Promotion Status Quotes

If you feel too much, there’s still a place for you here. If you feel too much, don’t go. It this world is too painful, stop and rest. It’s okay to stop and rest. If you need a break, it’s okay to say you need a break. This life –it’s not a contest, not a race, not a performance, not a thing that you win. It’s okay to slow down. You are here for more than grades, more than a job, more than a promotion, more than keeping up, more than getting by.This life is not about status or opinion or appearance. You don’t have to fake it. You do not have to fake it. Other people feel this way too. If your heart is broken, it’s okay to say your heart is broken. If you feel stuck, it’s okay to say you feel stuck. If you can’t let go, it’s okay to say you can’t let go.You are not alone in these places. Other people feel how you feel. You are more than just your pain. You are more than wounds, more than drugs, more than death and silence.There is still some time to be surprised. There is still some time to ask for help. There is still some time to start again. There is still some time for love to find you. It’s not too late. You’re not alone. It’s okay –whatever you need and however long it takes- its okay. It’s okay. If you feel too much, there’s still a place for you here. If you feel too much, don’t go. There is still some time.

Don't promote negativity online and expect people to treat you with positivity in person.

It is has been a long time since I have written one of my statuses about life. I have been very busy trying to promote my Fan page, Friends and services, and my books. However, I can tell you all one thing for certain. I am not a Quitter. I will not stop writing books. I will not stop pushing myself to succeed. I will not stop being who I am. I am a winner. Winning is an attitude. You take the good with the bad and you keep on going. It gets hard, you get tired and sometimes burnt out but you keep on going anyway, because you can. Winners have setbacks, but winners learn tighten their belts and go on. Winner look at what has gone wrong and instead of complaining they find ways of doing it better. Winners know that Rome was not built in a day and take every day as it comes. Winners do not whine, they roar.

I am opposed to animal welfare campaigns for two reasons. First, if animal use cannot be morally justified, then we ought to be clear about that, and advocate for no use. Although rape and child molestation are ubiquitous, we do not have campaigns for “humane” rape or “humane” child molestation. We condemn it all. We should do the same with respect to animal exploitation. Second, animal welfare reform does not provide significant protection for animal interests. Animals are chattel property; they are economic commodities. Given this status and the reality of markets, the level of protection provided by animal welfare will generally be limited to what promotes efficient exploitation. That is, we will protect animal interests to the extent that it provides an economic benefit.

As Susan Sontag observes in her study of photography, “Reality has come to seem more and more like what we are shown by cameras.” Bourgeois families in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, Sontag points out, posed for portraits in order to proclaim the family’s status, whereas today the family album of photographs verifies the individual’s existence: the camera helps to weaken the older idea of development as moral education and to promote a more passive idea according to which development consists of passing through the stages of life at the right time and in the right order.

Happiness, after all, is generally measured as reported satisfaction with one's life - a state of mind perhaps more accessible to those who are affluent, who conform to social norms, who suppress judgment in the service of faith, and who are not overly bothered by societal injustice...The real conservatism of positive psychology lies in its attachment to the status quo, with all its inequalities and abuses of power. Positive psychologists' tests of happiness and well-being, for example, rest heavily on measures of personal contentment with things as they are.

Monogamous marriage changes men psychologically, even hormonally, and has downstream effects on societies. Although this form of marriage is neither “natural” nor “normal” for human societies—and runs directly counter to the strong inclinations of high-status or elite men—it nevertheless can give religious groups and societies an advantage in intergroup competition. By suppressing male-male competition and altering family structure, monogamous marriage shifts men’s psychology in ways that tend to reduce crime, violence, and zero-sum thinking while promoting broader trust, long-term investments, and steady economic accumulation

Education as the practice of freedom affirms healthy selfesteem in students as it promotes their capacity to be aware and live consciously. It teaches them to reflect and act in ways that further self-actualization, rather than conformity to the status quo.

In the popular imagination, Asian Americans inhabit a vague purgatorial status: not white enough nor black enough; distrusted by African Americans, ignored by whites, unless we’re being used by whites to keep the black man down. We are the carpenter ants of the service industry, the apparatchiks of the corporate world, we are math-crunching middle managers who keep the corporate wheels greased but who never get promoted since we don’t have the right ‘face’ for leadership. We have a content problem. They think we have no inner resources. But while I may look impassive, I'm frantically paddling my feet underwater, always overcompensating to hide my devouring feelings of inadequacy. There's a ton of literature on the self-hating Jew and the self-hating African American, but not enough has been said about the self-hating Asian. Racial self hatred is seeing yourself whites see you, which turns you into your own worst enemy. Your only defence is to be hard on yourself, which becomes compulsive, and therefore a comfort: to peck yourself to death.

Business and financial interests were no more unified or consistent than the social movements, but their activities forged languages and concepts, practices and policies, and founded new institutions to promote mechanisms that either shored up or established inequalities of power, rank, wealth, or cultural status.

The travails of being an employee include not only uncertainty about the duration of one's employment, but also the humiliation of many working practices and dynamics. With most businesses shaped like pyramids, in which a wide base of employees gives way to a narrow tip of managers, the question of who will be rewarded - and who left behind - typically develops into one of the most oppressive of the workplace, and one which, like all anxieties, feeds off uncertainty. Because achievement in most fields is difficult to monitor reliably, the path to promotion or its oppositie can acquire an apparently haphazard connection to results. The succesful alpinist of organizational pyramids may not be the best at their jobs, but those who have best mastered a range of dark political arts in which civilized life does not usually offer instruction.

A reward-sensitive person is highly motivated to seek rewards—from a promotion to a lottery jackpot to an enjoyable evening out with friends. Reward sensitivity motivates us to pursue goals like sex and money, social status and influence.

If you’re going to build a strong culture, it’s paramount to make diversity one of your core values. This is what separates Bridgewater’s strong culture from a cult: The commitment is to promoting dissent. In hiring, instead of using similarity to gauge cultural fit, Bridgewater assesses cultural contribution.* Dalio wants people who will think independently and enrich the culture. By holding them accountable for dissenting, Dalio has fundamentally altered the way people make decisions. In a cult, core values are dogma. At Bridgewater, employees are expected to challenge the principles themselves. During training, when employees learn the principles, they’re constantly asked: Do you agree? “We have these standards that are stress tested over time, and you have to either operate by them or disagree with them and fight for better ones,” explains Zack Wieder, who works with Dalio on codifying the principles. Rather than deferring to the people with the greatest seniority or status, as was the case at Polaroid, decisions at Bridgewater are based on quality. The goal is to create an idea meritocracy, where the best ideas win. To get the best ideas on the table in the first place, you need radical transparency. Later, I’m going to challenge some of Dalio’s principles, but first I want to explain the weapons he has used to wage a war on groupthink.

promoter’s job is to stage a show of two types of power—wealth and beauty—embodied in the form of rich men and girls, respectively.

To insist that the kingdom of God is only spiritual is to promote the status quo.

If you have time for just three status updates a week, make one promotional, one funny or interesting (containing a picture or video) and one promoting somebody else.

One of the Buddha’s main messages was that the pleasures we seek evaporate quickly and leave us thirsting for more. We spend our time looking for the next gratifying thing—the next powdered-sugar doughnut, the next sexual encounter, the next status-enhancing promotion, the next online purchase. But the thrill always fades, and it always leaves us wanting more.

We have learned that to enable learning, an environment must be trusting, humanistic, and positive. It must promote high emotional engagement; mutual accountability; open-mindedness; permission to speak freely; reporting of and tolerance for mistakes; a maniacal vigilance against arrogance, elitism, and complacency; and the devaluation of status and hierarchy.

Significance unfortunately is a useful means toward a personal ends in the advance of science - status and widely distributed publications, a big laboratory, a staff of research assistants, a reduction in teaching load, a better salary, the finer wines of Bordeaux. Precision, knowledge, and control. In a narrow and cynical sense statistical significance is the way to achieve these. Design experiment. Then calculate statistical significance. Publish articles showing "significant" results. Enjoy promotion. But it is not science, and it will not last.

It is necessary for the oppressors to approach the people in order, via subjugation, to keep them passive. This approximation, however, does not involve being with the people, or require true communication. It is accomplished by the oppressors' depositing myths indispensable to the preservation of the status quo: for example, the myth that the oppressive order is a "free society"; the myth that all persons are free to work where they wish, that if they don't like their boss they can leave him and look for another job; the myth that this order respects human rights and is therefore worthy of esteem; the myth that anyone who is industrious can become an entrepreneur--worse yet, the myth that the street vendor is as much an entrepreneur as the owner of a large factory; the myth of the universal right of education, when of all the Brazilian children who enter primary schools only a tiny fraction ever reach the university; the myth of the equality of all individuals, when the question: "Do you know who you're talking to?" is still current among us; the myth of the heroism of the oppressor classes as defenders of "Western Christian civilization" against "materialist barbarism"; the myth of the charity and generosity of the elites, when what they really do as a class is to foster selective "good deeds" (subsequently elaborated into the myth of "disinterested aid," which on the international level was severely criticized by Pope John XXIII); the myth that the dominant elites, "recognizing their duties," promote the advancement of the people, so that the people, in a gesture of gratitude, should accept the words of the elites and be conformed to them; the myth of private property as fundamental to personal human development (so long as oppressors are the only true human beings); the myth of the industriousness of the oppressors and the laziness and dishonesty of the oppressed as well as the myth of the natural inferiority of the latter and the superiority of the former.

