#and at what point something is pathologized is dangerously relative

[solidagofvckr]

oh me? i was diagnosed with thoughts feelings and emotions. theyre giving me meth for it

[themysteriouswaylon]

while, yes, some people do fake disabilities or misdiagnose themselves or self-diagnose based off of tiktok or spread misinformation about disabilities, i feel like so many people have gotten so obsessed with this relatively small group of people to the point where every time they see someone being disabled in a way they aren’t familiar with or saying something about their disability they didn’t already know, their first course of action is to assume that they’re either ignorant or lying.

there are so many articles about ADHD and tourette’s and autism and whatever else as a “dangerous tiktok trend” it’s fucking apeshit. there are countless videos “calling out” or “reacting to” content creators with ““fake”“ disabilities with no proof that the individual is actually faking it. the already-misunderstood concept of self-diagnosis is becoming known in the mainstream, not as something many people have to do due to financial problems or poverty, systemic sexism, systemic racism, and unsupportive/neglectful/toxic families that involves months or years of research after years upon years upon potentially decades of wondering what’s wrong with you, but as something that random teenagers do just because they watched a tiktok once.

like i said, the deep internalization of disability -- particularly neurodivergence -- as something that largely exists as a phenomenon of over-self-diagnosis with a handful of genuine, professionally diagnosed cases has also caused people to become completely resistant to the idea that there’s anything about these conditions that they don’t know. literally once i saw a relatively viral post on here where the OP (who did not have ADHD. if they did, they weren’t diagnosed) claimed that time blindness is a fake ADHD symptom that comes from people trying to medicalize everyday experiences when like. time blindness is universally accepted by both people with ADHD and professionals as an ADHD trait and explains a large portion of the ADHD diagnostic criteria.

and yet, instead of even spending a second to look up what this person was talking about when referring to time blindness as ADHD-related, they publicly insisted that they were mistaken and falling for some stupid tiktok over-pathologization trap, because apparently any ADHD experience that they don’t already know about is automatically made-up. while i don’t know much of anything about OP outside of this post, i can almost assure you that this was definitely related to the excessive focus both mainstream and some social media have given to “fake” ADHD and “fake” ADHD symptoms.

all of this has just caused. so much harm to disabled people. i’d even say it’s set awareness and acceptance back a bit. now, not only are people largely unaware of how disability can actually manifest beyond what they see in the mainstream or with disabled relatives, (usually neurodivergent children and physically disabled seniors) but they’re so quick to assume that these experiences they don’t know about -- time blindness, late diagnosis, etc. -- are just made-up by tiktok-obsessed gen Zers

[permian-tropos]

hiii so im still relatively new to the pathologic fandom, i havent finished bachelors route yet but i love him. i still dont understand why he isnt in his own ending, do you mind explaining it for me? like what are the theories. also on that note, what are some of your favorite pathologic essays? on tumblr in written or on youtube anything will do, ive watched the hbomber sulmutal ragnarrox and mangaloregaming ones already. thanksss for your input <333 i really am obsessed!

Hi there anon!!! So cool of you to reach out to me! 

So the explanation about why the Bachelor isn’t in his own ending comes from an online AMA with the writer/head of IPL (who I feel obliged to mention has been recently accused of some awful shit so until that gets properly investigated -- and will it? honestly I don’t know :< -- the fandom is kind of holding its breath on this matter, or at least I am, if you’re new here I am very very sorry to break that news to you). 

What I remember from the screenshot I saw of it was that apparently the Bachelor doesn’t “belong” in this “weird world” he’s helped create, and that it was intentional to not show him among Maria Kaina’s worshippers during the Utopian cutscene. So that’s what I’m working with.  

Daniil is a pretty complicated guy, especially when he’s the player character. I feel like you have some leeway, not just in choosing which ending, but even why he chooses various endings, including his own. He can be skeptical and concerned about a lot of aspects of the Utopians, even while he falls more and more in with them ideologically. Not helped by the fact that the Kains are, to my mind, lovebombing the hell out of him in the end, he’s just... very conflicted I think? There’s a lot of dialogue options he can take that suggest he admires the Polyhedron for what it is currently -- a place for children to explore their dreams together and express the wonder and creativity of their youth. You can have him be concerned at the idea of the Kains kicking out the kids so that they can take the Polyhedron themselves. But he thinks it would be awful to destroy the Polyhedron even if it’s about to be used by some very weird and very Sus people. Because to him it’s irreplaceable. 

So... I think his relationship with the Kains is fraught. He sees the nasty sides of the other two ruling families early on and believes the Kains are the most sensible rulers of the town... but once the Kains know he’s hooked, they reveal their extremely absurd, grandiose, and rather ominous plans for Utopia for him. And he’s kind of in too deep to get out by then? He’s been through so much that I can see how it would be tempting to hope that the Kains are just being melodramatic and that they’re not actually evil... hopefully...? That the world they create will at least be beautiful and interesting. Maybe unique. 

But he isn’t as enthusiastic about actually living in it himself as them. He has more rational reasons for seeing the Town destroyed -- underneath it, in the soil, is a dangerous biohazard. He thinks that preventing people from inhabiting this land is the only way to stop this plague, which is his job. It’s like if he found out they were atop a nuclear waste disposal site -- abandon it and put up a sign saying This Is Not A Place Of Honor.  There’s not just one way to interpret his choice at the end but if you believe dialogue he has about seeing the Polyhedron as a way to preserve childhood innocence... he knows he’s past that point. He’s not innocent, he’s been destroyed by this plague, and whether you imagine him leaving the town in disgrace or even ending his own life, an interpretation where he walks away from the “weird world” is one where he has given up on himself.  He’s one of the few fictional characters out there who pursues a dream of defeating death while never once suggesting that he wants to live forever. I’ve always found that really interesting about him. He may be a very flawed guy, but he isn’t really coveting ultimate power or even ultimate happiness for himself. 

Except the one indulgence I would argue he does allow himself is constantly scamming and lying to accumulate more and more guns (seriously he can do this over and over in his route it’s so funny) and if you want to take that to be a metaphor for being transmasculine bc guns are phallic symbols, be my guest xD /j

------ 

And regarding essays... UmmmMM well there’s a few off my personal collection on youtube that I’ve enjoyed that aren’t the big ones you’ve already mentioned:  The Youtube channel Shmowder Productions has quite a few wonderful video essays on Pathologic.  There’s also @loquaciouslore who has made a lot of awesome videos centered on various characters and mechanics of Patho 2 mostly. This is an analysis specifically of the plague in Pathologic 2, trying to come up with scientific/historical explanations for it (despite it defying explanation). It’s a fun time. Also big mood for Bachelor stans, trying to use science on the magic plague.   I have a soft spot for this video essay on the Bachelor and his Suffering TM because it uses a comment that I made on reddit to talk about something the essayist found personally relatable. This one is I almost feel essential viewing, it’s about the relationship Pathologic 2 has to avant-garde movements in theater.

Hope you like this collection! 

[mtsainthelens]

having so many thoughts.

1.) in fiction, trauma stemming from an event is treated differently than trauma stemming from abuse. the former has clout

2.) most people alive are traumatized in some way, so i’m no longer surprised to see “accurate” representations of trauma. trauma is integral to most narratives even if its by another name. there’s even the possibility that i’m misnaming it, but you know what i’m referring to.

3.) usually a story that names PTSD is a story that handles it poorly. its a way of pathologizing and making it seem like an unnatural response. it doesn’t have to be this way but it usually is.

4.) relating back to point 2, most fictional characters are traumatized. that’s probably okay. the things that would traumatize an ordinary person may not always apply to a fictional story, but there are stand out events which are meant to be traumatic. (ex: finn the human fights and kills monsters everyday w/o an issue, but is terrified of the ocean. saying that he is or should be traumatized because his life is in danger everyday would be an incorrect reading because its normal in his world, but inferring that he has some trauma from his abandonment would be reasonable)

5.) though most fictional characters are traumatized, not half as many are abuse victims. this is maybe not surprising when you consider the amount of people in the entertainment industry (or if not industry, say creative spaces) have been outted as abusers themselves. i think its fair to guess the majority of fictional abuse victims have been written by people who are not victims.

6.) fictional abuse is far more gendered than fictional trauma. a large portion of abuse victims in fiction are battered women written by men, usually only there as a plot device. very little to be salvaged from this depiction, short of Marge Simpson Anime style retellings.

7.) male abuse victims are not usually plot devices. if they are, this is a relatively new phenomenon, bordering on fetishism.

i.) male children are an exception to this. they‘re children before they’re male.

ii.) there’s also the issue of male abuse victims being punchlines in older media, but i think this is actually pretty nuanced. it’s not to excuse abuse against men in any way, but the joke of “whipped man and domineering woman” isn’t really symbolic of any real life abuse scenarios. it’s a depiction of men who are in relationships with assertive women at a time where women weren’t expected to be assertive, exaggerated grossly to the point of abuse. something to be said about how wearing the pants in the relationship was associated with abuse, or how respect could only be gained through violence?

8.) well-written abuse victims are hard to come by. subjective, but i think some of the best depictions of abuse are irreverent. having a good sense of humor about it is pretty much a requirement. “my trauma made me funny” jokes may be overdone, but they didn’t come from nowhere. so-awful-its-funny type storytelling gets closer to the truth than most.

[dreaminginthedeepsouth]

What attracts people to Trump? What is their animus or driving force?

The reasons are multiple and varied, but in my recent public-service book, Profile of a Nation, I have outlined two major emotional drives: narcissistic symbiosis and shared psychosis. Narcissistic symbiosis refers to the developmental wounds that make the leader-follower relationship magnetically attractive. The leader, hungry for adulation to compensate for an inner lack of self-worth, projects grandiose omnipotence—while the followers, rendered needy by societal stress or developmental injury, yearn for a parental figure. When such wounded individuals are given positions of power, they arouse similar pathology in the population that creates a “lock and key” relationship.

“Shared psychosis”—which is also called “folie à millions” [“madness for millions”] when occurring at the national level or “induced delusions”—refers to the infectiousness of severe symptoms that goes beyond ordinary group psychology. When a highly symptomatic individual is placed in an influential position, the person’s symptoms can spread through the population through emotional bonds, heightening existing pathologies and inducing delusions, paranoia and propensity for violence—even in previously healthy individuals. The treatment is removal of exposure.

Why does Trump himself seem to gravitate toward violence and destruction?

Destructiveness is a core characteristic of mental pathology, whether directed toward the self or others. First, I wish to clarify that those with mental illness are, as a group, no more dangerous than those without mental illness. When mental pathology is accompanied by criminal-mindedness, however, the combination can make individuals far more dangerous than either alone.

In my textbook on violence, I emphasize the symbolic nature of violence and how it is a life impulse gone awry. Briefly, if one cannot have love, one resorts to respect. And when respect is unavailable, one resorts to fear. Trump is now living through an intolerable loss of respect: rejection by a nation in his election defeat. Violence helps compensate for feelings of powerlessness, inadequacy and lack of real productivity.

Do you think Trump is truly exhibiting delusional or psychotic behavior? Or is he simply behaving like an autocrat making a bald-faced attempt to hold onto his power?

I believe it is both. He is certainly of an autocratic disposition because his extreme narcissism does not allow for equality with other human beings, as democracy requires. Psychiatrists generally assess delusions through personal examination, but there is other evidence of their likelihood. First, delusions are more infectious than strategic lies, and so we see, from their sheer spread, that Trump likely truly believes them. Second, his emotional fragility, manifested in extreme intolerance of realities that do not fit his wishful view of the world, predispose him to psychotic spirals. Third, his public record includes numerous hours of interviews and interactions with other people—such as the hour-long one with the Georgia secretary of state—that very nearly confirm delusion, as my colleague and I discovered in a systematic analysis.

Where does the hatred some of his supporters display come from? And what can we do to promote healing?

In Profile of a Nation, I outline the many causes that create his followership. But there is important psychological injury that arises from relative—not absolute—socioeconomic deprivation. Yes, there is great injury, anger and redirectable energy for hatred, which Trump harnessed and stoked for his manipulation and use. The emotional bonds he has created facilitate shared psychosis at a massive scale. It is a natural consequence of the conditions we have set up. For healing, I usually recommend three steps: (1) Removal of the offending agent (the influential person with severe symptoms). (2) Dismantling systems of thought control—common in advertising but now also heavily adopted by politics. And (3) fixing the socioeconomic conditions that give rise to poor collective mental health in the first place.

What do you predict he will do after his presidency?

I again emphasize in Profile of a Nation that we should consider the president, his followers and the nation as an ecology, not in isolation. Hence, what he does after this presidency depends a great deal on us. This is the reason I frantically wrote the book over the summer: we require active intervention to stop him from achieving any number of destructive outcomes for the nation, including the establishment of a shadow presidency. He will have no limit, which is why I have actively advocated for removal and accountability, including prosecution. We need to remember that he is more a follower than a leader, and we need to place constraints from the outside when he cannot place them from within.

What do you think will happen to his supporters?

If we handle the situation appropriately, there will be a lot of disillusionment and trauma. And this is all right—they are healthy reactions to an abnormal situation. We must provide emotional support for healing, and this includes societal support, such as sources of belonging and dignity. Cult members and victims of abuse are often emotionally bonded to the relationship, unable to see the harm that is being done to them. After a while, the magnitude of the deception conspires with their own psychological protections against pain and disappointment. This causes them to avoid seeing the truth. And the situation with Trump supporters is very similar. The danger is that another pathological figure will come around and entice them with a false “solution” that is really a harnessing of this resistance.

How can we avert future insurrection attempts or acts of violence?

Violence is the end product of a long process, so prevention is key. Structural violence, or inequality, is the most potent stimulant of behavioral violence. And reducing inequality in all forms—economic, racial and gender—will help toward preventing violence. For prevention to be effective, knowledge and in-depth understanding cannot be overlooked—so we can anticipate what is coming, much like the pandemic. The silencing of mental health professionals during the Trump era, mainly through a politically driven distortion of an ethical guideline, was catastrophic, in my view, in the nation’s failure to understand, predict and prevent the dangers of this presidency.

Do you have any advice for people who do not support Trump but have supporters of him or “mini-Trumps” in their lives?

This is often very difficult because the relationship between Trump and his supporters is an abusive one, as an author of the 2017 book I edited, The Dangerous Case of Donald Trump, presciently pointed out. When the mind is hijacked for the benefit of the abuser, it becomes no longer a matter of presenting facts or appealing to logic. Removing Trump from power and influence will be healing in itself. But, I advise, first, not to confront [his supporters’] beliefs, for it will only rouse resistance. Second, persuasion should not be the goal but change of the circumstance that led to their faulty beliefs. Third, one should maintain one’s own bearing and mental health, because people who harbor delusional narratives tend to bulldoze over reality in their attempt to deny that their own narrative is false. As for mini-Trumps, it is important, above all, to set firm boundaries, to limit contact or even to leave the relationship, if possible. Because I specialize in treating violent individuals, I always believe there is something that can be done to treat them, but they seldom present for treatment unless forced.

[xanyoules]

"You Should Never Tell a Psychopath They Are a Psychopath. It Upsets Them": Villanelle, Joe Goldberg and Feeling Sorry for Psychopaths

What do you envision when you hear the word? I’d hazard a guess it’s your prototypical psychopath with a dead-eye stare and blood-stained knife in hand. Perhaps it’s your conspiracy theorist neighbour, or that — yes, that one — ex. We’ve seen Villanelle’s theatrical murders on ‘Killing Eve’ and we’ve rooted for Joe in ‘You’ despite his murder habit. We’ve read articles with clickbait titles on how to “spot” a psychopath and immediately diagnosed our sibling, colleague or ex-best friend. It’s a term we throw around carelessly, yet it also inspires fear. A real psychopath isn’t like us and they certainly aren’t worth any kind of sympathy. We’re good people and they’re crazy, violent, controlling, unemotional and self-obsessed. Right?

Sweet but a psycho

Popular culture has given us infamous psychopaths throughout the decades and a couple of our contemporary favourites must be Oskana Astankova — the Russian assassin “Villanelle” -from hit TV show ‘Killing Eve’ and Joe Goldberg from Netflix’s ‘You’. Despite their psychopathic tendencies, fans champion their victories.

Psychologist Robert Hare devised the ‘Psychopath Checklist’ back in 1980 and it is now routinely referred to as the PCL-R. Villanelle and Joe would score highly: both characters believe they are of great importance, routinely lie, act impulsively, struggle with control, take zero to little accountability for their actions, lack empathy, and have a history of criminality and behavioural problems.

Hare’s checklist is still doing the rounds in institutions worldwide, usually prisons, but it has come under plenty of criticism for what Willem Martens (2008) deems as being an unethical psychological practice. It’s difficult to diagnose the term “psychopath” but several diagnoses may suggest a fit, from Antisocial Behaviour Disorder to psychopathy and various other personality disorders.

Already, we see how complex a diagnosis it and encounter very different views from psychologists when it comes to the question of the psychopath. Yet, as we progress as a society, so does science. Science isn’t rigid, stuck in a time of Freud and every other straight, white, wealthy, old, neurotypical male philosopher and psychologist from the 20th century. It moves with society and it adapts as our knowledge deepens. Nowadays, some psychologists and mental health practitioners are rejecting the label “psychopath” completely due to the severely negative connotations and even calling psychopathy a mental health issue or disability.

