No surprise

This isn't exactly the most surprising news in the world, but it's still worth mentioning. A new study by the Urban Institute found that helping parents get health care helps kids as well.You can read more here. Part of the context for the study is the decision of states whether to expand Medicaid under the Affordable Care Act. I'm very proud of how WV has handled that--well over 141,000 people covered under Medicaid expansion since Jan. 1.

DOMESTIC VIOLENCE has been in the news quite a bit lately. Here are some ideas about how to stop it.

MORE OF THE SAME. Here's Ken Ward at Coal Tattoo on business as usual in WV.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

What a difference a day makes

Yesterday's post was kind of a downer about how it seemed impossible to restore funding for programs for kids and families that were cut in the WV state budget by Gov. Tomblin.

It turns out that state legislators had a trick or two up their sleeves at the special session. In a surprise move (probably as much to the governor as to advocates), the WV House unanimously restored funding to domestic violence programs, child advocacy centers, family resource centers and networks and other programs. The Senate overwhelmingly concurred. And, at this point, it looks like the governor is OK with the result.

Read more on that here.

As early as this morning, I would have given this zero probability of occurring, at least within several months. And Republicans were as insistent on restoring the funding as Democrats. In some cases, more so.

It just goes to show you never know. Thanks and congratulations to all the kids, families and advocates who pushed for this. Having a few hundred folks hit the capitol yesterday certainly didn't hurt either.

Better a greyhound than a kid in WV

West Virginia governor Earl Ray Tomblin exercised his line item veto powers today to override the legislature and slash funding for domestic violence programs, child abuse prevention, family resource centers and networks, and early childhood education programs. Oh yeah, and for programs that would help low income people who are elderly and/or disabled remain in their homes rather than nursing homes.

Meanwhile, state subsidies for greyhound dog breeding and horse racing continue. And rich guy from the Greenbrier got his tax credits. I guess that's all that matters.

To wind and tide

OK. Or Hwaet if you want to get Anglo-Saxon about it. Let it be duly noted that when I pass over to the Great Perhaps, I don't want a fancy funeral. I'll settle for one just like that given to Scyld Scefing, the ruler of the Spear-Danes in the early part of Beowulf.

In lieu of flowers, here's how it should be done, by way of Seamus Heaney's translation. First, take me out to a Viking ship like this:

they shouldered him out to the sea's flood,
the chief they revered who had long ruled them.
A ring-whorled prow rode in the harbour,
ice-clad, outbound, a craft for a prince.
They stretched their beloved lord in his boat,
laid out by the mast, amidships,
the great ring-giver. .

But make sure it's decked out like this:

Far-fetched treasures
were piled upon him, and precious gear
I never heard before of a ship so well furbished
with battle tackle, bladed weapons
and coats of mail.

Then pile it on:

The massed treasure
was loaded on top of him: it would travel far
on out into the ocean's sway.

And deck me out:

They decked his body no less bountifully
with offerings than those first ones did
who cast him away when he was a child
and launched him alone out over the waves.

Then raise a standard and shove me off:

And they set a gold standard up
high above his head and let him drift
to wind and tide, bewailing him
and mourning their loss. No man can tell,
no wise man in hall or weathered veteran
knows for certain who salvaged that load

Any questions?

ON THE AGENDA. WV advocates for survivors of domestic violence and sexual assault highlighted their public policy agenda yesterday. One of these priorities is modernizing unemployment to cover people who have lost employment due to domestic violence, stalking and sexual assault when they are again available for and seeking work.

FOR FOR THOUGHT and for the future.

NOT IF SOME PEOPLE I KNOW CAN HELP IT. It is suggested here that clean energy sources could meet most of our needs by 2050.

SPEAKING OF ENERGY, a draft study by the Department of the Interior on the future of mountaintop removal mining is stirring up predictable controversy here. Here's Ken Ward on the topic in the Gazette and in Coal Tattoo.

THIS COULD REALLY HAPPEN. For your amusement from The Onion.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

Gangland

The theme here lately is Beowulf, although you'll also find links and comments about current events below. As I mentioned in an earlier post, this oldest English epic is a bit like a cross between The Hobbit (dragons and monsters and all that) and The Sopranos. No wonder the world it portrays is so dangerous.

