For my sons, Memorial Day 2011

God Bless America blared from the flag waving Harley as boy scouts, soon to be men, marched between white lines. Memorial Day, a national glance inward to mourn the lives mangled and lost ‘serving’ freedom and civic liberty. I almost wept, not out of patriotic duty and honor but for the deep feeling of shame and betrayal that this and past pageants endure.

While I honor the ultimate sacrifice brothers and sisters have made through the ages, some urgent, some heroic and necessary, so many lives, however, have been mangled for reasons – that had they known – they would have wept too.

Responding to Touch the Future and National Institute for PLAY’s important PLAY SCIENCE DVD:

Creative play is the foundation for social-political freedom and liberty which is not possible when abnormal brain development is induces by a failure of affectional bonding in the maternal-infant –child relationship.

Depression, stereotypical rocking behaviors and compulsive stimulus-seeking behaviors, all produced by sensory deprivation to the developing brain

OPEN LETTER TO FIRST LADY MICHELLE OBAMA

ON THE HIGH RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN IMPAIRED BREASTFEEDING BONDING AND INFANT MORTALITY NOT ACKNOWLEDGED BY THE SURGEON GENERAL?S CALL TO ACTON TO SUPPORT BREASTFEEDING 2011; CALLS FOR WEANING AGE OF EVERY INFANT/ CHILD BE RECORDED AND PUBLISHED AS PART OF THE IMMUNOLOGICAL RECORD BY THE NATIONAL CENTER FOR HEALTH STATISTICS, CENTER FOR DISEASE CONTROL AND PREVENTION; AND ESTABLISH BY LAW THE GENDER EQUALITY OF REPRESENTATION IN THE CONGRESS.

The excess health risks associated with not breastfeeding are well known

Hi Lisa…
Interesting and common challenge.
Mentoring a real man in today's world.
 
Every young man is unique. One shoe definitely does not fit all.

I do not know of a rite of passage group that might fit the need.

What does it mean to be a man in today’s world?

I think we need to know where we are pointing before drawing a map.

What are the skills, wisdom and capacities needed to be such a thing?

The Way of the Superior Man : A Spiritual Guide to Mastering the Challenges of Women, Work, and Sexual Desire by David Didea
And
Fire in the Belly by Sam Keen
Would be good reading for you and your partner to help you formulate your own views.

How can you draw a map if you don’t know where you are going?

America is a Culture of Violence. Assassination of our political leaders has a long
history in this nation. Abraham Lincoln, John F. Kennedy, Robert F. Kennedy, Martin
Luther King, Jr. are in recent memory of this history and now we must add liberal
Democratic Representative Gabrielle Gifford, 8th District, Arizona, as a potential victim.
It is of more than passing interest that the victims of these assassinations represent the
liberal wing of America political thought and action. Questions must be raised as to the
origins of political/social conservatism in the genesis of these assassinations.

It is amazing that it takes an assassination and senseless mass murder to rile tolerant people. What follows are excerpts from today’s Climate of Hate by New York Times op-ed columnist Paul Krugman.

As David Frum, the former Bush speechwriter, has put it, “Republicans originally thought that Fox worked for us and now we’re discovering we work for Fox.”

Please understand – if there wasn’t an egger market for violence it would not appear in the script. While in India I discovered that at least one rape in most films was mandatory. Joseph Chilton Pearce was to be a consultant on children’s TV programming until the sponsor insisted on a steady stream of violence or there would be no show! That’s show business.

SEXUAL MONOGAMY AND VIOLENCE AGAINST WOMAN.
Part 1 A Betrayal of Human Sexual Evolution

James W. Prescott, Ph.D.
Institute of Humanistic Science

The Washington Post listed 3 new books about sex that illuminates rather than titillates at http://www.washingtonpost.com/wpdyn/content/article/2010/07/09/AR2010070902849_pf.html

The Washington Post July 11, 2010

http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/sex-dawn/201006/time-sex-dawn

This refers the reader to the Psychology Today Interview on the book which provides a source for the book reviewed.

10 JULY 2010

A NYT ARTICLE OF INTEREST:
Why Bonobos Don’t Kill Each Other
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/06/science/06conv.html

James W. Prescott, Ph.D.
Institute of Humanistic Science

In an Interview with Brian Hare, an assistant professor at the Duke Institute for Brain Sciences at Duke University, and Vanessa Woods, a research scientist in the Department of Evolutionary Anthropology at Duke by Claudia Dreifus, New York Times. July 2, 2010, the following exchange illustrates the disconnect between violence and killing with sexuality and their roots in the maternal-infant/child relationship. Brian Hare missed the central lesson of the Bonobo when he responded to Vanessa Woods’s commentary on Bonobo sexuality:

Suzann Arms of Birthing the Future is planning an international symposium on birth and how it affects the way the brain and therefore how culture develops. She asked for feedback – Though you might be interested…

Suzann 
It is done onto us as we perceive – as we believe – as we do onto others.

The emphasis you placed on birth – being the foundation of human development – is of course critical. I suggest that there is another focus, one that is deeper and more nurturing. The core insight driving all of our activities at Touch the Future is summarized in the preface for a new book in development Kids are NOT the Problem.

There is a pervasive, near universal perception – parenting is about kids. Just about everything a parent does and often thinks about is about ‘the kid.’ An alternative point of view, a completely different paradigm, is that kids provide the necessary catalyst for evolutionary development in adults. The first, parenting is about kids, places children, their care, education and development in the spotlight. They are the goal and focus of attention and resources. The second, becoming a parent is about adult development with kids providing the stimulus for this continuing growth, places the adult center stage. Adult growth and development then becomes the goal, focus of attention and target for resource investments. It sounds selfish but it’s NOT.