Psychology says what?

Identity is an important factor when it comes to being human. Our identities are important to us, especially as we engage and present these identities online. Psychopaths are said to be so unlike the majority they are unable to make genuine connections with others but as with anyone deemed ‘different’, it is the group that collectively rejects the ‘different’ individual, perpetuating a cycle of low interpersonal integration and marginalisation.

If given an official diagnosis with a working label of “psychopath”, combined with society’s current view of what it means to be a psychopath, a psychopath is quickly forced to the outskirts of society thus lowering their commitment to fulfilling social roles. A self-fulfilling prophecy becomes imminent: when someone is thought of and treated as if they are somehow broken, they often become it.

Noel Smith is the commissioning editor of magazine InsideTime and a former prisoner who has experienced his fair share of mental health difficulties. Writing for InsideTime, Smith says: “If people think you’re MAD, then everything you do, everything you think, will have MAD stamped across it.”

Psychologists Peterson & Seligman (2004), tired of psychology’s tendency to focus on the deviant side of humanity, proposed we all have the ability to express ‘the six common virtues’: wisdom and knowledge, courage, humanity, justice, temperance and spirituality or transcendence.

Here, Peterson & Seligman neatly demonstrated how language can create a narrative. The psychopath according to Hare’s checklist could be grandiose and controlling, but with a slightly different view, they’re confident and courageous leaders. We associate the term so often with negative traits that we ignore the possibility for positives.

Mental health matters — but not for you

“They [psychopaths] are the social snakes in the grass that slither and smile their way into your life and emotions. They feel no empathy, and only care about themselves” says Dr Xanthe Mallett, a forensic anthropologist and criminologist at Newcastle University.

Dr. Mallett’s words reinforce an age-old belief: the psychopath’s only identity is psychopath and they are incapable of being anything other than one-dimensional.

Author Nathan Filer expressed his initial dismay that once his diagnosis was televised by ‘Meet the Psychopaths’ programme on Channel 5, strangers expressed their fear and revulsion immediately. Filer states he “quickly got over” people’s negative opinions but received abuse on the streets with words such as “psycho” and “nutter” shouted at him on a regular basis, reinforcing the rejection by the collective.

Lucy Nichol, writer and mental health support activist, expressed her fears when joining a discussion panel at the Centre for Life Science’s speakeasy programme for adults in 2019. Nichol, rightfully, is anxious about the welfare of those living with psychosis and how they can be discriminated against due to fear. She worries that psychopaths can be “violent and frightening”, and any potential link between psychopaths and people living with psychosis can lead to danger for people with psychosis. Resistant to the movement of psychopathy being welcomed into the family of mental health, Nichol argues it should not be treated as a mental health concern. Her argument is that a classified psychopath lacks empathy and is unable to judge other people’s emotions and this makes the people around the psychopath vulnerable, not the psychopath.

Yet, other mental health conditions and disorders can lead to an individual not necessarily being able to empathise in the way a neurotypical person may empathise. Similarly, an individual with autism, a panic disorder or psychosis may have limited capacity to judge other people’s emotions on occasion. As a society, we tend to understand this and accommodate it.

In contrast to Nichol’s view, there are more and more calls for understanding psychopathy in broader, more compassionate terms.

Dr Luna Centifanti, Lecturer in Psychological Sciences at University of Liverpool classes psychopathy as a mental illness that means the individual experiences “disordered thinking, emotions and behaviour.” She added that psychopathy can lead to struggles with understanding emotions of others and therefore their responses to distress can be “inappropriate”.

Do better, be better

Joseph Newman is a psychologist at Wisconsin University who classifies psychopathy as a disability. Newman explains it as an ‘informational processing deficit’ where individuals have less ability to process cues immediately such as someone else’s fear or upset, inviting us to see the psychopath through a more sympathetic lens.

Campaigners, researchers, activists and those with lived experiences of mental health conditions and illnesses have made huge strides for inclusivity and understanding. As professionals such as Newman and Dr. Centifanti begin to deconstruct the pathological idea of psychopathy, it is being tentatively considered as a mental health issue.

Let’s go back to Villanelle. Her history is relatively secret, but the viewer knows she’s spent time in Russian prison and has no family, therefore little connection to others. Her violent, ‘psychopathic’ actions are a result of her occupation as an assassin as opposed to something she does simply for the joy of enacting violence.

A recent soundbite suggests the show’s writers are no longer calling Villanelle a “psychopath” after astute fans have criticised the way it reduces her to a label.

Be more psychopath

A merge of popular culture, sociology and psychology has begun to turn the connotations of ‘psychopath’ on its head somewhat. The Wisdom of Psychopaths by Kevin Dutton (2012) looks to diagnosed psychopaths to teach us how to care less about other people’s emotions and our own, be fearless in our jobs and have an unwavering belief in ourselves. Western culture is a key culprit in promoting the idea that an impressive salary equals success or showing emotion at work is unprofessional, so, maybe it’s true — we could learn a lot about success from a psychopath.

On the flip side, while these traits have the potential to lead to fantastical financial and business success in aggressively capitalist societies, that doesn’t make them inherently good. Now more than ever seems to be a time where we need to cultivate harmony, compassion and vulnerability for all people regardless of individual status, label or identity.

“It isn’t hard to convince someone you love them if you know what they want to hear”

An eyebrow raising sentence from everyone’s favourite cute psychopath, You’s Joe Goldberg. It is wonderfully inclusive to change the narrative on psychopathy but surely there’s a reason for its fierce reputation. Maybe Dr. Mallet was right in that the psychopath is always a sneaky snake, ready to pounce and sink their psychopathic poison into our blood.

Manipulation is one of the terms we regularly hear associated with psychopathy. If psychopaths are prone to manipulating others, it can be argued that simple survival instincts mean non psychopathic individuals want to protect themselves and society from such behaviour. However, by perpetuating the hype of how dangerous psychopaths are, we just come back to an earlier point made in this article that the collective ostracises the psychopath and therefore impacts their ability to comply with social norms.

Hug your local psychopath

It seems that one of the prevailing mainstream perspectives on psychopathy is that a psychopath is someone evil: they were born evil; they are evil, and they’ll die evil. Hopefully you’ll now join me in disagreeing with that sentiment and see psychopathy as a complex mental health issue where everyone experiencing it is different and deserves to have the chance to be defined beyond a label.

No one is innately criminal or violent. While yes, there are links between criminality, violence and psychopathy, it’s worth remembering that we live in a time of mass media consumption that loves to sensationalise. The need to sell and to exaggerate often win over the need to be patient, analyse and truly understand complex parts of the human experience.

Psychology’s flirtations with neuroscience have revealed fascinating results: the brain, what a non-scientist would likely assume is a fixed and unchangeable organ, does and can change. Our brains are individual and through theories of neuroplasticity we can understand the vitality of our social environment on our brain and therefore behaviour. Psychopaths cannot be excluded from this.

Psychology and sociology are working to explore links between criminality and disadvantage or oppression. If criminality is linked to psychopathy, we must ask why, and be prepared to look at an individual’s history and their social environment.

Frankly, many of the accusations thrown at psychopaths do not work for neurodiverse people. Whether it’s an anxious person unable to understand why their habits, born from their anxiety, frustrate their travel buddy or a psychopath who — as Dr. Newman believes — can’t recognise their words or behaviour has upset someone until much later, the world can be a confusing puzzle for those of us who do not fit neatly into the expected norm.

In expanding compassion and understanding to others regardless of what condition or disorder they may have, we can be instruments of change. Once we look to others and try to understand them, we deconstruct labels that lead to marginalisation and instead, we can bring people together by saying: you are not alone.

**

[imuybemovoko]

My beliefs now

I set this blog up for a bunch of different purposes including conlangs/worldbuilding stuff, my writing, and my views on religion and maybe also politics. So far, mostly, I’ve ranted a lot about the beliefs I left behind. Now that I’ve let that particular sketchy brand of Christianity, now that I’ve discovered the ways it and my conservative family background were probably turning me into a fascist while I was still in all that, I figure I might as well try to hash out where I stand now. I’m around eleven months out from my deconversion, and a lot has already changed. I might try to attempt a before and after thing but there’s a lot to unpack about how I used to think and I’m not sure I’ve understood everything yet. I think I made the mistake of thinking that not very long before that repressed memory about “Sharon” and her Jonah display came crashing back in March. This is current to late July 2020 and may not include everything. 

So without any further ado, let’s talk background. First, some things I’ve already either mentioned or given more than enough evidence for. I used to be a Christian fundamentalist. (Clearly. I rant about it a lot.) I got into that because I was raised religious, then let myself fall right the fuck into what I’ll call “deep end lite” shortly before senior year in high school. Some local churches in my small town arranged a missions trip thing and the way I agreed to go along felt in the moment like surrendering to a voice that’s been speaking to me all along. In ...a way, it was. Just not the voice I thought. I’m pretty sure I didn’t want this god, at any point like ever, until that little part of me whispered that it would be easier to accept him. I have a megathread document that I’ve stored a lot of my “God stories” from my time as a Christian in. Unfortunately I didn’t remember many specific details of this experience to write down in there, but I did write a bit of a “life-story” thing that reminds me that, chronologically, that happened after a period of focused attempts by the church to indoctrinate me, some traumatic things my family did, social struggles, and feeling like an asshole because of things I’d done in the past. I remember having this growing sense over the previous year that I was approaching some kind of very dangerous breaking point, to the point where (trigger warning: mental instability, school shooter mention. Please either stop here or skip to where it says “in other words” in the next paragraph after this if that’s going to be an issue. It also keeps getting dark from there for a minute. Please, please tread with care if you need to. There is no shame at all if this becomes too much. Take care of yourself first and foremost.) 

when discussing how I came to accept the faith, I told some of my Christian friends that I felt like there was a scary chance of me becoming a school shooter. I think this may have been a post-hoc projection, but I can’t quite be sure of that. I was in a bad place for a bit there in high school. I had a wild temper and some sketchy intrusive thoughts.

In other words, it hit at a perfect moment of weakness. That’s how oppressive forms of spirituality function, it’s how hate groups function... it’s a massive shit cocktail and I found a pretty bad influence in the form of people who promote that whole “born again experience” thing in Christianity. I’d say I’m glad I missed out on being dragged into a fascist ideology this way, but uh... I’m no longer convinced I didn’t grow up around something like that. More later. 

From there I spiraled my way through my first attempts at college through the university’s chapter of the Chi Alpha campus ministry and, peripherally through that, Assemblies of God (holy shit those guys are wild), then through a local Baptist church (more peripherally) and Calvary Chapel (I was a worship guitarist here for like 18 months and helped with their youth ministry for almost as long) closer to home and a CRU chapter at my community college. With each passing year I slipped further and further into this weird shame-induced funk where I got like... addicted to Jesus and hated myself or something. It’s a bit hard to find words that don’t take multiple entire extra pages and I want to be concise, so I’ll simply call it “Jesus-flavored depression” for brevity and because that was enough of a genuinely bad time (and I’m still fucked up enough) that I might need some fairly serious therapy.

Near the end of 2018 I was reaching a breaking point, wondering why nothing ever seemed to change in my life from “sexual sin” (...which in my case literally consisted of being attracted to women and occasional self-pleasure, but they literally teach you to hate yourself for less than that in the spicier churches rip) to my direction in life to how trapped I felt by my family. I also started to have more questions about the violence in the Bible and some of the sketchier doctrines, and that was strongly reinforced by some of the things I saw in a creative writing class I took, including an atheist who shared a story of a profoundly negative experience involving being taught about hell at a very young age. All that led to the absolute disaster that was December 2018. It was my last semester at the community college I went to. Finals week was a fucking disaster, and the week before that too, and my grades were really good but at great cost. I won’t go into a ton of detail because 1. space concerns and 2. this time is still damn painful to discuss, but just know that I’m unconvinced I’d have survived that month without this song. (Yes, that’s Paramore. Shut up xD they’re still good.) I looped it for like three days straight and I think it was just enough to keep me going through what was the third time I had any suicidal kind of thoughts ever and by far the worst and longest period of it so far.

So the next several months (and I won’t go into a ton of detail about this, I intended this post more to describe my current position and I don’t wanna get too in the weeds with background) were a confusing period of questioning, starting with, of all things, my family dynamic. The spiral after the week before finals was ...considerably worsened by some comments my dad made, and between that and some experiences in the past that the creative writing class I took that fall reminded me of, I was exposed to a bit of a deeply toxic pattern. I might discuss that more deeply in another post, but for now suffice it to say that extensive youtube binges and some other research between about January and March told me the situation is probably adjacent to pathological narcissism in some way. I brought some of this up to the church I was attending at the time (a small town Calvary Chapel, if I haven’t mentioned that already) and their responses were ...inconsistent. Some people blamed me, some people said “oh dang your dad is abusive”, and some people took the “your parents are trying their best” tack. In retrospect I think that made me doubt if God’s messaging to these people could really be trusted. Then, in about April, the question of hell came up again. I was helping in the church’s budding youth ministry at the time and we had about four regular attendees between the ages of 12 and 18. There were about three weeks in a row when one of the other adults (I’ll call her Kelly for the purposes of not doxxing; also more on her later) talked at length about how unbelief leads to hell. I remembered that atheist from creative writing, made the connection to these four kids, and thought, “what the hell are we doing?” (Pun not intended but rather convenient.) I immediately backed down from my role in the youth ministry, citing other equally valid but less pressing reasons involving stress from the issues with my dad, and tried to go on with life. But the floodgates were open. 

In late May or early June, I was staring out a window one morning and suddenly a question crossed my mind unbidden: “Is God a narcissist?” I thought back to a relatively recent sermon by the associate pastor in which he explained that the purpose of the world was “for God’s glory”, to some apparent sudden flights of rage, and some other factors in the scriptures, and thought, “holy shit, I need to investigate this, because God is also very adjacent to narcissism.” It took a hot minute for the ball to really get rolling with that, but once it did... I came to a point by late June or early July where I delivered an ultimatum to God, something to the tune of “Ok, either show me how all these questions I have can be answered beyond a doubt or I’m done.” 

There was no answer. 

God was silent during this time, and the people in the church were shocked that I had the questions I did and either concerned or ...rather spicy. I joined an ex-Christian discord server to aid in a proper, thorough investigation. I aired my questions both there and on a Christian discord server. The Christian server was toxic as fuck and the ex-Christians started making a crazy amount of sense. I watched some videos from Cosmic Skeptic and TheraminTrees (most notably the latter’s deconversion story) for new perspectives and, by mid-August, had crashed out of the faith altogether.

So the last time I ever stepped into a church with the intent of attending service (I showed up after once in January of 2020 to kinda let them know and that went pretty badly lol) was about two weeks before I started college again in the fall. I burned all but one of my Bibles and a collection of gospel tracts I never did anything else with and stylized it like my limited understanding of what a satanic/pagan ritual looked like, complete with a chant in my conlang Aylaan for a more personal twist because of course, to feel edgy. (I did a lot of kind of weird shit to feel edgy; that’s one of two of them I’m sure I don’t regret.) And after that, things got ...ah, confusing?

Because of course when the linchpin of your understanding of the world gives way, everything becomes fucked for a hot minute. 

So the first thing that happened was a couple months of anxiety and confusion. I slowly started to deconstruct my inherited political views too. (More on that later.) Then I had this really beautiful interesting moment in late September where I walked past a tree on the way to a class and had a sudden realization that I didn’t have to force the tree into a Christian framework anymore, it was just a beautiful mass of green shit and cellulose. I could appreciate it in whatever way I felt was best. I damn near broke down crying in the bathroom before class, it hit me that hard. So that’s fun xD

Since then I’ve kinda gone through a bunch of funky phases with this, including a couple of months of fairly salty atheism. Along with that process, I started questioning my sexuality in December (more on that in another post in a minute lmao it’s a trip) and literally shredding my politics in the face of Trump being a crackhead in a dangerous position getting away with confirmed illegal shit, COVID-19 and the ...dehumanizing responses of corporations and their sponsored politicians, and then what I noticed about the deaths of Ahmaud Arbery and George Floyd and the fallout from that. (In a nutshell, holy FUCK there’s a huge problem and it’s messed up that people don’t see it.) At this point, I’m socially progressive and pretty left leaning. I don’t know what the hell to do about it or how either other than some of the tense discussions I’ve been having, but I’d like to work against racism and discrimination too. So that’s cool and a lot better than where I was... 

which... I regret deeply.

I don’t know exactly how to define my old political views, and they were marked by considerable cognitive dissonance. I’ll try to illustrate this as best I can but I don’t know what label I can use. Here goes. 

Cursed images aside, I think the best way to explain this is through some background, i.e. what my parents believe, because my beliefs were largely inherited. 