Like all dominant groups, men seek to promote an image of their subordinate’s nature that contributes to the preservation of the status quo. For thousands of years, males have seen women not as women could be, but only as males want them to be.”11

There exits within the ecclesia and among its citizens a phenomena I refer to as 'Spiritual Correctness'. Essentially it says: 'Don't say anything that could offend anyone, focus on what is right with the 'church' and its leadership, don't be critical, speak the truth in 'love', promote the status quo, don't make 'waves', don't call anyone 'out', respect 'authority', don't expose 'wrong-doing', cover those who 'spiritually abuse' others, keep it 'secret' within our family; don't ask any hard questions. Sounds exactly like the textbook definition of a highly dysfunctional family system. The only 'system' and its enablers that Jesus spoke out against vehemently was the religious system of His day and its leadership." ~R. Alan Woods [2013]

THERE IS STILL SOME TIME If you feel too much, there’s still a place for you here. If you feel too much, don’t go. If this world is too painful, stop and rest. It’s okay to stop and rest. If you need a break, it’s okay to say you need a break. This life—it’s not a contest, not a race, not a performance, not a thing that you win. It’s okay to slow down. You are here for more than grades, more than a job, more than a promotion, more than keeping up, more than getting by. This life is not about status or opinion or appearance. You don’t have to fake it. You do not have to fake it. Other people feel this way too. If your heart is broken, it’s okay to say your heart is broken. If you feel stuck, it’s okay to say you feel stuck. If you can’t let go, it’s okay to say you can’t let go. You are not alone in these places. Other people feel how you feel. You are more than just your pain. You are more than wounds, more than drugs, more than death and silence. There is still some time to be surprised. There is still some time to ask for help. There is still some time to start again. There is still some time for love to find you. It’s not too late. You’re not alone. It’s okay—whatever you need and however long it takes—it’s okay. It’s okay. If you feel too much, there’s still a place for you here. If you feel too much, don’t go. There is still some time.

remember didn't you sneak away from camp to have a moment alone with What you felt stirring across the land . . . it was the equinox . . . green spring equal nights . . . canyons are opening up, at the bottoms are steaming fumaroles, steaming the tropical life there like greens in a pot, rank, dope-perfume, a hood of smell . . . human consciousness, that poor cripple, that deformed and doomed thing, is about to be born. This is the World just before men. Too violently pitched alive in constant flow ever to be seen by men directly. They are meant only to look at it dead, in still strata, transputrefied to oil or coal. Alive, it was a threat: it was Titans, was an overpeaking of life so clangorous and mad, such a green corona about Earth's body that some spoiler had to be brought in before it blew the Creation apart. So we, the crippled keepers, were sent out to multiply, to have dominion. God's spoilers. Us. Counter-revolutionaries. It is our mission to promote death. The way we kill, the way we die, being unique among the Creatures. It was something we had to work on, historically and personally. To build from scratch up to its present status as reaction, nearly as strong as life, holding down the green uprising. But only nearly as strong.

Whenever one person in a family system starts to make changes, even if the changes are healthy and positive, it’s not unusual for other members in this system to do everything they can to maintain the status quo and bring things back to homeostasis. If an addict stops drinking, for instance, family members often unconsciously sabotage that person’s recovery, because in order to regain homeostasis in the system, somebody has to fill the role of the troubled person. And who wants that role? Sometimes people even resist positive changes in their friends: Why are you going to the gym so much? Why can’t you stay out late—you don’t need more sleep! Why are you working so hard for that promotion? You’re no fun anymore!

Far better, of course, would be to abandon the promotion of religion altogether as grounds for charitable status. The benefits of this to society would be great, especially in the United States, where the sums of tax-free money sucked in by churches, and polishing the heels of already well-heeled televangelists, reach levels that could fairly be described as obscene.

If you’re going to build a strong culture, it’s paramount to make diversity one of your core values. This is what separates Bridgewater’s strong culture from a cult: The commitment is to promoting dissent. In hiring, instead of using similarity to gauge cultural fit, Bridgewater assesses cultural contribution.* Dalio wants people who will think independently and enrich the culture. By holding them accountable for dissenting, Dalio has fundamentally altered the way people make decisions. In a cult, core values are dogma. At Bridgewater, employees are expected to challenge the principles themselves. During training, when employees learn the principles, they’re constantly asked: Do you agree? “We have these standards that are stress tested over time, and you have to either operate by them or disagree with them and fight for better ones,” explains Zack Wieder, who works with Dalio on codifying the principles. Rather than deferring to the people with the greatest seniority or status, as was the case at Polaroid, decisions at Bridgewater are based on quality. The goal is to create an idea meritocracy, where the best ideas win. To get the best ideas on the table in the first place, you need radical transparency.

A good marketer can sell practically anything to anyone. Tobacco is literally dried, decaying vegetable matter that you light on fire and inhale, breathing horrid-tasting, toxic fumes into your lungs.121 At one point marketers promoted smoking as a status symbol and claimed it had health benefits. Once you give it a try, the addictive nature of the drug kicks in, and the agency’s job becomes much easier. If they can get you hooked, the product will sell itself. Since the product is actually poison, advertisers need to overcome your instinctual aversion. That’s a big hill for alcohol advertisements to climb, which is why the absolute best marketing firms on the globe, firms with psychologists and human behavior specialists on staff, are hired to create the ads. These marketers know that the most effective sale is an emotional sale, one that plays on your deepest fears, your ultimate concerns. Alcohol advertisements sell an end to loneliness, claiming that drinking provides friendship and romance. They appeal to your need for freedom by saying drinking will make you unique, brave, bold, or courageous. They promise fulfillment, satisfaction, and happiness. All these messages speak to your conscious and unconscious minds.

This was still the era - it would end later in that famous decade - when to be young was a social encumbrance, a mark of irrelevance, a faintly embarrassing condition for which marriage was the beginning of a cure. Almost strangers, they stood, strangely together, on a new pinnacle of existence, gleeful that their new status promised to promote them out of their endless youth - Edward and Florence, free at last!

Positive psychologists call this process “hedonic adaptation,” and it’s one of the biggest hindrances to long-term life satisfaction.16 The more we consume, acquire, and elevate our status, the harder it is to stay happy. Whether it’s money, grades, promotions, popularity, attention, or just plain material things we want, scientists agree: seeking out external rewards is a sure path to sabotaging our own happiness.

Muhammad kept his word and returned to Medina with the Emigrants and Helpers. He did not attempt to rule Mecca himself; nor did he replace the Qurayshan officials with his own companions; nor did he establish a purist Islamic regime. All former dignitaries kept their positions in the Haram, and the assembly and the status quo remained intact. His most hated enemies were not only reinstated but promoted and showered with gifts.

educators, we have to recognize that we help maintain the achievement gap when we don’t teach advance cognitive skills to students we label as “disadvantaged” because of their language, gender, race, or socioeconomic status. Many children start school with small learning gaps, but as they progress through school, the gap between African American and Latino and White students grows because we don’t teach them how to be independent learners. Based on these labels, we usually do the following (Mean & Knapp, 1991): Underestimate what disadvantaged students are intellectually capable of doing As a result, we postpone more challenging and interesting work until we believe they have mastered “the basics” By focusing only on low-level basics, we deprive students of a meaningful or motivating context for learning and practicing higher order thinking processes

New Age spirituality purports to promote change – its mantra is ‘transformation’ – but, in reality, it endorses the status quo. It preaches changing oneself to accept the world as it is. New Agers are too busy with their affirmations and introspections to do anything like take direct action. Indeed, in some books the advice to unleash one’s inner goddess turns out to be little more than to bring back the old ‘domestic goddess’. Using myth as one’s personal charter is nothing new (as we saw in Chapter 3), but when Alexander the Great chose Achilles, the psychopathic hero of Homer’s Iliad, to revere and emulate, he did so with action in mind. Alexander used classical myth as his ‘life coach’ and changed the world. New Agers use classical myth to ensure that the spirit is soothed, the horoscope reassuring, and the house clean, but the world stays the same.

In some countries, the strictly Progressive man reveals himself to be just as much as if not more prejudiced than the typical Reactionary. There is at times a sort of arrogant condescension in one's gushing, bleeding-heartedness, in that, behind the mask of social activism, one is acting on behalf of one's perceived 'inferiors'. He may promote himself as the savior of the world; he may pat on the head all those he insidiously assumes to be the lesser, whether in status or class or ability, and treat them as helpless children: but the biggest danger of all is that by his own conscience he may feel for them, think for them, and thus, decide for them. It is with such, this artificial brand of empathy, and self-righteousness and narcissism, that we always naively yet so ignorantly pity 'the others', and ultimately, in our schemes to secure them, we merely hold them down.

Luxury beliefs’ are the latest status symbol for rich Americans” by Rob Henderson New York Post, August 3, 2022 In the past, upper-class Americans used to display their social status with luxury goods. Today, they do it with luxury beliefs. People care a lot about social status. In fact, research indicates that respect and admiration from our peers are even more important than money for our sense of well-being. ...as trendy clothes and other products become more accessible and affordable, there is increasingly less status attached to luxury goods. The upper classes have found a clever solution to this problem: luxury beliefs. These are ideas and opinions that confer status on the rich at very little cost, while taking a toll on the lower class. ‘Upper-class people don a luxury belief to separate themselves from the lower class’ ... White privilege is the luxury belief that took me the longest to understand, because I grew up around poor whites. Often members of the upper-class claim that racial disparities stem from inherent advantages held by whites. Yet Asian Americans are more educated, have higher earnings and live longer than whites. Affluent whites are the most enthusiastic about the idea of white privilege, yet they are the least likely to incur any costs for promoting that belief. Rather, they raise their social standing by talking about their privilege. In other words, upper-class whites gain status by talking about their high status. When laws are enacted to combat white privilege, it won’t be the privileged whites who are harmed. Poor whites will bear the brunt. ... like with diamond rings or designer clothes of old, upper-class people don a luxury belief to separate themselves from the lower class. These beliefs, in turn, produce real, tangible consequences for disadvantaged people, further widening the divide.

