Daily Review 19/06/2015 #CampbellLives

Written By: - Date published: 6:30 pm, June 19th, 2015 - 26 comments
Categories: open mike - Tags:

Donald Trump we shall overcomb

Slightly redesigned in support of #CampbellLives.

Daily review is also your post.

This provides Standarnistas the opportunity to review events of the day.

The usual rules of good behaviour apply (see the Policy).

Don’t forget to be kind to each other.

26 comments on “Daily Review 19/06/2015 #CampbellLives ”

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  1. Clemgeopin 1
    19 June 2015 at 6:59 pm

    Here are the answers which I had posted earlier, but had no response yet:

    http://thestandard.org.nz/daily-review-18062015-campbelllives/#comment-1032132

  2. Clemgeopin 2
    19 June 2015 at 7:05 pm

    This news item made me feel quite helpless, distraught, disturbed and very sad.

    http://www.stuff.co.nz/auckland/local-news/69538507/young-aucklanders-in-hidden-sex-world

    • b waghorn 3.1
      19 June 2015 at 8:55 pm

      There’s a stench of corruption coming off those logs that’s so strong I can smell it in Taumarunui.

      • Sacha 3.1.1
        20 June 2015 at 5:51 pm

        I look forward to seeing media trace any connections back to the regional council that issued consents to drain and wreck wetlands.

  4. b waghorn 4
    19 June 2015 at 8:58 pm

    This daily review is tagged the 18/06/2015 its the 19th

  5. Charles 5
    19 June 2015 at 9:55 pm

    Cultivating Compassion

    If you knew me in real life you’d find this post both ironic and hypocritical, but I thought I’d offer some thoughts on something that people don’t often think of as politics: Compassion.

    This evening I was reading the blog of a writer who is occasionally found on The Daily Blog and she (Chloe King – blog called, Posse) highlighted the fact that one of the most political acts we can do, is offer compassion to other people.

    It’s not something we often read about in political news, and not something that anyone in power seems to value much. Mostly I’ve found that, in people who have a predisposition to compassion, life first tries to kick it out of them. Then they get ashamed that they ever cared, then they get angry at themselves for their “naivety” and fracture their normal balance, get bitter at the loss, and start sneering at anything as simple or unsophisticated or “naive” as compassion. If by some fluke of luck, or pig-headed stubbornness, a person can hold onto their capacity for compassion, after life takes everything it can from them to make them let it go, they’re left with one of the rarest traits in our culture. Those people are in a better position than me to say what should be done with it after that point.

    “If you want others to be happy, practice compassion. If you want to be happy, practice compassion.” – Dalai Lama

    Compassion has more than one definition, at times it means “simplicity”, and simplicity is a word with endless undefinable meanings, but in this case let’s concentrate on compassion as an act of kindness to other people within our existing reality.

    This site has an article on cultivating compassion. It is not exhaustive, but it’s simple and easy to apply:

    http://zenhabits.net/a-guide-to-cultivating-compassion-in-your-life-with-7-practices/

    “…Instead of recognizing the differences between yourself and others, try to recognize what you have in common. At the root of it all, we are all human beings. We need food, and shelter, and love. We crave attention, and recognition, and affection, and above all, happiness. Reflect on these commonalities you have with every other human being, and ignore the differences.”

    When meeting anyone else, remind yourself:

    “…Just like me, this person is seeking happiness in his/her life.
    Just like me, this person is trying to avoid suffering in his/her life.
    Just like me, this person has known sadness, loneliness and despair.
    Just like me, this person is seeking to fill his/her needs.
    Just like me, this person is learning about life…

    … the next step is to want that person to be free from suffering… Try this exercise: Imagine the suffering of a human being you’ve met recently. Now imagine that you are the one going through that suffering. Reflect on how much you would like that suffering to end. Reflect on how happy you would be if another human being desired your suffering to end, and acted upon it. Open your heart to that human being and if you feel even a little that you’d want their suffering to end, reflect on that feeling. That’s the feeling that you want to develop. With constant practice, that feeling can be grown and nurtured.

    …take the exercise a step further. Imagine again the suffering of someone you know or met recently. Imagine again that you are that person, and are going through that suffering. Now imagine that another human being would like your suffering to end… What would you like for that person to do to end your suffering? Now reverse roles: you are the person who desires for the other person’s suffering to end. Imagine that you do something to help ease the suffering, or end it completely. Once you get good at this stage, practice doing something small each day to help end the suffering of others, even in a tiny way. Even a smile, or a kind word, or doing an errand or chore, or just talking about a problem with another person. Practice doing something kind to help ease the suffering of others.”

