#(which sometimes is exactly what's needed and sometimes disastrously lacking in rigor and reflection)

[anghraine]

I know it's well-understood at this point that Kirk/Spock is much more of a nerd4nerd ship than a nerd/jock thing, but it's just been kind of percolating around my mind that both of them aren't just space nerds but space nerds who were personally bullied.

Like, 18-year-old Kirk was targeted by an older bully who combines "total asshole" with "the most grating man in existence":

MCCOY: Well, yeah, I'm beginning to feel a little bit picked-on, if that's what you mean. KIRK: I know the feeling very well. I had it at the Academy. An upperclassman there. One practical joke after another, and always on me. My own personal devil. A guy by the name of Finnegan. MCCOY: And you being the very serious young— KIRK: Serious? I'll make a confession, Bones. I was absolutely grim, which delighted Finnegan no end.

This was five years after Kirk survived a genocide, btw, and likely well before his stint as an Academy instructor known to be strict and demanding (which is the period the "stack of books with legs" description of him comes from). By the time he's 33, fifteen years after all this, it turns out one of his deepest fantasies is just beating the shit out of his bully, but only if he can do it According To The Rules (the replica of Finnegan sneers, "Always fight fair, don't you? True officer and gentleman, you").

Spock, meanwhile, is viciously targeted by his Vulcan peers for being biracial from at least age 5; he's described as being tormented by other boys by that age, and "at home nowhere except Starfleet." I think he'd have been 18 or 19 when he left for Starfleet and it's... the least bad of his options, but he seems to have spent his entire career among humans and being persistently subjected to raw racism and profound disrespect for his culture at every turn.

Like, their histories of being metaphorically shoved into lockers are not identical or anything, but I think it's interesting that they both have them.

[thestarsoftheirondog]

2021 The Year of the Silver Ox

The Metal Ox – Look in the Mirror

This is the year of the white metal Ox, sometimes known as the golden ox, but better named The Silver Ox.   This is going to be a year when we will fully feel the weight of our responsibilities, a year when it is necessary to double our efforts to accomplish anything at all.  The heavy-handed peace-maker has come to restore law and order.  Nothing untoward will be tolerated in this year and rebellion will be quashed.  Home is serene this year because the Ox is very patient, domesticated and sentimental. Family has a chance to reconcile and reunite.   The metal of this Ox is not some old, rusty piece of heavy machinery.  This is the Silver Ox, a shiny, polished metal that acts as a mirror and allows many to look candidly at themselves, clarify their desires and act decisively to make change, both personal and professional.   Achievement is still utterly dependent on a full measure of back-breaking work, but the Silver Ox in more insightful and self-knowing than other Ox years.  Work hard, but know what you want and what you are working towards.

I’m not a fan of the Ox in general. My very sharp teeth are not at all useful for gnawing cornerstones to perfect right angles, which is generally the proscribed activity for Ox years.  And I am a metal dog, the Iron Dog, particularly inflexible, so the stubborn metal of the Silver Ox out-weights my own naturally iron will, and I can foresee wasting a lot of time barking at myself in the mirror. The words of warning: if you are stubborn this year and stand against the Ox’s very frank demands for hard work and honesty, you are going to get flattened into the mud; and if you allow your anxieties and stress to pile up, boil over or spew forth, they are just going to get reflected back at you in that mirror.

That being said, I’m sure everyone is quite eager to get off the plague ship of 2020, regardless of what the Silver Ox has in store!  So plunk down the gangplank and let’s disembark without delay.    

 Note: I added the years for each animal sign, but remember if you are born in January, you are ruled by the previous year’s animal sign because the Chinese New Year does not usually begin until February.

Rat (1948, 1960, 1972, 1984, 1998, 2010): This is the year for your transformation.  You plotted it all out last year; now do it! Your new career is waiting. Don’t gamble – industry is the path to success.  Take no chances.  Avoid nuance – the Ox demands plain speech and overt action.  No sneaking around underground or lurking in dark corners this year!  Lucky you, Ox keeps things comfy at home so you can concentrate on your career. But Ox demands hard work and discipline and stamina.  You must stay well rested in order to meet the rigorous demands of the Ox. And above all, you must deliver on your promises.  This is a metal Ox and metal adds stubbornness to an already inflexible year. You should have a good year since you are starting ahead of everyone else – they are all staring stupidly into that mirror either asking themselves soul-searching questions or trying to figure out what they really want, while your plans are already made.  Continue to show restraint in spending – Ox will let you earn money, through hard work but resist the urge to splurge.  You will not need the money you earn this year so put it away and do not make any large purchases. This should be a very healthy year since the Ox will lend you fortitude to kick even your minor bad habits. This year there really are not a lot of other signs who can help you.  Ox is pretty much your best friend, even though they are very demanding.  Pigs are lively companions, although their obsession with work can be both exhausting and exasperating to their partners.  Tigers, Horses and Dogs are a triangle of signs you should avoid if you can – they have innate stubborn streaks (dogs) and rebellious tendencies (horses and tigers) that could get them into trouble that you want no part of that right now.

Ox (1949, 1961,1973, 1985, 1997, 2009): Love and Money are always yours in this year because you can be your hard-working, strong and ardent self.  No cunning or conniving required and no delicate veneers or refinements can contest your raw energy and brute strength.  This year, however, bodes for a distinct change in personality and perspective.  It’s a sentimental year.  Home can be blissful and loving if the Ox can keep its emotional sensitivity and stubbornness in check.  Look in the mirror and be mindful of what you see.  This will allow you to change and be more open to this year’s opportunities, both social and professional.  Your physical health should be good this year, but do remember to rest and relax.   Enjoy the company of friends and family.  The only health issues you are likely to have are mental.  Being overly sensitive can lead to depression. Excessive of energy can lead to agitation which will manifest as physical illness.   Snakes and Roosters are your best friends this year (and they aren’t hard on the eyes either).  They can help cheer you up and entertain you. Snakes have creative vision to help you direct your energy. And Roosters, aside from sharing your work ethic, can guide you to making your Herculean efforts profitable.  The Tiger-Horse-Dog triad are known agitators that will disturb you, in your year no less, so avoid them.  Goats are poised to flee to higher ground, so you can count on parting ways with them quickly.  

Tiger (1938,1950,1962, 1974, 1986, 1998, 2010): Look in the mirror. Time for some focus on yourself.  Questions, from the mundane and material to the spiritual and emotional, need to be answered during the first half of the year.  The Ox rewards hard work, but the Silver Ox requires you to be very introspective when setting your goals. Beware the fate of Narcissus, however, and do not languish before the mirror merely admiring yourself. You are fierce, noble and strong, but those are not the questions that require answers.  The Ox is industrious but not fast.  Tigers are strong as the Ox and a lot faster.  But before you dash out the door and start tearing things up, figure out what you really want.  The Ox wants discipline and order, and Tigers are just a tad unruly, with a bit of a temper to boot (and really sharp claws- No clawing this year!).  Simmer down and be patient when the Ox makes its demands. Financially, it is a good year for very careful planning and investing.  It is not a good year for spending.  The Silver Ox is very sentimental and home-oriented, so be careful not to overspend on your family or your abode.  Ox in general has a tendency to over-eat and to be an “emotional eater��, so stick to your diet.  Practice the patience of the Ox without the Ox’s emotional over-sensitivity.  Stress will make you physically ill so you need to be more objective and less emotional this year.  Your year, your 12 year reset, the next 12 year cycle of your life starts next year, in 2022, when we all go back to the jungle.  So this year you need to tidy up all the loose ends and mentally, as well as physically, finish whatever you have been working on.

