Posted in health, notes on the human condition, tagged 1957, 35 percent less likely, activities, affect, Ann Arbor, apart, appearances, artificial, attendance, blessings, bonds, Bowling Alone, break, breakdown, caregiver, cave, challenges, charity, chips are down, chronic, church, circumstances, closing, club, commitment, commonalities, community, comparisons, competition, connectedness, connection, consequences, cope, data, development, diagnosis, differences, difficult, dignity, disconnect, displaced, distance between, don't be a stranger, downsized, Easy Street, economic, effect, effort, employees, envy, example, exclude, fair weather, fear, friends, friendships, group, groups, hard times, hardship, hermit, how to, identity, illness, implications, individuals, involvement, isolation, Jennie E. Brand, job, job loss, job market, join, Joneses, keeping up, laid off, layoff, leave, livelihood, lives, lonely, long-term impact, longitudinal, Los Angeles, lose, loss, luck, meeting, membership, mental, miss, model, needs, nonprofit, normalcy, notice, organization, others, out of business, outgroup, participation, people, personal, pride, prime of life, professional, PTA, reach out and touch someone, reciprocal, reconnect, recovery, reestablish, regain, regroup, rejection, religious, relocating, repercussions, researchers, respond, restructuring, retreat, role, safety net, service, sever, shorten, skills, social contract, Social Forces, social lives, social science, socialize, sociologists, spiritual, starting over, study, superficial, support group, team, tough people, tough times, trials, UCLA, unemployed, University of California, University of Michigan, US News and World Report, Wisconsin high school graduates, workforce, youth on July 24, 2009 |
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Don’t be a stranger.
That’s the message of a 45-year-long study according to US News and World Report in “Job Loss Has Long-Term Impact on Social Lives“.
Once someone in the prime of life suffers a layoff or is otherwise displaced from the workforce, community connections — anything from a PTA meeting, charity involvement, sporting team or church attendance — are severed for good at least 35 percent of the time, study results show.
Perhaps this comes as a surprise. It shouldn’t. How many of us have grown distant from someone simply because they left our school, workplace, club or church?
And how many of us, by the same token, have isolated ourselves because we fear that others will judge us when the chips are down?
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Posted in notes on the human condition, tagged abuse, academia, accuse, African, American, antidote, ascribe, assumption, assumptions, attitudes, attribute, authority, awareness, background, baiting, barrier, beliefs, belong, black, blame, breakdown, butterfly effect, Cambridge, character, characteristics, Chicago Tribune, circumstances, color, community, connection, consciousness, control, cooperate, creed, dangerous, determinations, detox, difference, door, economic, education, emotional intelligence, ethnicity, expectations, experience, fanning the flames, forget, forgiveness, free, generalizations, get to know, goading, harmful, Harvard, hate, Henry Louis Gates Jr., history, home, hostility, house, hurtful, ideas, identify, identity, individual, influence, interpretation, intruder, law enforcement, letting go, life, limiting, multiculturalism, names, negative, neighborhood, neighbors, next generation, officer, others, ourselves, outcome, outgroup, painful, past, perceived, perception, perceptual filter, perpetuate, person, personal power, plight, police, power, present, professor, profile, profiling, projection, promoting, racialization, racism, rationalize, reality, recognize, recollection, recovery, reinforce, relationships, research, school, self fulfilling prophecy, skew, skin color, society, stereotypes, studies, success, taking charge, teach, transference, transmit, treatment, university, values, vector, victim, victimhood, victimization, views, virus, W.E.B. Du Bois Institute for African and African American Research on July 21, 2009 |
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Harvard Professor Henry Louis Gates Jr. cried foul when a neighbor’s call to the police resulted in his arrest at the door to his own home, the Chicago Tribune reports.
Refusing, allegedly, to identify himself to a responding Cambridge, Massachusetts police officer didn’t help law enforcement appreciate that the director of Harvard’s W.E.B. Du Bois Institute for African and African American Research was the rightful owner of the home — a far cry from the intruder his neighbor feared.
Professor Gates Jr. may not have intended to bait the officer into arresting him, but that’s the effect his apparent refusal to cooperate had.
“Is this what it means to be a black man in America?”, the professor rhetorically opined.
If “what it means” refers to negative racial assumptions applied to oneself — ascribing to the color of one’s skin the power to draw negative and unfair treatment — then yes. But in very real way, who or what is proposing the racism — the past or the present? Someone else — or the professor himself?
Psychologists call the phenomena of blurring the lines between the motivations of self and others “transference“. It’s no secret that sometimes we project our own assumptions on others, in this case an officer caught between a nosey neighbor and a prejudicially-minded professor.
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Posted in notes on the human condition, tagged accomplishment, acheivement, answers, antidepressants, arrogant, assumptions, attitude, auras, author, bad, behavior, Bible, blame, books, cause, chaos, church, circumstances, congratulate, contentment, control, coping, creator, criticism, culture, destiny, Dr. Wayne Dyer, Eastern, effect, emotions, empowerment, failure, faith, fate, God, gods, good, gratitude, guru, happy, healing, health, humble, idea, ideology, illusion, James Van Praagh, Jesus, judge, labels, letting go, liberating, life, lifestyle, living, love, luck, medium, mental, mysteries, mythology, narcissism, negative, New Age, open doors, Oprah, order, people, perfectionism, perform, personal, personality, philosophy, pop psychology, positive, power, preconception, pressure, project, proverb, psyche, psychology, Ralph Waldo Emerson, reality, recovery, religion, sabbatoge, science, Scripture, self, self help, Serenity Prayer, social, society, spirituality, stress, success, talent, talk show, The Secret, thinking, thoughts, universe, willpower, wisdom, worldview on June 22, 2008 |
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What does talk show host Oprah Winfrey, psychologist Dr. Wayne W. Dyer, medium James Van Praagh and “The Secret” author Rhonda Byrne share in common?
A belief that what you get out of life depends on how you think about life.
It seems straightforward enough. Empowering, even. Unfortunately, it isn’t quite that simple. (more…)
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