Friday, July 27, 2007

Grammar and syntax used by men and women show disparities

Man and Woman Talk: Grammatical and Syntactical Similarities and Disparities Institutional Papers Asha Kaul ; Nandan Debmalya Published By: IIMA on eSS (6/3/2007) editor@esocialsciences.com

----Abstract----
Multiple research studies on grammar and syntax used by men and women stress disparities stemming from gender specific styles of “talk”. Borrowing from the existing literature, transcripts of 107 employees in an Indian organization were analyzed to study variations, if any, in grammar and syntax across genders at the middle management level. The study was based on an analysis of reported speech of a critical incident of upward influence in the organization. The transcripts were classified into two clusters, viz., male and female. A frequency count for some grammatical and syntactical forms was taken. [W.P. No. 2007-06-03]. Blog Editorials Policy Matters Commentaries Papers Themes Resources Journals Book Reviews Links Editorial Board


Wednesday, July 18, 2007

To be human means to be called to interpersonal communion

Vox Nova Tuesday, July 17, 2007 Feminism and Catholicism By Morning's Minion
The title is deliberately chosen to be provocative. For what does feminism even mean? At its most basic level, it is refers to equality between the sexes. Hence feminists fight discrimination based on gender and all kinds of inequality -- cultural, political, and economic. In one sense, it is perfectly compatible with revelation, in the sense that God created man and woman as human beings to an equal degree. But in another sense, much of modern feminism is imbued with notions of individualism and determinism. While they define the matter in terms of power structures, Christians turn this on its head and define it in terms of service. And yet I would still argue that true, authentic feminism is fully in accord with Catholicism. Women are indeed equal! There is no better, and no fuller treatment of Church teaching on this matter than servant of God Pope John Paul's Mulieris Dignitatem, which is now almost nineteen years old.
The fundamental truth is laid down in Genesis. Both men and women are persons, because they are created in the image and likeness of God, the only creatures willed for their own sake. As John Paul says, the woman is "another "I" in a common humanity". Moreover, human beings cannot exist alone, only as the "unity of the two", implying a mutual relationship between man and woman: "To be human means to be called to interpersonal communion". In this sense, man and woman "are called to live in a communion of love, and in this way to mirror in the world the communion of love that is in God through which the Three Persons love each other in the intimate mystery of the one divine life". John Paul then notes that when Genesis talks of woman being created as a helper, this is in effect mutual help between man and woman. This refers to marriage in the first instance, but it also goes beyond marriage. Equality in marriage is defined in terms of service, whereby the husband and wife each offer a "sincere gift of self" to the other. Of course, equality does not mean that masculinity and femininity simply merge. While man and woman are fully equal, they remain different. But while distinct, they "complete and explain each other."
Original sin affects both man and woman. As a consequence of sin, the woman is addressed in the following terms: " Your desire shall be for your husband, and he shall rule over you." As John Paul notes, this is a sundering of the "unity of the two", and the consequences are especially stark for the woman given that this new-found "dominion" involves a "disturbance and loss of stability of that fundamental equality which the man and the woman possess in the unity of the two.." What was supposed to be equality became inequality as a consequence of sin. Again, this refers not only to marriage but to all spheres of social life where women face disadvantage and discrimination on account of their gender.
This equality between man and woman can be found in revelation, even if cultural factors obscured the true radical nature of this vision. And just as Christ fulfilled the old law, so was his approach to women remarkable at the time. His recognition of the inherent dignity of women in what remained a patriarchal culture raised more than a few eyebrows, and even provoked an element of scandal. Jesus was particularly adamant about the various elements of the tradition that discriminated against women, or (as in adultery laws) the "habitual discrimination against women in favor of men."
No passages in scripture are misinterpreted more than St. Paul's admonitions to husbands and wives in Ephesians. St. Paul develops the spousal theme in Genesis, the unity of the two, and likens the love between man and woman to the mystery of Christ and the Church, where Christ is the Bridegroom. Addressing husbands and wives, St. Paul calls them to "be subordinate to one another out of reverence for Christ." This again is the mutual self-giving, which defines our very personhood.
