11 December 2010

Must watch! Be a responsible member of society !!!

This is an eye opening video about how our changed environment can impact the health of your future child. The issues raised affect your child before a conception is even in place as well, because a child’s health blueprint becomes the lowest common denominator of both prospective parents health at the time of conception. Begin optimising your child’s health before a conception is even in place. Act pregnant now to get pregnant later.


 
... and do not be a murderer, do not kill a someone else child as well !
 

14 November 2010

That adoption by same-sex couples or single parents should not be legal

This ethics essay is about responsible parenting which leads to the well being of society and about the high potential risk of not achieving it. There is also shown a high potential risk of increasing social pathology. Parenting is hard to imagine without a family but responsible parenting is absolutely impossible without it. Need to repeat: It is hard to imagine not only parenting without family but also parenting without responsibility. Firstly, we should familiarize ourselves with the functions of the family. A good definition of the word “function” is: a contribution that a part of a system makes to the maintenance of the whole. This is also true when dealing with the functions of the family. Every member of a family contributes to the family unit as a whole, and every family unit contributes and adds to society. Talcott Parson, a well known structural sociologist said, “we need families in all societies because they do a special job for society” [1] and stated even more that the main functions of the family were: "to ensure that new babies actually survive to become adult members of that society, to regulate sexual activity, to ensure that children are satisfactorily socialized into the norms and values of society, to provide economic support for other family members, to satisfy our emotional needs for love and security," and finally, "to provide us with a sense of place and position in our society". [2] To make the family safe, our ancestors invented a social institution called marriage. Merriam-Webster's dictionary definition in the 2003 edition shows: “the mutual relation of husband and wife, the institution whereby men and women are joined in a special kind of social and legal dependence for the purpose of founding and maintaining a family”. The extended family or later nuclear family was the way humankind survived more than fifty five thousands of years.


However, at some point in history, human custom tradition and thoughts changed. The successful human survival strategy of society which was structured on a family base progressively deteriorated and ended. Destruction of successful western society had begun.

12 November 2010

Petition on German Concentration Camps

WHEREAS the media uses the historically erroneous terms "Polish concentration camp" and "Polish death camp" to describe Auschwitz and other Nazi extermination camps built by the Germans during World War II, which confuses impressionable and undereducated readers, leading them to believe that the Holocaust was executed by Poland, rather than Nazi Germany,


WHEREAS these phrases are Holocaust revisionism that desecrate the memories of six million Jews from 27 countries who were murdered by Nazi Germany,

WHEREAS Poland was the first country invaded by Germany, and the only country whose citizens suffered the death penalty for rescuing Jews, yet never surrendered during six years of German occupation, even though one-sixth of its population was killed in the war, approximately half of which was Christian,

WHEREAS educated journalists must know these facts and not cross the libel threshold of malice by using phrases such as "Polish concentration camps."


BE IT THEREFORE RESOLVED that the undersigned request that The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, and the Associated Press, include entries in their stylebooks requiring news stories to be historically accurate, using the official name of all "German concentration camps in Nazi-occupied Poland," as UNESCO did in 2007 when it named the camp in Auschwitz, "The Auschwitz-Birkenau German Nazi Concentration and Extermination Camp (1940-1945)."

Sign here http://www.thekf.org/events/news/petition/

My bio-history...

Bio-historical Critical Sociology started on 10.10.2009 in Polish cyberspace when I published my Polish blog series of sociological articles. In the blog, I analysed a Polish contemporary socio-political situation based on very interesting unpublished, open-ended articles through extensive research on relevant scientific fields and its findings, such as archeology, history, evolutionary biology, evolutionary anthropology, linguistics and sociology.

This biological and historical approach to Critical Sociology is a continuation of Darwin’s theory, Wilson’s sociobiology and Maryanski’s evolutionary sociology, including the thoughts of John Locke, Charles Wright Mills and Friedrich von Hayek. The approach remained in opposition to main stream academic sociology. In other words, it is an evolutionary approach in terms of social cultural history and the biological development of creatures on earth.

