Racial Thinking

What's this in my brain,

That keeps my mind in stain?
Why can't I praise my friend,
Who has my back to the end?
It's this racial cancer,
Cut it out, is the answer.

I'm free from the racial thought.

My friend free from my sinful plot.

Now color is a blessing not a curse.

Harmony can reign in the ‘verse.

Only you can stop the cancer in your brain.

Reject it, forsake it, become sane.

Fight through the shame.

So you can stop the pain.

EC Holm 2017

Emotion Literacy

In this analytically society based on reason and science, there are oasis of emotional communication.  Some are bars, sports events, clubs, religious get-togethers, game night, or a dinner party.  At these we let our hair down and say what's on our minds with little consideration of the consequences.  We communicate our fears, concerns, hopes, and dreams.  It seems we need an excuse to communicate emotionally.  What if society communicated emotionally on a daily basis?  What if our fears, concerns, hopes, and dreams could be related every day to our friends, co-workers, and love ones?  Sounds scary?  Well, it could be at first, but I believe it could revolutionize our society.  Opening up communications about our concerns can be very therapeutic.  It can also give new ideas to businesses, shore up risks, and foster synergic efforts.  In order to do this people need to be educated on Emotion Literacy.  Emotion Literacy is all about reading people and their emotional state, interacting withe them using empathy, and build solutions and conclusions out of the conversation.

 How do you read people?  For Empaths it comes naturally to read and listen to people's emotions.  For non-Empaths it may take more of an effort, but it can be done.  The key to reading people is first to shut up and second to consider the other person.  To all my fellow talkers and extroverts, I say with all the love and humility in the world, "SHUT UP!"  When you have someone in front of you, you need to be quiet and listen before speaking.  Knowing when to speak, is a key skill to be heard effectively.  To the introverts I ask to withhold judgment until you get the full message.  Often times people need to vent about something that is causing them stress in their lives.  Listening to them eases that stress.  When you listen to someone remember to take in the whole person, that is not only their words but tone as well, their body language, and their facial expressions.  Empaths also take in the person's emotion since they can feel what the person feels as the conversation progresses.  You may ask yourself what is this person actually saying, and how do I summarize what their message is?  These are key questions to answer as your listening.

How does one interact with Empathy?  This Empathy is 'walking in their shoes'.  This means to imagine going through what they are saying they went through.  How did they feel?  What were the circumstances?  What was the outcome?  What could have been done better?  I think this is also as skill Empaths need to learn.  Empaths naturally will listen and not do much else.  They will feel emotion of the person and thus have a deeper experience in listening, but they tend not to think about how things could have been better.  Yes, this skill normal people call Empathy requires analysis.  You have to use the analytical brain to interpret what is going on and what could be done.  The outcome of using Empathy puts you side by side with the person as a friend, confidant, and guide.  That means there is an amount of responsibility on your part.  The other person most always appreciates any Empathy they can get even if they don't say so.

How do you build solutions and conclusions?  This skill is an active one.  You listen and you submit ideas and opinions.  You also acknowledge all the points of the other person.  You make known the points you agree with.  All the while you keep using both reading and empathy skills.  Where you end up in the conversation may surprise you and the other person as well.  What your doing is building.  You are building up the person and yourself at the same time.

The Emotion Literacy I'm defining here is made up of reading people, using empathy, and actively building.  I just looked up Emotion Literacy and got a wiki page. I believe that what I wrote here is in concert with the definition of that wiki page.  The difference is that I'm giving practical advice to use in an interpersonal communication setting, that is talking to someone one on one.  Like any interpersonal communication skill, using the advice here takes practice.  I believe you would see how effective this is.  I use this on a daily basis with people I meet, and the rewards are many.

Interpersonal For A Better World....

Remember the saying 'Can't we all just get along?'  It used to be a popular saying in the '80s.  Ok, why can't we?  I have one idea, that people are in their own worlds and are disconnected emotionally from everyone else, or at least from people around them everyday.  Social internet was supposed to connect people, and it does but mostly in a superficial way.  It's that way not because of the internet, but because of the habits people have developed in communicating.  The worst habit of all is not listening.  Listening is fundamental to empathy.  Listening requires being quiet and contemplating what the other person's position or argument is.  It requires some halt to self, and some pause on our impulse to comment.  Now, most people think that listening involves ears.  Well, it does, but not just ears, it also involves eyes, nose, touch, the brain, and even emotion.  Yes, emotion.  How does one listen to someone's emotion and what does it have to do with people getting along?

