Life As We Knew It by Lela Markham
Book 1 of Transformation Project, a day-after-tomorrow apocalyptic.
#1day only Thursday January 31.
Archive for January 2019
#Free #Book Day Leave a comment
Obamacare Failure 1 comment
This is from almost two years ago, but nothing much has changed, so enjoy … or get angry. Whichever one you feel is most appropriate.
I found this article on The Federalist and I liked what the gal had to say so much that I decided to post it here. M. G. Oprea is a writer based in Austin, Texas. She holds a PhD in French linguistics from the University of Texas at Austin. You can follow her on Twitter here.
It’s that time of year. No, not New Years. It’s Obamacare enrollment time—that is, if you’re unfortunate enough to not have employer-sponsored health insurance.
There’s been a lot of media coverage lately about rising premiums. But the headache isn’t just financial, although that’s certainly part of it. With more insurance providers fleeing the individual market and coverage becoming worse and worse, getting the care you need can feel almost impossible.
To illustrate, I’d like to share my own experience buying insurance on the Obamacare exchange and trying to get treated for a chronic…
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#Free #Book Day Leave a comment
To Ruin or To Design Leave a comment
January 28, 2019
Are humans better at creating or destroying?
I feel like this week’s #OpenBook blog is something we could take about for hours and days and months and years. I am choosing one tangent of so many that I am passionate about regarding this topic.
Destruction and creation seem to hang out together, but typically people tend to want to talk about only one or the other. Look at history. Understanding what actually happened in history requires reading more than just the sugar coated highlight reel that the victor put together. Sometimes people worry that looking at both sides of things will harm their love of something, but I disagree. I love my husband dearly. He is by no means a perfect man. But he is a good man, and I (after a long list of embarrassing, whiney, selfish, frustrating moments in which I wasn’t the perfect spouse)…
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Breaking Bodies – When Creativity Destroys Leave a comment
Open Book 2019 Week #4
Are humans better at creating or destroying?
That’s quite the quandary.
Humans affect a lot of change to themselves, each other and their surroundings. Concepts as to if something is creative or destructive is relative and involves a number of factors involving an array of stakeholders and actors.
If we look at some notable examples of human’s ability to be creative, we also find some destructive and oppressive foundations. Conversely, artistry may appear in some pretty catastrophic stuff.
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Open Book Blog Hop – 28th January Leave a comment
This week’s topic is: ‘Are humans better at creating or destroying?’
That’s an easy one to answer, because I would say that generally it depends on the individual human and how they have been raised. Some children have had horrendous childhoods and feel worthless and unloved, or have even been brutalised by childhood abuse. These can become adults who are unhappy, quick to anger, and might go on to destroy the peace of anyone they come into contact with. Some adults of course recover if they can find a loving partner or receive therapy or counselling to gain the insight to deal with their past, but others might not fare so well. Of course I’m only speaking generally, but it’s usually a case where a child who does not feel loved or valued would then not care about anybody else and then as an adult might go on to commit…
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Creative Destruction 4 comments
Are humans better at creating or destroying?
Rules:
1. Link your blog to this hop.
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What an amazing topic!
As with so many things, I don’t see this in black and white terms. Without a doubt, human beings have a history of destructive behavior. Wars, environmental damage, genocides, infanticide – God must weep to see His creation being so absolutely stupid. He created us to be nurturing and we spit in His face and put ourselves on His throne and started smashing the china.
It would be easy to look around our planet and judge, as some people do, human beings as destructive beyond redemption.
And yet we are the most creative species. No other species creates art like we do. Amazing paintings, music that takes our souls to the heights of heaven and the depths of hell, books that speak words that break our hearts and put them back together again … there’s just so much that shows how incredibly creative we are. We were created by the ultimate Creator, and a part of being made in His image is that we hold an incredible capacity for creation.
And then there’s this little-recognized and largely not understood concept of Creative Destruction. It’s an economic term. It means that as new technologies and economic sectors are created, old ones are often destroyed, but in the process of the destruction, the people displaced by that transformation end up with improved lives.
This has application in so many areas, including as a writer. I am currently happily wrestling with my perennial work in progress, “What If Wasn’t.” I think I am on Complete Rewrite #3 and it’s starting to look like a series (no real surprise there, I guess). I’ve killed a lot of darlings in the process – but in the debris of each editing, I find gems worth keeping and making better. Destruction and creativity are symbiotic processes.
