Looking for Academic Ideas

[BronzDragon]

» Thom says: ☛ So, my mother asks me what I want for Christmas. One thing I tell her is that I am looking for a distance learning program where I can get the other half of my Transpersonal education. (I have gotten a load of the psychological side, with the quantum string to stitch the two sides together.) I tell her I would not mind evangelical, so long as it didn’t come from sources allied with James Kennedy or Jerry Falwell. (I have told her they are evil, and why I think that.) Well, she did more or less what I asked her. More, in that she got me a load of books her minister recommended based on what she told him. (She knows I am gay and Pagan, but I don’t think she has passed that onto him.) She did less, in that upon review of the books, I find they are in the same vein as the Falwell and Dobson flavor of evangelicals.

I am also finding myself struggling to understand what is not violent on the mental and verbal level (physical is easy enough). I often wonder whether a phrase I think through would be violent on those levels, and if so what would I expect to gain by its use.

So, I will ask this here, and double the value of my question. I am looking for academic ideas on both religious education as well as nonviolent resistance that will help me grow as a person, minister, and SoulForce influenced Gay Activist.

I look forward to your responses and suggestions, and any other advice you might have to offer.

[Zerbie]

Okay.

Well to start with the obvious, have you looked at all the resources (books, etc) on this website? If yes, and you liked them, check out their bibliographies and follow their sources.

[Daniel]

Thom- a book comes to mind here- a small slip of a book actually.

Shirt of Flame- The Secret Gay Art of War
by Ko Imani

I humbly suggest that everyone here should get their hands on this book. A great deal of substance is packed into its 111 pages- dealing with nonviolence in particular. And on the history of nonviolence, there is Mark Kulansky's Nonviolence: twenty-five lessons from the history of a dangerous idea.

http://www.myspace.com/shirtofflame

http://www.ashe-prem.org/seven/shirtofflame.shtml

http://www.whitecranejournal.com/58/art5814.asp

And I have not read the following by Toby Johnson, but have read another book of his: Gay Spirituality.

http://tobyjohnson.com/gayperspective.html

In this companion volume to his critically acclaimed, Lambda Literary Award-winning Gay Spirituality, Toby Johnson further explicates his visionary stance that gay people's nature as outsiders gives them a uniquely powerful perspective on the nature of God and religion.

Transpersonal enough?

These should provide ample book for thought.

[Emproph]

Thom- a book comes to mind here- a small slip of a book actually.

Shirt of Flame- The Secret Gay Art of War
by Ko Imani

I humbly suggest that everyone here should get their hands on this book. A great deal of substance is packed into its 111 pages- dealing with nonviolence in particular.

And might I say sir, a superb selection...

[Joe Brummer]

One of the most powerful books I have read about nonviolence is called "creating True Peace" by Thich Naht Hanh. It would be suggestion to learn about nonviolence.

[BronzDragon]

I humbly suggest that everyone here should get their hands on this book. A great deal of substance is packed into its 111 pages- dealing with nonviolence in particular. And on the history of nonviolence, there is Mark Kulansky's Nonviolence: twenty-five lessons from the history of a dangerous idea.

» Thom says: ☛ Okay, that was probably the worst book I could have read. Don’t get me wrong, the book itself is excellent, the points lucid, and is going to be a treasure in my library.

The trouble is, now I am angry, and not angry enough for alchemy, partly because I don’t yet know where to go with the anger. I don’t think it was the author’s intention, and I have been greatly educated by this work, it is just that, every case history and point of elucidation was like being bashed on the head.

This is like the anger a person feels when they thought mother had just gone away, but we’ve just learned she was killed horribly. Whom do I get angry with? Where do I take it?

PS: I am genuinely glad to have read this book. Really, I’m not angry with the messenger, just the subject of the message. And now, I guess I join the chorus of dissidents who say, “Love yourself, all else is commentary.” Well, I guess if it has to start somewhere, my foot is as good a where to start.

Nonviolence: Twenty-five lessons in a Dangerous Idea

Passive submission to brutality is a mortal sin.
Warlock Thomas Potter (SatyaGrahi Proverb.)

There is no proactive word for nonviolence.
Nations that build military forces as deterrent will eventually use them.
Nations see practitioners of Nonviolence as enemies of the state.
Once a state takes over a religion, the religion loses its nonviolent teachings.

Persecution is not an original feature in any religion, but it is always the strongly marked feature of all religions established by law.
(Thomas Paine)
Making a rebel into a saint after he is dead can defang and co-opt him.
Somewhere behind every war there is always a few founding lies.
A propaganda machine promoting hatred always has a war waiting in the wings.
People who go to war start to resemble their enemy.

He who fights with monsters should be careful lest he thereby become a monster.
And if you gaze long into an abyss, the abyss will also gaze into you.
(Frederick Wilhelm Nietzsche)
A conflict between a violent and nonviolent force is a moral argument. If the violent side can provoke the nonviolent side into violence, the violent side has won.
The problem lies not in the nature of humanity, but in the nature of power.
The longer a war lasts, the less popular it becomes.
The state imagines it is impotent without a military because it cannot conceive of power without force.
It is often not the largest but the best organized and most articulate group that prevails.
All debate momentarily ends with an “Enforced silence” once someone fires the first shots.
A shooting war is not necessary to overthrow an established power but is used to consolidate the revolution itself.
Violence does not resolve. It always leads to more violence.
Warfare produces peace activists. A group of veterans is a likely place to find peace activists.
People motivated by fear do not act well.

Beware the leader who bangs the drums of war in order to whip the citizenry into a patriotic fervor, for patriotism is a double-edged sword. It both emboldens the blood, just as it narrows the mind. And when the drums of war have reached a fever pitch and the blood boils with hate and the mind has closed, the leader will have no need of seizing the rights of the citizenry. Rather, the citizenry, infused with fear and blinded by patriotism, will offer up all of their rights unto the leader and gladly so. How do I know? For this is what I have done. And I am Cæsar.
(Cæsar Julius)
While it is perfectly feasible to convince the people faced with brutal repression to rise up in a suicidal attack on their oppressor, it is almost impossible to convince them to meet deadly violence with nonviolent resistance.
Wars do not have to be sold to the general public if an all-volunteer professional military can carry them out.
Once you start the business of killing, you just get “deeper and deeper,” without limits.
Violence always comes with a supposedly rational explanation — which we only dismiss as irrational if the violence fails.
Violence is a virus that infects and takes over.
The miracle is that despite all of society’s promotion of warfare, most soldiers find warfare to be a wrenching departure from their own moral values.
The hard work of beginning a movement to end war has already been done.

[scott snedeker]

I see anger as a step up the emtional scale from victim status. It is necessary step for many of us. However to stay in anger is hell (less hell than fear or despair) If you focus your thought differently to achieve merely being annoyed by say trivializing the power of what made you angry, then you have progressed yet another step up. From annoyed you can see that "things could be worse" which makes you appreciate this. From appreciation there can rise hope for improvement. From hope you can start believing by seeing some of the things you hoped for manifest. See enough manifestations and believeing starts to become knowing that what you want is coming. And in knowing is joy
---Climbing the emotional scale, from the Teachings of Abraham