This might be majorly over-simplified and based on what I remember of my own pre-deconstruction views and what I hear them say lately. I’m doing my best, but take it with a grain of salt. Basically, it seems like they walk this weird line between constitutionalist and very authoritarian that I see a hell of a lot of in rural America. Kinda like the Republic party used to before they yeeted into Trump’s mindfuck wholeheartedly. They’re homophobic to a rather alarming degree (more on that in another post soon) and not ...overtly Christian-supremacist but you can tell that their ethics are dripping with it and they’re terrified of Islam and they’d like to legislate some aspects of Christian morality. They also support the second amendment, which is the one thing I still agree with them on that I’m aware of, but they take it to more of an extreme than I’m willing to. For further ...flavor, they also reject the premise that parts of our society are systemically racist (and maybe also the idea that such a thing is even possible because of course), subscribe to the “bootstrap theory” for everything they can think to apply it to, reject climate science, and have been extremely conspiratorial about COVID-19. Also they like making it out like everything is a Democrat conspiracy theory, compare the Democrats to Hitler and Stalin to a weird degree, have on at least one occasion called Fox Motherfucking News left-leaning, and think Alex Jones is wacky but sometimes raises valid points. 

So that’s, in a nutshell, a bit of a look at my past political views, except I think I was a bit more Christian-dominionist than them and I think I had moments of “...does this really make any sense?” for years before I crashed out of everything. The first domino was my Christianity, but once that fell, my entire approach to the world went some places. 

So ...yeah. Oof. I was sketchy as shit. Glad that’s changed. 

So uh... I’ve already mentioned a vague (read: as much detail as I feel confident providing) description of my political views now, but after all this bullshit let’s finally get to the other half of my titular current beliefs. This ...isn’t going to be easy to explain either, but I feel more confident going into more detail. Buckle up :^)

Alright. So except for a couple of months where I was like “there is no god reeee” half because I was sOmE hYpErInTeLlEcTuAl SkEpTiC and half because of trauma from the toxic flavor of Christianity I left and some shitty developments in both politics and my social circles (I’ll talk at some length about “Kelly” in a sec here I think), since leaving Christianity I’ve always been what I’ll call “hopeful agnostic” (I think I stole this term from Rhett and/or Link lol). In a nutshell, what that means to me is “there may or may not be a god, but I hope there is at least one and they’re nice, or like, at least some spiritual thing that has a good aspect that can help me”. I also dabble in shitty rituals where I burn dead plants and occasionally also hate literature like gospel tracts (and, that one time, a couple of bibles) and basically call on “anyone who is listening and gives a fuck, else the placebo effect” for whatever my goal is. Like... witchy-adjacent but I don’t think about it very much at this stage. I kind of enjoy it, and I think for one reason or another it can be good for my mental health, but I’m wary of any kind of commitment or even more serious experimentation, even as I hope to find something good, because ...trauma, and maybe even absent that a desire to not be wrong in a way that’s dangerous to anyone else again. So that’s fun :^)

So if you’ve made it this far through this weird bullshit, thanks, this story is kind of important to me xD and if you couldn’t, and you’re not reading this ending thingy because it got too dark or it pissed you off or something, that’s cool too and you’re beautiful and valid. Whoever you are, I hope you find whatever healing you need. :)

[differential-form]

It's time to end the myth of emotional self-sufficiency

There’s something much more dangerous out there than the next big flu. It’s a virus, and it will shorten your life. But it’s not a tiny microbe; it’s a meme. It’s the prevailing myth of emotional self-sufficiency. You know this myth—it proclaims that people who need people are pathological, that a deep longing for relationship is sick, and that caring for and about others is co-dependent. It says you should be able to meet all your own needs, and that if you loved yourself enough you wouldn’t need anyone else—so if you’re wanting love, there’s something deficient about you. It’s the myth that shames you for feeling lonely. It’s the myth that has people in my therapy office whispering, “I really want a partner. But I know that’s wrong.” I am so tired of battling this myth alone. I need you with me on this. And here’s why. Humans did not evolve to live alone. It’s not our natural state. We evolved in closely knit bands of about 30 to 40 people. Out there on the plains, or in the forest, or wherever we were, we depended on each other. We hunted and gathered in groups, we sat together around communal fires, we shared food and stories, we slept snuggled up against the cold. It was safer to be part of the pack. You couldn’t survive long alone. Some of the unpleasantness of loneliness is that millions of years of evolution triggers a trace of ancient fear when we’re alone— the outliers are the ones that get picked off by leopards and lions. So, I need you. And you need me. We need each other. It’s in our DNA. We are relational beings We were born to be relational. Day-old deer can run and jump, but humans are helpless when we’re born. For the first months of our lives, we rely so totally on our mothers that attachment researchers say it makes no sense to talk about two separate people. The baby is entirely regulated by the mother. Good attunement by mother to baby builds trust and love. Enough trust and love creates what’s called secure attachment—the inner confidence that you are loved and will be responded to. Secure attachment creates confidence in exploring the world. Securely attached toddlers run off to explore, and then look back at mother, checking that she’s still there. Sometimes they run back, for ‘emotional refueling’ in the form of a loving glance or a kind word. Then they run off again, feeling safe and happy in the world. The myth is that somewhere along the line we grow out of this. But in fact we continue to be regulated by each other. Holding the hand of the one you love calms your heart rate and reduces your cortisol. Research shows that men live longer if they’re married, and women live longer if they have a network of close friends. Think about that—our need for relationship is literally a life and death issue. Our need for touch is another. Loving, caring physical touch causes us to secrete oxytocin, often called the bonding hormone—it makes us feel calm, safe, and happy. Just 40 seconds of being hugged by someone you like causes oxytocin release. But you can’t hug yourself, at least, not very successfully. You need to get it from someone else. Try it. Hug someone and count—you’ll feel the relaxation response switch in. That feeling of closeness with someone else will literally lengthen your life if you get enough of it. Far from being self-sufficient, we physically need each other. It’s a mammal thing In his book, ‘Outliers’, Malcolm Gladwell describes the town of Roseto, in Pennsylvania, which was settled by immigrants from Italy, and which has an extremely low rate of heart disease. It’s not because of diet, and it’s not because of exercise, or genes, or any of the other obvious potential causes. It turns out that the people of Roseto are abnormally healthy because they live together in extended families, and spend a lot of time socializing with each other and visiting with their neighbors. It’s the human contact that makes the difference. Human contact is literally essential for the health of your heart. Is that surprising? Only if you’re infected by a meme that tells you to deny your fundamental nature as a mammal. Ethologists are producing more and more data now that shows that all mammals are programmed for altruism and love. Our previous view of the world as a jungle full of selfish creatures fighting for survival is giving way to one of the world as a tightly knit tapestry of reciprocal relationships. In the early part of the twentieth century we were told that since aggressive chimps dominated by alpha males and their chest-beating ways were our closest relatives, their behavior proved that humans too were wired for aggression and domination. Then, as society shifted, and we became capable of seeing something other than aggression and domination ourselves, we ‘found’ the bonobos—pygmy chimps who live peacefully in matrilineal groups, happily spending their time sharing food and sex. So now we know that at least some of our closest relatives exist in polyamorous, sensual bliss! Lately even rats have been found to be capable of altruism. An experiment showed that a free rat will take the time to free a trapped one, and even save that other rat some of its food. I’d bet if those scientists went one stage further, they’d find that both the freed rat and the one that tripped the latch feel pretty damn good about it. It’s ridiculous to think we don’t need each other. In fact, the opposite is true—the more you give and take love, care, attention and contact with others, the happier and healthier you will be. So humans are naturally relational why has this meme taken such a hold? How did a meme based on avoidance become such a fervently held belief? This meme is all about fear We become avoidant because of fear. Sometimes people have been mean to us in the past and we carry the scars of that trauma—which makes us turn away from love because it has become twinned with the fear of betrayal. The far end of that avoidance response is the supreme isolation of schizoid personality disorder, or the lonely fearfulness of avoidant personality disorder. The near end is believing in the desirability of ‘meeting all of one’s own needs’. All of us have been betrayed at some point. So all of us harbor a little fear connected to the vulnerability of opening ourselves to love, and therefore this meme is seductive. But there’s another reason why it has taken hold, even though it’s one that goes against what makes us most healthy and happy. Primates live in bands, and those bands have hierarchies. The alphas get the girls (or the guy) and the best food. The betas are less highly ranked, but still ‘in’. Further down the scale the pickings are thinner, and you may not get to breed. Further down than that and you’re on the edge, glancing behind you for leopards while you scavenge for what you can get. The fear of being out on the edge leaves you dangerously open to infection by a toxic meme that’s gone viral, like the one I’m talking about. Here’s why. There are two ways to get to the top, depending on what type of society you live in. One is to be more aggressive than everyone else—that used to work, and still does in societies run by war lords (or chimps), for example. The other way is by affiliation—being appealing and friendly, and getting everyone to like you. In the modern Western dating world, affiliation is essential in bagging you a coveted position in the pack. And you don’t succeed in that venture by standing up against a major myth —particularly one about relationships—and saying, “nope, I don’t agree”. That would mark you as weird, wrong, dangerous to be associated with. Unless a significant proportion of your group is secretly thinking the same thing. And I think you are. Because at the deep level of feeling, you know this meme is wrong. Don’t isolate, inoculate. The solution is not to open less to other people. The solution is to open more. The idea that we can—and should—provide for ourselves in every area of our lives, is one that has been sold to us. It’s part of the ideology of the consumer society. We are increasingly reduced--reduced, not empowered—to buying as services the things that used to unfold from natural human relationships: home health care, baby-sitting, massage therapy, spiritual counseling, sexual fulfillment, entertainment, and so on. All these things used to be available to us for free, because we lived with and among other people. Community gatherings met layered sets of needs, in a rich texture of transactions. Markets, barn raisings, harvest times, village dances, and weekly church services, for example, provided opportunities for sharing information, trading, making friends, getting help, courtship, and entertainment. Now we’ve lost that collectivity, and most transactions have become one-dimensional. Even cafes and bars are no longer meeting places—they’re full of isolated individuals staring down at screens, updating their status on Facebook. But god forbid anyone talk to their neighbor—it’s become a weird thing to do, an impingement, something that creates unease. Fight the meme, my friends. We don’t need more self-reliance. Or more narcissistic focusing on ourselves. What we’re blocked in is our relationality: our readiness to receive and our willingness to give. We’ve become so infected with the values of the consumer society that we think we should only give if we’re going to get, and that we should try to get the most return for the least investment. God forbid we love someone more than they love us. Or give our love for free. We think we should provide for ourselves, because otherwise we’d be relying on someone else. And that means taking a risk without any guarantee. We’d rather hoard our own resources, and be all right, Jack. This is the attitude to life that has people in my office feeling both lonely as hell, and ashamed of it—they’ve been told it’s wrong to need people, and they’re scared that their normal attachment instincts are sick. Instead of going inward and trying to meet your own needs, go outward and build yourself a robust network of relationships, a community of like-minded souls that you can laugh with, cry with, listen to, care for and love—the type of network that makes people in Roseto live longer. Then when the inevitable betrayals, bereavements and disappointments happen, you won’t be alone. You’ll have support. Because the truth is, no-one makes it alone. And no-one—unless they’re the sole survivor of a plane crash in a jungle—should even try. Innoculate yourself from the virus by smiling at people, saying hello, getting involved, keeping in contact, leaning into differences, sticking with a friend who’s in hard times, offering to help, forgiving your lover, sending a card, giving a hug, picking up the crying kid, calling your mother. People need people. You’re perfectly normal. Rachel Vaughan MA, MFT

[buzzdixonwriter]

Duty Now For The Future (part two)

In our previous installment, our erstwhile essayist was about to plunge off the deep end yet again with his ideas of what the post-coronavirus pandemic world will look like.)

Venn Diagram Society

Because digital communications eliminates the need for physical proximity, and because we can find or form “tribes” of like-minded souls linked together by a common interest, we’ve seen traditional neighbor socialization fade.

We’re starting to realize that no one person is all one thing, that you are the biological relative of one group of people, related by marriage to another group (who in turn have other non-biological relations they share, are friends in real life with a variety of other people for a variety of other reasons, and are online friends with even more people whom we’ve never met face to face.

(As David Gerrold observed, sci-fi fans had a leg up on the rest of the world when the Internet age started because we’d been establishing these overlapping Venn diagrams for decades via print and mail communications.  We were primed for this, compadre!)

What we’re in the process of hashing out right now is how these overlapping groups will interact with and among themselves.

There are people we do not wish in our lives, and online that’s easy:  Block ‘em.

But that’s a lot more difficult when it involves biological relatives or people we’re related to by marriage.  New rules and customs are being hashed out (or is that #hashtagged_out?).

If it hasn’t be created already in some part of the world where long distance familial relations are important, we should see apps that let us figure out how we are related to one another.  The Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon game will provide a template for this.  When we encounter others in real life or online, the internet will find out how we’re linked through family and friends and special interest groups and clue us in.

We will become more interconnected, like it or not.

. . .

Future Culture Is African-American

In 2048 white Americans will only count as 49% of the population.

Years ago I predicted we’d be seeing a lot more white extremist racial violence between now and then and so far, I’ve been proven right.

There will be more incidents in the future, and some of the specific incidents will be very serious.

But eventually biology will hammer it through the thickest skulls of the whitest bigots that they are no longer in the driver’s seat, and if they want anything they better learn to play well with others.

If we were a White Anglo-Saxon Protestant nation up to this point, what will we be past 2048?

I think African-Americans will finally come into their own.

They have spent half a millennia buttressing their families and their culture against a dominant culture determined to destroy them, if not through outright genocide then by utter subjugation. 

With all those odds thrown against them, with all the handicaps and limitations and exclusions they faced, they nonetheless created a vibrant and thriving social network linking a vast number of sub-cultures and sub-groups within the larger African-American community.

Look at how the Jews, surviving in the face of three millennia of attempts to eradicate them, produced a culture so vibrant and strong that they prospered wherever they went.

Lok how the Irish, the whipping dogs of Great Britain, suffered oppressive bigotry when they emigrated to America, but once the foot came off their neck they dominated politics and culture in cities around the country.

The same will happen to the African-Americans.

They are prepared for this. 

They are going to dominate politics and culture for the rest of the century.

This is not to say that other groups won’t have a voice, quite the contrary.

Their voices will be heard louder than before, because the voices that had shouted them down will no longer be strong enough to do so.

But there’s something unique about the African-Americans position in US history that is going to give them and their culture that little extra boost that will put them at the forefront of the parade.

Good.

I think they will prove to be both stronger than their white predecessors and less callous about the rights of others.

. . .

Less Touch, More Contact

We’d already begun moving in this direction re online dating, with more and more people expressing dissatisfaction at “Tindr nightmares” who can’t grasp the basics of interpersonal relationships.

The coronavirus pandemic is going to produce a “slow down, cowboy” ripple through the dating pool.  There will be a shift away from instant physical gratification (yes, I understand not everybody uses online dating for that, but it is a common thread among those who do use it) and more towards building actual relationships.

We’ll see a gradual turn away from the more obvious forms of using sex to sell products, this in turn will lower the expectation that all close relationships must have a sexual context to them.

Sex ain’t going away, of course, but we may find romance coming back in unexpected ways.

The various…uh…”special interest” communities won’t go away, either, but they will become more insular.  They’ll see discretion as a powerful recruiting incentive, and within those communities there’s likely to be an even great degree of group identification and commitment as anybody who makes it in will need to demonstrate a sincere desire to join, not just casual curiosity.

. . .

Young & Stupid

The age of majority may shift…upward.

The western world may recognize the late teens to mid-twenties not as the start of adulthood but the last hurrah of adolescence.

People -- young ones especially -- do a lot of stupid things (see: “airline toilet, licking” in our first installment).

We tended to shove young children into the labor force as soon as they could pull weeds on the farm or work a shift in the factory.

We saw eighteen as a symbolic adulthood because we needed mass conscription for armies and younger than that the soldiers became too problematic re discipline (not that there’s weren’t very young soldiers in all wars).

We’re not entering an era where we may be able to push that back a bit.

Instead of urging young people to form families, we’ll be giving them time to get things out of their system, make their foolish mistakes, indulge in their embarrassing experiments.

All digitally documented, of course.

I expect we’ll eventually come to some sort of tacit cultural agreement that nude pictures or similar personal scandal that occur before a certain age will be dismissed as “kid stuff” and attempts to hold such shenanigans over the head of an adult (i.e., anyone past that age) will be regarded as pointless and silly and gauche.

This won’t apply to criminal activities, or things that get people hurt, or blatant displays of bigotry that reveal an underlying pathology, but it will give a pass on a lot of other things.

(I’m not predicting this, but the sci-fi writer in me can easily imagine a society codifying certain types of behavior to be done at specific ages under chaperoned behavior.  That’s not a new idea; parents in the late 19th century organized and supervised kissing games like Post Office for their adolescents in order to let them enjoy limited safe experimentation and to introduce them to acceptable adult behavior.)

. . .

Incels In Hell

In the short term, a lot of incels with borderline or not-so-borderline personality disorders are going to lose parents who exercised some degree of control over them.

They are going to be truly alone except for their online buddies, and many of them are going to be dispossessed in the aftermath of their parent/s death.

Since a lot of them have guns and dangerous chemicals, this is going to have some very bad repercussions.

I expect to see a dip in mass shooting rates during the crisis (counterbalanced by a rise in domestic assault and familial murders), then a sharp spike when the all-clear is sounded.

