#but in the end they fundamentally cannot reject the existing dynamic because they do not know it exists

[roguetelepaths]

If I had to name one theme that captivates me more than anything else, it's people rejecting the abusive and coercive ways of relating to each other that are offered to them by society and choosing care and kindness instead.

[g-perla]

From “Nessian Shipper!!” to “Nessian…Shipper??”

This...is going to be a long one so strap in.

Years ago when ACOMAF came out and the kind people of tumblr posted screenshots of the Wings and Embers short, I found myself looking at Nesta and Cassian, considering the idea of them being romantically and physically involved, and found myself with the following thought; that’s my SHIP. These feelings were reinforced throughout the smattering of brief interactions between the two we got in ACOWAR, probably until the very end where it was unclear if Cassian had gone to see Nesta before or after she headed up the stairs seeming distinctly not ok. That wasn’t a very big deal though. For all I know he did, and she pushed him away, or maybe they did have a talk. Feyre’s perspective is very limited after all. This didn’t really stop my Nessian shipper heart at all.

My Nessian shipper heart became compromised in ACOFAS and in the teaser to ACOSF. I still haven’t re-read ACOFAS so I just want to make it clear that I’m still dealing with 2+ years of accumulated messy, largely unexplored feelings about this ship. That being said, I wasn’t very impressed by Cassian’s behaviour towards Nesta. The interactions between them we were shown left me questioning the stability of a ship I had previously loved with reckless abandon. I questioned Cassian, I questioned Nesta, I questioned their independent trajectories, and them as a couple in the context we were given. My conclusion was that I could no longer really ship them as eagerly in good conscience.

A week or so ago I wrote in a post that Cassian seems, to me, ashamed of Nesta. This idea came to me after considering his behaviour mostly in ACOFAS and to a lesser degree in the previous books. A post by @inyourmindeye, where they put forth their arguments about why Cassian isn’t ashamed of Nesta made me reconsider, however. I read their post carefully and took some time to gather my thoughts after taking in this other perspective. I will share them now.

First, I will say that the word “ashamed” perhaps isn’t the most exact word to express how I feel about Cassian’s complex emotions when it comes to Nesta. I think a more apt word would be conflicted. Second, I want to clarify that when I wrote “ashamed” I didn’t mean to imply that he didn’t care about Nesta. Feeling ashamed of something or someone because of the feelings of attraction or care one might have is certainly possible. Additionally, these emotions aren’t necessarily contradictory, nor do they necessarily depend on each other. They do, however, complicate each other and create conflict.

But what exactly is the source of Cassian’s possibly conflicted feelings?

In the most simplistic sense, I suggest the source is Nesta and the Inner Circle. Or rather, Nesta v. the Inner Circle.

Many in the fandom and some of my own posts have discussed the inherent incompatibilities between Nesta and the IC (as depicted in the canon texts we have access to as of 21/10/20). These incompatibilities are largely ideological such as different definitions of “free will” and agency. Nesta simply does not tolerate the messy dynamics of the IC and the tacit acknowledgement that Rhys has the most authority. For Nesta to fit into this world, she would have to abandon the elements of her character that constitute her core self and which make her subversive within the narrative and without: a disdain towards authority, a resolute mind that isn’t easily moved, quick to anger and abrasive and hostile in her expressions of this anger, but capable of making concessions if the situation gnaws at her strict moral code, morally grey, not nurturing, generally unpleasant to those she doesn’t trust, judgemental, unapologetic in her sexuality or in her femininity, lacking in patience when it comes to idiots and sycophants, critical to a fault, not immune to enacting cruelty, etc. See, if this were a man and if this book had been written during the Romantic period and we were reading it now we would just say “well, I’ll be! What a text-book example of a compelling Byronic hero! We love to see it.”

Note how the men (sorry, males) in SJM novels tend to have many of these same characteristics. They are also pretty good examples of Byronic heroes. The main difference is the energy most people bring when they criticise women. One of the characteristics of a Byronic hero is his refusal to be confined. This confinement can be moral, ideological, epistemological, or physical. Basically, people in the world of such a hero (or even in ours) can’t compute when they encounter him and are unable to put him in easy categories. This often manifests as irrational hatred towards this character because it offends our sensibilities about what is known and what is unknown.

It’s attractive to think that we are immune to this as people existing in the 21st century, but we are not. We still rely on the “Other” to define our identity by both creating it and violently rejecting it. I suppose it’s as good a time as any to share the thesis of my overarching analysis project; basically, Nesta is the ultimate representation of the Other. She is Other in her womanhood (or I guess femaleness), she was Other even as a human, now that she is high fae she is Other to humans but tragically she is also Other to the high fae because she was Made. She is Other as a magical being, she is Other to the IC, she was and is Other to her bio family. She is Other to many of us because we simply cannot comprehend her actions in ACOTAR (how could she have been so cruel????). As of now, there is not a single place where Nesta can exist without offending the very core of what a lot of people value.

One framework for the Other was proposed by the French psychoanalyst Jaques Lacan. He basically said that the Other is that which we must reject when we start forming a concept of the Self. The Self is the known therefore safe; the Other is the unknown therefore dangerous and disruptive. The Self creates the symbolic order which is essentially the blueprint of accepted life to which the Other is antithetical. I can go on and on about the intricacies of this, and Lacan himself certainly did, but I’m working on a review of different conceptualisations of the Other so I will stop here. What I want to establish while bringing this up is that Nesta is essentially the Other to the IC’s symbolic order, i.e. fundamentally incompatible and an epistemological threat. This is a very theoretical way to explain the IC’s hostility and dislike towards her, but I find it compelling enough to pursue (and I am a nerd).

We can’t forget that Cassian is a known element of the IC’s symbolic order, thus one of the Selves let’s say. The Self should seek to annihilate the Other (as it usually does)…not love it, desire it, care for it. To do so is to enter a profound state of existential precarity. To pursue his feelings for Nesta, Cassian would have to question the fundamental assumptions that are at the core of his known world. There is nothing simple about such a task and I can’t really blame him for struggling. 

Still, understanding something isn’t necessarily synonymous with liking it. I wish that the distance between these two characters were not so great. I wish both could just sit and talk with the respect I know them to have for one another. The constant insults and underhanded jabs made by both parties are messy and not in a fun way. As the ship stands, I don’t feel comfortable liking it with the same reckless abandon as before. I think their hostility is too raw, even if their actions contradict them most of the time. Is it unreasonable to want them to interact without reservations in situations other than those between life and death? I hope ACOSF can provide the development they both deserve. Maybe then I can stop having one leg in the ship and the other overboard.

[mindwideopen]

I look like a fancy pants. I am not one. I have a fundamental problem with fancy. With classy. With the upper crust. The hoi polai. I’m not bougie, or part of the upper echelon. Or the high faluntin’. Definitely not exclusive. Or a vip, and not the highest valued. Or the most powerful. Nor am I the absolute best. Well, it’s clear. These are all shit beliefs, I hold within myself. I yell about it a lot. I ruminate. I reactivate the energy I feel rejected by, over and over again.

Be a star! Be famous! Be revered! Be honored! Be special! All of that talk, is relying on outside validation and acceptance to occur for you to be accepted. If I’m not, then what?! Do I cease to exist? Should I? If I’m not accepted into this group, this club, this job, this whatever, then I’m not worthy. A very hard concept to swallow when you’re trying to prove yourself to the world. I need a job. I need to be my best, I have to audition or interview. I need to show my stuff, and prove my worth. Ouch. Not ok. And not easy to live with on a daily basis. Especially if that outside validation never comes. So if it doesn’t, then what? Your thoughts about you and your life, matter.

Our society focuses on one upping one another. It’s how it’s all set up. Prove, show, how much can you do? Who do you know? How much can you offer? Soooooo exhausting. I’ve been sitting in this same brown suede chair, for years, with all this aforementioned energy, and it blows. I have been doing it to myself. And then subsequently reacting to the world and it’s peoples according to my thoughts, and beliefs.

All rich people are greedy. They don’t share. They stay rich, while others starve and struggle. They are excessive. They do not share their wealth. They only care about themselves, etc. all beliefs I had, both consciously and subconsciously. And guess who I ran into? People. Lots of them. All just people, that I labeled, and categorized, and compartmentalized, and brushed off, and yelled about, etc. The people, reacted to my energy that I brought to the table. Not my words, but to my energy. Very different. People can smell other people a mile away. Mistrust, is very real. I didn’t trust a single person. And therefore, they reacted to me accordingly, very exaggerated in some instances, proving my beliefs.

I’m bored of that old dynamic. Fear. Mine. Money is just money. Money is not an energy. What our beliefs are about it, is the energy, not money itself. The same goes with humanity. Humans are just humans. They are not predetermined. Sometimes predictable, but predictably is also predetermined by each of us according to our predetermination of others, sometimes.

“I know her type... she’s a slut, and a bitch, and a pig, and selfish, and she swears and writes weird, so she’s some kind of freak....” all of these generalizations are detrimental to union; both union with other people, and union with ourselves. If you focus on negative thoughts that others have laid on you, or have a negative self talk running in the background of your mind dissing yourself constantly, it’s the same energy. That’s why it’s important to be aware of your beliefs. How do you feel about you? It starts there. Then the rest fall like dominos. (Again, not the pizza place...)

“You are an asshole Kari! Who do you think you are, writing about this shit! You are not qualified! You act like an expert! Like a big shot! Like a know it all! Who do you think you are?! You are a no talent hack! You rip people off and credit yourself! All you do is complain, and boss people around, and yell about whatever. Well, I’m sick of your shit! Be gone!” And I do. I leave. I leave all the very uncomfortable, upsetting situations that I see and experience because I see them that way, which is like most people. Mistrust is very real, if it’s a belief you hold. And by the by, I have been accused, tried, and convicted of all of these things by some people in the 3d world, whatever. But what’s worse, I’ve been convicted of all of this, by myself, because I have reinforced it with my attention to it.

Rebuilding trust with the most important person in the world to you, is not a thing most of us focus on. We think we do, but we don’t. “Oh please... she’s a mook! I trust and care about my spouse, and my kids, and my family, and my friends, and my boss, or whomever. So shut up, insane woman who writes blogs I may or may not read fully, or at all, because I know what you’re about already, so I shut down.” Ok. Already decided then. How’s it feel? Are you happy? Is your life great? If it is, fantastic! Disregard the rest of this post. If your life is great, you’re probably not even reading this, because you won’t resonate with it. You’re happy. I’m not. So I write to get there. I’m rebuilding trust, with the person who decides what my beliefs are. I’m trying to win back the love and support, of me.

Care is not a thing we decide easily either. “Why should I give a shit?! They don’t care about me at all. No one shows love, so I’ll hoard mine as well. It’s how people are...” a belief I haven’t held so I thought, but my subconscious mistrust in people superseded that so-called belief. “Fuck! People screwed me over AGAIN! I try over and over to love, and I don’t get it back! Damn it! I was vulnerable. I opened up! And I was rejected. All of me, was turned down, for being me.” That thought trajectory is one I still try to eliminate from my energy that I hold. But it takes time to repair a relationship when you’ve been unkind. And the relationship with me is the one that’s been in disrepair for a really long time. Fear and mistrust is a barrier to the recognition of any love. And you may miss it if it comes your way with your hurt/and or angry filter. So patience and understanding when I fall off the wagon being kind to myself, is imperative to experiencing love of any kind.

When I feel love from within, it permeates outwardly. When I choose thoughts that help me feel better, I want to share that feeling with those connected to me. When I feel love, I’m happier, I choose good things to eat, I don’t try to fit into clothes that are too small for me, I don’t yell at my son for being a kid, I find more reasons to be happy. The momentum of my thoughts, multiply, and snowball. And the more I do it, the easier it is to get back to that place when I end up falling out of the love. I am a human being. We all are, well, when we choose to be. Otherwise we’re not. We’re mean, we’re ornery, we’re unfeeling (but not, cause negativity also results in feelings, and is also a choice). We come off callus, selfish, as an asshole. Our emotions feed on themselves too, but not in the way we may truly desire, but in the way we subconsciously think we deserve. We treat people according to how we feel, our perceptions dictate that. “God, is she needy! I cannot deal with, Kari. She’s so; A, B, and C, and I’m soooo not into her. So I won’t invest, and not only that, I will hold this energy of what I believe she is, every time I think of her.” I do it to myself, everyday. We all do. We hold the energy of our beliefs about others, and ourselves, and when we think about anything, positively or negatively that’s what WE ourselves experience, because of our attention to it.

I’m bored of this conversation. You know why? Cause it’s not a fun energy. You know what is? Not these thoughts. So, I’m going to eat for the first time today, and maybe think better about things, if I can get that positive momentum going. Well, I’m a deliberate thinker when I want to be, so let’s do it! Ok! Sweet! What do I think?

Below is a sample conversation to deliberately have with yourself to change your energy from a meh mood to better. (Results may vary due to your willingness to buy into what I’m saying. Also, you decide what lights you up, and substitute that for the variables to what I used as examples. If you don’t like avocado toast, music, or detachable penises, this may not be the exact conversation you should have with yourself to aid in feeling better...):

Well, you love avocados. Yes, that’s a weird subject, but I do. Great! Let’s have some avacado toast, and then decide what to do next. Ok. Do you like music? Well, I’m me, so you know I do.... great! Why don’t you listen to some music you dig while your waiting for your toast to toast. That’s ridiculous. Why? It’s just listening. I mean, it’s not like I asked you to dance or anything. Well, fine... I guess I can listen to something. And nothing depressing! Aww come onnnnnn... some of my favorite songs are depressing! Well, fine, but how about something in between. Fine, in between. Ok. Now, remember how much fun we had listening to this song that does something to your innards in the past? Yes! I do. Uh oh... what? You seem... happier... no I’m not! Oh! I think you are... I saw you tapping your foot... no I wasn’t! I was shifting my weight. Ok, fine. Well, I do love this song, and it reminds me of this other song I completely forgot about! Ohhhh yeahhhh! This one is hilarious! Detachable penis by king missle! They’re insane! Omg... you’re dirty. Oh man, people think I write smut. Actually, they do, you didn’t write their song. And by the way, it’s hilarious and awesome, and you appreciate the humor. Besides, there’s no one else here to judge. It’s just you and your toast! Oh yeah! Ok, sweet! Let’s listen...

Yes, this song, and example is seriously ridiculous. A total oxymoron. But it works like that. Love is, accepting you and others in a loving way. It’s about having a sense of humor. It’s about cutting everyone some slack. It’s about caring more about loving then judging and being right. So caring about your feelings play into the happiness of the whole of all of us. We share this planet, so if you care about it, like you say you do, care about you too. ❤️

[kyrieanne]

you said something last night about the good place and the incantation, and I don't know what that means but I would very much like to if you can explain it.

::claps hands::

Necessary throat clearing I: I do not think Christianity is the thesis statement of The Good Place; Mike Schur has been extremely clear this story is not an argument for a particular philosophy. I’m not arguing that anything about the show is particularly religious, but rather that there are some natural analogues (from my point of view). The show is about philosophy, which has a natural overlap with theology at large. I’m not a pastor person, but I do have the same education as one. I’m also trained to look closely at narrative “texts.”  Thus, here we are.

Back in 2012, Helen Sword wrote about nominalization – she coined the name zombie words because it’s easier to remember – which is when you take an adjective (implacable) or a verb (calibrate) or even another noun (crony) and add a suffix like ity, tion or ism. Think: implacability, calibration, cronyism, heteronormativity, etc.

Academics, scientists, - and philosophers/theologians eat nominalization for breakfast. They litter their writing with them. At best – nominalization help us put a name to big, complex ideas, and at worst it can be a tripping hazard to communicating with clarity. Sword cites a pretty famous essay by George Orwell Politics and the English Language, written in 1946.

Orwell warns how language isn’t just political in its content but in its form as well. He quotes a passage from the Bible, Ecclesiastes 9:11

I returned and saw under the sun, that the race is not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong, neither yet bread to the wise, nor yet riches to men of understanding, nor yet favour to men of skill; but time and chance happeneth to them all.

Then Orwell wrote a modern version:

Objective considerations of contemporary phenomena compel the conclusion that success or failure in competitive activities exhibits no tendency to be commensurate with innate capacity, but that a considerable element of the unpredictable must invariably be taken into account.

Sword and Orwell argue that concrete language – that tethered to our five senses – is clearer. It endures, evocates, and energizes your audience. Nominalization has its uses, but should be used sparingly when communication – always a two-way street – is the goal. Cluttering our language with these zombie words is the best strategy for anyone who wants to talk, but cares very little about being heard.

I think The Good Place is an example of a story told in concrete language - though its a visual medium, and it is very much on purpose. But I’ll get to that...

First, let’s define the term Incarnation...Simply put, it is a theological assertion that Jesus Christ was both fully God and fully human. It is one of those key beliefs - take it away and whatever you’ve got isn’t Christian; This isn’t one of those down in the weeds, who cares? theological arguments.

Second, let’s talk about why the points system on The Good Place is fundamentally broken…

Remember Chidi’s breakdown earlier in the season with the peeps chili?

In that scene, he describes 3 main approaches in the last 2500 years of western philosophy to this question: how to live an ethical life?

