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passive1income · 1 year ago

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Unlocking Wealth: A Comprehensive Review of the Wealth Rhythm Code

In today's fast-paced world, where financial struggles seem to be an ever-present reality for many, the pursuit of wealth and abundance often feels like an elusive dream. Despite countless efforts and endeavors, achieving financial freedom can seem like an insurmountable challenge. However, what if I told you that there's a groundbreaking solution to this age-old dilemma, hidden in the depths of scientific research and ancient wisdom? Enter the Wealth Rhythm Code – a revolutionary program designed to unlock the dormant potential within you and usher in a new era of prosperity.

Introduction: Unveiling the Wealth Rhythm Code

The Wealth Rhythm Code is not just another run-of-the-mill self-help program promising quick fixes and overnight success. Instead, it represents a paradigm shift in our understanding of wealth manifestation, drawing upon cutting-edge research in neuroscience, genetics, and quantum physics. Developed by a team of visionary scientists and personal development experts, the Wealth Rhythm Code taps into the inherent power of our pineal gland – the gateway to our subconscious mind – to activate a unique "wealth rhythm" that attracts abundance effortlessly.

The Science of Wealth Manifestation

At the heart of the Wealth Rhythm Code lies a profound understanding of the intricate interplay between our biology and our environment. Central to this understanding is the role of the pineal gland, a small but mighty gland located deep within the brain. Through years of research, scientists have discovered that the pineal gland plays a crucial role in regulating our biorhythms – the natural cycles that govern our physical, emotional, and mental well-being. Moreover, recent studies have revealed that the pineal gland is highly sensitive to external stimuli, including sound frequencies, which can profoundly influence its functioning.

The Power of Sound Frequencies

One of the key insights that led to the development of the Wealth Rhythm Code was the discovery that specific sound frequencies can stimulate the pineal gland and induce states of heightened awareness and receptivity. Drawing upon this knowledge, the creators of the Wealth Rhythm Code identified two potent sound frequencies that have been scientifically proven to activate the wealth rhythm within the pineal gland. By listening to these frequencies for just seven minutes a day, users can align their biorhythms with the frequency of abundance and unlock their innate capacity to attract wealth.

Activating Your Wealth Rhythm

The process of activating your wealth rhythm begins with a simple yet powerful daily ritual. Each morning, users are instructed to set aside seven minutes to listen to the Wealth Rhythm Code audio tracks while wearing headphones or earbuds. During this time, the carefully calibrated sound frequencies penetrate deep into the subconscious mind, reprogramming outdated belief systems and aligning the individual with the vibration of abundance. Over time, as the wealth rhythm becomes ingrained in the user's psyche, they will start to notice a gradual shift in their financial circumstances, as opportunities for wealth and prosperity begin to manifest effortlessly.

Real-Life Success Stories

The true testament to the effectiveness of the Wealth Rhythm Code lies in the countless success stories of individuals who have experienced dramatic transformations in their financial lives. From struggling entrepreneurs to seasoned investors, people from all walks of life have reported significant increases in income, unexpected windfalls, and newfound financial freedom after implementing the principles of the Wealth Rhythm Code. These real-life testimonials serve as inspiring proof that wealth manifestation is not just a pipe dream but a tangible reality within reach for anyone willing to embrace the power of their own mind.

Beyond Financial Wealth

While the primary focus of the Wealth Rhythm Code is on manifesting financial abundance, its benefits extend far beyond mere monetary gain. By aligning with the frequency of wealth, users also report improvements in their overall well-being, relationships, and sense of fulfillment. Freed from the constraints of financial worry, they are able to pursue their passions, contribute to their communities, and live life on their own terms. In essence, the Wealth Rhythm Code offers not just riches but a holistic transformation that encompasses every aspect of life.

The Path Forward

As we reach the conclusion of our journey through the Wealth Rhythm Code, it's clear that we stand at a crossroads – a choice between the familiar comfort of financial struggle or the exhilarating possibility of abundance. For those who are ready to embrace the latter, the Wealth Rhythm Code offers a roadmap to a brighter future. By harnessing the power of sound frequencies and activating the wealth rhythm within, individuals can unlock their full potential and step into a reality where wealth flows effortlessly and abundantly. The choice is yours – will you continue to live in scarcity, or will you unlock the door to unlimited abundance with the Wealth Rhythm Code?

In conclusion, the Wealth Rhythm Code represents a groundbreaking synthesis of science, spirituality, and practical wisdom, offering a transformative path to financial freedom and personal empowerment. With its innovative approach and proven results, it has the potential to revolutionize the way we think about wealth and abundance. So, if you're ready to rewrite your money story and manifest the life of your dreams, why wait any longer? Take the first step towards a brighter future today with the Wealth Rhythm Code.

Unlock your wealth potential today with the Wealth Rhythm Code and start manifesting abundance effortlessly! Don't wait any longer to transform your financial reality.

#WealthRhythm #Manifestation #Abundance #FinancialFreedom #Empowerment #SuccessMindset"#WealthCreation #SuccessMindset

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lupinhosblog · 2 years ago

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Genetic Wealth Code Review -⚠️WARNING⚠️- Does Genetic Wealth Code Work -...

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quentiin01 · 2 years ago

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Genetic Wealth Code Review-⚠️BEWARE⚠️-Does Genetic Wealth Code Work-Gene...

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increiblemente · 2 years ago

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🟢The pursuit of wealth is a common desire shared by many people. After all, who does not want to enjoy financial freedom, have economic security and realize their dreams? But is there a magic formula for calling wealth? According to the Law of Attraction, a powerful principle that has gained prominence in recent years, the answer may lie in our own ability to attract what we desire. Welcome to another video channel. In this video, we will explore the fundamental principles of the Law of Attraction and how to apply them to manifest the richness in our lives, as well as presenting two products that can help in this process: So stay tuned until the end of the video, and don’t forget to subscribe to the channel and leave your like. Let’s Understand the Law of Attraction and Wealth: The Law of Attraction is based on the principle that our thoughts and emotions have the power to directly influence the reality we experience. When applied to wealth, this law teaches us that if we keep positive thoughts and feelings about financial abundance, we will be more likely to attract opportunities and favorable circumstances to achieve it. In other words, wealth begins in the mind and manifests itself in our reality. Visualization and Attraction of Wealth: A fundamental practice in the Law of Attraction is visualization. By clearly and intensely visualizing the wealth we want to achieve, we are sending a message to the universe that this is the reality we want to manifest. It is important to imagine yourself already living the abundant life we long for, feeling the emotions associated with it. Visualization creates a powerful image in our mind, which begins to influence our actions and attitudes, aligning us with the wealth we want to attract. This is where Quantum Millionaire can be a valuable tool. Quantum Millionaire is an innovative program that combines advanced visualization techniques, guided meditation and specific positive affirmations to attract wealth in all areas of life. Through this program, you will be guided to connect with your unlimited potential for abundance and unlock the mental and emotional blocks that may be hindering your financial success. The Quantum Millionaire will enable you to fully utilize the Law of Attraction to manifest the wealth you desire. Transforming Limiting Beliefs and Building a Wealth Mindset: Our beliefs play a crucial role in the manifestation of wealth. If we believe that wealth is unattainable or that we do not deserve it, we are sending a contradictory message to the universe. It is essential to cultivate positive beliefs about abundance and our ability to attract wealth. This is where the Genetic Wealth Code can be a valuable tool. The Genetic Wealth Code is a revolutionary program that uses advanced mental reprogramming and belief transformation techniques to help you overcome the limiting patterns that prevent you from achieving wealth. Through a unique combination of powerful affirmations, guided visualizations and neurolinguistic techniques, the Code of Genetic Wealth will reprogram your mind to a mindset of wealth and abundance. This program goes beyond the conscious level, acting directly in your subconscious to eliminate internal barriers and pave the way for prosperity. ✔️Watch this video: 00:00 The Law of Attraction and the Way to Wealth 00:30 Quantum Millionaire 01:00 Quantum Millionaire program 01:20 quantum millionaire product 01:40 quantum millionaire order 02:01 Genetic Wealth Code 02:25 does Genetic Wealth Code works? 02:45 Genetic Wealth Code review 03:11 Genetic Wealth Code 2023 🔴The Law of Attraction and the Way to Wealth: Manifesting Abundance in Your Life Law of Attraction offers a powerful approach to calling wealth into our lives. By understanding and applying the principles of this law, we can direct our thoughts, emotions, and actions to manifest the financial reality we desire. The Quantum Millionaire and the Genetic Wealth Code are innovative products that can help you in this process by providing effective tools and techniques for mental reprogramming and the manifestation of wealth. If you are ready to transform your relationship with money and open yourself up to a life of prosperity, these programs can be a valuable resource in your journey towards the wealth and abundance you deserve.

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wineschool-blog · 4 years ago

