Our Better Angels

Posted on February 9, 2020 by Professor Taboo

————

“We are not enemies, but friends. We must not be enemies.
Though passion may have strained, it must not break
our bonds of affection. The mystic chords of memory will swell
when again touched, as surely they will be,
by the better angels of our nature.”
— President Abraham Lincoln First Inaugural Address,
Washington DC, March 1861

————

∼ ∼ ∼ § ∼ ∼ ∼

Back in the Fall of 2015 I had read some rumors and articles that one of my all-time favorite American, historical stories was being made into film. I was thrilled, elated this true event was finally making a screen-write then into full production. This true story is set during the 1970’s Civil Rights Movement throughout the old South, but for these two main characters the movie would begin exactly where it all began, Durham, North Carolina, 1971.

I thought about titling this blog-post Our Better Virtues, but decided against because Lincoln’s quote was just too spot on and appropriate for this subject and film. Although, “Virtues” would have inferred my own meaning, intention, and desires for human kind around the world. After all, every single living human on this planet has some virtues. They just have to choose to find them, bestow them liberally, and nurture as well as grow them. Oh well, “Our Better Angels” gets the point across just fine. 😉

I have blogged here several times about C.P. Ellis and Ann Atwater and the volatile, appalling events they both found themselves. In a February 2016 blog-post I wrote about expanding sympathy into deep empathy and how the two feelings, behaviors are actually quite different. The Golden Rule, “Do unto others” and so on, falls short of deep, impactful empathy. Real empathy requires much more than being self-centered or focused on one’s self. It requires putting yourself into their life, their shoes, and metaphorically (or literally?) walking in them 100-miles or more. It does not involve yourself.

This 2019 film, The Best of Enemies, starring Taraji P. Henson (as Ann Atwater) and Sam Rockwell (as C.P. Ellis), tells that story about finding and giving common, deep empathy for your fellow neighbor, your fellow human being. I finally had the opportunity to watch it and not soon enough! Here is one of the trailers:

Sadly and disappointingly critical reviews of the film have been average and unkind if not neutrally bland. Therefore, I am writing my own reviews and commentary everywhere I can. Why? Because I feel strongly it is important to point out a few things about historical, time-period films to less discerning audiences regarding authentic history, particularly scholarly history that seeks to gather all possible data, evidence, sources, and narratives… no matter their viewpoint. Now, for my personal review of the film, The Best of Enemies:

I imagine this film is horribly underrated and unappreciated by the majority of cinematic fans and specific “cultural” groups. BUT movie reviews will never change what Ann Atwater changed in North Carolina and the ripple-effects she and C.P. Ellis began afterwards during and for the Civil Rights in the 1970’s.

The fact that this film briefly portrays in two short hours what was accomplished in real life between Bill Riddick, Howard Clement, C.P. Ellis, and Ann Atwater—not to mention the Black community in Durham, NC—must be remembered. No matter what movie critics think about the film, and honestly, their trivial criticisms about its direction or production or script or acting do it injustice. Pffffft.

Real, accurate, authentic history is near impossible to translate/transcribe onto the silver-screen in a measly 2-hours or less. This unwinnable cinematic anomaly against movie producers, film-writers, film-budgets, then movie audiences and critics, should always be seriously considered when producing and releasing raw, historically accurate, socially-politically CORRECT and LEGALLY RIGHT Movements as the American Civil Rights, or other highly controversial subjects as the Holocaust or the U.S.’s 18th – 19th century treatment, extermination, and resettlement of Native American Indian tribes. Typically 2-hours or less will NEVER do these historical time-period subjects full justice.

Hence, when all considered, including reading and deciding the real worth/value of this film’s many bland or negative short-sighted or undeserved reviews, just remember this…

2-hours will NEVER be able to tell the full astonishing, real-life true story and relationship about and between Ann Atwater and C.P. Ellis… which required and evolved over three decades! Ignore movie critics, remember the core and marrow of what the film is telling, portraying!

5-stars and more, every time, every day!

Did I emphasize 2-hours enough? 😜

Seriously though, I hope you will make the time to watch, appreciate, and support these fine altruistic, humanitarian films like this one and the stories they tell. They will at least introduce to you a starting point to go further, dig deeper into the entire contextual narrative, facts, plausible facts, and plausible probabilities despite there often being degrees of cinematic license taken to appease corporate profits, severe time-constraints, and/or film productions at the expense of truth and full historical accuracy. Please keep this in mind.

