Lonely Rider

gueule-de-loupviolette: La tour Eiffel dans le Brouillard ,...

Sat, 29 Dec 2012 21:32:24 -0500

gueule-de-loupviolette:

La tour Eiffel dans le Brouillard , Paris ( 1930s).

Sunfish Regatta Ponce Puerto Rico Pan Pastel

Tue, 30 Oct 2012 00:25:12 -0400

Sunfish Regatta Ponce Puerto Rico

Pan Pastel

La Cuesta por Juana Diaz Pan Pastel

Tue, 30 Oct 2012 00:22:55 -0400

La Cuesta por Juana Diaz

Pan Pastel

beingblog: “And if I have prophetic powers, and understand all...

Tue, 02 Oct 2012 12:14:04 -0400

beingblog:

“And if I have prophetic powers, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but have not love, I am nothing.”

~1 Corinthians 13:2 (English Standard Version)

photo by Magnus Stivi (Taken with Instagram)

beingblog: If you’re like me and finding yourself pining for...

Sat, 18 Aug 2012 12:13:51 -0400

beingblog:

If you’re like me and finding yourself pining for the Olympic Games that are now over, take hope. Keith Loutit and Jarbas Agnelli’s shot over 170,000 still images for this tilt shift video of Rio de Janeiro during Carnival. The music and photography are brilliant, and the 2016 Olympic Games can’t come fast enough!

~Trent Gilliss, senior editor

Before the Jump Photo by J.Roig

Wed, 08 Aug 2012 21:01:00 -0400

Before the Jump

Photo by J.Roig

Amapola

Wed, 08 Aug 2012 08:57:38 -0400

Amapola

“Panas Perdidas” 2012 Dry Pastel

Wed, 08 Aug 2012 08:53:30 -0400

“Panas Perdidas” 2012 Dry Pastel

“Cisne” in dry pastel Replica of Tempera by PEHR

Wed, 08 Aug 2012 08:50:48 -0400

“Cisne” in dry pastel

Replica of Tempera by PEHR

beingblog: “You can’t avoid danger. It’s there. The world is a...

Tue, 12 Jun 2012 21:06:11 -0400

beingblog:

“You can’t avoid danger. It’s there. The world is a dangerous place, and if you sit around wringing your hands about it, you’ll miss out on all the adventure.”

— Jeanette Walls from Half Broke Horses.

Photo by freewheels74. (Taken with Instagram)

Photo

Mon, 04 Jun 2012 21:33:15 -0400

beingblog: Getting Revenge and Forgiveness: Science That...

Tue, 29 May 2012 11:27:48 -0400

beingblog:

Getting Revenge and Forgiveness: Science That Liberates Us from Reductive Analyses

by Krista Tippett, host

I first began to gain a kind of respect for the revenge impulse in human life when we worked, in the early days of this program, on a show about the death penalty. I came to understand that revenge was the original “criminal justice system.” For most of human history, prior to the rule of law, prior to structures of justice that transcend the messiness of human interaction, the threat of retaliation has been a primary tool humans possessed to pursue justice and also to deter cycles of violence. I’ll never forget Sister Helen Prejean, a great campaigner against the death penalty, describing anger as a moral response. The question, of course, is where we let that anger take us.

Now, as Michael McCullough lays out passionately, science is able to document how normal, and purposeful, our instinct for revenge is. In the brain, the instinct for revenge looks like a “craving,” a felt need that begs for satiation. We do range into the realms of global geopolitics in this conversation — to the world around Joseph Kony in Uganda no less — Michael McCullough is just as interested in the mundane forms this craving takes: in our reactions to neighbors and irritating co-workers or to our political opposites.

The good news is that Michael McCullough’s research is also revealing that forgiveness is hard-wired in us — purposeful and normal. He says that to think of forgiveness as a trait of the weak and the vulnerable reflects a simplistic imagination about evolutionary biology. We tolerate and excuse the deficits and mistakes of those we know and love and work with — and even those we don’t love but need to work with — many times each day. Forgiveness doesn’t work in real life as it too often works in media portrayals of dramatic stories of conversion and high emotion. It happens constantly, and we rarely stop to glorify it with the lofty word “forgiveness.”

This science, in other words, liberates us from reductive analyses of ourselves and the world around us. If we accept the normalcy of our instincts both to revenge and forgive, and can see what triggers them both, we have more control over both.

On its cautionary side, it offers lucid explanation of why human societies remain vulnerable — physiologically, not merely politically — to falling back on retaliation and violence as a form of justice. When we cease to see our own well-being as linked to that of others, when we feel threatened by their very existence and are only able to see them amorphously as part of an opposing group, the forgiveness instinct becomes less possible and violence more likely.

This conversation with Michael McCullough heightens my sense of what is at stake in the present global and national moment. One the one hand, the interactivity of the globalized world should make it possible — even necessary — for us to know people far beyond our families and “tribes” as necessary to our survival and even our flourishing.

I am also deeply concerned, as we roll through another toxic election year, at how complete the chasms in American society have become. We have divided ourselves in countless ways — between red and blue, between the 99 percent and the 1 percent. Such distinctions are surely inevitable. But the utter lack of communication, courtesy, and curiosity across these divides seems new to me. Alarmingly, the religious traditions that have been humanity’s moral respositories are also implicated in some of these divisions. How intriguing to imagine that we might harness lessons of science towards a more reconciliatory, peaceable future.

Springtime at Hermosura

Thu, 10 May 2012 14:11:00 -0400

Springtime at Hermosura

Regatta Internacional San Juan 2012

Thu, 10 May 2012 14:04:00 -0400

Regatta Internacional San Juan 2012

Kestrel Hermosura

Thu, 10 May 2012 14:03:29 -0400

Kestrel Hermosura

Amapola Barrio Cuatro Calles

Thu, 10 May 2012 14:00:00 -0400

Amapola Barrio Cuatro Calles

My Blue Heaven

Thu, 10 May 2012 13:56:33 -0400

My Blue Heaven

Por Salinas Dry Pastel, 2010

Thu, 10 May 2012 13:39:00 -0400

Por Salinas

Dry Pastel, 2010

Manzanas Dry Pastel 2010

Thu, 10 May 2012 13:31:00 -0400

Manzanas

Dry Pastel 2010

beingblog: “The more clearly we can focus our attention on the...

Thu, 10 May 2012 12:22:20 -0400

beingblog:

“The more clearly we can focus our attention on the wonders and realities of the universe about us the less taste we shall have for the destruction of our race.”

~Rachel Carson from Lost Woods: The Discovered Writing of Rachel Carson.

Photo by Roger Gordon. (Taken with instagram)