#and presenting that decision as noble is deeply reactionary

[cantsayidont]

December 1986. In the wake of the Crisis on Infinite Earths, John Byrne plainly expresses the ugly nativist foundations of Superman's new post-Crisis origin. Contemplating the history and culture of Krypton, which he's just received as a massive telepathic info-dump from a hologram of Jor-El, Superman unequivocally rejects as "ultimately meaningless" every single aspect of his Kryptonian heritage, from language to art to religion. Moreover, he expressly denies that he himself is an immigrant. This is not simply semantic; in Byrne's version, the starship that carries Kal-El to Earth is a "birthing matrix" — an in vitro womb in which Kryptonian embryos are grown — so he's not technically born until he lands on Earth and is decanted by his human parents on American soil:

This is actually Byrne's kindest take on the post-Crisis Krypton in this period: His horrifying 1988 WORLD OF KRYPTON miniseries, drawn by Mike Mignola, presents Jor-El's world as a fallen, postapocalyptic society, ruined, both environmentally and morally, by the degeneracy (a word I use advisedly) of Krypton's last Golden Age. Only Jor-El is presented as having any moral worth, and only because of his interest in the traditions and history of Krypton before the fall, which his father and peers (including Lara) consider distasteful. This questioning of modern Kryptonian culture ultimately gives Jor-El the wherewithal to save his (unborn) son from Krypton, both from its actual destruction and from its soulless corruption of natural human values. Yikes!

It's also worth recalling the status quo that MAN OF STEEL erased. Since 1958, Superman had been part of a diaspora of Kryptonian survivors: Besides himself and Krypto (with whom Byrne later dispensed very harshly), there were the millions of inhabitants of the Bottle City of Kandor, stolen by Brainiac before the destruction of Krypton and later enlarged on the distant planet Rokyn; Supergirl, born on Argo City after Krypton's destruction; the prisoners in the Phantom Zone; the Kryptonian bully Dev-Em and his parents (who later traveled to the 30th Century); and Supergirl's Kryptonian parents (who survived the destruction of Argo City and later settled in Kandor). In his Fortress of Solitude, Superman kept a private journal in Kryptonese. His intimates often referred to him as "Kal," not Clark. He observed, to at least some degree, certain Kryptonian customs, and in moments of stress, he would invoke the name of the Kryptonian god ("Great Rao!"). He was, like many members of real-world diasporas, a man of two worlds — neither wholly of Krypton nor entirely of Earth, but part of both, and an interstellar hero.

The Byrne/Wolfman reboot erased almost every facet of that, and very deliberately. Part of this, of course, was a desire to shake things up for commercial reasons, while part was DC's editorial conviction (mistaken, I think) that allowing any Kryptonian survivors other than Superman himself weakened and undermined Superman as a character. However, as the pages above make clear, it was also a desire to slam the door on the idea of Superman as an immigrant — and, by extension, on the Jewish coding that had been a central feature of the Superman comics mythos for nearly 30 years.

[watertowr]

a circumstantial self (pt 1 of 2)