Rabbit (1939, 1951, 1963, 1975, 1987, 1999, 2011):  You have the potential to identify other, significant sources of revenue this year. You can harness the energy of the Ox and make your hard work profitable.  You also need to stop playing second-fiddle and start giving yourself the respect and credibility you deserve.  You have an over-abundance of creativity this year – exactly what the Ox lacks.  You can really pull rabbits out of the hat this year, so pull yourself out!  Show off your talents. Stop worrying about absolute perfection and jump! Look in the mirror and see yourself as you truly are instead of as what loved ones tell you are or should be. This will lead to disagreement with your colleagues and your lovers.  You are so sensual and desirable that your nearest and dearest often suffer serious pangs of jealousy and insecurity, leading them to unfairly downplay your talent and criticize your work.   Be careful not to overwork yourself.  The Ox has stamina few can match, so don’t fall into that contest because you will lose and your health will suffer disastrously. You need to conserve your energy and use it creatively, with laser focus.  The Ox year is a domestic year, the last in a line of five (Rooster, Dog, Pig, Rat, Ox), before we all go back to the jungle in 2022, the Year of the Tiger.  So use the relative security of the Ox’s law-abiding, straight shooting, moderately paced year to make good progress, but remember this is a slow and steady wins the race year. Depression is a risk for the zodiac signs pre-disposed to it (Rabbit, Goat, Horse, Dog), so spend time with Goats (they will cheer you up and validate you) and Pigs (they will give you gentle, uncritical advice) and Dogs (they will believe in you and protect you).    

Dragon (1940, 1952, 1964, 1976, 1988, 2000, 2012): Opportunities are there and the Ox is earthbound and slow so you should have a clear view and ample time to make the most of them.  This is a year where the non-conformists (Dragons) shine.  Of all the zodiac animals, only the Dragons are mythical. Ox has plenty of energy and strength but lacks creativity.  This makes Dragons all the more sought after for their magic and imagination.  And this Ox is sweetly sentimental so home and family are not a source of friction this year. Dragons will be free to express themselves more fully and honestly to their loved ones.  Look in the mirror – you can solve any problem but you have to recognize it as a problem first. And, like the Tigers and the Goats, Dragons should beware of wasting too much time looking in the mirror only to admire their own reflections. The first half of the year will be relatively inactive since Dragons will be questioning their problems and possible solutions.  Even magical dragons can have doubts and seek advice. The Ox will lend you whatever muscle you need, so do not shirk your responsibilities, no matter how heavy.  This is a year when you must actually work, not just dream.  Be careful not to become agitated – there is no need and agitation will only exhaust you. Your health has the potential to deteriorate seriously if you don’t remain calm and well-rested. Remember too that Ox has a tendency to be an emotional eater, so stick very carefully to your diet and health regimes.  The second half of the year Dragons will relaunch themselves to new heights and dominate the skies again in a new and very purposeful way.  Monkeys and Rats will be good friends for you this year.  Monkeys are very clever and provide useful advice. Monkeys also have little or no conscience so their advice will be refreshingly unclouded by emotion or sentiment. They are also at their charming best this year.  Rats are the masters of timing and self-interest, so they can be of good service to Dragons this year.  Stay away from the Dogs – their bark is never agreeable to you, and this year your mirror is the only critic you have time for.

Snake (1941, 1953, 1965, 1977, 1989, 2001, 2013): You can actually find enlightenment and answers this year. Your dreams that have been on hold for a while can take root and blossom this year.  You inspire others. You provide many things the Ox innately lacks and can make a big difference in the lives of others this year.  Don’t be lured into imitating the Ox’s unreasonable and demanding tactics; you need to be your charming and charismatic self.  You have great flexibility which the Ox entirely lacks.  Emotional over-sensitivity of the Ox makes your hypnotic and graceful mannerisms very important to those around you.  Treat others and their emotions carefully and tactfully.  More importantly, socializing and communicating graciously will greatly improve the chance that you will meet someone who will be a catalyst for a significant career move some time in the next few years.  Ox and Roosters are your friends this year. Ox has the energy and the strength but needs your creative vision to be effective.  And the Rooster has the business acumen and accounting skills to make your projects profitable. Pigs, like you, are incredibly creative, however, they are workaholics and trying to partner with them in business will kill you.  Health is generally good for Snakes this year. This is a year full of energy, but be patient and practice stress management and reduction, or else agitation could lead to insomnia, depression and even mental disease.

Horse (1942, 1954, 1966, 1978, 1990, 2002, 2014): Optimism is high and you are brimming with confidence and plans which attract many willing helpers.  Ox likes your work ethic and will throw its significant weight behind you to help you get it done. You are detail oriented, disciplined and leave little to chance, so the mirror the Ox wants you to look in doesn’t really contain any surprises. Rather, the introspection of this year is just a sentimental review of your childhood and experiences, and recognition of how they have shaped you.  Above all, forgive yourself, love yourself and then put the mirror away.  Be careful not to get too sentimental as the Ox has a tendency to overspend on family and friends, and the horse has a tendency to try to purchase harmony with loved ones.  You are in the Tiger-Horse-Dog triad of compatibility, so those signs will always be fundamentally compatible with you.  Dog is conservative like you, and likes law and order, and Tiger shares your love of freedom and your wanderlust.  Ox is conservative too, and the Silver Ox is actually in favor of travel for family reunions, visits to ancestral lands or grave sites, or any travel for business.  Goats are very companionable this year (they are lonely); Tigers are willing to lend you a helping hand (they are bored).  Dragons are very spiritually appealing and noble this year.  Monkeys provide excellent advice and are better mannered than usual.  Avoid the Rats; their misgivings, pessimism and selfishness just rain all over your parade this year and bring down your high spirits.  Health is generally good this year, although there is a high chance of injury/accident in the second half of the year.  And there may be some problem within the skull – either dental, auditory or mental.  

Goat (1943, 1955, 1967, 1979, 1991, 2003): Money cannot buy you love, so don’t waste your money. Set goals because you can climb high and fast and will achieve them.  Invest in yourself, your own business, your own career and you will profit greatly.  Keep your cool or you might lose your lover and your money.  You don’t really get along with Ox, and when you do look in the mirror, you don’t look honestly.  You far prefer the flattery and attention of others. They tell you what you want to hear, and in exchange, you try to tell them what they want to hear.  Romance is in the air and you love Love.  Horses and rabbits are your best bet – they have the added benefit of being really creative and full of interesting plans this year, and they both need your kindness and pleasantry.  You could be absolutely smitten with a Pig or another Goat. Pig, however, loves business more than Pig will ever love you.  And another Goat, while a charming lover, isn’t going to take you anywhere new or different. Just remember, Love is not going to pay the bills, so don’t go languishing in it when you should be working.  Agitation and stress can manifest as physical illness this year, so Goats will have to be extra careful to devote enough time to rest and relaxation.  Goat’s health is always precariously wrapped up in their mental well-being and the demands of the Silver Ox for introspection can lead to depression in the zodiac signs that are prone to this affliction anyway (Horse, Goat, Rabbit, Dog).  Goat has a thin skin and the Silver Ox’s sentimentality leaves the Goat’s emotions exposed for excess bruising. Goat should stay away from the Rats (they will depress you) and the Dogs (they will hurt your feelings). One last reminder: Goats are stubborn, and at their worst can hurl themselves head first at rock walls; don’t do it.  Rock walls are for climbing, as nimbly as only a Goat can.

