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f-nodragonart · 4 years ago

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Worldbuilding, briefly

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about how I approach worldbuilding in my own work, and how worldbuilding appears in the media that I admire, and just want to share some thoughts

so, y’know how lot of writers admit that it feels like their characters end up writing themselves? hijacking the creators’ brains and acting out their own lives? I feel the same can be said for settings, if they’re given the chance to breathe freely

suffice to say, a setting should feel dynamic-- a living, changing thing that affects (and is affected by) characters/plot/etc., and has solid internal logic. I think the two central concepts which make for good worldbuilding, in this respect, are:

a sense of history��

holistic integration with all other story elements

History

when a setting only exists in the present moment, it comes off flat and static-- merely a cardboard set-piece that could fall over at a gust of too-strong wind (or critical thought). settings need history to feel vibrant and alive, just as any individual character needs history to inform their actions and beliefs

essentially, good worldbuilding answers the question of, “How did we get here?”

in practice, having a sense of history helps a great deal in predicting and designing how a setting looks at the present. think of it like following branching pathways back to the source-- the main divergence(s) from real-life. as humans living on planet Earth in our particular sociocultural environments, whatever we create will automatically borrow from what we’re familiar with, so it helps to track down where we may be subconsciously starting at. once we find that initial divergence, it’s a simple matter of following logical stepping-stones from that source, up to the present point

thus, you can break the broad question of, “How did we get here?” down into smaller, more manageable chunks by carefully tracking along a path of history

some examples of what I’m talking about here:

need an explanation for the current geopolitical climate? trace back the basic history of all the countries in question, follow it back to basic sources (fighting over resources/territory, power/ideological struggles, etc.), to figure out why the geopolitical landscape looks as it does today. want to figure out how a particular culture came to their current beliefs/practices? look back to the history of their land-- what resources do they use, what ecological cycles impact them, how much cultural overlap do they have with their neighbors, and how does this impact what they most cherish in themselves and others? want to figure out how/why a creature exists in your world? map their evolutionary taxonomy and ecological relationships back to a point that connects to the other creatures on your planet-- where exactly did they “start” out and what pushed them to evolve the way the did?

most of these sub-questions will likely never be directly answered in your story, and you don’t even need to have detailed answers for most of them. but trust me when I say that YOU knowing the answers (even answers that you may consider broad and simple) will affect how you craft the present setting and its sense of history

of course, the level of divergence from real-life will impact how much reworking a given setting needs in order to feel self-sustaining and whole. a world where political history diverges from real-life only a few years previous is going to have different needs than a story whose very life-forms are built on different molecular structures than Earth life, for example. it can be intimidating in some cases, but if you’re willing to put in the work and research for it, you can make some pretty incredible discoveries

Holistic Integration

I’ll fully admit, Folding Ideas’ video on Ludonarrative Dissonance is what rly got me thinking abt this topic (and more deeply abt my own thoughts on stylistic/tonal consistency). his central idea about how we can approach story elements as separate or integrated rly clarified some of my vague opinions/feelings on certain media

essentially, worldbuilding shouldn’t be treated as separate from other story elements like plot and themes, if you want it to work holistically in your world. otherwise, your worldbuilding may start telling a different story from the plot/themes/etc. you’re consciously trying to craft. in fact, I’ll even argue that it’s impossible to treat worldbuilding separately, on a fundamental level

let me focus specifically on themes for a moment when I say, humans don’t create objectively. we don’t craft worlds or stories without automatically inserting our own beliefs and ideas into the settings. to say that a setting is free of theme in particular is highly arrogant, imo, and a sign that the creator likely thinks their own views are simply the “norm”. a magic system will reflect a creator’s views on souls and energy and existence; creature designs will reveal the aesthetic and types of animals a creator gravitates towards; various political systems will reflect a creator’s background and assumptions about the power/morality of said systems

in this way, I think it’s downright impossible to craft a world without themes in the first place. so it just makes sense to recognize and lean into that, while crafting the more deliberate themes of a story

but even if we do assume, for sake of argument, that worlds COULD be crafted objectively, I just don’t understand why they would? why/how a world functions the way it does will affect the ways characters move through that world, and how they experience their arcs and subsequent themes. like, it’s genuinely baffling for me to imagine crafting a story without every element organically weaving into and affecting one another, it just doesn’t feel like it would even work

because when an element of the story doesn’t exist in service of the other elements around it, that element becomes a useless distraction rather than an asset. folks complain all the time about useless characters-- people that take up precious screentime without moving any other element (plot, character arcs, tone, etc.) forward. yet the same can absolutely be said for settings-- settings which just exist as spaces to set characters while they experience a plot, separate from that given setting. when these settings don’t touch any other element of the story in any meaningful way (or vis-versa), they become distracting and useless, and ultimately destabilize/undermine the other elements

like, when we’re told a setting is rough and dangerous, but the characters that live there don’t act like it (no street smarts, no sense of caution towards their environment, no sense of where they are and how to get where they need to quickly--), it undermines the reliability of the characters’ personalities/arcs. when we’re told a setting is full of casual magic which affects everything, yet we’re shown a 1:1 picture of real life with no sign of how people using magic, how tech may integrate with magic, how magic affects aesthetic or history, it distracts from and undermines the fantasy/escapism. when we’re explicitly told that a story’s themes center around defying expectations/roles, yet the setting we’re supposed to root for only reinforces pre-defined roles and rules, it completely undermines any of the deliberate themes the creator intends. when we’re following a plot through various environments meant to showcase the variety of culture and aesthetic a world has cultivated, but we’re merely shown variations on a very similar theme, it’s distracting and boring

worldbuilding should not feel like a dissonant piece from other story elements. worldbuilding should harmonize with and enhance all other story elements, and those elements in turn should enhance the worldbuilding. while it absolutely is useful to tackle or talk about certain elements separately (I mean, I am taking a whole post to discuss worldbuilding, specifically), ultimately a good story is a whole whose parts can’t be fully removed from one another

