Safety Education Quotes

What it means to be human is to bring up your children in safety, educate them, keep them healthy, teach them how to care for themselves and others, allow them to develop in their own way among adults who are sane and responsibile, who know the value of the world and not its economic potential. It means art, it means time, it means all the invisibles never counted by the GDP and the census figures. It means knowing that life has an inside as well as an outside. And I think it means love.

Whether one is rich or poor, educated or illiterate, religious or nonbelieving, man or woman, black, white, or brown, we are all the same. Physically, emotionally, and mentally, we are all equal. We all share basic needs for food, shelter, safety, and love. We all aspire to happiness and we all shun suffering. Each of us has hopes, worries, fears, and dreams. Each of us wants the best for our family and loved ones. We all experience pain when we suffer loss and joy when we achieve what we seek. On this fundamental level, religion, ethnicity, culture, and language make no difference.

Feminism has fought no wars. It has killed no opponents. It has set up no concentration camps, starved no enemies, practiced no cruelties. Its battles have been for education, for the vote, for better working conditions, for safety in the streets, for child care, for social welfare, for rape crisis centres, women's refuges, reforms in the law. If someone says, 'Oh, I'm not a feminist', I ask, 'Why? What's your problem?

We walked through the streets with our protectors. We wore our dresses. We gave up our education because that was the price of safety. That was the bargain we made with the devil we knew to escape the devil we didn't.

Sadly, our educational system, as well as many of the methods that profess to treat trauma, tend to bypass this emotional-engagement system and focus instead on recruiting the cognitive capacities of the mind. Despite the well-documented effects of anger, fear, and anxiety on the ability to reason, many programs continue to ignore the need to engage the safety system of the brain before trying to promote new ways of thinking. The last things that should be cut from school schedules are chorus, physical education, recess, and anything else involving movement, play, and joyful engagement.

There are also those who delusively if not enthusiastically surrender their liberty for the mastermind’s false promises of human and societal perfectibility. He hooks them with financial bribes in the form of ‘entitlements.’ And he makes incredible claims about indefectible health, safety, educational, and environmental policies, the success of which is to be measured not in the here and now but in the distant future. For these reasons and more, some become fanatics for the cause. They take to the streets and, ironically, demand their own demise as they protest against their own self-determination and for ever more autocracy and authoritarianism. When they vote, they vote to enchain not only their fellow citizens but, unwittingly, themselves. Paradoxically, as the utopia metastasizes and the society ossifies, elections become less relevant. More and more decisions are made by the masterminds and their experts, who substitute their self-serving and dogmatic judgments — which are proclaimed righteous and compassionate — for the the individual’s self-interests and best interests.

Like it or not, most people prioritize their own safety over the education of someone else’s child. I wanted to make them see that if we didn’t prioritize education now, it would be a public safety matter later.

I do not see that it is necessary for any people to prove to another that they build cathedrals or pyramids before they can be entitled to peace and safety.

Filter a website, and you protect a student for a day. Educate students about online safety in the real world environment, and you protect your child for a lifetime.

They wanted to be safe. It’s not that much to ask, it feels like. But we don’t have it to begin with, and to get it and keep it, they’d push another kid into the dark. One enclave would push another into the dark for that, too. And they didn’t stop at safety, either. They wanted comfort, and then they wanted luxury, and then they wanted excess, and every step of the way they still wanted to be safe, even as they made themselves more and more of a tempting target, and the only way they could stay safe was to have enough power to keep everyone off that wanted what they had.

A classroom needs to feel like a safe place for both students and teachers. In order for creativity and higher level thinking to be present in the classrooms, a feeling of safety must first be present in the classrooms.

Being born into a prosperous middle-class family typically endows you with a safety net for life. If you are not naturally very bright, you are still likely to go far and, at the very least, will never experience poverty as an adult. A good education compounded by your parents' 'cultural capital', financial support and networks will always see you through. If you are a bright child born into a working-class family, you do not have any of these things. The odds are that you will not be better off than your parents.

Make a freaking impact and start providing value! Let money come to you! Look around outside your world, stop being selfish, and help your fellow humans solve their problems. In a world of selfishness, become unselfish. Need something more concrete? No problem. Make 1 million people achieve any of the following: Make them feel better. Help them solve a problem. Educate them. Make them look better (health, nutrition, clothing, makeup). Give them security (housing, safety, health). Raise a positive emotion (love, happiness, laughter, self-confidence). Satisfy appetites, from basic (food) to the risqué (sexual). Make things easier. Enhance their dreams and give hope. … and I guarantee, you will be worth millions.

When society questions a victim’s reluctance to report, I will be here to remind you that you ask us to sacrifice our sanity to fight outdated structures that were designed to keep us down. Victims do not have the time for this. Victims are also students, teachers, parents, who can’t give up work or education. The average adult can barely find time to renew their license at the DMV. It is not reasonable to casually demand that victims put aside their lives to spend more time pursuing something they never asked for in the first place. This is not about the victims’ lack of effort. This is about society’s failure to have systems in place in which victims feel there’s a probable chance of achieving safety, justice, and restoration rather than being retraumatized, publicly shamed, psychologically tormented, and verbally mauled. The real question we need to be asking is not, Why didn’t she report, the question is, Why would you?

Don’t worry, Prima Donna. If you start to look faint, I’ll drag your body to safety.” “My name is Hailey.” “Okay, Hailey. I’ll drag your prima-donna butt to safety, right after I finish my lunch break

We had been bruised and gashed and concussed, had our legs set on fire and out heads cut open. We had lived in a state of alert, a kind of constant terror, our brains flooding with cortisol because we knew that any of those things might happen at any moment. Because Dad always put faith before safety.

health, social life, job, house, partners, finances; leisure use, leisure amount; working time, education, income, children; food, water, shelter, clothing, sex, health care; mobility; physical safety, social safety, job security, savings account, insurance, disability protection, family leave, vacation; place tenure, a commons; access to wilderness, mountains, ocean; peace, political stability, political input, political satisfaction; air, water, esteem; status, recognition; home, community, neighbors, civil society, sports, the arts; longevity treatments, gender choice; the opportunity to become more what you are that's all you need

Fascism talks ideology, but it is really just marketing—marketing for power. It is recognizable by its need to purge, by the strategies it uses to purge, and by its terror of truly democratic agendas. It is recognizable by its determination to convert all public services to private entrepreneurship, all nonprofit organizations to profit-making ones—so that the narrow but protective chasm between governance and business disappears. It changes citizens into taxpayers—so individuals become angry at even the notion of the public good. It changes neighbors into consumers—so the measure of our value as humans is not our humanity or our compassion or our generosity but what we own. It changes parenting into panicking—so that we vote against the interests of our own children; against their health care, their education, their safety from weapons. And in effecting these changes it produces the perfect capitalist, one who is willing to kill a human being for a product (a pair of sneakers, a jacket, a car) or kill generations for control of products (oil, drugs, fruit, gold).

E-V-E-R-Y-T-H-I-N-G—is connected. The soil needs rain, organic matter, air, worms and life in order to do what it needs to do to give and receive life. Each element is an essential component. “Organizing takes humility and selflessness and patience and rhythm while our ultimate goal of liberation will take many expert components. Some of us build and fight for land, healthy bodies, healthy relationships, clean air, water, homes, safety, dignity, and humanizing education. Others of us fight for food and political prisoners and abolition and environmental justice. Our work is intersectional and multifaceted. Nature teaches us that our work has to be nuanced and steadfast. And more than anything, that we need each other—at our highest natural glory—in order to get free.

Allowing bullying in the classroom is equivalent to excluding learning from the classroom. If bullying is present in the classroom it causes the classroom to not feel like a safe environment, and people do not learn in unsafe environments - except for those things which they feel will ensure their present safety.

People like me who want to abolish prisons and police, however, have a vision of a different society, built on cooperation instead of individualism, on mutual aid instead of self-preservation. What would the country look like if it had billions of extra dollars to spend on housing, food, and education for all? This change in society wouldn’t happen immediately, but the protests show that many people are ready to embrace a different vision of safety and justice. When the streets calm and people suggest once again that we hire more Black police officers or create more civilian review boards, I hope that we remember all the times those efforts have failed.

V-day is a movement: an organized effort to finally end violence against women. V-Day is a vision: we see a civilization where women live in freedom and safety. V-Day is a spirit: affirming that life should be live creating and thriving rather than surviving or recovering from terrible atrocities. V-Day is a catalyst: by raising wide public awareness of the issue, it will reinvigorates efforts already under way and commence new initiatives in publicity, education, and law. V-Day is a vital ongoing process: we proclaim Valentine's Day as V'day until the violence against women stops, and the it will become Victory Day.