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Know Your Wine Bottle

https://j.mp/3xlkIyW Wine bottles are based on centuries of traditions. The wine trade is deeply beholden to those traditions. Even the largest multinational wine corporation (talking to you, Gallo) won’t mess this those cultural norms. In fact, the shape of the wine bottle is the only thing that the entire world of wine agrees on. Did you know that the shape of a wine bottle tells you more than the art on the wine label? Even the color of the bottle can tell you a wealth of information about the wine inside. Call it superstition or respect for history, every winery insists on conforming to a few basic bottle shape rules. This is important since the very same wineries don’t have any compunction on borderline fraud on their wine labels. Table of ContentsWine Bottle ShapesBurgundy BottleRed WinesWhite WinesThe Big WhyReisling BottleWhite WinesRed WinesColor Codes in GermanyBordeaux BottleRed WinesWhite WinesThe Big WhyChampagne BottleSparkling WinesWine Bottle SizesSplit (AKa Piccolo)Half (AKA Demi)Half-literStandardLiterMagnumPretentious Wine Bottle Sizes Wine Tasting Classes Sommelier Courses Wine Bottle Shapes Wine Bottles are named after the wine regions that made them famous. Four are French wine regions, and one is German. Bottle shapes are a quick and easy shorthand for the style of wine in the bottle. Burgundy Bottle Red Wines Three major red grapes use this type of bottle: Pinot Noir, Grenache, and Syrah. A blend of Grenache and Syrah will also use this bottle style. However, no Pinot blend would ever be in one of these bottles: only a monster who eats small happy children would ever blend Pinot Noir: that’s one of the biggest taboos in the wine trade. Waist up portrait of female sommelier holding wine bottle during tasting session in restaurant, copy space White Wines Only a few white wines will be found in this type of bottle. Those include Chardonnay, Viognier, Marsanne, and Roussanne. While Chardonnay tends to be bottled as a single varietal, the others are often blended. As a rule, winemakers use these bottles for heavier white wines, often ongoing malolactic fermentation, barrel aging, and lees stirring. The Big Why The term “Burgundy” refers to Burgundy, France. The region produces two varietals Pinot Noir and Chardonnay. The other classic wine region that uses this type of bottle is the Rhone Valley. Those wines are Syrah and Grenache for reds (along with a dozen others) and Viognier, Marsanne, and Roussanne (and a dozen others). In Burgundy, no one blends grapes. In the Rhone, pretty much everyone blends. When bottling wines outside the classic Rhone and Burgundy varietals, a winemaker will use this bottle shape for wines she believes are nuanced and elegant. Reisling Bottle White Wines This bottle is famous for Riesling, and deservedly so. If you delve into wine geekery, you may hear this bottle called a “Hock,” an Old English term for German riesling. However, any white wine from Germany can use this bottle. That includes Gewurztraminer. Scheurebe, and Pinot Blanc. In France, wines from Alsace also use this wine bottle. Red Wines This bottle is mostly used for white wines, except in Alsace. In this French wine region, even Pinot Noir is sold in these slender fluted bottles. Color Codes in Germany Wines from the Rhine valley (Mittelrhein, Rheingau, Nahe, and Rheinhessen) are traditionally bottled in brown glass, Bottles from the Mosel are typically green. Before the 1920s, Mosel wines were blue. Bordeaux Bottle Red Wines Cabernet Sauvignon, Merlot, and Cabernet Franc are traditionally found in Bordeaux bottles. Actually, and wine grape genetically related to Cabernet will be found in this type of bottle. That includes grapes such as Malbec and Carmenere. White Wines Sauvignon Blanc and Semillon are the traditional white grapes in this style of bottle. This bottle is the defacto bottle for most dry, crisp white wines. If a wine is going to be buttery and oaky, the winery tends to offer them in a Burgundy bottle. The Big Why Bordeaux is the French wine region made famous for its red blends of Cabernet Sauvignon, Merlot, and Cabernet Franc. It’s also known for its white wines, which are blends of Sauvignon Blanc and Semillion. Over time, this bottle has become the default for most dry red wines. Everything from Zinfandel to Nebbiolo will often be sold in this broad-shouldered style bottle. This is the defacto red wine bottle. When winemakers opt to use another bottle style, it’s often intended as a big statement. Another way that winemakers can make a big statement is to use heavier Bordeaux-style bottles. The intended implication is that the heavier the bottle, the more luxurious the wine. Of course, using heavier glass adds to the cost of the wine, and it’s become something of a marketing gimmick at this point. Champagne Bottle Sparkling Wines These bottles are exclusively made for sparkling wines. The thickness of the glass and the tapered design is utilitarian: it helps prevent breakage. Back in the olden days –the 18th Century– champagne bottles had a nasty habit of shattering. A significant amount of CO2 is dissolved in sparkling wines; the amount of pressure is far more than in a car tire. Modern Champagne bottles are designed specifically to withhold that amount of pressure. If you find a bottle of bubbles that isn’t in a Champagne bottle, it is most likely only lightly carbonated. Wine Bottle Sizes There are several sizes of wine bottles as well. While many publications and wine schools make a big deal about this, don’t spend too much time on this issue. Most of these are artifacts of long-gone eras and have little to no value in the modern world of wine. Split (AKa Piccolo) This is a tiny bottle that is often plastic and as cheap as its contents. 187.5 ml of pure junk. Half (AKA Demi) Half bottles were popular in the ’90s but of little consequence these days. 375 ml. Half-liter A favorite bottle size for discount sweet wines is found at the bottom of the refrigerator at your local truck stop. 500 ml. v Standard This 750-milliliter wine bottle is really the only type that makes sense to purchase. This is because the entire distribution, import, and production economy are based on this size. Any other size will cost more to transport, bottle, and store. Liter We are learning our metric system! One liter is typically for a bottle of wine you plan on drinking by yourself in the weed-choked parking lot of a bankrupt shopping mall. Magnum The start of the pretentious bottle sizes. There are arguments made that wines in magnum bottles age better, but that is not true. These bottles are usually filled using two regular bottles and manually corked. These wines are only for show. Buy a Magnum if you value showing off more than drinking. 1.5 Liters. Pretentious Wine Bottle Sizes Are you a total asshole? Then these are the bottle sizes you should buy. This Cheval Blanc 1947 Methuselah is your’s for only $304,375.! Jeroboam (AKA Double Magnum) 3 LitersRehoboam (AKA Jeroboam) 4.5 LitersMethuselah (AKA Imperial) 6 LitersSalmanazar 9 LitersBalthazar 12 LitersNebuchadnezzar 15 LitersMelchior 18 LitersSolomon 20 LitersSovereign 26 LitersPrimat (AKA Goliath) 27 LitersMelchizedek (AKA Midas) 30 Liters Tasting Classes Wine Tasting Cheese Pairing Cocktails Food Pairing Wine Tasting Articles Seven Types of Corkscrews Build a Wine Cellar Know Your Wine Bottle Wine Glass Recommendations Wine Tasting 101 Wine Reviews: The Essential Guide Buying Wine Online Best Wine Shops in Philly By Keith Wallace https://j.mp/3xlkIyW

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jbuffyangel · 6 years ago

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The Good Soldier: Arrow 7x19 Review (Spartan)

Uhhhh....

Let’s dig in...

John Diggle

It has taken seven years and 157 episodes, but we are finally getting John Diggle’s backstory and IT’S JUICY.

Diggle and Oliver procured an A.R.G.U.S. vault drive during a run in with Virgil. For the life of me I cannot remember that guy’s connection to Emiko and her super villain organization, so I’m just slotting him in the “henchman” category. Does that work for everyone? Fabulous. Moving on.

Unfortunately, Felicity is unable to hack the protocols protecting the drive. Feel free to roll your eyes. A drive Felicity Smoak can’t hack? Please.

She does, however, recognize who created the protocols – the Department of Defense, or Arrow’s fake version which is the Defense Intelligence Agency.

Source: paigeOTA

John says something like, “Hey I know a guy.” OH YOU DO? John knows a guy at the Department of Defense? Not just any guy, but a GENERAL.

Gee, Diggle this information would have been super handy all the times Team Arrow has been fighting ARMIES like Slade and the Mirakuru soldiers, Ra’s Al Ghul and the League, or pretty much any bad guy to grace Arrow’s screen during May sweeps.

But okay, Season 7 he’s coughing up this info. Great. Helpful. Thanks big guy.

John is super nervous prior to the meeting with said General and even Oliver is wondering, “Dude what’s up with you?” So obviously this is an authority figure for Diggle, which means parent of some kind. This is all, but confirmed when General Stewart starts criticizing John’s career choices. Oh yeah, this guy is definitely a parent.

General Stewart is Diggle’s stepfather. Get it? Stewart as in John Stewart aka the Green Lantern. It’s completely okay if you missed that detail. I was about 15 minutes into the episode before I put that puzzle piece together.

General Stewart: I’m sorry to say you’ve lost your way.

I like this guy. Not for nothing, but “lost” is how I would also describe John the last couple seasons of Arrow. The more evolved and independent Oliver becomes the more adrift John becomes. Sure, he ditched A.R.G.U.S. to keep Lyla safe (Thank goodness. That storyline was terrible), but it doesn’t mean the General is wrong about his stepson. John needs direction outside of Oliver Queen and he’s been searching for it for awhile now.

Diggle: I left to protect my family and that’s not something you would understand, is it sir?

SHOTS FIRED! Daaaaaamn. Diggle is extra salty about this guy. What gives?

The Ninth Circle steals Archer from Smoak Tech (shiiiiiiiit), but General Stewart’s DIA soldiers save Felicity and Alena. Stewart is aware there’s a Ninth Circle mole inside A.R.G.U.S., so he’s been tracking their activity which led them to Smoak Tech headquarters aka the loft. The drive contained a list of DIA assets, which is why Emiko stole Archer. She’s planning on using the program to track them down and gain access to their intel.

Alright, that’s enough bad guy plot. Let’s get down to the goodies. Diggle is super pissed step daddy didn’t share his wealth of information, but Stewart argues it was classified. Oliver is basically a family counselor this entire episode and he slides in between to break up the tension. It’s hilarious.

Source: paigeOTA

Diggle leaves in a huff.

Source: paigeOTA

This is a theme throughout the episode. John Thomas is quite huffy. Oliver finally gets a chance to ask if there is any reason why John failed to mention during the last seven years that he has a stepfather at the DIA, particularly since he’s been up Oliver’s ass about honesty. But Oliver says it in a much nicer way.

This is why I love this man.

Source: 1-crazy-dreamer

He’s not a hypocrite. John never spilling the stepdad details over a glass of vodka is hinky and Oliver knows it. However, he’s not going to rub Diggle’s face in it because Oliver also understands he’s told much bigger lies through the course of their friendship. Oliver makes many mistakes, sometimes repeatedly, but it makes him an incredibly compassionate person.

SO HERE’S THE TEA. Stewart was John’s father’s best friend and commanding officer. An op went bad and John’s father stayed behind to hold off insurgents, saving the whole unit in the process. Stewart survived and Diggle’s father didn’t. John blames Stewart for his father’s death. He believes Stewart, as commanding officer, should have been the one to stay behind. AND THEN six months later, Stewart married John’s mother.

Excuse me, where has this soapy goodness been for the last seven years? The Young & the Restless writers are taking notes y’all! As @callistawolf pointed out this sounds a lot like Diggle’s history with Carly, his brother Andy’s wife. Diggle may hate his stepfather for marrying his best friend’s wife, but he kind of did the same thing with Carly. Sure, he didn’t marry her, but they definitely had a relationship. It seems this behavior runs in the Diggle family. John was always very uncomfortable with Carly being Andy’s widow and this backstory certainly brings another level of understanding why he felt that way.

Stewart is a total hard ass too, which doesn’t help his relationship with John or Andy very much. He focused on running “Spartan” survival drills with the boys and by the time John turned 18 he couldn’t wait to leave home. The whole nod to Spartan is interesting. This might be the first time we are given any background for why John’s helmet looks like a Spartan warrior. Felicity anointed Diggle with the code name, because she is Queen, but I think John was involved in designing the initial suit with Cisco. So, the overall Spartan look would have come from him and General Stewart is why.

