What is the Difference between Third Party Liability and Full Coverage Insurance?

Insurance can be very confusing for those of us who are not in the insurance business.

Often, our insurance agents start babbling about liability, comprehensive coverage, third party liability, and more - and we feel like they are speaking a language we have never heard before. Well - in a sense they are.

Again, it is very confusing to those who are not in the insurance business. Unfortunately, if you are to get the coverage that you need, at a price you can afford, you must start learning some of the terminology.

For instance, many people do not understand what the difference between third party liability insurance and full coverage insurance is. Third party liability coverage and full coverage insurance are much the same, but in other ways they are uniquely different. Before you determine which one you need, it is important to understand exactly what each type of coverage is.

Third Party Liability Coverage is essentially coverage that protects you in the event of an accident that is your fault.

It generally covers other people and their property that is damaged in a covered accident. It does not cover you, your passengers, your boat, your motor, or your trailer. Furthermore, third party liability coverage only goes into effect if your boat is in an accident that occurred when the boat was being used in a private capacity, as opposed to a commercial capacity.

Third party liability coverage is required by most states, and each state will have its own requirements as to the minimum liability coverage amounts that you have.

This type of insurance is generally required whether your boat is financed or not. Third party liability insurance coverage is often simply referred to as liability insurance, or in the case of boats, watercraft liability insurance. Talk to your agent to find out how much coverage is required in your state.

Full coverage insurance, on the other hand, will cover you, your boat, your motor, your trailer, and your passengers.

It is often referred to as comprehensive insurance, and it is available in different coverage amounts, with different options that are available for the policy. This type of insurance will be required by most lenders who finance boats, and most lenders will have their own requirements as to which optional insurance is purchased.

Essentially, what it comes down to is that third party liability insurance coverage protects other people and their property in the event of an accident that is your fault, while full coverage insurance protects you and your property - in the same way that the third party insurance protects others.

In fact, full coverage insurance will cover you whether the accident was your fault, someone else’s fault, or even no-fault. In most cases, it is in your best interest to have both third party liability insurance coverage - which is required - as well as full coverage insurance - which may be required if you have financed your boat.

Again, even if the boat has not been financed, you should strongly consider purchasing a full coverage or comprehensive policy. Many people even continue to carry the full coverage policy long after the boat has been paid off.

Boat repairs are expensive, and anything can happen.

Most full coverage policies will cover you in the event of mechanical failure, theft, and vandalism, as well as losses caused by storms, fires, explosions, sinking, and much more. Talk with your insurance agent to find out about the different options available for full coverage policies, and make sure that you get the coverage that you need!

CopyRight Ian D. Major 2005.

Ian D. Major makes it easy to understand Boat Insurance, quickly and easily. Learn all you need to know by visiting Why You Need Boat Insurance an entirely FREE source of information about Boat Insurance.

Do You Really Need Life Insurance

Life insurance is one of those taboo subjects for normal, casual or friendly conversation. Whenever people, however, develop a life threatening illness, have a close encounter with another vehicle on the highway, or otherwise find themselves in a situation where they are likely to be rated or declined by an insurance company, they suddenly develop a desire for a good life insurance policy. To give credit where credit is due, there are some thoughtfully disciplined people who give their portfolios regular review and make certain they have adequate coverage at all times.

I want so much for all people to think like the disciplined ones. In my career as a life insurance agent I bent backwards to persuade such people to keep their life insurance up to date. I have seen the difference between an adequately insured breadwinner at death, and one who barely had enough life insurance to bury him. The latter situation is quite painful to observe.

I, therefore, think it is imperative that everyone take the time to evaluate and understand what life insurance really can do. Ask yourself this question, “do I need life insurance and why do I need it.”

If someone, be it your wife, your children or your business partner, depend on you in any way that can be seen as a financial dependency, then you do need life insurance. In the case of premature death your family will need money to pay your last expenses, like outstanding bills, funeral expenses, attorney’s fees, medical bills and estate taxes. The businessman will need life insurance to fund a “buy sell” agreement, to pay off outstanding debt, or may be to keep the company afloat while they find a replacement for a deceased valuable employee.

I implore you to look at the following situations which will help you decide whether or not you need life insurance. So just try to relax and objectively as you can evaluate the situation for yourself.

One Parent Only Working

The most devastating situation occurs when one parent works and the other stays at home. Should the working parent die at a time when there are insufficient funds for the survivors to continue living in the manner to which they have become accustomed, then they may have to sell the house. The comforts which they had enjoyed for years would totally change. The minimal requirement is sufficient funds which would allow the survivors to adjust their lifestyle.

The ideal situation is to have sufficient funds which would allow the surviving parent not to work at all, during the formative years of the children. They can live in the same house, they can continue in the same school, and when the time comes to enter college, they go to the college of their choice.