In class I had been taught about neurotransmitters and their effect on brain chemistry; I understood that disease is not a choice. This knowledge might have made me sympathetic to my father, but it didn’t. I felt only anger. We were the ones who’d paid for it, I thought. Mother. Luke. Shawn. We had been bruised and gashed and concussed, had our legs set on fire and our heads cut open. We had lived in a state of alert, a kind of constant terror, our brains flooding with cortisol because we knew that any of those things might happen at any moment. Because Dad always put faith before safety. Because he believed himself right, and he kept on believing himself right—after the first car crash, after the second, after the bin, the fire, the pallet. And it was us who paid.

Education is our only political safety. Outside of this ark, all is deluge.

Teen drivers are more dangerous even than drivers in their eighties. And safety education, including showing teens gory movies of car crashes, has little effect.

The goal of the Deep Southern oligarchy has been consistent for over four centuries: to control and maintain a one-party state with a colonial-style economy based on large-scale agriculture and the extraction of primary resources by a compliant, poorly educated, low-wage workforce with as few labor, workplace safety, health care, and environmental regulations as possible.

Smiley himself was one of those solitaires who seem to have come into the world fully educated at the age of eighteen. Obscurity was his nature, as well as his profession. The byways of espionage are not populated by the brash and colourful adventurers of fiction. A man who, like Smiley, has lived and worked for years among his country's enemies learns only one prayer: that he may never, never be noticed. Assimilation is his highest aim, he learns to love the crowds who pass him in the street without a glance; he clings to them for his anonimity and his safety. His fear makes him servile - he could embrace the shoppers who jostle him in their impatience, and force him from the pavement. He could adore the officials, the police, the bus conductors, for the terse indifference of their attitudes. (ch. 9)

Conscience is strong in women. Children are very violently taught that they owe all to their parents, and the parents are not slow in foreclosing the mortgage. But the home is not a debtor's prison - to girls any more than to boys. This enormous claim of parents calls for extermination. Do they in truth do all for their children; do their children owe all to them? Is nothing furnished in the way of safety, sanitation, education, by that larger home, the state? What could these parents do, alone, in never so pleasant a home, without the allied forces of society to maintain that home in peace and prosperity. These lingering vestiges of a patriarchal cult must be left behind. Ancestor-worship has had victims enough. Girls are human creatures as well as boys, and both have duties, imperative duties, quite outside the home.

PIC abolition is a vision of a restructured society in a world where we have everything we need: food, shelter, education, health, art, beauty, clean water, and more things that are foundational to our personal and community safety.

And they didn’t stop at safety, either. They wanted comfort, and then they wanted luxury, and then they wanted excess, and every step of the way they still wanted to be safe, even as they made themselves more and more of a tempting target, and the only way they could stay safe was to have enough power to keep everyone off that wanted what they had.

For the first time, a whole generation had the economic & educational opportunity to turn their backs on the dead end factory jobs of their parents, who, traumatized by two world wars, had responded by creating a safety blanket of conformity.

One of the paradoxes of our time is that the War on Terror has served mainly to reinforce a collective belief that maintaining the right amount of fear and suspicion will earn one safety. Fear is promoted by the government as a kind of policy. Fear is accepted, even among the best-educated people in this country, even among the professors with whom I work, as a kind of intelligence. And inspiring fear in others is often seen as neighborly and kindly, instead of being regarded as what my cousin recognized it for - a violence.

Single-strand identities do not exist in a household, let alone in a nation. When America is at its best, we acknowledge the complexity of our societies and the complicating reality of how we experience this country—and its obstacles. Yet we never lose sight of the fact that we all want the same thing. We want education. We want economic security. We want health care. Identity politics pushes leaders to understand that because of race, class, gender, sexual orientation/gender identity, and national origin, people confront obstacles that stem from these identities. Successful leaders who wish to engage the broadest coalition of voters have to demonstrate that they understand that the barriers are not uniform and, moreover, that they have plans to tackle these impediments. The greatest politicians display both of these capacities, and they never forget that the destination—regardless of identity—is the same: safety, security, and opportunity.

There are many ways to honor America. This book is mine. I have completed this journey of self-education in the belief that the most terrifying possibility since 9/11 has not been terrorism--as frightening as that is--but the prospect that Americans will give up their rights in pursuing the chimera of security.

While the bullying paradigm creates destabilizing, fear-inducing, unpredictable conditions, the cornerstone of learning and healthy brain wiring is safety.

It is common for women with a lot of education or power positions to be a submissive or slave in their personal life. The

The autonomy enabled by a high-quality, free education system is just as important as the region’s economic equality and extensive welfare safety nets, if not more so.

The average person wastes his life. He has a great deal of energy but he wastes it. The life of an average person seems at the end utterly meaningless…without significance. When he looks back…what has he done? MIND The mind creates routine for its own safety and convenience. Tradition becomes our security. But when the mind is secure it is in decay. We all want to be famous people…and the moment we want to be something…we are no longer free. Intelligence is the capacity to perceive the essential…the what is. It is only when the mind is free from the old that it meets everything new…and in that there’s joy. To awaken this capacity in oneself and in others is real education. SOCIETY It is no measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society. Nature is busy creating absolutely unique individuals…whereas culture has invented a single mold to which we must conform. A consistent thinker is a thoughtless person because he conforms to a pattern. He repeats phrases and thinks in a groove. What happens to your heart and your mind when you are merely imitative, naturally they wither, do they not? The great enemy of mankind is superstition and belief which is the same thing. When you separate yourself by belief tradition by nationally it breeds violence. Despots are only the spokesmen for the attitude of domination and craving for power which is in the heart of almost everyone. Until the source is cleared there will be confusion and classes…hate and wars. A man who is seeking to understand violence does not belong to any country to any religion to any political party. He is concerned with the understanding of mankind. FEAR You have religion. Yet the constant assertion of belief is an indication of fear. You can only be afraid of what you think you know. One is never afraid of the unknown…one is afraid of the known coming to an end. A man who is not afraid is not aggressive. A man who has no sense of fear of any kind is really a free and peaceful mind. You want to be loved because you do not love…but the moment you really love, it is finished. You are no longer inquiring whether someone loves you or not. MEDITATION The ability to observe without evaluating is the highest form of intelligence. In meditation you will discover the whisperings of your own prejudices…your own noises…the monkey mind. You have to be your own teacher…truth is a pathless land. The beauty of meditation is that you never know where you are…where you are going…what the end is. Down deep we all understand that it is truth that liberates…not your effort to be free. The idea of ourselves…our real selves…is your escape from the fact of what you really are. Here we are talking of something entirely different….not of self improvement…but the cessation of self. ADVICE Take a break with the past and see what happens. Release attachment to outcomes…inside you will feel good no matter what. Eventually you will find that you don’t mind what happens. That is the essence of inner freedom…it is timeless spiritual truth. If you can really understand the problem the answer will come out of it. The answer is not separate from the problem. Suffer and understand…for all of that is part of life. Understanding and detachment…this is the secret. DEATH There is hope in people…not in societies not in systems but only in you and me. The man who lives without conflict…who lives with beauty and love…is not frightened by death…because to love is to die.

There is no justifiable reason why any man, woman or child on this planet should ever have to endure a single day without access to nutritious food,clean water,adequate shelter,healthcare,education and safety.

Psychologists at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, Canada, found that the better educated and wealthier a nation is, the less likely its population is to believe in a higher being. The Global Index of Religion and Atheism also assessed that poverty was a key indicator of a society’s tendency towards religion – so that poorer countries tend to be the most religious. The one exception to the rule? America. But in the strongly religious USA, despite the country’s wealth, there’s no universal healthcare, little job security, and a flimsy social welfare safety net. This means that the USA has a lot more in common with developing countries than she might like to think. Researchers from the University of British Columbia suggest that people are less likely to need the comfort of a god if they’re living somewhere stable, safe and prosperous.