Emiko kidnaps Diggle and General Stewart and thus they join the prestigious line of kidnapping OTA and their parents.

Source: ebett

This almost feels like parental initiation on this show. You can’t bond with your kid until you’ve been tied up by a mad man or woman in this case. Moira and Mama Smoak send their sympathies General.

Source: ebett

Dante tortures Diggle to get some codes out of Stewart and he folds pretty quick seeing his son in pain. Stewart being willing to do anything to keep John Diggle safe is quite an endearing quality and it makes me feel all the feels. What can I say? I like this guy.

Dante wants access to a secret DIA experimental weapon called CYGNUS X-1. It’s genetically engineered bacteria which can consume the byproduct of nuclear fission or as Felicity explained, “It’s a biological weapon that can literally eat through anything. That’s terrifying.” Listen, if she’s scared then I’m scared. Where Felicity Smoak goes so goes my nation.

Oliver: Archer. They are going to use the intel they get from the assets to locate the DNA of the people involved with CYGNUS X-1.

Nothing Oliver said sounds good,

but I’m only half paying attention to the bad guy plot, because I am way more focused on Oliver dropping the daddy bombshell, which he does after finding Diggle brooding about his father. Superhero Jesus to the rescue! John’s father didn’t die saving everyone. He died because he was negligent and took two marines with him. The reason the rest of the unit survived was because of John Stewart. He was the real hero.

Again, this is quite reminiscent of Diggle’s relationship with Andy. Maybe Stewart and John’s father weren’t biological brothers, but they were best friends just like Oliver and Diggle. So, they were brothers all the same. There seems to be a generational thread of the good brother and the bad brother in the Diggle family. One we find that continues in the flash forwards.

Stewart: I know you might not feel the same way, but you will always be a son to me.

Felicity is able to stop Emiko from using Archer, but she’s still able to steal the weapon. John confronts his stepfather with the truth after the mission is over. Diggle cannot understand why Stewart let John hate him for all these years. And the answer is simple – because that’s what parents do. General Stewart didn’t want to take the memory of his father away from John. Diggle believed his father was a hero, so he became one. Stewart believes the lie made Diggle who he is, but John disagrees.

Diggle: If I’m a hero it’s all because of you, sir.

The Stewart last name is no accident. The man who made John Diggle a hero has the same last name as one of the greatest heroes in DC history. If John ever truly wanted to honor the General he could change his last name and become John Stewart,

but I doubt we’ll ever see that happen nor do I think it’s necessary. John will always be Diggle. Our Diggle doesn’t need a ring because he’s is already a hero.

Source: @oliverqsmoak

John calling General Stewart “sir” is no accident either. Diggle, always the good soldier, has refused that courtesy the entire episode. But now he softens his voice; his eyes filled with tears, and calls the man who made him a hero, “sir.” John is showing respect, but also trust. He finally sees his stepfather for who he truly is. Diggle knows General Stewart is not only a good soldier, but a wonderful father. This “sir” carries more significant than “I love you” for these two men.

The gifts General Stewart gave Diggle go beyond merely survival. John is a good solider because that’s how General Stewart raised him to be. Just like Diggle’s father would want him to be.

The two hug and part with a deeper bond than the one they had before – a tradition when it comes to OTA and their parents. “Call your mother” is probably the best exit line of any character on Arrow. I loved it. Ernie Hudson was an absolute delight.

Unfortunately, we are seven years in. I’d rather have this episode in Season 7 than not at all, but there is an element of too little too late. “Spartan” makes sense in Season 1 or Season 2 at the latest. Felicity’s backstory episode was in Season 3 and I thought that was late.

It’s hard to understand why Arrow waited so long to give us this story. The only reason I can think of is DC. They have a long history of shooting down John Diggle storylines because they intend to use them somewhere else. The Suicide Squad springs to mind. David Ramsey has been very honest about DC’s refusal to allow John Stewart/Green Lantern on Arrow in the past, so they finally must have signed off in some capacity.

Do I think the Stewart name is important enough to wait seven years for an episode like this? No. I don’t, particularly if Arrow can’t develop the Green Lantern storyline for John any further. If they can then I understand holding off, but if “John Stewart” is just another Green Lantern Easter egg then I don’t think it was worth putting off the storyline.

Arrow did their best to explain this massive hole in John’s backstory. Oliver and Felicity were understandably dumbfounded by the revelations, but John’s explanation was pretty weak. How is a stepfather in the DIA not pertinent information? Of course it is, particularly when Diggle so strongly advocated for Oliver to clean out the skeletons in his closet. It just puts the episode in an awkward position and while I enjoyed it, the writers didn’t overcome the timing hurdle for me.

Flash Forwards

The Flash Forwards are rapidly becoming my favorite part of the show. If I don’t get a spin off I’m gonna… well I don’t really know what I’m gonna do because I don’t actually have any power but I’ll do something!

Felicity needs a thingamajig to fix the helmet Laurel helped Mia procure, so the Princess That Was Promised heads into Star City to track it down for Mama. Connor comes along because he’s in love with Mia and can’t stand to be separated from her for more than five minutes. Yeah, I know this hasn’t been explicitly stated, but it’s facts. #SmoaknHawke

Source: amunetblack

Mia has to get the thingamajig from the Deathstroke Gang. Can we just take a minute and appreciate there’s a Deathstroke Gang? That’s kind of amazing. I mean… it’s bad.

We’re in luck because Connor knows the leader of the Deathstroke Gang who is… drum roll please… John Jr. Diggle aka JJ!!!!!!!

YAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAASSSSSS!!!! According to Connor, Lyla and Diggle’s hero gig put some pressure on the kids. Connor went one way and JJ, in an attempt to rebel, went the other. This continues the good brother/bad brother Diggle family tradition!

Source: amunetblack

Listen, I was seriously just kidding around when I said there should be a Connor, Mia and JJ love triangle like Stefan, Elena and Damon, but if the Arrow writers want to take me up on it then FINE BY ME.

I have an opening in my television viewing schedule for a good brother/bad brother and the woman they both love storyline!

They are totally going there because Mia asks, “When do I get to meet him?” The “him” being JJ of course. Oh girl, you gonna meet him alright. Just you wait.

Oliver’s baby girl will have her pick of Diggle brothers and I CANNOT STAND IT BECAUSE IT IS TOO PERFECT. Why you ask? Because we don’t have to take sides. You can ship both sides of the love triangle because no matter which way you shake it Oliver and Felicity’s daughter ends up with one of Diggle and Lyla’s sons. THIS IS THE SHIPPER DREAM!

But we aren’t meeting JJ until the spin off. So settle girl. All in good time. There needs to be some surprises left for this show. Even though they haven’t cast the role yet, I bet you dollars to donuts there will be a chemistry read with Katherine McNamara for whoever they cast.

Source: amunetblack

In the meantime, we get to watch Kat and Joseph steam up the television screen with moments like this. Damn kids. It’s getting warm in here. Wowza.

I absolutely adore how the writers are flipping the expectations. It’s almost as if they anticipated some kind of resistance to William or Connor because they aren’t biological children. Trust me I’ve seen plenty of “William isn’t really Olicity’s kid” or “Connor isn’t really Dyla’s kid” crap out there. It’s pretty horrifying the perspective some have about non biological children, so consider me thrilled the writers took those opinions and shoved them where the sun doesn’t shine. William is Mini Felicity and the good solider is Connor, not JJ. It’s amazing.

Felicity Smoak and Alena

“Felicity Smoak now entering Smoak Tech."

This gives me a happy every time I hear it. Smoak Tech and Archer are basically Felicity’s babies before she has a baby. I particularly love the part when Felicity says she needs more than Team Arrow. Yes, she loves being Overwatch, but she wants to save the world as Felicity Smoak as well. She essentially wants to go hoodless too.

I think it’s great the writers are exploring a legacy for Oliver, Felicity and Diggle outside of Team Arrow. Felicity thus far is the furthest down the road, which is good because the character is leaving in three friggin episodes.

But we’ve seen in the future John finds an outlet for his passions as well with Knight Watch. We also know Oliver is going to save the universe (such an underachiever that one).

But it’s particularly important with Felicity because we have a tendency in our culture to pigeonhole women into one thing. You’re a mom or you’re *insert career choice here.* Once we pick a path then it’s our only path.

The reality is women, like men, can be many different things all at once.

Yes, the mind reels at the thought. The fact Felicity is still searching for something when she’s found happiness as Overwatch and as a wife & mother isn’t a radical concept, but it’s one rarely portrayed by television characters.

Nor do Felicity’s interests have to happen one at a time. I think the reason Felicity is exploring these multi faceted aspects of her character is because Emily is leaving the show and the writers didn’t want to leave anything on the table. But I’m not complaining. Even when the actress is about the leave the show this exploration seldom happens, so I’m taking the wins where I can find them.

Alena wants Felicity to sell the company and this irks me. If I’ve said it once then I’ve said it a million times I DO NOT TRUST ALENA. Girlfriend is there all of five minutes and she’s already trying to sell Felicity’s baby to the highest bidder. This is my essential problem with Alena – she always has an angle.

Felicity’s hactivism was about making the world a better place, but when it comes to Alena I cannot help but feel her motivations are more selfish. Even if that’s wrong and Alena has altruistic intentions, her morality line is deeply skewed particularly when compared to Felicity’s morality. It makes this partnership dangerous in my mind. Alright. Alena rant done.

Or maybe not because Alena just did something super sketchy!!!!

After Emiko steals Archer, Felicity realizes how incredibly dangerous the program can be.

Source: paigeOTA

I love how Alena sweetly reassures Felicity she is not a mad scientist.

Source: arrowdaily

I would have added she’s a cupcake genius with extra sprinkles, but that’s me. It’s moments like these I wish I trusted Alena, but I don’t.

Felicity is literally the furthest thing from a mad scientist or her father, but she is self aware. She understands her genius can create miraculous things, but that people can use those miracles in ways she never intended. It’s basically the “With great power comes great responsibility” hero code. Felicity accepts the responsibility of her superpower and is completely altruistic with it. If her creation hurts innocent people then she will destroy it even if the intent was to help. That is selfless heroism.

