A very important trend in the U.S. has gotten only a small amount of attention. One of the schisms splitting America into two countries is that a large percentage of the population is becoming less religious and more spiritual. What does that mean? I suggest to you that what it means is this growing “spiritual” movement ought to be thought of less in a religious context, and more in terms of consciousness. These are people who have begun to see all life as interconnected and interdependent. To recognize that humans are part of the Matrix of Consciousness, not something apart from it. This is not about dogmas and scriptures, this is about recognizing, as science is increasingly doing, that consciousness is causal and fundamental. This is why a great number of people have begun to meditate. This is why more people are becoming aware of what climate change is doing to the earth’s ecosystem. It is not so much religious / spiritual, I think it should be understood as religious sectarian / consciousness.
Most Americans are spiritual or religious in some way and many also say their spirituality and level of religiosity have changed over time.
But Americans are far more likely to say they have become more spiritual than to say they have become more religious, according to a new analysis of a 2023 Pew Research Center survey.
Some 41% of U.S. adults say they have grown more spiritual over the course of their lifetime, compared with 24% who say they have become more religious.
In contrast, 13% of U.S. adults say they have become less spiritual over time, while 33% say they have become less religious.
The rest say their spirituality and level of religiosity have either stayed the same or fluctuated – sometimes increasing and at other times decreasing.
We asked respondents how their spirituality and religiosity have changed as part of a wider U.S. study that explored the concept of spirituality and how it differs from religion. We did not define the words “spiritual” or “religious” in the survey, nor did we ask whether any changes in spirituality or religiosity were part of a gradual long-term […]
American men are having problems figuring out what a man is supposed to be, and are devolving to a primitive kind of manliness, as this article describes. They also don’t seem to have many friends, I find this very sad not just for the men, but for American culture.
Man Camp Credit: Jimmy Rex
They crawl slowly up a hill on their stomachs, covered in grime. One man moans after an instructor yanks him by the ankles back down the hill. Still, he keeps crawling.
One man lies on his back while an instructor sprays hose water in his face. Another, wearing big chains across his torso, shivers during an expletive-laden rant from a bearded man, who calls him a disappointment.
These men aren’t prepping for an elite military mission.
They’re trying to become better men, they say.
“Man camps,” or all-male experiences designed for men’s self-improvement, have gained attention on social media, where more extreme versions of these programs, such as the Modern Day Knight Project in Southern California, share videos of the treatment participants endure, often to the tune of hundreds of thousands of views.
Though men’s psychology experts are skeptical of the extreme iterations of man camps, they say the growing awareness of them points to a loneliness and need for community men face in modern society.
“Men are seeking out difficult experiences,” says Erik Anderson, a licensed marriage and […]
The American Union movement, plus the Roosevelt Veterans’ Rights Acts created the middle class in America, but somehow this has been forgotten. The idea that workers can improve their collective wellbeing through union actions seems to have been lost, and the result has been the disempowerment of workers, and a growing wealth disparity between workers and management.
The share of American workers who are members of a union hit a new low in 2023 — it’s now 1 in 10 — though the total number of unionized employees rose slightly.
Why it matters: Advocates say unions are a needed proponent of worker rights and compensation, while critics say unions throttle progress in the workplace.
Driving the news: 10% of the workforce was part of a union in 2023, down from 10.1% in 2022 and a high of 20.1% in 1983, the first year the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported comparable figures.
14.4 million workers were union members in 2023, up from 14.3 million in 2022 — but the percentage fell because the workforce grew at a faster rate than union membership.
The big picture: The slight drop in the union membership rate came during a year of significant action for Big Labor, including:
The UAW scoring record contracts from the General Motors, Ford and Stellantis after an unprecedented strike.
The Guardian newspaper, which is owned by a foundation not a corporation, is finally willing to say that which is not said by anyone on American corporate media. Wealth inequality is one of the trends tearing the United States apart. I have been saying this for years, but few seem to be listening. Sadly, the Republicans in Congress will not permit anything to be done about this. Quite the contrary they are trying to further lower the taxes of the uber-rich, and increase wealth inequality.
‘As the wealthy have got steadily richer in recent times, political talk about wealth taxes has diminished to a barely audible murmur.’ Credit: Dpa Picture Alliance / Alamy
In an intriguing study about to be published, the Dutch political philosopher Ingrid Robeyns poses a question that very rarely gets asked in mainstream politics. When it comes to the personal income and assets of the super-rich, how much is too much? The answer, she suggests in Limitarianism: The Case Against Extreme Wealth, should be anything above €10m. At that point, taxation should intervene, redeploying the surplus for the common good.
Ms Robeyns is not naive. She thinks of her €10m figure as a guiding ideal to be striven for, but one that is unlikely ever to become a reality given the current way of the world. Quite. Nevertheless, her provocative intervention is valuable, because it draws attention to a curious disjunction: as the wealthy have got steadily richer in recent times, soaking up the benefits of free capital movement, share price surges and rising asset values, political […]
Between the Houthi violence in the Red Sea and the lack of water in the Panama Canal, shipping companies are having to reroute their ships around South Africa. That adds at least another week to transport time, as well as tens of thousands of dollars in costs. Expect prices on anything that has to be shipped by sea to go up significantly in 2024.
A ship passes under the Puente Centenario bridge as it transits through the Panama Canal during a longstanding drought in Pedro Miguel, Panama. Credit: Justin Sullivan / Getty
An intense drought has led to a 36% decline in traffic for the Panama Canal, one of the most important maritime trade routes in the world.
Officials have denied ship crossings 36% as the canal has decreasing water levels from the drought, The Associated Press reported.
According to Ricaurte Vásquez, the administrator of the Panama Canal Authority, the decline of water in the artificial waterway could exceed previous cost loss estimates of $200 million this year, reaching up to $700 million in 2024.
The ongoing drought has disrupted trade, with Panama Canal Authority reporting the driest October in 2023 since October 1950. That month, authorities established reservation slots for transit. In November, the authority adjusted the daily transit to 31 vessels per day as part of its water-saving measures. In normal conditions, 38 vessels per day were permitted to cross the canal.
The canal authority recently reduced the number of vessels […]
