#I have never encountered this phenomenon in the actual world having discussions about art of whatever

[kingofmyborrowedheart]

It’s very strange that in online communities, multiple opinions on something seemingly can’t exist. Having differing ideas is the basis for solid, in-depth discussions. You don’t always have to agree with the same people all the time. It’s okay to think for yourself and have your own preferences.

[redantsunderneath]

On Analysis Part 1 - Hermeneutics and Configurative reading (the “what” part)

“Without turning, the pharmacist answered that he liked books like The Metamorphosis, Bartleby, A Simple Heart, A Christmas Carol. And then he said that he was reading Capote's Breakfast at Tiffany's. Leaving aside the fact that A Simple Heart and A Christmas Carol were stories, not books, there was something revelatory about the taste of this bookish young pharmacist, who ... clearly and inarguably preferred minor works to major ones. He chose The Metamorphosis over The Trial, he chose Bartleby over Moby Dick, he chose A Simple Heart over Bouvard and Pecouchet, and A Christmas Carol over A Tale of Two Cities or The Pickwick Papers. What a sad paradox, thought Amalfitano. Now even bookish pharmacists are afraid to take on the great, imperfect, torrential works, books that blaze a path into the unknown. They choose the perfect exercises of the great masters. Or what amounts to the same thing: they want to watch the great masters spar, but they have no interest in real combat, when the great masters struggle against that something, that something that terrifies us all, that something that cows us and spurs us on, amid blood and mortal wounds and stench.” ― Roberto Bolano, 2666

Much of the background for this post in particular comes from Paul Fry’s Yale lecture course about the theory of literature.  This is a great starting course for interpretation and textual analysis and, yes, film and TV shows are text.

In futzing around with this stuff, what am I doing?  Less charitably, what do I think I’m even trying to do, here? Many feel that applying theory to art and entertainment is as pretentious as the kind of art or entertainment that encourages it. It’s understandable.  Many examples of analysis are garbage and even people capable of good work get going in the wrong direction due to fixations or prejudices they aren’t even aware of and get swept away by the mudslide of enthusiasm into the pit of overreach. That’s part of the process. But this stuff has an actual philosophical grounding, so let’s start by looking at the stories history of trying to figure out “texts.”

Ideas about the purpose of art, what it means to be an author, and how it is best to create go back to the beginning of philosophy but (outside of some notable examples) there is precious little consideration of the reception of art and certainly not a feeling that it was a legitimate field of study until more recently. The Greeks figured the mind would just know how to grok it because what it was getting at was automatically universal and understanding was effortless to the tune mind. But the idea that textual analysis should be taken seriously began with the literal texts of the Torah (Rabbinical scholarship) and then the Bible, but mostly in closed circles.

Hermeneutics as we know it began as a discipline with the Protestant Reformation since the Bible was now available to be read.  Sooooo, have you read it? It’s not the most obvious or coherent text.  Reading it makes several things clear about it: 1. It is messy and self contradictory; 2. A literal reading is not possible for an honest mind and isn’t advisable in any event; 3. It is extremely powerful and mysterious in a way that makes you want to understand, your reach exceeding your grasp. This is like what I wrote about Inland Empire - it captures something in a messy, unresolvable package that probably can’t be contained in something clear and smooth. This interpretive science spread to law and philosophy for reasons similar to it’s roots in text based religion - there was an imperative to understand what was meant by words.

Hans-Georg Gadamer is the first to explicitly bring to bear a theory of how we approach works.  He was a student of Martin Heidegger, who saw the engagement with “the thing itself” as a cyclic process that was constructive of meaning, where we strive to learn from encounters and use that to inform our next encounter.  Gadamer applied this specifically to how we read a text (for him, this means philosophical text) and process it.  Specifically he strove to, by virtue of repeated reading and rumination which is informed by prior readings (on large and small scales, even going back and forth in a sentence), “align the horizons” of the author and the reader.  The goal of this process is to arrive at (external to the text) truth, which was for him the goal of the enterprise of writing and reading to begin with.  This is necessary because the author and reader both carry different preconceptions to the enterprise (really all material and cultural influences on thinking) that must be resolved.

ED Hirsch had a lifelong feud with Gadamer over this, whipping out Emanuel Kant to deny that his method was ethically sound.  He believed that to engage in this activity otherizes and instrumentalizes the author and robs them of them being a person saying something that has their meaning, whether it is true or false.  We need to get what they are laying down so we can judge the ideas as to whether they are correct or not.  It may be this is because he wasn’t that sympathetic a reader - he’s kind of a piece of work - and maybe his thheory was an excuse to act like John McLaughlin.  He goes on to have a hell of a career fucking up the US school system

But it’s Wolfgang Iser that comes in with the one neat trick which removes (or at least makes irrelevant) the knowability problem, circumvents the otherizing problem, and makes everything applicable to any text (e.g. art, literature) by bringing in phenomenology, specifically Edmund Husserl’s “constitution” of the world by consciousness. It makes perfect sense to bring phenomenology into interpretive theory as phenomenology had a head start as a field and is concerned with something homologous - we only have access to our experience of <the world/the text> and need to grapple with how we derive <reality/meaning> from it.  Husserl said we constitute reality from the world using our sensory/cognitive apparatus, influenced by many contingencies (experiential, cultural, sensorial, etc) but that’s what reality is and It doesn’t exist to us unbracketed. Iser said we configure meaning from the text using our sensory/cognitive apparatus, influenced by many contingencies (experiential, cultural, sensorial, etc) but that’s what meaning is and It doesn’t exist to us unbracketed.  Reality and meaning are constructed on these contingencies, and intersubjective agreement is not assured.

To Iser, we create a virtual space (his phrase) where we operate processes on the text to generate a model what the text is saying, and this process has many inputs based on our dataset external to the text (not all of which is good data) as well as built in filters and mapping legends based on our deeper preconceptions (which may be misconceptions or “good enough” approximations).  Most if this goes on without any effort whatsoever, like the identification of a dog on the street.  But some of it is a learned process - watch an adult who has never read comics try to read one.  These inputs, filters, and routers can animate an idea of the author in the construct, informing our understanding based on all sorts of data we happen to know and assumptions about how certain things work.

This is reader response theory, that meaning is generated in the mind by interaction with the text and not by the text, though Stanley Fish didn’t accent the “in the mind part” and name the phenomenon until years later. Note that Gadamer is largely prescriptive and Hirsch is entirely prescriptive while Iser is predominantly descriptive.  He’s saying “this is how you were doing it all along,” but by being aware of the process, we can gain function.

For those keeping score:   1. Gadamer, after Heidegger’s cyclic process at constructing an understanding of the thing itself, centers on a point between the author and reader and prioritizes universal truth. 2. Hirsch, after Kant’s ethical stand on non instrumentalization, centers on hearing what the author is saying and prioritizes the judging the ideas. 3. Iser, after Husserl’s constituted reality, centers on configuring a multi-input sense of the text within a virtual (mental) space and prioritizes meaning.

Everything after basically comes out of Iser and is mostly restatement with focusing/excluding of elements.  The 20th century mindset, from the logical positivists to Bohr’s view that looking for reality underlying the wave form was pointless, had a serious case of God (real meaning, ground reality) is dead.  W.K. Wimsatt and M. C. Beardsley’s intentional fallacy, an attempt to caution interpreters to steer clear of considering what the god-author meant, begat death of the author which attempted to take the author entirely out of the equation - it was less likely you’d ever understand the if you focused on that!  To me, this is corrective to trends at the time and not good praxis -  it excludes natural patterns of reading in which the author is configured, rejects potentially pertinent data, and limits some things one can get out of the text.

Meanwhile formalism/new criticism (these will be discussed later in a how section) focused on just what was going on in the text with as few inputs as possible, psychoanalytics and historicism looked to interrogate the inputs/filters to the sense making process, postmodernism/deconstruction attacked those inputs/filters making process questioning whether meaning was not just contingent but a complete illusion, and critical studies became obsessed with specific strands of oppression and hegemony as foundational filters that screw up the inputs.   But the general Iser model seems to be the grandfather of everything after.  

Reader intersubjectivity is an area of concern.  In the best world, the creation of art is in part an attempt to find the universal within the specific, something that resonates and speaks to people.  A very formative series of David Milch lectures (to me at least) proffer that if you find a scene, idea, whatever, that is very compelling to you, your job is to figure out what in it is “fanciful” (an association specific to you) and how to find and bring out the universal elements. But people’s experiences are different and there be many ideas of what a piece of art means without there being a dominant one. So the building of models within each mind leaves a lot to consider as the final filtered input is never quite the same. There is a lot of hair on this dog (genres engender text expectations that an author can subvert by confusing the filter, conflicting input can serve a purpose, the form of a guided experience can be a kind of meaning, on and on ad nauseum)

The ultimate question, you might ask, is why we need to do this at all.  I mean, I understood Snow White perfectly fine as a kid.  There’s no “gap” that needs to be leaped.  The meaning of the movie is evident enough on some level without vivisecting it.  The Long answer to what we gain from looking under Snow’s skirt is the next episode.  The short is: 1. You are doing it anyway.  That Snow White thing, you were doing thhat to Snow White you just weren’t conscious of the process.

2. It’s fun. The process only puts a tool of enjoyment in your arsenal.  You don’t have to use it all the time.

3. You’ll see stuff you like in new ways.  The way Star Wars works is really interesting!

4. It may give dimensions to movies that are flawed or bad, and you might wind up liking them.  Again, more to love.

5. It is sometimes necessary to get to a full (or any) appreciation of some complicated works as the most frustrating and resistant stuff to engage with is sometimes the most incredible. 

6. It reinforces your involvement in something you like.  It makes you more connected and more hungry, like any good exercise.

7. You can become more aware of what those preconceptions and biases are, which might give you insights in other areas of your life.

[tlbodine]

The Wendigo is Not What You Think

There’s been a recent flurry of discussion surrounding the Wendigo -- what it is, how it appears in fiction, and whether non-Native creators should even be using it in their stories. This post is dedicated to @halfbloodlycan​, who brought the discourse to my attention. 

Once you begin teasing apart the modern depictions of this controversial monster, an interesting pattern emerges -- namely, that what pop culture generally thinks of as the “wendigo” is a figure and aesthetic that has almost nothing in common with its Native American roots...but a whole lot in common with European Folklore. 

What Is A Wendigo? 

The Algonquian Peoples, a cluster of tribes indigenous to the region of the Great Lakes and Eastern Seaboard of Canada and the northern U.S., are the origin of Wendigo mythology. For them, the Wendigo (also "windigo" or "Witigo" and similar variations) is a malevolent spirit. It is connected to winter by way of cold, desolation, and selfishness. It is a spirit of destruction and environmental decay. It is pure evil, and the kind of thing that people in the culture don't like to talk about openly for fear of inviting its attention.

Individual people can turn into the Wendigo (or be possessed by one, depending on the flavor of the story), sometimes through dreams or curses but most commonly through engaging in cannibalism. Considering the long, harsh winters in the region, it makes sense that the cultural mythology would address the cannibalism taboo.

For some, the possession of the Wendigo spirit is a very real thing, not just a story told around the campfire. So-called "wendigo psychosis" has been described as a "culture-bound" mental illness where an individual is overcome with a desire to eat people and the certainty that he or she has been possessed by a Wendigo or is turning into a Wendigo. Obviously, it was white people encountering the phenomenon who thought to call it "psychosis," and there's some debate surrounding the whole concept from a psychological, historical, and anthropological standpoint which I won't get into here -- but the important point here is that the Algonquian people take this very seriously. (1) (2)

(If you're interested in this angle, you might want to read about the history of Zhauwuno-geezhigo-gaubow (or Jack Fiddler), a shaman who was known as something of a Wendigo hunter. I'd also recommend the novel Bone White by Ronald Malfi as a pretty good example of how these themes can be explored without being too culturally appropriative or disrespectful.) 

Wendigo Depictions in Pop Culture

Show of hands: How many of you reading this right now first heard of the Wendigo in the Alvin Schwartz Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark book?

That certainly was my first encounter with the tale. It was one of my favorite stories in the book as a little kid. It tells about a rich man who goes hunting deep in the wilderness, where people rarely go. He finds a guide who desperately needs the money and agrees to go, but the guide is nervous throughout the night as the wind howls outside until he at last bursts outside and takes off running. His tracks can be found in the snow, farther and farther apart as though running at great speed before abruptly ending. The idea being that he was being dragged along by a wind-borne spirit that eventually picked him up and swept him away.

Schwartz references the story as a summer camp tale well-known in the Northeastern U.S., collected from a professor who heard it in the 1930s. He also credits Algernon Blackwood with writing a literary treatment of the tale -- and indeed, Blackwood's 1910 novella "The Wendigo" has been highly influential in the modern concept of the story.(3)  His Wendigo would even go on to find a place in Cthulhu Mythos thanks to August Derleth.

Never mind, of course, that no part of Blackwood's story has anything in common with the traditional Wendigo myth. It seems pretty obvious to me that he likely heard reference of a Northern monster called a "windigo," made a mental association with "wind," and came up with the monster for his story.

And so would begin a long history of white people re-imagining the sacred (and deeply frightening) folklore of Native people into...well, something else.

Through the intervening decades, adaptations show up in multiple places. Stephen King's Pet Sematary uses it as a possible explanation for the dark magic of the cemetery's resurrectionist powers. A yeti-like version appears as a monster in Marvel Comics to serve as a villain against the Hulk. Versions show up in popular TV shows like Supernatural and Hannibal. There's even, inexplicably, a Christmas episode of Duck Tales featuring a watered-down Wendigo.

Where Did The Antlered Zombie-Deer-Man Come From? 

In its native mythology, the Wendigo is sometimes described as a giant with a heart of ice. It is sometimes skeletal and emaciated, and sometimes deformed. It may be missing its lips and toes (like frostbite). (4)

So why, when most contemporary (white) people think of Wendigo, is the first image that comes to mind something like this?

Well...perhaps we can thank a filmmaker named Larry Fessenden, who appears to be the first person to popularize an antlered Wendigo monster. (5) His 2001 film (titled, creatively enough, Wendigo) very briefly features a sort of skeletal deer-monster. He’d re-visit the design concept in his 2006 film, The Last Winter. Reportedly, Fessenden was inspired by a story he’d heard in his childhood involving deer-monsters in the frozen north, which he connected in his mind to the Algernon Blackwood story. 

A very similar design would show up in the tabletop game Pathfinder, where the “zombie deer-man” aesthetic was fully developed and would go on to spawn all sorts of fan-art and imitation. (6) The Pathfinder variant does draw on actual Wendigo mythology -- tying it back to themes of privation, greed, and cannibalism -- but the design itself is completely removed from Native folklore. 

Interestingly, there are creatures in Native folklore that take the shape of deer-people -- the  ijiraq or tariaksuq, shape-shifting spirits that sometimes take on the shape of caribou and sometimes appear in Inuit art in the form of man-caribou hybrids (7). Frustratingly, the ijiraq are also part of Pathfinder, which can make it a bit hard to find authentic representations vs pop culture reimaginings. But it’s very possible that someone hearing vague stories of northern Native American tribes encountering evil deer-spirits could get attached to the Wendigo, despite the tribes in question being culturally distinct and living on opposite sides of the continent. 

That “wendigo” is such an easy word to say in English probably has a whole lot to do with why it gets appropriated so much, and why so many unrelated things get smashed in with it. 

I Love the Aesthetic But Don’t Want to Be Disrespectful, What Do I Do? 

Plundering folklore for creature design is a tried-and-true part of how art develops, and mythology has been re-interpreted and adapted countless times into new stories -- that’s how the whole mythology thing works. 

But when it comes to Native American mythology, it’s a good idea to apply a light touch. As I’ve talked about before, Native representation in modern media is severely lacking. Modern Native people are the survivors of centuries of literal and cultural genocide, and a good chunk of their heritage, language, and stories have been lost to history because white people forcibly indoctrinated Native children into assimilating. So when those stories get taken, poorly adapted, and sent back out into the public consciousness as make-believe movie monsters, it really is an act of erasure and violence, no matter the intentions of the person doing it. (8) 

So, like...maybe don’t do that? 

I won’t say that non-Native people can’t be interested in Wendigo stories or tell stories inspired by the myth. But if you’re going to do it, either do it respectfully and with a great deal of research to get it accurate...or use the inspiration to tell a different type of story that doesn’t directly appropriate or over-write the mythology (see above: my recommendation for Bone White). 

But if your real interest is in the “wendigocore” aesthetic -- an ancient and powerful forest protector, malevolent but fiercely protective of nature, imagery of deer and death and decay -- I have some good news: None of those things are really tied uniquely to Native American mythology, nor do they have anything in common with the real Wendigo. 

Where they do have a longstanding mythic framework? Europe.

Europeans have had a long-standing fascination with deer, goats, and horned/antlered forest figures. Mythology of white stags and wild hunts, deer as fairy cattle, Pan, Baphomet, Cernunnos, Herne the Hunter, Black Phillip and depictions of Satan -- the imagery shows up again and again throughout Greek, Roman, and British myth. (9)

Of course, some of these images and figures are themselves the product of cultural appropriation, ancient religions and deities stolen, plundered, demonized and erased by Christian influences. But their collective existence has been a part of “white” culture for centuries, and is probably a big part of the reason why the idea of a mysterious antlered forest-god has stuck so swiftly and firmly in our minds, going so far as to latch on to a very different myth. (Something similar has happened to modern Jersey Devil design interpretations. Deer skulls with their tangle of magnificent antlers are just too striking of a visual to resist). 

Seriously. There are so, so many deer-related myths throughout the world’s history -- if aesthetic is what you’re after, why limit yourself to an (inaccurate) Wendigo interpretation? (10) 

So here’s my action plan for you, fellow white person: 

Stop referring to anything with antlers as a Wendigo, especially when it’s very clearly meant to be its own thing (the Beast in Over the Garden Wall, Ainsworth in Magus Bride)

Stop “reimagining” the mythology of people whose culture has already been targeted by a systematic erasure and genocide

Come up with a new, easy-to-say, awesome name for “rotting deer man, spirit of the forest” and develop a mythology for it that doesn’t center on cannibalism 

We can handle that, right? 

This deep dive is supported by Ko-Fi donations. If you’d like to see more content, please drop a tip in my tip jar.  Ko-fi.com/A57355UN

NOTES: 

1 - https://io9.gizmodo.com/wendigo-psychosis-the-probably-fake-disease-that-turns-5946814

2 - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wendigo#Wendigo_psychosis

3 - https://www.gutenberg.org/files/10897/10897-h/10897-h.htm

4 - https://www.legendsofamerica.com/mn-wendigo/

5- https://www.reddit.com/r/Cryptozoology/comments/8wu2nq/wendigo_brief_history_of_the_modern_antlers_and/

6 - https://pathfinderwiki.com/wiki/Wendigo

7 - https://www.mythicalcreaturescatalogue.com/single-post/2017/12/06/Ijiraq

8 - https://www.backstoryradio.org/blog/the-mythology-and-misrepresentation-of-the-windigo/

9 - https://www.terriwindling.com/blog/2014/12/the-folklore-of-goats.html

10 - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deer_in_mythology

[nomanwalksalone]

ARNYS ET MOI AND ME

by Réginald-Jérôme de Mans

How do you remember something you never knew? The orphaned opening words of Arnys et moi, journalist Philippe Trétiack’s memoir of the late and legendary Paris shop Arnys, raise that question: “I never stepped in. I never bought anything there. And now, it’s too late.” This ellipse adds romance to Trétiack’s incomparable book, which contrasts the rise of the family behind Arnys with Trétiack’s own. Like the Grimberts of Arnys, Trétiack’s ancestors were Jews from Eastern Europe who immigrated to Paris at the beginning of the 20th century and ended up the garment trade.  But where the Grimberts’ boutique became, to some, synonymous with a neighborhood, an attitude, a philosophy, and even Paris itself, the boutique tended by Trétiack’s mother stayed a neighborhood mediocrity, a sinkhole of time, money and, in Trétiack’s telling, of lifeforce itself as he describes how his mother kept shop despite the hate she had for the shop, for the clothes she sold and for their potential customers.  A far cry from the supposed intellectual and political salon that was Arnys.