St. Paul then calls on husbands to love their wives, and for wives to "be subordinate to their husbands as to the Lord. For the husband is head of his wife just as Christ is head of the church, he himself the savior of the body. As the church is subordinate to Christ, so wives should be subordinate to their husbands in everything." This has been taken to mean, by many fundamentalists today (and many Catholics in the past), that women should accept the headship of the husbands with submission. But this is exactly the kind of one-way "power relationship" that reflects the effects of sin in the world, not redemption. Instead, as John Paul is swift to note; "whereas in the relationship between Christ and the Church the subjection is only on the part of the Church, in the relationship between husband and wife the "subjection" is not one-sided but mutual... [T]he challenge presented by the "ethos" of the Redemption is clear and definitive. All the reasons in favour of the "subjection" of woman to man in marriage must be understood in the sense of a "mutual subjection" of both "out of reverence for Christ."
This teaching, although firmly a part of revelation, took a long time to sink in! It is certainly true that the approach of the early Church to women was remarkably liberating. Just remember the culture of the Roman empire where the pater familias literally possessed the power of life and death over his wife and children -- how far this is from the "unity of the two"! Even today, some of the sickness from this culture lives on, and we hear horror stories of "honor killings". From the beginning, the Church defended a daughter’s right to refuse to marry whoever the father chose. Initially, her exercise of that "right" was restricted to her choosing a virginal life consecrated to God, but gradually, the Church acknowledged a broader freedom. The Church needs to constantly sift through the deposit of faith and figure out what is true, and what is merely cultural. This takes time, and our journey is most certainly not complete. It is not even clear that St. Paul realized the full implications of Christ's message. Here is how John Paul puts it:
The apostolic letters are addressed to people living in an environment marked by that same traditional way of thinking and acting. The "innovation" of Christ is a fact: it constitutes the unambiguous content of the evangelical message and is the result of the Redemption. However, the awareness that in marriage there is mutual "subjection of the spouses out of reverence for Christ", and not just that of the wife to the husband, must gradually establish itself in hearts, consciences, behaviour and customs. This is a call which from that time onwards, does not cease to challenge succeeding generations; it is a call which people have to accept ever anew.
He makes a direct comparison to slavery. Just as St. Paul noted that in Christ there is no more man or woman, he also noted that there is no more slave or free man. John Paul comments: "Yet how many generations were needed for such a principle to be realized in the history of humanity through the abolition of slavery! And what is one to say of the many forms of slavery to which individuals and peoples are subjected, which have not yet disappeared from history?" There are Catholics today (and you know who you are) who argue that, just because the Church accepted the use of practices like torture in the past, so should Catholics not reject them automatically today. These people would do well to ponder the pope's words!
In conclusion, John Paul gives thanks for women: mothers, sisters, wives, women consecrated to virginity, women who watch over the family as well as women to work professionally and may be burdened with great social responsibility... in short, for all women, no matter their vocation! This is true "feminism", Catholic "feminism". Posted by Morning's Minion at 4:44 PM Labels: ,

Wednesday, July 11, 2007

80 per cent of Christians in North India are 'Dalits'

I am saddened that he [Rev Thampu] has been chosen to carry out an agenda that can only reduce St Stephen's College to rank mediocrity. I have no quarrels with 30 per cent Christian reservation. But why wasn't the so-called Dalit Christian quota carved out of that? Bishop Karam Masih says 80 per cent of Christians in North India are 'Dalits'. If so, they should have bagged the bulk of the seats reserved for the community. Obviously that did not happen. So, 40 per cent seats have now being earmarked for one religious community, and another 15 per cent for non-Christian SC/ST/OBCs. But, why only 15 per cent? SC/STs have a 22.7 per cent quota nationally and Arjun Singh wants to block another 27 per cent for Dalits. Christian plus other Depressed Classes would then take reservations to 90 per cent. Add to that five per cent sports and disabled. That totals 95 per cent. Sorry to see St Stephen's go down this slippery slope. A great national institution is hurtling inexorably towards its doom. I can only pray its reputation rests in peace. Amen. dailypioneer.com/Chandan Mitra Daily Pioneer, India - 16 Jun 2007

