SPIRIT IN MATTERS: Taking a Higher View of Life on Earth
By Dianne Eppler Adams

Vol. 2, No 8 – May 21, 2004
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FROM THIS VANTAGE POINT...

     The Problem of Unequal Relationships

You’d have to be marooned on a desert island not to be aware of the heart-wrenching news of Iraqi prisoner abuse and torture. While I have tried not to focus too much on the details, I find the photos and personal accounts appalling—just like most of you.

What comes up for me as a result is an awareness of the inherent problem of unequal relationships. When one person is perceived as less important or valuable than another, abuses of all kinds can happen. “Power corrupts” has been proven again!

In fact, unequal relationships harm the powerful and the weak. The ego of those who hold power over others takes control and eclipses the goodness of their soul. Those who perceive themselves as weak become drowned in fear and victim hood, unable to know their own worth.

The U.S. Declaration of Independence states that “all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness...”

To be sure, equal does not mean the same. Our national diversity is second to none. But it does mean that each person is inherently of equal value in the sight of the Creator. Therefore, it is our task to establish a society where each person is in essence equal—of equal importance and due equal respect.

If that’s our national intention as codified in the Declaration of Independence, why then do we operate in the world community with an entirely different code of ethics? We proudly proclaim that the U.S. is the world’s only Super Power and in so doing we have set up the conditions for abuse of that power. It is my view that until we return to the basic value of equality among nations that the United Nations was founded on, we are doomed to hear about more and further corruption.

What does this mean for us personally? Since our nation is a reflection of its citizens, we are all obliged to scrutinize our personal relationships. In what circumstances do you feel more powerful than or less valuable than another? In those relationships, you are in trouble—in danger of being abused or being the abuser. Consider shifting you’re perception and your behavior. No one is more valuable than you are—they are just different with different skills and responsibilities. And you are not more powerful or important than others.

Valuing diversity, without making others better or worse than you, will free you to pursue your own happiness!

(Your comments are always welcome at SpiritInMatters@aol.com.)
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HEALTHY PARTNERSHIP THROUGH SELF-LOVE: One Couple's Story
Sunday, June 20, 2004, 2-5 PM
Held in Alexandria, VA
Call 703-548-4552 to register

What is a healthy relationship? How would I recognize it if I found it? What can I do to prepare for it? If in a relationship, how can I nurture it to become healthy?

For many the idea of a healthy relationship is an oxymoron. For those who find themselves single, particularly later in life, the idea of happiness in a relationship seems impossible, yet the yearning for an "other" remains.

Dianne and Chuck Adams will share their personal journeys though a dialogue, weaving together individual stories, emphasizing lessons learned, and arriving at the commitment they hold now with a spirit of hope and possibility. What brought them together began with their own personal journey to self-love and self-appreciation.

You may find clues for your own journey, reasons not to fear relationship, hope that healthy partnership is possible for you.

This is one couple's story. Come listen and ask the questions that your heart yearns to understand.
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FOR YOUR CONSIDERATION...

AN UGLY PRISON RECORD
by Christopher Reed, Special to the Toronto Star (Canada), May 10, 2004
http://sim.c.topica.com/maacg0paa62FUaaaaaabaeQAVC/

For a nation founded on slavery and genocide, Americans retain an astonishingly enduring faith in their continuing righteousness. They are sounding this note again as the prison torture scandal continues in Iraq.

In a column in the New York Times last week, Middle East analyst Thomas Friedman warned that the revelations created the "danger of losing America as an instrument of moral authority and inspiration in the world."

Does he not read the world's newspapers? Uncle Sam as moral authority?

Other U.S. pundits similarly harrumphed about America's endangered integrity and leadership. President George W. Bush himself said the prison mistreatments were not the American way.

But they were, and they are.

...In "liberal" California, horror stories have appeared for years from hellholes such as Pelican Bay prison, where they house "the worst of the worst" — and also inflict the worst brutalities. A prisoner dumped in scalding water so his skin peeled off like old varnish; prisoners left naked outside in rainy and bitter weather for days; multiple beatings and rapes; several unexplained deaths.

In Corcoran prison, California, guards held their own Roman gladiator games with prisoners pitted against each other in fights to the near death. A disliked and defenceless prisoner was placed in the same cell as the biggest and baddest sex criminal — known as the Booty Bandit — to be duly raped to the amusement of the prisoner's supposed guardians.

Pelican Bay is such a fearful place, with prisoners kept under perpetual scrutiny while unable to see any other human being, a psychiatrist told a court that many were going insane.

A federal judge finally ordered reforms, as did another over Corcoran, but there is little evidence that either have become proper places even to house the worst.

Similar reports surface across America. Texas is especially bad.

Significantly, private, for-profit prisons have some of the worst records.

They often have such poor medical facilities that prisoners die from curable conditions, as Harper's magazine revealed in an exhaustive inquiry last year.

...It has worsened in recent years, despite a massive prison-building program that now incarcerates 2 million, the world's largest prison population.

Yet Americans have mostly ignored the disgrace of their penal system.

