Poems by my grandmother, Ernestine Cobern Beyer, that my beloved Mom, Barbara Beyer Malley, and I both love:
The Measure
The strong warm hand, the broad and steady shoulder,
The face you love grown dearer, kinder, older,
The comrade-glance, the peace, the burden-sharing,
The well-loved voice, the touch, the tender caring . . .
O, you who have this, guard it well and treasure it,
For only when you’ve lost it can you measure it!
Stars
The stars maintain eternal espionage
Above the earth, light centuries away.
To them our globe seems but a brief mirage
Created in experimental play.
In cosmic calm, indifferent, they beam
On good and evil, tears and wars and scars;
Earth–are you but a transitory dream
Envisioned by the cool and timeless stars?
Note from KMM: Let’s all do what we can to ensure that life on earth is not transitory. Protect Mother Earth. Fight climate change. Conserve. Recycle. Follow the lead of California and go solar.
And for more poetry and prose from my grandmother, my mother, and me, find The Path.
Note from KMM: Are you satisfied with the way things are going in this country today? or wondering what the heck went wrong and why we seem to be in such a mess? if you want some answers and want to know what to do about everything that has gone awry, read D. Roy Eidelson’s new book: POLITICAL MIND GAMES: How the 1% manipulate our understanding of what’s happening, what’s right, and what’s possible.
Post by Roy Eidelson
Giant corporations are raking in record profits, while millions of Americans remain scarred by the Great Recession and a recovery that has left them behind. Mammoth defense contractors push for more of everything military, while programs for the poor are on life support. Global polluters are blocking effective responses to climate change, while the disenfranchised suffer disproportionately from environmental disasters and devastation. Influential voices ridicule those who are disadvantaged by prejudice, by discrimination, and by dwindling resources. All the while, our middle class is shrinking, imperiled, and insecure. This is not the America most of us want.
It’s really no secret that certain individuals and groups — the Koch brothers, Walmart heirs, some Wall Street CEOs, prominent politicians (many Republicans, and some Democrats too), big-business lobbyists, right-wing think tanks, Fox News — use their wealth and influence to pursue a self-serving agenda that betrays the common good. Indeed, they’ve been doing it since long before Donald J. Trump moved into the White House. But what often flies under the radar is the extent to which they rely on psychologically manipulative appeals to advance their narrow interests at the expense of the rest of us. Examples include “The dangers of global warming are overblown,” “Voter fraud is a rampant injustice,” “Workers protesting low wages are devious and dishonest,” “We’ve earned every dollar and deserve your praise, not criticism,” and “Everyone will be helpless if gun reformers have their way.”
In my new book, POLITICAL MIND GAMES: How the 1% Manipulate Our Understanding of What’s Happening, What’s Right, and What’s Possible, I explain the psychology behind the success of today’s plutocrats in marketing their false claims — and what we can do to counter them. Offering a research-based framework, I show how the 1% exploit five fundamental concerns that govern our daily lives: issues of vulnerability, injustice, distrust, superiority, and helplessness. These concerns are soft targets for manipulation because each is linked to a basic question we ask ourselves as we try to make sense of the world around us. Consider:
Are we safe? Whether as passing thoughts or haunting worries, we wonder if we’re safe, if the people we care about are in harm’s way, and if danger lurks on the horizon. Our judgments on these matters go a long way in determining the choices we make and the actions we take. But we’re not particularly good at assessing our vulnerability. Among the ways that the 1% use this shortcoming to their advantage is by promoting alarmist accounts of the perils associated with change.
Are we being treated fairly? Cases of mistreatment frequently stir our anger and our desire to bring accountability to those we hold responsible. But our perceptions of what’s just and what’s not are far from perfect. This makes us ripe for exploitation by those eager to shape our views of right and wrong. That’s a key tactic for today’s plutocrats, and portraying their own selfish actions as efforts to address injustice—on our behalf—is just one of their ploys.
Who should we trust? We tend to divide the world into people and groups we deem trustworthy and others we don’t. When we get it right, we can avoid harm from those who have hostile intentions, while building valuable relationships with those who enhance our lives. But here too our judgments are sometimes unreliable. Among the ways the 1% exploit our doubts is by intentionally fostering distrust in order to divide the ranks of their adversaries.
Are we good enough? We’re quick to compare ourselves to others, often with the hope of demonstrating that we’re worthy of respect or admiration. But the impressions we have about our own worth—and the positive or negative qualities we see in other people—are intrinsically subjective. As a result, they’re susceptible to manipulation. One way plutocrats capitalize on this is by insisting that those who are struggling to get by are simply inferior to the rest of us.
Can we control what happens to us? Feelings of helplessness can pose a substantial obstacle in both personal and collective initiatives. When we lack confidence in our capabilities, we’re more inclined to give up and abandon our goals, and less likely to show resilience in the face of setbacks. The 1% take advantage of this inclination in several ways, including by telling us that stark inequalities are the result of powerful forces beyond everyone’s control.
In responding to these questions, today’s plutocrats are masters at using duplicitous mind games—like “It’s a Dangerous World,” “No Injustice Here,” “They’re Different from Us,” “Pursuing a Higher Purpose,” and “Don’t Blame Us”—to lead us away from a more equal and more decent society. Their answers are designed to manipulate our perceptions and emotions while distracting us from careful evaluation of arguments and evidence. Rather than viewing concerns about vulnerability, injustice, distrust, superiority, and helplessness as guideposts for improving the general welfare, the 1% exploit them to advance their interests and derail effective opposition to their rule.
