From: Chuck Haynes Area: Metaphysical To: All 9 Aug 93 07:36:28 Subject: Broken Homes & Violence UpdReq Original in : AEN_NEWS Echo Original from: NEIL SCHULMAN Original to : ALL Original date: 8 Aug 93, 10:27 The following article is under submission. Reproduction on computer bulletin boards is permitted for informational purposes only. Copyright (c) 1993 by J. Neil Schulman. All other rights reserved. THE REAL CAUSE OF VIOLENCE IN AMERICA? by J. Neil Schulman We live in a violent society -- there's no getting away from that simple fact. But what's the cause? Everybody has their pet scapegoat to blame for it. Some people blame the availability of guns, particularly among teenagers. Others blame the portrayal of violence on television. Still others blame the fact that kids play video games rather than reading books. I think the criminal use of guns, and TV violence, and the trivialization of our culture are all effects of deeper causes. And I think one of those deeper causes is that one third of American families with children are either single-parent or can't pay their bills unless both parents work. I was born in 1953. When I was growing up, I lived in a typical middle-class American family. My father went to work at a job that brought in money and my mother worked at home by taking care of my father, my older sister, and me. This combination worked out well. My mother taught me how to read long enough before I got to kindergarten that none of us can remember precisely how young I learned. Because taking care of the home was a full-time job for my mother, she always knew where my sister and I were and what we were doing, and whether we should be doing it or not. You can argue the feminist point that maybe it didn't always have to be the mommy who stayed at home and the daddy who went somewhere else to work, but it's hard to argue against the proposition that at least \one\ of the parents should have as his or her primary job raising their kids. In 1960, my father got a new job that moved the family from a three-bedroom attached house in Forest Hills, New York, to a brand-new house in Natick, Massachusetts -- a bedroom community for Boston. The house had four bedrooms, an unfurnished basement converted into a family room after a couple of years, sat on an acre of wooded land, and cost $24,000. My father's starting salary at his new job was $18,000 a year. You can look at it that my father had to work 16 months to earn enough money to buy the house for cash. Of course that's not how he did it -- the cost of the house was spread over a thirty-year- mortgage -- but that gives you a good idea of the ratio between earning power and house payments at the time. The same job my father started at $18,000 a year today has a starting salary of about $45,000. But the equivalent house on the same acre of land today costs around $250,000 -- and it was up to $350,000 until the real-estate market collapsed a few years ago. Today, the person holding my father's job would have to work 67 months -- over four times as long -- to earn the cash needed to buy the same house my parents raised me in. The fixed mortgage rate today is also about twice as high as the 4% interest rate my parents had on that house -- and it was \not\ a government subsidized rate. Other unavoidable costs have risen even faster. Medical and automobile insurance have skyrocketed, making insurance payments one of the largest yearly family outlays. Workers accept pay cuts to prevent their companies from going into bankruptcy or overseas, while prices for groceries continue upward. Mommies and daddies today work full-time jobs outside the home and manage a full-time job inside the home as well. Even that's not enough to make up the difference -- today's "home" is more likely a 1000-square-foot apartment rather than a 2400- square-foot house. Because there's no longer any real possibility of division of labor in the household -- and because families are living in smaller quarters than they used to -- families are buckling under the pressure: the national divorce rate is now around fifty percent. Why \not\ get divorced, since the pressures of living as a family are often no longer outbalanced by the satisfactions of home life? So too many kids are raised in what used to be called broken homes -- raised by babysitters, teachers in overcrowded classrooms, and by soulless electronic diversions. Then we wonder why our kids take pot shots out of car windows at other kids. Why not? Mommy or Daddy were too busy keeping a roof over their heads to drill into their little skulls that shooting at people is wrong. All of the above is a best-case scenario. Many of us can't even find the jobs necessary to keep body and soul together, and either get lost among the homeless, or in anesthetic drugs such as alcohol or cocaine. Of course as good a case can be made that it's possible for parents to raise children properly if there are other relatives close by or if neighbors help each other out. But the same economy that makes two-worker marriages break up also makes us chase across a continent after good jobs, scattering families and trivializing our friendships. You can argue that there are other causes for families breaking up. But there's little denying the role that economics plays in shaping social institutions. Because we're poorer than our parents' generation, our primary social institution -- the family -- is unable to do its job often enough that too many children are growing into violent criminals instead of civilized adults. We used to live in a country where the main product of our economy was hope for a better future. Our parents worked hard in the expectation that it would make their children's lives better than theirs. Instead, it's worse. Where did all their money go? That's easy. When you break down the economic burden on each family in taxes, inflation, hidden regulatory costs, higher interest rates, and lost industries due to money being spent on servicing the national debt rather than building new industries, my estimate is that it comes in at close to the same amount as the net income brought in by a second working parent: about $10,000 a year. If the cost of excess government is contributing to the destruction of our civilization itself, what's it worth to buy our country back from the politicians and lobbyists who are spending our family's house money? Is it worth our lives, our fortunes, and our sacred honor? One way or another, that's what we're paying anyway. ## J. Neil Schulman's 1979 novel \Alongside Night\ predicted many of our current economic ills, and won the Prometheus Hall of Fame Award in 1988. He lives in Los Angeles. OLX 2.1 TD Stop Crime: Arm the Victims! 