Modern – International Diplomacy News

Ascent of Modern Language: How Our Culture Shapes The Way We Speak

Book Review

Ascent of the A-Word: Assholism, the First Sixty Years by Geoffrey Nunberg

Public Affairs

It is delightful that a respected linguist would take up the challenge of writing about an inelegant word that has become a staple of our spoken language.

Who else but Geoffrey Nunberg would have taken the term “asshole” and dissected it into a multitude of forms that both describe and enhance our understanding-indeed appreciation-of this concept?

In the literal sense, assholerefers to someone’s anatomy; however, used in the popular colloquial fashion, assholerefers to someone’s personality or behavior.

It is the latter meaning Dr. Nunberg spends time deftly dissecting, from its first literary appearance to the characteristics of those who represent the archetypes in our society.

Dr. Nunberg traces the use of coarse language from the Victorian era of the 1920s to the spread of the A-word by returning World War II servicemen (and novelist Norman Mailer in The Naked and the Dead).

In an effort to describe who is an asshole or behaves in the category of assholism, Dr. Nunberg aligned his definition with Barbara Walter’s. Among those who are often paired with the asshole label are: Rush Limbaugh, Mel Gibson, Hank Williams Jr., Bill O’Reilly, Tiger Woods, Tom Cruise, Karl Rove, Donald Trump, Sarah Palin, and Mark Zuckerberg.

A personal deliberation over whether someone is an asshole, a prick, or jerk is more about a personality than semantics. To paraphrase the famous phrase by U.S. Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart regarding pornography: I can’t define one, but I know one when I see one.

Just as there are those who are specifically identifiable as assholes, Dr. Nunberg also has a definition of the “anti-asshole.”

The anti-asshole is a new cultural hero best depicted by Clint Eastwood’s Dirty Harry. Other anti-assholes include Bruce Willis and Steven Seagal.

These anti-heroes are tough, blunt, and disaffected, according to Professor Nunberg. They are courteous to ordinary folk, but abusive and contemptuous to criminals and those in the police hierarchy who keep them from doing their job.

Ascent of the A-Wordwould be incomplete if Professor Nunberg left out assholism in political discourse. His best example? Donald Trump. “Trump’s reputation as an asshole was firmly established before his dalliance with politics began.”

In his book, Dr. Nunberg trounces the political broadcasters as those who truly qualify as personal and professional assholes. He gives an example of this behavior by Ann Coulter when she gave a talk at the University of Ottawa in 2010. A Muslim student asked her how Muslims are expected to travel if they shouldn’t be allowed on airplanes as Coulter had suggested. She answered, “Take a camel.”

“To judge from the energy they give preening, sneering and bullying their guests and callers, a lot of successful ones in talk radio, as in baseball, are the nice guys who finish at the bottom of the division.”

“The problem with political assholism,” contends the author, “is that it has worked its way into everyday conversation, particularly as response to the politicization of manners associated with political correctness.”

In the end, assholism is not helpful in engendering or maintaining a useful and constructive dialogue. By its very definition, it is “designed to deny that very possibility” by dividing one group from another.

How do we avoid assholism? As Dr. Nunberg suggests, “When someone acts like an asshole “about an important matter,” it is important not to answer in kind, but “with the seriousness the question requires.”

Dr. Nunberg is a distinguished professor of linguistics at the University of California at Berkeley.

Source by Geri Spieler

This article is brought to you by Kokula Krishna Hari Kunasekaran! Visit Website or Follow back at @kkkhari

A Modern Case of Past Life Regression

Past life regression (PLR) may be both an experimental technique and a form of therapy, but it has scientific credibility only if reincarnation itself is proven scientifically to exist. The existence of reincarnation is not yet a scientific truth. Recent studies indicate that reincarnation merits acknowledgment as a scientific hypothesis because it can be falsified or confirmed through scientific investigation. For this reason Dr. Ian Stevenson's international field studies are immensely important. Any idea that has clinical usefulness has clinical validity, but the clinical validity of PLR has yet to be convincingly demonstrated.