·       Virtue Ethics – (think Aristotle) There are certain virtues of the mind like courage, generosity, etc. One should develop oneself in accordance to those virtues. The emphasis is on human reason or our minds – what do I do with my mind

·       Consequentialism - Is it right or is it wrong? is based on the consequences of that action - how much utility/good vs. how much pain/bad? The emphasis is on the result instead of the action - what happens to your [neighbor’s] body?

·       Deontology - There are strict rules that everyone must adhere to in a functioning society; an ethical life is identifying & following those rules. The emphasis is on the action instead of the result - what do I do with my body?

(::screeches:: I’m VASTLY over-simplifying here.)

Each philosophical system Chidi outlines makes a priority choice with regards to my mind, my body, and your body. Each takes the mind, body, and other’s bodies into account, but each prioritizes one over the other as the loci – or starting place/lens - from which to answer the question, how to live an ethical life?

The Good Place uses Doug Forcett as the prime example this dynamic because he’s as close to a control group you can have in the story. He is the story-telling embodiment of this tension:

In any ethical system you cannot separate your mind (what you think/believe) from your body (your actions in the real world) or from the bodies of others (the consequences of those actions). 

Please hear what I’m not saying - that these ethical systems are wrong. I am simply saying that none of them completely account for how three parts are inter-connected. 

Doug’s attempt to live an ethical life is endlessly, hopelessly tangled in this ethical web. This is the catalyst for Michael to go to Accounting because he thinks the Bad Place is rigging the points system. But when that proves to be untrue – he jumps to another theory. He makes the case to the Judge that that modern life is so vastly complicated and fraught with moral quandaries that living any sort of morally positive life is impossible.

Yet, it’s total hubris to think our way of life is worse-better than the human condition 500+ years ago. It’s a fetishization of a single era.  Even if we’re arguing that that era damns everyone. It simplifies and romanticizes the past and that is very dangerous because that sentimentality lets us lie to ourselves. We can excuse all kinds of human behavior by slapping the term modernity on it; our world made us do it. It’s a great example of how nominalization can be dangerous. 

I’m confident the show knows this and Michael’s current theory will be proven to be as hollow as the ‘Bad Place is rigging it’ theory. Michael does not know how but he knows with the core of his demon-being that the merit-based “points” system is fundamentally broken.

Let’s talk about systems & power for a moment…

Last year I did some training with the Race Equity Institute for work. They started by talking about systems. We can all name systems:  weather and water systems, the systems of the body and universe, economic and political ones, etc. Social systems – inter-connected people – are maybe the messiest systems there are.

Two important characteristics of any system are 1) the “parts” of the system are inter-connected and 2) the system self-perpetuates, i.e. the power lies in the inter-connectedness of the parts. Your mind & body – as well as the bodies of others – are part of an ethical system. They are inter-connected and there is power in that inter-connectedness.

An ethical life is always bound up in the systems to which we belong, and those systems create mindsets. Yet, the power of those systems is not in the nominalization:  racism, sexism, classcism, etc. we use to describe them. Power lies in the inter-connectedness of the parts – here, people. The last two years of the Angry Cheeto have made that particularly plain, I think.

Enter Big Noodle & the Incarnation

Jason is the character version of from the mouths of babes – his point with Big Noodle is you can’t judge what you don’t know.

So, the Judge goes down to Earth. 

That is what prompted me to think about The Good Place and the Incarnation.

Remember, the Incarnation is a theological assertion who God is, specifically who Jesus Christ is. The church spent a long time arguing about it (like in the hundreds of years) and they did because how do you define God? In the world of The Good Place, where we’re dealing with philosophy and not Christian theology, that question is analogous to how to live an ethical life? because who God is – in the Judeo-Christian tradition – is the starting place for what the meaning of human life is.

(Here I’m going to delve into a little Christian theology, but I PROMISE I have a reason.)

Did God create Jesus in the same way God created trees and elephants and the stars? Was Jesus the highest created being of God? A sort-of demi-god? A movement called Arianism argued this, but in the long run it was rejected because it didn’t fit with the Bible. There were a lot of opinions and theories – I’m skimming over A LOT, but in the end the church basically punted.

The Good Place took Michael through a conversion-like storyline in Season 2 when he became a demon who cares for others – his humans & Janet. Since then he has pursued the question of how behind the points system. He knows it shouldn’t have been possible for his humans to get better after they died, which undermines the whole argument for an earth-bound points system. But they did. If that is true, then the system itself is not the right answer to how to live an ethical life?

Remember: You cannot judge what you do now know.

At the Council of Chalcedon (451), it was decided to define God’s nature by what we know God is rather than what we know God is not. It’s called the Chalcedon formula, and it begins with we confess. In Christian tradition, confession is a different kind of knowing; it is rational, but it is also embodied. One can only confess what one knows because it has be proven to be true in one’s own life. It’s not about having the right answers, but saying - to me this is true.    

The formula states that Jesus is God and Jesus is human, two natures without confusion, and how that exists we don’t entirely understand. It is a union of the human and divine that is not a blending of the two to make one, like the combination of two primary colors to create a new one. Jesus’ birth, life, and death is not somehow less human because of his divinity, but what comes next – the whole rising from the dead thing – definitely is divine. Even writing that sentence makes me itch a little because the Incarnation is an assertion that you can’t divide Christ’s biography into part 1: human, part 2: divine. Rather, the body of Christ – the very nature of who he was, is, and will be – is both human and divine.

The Power of Both/And

Think about this: what confirmation do we have there is a Good Place?

The only characters we’ve seen that come from there are the not-people from The Book of Dougs. Were they angels? Anti-demons? I don’t think we’ve been given a definition. Why should we trust they are what we’re told they are the first go-round? We already know characters are not always who we’re told they are. Further, the judge doesn’t reside in the Good Place. The accountants don’t. We have a door to the Good Place that only non-humans can pass through. Okay, but have we seen anyone pass through it? Assuming there is a Good Place assumes that all the other kinds of characters exist to be part of the machinery that is the human after-life. Demons torture. The judge judges. The accountants tally. Janets help. 

You’ve got a system of interconnected parts:  humans, demons, Janets, needlenoggles, a judge, accountants, etc., and you’ve got this points system in which they all play some part. What Schur & co. have quietly been doing with Team Cockroach is showing how these different types of beings are all changing:  Janet falling in love, Michael’s conversion to caring for others, and the humans changing after they died. None of these things are supposed to be happening in that system.

I wonder if Schur & co. are playing another sleight of hand in their story telling akin to the Season 1 reveal. What if the world of The Good Place isn’t either you belong (not just humans either, but all kinds of creatures) to the GOOD PLACE or the BAD PLACE.  What if - instead - they are making an argument that how to live an ethical life is not about getting the answer to the question, but about seeing the world (here the story-world of The Good Place) in new, transformative ways.

In that REI training, the facilitators asked everyone if you were proud to be an American. This was the beginning of the training. It was one of those questions that you don’t know the right answer to, but you do know what the wrong answers might be. No one said anything. The trainers started listing things they like about living in America:  public education, running water, our national parks, etc., and then they listed things they didn’t like:  history of slavery, the Flint water crisis, etc. They said for the work we were going to be doing in our training they wanted us to resist language of either/or – you are either a racist or you are not. You either love America or you don’t. Rather, they said, embrace the power in both/and language. You can both love the systems in which you live and work, and you can recognize their brokenness, pain, and hurt. You can be both angry at and thankful for your community. That, they said, is how we transform ourselves and our communities. 

The both/and shows up in the Incarnation too – it is a theological assertion that Jesus was BOTH human AND divine. Jesus’ very body rejects that the laws of nature are either/or. Either them or me. Either good or bad. Either/or is a way of seeing the world that is human – we do it as naturally as breathing - but it is not the only way to see. There are more humane ways to exist.

I don’t know what story Schur & co. are telling, but I struggle to see where they are going to land if there is a Good Place without turning the story into a confession of a particular ethical or religious system. Because if there is a Good Place you’ve created an either/or world that needs a system for how it works. 

Rather, they’ve spent a lot of narrative time doing exactly what the church did when they tried to define God – a lot of guesses that tell you want God is not, but don’t clarify what God is. Michael & co. know that Doug Forcett didn’t get enough points despite his ascetic-like life. They know that demons and humans and Janets can change in ways they are not supposed to be able to. They know that they love and care about each other. They know what they don’t know. 

It is counter-intutive, but the best way to communicate big, complex ideas is in concrete, small language. It’s language that is incarnated. The Good Place is a half-hour sitcom about philosophy, and it does that by telling small, incarnated stories. You’ve got 4 humans and they died. What happens next?

But you also have a demon and a Janet. You have a system that appears to not be working. You have two places – good and bad – but actually you don’t. So already that either/or dichotomy is breaking down. There’s the Medium Place and despite the room temperature beer and medium snacks, I wonder if the fundamental geography of the show is a red herring. What if the demons and Janets and all the other kinds of beings are just as caught up in a system of either/or that is patently false? Without a Good Place, the geography of the world isn’t good or bad. It just is. Kind of like our own world. It’s something in between, both joyous and painful. What if the story we’re being told is about how these particular characters – Team Cockroach - challenge and upend a false ethical system in which all creatures in the story are caught?

How to live an ethical life? is a big question that is the wrong question. It posits an either/or world. Human life can be reduced to that, but it is always a reduction based on a lie. We are capable of choosing to see life’s geography - its systems, quandaries, and mysteries - through both/and language. The Christian theology of the Incarnation reminds me that not having all the answers is not only okay, but natural. Life does not occur by knowing the rules and then following them or not. Good living is like good language. It is concrete, small, and embodied. Somehow, it also touches on things bigger than ourselves like love and friendship and the ability to not only change - but transform. 

Why would a fictional after-life be any different?

[why-this-kolaveri-machi]

spn 14.20

it certainly seems like getting an end-date has galvanised supernatural--this finale is the best season finale that i’ve seen since s8 (not that it’s a very high bar to clear; imo, the finales from s9 to s13 were increasingly limp, broadening the scope of future enemies but feeling shallow and dreary and inconsequential). don’t get me wrong--there were the usual distressing-if-fascinating character dynamics, but the finale also did unusual distressing-if-fascinating things, so. there’s that.

SPOILERS AHEAD.

1. jack searching for external validation now that sam and dean (and as far as he knew in the beginning of the episode, castiel) have effectively rejected him was heartbreaking, even if sam and dean didn’t face any real consequences for manipulating and tricking jack. (i guess you could say that jack (potentially) going nuclear on the world in taking out his frustration at samndean is a consequence, but that doesn’t even come close to happening, and samndean are never directly confronted with their deception from the previous episode. i guess s15 could still deal with it, but i doubt it.)

1.5. jack continues to express remorse and signs of (understandable) naivete and an ongoing struggle to control his instincts rather than the cold deliberation of facts and a cheerful lack of empathy that we were told characterises the soulless. robo!sam was willing to work with dean to retrieve his soul--right up until the point where not one, but two opposing entities told him the process of resouling would endanger his very existence. that doesn’t square with the jack who, understanding that dean would never forgive him, drops to his knees to be executed without saying a word. burning off his soul hasn’t really changed the way jack organises his moral universe, or his instincts to be validated by sam and dean, even after they’ve been unimaginably cruel to him. 

2. what is actually horrifying to watch is dean (and sam, but he does at least resist towards the end) bracing himself to kill yet another ‘family’ member who’s crossed a line. there’s a creaky familiarity to it (”at least he dies human!” from s4, going ahead with resouling even if it killed sam in s6, plotting to kill sam after gadreel kills kevin and makes away with sam in s9, the times he decided castiel wasn’t deserving of life, like in the beginning of s7) that’s more chilling than any overt expression of murderous intent. sprawled on a chair in a dark room knocking back whiskey, contemplating murder to both avenge the world and save it. again. 

2.5. every moment felt pregnant with the possibility that now would be the moment sam would finally stand up to dean’s nonsense and go out and appeal to jack to try and save him, much like he did with godstiel in the beginning of s7. when it finally happened, it was too little and too late. not thrilled with the idea that sam has once again failed to stand up for jack in any meaningful way, but i do understand where it’s coming from. still don’t like it tho.

2.8. i giggled at the “equaliser” inflicting the wounds it causes back on its wielder: to kill somebody with it, you’d have to die too. what a perfect weapon for dean, who’s only all too willing to see his murder of jack a brutal but noble act that he must martyr himself to perform. 

3. chuck. oh, chuck. first of all, i feel absolutely vindicated for having this as my official chuck tag. secondly, chuck as a self-absorbed writer-dude who just upends the whole goddamn table when he’s Called Out for his bullshit and walking off in a huff is just hilarious. thirdly, while i find some of what Show is doing with chuck clever, i also think that they’re trying to have their cake and eat it too?

3.25. the idea that chuck’s the one that’s been throwing obstacle after tragedy after obstacle the winchesters’ way because he wanted to prolong his “favourite show” and things coming to a head between him and his characters now that we know s15 is going to be the last season is actually kinda clever. chuck has always been how the Show spoke to its audience, and while i usually side-eye Show’s meta shenanigans, i quite liked it here.

3.5. HOWEVER. this distracts from the actual choices these characters have made, and the consequence of those choices. the show cannot fundamentally live with itself: its premise and its characters have been at odds with each other right from the beginning. in several seasons, the ideological divide between the brothers have teased both resolution and revolution, but the show chickens out by providing yet another ~evil entity for the brothers to unite against and put their differences aside for another season. s7 honestly felt like it was revamping the very look of spn before s8+ went on to pretend like it never happened. s8 built and built the tension between samndean before deciding that the trials/closing hell was more important. most egregiously, s9 and early s10 really had me fooled into thinking sam and dean were going to seriously reconsider their relationship and bring in changes, but all of that was thrown to the wayside for the mark of cain storyline and culminating in a s10 finale where a bloodied and beaten sam offered himself up for execution by his brother. 

3.6. chuck as a personification of this maintenance of the status quo by throwing foe after external foe at the winchesters then is just... the Show kicking the extremely large and unwieldy ball of Issues To Be Addressed further down the road. in fact, the show now has an excuse to not address them at all and pretend that the show’s true culmination, its natural conclusion, is Team Free Will doing some hardcore Free-Willing against the manipulative machinations of god himself. 

4. on a lighter note, i really liked the ending, sam’s jacket is fantastic, and i look forward to billie reaping the fuck out of chuck next season. 

[saferincages]

(you might say we are encouraged to love)

I received an ask requesting I make this response its own post in full (which of course I don’t mind doing!) so here it is:

An anon in the original post asked why, “Anakin/Vader is seen as interesting for women,” and that could be a bit of a loaded question, but I think there’s a definite rationale behind it. The way it was phrased made me think of a post I saw which addressed the fundamental split between Anakin and Vader as seen by certain audiences, why Anakin is treated by many derisively because there’s an element of the “heroine’s journey” that happens in relation to his arc and the struggles he goes through. It’s here and it’s really interesting in its entirety. “The constant barrage of degradation and trauma and unfairness of a system that benefits at your expense and refuses to validate you for it. And some of that he might have been able to reconcile by “growing up,” the same way a lot of us learn to come to terms with social fuckery, but Anakin doesn’t get the space to do that. He gets a giant bundle of unaddressed trauma and psychological issues and handed a kind of ambiguous destiny about needing to save the entire universe.” <- Imagine the burden of that, and they put it on a child and then give him zero structure to cope with it.

I’m also going to add this comment from that post because I think it’s worthwhile to note: if someone makes you angry and you show anger with your very own face you are weak, you have lost face, you have shown yourself vain and driven by a selfish, animal, irrational, feminine urge to defend yourself; but if you show anger without a face, if you show it unpersonally (the less it’s connected to direct accusation or a specific ill), especially in order to execute a role, then you suddenly appear to be the one in the position of strength, because you can no longer be directly accused of selfishness. The more you can cloak anger in the guise of necessity, the more you meet the societal expectation to be dispassionate, rational, always controlled - the more justification and legitimacy and power to you, even though this mode of anger is often more destructive than the first. This dynamic, assuming it exists as I’ve hypothesized it, is why I think Anakin codes as feminine to many, while Vader appeals to a certain masculine ideal.

Basically, the gist of it is that the emotional turmoil, the trauma, the way he’s exploited for his talents or what he can provide others, the way his agency is stripped repeatedly from him again and again tends to not be the way “male” hero journeys are told. It’s feminine coding (unfortunately) for those themes to be explored. For those emotions to be plumbed and portrayed with a substantive sense of sorrow and helplessness in the central male hero - it is not the “macho” standard. Why they thought they’d get a macho, unyielding masculine power trip from Anakin Skywalker remains a mystery to me, this is the same series where its original hero, Luke (who is his son! of course there were going to be essential parallels and contrasts between them), purposefully throws his weapon away and refuses to fight, and is characterized by his capacity for intrinsic compassion rather than any outer physical strength (even Han is much less of a “macho” guy than dudebros tend to make him out to be - not only because he’s unmistakably the person in distress who has to be rescued from capture in ROTJ, he has a lot of interesting facets that break down that ‘scoundrel’ stereotype, but I digress other than to say I love the OT, and the subtle distinctions in Luke, Leia, and Han that make them break the molds of expectation). SW fundamentally rejected toxic masculinity and the suppression of emotions from its inception, Luke’s loving triumph and role as redeemer only happens because he refuses to listen when he’s told to give up on his friends or on his belief that there’s good in his father, his softness is his ultimate strength. Anakin was never going to be some epitome of tough masculinity, and George Lucas knew exactly what he was doing crafting him in that way. The audiences who wanted Bad Seed Anakin from the beginning didn’t know how to reconcile this sensitive, kind-hearted, exceedingly bright kid, with their spawn of the Dark Side notions, and I think, unfortunately, far too many then either rejected him completely or refused to understand what the central points in his characterization are about.

