#It's very much a self-perception and plurality thing where it just IS.

[wawhii]

Some rambling in the tags

[arsenalgbt]

Hi CS from ao3 again :) the baby will be a wonderful new beginning for declan and kai regardless of their gender so it's up to you (but you know what I'm partial to heh) so I'm excited about how you'll present that! Also looking forward to Timber's cameo because that will certainly be something... Dare I say the final step of the unknown in the monomyth... Regarding Declan: honestly, it's so fascinating how he is Everything and Nothing at the same time... It's hard to articulate what I think about him because it's such a delicate thing... Above all I'm evidently obsessed with his relationship with Kai because that's the setting where his character virtues and flaws flourish to their maximal extent just because of how complex their relationship is. I think Declan walks on eggshells around everyone he loves because he's perpetually scared of being "found out". Found out for what? He doesn't even know it himself. Found out for being a fraud, for being the villain, for being a bad husband, a bad person, a bad son, a bad brother, a failed son, a failed heir. Found out for not being the Declan (more like Declans, plural, the million and one Declans he created to make up for the fact that he's him) that everyone thinks he is and wants him to be. His relationship with Kai is both a release and a prison, and the only thing he needs to do for it to stop being the latter is to break free from himself which he cannot bring himself to do. There is soo much hatred that goes into his self-perception, he aids and abets every person that comes to swing at him. I think that this relationship with WDB is so interesting because that's his family but also he is in exile? self-imposed exile? The way he describes them at times it's like he's on the outside looking in but that's not true. He's there. He's wanted there. I think he finds refuge in the lighthearted moments with them because when he gets too into his head he reads into everything and bathes in the calamitous mistakes he's done (eg with Ben), but like, that's his family, he knows that, but family is fucked to him, like the concept isn't the most cohesive, it's too abstract, has too much teeth, not picture friendly, it doesn't make sense (that fucked picture of the family isn't being helped by the idea that the man he loves might be having the kid of the man he couldn't give up on). He'll kill himself before he goes to them because he thinks he's too much, I honestly think he sees himself as a burden in an empty room. However the flowers from KT... idc if I'm reading too much into it! That's a step in the right direction! He's keeping something alive! He's accepting something from his friend and cherishing it! He's embracing the earth and the baser feelings he used to abhor because of how easy of target it made him! When it comes to Mikel I'm LOL at that moment honestly he's not normal around him re: my point on family but it's getting better and I think that the way he goes to Mikel when he's in distress/needs an ear or someone to tell it to him says a lot (like i said, show don't tell!) but he also walks on eggshells around him though less carefully than the others because I feel like he feels transparent around Mikel. Like he sees right through him. Mikel is the person who finds him out. Anyway yeah he's so good... can't wait to see where he goes... Regarding your other questions: I don't watch f1, I'm not against ever writing for arsenal but that'll have to be on anon on ao3 haha (if you want me to write something specific i could give it a try?), I'm an arsenal fan (not really a gunnerina? I follow arsenal accounts on my blog but I'm not very active on any socmed) and randomly looked them up on ao3 and that's how I found your fic, I'm not the biggest fic reader and i don't really read rpf but I gave it a try. Good luck with writing the next instalment and looking forward to reading it!

HALLO! Spinnechen and jurrien’s cameo, trust………….

Above all I'm evidently obsessed with his relationship with Kai because that's the setting where his character virtues and flaws flourish to their maximal extent just because of how complex their relationship is.

OOOOO that, plus your previous deckai always in their best behaviour, their best life, when they are inside closed doors…….. BUT HELLOUR. No. he’s not the villain but we can agree to disagree on everything else (fraud villain bad husband/person/brother etc lol).

There is soo much hatred that goes into his self-perception, he aids and abets every person that comes to swing at him.

FIRSTLY I CRIED

I think that this relationship with WDB is so interesting because that's his family but also he is in exile? self-imposed exile? The way he describes them at times it's like he's on the outside looking in but that's not true. ////// but like, that's his family, he knows that, but family is fucked to him, like the concept isn't the most cohesive, it's too abstract, has too much teeth, not picture friendly, it doesn't make sense (that fucked picture of the family isn't being helped by the idea that the man he loves might be having the kid of the man he couldn't give up on). He'll kill himself before he goes to them because he thinks he's too much, I honestly think he sees himself as a burden in an empty room. 

SECONDLY that’s the second time ppl actually mentioning declan’s tendency to murk himself. Even i, who actually wrote that particular chapter, tend to forget. Sigh. THE ((( that's his family, he knows that, but family is fucked to him, like the concept isn't the most cohesive, it's too abstract, has too much teeth, not picture friendly, )))

MATE…………. I love it. Indeed the concept of family is foreign to declan. Do you know why he said yes to the arranged marriage aside from ‘saving his family biz from bankruptcy, thus he can still provide for his employees’? Yeah… not gonna spoil it for y’all but y’all can sense why.

However the flowers from KT... idc if I'm reading too much into it! That's a step in the right direction! He's keeping something alive! He's accepting something from his friend and cherishing it!

but he also walks on eggshells around him though less carefully than the others because I feel like he feels transparent around Mikel.

!!!!!!!!

More like; because mikel is way toooooooo trained to read him from the years he ‘endured’ declan’s very own brand of cruelty. Ooo how declan hated mikel with every inch of his being. Also yes, declan totally not normal about mikel since day 1 (but nothing psychosexual, thankfully)

Ooooooo ur not a gunnerinna that’s alright!

PLEASE i’ve thought long n hard about your offer holy shit mate!!!! go crazy posting on anon; DECKAI FAKE DATING, pls thx. I have never written this trope pls write it for me. That’s the tldr version, if you need a more detailed prompt I will yap but won’t be detailed ofc!!!

My wants list is just; any rating, if it’s gon have pr0n you know i’m only into bottom kai agenda. That’s it!

Also deffo no pressure whatsoever. Just write whenever u have time write whatever style u have etc etc. i joke (demand) my gunnerinna a lot to write a fic for me but srsly i’m just a man lol.

eye thank you so much for indulging me about my fic and declan's characterisation. he's fucking crazy.

[alyjojo]

Love Reading 🌡️ - August 2024 - Aries

Singles:

Who is Coming In: 3 Pentacles & The Tower

Regarding: The Magician

Long-Term Potential: Strength

There’s good news and bad news 🤔

Good News: This person is either a catalyst for major change in your life, or they’re meant to accompany you through some massive changes in your life that ARE meant to be - Wheel of Fortune clarifies The Magician. Phoenix is all about transformation and Paradise at the bottom shows a honeymoon period, I think this is a whirlwind affair with purpose. Yes it’s meant to be. They’re going to metaphorically remove you from a very small space of perception - in your mind - and place you into a much bigger, more successful space where you can grow more comfortably. Probably unconsciously, in the grand scheme of things, that’s how this all usually works. I can see they come in like a wrecking ball 💥 but not destructively, you just never see them coming; and not only that but they completely change everything about your world and what you thought was in it, where you thought you were going, how you looked at it. Funny how that works 😇

Bad News: It’s not your forever person, this is a karmic that’s meant to be here for a reason and a season, not long-term. For the long term they or you will never fully, consciously, or outright choose each other. This could be more of a friend than a partner, or it feels that way once it’s all over. I do see major attraction but not so much love, and/or someone may find love somewhere else. The only thing they give me about this person is their pets, maybe they work with animals, and I’m hearing it’s plural. A couple/few…rats? 🐀 Hamsters. Could be actual mice, I’m *seeing* mice. Or you may be the one holding back because they’re hot and the first date was great but you’re not into mice, and they’re all over the bed or something, no way thanks - it doesn’t have to be more than that. You will become more confident in yourself and what you like, why, how, etc., on your new path - because of this person.

Messages:

- Pet Lover 🦎

- LESSON 💯

PHOENIX 🔥

- New Phase & Rekindle

- Renew & Growth

- Changed Mind

- Rise from Ashes

Find your place of happiness and peace, and don’t let anyone pull you out of it.

Signs you may be dealing with:

Scorpio, Aries, Gemini & Sagittarius

Couples:

The relationship: 9 Cups rev

The problem: 7 Wands

What to do about it: Ace of Wands

There are some indulgent behaviors in your relationship, what that is idk, it depends on you and what you like to do too much of, to the point of like…zero limits from what I see, no boundaries. Anything can become toxic if it’s constant. The highlight of this point being that initially - this is unseen, hidden, unknown to the person doing it. One person is clueless and the other person is pissed off and impatient of whatever this is. Self sabotaging behaviors, could be addictions like drinking, drugs, partying, working, studying till you drop or something positive even (Page of Pentacles at the bottom.) Or this could be regarding a child, and an argument surrounding that. There could also be a large purchase of some sort that’s THE PLAN but in reality it’s extremely indulgent, like a house with five bathrooms for two people - necessary? No.

The problem is defending your case once this all comes to light. Before we didn’t see these overindulgences, how something may have become a problem over time is what I’m seeing, this isn’t a sudden thing. Temperance shows that over time, day by day, we’ve coasted along into this state of mind where we excuse something to avoid the drama - if there is any - or we’re just having a good time, what’s the problem? Two months ago it was a couple of drinks a month, now it’s per day, could be no one notices until it becomes an issue. Or the problem could be the defensiveness itself. Like it was FINE until NOW, what’s the problem?? The only thing that can be done to solve this is to lay it all out on the table and express your feelings, which could be angry, anxious, worried, happy, whatever. Get clear on all of it and do away with confusion or fear, that’s the only block I see here ❤️ Once you see it, you can’t unsee it. With Page of Pentacles, some of you may be coming up with a plan or signing up for something that helps you with this, something motivating, active, fun and/or inspiring. I see the best outcome happening for you, like it’s this person that’s being a pain in your ass, not Spirit, blame appropriately 😆 Too different seems to be your opinion about this thing, it’s going to be a big deal - just aim for clarity and try to do what you can as a team more than just one or the other - but there’s no need to be defensive of differences so long as no one gets hurt, right? They may irritate the piss out of you this month, but your person is your person & vice versa. Potayto Potahto 🥔 Idk why on earth I’m hearing this song my oldest daughter has played 50 times this week, she thinks it’s hilaaaarious, will add at the end. It has nothing to do with anything, or maybe I just don’t get it. Someone has or is a teenager here. Sigma 🫡

Messages:

- In every lifetime, I always come back to you.

- Too Different

WEDDING RINGS 💍

- Union & Marriage

- Soul Connection

- Everlasting Love

- Devotion

Remember, you can’t expect something for nothing, especially love. You have to give it out to get it back.

Signs you may be dealing with:

Heavy Leo, Pisces, Gemini & Cancer

[system-of-a-feather]

I’m guessing you’re anti-endo right

I really wouldn't call myself anti-endo. I think its a really complex topic and very facetted and this post has more details on my opinion on the syscourse topic there.

Personally I typically prefer to stay out of the conversation because I really don't feel there is enough information backed on science and research to firmly say one way or the other, and quite honestly I don't really care much for it or any real debates on the feelings / experiences / senses of plurality - like, at all really.

For me having DID is a very very very trauma centered experience and being "plural" is really just more of a side effect than the whole show so arguments about identifying / being plural without trauma just... don't interest me?

As long as people respect each other's boundaries and aren't being problematic or spreading missinformation, I really could careless, and honestly - on tumblr dot com, even the "being problematic and spreading missinformation" I hardly care about at this point.

My relationship with endogenics in general is that if they do them, I don't really care. I just very much do not like people pushing that because one small aspect of an experience is shared (feelings of plurality) that the whole thing is relatable and applicable because I very very much do not relate with much of the endogenic crowd.

Do I think there is an argument that it is important and possibly good for some people to have the endogenic area and space and do I think that endogenics could have their merit? Sure, honestly I could see that. Do I consider myself similar to endogenics? No. Do I have much of an interest in discussing plurality with endogenics? No, not really.

I don't really find an interest in discussing plurality with people who have DID / are traumagenic.

"Plurality" is just a *really really really* boring topic to me with where I am in my journey and the experiences I've had with it have been going on through my whole life and 3-5 years of focused therapy. It's really not interesting anymore and the idea of sharing a body with others and the dynamics that comes with it and "plural rights" are just stuff I really don't care about because its really just my normal. It's like having arguments about if you should or shouldn't eat breakfast if you wake up at 10:30 am. Like yeah maybe its interesting argument to have for like 10 minutes but man beyond that its just a little silly.

Research suggests that trauma is very very very common with people who have DID, but there really isn't enough research done to say that it ABSOLUTELY can not happen without trauma - let alone discussions of how self perception of trauma can affect everything and all that.

Again though, my interest is not in plurality and more on how the human brain copes with chronic and complex trauma during childhood. If endogenics are real and are a thing, thats whatever because the nature of it and what I am really interested in discussing is a total different thing.

The only firm "anti-endo" opinion that I guess might be one that I have is that I would REALLY prefer having DID due to chronic complex trauma to not be compared to experiencing plurality for any other reason.

Oh and I am absolutely anti-intentional systems (spiritual, tulpa, or anything where you craft them yourself).

If any of these opinions upsets you, you are free to unfollow. I don't mind.

I likely won't be responding to any asks about syscourse beyond a link to this or the previous post.

-Riku (Host)

[rametarin]

Getting into the weeds of an annoying conversation I’ve had.

Casually speaking to people that believe, very strongly, very hopefully, in life-after-meat bodies. And I don’t mean dietary, I mean, “escaping death by going cyborg.”

A lot of people wish to move their, “sentience,” out of their biological bodies and into a machine, because they do not want to die. Just, whatever it is that comprises their life, their existence, their essence, their metaphoric “soul,” they want to move it out of a vulnerable, mortal meat puppet and into an immortal machine. So as to avoid non-existence, entropy and death, if only long enough to witness the heat death of the universe.

And they get REALLY mad or huffy when you poke holes in their preferred method of immortality.

So they bring up the Ship of Theseus. “If you replace all the parts of a ship, is it even still the same ship anymore? :)” And argue that even you aren’t the you of 7-10 years ago. Owing to your sort tissue constantly replacing and replenishing itself, removing old cells, replacing them piecemeal.

So, they argue, based on that, slowly replacing a human brain little by little with cybernetics, or grey goo filler, should (to their logic) mean it’s possible to continue to exist, just slowly transfer from from a meat based consciousness and existence into a mechanical one.

And again, I argue, that’s not incorporating YOU into a robotic shell. That’s supplementing an existing body with an artificial one that is subserviant to your meat body, you. One that just is convinced, more and more, that it is you.

It would be you the same way that an alien devouring your brain from the inside and slowly replacing your brain with itself becomes, “you.” You can smugly smile and go, “well it has all my memories. It has my fingerprints. It lives in my body. It thinks and says it’s me. Therefore, it must be me.”

Except, no. YOU would be dead and your life and sapience, your existence, hollowed out and replaced by another just inheriting your body. An artificial life that is not part of the original biological blueprints of you.