————

Live Well — Love Much — Laugh Often — Learn Always

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License.
Permissions beyond the scope of this license may be available at https://professortaboo.com/contact-me/.

Hope for Humanity?

Posted on August 8, 2019 by Professor Taboo

As all of you can gather from my previous blog-post, and comments on other’s blogs about this last weekends multiple mass shootings and massacres, I was much more effected by them than in others past. That is not at all to say that the long, long list of all our country’s prior mass shootings, going as far back as 1966 at the University of Texas, Austin tower massacre, are any less crushing to me. They are! Every single fatality, every single wounded survivor scarred, perhaps permanently maimed, and those families having to deal with the life-altering aftermath and long, long, road of recovery, are all remembered and they all deeply effect me. This past weekend was especially gut-ripping heart-piercing because of how quickly they occurred in about one week. That is extremely disturbing for me. Actually, beyond disturbing.

But as luck would have it, in a small way, I was fortunate to catch last night on PBS American Experience their excellent documentary about Woodstock 1969. How timely it was. However, as I watched, my own memories of what took place at Woodstock were clouded, not like this show. It was different in some/many ways compared to what these actual attendees, band members, event coordinators, and journalists (actually there the entire 3½ days) interviewed and they interviewing fans, filming, photographing were saying in 1969 and was now made into this documentary. Clearly, I had been shown and told a distorted version and reports about the festival from what I now suspected were anti-Woodstock people, anti-Hippie people, anti-freedom people, pro-Warring people, all of whom would’ve had me believe their perceptions. Their presupposed conjectures while, ironically, not even there or within 5-miles of the ’69 festival. Imagine that.

I was determined to watch every single second of Woodstock: Three Days that Defined A Generation! Why? Because I wanted to know with all the major potential disasters I was foreseeing, I had to know the end results, about the injuries, the utter failures, Mob-panics turned into sheer chaos to survive, and therefore, probable casualties/deaths. What was going to happen and how bad was this going to end?

∼ ∼ ∼ § ∼ ∼ ∼

If any of you plan to watch it—and I highly recommend you do—then I won’t give too many spoilers. But there were two segments I found deeply profound, spiritual in the sense that had one been there, in those days and nights, by early Sunday you would have known beyond any doubt… you were part of something incredibly monumental, uplifting, and proof of what a half-million or so decent men, women, young boys and girls, and children, toddlers and babies, were all capable of doing, having received, and gave, helping… because it was just the decent thing to do. All these human virtues were undeniable, unavoidable as told by every person there.

When Jimi Hendrix came on stage Monday, (calm down Arkenaten!) toward the end of his set, he played The Star-Spangled Banner, a once-in-a-lifetime version of the national anthem. Spectators said it was an artform beyond verbal description. Hendrix had added his styled sound-effects dispersed throughout the anthem, like ‘rockets and bombs bursting in air.‘ Many fans picked up on his guitar-violence, death and carnage of war, the Vietnam War, and broke down in tears. The thousands there had lost dear ones, family members, brothers, husbands over there in the jungles and rice-fields. Other fans were speechless for several minutes after he finished, frozen in their postures their mouths gawked by what they just heard, felt, and witnessed.

Jimi’s encore song was Hey Joe. Perhaps one of his greatest songs ever.

As the end of the festival was drawing near, much of the crowd wanted to see/meet and hear from the owner of the farm and land they were on: Mr. Max B. Yasgur. He was politically Conservative and had had serious reservations about what he had approved and more so when he saw how so much bigger and challenging the event became in just the first day! In the end, even he was astonished:

Today, in our current state of affairs in the 21st century, I would have been dumb-founded by what happened and more… by what did not happen! I would’ve been speechless given those 1969 events and what happened between July 28th and August 4th, 2019… and too many other times since 1966 on the campus of the University of Texas, Austin. Amazed would be an insane understatement.

Woodstock 1969 showed me that even during one of our nation’s most turbulent, bloody, violent two decades in the Cold War, the 1960’s and several major assassinations of peacemakers—John F. Kennedy, Martin Luther King, Jr, and Robert Kennedy—that about 400,000 to 500,000 “people” (labelled derogatorily Hippies by pompous Conservatives) CAN INDEED conduct themselves exemplary over 3-days and 3-nights crammed onto one little farm to share music, fun, love, drugs (of course), and peace—only one accidental death during the 3½ days—and exhibit kindness to total strangers.