  © Buzz Dixon

[notesinthearchives-blog]

A Study in the Banal

[A Mal'Akh finger bone covered in code, presumably as a handy guide for little siblings]

[Normally, the correct biodata key would allow the code to be read automatically, but since you lack it it will have to be decoded]

[Decoding…]

Using a technology requires adopting the organisational practices and communication styles that made that technology. - Inverse Conway’s Law

If a technology doesn’t appear political to you, its because you are using the politics said technology implies. - Anon, adding a footnote to Inverse Conway’s Law

Our family’s claim that the ghost point fundamentally ruined almost all attempts at genuine transhumanist experimentation until the start of the post human era is controversial in some circles, and in all fairness there are a few edge cases to bear in mind. For example: the Heavenly Minds, as we have taken to categorising them, are a series of human era cases wherein the people involved ceased to be human in the biological sense of the word. However, we submit that these cannot be considered transhumanist success stories for the simple reason that they failed to transcend the human society that built them to any meaningful degree.

A quick study of their history is necessary here. The first of these came about as a result of human attempts to colonise the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter- the idea being that the asteroid belt communities would be able to provide a way point for ships hoping to gather hydrogen from Jupiter whilst also being just about close enough to the Sun for some use of solar power to be economical, and that a massive amount of wealth could be gained by mining the minerals in the asteroid belt and using the microgravity environment to build large ships without ever having to get them into orbit.

Needless to say, these plans hit reality like a car hits a solid brick wall. Though on paper the idea of hollowing out an asteroid to house people and generating gravity by making it spin is a relatively sound idea as far as they go, the society that the colonists and companies and governments involved hoped to build there was simply not going to happen.

By the time humanity had made serious attempts at entering space, their society was sufficiently complex that the average person who would become a space colonist had no input into making most of the goods they used nor any knowledge of said goods were made. Sitting at the end of a long supply chain of which they knew little, this by and large gave them the impression of a world without meaningful limitation- tellingly, every school of economics that was taken seriously took the world’s resources to be essentially infinite. But as these colonists and their leaders entered the asteroid belt, they entered made up of nothing but limitations, where supplies of food and water was inevitably fragile and certain death could quite literally be a few feet away.

The sheer culture shock of this combined with the inevitable shortages of food, water and electricity to cause multiple rebellions, but this did nothing. Every story this society understood as having some relevance to this situation involved an individual seizing the power of whoever was on top in order to bring about a plentiful cornucopia that the corrupt leaders had been preventing. Unsurprisingly, this just ending up replicating the same structure and society that had brought about the rebellion in the first place.

After a series of revolutions and counter revolutions that ended up going no where, it was proposed that if heaven could not be created in the material world that it could be created in the virtual one. Following the logic that human personalities were a programme being run on the biological computer of the brain, once a sufficiently advanced man-machine interface was created all that was necessary was for one’s personality to be uploaded to a powerful enough computer with a large enough memory, at which point they could exist in a heaven completely free of the material world.

Most of the asteroid belt’s human population was swiftly taken in by quasi religious mania, and uploaded their personalities en mass whilst letting their physical forms be taken apart molecule by molecule for the computer’s use. In the long run, the computer was no more inherently inclined to tell the individuals apart from each other than a person is to instinctively think of the ocean as individual water molecules that just happen to be together or any more than a person is to consider their separate thoughts as different entities from themselves. As such, the basic functioning of the computer lent in it to treating the individuals within it as part of its whole, and as a result the first Heavenly Mind was born.

Our family comes in here. A number of cousins had caught wind of this and, curious to see if it amounted to a genuine break from the ghost point, quietly created an small fork in the timeline from which the Heavenly Mind could be extracted without the Great Houses noticing.

The idea behind the Minds was not necessarily a bad one, but the Heavenly Mind our cousins picked up was a disappointment. Though its components were no longer human in the strictest biological sense of the word, and though it was theoretically intelligent enough to be on an equal footing with any of the higher powers, it had fundamentally failed to break past the cultural limitations of the ghost point, and as a result it could be understood as being within the context of not just humanity but the specific human society that created it.

As part of a series of experiments, the Heavenly Mind was given a society to shape however it thought best. Without fail, no matter what environment the society was in, the Mind would set about recreating the specific post ghost point human society that utterly failed to survive the asteroid belt prior to its creation. When said society would collapse, whether due to the environment or other factors, the Mind would declared the collapse inevitable in spite of post human societies surviving in comparable environments with even less resources at their disposal.

Various other Heavenly Minds were created under similar circumstances in the human era, and we did investigate them. The second Heavenly Mind we found was far more vicious than the first due the environment it came about it. Instead of a simple collection of asteroid colonies, this Heavenly Mind came about on a generation ship: a slower than light speed colonising ship wherein the passengers would live and die through several generations before reaching their destination.

Here, all the problems with the asteroid colonies were combined with the pressure placed on the generations that didn’t remember their home planet but wouldn’t live to see the planet they were intending to reach and the dangerous tendency for individuals born after the first generation to perceive themselves as breeding stock and others as a potential meal. Between this environment and the smaller population making the pathologies of each individual stand out more as they averaged out within the Heavenly Mind made the second Mind comfortable with and prone to extreme levels of violence, but other than this the experiments putting it in charge of various societies worked in a similar way to the first.

This pattern, with only minor variations, was repeated with every Heavenly Mind which we investigated. Understandably, we have little use for them now we have studied and catalogued them, though we still keep them in the Stacks as a number of us enjoy finding new ways to try to make them useful or at least entertaining. The most recent of these, Godfather Morlock’s “debate” with the original Mind on whether time travel was possible provided hours of entertainment before, in the words of one Father “the Mind realised that Morlock was taking the piss”. If you wish to try something similar yourself, please contact the relevant staff before going into the Stacks. They’ll appreciate more if you ask before hand than they will if you get yourself eaten by something in the Stacks and they have to clean up the mess…

Link to archived of our own version: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17042054/chapters/40206029

[myvoicenottheoneyougiveme]

If I trace it back, the larger pattern to the games you play--the way you divide and conquer--something comes to mind from way back that was rather bluntly right out in the open at one time. ...Erotomaniac stalker. This idea of some kind of person that once they get the notion in their head, they will delusionally pursue an object of affection by any means necessary. The unfortunate soul to be caught in the sights of this pathologically psychotic person, is someone that can’t seem to get away despite every plain as day measure to stop this stalker from harassing them. Having convinced themselves that the object of their affection really does want them, nothing the victim does or says can dissuade them. ...There was something in there about cognitive dissonance--the utter bewilderment when everything the stalker believed to be true actually wasn’t. It’s not to say that this person’s fantasy can’t be shattered, but that can be a rather dangerous situation given this unhinged person.

So... erotomaniac stalker who was not, who was by proxy solicited and solicited and solicited and solicited and solicited and solicited for all of the time and energy and attention, however apparently unwanted, that he poured out, who was himself tested and tested and tested and tested and squeezed and manipulated and coerced and harassed and tortured with his feet to the fire, watched as the fire consumed him, melting his brain to the point that that he no longer knew when it was and wasn’t happening. Behind a veil of plausible deniability, mind games, MIND FUCK games, were played on him without end. The only one not in on the joke. It was an absolutely desperate situation with no way forward and no way back, damned if he did and damned if he didn’t. He forged ahead pleading with the only party who had any power over what was happening--the person holding all the keys. ...Between the inside and the out, guilt, shame, and self-loathing, he was slowly coming unraveled. The heat of a fire so intense, he felt he might lose his mind, felt, for the first time in his life, that he knew what that felt like. Everything... everywhere... burning.

The more she tried to get off of herself any sense of obligation or guilt of her own welling up from a trauma past--from a romantic interest who killed himself--the more she vilified and smeared him to make her own out. She couldn’t own that if it didn’t follow the script she’d made, that she didn’t want it. She manipulated and maneuvered him, put words in his mouth, which he always spat out, rather than own a course herself. She felt trapped and so trapped him in return. Increasingly hyperbolic, she put him in a position where he could either find a way to tell her everything she wanted to hear (in good conscience), or he could be burned at the stake for being the monster who broke her heart.

He was in her way.

But she was in his way.

No way forward, no way back.

This dragged on for an ungodly amount of time, till it broke him, till he was down for the count. But she hadn’t won in the end. She hadn’t won the war for the narrative, for her victimhood, for his villainy--the war to take his humanity away from him and name him everything wrong with the world and crown her the world’s greatest victim. ...She’d simply killed him again.

After a relatively long time, he remembered a place where people mused and wrote and blogged about every mellow-dramatic thing that ever existed. And he had his own fair share of grief now to give shape and release--a stream of consciousness intentionally given to no one. And he surrounded himself with the work and thoughts and musings of like minded people, who exposed him to new things and enriched his life. It was a short-lived but wonderful breath of freedom amidst the ashes of the life he once knew. Almost nothing and no one remained that had been in his life before the war began. So everything that moved him, or that he found thought provoking, made its way here. Here instead of there. Instead of taken and twisted and picked apart, as though every breath he took were somehow a crime or MUST MUST MUST have something to do with the Queen-and-Savior. Instead, here, everything that was, just was. No receipt, no rejection, no anything. Simply existing after the longest nightmare.

It was rather raw, the most of what was released. In hindsight, I can say that it was a stream of “drama” and “grief” that was quite uncommon. And if the naming of a great cataclysmic “crime” as told from the other side, is any indication, extraordinary was the depth and breadth of the war torn landscape of what had transpired. To have read of any of it, it carried the gravity of few others...

or at least that’s what one stranger from that site must have thought when she read any of it, because she latched on like someone that WANTED TO BE the object of that “crazy”, “delusional” love. “Sign me up,” she must have said. “I want a piece of that action.” To be OBSESSED about. To be the center of someone’s world. To have someone on your line, LIKE THAT.

Communication was over the airwaves--a dance step, a pace which she set. Started out small but came to encompass every single post she made. It was an incredibly pointed, timed, back and forth, commenting on, reverberating about, every move and breath I made. I got brave, then she freaked out. Confused, I deleted everything and tried to walk away. She wondered where I’d gone, wondered what happened. I eventually came back, and she eventually played the tune she’d been playing. The conversation went on again as it had. But of course the timeline on all of this was relatively short. There wasn’t many places for such a conversation to go between two LITERAL strangers. And as much as she tried to guilt me like Michelle had, or anyone else had, for not feeling enough, I tried to stand on solid ground and say that she was being unfair. Her big grand gestures or lewd flirtations when unmatched were always met with accusations. Just like Michelle had. If it wasn’t flipping what she was doing around on me and making me out to be THE stalker. It was projecting some kind of judgement of her onto me over sexual promiscuity. She stated on more than one occasion that if men think that women are stained or spoiled or tainted once they’re not a virgin anymore, then they should look at themselves (as source of that staining).

She squeezed me. I’d come to give up bits of my real information and even a real photo. I’d tried to run a few times, when I’d put a foot forward (out of line mind you) to find a door slammed hard in my face. But it was only a few times. And the door slamming or any other kind of rejection was never an actual reply but came in the same format as the whole rest of the “conversation” had been.

But to a larger point, I’d demonstrated a desire or ability to delete my entire blog, mostly as a means of wiping the slate clean and removing any trace of a lingering intention to be involved with her. I’d intended and failed two or three times to go back to musing as I had without giving her a second thought. But I couldn’t understand WHY she was doing what she was doing.

After the first confusing run-in with her, I’d taken it to my counselor/therapist who I’d been working with since having that nervous breakdown that had me dropping out of the workforce and moving back home. The guidance was simple. And my initial reservations, were said to be unnecessary. But the guidance was simple. I’d never considered that anything I thought or felt could really matter to anyone. But the guidance was simple.

And the interaction with her had run its course and run straight into the dead end of the double-bind that Michelle had made. And for the old guilt this girl leveraged, and my own insecurity and shame, my own sense of obligation, like I’d been so gaslit and so brain-washed before, I HAD TO BE TOLD. I had to be told, that it was another situation where I was taking responsibility for things that were beyond my control. I had to be told that my initial insistence on REALITY, over fantasy--actual experience over make-believe, was in fact warranted. How was I to be obligated, like my feelings for this person should have been growing, like we’d been growing closer, like we’d been ACTUALLY getting to know one another? It wasn’t real. IT WASNT REAL, and I knew it, but she denied this. I knew it, and it took someone in authority on these interpersonal matters to say, “no, if you are not experiencing each other, your feelings will not grow. You will not feel any closer or more connected than the day you started. If she’s not interested, then she’s not interested. You don’t have to wonder beyond that. Her actions speak for themselves.” I didn’t owe this girl anything. And there was nothing for it.

I said my piece for the last time, and here’s where my own account of what happened next falters. I either posted it, in our usual format, out in the open, or I sent this “it’s been fun but...” as a final direct message to her inbox. “If we aren’t, if we’re not going to, then we can’t. That’s just how it is. What do you want from me? I’m moving on.” Most of these quotes are paraphrased. Exact wording is impossible this many years later. But this distinction of how I said my final bit is of great importance for what little of what came next that I was witness to.

I did as I’d done before. AS I’D DONE BEFORE This person who’d created her own system of feelers and spider-like stranded trip wires to quantify attention and to distinguish between WHO ever crossed her threshold, knew my every move. All I know, is that she knew enough to throw a fit when I attempted to opt out of that system by using the TOR browser. How dare I deny her CONFIRMATION of attention given her? Come to find out it was an HTML embedded google analytics... thingy. Don’t know what you call that, but websites use things like it all the time. It was like a little badge on the page. It was used in this case between us like the texting applications phones use nowadays where people can elect to or decline to send “read” status updates within the conversation. She knew when, how often, and from the approximate geographic location.

If I’d sent a direct message, this explanation about her analytics software isn’t so relevant. A direct message is plain. It’s time-stamped. It is itself evidence of itself. If I said my final piece just out in the open where most of our “conversation” had taken place, then this ticker of sorts, was the stand-in trip wire. Either way, I’d have to have visited her page to do either of these things. It was a “conversation” after all.

The point is, saying my piece, was PREDICTABLY followed by WHAT I’D DONE BEFORE.

DELETE.

Only this time, immediately after saying my piece, and going to delete and remake, my url that I’d deleted and remade 3 to 4 times by then, WAS UNAVAILABLE.

You tell me.

You tell me what that means.

You’ve acknowledged that I... you targeted the account I was using, how the hell do you think this all started?

I was forced to make another one, but I thought nothing of it. I thought better actually. It was a chance to be truly free. If she didn’t know what it was, she wouldn’t be echoing and trying to get my attention. I wouldn’t be left wondering. OR hoping.

Point is, she was “notified” of my departure. She was the only one, if not another stalker come from Facebook, come from Michelle-territory following the bread crumbs from Facebook, to Twitter, to Tumblr as the accounts were linked in that fashion.

SOMEONE KNEW

...someone was waiting.

Someone was waiting to snatch it up, the second I let it go again. But the only person who was actively notified of this, was the girl that cried wolf.

You tell me what that means.

The girl cried wolf ON HERSELF. Let’s leave aside the shock and awe lie for effect about a girl who is actually doing just fine and has long since moved on with her life. Cause it was, let’s see here, let me think really hard for a minute... 2013!!

The girl, that as an opening line, threw a fit about attention not given to her personally, but rather to a photo of someone else that wasn’t her, cause you know she put so much time into her selfie game. It was a simple click of Tumblr’s version of a like button, but it wasn’t on a picture of her. SOMETHING SHE POSTED, of ANOTHER GIRL. Oh, men are the worst. I didn’t know what was going on but she was probing like she’d go on to probe from then after, like a girl fishing or is it called “catfishing” these days in the dating scene?

My URL gone, the second I deleted it. Unlike the times before, when I’d just remake it right then or a little bit later after I’d think the dust had settled. Deletion the way it had become was a feeble attempt to disentangle myself from her. Predictable.

My URL was gone. Who was waiting there to take it but the person WHO WAS STALKING ME?

How complete was the facade? Did she copy and paste, things I’d once written? You said something once to the effect of a criminal who was convicted over matching bite marks. How complete was the facade? Did she use my real photo? The one I’d given up?

The girl TOOK the URL and proceeded to make a scene with it. And a scene she made. It wasn’t just on herself was it? It was every other person whose blog I’d ever clicked “follow” on. Every... single... one.

This “catfishing” internet stalker who’d been given an ultimatum, who’d been told “no”, who’d been rejected and walked away from. The girl whose game had been shut down. The girl whose toy had up and made up its own mind.

Thing is, nothing happened till I looked back one day. She didn’t know where to find me. She didn’t know how to stalk me again. She had no line or lead or anything to tie back to ACTUAL me. ...Till, I saw whatever the fuck kind of scene she was making with the tiniest bits of information I’d given her. Posting registries of sex offenders from Oregon and putting on blast LIKE SHE”D IDENTIFIED HER HARASSER. MUWAHAHAHAHHAHAHA.

And like an idiot putting way too much faith in humanity (or just girls was it?), I took the time to dispel whatever nightmare I believed she’d been caught up in. After all, wasn’t it what I needed? What I NEEDED more than anything to hear from Michelle, who refused to differentiate herself from the amorphous mob of pushing pulling stabbing prodding biting tearing torturing.... I was a sucker for what landed me here, RIGHT HERE, RIGHT HERE.