Monday, July 09, 2007

Brahmins prefer cricket because they don't like others touching them

Sify Home >> News & Info >> News >> Fullstory >> Column
Why do Brahmins prefer cricket? Pramod Navalkar
After reading an article in a leading English magazine, I realised the extent of its reach. The writer, in his article in a World Cup special issue, discusses the castes of our players.
He claims that Brahmins have dominated Indian cricket over the last 30-35 years, and that they keep others away. He offers statistics to prove his claim and points out that there were seven Brahmins in the '70s team, five in 1983 team, eight in 1997, eight again in 2000, four in 2002 and six in the current World Cup team. He has made some outrageous remarks in the article, insisting that Brahmins prefer cricket - no football or hockey for them - because the latter two are contact games and Brahmins don't like others touching them. Also (he claims), in cricket, one need not have a strong physique. He says that Brahmins dominated this game as it was purely urban and he mentions Ganguly and Tendulkar as examples.
No Dalit cricketer could play in the 20th century except Balu Palwankar, and he,too, couldn't play Test cricket. He further claims that other castes, including the Sikhs, Jats and Backward Castes are forced to play hockey and football. These comments are not only outrageous, they are objectionable. So far, our sports have never witnessed such a casteist mindset.
Our cricket administrators were accused of everything but this. There have been allegations of regional bias, but never that of casteism. If we allow this poison to spread, we may have to select all our sportsmen on the basis of their castes, and not on merit. The government must take action now, or the caste controversy is likely to spill over into the space-age.

Sunday, July 08, 2007

Indo-Persian Mithraism is not the same as that of Rome

When the Mothership Lands: Secrets of the CIA’s Psi-Plasma Vortex
By Drew Hempel, MA Anti-Copyright Fall, 2007
Chapter Ten: The Perimeter of Patriarchy: Science as Mass Ritual Sacrifice
The term conspiracy comes from the Latin word conspirare used to describe the medieval ritual of secretly breathing together to bond the community to the land, as detailed recently by Ivan Illich. The root of conspirare is spiro meaning spiral and with the prefix “con” the word conspiracy is the structure of “spiral unity,” as emphasized by the philosopher F.W. Schelling. Freemasonic conspiracy is therefore not dependent on secret groups of elite individuals doing satanic rituals, although this does occur. Freemasonic conspiracy is actually a structural “spiral unity” drive based in the resonating torque of the Sun, Moon and Earth.
Freemasonry evolved from the Solar Dynasties of the ancient city-states in the Fertile Crescent or the Levant—meaning literally “Sun Riser.” The amazing independent scholar, Acharya S., author of The Christ Conspiracy, gives a detailed analysis of the ancient struggle between matrifocal, lunar-based cultures and patriarchal, war-mongering Freemasonic Solar empires. For example in “Mithra, Light of the World” a chapter of her latest book Suns of God Acharya S. connects the ancient city-states to the later Freemasonic Roman empire:
“As noted, because Mithraic art of the Persians and Indians does not depict Mithra with the Bull, it is claimed that Indo-Persian Mithraism is not the same as that of Rome. In reality, the bull was sacred to the sun god and was an early solar symbol because of its connection to agriculture, in drawing the plough, which is why the time of planting is called ‘Taurus’ and is represented by the bull. In actuality, the solar-bull motif is found in very ancient cultures, including the Sumerian, upon whose seal is depicted the flaming ‘Bull of Heaven,’ representing the sun’s ‘fierce aspect.’”
For an academic argument of the same ancient Solar Dynasty global imperialism see professor Rodney Needham’s book Right and Left: Essays on dual symbolic classification, edited by and with introduction by anthropology professor Rodney Needham, forward by E.E. Evans-Pritchard (University of Chicago Press, 1973).
Ever since humans created a “symbolic revolution” to contain infinity by the Freemasonic foundation ritual of squaring the circle—traced back to 9,000 B.C.E. in the Cambridge University Press 2000 book The Birth of the Gods and the origins of agriculture by archaeologist Jacques Cauvin—there has been an increasing patriarchal war-mongering drive against the Lunar matrifocal water-earth energy. This global structural imbalance is based on the repression of what’s called in Indian Vedic yogic philosophy “the Golden Womb”—the nonlocal consciousness of the fourth dimension of space that can never be symbolized.
Just like a spring being increasingly strained as its twisted in one direction, the fourth dimension of space that is the Eternal Feminine consciousness is now returning full-force in the opposite, left-hand, right-brain direction through the paradoxes of the what’s called in science “the three body problem”—the nonlinear macroquantum chaos of the Moon-Sun-Earth harmonics. As I will be detailing, the Moon-Earth water torque resonance of the Freemasonic mathematical right-hand, left-brain spiral is, with apocalyptic force, springing back against modern science. I call this the conspiracy of the natural resonance revolution. Posted by Great Galactic Ghoul at 9:40 AM