I think humans are naturally better at destruction than we are at creativity because, since the Fall, we’re bent and we struggle to access the nature God created us to have. At best, creativity is a vestigial talent left over from when we were whole and complete, in full contact with the Creator. Destruction became our legacy when we divorced from His guidance. But because we are both, we live through this endless cycle of destruction and creativity, using the debris of our destruction as building blocks for our creativity, even as our creativity powers us forward into a future that leaves behind the technologies of the past.
It’s fascinating to view the cycle. In economics, it’s wonderful to see how the process of creative destruction has lifted so many people out of poverty. In history, it is stunning to see civilizations that have risen from the debris of prior civilizations. And, yet, there remains that destructive bent that believes that we must strangle others in order to get ahead. Whether we do the strangling in the board room or the capitol, we so often refuse to see that there is a better way based on individual striving in a society that allows both competition (which makes us strong) and cooperation (which allows for support where we’re weak). I see a lot of my daughter’s generation who are beginning to understand this and adopt a live-and-let-life strategy to live, but there are so many voices today that couch destructive messages in touchy-feely rhetoric. It is hard sometimes to know whether we are improving or devolving, but that too may be a cycle of creative destruction.
And now we should head off to see what my fellow authors think on this subject.
Handling Trolls You Know 1 comment
A while ago, an author I work with regularly took exception with my stance on prison reform. She — who has probably never met a felon — trolled me on Twitter and told me she wouldn’t work with me in the future until I changed my INFORMED opinion to match her feelings agenda.
Because I’d entered an obligation, I’ve continued to share her articles so long as they weren’t so far off the mark that I couldn’t agree with them in the slightest and then I just didn’t make a deal out of it.
But last week, I did an inventory to see if she had shared anything of mine since she’d decided she could ignore her obligation. I found no evidence that she had, so I informed her that I was no longer supporting her. That’s not entirely true. I would still support her if I found a redeeming comment there, but I don’t feel like I’m under obligation to support someone who is not keeping her commitments.
This isn’t about agreeing or disagreeing on topics. It’s about a verbal contract that was made to support one another through a blog. I welcome all debate, but when someone violates a contract with me, they can’t expect me to uphold my end of the contract.
A Response to Brad’s Presidential Pick Leave a comment
Reading this is interesting. I was half-right about Trump. He has done some good things while in office – regulations are way down. We’re fighting about the wall now and the partial government shutdown is showing how we can actually do without 800,000 federa workers.
But I was also right about oh-so-many observations. We’re still fighting about window-dressing when we need to be discussing real reform. So, there you go. A blast-from-the-past.
So, I’ve been formatting my latest book and asked Brad to post something to keep the blog active. I suggested Lew Rockwell or Chitina fishing photos, and I expected he’d at least be funny. Instead, he came out publicly for Trump.
I love Brad and he has a few good points. And I’ve read a fair number of libertarian pundits who are voting for Trump, so Brad is not completely off in the woods without a compass. I’ve said that if I had a gun to my head and was forced to choose between Hillary and Donald, I would choose Trump as the lesser of two evils, but we’re talking shades of difference that are so slight that you really aren’t sure if you’re right.
I’m opting to not vote for either one.
I agree with Brad and others that the left is eroding traditional social and economic values and…
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Johnson Could Win By a Landslide Leave a comment
I ran across this today and thought, blast from the past that’s plenty relevant. So here are my thoughts from a little over two years ago.
My husband Brad became a basket case this last week, according to Hillary Clinton. He’s a Trump supporter. We’ve discussed it. He doesn’t love Trump, but he thinks he’s better than Hillary and he has a chance to beat Hillary. Brad doesn’t think Gary Johnson has a chance to winning the election and he doesn’t want to waste his vote and endure 4-8 years of Hillary’s tyranny and probably 25 years of a Clinton-selected Supreme Court. I find a lot of people feel that way. I hear their concerns, but I don’t care. I’m done voting for the lesser of two evils, so I’m going to vote for someone I don’t have to hold my nose to justify.
My reasons for not voting for Trump are many. I don’t bend over backwards on topics of race. I believe reverse racism is a real thing that is as wrong as traditional…
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aurorawatcherak 