The kind of society portrayed in the poem isn't all that different from that of the Iliad. It's a warrior society based on a culture of honor. Culture of honor have been discussed here before (search blog in upper left hand corner form more). They have appeared in all kinds of societies and neighborhoods down to the present day.

To make it plain, a culture of honor is one in which the good things of life are easily taken away unless one responds vigorously to any and all slights or Nike stomps.

Beowulf also shows a glimpse of a "heroic" society dominated by lords and their thanes or retainers, who spend their time getting sloshed in mead halls when they aren't out raiding. The lord/thane bond was a very serious one, but it wasn't maintained with tyranny. Rather, the lord gained the loyalty of his retainers by generosity. In the poem, the lord is often called "the ring giver." As the poem puts it,

...a young prince must be prudent like that,
giving freely while his father lives
so that afterwards in age when fighting starts
steadfast companions will stand by him
and hold the line. Behaviour that’s admired
is the path to power among people everywhere.

Within the poem and in other Anglo-Saxon sources there are several stories about the lord/thane bond and the duty of a retainer to fight for and if need be avenge one's lord, even if he has already died and even if the fight is hopeless.

It's also a culture where feuds are common and can drag on and on. It wouldn't take much to get one started. Imagine a bunch of drunken warriors exchanging boasts in a mead hall. Bragging gives way to insults, which gives way to violence and then it's on. One good killing deserves another, unless the offender pays the wergild or blood price.

Finally, it's a culture composed of many rival bands and little kingdoms, each of which are prepared to move in on another's territory at any sign of weakness.

And all that is without taking the monsters into account, about which more later.

BUDGET CUTTING AUSTERITY MEASURES when taken to extremes can lead to disastrous outcomes.

COURTING TROUBLE. This article looks at the risks of climate change denial.

GET MOVING. Here's an NPR tribute to America's first fitness guru, the late great Jack LaLanne.

WHAT'S IN A SMILE? Apparently, quite a bit.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

Crazy as a loon

When it comes to religion, El Cabrero is a cradle Episcopalian of the Mahayana variety who happens to work for a Quaker organization.

But the older I get, the more I find the religion of my birth being unceremoniously elbowed out of the way from time to time by older traditions. Mostly it's Taoism. Sometimes it's Buddhism. And some days Greek mythology seems more reasonable and less bloodthirsty than monotheism.

This happens pretty much involuntarily. I'm not proud of it and try to keep it under control.

Sometimes a shamanistic streak emerges. I have several totem animals that speak to my condition. One is any variety of cat (surely a higher form of life). Others include the praying mantis (for martial arts reasons), great blue herons (because they are cool), and snakes (overdetermined).

Thanks to spending last week on Lake Champlain in Vermont, I've added a new sacred animal to my repertoire: the loon. This was the first time I ever saw one in action since they don't live this far south.

For other latitudinally challenged hillbillies such as my self, a loon is kind of a big-assed duck on steroids. They make a really cool sound and can swim under water for considerable distances looking for food.

One minute, you see them floating along. Then they suddenly dive and disappear, only to emerge a good ways off. From what I've read, they can dive as deep as 250 feet and stay under as long as five minutes.

I think what I like about them is their liminality, which is a fancy word for their ability to cross thresholds, like water, air and land (the last of which is not their favorite element). I've always found the boundaries between different states and kinds of things to be interesting. In mythological terms, I think that would put them under the jurisdiction of Hermes, god of boundaries and borders.

I'd better get to a church pretty soon...

UNEMPLOYMENT jumped again in my beloved state of West Virginia, but is still a tad below the national average. My guess is it will hit hardest here later and last longer.

MY EX-GRANDMOTHER-IN-LAW subscribed to the theory that the moon landing never happened. She had other strange beliefs as well which I wish I'd written down before she died. Anyhow, she's not alone.

DOMESTIC VIOLENCE. A new study found that violence continues after the breakup for those with children and that witnessing it has a strong negative affect on children even if they are not themselves the targets. A lot of this won't be news to those familiar with the subject, but more hard data is always welcome.

