Technology post.
I’ve been using KDE for the past couple days instead of GNOME. Specifically, Kubuntu. I’ve always been a GNOME man. But I’m really surprised by how much I’m enjoying KDE. The tight integration between elements reminds me of the mac.
Month: August 2005
On the Radical Acceptance of Everything
It is an axiom of Focusing that nothing inside gets healed or changed when we argue with it, preach to it, punish it, set goals for it or do any of the other typical things done to “unacceptable” thoughts, feelings and behaviors. The only process that has a chance to heal or change them is to let them inwardly be, and for the central I to extend to them listening, acceptance and empathy. Yet this process has been used, not just to listen to and heal “nice” feelings like sadness and guilt, but addictions and sexual compulsions, murderous rages-the inner parts people have that make them feel they can’t trust their entire inner selves, that lead them to believe there really are parts of themselves that are wicked, prone to evil, “naturally” cruel and selfish, un-Godly, untrustworthy. Brought back into the light of compassion, into the family of the Self, these parts reveal themselves not as devils and monsters, but as protectors and guardians of the Self’s very existence and integrity. Partly for this reason, Cornell sometimes describes her work as “the Radical Acceptance of Everything.”
Could it be true that there is no id, no fundamental Devil Within, no yetzer hara, or evil impulse, as the Talmud calls it? And if we don’t have such a thing inside us, does that mean nobody does? Or do some people have it-and then who knows who they are, who decides? And if nobody has it, then isn’t that the height of New Age softness and fuzziness, denying that evil and sin exists, glibly calling it “sickness” or “ignorance” and tritely claiming that “everything happens for a reason”? If there is no fundamental evil impulse, then what is the nature of evil? And where, of course, is God?
Thoughts on the Radical Acceptance of Everything.
I’m very interested in Focusing lately. Ann Weiser Cornell’s version of it especially.
There is a lot of great information on it at focusingresources.com.
Why
One of my favorite programmers with a web presence is the enigmatic Why the Lucky Stiff.
I decided to play with his blog software, Hobix. This is how you install Hobix on a Mac:
~ ed$ ruby -ropen-uri -e 'eval open("http://go.hobix.com/0.2f").read'
# Readying install...
# Beginning gzip transmission.
#
() ()
() ()
o --- (--= _--_ / \
o( -- (---= ~/ / ^ ^/
o. (___ (_(__-= // ///\/\/
you speedy little goat!!
you got.. you got..
ahee!! hobix!!
# halloo!! ready to install the very latest hobix??
# DON'T BE 'FRAIDY!! nothing scary AT ALL!! (hobix is
# whizzzy cool and /everyone/ is holding your hand.)
+ ready to go + [Y/n] ?
God bless those who don’t take themselves or their software even the slightest bit seriously. Bless them and shower them with chunky bacon.
UPDATE: of course, it crapped out and died trying to create a weblog. Maybe I should have been “fraidy.”
Whither The Ping
OK, I have no idea what to do with this blog anymore. No sense of focus or audience or anything.
The people I know read this include former colleagues, old friends, family, people I’ve met through the blogosphere, people I know through the internet in other contexts… Few to no common threads.
Posting seems fragmented since I’ve stopped ranting about politics. (By the way, this is not an act of willpower. I no longer want to rant about politics. I am finding better things to do than look at the world in terms of good guys and bad guys, no matter how good earnestly the folks currently in power seem to be auditioning for the role of “bad guys.”)
(I tried once to stop ranting through willpower, and it didn’t work. Nothing I’ve ever tried to do through willpower has ever worked, as far as I can tell. It is a pretty fair bet, at least for me, that if I think I just need more willpower to accomplish something, it can not be accomplished, at least by the means I’m trying to accomplish it. I seem to operate pretty much on maximum willpower at all times [modest as that may be] with no reserves to pull out for an emergency.)
Anyway, the audience for this blog — at least in terms of the people whom I know read it — is so damn disparate that I have a hard time writing anything to it. There’s no longer that much I have to say to “the blogosphere.”
So I just use it as a link dump. It’s sort of a really overengineered del.icio.us feed, with occasional sentences or two of opinion or personal remarks, but nothing that I wouldn’t mind sharing with all those readers who have very little to do with each other.
I’m honestly getting tired of it.
Don’t know what I’m going to do about it yet. Stewing.
[update: reposting because there was something deeply wack about this post, it produced a double entry with double comments boxes on the comments page, only the second of which worked. What up wordpress??]
The Wihtikow Will Get Ye If Ye Don’t Watch Out
Ubercool article about the wihtikow, better known as the terrifying Wendigo.
“In 1896 a man traveling through the woods with his family reported having a strange vision of a creature that apparently made him insane. He and the villagers believed he’d turned into a windigo and as his condition worsened, he was locked in a cabin. One eyewitness, a fur trader from Scotland, stated that he hardly looked like a human being at one point. The man was eventually executed by the frightened villagers, and huge logs were piled on his grave to make sure he couldn’t come back to life, as he had vowed to do unless a priest came to the village within three days. Strangely enough a priest did arrive, apparently the first ever in that area, and found all the villagers huddled in a shack, fearing for their lives.”