Book: Honoring My Father: Coming to Terms

Honoring My Father: Coming to Terms

Do you have someone you cared deeply about that is no longer with you? Do you wish that you could go back and do a better job of letting them know how much they meant to you? Yes, we all do. In this heartfelt account, David Satterlee tells personal stories of a remarkable father, his own failure in family and faith… and the rediscovery of love worth living for.

"Honoring My Father" is a journey of growth across generations. David remembers his Father's life with affection, and describes his own depression, spiritual crisis and divorce that led to being shunned by his family. Remarried, David and his wife attend his Dad's memorial service and discover opportunities to honor his Father's life, character, and a final wish.

This books also includes "Going to See Jessie," a related family story of elder-care, love, loyalty, and enduring patience. "Providing home care develops a predictable and cadenced routine... Going to see Jessie was an integral part of our Sisyphean life together. It was more than a routine; it was an obligatory rite, a necessary commemoration, like giving thanks before a meal or putting flowers on a grave."


Buy paperback or Kindle eBook at Amazon
Buy paperback or ebook at Barnes and Noble
Buy multiple eBook formats at Smashword

Book: The Role of Productivity in Community Success: The Jesuit-Guarani Cultural Confluence

The Role of Productivity in Community Success: The Jesuit-Guarani Cultural Confluence

This historical essay, drawn from the deepest jungles of Uruguay in South America, examines the creation of a flourishing culture and economy that lasted for almost two centuries. It explores the guided development of a virtuous web of social and economic controls that mixed the philosophy of Catholic Jesuit missionaries with the traditions of the native Guaraní peoples.

An unprecedented experiment in progressive community-building may have once created that rarest of cultural treasures – a functional and stable utopia... ended only by outside pressures of conquest and exploitation.

This is a living parable for our changing world, now suffering from seemingly-intractable political, cultural and economic turmoil… and struggling to be born into a tenuous future on uncertain threads of hope and despair. Rapid introduction of technology, educational systems, health care systems and social order have succeeded before – balancing competition and consumption in a new kind of community – and might be made to work again as we seek to create our own "new economy."

In this startling synthesis, Mr. Satterlee brings together and introduces: 
  • historical records, 
  • the social theories of the Catholic Church, 
  • the management theories of Peter Drucker, 
  • the psycho-social theories of Don Beck’s Spiral Dynamics Integral, and
  • the economics ideas of William Lewis and the McKinsey Global Institute on “the power of productivity.”

Buy paperback or Kindle eBook at Amazon
Buy paperback or ebook at Barnes and Noble
Buy multiple eBook formats at Smashwords

Essay: Setting limits

Information and comments on the essay:

Setting limits

From the book: Chum for Thought: Throwing Ideas into Dangerous Waters by David Satterlee

Find out more, including where to buy books and ebooks

Does Setting limits cause #isolation, loss of #intimacy, and even #alienation of #love?

Chum For Thought:
Throwing Ideas into Dangerous Waters

Women often feel at a disadvantage in relationships with men. Social pressures, openly or unrecognized, can give men a dominant role. How is a woman to feel self-respect, personal worth, independence, initiative, control, and security? The common answer, these days, is to “set limits.”

Setting defensive limits makes intuitive sense. “That which cannot touch you cannot harm you.” But, at what cost in isolation, loss of intimacy, and even alienation of love? In fact, the issue of boundaries and limits can affect the character of any relationship, not just those between men and women.

Kinds of Limits

Parents and teachers are urged to set firm, appropriate limits for young children as part of youths’ guided moral development. The goal is for children to

Essay: Eastern influences on contemporary Western culture and spirituality

Information and comments on the essay:

Eastern influences on contemporary Western culture and spirituality

From the book: Chum for Thought: Throwing Ideas into Dangerous Waters by David Satterlee

Find out more, including where to buy books and ebooks

Read or download this essay as a PDF file at: https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B4eNv8KtePyKY0djTlVOMDJQR1E/edit?usp=sharing

Chum For Thought:
Throwing Ideas into Dangerous Waters

Eastern influences on contemporary Western culture and spirituality

Many people in Western cultures have become aware of, and adopted elements of, traditional Eastern religions to a variety of degrees. Although usually ignorant of, or rejecting the full scope of the associated original foundational historical practice and philosophy, they are creating a new flavor of Western spirituality and a related social consciousness.