A good insurance policy is an excellent tool that you can use to take care of these things.

Both Parents Working

In todays world, in most families, both parents work and share the expenses. If one parent should prematurely die, would the income earned by the surviving parent be sufficient for the family to live on? Probably not. In anticipation of that possibility a fund could be set up, through an Insurance policy, to replace, totally or in part, the deceased parents income.

Single Parent

In the case of a single parent, all the financial responsibilities for the family may lay on his or her shoulders. If that parents died while the children are still in school, how will the children survive?

Partnership Or Corporation

Let us look at the situation where you own your own business. You have one partner or several partners. One partner dies. Is it not fair that the surviving partners should own the business and the deceased partners family receive full value for his or her stock? Adequate Insurance coverage can take care of this eventuality also.

It may be desirable by all parties concerned that the beneficiary of the deceased partner become a full and active partner, if this is the situation then the funds can be used as a cushion while the new partner or shareholder learns the business and adjusts to his or her new role.

Key Employee

Some employees are difficult to replace. It may take some time to get a replacement up to the production level of your long time, well seasoned and highly efficient employee. If your business depends a great deal on a particular key employee, would it not be wise to insure that employee in case he or she should die suddenly? The company would receive the death benefit in this case, and the money would be used to keep the company afloat, while a replacement is found and trained.

For more than 40 years Donald has been known for his extensive knowledge of the life insurance business. He has studied the work of all of the greats from Ben Feldman and Frank Bettger to Joe Gandolfo. He has represented some of the largest and best life insurance companies in the United States as well as Canada. His advice is invaluable.

Donald website is: http://www.lifeinsurancehub.net

CD Review: The Best of Sade

The Best of Sade is indeed that. A collection of sixteen of the very best songs she’s produced to this point.
With her exotic beauty and steamy voice it seems as though it was her destiny to be a star. Her voice is the very definition of smooth and has over the years become her trademark.

She showcases the very best of her vocal talents on tracks like Smooth Operator, The Sweetest Taboo, and the emotionally gripping Jezebel.

I’ve always felt No Ordinary Love is a very powerful song. Gives me that feeling that it is being delivered from deep inside the soul of this outstanding artist. As do a lot of Sade’s songs.

This is truly one of those rare CDs you can literally get lost in. Every song as good as the one before it.

Overall The Best of Sade is an outstanding release. What I call, must have music. I give it two thumbs up.

While this entire CD is outstanding the truly standout tunes are Your Love Is King [track 1], No Ordinary Love [track 11], and Kiss Of Life [track 13]. My SmoothLee Bonus Pick, and the one that got Sore […as in “Stuck On REpeat”] is track 7, Never As Good As The First Time. Very nice!

Release Notes:

Sade originally released The Best of Sade on April 3, 2001 on the Sony record label.

CD track list follows:

1. Your Love Is King
 2. Hang On To Your Love
 3. Smooth Operator
 4. Jezebel
 5. The Sweetest Taboo
 6. Is It A Crime
 7. Never As Good As The First Time
 8. Love Is Stronger Than Pride
 9. Paradise
 10. Nothing Can Come Between Us
 11. No Ordinary Love
 12. Like A Tattoo
 13. Kiss Of Life
 14. Please Send Me Someone To Love
 15. Cherish The Day
 16. Pearls

To listen to samples of each song on The Best of Sade by Sade go to:
Sade CD - The Best of Sade MP3 Samples

Clyde Lee Dennis, a.k.a. SmoothLee is a life long music fanatic. In addition to writing CD Reviews like this one for several music related websites he also hosts an internet radio show, and invites you to join him daily for some of the best soul soothing smooth jazz you’ll ever hear at http://www.SmoothJazz247.com

Create Your Unique Singing Style

What does it mean to create a singing style that is unique and distinct to you? We all attempt to develop a singing voice that brings out all the “best” qualities in our voice, but how is that achieved? How do we take our “best” vocal qualities and develop them in a way that is different from everyone else? How can we make our style engaging and pleasing to the listener?

First, you need to understand the fundamentals of vocal technique. Second, and more specific, you will need to learn where tone is produced and how that tone is transformed into a sound that radiates from the point a singer projects the voice, to the point where it softens and eventually fades out completely. This is referred to as resonance. It is the result caused by air traveling through the vocal cords, producing a tone and pitch that is carried outward on sound waves. In other words, resonance is what you hear when you sing using proper vocal co-ordination.

Resonance may be more easily understood when thinking of the speaking voice rather then the singing voice. Public speakers and business professionals, for example, will fall into two categories. They will either speak from the throat only where tone is produced resulting in a harsh shouting sound for men and a shallow squeaky sound for women or they will speak from a place that produces a slight “humming”. This “humming” combined with tone from the vocal cords will project a firm and confident voice that smoothly and warmly communicates each word. All great speaks have learned to achieve a balance between tone production and resonance.