Arguing that that’s somehow “transferring” your consciousness simply because our soft tissue regenerates and replaces itself, therefore, “we died within 8 years after we were born” is dishonest. As a biological organism, we exist as sovereign independent beings that are designed to do that, by natural selection. Our mortal bodies were designed to replenish and replace and maintain that through the generations of cell generation, death and replacement. So even if we do technically lose consciousness and whom we are die inside to be replaced with more of us, it’s still us. Objectively.

When you add artificial elements to that, like switching out dead braincells and brain wiring until the artificial and the natural are meshed up and virtually inoperable from one another, you aren’t making yourself into a robot. You’re just dying and supplementing what you’ve lost on a wetware, hardware and software level with mechanical stuff. You’re incubating a simulacrum in your brain, like athena from the head of Zeus.

Even if you were just a collection of the longest living cells in your body with a robotic brain wrapped around them, after a certain point, you just stop being you. At best you can argue where the line is between ceasing to be you.

I’d argue that you cannot store memory artificially about whom and what you are and take that function away from your biological brain, and still consider yourself you. The brain has many functions, and all of them are components of the real you. To even replace one of those wholesale with cybernetics is to lose some of your humanity. There will never be a time when you can just piecemeal replace your neurons and braincells wholesale with a robot and continue to exist.

That won’t be you anymore. It’ll just be the slow, inevitable march towards a robot that THINKS it’s you. It’ll be a copy born from a glacial suicide. You may as well have just scanned your brain’s patterns and structure and reproduced it by every nerve ending, memory and some sort of perfect sci-fi brain scan into a simulated consciousness in a robot.

The robot won’t be YOU, it’ll be a robot with a simulacrum of you. The same way a painting is not you. The same way your ass print in the snow, is not you. Just a sophisticated shadow of you.

Folks that dream of escaping death by transferring, “consciousness” out of their body and into a robot absolutely despise this line of thinking. They really tend to not want to die. So, they argue to defend it with resorting to misanthropy. “Life is just a series of amino acids and cells!” They tell themselves. “So it doesn’t matter if the thing that thinks it’s me, is actually biological! My biology doesn’t matter on whether I’m me!”

And it’s like. Bruh. Even if you cloned yourself, and to all human relevant metrics that clone could operate as you, it wouldn’t be you. Because you are still a sovereign and independent organism. That clone, not born from your mother, but a vat as a clipping of you allowed and shaped to become like you, does not have the same origin as you. Yes, it absolutely does matter, objectively, that the clone, while it possesses a large amount of your DNA, is still not YOU. You may be arguing that, “well science and other people can’t tell. :^).” That does not change the objective reality that it is not you.

The more they defend this braindead fantasy of going from human body to a robot, the more they betray what they’re willing to believe about what being a human is and is not in order to abandon it. The more they schizophrenically divorce their biology from what and whom they are, as people, as human beings.

And when you get to the point where you ask, “Oh what is sapience and sentience and individualism, anyway?” Then that says to me you don’t care about anything.  You’re just cowardly enough to not want to die. You’re just too stubborn and arrogant and egotistical to admit if you weren’t so convinced you had the intellectual and rational high ground, you’d be exactly like one of those braying sheep singing hymns in your religion of choice, praying that god or the universe itself won’t erase you from existence when you finally succumb to mortality. You damned self-deceiving coward. You self-delusional ninny. Milksop.

And this just absolutely matters, because this revelation of their value of human life, individuality and their own perception of what it means to be human, directly correlates into what they value when it comes to groups of humans relating to one another. Someone like that may speak high and mighty about humanity, compassion, but these are just egotist words and come purely from a place of faux-rational pride that they know the truth.

When the truth is, they pray at the altar of an idealized abstract, and not the reality of what a human is and does and is made of. They value the idea of all these little soulless meat robots working together as a sophisticated collective than they do the life of a single human being, seeing soul only in the net and gross, and not in the individuals or parts comprising it.

They’ll speak at length about “what people SHOULD” or “OUGHT” be doing for other people, while not giving a fuck about an individual. All their concepts of rights and privileges stem from the ideas of plurality, on the basis of being part of that set. Not based on individuals.

And after having had these conversations enough with the sorts of futurists, utopists, transhumanists, I feel confident in saying that if you also feel this way, I probably hate you. Seeing individual people as arbitrary random atoms floating around in space and time but seeing humanity, worth and relatable in groups of them? In the CONCEPT but then devaluing it by saying there’s no “real” individiaulsim that can’t be cloned, or reproduced, and be the exact same as what exists? Somehow you try to insist you see things in the macro and the minutia when you’re completely missing both and focusing on what you project onto them or what you THINK you see based on your own biases. Often based on the HOPE and idealism of what you think SHOULD be real, or what you HOPE humans become.

So the sort of person to pray for robotic physical immortality and “ascending” past the flesh, tends to just.. flow into the sort of person that loves the idea of humanity, but despises any human being that is not on board with their idealized vision of what humanity should be, and will not tolerate people that are not on board with it.

This has become a bit of an acid test for me. Maybe it’s just on the same shitty level as asking a persons horoscope to learn more about them. I don’t know. But if you think a clone of you is equally YOU, if you think a scanned reproduction of you is the equal you to the real thing, just because of the difficulty of proving the objective truth and origins of both to third parties, then you’re probably the same sort of used car salesman type that tries to sell people on “social advancement” while not giving a shit how many people it harms or how much humanity it kills in the name of said, “advancement,” or “evolution.”

[originlist]

and i’ll let you drift around a completely dark, empty space, without anything or anyone to help you. i don’t know how long you’ll last. it could be days, hours, or only minutes... but sooner or later, the cold darkness of space will shatter your spirit, and you’ll be desperate for warmth.

The world closes down to a single point. There is no longer an Ooku, no Kama, no Servants, no Chaldea. The presence of Mash on their comms is tinny and far away, barely distinguishable as anything at all, much less as words. Ritsu’s other Servants have vanished, without a word audible.

Kama claimed this space. The Ooku bends to her will. Ritsu knows this and knows, therefore, she isn’t lying. She’s put them here and she’ll wait.

Just like before, when they were let in here: everything is taken from you and you are alone. Everyone’s gone, that sentence, back in their head. But now, not only is everyone gone, the presence of a ground beneath them is gone, an environment to orient around, anything or anyone.

Everyone is gone, but something tugs at them. They know there is something that shouldn’t ever be separate from them, so they’ll ‘pray’ to it.

“Don’t leave me alone,” Ritsu says, and they don’t know if it’s out loud or only in their head. They don’t think it matters much. “Whatever you do, please, please, don’t leave me alone. Don’t leave.” When a request is made with enough loose power, with enough want for it, it doesn’t require a formal declaration. It’s enough for one of the command seals on their arm to flare and then fade.

That wasn’t necessary. Ritsu wasn’t alone originally, but the presence was faint. Enough perhaps to fool Kama or perhaps enough to show that Kama did have some sway in this place. Whatever it was causing it, it was outweighed by the command seal.

An exhale, soft, like someone is shaking their head, fond and exasperated, at such a request. The presence strengthens, leaning over and dragging Ritsu into it. They can’t see anything and the barely-there air makes them dizzy on top of the headache of mental corruption, but this place isn’t empty.

If it’s not empty, then it’s enough for Ritsu not to give up. They won’t be afraid or let the displacement get to them if this place truly cannot be ‘really empty’. Hands hold them close, protectively, more than should belong to one human (and the presence around Ritsu is not shaped like anything human, but it was never ‘human’ in the first place).

Hands on their shoulder, their cheek, fingers clasping over Ritsu’s own, arms around their middle, something like someone else’s cheek nuzzling against their crown. “i cannot be pried from you. into infinity, from any timeline, you are my creator and my origin is written into you. the thread of karma is sewn into you too tightly to remove. kama’s love (hatred) cannot outweigh mine. as humanity, you will live and be loved and i will not be separated.” This panic that Ritsu has been pushed into is a false result, a thoughtlessness, assuming that a half-mature Beast, embodying the Ooku or not, has enough power to adequately rend the universe.

(Ritsu argues it is a reasonable fear, when this venture all started with Kama taking everyone from them, it makes sense for it to end that way as well.) “I won’t let her win,” Ritsu mutters. They cling tightly to something that may or may not be perceptible. “But I’m scared. I don’t want...” They don’t know what it is they were going to end that sentence with. (Any of this, they don’t want any of this, they didn’t ask to carry humanity and they didn’t ask to be targeted. They didn’t ask to pay the price for someone else’s suffering redirected. They didn’t ask to be stripped of the people they always had at their side. Humanity is a social creature, after all.)

They don’t want it, but it’s their to deal with. Just like the lostbelts. (They remember the first, the difficulty of it like prying teeth, an exhausted hopelessness, and how this place is the same. Worse. They don’t know.) Beast hums. “you will not give up. that is humanity, that loved thing.“ No. They won’t. However much time here passes, however it dilates (it’s been a second. It’s been a day. They don’t know, or know if it matters).

"I won't give up. I still… need to get everyone back. And… Robin." That was the person they're missing. When their own name is up for debate and they can't focus, remember why they need Robin or where Robin has gone, they remember something like this person is necessary.

"yes. a shame, maybe, that kama does take all the fun out of everything." Petulant. Beast is mostly complaining emptily, for the sake of it, a vague lingering bitterness over a thing or two here. Even though vices are so endearing and fun, they can't have any fun with their Master in this place -- Kama really has taken all the love out of the universe, hm. 

(Beast is jealous at her very premise, too-- the universe will be me and the universe will love you (plural), it will love you (individual), excuse her but that position is not going to be given up easily!) “hmmm. you will have to put that command seal back once we return. what is the human phrase? to renew your vows.“ Ritsu manages to almost laugh at that near non-sequitur. It’s a distraction.

Ritsu’s head hurts. Still, it’s fine, it will be... [ ??? ]. They are [ ??? ]. Beast’s fingers smooth over their forehead as they murmur something or other, likely obtuse and ominous, but it eases the pain of mental corruption. (What does it matter who you are or what it is that made you need to fight, so long as you know with certainty that you will fight and you will win and you will not be isolated?)

From somewhere, a faint call that Ritsu can’t hear but makes Beast’s ears prick. Their attention is dragged somewhere, though the hold on Ritsu doesn’t lessen. “scheherazade, that poor fearfulness, is calling for you.” A pause, as Ritsu slowly draws themselves together. “...i am tempted to keep you for myself. as irritating as it is to feel that a gnat like beast iii has a point.”

“Bad joke.”

“mouuu, have faith in your servant having my lord’s interests at heart. i would not go through on it.”

Uh-huh. “Do you know where she is? I can’t move here.” She’s probably scared, too. They’ll have to go find her. Ritsu feels Beast nod and they’re tugged to go somewhere (are they? Without gravity, it’s hard to tell, they can only tell they changed some kind of orientation and direction). A gentle tug toward somewhere, where after time (again, they do not know how long, as if they fade in and out of awareness of their own self) slowly, slowly, Scheherazade comes into focus, dimly lit by her lanterns and with Mata Hari clinging to her arm.

Scheherazade smiles, relieved. “I’ve set up a safe field here. Are you alright, Ritsu?”

A moment to evaluate, a nod. (They do not recognize that name she uses.) “Yeah. Don’t worry about me.”

[iheartjosiebean]

Earlier this year I sought out traditional mental health support, and, unsurprisingly (to me anyway) it didn’t really go anywhere. My therapist wasn’t particularly engaging and on the 3rd session (keep in mind the 1st was just a diagnostic assessment) basically said she can’t make me participate, because I had solved my initial problem on my own when I felt like I wasn’t getting the support I’d hoped for. To her, I seemed to be doing better.

Since then I found out about a different kind of program called the Pleasure Eating Process. It deals specifically with shifting habits from binge eating and emotional eating toward eating for pleasure. You can enjoy food, any food, in whatever amount feels good to you without discomfort, or guilt, or shame. Because you’re dealing with your feelings instead of eating them, and you’re showing up for yourself in your body and treating it as the sacred vessel it is so you... stop eating beyond comfort and pleasure. I’ve always been intrigued by the concept of intuitive eating, and I’ve always felt like the completely unstructured nature of traditional therapy offers too many choices. This seems like a clear path to deal with my shit in a really tangible way. Plus I’ve been lurking in a free-content facebook group for a few months and thought it was worth investing in.

We’re encouraged to journal for the course and this might as well be a private journal because very few people read this and the ones I know irl (OK, not plural, just one person) I would openly share this shit with anyway.

One of the questions from today’s lesson was asking how overeating and excess weight serves you. What does it do for you? What’s the incentive to continue like this?

I mean, OK, I’ve decided it is NOT worth it to keep on like this, hence the course. I also wanna offer up a disclaimer that incoming thoughts and beliefs about my body are my own. I’m a believer in health at any size, and beyond that, it’s not any of my business whether someone is healthy or not, or what size they are, or if those things have anything to do with each other. I’m not here to shame anyone of any size, fitness level, or perception of or actual health.

A few years ago I was being sexually harassed by my supervisor on the regular. It was very covert, with heavy mindfuckery and gaslighting. I found myself gaining a few pounds. He’d admonish me if he came by my office and I was snacking, because “you’re always eating and that’s not good.” He’d laugh it off, but he still said something so... it mattered. I now had incentive to eat, and gain weight, because he creeped me out and if he found my form unappealing and caught me regularly defying him, maybe he’d leave me the fuck alone. Overeating felt like resistance. When he left the job (following confrontation that he was making female coworkers uncomfortable and they finally said something, go figure) I lost nearly 10 pounds effortlessly.

I’ve never really been someone who’s been bullied for being “fat” at any size I’ve been. People ask if I’m pregnant periodically, which I suppose is still pretty much saying that, but people don’t criticize what I eat, or concern-troll my health. I’m 200 pounds but I’m thin-enough-passing... or at least no one scrutinizes my habits for fear I'll die. I have thin-enough-privilege in that my size has never presented a barrier to me in any public or private spaces that I can remember.

BUT I’m big enough where I can blend in unnoticed. I’m invisible. I spiraled into exercise bulimia 10 years ago and got to 170 and then everyone fuckin’ noticed me. The attention was intoxicating, and terrifying. The return to invisibility has been like a security blanket. It was too much to maintain in every way, and I got tired - in my current form, it’s like I can just cozy up and take a nap.

There’s a certain (and I’m aware, false) comfort in self sabotage - when you succumb to the narrative “this is all you’ll ever be,” or “you get exactly what you deserve.” Overeating and carrying around a body out of balance feels like a punishment I deserve for, basically, being someone who just sucks. I’m terrified of looking deep at how I got down this well-worn path of shitty takes about myself, but I also know there’s no way out except back through it. And I sure as shit want off the path I’m on.

