Reflections From a Murky Pond

Ebonics aka African American Vernacular English (AAVE) is a distinctive lect of the English language spoken by many Blacks within America’s borders. It is the descendent of West African Pidgin English and Southern American English. Like all lects it is a regular, systematic language variety that contrasts with other dialects in terms of its grammar, pronunciation, and vocabulary. Therein lies the problem with Ebonics.

Language shapes thought because it shapes perception by defining the meanings of words, phrases and concepts. Simply put, a Black does not necessarily “hear” what a White is saying because the same word-sounds in Standard American English and Ebonics may have drastically different respective meanings.

A simple example is how a Black hears any statement by Whites about Black crime, whether it is Black-on-Black or Black-on-White. In many, though not all, cases members of the “Black Community” – native speakers of Ebonics – will not “hear” what the speaker is in their own minds saying. They derive a totally different meaning from it:

Around Blacks Never Relax

And that is the problem with Ebonics in a nutshell. It prevents us from having frank and open discussions about a plethora of serious topics and concerns. Not truly having a language in common means that Whites and the “Black Community” also do not have a basic cognitive framework in common within which to have such discussions.

Tags: AAVE | America | Blacks | Crime | Ebonics | English | Language & Idiom | Lera Boroditsky | Psychology | Sarcasm | Whites

This entry was posted on Tuesday, October 1st, 2013 at 4:27 am and is filed under Society. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.

It’s impossible for anyone of a rational bent to fail to realize that the Feminists of today exhibit a very strong and destructive pathology and that the pathology they exhibit is the pathology of victimhood.

Feminists have to be victims, otherwise they have no purpose. It doesn’t matter what their choices are or have been; if they don’t get the results that they want, it’s because of “The Patriarchy.”

An example of this is inadvertently provided by Sheilah O’Donnel:

O’Donnel, featured in the “60 Minutes” story pushing a stroller, was, in some ways, an unlikely voice of the opt-out revolution. She had been proudly working since she was 15, when she had a job as a coat-check girl. By 17, she was buying clothes and books and food — and sometimes even paying her family’s electric bill — through jobs that included waitressing and pedaling tourists around downtown Columbus, Ohio, on a pedi-taxi.

She worked her way through Ohio State and, eager to pay off her college loans, got a job selling copiers. She eventually landed in a competitive training program at Oracle, the technology company, where she rose quickly through the ranks, ending up in the top 5 percent of the sales force. She also met the man who would become her husband, Mark Eisel — an up-and-comer in management. They worked hard and became well off. At her peak, O’Donnel was earning $500,000 a year.

But after her first two children were born, O’Donnel’s travel for work became more difficult. She gave up a quarter of her earnings in exchange for working three days a week, but felt marginalized, her best accounts given to others, meetings often scheduled on her days out of the office. “I felt like a second-class citizen,” she said.

O’Donnel’s angst-filled lament on how she was treated by her employer, Oracle perfectly sums the victimhood displayed by the modern crop of Feminists that plague society. Specifically, it addresses the truth of their current, delusional rants about the “Wage Gap.”

O’Donnel, like a majority of women, chose to move her job to a secondary position in favor of raising her children. Yet, as a victim of Feminism, her pathology forced her to blame her employer for making the needed alternations in their practices to avoid being financially harmed by her decision because, according to the pathology of victimology that the Feminists promulgate, it’s their fault for not ignoring the consequences to them of her choices and guaranteeing her the same results as before. Even her use of “second-class citizen” fits the pathology, as it summons up the hoary, old canard of civil rights violations.

Tags: Choices | Employment | Equality | Feminism | Feminists | Men | Parenting | Psychology | Responsibility | Sheilah O’Donnel | Victimology | Women

This entry was posted on Saturday, August 10th, 2013 at 5:53 am and is filed under Society. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.

Female celebrities really seem to love stripping down for whatever their current pet cause célèbre is. I certainly don’t mind this as it lends beauty to the sentiments, even when those sentiment lack significant inherent beauty themselves.

A case in point is Amanda Heard’s photo shoot for marriage equality.

A Beautiful Sentiment But A Flawed Premise

Amanda Heard’s naked body certainly lends both interest and beauty to the sentiments involved in the cause of legalizing and normalizing queer marriages. Sadly, however, not matter how nice Ms. Heard is too look at she doesn’t change the fact that the entire queer marriage cause is predicated upon the premise that homosexuality is either acceptable behavior or an inborn, harmless yet incurable medical condition that must be accounted for and for which allowances must be made.

Neither of these premises are accepted by the majority of people at this time. Consensus opinion is still strongly divided upon whether or not homosexuality is inborn or behavior choice. Consensus opinion is also divided, though less widely, upon whether or not homosexuality, if it’s an inborn genetic or congenital condition, is harmless or more of the nature of alcoholism or other inborn psycho-medical pathologies.

It also doesn’t help Ms. Heard’s cause that she’s bisexual with, reportedly, a strong preference for other women. That makes this all seem a bit self-serving.

So Amanda Heard’s demonstration is a beautiful sentiment in so many contexts but is based upon a flawed premise since many, many people will just believe that it is another case where Liberals want people’s choices not to have negative consequences – equality and similarity of results without concern for inputs.

