Blog Archives - Northern Overexposure

Into Egypt - Suheir Hammad

2/26/2012

I like much of the work of Suheir Hammad the Palestinian-American poet. Her poetry focuses on themes of war and peace., social justice, and politics. Her poem "First Writings Since" on the aftermath of 9/11 is deeply moving and her poem "What I Will" is a defiant stand against war and occupation. Very powerful. This poem entitled "Into Egypt" was one of the first poems that she not only wrote but produced with a colleague. The images, music, and sound are part of the entire poem so in that sense it is one of the first multi-media representations of poetry on modern political themes. This kind of poetic representation is new and it is interesting how established artists are using the media as a form of poetic expression. This poem was written as the Egyptian revolution was beginning and the Arab spring was getting underway.

to be ready

you will want beauty

as your face

you will want to greet the day with a heart

you will wish was open

you will want to be brave

and you only fear

want belief in anything

and everything is doubt

when there is light finally you might squint

the sight of it all might make you

steady you will want

a vision ahead

redemptive dissonance

music for the end of

chorus for the coming of

manifest hum into hymn

the noise of it rivers you

you will cry water into flames

vulture your own heart to feed

you will want to love your self

at all enough you will want

to flee and forget the leaving

will have to leap still wanting

you will want to wait for witness

you will want to wait for those already gone

you will want until you are want

you will want until

you are ready...

Murdoch Inc. aka Fox News Busted

2/26/2012

Check out the clip below from an Iraq veteran asking a question of John Bolton regarding "blowback". The original questioner posted the clip on You Tube and also provides an editorial about how the audience actually responded to Bolton (booed) as opposed to how Fox edited it (applause).

It is not just Fox but many media outlets who can selectively edit, clip and frame what you see and thereby shape a narrative and a sense of reality that is different from that which is experienced, in this instance, in the studio itself.

I am reminded of the famous saying in Russia during the Soviet period. There were two main organs for news run by the state; Pravda and Izvestia. Pravda meant "truth" and Izvestia meant "news". The Russians had a pithy running joke that is lost in translation but ran along the lines of there is no truth (pravda) in news (isvestia) and no news (isvestia) in truth (pravda).

Oscar Predictions

2/26/2012

Today is the Academy Awards. I usually watch them and probably will in and out tonight as I work on some other things I need to have done for next week. I have seen some, but not all, of the movies nominated. Here goes:

1. Best Picture: The Tree of Life (A big caveat here. There is a lot of buzz about The Artist and it looks intriguing too). Still, I will go with The Tree of Life for the spiritual themes it tries to weave throughout.The movie does not follow a coherent plot line but instead acts as memory does through images and sensations. It taps into primordial memory and the Jungian collective unconscious; the origin of the world as it plays out in our experience in ways that we are not conscious of. The move begins with a quote from Job which serves as an anchor for the rest of the movie. "Where were you when I laid the foundations of the earth ... when the morning stars sang together?"

2. Best Actor: George Clooney. The movie The Descendents is a heartfelt one and Clooney is very good as the father trying to hold things together.

3. Best Actress: Glenn Close. In Albert Nobbs, Close plays Albert Nobbs a waiter who falls in love. The stretching of gender performances and the complexity of relationships are all fused in this very sensitive film. It is an important political statement relative to the gendering of roles and the freedom required for sexual relationships within those parameters. In one scene, the love interest says to Albert that he is the strangest man she has every met. In one sense, it speaks to the inherent different of the sexes while at the same time challenging the gendering that occurs within society relative to the sexes.

4. Best Actor in Supporting Role: Jonah Hill. I played a clip from Moneyball below. That clip features Jonah Hill. Easy choice for me.

5. Best Actress in Supporting Role: Octavia Spencer in The Help. The movie deserves a lift and Octavia Spencer was fantastic in Doubt and doubles down in this role.

6. Best Director: Terrence Malick. The Tree of Life for his vision and communication of it on the screen. The only analogy I can find is Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey.

7. Cinematography: The Artist. The black and white classic look helps to bring the period alive. Shadows and mood are conveyed perfectly.

Vatican revokes document subjugating indigenous people

2/25/2012

Interesting article from Dominican Life. The Vatican formally rescinded Inter Coetera, the papal bull from 1493 that gave Spain the unlimited right to posses all undiscovered new land. While, the doctrine was "revoked by the Sublimis Deus document of 1537 by Pope Paul III and reiterated by the Second Vatican Council, which states that “Indians and all other people who may later be discover by Christians, are by no means to be deprived of their liberty or the possession of their property…”, it still retains important symbolic value.

