Despite how he is written about in text books, taught about in public schools and most college classes, and remembered by mainstream media and the government, on this Martin Luther King Jr. Day, let us remember him how he actually was… a revolutionary thinker who challenged injustice in all its forms and explicitly connected those…
Author: Dr. Racho
The essentials.
First, I’m a romantic - and not just because I get married a lot. I’ve considered it a serious goal to fall in love with as many things as possible in this life. I live, trying to jump from inspiration to inspiration, and get carried away by ideas and beautiful things, always seeming to experience emotions more intensely than most.
Second, my mind does its best thinking, and I’m most comfortable, seeing the world at the macro level but individuals at the micro. The minutiae of almost anything could kill me. It’s why my house is generally always dirty, why I’d rather poke myself in the eye with a sharp stick than discuss American politics (unless it’s in regards to revolution) and why, although I can’t get an A in stats to save my life, I see interdisciplinary connectedness and how broad cultural characteristics can have philosophical and psychological consequences on an individual with relative ease.
Third, I believe we should strive to be as nonjudgmental towards each other as is humanly possible. We are all in this together and we’re all connected.
Finally, I’m a mother. My son is 3 and has taught me how to simultaneously grab life by the balls and revere its fragility. I lived 33 years thinking I knew what love was - I knew nothing. Words can’t describe him - he is an Adonis and his presence in my life pushes me to live more fully.
A poem: Time Until
The first was a tragedy I unintentionally or intentionally killed a man And heard for years he remained heavily unable As I, wading through, gathering up, and trying to hold together Too many pieces of a false self, of a false, weak, world Unable to know anything about love The second was less tragic,…
Art and Living Authentically
A friend of mine and I were speaking several years ago now about the nature of being an artist. He is a writer, among other things, and explained that he believes the true artist is one who creates in solitude, with no intent to share. For those artists who do display their work, he believes…
Looking for participants for the Denver Chapter of The Society for Creative Philanthropy
Hello friends, About a year ago, I discovered a young woman named Courtney Martin. She’s an author, activist, and all-around amazing woman. Among other things, she started The Society for Creative Philanthropy. She chose 9 friends and gave them each $100 with two stipulations – first, that they give it away in some creative and…
Staying…
I’ve always been a bit neurotic. I have a tendency towards obsessive worry, claustrophobia, agoraphobia, generalized anxiety, the occasional panic attack and mild to moderate mood disturbances. Ironically, I hardly ever worry about the things others might – things grounded in reality, such as money, work or retirement. I worry about things that aren’t likely…
The Problem is Not Gun Violence
Ugh. Videos, or dare I say propaganda like this distracts us from the actual problems this country faces. Here’s what I mean. First of all, as has been proven repeatedly through a history of strategic analyses, trying to mitigate something by addressing it at the end of its causal chain – by creating laws aimed…
The Effects of Technological Globalization on the Legitimacy of Hezbollah
Globalization has affected terrorist organizations in much the same way it has effected broader society, providing unparalleled opportunities to many that previously had little. The extent to which globalization has begun to level the world is evident when examining the vast number of terrorist organizations utilizing the Internet and other globalized versions of technology in…
Cultural Neuroscience: Self-Construal Style and its Neural Bases
Cultural differences in human behavior have been evident for thousands of years. For equally as long, differences in cultural practices and values, such as self-construal style, or the varied manner in which individuals within specific cultures tend to view the self relative to others (as either individualist or collectivist) were attributed to or explained by…
Human Trafficking: From the Objectification and Commodification of Women in Advertising to the Global Sex Trade
In 1620, Sir Francis Bacon, appalled by the degree to which contemporary society had embraced several intellectual and cultural fallacies, wrote a classic piece entitled, The Novum Organum, in an effort to thwart any further devotion to what he deemed to have become ‘The Four Idols’. The first of these, he described as Idols of…
Image
Image is as powerful as it is superficial. It has been my experience that there are numerous unwritten rules about being a woman. Some of them are as follows: if you’re an unattractive woman (according to our cultural standards) and you’re complaining about the pressure society puts on women to be beautiful, it’s because you’re…
MELISSA M. RACHO 