Opinion

Let’s talk so we can walk

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Golden chats are available!
We have listened to and read a lot of nonsense and blatantly unsubstantiated claims. This can lead to carelessness, attitudes of self-defense, and faceless, factless exchanges. Simple stories get buried in emotional and quizzical fluff. The life of a conversation takes on messianic functions when we laugh together. Conversation are supposed to open doors that let in the wind of life.

Some of the zigs of chatting

Questions are asked about the fluff instead of the facts. How, when, what, who, and where have become troublesome questions in recent times.

What do I know?
We are loathe to say “I do not know” when our ignorance is obvious. A few messy things we can do in a conversation are

  1. reserve the right to the final word (“My opinion is the truth”),
  2. think that questions disturb one’s narrative, and
  3. take the microphone and talk until one (or the other) forgets what one was saying or runs out of ‘story’.

Not my business? Then do not tell me

(What) Do you want me to know? When one asks if one can ask bells go off. Is that necessary. Aren’t opinions of every type waiting to be the fragrance in the room? Ashamed of our opinions, and wanting to put ourselves in the best possible light we opt to tell never-ending stories. We have every right, and our interests lead us to tell the same story over and over again, and it becomes obvious that variations of the story do not change the reason for telling. We are merely repeating how good or bad something is. We do not gravitate towards telling what a jerk we were, all day. Nooo. We end up believing the things we repeat. Let’s just credit God for the highways and the alleys. It’s much better than putting anyone in a bad light (without mentioning a solution).

A Two-way Street

If the story is an answer to a spoken question all the more should the narrator welcome exchange. It takes two. Every two must make space for the third. A popular maxim states that Christ is the silent listener to every conversation. That intersection – the third person – is essential unless we think our contributions are above critique. Information is not merely stuff we flip back and forth: there is purpose for opening our mouths except where the conversation is purely a time-filler, monologue, or performance. How well we listen is an essential component of good conversations. Listening delivers details, which, if not grasped, makes the time spent more like shooting the breeze, because facts are for focusing interests and, dare I say, love.

Facts not Faces

The sun never rises in the west. We do not hear well when we are talking. Neither is there much to a conversation without query. Something always needs clarification. The facts in the narrative may be all that stands between our motives and the health of the conversation. Who cares if we think our experiences are perfect and edifying when we know that failure is the common lot of every individual? Sugar coating our lifestory works for the immature and sinks the user into deeper delusions. Euphemisms are fine for creative writing and diplomatic relations, but keeping our narrative simple does wonders for building understanding, rapport and friendships.

No one has to look very far to tell that our faces eventually become masks when we avoid the facts of life. Our faces turn to bricks because no one sees our eyes in the phone calls and text messages. How we feel is not immaterial. There is a critical space for emotional envelopes in all our exchanges. Got passion? Be genuine.

Turn Taking

Monologues may be informative, empty and shallow, and funny and even shocking and disgusting but they have one thing in common: the speaker gets to listen to himself. When the subject is considered to be all about the speaker there is no need for a listener. Not even God does that.
Droning on, babbling on, rattling on and venting are apt descriptions of the kind of conversations that descend quickly to every thing that comes to mind.
Who is keeping track of the priority?

A confession about why one is a good judge of character turns to an incident where one lady who has little ability in a certain area of social participation exposes her shortcoming and it just happens that her husband is a military man who made millions selling fake meat to the vegetarian community and has a massive tumor in his nose that the doctors say is benign, but bigger tumors exist, like the one seen on vacation in Europe, where the hospitality was way below standards…blah blah blah.

Just try telling the narrator of an account like that the topic was judging character. One is likely to be chided for interrupting or for being impatient.
The best speech is dialogue so we do not need to figure out that religion has divebombed into silly slogans, or why teaching what Jesus taught has become shallow ads for miracles, lectures packed with meaningless tradition, self-aggrandizing stories instead of intelligent conversation.

Elbert E Joseph, PhD
Salt that refuses to be trampled
www.yeshuaspeaks.WordPress.com

Raining Down Vomit and Excreta at the Dinner Table

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Watching the circus across the United States I get a jolt of pride that my mother, Africa, is not an imperial serial rapist. My smile is not without a twinge of pity for the deceived millions, who have bought the idea that capitalism and democracy are the essential paths to greatness.

The GOP and its heartless talking heads are temporarily incapable of repenting of following a broken foundation. At least there is hope that a remnant -preferably young people – will call the the attempt to make a beast a person what it is: silly rebellion. The U.S. was born out of rebellion. Remember?

Maintaining
America’s
Greedy
Aspirations

Idiotic isn’t it? Any fool with a gun becomes a patriot, defending stolen land, and denying people the very cradle that bore the nation.
By the way, any nation built by bloody hands is, to speak kindly, an abomination.

People are gobbling up what ever is on the table: at church, work or school. The enduring foundations of family life and secular society did not begin in the middle ages or in the 19th century. If the leaders who got us into the Middle East mess or the abominable support for Nazism, violence against women, and misogyny or sold our future to China, had glanced at Abraham, father of the Jewish people, we would be light years ahead of the current devastation that makes even a civilized conversation implausible.