Tags: Amanda Heard | Celebrities | Equality | Gay Rights | Homosexuals | LGBT | Marriage | Medicine | Psychology | Queers | Society

This entry was posted on Friday, August 9th, 2013 at 8:12 am and is filed under Society. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.

America is now deep in dire straits with her future growing more and more uncertain. The Liberals and Progressives, realizing the difficulties in disarming the current generation of the American people, are switching their tactics away from adults and firearms and to assaulting Americans’ children in an attempt to disarm their minds.

Maryland educators are launching an assault on normal childhood behavior. In Talbot County, Maryland, two boys aged 6 were recently suspended for pretending their fingers were guns while playing cops and robbers during recess. This comes just after another 6-year-old at a Montgomery County school was suspended for the same thing. These suspensions were later reversed, but why are they happening in the first place? They seem to be part of a larger effort to condition our kids to reject guns and the Second Amendment.

Similar atrocities have also recently been committed upon our children by America’s domestic enemies in Pennsylvania and South Carolina as part of the Leftists’ push to indoctrinate American children to reject the Constitution.

It be easy to write these abominations off as reactionary behaviors in response to the MSM’s sensationalizing various shooting across the country, but the rot goes much deeper than that. Moral necrosis set into the educational system decades ago when Americans were ignorant and/or foolish enough to allow Liberals and Progressives access to it and participation within it.

Give me four years to teach the children and the seed I have sown will never be uprooted.

— Vladimir Lenin

Now, with Obama’s long-time friend, mentor, fellow traveller, and co-conspirator, the terrorist, Bill Ayers openly calling for the Leftist filth to commit psychological rape of Americans’ children through their “‘Absolute Access’ to America’s Classrooms,” it should be obvious to each and every American that is part of a concerted, if uncoordinated, push to poison the minds of America’s next generation.

Worse, these depraved and degenerate filth are no longer content with softly and subtly indoctrinating American children into their anti-American, anti-Constitutional cult. Now they’ve moved on to the much more damaging and aggressive use of aversion therapy techniques to achieve their goals. This conditioning is intended to cause the children to associate the Second Amendment with personal pain and suffering, thereby rewiring their brain pathways to be anti-firearm and anti-Constitution.

So answer for me these two questions:

1. As this is deliberately induced psychological damage and all hold that the real damage from rape is psychological, not physical, how are these filth in any substantive way different from any other baby rapers?
2. Have we as a nation grown so uncaring of our children that we will be complicit in their rapes?

America is now deep in dire straits with her future, our children,  growing more and more uncertain and more under threat. With the law and all legal systems corrupted and uncertain, it devolves to we, the People to exact justice and enact retribution upon these filth…which may be why they’re focusing on the 2nd Amendment as it enumerates that right which allows us to do so.

Tags: 2nd Amendment | America | Children | Constitution | Education | Gun Control | Gun Rights | Indoctrination | Liberals | Maryland | Parenting | Pennsylvania | Politics | Progressives | Psychology | School | Social Engineering | South Carolina

This entry was posted on Monday, February 4th, 2013 at 11:25 am and is filed under Politics. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.

Narcissistic Personality Disorder is a mental condition in which people have an inflated sense of self-importance and an extreme preoccupation with themselves. It is characterized by a two-leveled personality organization. The grandiose self exists on the superficial and manifest level, and the real self which is frustrated, emotionally deprived, and full of impotent rage exists on the deeper level.

Someone suffering from Narcissistic Personality Disorder can be expected to so many, if not all, of the 10 following symptoms:

1. Reacts to criticism with rage, shame, or humiliation
2. Takes advantage of other people to achieve his or her own goals
3. Has excessive feelings of self-importance
4. Exaggerates achievements and talents while belittling those of others
5. Is preoccupied with fantasies of success, power, beauty, intelligence, or ideal love
6. Has unreasonable expectations of favorable treatment
7. Needs constant attention and admiration
8. Disregards the feelings of others, and has little ability to feel empathy
9. Has obsessive self-interest
10. Pursues mainly selfish goals

In the of sufferers of Narcissistic Personality Disorder, their grandiose self dominates their inner world and is the primary shaper of the clinical picture. From the clinical point of view, narcissistic way of life is characterized by stereotyped cycles: periods of successful narcissistic activity, or narcissistic well-compensation, alternating with periods in which the narcissistic person fails to maintain their experience of grandiosity, i.e., narcissistic failure or decompensation.

Narcissistic Decompensation is the removal of the ego defenses propping up and sustaining the sufferer’s inflated self-esteem that was unable to “compensate” for a real or percieved injury of some kind. More simply put, decompensation occurs when the narcissist’s grandiosity is not validated by reality; their self image is impossible to sustain causing their real self to supplant their grandiose self. This normally results in the sufferer spirally downward into pessimism, frustration, and bitterness expressed as either withdrawal and passivity or some form of aggression, either at others or their selves.

Does any of this sound familiar?

Narcissistic Failure Anyone?

If you’re tuned into the American political landscape and have a reasonably unclouded mind, I’m guessing that it does…

Tags: 2012 Elections | America | Decompensation | Insanity | Mental Illness | Narcissism | Obama | Politics | Psychology

This entry was posted on Saturday, August 25th, 2012 at 4:20 pm and is filed under 2012 Election, Politics. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.