#(and of course this gets more complicated with certain religions and ethnicities where it can blend with other forms of discrimination | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

fineillsignup · 6 years ago

Text

tips for choosing a Chinese name for your OC when you don’t know Chinese

This is a meta for gifset trade with @purple-fury! Maybe you would like to trade something with me? You can PM me if so!

Choosing a Chinese name, if you don’t know a Chinese language, is difficult, but here’s a secret for you: choosing a Chinese name, when you do know a Chinese language, is also difficult. So, my tip #1 is: Relax. Did you know that Actual Chinese People choose shitty names all the dang time? It’s true!!! Just as you, doubtless, have come across people in your daily life in your native language that you think “God, your parents must have been on SOME SHIT when they named you”, the same is true about Chinese people, now and throughout history. If you choose a shitty name, it’s not the end of the world! Your character’s parents now canonically suck at choosing a name. There, we fixed it!

However. Just because you should not drive yourself to the brink of the grave fretting over choosing a Chinese name for a character, neither does that mean you shouldn’t care at all. Especially, tip #2, Never just pick some syllables that vaguely sound Chinese and call it a day. That shit is awful and tbh it’s as inaccurate and racist as saying “ching chong” to mimic the Chinese language. Examples: Cho Chang from Harry Potter, Tenten from Naruto, and most notorious of all, Fu Manchu and his daughter Fah lo Suee (how the F/UCK did he come up with that one).

So where do you begin then? Well, first you need to pick your character’s surname. This is actually not too difficult, because Chinese actually doesn’t have that many surnames in common use. One hundred surnames cover over eighty percent of China’s population, and in local areas especially, certain surnames within that one hundred are absurdly common, like one out of every ten people you meet is surnamed Wang, for example. Also, if you’re making an OC for an established media franchise, you may already have the surname based on who you want your character related to. Finally, if you’re writing an ethnically Chinese character who was born and raised outside of China, you might only want their surname to be Chinese, and give them a given name from the language/culture of their native country; that’s very very common.

If you don’t have a surname in mind, check out the Wikipedia page for the list of common Chinese surnames, roughly the top one hundred. If you’re not going to pick one of the top one hundred surnames, you should have a good reason why. Now you need to choose a romanization system. You’ll note that the Wikipedia list contains variant spellings. If your character is a Chinese-American (or other non-Chinese country) whose ancestors emigrated before the 1950s (or whose ancestors did not come from mainland China), their name will not be spelled according to pinyin. It might be spelled according to Wade-Giles romanization, or according to the name’s pronunciation in other Chinese languages, or according to what the name sounds like in the language of the country they immigrated to. (The latter is where you get spellings like Lee, Young, Woo, and Law.) A huge proportion of emigration especially came from southern China, where people spoke Cantonese, Min, Hakka, and other non-Mandarin languages.

So, for example, if you want to make a Chinese-Canadian character whose paternal source of their surname immigrated to Canada in the 20s, don’t give them the surname Xie, spelled that way, because #1 that spelling didn’t exist when their first generation ancestor left China and #2 their first generation ancestor was unlikely to have come from a part of China where Mandarin was spoken anyway (although still could have! that’s up to you). Instead, name them Tse, Tze, Sia, Chia, or Hsieh.

If you’re working with a character who lives in, or who left or is descended from people who left mainland China in the 1960s or later; or if you’re working with a historical or mythological setting, then you are going to want to use the pinyin romanization. The reason I say that you should use pinyin for historical or mythological settings is because pinyin is now the official or de facto romanization system for international standards in academia, the United Nations, etc. So if you’re writing a story with characters from ancient China, or medieval China, use pinyin, even though not only pinyin, but the Mandarin pronunciations themselves didn’t exist back then. Just... just accept this. This is one of those quirks of having a non-alphabetic language.

(Here’s an “exceptions” paragraph: there are various well known Chinese names that are typically, even now, transliterated in a non-standard way: Confucius, Mencius, the Yangtze River, Sun Yat-sen, etc. Go ahead and use these if you want. And if you really consciously want to make a Cantonese or Hakka or whatever setting, more power to you, but in that case you better be far beyond needing this tutorial and I don’t know why you’re here. Get. Scoot!)

One last point about names that use the ü with the umlaut over it. The umlaut ü is actually pretty critical for the meaning because wherever the ü appears, the consonant preceding it also can be used with u: lu/lü, nu/nü, etc. However, de facto, lots of individual people, media franchises, etc, simply drop the umlaut and write u instead when writing a name in English, such as “Lu Bu” in the Dynasty Warriors franchise in English (it should be written Lü Bu). And to be fair, since tones are also typically dropped in Latin script and are just as critical to the meaning and pronunciation of the original, dropping the umlaut probably doesn’t make much difference. This is kind of a choice you have to make for yourself. Maybe you even want to play with it! Maybe everybody thinks your character’s surname is pronounced “loo as in loo roll” but SURPRISE MOFO it’s actually lü! You could Do Something with that. Also, in contexts where people want to distinguish between u and ü when typing but don’t have easy access to a keyboard method of making the ü, the typical shorthand is the letter v.

Alright! So you have your surname and you know how you want it spelled using the Latin alphabet. Great! What next?

Alright, so, now we get to the hard part: choosing the given name. No, don’t cry, I know baby I know. We can do this. I believe in you.

Here are some premises we’re going to be operating on, and I’m not entirely sure why I made this a numbered list:

Chinese people, generally, love their kids. (Obviously, like in every culture, there are some awful exceptions, and I’ll give one specific example of this later on.)

As part of loving their kids, they want to give them a Good name.

So what makes a name a Good name??? Well, in Chinese culture, the cultural values (which have changed over time) have tended to prioritize things like: education; clan and family; health and beauty; religious devotions of various religions (Buddhism, Taoism, folk religions, Christianity, other); philosophical beliefs (Buddhism, Confucianism, etc) (see also education); refinement and culture (see also education); moral rectitude; and of course many other things as the individual personally finds important. You’ll notice that education is a big one. If you can’t decide on where to start, something related to education, intelligence, wisdom, knowledge, etc, is a bet that can’t go wrong.

Unlike in English speaking cultures (and I’m going to limit myself to English because we’re writing English and good God look at how long this post is already), there is no canon of “names” in Chinese like there has traditionally been in English. No John, Mary, Susan, Jacob, Maxine, William, and other words that are names and only names and which, historically at least, almost everyone was named. Instead, in Chinese culture, you can basically choose any character you want. You can choose one character, or two characters. (More than two characters? No one can live at that speed. Seriously, do not give your character a given name with more than two characters. If you need this tutorial, you don’t know enough to try it.) Congratulations, it is now a name!!

But what this means is that Chinese names aggressively Mean Something in a way that most English names don’t. You know nature names like Rose and Pearl, and Puritan names like Wrestling, Makepeace, Prudence, Silence, Zeal, and Unity? I mean, yeah, you can technically look up that the name Mary comes from a etymological root meaning bitter, but Mary doesn’t mean bitter in the way that Silence means, well, silence. Chinese names are much much more like the latter, because even though there are some characters that are more common as names than as words, the meaning of the name is still far more upfront than English names.

So the meaning of the name is generally a much more direct expression of those Good Values mentioned before. But it gets more complicated!

Being too direct has, across many eras of Chinese history, been considered crude; the very opposite of the education you’re valuing in the first place. Therefore, rather than the Puritan slap you in the face approach where you just name your kid VIRTUE!, Chinese have typically favoured instead more indirect, related words about these virtues and values, or poetic allusions to same. What might seem like a very blunt, concrete name, such as Guan Yu’s “yu” (which means feather), is actually a poetic, referential name to all the things that feathers evoke: flight, freedom, intellectual broadmindness, protection...

So when you’re choosing a name, you start from the value you want to express, then see where looking up related words in a dictionary gets you until you find something that sounds “like a name”; you can also try researching Chinese art symbolism to get more concrete names. Then, here’s my favourite trick, try combining your fake name with several of the most common surnames: 王，李，陈. And Google that shit. If you find Actual Human Beings with that name: congratulations, at least if you did f/uck up, somebody else out there f/ucked up first and stuck a Human Being with it, so you’re still doing better than they are. High five!

You’re going to stick with the same romanization system (or lack thereof) as you’ve used for the surname. In the interests of time, I’m going to focus on pinyin only.

First let’s take a look at some real and actual Chinese names and talk about what they mean, why they might have been chosen, and also some fictional OC names that I’ve come up with that riff off of these actual Chinese names. And then we’ll go over some resources and also some pitfalls. Hopefully you can learn by example! Fun!!!

Let’s start with two great historical strategists: Zhuge Liang and Zhou Yu, and the names I picked for some (fictional) sons of theirs. Then I will be talking about Sun Shangxiang and Guan Yinping, two historical-legendary women of the same era, and what I named their fictional daughters. And finally I’ll be talking about historical Chinese pirate Gan Ning and what I named his fictional wife and fictional daughter. Uh, this could be considered spoilers for my novel Clouds and Rain and associated one-shots in that universe, so you probably want to go and read that work... and its prequels... and leave lots of comments and kudos first and then come back. Don’t worry, I’ll wait.

(I’m just kidding you don’t need to know a thing about my work to find this useful.)

ZHUGE Liang is written 諸葛亮 in traditional Chinese characters and 诸葛亮 in simplified Chinese characters. It is a two-character surname. Two character surnames used to be more common than they are now. When I read Chinese history, I notice that two character surname clans seem to have a bad habit of flying real high and then getting the Icarus treatment if Icarus when his wings melted also got beheaded and had the Nine Familial Exterminations performed on his clan. Yikes. Sooner or later that'll cost ya.

But anyway. Zhuge means “lots of kudzu”, which if you have been to the American south you know is that only way that kudzu comes. Liang means “light, shining” in the sense of daylight, moonlight, etc; and from this literal meaning also such figurative meanings as reveal or clear. (I’m going to talk about words have a primary and secondary meaning in this way because I think it’s important for understanding. It’s just like how in English, ‘run’ has many meanings, but almost of all them are derived from a primary meaning of ‘to move fast via one’s human legs’, if I can be weird for a moment. “Run” as in “home run” comes from that, “run” as in “run in your stocking” comes from that, “run” as in “that’ll run you at least $200″ comes from that. You have to get it straight which is the primary meaning, which is the one that people think of first and they way they get to the secondary meaning.)

“Light” has a similar “enlightenment” concept in Chinese as in English, so the person who chose Zhuge Liang’s name—most likely his father or grandfather—clearly valued learning.

I named my fictional son for Zhuge Liang Zhuge Jing 京. The value or direction I was coming from is that Zhuge Liang has come to the decision that he has to nurture the next generation for the benefit of the land, that he has to remain in the world in a way that he very much did not want to do when he himself was a young man. In this alternate universe, Liu Bei has formed a new Han dynasty and recaptured Luoyang, so when Zhuge Liang’s son is then born he chooses this name Jing which means literally “capital”. This concrete name is meant as an allusion to a devotion to public service and to remaining “central”. After I chose this name, I discovered that Zhuge Liang actually has a recorded grandson named Zhuge Jing with this same character.

above, me, realizing I picked a good name

ZHOU Yu is written 周瑜 in both simplified and traditional Chinese characters.

The surname Zhou was and remains a very common Chinese surname whose original meaning was like... a really nice field. Like just the greatest f/ucking field you’ve ever seen. “Dang, that is a sweet field” said an ancient Chinese farmer, “I’m gonna make a new Chinese character to record just how great it is.” And then it came to mean things along the line of complete and thorough.

Yu means the excellence of a gemstone--its brilliance, lustre, etc, as opposed to its flaws. It is not a common word but does appear in some expressions such as 瑕不掩瑜 "a flaw does not conceal the rest of the gemstone's beauty; a defect does not mean the whole thing is bad".

Zhou Yu has gone down in history for being not only smart but also artistic and handsome. A real triple threat. And this name speaks to a family that valued art and beauty. It really does suit him.

Zhou Yu had two recorded sons but in my alternate history I gave him four. I borrowed the first one’s name from history: Xun 循, follow. Based on this name, I chose other names that I thought gave a similar sense of his values: Shou 守, guard; Wen 聞, listen. The youngest one I had born when he already knew he was dying, and things had not been going well generally; therefore I had him give him the name Shen 慎, which means “careful, cautious”.

SUN Shangxiang 孫尚香 is one of several names that history and legend give for a sister of w//arlord-king Sun Quan who was married to a rival w//arlord named Liu Bei in a marriage which, historically, uh, didn’t... didn’t go all that well. In my alternate history it goes well! You can’t stop me, I’ve already done it!

The surname Sun means “grandson” and the given name components are Shang mean “values, esteems” and Xiang “scent” which we can combine into meaning something like “precious perfume”. A lot of the recorded names for women in this era (a huge number didn’t have any names recorded, a problem in itself) seem to me to be more concrete, to contain more objects, to be more focused on affection, less focused on hopes and dreams. This makes sense for the era: you love your daughters (I HOPE) but then they get married and leave you. You don’t have long term plans for them because their long term belongs to another clan.

I gave her daughter by Liu Bei the name Liu Yitao 劉義桃. Yi 義 meaning righteousness, rectitude and 桃 meaning... peach. Okay, okay, I know "righteous peach" sounds damn funny in English, but the legendary oath in the peach garden, the "oath of brotherhood" is called in Chinese 結義 "tying righteousness" and the peach garden is, uh, a peach garden. I also give her the cutesy nickname Taotao 桃桃 which you could compare to “Peaches” or “Peachy”. Reduplication of a character in a two-character name is a classic nickname strategy in Chinese.

GUAN Yinping 關銀屏/关银屏 is a “made up” (scare quotes because old legends have their own kind of validity, fight me) name for a historical daughter of Guan Yu. Guan means “to close (a door)”. Yin means “silver” and ping means “a screen, to hide” and according to the legend, her father’s oath brother Zhang Fei named her after a silver treasure. So here again we see a name for a woman that completely lacks the kind of aspirations we see in male names. Who would have an aspiration for a daughter?

My fictional characters, that’s who. I named her daughter Lu Ruofeng 陸若鳳/陆若凤, Ruo (like the) Feng (phoenix), based on a quote from a Confucian text about what one should try to be during both times of chaos and times of good government. I portray her father as a devoted Confucian scholar, so that was another factor for why I looked to Confucian texts for a source of a name.

Modern parents also now have big dreams for their daughters :’) and so modern girls receive names that are far more similar to how boys are named.

GAN Ning 甘寧/甘宁 is a great example of a person whose name does not suit him. Gan 甘 depicts a tongue and means “sweet”, and Ning 寧 which shows a bowl and table and heart beneath a roof means “peaceful”. Which, it would be hard to come up with a name for this guy, a ruthless pirate turned extremely effective general:

that is less suitable than essentially being named “Sweet Peace”.