Today, churches large and small (the small imitating the large) have unthinkingly adopted a marketing mentality that, it turns out, subverts rather than promotes the gospel. We inadvertently imply that the church benefits as much from the spiritual transaction as does the recipient. Marketing, by its very nature, contradicts the essence of the gospel lifestyle of Jesus, who came not to be served, but to expend his life for others—no exchange implied or expected.4

In a classic study of how names impact people’s experience on the job market, researchers show that, all other things being equal, job seekers with White-sounding first names received 50 percent more callbacks from employers than job seekers with Black-sounding names.5 They calculated that the racial gap was equivalent to eight years of relevant work experience, which White applicants did not actually have; and the gap persisted across occupations, industry, employer size – even when employers included the “equal opportunity” clause in their ads.6 With emerging technologies we might assume that racial bias will be more scientifically rooted out. Yet, rather than challenging or overcoming the cycles of inequity, technical fixes too often reinforce and even deepen the status quo. For example, a study by a team of computer scientists at Princeton examined whether a popular algorithm, trained on human writing online, would exhibit the same biased tendencies that psychologists have documented among humans. They found that the algorithm associated White-sounding names with “pleasant” words and Black-sounding names with “unpleasant” ones.7 Such findings demonstrate what I call “the New Jim Code”: the employment of new technologies that reflect and reproduce existing inequities but that are promoted and perceived as more objective or progressive than the discriminatory systems of a previous era.

Although the Nazis portrayed themselves as a workers' party, they were predominantly middle-class citizens. The party was also strongest in rural protestant regions. Farmers, small businessmen, artisans & civil servants were the backbone of the Nazi party. They feared the loss of their incomes & status, were angry at big business & organized labour, and dreaded a communist revolution. Factors that made them vulnerable to the crude conspiracy theories promoted by the nazis.

Positive psychologists' more important contribution to the defense of the status qyo has been to assert or "find" that circumstances play only a minor role in determining a person's happiness. ... Indeed, if circumstances play only a small role - even 25 percent - in human happiness, then policy is a marginal exercise. Why advocate for better jobs and schools, safer neighborhoods, universal health insurance, or any other liberal desideratum if these measures will do little to make people happy?

soldiers serving in the Military Police and those serving in the Air Corps (the forerunner of the Air Force) about how good a job they thought their service did in recognizing and promoting people of ability. The answer was clear. Military Policemen had a far more positive view of their organization than did enlisted men in the Air Corps. On the face of it, that made no sense. The Military Police had one of the worst rates of promotion in all of the armed forces. The Air Corps had one of the best. The chance of an enlisted man rising to officer status in the Air Corps was twice that of a soldier in the Military Police. So, why on earth would the Military Policemen be more satisfied? The answer, Stouffer famously explained, is that Military Policemen compared themselves only to other Military Policemen. And if you got a promotion in the Military Police, that was such a rare event that you were very happy. And if you didn’t get promoted, you were in the same boat as most of your peers—so

I hope Popular will promote a reconsideration of our culture’s current relationship with popularity. Society has become fixated on status and all of its trappings—fame, power, wealth, and celebrity—even though research suggests that this is exactly what we should be avoiding if we want to foster a culture of kindness and contentment. This is concerning for all of us, but perhaps especially for today’s youth who are being raised in a society that values status in new and potentially dangerous ways.

Prioritizing likability over status means choosing to help our peers rather than exclusively satisfying our own needs, showing more interest in others rather than vying for more attention and power, and cultivating relationships more than “likes.” It’s making the choice to help others feel included and welcome rather than making ourselves feel superior. Attaining the most gratifying form of popularity comes from making the effort to fit in more than trying to stand out, and from doing what we can to promote harmony rather than focusing on how to dominate others.

Hey Pete. So why the leave from social media? You are an activist, right? It seems like this decision is counterproductive to your message and work." A: The short answer is I’m tired of the endless narcissism inherent to the medium. In the commercial society we have, coupled with the consequential sense of insecurity people feel, as they impulsively “package themselves” for public consumption, the expression most dominant in all of this - is vanity. And I find that disheartening, annoying and dangerous. It is a form of cultural violence in many respects. However, please note the difference - that I work to promote just that – a message/idea – not myself… and I honestly loath people who today just promote themselves for the sake of themselves. A sea of humans who have been conditioned into viewing who they are – as how they are seen online. Think about that for a moment. Social identity theory run amok. People have been conditioned to think “they are” how “others see them”. We live in an increasing fictional reality where people are now not only people – they are digital symbols. And those symbols become more important as a matter of “marketing” than people’s true personality. Now, one could argue that social perception has always had a communicative symbolism, even before the computer age. But nooooooothing like today. Social media has become a social prison and a strong means of social control, in fact. Beyond that, as most know, social media is literally designed like a drug. And it acts like it as people get more and more addicted to being seen and addicted to molding the way they want the world to view them – no matter how false the image (If there is any word that defines peoples’ behavior here – it is pretention). Dopamine fires upon recognition and, coupled with cell phone culture, we now have a sea of people in zombie like trances looking at their phones (literally) thousands of times a day, merging their direct, true interpersonal social reality with a virtual “social media” one. No one can read anymore... they just swipe a stream of 200 character headlines/posts/tweets. understanding the world as an aggregate of those fragmented sentences. Massive loss of comprehension happening, replaced by usually agreeable, "in-bubble" views - hence an actual loss of variety. So again, this isn’t to say non-commercial focused social media doesn’t have positive purposes, such as with activism at times. But, on the whole, it merely amplifies a general value system disorder of a “LOOK AT ME! LOOK AT HOW GREAT I AM!” – rooted in systemic insecurity. People lying to themselves, drawing meaningless satisfaction from superficial responses from a sea of avatars. And it’s no surprise. Market economics demands people self promote shamelessly, coupled with the arbitrary constructs of beauty and success that have also resulted. People see status in certain things and, directly or pathologically, use those things for their own narcissistic advantage. Think of those endless status pics of people rock climbing, or hanging out on a stunning beach or showing off their new trophy girl-friend, etc. It goes on and on and worse the general public generally likes it, seeking to imitate those images/symbols to amplify their own false status. Hence the endless feedback loop of superficiality. And people wonder why youth suicides have risen… a young woman looking at a model of perfection set by her peers, without proper knowledge of the medium, can be made to feel inferior far more dramatically than the typical body image problems associated to traditional advertising. That is just one example of the cultural violence inherent. The entire industry of social media is BASED on narcissistic status promotion and narrow self-interest. That is the emotion/intent that creates the billions and billions in revenue these platforms experience, as they in turn sell off people’s personal data to advertisers and governments. You are the product, of course.

Sherri Solvig had had cancer, lymphatic cancer, but due to valiant efforts by her doctors she had gone into remission. However, encoded in the memory-tapes of her brain was the datum that patients with lymphoma who go into remission usually eventually lose their remission. They aren’t cured; the ailment has somehow mysteriously passed from a palpable state into a sort of metaphysical state, a limbo. It is there but it is not there. So despite her current good health, Sherri (her mind told her) contained a ticking clock, and when the clock chimed she would die. Nothing could be done about it, except the frantic promotion of a second remission. But even if a second remission were obtained, that remission, too, by the same logic, the same inexorable process, would end. Time had Sherri in its absolute power. Time contained one outcome for her: terminal cancer. This is how her mind had factored the situation out; it had come to this conclusion, and no matter how good she felt or what she had going for her in her life, this fact remained a constant. A cancer patient in remission, then, represents a stepped-up case of the status of all humans; eventually you are going to die.

A reward-sensitive person is highly motivated to seek rewards—from a promotion to a lottery jackpot to an enjoyable evening out with friends. Reward sensitivity motivates us to pursue goals like sex and money, social status and influence. It prompts us to climb ladders and reach for faraway branches in order to gather life’s choicest fruits. But sometimes we’re too sensitive to rewards. Reward sensitivity on overdrive gets people into all kinds of trouble. We can get so excited by the prospect of juicy prizes, like winning big in the stock market, that we take outsized risks and ignore obvious warning signals.

As one human resources professional said to me, “I wish someone would tell twentysomethings that the office has a completely different culture than what they are used to. You can’t start an e-mail with ‘Hey!’ You’re probably going to have to work at one thing for quite a while before being promoted—or even complimented. People are going to tell you not to tweet about work or put stupid posts on your Gchat status. Not to wear certain clothes. You have to think about how you speak and write. How you act. Twentysomethings who’ve never had jobs don’t know this. Neither do the scanners and baristas who’ve been hanging out at work chatting with their friends.

The term “leadership” connotes critical experience rather than routine practice. This is suggested in the following comment by Barnard: The overvaluation of the apparatus of communication and administration is opposed to leadership and the development of leaders. It opposes leadership whose function is to promote appropriate adjustment of ends and means to new environmental conditions, because it opposes change either of status in general or of established procedures and habitual routine. This overvaluation also discourages the development of leaders by retarding the progress of the abler men and by putting an excessive premium on routine qualities.[6]  {37}

We spend our lives desperately seeking status; we are addicted to social esteem in a fairly literal sense, dependent on the neurotransmitters we get upon impressing people. Many of us claim to be self-sufficient, to have a moral gyroscope, to hold fast to our values, come what may. But people truly oblivious to peer approval get labeled sociopaths. And the epithets reserved for people at the other end of the spectrum, people who seek esteem most ardently—“self- promoter,” “social climber”—are only signs of our constitutional blindness. We are all self-promoters and social climbers. The people known as such are either so effective as to arouse envy or so graceless as to make their effort obvious, or both.

