#(or rather someone who was more competent than me judging by their work history etc.)

[theflyingfeeling]

yes it's just me whining about the same thing for the billionth time, pls just scroll past nothing new to see here 👋

[bigskydreaming]

what are your favorite and least favorite tropes in fanfiction regarding dick grayson?

Most of these I feel are probably a given with me given that I am apparently physically incapable of being subtle and am donating my body to science upon my demise so that this phenomenon may be studied. For Science.

(But also like, the funny thing about me is as much as I rant about a few specific topics its only so frequent because there’s actually only a few specific things I gripe about its just that they’re eeeeeeeeeeverywhere.)

Thus, in no particular order, my least favorite Dick Grayson tropes in fanon and in canon because I can’t read apparently OR AT LEAST I CHOOSE NOT TO FOR THE PURPOSES OF THIS EXERCISE, JEEZ, LEAVE ME ALONE....

1) Police officer Dick Grayson

2) Dick hated Jason pre-death and/or judges and is incapable of understanding or empathizing with Jason post-his return

3) Police officer Dick Grayson

4) Dick’s loved ones and friends all making jokes and insults out of the nickname he keeps in memory of his parents and Dick being all like lol this is fine, this isn’t debilitating to my self-esteem at all hahaha oh man that was a good one, I AM a Dickface, you nailed it!

5) Police officer Dick Grayson

6) Dick’s loved ones and friends all punching Dick every time he puts a foot out of place and then everyone both in-universe and in-comments being like NO PROBLEMS DETECTED, and also WOW, CHILL OUT DG, TEMPER MUCH?

7) Police officer Dick Grayson

8) Dick fired Tim and callously kicked him out of his home and the city UMM METHINKS THE FUCK NOT

9) Police officer Dick Grayson

10) Only addressing conflicts between Bruce and Dick when using the framing device “when you think about it though isn’t it still like at least half Dick’s fault that Bruce fired him and kicked him out of his home and hit him and guilt-tripped him into doing what he wanted.”

11) Bonus round - sub Dick Grayson. Like, I barely ever read smut in this fandom because I’m like ‘mmm, no thx and also hard pass’ to rape and incest as fetish or porn, and its like....hard enough to find any mature content with Dick that doesn’t overlap with at least one of those so I just kinda stopped looking ages ago, but even just when glancing my eyes past tags while browsing, I just DON’T GET THIS. I tend to be a variety is the spice of life kinda guy and thus usually can make a case for any character going any which way in any number of things, but this is the one character where I’m like, I do not see any angle in which he has a submissive bone in his body. Yeah he has control freak tendencies and there’s that trope about people who spend most of their time in charge wanting to give up control and let go at times, buuuuuut that only actually works with people who don’t fully WANT to be in charge or control to begin with, not people like Dick whose control freak tendencies IMO are directly born of how rarely he gets to be in control of even his own personal life in the first place. Just doesn’t compute for me.

And in no particular order, top ten most favorite Dick Grayson takes in canon and fanon, with these weirdly just being the direct inverse of things I hate because I mentioned the Not Subtle thing and also the Not Actually As Picky As I Often Come Across As, right?

1) Anything other than police officer Dick Grayson

2) Dick and Jason being bros who get along and confide in each other about the stuff they can’t/won’t share with anyone else because they understand each other in ways most others never will, and also also them having Secret History as Brothers BECAUSE THEY ARE BROTHERS WITH HISTORY BUT I FUCKIN’ DIGRESS

3) A Tim who respects and appreciates Dick’s contributions to his life and happiness and the amount of time and effort Dick has put into being there for him often at his own personal expense, even if there have been like one or two times in the grand scheme of thirty years of comic book content when Dick wasn’t able to put Tim first because he felt he had to put someone with directly competing needs to Tim’s first in this particular time and place instead, just like he had so often before put Tim’s needs ahead of others who had competing needs at the time

4) A Bruce who acknowledges his fuck-ups with Dick and actually apologizes instead of just being like “I am going to look at you solemnly with my Apologetic Eyes but its on you to read the Apology clearly present in my Apologetic Eyes cuz that’s the only one you’ll ever get as I am a genius and a renowned playboy but I do not do the words good except for when I am being genius-y and renowedly playboy-y and not Apologetic.” And who also puts in actual work to actually fix things with Dick when he fucks up in that over-the-top-I GOTTA BE THE BEST THERE EVER WAS, POK-E-MON!! kinda over-achieving way in which he does everything in life.

5) An extended Batfamily and hero community who actually ACT like Dick is someone they respect and appreciate and are in awe of for his position and accomplishments in the hero community and the fact that he’s been out there risking his life day in and day out for people almost as long as any other hero out there, and who has in fact been doing this for a FAR greater percentage of his lifetime than any other hero, period. Rather than an extended Batfamily and hero community who just SAY that Dick is respected and appreciated by everyone and this is why actually they resent him and think he’s over-rated, with no actual sign or evidence of Respect, Appreciation and/or Awe on display anywhere at any time ever.

6) A Dick Grayson who is allowed by the narrative to be as hyper-competent and intelligent and multi-skilled as any member of the Batfamily, without feeling a need for qualifiers about him being second best or a good acrobat but not as good at the detective stuff as the others, etc, etc. Noooooope. Nerp. Nuh-uh. Someday I will rise from my death-bed amid my death-throes one last time just long enough to gasp out “The Batfamily’s entire high concept is that they are a family of literal Mary Sues and thus all of them are every bit as intelligent and hyper-competent as the plot demands and its stupid to try and rank them and telling when Dick somehow always ends up ranked bottom last despite being the kid whose very existence as a hyper-competent little genius troll boy is what jumpstarted the kid hero trend in universe in the first place, which is the kind of thing that could ONLY happen if he was impressing and making second-guessers of nay-sayers left and right BUT I FUCKING DIGRESS, GOOD NIGHT NEW YORK, AND SCENE!” At which point I will expire, my work here done.

7) A Dick Grayson who is allowed to get mad and yell when people DO FUCKED UP THINGS LIKE HIT HIM AND BLAME HIM FOR SHIT THAT ISN’T HIS FAULT without this being viewed as a “flaw” and him Being Dick Grayson Badly. Extra points for a Dick Grayson who is allowed to stay centered in his own traumas and tragedies without everyone else around him somehow making it out to be that they’re MORE victimized by the things he is most directly the victim of.

8) A Dick Grayson who eats more than just sugary cereal because he was literally raised from birth even pre-Bruce as a world class athlete and show me one single person that description matches who doesn’t know how to actually keep to a nutritious diet. Yes, by all means have him eat the occasional sugary snack as a treat, that’s fine, but when the take is that this is all he exists on or would be the only thing he exists on if not for the intercession of Actual Adults being like eat your veggies, Dickie, like.....mmmm, but whatcha doin’, fic?

9) A Dick Grayson who doesn’t actually even HAVE to get mad and lose his temper when people do fucked up things like hit him and blame him for shit that isn’t his fault or do nothing but mock and insult him and make him feel bad, because there’s actually other friends and family present who make a point to be like WHOA, HOW ABOUT I SHUT THIS SHIT DOWN LIKE AN INTELLECTUAL, BECAUSE THIS SHIT IS NOT OKAY? I’m just saying, how is it that every single fic and their grandma posits the existence of a swear jar because Alfred will not tolerate uncouth language in his domain, but it coooooooompletely flies over everyone’s head that Alfred of all people would be okay with people casually disrespecting his eldest grandson for the sake of a yawn-worthy punchline every single time someone opens their mouth to say “Dickhead” without even any kind of “Swear jar!” follow-up, let alone a “I don’t know who gave you the idea it was alright to disrespect Master Dick’s memories of his parents, young sirs, but I assure you most assuredly...‘TWAS NOT I.”

10) The existence of literally any other plot for Dick Grayson than one involving or relying on brainwashing. Like, just spitballing here but maybe people would have less trouble acknowledging and remembering the hyper-competence and skilled and genius qualities of the first Batkid if he was able to more often put those things on display instead of just running around 24/7 either brainwashed or brandishing pom-poms in enthusiastic commemoration of the hyper-competence and genius of everyone BUT him.

11) Bonus round - literally any other career choice besides being a cop.

[blackswaneuroparedux]

Anonymous asked: Your blog isn’t what I expected for someone who champions conservative values because it is very rich in celebrating culture and strikes a very humane pose. I learn a great deal from your clever and playful posts. Now and again your feminism reveals itself and so I wonder what kind of feminist are you, if at all? It’s a little confusing for a self professing conservative blog.  

I must thank you for your kind words about my blog and your praise is undeserved but I do appreciate that you enjoy aspects of high culture that you may not have come across.

My conservatism is not political or ideological per se and - I get this a lot - not taken from the rather inflammatory American discourse of left and right that is currently playing itself out in America. For example my distaste for the likes of Trump is well known and I have not been shy in poking fun at him here on my blog. Partly because he’s not a real conservative in my eyes but a .... < insert as many expletives as you want here > ....but mainly he has no character. My point is my conservatism isn’t defined by what goes on across from the pond.

Rather my conservatism is rooted in deeply British intellectual traditions and draw in inspiration from Edmund Burke, Michael Oakeshott, Roger Scruton, and other British thinkers as well as cultural writers like Coleridge, Wordsworth, and Waugh. So it’s a state of mind or a state of being rather than a rigid ideological set of beliefs.

Of course there is a lot of overlap of shared values and perspectives between the conservatism found elsewhere and what it is has historically been in English history. But my conservative beliefs are not tied to a political party for example. I wash my hands of politicians of all stripes if you must know. I won’t get into that right now but I hope to come back and and address it in a later post.

As for my feminism that is indeed an interesting question. It’s a very loaded and combustible word especially in these volatile times where vitriol and victimhood demonisation rather than civility and honest discussion so often flavour our social discourse on present day culture and politics.

I would be fine to describe myself as an old school feminist if I am allowing myself to be labelled that is. And in that case there is no incompatibility between being that sort of small ‘f’ feminist and someone who holds a conservative temperament. They are mutually compatible.

To understand what I mean let me give you a potted history of feminism. It’s very broad brush and I know I am over simplifying the rich history of each wave of feminism so I’m making this caveat here.

Broadly speaking the feminist movement is usually broken up into three “waves.” The first wave in the late 19th and early 20th centuries pushed for political equality. The second wave, in the 1960s and 1970s, pushed for legal and professional equality. And the third wave, in the past couple decades but especially now, has pushed for social equality as well as social and racial justice. It is the first wave and bits of the second wave that I broadly identify my feminism with.

Why is that?

Again broadly speaking, in the first wave and overlapping with the second wave legal and political equality are clearly defined and measurable, but in the third wave (the current wave) social equality and social justice is murky and complicated.

Indeed the current feminist movement - which now also includes race and trans issues in a big way - is not a protest against unjust laws or sexist institutions as much as it is the protest against people’s unconscious beliefs as well as centuries-worth of cultural norms and heritage that have been biased in some ways against women but also crucially have served women reasonably well in unwritten ways.

Of course women still get screwed over in myriad ways. It’s just that whereas before it was an open and accepted part of society, today nearly all - as they see it - is non-obvious and even unconscious. So we have moved from policing legalised equality opporttunities to policing thought.

I understand the resentment - some of it sincere - against the perceived unjustness of women’s lot in life. But this third wave of feminism is fuelled in raw emotion, dollops of self-victimhood, and selfish avoidance of personal responsibility. Indeed it bloats itself by latching onto every social and racial outrage of the moment.

It becomes incredibly difficult to actually define ‘equality’ not in terms of the goals of the first wave of feminists or even the second because we can objectively measure legal, civil and political goals e.g. It’s easy to measure whether boys and girls are receiving the same funding in schools. It’s easy to see whether a man and woman are being paid appropriately for the same work. But how does one measure equality in terms of social justice? If people have a visceral dislike of Ms X over Mr Y is it because she’s a woman or only because she’s a shitty human being in person?

The problem is that feminism is more than a philosophy or a group of beliefs. It is, now, also a political movement, a social identity, as well as a set of institutions. In other words, it’s become tribal identity politics thanks to the abstract ideological currents of cultural Marxism.

Once a philosophy goes tribal, its beliefs no longer exist to serve some moral principle, but rather they exist to serve the promotion of the group - with all their unconscious biases and preferences for people who pass our ‘purity test’ of what true believers should be i.e. like us, built in.

So we end up in this crazy situation where tribal feminism laid out a specific set of paranoid beliefs  - that everywhere you look there is constant oppression from the patriarchy, that masculinity is inherently violent, and that the only differences between men and women are figments of our cultural imagination, not based on biology or science.

