#FreeThinker

[crimson-and-clover-1717]

Stede Bonnet, Renaissance Man (Or an Exceptional Man who Thinks He’s Mediocre)

I’ve posted before about Stede’s love of beauty. He’s an aesthete, finding wonder in art and creative self-care rather than the transcendental. Stede’s a freethinker. He challenges the orthodoxies of his time, rejecting forced heteronormative behaviours, and even questioning the accepted traditions of piracy.

The thing about Stede is he often asks ‘why?’ It’s partly what makes him dangerous to some. This slant towards subversion is much of what Izzy observes and detests. It’s one of many reasons Stede must be kept from Ed. Like a number of Renaissance-style thinkers before him, Stede refuses to go along with the status quo. He is ‘doing something original’, questioning dogma. Many find it ridiculous, bizarre even. And it’s significant that instead Ed finds Stede enchanting, because it demonstrates who Ed might be given the chance to find his own path.

Stede is also a polymath and likely an autodidact - I doubt he learned about ‘insane foliage’ at school. He is self-motived and seems to have knowledge across a broad spectrum of disciplines. Literature, drama, botany, entomology, psychology, art, textiles. Stede’s very much about the life of the mind.

And he’ll approach areas at which he’s not so gifted, such as cartography and sword-fighting, with the enthusiasm of a dilettante; when he can��t succeed the traditional way, he simply subverts the discipline and does it his own. However, the most important thing for me in defining Stede as a Renaissance man is his humanism. People are front and centre. Sometimes that person is himself, and he loses sight of others. But it’s okay as that’s the point. Humanism is partly about being a messy individual who can do better. And Stede is someone who can learn and alter his position when circumstances change. He might not do so in the best way all of the time, but he is a quick-learner and highly-adaptable.

Stede also understands that no culture or institution is bigger than the people within it. The most important thing is human dignity - it’s what he shows and teaches Ned’s crew: that they deserve to be respected as people. Stede also has a strong moral core. When he messes up, he feels it deeply. He demonstrates strong ethics towards the natural world too - he’s absolutely disgusted by turtle vs. crab. Stede believes not so much in human superiority, but human responsibility, and this is the flip side of having dignity as a human being.

Another aspect of Stede’s humanism is his belief that culture should be accessible to all. Some of this might be naivety on Stede’s part rather than a well-thought out philosophy, but he believes in it intuitively. Stede wants the crew to have access to his library despite not recognising they can’t all read. He gives them musical instruments and sports facilities - he’s interested in what makes people flourish. And Stede practically invents art therapy!

His ship is also a safe-space for human relationships to blossom - romantic, platonic, and in between. Zheng’s ship might appear to offer collective harmony, but it’s mandated and dogmatically applied. Opting out of morning tai chi for a 24-hour shagathon might be viewed as an act of dissent. No such big brother is judging you on Stede’s Revenge.

And all of this is because of the man Stede is, and the influence he has on those around him. Sometimes it falls on deaf ears. Many don’t like what Stede’s offering. Others actively rebel against it. But anyone with an ounce of goodness will get what Stede Bonnet is about and embrace it. Stede doesn’t seem to understand his own power, it comes from such an authentic place. For me, it makes him all the more endearing.

[vesperalis666]

🌹 Weaving a Bond with Satan – Part 2

In theistic Satanism, it’s not about blind worship.

It’s a living, evolving relationship based on freedom, sincerity, and introspection.

No rules, no obligations. Only an inner call to know yourself, to explore, to transcend.

🕯 Whether you see Satan as a guide, a deity, or a mirror: it’s up to you to define this relationship.

🌹 Hail Satan.

[nu-relations]

The Iconic New Mythology with 🐻 TEDDY & 🐱 CAT on 📷 INSTAGRAM +++ satirical & sureal weblog +++ DAILY UPDATES 🌐 https://nu-relations.com

[kellymagovern]

Another one of my all-time favorite "South Park" clips. It really illustrates how we can fall into our own self-made prisons. Any mind-made identity or label that you place on yourself will ultimately trap you and limit you.

[scotianostra]

On October 27th 1763 William Maclure was born in Ayr.

Maclure knew his own mind from an early age, changing his name from James, and adding the “A” to his surname, he had a private education and went on to travel widely in Europe and to America in 1782 at the age of 19.

