Problem Solving 101

I have heard it said on many occasions that the only constant in the Universe is change. Depending on the day, ones mood, what the latest change is and how you deal with it will determine you feelings toward this.

I have been going through a plethora of changes as of late. I thought the end of last year was going to be the majority, but so far this year has all been about changes. I sometimes forget that when I go through these moments that I can get so close to them that it is like walking up to a cliff-face, knowing there is something wonderful up there, but being so close, all I can see is the looming wall in my way.

These moments are actually good things, blessings. When you face them, know that it is NEVER insurmountable, and if at all possible, remember that you placed it there. Celebrate the moment of growth that is before you.

I know that sounds a bit silly to many of you, but if you can re-align your perception of the moment from viewing it as an obstacle to viewing it as an adventure, you will find whatever it is to be much easier to get through.

One of my favorite benefits of this view is that it allows you to reclaim your power over the situation. You are no longer its victim or having it done TO you, but now you have the power to DO TO IT what you wish.

The first few times it can seem impossible, but take a step back, a deep breath or two and just look at what is directly in front of you and deal with that. Then you can go on to what appears next, if you deal with it in this way, before you know it, that MAJOR difficulty suddenly becomes a collection of tiny little problems and before you know it, they are all out of the way and you can look back and ask yourself; "What was I thinking?"

PC = Orwellian Newspeak?

I am SO hoping that someone will channel Mark Twain to get his opinions on the latest round of ”Political Correctness” going around. I would pay to hear his thoughts on this...

I was so saddened to hear that there is soon to be a “sanitized” version of “The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn” and “The Adventures of Tom Sawyer” available for the general public. Twain scholar Judith Lee believes that you, the general public, are too stupid to handle Twain's use of certain words that by the standards of today may offend.

She [Judith Lee] argued that Twain's use of racial epithets was meant to be read ironically but that an appreciation of irony was an “advanced interpretive skill.” For a “general audience,” Lee said, a bowdlerized version will do.

Op-Ed: 'Huck' and 'Rent' done wrong
Tim Rutten
LA Times 01/08/2011
Also in the piece was a mention that at Monrovia High, an already “sanitized-for-high-schools version” of “Rent”, basically a retelling of “La Boheme”, was being cancelled with the District Superintendent, Linda Wagner, giving the reason of:

“We need to consider all our constituents” and from now on, the school only will be allowed to put on plays that “every child and every parent find to be acceptable.” She told another reporter this week that this play “is not family friendly” because it depicts “characters who have some dark issues they're dealing with”…

Where Monrovia's new standards leave its drama program is anybody's guess. You could, one supposes, go back to the classics, say, Sophocles' “Oedipus the King,” which Aristotle singled out for praise in his “Poetics.” No, that won't do — there's incest. Shakespeare's a problem — witchcraft in “Macbeth,” teenage sexuality in “Romeo and Juliet” and ageism in “King Lear.” Let's not even talk about “Othello” or “The Merchant of Venice.” No Ibsen — syphilis in “Ghosts” and disrespect for authorities in “An Enemy of the People.” Maybe something American: “Long Day's Journey Into Night” is out — drug and alcohol addiction there; “Death of a Salesman” undermines capitalism, and “Inherit the Wind” denigrates biblical inerrancy.

Tim Rutten
LA Times 01/08/2011
Political Correctness is nothing more than a socially acceptable lie that is based upon a completely false premise, you have the right and society has an obligation to make sure that you are not adversely affected by anything you may see or hear. In other words, if it might upset you, or potentially shatter some illusion you may carry, you should be shielded from it.

It is one thing to be aware of your audience and not to offend them without intent or cause or just being rude for rudeness' sake, but the idea that it is all well and good to ban the usage of words, ideas or such because “someone” may be put off is described so beautifully by Patrick Buchanan in his book, “The Death of the West.”

Political Correctness is Cultural Marxism, a regime to punish dissent and to stigmatize social heresy as the Inquisition punished religious heresy. Its trademark is intolerance.

I can tell you from personal experience that Political Correctness will not help you in any way, in fact I can nearly guarantee you that it will impede you in the long run because it is most often by having your cage rattled that you begin to learn from your experience.

As a Life Coach and Counselor I am practically in the business of being “Politically Incorrect” since I HAVE to tell you things you most likely have spent a lifetime avoiding, I am in the tree rattling business a lot of the time.