When we produce tone only and do not modify it with resonance, blending the deeper pitches from the chest with the higher pitches from the head, the result is unbalanced and unpleasant to listen too. Lack of resonance will result in long-term vocal cord damage and will keep you from reaching your potential. You will be unable to sing in a contemporary manner and will limit the variety of styles you can sing.

Guidelines for Creating Resonance and your UNIQUE Singing Style:

• As tone is produced in the vocal cords, lifting the tone above the vocal cords and placing the sound forward in the front of the mouth will allow you to have creative freedom and the ability to locate the exact spot where you resonate your unique sound.

• Use proper breath control to move the tone upward and into position.

• Keep your mental focus on the front of the mouth and not on the throat to avoid unnecessary pressure around the vocal cords.

• When practicing, work up the scale singing gently. Let the feeling of singing the scale guide you. Do not maneuver or impose the sound, as this will not give you the results your need.

Once accomplished, you will be free to focus on creating your unique singing style rather then being concerned about cracks, breaks or pitch. You will be able to sing up and down your entire range easily, without tension. Your larynx will stay seated, not rising up to high notes. You will feel a vibration in the head and/or chest. While similar for everyone, each person is slightly different, so you will need to experiment.

It is very easy to fall into old habits. Don’t! Stay focused on the long-term benefits and resist short-term thinking that will limit and likely stunt your ability to develop your voice and grow beyond your current limitations.

The exact point where you create resonance is the same place where you create your singing voice, modify and amplify the sound, and make any adjustments necessary to express a song in whatever way you choose. This is where all of your training takes action. Enjoy the process, push your creative boundaries and dare to be who you are musically. Everyone will be glad you did.

BIO
Over the years, Donna has developed a complete mind / body / spirit / voice method designed to access the energy from the body to eliminate any pressure that may prohibit us from singing our best. She combines specific breathing rhythms and patterns along with exercises designed to building proper breath support while gently working the entire vocal range, top to bottom. Donna is a member of SOCAN.

Mp3’s - The Future of Music?

Mp3 music is audio that has been digitally encoded and compressed to make the amount of data smaller without compromising the overall sound quality. It’s a revolutionary technique with incredibly good results; mp3 music is frequently indistinguishable from music found on a CD (though some audiophiles with very sensitive ears dispute that statement).

The popularity of mp3 music made available on the Internet is a trend reaching gigantic proportions; these encoded songs are everywhere. Websites called mp3 blogs offer rare or hard-to-find mp3 music and avid fans sometimes spend hours at a time sifting through the piles of downloadable material. Newer recording artists that would often fall under the radar without the help of a well-known label are now able to convert their songs into mp3 music and make them available on the Internet, allowing huge numbers of people the chance to hear songs that they otherwise wouldn’t have been exposed to. It’s an extremely popular thing, mp3 music, one of those rare pop-culture phenomena embraced by nearly everyone.

But regardless of its massive popularity, mp3 music is surrounded with controversy. Many programs that allow users to transfer mp3 music directly from computer to computer offer the services for free, eliminating the possibility of royalties for the artist and label. Fearful of losing tons of money to fans downloading records instead of buying them, large factions of the music industry fought to make free mp3 music illegal — and succeeded to a degree. The laws, however, have loopholes, and many websites or P2P programs have exploited them for all they’re worth.

Additionally, laws regulating mp3 music in the United States aren’t necessarily applicable to other countries, so new websites and programs (particularly, for some reason, in Russia) have popped up offering the free services railed against in America. Because of the hotly argued ethical issues surrounding mp3 music, many shy away from the topic (and practice) completely. Others embrace it, citing huge record costs as justification enough for free mp3 music. It’s an argument not likely to end anytime soon; the ethical issues will be debated as long as free mp3 music is available somewhere.

In any case, MP3’s are here to stay, and wise is the musician who learns about them and takes advantage of them.

(With Mollie Wells)

Duane Shinn is the author of over 500 music books and music educational materials such as DVD’s, CD’s, musical games for kids, chord charts, musical software, and piano lesson instructional courses for adults. His book-CD-DVD course titled http://www.chordpiano.com/>”How To Play Chord Piano In Ten Days!” has sold over 100,000 copies around the world. He holds advanced degrees from Southern Oregon University and was the founder of Piano University in Southern Oregon. He is the author of the popular free 101-week online e-mail newsletter titled “Amazing Secrets Of Exciting Piano Chords & Sizzling Chord Progressions” with over 57,400 current subscribers.