Monkey (1944, 1956, 1968, 1980, 1992, 2004): You have the energy, talent and ambition this year, and the Ox will reward your efforts and even lend you some extra muscle.  But you have some long-ignored questions about yourself that you need to answer.  Do not be afraid to look in the mirror.  With the answers, you will become more confident and focused throughout the year. Your wishes can’t come true until you actually make a wish; you can’t achieve your goals until you set them.  This Ox is sentimental and that sentimentality is NOT weakness; it is the patience and kindness to look at your past and acknowledge how it influences your personality, and how better to apply yourself.  You will be infinitely more successful with this self-knowledge.  This year has plenty of opportunities for the Monkey and you are intelligent enough, and quick enough, to take advantage with excellent results for your career and your bank account.  Be careful not to make promises you cannot keep. It is a healthy year generally, but could get off to a rocky start or suffer a minor set-back in the middle.  You are vibrant this year, and less inclined to tease than usual, making you very attractive and sought-after.  Take advantage of social connections to gain valuable information and higher visibility, but beware would-be seducers masquerading as would-be business partners.  They could raise false expectations, waste your valuable time and potentially damage your professional reputation.  

Rooster (1933, 1945, 1957, 1969, 1981, 1993, 2005):  This year is about an organized and disciplined campaign to regain your personal authority and power.  This is not a blustery year of fortune’s fickle winds and upheaval.  Change this year is engineered and deliberate to solve real problems.  Although some sacrifices are required, Roosters can make the necessary and timely changes, and surpass themselves gloriously.  It’s that Phoenix thing – crash, burn, rise from the ashes, soar high, and repeat as often as necessary.  It will be a busy year, full of plans and projects and social engagements.  And, because Rooster desires change, the sentimentality of this Ox will not depress Rooster or leave the Rooster with any regrets.  Friends and Family always come first with Rooster, and this year the sentimental Ox rewards the Rooster handsomely for these fine priorities. There will be friction in your professional life because you have to deal with personalities you do not appreciate.  Use your abundance of energy to focus on making the team work together and get the job done.  Snakes and Ox are very good friends this year: Snake has some excellent ideas and Ox has the muscle; Rooster harnesses them together and can drive them to success.  Monkeys and Rabbits are very hard to live with because Monkey tries to second-guess you at every turn, and Rabbit is just bouncing all over the place. Besides, neither of them are domesticated.  Your philosophical disagreements with Rats continue, with no plausible end in sight. Although you both love work, your work ethic is stronger and Rat does not give as high a priority to family life as you do. Excess energy can lead to excess agitation which in turn will lead to a decline in health, so keep your cool and your objectivity. As with any metal year, Roosters should take extra care to avoid accidents/injury.

Dog (1946, 1958, 1970, 1982, 1994, 2006): You have the energy and you have the determination; be organized and pay attention to detail. Consider your opportunities objectively so that you can prioritize the ones with the greatest potential for success and not waste your time on somebody else’s noble but impractical or impossible pet project. And don’t let your hard work go unrewarded or unrecognized.  Act decisively and demand credit where credit is due.  Look in the mirror to remind yourself of your self-worth and be confident that you deserve reward and advancement.  Don’t be suckered or guilted, or even friended into doing other people’s work for them.  We all have our own responsibilities this year, and they are heavy. Even with the extra energy of the Ox, your own burdens are quite enough – do not shoulder the burdens of others.  This is a domesticated year, the last of a string of 5 (Rooster, Dog, Pig, Rat, Ox) so be your dedicated, strong, well-behaved self - think lead on the sled dog team … running the Iditarod.  2022, the Year of the Tiger, it’s back to the jungle and you can howl and run wild with Tiger’s protection and good will, because Tiger is in your compatibility triad. Ox is not.  Your stamina is good and you pursue doggedly, but the Ox always demands more and physical exhaustion leading to deterioration in health is a real risk. No excesses this year.  Resist the impulsive spending and gift-giving; you have what you need so put the rest away for a rainy day. Keep your criticisms of others entirely to yourself this year (and every year?) because the Ox is in charge and other people’s feelings bruise easily this year. Depression is a big risk this year, so look to Rabbits (they are Dog’s secret friend and can cheer you up) and Tigers (in your affinity triad and they reassure and protect Dogs) to lift your spirits. While you tend to offer too much criticism, and nobody wants to hear it this year, you esteem Tigers and Horses so much that you find fault with them far less frequently than with others. And even when you do find fault with them, your loyalty generally keeps you quiet.  So you will be a much more agreeable companion within your triad this year than outside it.  Strive to remain optimistic; it will be better for everyone if you do! There are no obstacles in an Ox year that cannot be overcome.

Pig (1947, 1959, 1971, 1983, 1995, 2007): Money flows your way and luck is with you in your investments.  You are strong like the ox and the ox loves your work ethic and willingly throws its weight behind your endeavors. You are clever and can really take advantage of the opportunities this year. Don’t let sentimentality draw you into unfruitful ventures or cloud your vision concerning really golden opportunities.  Although the pig can potentially over-indulge, their enormous appetite for work over-rides everything this year.  And while excess energy leads to agitation and stress in other signs, the pigs just plow it back into even greater productivity. There will be extra money this year, so put some away safely to invest in a terrific opportunity a few years from now. This will be an extraordinary year in many regards.  Be careful with the feelings of others.  The Ox has a tendency to be overly sensitive. Pigs will need to be patient with the sentimental mood that prevails this year. Of course Pig would rather just work, but family and friends feel neglected by pig while pig is truffle hunting. Goats, Tigers and Rabbits are good friends this year.  The Tigers admire your strength and your ability to fight. This bodes well for you in 2022, the Year of the Tiger, when jungle warfare comes back into style. Tigers also like your creativity and intelligence and will help you this year because they are bored.  Goats and Rabbits need you a little bit more than you need them. Goats are lonely this year and want to socialize in style (you have high style); and Rabbits need your advice and help applying their creativity in a more focused and profitable manner. Both Goats and Rabbits trust you not to bruise their emotions. Goat may even fall in love with you.  Living with a Rat is never boring, but although both of you have a tendency to prioritize work over home life, ironically it is the Rat who claims to be neglected.  This is likely because Rat lacks your stamina. Snakes are to be avoided – they get on well with Ox and can flourish this year, but they have nothing to offer Pigs. Remember the Roosters are very good with money, and are doing capable of doing that Phoenix thing and rise from the ashes, so don’t discount them from your business plans.