And when he was an adult, his style name—a name that Chinese men used to be given when they turned 20 (ie became adults) by East Asian reckoning—indeed reflects that. Choosing your own style name was widely considered to be crass. I absolutely think that Gan Ning chose his own style name; he was that kind of a guy. And the name he chose! Xingba 興霸/兴霸! I’ve never seen another style name like it. It means, basically, “thriving dominator”! Brand new official adult Gan Ning treats his style name like he’s picking his Xbox gamer tag and he picks BadassBoss69_420, that’s what this style name is like to me. Except, you know, he had almost certainly killed many hundreds of people by the time he was nineteen, so, uh, it wouldn’t be a wise idea to make fun of his name to his face.

In my fictional version of his life, he married a woman whose father was the exception to the “parents love their children” rule and who named his daughter Pandi 盼第 “expecting a younger brother”, which is a classic “daughters ain’t shit, I want a son” name. Real and actual Chinese women have been given this shitty name and ones like it.

Because Gan Ning had an ironically placid name, I also gave his daughter the placid single character name Wan 婉, which means “gentle, restrained”, as a foil to her wild personality.

So there are a bunch of examples of some historical characters and some OCs and how I chose their names. “But wait, all that was really cool, but how can I do that? You can read Chinese, I can’t!”

I originally had a bunch of links here to dictionaries and resources but Tumblr :) wouldn’t let the post show up in tag search with all the links :) :) :) so you need to check the reblogs of this post to see my own reblog; that reblog has all the links. I’M SORRY ABOUT THIS. Here are a list of the sites without the links if you want to Google them yourself.

MDBG - an open source dictionary - start here

Wiktionary - don’t knock it til you try it

iCIBA (they recently changed their user interface and it’s much less English-speaker friendly now but it’s still a great dictionary)

Pleco (an iOS app, maybe also Android???) contains same open source dictionary as MDBG and also its own proprietary dictionary

Chinese Etymology at hanziyuan dot net

You search some English keywords from the value you want, and then you see what kind of characters you get. You should take the character and then reverse search, making sure that it doesn’t have negative words/meanings, and similar. Look into the etymology and see if it has any thematic elements that appeal to what you’re doing with the character--eg a fire radical for a character with fire powers.

And then, like I mention before, when you have got a couple characters and you think “I think this could be a good name”, you go to Google, you take a very common surname, you append your chosen name—don’t forget to use quotation marks—and you see what happens. Did you get some results? Even better, did you get lots of results? Then you’re probably safe! No results does not necessarily mean your name won’t work, but you should probably run it by an Actual Chinese Native Speaker at that point to check. Also, remember, as I said at the beginning, sometimes people have weird names. If you consciously decide “you know what, I think this character’s parents would choose a weird name”, then own that.

THINGS YOU SHOULD PROBABLY IGNORE!

Starting in relatively recent history (not really a big thing until Song dynasty) and continuing, moreso outside of mainland China, to the modern day, there is something called a generation name component to a name. This means that of a name’s two characters, one of the characters is shared with every other paternal line relative of that person’s generation; historically, usually only boys get a generation name and girls don’t. (Chinese history, banging on pots and pans: DAUGHTERS AIN’T SHIT AND DON’T FORGET IT!) “Generation” here means everyone who is equidistant descendant from some past ancestor, not necessarily that they are exactly the same age. For example, all of ancestor’s X’s sons share the character 一 in their names, his grandsons all have the character 二，great-grandsons 三, great-great-grandsons 四 (I just used numbers because I’m lazy). By the time you get to great-great-grandson, you might have some that are forty years old and some that are babies (because of how old their fathers were when they were conceived), but they are still the same generation.

In some clans, this tradition goes so far as to have something called a name poem, where the generations cycle, character by character, through a poem that was specifically written for this purpose and which is generally about how their clan is super rad.

If you want to riff off of this idea and have siblings or paternal cousins share a character in their names, ok, but it genuinely isn’t necessary. Anyone with a single character name obviously doesn’t have one of these generation names, and by no means does every person with a two character name (especially female) have a generation name. If you’re doing an OC for an ancient Chinese setting (certainly anything before the year about 500), you shouldn’t use these generation names because it wasn’t a thing. Also, in a modern setting, even if such a generation name or name poem exists, it’s not like there is any legal requirement to use it (though there may be family pressure to do so).

As a further complication, some parents do the shared character thing among their children without it actually being a generation name per se because it isn’t shared by any cousins. Or, they have all their children (or all their children of the same gender) share a radical, which is a meaning component in a Chinese character.

If someone does have one of these shared character names, then their nickname will never come from that shared character; either they will be called by the full name or by some name riffing off of the character that is not shared. For example, I knew a pair of sisters called Yuru and Yufei with the same first character; the first sister went by her English name in daily life (even when speaking Chinese) while the second sister was called Feifei.

tl;dr If you don’t already know Chinese, consider generation names an extra complication for masochists only. Definitely not required for modern characters.

Fortune telling is another thing that I think you should either ignore or wildly make up. Do you know what ordinary Chinese people who want to choose a lucky name for their child do? They hire someone to work it out. This is not some DIY shit even if you are deeply immured in the culture. There are considerations of the number of strokes, the radicals, the birth date, the birth hour. You’re the god of your fictional universe, so go ahead and unilaterally declare that your desired names are lucky or unlucky as suits the story if you want to.

MILK NAMES

In modern times, babies get named right away, if for no other reason that the government requires it everywhere in the world for record keeping purposes.

However, in traditional times, Chinese people did not give babies a permanent name right away, instead waiting until a certain period of time had passed (3 months/100 days is a classic).

What do you call the baby in the meantime? A milk name 乳名, which your (close, older than you) family may or may not keep on using for you until such time as you die, just so that you remember that you used to be a funny looking little raisin that peed on people.

This kind of name is almost always very humble, sometimes to the point of being outright insulting. This is because to use any name on your baby that implies you might actually like the little thing is tempting Bad News. Possible exception: sometimes a baby would receive a milk name that dedicated it to some deity. In this case, I guess you’re hoping that deity will be flattered enough to take on the job of shooing away all the other spirits and things that might be otherwise attracted to this Delicious Fresh Baby.

Because milk names were only used by one’s (older) family and very close family friends of one’s parents/grandparents, most people’s milk names are not recorded or known, with some notable exceptions. Liu Shan, the son of Liu Bei, who as a baby was rescued by Zhao Yun during the Shu forces retreat from Changban. Perhaps because his big debut in history/legend was as a baby, he is well-known for his milk name A-Dou 阿斗, which means, essentially, Dipper.

If you’re writing a story, you really only need to worry about a milk name for your character if it’s a historical (or pseudohistorical) setting, and even then only if the character either makes an appearance as a small infant or you consciously decide to have them interact with characters who knew them well as a small child and choose to continue using the milk name. Not all parents, etc who could use the milk name with a youth or an adult actually did so.

Here are some milk names I’ve come up with in my fiction: Little Mouse/Xiaoshu 小鼠 for a girl, Tadpole/Kedou 蝌蚪 for a boy, and Shouty/A-Yao 阿吆 for a boy. In the first two cases the babies were both smol and quiet (as babies go). The last one neither small nor quiet, ahahaha. 蔷蔷 Qiangqiang, which is a pretty enough name meaning “wild rose” (duplication to make it lighter), except the baby is a boy, so this is the typical idea that making a boy feminine makes him worth less, which, yikes, but also, historically accurate. Also Xiaohei 小黑 “Blackie” for a work that I will probably never publish because I don’t ever see myself finishing it. I might recycle it to use on another story.

Here are some more milk names I came up with off the cuff for a friend that wanted an insulting milk name. They ended up not using any of these, so feel free to use, no credit necessary. Rongzi 冗子 “Unwanted Child”; Xiaochou 小丑 “Little Ugly”; A-Xu 阿虛 “Empty”; Pangzhu 胖豬 “Fat Pig”; Shasha 傻傻 “Dummy”.

PITFALLS!

Chinese has a lot of homophones. Like, so many, you cannot even believe. That means the potential for puns, double meanings, etc, is off the charts. And this can be bad, real real bad, when it comes to names. It is way too easy to pick a name and think to yourself “wow, this name is great” and then realize later that the name sounds exactly the same as “cat shit” or something even worse.

Some Chinese families live the name choosing life on hard mode because their surname is itself a homonym that can make almost any name sound bad. I’m speaking of course of the poor Wus and Bus of the world. You see Wu may have innocuous and pleasant surnames associated with it, but it also means “without, un-”. (Bu is similar, sounds like “no, not”.) Suddenly, any pleasant name you give your kid, your kid is NOT that thing.

This means picking a name that is pleasant in itself yet also somehow also pleasant when combined with Wu. So you might pick a character with a sound like Ting, Xian, Hui, or Liang - unstopping, unlimited, no regrets, immeasurable. A positive negative name, a kind of paradox. Like I said, this is naming on hard mode.

If you are naming an ancient character, I am going to say in my opinion you should ignore all considerations of sound, because reconstruction of ancient Chinese pronunciations is on some other, other level of pedantic and you just don’t need to do that to yourself.

For modern characters, however, an attractive name, in general, should be a mix of tones and a mix of sounds. As a non-Chinese speaker, basically this means especially if you go for a two character given name, having all three characters start with the same sound, or end with the same sound, can sound kind of tongue twistery and thus silly/stupid. That doesn’t mean that such names never exist, and can in some cases even sound good (or at least memorable), but how likely is it that you’ve found the exception? Not very. (Two out of three having repetition isn’t bad. It’s three out of three you have to be careful of. Something like Wang Fang or Zhou Pengpeng is probably fine; it’s something over the top like Guan Guangguo or Li Lili you want to avoid.)

Just like the West (sigh), in the modern Sinosphere it is widely acceptable for girls to have masculine names but totally unacceptable for boys to have feminine names. If you see the radical 女 which means woman, don’t choose that character for a boy, at least if you’re trying to be realistic. Now Chinese ideas of masculinity doesn’t have the same boundaries as Western ideas, but if you want to play around in those boundaries, you gotta do that research on your own; you’ve left what I can teach you in this already entirely too long tutorial.

Don’t name a character after someone else in story, or after a famous person. In some/many Western cultures, and actually in some Eastern cultures too (Japan is basically fine with this, for example), naming a baby the same name as someone else (a relative, a saint, a famous person, etc), is a respected and popular way to honour that person.

But not in Chinese culture, not now, not a thousand years ago, not two thousand years ago. (Disclaimer: I bet there is some weird rare exception that, eventually, somebody will “gotcha” me with. I am prepared to be amazed and delighted when this occurs.)

Part of this is because of a fundamentally different idea in Chinese culture vs many other cultures about what is valuing vs disrespecting with regard to personal names. The highest respect paid in Chinese history to a category of personal names is to the emperor, and what would happen there is that it would be under name taboo, a very serious and onerous custom where you not only have to not say the emperor’s name, but you can’t say anything that sounds the same as the emperor’s name.

Did I mention that this is in the language of CRAZY GO NUTS numbers of homonyms? The day-to-day troubles caused by observing name taboo were so potentially intense that there are even instances where, before ascending to the imperial throne, the emperor-to-be would change his name to something that was easier to observe taboo about!

So you see this is an attitude that says: if you want to honour and show respect to somebody, you don’t speak their name.

As the highest person in the land, only the emperor gets this extreme level of avoidance, but it trickles down all through society. You can’t use the personal names of people superior to you. Naming a baby after someone inherently throws the hierarchy out of whack. Now you have a young baby with the same name as a grown adult, or even a dead person, who is due honour from their rank in life. People who would not be permitted to use the inspiration’s name may now use that name because they are superior to the baby who received the name! This would mean that hierarchy was not being preserved, and oh my heaven, is there anything worse than hierarchy not being preserved? All of Chinese History: Noooooo!

Now. As an author—and I hope to God no one is using my Chinese name guide as a resource to name an actual human baby because I can’t take that kind of pressure—you can use the names of characters to inspire the names of other characters, in the following way.

Remember that I said that the key, the starting point, to naming someone in Chinese is to start from a value. Okay. So what you do, if as the author you want to draw a thematic connection between two fictional characters, is take the Inspiration character’s name, think about what the value is that caused that name to be chosen, and then go from that value to choose the New Character’s name.

If you’ll recall what I said about Gan Ning and his baby Wan, this is exactly the approach I took. Gan Ning had a placid single character name that belied his violent and outrageous personality; I chose a placid single character name for his similarly wild daughter to make them thematically similar. As an author, I named his baby after him. But within the context of the story, she was not named after him. Does the distinction make sense?

Values also run in families for obvious reasons. It’s very common to look at a family tree and see lots of names that follow a kind of theme and give you a sense that, eg, this family is rather low class and uneducated; this family is very erudite but a bit too fussy about it; this family is really big on Confucianism. So yes, as an author, looking to other characters for inspiration is not a bad idea.

Remember, a lot of times, as an author, you can and even should kick realism to the curb sometimes. If you want to make some Ominous Foreshadowing that Character A’s name is something to do with fire but! They name their child something to do with water and therefore they are destined to clash with their own offspring, gasp, you can do that kind of thing because you are the god of your universe. Relish your power.

Do you have any more questions? Feel free to send a PM or an ask. I hope this was helpful! Go forth and name your Chinese OCs with slightly more confidence!

Edit 22 April 2019: I added some more sections (fortune telling, Milk Names, and taboo on naming after people). I also need to overhaul the entirety of the previous to emphasize that even thought I thoughtlessly used “Chinese” as if it was synonymous with “Han”, there are non-Han Chinese and they can have very different naming customs. Mea culpa.

40K notes · View notes

sgmwesters · 4 years ago

Photo

╰ ❛ 💉 — › abigail spencer. cis woman. she/her. . ╯ have you met aubrey sterling yet ? this forty one year old libra has been living in the seattle area for eight years. she makes a living as a chief operating officer, which is best suited for their diplomatic, poised, impatient, and manipulative personality. you don’t own me by saygrace is one of their favorite songs, and they’re written by em, 25, gmt, she/her, no triggers

B A S I C I N F O R M A T I O N

full name: aubrey rebecca sterling.

nickname(s): aubs, but only if you’re close.

age: forty one (41).

date of birth: 10 october 1979, libra.

hometown: arlington, virginia.

current location: seattle, washington.

ethnicity: caucasian.

nationality: american.

gender: cis female.

pronouns: she/her.

orientation: whatever it is she has questionable taste that’s for certain.

religion: athiest, but don’t tell her mother.

political affiliation: democrat.

occupation: chief operating officer.

living arrangements: a very swanky penthouse apartment.

language(s) spoken: english, french, spanish.

accent: american.

