We are a commune of inquiring, skeptical, politically centrist, capitalist, anglophile, traditionalist New England Yankee humans, humanoids, and animals with many interests beyond and above politics. Each of us has had a high-school education (or GED), but all had ADD so didn't pay attention very well, especially the dogs. Each one of us does "try my best to be just like I am," and none of us enjoys working for others, including for Maggie, from whom we receive neither a nickel nor a dime. Freedom from nags, cranks, government, do-gooders, control-freaks and idiots is all that we ask for.
Seems like everybody wants to be a therapist or counselor these days.
Everybody has problems of various degrees, and indeed sometimes it is helpful to talk it over with a trusted person. I have no problem with Biblical counseling. Anybody in a "helping profession" needs to know his limits and needs to be humble about his capacities.
My guess is that biblical counseling as some form of psychotherapy (as opposed to help with relationship to God which I would call Pastoral Counseling) can be most helpful for those whose guilt is honestly come by. By that I mean people who have every reason to feel troubled by guilt and remorse because they have done wrong, have not earned self-respect or earned a feeling of deserving God's love (which is another complicated topic). In other words, non-neurotic guilt.
... the lynchpin of our civilizational patrimony, now starting to break apart, is the United States, on whose vitality, basic conservative values and prosperity the so-called “free world” depends, or has depended. Foundering in sidereal levels of debt, ravaged by a parasitical entitlement cohort and crushing numbers of real unemployment, together amounting, according to some estimates, to 47% of the census which does not pay taxes (according to Forbes, 70% of American families receive more in net government transfers, refunds and benefits than they pay into the system), crippled by a left-leaning governing party, a complicit media establishment, and an academic fifth column, the U.S. has also been infiltrated by Muslim Brotherhood operatives and riddled by subversive Islamic organizations that may be ultimately sufficient in themselves to turn the American dream into an American nightmare. As Thomas Sowell writes, “Why are Americans — and the Western world in general — falling all over ourselves stifling our own self-expression to appease people who chose to immigrate here, and are now demanding the suppression of anything they don’t like, such as public expressions of Christianity or displays of the American flag?”
“God is the only comfort, He is also the supreme terror: the thing we most need and the thing we most want to hide from...If you look for truth, you may find comfort in the end: if you look for comfort you will not get either comfort or truth – only soft soap and wishful thinking to begin with and, in the end, despair.”
It certainly is a wonderful place, vibrant and active on nice days. Shinn caught its beauty on a wet and windy night, as well.
(A late note - in our comments, a regional Philadelphia artist clarified that the "Philadelphia Four" is actually the "Philadelphia Five" and inclusive of Henri. It seems information on the intertubes is less than clear about the term, as Henri was mentor to the Four. However, the terms seem interchangeable. Ephemeral New York noted that George Bellows lived near Gramercy Park, as well, on 19th Street. We did not pass his house on our tour.)
You Don't Have to Feel Your Breasts - Breast self-exams haven't been shown to save lives. Instead,
here's how to actually tell if you might have breast cancer.
Discussions about free will are too often binary. It does not take a neuroscientist or a philosopher to see that choices of action (or inaction) occur in the context of a complicated web of culture and tradition, peer pressures, character, emotional state, etc.
What a coup it would be if your neuroscience experiment brought about the collapse of several millennia of inconclusive philosophising about free will! A curious fact about these forays into philosophy is that almost invariably the scientists concentrate on the least scientifically informed, most simplistic conceptions of free will, as if to say they can’t be bothered considering the subtleties of alternative views worked out by mere philosophers. For instance, all the experiments in the Libet tradition take as their test case of a freely willed decision a trivial choice—between flicking or not flicking your wrist, or pushing the button on the left, not the right—with nothing hinging on which decision you make. Mele aptly likens these situations to being confronted with many identical jars of peanuts on the supermarket shelf and deciding which to reach for. You need no reason to choose the one you choose so you let some unconscious bias direct your hand to a jar—any jar—that is handy. Not an impressive model of a freely willed choice for which somebody might be held responsible. Moreover, as Mele points out, you are directed not to make a reasoned choice, so the fact that you have no clue about the source of your urge is hardly evidence that we, in general, are misled or clueless about how we make our choices.
China’s atheistic communist government conceded that its Christian population had doubled to 21 million over the past decade, worshiping in 55,000 official Protestant and 4,600 Catholic churches. The underground church, it’s widely known, was much larger—by foreign estimates perhaps 77 million, which means larger than the Communist Party. A Pew Global Attitudes study found only 11 percent of Chinese saying religion was not important in their lives, compared to 31 percent saying it was very or somewhat important. Indeed, everywhere the authors looked outside their European homeland, religion was booming in the early 21st century world.