TALKING SENSE. I can't recommend enough Ken Ward Jr.'s Coal Tattoo blog. Here are links to three recent posts. The first debunks the hysterical response to climate change legislation by WV's ruling class. The second debunks a debunking of a study of the cost of coal by a WVU researcher. And the third points to an under-used way of bringing green jobs to the coalfields.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

"...freedom only after countless pains"

Heracles would eventually liberate Prometheus. Image courtesy of wikipedia.

Goat Rope these days is taking a tour of ancient Greek tragedy (but you'll find links and comments about current events below). This week the theme is Prometheus Bound by Aeschylus.

Why Greek tragedy? I'm convinced the tragic lens often is the one that applies best to current problems. In an earlier post about coal and Appalachia, I argued that we too often tend to view the world through a simplified action movie lens, with clear good guys who are all good and bad guys who are all bad (see former President Bush) and a happy ending. Would that it were so.

But back to the story at hand.

It is easy to see Prometheus as the archetypal rebel against tyranny and to view Zeus as an evil usurper. But Aeschylus was concerned with a deeper matter: how excess can be tempered and holy moderation can be achieved. He was all about avoiding excess and calling for moderation.

We only have the first play of his trilogy, but we know it ended with the release of Prometheus, who would aid Zeus with information that would allow him to remain in power.

Zeus, after violently overthrowing the old order, was excessive in his punishment and use of power. Prometheus, though he benefited humanity, was excessive in his pride and defiance, as some of his sympathetic visitors suggested.

Totalitarianism and the rule of force must give way to restraint and the rule of law. Prometheus and Zeus are symbols of forethought and reason on the one hand and power on the other--and these must be reconciled.

Too bad we can't see how Aeschylus got there. Too bad we haven't figured out how to get there ourselves.

Y'all have a good weekend and try not to get chained to any rocks.

SPEAKING OF BEING CHAINED TO ROCKS, this essay hopes we'll be liberated soon from the rock of market fundamentalism.

HEALTH CARE COSTS exceed wage gains in El Cabrero's beloved state of West Virginia (and elsewhere in the US too). Meanwhile, it looks like the health care industry, after making a show of supporting reforms, is trying to sabotage President Obama's health care plan. Their main target is a public option which many see as the key to moving towards universal coverage.

REASON # 42949 why we need the Employee Free Choice Act here.

NOT COOL. WV's proposed state budget includes cuts in legal services for domestic violence victims.

MONKEY BRAINS aren't all that different from ours.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

Acting bad

The toy monkey insulted this man's honor.

El Cabrero is musing this week about how some cultures evolved in situations which promoted the use or threat of violence as a survival asset. Let me state again that people who want to make the world less violent would do well to try to understand the factors that contribute to violence.

As I mentioned yesterday, the researchers Richard Nisbett and Dov Cohen came up with some interesting findings as reported in their book, Culture of Honor: The Psychology of Violence in the South. I consider Appalachia to be a distinct cultural area from the deep south but they discuss that region as well.

The authors note that one leading cause of male violence is

the sense of threat to one of his most valued possessions, namely, his reputation for strength and toughness. In many of the world's cultures, social status, economic well-being, and life itself are linked to such a reputation. This is true wherever gaining resources, or keeping them, depends on the community's believing that the individual is capable of defending himself against predation. If resources are abundant or are not subject to theft (like those of most traditional farming peoples, for example), then a reputation for toughness has little value. But if resources are in a scarce or unpredictable supply, and if they are sufficiently portable that theft is a practicable route to bounty, then toughness has great economic value. Potential predators will go elsewhere rather than risk dealing with a man who knows how to defend himself and his possessions and who appears to be not afraid to die.

Again, such cultural values tend to develop in herding societies, where wealth is mobile, but they can last long after social conditions have changed.

I would write more about this subject today, but I'm off on a cattle raid...

UNEMPLOYMENT. The US Senate yesterday approved an extension of unemployment benefits. unemployment benefits. Here's some information showing why that's a good idea.

SITTING HERE IN LIMBO. Waiting for decisive action on the economy even for a few months could be really, really bad, as Paul Krugman argues in today's op-ed.