Both Eastern practitioners and Western philosophers have helped raise our general consciousness of Eastern spiritual traditions over the last century. Some of the more prominent are briefly described in the following:

William James, a leading psychologist and philosopher published The Varieties of Religious Experience in 1902. This helped introduce Eastern religious thought to the West.

 Aldous Huxley’s 1945 The Perennial Philosophy identifies a recurring insight of divine reality that is common to most primitive peoples and all

Essay: Japan, America, and sacred nationalism

Information and comments on the essay:

Japan, America, and sacred nationalism

From the book: Chum for Thought: Throwing Ideas into Dangerous Waters by David Satterlee

Find out more, including where to buy books and ebooks

Read or download this essay as a PDF file at: https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B4eNv8KtePyKZkxRVW9jSWpsZVk/edit?usp=sharing

Chum For Thought:
Throwing Ideas into Dangerous Waters

Japan, America, and sacred nationalism

The Japanese islands have remained relatively isolated throughout their history. This has allowed for the development and concentration of distinctive religious and cultural characteristics. Although Japan has experienced Eastern influences (mostly Chinese and Buddhism), and Western influences (especially Anglo/American and Christian), these have seemed to only flavor, not disrupt, the Nipponese sense of identity. This bears a strong resemblance to contemporary American right-wing conservatism.

From the most ancient times, Japan, and its Shinto practices have been organized around community-clans and their respective clan gods. Even when communities gradually expanded, community worship continued to revolve around local guardian gods and the ancestors of extended families. Broader political power was rooted in the relationships of confederations of clans. This religio-cultural structure made it unlikely that religions of foreign origin could have much impact and still remain intact. This system retained a stable core of abiding traditions, supplemented by a somewhat more adaptive layer of minor local traditions.

As an example, Buddhism, when promoted by certain nobles, was assimilated in Japan by

Essay: Confucius, Emerson, and Ginsberg

Information and comments on the essay:

Confucius, Emerson, and Ginsberg

From the book: Chum for Thought: Throwing Ideas into Dangerous Waters by David Satterlee

Find out more, including where to buy books and ebooks

Read or download this essay as a PDF file at: https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B4eNv8KtePyKX0N1cTNqMTY1N2c/edit?usp=sharing

Chum For Thought:
Throwing Ideas into Dangerous Waters

Confucius, Emerson, and Ginsberg

The classic tenants of Confucianism and Taoism take disparate, but not mutually-exclusive, views of existence. While only Confucians would seek to give advice for improving society, elements of both views are important to a balanced and healthful existence within a society.

Confucianism is all about improving society. Individuals are expected to yield to established laws and the greater good of the community. The fundamental concept for maintaining society is the competence and fairness of public servants, which earns respectful honor and loyalty (for others, family, ancestors, public servants, and tradition). Law and tradition are looked to for guidance. The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy explains:

Confucius' social philosophy largely revolves around the concept of ren, “compassion” or “loving others.” Cultivating or practicing such concern for others involved deprecating oneself. … Learning self-restraint involves studying and mastering li, the ritual forms and rules of propriety through which one expresses respect for superiors and enacts his role in society in such a way that he himself is worthy of respect and admiration. A concern for propriety should inform

Essay: Is self-denial good for you?

Information and comments on the essay:

Is self-denial good for you?

From the book: Chum for Thought: Throwing Ideas into Dangerous Waters by David Satterlee

Find out more, including where to buy books and ebooks

Read or download this essay as a PDF file at: https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B4eNv8KtePyKNG1fWXZETTNDR00/edit?usp=sharing

#Hindu #Buddhist #Saints

Chum For Thought:
Throwing Ideas into Dangerous Waters

Is self-denial good for you?

Asceticism is the voluntary and deliberate self-denial of personal comforts and possessions. It is usually undertaken to distance oneself from the distractions of material or interpersonal responsibilities. This is often with the explicit purpose of devoting time and attention to transcendental spiritual pursuits.