718499927771849992777184999277718499927771849992777184999277718 From: Chuck Haynes Area: Metaphysical To: All 9 Aug 93 07:39:06 Subject: Shamanism UpdReq Original in : AMTHEO Echo Original from: Pat Haynes Original to : All Original date: 8 Aug 93, 19:58 What is Shamanism? Where did it come from? The word shaman is from the Tungus; saman. Meaning a Priest of Shamanism; A Magician. (Webster) From "Occidental Mythology" by Joseph Campbell "The myths and rites of the roving tribesmen of the Great Hunt, for whom the animals, large and small, of the rolling plains manifestation of the powers and mysteries of nature, were based largely on the idea that between mankind and beasts a covenant existed. The food animals gave their bodies willingly to be slain, provided certain rites were enacted to insure rebirth and return. Animals appeared in vision, to become guardians, initiators, and vehicles of the shamans, bestowing upon them knowledge, power, and spiritual insight. And the people, in their rites, dressed as and imitated beasts." Some form of Shamanism is/has been practiced in Eastern Siberia - Manchuria (notably among the Tungus), Tibet, China, Japan & Korea to Mongoloid and Turkic tribes. The Finns, Lapps, Estonians & Hungarians form the western frontier of old world Shamanism. On this continent, the Eskimos, on the north pacific coast, the Plateau, California, Great Basin, Plains & Eastern Woodland tribes, and some (not all) of the S.W. tribes. In many communities in Middle America (Mexico to Panama) the traditions have been confused with Catholicism, however many tribes in South America still practice Shamanism. Mircea Eliade, chairman of the department of history of religions at the University of Chicago, is considered by many to be the ultimate source of information on archaic Shamanism. In his book "Shamanism: Archaic Techniques of Ecstasy" he credits an even wider range of the practice than the above information from the Britanica. He states that generally Shamanism coexists with other forms of magic and religion. Eliade also says that not all magicians are Shamans, although Shamans practice magic, and not all medicine men are Shamans, although Shamans heal. "It would be more correct to class shamanism among the mysticisms than with what is commonly called a religion. We shall find shamanism within a considerable number of religions, for shamanism always remains an ecstatic technique. A comparison at once come to mind - that of monks, mystics, and saints within Christian churches. "..a shaman is not recognized as such until after he has received two kinds of training: (1) ecstatic (dreams, trances, etc.) and (2) traditional (shamanic techniques, names and functions of the spirits, mythology and genealogy of the clan, secret language, etc.). It is only the initiatory death and resurrection that consecrates a shaman". A more modern interpretation is given in "Medicine Cards" by Jamie Sams. The basic idea of the ancient initiations was to break down all the former notions of "self or a ritualistic death of some way of life that no longer suits the growth pattern. Jose and Lena Stevens, in their book "The Secrets of Shamanism" offer this description of the modern Shaman. "While shamans have no fixed dogma or religion , they all believe in the universal web of power that supports all life. According to shamanism, all elements of the environment are alive and all have their source of power in the spirit world. Rocks, plants, animals, clouds, and wind are charged with life and must be paid due respect for the maintenance of harmony and health. Shamans consider all life-forms to be interconnected, and a mutually supportive balance among them is essential for humankinds survival. Our job is to understand this balance and to live in harmony with it, always taking nature into consideration in every endeavor. The web of power in nature is the life giver and the source of all successful activity." Many Native Americans resent having the ways of the "Red Road" taught to non Amerindians. Some, who have some trace of Amerindian blood, have found Native teachers and greatly resent what they often refer to as New Age/Neo/Urban shamans. Ed (Eagleman) McGaa, in his book "Mother Earth Spirituality", responds that "if we do not teach other two legs to love the Mother Earth, when they destroy it, ALL two legs will go with them." Suggested reading on more modern Shamanic practices,in addition to the books noted above: "In The Shadow of the Shaman" by Amber Wolfe "Urban Shaman" by Dr. Serge Kahili King And, when it is published, "The HuMat Ceremony" by Tandika Star 718499927771849992777184999277718499927771849992777184999277718 From: Durwydd Mac Tara Area: Metaphysical To: All 9 Aug 93 12:19:24 Subject: Repost of Charge... Pvt UpdReq * Original Area: Book_Of_Shadows * Original From: Kalioppe (93:9500/0) * Original To : Endora (93:9500/0) No problem, sweetie! Here it is... RHYMING CHARGE OF THE GODDESS I am the harmonious tune of the songbird And the laughter of a gleeful child. I am the bubbling sound of the running brook And the scent of the flowers wild. I am the floating leaf upon the breeze And the dancing fire in the forest glade. I am the sweet smell of rains upon the soil And the rapture of passion when love is made. I am the germination of seed in the Spring And the ripening of wheat in the Sun. I am the peaceful depth of the twilight That soothes the soul when day is done. I am found in the twinkling of an aged eye... And found in the birth of a newborn pup... Yes...Birth and Growth and Death, am I I am the gracious Earth, on whom you sup. I am your sister, your mother, the wise one. I wrap you gently in the warmth of my love. That which you seek you shall find within: Not without...not below...not above! Remember always, my children, be reverent Be gentle, loving and kind to each other And hold sacred the Earth and its creatures For I am the Lady, Creatrix and Mother! -Kalioppe- 1993 ... Magical echoes are tricky things. 718499927771849992777184999277718499927771849992777184999277718