P H Y S I C A L A P P E A R A N C E

face claim: abigail spencer.

hair color: brunette.

eye color: brown.

height: 5 ft 5.

weight: 117 lbs.

build: petite.

tattoos: none.

piercings: ears.

clothing style: powerful vibes.

usual expression: resting bitch face ofc.

distinguishing characteristics: none.

H E A L T H

physical ailments: none.

neurological conditions: being attracted to john davenport.

allergies: hayfever.

sleeping habits: fluctuates.

eating habits: when she has the time.

exercise habits: when she has the time.

emotional stability: gives the impression of a nine, likely a six.

sociability: truly depends on her mood.

body temperature: slightly warm.

addictions: none.

drug use: has done in the past but not for a long time, will deny it.

alcohol use: who doesn’t?

P E R S O N A L I T Y

positive traits: diplomatic, poised.

negative traits: impatient, manipulative.

fears: will argue that she has no fears.

F A V O U R I T E S

weather: dry.

colour: burgundy.

music: overly attached to 90s pop.

movies: the godfather.

sport: none.

beverage: black coffee, gin.

food: sushi - the proper stuff.

animal: has a real soft spot for cats.

H E A D C A N O N S

aubrey was born as the second of four children to fairly well off parents in arlington, virginia. her father had made his money in insurance, and her mother was a well respected professor at georgetown university.

none of the sterling kids had ever wanted for anything - a comfortable lifestyle that had given each of the children the opportunity to explore their own sports and hobbies as they saw fit.

aubrey felt most at home in the debate club. she’d find flaws in arguments without much hesitation, able to wipe the floor with any of the opponents that came her way. she led her high school debate team to victory a number of times during her time, far grateful to have found that rather than have been pushed into something far out of her comfort zone - like sports.

it was no surprise that aubrey went into pre-law when she was accepted into brown. brown wasn’t her first choice of undergrad establishments, but it was merely a stepping stone onto a wider career for her. she came into her own, found her independece, and thrived.

achieving a spectacular score in her LSATs had her heading straight for harvard law - an institute that she was proud to attend, and exactly where she met john davenport. and thus what began an increasingly complicated relationship. the competition, the tension, do i really have to spell it out for you?

at the height, the pair were both competing for the same coveted spot at a firm in new york city. i mean, you can imagine just how bad they both were. and surprisingly the firm folded - offered them both positions, when they’d only been competing for one. they’re that good.

the on-and-off, the competing, the power struggles between them continued even into the early stages of john dating nancy (men!). of course aubrey wasn’t really happy with that whole situation going on but that’s life ya know.

when john married nancy, aubrey managed to secure herself a promotion at another firm. she’d say it was just the way that timing worked out, but anyone who knew her that well knew that she’d seeked it out, deciding it was much easier if her and john weren’t under the same roof.

and it worked, for the most part. aubrey kept things professional, kept her distance. when john announced he was moving to london, there was a slight slip in the professionalism once again, and that was the last time the two had seen each other in person.

aubrey continued to thrive in her career in new york, eventually meeting the man who would go on to be her fiance. he was a doctor at lennox hill hospital, and for a while things were going really well.

eight years ago, they got the call for her fiance to take up a head of department position at seattle presbyterian, and before she could really have a chance to consider her options, they were packed up and ready to go. aubrey will cite this as her biggest regret to date, having not wanted to move at all.

despite this, they managed to settle themselves in a nice home, and aubrey was proposed to three years after being in seattle. aubrey had settled into a position at a local law firm, and even though it wasn’t quite the life she was used to, she was happy. for the most part.

four years of engagement later, and aubrey was starting to get antsy. she felt like something was wrong, like her fiance wasn’t as fully committed to the relationship as he used to be, as she would have hoped he would be if they were meant to be getting married. she started investigating, and didn’t like what she’d found.

as it turned out, the head of department position hadn’t been the only reason for moving to seattle. her now-fiance had found out that he had a son, and hadn’t thought to include aubrey on this. for years he’d been spending time with this other family, and aubrey felt completely betrayed.

so, aubrey began some secrets of her own. she found herself a penthouse apartment, and over the course of a few months she started moving her belongings there when she could. not a lot, just some clothes here and there, some of her keepsakes. not enough for him to notice that anything was wrong.

she also secured herself a job as chief operating officer at another firm, removing herself from anything about her that her fiance knew about. and that was it - one night, two weeks ago, aubrey simply did not go to the home that they had shared. she’d left a letter, explaining that she knew about everything and that she wasn’t going to be putting up with it any more.

aubrey is still currently wearing her engagement ring - she’s worn it for five years, taking it off feels strange. she’ll replace it with someone else eventually, the ring holding no meaning for her any more, but she just feels lost without it. she’s just started her new job too, look out john davenport. she’s back.

W A N T E D C O N N E C T I O N S / P L O T S

the ex fiance can you IMAGINE the WWE smackdown that would occur i’m living for it.

let’s give her a medical sibling??????

bffs pls and thanks

#━━ ✦ 𝐀𝐔𝐁𝐑𝐄𝐘 𝐒𝐓𝐄𝐑𝐋𝐈𝐍𝐆 ❮ biography ❯#newintros

2 notes · View notes

tlbodine · 5 years ago

Note

Hi! Im writing a story that has to mix fantasy and reality, Ive always been interested in folklore, cultures, and beliefs of other people. All of these things are involved in my story, I wanted to add in a character that is Native American (Her name is Rosalie), I'm on the fence because I don't want to touch something that I shouldn't. How should I go about this? Should I change her ethnicity, Should I in someway make it my own? Or how should I write it or should I write about something else.

This is tricky. And the answer is going to be really long. Sorry.

I want to make it clear that I am not myself in any way a representative of Native people or claiming to be one. I’m just a white lady who grew up near the reservation and have had maybe more interactions with Native American cultures than a lot of people. But at the end of the day, I’d defer judgment to people closer to the people being specifically affected.

So, with that disclaimer out of the way. Here’s the thing. I’m not here to tell anybody what they should or should not write about. But I can hopefully give you some stuff to think about that will help you decide.

Thing One: “Native American” is not a monoculture. There are 574 tribes federally recognized by the U.S. government. They are all culturally distinct. They each have their own histories, mythology, religion, food, lifestyle, and so forth. So before you go creating any Native OC, you’re gonna want to narrow that down to a tribal affiliation.

You can do this one of two ways. You can choose a geographic location and then look for a tribe who lives in that area, or you can choose a tribe and then root them in that geographic location. Of course, a Lakota Sioux could live in New York, but she wouldn’t be from New York, you feel me?

Writing about “Native Americans” without understanding their tribal affiliation and history is like writing about “Europeans” as if Italians and Russians and Greeks and Germans were all the same.

Thing Two: If you’re going to be talking about mythology/folklore, you need to do your research while also recognizing that a lot of the most accurate and authentic information is not going to be accessible to you.

A lot of Native cultures are “closed” cultures in the sense that they’re not going to teach sacred knowledge and rituals to outsiders. They’re just not. It’s none of your business. They’re not hiding this information from you because they want to be greedy, they’re hiding it because until 1978 it was illegal for them to practice their religion in public in a lot of the country. A lot of things from Native cultures have been erased forever or diluted by outside influences.

So this means that if you’re writing a character whose life includes or is influenced by traditional culture, there are some things you won’t be able to portray accurately. And I personally think it would be disrespectful to just make something up, especially if you don’t make it extremely clear that you’re making it up.

For an example of how this could work: The film Dance Me Outside is a really great mystery-thriller set on a reservation, and I heartily recommend it. But there’s one scene where one of the characters has married a white guy. She brings him home to her family and, for plot reasons, needs him to be out of her hair for a bit. So she sends him out with some of her male relatives to keep him occupied. They decide it would be hilarious to do a “naming ceremony” to give him an “Indian Name.” It’s very clear in the narrative that they’re making this up as they go along -- they are creating what they think he thinks a naming ceremony would look like, and he’s gullible enough to go along with it because he’s eager to please (and at this point very drunk). The scene is very funny and advances the plot and develops some characterization without ever actually revealing any secret/sacred knowledge.

But in general? If something is sacred to a tribe? You don’t get to fuck around with it. You don’t get to put your own fresh spin on it or just make up stuff that “sounds” authentic. Because...

Thing Three: You will encounter a TON of fake or inaccurate information out there. Just, a ton. Because here’s the thing. White folks didn’t just commit genocide against Native people. It wasn’t enough to destroy their people and their culture. White folks have a really long history with appropriating their culture.

So the situation is that you get a group of people whose ancestors were actively hunted like animals (there were bounties for scalps!), sent to forced re-education camps where they were frequently abused and scrubbed of their culture and language, and who were not allowed to practice their religion under threat of law. And at the same time, aspects of those religions and cultures -- that the people who made them cannot practice! -- are taken and absorbed into pop culture.

Yeah. It’s shitty.

So when you’re researching, you need to be absolutely certain that your sources are coming from actual Native Americans from the tribe you want to write about and not from white folks who think some aspect of their culture is neat. Because, personally, I feel like cultural appropriation -- in the context of Native Americans -- is continuing to perpetuate genocide, and that feels icky.

Thing Four: Modern Natives =/= Historical Natives.

There is this....weird, colonialist tendency to imagine Native Americans as...living fossils, or quaint backwards people who live in old-fashioned ways, or as a thing that used to exist but not anymore. I get the impression talking to a lot of people that they think Native Americans stopped existing in the Wild West days. Like “Indian” is a category in their head alongside “Cowboy” and “Samurai” and “Pirate” or whatever.

But that’s not, like....the case. Modern Native American people exist, and they have varied and complex relationships with their culture and history just like everybody else. Some people live on reservations and practice traditional religious and cultural practices. Some people live in small towns or cities and practice a mixture of modern and more traditional lifestyles. A lot of them are Christian. Some blend cultural aspects of their tribe with Christian aspects of religion. And so on and so forth. It will 100% depend on the individual!

There are also aspects of cultures that get blended across tribal affiliations! This is especially true among the sort of “powwow culture” groups who dance competitively or trade crafts at powwows and fairs.

Anyway the whole thing is VERY COMPLICATED and honestly not something you’re going to learn from reading a book. It’s the kind of nuance that’s only going to make sense to you if you’re hanging out with Native people and understand their individual lives.

Thing Five: There are a ton of harmful stereotypes and things you maybe don’t even think about or realize are stereotypes because there is so much misinformation out there. I feel like almost every representation of Native Americans in media is bad because most of the stories are written by folks who just don’t know what it’s like to be Native, and they’re writing for a White audience.

PHEW. Okay. That was a lot. If you’re still reading, THANK YOU.

So what’s my answer to your question?

I think it really depends. Why do YOU want to write a Native OC? Are you willing to put in some time and effort to research them? What kind of story are they going to feature in? I think by and large, people outside of a culture shouldn’t try to write stories about being that culture. As in, like, I don’t think a white person has any business writing a story to “illuminate the struggles” of Native people or anything like that.

But if you want one of the characters in your horror novel to be Native because the story takes place in an area with a lot of Native people, sure. That makes sense. And if that person’s frame of reference is flavored by their culture, sure, go for it.

But I certainly would not recommend writing a story that, for example, re-casts a sacred/mythological Native American figure as a monster (cough, Wendigo, cough), or one that creatively reimagines the mythology unless it is exceptionally clear that the mythology is being reimagined and is not meant to be accurate at all (because otherwise it runs the risk of further polluting an already almost-extinct culture).

So...that’s my opinion. I hope this was helpful!

17 notes · View notes

alatismeni-theitsa · 5 years ago

Note

hi, i'm the "is it okay to name fictional characters after greek gods?" anon. for context, it's for a roleplay i'm doing with my friends. it takes place in another dimension, though our dimension does exist here, and all the characters have some sort of power. another character made by a friend of mine has a japanese name, so it isn't strange for characters to have names of different backgrounds from our dimension. (1/?)

the difference between me and my friend is that she made her character japanese for self rep, as she is japanese, but as far as i know i have no greek heritage or have been raised with the greek religion, thus why i want to get this right. i've been thinking of naming one of my characters electra (her power being controlling electricity) after electra, greek goddess of the storm clouds, and another character hestia (her power being fire) after hestia, greek goddess of the hearth.

Hestia would be greek (as greek as this different dimension allows) on her mom's side, given the name by her mother, while electra, who's an orphan and would have to give herself a name, would give herself a greek god's name after hestia. would this be alright? (sorry if this was annoying, by the way).

________________________________________________________________

I believe that in roleplay you can be whoever you like. Another gender, sex, ethnicity etc. (to the extent ethnicities exist in your dimension). This is the point of roleplay, to act and be creative. And not everything has to be super Politically Correct all the time. From what I understand this roleplay is private and it's not broadcasted to thousands of people who will probably shape an opinion about the ethcnities you presented (in that case I would advice caution). And certainly, you don't have to have connection to a certain culture to role-play characters from it. I don't think it will be offensive or anything.

For the same reason, you can write a Greek character person in your book or your script.

However, I need to say that you probably need to consider culture. If you considered role-playing a Hawaian person, shouldn't you consider how their culture affects them and their name? It's not that you SHOULDN'T roleplay a person from another culture, it's more that maybe you probably won't be able to portray that culture and thus your character is going to be more like your own ethnicity with a name from another culture. This is like erasing the culture from the person but keeping only the “cool“ name from that culture. It seems kinda pretentious. (I am not saying this is your intention, of course! I am sure you mean the best!)

Arguably, a person with Greek heritage won’t act very different than a person from your own culture. You can still portray a Greek without being culturally sensitive the whole time. But each person carries their culture and background, even though it’s not super obvious.

Of course, you can use the roleplaying to learn more things about Greek culture and use them in your role! You can say "huh, this word is actually Greek! I know what it means!" when someone tries to empress you with a "complicated" English word. You can start spitting on your friends for good luck and they will be like "wtf??" and you will say "it's a blessing, TAKE IT DAMMIT". Or “breaking plates means you are having fun!” or you can say "I love two things in life, loyalty and gyros". Things like that!

I believe your Greek character would strive to learn more about their own culture. From time to time I have people with Greek heritage asking me stuff about Greek culture because they want to connect with it. I imagine that an orphan, who would have no family, would cling to their culture to find a sense of belonging.

All in all I am not saying you shouldn't do it. I don't want to police you and stop you from having fun. I think you should do it! I just started this discussion because it's good to consider cultural aspects!

When it comes to the names, Electra is a given name and I think it's fine to use it in that context.

