#Robert's religious trauma is probably on a different level

[samd1o1]

I understand why this wasn't used in the film (the serious Dracula manipulation is better) but god damn it's still funny.

[theroadtoadvancedwellness-blog]

Wellness Is Where You Find It - Or Is It?

Introduction

Who said wellness is where you find it? Is it true? How can one know where to look? Have you found it? If so, where?

Why does it seem that so many people spend their lives lookin' for wellness in all the wrong places, lookin' for wellness in too many faces, searchin' their eyes and lookin' for traces of what Halbert Dunn, Jack Travis, Bill Hettler and doctors, philosophers, wellness report publishers and so many others are forever dreamin' of?

Well, let me back up for a minute by addressing the first question, namely who said wellness is where you find it?

Thomas W. Flynn said that or, more specifically, wrote it on a gift card that humorously exhibits his disdain for Santa Claus. The gift card was signed and inscribed just for me, thanks to a donation made to a secular fund-raiser by a friend. I can't mention the name of my beneficiary - she insists on anonymity. (Why I don't know - perhaps she's a lottery winner hounded by supplicants, or is in hiding owing to a fatwa levied by Ayatollah Khomeini, or perhaps her shadow-dwelling nature is related to traumas from her Catholic upbringing - who knows?)

Tom Flynn is an American author, journalist, novelist, Executive Director of the Council for Secular Humanism and editor of its journal, Free Inquiry magazine. He's also director of the Robert Green Ingersoll Birthplace Museum and the Freethought Trail - and an acquaintance. I first met Tom thirty years ago during the Christmas season in Orlando when he gave an entertaining and thoroughly convincing lecture about his one-man war on Christmas in general and the Santa Claus silliness in particular. His point of view, described in a 1993 book entitled, The Trouble with Christmas, is that early immersion in the Santa myth predisposes children to accept absurd religious teachings in later life.

Digressing for a moment, let's apply the second question (Is it true) to this matter of the alleged harm attending early immersion in the Santa myth. Does this tradition really incline little humans to grow into gullible, superstitious adults?

Consider the counter argument put forward by another acquaintance, also a paragon of free thought, namely editor Dale McGowan. Dale takes the position that the opposite is more likely - that discovering that Santa was a preposterous myth probably inclines children to reject religious dogmas in later life.

Which is it?

So, Is It True That Wellness Is Where You Find It?

Let us examine this great question using the example of our president, the stable genius.

Our Fearless Leader seems to have found a wellness lifestyle in the wrong places, that is, in a high risk lifestyle. At least that's the impression I get from findings his annual physical at the Walter Reed National Medical Center. The examining doctor gave Trump a glowing report indicating no concern about his physical or mental health status. Washington Post columnist Dana Milbank, however, did express concern, not about Trump's health but rather about his doctor, Rear Adm. Ronny Jackson. How could a physician describe an exercise-averse, cheeseburger-addicted, borderline obese 71-year-old man with significant plaque in his coronary arteries and high cholesterol as the very picture of health? At a White House press briefing, Dr. Jackson termed the Dear Leader's health to be excellent - and repeated that word - excellent, eight times! Reference was also made to Trump's incredible cardiac fitness, incredible genes - all totally amazing, surpassingly marvelous, superbly stupendous and extremely awesome.

Wait - there's more. His genes are great, too - a gift from God.

How, you might wonder, can a ghastly lifestyle associated with a junk food diet, little or no exercise, significant arterial plaque, high cholesterol and borderline obesity square with such a glowing health report? Based upon Dr. Jackson's findings, nobody is healthier than the president. Surely the president, and probably Dr. Jackson, would guarantee it.

Trump's medical report suggests reality is in the eye of the beholder. Do we really want to view wellness in this fashion?

Where has Trump found wellness? Clearly in low level worseness or, what medical science describes as a terrible lifestyle. Who knew to look there? I hope you will look elsewhere.

How Can One Know Where to Find Wellness?