Unfortunately, Alena does not share this code. And this is my essential problem with her. Yes, I love the adorable banter and a female friend for Felicity to geek out with. I particularly love that Alena replaced Curtis Holt’s mansplaining ass. But Alena has no problem crossing lines to get what SHE wants regardless of who it hurts in the process.

This is why Felicity’s arc this season is so crucial. Felicity thought she was that kind of person. Someone who would do whatever is necessary to get what she wants. It’s incredibly important to remember Felicity was trying to save her family, which is nowhere near the same as Alena trying to save a computer program that can make billions. The two don’t equate.

However, Felicity discovered she retains a moral integrity even in her darkest moments. She has the capacity to do “whatever it takes” like we all do, but ultimately Felicity realized holding to her morality makes her strong. Alena is different. She has no integrity, which is why she cannot be trusted.

And yet, it seems like in the future Felicity blames herself for how Archer was used and not Alena. Sometimes she is just like her husband.

Stray Thoughts

I love that even though I know Felicity will pull that trigger, and she did, her hand was shaking. It’s so beautifully human and one of the reasons I connect to this character so much.

This girl can really zero in on the point of the episode, can’t she? Source: arrowdaily

“That’s not very fair John.” Indeed. Very un-Yoda like behavior.

Diggle wore a shirt during the kidnapping scene. I’m extremely disappointed Arrow. You had one job!

Oliver racing to Felicity’s side the minute she says, “Hey!” will always be amazing and a trick I need to teach my husband. Source: lucyyh

Olicity finishes each other’s sentences. Your OTP could never. Source: 1-crazy-dreamer

“Normally I’m off by myself staring into nothing.” Oliver jokes about his broodiness now. Oh how far we have traveled my friends.

Oliver not saying "I'm glad you're both okay" took a lot of self control. Way to keep a lid on it Superhero Daddy. Source: olicitygifs

Felicity hacks the helmet while Mia and Connor look on mind blown.

Oliver is so chill when people insult him.

My poor babe is used to being dragged by these ungrateful twats. #OLIVERQUEENDESERVESBETTER2019 Source: 1-crazy-dreamer

The foremost expert on robotics wouldn't call Felicity back when she was CEO of Palmer Tech & now he wants to BUY Archer. I guess Ray didn't have anything he was interested in. Yes, Arrow is saying Felicity Smoak is way way way way smarter than Ray Palmer. The sky is also blue.

Even when it’s not an Olicity focused episode, Emily and Stephen do such a wonderful job of showing us Oliver and Felicity’s love and connection in the small moments. These little touches are among the many things I’m going to miss the most next season.

Source: lucyyh

Disclaimer: Any gifs on the blog are not mine. If you would like a gif removed from my reviews, please message me. 7x19 gifs credited.

If you’d like to support the blog, please buy me a cup of tea!

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awildpoliticalnerd · 6 years ago

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Book Review: The Moral Animal: Why We Are the Way We Are: The New Science of Evolutionary Psychology. By Robert Wright. (1994).

Robert Wright’s The Moral Animal is a look through the field of evolutionary psychology--at least as it stood at the book's writing in 1994. It's a promising work with a lot of insight. However, it can best be analogized to the peacock: If it survives, it does so despite the massive disadvantage of some obvious maladaptions. In the case of the peacock, the adaption is its oversized tail (or "train" as it's often referred to). In the case of The Moral Animal, it's Wright’s own unexamined moral and ideological biases presented as fact that lowered its potential.

The big sell of the book is actually a rather interesting premise: Take the most famous proponent of the theory of evolution (Charles “the Chuck” Darwin) and use his life to demonstrate the principles of evolutionary psychology. Want to illustrate the theory that men are less biologically inclined towards lifelong monogamy thanks to our disproportionately small part in the baby-making process? Highlight the fact that Darwin literally sketched out a cost/benefit analysis of getting married in his notebook. Want to argue that young siblings should be both predisposed towards rivalry and cooperation thanks to kin selection? Give some (admittedly adorable) examples of Darwin’s many, many children. Because of this, the book was part popular-science exploration of a then-burgeoning topic and accessible biography on one of the most important scientific minds to ever emerge from the primordial ooze. When done well, this was the book at its best. It was discursive, informative, and enjoyable. It kept me engaged over much of the book’s nearly 400-pages.

(Lest someone use the opening example as evidence that I have no idea what the hell I’m talking about later in the review, let it be known that I know that the mystery of the peacock’s train was solved with the insights of sexual selection--that peahens select males with large trains because possessing one shows that the males have got to be pretty dang "fit" to survive with such a glaringly obvious disadvantage. Writing thematically consistent introductions is hard; I claim some artistic liberties here).

There are two core ways that this plays out throughout the book. The first is the odd insistence that every possible point that Wright could conceive of making in this vast subject was exemplified by good ol’ Chuck. And there were times that this was very clearly a stretch. The way he pursued his eventual wife, Emma, is described through a very genetic lens instead of primarily cultural terms (part of a supposed genetic predisposition towards the “Madonna-Whore” dichotomy for those of us with that infernal y chromosome). His differential patterns of grief for the loss of two of his children (he reportedly mourned the death of his ten year old daughter far longer, and far more intensely, then that of his infant son) are couched as being primarily due to their proximity to prime fertility age. His intense anxiety about publishing what would be his scientific legacy (you know, apart from being the 19th century’s foremost barnacle expert)? It’s the genes! It’s genes, genes, genes all the way down.

I’d like to say that the book was always like this. Or, apparently, my desire to want to say this, my inability to do so, and the considerable amount of sarcasm required to pen these last two sentences are because of my genes. At least that’s the culprit if we were to take Wright literally. At times, he is positively (and ironically) evangelical about the power of our genetics in dictating our behavior. And it is to the rest of the work’s detriment.

I’m not some biological denialist. I believe whole-heartedly in evolutionary theory. And, of course, the potential for any and all physical actions have to ultimately originate in the code that facilitates every biological process we undertake. But, first off, since natural selection works probabilistically, what do you think the odds are that, of the billions of humans to walk the Earth, the theory’s first popular progenitor is an acceptable exemplar of all of these processes? It’s laughably small. Literally smaller than the first common ancestor of all life on this planet compared to the sun. I don’t think that this means that Wright had to abandon the mission of using Darwin as an illustration--again, that’s part of what made this book so interesting--but it would be far better served if, instead, Wright said something to the effect of “we can see an imperfect analogy to these processes in Darwin’s life.” A small change but, as Wright knows, small changes can have a large impact.

I suspect that Wright’s self-admitted zealousy on the subject was partially spurred on by the fact that this book was written before epigenetics (the process through which different parts of the genome are activated/deactivated in response to environmental changes, changing the genes’ expression) was more rigorously demonstrated. I recall him adamantly insisting, once or twice, that genes “can’t be changed” once we’ve been conceived. At the time, that was the belief commensurate with the best available evidence. Although epigenetics do not disprove this, the truth is that our genes are far more flexible than originally thought. If genetic fixedness is what you’re arguing, it’s pretty tough to say anything other than “everything Darwin did ever is totally explainable through evolutionary psychology.” Even if it's not true. So I’ve decided to chalk this up to scientific progress and its inevitable, unenviable ability to reveal certain pronouncements as utterly wrong. It’ll undoubtedly happen to me; it happens to any practicing scientist.

The second theme, though, is less able to be chalked up to the inexorable march of progress. That is the distinct, but related, assertion interwoven throughout the text that literally everything can be explained by evolutionary psychology. Moral codes? Evolutionary psychology. Selective memory of our own moral failings? Evolutionary psychology. Western social structures and the necessity of political and economic inequality? Survey says: Evolutionary psychology.

These assertions are often manifest through what I call “cover your ass” language. We all know it; we all, regrettably, deploy it. It comes when the authors use absolute terms for the vast preponderance of the work and then say “now, do I really think that this explains everything? Of course not! But…” and then proceeds to make the exact same points, just with a couple of words interjected to signal intellectual humility. A few careful words do not erase the other 98% and the frames they collectively construct. Wright is arguing that evolutionary psychology alone can explain just about every social phenomenon, from the simple to profound. But the fact of the matter is that evolutionary psychology would be hard-pressed to understand why people on vacation with their families would bother to leave tips at restaurants despite the fact that they do, more often than not. (Seriously. Reciprocal altruism’s out since you’ll never see that server again. Odds are they weren’t related, so kin selection’s out too. Peacocking wealth contrasts with women’s supposed preference for mates who don’t needlessly divert resources away from her children. Tipping is a tough nut to crack for rational-choice-esque theoried like evolutionary psych). If it can’t explain something so banal as this, I have strong doubts of the deterministic account Wright explicates here. He will, almost begrudgingly, admit that social and environmental forces play a part in genetic expression. But he does not seem prepared to admit that it plays as big of a role as even the available evidence at the time did.

The more I read it, the more I felt that this book was symbolic of a lot of evolutionary science at the time: It contains real, interesting insight on genetic processes and their role (however expansive or limited) in complex interpersonal phenomena. These shouldn’t be undersold or ignored; I learned a great deal reading this book. The problem is that these insights come paired with uninterrogated moralizing, steeped in contemporaneous social events, passed off as timeless, objective Truth. The most obvious example (because of how often Wright returns to it) comes in the aforementioned asymmetry in male parental investment. Or, rather, the seemingly inevitable end-result: Divorce. This was often curiously paired with hand-wavey discussions of the Madonna-Whore dichotomy. Apparently, men who manage to have sex with women earlier in the relationship feel less inclined to see her as a viable marriage partner. Should a quickly-pairing couple (referring to the speed in which they decide to do the act and not, hopefully, the duration of the act itself) wind-up married, men are more likely to ditch the women--and ditch them for similar "kinds" of women. This discussion would often lead to Wright lamenting how women are engaging in sex earlier and earlier in romantic relationships. Things were better decades before this promiscuity was socially acceptable. Like back in Victorian England when Charles wed his beloved Emma. And the evidentiary linchpin, at times explicitly mentioned while only obliquely inferred at others, is the sky-high divorce rates that, Wright argues, came as a consequence of social structures being poorly designed considering our inherent genetic predispositions.

Of course, we now know that the high divorce rates of the 90s were a temporary thing. First-marriages are lasting far longer than they did (on average) in the 80’s, 90’s, and early 00’s but divorces are just as easy (if not easier) than ever before. If it was entirely because of early sex and our baser nature, the pattern should continue. The fact that it doesn’t is both evidence that evolutionary psychology is more limited than Wright suggests and that the urgency imbued in his analysis was shaped by his own moral sensibilities rather than those seen in society as a whole, inculcated by natural selection.