Hestia unfortunatelly is not a give name for humans in Greek culture. Hestia is still used in the language and it's solely for objects. "Hestia" is the place where students of a university stay. "Hestiatorion" is "restaurant". So a Greek wouldn't name their child Hestia. Maybe search for a different name? "Labrini" (shiny), or "Fotini" (Bright) or a name with a similar meaning? You can send me another ask or a dm if you want help finding a name!

#answered #roleplay #greek culture

10 notes · View notes

gaiahypothesims · 6 years ago

Text

50 Questions for your Sim

I was tagged by TWO people but I can’t scroll back far enough to see who the second was!!! I’m so sorry! @ultroslovesyou Thanks for the tag that I CAN find.

Ash would LOVE to answer these himself. And its LONG because .... Ashley. (Its like... so long I’m embarrassed)

01. How old is your sim? Isn’t age subjective? I’m as wise as an elder, but youthful in looks as a young man in his absolute prime.

02. When is your sim’s birthday? On the most perfect day. My Mother said the sun was shining and all the birds were singing. My newborn cries were met with tears of joy and happiness.

03. What is your sim’s zodiac sign? This is a complicated question, as the Zodiac horoscopes you see popularly don’t take into account so many details. For one-... No I can’t answer this without explaining everything-

04. What is your sim’s ethnicity? I’m a child of the world. Fine, my parents are originally from India. Though I’ll have you know this kind of question is very narrow-minded.

05. Does your sim have any nicknames? Ash. That’s it. NO you may not ask my brother if I have any others.... or Evelyn... or Rosie. Just take my word for it.

06. Do they have a job? Travel Writer and a professional student in the teachings of the world. In fact, I do believe that being an avid learner in all things-

07. Where does your sim live? Its rude to interrupt someone every time they try to answer a question. AS I was saying, being an avid learner has taught me that there is no such thing as having a ‘job’. We have a responsibility to cultivate our PASSIONS. In that way you will never once be trapped by a ‘job’ or by one ‘place’, a box really, to call a home.

08. Who does your sim live with? I’ve lived with so many different, unique, and beautiful individuals. I’ve been really helping my amazing friend Evelyn out. She’s very dependent on my mental fortitude. I don’t find it trying at all, though there are some days I do feel an imbalance in my Chi due to her constant bitching about my hair shedding. I tell her that just because she can SEE my hair better because its black doesn’t mean that she isn’t shedding as well. The OTHER day I found a long, thin, sad, brown hair in my soup, and I know for a fact that I have only the most luxurious raven black hair.

09. What environment did your sim grow up in? (strict, loving, cold etc.) I have the most loving of parents. My brother on the other hand... well let’s just say he’s embraced Capitalistic conspiracy.

10. What are your sim’s favourite food? I’ve found that the most healing and ethereal foods are what my body craves. Something like Lotus blossom water, I feel could sustain me for years. .. hmm?.. Oh no, I’d never TRY to live off of it. It is just water...

11. What is your sim’s favourite drink? I adore a good Oolong tea, I have an interesting story about how I was introduced to this-

12. If they have one what is your sim’s favourite color? Well that was rude, I wanted to explain the Oolong. Very well... moving on. How can one choose a favourite colour? The spectrum is SO vast. Can you believe that human eye can perceive approximately 10,000,000 colours? How can I choose a favourite?

13. Does your sim believe in any clichés? (love at first sight) Of course! There has to be a basis of truth if so many can relate to cliches.

14. What is your sim’s sexuality? I would say that I do mostly enjoy the company of women sexually, but that’s not to say that I think men are unattractive. Sexuality isn’t a be all- end all. We are constantly learning new things about ourselves. I’ve recently discovered that I don’t mind a bit of anal play. I’ll tell you exactly how I discovered this, and it might surprise you-

15. What is your sim’s gender identity? How can you NOT want to learn more about my experience? It might change your life. I’m going to be writing about it for my next article. It has something to do with... a bath house.. and that’s ALL you’re going to get from me since you so rudely interrupted. Again.

16. Is your sim type a or type b? I don’t believe in types. Like asking me if I’m a square or a circle. I’m an entire sphere, unable to be bound to your strict typist ideals.

17. Is your sim introverted or extroverted? I would have to say that I am thoughtfully introverted.

18. What is your sim’s favourite woohoo position? Oh so NOW you want to hear about my sexual exploits? Well its too late. I’ve been through the entire Kama Sutra, and NO that is not because I have Indian heritage, and it would have shocked you.

19. Is your sim a pet person? If so what is their favourite animal? Not so much. I like Jonah’s dog actually. In fact he is likely more loyal to me now than he ever was to Jonah. An animal can sense things.

20. Does your sim have a best friend? Rosie and Evelyn.

21. What is/was your sim’s favourite school subject? I quite enjoyed creative writing, which I think is why I turned to Travel Writing. The absolute best of both worlds.

22. Is/was your sim a high, mid or low achiever in school? Every child has their own strengths and I find it unfair to measure one against the other when everyone is a unique learner.

23. Are they planning to go or have they already been to college? If so, what would be or what was their major? I did go for a few years, but I never graduated with a degree. The classes that I took were all for my own interest, not to pander to organized academia for a worthless piece of paper.

24. What are your sim’s political beliefs? (if they have them) Politics are a construct to keep the individual from reaching their full potential.

25. What is one thing your sim wants to do before they die? I’d like to share my travels with someone that I love, and that loves me back.

26. Does your sim have a favourite TV show (cable) and/or movie? Watching television stunts a persons cultural and creative growth.

27. Is your sim a Netflix viewer? If so what are their top 3 shows. No.

28. Does your sim like books? Absolutely. I try to pick up a new book at every new location that I get to. I then leave my old book. Its a wonderful way to associate a certain story with a specific location. The feel and smell and tastes seem to stick better, for me, that way.

29. Does your sim enjoy video games, if so what is their favourite one and do they play on PC or console? Well, I don’t love video games. But Evelyn owns one of those game systems, and sometimes we play together. Its purely for her therapeutic benefit that I join in.

30. What is your sim’s personal style? I wouldn’t dream of limiting myself to only one style.

31. Does your sim have a lucky charm? I make my own luck.

32. Is your sim religious? I’m an acolyte of all religions, including no religion.

33. What kind of music does your sim listen to and who is their favourite artist? There was a beggar woman in Romania that played the most beautiful violin. I gifted her talent with a hand-written poem. She didn’t seem to appreciate it, but I still remember her music.

34. Is your sim a festive person? If so what’s their favourite holiday? I love celebrating all the holidays, and festivals, as long as they aren’t attached to the shilling of Corporate greed.

35. What is your sim’s favourite type of weather? All weather is beautiful and should be appreciated.

36. Does your sim prefer to start fights or finish them? I don’t prefer either.

37. Does your sim have a dream job? I am living my dream, doing something I love strictly for the passion of doing it.

38. Does your sim have any siblings? .... ugh.. one brother. Raj.

39. Does your sim get along with their family? I love my parents very much. My mother is the most beautiful and loving woman, and my Father is generous and giving.

40. What is your sim’s favourite hobby? Nothing, I don’t believe in hobbies. I believe in passion and doing. If you’re doing it and you love it, it isn’t a ‘hobby’ its a passionate endeavor.

41. What does your sim look for in a romantic partner? I’m not very good at making things work with women. I’m not entirely sure why. It could be because I move so frequently. I have no schedule, no concept of time and plans. I suppose I’d love someone that also could be as flexible.

42. What is a secret about your sim? I have no secrets, I’m an open book. <He’s extremely vain. His nonchalance is extremely cultivated>

43. What is a wish your sim has? To share my adventures with someone that loves me.

44. What is a flaw your sim has? Is there really such a thing as flaws? Are we not like the kintsugi in Japanese pottery, “flaws” make us beautifully unique.

45. How do others generally perceive your sim? I would say that some are threatened by my complete oneness with the universe. They might see it as something else, arrogance... perhaps. Though if I could have a moment to explain it to them, they would understand and appreciate it.

46. Does your sim have a greatest achievement? Every achievement is a great one. For a person to get up in the morning, is an achievement. The will to say “yes! another.” and to make it through the day happily, unhappily, to have an adventure, to stay home and self-care, its what life is about. There is NO greatest achievement. Every action is great in itself, no matter how small.

47. If they have one, what is your sim’s greatest regret? That I tried to follow in Rajan’s footsteps for too long. Instead of embracing who I really was.

48. Does your sim have a favourite emoji? Emoji’s can’t properly convey all the feelings that I have. I feel that a wordy text, or a phone call is so much better. A long text is something the person can treasure over and over, but a phone call can contain so much more warmth and genuine conversation.

49. Does your sim use simstagram? <under his breath> Yes.

50. What is the last text your sim sent (and who did they text)? Oh do I have to share? This isn’t exactly... fine.. its to Evelyn and it says: You’re a dirty tramp. <cough> ... I’m sure she’s treasuring the words right now, yes thank you.

#the sims 3 #character bio #ashley #convergence #sims 3 #ts3 #simblr #sims story #this is an actual novel I'm sorry for that #maybe I should spend my time more wisely #but i love him so much

62 notes · View notes

ashton-slashton · 5 years ago

Note

hellraiser, the ring, the exorcist

hellraiser: do u have any tattoos/piercings? do u want any? Yes, actually! I have three stick-n-pokes, two on my left hand and one on my right inner ankle. There's a little peace symbol on my middle finger, and a fun little arrow below the last knuckle on my thumb, which is sadly fucked up because it healed bad, and a treble cleft on my ankle. They're all faded, and I'm hoping to get them touched up before I move out of state. I want to get a bunch of little cartoon bats on my wrist, and maybe some more meaningless symbols on my hands. I might want a magen david somewhere, maybe. We'll see. I have pierced ears (gauges, actually, I'm at a 0mm and intend to stay there), a ring in my left nostril that I got when I was 18. I had snake bites for a while but I took them out because they were bad for my teeth, wouldn't heal very well, and I worked at a daycare at the time. I'd like to get a septum ring, because why the hell not? Worst case scenario, I gotta take it out and I wasted $25-$30.

the ring: if u could visit/live anywhere in the world, where would u? Well, live anywhere? I'd be happy to just live comfortably in Denton, TX with my partner. Hopefully that'll happen within the year, or by early 2021. But visit? Given the financial ability, I fully intend to visit my friend @scifimemecore in Italy. I've even been trying to learn some Italian, but skimped on my lessons for too long.

the exorcist: are u religious? Ah, quid pro quo I see! Short answer, yes, I'm Jewish. The (very) long answer? I've had a complicated relationship with religion. My parents were both raised Christian, my father being Catholic and my mother being Protestant (specifically the Church Of Christ, which she would describe quite earnestly as a cult). But both would grow to have very liberal, non-conservative viewpoints. It took my mom longer to unlearn some things, and she's still unlearning things, but I digress. The area we live in is HIGHLY conservative. When I was a toddler, they tried "church shopping," i.e., going from church to church to see if they could find the right fit. All of them, every single one, was bafflingly out of touch and close-minded. They didn't feel comfortable raising me in that kind of environment. So they raised me without practicing any religion. They taught me right from wrong and to love my peers unconditionally, that being different was no reason to be cruel, that sort of thing. They raised me to be considerate of others, as any parent should.

But my peers scarcely felt the same way. Since I was 5, I had fellow classmates telling me I was a sinner and a heathen and that I'd burn in hell if I didn't go to church. The teachers let them because they believed the same. This went on for YEARS.

In 5th grade, that's when the antisemitism started. It was fleeting, and I think I hoped it wouldn't last. But I was mocked for my appearance. The most common name I was called was Pinocchio, because I was "a liar with a big nose". At 10 years old, I wanted a nose job. I look back, and I know that these children probably heard this all from their parents or the tv. Their parents probably saw MY parents and myself, with our dark hair and not-so-button-like noses and the distinct lack of Christianity and the foreign-sounding name and made an assumption.

In middle school, I claimed to be agnostic, because I didn't know how else to describe my feelings on religion. But now I realize, looking back on what I said (a little too openly) about my beliefs, it was pretty intrinsically Jewish. In 8th grade and on until I graduated, that's when things kinda escalated. Certain classmates would call me a Jew, and usually that was considered bad enough, but a couple times they went a step further and called me a k*ke. I didn't even know what that one meant at the time. Swastikas were carved/drawn on or in plain sight of my desks. Classmates would tell holocaust jokes in clear earshot of me to try and gauge my reaction.

So, after all of that, I realized that even though I was raised entirely without religion, I still had a lot of the experiences of Jewish youth in terms of prejudice, but lacked all the positives. I lacked a community I could turn to for sympathy and understanding, I lacked the education to know WHY I was being treated this way, and I lacked guidance. So for a really long time, for the better portion of my life, I felt truly alone.

This isn't supposed to be a sob story. It happened, it sucked, and it's stuck with me. I'd be lying if I said it didn't still affect me, but things are better now, and I've met better people. Am I bitter? Of course, who wouldn't be? But it's just... something that shaped me. It sucked, but those experiences are a part of me, and I can't shake that.

Two years ago, my dad's sister finally found the origins of our name. It's Polish. Old Polish. It's the name of a village that doesn't even exist anymore, and my great great great (or however many greats are in there) grandfather probably just told the immigration department that in lieu of a "real" surname, so here the fuck we are. And lemme tell ya, it is a VERY uncommon name. The only people I've been able to find with the same name are uh. All in the middle east. That should be a pretty big hint. And my dad's Mom's maiden name? Platt.

So I kinda found out all at once that there's a HIGH chance that I'm ethnically Jewish. Germanic Polish, and Jewish. I had already considered converting, but this cemented it. There was an entire culture that I didn't even know I had, that I missed out on entirely, but was still ridiculed for nonetheless. And I don't want to feel that emptiness anymore, I don't want to stay bitter about what I lost. I want to learn more and do more and be a part of something, and I really think that this is how I can do it.

So, TLDR: Judaism is the religion I feel most at home in, and so far, I've been more welcomed there than in any other religion.

⚰️ horror movie ask game 🔪

#asks #louisewilder #i didn't intend for this to be so long but i figured i'd be upfront and lay all my cards out on the table right off #antisemetism tw #jewish stuff

1 note · View note

amargarone772 · 6 years ago

Text

Expert Interview: Discussing France’s Political History and Current Events with Professor Elizabeth Carter

https://www.unh.edu/unhtoday/expert/carter-elizabeth

The following interview is an interview conducted with Professor Elizabeth Carter, Assistant Professor of Political Science at the University of New Hampshire. Carter has been a member of the UNH faculty since 2015, and has received her PhD in political science at the University of California Berkeley as well as her M.P.A from the University of Washington. Her postdoctoral research was done at the Max Planck Institute of the Study of Societies in Cologne, Germany. Carter’s areas of focus are European politics, political economy, and food politics.

