Heartbreak: Loving Ourselves Through Difficult Times, By Jack Adam Weber
The degree to which we love is the degree to which we break open when we lose what we love. Grief is the central emotion associated with heartbreak. It´s there under the we might feel. But, in order to get to grief we must eventually allow ourselves to let go, even temporarily, of anger and feelings of vengeance. This is difficult for some because anger gives us the illusion that we are in control and powerful. Yet, to reclaim deep power we must let ourselves grieve.
Snowden: "I Did What I Did Because I Believe It Is the Right Thing to Do"
Snowden: The surveillance revelations are critically important because they revealed that our rights are being redefined in secret, by secret courts that were never intended to have that role—without the consent of the public, without even the awareness of the majority of our political representatives. However, as important as that is, I don’t think it is the most important thing. I think it is the fact that the director of national intelligence gave a false statement to Congress under oath, which is a felony. If we allow our officials to knowingly break the law publicly and face no consequences, we’re instituting a culture of immunity, and this is what I think historically will actually be considered the biggest disappointment of the Obama administration. I don’t think it’s going to be related to social or economic policies; it’s going to be the fact that he said let’s go forward, not backward, in regard to the violations of law that occurred under the Bush administration. There was a real choice when he became president. It was a very difficult choice—to say, “We’re not going to hold senior officials to account with the same laws that every other citizen in the country is held to,” or “This is a nation that believes in the rule of law.” And the rule of law doesn’t mean the police are in charge, but that we all answer to the same laws. You know, if Congress is going to investigate baseball players about whether or not they told the truth, how can we justify giving the most powerful intelligence official, Clapper, a pass? This is how J. Edgar Hoover ended up in charge of the FBI forever.
Facing Up To The Capitalist Within, By Georgie Wingfield-Hayes
As with the social changes that were necessary to end the African slave trade, a transformation of modern capitalism requires that we step outside of ourselves and examine our own roles within the system objectively. It’s easy to see capitalism as a system external to ourselves, but it’s much harder to acknowledge the stories we carry inside of ourselves that create and reinforce the values that sustain it.