Plus: ACB Days and Highly Sensitive People
ACB Days start today. The Senate Judiciary Committee will start asking her questions.
The left will scramble for anything they can to stop the confirmation from proceeding, including hauling in COVID, alleging that Lindsey Graham (who is in the fight of his life against an incredibly-funded Democratic challenger) was exposed to COVID so, you know, we can't have the hearing, so let's just call the whole thing off. If you want to watch live, here's the link.
Has anyone noticed that COVID has become our prime justification? If someone doesn't want to do something, or resists something, they say, “What about COVID?” It's the same way that, when you're sitting on a volunteer board and someone doesn't want to do X, Y, or Z, he or she will always say, “What about the liability?”
It's up there with “We need to do it for the children,” which is easily the biggest justification for every government action. It also propels a lot of individual and nonprofit decisions.
Such things–COVID, aversion to getting sued, and care for children–are givens and don't need to be explicitly stated anymore than we need to state that we all need air to breathe.
So, if you're opposed to a decision or proposal, and the best you can muster is COVID, liability, or the children, I'm afraid you're admitting that you have no good argument in opposition. You'll need to bring it at a unique angle or combine it with facts that your interlocutor hasn't considered.
Highly Sensitive People
I learned of a new thing last week: Highly sensitive people. Apparently, nearly 20% of the population are HSPs. HSPs are “naturally predisposed to process and perceive information on a much deeper level than others.”
It's not a good thing or a bad thing. But it's apparently a thing. Such people find it difficult to move on after a bad experience with another person and get exhausted in groups because they intuitively process everything that's going on in a room (they are, after all, sensitive).
Are you a HSP? The link above has nine traits shared by HSP people. This article at Medium sets forth eight:
1. You Usually Feel Emotionally Exhausted
2. You Overanalyze Everything
3. You Have a Hard Time Moving On
4. You are Uncomfortable with Change
5. You Don't React Well to Criticism and Conflict
6. You Don't Do Well Under Pressure
7. You Have a Hard Time Saying “no”
8. You Need Alone Time
If you're an HSP (or maybe are on the HSP spectrum, if not full-blown HSP), the description of the traits in the two links above provides clues for how to deal with each of these traits. I'll plan on addressing one or two every day this week.
Desert Father Corner
“Never belittle the significance of your thoughts, for not one escapes God's notice.” Mark the Hermit, Philokalia (Faber and Faber), Vol. One, p. 116.
Mark lived in the 400s. He was light years ahead of the mindfulness practitioners.
Most, if not all, modern advances in psychology are merely postmodern returns to premodern truths. Please keep that in mind as this feature reoccurs.
Covidween
It's bad enough that an entire generation of kids are being told to be afraid of . . . everything. Now they're even being told to be afraid of enjoying to be afraid: The New York Times advises parents about how they should trick-or-treat in COVID times.