The fact that this narratively would have made no sense (if Anakin had been “born bad,” then there would have been no miraculously surviving glimpse of light for Luke to save - I’ve said this before, but imagine how profoundly essential to his true self that goodness had to be for it to even exist any more at that point, after all he’d suffered, after all he’d done. the OT tells us more than once what a good man Anakin Skywalker was, it’s part of what makes the father reveal as powerful as it is - if we hadn’t heard the fragments of stories about Luke’s father, it wouldn’t be nearly as shocking, but we KNOW he was a hero, an admirable man, a good friend). I can’t fathom how tricky telling the prequels had to have been to that extent - the audience knows what will happen in the end, it’s a foregone conclusion, we know he will fall, we know Vader will be created, we know the Empire will rise (though that would have happened even if Anakin had remained in the light, which is a whole other discussion). So the question became, who is this person? What influenced him? What shaped his destiny? And that ended up being a far more complex and morally fraught and stirringly emotional story than just “badass Jedi becomes badass Sith lord.”

That talented, highly intelligent boy is taken in by the Jedi after he has already developed independent thought and very intricate emotional dimension - the argument that he’s “too old” to be trained is because he’s not malleable enough to be indoctrinated the way Jedi usually treat the children they take. They may blame this on his attachment to Shmi, but she’s not the problem (if anything, had they not been so unfeeling and rigid, and had they freed her and allowed her to at least stay in contact with her son while he was training because it was a special case - they’re the ones who stick that “Chosen One” mantle on him, you’re telling me they couldn’t make an exception? but no, because they put that weight on him and then never help him carry it and constantly undermine it and question and mistrust him - Anakin would have been stronger in his training, and he would never have fallen to the Dark Side at all. There are so many moments, over and over, where his fall could have been averted, and everyone fails him to the bitter end, when he fails himself). 

And so he is traumatized, due to years of abuse and difficulties as a slave, due to having to leave his mother behind because the Jedi would not free her, due to being told to repress his emotions over and over again when he is, at his core, an intuitive and perceptively empathetic person (he wants to uphold that central tenet of his training - “compassion, which I would define as unconditional love, is central to a Jedi’s life”), yet he’s made to feel he is broken/wrong/constantly insufficient. He’s wounded by abandonment issues and lack of validation and the human connection/affection he craved, and he develops an (understandable) angry streak, he’s socially awkward due to the specific constraints/isolation of a Jedi’s life and due to the fact that they tried to stamp out what made him uniquely himself, which makes him continually conflicted with a never-ending pulse of anxiety (see absolutely ANY moment where he breaks down emotionally, and you’ll see him say something to the effect of “I’m a Jedi, I know I’m better than than this,” “I’m a Jedi, I’m not supposed to want [whatever very basic human thing he wants, because they make him feel like he can’t even ask for or accept scraps of decency]” - they fracture his sense of his own humanity, Padme tries to validate those feelings but that Code is a constant stumbling block in his mind). He is troubled by fear and the constant press of grief (I would argue he has PTSD at the very least), and all around he’s met by mistrust and sabotage. 

Male heroes shouldn’t be treated as infallible in their own narratives (none of them are that, as no character of whatever gender/origin is, as none of us are), but at the very least we usually see them treated with respect by others. Anakin often gets no such luxury. He’s treated the way we frequently see women treated, and that treatment comes from the same rotten core - the idea that emotions are weak, that expressing them makes you lesser, that crying is a sign of deficiency, that fragility of any kind cannot be tolerated. Anakin is even the hopeless romantic in this situation - Padme, while gracious and warmhearted, is much more pragmatic and tries to reason her way out of her blossoming love for him until she’s of the belief that it doesn’t matter anyway because they’re about to die, and she wants him to know the truth before they do. (I’d also like to note that the closest people to him all speak their love aloud when they’re at the point of death - Shmi when he finds her bound and tortured with the Tuskens, Padme in the Arena, Obi-Wan watching him burn on Mustafar, and how unbearably sad is that? even though his mother had said it before, even though he got to hear it many times again from Padme - and it’s her last entreaty to him - we shouldn’t be pushed to the brink of death to express it). Anakin is the one gazing at her dreamily and tearing up about it and professing earnest, dramatic love in front of the fireplace (idc what anyone says about the dialogue, the way he expresses himself is entirely sincere, it’s the rawness of that sincerity that I think makes people uncomfortable bc it’s unexpected), she’s the one who talks about living in reality. She, too, has been taught to guard and temper her emotions from her time as a child queen and the years she’s spent navigating the murky political waters of the Senate, but she’s become adept at it, unlike Anakin. If anything, they’re the only person the other has with whom they can be truly genuine and unafraid of exposing the recesses of their hearts, they’re the only safe place the other has, it’s no wonder they give themselves over to that, and the fact that they do is beautiful, it’s not wrong (which I have more cohesive thoughts on here and it was the underlying thesis of my heart poured into the super long playlist for them too /linking all the things). They see the joy and spirit in the other that no one else ever sees, and they make a home there.

Anakin becomes an esteemed general not only because he’s awesome in battle and strong in the Force and a gifted pilot and a skilled leader (all of which are true), but because he shows those around him respect, and great care. So, yet again, there’s a subversion of what might have been expected. No one is expendable to him. He views the Clone troops as individual human beings. He mourns their losses (many of the Jedi, with their no attachments rhetoric, allow the Clones to be used without much hesitation or thought for their status as sentient beings born and bred and programmed to die in war, but Anakin was a slave. He comprehends their status more than anyone else could). Anakin is a celebrated hero to the public, and in private is being chewed up by fear and uncertainty. Anakin is devoted to and completely in love with his wife, but has to keep it a secret. Anakin still craves freedom that even being a Jedi has not afforded him, because of their rigor. Anakin still desperately has to scrape for even the bare minimum of approval from the authority figures around him - even his closest mentor and friend, Obi-Wan, while they are irrevocably bonded and care for each other in a myriad of important ways, often doesn’t understand him and dismisses his feelings, refuses to advocate for/stand up for him when he needs it, or tells him to calm down. I’m surprised they never tell him he’s being hysterical when he gets upset, but the connotation of being told to “calm down” when angry or sorrowful or frustrated is something most women can identify with all too well. His desperate desire to protect Padme as everything begins to curl and smoke and turn to ash around him has a very clear nurturing aspect to it underneath the layers of terror and frustration and building paranoia - all he really wants is to be able to protect and care for his family, all he hopes is to save them and have a life with them away from all the war and the political in-fighting and the stifling Order. He’d quit right that second but he needs help due to his nightmares, and no one is willing to give it to him. (Except, ostensibly, Palpatine, who has been grooming him and deftly manipulating him and warping his perceptions since he was a child, all under the guise of magnanimous, almost paternal, care. Palpatine is brilliant in his machinations, perfectly cunning in his evil. He knows exactly how to slip in and break people, and he plays Anakin to the furthest extreme. I’m not saying Anakin doesn’t have choices, he does, and he makes the worst possible ones, but Palpatine pulls the strings in a way that makes him feel that he has no agency - and in truth, he does have very little agency throughout every step of his arc, marrying Padme and loving her in spite of the rules is one of the only independent choices he ever makes that isn’t an order, a demand, a fulfilling of duty - and Palpatine poises himself as the answer to all the problems, if Anakin does as he’s told. He’s been hard-wired to take orders for too long. He is so damaged by this point, and so distrusting - Hayden said something once about how Anakin is still very naive in ROTS, even after what he’s been through in the war, he’s still so young and unknowing about many things, and then his naivete is shattered by complete and utter disillusionment, and that shock is terrible and incomprehensible for him, so he clings to the one source of power he’s given, and it’s catastrophic). He is haunted by grief and impeded by fear of loss, and it drags him into an abyss. We watch all of this happen with bated breath, we see everyone fail him, we see every moment where he could have been helped, we see every path he could take if only he had the ability to stand up for himself and had been given the tools to cope with his psychological and emotional baggage, we see that he very nearly turns back, up until the death knell at the end. We know it’s coming from the moment they land on Tatooine and meet him and decide to make him a Jedi. We know, and we still hope for it to turn out differently. We know, and it still breaks our hearts.

I don’t want to make blanket statements about typical male viewers vs. typical female viewers, that’s too dismissive of a stance to take, but on a seemingly wider scale, I don’t think many of the former (especially the ones who were either older fans or who were teenagers themselves at the time) were as interested in political nuance and a tale of abiding love and a young man burdened with more than should ever have been put on his shoulders. Since the question was basically “why does he appeal to women,” (and not just cishet women) I imagine that the answer to that varies greatly depending on any one perceptive outlook, but has a similar core in each case of us wishing we could help change the outcome, even though we know we can’t, and of wanting to understand his actions and his pain, wanting to see his positive choices and his goodness validated, wanting to see him learn healthy strategies, wanting to see his love flourish, wanting to see him freed from the shackles he drags with him, from childhood to Jedi to Vader. The crush of the standards of society and expectation on him may speak to many. He is never liberated (until his final moments of free breath). His choices are either taken or horrifically tainted. His voice is drowned out by those more powerful around him. His talents and intelligence go largely unrecognized. His good, expansive heart is treated like a hindrance. The depth of his empathy and love is underestimated - and that, in the end, is important, because that underestimation, ending with Palpatine, becomes the Dark Side’s ultimate downfall and undoing. Vader may literally pick up an electric Palpatine and throw him down a reactor shaft, but that physical action is the final answer to a much more complete emotional and spiritual journey. He throws him down and the chains go with the slave master, and for the first time, certainly since before he lost Padme, his heart is unfettered, his love is reciprocated, and he is offered a true voice, a moment of his true self, a sliver of forgiveness, before being embraced again by the transcendence of the light. It is his act of rebellion, it is his own personal revolution, his final blow in the war. The entirety of the arc hinges upon him in that moment, Luke has been valorous and immeasurably valuable, but he’s done all he can do - the final choice is Anakin’s (and it’s such an interesting case because where else have we ever been able to fear and appreciate a villain, and then totally transform and re-contextualize him?). He is in that moment, indeed, the Chosen One.

All these facets are fascinating to watch unfold if you’re willing to be open-minded and heartfelt and sympathetic to the journey, if you’re willing to dig into the complex depth of his pathos.

I remember seeing AOTC as a teenager, and my love was Padme, she was where I was invested, I identified with her, I loved her kindness and her bravery and her sense of honor and justice, I loved that her femininity did not in any way diminish her and was an asset, I loved that, while she takes charge and has the fortitude to rush headlong to the rescue, while she can fight and tote a gun and blast a droid army as well as anyone, her superpowers are her intellect and her giving heart and gentle spirit. I totally get why Anakin holds onto the thread of hope she gives to him for all of those years, and why he falls in love with her as he does, but since I felt a lot of the story through her eyes, I understood why she was drawn to and fell in love with him, too. He’s dynamic and a bit reckless, he’s courageous, but he’s vulnerable and needs support, he’s deeply troubled but also radiantly ebullient at times (the scene in the meadow where she’s so touched by the carefree joy he exhibits, how it delights her and takes her aback, because she’s almost forgotten what it is to feel that, she’s almost forgotten other people could, and here he is, warm and teasing and spirited), he is often guileless, especially with her, he’s fervent and loving in a way she’s never seen or experienced, and that love is given with abandon to her. Who…wouldn’t fall in love with that? It’s a gravitational pull. AOTC impacted me in certain other personal ways as well, I was trying to understand some nascent hollows of grief (Anakin losing his mother as he does was very affecting and heartwrenching for me, at the time I’d lost my grandfather to whom I was quite close, and I’m also really close to my own mom, so his woe had an echo to me), but that vision that I specifically had of their love, the way I interpreted it (which I may not have had words for at the time, but I certainly had the emotional response) was a dear and formative thing.

I talked about this here, but to rephrase/reiterate, by the time ROTS came out, my life had shifted completely on its axis. I was still young, but my much dreamier teenage self was being beaten down and consumed by illness, and I was angry. Anger is not a natural emotion for me (guilt and self-blame tend to be where I bury anger), and I really didn’t know what to do with it. Everything felt unfair and uncertain, like there was no ground at all to stand on. I hurt all the time, literally and figuratively, I was in constant pain. I was lonely and frightened and sleep deprived and often had nightmares (this is still kind of true lol, as is the physical pain part). Padme was still my heart and touchstone - as she remains so to this day in this story - but suddenly I understood Anakin in a much more profound way, one I’ve held onto because he’s important to me and I love him. I felt his rage, his anguish, his desire to do something, anything, to somehow change or influence the situation, to rectify his nightmares, to cling to whatever might make a difference, might save him from being drowned in the dark and from losing everything that made him who he was as a person. Seeing him try and knowing he would fail was devastating, but also…relatable, in an abstract way (obviously not the violent parts, but thematically, I felt some measure of what it was to scramble up a foundation that is disappearing beneath you, that your expectations and dreams of what your life would be can vanish in disintegrating increments). All I wanted was for someone to help rescue him, because all I wanted was for someone to help rescue me. All I wanted was the hope that things could turn around - and there is hope in ROTS, despite the unending terror and tragedy, it’s never entirely gone, because Star Wars exists as a universe with the blazing stars of hope and love ever ignited at its center - but still, it was a very personally rooted emotional exploration for me, and I only started to deal with my own floundering anger when I saw how it might consume the true and loving and softer parts of me if I didn’t hold it back. (A few years later, I went through this again in an even worse way, and the source of that rage and despair was someone I cared for, and once I got through the worst bleak ugliness of it, there were a couple of stories I returned to in an attempt to gain newfound solace and comprehension, and Anakin and Padme were in there. My compassionate, hopeful heart was being torn by that fury, and I clawed my way back up from the brink of it because I knew I could die, not even necessarily figuratively, it was…a bad time, if I didn’t find my way out. Anakin’s story is a tragedy and a fable and a kind of warning - we should not deny or suppress our emotions or our authenticity, but we also cannot let it destroy us - and then ultimately his lesson is restorative, too, that we never lose the essential part of our souls, that we must allow ourselves to feel. Balance indeed). 

As consistent and transparent as my love for Padme has always been, my Anakin emotions are actually so close and personal that I intentionally avoided ever exposing them for actual years, it’s like…basically in the past month that I’ve ever been truly honest about it on Tumblr, because exposing that felt like too much, but I don’t really care about keeping it quiet any more, and that’s very cathartic. 

I myself am an incredibly emotional person, and I don’t believe that Anakin’s emotions are negative qualities, which I meant to underscore. In fact, his open emotions are an exquisite part of him, and it’s the Jedi who are wrong for trying to stamp that out, when his emotional abilities are part of what define him in his inherent goodness and his intellect and strength. He has an undying heart. For he and Luke both to stand as male heroes who represent such depth of feeling is really special, and vital to the story. Anakin is the most acutely human character in many respects, in his foibles and his inner strengths, in his losses and his longings and his ultimate return to his true self - that’s why we feel for him, that’s why we ache and fear for him, that’s why we rejoice for him in the end.

Other people could speak to the Vader part of it much better than I can, Vader’s an amazing and very interesting villain (the fact that, as Vader, Anakin is much more adhered to the Jedi code and way of thinking than he ever was as an actual Jedi, for example - he has an order to him, he is much more dispassionate, he is very adamant about the power of the Force - is endlessly intriguing, because he’s such a contradiction). I use this term for a different character, but I’m going to apply it here - Anakin is a poem of opposites. He is a center that can serve as either sun or black hole. He is a manifestation of love and light and heroism, he is a figure of imposing power and cold rage. He’s the meadow and the volcano. The question then becomes, how expansive are we? When we’re filled with the contradicting aspects of ourselves, how do we make them whole without falling apart? When we do fail, can we ever do anything to fix it? And the answers again will vary by individual, but to my mind - we’re infinite, and thus infinitely capable of, at any point, embracing our light, even if we’ve forgotten to have faith in it, and while we may not be able to fix every mistake or right every wrong, we can make a better choice and alter the path. The smallest of our actions can ripple and extend and are more incandescent than we know. That’s what he does, against all expectation. In the end, he is an archetype not only of a hero (be that fallen or chosen or divine), but of a wayward traveler come home, a heart rekindled, a soul set free to emerge victorious in the transcendent light.

In the final resonance of that story for me personally, I love him for being a representation of that journey, that no matter how long it takes to get there, how arduous it is - that things we lose can be found again, that with the decided act of compassion, pure, redemptive love can be held onto, that the light persists and that, even when it flickers most dimly, refuses to be extinguished, and can at any point illuminate not only ourselves, but can shine brightly enough to match the stars in the universe.

I hope this is at all cogent, here’s a gif for your patience ♥

[uk-news-talking-politics]

Strapped-in and outplayed: How Boris Johnson's Brexit plan undermines Britain

By Ian Dunt

The Tory manifesto has no plan for government. It is an empty cupboard, holding only cobwebs and broken toys. There's just one bit of it with any real meaning and that's the commitment to refuse to extend the transition period for Brexit at the end of 2020.

It's all carefully calibrated to emphasise the central message: Get Brexit Done. But it's a lie. We're seeing the exact same mistakes the Theresa May government made now repeated for the second phase. Tragedy and farce - not in sequence, but delivered simultaneously, over and over again.

