I learned last week that becoming powerful has measurable neurological effects on your ability to empathize.
Listen to this fascinating episode of NPR’s Hidden Brain on “The Perils of Power”.
If you have a Harvard Business Review subscription there is a long article in the October 2016 edition called “Don’t let power corrupt you”.
The BBC recently reported on the “Islamic Sufi prayer ceremony known as Zikr“. It is pretty popular in the Caucasus.
Years ago I remember seeing a brief news spot on Ramzan Kadyrov, the strongman ruler of Chechnya. He was doing what I now realize is the Zikr dance. At the time I was absolutely intrigued, and I still am.There is something fascinating about this. Must be the raver in me.
There is an entire Youtube channel devoted to Zikr.
And because it is the internet, there is a pisstake (this dance set to rave music, which highlights just how similar dance/trance and these spiritual practices are to each other).
More
A Whirling Sufi Revival With Unclear Implications – NY Times, 2006
Chechnya: Kadyrov Uses ‘Folk Islam’ For Political Gain – Radio Free Europe, 2016
Kadyrov Turns to Zikrism to Legitimize His Rule – The Jamestome Foundation
A wonderful letter on censorship from Charles Bukowski that I found on the Farnam Street Blog. Bukowski had one of his books removed from a library and this was his response to the person warning him about it. The emphases are mine. It was written in 1985:
The thing that I fear discriminating against is humor and truth.
…Censorship is the tool of those who have the need to hide actualities from themselves and from others. Their fear is only their inability to face what is real, and I can’t vent any anger against them. I only feel this appalling sadness. Somewhere, in their upbringing, they were shielded against the total facts of our existence. They were only taught to look one way when many ways exist.
I am not dismayed that one of my books has been hunted down and dislodged from the shelves of a local library. In a sense, I am honored that I have written something that has awakened these from their non-ponderous depths. But I am hurt, yes, when somebody else’s book is censored, for that book, usually is a great book and there are few of those, and throughout the ages that type of book has often generated into a classic, and what was once thought shocking and immoral is now required reading at many of our universities.
I am not saying that my book is one of those, but I am saying thatin our time, at this moment when any moment may be the last for many of us, it’s damned galling and impossibly sad that we still have among us the small, bitter people, the witch-hunters and the declaimers against reality. Yet, these too belong with us, they are part of the whole, and if I haven’t written about them, I should, maybe have here, and that’s enough.
may we all get better together,”
Absolutely wonderful.