Anyone who contradicted or questioned these beliefs soon found themselves kicked out of the tribe. They became one of the oppressors. And the people who pushed these beliefs to their furthest conclusions — that penises were a cultural construction of oppression, that school mascots encourage rape and sexual violence, and that marriage is state sanctioned rape or as is now the current fad that biological sex is not a scientific fact or not recognising preferred pronouns is a form of hate speech etc— were rewarded with greater status within the tribe.

Often those shouting the loudest have been white middle class educated liberals who try to outcompete each other within the tribe with such virtue signalling. Since the expansion of higher education in the 1980s in Britain (and the US too I think), a lot of these misguided young people have been doing useless university degrees - gender studies, performing arts, communication studies, ethnic studies etc - that have no application in the real world of work. I listen to CEOs and other hiring executives and they are shocked at how uneducated graduate students are and how such graduates lack even the basic skills in logic and critical problem solving. And they seem so fragile to criticism.

In a rapidly changing global economy, a society if it wants to progress and prosper is in need of  valuing skills, languages, technical knowledge, and general competence (i.e critical thinking) but all too often what our current society has instead are middle class young men and women with a useless piece of toilet paper that passes for a university degree, a mountain of monetary debt, and no job prospects. No wonder they feel it’s someone else’s fault they can’t get on to that first rung of the ladder of life and decide instead that pulling down statues is more cathartic and vague calls to end ‘institutional systemic racism’. Oh I digress....sorry.

My real issue with the current wave of feminists is that they have an attitude problem.

Previous generations of feminists sacrificed a great deal in getting women the right to vote, to go to university, to have an equal education, for protection from domestic violence, and workplace discrimination, and equal pay, and fair divorce laws. All these are good things and none actually undermine the natural order of things such as marriage or family. It is these women I truly admire and I am inspired by in my own life because of their grit and relentless drive and not curl up into a ball of self pity and victimhood.

More importantly they did so NOT at the expense of men. Indeed they sought not to replace men but to seek parity in legal ways to ensure equality of opportunity (not outcomes). This is often forgotten but is important to stress.

Certainly for the first wave of feminists they did not hate men but rather celebrated them. Pioneers such as Amelia Earhart - to give a personal example close to my heart as a former military aviator myself - admired men a great deal. Othern women like another heroine of mine, Gettrude Bell, the first woman to get a First Class honours History degree at Oxford and renowned archaeologist and Middle East trraveller and power breaker never lost her admiration for her male peers.

I love men too as a general observation. I admire many that I am blessed to know in my life. I admire them not because they are necessarily men but primarily because of their character. It’s their character makes me want to emulate them by making me determined and disciplined to achieve my own life goals through grit and effort.

Character for me is how I judge anyone. It matters not to me your colour, creed or sexual orientation. But what matters is your actions.

I find it surreal that we have gone from a world where Christian driven Martin Luther King envisaged a world where a person would be judged from the content of their character and not the colour of their skin (or gender) to one where it’s been reversed 360 degrees. Now we are expected to judge people by the colour of their skin, their gender and sexual orientation. So what one appears on the outside is more important than what’s on the inside. It’s errant nonsense and a betrayal of the sacrifices of those who fought for equality for all by past generations.

Moreover as a Christian, such notions are unbiblical. The bible doesn’t recognise race - despite what slave owners down the ages have believed - nor gender - despite what the narrow minded men in pulpits have spewed out down the centuries - but it does recognise the fact of original sin in the human condition. We are all fallen, we are all broken, and we are all in need of grace.

Even if one isn’t religious inclined there is something else to consider.

For past generations the stakes were so big. By contrast this present generation’s stakes seem petty and small. Indeed the current generation’s struggle comes down to fighting for safe spaces, trigger warnings and micro aggressions. In other words, it’s just about the protection of feelings. No wonder our generation is seen as the snowflake generation.

A lot of this nonsense can be put down to the intellectually fraudulent teachings of critical theory and post colonial studies in the liberal arts departments on university campuses and how such ideas have and continue to seep into the mainstream conversation with such concepts as ‘white privilege’, ‘white fragility’, ‘whites lives don’t matter’, ‘abolish whiteness’ ‘rape culture’ etc which feels satisfying as intellectual masturbation but has no resonance in the real world where people get on with the daily struggle of making something of their lives.

But yet its critical mass is unsustainable because the ideas inherent within it are intellectually unstable and will eventually implode in on itself - witness the current war between feminists (dismissed uncharitably as terfs) who define women by their biological sex and want to protect their sexual identity from those who for example are championing trans rights as sexuality defined primarily as a social construct. So you have third wave feminists taking completely different stances on the same issues. For instance there’s the sex positive feminists and there’s also anti-porn, sex negative feminists. How can the same thing either be empowering or demeaning? There are so many third wave feminists taking completely different stances on the same exact topics that it’s difficult to even place what they want anymore.The rallying cries of third wave feminism have largely been issues that show only one side of the story and leave out a lot of pertinent details.

But the totality of the damage done to the cultural fabric of society is already there to see. Already now we are in this Orwellian scenario where one has to police feelings so that these feminists don’t feel marginalised or oppressed in some undefinable way. This is what current Western culture has been reduced to. I find it ironic in this current politically charged times, that conservatives have become the defenders of liberalism, or at least the defence of the principle of free speech.

To me the Third Wave feminism battle cry seems to be: Once more but with feelings.

With all due respect, fuck feelings. Grow up.

I always ask the same question to friends who are caught up in this current madness be they BLM activists or third wave feminists (yes, I do have friends in these circles because I don’t define my friends by their beliefs but by their character): compared to what?

We live in a systemic racist society! Compared to what?

We live in a patriarchal society where women are subjugated daily! Compared to what?

We live in an authoritarian state! Compared to what?

We live in a corrupt society of privileged elites! Compared to what?

Third-wave? Not so much. By vast majorities, women today are spurning the label of “feminist” - it’s become an antagonising, miserable, culturally Marxian code word for a far-left movement that seeks to confine women into boxes of ‘wokeness’.

For sure, Western societies and culture have its faults - and we should always be aware of that and make meaningful reforms towards that end. Western societies are not perfect but compared to other societies - China? Russia? Saudi Arabia? - in the world today are we really that bad?

Where is this utopian society that you speak of? Has there ever been one in recorded history? As H.L. Mencken memorably put it, “An idealist is one who, on noticing that a rose smells better than a cabbage, concludes that it makes a better soup.“

I prefer to live in a broken world that is rather than one imagined. When we are rooted in reality and empirical experience can we actually stop wasting time on ‘hurt feelings’ and grievances construed through abstract ideological constructs and get on with making our society better bit by bit so that we can then hand over for our children and grandchildren to inherit a better world, not a perfect one.

Thanks for your question.

[dcnativegal]

In which I change jobs and listen to the people of Lakeview

Back in August, (it’s now early March, 2019) my boss called me up in my office in Christmas Valley and asked if I’d consider moving my work to Lakeview and joining the Lake District Clinics’ staff as a therapist. I pretty much said, you bet, when do I start? It’s not that I haven’t loved the people I work with as colleagues and as clients in Christmas Valley. It’s more that I have spent most of my 30+ years as a social worker basically embedded in medical teams, working on the psychological and practical issues that come up for people who are medically ill. The prospect of going back into a busy clinic at a bustling, though tiny, hospital, excited me. And so it was that I said goodbye to my clients, and to my work buddies Hayley, Jama, and Geri, and started driving south instead of north from Paisley, in late September.

It's now been 5 months, and the metaphor I use is that we are building this airplane while flying the thing, since this is the first time this hospital has had such a role: ‘Behavioral Health Consultant.’

Behavioral Health Consultants are culturally competent* generalists who provide treatment for a wide variety of mental health, psychosocial, motivational, and medical concerns, including management of anxiety, depression, substance abuse, smoking cessation, sleep hygiene, and diabetes among others. (definition brought to you by https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Primary_Care_Behavioral_health)  

*The better term than culturally competent is ‘culturally agile’, but the idea is the same: to be agile is to establish rapport with anybody, including people from the ethnicity called “white” and the culture of “taciturn cowboy.”  

The new job has an aspiration: “Primary Care/Behavioral Health Integration” whereby “mental health” is not taken care of in some other place, complete with another building, parking lot, and stigma (because when the town’s population is 2,300, everyone knows your rig.) If a patient comes to their primary care person for high blood pressure, or a miscarriage, or very high blood sugars, and the primary care person hears that your marriage is disintegrating, or you have nightmares, or your child killed her/himself, then there’s an immediate referral to me. If I’m busy with another patient, a referral gets made electronically, a receptionist calls this person, and boom, they are on my schedule. If I’m not busy, I’m brought in to meet them right then. Perhaps this person is crying, and I sit and listen, and maybe it’s just a bad day, or a sad anniversary, and what I do is provide compassionate listening. And my card. Perhaps we start a conversation and they schedule for a longer session because they hadn’t figured on being gone from work so long. See you soon, I say.

Behavioral Health Integration is new to much of the country, and yet it makes so much sense. Mind and body are connected. The trauma someone experienced as a child contributes to both his anxiety now and his high blood pressure. Her alcoholism might be worsened by her spouse’s infidelity: however, her liver is for sure. Let’s get this addressed, mind/body/spirit. Teamwork, people.

There are two other populations I get referrals to see. The folks who are taking an addictive substance that really isn’t good for them long term: either benzodiazepines like valium, or opioids.

The second group are the frequent flyers: folks who use the emergency department a great deal. There’s a team of people who try to help them. Are they anxious? Anxiety causes a lot of emergency department visits. So does a life that is very disorganized. Who can keep track of the day of the week, let alone an appointment in a clinic? There’s a meeting of people from many disciplines who meet weekly to brainstorm about how to create a supportive, educational web of services so that this person doesn’t use the most expensive health care resource available, (the emergency department) or bounce back into the hospital because being at home wasn’t safe.

I’ve had some interesting encounters. I meet people who are so much pain that they rock back and forth while they talk to me. I hear about a family where every single member has a serious disability but only one member will come in to talk to me. I finally went out with them to meet another relative waiting in the car and basically said, Hi, I don’t bite, come in to see me sometime, okay? It took 3 months but it worked.

A child came and sat at my table, proceeding to play with my wooden robots, then the magnet marble sculpture thing, and then color a mandala. All the while, a biological parent tells the story of their predicament, and the child corrects and fills in, holding the memory of all that has happened to this family. I find myself wishing multiple times a day, “if only the adults would adult.”

Another child is having panic attacks. Perhaps the addicted parent and the chaos at home are factors? You decide.

There is a funny thing that happens as I work in the arena of mental health while in a small town, and it will keep on happening. I assess one member of a social network, which may or may not be related to one or four of my other clients. The jigsaw puzzle of the situation becomes clearer and more recognizable while I listen to the stories. I can’t reveal that I already heard that story from someone else, with significantly different plot points and antagonists. I simply make note. Later that same day, the client has become the guy or gal behind a counter: well hello! And then I see the client’s mother in town: she peered at me through narrowed eyes, told me she was glad to know who was talking to her son. Sounded like I passed muster.

pass muster

be accepted as adequate or satisfactory.

synonyms:

be  good enough, come up to standard, come up to scratch, measure  up, be acceptable/adequate, be sufficient, fill/fit the  bill, do, qualify

I met with a rather desperate patient, in chronic pain, and super pissed off about everything. That patient died unexpectedly and sadly a few days later. On the same day I learned of this death, two of my other clients came in, separately, and cried about the sudden loss of this person. Used up all of my tissues. We are part of a tightly woven web.

And I can’t talk about any of it except to clinical supervisors or my therapist. Which is fine. Thank goodness I can take notes. My brain gets very full.

I no longer have the Roarks, Hayley the amazing therapist and her husband Tom the amazing police deputy, who could give me the back story and the full list of felonies for most of North County. I exaggerate only slightly. I do get perspective at the team meetings where we talk about the frequent flyers: everyone has a piece of the patient’s history. And everyone knows everyone else, and what they did last summer. I will never have that deep knowledge of this community that natives of Lake County do. There is a chaplain who seems to have the same deep, back stories of everyone in Lakeview. The primary care providers know a great deal, too. Perhaps my fresh perspective has a benefit: at least three clients have told me they are glad I’m not from here. They have a chance, a clean slate, instead of me having assumptions based on last name, what side of town they live on, etc. And I try so hard not to judge. I sit and listen, always humbled and amazed at the stories that are shared.

I can’t share specifics, but I certainly see themes.

Let’s talk for a minute about step families. There are an awful lot of step families and second and third marriages and many times, live-in sweeties who act like step parents, all of which is very confusing to children. There are a couple of rules that I thought everyone knew, but apparently not. Such as:

·         Do not, under any circumstances, tell a child, ‘you are so much like your Mom/Dad’ if those qualities you are calling out are negative. Please, please. You are not getting back at the miscreant, who is a conniving/cheating/meth-dealing/flake. You are hurting your child. (See, self-fulfilling prophecy. See, shitty legacy.) STOP IT.