A cult is a group of people who share an obsessive devotion to a person or idea. The cults described in this book use violent tactics to recruit, indoctrinate, and keep members. Ritual abuse is defined as the emotionally, physically, and sexually abusive acts performed by violent cults. Most violent cults do not openly express their beliefs and practices, and they tend to live separately in noncommunal environments to avoid detection. Some victims of ritual abuse are children abused outside the home by nonfamily members, in public settings such as day care. Other victims are children and teenagers who are forced by their parents to witness and participate in violent rituals. Adult ritual abuse victims often include these grown children who were forced from childhood to be a member of the group. Other adult and teenage victims are people who unknowingly joined social groups or organizations that slowly manipulated and blackmailed them into becoming permanent members of the group. All cases of ritual abuse, no matter what the age of the victim, involve intense physical and emotional trauma. Violent cults may sacrifice humans and animals as part of religious rituals. They use torture to silence victims and other unwilling participants. Ritual abuse victims say they are degraded and humiliated and are often forced to torture, kill, and sexually violate other helpless victims. The purpose of the ritual abuse is usually indoctrination. The cults intend to destroy these victims' free will by undermining their sense of safety in the world and by forcing them to hurt others. In the last ten years, a number of people have been convicted on sexual abuse charges in cases where the abused children had reported elements of ritual child abuse. These children described being raped by groups of adults who wore costumes or masks and said they were forced to witness religious-type rituals in which animals and humans were tortured or killed. In one case, the defense introduced in court photographs of the children being abused by the defendants[.1] In another case, the police found tunnels etched with crosses and pentacles along with stone altars and candles in a cemetery where abuse had been reported. The defendants in this case pleaded guilty to charges of incest, cruelty, and indecent assault.[2] Ritual abuse allegations have been made in England, the United States, and Canada.[3] Many myths abound concerning the parents and children who report ritual abuse. Some people suggest that the tales of ritual abuse are "mass hysteria." They say the parents of these children who report ritual abuse are often overly zealous Christians on a "witch-hunt" to persecute satanists. These skeptics say the parents are fearful of satanism, and they use their knowledge of the Black Mass (a historically well-known, sexualized ritual in which animals and humans are sacrificed) to brainwash their children into saying they were abused by satanists.[4] In 1992 I conducted a study to separate fact from fiction in regard to the disclosures of children who report ritual abuse.[5] The study was conducted through Believe the Children, a national organization that provides support and educational sources for ritual abuse survivors and their families.

I use “anticapitalist” because conservative defenders of capitalism regularly say their liberal and socialist opponents are against capitalism. They say efforts to provide a safety net for all people are “anticapitalist.” They say attempts to prevent monopolies are “anticapitalist.” They say efforts that strengthen weak unions and weaken exploitative owners are “anticapitalist.” They say plans to normalize worker ownership and regulations protecting consumers, workers, and environments from big business are “anticapitalist.” They say laws taxing the richest more than the middle class, redistributing pilfered wealth, and guaranteeing basic incomes are “anticapitalist.” They say wars to end poverty are “anticapitalist.” They say campaigns to remove the profit motive from essential life sectors like education, healthcare, utilities, mass media, and incarceration are “anticapitalist.” In doing so, these conservative defenders are defining capitalism. They define capitalism as the freedom to exploit people into economic ruin; the freedom to assassinate unions; the freedom to prey on unprotected consumers, workers, and environments; the freedom to value quarterly profits over climate change; the freedom to undermine small businesses and cushion corporations; the freedom from competition; the freedom not to pay taxes; the freedom to heave the tax burden onto the middle and lower classes; the freedom to commodify everything and everyone; the freedom to keep poor people poor and middle-income people struggling to stay middle income, and make rich people richer. The history of capitalism—of world warring, classing, slave trading, enslaving, colonizing, depressing wages, and dispossessing land and labor and resources and rights—bears out the conservative definition of capitalism.

I had told our kids in a thousand ways, “As you go through life with us, you will need a lot of things. You’ll get what you need — things like love, food, shelter, safety, values, structure, faith, opportunity, and an education. We are committed to seeing that you get what you need. But we also want you to know that you really don’t deserve anything. You can’t demand a toy, a phone, a laptop, or a car. That attitude won’t work with us. Need, yes; deserve, not so much.” The

What's better- supply side economics a la John Keynes, or libertarian free markets a la Milton Friedman? Safety nets or bootstraps to build a just society? Big sticks or carrots to preserve international order? Federal or states' rights to guide the governed? Investing in education or employment to empower a citizenry? Seperation or integration of church and state? Multicultural melting pot or national identity? Revolution or evolution? The only honest answer is "it depends." and we're not entirely sure.

We are taught so little about the health and safety of our physical bodies and also so little about how to protect them. Women have been kept in the dark of our own light, having to go to extraordinary lengths to educate others about what we need, from our basic rights to affordable health care, to our own sexual pleasures, to our emotional well-being. The burden is on women to be self-taught in a world where most men are already self-made—the latter being defined by expectations, the former by limitations.

One of the paradoxes of our time is that the War on Terror has served mainly to reinforce a collective belief that maintaining the right amount of fear and suspicion will earn one safety. Fear is promoted by the government as a kind of policy. Fear is accepted, even among the best-educated people in this country, even among the professors with whom I work, as a kind of intelligence. And inspiring fear in others is often seen as neighborly and kindly, instead of being regarded as what my cousin recognized it for—a violence.

The most powerful country in the world has handed over all of it's affairs, the prosperity of an entire economy, the security of some 300 million citizens, the purity of it's water, the viability of it's air, the safety of it's food, the future of it's vast system of education, the soundness of it's national highways, airways, and railways, the apocalyptic potential of nuclear arsenal to a carnival barker who introduce the phrase "grab em by the pussy", into the national lexicon. It is as if the white tribe united in demonstration to say "if a black man can be president than any white man, no matter how fallen, can be president", and in that perverse way, the democratic dreams of Jefferson and Jackson were fulfilled. The American Tragedy now being wrought, is larger than most imaged and will not end with Trump. In recent times, whiteness as an overt political tactic has been restrained by a kind of cordiality held that it's overt invocation would scare off moderate whites. This has proved to be only half-true at best. Trump's legacy will be exposing the patina of decency for what it is and revealing just how much a demagague can get away with. It does not take much to imagine another politician, wiser in the ways of Washington, schooled in the methodology of governance, now liberated from the pretense of anti-racist civility, doing a much more effective job than Trump.

Poor health was not just the result of random acts, bad luck, bad behavior or unfortunate genetics. Deliberate public policy decision about housing, education, parks and streets were the key drivers of racial differences in mortality. Crime kept people off the streets and limited their ability to exercise. The lack of grocery stores limited dietary choices. The lack of primary care doctors and specialists in these communities made chronic disease care more difficult. The degradation and loss of hospital services in these communities affected hospital-based outcomes. … The chronic underfunding of critical health services at Cook County Hospital and other safety-net providers contributed to these poor outcomes as well. The deleterious impact of social structures such as urban poverty and racism on health has been called 'structural violence.

Obama himself, underestimating Trump and thus underestimating the power of whiteness, believed the Republican nominee too objectionable to actually win. In this Obama was, tragically, wrong. And so the most powerful country in the world has handed over all of its affairs—the prosperity of an entire economy, the security of some 300 million citizens, the purity of its water, the viability of its air, the safety of its food, the future of its vast system of education, the soundness of its national highways, airways, and railways, the apocalyptic potential of its nuclear arsenal—to a carnival barker who introduced the phrase “grab ’em by the pussy” into the national lexicon. It is as if the white tribe united in demonstration to say, “If a black man can be president, then any white man—no matter how fallen—can be president.” And in that perverse way the democratic dreams of Jefferson and Jackson were fulfilled.

That’s all Todd wanted. That’s all Magnus wanted. They wanted to be safe. It’s not that much to ask, it feels like. But we don’t have it to begin with, and to get it and keep it, they’d push another kid into the dark. One enclave would push another into the dark for that, too. And they didn’t stop at safety, either. They wanted comfort, and then they wanted luxury, and then they wanted excess, and every step of the way they still wanted to be safe, even as they made themselves more and more of a tempting target, and the only way they could stay safe was to have enough power to keep everyone off that wanted what they had.

Better still, improvements build on one another. A richer world can better afford to protect the environment, police its gangs, strengthen its social safety nets, and teach and heal its citizens. A better-educated and connected world cares more about the environment, indulges fewer autocrats, and starts fewer wars.

Parenting means loving a child, taking responsibility for her life and safety, feeding, dressing, encouraging, comforting, working on her behalf without reservations, and raising her to be a mature person. Parenting also means educating, restricting, stopping, and demanding. It is not a case of either or; it is a case of both.

Gradually, however, the liberal story expanded its horizons, and at least in theory came to value the liberties and rights of all human beings without exception. As the circle of liberty expanded, the liberal story also came to recognize the importance of communist-style welfare programs. Liberty is not worth much unless it is coupled with some kind of social safety net. Social-democratic welfare states combined democracy and human rights with state-sponsored education and healthcare. Even the ultracapitalist United States has realized that the protection of liberty requires at least some government welfare services. Starving children have no liberties.