She needed to know. She needed to know. That was all. If she was a decent person who ever meant anything she ever said, despite not being willing to let it go anywhere, SHE NEEDED TO KNOW.

But I wasn’t back. She tried to resume the games she’d been playing. Magically, all around, the HARASSMENT, stopped. Nowhere to be found. As if all was right with the world again. ...Funny how that works.

But I wasn’t back. I made that clear. I repeated myself a few times.

And when her ticker read that I really actually wasn’t back, what do you think happened next? Next, now that she’d found me? Next, now that she had an actual person to point a finger at?

I did what I’d done so many times before in an attempt to disentangle myself from her. I did so predictably. DELETE. Only this time, right after informing her that I was done. My URL was magically gone when I went to remake it.

Tell me how that happened. TELL ME. TELL ME WHO.

BYE, I’M LEAVING. HAVE A NICE LIFE. DELETE Huh, that’s weird. It’s never done that before.

Hey, HEY, HEY, I’M about to delete this AGAIN. DONT GET ANY FUNNY IDEAS IDENTITY THEFT IS A CRIME YOU KNOW

Like, ...I’ve been open-ended on this myself and for the longest time not willing to believe that she’d do that. But it wasn’t an accident. I’m sure of that now. Had the thought when I thought to myself what someone who actually wanted to do what you say I’ve done, would have done to ACTUALLY GET AWAY WITH IT. I can tell you, I wouldn’t have been caught. I can tell you, that I would never have been so stupid in the first place, but ...like seriously. Why would I stick around? WHY? I know how the internet works. I know about how these sites log information. I know about the trails that can be followed. It’s absolutely unthinkable. But assume I did, and it’s like WHY? WHY THE FUCK, would I have stuck around? Why the fuck would I have jumped out to say HERE I AM, SHOOT ME PLEASE, if I had any fucking clue what was going on?

“Hey, this is what we’re up against. I don’t know why you think that way or feel that way about it, but this is a dead end. I can’t keep doing this. If you actually want to make something, then lets make something, otherwise, I have to go.

I’m not going to keep doing this with you anymore.”

SEND

DELETE EVERYTHING? confirm ITS ALL GONE

NEW ACCOUNT CREATION

URL UNAVAILABLE

??????????????????????????????????????????????????????????

Please explain to me what that looks like. 

What happened, that ever pointed you at me?

What was that other account doing?

What backlog over a number of weeks was just waiting to slam down on top of me, when it was abundantly clear I wasn’t coming back?

Who harassed every other person I was still following after I shut the door on her?

Why did it take till I’d looked back to wonder about her in a poor stroke of judgement, before that trap snapped? Why if there was anything AT ALL besides tying it to me? Why did the URL disappear? Who took it? Why did “this” begin like a wildfire, only after I’d shown myself again to her? Why wasn’t that other account enough? Why? Why wasn’t that other account enough?

Did that girl I tried to give some advice to when she was putting her AMA harassers on blast about, did her reaction to me indicate something? Was it the same profile picture? The person harassing her? Then I show up? Then I show up, same profile picture, offering sympathy?

What person could have SO GODDAMNED STUPID, even if they wanted to... what? Get even? I may as well have said, HERE I AM, COME AND GET ME. I’m right here. SHOOT HERE. LOCK ME UP.

I stumbled into “this” like someone who didn’t have a clue.

Explain to me, EXPLAIN, EXPLAIN IT TO ME.

HOW

WHY

Who stole it?

And what did they do with it?

Who stole my identity, and what did they do with it?

WHAT, gave you the fuel for the chain reaction, the critical mass to set “this” NUCLEAR BOMB off in my life?

What, gathers from all corners of the earth to your banner?

Who stole my identity, and what did they do with it? 

What, but to end my life with the biggest “orgy of evidence” only someone who wanted to be found or caught could have come up with?

Here I am, take me away. SHOOT HERE.

Who stole my identity, and what did they do with it?

Who decided, I hadn’t paid enough already? Who decided that my life had to end?

[so much for effective and concise, the moment of the thought has long passed, but the question has remained. I don’t feel that the point is at all lost for being smeared over a page like a person ground across the pavement dragged along behind by a noose.

Erotomaniac stalker who was not. Tortured, lost any grip on when it was and wasn’t happening. Broke. Found his way here. Was read by someone who was hellbent on getting a piece of that action. A “conversation” that ran its course, despite her attempts to get me to back down from having my own back and putting my foot down on what I knew was true. Said goodbye for the last time. Deleted the blog as predictably as I’d shown up to then. Signaled it. Might as well have been waving those lights for planes to land. RIGHT HERE.

The point, was that I sent it to her. She was notified. She the person who had been stalking me, was notified. I’m going now. Bye. Delete. Remake. ACCOUNT UNAVAILABLE.

If it was in fact that account, someone posing as me, someone impersonating me, and RIGHT AFTER, I’d walked away, made good on walking away.

You tell me.

You tell me what that looks like.

Who else could have taken it? Who else could have timed that so perfectly? Who else but the person who’d been messaged or NOTIFIED via the strands in her web? Who else could have snatched that up in the matter of minutes or even seconds that it took me to turn around and remake it? WHO?

And why would I, even if I could be said to be so pathological, why would I have been so stupid as to leave such a trail? And why would I have... why would I have been around to incriminate myself if I had any idea what was going on? If she already thought it was me, if she was already crying wolf and couldn’t do anything about it, why would I have come walking in, from my actual account tied to things in my name, and not hiding behind a proxy network? WHY, would I have put myself in the position to be accused of something like that, if tormenting her and everyone else was the goal? Why the hell would I make a trail back to myself? How complete was the facade? Did it scream what she wanted it to scream? But she lacked anything real? Till I showed up? Yes, yes, I’ll just ...no ...no.

Why the hell would anyone do that if they wanted to get away with it?

I said goodbye.

My account was stolen.

Who else could have taken it?

I’m tired. I’m tired of everything. But if there was ever a clear-cut anything I can say it now. I can. The girl is fine. The girl has long since moved on. The girl got everything she wanted and then some. I would never live down, rejecting her.

EVER. I would never live down saying “no” to these games.

Who else could have taken it?

And why would I make a mess posing as myself and then show up with my real account like I wanted the cuffs put on me? It makes no goddamned sense.

She waited. I said goodbye again, for the last time, it had been coming.

Account unavailable.

Who else could have swooped in right then and there? Who else but the one literally notified?

There’s nothing else to say. Nothing left to show.

I will have said this at least. Dared to.

She cried wolf on herself. End of story. Literally. The clock has long since stopped, I should know.]

[A collage of other things and other people, but not a direct experience of someone lacks depth. It’s vapid. It’s not rooted in anything. A knowable, definable, experience-able person. Playing footsie on the internet, (read: CATFISHING) doesn’t count as legitimate quality time spent with someone. Demanding that they do with the inside of their own head, can only ever be in love with love, not with someone. And I never could do with the inside of my head. If I could, I really would have been, the kind of erotomaniac stalker you’ve always needed me to be. It’d have been enough for me, the way you acted like it was enough for you. But it wasn’t for me. Not by a long shot. So you vilified me. And when you in the end failed to vilify me, you flipped this on its head. Not a villain for failing. Now somehow, a villain for going so far with so little. So far. More like straight to hell.]

[brujebutchdraws]

this post features talk of abuse, ableism, pathologization, ABA therapy, forced medication and dehumanization. please do skip it if this might put your mental health at risk. the r slur will be spelled as such “r.t.rd”.

spoilers for the Undertale game have to be looked out for too.

links will be in bold.

[three images of the video game Undertale’s character Toriel, one being a gif, and the two others being the same images, but transparent and composing the gif. Toriel wears an all-red outfit, a short sleeved dress with a flame print on it, with crimson red heels. she also carries a small plastic bag with stimtoys in it. a grey sealion squishie, a green handspinner, a black and green music and sound-concealer headphones, a purple chewerly necklace, and a book of her child’s special interest, knights. she first holds her free hand to where her soul rests, eyes closed with a calm smile, and then she extends her free arm to her right, and ignites a flame in which a puzzle piece is scorched black. her eyes are also open with her mouth, in a friendly expression. 

upside of her is written the tag Go Red Instead. downside her is written the tag actually autistic. both are in big red letters. on her left is written “support autistic people” followed by “by being good allistic parents”, and then to her right by  the following:

“by rejecting the ‘suffering but courageous Autism Mom’ ableist fetishistic narrative and all of its variations.”

“by accepting your childd as they are by nature and stopping the pursuit of ‘cures’ when there is no disease.”

“by acknowledging your past mistakes and growing from them.”

“by reassuring your child that their worth is not defined by how ‘normal’ they appear to their peers.”

“by telling them ‘I love you’ without ‘even if you’re...’ following behind.”

“by learning to adapt to your child, and not have them to adapt to you, the advantaged adult.”

“by subsiding to certains of their needs/desires, even if they’re unconventional or unrelatable to you, so long they aren’t dangerous, of course.”

“by considering them as people first, your autistic kid(s) second. You are the only one able to truly protect their agency as a person in their formative years.”

“by letting them be the teller of their own story. if not vocally, sign language an alternatives exist. please use them.”

the phrases are all preceded by upside-down red-lined hearts.]

this is april month, autistic people awareness’ month, so i’m here to teach anyone who’d listen a bit about smtg from autistic people.

#(Go)ReadInstead is a movement of the autistic community against autism speaks’ “light it blue” movement. autism speaks promotes the idea that autistic people are sick, compare us to cancer patients, and “light it up blue” to “raise awareness about the Bad Autism we must seek and destroy out of our children”. it is a logic of abuse apologism and ableist conceptions of a neurodivergency that is no illness and neither lethal nor dangerous to anyone, caused by old myths and outdated fears of demons and faeries/changelins.

the character Toriel is not hinted at, coded, or canonically autistic. she is, though, canonically the mother of Chara, a character who i interpret as being autistic. Toriel is far from being the perfect mother, in fact she made huge mistakes that failed her child. however, she is able of wisdom and humility, and i believe that given the chance, she would learn to be an excellent parent to an autistic child, even with their trauma on top of that. that’s why i deem it best to illustrate my point with this caring goat monster.

i don’t know much about good parenting from a carer’s point of view, i’ll admit, because of personal trauma. i do have insights from the child’s position. but first, i’ll quote an helpful fellow, who i will be calling C :

“from experience, I can tell you that the worst thing you can do for you autistic children is to prioritize managing their behavior over raising them in an open minded and loving environment that addresses their needs.

like if you have a kid that moves around a lot to stim and you pull the "quiet hands" bullshit to try to get them to sit down instead of giving them other opportunities to let out energy and teaching them to manage their own movements, for example.

bad parents, they don't care about their kids, they only care about garnering sympathy for themselves because "OH IT'S SO HARD BEING THE PARENT OF A DIFFICULT CHILD”.

well that's some stuff about bad parents but a good parent of an autistic child, or any child for that matter, would be able to not only address their child's needs but also would care enough to make adjustments to themselves and the way they approach a child care if this is something they're totally new to.

though in this day and age, even parents who don't have any autistic family members don't have any right to not know autistic kids and people exist.

basically look at Autism Speaks and do NOTHING that they do.

support groups that only deal with supporting relatives of people with autism and not communicating with autistic people themselves are bad news.

stay far away from any counseling or pediatric resources that treat children showing traits typical of autism as showing "symptoms" or try to determine of kids are "at risk".

you can either help them grow into an environment where they're allowed to achieve their potential for independence and happiness.

or you can suppress them into submission and condition them to not be an inconvenience to you, which is unfortunately what a lot of parents try to do, whether out of malice or ignorance.”

i don’t have much to add, to be honest. i asked for advice and they made a point by point explanation that just did the whole job.

the keyword is also ACCEPTING. not just tolerating. no, fullout, entire acceptance. and never trying to “cure” your kid. because they’re okay, in that aspect. sure, they’ll have a difficult life in a world that doesn’t want to acknowledge them, but by trying to suppress their very nature, you’d just be playing by this world’s rules. that makes you an executioner, simply put, not a saviour or a protector.

reject all movements linked to autism moms. you are no mom or dad or pam of autism. you’re an allistic parent of an autistic child. you do not have a special parent status. you have allistic privilege over your child. use it wisely. 

or you’ll get a child like me: actually unable to function properly due to traumatic pushes for me to be all-time allistic passing, an indigo child, having learned self-destructive behaviours to take out the frustration on myself, an extremely bad self-esteem, and anger issues, and a fear and hatred of authority without explanations, and ultimately, a broken adult who loathes their parents more than anyone else in the fucking universe, and disowned them.

you don’t want that. and the only alternative to my outcome of anger because of allistic abusive parenting is a scared, hiding child, who is bound to be a dead child, by suicide, exhaustion or murdered for not being good enough. 

because only my anger saved me. taking the path of dehumanizing your offspring can only result in them destroying you, metaphorically, or destroying themselves. no in-between of miraculously not autistic anymore youth.

consider that. 

do not just support the autistic people that you can control to make yourself look good, do not think of us as little mindless things to direct according to your allistic narratives. value us all, respect us all and support us all.

companion pieces about autistic people: Papyrus, Chara, sans.

companion pieces about allistic allyship: Frisk, Grillby, Flowey.

Thanks you for your attention- Uidelsib E.N.

i invite you to course through my #actuallyautistic tag on my main, elitigre, for more insight on many things autistic.

my askbox on said blog is also open for you to ask some things on being autistic. do keep in mind i’d be answering on my free time, not as a job.

the character Toriel, from the video game Undertale (2015), belongs to Toby Fox.

this post is not invitation for debate on the autistic spectrum being an illness, harmful, or how Actually Autism Speaks Is Good And ABA Saves Lives.

all attempts to do so will be blocked. Go Read Instead.

[sejjouaven]

(Quotes-Additional Notes) ‘Psychotherapy & Existentialism’ - Viktor E. Frankl (1967)

(Pg. 2)

"Man's freedom of will belongs to the immediate data of his experience."

(Pg. 3)

"Man is not free from conditions, be they biological or psychological or sociological in nature."

"Man is free to rise above the plane of somatic and psychic determinants of his existence."

(Pg. 6)

"Thus we could say that while the 'will to pleasure' mistakes the effect for the end, the 'will to power' mistakes the means to an end for the end itself."

(Pg. 8)

"If man were really driven to meaning he would embark on meaning fulfillment solely for the sake of getting rid of this drive."

(Pg. 9)

"...man also only returns to himself, to being concerned with his self, after he has missed his mission, has failed to find a meaning in his life."

"Rolf Von Eckartsberg, also a Harvard assistant of mine, has shown the insufficiency of the role-playing concept by pointing out that it avoids the very problem behind it--the problem of choice and value. For again there is a problem: Which role to adopt, which cause to advocate? We are not spared decision-making. "The same holds for those who teach that both man's ultimate destination and primary intention is to develop his potentialities. Socrates confessed that he had within himself the potentiality to become a criminal, but decided to turn away from materializing this potentiality, and this decision , we might ad, made all the difference."

(Pg. 12)

"...meaning must not coincide with being; meaning must be ahead of being. Meaning sets the pace for being. Existence falters unless it is lived in terms of transcendence toward something beyond itself. Viewed from this angle, we might distinguish people who are pacemakers and those who are peacemakers: the former confront us with meanings and values, thus supporting our meaning orientation; the latter alleviate the burden of meaning confrontation.""In this senses Moses was a pacemaker; he did not soothe man's conscience but rather stirred it up. Moses confronted his people with the Ten Commandments and did not spare them confrontation with ideals and values. Peacemakers, on the other hand, appease people; they try to reconcile them with themselves. "Let's face facts," they say. "Why worry about your shortcomings? Only a minority live up to ideals. So let's forget them; let's care for peace of mind, or soul, rather than those existential meanings which just arouse tensions in human beings.""What the peacemakers overlook is the wisdom laid down in Goethe's warning: "If we take man as he is, we (may) make him worse; if we take him as he ought to be, we help him become it."Once meaning orientation turns into meaning confrontation, that stage of maturation and development is reached in which freedom--that concept so much emphasized by existentialist philosophy--becomes responsibleness.”

(Pg. 14)

“In the course of growing awareness, it might then finally turn out that life never ceases to hold and retain a meaning up to its very last moment. This is due to the fact that, as a phenomenological analysis can show us, man not only finds his life meaningful through his deeds, his works, his creativity, but also through his experiences, his encounters with what is true, good, and beautiful in the world, and last but not least, his encounter with others, with fellow human beings and their unique qualities."

(Pg. 15)

"It goes without saying that suffering can be meaningful only if the situation cannot be changed--otherwise we would not be dealing with heroism but rather masochism.""Life can be made meaningful in a threefold way: first, through what we give to life (in terms of our creative works); second, by what we take from the world (in terms of our experiencing values); and third, through the stand we take toward a fate we no longer can change (an incurable disease, an inoperable cancer, or the like).""However, even apart from this, man is not spared facing his human condition which includes what I call the tragic triad of human existence, namely , pain, death, and guilt. By pain, I mean suffering; by the other constituents of the tragic triad, I mean the twofold fact of man's mortality and fallibility."

