Tag: Laura Mappin

What I’ve Learned by Building Our Taboo Museum

What I’ve Learned by Building Our Taboo Museum

Laura Mappin

Nov 16, 2014

 

Laura MappinLaura Mappin founded Our Taboo Museum, an online museum which addresses every possible taboo subject using any artistic means possible – writing, crochet, performance art, etc.

Her motivation was to have conversations with the willing and to make these topics less taboo, more understood, less feared over time in the hopes that we would learn to address them in a healthier way with our eyes open instead of dealing with them from fear.

This process has been full of surprises.

Join us as she describes her sometimes funny, sometimes frustrating, confusing, embarrassing experiences juxtaposing her museum idea with the rest of the world.

Mappin holds BS degrees in math and computer science from the University of Pittsburgh, which merited her the opportunity to spend twenty years fermenting in corporate America providing fuel for creating Our Taboo Museum.

 

Your Hopes and Dreams for the Humanist Community in Silicon Valley (HCSV)

Your Hopes and Dreams for the Humanist Community in Silicon Valley (HCSV)

Laura Mappin and Paul Gilbert

Aug 10, 2014

What do you appreciate about HCSV? How could HCSV change to be more meaningful to you? What would you be willing to do to help make HCSV be more worthwhile to you? This Forum will be a discussion among attendees (co-facilitated by HCSV members Laura Mappin and Paul Gilbert). Bring your thoughts to share, and your willingness to listen to, and collaborate with, others.

Me and My Ego

Me and My Ego

Laura Mappin

June 8, 2014

Laura Mappin

The ego is the hardiest of all weeds — Robert Grant, author of Way of the Wound, http://amzn.to/LhZ4TZ

What kind of relationship do you have with your ego? How did you even get to learn that you had one? How do you manage it? Do you manage it? What tools or perspectives do you use?

For the first half of this forum, Humanist Community member Laura Mappin will share her trip in getting in touch with her ego and developing ways to manage it that now work well for her. This trip didn’t involve any religion or other pop self-help methods since she was quite wary of them.

For the second half, attendees will be invited to respond and share their stories along this topic.

 

Humanist Community Forum (2014-06-08): Me and My Ego (Laura Mappin) from Humanist Community-SiliconValley on Vimeo.

Laura Mappin

Taboos for Totalitarianism

Laura Mappin

October 27, 2013

Laura Mappin   The less we can discuss a topic honestly, the more we leave ourselves open to manipulation and control by others, including governments.

For example, if we cannot stomach the idea of just imagining that someone we know and trust could have molested our child, we might not believe her when she tries to tell us this is so. If we as a society force others to lead closeted lives that would otherwise hurt no one, we are responsible for emotionally torturing others, which can lead the closeted to behave or lash out in insidious ways. As a society or nation, if we cannot admit all of the truths about war, we can end up making choices that are sorely not in our interest.

In this presentation, Laura Mappin will discuss her taboo taxonomy and how she sees taboo subjects relating to each other. She will also discuss how she believes our increased ease with discussing these subjects and permitting some of them helps create healthier societies.

The argument to be presented is a work in progress. Your questions and thoughts are welcome.

Laura Mappin has been puzzled most of her life about what motivates people’s behavior and how those actions overlay with fairness. She has BS degrees in Computer Science and Math from the University of Pittsburgh, which probably impacted her ways of perceiving and graphing this squishy data. This presentation is the culmination of personal conundrums and ideas that have been percolating in her mind for decades.

 

Humanist Community Forum (2013-10-27): Taboos for Totalitarianism (Laura Mappin) from Humanist Community-SiliconValley on Vimeo.

 

For more information on this talk or to contact Laura, go to:
http://ourtaboomuseum.com/hcsv2

 

Laura Mappin

Our Taboo Museum

Difficult Discussions are My Prozac

Laura Mappin

April 28, 2013

 

Laura MappinLaura Mappin, a Humanist Community member, will share her online website Our Taboo Museum which transforms taboos through crowd sourced conversation, art and products.  She’ll also discuss the experiences in her life that drove her to create this collaborative place of straight talk with gobs of humor.

Her museum’s purpose is similar to the Humanist Community although discussions might be more personal and may cover a narrower set of topics.  (String theory is not on the list.)

She will discuss her taboo taxonomy around which she organizes the site.  It includes 14 groups, namely, Body, Aging, Death, Skin Color, Sex, Sexual Identity, Reproduction, Rape, Bigotry, Social Norms, Mental Health, Parenting, Money, Shame.

An egalitarian probably since birth, she grew up a sensitive kid with an angry father, experiencing misplaced violence which she of course misunderstood and folded into her opinion of herself.  Then she spent almost 20 years in hi-tech, being exposed to near fatal amounts of left brain behavior.  Being fired or laid off (who knows what that was) at the same time as going through an amicable and mutually desired but still security-shattering divorce, she clinched her date with the abyss.

All of these events fueled her passion to create this museum to talk about what holds humans back from acting more fully in our own interests.  At least, that’s the theory.

The museum and a way to contact the speaker can be found at http://ourtaboomuseum.com

Humanist Community Forum (2013-04-28): Our Taboo Museum Difficult Discussions are My Prozac (Laura Mappin) from Humanist Community-SiliconValley on Vimeo.