People often ask me why a benevolent God would allow pain into the world, is it really the punishment that we interpret it to be? Simply put, it is a blessing that most of us do not recognize. It is through pain in all its forms that we are motivated to grow, to change, it is our number one motivator. Without pain, we are happy to stay exactly where we are.

When I think about Political Correctness, I cannot help but think of George Orwell's Newspeak in “1984” which he described as; “It was intended that when Newspeak had been adopted once and for all and Oldspeak forgotten, a heretical thought should be literally unthinkable, at least so far as thought is dependent on words.”

So remember the three great truths that in many ways embody the thought process of Newspeak and it's current incarnation as Political Correctness:

War is peace.
Freedom is slavery.
Ignorance is strength.

Authenticity

About a year ago, I went to a weekend seminar called "The Forum" as part of the Landmark Education Series. I really enjoyed the seminar and left with many interesting insights into the workings of the mind, defined by the context of the Forum as the bio-chemical brain, I define this as the part that acts as a signal processor from the physical world to the Spiritual one, a communications interface between the Physical and Astral bodies.

One of the areas the went into is the idea of "Authenticity" and how most people are inauthentic in their day-to-day lives. I understand this perspective, it is the same one that makes people like Bill Maher feel that all Religion is sheer foolishness and dangerous. When you judge something by the external representations given by men, it is amazingly obvious that many people would feel this way.

I think though, that Landmark and many others are looking in the wrong place for their perspective. The question is not if people are authentic, but WHAT they are authentic to? Simply put, EVERYONE is always authentic to something, but are they aware and/or honest about what it is they are being authentic to?

From the day-to-day perspective of people giving their word to something and then following through, most of us have become so bad at this that we come off as being quite in-authentic, hence the perspective of Landmark et al.

I had a discussion with someone a while back that was the most direct statement of authenticity that I can remember hearing, not only for the direct honesty, but because I truly doubt the person giving the statement had any clue just how honest they were being about the subject.

The details of the conversation are unimportant, but it had to do with the possible drastic measures that could be put into effect if people were not willing and/or capable of following through on their word. The received response was that if that happened that they would quit. The simple and direct statement was not only just a statement of pure authenticity, but showed that they were willing to put themselves through all sorts of extra efforts rather that follow through on the subject.

So what we need to do is not judge ourselves and others as being inauthentic, but to determine what it is that we are being authentic to. I will give you an example from my experience at the "Forum."

I wanted to take Spiritgeek.com from a side project and turn it into the central focus of my life, thus putting myself into the targeting sights of my Forum leader. At the time, I thought she was being really tough on me and not really listening to what it was that I was saying, but the issue was not hers, but mine. I was so listening to the justifications and reasons for what was happening that I had lost focus on what I was being authentic to.

In this particular case and time, I was being authentic to keeping a paycheck coming in, the stability of having my basic needs met by a job that was really beginning to cause me problems. I was becoming more and more unhappy with the current arrangements, but I was willing to pay for my stability, in a mundane sense, with the added stress of the work situation and the lack of peace that I was having in my day-to-day existence.

So the issue was not that I was being in-authentic, but what it was I was being authentic to. What areas are you authentic to that you are not necessarily aware of? Find them, decide if that is where you wish to be authentic in your existence and if not, change it.

Rocky Horror Memories

I am so amazed with Ryan Murphy's show "Glee." Every time I think he has done something that is going to be impossible to surpass, he surprises me. My first amazement was his "The Power of Madonna" show and then he blew me away with his Lady Gaga "Theatricality" episode. I was watching this weeks episode from last night and good luck topping tonight's.

Now I will admit freely that part of the difficulty Ryan's going to have is he hit a topic close to my heart and just completely full of memories; The Rocky Horror Picture Show.

The first time I went to see Rocky Horror, I didn't care for it; the audience was constantly screaming, I couldn't hear half the story or the numbers, people were throwing stuff and what I could make out of it did not make ANY sense to me, I never expected to go back.

(Mom and Dad, you may not want to read this as you are going to learn some things you probably did not know and ignorance may just be bliss...)

Sometime around late 1979 to early 1980 I was hanging out with a group of friends and they decided that they wanted to go and I was not very enthusiastic about it.

At this time in my life I was coming to grasp with just what my differences meant in my world of the time, social outcast (or pariah), what was left of my home life falling apart and my beginning to become aware that "I" had no say in any aspect of my home life and I had tended to start spending as little time at home as possible.

I went to the Varsity Theater at 6610 Delmar Blvd in University City and stood in line with a collection of punks, glams and costumed characters waiting around smoking everything from Marlboros to Jakarta Cloves and a few things that are still not legal in most towns. What should I have expected for a movie that only runs on Friday and Saturday nights starting at midnight?