As economic inequality grew, time horizons shrank, and fewer Americans believed that the future held a better version of the present. Lacking a functional state that assured basic social goods taken for granted elsewhere - education, pensions, health care, transport, parental leave, vacations - Americans could be overwhelmed by each day, and lose a sense of the future.

The Torah, then, was compact, transferable history, law, wisdom, poetic chant, prophecy, consolation and self-strengthening counsel. Just as the sanctuary could be erected in safety and dismantled in crisis, the speaking scroll was designed to survive even incineration, because the scribes who had composed and edited it had memorised its oral traditions and its texts as part of their basic education.

That is exactly what teenagers of ass sexualities need: ongoing discussion and education that addresses pleasure, mutuality, safety, love, intimacy, and self-discovery. They need to understand the potential to either be the perpetrator or the victim of intimate partner violence and sexual assault. They need to have agency over their bodies. And for all of them, adult denial puts them at risk of physical and emotional trauma.

What a good government does, what a republic does, is moderate competition; allow the tug of war, but never let one side walk away with the rope. They also establish rule of law, and a safety net below which people cannot fall. Everybody can vote, everybody can share power, no matter how rich or poor. Everybody has rights, and the republic is strong enough to enforce those rights. Police, health, mail, education, the things that everybody needs are guaranteed. Corporations can compete, but they are kept reasonably honest and not allowed to over leverage and risk people other than themselves. People will abuse the system, some corps will get away with crime, but the distribution of a minimum amount of power and resources to all people hedges the damage. And it forces the wealthy, not to be slaves to the poor, but to have a modicum of concern for them, because they can vote.

Be Willing to Pay the Price If people knew how hard I had to work to gain my mastery, it wouldn’t seem wonderful at all. MICHELANGELO Renaissance sculptor and painter who spent 4 years lying on his back painting the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel Behind every great achievement is a story of education, training, practice, discipline, and sacrifice. You have to be willing to pay the price. Maybe that price is pursuing one single activity while putting everything else in your life on hold. Maybe it’s investing all of your own personal wealth or savings. Maybe it’s the willingness to walk away from the safety of your current situation. But though many things are typically required to reach a successful outcome, the willingness to do what’s required adds that extra dimension to the mix that helps you persevere in the face of overwhelming challenges, setbacks, pain, and even personal

It's both a tremendous obligation and honor to undertake the unfulfilled work of the best of our abolitionist precursors--those who did not only want the abolition of white supremacist slavery and normalized anti-Black violence, but who also recognized that the greatest promise of abolitionism was a comprehensive transformation of a civilization in which the sanctity of white civil society was defined by its capacity to define 'community' and 'safety' through the effective of its ability to wage racial genocides. The present day work of (..) abolition has to proceed with organic recognition of its historical roots in liberation struggles against slavery, colonization, and conquest--and therefore struggle to constantly develop effective, creative, and politically educating forms of radical movement against the genocidal white supremacist state and the society to which it's tethered.

Opportunity can be hoarded, then, not only by abandoning public goods for private ones, but also by leveraging individual fortunes to acquire access to exclusive public goods, buying yourself into an upscale community. In many corners of America, a pricey mortgage doesn’t just buy a home; it also buys a good education, a well-run soccer league, and public safety so thick and expected it appears natural, instead of the product of social design.

The philosopher John Stuart Mill once wrote, “War is an ugly thing, but not the ugliest of things. The decayed and degraded state of moral and patriotic feeling which thinks that nothing is worth war is much worse. The person who has nothing for which he is willing to fight, nothing which is more important than his own personal safety, is a miserable creature and has no chance of being free unless made and kept so by the exertions of better men than himself.

In activist and progressive communities, we’re accustomed to attending one training or reading one essay and then declaring ourselves leaders and educators on an issue. I believe that the notion of instant expertise is contrary to our liberatory values. ... We must practice community safety much as one practices an instrument or a sport: in slow, measurable and deliberate ways. Only by practicing can we build the knowledge we need to defuse and address conflict within our communities.

What it means to be human,’ I said, ‘is to bring up your children in safety, educate them, keep them healthy, teach them how to care for themselves and others, allow them to develop in their own way among adults who are sane and responsible, who know the value of the world and not its economic potential. It means art, it means time, it means all the invisibles never counted by the GDP and the census figures. It means knowing that life has an inside as well as an outside. ‘And I think it means love.

After all, the media have been and are the major dispenser of the ideals and norms surrounding motherhood: Millions of us have gone to the media for nuts-and-bolts child-rearing advice. Many of us, in fact, preferred media advice to the advice our mothers gave us. We didn't want to be like our mothers and many of us didn't want to raise our kids the way they raised us (although it turns out they did a pretty good job in the end). Thus beginning in the mid-1970s, working mothers became the most important thing you can become in the United States: a market. And they became a market just as niche marketing was exploding--the rise of cable channels, magazines like Working Mother, Family Life, Child, and Twins, all supported by advertisements geared specifically to the new, modern mother. Increased emphasis on child safety, from car seats to bicycle helmets, increased concerns about Johnny not being able to read, the recognition that mothers bought cars, watched the news, and maybe didn't want to tune into one TV show after the next about male detectives with a cockatoo or some other dumbass mascot saving hapless women--all contributed to new shows, ad campaigns, magazines, and TV news stories geared to mothers, especially affluent, upscale ones. Because of this sheer increase in output and target marketing, mothers were bombarded as never before by media constructions of the good mother. The good mother bought all this stuff to stimulate, protect, educate, and indulge her kids. She had to assemble it, install it, use it with her child, and protect her child from some of its features.

The nuclear thing is harder to figure. The United States, according to a 1998 study by the Brookings Institution, spent nearly eight trillion in today’s dollars on nukes in the last half of the twentieth century, which represents something like a third of our total military spending in the Cold War. Just the nuke budget was more than that half-century’s federal spending on Medicare, education, social services, disaster relief, scientific research (of the non-nuclear stripe), environmental protection, food safety inspectors, highway maintenance, cops, prosecutors, judges, and prisons … combined.

Despite the well-documented effects of anger, fear, and anxiety on the ability to reason, many programs continue to ignore the need to engage the safety system of the brain before trying to promote new ways of thinking. The last things that should be cut from school schedules are chorus, physical education, recess, and anything else involving movement, play, and joyful engagement. When children are oppositional, defensive, numbed out, or enraged, it’s also important to recognize that such “bad behavior” may repeat action patterns that were established to survive serious threats, even if they are intensely upsetting or off-putting.

Nurture parent-teacher relationships. When students feel that parents are talking negatively about their teacher, it undermines that critical relationship, akin to the acrimonious divorce of parents, notes Suniya Luthar. Students learn best from teachers they feel close to, and teachers play an essential role in buffering against achievement stress. Show respect and appreciation when you speak about or interact with their teachers. Actively build a partnership with educators so that a child can be best supported. “Replace” yourself. Consider creating your own council of parents. Value and appreciate the adults in your children’s lives. Guard that time so that they can enjoy a wider safety net of support. You might even make it formal, as some parents I interviewed did, by creating a master sheet of phone numbers and meeting together as a group. Encourage gratitude. Help children to get into the habit of telling others explicitly why they matter. You might adopt a regular gratitude practice at home, like “the one thing I love about the birthday person.” Teach kids how to think gratefully. Point out when someone goes out of their way to find a present for them, or when they do something kind that makes your child’s life better. Researchers find gratitude is the glue that binds relationships together.

Psychologists at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, Canada, found that the better educated and wealthier a nation is, the less likely its population is to believe in a higher being. The Global Index of Religion and Atheism also assessed that poverty was a key indicator of a society's tendency towards religion - so that poorer countries tend to be the most religious. The one exception to the rule? America. But in the strongly religious USA, despite the country's wealth, there's no universal healthcare, little job security, and a flimsy social welfare safety net. This means that the USA has a lot more in common with developing countries than she might like to think.