THINKING BIG. From Foreign Policy, here's an interview on the state of things with economist Jeffrey Sachs.

CAR TALK. Here's Dean Baker on the proposed bailout to the automotive industry.

CUTE PRIMATE UPDATE here.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

Where will it end?

Athena, courtesy of wikipedia.

We're almost done with a long series on the Odyssey of Homer. You'll also find links and comments about current events. When I started writing about what this timeless classic had to say to us today, I never thought it would last this long. What can I say? Homer is the man (or maybe, as some have speculated, the woman).

For many readers, the least satisfying part of the book is the ending. Odysseus, Telemachus and some faithful servants finally wreak terrible vengeance on the 108 suitors and the unfaithful maids and servants. In a contest, Odysseus strings a bow as only he can do and a massacre ensues.

(The goat herder Melanthius comes to a particularly nasty end. El Cabrero's one complaint about the bard is that he was a little rough on a fellow goat herder. I'm not sure you can really blame the guy for being such a jerk: this is an occupational hazard of hanging out with goats. But I digress...)

The people of Ithaca are not happy about this slaughter. Nor are they particularly pleased with a commander who loses every single one of his 600 men after the war was over.

A fresh conflict is about to ensue between Odysseus, son Telemachus, father Laertes, and servants and a mob of Ithacans when the gods intervened. Athena cries out

"in a piercing voice that stopped all fighters cold,
"Hold back, you men of Ithaca, back from brutal war!
Break off--shed no more blood--make peace at once!"

With that,

...Terror blanched their faces,
they went limp with fear, weapons slipped from their hands
and strewed the ground at the goddess' ringing voice...

At her command, they made a pact of peace.

It is kind of hard to believe (even in an epic with all kinds of gods and monsters and wonders). But it does raise this point: how does the spiral of violence come to an end, with one provocation being answered by yet another with no end in sight and with all sides feeling justified in doing what they do?

Homer seems to suggest that we do need some kind of divine intervention for that to happen. If it's on the menu, I'll take it. Another reading is to say that our only hope is in what the goddess Athena embodies: wisdom, craft and strategy.

Or maybe they're the same thing.

THE END OF AFFLUENZA? Maybe.

PAYBACK. Here's an interesting item on our innate sense sense of justice, the desire to punish cheaters, and capacity for forgiveness.

THE RECESSION AND YOUR HEALTH. Economic downturns can have some interesting effects.

GET THE PICTURE on climate change? If not, click here.

WARM BLOODED. Half of all mammal species are in decline and one fourth are headed for extinction, according to this report. Here's more on the topic.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

VIOLENCE AND PUBLIC HEALTH

Improvements in human longevity and physical well-being over the last hundred or so years have come more from improvements in public health than in the treatment of individual patients and diseases.

I'm just talking about the basics, like clean water and a sewage system. This is still an issue in many parts of the world. In the developing world today, diarrhea is the leading cause of child deaths--two million per year. Around six million people of all ages die from it annually.

Dr. James Gilligan, author of the 1996 Violence: Reflections on a National Epidemic, suggests that we take a public health approach to violence prevention and reduction at both the interpersonal and structural level.

Rather than conventional moralistic condemnations,

the only way to explain the causes of violence so that we can learn how to prevent it, is to approach violence as a problem in public health and preventive medicine, and to think of violence as a symptom of life-threatening (and often lethal) pathology which, like all forms of illness, has an etiology or cause, a pathogen. To think of violence as evil--if we confuse hat value judgment about violence with an explanation of it--can only confuse us into thinking we have an explanation when we do not.

Based on experience over 25 years in working with violent offenders, Gilligan believes that he has identified the pathogen or "virus" that causes violence. And that pathogen is shame.

More on that tomorrow.

WHATEVER HAPPENED TO THE UPPER CLASS? They're still there.

TWO FROM THE NEW YORKER. Here's George Packer on the future of movement conservatism. And here's an item on the elusive search for a cure for the common hangover.

NIRVANA. Not the band, the state of being. Here's an interesting article about a brain scientist who experienced it by way of having a stroke.

SPEAKING OF WHICH, more and more therapists and researchers are giving Buddhist-inspired mindfulness meditation a second look.