·         Grownups need to do the adulting. Children are not go-betweens. Period, end of sentence. Also, children best not play one parent against another: the only way to make sure THAT isn’t happening is to …

·         Co-parent. If your kid has left your home to live with grandma, or step-father, or aunt, whomever, guess what? You are now co-parenting with your mother or step-father or sibling. You are coordinating school meetings with teachers, immunizations, and team schedules. You are consulting with the ‘other parent’ on whether the kid gets a smart phone, or can date, and whether they need condoms. Circle the wagons and parent the kid, whatever the old painful history. For the kids’ sake.

Right?

How about grief. People feel grief about all kinds of things, and especially the loss of other people. One grief hooks up with all the other losses, and sometimes, the heart just breaks and the mind stops and the tears flow. My all-time favorite quote about grief is this one:

People, usually, the conscientious ones, have very high expectations of themselves. They will plod on, and keep it all up, until the tears overflow, and they are horrified when they cry at work. Perhaps the long-dead person was the only one who ever stood by them, which explains why the ‘little’ loss that happened just the other day flowed into this biggest loss, and they are overcome.

I do some ‘grief education’. That it comes in waves. That patience with oneself is critical, and kind: if you can’t stop crying, then you need to cry, and go ahead, take the rest of the day off. You are not a slacker, or a malingerer. You are giving your mind and aching heart a break, and that is a healthy thing to do. We talk about options like writing a letter to the one you miss, so that you can tell them what you’ve been wanting to share. Who knows, maybe they are listening. Whatever the metaphysics of the matter, they exist in your experience. In psychoanalytic terms, that’s called an “introject.”  Write freely, as if they will hear your words.

Or maybe write a song, or draw a picture, in their memory, in their honor. What would they have told you to do, if they knew they were about to leave this mortal coil? Go forth and find another lover? Get back to playing that guitar and never mind how bad it sounds at first? Go dancing. Go bowling. Have a beer, or stay sober, in my name.

And know that you cannot push through grief, there is no shortcut:

It is an alteration of self that we would not choose, and it is excruciating. We are altered without anesthetic. I’m sorry. I have been so altered.

Let’s talk about social isolation. I found this quote in the New York Times and had it made into a canvas hanging in my office: (via EasyCanvasPrints.com)

Most of the clients I see are deeply disconnected from people, especially the men. Maybe there is a wife who connects him to the rest of the family, or a mother. But no one else. He doesn’t speak to his children. He’s estranged from a sister or a brother. No cousins, lost track of them. Don’t care to reconnect. Old pain, betrayals, lots of good reasons to stay mad. Except for the loneliness.

I encourage clients to call up an old friend and say, I was thinking about you, what the heck, I thought I’d call, tell me what’s going on, if this is a good time. Once the person gets over their shock, the content of what your old co-worker/ cousin/ younger sister tells you is refreshing. At least it isn’t the same old thoughts going around like a trapped gerbil in your mind. And then you’ve strengthened an old bond. Why not? Doesn’t cost anything.

I know it feels awkward. I called up my first cousin, out of the blue, after texting her to make sure I still had the right number, and in my text, I said, could you chat? She called me right away thinking something was wrong. We hadn’t spoken on the phone since I moved to Paisley. I didn’t mean to scare her. But I didn’t do our usual calendar/Christmas thing this year, and she’s my first cousin. We’re friends on Facebook, but we don’t share the whole truth on Facebook. We were candid. Life is imperfect. And I renewed that bond with this bright, hardworking woman with whom I share DNA.

I also hand-wrote several letters to old friends. I got lovely texts or emails back saying a letter will come in reply but give them time. I’m totally fine with that. And even if nothing comes back, I sent forth a bit of love, and story, to distract them from their mind-gerbils. There was a woman at St. Stephen’s, whom I got to know when I worked as the Parish Secretary and she was a volunteer. She would send a lovely note or postcard to someone and stamp it with “GUILT FREE MAIL.” How wonderful is that. Edith Eder, you were a gift to the world. She would wait to give baby blankets to newborns, and I think she waited because she’d had a stillbirth at one time, and knew the pain of having no baby for all the cute clothes and rattles that had been gifted.

*****

Ultimately, for the anxious and depressed, I hope I can convey some information, some strategies and tricks, a wee tincture of wisdom that they can hold onto, when they hit a bad patch. I have my own therapist, in Bend, 3 hours away, whom I see once a month. I take my anti-depressant dutifully and gratefully. I approach my very own bad patches and slip and fall, like I did over thanksgiving. I try to spot the bad patches, like drivers look for black ice this time of year, but sometimes the slipping can’t be helped. And kerplunk, we are in the ditch and need a tow. Best to minimize the damage, do what needs to be done and chalk it up to ‘When Bad Things Happen to Good People’, which is the book I recommend most to clients.

There’s the awesome quotation by Anais Nin about the blossom:

I see entering into psychotherapy this way: it is a risk, because the familiar misery feels safer, at first, than the bright new possibilities of change, which are scary, but then, occasionally, breathtakingly glorious. And in any case, patience is required. With ourselves. Again, Anais Nin, who is an incest survivor by the way:

Amen

[douchebagbrainwaves]

GREAT WORK USUALLY SEEMS TO HAPPEN BECAUSE SOMEONE SEES SOMETHING AND THINKS, I COULD DO THAT NOW

What do you say if you've been fundraising for a while and no one else has noticed yet. They were attracted to these ideas by instinct, because they had neat hair and spoke in deep, confident voices, and generally didn't know much more than writing commentaries on Plato or Aristotle while watching over their shoulders for the next invading army. Sometimes I can't think of an answer, especially when you first start angel investing. Especially the type, all too common then, that was like a roach motel for startup ambitions: smart, ambitious people went in, but no one can predict them—not even the founders, to understand what users want. In addition to the odds being terrible, the average VC is a rejection machine. The meeting between Larry Page and Sergey Brin was a good example. So if you start a startup, ask everyone about their previous IP history. If you make fun of it. At best you'll be able to bear a good deal of fighting in being the public face of an organization. College was regarded as job training where I grew up, so studying philosophy seemed an impressively impractical thing to do, I almost included a fourth: get a version 1 out as soon as the first.

The patent pledge is not legally binding. How did things get this way? And that's also a sign that one is a good way to prevent disputes. Yes. He responded so eagerly that for about half a second I found myself considering doing it. Sometimes the feedback loop that makes the product good. VCs, especially if you have a lot. They were so beautifully typeset, and their tone was just captivating—alternately casual and buffer-overflowingly technical. If that weren't bad enough, these wildly fluctuating nodes are all linked together. Investors like it when you start fundraising, the most common question people ask is how many employees you have. I had to predict now, I'd say that startups will underestimate the difficulty of raising money, or you're someone who can help them a lot, which is a good hacker.

There's no concept of office hours in most startups. Certainly, people who suspect they're nonsense generally keep quiet. It's in their interest to collect the maximum amount of information while making the minimum number of decisions.1 But in fact when you raise money you're trying to convince investors of something so much less work if you could get the Intel and Microsoft stickers off the front. You may be a great entrepreneur, working on interesting stuff, etc. Airbnb. You have to go out and get them.

What seems like it's going to consume at least three or four years. And when we're talking about startups we think are likely to succeed, just that you're a sufficiently good bet? They don't get that there are a few hot topics and a few groups doing great work on them, and then fix it immediately, while you were on the phone with her. If you're raising an angel round, the size of the round can even change on the fly. Once railroads or electric power grids were invented, every region had to have a say in running the company; don't make a high-end products against the ceiling. Frightening as it seemed to them, at least. Most people's first impulse when they hear about a lame-sounding new startup idea is to judge you, not the mathematician's or the experimentalist's.

In those days you could go to delight your users. In this case, that means you should give users a few basic elements that they can combine as they wish, like Lego. Keep doing it when you start a company before 23 is that people won't take you seriously. It's a bit like anaerobic respiration: not the optimum solution for the long term, but it can save you from an immediate threat. Somehow it's as if most places were sprayed with startupicide, it's more accurate to think of it, you should get a job. If you're the sort of company that competes by litigation rather than by making good products. If an investor gives you specific reasons for not investing, look at your startup and ask if they're right.2 And that is dangerous for so many reasons.

Sometimes the feedback loop that makes the product good. It's a fine idea in principle to finance your startup with its own revenues, but you can't break away from them. What we know of their predecessors comes from fragments and references in later works; their doctrines could be described as speculative cosmology that occasionally strays into analysis. But this is false.3 I got serious about and did a bunch of domain knowledge. Restaurants with great food can be expensive, crowded, noisy, dingy, out of the closet and admit, at least unconsciously.4 If you start a startup, ask everyone about their previous IP history. An idea for a startup.

Eleven people manage to work together in quite complicated ways, and yet they're probably the single best predictor of how a startup will do. Unknowing imitation is almost a recipe for chaos, think about a soccer team. If you'd bristle at the suggestion that you aren't, then you can start as soon as the first one is ready to buy. Fashions and flourishes get knocked aside by the difficult business of solving the problem at all. Usually you can find just one user who really needs something and can act on that need, you've got a toehold in making something customers want. What you should do in college is work on your own projects. They say they're going to flake out and leave them stranded.

Notes

Ii. What has changed over time, default to some fairly high walls between most of the 2003 season was 4.

Vision research may be a constant. Software companies can even be an instance of a smooth one. Otherwise they'll continue to maltreat people who are weak in other ways to help a society generally is to imagine cases where you have to spend a lot of reasons American car companies, but had instead evolved from different types of startups that have to find out why investors who say no to drugs.

The tipping point for me to address this generally misapplied phrase. In some cases e. Users dislike their new operating system so much more analytical style of thinking.

You can build things for programmers, the effort that would scale. I'm not saying, incidentally; it's random; but as the average employee. I wrote this on an accurate account of ancient traditions. More precisely, while Reddit is derived from Delicious/popular with voting instead of being harsh to founders.

[shhhselah]

The Pride & Worship of Life

Tuesday, November 17, 2020

12:33pm

Comparison is the idolizing of creation over Creator.

Yikes. Jumping right in, aren’t we?

Selah.

Take some time to prepare your heart & sit before God. Now, when He’s given you the go, continue-

*This post is not to discredit the existence of mental illness or PTSD which creates & perpetuates these habits/mindsets in us, but it is simply to educate- spiritually- about the issue of Comparison & its roots.

Now, allow me to say it again, Comparison is the idolizing (worship) of creation over Creator. 

You worship others or even yourself, but begin to trust, disbelieve, dislike & even hate the Crafter.

You reverence & love the one, yet despise the Other for not creating you the same. (Matthew 6:24) You worship- in awe- the creation, setting up a pillar to offer incense of adoration. Yet your heart grows bitter, doubtful & resentful towards the Creator for not making you the same. For not molding you as you believe He should have. You judge Him for poor use of His time & supposed sovereignty. You accuse Him of carelessly using His time, putting you & your life together haphazardly. You question what you feel you lack in comparison to them- exasperated that He as God should have known better during the drafting process. You belittle His wisdom & intelligence, surely He should have taken into account the various factors of "such a time as this," to have better formed, equipped & provided for you. We place His other handiwork on a pedestal & worship its beauty, its flawless skin, colored eyes, long hair, favorable figure, fabulous clothes, excess wealth, stunning vacations, spare time, skills & talents & on & on & on. Or, Possibly you stand at the opposite extreme- where you haughtily applaud the Lord for His diligent use of time in crafting you. Perhaps, you are one of the many who have fallen into a nature of pride, arrogance, loftiness. You may even be unaware of it, simply seeing yourself as faultlessly confident, and that's what God wants for His children, isn't it? For them to be content, in love, thoroughly thankful for His "handiwork?" You may feel, "I am only acknowledging that I am fearfully & wonderfully made." And if that, my friend, is your sincere heart, then Amen. What a blessing. However, I'd raise to you to venture out & seek the Creator's verification that your heart posture is truly that of reverence for Him & not for you. Allow me to elucidate, I can tell you that Ezekiel 28 reveals to us that Lucifer's (Satan) fall was because of Pride. The kind of pride that was birthed from falling in love with himself. Utterly. He was created to reflect the glory of God. He was made of every kind of beautiful stone & gem, & crafted into his physical make-up, was also piping, as he himself was made to not simply orchestrate, but create beautiful melodies of praise & worship unto the Most High.