A bio-history approach to human ecology stresses the interplay between biophysical and cultural processes. Its starting point is the study of the history of life on earth and of the basic principles of evolution, ecology, and physiology, as well as the sensitivities of ecosystems and living organisms. It then considers the biological and innate sensitivities of humans, the emergence of the human aptitude for culture and its biological significance. It is particularly concerned with the interplay between cultural processes and biophysical systems, such as ecosystems and human populations.

Research methods used in this bio-historical school of critical sociology are qualitative observations based on one on one in-depth interviews rather than quantitative statistics or polls. The social researcher works like a private detective gathering social and personal data which are further used in logical processes of forming a conclusion such as induction, deduction or analogy.


See:


Editing support: Jane Lock

04 November 2010

If you are a Jew... - a letter from a “CouchSurfing” host to his potential globetrotters guests

If you are a Jew and visiting or staying at my place, please read this note carefully as it carries some important statements.


From early childhood I have been very passionate about history and I have read hundreds of books (literally) about many history events. I have always been particularly interested in the history of the World War II. I consider World War II to be the most significant event in the history of our modern civilisation. Recent contact with Jews in Australia has brought a mixed bag of feelings. Despite many positive experiences, I have heard several false anti-Polish statements that have roots in negative stereotypes popularised by the Western media which are not supported by historical evidence. As I personally know people who risked their lives to help Jews during World War II, these statements are deeply offensive to me, my friends and my nation and I simply won’t tolerate them. I would like to present comments expressed by Jews I have met in Australia for your consideration:



1. “Poles are Anti-Semitic”

As individual opinions typically vary, the cruel events of the World War II have greatly reduced the Jewish population in Poland (it has been reduced to around 15,000 people) therefore for most of my life I have never met a Jew and anti-semitism has never existed in my consciousness. Possibly, for the same reason I have never met anyone who has demonstrated anti-Jewish attitudes. According to Wikipedia, “Germany, France, Britain and Russia are the countries with the highest rate of anti-semitic incidents in Europe. The Netherlands and Sweden have also consistently had high rates of anti-semitic attacks since 2000”. Poland is not mentioned there. It is also an undeniable fact that Poland hosted the biggest Jewish community on the planet for many centuries, with first settlement records reaching back to the XI century. Read more about Jewish settlement in Poland through the following link:

https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/History_of_the_Jews_in_Poland

29 October 2010

William Grassie; Nationalism, Terrorism, and Religion: A Bio-Historical Approach

This is a part of a lecture that William Grassie gave in 2008: February at the Subodhi Institute, April at the University of Peradeniya and again in May, BMICH Committee Room B, Colombo, Sri Lanka;
http://www.grassie.net/pdfs/2008_A_Biohistorical_Approach.pdf viewed on 29.10.2010 at 13:53(GMT+10)

“Discussing the phenomena of nationalism, terrorism, and religion. It is wise to take a bio-historical, evolutionary perspective, because I think this will help us best understand and transform many conflicts [and dilemmas] throughout the world.
I am inspired to take this evolutionary approach in part through my encounters with the writings of Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, a French Jesuit Paleontologist who died in 1955.
He writes:
For our age, to have become conscious of evolution means something very different and much more than having discovered one further fact...
Blind indeed are those who do not see the sweep of a movement whose orb infinitely transcends the natural sciences and has successfully invaded and conquered the surrounding territory – chemistry, physics, sociology, and even mathematics and the history of religions. One after the other all the fields of human knowledge have been shaken and carried away by the same under-water current in the direction of some development. Is evolution a theory, a system, or a hypothesis? It is more: it is a general condition to which all theories, all hypotheses, all systems must bow and which they must satisfy henceforward if they are to be thinkable and true. Evolution is a light illuminating all facts, a curve that all lines must follow.