Carter provides insight on France’s history and the Front National Party. She also examines the current refugee crisis, the political system under President Macron, and the yellow vest movement that has been taking over France since last November. Carter discusses the media’s role in Macron’s presidential election, and compares the current day issues of France to those of other European nations and the United States. Carter’s educational background and personal affiliation with France provide her with the ideal qualities to discuss these critical topics.

We also discussed the Front National Party under Jean-Marie Le Pen, whose goal was to protect French identity and defend the fundamental values of our civilization (Betz, 2003, p. 196). In the past, immigrants coming to France were able to assimilate easier because they mainly came from other European nations (Betz, 2003, p. 197). However, most new immigrants came from African, Middle East, and Asians regions and had cultural backgrounds that the Front National claimed would threaten the French culture (Betz, 2003, p. 197).

Interviewer: Ali Margarone, senior Communication student at the University of New Hampshire

Interviewee: Professor Elizabeth Carter, Assistant Professor of Political Science at the University of New Hampshire

Interview Transcript:

Refugee Crisis

A: What are your opinions on the current refugee crisis?

PC: When I think about the refugee crisis, I first think about Germany and Chancellor Merkel’s response. There is the Syrian refugee crisis that relate to the German history. Angela Merkel is the Chancellor and the leader of the center-right party, the Christian Democrats. She took a pretty contested stance in her party, which was to welcome the refugees with quite open arms. The rhetoric that was said, not by Merkel directly, was other people took in German refugees at our darkest hour, now we can do this and step in to help others. At that time, she was in a Grand Coalition with the Socialist government that would be to the little bit to the left, so she may have been a bit more influenced in some ways by that party. Overall, Germany had a really exceptional stance on integrating migrants. So I think the question is, what is the effect of that in France?

A: Do you mean how is France being affected by what Germany is doing?

PC: Yes. Because it’s not like France is a peaceful place that had good immigrant relations and then there was the refugee crisis in about 2013.

A: In regards to the refugee crisis, do you know exactly what French President Macron’s stances are?

PC: I almost want to say centrist, because I was following the situation that was going on in Calais with the camps being taken apart. He tends to be an ally with Chancellor Merkel, and I think he wants to be the pragmatic centrist. But he also wants people in France to be happy. France has a ton of immigrants, but the thing you hear people talking about in Germany is the Syrians; in France, it’s not. There definitely have been Syrian refugees in France, but again I think its like pressing on the already sensitive spot of the many Muslim immigrants. There’s still an influx of refugees from Tanzania, Algeria, and Sub-Saharan French former colonies. You walk around Paris, and there’s boulevards full of tents, at least 10 sleeping bags on one block. I’ve been going to France for 20 years, and this is something I’ve never seen before. They do often seem to be refugees who have come to France because they think they can get a better life. France has a really strong identity that’s tied to being French and having French values, language, being Catholic but secular. They aren’t open to people, especially Muslim immigrants, who they feel won’t take on the French culture.

A: Some research I’ve done showed that it’s the way you look that greatly affects the way in which you are treated. The French tend to be more accepting of other European refugees rather than those from Africa or the Middle East. Do you think this is true?

PC: I noticed that much more in Germany, who only considered Germans to be those with German blood. France’s take on nationality is that you are French if you are born on French soil; anyone can be French, as its about liberty, equality, and brotherhood. You have to speak French and adopt the liberal values of the French Revolution and the French state today. France’s issue with the hijab was interpreted as Muslim women rejecting French culture. However, when I taught in public school in France, I noticed my students would wear bandanas on their heads to get around the law that banned the hijabs. It was their way of protesting they would not allow France to push this law on them. Even though France has this identity of liberty and equality, they fall short of their ideals. In France, there is no hyphenated identity. If someone referred to themselves as Algerian-French, it’d be considered a threat because it weakens your French-ness. As a result, there are no statistics collected on what the ethnic backgrounds of people in France are because they don’t ask.

When it comes to being hired in France, you put your photo on your application. If your name is Mohamed, you will not be hired. While not everyone discriminates and is racist, I have a friend in France who does sales that claims he won’t hire anyone with the name Mohamed because he knows other people are racist and would no longer buy from his company if they saw this. While the issue of discrimination is so prominent, they can’t even diagnose the issue because they have no idea how many people of color or of a certain religion there are in a certain school because they don’t have that data.

History of the Front National Party

A: How do you think France’s history has led up to what is going on now?

PC: That’s everything. So if we want to talk about it, we have to talk about Jean-Marie Le Pen and the Front National Party. The party has now changed names, but we will call it the Front National because that is what the party had been called for decades. Understanding Jean-Marie Le Pen involves understanding his really complicated and long history.

A: This is because he was very racist and said a lot of things about the Holocaust that he claimed didn’t exist and didn’t allow France to take responsibility for it or didn’t think that they should.

PC: Yes, they both he and his daughter Marine Le Pen said some crazy things, and she would argue that her father is crazier. She’s seen as relatively more moderate, but the important thing to keep in mind about Jean-Marie Le Pen is where he came from ideologically, which was a movement called the Poujadist movement that came out of the Algerian War. Algeria is a majority Muslim country in Northern Africa which used to be a part of France. The French considered it to be a French state. The Algerians decided in the 1950s to fight back during Charles de Gaulle’s presidency in France. There was a lot of guerilla tactics and some would even consider terrorist actions because they had limited resources for other ways of fighting. When the Algerians won the war, Jean-Marie Le Pen and other Poujadist members saw Charles de Gaulle as a traitor, that he had stabbed France in the back, that he had let go a part of France. This is when the Front National started. It was more nationalistic than the de Gaulle Party, which was a center-right party. In the beginning, it was pro-European Union, but of course, that changed. It was interesting because the Front National wanted and considered Algeria to be a part of France that was lost, but at the same time, they were very anti-Muslim. This anti-Muslim component and this tension around French relations with the Muslim and Arab world, especially with the Algerians, have always been the cornerstone of the Front National.

If you go to France today and ask people about what’s going on with the far-right movements, you will meet people who are critical of them, especially those in academia. But I’ve been shocked by how many people identify as Fascist, who are blatantly anti-Muslim and even those trying to be liberal will say the problem is we have too many immigrants here. It’s Algerian immigrants and those from other former French colonies in Sub-Saharan and Northern Africa. There is also a huge amount of anti-Semitism in France which continues to be a massive issue that’s been reported on more recently in the press. So this is why the Front National has always been nationalist and anti-immigrant that’s been seen well before the recent crisis. I think at first Jean-Marie Le Pen was seen as kind of a crazy, out-there guy, and then people were really shocked when he made it to the second round of presidential vote in 2002. Jean-Marie Le Pen did make it to the second round in 2002 but then lost to Jacques Chirac by 85% to 15.

A: So is this when the Front National gained my attention worldwide?

PC: Yes. While people in France always knew about this movement, his advancement to the second round really put the Front National on the map globally. Although his daughter Marine has been able to situate herself definitely as a populist, but maybe less provocatively and offensive.

A: Well wasn’t that one of her goals?

PC: Yes, and she’s distanced herself. She kicked her father out of the party.

The Yellow Vest Movement

A: What are your thoughts on the yellow vest movement?

PC: I actually was in France when the gilets Jaunes movement started.

A: Oh wow, so did you see it all happen?

PC: No, the day there were the big riots I went to the London for a day and I came back and met my friend at the train station and he told me you know parts of the city are burning and I thought it was a joke.

A: Yeah, I had friends who were there for spring break and they saw all the riots going on too so it’s definitely still prominent.

PC: The thing with France is whenever the government tries to make a change there’s a mass protest. And this can even be when it comes to trying to change the benefits for the railway workers. The railways will stop. Or whoever the threatened group is will go on strike and then the government will be forced to rescind what they are trying to do. France has a really unique historical structure. France is a historically centralized country, kind of uniquely centralized. There is a lot of power at the presidency and a lot of power in Paris, and people will say the consequence of that is you don’t have very strong intermediary organizations. So in a country like Germany, if you’re trying to make reform, intermediary organizations like employer groups and unions will get together to try and work these out in cooperation with the state. In France, they don’t have those groups. They have weak unions and a strong state, and you would think that the French Unions are strong because they could have so much protest, but actually when unions are weak its because they can’t actually have a voice at the table, and when they don’t get their voice at the table their only weapon is to strike. Striking is a last resort.

The gilets jaunes started because of the proposed gas tax and there is a French culture of striking as a way to try to pressure the government. And it seems they were quite successful; Macron said okay I’m going to postpone this tax, but it was kind of like a snowball got pushed down the hill and people protesting on this movement often go because the scope of this protest has increased because people have been upset about other things for some time.

A: Do you feel the movement is different from how it started?

PC: It is, as it has become much more extreme. In a way, it’s a parallel to Brexit too, which is another thing that started off one way and then morphed into a different kind of movement with different people and different interests in it. I think a lot of people are protesting economic inequality and security more broadly. In France, they usually have really protected workers and strong benefits. And how they have tried to adapt to a changing economy is basically by having more precarious or temporary employment. So a lot of young people today are temps, along with huge levels of unemployment. They no longer have things to count on that older generations once had.

People are sick of this, and who are they blaming? They’re blaming their government, they’re blaming the European Union, they’re blaming globalization. Why are they blaming the European Union? Because European leaders have had a habit of everything time there’s an unpopular change they need to make, they blame it on the EU. There’s been a lot of “I don’t want to do this, but we need to do this for Europe.” And then the net consequence of this is to build up resentment towards the European project. That’s why the Front National that used to be pro-Europe, now take Europe as a scapegoat. They claim that instead of increasing French independence and sovereignty that it’s a threat to it.

MEDIA

A: What’s your opinion on the role of the media in France, in particular to the most recent presidential election?

PC: As far as the role of media in presidential elections, I think one think worth mentioning is Macron created his own party ‘En Marche!’. He had very little political background. How the French elections are structured in time has changed now so that parliament and the president are just a few weeks apart. It used to be staggered by years, and so it would be kind of like what we have in the U.S., it would always be a president that would be of one party, and then the parliament would be of the other because it would be a protest vote and they never get anything done. So, they’ve coordinated these. The president is election first, so Macron was elected with this new party, and then had like six weeks to get together this ticket of new potential parliamentarians and he was very successful with that and they were able to get a number of seats.

A: So do you feel that the media helped him?

PC: I don’t know the details of that but what we can say is that the media is different and nothing has ever happened before like with what happened with Macron in France. So, is that a correlation or a causation? I’m not going to go there and make that judgment, but someone could make a case that it is more than just correlation.

He has positioned himself as a new type of president, but the ways of protest aren’t different. They haven’t worn yellow vests before, but they taking the streets and they’re looting and rioting and they’re doing things that they’ve done quite regularly since the French revolution. But you have a new type of president and an old type of political movement, and they don’t seem to be too persuaded by the actions he’s taking. He’s spent over a hundred hours talking to people, and it sounds to me he is trying to come up with innovative solutions. The thing happening in France is that in every election, people are voting for someone very different. Like okay, we’ll vote for a socialist, we’ll vote for the center-right guy, we’ll vote for the new party. They’re trying to vote for anyone who they think can break their stalemate because they have some kind of institutionalized sick stalemate. And when it comes to kind of their economic sclerosis – that’s a word that’s used to call European political economy in general when there wasn’t any, it was called a Eurosclerosis, which would be a sclerotic economies of Europe after the 1970s – when there was no growth. So I think people are seeing that France has suffered from no growth and keep electing a different type of president thinking he would be able to fix it, but he isn’t able to fix it. They reject the president, then try something else. I think what nobody knows is that when you have institutionalized problems, you can’t just change one office and think everything was going to reform. Most French presidents, with the exception of Hollande, have been trying to move France closer to the market. And the French are trying to, they want to keep what’s considered a uniquely French model in a globalized economy, which is Anglo-Saxon. And the question is can they do it, and Macron thinks that they need to move towards the Anglo-Saxon variant, which means more ‘précarité,’ more precariousness, more people being fired, etc.

Comparing the U.S. and Trump to France

A: Do you think the discrimination and racism Trump tries to ignite within the United States compares at all to what is going on in France?

PC: What’s going on in France right now is different from Trump. It was actually really weird for me to hear Trump use all this anti-immigrant rhetoric because almost everyone here is an immigrant unless you’re Native American. Most of his wives were immigrants, and we don’t have an immigration influx. What Trump is doing is borrowing rhetoric from Europe; Trump tried something and it worked. I actually spoke with someone who was a former member of the Trump administration who claimed Trump isn’t even anti-immigrant. Steven Miller, far-right senior advisor for policy of Trump, is anti-immigrant and has a rhetoric that worked. Trump saw how effective Miller was with his demographic. Trump doesn’t really care about immigration, but he realizes that it is helping him with his base. What he is doing is very similar to what is being done in Europe, the only difference is we don’t have same issues as them. It isn’t people in San Diego on the border supporting Trump, its those in the heartland who are losing their jobs and looking for someone to blame.

Citations:

“Xenophobia, Identity Politics and Exclusionary Populism in Western Europe.” Socialist Register 2003: Fighting Identities: Race, Religion and Ethno-Nationalism, by Hertz-Georg Betz, Merlin Press, 2003.

https://www.unh.edu/unhtoday/expert/carter-elizabeth

2 notes · View notes

brainstatic · 7 years ago

Link

OK, this genre of pearl-clutching about college kids not being racist enough is overdone enough as it is, but this article by noted blowhard Jonathan Haidt is too much. I have to rant about this piece of shit.

What is happening to our country, and our universities? It sometimes seems that everything is coming apart.

This is a complaint found in every generation in every civilization on the planet. We have written records of ancient Greeks and Romans making this exact same whine.

Anyway, then there’s a brief summary of cosmology 101 because we’re in for the biggest historical stretch ever.

I’d like you to consider an idea that I’ll call “the fine-tuned liberal democracy.” It begins by looking backward a few million generations and tracing our ancestry, from tree-dwelling apes to land-dwelling apes, to upright-walking apes, whose hands were freed up for tool use, to larger-brained hominids who made weapons as well as tools, and then finally to homo sapiens, who painted cave walls and painted their faces and danced around campfires and worshipped gods and murdered each other in large numbers.

But enough about the 2016 Republican National Convention.

Here is the fine-tuned liberal democracy hypothesis: as tribal primates, human beings are unsuited for life in large, diverse secular democracies, unless you get certain settings finely adjusted to make possible the development of stable political life. This seems to be what the Founding Fathers believed.