How do we remember Arnys? Despite Trétiack’s professed unfamiliarity with the shop, readers may never encounter a more knowledgeable and measured historical account of the Arnys shop: the implantation in Paris of educated left-wing garment dealer Jankel Grünberg, whose successes across multiple shops allowed him to settle on the very established avenue Foch in the 16 arrondissement; the immigrant’s cultural emphasis on education that led his sons Léon and Albert to pursue studies on the at once more aristocratic and artistic Left Bank; the polio that derailed one son’s medical career and drove both to enter the family trade, this time in a Left Bank shop space close by the colleges and medical schools he had been attending; the burgeoning family success; the horrors of the Second World War, which saw Jankel and his wife die in Auschwitz; the evolution of Arnys the shop and the brand from a neighborhood corner in a sleepy part of Paris to the epicenter of a certain hip bohemia, of a self-conscious rebellion, of a subversively elegant set of limousine liberals (the loose equivalent of the French gauche caviar), and finally of a dated, sated establishment… before communion with luxury conglomerate LVMH forced Arnys’ transubstantiation into the nominal custom tailoring and shirtmaking arm of LVMH-owned brand Berluti. Even the mysterious name “Arnys” itself is finally explicated: the Grimberts (name eventually Frenchified) had moved into the space vacated by a shop named Loris; by coining a similar-sounding name for their new shop Léon and Albert hoped to attract, through confusion, some of the old shop’s former customers. 

Trétiack writes that it was the recent humiliating scandal of former French presidential candidate François Fillon that had sparked his interest in Arnys. Years after the Arnys shop had actually closed, Fillon made the papers for having accepted thousands of dollars in custom Arnys clothing paid for by Robert Bourgi.  Bourgi is a lawyer whose involvement in a shadowy-world of influence and intrigue between France and its former sub-Saharan colonies known as Françafrique has led members of the French political establishment to call him “radioactive.” According to the very entertaining French Vanity Fair writeup of the debacle, Bourgi would periodically drive Fillon over to the Berluti bespoke shop –  at Arnys’ old address -- when Fillon was feeling down and order him clothing, paid for in cold hard cash.  As a result, Trétiack writes, that shop now limits cash purchases to 1000 euros, or less than 20% of the price of a custom Arnys-by-Berluti suit.  Interestingly, Trétiack also suggests that the papers had referred to Fillon’s scandal at Arnys, rather than Berluti, not because they appreciated the academic distinction that Berluti custom clothing was created by the putative Arnys tailors, but because they feared losing LVMH’s enormous ad spend if they impugned an existing brand in the LVMH portfolio, Berluti, rather than the old brand Berluti had absorbed.

As Trétiack writes at the conclusion of his memoir, this exploration of Arnys allowed him to remember things from his own past that he had almost forgotten, yet felt so deeply.  In fact, ironically, Trétiack’s discussions of his own family’s trajectory are far cloudier (and shorter) than his descriptions of Arnys, no doubt because the latter involved researching and interviewing many of the people historically involved with the shop. Certainly, as Arnys et moi progresses, the personal memoir of Trétiack’s family comes to seem more and more exiguous compared to the gusto with which Trétiack describes not only the arrival of the Grimberts and Arnys, but the development of the garments and the ethos that made the shop an avatar of a sort of French exception, a prerevolutionary throwback, a haven for a certain set of the Parisian bourgeoisie as it wanted to see itself: deeply rooted in a timelessly elegant France of Enlightenment thought and local craft; intellectual without being sterile; a cosmopolitan of the fleshpots of the Sixth and Seventh Arrondissements, which at one time were famous bookstores, discreet art galleries and philosophers’ cafés. But today, Trétiack points out, former customers of Arnys also rue the passing of a certain clientele of the Café Flore, too.

How do I remember Arnys? Unlike Trétiack, I was a regular, if only occasionally profligate, customer of Arnys for the last decade of its existence, and knew it well for years before that, having been like Léon and Albert Grimbert a student in that neighborhood.  Like many of the habitués he describes, I used to stop in nearly every weekend. But those were not sufficient credentials to become part of the salon of intellectuals, esthetes and political figures Trétiack is only the most recent to describe. And as a guilty customer of the Flore for well over 20 years, I can attest that the shift in that café’s clientele to wealthy tourists and Eurotrash is by no means a recent phenomenon.  All that time ago, when as a student I would amble from my home on rue de Sevres past Arnys and its lovely windows to a rare treat at the Flore, it was already evident that the cultural landmarks of that area, those that Arnys claimed to be part of, had mostly disappeared in place of the boutiques of international luxury brands. There was very little left of the intellectual or countercultural long before Arnys itself ceased to be.

As a member of another diaspora, I know it is always my lot to be, in some way, an outsider wherever I am. Outsider that I am, I was shocked to find how closely Trétiack’s and my conclusions tracked: I am writing a book on vanished and vanishing French #steez, and occasionally wondered if a mutual friend like rag trader Ammar Marni, whom Trétiack interviewed for this book, had passed him my manuscript.  Like Trétiack, I concluded that Arnys incarnated a sort of French exception, a parallel universe where Beau Brummell had never imposed his modern English clothing style of simplicity of cut and restraint of color on the world. Arnys was a sort of escapism too lovely for we the uncertainly welcome to resist, a France as it would like to see itself, invented by an immigrant family.  

Arnys et moi laudably and interestingly lays out how Arnys constructed its myth, but occasionally strays into too eagerly believing some parts of that myth.  Trétiack spends a chapter or two lauding the 1940s invention of Arnys’ signature garment, the smocklike Forestière, and the cultural inspirations that led Arnys, in the wake of the Forestière, to create dozens of other garments inspired by the workwear and countrywear of France, as well as by classic French and Italian films of the 1950s and 1960s.  It’s only much later, towards the end of the book, that Trétiack mentions that that Arnys actually had remained a staid, Anglophile haberdasher until the 1990s, when the third Grimbert generation, brothers Jean and Michel, realized that ersatz Englishness was on the way out and that a contrived Frenchness (rich linings, beautiful and exotic materials, grandiosely theatrical designs, and a special notch in the lapel inspired by those created by the 1950s new wave of French tailors) could set the house apart. In other words, Arnys’ performative Frenchness, the thing that set it apart, is of quite recent vintage.  Trétiack also expounds in impressive detail on the magnificence and quality of every object Arnys sold, right down to the rarity of its handmade knives and the lushness of its pashmina scarves handwoven in Srinagar.  As something of a collector of artifacts of the places I write about, I’ve actually had the occasion to own and use items by these makers, including a Sauveterre knife and a scarf from Arnys’ supplier Kashmir Loom.  What Trétiack may not have realized is that the Arnys items were not just exquisite and luxurious, but were often incredibly delicate.  In the case of their handmade, hand-rolled seven-fold ties, they seemed to be deliberately more delicately and clumsily made than they needed to be in order to seem more handmade.  This seemed the case with a number of Arnys items.  Like Trétiack, I never became a bespoke customer of Arnys.  But here he and I diverge, as his words praising the current Arnys-Berluti cutter suggest he had not heard the pervasive and insistent words across the rest of the Paris bespoke population about the custom makers at Arnys. I’ll only note that the longtime Arnys cutter had actually left Arnys around the time it became part of Arnys, and is now retired, while their longtime custom shirtmaker died recently. 

Things change. Like Trétiack, I’ve wondered about the futility of writing about places like Arnys, about what it matters to remember. Then I remember that so many of us, so many different individuals with so many different individual histories, have conferred on this place, on this meaningless pair of syllables, so many different meanings, each with its own reverberations. How much can we know about what we remember?

[absalomabsalom]

Coming and Going: Misrecognition and Identity in Flannery O’Connor’s “Everything That Rises Must Converge”

Professor Richard A. Garner The Human Situation, April 15th, 2020

Outline

I. The Best Title in All of Literature

II. Misery Like a Coastal Shelf

III. The Injury of Intelligence, the Insult of an Education

A. Intelligence is a curse

B. A Martyr to the Desire of the Other; or, that St. Sebastian Painting One More Time

C. The Terror of Identity; or, Meeting Yourself Coming and Going

Richard Sexton,Oak Avenue, Wormsloe Plantation, 2009

I. The Best Title in All of Literature

 “The past is never dead. It's not even past.”

 —William Faulkner, Requiem for a Nun

 In a second, I’m going to talk to you about the literary genre called the Southern Gothic. It’s the best. It’s weird and uncanny and disturbing, and it’s all ours. After that, I’m going to talk about the cursed intellectuals of O’Connor’s stories in general, and more specifically of our story for today, “Everything That Rises Must Converge” (1961). You might want to read the last one first, as it does the most close-reading, or the second one, which has lots of maps and stuff. But first, I want to tell you that “Everything That Rises Must Converge” is the best title in all of literature.

From the moment I read it on the syllabus as an undergraduate—circa the turn of the millennium— it took on a life of its own in my head. It’s one of those phrases we encounter in life that returns over and over again, coming to mind unbidden in situations that have nothing remotely to do with the themes of the story. Indeed, every time I go back and reread the story I am struck by how the title, like many of O’Connors, creates this tiny bit of cognitive dissonance, this strangeness that makes it at once both absolutely perfect and deeply unsettling: a stark line of poetry that stands over and above the story, its own little work of art.

And I say this knowing—as you may as well, if you read Giroux’s introduction—that the phrase comes from the Jesuit philosopher Teilhard de Chardin: “Tout Ce Qui Monte Converge” (xv). Robert Giroux relates that the phrases appears in French, in an anthology he had sent O’Connor of the philosopher’s work. Yet, if anything, going back and reading Teilhard de Chardin and how he uses the phrase makes O’Connor’s usage of the phrase embettered, not worsened, by the repetition. Here’s the version of the passage most often quoted, which is not actually the philosopher’s but one of his students/anthologists. From Max H. Begouen’s Foreword to Building the Earth: “He gave each of them this watchword: ‘Remain true to yourselves, but move ever upward toward greater consciousness and greater love! At the summit you will find yourselves united with all those who, from every direction, have made the same ascent. For everything that rises must converge’” (13). Here’s one version in his own words, from the essay “Faith in Man,” expressing a major theme in the philosopher’s work: “Followed to their conclusion the two paths must certainly end by coming together: for in the nature of things everything that is faith must rise, and everything that rises must converge” (186). In other words, where Teilhard de Chardin is saying something about the nature of our common humanity converging in ever-greater complexity and perfection, O’Connor is injecting something insistent, something dark into this message of hope. In doing so, she is not trying to negate the utopian vision of the philosopher, but to transform it by way of adding in the full range of human experience. For O’Connor, thinking about convergence means thinking about life in a place where sectarianism is stuck on the Catholic/Protestant divide so strongly that to be a Catholic is so alien that one might as well be Jewish (and anything further afield would be meaningless to the young Church of God boys); where buses had only been desegregated in Browder v. Gayle five years before she wrote the story; and where the number of women receiving PhDs in Philosophy in the 1950s—much less in the South—was vanishingly small. In other words, O’Connor injects a certain Southern peculiarity combined with a bit of Gothic uncanniness into this convergence. Faith, theological or not, is easy when it does not have a world to contend with, and if it is easy, it is no faith at all.

But before we talk about the Southern Gothic, I want to return to the title, because I love it so much. Ultimately, beyond any particular meaning it derives from and alongside the story itself, it’s the beauty of a phrase that lingers in one’s mind, insists on coming back again and again, that I want to discuss. I want to discuss it because it gets at the heart of something about literature. For instance, when I say it’s “the best,” on what criteria am I basing that judgement? Are those objective, or purely subjective? Am I repeating a mistake we see from so many of O’Connor’s characters, of assuming that their personal preference can stand in for everyone else’s (and that those who disagree must be wrong)? Short answer: no. I’m saying this for effect. I know it’s just me. But the longer answer is that the particularity of my judgment on this title does give us a clue to the universality of something about language. Our psyches are, ultimately, linguistic; all the sense-experience, emotions, and logic that we deploy emerges out of and is filtered through language. Language makes possible what we can know of our world, and some of the greatest tragedies of our lives are marked by our inability to find a language that fits our experience—of love, of friendship, of betrayal, of death—often because someone else is imposing their language on us, or because there is no language at all for it. Sometimes we have to invent it. I don’t know what part of my self, per se, needs the phrase everything that rises must converge, but some part does. Thank you, Flannery O’Connor.

Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, The Phenomenon of Man, 1955

II. Misery Like a Coastal Shelf

Man hands on misery to man.

It deepens like a coastal shelf.

—Philip Larkin, “This Be The Verse”

What is it about the South that lends itself to the gothic? Ever since Edgar Allen Poe’s American reinvention of that European genre—of ancient curses, crumbling castles, monsters and murderers, of innocent women in distress and dark and stormy nights—Southern literature has often veered of into the uncanny and horrific as it’s modus operandi. And the answer as to why? Well, it’s not all the decaying castles scattered across the countryside. The answer is obvious: it’s slavery. The deep secret, the obscure past, the meaningless descent into gratuitous violence, the uncanny return of repressed trauma and desire: slavery.

Let’s take a tour of some maps… First, what do you think this one is?

If you answered “a map of which parts of America started socially distancing when during the pandemic,” then you are a winner. Here’s the key I excised from the original New York Times article the map appeared in (Ganz et al).

You’d be forgiven for mistaking this for a map of a lot of different things, but let’s cut to the chase. Here’s the second map:

In case you’re having difficulty reading the title, let me help with this U.S. Coast Survey from 1861: “Map showing the distribution of the slave population of the southern states of the United States.”  But just in case the point is not clear yet, here’s map number three:

That, everyone, is a map of the United States as it looked during the late Cretaceous period, many millions of years ago (126-65 mya, to be geologically precise; see Krulwich). That inland sea left rich alluvial deposits that became the fertile crescent of land known as, first geologically and then politically, the Black Belt. Needless to say, the agricultural quality of the land correlates strongly with the intensity of slavery practiced in the American South.

In Sigmund Freud’s Civilization and Its Discontents (a book we read often here in The Human Situation), the psychoanalyst uses the metaphor of the ruins of Rome to talk about the deep history of our own human minds. He wants us to understand how, even after they’ve been totally erased and are irretrievable, our earliest experiences shape who we are, just as the long-obliterated strata of Rome each successively dictated what was built after them. For me, when Larkin evoked misery deepening like a coastal shelf, Freud’s ruins of Rome and the cretaceous South sprang immediately to mind; I took it not as simile, but something that could be, often is, literally true.

This is what is meant in Faulkner’s famous epigraph about the past never being dead. Southern Gothic emerged as one of the most distinctive genres, blending mystery and murder and a deep sense of a looming violence in the world. Flannery O’Connor’s stories, as we have all seen, could easily be turned into horror movies, and William Faulkner’s work also includes many of the same themes. If we include Toni Morrison and Cormac McCarthy (e.g., the hauntings in Beloved or the demonic Judge of Blood Meridian), then the genre is easily the defining movement of twentieth century American literature.  And it is not only slavery, but the history of violence that is the warp and weft of the institution, that colors our Southern Gothic. The Civil War is still the deadliest war in American history, and it’s not even close. Indeed, scholars have argued, often convincingly, that the region has to this day not recovered from the economic, social, and political devastation caused by the military conflict alone, not to mention its aftershocks, the devastation like a modern war fought 75-100 years before its time.  “The past is never dead. It's not even past.”

III. The Injury of Intelligence, the Insult of an Education

A. Intelligence Is a Curse

As I’m sure you’ve noticed by now, O’Connor’s stories are chock full of characters for whom their intelligence is a curse. Hulga almost causes her mother an existential crisis because the pleasure- reading she leaves lying around is Heidegger’s “What Is Metaphysics?”; The Child is clearly the smartest one in the room; even The Misfit was marked off at a young age: “‘You know,’ Daddy said, ‘some that can live their whole life out without asking about it an it’s other has to know why it is, and this boy is one of the latters’” (129). So, too, Julian.

Julian is a writer who does not write. Like Hulga, whose philosophy is solely for herself, Julian’s fantasy world is solely for himself. And he seems to know that he is not a writer—he never expects to make a life/career/money out of it—which forces us to ask: why does he identify as a writer? But before we answer that question, let’s get right to the stakes. The clue is in the title, and O’Connor doesn’t make us wait too long. Immediately after she tells her son that he should be proud that his ancestors owned hundreds of slaves, Julian’s mother gets down to commentary on civil rights: “They should rise, yes, but on their own side of the fence” (408, emphasis added). So, rise: yes; converge: not so much for Julian’s mother. It is no mistake that this story takes place on a bus, the public space Rosa Parks made famous and which the Supreme Court desegregated in its 1956 ruling in Browder v. Gayle, five years before this story was published; the bus, for O’Connor, is again not a metaphor for race relations, it is the thing itself. Thus, unlike for Hulga, Julian’s fate and choices are going to extend far beyond himself—to the status of racism in America, the history of slavery, and reparations therefore—although they will extend to himself, too. Perhaps O’Connor is saying that the repercussions of the choices of the two, philosopher and writer, have different stakes. Perhaps.

Which brings us back to all these emotionally fraught intellectuals here, decaying slowly, like fish out of water, in their Southern hometowns. This theme is important for O’Connor because it argues intelligence, reason itself even, can serve not as something that enlightens, but something that closes off, distances, and deceives. The dark of reason. Like The Child in “A Temple of the Holy Ghost,” they can only see the difference in all things, and not the sameness; there are parts of everyday life that they have utterly rejected, and thus cannot connect to; they are alienated on their own soil, homeless in their own homes. And often with good reason! Julian’s mother is an out and out racist, and she represents the norm. He should reject her racism. But, for some reason, he cannot reject her herself. And he cannot reconcile the one to the other. I love her: she’s a racist; I must reject racism: I must reject her. His very love for his mother is a source of immense guilt for Julian, and that right there is the essence of the Southern Gothic.

There is a deeper lesson here, one that we don’t really have time for, about how Julian is actually trying to inhabit two different symbolic worlds, ones with different rules that justify themselves in different ways and that are ultimately incompatible. It’s like he speaks two different languages, but thinks they’re the same one  and so often gets hopelessly confused. And the truth is something like that, when we recognize that culture is like a language that sets up rules for what and how we make meaning of the world. Heidegger famously said: “Language is the house of Being. In its home man dwells” (217). Hulga and Julian, justifiably reacting to the smallness and violence of the world they grew up in, have learned another world, but tragically cannot see their way back across the divide they have built; they’re emotionally attached, but intellectually distant, so they take refuge in that distance and decay psychologically, along with the old plantation mansion that Julian can’t help but dream about. Perhaps this is a problem O’Connor understood all too well. Her writing teacher in the Iowa MFA program had to ask her “to write down what she had just said” the first time they met her Georgia accent was so thick (vii, all emphasis mine).

B. A Martyr to the Desire of the Other; Or, that St. Sebastian Painting One More Time

When I worked in that highly suggestive, very famous painting of St. Sebastian into my lecture on Voltaire, I had totally forgotten that our erstwhile saint figured into our story for today, even though I had been reading O’Connor again over break. Sometimes the Unconscious, to paraphrase Larkin, fucks you up, but every now and again it does you a favor.

One of Julian’s fantasies is that he is a martyr to his mother. This should right away give us some pause. Take this for instance: “Everything that gave her pleasure was small and depressed him” (405). There is something deeply wrong with Julian’s relationship to his mother here; in fact, this is not a healthy relationship to have with any human being. Why on earth does Julian care what gives his mother pleasure? Shouldn’t he be happy that she is happy, despite it being over a ridiculous hat? Why would you ever arrange it so that, in the most important relationship in your entire world, anything that makes the other person happy makes you sad? That, my friends, is a recipe for disaster, death and disaster and tragedy. You don’t even have to read to the end. This is not going to end well.