This wasn’t all of the social critique Wright was inclined to wade in. All fields and theories have their critics. Good authors often anticipate common objections and address them in the text. He saw his most likely critics as less scientifically driven as ideologically so. Lofty prose to the contrary, he was on the attack far more than on the defense; Darwin found himself a new bull dog. His target: Those dastardly post-modernists. He often panned “post-modernism” for their critiques of evolutionary psychology, often claiming (without much evidence) that it stemmed from the post-modernists’ universal and fundamental ignorance about biology. Honestly, the way Wright so derisively talked about them, I was surprised that he didn’t bust out a couple of verbose “yo mamma” jokes.

What makes his vituperative swipes so ironic 25 years later is that the post-structuralists were right. Many evolutionary scientists were predisposed towards advancing biologically deterministic theories of human behavior. Any practicing geneticist worth their salt today would tell you that human behavior is so dependent on genes' interactions with the social and physical environment that even things we take for granted as “hard-wired” (such as one’s sexual preference) has been persuasively shown to not be the consequence of singular genes--or even wholly the consequence of complex genetic interactions. This is a far, far cry from Wright’s portrayal in the book; I honestly think he would be aghast at this suggestion, as if it surrenders precious ground to heretical forces in the battle for all of science’s soul. And the post-modernists are consequently vindicated in questioning what kind of power is made manifest, and towards whom is it ultimately directed, when these assertions are given the pop-science stamp of total veracity. (Actually, despite it being basically their entire deal, I can’t recall a moment when Wright discussed power when issuing his disses of post-modernism. Instead, he discussed them in the same kind of shifting, ephemeral manner that paints them as boogeymen with accusations that were often equally grounded in reality. I think he would find his own intellectual horizons broadened if he allotted the same serious attention to their intellectual contributions as he demands for his subject).

To shoehorn in a personal complaint that I had, the book was heavy in evolutionary theory but very, very sparse in social-psychological insight. Spare a chapter where Wright tried to rehabilitate Freud’s reputation (as successful attempt as one’s going to have considering how uphill that battle is), most of the psychology was relegated to sexual pairing preferences and over-general suggestions on morality and social bonding. The former was interesting and insightful; the rest woefully underdeveloped. I may be spoiled by books like Behave and How Emotions Are Made (part of these phenomenal works both touched on how evolution may bring around specific cognitive processes), but I think Wright could have comfortably fit interesting, more specific insights if he shed the weird moralism and extensive post-modernist vendetta.

I hate closing reviews with negatives, no matter how well deserved. Presumably that’s in my genes as well. So I’d actually like to conclude by saying that I well and truly learned a lot from this book. Some of it was less novel so much as it was a refresher (I have read a number of prominent books on evolutionary theory, including the oft-referenced Selfish Gene by Richard Dawkins), but some insights were well and truly new to me and illuminating. The one that stands out the most at the moment is the game theoretic accounts claiming that monogamy ultimately serves men (while institutional polygyny would be better for women) and the argument that people are more rude in spaces with fewer permanent interpersonal ties. I also thought the point that adherence to cultural values are an expedient for environmentally contingent reproductive success was well argued. I don’t buy these arguments entirely, but I think they and other points are worth mulling over to extract the useful bits. But in order to get to these bits, you have to be attentive and willing to parse through a lot of things that, in the rat-race of ideas, deserve to be thoroughly out-competed.

#reviews #book review #evolutionary psychology #books #psychology #nonfiction

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fortunatowrites · 6 years ago

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Hitman 3049

Prompt: You’re a hitman about to take out a target. Describe how you’re going to do it.

April 3049: The new game Final Creed VII is on the verge of release. UbiSquaresoft needs this success to re-establish themselves as the top gaming company and not fall into the harsh world of bankruptcy. Today, special reviewers and cyber-bloggers are gathering for their early release demo copies for review only. CarpCommunicate is one of these cyber-bloggers with too big a following to risk one of his harsh and unfair reviews. This is why I’m headed to the Mall of New-Florida now; it’s my job to make sure his reign of corporate destruction stops here.

Several companies have backed Ubisquaresoft, such as MicroSquare, in this darknet dealing. An angry heir, driven bankrupt by the Carp’s reviews, has loaned me an especially nice car. Sleek, red, smells of pine, and it’s incredibly fast. The only downside is that he got in bed with Brisk tea so there are stickers everywhere. I tried to peel off the biggest Brisk logo from the door, but it readhered itself almost immediately. I opened another bottle of Brisk and smelled the new car/pine scent while I imagined how it would go down.

All of the reviewer copies are outfitted with new age anti-piracy codes. In the past, legendary hackers have found ways to kidnap reviewers and break their codes without sacrificing anyone. This current one is a toxin injected into the reviewer’s blood. Putting the game anywhere unauthorized activates the toxin and kills the reviewer. All I needed to do was take his laptop and the game: frame him for piracy. All his former reviews would fall on deaf ears without honor.

Getting past the Mall of New-Florida’s border was easy enough, but not incredibly easy like driving through. The car wouldn’t pass through the hologram projected stop signs, so I couldn’t do that. Even though I wanted to just speed past them in this demon of a car.

As I pulled up the Gate Teller Screen, an attendant appeared.

“Welcome to the Mall of New-Florida. Are you returning home or coming to shop?”

“Brisk delivery.”

“Scanning car now!” the machine cheerily declared.

A green grid of lasers scanned over the car, finding nothing not allowed at the mall.

“We’ve noticed your tires are kind of low, would you like to buy some new Mall of New-Florida branded tires? Free pistol included if you buy right now!” “No. I only buy my guns from the Mall directly.”

Implying I was about to go buy some more guns was more than enough to shortcut all the ad and sale attempts from the attendant program.

“Enjoy your trip!”

The screen turned off and the stop sign changed to a green alligator with flamingos standing on its back. I drove on through and then cruised at high speeds. With a car this nice, I just had to try it out. As I sped along, the neon advertisements glowed and dimmed accordingly to match my Username review in the car. I simply ignored them and drank a Brisk.

Suddenly, the inside of the car started flashing red and blue. I nearly spit out the Brisk tea with anger as I saw the jet black car hovering behind me. It was a Mall Cop: the worst kind of cop. As I closed the cap on the Brisk, I tried to forget about all the power a Mall Cop’s gotten since the Malls of America bought the Judicial System 64. America was a corporate wonderland and I was Alice...with much more moxie.

The officer walked over, his black leather reflecting the neon street lights. The lightweight armor over his uniform looked almost like plastic, but I knew it could stop everything short of a neon knife. I had three of them hidden in the stache of Brisk and two more on my person. He tapped on the window and I rolled it down.

“What’s the problem, Officer?”

“You were driving too Briskly down the road,” he joked. The officer stared at me through his helmet’s visor. I simply stared back for a moment. I watched his hand grip the handle of his buzz baton, a hard-light tool favored by the police for beating on criminals. Or people who didn’t laugh at their dumb jokes.

In the blink of an eye, my hand shot out and grabbed him by the collar. I yanked down hard and his helmet banged against the top of the car, disorienting him. Then I grabbed one of the Brisk bottles and smiled. When he gasped I shoved the bottle of Brisk in his mouth and punched it. The muffled noise was either a scream or apologizing for his Brisk pun.

He cleared his throat and broke my imagination. I forced a laugh and then told him I don’t understand.

“Ah, another dumb rich boy. You were doing one fifty in an eighty zone, idiot.”

“Was I?” I tried to say coyly.

“Is that pine I smell?” he asked, leaning a little closer to the window.

“I wouldn’t know, pine trees are extinct.”

“I bet it’s pine,” he reaffirmed standing back up.

“If you’re an expert, maybe I should leave this pine freshener with you?”

He stared at me for a moment as he began to process whether or not he should accept my bribe of the luxurious car freshener. Pine was the new sign of excessive wealth, like most physical materials. A gloved hand reached out for an offering and I smiled.

“Username and registration,” he coldly told me.

Bastard. I typed on the car’s dashboard screen and opened the USB department. I pulled out the Username, outfitted with a fake personal file of course, and the registration USB keys. I then placed them both in that gloved hand.

He immediately popped the Username key into his radio and a hologram of my face displayed next to my actual one. I kept the same deadpan look I did for the mug shot as he compared. He took in another whiff of the pine scent before stepping away.

I watched him walk back into his vehicle and began cursing. Checking the time, I saw there was only an hour left before the Carp went to his console to boot up Final Creed VII. If that happened, my mission would be marked a failure. Quickly, I grabbed a Brisk and the pine freshener. It was time to act like a professional.

Walking up to his car with my offers in hand, I saw the hood of the car open up and reveal a machine gun. The gun whirred and clicked into place: pointed directly at me. The cop stepped out of his vehicle with the controller in his hand. It looked like the model based off the ancient Xbox One. President Gates did so much for our police force and now these mall crooks had his tech.

“I thought you might be thirsty. I’ve got so many of these teas in the car, I don’t know what to do with them. And I’ve got another Pine scent somewhere, you should keep this one.”

He stared at me for a minute.

“Go back to your car.” I held up the Brisk and pine freshener towards him. He took one of his hands off the controller and angrily pointed at the car. I threw the Brisk tea at the controller and knocked it out of his hand.

“Punk!” he hollered as he reached for his revolver.

Briskly moving towards him, I grabbed his wrist and pulled it behind his back. He reached out with the other hand but I looped the cord of the freshener, a very elastic cord, around his other wrist and then pulled it around his neck. It was a tough cord outfitted for even being draped around furniture. Perfect for a nice, refreshing, and pine smelling strangulation.

I put the cop’s body back in the vehicle and put his car on auto, sending it speeding off into the distance away from the road. I watched as it disappeared through the valley of holo-ads, doomed to hit a swamp eventually. At this time of the year, the GMG’s (Genetically Modified Gators, a failed project of an old GMO company before deciding to invest in cyber modifications) should have migrated this far north. They’ll dispose of everything before his server refreshes my data. Thank god he wasn’t working for Disney or he would have had too many cybernetic parts.

I checked my wrist phone to see the time. I had about thirty minutes left. Plenty of time to get in, plenty of time to get out. I got back in the car and hung the pine freshener back up. Then I went to do my job.