It is feminist thinking that empowers me to engage in a constructive critique of [Paulo] Freire’s work (which I needed so that as a young reader of his work I did not passively absorb the worldview presented) and yet there are many other standpoints from which I approach his work that enable me to experience its value, that make it possible for that work to touch me at the very core of my being. In talking with academic feminists (usually white women) who feel they must either dismiss or devalue the work of Freire because of sexism, I see clearly how our different responses are shaped by the standpoint that we bring to the work. I came to Freire thirsty, dying of thirst (in that way that the colonized, marginalized subject who is still unsure of how to break the hold of the status quo, who longs for change, is needy, is thirsty), and I found in his work (and the work of Malcolm X, Fanon, etc.) a way to quench that thirst. To have work that promotes one’s lib­eration is such a powerful gift that it does not matter so much if the gift is flawed. Think of the work as water that contains some dirt. Because you are thirsty you are not too proud to extract the dirt and be nourished by the water. For me this is an experience that corresponds very much to the way individuals of privilege respond to the use of water in the First World context. When you are privileged, living in one of the richest countries in the world, you can waste resources. And you can especially justify your dispos­al of something that you consider impure. Look at what most people do with water in this country. Many people purchase special water because they consider tap water unclean—and of course this purchasing is a luxury. Even our ability to see the water that come through the tap as unclean is itself informed by an imperialist consumer per­ spective. It is an expression of luxury and not just simply a response to the condition of water. If we approach the drinking of water that comes from the tap from a global perspective we would have to talk about it differently. We would have to consider what the vast majority of the peo­ ple in the world who are thirsty must do to obtain water. Paulo’s work has been living water for me.

Scientists nowadays point out that morality in fact has deep evolutionary roots pre-dating the appearance of humankind by millions of years. All social mammals, such as wolves, dolphins and monkeys, have ethical codes, adapted by evolution to promote group cooperation. For example, when wolf cubs play with one another, they have 'fair game' rules. If a cub bites too hard, or continues to bite an opponent that has rolled on his back and surrendered, the other cubs will stop playing with him. In chimpanzee bands dominant members are expected to respect the property rights of weaker members. If a junior female chimpanzee finds a banana, even the alpha male will usually avoid stealing it for himself. If he breaks this rule, he is likely to lose status. (page 118)

Heroines of American journalism, writing in publications like The New York Times and The Washington Post, and reporting for major television networks, have all played a similar role of legitimizing America's new imperial project in Afghanistan and Iraq and the Middle East at large, promoting a narrative that violent military incursions are designed to liberate women and deliver better societies. Thus they also underscore their own superior status as white feminists, with their values of rebellion over resilience, risk over caution, and speed over endurance as the ultimate feminist values. Afghan women emerge as no more than prototypes whose wishes always align with what white feminists think they should want, rather than as people with independent political positions and perspectives.

If government had declined to build racially separate public housing in cities where segregation hadn’t previously taken root, and instead had scattered integrated developments throughout the community, those cities might have developed in a less racially toxic fashion, with fewer desperate ghettos and more diverse suburbs. If the federal government had not urged suburbs to adopt exclusionary zoning laws, white flight would have been minimized because there would have been fewer racially exclusive suburbs to which frightened homeowners could flee. If the government had told developers that they could have FHA guarantees only if the homes they built were open to all, integrated working-class suburbs would likely have matured with both African Americans and whites sharing the benefits. If state courts had not blessed private discrimination by ordering the eviction of African American homeowners in neighborhoods where association rules and restrictive covenants barred their residence, middle-class African Americans would have been able gradually to integrate previously white communities as they developed the financial means to do so. If churches, universities, and hospitals had faced loss of tax-exempt status for their promotion of restrictive covenants, they most likely would have refrained from such activity. If police had arrested, rather than encouraged, leaders of mob violence when African Americans moved into previously white neighborhoods, racial transitions would have been smoother. If state real estate commissions had denied licenses to brokers who claimed an “ethical” obligation to impose segregation, those brokers might have guided the evolution of interracial neighborhoods. If school boards had not placed schools and drawn attendance boundaries to ensure the separation of black and white pupils, families might not have had to relocate to have access to education for their children. If federal and state highway planners had not used urban interstates to demolish African American neighborhoods and force their residents deeper into urban ghettos, black impoverishment would have lessened, and some displaced families might have accumulated the resources to improve their housing and its location. If government had given African Americans the same labor-market rights that other citizens enjoyed, African American working-class families would not have been trapped in lower-income minority communities, from lack of funds to live elsewhere. If the federal government had not exploited the racial boundaries it had created in metropolitan areas, by spending billions on tax breaks for single-family suburban homeowners, while failing to spend adequate funds on transportation networks that could bring African Americans to job opportunities, the inequality on which segregation feeds would have diminished. If federal programs were not, even to this day, reinforcing racial isolation by disproportionately directing low-income African Americans who receive housing assistance into the segregated neighborhoods that government had previously established, we might see many more inclusive communities. Undoing the effects of de jure segregation will be incomparably difficult. To make a start, we will first have to contemplate what we have collectively done and, on behalf of our government, accept responsibility.

Thorstein Veblen’s Theory of the Leisure Class—A Status Update by Rob Henderson The chief purpose of luxury beliefs is to indicate evidence of the believer’s social class and education. ... When an affluent person advocates for drug legalization, or anti-vaccination policies, or open borders, or loose sexual norms, or uses the term “white privilege,” they are engaging in a status display. They are trying to tell you, “I am a member of the upper class.” ... Affluent people promote open borders or the decriminalization of drugs because it advances their social standing, not least because they know that the adoption of those policies will cost them less than others. ... Unfortunately, the luxury beliefs of the upper class often trickle down and are adopted by people lower down the food chain, which means many of these beliefs end up causing social harm.

But while the evolutionary escalator is an incredibly common expression of a belief in human exceptionalism, it doesn’t have any real basis in ecological reality. The view is one Darwin specifically rejected, which makes it all the more ironic that it is the neo-Darwinians that have spread it about so much. Darwin’s own perspective, as the English philosopher Mary Midgley comments, is much different, he did . . . not see evolution as an escalator, but as a sinuous, branching radiating pattern—not a staircase, but perhaps a bush or seaweed. Life-forms diverge from each other to meet particular needs in their various environments. Our own species figures then only as one among the many, with no special status or guarantee of supremacy. This notion has, however, always been found far less exciting than the escalator model, which has been enormously popular ever since it was promoted by Herbert Spencer, in spite of Darwin’s own rejection of it and its evident complete irrelevance to this theory.13

Many of those who have experienced trauma in early childhood grow up to become adults with dysfunctional lives and dysfunctional relationships, never being able to solve such issues within themselves, not even with the help of the best therapists in the world, because the root cause of it has been removed by the institutions in control of mental health training programs, mainstream media and public opinion. And the root cause of all evil, including self-inflicted evil, lays on the capacity to differentiate good from evil, which has helped us survive as a society and as individuals throughout the entirety of human history and up to this day. Once you remove this natural ability from anyone's awareness, no theory, despite the amount of logic and common sense in it, will ever work. As a matter of fact, not many people know what serves their best interest, because they don't even know what is good or evil. They relativize their ignorance to justify their stupidity. And this constitutes a thicker layer on top of their innate capacity to perceive reality. Many problems, including those related to self-esteem, could easily be solved, if one was able of properly differentiating what promotes survival from what leads to death. Whenever a large group of people lacks such capacity, they are promoting a dysfunctional society by default, and in doing so, replicating the same traumas that made them themselves dysfunctional as humans. And that’s how an overall mindset rooted on victimization and justification promotes the power of those in control. One cannot ever be free unless he rebels against his own status quo and towards a higher level of individualization, risking that which he depends the most upon — the respect and acceptance of friends and family. The battle of ego and social validation against ethics, has made many souls captive to a world created to weaken them and blind them. Indeed, it is interesting to see how humanity replicates the tortures of medieval times with more sophisticated weapons, and how wars developed towards a higher degree of abstraction, in order to nullify any resistance, or the mere level of awareness justifying it.

The most interesting aspects of the story lie between the two extremes of coercion and popularity. It might be instructive to consider fascist regimes’ management of workers, who were surely the most recalcitrant part of the population. It is clear that both Fascism and Nazism enjoyed some success in this domain. According to Tim Mason, the ultimate authority on German workers under Nazism, the Third Reich “contained” German workers by four means: terror, division, some concessions, and integration devices such as the famous Strength Through Joy (Kraft durch Freude) leisure-time organization. Let there be no doubt that terror awaited workers who resisted directly. It was the cadres of the German Socialist and Communist parties who filled the first concentration camps in 1933, before the Jews. Since socialists and communists were already divided, it was not hard for the Nazis to create another division between those workers who continued to resist and those who decided to try to live normal lives. The suppression of autonomous worker organizations allowed fascist regimes to address workers individually rather than collectively. Soon, demoralized by the defeat of their unions and parties, workers were atomized, deprived of their usual places of sociability, and afraid to confide in anyone. Both regimes made some concessions to workers—Mason’s third device for worker “containment.” They did not simply silence them, as in traditional dictatorships. After power, official unions enjoyed a monopoly of labor representation. The Nazi Labor Front had to preserve its credibility by actually paying some attention to working conditions. Mindful of the 1918 revolution, the Third Reich was willing to do absolutely anything to avoid unemployment or food shortages. As the German economy heated up in rearmament, there was even some wage creep. Later in the war, the arrival of slave labor, which promoted many German workers to the status of masters, provided additional satisfactions. Mussolini was particularly proud of how workers would fare under his corporatist constitution. The Labor Charter (1927) promised that workers and employers would sit down together in a “corporation” for each branch of the economy, and submerge class struggle in the discovery of their common interests. It looked very imposing by 1939 when a Chamber of Corporations replaced parliament. In practice, however, the corporative bodies were run by businessmen, while the workers’ sections were set apart and excluded from the factory floor. Mason’s fourth form of “containment”—integrative devices—was a specialty of fascist regimes. Fascists were past masters at manipulating group dynamics: the youth group, the leisure-time association, party rallies. Peer pressure was particularly powerful in small groups. There the patriotic majority shamed or intimidated nonconformists into at least keeping their mouths shut. Sebastian Haffner recalled how his group of apprentice magistrates was sent in summer 1933 on a retreat, where these highly educated young men, mostly non-Nazis, were bonded into a group by marching, singing, uniforms, and drill. To resist seemed pointless, certain to lead nowhere but to prison and an end to the dreamed-of career. Finally, with astonishment, he observed himself raising his arm, fitted with a swastika armband, in the Nazi salute. These various techniques of social control were successful.