(Pg. 17)

"Each man is unique and each man's life is singular; no one is replaceable nor is his life repeatable, This twofold uniqueness adds to man's responsibleness.""Ultimately, this responsibleness derives from the existential fact that life is a chain of questions which man has to answer by answering for life, to which he has to respond by being responsible, by making decisions, by deciding which answers to give to the individual questions.""Again, I quote Geothe who once said: 'We must always aim at the bull's eye--although we know that we will not always hit it.' Or, to put it more prosaically: We have to try to reach the absolutely best--otherwise we shall not even reach the relatively good."

(Pg. 21)

"...in this age of existential vacuum, the danger lies much more in man's not being burdened enough (*Perhaps a burden caused by workings that are accumulative toward suffering?*) Pathology results not only from stress, but also from relief of stress which ends in emptiness. A lack of tension created by the loss of meaning is as dangerous a threat in terms of mental health as is too high a tension."

(Pg. 25)

"...we see that man is ready to suffer if only he can be satisfied that his suffering has a meaning.”

(Pg. 28)

"Today the exercising of one's freedom is sometimes hampered by what I call a crippling pandeterminism which is so pervasive in psychology. The doctor's pandeterminism plays into the hands of the patient's fatalism, thus reinforcing the latter's neurosis. There is, for instance, the contention that a person's religious life is wholly conditioned by his early childhood experiences--that his concept of God is formed according to his father image. In order to obtain a more accurate information on this correlation, I had my staff at the Vienna Poliklinik Hospital screen the patients that visited its outpatient clinic in a day. This screening showed that twenty-three patients had a positive father image, thirteen a negative one. But only sixteen of the subjects with a positive father image and only two of the subjects with a negative father image had let themselves be fully determined through these images in their respective religious developments. Half of the total numbered screen developed their religious concepts independent from their father images. Thus half of the subjects displayed what education has made out of them, and the other half exhibited what, by way of decision, they had made out of themselves."

(Pg. 31)

"Even in advanced years one should not envy a young person. Why should one? For the possibilities a young person has, or for his future? No, I should say that, instead of possibilities in the future, the old person has realities in the past-work done, love loved, and suffering suffered."

(Pg. 38)

Homeostasis, equilibrium, adaptation, self-preservation, defense, and adjustment are merely negative concepts and must be supplemented by positive concepts.

(Pg. 39)

The normal approach of man to the world is never primarily that of a means-end relationship. Rather, such a view, centered around the means-end relationship, corresponds to what is observed in animals which have been exposed to certain artificial conditions.

(Pg. 40)

This proves (regarding an experiment illustrated in the book) that even an animal is not normally, or at least not primarily, interested in the restoration of that psychic condition which is called satisfaction.

(Pg. 41)

"...'pursuit of happiness' amounts to a self-contradiction:..."

"A really good conscience can never be reached by grasping for it, but solely by doing a deed for the sake of a cause, or for the sake of the person involved, or for God's sake."

"A good conscience is one of those things which can be brought about only as an unintended side effect and is destroyed at the moment that it is sought after directly."

"He cannot even strive for "peace of soul", for this kind of peace, which apparently means the (re-) establishment of a good conscience, eludes him as soon as it has become a matter of intention instead of remaining a matter of effect. (of subjection)."

(Pg. 42)

"...homeostasis can never be the ultimate aim in life."

(On noogenic neuroses) "They are rather rooted in collisions between different values, or in the unrewarded longing and groping of man for that hierarchically highest value-an ultimate meaning to his life."

(Pg. 44)

"Each human being is unique both in his essence and his existence."

(Pg. 45)

"...self-actualization is an effect and cannot be the object of intention."

(Pg. 46)

"Only as man withdraws from himself in the sense of releasing self-centered interest and attention will he gain an authentic mode of existence."

(Pg. 47)

(On the challenge to responsibility) "Potentialism involves an attempt to avoid this burden of responsibility.

"A close examination of such escapism reveals that the potentialist finds the tension between what is and what should be intolerable. However, this tension cannot be eradicated, even by potentialism, for it is inherent in human existence.

"...acceptance of finiteness is the precondition to mental health and human progress, where the inability to accept it is characteristic of the neurotic personality."

(Pg. 48-49)

"Any theory which obscures the objectivity of the object and disregards its intrinsic otherness through the assumption that the world is a mere self-expression and nothing but a projection of the subject is a theory which misses the point."

"The essential dynamic which constitutes human cognition has its source in this tensional situation between man and that 'world' which he 'is in'. In logotherapy, this dynamics, in contrast to psychodynamics, is referred to as noodynamics."

(Pg. 50)

"The more the eye sees itself, the less the world and its objects are visible to it. The ability of the eye to see is dependent upon its inability to see itself."

(Pg. 54)

"...being, with its objective counterpart, which is meaning."

(Pg. 55)

"Thus, we can see that when speaking of man's 'being in the world' we should not deny that there is also a 'meaning in the world'. Only when we have taken this meaning into full account have we supplemented the subjective aspect of human existence with its objective correlate. Not before then have we become aware of existence as being expanded in a polar field of tension between the self and the world."

"No concept of the world is adequate, then as long as it is understood in terms of mere projection or self-expression. If, above all, the meaning in the world to be fulfilled by man and the values therein to be realized by him were no more than his 'secondary rationalization, sublimations, and reaction formations."

"The world must be seen as essentially more than that (objective)."

(Pg. 56)

(On the psychology of a mean's end outlook) "...for then he would have destroyed any authentic relationship with them. They would then have become mere tools; they would be of use for him, but by the same token, they would have ceased to have any value, that is to say, value in itself."

"When we speak of meaning, however, we should not disregard the fact that man does not fulfill the meaning of his existence merely by his creative endeavors and experimental encounters, or by working and loving. We must not overlook the fact that there are also tragic experiences inherent in human life, above all that 'tragic triad'-if I may use this term-which is represented by the primordial facts of man's existence: suffering, guilt, and transitoriness."

(In regard to suffering) "...patients never really despair because of any suffering in itself. Instead, their despair stems in each instance from a doubt as to whether suffering is meaningful."

(Pg. 57)

To look for the general meaning of man's life would be comparable to asking a chess player: 'What's the best move?' There is no such thing as 'the best move' apart from the one that is best within the context of a particular situation of a particular game.

(Pg. 59)

"...there is something different that seems to me to be an even more erroneous assumption underlying psychoanalytic theory-and, unfortunately, psychoanalytic practice-which we may call 'pandeterminism' By this I mean any view of man which disregards or neglect the intrinsically human capacity of free choice interprets human existence in terms of mere dynamics. Man, as the finite being he basically is, will never be able to free himself completely from the ties which bind him to the various realms wherein he is confronted by unalterable conditions."

(Pg. 63)

"Human existence is, in its essence, noetic."

"...man is self-determining. In actuality, man is free and responsible".

(Pg. 64)

"Man is free to be responsible, and he is responsible for the realization of the meaning of his life, the logos of his existence."

(Pg. 76)

"...hyperthyroidism brings about an inclination to anxiety states which the patient often responds to in terms of what is called 'anticipatory anxiety.' That is to say, he is afraid of the recurrence of anxiety, and the very expectation of such an attack precipitates it again and again. Increasingly, the patient is caught in a feedback mechanism between the primary somatic condition and the secondary psychic reaction."

(Pg. 77)

"...masked tetany frequently results in claustrophobias just as mild as hyperthyroidism does in agoraphobias."

"...anticipatory anxiety thrives in the existential vacuum."

(Pg. 82)

"What man is, he becomes through that cause which he has made his own."

(Pg. 84)

"...the ultimate meaning of man's life is not a matter of his intellectual cognition but rather the matter of his existential commitment."

(Pg. 88)

"Pain, death, and guilt are inescapable; the more the neurotic tries to deny them, the more he entangles himself in additional suffering."

"Although, the tragic triad is an undeniable fact inherent in human existence, it is rationalized away by means of technological progressivism and scientism."

(Pg. 89)

(Quote of Jewish sage [Hillel]) "'If I do not do this job-who will do it? And if I do not do this job right now-when shall I do it? But if I carry it out only for my own sake-what am I?'"

(Pg. 90)

(Quote of Lao-tse) "Having completed a task means having become eternal."

"What man has done cannot be undone."

"In the same fashion, a man who has failed by a deed cannot change what happened, but by repentance he can change himself."

"The difference lies in the fact that the right attitude is, then, a right attitude of himself."

(Pg. 99)

"There can be no question, therefore, that a prisoner did not necessarily and automatically have to succumb to the camp atmosphere. By virtue of that which I have in another context called the 'defiant power of the human spirit,' he had the possibility of holding himself above the influence of his environment. If I still had any need of proof that this defiant power of the spirit is a reality, then the concentration camp was the crucial experiment."

"...it is true that the good example productively gives birth to good."

(Pg. 103)

(On the underlying truth of the psychotherapeutic work in the concentration camp) "He who knows a 'why' for living, will surmount almost every 'how'."

(Pg. 110)

"In a sense, living through the concentration camp was one big experiment-a crucial experiment. Our dead colleagues passed the test with honors. They proved to us that even under the most deprived, the most humiliating conditions, man can still remain man-true man and true physician. What was honor to them who gave this proof, should be a lesson to us. It should teach us what man is, and what man can become."

"What then is a man? We ask again. He is a being who continuously decides what he is: a being who equally harbors the potential to descend to the level of an animal or to ascend to the life of a saint. Man is that  being, who, after all, invented the gas chambers; but at the same time he is that being who entered into same gas chambers with his head held high and with the 'Our Father' or the Jewish prayer of the dying on his lips."

(Pg. 110-111)

"What is man that you are mindful of him? 'He is a reed,' said Pascal, 'but a reed which thinks!' And it is this thinking, this consciousness, this responsibility that constitute the dignity of man, the dignity of each individual human being. And it is always to be ascribed to the individual person whether he preserves this dignity or tarnishes it. Whereas the first behavior is guilt. And there is only personal guilt; collective guilt is a concept which has no meaning. Certainly there is also the personal guilt of a man who has 'done nothing wrong,' but who has failed to do 'something right'; failed to do so because of the apprehension for himself or anxiety for his family, but whoever wishes to condemn such a man as a coward must first prove that in the same situation he himself would have been a hero."

([Translated] Quote of Paul Valery) "As long as we judge and accuse, we have not arrived at the fundamental truth."

(Pg. 113)

"The American psychiatrist, Freyhan, asserts that earlier centuries had both more anxiety and more reason for anxiety than our own age and points to the witch trials, the religious wars, the migration of nations, the slave trade, and the great plagues."

(Pg. 114)

"For it seems to me that the progress-minded, progress-intoxicated generation of the Darwinian epoch did not at all feel themselves humbled, but rather seemed proud of the fact that their monkey ancestors had progressed magnificently far, so far that nothing blocked the road any longer for further development, for 'superman.' Indeed, man's ability to stand erect had 'gone to his head.'"

(Pg. 115)

"One is left with the impression that the delusional ideas of our patients are shaped by the spirit of the age and change with it; that therefore the spirit of the age makes itself felt right into the depth of psychotic mental life."

(Pg. 117)

(On the symptoms of the collective modern neurosis--On the word/statement, '[ephemeral] attitude toward life') "And thus they have given up the idea of planning far ahead or organizing their lives around a definite purpose."

(On the symptoms of the collective modern neurosis) "A further symptom is the fatalist attitude toward life."

(On fatalist attitude) "He tends to consider himself a plaything of external circumstances or internal conditions and therefore lets himself be shifted around."

(On the symptoms of the collective modern neurosis) "The neurotic who suffers from the fourth symptom, fanaticism, denies the personality of others."

(Pg. 121)

"A nihilist is a man who considers Being, and above all his own existence, meaningless."

(Pg. 122)

(On the crisis of the existential vacuum) "And when does this vacuum open up, when does this so often latent vacuum become manifest? In the state of boredom."

(Pg. 124)

(In the words of Harvey Cushing as quoted by Percival Bailey) "The only way to endure life is always to have a task to complete."

(Pg. 126)

"Sexual libido only becomes rampant in the existential vacuum."

(Pg. 127)

"Man is not 'driven,' man decides. Man is free. (To decide of responsibility).

"The more a man strives for pleasure the less pleasure he achieves. And vice versa; The harder a man tries to evade unpleasure, or suffering, the deeper he plunges himself into additional suffering.

(Pg. 128)

"The possibility of realizing what I called attitudinal values--by the very attitude with which we face our suffering--is there to the very last moment (of our existence).

"That which causes our guilt, for which we are responsible, can no longer be changed; but the guilt itself can be redeemed and here again everything depends on the right attitude toward ourselves--upon true repentance."

"If the meaning of life consisted in reproduction, then every generation would find its meaning only in the next generation. (Not only sexual but also cultural, societal, economical, etc., regardless of circumstances.)

(Pg. 129)

"The so-called life not worth living does not exist. And even the manifestations of psychosis conceal a real spiritual person, unassailable by mental disease."

(After the illustration of ‘IQ: Idiots/Saints debate’ with Pere Beirnaert) "There is, therefore, and I hope I have shown it, no reason to doubt the meaning of even the most miserable life."

(Pg. 136)

"One characteristic of human existence is its transcendence."

(Pg. 141)

"...values do not drive--they pull."

(Pg. 145)

(On anticipatory anxiety) "This is the compulsion to self-observation."

"In addition to the fact that excessive attention proves to be an intrinsically pathogenic factor with regard to the etiology of neuroses, we observe that in many neurotic patients excessive intention may also be pathogenic."

(Pg. 146)

"Thus we see an interesting parallel in that anticipatory anxiety brings about precisely what the patient fears, while excessive intention, as well as excessive self-observation with regard to one's own functioning, makes this functioning impossible."

(On paradoxical intention) "This brings about a change of attitude toward the symptom which enables the patient to place himself at a distance from the symptom, to detach himself from his neurosis."

(On paradoxical intention) "Such a procedure must make use of the unique potentiality for self-detachment inherent in a sense of humor."

(Pg. 152)

"The traumata merely provide the contents of the respective obsessions, compulsions, and phobias. Even psychoanalysts are more and more inclined to assume that traumata in themselves do not directly cause neuroses. In some cases, I would dare say that even the opposite is true: The trauma does not cause the neurosis, but rather, the neurosis makes the trauma reappear."

(Pg. 160)

"Just as paradoxical intention is designed to counteract anticipatory anxiety, de-reflection is intended to counteract the compulsive inclination to self-observation."

(Pg. 163)

"Paradoxical intention lends itself particularly to short-term therapy, especially in cases with an underlying anticipatory anxiety mechanism."

(Pg. 165)

"...if an artist should become psychotic and nevertheless continue his artistic production, he does so in spite of his psychosis, never because of it. A mental disease in itself is never productive, a sickness as such never creative. Only the spirit of man can be creative, never a sickness of that spirit."

[ibmiller]

Introduction

I began researching this topic out of ignorance. After being more or less snookered by Dr. Warren into giving a presentation, I chose one of the first topics that came to mind. I hope you will bear with me as I exhume a body of knowledge that has already had several postmortems: that of Dr. Watson's wife, or wives, depending on your inclination. I attempted to gather every scholarly article on the subject I could find, so that I wouldn't have to do all the research myself. The Interlibrary Loan Department in Swem Library hates me now, thanks to Dr. Warren.

We all know Watson's predilection for members of the opposite sex. He remarks on their beauty and dress an uncountable number of times throughout the canon. We know from him that his experience with women extends over "many nations and three separate continents." We know from Holmes that the fair sex is "Watson's department." I will review the various theories on how many wives Dr. Watson had, and bring you to what I believe is the most logical conclusion. It should be an interesting area for exploration. It is also an area, in my opinion, that has barely been tapped.

In 1944, Dorothy Sayers said:

There is a conspiracy afoot to provide Watson with as many wives as Henry VIII, but, however this may be, only one is ever mentioned by him and only one left any abiding memory in his heart.

Less devout scholars than Ms. Sayers wanted Watson to have multiple wives so much that they invented them for him. William S. Baring-Gould points out that Watson marries the American Constance Adams in Doyle's unpublished play "Angels of Darkness." In 1978, Hartley Nathan purportedly found Watson's will and testament in Toronto, Canada, proving that the good doctor had twin sons (Clarence and George) by his first wife Constance, a daughter (Gertrude) by his second wife Mary, and another daughter (Elsie) by his third wife, whose name we do not know.

Two-Wife Theories

In any case, it is certain that Watson had at least one wife. Mary Morstan is explicitly mentioned in several places throughout the canon, starting with "The Sign of the Four." In 1888, Mary Morstan walked into Dr. Watson's life and swept him off his feet. Watson writes:

She was a blonde young lady, small, dainty, well gloved, and dressed in the most perfect taste. There was, however, a plainness and simplicity about her costume which bore with it a suggestion of limited means. . . .Her face had neither regularity of feature nor beauty of complexion, but her expression was sweet and amiable, and her large blue eyes were singularly spiritual and sympathetic. In an experience of women which extends over many nations and three separate continents, I have never looked upon a face which gave a clearer promise of a refined and sensitive nature. (SIGN, pp. 11- 12).