#creative writing #writing prompt #writing practice #free writing #hitman #future #sci fi #short stories #capitalism future

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peachyhomework · 3 years ago

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Population Health Problems (ANSWERED)

Purpose

The purpose of this discussion is for learners to identify different population health problems that are impacting their community.

Course Outcome

This assignment enables the student to meet the following course outcome:

CO5 Utilize a collaborative approach to address factors that influence population health (PO2)

Discussion Question

Problems that impact populations are vast and now more than ever social media is getting involved.

Choose one of the following population health problems to focus on:

Substance use and/or abuse

Environmental health (air, water, ground, energy, climate, etc.)

https://www3.epa.gov/myem/envmap/find.htmlLinks to an external site. has a wealth of information

Violence

Abuse

Research and share an overview of the current data on this population health problem specific to your community. You must use one (or more) of the resources from the Direct Care Project Part 1: Assessment and Diagnosis assignment. You may choose to find additional outside source(s).

Then take a moment to review the Twitter feed for compelling Tweets that may have an impact on or discuss the population health problem.

Give an overview of any agency, organization, person, or affiliation that is addressing the population health problem.

How could a community health nurse collaborate with the agency, organization, person, or affiliation address the population health problem?

Compose a 280-character or fewer Tweet that describes what you have shared with the class. Remember Twitter only allows 280 characters (this includes spaces, etc.) so you will need to be concise. It should include a hashtag. Include the URL to the reference or Tweet if applicable. Share this Tweet in the discussion.

Note: A Twitter account is not required nor is posting your Tweet on social media.

Your discussion post should look like:

Paragraph one: Overview of the current data on this population health problem specific to your community

Paragraph two: Overview of any agency, organization, person, or affiliation that is addressing the population health problem

Paragraph three: How could a community health nurse collaborate with the agency, organization, person, or affiliation to address the population health problem?

Tweet: 280-character or fewer Tweet with hashtag and reference if applicable.

Resources: Where did you find your data?

Example Tweet: Your zip code can have more of an impact on your health than your genetic code. Know your stats. #socialdeterminantsofhealth #SDoH #knowyourstats www3.epa.gov/myem/envmap/find.htmlLinks to an external site.

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lazaefair · 8 years ago

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I SAW YOUR "#cyberpunk baze x chirrut?" TAG AND NOW I'M THINKING -- chirrut as the badass techno-monk still loyal to his destroyed order, baze as a Bodyguard For Hire With A Big Gun, ughhhhh i can see it so clearly in my head and i love it

Star Wars is basically one step away from cyberpunk anyway, just add more neon and stick everyone on one planet instead of a billion, et voilà.

Chirrut works as a technomancer, able to communicate with and manipulate computers directly without needing code or terminals or cybernetic implants. He came by his abilities not through the self-taught survival-of-the-fittest lessons of the street, nor through sinister experimentation by one of the Megacorps, but through good old-fashioned techno-religion. His bond with the very web of cyberspace becomes the stuff of legends on both the mainstream and shadow ‘nets. This flickering presence known as The Monk, who slips through firewalls and cyber sentries like so much tissue paper, who runs his digital fingers through classified archives and top-security files pretty much whenever and however he pleases, whose reported exploits far exceed the number of places he’s actually been in.

Even glimpsing his avatar requires feats of hacking accessible only to the top tiers of hackers, the legends say, and a confirmed Monk sighting goes onto a person’s net profile like an elite badge of honor, good for both reputations and credit accounts. The legends have also embroidered the description of Chirrut’s avatar way beyond the actual mask of bits and bytes that he assumes when he goes into cyberspace - he particularly enjoys the fanfics that feature flames, or improbably giant swords, or improbably glowing armor, or all three at once - but most of them eventually boil down to a few common threads: a beautiful man with Chinese features, wearing traditional robes, disarming your defenses in a single glance of his eerie, blank white eyes.

But as invincible as The Monk may be in cyberspace, commanding the very hardware of its machinery to bend to his will, he has a weakness. Which is simply the weakness of any hacker, down to the most ordinary - when he’s plugged in, he can’t defend his own body.

Company enforcers know that. Rival hackers know that. Anyone Chirrut has ever crossed, from the Megacorp that bought out and razed his religious order, to the most recent two-bit mob boss he humiliated and laid bare to the sharks of the underworld, and continuing on down the list, knows that.

So that’s where Baze comes in.

Baze - to put it in the simplest terms - has a really big gun.

He started life as a fully organic, ordinary genetic human. That’s all ancient history by now, seriously - the reason why his Wuxing IST-Tech 45 plasma-cell cannon has so much concentrated firepower, and why it’s so deadly accurate in his hands, is because strictly speaking, there’s no boundary between the cannon and his hands. Cybernetic implants in his limbs, his body, his eyes - even his brain - turn him into a living weapon, one that maintains the firepower and accuracy even if by some miracle he’s separated from his primary weapon.

His reputation takes longer to grow and spread than Chirrut’s, in part because it’s a fair few years before anyone realizes the quiet-but-menacing mercenary with minor-but-solid street cred operating in a single medium-size city within the Sino-Pacific Trade Group is connected to the much-rumored but somehow even more elusive bodyguard of the internationally-famous Monk. Is, in fact, the same person. (Chirrut still likes to gleefully send him text strings from shadow ‘net forums regarding wild conspiracy theories pulling together highly improbable shreds of evidence to pinpoint the entirely wrong person as the identity of The Monk’s Protector.)

As Chirrut’s daring deeds spread across cyberspace, undermining corporate structures, propping up rebellions, sabotaging exploitative operations, declawing predators and giving teeth to prey, so too does the manhunt for The Monk. Over the years, Baze stops taking as many merc jobs that require him to leave Chirrut’s side, because he simply cannot trust that his partner won’t hook into the ‘net while he’s gone, dancing with wild abandon across the strands of the matrix that runs their world. And, incidentally, leaving himself a completely empty physical shell lying comatose amongst cushions on the floor of their shared apartment. A heavily fortified apartment, but still.

After one particularly long week, which features three highway chases, four days of hopping from safehouse to safehouse, thirty hired hitmen (spaced out over the week), too much expended ammunition to bear thinking about, and a fuckload of cleanup - flesh-eating nanobots do not come cheap, let me tell you, and neither do plasma cartridges - Baze decides to say something.

“You could at least take a few paying jobs, since I can’t anymore,” he grumbles while he takes one of his guns apart for maintenance. “Thanks to you,” he adds, because sometimes it takes many repetitions of an idea for Chirrut to come to grips with it.

“Yes, we will eventually starve. Soon I will be nothing but an insubstantial ghost, just a spirit swaying in the digital breeze, blown wherever the matrix wills it. I think I’d make quite an attractive ghost, don’t you think?” Chirrut says, leaning back from his meditation pose and stretching, tilting his chin up and exposing a delicious stretch of throat that has Baze clamping down on a highly annoyed spark of lust. “You, on the other hand, would make for quite a large lump of a corpse, come to think of it. Hmm.”

Baze snorts. “You didn’t act like you were kissing a corpse last night,” he says, and Chirrut waves a hand.

“No, no, you’re right. I prefer you in non-corpse-form. Very well then,” and he unfolds with the startling grace that he has - the same physical capability that’s stymied more than one assassin expecting an infirm, out-of-shape hacker - and bounds over to fold into Baze’s lap, who hastily retracts the gun into his arm compartment. Chirrut cups his cheek, running light fingers over exposed metal ridges and surgery scarring. “For you, my beloved, I will take a paying contract. How much should the Monk charge for his services, I wonder?”

Baze raises an eyebrow under Chirrut’s hand, not bothering to conceal his surprise at his partner’s easy capitulation. “For you? You could probably ask for anything you want. Couple million creds, to start with, and going up from there.”

Chirrut’s pupils contract in the way that indicates he’s pulling something up on his internal HUD. “I have here a humble request,” he says, stretching out the word ‘humble.’ “From someone designating herself Mon Mothma. Came in just a few hours ago.”

Baze raises his other eyebrow. Mon Mothma of Alliance Corp? Everyone in the shadow world knows by now it’s just a front for one of the many proletarian movements seeking to break the grip of the oligarchy. Ironic that she’s funding it with wealth gained through her own corporation. But she can pay handsomely.

Chirrut bends forward to kiss his eyebrows. “I take it you approve.”

“You’ve vetted it already,” Baze says.

Chirrut scoffs. “You could have left that thought unvoiced and saved yourself the energy,” he says, and Baze rolls his eyes.

“When’s the verification meeting?”

“Tomorrow, in the Prosperity District. At a very nice café for the finest tea in the region, the reviews tell me.”

Right in the heart of downtown, in the shadow of every major Megacorp skyscraper in the SPTG. Baze sighs. “I’ll get out your good suit. Try not to get yourself killed.”

“Mon Mothma asked for you, too. By name.” Chirrut smiles radiantly, inordinately pleased for no reason Baze can think of.

He grunts and wraps his hands around Chirrut’s waist. “We’ll have to pull the rich-asshole-and-his-bodyguard act again.” Baze’s visible modifications aren’t unusual in the bowels of the city, down at street level, but would stand out as unspeakably gauche if he tried to pass himself off as a plutocrat on the 200th floor of some shiny fuck-off corporate complex.

“If we must,” Chirrut dismisses. Then he pushes Baze flat on the floor and slides down, grin glittering wickedly, and proceeds to make Baze prove - repeatedly - that he is very much, definitely, decidedly not a corpse.

(Sidenote: Baze does in fact own a super rad cyberpunk motorcycle that leaves neon streaks in the darkness when he and Chirrut ride through the rain-soaked alleys of their city, because the Rule Of Cool turned the knob up to 11 on this pair, and everyone knows it.)

#spiritassassin #baze x chirrut #chirrut x baze #cyberpunk AU #rogue one #star wars fanfiction #by lazaefair

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jonasmaurer · 5 years ago

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054: Optimizing our genetic potential and strengthening the immune system with Dr. David Minkoff

Hi friends! I hope you’re having a lovely week so far. I’m so excited to have a new podcast episode up this week. Things have been a bit sporadic on the podcast front with everything going on (aka our house is pretty much never quiet right now! ha) but I definitely intend to post new episodes whenever I can. Make sure to subscribe so you can get updates whenever a new one goes live!

I was so thrilled to have the honor of chatting with Dr. David Minkoff for the show last week. He is such a wealth of knowledge and has an impressive background with his medical practice and his own testament to living a healthy lifestyle. He drops so many knowledge bombs in this episode and hope that you enjoy this one!

