Long ago and far away,
A prophesy told of a day
When no more death on Earth we’d see
And balanced true to nature be.
And children laugh and dance and swing,
And joyous would all people sing,
A new day dawn, a glorious spring,
And no more pain and love would sing.
But as the Earth begins her birth,
And joyously we span her girth,
They spurn to see, and scorn with glee,
The painful lot in people be.
And though we hope that peace might stay, Their hand from spreading death this day They beat their drums to…
I have a lot of respect for Abraham Maslow. In 1943 he came up with the “hierarchy of needs.” This hierarchy of needs initially provided the foundation for a theory of human motivation that saw human behaviour as motivated by a series of needs, from lower physiological needs to higher needs for self-actualization and transcendence. …
A modern day take on an agitprop classic
This is my own version of the “Two Cows” parable, a parable which, in original form, was used as political propaganda (agitprop) to justify Capitalism and silence its critics. The original version is provided here. I provide some comments and background at the end of this piece. You will find it helpful to read this article on Demystifying Money, and watch this video series on money, otherwise you might miss the significance of this revision.
You Have Two Cows
Capitalism: You have two cows. You’re not happy with just two cows so you take other people’s cows. You get the people with no cows…
If you are an evangelical Christian, a member of the Christian orthodoxy, or just someone that believes that the bible is an authoritative source for spiritual guidance and inspiration, you have a problem. That problem, as born again bible scholar Bart D. Ehrman points out, is the bible is a fudged document. Original manuscripts of the Gospels or the Acts or the Letters that make up the New Testament do not exist. Original copies have been lost for centuries. What remain are not even copies of these original manuscripts, but copies of copies of copies. What is worse for those…
I recently noticed some conservative Republican apparatchik using a passage from a bible story to slam democrats and progressives. It was the “Jesus Delivers the Adulterous Woman” story, found here in several versions. As this person tells the story, a mob of people had gathered to stone a woman. Seeing this, Jesus said, “he that is without sin among you, let him cast the first stone.” After saying this, the mob of people file away. …
An article written for Canadian Journal of Sociology entitled “A Sociology of Tarot,” burst the mythical bubble that surrounds the western Tarot deck by pointing out that the tarot is not a spiritual tool of deep cosmic/spiritual wisdom, as its creators would have you believe, but a propaganda device, a “body of knowledge,” a discourse (McHoul and Grace 1993) dressed up as spiritual wisdom, developed by Freemasons in order to help lubricate and facilitate the peaceful transition of power from feudal to capitalist lords by subjugating, in the sense used by Foucault, both the elites themselves and the masses which…
I am currently working on a revision to my Canadian studies sociology course, specifically a unit on racism. In the unit, I am including some information on Edward Cornwallis, an English aristocrat who came to Canada to help expand the British colony. He is an interesting historical figure because, in 1749 in what is now known as Halifax, he issued the following terrorist proclamation.
…we…do hereby authorize and command all Officers Civil and Military, and all His Majesty’s Subjects or others to annoy, distress, take or destroy the Savage commonly called Micmac, wherever they are found, and…do promise a reward…
By Mike Sosteric on The Capital
Do you know what money is? Despite the critical importance of money to your modern life, I would bet that you do not know. You might have an idea, but likely this idea is partial and incomplete, perhaps even mystified. But, let us find out. Let us ask the question, what is money?
Chances are if you have an answer to that question off the top, you are going to say that money is a medium of exchange. You exchange money for something else, for goods like food or services like a car repair. Money is a medium of exchange…
In 2015, a bomb went off in my home. One moment I was counselling a client about a childhood abuse issue, and then the next thing I knew, we were talking about Islamophobia and a border crisis. At the time I thought, “Canada does not have an immigration problem.” It was only later when I realized we’d been attacked.
Read more: World War Three is being waged in cyberspace
It was not a conventional bomb. There was no concussive blast, nobody died directly. However, after the 2016 United States election placed Donald Trump in power, the nature of the attack…
Mike Sosteric
I talk sociology, psychology, and human spirituality. Follow me here or at https://athabascau.academia.edu/DrS