CLOSING A GAP. Some colleges are trying to break down the barriers between the sciences and the humanities.

DEATH'S DOOR. The Rev. Carroll Pickett, for years a prison chaplain at Huntsville, Texas who witnessed 95 executions, has come to oppose the death penalty and is the subject of a new film.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

VIOLENCE AND TRAGEDY

Orestes at Delphi, courtesy of wikipedia.

It's an interesting fact that great literature and social science seem to agree about the nature of violence: it usually doesn't just come out of nowhere.

While I'm not interesting in excusing any violent behavior, numerous studies show that perpetrators of violence tend to have been its victims in the past (and often in the future) and that today's victim may be tomorrow's perpetrator.

In the great tragedies of literature, the violence that occurs or is alluded to onstage is usually only the latest link in a chain of events. The bloody scene that Fortinbras stumbles upon at the end of Hamlet was preceded by murders and betrayals.

This is also true of group violence such as armed conflict. Wars, too, have their family trees.

The ancient Greeks had a word for the dangerous pollution that could be unleashed by violence: miasma. It was almost like a toxic substance that could infect people who had nothing to do with the original acts and could play out over the generations.

One strand of Greek mythology that shows how the miasma of violence can play out over time is that of the terrible house of Atreus, which figures in Homer's Iliad and Odyssey, the Oresteia of Aeschylus and elsewhere.

Atreus, king of Mycenae, committed an act of sacrilege against the gods and the sacred nature of food and family when he killed the children of his brother and rival Thyeses and fed them to their unknowing father. His son, Agamemnon, was fated to sacrifice his daughter Iphigenia to Artemis to gain favorable winds to invade Troy, where bloody warfare raged for ten years.

His wife, Clytemnestra, was outraged by this murder and takes Aegisthus, son of Thyeses as lover. When Agamemnon returns from the bloody sack of Troy, they kill him. Agamemnon's son Orestes is driven to kill his mother and Aegisthus to avenge his father. He is then pursued by the Furies, the dark goddesses who personify vengeance.

So it went. So it goes.

In the end, it took divine intervention by Apollo and Athena to end the cycle of violence and placate the Furies. What will it take to end ours--or even slow it down a little?

SPEAKING OF WHICH, here's an AP article that shows how neighbors can intervene to help dispell the miasma of domestic violence.

BROTHER, CAN YOU SPARE SOME RICE? Here's more on the global food crisis.

THE G.I. BILL helped create the American middle class. The latest Economic Policy Institute snapshot highlights the value of the proposed 21st Century G.I. Bill.

URGENT ANCIENT AMPHIBIAN UPDATE. This critter, found in Texas, was a little bit frog and a little bit salamander.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

TALKING SENSE

Several years ago, I stumbled on a thought provoking book titled Violence: Reflections on a National Epidemic. The author, James Gilligan, is a physician and psychiatrist who worked extensively in prisons and mental hospitals and who drew extensively on his decades of experience with violent offenders in developing his theories.

Recently, I gave the book another look and found that the public health approach he advocated holds up pretty well both in terms of personal violence committed by individuals and the much more extensive structural violence inflicted every day on poor and relatively powerless people.

The unfortunate fact that this book did not find as large an audience as it deserves is probably because he took it in a direction which many people want to avoid: the economic inequities that are violent in themselves and contribute to the level of interpersonal violence. This isn't exactly new. In the first half of the 20th century Mahatma Gandhi observed that "poverty is the worst form of violence."

Gilligan cites research on economic disparities in his book that indicates that 180 people die prematurely due to economic factors such as lack of food, clean water, health care, public health measures, etc. for every 1 person killed in armed conflict. The numbers have changed since his book came out in 1996, but the vast majority of the carnage is still on the economic side.

Let's start by just looking at (lack of) health care related deaths in the US. Families USA recently reported that in 2006 alone 22,000 Americans died prematurely because they lacked health insurance. West Virginia's share amounts to an estimated 210 unnecessary deaths per year or around four people per week.

