The Violence of Love

THE VIOLENCE we preach is not
the violence of the sword,
the violence of hatred.
It is the violence of love,
of brotherhood,
the violence that wills to beat weapons
into sickles for work.

Oscar Romero, nov. 22, 1977

Om Kitsch og Kunst

"Kitschens negasjon av kunstens verdisystem betegner (Herman) Broch imidlertid ikke som opposisjon, men som imitasjon. Opposisjon kan nemlig være ærlig og redelig, den kan være uttrykk for genuin uenighet og opprørstrang overfor etablerte verdier, og dette gjelder aldri for kitschen. Kitschen er lureri, ikke raseri; kitschen er innsmigrende, ikke opprivende; kitschen er aldri uenig eller enig i det som finnes innenfor kunstens verdisystem, den etterligner det bare. Brochs metafysiske beskrivelse av kitsch er at den gjør det uendelige mål endelig, at den imiterer dette uendelige mål gjennom en falsk identifikasjon med noe endelig, slik at symbolene på det uendelige målet blir identisk med dette målet selv. Et eksempel han nevner er kirken som gikk fra å være et symbol på Gud til å bli direkte identifisert med Gud. Eller erotikken som gikk fra å være et symbol på kjærligheten til å bli selve kjærligheten. Pornografi oppstår således som kjærlighetslitteraturens «kitsch» idet selve kjønnsakten er blitt et mål i seg selv."

Av Frode Helmich Pedersen

Nestekjærlighet

"Vi etterlyser et visjonært menneske– og samfunnssyn i vår rike del av verden. Vi må kjempe for å virkeliggjøre menneskerettighetene. Retten til et verdig liv og retten til en fremtid. For hvert enkelt menneske.

Verden trenger at vi beskytter det menneskelige i oss. Den som kan, skal hjelpe."

Margreth Olin, initiativtaker nestekjaerlighet.no

KLIKK OVERSKRIFTEN OG SIGNER OPPROPET

honey

"Life is the flower for which love is the honey."
Victor Hugo

The Scent of Desire

The sense of smell is very suggestible. It didn't evolve in a world where there was fragrance and perfume and aftershave. There's evidence suggesting in divorce rates that the [divorcée's] sense of smell was off. There's also good evidence that people who are similar in terms of their immune systems have a more difficult time conceiving, whether they're twenty or forty. So I think the reason women are having such a hard time conceiving these days is not just because they're [having children when they're] older, but also potentially because she met the guy while on the pill, or his cologne swept her off her feet, and by the time she got to really smell him it was too late because she was in love with him.

©2007 Nerve.com and Catrinel Bartolomeu

The Smell of Love

"Why do bulls and horses turn up their nostrils when excited by love?" Darwin pondered deep in one of his unpublished notebooks. He came to believe that natural selection designed animals to produce two, and only two, types of odors—defensive ones, like the skunk's, and scents for territorial marking and mate attracting, like that exuded by the male musk deer and bottled by perfumers everywhere. The evaluative sniffing that mammals engage in during courtship were clues that scent is the chemical equivalent of the peacock's plumage or the nightingale's song—finery with which to attract mates.

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De vanskelige menneskene

"... Noen ganger treffer jeg på slike “vanskelige mennesker”. De fremstår som unyanserte noen ganger. Og de får gjerne også høre det. Av leger, av saksbehandlere og av andre mennesker rundt seg. Aldri fornøyd. Det må være noe galt med dem. Stakkars saksbehandlere, tenker mange antageligvis.

Men jeg tar meg stadig i å lure… Hvordan ble disse menneskene sånn? Hvordan kom piggene ut i første omgang? Blir de behandlet dårlig fordi de er vanskelige eller er de vanskelige fordi de blir behandlet dårlig?"

Funnet på bloggen Fullt Hus og stormende jubel, av Lin

The roots of violence

If we know that the roots of violence are fertilized by childhood abuse, can we make a long-term commitment to reduce violence by focusing on our children rather than our criminals? What if we set a goal of reducing the cases of childhood abuse and neglect by 50 percent a year? What if we monitored statistics on childhood abuse as avidly as we track housing starts, inflation, or baseball scores? We would have to commit ourselves, seriously, to improving access to quality day care and after-school programs. We might need to educate and support parents so they could know how to nurture their children more effectively. We certainly would need to foster better relationships among peers and siblings.

Copyright 2008 The Dana Foundation All Rights Reserved danainfo@dana.org

Lifelong beneficial changes

Fifty years ago, Seymour Levine and Victor Denenberg showed that small alterations in their environment led to lasting changes in rats’ development, behavior, and response to stress. Something as seemingly inconsequential as five minutes of human handling during a rat’s infancy produced lifelong beneficial changes. We now understand through the research efforts of Michael Meany and Paul Plotsky that the effects of brief handling were highly beneficial and were due to increased maternal attention. Those pups whose mothers spontaneously lick and groom them the most (about one-third in a laboratory setting) display the same benefits as the rats with the human handling. By contrast, long isolation produces stress that has a deleterious effect on brain and behavior development.

Copyright 2008 The Dana Foundation All Rights Reserved danainfo@dana.org