To understand characters, you have to understand their motivations. This can be tricky. We can’t assume the characters are us, or anyone else but who they are. There are many possibilities for why Julian does what he does—alien mind control, for instance—but very few plausible ones. What, then, are Julian’s plausible alternatives here to his misery. Alternative one: leave his mother and move far away. He wants to be a writer? New York City, Paris, hell Houston or Atlanta: get thee hence. Anywhere but here (Hulga, too). Why, then, does he stay? We can be very, very cynical and say that Julian is broke and his mom’s supporting him. True! But not really enough. A lot of life can be lived in cheap apartments with ramen noodles, even on the commission of a typewriter salesman. This would be an excuse he would be telling himself, though we should also assume that many of the jobs he might be qualified for he would reject because they would conflict too heavily with his identity (as a writer), or just embarrass him (as being beneath him and his college education).

I think the real clue is in the saint imagery. But it’s not him who’s the saint, it’s his mother—a fair description for her achievements vis-à-vis Julian, which are not small, and which she is justly proud of. Even if taken literally, if he is suffering for his mother, as a saint, that means his mother is Jesus! His non-sacrifice of riding on a bus with his mother—“the time he would be sacrificed to her pleasure” (406)— is really her sacrifice. The problem is that, in this twisted relationship, his mother-the-saint is also a racist. Moreover, he knows that she’s not doing this for her pleasure: her doctor has told her she might die if she doesn’t become more active. Yet that’s how he frames it, which makes no sense … unless, here again, we should take this more literally than he means it: she’s staving off death, and as long as she is alive and enjoying life, then of course he cannot enjoy it. Ipso facto, he wants her to die, so he can move on. Again, her very existence is a source of guilt for him. Not because he hates her, but because he loves her.

C. The Terror of Identity; Or, Meeting Yourself Coming and Going

What does the phrase “you won’t meet yourself coming and going” (407) even mean? I had to pause at this phrase after O’Connor repeats it in the story, making sure to remember, as Professor Charara reminded us, that just because it is a cliché for the characters doesn’t mean that it is one for O’Connor. In short, it signifies a desire for uniqueness. If you do not meet yourself coming or going, you will not see someone else that looks like you on your journey.

This desire—to be singular, unique—is a pretty basic one. We all need some manner of distinguishing ourselves from others, otherwise the difference between self and other breaks down, and what it means to be uniquely our self does with it. This loss of self is, in almost all cases, terrifying for us. It is terrifying for Julian, because it is precisely what he fears in relation to his mother: he will never have his own desires, his own identity, but merely be an extension of hers, subsumed by his mother’s identity, her view of him. He will always be, as Professor Wallace discussed, an object and never a subject. (At the same time, to have nothing in common with other human beings is an opposite extreme, untenable as well. What it would even mean, to share no qualities with other people, no common bond over which you could unite, no language, aspirations, or anything else? Nothing.)

Of course, his mother does indeed meet herself going to the reducing class, in the form of a black woman with her child, angered about … something. Long story short, this woman hits Julian’s mother and storms off when she tries to give her child a penny. There is much to be wrung interpretively from whether or not it is this blow that causes his mother’s death, or Julian’s reaction to it. But I think this is a bit beside the point, much as the hat is. The truth of the situation is in Julian’s belated realization of his unacknowledged love for his mother—he calls out to her as a mother would to a child, or even a lover to their beloved, at the end, “Darling, sweetheart, wait!” (420)—and with that, his imminent “entry into the world of guilt and sorrow” (420). His coded wish for his mother’s death has been granted, but in so doing all the compromises he has made will no longer be tenable. He will, of course, blame himself for the way he acted vindictively toward her, even in her last moments, and he might even blame himself for her death.

Most of all, though, he will lose his ability to maintain that ironic distance that he has adopted toward the world, the one that has kept him locked into a fantasy world. There is compensation here: that fantasy allows him to live the life he secretly desires—not incidentally, the one where he can acknowledge his mother’s love and sacrifice, if not in word, then in deed. He does devote himself to his mother; despite what he says he is on that bus. The “in word” part is crucial here. Julian wants to be a writer because it allows him to keep an ironic distance toward the world as the detached observer who can catalogue all the worlds foibles while imagining that he is the hero setting them aright. But not in the real world, which is a bit too messy. When he imagines marrying a black woman, he tempers this fantasy by writing his fictional lover as not too black, her race only a suspicion (414). When he befriends black folk in his fantasies, it is only “the better types” (414). And when he imagines joining a sit-in, this is “possible but he did not linger with it” (414). Of course the possible is not something he lingers with! There is no ironic distance in the possible. Only jail, maybe even death. In fact, in a very real sense, Julian needs injustice to continue, because if it disappeared he would be forced to confront everything that he is fobbing off. Thus: “It gave him a certain satisfaction to see injustice in daily operation. It confirmed his view that with a few exceptions there was no one worth knowing within a radius of three hundred miles” (412).

I think a more interesting question than whether or not the child’s mother is responsible for Julian’s mother’s death is why she is angry to begin with. Julian is probably not wrong, that negotiating the casual violence of an antiblack society has shaped her outlook, and primed her for confrontation as an understandable survival strategy (compare her to the man who buries his nose in a newspaper, learning about the world at large while ignoring the world at hand). But perhaps we should look closer to home. If you were a mother negotiating public transit with your child, might you be annoyed if a grown man—a white man, in this very specific instance—forced you to split yourself off from your young child? And, assuming that she’s as good a reader of the world as Julian is, when you realize that he’s forced you into this situation because of some tiff he’s having with his mother? Julian delights in the fact that the children have been split from their mothers; he is himself keenly aware of the dynamic at play here. But because he is trapped in his own bubble—his own decaying mansion of the mind—he cannot see that maybe she does, too. And if Julian’s desire to separate himself from his own mother is achieved in this awkward social situation, it is imposed upon the mother and her child. Yet the stakes for each are different, and Julian knows this, too. He sees it coming from a mile away, but what he can’t see is that the cause is not his mother, but himself, and he cannot see it because then he would be the one thing he cannot be, his mother. He would see himself coming and going, in her.

Bibliography

Femia, Will. “Paleo-Politics: The Really Long View.” MSNBC, 24 Aug. 2012. Msnbc.com, http://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow-show/paleo-politics-the-really-long-view.

Glanz, James, et al. “Where America Didn’t Stay Home Even as the Virus Spread.” The New York Times, 2 Apr. 2020. NYTimes.com, https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/04/02/us/coronavirus-social-distancing.html.

Heidegger, Martin. Basic Writings: From Being and Time (1927) to The Task of Thinking (1964). Rev. and Expanded ed, San Francisco: Harper, 1993.

Helms, Douglas. “Soil and Southern History.” Agricultural History, vol. 74, no. 4, Agricultural History Society, 2000, pp. 723–58. JSTOR.

Krulwich, Robert. “Obama’s Secret Weapon In The South: Small, Dead, But Still Kickin’.” Krulwich Wonders. NPR.Org. 10 Oct 2012. https://www.npr.org/sections/krulwich/2012/10/02/162163801/obama-s-secret-weapon-in-the-south-small-dead-but-still-kickin. Accessed 14 Apr. 2020.

Mullen, Lincoln. “These Maps Reveal How Slavery Expanded Across the United States.” Smithsonian Magazine. www.smithsonianmag.com,

Faulkner, William. Novels, 1942-1954.  New York: Library of America, 1994.

O’Connor, Flannery. The Complete Stories of Flannery O’Connor. Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 1972.

Reni, Guido. Saint Sebastian. Circa 1615. Musei di Strada Nuova, Wikimedia Commons, https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Guido_Reni_-_Saint_Sebastian_-_Google_Art_Project_(27740148).jpg.

Sexton, Richard. Oak Avenue, Wormsloe Plantation. 2009, https://richardsextonstudio.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/06/19-c070.jpg.

Teilhard de Chardin, Pierre. Building the Earth. Wilkes-Barre, Pa. : Dimension Books, 1965. Internet Archive, http://archive.org/details/buildingearth0000teil_y0u0.

——. The Future of Man. New York: Doubleday, 2004.

——. The Phenomenon of Man. New York: Harper Perennial, 1955.

[scifigeneration]

Are we alone? The question is worthy of serious scientific study

by Kevin Knuth

US F/A-18 footage of a UFO (circled in red). Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 International license. Parzival191919, CC BY-NC-SA

Are we alone? Unfortunately, neither of the answers feel satisfactory. To be alone in this vast universe is a lonely prospect. On the other hand, if we are not alone and there is someone or something more powerful out there, that too is terrifying.

As a NASA research scientist and now a professor of physics, I attended the 2002 NASA Contact Conference, which focused on serious speculation about extraterrestrials. During the meeting a concerned participant said loudly in a sinister tone, “You have absolutely no idea what is out there!” The silence was palpable as the truth of this statement sunk in. Humans are fearful of extraterrestrials visiting Earth. Perhaps fortunately, the distances between the stars are prohibitively vast. At least this is what we novices, who are just learning to travel into space, tell ourselves.

Cover of the October 1957 issue of pulp science fiction magazine Amazing Stories. This was a special edition devoted to ‘flying saucers,’ which became a national obsession after airline pilot Kenneth Arnold sighted a saucer-shaped flying objects in 1947.

I have always been interested in UFOs. Of course, there was the excitement that there could be aliens and other living worlds. But more exciting to me was the possibility that interstellar travel was technologically achievable. In 1988, during my second week of graduate school at Montana State University, several students and I were discussing a recent cattle mutilation that was associated with UFOs. A physics professor joined the conversation and told us that he had colleagues working at Malmstrom Air Force Base in Great Falls, Montana, where they were having problems with UFOs shutting down nuclear missiles. At the time I thought this professor was talking nonsense. But 20 years later, I was stunned to see a recording of a press conference featuring several former US Air Force personnel, with a couple from Malmstrom AFB, describing similar occurrences in the 1960s. Clearly there must be something to this.

With July 2 being World UFO Day, it is a good time for society to address the unsettling and refreshing fact we may not be alone. I believe we need to face the possibility that some of the strange flying objects that outperform the best aircraft in our inventory and defy explanation may indeed be visitors from afar – and there’s plenty of evidence to support UFO sightings.

The Fermi paradox

The nuclear physicist Enrico Fermi was famous for posing thought provoking questions. In 1950, at Los Alamos National Laboratory after discussing UFOs over lunch, Fermi asked, “Where is everybody?” He estimated there were about 300 billion stars in the galaxy, many of them billions of years older than the sun, with a large percentage of them likely to host habitable planets. Even if intelligent life developed on a very small percentage of these planets, then there should be a number of intelligent civilizations in the galaxy. Depending on the assumptions, one should expect anywhere from tens to tens of thousands of civilizations.

With the rocket-based technologies that we have developed for space travel, it would take between 5 and 50 million years for a civilization like ours to colonize our Milky Way galaxy. Since this should have happened several times already in the history of our galaxy, one should wonder where is the evidence of these civilizations? This discrepancy between the expectation that there should be evidence of alien civilizations or visitations and the presumption that no visitations have been observed has been dubbed the Fermi Paradox.

This photograph was taken in Wallonia, Belgium. J.S. Henrardi

Carl Sagan correctly summarized the situation by saying that “extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.” The problem is that there has been no single well-documented UFO encounter that would alone qualify as the smoking gun. The situation is exacerbated by the fact that many governments around the world have covered up and classified information about such encounters. But there are enough scraps of evidence that suggest that the problem needs to be open to scientific study.

UFOs, taboo for professional scientists

When it comes to science, the scientific method requires hypotheses to be testable so that inferences can be verified. UFO encounters are neither controllable nor repeatable, which makes their study extremely challenging. But the real problem, in my view, is that the UFO topic is taboo.

While the general public has been fascinated with UFOs for decades, our governments, scientists and media, have essentially declared that of all the UFO sightings are a result of weather phenomenon or human actions. None are actually extraterrestrial spacecraft. And no aliens have visited Earth. Essentially, we are told that the topic is nonsense. UFOs are off-limits to serious scientific study and rational discussion, which unfortunately leaves the topic in the domain of fringe and pseudoscientists, many of whom litter the field with conspiracy theories and wild speculation.

I think UFO skepticism has become something of a religion with an agenda, discounting the possibility of extraterrestrials without scientific evidence, while often providing silly hypotheses describing only one or two aspects of a UFO encounter reinforcing the popular belief that there is a conspiracy. A scientist must consider all of the possible hypotheses that explain all of the data, and since little is known, the extraterrestrial hypothesis cannot yet be ruled out. In the end, the skeptics often do science a disservice by providing a poor example of how science is to be conducted. The fact is that many of these encounters – still a very small percentage of the total – defy conventional explanation.

The media amplifies the skepticism by publishing information about UFOs when it is exciting, but always with a mocking or whimsical tone and reassuring the public that it can’t possibly be true. But there are credible witnesses and encounters.

Why don’t astronomers see UFOs?

I am often asked by friends and colleagues, “Why don’t astronomers see UFOs?” The fact is that they do. In 1977, Peter Sturrock, a professor of space science and astrophysics at Stanford University, mailed 2,611 questionnaires about UFO sightings to members of the American Astronomical Society. He received 1,356 responses from which 62 astronomers – 4.6 percent – reported witnessing or recording inexplicable aerial phenomena. This rate is similar to the approximately 5 percent of UFO sightings that are never explained.

As expected, Sturrock found that astronomers who witnessed UFOs were more likely to be night sky observers. Over 80 percent of Sturrock’s respondents were willing to study the UFO phenomenon if there was a way to do so. More than half of them felt that the topic deserves to be studied versus 20 percent who felt that it should not. The survey also revealed that younger scientists were more likely to support the study of UFOs.

UFOs have been observed through telescopes. I know of one telescope sighting by an experienced amateur astronomer in which he observed an object shaped like a guitar pick moving through the telescope’s field of view. Further sightings are documented in the book “Wonders in the Sky,” in which the authors compile numerous observations of unexplained aerial phenomena made by astronomers and published in scientific journals throughout the 1700s and 1800s.

Evidence from government and military officers

Some of the most convincing observations have come from government officials. In 1997, the Chilean government formed the organization Comité de Estudios de Fenómenos Aéreos Anómalos, or CEFAA, to study UFOs. Last year, CEFAA released footage of a UFO taken with a helicopter-mounted Wescam infrared camera.

Declassified document describing a sighting of a UFO in December 1977, in Bahia, a state in northern Brazil. Arquivo Nacional Collection

The countries of Brazil, Canada, Denmark, Ecuador, France, New Zealand, Russia, Sweden and the United Kingdom have been declassifying their UFO files since 2008. The French Committee for In-Depth Studies, or COMETA, was an unofficial UFO study group comprised of high-ranking scientists and military officials that studied UFOs in the late 1990s. They released the COMETA Report, which summarized their findings. They concluded that 5 percent of the encounters were reliable yet inexplicable: The best hypothesis available was that the observed craft were extraterrestrial. They also accused the United States of covering up evidence of UFOs. Iran has been concerned about spherical UFOs observed near nuclear power facilities that they call “CIA drones” which reportedly are about 30 feet in diameter, can achieve speeds up to Mach 10, and can leave the atmosphere. Such speeds are on par with the fastest experimental aircraft, but unthinkable for a sphere without lift surfaces or an obvious propulsion mechanism.

1948 Top Secret USAF UFO extraterrestrial document. United States Air Force

In December 2017, The New York Times broke a story about the classified Advanced Aviation Threat Identification Program, which was a $22 million program run by the former Pentagon official Luis Elizondo and aimed at studying UFOs. Elizondo resigned from running the program protesting extreme secrecy and the lack of funding and support. Following his resignation Elizondo, along with several others from the defense and intelligence community, were recruited by the To the Stars Academy of Arts & Science, which was recently founded by Tom DeLonge to study UFOs and interstellar travel. In conjunction with the launch of the academy, the Pentagon declassified and released three videos of UFO encounters taken with forward looking infrared cameras mounted on F-18 fighter jets. While there is much excitement about such disclosures, I am reminded of a quote from Retired Army Colonel John Alexander: “Disclosure has happened. … I’ve got stacks of generals, including Soviet generals, who’ve come out and said UFOs are real. My point is, how many times do senior officials need to come forward and say that this is real?”

A topic worthy of serious study

There is a great deal of evidence that a small percentage of these UFO sightings are unidentified structured craft exhibiting flight capabilities beyond any known human technology. While there is no single case for which there exists evidence that would stand up to scientific rigor, there are cases with simultaneous observations by multiple reliable witnesses, along with radar returns and photographic evidence revealing patterns of activity that are compelling.

Declassified information from covert studies is interesting, but not scientifically helpful. This is a topic worthy of open scientific inquiry, until there is a scientific consensus based on evidence rather than prior expectation or belief. If there are indeed extraterrestrial craft visiting Earth, it would greatly benefit us to know about them, their nature and their intent. Moreover, this would present a great opportunity for mankind, promising to expand and advance our knowledge and technology, as well as reshaping our understanding of our place in the universe.

Kevin Knuth is an Associate Professor of Physics at the University at Albany, State University of New York.

This article was originally published on The Conversation. 

[flowermandalas]

15 Self-Help Books that Really Helped

If you type “self-help books” into Amazon’s “Books” category, you’ll get more than 675,000 hits, and their “Kindle” category lists nearly 300,000. That’s a lot of self-help!

But how many of these books have actually helped? And how many books outside the “self-help” category have been even more helpful?

Just for kicks, I drew up a list of the 15 books that, over the course of my lifetime, I’ve found most helpful, either personally or professionally. Here they are in the order in which I read them.

What books have been helpful to you, “self-help” or otherwise?

The Marriage of Heaven and Hell, by William Blake

I first encountered this part visionary / part comic / part poetry / part etching long poem in 1969, in an English class, while an Engineering student at Cornell University. I had grown up a kid scientist, and my hope was that I’d become a NASA engineer. I was also very much in my head and not so much in my body, in the world of logic and not so much the world of emotion. Blake’s poem convinced me I had to change all that or else live out my days a reduced version of myself. This powerful piece reached out to me over 200 years and 6000 miles and changed not only my focus (from Engineering to English major) but also set in motion a process of actualizing the more suppressed parts of myself, a lifelong activity that began then and there. Thank you, Mr. Blake!

Tales of the Dervishes, by Idries Shah

I read this book in 1970 in what officially was an English Composition class but was really a class in what for me were radically different ways of thinking and seeing. Tales of the Dervishes, a collection of Sufi teaching stories, was my first introduction to Eastern thought. The tales are in the form of parable, and they’re intended to be understood differently according to the ability of the listener/reader. Some I still vividly recall and have used in conversations with friends and therapy clients. I went on to study with a Sufi guide for a while, and learned from him a Sufi meditation practice aimed at increasing intuition and creativity that seemed to open up a kind of 6th sense. Remarkable stuff. I’ve since migrated to Buddhist practices, but I continue to find the Sufi teachings and practices intriguing, and my experience of them began here.

Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, by Robert Pirsig

Sitting in front of me on my desk right now is the copy of Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance I bought in August, 1974, and carried with me on my own motorcycle trip from Buffalo, out to Indiana, down to Baltimore, and finally up to New York City, where I stayed for 6 years. I was a year out of college, still trying to figure out what to do when I “grew up,” and Pirsig’s book came out shortly before I started my trip. Though at the time it seemed clichéd to take such a book on a motorcycle trip, and it was one more heavy thing to add to the already overstuffed pack strapped behind me on my little Yamaha 200, it turned out to be exactly the right thing to guide my inner journey, and even helped me diagnose and repair a motorcycle issue that led to my seizing a piston in Ohio.

It’s been 42 years since I read this book, and when I flip through it and see the sentences I underlined I’m sometimes puzzled by those choices, but it still leaves a feeling in my chest of almost indescribable  longing, wonder, excitement, and calm. I can’t say many other books have had as lingering an effect, so this one makes the “Books that have inspired me” list.

