Everyday Ethics

To be humble, to be kind.
It is the giving of the peace in your mind.
To a stranger, To a friend
To give in such a way that has no end.
We are Love
We are One
We are how we treat each other when the day is done.
We are Peace
We are War
We are how we treat each other and Nothing More
(Nothing More by Alternate Routes)

How we treat each other speaks to how we live out our everyday ethics.

This article was quite challenging in what it says about those ethics.

A Window Into Everyday Morality via Text Message By BENEDICT CAREY NY TIMES SEPT. 11, 2014

An excerpt:

The survey found no significant differences in moral behavior or judgment between religious people and nonreligious ones.

It did find some evidence to support theories developed in lab experiments. For instance, psychologists describe good deeds as “contagious,” and so it appeared in the new data. People on the receiving end of an act of kindness were about 10 percent more likely than the average person to do something nice themselves later in the day. On the other hand, those who granted that kindness were slightly more likely than average (about 3 percent) to commit a small act of rudeness or dismissiveness later in the same day – granting themselves “moral license” to do so.

Psychologists have also contended that a fundamental difference between the political right and the left is that conservatives tend to think of morality in terms of loyalty and faith, while liberals focus on fairness and liberty. And so it was in the survey. Participants to the right identified more breaches and affirmations of loyalty, and those to left saw more examples of unfair and generous treatment.

I am surprised a bit at what the survey found; but then again as is pointed out, our worldview will also play a role in the contagious good deeds or not.  Much food for thought.

Hunger in America

"An estimated 14.3 percent of American households were food insecure at least some time during the year in 2013, meaning they lacked access to enough food for an active, healthy life for all household members." (USDA: Household Food Security in the United States in 2013)

What can be done to help those who are food insecure?

One way to help those in poverty, is to intervene earlier...

The Way to Beat Poverty By NICHOLAS KRISTOF and SHERYL WuDUNN NY TIMES SEPT. 12, 2014


An excerpt:

James Heckman, a Nobel Prize-winning economist at the University of Chicago, says that our society would be better off taking sums we invest in high school and university and redeploying them to help struggling kids in the first five years of life. We certainly would prefer not to cut education budgets of any kind, but if pressed, we would have to agree that $1 billion spent on home visitation for at-risk young mothers would achieve much more in breaking the poverty cycle than the same sum spent on indirect subsidies collected by for-profit universities.

Second, children’s programs are most successful when they leverage the most important — and difficult — job in the world: parenting. Give parents the tools to nurture their child in infancy and the result will be a more self-confident and resilient person for decades to come. It’s far less expensive to coach parents to support children than to maintain prisons years later.

What does that mean for all of us? We wish more donors would endow not just professorships but also the jobs of nurses who visit at-risk parents; we wish tycoons would seek naming opportunities not only at concert halls and museum wings but also in nursery schools. We need advocates to push federal, state and local governments to invest in the first couple of years of life, to support parents during pregnancy and a child’s earliest years.

Another place to turn: http://feedingamerica.org/how-we-fight-hunger.aspx

As the nation’s leading domestic hunger-relief charity, our nationwide food bank network members supply food to 46 million Americans each year, including 12 million children and 3 million seniors. Feeding America benefits from the unique relationship between local member food banks at the front lines of hunger relief and the central efforts of our national office.

To help in Monroe & Connectciut:

http://www.ctfoodbank.org/

http://www.monroect.org/FoodPantry.aspx

Domestic Violence

Almighty God, our heavenly Father, who set the solitary in families: We commend to your continual care the homes in which your people dwell. Put far from them every root of bitterness, the desire of vainglory, and the pride of life. Fill them with faith, virtue, knowledge, temperance, patience, godliness. Knit together in constant affection those who, in holy wedlock, have been made one flesh. Turn the hearts of the parents to the children, and the hearts of the children to the parents; and so enkindle fervent charity among us all, that we may evermore be kindly affectioned one to another; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

This prayer for the family, reminds me that every prayer seeks God's care upon our homes and our families.  Sadly, many families experience violence at the hands & mouths of other family members.

The Huffington Post is doing a series of articles on this subject:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/09/12/why-didnt-you-just-leave-family_n_5805614.html 

It is important that we talk about this and shed the light that is necessary on such a dark part of our society. But not only talk, but do something about it too! 

Need help? In the U.S., call 1-800-799-SAFE (7233) for the National Domestic Violence Hotline.

Looking for help in Monroe?  http://www.cwfefc.org/ - Center for Family Justice (of eastern Fairfield County, Connecticut)


http://shamelesssurvivors.com/ - a website by a survivor of DV