Demonstrating for peace to promote war was nothing new. Totalitarianism always requires a tangible enemy. To the ancient Greeks, a holocaust was simply a burnt sacrifice. Khrushchev wanted to go down in history as the Soviet leader who exported communism to the American continent. In 1959 he was able to install the Castro brothers in Havana and soon my foreign intelligence service became involved in helping Cuba's new communist rulers to export revolution throughout South America. At that point it did not work. In the 1950s and 1960s most Latin Americans were poor, religious peasants who had accepted the status quo. A black version of liberation theology began growing in a few radical-leftist black churches in the US where Marxist thought is predicated on a system pf oppressor class ( white ) versus victim class ( black ) and it sees just one solution: the destruction of the enemy. In the 1950s UNESCO was perceived by many as a platform for communists to attack the West and the KGB used it to place agents around the world. Che Guevara's diaries, with an introduction by Fidel Castro, were produced by the Kremlin's dezinformatsiya machine. Changing minds is what Soviet communism was all about. Khrushchev's political necrophagy ( = blaming and condemning one's predecessor in office. It is a dangerous game. It hurts the country's national pride and it usually turns against its own user ) evolved from the Soviet tradition of sanctifying the supreme ruler. Although the communists publicly proclaimed the decisive role of the people in history, the Kremlin and its KGB believed that only the leader counted. Change the public image of the leader and you change history, I heard over and over from Khrushchev's lips. Khrushchev was certainly the most controversial Soviet to reign in the Kremlin. He unmasked Stalin's crimes, but he made political assassination a main instrument of his own foreign policy; he authored a policy of peaceful coexistence with the West but he pushed the world to the brink of nuclear war; he repaired Moscow's relationships with Yugoslavia's Tito, but he destroyed the unity of the communist world. His close association with Stalin's killings made him aware of what political crime could accomplish and gave him a taste for the simple criminal solution. His total ignorance about the civilized world, together with his irrational hatred of the "bourgeoisie" and his propensity to offend people, made him believe that disinformation and threats were the most efficient and dignified way for a Soviet leader to deal with "bourgeois" governments. As that very clever master of deception Yuri Andropov once told me, if a good piece of disinformation is repeated over and over, after a while it will take on a life of its own and will, all by itself, generate a horde or unwitting but passionate advocates. When I was working for Ceausescu, I always tried to find a way to help him reach a decision on his own, rather than telling him directly what I thought he should do about something. That way both of us were happy. From our KGB advisors, I had learned that the best way to ut over a deception was to let the target see something for himself, with his own eyes. By 1999, President Yeltsin's ill-conceived privatization had enabled a small clique of predatory insiders to plunder Russia's most valuable assets. The corruption generated by this widespread looting penetrated every corner of the country and it eventually created a Mafia-style economic system that threatened the stability of Russia itself. During the old Cold War, the KGB was a state within a state. In Putin's time, the KGB now rechristened FSB, is the state. The Soviet Union had one KGB officer for every 428 citizens. In 2004, Putin's Russia had one FSB officer for every 297 citizens.

Lemat's agent says to him: y duty to you, first and foremost, is make sure you have a career, a prosperous one. I know authors always want to pander to their more artistic leanings, but this is a business after all. You have to do something to pay the bills so you can keep on writing. If you wanted to be an author just for the sake of expressing your thoughts, you could have done that by staying self-published, am I correct? but that's not what you wanted. That's not why you penned Killing Jesus. You wanted to get out there and swim in a bigger pond, didn't you? Well, here you are. Welcome to the blooming ocean.

Americans need no strong sense of personal identity premised upon personal values or shared experiences. Many of us gladly traded in a moral and ethical characterization of self for an identity provided by our jobs and brand name consumer goods. We describe ourselves to new acquaintances by stating our vocations. We all know the class ranking system associated with our respective occupations. Whatever trendy neighborhood development we reside in establishes our social class. We are what we drive to work, what we do for a living, what exclusive clubs we belong as members, what teams we root for, and what artists we follow. Instead of working to develop a mature inward state of consciousness and expand their knowledge of the world, many Americans including me suffer from a juvenile tendency to define ourselves based upon our embodied social status. Americans promote their status by touting their jobs, the housing developments that we live in, and the designer clothes and sportswear that we clad ourselves.

The study by Falk Hvidberg et al. [69] confirms the findings from the health status report by Komaroffet al. from 1996 [70]. It also means that nothing has changed in the health situation of ME/CFS patients in the last 20 years and that means that the current 2 available treatments, CBT and GET, which have been heavily promoted for more than 20 years as the treatments for ME/ CFS, which most ME patients have tried, because they desperately want to get better, are not effective at all, or even harmful, as patients have been saying for a long time [32] which was confirmed and objectified by Black et al. [31].

Our curious Western relationship with the country reinforces their strange status. We beg them to buy yet another squadron of supersonic interceptors to go with their latest platoon of tanks, plead with them to keep the price of oil low, and praise them as reliable partners in the Middle East while turning a very blind eye to their extreme distaste for democracy, not to mention the fact that they supplied nearly all the 9/11 terrorists and continue to promote dissent in the Islamic world.

Queen bees internalized the low status of women and in order to feel worthy themselves wanted only to associate with men. Often, these queen bees were rewarded for maintaining the status quo and not promoting other women.

Charismatic authority is best described by a series of negatives—by what it is not.161 The staff of a charismatic leader is not made up of technically-trained officials. Appointment and dismissal, career and promotion have no place here, only the call of the leader himself. There is no hierarchical organization, no defined sphere of competence, and no salary scale. There is “no system of formal rules, of abstract legal principles,” no systematic judicial process, and no recognition of the normative status of precedent. Each judicial decision is arrived at de novo, as if by a fresh oracle of the divine. Charismatic authority repudiates the past and allows no place for tradition. Ordinary economic considerations have no place either, while “‘booty’ and extortion” are “the typical form of charismatic provision for needs.

The separation of mind and body that informs medical practice is also the dominant ideology in our culture. We do not often think of socio-economic structures and practices as determinants of illness or well-being. They are not usually “part of the equation.” Yet the scientific data is beyond dispute: socio-economic relationships have a profound influence on health. For example, although the media and the medical profession — inspired by pharmaceutical research — tirelessly promote the idea that next to hypertension and smoking, high cholesterol poses the greatest risk for heart disease, the evidence is that job strain is more important than all the other risk factors combined. Further, stress in general and job strain in particular are significant contributors both to high blood pressure and to elevated cholesterol levels. Economic relationships influence health because, most obviously, people with higher incomes are better able to afford healthier diets, living and working conditions and stress-reducing pursuits. Dennis Raphael, associate professor at the School of Health Policy and Management at York University in Toronto has recently published a study of the societal influences on heart disease in Canada and elsewhere. His conclusion: “One of the most important life conditions that determine whether individuals stay healthy or become ill is their income. In addition, the overall health of North American society may be more determined by the distribution of income among its members rather than the overall wealth of the society…. Many studies find that socioeconomic circumstances, rather than medical and lifestyle risk factors, are the main causes of cardiovascular disease, and that conditions during early life are especially important.” The element of control is the less obvious but equally important aspect of social and job status as a health factor. Since stress escalates as the sense of control diminishes, people who exercise greater control over their work and lives enjoy better health. This principle was demonstrated in the British Whitehall study showing that second-tier civil servants were at greater risk for heart disease than their superiors, despite nearly comparable incomes. Recognizing the multigenerational template for behaviour and for illness, and recognizing, too, the social influences that shape families and human lives, we dispense with the unhelpful and unscientific attitude of blame. Discarding blame leaves us free to move toward the necessary adoption of responsibility, a matter to be taken up when we come in the final chapters to consider healing.

The addict is re-traumatized over and over again by ostracism, harassment, dire poverty, the spread of disease, the frantic hunt for a source of the substance of dependence, the violence of the underground drug world and harsh chastisement at the hands of the law — all inevitable consequences of the War on Drugs. Studies on primates and other animals have also shown that low social status and being dominated enhance the risk of drug use, with negative effects on dopamine receptors. By contrast, after being housed with more subordinate animals, dominant monkeys had an increase of over 20 per cent of their dopamine receptors and less tendency to use cocaine. The findings of stress research suggest that the issue is not control over others, but whether one is free to exercise control in one’s own life. Yet the practices of the social welfare, legal and medical systems subject the addict to domination in many ways and deprive her of control, even if unwittingly. In relegating the addict to the bottom of the social and moral scales and in our contemptuous rejection of her as a person, we have created the exact circumstances that are most likely to keep her trapped in pathological dependence on drugs. There is no island of relief, only oceanic despair. “The War on Drugs is cultural schizophrenia,” says Jaak Panksepp. I agree. The War on Drugs expresses a split mindset in two ways: we want to eradicate or limit addiction, yet our social policies are best suited to promote it, and we condemn the addict for qualities we dare not acknowledge in ourselves. Rather than exhort the addict to be other than the way she is, we need to find the strength to admit that we have greatly exacerbated her distress and perhaps our own. If we want to help people seek the possibility of transformation within themselves, we first have to transform our own view of our relationship to them.