If you look at the number of deaths attributable to economic disparities on a world scale, the results would be staggering. According to UNICEF, more than 26,000 children under age five die from preventable deaths every day. That's almost 10 million preventable deaths year, not counting people over age five.

Unfortunately for us all, as Gilligan puts it,

When violence is defined as criminal, many people see and care about it. When it is simply a byproduct of our social and economic structure, many do not see it; and it is hard to care about something one cannot see.

SPEAKING OF VIOLENCE, screening for domestic violence by medical professionals can help to end it, according to this NY Times article.

THE BUTCHER'S BILL. From the Hightower Lowdown, here's a damage assessment of 10,000--I mean nearly eight--years of Bush/Cheney.

HUNGRY COUNTRY. USA Today reports that food stamp enrollment has surpassed the previous record set in 1994. Here's one thing that's changed:

Since 2006, soaring food and fuel prices have combined with lost jobs and stagnant wages to boost the number of Americans needing food aid. More than 41% of those on food stamps came from working families in 2006, up from 30% a decade earlier, according to the latest Agriculture Department data.

CAN MUSIC HELP HEAL PEOPLE? Maybe.

RANDOM LINK. Scientists have found millions of starfish hanging out in an undersea volcano. I'm not sure what that has to do with anything but thought it was kind of cool.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

THINKING ABOUT VIOLENCE

There are often occasions in life where following our natural inclinations isn't a very good idea. One example is the all-too-human tendency to ignore things we don't like. Violence is a case in point. I think people who want to make the world less violent and less unjust would do well to think and learn as much about it as possible, although preferably not first hand...

I've had many discussions with people over the years about what they consider violence to be and what kind of violence is the worst. The ideas people come up with vary widely, although it seems like many people who have experienced a lot of violence in their lives often consider mental cruelty to be the worst--perhaps because cruel intent is conveyed by physical violence and other kinds of abuse.

I tend to think of violence broadly as any act (or non-action) involving human agency that harms people or keeps them from developing their potential. This would include institutional or structural violence such as poverty as well as physical violence committed by individuals or groups.

(And by the way, way more people die needlessly from preventable things related to the structural violence of poverty and economic disparities that personal violence or even armed conflict. )

To me, the opposite of violence is not so much peace or nonviolence as that state of thriving or well-being that the ancient Greeks referred to as eudaimonia (literally something like "good spirits"), which is often but inadequately translated into English as happiness. As Aristotle argued in his Ethics, happiness or eudaimonia is the goal of human life in the sense that we want other things in order to be happy but desire happiness for its own sake. It's not the same thing as pleasure, although that's a part of a happy life. Rather, it involves not only being able to meet basic human needs but also self-actualization, which for social animals like ourselves inherently involves others.

STRETCHED. As the economy sours for many Americans, people are turning to food stamps to help make ends meet. But as AP reported recently, rising food prices are diminishing their purchasing power.

DEMOCRACY AT RISK. Here's Bill Moyers musing on the future of the Republic.

HALF IN TEN. A new campaign aims at reducing poverty in the US by 50 percent over the next ten years. For more details, click here.

CHANGING LIFESTYLES are likely to come in the wake of higher fuel costs.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

CULTURAL DISTANCE

In the Dhammapada, the Buddha says

All beings tremble before violence.
All fear death.
All love life.
See yourself in others.
Then whom can you hurt?

Part of the secret of unleashing violence on others is precisely countering the ability of people to see themselves in others, in eliminating empathy. Often this involves seeing the other as the Other--someone totally different from oneself.

In his book On Killing, Lt. Col. Dave Grossman refers to this as "emotional distance." Often, this is done by means of emphasizing cultural distance, which creates what he calls "emotional hooding."

As he puts it,

It is so much easier to kill someone if they look distinctly different from you. If your propaganda machine can convince your soldiers that their opponents are not really human but are "inferior forms of life," then their natural resistance to killing their own species will be reduced. Often the enemy's humanity is denied by referring to him as a "gook," "Kraut," or Nip." In Vietnam this process was assisted by the "body count" mentality, in which we referred to and thought of the enemy as numbers. One Vietnam vet told me that this permitted him to think that killing the NVA and VC was like "stepping on ants."