On Empathy

The Encyclopaedia Britannica (1999 edition) defines empathy as:

“The ability to imagine oneself in anther’s place and understand the other’s feelings, desires, ideas, and actions. It is a term coined in the early 20th century, equivalent to the German Einfhlung and modelled on “sympathy.” The term is used with special (but not exclusive) reference to aesthetic experience. The most obvious example, perhaps, is that of the actor or singer who genuinely feels the part he is performing. With other works of art, a spectator may, by a kind of introjection, feel himself involved in what he observes or contemplates. The use of empathy is an important part of the counselling technique developed by the American psychologist Carl Rogers.”

Empathy is predicated upon and must, therefore, incorporate the following elements:

Imagination which is dependent on the ability to imagine;
The existence of an accessible Self (self-awareness or self-consciousness);
The existence of an available other (other-awareness, recognizing the outside world);
The existence of accessible feelings, desires, ideas and representations of actions or their outcomes both in the empathizing Self (”Empathor”) and in the Other, the object of empathy (”Empathee”);
The availability of an aesthetic frame of reference;
The availability of a moral frame of reference.
While (a) is presumed to be universally available to all agents (though in varying degrees) - the existence of the other components of empathy should not be taken for granted.

Conditions (b) and (c), for instance, are not satisfied by people who suffer from personality disorders, such as the Narcissistic Personality Disorder. Condition (d) is not met in autistic people (e.g., those who suffer from the Asperger syndrome). Conditions (e) is so totally dependent on the specifics of the culture, period and society in which it exists - that it is rather meaningless and ambiguous as a yardstick. Condition (f) suffer from both afflictions: it is both culture-dependent AND is not satisfied in many people (such as those who suffer from the Antisocial Personality Disorder and who are devoid of any conscience or moral sense).

Thus, the very existence of empathy should be questioned. It is often confused with inter-subjectivity. The latter is defined thus by “The Oxford Companion to Philosophy, 1995″:

“This term refers to the status of being somehow accessible to at least two (usually all, in principle) minds or ’subjectivities’. It thus implies that there is some sort of communication between those minds; which in turn implies that each communicating minds aware not only of the existence of the other but also of its intention to convey information to the other. The idea, for theorists, is that if subjective processes can be brought into agreement, then perhaps that is as good as the (unattainable?) status of being objective - completely independent of subjectivity. The question facing such theorists is whether intersubjectivity is definable without presupposing an objective environment in which communication takes place (the ‘wiring’ from subject A to subject B). At a less fundamental level, however, the need for intersubjective verification of scientific hypotheses has been long recognized”. (page 414).

On the face of it, the difference between intersubjectivity and empathy is double:

Intersubjectivity requires an EXPLICIT, communicated agreement between at least two subjects.
It involves EXTERNAL things (so called “objective” entities).
These “differences” are artificial. This how empathy is defined in “Psychology - An Introduction (Ninth Edition) by Charles G. Morris, Prentice Hall, 1996″:

“Closely related to the ability to read other people’s emotions is empathy - the arousal of an emotion in an observer that is a vicarious response to the other person’s situation… Empathy depends not only on one’s ability to identify someone else’s emotions but also on one’s capacity to put oneself in the other person’s place and to experience an appropriate emotional response. Just as sensitivity to non-verbal cues increases with age, so does empathy: The cognitive and perceptual abilities required for empathy develop only as a child matures… (page 442)

In empathy training, for example, each member of the couple is taught to share inner feelings and to listen to and understand the partner’s feelings before responding to them. The empathy technique focuses the couple’s attention on feelings and requires that they spend more time listening and less time in rebuttal.” (page 576).

Thus empathy does require the communication of feelings AND an agreement on the appropriate outcome of the communicated emotions (=affective agreement). In the absence of such agreement, we are faced with inappropriate affect (laughing at a funeral, for instance).

Moreover, empathy does relate to external objects and is provoked by them. There is no empathy in the absence of an empathee. Granted, intersubjectivity is intuitively applied to the inanimate while empathy is applied to the living (animals, humans, even plants). But this is a difference in human preferences - not in definition.

Empathy can, thus, be re-defined as a form of intersubjectivity which involves living things as “objects” to which the communicated intersubjective agreement relates. It is wrong to limit empathy to the communication of emotion. It is the intersubjective, concomitant experience of BEING. The empathor empathizes not only with the empathee’s emotions but also with his physical state and other parameters of existence (pain, hunger, thirst, suffocation, sexual pleasure etc.).

This leads to the important (and perhaps intractable) psychophysical question.

Intersubjectivity relates to external objects but the subjects communicate and reach an agreement regarding the way THEY have been affected by the objects.

Empathy relates to external objects (the Others) but the subjects communicate and reach an agreement regarding the way THEY would have felt had they BEEN the object.

This is no minor difference, if it, indeed, exists. But does it really exist?