The most famous case of past life regression (PLR) is undoubtedly that of Bridey Murphy. It is a historical case. In the mid-twentieth century Morey Bernstein, a Colorado businessman who had practiced hypnotism for ten years with hundreds of different persons, decided to attempt to regress someone to one or more past lives. He chose as his subject a woman called Virginia Tighe, knowing that she had the ability to go into a deep trance with ease. Between 29 November 1952 and 29 August 1953 Bernstein made six attempts to facilitate the regression of Virginia. During those sessions she recalled one brief life as a baby who died. After that there emerged the figure of Bridey Murphy – more formally Bridget Kathleen Murphy.

Following her first experience as Bridey, Virginia mutated into her alter ego whenever invited to do so in a trance state. She proffered a significant amount of information about Ireland, none of which she had any explicable way of knowing as Virginia Tighe. She said she had been born in Cork in 1798, the daughter of a Protestant barrister called Duncan Murphy and his wife Kathleen. She had a brother named Duncan Blaine Murphy, who had married Aimee Strayne. Another brother had died in infancy. At the age of twenty, Bridey said, she was married in a Protestant ceremony to a Catholic, Brian Joseph McCarthy, the son of another Cork barrister. Brian and Bridey moved to Belfast, where he attended school and eventually progressed to teach law at Queen's University. They had no children, and Bridey lived until she was sixty-six.

No record of any of these facts has been identified in Ireland. However, during her narration of her experiences as Bridey, Virginia mentioned the names of two Belfast grocers, Farr's and John Carrigan. It proved possible to verify that two grocers with those names did operate retail enterprises in the city at the appropriate time. She said that her address in Cork was The Meadows, and it was established that there is an area in that town named Mardike Meadows. Queen's University in Belfast is of course a renowned educational establishment. Virginia used certain distinctive words that on investigation proved to be in use in Ireland at Bridey's time, such as 'ditched' for 'buried', a 'linen' to mean a handkerchief, and 'lough' for river or lake. It was pointed out by those convinced of the veracity of Virginia's recollections that a girl born and raised in the United States, as Virginia was, would be unlikely to have been acquainted with these terms. Investigative reporters connected that there was some evidence for 'something', as yet unexplained. Credible hypnosis experts claim to have debunked this case, but the late Professor Ian Stevenson who has investigated maximum cases of children remembering previous lives, considered it worthy of closer scrutiny.

"Looking For Carroll Beckwith" (Robert L. Snow, 1999, Looking for Carroll Beckwith. Pennsylvania: Daybreak books) is an interesting case of past life regression. Carroll Beckwith was a minor portrait painter who had lived and worked in New York city in the late 19th and early20th century. He had never done anything outstanding that would make him immortal as an artist. Captain Robert L. Snow is a commander of the homicide branch at the Indianapolis Police department. He discovered while under hypnosis that he was Carroll Beckwith in a previous life. Snow wanted to disprove the images he had experienced while under hypnosis as a form of cryptomnesia. Mr Snow was already disenchanted with hypnotherapeutic procedures in child sex abuse cases. The regression took place in 1992 and Captain Snow was able to find 28 details to his regression that could be proven or disproven.

Instead of disproving the veracity of his images, Mr Snow proved that most every recollection he had while hypnotised actually took place nearly 100 years earlier. While holidaying in New Orleans, Captain Snow entered an art gallery in an obscure side street where he encountered the painting of his memory: the hunchbacked woman. He learned that Beckwith's personal diaries and an unpublished autobiography existed in a local library in New York. For a detective that was a definitive piece of evidence to close or prove the case. From Beckwith's diaries, he found that 26 points of 28 matched with the life of Carroll Beckwith. His recollections included that Beckwith used a walking stick even though he was not disabled, visited France, drunk wine (Whiskey was the popular drink in US), disliked painting portraits, upset over bad picture hangings and lighting in art shows, painted the portrait of a hunchbacked woman, mother died of blood clot, wife Berth was childless, Berth used to play piano or sing for friends etc. Captain Snow got the name of the previous personality's wife incorrect but his frank admittance of it adds to his credibility. Mr Snow claims that he has more proof of his previous life existence than most murder cases and is convinced that he carries some of the memories of Carroll Beckwith. Parapsychologists could offer alternative explanations even for such apparently true memories. Captain Snow simply concludes in his book: "I cannot accept that, with the billions of people who have inhabited the Earth, my case is unique, that mine would be the only case since John the Baptist, who some say that Jesus describes in Mathew as being a rebirth of Elijah ".

Extreme skeptics of past life regression might explain away the flash backs of hypnotic remembrances of previous lives as "walk in" phenomenon which has not been discussed in the scientific literature of parapsychology.