Later in the narrative, Watson says of Mary:

My mind ran upon our late visitor -- her smiles, the deep rich tones of her voice, the strange mystery which overhung her life. If she were seventeen at the time of her father's disappearance she must be seven-and-twenty now -- a sweet age, when youth has lost its self-consciousness and become a little sobered by experience. So I sat and mused until such dangerous thoughts came into my head that I hurried away to my desk and plunged furiously into the latest treatise upon pathology (SIGN, p. 16).

The prospect that the Agra treasure might spoil his chances with Miss Morstan certainly weighed heavily on Dr. Watson's mind. So distracted was Watson that when Thaddeus Sholto bombarded him with trains of symptoms, the Doctor found himself prescribing strychnine in large doses as a sedative. It seems evident that Watson was in love.

At any rate, Watson married Miss Morstan soon after the conclusion to "The Sign of the Four." Watson was 35 and Mary 27 at the time their troth was plighted. The popular view is that Mary died in 1893 or 1894. Holmes rose from the dead in 1894 and took Watson's mind off his "sad bereavement" for awhile with some new adventures. This didn't last forever, as, according to S. C. Roberts, Watson remarried soon after the turn of the century. Holmes himself, in "The Blanched Soldier," remarks in January 1903 that Watson had "deserted him for a wife," so it seems evident that Watson remarried at least once. The identity of this second wife has been conjectured by Chris Morley and George Haynes to be Lady Frances Carfax, and by S. C. Roberts to be Violet de Merville (ILLU).

The fact that Watson married Miss Morstan is well-known and goes almost undisputed. Of course, nothing is so abhorrent to many Sherlockians than a plainly stated, obvious fact. Eminent Sherlockian scholar and author Rex Stout wrote an article entitled "Watson Was a Woman," which, if true, would of course preclude any wives.

On the other hand, there are those who contend that Watson had not two wives, but one. In an interesting twist to the Rex Stout theory, Dr. Robert Katz, in his toast to the Second Mrs. Watson at the 1996 BSI Dinner, held that there was only one Mrs. Watson. Katz's logic was that because Holmes was such an intolerable lodger because of his bad habits and his propensity for getting his roommates into danger, they left him after a short while. This posed a problem for the Literary Agent, who had great success with Holmes and Watson. The conflict was resolved by having several Dr. Watsons in succession, each of whom was married only once.

On the other hand, there are those who claim that our mutual friend had three or more wives. We'll ignore Rex Stout for the moment and concentrate instead on the one-wife and multi-wife theories.

One-Wife Theories

The fourteenth century English scholastic philosopher, William of Ockham, held that assumptions used to explain something must not be unnecessarily multiplied. This "shaving away of multiple assumptions" is known familiarly as "Ockham's Razor." A more simple way of stating the principle is that, all things being equal, the simplest explanation is usually the best. This is known in science as the Law of Parsimony. There are only a few published proponents of the one-wife theory, but they claim to have Ockham's razor on their side.

Jane Nightwork, in 1946, made the surprising claim that "Watson's second wife was actually his first wife; and there never was a third." Nightwork speculates that Watson and Mary had a "falling out" in 1894 due to Mary's success in her own dress-making business. Since divorce at this time was all but impossible, it is likely that Holmes was referring to Watson's separation rather than Mary's death when he said, "Work is the best antidote to sorrow, my dear Watson" in "The Empty House." According to Nightwork, when Holmes says, "The good Watson had at that time deserted me for a wife," he is referring to the happy reunion of John and Mary in 1902, when the couple decided to have another go at marriage. There is no need to assume that Mary died. This view was later supported by Christopher Morley.

H. W. Starr claimed that the "sad bereavement" doesn't refer to death, but is Watson's excuse to the reading public for moving back in with Holmes after violent marital disputes. Starr blames the switching of residences between Queen Anne St. and Baker St. on Watson's proclivity to go adventuring with Holmes, a habit which caused much marital strife for Watson. The couple finally reconciled in 1902 and left Holmes by himself.

Dan Warren claims that Mary is instead the victim of tuberculosis. Because she must spend so much time in a German health spa, Watson occasionally lives with Holmes. According to Warren, the "sad bereavement" mentioned by Holmes refers to the Watsons' miscarried child, an event which occurred more frequently among women with TB. How much of this has canonical support, I don't know, but it's a good theory, nonetheless. It might be what Doyle had intended all along, as his first wife Louise died after a thirteen-year battle with TB, and took many visits to Switzerland for her health.

Another bit of evidence for a single marriage lies in "The Dying Detective," which occurred, according to Watson, "in the second year of my married life." "The Dying Detective" wasn't published until 1913, eleven years after the presumed second marriage took place. It is evident that Watson had only been married once by 1913 or he would have said "the second year of his first marriage." As he was in his early sixties by in 1913, it is unlikely that he married again.

Three-Wife theories

There is some support for the claim that Watson had three wives. In "The Veiled Lodger," 1896, Watson says he has taken up separate lodgings. Harold Bell assumed that this referred to another marriage. I don't know if I believe him, but Trevor Hall points out that perhaps Watson was going through a mid-life crisis at this time. He was, after all, in his mid-forties. I think far greater evidence for a marriage lies in "The Five Orange Pips," which precedes "The Sign of the Four," and hence Mary Morstan, by a year.

In "The Five Orange Pips," Watson mentions that "My wife was on a visit to her mother's, and for a few days I was a dweller once more in my old quarters at Baker Street." However, in "The Sign of the Four," Mary states quite clearly that her mother was dead and that she had no relatives in England. The statement in "The Five Orange Pips" was later changed in light of this fact to refer to Mary's aunt rather than her mother, but keep in mind that this was a change made after the fact by editors, not by Watson. This instance gives rise to the theory that Watson had a wife in 1887, before he wedded Mary in 1888. A counter-argument is that "The Sign of the Four" is mentioned in "The Five Orange Pips" and therefore must have already occurred. I refuse to admit the late Gavin Brend's assertion that Watson had messy hand-writing or simply had his dates wrong. This happened only three times that I can tell -- once in "Wisteria Lodge," once in "The Red-Headed League," and once elsewhere in "The Sign of the Four." I think it more likely that Watson included the title for publicity reasons.

Four-Wife Theories

In the extreme case, Watson hypothetically could have had at least 4 marriages:

1887 - A short marriage to someone unknown. (FIVE) 1888 - Watson weds Mary Morstan (SIGN) 1896 - Watson takes up separate quarters (VEIL) 1902 - Watson deserts Holmes for a wife (BLAN)

Five-Wife Theories

If we're to trust Baring-Gould about "Angels of Darkness," Watson had a fifth wife in the mid-1880's named Constance Adams. Trevor Hall supports the five- wife theory, citing Watson's wives as Constance Adams, Miss X, Mary Morstan, Miss Y, and Miss Z.

Six-Wife Theories

In his review of the unpublished play "Angels of Darkness," Harlan Umansky claims that the play ends with Watson being engaged to Lucy Ferrier at the deathbed request of John Ferrier. Is Lucy Ferrier Miss X? Or should we add her to the list, making six short-lived wives for Dr. Watson? That is open to speculation, since, according to the rumor mill, the plot of "Angels of Darkness" directly contradicts that of "A Study in Scarlet"--it has Watson working in San Francisco and doesn't involve Holmes at all. It would be nice if the six-wife theory were correct--it would fulfill Ms. Sayers' prophesy of Watson having as many wives as Henry VIII.

Seven-Wife Theories

A case could be made that Watson had seven wives if you juggle the dates around in "The Sign of the Four," "The Five Orange Pips," and "A Scandal in Bohemia." We'll call this mysterious lady Miss Q. The evidence for her existence is flimsy at best, however, so I won't go into it.

Conclusions

Now, given the fact that Watson probably couldn't have divorced any of his wives by the laws in England at the time, this means, unless Watson was a bigamist as some have suggested, that all but the last of his wives must have died, and none of them under circumstances Watson sees fit to describe to the reader. In fact, Miss Q, Miss X, and Miss Y must have died after no more than a year of marriage--Miss Q and Miss X because Watson remarried the next year, and Miss Y because Watson was living back in his old quarters in Baker Street by 1897 (ABBE).

There are two theories we can dismiss out of hand. The first is that Dr. Watson was a deadbeat addicted to gambling.

Look at the facts. Watson is always skipping out on his practice to run off with Holmes. Watson spent a summer at "Shoscombe Old Place" of horseracing fame. He frequently spends half his pension check at the races. Holmes kept Watson's checkbook locked in his desk drawer. Is it any surprise to learn that Watson would be in dire financial straits? Could he have, for instance, had a system of marrying rich women who were at death's door, taken out huge life insurance policies on them, and then merely wait for them to pass on in order to collect and support his gambling habit? Given what other information we have about Dr. Watson's personality, my answer must be "Not bloody likely."

The second dubious explanation is that Watson was a serial killer.

How hard would it be for a doctor to procure poisons or administer deadly infections? Watson does admit to having "another set of vices" in "A Study in Scarlet"--could he be referring to a murderous streak a mile wide? This would make Watson one of the most diabolical, cunning, and daring killers of all time, to stay so brazenly close to the world's greatest detective and yet defy discovery at every turn. One would surmise that Holmes would get suspicious by the fourth or fifth time he was asked to present a ring as the best man.

Or could it be simply that because Watson, as a doctor, came into more frequent contact with women of frail health, he was hence more likely to marry such women? I tend to support this position. Cases could, and have, been made that Watson had as many as seven wives, but I tend to think he had only two: Mary Morstan and the Miss Z of 1903. It is now time to use Ockham's razor to cut through the extraneous theories. There are two strong canonical references to Dr. Watson's wives--Mary Morstan and Miss Z of 1903. The inference that these are one and the same woman is a stretch, and I believe that those who have claimed to have Ockham's razor on their side by saying that Watson had only one wife are misinterpreting the nature of parsimony. 'One' is not necessarily a simpler number than 'Two' when 'Two' makes more sense. In order to play The Game, we must accept what Watson says at face value unless he is clearly, undeniably wrong.

References

Baesch, J. Personal Communication. 20 August, 1997.

Baring-Gould, W. S. (1962). Sherlock Holmes of Baker Street.

Brend, G. (1951). My Dear Holmes.

Bunson, M. E. (1994). Encyclopedia Sherlockiana.

Doyle, A. C. (1993). The Sign of the Four. New York: Oxford University Press.

Fink, J. (1992). The marital hoax of John H. Watson. The Baker Street Journal, 42(2), 102-105.

Fitz, R. (1944). A Belated Eulogy: To John H. Watson, M.D., in Profile by Gaslight, Edgar W. Smith (Ed.), Simon and Schuster: New York.

Hall, T. (1971). The Late Mr. Sherlock Holmes.

Katz, R. (1996). To the Second Mrs. Watson. The Baker Street Journal, 46(1), 9-10.

Moriarity, D. Personal Communication. August, 1997.

Morley, C. (1934). Doctor Watson's Secret, in Rothman, S. (Ed.): The Standard Doyle Company, 1990.

Nathan, H. (1978). John H. Watson, M.D. Discovered at Last. The Baker Street Journal, 28(4), 204-213.

Nguyen, H. Personal Communication. 22 August, 1997.

Nightwork, J. (1946). Watson à la Mode. The Baker Street Journal, 1(1), 15- 20.

Redmond, C. (1984). In Bed With Sherlock Holmes.

Roberts, S. C. (1953). Holmes & Watson, New York: Otto Penzler's Sherlock Holmes Library.

Starr, H. W. (1946). Some New Light on Watson. The Baker Street Journal, 1(1), 55-63.

Stout, R. (1944). Watson Was a Woman, in Profile by Gaslight, Edgar W. Smith (Ed.), Simon and Schuster: New York.

Warren, D. C. (1991). Mary, the One and Only. The Baker Street Journal, 41(1), 21-24.

Wigglesworth, B. (1947). Many Nations and Three Separate Continents.The Baker Street Journal, 2(3), 273-278.

[sinrau]

The president’s niece, Mary L. Trump, is the first to break ranks with the family and release a tell-all memoir.

President Trump has long been estranged from his niece, Mary L. Trump.Credit…Erin Schaff/The New York Times

By Maggie Haberman and Alan Feuer

July 7, 2020Updated 8:19 p.m. ET

Mary L. Trump, President Trump’s niece,plans to publish a tell-all family memoir next week, describing how a decades long history of darkness, dysfunction and brutality turned her uncle into a reckless leader who, according to her publisher, Simon & Schuster, “now threatens the world’s health, economic security and social fabric.”

The book, “Too Much and Never Enough: How My Family Created the World’s Most Dangerous Man,” depicts a multigenerational saga of greed, betrayal and internecine tension and seeks to explain how President Trump’s position in one of New York’s wealthiest and most infamous real-estate empires helped him acquire what Ms. Trump has referred to as “twisted behaviors” — attributes like seeing other people in “monetary terms” and practicing “cheating as a way of life.”

Ms. Trump, who at 55 has long been estranged from President Trump, is the first member of the Trump clan to break ranks with her relatives by writing a book about their secrets. Since late June, her family — led by the president’s younger brother, Robert S. Trump — has been trying to stop the publication of the book, citing a confidentiality agreement that she signed nearly 20 years ago during a dispute over the will of the family patriarch, Fred Trump Sr., the president’s father. But a judge in New York has refused to enjoin Simon & Schuster from releasing the memoir and is expected to soon rule on whether Ms. Trump herself violated the confidentiality agreement.

Here are some of the highlights from her manuscript:

Cheating on a College Entrance Test

As a high school student in Queens, Ms. Trump writes, Donald Trump paid someone to take a precollegiate test, the SAT, on his behalf. The high score the proxy earned for him, Ms. Trump adds, helped the young Mr. Trump to later gain admittance when he transferred as an undergraduate to the University of Pennsylvania’s prestigious Wharton business school.

Mr. Trump has often boasted about attending Wharton, which he has referred to as “the best school in the world” and “super genius stuff.”

Sending a Brother to the Hospital Alone

It has long been part of the Trump family’s lore that the eldest child of Fred Trump Sr., Fred Trump Jr., who was better known as Freddy, was the black sheep of the dynasty. Freddy Trump was a handsome, garrulous man and a heavy drinker who, after a miserable experience working for his father, left his job in real estate to pursue a passion for flying, becoming a pilot for Trans World Airlines.

Donald Trump has often remarked that his brother’s departure from the family business opened space for him to move into and succeed. “For me, it worked very well,” Mr. Trump told The New York Times during his presidential campaign about serving under his father. “For Fred, it wasn’t something that was going to work.”

Mr. Trump and his father, Fred Trump Sr., overlooking some of their properties in Brooklyn in 1973.Credit…Barton Silverman/The New York Times

Fred Trump Sr. could be brutal to his namesake, shouting at him once as a group of employees looked on, “Donald is worth ten of you,” Ms. Trump writes.

Freddy Trump died in 1981 from an alcohol-induced heart attack when he was 42, and Ms. Trump tells the story in her book about how his family sent him to the hospital alone on the night of his death. No one went with him, Ms. Trump writes.

Donald Trump, she added, went to see a movie.

“No Principles,” a Sister Says

Even at the start of Mr. Trump’s campaign, his sister, Maryanne Trump Barry, a retired federal appeals court judge, had deep reservations about his fitness for office, Ms. Trump writes.

“He’s a clown — this will never happen,” she quotes her aunt as saying during one of their regular lunches in 2015, just after Mr. Trump announced that he was running for president.

Maryanne Trump was particularly baffled by support for her brother among evangelical Christians, according to the book.

“The only time Donald went to church was when the cameras were there,” Ms. Trump quotes her aunt as saying. “It’s mind boggling. But that’s all about his base. He has no principles. None!”

Donald Trump, Narcissist

Ms. Trump, a clinical psychologist, asserts that her uncle has all nine clinical criteria for being a narcissist. And yet, she notes, even that label does not capture the full array of the president’s psychological troubles.

“The fact is,” she writes, “Donald’s pathologies are so complex and his behaviors so often inexplicable that coming up with an accurate and comprehensive diagnosis would require a full battery of psychological and neurophysical tests that he’ll never sit for.”

At another point she says: “Donald has been institutionalized for most of his adult life, so there is no way to know how he would thrive, or even survive, on his own in the real world.”

Like other critics of the president, Ms. Trump takes issue in the book with the notion that Mr. Trump is a strategic thinker who operates according to specific agendas or organizing principles.

“He doesn’t,” she writes. “Donald’s ego has been and is a fragile and inadequate barrier between him and the real world, which, thanks to his father’s money and power, he never had to negotiate by himself.”

[044-eu]

The Jack Russell Terrier Dog Breed

The first time I met a jack russell terrier,I was very amazed by its extreme sweetness. I quickly realized that although I have always been surrounded by dogs of all kinds, I had never seen such an affectionate and playful animal. I felt the need for an active and affectionate dog and I had never had to deal with a small dog, much less with a hunting dog. Eventually I decided, I bought several books on the jack russell terrier and after some time I contacted a couple who would later give me a beautiful puppy.