What is it that we feel in empathy? Is it OUR emotions/sensations merely provoked by an external trigger (classic intersubjectivity) or is it a TRANSFER of the object’s feelings/sensations to us?

Such a transfer being physically impossible (as far as we know) - we are forced to adopt the former model. Empathy is the set of reactions - emotional and cognitive - to triggering by an external object (the other). It is the equivalent of resonance in the physical sciences. But we have NO WAY to ascertain the “wavelength” of such resonance is identical in both subjects. In other words, we have no way to verify that the feelings or sensation invoked in the two (or more) subjects are one and the same. What I call “sadness” may not be what you call “sadness”. Colours have unique, uniform, independently measurable properties (like energy). Still, no one can prove that what I see as “red” is what another calls “red” (as is the case with Daltonists). If this is true where “objective”, measurable, phenomena are concerned - it is infinitely true in the case of emotions or feelings.

We are, therefore, forced to refine our definition:

Empathy is a form of intersubjectivity which involves living things as “objects” to which the communicated intersubjective agreement relates. It is the intersubjective, concomitant experience of BEING. The empathor empathizes not only with the empathee’s emotions but also with his physical state and other parameters of existence (pain, hunger, thirst, suffocation, sexual pleasure etc.).

BUT

The meaning attributed to the words used by the parties to the intersubjective agreement known as empathy is totally dependent upon each party. The same words are used, the same denotates - but it cannot be proven that the same connotates, the same experiences, emotions and sensations are being discussed or communicated.

Language (and, by extension, art and culture) serve to introduce us to other points of view (”what is it like to be someone else” to paraphrase Thomas Nagle). By providing a bridge between the subjective (inner experience) and the objective (words, images, sounds) -language facilitates social exchange and interaction. It is a dictionary which translates one’s subjective private language to the coin of the public medium. Knowledge and language are, thus, the ultimate social glue, though both are based on approximations and guesses (see George Steiner’s “After Babel”).

But, whereas the intersubjective agreement regarding measurements and observations concerning external objects IS verifiable or falsifiable using INDEPENDENT tools (e.g., lab experiments) - the intersubjective agreement which concerns itself with the emotions, sensations and experiences of subjects as communicated by them IS NOT verifiable or falsifiable using INDEPENDENT tools. The interpretation of this second kind of agreement is dependent upon introspection and an assumption that identical words used by different subjects still possess identical meaning. This assumption is not falsifiable (or verifiable). It is neither true nor false. It is a probabilistic statement with no probabilities attached. It is, in short, a meaningless statement. As a result, empathy itself is meaningless.

In human-speak, if you say that you are said and I empathize with you it means that we have an agreement. I regard you as my object. You communicate to me a property of yours (”sadness”). This triggers in me a recollection of “what is sadness” or “what is to be sad”. I say that I know what you mean, I have been sad before, I know what it is like to be sad. I empathize with you. We agree about being sad. We have an intersubjective agreement.

Alas, such an agreement is meaningless. We cannot (yet) measure sadness, quantify it, crystallize it, access it in any way from the outside. We are totally and absolutely reliant on your introspection and my introspection. There is no way anyone can prove that my “sadness” is even remotely similar to your sadness. I may be feeling or experiencing something that you might find hilarious and not sad at all. Still, I call it “sadness” and I empathize with you.

This would not have been that grave if empathy hadn’t been the cornerstone of morality.

The Encyclopaedia Britannica, 1999 Edition:

“Empathy and other forms of social awareness are important in the development of a moral sense. Morality embraces a person’s beliefs about the appropriateness or goodness of what he does, thinks, or feels… Childhood is … the time at which moral standards begin to develop in a process that often extends well into adulthood. The American psychologist Lawrence Kohlberg hypothesized that people’s development of moral standards passes through stages that can be grouped into three moral levels…

At the third level, that of postconventional moral reasoning, the adult bases his moral standards on principles that he himself has evaluated and that he accepts as inherently valid, regardless of society’s opinion. He is aware of the arbitrary, subjective nature of social standards and rules, which he regards as relative rather than absolute in authority.

Thus the bases for justifying moral standards pass from avoidance of punishment to avoidance of adult disapproval and rejection to avoidance of internal guilt and self-recrimination. The person’s moral reasoning also moves toward increasingly greater social scope (i.e., including more people and institutions) and greater abstraction (i.e., from reasoning about physical events such as pain or pleasure to reasoning about values, rights, and implicit contracts).”

