Teaching how to negotiate relationships

This is why I think the critical thing at this age group is teaching them how to negotiate relationships and peer groups. By the time they enter this volatile period they should already know the basics. Remember, one of the girls had her first experience when she was 11. It’s time we stopped being in denial.

I also think it odd that some people can profess a desire to protect children from the alleged emotional trauma of young sex but then be unmoved about school bullying claiming that it will toughen them up. Curiously moral conservatives seem to like ‘tough love’ programs. In which case I can digress into Reich on Fascism and its origins in sexual repression. Posted in Sexology, Ray's Integral Blog 1 Comment » show comment »

Pastors, creationism teachers, Christian stand-up comics and rockers

By ALESSANDRA STANLEY nytimes.com: January 25, 2007

The French writer Bernard-Henri Lévy took a more self-serious tour of evangelical Christianity when he retraveled the road taken by Alexis de Tocqueville in his study of the modern American psyche, “American Vertigo.” (Mr. Lévy found New World religiosity a little less admirable than his predecessor did.)
“Friends of God” is not intended as a satire or even an exposé; Mr. Haggard’s fall from grace occurred after the filming was complete and is summed up in a postscript.
The documentary is a good-natured travelogue: it glances on the more intolerant and grotesque manifestations of Christian fundamentalism and also the faith’s vast following and political clout. Ms. Pelosi’s film doesn’t go deep; it doesn’t even explore why so many televangelists seem to follow the trajectory of Elmer Gantry. But it doesn’t snicker. “Friends of God” serves as a breezy, colorful reminder of how George W. Bush became president, why Fox News has the highest ratings of any 24-hour cable news network and why Democrats didn’t win an even greater landslide in the 2006 elections.
Ms. Pelosi is the daughter of the newly elected House speaker, Nancy Pelosi, and this is her third HBO film, and the one furthest afield from her natural habitats of Washington, New York and San Francisco. The first documentary, “Journeys With George,” was a mischievous, camcorder-look inside the world of the presidential campaign. (Ms. Pelosi was an NBC News producer on Mr. Bush’s press plane.) Her second, “Diary of a Political Tourist,” a smart-alecky, first-person tour of the Democratic primary process, was less winning.
Ms. Pelosi stays off camera and out of the way in “Friends of God,” and we only occasionally hear her voice. “So explain to me the concept of this Biblical mini golf,” the filmmaker says to a man who putts on a paper-and-glue parted Red Sea. (The ninth hole is a papier-mâché miniature of the Holy Sepulchre.)
Mostly, Ms. Pelosi lets pastors, creationism teachers, Christian stand-up comics and rockers and the founder of the Christian Wrestling Federation speak for themselves.
“So we do have a public relations problem; we always have — they killed Jesus if you’ll recall,” Mr. Haggard tells her. “And the church has always had this problem because we are the ones with the role to say, ‘There is a moral plumb line, and we need to rise up to it.’ ” At this point, the disgraced minister seems almost to foreshadow his own fate.
“And that’s also why secular people are so concerned when the church doesn’t fulfill its own moral standard,” he said. “Like if a pastor falls into corruption or becomes dishonest or greedy: it’s heartbreaking because even secular people want godly people to be authentically godly.”
FRIENDS OF GOD A Road Trip With Alexandra Pelosi HBO, tonight at 9, Eastern and Pacific times; 8, Central time. Written, directed and produced by Alexandra Pelosi; Lisa Heller, supervising producer; Sheila Nevins, executive producer. nytimes.com

4 core types & 3 core strategies

How types, strategies, and stations all fit together: In recent posts we've looked at the the 4 core types (masculine, feminine, introvert, and extravert) and the 3 core strategies (cardinal, fixed, and mutable). These are some of the most basic patterns that organize the human personality and therefore our experience of ourselves, our worldspaces, and worldviews.

When put together, the 4 types and 3 strategies may be arranged into 12 distinct combinations. It is no coincidence that these 12 combinations are the same as the 12 stations of life used by Whole Writing. Each station depicts a particular orientation to reality, a set of competencies that must be faced (and hopefully successfully navigated), a set of concerns and strategies for advancement, and a set of developmental potentials.

Perhaps the clearest way of introducing the 12 stations is to identify briefly how each of the stations reflect the core types and strategies. At the most fundamental levels, these are the building blocks of who we are, what we do, and how we change.

If you are familiar with astrology, then it will be helpful for you to think of the core types, core strategies, and stations as analogous to elements, qualities, and signs. However, knowledge of astrology is not required. (In the following discussion, a mythopoetic expression of how the stations appear is offered as an aid in visualizing the progression from 0 to B.)... Monday, January 08, 2007 posted by Joe Perez at 1/08/2007

Sexuality is a great conduit of power

Foucault asks how it is that we have come to see sex as the key to explaining us, as holding the truth about us. The answer has to do with the relationship sex has with power and knowledge. Foucault criticizes the "juridico- discursive" conception of power as something that simply represses and restricts, always taking a law-like form. He suggests instead that power is as productive as it is repressive, that it is multi-faceted and omnipresent. Power is everywhere and working in all directions. Sexuality, then, isn't something that power represses, but a great conduit of power.

Foucault identifies four major focus points: the sexuality of children, women, married couples, and the sexually "perverse." The deployment of sexuality through these four points allows power to spread itself into the family and throughout society. This deployment took place with the rise of the bourgeoisie, who saw sexual deviance as hereditary and dangerous to the continued survival of their class. The controls they placed on sex were thus primarily intended to ensure their own health and longevity. Philosophy Study Guides