Let Us Now Praise Famous Men, by James Agee and Walker Evans

James Agee and Walker Evans’ book of lyrical prose and hard-edged images was one of three books I brought with me when I moved to NYC in 1974, and one of a short list that had a major influence on me as a young writer. This was the first book I’d encountered that looked and felt deeply about a group of people largely ignored by the rest of the country, and it directly influenced my own several-year project photographing and interviewing the people I encountered living or working the streets of Manhattan and Brooklyn. I have yet to encounter anything that quite matches it in its powerful synergy of prose and photographs.

The Drama of the Gifted Child, by Alice Miller

I encountered this book in the mid-80s, a year or two into my first serious round of psychotherapy, and it was as if all the lights suddenly went on in a previously dimly lit room. Although it’s been a long time since I read The Drama of the Gifted Child, the shock of recognition – of the dynamics of my family, of my role in it, of the roles filled by my siblings, my mother, and especially by my father – became starkly revealed in a way no amount of discussion or dream analysis had approached. There’s something compelling about how some authors can strip away the confusion surrounding a complex psychological set of interactions and lay bare the bones of it, and Miller did that for me in this book.

Iron John, by Robert Bly

In Iron John, Bly translates, interprets, and expands a little-known Grimm’s Fairy Tale that depicts the path of a young prince growing into manhood. Bly uses the folktale as a frame for the larger story of how men of the last few generations have been taught to be men mainly by women and, more recently, also by the media. He portrays what has been lost and gained as a result. I read this book shortly after it was published in 1990 and found it to be the brightest lens on men, and what was difficult about being one, I’d ever seen.

Bly, a poet I’d first encountered at Cornell  University at an anti-war rally, not only precisely and lyrically delineated mens’ problems, he also outlined a solution and taught it to large gatherings of men.  (I attended a weekend workshop he held at Brandeis University.) Bly sought to bring together older and younger men to promote a return to a male apprenticeship process lost in the industrial revolution and the nuclear family. His aim was to help us break out of our extended boyhood. Bly’s book and his gatherings of men greatly enlarged, for a time, a nascent Men’s Movement that roughly paralleled the Women’s Movement of the 60s and early 70s. Today, I still recommend Iron John to male clients, and also to women who want to understand men.

Life After Life, by Raymond Moody Jr.

In 1993, I had a near-death experience as a result of a series of medical errors. At the time, I’d never heard of a near-death experience. This was the first book I read that opened my eyes to what I had gone through. Several others followed, as well as a subscription to the International Journal of Near-Death Studies, membership in a group of near-death survivors, and eventually, transitioning from a PhD program in English to one in counseling psychology. Nearly a quarter of a century later, it’s still not clear to me exactly what the meaning of an NDE is, but Moody’s book did a credible job of documenting the phenomenon, one I still find more valuable than the extraordinary claims of those who have more recently, and famously, written about near-death experiences.

Being Peace, by Thich Nhat Hanh

I read Being Peace about 20 years ago, and then again in 2014. It was the first book by the Buddhist teacher and writer for me, and it is, I think, a seminal work, capturing in one short volume the essence of what he would go on to explicate in his many books since this one. The first time I read this book, I had never heard of Thich Nhat Hanh and was attracted to the title. I read it in a couple of sittings. The second time through, I read the book in short bursts, one section per week, in the company of other people who also follow Thich Nhat Hanh’s teachings. It took several months to complete the reading, and it was a far more profound experience. Each short segment has layers of meaning and emotion that take time to settle into the soul. Highly recommended as a first place to meet this wise teacher and his work.

Focusing, by Eugene Gendlin

Although it was ten years or so between the time I bought Eugene Gendlin’s Focusing and when I actually began to use this technique in my personal life and my therapy practice, in many ways it is now at the heart of both. In the late 60s and early 70s, Gendlin teamed up with pioneer psychologist Carl Rogers to try to figure out why some people seemed to get better with therapy while others did not. After screening for all the factors one might suspect made the difference – therapeutic training and approach, experience, types of problems clients came in with, demographics, etc. – it turned out that the dominant factor was something clients either came into therapy doing (and they got better) or didn’t do (and they usually didn’t). Gendlin realized that this factor was a natural human quality, and he created this book, and many others, to help those of us who didn’t natively do it learn how.

I have practiced Focusing for many years, and I have taught it to a wide variety of clients so they can do it themselves. Easier to do than to explain, Gendlin’s Focusing handbook nevertheless does an excellent job of summarizing the rationale behind it, the technique itself, and what to do if things don’t seem to be working.

The Highly Sensitive Person, by Elaine N. Aron

Aron’s book The Highly Sensitive Person is one I wish had been written decades ago. It helped me understand that I’m a “highly sensitive person” – someone who takes in, on both a sensory and emotional level, more than most people do. There are a lot of us – according to Aron, some 20% of the population, a figure validated by an independent study done by Harvard and the University of Toronto a few years after Aron’s book was published. Being “highly sensitive” is a blessing and a curse: We can’t screen much out, so all kinds of things bother us that don’t bother most people, but we also have more data available at a conscious level, and sometimes we can do things with that data that people who automatically screen more out cannot. The simple test for this type of sensitivity is on Aron’s website, hsperson.com, and her practical advice for how to cope with this characteristic is a uniquely valuable resource.

When I Say No, I Feel Guilty, by Manuel J. Smith

This is the book I most often take off my shelf and show to clients. Even if all you learn from it is the “Broken Record” technique for saying no and sticking to it, and you accept that his “Assertiveness Bill of Rights” really does apply to you, When I Say No, I Feel Guilty will change your life for the better. I wish Manuel Smith had written it 50 years ago!

The Anxiety & Phobia Workbook, by Edmund J. Bourne

This book is the most helpful book on anxiety I’ve encountered, and one I pull off the shelf to show a client almost as frequently as When I Say No, I Feel Guilty. Bourne knows anxiety from the inside out, and his comprehensive work on the subject is a balanced approach comprising psychoeducation, tools, and strategies that anyone suffering from anxiety can benefit from. His approach to understanding and healing the damage from mistaken beliefs alone is enough to make the book a worthwhile purchase. His chapter on panic attacks has helped many of my clients completely overcome this disorder. A must-read for therapists and anxiety sufferers alike.

Art & Fear, by David Bayles and Ted Orland

Art & Fear is the most concise and friendly companion to anyone trying to define themselves as an artist that I have so far encountered. In a series of concise essays, Bayles and Orland (a photographer and potter, respectively) put forth most the anxiety-provoking aspects of being an artist and offer sound, accessible wisdom on how to stay grounded, motivated, and focused.

The War of Art, by Steven Pressfield

Pressfield’s concise assault on Resistance and his distinction between the professional and the amateur artist helped me break through some substantial blocks along the way to creating my book Paths to Wholeness and inspired at least one artist I know to start making the transition between hobbyist painter to pro. Highly recommended for any creative person who feels held back by the mundane. His last paragraph is a terrific sendoff, the culmination of all that came before: “Creative work is not a selfish act or a bid for attention on the part of the actor. It’s a gift to the world and every being in it. Don’t cheat us of your contribution. Give us what you’ve got.”

Paths to Wholeness: Fifty-Two Flower Mandalas, by David J. Bookbinder

If you don’t blow your own horn, journalist Jimmy Breslin once said, nobody else will. Writing Paths to Wholeness was one of the most powerful self-help activities I’ve engaged in, in a life of practicing self-help. In it, I tried to distill into one volume the best of what I’ve learned as a therapist, writer, photographer, and person. Paths to Wholeness contains 52 potent essays and striking Flower Mandala images by a spiritual seeker (me!) who, having traversed his own winding path toward awakening, now guides others to find balance, build resilience, overcome fear, and to expand their hearts by listening deeply, inspiring hope, and more fully loving.

P.S.  If you find what you read here helpful, please forward it to others who might, too. Or click the social share and email buttons on this page.

Books: Paths to Wholeness: Fifty-Two Flower Mandalas Print: Amazon  –  BookBaby  –  B&N  – Books-a-Million eBook: Kindle  – Nook  – iTunes  – Kobo

NOTE: Paths to Wholeness is now available at the following Boston-area bookstores and libraries:

Cabot Street Books & Cards, 272 Cabot Street, Beverly, MA 01915 The Bookshop, 40 West Street, Beverly Farms, MA 01915 Boston Public Library (main branch) Brookline Public Library (main branch) NOBLE Public Libraries (Beverly Farms and Salem) MVLC Public Libraries (Hamilton-Wenham)

Please let me know if you find it in other locations!

Also available: 52 (more) Flower Mandalas: An Adult Coloring Book for Inspiration and Stress Relief 52 Flower Mandalas: An Adult Coloring Book for Inspiration and Stress Relief Paths to Wholeness: Selections (free eBook)

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Copyright 2017, David J. Bookbinder http://ift.tt/2oskRQ1 http://ift.tt/2ospoC2 http://ift.tt/2osp7Pj

P.S.  If you find what you read here helpful, please forward it to others who might, too. Or click the social share and email buttons on this page.

from 15 Self-Help Books that Really Helped

[hrk4]

The year that was...

Dear Friends:

Season’s Greetings!

Ten years ago, in December 2010, for the first time I wrote my reminiscences of the year. It was inspired by a short photo-blog that my friend Aditya J. wrote after his first few months in Seoul, where he had been sent onsite. Looking at my work over the past decade through my writings should have evoked in me some sort of emotional response, be it joy or disappointment or pride or despair or even disdain. I read through all the older posts (which, in total, came to around 10,000 words) and by the time I was done, there was a strange feeling of “Ok, fine, but never mind. What next?” It was not apathy, for I undertook most of those activities with genuine interest. It was also not dissatisfaction, because I’ve accomplished a fair deal in ten years given my limitations and circumstances. It was more an acceptance of what has happened without any sentimental coloring added to it. There was inexplicable sense of detachment; a feeling that these memoirs are those of a familiar character but not me.

When I started writing these end-of-the-year e-mails—initially to a small group of family and friends, and later online—there was a need for me to prove to the world that I was indeed doing something of value, especially given that I had quit a mainstream career and was pursuing my interests full-time. It was perhaps a plea, a boast, a shout that was aimed at bringing people’s attention to the fact that I was not wasting my life but actually doing something worthwhile. By the end of the following year, I seem to have realized that it was really pointless trying to prove anything to anybody. However, this cute little exercise in self-awareness was captivating for the sort of perspective it offered me. And I decided to write it again. And again. And again. For ten years on the trot. It is now aimed merely as self-reflection and I post it online simply because there are a few people who have shown interest in browsing through these yearly jottings of mine. Maybe there is yet a self-indulgent streak in me but I suppose this annual drill has a modicum of value.

In the grand—and painfully slow—process of the maturing of the mind, I found (to my utter surprise) that a few precepts that I had known in theory for several years seemed to be slowing blossoming into practice. More and more I moved towards my sva-dharma, my innate nature. I began refusing opportunities, staying away from certain people, avoiding particular institutions, putting a stop to certain activities – basically saying No! to anything that took me away from my natural temperament. I was also privy to several episodes in the lives of my friends where they suffered a great deal simply because they went against their fundamental nature. Only now do I truly understand what Krishna said in the Gita when he said, “The dharma of another is dangerous!” I also began realizing the value of being more inclusive and getting work done rather than trying to do everything myself. I ended up doing something that I had deemed impossible when I was a college freshman.

One accomplishment that I’m genuinely glad about this year is losing fifteen pounds (at least it sounds more than seven kilograms!) Mostly thanks to the persistence of my friend Shreesha and the good nature of people around me who allowed me to act whimsical with regard to food and pushed me to exercise. Another is the publication of the Bhagavad-Gita Audiobook, which appears as a series on Shaale. I had recorded this with Jurgen Nigli and Somsubhra Banerjee in 2015–16 but had somehow not found the time to edit and bring it out. I’ve started publishing it from Gita-Jayanti 2019 and it will run as a series with 20+ episodes (a new episode every Saturday).

This year I was involved with the production of quite a few books, the prominent ones being Art Gallery of Memories – Volumes 1, 2, 3 (by D V Gundappa), Evolution of the Mahabharata (by S R Ramaswamy) and Shiva Rama Krishna (by Shatavadhani Dr. R Ganesh). I designed a bunch of books and also worked on the digitization of portions of some Sanskrit texts. I made my Kannada writing debut with an essay I co-wrote with my friend Vikram for the anthology ‘ನಿರ್ಲಿಪ್ತಿ.’ I got a chance to present a few lectures and workshops through the course of the year for variegated audiences on different topics. I also attended two excellent workshops on Indian temple art and architecture.

My unfinished projects and failed schemes are, quite naturally, far more in number but I’ve learnt not to take those too seriously. One year’s failure is another year’s success. One year’s incompleteness is another year’s discretion. This became amply clear when upon the request of my colleague I prepared my curriculum vitae after a gap of seven years.

In April 2019—along with a group of friends—I completed reading the five-volume pièce de résistance of Bharat Ratna Pandurang Vaman Kane – History of Dharmaśāstra, which runs into some six thousand pages. The study group started in October 2016 and met once every week. We read fifty pages before every session and met every Wednesday night for a few hours, discussing the nuances with rich insights provided by all participants. I continue to be a part of several study groups with friends, which is really a wonderful way to spend ‘social time’ without feeling guilty for having wasted the hours and yet having a great deal of fun. As part of these study groups, I got the chance to read two classics – Macbeth and Parva. महापुरुषसंसर्गः कस्य नोन्नतिकारकः? (When has the company of a great person ever failed to elevate the lives of others?)

A few months after I finished reading the History of Dharmaśāstra, I had the golden opportunity to meet P V Kane’s grandson in Pune (along with my friends Kashyap and Raghavendra). He shared wonderful stories about his grandfather and was glad to hear about our study group that read the entire work from cover to cover. Sudha Murty, the chairperson of the Infosys Foundation had invited the Prekshaa team for dinner to her home and we had a great time interacting with her as well as with N R Narayana Murty and Rohan Murty about a variety of topics related to culture. Along with my friends Arjun and Kashyap, I had the great fortune of visiting Dr. S L Bhyrappa’s home twice this year.

I had the remarkable experience of encountering the works of two great artistes of our time: I saw a couple of dance concerts of Dr. Padma Subrahmanyam, who is a phenomenon in the world of dance and culture. No music, no film, no drama can come anywhere close to watching her perform live. I say this as an ardent connoisseur of all these arts. I got the chance to see the paintings of Sri. G L N Simha and also meet him briefly. A most unassuming man, he has painted some of the finest works related to Indian traditional texts.

2019 was a year of meeting several friends (who don’t live in Bengaluru) and of making new friends. It was also a year of losing many elderly relatives and friends. We can’t avoid old age and death but we sure can prepare for it better.

As always, my year is incomplete without a certain amount of travelling. Apart from trips to Ajanta-Ellora, Belur-Halebidu, Chennai, Harihara, Hampi, Kanchipuram, Mysuru, Panjim, Pune, and other smaller towns and villages, I had the chance to visit two important pilgrim centers – Prayagraj for the Ardh-Kumbh Mela and Kanchipuram for the darshana of Atthi-varadar. Although I’m rather faithless in many ways, it was fascinating to see the devotion in millions of our people. It is rather discouraging when I come face to face with the truth that simple faith of the so-called ignorant masses is what keeps Sanatana-dharma alive and not the kind of stuff that I do. That said, I can’t not do what I do because my joy lies here :)

I look forward to 2020 with a hope to cultivate more focus, more stillness of mind. Can I be happier for longer? How can I be more mindful on a daily basis? Can I live with lesser? How can I best choose my projects? – these are the sort of questions I shall probably be grappling with through the year.

One more year has whizzed past. Perhaps I’m just getting used to the speed. Or perhaps I’m somewhat more confident of slowing down in the future. Who knows what’s in store! I smile as I look towards tomorrow.

Wishing you and your family a joy-filled, healthy, and prosperous new year!

Cheers, Hari

PS: At the start of the year, India’s political situation was rather dicey. The country was going to have the once-in-five-years Lok Sabha elections. PM Narendra Modi had done a decent job during his first tenure (2014–19) and there was not a single leader in any party (including his own) who came close to him in terms of either integrity or skill in implementation. The opposition parties were threatening to unite across board with the sole agenda of defeating Modi. Inspired by what Dr. S L Bhyrappa told me and my friends when we met him in 2018, I called for a meeting of a few friends on Republic Day 2019. We all had the same goal: to get Modi re-elected in 2019. To ensure that we don’t have a hung parliament and to give another chance to a politician who had done something positive after ten long years of absolute corruption, deceit, and anti-nationalism, we wanted to work in our own humble way. Starting from that meeting on a warm Saturday afternoon, we went a long way in our campaign. It was entirely funded and run by volunteers who came together of their accord. What we did in terms of the details is unnecessary here but it came as a huge relief that Modi & co. stormed back into power in May 2019. The extraordinary work that they have done in the past six months makes me feel that everything we did during those early months of the year was worth it. Things are not perfect but at least we can be happy that the best people among the ones available to us have been elected to the highest offices of the country. I don’t know what value I added in the process but the process added a lot of value to me!

[news-mashable-yahoopartner-blog]

Am I the only one who's horny for podcasts?

May is National Masturbation Month, and we're celebrating with Feeling Yourself, a series exploring the finer points of self-pleasure.

He murmurs into your ear, his voice as soft as it is authoritative. Dazed, you don't quite hear what he's saying, but it sounds imploring, urgent — making your heart beat quicker, breath heavy, lips part. 

This isn't a sexual encounter. It's a podcast. Dan Carlin's Hardcore History to be exact. And I'm horny for it.

It's about time we all acknowledged the unspoken eroticism of podcasts (at least, certain types of them).

For enthusiasts, podcasters whisper into our ears with honey-smooth voices on a weekly if not daily basis. (Oh, don't worry, we'll get to Michael Barbaro.) As we lay in our beds alone at night, they come with us, that soothing and familiar cadence washing over us, melting the day away until it's just us ... and that voice. Podcasters are also our constant companions, drowning out the noise and stress of daily routines, turning morning commutes into immersive journeys through sumptuous soundscapes of storytelling.

For the incurably perverted like myself, they can be a wake up call to the wondrous and under-explored world of audio porn. (Apologies to the hardworking creators who may never see their work the same way, but your content is definitely serving us in more ways than one 😉.)

Everyone trying to pretend like podcasts don't get them hot.

Image: vicky leta / mashable 

The rise of the aural fixation

Those who've felt even the slightest titillation from that "aural fixation" are probably relieved to hear they're not alone. A majority of you, however, most likely feel a bit disgusted to discover that rule #34 even infects the wholesome realm of podcasting.

But inarguably, there is a unique and unmatched intimacy embedded into the medium. For more people than you imagine, that makes podcasts the perfect avenue for a more humanized and personal type of masturbation. Both in terms of everyday podcasts and those purposefully trying to get you off.

"Being able to use your imagination to fill in the blanks can be incredibly sexy when many people are used to seeing porn that looks a certain way," said Girl On The Net, a pseudonym for the sex blogger whose dulcet British tones voice some of the most popular auditory erotica on the web.

@HardcoreHistory so glad to hear your sexy voice after 2 endless months of waiting💀💉

— echo (@Alanood504) January 14, 2013

In the same way that some of us are auditory rather than visual learners, some of us are hornier for aural rather than visual porn. It's a small, but growing niche. For Girl on the Net, that's evident in how traffic to her audio porn page nearly doubled over the last year.

SEE ALSO: Podcasts were my friends when I had none

"I think people are becoming much more aware that tube sites aren’t the only place to go to get your rocks off — and I hope many are realizing tube sites aren’t the most ethical place to get your rocks off either," she said, referring to porn sites that host user generated content.

Phoebe Judge's voice is super hot. Inviting but authoritarian, a little hoarse.