But, if moral reasoning is based on introspection and empathy - it is, indeed, dangerously relative and not objective in any known sense of the word. Empathy is a unique agreement on the emotional and experiential content of two or more introspective processes in two or more subjective. Such an agreement can never have any meaning, even as far as the parties to it are concerned. They can never be sure that they are discussing the same emotions or experiences. There is no way to compare, measure, observe, falsify or verify (prove) that the “same” emotion is experienced identically by the parties to the empathy agreement. Empathy is meaningless and introspection involves a private language despite what Wittgenstein had to say. Morality is thus reduced to a set of meaningless private languages.

The Encyclopaedia Britannica:

“… Others have argued that because even rather young children are capable of showing empathy with the pain of others, the inhibition of aggressive behaviour arises from this moral affect rather than from the mere anticipation of punishment. Some scientists have found that children differ in their individual capacity for empathy, and, therefore, some children are more sensitive to moral prohibitions than others.

Young children’s growing awareness of their own emotional states, characteristics, and abilities leads to empathy–i.e., the ability to appreciate the feelings and perspectives of others. Empathy and other forms of social awareness are in turn important in the development of a moral sense… Another important aspect of children’s emotional development is the formation of their self-concept, or identity–i.e., their sense of who they are and what their relation to other people is.

According to Lipps’s concept of empathy, a person appreciates another person’s reaction by a projection of the self into the other. In his sthetik, 2 vol. (1903-06; ‘Aesthetics’), he made all appreciation of art dependent upon a similar self-projection into the object.”

This may well be the key. Empathy has little to do with the other person (the empathee). It is simply the result of conditioning and socialization. In other words, when we hurt someone - we don’t experience his pain. We experience OUR pain. Hurting somebody - hurts US. The reaction of pain is provoked in US by OUR own actions. We have been taught a learned response of feeling pain when we inflict it upon another. But we have also been taught to feel responsible for our fellow beings (guilt). So, we experience pain whenever another person claims to experience it as well. We feel guilty.

In sum:

To use the example of pain, we experience it in tandem with another person because we feel guilty or somehow responsible for his condition. A learned reaction is activated and we experience (our kind of) pain as well. We communicate it to the other person and an agreement of empathy is struck between us.

We attribute feelings, sensations and experiences to the object of our actions. It is the psychological defence mechanism of projection. Unable to conceive of inflicting pain upon ourselves - we displace the source. It is the other’s pain that we are feeling, we keep telling ourselves, not our own.

The Encyclopaedia Britannica:

“Perhaps the most important aspect of children’s emotional development is a growing awareness of their own emotional states and the ability to discern and interpret the emotions of others. The last half of the second year is a time when children start becoming aware of their own emotional states, characteristics, abilities, and potential for action; this phenomenon is called self-awareness… (coupled with strong narcissistic behaviours and traits - SV)…

This growing awareness of and ability to recall one’s own emotional states leads to empathy, or the ability to appreciate the feelings and perceptions of others. Young children’s dawning awareness of their own potential for action inspires them to try to direct (or otherwise affect) the behaviour of others…

…With age, children acquire the ability to understand the perspective, or point of view, of other people, a development that is closely linked with the empathic sharing of others’ emotions…

One major factor underlying these changes is the child’s increasing cognitive sophistication. For example, in order to feel the emotion of guilt, a child must appreciate the fact that he could have inhibited a particular action of his that violated a moral standard. The awareness that one can impose a restraint on one’s own behaviour requires a certain level of cognitive maturation, and, therefore, the emotion of guilt cannot appear until that competence is attained.”

That empathy is a REACTION to external stimuli that is fully contained within the empathor and then projected onto the empathee - is clearly demonstrated by “inborn empathy”. It is the ability to exhibit empathy and altruistic behaviour in response to facial expressions. Newborns react this way to their mother’s facial expression of sadness or distress.

This serves to prove that empathy has very little to do with the feelings, experiences or sensations of the other (the empathee). Surely, the infant has no idea what it is like to feel sad and definitely not what it is like for his mother to feel sad. In this case, it is a complex reflexive reaction. Later on, empathy is still rather reflexive, the result of conditioning.

The Encyclopaedia Britannica quotes fascinating research which dramatically proves the object-independent nature of empathy. Empathy is an internal reaction, an internal process, triggered by external cue provided by animate objects. It is communicated to the empathee-other by the empathor but the communication and the resulting agreement (”I know how you feel therefore we agree on how you feel”) is rendered meaningless by the absence of a monovalent, unambiguous dictionary.

“An extensive series of studies indicated that positive emotion feelings enhance empathy and altruism. It was shown by the American psychologist Alice M. Isen that relatively small favours or bits of good luck (like finding money in a coin telephone or getting an unexpected gift) induced positive emotion in people and that such emotion regularly increased the subjects’ inclination to sympathize or provide help.

