Let us play with the idea for a moment that God never demanded anything from anyone.

What would the implications be if we discovered that God want or need nothing from nobody? I know some of the readers may experience feelings of anxiety, fear, anger or even panic when they attempt to contemplate what might look like a preposterous statement far removed from the historical “God perceptions” that we grew up with. What would have happened to mankind if they discovered a long time ago that God actually never needed or expected anything from anyone?

 

Would there have been any meaningful theology?

 

Would there have been any churches?

 

Would there have been the endless number of religions and spiritual movements with all their individual dogmas?

 

Would there have been the ongoing love – fear relationships that many still  experience today when they think of the God concept promoted by their church?

 

Would there have been fear of death, hell and Satan?

 

Would there have been fear of old age?

 

Would there have been the religious wars where many millions were killed in the name of various Gods?

 

Would there have been a Roman Catholic, Christian and a Muslim Movements that boast with billions of followers?

 

The reason why many of us still insist that God have always had strict requirements is because in some peculiar way it provides us with a sense of worthiness. Some might even reason that they will have to become atheists if they bought into the idea that God needs nothing from nobody. The idea never cross their mind that most of the God perceptions that they cling to were planted in their heads when still very young. 

 

Churches, clergy, priests, emperors, kings etc. worked themselves into a very powerful and influential position by claiming that they are the earthly representatives of some or other God. They revealed hundreds of laws, rules, regulations and expectations that the God according to their perception of Him insist that must be enforced to make Him happy and assist Him to remain composed and not lose His cool. The prescriptions were always linked to dire warnings that, if ignored or not address to the letter would result in serious punishment in the near future or in some kind of afterlife. These warning included predictions of death, destruction, famine, droughts and hardship. These predictions were initially enough to control their followers and keep them subservient. It later became necessary to turn up the heat regarding God’s expectations and needs. This is where those that thought that they might get away with disobedience to God’s commands (like totally wiping out a so-called pagan nation) discovered that God also have a record keeping system and a court of law in heaven that is waiting for those that failed to fulfil the stipulated requirements when they die . The concept of Hell and everlasting damnation after death tightened the screws of control to a level where most in a sheep like manner remain loyal to the church. 

 

The endless laws, rules and regulations continued to flow from God through so-called inspired individuals until Constantine decided to collate a book (The Bible). All the mystical inspired chats between God and the authors suddenly dried up. Not a single person according to this philosophy have been inspire after this event. God vanished from the stage of life and apparently retreated to his heavenly abode. The clergy however kept churning out endless often self-serving commands by interpreting the historical laws and commandments and in this manner kept the upper hand, power and money flowing.

 

Stop for a moment and think about the statements that I made above. Let us play for a moment with the idea that God never demanded anything from anyone. What would the implications be if man made Gods for themselves in their own image? What would the implications be if the depictions of the Gods were wrong and that God never insisted on the endless range of requirements now cast in stone in their Holy Books? What if the real God (life force) never meddled with man and allowed each individual to work out his own fate and future on a moment to moment basis with the choices he or she make? What if God gave man free will to make any choice and never metered out any punishment, but like a good parent allows His now physically mature children to learn via their own mistakes? Do not reject this option. Think about it for a moment and you will discover that a million and one things that might have bothered you about your current God concept now suddenly fall into place.

 

Rene

 

The wrong men on Death Row – Bad convictions challenges the death penalty’s fairness.

The wrong men on Death Row

A growing number of bad convictions challenges the death penalty’s fairness

 

Gary Gauger’s voice was flat when he called 911 to report finding his father in a pool of blood. Police arrived at the Illinois farmhouse Gauger shared with his parents and discovered that his mother was dead, too. The 40-year-old son, a quirky ex-hippie organic farmer, became a murder suspect. After all, someone had slashed Ruth and Morrie Gauger’s throats just 30 feet from where Gary slept. There were no signs of a struggle or robbery. But what most bothered the cops was the son’s reaction: He quietly tended to his tomato plants as they investigated. Eventually, Gauger was sentenced to die by lethal injection–until it became clear police had the wrong guy. His case is not unusual.