Yes, humanity’s best is absolutely possible! Half-a-million people packed into a few acres, outdoors, with security/police named “Po-lease” (i.e. hospitality) not legitimate police officers, and so potentially volatile to panic and countless other possible flash-points, proved it does happen, and ended instead with no violence whatsoever. Better yet, no serious problems to the chagrin of Conservatives who prior wanted to shut down the festival or were hoping it would have horrible injuries and fatalities! That is what they had warned to newspapers and TV reporters.

What really moved me was that when natural weather-forces moved-in coupled with the opposition of bigoted, arrogant, slandering Conservatives labeling the event a pending or complete disaster and certain subsequent humanitarian rescue… the Hippies of Flower-power, cannibus, and LSD helped each other for FREE! They worked together, volunteered to resolve many arising problems! Apparently it was contagious. The tiny town of Bethel’s residents pitched in to provide food for all the festival-goers! Are you FREAKIN’ KIDDING ME!!!?

People… WordPress readers… THAT is what an intelligent species does full of compassion, unity, selflessness, understanding, and embracing pure HUMAN connection. You don’t even have to belong to any nation, any charity, any political party. It’s JUST. NOT. THAT. COMPLICATED.

What a spectacle. What an epiphany those four days must have been… intimately amongst 400,000+ others you had not known before that Friday! Wow. My hope in and for humanity, decent caring people—if any Woodstock-goers would’ve ever been called that by 60’s ultra-Conservative Americans—but human beings being very human, were part of something bigger than self, glad to help each other while having fun openly, loving freely, dancing, smiling and never once considered gun-shots to be a fix, ever. YES… my belief in humanity’s finest virtues were restored, are restored. At least from Hippies in 1969 they are.

However, I think there are some/many today equal to those good Woodstockers who were grossly stereotyped and wrongly judged as useless before anything started Aug. 15, 1969. Because there are many of us today, many decent people like them in 1969, who know violent-hate or verbal-hate can be stopped and will not be tolerated, ever. Let’s not forget we have many, thousands, millions who know what the right thing to be, say, and do is really about, what it actually looks like, sounds like, and behaves like… for anyone from anywhere on this beautiful planet.

————

Live Well — Love Much — Laugh Often — Learn Always — Stop Stereotyping & Hating

This work by Professor Taboo is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
Permissions beyond the scope of this license may be available at www.professortaboo.com/contact-me/.

Human & Atomic Interactions

Posted on December 5, 2016 by Professor Taboo

I want to pause a moment in between my Memoirs series, its last blog-post The Party and its continuation The Poke-her Game because I have recently been very inspired to write this post. For my BDSM readers, I apologize — it’s almost finished so thank you in advance for your patience. Now to the fascination of Human and Atomic Interactions.

≤ ≤ ≤ ≤ · ≅ · ≥ ≥ ≥ ≥
(line break)

Are you familiar with some terms in chemistry? Many? How about covalent compounds, polar covalent compounds, ionic bonds, electronegativity, and electropositivity? These are a few terms that define the interactions between atoms. Is it any surprise we can draw parallels between atomic interactions and human interactions? It’s not difficult. After all, every single one of us are made up of bonds, compounds, and atoms in ever so slightly varied formations. I’d like to share the chemical definitions of the terms mentioned above according to Chemistry-Dictionary.com:

Covalent bonds — 1) chemical bond formed by the sharing of one or more electron pairs between two atoms. 2) atoms linked together by sharing valence electrons.

Polar covalent bonds — 1) covalent bond in which there is an unsymmetrical distribution of electron density. 2) atomic linkage with both ionic and covalent characteristics.

Ionic bonds — atoms linked together by the attraction of unlike charges.

Electronegativity — 1) a measure of the relative tendency of an atom to attract electrons to itself when chemically combined with another atom. 2) a measure of the ability of an atom in a molecule to draw bonding electrons to itself. This is partially determined by how many electron vacancies are available in an element’s filling orbital. The most electronegative elements are the halogens, which have only one vacancy (i.e. have seven electrons in their filling orbital). Sulfur and oxygen are also highly electronegative. 3) a number describing the attraction of an element for electrons in a chemical bond.

Electropositivity — a measure of an element’s ability to donate electrons, and therefore form positive ions; thus, it is opposed to electronegativity. (Wikipedia)

Notice how the exchange or resistance, the charge and intensity of electrons make up much of the interactions between these five chemical states? Would it be beneficial to find applications of these chemical states in everyday life to gain more meaning and purpose? Is it good to understand how things interact, what makes strong or weak bonds and why they react the way they react to each other? I certainly want to understand (and respect!) why ammonia-nitrate does not react well with specific other compounds. Or why nitroglycerin does not react well inside playroom hippity-hop balls or attached to pogo-sticks!