The alienating effects of wealth and modernity on the human experience start virtually at birth and never let up. Infants in hunter-gatherer societies are carried by their mothers as much as 90 percent of the time, which roughly corresponds to carrying rates among other primates. One can get an idea of how important this kind of touch is to primates from an infamous experiment conducted in the 1950s by a primatologist and psychologist named Harry Harlow. Baby rhesus monkeys were separated from their mothers and presented with the choice of two kinds of surrogates: a cuddly mother made out of terry cloth or an uninviting mother made out of wire mesh. The wire mesh mother, however, had a nipple that dispensed warm milk. The babies took their nourishment as quickly as possible and then rushed back to cling to the terry cloth mother, which had enough softness to provide the illusion of affection. Clearly, touch and closeness are vital to the health of baby primates—including humans. In America during the 1970s, mothers maintained skin-to-skin contact with babies as little as 16 percent of the time, which is a level that traditional societies would probably consider a form of child abuse. Also unthinkable would be the modern practice of making young children sleep by themselves. In two American studies of middle-class families during the 1980s, 85 percent of young children slept alone in their own room—a figure that rose to 95 percent among families considered “well educated.” Northern European societies, including America, are the only ones in history to make very young children sleep alone in such numbers. The isolation is thought to make many children bond intensely with stuffed animals for reassurance. Only in Northern European societies do children go through the well-known developmental stage of bonding with stuffed animals; elsewhere, children get their sense of safety from the adults sleeping near them. The point of making children sleep alone, according to Western psychologists, is to make them “self-soothing,” but that clearly runs contrary to our evolution. Humans are primates—we share 98 percent of our DNA with chimpanzees—and primates almost never leave infants unattended, because they would be extremely vulnerable to predators. Infants seem to know this instinctively, so being left alone in a dark room is terrifying to them. Compare the self-soothing approach to that of a traditional Mayan community in Guatemala: “Infants and children simply fall asleep when sleepy, do not wear specific sleep clothes or use traditional transitional objects, room share and cosleep with parents or siblings, and nurse on demand during the night.” Another study notes about Bali: “Babies are encouraged to acquire quickly the capacity to sleep under any circumstances, including situations of high stimulation, musical performances, and other noisy observances which reflect their more complete integration into adult social activities.

What I didn't understand then was that the same pressure were weighing on us all. My entire community suffered from the lack of trust: we didn't trust society to provide the basics of good education, safety, access to good jobs, fairness in the justice system. And even as we distrusted the society around us, the culture that cornered us and told us were perpetually less, we distrusted each other. We did not trust our fathers to raise us, provide for us. Because we trusted nothing, we endeavored to protect ourselves, boys becoming misogynistic and violent, girls turning duplicitous, all of us hopeless. Some of us turned sour from pressure, let it erode our sense of self until we hated what we saw, within and without. And to blunt it all, some of us turned to drugs.

Patriotism comes from the same Latin word as father. Blind patriotism is collective transference. In it the state becomes a parent and we citizens submit our loyalty to ensure its protection. We may have been encouraged to make that bargain from our public school education, our family home, religion, or culture in general. We associate safety with obedience to authority, for example, going along with government policies. We then make duty, as it is defined by the nation, our unquestioned course. Our motivation is usually not love of country but fear of being without a country that will defend us and our property. Connection is all-important to us; excommunication is the equivalent of death, the finality we can’t dispute. Healthy adult loyalty is a virtue that does not become blind obedience for fear of losing connection, nor total devotion so that we lose our boundaries. Our civil obedience can be so firm that it may take precedence over our concern for those we love, even our children. Here is an example: A young mother is told by the doctor that her toddler is allergic to peanuts and peanut oil. She lets the school know of her son’s allergy when he goes to kindergarten. Throughout his childhood, she is vigilant and makes sure he is safe from peanuts in any form. Eighteen years later, there is a war and he is drafted. The same mother, who was so scrupulously careful about her child’s safety, now waves goodbye to him with a tear but without protest. Mother’s own training in public school and throughout her life has made her believe that her son’s life is expendable whether or not the war in question is just. “Patriotism” is so deeply ingrained in her that she does not even imagine an alternative, even when her son’s life is at stake. It is of course also true that, biologically, parents are ready to let children go just as the state is ready to draft them. What a cunning synchronic-ity. In addition, old men who decide on war take advantage of the timing too. The warrior archetype is lively in eighteen-year-olds, who are willing to fight. Those in their mid-thirties, whose archetype is being a householder and making a mark in their chosen field, will not show an interest in battlefields of blood. The chiefs count on the fact that young braves will take the warrior myth literally rather than as a metaphor for interior battles. They will be willing to put their lives on the line to live out the collective myth of societies that have not found the path of nonviolence. Our collective nature thus seems geared to making war a workable enterprise. In some people, peacemaking is the archetype most in evidence. Nature seems to have made that population smaller, unfortunately. Our culture has trained us to endure and tolerate, not to protest and rebel. Every cell of our bodies learned that lesson. It may not be virtue; it may be fear. We may believe that showing anger is dangerous, because it opposes the authority we are obliged to appease and placate if we are to survive. This explains why we so admire someone who dares to say no and to stand up or even to die for what he believes. That person did not fall prey to the collective seduction. Watching Jeopardy on television, I notice that the audience applauds with special force when a contestant risks everything on a double-jeopardy question. The healthy part of us ardently admires daring. In our positive shadow, our admiration reflects our own disavowed or hidden potential. We, too, have it in us to dare. We can stand up for our truth, putting every comfort on the line, if only we can calm our long-scared ego and open to the part of us that wants to live free. Joseph Campbell says encouragingly, “The part of us that wants to become is fearless.” Religion and Transference Transference is not simply horizontal, from person to person, but vertical from person to a higher power, usually personified as God. When

Sadly, our educational system, as well as many of the methods that profess to treat trauma, tend to bypass this emotional-engagement system and focus instead on recruiting the cognitive capacities of the mind. Despite the well-documented effects of anger, fear, and anxiety on the ability to reason, many programs continue to ignore the need to engage the safety system of the brain before trying to promote new ways of thinking. The last things that should be cut from school schedules are chorus, physical education, recess, and anything else involving movement, play, and joyful engagement. When children are oppositional, defensive, numbed out, or enraged, it’s also important to recognize that such “bad behavior” may repeat action patterns that were established to survive serious threats, even if they are intensely upsetting or off-putting.

The conventional approach to community building and development addresses problem areas such as public safety, jobs and local economy, affordable housing, youth, universal health care, and education. Every city has thousands of institutions, programs, and agencies all committed to serving the public good. From the standpoint of building community and social capital, these institutions and programs are just treating the symptoms. Safety, jobs, housing, and the rest are symptoms of the unreconciled and fragmented nature of the community—what Lopez calls the breakdown of community. This fragmentation or breakdown creates a context where trying to solve the symptoms only sustains them. Otherwise, why have we been working on these symptoms for so long and so hard; and even with so many successful programs, why have we seen too little fundamental change?

Subtracting a day of rest each week has had a profound effect on our lives. How could it not? One day a week adds up. Fifty-two days a year times an average life span is equal to more than eleven years. Take away eleven years of anything in a lifetime, and there will be a change. This is a law of the universe: for every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction. Subtract over a decade of sleep, work, or education, and the entire character of one’s existence is altered. Multiply eleven years times a third of a billion Americans, and you are looking for a lost continent of time. Unfortunately, in our society, it’s not Monday that got mislaid; it’s our Sabbath, our day of rest. If there is to be any hope for recovering the Sabbath, we must first admit that something is missing. Despite reassurances of convenience, safety, and choice, America has been conned.

Other centuries sought safety in the union of reason and religion, research and asceticism. In their Universitas Litterarum, theology ruled. Among us we use meditation, the fine gradations of yoga technique, in our efforts to exorcise the beast within us and the diabolus dwelling in every branch of knowledge. Now you know as well as I that the Glass Bead Game also has its hidden diabolus, that it can lead to empty virtuosity, to artistic vanity, to self-advancement, to the seeking of power over others and then to the abuse of that power. This is why we need another kind of education beside the intellectual and submit ourselves to the morality of the Order, not in order to reshape our mentally active life into a psychically vegetative dream-life, but on the contrary to make ourselves fit for the summit of intellectual achievement. We do not intend to flee from the vita activa to the vita contemplativa, nor vice versa, but to keep moving forward while alternating between the two, being at home in both, partaking of both.

There are many reasons why the tech revolution will hit the emerging world much harder than it will hit Europe and the United States. In developed countries, children are more likely to grow up with digital technologies as toys and then to encounter them in school. Governments in these countries have money to invest in educational systems that prepare workers, both blue and white collar, for change. Their universities have much greater access to state-of-the-art technologies. Their companies produce the innovations that drive tech change in the first place. This creates a dynamic in which high-wage countries are more likely than low-wage ones to dominate the skill-intensive industries that will generate twenty-first-century growth, leaving behind large numbers of those billion-plus people who only recently emerged from age-old deprivation. The wealth in developed countries helps them maintain much stronger social safety nets than in poorer countries to help citizens who lose their jobs, fall ill, or need to care for sick children or aging parents. In short, wealthier countries are both more adaptable and more resilient than developing ones.