Let's tackle the first part of the question.  Have you ever had a nagging feeling that someone was watching you, and then you looked and someone was staring at you?  Well, you've picked up on their emotion.  People transmit brain waves all the time.  It's not a hard stretch to realize a brain can receive brain waves from another brain as well as transmit them.  So when your conversing with another person realize that the feelings you feel are not only yours but theirs as well.  This becomes clear when you pause your thinking brain and just listen.  The process of transmitting and receiving emotion is an on-going one.  People have emotions, and they transmit them, and it just takes a listening brain to start to interpret them.  The biggest hindrance to interpreting emotion is unbelief.  Unbelief stems from selfishness.  That is being concerned mainly about ourselves.  Putting that part of ourselves on hold is key.  Once that is done, we are ready to get those brain waves to help us experience what the other person is experiencing.  This is not mind-reading as depicted in movies.  These emotions are on the current emotions we all experience.

What would the world be like if we really listened to each other's emotions?  Listening involves all inputs including listening to emotion.  What we are talking about is interpersonal communication.  Listening to emotion is different than hearing what a person says, than a person's facial expressions, than picking up on subtle odors, or even than feeling them tremble.  Listening to their emotion lets us have a sense of experience to what their talking about.  It's like the difference from reading a good story to seeing the story as a movie, or seeing the story as a movie and playing the story as an immersed 3D computer game.  We're there.  This will innately help us understand the other person.  This is true empathy.  I believe that the act of listening to one another's emotions fosters reason rather than competition, intelligent argument rather than heightened emotions, and a spirit of working together rather than working against each other.  Being heard and understood is a basic human social need.  When that need is met we feel we are part of a community, and when that need is not met we feel we don't belong.  Listening has the power to create community.

By listening to one anther and listening to each other's emotions is key to fostering community.  So to answer the question 'Can't we just get along,' we can if we listen.

Empathic Intelligence

On the BBC I heard that western women have turned to Islam in a post 9-11 era.  If you look at the idea of women joining Islam intellectually, you could not conceive that there would be an attraction since Islam is seemingly male dominant and female subversive.  These women are first curious about the ideals of Islam.  Then they see how women in that faith act, how they give even-though they have next to nothing.  This curiosity and attraction seems to be a similar drive that of a scientist investigating their field or a investigator investigating their case.  It used to be that men would just chalk this up to just women's emotions, but I believe there is something more inherently viable and even important.  These women are using empathic intelligence.  To learn from people by applying empathy is empathic intelligence.  I want to explore what this means in a practical sense.  I will share an article from a psychological periodical, I will share my own experience, and I will explore the importance of this intelligence.

In Psychology Today I found an article titled Empathic Intelligence: To put yourself in their shoes, unlace yours by Dr. Jeremy Sherman, 21 May 2009.  Where Dr. Sherman defines Empathic Intelligence as "is the ability to hold two opposed positions in mind at the same time and still retain the ability to think for yourself."  He also uses the analogy of swapping shoes.  If you go to a shoe store to buy shoes your going to try them on and your going to walk in them before making a decision to buy them.  You have to feel them out.  You determine the pros and cons of the shoe before making your decision.  So it is with empathy.  If your in the market for a new religion, you look for something that catches your eye.  You look around for examples of people in that religion.  You may even try it out for a time, that is visit a monument, read a story integral to the teachings, spend a day with those who follow it.  Your weighing, measuring, and feeling the religion in order to make a decision to convert or refute.  What your doing is exercising empathic intelligence.  Dr. Sherman holds that this type of intelligence requires putting yourself at risk, and implies that there is a certain amount of courage needed to proceed.

I have felt like a mimicker since childhood.  I am a natural empath and as such can't help but to put myself in people's shoes.  Once I was so effective in my shoe swapping that I convinced another boy that I could speak German, and he was German.  I learned to swim by watching and feeling out people.  Nobody taught me how to do breast stroke or crawl, I just did it.  Nobody taught me how to sail a boat, I watched my father teach my brother, and years later just went out and sailed the boat by myself for the first time.  I even had to tack in back to the beach.  These things I learned by applying empathic intelligence.

Empathic Intelligence is important, though it has not been given much attention.  The Christian religion started small with a man who taught and made miracles.  People were drawn to him, they wanted to be like him.  He had a way of invoking empathic intelligence in his followers.  Often in his texts and those of his followers we find that people wanted to emulate him in every way.  Many did even to death.  But centuries later, the religion took a analytical tone.  Principles were outlined, texts were standardized, doctrines were writ, and dogmas were upheld.  Even today you find many churches applying analytical intelligence to define the religion.  You also find many churches that do not feed the poor, help the sick, house the homeless.  Analytics can make a religion more palatable but it can also kill off its spirit.  It's no wonder that the Methodist movement bloomed in the 1800s and the Pentecostal movement blossomed from the 1960's through the 1980's.  These movements applied empathic intelligence that won over crowds of people.  This is in stark contrast to the "well defined" faiths that loose people and can even cause oppression.  Empathic Intelligence invigorates the soul and a lack of it can starve the same soul.