Source by James Paul Pandarakalam

This article is brought to you by Kokula Krishna Hari Kunasekaran! Visit Website or Follow back at @kkkhari

Women, The New James Bond of Our Modern Times

More than ever the world needs emotionally intelligent, humanity focused, and heart awakened women leaders that play an important role in the evolution of human consciousness and in the direction the world we all share is taking.

With Brexit, Syrian refugee crisis, and the rise of unprecedented extremism, nationalism, fascism, phobias, antisemitism, Islamophobia, etc, it is essential to have conscious women leaders who like James Bond, can overcome the toughest challenges presented to them and from the the ashes rise triumphantly like a phoenix.

Many of us grew up with super heroes like James Bond, Captain America, Jean Luke Pickard, Superman, Wonder woman, Madonna, Lady Gaga, and Oprah being our hero's that we aspire to become.

The time has come for us all to do our part and awaken the hero within, to take action, be engaged, and have our say in the global crisis that in one form or another impacts every human being.

I grew up in the ghettos of a small town called Gostivar in western Macedonia at times where daily I saw women being abused, judged, and had very little human rights. As I started to travel around the world, I realized, just like my mother, sisters, cousins, and other women I knew back at home, millions of women continue to be treated badly.

As a kid, I knew I was different, I felt the pain, the judgment, and the loneliness and the abuse that my mother and other women endured. Ever since I wanted to do something about it, this feeling to help women globally followed me through my entire life, and it is what also inspired me to be who I am today and in my latest book write about a global problem we all share- loneliness.

Most you may have heard about the extraordinary work that mother Theresa did around the world. What has changed? Not much, we still experience global segregation in an era that is technologically advanced yet many feeling extremely lonely in their hearts.

To address the global problems such as famine, inequality, job losses, war, climate change, sustainability, etc, I believe more conscious women are required in order for humanity to find the solutions to the global problems that are on the rise.

Women have an important role in building a more just, equal, and harmonious society, and in directing the course of the planet we all live, share, and call home.

My mother, together with my dad, fought for educating, empowering, and supporting my sisters to be free of religious and political dogmas that imprisoned women, treated them as non-equals, and enslaved them. Today, I continue to support their mission by carry this torch of light that my parent ignited in me.

Through my day-to-day coaching, healing, and speaking engagements I help many amazing woman from all professions and background to step up into their true power, their hearts intelligence, and aid them create, build, and grow iconic businesses, products, and most of all an inner wisdom required to be conscious, healthy and wealthy leaders.

As openly gay man, I know from first-hand experience what it feels like to be different, to not fit the box that someone else created for you, and to not conform to societal expectations.

Millions of women around the world still continue to endure mental, physical, emotional and sexual abuse. If we are to change the course of the future that we all want, then we all need to do our part in assisting women grow into beautiful goddesses who with their wings of love, compassion, and understanding can embrace the darkness experienced globally and turn it into light that shine's humanity's path to a better future.

Many people who I have met on my path at some point in their lives they all felt the pain of being rejected, abandoned, and alone in a world where we come to express our true magnificent being that is infinite in our abilities to create and destroy life.

Throughout my life, starting from my mum, sisters, friends, work colleagues, teachers, healers, and many amazing women who crossed my path, they have helped on my journey to better myself and become who I am today.

Some of them were nominated for the "Global Woman of the Year Award 2017" organized by Mirela Sula who founded Migrant and Global Women with a mission which aims to address the following questions:

1. How can women come together and become leaders in building and empowering their communities.

2. How can men help in building a new paradigm for women as an equal and influential force in society.

3. How can we bring together the most successful leaders from around the globe and redefine the pathways to power and diversity in businesses and communities.

Mirela, with her mission and the vision for Global Woman is the James Bond of our modern time. She is the wonderwoman who helps women globally step into their true power.

As a supporter of women, Todor and I joined Mirela and many amazing women for this once a year event that honors the extraordinary work women do at the Global Women Magazine grand gala dinner held on the 25th March 2017 where they presented the awards for the best cover stories and the ultimate "Global Women of the Year".

Reading this article you know that you are an agent for change, love, peace, and equality. Make sure you take daily action, connect with other people who share a similar vision, and keep investing in your greatest asset-you.

Love and Wisdom,

Source by Tony Jeton Selimi