Smiley himself was one of those solitaries who seem to have come into the world fully educated at the age of eighteen. Obscurity was his nature, as well as his profession. The byways of espionage are not populated by the brash and colourful adventurers of fiction. A man who, like Smiley, has lived and worked for years among his country’s enemies learns only one prayer: that he may never, never be noticed. Assimilation is his highest aim, he learns to love the crowds who pass him in the street without a glance; he clings to them for his anonymity and his safety. His fear makes him servile—he could embrace the shoppers who jostle him in their impatience, and force him from the pavement. He could adore the officials, the police, the bus conductors, for the terse indifference of their attitudes. But this fear, this servility, this dependence, had developed in Smiley a perception for the colour of human beings: a swift, feminine sensitivity to their characters and motives. He knew mankind as a huntsman knows his cover, as a fox the wood. For a spy must hunt while he is hunted, and the crowd is his estate. He could collect their gestures and their words, record the interplay of glance and movement, as a huntsman can record the twisted bracken and the broken twig, or as a fox detects the signs of danger.

Neoliberal economics, the logic of which is tending today to win out throughout the world thanks to international bodies like the World Bank or the International Monetary Fund and the governments to whom they, directly or indirectly, dictate their principles of ‘governance’,10 owes a certain number of its allegedly universal characteristics to the fact that it is immersed or embedded in a particular society, that is to say, rooted in a system of beliefs and values, an ethos and a moral view of the world, in short, an economic common sense, linked, as such, to the social and cognitive structures of a particular social order. It is from this particular economy that neoclassical economic theory borrows its fundamental assumptions, which it formalizes and rationalizes, thereby establishing them as the foundations of a universal model. That model rests on two postulates (which their advocates regard as proven propositions): the economy is a separate domain governed by natural and universal laws with which governments must not interfere by inappropriate intervention; the market is the optimum means for organizing production and trade efficiently and equitably in democratic societies. It is the universalization of a particular case, that of the United States of America, characterized fundamentally by the weakness of the state which, though already reduced to a bare minimum, has been further weakened by the ultra-liberal conservative revolution, giving rise as a consequence to various typical characteristics: a policy oriented towards withdrawal or abstention by the state in economic matters; the shifting into the private sector (or the contracting out) of ‘public services’ and the conversion of public goods such as health, housing, safety, education and culture – books, films, television and radio – into commercial goods and the users of those services into clients; a renunciation (linked to the reduction in the capacity to intervene in the economy) of the power to equalize opportunities and reduce inequality (which is tending to increase excessively) in the name of the old liberal ‘self-help’ tradition (a legacy of the Calvinist belief that God helps those who help themselves) and of the conservative glorification of individual responsibility (which leads, for example, to ascribing responsibility for unemployment or economic failure primarily to individuals, not to the social order, and encourages the delegation of functions of social assistance to lower levels of authority, such as the region or city); the withering away of the Hegelian–Durkheimian view of the state as a collective authority with a responsibility to act as the collective will and consciousness, and a duty to make decisions in keeping with the general interest and contribute to promoting greater solidarity. Moreover,

His great concern had to do with the fact that private fortunes were significantly outpacing investments in public services like schools, parks, and safety net programs. The process tends to begin gradually before accelerating under its own momentum. As people accumulate more money, they become less dependent on public goods and, in turn, less interested in supporting them. If they get their way, through tax breaks and other means, personal fortunes grow while public goods are allowed to deteriorate. As public housing, public education, and public transportation become poorer, they become increasingly, then almost exclusively, used only by the poor themselves.[6] People then begin to denigrate the public sector altogether, as if it were rotten at the root and not something the rich had found it in their interest to destroy. The rich and the poor soon unite in their animosity toward public goods—the rich because they are made to pay for things they don’t need and the poor because what they need has become shabby and broken. Things collectively shared, especially if they are shared across class and racial divides, come to be seen as lesser. In America, a clear marker of poverty is one’s reliance on public services, and a clear marker of affluence is one’s degree of distance from them. Enough money brings “financial independence,” which tellingly does not signal independence from work but from the public sector. There was a time when Americans wished to be free of bosses. Now we wish to be free of bus drivers. We wish for the freedom to withdraw from the wider community and sequester ourselves in a more exclusive one, pulling further and further away from the poor until the world they inhabit becomes utterly unrecognizable to us.[7]

I believe that if, like me, you have privilege and are equipped with the resources and knowledge to have these conversations, it is your job to educate those who have no idea how to navigate this information, define these resources, and to challenge their own preconceived ideas. It is not solely the responsibility of marginalised people to advocate for their own rights, to explain their own oppression, or to hold hands with the very people undermining them. This is a reminder that each and every one of us has arrived at our current worldview because of people who took the time to explain things, who performed labour to educate us. We need to pay that forward, not sit on high horses. I know I am the product of the people closest to me, and that our debates and occasional conflicts are at the crux of my self-development, reflection, and empowerment. It isn’t your job to engage in harmful conversations with those committed to misunderstanding you but it isn’t helpful to demonise people whose views do not mirror your own or whose progress is slower. It isn’t effective to shut down and to turn your back on those with other worldviews once you believe you know better. We shouldn’t pull the ladder up behind us when we decided we’re in the right place. We shouldn’t be shutting up shop. This is the ultimate opportunity to use what we have learned to ensure marginalised people do not have to have these conversations. We don’t need to speak on behalf of anyone but we can direct people to resources, we can push back on problematic language and views, and we can use our knowledge and privilege for change-making. If you hold the privileges that I do, a White woman claiming to be a feminist, your fear is not enough of a barrier. I know that is a confronting statement but it is something we must interrogate. It is vital to note that there are many circumstances where breaking your silence, challenging the status quo, and speaking out pose a threat. I want to be clear that this is not a call to subject yourself to devastating outcomes, or dangerous conversations, or situations that pose a threat to your safety or security. But if the only thing standing between you and change is fear of causing your friends discomfort, or lowering the mood by calling out something that may be considered taboo, you must walk through that fear. History depends on it. Change is contingent on your voice. If you want to identify as a feminist. If you want to claim this space and that you are #doingthework, this is exactly what that work looks like. Having difficult conversations, being brave, and challenging widely held assumptions. Turning up to the protest. Putting your money toward causes you claim to stand for. Buying the book and using what you’ve learned to ensure this work does not remain the sole responsibility of the impacted, marginalised communities, but becomes something that those without lied experiences understand and advocate for. Doing all this, is more than half the battle. The next time you bookend a conversation with “it is not my job to educate you”, I think it is really important to remember that, actually, it kind of is. Your privilege means you have access to people and influence over them. You are considered by society to be more palatable in your anger, and your advocacy, and people are more willing to hear you speak to difficult topics. It is your job to educate yourself, and to use that inherent privilege to educate others, or to at least have a go. It is your job, as the feminist you claim to be, to act as a barricade for people experiencing compounding marginalisations. It is your job to educate yourself and others. It is as simple as that.

To achieve authentic, sustained happiness, above all else you need to be in charge of your life, to be in control of who you want to be, and be able to make the appropriate changes if you are not. This cannot merely be a perception, a slogan like the American Dream (the United States came way down on the LSE's social mobility scale, incidentally). In Scandinavia it is a reality. These are the real lands of opportunity. There is far greater social mobility in the Nordic countries than in the United States or Britain and, for all the collectivism and state interference in the lives of the people who live here, there is far greater freedom to be the person you want to be, and do the things you want to do, up here in the north. In a recent poll by Gallup, only 5 percent of Danes said they could not change their lives if they wanted to. In contrast, I can think of many American states in which it would probably be quite an uncomfortable experience to declare yourself an atheist, for example or gay, or to be married yet choose not to have children, or to be unmarried and have children, or to have an abortion, or to raise your children as Muslims. Less significantly, but still limiting, I don't imagine it would be easy being vegetarian in Texas, for instance, or a wine buff in Salt Lake City, come to that. And don't even think of coming out as a socialist anywhere! In Scandinavia you can be all of these things and no one will bat an eye (as long as you wait and cross on green). Crucial to this social mobility are the schools. The autonomy enabled by a high-quality, free education system is just as important as the region's economic equality and extensive welfare safety nets, if not more so. In Scandinavia the standard of education is not only the best in the world, but the opportunities it presents are available to all, free of charge. This is the bedrock of Nordic exceptionalism.