Let us watch the game until the next revolution comes around. It will not be on TV or YouTube.

The Triumph of Buffoonery

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Who would have thought that a public figure in modern politics in the 21st. century could advocate a ban on a religious group and get away with repeating it? Since starting to write this article at the beginning of the United States Election campaign I have learned that when Donald Trump opens his mouth it is either a cliché or mind-numbing, hateful nonsense that spills out. Of course there are many that love him, like what he says, but I do not have to listen to him unlike the increasing number of people who have not distanced themselves from his voice. When that love fades to accountability they too will likely face the mind-numbing and hateful nonsense. The GOP has not yet officially called the Trumphoon (trumpcard buffoon) on the targeting of Muslims or the greatness of America.
It will not be long before the Republicans heave him over the side and thank him for saying the kinds of things they have wanted to say for decades but could not for fear of offending an increasingly sensitive and polarized population and for fear of being exposed as the party with a hateful agenda. If an outsider like Trumphoon can speak the truth about immigration and crime using crude terms and use damaging stereotypes then the GOP has the campaign shenanigans made. Trumphoon is going to jail if he keeps up the hate speech! When someone as unhinged as the Trumphoon can win the White House then Americans will have scraped a hole in the bottom of the barrel.
How is it that the psychologists have not designed a test for racism? Or how can the news outlets not have a scale for measuring inflammatory nonsense? It’s an election, they say, meaning “anything goes”. Conscientious theologians have designed tests for legalism, racism, literacy, idolatry, capitalism, and Pharisaism. The level of nincompoopery and ignorance being spewed out by the trumphoon if found among theologians finds shelter only in backroom churches.
Will American politicians find the courage to strain out buffoonery? Unlikely. They have so perverted their way – to the extent that the term politician has become abhorrent – they obviously need to wake the founding fathers. No tycoon, governor, senator, mayor, or congressman can claim to have particular insight. The Trumphoon alone has a brain. America needs a make-over and everyone who imagines that the declaration of independence and the Constitution are perfect documents is a deluded idolater. Just watch what happens when informed people evaluate the Buffoon’s assumed success and the documented greatness of America. The leaders who are not intoxicated by either buffoonery or imaginary business acumen must call out the supreme buffoon.
Are we not seeing the same kind of meltdown that has accompanied the eclipsing of ancient Babylon, Persia, Greece and Rome? These ancient world-ruling empires crashed after asserting themselves as sovereign and omnipotent. As we come to the modern era we find the likes of Italy, Spain, Portugal, France, Great Britain and the United States of America populating the empire-scape. All of them established great reach of their power across the globe and sometimes quietly returned to relative obscurity. The call now is for the United States and its allies to take the lead and maintain civil society in its greater forms. As noble as this initiative is so is its founding principle ignoble, and therefore destined to fail. Are not our modern nations and alliances already at the top of their game?
Which is where we run into the trumphoon. He wants to make America “great again”. America was never great! Great Britain was! So the mighty buffoon needs to speak more clearly on what America’s greatness entails. Let him just try. His lead in the polls cannot be separated from the Republican base.
Who can those Trumphoon fans be? Can he stretch the truth to deny that his audiences are Republicans just as he denies being a politician? His lead in the polls also tells us about the lust for power among Americans who strive to become leaders.
Community among humans seems to have always had, more or less, a dependence on the sage, the shaman, the expert the lawyer, the ruler, the hero, the warrior and the monarch. The king is a tycoon because he owns everything and whatever we can claim ownership of is taxable by the king. Pluralism allows us to choose any of these leader types as our anchor. Many tycoons have little in their life-ledger besides cash and business fortune. If he is really rich he is also really close to losing a chance of ever being a kingdom child: either greed or apathy hounds him, and from the Trumphoon’s repeated slurs and thin skin, it is quite obvious that he is a hateful and abominable person.
I’d rather have a sage, a shaman, an expert, a lawyer, a business major, a hero, or a warrior. Times have not changed much because people still despise a tycoon. Rich people may have the admiration and jealousy of millions but when the chips are counted rich individuals get the shaft because the loyalty of a rich person is likely to be vested in their riches and not in a principle or supreme Being.
This tycoon’s foray into politics signals one more – maybe the last – attempt by one more “professional” person to make sweeping claims about personal efficiency. George Bush and Sarah Palin are examples of persons with governor experience but what a disappointment both have been!
If Muslims can be deemed offensive and be banned from entering the United States what other group may find itself facing a ban or some other sanction? What is the trumphoon saying about Muslims born and raised in the United States? Respect for the law is paramount in the USA so somebody had better soon shake the trumphoon from his stupor and let the American people conduct their election without inflammatory, hateful, and crude terminology. If not the temple comes down with a crash and American greatness will almost instantly be visible across the globe as oppression, tyranny, prostitution, torture, and with the exception of (to quote an American president) a few “points of light” sheer buffoonery. Finally we will see the American heart rejoicing that they have a trump card, one that is as wild as wild cards come, so wild as to close the door on America’s population and community-building matrices. Sheer buffoonery has reached high places and defies evaluation.