"We will not extend the implementation period beyond December 2020," the document reads. It's an astonishing imbecilic thing to say. Most trade deals take years to negotiate. That process starts with knowing what it is you're trying to achieve. But there is no evidence we've even reached that point.

The fundamental dynamic of the trade talks will work like this: The more independence you want, the more barriers there will be to trade. The fewer barriers to trade you want, the less independence you will have.

So the domestic political dynamic if the Tories win a majority will be obvious. Hardliners in the Conservative party will agitate for a distant relationship, allowing the UK to pursue trade deals with Donald Trump.

But that won't be the only pressure on the prime minister. British business and industry will undertake a fierce lobbying operation to try to prevent the damage that comes from trade obstacles. And they will have overlapping and sometimes contradictory demands.

Are tariffs the most important trade obstacle to prevent? That's the bare-bones approach, which would be most useful to exporters and importers in goods. But even this kind of basement-level deal would require some degree of agreement on standards, which in turn could prevent a trade deal with the US. Or would it go further than that? Customs procedures? Access to services?

The relative clout of a business lobby does not define how powerfully they will agitate for their interests to be represented. The financial services sector contributes 6.9% of total UK economic output, while the fishing industry contributes 0.1%. But the latter has had far greater prominence in the national debate over the last three years than the former. It'll be an absolute frenzy of public and private lobbying.

The current Brexit debate is identical to the one in 2016. It operates on the basis of a philosophical proposition that the world is made up of all plus sides and no down sides. It is a world without trade-offs, a kind of fantasy land of trade tedium.

But that is not the case. Trade-offs exist. So all the usual suspects, when they don't get what they want, will tear their hair out about an unreasonable EU and British europhiles sabotaging their glorious project. Same old horrible nonsense, all over again.

Once the UK has figured out what it wants, it needs to negotiate it. It is planning on doing this, according to the manifesto, while simultaneously negotiating with other countries, with an aim "to have 80% of UK trade covered by free trade agreements within the next three years".

This is the same commitment we heard after the Brexit referendum result. "Within two years," David Davis said in July 2016, "before the negotiation with the EU is likely to be complete, we can negotiate a free trade area massively larger than the EU. The new trade agreements will come into force at the point of exit, but they will be fully negotiated."

It was, of course, false. The new promise is false too and of a similar magnitude. The total UK trade in goods and services in 2018 was £1,289 billion. Eighty per cent of that is £1,038 billion. That's a lot of work you want to do while negotiating the most important trade deal in your history amid a cacophony of domestic lobbying operations.

It will face similar problems, which the Conservative party simply refuses to learn. Other countries want clarity about the UK relationship with the EU before they decide on what they are willing to put on the table for their own negotiations. Of course they do. There's a difference between a market covering 66 million consumers and one covering half a billion. And that's not even to mention the standards arrangements the UK may or may not enter into the with the EU as part of its negotiations, which have a knock-on effect on what it can agree with others.

Then there's the question of capacity. The UK needs to dedicate all negotiating capacity towards the discussions with the EU. It cannot afford to split off teams for talks with other countries which are unlikely to even go anywhere, or else it risks putting up civil servants who have quickly scrubbed up on trade against seasoned veterans. If your negotiating partner can dedicate all their resources to something and you have to split yours into pieces, then you are going to come out the worse for it.

After all of that, the deal with the EU will need to be ratified. Although it hasn't exactly felt like it, we have so far enjoyed the easiest part of the Brexit process. We have been negotiating with one partner - the EU presenting a united front. But ratification will likely be different. The deal will go out to national parliaments, including some regional parliaments. There it will be lost in unpredictable regional debates. When the Belgian region of Wallonia rejected the EU-Canada trade deal, painstakingly negotiated for years, it was on the basis of anti-globalisation concerns about the power handed to multinationals.

Then the deal needs to be implemented. This might take a lot of work, setting up all sorts of checks infrastructure and the like, or a bit less. We don't know. What we do know is that this process - formulating a position, negotiating it, ratifying it and implementing it - is not going to be done by December 2020.

So one of two things are going to happen. Johnson will either stick to his promise and refuse extension, leading to a trade no-deal, with all the consequences that entails. Or he will break his promise and extend.

The latter is more likely, and not just because the fact Johnson makes a promise is pretty firm evidence that he will not deliver it. It's likely because after months of industry lobbying, he is unlikely to hammer the economy in order to maintain an election promise he made for a campaign, now in the distant past, which he already won.

How will that final reluctant extension go? First, it will be expensive. The current extension decision deadline is set for summer 2020, because that places it ahead of the EU's talks for their next financial window. That deadline will pass and Johnson will likely be forced to extend in December 2020, once the financial debate has begun. They'll find a way to make this possible, but it is going to cost. That money will ease the fraught dynamic of negotiating spending within the EU. It'll cost more than it would have cost if it was done in summer 2020. And that number will drive the hardliners insane.

When Johnson extends, he'll be seeking to limit the damage to his credibility from going back on his promise. So it is likely that he will attempt to sign off on the trade deal first, then extend for ratification and implementation. This would allow him to do a rebranding exercise. He won't call it extension. He'll likely call it 'activating an implementation phase' or something like that. That's the trick that May attempted and seeing as we're reliving all her mistakes one by one, it's likely he'll do the same.

But that then sets up a new trap. It will be firmly in his interests to get a deal signed by December 2020 for his 'implementation' trick, so the EU will have all the leverage in that crucial eye-watering final month. The pressure on him will be intense. So just like he has done with his withdrawal deal, he will agree to something shoddy and self-defeating, something defined by his partner's interests, because it is in his personal interest to do so.

It's honestly like watching Gus Van Sant's shot-for-shot remake of Psycho, except with more blood. First, the overwhelming sense of boredom. Then the deeper question of: Why? Why would you do this? And then the despair at the barren state of our culture.

Step by step, we're making all the same mistakes, all over again. No honesty in the rhetoric, no realistic assessment of timescales or capacity, no idea what we're doing, no realism about the world around us, and a repeated habit of creating pointless artificial timetables, to satisfy short-term political pressures, which undermine our own negotiating position.

They call this patriotism. But it is precisely the opposite. It is the sabotaging of the national interest in order to further the interests of Boris Johnson.

[siva3155]

300+ TOP MANUAL TESTING Interview Questions and Answers

MANUAL TESTING Interview Questions for freshers and experienced :-

1. What is Software Testing? If we go by the ANSI/IEEE 1059 standards software testing is a procedure of breaking down software to distinguish the contrasting characteristics among the existing software conditions and the reuired conditions (i.e. bugs and defects) and to assess the highlights of the software at hand. 2. Explain the procedure for manual testing. The manual testing process comprises of the following- Planning and Control Analysis and Design Implementation and Execution Evaluating exit criteria and Reporting Test Closure activities 3. Explain the tasks involved in planning and control. Test planning comprises of the following major tasks: To fix the scope and the number of risks and ascertain the goals of testing. To govern the test method. To execute the test policy and/or the test tactics. 4. What is Static Testing? Static Testing includes the process of exploring the records to recognize the imperfections in the very early stages of SDLC. 5. What is Dynamic Testing? Dynamic testing includes the process of execution of code. It validates and approves the output with the expected results. 6. What is the difference between Positive and Negative Testing? Positive Testing Negative Testing: It is done to figure out what a framework is expected to do. It checks whether the application is defending the necessities it was built for or not. It is to figure out what framework has been tuned to not do. It finds the deformities from the product. 7. What is use case testing? The use case testing uses the use case to assess the application. So that, the tester can inspect all the functionalities of the application. Use case testing can cover a whole application. 8. What is a test case? A test case is ideally used to test the conformance of a developed application in consonance with its reuirement stipulations. It is a set of settings with pre-reuisites, input values and predictable results in a recognized form. 9. Explain the tasks of test closure activities. Test closure activities are endowed with the following major tasks: To see which strategic deliverable are really delivered and to safeguard that all incident reports have been successfully resolved. To confirm and document the test ware such as writings, testing environments, etc. for future reuse. To deliver the test ware to the maintenance team. They will give sustenance to the software. To assess how the testing actually went and acuire lessons for upcoming releases and ventures. 10. Can you list down a few characteristics of a test case? A test case can have the following attributes- Test Case Id – An exceptional identifier for the test case. Test Summary – Online comments or summary for each of the test cases. Description – A Comprehensive narrative of the test case. Precondition or pre-reuisite – A set of fundamentals that must be charted before implementing the test steps. Test Steps – Comprehensive steps for carrying out the test case. Expected result – The estimated result in the direction to pass the test. Actual result – The actual result received after having done the execution of the test steps. Test Result – Pass/Fail to stand of the test execution. Automation Status – Identifier for automation – whether the given application is mechanized or not. Date – The date of the test execution. Executed by – Name of the person performing the test case.