People forget, but Hillary was really President – not Bill. Just 4 days after taking office, Hillary was given the authority to start a task force for healthcare reform. The problem was, her vision was unbelievable. The costs upon business were oppressive so much so that not even the Democrats could support her. When asked how was a small business mom and pop going to pay for healthcare she said if they could not afford it they should not be in business. From that moment on, my respect for her collapsed. She revealed herself as a real Marxist.
I would build a cloudy House For my thoughts to live in; When for earth too fancy-loose And too low for Heaven! Hush! I talk my dream aloud I build it bright to see, I build it on the moonlit cloud, To which I looked with thee.
Cloud-walls of the morning's grey, Faced with amber column, Crowned with crimson cupola From a sunset solemn! May mists, for the casements, fetch, Pale and glimmering; With a sunbeam hid in each, And a smell of spring.
Build the entrance high and proud, Darkening and then brightening, If a riven thunder-cloud, Veined by the lightning. Use one with an iris-stain, For the door within; Turning to a sound like rain, As I enter in.
Build a spacious hall thereby: Boldly, never fearing. Use the blue place of the sky, Which the wind is clearing; Branched with corridors sublime, Flecked with winding stairs Such as children wish to climb, Following their own prayers.
In the mutest of the house, I will have my chamber: Silence at the door shall use Evening's light of amber, Solemnising every mood, Softening in degree, Turning sadness into good, As I turn the key.
Be my chamber tapestried With the showers of summer, Close, but soundless - glorified When the sunbeams come here; Wandering harpers, harping on Waters stringed for such, Drawing colours, for a tune, With a vibrant touch.
Bring a shadow green and still From the chestnut forest, Bring a purple from the hill, When the heat is sorest; Spread them out from wall to wall, Carpet-wove around, Whereupon the foot shall fall In light instead of sound.
Bring the fantasque cloudlets home From the noontide zenith Ranged, for sculptures, round the room, Named as Fancy weeneth: Some be Junos, without eyes; Naiads, without sources Some be birds of paradise, Some, Olympian horses.
Bring the dews the birds shake off, Waking in the hedges, Those too, perfumed for a proof, From the lilies' edges: From our England's field and moor, Bring them calm and white in; Whence to form a mirror pure, For Love's self-delighting.
Bring a grey cloud from the east, Where the lark is singing; Something of the song at least, Unlost in the bringing: That shall be a morning chair, Poet-dream may sit in, When it leans out on the air, Unrhymed and unwritten.
Bring the red cloud from the sun While he sinketh, catch it. That shall be a couch, with one Sidelong star to watch it, Fit for poet's finest Thought, At the curfew-sounding; Things unseen being nearer brought Than the seen, around him.
Poet's thought, not poet's sigh! 'Las, they come together! Cloudy walls divide and fly, As in April weather! Cupola and column proud, Structure bright to see - Gone - except that moonlit cloud, To which I looked with thee!
Let them! Wipe such visionings From the Fancy's cartel Love secures some fairer things Dowered with his immortal. The sun may darken - heaven be bowed - But still, unchanged shall be, Here in my soul, that moonlit cloud, To which I looked with THEE!
I believe that evil exists. I have seen it in myself, and I think I understand the human desire to externalize it or to deny it. Denial of evil is dangerous.
From The Guardian (really): The truth about evil - Our leaders talk a great deal about vanquishing the forces of evil. But their rhetoric reveals a failure to accept that cruelty and conflict are basic human traits
One quote from this good essay:
There are some who think the very idea of evil is an obsolete relic of religion. For most secular thinkers, what has been defined as evil in the past is the expression of social ills that can in principle be remedied. But these same thinkers very often invoke evil forces to account for humankind’s failure to advance. The secularisation of the modern moral vocabulary that many believed was under way has not occurred: public discourse about good and evil continues to be rooted in religion. Yet the idea of evil that is invoked is not one that features in the central religious traditions of the west. The belief that evil can be finally overcome has more in common with the dualistic heresies of ancient and medieval times than it does with any western religious orthodoxy.
I know a guy who got an A+ in Physical Chemistry at an elite university, and never went to class. He needed the spare time to practice with his grunge band. He told me he spent 24 hours non-stop going through the textbook with the help of some borrowed Adderal.
I suspect he missed a lot of interesting stuff, but he got the competency.
There are plenty of reasons for "seat time" in many areas of study, but certainly not in all. For example, there really are no valid criteria (in my view) for competency in Art History, or in history for that matter.
My experience in life has taught me that many or most people would accept some form of feudalism in exchange for safety and security for themselves and their families. Serfdom, if you will.
Caught as most of us are between a job and the government, it's all still basically feudal is it not? Not what the American founders had in mind.
Image via 
You Don't Have to Feel Your Breasts 
Frank Serpico 
The House Of Clouds 