Here And Now

[P]erhaps I’m paranoid — I’m certainly not an economist — but do you think it’s possible that some people don’t want unemployment fixed because they’re hoping to create a catastrophe that will result in the gutting of modern Western employment, environmental and consumer protection standards?

I ask because, through the late 90s and early 00s, I found myself in discussions with people who insisted that American and Canadian workers needed to learn “to compete on a global level.” When I would ask them what we could do toward that end, they were very vague. When I specifically asked if they meant to work for the same pay and benefits packages as workers in some other areas of the world; to accept workplace safety standards found in some other countries; to allow child labour; to get rid of pesky environmental regulations that interfere with corporate profits; to accept goods made with components known to be hazardous to health; they would simply smile and repeat that we needed to learn to compete on a global level.

It seems that allowing unemployment to spiral out of control would certainly go a long way toward bringing those conditions back to North America. There’s much talk of the burden we’re putting on our children if we spend more to create jobs, but what more horrible burden could we put on them than to erase decades of human progress?

-comment posted by "JoyfulC" on Paul Krugman's NYTimes blog

I rather like this one. When dealing with American politics and business, you can never be too cynical.

This theme song conjures up some of my earliest TV cartoon show memories. I still remember the words to this song from, what, 50 years ago? We had a big old boxy GE black-and-white TV. We'd plop ourselves down in front of it early on Saturday morning and stay there until lunchtime.

When people start to meditate or to work with any kind of spiritual discipline, they often think that somehow they're going to improve, which is a sort of subtle aggression against who they really are. It's a bit like saying, "If I jog, I'll be a much better person." "If I could only get a nicer house, I'd be a better person." "If I could meditate and calm down, I'd be a better person"... 

But loving-kindness - maitri - toward ourselves doesn't mean getting rid of anything. Maitri means that we can still be crazy after all these years. We can still be angry after all these years. We can still be timid or jealous or full of feelings of unworthiness. The point is not to try to change ourselves. Meditation practice isn't about trying to throw ourselves away and become something better. It's about befriending who we are already. The ground of practice is you or me or whoever we are right now, just as we are. That's the ground, that's what we study, that's what we come to know with tremendous curiosity and interest. 

   - Pema Chodron, The Wisdom of No Escape and the Path of Loving-Kindness