Political Mind Games was written with a clear purpose: to help inoculate the public against the 1%’s self-serving appeals. When we expose and debunk their mind games, the plutocrats’ empty rhetoric loses its allure, their selfish motives are laid bare, and everyone can see clearly how a privileged few have fleeced and forsaken the country—and the people—that made their enormous wealth and power possible. In turn, this recognition lays the groundwork for the coalition-building and collective action that can restore and reinvigorate our democratic principles and commitments.
Dr. Roy Eidelson has been a practicing clinical, research, and political psychologist for over thirty years. His work focuses on applying psychological knowledge to issues of social justice and social change. He is the former executive director of the Solomon Asch Center for Study of Ethnopolitical Conflict at the University of Pennsylvania, and a past president of Psychologists for Social Responsibility. He is also a member of the Coalition for an Ethical Psychology, which advocates against complicity in torture and in favor of restoring psychology’s commitment to do-no-harm ethics
A video of an emaciated polar bear on Baffin Island was recently shared on social media. Warmer temperatures have led to longer ice-free periods throughout the year in the Arctic, increasing the risk of starvation for the animals. (Photo: @mitrasites2016/Twitter)
Today’s post features excerpts from a Common Dreams staff writer, Julia Conley, who describes an award-winning video of a polar bear starving to death. Global warming results in less ice, which means less availability of polar bears’ food.
Conley’s story and the video deserve attention because, frankly, the powerful oil industry magnates and the politicians in their pockets don’t give a damn about polar bears. They care only about profits and the power that money brings.
And face it, they also don’t give a damn about you or your children or your grandchildren, and certainly not the environment that sustains — or cannot sustain — life.
Julia Conley tells us:
“A video of a starving polar bear led to calls for climate change deniers to confront the real-world effects of global warming this week. Taken by a Canadian conservationist and photographer and posted to social media, the video offered a stark visual of the drastic impacts of climate change that have already begun taking root.
“‘When scientists say bears are going extinct, I want people to realize what it looks like. Bears are going to starve to death. This is what a starving bear looks like.’ (Paul Nicklen)
“On social media, viewers of Nicklen’s video called for political leaders like President Donald Trump, who has refused to take part in global efforts to minimize the warming of the earth by reducing carbon emissions, to reconsider their climate-wrecking actions.”
We can all take part in those efforts before the earth becomes unable to sustain life at all. Remember, the oil magnates and the banking system and the military-industrial complex has tons of money and power, but you have a voice and a vote. There are millions and millions more people like you, like us, than like them.
Conley’s article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 License.
An icon to represent “global thinking”. In the public domain. Author: Benjamin D. Esham (bdesham).
by Anthony J. Marsella
The emergence of a global era — a borderless psychological and physical milieu –confronts us with new and bewildering challenges to identity formation, change, and assertion.
Age-old questions regarding identity — “Who am I?” What do I believe?” “What is my purpose?” “What are my responsibilities?” “How did I become who I am?”– must now be answered amidst a context of unavoidable competing and conflicting global forces that are giving rise to increasing levels of uncertainty, unpredictability, confusion, and fear.
Indeed, many of our traditional political, economic, social, and religious institutions — long a major source for shaping individual and collective identities — have become part of the problems we face in identity formation and negotiation.
The problem of the sense of identity is not, as it is usually understood, merely a philosophical problem, or a problem only concerning our mind and thought. The need to feel a sense of identity stems from the very condition of human existence, and it is the source of the most intense strivings.
Since I cannot remain sane without the sense of “I,” l am driven to do almost anything to acquire this sense. Behind the intense passion for status and conformity is this very need, and it is sometimes even stronger than the need for physical survival.
What could be more obvious than the fact that people are willing to risk their lives, to give up their love, to surrender their freedom, to sacrifice their own thoughts, for the sake of being one of the herd, of conforming, and thus of acquiring a sense of identity, even though it is an illusory one (Fromm, 1955, p. 63).
But amidst this quest for identity — essential to human functioning – we are missing an identification that may be critical for our survival, and that is an identity with life itself. We seem oblivious to the fact that above all things, we are alive, and life deserves our loyalty as much as any other identity we may have or pursue.
We are more than humanity, and we must identify ourselves with more than humanity. We are embedded in life, we are surrounded and immersed in life in millions of ways. It is the most obvious and yet most ignored aspect of our being, and in our ignorance, we fail to see that we are connected, united, linked to so much more beyond ourselves. And that “connection” holds the key to our very nature.
Yet, we find ourselves as human beings assaulting and killing life in all its forms—species are becoming extinct, bio-diversity is declining, global warming is occurring, and there is a depletion of our water, energy, and agricultural resources, and wars and conflict are endemic. I would like to suggest that a solution for many of the challenges we face may be to move beyond our conventional identifications with self, culture, nation, and even humanity, to an identification with life — Lifeism.
Anthony J. Marsella, Ph.D., Professor Emeritus, Department of Psychology, University of Hawaii, Honolulu, Hawaii. Dr. Marsella has promoted cross-cultural understanding and acceptance as a key to peace within and among nations. He has conducted international research for three decades, as a Fulbright Scholar in the Philippines, a project director for a psychiatric epidemiological study in Borneo, a National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) Culture and Mental Health Fellow at the East-West Center in Honolulu, Hawaii, and a professor of psychology and director of the World Health Organization (WHO) at the University of Hawaii at Manoa. He is Past President of Psychologists for Social Responsibility (PsySR).
Note from KMM: Are you satisfied with the way things are going in this country today? or wondering what the heck went wrong and why we seem to be in such a mess? if you want some answers and want to know what to do about everything that has gone awry, read D. Roy Eidelson’s new book: POLITICAL MIND GAMES: How the 1% manipulate our understanding of what’s happening, what’s right, and what’s possible. 