There is a feathering of the periphery. Sometimes a forking of intent. The undercurrents of future repression glaze over a current experience. We become disoriented. We become better equipped to forget the details at a later time. A conscientious objection to experience; the grand threat to every sense of perception we possess. I find myself in temperate states of dissociation often. I live with alternating kinds of trepidation and potential energy. I tend to pour over what I endure and draw important conclusions from it for others. To then perpetuate them in meaningful channels of connective tissue that at least works from my direction to theirs if not in return, is the noble thing to strive for. To be revolutionary, not reactionary. Some human truths: We inadvertently serve interests, we passively disappoint; reveal ourselves in moments of unwitting transparency that, if noticed in their midst, allow us to see with a starkness of clarity that only befalls such glaringly vulnerable moments human behavior. If we catch these moments we cover up. Perhaps we laugh in a way that seems nearing mania or as though a demons live in our stomachs, who shove up air in pockets to force out ungodly sounds. Some personal truths: To me, a misstep of small talk is a self exorcism of humility. It’s violent. I do not exaggerate my feelings when I say this. I find that security of self and sense of individuality, the kind idiosyncrasies that we imagine might be endearing, or at least make us who we are, become more akin to cellulite in my eyes. They are the stretch marks of our respective distinctions. They become traits that are exhausting to have from situation to situation, to varying degrees each. We look at each other and know that we all suffer, that everybody has, for example, a quiet physical embarrassment or has had one in the past. Something medical, or just body parts we deem ugly. That we’ve all had moments in the mirror that have left us crestfallen. It becomes less cumbersome to think of our own in this light - with the weightlessness of tacit commonality. But still it is a sack to drag around in the muck,an addition to the edge people talk about needing to take off. On bad days these are the things that make us feel isolated and singularly subhuman. Nonhuman. For the utmost ill-adaptive of us all this is what our uniqueness becomes for us; disfigurements, monstrosities - things that other’s celebrate as individuality we lament as the vehicles of alienation and awkward, loathsome garnishments of abject terror and disgust. By we I mean me and people like me. It’s folly to think there aren’t such people and I know some. And if feels exactly as I say and nothing less than that thereof. It is a way of being that is deeper than pessimism and not an attitude but intrinsic nature. All becomes a dichotomy instead of a continuum. The world innately perceived with heightened contrast. No gentleness of shading. Instead, identifying highlights and then red flags. Cliffs and limits, not guiding signs and suggested perimeters. It is not a friendly road but a maze, maybe rigged, with a ghastly presence that permeates throughout. The entirety of life becomes never ending collective of utterly fringe experience. Some hard truths:Stability is not missing from me. It doesn’t merely not eat at the table. The help I need is not getting it back. Rather, there is no room made for it to begin with. It is not an absence felt. There is no outline for where it should nicely fit. There is not place setting. I am weaving in and out of the extremes of consciousness, finding danger at each end and thus racing between one and the other but understanding nothing that isn’t one of the concrete walls at the ends of either. Some sad results: There are implications of having such an internal landscape. There are implications for everybody as to some extent we all must trust a society made up of people that you have no faith in, no understanding of, often full disagreement and rage with. I sometimes need the people that make it up to mitigate my inclinations of belief, my sense of whether or not my behavior and sense of reality is correct, or too black, or too white. In other words Using other people’s reactions to gauge whether or not and the extent to which you are being insane - frenzied, biased, depressive, intolerant, hostile, contrary. We all do this slightly, especially in group settings. And then having to adjust what you take from your perceptions of those reactions, because you know even them to be fundamentally skewed. That is the plight. And so ponder: What metric is there to safely use when what you are trying to measure is so difficult as it is to quantify, or even define? When your internal sense of situations is incorrect or overblown, how can you make a decision? A life-changing choice or course of action? Only knowing the faultiness of your inclinations because of what you have been told, and how you have been told, and how many people have told you, and the esteem in which you hold some of them, makes one feel out of control. And then having to accept what you are being told! What challenge to the ego and sense of self and sense of reality that such an acceptance represents! I believe people fear therapy for this reason. And then rarely knowing yourself what is outlandish in your mind, what is or is not a distortion, what is it isn’t based in reality. I and others am presented with these problems not just because deep thinking and philosophy has presented them. It is not all a byproduct of intensely introspective tendencies. It is