Watermark: Interesting Reading

10 Things I Have Learned, Milton Glaser
via Lifehacker

Everyone always talks about confidence and believing in what you do. I remember once going to a class in Kundalini yoga where the teacher said that, spirituality speaking, if you believed that you had achieved enlightenment you have merely arrived at your limitation. I think that is also true in a more practical sense. Deeply held beliefs of any kind prevent you from being open to experience, which is why I find all firmly held ideological positions questionable. It makes me nervous when someone believes too deeply or too much. I think that being sceptical and questioning all deeply held beliefs is essential. Of course we must know the difference between scepticism and cynicism because cynicism is as much a restriction of one’s openness to the world as passionate belief is. They are sort of twins.

today as yesterday revisited, Chief Blogging Officer
via Sandhill Trek

What stands in the way is a little item called ideology. Call them belief systems if it makes you more comfortable. Americans, especially, seem to be made easily uncomfortable by talk of ideology. Like class, ideology is what other people -- people somewhere "over there" -- have. Not us. What we have is the plain vanilla truth. This charming naivete quickly shades into the kind of unconscious arrogance that makes those other people over there want to blow up our buildings and give us all anthrax. Nasty, yes. Despicable, yes. Understandable? Unfortunately, yes. Because if you say you have no ideology, only the truth of the "way things are," then there is no possibility of having a conversation. Because if you say you have no "system of belief" but rather perceive reality as it truly is, then there's no use talking.

The importance of feminism to liberalism, Mouse Words

There's been a lot of ink spilled as of late bemoaning the lack of direction and lack of goals for progressives. This sort of thing really perplexes those of us who concentrate on feminist progressivism--I have no problem whatsoever stating what my direction and goals are for feminism. Feminists want full legal equality for women, parity between the sexes in every aspect of public life, social relationships between men and women based on equality, the rights of children to be acknowledged and respected, the right of women to use every tool science has to offer to maintain control over our bodies, wage equity, social policies to help parents, and healthy social attitudes towards sexuality. We also have tons of plans and ideas that we'd like to implement. You want goals and ideas? Feminists got 'em.

Squid? Or Octopus?, alphabitch
via Trish Wilson's Blog

It's not all that long ago (a few days? weeks?) that Pharyngula came to my attention, but I've become what I guess you could call an admirer of PZ Myers. And since it's his birthday, and he likes cephalopods, I thought I'd post this story about a squid. Well, it's not a squid, actually, but the squid plays a very important role. Plus it does take place in Minnesota. Well, my dad lives very close to Minnesota, anyway. Just across the river in Wisconsin.

Creating a Post-Civilization Culture, How To Save The World

Principles: Because it's so difficult to get consensus on principles, and because principles cannot be imposed, I think it's important that the new culture have as few principles, and as inclusive and intuitive principles as possible. The smallest set I can come up with that will do the job is these five, and they're all about responsibility:

Legacy Principle: We must leave the world at least as healthy, abundant and well-off for future generations as we found it.

Gaia Principle: We recognize that Earth is a single, self-balancing, self-managing organism of which we are an inseparable part, and we have a sacred responsibility to respect and live in harmony with all other life on Earth, not treat it as our 'property', and to waste nothing.

Stop at One Principle: Until we can restore a healthy balance to life on our planet, and live up to the Legacy and Gaia Principles, we must procreate no more than one child for each two human inhabitants until our population is reduced to one billion.

No Debts No Deficits Principle: We must always live within our means, be beholden to no others, and never encumber our descendants.

Trade Only Surpluses Principle: We will buy from other communities only those things which we cannot reasonably produce ourselves, and sell to other communities only those things which we do not need ourselves.

The Religious Left, Salon

And yet there was a time -- not so very long ago -- when the religious left was a powerful institution in American society and politics, when the term "religious" was not immediately assumed to connote "conservative." Moral giants with names like Reinhold Niebuhr and Dorothy Day and Martin Luther King Jr. led intellectual and social justice movements. It's nearly impossible to page through American history without coming across political causes that were driven either partly or entirely by progressive people of faith -- abolition, women's suffrage, labor reforms of the progressive era, civil rights, and any number of antiwar movements.