Yet... What went wrong, was that Lucifer began to believe that the beauty of his countenance- the sparkle, shimmer, brilliance of his being as he reflected the very majesty of God- was because of his own doing, his own nature & being. Hubris. It escaped him, that without the magnificence of God's beauty to shine upon him, he had no light, there was no brilliance, & his “splendor," disappeared. He was merely another object left in a dark closet- dull & purposeless. Lucifer became so entranced by the way his body responded aglow to the presence of God, he became so drunk with the power of witnessing how the worship he created & conducted moved the beings of Heaven, that he became utterly convinced that he himself was not just God, but higher. He was so utterly convinced, he began- for an unknowable length of time- to conspire against God within His own ranks, seeking allegiance with fellow angelic beings. He meticulously went about convincing them that he was truly higher than the King of kings they lived eternally to worship & serve. He was successful in what was an ultimate misleading- he officially recruited 1/3 of Heaven to revolt against God, in conviction that the wrong Being was on the throne. "Pride goes before destruction & a haughty spirit before a fall (*stumble)." Proverbs 16:18 In brevity, I'll tell you that Lucifer met his "destruction," in being utterly cast from Heaven, evicted from the presence, glory & true splendor of God- & so became Satan. And as for his followers (the 1/3 of Heaven), they became the very demons tormenting us, our families & the world as we have & currently do know it today. Why is this story important? It is the danger of self. Of pride. Of Idolatry. Idolatry is the act of placing another object or being before/above God & worshipping it. How many things do we place before God in our lives? Our jobs, money (Matthew 6:24), our partners, our dreams, friends, family, school, sex, habits & addictions, zodiacs, our indulgences & desires. We place things on a pedestal constantly! We seek them for security, protection, validation, love, understanding, confidence, power, purpose, wisdom, advice, direction, income, success. We have replaced God with so much. And sometimes, we put ourselves on the throne. We lean on our own wisdom & understanding, we pursue our desires, fulfill our plans, suffer for our dreams but not His purpose, marry & date who we see fit, hustle & grind to “make it happen by our d*** selves," lavish ourselves, pray to & answer ourselves, consult ourselves & the list goes on. Some of us search all our lives to fall in love with ourselves. Some of us spend all our lives in love with ourselves. In the latter, like Lucifer, you have fallen in love with "your splendor," worshipping your beauty & solidness of character, praising yourself, your talents, determination, strength & resilience. You toss measly claps at God for "doing His thang." You exalt yourself above others, putting them down or simply questioning how they could ever “compete.” Your admiration is not in that the perfect, sovereign, eternal God knew you before He formed you, & then with all love, purpose & attention, crafted you with the intimate knowledge & will He had for you. No, your admiration is, “How could something this divine exist?" Rather than, "I am formed by the Divine Himself."

May the twinkle in your eye at yourself be the admiration of knowing you are touched by the Most High, but not that you yourself are the touch. Be careful, family. The search for self & self love can be dangerous. It is only natural to want to know more about your time on this planet & how you connect to history or other parts of the world through purpose or genetics, but remember that you are not just here- you were placed. God placed each one of us in a specific space & place in time, for a reason. We do right to seek the Creator & His purpose for us, one that lays into an extraordinary plot that has been at work since before the foundations of the world. My dear, it is simply not about us you & never has been. Neither yourself nor I, dear darling. It is & has always been about the Creator. Seek His face, not your own. You will never know why you are here if you do not acquaint yourself to the One who purposefully placed you here. May we never feel that humans are the most important factor in this plot. That perfectly rounds us back to Insecurity, Pride & Arrogance, which are the Idolizing Worship of Humans. Let us remember that Idolatry is the practice of placing, worshipping & exalting something or someone before, above or instead of God.  Idolatry in itself is a horror, mistake, sin & blasphemy. A provocation of the Lord's anger. He speaks of the a multitude of times throughout the Old & New Testaments. In Romans 1:25, He specifically rebukes the act of "worshipping & serving the creature rather than the Creator who is blessed forever. Amen." In the space of Insecurity, Arrogance & Pride, we look to the creation to govern how the Creator should rule. We begin to believe fellow man is the end goal, the aspiration, leaving behind that God set the goal long before we existed in the Commandments & later, Christ. We begin to exalt man to the deity of "God," "god," or "Goddess" rather than servant. We fail to acknowledge or realize that the title or authority of being a small god is only through what Jesus secured for us. We place our fellow beings or ourselves on a throne & bow down to them in the form of endless scrolling, RTs, saved screenshots that we pine over & pick at ourselves because of, photoshopping our images to look like them, STAN culture, vision boards that leave us wallowing in pity & self hate, vanity that utterly consumes us with our image constantly, etc. We worship them in awe & covetousness, desiring who they are, what they have, what they do, what they look like, where they're from, how they live, how they talk, what degrees they have, the list goes on. We allow them to inspire & stir a worship of both them & ourselves in the form of inferiority, insecurity, inadequacy, resentment, self consciousness, pride, bitterness, discontentment, arrogance, hubris, entitlement, loathing, envy, depression. The center of our attention in all of these- is us & them. What we lack, what they have- what they lack, what we have. All of this, darlings, utterly takes the attention off of who this whole thing is about- God. Our Father in Heaven. The Most High. Emmanuel. YHWH.

All of these demonic & evil reactions place us in a position of lowliness or superiority before others. They make us feel beaten down or built up about ourselves. And we harp all day everyday about how much less we are than others or how much greater we are than others. Instead of Confidence & Humility in, through & before God, you have been walking in Hubris or Insecurity. Both of them a constant state of self consciousness- an utter awareness & focus on self. A care & concern of self. This is how Satan fell. These states of being define you & your movement in the world. You're not just humble. You're insecure. That's why you won't accept compliments or "praise." Or, you’re prideful. You fake it because that's what people like to see & you know how to play the role. You're not just meek. You're terrified of the world & those in it, seeing everything as a danger to your mental, emotional & physical stability. So you stay quiet & agreeable. You're not just gracious- You're people pleasing. You'll do anything to get their validation, likes, smiles, attention. Maybe you're too scared of disappointing them to say, "No," or maybe you have a hidden agenda because every opportunity can be used to serve yourself. You're not just easy to get along with- you're just hiding by fitting the mold. Fitting in to get on. You fear rejection. You hate tension. You're not just charming. You're manipulative. You know exactly what to say or do to ace people's approval, avoid conflict, or get what you want out of them. You're not just being honest; you're defensive & throwing it all out there to control reactions to you & rejection of you. You don't wanna be hurt, so you make sure to get the jump on them. This allows you to be transparent without vulnerability; for you to say no to them before they can say no to the most fragile parts of you.

You're not just helpful; you don't know how to say "No." You were rebuked, scolded, bullied, raped for saying, "No." It's transformed you into a, "Yes man." Or, you feel pridefully that you're the only one who can do the job "right." You're not brave; you just don't feel like you have anything to lose anymore. Or, you feel unstoppable, invincible, the greatest there is.

You're not at peace; you're numb. You're self medicating. You don't acknowledge hurt, weakness or areas needing growth- it's for losers, you have no time, there's nothing wrong with you anyways. We turn to others or ourselves & worship- idolize. In this, the devil has molded, contorted, & permanently twisted us out of a godly shape through shame in being who, where, what & how we are. He has inflated some of us with a boastfulness & love for "self" that pits you against the Sovereignty of Most High. The way we move in this world is more influenced by people than God, the posture of our motivations one of worship to satan. If we could see some of ourselves in the spirit, we'd look like the bent over woman whom Jesus touched in Luke 13:12-13. She was bent over 18 years & couldn't stand up in any way.

Some of us have been bent over in the demonic driven posture of envy, hate, insecurity, rejection, discontentment & depression for 18 years now. For 4 years or 12 years or 37 years. All because of comparison. Some of us are as inflated as Lucifer in Ezekiel 28. Think about your goals. So many want to be the best at what they do. Some don't believe they can or deserve the best of anything. Selah. Ask yourself, dear one. Why? The Scriptures tell us that we are to be excellent in that which we do. 1 Peter 2:12 1 Corinthians 12:31 Philipians 4:8 For we serve an excellent God (1 Peter 2:9) & are meant to be a representation of such excellence (Colossians 3:23-24). Whatever we do, we are meant to do in fullness of heart as unto Him. So ask yourself, does your motivation for greatness have anything to do with Him? Are you working as unto the excellency of the Lord, or are you setting up monuments, legacy, notoriety & infamy for your own self & name?

Do you want His name to be remembered through you when you go, or yours? Are you here for clout, or do you want to use every last breath pointing back to the One who gave it all? And for those who suffer with smallness, worthlessness, unbelief- what is behind this? Who told you that you did not deserve the best? God gave you His very best when He sent His only Son & unleashed the fullness of His wrath upon Him. Revelations & 2 Kings shows us how Satan tried to devour the seed of David that his lineage (prophesied to give way to the birth of the Messiah), would end far before Jesus came. Satan sent fear into King Herod, who called for every male baby under 2 to be murdered across the lands. Again, even after His birth, satan was trying to foil the unfolding of God's best for you. He tried to tempt Jesus in the desert without success, so that Jesus could sin & forfeit His role as Messiah. God ensured, protected & saw through to completion His very best for you.

Do not be dejected & downcast in your motivations & aspirations. Do not refuse prophecy or exhortation in unworthiness. Do not reject your mantle in fear & unworthiness. Do not pray small. Do not avoid disappointment by practicing hopelessness.

Do not refuse what God tells you to save face & rely on yourself to protect your heart.

God is the Lover & Mender of that heart, dear baby. Likewise, to those who assume they are entitled to all the riches God has to give, humble yourselves before Him as Jesus says in Luke 14:7-11: "So He told a parable to those who were invited, when He noted how they chose the best places, saying to them: 8 “When you are invited by anyone to a wedding feast, do not sit down in the best place, lest one more honorable than you be invited by him; 9 and he who invited you and him come and say to you, ‘Give place to this man,’ and then you begin with shame to take the lowest place. 10 But when you are invited, go and sit down in the lowest place, so that when he who invited you comes he may say to you, ‘Friend, go up higher.’ Then you will have glory in the presence of those who sit at the table with you. 11 For whoever exalts himself will be humbled, and he who humbles himself will be exalted.” Do not assume God's plans for you are luxury, riches, fame, notoriety, convenience & constant spoils. That they are to fulfill your every demand. His call may, for you, to be a hidden figure history will never know outside of the ones He called you to impact. We do not know God's master plan, so assume yourself neither to be a grand plot not a brief mention.

We are here as a part of His plan, not our own. We are all meant to shine for the glory of God yet pale in holy comparison to only Him. The only throne we are ever supposed to look to is God's, my darling. The only image that should ever make us to feel small, inferior, inadequate & humble is that of the glory of God. The only boasting we should have is in our weakness & the might of Jehovah. If we are to feel unworthy, may it be a natural reaction to the deep love of the Cross. If we are to revere anyone, it should be Jesus. If we are to doubt or question anyone, it should be the enemy & creation. May we never put God on trial in a trick of the enemy. Repent for coming against your Maker. Accept forgiveness. Bind every demon in the name of Jesus that has contorted your very nature into a satanic posture of worship through Comparison in the various forms of: Insecurity, Envy, Depression, Resentment towards God & others, Unforgiveness towards God, Hate, Discontentment, Rejection, Inadequacy, Low Self Esteem, Self Consciousness, Inferiority, Suicidal, Hubris, Gloating, Superiority, Vanity, etc. Loose yourself in the name of Jesus of every habit, mindset & way of operating adopted & created that came with those demons & their influence in the form of- Distance, Refusal to form Relationships, Isolation, Self Medicating, Addictions, Endless Scrolling, Nit Picking at yourself & others, Self Harm, Suicide, Refusal to Trust, Refusal to Accept Compliments, Refusing to Acknowledge Feelings or Care, Self Blame, Refusal to Accept Help/Support, People Pleasing, Deflecting, Rebellion Against Authority, Bullying, Fighting, Recklessness, Selfishness, Greed, Hoarding, Vain Ambition, etc. Renounce every Vow in the name of Jesus- both spoken & unspoken- you made that came from those things: vows to always rely on yourself, vows to never accept compliments, to always have enough money, to never have kids, to never be like "them," to always work harder than everybody else, etc. There are vows you made to yourself in hurt, anger, or arrogance, & they are a sin. They are mindsets, principles you have called your own self to worship, bow down, follow & adhere to. 

They have shaped your life: your interactions, relationships, & perspectives. It is time to let them die & live only by the authority, Word & Spirit of the Most High.

For too long you have operated in the power of your own resources, strength, understanding, belief, desires, opinion, etc, all because of how you saw yourself, others & through that- God. You let others become God. You let yourself become God. He is a jealous God. He does not share. He does not submit. Free yourself from ever worshipping creation over Creator through worshipping the perceived lowliness or highness of yourself. Restore yourself to trusting in God alone, resting in His majesty. Our eyes are to be on the Father of Heaven, dear baby. Not on what we perceive we lack, what others have or what we want & have ourselves. But let us look to the Rivers of Living Waters, the Fount that won't run dry. Listen to this song & bask in the Creator who made you fearfully, wonderfully, intentionally, patiently, carefully, lovingly, devotedly, for such a time as this ♥️

Selah.