 

After years of debate, most Americans now believe the death penalty is an appropriate punishment for the most repulsive murders. But that support is rooted in an underlying assumption: that the right person is being executed. The most recent list by an antideath-penalty group shows that Gary Gauger is one of 74 men exonerated and freed from death row over the past 25 years–a figure so stark it’s causing even some supporters of capital punishment to rethink whether the death penalty can work fairly. Among them is Gerald Kogan, who recently stepped down as chief justice of Florida’s Supreme Court. “If one innocent person is executed along the way, then we can no longer justify capital punishment,” he says.

 

Mistaken convictions. For every 7 executions–486 since 1976–1 other prisoner on death row has been found innocent. And there’s concern even more mistaken convictions will follow as record numbers of inmates fill death rows, pressure builds for speedy executions, and fewer attorneys defend prisoners facing execution. Next week, Gauger and scores of others mistakenly condemned will gather at Northwestern University School of Law in Chicago for the National Conference on Wrongful Convictions & the Death Penalty. They are “the flesh and blood mistakes of the death penalty,” says Richard Dieter of the Death Penalty Information Center.

 

Timeout sought. Executions have been rare since the death penalty was reinstated in 1976. But the pace is picking up. There are now 3,517 prisoners on death row in the 38 capital-punishment states–an all-time high and a tripling since 1982. The 74 executions in 1997–the most since 1955–represented a 60 percent spike from the year before. Citing bad lawyering and mistaken convictions, the American Bar Association last year called for a death-penalty moratorium. This month, Illinois legislators will vote on such a ban. That state, more than any other, is grappling with the problem: It has exonerated almost as many men (nine) on death row as it has executed (11).

 

It’s tempting to view the reprieved as proof that the legal system eventually corrects its mistakes. But only one of the nine men released in Illinois got out through normal appeals. Most have outsiders to thank. Northwestern University journalism professor David Protess and four of his students followed leads missed by police and defense attorneys to tie four other men to the rape and murders that put four innocent men in prison. “Without them, I’d be in the graveyard,” says Dennis Williams, who spent 16 years on death row. “The system didn’t do anything.”

 

Most damning of the current system would be proof that a guiltless person has been executed. Credible, but not clear-cut, claims of innocence have been raised in a handful of executions since 1976. Leonel Herrera died by lethal injection in Texas in 1993 even though another man confessed to the murder. The U.S. Supreme Court ruled that, with his court appeals exhausted, an extraordinary amount of proof was required to stop his execution. Governors, the court noted, can still grant clemency in such cases. But what was once common is now so politically risky that only about one death row inmate a year wins such freedom.

 

How wrongful convictions happen: Gary Gauger’s calm gave a cop a hunch. But it was Gauger’s trusting nature that gave police a murder tale that day in 1993. Gauger says that during 18 hours of nonstop interrogation, detectives insisted they had a “stack of evidence” against him. They didn’t–but it never occurred to the laid-back farmer that his accusers might be lying. Instead, he worried he might have blacked out the way he sometimes did in the days when he drank heavily. So Gauger went along with police suggestions that, to jog his memory, he hypothetically describe the murders. After viewing photos of his mother’s slit throat, Gauger explained how he could have walked into her rug shop next to the house (“she knows and trusts me”), pulled her hair, slashed her throat and then done the same to his dad as he worked in his nearby antique-motorcycle shop. To police, this was a chilling confession. Even Gauger, by this point suicidal, believed he must have committed the crimes.

 

False confessions. Though police failed to turn up any physical evidence during a 10-day search of the farm, prosecutors depicted Gauger as an oddball who could have turned on his mother and father. He was a pot-smoking ex-alcoholic who once lived on a commune and brought his organic farming ways back to Richmond, Ill. The judge rolled his eyes during Gauger’s testimony and, when defense attorneys objected, simply turned his back on Gauger. The jury took just three hours to reach a guilty verdict. “Nutty as a fruitcake,” the jury foreman declared afterward.