The best known example of a militaristic policy based on cultural distance is the Nazi idea of the master race, but it has shown up many times in many guises. Obviously, this kind of thinking can promote atrocities.

Grossman notes, however, that the use of cultural distance to promote killing often rebounds on those who promote it. If one does something to one's opponent, one should not be surprised if the opponent does the same given the opportunity.

RETAIL RECESSION. According to this NY Times article, a number of retail chain stores are heading for bankruptcy.

IRAQI LABOR LAWS. Thirty seven members of Congress have signed on to a letter to Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki urging that Iraqi workers be guaranteed the right to organize. Saddam Hussein-era laws restricting independent labor unions apparently remain in effect. The letter says in part that

We believe that the promotion of fundamental worker rights is essential to ensuring that the exercise of human rights becomes a reality for the people of Iraq.

BIOFUEL VS FOOD. The move to make fuel from crops is driving up food prices and contributing to hunger in poor countries.

AUTOMATIC PILOT. A new study suggests that many of our decisions are made before we are consciously aware of it.

MASSEY. Some Massey Energy shareholders are pushing for greater disclosure of the company's political activities. Meanwhile, the compensation of CEO Don Blankenship is up by 35 percent.

URGENT KOMODO DRAGON UPDATE. If you've ever wondered just how Komodo dragons with lightweight skulls and not much biting power can kill and eat big critters, click here.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

FORCE AND RESISTANCE (AND A MESSAGE FOR EMAIL SUBSCRIBERS)

The guiding thread through this week's Goat Rope is a series of reflections on the ancient Chinese classic the Tao Te Ching. If this is your first visit, please click on the earlier entries.

A major theme of the Tao Te Ching is the critique of force and its unskillful use. For example, if you push people, they usually push back--harder. If you try to pull people towards you, literally or otherwise, they tend to pull away. If you hit a nail, it usually goes in deeper.

Heated arguments with people seldom convince. When muscles are treated with resistance, they grow stronger. Strident and self-righteous groups often alienate others.

When new antibiotics are developed, micro-organisms tend to evolve defenses. Some insects develop immunities to poisons. And, uhhh, arrogant and aggressive foreign policies and unnecessary wards don't usually work out very well either.

The common tendency to apply force against that which we dislike often has the unintended consequence of strengthening it. As Holmes Welch put it in his book Taoism: The Parting of the Way,

Interfere with existence and it resists, as a stone resists crushing. If it is a living creature it resists actively, as a wasp being crushed will sting. But the kind of resistance offered by living creatures is unique: it grows stronger as interference grows stronger up to the point where the creature’s capacity for resistance is destroyed. Evolution might be thought of as a march towards ever more highly articulated and effective capacity for resistance. Humans and human societies are thus highly responsive to challenge. So when anyone, ruler or subject, tries to act upon humans individually or collectively, the ultimate result is the opposite of what he is aiming at. He has invoked what we might call “the Law of Aggression."

While the Tao Te Ching recognizes that some coercion may be necessary for defensive purposes, it advises that the wise person or leader should use force of any kind only when absolutely necessary and use it to the least degree possible and then stop. Excess and aggression lead to disaster:

Whenever you advise a ruler in the way of Tao,
Counsel him not to use force to conquer the universe.
For this would only cause resistance.
Thorn bushes spring up wherever the army has passed.
Lean years follow in the wake of a great war.
Just do what needs to be done.
Never take advantage of power.

Achieve results,
But never glory in them.
Achieve results,
But never boast.
Achieve results,
But never be proud.
Achieve results,
Because this is the natural way.
Achieve results,
But not through violence.

Force is followed by loss of strength.
This is not the way of Tao.
That which goes against the Tao
comes to an early end. 30

MINIMUM WAGE CALL IN DAYS MAY 9-11. The Let Justice Roll Living Wage Campaign is urging people to call Congress between now and May 11th and urge that they get moving on the minimum wage. Two different bills have passed the House and Senate and await reconciliation. Click here for more info, complete with a toll free number provided by the American Friends Service Committee.

THE LATEST ON SAGO. This is from Ken Ward in today's Charleston Gazette.

GUARDING KANSAS. The war in Iraq has limited the ability of the Kansas Guard to respond to disasters like that in Greensburg.