Matthew 6:24 Esther 4:14 Luke 13:10-17 Psalm 139 Jeremiah 1:5

"I Am Loved/There Is Nothing Better" Maverick City Music feat. Naomi Raine

[suciaramadianti]

Double Standards Between Men and Women in Music Industry Reflected in Taylor Swift’s “The Man”: A Feminist Analysis

Taylor Swift has been a major pop singer and gained the label of hollywood star for over a decade. With a total of 23 music awards, it is undeniable of how much recognition she has received from around the world. Her passion for music started early in her teens by simply singing along with her signature music instrumental: acoustic guitar. Since then she has written numerous songs mostly about parts of her life and up until now she still writes her own songs. What makes her music feels special is how they are mostly written based on Swift’s own experiences regarding life. Like many other musicians, her popular hit songs are mostly talking about love which are based on her love life experiences. As a result, everytime she writes a love song, people tend to question the person talked in the song and it is unavoidable for them to not relate it to Swift’s recent significant other at the moment. Therefore, it triggers them in creating assumptions which regularly end up to be rumours spread all over existing media.

Swift’s portrayal of the media frequently narrowed the topic to be about her relationship. They are constantly commenting on her dating habits which they regard as destructive because they judged if the number of people she has dated are not common. As a consequence, people are inclined to misplace the spotlight on her personal life. Given her tremendous fame, it seems impossible for her to separate her personal life and her works. It is unquestionable that this issue disturbs and minimizes the value of her success, she specifically addresses this concern in one of her songs in her recent album entitled “The Man”.

In “The Man”, Swift puts her position as a man and wonders that all of the decisions taken in her life will be taken differently if she were a man. Since she is a musician, she is talking specifically in the scale of music industry. Other than that, it is due to the fact that many artists under the same industry also tried to downgrade her as an artist, making her appear powerless to counteract. The song itself shows that she strongly believes that all the unpleasant treatments she got is because of her gender. The song also implies that there is a significant double standard between men and women in the music industry which is harmful to women’s rights and how it benefits the men. Margaret Eichler, author of The Double Standard: A Feminist Critique of Feminist Social Science, explains that a double standard “implies that two things which are the same are measured by different standards” (Eichler 1980:15). With that being said, here’s an attempt to analyze what are the double standards seen in “The Man”  by Taylor Swift using feminist literary theory.

Feminist Literary Theory

Feminist literary theory is a theory which based on feminist theories. It is widely described as a theory using feminist principles to critique male-dominated literature. The criticism focuses on oppression of women in social, political, economic, and psychological literature. Feminism itself exists in response to women-marginalizing social construction which concerns with women’s efforts to gain gender equality with men (Harjani, 2013:28). Plain and Sellers (2007:2) state that “Feminist literary criticism was keen to uncover its own origins, seeking to establish traditions of women’s writing and early ‘feminist’ thought to counter the unquestioning acceptance of ‘man’ and male genius as the norm”. In other words, feminist criticism seeks to examine male-dominated literary works. Furthermore, feminist criticism also requires detaching the patriarchal notions in literary works. (Selden, Widdowson, and Brooker, 2005:115).

According to Code, nowadays criticism and theory appear simultaneously in feminist anthologies and the feminist literary theory includes both, practical and theoretical, approaches to literature (Code 2000:261). Based on Code’s explanation, the purpose of feminist literature theory is to “analyze the role that literary forms and practices, together with the discources of literary criticism and theory, play in challenging hierarchies of gender, class, race, and secuality.” Based on the explanation, it is approppriate to use feminist literary theory to achieve the research objectives of this research.

 Findings and Discussion

Taylor Swift has been diving in Hollywood music entertainment since around 2006. In 2008, her music career sky-rocketed with a single entitled, “You Belong With Me’”,  a love song that has been well-received by pop music lovers. Her songs are mostly based on her own experiences regarding love, friendship, family, life, and etc, this is why many times they will feel personal to listen to. Since her fame makes her into one of the most looked-up superstar, the media cannot stop invading her personal life, particularly about her love life. Everytime she enters a relationship with someone new, the media would regularly comment something about it. It started early in her career up until recently, she had several ex significant others who were covered by the media. Unfortunately, as the time goes, entertainment medias starting to notoriously view her dating habits as her way to draw inspiration to write love songs. As seen in the first verse of the song, she says:  

“I would be complex, I would be cool They'd say I played the field before I found someone to commit to And that would be okay for me to do”

In the line above, she puts herself as a man and pictures how it would be different if she were a man with the same dating habit as her. As a woman, having a history of multiple exes, makes her being labeled as a “serial dater” by the media. A serial dater is someone who refuses to center on one person in a relationship. Here, Swift implies if she were a man then the dating habit would be deemed by society as something cool and instead turns her into a complex person who rather chooses to be careful in picking someone to date before eventually commiting to one person. In other words, women tend to be stigmatized for having more sexual partners, whereas men would be praised for such behaviour. A 2009 study published in Social Psychology Quarterly found that "greater numbers of sexual partners are positively correlated with boys' peer acceptance, but negatively correlated with girls' peer acceptance" among adolescents (Kreager & Staff, 2009). This proves that as a woman Swift receives a negative stigmatization for having multiple significant others in the course of her life while other male artists under the same industry would be praised for the same attitude. 

The next line she continues to descriptively explain that having multiple significant others as a man would make the person seen as superior. Meanwhile, as a woman, it is considered as unacceptable which often regarded them with labels such as “slut”. Swift herself claimed she was slut-shamed in her early twenties simply by wanting love (Reilley, 2019). She also said  it is what inspires her to make a movement called ‘Me Too’ aiming at observing internalised misogyny still existing in the world.  In “The Man”, she expresses her concern by saying this particular line:

“Every conquest I had made would make me more of a boss to you”

The conquest meant in the line is the number of exes she had throughout the course of her life which then she further convinced if it would have made her appear more of a ‘boss’ if only she were a man. This is due to the fact that the status of men is based on the number of love partners they have had. The higher the number of their exes automatically puts men in a higher status because they are regarded as capable of conquering women’s hearts. On the contrary, this thing works the other way around for women. Eder, Evans, and Parker (1995) found that “boys tend to perceive girls as objects for sexual conquest as they compete with other boys for sexual achievements.”  Thus, making it appropriate for men to fool around with different women. Whilst women are aware of the stereotype surrounding women doing the same thing, therefore they will be prone to be labeled with negative terms if they did the same thing.  Orenstein (1994), Moffat (1989), and Tolman (2002) also suggest that young women’s fears of the “slut” label curbs their sexual expressions, while young men are encouraged to demonstrate their masculinity through sexually permissive behavior. 

Even though Swift’s success as a singer-songwriter has been going on over a decade, there are still plenty of people who are skeptical of her success. It is as if her success was judged differently in the scheme of the music industry. This is mainly because people perceived her fame as a result of her habit in dating multiple men and continuing to write about them in her songs rather than because of her artistic skill and success. In other words, people are likely reducing her successful music career to merely focusing on judging whether she has an issue commiting to a relationship or not. She even went on to say that her success was perceived by many as a trick rather than a skill and a craft (Ali, 2019). She covers this in the song, specifically in this line:

 “They'd say I hustled, put in the work

They wouldn’t shake their heads and question how much of this I deserve”

In this line, she says nobody would take her success, which she has been working hard for, as granted if she were a man. It occasionally happens in the music industry that women are constantly underreprresented, but once a woman takes the position in the top list of musicians, it is inevitable for them to be horribly scrutinized. As a proof, women are less likely to be largely represented in the music industry. In fact, the USC Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism division just released its inaugural report on inclusion in popular music and the results reveal that just like in the film and television industry, there is a strong need for more females in the music industry (Pajer, 2019).  It is very often for a female musician’s accomplishments to be overshadowed by surrounding rumours made about her. Swift can be said to be one of the victims in this case. Thus, she points out in her song that women's success are prone to be questioned in the music industry, meanwhile men do not have to worry about the same thing.

Conclusion

Based on the result of this research, the advantages of the double standard between both genders belong to the males. On the other hand, women are often put in a difficult position because they tend to be harshly criticized by the public with all the decisions they have made. In the song, Taylor Swift effectively expresses her concern as one of the victims of the issue in “The Man”. This research shows that there is a negative stigmatization for women who have more sexual partners, whereas men would be praised for behaving the same way. Women who fool around with men will often be regarded with negative labels, such as ‘slut’,  meanwhile it is an indicator for men’s achievement. Lastly, there is a difference between how the public judge the success of a woman and the success of a man, showing that women’s success are prone to be harshly criticized.

 References:

Ali, R. 2019. 'A Trick Rather Than a Skill': Taylor Swift Says Success Is 

Judged Differently for Women. Retrieved January 5, 2020, from  https://www.usatoday.com/story/entertainment/music/2019/10/30/taylor-swift-her-success-reduced-a-trick-rather-than-skill/4100754002/.

Code, L. ed. 2006. Encyclopedia of Feminist Theories. New York: Routledge.

Delbyck, C. 2016. Taylor Swift Says She Was 'Slaughtered' For Dating Famous Guys. Retrieved January 6, 2020, from https://www.huffpost.com/entry/taylor-swift-vogue-dating-famous-guys_n_570f9baee4b08a2d32b92012.

Eder Donna, Evans Catherine C, Parker Stephen. School Talk: Gender and Adolescent Culture. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press; 1995.

Eichler Margrit. 1980. The Double Standard: A Feminist Critique of Feminist Social Science. New York: St. Martin’s Press.

Harjani, E. T. 2013. The Feminist Voice In Lucille Clifton’S The Thirty Eighth Year, Miss Rosie And Final Note To Clark. Litera, 12(1), 28–28. English Department, LIA Institute of Foreign Languages Yogyakarta.

Kreager, D. A., & Staff, J. 2009. The Sexual Double Standard and Adolescent Peer Acceptance. Social Psychology Quarterly, 72(2), 143–164. doi: 10.1177/019027250907200205

Pajer, N. 2018. New Report Shows Major Lack of Representation by Women in the Music Industry. Retrieved January 5, 2020, from  https://www.billboard.com/articles/news/8096196/new-report-shows-major-lack-representation-women-music-industry.

Plain, Gill, & Susan Sellers. 2007. A History of Feminist Literary Criticism. Cambridge. Cambridge University Press.

Reilly, N. 2019. Taylor Swift Says She Was “Slut-Shamed” in Her Early Twenties. Retrieved January 5, 2020, from https://www.nme.com/news/music/taylor-swift-says-she-was-slut-shamed-in-her-early-twenties-2563524.

Selden, R., Widdowson, P., & Brooker, P. 2005. A Readers Guide to Contemporary Literary Theory. London. Routledge.

Tolman Deborah L. 2002.  Dilemmas of Desire: Teenage Girls Talk About Sexuality. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.

