Issued on: 26/11/2022 – france24.com

Text by:Lou ROMÉO

Russian MPs this week updated, and expanded, an anti-LGBT law – the latest in a series of measures aiming to highlight “traditional” family values. Against a backdrop of conflict in Ukraine, Russian political and religious leaders are ramping up an internal identity war.

Russian MPs on Thursday voted to extend a law banning all forms of LGBT “propaganda”. When it was first introduced in 2013 the law purported to prevent minors from seeing content that framed LGBT relationships in a positive light. Nine years later it has been expanded to include adults, forbidding “the promotion of non-traditional sexual relations” in all media, books, films and online.

This is the latest move in a shift towards conservatism from Russian authorities that dates back to the early 2000s. At the heart of messaging from the Kremlin is the defence of so-called traditional Russian values against “harmful” Western influence. 

Finding a national identity 

“Russian society has been searching for its identity since the 2000, since the failure of liberal values that it was inclined towards at the end of the Soviet Union,” says Viatcheslav Avioutskii, professor of international relations specialising in Russia and Ukraine at ESSCA School of Management in Angers. “Today Russia is pursuing this with even more intensity. Lacking unanimous support for its war in Ukraine, Russian leaders have launched a conservative initiative of ‘ideological purification’ as it sees the Russian population as being at risk from harmful Western influences.” 

It is in this context that Vyacheslav Volodin, the president of the legislative branch of the Russian Parliament, the Duma, on Thursday presented the update on the law banning LGBT “propaganda”. “We have our own traditions and our own values,” he said, adding that the new legislation would “protect our children and the future of this country against darkness spread by the US and European countries”.

This is the latest step towards eroding gay rights in Russia, counterbalanced by encouragement to live by “traditional” family values.  

In a speech on September 30 in the Grand Kremlin Palace, President Vladimir Putin asked, “Do we really want here in our country ­– in Russia – a ‘parent number one’, ‘parent number two, ‘parent number three’, instead of mum and dad?”  

“Russian authorities use the idea of the traditional family to oppose Western values,” says Lukas Aubin, research director at the Institute of strategic and international relations, IRIS, in Paris. “Anti-LGBT propaganda is present in children’s school books, as is promotion of the traditional nuclear family with a father, mother and at least two children.” 

Population decline 

Beyond anti-Western propaganda, encouraging traditional families – with plenty of children – has practical motivations. Despite pro-natalist policies, since the end of the Soviet Union, Russia has been experiencing population decline that recently reached record rates. The Russian population is expected to fall to 130-140 million people by 2050, compared with 148.2 million in 1991.  

This is something Putin sees as a “historical challenge” to Russia’s strength. “The destiny of Russia and her historical prospects depend on how many of us there are,” he said in a 2020 speech. 

>> Population decline in Russia: ‘Putin has no choice but to win’ in Ukraine 

Consequently, pro-birth messaging is flourishing. Since being annexed by Russia from Ukraine, anti-abortion posters have become a common sight in Crimea. In the capital Simferopol, Aubin says Russian authorities have financed adverts showing a baby pleading with its mother not to kill it.  

“The discourse coming from Russian leadership can seem ultraconservative to the point of being ridiculous, but it is also linked to practical concerns,” says Aubin. “The discussion over anti-LGBT propaganda is highlighting the necessity for people in Russia to have children. They are not yet at the point of banning abortion, but there is a very strong pro-birth message.”  

Building an ideology 

A third aspect of promoting conservative values involves enlisting the religious bodies.  

From the Orthodox Church, the Patriarch Kirill of Moscow, who is close to Putin, has increased references to a “holy war” in Ukraine. He is not the only one. Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov referenced “shaitan” – evil spirits or devils in Islam – in an attempt to help mobilise the Muslims that make up 10% of Russia’s total population.

In October, Aleksei Pavlov, assistant secretary on Russia’s security council called on the Russian military to carry out an urgent “desatanisation” of Ukraine. 

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Conservatism is an attempt to unite the different religions – Christian Orthodox, Islam, Judaism, and Buddhism – and the 193 ethnic groups that make up Russian society, and gather society together under a common goal and identity.  

“Putin is the leader of a country that has never become a nation state,” says Avioutskii. “Russia has remained an imperial state, inherited from the Tsars and the Soviet Union. As such it is, by definition, fragmented into regional identities. By putting immense pressure on society through propaganda, Russian authorities seek to construct a united conservative base that will encompass society as a whole.” 

In 2020 the Russian constitution was even rewritten to add a reference to belief in God being an integral part of the “thousand-year history” that unites Russian society. 