[thesunshinedissociation]

A Maria-Centric View of Our System

I realized this morning that my hope when I tell friends about our plurality is that they’ll assume they’ve been interacting with several of us and thus their feelings towards the presumed singlet will just be re-understood as towards at least several of us, if not the whole system. But also as far as I know we haven’t really told anyone how to tell us apart. So, from my point of view, here’s something of a description of each of us. (Thankfully, as far as I can tell, I have a nice spot in the system for this.) I’ll go from most to least active. 

Maria: Me. Self-description is probably the hardest, but as best I can tell, I’m the one who’s best able to get desires going. Especially for pleasure. Like, whereas the others will be very lost trying to find something they want, I can be somewhat hedonistic at times. I also do get a lot done, which is good since I also have a lot of energy and a really good tolerance for being alone.  Some people don’t seem to like me as much, especially after some of my more reckless decisions. (I just noticed my name is one letter away from mania...) Which has made me all the more aware of how okay I am with being alone. Also, I feel about fifteen years old inside, and it can be kinda scary at times since I still have the responsibilities of someone ten years older.  I used to be pretty bad on a stimulant addiction. Lately I’ve noticed I don’t like nicotine. My drug tolerance seems generally lower. But, I also don’t have anorexic tendencies, nor do I have money anxiety. On the other hand, the others don’t love my love of candy and snacks. Nor do they always love when I go on spending sprees. Oh well. At least I enjoy myself. (The near-constant physical pain is less pleasant. As is being constantly overheated. While I’m often derealized, that’s not so bad because it makes the world less scary. I feel myself as very real, which is nice. The distorted perceptions are weird but workable. The ability to give myself a buzz without drugs is really fun.) I imagine I’m usually pretty identifiable by my energy. I’m also more concerned with my aesthetic than most of the others, but my external appearance usually ends up at least somewhat chaotic. 

Natalia: The caretaker of the group. We’re really close, usually able to talk to each other at will, switch with each other almost at will, and when one of us come around, the other is rarely far away. She’s pretty protective of all of us, and has run into conflict a few times when keeping everyone away to keep us safe. Our roomates say she’s remarkably responsible. Which is fair; most of the stuff that has to get done like cleaning the house or putting food in one of the anorexic/depressive alters falls on her. Sadly, she’s not as good at having fun. But she says she’s usually content. Which, hey, if being caring is what makes her happy, that seems alright. I appreciate having someone around to keep me calm when things go awry. Hell, I wouldn’t be surprised if half of my coping skills were just to turn to her for help. She’s also usually pretty easy to identify by behavior alone, I imagine. Like, her primary drive is to take care of anyone she cares about. She usually keeps her appearance more tame, but it’s not super important. 

Victoria: Sometimes she can feel really great, but it’s pretty fragile. On any day she’s out, there’s a good chance she’s going to crash hard. Usually because she can’t handle being alone, and will very quickly suspect that she’s too socially inadequate to carry on. She’s also more isolated in the system, especially since her falling out with Natalia and Lizzie a few months ago. (But they weren’t very compatible to start with.)  I’m not sure how much she has going for her besides some attachment problems. Either her appearance will be too depressed to even wear clean clothes or else when she’s doing well socially (or when ego-inflated by other means) she’ll make herself as attractive as she can. Which makes sense given her felt need to be attractive. (Thank goodness we all reflect externally enough to keep track of all of our problems.) If you look at the DSM entry on BPD, all nine criteria fit her pretty well. Though also she’s often tormented by Natasha. Her access to the rest of the system is pretty bad; she’s especially prone to amnesia, and she’s a bit in denial, still.

Natasha: The arch-persecutor. She’s angry and violent, usually towards us. She doesn’t really trust anyone outside the system, so she abuses us to keep us safe from them. I can’t remember her fronting for a long enough period of time to really have much to say about how she acts outside.  We’re learning to work with her. I hope someday she can be okay. As much as we fight, I do care about her. I understand why she’s easy to dislike, though.

Jeanine: She’s a bit farther away from me in the system so I don’t know her very well. I can see the playlist she made for herself on Spotify is totally the most unique. (We all share one account, and most of us have playlists for ourselves.) She can be way more fight-y than most. I used to think she was just basically the protector that followed Jasmine, but she’s spent enough time out on her own that I’m not so sure. (While interactions go in all sorts of directions, I seem pretty close with Natalia, Jasmine with Jeanine, and Victoria with Natasha.) She’s not as mean as Natasha, not as self-assured as I or Natalia, not as responsible as Natalia, not as energetic as me, but she is nonetheless aggressive, energetic, self-assured, and responsible.  The hard rock/heavy metal section of our closet basically only exists for her.

Jasmine: The other teenager in the system. Except she’s also about as sad as Victoria. Thankfully instead of having outbursts, she’ll just glue herself to a couch and sleep for two weeks excepting when she absolutely has to get up. And even then, while most of us can pull it together for a social obligation (like, Victoria can attempt suicide, fail, and then go to work or a party or whatever), Jasmine will actually call off.  Which I guess means when we actually need a break for whatever reason, she is the best-equipped to handle it. She’s also either aro/ace or close to it, so she’s useful for romantic failure. Though the intensity of her platonic feelings can be a bit much. As I write this, I’m realizing who’s going to be handling all the writing we have to do. Hint: It’s mostly me, featuring Natalia. Victoria will help when she’s not crashing. Jeanine and Jasmine are less helpful since their life ambitions are more artistic than academic. (Which is another good hint as to who’s out: We don’t even have the same long term ambitions!) I’m pretty sure she’s still the only one with her hairstyle. It looks good, so I wouldn’t be surprised if someone else uses it sometimes. That said, she also easily puts the most effort into her appearance. (We make a good team, what with me having the will to buy nice clothes and her wanting to wear them. If only we got to be together more. Someday, hopefully.)

Emily: The child of the system. She’s seven years old, and she can’t talk. She also pretty much only comes out deep in the night or when there’s a fight. I imagine her childishness and silence is pretty identifiable. Everyone except maybe Natasha cares about her a lot. We do our best to take care of her, though admittedly we dream of someday someone else caring about her, too. Best I can tell, she’s stuck in a neverending flasback of trying to get help but finding nobody. I don’t know what trauma she’s holding, and I’m a little intimidated by the idea of finding out.

Lizzie: She used to be out more, I think. She wanted to get into politics and redirected our life in that direction for a bit. We all call her the bleeding heart of the group, though she’s less into the direct and forceful caring like Natalia and more into standing up for people and being a force for more widespread good. She also had quite the incident a few months ago in the inner world with Natalia and Victoria. She stopped coming out as much as Natalia picked up where she left off. Someone else will have to fill in more on her.

Olivia: She’s not out much, but also I know she feels pretty good about herself. Probably at least as good as I do about myself. She used to use our legal name, though mostly because she felt the most strongly connected with it. Like, she said for once she actually felt like that person. We realized her using that name is super confusing, though, and led people to think she’s the “core”, “original”, or otherwise the One Alter Worth Saving. Which is, on the one hand, just false. Maybe she was the first, but maybe Emily was! Or maybe I was! All being first means though is being the first one to form out of the not-yet-unified infant mind. If we ever do fuse, that will be removing the barriers between us, not destroying any of us. But that’s like putting a jigsaw puzzle together--there’s no “core piece” of a puzzle that all the others fuse to.  Anyway, I don’t know her super well because she’s not very active, inside or out. So I’m tapping into stuff from like six months ago. But hey, if we do get her out, she does at least know how to handle the social professional world pretty well. Or maybe her confidence and assertiveness just works to her advantage in our current setting.

Marina: Last seen in September, she’s not out much, and she’s incredibly intense. She’s closest to me, and I don’t see much of her. I imagine if I’m in dire need of someone to unleash hell outwardly, she might pop in? She really doesn’t like the system as a whole and will actively thwart others’ efforts. I think ever since I stopped being so apathetic towards the others she hasn’t had her chance to come out, since usually we’d tag team, me taking advantage of the system and her just destroying it. Now I take care of ourselves. (Maybe someone else will have a better view of her, though. Maybe I’m wrong about being closest with her.)

Adrianna: She hasn’t been around much lately, though she used to be. Only one who had to have a name assigned to her since her self-esteem is so low she wouldn’t give herself one. (She called herself “nameless” in our notebook. And if it wasn’t clear from the Olivia paragraph, some of us are trying to actually run this system instead of continuing the complete chaos that came from having a mysterious personality roulette for years.) I don’t remember her super well. I think she’s a bit more of a pushover than anyone else, at least. Like, Victoria may get attached, but she does at least know how to speak up for herself. Adrianna is good enough at handling troubling emotions to stay functional while keeping her suffering hidden. Though she does talk to us a lot when she’s out. 

Angelica: I know she exists, because she made a note of it in our notebook, but I don’t really know her. Not around much, to my knowledge.

-Maria

[realityebooks]

Unlocking Shapely Design Of Night’s Mane: 14 Truths For Success, Wellness, Bliss

By Santosh Jha

A legendary poet, known for, or rather notorious for his playfulness with words and self-possessed interpretations of realism, says –

... fresh, breezy, dark, a fragrant shadow...

gets horizoned over the land and water...

... in how very tough and complicated ways,

my poetries unlock the shapely design of night’s mane...!

Somehow, the toughest part of human acquisition and his or her passion for attainments is the gigantic vastness of the world we live in and the cosmos beyond our reach, always egging every individual to keep stretching his or her endeavors to reach at more, even while in awe of the infinity of realism... Still, when a person stands in this plane of emotions and entangled imaginative brilliance, even this infinity becomes a suffocatingly restrictive space and domain...!

There is such a small and stupidly negligible value and worth of a human being, when he or she stands in front of the colossal probabilities of life’s randomizations and resultant chaos and confusion. Still, a poet, an artist a person endowed with the faculty of emotional imaginations, is damn happy playing with these chaos and confusions...

Human inventiveness and symmetrical artistry of playful-metaphorization of life’s confusion and chaos into something meaningfully and intuitively enjoyable, in time-space situationality is sheer joy.

Very few, actually fewer than the word ‘few’ could ever describe, have this endowment and evolved faculty of the mastery of this artistry for playfulness with all things random, infinite, ephemeral, conflational and chaotic... And, as someone gets it, his or her playfulness becomes an attainment, only he or she can sing and dance to...

Life offers an unending list of material and immaterial attainments. Cultures extend another list of life’s utility and worth. The contemporary worldview sneaks in yet another list of ‘karma’ and life’s possessions... However, an artist of playfulness of probabilities has his or her own singular agenda of worth, utilities, attainments, possessions, and karma.

As the poet above said, to unlock the shapely design of night’s mane, is some playfulness of probabilities, is something no worldly list includes as of any worth and utility. Still, this playfulness of probabilities and its randomizations engender a pool of joy and satisfaction, which itself is beyond the definition of infinite and colossal...

The wise has said, “The greatest wonder of the world is that the very attainer of all attainments of life itself is mortal, even then, everyone spends his or her whole life in mad and unlimited possession of these mortal attainments, gleefully and playfully forgetting the fact about his or her own mortality and this randomized probability of the mortality.”

The few, who have this faculty of emotional imaginations, understand and accept this core and critical reality and then, they rise above this and opt for the playfulness of this very probability of randomized mortality. This mortality itself becomes the subject and object of all karma, and then everything sings and dances... the joys ride the core energy of the randomized probabilities of mortality... this playfulness for that song and dance of emotional imaginations stands out as the singular karma...

**

Truth, in its perceptional ‘51Shades of Grey and Blues’, seems always standing in the peripheral extremities of actionable mainstream of human life and living… The centerstage of theatre of life-living keeps staging the play of ‘fruition of futilities’… That is probably why truthfulness of realism misses the due and righteous attention… Why…?

Often, as it seems, truth is least interested in competing for ‘Recognition’ and ‘Market Space’. Therefore, it loses out to fancifulness of the charm and charisma of falsehood as well as synthetic realism… Also, it seems, truth is Unemotionally Objective and Boringly Impersonal and therefore seems to naturally be a loser to emotionally subjective ‘perceptions’, which is a fabulous lover and pampers the ‘I’ with its voluptuousness of personal charms…!

Science as well as spiritualism commonly accepts that truthfulness of realism is not an external entity; it is rather inside human brain and its plexus of processes. Had truthfulness of realism been an external thing, a single person could have manufactured it in a mega factory and distributed it to 8 billion people, equally and in enough measure; very well like a smart phone. But, we all know, truthfulness of realism is Internalized Entity – an enterprise for every individual…

However, there is a scientific, objective and singular mechanism and process, by which everyone can launch his or her personal enterprise of deciphering and installing his or her truthfulness of realism… But then, it is a boring process and does not have any charm… Nobody goes to a doctor for health and wellness; they only seek medicines as cures for illness. Doctors know it and they seldom talk, just write medicines. It is the charming thing… Truthfulness of realism is health-wellness, which is made to stand in peripheral extremities as the medicine plays its charm and charisma at the centerstage of theatre of life-living…

Similarly, personal-poise and internal-wellness loses out to rituals and external enterprises of spiritualism, as billions of men and women find larger utility in spending moneys, time and energies in external-tangible ‘spiritual-deliveries’ by celebrity saints and spiritualists… Truth, in its perceptional ‘51Shades of Grey and Blues’, always stands in the peripheral extremities of actionable mainstream of human life and living…!

**

There are Realities, which doesn’t come natural and innately to average person. The ‘Truth’ probably has no inclination to seek ‘fans’ and ‘followers’. The seeker may also not be obsessed about truth. Truth is everywhere and manifesting in all things around us. One does not need to strive and labor for unraveling and attainment of truth and reality. One just has to be in receptive mode consciousness. One just has to be aware of oneself in peaceful and poised consciousness. Truth is just sitting there, with we all. There are simple truths and realities all around us. Some of them are being listed below –

1. The world we live in is huge and complex, beyond our imaginations and this is why, life is not meant to be easy. Still, we have successfully dealt with all complexities and troubles of life, as we are the best problem solver of the universe. However, this facility does not come automatic to us; it needs understanding the mechanism of life and living and persevered practice.

2. Most of what we see and experience is usually neutral, neither out-rightly good nor bad. This world is not our theatre of good or bad. We are the theatre of what good or bad happen to us.

3. Problems are usually, just the positioning or situation of some elements of our immediate and ambient physical and emotional environment. The solution cannot be outside the elements, which constitute a problem. Often, solutions are just an alternative arrangement of the same elements within a problem.

4. We have the mechanism for solving problems brilliantly but, it works best when we are not in our instinctive ‘reactive-mode’ but in ‘receptive-mode’. The receptive-mode mind-consciousness is our subjective consciousness, which is the doorstep of our true intelligence – the problem solver. We need to assess a problem not with ‘reactive-mode’, but ‘receptive-mode’ consciousness.

5. This subjective consciousness is the great facility and a definitive edge for humanity, putting us on top of all other species on Earth. However, this subjective consciousness is also the single largest source of most troubles as it is usually overly “dressed-up” and burdened by the cultural-fabrics of archetypal and popular ‘learning’. We need to ‘undress’ our subjective mind consciousness, through the process of ‘unlearning’, as we grow and mature.