 

A study by Profs. Hugo Bedau of Tufts University and Michael Radelet of the University of Florida found three factors common among wrongful capital convictions. One third involve perjured testimony, often from jailhouse snitches claiming to have heard a defendant’s prison confession. (At Gauger’s trial, a fellow inmate made a dubious claim to hearing Gauger confess. The man, contacted in jail by U.S. News, offered to tell a very different story if the magazine would pay for an interview.) One of every 7 cases, Bedau and Radelet found, involves faulty eyewitness identifications, and a seventh involve false confessions, like Gauger’s.

 

False confessions occur with greater frequency than recognized even by law-enforcement professionals, argues Richard Leo of the University of California–Irvine. About a quarter, he estimates, involve people with mild mental retardation, who often try to hide limitations by guessing “right” answers to police questions. Children are vulnerable, too. Chicago police in September dropped murder charges against two boys, 7 and 8 years old, who confessed to killing 11-year-old Ryan Harris with a rock to steal her bicycle. After a crime laboratory found semen on the dead girl’s clothes, police began looking for an older suspect. An educated innocent person, likely to trust police, may be especially prone to police trickery–which courts allow as often necessary to crack savvy criminals. “My parents had just been murdered and these were the good guys,” Gauger says. “I know it sounds naive now, but when they told me they wouldn’t lie to me, I believed them.”

 

The falsely convicted is almost always an outsider–often from a minority group. In Illinois, six of the nine dismissed from death row were black or Hispanic men accused of murder, rape, or both of white victims. But the No. 1 reason people are falsely convicted is poor legal representation. Many states cap fees for court-appointed attorneys, which makes it tough for indigents to get competent lawyers. And it’s been harder for inmates to find lawyers to handle appeals since Congress in 1996 stopped funding legal-aid centers in 20 states.

 

How wrongful convictions get discovered: Gary Gauger has a simple answer to how he won his freedom: “I got lucky.” Of all the 74 released from death row, Gauger’s stay was one of the briefest–just eight months. Shortly after his conviction, FBI agents listening in on a wiretap overheard members of a motorcycle gang discussing the murder of Ruth and Morrie Gauger. Last year, two members of the Outlaws Motorcycle Club, Randall “Madman” Miller and James “Preacher” Schneider, were indicted for the Gauger killings. But a federal judge last month ruled the wiretaps were unauthorized and dismissed all the charges. The U.S. Attorney says he is seeking to reinstate them.

 

Even when another person confesses, the legal system can be slow to respond. Rolando Cruz and Alejandro Hernandez spent 10 years each on death row in Illinois for the rape and murder of 10-year-old Jeanine Nicarico. Shortly after their convictions, police arrested a repeat sex offender and murderer named Brian Dugan who confessed to the crime, providing minute details unknown to the public. Prosecutors still insisted Cruz and Hernandez were the killers–even after DNA testing linked Dugan to the crime. At Cruz’s third trial, a police officer admitted that he’d lied when he testified Cruz had confessed in a “vision” about the girl’s murder. The judge then declared Cruz not guilty. In January, seven police officers and prosecutors go on trial charged with conspiracy to conceal and fabricate evidence against Cruz and Hernandez.

 

Discarded evidence. DNA profiling, perhaps more than any other development, has exposed the fallibility of the legal system. In the last decade, 56 wrongfully convicted people have won release because of DNA testing, 10 of them from death row. Attorneys Barry Scheck and Peter Neufeld, with the help of their students at New York’s Cardozo School of Law, have freed 35 of those. But their Innocence Project has been hobbled by the fact that, in 70 percent of the cases they pursued police had already discarded semen, hair, or other evidence needed for testing.

 

Gauger had one other thing going for him that is key to overturning bogus convictions: outside advocates. Most important was his twin sister, Ginger, who convinced Northwestern Law School Prof. Lawrence Marshall (who also defended Cruz and organized next week’s conference) to help her brother a week before the deadline for the final state appeal. In September 1994, Gauger’s death sentence was reduced to life in prison. Two years later, he was freed. Marshall visited Gauger in prison with the surprise news. “That’s good,” he said with a smile and his customary calm.