Well, one could ask readers of my newsletter - they could point the way, I'm sure. In addition, I could suggest about a dozen books starting with High Level Wellness: An Alternative to Doctors, Drugs and Disease or, a more recent opus, Wellness Orgasms: The Fun Way to Live Well and Die Healthy. But, I'm too modest to recommend such a course.

Maybe wellness is not to be found in any particular newsletter, book, conference, location, creed or faith system at all, but rather in a way of thinking that promotes happiness and other qualities of exuberance - even if one's appearance suggests less than stellar health status, even if age graded.

The Usual Suspects Where Wellness Might Be Found

Ideally, from a REAL wellness perspective, wellness is most likely to be found in the course of daily thought and action guided by four theoretical conditions:

Having an appreciation of reason and a willingness to use it.

Recognizing the value of exuberance - in the experience of joy, meaning, common decencies, love, etc.

Embracing athleticism, that is, sound nutrition and regular exercise.

Reverence for and insistence upon liberty or freedom, for oneself personally and others.

Auguste Comte's Law of Positive Philosophy introduced the idea that our leading conceptions, theories or movements (such as REAL wellness) pass successively through three different theoretical conditions:

The theological or fictitious.

The metaphysical or abstract.

The scientific or positive.

Advocates of REAL wellness like to think that the movement is or at least should be found only in the scientific mode. Perhaps someday, that will be so. However, current practice of traditional wellness, where most seem to find it, is rooted in the metaphysical and antediluvian remnants of theological and metaphysical persuasions.

Alas, the Flynn rule applies even here: for those so inclined, wellness, like Trump's version of excellent health, is wherever one cares to find it. Bottom line: choose wisely and go lookin' for wellness in all the places science and reason indicate are the likeliest locations.

Summary

Wellness, at least the REAL kind of wellness that is pursued for the positive returns it enables besides good health, is not to be found anywhere in particular, but is rather a never-ending process throughout a lifetime of fine- tuning ideas and actions that embellish our existence. We don't so much find it, as if it were something fixed and settled, as we hone in on a set of directions, wherever we are, that enable us to make the best of our changing situations.

[mermaidsirennikita]

Thoughts on Mary I and Elizabeth I (if you don't mind to open that can of worms)

I love cans of worms, historically speaking!

Purely speaking of them in terms of how they fared as monarchs--of course Elizabeth was a much more successful ruler than Mary, and is rightly remembered as such.  With that being said, I don’t think that she was the shining paragon of queenliness that some hold her up to be; she definitely displayed the Tudor temper we saw in both Henry VIII and Mary I (though it was oddly lacking, for the most part, in Henry VII it seems).  She was prone to jealousy and possessiveness concerning her favorites (not just her male favorites, but her female friends as well) and clearly was insecure about her throne, and rightly so.  But the thing is that Elizabeth seemed to be able to distance her personal feelings from what she needed to do as a monarch--not all of the time, but a lot of the time, and more often than Mary did.  I don’t feel like anyone can say, for example, that she never wanted to marry and have children.  She clearly had reason to fear marriage on a personal level, and like any woman of her time likely had a healthy fear of childbirth.  But while we can’t assume by any means that she wanted a husband and children, there’s really nothing to indicate that she was deeply against these things on a purely personal level, and much to me indicates that at one point in her life, she was pretty passionately in love with Robert Dudley and it’s quite possible that she wanted something more than what they were limited to.

But she made the pragmatic decision there, not just to secure her own rule but because the more secure her rule was, the more secure her country was.  She also--while not being totally above religious persecution--was able to separate herself from the pretty shitty treatment she’d been given as a Protestant by a Catholic queen, and had a fairly pragmatic approach to religion.  While Elizabeth was not the fervent fanatic for Protestantism that Mary was for Catholicism, she cared enough about her religion to never really give it up, even on pain of death.  So it meant something to her; but she wasn’t going to attempt to eradicate Catholics the way Mary did Protestants, though Elizabeth had the same reasons to fear Catholics that Mary did Protestants.  (And frankly, she had greater reasons to fear them because many of the other European powers were governed by Catholics, and indeed her greatest rival for the throne was her greatest rival because she was Catholic.)