Download a full transcript of this episode here.

Here’s a little bit about Dr. Minkoff if you’re not familiar with his work:

Dr. David Minkoff is a leading physician, best-selling author, athlete and devoted family man on a mission to help people optimize their health and vitality so they can live a prosperous life.

Dr. Minkoff is the founder of LifeWorks Wellness Center, one of the largest alternative medical clinics in the U.S., and BodyHealth, a nutrition company offering a unique range of dietary supplements. Dr. Minkoff has a diverse background as a Board Certified Pediatrician, a Fellow in Infectious Disease, an ER physician and as the co-director of a neonatal intensive care unit. He is the author of the best-selling book The Search for the Perfect Protein and an expert in Hormone Replacement, Functional Medicine, Chelation, Allergy Elimination, European Biological Medicine, Neural Therapy, Prolotherapy, Ozone Therapy, Longevity/Aging Medicine, Enderlein Therapy, Insulin Potentiated Therapy and more.

Dr. Minkoff is passionate about fitness and at 71, he completed his 43rd full IronmanTriathlon and has qualified for the Kona world championships 8 times. When he’s not training, he devotes time for his wife of 50 years, and their 3 children and 8 grandchildren.

Here’s what we talk about in this episode:

Background info and what inspired him to practice medicine

Focus on genetics and tips to optimize genetic potential

Tips for endurance sports success and some of his best strategies

The current pandemic and his tips on protecting and improving our immune systems

His strategy for being “healthy in real life”

and so much more.

I was blown away by his knowledge and how much he was able to share during this 1-hour episode. He mentions the issue of censorship, especially recently with everything going on, and I wanted to mention that I will continue to share as many experts as possible on my show. Even if we may not agree with every single thing they have to say, that’s the beauty about being able to educate ourselves and make our own decisions. I loved his transparency and genuinely enjoyed learning from him during this episode.

Connect with Dr. Minkoff through his website or BodyHealth. Check out his book, The Search for the Perfect Protein, on Amazon.

** Please note that the Healthy In Real Life Podcast is not intended to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any disease or medical condition. The information and guidance in our episodes are there for informational and entertainment purposes only and cannot replace the advice of your personal health professionals or physicians. You should always consult your physician before making any changes to your routine.

Resources:

Don’t forget to sign up for your free 30 days of Les Mills On Demand! This is one of my all-time favorite workout platforms. The instructors are knowledgeable and motivating, plus the music is incredible. There are so many different formats, you’ll definitely find something you love. Get your free workouts here. Perfect opportunity to switch up your routine now that so many of us are working out at home.

CBD has changed my life. It helps so much with my anxiety and sense of calmness. You can read more about my experience with CBD here and use the code FITNESSISTA here to get an extra 15% off your first order. (I love the flavored drops!)

Thank you so much for listening and for all of your support with the podcast! Please leave a rating or review if you enjoyed this episode. If you leave a rating, head to this page and you’ll get a little “thank you” gift from me to you.

You can listen and subscribe to the podcast on iTunes, Stitcher, and Google Play.

xoxo

Gina

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turninginasignments · 5 years ago

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Final Draft

Lochlan Dean

Fish

English 2020

March 30th, 2020

Research Conducted on Altruism

Throughout human society’s history, there have always been questions about science and philosophy with the biggest names being Aristotle and Socrates for their philosophical ideas or Albert Einstein and Rosalind Franklin for their advancements throughout history. We receive new answers to questions and new questions every day that need to be answered. One notion that we researchers have looked into is the idea of altruism. Altruism is the concept of selfless actions or thoughts towards another individual. The term altruism was first thought up by a sociologist and philosopher of science named Auguste Comte. Ever since then altruism has been a major topic for evolutionary psychology researchers, psychology researchers, evolutionary biologists, and others to look into. The concept of altruism is a debated one today as there are few concrete facts about it. There are many hypotheses, theories, and ideas on the subject done by many different researchers throughout the decades. One of the biggest questions that is still unanswered is “where does altruism come from?” There may be some debates on the concept of altruism but one thing that is generally agreed upon is the idea that humans are altruistic and have empathy. One thing that is not known is where that human altruism comes from - is it biological in our genes or psychological? For this paper, I have decided to look into different sources to get an understanding of altruism and to be able to add my own voice to the discourse. I have looked at a variety of different sources ranging from public speeches, mini-documentaries, and of course, a number of peer-reviewed scholarly articles. As there are new studies being conducted frequently and new information being collected by them I have limited my sources to those conducted within the last 15 years. The discourse for altruism is vast and there are different ideas on where altruism has its origination in humans.

One of the biggest questions that researchers want to answer about altruism is if it is biological or psychological. I am sure we are all familiar with Charles Darwin’s contributions to our understanding of nature and biology in his book On the Origin of Species. Darwin argues that all life in this world evolved through a brutal competition of existence. It is Darwin who is responsible for the idea of natural selection, which he thought is how life evolved. He also used the term survival of the fittest to describe natural selection. Natural selection is accepted by evolutionists to be a process that species evolve. Self-preservation is also thought to be a major drive factor on what dictates humans actions. There is the idea according to neoclassical economics that rational beings do whatever they need to in order to maximize their own wealth. The traditional views of both evolutionary biology and psychology have left little room for altruism. Darwin himself was unable to give a reason for biological altruism in his book. In his book, Darwin said “Can we consider the sting of the wasp or of the bee as perfect which… inevitably causes the death of the insect” (Darwin Ch. 6) Altruism is not only a human concept, but it is also found all throughout the animal kingdom in nature.

Altruism is an umbrella term that can cover a vast number of other terms. There may not be one set type of altruism but there are different terms that are generally agreed upon. Two big main ones are biological altruism and psychological altruism. Biological altruism is tied to the biological fitness of the organism. When an organism does a biological altruistic act it is an act that helps the survival of another at the cost of its own physical health. As stated earlier altruism is not just found in humans but is also found in various animals in the animal kingdom. Some prime examples are vampire bats regurgitating blood to feed other bats from other families if they failed to hunt that night, or when an animal does a warning cry when they spot a predator, thus drawing attention to themself but warning others. Psychological altruism is when the actor just wants good for others with no reward. Psychological altruism relies heavily on the psychological state of the actor at the time. Another type of altruism that is similar to psychological altruism is helping altruism, which covers the acts that do not fall into either of the previously mentioned categories. Helping altruism is the concept that humans help other humans just for the sake of doing the action of helping someone, instead of it focusing on an individual’s mental state. This type of altruism focuses on all of humankind as a whole. Any act can fall into an individual type or multiple types. With the debate and non-unified ideas, there are many other types that fall under those three categories. There are some subcategories that are generally agreed upon. The first one is kin selection. Kin selection is an altruistic act for one’s relatives or possibly another organism in their small grouping. A second is reciprocal altruism. Reciprocal altruism is the idea of doing an altruistic act for another organism with the expectation that you will receive an altruistic act back; the term “you scratch my back and I’ll scratch yours” describes this one well. The third idea is indirect reciprocity, which is the idea that acts are given on the concept of reputation and wanting to avoid getting a bad reputation. Signaling is an idea that is not as commonly accepted as the other three, since it is similar to indirect reciprocity. The difference is that instead of performing an altruistic act to avoid getting a bad reputation, you do an altruistic act to signal that you are a good person. There is another idea of altruism called egotistical altruism. The idea of egotistical altruism is being altruistic towards others so that it will better the world which in turn will make your own life better. Egotistical altruism argues that the reason people will potentially do altruistic acts towards total strangers that they will never see again can be because of this idea. An example of egotistical altruism is someone donating money to help better conditions in some small groups in a third world country so that the inhabitants can have a better life and therefore make the world a better place. Education is a good example of egotistical altruism: if you help someone with financial issues and they are able to get an education, they can further contribute towards certain fields. Altruism can be thought of as a family tree chart, with the word altruism at the top as the head of the family with other terms going down getting more into specifics but they can all be traced back up to altruism. Having a general concept of the different ideas of altruism can help give a better understanding of altruism itself and hopefully help at looking at the origins of altruism, and solving the puzzle that is “why are humans altruistic?”

There are many different ideas on altruism and different fields of study hope to be able to explain it. One of these fields of study is genetics. Genetics is the study of heredity and the variation of inherited characteristics. Genetics is a relatively new science that started in 1905 but did not take off in popularity until technology had advanced enough for a scientist to be able to accurately look into it. One such event was when the first picture of DNA was taken. The picture was taken by Watson and Crick using a technique called X-ray crystallography that was invented by Rosalind Franklin. All living things have DNA makeup inside of them making them who they are. Despite humans being separated throughout the world, we are still generally all alike and that is due to the fact that we are all 99.9% genetically alike with each other. Genetics is one way that evolutionary biologists have tried to explain altruism.

Richard Dawkins is a well-known scientist around the world who presents one explanation on why humans are altruistic. Dawkins is an English ethologist, evolutionary biologist, and author who has been contributing to the field of science since the 1960s. Richard Dawkins came up with the idea of the “selfish gene” on altruism and published it in 1976. Dawkins argued that humans are all just genetic survival machines. Survival of the fittest really only means the survival of the genes - a gene that doesn’t look after itself doesn’t survive. Richard Dawkins tries to use the science of genetics to crack the code of altruism. Dawkins makes the argument that the main objective of genes is to survive, which they do by organisms reproducing and passing the genes onto the offspring, essentially making genes “immortal.” He argues that the way our genes can achieve their goal of being passed down to future generations is by the typical self-preservation mentality. The way altruism comes into the picture is Dawkins claims that there are instances where the gene can achieve its selfish goals by doing a form of altruism. This theory best supports the idea of kin selection. Kin selection is when an individual organism acts in the best interests of other members of their family and/or small group, even at a cost to itself. The argument is that due to the selfish desires of our genes they produce unselfish actions to those around us. If our genes help related organisms reproduce, by helping ensure their survival, a gene then succeeds in helping copies of itself be reproduced and passed on. Dawkins’s theory is that altruism came from the selfish desires of our genes and we are just the vessel that carries our genes and DNA.