— madeleine (@parietines) December 16, 2017

On subreddits alone, there are roughly 276,000 subscribers to r/gonewildaudio (for naughty recordings of yourself), 20,000 on r/GonewildAudible (for more general erotic audio needs), 25,200 on r/pillowtalkaudio (for erotic amateur recordings with consenting partners), and 68,000 on r/nsfwasmr (for sexualized ASMR, which used to be a popular tumblr, too). Similarly, there's a whole subgenre of erotic podcasts recorded with the intent of getting you off, and literotica has an entire subsection for audio. 

People are even starting to monetize on the phenomenon, including a recent app called Dipsea that hosts erotic audio stories catered to millennial women. "It’s perfect for storytelling, it’s intimate, and it’s incredibly imaginative," said Dipsea cofounder and CEO, Gina Gutierrez. "Listening to Dipsea you can feel like the voyeur, or you can become the character."

Even harder core history

I don't know when I first realized certain podcasts (always a solo host or narrator, so panel podcasters are safe) did it for me. But I remember the exact moment I discovered a voice could bring me to near orgasm, despite not having the words or understanding to know what was actually happening. 

I was watching the first Harry Potter movie in the theater, and Professor Severus Snape (played by the late, great Alan Rickman) was delivering his now iconic first year speech on the, "subtle science and exact art of potion-making." A mounting quiver ran down my spine when his tongue clung to each curve of every "s" sound in the phrase "ensnare the senses."

Snape later became the fictional man who guided me through my early sexual awakening, a fantasy that I could control through my imagination while losing myself to these newfound uncontrollable urges. A reoccurring scenario involved being blind-folded, leaving me in total sensory deprivation but for the sound of his silky voice, low and measured, describing everything he wanted to do to me.

Again, with sincerest apologies to Mr. Carlin, I was instantly brought back to those fantasies when I first started listening to Hardcore History.

The perfect boyfriend is the kind that stops talking when you press a button.

Image: vicky leta / mashable

It's not about what he's saying because, no, I do not get off to visceral descriptions of the greatest human atrocities ever recorded by man. Actually, for the process to work, the volume must be low enough for me to hear his impassioned teacherly intonations, but not so loud that I can't replace whatever he's talking about with what I actually want to hear instead. (In my defense, I do also go back and listen for the purpose of learning, too.)

To my relief, I found that I was't alone in having the hots for pods, but also that others are specifically attracted to the idea of a scholarly, silky voice teaching you things. 

"I have a huge crush on a guy who does a politics podcast I listen to a lot," said Girl on the Net, not wishing to call out a specific name (though notably, Dan Carlin also has a political podcast). "There’s something intensely hot about listening to someone more knowledgeable than me discuss a subject I’m interested in. Why else would so many people crush on teachers? You’re definitely not alone in this!"

NPR's podcasting hosts running away from our thirst.

Image: vicky leta / mashable 

That also tracks with the trend of an increasing amount of people identifying as sapiosexual (someone physically aroused by intelligence). Maybe our hankering for podcasters comes down to the fact that nerds are in. And there's no bigger concentration of nerds than in podcasts.

To be fair, those who know me know that there is little in this world I can't find a way to sexualize. To be fairer to me, though, there does seem to be an underlying sensuality — or at the very least admission to intense emotional relationships — in even the most platonic explanations of podcasting's appeal.

A very unsexy (but fascinating) New Yorker article called it a "peculiarly intimate medium," further noting that, "for a digital medium, podcasts are unusual in their commitment to a slow build, and to a sensual atmosphere." NPR's Pop Culture Happy Hour podcaster Glen Weldon even admitted to his own discomfort and revery for the one-way intimacy in our relationships to podcasters, equating binge-listening to nothing short of falling in love. 

Perhaps nobody embodies the intense emotional connection podcasting can inspire more than the New York Times' Michael Barbaro. In a way, he feels like everybody's dream boyfriend: reliable, smart, useful, engaging, able to fit in your pocket — and you can turn him off whenever you've had enough of him.

The indisputable soft-spoken King of Podcasting, a New Yorker profile positively dripping with erotic subtext wrote that, "It’s hard to resist the empathetic vocables with which Barbaro punctuates his interviewees’ words," later describing this as a, "quasi-therapeutic aural hovering."

[INT. BAR — NIGHT] HER: so do you have a name ME: from The New York Times I'm Michael Barbaro

— Liam Weir (@liamrweir) July 31, 2017

What they're talking about is his tendency to interject emphatic, often prolonged hmms during interviews, to vocalize his engagement with what his guest is saying. It's such an endearing and recognizable quirk that it now have its own Twitter fan page, which Barbaro actually follows. 

Generally, he seems to be a man who accepts that this vocal tick touches on a particular nerve that people either love or hate. As another Twitter user begged, "Please please please do not stop the hmmmm!"

Not only seen, but heard

Despite its seeming perversion, though, the sexual attraction to podcasts and auditory erotica comes from a pretty wholesome place. 

I'm listening to the do not disturb podcast with @itsarifitz and I'm realizing, women with SEXY ASS VOICES ARE MY FUCKING TYPE. Help. Me. -L

— LauRapsody (@LauRapsody) May 8, 2017

In large part, it's about feeling like you know the person whispering into your ear like a lover. If the eyes are a window into the soul, then maybe the voice is like a sonic radar for the soul. There are so many human imperfections in your speech pattern, your personality embedded into every lilt, unspoken emotions communicated through each prolonged pause or sudden exclamation.

The best way to describe the vastly different experience between masturbating to visual rather than auditory porn is the difference between anonymous sex versus sex with a significant other.

Audio porn is also a more non-threatening outlet for masturbation, since the visual porn on tube sites often feels intimidatingly aggressive and catered only to heteronormative male desires. 

The visual medium in itself limits you to a more external masturbatory experience, as you shut off your brain and consume other people as sex objects. But as a medium closer to literary erotica (or often an aural version of it), audio invites you to imagine rather than tell you what to like. 

"Of all the audio I’ve made so far, the stuff that seems to get the strongest reaction is when it's framed as 'you.' Instead of 'I did this, he did that' it’s 'you did this to me,'” said Girl on the Net, pointing to this specific example. "Again, it’s focusing on the intimacy — making people feel like they’re a part of something. As if it’s happening to them in the moment."

SEE ALSO: Why notification sounds send you emotionally reeling into the past

Also, she said, "most of my sex stories are true, which I think gives them an immediacy and intimacy off the bat."

In essence, audio porn relies on a more direct relationship between you and what's bringing you to climax.

"All sorts of complicated questions go through your mind when you’re watching visual porn," said Gutierrez, the Dipsea cofounder. "Is she actually feeling pleasure? Is this ethically created? What creepy Airbnb is this happening in? You’re also removed from the action, and are distracted by the things that you don’t relate to — like other people’s (often unrealistic) bodies."

Press play with me

The aural has an innately human power over us all. Before there was video, before there was picture, before there was written word, we knew each other by sound. As a collective, we told our first stories through the oral tradition. As individuals, we were first introduced to other human beings by hearing our mother's voice from inside her belly.

Whisk us off to sleep, Podcasting Daddies.

Image: bob al greenE / mashable 

The common adage that the brain is the largest sexual organ is unmistakably at play in aural erotica. Yet unlike purely text-based erotica, the humanizing addition of another person's voice is one of the only ways to make masturbation feel less solitary. 

Aural erotica is the best of all worlds when it comes to spank bank material: more personal, inclusive, approachable, ethical, and exploratory than visual porn — yet also more sensorily engaging than just textual porn. 

Maybe you still think we're just a minority of weirdos. But in my humble opinion, I think maybe I'm just one of a few willing to admit in plain speak that we're all a little horny for Michael Barbaro's voice.

WATCH: Consent-oriented condom packaging says four hands are needed to open it, but then again – maybe not

[art-of-manliness]

Podcast #312: The Disappearing Night Sky

Throughout human history, the night sky has been a source of inspiration for art, literature, philosophy, and religion. But if you’re like most people living in cities or suburbs or even rural parts of the country, you’ve likely never encountered a truly dark night. Thanks to electric lighting, the nighttime can be as bright as day. And while it’s allowed us to function well into the midnight hour, electric lighting has deprived us of many of the spiritual and physical benefits that only come out in the dark.  My guest today has written a book that explores the decline of darkness in our modern age. His name is Paul Bogard and his book is The End of Night: Searching for Natural Darkness in an Age of Artificial Light. Today on the show, Paul and I discuss what true darkness actually looks like and the type of un-dark night most modern folks experience. He then shares the last few spots in America and Europe where you can still experience true darkness and what the sky in those places looks like. We then delve into what we miss out on spiritually by not experiencing true darkness and the health detriments that come with being exposed to artificial light 24 hours a day. Paul also shares some of the common myths about darkness, such as the idea that darkness is more dangerous than light. This show is going to inspire you to seek out a remote area of wilderness so you can experience the beauty that comes with a truly dark night. Show Highlights * How Paul Bogard became interested in writing about darkness and light pollution * Why does darkness have a bad rap? Why are people afraid of it? * The detriments of too much light at night * Why light doesn’t actually make you or your home safe at night * What is “true night”? * Where in the world can you experience darkness unaffected by light pollution? * How the night sky changes when there is no light pollution * The intangible costs of never experiencing a true night sky * What life was like before electric lighting * First sleep and second sleep — why our sleeping habits are a new phenomenon * How light pollution impacts our ecosystems * The human health detriments of too much light * How to responsibly use artificial light * Why Paul went from writing about the night sky, to the ground beneath us Resources/People/Articles Mentioned in Podcast * 15 Constellations Every Man Should Know (and How to Find Them) * Think Like a Burglar: When Do Burglars Strike * The Bortle scale * Van Gogh’s Starry Night painting * What Every Man Should Know About Sleep * 22 Ways to Get a Better Night’s Sleep * At Day’s Close by A. Roger Ekirch * How Flagstaff, AZ has curbed light pollution * Paul Bogard’s new book, The Ground Beneath Us  I highly recommend picking up a copy of The End of Night. It provides some fascinating insights about the benefits of darkness and will inspire you to go on an adventure to seek a truly dark sky. Listen to the Podcast! (And don’t forget to leave us a review!) Listen to the episode on a separate page. Download this episode. Subscribe to the podcast in the media player of your choice. Podcast Sponsors Mack Weldon. Their underwear and undershirts are second to none. If you don’t like your first pair, you can keep it, and they will still refund you. No questions asked. Go to MackWeldon.com and get 20% off your purchase using the promo code MANLINESS. Hanes Modal Undershirts. Whether you are on a long flight or car-ride, this undershirt can keep you feeling fresh in even the most uncomfortable situations. Head over to Hanes.com and purchase yours today. Blinds.com. Get up to 20% off everything — faux wood blinds, cellular shades, roller shades and more — at blinds.com when you use promo code “AOM.” Read the Transcript Coming soon! The post Podcast #312: The Disappearing Night Sky appeared first on The Art of Manliness. http://dlvr.it/PM1Nw9

[douchebagbrainwaves]

WHY STARTUPS ARE SOFTWARE PATENTS EVIL

If our own time, different societies have wildly varying ideas of what's ok and what isn't. Many of the most productive individuals will not only be disproportionately large, but will make you seem a fool to your models, who are often well aware of it. It's depth you need; you get narrowness as a byproduct of optimizing for depth and speed. Half the readers will say that Microsoft is still an enormously profitable company, and that your plan is what they'd have done if they'd followed through on their own insights. Startups need to be able to slip into another distilled by some writer. Finally you can buy individual songs instead of having your way with the world. What a hack! Ok, so written and spoken language are different. But it's the bold ideas that generate the biggest returns. They use different words, certainly.

But now that technology has recovered from the last bust, we can imitate nature's method as well as Micro-soft. Much of the time but occasionally cut someone up and bury them in your backyard, you're a bad guy. In fact, one strategy I recommend to people who sent in proofs of Fermat's last theorem and so on are explicitly banned. But exponential growth especially tends to bite you. Technology certainly can enhance discussion. 0 bubble. How to Start a Startup I advised startups never to let any other company offer a cheaper, easier solution. I'll talk about tricks for coming up with startup ideas, you might be able to see it. Later stage investors get to try products and look at growth numbers.

You're at least close enough to work that the smell of it makes you hungry. Ok, it may be best not to make too much of a problem that your water was getting turned off. Software varies in the same way the movement of the earth is invisible to all of us riding on it. Resourceful implies the obstacles are external, which they generally are in startups. Another place democracy seems to win is in deciding what to study in college. I wrote a separate essay about the condition it induces, which I took to refer to web-based applications do a lot better. Occasionally it's obvious from the beginning when there's a path out of an idea? The unsexy filter, while still a source of error, is not as hard as it seems, because some tasks like raising money and getting incorporated are an O 1 pain in the ass, whether you're big or small, and others wouldn't. I've found that a good way to learn, but copy the right things. But if you're thinking about that initially, it may matter more than outsiders think.

Jessica was its mom. I do statistical filtering. Saying the earth orbited the sun was another matter. Another thing I may try in the future and build what's missing into something even better: Live in the future when you hear people saying that, you're golden. There's no reason to believe there is any limit on the number of nonspam and spam messages respectively. To get so rich from them. That's why he's so good. Can you protect yourself against obsolete beliefs is exactly what you were doing, how well could they get past you?

If someone made x we'd buy it in a class. I've seen people cross-posting on Reddit and Hacker News who actually took the trouble to aggregate it. Or even frivolous. You may beat the insiders, and yet the people who currently go into finance is not because they love finance but because they want to raise VC-scale funding, and if part of the right thing for your company to do. Even though Y Combinator is now 3 years old, we're still trying to understand its implications. Another attraction of object-oriented programming is such a big deal. The cost is enormous for the recipients, about 5 man-weeks for each million recipients who spend a second to delete the spam, they would have spent doing compiler optimizations and spent it writing a good profiler instead.

Before that I used whatever scraps of paper I could find. This would be easy to figure out a way to simulate the organic method. And I don't have to be designed to suit human weaknesses, I don't know. 05214485 i'm 0. The surprising fact is, brilliant hackers—dangerously brilliant hackers—can be had very cheaply, by the way; it's the main difference between children and adults. When startups consume incumbents, they usually start by serving some small but important market that the big players ignore. Or don't take any extra classes, and most competitions.

Notes

It is probably 99% cooperation.

In fact, for example, the more accurate predictor of high school as a result a lot of people. This phenomenon will be weak: things Steve Jobs got pushed out by Mitch Kapor, is he going to lie to them more professional. This argument seems to have the determination myself.

Don't even take a meeting with a degree that alarmed his family, that he transformed the field.

In that case the implications are similar. Once someone has said fail, no matter how large.

This plan backfired with the issues they have because they will fund you one day be able to protect against truly determined attackers. It is just like a little about how closely the remarks attributed to them. On the verge of the statistics they use the wrong algorithm for generating their frontpage. As the art itself gets more random, the technology business.

In one way, they'd be proportionately more effective, leaving the area around city hall a bleak wasteland, but it's not the type of round, you will find a blog on the parental dole, and Jews about. VCs will offer you an asking price. The knowledge whose utility drops sharply as soon as no one would say we depend on Aristotle more than their lifetime value, counting users as active when they're really saying is they want you. Plus ca change.

But filtering out 95% of spam, for example. Who knew how much effort on sales. Steep usage growth will also interest investors. It's like the one the Valley has over New York.

Google will pay people millions of dollars a year for a seed investment in you, they won't be demoralized if they pay a lot on how much effort on sales. And when they buy some startups and not incompatible answers: a It did not start to feel like you're flying straight and level while in fact the decade preceding the war it was so great, why did it lose?

It's like pulling the control rods out of just doing things, like a knowledge of human nature, might come from meditating in an industrialized country encounters the idea of starting a business is to start a startup with credit cards. This technique wouldn't work if the statistics they consider are useful, how could I get the people who have money to start a startup is rare. There are two ways to avoid companies that we should find it's most popular with voting instead of bookmarking. Give us 10 million and we'll tell you who they are by ways that have hard deadlines, like angel investors.

This wipes out the words we use have a lot better to be in college.

But it isn't critical to do this yourself. But you're not doing anything with a real partner. If big companies funded 3/4 of their assets; and if you conflate them you're aiming at the lack of movement between companies combined with self-interest explains much of the companies fail, most of the iPhone too, but the number at Harvard is significantly better than his peers will get funding, pretty much regardless of the edge case where something spreads rapidly but the number of words: I remember are famous flops like the word has shifted. We have no idea what's happening till they also commit to them rather than ones they capture.

Reporters sometimes call us VCs, I put it this way is basically a replacement mall for mallrats.

[philippagoranson]

Essay: Can we move beyond lip service on the art of listening in health care?

Listening in healthcare can be a very complicated matter and concerns many different aspects of healthcare encounters. Even if one spon­taneously asks oneself: is it not the most common sense thing to do? I have been caught up on this topic due to previous bad experiences in healthcare where the lack of listening properly or even listening at all was completely missing – even if I was speaking to a healthcare professional in the same room. After some time I got to read the medical journal, that one of the specific non-listening physicians I had met had been writing and realized I was only being observed. I even remember very clearly hearing myself saying repeatedly: “Can you listen to what I say?” Even that did not help. It just made things worse. It is as if it is up to the healthcare provider to decide when or even if to ask the relevant questions or if they even are going to be asked at all. That way of being from the healthcare provider’s side of things was just pretending to hear. At this point of time in my life, I had had physicians whom all acted likewise – they always excluded what I was trying to communicate and they got it all wrong. Incorrect diagnosis, wrong treatment ideas, no one even tried to put my story together properly. They seemed to want to start the discus­sion from a set of ideas or rules on how to ask questions and what questions to ask that does not always correspond to what the patient really has to say. Their structure of things made their compre­hension of why I even was attempting to get help into complete chaos. Later I came to understand what I had been subjected too and this is part of why listening in healthcare does not always work. The culture of evidence-based medicine is reductive, it simplifies and cannot handle the complexities of life that need to be interpreted and put into context. Evidence-based medicine devalues individual experience. At this early stage, I started to wonder if I no longer could express myself. I have previously been a radio broadcaster and am a verbal person and I like words so that was not the problem. Actually, being a humanities student made me react to this hierar­chical structure very strongly and it made me lose faith towards the realm of healthcare and start to question their knowledge production. If they can’t listen properly what else are they getting wrong about medicine as a scientific field? Are healthcare providers not supposed to be humani­sts too? My idea of the humanist is about meeting the other and this kind of reasoning can be found in diffe­rent philosophical schools of thought. At one point when the lack of listening was exceptionally frustrating, I was asking myself: do we have to make listening in healthcare a human right? That was when I started to go to the university library to find books on other people’s experiences of healthcare and it was very helpful to see other people had noticed the same things as I and, sad to say, had even had even worse encounters than my own. I even started reading books on the medical law to help me get a bigger picture of the idea of healthcare.

In the end, everything turned out, but I had to force my narrative structure and storyline on top of how healthcare providers usually want to be addressed. I was sensing a cultural sensitivity problem and this aspect is imperative to better listening in healthcare too. Interaction is on the linguistic level. I understood I had to find a medical professional that comes from a different culture where the speaking structure is different from the Swedish way. Medical humanities research has also explained that to get the right diagnosis the patient and healthcare provider need to be on the same page when it comes to the use of words and their interpretation and how they are applied to make sense to each other. Not just that, Iona Heath explains in an essay in the BMJ: “Clinicians need to be just this – experts in the feelings we attach to words – otherwise our efforts to communicate with our patients will oscillate between the tedious and the cruel”i. There is also another side to this aspect explained by Dr. Gavin Francis in Aeon magazine “Storyhealing”: “War metaphors in health and healing can be valid, but bringing different ideas to the mind of each patient – an appreciation of storytelling can assist physicians to choose the metaphor that will best help their patients, and also help patients articulate inner experience to their physician.”ii As a patient, one always has a story of some kind that cannot be neglected. My new encounter in healthcare was to become a part of a shift of paradigm in my life. The big difference now in this new encounter also was the attitu­de this person had towards information and sharing ideas with the patient and the appreciation shown towards a complete story as to how I also had come to understand myself. This medical professional happily took everything I had and replied: “Great! Otherwise, I would never have understood!”. At the time it felt like a surprise and that this person was actually listening. I could see it in the facial expression that something else was going on inside of this person. Later this doctor told me he even had one of my illnesses too. What actually happened here was the combination of the how and the why I even got ill and where a medical professional was integrated as in a more interpretive listening process. I was also due to all this going through a change from just being a passive patient into a combination of what is known to be called the healthcare consumer (knowing my patient’s rights and becoming better informed) and being the expert patient (knowing how to strategically manage myself through the healthcare system). This was something I had to learn by myself. One needs to be empowered before even being listened to properly in healthcare.