Asceticism is relatively common among the most devout adherents of many religions. Mormon missionaries temporarily defer marriage, career, and family associations for at least two years during their missions. Missionaries of other religions, usually live according to the impoverished standards of the community to which they are sent.

Religions with special orders of devotion may distinguish individuals who take vows of poverty, celibacy, and obedience. They may live cloistered lives of isolation or give exclusive attention to assigned duties. Volunteer workers at the branch offices of Jehovah’s Witnesses take such vows as do many priests, monks, and nuns.

Individuals such as Hindu and Jain ascetics usually have reached a point of spiritual development that

Essay: Walking with the flow of Tao in a modern world

Information and comments on the essay:

Walking with the flow of Tao in a modern world

From the book: Chum for Thought: Throwing Ideas into Dangerous Waters by David Satterlee

Find out more, including where to buy books and ebooks

Read or download this essay as a PDF file at: https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B4eNv8KtePyKSVRLUURhMFdlWkE/edit?usp=sharing

Chum For Thought:
Throwing Ideas into Dangerous Waters

Walking with the flow of Tao in a modern world

The Chinese character for Tao combines two signs: head and foot. It reflects the concept of walking consciously. It is simply “the way” and implies that the walker is in conscious harmony with the existing order of things. His/her actions are intentionally harmonious rather than in conflict or opposition to what is. The way of Tao tends to rely more on sensitized intuition rather than reasoning and logic.

The practical application of Tao-living leads to competences that Westerners would consider “giftedness.” For instance, an archer living with Tao would not attempt to mentally calculate trajectories and influences of a cross breeze, but would experience a sense of fullness with his environment, visualizing the arrow’s destination. He would release his arrow toward the target when the moment and position seemed right. Skilled basketball players (or golfers, etc.) can have the same reflexes for making good shots or right moves. Many of us feel the same sense of effortlessness while driving in traffic.

The research psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi describes a similar state of mind that he calls “flow.” Flow may occur while

Essay: Implications of the Buddhist “no-self” concept

Information and comments on the essay:

Implications of the Buddhist “no-self” concept

From the book: Chum for Thought: Throwing Ideas into Dangerous Waters by David Satterlee

Find out more, including where to buy books and ebooks

Read or download this essay as a PDF file at: https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B4eNv8KtePyKVkQtc28tcVJjX0k/edit?usp=sharing

Hindu #Buddhist #Saints

Chum For Thought:
Throwing Ideas into Dangerous Waters

Implications of the Buddhist “no-self” concept

The Hindu concept of atman is the indestructible essential self, which is reincarnated in a series of corporeal physical existences.

The Buddhist concept of “an-atman” (or no-atman) refutes the idea of an irreducible unitary essence that sustains an existence. An-atman presumes total dissipation at death and rebirth as a new constitution from previous cause.

The implication of an-atman is that no thing or person is special. Wealth accumulated for the sole benefit of self or favored others is meaningless because we are not only related to all else, but are nothing but “all else.”

With the distinction of all things and selves being illusion, there is no need to cling or grasp for anything desired but perceived to be unobtained. In fact, the desire for things-not-had defines the dukkha (“suffering”) of the human condition.

Since the accumulation of ever-increasing possessions and the

Essay: Hindu class systems vs. cultures and communities in general

Information and comments on the essay:

Hindu class systems vs. cultures and communities in general

From the book: Chum for Thought: Throwing Ideas into Dangerous Waters by David Satterlee

Find out more, including where to buy books and ebooks

Read or download this essay as a PDF file at: https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B4eNv8KtePyKdjE4dk5wX2s0QVk/edit?usp=sharing

Chum For Thought:
Throwing Ideas into Dangerous Waters

Hindu class systems vs. cultures and communities in general

Some, feeling that they lack any interest in Eastern religions, may have the impulse to skip this one. They would miss a thought-provoking exercise in comparing and contrasting that could be very relevant to their own communities and values.

The traditional Hindu class system is anchored in sacred scripture, and many generations of tradition. Hinduism, in part, defines itself by compliance to class distinctions, and so Hinduism fits very coherently with the class system of India. Class systems are common in most religious and cultural systems, including contemporary America.