 

How to prevent wrongful convictions: It’s a fall afternoon and starlings are fluttering through the colorful maples that frame the Gauger farmhouse. Gary Gauger loads a dusty pickup with pumpkins, squash, and other vegetables. Inside, Ginger has taken up her mother’s business of selling Asian kilims and American Indian pottery. A friend runs the vintage-motorcycle business, still called Morrie’s Place, in an adjoining garage. For Gary Gauger, life seems normal again. Customers at his vegetable stand sort through bushels of squash. A hand-lettered sign advises: “Self Service: please place money in black box . . . thanks.”

 

But there is pain, too, for his lost parents and for his 3½ lost years. And it’s that part of his story Gauger will share at the upcoming conference in the hope of sparing others such pain. Other conferees at the Northwestern event are expected to endorse a moratorium on executions at least until safeguards are in place such as increased legal aid, certification of capital-trial attorneys, limits on use of jail-house snitches, access to post-conviction DNA testing, and the recording of all police interrogations. There will also be appeals for accreditation of forensic experts: The first Cruz trial turned on a bloody footprint identified by an expert who was later discredited when she claimed she could tell a person’s class and race by shoe imprints.

 

Gauger says the worst part about being wrongfully convicted is knowing that the guilty person is free. The victim Gauger most thinks about is 7-year-old Melissa Ackerman. The little girl was grabbed from her bicycle, sodomized, and left in an irrigation ditch, her body so unrecognizable that she could be identified only by dental records. She was killed by Brian Dugan, while Rolando Cruz and Alejandro Hernandez sat behind bars–falsely convicted of another child’s murder committed by Dugan.

DIG DEEPER

Executions in Saudi Arabia are mostly done by beheading with the help of a sword

 

HERE

 

30 Things to Stop Doing to Yourself …. starting today.

As Maria Robinson once said, “Nobody can go back and start a new beginning, but anyone can start today and make a new ending.”

 

Nothing could be closer to the truth. But before you can begin this process of transformation you have to stop doing the things that have been holding you back.

Here are some ideas to get you started:

1. Stop spending time with the wrong people. Life is too short to spend time with people who suck the happiness out of you. If someone wants you in their life, they’ll make room for you. You shouldn’t have to fight for a spot. Never, ever insist yourself to someone who continuously overlooks your worth. And remember, it’s not the people that stand by your side when you’re at your best, but the ones who stand beside you when you’re at your worst that are your true friends.

2. Stop running from your problems. Face them head on. No, it won’t be easy. There is no person in the world capable of flawlessly handling every punch thrown at them. We aren’t supposed to be able to instantly solve problems. That’s not how we’re made. In fact, we’re made to get upset, sad, hurt, stumble and fall. Because that’s the whole purpose of living to face problems, learn, adapt, and solve them over the course of time. This is what ultimately molds us into the person we become.

3. Stop lying to yourself. You can lie to anyone else in the world, but you can’t lie to yourself. Our lives improve only when we take chances, and the first and most difficult chance we can take is to be honest with ourselves. 

4. Stop putting your own needs on the back burner.The most painful thing is losing yourself in the process of loving someone too much, and forgetting that you are special too. Yes, help others; but help yourself too. If there was ever a moment to follow your passion and do something that matters to you, that moment is now.

5. Stop trying to be someone you’re not. One of the greatest challenges in life is being yourself in a world that’s trying to make you like everyone else. Someone will always be prettier, someone will always be smarter, someone will always be younger, but they will never be you. Don’t change so people will like you. Be yourself and the right people will love the real you.

6. Stop trying to hold onto the past. You can’t start the next chapter of your life if you keep re-reading your last one.

7. Stop being scared to make a mistake. Doing something and getting it wrong is at least ten times more productive than doing nothing. Every success has a trail of failures behind it, and every failure is leading towards success. You end up regretting the things you did NOT do far more than the things you did.