6. We have attained great success in mechanical and tangible matters, because of the singularity and objectivity of procedures. In emotional, inter-personal and intangible matters, we have most troubles as we always have plural, subjective and opinion-based procedures. That is why, to be equally successful in later domain, the key elements are tolerance, acceptance and compassion as it allows a holistic-assimilative-integrative mind-consciousness. This works best in the later domain where singularity is calamitous, unlike the former domain where singularity is a virtue.

7. Often, an individual’s decision about right and wrong, good and bad is based on very localized factors of ambient culture. This often ‘dresses-up’ a problem. If one accepts the utility of wider and larger environment, in deciding a value, one shall have larger objectivity. This shall help in seeing a problem in universal perspective, enabling better and quick solutions.

8. Our brain is a genius of solutions but it has its limitations. The larger mechanism of brain is instinctive, an auto-mode functioning, where an individual’s subjective consciousness has little control. We need to learn through disciplined practice, the art of reigning in our instincts and subject it to as much assimilative-integrative referrals as possible. This checks intuitive ‘dressing-up’ of day-to-day problems of life.

9. The decision-making process of mind is affected by multiplicity of factors and even we cannot know which factor prevailed over others in deciding in favor or against a situation. The conscious mind is a small space in mind compared to huge subconscious domain. We need to learn the art of ‘unlearning’ to prune our subconscious mind of unproductive and archetypal benchmarks, to ‘undress’ a problem at hand.

10. There is a state of mind-consciousness, which is greatly helpful in attaining this position, which undresses problems and arrives at naked solutions. This state has broad four elements – non-discrimination, tolerance and non-aggression, non-obsession for self-gratification and openness for new knowledge and wisdom.

11. Solutions are essentially a state of mind positioning. The best state of mind is ‘innocence’. This innocence in adult is very different from that in a child. In kids, it is unconsciously engendered out of purity of ‘ignorance’, whereas in adults, it is a conscious creation of ‘wisdom’. Adults attain it after a long process of ‘unlearning’, whereas for kids, it is a natural reward of ‘not learning’.

12. This innocence in adults is referred as ‘The State of Zero’, the state of quintessential readiness, the state of ‘Nisprih’ beingness. When it happens; all good and cherished ideals of humanity fall in your lap, they fill your being. It embodies all goodness – honesty, innocence, transparency, selflessness and egolessness and above all the compassion.

13. This innocence, the state of zero, leads you to the ultimate empowerment of self – The Ability to Forgive. When forgiveness becomes the first instinct, it is a sure sign that the stage of readiness has been attained.

14. This state of mind-consciousness accepts very little ‘problems’ and needs very few ‘Solutions’. This is a mind-consciousness, where you accept nothing – no pride, no self, no ego, no ‘I’ and you give everything as you forgive.

*****

About Santosh Jha

📷

Author, Poet, Journalist, Confabulator

I may have written 47 eBooks but I believe, I am more an affectionate and compassionate confabulator, not truly a writer in traditional sense of the term. It is a joy to talk to people, share ideas and learn/unlearn mutually. All my writings, be it fiction or non-fiction, are about the 3Cs – Consciousness, Cognition and Causality, in the light of this new wisdom of holism – a fruitful mix of old and new knowledge of humanity. I write to share ideas hovering around the 3Cs to help empower you, which then automatically translates into your larger life-living wellness and personal excellence. I believe, success of a writing enterprise is not in how many books you sell, but in how many different ways your writings can help others. This is why, very consciously, all my writings are FREE and I wish them to be very helpful.

**

Author Page: Find my eBooks (fiction and non-fiction), ALL of them FREE at: https://www.smashwords.com/profile/view/SantoshJha

** Also FREE at Google Play, Google Books, apple iTunes, Nook Books, Kobo, free-ebooks.net, etc.

***

[theliterateape]

Grappling with Postmodernism in a Post-Trump America

by Don Hall

“...modernism is the assertion that truth can be known definitively. Postmodernism is the assertion that truth can never be known definitively; it can only be guessed at and approximated, at best.” - Mark Manson

Remember, back in the good old days before the country elected the most improbably unelectable bully with the propensity to lie about, well, fucking everything, when Stephen Colbert made the satirical argument about “truthiness”? How we all laughed?

Truthiness is the belief or assertion that a particular statement is true based on the intuition or perceptions of some individual or individuals, without regard to evidence, logic, intellectual examination, or facts.

At the time this was Colbert’s comic take on postmodernism. It is now not quite so funny because those on the fringes of our body politic are full-on postmodernists without the wink of isn’t this kind of ridiculous?

The entire Trump strategy of contesting the election is postmodernist. “We believe there was voter fraud so it must be there.” Never mind a lack of evidence. That predisposed intuition is enough to launch investigations and lawsuits and, whether any evidence is found, the gut assertion will be embedded.

Modernism came around during the Enlightenment. Modernists argued that our understanding of reality could be improved upon through experimentation, observation, and reason. It arose as a response to the superstitions and control of the Church and placed science and quantifiable data as a replacement for faith.

Postmodernism was faith fighting back. Absent of a tether to a god or religious dogma, it simply posited that nothing was really true and that science is merely a tool for subjective focus. Tear down science and collected data and all you have left is faith.

The 75 million plus who voted Blue in this election are socialist.

The 71 million plus who voted Red in this election are racist.

Joe Biden is a Trojan horse for the Extreme Left.

Donald Trump was a dictator.

Zoomers just live in their parents’ basements and loot at any chance.

Boomers are greedy, angry supporters of caging immigrant children.

All white people are racist.

All black people are violent.

All men are fundamentally misogynist.

All women are fundamentally misandrist.

Twitter is an accurate reflection of the vast plurality of opinions.

None of these statements is rooted in fact. All smack of ‘truthiness.’

The #NotAll_____ responses to postmodern hashtags are not an agreement to the contrary but a another way of saying Generalizations are mostly bullshit.

In a recent Literate ApeCast, with guest Peter Kremidas, the question was whether or not politics are fundamentally emotional. Of course, I argued that it should not be but failed to recognize that, in a postmodernist view, politics has to be based upon emotion and lived experience. In a postmodernist worldview, emotion and political activism are irrevocably intertwined.

Donald Trump should’ve been repudiated but he most certainly was not. He lost the election but by a slim margin (four million votes equals a whopping 1.25% of the population which ain’t much no matter how you slice it and definitely not a repudiation). Trumpism is still alive and well and the only aspect of our cultural and political climate equal in postmodern practice to that is the Woke Cult. Both truck in ‘lived experience,’ anecdotal evidence over data, and a belief that their belief is enough to be their truth as opposed to the truth.

Both rely almost entirely in suspension of rationality for the raw emotion so easily fooled.

“Stop the count except for the states I’m ahead in” is only slightly different logic than “White people who deny their racism are too fragile to acknowledge it.”

Sure, social media has exacerbated this postmodern truthiness but we’re mostly grown ass adults and are wholly responsible for our own perspectives.

I remember in the early days of the pandemic (what was that — last week?) when those predisposed to believe the whole thing was a hoax and eagerly lapping up the cat vomit of faux scientists claiming it to be so. When asked why I thought it was real, I always answered exactly the same way: “I listen to the consensus of credible scientists on the matter. That consensus of credible scientists indicates the pandemic is real and will have real consequences should we ignore it.”

I think, after staring in awe at what I used to label mouthbreathing stupidity, I understand the rise of this adherence to postmodern thought: it feels like religion without a deity. One can feel virtuous, understood, and supported by a community of like-minded believers by buying into the self affirmation that one need not listen to expertise but ‘go with your gut’ and let the chips fall.

The postmodernist wants to believe that a Trump voter is racist and sexist. A modernist looks at the data, sees that prior to the 2016 election four million manufacturing jobs were eliminated in Ohio, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, and Michigan to be replaced by industrial automation. And those voters cast their ballots for the candidate who want to “Make America Great” rather than the one who told them “America is already great.”

A postmodernist boils whole systems and groups into easily digestible categories. A modernist understands how complicated people are and does some research to find context. Context is the garlic to the postmodernist vampire.

I know our education system needs attention and so many of us are reticent to do any sort of homework but in a media landscape where one can type in “Weight Loss Techniques” into a search field and receive hundreds of thousands of conflicting, contradictory ideas, maybe some homework is exactly what is necessary.

A couple of rules of thumb I’ve learned to follow in the past four or five years:

If I read it on social media, best to assume it’s bullshit.

If the belief is not backed up by data, it’s bullshit.

If a politician says it without supporting evidence, it’s bullshit.

If it’s full of ‘buzzwords’ (intersectionality, freedom of religion, freedom of speech, TERF, fragility), it’s bullshit.

Anything boiled down to a hashtag carries sacks of bullshit in it’s wake.

Example: This week Secretary of State Pompeo was asked about the transition from Trump to Biden. His exact words were:

‘There Will Be a Smooth Transition…to a Second Trump Administration’

Of course, the media went apeshit. It was another example of corruption, of evil, of obstruction. So I went and watched the video. He was obviously making a joke. Not a great joke given the circumstances but it’s very apparent his comment was tongue-in-cheek.

I’m a modernist. Why not join me and stop being lead by your emotional need for faith? To grapple with postmodernism one must acknowledge what a crock of bullshit it is and then recognize the signs that you are following that perspective like the lunatic fringe.

Then do some fucking research. Christ, we have the most sophisticated information technology in history, so you have no excuse.

[wcrmtale-blog]

001. BASICS.

FULL NAME. Peter Douglas Pettigrew

NICKNAME. Pete, Wormtail, Wormy, Dougie (but very specifically only by certain aunts)

BIRTHDAY.  May 21st, 1960

GENDER. Cisgender male

SEXUALITY. Questioning (bisexual)

RELATIONSHIP STATUS. Single

SPOKEN LANGUAGES. English, some poor Latin retention from Hogwarts

ACCENT. All Sheffield, dropping his h’s, making his u’s into uh’s, contorting vowels and dropping plurals, turning behind into be-yind. Pete himself tends to insert plenty of speech breaks, liberally peppered with filler words (all those good ums and ahs), though his sentences tend to blur together rather than having an audible period/pause after every idea. Peter’s a notorious mumbler, always checking himself to try and chin up and speak a little more defined so he and his conversational partner don’t have to play the painful ‘can you repeat that?’ game.

BIRTHPLACE. Sheffield, South Yorkshire, England

ASTROLOGICAL SIGN. Taurus/Gemini cusp. One of the Earth signs, Taurus has a reputation for being a grounded sign, less hotheaded and more reliable and practical than others. A Taurus can be committed to the point of stubbornness and often finds fulfillment in utility. However, Taurus is very susceptible to possessiveness and insecurity and is very resistant to sudden change; criticism hits hard and when a Taurus is in an unhealthy mental state, a great majority of their emotions can be reliant on the people they are surrounded by. What a Taurus wants more than anything is stability and purpose; without these things, the ground feels shaky underneath their feet and can send them spiraling to find a way to fulfill those needs.

EX-HOGWARTS HOUSE. Gryffindor

PATRONUS. Brown rat

BOGGART. An ever changing beast that’s seen many variations. The current most popular switches between two variations of failure -- one in failing in his duty to the Order and Albus Dumbledore himself dishonorably discharging him, the other in facing the rest of the Marauders and finding that none of them remember him. Had Pete been exposed circa his second year at Hogwarts, it would have likely been Minerva Mcgonagall (brilliant, impatient, terrifying). 

BLOOD STATUS. Pureblood

ALLIED WITH. Order of the Phoenix

FACECLAIM. Charlie Heaton

002. PHYSICAL TRAITS.

HAIR COLOUR & STYLE. Ashy brown, it’s thin but there’s a lot of it, which makes tangling a nightmare if he doesn’t stay on top of it. The current style is grown out of a childhood bowl cut and the now-longer layers tend to piece together around his face and over his eyes. Peter hates how it looks tucked behind his ears too much to keep it out of the way like that, leading to frequent little jerky movements of his head intended to force his hair back into place for a few minutes at a time. The gesture is hardly a graceful one and sometimes he doesn’t bother; all the easier to hide behind.

EYE COLOUR. Dark brown

COMPLEXION. Pale, sunburns at the drop of a hat

ETHNICITY. Caucasian

HEIGHT. 1.71 m (5′6 ft)

PHYSIQUE. Skinny in the way any post-adolescent boy retaining his metabolism is, a little soft in the stomach where late night stress snacking is just beginning to catch up with him. Narrow shoulders, lines more round than sharp, a body used to having to look up to people.

TATTOOS. N/A

PIERCINGS. N/A

CLOTHING & STYLE. Lots of denim, plenty of layers (jackets, jumpers, undershirts, even when it’s warmer out), single-minded dedication to old white trainers that are worn until the bottoms run through. An especially well loved Gryffindor jumper that gets the most use out of all of them. Brown beanies tugged down over red-tipped ears, thick woolen socks with warming threads sewn into the toes. Henley shirts, red or navy and usually with a flannel thrown over the top. A preference for long sleeves and full length pants that suggests a lack of desire to shown off one’s body – in fact, quite the opposite.

MANNERISMS. Darting eyes hopping between every member of a conversation and a few on the outside, not missing anything. Shoulders hunched up around the ears, a laugh that hesitates, always looking for someone else’s laughter to confirm that it’s warranted. Rubbing hands together in the cold, shifting from foot foot when idle, tucking chin close to chest and curling in on himself. Thumbing repetitively at the filter of a cigarette, always blowing smoke down instead of out. Grabbing at items in his pocket and squeezing them tight. Flinching instinctively when someone approaches too fast, even if that someone is a friend.

HABITS. A nervous fidgeter, all leg bouncing and picking at nails until his cuticles are raw, barely conscious he’s doing it. A semi-conscious chewer too; plastic spoons and straws tend to get caught up in his mouth for an hour after he’s done with them, same with the ends of zippers or the tops of pens. Classic stress eater, often climbing out of bed late at night to dig a snack out of the fridge or from under his bed. Peter drinks milk from of the carton and eats ice cream out of the tub; spoons macaroni into his mouth from the pot rather than into a bowl first and snatches bacon right from the pan, absentmindedly sucking his fingers clean after. His friends are more than used to that specific longing look that means he wants something from your plate but is too polite to ask for it. Pete hums constantly when he’s alone (or thinks he is), especially in the shower. Kicks off his shoes and tucks his feet up to his chest on big enough chairs and couches, never unties the laces on his trainers. Tends to make faces when he makes eye contact with himself a mirror. Prefers to sleep in his Animagus form if it’s safe enough that no one isn’t in the know will burst into his bedroom. After he’s been standing for more than ten minutes at a time, he starts leaning into things: doorframes, walls, tables, Remus...