I’m not sure the slave-owners were as committed to diverse and secular democracy as you think.

Thankfully, our Founders were good psychologists. They knew that we are not angels; they knew that we are tribal creatures.

Yet they completely failed to anticipate hyper-partisanship, an oversight that will be remembered as the one that caused America’s downfall.

So what did the Founders do? They built in safeguards against runaway factionalism, such as the division of powers among the three branches, and an elaborate series of checks and balances.

No, they were not concerned with factionalism, they were afraid of three things: tyrants, unqualified demagogues, and leaders beholden to foreign powers. Bang up jobs guys.

What would Jefferson say if he were to take a tour of America’s most prestigious universities in 2017?

Thomas Jefferson owned people and didn’t know what bacteria is, who gives a shit.

Why do we hate and fear each other so much more than we used to as recently as the early 1990s? The political scientist Sam Abrams and I wrote an essay in 2015, listing ten causes. I won’t describe them all, but I’ll give you a unifying idea, another metaphor from physics: keep your eye on the balance between centrifugal and centripetal forces. Imagine three kids making a human chain with their arms, and one kid has his free hand wrapped around a pole. The kids start running around in a circle, around the pole, faster and faster. The centrifugal force increases. That’s the force pulling outward as the human centrifuge speeds up. But at the same time, the kids strengthen their grip. That’s the centripetal force, pulling them inward along the chain of their arms. Eventually the centrifugal force exceeds the centripetal force and their hands slip. The chain breaks. This, I believe, is what is happening to our country. I’ll briefly mention five of the trends that Abrams and I identified, all of which can be seen as increasing centrifugal forces or weakening centripetal forces.

This is the metaphor that underpins the rest of the article. It’s admittedly interesting, too bad he applies it in the most asinine ways possible.

External enemies: Fighting and winning two world wars, followed by the Cold War, had an enormous unifying effect.

We put Japanese people in camps and spent the 50s afraid our neighbors could be communist spies, but sure, unifying, right.

The Vietnam War was different, but in general, war is the strongest known centripetal force.

War brings people together except for that one time it tore the country apart. Also all the other times.

Immigration and diversity: This one is complicated and politically fraught. Let me be clear that I think immigration and diversity are good things, overall.

I smell a “but” coming.

The economists seem to agree that immigration brings large economic benefits. The complete dominance of America in Nobel prizes, music, and the arts, and now the technology sector, would not have happened if we had not been open to immigrants.

So we agree immigrants are the only ones doing the things which future generations will remember us fondly for.

But

There it is.

as a social psychologist, I must point out that immigration and diversity have many sociological effects, some of which are negative.

This is from someone who just implied the World Wars had no meaningful negative side effects and Vietnam was just a big oopsie.

The political scientist Robert Putnam found this in a paper titled “E Pluribus Unum,” in which he followed his data to a conclusion he clearly did not relish: “In the short run, immigration and ethnic diversity tend to reduce social solidarity and social capital. New evidence from the US suggests that in ethnically diverse neighborhoods residents of all races tend to ‘hunker down.’ Trust (even of one’s own race) is lower, altruism and community cooperation rarer, friends fewer.”

That’s questionable, but notice how it specifies “in the short run.” What does Putnam have to say about the long run? Let’s take a quote from the abstract from that very link: “In the long run immigration and diversity are likely to have important cultural, economic, fiscal, and developmental benefits.” Weird that Haidt left that part out, he’s so committed to diversity.

I repeat that diversity has many good effects too, and I am grateful that America took in my grandparents from Russia and Poland, and my wife’s parents from Korea. But Putnam’s findings make it clear that those who want more diversity should be even more attentive to strengthening centripetal forces.

And yet you left out that Putnam agrees with you.

The final two causes I will mention are likely to arouse the most disagreement, because these are the two where I blame specific parties, specific sides. They are: the Republicans in Washington, and the Left on campus. Both have strengthened the centrifugal forces that are now tearing us apart.

Haidt sees too equivalent forces at work: the party that dominates every lever of government, makes all laws, controls the presidency and all executive departments, and the majority of state governments. On the other side, there’s a 19-year-old Oberlin student who wrote about safe spaces for the school newspaper.

The more radical Republican Party: When the Democrats ran the House of Representatives for almost all of six decades, before 1995, they did not treat the Republican minority particularly well.

Those six decades included long periods where Dixiecrats voted with Republicans more often than with their own party, giving Republicans a functional majority. There were also the so-called “Rockefeller Republicans”, socially liberal Republicans named after their de fact leader, New York governor Nelson Rockefeller. They voted with Democrats a good chunk of the time. This blended partisan makeup sort of kills his whole belief in the permanent partisanship of American politics, so I don’t expect him to mention it, if he knows about it at all. I don’t know how Democrats mistreated Republicans during this period, maybe by almost impeaching their profoundly criminal president?

The new identity politics of the Left: Jonathan Rauch offers a simple definition of identity politics: a “political mobilization organized around group characteristics such as race, gender, and sexuality, as opposed to party, ideology, or pecuniary interest.” Rauch then adds: “In America, this sort of mobilization is not new, unusual, unAmerican, illegitimate, nefarious, or particularly leftwing.” This definition makes it easy for us to identify two kinds of identity politics: the good kind is that which, in the long run, is a centripetal force. The bad kind is that which, in the long run, is a centrifugal force.

Yes, I’m sure Haidt does find it quite easy to separate the civil rights movements he likes and those he doesn’t like. I’m going to predict the ones he likes are the ones led by dead people who aren’t here to make him uncomfortable. I predict the I Have A Dream speech will make an appearance.

When slavery was written into the Constitution, it set us up for the greatest explosion of our history. It was a necessary explosion, but we didn’t manage the healing process well in the Reconstruction era. When Jim Crow was written into Southern laws, it led to another period of necessary explosions, in the 1960s.

While I would contest that racial strife happened in fits and bursts, and not in a long continuous stream, I appreciate that Haidt acknowledges the thing that torpedoes his first billion paragraphs about the Founders’ commitment to peace and justice.

Martin Luther King’s rhetoric made it clear that this was a campaign to create conditions that would allow national reconciliation. He drew on the moral resources of the American civil religion to activate our shared identity and values: “When the architects of our republic wrote the magnificent words of the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence, they were signing a promissory note.” And: “I still have a dream. It is a dream deeply rooted in the American dream. I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: ‘We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal.’

Called it.

Of course, some people saw the civil rights movement as divisive, or centrifugal.

“Some people” meaning the FBI and the guy who shot him.

But what happens when young people study intersectionality? In some majors, it’s woven into many courses. Students memorize diagrams showing matrices of privilege and oppression.

That has never happened.

Intersectionality is like NATO for social-justice activists.

I have no words.

Can you imagine a culture that is more antithetical to the mission of a university? Can you believe that many universities offer dozens of courses that promote this way of thinking? Some are even requiring that all students take such a course.

I’m only in my first year of grad school for linguistics but I can tell you that it’s literally impossible without an understanding of intersectionality.

Anyway, the rest of the article is just rephrasing the first parts, and then he plugs his website called “The Heterodox Academy” (it means “unconventional.”) Being unconventional or contrarian is like being rich: if you have to tell people you are, you’re probably not. The purported goal of this website is to challenge “conventional thinking” that became conventional supposedly without evidence. The ones listed in their FAQ are:

Humans are a blank slate, and “human nature” does not exist.

No one has believed this since the 60s, so you can triumphantly cross that one off your list.

All differences between human groups are caused by differential treatment of those groups, or by differential media portrayals of group members.

Groups? What groups? Like, theater nerds, history buffs, professional bowlers? Oh you mean races, your goal is to promote race science, got it.

Social stereotypes do not correspond to any real differences.

In case it wasn’t clear this was about racism.

In conclusion, Johnathan Haidt is racist buffoon and the only injustice at work is that he was ever given respect in the first place.

#johnathan haidt #i haidt this asshole

67 notes · View notes

longdelayspossible · 7 years ago

Text

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

Big gallery of pictures taken in Jerusalem, some months ago. The weather was a bit colder than expected. Coming from the lower parts of the country (literally, the lowest, the dead sea), it felt a bit chillier here. I was cloudy and rainy at times. Not too different from the weather in UK!

The old city feels chaotic. Crowded of people of all places and faiths, tourists and locals, people from everywhere gather here for different reasons. The biggest one is the religious for sure, but some people like me were just following a friend that wanted to come here. And I was curious about the place too. Even if you don’t feel like talking to your imaginary friends, this place is really special. There is this feeling of historic vertigo, willing to explore every corner, danger, and fascination, all at the same time. And at some point too, tiredness. It’s really easy to get lost in the labyrinthic narrow alleyways of this old place. At times the gps in your mobile doesn’t seem to work, and all you want is a pomegranate juice and rest in one of the hundreds of tiny shops where they prepare it right in front of you. Speaking of shops, it was surprising to me the amount of them. Before coming here I thought about this place to be like a preserved piece of time from millennia ago, for all the religions that find a meaning here, etc.. and yes of course, it is that, but it is also a gigantic bazaar where you can find souvenirs of all kinds, all sorts of food, barber shops, even photography studios!

But nothing really happened during the time spent there. Security more proper of an airport it seemed to me. It all felt safe enough, although a bit tense at times. That was the part that felt dangerous and paranoid to me. The situation here is known by everyone to be complicated, to say the least. In every corner you could find armed men and woman, asking for identifications, metal detector arcs to enter in some areas, and depending on your religious/ethnic background you are not allowed to enter certain parts of the city.

One day was enough, although I reckon that this place deserves more time.

Israel (3), or the old city of Jerusalem #photography #travel #israel Big gallery of pictures taken in Jerusalem, some months ago. The weather was a bit colder than expected.

#israel #jerusalem #photography #street photography #travel photography #Urban Exploration

2 notes · View notes

jennyschectersghost · 8 years ago

Text

So I'm mostly over the whole CDM mess at this point, but some of these defenses are truly incredible. I...I really should stop reading them, but I can't fully look away.

In fact, out of morbid curiosity, I checked @projectqu*er's blog to see if they'd said anything further on the matter---and they'd actually posted a statement "in solidarity with Chicago D*ke March" from an affiliated Jew who is attempting to stick up for them, you know, so the white goy running that blog can feel justified in talking over the rest of us.

First of all, it's nothing short of absurd that people are seriously giving CDM the "solidarity" they've been calling for (SOLIDARITY!), as if they are somehow being oppressed or in any way mistreated by being widely held responsible for their antisemitic actions, which they still haven't apologized for or even acknowledged.

Secondly, I'm...I'm really just fucking floored by huge swaths of this statement, wow. I mean, it pissed me off at first, but now I mostly feel sad for this person and all the antisemitism she seems to have internalized, which is pretty easy to do in that sort of environment from what I've seen (sadly). I hope someday she can truly, unequivocally *know* that it is possible to support Palestinians as an unabashedly Jewish person---without forgetting all our Jewishness entails, without rewriting our histories or glossing over so many legitimate realities of the diasporic experience. I hope she can reconnect with her own Jewishness someday. I hope she's okay.

I mean, she basically frames the whole thing as if wanting to exist as a Jew in public is seriously akin to White Fragility, as if *public existence* is actually a thing that fucking white goyim would *ever* have to worry about...ever, in any fucking universe, at least on the basis of being white goyim. Like?! When is the last time anyone was kicked out of an event because of an explicitly pro-LGBT cross, even though white Western Christianity has persecuted and oppressed countless groups of people pretty much since its inception (DEFINITELY including Jews)?

But the MAGEN DAVID is ALSO on THE ISRAELI FLAG!! Yeah, and as much as plenty of leftists (myself included) might verbally shit on the American flag or whatever, CAN YOU IMAGINE a white goy EVER actually being expelled from an event because of an American Pride flag, the likes of which can literally be seen at comparable fucking events constantly, even though this country is itself undeniably violent and imperialistic?

Anyway. She also attacks both Ellie Otra and Lauren Grauer on a personal level, effectively demonizing both of them, characterizing and dismissing both of them as Fragile Whites obviously---acting as if they were both affiliated with A Wider Bridge (and as if A Wider Bridge is something much more insidious than it really appears to be) when only Lauren Grauer is actually affiliated with AWD, and this was discovered after the fact as far as I know, and it was not brought up by her as far as I know, and it definitely had nothing to do with her flag or why she was fucking there---ignoring the Persian part of Ellie Otra's Jewish background and all the ways in which that could further complicate goyische perception of her, especially white goyische perception of her---and mysteriously making no mention whatsoever of Eleanor Shoshany-Anderson, the Iranian Jewish woman who would most certainly be considered a woman of color by anyone's standard, who also had a Jewish Pride flag with a [*gasp*] Magen David on it and was booted precisely the same way, you know, for having *the audacity* to be visibly Jewish. She is just...unnamed, forgotten. Erased. How convenient.

And like...fuck, you know? Fuck.

It's hard to know exactly what to believe at this point, since CDM's Official Story has changed several times now. But this person does also assert that Magen Davids, arguably the mostly widely recognized symbol of Judaism and Jewishness in general, were effectively banned because Palestinian marchers were triggered by seeing them on a few rainbow flags.

Um. Okay. Giving her the benefit of the doubt and assuming that isn't just a bullshit excuse, like assuming there really were Palestinians there who really were triggered by that image, triggered as in legitimately having a *trauma response*...I can think of at least a few alternative means of supporting them without infringing on anyone else's rights (you know, just off the top of my head):

-They could have explicitly reassured the triggered marchers that they were safe and supported there, reminding them of where they were.

-They could have marched alongside the triggered marchers and made space for hearing them out---directly, intentionally making themselves emotionally available to the triggered marchers if they needed to talk through any thoughts or feelings.

-They could have physically helped the triggered marchers stay away from the triggering images---marching around them, in front of them, or behind them as the case might have been, you know, whatever---just making sure the flags weren't especially visible to them or at least trying to block those triggering images from their direct view(s).

Did they even *try* taking any of these sorts of measures, by any of their own accounts? No. Of course not. And as far as I'm concerned, it is still indefensible and completely uncalled for to just...jump right to interrogating and booting people for visibly taking pride as LGBT folks within their own marginalized cultural background, ethnicity and religion, you know, to *literally expel* them for being visibly Jewish. Fuck.

I used to be pretty frequently triggered by people grinning at me the wrong way, bringing me back to a sexually traumatic incident from my adolescence, but I would never tell any of the people around me they're not allowed to smile.

Sometimes I'm triggered by the sight, smell and taste of bananas because my abusive ex forcibly shoved one in my mouth before dragging me across the kitchen floor, but I would never banish anyone for eating a banana.