Teflon molecule

I feel it is also equally important to know and understand good helpful bonds and reactions. How many of you are aware of polytetrafluoroethylene and what it helps and prevents? While building the tallest bridge in the world, in southern France, the Millau Viaduct faced some unprecedented engineering obstacles. In the bridging-phase between the seven enormous masts, engineers needed a method of scooting the eight 8,070-ft long, 36,000 ton decks from one mast to the next 890-feet up. It was accomplished by using two huge polytetrafluoroethylene-coated hydrolic-powered opposed wedges in a, albeit only 600-millimeters per cycle, leap-frog motion. Today, the bridge allows traffic to pass quicker between Paris and Montpellier with no apparent ecological impact to the area.

How about the critical bonds of hydrogen or peptides? How much are these two bonds used? The fact that all humans consist of roughly 63% body fluid, hydrogen bonds are vital to body functions. Peptide bonds are just as vital. All proteins, DNA, RNA, as well as multitudes of other structures use this bond. EMT’s and ER doctors and nurses must be thoroughly trained in these chemical makeups and interactions in order to save and/or rehabilitate patients. It certainly doesn’t hurt non-medical persons to have very basic understandings of these bonds for everyday life.

In my Earth or Physical Science classes we’d often discuss and learn about “Happy Atoms.” Like any of us, most atoms want to be alive and happy. The concept can be summarized this way: if your atomic shell (mind, body, soul) was full, then you are a Happy Atom. There are atoms (people) with extra electrons. They enjoy giving up or donating their electrons. Other atoms (people) have almost-full shells. They move around seeking out atoms (people) who have extra to give. Prime examples of these interactions are sodium with magnesium, and oxygen with fluorine. When they work together with their electrons, both pairs and multiple pairings can end up happy. Like magnets the positive and negative charges of electrons attract each other. This is when “opposites attract” to form a strong bond. However, as is often the case in many aspects of chemical and life-interactions, not all are “happy bonds.” Why unhappy?

Unhappy bonds can be described as those possessing low, medium, or high energy levels. Taking this description a bit further, managing the increase or decrease of these energy levels can be directly associated with a knowledge-interaction bank, if you will. This bank knows what investments and withdrawals are dangerous and risky, as well as those that are profitable and safe. But there is one and only one factor that the bank cannot inerrantly predict: How well does each individual customer thoroughly understand their own molecular makeup, their behavior blueprints, or how well or poorly to articulate them. You see, it isn’t enough to understand or attempt to understand only external interactions and dynamics. You, yourself, are just as important as any others in the interactions. How well and how honestly you understand yourself, often… no, equally determines what type of interactions you and others create.

Sir Francis Bacon once said that “knowledge is power.” Power for what? Clearly there are positive life-giving interactions between molecules and organisms, and there are negative ones. These interactions, all of them, and please excuse the intentional dichotomy, are they necessarily unnecessary? Is the knowledge-interaction bank exclusive only to the student? To the teacher? To the classroom of classmates? To one school? And here is perhaps a bigger question:

Is there a necessary or unnecessary learning-curve to understanding life’s interactions?
(line break)

We interrupt this program to bring you an important musical and meme message!

In the fields of neurology, pathology, endocrinology, genetics, linguistics, psychology, sociology, even philosophy — is there an interdisciplinary term for these(?) — do these areas perpetually interact or are they completely self-sufficient, self-reliant?

With chemical interactions, many if not most are well understood and predictable, until we humans or the environment create new ones. With human interactions, some… if not more or less… are well understood, until someone or others invent new ones. When these unexpected creations occur, and they inevitably do, how should they be received? Received with instantaneous conclusions or judgements, or with reservation, patience, and time in order to account for margins of error? Perhaps with elements of both? Is there a time to speak your results or a time to quietly wait, to consider, and reconsider? It has been my personal experience that TIME… typically more than what I first imagine, is the wise policy. A policy to suspend or allow for the learning-curve, if for no other reason than to remind myself that in order to gain improved interactions, human or otherwise, this policy also allows for the greatest of virtues and bonds to flourish.

To my readers and followers, what are your thoughts and experiences with interactions and bonds… atomic, chemical, or human? Please share them!

Live Well — Love Much — Laugh Often — Learn Always

(paragraph break)