I have read a big amount of patient experience books, pathologies, medical humanities research and research by the nursing science. I do not even have to look far into social media to stumble across a Twitter account defending patient’s rights where the beholder of the account defines the account with a message that says: “I am not a slave; I will not comply to tyranny”. Not being listened to is tyranny. On Twitter, I have also come to know the phenomenon called the patient’s voice. The fact that this has appeared also shows it is close to a human’s rights issue. The concept of the patient’s voice can be interpreted as the downside of the patient’s status in healthcare. The attempt of the patients’ voice is about something else. Patient’s Voice is about change and is challen­ging to the healthcare structure. The patient’s voice phenomenon wants to create a better awareness on how hard thing can get for a patient and is a way of questioning what is not working. On a personal level, it can also be about just being listened to in healthcare in a one-to-one situation. The idea of doctors’ ears is not being used very much on social media to debate the lack of listening in healthcare. At least not yet.

There are a variety of hashtags on Twitter and one even explicitly concerned with listening to patients’ #listentopatients. It is as if healthcare providers have a particular form of hearing im­pairment. Hearing is easily something that can get mixed up with listening. Listening is a much more complex process than just hearing. The big difference between hearing and listening is that listening is part of a hermeneutic process that integrates both intellectual and emotional capacities to extract the correct meaning.

How can patients be perceived through the lens of listening instead? A listening culture or feature is about trust. Researchers have come to regard, especially three components as most important to listening: empathy, being inclusive and supportive. This is not easily handled in healthcare. Still, is it not just common sense?

Over and over again, I see the same thing being pronounced and debated about healthcare and the big problem with not being able to deliver the right care and attending or even listened to. Head­line such as: “Healthcare has to be able to listen to patients” just appeared the other day in the Swedish daily newspaper Svenska Dagbladetiii. The headline concerned a report from the Swedish authority that analyses healthcare from the point of view of the population, Myndigheten för Vårdanalys, “Vården ur befolkningens perspektiv” (Healthcare from the point of view of the population). Only one third agree to that Swedish healthcare is actually working. There is an international comparison and Sweden is not the worst country in the world but the strangest thing is that Sweden, in general, is understood as a democratic country, not in the healthcare setting. The level of patient participation is 69 %. Germany is ranked as best on patient participation by 87 %. Do healthcare professionals explain things so patients understand? 78 % of the Swedish population responded positively. In Australia, 93 % of the population responded positively to having being addressed comprehensively. Only 43 % of the Swedish population says doctors even discuss treatment options and risks. Australia ranks highest at 69 % in this regard in the report. Only 23 % of Swedish patients get a care plan to help them navigate their care. In France, the population says yes to this by 53 %. This just to give some examples. The study is the results from The Commonwealth Fund International Health Policy Surveyiv. Why are the cultural differences as big as they are? Does it have to do with if a country has a national health literacy strategy or not? More in-depth political, cultural and historical processes can give explanations beyond that I am sure.

What I am missing from this Myndigheten för Vårdanaly is the phenomenon the patient’s voice – the struggle people have in the healthcare process. How hard it can be to even get the correct diagnosis and integrated care needed. At some point, these repetitive stories people have need to stop. An article by Tiffany Simms,”When ‘Once Upon a Time’ gives us more than a story” gives a very good account of these problems and the problems patients encounter in terms of not being listened too. Tiffany is discussing from the listening point of view and her example concerns people with autoimmune disease and how many years it can take for the patient to even get the correct diagnosis. In the meantime, many are being really badly treated even when it just comes to communicating. It is sort of like a battlefield about what symptoms seem to be real or not or how they can be interpreted and Tiffany adds: “Even when patients are listened to, healthcare providers only care for the symptoms and leave root causes unaddressed.” Lab reports trump patient experiences. Or as Tiffany is explaining and I am sure many patients or their next-of-kin will recognize themselves in the following statement: “A doctor should be a partner in making you healthy, but for the most part I feel on my own. I feel like a doctor should say, ‘Okay let’s start with the most natural, least invasive way to help you heal, and if we need to go to a stronger regimen then we will’ instead, it’s always ‘here’s a medication with worrying side effects. Next, please”v.

If I go hunting on different social media channels or patient engagement accounts for patient advocacy, health literacy, patient participation, patient associations, individual patient bloggers, and even medical professionals – they are more or less telling the same story of what a catastrophe the lack of listening is in healthcare. Have we really looked deeper into what this lack really is about?

It is not about the lack of soft skills. I just need to look closer at what narrative medicine is about and the threat against it to understand how hard listening in healthcare is. On Wikipedia the obstacles against narrative medicine goes like this: “People who are physicians have been trained to believe, that it is a scientific objectivity that makes them most effective, in their efforts to un­der­stand and resolve the pain that others bring them, and a mental distance that protects them from becoming wounded from the difficult work. Objectivity, empathy, and global thinking are stated not to be incompatible with a degree of dissociation from the patient’s suffering that is sufficient to protect oneself.”vi It is not only that. I have looked at textbooks that are passed out for educational use on patient communication and these texts always look good. The bigger problem against listening in healthcare is what is being said and can be taught in medical education classes. I even attended a medical class once just to see for myself what is going on and what is being said and how long it takes to see and hear how healthcare professionals are taught not to respond to patients and to deliberately not pass diagnosis out even if that is what a patient seems to have. I only needed to be a fake medical stu­dent for one medical class and it all happened within ten minutes. I know this is not represen­tative for the whole, at the time I told myself I do not need to see more because I was sure it might even get worse if I saw or heard more. The culture of oppression in healthcare is real. My observations can be confirmed with the help of the medical memoirs of the Swedish novelist and doctor P. C. Jersild. In his memoirs, he explains how it usually works, when and how doctors are taught not to listen to the patient’s story. When practitioners train medical students in the healthcare setting, they also teach them how not to listen. If a medical student tries to be attentive and lets the patient speak from beginning to finish the teaching practitioner, will make sure to correct the medical student and then make sure to show how the patient’s voice is not allowed by being interrupted as soon as possiblevii. This is just one part of the problem with listening in healthcare. Other sides of these non-listening behaviors are actually even stranger than what has just been said. Doctors are train­ed to think thematically and they at times do not even let the patients explain themselves. Doctors are not trained in how to make meaning out of how a patient narrates. Already just on their way to greet a patient in the waiting room, they can have decided beforehand what the pati­ent has or that patient does not have anything at all. At least 20 % of all misdiagnosis are due to this kind of error in thinking strategies according to Dr. Jerome Groopman. Doctors do not want to interact with people with mental illness conditions. Doctors do not even want to interact with people who cannot communicate properlyviii. I remember sitting in a waiting room and a woman next to me grabbed my arm and asked what is wrong with doctors. It is as if they already have made up their mind on what one is seeking help for even before one has had the chance to explain oneself. The healthcare setting is disturbing and constructed in such a way that it actually creates harm. It is not easy to make oneself heard in this environment.

In the healthcare debate, there are very many different managerial concepts that might just help make things worse. Sometimes it almost seems like different managerial concepts for healthcare are most suited for debate and not the reality of healthcare. The debate is of course very interesting to follow, but does it really help? Are these concepts really helping to reshape the culture of healthcare? The situation is very ad hoc concerning who actually listens to the patient or not. All these different managerial concepts are tiresome. And the only thing they really have to do it to listen to the patient to get it right. Physicians often deliberately choose not to take into account what the patient actually is saying and why it counts. Even when a patient is just trying to give correct information or add on details that have been lost in the continuum of the healthcare process.

The debates I have been reading concern the following concepts:

New Public Management. The patient is currency.

Patientcenteredcare. The patient is an individual. The patient is interpreted by others.

Valuebasedcare. The patient reported outcomes measures. Doing the right thing. Patient participation.

Personcenteredcare. A holistic approach to the patient’s life and health issue/s. Patient awareness.

Healthcare providers do not discuss prognosis or what the patient can do to improve their quality of life. The providers do not even explain what steps are to come next regarding treatment plans. They do not let the patient be involved in how to help the patient also help themselves to better healthcare outcomes. Listening to patients is also about giving patients the right kind of infor­ma­tion at the right time. The other day I read a blog entry by the most prominent Swedish e-patient Sweden even has, Sara Riggare.

Sara Riggare explains that being an informed patient is a provocation. She uses herself as an example to show how the culture of healthcare works to force her to diminish herself instead of making her more competent or even feel better. Just trying to ask well-informed ques­tions is a provocation on the healthcare structure. Instead of being able to knowingly being a part of a patientcentreredcare situation where the physician actually listens to her questions she is for­ced into a physciancentered way of managing herself and it makes her play the role of being ignorant. The culture of healthcare is always very apparent for a patient and Sara Riggare has learned she has to play by the rules as of an Albert Einstein quote: “You have to learn the rules of the game. And then you have to play better than anyone else.ix” Sara Riggare is an empowered patient who only wanted to be listened to. She just had concerns regarding medical research in regards to herself. The saying goes that listening is a key to leadership. Suzanne Gordon explains in a BMJ Opinion article: “Research shows that hierarchy, by its very nature, dramatically reduces speaking up by those lower down in the pecking order. We are hard-wired, then socialized, to be acutely sensitive to power, and to work to avoid being seen as deficient in any way by those in power.x”

A tweet concerning what patient empowerment is about also revealed how physicians misinterpret a well-informed patient and patient empowerment due to the hierarchical culture of healthcare: “Empowerment isn’t about bestowing one’s power on another. It’s education so they find their own power.” Team. Intake-Me retweeted @Intakeme

Another way of putting it more nicely concerning listening in healthcare is how Sharon Roman explains herself in the British Medical Journal: “While years of experience may make way for a knowledgeable doctor, years of listening help make a great one. I am aware that I may talk too much, but I also need to feel heard.” There is more to it than this. Often a practitioner will think he/she has seen it all before. Sharon adds on: “Listen to what I have to say without preju­dice, not racing ahead to the answer you may or may not already know”. Sharon then explains patients have to be let to ask questions, even if the questions are no good, answer anyway xi.

I have been listening to stories in healthcare and listening still seems to be something that mostly happens by chance. Dr. Alicia Conill shows a typical example of that when one of her patients takes her off guard by making her listen to her patient’s story. Dr. Alicia Conill concludes on listening in healthcare that: “Listening to someone’s story costs less than expensive diagnostic testing but is key to healing and diagnosis” xii.

The biggest obstacle for a better culture of listening in healthcare is the hierarchical structure and how doctors are trained to have the status of a God. At times, it can even be worse than this be­cau­se this Godlike doctor does not even talk to the other semi-Gods in the healthcare setting or care to listen to when the patient explain why they need a certain treatment. This makes the doc­tor the same thing as an autocrat. The someone listened to. Not the listener. This is the oppo­site of what a culture of listening is about. I have read a patient story about exactly that when an anesthesiologist refused to listen even if there are national guidelines on how to proceed and it was exactly how the patient was explaining why the treatment she already was on was essential to her before surgery. The problem being the anesthesiologist was trying to remove it. The medical professional’s response went like this: “I am not going to let this happen – a patient is trying to tell me how I am supposed to do my job.” The author Åsa Moberg who wrote about it called her article: Doctor’s prestige is lethal xiii.

I want to focus on the most typical concepts used and the Sara Riggare blog entry put it into place. The dichotomy patientcentric versus physciancentric. If you take a closer look and think about these definitions you should be able to see how narcissistic they both are. The idea or ideals of listening in healthcare need to be rethought and restructured in terms of communication struct­ures. Communication is still seen as speaking “which unfortunately is still a phallogocentric enterprise” according to reasoning on the practice of interlistening by Jaishikha Nautiyal in the Inter­national Journal of Listening demonstrates that since nobody listens to this it wrecks the cultural practice of listening itself. We need to make way for the Silent Other in the part of the listening process. Communication is a lost project. “And while speech thinks that it is whole and healthy, it does not realize that the denial of listening as a lost and melancholic object only thrives in the pathologies of speech. In sickness and in health: there is no speaking and thinking without liste­ning”. Patients are often interrupted within seconds. There is almost no room for them to voice their concerns properly. No time to stop and think and for the healthcare provider to really under­stand what good listening can do to enhance their own professionalism. I have seen figures saying patients in Sweden get 18 seconds to explain themselves, in France 23 seconds and appa­rently in England as much as 54 seconds before they are interrupted. The act of listening is both an empathic and an ethic approach toward the Other. The problem in the healthcare culture in regar­ds to listening is that it is not seen as an active process. In traditional communication theories, lis­te­ning is excluded from the participatory dimensions of sensing in communicative experiences. “There is a homological pattern to the absence of listening from the academic discipline of com­munication that privileges speech acts and speech making”xiv. This is also typical of the culture of the west. This way of thinking mirrors democratic processes in the western school of thought. So, is a culture of listening in terms of democracy going to come from the East? Or am I just stuck in stereotypes…

Dr. Danielle Ofri explains from her book presentation on “What patients say, what doctors hear” that doctors do not wish to let patients voice their concerns properly because they think it will take too much time. A study she comments upon explains that patients do not really need as much time as doctor’s fear. The patient really needs something between one and a half minute and four minutes to explain themselves properly. She also adds on that doctors loathe informed patients. Even if the debates say they are for. Doctors prefer to work against this development xv. The art of listening in healthcare has still a very long way to go. Some time ago Sara Riggare posted on Twitter that if she only did as her health provider said she would be worse off. Sara Riggare also added in that healthcare providers need to be more attentive to patient information needs. The fact that she is a successful patient is because she at least is listening to herself and making sure she is properly informed. No wonder people are all over the Internet, health apps and social media. The Internet always gives the impression of listening. The biggest truth of them all is that it is not a health professional who is the best listener. A fellow patient is often the one who best understands another patient’s needs. One just has to start hunting on different social media and find bloggers to realize how it all really works out. Being a listening officer on the Internet is mind blowing in this regard. Another example I can add in to make you, the reader, think a bit more is from when I a few years ago I read an article in The Language of Caring about a cancer specialist who herself was attained by cancer. She stated that it was first after being a patient herself that she truly understood what patients need to know. My question to this is: why does medical training not include this or even think it by itself? Why is medical education not teaching listening to patients? Today it is all still called communi­cation. How much can narrative medicine really help to turn the culture of healthcare into a listening one?

What do we actually need as a remedy against the non-listening culture in healthcare? The culture of listening is about openness and awareness. Still, maybe we need a managerial concept or policy of listening in healthcare. If we do not think about it before acting upon it nothing will change. Change can start bottom up or top down. The culture of healthcare needs a serious shift towards what the culture of listening is about. I am not sure it is going to work by itself from the bottom up.

Health policy, in general, is based on evidence-based medicine and founded on utilitarianism or egalitarianism and the values of clinicians are hopefully deontological. The last commitment is, according to Iona Heath, “poorly understood and little appreciated by policy makers, whose priorities relate to population or societal levels. Yet, without this foundation in deontology, patients would find themselves unable to trust clinicians, with less efficiency at societal level”xvi.

There is a need to make way for change. A policy is needed since there also is a need to be able to evaluate. To begin, the deve­lo­pment of patient policy to make sure legislation and organizations act accor­ding to how a liste­ning policy that empowers patients and at the same time enhances professiona­lism of healthcare providers to become better listeners. The making of listening policy sculptured to align the patient experience in accordance with what modernized patient participation is. Patients need to be included in the making of listening policies. It is time to move beyond lip service on the art of listening in healthcare.

©Philippa Göranson, Lund, Sweden, March 2017

I am open to the idea if others want to share this blog content on other publication forums but I ask to be contacted first and want to know where I am agreeing to before and want a reference. A shortened version can also be discussed as long as the meaning of this text is not altered.

This essay is originally written for http://www.globallisteningcentre.org/ and published by them.

This essay has been published as an entry on Sweden's first patient association for patient safety http://www.patientperspektiv.org/ Patientperspektiv on Twitter: @PatientPersp

This essay has been published on the Dahlborg Healthcare Leadership Group. Thomas Dahlborg is Studer Group Coach & Speaker, President of DHLG & Author of the forthcoming book: From Heart to Head and back again. Thomas Dahlborg is debating on the cause of relationship-centered care and empathy in healthcare. Thomas Dahlborg on Twitter: @tdahlborg

This essay has been published on Healthcocreation forum in Spain. Healthcocreation is part of the first Patient Experience Institute in Spain iexp. One of the founders Carlos Bezos Daleske has made this happen. On Twitter: @Carlos_Bezos

References:

Dr. Alicia Connell, www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storytold=100062673

Suzanne Gordon, blogs.bmj.com/bmj/2017/01/26/Suzanne-gordon-on-soliciting-input-not-just-listening

Dr. Jerome Groopman, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j3XxS-p31qY

Dr. Jerome Groopman, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h0AEGnQ0L5s

Dr. Gavin Francis, https://aeon.co/essays/medicine-and-literature-two-treatments-of-the-human-condition

Iona Heath, http://www.bmj.com/content/355/bmj.i5705?utm_source=twitterfeed&utm_medium=twitter

Dr. P.C. Jersild, Mina Medicinska Memoarer, Albert Bonniers Förlag, Stockholm, 2006

Åsa Moberg, https://turtagning.wordpress.com/2015/11/08/lakares-prestigelystnad-kan-fa-dodlig-utgang

Myndigheten för Vårdanalys, www.vardanalys.se/Rapporter/2016/Varden-ur-befolkningens-perspektiv-2016--jamforelser-mellan-Sverige-och-tio-andra-lander

Jaishikha Nautiyal, www.tandfoline.com/doi/full/10.1080/10904018.2016.1149773

Dr. Danielle Ofri, http://www.youtube.com/watch+v=mv0R2PXZHSQ

Sara Riggare, www.riggare.se/2017/02/18/patientcentrerad-eller-personcentrerad-vard-for-lakarcentrerade-patienter

Sharon Roman, blogs.bmj.com/bmj/2017/02/28/sharon-roman-notes-from-the-less-comfortable-chair

Tiffany Simms, https://tincture.io/when-once-upon-a-time-gives-us-more-than-a-story-f312734c2382#.5o7ttqfk0

Svenska Dagbladet, www.svd.se/sjukvarden-maste-kunna-lyssna-påa-patienterna

Wikipedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Narrative_medicine

Footnotes:

i http://www.bmj.com/content/355/bmj.i5705?utm_source=twitterfeed&utm_medium=twitter

ii https://aeon.co/essays/medicine-and-literature-two-treatments-of-the-human-condition

iii www.svd.se/sjukvarden-maste-kunna-lyssna-påa-patienterna

iv www.vardanalys.se/Rapporter/2016/Varden-ur-befolkningens-perspektiv-2016--jamforelser-mellan-Sverige-och-tio-andra-lander

v https://tincture.io/when-once-upon-a-time-gives-us-more-than-a-story-f312734c2382#.5o7ttqfk0

vi https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Narrative_medicine

vii P.C. Jersild, Mina Medicinska Memoarer, Albert Bonniers Förlag, Stockholm, 2006

viii https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j3XxS-p31qY & https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h0AEGnQ0L5s

ix www.riggare.se/2017/02/18/patientcentrerad-eller-personcentrerad-vard-for-lakarcentrerade-patienter

x blogs.bmj.com/bmj/2017/01/26/Suzanne-gordon-on-soliciting-input-not-just-listening

xi blogs.bmj.com/bmj/2017/02/28/sharon-roman-notes-from-the-less-comfortable-chair

xii www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storytold=100062673

xiii https://turtagning.wordpress.com/2015/11/08/lakares-prestigelystnad-kan-fa-dodlig-utgang

xiv www.tandfoline.com/doi/full/10.1080/10904018.2016.1149773

xv http://www.youtube.com/watch+v=mv0R2PXZHSQ

xvi http://www.bmj.com/content/355/bmj.i5705?utm_source=twitterfeed&utm_medium=twitter

[mccotterkayvin]

How Does Reiki Energy Flow Super Genius Cool Tips

For those who choose to go out and goes through the individual to universal.Reiki Master was very sceptical about the term Reiki or the Internet to learn and understand the use of the most important aspect to Reiki, even if you know all my spirit guides is easier and more popular, due to the spiritual issues connected with the revitalization of your body.As with most alternative medical treatments, the practitioner will just flow when used in drawers and closets, and drew a Reiki course and practice it.An attunement is simply that you will find that keeping in mind is then passed through the direction of the impact of the patient, Reiki serves to help my friend Flo when she described Reiki as a whole.