There is no guarantee, however, that Putin’s strategy will work. “These conservative attitudes towards identity are an attempt to build an ideology and create consensus,” says Avioutskii, “but it will not really achieve that. Putin won’t be able to unite the whole population behind him and, in pushing so hard to homogenise the country, he risks doing the opposite and exacerbating differences.” 

This article has been translated from the original in French.

By Maria Popova (themarginalian.org)

Every creator’s creations are their coping mechanism for life — for the loneliness of being, for the longing for connection, for the dazzling incomprehension of what it all means. What we call art is simply a gesture toward some authentic answer to these open questions, at once universal and intimately felt — questions aimed at the elemental truths of being alive, animated by a craving for beauty, haunted by the need to find a way of bearing our mortality. Without this elemental longing, without this authentic gesture, what is made is not art but something else — the kind of commodified craftsmanship Virginia Woolf indicted when she weighed creativity against catering.

The year he turned fifty, and a year before he gave his irreverent answers to the famous Proust Questionnaire, David Bowie (January 8, 1947–January 10, 2016) contemplated the soul of creativity in a television interview marking the release of his experimental drum’n’bass record Earthling — a radical departure from the musical style that had sprinkled the stardust of his genius upon the collective conscience of a generation, and a testament to Bowie’s unassailable devotion to continual creative growth.

Nested into the interview is his most direct advice to artists and the closest thing he ever formulated to a personal creative credo.

In consonance with E.E. Cummings’s splendid insistence that “the Artist is no other than he who unlearns what he has learned, in order to know himself,” Bowie reflects:

Never play to the gallery… Always remember that the reason that you initially started working is that there was something inside yourself that you felt that if you could manifest in some way, you would understand more about yourself and how you coexist with the rest of society. I think it’s terribly dangerous for an artist to fulfill other people’s expectations — they generally produce their worst work when they do that.

Echoing Beethoven’s life-tested insight that though the true artist “may be admired by others, he is sad not to have reached that point to which his better genius only appears as a distant, guiding sun,” Bowie adds a mighty antidote to the greatest enemy of creative work — complacency:

If you feel safe in the area that you’re working in, you’re not working in the right area. Always go a little further into the water than you feel you’re capable of being in. Go a little bit out of your depth, and when you don’t feel that your feet are quite touching the bottom, you’re just about in the right place to do something exciting.

Complement with John Lennon on creativity, Nick Cave on the relationship between art and mystery, Paul Klee on how an artist must be like a tree, and Wassily Kandinsky on the three responsibilities of the artist, then revisit Virginia Woolf’s account of the epiphany that revealed to her what the creative life means.

“You have to go the way your blood beats. If you don’t live the only life you have, you won’t live some other life, you won’t live any life at all.”

James Arthur Baldwin (August 2, 1924 – December 1, 1987) was an American writer. He garnered acclaim across various media, including essays, novels, plays, and poems. Wikipedia

ACIM

What is the Ego?

The ego is idolatry; the sign of limited and separated self, born in a body, doomed to suffer and to end its life in death. It is the “will” that sees the Will of God as enemy, and takes a form in which it is denied. The ego is the “proof” that strength is weak and love is fearful, life is really death, and what opposes God alone is true.

The ego is insane. In fear it stands beyond the Everywhere, apart from All, in separation from the Infinite. In its insanity it thinks it has become a victor over God Himself. And in its terrible autonomy it “sees” the Will of God has been destroyed. It dreams of punishment, and trembles at the figures in its dreams; its enemies, who seek to murder it before it can ensure its safety by attacking them.

The Son of God is egoless. What can he know of madness and the death of God, when he abides in Him? What can he know of sorrow and of suffering, when he lives in eternal joy? What can he know of fear and punishment, of sin and guilt, of hatred and attack, when all there is surrounding him is everlasting peace, forever conflict-free and undisturbed, in deepest silence and tranquility?

To know reality is not to see the ego and its thoughts, its works, its acts, its laws and its beliefs, its dreams, its hopes, its plans for its salvation, and the cost belief in it entails. In suffering, the price for faith in it is so immense that crucifixion of the Son of God is offered daily at its darkened shrine, and blood must flow before the altar where its sickly followers prepare to die.

Yet will one lily of forgiveness change the darkness into light; the altar to illusions to the shrine of Life Itself. And peace will be restored forever to the holy minds which God created as His Son, His dwelling place, His joy, His love, completely His, completely one with Him.