003. PERSONALITY TRAITS & TYPES.

POSITIVE. PERCEPTIVE, ADAPTABLE, UNOBTRUSIVE, CONSIDERATE, EMPATHETIC, LOGICAL, PATIENT

NEGATIVE. AWKWARD, ANXIOUS, WITHDRAWN, WILLFULLY GULLIBLE, INDECISIVE, SELF-CRITICAL, DEPENDENT

HOBBIES & INTERESTS. Novels, particularly sci-fi. Any kind of new music, muggle and wizard bands alike. Some light art, he doesn’t credit himself with being anything but a doodler but he’s actually got an eye for landscapes and buildings. There’s a newly acquired interest in gardening that’s just recently begun to creep in there as well. 

INSECURITIES. Hoo boy.. his physicality: what he looks like, what his strengths are (or more specifically, aren’t. He’s well aware he isn’t exactly toned). His learning ability: everything he struggled to retain in school, how much longer it takes him to pick up most new magic compared to his peers. His personality: how awkward he is at conversation or cracking jokes, how boring he can physically hear himself being every time he talks to another person, how little he has to say about himself that’s interesting or engaging. His roots: entirely unremarkable, the kind of generic that no one remembers. His friends: how easy it would be for them to drop him, how many other vastly more interesting, funny, charming people there are that could take his place, how much more dedicated he fears they are to each other compared to him. Himself in comparison to everyone around him: encompassing all of these previous fears.

MBTI TYPE. ISFP; introverted, sensing, feeling, percieving.  

ENNEAGRAM TYPE. Type Two - The Helper

MORAL ALIGNMENT. True Neutral

TEMPERAMENT. Melancholic

DEADLY SIN. Sloth

004. THIS OR THAT.

INTROVERT OR EXTROVERT?

OPTIMIST OR PESSIMIST?

LEADER OR FOLLOWER?

CONFIDENT OR SELF-CONSCIOUS?

CAUTIOUS OR CARELESS?

PASSIONATE OR APATHETIC?

BOOK SMARTS OR STREET SMARTS?

COMPLIMENTS OR INSULTS?

COLD HANDS OR WARM HEART?

005. ASSOCIATIONS.

COLOURS. Washed out colors; pale reds and oranges and piney greens like a chilly landscape under late autumn rain. Dusty brown, like cooking chocolate or dead leaves. The dingey off-white of something well-worn. Once blazing scarlet and gold, sported long after the brilliance of the color has faded. The translucent blue of shallow veins.

WORDS. Hesitant, shuffling, sniffle, blink, curl, small, nibble, snort, resigned, surprised – ‘woah!’, ‘sure’, ‘i s’pose…’

SCENT. Wet wool, dusty books, lived in skin and no cologne, tobacco lingering in hair from his and Sirius’ cigarettes, ash in a fireplace the morning after. Rich earth, a smell like the word ‘verdant’, like Hestia in the greenhouse.

TASTE. A Pepper-Up potion on a cold day, a rolled up slice of plain wheat bread for a meal while on watch, leftovers just a little off from one too many reheating charms, the burn of alcohol forced down, a meaningless kiss from years ago, joining the rest he can count on one hand.

SOUND. Chaotic conversation while playing observer in the Common Room, all laughter and chatter and friendly lobbed insults. His mother’s favorite songs from the 50′s playing every Sunday morning, the church bells on the walk through town. The confident lilt of James’ voice, the steady cadence of Remus’. Click, pressing play on his Walkman, different from the click-sht of a lighter. A hard sniff, the choked noise of holding back louder tears. The shuffling of sheets and the squeak of mattress coils in a quiet room late at night, turning over and over trying to find a comfortable spot.

MAGIC. Convenience, practicality, repetition. Sneaking off to drill himself again and again until it finally sticks. The giddy rush of that first Patronus, the sheer triumph of that first transformation. Three unregistered Animagi, a law worth breaking, the boy worth breaking it for.

WEATHER. Autumn, cool and overcast. Curling up on the couch in sun beams sneaking through the window, the most satisfying naps he can remember. Dead leaves crunching underfoot walking through the courtyard, going out of his way to step on them. Summer, always a little damp under long sleeves, dizzy and overheated. The heaviness in spring air when rain is on the horizon.

FEELING. Anticipation, queasy anxiety, wanting to reach out and holding back instead. The dread of approaching a classroom without assigned work ready, the exhilaration of cheering on the winning team, the sensation of always having to walk a little faster to keep up. The darker pleasure of seeing someone else be the butt of the joke. The guilty undercurrent of worry watching a close friend laughing with someone else. The guiltier undercurrent of resentment. Wanting. Doubting. Reminiscing. A distant crush from childhood that never quite goes away. The comfort of being touched by someone you care about, an arm around the shoulders, a hand ruffling your hair. The old fears that only get bigger – of not being enough, of never having been enough.

MEMORY. Learning to ride a bike and a broom the same summer, coughing a fit at his first cigarette. Nervously wiping hands on his trousers before shaking Remus’ hand, their first time on the Hogwarts Express. Watching James on the Quidditch Pitch, like trying to stare head-on at the sun. One period of grace when even Sirius felt like a close friend, when everything was right, when school never needed to end. 

TOUCH. Damp earth clinging to the soles of bare feet, goosebumps on bare skin. Sliding on a jumper with nothing underneath.  Pale grey and soft to the touch, a tiny heart trembling under thin skin. Chocolate Frogs melting onto finger tips. Sirius giving him a joking pinch to the cheek, a hard clap on the back, the pain sore and sweet all at once.

[enchantedzuyorker]

SMASH CIV

The issue of civilization and its real nature during the whole period of history and especially the latest years holds a prominent position amongst the self announced radical anarchist circles. Various analyses and perspectives have been expressed and we are certain that many more will be expressed during this age, where technology, more and more inaccessible to the average citizen reveals even more its side that has to do with the management and the conservation of the present order of things. The economic flurries and intensification of class stratification limited the role of technology in the daily life of the simple citizen to systems of control, security systems and in a torturing consuming withdrawal syndrome, as they watch technology contribute to the development of new products, they are not able to obtain them anymore, now helplessly with empty pockets observing them in the windows of stores or TV screens.

So certainly, what is expected in the upcoming years is an antiscientific and anti-technological delirium by the economically weaker classes since technology from affectionate and compassionate mother became a shrew that abandoned her children to their fate intervening only for their restriction and the aggravation of their economic predicament. A nostalgia for the older years will flourish, when the scientific specialization wasn’t so widespread and the goods of technology were more accessible for the hoi polloi. When the scientific terms didn’t need a five year studying and postgraduate studies to be understood. But let’s leave all this for later.

What is the renowned civilization? Most approaches present it as the technological totalitarianism and the violent capitalist rationalization. Others refer to the techno-industrial system and the big urban zones which base on the objectification and the repeatedly exploitation of the natural world. Others having a primitivist base refer to the development of authoritarian structures and ways of organization of the people in specific geographic areas that extended, conquering and ravaging communities in harmony with the natural environment. Certainly civilization is all of these and many more that nullify the root of the above perceptions. If we don’t want to confine ourselves in a superficial interpretation of the western civilization, being the most prevalent, we ought to proceed to the admittance that civilization existed since almost always. It was created by the first attempts of the human to cope with the natural alienation. Mayans also had civilization. The nomadic tribes of Africa had civilization. The Natives in America had civilization. Also the tribes of the Amazon have civilization. Even the so called “uncivilized” by the west have a different civilization, which the west feels compelled to annihilate as so to ensure its own survival since any civilization when developing simultaneously with another constitutes a thorn that must be removed.

Civilization built on uniformity is impossible to accept a different culture or a different way of life, even if this is uniform. Pluralism of opinions inside a civilization can only be something seeming. Questioning is acceptable only when it doesn’t question the fixed values that ensure the development of the civilized culture. In our society Christianity can be questioned but not the faith in something superior in itself. Democracy can be questioned but not the political management of the movements of the rabble. There are standards on which cohesion and coexistence are validated, which don’t accept the slightest questioning and when they start to creak it is a sign of decadence and collapse for the edifice. This creak could be caused by the invasion of new moral perceptions and existential values that their exponents proving there is an alternative way of life beyond the given, set under questioning the basic traditions which for years constituted pillars of the big roof under which the crowd was concentrated. This is why racism is an inherent part of every mass society. The hate of the Greeks against the immigrants is completely justified if we consider the ruptures these people could bring by just breathing.

How does the most merciful Jesus, for whom so much blood has been spilt, allow to the heathens to breathe? And vice versa of course. Regardless if the full pockets in periods of consuming plenty constitute a useful distraction, being a common cultural element of the puddle that the herd hides in its soul. So we observe, that civilization is in no case global regarding the forms it can take. On the contrary, the differences of civilizations can be so chaotic that can justify all genocides, slaughters, annihilations and destructions throughout history. So if we want, to speak about the human civilization and not about the forms it has taken throughout history we will have to look for the related elements between these civilizations and analyze them.

The par excellence related element on which each civilization and society has been founded is the domination of the collective imaginary. The sphere of the collective imaginary includes morality, culture, perception, communication, reality, truth and the spirit which condition a civilization. We could say that civilization is the consolidation of a herd, the stabilization of its interior. The creation of some unquestionable values which ensure the social cohesion and the continuous adherence to the dominant collective imaginary. The so called traditions, which rarely receive a radical questioning that leads to the crisis of the edifice, whereas whichever alteration usually needs work of many years and generations. The most possible thing is that these traditions, which give a specific identity to the crowd who is under the roof of a civilization, will have very few common contact points.

The common point which would help us discuss about civilization in its entirety cannot be looked for in terms such as “anthropocentrism”, “rationalist domination”, “scientific dogma” and “objectification of the natural world” because all of these existing situations characterize the western monstrosity and not all the facets of civilization. The word that could give us ground for the conduct of dialogues on the total questioning of civilization, beyond the domination of the collective imaginary, is “systematization”.  Systematization is something much more than institutionalized rights, method of management of human resources and conversion of subjective thoughts into objective communication. Systematization expresses the gregarious need for setting a common, rational, global course. If we verge on the matter of systematization historically we will see that it has its roots at the dawn of the first organized societies, where humans facing a hostile towards them natural world, which included the survival of the fittest, were forced to confederate into herds claiming their own share of life. Though the passage from the stage of natural alienation to the one of social demanded some retreat of the individual in favor of the mass and the further development of the herd instincts.

Society, as to consolidate, develop civilization and annihilate its contradictions ought to subjugate to a system which would call “truth”. Truth, whichever form it took, from the moment it constituted a product of social reality, would automatically justify the existence of society and the crushing of individual autonomy putting as shield its artificial imaginary prescripts. Without a system that would define the right or wrong, the moral or the immoral, the natural or the unnatural it would be impossible for humans to co-exist under those forms that a co-existence would be possible taking under consideration the reality of this era, thus even their extinction would be possible.

All civilizations were built effortlessly as natural defense of the human-ape against its environment or to put it more correct the conclusion of the instinct of survival driven by cowardice. The construction of various civilizations and their oncoming conflicts was an unavoidable fact which would deluge history, insomuch as mentioned before, the parallel existence of two civilizations constitutes for both simultaneously a carcinoma that ought to be annihilated since it questions the truth of each one of them and threatens their cohesion. Systematized life and domination of the collective imaginary are two inseparable terms, inextricably connected with what we call civilization of all human kind, the facets of which for centuries dominate, enslave, classify and confine the possibilities of life. The endless collision of global realities had led us today in a situation, which the primacy is being held by the western rational model having opposite of it opponents that can’t pose a serious threat, like the muslim states, where the cultural chasms are ostensible, since everywhere the common faith in scientific progress, industrial expansion, technology and anthropocentrism are dominant.

Verging on Civilization from this point of view, we localize concisely its heart, in the systematization of life under the consolidation of some common standards necessary for the organization of mass survival. Standards that must seem necessary and natural, of which the questioning and overthrow will root new ones. Having in mind the above, the effort of this approach is done for nothing but the localization of the components of authority and all the barriers for a free and chaotic life, as so the total attack on the foundations and the world of domination will be more effective in the here and now. Civilization as matrix of organized centralized structures followed an evolutional course of expansion of the chains of authority. From the human domination and exploitation of the earth and non human animals and from the statutory domination to the social diffusion and its reproduction. Alongside this codes of values were created and the morality which will decorate and provide the suitable alibi.

On the steering wheel of this course are the ideologemes of progress and modernization.

The achievements of which both on a cultural level and material are inextricably connected with the needs of domination. They ought to bring profit for the capitalist machine, to ensure control and cohesion of mass societies and reproduce authority on their inside. The window of western civilization and progress is no other than the complex science-technology. Trying to touch on science in essence, we perceive it as the result of the pursuit of the human mind to put in order “reality”. In a few words science with rationalism as a guide, elevates the human guiding it to classify the uncertain and alarming stimuli that the senses receive from the environment. An ability of domination of the senses and the instincts by the human cerebration.

The findings of science as a social dogma are unquestionable, their demolition cannot come from anything else but from the same way of determinism and rationalism. So science as another religion, which places this time in the centre the human, aims at the objectification of the world, the order and control of everything. Not for the imaginary of a neutrality, since we know well that this complex is in the service of domination. It’s worth for one more time to emphasize on the extensive use of DNA identification as the contemporary imprint, in the service of domination. The mechanization of contemporary life with the diffusion of technology in every human activity, constitutes the best means of surveillance and domination of humans. And we don’t speak only about cameras and control systems. The findings of technology that are meant for mass consumption must become compatible with the citizen-consumer. Thus the individual adjusts to the ways and perception of a machine or a computer so that its use can be feasible. Behaviors, thoughts, emotions, life, convert to mechanical procedures.

The raw murderous nature of western civilization we have no other way to see, but in its industrial dimension. We live in times that industrial civilization expands apace in every corner of the planet ravaging humans, earth and nonhuman animals so the capitalist machine can be fed and the needs of the cementitious cemeteries named cities to be covered. The humans like undead in them, look like machines programmed on a wretched repetitiousness, the massive road networks that connect them allow the mass transport of humans and commodities. Industrial civilization demolishes every form of life in its way, its activities spread mainly in the so called “ underdeveloped” countries in which its creation will return under the form of tons of garbage. Deforestation, nitrates in seas and rivers and methane in the air are some things of which the meat industry grants to life. The mass imprisonment and murders of animals as much as biotechnology that experiments on them for the creation of more efficient organisms, verify the ultimate domination over living beings. The mining activities drain the Earth and pollute everything around them.

On the other hand the endoauthoritative competition for control of energy presage the new bloodshed on the planet at the time when the resources will be increasingly depleted. We often listen by classic anarchists to perceive as means and project the management or self-management of the techno-scientific achievements of civilization as much as the means of production with a liberatory prefix. Though the complex of science-technology not only has been made according to the needs of domination, but also carries the seed of authority in its core. The anthropocentric perception, the monolithism where it emanates, the specialization and apportionment of work in an industrialized environment, is the crop of authority that must be eradicated. This project of some anarchists reveals among others their post-revolutionary need to rise new standards and the reality of their civilization with the new “anti-authoritarian” dogmas.

