Tag Archives: fear

Quoting: Overcome Fears Blocking Action

When trying to influence someone and you find that your first approach is not effective, try to figure out what specifically is holding him back from accepting your position. For example: What fears might he have? What obstacles might he be focusing on that would make it difficult for him? Then show the person why he has no reason to be afraid and that the potential obstacles will not be a problem.

Today, think about what fears are holding you back from taking some positive action that you know is in your best interest. Imagine that you have been given the gift of tremendous courage and confidence. Let this empower you – and resolve to take action!

Sources: see Ralbag – Shaar ahavas rayim, no.12

Quoting: Visualize Without Fear

Make it a regular practice to mentally visualize yourself behaving in a fearless manner in situations where you presently experience fear. Think of something that, if you would be able to do it, would make a big difference in your life and vividly imagine yourself doing it without fear.

Sources: For a series of probing questions on this topic, see Rabbi Zelig Pliskin’s “Gateway to Self Knowledge,” p.232

Kavanaugh Protests Right Here In River City

boise protest

Screenshot from my Facebook page – Kavanaugh protests in Boise, Idaho

Since my grandchildren are coming over soon, and since the vote to confirm Brett Kavanaugh won’t be held until between four and five this evening Eastern Time (two to three my time), I was going to give this a rest, but a friend of mine on Facebook (and in real life) posted the question above.

Here’s the link to the full news video courtesy of the Idaho Republican Party’s Facebook page. It’s not very long and I encourage you to view it before continuing.

Continue reading →

Seeking Kindness in the Aftermath of Kavanaugh – It’s Not Easy

violence

Screenshot of a video on twitter showing a young woman grabbing and destroying signs made by a conservative students group.

It occurs to me that there is a certain inconsistency in promoting kindness and then, at least to some, coming off as politically snarky. Okay, it wasn’t my intent, but I can see how some folks might take it that way.

Today’s the day when the full Senate votes on whether or not to confirm Judge Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court. Frankly, I don’t think either the Republicans or Democrats come away from this clean, and the result, as I said yesterday, is that American politics has officially become a denizen of the foulest sewer, like a mythical alligator.

As I also previously stated, no matter which way the vote goes, we all lose. Oh sure, some people will feel like they’ve won, but look what had to happen to achieve “victory.” Each side accused the other of some pretty vile political tricks, not to mention what ordinary people said and did. Both sides tried to destroy a human being. Both Kavanaugh’s and Ford’s reputations were dragged through the fecal matter, along with their families and anyone who might corroborate their stories, and even children were plagued with death threats.

Anyone who has ever been sexually assaulted or had a family member assaulted in such a manner absolutely projects all of their emotions onto Kavanaugh, as if confirming him to SCOTUS is tacit approval of all sexual crimes, and a total discounting of all victims everywhere.

Continue reading →

Five Ridiculously Implausible Things The Progressive Left is Afraid Of

A.M. Freeman

A.M. Freeman as found on her blog.

A little while ago (as I write this), I came across something on A.M. Freeman’s blog called When The Satire Site Can’t Recognize Satire. It was written in response to an article at Cracked.com called 5 Ridiculously Implausible Things The Alt-Right Is Afraid Of (Yes, I ripped off the title). Apparently, the missive’s author S. Peter Davis read the Superversive Press anthology Forbidden Thoughts, first published in January 2017 (to which Ms. Freeman contributed a story), edited by Jason Rennie, and with a foreword by the highly controversial Milo Yiannopoulos, and didn’t like it very much (Oh, keep in mind, I’ve read some of Mr. Yiannopoulos’s work and frankly, I don’t have much use for it).

Reading his review, and assuming his rendition of the stories contained within the anthology are accurate, yes, the themes and content are wildly exaggerated outside the realm of probability, but that was exactly the point. As Freeman pointed out, they were written as satire, blowing modern controversial topics way, way out of proportion to prove a point. The same was done in another Superversive anthology I read and reviewed called To Be Men: Stories Celebrating Masculinity. Yes, they’re all written from a very conservative and sometimes religious perspective, but the concern here, and probably the reason for the existence of Superversive Press, is that SF/F is increasingly becoming biased (or so is the belief) toward the left and perhaps the progressive far left (alt-left?), such that the rest of us don’t have a voice in the genre.

Continue reading →

Shut up, Wesley OR Why You Should Expect twitter to Hurt You

shut up, wesley

Shut up, Wesley meme

“It is impossible to see a fault in someone else if you don’t have it in yourself.” -Anonymous

I’ve been thinking about the amazing amount of kvetching going on in social media and especially twitter. I’ve participated in a certain amount of it as well, as chronicled in blog posts such as This is the World of Science Fiction and WorldCon?, Part 2: This is the World of Science Fiction and WorldCon?, and Here We Go Again: Comicsgate. In the last comment I made in the last blog post listed, I decided to take the moral high road and not participate in such spitting contests and the measuring of each other’s male genitalia. However, I came across something interesting.

wheaton

Wil Wheaton quits social media

Apparently, actor Wil Wheaton of Shut up, Wesley fame has made a rather big deal of quitting social media because people were mean to him.