Mary has always struck me less as this horrid monster--though she did monstrous things--than a pretty tragic figure.  She seems to have been intelligent, charming, and attractive in her younger years--and she also seems to have wanted marriage and children.  Her father screwed her over on so many levels.  Not to armchair diagnose Mary--and for every emotional explanation you can make for her mistakes, you can probably come up with several political ones--but it almost seems that she lived a stunted life.  Of course she made moves to eradicate Protestants once she became queen, but she also seemed to be trying to make up for lost time on a personal level.  Henry SHOULD have found her a husband when she was in her teens and she knew this; but she was left scrambling to marry ASAP and produce an heir in her thirties, in an era when that age meant a lot more for fertility than it does now.  As much as it’s often been said that she was besotted by Philip, and as much as she does seem to have made some bad decisions in an attempt to have a good marriage--Elizabeth saw more astutely, perhaps, that you missed out on an heir in avoiding marriage but in the long term consolidated personal power--she was also looking for that heir.  You could see this as Mary attempting to cultivate more traditional power and prioritize the Tudor dynasty, while Elizabeth put her own rule first and sacrificed the dynasty.  In the case of the Tudors, personal rule > dynasty ended up being a better strategy not just for the ruler, but for the nation.  But it was a roll of the dice.

 As for their relationship with each other--look, on a psychological level...  I know it sounds harsh, but I think it makes total sense that Mary resented Elizabeth and likely saw her as a representation of her father’s treatment of her mother, and for that matter Anne Boleyn.  It honestly weirds me out a little when people act as if Mary I was some bitch for disliking Anne.  I love Anne B. and all, but making nice with a stepdaughter who was pushed from the line of succession and otherwise jeopardized her own child’s rule was not a priority for her, and from a political perspective shouldn’t have been.  And even if she had been nice with her--we can try and be above it all, but let me know how that works for you when you’re faced with making nice with “the other woman” (or other man) in your parents’ marriage.  Mary seems to have tried to be a loving sister to Elizabeth when they were younger, but I doubt she was ever really able to get over what happened to her mother, and honestly, how could she?  For that matter, everything Mary Queen of Scots was to Elizabeth, Elizabeth was to Mary I--except her claim was stronger.  Elizabeth was, to Mary, her natural heir (and therefore threat, as they were of differing denominations and for that matter born of different mothers) and at the time, much younger and much more capable of bearing children.  Mary was under immense stress for the entirety of her reign, and this doesn’t excuse what she did, but it does explain some of her more erratic and emotional moments (and her “phantom pregnancies”).  

It’s honestly no wonder that Elizabeth was a stronger queen, because she was mentally stronger to begin with.  She grew up, basically from toddlerhood to 25, with the specter of death or at the very least extreme disfavor with the king hanging over her head.  She was dependent on the whims of her tyrannical father, then spent time being assaulted by Thomas Seymour (who was very close to the king, of course) and then she lived under Mary’s threat.  Mary spent more of her formative years as a beloved princess, then had all of that--and her inheritance--torn from her.  She was someone with a grand legacy on both parents’ sides who was battered mentally, and by the time she became queen it showed.  Elizabeth had her neuroses, but the way in which her trauma occurred seems to her toughened her in many ways.  But, ironically, while Mary I had the opportunity to execute her sister, she never did.  And though Elizabeth did her best to talk herself out of executing Mary Stuart, she ultimately did so.  Maybe the bonds of sisterhood prevailed in Mary I and Elizabeth’s cases--maybe Mary couldn’t help but cling to the idea of a Tudor dynasty, even if it continued through a sister she hated and at certain points seemed have convinced herself wasn’t a Tudor at all. We really can’t know why she let Elizabeth live, exactly, because it was clearly a very personal choice.

Either way--fascinating women, both.