Sometimes people in ED recovery are triggered by the mere sight of Very Thin or Very Fat bodies; and if you knew this was the case for someone in your space, would you *actually* tell someone else to "cover up or get out" because you knew *their physical form* could be triggering? I would sure as fuck hope not. Because that is no way to behave.

And despite the particular form of hypocrisy that I mentioned earlier, I *could* understand kicking them out if those flags had in fact been Israeli flags at an explicitly anti-Zionist event, if those flags were *actually* supposed to be making any kind of statement about Israel/Palestine or if those flags had been, hm, I don't know, anti-Palestinian in any way.

But the fact remains that they were Jewish Pride flags. They were quite obviously Jewish Pride flags. And goyim have absolutely *no right* to decide what an ancient Jewish symbol means.

That's the thing, though: any awareness of more general goyische/Jewish dynamic seems to immediately evaporate in these sorts of anti-Zionist spaces, if it was ever there at all (which ultimately helps no one). Suddenly there is no discernible memory amongst *non-Palestinian* goyim of the Crusades, the blood libel, the Inquisition, the countless murders, the multiple expulsions, the pogroms, the forced assimilation, the Venetian ghetto, the historical segregation in numerous countries, the Holocaust, the Farhud, the discriminatory laws, the ongoing hate crimes, all the current ways in which our religion most definitely isn't regarded as the default in *every country except Israel,* none of it. None of it at all.

Because having or maintaining any active awareness of that sort of stuff makes all the most accepted narratives too messy, too multi-faceted. So suddenly all Jews (or "Zionists" as thinly veiled code for "Jews," as the case *sometimes* legitimately is) are framed as privileged oppressors in every context *in the world,* and I have literally had this kind of thinking espoused to me by people whose ancestors very likely persecuted mine at some point.

But it's fine in the name of anti-Zionism, right? It's all just anti-Zionism for sure!! Because Jews have ~never~ existed before the contemporary state of Israel and still don't exist outside of it, clearly, except in Evil Zionist Cabals. In fact, I am pretty obviously typing this from the Globalist Zionist New World Order Illuminati clubhouse. Duh.

From this person's statement:

"...Zionism is a system of power and control places Jews in a position of privilege vis a vis Palestinians.

This means that when Jews enter an anti-Zionist space, we accept that we are entering it under certain conditions. As beneficiaries of the system of power and control that those spaces were set up to combat and dismantle, we may be held to a higher political standard. We may be required to affirm certain political positions in order to remain in the space. We may be asked certain questions about our politics because of our positions of privilege. ... That is our role as accomplices, and privileged people in that space. Other privileged groups of people are treated the same way in social justice spaces, and that is the norm in our corner of society."

As beneficiaries. As ACCOMPLICES. I just. Wow. WOW. Other privileged groups of people? That would all be well and good if *all Jews* were in fact "the beneficiaries of the system of power [of Zionism]," (holy fuck), but that is certainly not the case. I mean, *how* are any Jews *here* at all privileged on the basis of "Zionism's" existence, or on the basis of our Jewishness specifically? Name one way! One fucking way! Without relying on those good old antisemitic tropes!!! I bet you fucking can't?!!

Of course some of us *are* privileged on the basis of our (debatably conditional) access to *whiteness* which is important to remain cognizant of, but we're certainly not privileged in any way specifically *because* we're *Jewish*---and the access some of us do have to whiteness is really in spite of our Jewishness, not because of it.

Of course we would have privilege as Jews in Israel. Israel is the one nation-state in the world where we would be privileged specifically on the basis of Jewishness, but we are not living in Israel. This is not Israel. Regardless of how any individual American Jew may or may not feel about it, we are not living in Israel. Even in radical circles, even at an explicitly anti-Zionist American q*eer event, this is still the United States---and the actual implications of our Jewishness here in this "Christian nation" don't magically vanish when we enter an "anti-Zionist space" for one LGBT March or any other kind of event.

Pretending otherwise to suit your agenda, however well-intentioned it might be in regards to supporting Palestinian folks, is really bizarrely dishonest if not outright absurd. It is not just forcibly, violently rewriting our people's entire fucking history, it is also erasing the ongoing context of how diasporic Jews very much do still exist as a marginalized ethno-religious group in the entire rest of the world (including here, unfortunately, as we are being so blatantly reminded of now with the emboldenment of literal Nazis). And would you deny this completely? Or do you somehow truly believe that it can be ignored?

#It's 4 in the morning lol I'm gonna be so tired :/ sry 4 the length but like #fuck #antisemitism #Chicago Dyke March #CDM #fuck them #fucking fuck #personal #:/

7 notes · View notes

lokgifsandmusings · 8 years ago

Note

Love your blogs! sorry if you've answered this before, but how do you feel about nonJewish actors playing Jewish characters? Is that whitewashing?

Well a lot of jews are white, myself included (though there most certainly are jewish PoCs and frankly that deserves more attention in and of itself). So I guess it’s more like…goywashing?

But honestly, my own opinions on this aren’t exactly shvartz un vice. Also I’m just speaking for me, not *THE JEWS* because, well, no one can do that.

I don’t…really…care.

Don’t get me wrong: I do happen to think that jewish actors have the potential to bring more authenticity or, idk something, to a jewish role—to tap into this empathetic and deeply felt understanding. Sort of like how I’m a firm believer that Seychelle Gabriel’s intersectionality mattered very much in how genuine her performance as Asami felt, particularly in the scenes involving her screaming at the police.

But at the same time, shit’s complicated. For one, it is outright illegal to discriminate actors in hiring practices based on race, ethnicity, culture, religion, sexuality, and so on. Casting calls can’t ever be for someone “white” specifically, but can say “white features” for this reason. Yes, casting directors can do their homework on someone and they can’t stop someone from volunteering this info, but that whole process and the ethics are muddy too. Are casting directors going to be looking for actors with a certain kind of schnoz or a last name ending in “ein”, “berg”, and “baum”? That’s…not troubling at all. (Also, selfishly, I’d get screened out in a second.)

Secondly, I don’t give two salted figs that Courtney Cox played Monica Geller. Yeah, she looks about as jewish as an Easter bunny, but what I cared about was that her jewishness affected her scripting officially zero times. Ross was allowed to evince a certain jewishness in his mannerisms (though I’d argue they were very underplayed from what they could have been too) and had that one weird episode where he tried to teach his son about Hanukkah, but Monica just…had her Christmas tree and never once had a discussion about raising a kid with Chandler Bing and what that would mean in terms of identity. Don’t get me started on Rachel being obviously jewish, either.

I think what my point is, is that it’s the *writing* of jewish characters I care about more than anything. And I don’t think you have to be a jew to write jewish characters well; you just have to be willing to do your damned homework. Fuck, Marguerite Bennett is knocking this out of the park with Batwoman right now, and her scripting of Bombshells helped me through an identity crisis. In terms of acting/portrayal, it never once mattered to me that Grandma Minka was voiced by a goy—it mattered that she spoke Yiddish with the *right* inflection (kinda hard to describe) and was preoccupied with the spotty wine glasses when she was futzing around getting her seder ready.

I just want jewish characters to feel authentically jewish, in the same way I want queer characters to feel authentically queer. Acting and directing of course contributes to this, but it’s almost always the writing that it all comes back to.

#asks #anonymous #jewish things #I was super evasive before so #yeah #there ya go

43 notes · View notes

tanadrin · 8 years ago

Text

I have just finished reading White Mughals, William Dalrymple’s prequel-of-sorts to The Last Mughal. The main events take place about sixty years before, and concern the relationship between the British Resident at the court of Hyderabad, James Achilles Kirkpatrick, and a Muslim woman of Persian descent whom he fell in love with and married, Khair un-Nissa; the way Dalrymple talks it up in the early chapters you think this might be a historical drama with Shakespeare-level tragedy and revenge, but it’s not (though it does end sadly). Mostly, it’s an excuse for Dalrymple to talk about the politics of Hyderabad and south India, to discuss fascinating personalities like Abdul Latif Shushtari, Khair’s Persian cousin who comes to India to make his fortune (and spends the entire time complaining about Indian Muslims, Indian Hindus, the weather, Americans, the British, and the food), and, above all, the cultural moment between the East India Company establishing a solid foothold in the subcontinent and the creation of a sharp cultural line between India and Britain in which it was possible to inhabit a world that was simultaneously of Europe and of India.

There seems to be a period, of indeterminate length of time--perhaps the 1750s to the 1820s or 30s?--when it was perfectly ordinary for a British man, born in Europe or the colonies, to be able to go to India in the service of the Company to make his fortune, to marry an Indian woman (or women, especially if he converted to Islam), to adopt Indian dress and language and habits, and to have children who were as much part of the Mughal aristocratic class as they were of the British aristocratic class or immediately sub-aristocratic stratum. Certain economic incentives worked against a thorough mixing of the cultures. The British presence in India was overwhelmingly male, the women being either wives of officers or high-ranking Company officials or, occasionally, single women seeking eligible husbands (though the stuffier European sexual morality meant that they often struggled to compete with Indian women for the men’s affection). European women were not, as a rule, to be found among the fortune-seekers and adventurers who made their way to India, but there were a couple of notable exceptions, and there are even recorded cases of European women being recruited to Indian harems. Indian wives also very often did not return to Britain with their husbands, but mostly this seems to be because the sorts of European men who married Indian women ultimately preferred to live out the rest of their lives in India, their health permitting. People like David Ochterlony, the Resident at Delhi, amassed large fortunes and settled down quite happily with their families to live out their days in India; many were buried there, in tombs which merge European and Indian architectural styles.

And some officials, like Kirkpatrick, eventually became skeptical of the whole colonial project. When Richard Wellesly (brother to the more famous Arthur) became the Governor-General of India, he initiated a program of expanding the empire’s reach in India pretty much for its own sake, rather than out of any notion of commercial or enterprising spirit. The result was that Residents like Kirkpatrick were told to get the princes they advised to sign unequal treaties by any means necessary, and that vast quantities of blood and treasure were expended on unnecessary wars. Someone like Kirkpatrick, who regarded the Nizam of Hyderabad and his court with as much respect as he would any European prince, and indeed counted many of them among his friends, resisted such wasteful conquest, and saw, quite correctly, that even if Britain managed to establish hegemony over the subcontinent through such means, it would come at a terrible cost.

I like this book for two reasons. One, it offers another view of colonialism, one which is rarely discussed. First, the East India Company was, well, a company, and there were moments in its history when you could almost believe it did indeed operate in a morally neutral if mercantile fashion, not intentionally as an agent of destructive colonization. It is a reminder that history is big and complicated and never as simple as we would like to believe, and that even if broadly destructive trends do exist, there are good people on both sides of them, who deserve to be remembered. More importantly, if your view of the British in far-flung places is uniformly as grim, badly-dressed-for-the-climate, gin-and-tonic-swilling colonial overlords, this book offers a dozen named examples (and many more) of British people who showed up in India, quite liked what they saw, and discarded large chunks of their own Britishness to embrace cultures and peoples they fell in love with. Informed as he is by both English-language and Indian (Persian and Urdu and Deccani) sources, Dalrymple is the opposite of Kipling: for him, all cultures are united by their common humanity, even if they exhibit, especially in this time period, dizzying diversity. There is a fantastic episode late in the book where Kirkpatrick’s daughter, Katherine Aurora “Kitty” Kirkpatrick (born Noor un-Nissa, Sahib Begum), by now grown and educated in England, reconnects with her maternal grandmother, Sharaf un-Nissa. The two write a series of emotional letters to one another, both immensely gratified and moved to be reconnecting with beloved family after so many years and the death of Khair. Kitty Kirkpatrick writes in a familiar style--the pleasantries and emotional language and turns of phrase of an Austen character, and Sharaf writes with all the flourishes and religious allusions of an Indian Muslim noblewoman, and yet their clear and evident love for one another, and their powerful familial bond, is what shines through the letters above all. These are two women of utterly different cultural contexts and backgrounds, yet who clearly regard one another as close family, as close as family can possibly be.

This is maybe why I don’t worry much about concepts like cultural appropriation, and why I find it hard to get worked up over the idea that any kind of real harm is perpetuated by one group adopting the superficial elements of other cultural or subcultural groups. In reality, the borders we have drawn between cultures (and races, and nations, and any other kind of human tribe) are of a shockingly recent invention. It was not until the 1830s and 40s, with the arrival of Wellesley’s successors in India--bright-eyed Evangelical protestants, the first generation of Anglicans really committed to the notion that the Church of England wasn’t just a franchise of Catholicism that let the monarch run things, and reform-minded, forward thinking, science-oriented racists with shiny new ideas about the inherent qualities of different human populations, that the dividing lines between the British and the Indians were really drawn. This is when the number of marriages between British men and Indian women begins to decrease; when the British Residents at Hyderabad begin to see the Nizam as their subject, and not as their partner, when British presence in India becomes more about the Empire than about the Company. This, I suspect, is when Indianness begins to develop in opposition to Britishness, laying the groundwork for a unified idenity and a pan-Indian nationalism a hundred years later. And while I don’t want to knock that achievement--in any other part of the world, there’s no way Gujarat and Delhi and Kerala and West Bengal would be part of one country without nationalism and terrorism and ethnic tension--even on the left as we pay lip service to ideas like open borders and mundialization we take it as read that you have your culture and I have mine, and only under certain very narrow and respectful conditions are you allowed to approach mine and sample from it. If you are allowed at all.

I reject this. It is nationalism by another name; it’s certainly tribalism, and an enforced tribalization, and while yes, it’s possible to disprespect and denigrate other cultures in ways that are deeply hurtful and deeply harmful, and possible to cause offense where homage is intended, using the shrinking terror of causing such harm to throw up walls between cultures and subcultures is far more harmful than accidental offense given where none was intended. The history of a place like India--and, of course, Britain--is the history of cultural contact, of the horizontal and vertical mixing of religions and values and arts and languages. We should embrace this. When you spend time embedded in another culture, you can finally begin to understand it--somebody like Kirkpatrick would laugh themselves sick at modern stereotypes of Islam, for instance, considering that all the Muslims he knew (including himself, eventually) had more in common with the vague Deist British intelligentsia of the period, and lived in cosmopolitan surroundings where Hindus celebrated festivals at the shrines of Sufi saints--in a period when religious Christians were soon to become the threat to stability and harmony in India, not religious Muslims.

As Dalrymple says at the close of his book, East and West have mingled before; they will do so again, whether we like it or not. I hope that happens sooner rather than later, but how comfortable we find that association will depend on how strongly we insist on the barriers between our tribes and sub-tribes and classes and cultures. I would just as soon dispense with those, in favor of the things that unite us.