The history of the Catholic Church with respect to aboriginal people in North America has been mixed. Michael Stogre, the Canadian Jesuit wrote a good book entitled "That the World May Believe" on the history of papal social thought on indigenous people. Stogre argues that as interpreters of natural law, the Catholic Church did hold that indigenous people did have natural dominion to the land and therefore could not legally be enslaved. I will have to reread the book to see how right to the land figured in this. Afterall, indigenous people were dispossessed of their original lands and the legal recourse that native people are seeking here in Canada is integrally connected to the history of European colonization. The Catholic Church was heavily involved in the colonial project of the European nations most notably through residential schools.

Additionally, we need to understand that the colonization of North America by Europe involved primarily three different countries; Britain. France and Spain. Each country had a different approach to assimilation and subjugation. Spain was the most draconian. Bartolomé de Las Casas is an important Dominican human rights activist who was very instrumental in the fifteenth century criticizing the manner in which Spain treated the indigenous people. I am sure he would be pleased with this symbolic development some 500 years later.

Perceived Justice

2/22/2012

I will begin with this poem from Gerard Manley Hopkins.

Justus quidem tu es, Domine, si disputem tecum; verumtamen
justa loquar ad te: Quare via impiorum prosperatur? &c. (Jerem. xii 1.)

Thou art indeed just, Lord, if I contend
With thee; but, sir, so what I plead is just.
Why do sinners’ ways prosper? and why must
Disappointment all I endeavour end?
Wert thou my enemy, O thou my friend,
How wouldst thou worse, I wonder, than thou dost
Defeat, thwart me? Oh, the sots and thralls of lust
Do in spare hours more thrive than I that spend,
Sir, life upon thy cause. See, banks and brakes
Now, leavèd how thick! lacèd they are again
With fretty chervil, look, and fresh wind shakes
Them; birds build – but not I build; no, but strain,
Time’s eunuch, and not breed one work that wakes.
Mine, O thou lord of life, send my roots rain.

Today at a workshop on management we were presented with four types of perceived justice. The facilitator was of the opinion that there is not really any fairness or real justice in the world although people believe there is. From the point of view of people we manage, therefore, it is important that they perceive our actions as just. To the claim that it is naive of staff or people in general to believe in that the world is fair or just, I would give a qualified yes. I will explain my qualification below.

While she did not use this language, I would argue that all leaders have an ethical obligation to behave in a just fashion. Assuming, for the sake of argument, that justice is a commodity as opposed to an outcome, she framed justice according to four domains.

1. Distributive Justice
2. Procedural Justice
3. Interpersonal Justice
4. Informational justice

Distributive justice refers to the perceived fairness of distribution or allocation of rewards; procedural justice to the perceived fairness of the procedures used to make decisions; interpersonal justice to the respect, sensitivity and other interpersonal dynamics; and informational justice refers to providing people with adequate explanations.

I think that this is a very useful way to frame decision making and I believe that justice is an important value, and indeed is one of the four cardinal virtues and this way of thinking about our activity is indeed a very useful tool when problem solving and communicating. As a virtue, therefore, justice must be something observable in our experience. Granted, it is far easier to see the contrary as Hopkins relays in his poem. Still there is, I believe justice.

The bottom line is that there are often no easy answers to the complexities of life or of leadership. However, that is different than saying that actions do not have to comport with values, such as justice, however illusory they might appear upon observation of human experience.

On a personal note, the poem by Hopkins is one that resonates for me and for many who have lost hope that justice is possible in the world. Certainly, the world as it is needs to be embraced. At the same time our deepest values need to be filled and nurtured. As it is not possible for them to be nurtured in the world, Hopkins asks that "God" nurture it in the deepest part of himself, his deepest roots. And that too, is my prayer.

Stop Bill C-30

2/20/2012

As many of you know Bill C-30 is the online surveillance bill that would permit the ISP address of internet users to be turned over to the police without a search warrant.

Ostensibly the bill is intended to protect children from online predators but once the camel (in the case the government) gets its nose under the tent (in this case your privacy), it is very difficult to scale it back.

