and difficult things in the last decade or more, that I was sorry that certain circumstances brought her tremendous anxiety and that I didn’t know what to say to that. This particular friend has had encounters with racism, to add on to everything else she had to deal with in her personal and family life. It would seem that empathy no longer cuts it these days, as my effort backfired.  I was lambasted by a friend of hers, no one I know, a complete stranger to me, who chastised me with this: “You could start by apologizing for not realizing how your privilege can further wound the people around you that don’t have it. When you can’t look outside your own experience to be able to understand why so many people are ov...