The spectacularization of nature being targeted by the existential insurrection.

Negation of the existent and every civilization is our way. Though our desire for the annihilation of society and civilization doesn’t emanate from the identification of a primitivist ideal or some form of faith in an ideal society in complete harmony with the environment and the ecosystem. Our acquaintance with the world from the first moment we met with our senses had been guided through the prism that the universality of the western model, through which we were socialized, imposed.

The separation nature—civilization is a false separation since behind both terms is hidden the same “truth” that the contemporary citizens worship and it is no other than the gregarious interpretation of the chaos of existence with only purpose the conservation of the authoritative structure that feeds the present sickly nature under the name Humanity. The western pattern drawing its roots on the ancient greek philosophy and mainly Plato, who preached the separation of senses and spirit, fortified its primacy through the urban revolutions and Enlightenment, concentrating under the name “nature” all the aspects of human which ought to stay in the past, with purpose the prosperity of humanity under the guidance of the rationalist spirit. Of course in the eras of economic domination everyone can obtain a piece of “natural wilderness” as a form of vacation from the everyday urban routine, as the faithful are allowed to redeem commercialized “sin”. If our reading continues to march on the same segregative dogma of nature—civilization it is unavoidable not to find ourselves in front of contradictions which do not belong to us.

Both “wild nature” and civilization belong to the spectacularized reality of the crowd, the same as with all contradictions that condition the readings which keep on adhering to the aforementioned dogma. We do not want to interpret this chaos into a common dialect with utter purpose the rise of yet another ideal, but to enjoy it since we accept we constitute part of it. We desire to restore the innocence of becoming and extort it from the jaws of every kind of cultural domination. Against every dogmatism, deification and universality, our speech seeks the forgotten traces of instincts craving the total harmonization with them with purpose the setting of a course of power, life and freedom. The compass of this course doesn’t have any indicators, nor points of the horizon. For us, chaos is the negation of every monolithic reality, every dogma, every exaltation.

The monolithism of every standard imposes the classification of everything that surrounds it and its hetero-determination. The compass of chaos is this that leads to the infinite possibilities of life liberated from authoritative relations. Chaos and anarchy are inextricably connected inside the journey towards the unknown of possibilities, where each moment gestates its own surprise. The constant insurrection, the continuous polemic against every authority, tears down the idols and everything that attempts to occupy the throne of truth.

[achterland]

BA Dance Performance DU2021 Marie Maravieski Mazzer Written assignment dance training HT-18

anna grip

pushing, falling, turning in

everything is work, we’re not arriving anywhere

just do it – to try to do it it’s too less

you can never do too much

the machinery of the body keeps on going

 karin munters (klein)

connections in the body -> becoming intimate with your own anatomy

taking the protagonism out of famous (aka overworked) muscle groups (quads, gluteos) and realizing how to work with different components of the body

the samarbeta between muscles, bones and liquid systems

 chrysa parkinson (“self-interview on practice” video)

what is practice, again?

is it just where your focus lays at while you’re doing something?

is it just to do something over and over?

ideas change actions, actions change ideas

 zoë polluch and her one single class with us under the subject dance

even though we are 1st year students, we already have our own thoughts on what dance is

 leila mcmillan (flying low/passing through)

movement coming from the center and connection to the center line

gathering/sending the limbs (again, from the center)

dancer’s relation to the floor – coming up and down from it as fast as you can

spiraling – they help with all the floor business

energy and speed – and what are the things that bring you speed, such as muscle releasing, breathing, “do not tuck your toes under!!” and walk your feet

look at each other, look at things, bring up an active gaze

 ralph jarochinski (contact impro)

body layers: surface (skin), soft tissues, hard tissues (bones) and the connections among them

fluid system activation and how it reverberates on the environment

distribution of weight: collapsing, blocking, distributing (while working with a partner)

maintaining the communication during the movement

different ways of changing the point of contact: bridging, rolling, sliding, travelling, vibrating, pivoting, zooming in/out the area of contact, touching with more or less pressure, pulling the skin on its elasticity

wait, offer, give, be

 salva sanchis

thinking about the dance as it happens in the moment

dialogue between intention and movement

the power of the choice: to choose to keep on going or to change what you’re doing

identify the way you relate to the movement

dance technique is to identify key features that make the movement/idea work

 gabriel schenker

broader way of thinking about dance, in the sense of including many aspects such as relation to the music, to the audience, to the space and to the plurality of the body at the same time

enjoying the ride and not lay onto positions: you can start from anywhere and go everywhere

pressing against, throwing, molding (with a partner’s body)

precision and what does it bring

 shannon cooney

the huge difference that paying attention on the subtleties makes on the big picture

the non-naming of things you see or sense makes you read the world differently

or better, the language hijacks our perception of the world so much that we don’t even perceive things by our sensations anymore

the aspects of the sight: color, shadow, light, movement, shape

understanding tridimensionality

sliding your thoughts to the front and to the lateral part of the brain and how does this affect the way we perceive things

 ulrika berg

overlapping of movements of different parts of the body in time

taking risks

connection between perception/movement/thought

go away from form and instead work with the way i relate to the material

to include perception in your movement, but not try to control it

to work with paradoxical scores

to generate something from a problem

falling, pushing, twisting and how the speed comes as a result from this

to have some things to work with and see where does it lead you rather than already knowing where you’re gonna arrive

dealing with stuff, a lot of them by the way

 libby farr

where you think things are in your body vs. where they really are in relation to other parts of your body or to the space

what is the work of the pelvis vs. what is the work of the hip flexors

“pelvis is part of the torso” – said 8 hundred times

“push away the floor” – more 8 hundred times

connection to the center line in order to make the movements more fluent

to approach the practice through your body, not from the aesthetic of it

 jan buckhardt

be focused, be together, respect

leave time for things to develop

but also dare to break things apart and be curious to see where will it go

bring awareness to your back space

the potentiality of the situation

be on your own but also know that you’re part of something bigger

  i struggled with the format i should write this essay. i started with analyzing deeply some of anna’s concepts but i soon realized that if i would do it to all of the concepts i would like to mention it would take me 5000 words. then i just figured it would make sense to present them in a very brief way, because that’s how they are still in my body – some more, some less, but there. i felt also some sort of pressure to do so because of the task – if i were to mention only my favorites or the ones that are perceptibly and constantly present in my body, i would not only terribly fall out of the task but also leave a lot aside. and, of course, even with this skim-through-it-all format i’ve chosen, i still say a lot about the way i received all this information and how they still resonate in me.

 as a class, we’ve talked a lot about continuity. that this thing about having a new teacher every two weeks in the very beginning of the program was definitely confusing for all of us. now, after three months and a half of this, i’m able to look back and see some sort of continuity, but no so much while navigating through it.

 when you’re starting to have some depth into the teacher’s work, they go away and there is something new already coming. so it was hard to be in class and to be able to apply all the previous knowledge we were exposed to and connect ways of thinking about dance. in this sense, my own studio practice was valuable – when i was alone in the blank empty eternal room, i could look inside of me and see what was vibrating there. my question was always “what do i want to practice today?”, sometimes “what do i need to practice today?”, which both felt very connected. that was absolutely driven by my interests; which class did i find more significant, what i didn’t understand that much but found curious enough to go through one more time.

 and at those moments i can understand and touch continuity – i can see what is still there, what is not there at all, how much my dance has changed and how my interests in dance have changed as well.

[Marie Maravieski Mazzer is not my name]

[theconservativebrief]

A few days ago, I came across this rather striking finding from a recent public opinion survey by the Public Religion Research Institute:

It is striking for a couple of reasons. For one thing, the question is not about illegal immigrants, or even immigrants at all, it’s not about crime, or welfare, or jobs … it’s just about racial diversity as such. And more Republicans are against it than for it! (So much for “economic anxiety.”)

But the question is also notable for its unstated premise: that the growing presence of people other than whites in the US (what else could “increased racial diversity” mean in a majority white country?) is a subject of active political debate. It is not taken for granted as constitutive of a multiethnic democracy, but treated as a kind of add-on, an extra feature. “Is it working? Maybe we should roll it back. Let’s discuss.”

I tried to imagine how that question might strike, oh, someone whose grandparents immigrated from Uganda. That person is just as much a citizen as any other American. She did not choose to be black and cannot choose to be some other race. But now she hears that it is, at the very least, an open question whether her very presence — and her choice to have children, to further diversify America — is detrimental to her country. Is it bad to have her around at all, because she’s black? Let’s discuss.

It must be alienating to feel like one is on probation in one’s own country, that one’s presence is subject to the approval of white people. And it must be a familiar feeling, especially these days, for everyone who is not white (and male).

It occurred to me that white people rarely if ever experience questions like this, about their very legitimacy. Do they belong? Is having more of them around good for America?

One thing white people have never experienced is a poll on whether their presence in their own country is intrinsically detrimental.

— David Roberts (@drvox) July 24, 2018

In fact, I thought to myself, I bet asking the question at all — not answering it either way, just asking it — would make a lot of white people flip out. Imagine if they saw that on a poll!

So, as a bit of goofy provocation, I made just such a poll:

Do white people have a positive or negative effect on America?

— David Roberts (@drvox) July 24, 2018

I should have said “impact,” not “effect,” to mirror the original poll question. (Twitter really needs some kind of edit feature.) It was not the best zinger ever, and probably not a very constructive way to make a point, but whatever, it was only a tweet. I went and walked my dog.

As you’ve likely predicted, a lot of white people flipped out.

By the time I got home, the poll had spread into Trump land, the thread was flooded with MAGA tweeters, and white people were being decisively vindicated in the poll. By Wednesday morning, I was the outrage of the day on the entertainment site The Wrap and on a couple of right-wing news sites.

For reasons that remain somewhat mysterious to me, the MAGA brigade seems to view their victory in my poll — as of closing, 82 percent deem white people’s net impact as positive, so congrats to my fellow white people! — as a grand self-own on my part. Presumably because I cared about this poll, wanted white people to lose, and assumed my followers would send them down to defeat.

Those erroneous assumptions and many more are reflected in the Twitter thread beneath the poll, which I recommend to anyone with a masochistic streak. The words “cuck” and “soy boy” come up a lot, as well as a wide variety of colorful anatomical suggestions.

The funny thing is, I never said a disparaging word about white people. I only said that, while other groups are accustomed to being discussed and polled and judged, white people aren’t, and they would freak out if they saw a question like the one in the PRRI poll about themselves.

Then they saw one, completely missed the context, and freaked out, right on cue, thus proving my point in real time. But they won my Twitter poll, so … burn, I guess?

It’s all pretty silly. In 24 hours, everyone involved will have moved on to being outraged about something else. The only lesson I feel certain about: Twitter is terrible, and no one should ever tweet again, even though we all know we’re going to.

But maybe there’s a little insight to be gleaned. I do think the reaction illuminates a larger point.

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I kept up with the first few hundred responses (there are over a thousand now), and it’s interesting to see what they shared and where they differed.

Substantively (if you can call it that), there were two basic reactions. One is to say that I’m a racist, or liberals are the real racists, because they keep calling attention to race and dividing people up by race, while conservatives are just trying to be individuals and judge people by the content of their character. It’s the “No puppet! You’re the puppet!” of racism.

The other kind of response was, to paraphrase: Of course white people are good for America, white people are America, and America, like every other shithole nation white people conquered, would still be a shithole if not for white people.

(I’m not going to pluck out individual tweets and embed them here because I don’t want to drag individuals on Twitter into a public dispute like this; you can read the thread to see if I’m characterizing it accurately.)

These are mutually contradictory points, of course. “You’re the real racist, and white people rule.” But they are both very familiar in conservative rhetoric and both delivered behind the same aesthetic, using the same keywords, in the same jumbled tone of fury and contempt.

I didn’t answer the question I asked, but asking it was enough to trigger all the same outrage. Why is that?

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On his podcast, Vox’s Ezra Klein recently interviewed Yale psychologist Jennifer Richeson, noting she “has done pioneering work on the way perceptions of demographic threat and change affect people’s political opinions, voting behavior, and ideas about themselves.”

One of Richeson’s key insights is that reminders of coming demographic decline — the notion that America will soon become a “majority minority” country, with people of color outnumbering whites — not only cause increased hostility toward other racial groups (which might be expected) but also push white people in a conservative direction on seemingly unrelated policy questions like tax rates and oil drilling.

She also makes the point that the majority-minority narrative is bogus. By the time it is forecast to happen, who-knows-what demographic changes will have taken place, including changes in who gets coded as “white.” Since the idea is wrong and it freaks people out, she reasons, we should probably stop uncritically repeating it.

Still, what recent political evidence seems to show — and my Twitter brouhaha reflects in some small way — is that the effects Richeson found kick in well before news of any demographic apocalypse arrives (if you consider being a plurality rather than a majority apocalyptic).

Indeed, as research on “priming” shows, simply discussing race at all kicks up those effects among the racially dominant group. Or to put it more bluntly, in the US context: White people really don’t like being called white people. They don’t like being reminded that they are white people, part of a group with discernible boundaries, shared interests, and shared responsibilities.

After all, one of the benefits of being in the dominant demographic and cultural group is that you are allowed to simply be a person, a blank slate upon which you can write your own individual story. You have no baggage but what you choose.

In most situations in the US, a woman is a female person. Someone part of a racial minority is a black person or a Latino person, etc. Gay people. Trans people. Immigrant people. All these groups are [adjective] people, people with an asterisk, while a white, heterosexual male is simply a person, as generic as he chooses. His presence is taken for granted; it rarely occurs to anyone to question it. A white man in khakis and a polo shirt can walk into almost any milieu in the US and, even if he’s greeted with hostility, be taken seriously. His legitimacy is assumed.

The power and privilege that come along with that — being the base model, a person with no asterisk — are invisible to many white men. Simply calling them “white people,” much less questioning the behavior or beliefs of white people, drags that power and privilege into the open.

Some white men have even been known to rise above their level of competence. Timothy A. Clary/AFP/Getty Images

“Identity politics” — dragging around the baggage of one’s identity, being forced constantly to reckon with it, work around the stereotypes and discrimination it attracts, speak for it, represent it — is something that is forced on other groups, not something they choose. Do you think a young black man likes walking into a store knowing he’s already carrying the weight of a million suspicions and expectations, that he has to behave perfectly lest he invoke them? He’d probably like to be thinking about tax policy too, if he didn’t have to worry about getting shot by the cops on his way home. But that worry comes with his identity.

White men bridle at the notion of being part of a tribe or engaging in identity politics. (Ahem.) Alone among social groups, they are allowed the illusion that they have only their own bespoke identity, that they are pure freethinkers, citizens, unburdened and uninfluenced by collective baggage (unique and precious “snowflakes,” if you will).

No one else is allowed to think that — at least not for long, before they are reminded again that they are, in the eyes of their country, little more than their identity, their asterisk. No one else gets to pretend their politics are free of identity.