Cosmic Mother worship: the secret worship of ferro-magnetic meteorites

Today’s popular political cultures are dominated by two trends: The run away best-selling success of the Da Vinci Code and the fear-driven tactics of Jihad Terrorism. These two seemingly unrelated topics are connected by the secret worship of ferro-magnetic meteorites. The Da Vinci Code argues that western civilization is really ruled by a Cosmic Mother worship and this is backed up by the Roman Empire transmitting the Black Stone Meteorite of Cybele worship from Anatolia to Europe. Cybele, the dominant goddess of Asia Minor, was represented by Athena, Diana, and Holy Mary in the West but all of these goddesses were also associated with a very strong worship of ISIS in the West, the Egyptian Cosmic Mother. ISIS worship and magic revolved around the power of meteorites and the center of the Islam worship at Mecca also is based on a “black stone” meteorite.
Physics professor Lee Smolin argues that only spiral-based vortex galaxies can evolve organic life. In fact science has proven that the evolution of humans is so strongly against chance that there is a design of consciousness to the universe (i.e. Biocosm rated a top-ten 2003 science book by Discover magazine and several top researchers). Only the concept of resonance properly bridges the role of consciousness as a scientific substrate of reality and chance as the product of statistically predictable interference waves in quantum mechanics. This disturbing debate between design and evolution is why physicist professor Arnold Pacey in his book, Meaning in Technology (M.I.T. Press, 1999) argues that music is the best model for a proper application of science to society.

How gender has been conceptualized in different spiritual traditions

Gender, sexuality, and spirituality:
I’m passionately interested in looking at how human conceptions of gender, sex and sexuality have evolved since the dawn of humanity, both in our spiritual traditions and in our scientific research. Ken Wilber, Joyce McCarl Nielsen, Riane Eisler, and many others, have done some excellent work in this regard already, but I want to approach it specifically from the point of view of Sri Aurobindo’s and the Mother’s idea of Supramentalisation: the integration and transcendence of all dualities on all planes of Reality, right down to the physical and most mundane plane.
Moreover I want to concentrate on how gender has been conceptualized in different spiritual traditions. The typical conception is that women are the embodiment of the feminine principle of creation whereas men are the embodiment of the masculine principle, but as the Mother stated clearly, and as my own research is indicating, no spiritual tradition has ever really been that clear-cut. Moreover, what is meant by the terms “masculine” and “feminine” is often different in different traditions (for instance, in Sri Aurobindo’s mythos, the “feminine” principle refers to the active principle, the executrix, not a passive or inactive principle), and additionally, the archetypal notions of the masculine and feminine as cosmic principles mean very different things as compared to the watered-down patriarchal gender stereotypes we see in many cultures today. So there is a lot of unpacking that needs to be done here, and once again, I’d like to see if an annotated bibliography can be put up on the Internet about this. Posted by ned on July 8, 2007. Filed under Notes and Speculations. the stumbling mystic God shall grow up . . . while the wise men talk and sleep. http://naqsh.org/ned/?p=267