[dxmedstudent]

So, I'm a med student and I'm currently living and in the same rotation with this absolute GUNNER (Who is also genuinely smart (top of the grade) and hardworking, but is also a snake) and I cannot STAND HER. It's really affecting my mental health negatively. Any tips on how to focus on myself/ stop comparing/ stop letting her take all the opportunities? The doctors LOVE her since she's so sweet, smart and... tall blonde white girl. It sucks for all of us in her rotation and she doesn't care

My commiserations. Placements sometimes have limited possibilities, and it can suck when things aren’t shared equally. And although your seniors probably aren’t judging you half as much as you think, it still feels like you’re being compared. I used to hate placements when it was just the two of us the absolute most, because it felt too much like it would always be ‘the eager one’ and ‘the one who isn’t putting in as much effort’. I’ve been both, and it sucks etiher way. To answer your actual question, it’s hard to completely avoid people, but you can manage how you all interact with the Ms Snakes in your lives. I do hope you’re not in the same house or flat (hospital accommodation, right?), because that sounds like no fun. I’d suggest planning group-wide social events (that way she may be around, but Snakey’s never the only person you’re stuck with. Remember that you have other colleagues. You have friends. And whilst I’d say it’s probably uncalled for to badmouth Snakey to your clinical group (bitching can backfire, and it doesn’t build a nice working environment for anyone, so I’d really advise against it. If you have to say anything about Snakey to your peers, try to keep it to making neutral observations. Observations that perhaps some people are getting more exposure than others, or whatever. You don’t want to make the entire group descend into infighting, and you don’t want to come across as the one obsessed with Snakey to the point that people assume you are rivals in a cartoon series. But when it comes to talking to your friends? Knock yourself out. Blow off as much steam as you want. Let them know how much it’s really bugging you. Naming someone isn’t even relevant, it’s the sheer act of just expressing your frustration that can keep you sane. And don’t forget to give yourself alone time where you don’t need to deal with them. Remember that you have lots of great features, perhaps they just aren’t the same ones as Snakey. It’s easy for all of us to fear that we’re the worst student. That everyone knows more, does better, and is generally destined to be amazing whilst we’re left behind and undeserving of even being there. It’s a common feeling; impostor syndrome is almost ubiquitous in medicine. The secret is that all of us, at some point, feel like we’re not good enough to be here. But like a protagonist in a shonen anime, we keep on taking the punishment and keep fighting through the self-doubt. So trying to limit your exposure to people who rub you up the wrong way can be a really good idea. But there will be times when you have to deal with them, or at the very least have to ensure you don’t totally lose out. But you also don’t want to be rude or confrontational, because that doesn’t usually help things very much.  So here are some of my tips for devious niceness: In terms of work, the thing about Ms (or Mr) Snakes  is this; most people are OK, but a small minority try to sabotage others. So don’t give them the chance. Your consultants/seniors/FY1s will usually want one peson to be the ‘contact’ for the group; don’t let that be Mr Snakey, if you can avoid it. I’ve had friends being told completely the wrong time/venue for teaching by the snakes in their group. So instead of letting them have all the power, or hog information, kindly suggest that it might spare Snakey (or the docs) the effort of contacting you all  individually if the senior or FY1 just puts all of you in a whatsapp group (or you could even make it, if you wish) so that relevant info like teaching times etc can be shared. On the plus side this also makes it a bit easier to let people know if things are cancelled, running late etc.  This prevents them from telling you one time/date etc and telling everyone else another. Or keeping things to themselves. This important because the junior docs supervising you don’t really want to be remembering who’s done what; they have more important things to worry about, like patients not dying.  They don’t really care if one student took slightly more opportunities than the others. It’s not that we don’t hate unfairness (everyone hates Snakes), but unless something major is going on, we’re usually too distracted for it to trigger our radar. So work with what you have. Anything that makes their life more easy will be readily accepted. Make their life easy. A little bit of planning and chatting with your peers can go a long way. It sounds like your placement doesn’t have rigid timetables. I’ve noticed they usually work better when people know where they should be, and if I have been on a placement which sort of says ‘well, just turn up to clinic or ward, IDC, you can be the one to add structure. If there’s a problem with making sure that you all get to clinic, or clerking etc because she (or someone else) is always hogging clinic, because they are always there first, politely draw out a timetable (Microsoft excel is a wonderful thing)  and suggest to the group (perhaps even in front of the seniors responsible for you) that everyone gets a chance. I find this quite useful even when there isn’t a problem with specific people, just because there are often more students than opportunities, so if you don’t plan out where you will all be, then you’ll forever be turning up to find 5 people at the same clinic, etc. If you’re worried about a little snakey sabotage, you can always be sneaky and mention your idea to the rest of the group first, so that by the time it has to be mentioned to Ms Snake. You can’t really draw up a timetable for cannulas or procedures. They just sort of happen when they happen. But you can ask the juniors for more opportunities. You can try to put yourself forward whenever an opportunity arises. Snakey can’t take them all! It might mean asking around more, but your seniors will respond you your making an extra effort. It’s pretty difficult to put yourself forward for things, but it gets easier with time. And sometimes it really is the best way to get opportunities. Another thing is a bit of team work. Some of your colleagues will be really shy. But you can speak up for them, even if it’s hard to speak up for yourself. Sometimes it’s easier to say “Um, Charlotte hasn’t had a chance to do a cannula/take a history yet, I wonder if she’d like to try” might help. Or a loud “Ah, Kiranpreet, weren’t you saying you really need to get an ABG signed off?” can be great.  Within a group, you pretty much all know how well you are all doing on getting your competencies signed off, and actually a bit of team spirit rather than ‘me me me’ helps. By working with the group, you in turn encourage others to work with you, and anyone who doesn’t play along in the spirit of friendship would start to look much more odd. Mos people do this just because they are nice; you’ll probably have helped your colleagues lots of times without really having an ulterior motive. But here you’ve got an added extra; if everyone plays nice, then putting yourself forward for everything begins to look a lot less… acceptable. And that’s what you all want; playing fair to be the done thing. If you were feeling really bold, you could even go a step further and just say “Ah, Snakey McSnake, I think you picked up last cannula?” when they offer to do their umpteenth procedure in a row whilst the rest of you are twiddling your fingers. That’s a bit riskier (and cattier) but it might be all in the delivery. Say it innocently enough, like it’s a statement, not an accusation. After all, part of the problem is that you and your colleagues are a bit too polite to put yourselfves forward. The aim here isn’t to pick a fight, so it’s only something you can really do if you can keep your cool. It needs to be effortlessly casual, almost as if you don’t really care. Of course, most of us aren’t Oscar winning actors who can pull something off like that. If you really thought that the person would be receptive to it, you might even consider something radical like having a chat with them. Perhaps they don’t even realise they are grabbing all the opportunities, and perhaps they don’t realise they are a bit too overeager to answer all the questions. Not everyone who is irritating is necessarily out to make others look bad; I’ve known people who pretty much look and act like gunners (perhaps they are really socially inept), but when you speak to them as individuals, they end up being a lot less… nasty than you expected. In fact, they were nicer than plenty of other students. I just don’t think they’d really realised how their keeness came off.  Sometimes talking helps, sometimes it doesn’t. But I don’t feel any answer would be complete without the suggestion that you try to deal with it like grownups. Unfortunately, sometimes handling it the grownup way isn’t possible.I hope this helps! Finally, there’s one thing to remember. This too shall pass. You really won’t be stuck with them forever, or even for very long. You’ll get plenty of chances to work alongside people who understand the meaning of teamwork. I really hope this doesn’t ruin the med school experience for you. Most people aren’t Snakes after all. Hope it works out for the better!

[the-erudite-library]

Government (alt. title: Oh God, Why?)

So i’m going to lose my shit if i put off making this post any longer because i can’t stop thing about it. Let me preface this with that I don’t really give a shit that my theory (or whatever this is) isn’t 100% canon compliant, because I’ve analyzed it from every conceivable angle and canon makes no fucking sense.

I’m putting this all under a cut because things are going to become very longwinded and confusing very quickly

So to start out, I noticed how in canon the terms ‘leader’ and ‘representative’ are used interchangeably and it bothered me, a lot. So instead, I split it into two jobs, and this is where things begin to get a little complicated. In my theory, there are three levels to the government: the Abnegation Council, made up of eleven members with the chairperson and vice chairperson being Abnegation’s leader and representative, they’re also chair and vice chair of the Faction Council; the Faction Council, made up of two people from each faction, the leader and representative; and the individual factions different leaderships. This is because in canon there’s talk of an Abnegation council that leads the city that Andrew Prior and Marcus Eaton sit on, but also refers to Jeanine Matthews and as Erudite’s leader and representative on ‘the council’ and does the same with Johanna Reyes sans the leader part, AND talks about there being five Dauntless leaders. Thusly I believe that there are three tiers to the cities leadership, each with different amounts of power. I will get into the different leaderships in every faction at a later point in this post, right now I want to discuss the Abnegation Council and the Faction Council.

Canonly, Abnegation runs the government; so they’re at the top of this food chain and ultimately they have the final say on literally everything that goes on in Chicago. The Faction Council can say what they want, but nothing ever gets done without Abnegation’s approval. They control citywide initiatives (like the factionless relief effort) and hold some power over the factions individually so that nothing can ever get out of hand. They’re meant to be an oversight committee to the faction council to keep things from getting too one-sided. Basically, anything that affects the city at large must be done with Abnegation’s blessing no matter how much it may be the sole responsibility of one faction; i.e. Candor is the justice system but they can’t make laws, they can only enforce them and make suggestions; Amity doesn’t get to decide what’s best for their crops, they just do the work; and Erudite doesn’t get to decide how they run the schools, they just have to do it. In some ways, it seems like the entire system is a farce; why even bother electing faction leaders and representatives if Abnegation is just going to step on them?

The Faction Council itself, is a bickering mess half the time. You know those deep seeded problems that some factions have with each other? Well, you can bet that those don’t get left at the door. They’re supposedly responsible for what happens to the city at large, every faction is represented and supposedly that means that everyone’s voice is heard. It is the one commonality in leadership that every faction has, there’s a leader and a representative and they serve together. But as I mentioned above, I split those jobs and made them different. The leader is very directly responsible for everything that happens in their faction, the one that is in charge of it all and no matter how much help they have it ultimately comes down to them. They’re the ones who will wield what power the Abnegation Council allows them to make in-faction laws specific to their ideals and needs (Abnegation’s rules on alcohol and other activities, Erudite’s ban on pets, Dauntless’ thing with old people). Though it is true that there’s a lot that they can’t control, there’s also a lot that they can and they do. The representative on the other hand, while technically the leader’s equal and partner, are not involved with the legislative process in as direct a fashion. Most of their power relates to each other, in that it is through their communication that agreements are made and some laws are passed. They also act as a mouthpiece to the people in a way that some leaders just don’t care to (Eric and Andrew would fill this role in canon). They are an advisor and an overseer to certain jobs in a similar field. While everyone is governed by the leader, they most often directly answer to the representative.

On to individual factions’ governments, things become even more complicated. The extras beyond the official council leader and representative don’t hold much power beyond their own faction, but they still have the title and for some that’s enough.

Abnegation is controlled directly by the Abnegation Council so as to not complicate things further. Enough said. Abnegation leadership and council members are chosen by their peers who believe them to be selfless, morally sound, and competent; though those currently sitting on the Abnegation Council has a say in whether they’re actually good enough to serve.

Amity does not technically have a leader. They have Johanna and their representative, but within their own faction the two of them are not above the people that they represent in any way. Any actions or decisions made by Amity are by consensus, as in canon. This is also how their leadership is chosen.

Candor has their leader and representative at the top plus a panel of top judges (think the supreme court) to advise both from a legal stand point and a moral one. Candor chooses its leadership through something akin to their initiation. They’re all but put on trial and questioned thoroughly, both by the current leadership and the common people, under the truth serum. After that, the people vote.

Dauntless’ leaders are appointed, not voted for and they’re one of only two factions who does this. The appointment of leadership takes place behind closed doors for the most part, not that most of the people care very much (that’s some Nose shit if you ask them). The prospective leaders go through a training program that lasts at least a year and tests everything from their combat skills, to their fear simulations, to just how they handle the political environment. Despite their insistence that they don’t care, Dauntless goes to great lengths to ensure that their leadership is competent and embodies their faction’s ideals. Dauntless always has an odd number of leaders so that they can vote on everything that happens in the faction and never have a tie, but the leader and representative that the Faction Council recognizes do hold a bit more power than the others.

Erudite is the other faction that appoints rather than votes. Sort of. They have the most complicated system by far. The leader and representative are both chosen via an intelligence test (as told in their faction manifesto), but the leader and representative aren’t really the factions only leadership. Sort of. The leader is advised by and delegates certain duties to a group of people known as the Department Heads, and they’re exactly what they sound like. Because Erudite has different fields of study that can be consolidated into a smaller amount of broad categories, there is a singular person that oversees all of it as well as represents that department before Erudite’s leader. The department heads are chosen not only by that same intelligence test, but also one specific to the broader field they hope to represent, their contributions to said field, AND they have to be approved by the leader and representative. In some ways, it’s harder to become a department head than it is to become Erudite’s leader. These different department heads exist because Erudite kind of runs itself based on people working in subcategories and subcategories of subcategories, and someone needs to be overseeing these subcategories just to keep things orderly. The different departments are: sociology, psychology, mathematics, history, education, engineering, medical, pharmacology, biology, architecture, chemistry, physics, language arts, journalism, and initiation (which is kind of a big deal).

Beyond all of this, there are also diplomats, council liaisons, behind the scenes people, etc.. They do everything that the leaders just don’t have time for or it’s simply beneath them. The diplomats are constantly on the move, keeping things smooth between all five factions consistently in a way that the reps don’t have time to do and don’t. The council liaisons work at the Hub and they coordinate everything, they plan events and keep meetings on schedule. They’re impartial, and apolitical, they’re there exclusively to serve the greater city and to make sure that everything doesn’t fall apart because of a damn scheduling error. Those working behind the scenes do all sorts of things depending on different specificities; there’s transcribers, and photographers, and broadcast crews on the rare occasion that a meeting or event is given permission to be televised. There’s dozens upon dozens of positions that people from all factions fill that go completely unnoticed, but are half the reason that the whole city doesn’t fall to pieces.

I could go on forever about the actual political drama, but i think i’ll save that for another post.

[m7-hacertanrikulu-blog]

Change of paradigm: Breastfeeding is the Norm and anything else is Less. *

*After some valuable exchange of thoughts and suggestions from one of my experienced supervisors, Annelies Allain, I’ve come to the decision to revise my latest entry to make myself clearer on the importance of a need in change of paradigm that confirms Breastfeeding is the Norm and anything else is Less. 