not due to overindulgence in analysis of the same. A crucial point: We are brought to these dilemmas because we have been led to them with such a pervasive and disruptive patterns of behavior and thinking, and we believe it because of how often we’ve been told by those we trust. It is just that some cannot accept the truth of it and remain oblivious, never to struggle with the implications and also never to change. And so without any direction, what do people do in such a situation? Deeply trust a small few for advice and whose reactions you must unconditionally accept there to be merit in, because of who they are. To partially on others for your sense of self and reality. And the obvious pitfalls, woeful and maddening. What if they are the wrong few, or just plain wrong? What if they are having a bad day when you come to them with something crucial? What if you are causing their bad day and deliberately mislead you? What if they are mad at you? What if they choose to lie? All of these things begin to mean something very significant for you when you need this person to help you correctly interpret and navigate the world. The more intelligent a person is, the more frightening this becomes. This is but an illustration of what I feel the roots of some kinds of paranoia are. When people influence you greatly, it becomes terrifying. What impacts them then influences you so deeply on top of everything else that does. And then still it must all of undergo the muddying waters of interpersonal conveyance. What if there is only one person you can rely on for such an incomprehensibly important role, an innately unhealthy role that so many would refuse to fill, a role that takes so much time and energy, predicated on such an immense amount of trust? And of course, what if they die? Such projection is necessary when it’s relevant to self protection beyond grief. ***The dysfunctional patterns of behavior, sense of self, and relationships seen in people with BPD and with myself I believe to all stem from fundamental misconstruing of reality, and the inclination to form intense relationships that involve such multifaceted reliance on another person that it results in. It also inherently merits the propensity for interpersonal disaster for all involved. It is a vicious cycle; Implications for lability of mood, etc, can essentially be gleaned. I think this extends beyond myself and I am merely aware of it. An amplification of social instinct*And so if I become suspicious and paranoid it is because of the extent to which have to rely on others. If something goes wrong it is natural to wonder if perhaps it is because I am being lied to or have been led astray. An easy example: you don’t like your body and struggle with it. You’ve been trying to lose weight but can’t tell if you’ve improved - you aren’t fat but you want to be skinny. You ask your boyfriend if you are thin and he says yes. “Really? You’d think that if you saw me in the street, a stranger?” “Yes, I would”. Later someone compliments you: “I love curvy women! Thick thighs save lives! Women are too skinny nowadays”. You feel lied to by your boyfriend. That paranoia can shut one off from helpful interpretations of reality from other people that need to be heard and understood, because some often cannot do it for themselves. And so of course it gets worse - it’s a perfect storm. The paranoia sometimes seeps into what I must fundamentally accept in order to have any hope of functioning, which is that my feelings and perceptions often to do not reflect at the very the intensity of what is truly going on or the actuality of what is at hand in general. If I respond as if they did, my behavior would not seem quite right. On emptiness and self:Feelings of emptiness sometimes exist because the extent confusion experienced merits a sense of absence - something that is ever-changing can less malleable and more fluid. In this case it is, in fact, going to cease being thought of or interacted with as a solid. Such is my sense of self. This is always true but often merely distinctly felt. Emptiness can be felt more acutely and intensely, due to contrast. I sometimes only can understand things when they are contrasted, starkly, with another. I can only perceive and understand them because they stick out like a sore thumb - like only being able to see a silhouette because there is a bright light bombarding objects enshrouded in darkness. And so feelings of emptiness can be worse when I am, for example, where I grew up, or feeling physically good, or with somebody who loves me very much or is being especially affectionate. By comparison to the depth of emotion I understand to be there or can indeed sense, I feel deeply void in a fundamental place because of the comparison. Sadness and joy become paradoxical. The the outlines of who I am become external and flimsy; circumstantial evidence that I am me. Other people seem to understand who I am much better than I can. To me I do not have a consistent core other than lability, a perfectly confusing oxymoron especially when it comes to something as important as sense of self. “It really must be hopeless if I feel like this when good things are happening all around me!” Having teeth extracted presents the unique dilemma, if done correctly: experiencing no or little pain, but knowing that you truly very much should be. That without numbing it would be intolerably excruciating. That the pressure is the strength with which your tooth is being pulled on from your very skeletal structure, roots and all. You aren’t in pain, but isn’t it scary?