New York Post, August 3, 2022 “ ‘Luxury beliefs’ are the latest status symbol for rich Americans” by Rob Henderson One example of luxury belief is that all family structures are equal. This is not true. Evidence is clear that families with two married parents are the most beneficial for young children. And yet, affluent, educated people raised by two married parents are more likely than others to believe monogamy is outdated, marriage is a sham or that all families are the same. … Another luxury belief is that religion is irrational or harmful. Members of the upper class are most likely to be atheists or non-religious. But they have the resources and access to thrive without the unifying social edifice of religion. Places of worship are often essential for the social fabric of poor communities. Denigrating the importance of religion harms the poor. While affluent people often find meaning in their work, most Americans do not have the luxury of a “profession.” They have jobs. They clock in, they clock out. Without a family or community to care for, such a job can feel meaningless. Then there’s the luxury belief that individual decisions don’t matter much compared to random social forces, including luck. This belief is more common among many of my peers at Yale and Cambridge than the kids I grew up with in foster care or the women and men I served with in the military. The key message is that the outcomes of your life are beyond your control. This idea works to the benefit of the upper class and harms ordinary people. … White privilege is the luxury belief that took me the longest to understand, because I grew up around poor whites. Often members of the upper-class claim that racial disparities stem from inherent advantages held by whites. Yet Asian Americans are more educated, have higher earnings and live longer than whites. Affluent whites are the most enthusiastic about the idea of white privilege, yet they are the least likely to incur any costs for promoting that belief. … When laws are enacted to combat white privilege, it won’t be the privileged whites who are harmed. Poor whites will bear the brunt. … In the future, expect the upper class to defame even more values — including ones they hold dear — in their quest to gain top-dog status.

New York Post, August 3, 2022 “ ‘Luxury beliefs’ are the latest status symbol for rich Americans” by Rob Henderson One example of luxury belief is that all family structures are equal. This is not true. Evidence is clear that families with two married parents are the most beneficial for young children. And yet, affluent, educated people raised by two married parents are more likely than others to believe monogamy is outdated, marriage is a sham or that all families are the same. … This luxury belief contributed to the erosion of the family. Today, the marriage rates of affluent Americans are nearly the same as they were in the 1960s. But working-class people are far less likely to get married. Furthermore, out-of-wedlock birthrates are more than 10 times higher than they were in 1960, mostly among the poor and working class. Affluent people seldom have kids out of wedlock but are more likely than others to express the luxury belief that doing so is of no consequence. Another luxury belief is that religion is irrational or harmful. Members of the upper class are most likely to be atheists or non-religious. But they have the resources and access to thrive without the unifying social edifice of religion. Places of worship are often essential for the social fabric of poor communities. Denigrating the importance of religion harms the poor. While affluent people often find meaning in their work, most Americans do not have the luxury of a “profession.” They have jobs. They clock in, they clock out. Without a family or community to care for, such a job can feel meaningless. Then there’s the luxury belief that individual decisions don’t matter much compared to random social forces, including luck. This belief is more common among many of my peers at Yale and Cambridge than the kids I grew up with in foster care or the women and men I served with in the military. The key message is that the outcomes of your life are beyond your control. This idea works to the benefit of the upper class and harms ordinary people. … White privilege is the luxury belief that took me the longest to understand, because I grew up around poor whites. Often members of the upper-class claim that racial disparities stem from inherent advantages held by whites. Yet Asian Americans are more educated, have higher earnings and live longer than whites. Affluent whites are the most enthusiastic about the idea of white privilege, yet they are the least likely to incur any costs for promoting that belief. … When laws are enacted to combat white privilege, it won’t be the privileged whites who are harmed. Poor whites will bear the brunt. …

To bear witness to injustice is to tell a story about our world based upon firsthand observation of real-life circumstance, fueled by moral outrage, concerned for the common good and promoting social change. When our stories provide a sense of history, social responsibility and concern for the common good, they can foster a democracy rooted in the public interest and promote a society that embraces an inclusive social contract. We must make hope possible. The goal is to change things, to remove a bit of the unnecessary suffering of our world, to create what Martin Luther King referred to as “the Beloved Community.” We must believe that we can make a difference. To change the “system” necessitates a change of will in which we acknowledge our complicity with the status quo and decide to no longer silently go along with the way things are. Instead, we decide to live our values, speak our truth and do what must be done.

The central tenets include the elimination (or preferably the privatization) of government services of all kinds, an all-out assault on the ability of labor to organize, the massive deregulation of every segment of the economy, and the absolute faith in market-based principles to adjudicate all elements of social, political, cultural, and economic life. The results have been staggering levels of wealth and income inequality, the disappearance or significant shredding of even the most grudging social safety net provisions, the loss of the “commons” in virtually all sectors, and the truncation (ideally to zero) of public expectations for anything that might be provided by something called “society.” These then are three broad categories of consequences that we take up below: militarism (and threats of war and “terrorism”), environmental catastrophe, and the seemingly more mundane suite of neoliberal effects. But these phenomena produce reactions. Once these effects are out in the world, we need to think about the way in which social movements cohere around them, and demands for progressive change are asserted. But at the same time, we want to think about the ways in which elites (who are advantaged by maintaining or reinforcing the status quo) respond to those reactions. These are the matters that we take up in chapter six. Over the past several years (as in the many decades before), we have seen an enormous panoply of social movements for social, political, and economic justice: anti-austerity movements, environmental activism, human rights promotion (including expansions of the definition of “human” and the list of rights themselves), criminal justice reform, poverty elimination/reduction, and many others. One disheartening continuity has been the successful ability of elites to keep these movements separated from, and often, in fact, antagonistic to each other. One of our key objectives here is to demonstrate the fundamental linkages among these seemingly disparate issues, in order to provide the rationale and impetus for coalition and unity.

We are enabled to grow in godliness by the resources of our union with Christ—our sanctification springs from the justification that is by faith. How does this work? How does faith in my justification lead to my sanctification; i.e., how does faith in my union with Christ promote godliness? The answer is that our union with Christ allows us to have two confidences that are the empowering mechanisms for godliness in the Christian life: 1) confidence that our status does not change; and, 2) confidence that our ability does change.

Before, he had not realized what he actually wanted. Until today, when he saw how Cheng Yujin bade him farewell so easily, and how she began to talk happily about her and her future husband, Cheng Yuanjing finally understood what kind of answer he actually wanted to hear. He was not her uncle, nor was she his niece. What he wanted was for Cheng Yujin to see him as a man. He wanted her to give him an embroidery, make him pastries, and came to see him — as a man. Cheng Yuanjing had witnessed how Cheng Yujin very attentively cared for other men. Truly tasteless. Lin Qingyuan’s martial and literary skills weren’t as good as him. Her cousin brother was nothing more than a half-grown child. Why did Cheng Yujin so obsessed with them? Upon this inexplicable feeling, he deliberately revealed his identity. Later, Cheng Yujin’s attitude towards him indeed changed. Unfortunately, she still didn’t see him as a man. Since she knew his identity, Cheng Yujin always regarded him as a symbol, a tool that could promote her future husband and son’s position. Sometimes Cheng Yuanjing wanted to knock Cheng Yujin’s head and pried it open to have a look. Since she wanted to marry a wealthy and powerful husband, how could she put her sight on Xu Zhixian and Lin Qingyuan? As a crown prince, he had no shortage of money, property, power, and status. Moreover, he also currently occupied the identity of the Cheng family’s ninth son, which enabled her to get closer with him easily. Such conveniences, such good conditions, yet Cheng Yujin didn’t use it and still dared to talk about her future husband in front of him. For Cheng Yuanjing, Cheng Yujin was an oddity, truly the only one. The more he got closer to her, the more joyful and possessive Cheng Yuanjing became, and the more he couldn’t bear to hear about another man from her mouth.

When you give me a good service, I will use my celebrity status ranking to endorse you, but when you give me a bad service. I will use my celebrity status ranking to expose you.

In a dysfunctional culture, the members are often confused about their roles and the overall direction of the group. Amid such confusion, people start to think more of their own interests and agendas, and they form factions. Worried more about their status than the health of the group, their egos become touchy, and they obsess over who’s getting more. In this contentious atmosphere, the bad apples—the Stirrers, the men and women of low character—find numerous ways to stir trouble and promote themselves. Those who excel at schmoozing and playing politics but little else often thrive, rise to the top, and become lieutenants. Mediocrity is preferred and rewarded.

radical premise behind this model is that the goal of leadership is not to promote the position, power, status, influence—or even the agenda—of the human leader. It is to accomplish God’s purpose in the world. The leader is therefore more concerned with doing what is right than with personal success. He or she is focused more on the growth and success of those being led than on personal power or prestige.

was greatly handicapped by the fact that it always remained the personal crusade of a single leader whose autocratic methods and slipshod financial practices alienated much of the support the movement might otherwise have received.”17 His business venture into the Black Star Line shipping company was successful as far as promoting the possibilities of black economic power, but a disaster as far as it concerned the financial capabilities of the U.N.I.A. and Garvey’s own legal status in America. J. Edgar Hoover, later famous as the head of the F.B.I., was the Bureau of Investigation agent assigned to investigate and help eliminate Garvey from the American scene, and because of the careless and inept business practices of the Black Star Line, Hoover was able to bring about Garvey’s arrest in 1922 and in 1923 his conviction (on very flimsy

The obstacle to achieving such vocational diversification and general aptitude does not lie in the human character as such, but rather in the mass of qualifying educational and vocational restrictions imposed by every privileged group in order to maintain its special status, emoluments, and perquisites. Though the reputed object of these regulations is often laudable, as measures to ensure competence and protect members from unqualified rivals, the underlying aim is to prevent fresh activities and organizations from arising in competition with the power system. As a result, the scope of human initiative through direct action becomes limited: today the smallest new measure must run a gauntlet of licensing laws, professional codes, trades union regulations, wage schedules, promotion priorities, bureaucratic restrictions and inspections. Even the exigencies of war were only partly able to break down or bypass these barriers-for where are they more deeply entrenched than in the military machine itself? This explains, perhaps, why there is so little prospect of overcoming the defects of the power system by any attack that employs mass organizations and mass efforts at persuasion; for these mass methods support the very system they attack. The changes that have so far been effective, and that give promise of further success, are those that have been initiated by animated individual minds, small groups, and local communities nibbling at the edges of the power structure by breaking routines and defying regulations. Such an attack seeks, not to capture the citadel of power, but to withdraw from it and quietly paralyze it. Once such initiatives become widespread, as they at last show signs of becoming, it will restore power and confident authority to its proper source: the human personality and the small face-to-face community.