By taking this broad evolutionary approach, we gain the most leverage in both understanding and transforming [our] countries and the world. So [it is good to] begin globally and end locally [wherever on Earth].

Nationalism
Nationalism can be understood as an evolutionary outgrowth of our natural tribal passions and rationalities, which were imprinted in the human psyche and genome over millions of years. Humans are profoundly social animals with a highly evolved capacityto engage in symbolic thought. One of the fundamental challenges in social species is how to ensure cooperation within the group and sacrifice on behalf of the group. The wellbeing and survival of the group depends on this cooperation and sacrifice. In humans, this is accomplished by a mix of evolved primate behaviours, as well as, newer cultural adaptations in the realm of religions, ideologies, and cultures.

It is no simple evolutionary trick to get individuals to cooperate and to sacrifice their own wellbeing, or that of their immediate offspring, for the benefit of the group. And yet, we cannot imagine that a human society would long endure if it could not 1) organize its members to cooperate and 2) in extreme instances, ask individuals to sacrifice their wellbeing for the benefit of the group. The latter is particularly troublesome to evolutionary biologists, because true altruism would contradict Darwin’s theory of natural selection. There are various theories within evolutionary biology that try to explain other-regarding behaviour. They go by names like kin selection and reciprocal altruism. At this stage, we need only consider a few of the proximate mechanism, rather than their ultimate explanations, and think about how these scale up from the level of the tribe to the dynamics of a nation state.

Remember that the dark side of this in-group altruism is that it is often employed in the most brutal manner against outsiders. Humans are clearly capable of great evil, as manifested in warfare, massacres, pillaging, raping, and enslavement, which have been the norm for most of human history and presumably much of our pre-history. This evil is partly a function of our evolved nature.

Of course, humans have natural dispositions towards living in groups. It hardly needs to be said, but no human is self-created. There is no such thing as a fully autonomous individual human. We speak languages we did not invent; we use tools that we did not design; we benefit from a vast library of knowledge that we did not discover; and we are nurtured as infants and children into “individuality” by families and societies that we did not choose.

14 October 2010

What does Henry Lawson’s story “Drifted Back” tell us about the experience of the Australians in 19th century? What two themes we can identify in the story?

File:Henry Lawson photograph 1902.jpgIn this essay I will present my view on Henry Lawson’s perspective on the life and experience of white settlement pioneers in outback Australia described in a sketch story “Drifted Back”. Lawson (17 June 1867 – 2 September 1922) absolutely had no romantic illusions about a 'rural idyll'. His bitter view of the outback life was far removed from the romantic idyll of brave horsemen and beautiful scenery depicted in some other Australian novels and poetry of his time. He touched two themes in the story: loneliness and change.

From the story we learn that the stranger, perhaps a white old man, has come back after 15 years to the town he knew very well. He enquired about number of people he knew from this desolate town. He listed them surname by surname expecting to find a few of his old friends. He seemed very surprised to find that most of the people were no longer in the town. He did not expected so big a change. It seems like he did not realise that time is flowing. He came alone to his hometown after years of his swagman journey “(…)I've tramped and travelled long ways since then” expecting to reunite with his family - old friends, to find a home again and spend Christmas-time like everyone likes to spend – with family, among people where one feels safe and comfortable.

23 July 2010

The Forgotten Genocide of World War II

Operation AB KATYN - download movie "Katyn" by Adrzej Wajda (Oscar award winner)

Commemorating the 70th anniversary of the Katyn Massacre after the partition of Poland by Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union in 1939.

After Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union collaborated to rip Democratic Poland apart in September 1939, the two totalitarian regimes started a systematic extermination campaign aimed at destroying not only Polish patriotism but also the spirit of freedom which made Poland the first nation to stand up against them.

If we forget about them, then You God in heaven, forget about us.
 
(paraphrase of Adam Mickiewicz - a Polish bard)



The image was taken from blogs.myspace.com/cafe_bodo