8. Stop berating yourself for old mistakes. We may love the wrong person and cry about the wrong things, but no matter how things go wrong, one thing is for sure, mistakes help us find the person and things that are right for us. We all make mistakes, have struggles, and even regret things in our past. But you are not your mistakes, you are not your struggles, and you are here NOW with the power to shape your day and your future. Every single thing that has ever happened in your life is preparing you for a moment that is yet to come.

9. Stop trying to buy happiness. Many of the things we desire are expensive. But the truth is, the things that really satisfy us are totally free love, laughter and working on our passions.

10. Stop exclusively looking to others for happiness.If you’re not happy with who you are on the inside, you won’t be happy in a long-term relationship with anyone else either. You have to create stability in your own life first before you can share it with someone else. .

11. Stop being idle. Don’t think too much or you’ll create a problem that wasn’t even there in the first place. Evaluate situations and take decisive action. You cannot change what you refuse to confront. Making progress involves risk. Period! You can’t make it to second base with your foot on first.

12. Stop thinking you’re not ready. Nobody ever feels 100% ready when an opportunity arises. Because most great opportunities in life force us to grow beyond our comfort zones, which means we won’t feel totally comfortable at first.

13. Stop getting involved in relationships for the wrong reasons. Relationships must be chosen wisely. It’s better to be alone than to be in bad company. There’s no need to rush. If something is meant to be, it will happen in the right time, with the right person, and for the best reason. Fall in love when you’re ready, not when you’re lonely.

14. Stop rejecting new relationships just because old ones didn’t work. In life you’ll realize that there is a purpose for everyone you meet. Some will test you, some will use you and some will teach you. But most importantly, some will bring out the best in you.

15. Stop trying to compete against everyone else.Don’t worry about what others doing better than you. Concentrate on beating your own records every day. Success is a battle between YOU and YOURSELF only.

16. Stop being jealous of others. Jealousy is the art of counting someone else’s blessings instead of your own. Ask yourself this: “What’s something I have that everyone wants?”

17. Stop complaining and feeling sorry for yourself.Life’s curveballs are thrown for a reason to shift your path in a direction that is meant for you. You may not see or understand everything the moment it happens, and it may be tough. But reflect back on those negative curveballs thrown at you in the past. You’ll often see that eventually they led you to a better place, person, state of mind, or situation. So smile! Let everyone know that today you are a lot stronger than you were yesterday, and you will be.

18. Stop holding grudges. Don’t live your life with hate in your heart. You will end up hurting yourself more than the people you hate. Forgiveness is not saying, “What you did to me is okay.” It is saying, “I’m not going to let what you did to me ruin my happiness forever.” Forgiveness is the answer… let go, find peace, liberate yourself! And remember, forgiveness is not just for other people, it’s for you too. If you must, forgive yourself, move on and try to do better next time.

19. Stop letting others bring you down to their level.Refuse to lower your standards to accommodate those who refuse to raise theirs.

20. Stop wasting time explaining yourself to others.Your friends don’t need it and your enemies won’t believe it anyway. Just do what you know in your heart is right.

21. Stop doing the same things over and over without taking a break. The time to take a deep breath is when you don’t have time for it. If you keep doing what you’re doing, you’ll keep getting what you’re getting. Sometimes you need to distance yourself to see things clearly.

22. Stop overlooking the beauty of small moments.Enjoy the little things, because one day you may look back and discover they were the big things. The best portion of your life will be the small, nameless moments you spend smiling with someone who matters to you.

23. Stop trying to make things perfect. The real world doesn’t reward perfectionists, it rewards people who get things done. .

24. Stop following the path of least resistance. Life is not easy, especially when you plan on achieving something worthwhile. Don’t take the easy way out. Do something extraordinary.

25. Stop acting like everything is fine if it isn’t. It’s okay to fall apart for a little while. You don’t always have to pretend to be strong, and there is no need to constantly prove that everything is going well. You shouldn’t be concerned with what other people are thinking either cry if you need to it’s healthy to shed your tears. The sooner you do, the sooner you will be able to smile again.