Two organisations spawned by Alice Bailey’s work, the Lucis Trust (formerly the Lucifer Trust) and the World Goodwill Organisation, are both staunch promoters of the United Nations. They are almost UN ‘groupies’, such is their devotion. It is interesting to see how the New Age has inherited ‘truths’ over the decades in the same way that conventional religion has done over the centuries. As the followers of Christianity have inherited the manipulated version of Jesus, so New Agers have inherited the Masters. There is too little checking of origins, too much acceptance of inherited belief, I think. Certainly there is with the Masters and Blavatsky’s Great White Brotherhood because she admitted in correspondence with her sister, that she had made up their names by using the nicknames of the Rosicrucians and Freemasons who were funding her. Yet today all over the world there are hundreds of thousands (at least) of New Age ‘channellers’ who claim to be communicating with these Masters and with the Archangel Michael who is an ancient deity of the Phoenicians. If the New Age isn’t careful, it will be Christianity revisited. It is already becoming so. I believe that the concept of Masters can be a means through which those who have rejected the status quo of religion and science can still have their minds controlled.

fundamental flaw of modern capitalism is that businesses promote bombastic people. As Cameron Anderson and Sébastien Brion of the University of California, Berkeley, showed experimentally, ‘In conditions where there is any ambiguity in competence and performance (which is common in organisations), overconfident individuals will be perceived as more competent by others, and attain higher levels of status, compared to individuals with more accurate self-perceptions of competence.

The analogy between infertile heterosexuals and same-sex couples misses the point. The extension of marriage to infertile heterosexual couples serves not to deprecate same-sex couples, but to preserve the equal status of women in marriage. A test for fertility would be unfair to women because all women spend most of their adult lives in a state of infertility. Fertile women are infertile most days of a month, and postmenopausal women are always infertile. A fertility requirement would also render women susceptible to enormous abuse by men, providing a ready excuse for men who would trade in older women for nubile brides. The status of women in marriage would be intolerably diminished through this practice. Infertility is less common among men, as they can sire children into old age. Moreover, men, like women, typically do not discover that they are infertile until they attempt to sire children, at which time they ought already to be married. A measure that serves primarily to protect women and to preserve their equal status within the institution of marriage is not a measure that is an appropriate basis by which to judge that the same should go for same-sex couples. One of the great challenges men and women face in marriage is in coming to terms with their differences while respecting the status of the other as an equal. Acceptance of infertility is a measure promoting this end. A measure to accommodate the reality of sex-based difference in marriage is no reason to extend marriage to same-sex couples. Moreover, accommodation for infertility in no way diminishes the reality that the inequality of the parent-child relationship is what differentiates marriage from other contractual relationships. It is the parent-child relation, as it emerges from sexual difference and procreation, which elevates marriage above a mere contract, and renders it a sacred duty.

We do science because we want to understand the truth. It is a constant, ongoing pursuit to understand our own biology so that we can make smart choices at an individual and policy level. If the science of breastfeeding is used first and foremost as a tool for breastfeeding promotion, we compromise public trust in science. Biased information about breastfeeding also sets up infant feeding as a debate, which sometimes escalates to mommy war status, and it doesn't need to be either of these.

(The term “sheep-dipped” appears in The New York Times version of the Pentagon Papers without clarification. It is an intricate Army-devised process by which a man who is in the service as a full career soldier or officer agrees to go through all the legal and official motions of resigning from the service. Then, rather than actually being released, his records are pulled from the Army personnel files and transferred to a special Army intelligence file. Substitute but nonetheless real-appearing records are then processed, and the man “leaves” the service. He is encouraged to write to friends and give a cover reason why he got out. He goes to his bank and charge card services and changes his status to civilian, and does the hundreds of other official and personal things that any man would do if he really had gotten out of the service. Meanwhile, his real Army records are kept in secrecy, but not forgotten. If his contemporaries get promoted, he gets promoted. All of the things that can be done for his hidden records to keep him even with his peers are done. Some very real problems arise in the event he gets killed or captured as a prisoner. There are problems with insurance and with benefits his wife would receive had he remained in the service. At this point, sheep-dipping gets really complicated, and each case is handled quite separately.)

Key to the Pronunciations This dictionary uses a simple respelling system to show how entries are pronounced, using the symbols listed below. Generally, only the first of two or more identical headwords will have a pronunciation respelling. Where a derivative simply adds a common suffix such as -less, -ness, or -ly to the headword, the derivative may not have a pronunciation respelling unless some other element of the pronunciation also changes. as in hat //, fashion // as in day //, rate // as in lot //, father //, barn // as in big // as in church //, picture // as in dog //, bed // as in men //, bet //, ferry // as in feet //, receive // as in air //, care // as in soda //, mother /, her // as in free //, graph //, tough // as in get //, exist // as in her //, behave // as in fit //, women // as in time /t/, hire //, sky // as in ear //, pierce // as in judge //, carriage // as in kettle //, cut //, quick // as in lap //, cellar //, cradle // as in main //, dam // as in need //, honor //, maiden // as in sing //, anger // as in go //, promote // as in law //, thought //, lore // as in boy //, noisy // as in wood //, sure // as in food //, music // as in mouse //, coward // as in put //, cap // as in run //, fur //, spirit // as in sit //, lesson //, face // as in shut //, social // as in top //, seat //, forty // as in thin //, truth // as in then //, father // as in very //, never // as in wait //, quit // as in when //, which // as in yet //, accuse // as in zipper //, musician // as in measure //, vision // Foreign Sounds as in Bach // as in en route //, Rodin / / as in hors d’oeuvre //, Goethe // as in Lully //, Utrecht // Stress Marks Stress (or accent) is represented by marks placed before the affected syllable. The primary stress mark is a short, raised vertical line // which signifies that the heaviest emphasis should be placed on the syllable that follows. The secondary stress mark is a short, lowered vertical line // which signifies a somewhat weaker emphasis than on the syllable with primary stress. Variant Pronunciations There are several ways in which variant pronunciations are indicated in the respellings. Some respellings show a pronunciation symbol within parentheses to indicate a possible variation in pronunciation; for example, in sandwich //. Variant pronunciations may be respelled in full, separated by semicolons. The more common pronunciation is listed first, if this can be determined, but many variants are so common and widespread as to be ofequal status. Variant pronunciations may be indicated by respelling only the part of the word that changes. A hyphen will replace the part of the pronunciation that has remained the same. Note: A hyphen sometimes serves to separate syllables where the respelling might otherwise look confusing, as at reinforce //.

The Rockefeller Foundation is known as a charitable organization that operates out of New York City. Officially it was established to “promote the well-being of mankind throughout the world”. In reality the Rockefeller Foundation is a decisive actor on the international stage. The many activities of the Rockefeller Foundation are not isolated items, each independent of the others. They all fall into a world-wide organization in the interests of the New World Order. Among the many international agencies is David Rockefeller’s private intelligence service, better known as INTERPOL. According to the U.S. Department of Justice 1988 manual, “INTERPOL conducts inter-governmental activities, but is not based on an international treaty, convention, or similar legal documents. It was founded upon a constitution drawn up and written by a group of police officers who did not submit it for diplomatic signatures, nor have they ever submitted it for ratification by governments.” INTERPOL is an illegal entity operating within the borders of the United States, without the sanction and approval of the people in flagrant violation of the Constitution of the United States and the constitutions of the fifty states.[23] INTERPOL is a private agency with a communications network stretching around the globe. In spite of the fact that INTERPOL is a private organization, it was granted “observer status” by the United Nations in 1975, a stature that enables it to sit at meetings and vote on resolutions, even though it is not a member country and has no governmental status. Since INTERPOL is not a state, the United Nations are violating their own charter.

While Roswell has been the umbrella for most of these events, the least talked about was Aztec, the site of a crash promoted by Frank Scully in his blockbuster book, Behind the Flying Saucers, published in 1950. But, Scully's fame and his shocking revelations soon became a shambles. Investigation, which exposed the shady status of some of his informants, was enough for the myopic lords of research and the media at that time, and, without looking any further into the incident, declared Aztec a hoax. The case laid dormant

Santiago de Cuba In 1553, Santiago was first invaded and plundered by the French. They were followed by the British, led by Sir Christopher Myngs, a British officer in the Royal Navy, who served under the leadership of Oliver Cromwell, an infamous buccaneer. Cromwell promoted Myngs to the rank of Admiral and ordered him to the Caribbean in 1656, where he was responsible for looting Spanish settlements and conquering the island of Jamaica from the Spanish. During his career Myngs was also responsible for spawning the privateering career of Henry Morgan. The British considered Myngs an Admiral, but to the Spanish he was a pirate when he broke through the strong Spanish defenses of Santiago de Cuba to plunder and sack the city. Santiago had lost its status as the capital of Cuba when the seat of power was moved to Havana in 1589, but many people to this day, feel it is still the capital city when it comes to culture. Of course, anyone from La Habana would strongly disagree with this! Carnival is the predominant pageant in the city because it relates to the Afro-Cuban beliefs rather than Christianity. It also occurs in July instead of February. The large number of Afro-Cubans in Santiago were responsible for bringing in much of the African culture found in eastern Cuba. Many of these people practice Santería, a syncretic religion that had emerged from different West African beliefs and was brought to Cuba from Haiti.

