Tag: Life

Self plagiarism: an unsustainable and ridiculous legal concept

If I write a beautiful sentence in a poem and then use it in a novel, or if I publish an article on my blog and re-publish it on social media, it is a ridiculous idea that I could be committing the crime of “self plagiarism.”

“Self-plagiarism,” explained Robert Cruetz, “is also known as ‘reuse,’ ‘recycling fraud,’ or ‘duplicate publication,’ and consists of a person re-purposing their own written material without providing proper attribution by citing the original content.”

The legal concept of “self-plagiarism” is contrary to the order of the universe, unnatural, and therefore inherently flawed. Think of genetic code as a type of writing. A rule prohibiting “self plagiarism”” would have derailed evolution from its earliest beginnings and planet Earth would still be a hot dead rock without an atmosphere or arable soil.

All life has borrowed “writing” from the prior generation in order to both survive and to thrive in the process of adding to it, improving upon it.

Here it seems to me that the spirit of the law against plagiarism has been lost. The spirit of plagiarism laws was to protect the livelihood of the original author. The ability of the author to support their life their family. Think about that.

Self-plagiarism is ridiculous and foolish legalistic concept.

I hereby confess this is a repost, self-plagiarism, from my original writing on LinkedIn.

A key relationship which could save the world

Every February we celebrate relationships of love. Relationship: the state of being connected. We have relationships with people. We also have relationships with things. Our cars. Our homes. Even ourselves. When doing dishes, I am in relationship with the water, the soap, the plates.

Ignore them, neglect them, and things fall apart.

I propose that there is one bottom-line key relationship that has been seriously neglected by most people. I propose furth that fixing this one relationship could help restore everything, the entire network of connections to lots of others.

You’re probably thinking I’m going to say the key relationship is with God. Nope. Not this time.

The key relationship I’m talking about? Death.

That’s right. Whether we think about or not, we all have a relationship  with Death.

Think about all the beings you know. What living being–man, woman, child, dog, cat, tree, planet, solar system–is not going to die? Can we at least agree that Death is an inevitable fact that will happen to every person? And to every living thing?

While we may have varying beliefs about life AFTER death, this is only about Death itself. You and I, and everyone you see, everyone you know, will some day, face Death.

Death is real. Death walks with me and with you, every single day of our lives. Death is sitting, right now, there in the room with you, perched on your left shoulder. You were born with your Death. Your Death is always there, at arm’s length.

Yet the vast majority who walk the earth act as if that fact, that truth, is not true. That Death is never going to happen to them, to those they love, or to their children. Sigmund Freud observed that “at bottom, no one believes in his own death…. Every one of us is convinced of his own immortality.”

Because of our neglected relationship with Death, most of us are stuck within the first four stages of grief as identified by Elisabeth Kubler-Ross. You may recall the stages, so well stated by Roy Scheider in Bob Fosse’s All That Jazz: Denial, Anger, Bargaining, Depression, and finally, Acceptance.

What is your relationship with Death?

Are you in Denial? Do you just close your eyes, surround yourself with physical comforts and pleasure, and pretend it’s not there?

Are you in Anger, which is simply fear outwardly expressed: always running away, forever washing your hands, arming yourself to the hilt, erecting walls, building fortresses, protecting yourself?

Are you into Bargaining with Death?  Do you see and live life through the lens of the cold, rational, scientific mind, trying to talk your way out of the relationship?

Or are you Depressed, which is simply fear turned inward:  sad, forlorn, deflated, and with barely enough energy to get out of bed? Does the thought of Death tend to take you down into a pit of despair?

Most of the world is stuck in Denial and Anger. Think about the wars and the misery caused by Denial and Anger’s children: rivalry, nationalism, hoarding and fear. When we create the ideas of national borders, of possessions, of “resources,”  of money, of material wealth, we are doing so out of Denial of Death.  Think about the misery inflicted by cold calculating intellectual minds in the pursuit of knowledge, a form of Bargaining:  If we breed the perfect human, if we build a bigger ship, if we can just crack the code of the human genome, maybe we can live forever. We think we can engineer our way out of the Truth that Death is a fact of Life.

So where are you in your relationship with that little guy sitting on your left shoulder? Do you even have a relationship with Death at all–or are you stuck in Denial, Anger, Bargaining or Depression? Instead of seeing Death as an enemy to be avoided at all costs, could you possibly entertain the idea that Death–mortality–is actually a precious gift for which to be thankful? That Death is actually a serious Ally? Ask anyone who has had a near-death experience:  Death enhances the value of life. Death renews, motivates, and infuses energy into our every endeavor. Death brings us back to the powerful present moment. Death touches our hearts. Think about it.

What would your world be like if you let go of your fear, your denial, your sadness, moved into Acceptance of your own mortality, and then went beyond it — to Gratitude? What would the quality of your Life be like, if you had a positive relationship with Death? A loving relationship, even?

Steve Jobs did it. He embraced Death. Death was his greatest ally. It empowered him. It inspired him to live life to the absolute fullest in every moment. Even on his death bed, he was trying to improve the equipment in his hospital room, to make life better.  Mahatma Gandhi did it. He faced down legions of armed soldiers, with Death as his ally, in order to bring about peace, to save lives, to make life better. And the man, Jesus Christ, whether you believe who he says he was or not–He went willingly to death, without fear, to demonstrate that you can’t kill God. He came not to conquer, but to make life better. As did mass numbers of His followers. (We Orthodox say, He conquered death by death, and set us all free. But that’s another story.)