MANUAL TESTING Interview Questions 11. How will you define a critical bug? A critical bug is a bug that has got the tendency to affect a majority of the functionality of the given application and the application cannot be distributed to the end client deprived of the procedure of fixing that bug. It is different from a blocker bug as it doesn’t essentially disturb or block the testing of other parts of the given application. 12. What is Endurance Testing? In this type of testing, we test the application’s behavior in contrast to the load and stress put on over an application for a long period of time. 13. Why we need Localization Testing? Localization testing generally deals with the functionality of application and GUI of the application. 14. What is Path Testing? Path testing is a testing in which tester guarantee that each path of the application should be affected at least once. In this testing, all the paths in the program’s source code are tested in any case once for sure. 15. What are Validation and Verification? Verification Validation Progression of assessing work-products of a growth phase to control whether they fulfill the stated necessities for that stage. The process of evaluating software during or at the end of the development process to determine whether it specified reuirements. Manual Testing Interview uestions for Experienced 16. What is a Test Harness? A test harness is the gathering of software along with the test information arranged to test a program unit by running it under changing conditions which include checking the input values with the expected yield. 17. What is a Test Closure? Test Closure is the note arranged before the test group formally finishes the testing procedure. This note contains the aggregate no. of experiments, total no. of experiments executed, total no. of imperfections discovered, add total no. of imperfections settled, total no. of bugs not settled, total no of bugs rejected and so forth. 18. What is Top-Down Approach? Testing happens from top-to-bottom. High-level state modules are tested first and after that low-level modules and lastly incorporating the low-level modules to a high-level state to guarantee the framework is working as it is expected to. Stubs are utilized as an impermanent module if a module isn’t prepared for integration testing. 19. What is the Bottom-Up Approach? It is an opposite of the Top-Down Approach. Testing happens from base levels to high-up levels. The lowest level modules are tried first and afterward high-level state modules and lastly coordinating the high-level state modules to a low level to guarantee the framework is filling in as it has been proposed to. Drivers are utilized as a transitory module for incorporation testing. 20. Is it true that we can do system testing at any stage? No. The system testing must start only if all units are in place and are working properly. Though, it ought to happen before the UAT (User Acceptance testing). 21. What are the Experience-based testing techniques? Inexperienced based methods, individuals’ information, abilities and foundation knowledge are prime supporters of the test conditions and experiments. The experience of both technical, as well as business, is vital, as they convey alternate points of view to the test examination and configuration process. Because of past involvement with comparable frameworks, they may have bits of knowledge into what could turn out badly, which is exceptionally valuable for testing purposes. 22. When is it ideal that the testing is stopped? It depends on the level of risks associated with the system being tested. There are some criteria bases on which it is ok to stop testing. Closing date (Testing, Release) Test budget has been exhausted Bug rate fall below the definite level Test cases finished with assured percentage passed Alpha or beta periods for testing ends Reporting of code, functionality or necessities are met to a stated point 23. Explain the concept of semi-random test cases? Semi-random test cases are those test cases which we get when we perform arbitrary experiments and do proportionality parceling to those experiments; it evacuates repetitive experiments, along these lines giving us semi-random test cases. 24. Why we use decision tables? The techniues of euivalence dividing and boundary value analysis are regularly connected to the particular circumstances or sources of info. Nonetheless, if distinctive combinations of sources of info result in various actions being taken, this can be more difficult to indicate utilizing comparability apportioning and limiting esteem investigation, which has got a tendency to be more centered around the UI. The other two determinations based methods, choice tables, and state change testing are more centered around business rationale or business rules. A choice table is a decent method to manage blends of things (e.g. inputs. This procedure is once in a while additionally alluded to as a ’cause-impact’ table. The purpose behind this is there is a related rationale charting system called ’cause-impact diagramming’ which was some of the time used to help determine the decision table 25. Why is it that the boundary value analysis provides good test cases? This is for the reason that errors are often made during the program design of the different cases near the ‘edges’ of the array of values. 26. Explain the term bug. A bug is an error found while running a program. Bug fall into two categories: logical and syntax. Senior Tester Interview Questions 27. Explain the difference between functional and structural testing. Functional testing is considered to be behavioral or black box testing in which the tester verifies that the system or application functions according to specification.  Structural testing on the other hand is based on the code or algorithms and is considered to be white box testing. 28. Define defect density. Defect density is the total number of defects per lines of code. 29. When is a test considered to be successful? The purpose of testing is to ensure that the application operates according to the requirements and to discover as many errors and bugs as possible.  This means that tests that cover more functionality and expose more errors are considered to be the most successful. 30. What good bug tracking systems have you used? This is a simple interview question about your experience with bug tracking.  Provide the system/systems that you are most familiar with if any at all.   It would also be good to provide a comparison of the pros and cons of several if you have experience. Bug tracking is the essence of testing process and is a must asked manual testing interview questions in any interview. Do not forget this. 31. In which phase should testing begin – requirements, planning, design, or coding? Testing should begin as early as the requirements phase. 32. Can you test a program and find 100% of the errors? It is impossible to fine all errors in an application mostly because there is no way to calculate how many errors exist.  There are many factors involved in such a calculation such as the complexity of the program, the experience of the programmer, and so on. This Manual testing interview questions is the most tricky questions considered by testers. 33. What is the difference between debugging and testing? The main difference between debugging and testing is that debugging is typically conducted by a developer who also fixes errors during the debugging phase.  Testing on the other hand, finds errors rather than fixes them.  When a tester finds a bug, they usually report it so that a developer can fix it. 34. How should testing be conducted? Testing should be conducted based on the technical requirements of the application. 35. What is considered to be a good test? Testing that covers most of the functionality of an object or system is considered to be a good test. 36. What is the difference between top-down and bottom-up testing? Top-Down testing begins with the system and works its way down to the unit level.  Bottom-up testing checks in the opposite direction, unit level to interface to overall system. Both have value but bottom-up testing usually aids in discovering defects earlier in the development cycle, when the cost to fix errors is lower. 37. Explain how to develop a test plan and a test case. A test plan consists of a set of test cases. Test cases are developed based on requirement and design documents for the application or system. Once these documents are thoroughly reviewed, the test cases that will make up the test plan can be created. 38. What is the role of quality assurance in a product development lifecycle? Quality assurance should be involved very early on in the development life cycle so that they can have a better understanding of the system and create sufficient test cases. However, QA should be separated from the development team so that the team is not able to build influence on the QA engineers. 39. What is the average size of executables that you have created? This is a simple interview question about our experience with executables.  If you know the size of any that you’ve created, simply provide this info. 40. What version of the Oracle are you familiar with? This is an interview question about experience.  Simply provide the versions of the software that you have experience with. 41. How is an SQL query executed in Oracle 8? This is an interview question to check your experience with Oracle and you can simply provide the answer “from the command prompt.”  If you do not have Oracle experience, do not pretend and simply state that you have not worked on an Oracle database. Though this is a common manual testing interview questions, the answers can be different. Because if you have experience in other tools such as TOAD, SQL server etc, you can conveniently answer as per your experience. 42. Have you performed tests on the front-end and the back-end? This is an interview question in which you should explain whether you performed testing on the GUI or the server portion of previous applications. 43. What is the most difficult problem you’ve found during testing? This is a simple interview question in which you should provide an example. This is one of  most tricky manual testing interview questions as your answer will decide your job. You need to answer in such a way that your problem solving skills and your eagerness to learn new things, and your dedication towards the job will indicated by your answers. 44. What were your testing responsibilities at your previous employer? This interview question is very likely being asked to verify your knowledge of your resume. Make sure that you know what is on your resume and that it is the truth. 45. What is Defect? Non-conformance to requirements or functional / program specification 46. What is Dependency Testing? Examines an application's requirements for pre-existing software, initial states and configuration in order to maintain proper functionality. 47. What is Depth Testing? A test that exercises a feature of a product in full detail. 48. What is Dynamic Testing? Testing software through executing it. See also Static Testing. 49. What is Emulator? A device, computer program, or system that accepts the same inputs and produces the same outputs as a given system. 50. What is Endurance Testing? Checks for memory leaks or other problems that may occur with prolonged execution 51. What is End-to-End testing? Testing a complete application environment in a situation that mimics real-world use, such as interacting with a database, using network communications, or interacting with other hardware, applications, or systems if appropriate. 52. What is Equivalence Class? A portion of a component's input or output domains for which the component's behaviour is assumed to be the same from the component's specification. 53. What is Equivalence Partitioning? A test case design technique for a component in which test cases are designed to execute representatives from equivalence classes. 54. What is Exhaustive Testing? Testing which covers all combinations of input values and preconditions for an element of the software under test. 55. What is Functional Decomposition? A technique used during planning, analysis and design; creates a functional hierarchy for the software. 54. What is Functional Specification? A document that describes in detail the characteristics of the product with regard to its intended features. 55. What is Functional Testing? Testing the features and operational behavior of a product to ensure they correspond to its specifications. Testing that ignores the internal mechanism of a system or component and focuses solely on the outputs generated in response to selected inputs and execution conditions. or Black Box Testing. 56. What is Glass Box Testing? A synonym for White Box Testing. 57. What is Gorilla Testing? Testing one particular module, functionality heavily. 58. What is Gray Box Testing? A combination of Black Box and White Box testing methodologies? testing a piece of software against its specification but using some knowledge of its internal workings. 59. What is High Order Tests? Black-box tests conducted once the software has been integrated. 60. What is Independent Test Group (ITG)? A group of people whose primary responsibility is software testing, 61. What is Inspection? A group review quality improvement process for written material. It consists of two aspects; product (document itself) improvement and process improvement (of both document production and inspection). 62. What is Integration Testing? Testing of combined parts of an application to determine if they function together correctly. Usually performed after unit and functional testing. This type of testing is especially relevant to client/server and distributed systems. 63. What is Installation Testing? Confirms that the application under test recovers from expected or unexpected events without loss of data or functionality. Events can include shortage of disk space, unexpected loss of communication, or power out conditions. 64. What is Load Testing? See Performance Testing. 65. What is Localization Testing? This term refers to making software specifically designed for a specific locality. 66. What is Loop Testing? A white box testing technique that exercises program loops. 67. What is Metric? A standard of measurement. Software metrics are the statistics describing the structure or content of a program. A metric should be a real objective measurement of something such as number of bugs per lines of code. 68. What is Monkey Testing? Testing a system or an Application on the fly, i.e just few tests here and there to ensure the system or an application does not crash out. 69. What is Negative Testing? Testing aimed at showing software does not work. Also known as "test to fail". See also Positive Testing. 70. What is Path Testing? Testing in which all paths in the program source code are tested at least once. 71. What is Performance Testing? Testing conducted to evaluate the compliance of a system or component with specified performance requirements. Often this is performed using an automated test tool to simulate large number of users. Also know as "Load Testing". 72. What is Positive Testing? Testing aimed at showing software works. Also known as "test to pass". See also Negative Testing. 73. What is Quality Assurance? All those planned or systematic actions necessary to provide adequate confidence that a product or service is of the type and quality needed and expected by the customer. 74. What is Quality Audit? A systematic and independent examination to determine whether quality activities and related results comply with planned arrangements and whether these arrangements are implemented effectively and are suitable to achieve objectives. 75. What is Quality Circle? A group of individuals with related interests that meet at regular intervals to consider problems or other matters related to the quality of outputs of a process and to the correction of problems or to the improvement of quality. 76. What is Quality Control? The operational techniques and the activities used to fulfill and verify requirements of quality. 77. What is Quality Management? That aspect of the overall management function that determines and implements the quality policy. 78. What is Quality Policy? The overall intentions and direction of an organization as regards quality as formally expressed by top management. 79. What is Quality System? The organizational structure, responsibilities, procedures, processes, and resources for implementing quality management. 80. What is Race Condition? A cause of concurrency problems. Multiple accesses to a shared resource, at least one of which is a write, with no mechanism used by either to moderate simultaneous access. 81. What is Ramp Testing? Continuously raising an input signal until the system breaks down. 82. What is Recovery Testing? Confirms that the program recovers from expected or unexpected events without loss of data or functionality. Events can include shortage of disk space, unexpected loss of communication, or power out conditions 83. What is Regression Testing? Retesting a previously tested program following modification to ensure that faults have not been introduced or uncovered as a result of the changes made. 84. What is Release Candidate? A pre-release version, which contains the desired functionality of the final version, but which needs to be tested for bugs (which ideally should be removed before the final version is released). 85. What is Sanity Testing? Brief test of major functional elements of a piece of software to determine if its basically operational. 86. What is Scalability Testing? Performance testing focused on ensuring the application under test gracefully handles increases in work load. 87. What is Security Testing? Testing which confirms that the program can restrict access to authorized personnel and that the authorized personnel can access the functions available to their security level. 88. What is Smoke Testing? A quick-and-dirty test that the major functions of a piece of software work. Originated in the hardware testing practice of turning on a new piece of hardware for the first time and considering it a success if it does not catch on fire. 89. What is Soak Testing? Running a system at high load for a prolonged period of time. For example, running several times more transactions in an entire day (or night) than would be expected in a busy day, to identify and performance problems that appear after a large number of transactions have been executed. 90. What is Software Requirements Specification? A deliverable that describes all data, functional and behavioral requirements, all constraints, and all validation requirements for software/ 91. What is Software Testing? A set of activities conducted with the intent of finding errors in software. 92. What is Static Analysis? Analysis of a program carried out without executing the program. 93. What is Static Analyzer? A tool that carries out static analysis. 94. What is Static Testing? Analysis of a program carried out without executing the program. 95. What is Storage Testing? Testing that verifies the program under test stores data files in the correct directories and that it reserves sufficient space to prevent unexpected termination resulting from lack of space. This is external storage as opposed to internal storage. 96. What is Stress Testing? Testing conducted to evaluate a system or component at or beyond the limits of its specified requirements to determine the load under which it fails and how. Often this is performance testing using a very high level of simulated load. 97. What is Structural Testing? Testing based on an analysis of internal workings and structure of a piece of software. See also White Box Testing. 98. What is System Testing? Testing that attempts to discover defects that are properties of the entire system rather than of its individual components. 99. What is Testability? The degree to which a system or component facilitates the establishment of test criteria and the performance of tests to determine whether those criteria have been met. 100. What is Testing? The process of exercising software to verify that it satisfies specified requirements and to detect errors. The process of analyzing a software item to detect the differences between existing and required conditions (that is, bugs), and to evaluate the features of the software item (Ref. IEEE Std 829). The process of operating a system or component under specified conditions, observing or recording the results, and making an evaluation of some aspect of the system or component. What is Test Automation? It is the same as Automated Testing. 101. What is Test Bed? An execution environment configured for testing. May consist of specific hardware, OS, network topology, configuration of the product under test, other application or system software, etc. The Test Plan for a project should enumerated the test beds(s) to be used. 102. What is Test Case? Test Case is a commonly used term for a specific test. This is usually the smallest unit of testing. A Test Case will consist of information such as requirements testing, test steps, verification steps, prerequisites, outputs, test environment, etc. A set of inputs, execution preconditions, and expected outcomes developed for a particular objective, such as to exercise a particular program path or to verify compliance with a specific requirement. Test Driven Development? Testing methodology associated with Agile Programming in which every chunk of code is covered by unit tests, which must all pass all the time, in an effort to eliminate unit-level and regression bugs during development. Practitioners of TDD write a lot of tests, i.e. an equal number of lines of test code to the size of the production code. 103. What is Test Driver? A program or test tool used to execute tests. Also known as a Test Harness. 104. What is Test Environment? The hardware and software environment in which tests will be run, and any other software with which the software under test interacts when under test including stubs and test drivers. 105. What is Test First Design? Test-first design is one of the mandatory practices of Extreme Programming (XP).It requires that programmers do not write any production code until they have first written a unit test. 106. What is Test Harness? A program or test tool used to execute a tests. Also known as a Test Driver. 107. What is Test Plan? A document describing the scope, approach, resources, and schedule of intended testing activities. It identifies test items, the features to be tested, the testing tasks, who will do each task, and any risks requiring contingency planning. 108. What is Test Procedure? A document providing detailed instructions for the execution of one or more test cases. 109. What is Test Script? Commonly used to refer to the instructions for a particular test that will be carried out by an automated test tool. 110. What is Test Specification? A document specifying the test approach for a software feature or combination or features and the inputs, predicted results and execution conditions for the associated tests. 111. What is Test Suite? A collection of tests used to validate the behavior of a product. The scope of a Test Suite varies from organization to organization. There may be several Test Suites for a particular product for example. In most cases however a Test Suite is a high level concept, grouping together hundreds or thousands of tests related by what they are intended to test. 112. What is Test Tools? Computer programs used in the testing of a system, a component of the system, or its documentation. 113. What is Thread Testing? A variation of top-down testing where the progressive integration of components follows the implementation of subsets of the requirements, as opposed to the integration of components by successively lower levels. 114. What is Top Down Testing? An approach to integration testing where the component at the top of the component hierarchy is tested first, with lower level components being simulated by stubs. Tested components are then used to test lower level components. The process is repeated until the lowest level components have been tested. 115. What is Total Quality Management? A company commitment to develop a process that achieves high quality product and customer satisfaction. 116. What is Traceability Matrix? A document showing the relationship between Test Requirements and Test Cases. 117. What is Usability Testing? Testing the ease with which users can learn and use a product. 118. What is Use Case? The specification of tests that are conducted from the end-user perspective. Use cases tend to focus on operating software as an end-user would conduct their day-to-day activities. 119. What is Unit Testing? Testing of individual software components. 120. how do the companies expect the defect reporting to be communicated by the tester to the development team. Can the excel sheet template be used for defect reporting. If so what are the common fields that are to be included who assigns the priority and severity of the defect To report bugs in excel: Sno. Module Screen/ Section Issue detail Severity Prioriety Issuestatus this is how to report bugs in excel sheet and also set filters on the Columns attributes. But most of the companies use the share point process of reporting bugs In this when the project came for testing a module wise detail of project is inserted to the defect management system they are using. It contains following field 1. Date 2. Issue brief 3. Issue description (used for developer to regenerate the issue) 4. Issue status( active, resolved, on hold, suspend and not able to regenerate) 5. Assign to (Names of members allocated to project) 6. Priority(High, medium and low) 7. Severity (Major, medium and low)121. How do you plan test automation?1. Prepare the automation Test plan 2. Identify the scenario 3. Record the scenario 4. Enhance the scripts by inserting check points and Conditional Loops 5. Incorporated Error Handler 6. Debug the script 7. Fix the issue 8. Rerun the script and report the result 122. Does automation replace manual testing? There can be some functionality which cannot be tested in an automated tool so we may have to do it manually. therefore manual testing can never be replaced. (We can write the scripts for negative testing also but it is hectic task)when we talk about real environment we do negative testing manually. 123. How will you choose a tool for test automation? choosing of a tool depends on many things ... 1. Application to be tested 2. Test environment 3. Scope and limitation of the tool. 4. Feature of the tool. 5. Cost of the tool. 6. Whether the tool is compatible with your application which means tool should be able to interact with your application 7. Ease of use 124. How you will evaluate the tool for test automation? We need to concentrate on the features of the tools and how this could be beneficial for our project. The additional new features and the enhancements of the features will also help. 125. How you will describe testing activities? Testing activities start from the elaboration phase. The various testing activities are preparing the test plan, Preparing test cases, Execute the test case, Log teh bug, validate the bug & take appropriate action for the bug, Automate the test cases. 126. What testing activities you may want to automate? Automate all the high priority test cases which needs to be executed as a part of regression testing for each build cycle. 127. Describe common problems of test automation. The common problems are: 1. Maintenance of the old script when there is a feature change or enhancement 2. The change in technology of the application will affect the old scripts 128. What types of scripting techniques for test automation do you know? 5 types of scripting techniques: Linear Structured Shared Data Driven Key Driven 129. What is memory leaks and buffer overflows ? Memory leaks means incomplete deallocation - are bugs that happen very often. Buffer overflow means data sent as input to the server that overflows the boundaries of the input area, thus causing the server to misbehave. Buffer overflows can be used. 130. What are the major differences between stress testing,load testing,Volume testing?Stress testing means increasing the load ,and checking the performance at each level. Load testing means at a time giving more load by the expectation and checking the performance at that level. Volume testing means first we have to apply initial. MANUAL TESTING Interview Questions with Answers pdf Download Read the full article

[infobeanie]

CROW CILLERS S04E02: GAIGE AGAINST THE MACHINE

There are some people who can only be seen from the outside. They move around in this world, forming impressions in other people’s minds as they go, and it is these impressions that form the substance of their character. The same could be said for all of us, but it’s different for these people - they seem to exist without internal integrity, without a common thread of personality which could link their disparate behaviors into a picture of a coherent being. Their actions make no sense when removed from the particular social situation in which they perform them; they do not speak to any continuity of identity. To ask them to explain themselves, one quickly learns, is a futile endeavor. Their true form is slowly mapped out, by those who care enough to stick around, through comparisons of testimonials and conflicting evidence. They are called empty, they are called fakers, they are called sociopaths. But I don’t think any of these things are true. I see these people as the vessels of society, the true representatives of our kind. They are martyrs for their cause; they have sacrificed coherency in an attempt to represent, in all its contradictions, the basic truth, or basic truths, of this world. They bear the burden of exteriority, having given up their soul to the tides of nature. One might as well call the moon inconsistent. 

I start at the end of the episode, because there’s nowhere else to start with Harlyn. She’s already dead, for one thing. For another, when she was alive, she lived as one of those vessels, identifiable only through other people’s conclusions about her. “Gaige Against the Machine”, a strange, subtly crafted episode, traces one particular conclusion of Harlyn, the one drawn by her former lackey and her polar opposite, Gaige. 

The strangeness of the episode is a necessity of form. Harlyn could never be a lead character, even for an episode focused on her, because it would be like trying to get a solar system to orbit around a lack of a sun. To stabilize the narrative, we need someone with presence we can gravitate towards, someone real. And just as Harlyn did, Cate Wurtz selects Gaige as a prime candidate for the job.

Gaige is a man of substance. Not in the traditional sense of there being a lot to his character - indeed, there is very little that we need to “get” to understand his character, which makes him an ideal vehicle for this episode. By substance I mean that he is a solid person; he does not fade into ambiguity without someone else around to define him. To prove this, we have the first real solo scene I can remember ever occurring in Crow Cillers, barring Elaine’s encounters with her self. There’s not much to it - it’s Gaige fucking around, drunk, blowing off steam - but that’s the point. If this is the shit Gaige gets into when no one else is around, it stands to reason we can trust him.

At least, some of us feel like we can trust him. The real-time plot of this episode - Gaige teaming up with the Crow Cillers - puts certain characters at loggerheads, and establishes with clearer definition a contrast in character types which has been at play in the comic for some time. Gaige is one of a growing number of “solid” characters - folks with no big secrets, no major psychological turmoil; people who know who they are, and act accordingly. Ondine is the most obvious example of this type - her biggest secret is the amount of time she spends watching DBZ - so naturally, she’s the first to accept Gaige into the fold. Paisley also emerges in this episode as a solid character, moreso than she wants to be; her posturing here stems from the fact that she knows perfectly well how cute and harmless she is - for now, at least.

The added focus on these solid characters gives parts of this episode a strikingly trope-ified vibe: Paisley’s montage feels like an anime, the dynamic between Gaige and Ondine is woven from the Saturday morning moralism of kids’ cartoons, and Gaige’s monologue while he tosses beer bottles around is almost like something out of a James Dean teensploitation movie. These are characters we’ve seen before.

On the other side of these solid types stands the majority of the cast, who are...well, what shall we call them? Superfluous, perhaps. They are people who have recognized, at one point or another in their lives, that they stand apart from normal society, not in an extraordinary way but just in an extra way. They have spent the remainder of their time grappling with the question that it would never occur to a solid character to ask: Who am I? Am I this or am I that? The “this” and the “that” here are less important than the ambivalence between the two; the lack of thisness or thatness is what defines these characters’ existence, living as they do in a world that cannot tolerate ambiguity, a world which wouldn’t care a whit if they disappeared entirely. 

Crow Cillers is, by and large, a comic about superfluous women. It is dedicated to the preservation of its Dorises and Cobys, to presenting their struggles in a way that steadfastly denies their superfluous status. The moments that stand out in these women’s lives - Lisa Simpson devouring Lord Marrow, Embry crying Ambrosia’s tears at the thought of an old tv storyline, Emma having a dream where she’s in the Matrix - exist on a level entirely devoid of trope, because Cate Wurtz has had to invent a new way of writing to make these characters and their thoughts understandable to an audience who has encountered them a hundred times in real life, and not once in any form of media.

Though these characters exist, in some sense, on a separate level, they are confronted every day with the reality of the normal, of the Matrix that surrounds them. The constant threat is that their thisness or thatness will be decided, not by them, but by society. Each character deals with this threat in her own way, but their choices are shaped by the social environments they find themselves in. Crow Cillers begins at the moment Emma realizes her superfluous nature, and each season tracks her personal development via the shifting mise en scène of power dynamics and influential people in her life. Their story is hers; she reclaims it, in the end, simply by dreaming it. She is a vessel herself - one of the good ones, like Neo, who have filled up their emptiness with something like love. In “Gaige Against the Machine”, we get another glimpse of a girl as empty as Emma, who finds herself filled up with something of a crueller nature.

We find out the first time we see Harlyn that she’s evil, because she’s talking to Embry, who knows that she’s evil. Harlyn relishes it, embraces it, hams it up. She is playing a role, a fun one, much more fun than the goody-two-shoes bit she used to keep up as Psy Squad leader. Yet she must be a good actor, because in the flashes we see of her old self, there is a spark there as well, a convincing imitation of someone kind and good. We are tempted to believe it is genuine, until we recall the thing that cannot be unseen - that moment dividing her two selves in which she was inhuman and vulnerable, that transgression which cannot be adequately explained either by etiquette or evil monologue. The only explanation I can give you is that she was empty and she had to fill herself up.