Nativism is a movement that promotes favored status for established citizens or residents of a nation over newcomers or immigrants. Nativists typically oppose immigration and support restricting the legal status of specific ethnic groups because they view them as harming the culture of the host nation.

It is proper Netiquette to post pictures with status updates to make them more engaging. NetworkEtiquette.net

humans are not equal, then a dictatorship of the superior persons over the inferiors (fascism) is justifiable. Hence, the human equality principle cannot be rejected consistently with an averred belief in democracy. Those who plead the cause of freedom but reject human equality actually plead a different cause; consciously or unconsciously, they defend preferential status and a license to exploit others. As we saw in the peasants’ questionnaire-responses, equality is something deeper than logic, it is an irrepressible feeling in each person. America’s serious social problems, domestic and foreign, can be solved only through respect-in-action for the equality/freedom principle so that the domestic and global social situation fits human nature.

And then something different happened. In the 1980s and ‘90s, more so than at any other time in American history, youth culture wasn’t challenging the status quo. Young people didn’t want to change the system – they wanted to game the system. They wanted money. The pursuit of the almighty dollar had always been the purview of soulless grown-ups and parents, but now kids – certainly not all kids, but youth culture overall – were promoting the idea that “getting paid” was cool. […] The goal was success that came from the ruthless pursuit of money for its own sake – in fact, often the more ruthless the pursuit, the cooler it was thought to be.

My duty to you, first and foremost, is make sure you have a career, a prosperous one. I know authors always want to pander to their more artistic leanings, but this is a business after all. You have to do something to pay the bills so you can keep on writing. If you wanted to be an author just for the sake of expressing your thoughts, you could have done that by staying self-published, am I correct? but that's not what you wanted. That's not why you penned Killing Jesus. You wanted to get out there and swim in a bigger pond, didn't you? Well, here you are. Welcome to the blooming ocean.

The politics of the 1970s were the second factor in this social shift. In his efforts to confront the Nasserite and socialist forces in Egypt, President Anwar Sadat unleashed Egypt's Islamic forces. He released thousands of the Muslim Brotherhood's leaders and members from jail (after years of imprisonment and prosecution under Nasser), and allowed the Brotherhood's old newspaper the Call (Al-Dawaa) to be reissued. He tried to assume the mantle of Islam by calling himself ‘the guardian of the faith’; emphasized that his first name was ‘Mohamed’ not ‘Anwar’; promoted religious schools; authorized a major increase in the budget of Al-Azhar and an expansion of its parallel educational system; opened the door for leading religious scholars and commentators to dominate the state-controlled media; introduced apostasy laws in Egypt after years of a highly liberal intellectual atmosphere; declared sharia law (Islamic jurisprudence) as the principal source for the Egyptian constitution (after decades during which religion was generally marginal to legislation with the exception of personal status laws); and declared himself the leader of ‘an Islamic pious country’.

The sexually insatiable woman,” declared a terrified Donald Symons, “is to be found primarily, if not exclusively, in the ideology of feminism, the hopes of boys, and the fears of men.”10 Perhaps, but Marvin Harris offers a different take, writing, “Like all dominant groups, men seek to promote an image of their subordinate’s nature that contributes to the preservation of the status quo. For thousands of years, males have seen women not as women could be, but only as males want them to be.”11

Marlan Rico Lee Timeline Recent Status Photo / Video Place Life Event Status Photo / Video Place Life Event What's on your mind? Marlan Rico Lee 15 hours ago 16th annual individual car show. Play Video0:17 LikeLike · · Promote · Share Marlan Rico Lee 23 hours ago · Edited PIONEERS People who become leaders first learn what it means to be able to follow. They also are idealist in the fact that they must think outside of the norm. You don't become original by following everyone else but you get your idea of how people feel when you need them to adhere to your ideas. First In order to have an original idea you use what you have learned but take old ideas and put a dynamic twist to it recreating the idea. You must think the idea first before it can be manifested. But know that as long as an idea stays in your mind it really means nothing to the world and it stays only a figment of your imagination.

Insight 1: Human decision making serves evolutionary goals. The traditional way of thinking about human behavior is based almost completely on a consideration of people’s surface goals—getting a decent bargain on a pair of dress shoes, for example, or picking a fine restaurant for a date next Saturday. But humans, like all animals, evolved to make choices in ways that promote deeper evolutionary purposes. Once we start looking at modern choices through this ancestral lens, many decisions that appear foolish and irrational at the surface level turn out to be smart and adaptive at a deeper evolutionary level. Insight 2: Human decision making is designed to achieve several very different evolutionary goals. Economists and psychologists have often assumed that humans seek a single broad goal: to feel good or to maximize benefits. In actuality, all humans pursue several very different evolutionary goals, such as acquiring a mate, protecting themselves from danger, and attaining status. This is an important distinction. Depending on which evolutionary goal they currently have in mind, consciously or subconsciously, people will have very different biases and make very different choices.

Kiip’s move comes at a time when more and more data on people’s actions is becoming available as wearable devices, Internet-connected home automation equipment, and cars with integrated data connections head to market. Those new data streams could form the basis for many new services and products, but they also bring new privacy concerns. Ads tailored to driving behavior will be possible thanks to a partnership between Kiip and fellow startup Mojio. It expects to launch a $149 device this summer that plugs into a car’s diagnostic port and streams vehicle data to a smartphone app to help users track their driving, their fuel economy, and their vehicle’s maintenance status. Kiip will use data from that device to target promotions inside the Mojio app.

For a maverick, he rebelled against his party a puny five times in his seven years as an MP. When he did so, it was usually taking a more liberal line than the leadership (and, indeed, his own previous positions), such as backing the repeal of the infamous Section 28 ban on the promotion of homosexuality and voting in favour of giving legal status to change of gender for transsexuals. When

Ollie Clark stepped into his path, blocking Cade's view of Lily. Instantly on the alert, Cade felt the watchful attention of several of Ollie's cohorts on the sidelines. He hadn't intended to make trouble, but he certainly didn't intend to run from it either. Directing his gaze questioningly to the tall man in front of him, Cade waited. "Indians ain't allowed in here. We've got white ladies present." Ladies, whores, and creatures of indeterminable sex or status, but Cade didn't point that out. He merely waited. Irritation flared in Clark's eyes. "I'm askin' you to leave, red man." A hissing intake of breath behind him was all the warning Ollie received. Before he could spin around, a furious virago in blue gingham swirled past him and grabbed Cade’s arm. Blue fire shot sparks from her eyes as she spoke. "Cade is my escort, and I'll be damned if either one of us leaves, Mister Clark." Reducing him to the status of "mister" after his hard-won promotion to "Ollie" wasn't sufficient. Lily glared at him. "And for your information, Cade has more of a right to be here than anyone else in this town. Both Mexicans and Indians were here before us. You'll be lucky if they don't run you out of Texas before this is all over." Realizing Cade had no intention of budging from this battle, Lily threw him a sharp look, released his arm, and lifted her skirt in imminent departure. "I am in need of a lemonade, gentlemen. I trust you'll find a way to settle your differences amicably.

Liked Following Message More Contact Us .. Status Photo / VideoOffer, Event + . Write something... . 1 Draft Created Saturday, November 5 at 4:05pm. See draft. . The Year of “Alphabetization In the Cuban post revolution era it was at “Che” Guevara who promoted educational and health reforms. 1961 became the “Year of Cuban Literacy” or the “Campaña Nacional de Alfabetización en Cuba,” meaning the “Year of Alphabetization in Cuba.” The illiteracy rate had increased throughout Cuba after the revolution. Fidel Castro in a speech told prospective literacy teachers, “You will teach, and you will learn,” meaning that this educational program would become a two-way street. Both public and private schools were closed two months earlier, for the summer than usual, so that both teachers and students could voluntarily participate in this special ambitious endeavor. A newly uniformed army of young teachers went out into the countryside, to help educate those in need of literacy education. It was the first time that a sexually commingled group would spend the summer together, raising the anxiety of many that had only known a more Victorian lifestyle. For the first time boys and girls, just coming of age, would be sharing living conditions together. This tended to make young people more self-sufficient and thought to give them a better understanding of the Revolution. It is estimated that a million Cubans took part in this educational program. Aside from the primary purpose of decreasing illiteracy, it gave the young people from urban areas an opportunity to see firsthand what conditions were like in the rural parts of Cuba. Since it was the government that provided books and supplies, as well as blankets, hammocks and uniforms, it is no surprise that the educational curriculum included the history of the Cuban Revolution, however it made Cuba the most literate countries in the world with a UNESCO literacy rate in 2015, of 99.7%. By Captain Hank Bracker, author of the award winning book “The Exciting Story of Cuba,” Follow Captain Hank Bracker on Facebook, Goodreads, his Website account and Twitter.

Thus was born an astonishing new idea that governments justify their existence only by promoting possibilities for prosperity and happiness among all those they rule over.

Britain: A nation that keeps a stiff upper lip, takes it on the chin without complaining, plays fair at all times and is by and large: “the gentleman of the world.” Anything else old boy, just wouldn’t be cricket … This is the image of itself that Britain likes to promote, at home and abroad. However, the idea that the ‘United Kingdom’ plays fair or by the rules is just as mythical as its status as an imaginary fifth nation that replaced four real sovereign countries. This booklet aims to burst that myth and also aims to provide solid proof that the United Kingdom is anything but ‘united.