While I was watching Wild Bill with Rob Lowe last night, it occurred to me that the carpet I soaked with water and vacuumed up may not dry properly. We're going into the humid months; nothing dries completely. I put the overhead fan on in that area before I went to bed.
In today's driveway yoga class, Yvette had us standing with our legs hip-width apart and make figure eights with our hips. I had been doing something like this when I walked, pushing my left hip out further to the left. This clarified what I had to do. With each step, I worked on pushing my hip out as Yvette instructed. It made a difference.
I was sort of lost for a good part of the day. I meditated. That helped a little. I tried to nap. That wasn't what I needed. I got up and did some work. I finally posted my new and improved tutoring ads on Craig's list on three islands, Oahu, Big Island, and Maui. I figure that's where the money is.
I had plans for weeding and spraying vinegar. I still had water in the spray bottle. I decided to use up the water, cleaning another section of the screen. There are six eight-foot sections of screen on one side of the lanai. The one I did yesterday hadn't been done since we had the house repainted. It sat behind a chair. The next section wasn't quite as dirty.
When the water was gone, I went out to do some gardening. First stop, pour 1.3 gallons of vinegar into the spray bottle. Our neighbor had complained about our plumbago vines growing over his fence. I spent a week or two hacking them back, creating a two-foot space between the vines. Since I got it cleared, I have had the gardener maintain it. However, I knew they just did what could be accomplished with a fuel-driven machine. None of that on their knees weed pulling. That's what I did it pulled up every piece of green I could and then sprayed vinegar over the area I had covered. I didn't get all of it done. This is at least a three-day job.
I had an hour-long talk with Judy, which felt great. We can talk about many things. Then there are subjects which are off the table. I mentioned two people I hadn't heard from in a while, Shivani and Sandor. When I got off the phone with her, I made a point of texting Shivani. She had plans of camping for a few days. Then Sandor called, saying he was at Costco. He would stop by to drop off some supplements he recommended. I told him I was about to take Elsa for a walk. I would see him as he passed me on his way to my house.
That's what happened. Sandor stopped to talk to me on the street. He and his wife had gone to Costco to help out a poor woman who just had a baby. They bought diapers and whatever she needed. They bought me a bag of lemons and a bag of sweet kale salad.
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Musings: Hidden Brian had a program on empathy. This is huge for me because I have strong opinions about what works and what doesn't. The speaker defined three(3) types of empathy.
1. Emotional empathy
2. Cognitive empathy and
3. Empathic concern or compassion, wishing someone well.
They say different brain systems support the different types. For example, people with autism lack cognitive empathy but are good at emotional empathy. While sociopaths lack emotional empathy but are excellent at cognitive empathy.
The speaker did address the downsides of empathy. He said it is very taxing on service providers who have to deal with distress or pain in others.. If they feel too much of what their clients are feeling, they have nothing left for their own lives. The other downside is that being overwhelmed by emotional empathy can result in people turning themselves off and denigrating the victims to the point of dehumanizing them. When people's jobs require them to mistreat a group of people, many do exactly that. They dehumanize their charges and then give themselves permission to treat people badly, very badly in many cases, murderously badly.
The other negative aspect of emotional empathy is that people can feel more for "their tribe /group' than the 'other tribe/group.' He said you shouldn't just ask people if they feel for the other group, but do they feel 'more' for their own group members than the other group. I would guess it has to do with the degree of disparity of empathy between our own group versus another group.
We're facing problems like that now. Yes, black people are being poorly treated because they are basically bad people, according to many. Many of those who have been killed by our policemen had criminal charges against them. I recall that one man was arrested for wanting to walk home while drunk, panicked, grabbed the policemen's laser, and ran away. He was shot in the back. That poor cop. He was protecting himself. He was a good person. The man who was shot was basically a bad person. After all, the police were called because he was so drunk he fell asleep in his car blocking the MacDonnell's drive-thru. Seems deserving of the death sentence to me, no.
Many people have more emotional empathy for the police than the black man who was shot. They have more emotional empathy for the policeman who felt threatened and shot the man. For me, the problem lies in the way we train our police force. Why are these police officers so quick to shoot? There are police forces all over the world that do not have the same practice. Are the people in their culture more law-abiding? Does anyone really believe that there is a difference like that?
There are many more examples of black men who have been shot than whites, but not exclusively. There was that seventy-year-old man who was knocked down while peacefully protesting. When a police officer wanted to help him up, his buddies pulled him away.
The Camden police force offers us an alternative. It was defunded ten years ago because their city went broke. The police department was disbanded, everyone was fired. The police chief then hired a new police force. He interviewed the applicants to make sure they were committed to "serving" the community instead of "controlling "it. Guess what! The crime rate drop, the murder rate dropped. The bad interactions between the police and the members of the community, mostly black, dropped. There is something wrong with the culture of the police departments. I don't know where it started.
Some say policing in this country was developed to pursue runaway slaves and then control emancipated black people who wanted to have a role in governing. What did control mean in this case? Making damn sure they had no voice in the political structure. Making damn sure they owned no land. Making damn sure they got no education. Make damn sure they had nothing to leave their families when they died.
Should there be any question in anyone's mind as they read the above, I definitely believe the police, some police, and American policing culture are guilty of bias against blacks. I think that most, if not all, shootings were unnecessary. Most of the crimes these people have been guilty of are minor crimes. The worst ones are serious domestic violence charges. For many, their only crime at their time of being shot was being black.
What do you think the police would do if they arrested a black man who walked into a church prayer group of whites and shot them? What did the police do when they arrested Dylan Roof? They were gentle in their handling of him. They understood that he was mentally ill. They went out and bought him a Burger King. Do you think the police force would have done the same thing for a mentally ill black man who shot up a church prayer group? If there is a comparable case, I'd be interested in hearing about it.
I mentioned the seventy-year-old white man earlier. Maybe the case is their bias is against anyone who disagrees with them. That white man was demonstrating for black rights. That made him like one of them. There are words for people like him: n ------ lovers. That would mean he was one of THEM and not like US.
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