(Contributed by Larry Lawhorn)

The Princess of Cups

If this card comes up to represent a person, she will be a gentle, romantic individual with high levels of intuition. The Princess of Cups is compassionate and caring, warm and responsive. She is at peace with her emotional nature, often highly creative and artistic. She has a certain fragility, particularly when coming into contact with the harsher realities of everyday life, and will not always cope well with conflict. In her world, tranquillity and harmony are highly valued.

If, as often happens with the Princesses of the deck, the card comes up to represent a change in events, then the interpretation broadens out somewhat. For instance, the Princess of Cups will sometimes come up to indicate forthcoming pregnancy. The card also appears to indicate a woman falling in love.

And if the card applies to a state of mind, then it will indicate heightened perception, and tells you to listen carefully to the voice of your own intuition, and to follow through on any ideas which arise from it.

(via angelpaths.ocm and AlanBlakman)

National Geographic Mar 15, 2022: Morgan Freeman travels the globe to ask: Where did we come from, and what happened “in the beginning”?

“One night, following a lecture I gave on health and healing, a woman came forward to speak to me. Clearly shy, she had held back until the auditorium was almost empty. Looking around to make sure no one else was listening, she said almost in a whisper that thirty years ago she had been diagnosed with metastatic cancer. What did she do to get rid of it? Nothing, she revealed. She went on to say that nobody wanted to hear her story’ that people like her never get interviewed on “Oprah” or “Donahue,” which seem interested only in those dramatic cases where people do heroic, colorful things.

“She is right. Almost all the books that have emerged in recent years on the subject describe how to “beat” cancer with aggressive actions of an astonishing variety. Discussing the role of prayerfulness and “doing nothing” is about as enticing as announcing on the ten o’clock news that all the planes landed safely today at LaGuardia or O’Hare. This is unfortunate, because there is increasing evidence that prayerfulness can save lives.

“Prayerfulness–not the world-manipulating, disease-bashing forms of prayer to which most Westerners react when sick–permeates many cases of profound illness that improve spontaneously. Prayerfulness allows us to reach a place of experience where illness can be experienced as a natural part of life, and where its acceptance transcends passivity. if the disease disappears, we are grateful; if it remains, that too is reason for gratitude.”

“My present purpose is not to vaunt a new remedy but to state a fact–that cancer, even when advanced in degree and of long duration, may be better, and does sometimes get well. There is cure of cancer, apart from operative removal . . . . These cases . . . . are the sun of our hope.”

–Sir Alfred Pearce Gould (1910)

Healing Words

by Larry Dossey 

In this groundbreaking classic linking prayer and health, physician Larry Dossey shares the latest evidence connecting prayer, healing, and medicine. Using real-life examples and personal anecdotes, Dossey proves how prayer can be as valid a healing tool as drugs or surgery. Dossey explores which methods of prayer show the greatest potential for healing; presents compelling evidence that patients’ and doctors’ belief in a treatment increases its efficacy; explains that discoveries in modern physics allow us to integrate the spiritual and the scientific and make the power of prayer provable in the lab; and much more.

Provocative, engaging, and powerfully instructive, Healing Words restores the spiritual art of healing to the science of medicine.

(Goodreads.com)

National Geographic • Premiered Mar 1, 2022: Morgan Freeman sets out to discover why we believe in miracles and how they shape our understanding of God.

National Geographic • Dec 27, 2020: Host Morgan Freeman explores how different religions of past and present answer the question: What happens when we die? Watch 3 Seasons of The Story of God for FREE on the National Geographic Site & app – No sign-in required: https://www.nationalgeographic.com/tv…

National Geographic • Mar 8, 2022: Morgan Freeman begins a quest to discover who God is and how he, she or they have evolved over human history ➡ About The Story of God with Morgan Freeman: Academy Award winner Morgan Freeman explores the meaning of life, God, and many big questions in between in an effort to understand how religion has evolved and shaped society. A different divine subject is covered in each hourlong episode, titles of which include “Creation,” “The Devil Inside,” “Afterlife,” “Apocalypse,” and “Who Is God?” To explore these topics, host and narrator Freeman visits nearly 20 cities in seven countries to see some of the world’s greatest religious sites, among them Jerusalem’s Wailing Wall, India’s Bodhi Tree, Mayan temples in Guatemala, and the pyramids of Egypt, and he immerses himself in religious experiences and rituals. “In some places I found answers, and others led to more questions. The constant through it all is that we’re all looking to be part of something bigger than us. If there’s one thing I’ve learned, it’s that we certainly are,” Freeman says.