 In Hinduism, the separation of groups helps to maintain ritual purity. An unclean interaction in society can prevent a higher class member from performing their ritual responsibilities in behalf of others. Each class (varna) has its defined and accepted role (dharma). For instance, sacred learning, community rites, and sacrifice are reserved for the Brahman (priestly) class.

Other Hindu religious classes are defined according to societal place. The warrior class (Kshatriya) serves for defense and administration. Producers (Vaishya) are responsible as businessmen, merchants, and for higher crafts. Menials (Shudra) provide

Essay: The meaning of the “Sacred”

Information and comments on the essay:

The meaning of the “Sacred”

From the book: Chum for Thought: Throwing Ideas into Dangerous Waters by David Satterlee

Find out more, including where to buy books and ebooks

Read or download this essay as a PDF file at: https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B4eNv8KtePyKeGZPbzJFeTBMVzQ/edit?usp=sharing

#Religion #God #Worship

Chum For Thought:
Throwing Ideas into Dangerous Waters

The meaning of the “Sacred”

Let us take “the sacred” to be that which is accepted (by an individual, culture, etc.) to provide an ultimate reality, value, and meaning for life (Ludwig 3). Although there are some who believe that life holds no meaning and that nothing can be proved, these same people usually choose to keep living and hold some criteria that serves as their basis for making choices. I would propose that a sense of the sacred is universal among self-reflective beings.

With the above definition, “anything” can be sacred. For instance, for the very secular, scientific truth may be held as sacred. Anything that merits the use of ceremony may also be endowed with sacred attachment. In religion, baptism and weddings may actually be called sacraments. In a wider perspective, life is so remarkable, the unlikely conditions that make our life-supporting environment possible are so precious, and the potential of our creative nature is so inspiring, that everything should be sacred.

An unusual predominance of such feelings of sacred fullness and identification was first associated with epileptics in the late 1800s. Since then, a wide range of scientific experiments

Essay: Moral dilemmas of World War II

Information and comments on the essay:

Moral dilemmas of World War II

From the book: Chum for Thought: Throwing Ideas into Dangerous Waters by David Satterlee

Find out more, including where to buy books and ebooks

Read or download this essay as a PDF file at: https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B4eNv8KtePyKc0VhTnU5azlZeDQ/edit?usp=sharing

Chum For Thought:
Throwing Ideas into Dangerous Waters

Moral dilemmas of World War II

World War II had an entirely different character than The Great War. Advancing technology continued to increase the destructive power of armies and their ability to project that power, often in sudden and unexpected ways. World War II became alarmingly dangerous. The determination to definitively end this war posed a great many strategic and morally equivocal choices.

World War I followed centuries of colonialism and national consolidation. At that point, a bunch of bully-boys were ready and anxious to play king-of-the-mountain. Some of them played very rough and everybody got hurt. For the most part, they came away determined to play nicer in the future. Most of the world believed that they had learned the lessons of full-out nationalism.

As things worked out, social conventions (and faltering economics) had developed to the point that colonies could attempt (and usually gain) independence. World War II played out the end to large-scale overt military conquest when a pair of hard-core bad boys

Essay: Nationalism, cultural assimilation, and pluralistic globalization — or The Ultimate Imperialism

Information and comments on the essay:

Nationalism, cultural assimilation, and pluralistic globalization — or The Ultimate Imperialism

From the book: Chum for Thought: Throwing Ideas into Dangerous Waters by David Satterlee

Find out more, including where to buy books and ebooks

Read or download this essay as a PDF file at: https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B4eNv8KtePyKRFlyQmhhWU1lQVk/edit?usp=sharing

#immigration
#Imperialism

Chum For Thought:
Throwing Ideas into Dangerous Waters

Nationalism, cultural assimilation, and pluralistic globalization — or The Ultimate Imperialism

In the past, as one nation conquered another, assimilation policies affected public welfare. Where deliberate steps were taken to introduce mainstream society and outside cultures to each other, the conqueror benefited from increased diversity and reduced rebellion.

The Ottoman Janissary system seems similar to the Assyrian practice of assimilating and dispersing conquered peoples. For instance, the Israelite Daniel and his companions were taken into the court of the Assyrian king for education and eventual responsibility in governing his empire.