They became so fearful of crime, they lost consideration for the lives of criminals. Any idea of rehabilitation has been abandoned. Even when scandals over mistreatment do emerge, many say the inmates deserve it.


GROSS NATIONAL HAPPINESS AND ALTRUISTIC ECONOMICS
Global Ideas Bank
http://sim.c.topica.com/maacg0paa62FVaaaaaabaeQAVC/

Led by its young king, King Jigme Singye Wangchuck, the kingdom of Bhutan is the only country in the world to measure its wellbeing by Gross National Happiness (GNH) instead of Gross National Product (GNP). This unorthodox approach is a serious attempt to question the values of unbridled economic progress, and foreground the importance of maintaining a balance between tradition and modernisation. Bhutan has followed a cautious path of development since the 1960s, with the intention of preserving its heritage and culture and protecting its environment.

‘Anyone with a grievance can get a hearing with the king’

GNH is an official policy of the kingdom, having been passed in parliament, and it is perhaps best illustrated by some examples from Bhutan which prove that happiness really does take precedence over economic prosperity there. The country limits the number of tourists that are able to visit it, because the Bhutanese had complained that the environment was being affected and sacred lands were being spoiled. The limiting was therefore aimed at increasing the ‘happiness’ of these people. Similarly, demonstrating that the concept of GNH is inextricably connected to accountability, anyone with a grievance can go to the king himself and get a hearing.

The policy of GNH, as well as focusing on cultural promotion and good governance, also aims to put an end to ‘spiritual hunger’. Material and technological progress is not rejected or banned, but it must not be to the detriment of the value of human life, and humanity’s soul. So the new policy has a spiritual aspect to it, as well as an eminently sensible accountability aspect. Mental and psychological wealth are genuine considerations in Bhutan. Happiness is more important than monetary wealth.

...It is also intended to provoke discussion about how altruism, or spiritual and moral beliefs, can be integrated into economics. That is, it is intended to question the basis on which modern economics is founded, where wellbeing is judged on the acquisition of material things, consumption and production. Economics has limited itself to things which can be measured monetarily, and this is its weakness as well as its (empirical) strength. As Sander Tideman points out, in his paper ‘Gross National Happiness: Towards Buddhist Economics’, it is the qualitative distinctions that are lost in this measuring of quantity: “economic calculations ignore the value of things such as fresh water, green forests, clean air, traditional ways of life”, merely because they cannot be easily quantified.

...What Sander Tideman suggests is that initiatives like Bhutan’s GNH “point us to the need to base development on spiritual values, transmitted through culture, rather than merely material values”. An economics incorporating environmental and human factors does not deal with the essential problem for Tideman, which is that material development should only ever be seen as a means for people to devote themselves to spiritual development: that mind should always come over matter, as it were.

‘Buddhist economics deals with the totality of life, not just finance’


HAS THE ROMANCE GONE? WAS IT THE DRUG?
By ANAHAD O'CONNOR, The New York Times
http://sim.c.topica.com/maacg0paa62FWaaaaaabaeQAVC/

For most people taking antidepressants, the risk of a diminished sex drive may seem like a worthwhile sacrifice for the benefits from the drugs.

Up to 70 percent of patients on antidepressants report sexual side effects, yet the number of Americans who take the drugs has ballooned since Prozac was introduced in the late 1980's. Last year, studies show, doctors in the United States wrote 213 million prescriptions for antidepressants.

But what if the sexual side effects of the drugs, often considered little more than a nuisance, had more serious consequences, impairing not only sexual desire in some people, but also the ability to experience romance? The question, which experts are beginning to ask, was at the center of a talk this weekend at the annual meeting of the American Psychiatric Association in New York. Dr. Helen E. Fisher, an anthropologist at Rutgers, presented findings that suggest, she says, that common antidepressants that tinker with serotonin levels in the brain can also disrupt neural circuits involved in romance and attachment.

"We know that there are real sexual problems associated with serotonin-enhancing medications," said Dr. Fisher, author of "Why We Love: The Nature and Chemistry of Romantic Love" (2004). "But when you cripple a person's sexual desire and arousal, you're also jeopardizing their ability to fall in love and to stay in love."

...Often, the change is subtle. Drs. Fisher and Thomson point to case studies of people who gradually find their emotions blunted and their ability to see attractive features in others lost. The researchers also point to more extreme cases like people who say losing their sex drives caused romantic feelings toward longtime spouses to evaporate suddenly.

"Everyone is distinctly different," Dr. Fisher said. "Some people are so securely attached that this isn't going to change things for them. But people should be aware that these drugs dull the emotions, including the positive ones that are central components of romantic love."

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"I would rather be ashes than dust! I would rather that my spark should burn out in a brilliant blaze than it should be stifled by dry rot. I would rather be a superb meteor, every atom of me in magnificent glow, than a sleepy and permanent planet. The proper function of man is to live, not to exist. I shall not waste my days in trying to prolong them. I shall use my time."
---Jack London, American Author

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©2004 Spirit in Matters: Taking a Higher View of Life on Earth - 501 Slaters Lane #422, Alexandria, VA 22314. All rights reserved. Permission is granted for reproduction or redistribution of the e-newsletter in its entirety only.