Author: Rick Bellingham
Hope
“Hope of consciousness is strength; hope of feelings is slavery; hope of body is disease.” — Gurdjieff “This is a fearful, hopeless and even nihilistic time.” — Michelle Goldberg “Hope in reality is the worst of all evils because it prolongs the torments of man.” — Nietzsche Whew!! Other than placing your hope in consciousness, those are some pretty bleak quotes! Is hope hopeless? That’s the question I want to take on in this post. Read More
The Corrections Component in the Justice with PEACE System
What if jails were able to reduce recidivism by 50% over a three-year period (based on rearrest)? Well, 50 years ago, that’s exactly what we did. How did that happen? We developed a comprehensive and integrated program aimed at multiple stakeholders, and implemented it systematically through five phases: readiness, awareness, acquisition, application, and follow-up. This post will address all five phases of the Corrections component of the Justice in PEACE system I overviewed in the Read More
Justice with PEACE
No justice; no peace!!! That has been the slogan of many protest movements going back as far as the 1986 killing of Michael Griffith, a Trinidadian immigrant assaulted by a mob of white youth in Howard Beach, NYC. Since then, it has been a rallying cry for each miscarriage of justice perpetrated on the disenfranchised. It implies, of course, that peaceful action is impossible without justice. I wholeheartedly agree. In this post, I’m proposing that Read More
Pretending Part II
“Everything hurts,Our hearts shadowed and strange,Minds made muddied and mute.We carry tragedy, terrifying and true.And yet none of it is new” —Amanda Gorman In February, 2021, I wrote a post on pretending. In the last year, there have been so many terrifying tragedies and “none of it is new.” We are still pretending no changes are needed. So, here is Part II. As is my custom, I have been reading lots of books trying to Read More
The Hard Truth Of Uvalde
Zoom into the crippling and crushing grief of any one parent of one of the slaughtered children in Uvalde and you will get a glimpse of the shattered soul of America. Zoom out 1000x and you will get a sense of the enormity of the problem we are facing here. We already knew that there is little justice in American criminal justice. Now it is clear there is apparently little system in the American justice Read More
Change
“Come mothers and fathers throughout the landAnd don’t criticize what you can’t understandYour sons and your daughters are beyond your commandYour old road is rapidly agingSo get out of the new road if you can’t lend a handThe times, they are a-changin’.” Yup, the times are a-changin’. Bob Dylan wrote this song in 1964, and change has continuously accelerated since then. For example, the world population, when he wrote the song, was about 3 billion. Read More
30 Steps on the Path to Harmony
“We always belonged to this mystery, and maybe we can begin to find our way back, even if it means following an almost hidden path.” —Llewellyn Vaughan-Lee I just completed a 60 day course entitled “Harmonizing All with All” conducted by Artie Vipperla, a Harvard trained polymath and Ph.D. psychologist who happens to be a Vietnam buddy of mine. The course consisted of two cycles – the first to present and give people an experience Read More
10 Steps for Building a Healthy Community Part I
Our small town of Elk Rapids (ER), Michigan is embarking on a bold experiment. We are seeking to find common ground across divides while welcoming healthy conflicts and respectful disagreements—not exactly what we are seeing around the world. WHY? We want to demonstrate that it is possible to bridge divides in the pursuit of creating healthy, innovative, and thriving communities, and that is possible for multiple community agencies to engage constructively and collaboratively to accelerate Read More
Complexity
“We need a self because the complexity of the chemical processes that make up our individual humanities exceeds the processing power of our brains.” Mohsin Hamid Humans are complex systems – so complex that it is tempting to reduce experience into simplistic dualities. A great case in point are the conversations about gender fluidity and sexual orientation. It is so easy to confine the human experience into the binary of male and female. These handy Read More
Illusions and Possibilities
“Illusions commend themselves to us because they save us pain and allow us to enjoy pleasure instead. We must therefore accept it without complaint when they sometimes collide with a bit of reality against which they are dashed to pieces.” Sigmund Freud Gurdjieff often stated that his mission was to mercilessly destroy the illusions we have about ourselves and the world. He is getting a lot of help these days from three major disruptions on Read More
War Culture Antidotes
“The authoritarians tell a simple story about how to restore order — it comes from cultural homogeneity and the iron fist of the strongman. Democrats have a harder challenge — to show how order can be woven amid diversity, openness and the full flowering of individuals. But Democrats need to name the moral values and practices that will restore social order.” David Brooks Practices and behaviors are simply manifest values. That’s true on an individual Read More
Welcoming
Hmmm, The dawn of curiosity Awareness begins to awaken I notice my shriveled state I take stock of my rigidity I feel my numbness I am tight and closed I am defensive and protected Could there be more? Can I open? Is it worth it? Ohhh, I open to possibility Leaves on the trees Flowers blooming Wind blowing gently in my face The sound of streams singing All this beauty waiting to be Seen, Read More