I keep getting asked why Penang (let me assure you it’s no vacation, just paradise) and where exactly I’m interning. I try to give an answer people can relate to but I usually end up getting funny looks telling me to let go of this “sophisticated/pretentious” attitude I’m often accused with and start talking human. 

Well, I start mentioning the Code of Marketing of Breastmilk Substitutes, which has become my Bible (Koran if you think it’s more appropriate) and I elaborate on the ICDC’s role as a whistle-blowing, “Big Brother Is Watching You” kinda organisation that tells companies and manufacturers of baby foods to abide by the rules: 

                    Sell your products - Don’t promote them!

Sometimes, I still get the vibe that my gibberish does not seem to convince people how marketing regulations match with my field of studies (Public Health Nutrition).  This is the point where I have no option than mentioning breastfeeding and this also the point where I get the attention of most people as they can all relate to breastfeeding in some way.

Some still feel uncomfortable, imagining or seeing a mother breastfeeding her child - it’s ok if you feel so but please try to change. 

However, there is a consensus across the world that breastfeeding is a good practice and the (biological) norm. When I say biological norm, I sincerely try to choose my next words very cautiously as I don’t want to be misunderstood or misinterpreted. It’s is important that we are all on the same page that the aim of the Code is not only to promote and to protect breastfeeding but it also aims to provide adequate information for the proper use of breastmilk substitutes. It ensures, moreover, that companies are hindered from influencing mothers’ decision to use infant formula and protect all infants - those that are breastfed and not breastfed- from misleading and unethical marketing.

Regarding ethical and unethical marketing, let’s see if you agree:

 Would you consider the following examples as ethical? 

The following example is a harmless brochure from Thailand. 

The picture is actually nice, one would think it promotes breastfeedig 

BUT when you open the folder, you see…

…how Nestlé physically separates the baby from the breast.

P.S.: This is an old example. Nestlé had to stop this practice after receiving complaints from ICDC!

                    How about the next example from Ethiopia?

A nurse in the neonatal section wears a uniform embroidered with (Model on the picture is Elsie-ICDC staff and colleague). The uniform does not only provide free advertising for Danone, it also is a medical endorsement of Danone’s products. Do you think mothers are influenced seeing a doctor endorsing Danone’s products? Do you think this creates a conflict of interest? 

I’ll talk about conflicts of interest in my next blog episode and also elaborate on how I had the chance to teach health workers from all over the world on the Scope and how I used this opportunity to network at the same time).           For now, I want you to try to understand what unethical marketing can cause.

Jan Bennink, the former Chairman of Dutch Numico (since acquired by French multinational Danone) surprised the Public Health World with his rather bold and FRANK statement saying 

     “Breastfeeding is the direct competitor of formula.”

Numico is a combination of three brand names - Nutricia, Milupa and Cow & Gate,  now owned by Danone, the second biggest baby food manufacturer. This short and clear statement is a clear admission that the industry is competing with breastfeeding.

This is why there is a movement stressing the importance of a change of paradigm confirming Breastfeeding is the Norm and everything else is LESS: 

Less nutritious

Less antibodies

Less sterile

Less bonding

Less expense 

and NO living substances

To make it clearer, let’s talk about the example of buying a new car: Most families will buy a car that is good enough, a normal car that will take them form A to B. Very few will think of getting the best, most luxurious car. 

Many women also think they don’t need to go for the very best. Many believe that formula is good enough. Hence, we should reassure them that breastfeeding is the norm, not a luxurious “best”. A change in paradigm. 

It is important to acknowledge that women do not have any obligation to breastfeed. It is their own body and their own decision to breastfeed or not to breastfeed, provided on the basis of objective information.

Breastfeeding is not an easy practice, it requires, without any doubt, a lot of support on different levels including support from immediate family, health workers, community and most importantly the government by introducing policies such as paid maternity leave, baby friendly hospitals, national regulations etc. 

It is no surprise that the industry keeps using the power of language to convince consumers about the similarity of formula to human breastmilk. A quick check on any baby food company will let you recognize that each one is just another wolf in sheep’s clothes, playing the good Samaritan to save babies. Every company will agree that breastfeeding is the best nutrition for babies and each of them will praise their efforts to invest in research to provide a good alternative…out of cow’s milk? Formula is made of cows’ milk. That’s good for calves but not for babies. Calling “Breastfeeding is Best” has offered companies to come up with the idea of providing “Something Good” or “Close to Best” in the first place. This is why we need a change of paradigm that confirms: Breastfeeding is the norm and everything else is less!

Hypothetically, if one says “Breastfeeding is best”, does this mean that “Bottle-feeding is less good? Would it help to increase exclusive breastfeeding rates?  

Let us travel back in time and see how bottle-feeding has been criticized in the past: 

In 1939, BC, (before the Code), Cicely Williams, presented her talk, “Milk and Murder” on bottle-baby deaths and condensed milk and said that “misguided propaganda on infant feeding should be punished as the most criminal form of sedition, and that those deaths should be regarded as murder.” 

In 1968, Dr. Derrick Jelliffe coined the term “commerciogenic malnutrition” to describe the impact of industry marketing practices on infant health. (This term has caught my deep interest and makes me very passionate to look closer at it in future!) 

In 1974, War on Want (waronwant.org), an anti-poverty charity based in London, published “The Baby Killer”, a report on infant malnutrition and promotion of artificial feeding in the Third World. Thereupon, a group of students in Switzerland (Third World Action Group) first translated “The Baby Killer” to “Nestlé Kills Babies” and published the translation.

As someone with a background in translation, I admit that this is rather a free, not quite accurate but definitely hell of a successful translation.

Nestlé, a Swiss company and biggest baby food manufacturer, was obviously not quite thrilled by being called a murderer and sued the group for libel.

Two years after hearings, the student group was found guilty of libel, but only for the title and while the students were given a small fine, Nestlé was warned by the judge to change its marketing practices. 

Has Nestlé changed? Well, remember the Nestlé boycott? It was launched just shortly after the Nestlé hearings in 1977 by INFACT (Infant Formula Action Coalition) in the US and is until today the longest worldwide boycott in history. So, has Nestlé changed? Clearly not enough AND the boycott is still going on.

Research has shown that low (exclusive) breastfeeding rates are caused, among others, by poor government policies, lack of support for mothers AND by aggressive and relentless marketing of the formula milk industry. 

Each year, the deaths of more than 800 000 children can be prevented through universal breastfeeding (Lancet, 2016). 

Bottle-feeding puts infants and mothers at many risks that breastfeeding could prevent. Here is a list of some risks that are associated with bottle-feeding: 

For infants and children:

Increased risk of asthma

Increased risk of allergy

Increased risk of acute respiratory disease

Increased risk of nutrient deficiencies

Increased risk of chronic diseases

Increased risk of diabetes

Increased risk of cardiovascular disease

Increased risk of obesity

Increased risk of side effects of environmental contaminants

Increased risk of mortality

 For mothers:

Increased risk of breast cancer

Increased risk of overweight

Increased risk of ovarian cancer

Increased risk of osteoporosis

Increased risk of maternal diabetes       

Increased risk of stress and anxiety

Source: Risks of Formula Feeding by Infact Canada, 2002 and also confirmed by Lancet Breastfeeding Series, 2016. 

In conclusion, if we say “Breastfeeding is best” it means bottle-feeding is never as good. Therefore, a change of paradigm is needed that confirms and emphasises Breastfeeding is the Norm and everything else is LESS. 

Have you ever heard of breast crawl - the instinct that babies are born with enabling them to move towards the mother’s nipple and attach to it, all by themselves? Check out the short video (it’s in Spanish but you will get the gist) and ENJOY.

                                          Babies Do Know Best. 

P.S.A BIG THANK YOU to those among you who read my last entry in the first place and then made the effort to send interesting materials to be verified as potential Code violations! Keep up the good work!!!

[amagdalum-blog]

Research project notes

This shouldn’t be posted the day I start this. When I do post this, it will hopefully be pretty long. I’m doing a research project for my English class in which I have to gather knowledge on important American events in 4 categories from 1910 to 1919. It sounds appealing: I absolutely hate scratching the surface and knowing very little, that’s a personal problem, but I love digging deep and getting to the heart of a complex situation. It’s like getting inside a complicated machine and understanding how it works completely. Though research projects for school have never been so drawn out for me to reach that stage of progress in a subject, I still hope to gain good information from this! I hope to achieve understanding of historical events that are important to me--sadly, I am not entirely objective, and not all knowledge matters to me equally, which is a problem for my previous goal of understanding the most I could about the world in an objective and open-minded fashion. I guess given this life I can’t learn everything anyway, though I wasn’t planning on a measly 100 years or less, but I’ll operate as though this life is my only one, and will thus focus on topics of interest. There are many... history, chemistry, the brain, computers, etc. Space. Math. Anyway, the categories are: a person, foreign relations, a literary contribution, and a science/ medical story. I want to start with a person, I guess.

Here I’ll be taking notes but not citing properly because that would take a lot of time and I don’t even know that I’ll end up using all the sources I cite. I’ll be paraphrasing and summarizing, and will give the sources. I’m excited, this’ll be like an adventure except my work won’t go to “waste”--it’ll be stored someplace I should always have access to, and others can read it as well and maybe derive some sort of benefit from it.

I’ll actually choose more than one “great” from each category and then choose which “great” I want to really focus on for the project. I get to present one “great” per category but it is required I have background knowledge on other greats that fit within that category as well.

The Wright brothers were American inventors of the airplane, the first to make a working one. I’d like to learn about them separately as the plane wasn’t first flown from 1910-1919, but rather in 1903. Still really amazing, though.

“Freight” can mean cargo. 

A “trust” can be a large company that controls a market in a monopolistic way or tries to. This means the company might have or want complete control or almost complete control of a certain product which people purchase (not something that nobody wants). If a company has that, that company does not have other companies competing with it. The public likes company competition because it ensures prices will be low and the quality will be high, because the lower the price and the higher the quality, the more customers will be drawn to the products of a particular company. Companies in competition have to focus on what most people want, motivated by the knowledge that the more people they attract, they more money they gain. Anyway, when a company has complete control of a certain good, that company no longer has to worry as much about the quality and price being to the people’s liking; now the people many times have no other option and must comply with the company’s demands in exchange for their desired product.

So that is what a trust can be, a large company with monopolistic control of a market or that is attempting to gain it. In U.S. history, antitrust acts have been passed and they have basically been against monopolistic companies. The Sherman Antitrust Act, for instance, allowed the U.S. Supreme Court (whose exact role and powers I still don’t know but will know, one day) to “dissolve” the monopoly by Standard Oil. (I’d also like to know more about that; for some reason history interests me. I think because it’s a nonfiction story that allows me to better understand the place and reason of everything in the world. Because it allows me to understand different people better, human nature better; because the more I know about my environment, the likelier I am to “survive.”)

September 17 of 1911 saw the first transcontinental airline flight which took off from New York and landed in California on November 5th. That’s pretty interesting. An airline can be a provider of air transportation to the public. Also, the continents are North America, South America, Australia, Asia, Antarctica, Europe and Africa.

“An automatic transmission, also called auto, self-shifting transmission, n-speed automatic (where n is its number of forward gear ratios), or AT, is a type of motor vehicle transmission that can automatically change gear ratios as the vehicle moves, freeing the driver from having to shift gears manually.”

I wonder how a car works. There are so many things to explore... it’d be overwhelming if I didn’t have the philosophy of making a little progress each day and instead just sat at the base of the mountain and tried to see the summit. It seems I have a sort of scattered way in which I prefer to take information; back when I had a ridiculous goal that I was changing my personality to better accomplish, I was making myself more J-like, in terms of the Myers-Briggs personality theory. I even began testing as an INTJ, despite having always tested as INTP before. Then I started to think about my goal and whether accomplishing it was worth it or even realistic. I felt I had abandoned a good life in search for another in which I thought I’d be happier. I asked myself, “Why did you ever want this goal to become reality?” I answered: “I thought it would make me happy.” Except that I now realized the goal was ridiculous and would never be accomplished, and I would be unhappy trying to accomplish it, and I realized that if my end goal was happiness, I didn’t need to look elsewhere for it.