Life is a gift, a precious gift! And Life is never more precious than when we cultivate our relationships with those we love. Right?  Well, what if we recognized one major key relationship in our lives–our relationship with that little guy who came with the package, who’s sitting perched on our shoulder, who’s been there every day, since conception?

Let’s change our minds, change our paradigm about Death. Let’s take our hands away from our face, wipe away the tears, and look Death right in the eye.  Let us see Death as a gift, an Ally, to empower us, to inspire us, to make Life incredibly richer.

Think about what would happen to our politics, our economy, our environment– if we were ALL to stop chasing the fantasy of immortality?

Truth bestows freedom. Nothing in Life is more true than Death. We can run, we can hide, we can crawl into a hole. But is that really the best way to live?   Freedom from denial, anger, fear, bargaining and depression, here and now, in this world, is true freedom.  Treating our own Death as a friend, may prove the most key relationship of all.

A Human Need: The Purpose, Benefit and Value of Worship

Of all the differences between people, belief in God is one area in which we are almost all in accord. Contrary to widespread perception, only 1.6% of Americans self-identify as atheists, and only 2.4% as agnostics. The remainder, 96%, believe in the existence of a higher power in some fashion or another. A full 78% self-identify as Christian. Belief in God is “absolutely certain” for 71%, religion is “very important” for 56%, and frequent participation in religious services–weekly worship–happens for 39%. (This all according to the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life.)

Could it be that human beings have an intrinsic and enduring need for God, much like they need companionship, food, clothing, and meaningful work? For a field that has not been studied or promoted in public schools for over 50 years, clearly the subject matter of divinity remains important and relevant for the vast majority of Americans.

Yet in the diverse marketplace of religions available to Americans today, many remain dissatisfied: 28% of adults report having made a major change of religious affiliation since childhood, such as moving from atheism to Christianity or vice versa. Within the ranks of Christianity itself, a full 44% have jumped ship from the faith in which they were raised. What is triggering all this movement? Clearly some needs are unfulfilled. Is there an inherently correct way to worship that best fills the need, and incorrect ways that do not?

At Death to the World is an excellent piece entitled In Spirit and Truth which answers these vexing existential questions succinctly, by going back all the way to the common beginning shared by Christians, Jews, and Muslims. In today’s fast-moving society where the cycle of human technological obsolescence grows increasingly shorter, seeking guidance from old ways seems oddly counter-intuitive.  Particularly to those whose religious focus has been on more modern religious practices, checking in with ancient history seems foolish, awkward, and irrelevant, the author writes.

“This seems like death to those who love toe-tapping worship, but in fact the Life of God is hidden in these ancient forms and they very much need to be brought back in our day.”

Cain-and-Abel
Ancient hagiography depicting one of the earliest recorded accounts of human worship behavior, that of Cain and Abel.

Speaking from personal experience, having been one of those dissatisfied seekers who searched far and wide over several decades for spiritual truth, embracing ancient ways has lead to fulfillment far exceeding anything I thought possible.

In exploring the story of Cain and Abel, as recorded by Moses in the book of Genesis, we see that the earliest humans understood that to worship is to give away something of value to God. Similarly, Indigenous Native Americans practice the Giveaway Ceremony, and the Potlatch Ceremony (from which our tradition of potluck dinners hails.) Giving things away brings us closer to a fulfilling our need for relationship with God.

But in the story of these two brothers, the first generation after entering the world to begin the long lesson of learning from the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil, one brother’s worship practice of giving away is done correctly, and other’s is not.

“If we understand that true worship is as much a correction of the worshipper as anything else, then what we see in this story is that Cain was not willing to be corrected. He stubbornly wanted God to accept what he thought was good enough, rather than to learn from God what would constitute true worship. Cain was therefore a false worshipper.

“Throughout the history of Israel, we see God being very specific about true worship, not only in terms of what makes a true offering, the construction of the altar it should be offered upon, the Temple in which it should be offered, but even right down to the details of which incense to burn before Him. Once again, these instructions are given for man’s benefit, not for God’s. He who owns the cattle on a thousand hills does not need the blood of bulls and calves to be offered to Him. But man needed to offer them in order to humble himself before God, recognize his own sinfulness, and to glorify God as the Maker of all things and man’s only Redeemer.”

Many thanks to Archpriest Micheal Reagan for this excellent homily exploring these questions, as well as to the monks who have recently given one of my favorite sites a new makeover. Death to the World began as an extraordinary print publication in the early 1990s.  A  lifesaving vehicle produced with great loving care using traditional paste-up, then photocopied and hand-distributed person-to-person throughout the Christian punk rock underground, its circulation amazingly reached a pinnacle of tens of thousands. It is truly a blessing to find Death to the World given new life today, online. I encourage all Truthseekers to explore it in depth.

In reading and study, may the Holy Spirit of Truth touch your heart. And may Death to the World continue helping bring about the precise type of death that is necessary in order to find true spiritual life and fulfillment.

http://deathtotheworld.com/articles/zine-articles/in-spirit-and-truth-issue-13/