Generally speaking a view of the available economic systems that have been tested historically must acknowledge the immense power of capitalism to generate living standards food housing education the amenities to a degree unprecedented in human civilization. The benefits of such a system while occasionally random and unpredictable with periods of undeniable stress and misery depression starvation and degradation are inevitably distributed to a greater and greater percentage of the population. The periods of economic stability also ensure a greater degree of popular political freedom and among the industrial Western democracies today despite occasional suppression of free speech quashing of dissent corruption of public officials and despite the tendency of legislation to serve the interests of the ruling business oligarchy the poisoning of the air water the chemical adulteration of food the obscene development of hideous weaponry the increased costs of simple survival the waste of human resources the ruin of cities the servitude of backward foreign populations the standards of life under capitalism by any criterion are far greater than under state socialism in whatever forms it is found British Swedish Cuban Soviet or Chinese. Thus the good that fierce advocacy of personal wealth accomplishes in the historical run of things outweighs the bad. And while we may not admire always the personal motives of our business leaders we can appreciate the inevitable percolation of the good life as it comes down through our native American soil. You cannot observe the bounteous beauty of our county nor take pleasure in its most ordinary institutions in peace and safety without acknowledging the extraordinary achievement of American civilization. There are no Japanese bandits lying in wait on the Tokaidoways after all. Drive down the turnpike past the pretty painted pipes of the oil refineries and no one will hurt you.

Activists who expressed genuine and reasonable concern for the struggles of trans-identified people would simultaneously dismiss women’s desire for safety, privacy, dignity and fair competition. Unlike those activists, I feel compassion both for people who feel at odds with their sexed bodies, and for the people, mainly women and children, who are harmed when sexual dimorphism is denied. At first I was puzzled that well-educated young women were the most ardent supporters of this new policy of gender self-identification, even though it is very much against their interests. A man may be embarrassed if a female person uses a male changing room; a male in a communal female facility can inspire fear. I came to see it as the rising generation’s ‘luxury belief’ – a creed espoused by members of an elite to enhance their status in each other’s eyes, with the harms experienced by the less fortunate. If you have social and financial capital, you can buy your way out of problems – if a facility you use jeopardises your safety or privacy, you will simply switch. It is poorer and older women who are stuck with the consequences of self-ID in women’s prisons, shelters and refuges, hospital wards and care homes. And some women’s apparent support for self-ID is deceptive, expressed for fear of what open opposition would bring. The few male academics and journalists who write critically on this topic tell me that they get only a fraction of the hate directed at their female peers (and are spared the sexualised insults and rape threats). This dynamic is reinforced by ageism, which is inextricably intertwined with misogyny – including internalised misogyny. I was astonished by the young female reviewer who described my book’s tone as ‘harsh’ and ‘unfortunate’. I wondered if she knew that sexists often say they would have listened to women if only they had stated their demands more nicely and politely, and whether she realised that once she is no longer young and beautiful, the same sorts of things will be said about her, too.

He surprised her by reaching out for her, his arms closing around her. She stiffened but allowed him to draw her near. “Poor sweet,” he murmured. “You have so many burdens to carry.” There had been a time when Amelia had passionately longed for a moment such as this. Being held by Christopher, soothed by him. Once this would have been heaven. But it didn’t feel quite the same as before. “Christoph—” she began, moving away from him, but his mouth caught hers, and she froze in astonishment as he kissed her. This, too, was different … and yet for a moment, she remembered what it had been like, how happy she had once been with him. It seemed so long ago, that time before the scarlet fever, when she had been innocent and hopeful and the future had seemed full of promise. She turned her face from his. “No, Christopher.” “Of course.” He pressed his lips to her hair. “Now isn’t the proper time for this. I’m sorry.” “I’m so concerned about my brother, and Merripen, I can’t think of anything else—” “I know, sweet.” He turned her face back to his. “I’m going to help you and your family. There’s nothing I want more than your safety and happiness. And you need my protection. With your family in turmoil, you could easily be taken advantage of.” She frowned. “No one is taking advantage of me.” “What about the Gypsy?” “You’re referring to Mr. Rohan?” Christopher nodded. “I chanced to meet him on his way to London, and he spoke of you in a way that … well, suffice it to say, he’s no gentleman. I was offended for your sake.” “What did he say?” “He went so far as to claim that you and he were going to marry.” A scornful laugh escaped him. “As if you would ever lower yourself to that. A half-bred Gypsy with no manners or education.” Amelia felt a rush of defensive anger. She looked into the face of the man she had once loved so desperately. He was the embodiment of everything a young woman should want to marry. Not all that long ago, she might have compared him to Cam Rohan and found Christopher superior. But she was no longer the woman she had been … and Christopher wasn’t the knight in shining armor she had believed him to be. “I wouldn’t consider it lowering myself,” she said. “Mr. Rohan is a gentleman, and highly esteemed by his friends.” “They all find him entertaining enough for social occasions, but he will never be their equal. And never a gentleman. That’s understood by everyone, my dear, even Rohan himself.” “It’s neither understood nor accepted by me,” she said. “There is more to being a gentleman than fine manners.

The alienating effects of wealth and modernity on the human experience start virtually at birth and never let up. Infants in hunter-gatherer societies are carried by their mothers as much as 90 percent of the time, which roughly corresponds to carrying rates among other primates. One can get an idea of how important this kind of touch is to primates from an infamous experiment conducted in the 1950s by a primatologist and psychologist named Harry Harlow. Baby rhesus monkeys were separated from their mothers and presented with the choice of two kinds of surrogates: a cuddly mother made out of terry cloth or an uninviting mother made out of wire mesh. The wire mesh mother, however, had a nipple that dispensed warm milk. The babies took their nourishment as quickly as possible and then rushed back to cling to the terry cloth mother, which had enough softness to provide the illusion of affection. Clearly, touch and closeness are vital to the health of baby primates—including humans. In America during the 1970s, mothers maintained skin-to-skin contact with babies as little as 16 percent of the time, which is a level that traditional societies would probably consider a form of child abuse. Also unthinkable would be the modern practice of making young children sleep by themselves. In two American studies of middle-class families during the 1980s, 85 percent of young children slept alone in their own room—a figure that rose to 95 percent among families considered “well educated.” Northern European societies, including America, are the only ones in history to make very young children sleep alone in such numbers. The isolation is thought to make many children bond intensely with stuffed animals for reassurance. Only in Northern European societies do children go through the well-known developmental stage of bonding with stuffed animals; elsewhere, children get their sense of safety from the adults sleeping near them. The point of making children sleep alone, according to Western psychologists, is to make them “self-soothing,” but that clearly runs contrary to our evolution. Humans are primates—we share 98 percent of our DNA with chimpanzees—and primates almost never leave infants unattended, because they would be extremely vulnerable to predators. Infants seem to know this instinctively, so being left alone in a dark room is terrifying to them. Compare the self-soothing approach to that of a traditional Mayan community in Guatemala: “Infants and children simply fall asleep when sleepy, do not wear specific sleep clothes or use traditional transitional objects, room share and cosleep with parents or siblings, and nurse on demand during the night.” Another study notes about Bali: “Babies are encouraged to acquire quickly the capacity to sleep under any circumstances, including situations of high stimulation, musical performances, and other noisy observances which reflect their more complete integration into adult social activities

There are many who profess to be religious and speak of themselves as Christians, and, according to one such, “as accepting the scriptures only as sources of inspiration and moral truth,” and then ask in their smugness: “Do the revelations of God give us a handrail to the kingdom of God, as the Lord’s messenger told Lehi, or merely a compass?” Unfortunately, some are among us who claim to be Church members but are somewhat like the scoffers in Lehi’s vision—standing aloof and seemingly inclined to hold in derision the faithful who choose to accept Church authorities as God’s special witnesses of the gospel and his agents in directing the affairs of the Church. There are those in the Church who speak of themselves as liberals who, as one of our former presidents has said, “read by the lamp of their own conceit.” (Joseph F. Smith, Gospel Doctrine [Deseret Book Co., 1939], p. 373.) One time I asked one of our Church educational leaders how he would define a liberal in the Church. He answered in one sentence: “A liberal in the Church is merely one who does not have a testimony.” Dr. John A. Widtsoe, former member of the Quorum of the Twelve and an eminent educator, made a statement relative to this word liberal as it applied to those in the Church. This is what he said: “The self-called liberal [in the Church] is usually one who has broken with the fundamental principles or guiding philosophy of the group to which he belongs. . . . He claims membership in an organization but does not believe in its basic concepts; and sets out to reform it by changing its foundations. . . . “It is folly to speak of a liberal religion, if that religion claims that it rests upon unchanging truth.” And then Dr. Widtsoe concludes his statement with this: “It is well to beware of people who go about proclaiming that they are or their churches are liberal. The probabilities are that the structure of their faith is built on sand and will not withstand the storms of truth.” (“Evidences and Reconciliations,” Improvement Era, vol. 44 [1941], p. 609.) Here again, to use the figure of speech in Lehi’s vision, they are those who are blinded by the mists of darkness and as yet have not a firm grasp on the “iron rod.” Wouldn’t it be wonderful if, when there are questions which are unanswered because the Lord hasn’t seen fit to reveal the answers as yet, all such could say, as Abraham Lincoln is alleged to have said, “I accept all I read in the Bible that I can understand, and accept the rest on faith.” . . . Wouldn’t it be a great thing if all who are well schooled in secular learning could hold fast to the “iron rod,” or the word of God, which could lead them, through faith, to an understanding, rather than to have them stray away into strange paths of man-made theories and be plunged into the murky waters of disbelief and apostasy? . . . Cyprian, a defender of the faith in the Apostolic Period, testified, and I quote, “Into my heart, purified of all sin, there entered a light which came from on high, and then suddenly and in a marvelous manner, I saw certainty succeed doubt.” . . . The Lord issued a warning to those who would seek to destroy the faith of an individual or lead him away from the word of God or cause him to lose his grasp on the “iron rod,” wherein was safety by faith in a Divine Redeemer and his purposes concerning this earth and its peoples. The Master warned: “But whoso shall offend one of these little ones which believe in me, it were better … that a millstone were hanged about his neck, and that he were drowned in the depth of the sea.” (Matt. 18:6.) The Master was impressing the fact that rather than ruin the soul of a true believer, it were better for a person to suffer an earthly death than to incur the penalty of jeopardizing his own eternal destiny.