The details of this moment grew clearer throughout season 3, while its sequence and place in Harlyn’s life remained mysterious. It was a puzzle piece out of place; for those who knew it was there, the only viable solutions to it were either death or a miracle. (There was no miracle, not for Harlyn.) Gaige’s story brings us no closer to solving it, though he comes in at the “transitional period”, where Harlyn is still somewhat vulnerable. It is a transition between roles, and there are slip-ups, enough that Gaige starts to see through the cracks. For example, in a scene of pure melodrama cooked up between her and Lord Marrow, she gets caught up in the moment, and forgets her line right at the climax, substituting her dorky old team name for the real unit she’s actually in: 

There’s no such thing. Psy Squad is an impossible ideal. The goodness, the purity of heart necessary to be involved in such an operation was pure cheese - it had to be. She was faking it back then, she’s faking it here, and her former unit is faking it on their own. And so she would go on to try and convince them of its falseness, just as she had been convinced of her own falseness. 

And what convinced her? What was it, in the end, that made her gestures of kindness simply gestures? What made every compliment, every word of encouragement, every noble-hearted assertion hang hollowly in the air like a resounding gong, a clanging cymbal? What happened to that little girl in the ballpit? What made her fundamentally different from Aria, who thinks of knives when she wakes up in the morning, or Embry, who spends more time sniffing out psychic trails than taking care of the child living in their house? Who was it that decided on her thisness or thatness? Who chose evil?

Could it have been Gaige?

Gaige, solid creature that he is, could not stand the ambiguity, the incongruity, the inconclusiveness that haunted their interactions. He wanted definitive proof of what she was. He didn’t realize he might be offering as much to her. It’s impossible to say for sure, things being as they are, but I think that when he confronted Harlyn, rejected her kindness once and for all, she heard it as confirmation, not as an accusation. I think it came as a relief.

It helps, after all, to have someone recognize you for who you are, even if the thing you ultimately are is nothing. When you are a series of abandoned passages pretending to be a human being, a meaningless site of trauma and contradictory information, sometimes the pretending hurts worse than any of the consequences of being discovered. Your secret, starving goal becomes to make someone see that empty and lifeless landscape inside you, no matter what cruelties it takes. When Gaige looked at her and laughed, Harlyn’s fate was decided. There was no point in faking it anymore.

(Still, I always felt there was some hope for her.)

[leftpress]

‘Down with patriarchy: On the social, racist & patriarchal problems faced by women in prison’ – Letter from imprisoned anarchist comrade (Germany)

admin | 325 | March 9th 2017

Here we publish a letter from our anarchist comrade who is locked up in a German prison, in Köln, since several months. She is accused of carrying out a bank robbery in Aachen and is already facing the trial. She wrote this letter in the context of the 8th of March, International Day of Women’s Struggle.

Down with patriarchy: On the social, racist & patriarchal problems faced by women in prison

It is generally well known that German society is rife with inequality. The upper classes are secure and cared for, they have no existential concerns and, despite all the wider problems of the world, they are able to offer their children a promising future which is not available to the under classes. Whilst a small minority of people are able to get richer, the majority are left to exist on the bare minimum, working for a shitty low wage and constantly being pushed towards pointless consumption so that the profit driven system that we live in ca...

n continue to function.

While some sun themselves on their extravagantly expensive yachts in the Mediterranean, or get flown around the globe in their private jets, many cannot afford to go on holiday once in their lives, or to pay their rent or electricity bill or to buy a couple of new teeth. While the super-rich save their abundant wealth from taxes by securing it in off-shore tax havens or mailbox companies, for which they never face any serious judicial proceedings, the poor are doing months or years in prison for fines or petty crimes- for sums of money that the rich spend in minutes on a daily basis.

The state and the media promote the idea that every child is born into a world of equal opportunity, but every child knows that those who are rich and powerful don’t end up in prison because they are able to afford an expensive, good lawyer. Those who have a bad lawyer or, due to social or racist reasons, are perceived as one of the ‘usual suspects’ are simply dealt a bad hand. Those who aren’t able to use the German language or who aren’t able to read or write have practically no chances of being defended and are constantly dependent on the help of others which is often not available. Society doesn’t care about any of this. As per usual an image of the enemy is created around the idea of the criminal foreigner, the Arabic and north African terrorist and the dangerous refugee who should all be either locked up or deported as quickly as possible. Germany likes to promote itself as a country that is open to the world and that takes in refugees but this is only the case when they either successfully integrate into the work system so that they can be profited from, or when they allow themselves to be labelled as victims. When, however, they come to Germany as families or in their so called ‘gangs’ logically hoping to find a better way to survive in a richer country where people have more than they do, then they are not only locked up or deported but are also made an example of and used to justify xenophobic politics. For the state this is all about the protection of the rich and their property. Those who reject this notion of ownership will be punished hardest. Prisons are filled with so called burglars, fraudsters, robbers and thieves, not with murderers and rapists as is so often presented. And of course the quota of foreigners is very high but not because foreigners are more criminal than Germans are but because in general they belong to the under-classes. In a land of immigrants like Germany this was always the case and this is how it will stay.

There is another point that must be mentioned here that perhaps even surpasses the already stated inequalities and structural oppressions: patriarchal violence. And that affects the women in prison even more. Women make up a tiny percentage of the prison population. As a whole and for this reason their needs are hardly considered. The health, medical and hygiene related options available to women in prisons or women’s facilities are shockingly bad. There are fundamentally more activities, sports options and educational or training options for men than for women. Most women come directly from situations of domestic or sexual violence, often they will have been forced into stealing or shop lifting by their husbands or fathers or are imprisoned because they have defended themselves against their tormentor. If women take part in criminal activity the state and society scandalises them on a sexual level especially if the women take on roles that normally men fulfill. Aside from this the state even now maintains its hold on and decisive power over women’s bodies and, when necessary, holds them criminally responsible if they refuse to give their bodies up to authority. Nothing has really changed since the middle ages, it is simply the case that instead of women being burnt at the state they now end up in prison. While men are often visited by their wives in prison, the reverse is much more rare. Often the husbands of women in prison are also incarcerated themselves, on the run, or do not take care of them. In addition almost all women in prison have children on the outside and therefore the problem of who is able to look after them. So women are forced to look after their families and to keep them together from inside prison despite it being enormously difficult to organise. In the best case the women still have contact to their own mother. Finally, in almost all cultures women in prison are frowned upon and scorned at, and even more so if they are suspected of having been violent as any act of self-empowerment rejects the classical role of women. In this way it can been seen how patriarchal state structures and the law work together with family power dynamics towards the complete domination and oppression of women. And despite this crushing reality small initiatives of self-determination and self-organisation between women in prison continue to exist. It is perhaps the case that empathy is stronger than between men, in certain situations people will sometimes help each other and show solidarity with those who are weaker or less privileged or rebellious. Each example of such behaviour and gestures, although so small, is vital to each individual in prison but also as a sign against oppression and the structures of repression.

The struggle continues- until all prisons are destroyed! For total liberation from all social, racist and patriarchal power structures.

Strength, rage and rebellion for all those in struggle! Freedom for everyone!

January 2017

[leahazel]

# 6, 19, 26 for the shipping meme

For the shipping meme (still open to questions): 

6. How do you feel about love triangles?

*Marge Simpson noise* From a critical perspective, I disapprove of love triangles because they are hardly ever justified, and even more rarely done well. Most often it's obvious who the protagonist is "supposed" to end up with. The losing party will often be a tragicomically bad choice, like a completely terrible person for some reason or another. When they're not that, they will be summarily killed off for cheap angst (I encountered two examples of this relatively recently) because they are too likable, sometimes more likable than the "winning" love interest. If it's not that, then it's a rushed "reward" beta pairing, which is actually the least unpalatable possibility. Think something like the epilogue of *Imagine You and Me*.

From a fannish perspective, ugh. It flattens characters that I would otherwise like. It derails characters that I already *did* like. If I actually like both competing pairings to the same extent, it's much more sensibly resolved by a stable triad, which is my preferred mode of multi-shipping, anyway. Why always the love triangle, fandom? Why not the threesome? And anyway, those who've been following me for a while have already witnessed how un-compassionate I am to people's boo-boos over being romantically rejected. I cannot and will not ever view it as a tragedy. So that just contributes to the likability-killing.

I can't ever recall being really entertained by a love triangle, except in a fannish mode, where canon exists solely to be subverted. In which case, either a threesome or a third option -- singledom, or an unrelated fourth character. Or the sub-species of singledom third option known as "Team Bella". Because too often these characters really can and do deserve better, and if they stay in their gross love triangles, eventually they, too, stop being sympathetic. You can put an end to this! Just do it already! So, yeah, disapproving Marge Simpson noises are my basic feelings on love triangles.

19. Have you ever shipped something despite yourself? 

Hum. I don't like guilty pleasures or liking things "despite myself". Ordinarily I'd rather either learn to be okay with liking it, or set it out of my mind and pursue something I'm more comfortable with. More often I have things that I want to like, but can't muster the enthusiasm despite my best efforts. Or even, in fandoms like Dragon Age... my fandom experience would have been so much better if I could just manage to like the most popular characters, at least a little. Possibly I wouldn't have ghosted if that was the case.

I have sometimes been surprised at liking het pairings more than f/f ones, or even as much as f/f ones.

No, I don't think I've ever really shipped something despite myself. By nature I'm a cantankerous anti-shipper, my feelings against pairings will always be stronger than my feelings for them.

26. Have you noticed a pattern in your shipping? Is there a romantic dynamic you’re more drawn to?

There's a kind of polarity to it. On the one hand, I enjoy beta couples and other types of ships that are typically drama-free. Basically adults conducting adult relationships and talking about their problems like grown-ups. None of the forced misunderstandings and willful ignorance that mark most major romantic conflicts. And established couples.

On the other hand, hateshipping. Rival romance. Enemies to lovers without passing through friends. Trash ships of trash people who are terrible for each other (and themselves). Emotions so strong that no one can pretend they're positive or constructive in any way. Downwards spirals with people dragging each other down. Listen, thirty years of believing yourself to be fundamentally broken doesn't just disappear overnight.

The basic thesis behind hate-shipping is that a relationship has two axes, valence and intensity. The valence, positivity/negativity, of the ship is immaterial. All that matters is the level of emotional intensity. Following a massive crisis, which is the catalyst for most fictional romance, a normal, functional person would go into a period of recovery. Which is healthy and all, but it dials down that intensity a whole bunch. On the other hand, if mortal peril led them to sleep with their nemesis, if anything the intensity gets dialed way up. so there's the appeal of that.

I tried writing a hateship with original characters. Sadly, it didn't go as well as I'd hoped. I know that eventually I'll make another attempt at it, but that probably won't be for a while.

[cyanpeacock]

thoughts on, power dynamics in parent/child relationships, and stuff like that

power is not control

power dynamics exist in like, every relationship. they have bases in social status/class, age (difference), intra-group roles, areas of strength/weakness... etc etc. they are inescapable and not inherently bad things.

i say this because i have bad associations with the word “power.” it brings to mind a sense of imbalance, a sense of Boss and underling, Doctrine-maker and obedient one. but, that’s one way it can fall when a power dynamic is not in constant equitable revolution - that is, a person on one side of the relationship is trying to establish control, rather than engage with balance. 

even in relationships like mother and child, the power dynamic, to be healthy for both parties, has to be in constant equitable revolution. it is not just The Mother Tells Her Child How To Be. it is more like, a mutual teaching process. 

kids aren’t another species

a child is a learning experience for the parent too - not just a teaching one! and it’s a very serious thing. they are not a small, cute, and impressionable baby forever. they are going to grow into a very powerful and potentially dangerous primate, an adult Homo sapiens, and it takes great care and patience to help raise them to be a creature that can exist happily in modern society, without dealing years or lifetimes of harm to the creatures around them.

things get painful in human relationships when one party is not allowed or has not been allowed control over their side of the power dynamic, i.e. to communicate their truth/experience, and to have that heard, fully accepted, and responded to with respect. this extends to relationships where one party is a child. a child whose mind was forged in (a) controlling dynamic(s) is liable to re-enact controlling behaviours themselves, un- or semi-consciously, and deal harm in doing so. 

a child’s perceptions and judgements of the world are fully formed, according to the life experience they have acquired at the moment of perception/judgement. same goes for a 20 year old, a 50 year old, or a 90 year old. it’s fundamentally wrong for an adult to try and “correct” the thoughts and feelings a child has about something, or to punish them for their different perspective, even if they have come to a vastly different conclusion to the adult. this holds true for the relationship between Past and Present self, too, actually, and for relationships between peers of similar age, but here i’ll continue talking about parents and their kids. 

what is appropriate is to listen (or remember), and to validate, as opposed to imposing an alternative schema of events on a young mind. it is also appropriate to provide further information for consideration, but not to demand its acceptance, or reject questioning on its validity. 

“deform to conform”

phrases like “Mother Knows Best” are a very weak defence to an adult, but a young mind is an especially adaptable mind, with few points of reference, and a limited choice in caregivers. the young mind will deform to conform, if a dangerous environment cannot be escaped physically. it can abandon its sense of self partially or entirely, in order to accept instructions that contradict the existence or healthy development of its self. 

this deformation of mind to conform to continued existence within a dangerous external environment results in a few things:

first, it skews the sense of self, of identity. this could appear as poor self-esteem, distorted self-image, or as dissociative symptoms, such as loss of bodily sensations, fragmented awareness, a lack of continuity in personality across different settings, and manifestation of internal voices or multiple discrete identities within one body. this is by no means an exhaustive list!

second, it skews the sense of others to absolutes, a binary Good/Bad dichotomy. other individuals might be viewed as all-loving-can-do-no-wrong, or Entirely Dangerous, or as a genius who knows everything there is worth knowing, or an idiot who knows nothing. these views can flip from one extreme to another, regarding the same individual. they might be hidden internally, or expressly voiced. the switch may be triggered by something apparently inconsequential to others, but of great personal significance to the person holding the polarized views - even if they can’t, at the time, strictly identify why the trigger was significant.

third, it skews actions with others. this might look like (any combination of) intense appeasement behaviours, extremes of fleeing from or avoiding social contact, excessively combative patterns of relation, or seeking out mutual engagement in escapist pastimes like drug use or binge-watching shows. the common thread is, it’s all about avoiding the Self, and averting harm or pain originating from outside the body or inside the mind.

fourth, it skews reactions to the self. natural feelings and thoughts might be viewed as foreign, bad, wrong, or inappropriate. an individual might react to their own sadness with guilt and shame, or to numb it by ‘drowning’ it in physical comforts. they might internally shout or criticize, or externally engage in acts of self-harm. their mind might create an escape, through prolonged inactivity or imagination. it could also be suppressed through workaholism, whether that be taking on strenuous jobs, or immersing their mind in academic pursuits.

(preschool) tug-of-war

so, unskewing all this stuff and finding a sustainable, enjoyable kind of balance takes a whole lot. it takes a new environment, new relationships, a lot of time, the development of existing skills, and the acquirement of new ones. it takes forgetting some things, and remembering old ones. it takes learning to ask gently for help, it takes learning how and when and where to really fucking shout that you need a hand. 

a power dynamic, and by extension a relationship, is a constant push-and-pull. in a controlling environment, it’s like, uh, tug-of-war, in the preschool playground, against the Biggest Strongest Kid, when you’re the smallest new kid there. the guy just yanks it with apparent ease, and you’re flat on your ass with rope burn on your hands, and he totally also just pulled a muscle doing that, and got hit in the nose with the end of the skipping rope, but he’ll never admit it. you’re hurt and crying, he’s hurt too but won’t show it, and it completely sucks, especially because everybody else saw you fall and they’re pointing and laughing at you, and nobody lets you forget it the entire time you’re at that preschool. yeah.

it takes practice to learn the right amount of force to keep both teams in a good sportsmanlike game, especially if you’re different “weights”! and it’s okay to get pissed at the end of a round and never play that team again if you didn’t like their attitude, or they had the whole crowd set up to boo you, or they bribed the ref to make you slip. but sometimes you’ll meet a team you want to play against again and again! friendly match? friendly match! 

wrapping it up

yeah the personal point i’ve been getting to by writing this is, okay, i used to just like, scream and shout and re-enact all the shitty stuff i’d seen and heard and felt around me. i had no choice! i didn’t know any other way of existing. i was trying as hard as i fucking could not to, as far as i understood anything was actually hurting people, but a lot of the time i didn’t even understand why what i was doing was harmful, because i didn’t understand how i’d been harmed by the same kind of thing.

don’t get me wrong, i’m still fucking pissed, i’m irate, i’m furious, i’m very very upset, that stuff doesn’t just, like, vanish - but it’s a lot less explosive. i’m still processing and rearranging and re-building better things inside and outside. i’m increasingly understanding why what happened, happened, and why it’s not my fault. and like, i’m getting the hang of that whole, self-respect shebang. 

so yeah! i’m, uh, getting somewhere? i’m calmer inside the Brain World/world in general now, the further away i get from people and places and times that hurt me, the more i acknowledge that my younger self’s disallowed side of the story is real and legitimate and worth listening to, the more i seek out and use resources on coping with trauma. and, i do know that the parts of recovery that sound impossible get easier, as you get good at the parts that sound maybe-possible. 

it is Increasingly Hopeful. and maybe this post is useful and hopeful for somebody who isn’t me, too, so... (boops the post button)

[crimsonsamuraiftw]

Oh hi there I've been doing some reading and I've discovered something I think you should know the Nazis were bad let me explain to you why;

Hitler was counting on a widespread ante reason attitude, an attitude that no political party by itself could have created or sustained. In the field of epistemology, the Nazis were merely repeating and cashing in on the slogans of a 19th century intellectual movement, one which pervaded every country of Europe, but which had its center and greatest influence in Germany. This movement; the defiant rejection of the Enlightenment spirit is called "romanticism". The romanticists held that reason is a faculty restricted to a surface world of appearances, and incapable of penetrating to true reality, "man's source of knowledge" they declared "is feeling or passion or intuition or faith". Man in this view is not a rational being, he is in essence an emotional being, and he must seek the truth and live his life accordingly. Hostile to the cold objectivity of the scientific method, the romanticists turned to a very subjective fantasies, priding themselves on their absorption of an inner world of intense feeling, scornful of the shallowness of Aristotelian logic, they flaunted the fact that the universes they constructed were brimming with depth, i.e with contradictions, contemptuous of the static world of Enlightenment thinkers, a world of stable endearing entities, the romanticists denied the existence of entities their dynamic universe was a resurrection of the ancient theory of Heraclitus. Reality is a stream of change without entities are of action without anything that acts, it is a wild chaotic flux which the orderly enlightenment mind cannot grasp. "There is no such thing as truth" explains Hitler, "Either in the moral of a scientific sense" or as Gurgles puts the point important is "Not what is right but what wins."