White people do. But simply saying the words “white people” is a direct attack on that illusion. It identifies, i.e., creates (or rather, exposes) an identity, a group with shared characteristics and interests. It raises questions (and doubts) about the group’s standing and power relative to other groups. It illuminates all that hidden baggage. Lots of white people really hate that.

In politics, we talk about groups all the time — minorities, immigrants, criminals, what have you — and by and large, no one blinks. The only time I get blowback is when I generalize about men or white people (okay, or baby boomers). Suddenly, “lumping people together” becomes a sin. Even among white liberal friends, I’ve noticed that merely saying the words “white people” causes a frisson of discomfort.

In fact, it’s difficult to think of a US setting in which the words “white people” are received neutrally. The term is always charged somehow, freighted with meaning and potential conflict, vaguely subversive. White people. White people. White people.

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What primes white people is simply the reminder that they are white people — that they are, and will increasingly be, one group of Americans among others, with particular interests, settling differences via democracy.

Right now, the white maleocracy is clinging to power, with disproportionate wealth and representation in Congress relative to its size. And all the while its leaders decry identity politics. They are used to being the default setting, people with no asterisks, no baggage, and they are extremely loath to give that up.

In fact, they want their America, the America where white dominance is so ubiquitous as to be unremarkable, back. They keep saying so.

As many have pointed out and this political era has made painfully clear, to a dominant demographic, the loss of privilege feels like persecution. Being just one group among many feels like losing. After all, what good is being white in the US, especially among poor whites, if some third-generation Ugandan immigrant has just as much control over their fate as they have over hers? If a poll asks whether they’re any good for her, rather than the other way around?

For the dominant group, being judged and asked to justify itself, as so many subaltern groups are judged and asked to justify themselves, feels like an insult. If you doubt that, go read this Twitter thread.

Original Source -> American white people really hate being called “white people”

via The Conservative Brief

[munsal]

Thinking of Hope through Images of Women

Exhibist # 9, May 2016

A few months ago, I met Selda (Asal) of Apartman Projesi in Berlin for a coffee. As we discussed the political, social, and cultural climate in Turkey over our morning coffee, I realized I kept returning to recent art works by artists I knew personally to describe a feeling or a thought. I was not able to refer to something “real” that happened—representations or evocations had become more “real” under the current circumstances. Maybe this was nothing new or extraordinary, but this particular conversation resonated with me. And it is this conversation that I’m going to use as a jumping board to discuss the feeling of “hope” in the images of and by women from different geographies.

“Measures of Distance,” an early piece of Mona Hatoum, is jarring. The raw directness of the relationship between a mother and daughter is almost too much to handle. The video starts with close-up images of what appears to be body parts, behind a translucent drop, covered with Arabic script. Visually, these images are threatening to an observer viewing this video after 9/11 and ISIS. Arabic is associated with terror, the unknown. The juxtaposition of the intimacy of another person’s body and the ominous nature of the script is puzzling. The combination is further complicated by the image of the female voice and body with Arabic. In our common perception, women of Islam, the women associated with Arabic, are hidden behind veils. They do not speak out nor show their body and they are not self-expressive, yet the viewer is en face with a very intimate portrait of a woman. At the beginning of the video, there are two women talking in the background in what appears to be Arabic while the viewer is confronted with the images of the body and the script. A woman’s voice takes over, reading letters. The letters are from Mona Hatoum’s mother to Mona and the age of the voice identifies the reader as the artist herself. Hatoum reads the letters, slowly, clearly, without a trace of emotion.

The letters mention the war, the longing of the mother for Hatoum, sexuality, marriage and the father. The letters are not monotonous and are very layered in meaning. The mother misses Hatoum yet she is pleased by their newfound relationship; Hatoum photographs her and uses the mother’s videotapes in her work. The mother feels a guilty pleasure in sharing something with her daughter that she can’t share with her husband. The sisterhood achieved through their nakedness together is not comprehensible to the father and the mother acknowledges that he seems to feel that Hatoum has trespassed into his territory, claiming his subject, as the nakedness of the woman belongs to the husband. Somehow, to the father, the bond between husband and wife is more private, intimate and sacred than the bond between the two women.

The mother’s tone borders on frivolous without ever losing the genuine love and care she has for her daughter. She acknowledges the “fun” in sexuality, claiming that this is one of the primary reasons she wants her daughter to get married. She wants her daughter to cherish her sexuality as men need to prove their manhood every day and a woman is reminded of her sexuality only once a month. These thoughts are obviously affected by the cultural background of the mother and yet do not fit a stereotypical representation of the Muslim female: the mother is outspoken, sincere, and articulate.

Hatoum’s work turns the mirror to me, showing me what I think and believe through secretly sharing the intimate world between herself and her mother. There is something timeless, universal and beautiful about this gesture and I cannot help but think that the video becomes a means to close the distances, between Hatoum and her mother and between me and the work, rather than measuring those distances.

I’m thinking of images as a way to transcend boundaries and as a mode of resistance. Hatoum’s images are transgressive through interweaving the personal with notions of exile and distance. The innately personal poetics of the work makes a statement about politics and the resilience of the individual in a way bigger statements seem to be incapable of doing.

This thought takes me to a very different time and place—to Ceylan Ozturk’s recent solo exhibition at MARS, Istanbul. Call me Venus was tucked away in the basement of MARS, a sex-shop display of Venus of Willendorf-inspired dildos, juxtaposed with two earlier portraits featuring the same Venus. In particular, I’m thinking about the video documentation of the performance in which Ceylan was at the Besiktas market, selling underwear featuring the Venus. Venus of Willendorf in Besiktas. A body traveling through time and space to land in this peculiar situation bringing together Saturday shoppers. Ceylan has impromptu conversations with the shoppers as to why the underwear she is selling is good and why this image of the voluptuous Venus is empowering to women. Many are not convinced (she was only able to sell a few, after all), but many at least seem to care about what she has to say about this figure that would potentially be adorning their bodies.

This moment of encountering another body in the common space of the market is one that is marked by an apparent intimacy—however, what Ceylan brings to the fore through underwear is something that we are all too familiar with; the woman’s body as a site of contention, of control. Through this simple gesture of printing a voluptuous Venus on underwear, Ceylan not only starts a conversation but also subverts what we expect from women’s bodies. Why would a woman wear this quaint Venus on her body? Because it is a symbol and a symbol for her only. Of her body, of her sexuality, of her libido, if she chooses to.

Ceylan’s intervention into the public space—although a very different public and a very different type of space—was in the museum where Venus of Willendorf was exhibited. She prepared a pamphlet with “information” on the Venus. While descriptions of the Venus included her “fertility” and “maternal” nature, although there is no evidence or indication to suggest that this was indeed the reasoning behind Venus being represented the way she was, Ceylan wrote about Venus’s sexuality, her libido. She reasoned that her large bosom could suggest things other than being a mother. She took this pamphlet and haphazardly stuck it on the pedestal where the Venus was on display, offering an alternative set of knowledge to viewers who chose to read her pamphlet.

This gesture of producing a space of plurality is of importance, especially now, when we see the public space(s) limited, destroyed, or censored. After all, information and knowledge are empowering and it is the access that can help people decide for themselves. Ceylan’s presence both in the Besiktas market and the museum are ways of intervening, of shifting paradigms. While the focus on fertility in discourses on the Venus of Willendorf might appear to be non-threatening, they reflect a patriarchal mode of thinking that is even more alarming because we are used to it.

While thinking of public space and gestures, my mind goes to Su Friedrich’s "Scar Tissue". The piece is a filmic version of a white canvas or a silent music piece, where although a very specific reading is possible, the many possible readings are almost more meaningful and true to the work. Here are a few readings that stem from my specific, personal experience:

Reading 1: Lee Friedlander photographs. The photographer’s images of New York are particularly pertinent to Friedrich’s work. Two artists’ skewed perspectives are directly related to the geometric visual sensibility that they seem to share. The city, people and places that are well-recognized become defamiliarized. The viewer, through this disorientation, is drawn in to get reacquainted with the images that are obviously anchored in daily reality. The work pulls and repels us, revealing just enough of what we know and then fracturing that information to engage us the whole time we’re ‘in’ these moving images.

Reading 2: The fractured sequence is reminiscent of Maya Deren’s Meshes of the Afternoon. However, the deconstruction of such a mundane sequence to create a set of absolutely unique, almost ominous images with an inherent rhythm makes 'Scar Tissue' almost more dreamlike than Deren’s work. As the viewer is aware of the particular environment where these images are situated, the film takes on a more menacing role, showing us what “could” be.

Reading 3: The fact that Friedrich never really shows the whole body, but rather plays off of body parts could be read as a desire to show less of the people on the screen, so that the viewer’s reading can be generalized. If the “characters” existed as people, the images would inevitably read to tell a story about these people. The legs and torsos do not signify people; it is the experience of these body parts and the rhythm with which they are portrayed that constitute the work.

Reading 4: Scar tissue or scarring can be defined as the state of a wound as it is healing. It does not denote a complete healing, where the wound cannot be seen any more. It also does not mean the state of a wound, which interferes with the integrity of the body and it is something that needs to be mended immediately; a wound is a state of flux that the body cannot tolerate. Hence, scar tissue is that state in between, paralleling the images in the film. Nobody is at their destination, they are also not at their comfort zone, their “base”. Friedrich christening the film with such a corporal title reveals a more personal, visceral intention in the work that can be extrapolated to each and every one of us who share the quotidian with the owners of these body parts we see on the screen.

The moving body parts, and the focus on what we usually don’t pay attention to, is a particular subversion of the voyeuristic, male gaze on the quotidian. Instead of looking up or looking at something directly, Friedrich’s gaze is pointed down and the rhythm found in the strangers’ footsteps has a peculiar prowess. Why is she looking down? Why can’t she look up? Why can we look at things directly? The wondering as to why we are looking at things we do produces a field of the known gone wrong and this becomes Friedrich’s material.

Lutz Bacher, whose practice is (un)defined by ambiguity, has employed different media and has used constellations of objects and situations to create works about the fluctuations of meaning in things and experiences. To put it bluntly, Bacher’s work is about everything and nothing: Huge Uterus (1989), a video of the artist undergoing an operation to remove fibroid tumours, is a deeply personal account of an experience that is as physical and corporeal as it gets; Stress Balls (2012) is simple, funny, with hundreds of balls scattered across the floor of a room (Did the artist walk around squeezing these balls that were then ‘installed’ in the context of a gallery?); Closed Circuit (1997–2000), a silent 40-minute video animation, consists of video stills from year-long recordings of one of Bacher’s art dealers, Pat Hearn, in her office and is a dilution and a distillation of time and images, and of a person and a situation.

The Celestial Handbook (2011) is a work of appropriation. The installation is made up of 85 framed book pages, 25 of which were displayed at the 13th Istanbul Biennial. The famous amateur astronomer Robert Burnham Jr. authored the eponymous 2,138-page book, which was published as a three-volume set in 1978. It lists more than 7,000 celestial objects. A remarkable feat of dedication, the images in the book document Burnham’s experience as an astronomer, while the photograph captions represent the tension between language and the observed—the captions express the gap between what Burnham sees and how he describes what he sees. The images, all of which are confrontations with the universe in their monochrome modesty, fall short of expectations of what celestial bodies would and should look like. Underscoring the partiality of recording observations, Burnham’s inconsistent descriptions—at times factual, at others exaggeratedly poetic—capture the humbling experience of attempting to convey things and experiences.

Ultimately, Bacher’s gesture of foregrounding, displaying, selecting, exposing this set of images and words that are directed toward a niche group of hobbyists reveals two impetuses: one, the artist’s fashioning of a personalized, yet somehow unspecific, visual and conceptual vocabulary through the dislocation of images and words from their original source; two, the simple act of sharing a fortuitous discovery of amateurism and tenacity.

And my impression of Bacher’s work—an artist who has already deconstructed the very mythology and construction of artistic, creative identity through taking on a pseudonym—hinges on the word “stage.” Because it is on the stage that Bacher constructs for herself that reference points are marked—cultural, quotidian, personal, fictional—without ever really coming together and it is in this lack of coherence, the humorous manner in which Bacher both empowers and undermines the viewer, that I come to appreciate the clueless state in which I leave her exhibitions. To put it bluntly, Bacher’s work is about everything and nothing.

It was this kind of simplicity, artistic practice stripped bare, that marked Isil Egrikavuk’s short animation at YAMA, a public screen on top of the Marmara Pera Hotel, powerful. Egrikavuk’s short sentence urging Eve to eat her apple, the apple emoticon being transformed into a woman’s face were markedly about the presence of the woman in the public space. After all, Eve exists only through her emerging from Adam’s rib. She is the temptress and she is the reason Adam and Eve left paradise. The minute “Eve” appears as a word in public space, images of her with a leaf covering her private parts pop into our heads. However, “Eve” is also associated with “maternal” feelings. “Mother Eve” is the way in which she is referred to in conservative circles and it is this “maternal” aspect that is at odds with her double depiction as a temptress. Are these two things consolidated in religious mythology? Not necessarily, but obviously her being addressed directly to finish up her apple in public space was a problem and was more evocative than first believed, because this work was censored by the municipality, citing reasons of creating visual pollution.

This notion of pollution takes me to Facebook’s policies on the representation of naked bodies. After all, of the works I cited above, which ones would be banned on Facebook? Are Ceylan’s dildos too “provocative”? Is the mere mention of Eve and apple in the same sentence all about seduction? A viral video during breast cancer awareness month pop into my head. A young woman takes of her robe, her nipples are covered with the social media icons of Instagram and Facebook (Instagram is owned by Facebook). A, let’s say, chubby man with a naked torso then stands in front of the woman and we see her hands cup and circle his breasts to teach viewers how to do a breast exam at home. After all, nipples are not pornographic; it is how we look at them that makes them pornographic. This act of using the non-forbidden male nipple to teach women how to be safe and how to diagnose breast cancer early was a very subversive gesture, making viewers think about what intimidates us in the public space and what we are able to see and what we are not able to see. And unfortunately, the image of the woman and the image by women are still at the forefront of things that we are not able to cope with fully. And it is woman artists who can reclaim this territory through adapting, turning, transforming and manoeuvring representations of their own bodies.

There is a beautiful passage in Orhan Pamuk’s Snow. “How much can we ever know about the love and pain in another heart? How much can we hope to understand those who have suffered deeper anguish, greater deprivation, and more crushing disappointments than we ourselves have known?” My bringing these works in film and objects together was in hopes of thinking about what it means to resist and to retaliate through the personal. After all, we cannot hope to understand anything aside from what we know and what do we know better than our own bodies, our own experiences? This is where hope begins for me.