At the Varsity, Rocky Horror always started with a cartoon I cannot remember, the video intro to Meatloaf's "You Took The Words Right Out Of My Mouth" followed by "Paradise by the Dashboard Light" and finally Tim Curry's "I Do the Rock." The room would go dark and a giant set of lips would begin to appear on the screen while a cast of live characters would do the "Science Fiction/Double Feature" line dance, kinda a Bob Fosse on a lazy day (I still remember all the steps and motions -- frightening).

Needless to say, by the end of the evening I was hooked. I really got into what was going on and made a collection of new friends and acquaintances that did something no one else in my life had until that time, like and accept me for me, not what they wanted me to be.

As I said, things at home were not going well and the Psychiatrist my family had me going to creeped me out completely so I was not getting any "therapy" there. Rocky Horror became my new therapy. I could go every Friday and Saturday night, let my hair down, be myself, enjoy everything and release the last week's frustration and anxiety.

Very quickly I became friends with and later joined the "cast" as Riff Raff, the Butler/Handyman. I spent time and what little money I had at the time to buy a tailcoat and made a hunchback out of an old military backpack I had which also came in handy for the additional props one takes to Rocky Horror; rice, newspaper, water pistol, lighter, rubber gloves, noise-maker, toilet paper, toast, party hat, bell, cards and hot dogs.

I made such an effort to go EVERY week, I rode my bike about 10 miles each way on many occasions, I even "borrowed" my parents car once in a while to get there. I remember fighting with my parents about going to that "cult" film and trying, in vain, to explain that this was not the Moonies but a regular group of people who return week after week.

I will never forget one night on the way home with a group of friends when I made the fateful decision to be the last person dropped off and we got pulled over for having a headlight out. I had the pleasure of being carted off to the local police station, in full costume and makeup, then transported to Juvenile Detention for being out after curfew and I enjoyed sitting in a holding cell till around 9 or 10 the next morning before my step-mom came to pick me up.

As the years went on, I would continue going to Rocky in cities all over the country and recently decided to finish the last 12 theater viewings to make 1000 shows (I don't count video and DVD viewings, not nearly as much fun). Likely I will finish this off at the Nuart Theatre in West Los Angeles.

For me, "The Rocky Horror Picture Show" has been one of those threads that has joined all the periods of my life through the years. I have met people that have amazed me in their variety and joy, all brought together by a film about a cross-dressing mad scientist, his creation and the innocent young couple who stumbles across an intergalactic party, set to fun music that has kept it's joy for 35 years.

So Ryan, I salute you for your comment about why Rocky Horror spoke to me and all those like me:

“It [Rocky Horror] was for outcasts, people on the fringes who had no place left to go but were searching for someplace, anyplace, where they felt like they belonged.”

Will Schuester

Sparing the Rod

I was reading a personal ad earlier by a young man looking for a partner in life and he wants to have children. He comes from a more traditional background and spent part of his ad discussing his beliefs in child-rearing and specifically mentioned the following;

He who spares the rod hates his son, but he who loves him is careful to discipline him.

Proverbs 13:24 (NIV)
There seems to be an assumption in today's world that this, and other similar verses, are a justification for spanking, hitting or beating children, it is not.

One of the things we forget about in trying to understand the scriptures of the world is often to put them into cultural context so that we can make heads-or-tails of the metaphors that are used. In the case of the Hebrews the predominate metaphor is that of a shepherd and his flock.

When a shepherd uses his rod to guide the flock, it is not about beating the livestock, but about putting a barrier in front of, prodding and maybe an occasional tapping at most. When my cats attempt to get into what I am eating, I often take my hand and put it between them and their object of interest. They are not particularly fond of it, one occasionally hisses at me for a moment, but it supplies guidance to where they may or may not be.

Children need guidance from their parents, it is how they are kept safe and taught what is and is not acceptable behavior. I find that more than spanking a child one can talk with, not at, them and the child learns.

The biggest place that I find most parents losing the game is through a failure of consistency. I so often hear parents set a barrier for their children and then not follow through, children are a lot brighter than we often assume. I hate to say it, but children learn how to manipulate their parents very early, it is part of the early stages of learning to communicate so it is not as bad as it sounds.

So when we talk about "sparing the rod or spoiling the child" we are talking about what all parents have to do, supply guidance for their children. Discipline is a way of supplying guidance, but physical abuse and beatings are not, remember that!