Several studies have demonstrated that positive emotion facilitates creative problem solving. One of these studies showed that positive emotion enabled subjects to name more uses for common objects. Another showed that positive emotion enhanced creative problem solving by enabling subjects to see relations among objects (and other people - SV) that would otherwise go unnoticed. A number of studies have demonstrated the beneficial effects of positive emotion on thinking, memory, and action in pre-school and older children.”

If empathy increases with positive emotion (a result of good luck, for instance) - then it has little to do with its objects and a lot to do with the person in whom it is provoked.

ADDENDUM - Interview granted to the National Post, Toronto, Canada, July 2003

Q. How important is empathy to proper psychological functioning?

A. Empathy is more important socially than it is psychologically. The absence of empathy - for instance in the Narcissistic and Antisocial personality disorders - predisposes people to exploit and abuse others. Empathy is the bedrock of our sense of morality. Arguably, aggressive behavior is as inhibited by empathy at least as much as it is by anticipated punishment.

But the existence of empathy in a person is also a sign of self-awareness, a healthy identity, a well-regulated sense of self-worth, and self-love (in the positive sense). Its absence denotes emotional and cognitive immaturity, an inability to love, to truly relate to others, to respect their boundaries and accept their needs, feelings, hopes, fears, choices, and preferences as autonomous entities.

Q. How is empathy developed?

A. It may be innate. Even toddlers seem to empathize with the pain - or happiness - of others (such as their caregivers). Empathy increases as the child forms a self-concept (identity). The more aware the infant is of his or her emotional states, the more he explores his limitations and capabilities - the more prone he is to projecting this new found knowledge unto others. By attributing to people around him his new gained insights about himself, the child develop a moral sense and inhibits his anti-social impulses. The development of empathy is, therefore, a part of the process of socialization.

But, as the American psychologist Carl Rogers taught us, empathy is also learned and inculcated. We are coached to feel guilt and pain when we inflict suffering on another person. Empathy is an attempt to avoid our own self-imposed agony by projecting it onto another.

Q. Is there an increasing dearth of empathy in society today? Why do you think so?

A. The social institutions that reified, propagated and administered empathy have imploded. The nuclear family, the closely-knit extended clan, the village, the neighborhood, the Church- have all unraveled. Society is atomized and anomic. The resulting alienation fostered a wave of antisocial behavior, both criminal and “legitimate”. The survival value of empathy is on the decline. It is far wiser to be cunning, to cut corners, to deceive, and to abuse - than to be empathic. Empathy has largely dropped from the contemporary curriculum of socialization.

In a desperate attempt to cope with these inexorable processes, behaviors predicated on a lack of empathy have been pathologized and “medicalized”. The sad truth is that narcissistic or antisocial conduct is both normative and rational. No amount of “diagnosis”, “treatment”, and medication can hide or reverse this fact. Ours is a cultural malaise which permeates every single cell and strand of the social fabric.

Q. Is there any empirical evidence we can point to of a decline in empathy?

Empathy cannot be measured directly - but only through proxies such as criminality, terrorism, charity, violence, antisocial behavior, related mental health disorders, or abuse.

Moreover, it is extremely difficult to separate the effects of deterrence from the effects of empathy.

If I don’t batter my wife, torture animals, or steal - is it because I am empathetic or because I don’t want to go to jail?

Rising litigiousness, zero tolerance, and skyrocketing rates of incarceration - as well as the ageing of the population - have sliced intimate partner violence and other forms of crime across the United States in the last decade. But this benevolent decline had nothing to do with increasing empathy.
The statistics are open to interpretation but it would be safe to say that the last century has been the most violent and least empathetic in human history. Wars and terrorism are on the rise, charity giving on the wane (measured as percentage of national wealth), welfare policies are being abolished, Darwininan models of capitalism are spreading. In the last two decades, mental health disorders were added to the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of the American Psychiatric Association whose hallmark is the lack of empathy. The violence is reflected in our popular culture: movies, video games, and the media.

Empathy - supposedly a spontaneous reaction to the plight of our fellow humans - is now channeled through self-interested and bloated non-government organizations or multilateral outfits. The vibrant world of private empathy has been replaced by faceless state largesse. Pity, mercy, the elation of giving are tax-deductible. It is a sorry sight.

Sam Vaknin ( samvak.tripod.com ) is the author of Malignant Self Love - Narcissism Revisited and After the Rain - How the West Lost the East. He served as a columnist for Global Politician, Central Europe Review, PopMatters, Bellaonline, and eBookWeb, a United Press International (UPI) Senior Business Correspondent, and the editor of mental health and Central East Europe categories in The Open Directory and Suite101.

Until recently, he served as the Economic Advisor to the Government of Macedonia.

Visit Sam’s Web site at samvak.tripod.com

Real Estate Johns Island

real estate johns island

If you have done much looking at real estate in the Charleston, South Carolina area then you have undoubtedly found out a lot of information about real estate Johns Island. It’s a popular term for the destination. Real Estate Johns Island seems to be forever linked synonyms in the local real estate industry and with good reason.