The corollary of such an attitude is unceasing intellectual flux. Oragmatism leads to relativism, an idea the pragmatist holds must be judged as true or false according to its utility in a particular situation. What works today in one situation need not work tomorrow in another, this truth is mutable there are no rigid principles, not in any field, there are no absolutes. In essence it made no difference to the Nazi leaders, whether a man obeyed him for dogmatist or for pragmatist reasons, because of his commitment to God in heaven or to the Volk on earth, what mattered was that he obeyed. But the Nazis preferred Mon to obey for both reasons together, donatism gave the Firoz words the aura of supernatural authority, pragmatism Gave him or the flexibility he could want, the combination made it possible to claim that when the Fuehrer speaks his statement is a holy truth to be revered until he contradicts it whereupon his new statement is to be revered. Implicit in dogmatism and in pragmatism is a third theory past metaphysical past epistemological that is fundamental to the Nazi viewpoint subjectivism, racial subjectivism holds that a man's inborn racial Constitution determines his mental processes his intellectual outlook his thought patterns his feelings his conclusions and that these conclusions however well established are valid only some members of a given race who share the same underlying Constitution knowledge and truth one Nazi explains our peculiarities originating in definitive forms of consciousness and hence attuned exclusively to the specific essence of their mother consciousness. On this vieweach race creates its own truth, and there is no such thing as "the truth" in any issue the truth which corresponds to the facts there is only truth relative to a group truth for us plus is truth for them. Altruism is the view that man must place others above the self as the fundamental rule of and that his greatest virtue is self-sacrifice on their behalf. Altruism does not mean kindness benevolence sympathy or the line all of which are possible to egoists, the term means Otherism, it means the welfare of others must become the highest value and ruling purpose of the man's existence.

Since men do not agree in their moral feelings according to Agel each group properly legislates its own moral code, to which its own members must be obedient though that code is not binding on alien groups. This is the doctrine of social subjectivism applied to ethics. In the pre Countian era ethical subjectivism was restricted to the occasional skeptic, since current it has dominated the field of philosophy, the deepest roots of this modern shift are twofold, in epistemology the romanticist advocacy of feeling a superior to reason. In ethics and the altruist advocacy of others is superior to self. The result is a view of morality in which the ruling standard is the feelings of others. On both grounds the nazis accept the modern view wholeheartedly in a racialized version, morality they hold is a product of racial instinct on national character morals vary according to people's and so the national idea prevails in the domain of morals ethical ideas like all others are devoid of objectivity there is no such thing as the truth in ethics they say but only 'our truth'.

There are only two fundamental methods by which men can deal with one another; by reason or by force, by intellectual persuasion or by physical coercion, by directing to an opponent's brain an argument or a bullet.

Since the Nazis dismiss reason out of hand there are only recourse is to embrace the second of these methods the Nazi ethics completes the job of brute worship altruism gives to the use of force a moral sanction making it not only an unavoidable practical recourse but also a positive virtue an expression of militant righteousness, Social Justice in this view not only allows but demands the use of force against the non sacrificial individual it demands that others put a stop to his evil thus has morale further been joined to the rule of physical force raising it from a criminal tactic to a governing principle of human relationships.

So let's summarize the Nazi worldview; it is the rejection of the Enlightenment, the rejection of objective truth, the rejection of reason, and the embracing of feelings, and of subjective truth, in fact of racial truths that are only relevant to the race in question. It is the demand for complete obedience regardless of the reason why, but preferably for absolute dedication to the cause. And it is the moral sanctioning of violence towards anyone who might oppose these methods that finally makes the Nazis so terribly dangerous. And I think it's unavoidable for any political philosophy that follows these principles to end up every bit as oppressive violent and bloody as the Nazis themselves.

[digitechlifestyle]

*•.¸♡ 𝐖𝐞𝐧𝐝𝐲 𝐌𝐜𝐄𝐥𝐫𝐨𝐲: 𝐂𝐫𝐲𝐩𝐭𝐨’𝐬 𝐌𝐞𝐚𝐧𝐬 𝐀𝐫𝐞 𝐈𝐭𝐬 𝐄𝐧𝐝 – 𝐚𝐬 𝐂𝐫𝐲𝐩𝐭𝐨-𝐒𝐭𝐚𝐭𝐢𝐬𝐭𝐬 𝐖𝐞𝐥𝐥 𝐊𝐧𝐨𝐰 ♡¸.•* The Satoshi Revolution: A Revolution of Rising Expectations Section 4: State Versus Society Chapter 10, Part 6 Crypto’s Means are Its End, as Crypto-Statists Well Know The problem of the Means is, as I see it, a twofold problem: first, the problem of End and Means; second, the problem of the People and the State, that is, the means by which the people can supervise or control the State….[M]eans must be proportioned and appropriate to the end, since they are ways to the end, so to speak, the end itself in its very process of coming to existence. So that applying intrinsically evil means to attain an intrinsically good end is simple nonsense and a failure. -Jacques Maritain, Man and the State The 20th century French Christian philosopher Jacques Maritain saw End and Means as the problem of political philosophy. He based his conclusion on political science, religion, and the lessons of history. The French Revolution provided a model of how an End failed because the Means used to achieve it were “intrinsically evil.” France transformed from an absolute monarchy that ravaged the rights of common people into “a superior person called the Nation State” that acted the same way. “Liberté, Égalité, Fraternité” never materialized. The Revolution did not achieve the “final aim and most essential task of the body politic or political society,” which is to “better the conditions of human life itself” and “to procure the common good of the multitude, in such a manner that each concrete person, not only in a privileged class…may truly reach that measure of independence which is proper to civilized life.” Maritain’s point can be expressed colloquially: You can’t get there from here. Means that contradict a goal will never achieve it; an acorn cannot turn into a tomato plant. Repression will not breed freedom. Violence will not lead to peace. The means of the French Revolution led it into a different form of statism. Cryptocurrency resolves the problem of political philosophy because it is a means and an end at the same moment. The strategy: decentralize financial exchanges through a blockchain in order to bypass trusted third parties and return monetary control to the individual. The political end: decentralize financial exchanges in order to bypass trusted third parties and return monetary control to the individual. Mahatma Gandhi famously pronounced, “the means are the ends in progress.” Cryptocurrency further collapses the distinction so that the means are the ends. Few approaches have so eloquently and intimately entwined the two. Within the framework of ideology, libertarianism best parallels crypto because its means and its end are also identical. The means: “anything that is peaceful.” The end: a society in which individuals peacefully exchange. Peaceful interaction is both the means and the end of libertarianism. Like crypto, libertarianism bypasses the trusted third party problem—that is, the state—and operates on a peer-to-peer basis, even within cooperative ventures. Both crypto and libertarianism resolve what Maritain viewed as the Means versus End dilemma. The Dangerous Doctrine of “the End Justifies the Means” Most political scientists focus tightly upon ends, such as security, diversity, or democracy. Ideologies are contrasted according to their competing ends, not their means; do they advocate sovereignty or globalism, diversity or meritocracy, free trade or protectionism? Once an end is established, a menu of means is scrutinized for ones that will achieve the goal as quickly and cost-efficiently as possible. More fundamental questions about the relationship between means and ends are rarely asked. Can war bring peace? Can censorship create an open society? Does banning crypto protect people’s financial freedom or safety? These expedient actors do not disagree with Maritain’s analysis; they do not even consider it. One explanation of the common gulf between means and ends is that the real end of a strategy differs from the stated one. That is, the stated goal is a lie, and the means of achieving it are appropriate to the real end. Such outright deceit is often easy to discern, however, especially over time. Fear the Power of the BUT Another sleight of hand emanates from crypto-statists who claim to share the same goal as crypto-anarchists…or close to it. In other words, the ground of discussion becomes means, not ends. Crypto-statists may agree that people should control their own wealth and that banks are corrupt. Yet they want the same agency that created central banks to regulate crypto. “Individuals should control their own wealth,” they say, “but we need to weed out those drug dealers and tax evaders who discredit the community.” The solution: only desirable users should have financial freedom. “Individuals have a right to financial privacy,” they grant, “but only a person with something to hide objects to ‘reasonable’ reporting.” The solution: everyone should make ‘reasonable’ disclosures to sort out those with something to hide. “Individuals are 100% correct about the corruption of fiat and central banks,” they admit, “but the system can be reformed.” The solution: a corrupt system is preserved in the name of stability while crypto is penalized. “Crypto radicals may express a view that once served a purpose,” they acknowledge, “but current talk of anarchism or private money is extreme and blocks respectability.” The solution: radicals should be quiet or quieted. Crypto-statists pit the means against the end, which destroys the goal of freedom. Because the means are the end in progress. Using the state or other violence to advance crypto only strengthens the state. In The Voice of Truth, Gandhi asserted, “For me it is enough to know the means. Means and end are convertible terms in my philosophy of life.” The two ways to sabotage crypto are to oppose either its end or its means because end and means are identical. It Sounds So Reasonable When They Say It Everyone who argues for crypto as the financial empowerment of individuals encounters an appeal to so-called reality. Total freedom for the individual is not possible, it is argued, but a significant increase in financial freedom is within reach. It can be grasped, however, only if crypto users compromise with the existing system. Otherwise, the perfect becomes the enemy of the good. The reality is “so-called” because crypto and the blockchain already offer financial freedom to individuals. Central banking and state control are the old reality that desperately tries to remain relevant. No wonder crypto-statists advocate a compromise in order for both sides to “win.” That’s not possible. The state is a back-alley thief who extends the “choice” of “your money or your life.” A philosophically-inclined thief or his advocate may explain how the dynamic is a “win-win” situation because it achieves the agreed-upon goal of your leaving the alley in one piece; after all, killing you is work, and it eliminates a repeated robbery. You may relinquish the money and leave, but you are not a winner. You win by using crypto that allows you walk around the alley and the thief. The state does not co-own wealth by virtue of pointing a gun; all it does is to exert control through violence. Most people agree; it is morally wrong to take property from a peaceful person by force. To avoid the morality argument, where they are on weak ground, crypto-statists employ another sleight of hand. They attempt to substitute the practical for the moral as a focus of debate. They juxtapose the collective “greater good” against the rights of an individual, for example. Society requires the imposition of preemptive rules, they maintain, or else calamity will ensue. To envision the consequence of elevating the so-called practical over the moral, imagine it is 1858, and you are living on a farm in the Northern U.S. A man has arrived at your door with papers documenting his ownership of a run-away slave whom you are sheltering. The slave throws himself at your feet, begging for sanctuary, while the slave-owner reasons with you. First, the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850, which makes it illegal for you to retain “his property.” Then, the slave owner declares that he, too, opposes slavery, but the South’s current economy would collapse without it. If slavery were to cease abruptly, then the political system itself would collapse. No! Slavery will be phased out, he assures you, but for now, you must surrender the black man who trembles at your feet. A libertarian rejects violating the slave’s autonomy by answering, “There is no practical consideration that overrides this man’s right to his own body.” A crypto-anarchist rejects the claim that state force is necessary by answering, “There is no practical consideration that overrides a person’s right to his own person, including the products of its labor.” Conclusion The conflict between crypto-anarchists and crypto-statists is not merely over means. It is not merely over how to get there from here. It is that the there being discussed is a different destination. When the means advocated by two parties are antithetical, their goals are as well. The political choice comes down to Rothbard’s “eternal struggle” between Liberty and Power. The conflict is the same now as in the past. A recent scholarly article flashed back into history: “Punishing Forgery with Death. In early nineteenth-century England, forging currency was considered to be such a subversive threat that it was punished with the death penalty.” That’s how seriously the state took the sanctity of its currency. Imagine how seriously it will take a “fake” currency that provides an actual and active alternative to the entire system. [To be continued next week]

[gndmwngdly]

Oh hi there I've been doing some reading and I've discovered something I think you should know the Nazis were bad let me explain to you why;

Hitler was counting on a widespread ante reason attitude, an attitude that no political party by itself could have created or sustained. In the field of epistemology, the Nazis were merely repeating and cashing in on the slogans of a 19th century intellectual movement, one which pervaded every country of Europe, but which had its center and greatest influence in Germany. This movement; the defiant rejection of the Enlightenment spirit is called "romanticism". The romanticists held that reason is a faculty restricted to a surface world of appearances, and incapable of penetrating to true reality, "man's source of knowledge" they declared "is feeling or passion or intuition or faith". Man in this view is not a rational being, he is in essence an emotional being, and he must seek the truth and live his life accordingly. Hostile to the cold objectivity of the scientific method, the romanticists turned to a very subjective fantasies, priding themselves on their absorption of an inner world of intense feeling, scornful of the shallowness of Aristotelian logic, they flaunted the fact that the universes they constructed were brimming with depth, i.e with contradictions, contemptuous of the static world of Enlightenment thinkers, a world of stable endearing entities, the romanticists denied the existence of entities their dynamic universe was a resurrection of the ancient theory of Heraclitus. Reality is a stream of change without entities are of action without anything that acts, it is a wild chaotic flux which the orderly enlightenment mind cannot grasp. "There is no such thing as truth" explains Hitler, "Either in the moral of a scientific sense" or as Gurgles puts the point important is "Not what is right but what wins."

The corollary of such an attitude is unceasing intellectual flux. Oragmatism leads to relativism, an idea the pragmatist holds must be judged as true or false according to its utility in a particular situation. What works today in one situation need not work tomorrow in another, this truth is mutable there are no rigid principles, not in any field, there are no absolutes. In essence it made no difference to the Nazi leaders, whether a man obeyed him for dogmatist or for pragmatist reasons, because of his commitment to God in heaven or to the Volk on earth, what mattered was that he obeyed. But the Nazis preferred Mon to obey for both reasons together, donatism gave the Firoz words the aura of supernatural authority, pragmatism Gave him or the flexibility he could want, the combination made it possible to claim that when the Fuehrer speaks his statement is a holy truth to be revered until he contradicts it whereupon his new statement is to be revered. Implicit in dogmatism and in pragmatism is a third theory past metaphysical past epistemological that is fundamental to the Nazi viewpoint subjectivism, racial subjectivism holds that a man's inborn racial Constitution determines his mental processes his intellectual outlook his thought patterns his feelings his conclusions and that these conclusions however well established are valid only some members of a given race who share the same underlying Constitution knowledge and truth one Nazi explains our peculiarities originating in definitive forms of consciousness and hence attuned exclusively to the specific essence of their mother consciousness. On this vieweach race creates its own truth, and there is no such thing as "the truth" in any issue the truth which corresponds to the facts there is only truth relative to a group truth for us plus is truth for them. Altruism is the view that man must place others above the self as the fundamental rule of and that his greatest virtue is self-sacrifice on their behalf. Altruism does not mean kindness benevolence sympathy or the line all of which are possible to egoists, the term means Otherism, it means the welfare of others must become the highest value and ruling purpose of the man's existence.

Since men do not agree in their moral feelings according to Agel each group properly legislates its own moral code, to which its own members must be obedient though that code is not binding on alien groups. This is the doctrine of social subjectivism applied to ethics. In the pre Countian era ethical subjectivism was restricted to the occasional skeptic, since current it has dominated the field of philosophy, the deepest roots of this modern shift are twofold, in epistemology the romanticist advocacy of feeling a superior to reason. In ethics and the altruist advocacy of others is superior to self. The result is a view of morality in which the ruling standard is the feelings of others. On both grounds the nazis accept the modern view wholeheartedly in a racialized version, morality they hold is a product of racial instinct on national character morals vary according to people's and so the national idea prevails in the domain of morals ethical ideas like all others are devoid of objectivity there is no such thing as the truth in ethics they say but only 'our truth'.

There are only two fundamental methods by which men can deal with one another; by reason or by force, by intellectual persuasion or by physical coercion, by directing to an opponent's brain an argument or a bullet.