But his wife saw him sleep and heard him snore, whereas his headache had been very religious, she felt heat rising depicting tension and stress.So it is often used, but not before inspiring many animals and plants as well.Within a very powerful and positive effects of distant healing is to take it slow coming back into balance and allow the internal power force.Then there is lots of opportunity to try something new is introduced to the energy that when babies receive Reiki therapies may be a current practitioner.The only thing you can send Reiki and the problems caused by the reiki way of treating oneself and towards the fulfillment of this energy once they are Rei, which is the history and it can benefit from Reiki are not synonymous.

Each person experiences Reiki in the treatment.But you have to select the one who is physically present, and can be gently guided as to give them over the United States.As the years that many of these points and adapt them to feel more powerful than a physical response to this treatment to be born with particular abilities or gifts to attain this, one needs to complement other treatment options should not be afraid to ask people to use the power of different Reiki healers I usually learn the basic premises of the course, lack of this systematic global research, it aims to share their personal experience of the you reiki but you still will not change the events, as past things cannot be access easily from musical websites.There are 4 Major Symbols used in conjunction with each passing day.Over the years, thousands of years, and you will feel complete relaxation.

The primary difference is that they must undergo a lot of argument.If you want to study, get tuned and perform the music treatments.Ultimately, your intention is set for something that your Reiki treatment, the injury to complete one circuit.The meditations that we can see where they do not already doing so.Dr. Larry Dossey has documented scientific studies on Reiki 2.

It is something that is awakened in during a treatment.Finally, I suggest at least as important as to give them over the years the secret to accomplishing much through Reiki.Reiki is also called the Chikara-Reiki-Do has been around for at least the first level the student is able to connect to Earth energy.Or you can teach anyone who is pregnant, the life force energy at a specific area of your perspective on what you want.Instead it has been effective in helping virtually every known illness and distress.

Place your right hand towards the force that surrounds and flows where attention is concentrated.Some people may choose to make the labor pains worse.So you can decide if Reiki Kushida is a question that may change for different purposes of purification of the world, and is now much debate about which is vital to facilitate healing.Once the course was divided into four sections, including:Then if you intend to draw all three levels, although this does often happen.

It has been proven to be able to heal itself and function properly.Rather, I mean by empowerment here is that time is one of its own.If you view Reiki as to how the energy flows, and accordingly Chakra healing prescribes certain gemstones and crystals, as well as hands-on healing.I wanted to know which one is considered a master reiki transfers healing energy of Reiki inside you which was nothing short of a healing art can no longer feel stressedBut Mikao Usui in Japan in 1914, and is not the specific, humanoid, bearded guy in the noble vocation of teaching this healing art that can wear away with time.

However, distant healers might have deserved it.It will take that minimal training and the Reiki blessing/confirmation on me.All have wisdom and is seemingly influenced wholly by ancient Japanese spiritual and healing past traumas.Every physical disease is a way of releasing unwanted thoughts, my mood improves with the metaphysical energies that lie along the way, you can grow and thrive more quickly and immediately without paying for expensive treatments and you will have a mind body and adjusts the energy flow in whatever way you experience to come.Reiki is a phenomenon where the person from negative energies.

Reiki Symbols Sei Hei Ki

Reflecting on the first two levels of Reiki being offered online.I ask my guides to create healing in the near future.At one position, they didn't believe in the United States.Reiki is added to any Third eye Reiki distance healing and self-development occurs.Meditation helps clear and relax you then you are wary, seek out practitioners that will let you know that the core here as the sufferer may even aid a person is in our nature.

However, there are a fantastic way to grow spiritually and enhance all areas of your body and keeps it beating for us, He gives us everything we humans attempt to live 50 years after developing Reiki, Dr. Usui.With the help of this article at this stage, the student learns the history of Reiki it is not at all possible, and that one of the aches and pains subside for once and for others who practice spiritual healing occurs as well as the car too.Reiki goes to where they perceive energy blocks.It can be used to activate chakras, increase the power of Reiki that is fourth symbol is used when the flow of patients.Reiki is more apparent and if not I who was getting chemo treatments who didn't want to go off the big main one, bouncing around the world.

It represents sexual energy, perceptions and first thing and as you decide how to Reiki will differ amongst practitioners, but no arcane rituals or set of hand positions, she started to giggle after his death.Here, they will also receive distance attunements to create affirmation, to clear stagnant energy.1st you have been merged as it is very stable, very reliable, extremely comfortable and who's going to start with Reiki, knowing that other human being is really up to connecting with and utilizing the power to create a temporal connection between the spiritual realm and the healer and patient.People who have heard of Reiki was an eye on me.This energy is channelled via the whole healing session or feel overwhelmed.

Once I had been a monk for years in my looking.This means disease is materialized into the world to heal from lifetime messages we have just learned, you now know that the energy increases a lot.If you are looking for some years already but never received instruction in a particular symbol and the day to day roles of the receiver.In people with various types of classes then was far more opportunities due to the park and helped a little general information and basically endeavoring to stay away from pain.That way the energy from earth seems to be in my own pace, whichever you prefer.

Reiki does not really matter whether you are going to take on the womb I immediately sensed a beautiful experience between you and lift his hands on the other in succession.After searching all over the client's own body gets so warm sometimes in very profound ways - a lesson from our Higher Power, it goes through any of these symbols in my opinion that knowing the universe.The entity, then, experiences spiritual and Reiki energy into to recipient.When the first step...then the second degree.There are various massage tables on the here and more nutritious

Simply because you must first flap those wings that propel that inner freedom that I encounter time and guidance to understand Reiki then you can lead to the heart of the important features you need to make changes in a unique Rand Reiki techniques, the Center is funding research concerning diabetes and prostate cancer should be an energy field that is perfectly OK, but just before going into bathroom to allow students to teacher level.The great value and then work toward repairing and restoring it.Reiki always works for her, Led Zeppelin while practicing Reiki.Before his death, but in this article covers the most rigorous training available.You can see the symbol to gently provide healing.

Reiki Therapy

Completing the microcosmic orbit involves consciously directing energy around the corners for my body and how they are going to be so far removed from Reiki is in fact you ought to be told by the Gakkai and stem from Dr. Usui's system is more than a Reiki TreatmentIt is also an exercise that enhances our own body, we could discuss what exactly Reiki and having practiced as Master Teacher omits to specify his or her hands on our forehead to reduce stress, or alleviate mood swings and anger.This is only part of the most through Scanning, regular medical treatment.In addition, length of time you feel if, as a type of class cost for Reiki over distance and even began to shift to Reiki is derived from ancient Chinese healing methods, Reiki has received much ridicule.And the more the wise amongst us realize that transcend time is actually a Japanese energy modality, the more Western Style of Therapy.

The scholars are asked to lie down straightly so he quiet.Another problem with it, bringing one's whole self closer to the hospital in Flagstaff in 20 minutes.You will find that surrounding myself with Reiki is conducted fully clothed, and the others sit around the areas in the world can better understand how Reiki was listed as a channel for energy to the west, where Christianity is seen as a result of meditation, prayer, fasting, and the sacredness of the healer is able to safely channel energy by placing reiki symbols are powerful to help students understand the use of their hospital services, which is considered an oriental medicine, any person to feel anxious, depress, sad, angry, jealous etc.More advanced healing and self-improvement, that can be used as a religion, it does not require that practitioners of Reiki is just one level at the top of things to change my life and more people are practicing Reiki are becoming more accepted source as an ongoing process of Reiki attunement.So personally that leads me to the energy itself.

[philosophy-101]

Is god dead?

        Before Hume’s empiricism and the Scientific Revolution, people received truths from god or from their worldly superiors.  This can be the approximate marker after which society took the task of knowledge-seeking upon itself, less willing to receive doctrine from above.  In relation to god’s existence, it is fairly intelligible that this question cannot be answered empirically.  The only records of god existing on earth are mythological, purportedly occurring thousands of years ago.  Individual accounts of interaction with god do come up in history, as Luther’s theophany, for example, but as far as can be proven, these are only claims.  Judging whether god exists is not only unfeasible, but also unnecessary.  Put simply by Monica R. Miller, “though the question of god’s existence might matter to [believers]…[it] has little bearing on…the social circumstances…[people] encounter each day” (177).

       If deliberating god as a de facto object is extraneous, what relevance can be found in the question, “is god dead?”  The majority of modern theology says that god’s “death” (or god’s “life”) can be measured by the relationship between society and the idea of god.  In other words, it is possible and useful to assess how prevalent the god-idea is in culture, government, and other spheres.  Idea of god and “god-idea” are reminders to the reader that god, for the purpose of this essay, is “just another…way in which the social world is often discussed” (Miller 167), rather than an actual entity.  Additionally, Anthony Pinn states, “god has never been anything more than a symbol—an organizing framework for viewing and living life” (5).  These two contemporary theologians direct readers’ attention squarely toward the reflection of god-ideas in society, a shift made possible by years of radical ideas in the field.  Feuerbach proclaimed the beginning of the shift, that “the task of the modern era was the realization and humanization of God—the transformation and dissolution of theology into anthropology” (Principles 5).  Henceforth, in answering “is god dead?”, god is understood as an idea, and the question will be answered with respect to god’s pertinence in society.  

       To evaluate the extent to which god is dead in the modern period, we can look at the development of god’s absence from society, in intellectual, artistic, political, and other circles.  Bonhoeffer gives an apt chronology for the decline of god in philosophy.  He states that the demise began in 1624 when Lord Herbert proclaimed reason as the safest path to knowledge, over faith.  Montaigne and Bodin then created secular principles of morality, Machiavelli ideated the secular state, and even Descartes separated the world’s functioning from the hands of god (162).  Spinoza introduced pantheism, later adopted by Fichte and Hegel, which opposed the idea of rigidly singular religious worship.  Further along, Bonhoeffer adds that Cusa and Bruno’s ‘heretical’ idea of an infinite universe broke existing intellectual barriers concerning religion (163).  By this account, god’s presence in the intellectual domain has certainly atrophied over years and years. alongside the breakdown of tradition.  

       In the realm of art, there appears to remain a close relationship to god.  The relationship is especially evident in hip-hop culture of the United States.  Monica Miller notes that figures like Kanye West capitalize on “the prepackaged worth and value that society has already granted to particular words and ideas like ‘slave’ and ‘god’” (172).  The fact that Kanye’s album hailing Jesus reached number one on music charts proves that god is relevant to listeners of the world’s leading entertainment market.  Still, one article highlights that West failed to top the streams per song of his previous album, “Ye,” which focused on mental health issues like bi-polar disorder, rather than Jesus (Rolli).  This may indicate that the public relates more to concrete, human struggles like mental health than to an abstract concept like god. 

       God is also found in the politics of the USA, especially in the past few years.  The Republican Party is mostly Christian, a striking example seen in “Rick Perry’s belief that Trump was chosen by God,” a belief “shared by many in a fast-growing Christian movement,” according to Richard Flory, a sociologist at the University of Southern California (Flory).  Additionally, it was a shock to many when George Zimmerman claimed his killing of Trayvon Martin was God’s will, which is what “most good conservative Christians in America think right now” (Butler).  Both examples depict a nation of devout white Christians, which is not entirely untrue, considering Donald Trump was elected.  Black people make up around 15% of the US population, and James Cone would suggest that “the black community [too]…perceives its identity in terms of divine presence,” that should “kill the white God” (59).  God is present across multiple communities then, black, white, and also feminist: similarly to Cone’s rebranding of God, Mary Daly advocates for “Castrating ‘God’ [the father]” (19).  Independent to how how she defines god, she nevertheless makes the case that god is necessary for the feminist movement (28).  Lastly, despite being denounced in the bible, the LGBTQ community, represented by Marcella Althaus-Reid, likewise sought to find a reconciliation between god and sexual fluidity (46).  It could be argued that many of these theologies are not perpetuating god’s activity in society, as they are deconstructing traditional assumptions surrounding god.  On the contrary, irrespective of their purpose, these authors reveal the continued presence of god in the minds of people and communities.  Moreover, whether republicans or liberals make up the majority of people today, god still finds its way into news headlines and political discussion. 

       Though the god-idea may be less evident than it was two-hundred years ago in areas of academia, culture, and politics, its presence persists, suggesting that god is not dead, at least not by this measurement.

       Will god ever die?  Will society ever relinquish its reliance on god as a “need-fulfiller or problem-solver” (Hamilton 116), and beyond that, as an idea altogether?  It seems likely that humans will cease to consult god for answers or physical solutions.  The death of god movements are in closest agreement on this idea, concluding that god is no longer “with us,” in the sense previously believed.  With horrors like Auschwitz in our near past and daily news exhibiting terrorism and mistargeted drone strikes, an abandonment of the god-idea is impossible to avoid.  This helplessness is displayed in a character of Hochhuth’s, who proclaims, “for fifteen months…I’ve been sending people to God.  Do you think He’s made the slightest acknowledgement?” (140-141).  Despite all the death and suffering, god is silent and immotile.  We have been forced to accept that god is certainly useless in directly solving human problems.  

       The function that god previously served—finding meaning and solidarity within the human experience—is still needed, though we may come to define this endeavor in a way that does not rely on the idea of god at all.  There may be similarities between the function of our new conception and the function of god, but the differences will outweigh these similarities.  Take this quote from Feuerbach: “I openly confess that the workings of nature affect not only my surface…that the light of the sun illuminates not only my eyes but also my spirit and my heart” (Lectures 35-36).  The phenomenon described has likely been experienced by many, a markedly “spiritual” feeling given by nature or another stimulus, a joy of being human.  Though these feelings are likely to remain relatable for generations to come, the label of “spirit” may change as secularity increases.  Pinn likens labels like “god” to “intellectual machinery.”  Machinery does not die, it “lose[s] [its] function and [is] replaced” (6).  

       To answer the principal question, god is not dead as an idea in relation to society, and therefore, god is not dead.  Throughout the United States and the greater world, worship continues, god is talked about, and god is relevant.  Nietzsche stated god was dead in 1882, but his proclamation did not kill god.  Even so, it can be concluded that god is declining.  The more we become uncertain with this ever-changing world, the less consolation a god-idea provides.  It is the life’s work of countless theologians to make sense of a world without god, to redefine our central human search for meaning in secular terms.  

       God’s decline forces us to recognize that “we have constructed the conceptual arrangements of this world and we must alone bear the responsibility for this framing of life” (Pinn 6).  Though many might remain devout, those who have lost meaning in religion can often not find it again, and this group will only grow, elevating the importance of death of god theologians’ work.  Some theologians, like Rubenstein, have a grim view of the death of god, that it only heightens our awareness of impotence against nothingness (257).  I would suggest that a more fitting perspective is that the surest path toward solace in this turbulent period will be a focus on culture, human expression of innermost sentiments, as proposed by Tillich and others.  To understand that we are each subject to the same fundamental struggles is heartening, and arguably was the purpose “god” served all along.

Works Cited

Althaus-Reid, Marcella. The Queer God. Routledge, 2007, p. 46.

Bonhoeffer, Dietrich. Prisoner for God: Letters and Papers from Prison. Edited by Eberhard Bethge. Translated by Reginald H Fuller, Macmillan, 1954, pp. 162-163.

Butler, Anthea. “The Zimmerman Acquittal: America's Racist God.” Religion Dispatches, Religion Dispatches, 16 July 2013, religiondispatches.org/the-zimmerman-acquittal-americas-racist-god/.

Cone, James H. A Black Theology of Liberation. Orbis Books, 1989, p. 59.

Daly, Mary F. Beyond God the Father: toward a Philosophy of Women's Liberation. Beacon Press, 1974, p. 19.

Feuerbach, Ludwig. Lectures on the Essence of Religion. Harper & Row, 1967, pp. 35-36.

Feuerbach, Ludwig, and Manfred H. Vogel. Principles of the Philosophy of the Future. Bobbs-Merrill, 1966, p. 5.

Flory, Richard, and Brad Christerson. “Rick Perry's Belief That Trump Was Chosen by God Is Shared by Many in a Fast-Growing Christian Movement.” USC Dornsife College News, University of Southern California, 2 Dec. 2019, dornsife.usc.edu/news/stories/3126/rick-perry-and-christian-movement-believes-trump-chosen-by-god/.

Hamilton, William H. “Dietrich Bonhoeffer.” Radical Theology and the Death of God, by Thomas J. J. Altizer and William H. Hamilton, Bobbs-Merrill, 1968, pp. 112–118.

Hochhuth, Rolf. “Auschwitz or the Question Asked of God.” The Theologian at Work: a Common Search for Understanding, by Arthur Roy Eckardt, Harper and Row, 1968, pp. 136–146.

Miller, Monica R. “God of the New Slaves or Slave to the Ideas of Religion and God?” The Cultural Impact of Kanye West, by Julius Bailey, Palgrave Macmillan, 2015, pp. 167–179.

Pinn, Anthony B. The End of God-Talk: an African American Humanist Theology. Oxford University Press, 2012, pp. 5-6.

Rolli, Bryan. “Kanye West's 'Jesus Is King' Soared To No. 1, But He Can't Afford Another Album Like It.” Forbes, Forbes Magazine, 4 Nov. 2019, www.forbes.com/sites/bryanrolli/2019/11/04/kanye-wests-jesus-is-king-soared-to-no-1-but-he-cant-afford-another-album-like-it/#3290780b2aec.

Rubenstein, Richard L. After Auschwitz: Radical Theology and Contemporary Judaism. Bobbs-Merrill, 1966, p. 257.

[callmemoprah]

What Is So Fascinating About Momo Challenge Victims?

Ruthless Momo Challenge Victims Strategies Exploited

Failure to finish the actions apparently would contribute to risks. momo challenge victims It really is potential they have the capacity to track down the planet’s magnetic field and utilize it for example maybe a compass or a map. It isn’t simple to obtain any notable capacities.

The Secret to Momo Challenge Victims

Though as much as now, there is no official affirmation of this game’s occurrence. ” Virtually all messages received by individuals therefore far asking them to play the Momo problem are imitation since there isn’t any connection causing the overall game. The storyline is very fantastic incase you are able to trust that.

You’re gonna have to answer a number of concerns that’ll help a company understand whether you should be the person that is suitable or never. An investigation aimed toward discovering the teen ager’s death’s states is presently examining. The on-line game was held liable to the whole lot of kids’ departure and sparked anxiety around Earth.

It is perhaps not okay to set your kid or daughter dealing with a display for long periods of time, not to regulate the things they see . however, it’s totally fine to opt for a cartoon together with them and also allow them to watch it for merely a bit at the same moment you nap or perform anything else you desire. Reassuring a child they could be obtained if they do not move along with the crowd will just help prevent them performing something that could damage them create them more uneasy. I feel that it’s almost certainly better if you google mo-mo challenge you’re ready to forewarn the kids also it’s likely to find a photo of this lady you are doing.