I have looked at an article, shared personal examples, and shown the importance of empathic intelligence.  Learning to feed the empathic intelligence in people can give you followers, it can make you popular.  That can be good and bad.  It's a tool to be wielded and it's a might tool at that.  Learning to use it for your own learning is important to being a perpetual student.  I hope this brings to light what empathic intelligence is and how important it is to people.

Wrong Materialism

Have you ever wondered why things happen just when you need them most?  We were taught to value material things since infancy.  We were taught about money and buying and selling material objects.  We were taught math and physics on the behavior of material things.  We were taught the composition of material things.  Then we were left to think on the Universe.  When we think on the beginning of humans, we are left with a debate of whether we evolved from other material animals or did God create us.  The problem with the premise of this debate is that there are two premises.  The first premise is that material is the basis of everything and the other is that consciousness is the basis of all things, taken that God is consciousness.  As an empath I have to side with the latter.  Materialism is not the nature of the Universe, consciousness is what is underlines all that we see.

I recently viewed a video called TheQuantum Activist that featured Amit Goswami Ph D.  In it Goswami states that if you take the premise that consciousness is the basis of the universe then some paradoxes go away.  In other words, a model on reality becomes much more logical if consciousness was the foundation.  I tend to agree. 


In religion, what we see is described as temporary, as a realm that exists on the shoulders of another realm.  Often the name given to the base realm is the spiritual realm.  The creation story goes that God spoke and the universe came to be.  In this fashion the Bible shows that the spiritual realm was first before the physical realm.


Materialism has historically lead to some of the biggest blood baths in history.  The Holocaust, the Soviet Cultural Revolution and the Chinese Cultural Revolution left many dead.  These were driven by ideals which had their basis in materialism.  You may say that materialism has brought us technology, and you would be correct.   There are many things we have benefited by being materialistic in our thinking.  In spite of the benefits the loss of life and the suffering of humans and animals should be considered.


Consciousness allows and promotes feeling, emotions and empathy.  The Human experience is riddled with emotion and empathy.  How many times have we been taken by a story where the child comes to a point of understanding and grows up?  Who can watch the movie Bambi by Walt Disney and not feel strong sorrow when the mother dies?  How many times can we read Julius Ceasar by Shakespeare before we stop agonizing over the words "Et tu, Brute?"  How many generations have and will take to heart the words of the song "Where Have All The Flowers Gone?"  These responses we have are emotion, empathy, love, hope and belief.  They are not things of atoms and molecules.  You may call them energy but I have a grave suspicion that they are even more than energy.  They are part of the consciousness that has created the universe.

Some scientists today seem to be material minded.  They may seem to only want to heed with what the can detect with their instruments.  Science is like that.  Science is observation and it looks for concrete consistency.  It recognizes that nothing can be known a hundred percent.  For that you have to conduct an experiment a hundred percent of the intervals of time that there has been and was and will be.  No, science is not a hundred percent.  To get their claims, scientists make generalities and assumptions.  In spite of the nature of materialistic science we have upheld it as the way to know everything.  The question of the Soul eludes science.  Science fails to explain how Life comes about.  As Sting said in his song "Love Is The Seventh Wave", there is a deeper wave than this swelling in the world.  We can be so much better if we embrace the value of consciousness.

Social Responsibility

In the aftermath of the January 8th 2011 shooting in Tucson Arizona, the political talking heads came out pointing fingers at the opposite side of the Congressional isle.  They insinuated blame to each other for the atrocity.  What they did not do is to take responsibility.  What did I say, take responsibility for a crazy shooter guy actions?  Yes, I said take responsibility, but not for the shooter's actions but for the circumstances of that day.  Ike famously said "the buck stops here" referring to himself as President of the United States.  He took responsibility.  In this case the buck really stops with the boss of the President, the People.  We are the People.  We need to take responsibility.  We the People should take responsibility for the circumstances that brought about the shootings in Tucson Arizona.  I will explore what responsibility means and what it means to us, I will layout the circumstances as far as is known, and I will explore possible solutions to help prevent such an atrocity to occur.