[apostleshop]

Pope's at "(Re)Thinking Europe Conference": Full text

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Pope's at "(Re)Thinking Europe Conference": Full text

(Vatican Radio) Here is the full text of Pope Francis’ remarks at the conference on (Re)Thinking Europe: a Christian Contribution to the Future of the European Project, sponsored by the Commission of the Bishops’ Conferences of the European Community (COMECE): 

Address of His Holiness Pope Francis  to the Commission of the Bishops’ Conferences of the European Community

Saturday, 28 October 2017

Your Eminences, Your Excellencies, Distinguished Authorities, Ladies and Gentlemen,

I am pleased to join you at the conclusion of your Dialogue on the theme (Re)Thinking Europe – a Christian Contribution to the Future of the European Project, sponsored by the Commission of the Bishops’ Conferences of the European Community (COMECE).  In a particular way I greet the President of the Commission, His Eminence Cardinal Reinhard Marx, and the Honourable Antonio Tajani, President of the European Parliament, and I thank them for their kind words.  To each of you I express my deep appreciation for your active contribution to this important discussion.

In these days, your Dialogue has allowed for wide-ranging reflection on the future of Europe from a variety of viewpoints, thanks to the presence of leading figures from the ecclesial, political and academic sectors, and from civil society as a whole.  The young have been able to present their expectations and hopes, and to share them with their elders, while these in turn have drawn on their own reflections and experiences.  It is significant that this meeting was intended above all to be a dialogue, pursued in a spirit of openness and freedom, for the sake of mutual enrichment.  It has sought to shed light on the future path of Europe, the road that all of us are called to travel in surmounting present crises and facing challenges yet to come.

To speak of a Christian contribution to the future of the continent means, before all else, to consider our task, as Christians today, in these lands which have been so richly shaped by the faith down the centuries.  What is our responsibility at a time when the face of Europe is increasingly distinguished by a plurality of cultures and religions, while for many people Christianity is regarded as a thing of the past, both alien and irrelevant?

Person and community

          In the twilight of the ancient world, as the glories of Rome fell into the ruins that still amaze us, and new peoples flooded across the borders of the Empire, one young man echoed anew the words of the Psalmist: “Who is the man that longs for life and desires to see good days?”[1]  By asking this question in the Prologue of his Rule, Saint Benedict pointed the people of his time, and ours as well, to a view of man radically different from that of classical Greco-Roman culture, and even more from the violent outlook typical of the invading barbarians.  Man is no longer simply a civis, a citizen endowed with privileges to be enjoyed at leisure; no longer a miles, a soldier serving the powers of the time; and above all, no longer a servus, a commodity bereft of freedom and destined solely for hard labour. 

          Saint Benedict was not concerned about social status, riches or power.  He appealed to the nature common to every human being, who, whatever his or her condition, longs for life and desires to see good days.  For Benedict, the important thing was not functions but persons.  This was one of the foundational values brought by Christianity: the sense of the person created in the image of God.  This principle led to the building of the monasteries, which in time would become the cradle of the human, cultural, religious and economic rebirth of the continent.

          The first and perhaps the greatest contribution that Christians can make to today’s Europe is to remind her that she is not a mass of statistics or institutions, but is made up of people.  Sadly, we see how frequently issues get reduced to discussions about numbers. There are no citizens, only votes.  There are no migrants, only quotas.  There are no workers, only economic markers.  There are no poor, only thresholds of poverty.  The concrete reality of the human person is thus reduced to an abstract – and thus more comfortable and reassuring – principle.  The reason for this is clear: people have faces; they force us to assume a responsibility that is real, personal and effective.  Statistics, however useful and important, are about arguments; they are soulless.  They offer an alibi for not getting involved, because they never touch us in the flesh.

          To acknowledge that others are persons means to value what unites us to them.  To be a person connects us with others; it makes us a community.  The second contribution that Christians can make to the future of Europe, then, is to help recover the sense of belonging to a community.  It is not by chance that the founders of the European project chose that very word to identify the new political subject coming into being.  Community is the greatest antidote to the forms of individualism typical of our times, to that widespread tendency in the West to see oneself and one’s life in isolation from others.  The concept of freedom is misunderstood and seen as if it were a right to be left alone, free from all bonds.  As a result, a deracinated society has grown up, lacking a sense of belonging and of its own past.

            Christians recognize that their identity is primarily relational.  They are joined to one another as members of one body, the Church (cf. 1 Cor 12:12), and each, with his or her unique identity and gifts, freely shares in the common work of building up that body.  Analogously, this relationship is also found in the areas of interpersonal relationships and civil society.  By interacting with others, each one discovers his or her own qualities and defects, strengths and weaknesses.  In other words, they come to know who they are, their specific identity.

          The family, as the primordial community, remains the most fundamental place for this process of discovery.  There, diversity is valued and at the same time brought into unity.  The family is the harmonious union of the differences between man and woman, which becomes stronger and more authentic to the extent that it is fruitful, capable of opening itself to life and to others.  Secular communities, likewise, are alive when they are capable of openness, embracing the differences and gifts of each person while at the same time generating new life, development, labour, innovation and culture.

          Person and community are thus the foundations of the Europe that we, as Christians, want and can contribute to building.  The bricks of this structure are dialogue, inclusion, solidarity, development and peace.

  A place of dialogue

            Today the whole of Europe, from the Atlantic to the Urals, from the North Pole to the Mediterranean, cannot miss the chance to be first and foremost a place of candid and constructive dialogue, in which all participants share equal dignity.  We are called to build a Europe in which we can meet and engage at every level, much as in the ancient agorá, the main square of the polis.  The latter was not just a marketplace but also the nerve centre of political life, where laws were passed for the common good.  The presence of a temple dominating the square was a reminder that the horizontal dimension of daily life ought never to overlook the transcendent, which invites us to see beyond the ephemeral, the transitory and the provisional.

          This leads us to reflect on the positive and constructive role that religion in general plays in the building up of society.  I think, for example, of the contribution made by interreligious dialogue to greater mutual understanding between Christians and Muslims in Europe.  Regrettably, a certain secularist prejudice, still in vogue, is incapable of seeing the positive value of religion’s public and objective role in society, preferring to relegate it to the realm of the merely private and sentimental.  The result is the predominance of a certain groupthink,[2] quite apparent in international meetings, which sees the affirmation of religious identity as a threat to itself and its dominance, and ends up promoting an ersatz conflict between the right to religious freedom and other fundamental rights.

          Favouring dialogue, in any form whatsoever, is a fundamental responsibility of politics.  Sadly, all too often we see how politics is becoming instead a forum for clashes between opposing forces.  The voice of dialogue is replaced by shouted claims and demands.  One often has the feeling that the primary goal is no longer the common good, and this perception is shared by more and more citizens.  Extremist and populist groups are finding fertile ground in many countries; they make protest the heart of their political message, without offering the alternative of a constructive political project.  Dialogue is replaced either by a futile antagonism that can even threaten civil coexistence, or by the domination of a single political power that constrains and obstructs a true experience of democracy.  In the one, bridges are burned; in the other, walls are erected.

          Christians are called to promote political dialogue, especially where it is threatened and where conflict seems to prevail.  Christians are called to restore dignity to politics and to view politics as a lofty service to the common good, not a platform for power.  This demands a suitable formation, since politics is not the “art of improvising”.  Instead, it is a noble expression of self-sacrifice and personal dedication for the benefit of the community.  To be a leader demands thoughtfulness, training and experience.

  An inclusive milieu

          Leaders together share responsibility for promoting a Europe that is an inclusive community, free of one fundamental misunderstanding: namely that inclusion does not mean downplaying differences.  On the contrary, a community is truly inclusive when differences are valued and viewed as a shared source of enrichment.  Seen in this way, migrants are more a resource than a burden.  Christians are called to meditate seriously on Jesus’ words: “I was a stranger and you welcomed me” (Mt 25:35).  Especially when faced with the tragedy of displaced persons and refugees, we must not forget that we are dealing with persons, who cannot be welcomed or rejected at our own pleasure, or in accordance with political, economic or even religious ideas.

          Nor is this opposed to the duty of all government authorities to address the migration issue “with the virtue proper to governance, which is prudence”.[3]  Authorities should keep in mind the need for an open heart, but also their ability to provide for the full integration, on the social, economic and political level, of those entering their countries.  We cannot regard the phenomenon of migration as an indiscriminate and unregulated process, but neither can we erect walls of indifference and fear.  For their part, migrants must not neglect their own grave responsibility to learn, respect and assimilate the culture and traditions of the nations that welcome them.

  Room for solidarity

          Striving for an inclusive community means making room for solidarity.  To be a community in fact entails supporting one another; bearing burdens and making extraordinary sacrifices do not fall to some few, while the rest remain entrenched in defence of their privileged positions.  A European Union that, in facing its crises, fails to recover a sense of being a single community that sustains and assists its members – and not just a collection of small interest groups – would miss out not only on one of the greatest challenges of its history, but also on one of the greatest opportunities for its own future.

          Solidarity, which from a Christian perspective finds its raison d’être in the precept of love (cf. Mt 22:37-40), has to be the lifeblood of a mature community.  Together with the other cardinal principle of subsidiarity, it is not limited to relations between the states and regions of Europe.  To be a solidary community means to be concerned for the most vulnerable of society, the poor and those discarded by social and economic systems, beginning with the elderly and the unemployed.  At the same time, solidarity calls for a recovery of cooperation and mutual support between the generations.

          An unprecedented generational conflict has been taking place since the 1960’s.  In passing on to new generations the ideals that made Europe great, one could say, with a touch of hyperbole, that betrayal was preferred to tradition.  The rejection of what had been passed down from earlier generations was followed by a period of dramatic sterility.  Not only because Europe has fewer children, and all too many were denied the right to be born, but also because there has been a failure to pass on the material and cultural tools that young people need to face the future.  Europe has a kind of memory deficit.  To become once more a solidary community means rediscovering the value of our own past, in order to enrich the present and to pass on a future of hope to future generations. 

          Instead, many young people are lost, without roots or prospects, “tossed to and fro and carried about with every wind of doctrine” (Eph 4:14).  At times they are even “held captive” by possessive adults who struggle to carry out their own responsibilities.  It is a grave responsibility to provide an education, not only by offering technical and scientific knowledge, but above all by working “to promote the complete perfection of the human person, the good of earthly society and the building of a world that is more human”.[4]  This demands the involvement of society as a whole.  Education is a shared duty that requires the active and combined participation of parents, schools and universities, religious and civil institutions.  Without education, culture does not develop and the life of the community dries up.

  A source of development

          A Europe that rediscovers itself as a community will surely be a source of development for herself and for the whole world.  Development must be understood in the terms laid down by Blessed Paul VI: “To be authentic, it must be well rounded; it must foster the development of each man and of the whole man.  As an eminent specialist on this question has rightly said: ‘We cannot allow economics to be separated from human realities, nor development from the civilization in which it takes place. What counts for us is man – each individual man, each human group, and humanity as a whole’”.[5]

Work certainly contributes to human development; it is an essential factor in the dignity and growth of the person.  Employment and suitable working conditions are needed.  The last century provided many eloquent examples of Christian entrepreneurs who understood that the success of their ventures depended above all on the ability to provide employment opportunities and dignified working conditions.  There is a need to recover the spirit of those ventures, for they are also the best antidote to the imbalances caused by a soulless globalization which, more attentive to profits than people, has created significant pockets of poverty, unemployment, exploitation and social unease.

It would also be helpful to recover a sense of the need to provide concrete opportunities for employment, especially to the young.  Today, many people tend to shy away from certain jobs because they seem physically demanding and unprofitable, forgetting how indispensable they are for human development.  Where would we be without the efforts of those whose work contributes daily to putting food on our tables?  Where would we be without the patient and creative labour of those who produce the clothes we wear or build the houses in which we live?  Many essential professions are now looked down upon.  Yet they are essential both for society and, above all, for the satisfaction that they give to those who realize that they are being useful in themselves and for others, thanks to their daily work. 

Governments also have the duty to create economic conditions that promote a healthy entrepreneurship and appropriate levels of employment.  Politicians are especially responsible for restoring a virtuous circle that, starting from investments that favour the family and education, enable the harmonious and peaceful development of the entire civil community.

  A promise of peace

Finally, the commitment of Christians in Europe must represent a promise of peace.  This was the central concern that inspired the signatories of the Treaties of Rome.  After two World Wars and atrocious acts of violence perpetrated by peoples against peoples, the time had come to affirm the right to peace.[6]  Yet today we continue to see how fragile is that peace, and how particular and national agendas risk thwarting the courageous dreams of the founders of Europe.[7]

Being peacemakers (cf. Mt 5:9), however, does not mean simply striving to avoid internal tensions, working to end the bloodshed and conflicts throughout our world, or relieving those who suffer.  To be workers for peace entails promoting a culture of peace.  This requires love for the truth, without which authentic human relationships cannot exist; it also requires the pursuit of justice, without which oppression becomes the rule in any community.

Peace also requires creativity.  The European Union will remain faithful to its commitment to peace only to the extent that it does not lose hope and can renew itself in order to respond to the needs and expectations of its citizens.  A hundred years ago, in these very days, the battle of Caporetto was fought, one of the most dramatic of the First World War.  It was the culmination of that war of attrition, which set a sinister record in reaping countless casualties for the sake of risible gains.  From that event we learn that entrenchment in one’s own positions only leads to failure.  Now is not the time, then, to dig trenches, but instead to work courageously to realize the founding fathers’ dream of a united and harmonious Europe, a community of peoples desirous of sharing a future of development and peace.

  To be the soul of Europe

Your Eminence, Your Excellencies,

Distinguished Guests,

The author of the Letter to Diognetus states that “what the soul is to the body, Christians are to the world”.[8]  In our day, Christians are called to revitalize Europe and to revive its conscience, not by occupying spaces, but by generating processes[9] capable of awakening new energies in society.  This is exactly what Saint Benedict did.  It was not by chance that Paul VI proclaimed him the Patron of Europe.  He was not concerned to occupy spaces in a wayward and confused world.   Sustained by faith, Benedict looked ahead, and from a tiny cave in Subiaco he gave birth to an exciting and irresistible movement that changed the face of Europe.  May Saint Benedict, “messenger of peace, promoter of union, master of civilization”[10] make clear to us, the Christians of our own time, how a joyful hope, flowing from faith, is able to change the world. 

Thank you.

  [1]  SAINT BENEDICT, Rule, Prologue, 14; cf. Ps 34:12.

[2] La dittatura del pensiero unico, Morning Reflection in the Domus Sanctae Marthae Chapel, 10 April 2014.

[3] Cf. Press Conference on the Return Flight from Colombia, 10 September 2017.

[4] SECOND VATICAN ECUMENICAL COUNCIL, Declaration Gravissimum Educationis (28 October 1963), 3.

[5] PAUL VI, Encyclical Letter Populorum Progressio (26 March 1967), 14.

[6] Cf. Address to Students and Academic Authorities, Bologna, 1 October 2017, 3.

[7] Cf. ibid.

[8] Op. cit., VI.

[9] Cf. Apostolic Exhortation Evangelii Gaudium, 223.

[10] PAUL VI, Apostolic Letter Pacis Nuntius, 24 October 1964.

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