26. Stop blaming others for your troubles. The extent to which you can achieve your dreams depends on the extent to which you take responsibility for your life. When you blame others for what you’re going through, you deny responsibility you give others power over that part of your life.

27. Stop trying to be everything to everyone. Doing so is impossible, and trying will only burn you out. But making one person smile CAN change the world. Maybe not the whole world, but their world. So narrow your focus.

28. Stop worrying so much. Worry will not strip tomorrow of its burdens, it will strip today of its joy. One way to check if something is worth mulling over is to ask yourself this question: “Will this matter in one year’s time? Three years? Five years?” If not, then it’s not worth worrying about.

29. Stop focusing on what you don’t want to happen.Focus on what you do want to happen. Positive thinking is at the forefront of every great success story. If you awake every morning with the thought that something wonderful will happen in your life today, and you pay close attention, you’ll often find that you’re right.
 

30. Stop being ungrateful. No matter how good or bad you have it, wake up each day thankful for your life. Someone somewhere else is desperately fighting for theirs. Instead of thinking about what you’re missing, try thinking about what you have that everyone else is missing.

Source: Marc and Angel Hack Life

 

Smile for a While – “Will you please stop singing for a moment”

 

Mind Over Medicine

 Photo: http://www.care2.com/greenliving/tag/mind-over-medicine

 

Some of us discover early in life that real friends are rarer than virgins in a whore house.

It is imperative to grasp as early as possible that you must believe in your own integrity, value and ability to make a difference. Most of us start life deluded and think that we are and will always be surrounded by individuals that will support us and that will be there for us when things fail to materialise as expected. Some of us discover early in life that real friends are rarer than virgins in a whore house. We discover that our so-called blood brothers and friends vanish like a fart in a thunder storm when things start going wrong for us. We should teach children that life is not fair and that they will more often than not work like a slave and get little or no rewards. Children must understand that life consist out of an endless range of challenges that will come at them like the waves of the ocean. We cannot give our children a bigger gift than the preparation needed to see things as they are (reality). True champions play to win, but also understand that it is silly to expect to win every time they go out to compete. The key to a long and successful career is fortitude. It is not how hard you get hit, but how many times you bounce back. We must train our children to see failure as stepping stones and not disasters. The biggest curse you can put on a child is to create the impression that everything will turn our ok if they try their best. You might be the best talented player that attempt to get into a team at school and still fail to find your name on the final team list. You may have failed to make the cut because a few other players have parents that make big donations to the school and play golf with the coach. The unprepared child is often destroyed long before he or she leave school. Unprepared children become disillusioned and some of them never recover. Look around you or do some research and you will discover that the real successful players in sport and the business world overcame serious adversity during their journey through life. There will be times in your life where you will face very testing times. You will yearn for support and understanding and discover that there is no one that is brave enough or loyal enough to come to your rescue. It is these critical moments, these dark nights of the soul that bring out the best in those with fortitude, courage and determination. Some of us understand that disaster can strike at any moment. We do not fear setbacks and disasters because we know that we can like so many times before overcome anything. Winners and true champions can get up and immediately start building on a new dream and a more exciting goal. The magic ingredient that so many lack in life is staying power and determination. This is the biggest blessing you can pass onto your children. The best way my friend to do this is to lead by example. Show your children that you are strong and courageous in the face of adversity.

Rene

NOTHING IS AS IT SEEMS

 

Humans can broadly be divided into two types – those with a Tribal Mentality and those with a Humanist Mentality.

Humans can broadly be divided into two types – those with a Tribal Mentality and those with a Humanist Mentality. Both mentalities exist in most people to varying degrees.

Tribalists tend to be loyal to their own group, community or society. They tend to be nationalist and conservative. In extreme cases Tribalistsdehumanise and demonise outgroups. They tend to focus on the conflicts of interest that can exist between various groups. They suffer from what behavioural psychologists call the outgroup homogeneity bias (individuals tend to see members of their own group as being relatively more varied than members of other groups).

Humanists tend to look at people as individuals, and to see the similarities that exist between different societies, rather than the differences. They tend to be cosmopolitan and progressive. They tend to focus on co-operation between groups, rather than conflicts of interest.

People with a Tribal Mentality regard those with a Humanist Mentality as treacherous, cowardly and naïve. People with a Humanist Mentality regard those with a Tribal Mentality as bigoted, narrow-minded and irrational.

Examples of very Tribalist groups would include German Neo-Nazis, Russian nationalists, Japanese supremacists, Muslim fundamentalists, extremist Irish Catholic Nationalists, American Exceptionalists and so forth. The point is: the tribal mentality is found in all societies. In Sri Lanka, many Buddhist monasteries are hotbeds of ultranationalist, reactionary, anti-Tamil extremism. So even a peaceful religion like Buddhism can be co-opted by Tribalists. All these tribalist groups tend to be xenophobic, but the irony is that they have much more in common with each other than they do with Humanists. For example, an American Exceptionalist has more in common with a Muslim fundamentalist, than either type does with a Humanist – because both the American Exceptionalist and the Muslim fundamentalist have a Tribal Mentality.

Often, the anger of Tribalists is not focused on other tribes, but on what they call “the Liberal Elite” (i.e. Humanists). Humanists also exist in all societies and, what is more, they tend to agree with each other even though they are from different societies. In other words, Humanists everywhere in the world form alliances in a way that Tribalists cannot. The real danger for Tribalists comes not from other tribes (extremists need opposing extremists in order to exist) – the real danger comes from Humanists, who tend to be shrewd. Hence the diatribes from Tribalists about the “Liberal Elites” whom they suspect of trying to take over the world by taking control of universities, internationalist institutions, the media, human rights organisations and so forth. In one sense, the Tribalists are correct – the Enlightenment revolution in philosophy, with its humanist concepts of human rights, democracy, rationality and personal freedom, has made great progress in taking over the world. Humanism has a universal appeal that transcends any particular tribalism. So don’t worry, if anyone is going to take over the world, it is not going to be any particular group ofTribalists – it will be the Humanists. So be happy!

.

http://www.brianbarrington.com/2009/02/tribal-mentality-versus-humanist.html

 

5 powerful words that can RADICALLY enriched the quality in your life.

Right this moment, I am going to give out 5 of the most powerful words that can RADICALLY enriched the everyday quality in your life. I trust that you’ll become conscious enough of what you are saying, to notice if you use these words. Sounds simple. You think you can do that? Good.

1. TRY.

Anyone who has ever spent a substantial amount of time with me knows how REPULSED i will be by this word. YUCK. Once you say that you will TRY to do anything, you’re essentially giving yourself permission to fail. Congratulations – you’ve just set yourself up to fail from the get-go’.

2. CAN’T.

Another expression which has rightly been viciously stripped from the vocabulary of those who have EVER accomplished ANY noteworthy, innovative, accomplishment. Let’s rid ourselves of this pesky terrorist tyrant and agree to substitute it for any word more deserving of our dialog.

3. NEED.

This little nuisance is definitely an unsuspecting suspect, a smooth criminal. My “buyer beware” using the word NEED, like the majority of words, is the context. Using the word need can presuppose that you’re not okay right now, and won’t be okay if you dont get what you “need.”

4. BUT.

Notice the next time you’re conversing with someone and the chit-chatter turns into a debate. Next time you observe yourself being on you BUT, say “Yes, AND”. Notice the way the conversation’s flow assumes a new feel once you change the word but, for “yes and.”.

5. YET.

It is definitely such a powerful word, and, i actually find it to be CAN’T’s kryptonite. For instance, if you catch yourself mid-sentence saying something along the lines of “I still CAN’T learn how to do that”, it is possible to easily just add the phrase YET to the end. It suggests you will succeed in what you are doing.

By: Ricky Rakestraw

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