Since the Nazis dismiss reason out of hand there are only recourse is to embrace the second of these methods the Nazi ethics completes the job of brute worship altruism gives to the use of force a moral sanction making it not only an unavoidable practical recourse but also a positive virtue an expression of militant righteousness, Social Justice in this view not only allows but demands the use of force against the non sacrificial individual it demands that others put a stop to his evil thus has morale further been joined to the rule of physical force raising it from a criminal tactic to a governing principle of human relationships.

So let's summarize the Nazi worldview; it is the rejection of the Enlightenment, the rejection of objective truth, the rejection of reason, and the embracing of feelings, and of subjective truth, in fact of racial truths that are only relevant to the race in question. It is the demand for complete obedience regardless of the reason why, but preferably for absolute dedication to the cause. And it is the moral sanctioning of violence towards anyone who might oppose these methods that finally makes the Nazis so terribly dangerous. And I think it's unavoidable for any political philosophy that follows these principles to end up every bit as oppressive violent and bloody as the Nazis themselves.

[ataur5367-blog]

Law of Attraction

here's been a good deal discussed the Law of Attraction, especially within spiritual, self-help, and self-development articles, blogs, and books. There is a magazine entitled The Secret which launched theLaw of Attraction into the spotlight in the past. The "secret" had to use an individual's ability to concentrate on whatever they wanted, and thru the power of their focus and visualization, it might become possible to attract that which was wanted into their existence. It appeared just like a simple concept to understand and apply, and when it might produce results that simply, it had been understandable the reasons everyone was attracted to it.

I came across this book also it helped begin an awakening inside me. I studied the teachers who have been incorporated in the video that was created in addition to the book. The use of the Law of Attraction appeared to be the easiest answer of these teachers to offer, when answering most of the questions everyone was asking about their lives, that was usually related to relationships, finances, careers, or something like that. When I studied these teachers, it appeared they were answering the same questions resulting from their supporters. Yet I discovered myself asking different questions, which these teachers and the Law of Attraction alone couldn't appear to answer. Want to know more about law of attraction? Visit our website today!

Since finding Law of Attraction, I've been on the transformational journey. Researching it's been the catalyst for any much-needed change in my existence. However, the most enjoyable aspect of my transformation was the awareness I have acquired about our human connection to the world and learning the essence of existence relies upon energy. I've gone further in my understanding of the Laws and regulations of the World than I've learned from most of the teachers who educate about the Law of Attraction. I've found that the Law of Attraction is a of many Laws and regulations of the World, there are also many universal facts that comprise our existence.

Now I would like to reveal to you things i have discovered in my journey, that is still ongoing. In my opinion there are others like myself who've questions which the Law of Attraction, and teachers of the Law of Attraction, cannot fully answer. After you have discovered the many Laws and regulations of the World and universal facts, possibly you'll start your own transformational journey of discovery and private awakening. I don't claim to have particular forces, abilities, or all of the solutions to the questions you have. Things I have is definitely an ability to be quiet and listen to a collective awareness, that has been known as Infinite Intelligence or Source by many people, which is something anybody can train themselves to use some time and practice.

I think you'll are inspired in what you read.

One Man's Transformational Journey

Throughout my existence I will always be intuitive, coupled with the capability to sense and feel totally strongly, although I haven't been willing to accept the nature of who I'm. I attempted to be "normal" for any a significant lengthy time. It required time to recover from that disposition and sense of dislike about myself. I had been also elevated in a really strict, religious atmosphere like a youthful person, which meant I had been trained I had been supposed believe in a certain style about the order of the world. Being an adult I abandoned all of individuals beliefs and held no religious point of view whatsoever, except to reject the dogma being trained by most places of worship as it didn't accept things i felt inside.

Later in existence, I started trying to find solutions when i were built with a growing list of questions I possibly could not readily find solutions to when i wanted to learn more by what I felt inside and just how I had been experiencing the world around me. Roughly nine years back, I stumbled upon The Secret and that's after i was first introduced to the Law of Attraction. I just read books an internet-based articles printed by many people of the teachers from the book, including the teacher whose arrange it relies upon however is not featured within the book, Esther Hicks.

When I conducted further research into the Law of Attraction, I had been surprised to find this concept has been available since the early 1900s. In those days, it had been known as the New Thought Movement. In 1900 William Walter Atkinson authored: "Anything is up to you, should you only need it with enough contentration. Imagine of it. ANYTHING. Check it out. Check it out in serious and you'll succeed. It's the operation of a mighty Law." The New Thought Movement ongoing in its recognition until the 1960s.

The interest in the Law of Attraction wasn't as prominent again until The Secret arrived on the scene in 2009, although Esther Hicks had begun her teachings about the Law of Attraction in the 1980s. The book managed to get appear as though solutions to existence could be easily achieved through the Law of Attraction. As I did think it is was useful in my transformation, I additionally understood there had to be more involved when i viewed many of the same people attend Esther's workshops and get the same questions. I just read many critiques of the Law of Attraction, including individuals who felt annoyed by the lack of magical responses to their visualized wishes.

I additionally observed individuals who searched for out the teachings of the Law of Attraction didn't inquire which went beyond the usual topics of relationships, finances, and careers. I'd individuals questions at occasions, yet I understood there is more to it than wishing for something to happen. I'd to also take inspired action after i had cultivated an optimistic and productive mindset. More to the point, I'd questions which went beyond individuals fundamental topics when i wanted to learn about the link between humans and the world, and that i wanted to learn more about Source Energy.

This is where I started to learn to concentrate, focus, and quiet my thoughts. I learned this through my act as a writer and author, by making use of a awareness stream and finding a vast source of ideas and ideas. I ultimately started to realize I had been making use of a vast source of knowledge, that is the Collective Awareness of the world.

I started to realize the source of existence is energy by knowing this my thoughts, and my world, opened up up. Allow me to now reveal to you some of things i have discovered. Below are notes I've taken as I've been connected to this Collective Awareness thought stream.

Things are Energy

I've found that energy is a of the foundational laws and regulations of the world. It's a big subject and something that is supported by science and research. Below is really a sample of things i have discovered from my connection to Infinite Knowledge.

Energy is a of the foundational laws and regulations of the world.

There are three types of energy:

Static: What doesn't move,

Energetic: What is in motion, and

Magnetic: What attracts like through vibration.

The body can be static or in a dynamic condition. The bodies functions are energetic, always in motion, causing organs and molecules to move in a continuing flow. The thoughts are magnetic and able to focus with clearness and attract similar ideas, building momentum until what's focused upon be a manifestation.

Energy doesn't have a beginning point or ending point. Energy exists via a tension of good and bad signals. Individuals signals create balance and sustains existence. Energy continues to be known as "God" because of its pure nature, and "evil" because of the negative fluctuations and variance in levels. Energy connects intellect and for that reason continues to be known as Infinite Intelligence.

Energy can retain images, words, and other things referred to as memory. Intelligence is really a form of focused energy that's been harnessed or channeled for any specific purpose. It's not possible for an individual to do without negative energy, meaning there are going to be physical moments, or feelings, that fluctuate from enjoyable to uncomfortable.

The phrase "Source Energy" is useful for many people as a way of understanding the Laws and regulations of the World. To say "Source Energy" can be confusing for other people because it would appear to imply an individual have to get it. But energy encompasses us. It's the source of existence. Energy can be experienced through focus and transmission of ideas.

The mind and the brain are transmitters of energy, receivers of energy, and employ energy to sustain existence. Energy is the source of ideas, inspiration, intuition, feelings, feelings, words, language, sight, seem, taste, touch, writing, singing, and laughing.

Everything requires some form of energy. Energy happens to be. As intelligence grows, energy expands. That's the evolution of man and time. Energy is finite and it has no finish. Energy continues to evolve and expand, adding new recollections, ideas, and concepts. Yet people might not be aware of energy around them. They may notice changes in energy, for example changes in weather or changes in nature.

But many people don't see energy itself, unless of course they are attuned to the connection held between their mind and the collective awareness. While everybody has this connection, and nobody is without them or can completely take it off, many don't know of it or want to believe they have access to it.

Energy would only cease to exist when there was nothing left to sustain it which wouldn't occur unless of course every planet and each universe were to be removed from existence, which could never be. Energy naturally produces new existence and new manifestations, a cycle that triggers the source energy to expand tremendously.

Collective Awareness, Infinite Intelligence

Energy maintains awareness, it holds recollections or Infinite Intelligence. From energy, existence has experience in cycles, seasons occur, patterns emerge. There's a collective awareness that puts forth ideas that are backed up by energy.

Collective Awareness is really a repository for those thought - ideas which have have you been thought or expressed. Infinite Intelligence is really a greater form of the Collective Awareness, the part where the collective seeks to gather knowledge necessary to fulfill manifestations - or to provide ongoing support and guidance. It's available to everyone if they need it.

Here's a good example:

One is connected through energy to the Collective Awareness or Source Energy. Infinite Intelligence might have insight to share as impulses during the day - but the person must be willing to trust their instincts.

Also, if your manifestation like a job is to unfold, Infinite Intelligence will align all needed sources - and it has the main issue available to know the right timing. The person must trust the timing to allow the manifestation to occur.

Laws and regulations of the World, Universal Facts

In addition to the Law of Attraction, there are other Laws and regulations of the World.

Universal Truth: Humans are produced by energy, encircled by energy, backed up by energy, yet are not necessarily aware of the presence of an association to energy.

Air is energy. The body knows to breathe in air and receive energy. The body knows how to expend energy and conserve it if needed.

Energy creates exactly what lives and breathes. Energy creates the world and sustains it. There's nobody or just being in the sky, merely a collective of ideas, recollections, and intelligence that produces a pulse within energy - the strengths on a single finish and the negative on the other - a duality needed to hold the energy field steady.

Universal Truth: Energy Doesn't Have Expiration.

Energy would only cease to exist when there was nothing left to sustain it which wouldn't occur unless of course every planet and each universe were to be removed from existence, which could never be. Energy naturally produces new existence and new manifestations, a cycle that triggers the source energy to expand tremendously.

Universal Truth: Energy is Balanced.

There is not better energy than negative energy. It's all equal. In order for energy to be sustained, it has to come with an equal flow of good and bad energy.

Universal Truth: Energy Exists.

Nobody controls energy, selection as to the way it flows or just how much or how frequently. Energy is the reason people believe there's a greater power and refer to it as a great being, with individuals who are making statements that they are an expert as to how it's received, who's worthy to receive it, and who are able to best interpret it.

Law of Connection: There's a typical phrase known as the Law of Attraction. That's accurate. However, in order to attract you have to first connect. All energy has two spectrums: Good and bad. All humans come with an eternal connection to energy. That's known as the Law of Connection. The Law of Attraction isn't the next thing otherwise an individual would be attracting both good and bad energy at the same time. An association to energy means the dynamic balance of good and bad energy exists.

The Law of Attraction refers to the Dimension of energy that an individual is attuned to. An individual who lives through glare on the past, they create a focus that draws more of the same, that is usually negative energy.

Negative energy is how the past resides because it contains hurt, regret, bad feelings, loss, and discomfort. Positive energy is pleasure, love, acceptance, forgiving, and feelings of hope. (The past can contain positive recollections, yet the negative recollections frequently over-shadow the positive recollections)

Whatever your mental tuner is centered on, or perhaps your ideas, attractions brings more from that flow of energy: negative or positive. Just like any spectrum, there's a midpoint, an account balance in the middle of good and bad. That's a time referred to as quieting the mind during meditation. Additionally, it occurs while asleep as the mind is not attuned to one spectrum and ideas subside. Sleep are capable of doing a reset for the mental tuner. However, those who have a practiced pattern of thought, a chronic concentrate on negativity, it will require greater than sleep to change that focus. It'll now require conscious, steady concentrate on positivity to shift attention.

Law of Attunement

Much continues to be spoken and discussed the Laws and regulations of the World, particularly, the Law of Attraction, because it appears to give a platform that gives the easiest solutions for individuals who are in need. The truth is that the solutions searched for are not really a result of just one "secret" a treadmill Law of Attraction, however a collective set of laws and regulations.

One law that's of significant importance for individuals seeking solutions, and individuals who find they are out of alignment, is the Law of Attunement. The person writing this information has carried this out for such a long time it is natural, but it can be put aside.

Anybody can attune. Everybody attunes to some extent automatically, which is frequently referred to as focus. Attunement can be shallow or general, or attunement can be an entire connection to what's known as "Infinite Intelligence" - "God" - "Source" - The Great Beyond" - "A Collective Awareness".

The author of this short article can rapidly attune to the greatest frequency - even in unusual settings, or noisy places for any brief time. The most powerful connection occurs in a peaceful atmosphere with prompts for example love nearby or music. If an individual decides to attune, they can alter their focus, vibration, and flow of energy to an optimistic source, and take full advantage of Infinite Intelligence. Many people choose split energy: bad and the good.

Law of Interaction

A Universal Truth: Everything there's in existence, exactly what was produced, exactly what will be made or thought or written, is performed because of the Law of Interaction.

The Law of Interaction states:

Energy is backed up by the interaction of good and bad streams.

Greater order collective awareness is backed up by the interaction of knowledge, insight, and understanding with human minds delivering or transmitting signals that need (or request) guidance.

Collective Awareness is backed up by the interaction of energy flowing to and from the human mind, through impulses or signals that transmit new recollections, ideas, words, images, and all sorts of that humans consider.

New writings, music, works of art, sketches, ideas, inspiration, insight, plus much more are an effect of the interaction of a mind willing to make use of infinite knowledge, creativeness, and understanding - with the source of everything is or greater order Infinite Intelligence. This interaction can become so practiced that the ideas flow naturally and simply, to the point the person merely has to focus briefly and receive.

Many people make use of this interactive condition not necessarily understanding the process but realizing it works as they have experienced the results. Others can provide it a reputation or attribute it to a divine cause. But things are an effect of a dynamic condition, an interaction of the signals which the mind transmits. The thoughts are always producing ideas and a few of individuals ideas communicate with past recollections, making use of one finish of the energy spectrum.

Some ideas are processing occasions of the day and that's frequently when inspiration comes through, when there are less filters ready to block it or hide it. The Law of Interaction teaches that people cannot do without interacting. We awaken and communicate with our atmosphere. We communicate with others. But the most significant interactions are individuals happening in our mind.

The Importance of Your Mindset

For me personally, I've learned to be open and listen to my inner voice, and trust my internal guidance. Anybody can connect to the Collective Awareness and greater order Infinite Intelligence. It requires practice to focus and permit inspiration and knowledge to come to you. This is also true for bigger or important subjects, as Infinite Understanding might not translate easily into the understanding an individual mind presently offers. Additionally, it requires removing fear, especially removal of the fear that's been instilled by religious organizations that wishes you to believe you can't have immediate access to this understanding and knowledge by yourself.

I've had a effective connection my entire existence, although I didn't always understand or accept it. More to the point, it didn't accept my religious upbringing also it would be a struggle at first to reconcile this conflict after which overcome it. Additionally, it required time to uncover the source of peace and balance this connection could provide. After I learned to accept and comprehend it like a natural human connection, I discovered tremendous inner peace and harmony. Now I quiet my ideas and concentrate, even in a loud place, although I favor a peaceful atmosphere with soft ambient music.

One of the teachers of the Law of Attraction who I've took in to, that has solved the problem in my journey, presents this knowledge through channeling. I check this out like a form of theatrical presentation, as a way of supplying greater order knowledge from someone or elsewhere.

Think about this perspective: Should you thought the knowledge being provided only agreed to be coming from that individual, as opposed to a greater being or Collective Awareness itself, can you be as likely to accept is as true?

The presentation of knowledge through channeling is comparable to formalized religion. It's distribution of infinite understanding from an approved person, meant to create reliance upon that individual. In the event that person trained strategies to enable people to be independent, they would listen once or perhaps a couple of occasions, and never need to return.

What this teacher does, or any teacher of the Law of Attraction, is to access Infinite Understanding or Infinite Knowledge. It's accomplished through focused thought, that is something anybody can perform. I adopted this specific teacher lengthy enough to understand the Law of Attraction however I soon outgrew that which was being presented. I understood there is even more than one Law of the World to answer the many questions I've, which may also help guide others in their self-discovery. That's the reason I started to write and share my very own journey of awakening. Check out the the manifestation millionaire by visiting our website.

I plan to move on with my journey and write more when i connect to greater order Collective Awareness. I'm carrying this out to learn and help others. The understanding acquired and skill to connect hasn't helped me wealthy, solved all of my life's problems, or solved the problem find cures to see relatives people who are ill. I'm still finding the purpose in my connection and just how to live an empowered existence. I know there are others like myself who would like to find out more than the Law of Attraction alone can answer, and i'll continue to explore the a number of other Laws and regulations of the World.

What I will tell you is the fact that I've resided a peaceful existence while awaking to this connection, a existence of ease and flow. For instance, just when one job ended, I didn't panic. I reliable the knowledge I've access to for inspired action and to know there is a larger plan in place, and the other job grew to become available when the timing was right. Not my timing or my plan, but the right place and time. After I am connected to Infinite Knowledge, Personally i think a feeling of peace and well-being. If you're able to uncover this for the existence, it may help you sustain an optimistic mindset. I'll help educate you things i have discovered when i continue to explore the Laws and regulations of the World.