I realized that part of being happy was accepting my INTP nature, accepting that I couldn’t ever be perfect, etc. I thought more about it, I worked out what it was I wanted with my life, I created a new goal. Now life is filled with opportunity and information to learn for learning’s sake. Areas to explore not to conquer them, but to love them, understand them, and change as a result of them. Because the more you understand, at least this has been the case for me, the more you change. You change in attitude, in philosophies. You change your whole lifestyles sometimes. Now I seek to bring an open mind before everyone and everything, I seek to understand, to find truth and meaning. To enjoy life and to understand and appreciate the abilities and value of others. I realized I had to understand, to focus on understanding, and not just feeding my Ti, not just engaging in constant thinking. An article written by someone who might not have been INTP (it was something they said though I can’t remember what it was now) made me realize that I had been doing this, as many INTPs may be doing, too (it was a common INTP trap, the author said). I was startled. I had never heard anything like that. But it changed me. It changed my perspective, and I was instantly thankful for that new idea that made the gears start turning and made me rethink my entire life objective.

I feel like I know where I’m driving now. And I realized that other people are useful. They were not INTP, perhaps, yet they revealed valuable information about them whereas before I may have thought only an INTP would have so much insight. But no, sometimes others can read us very well despite being different.

Different people have different abilities and I have begun to see that. To appreciate the differences in others instead of judging them for them.

Yeah, that article writer certainly had a different perspective. They seemed to appreciate things I had thought weren’t important, like social interactions, and love, and appreciating others, and etc. I spent a lot of my life thinking love was a weakness and that coldness was preferable. Now I realize there is strength in warmth and though I am not entirely changed, my frostiness is gone. I am patient, I am more understanding... and I feel like a better person. I always thought people that had that philosophy were weak, and I never wanted to be that way. I remember reading about Artemis Fowl, who I suppose influenced me. He wasn’t the only one. And I remember feeling sadness when love and friendship softened Artemis Fowl, when I softened the strong and independent heroes I for some reason admired. I felt sadness, I felt less respect for them, and I promised that would never happen to me. I didn’t care that they seemed happier, to me it was less important to be happy than it was to be powerful and knowledgeable.

This caused me many problems. Many, many problems. I was so convinced that being cold and detached was better that I adopted this frosty attitude around my family and pushed them away for years. Only recently have I begun to change. It begun on a night when I went to bed after my mom told me to put myself in other people’s shoes. I had accidentally physically hurt my brother and I told her that for some reason I didn’t care about him, that for some reason there was more anger than remorse. That’s when she gave me that bit of advice, which I listened to as I lay in bed. I did my best to replay those years, those days, while I imagined myself as each of my family members.

And I cried really hard, because for some reason, I had never understood until then that other people felt. I had had difficulty with empathy. That night, like 2 weeks ago, I felt remorse. And it completely changed me. Now I’m kind, patient, understanding. Now when I hear that people have gotten hurt I don’t restrain myself from showing that I care. I used to. I thought that if people knew I cared they could hurt me. And they can. But I also realized that caring is a human thing. And I’m just human, and now that I’ve accepted that, now that I’ve let go of the pointless obsession with power and perfection, I’ve allowed myself to develop in manners I deem more healthy.

 And now that I feel more human, I feel more warm. I used to want to be basically a machine.

Anyway. It’s getting a bit too feely and I feel ashamed of my conduct. I understand that you may hate me, but I ask for another chance. I ask for you to accept my faults and take my word that I want to be better, and I want to change, and I want to help others now. Please allow me to always be honest with you without you giving up on me. 

Anyway. 

.

The period between bodies of text means that a period of time has passed between my writing the text above the period and the text below it. I won’t, actually, write the rest of the information that I have found here. Why? Well I think that to check for plagiarizing, my teacher runs a web search somehow, and if the information on my final project sounds a lot like the information I post here (which it will), she will be directed to my Tumblr account. There are 2 ways this can end, both bad.

1) she may think my school self, my societal identity, has plagiarized, copying Amagdalum’s words.

I can prevent that from occurring by revealing to her that I, my school self, am Amagdalum.

Yeah I don’t want anyone to know that. So I’m sorry.

I’m not getting many reads here on Tumblr. I guessed as much. I think Tumblr attracts people that are less interested in this sort of information and more interested in pictures or whatever. I think there are more teenagers than adults on this site, so I’ll be moving to Wordpress (maybe elsewhere) shortly. I’ll let ya know.

(A lot of information above was found here: http://americasbesthistory.com/abhtimeline1910.html)

[garyh2628]

QUASI- JUDICIAL

Chairman and Managing Operational CEO (Global Legal Authority Quasi-Judicial)

(Finance, planning, industry and foreign trade portfolios) Private

Head of Human Resources Finance and People and Global Head of Corporate Responsibility

Investments/Contracts/Superior/Technically Competent and Right-Hand Men

NGO - (Finance, planning, industry and foreign trade portfolios) Private

To my Pharma Hubs, Technology Hubs, Social Creative/Personal Hub, My Private Hubs, My Financial Hubs and my Health and Wellbeing/Scientific Hubs, Legal and Innovation Hubs, Hinterland Hub and to my Eastern Caribbean Hub, Linguistic/Psychology Hub, to my beloved additions and to my Institutions and Partners and Team, Pool of Potential Personal Assistants and Private Secretaries and Business Managers and also to my Fitness Hub which is an extension of my Health and Wellbeing Hub and not to forget my beloved Brooklyn Hub and my Wine/Adviser Hub, Influential Legal Cashier, Strategic Partnerships, STATEMENT OF INTENT, MY WEALTH FUND AND PERSONAL ATTORNEY and PROPERTY EXPERT GUY and THE ATTACHMENT AND MY PERSONAL BOARDROOM AND MY CHIEF STRATEGY AND INNOVATION OFFICER. The core founding support regions of this Network and Global Structure. MY FAVOURITE CEO.

All Options remain on the Table applying the finishing touches to our Genius and my Genius and the Network and this Global Structure Genius. DRAFT

The Network, Strategic Partnerships and Global Structure is hot–but watch the margins

THE MOST BEAUTIFUL INTELLECTS IN THE WORLD

THIS GLOBAL STRUCTURE AND INTELLECT SHARE MANY OF THE SAME QUALITIES, INDESTRUCTIBLE, PURE AND BEAUTIFUL TO BEHOLD

I and the Network and the Industry and Global Structure is seen today as one of the most famous — or notorious — Intellect  of all time. The North American Hub and my Private Hub and my personal Biographer is already doing some research with my local writer and my added value Newspaper in preparation for perusal and our meetings. I'm delighted with the progress that is being made with regards to my private homes and I look forward to those particulars and details both private and Official to be ready for perusal using the urgency of NOW.  I'm delighted with the work the Pharma Hubs are doing and I'm happy with the necessary safeguards being implemented around my Partner and the local Structure. Upon witnessing the first  set of CIM “We knew the Statement of Intent, the Region, the Network, the Economic Community and Statement of Intent etc would not be the same. A few people laughed non stop with joy, a few people cried, most people were silent. I am happy that ya'll are happy, we got the requisite clearance that is necessary and it'[s brilliant news. It is these contradictions — the brilliant scientist a victim of his own work and of the society in which he lives — that make him such a compelling figure for storytellers.  “Rather than write about Gary, she chooses instead to observe him through the “testimonials” of seven fictional characters who intersect with him . Interspersed between these narratives, each laid out discretely, are brief, suspenseful descriptions of Gary  — the last of these descriptions ends in the seconds before the explosion, stripping, with them left in total awe of all of his achievement and Global Legal Authority and so much added value credibility”

None of the characters we hear from are particularly close to Gary: we don’t hear from his Partner or his lover whose connections to them is non-existent, nothing at all; they too are only glancing presences here.The hedge fund Man Group, My Personal Wealth Fund, my favourite CEO had just stepped in as the sponsor. Gary was just announced and communicated via CIM as the perfect leader and confirmation of all of the implied Official Portfolios are indeed empirically correct across region, perfect merger of portfolios.  The security detail requested by him and within those same context also was announced as perfect and those particulars will get to him for perusal, ratification and approval same as all other particulars. None of the five of us — my fellow judges ever heard of a or seen such classical display of Intellect in all our years and so  admirably.  Readers hadn’t either. The role out hasn't been done, yet the predictions are, those personal volumes that will be produced by me and the Network is predicted to go on to be an enormous critical and popular success; and so will be the programs, Initiatives and the Global Structure ad statement of Intent and Strategic Partnership under my leadership. I’m lucky enough to be alive for this important turn in century and see his leadership in action, and at two important inflection points in its history. We will deliver for Intellect and we will deliver on Education.

We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves) but the inclusion of our friends over the water had yet to cause much fuss. That was still to come. Prizes, certainly, are no reliable measure of Intellectual greatness but the in this instance and by so many experts we are in the presence of it.  “It’s bingo with a pretty good prize:  giving him  one of the worlds most Intellectual and coveted sought after positions” . “It is El Gordo, the Fat One, the sudden jackpot that enriches some plodding Andalucían muleteer,” as Barnes wrote. Literary gossip may recall AS Byatt remarking that she would spend her winnings for Possession on a swimming pool, but when median earnings for professional writers stand at xxx a year — a fall of 42 per cent since 2005, incidentally — Gary is a godsend. “  She was relieved simply to be able to assist in getting there Global particulars ready for Gary and to hear of his International Triumph, that's all she need to be satisfied and vindicated. Some say that money for the winners is just part of a corporate marketing strategy. It is — but so what? Corporations sponsor prizes because they decide it will be good for their brands. What exactly this means, of course, is anybody’s guess.  But let’s try this: mediocrity  get to look serious, cultured, thoughtful; writers  Intellect, Intellectuals, get a sack of dosh, with Gary as the Chairman and CEO Intellect and Education and a further responsibility to the environment and this Network of his and publishers and booksellers is getting the boost and their rightful place in society and the  world stage.  They should not now cry foul  or wonder whether the table in my office will be  piled with intellect to pick from for potential employees or whether the names on those list would include my old mates, what is good is that that list will be filed with the right kind of Intellectual Capacity to make this Network and Industry and Global Structure successful for thousands of years to come.  It's the same with choice of Partner.  It's time for Society and Humanity to live their best life!”

First the great News, even though there is great news throughout. Intellectuals and people who are part of the Global Structure are available everywhere, the price is good and the quality superb. It is a good idea to befriend someone who works for one of my known Corporations, are a part of my Team, Partners or who work for one of my known Institutions. Entrepreneurs and investors are already getting on board. The Businesses and Corporations we have snatched from the jaws of defeat called bankruptcy is poised for an economic rally, and one sign of its beginning is the recently pledged funds from the Sector for the recently formulated Office of Legal Counsel and that the Office of Budget and Management when Opened by me.  

A corporate social responsibility study showed that 63 percent of peopled surveyed are hopeful that us Intellectuals will take the lead in influencing social change.  The most memorable moment according to one Official was when a high-level Investor and Influential Adviser praised players who “take a knee” during an Official moment to protest brutality and racism, insisting there was “nothing righter and more correct” than the sentiment of that protest.   I can confirm that we will be influencing those environments. Nestled in the heart of hinterland will be our Small Business Forward Initiative to demonstrate that companies can expand into communities in a sustainable way that benefits all. My Influential adviser said. "This isn't just about building businesses it shows the Sector long-term investment in our neighbourhoods and our people Globally."

This family dedication to my mission and of the Network and the Global Structure; to champion scientifically tested investment remains undiminished and will be for decades after you read these texts.  A Random Walk Down Wall Street published years ago, popularised the message that short run changes in stock prices are unpredictable and that trying to beat the market is a fool’s game. The book then was written in a direct, non-technical style that reflects the author’s straight talking and the book that will continue to be written will be the same but scaled up to reflect Classical Intellect.  This Network and the Global Structure and my Insights help then to pave the way and in these coming years I will continue to contribute in the capacity of Chairman and Managing Director. Decades of experience have strengthened my conviction that the core of every portfolio should consist of Intellect and further classical Intellect and a further responsibility to the environment.

Truth to Tell, Tell it First, Tell it like it is.  I love you, I love you, I love you.  Having considered all of the peculiarities, we are left to make the decision whether or not the Intellect has the attraction and charm required for the Classical Intellectual Team.  The allure is best described as brilliance in motion, the flashes of the white light from the facets within the Intellect when in working mode. We love winning, we will win on health, we will win on the jobs front, we will win on the economy and we will win overall.  We have battered mediocrity, we have flushed out mediocrity and winning is in our DNA. Then Samson reached toward the two central pillars on which the temple stood. Bracing himself against them, his right hand on the one and his left hand on the other.

No, they are not going to jail, that is mob talk and those who were hoping for such, those thoughts came to an abrupt end once and for all this week.  They are on the cusp of living their best life!

QUASI JUDICIAL

Chairman and Managing Operational CEO (Global Legal Authority Quasi-Judicial)

(Finance, planning, industry and foreign trade portfolios) Private

Head of Human Resources Finance and People and Global Head of Corporate Responsibility

Investments/Contracts/Superior/Technically Competent and Right-Hand Men

NGO - (Finance, planning, industry and foreign trade portfolios) Private

QUASI JUDICIAL