Music is essential

Daniel Levitin and Farhad Manjoo talk about the neuroscience of music:

Humans prefer music of their own culture when they’re toddlers, but it’s in our teens that we choose the specific sort of music that we’ll love forever. These years, Levitin explains, are emotional times, “and we tend to remember things that have an emotional component because our amygdala and neurotransmitters act in concert to ‘tag’ the memories as something important.”

Peter Gabriel sledgehammered my generation to get our attention. And then explained. It won’t make sense to people from another generation, I guess. Or maybe it does. I understand what they were doing in the sixties. It worked.

And this post will either make sense to you, or it is for someone else.

Is Mark Steyn a coward?

Glenn Greenwald shows the quaking heart of a chickenhawk.

People may disagree with me

I know this. I respect this. You might think I’m wrong.

But I’d rather be moral than right, any day.

What do you think? Is it moral to kill people? Is it moral to put people in a cage for using medicine that makes them feel better and helps them cope with pain or other disability? To take away their homes and families? To destroy their lives?

You might know what is right for you, but don’t be immoral to me. I’ll do the same.

Difficult but true

I think this may be the scariest and most potentially confrontational article I could write, but I am conscious of this now and I want to express it before it is lost.

Jews are racists.

That is a terribly hard thing for me to say, because I was raised as a Jew. I was born to a Jewish family. All of my close blood relatives are Jewish. I love them all.

But you have to understand, it’s far more subtle than the crude anti-black southern stereotype; it is part of the culture that the Jews are the only Chosen People of God.

That means everyone else is Goy. Not chosen. Less.

Everyone is chosen. Stop doing that. Stop believing it. You aren’t more special than anyone. Everyone is special.

Letter to Dave Neiwert

Dave, the truth is I was sympathetic to the Patriot movement in the 1990s and although my opinion has changed greatly, I understand the anger and frustration they felt.

My involvement was as an advocate of state citizenship in Pennsylvania over the issue of right to travel.

You can think it’s very silly and I was very much turned off by the racism and outright lunacy that did exist in that fever swamp, but there is a core of truth that has to be addressed.

People are being policed to death.

My blog is about cannabis, and I’ll tell you we’re still under attack here. I’m a progressive now as far as it goes but I don’t want to help anyone that wants to take away my freedom and my religion and my medicine.

We can’t do anything to change the minds of the true believers in racism, but we can sure find out why they have an audience still and address their concerns with some sincerity.

The fever swamp needs some help to get its temperature under control. We as a society are schizophrenic and self-destructive and that needs to be cured very fast before we succeed.

My medicine of choice is cannabis and I am not being silly or trivial. I believe it can heal the conscience and restore balance. It brings peace and contentment, and that is not a bad thing. We cannot continue to have war.

[ Cross-posted to comment on Orcinus ]

Love and Hatred begins at home

You have to love your children in order for your children to love themselves. Eventually they might outgrow hatred but it’s a hard road and it takes time. And meantime they may have children of their own and pass their fears along. In fact, it’s a good chance that if you hate your children you hate yourself. And if you hate yourself, you are your own worst enemy.

And that’s what each of us needs to do right now, is forgive ourselves for whatever we may have done in the past and not do it anymore if it was wrong. Stop making the same mistakes. Start doing things right and according to your conscience. Love yourself by being good to yourself, and being good to others.

A good tree brings forth good fruit, and an evil tree brings forth poison. Are you a good tree or an evil tree? Do you bring forth love and respect and care for others? Do you love and respect and care for yourself? If you answered “no” to either of these questions you need to take steps right now. You need to figure out what you are doing wrong, and admit it, already. Say it’s wrong, say you made a mistake, say you are sorry, don’t do it again.

Children learn to do this, but adults often forget.