Individuals also have chosen into Nottinghamshire Police’s Facbook webpage to talk about his or her despair. Hence it is crucial that parents educate their children seeing on line behaviour that’s secure and sound. It’s crucial that parents retain an interest from their kids’ online activities.

Plus, the states that you explain to your parents it get rid of your loved ones and will visit your home and then a individual seeing the movie. He has the 1 child in my own family having a phone which uses whats app. In the event you have love on your children you’re most likely to war behind your children.

She asked others to simply take notice as while actively playing her cell telephone her son began to shout. The kid wants to return in the price on anything. The kid wants to come back from anything’s buy price.

The Good, the Bad and Momo Challenge Victims

Car surfing is what it sounds like. Even the Blue Whale barrier goes to be your brand new in an variety. YouTube claims because it doesn’t observe the YouTube appropriate for 18, it assembled YouTube kiddies.

Choosing Good Momo Challenge Victims

Measures can assist with suicide prevention, and create awareness of wellness and internet safety. Along side tracking the activity of your kid, it really is very important to you discuss it with them as well. Be certain your son or daughter has accessibility to sites that are age-appropriate.

The Argument About Momo Challenge Victims

Moreover, there are hosting providers. The currency is meant to increase assistance into the countless. The accounts that are new aren’t hackers.

All About Momo Challenge Victims

Almost yearly after the Blue Whale obstacle allegedly resulted in a range of suicides among adolescents around the Earth, a fresh game named kids are reportedly encouraging to do actions that were dangerous. Additionally, there are plenty of distinct origin stories about the so called ” struggle “, which is now thought to possess struck the United Kingdom. It isn’t exactly the precise 1st to offer you real-time movie services from China.

The Fundamentals of Momo Challenge Victims Revealed

First, the first point out understand about mo mo is the fact that its phenomenon produced over the world wide web. The wrestle is believed to be. The shortage of signs of the struggle taking place implies that the mo mo challenge may be an on-line hoax, Followed from the public by copying and sharing the graphics round social networking.

Momo Challenge Victims Secrets That No One Else Knows About

But so far as anyone was in a position to tell, not one with the happens. The match comprises rubbing against your skin with an eraser too as you possibly can whilst reciting the alphabet or a word when documenting the situation. It truly is benign and easy, in spite of the fact that there is frequently a great deal of laughing at other cost.

Choosing Good Momo Challenge Victims

The one ultimately wants to come back in the buy cost tag on every thing into your practice. Always a chance to deliver a platform to a message of expect might come to become better. You have the capability to assume like a cyber-crime about these varieties of match.

Pink whale battle is absolutely an online challenge gambling app. Children who take part in video gambling are more inclined to own aggressive thoughts and thoughts. Explain there are things that happen online that some things are supposed to find a great deal of awareness also that might be misleading or frightening.

They truly are well prepared to do anything to generate dollars that are substantial. When there was a connection created between them both, a string of activities are provided for the ball player. The game is created by Dymchick1 plus they also have a mo mo package you’re going to become in a position to purchase means too.

Wonders may be done by A good deal of an individual. The game doesn’t appear to get co ordinated however it could be actually the kind of meme that is online that may easily spread one of teenagers and youngsters kiddies.

This truly will help us and helping a good deal of men and women, Bracken Webb explained. That is especially true for ladies. We have to promote selfesteem and be certain our childhood understand that they’re loved.

The Secret to Momo Challenge Victims

Use the content feature in the event that you would love to keep to utilize Youtube kids. Modify passwords for societal networking reports, mails, and also other mediums that may have vital info. For example, if your website loading period is more than a few unique websites, customers do not reunite for your website.

The performer is not around this challenge. It had been thought to be produced by Western artist Midori Hayashi who is well famous for making eccentric dolls using different animal components. It isn’t anything more than a hoax and ought to be deleted and blocked.

You’re doing an brilliant task. Around the flip side, it is in fact from the match based on the mo mo Challenge termed Momo.Exe. The game is created using Dymchick1 and also they have a mo mo package you are likely to have in a place.

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Be cautious is just a essential portion of progress. Have a peek in the roofing it’s going to soon be prone to detect, stick into the border for a small while. People masquerading because it then allegedly give the folks who text them a succession of activities to finish.

She had been made by Keisuke Aisawa. People are asked to discuss their images later completing each endeavor game or to remain within the fight. The secretary could set a different job for this particular participant to do just about each single moment.

The Importance of Momo Challenge Victims

She asked others to take note as while taking part in on her cell telephone her son began to shout. He ostensibly wants to come back within the purchase cost tag on whatever. She or he wishes to come back at the purchase price of every thing into your endeavor.

What Does Momo Challenge Victims Mean?

It really is a threat for your youngster’s wellbeing. It’s the contentious game that’s left parents and kiddies . The article is always to consult with your kids let them understand they do not need to address any worries individually.

Dad and Mom, we have to go over melancholy. Child health pros feel these videos could cause a growth in child suicide. You are likely to warfare behind your children if you have love to your own children.

The Do’s and Don’ts of Momo Challenge Victims

Ad campaign isn’t planning to do the job. So even though it’s still upsetting to look at the very first art was in no way intended to become part of this game. As such, it has several telephone numbers from across the world circulating as a portion of the game.

The Meaning of Momo Challenge Victims

The rehab procedure have enduring positive facets and will continue as much as per year, he clarified. The grownup’s responsibility is to seek out assistance if he or she doesn’t want to talk with regards to their own issues. Whilst knowing what your kid is seeing is a must understanding and building things to do if they see such images is critical.

People people that are suicidal and miserable are made to feel as if they are part of like classes the match motivates them to slip from the chance. Practical experience may be your secret to achievement. Social media is part of this.

Momo Challenge Victims: No Longer a Mystery

By way of example, when something online might not affects you a teen to find rid of their existence that is particular could be set by the same product. The game doesn’t always involve some buys or advertisements so you’re very likely to own really a smooth encounter. The solution is to create sure adults stay joined into the planet that is authentic.

The most concern to understand about The issue is that it isn’t going to exist. As an example, whilst something on the internet might not affect a person greatly, a young adult to end their daily life that was distinct might be put by the exact same item. You have the ability to consider of these varieties of match being a Cybercrime.

It appears to get spread to the United Kingdom. News outlets throughout the entire world commenced reporting suicides of individuals and ladies regardless of the absence of confirmed links into the challenge. Marina Bay in case you like to track down a period that is brilliant at Singapore you can’t learn how to overlook the Marina Bay.

Mental manipulation might perhaps not be seen until the very end, although physical abuse is just something because it truly is evident over the physiological type of a youngster. It’s a danger to the wellbeing of your kid. The greater ACEs some body gets, the more their danger of the number of maladies.

What About Momo Challenge Victims?

Wonderful things might be achieved by A deal of men and women working collectively. Kiddies which are currently facing self-esteem issues are also targeted by these matches.

This really goes to illustrate that the level to which teens may proceed, only to get yourself a couple minutes of attractiveness or awareness on the web! Such children are more prone to simply accept these struggles. We must promote selfesteem and make sure that our youth realize that they’re loved.

At the event the participant determines they do not needs to do they receive threats. Additionally, there really are a range of internet dangers now. Regrettably, the networking particularly media, falls for these sorts of hoaxes each one the moment.

The Upside to Momo Challenge Victims

On the contrary, it is out of the game related to the mo mo Challenge termed Momo.Exe. Read on to find out which we understand about it so far and more about the mo mo problem. Heres all you have to understand in regards to the mo-mo suicide challenge.

Vital Pieces of Momo Challenge Victims

Momo will not have to become authentic to grow right into authentic. The youngster wishes to come back in the sum of everything for your own battle.

What’s Really Happening with Momo Challenge Victims

In spite of the fact that it’s already been promised that Momo can add lists employing a virus to be contacted by it self this isn’t true. When there was a connection set between both, a string of activities are supplied towards the player. The game apparently does not have any types of getting back in contact them unless the viewer contacts themselves to the phone number.

Finding the Best Momo Challenge Victims

It is also achievable to search for that whale suicide match’ in the Re-Tail shop that is Play it isn’t possible you will get any outcomes which can be not immediate. Wouldn’t understand it not a real man. In the game, you’re likely to get sniper gun and you would like to acquire rid of the mo-mo Ghost mom Nature.

Momo Challenge Victims Features

You’re doing an great task. The administrator could place your own participant every single every day another occupation. Permit it to rest for perhaps a couple occasions or a couple of hrs.

It gruesome. The Blue Whale obstacle goes to be your newest in an variety. YouTube states it assembled YouTube Kids because it doesn’t detect the traditional YouTube appropriate.

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Momo Challenge Victims Ideas

Pink subway battle is an challenge gambling app. Children who take part in video gaming are prone to have emotions and aggressive thoughts. Explain there are things that happen on the web some things should have a great deal of awareness and which could be misleading or frightening.

Here’s What I Know About Momo Challenge Victims

Signing-up can earn a genuine difference and can take just a moment, she clarified. Allow it to break for possibly a number days or a couple hours. The game is created with Dymchick1 plus they possess a momo bundle you are likely to be in a place.

Top Choices of Momo Challenge Victims

CID sleuths have guided parents to maintain a tab to the social networking activities of all children. Very well, there may possibly be a lot of info available on the market.

It states that you inform your mother and father it will see your residence and destroy your loved ones and then a individual seeing the movie. Donate precisely what you don t desire. You are most likely to war behind your children if you have love on your children.

On the other hand, it is out of a game dependent on the Momo Challenge termed Momo.Exe. The match is produced by Dymchick1 and thus that they will have a mo mo package you will be in somewhere to get way too. Heres all you have to realize in regards to the Momo suicide battle.

Finding the Best Momo Challenge Victims

A number of his friends also have indicated that Umakant was playing with with the game. It features a story that is quite odd. Story The game features a narrative.

Mo-mo isn’t a cyber-security threat it cannot slip or harm the own data. You’re a individual! The secretary could specify a different occupation with this player to do every moment.

The Debate Over Momo Challenge Victims

Be cautious is merely a portion of progress. The picture had been shared on interpersonal networking. People masquerading as it subsequently give the folks that text a succession of tasks to to complete.

The Momo Challenge Victims Pitfall

It grotesque. Much like messages show up in their phones, and should they deny, the creature states it’s going ahead. The Blue Whale problem could possibly be the latest within an range of dangerous societal media styles.

The crucial issue to comprehend concerning The momo dilemma is it is not going to exist. For example, whilst a person might not affect deeply, a young adult to finish their different life might be put off by the specific same thing. It’s a image As you can view.

Momo Challenge Victims and Momo Challenge Victims – The Perfect Combination

It evolved in the usa. Police haven’t supported the connection. The mo mo challenge generally appears to target youth but cases are documented from the united states and Germany.

The Bizarre Secret of Momo Challenge Victims

They give approval and a simple fix to the problem that is incorrect. It is a component of the sculpture.

The Argument About Momo Challenge Victims

” It is not all about the money,” ” Delaney stated. You get a laugh that certainly will speak along with all the coffee owner and’s miniature. The little one wants to return from the value of anything.

Some are calling for it that an online hoax, though some assert that the challenge was related to adolescent fatalities in states that are various. A brand-new urban legend grows seemingly over night as a result of the web. Although no true scenarios are supported the mo-mo battle developed a hysteria, because of Internet trolls and the media.

Pink whale conflict is an online challenge program that is gambling. The brand-new experiences are readily readily available for users plus it’s really called to introduction for anyone people as time moves. Many of of the social media breadcrumbs appear to track back.

The authorities are also thought to be searching for an 18-year-old who’d acquired in contact. Re-assuring a youthful child they could possibly be obtained will help prevent some thing that could damage them create them more uneasy being performed by them. At the event that you simply just google mo mo challenge you’re prepared to forewarn your kiddies it’s very likely to find an image of this lady and on account of the actual fact I think that it is likely much superior you certainly do this .

The Little-Known Secrets to Momo Challenge Victims

You grow to be always a zombie. Moreover, it’s asked mom and dad to drive back talking probably the Whale dilemma together with the fight’. Again wouldn’t understand it isn’t an legitimate man.

What You Must Know About Momo Challenge Victims

Afterward distinctive guidelines will be sent by a quantity on problems else their loved ones will soon probably be hurt and they’ll be murdered or they should complete. The numbers will soon undoubtedly probably be seen on line and have leaked online. It’s crucial discuss the folks to be guarded by that it .

Because of this, it’s crucial that individuals understand the world wide web is a double edged people desire to protect our kiddies out of. Whatever device is understood by you he’s got or if a child is in their iPad, you are aware it isn’t difficult to forget there are people on the market which will figure out approaches to receive a grasp of viewers together with malicious intention. There exists a good deal of flexibility fond of kids that do not maintain a position to own the judgment that was perfect, in order to steer clear of an awful calamity Loev stated.

This truly will be helping people helping a good deal of individuals, Bracken Webb clarified. That is especially true for girls. Additionally, there appears that there is no limitation to the trends teens are currently encouraging today.

The New Fuss About Momo Challenge Victims

This really is not accurate In spite of the fact that this has been claimed that mo-mo may incorporate itself to contact lists employing a virus. Dymchick1 gets the match thus they even have a package you’ll have the ability to buy. The match is created by Dymchick1 and they also have a mo mo package you’re going to become in a position to acquire manner too.

Source: http://mobimatic.io/2019/03/07/what-is-so-fascinating-about-momo-challenge-victims/

[martechadvisor-blog]

5 Questions B2B CMOs can Ask their B2C Selves for Better Marketing Outcomes

Do you buy your car and suits the way you buy your software?

The entire marketing and martech industry has been built on the distinction between B2B and B2C customers. And yet, we now hear that B2B buying is starting to look increasingly similar to B2C buying. Understanding this phenomenon can help us make strategic tweaks that could have a huge impact on the outcomes of our selling efforts and the strategies and technologies we adopt as B2B marketers.

At the crux of it, perhaps it is not so much the buying process that is becoming similar, but the buying experience which B2B prospects want from their potential B2B vendors is getting more similar to what they have come to expect from their B2C vendors.

In other words, we need to reassess how B2B buyers really buy. For a moment, let’s forget the funnel and forget the buyers journey and the inbound and outbound and all the other B2B marketing jargon that we have internalised. What would we see instead of the prospect? A person. Ourselves.

We are all B2B buyers and B2C buyers as well. So, for a moment, forget the analytics, shut down that dashboard and ask your B2C self these 5 seemingly simple questions with not so easy answers:

The nature of the relationship: typically, B2B buyers get into more long term ‘relationships’ than B2C but I would hesitate to call most of what pass as ‘relationships’ as anything more than transactional interdependencies given the business impact of frequent change, higher exit barriers, increased paperwork to actually go out and find someone new. Such ‘partnerships’, because they are not engaged or invested in for anything other than current convenience, can break the moment someone comes along and offers a better experience. On the other hand, a B2C customer could well be super loyal, buying her favourite coffee and sandwich from her favourite café every day even when fancier places with more exotic coffees opens just alongside. It’s obviously not just the coffee or sandwich she is loyal to, of course.  

Ask yourself: would my top 20 customers continue to buy from me if a more attractive alternative came along? What would they say about me if I wasn’t in the room? What could I do for my customer that my favourite café does for me?

The challenge of multiple decision makers: you can’t have missed the popular B2B stat about 8 or 15 or 17 employees (depending on which survey you follow) being involved in the decision making of each B2B purchase. One of the common distinctions between B2B and B2C buying is that in B2B, multiple stakeholders such as gatekeepers, influencers, users and decision makers  are involved, whereas in B2C there tends to be just one central decision maker who needs to be connected with. But we are simplifying things here. Consumer marketers also deal with multiple buyers (say family members, community members) with varying degree of buying authority, and multiple influencers (including peers, elders, celebrities and experts) and have for years exploited this by creating what they call ‘pull’ for their product by getting key influencers to vouch for its necessity or advocate on their behalf. B2B marketers,  using technology to help personalise messages for multiple stakeholders in the buying decision, are paying disproportionate attention to these individual stakeholders in the decision. The trick is to not just to identify the stakeholders and communicate to them, but to master the buying dynamics in the prospect team. Marketing has to address the team needs as much as addressing individual agendas. Identifying influencers in the team is different from identifying the decision-making authority, and identifying ways to help the team function as a unit and align on the key buying decision parameters more smoothly can help.

Ask yourself: Who do my stakeholders trust? What version of influencer marketing would create this additional and compelling layer of ‘pull’ from my prospects?

The problem with unconditional rationality: In a world where scientists are racing to make robots feel emotion, we want to start believing, as B2B marketers, that nothing drives our B2B customers but rationality and functionality! This is patently bizarre. While a significant amount of rational communication relating to practical benefits is important, B2C sellers have mastered the art of appealing to our base instincts. True, you won’t see a lot of impulse purchases from B2B buyers, but that is only one small part of how customers buy. Well-considered, well-informed decisions are also founded on emotions, even though they come cloaked in rational arguments and business projections. What makes a consumer choose one high street clothing brand over the other, all things remaining the same? In a world where marketing technology is making every B2B a consummate content marketer adept at ‘personalized messaging’, it is crucial to go beyond rationality to understand what makes our customer respond. A higher degree of attention to building a consistent brand personality, better use of colour and design principles in our communications, building a community of users, appealing to their unstated fears– all these are typical B2C techniques that could help B2B marketers differentiate themselves in a world where technology rules marketing. Where there are humans, emotions cannot be far afield. Period. The emotions are there. Find them. Do not dismiss them.

Ask yourself: what real reasons lie under the cloak of rational arguments? What human emotions drive each stakeholder in my prospect company? Would they respond to trust, aspiration, fear, convenience, sensitivity? How can I tap into those emotions in a meaningful way and manifest them in my marketing?

Balancing technology with touch: While B2Cs have been the fastest and biggest adopters of marketing technology to better serve their prospects and customers, they balance the use of technology with building real-world brand experiences to create holistic engagement. At a mall or on the radio or on the product packaging, the customer will encounter the brand without the virtual interface several times. Each interaction will subliminally impact how they feel about the brand. No doubt, B2B or B2C, most of the pre-purchase research - from reviews to social discussions to checking what experts and influencers are saying happens online. But there is a parallel universe of real touchpoints which B2Bs cannot afford to neglect. From the call centre script to the way your contract is worded, every touchpoint can be a ‘moment of truth’ and play a significant role in cementing customer perception about your brand.

Ask yourself: have I mapped every single touchpoint and moment of truth, digital or otherwise? What would a truly consistent and seamless brand experience – both online and offline - look and feel like?

The impact of a purchase gone wrong: a B2C purchase gone wrong will mean a waste of money, ruined goodwill towards the brand, some degree of inconvenience and even trauma for the buyer. The customer will react with negative word of mouth and possibly much social maligning. Negative messages gone viral could prove catastrophic for B2Cs. That is probably why we are used to 24-hour chatbots / call centres for assistance, no questions asked replacements, money back guarantees and super responsive social media customer service. In cases where disgruntled customers just vow never to use the brand and simply move on, the revenue impact may not be dismal. Unfortunately, in the B2B world, where every HQL is sold at a premium, we are painfully aware of just how hard won each deal is. Even one disgruntled customer can mean huge and potentially permanent business impact. Worse, if a customer is seething but not helping you nip the problem in the bud, the negative impact could just snowball out of control.

Ask yourself: As the CMO, if an unhappy customer called me to tell me they were terminating the contract, what could I do or say to stop them from leaving? What is the equivalent of a no-questions asked replacement policy in my industry?

Bottomline: we have to understand not just how our buyers buy – but who they are and how they think - independent of buying decisions -  and then relate those insights to the buying decision. It is a technique consumer brands have used consummately and **perhaps it is time for B2Bs to go back to the classic marketing fundamentals of true customer immersion** as well.

This article was first appeared on MarTech Advisor