The millet system’s tolerance for other religions was practical, as people are most likely to fight for the religious practices that are ingrained in their world views. Who would you more likely want to displease; your God or some remote king-at-this-time?

Taking the best and brightest children for government service assured that

Essay: Known knowns and unknown unknowns

Information and comments on the essay:

Known knowns and unknown unknowns

From the book: Chum for Thought: Throwing Ideas into Dangerous Waters by David Satterlee

Find out more, including where to buy books and ebooks

Read or download this essay as a PDF file at: https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B4eNv8KtePyKeTZGNzhhdExsa1E/edit?usp=sharing

Donald #Rumsfeld on Known knowns and unknown unknowns

Chum For Thought:
Throwing Ideas into Dangerous Waters

Known knowns and unknown unknowns

In 2002, the press took exception to a comment by Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld. However, I think he was onto something important…

“…there are known knowns; there are things we know we know. We also know there are known unknowns; that is to say, we know there are some things we do not know. But there are also unknown unknowns – the ones we don’t know we don’t know.”
Donald Rumsfeld – Defense Department briefing, February 12, 2002  (Federal par. 160)

This quotation has been rendered in several minor variations. They all fall short by one of exhausting the matrix of known and knowable. But, that is not critical to the point that he was making. The version (below) that I transcribed from a video of his briefing includes the sound of an audience starting to laugh. The reporters may have been anticipating questioning him sharply about unknown knowns:

“… there are known knowns; there are things we know that we know. There are known unknowns. That is to say, there are things that we now know we don’t know. But there are also unknown unknowns; there are things we do not know we don’t know.”           
ibid (transcribed by Satterlee—italics added)

Secretary Rumsfeld was nearing the end of a protracted and confrontational news conference at the time that he made this statement. Reporters had repeatedly parsed his words and perversely tried to turn them against him. He had just defended a ludicrous challenge to the Pentagon’s attentiveness to Iraq. A questioner asserts that, “…there is no evidence of a direct link between Baghdad and some of these terrorist organizations.”

Rumsfeld, evidently getting testy, introduces

Essay: How to Build a Joke (No joking, I’m serious.)

Information and comments on the essay:

How to Build a Joke (No joking, I’m serious.)

From the book: Chum for Thought: Throwing Ideas into Dangerous Waters by David Satterlee

Find out more, including where to buy books and ebooks

Read or download this essay as a PDF file at: https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B4eNv8KtePyKSzZmZFNSTUtPUWc/edit?usp=sharing

#Comedy #Humor 

Chum For Thought:
Throwing Ideas into Dangerous Waters

How to Build a Joke (No joking, I’m serious.)

For most people, a good joke is like pornography or the Tao—they cannot give you a good definition, but they know it when they see it.

Building good jokes requires attention to context, discrimination, structure, and activation of a special set of neural responses. So, the first thing I need to do is explain how a joke works. After all, how are you going to create an original version of something if you do not have a grasp of the fundamental internal mechanisms, the secret ingredients in the special sauce?

There is something wrong with a good joke. A good joke produces immediate, obvious, and alarming symptoms of acute pathology. The victim’s face contorts and begins involuntary convulsions that may spread to the entire body. Respiration becomes disrupted and spastic. Blood pressure and heart rate go up suddenly. Food may be aspirated and beverages may be expelled from the nose. If you were not aware of the stimulus, the physiological reaction might lead you to assume overt acute pathology.

As it happens, strokes and certain other brain lesions have been known to trigger what is known in medical literature as “pathological laughter and crying” (PLC). Oddly, the same small brain area is responsible for both laughing and crying. This is consistent; we have all known, and possibly been offended by, someone who laughed suddenly when

Essay: Psychic travels in my otherwhere

Information and comments on the essay:

Psychic travels in my otherwhere

From the book: Chum for Thought: Throwing Ideas into Dangerous Waters by David Satterlee

Find out more, including where to buy books and ebooks

Read or download this essay as a PDF file at: https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B4eNv8KtePyKNmtVdWRmdHRaNDg/edit?usp=sharing

Chum For Thought:
Throwing Ideas into Dangerous Waters

Psychic travels in my otherwhere

I have always enjoyed hiking, usually alone, in the woods. Twice now, when I had the chance, I have moved to the mountains of Western North Carolina. My wife and I purchased our present home because it was isolated and out of view of other houses. We cherish our “hole in the woods.” I could walk out the back door and follow paths, or just my nose, for miles. These woods are my comfort and respite from the anxiety, noise, and stress of living in cities.

