More sinned against than sinners, ALL!

Oprah seemed to be as good as yesterday's TV provided, at a time when my wife and I were just finishing dinner. And there we found Geneen Roth, author of another New York Times bestseller, Women, Food and God. Oprah's history of "yo-yoing" (her word, not mine) up and down the scales (the bathroom scales that is!) over the last three decades makes her an eloquent spokesperson for all those who struggle with gaining weight, then dieting, and gaining it all (and sometimes more) back again.
And the central theme of this book, if I was listening carefully and taking in what I was hearing, is that many people have dumped on themselves for not being "enough" or "good enough" or "in pain" or "struggling with a bad day, event, loss, death, failure....(you fill in your own blank with the appropriate noun and food has been a way of reducing the pain, denying the pain, avoiding the pain, putting the pain aside, burying the pain for the moment. And food could be any of several pain "medications" that do not come with a doctor's prescription.
And, according to Roth, "Kindness, (and not more self-flagellation) is the answer." Only if we begin to treat ourselves more kindly will we enter into the pain that is our own inner work, and that is required of us, and only by doing the hard inner work will we begin to see our own inner "gifts," or as Carl Jung put it, our "gold."
Imagine, a society beginning to treat itself with kindness, and not consider such kindness narcissistic.
The christian church has much to answer for in generating several hundreds of generations of people "who have sinned and come short of the glory of God" as Paul put it, in his own self-flaggellating perfectionism. Of course, we have sinned, all of us, without exception, and will continue to "sin" in the overt and in the more covert manners available to all of us. We are not OUR SINS! We have responsibility for them, but they do not define us, even before God.
And we will all find people whose self-loathing has been and will continue to be "projected" onto us, and until we come to full awareness that their aspersions have absolutely nothing to do with us, and everything to do with them, we will continue to writhe under the "weight" of that projected judgement. And that weight contributes mightily to our sense of ourself. And that pain adds to the embarrassment, shame, guilt or whatever word seems to best fit, (meaning self-criticism, self-judgement, self-contempt) all of it generating more pain, and all of it worthless, because it is not our true picture of ourselves.
Imagine, if we could become a society in which we could see every other person, including those in prison, and those who whipped us, and those who spat upon us, or threw rocks at our heads at the town beach, or who pounded us in jealous anger because we had friends they wanted, and those who maligned us with gossip and those who raped us sexually or through stripping away our reputation with false or exaggerated accusations, or who stripped away the respect of our children, for their own "self-loathing" purposes, as more sinned against than sinners!
You see, this is not merely an issue of weight gain and loss; it is a matter that seeks expression in all phases, stages and arenas of our existence. And when we have all taken the oath to begin to purge our hearts, minds and bodies of the self-loathing that is woven into every cell of every organ, especially the organ between our ears, the brain, only then will we stop waging wars without cause, and only then will we stop building prisons for prisoners whose crimes were never reported, and only then will we find in our religious, political, corporate, scientific and academic opponents, the same capacity to see us in the way that we are attempting to see him/her, as more sinned against than sinner, and only then will we begin to see the vision of a world where agape love can and does operate and that world (community, town village, family) will not have a specific religious institutional "sign" over the entrance, because the entrance will be a rainbow which does not need a sign to remind those near that they are in the presence of the God of their own belief system.
As the Rabbi put it to the Abbot, whose monastery was nearly empty of brothers, while his synagogue was also nearly empty of faithful, "Just remember, the Messiah is among you!" (Quoted in Scott Peck's, The Different Drum)

The Secret History of the War on Cancer: the Book

In her compelling book, The Secret History of the War on Cancer, Devra Davis picks away the layers of collusion, cover-up, denial, lobbying and outright lying that have comprised much of the last hundred years of a conflict between the interests of the large mega-corporations, like DuPont, and the life-saving interests of thousands, perhaps hundreds of thousands of lives that were sacrificed to keep the corporate, chemical secrets hidden.
Telling secrets is never a "friend-generating" sport; and in these cases, Davis takes the gloves off, for many reasons, not the least of which are the preventable deaths of her family members, if the full truth of the dangers of certain elements, compounds and the conditions for working with those chemicals had been disclosed fully, honourably, and at a time when those secrets were fully known.
Isn't it strange, or perhaps not, that while the rocket scientists who had been producing German rockets during WWII found employment in the U.S. immediately after the war, and began seamlessly producing military materiel for the U.S., those German scientists and medical professionals who had done so much to advance the cause of fighting cancer were not so "acceptable," or "needed" in the post-war American consciousness of the dangers of carcinogens. You may recall that the Germany of the Third Reich was as opposed to the known causes of cancer as it was to the existence of "foreign" and particularly Jewish contaminants in their perfect Aryan race war. Hitler, himself, applied mustard dressings to his dying mother's open chest sores, as she struggling, in vain, against the ravages of her cancer.
And yet, the list of virulent elements, especially those used in the production of dyes, like benzidine, and their capacity to inflict savage and mortal damage to those whose livelihoods depended on their working, without adequate protection, in unsafe environments.
And, the legal forces mounted against those who sought justice on behalf of their dead and/or suffering loved ones, were so powerful, so well financed, and so meticulous that many of the "expert witnesses" including Davis herself, were declared incompetent, "because they could not specifically prove that X chemical had caused Y cancer in Z person."

So, when you next hear someone describing the law as a "blunt" instrument in the pursuit of justice, remember that it is only blunt when it needs to be, when, for example the legislators are writing the laws, so that many cases can be heard under the principles of the statute, but in the cross-examination process, any question that can be devised that is not leading, is admissable. And the imagination and nit-picking of the defense attorneys also knows no limits, in pursuit of the exoneration of the complicit corporation, in the pursuit of its profits, using whatever chemicals, with whatever dangers, make that pursuit possible.

Every student of both science, and of business should be required to read, study, digest and debate the contents of this revealing book, so that George Carlin's oxymoron, "business ethics" can be reversed, and we can begin to speak legitimately of the "ethics of business."
Workplace safety, including safety from dangerous substances is, and will likely remain such a difficult and often unsuccessful battle of justice, since the lives of the victims are worth pennies, compared to the "larger value" of the corporation's ability to continue to pursue its profits, in a culture that worships at the altar of the corporation. If the "engine of the economy" is the corporation, or the smaller business entity, and the politicians seek their own re-election, for which they need  the support of both of those business/corporate entities, then it follows that the "safety" of the workers, who also need the dangerous jobs they hold, and will continue to hold, (and remember they voluntarily applied for those jobs) will take a back seat to the profit motive of their employers. And, as Davis documents, justice will come in very small droplets, infrequently sprinkled, and only reluctantly even then, on the graves of its victims.