The Huffington Post Canada has some very good coverage of the story.

Couple this story with other stories of the "new" internet and Google's consolidation of its privacy and proposed legislation in the USA such as SOPA that was successfully curtailed thanks to internet campaigns and opposition from online groups such as Wikipedia and you can see the cause for concern.

I am reminded of the famous phrase often attributed to Jefferson that the price of liberty is eternal vigilance.

Great Moneyball Clip

2/20/2012

I watched Moneyball this weekend and this scene was one of the best scenes in the movie. On Friday, I listened to a researcher discuss stories and storytelling and he said that the worst thing to do with a good story is to ruin it by saying what "the moral of the story is..." In that spirit, I will let the scene speak for itself.

The metaphor in the scene is a particularly poignant one for me but I will pass over that meaning in uncharacteristic silence.

Dr. Katz and new technology

2/19/2012

A little laugh for a balmy Sunday afternoon. Below is a clip from one of my favourite comedies, Dr. Katz Professional Therapist. In this clip, Dr. Katz encourages his son to try the new phone system and confusion ensues. Great deadpan improvisation.

The Mind-Body Connection in health

2/19/2012

I was at a graduate conference yesterday. The speaker was very good and alluded to the work of Gabor Mate on addiction. I am familiar with Gabor Mate and CMHA brought him to Thunder Bay to discuss harm reduction as an intervention.

In this interview from Democracy Now, Gabor Mate discusses how the mind and body are integrally linked. I would also add that spirituality plays a profound role in the mind and conducted research on that very issues. However, that, not entirely unrelated issue aside, the mind/body connection is lacking from most modern medical practice. Mate says:

The point now is that the emotional centers of the brain, which regulate our behaviors and our responses and our reactions, are physiologically connected with — and we know exactly how they’re connected — with the immune system, the nervous system and the hormonal apparatus. In fact, it’s no longer possible, scientifically, to speak of these as separate systems, as if immunity was separate from emotions, as if the nervous system was separate from the hormonal apparatus...So, in short, we have one system. The science that studies it is called psychoneuroimmunology. And scientifically, it’s not even controversial, but it’s completely lacking from medical practice.

He shares some concrete research in this regard. It is well worth the time to listen to the article. Even in my own work in mental health, it is amazing how little we in the mental health field appreciate the role that mental health, emotional regulation, etc. has in the development of physical health symptomology.

The takeaway from me is that we need to care for ourselves. In fact, Foucault's last volume in his three volume book, "the History of Sexuality" is subtitled the care of the self. The care of the self was a major theme in Greek health education and Foucault suggests a kind of back to the future movement when it comes to eduction.

The basic holistic intuition that there is a connection between mind, body, culture is now scientifically observable but has yet to be translated into educational or health practice. I hope my own research and the research of others can contribute to a different educational praxis.

I will give Mate the last word:

I can tell you from personal experience and observation that people who do that, who take a broader approach to their own health, they actually do a lot better. And I know people who have survived supposedly terminal diagnoses simply because they’ve taken their own mind-body unity, and I would say spiritual unity, as well, seriously, and they’ve gone beyond a narrow medical model of treatment. And I’m not here to disparage the value of the medical approach in which I was trained. I’m just saying that it’s hopelessly narrow, and it leaves many people without appropriate treatment and appropriate support.

Kevin Costner's eulogy at Whitney Houston's funeral

2/18/2012

Kevin Costner's eulogizing at Whitney's funeral is a very powerful eulogy on friendship and hope. It is inspiring. Costner did an excellent job in humanizing Whitney Houston. He shares a great anecdote about her fears and self-doubt and shared how all the famous people in the room experienced it too. He is very gracious in his characterization of her acting in The Bodyguard.

He has a great and uplifting message for her daughters. In a great allusion to the movie, he says to her children who are dreaming and hoping for great things, that Whitney would say guard your bodies and guard the precious miracle of your own life and then sing your hearts out and there will be a lady in Heaven who is making God himself wonder how he created something so perfect.

My Pensées

The title of this blog is an allusion to the famous work of Blaise Pascal. This blog represents the variety of my interests and thoughts on any given day and are strung together, like Pascal's Pensees, in no particular order. I work in the field of mental health, education, and human rights. I write and am a human rights advocate. I enjoy poetry, jazz, spirituality, politics and a potpourri of other interests that you will see reflected in this blog.

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