A bit of history about the Jack Russell Terrier

First of all, to get an idea of what the Jack Russell Terrieris, I think it's necessary to mention the origins by telling what is considered by many to be the official story. It is almost certain that the breed was born in Britain. In the 1800s, hunting was a widespread practice in Britain. It is said that the Reverend John Russell, nicknamed Jack, in the Devon region, felt the need to create a new breed of Terrier to help him in fox hunting. Legend has it that the reverend, who fell in love with the milkman's dog, managed to win it. Trump, his name was this dog, and was crossed with other hunting dogs such as the beagle. The result was an intelligent, active and confident dog. In fact, the breed was formalized in Australia and became official in 2000 and then relatively recently. The official enci standard is available on the site and there is no need to repeat it in this article. Of course, during the selection process, Trump was paired with the fox terrier, the priest's favorite breed. Subsequent generations were then crossed with Beagle, Border Terrier, and Lakeland Terrier. Some claim that the Jack Russell Terrier also has ancient bulldog blood, very different from today's or pit bull's. In fact, whatever the past pairings have been, it is more plausible that the strong character is due to the terriers. This small dog was carried inside a bag by horse hunters. Once sighted the fox was released.

The character of the Jack Russell Terrier

When discussing character in dog breeds, we are faced with different points of view but we will talk about it in another article better. As for the genetic predisposition aspect, it is undeniable that the Jack Russell Terrier is a very intelligent, vocal, lively and brave dog. Although it is one of the most loving races ever, one should never be fooled. The Jack Russell Terrier is not a dog to keep in the house constantly and is not a dog made to spend the days on the couch or inside the kennel. On the contrary, this is a really dynamic dog that suffers a lot when it is not free to run on the meadows. So if you're a person who tends not to have time to take him out for long walks every day, or if you're lazy people, you better avoid taking this breed. The Jack Russell Terrier is also a dog with a very strong character, this does not mean, as many people think, that he is not afraid. First of all, there is a distinction between fearlessness and courage. The absence of fear is a condition, often pathological, that due to a malfunction, does not allow the organism to feel the stimulus of fear. Any animal with this malfunction could never evolve due to the fact that fear serves precisely to protect itself from danger. Courage, on the other hand, means overcoming our fears in order to achieve a goal. In fact, this animal is aware of its size and reacts in a very particular way to fear. Being a very shrewd dog, in the face of danger you will see him back but without fleeing. He will try to understand the situation and assess whether it is appropriate to advance or not. This particular characteristic is essential in a hunting dog because the latter must be able to protect itself without losing sight of its prey. Although I am personally opposed to hunting, I will use an example to help you understand the needs of this behaviour. Imagine that your Jack Russell Terrier has spotted a possible prey in a runaway fox. The first and irresistible impulse she will have if she sees her run away is to chase her by vocalizing as much as possible. Later the poor fox will try to hide in a burrow but here too she will be chased by our dog. The prey can no longer escape and finding itself with its back to the wall inside its burrow will then attempt to attack the dog. At this point, at the same size, being the prey a wild animal, without a shadow of a doubt could inflict fatal wounds on our animal. But if you were able to slip into the fox's lair with your dog, you would notice a particular behavior in this. You'd see the Jack Russell Terrier stiffen and swell the hair, a feature common to many animals. The animal would begin to tease its prey by advancing and retreating while with lightning-fast side leaps, always facing the target, it would avoid most of the attacks. A very unpleasant scene certainly but when this breed was selected, at a time when human sensitivity had not evolved as it is today, it served to keep the prey engaged to give the hunter a chance to come. Fortunately, fox hunting has been banned in many countries and breeders have greatly mitigated the tendency to predator yore of the various breeds but it is still very present in this dog. Another feature that hunting dogs should have is that of creative thinking. In fact, there are other types of dogs that in front of the scene that I have exhibited previously would not know exactly what to do and therefore would give themselves to escape. The dog that is used for this purpose must also be perfectly able to have a strong sociality and emotional interdependence with humans. It will be very difficult for a Jack Russell Terrier to bite a human being. The discourse changes with the other dogs. Due to the fact that this kind of dogs have to recognize their herd, it is necessary that socialize from an early age with other dogs. A properly socialized Jack Russell Terrier will have no problem playing quietly with other dogs but be careful that these last animals with which he is in contact are balanced. In fact, nothing is enough to make the Jack Russell Terrier react and if you were to come face to face with a dog of any size that snarls at him, most likely he will not back down. A high attitude of this breed is the fact that it is not particularly intimidated by large animals, this kind of behavior is important when we consider the fact that the kind of hunting for which it was selected was done on the saddle of a Horse. Lately this breed has spread to the cities for a matter of fashion and for the great affection and powerful vitality of this animal. However, the city is not ideal for this kind of dog that would undoubtedly have much more fun in the countryside. In this regard, being a very active dog and eager to company, if you have enough space, I always recommend taking two puppies instead of just one. At the cost of seeming repetitive I repeat that this is a dog that needs to play and always move. If you were to find yourself always alone in a narrow and closed place inevitably will develop destructive behaviors with furniture or it could happen that it runs irrationally from one end of the house to the other for no reason as crazy. Don't worry, these kinds of behaviors are normal and cure themselves with good outdoor passing that no doubt also does us humans good.

Jack Russell Terrier's Intelligence

As it is also for humans, each dog has its own degree of intelligence but it is still undeniable that the result of marriage between two nobel prizes, most likely will give rise to a creature at least quite intelligent. In principle we can say that all the Jack Russell Terriers I've dealt with are extraordinarily intelligent. We'll talk about dog intelligence in another article in more detail, but for now we can define two main schools of thought. The first states that a dog's intelligence is based on functional intelligence, and the second states that intelligence is not necessarily functional. Functional intelligence in dogs (with a definition that does not do it justice anyway) is that predisposition to understand and respond appropriately to certain stimuli. I've heard some Jack Russell Terrier owner say it's a breed of stupid dogs because they don't understand the controls. If only they knew how wrong they were. This race, in fact, beyond the definition and laboratory tests, based on its race attitudes, is exceptionally intelligent. Since it is a dog with a dominant character will always be willing to subduedly challenge the owner when he does not want to do something. The inherent curiosity in the breed in fact pushes these dogs to get very distracted and because of the innate tenacity, they will hardly abandon an activity that they find to their liking to make the puppets of their owner. There are races in fact that are willing to do anything and at any time for the satisfaction of their master. But the Jack Russell Terrier should certainly not be treated as a lesser being. I consider the Jack Russell Terrier a very proud dog and over time I have learned to respect it without losing sight of the fact that I am the leader of the herd.

Jack Russell Terrier's agility and motion ability

If you are looking for an agile dog and are willing to provide the necessary care and attention to your dog, this breed will never disappoint you. As I have also written before, the Jack Russell Terrier is a dog that needs to move, you must tire otherwise you feel depressed, nervous and frustrated. Since we don't want our quadruped friend to feel frustrated, we have to take care of him daily and more than once a day. But be very careful about the type of games you play. Since we all have to live in a civilized and modern environment, I would avoid those games that favor predatory. It is always beautiful to see a dog running happily on the lawn playing with its own kind but watching a dog of this breed is an unforgettable experience. It seems to observe a small hovercraft with a jet engine that touches the ground. If you can meet your friend's daily needs, be sure that you will always feel fit. For this reason, it is a dog that I do not recommend to elderly lonely and handicapped people because it suffers a lot to stay still and also has a tendency to eat and fatten. Another aspect not to be underestimated is the time we have to devote to him, although this is an animal always ready when it comes to going out for a run or a walk, it is good to always get used to going out at a certain time. This good habit you should follow for all breeds but especially with this because being a very smart and emotional dog, if at that time expectto go out you tend to feel frustrated and if left alone, could take the bad habit to do the needs at home. A very common stereotype states that the Jack Russell Terrier is the ideal dog for those who jog competitively or cycling. Once again I have to dispel this stereotype. Of course, in general, any dog can run faster than any human being by travelling much longer distances. In my case, if I were to run with my dog while keeping it on a leash as the law of my country dictates, after a few meters it would turn behind me wondering: When do we start? The discourse, however, changes whether the dog should follow a marathoner or even worse a cyclist. Reiterating that in some countries, it is rightly forbidden to keep the dog tied to a moving bicycle and it is illegal to leave a free dog on public soil, I would also like to mention that this is a dog that does not have very long legs and is not made to run with the same pace for many kilometers. In the past it was carried in a hunter's shoulder bag that was travelling on the back of a horse, it is not the kind of hunting dog that follows the equines throughout the day. Remember that any dog must be by your side when walking and that you never have to travel distances of more than 25 kilometres. Although it seems strange, dogs like humans must gradually start running. I can understand that this may seem strange, but it is not uncommon for a dog that apparently runs happily suddenly to slump to the ground due to a cardiac arrest. However, you should not think that it is a delicate dog, in the vast majority of cases it will be perfectly able to match and exceed your performance if you are walking. The Jack Russell Terrier's attitude is still to shoot. In fact, it is able to travel short distances at an impressive speed when compared to its size. In fact, there are specific sports specialties that enhance this peculiarity such as the agility dog, the pursuit of a mechanical surrogate of a fox and the obstacle race to give examples.

Predisposition to the defense of the house in the Jack Russell Terrier

A great value of this dog is the fact that it is one of the best alarm systems in existence. Regardless of whether you appreciate it or not, at the slightest suspicious noise it will start barking. When a dog of this breed starts barking, the owners know it well, it will surely wake up the whole neighborhood. I wrote alarm system because this is not a dog that normally bites humans even if strangers. Another characteristic due to the purpose for which this breed was selected. A hunting dog must be able to work with all members of the hunt including people it has never seen before. It is not acceptable for a dog to catch an unknown hunter when he recovers his prey in what he considers his own territory. The fact that it does not bite the thief anyway is a good thing because I have never seen the use of trained guard dogs even if I respect the needs of those who do. In my country also, if a dog bites a thief, although this may seem ridiculous to many readers who do not live in my country, the owner passes several troubles, many times higher than the potential theft that the thief would steal. Having a ruthless watchdog, among other things, is dangerous for the same dog because the hypothetical thief would be better equipped.

The Jack Russell Terrier and the Children

Personally, I have seen that the Jack Russell Terrier adapts to children over the age of five if they are family and supervised by adults. The Jack Russell Terrier is not an aggressive dog, it will not tend to bite humans whether they are adults or children. However, when dealing with children, you should keep in mind that it is a very affectionate and rustic dog. Then it could unintentionally injure the infant with his nails or in an attempt to play, make him fall. For this reason, because of the lively nature of this dog, I do not think it is the classic breed nanny or pet therapy. I do not want to be misunderstood on this point, although this dog has the predisposition of mind to be kind and affectionate, the way in which he manifests this affection may be too impering.

Jack Russell Terrier training readiness

Before we talk about training, and this applies to any animal, we need to talk about behavior and education. There is a lot of confusion around from so-called animal lovers who claim that the dog educates and does not train. In fact, serious insiders know that education and training are two separate and distinct things. Education represents the set of habits that are encouraged or discouraged in the dog. This is a step that must necessarily be done when the dog is a puppy. We talk about basic habits such as eating at a certain time, doing needs out, avoiding begging for food, walking on a leash and the like. In this can help us specialized books on the education of the dog, experienced educators or rather both. If at this stage the dog has problems, which in almost all cases are due to humans, an expert in the behavior must intervene, which in some cases may coincide with an experienced veterinarian. Training, on the other hand, is a totally different practice, except in rare cases, it is generally started after the educational phase and must then be repeated continuously. The biggest difference between education and training is that education is necessary for all animals, training is an accessory that can be done or not. If, for example, I have to become a civil protection worker, it is right that I train by taking courses and maintaining the qualification continuously for as long as it takes to carry out my function. Similarly, police dogs are continually trained. I understand that some of you could misinterpret the word training because with modernity, a kind of problem was born inserted in an awareness context but it is said training because precisely you train the dog as when you train a human being and there's nothing wrong with that term. The methods for training a dog are diverse and we will talk more about it in a future article on dog training methods. You suffice it to know at this juncture that for this breed is strongly recommended the help of a professional in education, that it is clear that no dog should ever be beaten and that you never scream against a Jack Russell Terrier to avoid getting the opposite effect to the desired and for a matter of intelligence, civilization and humanity. This breed adapts to any type of training that does not include specific physical abilities as opposed to its morphology. For example you should not educate a Jack Russell Terrier to command "land or down" for the simple fact that it does not fit in that position and has objective physical difficulties to perform. We should not attempt to educate or train this dog for tasks that force him to stand still very long and alone. For all other purposes, with a little patience, you can achieve quite satisfactory results. Always remember that a Jack Russell Terrier when he sees you disappointed gets nervous and that the only way to calm him is not to yell at him but to approach and distract him. After twenty minutes at most always games and cuddles. Learn not to be fooled by your dog, as I have already said the dogs of this breed are extraordinarily intelligent. They will try to make fun of you, if you comply with their claims they will assume the certain behavior that has made you give in. In a nutshell they will try to manipulate you, they will be ruffian and insistent. You will be amazed at the amount and quality of things this dog can do if he realizes that he has no hope of ignoring or manipulating you. However, always be sweet and modulate the tone of voice well. A lower tone of voice tends to positively attract his attention much more than a shrill and inarticulate scream.

Jack Russell Terrier's hair and grooming

Referring to the varieties and neglecting the various standards of local breed we can have different types of hair and here I will list the most common. The so-called broken or broken hair, is essentially in a shale hair with the exception of the paws where the hair is smooth. In some areas there may be differences in growth, it never cuts and is still quite strong. The birth of this type of hair is due to the fact that another variety, the rough hair, was a type of hair too delicate. Then they had two specimens paired, one with rough hair and one with smooth fur to have a variety with much thicker hair. This particular exception throws a dog with exceptionally soft and thick hair but loses hair continuously. For both broken hair and rough hair, a minimal grooming called striping is sufficient due to the fact that they have moderate regrowth contrary to smooth hair that should not be subject to wetsuit. Then there's the teddy bear variety. I know it sounds like a joke but it really does exist. As the name says, it has a smooth, bushy and hard hair like a pelouche teddy bear. It's a touch-like feel. There are particular mixes that can generate a wide variety of types derived from those previously exhibited. For example, what I have at home is a smooth sleeping teddy bear, the result of mating between a broken male and a smooth female has an exceptionally thick hair, longer than the satin hair that has the smooth, much more pleasant to the touch but with a small Problem. It loses hair continuously and should be brushed at least three times a day.

Predisposition to the defense of the master in the Jack Russell Terrier

No dog should ever be trained to attack a fellow man or human. Never, for no reason in the world. There are, however, more protective breeds than others, this one in particular is not particularly suitable for the purpose even if when it sinks its teeth for fun and only for play on the appropriate sleeve does not detach anymore, even if it is lifted from the ground.

Power ingaman of the Jack Russell Terrier

Someone once advised me on the barf diet which would be a diet of raw meats specially designed for the health of their dog. I've done a lot of research on this diet. In practice it is based on the principle that the dog comes from the wolf and the wolf is carnivorous. This type of diet has never convinced me but I still respect the supporters. I am convinced that a dog with this diet can live long and in perfect health. And that of course raw meat is always better from a taste point of view of crisps or canned foods. Someone else gave me examples to make me better understand his point of view on the barf diet. One of these argued that even for humans it is always better to have a fresh food and a fruit grown in a natural environment rather than a canned or particularly industrially processed food. But now I'm going to explain to you what my personal point of view is. First of all, wolves are omnivorous carnivores. In fact, it is precisely for this reason that the canids managed to survive when the big felines of the past, purely carnivorous, became extinct. Subsequently the wolf approached the humans who shared their food and established this special bond that has now lasted for centuries if not millennia. Currently for my dog I use specially designed foods, i privilege the dry croquettes and occasionally a can. Clearly it is obvious that it would be better if the dog ate specially prepared food at home because even at the quality of the foods prepared by fresh food and subsequently cooked may be preferable. Unfortunately if I had to cook for the dog I would have to cook twice and I would not be able to do it while maintaining the right theoretical supply of nutrients that it needs and that is still very different from mine. It is a good idea not to get the dog used to eating while eating you otherwise it will be impossible to eat without the dog begging for food from anyone and sometimes pretends.

Jack Russell Terrier's Most Frequent Pathologies

This dog needs a very frequent cleaning of the teeth, unlike other breeds, it is not enough the help of the classic fluoride slats as it is very predisposed to tartar accumulations. Because of his temperament, especially if he is not fit and in his late age, he may develop heart disease and even hernias. In some cases, there has been a fairly frequent predisposition of pathologies related to the skeletal muscle apparatus such as knee dysplasia and Legg-Calvé-Perthes disease. Sometimes there may also be a predisposition for certain pathologies that involve the visual apparatus such as glaucoma and crystalline dislocation. With regard to the auditory apparatus, some specimens have presented and present a form of congenital deafness that some associate with a genetic predisposition related to the white color of the mantle. The particular shape of the ears serves specifically to protect it from any external elements present in the bush. Another pathology that may arise and which has also been observed with a certain frequency in this breed is cerebral ataxia, a deadly pathology that causes the destruction of cells. Read the full article