Okay, I get it. People are mean to each other all over twitter, and someone like Wheaton, who arguably played the most unpopular character in STTNG, and who was once compared with Jar Jar Binks on a closed Science Fiction group in Facebook makes a really big target. Actually, I kind of feel sorry for him as on his blog, he said:

Continue reading →

The Proposal

path

© Sue Vincent

Fear drenched Simon Clark like the sweat that covered his body. The wooded path made it look like a morning in early Spring, but the reality of the brutal August heat and the hazy smoke of a dozen wildfires across the west belied the scenery.

“I can’t do this. It’s too hard.” He wasn’t muttering to himself, but to his unseen companion.

“You have to, Simon. Too many people are depending on you.” She always sounded like a young woman, but there was something slightly mechanical about her tone.

“I just want to go home.”

“You are home.”

“I don’t mean that. I want to go someplace where I can be safe. Someplace where it’s cool and dry and I can relax.”

“You don’t have time for that right now. You have a job to do.”

“Why does it have to be me? I didn’t ask for the responsiblity.”

Continue reading →

The WorldCon 76 Incident: The Consequences of Twitter

toxic twitter

Toxic Twitter

After I wrote The WorldCon 76 Incident: This Never Happened to Me on Twitter Before (and yes, I posted links on twitter and Facebook), I thought it was over. True, I did get one response from a very nice person saying (basically) that I was overreacting and people on twitter were just trying to be helpful.

I responded to him by saying that it was difficult for me to tell if their intent was to be helpful or critical, since at least some of the statements were ambiguous. I also compared twitter to a “wild west show.” I didn’t hear back from him and so that was that, or so I believed.

Then this morning, I got another response from someone who hadn’t addressed me before, stating (again basically) that I was uninformed about WorldCon, the Hugos, and one of the people who had been most critical (to the point of hostility) of me. As I looked at the tweets of the person who is supposed to be an important voice, I saw said-individual was pretty critical of a lot of other folks, specifically conservatives who have questioned the objectivity of the aforementioned Hugos (AKA, the “Sad Puppies”).

None of the people who addressed me have their tweets hidden, so I thought I’d take a look at what else they had to talk about. I wanted a wider understanding of the individuals involved. To that end, I’m posting screen captures of a few tweets of two of these people while doing my best to hide their identities (except for David Hogg’s since he seems to thrive on publicity).

Continue reading →

Toxic Fear and Things That Go Bump In The Night (and on Social Media)

fight or flight

Found at cbt4panic.org website – no image credit given

What started all this was a post by conservative speculative fiction writer Jon Del Arroz at the SuperversiveSF blog called My Post Mocking Feminism Goes Viral – Twitter Locks My Account. Apparently, his twitter account was temporarily locked again, this time for mocking something called National No Bra Day which is supposed to raise awareness about breast cancer by having women go braless (sort of like No-Shave November). This year, the event is on Saturday, October 13th, which makes it odd that anyone would bring up the topic now. Anyway, here’s Del Arroz’s tweet for your consideration.

If you go to Mr. Del Arroz’s blog, you’ll see that he is frequently critical of leftist and progressive causes, and leftist speculative fiction author Jim C. Hines went so far as to post a lengthy missive on his blog chronicling, in great detail, a list of Del Arroz’s supposed “trolling and harassing.”

On the other hand, I’ve been assured by numerous people who I respect that Del Arroz is being treated unfairly by a number of authors (such as Mr. Hines), and particularly by several Cons (conventions) for his religious and political views.

Why?

Continue reading →

The Good Old Days

orchard

Image: Core Orchards Detroit

Alexander May had created a way to save the world. Unfortunately, the rest of the world found out about it.

Dr. Alexander May, Ph.Ds in Particle Physics and Temporal Mechanics, retired Owner and CEO of TimeTeck, one of the largest and most profitable technology companies in the world, had watched that world continue its downward spiral toward an ethical and moral vacuum for most of his life. Wars, rumors of wars, earthquakes, plagues, and runaway environmental pollution was bringing life on Earth to a slow and agonizing end.

May knew he could fix it all. He could make the Earth life-sustaining again, bring peace to all nations, tribes, and clans. What was required was totally reorganizing the time-line and completely rewriting history.

All of the so-called climate change advocates were a bunch of hypocrites. They wanted to restore a sustainable planetary biosphere, but they didn’t want to make the sacrifices necessary. The world wanted to keep the Internet, their iPhones, their cat videos, and the rest of that crap.

You can’t have it both ways.

Continue reading →