Great Roofing Tips You Should Check Out To make sure that you get the right roof for your needs, learn more about it before you hire someone to install one. This article is going to teach you a few things that can help you to have a roofing project that goes well. You just might learn a thing or two about roofing that can save you some time or money. Don't mess around with your roof if the weather is inclement. Not only does it make it more dangerous for you to go up there, but it can also ruin the work you're attempting to do. Wait for nice weather, both temperature and storm-wise, and then take advantage of the beautiful day. Always be safe when you're up on your roof. If you don't know what you're doing, don't go up there! Wear the right safety gear and don't do anything that puts your body at risk. Remember to bring along the right tools for the job as well to ensure you do the work right. Safety should always be your primary concern when repairing a roof. A quick way to seriously injure yourself is to try to work on your roof in wet conditions. Put a bucket beneath any leaks until the weather improves, then go inspect the roof and see if it's possible for you to repair it. Gutter To protect the integrity of your roof, clean the gutters regularly. Many roof problems, such as leaking, are caused by back-ups in the gutter system. Having a clogged gutter means that rain and snow cannot adequately drain and that puts an extra burden on your roofing materials. Buy tools to make cleaning the gutters faster and easier on you. If you have a hard time getting debris out of your gutter, you may want to bring in some new tools. Try fastening a metal angle on the end of a long board, then move the material towards you with a raking motion. Afterwards, clear out extra debris with a wire brush. While you should give your gutter periodic deep cleanings, there are certain things you should get away from your gutter the moment you see them. Litter, twigs, and pine needles are all big clogging culprits, and knocking them out of the way will help you prevent problems with your own gutter. These short tips have given you the knowledge you needed. These tips will maximize your knowledge of roofing. It can be a nightmare to repair or replace your roof if you are not educated on the matter.

The philosopher John Stuart Mill once wrote, “War is an ugly thing, but not the ugliest of things. The decayed and degraded state of moral and patriotic feeling which thinks that nothing is worth war is much worse. The person who has nothing for which he is willing to fight, nothing which is more important than his own personal safety, is a miserable creature and has no chance of being free unless made and kept so by the exertions of better men than himself.”8

Restricting the sale and use of guns became a salient political issue only after the assassinations of the Kennedy brothers and Martin Luther King, Jr. The gun control laws enacted or seriously proposed were modest. When Congress was passing gun regulation in 1968, the National Rifle Association’s executive vice-president wrote that “the measure as a whole appears to be one that the sportsmen of America can live with.” The GOP platforms of 1968 and 1972 supported gun regulation—and President Nixon, his speechwriter William Safire recalled, told him that “guns are an abomination” and that he would have outlawed handguns if he could. But violent crime had tripled in a decade, and in the late 1970s hysterics managed to take over the NRA, replacing its motto “Firearms Safety Education, Marksmanship Training, Shooting for Recreation” with the second half of the Second Amendment—“The Right of the People to Keep and Bear Arms Shall Not Be Infringed.” Within a decade, the official Republican position shifted almost 180 degrees to oppose any federal registration of firearms. In other words, fantasy was starting to hold its own against reason.

Japanese people like New Zealand, the quality of education, the beautiful natural surroundings, the value for money and the perceived high safety aspect. These unique characteristics attract tourists, working holidaymakers and students alike.

print out a copy of Safety First: A Reality-Based Approach to Teens and Drugs, a thoughtful, research-based harm-reduction guide for teens, parents, and educators, written by Marsha Rosenbaum, Ph.D., and published by the Drug Policy Alliance.*26

The act of making that designers find so satisfying is built into early childhood education, but as they grow, many children lose opportunities to create their own environment, bounded by a text-centric view of education and concerns for safety. Despite adults’ desire to create a safer, softer child-centric world, something got lost in translation. Jane Jacobs said, of the child in the designed-for-childhood environment: “Their homes and playgrounds, so orderly looking, so buffered from the muddled, messy intrusions of the great world, may accidentally be ideally planned for children to concentrate on television, but for too little else their hungry brains require.”9 Our built environment is making kids less healthy, less independent, and less imaginative. What those hungry brains require is freedom. Treating children as citizens, rather than as consumers, can break that pattern, creating a shared spatial economy centered on public education, recreation, and transportation safe and open for all.

The focus on thinking rather than emotions is a major reason that so many highly intelligent, highly educated people have so many stress symptoms: they learned early in life to get their moment-to-moment security—safety, nurturance, love—from thinking and doing, rather than from their emotional connection to themselves.

We need Olympic Games, international trade, educational exchange programs, free internet—anything that lets us meet across ethnic groups and country borders. We must take care of and strengthen our safety nets for world peace.

Safety is synonymous with comfort, and comfort is antithetical to confrontation and growth. I have never grown in my life without being disciplined, confronted, or challenged. I have never matured and become better at much of anything, unless I was first made to feel dissonance and discomfort. Safe spaces will encourage students to do nothing more than what they already do and become nothing more than what they already are. If each of us is "good" enough, then feeling safe in that goodness may be fine. But, if we are hell-bent in our sin, then true love and good education calls for someone to stand in our way and say, "This may make you fell threatened and unsafe, but you're not as good as you think you are. Life isn't about you. You need to stop your bad behavior and think about others more than yourself!". The irony is that, while today's students are quick to deny the reality of sin, at the same time they are crying to be protected from ideas and actions they see as "sinful"--things they don't want to hear; things they don't want to see or experience; things and people they believe to be wrong. This new world of "safe spaces" is very much an "us" versus "them" paradigm. Consequently, because today's post-mods and millennials see themselves as sinless, anyone who dares disagree with them is sinful. In an effort to protect themselves from anyone and any idea they disagree with their call for "safety" has become a tool of emotional and ideological fascism.

We lost sight of some of the principal reasons for government: to protect the rights of the minority against the majority; to invest in things the market doesn’t like paying for, like education, infrastructure, and deep research; and to provide a safety net for those who slip through the cracks of the capitalist marketplace. Many came to see government as a threat to liberty, not its protector.

You need to understand that risk is not the same for everyone. Water is not fundamentally risky, just as owning a business is not fundamentally risky. It’s the way that we interact with the environment, the knowledge we gather, and the safety nets that we establish that determine the level of risk.

no matter whether the individual motivations and behaviour of ordinary white people were racist or not, all whites benefited from social structures and organizational patterns that continually disadvantaged blacks, while allowing whites to stay well ahead in living standards, including housing, health and life span, neighbourhood amenities and safety, educational facilities and achievement, level of employment, and income and wealth.

buying yourself into an upscale community. In many corners of America, a pricey mortgage doesn’t just buy a home; it also buys a good education, a well-run soccer league, and public safety so thick and expected it appears natural, instead of the product of social design.[19]

What is needed is not a rejection of the positive role of the market mechanism in generating income and wealth, but the important recognition that the market mechanism has to work in a world of many institutions. We need the power and protection of these institutions, provided by democratic practice, civil and human rights, a free and open media, facilities for basic education and health care, economic safety nets, and of course, provisions for women's freedom and rights