Years ago, while searching for peace, I read a recommendation to create a detailed, imaginary, inner place of quiet refuge. Sitting down with a sketch pad, I developed a plan. It was filled with resources that I could only imagine. It has been my private safe place now for many years. It is always ready and available, but has to be approached methodically. I have never taken anyone there with me.

I am walking, slightly uphill, along a path. It may be in the rolling hills of Kentucky along the Appalachian Trail. It is late spring but the morning air is still tart. The trail is well-trodden and about 4 feet wide. There is enough room for two people to pass without crowding or having to pause to acknowledge the other. The path is densely lined so that no horizon is visible past this tunnel through the trees. Last season’s leaves still mulch the way, sliding gracefully ahead to an infinite destination. 

Every footstep is muted, the birds are hushed, no breeze disturbs the cathedral trees. Every step is comfortable and smooth. My small daypack seems weightless. The resolute scent of wild mint lifts the feet, the heart, and the spirit. A small squirrel watches from four paces off the way and is

Essay: When you say “WE,” just who do you mean?

Information and comments on the essay:

When you say “WE,” just who do you mean?

From the book: Chum for Thought: Throwing Ideas into Dangerous Waters by David Satterlee

Find out more, including where to buy books and ebooks

Read or download this essay as a PDF file at: https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B4eNv8KtePyKQUdLaXZwZVF5aDg/edit?usp=sharing

#fundamentalism #authoritarianism #human #development #integral

Chum For Thought:
Throwing Ideas into Dangerous Waters

When you say “WE,” just who do you mean?

Family is always, obviously, “WE.” But stopping there just puts too many limits on the culture that we can achieve. If WE is only family, you need a strict father or tribal chief to enforce order and to lead YOUR cousins on plundering raids against OTHER families or tribes.

If your WE is too small, you have to always arm yourselves and be vigilant to protect your life and property against the next small group that defines “US” as just “OUR family” or “OUR tribe.” 

Without broader cooperation, life just becomes too hard and too dangerous and it often becomes necessary to attack other families or tribes to survive. Our philosophy becomes, “If we do not stand for ourselves, first, foremost, and always, we stand to fall.” If WE is too small, it is moral to take what YOU can from THEM because OUR needs are more important to US because survival is always the highest value.

Or, do you get your values and sense of who you are from a larger association, community of faith, or regional alliance? Do you identify primarily as Scandinavian Lutherans or Southern Baptists? Is YOUR version of God the ONLY TRUE God? My, how comforting that

Essay: A personal transformation that shocks my family

Gave up #Religion

Information and comments on the essay:

A personal transformation that shocks my family

From the book: Chum for Thought: Throwing Ideas into Dangerous Waters by David Satterlee

Find out more, including where to buy books and ebooks

Read or download this essay as a PDF file at: https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B4eNv8KtePyKdjE4dk5wX2s0QVk/edit?usp=sharing

Chum For Thought:
Throwing Ideas into Dangerous Waters

A personal transformation that shocks my family

MOST OF YOU DON'T KNOW that my political participation and the tone of my writing is particularly shocking for those who know the deeply conservative evangelical fundamentalist Christian faith in which I was raised.

I was taught to be radically non-political, with the certainty that God is Love and Satan is the false god exercising power over all governments of men and all other religious beliefs. We understood that only Christ's Kingdom could restore humanity to peace, security, and the approval of God.

I deliberately married a woman with these same beliefs and we taught them to our children. I also taught these things inside the congregation and to the public. As my certainty weakened, my family, faith, work, and physical and mental health all unraveled together. Having survived the loss of all that, I pretty-much started from scratch.

It's been over ten years and I'm still fragile but somewhat better now, thank you. Under stress, I have Tourette ticks; I hoot, moo, and chirp. Thankfully,