    Follow the above link to read it all, not edited by me. It goes further, into territory that people more tolerant than me could go. I still gripe about “not being able to teach people kindness” so I have some ways to go before I can hug a National Party MP.

    Leaving deliberate manipulations of the sentiment in these exercises to one side for a bit, there are of course big problems with these very general suggestions – the road to hell is paved with good intention.

    For example, unless a person is either particularly self-aware, or conveniently uncomplicated by life, they may make mistakes in identifying suffering; or the root of the problem, and what it may take to solve suffering; and it can take considerable time to learn how to distinguish between personal desire, transference or projection, and intuition and compassion; but those who are already predisposed to compassion will be able to find their way easily enough.

    People who never use phrases like, “open your heart” will look at those words, go cold, and wonder what tired old hippy crap this might be. I’m afraid I do not know how to get through to those people. Let’s make believe they are naturally occurring sociopaths, of the unassuming and harmless kind: they can’t feel what we feel, but they can go through the motions if we all agree it’s what people do to stay socially coherent. Those people know when to smile, know what a kind word sounds like even if kindness isn’t something they could describe in terms of emotion, and in talking to someone about a problem they may even be more adept at listening without the interference of judgement, than empaths.

    Anyone else, has to go a little further into the definitions of simplicity.

    It is no co-incidence that Jesus Christ allegedly said, “Give away all you have, and follow me”. As I understand it, he wasn’t talking so much about the necessity of travelling light when living a life on the road, but letting go of everything we think we are, our ideas about stuff, our beliefs, our politics, our over-reliance on those logical critical thinking skills everyone else says are so necessary to successful life, and trust in the innate nature of our existence – allowing the miracle of life to appear.

    Eastern philosophy has a story of a man who threw away his valuable jewellery, put his young child on his back and ran out of the village never to be seen again. People asked, “Was it because he thought the child was worth more?” And the reply was, “No, greed had joined him to his jewellery, but Heaven had connected him to his child.” Although Eastern philosophy attempts to trace things as far back as possible, Heaven, in this case, was the abbreviated and immediately identifiable source of relationship between all things – a respect for simplicity.

    A less extreme translation would be: Don’t over-think it, thinking is not simplicity. Compassion revolves around simplicity.

    Most of the well-known Western prophets and Eastern philosophers ranged from working, to ruling class. They had to have a certain amount of free time to sit around thinking, talking or writing. So while it may be “…easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle, than a rich man enter the kingdom of god…” I don’t believe it follows that a rich person could not cultivate compassion, starting wherever they chose, somewhere simple.

    Now if you’ll excuse me, I have complex character assassinations to get back to…

    • Bill 5.2
      19 June 2015 at 11:57 pm

      I have some ways to go before I can hug a National Party MP

      Why would you ever want to hug a source of that which generates situations for people where they experience suffering? (That sentence is a bit munted, I hope you get my meaning)

      If the National Party MP is in a situation where they are not a National Party MP then maybe, depending on the circumstances, you’d be easy enough about giving them a hug or a kind word. My point though is that no-one should ever want to hug a National Party MP. That would simply be unconscionable. There are some roles that people play that deserve only our opprobrium.

    • philj 5.3
      20 June 2015 at 9:25 pm

      Thank you for your thoughts Charles on Compassion. Modern life has become more complex and hurried, and stressful. Theologian Karen Armstrong promoted ” The Charter for Compassion ” a few years ago, as a prerequisite for the survival of the human race on planet earth. Will science or religion save us or will we have to do it ourselves?

  6. RedBaronCv 6
    19 June 2015 at 10:25 pm

    Wel I do hope that Lprent didn’t see today’s Dompost daily quiz in the paper. When the question invoves The Standard and the answer is the Labour party

    • weka 6.1
      19 June 2015 at 10:42 pm

      go on, tell us the question.

      • RedBaronCV 6.1.1
        19 June 2015 at 10:47 pm

        Can’t remember the eaxct wording but along the lines of “the Standard is associated with which political party ?”

        There was no question 8 but the answer was “the sultans of swing” so maybe the question mentioned Lprent? ( in his partying days?)

  8. weka 8
    19 June 2015 at 11:00 pm

    Jon Stewart on the Charleston shootings,

    You know it’s going to go down the same path… “this is a terrible tragedy”… they’re already using the nuanced language of lack of effort for this…