Johns Island is known for its quality of life. It’s a unique South Carolina island that provides the best of multiple worlds. It’s just close enough to the city to be productive and just far enough away from the city to have a rich natural environment. It all combines to create this superb way of living that is both traditional and comfortable.

Johns Island is not only known for the quality of life that residents enjoy but also for the great living environment that residents enjoy. There is always something to do and it usually involves getting closer to nature. Golfers love the golf courses on Johns Island, from the popular local clubs to the most posh and exclusive golf clubs, there is golfing to fit every desire and budget.

There is more than just golf on Johns Island, there is also some of the best boating in the southeast. Johns Island is located along the Intracoastal Waterway and this means that it’s the main north to south progression of boats. It’s a chance to dream about a boating adventure while playing a great round of golf. After boating there are trails to explore, birds to see and everything else you can imagine getting the most out of life.

First Class Snow throughout the European Alps

We have had nearly 2 metres snowfall during the last week. The snow was so prolonged that skiing lifts were shut down, the local train has been stopping at Chamonix train station and not going up to Le Praz. Several roads have been closed past our luxury chalet and avalanche announcements released.

Compare this to 2 seasons past, with the unbelievably warm Feb conditions, grass showing on the ski slopes, and admonitions that global warming meant the finish of skiing in the European Alps. The study from winter 2006 predicted that global warming could make snowboarding far too expensive for a lot of skiers, with a third of ski domains closing and the melting of glaciers. Climatologists assert that it’s nearly impossible to assign the seasonal differences in the weather patterns to the outcomes of climate change.

So we could be experiencing the deepest downturn in almost 30 yrs, and the Pound has headed to new levels versus the euro, but the snowboarding is fine, and the latest bookings show that boarders are enthusiastic to enjoy the superb conditions. This winter is certainly the finest in nine seasons, and a lot of skiers are announcing that it is the finest skiing snow in 10 seasons.

Even so think that lots of snow like this means high avalanches risks.

Low Fat Low Cholesterol Cooking

Low fat, low cholesterol cooking is a great way to remedy high cholesterol or high triglyceride levels and to lower your risk for heart disease and stroke. With some simple, healthy changes to your diet and lifestyle you can lower your cholesterol and enjoy a happier, healthier life.

The first step in low fat low cholesterol cooking is to determine which foods to include and which to limit, or avoid entirely. High cholesterol foods that should be limited and only enjoyed on rare occasions include duck, goose, liver, kidney and other organ meats. You should also begin to reduce portion size on other foods that are high in cholesterol or saturated fats, like beef, pork dairy, palm oil, palm kernel oil and coconut oil.

You can still enjoy these foods in small portions and use low fat low cholesterol cooking tips and techniques to reduce their negative impact on your health. For example, trim any visible fat off of beef and pork, remove the skin from poultry and switch to low fat options for milk, cheese and other dairy products.

The next step in low fat low cholesterol cooking is to switch to non-hydrogenated healthy vegetable cooking oils. Corn oil, olive oil, canola oil, safflower oil, sunflower oil, grapeseed oil and soybean oil are all good options. Avoid fried foods and use small amounts of these oils to sauté foods instead in order to get the most our of your low fat low cholesterol cooking.

Another great addition to your low fat low cholesterol cooking plan is to include foods that can help lower cholesterol by binding with some of the cholesterol in foods and prohibiting absorption of the cholesterol. Foods that are high in soluble fiber, such as apples, oatmeal and whole grains are healthy, flavorful examples of cholesterol-lowering foods.

Low fat low cholesterol cooking is fun and rewarding and will lead to a longer, happier, healthier life.

Mobile Broadband Going Strong

Telecom analysts, Analysys Mason, have caused a lot of excitement with their latest report. The report predicts that the total number of mobile broadband connections in Europe will reach 148 million by the year 2014.

When this figure is added to the fact that mobile broadband growth rate is predicted at 46% year on year, with fixed line connections growing at a much slower pace, it shows that mobile broadband will make up almost half the total number of connections in Europe by 2014. That means it will easily outnumber fixed-line cable and DSL broadband connections by that time.

By 2015, mobile broadband will have the dominant share in the total broadband connections pie. This kind of growth is good news for the industry in the current economic downturn. Much of the growth is expected to come from casual, prepaid customers with the service being used as a supplement to their primary fixed connection.

Chief analyst of Analysys Mason, Matt Hatton is of the opinion that mobile broadband will be driving the growth in mobile in Europe for the next five to six years. He also poses the service as the next big thing in the mobile broadband uk industry. It will give service providers a much-needed way to make more revenue as voice service revenue starts to stagnate.