  So we know what in the world we are talking about, let's define responsibility.  In the Dictionary.com (or should we say at Dictionary.com, I figure its a dictionary)  the word responsibility has one meaning of "a particular burden of obligation upon one who is responsible."  The word responsible has a definition of the same source as "answerable or accountable, as for something within one's power, control, or management."  You may ask how in the world are we the people managers of the circumstances that day?  Its hard to see the responsibility.  One form of responsibility that has been thrown around is the gun and violent references made in today's political rhetoric.  If that has any part in this incident, its a small one, but it is a circumstance.  Beside the obvious legal issues this incident brings up, there exists the concept of social responsibility which is one of the main responsibilities of every citizen.  Social responsibility includes how we interact with one another, how we argue, and how we do on curtailing violence.  How are regular citizens supposed to curtail violence, isn't that the job for the police?  Every act of violence starts with an idea.  These ideas are anti-social and violent in nature.  How are we doing teaching each other to argue ideas civilly rather than resorting to violence?  Not very good as far as I can see.  How many heated arguments are there going on on the internet today?  How many people cause strife on purpose?  There is a social imbalance there.  Causing anger in people is never without its consequences.  Bullying is a social crime.  Bullying can also be a legal crime when its accompanied with verbal abuse or results in a death.  How many people know how to argue civilly or to walk away from verbal abuse?  Apparently, it's not enough.

What were the pertinent circumstances for the Tucson shooting?  There were good and bad circumstances.  Gabrielle Giffords decided to meet her constituents out side a common supermarket.  This was the main circumstance.  This type of circumstance was set up by the nature of our democratic republic.  The Representative of the People must meet the People in person.  They must interact.  Thus a level of insecurity was accepted.  The political rhetoric had been passionate in the last few months.  The rhetoric included violent imagery and wording.  This can explain a passionate crowd and could have helped the shooter take a gun that day to the scene.  Children were present, namely Christina Taylor Green who was nine years old looking to learn about politics and democracy and to help others by meeting her representative in person.  There was a crowd of people in a limited area which prevented movement.  Finally there came the shooter apparently out of his mind.  I heard that he was suffering form a form of schizophrenia or that he lost his grasp on reality.  The shooter had a gun he purchased legally.  These circumstances I gleaned from hearing news reports.  For many of these circumstances, if they were not present some lives could have been saved.  The circumstance of the crowd and no movement was a sign that there was potential risk present.  Any time you have a crowd there is risk involved.  If the crowd cannot move then the risk is very high.  What if some car ran into that crowd?  They could not move away fast enough.  A car did not run into the crowd but a shooter shot into the crowd and the crowd could not move.  There was risk involved there.  These circumstances came together and aided the result we all saw on January 8th.

Now, what how could have socially responsible citizens preventing all these circumstances from intersecting at the place and time of the shooting?  I cannot argue against Giffords' action of setting up or attending the function in front of the grocery store.  Social responsibility calls for interaction and peaceful communication among people.  Passionate rhetoric can get out of hand.  Social responsibility calls to curb the passion, or encourage to argue civilly and not in extremes.  This could have changed the shooter's mind from even going to the scene that day.  It also might have curbed his thoughts about violence.  Having children present is a touchy subject.  Social responsibility requires the chaperon to continually evaluate the situation for danger.  Was there cause to make the chaperon of Christina Taylor Green suspicious of a dangerous situation.  We could speculate here, but I'd rather leave it with her chaperon that day to judge.  Clearly a protective mindset was called for in similar situations.  About the crowd not being able to move, I feel that the citizens participating in Giffords' event could have asked to move the event over to a more open area.  This type of social responsibility we rarely see.  We want to leave it up to some security personnel.  That day there were no security personnel.  In such a case I believe that responsible citizens can look over the situation  and influence a better setup.  The shooter didn't have a grasp on reality.  Where was his support group?  Perhaps he had none.  He seemed to have some friends on the internet, and you have to wonder how they handled him and each other.  Too often people on the internet provoke other people and bully them or manipulate them for some reaction.  This is not social responsibility, but it's social irresponsibility.  We need to watch out how we treat other people even in impersonal formats like the internet.  Above all empathy could have influenced the shooter to not commit such an event.  To empathize with someone is not to condone them or even to like them, but it can be used to influence them and nudge them in a little different way.  You see if any of these circumstances were nudge in different way the results would have been far less tragic.


Social responsibility includes empathy, caring, being aware of circumstances, acting to reduce risk, being a friend, and a myriad of other things.  These things culminate in interacting with other people and not keeping to yourself nor just look out for number one.  As tragic the shooting in Tucson was, there have been other tragic situations in the past and there will be in the future.  If we are socially responsible we can minimize the effects of these situations.  Those who are socially responsible we end up calling heroes.  Heroes of that day were pointed out by President Obama in his speech to Tucson and the nation.

Here is his speech in its entirety from PBS: