“Like everyone, I live in a little house with many doors and windows.
One door goes out to my neighborhood. The local kids come to play with my dog. The elderly neighbors take so long to tell me their stories. I slow down my inner clock to listen.
One window looks out at the nature around me. I’m getting to know this one tree really well. I toss a little dog food out there each day, and watch the local birds and rodents come by to eat it.
One door is just for my son. This door goes somewhere new every time he opens it. I pause what I’m doing and follow him on an adventure. My inner clock stops working through that door.
One door goes to my connections — the people around the world with mutual interests. A dozen people a day knock on this door and say hello. Sometimes more.
One hidden door is for my dearest friends. That one comes all the way inside, anytime.
One skylight looks far into the future. I daydream there a lot.
One little locket looks at the past. I daydream there, too.
But one door is really no fun to open. I’m horrified at all the shouting, the second I open it. It’s an infinite dark room filled with psychologically tortured people, trying to get attention. Strangers screaming at strangers, starting fights. Businesses set up shop there, showing who’s said and done bad things today, because they make money when people get mad.
They say I’m supposed to open that door, because that’s the real world.
But it seems a lot less real than what’s in the other doors and windows in my life.”
What is character? And how is it related to consciousness? What is consciousness, even? Read this short, clear, mind expanding book to find out! But be willing to have a revolution of perspective on what you are. Starter question: How deep into the physical structure does consciousness run?
Violence vs. Non-violence: how do you prefer your protests?
“Those who defend the validity of mob violence claim that it is justifiable to the extent that it unnerves the powers that be. But do the powerful really feel threatened by a smashed Starbucks window or Richard Spencer taking a punch? The evidence strongly suggests the opposite: When leftists resort to explicit violence, they make regular people more sympathetic to governmental authority and a conservative worldview.Princeton University’s Omar Wasow studied protest movements in the 1960s and found that violent upheaval tended to make white voters more conservative, whereas nonviolent protests were associated with increased liberalism among white voters. “These patterns suggest violent protest activity is correlated with a taste for ‘social control’ among the predominantly white mass public,” wrote Wasow in his study.”
”In contrast, “nonviolent movements succeed because they invite mass participation,” says Maria Stephan, a director at the United States Institute of Peace. Violent resistance, on the other hand, is incredibly divisive. Stephan and Erica Chenoweth produced a book, Why Civil Resistance Works, which found nonviolent resistance movements were twice as likely as violent movements to achieve their aims in the 20th and early 21st centuries. “A campaign’s commitment to nonviolent methods enhances its domestic and international legitimacy and encourages more broad-based participation in the resistance, which translates into increased pressure being brought to bear on the target,” they wrote. According to Stephan and Chenoweth, governments have little trouble justifying brutal crackdowns on violent protesters, but nonviolent protesters engender greater sympathy from the public, reducing the likelihood of repression.”
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