He spent a lot of time in Paris and was witness to the events of the French Revolution. He worked there as one of the commissioners appointed to settle the claims of American citizens on the French government during the early years of the new Republic. He also became interested in geology and studied throughout his twenties on the subject.

Maclure returned to the US in 1824, by now he was in his 50���s, he became friends with Robert Owen,of New Lanark fame and settled in the community of New Harmony, formed by Owen.. Maclure had by now earned himself a small fortune and was financially independent, he set about on a self imposed geological survey of America. The results of his unaided labours were submitted to the American Philosophical Society in a memoir entitled Observations on the Geology of the United States explanatory of a Geological Map, and published in the Society’s Transactions It is due to this and further surveys that Maclure is known as the “father of American geology”

There is loads more about Maclure that you can read here http://infed.org/mobi/william-maclure/

[exiledintoascension]

Video provided by Global News

The actual cause of the Democrats' damning loss. The moment that the vampiric stake pierced the heart of Kamala's campaign.

[simply-buddhism]

[libraryofmethos]

This hurts because of how true it is.

[in-tenebris-et-in-solitudine]

[wisteria-grows-here]

Free Will is my girlfriend

[distressedcompanion]

[religion-is-a-mental-illness]

"A believer approaches death with the desire to present himself or herself as a victim deserving of revenge. A free-thinker carries no perverted fantasies, only bittersweet memories." -- Nirav Mehta

[vesperalis666]

At a time when the Devil was still feared, cursed, and buried beneath dogma… some dared to write him differently. They didn’t follow fear — they followed fire.

📖 From the shadows of religion and repression, poets and thinkers rose. Milton, Shelley, Blake, Baudelaire, Carducci... Each in their own tongue, they whispered a new truth: Satan is not always the enemy. Sometimes, he is the rebel, the thinker, the wounded light.

In a world that refused to see beyond the horns, these writers saw a mirror.

— Vesperalis

[crustaceansingles]

Get your own thoughts. These ones are MINE

[kellymagovern]

"You guys are out here still being afraid of the Devil? You're an adult? You're scared of a scary guy? Like, I grew up in the Catholic Church and I was like scared of going to hell and stuff. But then I, like, became 8 years old, you know?" —Matt Grippi [x]

[scotianostra]

The second extraordinary Scottish lady today, Frances "Fanny" Wright was born on September 6th 1795 in Dundee.

After her parents died when she was two years old, Frances Wright spent her childhood with a succession of relatives in Scotland. Living with her uncle, a professor of moral philosophy at Glasgow College, she explored the college's libraries and became especially intrigued by books about the newly independent United States. A two-year tour of the United States with her sister provided Frances Wright with the material for her Views of Society and Manners in America in 1821, an enthusiastic account of Americans' patriotic idealism.

Formulating a plan to emigrate to the United States and create a southern settlement on which slaves could work to earn profits toward their eventual emancipation, Frances Wright purchased a tract in Tennessee called Nashoba and recruited slaves and abolitionists to join her. The farm never produced enough to achieve her initial goal, and when she made a brief journey back to England, Nashoba provoked a national scandal after its remaining settlers proclaimed a doctrine of free love. Upon her return to the United States, she paid to transport of the slaves to Haiti (where they would be free) and moved to a utopian community in Indiana.

An anti-clerical lecture tour consolidated her unpopularity among the American middle class. In these lectures, she recommended the abolition of capital punishment and advocated women's rights, focusing especially on the need for birth control and liberalized divorce laws. Well-received in New York City, she relocated there and became a leading figure in the progressive working class politics of the day.

In New York, she met, had a child with, and married French doctor Guillaume D'Arusmont in 1831. The child died shortly, and the couple moved to Paris, where Frances Wright D'Arusmont had a daughter and removed herself somewhat from the public eye. Traveling across the Atlantic several times throughout the 1830s, she lectured occasionally, but her audiences were small and the movements in which she had involved herself had either fallen apart or found other leadership. She and her husband divorced in 1852, and he retained custody of their child. She died in Cincinnati in 1852, the inscription on her gravestone at her own request, reads "I have wedded the cause of human improvement, staked on it my fortune, my reputation and my life.

As usual you can get the full story on this link here http://www.womenhistoryblog.com/2012/01/frances-wright.html