There are some counter-arguments to Dawkins’s selfish gene theory. Richard Dawkins’s theory on the selfish gene is only backed by biological altruism and not by psychological altruism. One criticism is on Dawkins’s gene-centered view. Dawkins assumes the struggle for survival takes place on the genetic level and focuses on the survival of the genes instead of the organism as a whole. While that argument can be valid, many scientists have considered it too fluid of an argument without enough scientific backing for it. The main criticism is that this theory is too narrow-focused. It relies on genetic survivability and uses kin selection as a major backing up point, but there are many other types of altruism that this theory does not help back up. This theory only applies to populations in which sexual reproduction causes complete allelic mixing, panmictic organisms. There are organisms that are not panmictic so this theory would not apply to them.

There is another idea on what the origins of altruism are that follows evolutionary genetics and genes. All the ideas of altruism that have been previously explained in this research paper have all been ideas that give back to the actor. There was one group of scientists, who called themselves the collective, that came up with the idea that the reason why humans are altruistic has to do with none of those ideas. They operate under the assumption that behavioral mechanisms are not perfect goal-seeking devices, like what Richard Dawkins claimed the genes were. The collective thinks that behavior mechanisms are context-specific physiological systems that respond to different environmental cues in order to engage what is the best course of action, based on evolutionary history. The collective think that altruism is backed more by psychological reasons and not biological ones. Some evidence to help support this idea is a study done on people helping other people. It was found that people were more likely to perform an altruistic act while having outside environmental forces paying a part. In particular, this study found that altruistic acts were performed always but that there was a stark increase when people were being watched by robots with human-looking eyes. The argument is that humans have strong reciprocity towards other humans, but that the reason for it is not due to any of the reasons previously mentioned (such as kin selection or reciprocal altruism). The collective argues that there is a biological and evolutionary logic to human cooperation. The idea is that the reason humans are altruistic is due to genes misfiring. The common human social environment, society, has only been around for 0.1% of all of human history; or in metaphorical terms has advanced in a gene’s eyeblink. The idea is, our social environment advancing so quickly has left some strange tendencies left over from past eras. It is thought that due to kin selection or reciprocal altruism or other forms of altruism, it helped humankind survive and advance in past eras when we lived in smaller groups. Now that we live in the world today things are different. A perfect example to liken it to is sexual reproduction. Humans feel a desire to reproduce and generate offspring. There are biological and evolutionary triggers to make us feel desire even though in today’s time humans engage in sexual intercourse without the purpose of having offspring. Contraceptives have been invented to thwart the outcome of having offspring, and yet we still have the biological urges and desires to engage in sexual intercourse. The idea is that being altruistic is much the same. In the past, there was the biological and genetic push to be altruistic to better help our species survive, and that is the reason people feel the desire to be nice today. It is a leftover evolutionary push. The difference between this argument for the origin of altruism and the selfish gene theory is this argument pushes the idea that it is a gene misfire - something from the past that is still in us - and it focuses on the organism as a whole. The selfish gene theory focuses on the individual genetic view and claims that the selfish gene is still within us.

There are of course problems with this argument as well. This argument states that humans are naturally and biologically altruistic and caring. Perhaps the biggest reason why this argument might be hard to accept is because it goes against decades of biological research that states humans are inherently selfish. This argument is relatively new to the discourse compared to the many other ideas that have been researched about human nature. The economics standpoint is perhaps the most effective counter-argument to this idea. Another argument for this idea is the fact that there have to be social, political, or environmental restrictions upon people or else negative interactions can occur between people. Some examples of that are the pirate rule in the Caribbean in the 18th century, warlords, and other anarchistic situations. The argument is that we can not simply rely on humans being naturally altruistic or empathetic towards the good of the group. Instead, we require social, environmental, political, and economic restrictions to ensure the cooperation of individuals and have them avoid temptation.

There are other voices in the existing work as the body of work on altruism is quite vast. The main reason I have conducted the research for this paper is to develop my own understanding of the issue so that I can add my own voice and arguments to the discourse. Throughout my experience of gathering knowledge on this subject, I noticed a severe lack of study about certain issues or actions that can be considered altruistic. One of the areas where I found the least study was regarding actions that were done after death or actions that resulted in the death of the altruist. A prime example of what I am bringing up is organ donation. Being an organ donor is something someone can decide when they receive their driver’s license but it can be changed whenever the individual wants. There are a huge number of scholarly and opinion articles about organ donation, but that particular topic is not central to my argument. Another example of what I was talking about are instances where the individual sacrifices him- or herself for the sake of others. Roy Benavidez was an American soldier who fought in the Vietnam war. He received the medal of honor for an instance called “six hours in hell.” He fought off thousands of Vietnamese soldiers while defending a position where other American troops were getting evacuated by helicopter. He also carried multiple bodies to the helicopter, all while receiving multiple wounds. He waited until he was the last soldier to get on. These are of course some extreme examples of what I want to focus on. I propose that in future research projects a new category of altruism needs to be considered, since it doesn’t seem that organ donation and self-sacrifice fit in any of the previously-discussed categories. Organ donation and sacrificing yourself for the sake of others are cases of extreme empathy and altruism that I do not believe fall under the current umbrella terms. Perhaps by looking into these extreme situations, researchers can define a new type of altruism and get a better understanding of what the driving force behind actions such as these are.

Some counter-arguments for my idea can be found. Arguments could be made that even though those situations are extreme they can still be classified by other terms. Organ donation, for example, could be viewed as signaling: trying to show that you are a good person by being an organ donor. My response to this is that most of the time being an organ donor is a small mark on the individuals’ license and is not a thing that is often brought up in social situations. Further research would have to be conducted solely on the topic of organ donation to better understand where it fits in the puzzle of human altruism. An individual who does a drastic action to better the chance of survival for others at the cost of their own physical well-being could also be misclassified. Some counter-arguers could claim that even though those actions are extreme they still fall under kin selection. Kin selection could be a good umbrella for these types of self-sacrificing action. The idea of sacrificing yourself for the better biological health of others does fall under the definition of kin selection, but I still propose that there is more to it. Kin selection normally contains things such as grooming in primates, sacrificing some food for bats, or some kind of warning cry to alert the group. Hardly ever are instances observed in other animals of individuals sacrificing themselves for others, except of course parental units defending their offspring. Egotistical altruism could be claimed for both of them as by doing either act it would directly positively affect other people’s lives and indirectly make the world a better place. My response to that argument is this: true, the world would be a better place, but it comes at the cost of the life of the altruist so therefore the betterment does not affect them. Perhaps if you combine egotistical and kin selection it could make sense as you want to make the world a better place for your offspring or other close friends or family. I still believe that further research needs to be conducted on these issues as they have not been researched as they should be. I propose the research can be conducted by investing time, personal, and perhaps some resources into conducting a wide mass study on the mindset of those who are organ donors or those who have performed extreme actions of sacrifice. Better understanding the mindset of those individuals and what their reasoning was in those instances would give us a better understanding of the reason for those actions: whether biological or psychological. Better understanding the reason humans perform altruistic acts is the first step to better understand the origin and reason why humans are altruistic.

Throughout this research paper I have taken a look into the discourse of altruism. I have looked at the various different terms and types of altruism, resulting in the words having a trickle effect of coverage. The literature on altruism is quite large, with many different ideas and hypotheses on the reason why humans have altruistic tendencies and what the origin of it is - if it is biological or psychological. Richard Dawkins has a theory that its origin sits upon the selfish gene concept. The selfish gene concept is the idea that the reason humans are altruistic is due to selfish gene desires. Our genes desire to reproduce and survive so with that desire they produce altruism to better help the survivability of the gene. The other argument was the reason humans are altruistic is due to the logical evolutionary development of humans. An opposing argument claimed that being altruistic was the best course of action for survivability. Human society has advanced in an extremely short time, genetically speaking, so some tendencies that don’t fit modern society have remained in our species. One biological tendency we still have in our current social environment is the desire to engage in sexual intercourse. With contraceptives we have thwarted the purpose of sexual intercourse (to reproduce offspring) and yet humans still have the desire and biological push. It is proposed that altruism is much like that: that we had to have the biological push to be altruistic to better enhance our species survivability and that is a leftover genetic misfire today.

My own argument for this paper was to invest further research into different ideas of altruism as there are actions that I do not believe fall under any current idea of altruism. It is my thought that if further research is conducted on altruism it will lead to a better understanding of the reasons we feel altruistic tendencies, possibly helping to crack the biological puzzle of why are we altruistic.

Sources

Andy80o, “Richard Dawkins on Altruism and The Selfish Gene”. Youtube, September 1st, 2012, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n8C-ntwUpzM&feature=youtu.be.

Burnham, Terence C., and Dominic D. P. Johnson. “The Biological and Evolutionary Logic of Human Cooperation.” Analyse & Kritik, vol. 27, no. 1, Jan. 2005. OneSearch, DOI: https://doi.org/10.1515/auk-2005-0107

Darwin, Charles. On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, or the Preservation of Favored Races in the Struggle for Life. 1 ed., 1859

Hoffman, Edward, et al. “The Psychological Benefits of Receiving Real-Life Altruism.” Journal of Humanistic Psychology, vol. 60, no. 2, Mar. 2020, pp. 187–204. EBSCOhost, DOI:10.1177/0022167817690280.

Joan B. Silk, and Bailey R. House. “The Evolution of Altruistic Social Preferences in Human Groups.” Philosophical Transactions: Biological Sciences, vol. 371, no. 1687, 2016, p. 1. EBSCOhost, search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=edsjsr&AN=edsjsr.24768660&site=eds-live.

Kurzgesagt. “A selfish Argument for Making the World a Better Place - Egoistic Altruism.” Youtube, March 18th, 2018, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rvskMHn0sqQ&feature=youtu.be.

Marsh, Abigail A. “Neural, Cognitive, and Evolutionary Foundations of Human Altruism.” WIREs: Cognitive Science, vol. 7, no. 1, Jan. 2016, p. 59. EBSCOhost, search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=edb&AN=112128886&site=eds-live.

Ramsey, Grant. “Can Altruism Be Unified?” Studies in History and Philosophy of Biol & Biomed Sci, vol. 56, Apr. 2016, pp. 32–38. EBSCOhost, DOI:10.1016/j.shpsc.2015.10.007.

Singer, Peter. TED. “Peter Singer: The why and how of effective altruism.” Youtube, May 20th, 2013, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Diuv3XZQXyc&feature=youtu.be

TEDx Talks. “The Science of Altruism | Dustin Daniels | TEDxFSU” Youtube, June 29th, 2016, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=brqg4HA3mUI&feature=youtu.be.

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wineschool-blog · 4 years ago

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Know Your Wine Bottle

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