#william dalrymple #white mughals

9 notes · View notes

usaadmission · 5 years ago

Text

Ms. vs Ph.D

A master’s degree is the very first degree of graduate study. To apply for a master’s degree you typically should already hold an undergraduate degree (a bachelor’s degree).

A master’s level generally calls for a year and a half to 2 years of the permanent research study.

To gain a master’s level you normally require to complete from 36 to 54 term credit scores of study (or 60 to 90 quarter-credits). This equals 12 to 18 college programs. A lot of master’s levels are granted by public or state colleges.

Why gain a master’s degree?

Many works require a master’s level, and also many that do not require the degree will certainly pay even more if you have a master’s.

The length of time does it take?

Full-time: from 1.5 to 2.5 years.

Part-time: up to 5 or 6 years.

How much does it cost?

Master’s level tuition rates vary greatly, from a low of about $8,000 to a high of near $300,000 for the most costly brick-and-mortar programs. Most pupils secure lendings to finish a master’s degree. On the internet, programs have a tendency to be extra modestly priced yet still differ.

Is it worth it?

That depends on the income differential in the field as well as the cost of your education and learning. In the large majority of areas, the salary differential makes a degree cost a fantastic investment. Right here is a tool to check to see the averages in your option of the profession: Grad Sense Degree/Salary Calculator.

What sorts of master’s levels are there?

You call it. Nearly all fields contend least a sub-specialty that offers a master’s level program. Just to list a couple of locations: education and learning, health and wellness scientific researches, engineering, social solutions, maths, service, monitoring, vet scientific research, biological/chemical/physical scientific researches, religion, computer science, arts and also liberal arts. And also extra.

Exactly how do I choose the best master’s degree program?

Take into consideration expense, wage differential for the level, your time, and also your professional objectives. Make certain that your program is approved and that it covers the particular educational program that will help you attain your goals.

Why make a master’s degree?

Taking into consideration whether to go after a master’s level can be complicated. This short article will certainly provide you a suggestion of all the aspects you should think about prior to you enlist in a master’s degree program. The basic trends are that more people are obtaining master’s levels, even more, occupations are calling for a master’s, and extra programs are readily available online. Finished in regarding two year’s fulltime, or three to 5 years part-time, a master’s level does not take as much time as an undergraduate degree. The expense of a level can differ extensively, as well as depending upon the wage premium in your area for the master’s, a level can be a great financial investment in your future revenues.

Despite your selected profession, there are most likely master’s level programs to advance your occupation. Why would certainly you need one? Nowadays, it can be beneficial to have a master’s level so you can compete for tasks with greater salaries as well as even more responsibility. While some occupations make it obligatory to have a master’s level, other careers may not require it. Even if your occupation does not call for a master’s degree, there might be a wage differential for workers that would make the degree worth the time, cash and also initiative.

Patterns in Master’s Degree Education.

In case you haven’t discovered, there are even more individuals getting master’s levels nowadays. An enhancing variety of occupations now require or motivate a master’s degree in education for employees. People with a master’s degree will certainly earn more than those with much less education and learning, as well as over a variety of years of work, this wage differential will certainly build up. The typical once a week wage for those with a master’s level has to do with 20% more than for those with just a bachelor’s level. If that is not nearly enough to make you think of getting a master’s level, consider this: the average wage for those with a master’s level in 2017 was $68,090, while the 2017 median for all careers was just $37,690.

One more trend is that occupations that utilized to employ people with simply a bachelor’s level are commonly now needing those going into the profession to start with a master’s level. This is typically called “level inflation,” which though annoying, is a fact of life that most of us have to deal with now. Not just does this indicate brand-new employees require the degree, however typically, workers already in the career might require to get a master’s degree at some time just to keep their jobs. Physical therapists currently require a master’s level to get in the area, as do nurse practitioners. Librarians and also academic managers now normally need a master’s level. Statisticians as well as urban planners, dramatization and also songs teachers, doctor aides and substance abuse social workers�� all need a master’s degree for entry into the field.

Obtaining a master’s degree has numerous advantages for those searching for work. The Bureau of Labor Statistics projects that employment in work needing a master’s level will certainly boost by 17% between 2016 and also 2026, which is much faster than the ordinary boost across all careers of 7%. Add that along with the fact that people with a master’s degree in an area where it is not strictly required likewise make even more cash and also might have an upper hand on job applicants with lower certifications, and also you have some very solid disagreements for getting that level.

Mater’s programs are progressively varied, enlisting even more trainees from underrepresented racial and also ethnic backgrounds. There is additionally boosting diversity in the types of programs supplied, with the number of distinct classifications of master’s programs increasing from 289 in 1195 to 514 in 2017. The number of global students seeking an academic degree is reducing somewhat, even while a bigger percentage of programs are currently provided fully or partially online. This can make graduate degrees readily available to pupils in all geographical locations as well as take away the inconvenience of relocating to participate in an on-campus program.

Much more readily available tasks, higher revenues, easier to accessibility– what’s the rub? Researching takes some time as well as cash. When you take into consideration that getting a master’s degree can take as low as one as well as a half years, and the rise in salaries, as well as task potential customers, can last your whole occupation, it could well be worth the financial investment you make. Picking whether or not to go with a master’s, each person requires to meticulously examine their requirements, their goals, their finances, and their certain stamina and also weaknesses.

The majority of Popular Master’s Degree Majors.

When picking a master’s program, consider your expert occupation requires then target academic objectives. Master’s degrees typically concentrate on a solitary specialized area. As an example, you might gain a Master of Science in Addiction Counseling or a Master of Science in Reading and also Literacy. If you desire to concentrate your occupation in a high-demand niche area, the capability to concentrate on one specific niche makes your graduate-level a good credential.

IDEA: One of the most prominent on the internet master’s programs is the Master of Business Administration (MBA). Several supervisors today earn the MBA to qualify for competitive monitoring positions in areas as varied as modern technology administration and healthcare records management

Ph.D. Study – What is a Ph.D.?

A Ph.D. is a postgrad doctoral degree, awarded to students that finish an original thesis providing a significant brand-new contribution to understanding in their topic. Ph.D. credentials are available in all topics and also are typically the highest degree of academic degree a person can achieve.

This page explains what a PhD is, what it entails and what you require to understand if you’re considering looking for a PhD study project, or enlisting on a doctoral program.

The interpretation of a PhD.

The PhD can tackle something of a mythic condition. Are they only for brilliants? Do you need to discover something unbelievable? Does the certification make you an academic? As well as are greater research degrees just for individuals who intend to be academics?

Also the full title, ‘Doctor of Philosophy’, has a somewhat strange ring to it. Do you end up being a medical professional? Yes, however not that type of doctor. Do you have to examine Philosophy? No (not unless you wish to).

Before going any type of further, allows clarify what a PhD is as well as what specifies a doctorate.

What does ‘PhD’ represent?

PhD represents ‘Doctor of Philosophy’ which is an acronym of the Latin term, (Ph) Philosophize (d) doctor. Words ‘philosophy’ below refers to its original Greek definition: Philo (good friend or lover of) Sophia (wisdom).

The beginning of the PhD.

In spite of its name, the PhD isn’t, in fact, an Ancient Greek level. Rather it’s a much more current advancement. The PhD as we understand it was established in nineteenth-century Germany, alongside the modern research university.

Higher education had commonly focused on the proficiency of an existing body of scholarship and the highest possible scholastic ranking readily available was, appropriately enough, a Master’s degree.

As the focus moved a lot more onto the production of new expertise and concepts, the PhD level was generated to recognize those that showed the necessary skills and also know-how.

The PhD research procedure – what’s entailed?

Unlike many Masters Courses (or all undergraduate programs), a PhD is a pure research study level. However, that does not indicate you’ll just spend three years locked away in a library or lab. The contemporary PhD is varied and also differed qualification with various elements.

Whereas the third or second year of an educated level looks rather a great deal like the first (with even more components as well as coursework at a higher degree) a PhD moves with a collection of phases.

A common PhD normally includes:

– Carrying out a literature testimonial (a study of present scholarship in your area).

– Conducting initial research and accumulating your results.

– Producing a thesis that offers your final thoughts.

– Writing up your thesis and also sending it as an argumentation.

– Defending your thesis in an oral viva voce exam.

These phases vary a little between universities and topics, however, they tend to fall into the same sequence over the three years of a normal full-time PhD

Masters vs PhD Degree – Which Is Right for You?

If you’re thinking about proceeding your education after making an undergraduate degree, you might wonder what the differences are between a Masters vs PhD. As numerous factors as people need to seek a graduate degree, there are equally as many levels offered to you.

Consequently, there are lots of things to take into consideration when selecting in between a Master’s degree programs and PhD programs, including which degree is higher, which one expenses more, and the kinds of levels offered.

Which One Is Higher: A PhD or masters?

For most trainees, a bachelor’s level is the ‘initial’ degree, a Masters is the ‘second’ level, as well as a Doctorate degree, such as the Doctor of Philosophy (PhD), is an ‘incurable level’. That does not indicate it’s the very same course for everybody or for all topics.

For instance, some nursing schools use nursing bridge programs, which permit trainees to go straight from an ADN to MSN, or an entry-level MSN, which is designed for students with a non-nursing level.

Do You Have To Get A Masters Before A PHD?

There are some graduate programs that supply a formal plan of research study for completing a Masters and also PhD at the same time. Referred to as twin degrees, joint degrees, or master’s and also PhD mixed levels, graduate institutions with these practical programs are a terrific method to make both levels at the same time. Locate 11 Grad Schools that Offer Dual Masters as well as Ph.D. Levels below!

How Long Does It Take to Get a Master’s Degree?

Normally a full-time college student could acquire a Master’s level in regarding two years. Master’s levels generally need less time than doctoral degrees. In any case, making an academic degree is a substantial investment of time.

How Long Does It Take to Get a PhD?

A PhD (Doctor of Philosophy) normally requires at least 5 to 6 years in a certified graduate school. Several trainees might take seven to nine years to complete depending upon examinations, coursework, and dissertations needed.

Which One Costs More?

Because a PhD takes longer to finish, it usually costs even more money. The other side to this is that a PhD may yield a higher income upon conclusion and also is consequently worth the increased cost long-term.

Whichever academic degree you decide to go after, you’ll have expenditures, such as tuition, fees, others, as well as publications. On top of that, there is additionally a considerable loss of money if you’re not able to work or make reduced wages through assistantships or part-time employment. Student funding’s are always a choice to pursue, but they may have high interest rates that can take years to pay back.

Another thing to think about is that each school bills a different amount for graduate degrees. For that reason, be sure to think about the cost of each school prior to making a decision.

Masters vs PhD: Weighing your Options.

We understand that graduate school needs time, money, as well as dedication for a phd and also both masters. Which should you choose?

Masters levels have a tendency to be extra career-oriented while PhD’s tend to be much more concentrated on the study because they are preparing people for research-oriented jobs or in the academic community. If all you desire is a raise, a PhD is most likely not the road to select.

On the other hand, if you like finding out in and of itself, research study, as well as if you want to go after a job as a professor, then the work required for PhD may be just for you. Also, several PhD programs call for that you have made a Masters, though there are exemptions. Consequently, get in touch with the admissions demands of all colleges and also programs prior to applying.

Benefits of Earning a PhD.

PhD job needs initial research that adds brand-new information to the field of study. Among the much less concrete, though very important, factors to obtain a PhD is composed in the concept of producing expertise.

Several of the benefits of earning a PhD consist of:

– You’ll be considered as a professional in your field.

– Enhance your transferable abilities, such as crucial thinking, analytical, as well as extensive evaluation.

– Add to the study and also understanding in your field.

– Improve your analytical skills.

– You can include Dr. in your title.

Don’t fail to remember, if you can’t or don’t intend to relocate to make your graduate degree, there is always the choice of gaining your degree with distance learning. Search for recognized online graduate programs for extra on the internet masters as well as doctorate programs.

Commitment to Earning a Master’s vs. PhD.

There’s no chance around it, graduate school takes job. Lots of trainees who drifted through university are surprised to find that graduate college needs a much larger commitment in terms of job and intellectual energy.

Graduate colleges can be really competitive. In addition to a complete program ton, lots of trainees are showing or functioning, plus attempting to balance their personal as well as household duties. This competition between pupils, added obligation, and also variety of courses that call for thorough evaluation as well as analysis, leads numerous pupils to find themselves bewildered.

This holds for both masters as well as PhDs. The number of years called for to earn a PhD calls for willpower on a scale above as well as past what both undergraduates and those pursuing a master’s degree experience.

One of the vital distinctions between undergraduate as well as graduate levels, whether you seek a masters or PhD, is the capability of college student to focus on a field and subject in which they are extremely interested. Plus, while a graduate degree might boost your job, it is not viewed as obligatory as a bachelor’s degree can be. Pursuing a masters degree or a PhD can appear like your option, which inspires some students to perform much better.

Still Deciding Between a Masters or PhD?

To summarize, a PhD may deserve it if:.

– You really like your field.

– You appreciate your researches.

– You want the benefits and also eminence associated with the doctoral degree.

On the other hand, if you are merely wanting to alter areas, acquire a promo, or fidget regarding five to six, even more, years of school, then a Masters is probably a far better choice.

Nevertheless, it deserves noting that you may be able to get more financial assistance for a PhD. Considering that it takes much longer, institutions identify that those trying to get their PhD’s need even more aid than those who only desire a Master’s degree.

This includes an interesting measurement of the application process for two factors:

1. It is possibly better to put on the doctoral program because there is no charge for altering your mind as well as making a decision to entrust just a Master’s degree, as well as enhances your chances of getting financial aid.

2. PhD programs can be a lot more competitive, and putting on it, as opposed to the Master’s degree program, might reduce your chances of admission. If you are rejected entrance to the PhD program, you could ask the college to consider you for the Master’s program, if that’s enabled at that certain college.

The typical once a week wage for those with a master’s degree is concerning 20% higher than for those with just a bachelor’s degree. If that is not sufficient to make you assume concerning getting a master’s degree, consider this: the median wage for those with a master’s level in 2017 was $68,090, while 2017 mean for all professions was simply $37,690.

An additional trend is that occupations that used to employ individuals with simply a bachelor’s degree are frequently now calling for those entering the profession to start with a master’s level. Not only does this indicate brand-new employees need the degree, yet often, employees already in the occupation may require to get a master’s degree at some factor simply to maintain their jobs. Referred to as twin degrees, joint levels, or master’s and PhD consolidated degrees, grad colleges with these useful programs are an excellent means to make both degrees at the same time.

from USA Admission – Study in USA , F1 Visa, Opt https://usaadmission.com/ms-vs-ph-d/

0 notes