[punkestboy-blog]

The world of humanitarian help provides little time for reflection…

Typically, assist staff move from crisis to crisis, with barely a moment to soak up the lessons from their final posting earlier than they are confronted with a recent new catastrophe in a unique land. For Tony Vaux, former coordinator of Oxfam’s international emergency packages who spent twenty-seven years with the group, reflection got here solely after the very fact. Upon leaving Oxfam to pursue life as an unbiased advisor, he started to think about each the private motivations that had pushed him and most of the individuals he labored with, and the bigger picture of assist, with its multi-layered demands and agendas. The outcome was a guide, The Selfish Altruist, which rigorously examines the various elements of aid and improvement packages.

As Vaux makes clear, merely wanting to assist does not absolve help staff of their inner prejudices, assumptions, and judgments. Such baggage accompanies them into the sector, and may cloud their reasoning and have an effect on their selections, notably once they stay unaware of it. Further, and not using a clear understanding of the cultures they’re trying to help, humanitarians run the danger of making use of western values to distinctly non-western conditions, sometimes with disastrous results.

Having personally witnessed a few of the biggest international crises of our time, Vaux speaks with authority on the growing position of presidency in overseas assist, the need for larger understanding among the public, and the tenuous stability between aid efforts and developmental objectives. After spending his early years in Ethiopia, Somalia, Mozambique, and the Sudan, he later targeted his efforts on the Balkan crisis and Japanese Europe. He spoke with SuperConsciousness Editor-in-Chief Heidi Smith about what he has discovered by means of his many experiences addressing the impacts of struggle, famine, and societal upheaval.

SC: How do you see the distinction between people who grow to be aware of a catastrophe and are motivated to go do one thing about it, versus individuals who see exactly the same thing and have a momentary feeling of dismay, and then change the channel?

TV: I all the time had this robust feeling about injustice on the planet and the inequality between individuals who have tons, virtually greater than they want, and individuals who have nothing. That offends me. My brother, who’s had obviously an identical upbringing and schooling, has by no means shown any curiosity in these points. It does seem to be a really particular person thing. Some individuals react extra to the struggling of different individuals and really feel that they need to do one thing about it. Other individuals maybe are extra capable of gloss over that and say, “Well, there’s plenty of that around.”

SC: It looks like most individuals have a filtering mechanism that comes up with all the reasons to not help, however altruistic individuals don’t. Have you ever encountered that?

TV: That’s definitely true in my case. I sort of drifted round after College and went into banking, and I feel the extra I noticed how pointless that was (for me), the extra I felt there was nothing else I needed to do besides to deal with a few of these problems with injustice.

But the individuals I work with come from a variety of different motives. There’s no single driving drive, and it’s modified over time as nicely. Once I first joined Oxfam there were a lot of people who had worked in colonial occasions and who felt a sense of duty, virtually as a duty. That’s become individuals who felt that the world must be a greater place in my era. I joined Oxfam in 1970, and I feel we have been still in that era when lots of people who had been at University felt they needed to do something concerning the state of the world. Afterward extra business-oriented models got here in, and assist itself turned extra like a enterprise by way of the 80’s and 90’s, and that’s what it stays in the present day.

Ethiopia

SC: What are a few of the shocking attitudes that folks might discover in themselves once they get into this type of work?

TV: The motive of serving to different individuals does suggest at the root of it a sense that “I am superior,” I’m “the donor.” The opposite individual is “the recipient.” It’s a basically unequal type of relationship that you simply begin off with, and it’s very straightforward to fall into the view that, as a result of I’ve acquired numerous money and I can speak about insurance policies and determine between individuals, that I and my culture and my group and the whole lot around me is in some sense superior. It’s very exhausting to avoid that, particularly whenever you’re working with individuals who have very, very little. It’s fairly exhausting to maintain arguing with yourself that these individuals have the same intelligence and the same emotions and reactions.

I feel only a few businesses would really critically claim that they will exhibit neutrality. That’s one of the the reason why help has grow to be a lot harder, as a result of there isn’t a transparent path anymore.

The state of affairs that basically introduced that residence to me was the wars within the Balkans, dealing with people who had lived a life similar to the life I was main – the same sort of countryside, the identical degree of affluence or no less than comparable, and yet out of the blue their entire society has collapsed round them. They’d by no means anticipated this to happen. And that made me assume a lot more that such a factor might happen in our own society. These kinds of reflections enable you to understand that there isn’t a difference. It’s just that some of us are in a luckier position than others.

Ethiopia

SC: How does an insistence on viewing individuals as victims blind help staff to the realities on the bottom?

TV: In Mozambique, for instance, I simply assumed that everybody was utterly helpless and that all the things had to be flown in from outdoors to assist them. I made the standard mistake of not realizing that the rationale individuals lacked food was not because there was no meals around however just because they couldn’t get at it, and I was really shocked to find that there was a warehouse in the midst of this city filled with ravenous individuals where the federal government was maintaining food that it had collected from farmers the earlier yr. Due to the warfare, the government couldn’t get this meals out, and it was meant to go to the markets within the cities. However someway it had never been thought of that this meals must be distributed to the individuals who have been ravenous. Assist businesses like Oxfam have been making desperate efforts to attempt to convey food in. I feel we have been even flying it by airplanes, when what we should always have accomplished is came upon what was out there and made some negotiations to get the food to people who wanted it, which I feel might have been finished. I’d been visiting Mozambique for two or three years in the course of the warfare before I truly realized that this was true.

Typically, truly famines aren’t what you assume they’re. They’re political events, and in the case of Ethiopia, the place I additionally did numerous work, the primary political event was the struggle happening. The conflict simply messed everyone up utterly, and then the individuals couldn’t get to the locations where there was meals to purchase it. So this concept of individuals being innocent but helpless victims makes you truly cease in search of the political realities of the state of affairs. It goes back to a type of virtually racist view that other individuals’s lives are rather a lot easier than ours. If meals didn’t seem here, we wouldn’t instantly assume that there was no food obtainable. We might simply say, “Oh, there must be some transport problem or something like that.” It’s the same in different nations. Truly it’s almost all the time a political drawback, not some “Biblical” crop failure.

Katrina

SC: It looks like a number of the really practical options that you simply mentioned, like charging the individuals who can afford it for meals, are untenable within the eyes of donors.

TV: In a famine state of affairs, I feel you’ll be able to often buy meals. But we get stuck on bringing food help in partly due to the reasons we’ve simply been talking about, but in addition, in fact, the meals help is a means of eliminating surpluses from Western nations, particularly the USA. So help staff typically go into a state of affairs saying, “How can I use food aid here?” moderately than asking whether or not food help is important. We truly include lots of baggage about how donors favor to work, following self-interested insurance policies like subsidizing farmers within the West, slightly than doing what’s needed on the ground.

It was the closeness between the army and the aid businesses that was really the large turning point from Kosovo. We had a state of affairs by which Oxfam’s employees have been related to the British army forces that have been, the truth is, bombing an office related to Oxfam in Serbia.

SC: The NATO operations in Kosovo have been a turning point in the relationship between humanitarians and governments with agendas. How did that change the world of help?

TV: It confirmed that Western powers after the top of the Chilly Warfare have been now beginning to intervene very, very actively and militarily in numerous situations, and linking that to humanitarian or good authorities sort of aims. That put them exactly in the same territory as the aid businesses. It was the closeness between the army and the help businesses that was actually the large turning level from Kosovo. We had a state of affairs during which Oxfam’s employees have been associated with the British army forces that have been, in reality, bombing an office associated with Oxfam in Serbia. That made me understand that assist businesses have all the time been close to donor governments, but up till now the donor governments had not likely been intervening in these situations. Now we as businesses that make use of their money and assets discover ourselves tied to their goals, and naturally this turned an enormous problem in Afghanistan and Iraq, where the help businesses could not distance themselves in any respect from regardless of the West was making an attempt to do, and truly turned a goal for assault from local individuals.

C: Might you describe the nice line between attachment and detachment in these kinds of situations, notably when it comes to the difficulty of neutrality?

TV: The idea of neutrality has an enormous history from the Purple Cross movement, nevertheless it was very handy in the course of the Chilly Conflict, because if assist businesses needed to function in a rustic like Ethiopia, which was dominated by the Soviet Union, you didn’t need to be seen as a part of the West. So, we claimed neutrality and tried to give attention to humanitarian wants, with a view to make it possible for we had entry to those areas. It worked very nicely, and help businesses have been capable of operate all over through the Cold Warfare. After the top of the Cold Struggle, it turned very troublesome to sustain, since you couldn’t actually detach your self from the federal government of the country by which you worked and lived. Although assist businesses tried to say neutrality, it didn’t really wash, because in almost all instances they have been accepting money from these governments, they usually were not talking out towards whatever that authorities was doing. Though neutrality continues to be considered a good suggestion, I feel very few businesses would actually critically declare that they will reveal neutrality. That’s one of the the reason why assist has develop into so much harder, because there isn’t a clear path anymore.

SC: Might you describe the tensions between the development and aid factions that you simply noticed on the planet of humanitarian help and the way those relate to gender?

TV: This deep division between the development sort of people and the aid sort of individuals could be very elementary in assist. They’re virtually like two tribes or cultures among help staff. Some individuals are more in favor of fast outcomes, they usually’re within the aid faction. Then there are the people who give attention to long-term change, those who speak rather more about altering society; they’re the more political dimension. There is a gender facet in that various the speedy aid tends to be men, and the long-term improvement tends to be ladies. From an organizational perspective, you want these two teams to work together and to have the ability to coordinate their activities, however it’s truly individuals with totally totally different values.

Darfur

One of the crucial troublesome things to do is get these two teams to work with each other, and that resulted in some fairly tragic results. We had a state of affairs in Ethiopia in 1984 where the workplace had gone over to a completely developmental mode and actually hated the concept plenty of aid staff would are available, and so they tended to cover evidence of the famine that was creating in 1984 until too late.

SC: In Afghanistan Oxfam took a stand concerning the status of girls, but this also had some fallout. What has been the long-term effect of that state of affairs?

TV: Oxfam had taken duty for an enormous water supply in Kabul. It was supposed to provide about 10,000 individuals, and Oxfam needed to involve ladies in that program. However the Taliban was in cost at that time and wouldn’t permit ladies to take part, so Oxfam closed the program utterly. Additionally they didn’t need some other organization to proceed this system, as a result of Oxfam needed to influence the Taliban to be extra open in the direction of ladies. So, all of it feels like excellent, high-principled motion, and it turned essential in Oxfam at the moment, because there was a battle happening to determine a gender unit in Oxfam and to determine gender as one in every of Oxfam’s important focuses.

On the time of the tsunami, everyone very generously gave tons and plenty of cash, but really the tsunami wasn’t the primary need even at the moment. It was just that it had by far the most important media profile, and the pictures have been of a kind that draws public donations.

All this played out over the difficulty of a water supply in Kabul. An evaluation was executed a yr or two after this system was closed which raised the difficulty: by not supplying this water, Oxfam had led to quite a big number of deaths, because individuals needed to drink contaminated water, and there’d been lots of outbreaks of diarrhea and illnesses of that kind. Obviously it’s an excellent factor to have rules, but finally you possibly can’t stand by one precept alone. Within the assist world particularly, rules are all the time competing with one another, and the precept of involvement of girls is a vital one, however the principle of saving lives in a determined humanitarian state of affairs is probably extra elementary.

Somalia

SC: What is the position of self awareness in humanitarian help, and the way does it apply to altruism?

TV: I wrote [The Selfish Altruist] largely as a reflection on my expertise. I’d been working in this subject for about twenty-five years at that time, and I had continually moved on from one disaster to a different, or one area of labor to a different, and by no means had the prospect to mirror on this stuff, and yet I felt uneasy about my experiences. Simply on the point once I was beginning to study one thing, I’d move on. You do need time for reflection, and that’s an enormous problem for help staff, because they’re all the time shifting on. It’s solely by reflecting on things and having a certain period of time that you simply develop the self-awareness to comprehend where you have been permitting your private or organizational preferences to get in the best way of altruism, which means really specializing in the individual in want.

Self consciousness is necessary in organizations, and the implication is that folks should have more time for that self-awareness process. Another monitor is to encourage more questioning amongst help staff of one another and more learning processes. If, say, one group of assist staff comes to take a look at the work of one other group, extra collective methods of self consciousness could also be potential. I usually find that processes like peer evaluation are rather more efficient and result in far more learning and alter than evaluations.

Typically, truly famines aren’t what you assume they are. They’re political events, and within the case of Ethiopia, where I additionally did numerous work, the primary political event was the struggle happening.

SC: Ideally what can be your vision for the way forward for help?

TV: My essential concern is that help ought to remain trustworthy and truthful to its own roots and goals, and I do feel that typically it needs to be tougher in the direction of the people who help it, the general public and the bilateral donors. At the time of the tsunami, everyone very generously gave tons and plenty of money, but really the tsunami wasn’t the primary want even at the moment. It was just that it had by far the most important media profile, and the pictures have been of a kind that draws public donations. As a result of individuals gave so much cash for the tsunami, the aid businesses put all their greatest individuals and efforts into the tsunami response. But all the people who have been killed by the tsunami have been already lifeless. There was an enormous reconstruction course of, nevertheless it wasn’t exactly life saving. It was only a longterm improvement course of, whereas at the similar time individuals have been nonetheless dying only for lack of food and drugs within the Congo. That confirmed me that the aid businesses can get swept along by the best way the general public works.

Similarly, they will get swept alongside by the donor governments, like they’ve been swept along into Iraq and Afghanistan. I’d like the aid businesses to be prepared to face up once they assume they’re being swept apart by what are finally quite selfish moderately than altruistic forces. When it comes to imaginative and prescient, I’d say the primary thing is to keep truthfulness and maintain questioning people who help assist. I do fear that the general public usually doesn’t know lots about assist and the problems concerned with it, and so for those who simply comply with public opinion and what individuals will give money for, you will end up with a fairly distorted help image.

Lastly, help itself ought to be more globalized now, however it still seems a type of small group of Western businesses dominating it. There at the moment are excellent non-government organizations in practically each country around the globe, and people organizations really ought to be shifting ahead into the entrance strains. One of the challenges is to cease assist from being quite a lot of a Western challenge and have it turn into a extra international one.

The post Altruism And Attitude

[ourwinterana0universe]

The world of humanitarian help provides little time for reflection…

Typically, assist staff move from crisis to crisis, with barely a moment to soak up the lessons from their final posting earlier than they are confronted with a recent new catastrophe in a unique land. For Tony Vaux, former coordinator of Oxfam’s international emergency packages who spent twenty-seven years with the group, reflection got here solely after the very fact. Upon leaving Oxfam to pursue life as an unbiased advisor, he started to think about each the private motivations that had pushed him and most of the individuals he labored with, and the bigger picture of assist, with its multi-layered demands and agendas. The outcome was a guide, The Selfish Altruist, which rigorously examines the various elements of aid and improvement packages.

As Vaux makes clear, merely wanting to assist does not absolve help staff of their inner prejudices, assumptions, and judgments. Such baggage accompanies them into the sector, and may cloud their reasoning and have an effect on their selections, notably once they stay unaware of it. Further, and not using a clear understanding of the cultures they’re trying to help, humanitarians run the danger of making use of western values to distinctly non-western conditions, sometimes with disastrous results.

Having personally witnessed a few of the biggest international crises of our time, Vaux speaks with authority on the growing position of presidency in overseas assist, the need for larger understanding among the public, and the tenuous stability between aid efforts and developmental objectives. After spending his early years in Ethiopia, Somalia, Mozambique, and the Sudan, he later targeted his efforts on the Balkan crisis and Japanese Europe. He spoke with SuperConsciousness Editor-in-Chief Heidi Smith about what he has discovered by means of his many experiences addressing the impacts of struggle, famine, and societal upheaval.

SC: How do you see the distinction between people who grow to be aware of a catastrophe and are motivated to go do one thing about it, versus individuals who see exactly the same thing and have a momentary feeling of dismay, and then change the channel?

TV: I all the time had this robust feeling about injustice on the planet and the inequality between individuals who have tons, virtually greater than they want, and individuals who have nothing. That offends me. My brother, who’s had obviously an identical upbringing and schooling, has by no means shown any curiosity in these points. It does seem to be a really particular person thing. Some individuals react extra to the struggling of different individuals and really feel that they need to do one thing about it. Other individuals maybe are extra capable of gloss over that and say, “Well, there’s plenty of that around.”

SC: It looks like most individuals have a filtering mechanism that comes up with all the reasons to not help, however altruistic individuals don’t. Have you ever encountered that?

TV: That’s definitely true in my case. I sort of drifted round after College and went into banking, and I feel the extra I noticed how pointless that was (for me), the extra I felt there was nothing else I needed to do besides to deal with a few of these problems with injustice.

But the individuals I work with come from a variety of different motives. There’s no single driving drive, and it’s modified over time as nicely. Once I first joined Oxfam there were a lot of people who had worked in colonial occasions and who felt a sense of duty, virtually as a duty. That’s become individuals who felt that the world must be a greater place in my era. I joined Oxfam in 1970, and I feel we have been still in that era when lots of people who had been at University felt they needed to do something concerning the state of the world. Afterward extra business-oriented models got here in, and assist itself turned extra like a enterprise by way of the 80’s and 90’s, and that’s what it stays in the present day.

Ethiopia

SC: What are a few of the shocking attitudes that folks might discover in themselves once they get into this type of work?

TV: The motive of serving to different individuals does suggest at the root of it a sense that “I am superior,” I’m “the donor.” The opposite individual is “the recipient.” It’s a basically unequal type of relationship that you simply begin off with, and it’s very straightforward to fall into the view that, as a result of I’ve acquired numerous money and I can speak about insurance policies and determine between individuals, that I and my culture and my group and the whole lot around me is in some sense superior. It’s very exhausting to avoid that, particularly whenever you’re working with individuals who have very, very little. It’s fairly exhausting to maintain arguing with yourself that these individuals have the same intelligence and the same emotions and reactions.

I feel only a few businesses would really critically claim that they will exhibit neutrality. That’s one of the the reason why help has grow to be a lot harder, as a result of there isn’t a transparent path anymore.

The state of affairs that basically introduced that residence to me was the wars within the Balkans, dealing with people who had lived a life similar to the life I was main – the same sort of countryside, the identical degree of affluence or no less than comparable, and yet out of the blue their entire society has collapsed round them. They’d by no means anticipated this to happen. And that made me assume a lot more that such a factor might happen in our own society. These kinds of reflections enable you to understand that there isn’t a difference. It’s just that some of us are in a luckier position than others.

Ethiopia

SC: How does an insistence on viewing individuals as victims blind help staff to the realities on the bottom?

TV: In Mozambique, for instance, I simply assumed that everybody was utterly helpless and that all the things had to be flown in from outdoors to assist them. I made the standard mistake of not realizing that the rationale individuals lacked food was not because there was no meals around however just because they couldn’t get at it, and I was really shocked to find that there was a warehouse in the midst of this city filled with ravenous individuals where the federal government was maintaining food that it had collected from farmers the earlier yr. Due to the warfare, the government couldn’t get this meals out, and it was meant to go to the markets within the cities. However someway it had never been thought of that this meals must be distributed to the individuals who have been ravenous. Assist businesses like Oxfam have been making desperate efforts to attempt to convey food in. I feel we have been even flying it by airplanes, when what we should always have accomplished is came upon what was out there and made some negotiations to get the food to people who wanted it, which I feel might have been finished. I’d been visiting Mozambique for two or three years in the course of the warfare before I truly realized that this was true.

Typically, truly famines aren’t what you assume they’re. They’re political events, and in the case of Ethiopia, the place I additionally did numerous work, the primary political event was the struggle happening. The conflict simply messed everyone up utterly, and then the individuals couldn’t get to the locations where there was meals to purchase it. So this concept of individuals being innocent but helpless victims makes you truly cease in search of the political realities of the state of affairs. It goes back to a type of virtually racist view that other individuals’s lives are rather a lot easier than ours. If meals didn’t seem here, we wouldn’t instantly assume that there was no food obtainable. We might simply say, “Oh, there must be some transport problem or something like that.” It’s the same in different nations. Truly it’s almost all the time a political drawback, not some “Biblical” crop failure.

Katrina

SC: It looks like a number of the really practical options that you simply mentioned, like charging the individuals who can afford it for meals, are untenable within the eyes of donors.

TV: In a famine state of affairs, I feel you’ll be able to often buy meals. But we get stuck on bringing food help in partly due to the reasons we’ve simply been talking about, but in addition, in fact, the meals help is a means of eliminating surpluses from Western nations, particularly the USA. So help staff typically go into a state of affairs saying, “How can I use food aid here?” moderately than asking whether or not food help is important. We truly include lots of baggage about how donors favor to work, following self-interested insurance policies like subsidizing farmers within the West, slightly than doing what’s needed on the ground.

It was the closeness between the army and the aid businesses that was really the large turning point from Kosovo. We had a state of affairs by which Oxfam’s employees have been related to the British army forces that have been, the truth is, bombing an office related to Oxfam in Serbia.

SC: The NATO operations in Kosovo have been a turning point in the relationship between humanitarians and governments with agendas. How did that change the world of help?

TV: It confirmed that Western powers after the top of the Chilly Warfare have been now beginning to intervene very, very actively and militarily in numerous situations, and linking that to humanitarian or good authorities sort of aims. That put them exactly in the same territory as the aid businesses. It was the closeness between the army and the help businesses that was actually the large turning level from Kosovo. We had a state of affairs during which Oxfam’s employees have been associated with the British army forces that have been, in reality, bombing an office associated with Oxfam in Serbia. That made me understand that assist businesses have all the time been close to donor governments, but up till now the donor governments had not likely been intervening in these situations. Now we as businesses that make use of their money and assets discover ourselves tied to their goals, and naturally this turned an enormous problem in Afghanistan and Iraq, where the help businesses could not distance themselves in any respect from regardless of the West was making an attempt to do, and truly turned a goal for assault from local individuals.

C: Might you describe the nice line between attachment and detachment in these kinds of situations, notably when it comes to the difficulty of neutrality?

TV: The idea of neutrality has an enormous history from the Purple Cross movement, nevertheless it was very handy in the course of the Chilly Conflict, because if assist businesses needed to function in a rustic like Ethiopia, which was dominated by the Soviet Union, you didn’t need to be seen as a part of the West. So, we claimed neutrality and tried to give attention to humanitarian wants, with a view to make it possible for we had entry to those areas. It worked very nicely, and help businesses have been capable of operate all over through the Cold Warfare. After the top of the Cold Struggle, it turned very troublesome to sustain, since you couldn’t actually detach your self from the federal government of the country by which you worked and lived. Although assist businesses tried to say neutrality, it didn’t really wash, because in almost all instances they have been accepting money from these governments, they usually were not talking out towards whatever that authorities was doing. Though neutrality continues to be considered a good suggestion, I feel very few businesses would actually critically declare that they will reveal neutrality. That’s one of the the reason why assist has develop into so much harder, because there isn’t a clear path anymore.

SC: Might you describe the tensions between the development and aid factions that you simply noticed on the planet of humanitarian help and the way those relate to gender?

TV: This deep division between the development sort of people and the aid sort of individuals could be very elementary in assist. They’re virtually like two tribes or cultures among help staff. Some individuals are more in favor of fast outcomes, they usually’re within the aid faction. Then there are the people who give attention to long-term change, those who speak rather more about altering society; they’re the more political dimension. There is a gender facet in that various the speedy aid tends to be men, and the long-term improvement tends to be ladies. From an organizational perspective, you want these two teams to work together and to have the ability to coordinate their activities, however it’s truly individuals with totally totally different values.

Darfur

One of the crucial troublesome things to do is get these two teams to work with each other, and that resulted in some fairly tragic results. We had a state of affairs in Ethiopia in 1984 where the workplace had gone over to a completely developmental mode and actually hated the concept plenty of aid staff would are available, and so they tended to cover evidence of the famine that was creating in 1984 until too late.

SC: In Afghanistan Oxfam took a stand concerning the status of girls, but this also had some fallout. What has been the long-term effect of that state of affairs?

TV: Oxfam had taken duty for an enormous water supply in Kabul. It was supposed to provide about 10,000 individuals, and Oxfam needed to involve ladies in that program. However the Taliban was in cost at that time and wouldn’t permit ladies to take part, so Oxfam closed the program utterly. Additionally they didn’t need some other organization to proceed this system, as a result of Oxfam needed to influence the Taliban to be extra open in the direction of ladies. So, all of it feels like excellent, high-principled motion, and it turned essential in Oxfam at the moment, because there was a battle happening to determine a gender unit in Oxfam and to determine gender as one in every of Oxfam’s important focuses.

On the time of the tsunami, everyone very generously gave tons and plenty of cash, but really the tsunami wasn’t the primary need even at the moment. It was just that it had by far the most important media profile, and the pictures have been of a kind that draws public donations.

All this played out over the difficulty of a water supply in Kabul. An evaluation was executed a yr or two after this system was closed which raised the difficulty: by not supplying this water, Oxfam had led to quite a big number of deaths, because individuals needed to drink contaminated water, and there’d been lots of outbreaks of diarrhea and illnesses of that kind. Obviously it’s an excellent factor to have rules, but finally you possibly can’t stand by one precept alone. Within the assist world particularly, rules are all the time competing with one another, and the precept of involvement of girls is a vital one, however the principle of saving lives in a determined humanitarian state of affairs is probably extra elementary.

Somalia

SC: What is the position of self awareness in humanitarian help, and the way does it apply to altruism?

TV: I wrote [The Selfish Altruist] largely as a reflection on my expertise. I’d been working in this subject for about twenty-five years at that time, and I had continually moved on from one disaster to a different, or one area of labor to a different, and by no means had the prospect to mirror on this stuff, and yet I felt uneasy about my experiences. Simply on the point once I was beginning to study one thing, I’d move on. You do need time for reflection, and that’s an enormous problem for help staff, because they’re all the time shifting on. It’s solely by reflecting on things and having a certain period of time that you simply develop the self-awareness to comprehend where you have been permitting your private or organizational preferences to get in the best way of altruism, which means really specializing in the individual in want.

Self consciousness is necessary in organizations, and the implication is that folks should have more time for that self-awareness process. Another monitor is to encourage more questioning amongst help staff of one another and more learning processes. If, say, one group of assist staff comes to take a look at the work of one other group, extra collective methods of self consciousness could also be potential. I usually find that processes like peer evaluation are rather more efficient and result in far more learning and alter than evaluations.

Typically, truly famines aren’t what you assume they are. They’re political events, and within the case of Ethiopia, where I additionally did numerous work, the primary political event was the struggle happening.

SC: Ideally what can be your vision for the way forward for help?

TV: My essential concern is that help ought to remain trustworthy and truthful to its own roots and goals, and I do feel that typically it needs to be tougher in the direction of the people who help it, the general public and the bilateral donors. At the time of the tsunami, everyone very generously gave tons and plenty of money, but really the tsunami wasn’t the primary want even at the moment. It was just that it had by far the most important media profile, and the pictures have been of a kind that draws public donations. As a result of individuals gave so much cash for the tsunami, the aid businesses put all their greatest individuals and efforts into the tsunami response. But all the people who have been killed by the tsunami have been already lifeless. There was an enormous reconstruction course of, nevertheless it wasn’t exactly life saving. It was only a longterm improvement course of, whereas at the similar time individuals have been nonetheless dying only for lack of food and drugs within the Congo. That confirmed me that the aid businesses can get swept along by the best way the general public works.

Similarly, they will get swept alongside by the donor governments, like they’ve been swept along into Iraq and Afghanistan. I’d like the aid businesses to be prepared to face up once they assume they’re being swept apart by what are finally quite selfish moderately than altruistic forces. When it comes to imaginative and prescient, I’d say the primary thing is to keep truthfulness and maintain questioning people who help assist. I do fear that the general public usually doesn’t know lots about assist and the problems concerned with it, and so for those who simply comply with public opinion and what individuals will give money for, you will end up with a fairly distorted help image.

Lastly, help itself ought to be more globalized now, however it still seems a type of small group of Western businesses dominating it. There at the moment are excellent non-government organizations in practically each country around the globe, and people organizations really ought to be shifting ahead into the entrance strains. One of the challenges is to cease assist from being quite a lot of a Western challenge and have it turn into a extra international one.

The post Altruism And Attitude

[livrelady]

#i feel like kirk and mccoy are generally seen as more temperamentally aligned despite kirk being emotionally closer to spock#spock representing cold logic and kirk and mccoy as the passionate emotional ones#but i feel like a) spock is wildly emotional just repressed. and coolly utilitarian in philosophy. and usually undemonstrative.#b) mccoy is highly intelligent and sometimes VERY much the voice of reason#(not typically cool rationality but certainly reason - he puts together clues that the others don't see on multiple occasions#he's not as easily derailed by obscuring details or over-cerebral analysis paralysis as the other two imo)#c) but mccoy sometimes struggles with the really big emotional shit and spock is more on kirk's emotional wavelength there#(this is especially obvious in conscience of the king and turnabout intruder but not only there - in both mccoy resists seeing#the full horror of the violations of the most basic rights that kirk has endured while spock is much more sensitive to those things)#and d) kirk is emotionally expressive but typically more cautious and measured in judgment than either of the others#more likely to formulate positions in terms of philosophical principles than mccoy's kneejerk sense of decency#(which sometimes is exactly what's needed and sometimes disastrously lacking in rigor and reflection)#or spock's often brutally utilitarian focus on outcomes that runs roughshod over... like. everyone.#that's why kirk is the mediator; he's not at the exact midpoint in every dispute#but broadly his personality and strengths/weaknesses fall pretty evenly between spock and mccoy#(interestingly i think this is especially noticeable with kirk's infamous seductions - which are rarely motivated by simple desire#they combine the focused perception and expressiveness of mccoy and the brutally self-denying calculations of spock#when sylvia exclaims that he seems warm and passionate but his mind is cold it's like... yeah. softly lit femme fatale james t kirk#it's like the unholy side of kirk's overall approach borrowing pretty equally from both mccoy and spock)#ANYWAY the point is that i don't think kirk is actually more similar to mccoy than he is to spock#and in particular his tendency to repress the horrors and focus on useful concrete action are very akin to spock#long post#anghraine babbles#star peace#otp: the premise#c: who do i need to be#c: i object to intellect without discipline#star trek: the original series#anghraine's meta (X)

I know it's well-understood at this point that Kirk/Spock is much more of a nerd4nerd ship than a nerd/jock thing, but it's just been kind of percolating around my mind that both of them aren't just space nerds but space nerds who were personally bullied.

Like, 18-year-old Kirk was targeted by an older bully who combines "total asshole" with "the most grating man in existence":

MCCOY: Well, yeah, I'm beginning to feel a little bit picked-on, if that's what you mean. KIRK: I know the feeling very well. I had it at the Academy. An upperclassman there. One practical joke after another, and always on me. My own personal devil. A guy by the name of Finnegan. MCCOY: And you being the very serious young— KIRK: Serious? I'll make a confession, Bones. I was absolutely grim, which delighted Finnegan no end.

This was five years after Kirk survived a genocide, btw, and likely well before his stint as an Academy instructor known to be strict and demanding (which is the period the "stack of books with legs" description of him comes from). By the time he's 33, fifteen years after all this, it turns out one of his deepest fantasies is just beating the shit out of his bully, but only if he can do it According To The Rules (the replica of Finnegan sneers, "Always fight fair, don't you? True officer and gentleman, you").

Spock, meanwhile, is viciously targeted by his Vulcan peers for being biracial from at least age 5; he's described as being tormented by other boys by that age, and "at home nowhere except Starfleet." I think he'd have been 18 or 19 when he left for Starfleet and it's... the least bad of his options, but he seems to have spent his entire career among humans and being persistently subjected to raw racism and profound disrespect for his culture at every turn.

Like, their histories of being metaphorically shoved into lockers are not identical or anything, but I think it's interesting that they both have them.

[tocautiouslygo]

#i feel like kirk and mccoy are generally seen as more temperamentally aligned despite kirk being emotionally closer to spock #spock representing cold logic and kirk and mccoy as the passionate emotional ones #but i feel like a) spock is wildly emotional just repressed. and coolly utilitarian in philosophy. and usually undemonstrative. #b) mccoy is highly intelligent and sometimes VERY much the voice of reason #(not typically cool rationality but certainly reason - he puts together clues that the others don't see on multiple occasions #he's not as easily derailed by obscuring details or over-cerebral analysis paralysis as the other two imo) #c) but mccoy sometimes struggles with the really big emotional shit and spock is more on kirk's emotional wavelength there #(this is especially obvious in conscience of the king and turnabout intruder but not only there - in both mccoy resists seeing #the full horror of the violations of the most basic rights that kirk has endured while spock is much more sensitive to those things) #and d) kirk is emotionally expressive but typically more cautious and measured in judgment than either of the others #more likely to formulate positions in terms of philosophical principles than mccoy's kneejerk sense of decency #(which sometimes is exactly what's needed and sometimes disastrously lacking in rigor and reflection) #or spock's often brutally utilitarian focus on outcomes that runs roughshod over... like. everyone. #that's why kirk is the mediator; he's not at the exact midpoint in every dispute #but broadly his personality and strengths/weaknesses fall pretty evenly between spock and mccoy #(interestingly i think this is especially noticeable with kirk's infamous seductions - which are rarely motivated by simple desire #they combine the focused perception and expressiveness of mccoy and the brutally self-denying calculations of spock #when sylvia exclaims that he seems warm and passionate but his mind is cold it's like... yeah. softly lit femme fatale james t kirk #it's like the unholy side of kirk's overall approach borrowing pretty equally from both mccoy and spock) #ANYWAY the point is that i don't think kirk is actually more similar to mccoy than he is to spock #and in particular his tendency to repress the horrors and focus on useful concrete action are very akin to spock

(tags via op)

I know it's well-understood at this point that Kirk/Spock is much more of a nerd4nerd ship than a nerd/jock thing, but it's just been kind of percolating around my mind that both of them aren't just space nerds but space nerds who were personally bullied.

Like, 18-year-old Kirk was targeted by an older bully who combines "total asshole" with "the most grating man in existence":

MCCOY: Well, yeah, I'm beginning to feel a little bit picked-on, if that's what you mean. KIRK: I know the feeling very well. I had it at the Academy. An upperclassman there. One practical joke after another, and always on me. My own personal devil. A guy by the name of Finnegan. MCCOY: And you being the very serious young— KIRK: Serious? I'll make a confession, Bones. I was absolutely grim, which delighted Finnegan no end.

This was five years after Kirk survived a genocide, btw, and likely well before his stint as an Academy instructor known to be strict and demanding (which is the period the "stack of books with legs" description of him comes from). By the time he's 33, fifteen years after all this, it turns out one of his deepest fantasies is just beating the shit out of his bully, but only if he can do it According To The Rules (the replica of Finnegan sneers, "Always fight fair, don't you? True officer and gentleman, you").

Spock, meanwhile, is viciously targeted by his Vulcan peers for being biracial from at least age 5; he's described as being tormented by other boys by that age, and "at home nowhere except Starfleet." I think he'd have been 18 or 19 when he left for Starfleet and it's... the least bad of his options, but he seems to have spent his entire career among humans and being persistently subjected to raw racism and profound disrespect for his culture at every turn.

Like, their histories of being metaphorically shoved into lockers are not identical or anything, but I think it's interesting that they both have them.