NOTE TO EMAIL SUBSCRIBERS. It has come to my attention that some people who get Goat Rope via email haven't been receiving it. It should be working now. Sorry for any inconvenience.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

OEDIPUS WRECKS, PLUS NEWS ABOUT DOMESTIC VIOLENCE AND THE FEDERAL BUDGET

Caption: The little guys here are in the oral phase.

This is the fourth installment in Goat Rope's official Fun With Freud week. If this is your first visit, please scroll down to earlier entries.

Disclaimer: El Cabrero is neither a psychologist nor an orthodox Freudian. I think he was probably WAY wrong about a lot of things but that some of his basic ideas still have merit. Or are at least entertaining.

The area of his theory that most scandalized his contemporaries had to do with child development. He believed that the passions that drive adults are present in children from earliest days in a different form, who ordinarily go through a series of phases of development(oral, anal, phallic, latent, and mature adult).

Most scandalous of all was his theory of the Oedipus complex, which took its name from the classic Greek myth of the tyrant of Thebes who inadvertently killed his father and married his mother.

He believed that young children, especially boys (the psychology of females was...problematic for him) wanted exclusive possession of their mother or female caregiver and resented adult males, especially their fathers. He believed that how the child negotiated those early entanglements and conflicts shaped the rest of his life.

To put it mildly, his ideas on this point are not widely accepted today (although they do seem to fit for some people). Is there anything worth keeping in here?

Here's the official Goat Rope verdict: a little.

It's hard to deny that when kids roll out, it's all about the mouth as the main focus of energy and attention. After a while, they do become fascinated with all things having to do self control of certain bodily functions. Then there's the period where they run around playing with themselves (some people seem to get stuck there). After a while, about the time kids now enter school, they chill out and are fairly calm for a few years. Then, in adolescence, the beast reawakens.

That's pretty close.

And while not many people believe the Oedipus complex is a universal fact, there is a great and growing body of evidence that early interactions shape a child's approach to others over the course of a lifetime. Attachment theory was first developed by John Bowlby, a psychoanalyst, in partnership with Mary Ainsworth.

Freud's theory of child development has influenced many future theorists, even if some developed their ideas in direct opposition to his. Erik Erikson's theories of the stages of psycho-social development are a further elaboration of Freud's initial ideas.

His ideas have also influenced studies of how gender affects child development, particularly of how boys often come to define themselves in terms of separation while with girls relationships are more important.

The mother/child relationship is an emotionally powerful one, as El Cabrero was recently reminded in a conversation with his 3 year old grandson. I tried to say that his mother (my daughter) was a woman. "NO!," he screamed indignantly, "She's my MOM!"

That was pretty complex.

A LITTLE GOOD NEWS. Speaking of family conflicts, the federal government reported in March that violence against intimate partners is down dramatically in recent years:

Criminal violence against intimate partners fell by nearly two-thirds in recent years and has reached a record low, according to preliminary government
figures.

The declines were greatest for nonfatal attacks, which fell by about 65 percent from 1993 to 2005, according to the federal Bureau of Justice Statistics. Homicides among intimate partners dropped by roughly a third.

The figures are based on the annual National Crime Victimization Survey, which counts criminal abuse against spouses, girlfriends, boyfriends and former spouses, whether it's been reported to police or not. The information,collected in thousands of confidential interviews, is the most widely used instrument for charting U.S. crime trends.

Homicides involving a domestic partner were down by roughly a third over the same period, although sadly you wouldn't notice the decline from the all too frequent incidents of relationship homicide from watching the headlines. It's still unfortunately all too common and it's important to remember that domestic violence is still underreported.

A lot of the credit for this reduction should go to the domestic violence movement, which has worked long and hard to change laws and policies; educate the public, the police, the courts, etc. about the issues; and provide services to people facing intimate violence.

FEDERAL BUDGET. As the U.S. House takes up the budget, a number of groups are urging people to contact their representatives to support human needs funding. Here's a link to ECAP (Emergency Campaign for America's Priorities) and Sojourners on the topic. The vote may happen today, if you're interested, don't delay.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED