#ESF theory

[lightdancer1]

Originally Darkness Falls was to be a twelve-part series:

But after looking back over High Cost of Living and some of the Death and Tim Hunter scenes, I decided to incorporate them with this AU's Death. And to expand the last part significantly to incorporate aspects of that one scene from The Books of Magic.

The first eight parts of sixteen were at that higher/cosmic level, the second half incorporates views from the 'lower deck' and includes how ordinary people, as well as superheroes, deal with the world where Death died in 1916 and a direct glimpse at cultural effects.

It's not quite what TV Tropes would call the Umasqued world where the whole veil on the supernatural falls given this is the DCU we're talking about here, but the whole impact of a sudden and abrupt implosion of death and dying that started on Earth and at the end of 1916 reached multiversal scale and affected every single one of the fifty-two earths and all of hypertime does not fade readily.

Comic book death is already weird enough in the regular DCU, in this particular version the death of Death made it much weirder and more unpredictable in its effects. Among the smaller changes are that the Lazarus Pits produce a kind of catatonia (meaning Ra's always comes to on his throne and there's a wee bit of a 40K Corpse Emperor vibe to him in post-Pit states and Jason Todd abruptly falls in and out of catatonia at unpredictable intervals), that the Blackest Night insofar as it happens happens vastly differently, religion and magic function very differently (the death of Death was an unintended hard reboot of magic at multiple levels and some of the dead gods and demons that resurrected never went back to the grave).

Also Adolf Hitler and the Nazis never took over Germany and the Bolsheviks never took over Russia, though there was still a second world war that started as a general European war and spilled over into a war in Asia (in reverse to history's pattern in reality) upon the death of Field Marshal Hindenburg, the Ottoman Empire is still alive and well in the 21st Century and facing both Jewish and Arab terrorists fighting for homelands and working together and shooting at each other impartially......

And the East Slav Federation (as greater Russia is called in this AU with quasi-independent Belarus and Ukraine and a Transnistria equivalent with Ruthenia) invented the atom bomb first because the Khozyain said "split the atom" and Russia didn't need to worry 'bout no measly budgets or accountability to the Duma.

The USA is in a global imperial rivalry with the East Slav Federation headquartered in Petrograd, (read: Greater Russia with a somewhat more competent Putinist type nationalism absent the USSR) as the British Empire was fatally weakened after the world wars and played the historical USSR role of backing the national liberation movements while the ESF played the US role in backing white supremacy.

So this is the geopolitical backdrop to the AU DCU's modern era, a Cold War very much active and like the historical version backed by a nuclear balance of terror where the USA started behind and then vastly outmatched the ESF at every possible quantitative and qualitative level (which the Russians are very much aware of and resent immensely), superhero organizations that are superpowers in their own right and more caught up in strife with villains who couldn't care less about Cold War rivalries save insofar as it suits a scheme to work with one or the other side, and the entire world aware that in 1916 for a year nothing was born and nothing died.

There are a bunch of different theories about what happened and why, but the occultists of the world all have the basic picture. That one Roderick Burgess, aspiring Aleister Crowley wannabe tortured Death to death in a basement and then reality nearly came unglued as the maddened things of the Source Wall had their fun just like they did the first time when Death left in the very dawn of time.

Christian fundamentalism is a virtually moribund because a very real apocalypse did happen with WWI and then Jesus *didn't* come back, though other brands of extremist cuckoo elements have taken their place. Among them cults of the Second, which means essentially that with the recognition of the overlap of the Year Without Death with the hidden occult teachings of a death deity who is life and death both and whose previous mishap led to the implosion of both, the dying goddess is worshiped in a manner that Death of the Endless is *very* aware of and detests.

[swordoforion]

Orion Digest №45 - Alternate Models of ESF: What is Essential?

Eco-socialist federalism was founded on, and still relies upon, its central tenets. Regardless of the method by which it is implemented, it is important to understand that the nations of Earth must be united under one federation, that economy cannot serve the people adequately unless the means of production are available to public use, and until the system created is focused upon the preservation of Earth's ecosystem to allow humanity's continued survival. Everything else, much of what has been introduced in past issues, is merely models and suggestions on how this much could realistically be achieved.

I stand firm on the idea that the basic description listed above is true and necessary, but I also understand that the methods previously disclosed could be susceptible to my personal biases or lapses in my knowledge. Many have tried to implement the above concepts and met with some degree of failure, though the ideals are not to blame; simply the way they were handled. Similarly, I intend to keep writing and proposing more details on eco-socialist federalism as I envision it, but at the same time I am entirely welcome to alternate interpretations and approaches to the application of ESF to the world's political systems, as well as suggestions for improvement upon my own models.

It is not that I consider what I have written incorrect, but one person's perspective on such an issue might not compare to the perspectives of many. The two may align, but I find that the insights and experiences of others can make a collaborative piece of theory or art all the greater, and the juxtaposition of two differing perspective on an issue can prove a great testing ground for the merits of an individual theory. I believe that there are multiple ways that eco-socialist federalism can be achieved, and that different models can be more effective at accomplishing the goals of Orion.

While our membership leaves us currently unable for such a democratic assembly, the aim is to spread across the world and accumulate members that can reach a consensus on a strategy forward, and when the time comes, I am prepared to make my case not just through essays, but to members of Orion from every region, in hopes that I will find a majority that is in agreement with my plan. At the same time, to not leave my strategy up to democratic review would be a disservice to the spirit of the mission - we aim to build a world that serves the people, and if it is found that my judgement is lacking, and that current ESF models are inefficient in putting people and progress first, I am welcome to new and fresh ideas.

Similarly, when the time comes where Orion's structure has been filled out and established, I intend not to continue to serve as Instruist (as derived from the Esperanto word 'instruisto', the elected chair of Sword COMMAND, the executive house of Orion's command structure - represented by the office's seal, DKTC) until properly and democratically re-elected by such an assembly. My intent is to lay down the foundations of Orionist theory, philosophy and structure, as well as to propose my own approach to them, and leave it up to future members of this organization as to what path they shall choose to take.

So then, how might other models differ? While a federation must remain democratic, the structure of Parliament, the Judiciary, and the Executive Bureaucracy are not set in stone, let alone are the presence of such houses assured. Models that still allow for citizens to have a say in every level of government still accomplish the basic purpose. An economy can still be socialist while ridding itself of the market, so long as every citizen that falls beneath the livable threshold is provided for, and that the means of production are accountable and available to the public, rather than to private ownership. Finally, while de-escalation is one proposed strategy for environmental revitalization, there could exist both more and less extreme alternatives to save the ecosystem, especially as more and more advanced technology is developed.

It is important to understand that these models may need to change with the passage of time due to the unpredictability of the future. Certain circumstances may arise that require Orion to adapt and change, whether political, social, or environmental. For example, should the federation established one day be distorted into the antithesis of its ideals, it would be foolhardy to simply try once more with the same exact strategy; it is of vital importance that Orion can learn and grow with time. Just as a federation may be fallible, it is important for each member to understand that so too could the organization become doggedly stuck on an incorrect path, and as a member, it is important to stand up and fight even their fellow members on issues of importance to the organization and the world.

Outside of eco-socialist federalism, the other two primary components essential to Orionist thought are those of philosophy and structure, both of which have been laid out. Digest No. 41 detailed the basics of Orionist philosophy - the five levels (beauty, empathy, responsibility, discipline, and sacrifice) that detail the duty to fight so that the people of the world can truly appreciate the world around them and find greater meaning in their lives. Structure is listed already in several places - the two house command structure of Orion (Sword COMMAND, of which the Instruist is elected and the other positions are appointed; and the Council of Flagbearers, of which regions elect their own representatives), as well as the three branches (Sword of Orion, Liberius, Museion Institute) and their respective chapters.

Beyond this, I anticipate that over the course of Orion's existence, the words and theories written down in the Digest may be subject to change and evolution, and while I may find myself in disagreement, I am open to the idea of being proved wrong. However, it is vital that the theory, philosophy, and structure remain essential. We cannot forget that people deserve to enjoy the world, and that we owe it to each other to be kind and work together. We cannot neglect the precious balance between us and our natural habitat. We must make sure that our society is one that is united and puts accountability in the hands of both the individual and the community. Finally, as long as there are those who are willing to strive for these ideals, Orion must fight for the survival and prosperity of humanity, and for that unending pursuit of beauty and knowledge.

- DKTC FL

[meggs-benedict]

There is this theory that TK is actually dying because she travels through timelines so much that her body is crumbling from the inside which is why her costume has a giant gap on her right eye and I see your design of TK in the ESF au also has a giant gap in her eye so she could be on of the many other TKs who are literally dying on the inside

honestly im dead inside too TK dw

/j

[jasper-tarot-reader]

Hello, Jasper!

It’s me again. I came back with a little weird question for your decks.

The question is, when Universe sends a number 87 to me a lot (at least 4 or 5 times every day for the last two or three months), what does Universe want to let me know?

I searched for the answer on different resources and inside me but I wasn’t successful. I hope you and your cards will help me to find the truth! Your readings always help me get some insights so I trust them a lot.

Also, in your answer to my feedback message you to wrote you've ended up working on a LEOP. I found it interesting and googled to know more. But I didn't learn as much as I wanted to. That's why I'd be thankful to you if you tell me more about LEOP (if you can and want to).

I think that's all I wanted to write. If you celebrated Christmas I hope it was funny and joyful for you!

Wishing you good health, luck and happiness,

Lilou💛

Hey again Lilou!

You actually sent me this message when we're in the crunch time for getting the LEOP done, so that's what took me so long to post! So first, let's do the reading, and then I'll talk more about the LEOP. I chose Abbot the Dragon Tarot for this reading!

Question: What does the Universe want Lilou to know when it sends them the number 87? Answer: Page/Cups reversed

This card represents an unwillingness to accept responsibility and fickleness, childishness, and self-absorption being masked as obedience. People like this card indicates can flatter others into taking them on, but will be unable to live up to the expectations they raise.

For some reason, after I pulled this card, the thought "dump him" repeated three times in my head, but I can't for the life of me explain what that means here.

Pulling on my (very limited) knowledge of numerology based on tarot, Eights are about progress and priorities, while Sevens are about patience, trust, and commitment. Another big thing in numerology is adding numbers together until you get a single digit, which in this case would be Six: success, satisfaction, and reward.

Therefore, following this logic, you're seeing the number 87 because it's time for you to re-evaluate things in your life and to see if they're helping you or hindering you in the long run.

...You know that meme of the guy in front of the board with a bunch of papers and random strings connecting them? The Pepe Silvie Always Sunny in Philidelphia one? That's me right now because numerology is SO not my wheelhouse.

But let's talk about something that is: the LEOP. Short for "Local Emergency Operations Plan", this is a plan created by a city or county using information provided from the State Emergency Management Agency (SEMA) to prepare for emergencies so that everyone knows what their jobs are.

There's the Basic Plan and then addendums that appear either as Emergency Support Functions (ESFs) or Annexes which go more into detail about things like Firefighting (ESF 4/Annex F) and Catastrophic events like earthquakes (the Catastrophic Annex). Which, considering all of Missouri would be impacted by the New Madrid Seismic Zone in the event that it blows, is very important for us to plan for.

I'm helping my mom write one for a county, which means we have to get all of the cities in the county to promulgate with us - to agree to use our plan so they don't have to write their own and so they can just follow our lead.

If you'd like to know more about Missouri EOPs (Emergency Operations Plans), then here's a link right to the Missouri SEMA website: https://sema.dps.mo.gov/newspubs/publications/leop_planning_documents.php

How about that? You got a tarot reading, a conspiracy theory about numerology, AND information about larger-scale emergency planning, all in one post!

Leave feedback as another ask that I can publish publicly and tell me what parts felt right, if anything felt off, stuff like that. Until you do, you will be added to my greylist. Please reblog my reading guidelines!

~Jasper

[mbti-sorted]

II. Style

Ok, so the truth-is-beauty site has 7 types identified, which can be combined in twos or threes for a total 63 types.  These are types to describe the lines of your face, and aren’t necessarily the style types that people choose to wear.  Just what would look good on them.  I’m going to use it more interchangeably with what I actually see people wearing, because that’s more useful for identifying people by clothing.  To be honest, though, it is often somewhat interchangeable - people like to wear clothes that look good on them.

Also, this is a site that is oriented towards women.  If you go through the whole thing, there are posts about men - and certainly the colouring is useful information.  You can use the same style types for men, it just doesn’t show you how that would translate into actual clothes.  This next bit, though, where I try and match style type to mbti type might be applicable to men, but it is specifically about women.

1. Romantic - Mature, sexy.  ES types, particularly ESFPs.  Sometimes ENTJs.

2. Ethereal - Would you be hired to play a humanoid otherworldly being in a fantasy/sci-fi movie (elves, angels, gods, androids)?  Tends to be a bit androgynous.  This is apparently the rarest type, and I can see why since most of her examples were ENTPs.  I think this tends to be mostly T-type women and F-type men (going for the androgyny).  So mostly ENTPs, but also SFPs, ESTJs, STPs and INTPs.  Maybe some ISFJs.

3. Dramatic- Powerful, bold, intimidating.  ESTs. ENTJs. (All those types with the wide-angled eyes.)  Occasionally ESFs.  Also (maybe because they have high-contrast faces?) ISTJs and to a lesser extent INTJs - I remember someone asked me about INTJs and colourblocking, so that’s where that comes in.  Also ISPs.

4. Natural - Earthy, comfortable, relaxed.  Most types to a certain extent, but particularly EFs.

5. Classic - Subtle, simple & well tailored.  Faces are symmetrical and features are nice but un-noteworhy (nothing sticks out).  Think old money, or business clothes.  I think of J types, particularly SJs, but also most other types, as well.  STs tend to have a dramatic lean on this style.  ENs tend to lean more natural.

6. Gamine - Youthful, boyish, playful.

7. Ingenue - Sweet, innocent, dainty. 

Introverts tend to have baby-faces and usually have some sort of Gamine or Ingenue leanings (often mixed with natural or classic - just trying to fade into the background!  ITs also lean into dramatic or ethereal, and IFs also lean into romantic or dramatic or ethereal).   It splits pretty well with F type Ingenues and T type Gamines, but there is crossover.  Particularly for gay introverts - if you have butch/femme leanings, that definitely takes precedence in your style over being an F/T.

There are also plenty of extraverts with child-like features.  I can’t really pin down which are more likely to be girlish or boyish, though.  I think the ESs are all over the map.  Maybe more ingenue for ENFP, ESFJ and more gamine for ENFJ, ENTJ, ENTP.  ESTJ, ESTP and ESFP seem more evenly split.

Most people are not one type alone - so here’s all the two, and three type combos, for a total of 63 style types (again this is what styles look good on people, not what they actually wear, so a lot of people take elements from many styles, especially if trying to figure out what works on them - and some people never figure it out).  You can also browse through the styles here and see if you can identify which types they belong to.  A lot of them seem like they would be better in another time, or at least are very impractical for most people’s day-to-day use.

Anyway, up until last week I was pretty unfamiliar with anything fashion-related, so I’ll probably refine my ideas about this over a long period of time.  It’s not a huge step from personality theory to fashion theory, though.  Lots of practical applications for both!  Hope you enjoy reading more about it - she’s got some really interesting posts including one about about using costume design in tv/movies to influence expectations for characters.

[bluewatsons]

Ib Bondebjerg, The embodied mind: when biology meets culture and society, 1 Palgrave Communications 15015 (2015)

Abstract

Since the 1980s the study of the brain has developed from being a primarily biological field to a significant interdisciplinary area with a strong influence on the humanities and social sciences. In this article I describe fundamental elements in what I call the embodied mind paradigm, and new understanding of the relation between mind, body and emotions. The new paradigm challenges certain notions of constructivism in the humanities and social sciences, but also opens up fruitful venues for new interdisciplinary research. Here I outline such possibilities in the particular areas of linguistics, philosophy, sociology and film studies. This article is published as part of an ongoing collection dedicated to interdisciplinary research.

Introduction

In a recent portrait of and interview, the young, very successful Danish theatre director, Elisa Kragerup, was asked what influenced her decision over which plays to put on stage: “Working with theatre is for me a way to engage in what it is to be human. When my passion for something is awoken, it is because I feel it in my body, when it gives me a physical feeling (...). It is a very physical thing to work with both the higher and the deeper aspects of being human (...) The body is a language, which can be used to tell transformation stories” (Skotte, 2015). It is not often that we hear a person working with an art form, such as the theatre, talk so directly about the body and emotions when defining creative work. Some theatre or film directors, or some authors might tend to talk about the more rational, abstract and intellectual dimensions of art and creativity. Yet most creative people know that the body, the emotions, what we feel about something, are deeply imbedded in all forms of art and communication. Indeed, the ancient Greek and Roman rhetorical traditions talk about logos, ethos and pathos as part of a successful communication.

Two cultures revisited

In a way it should not be controversial to point to biology and neurology as a fundamental dimension for research in the humanities and social sciences. It ought to be common sense to connect elements from biology, the natural sciences, humanities and social sciences to get a deeper understanding of how our society and culture, our art forms and types of communication, are linked to the concept of our embodied mind. However, the split and controversy, pointed out by Snow in his original lecture and the book that followed, The Two Cultures (1956/59, republished 2012), between natural sciences and the humanities and social sciences still exist. In the humanities and social sciences there is a strong trend towards constructivist views, and biology and neurology often signal a kind of determinism to those in these fields of research. It should not, however, come as a surprise to researchers in the humanities and social sciences, that the human mind and body are the result of a very long and slow evolutionary history. After all, Darwin was not born yesterday, and Darwinism is a firmly established paradigm for the under- standing of how humans develop and the interaction between our biology and the natural and social context work. It is not a deterministic theory, but a theory that teaches us to look carefully into both the very fundamental dimensions of how our body and mind functions, and the social, historical and cultural context in which we live.

C P Snow was already wondering why it was expected that people in the natural sciences should know the fundamentals of culture and society in order to be considered educated citizens, whereas those in the humanities and social science considered some of the most basic aspects of natural science irrelevant. What we see today in the new interdisciplinary embodied mind paradigm is often that across the split, which Snow described, the humanities, social sciences and natural sciences collaborate and enter one another’s territory. Researchers with a natural sciences background—like for instance the Danish neurologist and Oxford professor Morten Kringelbach or the American neurologist Antonio Damasio—enter art studies and philo- sophy through books like Mind Space. The Emotional Brain (Kringelbach, in Danish, 2004) and Self Comes to Mind. Constructing the Conscious Brain (Damasio, 2010). Conversely, linguists, such as American Lakoff and philosopher Johnson, start developing an embodied theory of language and meaning in Metaphors We Life By (1980). Furthermore, in film, media and literary studies, and studies of creativity, the embodied mind paradigm is strong, for instance in Turner’s The Literary Mind (1996), Ed Tan’s Emotion and the Structure of Narrative Film (1996) or the more popular book by Gottschall, The Storytelling Animal. How Stories Make us Human (2012), which combines psychology, sociology, aesthetics and neurology.

Descartes’ error: the neurological turn

From 1994 to 1997, I was a member of European Science Foundation’s Standing Committee for The Humanities. ESF-Humanities has always been very dedicated to the development of interdisciplinary research, not just with the social sciences, but also the various branches of natural sciences. ESF was located in Strasbourg, and in 1995 a strike made the trip back to Copenhagen very long. However, I had brought with me Damasio’s book Descartes’ Error. Emotion, Reason and the Human Brain (1994), simply because I found the title so intriguing, and I had plenty of time to read what for me became a bit of a revelation and led to my own personal neurological turn. What the book does is to use compelling neurological research to raise and give answers to questions that have profound importance for the understanding of humans, culture and society. The fascinating thing about the book is that Damasio can move seamlessly between biology, neurology, philosophy and psychology. His introduction is also a personal story of factors that changed his own understanding of things and the fundamental way in which we generally look upon and evaluate, for instance, the relation between rationality and emotions:

I had grown up accustomed to thinking that the mechanisms of reason existed in a separate province of the mind, where emotion should not be allowed to intrude, and when I thought of the brain behind that mind, I envisioned separate neural systems for reason and emotion. This was the widely held view of the relation between reason and emotion, in mental and neural terms. (Damasio, 1994: xii)

What the book argues for, through different case studies of persons with specific forms of brain damage and more general neurological arguments, is that this widely held concept is completely wrong. Feelings, memory and perceptual images play an important role for our reasoning, and because the body and the mind are so connected, feelings and reasoning interact; feelings play an important role for our minds and for our ability to act in society. As Damasio points out, feelings and emotions are not a luxury, they are in fact as “cognitive as other percepts” (xv), and they guide our decision making and reasoning in important ways. So Descartes’ error was that his sentence “Cogito ergo sum” (I think therefore I am) created an “abyssal separation of body and mind (...) the separation of the most refined operations of the mind from the structure and operation of a biological organism” (Damasio, 1994: 249–250).

This general argument for an embodied mind, for the biological basis of both reason and emotion has been taken further and discussed in many books both with a philosophical agenda and with a more creative and communicative agenda. In one of his later books, Self Comes to Mind. Construction the Conscious Brain (2010), Damasio himself develops a theory of the self that is based on the embodied mind framework. The self, who we are and what we feel and think as a “me”, is, according to Damasio (2010: 22–23), a very complicated process in which the self is constituted by three different kinds of self: the “protoself” with the primordial feelings, mainly in the cerebral cortex and brain stem; the “core self” or what he calls a “material me” where interactions between the organism and objects take place, and “the autobiographical self”, which is our aggregated knowledge and memory of both the past and projections of the future. Finally we have what Damasio calls “a knower”, where the core and autobiographical self give our minds a “subjectivity”.

Damasio is not a philosopher, but his theories and biological empirical evidence has been taken up and critically discussed by some of our most interesting new philosophers, for instance in Zahavi’s new book Self and Other (2014). Zahavi’s book represents an important interdisciplinary attempt to connect classical phenomenology and philosophy with the new trends in the philosophy of the mind. Such an attempt to expand the embodied mind theory into philosophy and challenge the whole Western tradition for understanding rational and cognitive processes is also strongly represented in Lakoff and Johnson’s Philosophy in the Flesh. The Embodied Mind and Its Challenge to Western Thought (1999). In effect what the book says is: the mind is inherently embodied, thought is mostly unconscious and abstract concepts are largely metaphorical. What the book also argues for, based on cognitive science, is that commonalities and universality, when we talk of human societies and culture, are much more dominant and important than differences. This again does not mean that culture and society are not important; it simply means that the social and cultural diversity, or the historical and national differences, we can observe, are built onto our embodied minds, which ensure a strong commonality beneath our variations.

The social mind: new cognitive sociology

Generally speaking the new embodied mind paradigm is not an erosion of the things humanities and social sciences have been researching for years: how cultures communicate and interact, how the creative and artistic dimension of our life, how societies and politics are formed, and so on. Rather, this new cognitive- emotional theory offers a new foundation of cultural and social studies of societies and historical development. Damasio (2010), who is in fact very conscious about the kind of controversy his theory and biological framework can create outside natural sciences, has said this very explicitly:

Naturalizing the conscious mind and planting it firmly in the brain does not diminish the role of culture in the construction of human beings, does not reduce human dignity, and does not mark the end of mystery and puzzlement. Cultures arise and evolve from collective efforts of human brains over many generations, and some cultures even die in the process. They require brains that have already been shaped by prior cultural effects. The significance of cultures to the making of the modern human mind is not in question. Nor is the dignity of that human mind diminished by connecting it to the astonishing complexity and beauty to be found inside living cells and tissues. (27)

This strong statement from Damasio is reflected in different forms of cognitive sociology, an already firmly established subdiscipline represented, for example, in a text-book like Fiske and Taylor’s Social Cognition (1991, and many later editions). Here social cognitive processes are described through, for instance, schema theory, the social categories we use in social interaction, in connection with self-understanding and memory, attribution theory, and affects and cognition and their role in the building of attitudes for instance. Although social cognition like this is not directly linked to the new dimensions of the embodied mind framework, and the link to biology and neurology is thinner, there is definitely a shared common ground that can be developed further. This is also the case with other approaches to cognitive sociology, for instance Zerubavel’s Social Mindscapes. An Invitation to Cognitive Sociology (1999).

Zerubavel’s book offers what he calls a general outline of a “sociology of the mind”, and in the opening chapter he argues that the need for a cognitive sociology really stems from a still very dominant trend in cognitive science to study individual brains and forms of cognition, “cognitive individualism” (Zerubavel, 1999: 2). Like Damasio (but without direct reference) he sees the rise of modern cognitive science as coinciding with the decline of the “Romantic vision of the individual thinker” (Ibid.). In a model of dimensions cognitive sociology, Zerubavel (1999) talks about three fundamental dimensions of cognitive sociology: cognitive individualism, cognitive sociology and cognitive universalism (20). These dimensions on the one hand point to very subjective, personal dimensions of our social cognition, and on the other hand to universal cognitive commonalities that are related to the deep biological dimensions of social cognition that we share as human being, despite our differences. At the centre we then find the more collective, historical, subcultural dimensions of social cognitions, the things that are formed by our being members of “thought communities”.

Therefore, despite his attack on the romantic notion of the individual and his strong argument for cognitive theories that play down our cognitive individualism and differences and support the cognitive universalism or our cognitive commonality as human beings, Zerubavel (1999) focuses on the interplay between cognitive universalism and a cognitive sociology focusing on cognitive diversity and differences (10–11). In an almost paradoxical way Zerubavel actually argues that being aware of what is universal and common for all human beings makes it much clearer how we can approach collective processes of cognitive socialization and formation of social though communities, subcultures and structures of collective memory or shared cultural experiences. The universality of our embodied mind and foundation for our experiences is not in opposition to the analysis of the cognitive diversity and pluralism we find in modern cultures.

When cognitive sociology and linguistics is used in actual research of contemporary matters, such as it is the case with George Lakoff’s The Political Mind (2008), the reaction can, however, be quite strong. In his review in the New York Times, Saletan (2008) simply called the book “Neuro-Liberalism”, and what happens in this review is basically that Saletan reacts against the biological dimensions as if they form a deterministic framework for Lakoff’s comparative analysis of Republican and Democrat political discourses:

In place of neoliberalism, he offers neuroliberalism. Since voters’ opinions are neither logical nor self-made, they should be altered, not obeyed. Politicians should “not follow polls but use them to see how they can change public opinion to their moral worldview.” And since persuasion is mechanical, progressives should rely less on facts and more on images and drama, “casting progressives as heroes, and by implication, conservatives as villains.” The key is to “say things not once, but over and over. Brains change when ideas are repeatedly activated. (Saletan, 2008)

What Lakoff is trying to analyse, however, are different political discourses and how they relate to the way our brain basically works through links between emotion and reason, through metaphor, narrative and dramatic oppositions. He is, in a way, just continuing the work done by rhetorical research for centuries on which speeches have had an impact and which have not, and why that is. Abstract facts and arguments are not enough in themselves, and to state that is not deterministic, but based on solid neurological research, and which is not in opposition to demands for truth, facts and reason.

Moving images, culture and the mind

The study of moving images, of film, television and more recently the internet and social media have gone through some of the same theoretical main trends as other areas of the humanities and social sciences: strong aesthetic, cultural paradigms have existed alongside more sociological approaches. Around 1985 cognitive theory developed rapidly in film and media studies. Bordwell’s book Narration in the Fiction Film (1985) became an influential starting point for theories of genres and narrative structures in film and other media that combined both formalist, structural analysis and cognitive and psychological ways of describing film comprehension. By defining and describing very fundamental and universal forms of film narration (for instance classical narration and art cinema narration) he went against a tendency to see genres primarily as historically and culturally constructed. The viewer here emerged not primarily as a socially and culturally constructed viewer, but as a viewer constituted by the fundamental dimensions of cognitive and emotional involvement in film and narrative structures.

This attempt to establish very fundamental, universal genres and modes of reception in film is further developed in Grodal’s two books Moving Pictures. A new Theory of Film, Genres, Feelings and Cognition (1997) and Embodied Visions. Evolution. Emotion, Culture and Film (2009). Grodal defines basic genres through the emotional responses and typical moods activated in the spectator of different types of films. The different genres also involve aspects of active and passive relations with narrative forms and characters. Besides the classical, canonical narrative Grodal deals with classical genres also described in other film theories such as comedy and melodrama. However, he also talks about, for instance, associative lyricism, obsessional paratelic fictions and metafiction. Such genres, defined by specific cognitive and emotional elements, have universal dimensions, but they are also influenced by historical, social and cultural factors, which create variations. Visual fiction is thus seen as mental structures modelled on the basis of a simulated reality of actions and emotions to which we react with much the same experiences and capacities as in real-life experiences. The book thus argues that many of the fundamental structures of film experience are based on embodied emotional and cognitive patterns that interact with the concrete social and historical context of audiences.

Grodal’s theory of film genres as embodied flow (see also Bondebjerg, 2015) explains the popularity of specific genres and their relation to basic mental and emotional activities and experiences. However, there is no fundamental conflict between a cultural, historical and stylistic approach to visual fictions and Grodal’s position, but the experience and processing of moving images cannot be described as culturally constructed in any short- term sense. In the introduction to his second book Grodal makes the same statements, as those researchers already cited, about why the embodied mind theory represents a major shift in the humanities and social sciences. He refers to Damasio’s statement that film is actually a good illustration of how consciousness functions, because the filmic experience in many ways simulates the real-world experience, and because it illustrates that levels of a bodily and biopsychological nature, far below language and consciousness, are activated (Grodal, 2009: 13).

As such, when traditional film scholars—or language and literature scholars—only see a culturally and historically constructed language, they miss the dialectic between mind, body and society. Both social theory and constructivism tend to see the mind as a blank slate from birth on which culture and society make their imprints (see Barkow et al., 1992). But as the embodied mind theory has shown through both experimental, clinical research and empirical sociological research this is out of touch with the fundamental dynamic between biology, sociology and culture. Humans come with a very strong biological framework that is by nature universal and interacts with society and culture in much more complex ways. In film research this problem has been studied theoretically and experimentally by Ed Tan in Emotion and the Structure of Narrative Film (1996)—the subtitle “Film as an Emotion Machine”, indicates what it is about. He is not trying to deal with all aspects of film experience and cultural and social aspects of cinema; rather, he is trying to focus on how viewers emotionally involve with classical narrative films and how those emotions are created between screen and viewers both bodily and mentally.

This is also very much the agenda for Carl Plantigas’s Moving Viewers. American Film and the Spectator’s Experience (2009). He criticizes the main trend in cultural studies and aesthetic theories of cinema and media and the way in which they primarily look for hidden meanings and tend to look for abstract propositions, messages and themes. Furthermore, he criticises the dominant forms of empirical audience research for not dealing with emotions. He sees the cultural studies paradigm as a result deep down of the same dichotomy between biology and culture, between reason and emotion that for decades have haunted Western thought and have led to a misunderstanding of emotions as counterproductive for logical and critical thought (Plantinga, 2009: 4).

Towards a new interdisciplinary agenda: biology, culture and society We are biological creatures just as much as we are cultural and social creatures. We are born with a brain and a body before we are even defined as individuals and citizens in a specific society; we are universal in the making, before we get a specific language and are formed by the circumstances and times we live in. Modern theories of cognition and emotion point to the fact that we have much the same emotions, although different societies and social circumstances can teach us and influence how we control or exhibit them. Since man developed language, we have always told stories, drawn pictures in ways that have strong universal elements, and this has also been a basis for great diversity and historical variation. There seems to be strong universal patterns beneath the way these creative and communicative formats are developed.

Unlike what traditional cultural studies and sociology tend to infer, biology and evolution show that we are not born like a blank slate, and constructed from scratch as cultural and social beings. Our body, biology, brain and neural system play a very crucial role for how we are formed, but at the same time biology, culture and society certainly interact in very specific ways. We are not just individuals created by our own history and development, we are not just social and group-determined individuals—we are in fact also individuals with a strong evolutionary ballast of biological nature and with universal dimensions. Emotions are not just a byproduct of evolution, only there to be controlled or suppressed, fiction and narratives are not just entertainment to be avoided by rational thought, they are actually very basic and universal structures through which we understand and make sense of the world. Reason, logic, facts and so on are just as necessary, but they exist as part of the same biological make up of all human beings, and they are historically equally as important for our cultural and social life.

Interdisciplinary collaboration and dialogue across disciplines are more important than ever for the understanding of humans in culture and society, and biology is an integrated dimension in that understanding (Bondebjerg, 2000). Biology and neurology have made major advances in knowledge of the human body and brain over the last five decades. Technologies to study the living brain are beginning to appear, and this development will make it the emotional and thinking parts of our experience in focus. Research in film and media studies, but also in social media and networking, in game studies, memory studies, and in the creative arts, offer much potential in such an interdisciplinary endeavour.

References

Barkow J, Cosmoses L and Tooby J (1992) The Adapted Mind: Evolutionary Psychology and the Generation of Culture. Oxford University Press: New York.

Bondebjerg I (2000) Moving Images, Culture and the Mind. University of Luton Press: Luton.

Bondebjerg I (2015) Film: genres and genre theory. In: Wright J D (ed). International Encyclopedia of the Social & Behavioral Sciences, 2nd edition, Vol. 9. Elsevier: Oxford, pp 160–164.

Bordwell D (1985) Narration in the Fiction Film. The University of Wisconsin Press: Madison–Wisconsin.

Damasio A (1994) Descartes’ Error. Emotion, Reason and the Human Brain. Avon Books: New York.

Damasio A (2010) Self Comes to Mind. Construction the Conscious Brain. Vintage Books: New York.

Fiske S T and Taylor S E (1991) Social Cognition. McGraw Hill: New York. Grodal T K (1997) Moving Pictures. A New Theory of Film, Genres, Feelings and Cognition. Oxford University Press: Oxford.

Grodal T K (2009) Embodied Visions. Evolution. Emotion, Culture and Film. Oxford University Press: Oxford.

Gottschall J (2012) The Storytelling Animal. How Stories Make us Human. Mariner Books: New York.

Kringelbach M (2004) Hjernerum. Den følelsesfiulde hjerne/Mind Space. The Emotional Brain. People’s Press: Copenhagen.

Lakoff G (2008) The Political Mind. New York: Penguin Books.

Lakoff G and Johnson M (1980) Metaphors We Live By. Chicago University Press: Chicago.

Lakoff G and Johnson M (1999) Philosophy in the Flesh. The Embodied Mind and Its Challenge to Western Thought. Basic Books: New York.

Plantiga C (2009) Moving Viewers. American Film and the Spectator’s Experience. University of California Press: Berkeley.

Saletan W (2008) Neuro-liberalism. New York Times, 22 June.

Skotte K (2015) Vi lyver for at få sandheden frem. Interview med Elisa Kragerup/We lie to reach the truth. Interview with Elisa Kragerup. Politiken, 9 March.

Snow C P (1956/59, 2012) The Two Cultures. Cambridge University Press: Cambridge–New York.

Tan E (1996) Emotion and the Structure of Narrative Film. Routledge: New York and London.

Turner M (1996) The Literary Mind.The Origins of Thought and Language. Oxford University Press: Oxford.

Zahavi D (2014) Self and Other. Oxford University Press: Oxford.

Zerubavel E (1999) Social Mindscapes. An Invitation to Cognitive Sociology. Harvard University Press: Cambridge, MA.

[journalofsportsmedicine]

Culturally Historical Origins of Concept “Physical Education”-Juniper Publishers

Introduction

The construction of a theory that objectively reveals the patterns of development of the field of activity of people associated with the use of exercise, the name of which in the broad social and scientific practice is most commonly used the term “physical culture”, only possible if using scientifically sound concepts [1]. In a previous post [2], the concept of “physical culture” was introduced as a result of the cognitive activity of many scientists, that is, it is consensual. Obviously, for the unbiased and unbiased perception of this definition, the cultural and historical origins of the scientific community need to be uncovered.

Goal

To highlight the conditions for the emergence of the concept of “physical culture” in the process of cultural and historical evolution of the sphere of activity of people related to the use of exercise.

Research methods

Consist in the analysis of special literature, which covers various aspects of the development of basic forms of social manifestation of physical culture, as well as the use of a systematic and historiographic approach to the analysis of this problem. The study used Google’s online search service (Google Books Ngram Viewer).

Research results

According to the historical materials of the phrase “physical culture” entered widespread social practice in the first half of the 19th century. Its appearance was made possible by the fact that from the eighteenth century the term “culture”[1] (Latin culture, from the verb colure, which translates to cultivation, cultivation, improvement) began to be used, among other things (monoculture, agriculture etc.), to define human activities aimed at their own development. This term was introduced as an independent abstract concept in the late XVII century. the German philosopher S. Pufendorf (1632 -1694), who understood the concept of “culture” as created by man. He noted that the creator of culture is not a specific person, but large groups of people united by common activities, in a sense, “aggregate person”. Thus, in the early 19th century the word “culture” was used to refer to people to characterize their activities and their results in the processing, improvement, development, education of the human essence in all its dimensions.

In the period of occurrence of the phrase “physical culture” its other component, namely the word “physical” was used quite widely in different spheres of human activity to define the natural origin of various phenomena and objects as well as in the family education system to characterize the process of physical (physical) development of children. For example [3], when discussing family upbringing, stated that “… the first major part of upbringing, that is, caring for the body… the first one is because body training is already needed when other training is needed. has no place yet. This part of education is called by scientists’ physical education. It was this understanding of the concept of “physical” in relation to man (corporeal) that was most widespread in the 19th century. For example, in the same sense, the term “physical” was used by T. Smith in the book “Philosophy of Health: or a statement of the physical and mental constitution of man” [4], as well as in the study “The [1] The word “cultura” is first found in the treatise on Mark Portius Cato the Elder (234-149 BC) by De Agri Cultura (c. 160 BC). Almost two centuries later, Mark Tulius Cicero (106-143 BC) used the word in the Tusculan Conversations to characterize the process of educating the human soul “culture animi auten philosophic esf” (cultivation of the soul is philosophy) [5].

Based on the above analysis of the substantive essence of the concepts of “culture” and “physical” we can conclude that the phrase “physical culture” can be interpreted ambiguously, both narrowly and broadly. In a narrow sense, it means the development, nurture, care, perfection of human physicality. In this case, the word “physical” is used in the translation as “bodily.” Under this condition, the concept of “physical culture” is equivalent to the concept of “bodily culture.” For example, in his article on Principles of Physical Education, Taylor published in the American Homeopathic Journal [6] noted that people under the term “physical culture” usually understand muscular culture (physical culture). The results of the analysis of the specialized literature indicate that such an interpretation of the concept of “physical culture” has survived to some extent even to this day. For example [7], noting that the phrase “bodily culture” was quite widespread in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, suggested returning to it, arguing that the activity of people in the field of physical culture transforms the physical origin of a person from naturally this phenomenon in the phenomenon of socio-cultural in the book “Physical Culture, Strength and Body” [8] noting that in the last decade there has been a surge in books about “body” in society, raising a number of questions, in particular, about the nature of the body, about the relationship between “ the natural “(physical) body and the” constructed “body, between the” natural “body and the” virtual “body. The problem of human physicality is also analyzed in many other contemporary studies, for example [9, 10] and many others].

On the other hand, the concept of “physical culture” can be interpreted not only as “bodily culture”, but also much broader than the development, nurturing, nurturing, perfection of the totality of features of a given person from nature. In this case, the word “physical” is interpreted as “natural”, that is, given to man from nature. These natural attributes include not only the body, but also sensory-motor reactions, feelings, emotions, intelligence, as well as various needs, for example, in health, in physical activity, in cognition of the outside world and several others. These signs, in their totality, form the basis of a person’s spiritual existence. Therefore, the concept of “physical culture” in the broadest sense should be interpreted as the activities of people using physical exercises to educate (develop, nurture, improve) the physical and spiritual essence of man, as well as individual and socially significant results of such activities.

    Conclusion

a) The analysis of cultural and historical origins of the concept of “physical culture” showed that it should be interpreted as the activity of people with the use of physical exercises to educate (develop, care, improve) the physical and spiritual essence of man in all its diversity, as well as individual and socially significant results. of such activity

b) The results of the comparative analysis indicate that the definition of the concept of “physical culture” made based on the results of the analysis of its cultural and historical origins coincides with the consensus definition of this concept [2], which testifies to its objectivity and correctness. Therefore, this concept can be used as a basis in the development of a theory that describes the field of activity of people associated with the use of exercise, the name most commonly used in the broad scientific and social practice, the term “physical culture”.

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[kendrixtermina]

Reevaluating Quadras and Quadra Attraction

You know, I was always sceptical about quadra attraction. 

In fact I still mantain that it’s probably only true to a degree, not that ‘necessary’ to get along & can be overriden by socialization etc .

We can find lots of examples & counterexamples and this is just one of it that only has meaning in the context of other observations. 

But it’s still amazing how the bae has managed to find ALL the ESFPs in our university’s the telecomunications engineering deparment. 

Like he’ll bring over/ mention/ run into one of his friends, and within 6 minutes the friend will say something like “I just can’t stand to be cooped up in a small room where I don’t have space to walk around.”, “I’m not so much into the theory part, it’s the hardware part that’s my thing” or “I’m glad that big gamble paid off”

From how he describes his childhood friends, he’s had this friendship preference all his life - ie, he made mischief , then while he was doing his barchelor’s degree he says he “hung out with the extroverts to learn their tricks”

One, for example, (the one I’ve interacted the mot with & am therefore surest about) is a super modest kinda bohemian dude even though his family is rich, who’s been getting his degree to appease his ambitious parents so they’ll accept his fiancé whom he’s still very devoted to despite the long-distance relationship. Body language is also a dead ringer for Se-Fi. 

The remarkable thing is, his friends are usually also businesspartners, colleagues or co-students, that is, businessmen, engineers and computer science/physics people - ie. a group where xSFPs would be underrepresented (though I definitely get how Se-Te would be useful for engineering and business should be their jam anyways) but they’re overrepresented in his friend group. 

He doesn’t much get on with most of the abundant NTPs at the faculty, often commenting on how a lot of pll there are “overspecialized antisocial Nerds who don’t understand the need for presentability/responsibility” (more an observation than a shittalk tho, he wants to know why) - though he has one good friend who sounds xNTP-ish (according to him, he’s “very good with alghorithms & is very passionately into designing them but also really overcomplicates things at times”) and, of course, me. 

Not sure if he ever tried dating an ESFP tho. He doesn’t mention his exes much, (and as an 1 INTJ with a strong 9 wing he’s simply not the sort to vent about that) but there’s been the implications that there was unpleasantness  - GFs who wanted him to call all the time, didn’t listen to his ideas, wanted to go out and do a lot of stuff more than he could put up with. That does sound like a negatively skewed ESF descriptions but it could’ve been ESFJ as well and it’s not enough info to remotely tell anything. 

For not entirely altruistic reasons, I’m kinda glad he didn’t (or that it didn’t work out) 

Not ready to draw new conclusions for me personally tho. I never socialized much, so, insufficient sample size to begin with. 

[geograph-hitje]

Reference List: In the case of urban planning, community engagement is a futile exercise.

Allmendinger , P. & Haughton, G., 2011. Post‐political spatial planning in England: a crisis of consensus?. Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers, 37(1), pp. 89-103, viewed 10 September 2018, <https://rgs-ibg.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/j.1475-5661.2011.00468.x>.

Arnstein, S., 1969. A ladder of citizen participation. Journal of the American Institute of Planners, 35(4), pp. 216-224, viewed 10 September 2018, <http://www.participatorymethods.org/sites/participatorymethods.org/files/Arnstein%20ladder%201969.pdf>.

Bajracharya, B., Brown, R. & Hearn, G., 2008. The Second Life of urban planning? Using NeoGeography tools for community engagement. Journal of Location Based Services, 3(2), pp. 97-117, viewed 10 September 2018, <https://www-tandfonline-com.proxy.library.adelaide.edu.au/doi/abs/10.1080/17489720903150016>.

Brownill, S., 2009. The Dynamics of Participation: Modes of Governance and Increasing Participation in Planning. Urban Policy and Research, 27(4), pp. 357-375, viewed 10 September 2018,  <https://www-tandfonline-com.proxy.library.adelaide.edu.au/doi/abs/10.1080/08111140903308842>.

Clifford, B., 2012. Rendering reform: local authority planners and perceptions of public participation in Great Britain. Local Environment, 18(1), pp. 110-131, viewed 10 September 2018, <https://www-tandfonline-com.proxy.library.adelaide.edu.au/doi/abs/10.1080/13549839.2012.719015>.

Collie, N., 2011. Cities of the imagination: Science fiction, urban space, and community engagement in urban planning. Futures, 43(4), pp. 424-431, viewed 10 September 2018, <https://www-sciencedirect-com.proxy.library.adelaide.edu.au/science/article/pii/S0016328711000061>.

Flint, A., 2014. The Hazardous Business of Celebrating Le Corbusier. [Online] Available at: https://www.citylab.com/design/2014/11/the-hazardous-business-of-celebrating-le-corbusier/382584/ [Accessed 10 September 2018].

Goodchild, M. F., 2007. Citizens as sensors: the world of volunteered geography. GeoJournal, 69(4), pp. 211-221, viewed 10 September 2018, <https://link-springer-com.proxy.library.adelaide.edu.au/article/10.1007/s10708-007-9111-y>.

Google, 2018. Google Maps Help: Add, remove, or share photos and videos. [Online] Available at: https://support.google.com/maps/answer/2622947?co=GENIE.Platform%3DDesktop&hl=en [Accessed 10 September 2018].

Guertz, C. & Van de wijdeven, T., 2010. Making Citizen Participation Work: The Challenging Search for New Forms of Local Democracy in The Netherlands. Local Government Studies , 36(4), pp. 531-549, viewed 10 September 2018, <https://www-tandfonline-com.proxy.library.adelaide.edu.au/doi/abs/10.1080/03003930.2010.494110>.

Healey, P., 1997. Collaborative Planning: Shaping Places in Fragmented Societies. 1st ed. Vancouver: University of British Columbia Press, viewed 11 September 2018, <https://books.google.com.au/books?hl=en&lr=&id=psW_hMb3AH8C&oi=fnd&pg=PR10&ots=ZnktE1M99L&sig=_jfz4oKCvy02icKo2Os7DZh35hU&redir_esc=y#v=onepage&q&f=false>.

Hubbard, A. & Abbot, S., 2012. The top six community engagement challenges facing urban planning. Planning News, 38(3), p. 21, viewed 10 September 2018, <https://search-informit-com-au.proxy.library.adelaide.edu.au/fullText;dn=271434734523209;res=IELBUS>.

Konsti-Laakso, S. & Rantala, T., 2018. Managing community engagement: A process model for urban planning. European Journal of Operational Research, 268(3), pp. 1040-1049, viewed 10 September 2018, <https://www-sciencedirect-com.proxy.library.adelaide.edu.au/science/article/pii/S0377221717310846>.

Lindner, R., 2006. ‘The cultural texture of the city’, in Johan Fornäs (ed), Proceedings of the ESF-LiU Conference Cities and Media: Cultural Perspectives on Urban Identities in a Mediatized World, Vadstena, Sweden, viewed 10 September 2018, <http://www.ep.liu.se/ecp/020/005/>.

Lithgow, S. & Stewart, J., 2014. Problems and prospects in community engagement in urban planning and decision-making: three case studies from the Australian Capital Territory. Policy Studies , 36(1), pp. 18-34, viewed 10 September 2018, <https://www-tandfonline-com.proxy.library.adelaide.edu.au/doi/abs/10.1080/01442872.2014.981061>.

McGuirk, P., 2001. Situating Communicative Planning Theory: Context, Power, and Knowledge. Environment and Planning A: Economy and Space, 33(2), pp. 195-217, viewed 10 September 2018, <http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1068/a3355>.

Lipsky, M., 1980. Street-level bureaucracy: dilemmas of the individual in public services. 1st ed. New York: Russell Sage Foundation.

OPDM (Office of the Deputy Prime Minister), 2004. Community Involvement in Planning: The Government's Objectives, London: OPDM, viewed 10 September 2018, <http://webarchive.nationalarchives.gov.uk/20120919203426/http://www.communities.gov.uk/documents/planningandbuilding/pdf/147588.pdf>.

Roy, P., 2015. Collaborative planning – A neoliberal strategy? A study of the Atlanta BeltLine. Cities, Volume 43, pp. 59-68, viewed 10 September 2018, <https://www-sciencedirect-com.proxy.library.adelaide.edu.au/science/article/pii/S0264275114001899?via%3Dihub>.

Swyngedouw, E. (2010), Post-democratic cities: For whom and for what? Paper presented at the Concluding Session, Regional Studies Association Annual Conference, 26th May, Pecs, Budapest, viewed 10 September 2018, <http://www.regional-studies-assoc.ac.uk/events/2010/may-pecs/papers/Swyngedouw.pdf>.

Walker, J., Cornwall, D. & Ferguson, J. 2018, ‘The $300bn transformation of our big cities’, The Weekend Australian, 1-2 September 2018, pp. 1 & 16.

Wanna, J., 2008. Collaborative Government: Meanings, Dimensions, Drivers and Outcomes. In: J. O'Flynn & J. Wanna, eds. Collaborative Governance. A new era of public policy in Australia?. Canberra: Australian National University E Press, pp. 3-12, viewed 10 September 2018, <http://press-files.anu.edu.au/downloads/press/p96031/pdf/book.pdf?referer=142>.

[askesf]

Why Possession is Dying (Theory)

Why Possession’s status is dying on the character sheet (Theory)

In my last theory, the part that explains why he is slowly dying is incorrect, so this is another theory trying to explain it! In the background of a recent ask that depicts Possession and Scar saying they are both alright, it shows dead, smaller characters that look similar to Possession. There are no other characters in ESF that look similar to Possession, so I think that these are parts of him. I think that he is constantly dying, but he sacrifices or loses parts of himself to stay alive. He may be dying because he is slowly losing all of himself. This ability would also explain why he has been able to survive for so long.

Author: nice one! I would call these parts ‘clones’ tho. But otherwise, well done!

[swordoforion]

Orion Digest №40 - The Dual Machines

Between government, economy, and culture, humans have formed an international society that turns what would be a simple population of humans and the planet's resources into a complex machine of moving parts. Every person within the system does their part and has their effect on the world around them, and when compounded together, it creates an sizable and tangible effect on the individual, taking on a life of its own. Even if it is made of words and beliefs rather than gears and screws, the moving parts still come together to take in fuel and output a desired result.

In this case, the desired result with civilization is to input available resources and labor to provide citizens with goods and services to fulfill their needs, from nutrition to safety, rather than have all the tasks of survival placed on each person alone. After all, it would provide much for benefit when making a shirt for one person to shear the sheep, another to collect the wool, another to spin the yarn, and so on, rather than have each person take on every step. In an ideal version of this machine, everyone is able to put in a small amount of effort and have their needs met, and those who are physically or mentally unable to work are provided for.

Unfortunately, when civilization first formed, we had not yet learned how to best organize ourselves, nor had we faced the atrocities that would teach us morality. Wanting not to labor but to still live in luxury, people sought power over others, and bent political systems, economies, and cultures to their will. Certain peoples had to succeed above all, certain nations had to be the strongest, certain elites had to possess wealth and nobility, even if it meant the rest had to work harder and eat less. Back then, we hadn't learned to care about the pain of others, and so we took what made us feel good. After that, once the first stone was cast, and power was seized, others seeking their own interest followed suit, in a back-and-forth that has lasted millennia.

With time, those that have fought for the greater good have brought a greater sense of morality into the public eye, but even as people recognize the need for equality and sense of community, the systems that make up modern society are not conducive to greater and swifter change. Like a broken car with bad mileage, we are using more resources than necessary while hardly improving quality of life for much of the world, and barriers to public input in government are sprouting up everywhere. The consequences of our past actions haunt us and have placed upon our shoulders a great burden - people are at each other's throats, the world is burning, and those in power have little interest in disadvantaging themselves to provide for the greater good.

If the 'machine' is broken, it is our moral obligation, both for our own sake's and for the sake of others, to fix or replace it. Now that we stand on firmer ground, having seen what elements worked and which ones failed, we can work on a better machine. This is the purpose of eco-socialist federalism - a grand design supported by the belief and contribution of its population to fix the problems we have created in our ignorance, and to lay a stronger foundation for future generations to prosper. This is not an attempt to place a select few in power, to create a population of slaves that support the lavish livelihoods of the insatiable - this is an attempt to bend culture, politics, and economy down to a level that benefits all who participate in it. Everyone does their part, and everyone shares in the spoils.

Unfortunately, there is always the chance that whether by design or by human error, this grand new attempt at catering to the common good will be flawed, or will fail. We seek to design a more efficient machine, but when transitioning from paper to practice, there may be faults and errors that escaped our notice. This does not mean we shouldn't try - even if there are still problems to solve, having less of them will still be a net positive result. However, it means we should be prepared to continue pushing for change and redesign, not stopping until we get it right, and even then, questioning on ways we can improve.

It is for these reasons that we propose to create two 'machines' - a federation that efficiently manages resources and serves the people, and an organization - Orion - that will stand from now until its last member to serve the ideals for which the federation stands. The establishment of a federation is a necessity - only united do we stand a chance of fixing our damages and alleviating our pains. However, Orion should not only serve to establish the federation - if we truly believe in the Tenets we have set forth, we must be prepared to see it through, to watch over the new world and, should a time come when the federation has fallen from its purpose, fight to fix the machine once more.

If society is to be a clock, gears turning and moving forward with the passage of time, then Orion is to be a clock keeper - watching and making adjustments as needed. This is not to say that Orion should serve as an official position within the federation - to do so would be to tie down the actions of our organization and make our authority seem undemocratic. Rather, Orion simply will, if necessary, speak the truth and aid communities on the grounds of moral authority above legal authority. If that falls in line with the federation, all the better, but if it does not, and the federation shows itself as no longer focused upon the greater good, Orion will be present to correct it.

In an ideal future, all that this second machine would have to do is stand still, keeping watch, and keeping firm the values of equality, community, and justice it has been founded upon. If all goes well, and we are able to properly fix the machine with what we know this time, it will never need to be repaired again. But so many times in the past have we thought ourselves right and correct about the state of the world, and so many times have we been wrong. The best thing we can do is guess the best course of action, take it, and be prepared to question ourselves and improve in the aftermath. We must first build federation, but if it proves flawed, Orion will be ready to act once more, and again as many times as necessary.

We are not the only organization out there seeking change, and one of our greatest strengths will be helping others with similar missions achieve their goals. However, even if we're not the only one out there fighting for a better world, our mission is to always be out there, either fighting or defending a better world.

- DKTC FL

[meggs-benedict]

Theory in the ESF au when Sparkling straight up sees Almond's ghost he freaks the fuck out thinking it's Tk pulling another mind trick even though it isn't he would continue not to believe it's his dad until one night when Almond checks on his kids again Sparkling just throws a random vase at Almond's ghost finally making him go away and also waking up Walnut in the process

DUDE

[rightsinexile]

Publications

“The directives and actions in response to the refugee crisis will be analysed in order to answer the question of whether a Human Security approach could be available model for the European Union in international relations.” Human Security from the Critical Theory Perspective: EU and the Refugee Crisis. Emre Baysoy. Sosyal Bilimler Metinleri. February 2018.

“Children returning to Afghanistan face difficulties in accessing reliable shelter, education, jobs and medical support, and risk recruitment to armed groups and physical harm due to conflict. Child returnees face psychosocial and in some cases legal challenges, which render reintegration improbable and pose fundamental challenges to their wellbeing. Currently, returns to Afghanistan cannot be considered durable.” From Europe to Afghanistan: Experiences of Child Returnees. Marion Guillaume, Nassim Majidi, Samuel Hall. Save the Children. October 2018.

“The 2018 immigration and asylum law also re-introduced non-suspensive appeals for safe countries of origin; asylum seekers can now be removed from the country before their appeal is determined. Statistics regarding the number of individuals detained prior to Dublin transfers already reflect this toughened stance, with 3,723 asylum seekers placed in detention in 2017 as opposed to 834 in 2015.” Immigration Detention in France: Longer, More Widespread, and Harder to Contest. Global Detention Project. October 2018.

“A controversial ground that had been frequently used to justify detention of asylum seekers was removed in the 2015 amendment to the Law on Protection. It permitted detention in order to prevent the abuse of asylum proceedings.” Immigration Detention in Poland: Systematic Family Detention, Lack of Individual Assessment. Global Detention Project. October 2018.

“Although officials and politicians often present new digital platforms as security threats that enable traffickers and illicit enterprises, these technologies also have played a critically important role in aiding refugees, asylum seekers, and migrants in need. They help people connect to the outside world from inside detention centres, provide desperately needed information about sources of humanitarian assistance, and enable the creation of digital communities that give migrants and their loved ones’ agency to proactively search out solutions.” Physical Fences and Digital Divides. A Global Detention Project Investigation into the Role of Social Media in the Context of Migration Control. Part I: Exposing the “Crisis.” Tom Rollins. Global Detention Project. May 2018.

“A key finding is that usage of digital tools is far more varied than the extant literature generally reports. Indeed, varying factors including socio-economics, nationality, and smuggling modus operandi considerably affect the use of such resources. Many sources, for example, emphasised the importance of community and diaspora networks during the various stages of their journeys and downplayed the role of social media and smartphones, which were often barely used—and sometimes not at all.” Physical Fences and Digital Divides. A Global Detention Project Investigation into the Role of Social Media in the Context of Migration Control. Part II: “Why Would You Go?” Tom Rollins. Global Detention Project. October 2018.

“One reason refugees have little access to formal employment is the unsubstantiated belief that refugees inevitably drive down wages, take jobs from hosts, and reduce the quality of services.[2] While these fears are understandable because of the complex economic and fiscal effects of hosting refugees, they are, for the most part, not borne out by the evidence.” The Economic and Fiscal Effects of Granting Refugees Formal Labor Market Access. Michael Clemens , Cindy Huang and Jimmy Graham. Center for Global Development. October 2018.

“The best way forward to improve the way sexual orientation asylum claims are decided seems to entail the combination of a series of legislative amendments with a three-pronged non-legislative strategy: training, guidance and quality control.” Testing the untestable: The CJEU’s decision in Case C-473/16, F v Bevándorlási és Állampolgársági Hivatal. Nuno Ferreira, Denise Venturi. European Database of Asylum Law. June 2018.

“Ethiopia became one of a few countries in the world to pilot the Comprehensive Refugee Response Framework (CRRF) in February 2017 with a nationwide launch of the same in November 2017. [...] Understanding the implementation prospects is critical, because the CRRF has the potential to bring about drastic changes in Ethiopia’s refugee protection – such as expanding socio-economic opportunities of refugees in a way that benefits and impact the host communities.” Ethiopia’s refugee response: Focus on socio-economic integration and self-reliance. Tsion Tadesse Abebe. Institute for Security Studies. October 2018.

“The purpose of this rule is to limit aliens’ eligibility for asylum if they enter in contravention of a proclamation suspending or restricting their entry along the southern border.” Aliens Subject to a Bar on Entry Under Certain Presidential Proclamations; Procedures for Protection Claims.  Interim final rule; request for comment. US Federal Register. November 2018.

“According to [the king’s] presentation, the three new Moroccan laws on asylum, integration, and anti-trafficking would entail a chapter on cooperation with [international organizations]. Such cooperation serves the Moroccan authorities not only within the national struggle for power and positions, but also on the international level. Through the appropriation of its dominant discourses and expert knowledge, the Moroccan authorities have been able to reemploy the cultural capital of international migration management in order to convert it into economic and social benefits in international negotiations.” Practices and power of knowledge dissemination: International organizations in the externalization of migration management in Morocco and Tunisia. Inken Bartels. Movements. 2018.

“This article makes four related arguments regarding the academic field of migration and refugee studies (MARS) in the UK and its relations of knowledge production with UK state agencies. The first, most empirical, argument is that the field’s members harmed their human subjects by providing technical and symbolic assistance to two UK Home Office-managed organisations in controlling migration: the Advisory Panel on Country Information (APCI) and the Migration Advisory Committee (MAC).” MARS attacks! A cautionary tale from the UK on the relation between Migration and Refugee Studies (MARS) and migration control. Joshua Hatton. Movements. 2018.

“The number of refugees has drastically increased since the signing of the 2015 agreement, making them an important constituency. There have been three refugee observers at the talks; however, IGAD has been accused of doing little to fully include refugees, and they did not sign the final September agreement.” “We do not honour agreements”: Dialogue and peace agreements in South Sudan. Thijs Van Laer. International Refugee Rights Initiative. November 2018.

“When security in Afghanistan deteriorates, ethnic minorities can easily find themselves in the firing line. In particular, there is a long history of persecution of and discrimination against members of the Hazara Shiite minority in Afghanistan.” On the return of Hazaras to Afghanistan. William Maley. November 2018.

“This Policy Memorandum establishes the policy of EOIR--consistent with INA § 208(d)(5)(A)(iii) – to complete adjudications of asylum applications within 180 days to the maximum extent practicable.” Guidance regarding the adjudication of asylum applications consistent with § 208(d)(5)(A)(iii). James R. McHenry, EOIR Director. November 2018.

“Recent judgments by the domestic courts in Israel presented this state with an opportunity to formulate a different policy accommodating the needs of the Eritrean ‘infiltrators’/asylum-seekers. In spite of these judgments, the policy applied to Eritreans seems not to have changed. This means that Israel seems to utilize the present situation of the Eritreans in the country as a means to deflect the intentions of others who would like to seek asylum there.” To stay or to leave? The unsolved dilemma of the Eritrean asylum-seekers in Israel. Cristiano d’Orsi. Harvard International Law Journal. Spring 2018.

“There is a concern that the executive actions violate the immigration statute and other laws. While the interim final rule and presidential proclamation identify some sections of the immigration statute, these sections cannot be read in isolation to the statute as a whole, nor can it conflict with the U.S. Constitution, statutes and other laws. One concern is that these actions violate the statutory provision that governs asylum law and other laws.” Joint Interim Rule on Asylum and Presidential Proclamation: What you need to know. Penn State Law Center for Immigrants’ Rights Clinic. November 2018.

“This document analyses selected new legislative and budgetary proposals [regarding asylum and migration] published by the European Commission within the framework of the proposed Multiannual Financial Framework for 2021-27.” The way forward: A comprehensive study of the new proposals for EU funds on asylum, migration and integration. Rachel Westerby. ECRE and UNHCR. October 2018.

“This reflection paper addresses the proposals of most relevance to beneficiaries of the current Asylum Migration & Integration Fund (AMIF) 2014-20, and those that are proposed to be implemented by Member States via ‘shared management’ arrangements (National Programmes). It concentrates mainly on the proposed Asylum & Migration Fund (AMF) and European Social Fund+ (ESF+).” The way forward: A reflection paper on the new proposals for EU funds on asylum, migration and integration 2021-27. Rachel Westerby. ECRE and UNHCR. October 2018.

“Although easily forgotten now, it is worth remembering that, until the 1980s, the forced migration and refugee problem across much of East and Southeast Asia was, for the largest part, a Chinese problem involving mass flight from communist China, political dissidents on both sides of the Taiwan Strait and ethnic Chinese minorities who were excluded wholly or partially from citizenship and full economic participation in their countries of residence. Echoes of this complicated past can still be found in contemporary debates over the treatment of North Korean ‘defectors’, differential citizenship for ethnic minorities, ‘temporary’ migrant labour and human trafficking that consume the public discussion and public policy surrounding migration and citizenship in Asia today.” Forced migration, refugees and China’s entry into the ‘family of nations’, 1861-1949. Glen Peterson. Journal of Refugee Studies. September 2018.

“This case study generates several conclusions of wider relevance to refugee studies, namely the flexibility of perceptions of belonging, the possibility of deliberately reshaping perceptions of belonging and the existence of multiple, overlapping identities (i.e. citizenship, faith, ethnicity and culture) that are accorded different weight and value at different times.” Boundaries and belonging in the Indo-Myanmar borderlands: Chin refugees in Mizoram. Kirsten McConnachie. Journal of Refugee Studies. September 2018.

“For many years, a bottle-neck scenario has been unfolding in Northern France, characterised by precarity, rough-sleeping, dangerous and unauthorised border-crossings, and excessive police violence which often takes the shape of dangerous interventions. Refugees and displaced people report arbitrary arrests and detentions, where they allegedly oftentimes experience further violence and may be left without access to food or water, raising serious concerns that the rights of displaced people may be violated whilst held in detention. The use of tear gas and intimidation tactics, as well as what would appear to amount to intentional sleep deprivation, appears to be part of a conscious tactic by the French state to create a hostile environment for refugees and asylum seekers in Northern France.” Refugees and displaced people in northern France: A brief timeline of the human rights situation in the Calais area. Marta Welander, Fee Mira Gerlach. Refugee Rights Europe. October 2018.

“This paper examines the sources and intersections of vulnerability and offers an overview of how various courts have conceptualized the vulnerability of migrants. It is argued that, in the context of the Global Compacts and at national level, the term “vulnerability” too often serves to portray migrants in a negative light, as helpless victims. Policy makers and judges often discard the fact that the precariousness in which migrants find themselves is mostly constructed by states and other actors through policies and practices that are well documented.” “Migrants in vulnerable situations” and the Global Compact for Safe Orderly and Regular Migration. Idil Atak, Delphine Nakache, Elspeth Guild, François Crépeau. Queen Mary School of Law Legal Studies Research Paper No. 273/2018. February 2018.

“While the World Bank’s financing and [the Comprehensive Refugee Response Framework] are “pulling in the same direction”, there are no formal agreed on outcomes and no formal linkages between the funding and the framework. The process for making decisions about policies and programs have seemingly marginalizes NGOs and refugees themselves, even though there are new structures meant to give them a voice.” New responses to the refugee crisis: Promises and challenges in Uganda. Sarah Miller. International Rescue Committee. November 2018.

[mbti-sorted]

That's so uncanny, I'm the only person in my family with cool-toned skin, and I'm the only person in my family with Fi-Te. Also, as an ESFP that was fun to read since we're referenced in almost every category (those some ES, EF, ESFs really add up).

Yes, like clearly there are people of every mbti type with both warm and cool skin, but also, things that seem very coincidental are probably worth looking into.

My current theory to check out is - does your skin tone tend to take after your parent with the same F and T functions as you? And if it does, that kind of implies your mbti might be somewhat genetic. And if you have two parents with the same F/T functions, but different skin tones, then what does that mean for you? Or do people tend to be attracted to people with opposite functions and skin tones, or same functions and skin tones?

Curious! If I get a spare minute, I'll see if I can figure some of that out.

I think setting out style by style type makes it a bit vague by mbti type. I might do another set of posts to be more specific about what happens for each mbti...

ESFPs maybe tend to dress according to the work they do? Like their work, personality and style are all heavily intertwined. I know a jeweler who was classic natural, a singer who was dramatic natural ethereal, a high school teacher who was dramatic (?) natural classic, a flight attendant in natural classic gamine, a jack of all trades in natural-gamine, a secretary in natural classic, one working in a call-centre in natural gamine - and that's just people I personally know off the top of my head.

Most people (in general) currently wear some element of natural and/or classic (it's just what seems neutral to wear right now), and add bits of other styles.

[lodelcar]

THE REGIONAL CALL FOR AUTONOMY: A CURSE FOR EUROPE?

Picture: Appareillages, 2004-2008 (J.P.Forest-Tahiti), Oceania exhibition in Royal Museum of History and Art (Brussels)

An important trend in several countries shows the unhappiness of peripheral regions with the centralizing policy of their governments: Spanish Catalonia claims its independence, French Corsica wants more autonomy, Italian Lombardy and Veneto have also a strong political party aiming for as much autonomy as possible, Spanish Bask country wants to keep as much autonomy as it can, bilingual Italian Alto Adige/Südtirol is confronted with right-wing Austrian proposals to give double nationality to its German-speaking citizens, Croatian Istria has also a regional party and wants to keep and extend its regional competences, Danish Far-Oer islands have a strong demand for self-government and even independence, Belgian Flanders has a dominant right-wing party that also claims independence in its statutes, Polish and Czech Silezia have also a unneglectable trend for autonomy.[1] Regions that are located peripherally feel abandoned in the first place because they are unable to attract foreign direct investment and therefore large employers. Because indeed, multinationals care about location: proximity of a local market and proximity of human resources in vast quantities. And that is mostly close to large metropolises. So traditionally, peripheral regions are often not well represented inside the democratic institutions. In the case of Catalonia, Bask country, Flanders, Veneto or Lombardia, the motivation is different: they want to keep the wealth they developed in their own hands, unwilling to share it with “spilling” neighbours. Federal states such as Germany, Austria and Belgium tried to solve the problem by giving social and economic authority to its member states. Socially embedded countries, such as the Scandinavian countries, started from a point of view that everybody should have the chance to live his life decently in the place he wants to stay. And the small countries -small in size and in density of population-, such as the Baltics, Cyprus, Luxembourg or Slovenia have a democratic representation system that covers the entire country.

Regional consciousness based upon historical differences?

But then one can observe that the dissatisfaction is often expressed in a sentimental way, claiming a different historic past, cultural and/or linguistic differences. Whereas in general the fundamental motive is economical: whether they consider they contribute too much for the other regions or they do not receive enough from the others. One of the results of the European Union project has been indeed, that we start to consider ourselves as Europeans in the first place, with a common cultural and religious history and particularly, common values. Especially the young generation feels that way: they start to see through the allegations of populists who try to convince their voters of the inferiority of the others. Their political project is often inexistent or not well thought true: numerous have been the examples that occurred in the last two years.[2]

Through its Cohesion program, the European Union pleads for more involvement in social and economic matters of regions. It stimulates cities and regions to collaborate on matters that are close to the citizen. One of the elements to stimulate regional involvement is to stimulate them in taking responsibility on the management of the European Regional Development Funds based upon a regionally developed strategy. [3] The difference in approach is striking: the UK manages the ERDF per member state of the Union: England, Scotland, Wales (2 programs!), Northern-Ireland and Gibraltar. Countries organizing the ERDF funds in a centralized way are Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia, Croatia, Malta, Luxembourg, Lithuania, Latvia, Hungary, Finland, Estonia, Denmark, Cyprus, Czech Republic, Bulgaria and Austria. Countries having developed various strategic plans for their regions –and enabling them most likely to manage the funds themselves- are Belgium, France, Germany, Greece, Ireland, Italy, Netherlands, Poland, Portugal, Spain and Sweden. And then there is an overwhelming offer of some 330 cross border collaboration plans. Hereby the regional approach is aiming transnational regions, such as countries alongside the coast of the Adriatic and Ionian sea, the Low Countries and the North of France, the Danube countries or the countries alongside the Baltic Sea.

Continuing to promote the regional approach in the same way?

We do not always understand the purpose of the scattered approach, to be motivated in the first place by the lack of funding and that makes the acceptance of projects more like a lottery or the survival of the fittest. The total budget for all structural and investment funds in the period 2014-2020 is 347,737 million € and represents 1/3rd of the European budget. This overview shows, the EU is investing quite some money in regional development. On the other hand, it also shows, this investment is spread over 209 regions, 380 operational programs, 122 categories of intervention and 13 thematic objectives. [4] If one considers this, it is understandable that less densely populated peripheral regions that suffered already from an important brain drain, feel abandoned and have a willing ear for populist stories, complot theories and other fake news. Nevertheless in 2017 an initiative has been initiated and organised for the prolongation of a modern EU-Cohesion Policy for all regions post 2020. 

This does not mean though, that less favoured regions do not accept the challenge. In general, even less prosperous regions can have charismatic figures, able to convince their fellow citizens to collaborate and to undertake challenging projects. Even in more remote regions (or should we say, because of its remote location), like Galicia in Spain, Bucovina in Romania or Norrbotten in Sweden, we found thrilling examples of applications for future oriented initiatives and employment creation.  [5]  

Update the regional approach?

In most cases, old school regionalism starts when national governments are not taking care of the welfare of all citizens. Politicians tend to think sometimes in a very short-term and narrow-minded way: they only take care of their own supporters. And provided these supporters are located in a certain area or within a particular group of the population, they don’t feel they have to take care of the rest. The most extreme example in Europe is Belgium, where only two minor parties are represented in both parts of the country: the Green party and the far-left party. All other parties limit their activity to one or two of the regions. Politicians are not even interested in being interviewed by newspapers or televisions stations from areas that cannot vote for them. This leads to ignorance about the needs of the others. Catalonia is suffering from the same disease.

New regionalism is found in France, with strong historical regions, but also with a historically strong centralised government. A French region is at the same time an administrative division of the territory of France, a decentralized territorial collectivity endowed with the legal personality and a freedom of administration, an electoral district and an administrative district of the deconcentrated services of the State.[6]When they were created in 1956, they were 27. Since 2016 they are 18. Because of ineffectiveness or because of a lack of budget. But because of the definition here above, the protest was quite limited and the reorganisation implemented smoothly. France showed the effectiveness of the statute of regions for social and economic development.

A quite effective regional approach is also found in the Netherlands. The authority of the 12 Dutch provinces covers: regional economics, spatial planning, security, education (municipalities), culture and health (hospitals with municipalities). The collaboration between the provinces is striking: they have created an Association of Dutch Provinces in 2000 as an issue of the Dutch interprovincial concertation. This association represents the 12 Dutch provinces and defends their interests. Jointly they are represented in Brussels with an office that is following the European policy and tries to influence it. The aim of the Dutch provinces is to stimulate the financing of projects to promote regional economy. With own budgets and where possible with European money, currently the ERDF and ESF funds. ERDF funds are managed in the Netherlands by the provinces, ESF funds by the municipalities. The association pays attention on European Cohesion Policy, European Agricultural Policy, Energy Union and Decentralized Natural Policy. They are very much aware of the changes that are taking place by the Brexit, which will affect European funding. Moreover the use of resources for refugees and cybersecurity puts this distribution under pressure.

Regions: a curse for Europe?

Catalonians where shocked by the words of EU Commission president Juncker declaring he did not back Catalan independence, fearing others may follow the same path and because it could result in a region too complicated for the European Union (EU) to govern.[7] The Spanish legislation about the regional approach is a very complicated one, laid down in the Spanish Constitution of 1978. Spain did not want to become a federal state, with the Franco nationalist heritage in mind and quite some Franco supporters still on high positions. It is up to the Spanish government to decide where modifications in their legislation should be introduced. But Europe, bearing in mind that 1/3rd of its budget goes to Cohesion funds and regional development, should stimulate the central government not to hide themselves behind “the law” and to strive for solutions satisfying all inhabitants of Spain.

The EU structure could become indeed extremely complicated should it have to find unanimity within all regions of the EU, considering the current NUTS 2013 classification lists 98 regions at NUTS 1, 276 regions at NUTS 2 and 1342 regions at NUTS 3 level.[8] But even with 27 member states, the principle of unanimity becomes unbearable and leads to inertia. The United States of America have also their states, with specific legislation, with its own fiscal authority, its own police force and its own decisional power. And under those states, there are counties and cities representing the regional and local authorities and striving for a better life for its inhabitants. So Europe should strive to a common authority grid, inviting every member state to take into account the wishes of all its citizens, not only the ones that vote for the party in power.

Louis Delcart, board member European Academy of the Regions, www.ear-aer.eu

[1]

https://www.theguardian.com/world/ng-interactive/2017/oct/27/beyond-catalonia-pro-independence-movements-in-europe-map

[2] The political program of Marine Le Pen for the 2017 French presidential elections did not go further than slogans, as did Geert Wilders’ program for the 2016 Dutch parliamentary elections. The most striking was the independence declaration of Catalan Carles Puigdemont in September 2017, who had to consider, once the independence was declared, what the next steps had to be. And last but not least the Brexit adventure, where the political protagonists all disappeared from the political scenery without leaving a structured plan of execution, leaving the realization of their “impossible dream” to others.

[3] http://ec.europa.eu/regional_policy/en/atlas/programmes/

[4] http://s3platform.jrc.ec.europa.eu/esif-viewer

 [5] The Statistical Implementation Unit North-East Romania created a Regional innovation board in which commodities such as water and energy and waste have been discussed and initiatives taken. A Water cluster has been created, integrating all players for waste, sewages, water and energy. In Iasi Veolia started to treat the waste. They started to take initiatives on circular economy. Although there is no central energy policy in Romania, nor is there regional or local policy, there are exceptions: in Suceava there are electric buses (thanks to a Swiss fund). There is now a covenant of Mayors of Nord-East Romania trying to reduce CO2 emission per city. They want to turn municipalities in carbon neutral entities. Town mayors are looking for examples of renewable energy. They do not care in this term of the classic electric grid, creating stand-alone alternatives for their city. Projects for public illumination based upon hydro power or solar energy are very popular. Also in terms of circular economy and short value chains (localization) initiatives have taken, e.g. cultivation of hemp as biodegradable basic material.

The Spanish region of Galicia disposes of natural gas in Orense: Gas natural Fenosa. The region meets almost by 100% the renewable energy goals set up for 2020. Given Galicia’s location and geographic features, the establishment of hydroelectric and thermal power stations, hydraulic operations, wind farms, and solar power stations is ideal. They have developed 2 wind energy parks and the region is on the brink of remarkable growth in solar energy capabilities. It also disposes of 2 biomass centrals. Another example is an initiative of regrouping all activities of the port of Vigo under one umbrella, enabling the port to develop its business model. This initiative has been taken by the president of the port of Vigo, in close collaboration with the dean of the university of Vigo. The involved also the president of the Xunta de Galicia for the development of infrastructure inside the port. The University created also the “campus do mar”. Campus do Mar is a project spearheaded by the University of Vigo and promoted by the three Galician universities, the Spanish Council of Scientific Research (CSIC) and the Spanish Institute of Oceanography (IEO). It therefore brings together socio-economic agents and marine researchers from the Galicia-Northern Portugal Euroregion, in order to harness the best possible potential and optimize the available resources.

The Swedish city of Luleå, although situated very north in Europe is a fast growing urban region. Luleå has the seventh biggest harbor in Sweden for shipping goods. It has a large steel industry and is a centre for extensive research. Luleå University of Technology is one of Sweden’s three technology universities and the northernmost university in Sweden. The information technology industry in Luleå has about 2000 employees (2008). Luleå is the home of several major innovations and technological milestones. On 27 October 2011, Facebook announced it would locate its first data center outside of the United States in Luleå. The establishment of Facebook in Luleå has also led to other companies realizing the potential of establishing in Luleå. The positive effect has also been noticeable at the university where the applications rate has risen with 18 percent- Luleå Science Park has also had an increase with 25 percent of new established companies.(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lule%C3%A5)

[6] https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/R%C3%A9gion_fran%C3%A7aise

[7] BBC News, 13 October 2017, EU Spain: Juncker does not want Catalonian independence, http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-41610863

[8] http://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/web/nuts. Socio-economic analyses of the regions: NUTS 1: major socio-economic regions, NUTS 2: basic regions for the application of regional policies,     NUTS 3: small regions for specific diagnoses 

[spectre-inspector-rpm7000]

An area of contention is becoming prevalent among those who investigate the EVP phenomenon. It has to do with whether or not certain types of sensors or microphones can detect EVP. The disagreement has to do with whether EVP is an acoustic phenomenon or something else. This article addresses that issue. What not to buy & why, weekinweird.com/2009/11/29/what-not-to-get-your-favorite-ghost-hunter-for-christmas/