Internal Logic

you may be wondering why I have yet to make any real mention of “logic” up to this point, since that’s how most folks analyze worldbuilding. hell, even I usually judge worlds based on how well they stick to their “internal logic”. but I think focusing on a vague sense of “logic” puts the cart before the horse, so to speak

if you don’t know the history of a particular setting, how can you track any cultural/political/etc. logic to its source? to say that logic “pre-establishes” certain rules is to admit that there is a sense of history there in the first place, thus specific events preceding the present text which explain why the present exists as it does. like, the big bang is a historical event that’s set up the logic of our entire universe, the same way a war sets up the political logic of a nation going forward. thus, history precedes logic

but before history can set precedents in worldbuilding, it’s really the other story elements which decide what history is important enough to establish in the first place. a story whose themes center around biological imperatives and ecology will need worldbuilding with a strong biological history; a story whose plot centers on political intrigue will need a world with a strong political history; a story with characters ranging across all different cultures will need to establish history for those cultures, etc. you aren’t obligated to establish the history of every single aspect of a setting, merely the parts that are actually relevant to the rest of the narrative in some way

this is how the internal logic of a story is established: by knowing exactly what history needs to be established to enhance the other story elements. logic should organically follow, once you have a strong grasp of history and holistic integration

-Mod Spiral

#worldbuilding #mod spiral #me: *holds worldbuilding/lore/specevo* I just think it's neat :)

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jamestaylorswift · 5 years ago

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You're so mind-blowingly brilliant -- your posts never cease to make my day! I don't even have a tumblr account, but I check your page at least ten times/day, hoping for a new analysis. Reading your essay on "folklore"'s dreamscape felt like an acid trip in the best possible way. Please share your thoughts on the original "Cardigan" lyrics ASAP!

Thanks, anon! You’ve got me blushing like a damn fool over here 😊 You’re always welcome on this blog, lurking or otherwise!

Okay so this is more a line of reasoning that starts at the OG “cardigan,” not just lyric analysis. I’m not exactly sure how to organize all these thoughts so I’m just going to put them in the order that they came. Apologies if this is a mess. (And under a cut because I can’t shut up lmao)

To me, the OG “cardigan” is the antithesis of the song as we now know it. That got me thinking about how the core of the album might have been much different too.

The album-making process started with “my tears ricochet.” (I believe this song is from Karlie’s point of view, per the notes in the dreamscape essay.) I’m assuming Taylor didn’t edit this song much. She has implied in the past that a song is “written” when it takes musical form (i.e. lyrics literally get put to a track). The idea of a dead lover is also extremely compelling. She made “cardigan,” “seven,” and “peace” next.

It’s likely that these four songs represent folklore’s original ideological pillars. The common thread of Aaron’s three songs (both versions of “cardigan”) is the idea of age or maturity. “peace” and “seven” are age-related endpoints and “cardigan” is a midway point. “my tears ricochet” happens to be an endpoint (i.e. dying, as opposed to reaching an adult maturity).

From these songs, I extrapolate that Taylor wanted to explore emotional growth specifically by addressing Peter Pan and Wendy’s philosophical disagreement. (Also…veer off into gay childhood trauma.) “peace” is about the strongest argument anyone could make in favor of Wendy—growing up is necessary, especially in order to love and treat someone properly. (This song even argues for mutual maturity/understanding.) “my tears ricochet” is the fallout if two people end up fighting with each other, not for each other. OG “cardigan” comes down on Peter’s side—if given the choice to preserve youth or yield to age, one should prefer the former. The album was to transform an endorsement of Peter into an endorsement of Wendy.

The three songs done with Aaron were likely written to appear in the order they do today: “cardigan” as exposition, then “seven,” then “peace.” Observe that to chart a course hitting all four songs, Taylor has to align OG “cardigan” with “my tears ricochet.” “seven” can stand on its own, provided she pads it with enough storytelling. “peace” and “my tears ricochet” cannot both be endpoints of the story, especially because they are at odds with each other. The mutual understanding in “peace” is not at all consistent with the hatred and sadness in “my tears ricochet.” Thus, the track list requires the partial ordering of OG “cardigan,” then “my tears ricochet,” then (much later) “peace.”

Let’s talk about OG “cardigan.” The first verse paints the potrait of Karlie. “Vintage tee, brand new phone // high heels on cobblestones // when you are young they assume you know nothing” alludes to the glamor of modeling, plus its stereotype as the profession of being young, dumb, and beautiful. “Livin’ in a gold age // sneakin’ to my bird cage” reintroduces the tension of reputation, youth and freedom at odds with oppressive forces. “Laughin’ like a damn fool // breakin’ every damn rule” contrasts the characterization of Karlie in the verse. She instead has a marvelous time being hot, smart, and moderately evil. Through this contrast, Taylor suggests that the power of youth is the freedom to choose to ignore very serious problems (pseudo-escapism?). The OG outro full of zingers is Taylor’s perspective as someone who gets burned by the freedom of choice. Young Karlie leaves young Taylor because the high of reputation-era antics wears off. Then, old Taylor, still affected by this loss, also loses her mind in a reverse-“Don’t Blame Me” kinda way.

Word choice, to me, suggests that “cardigan” was originally conceived not as the Breakup Song of the Cenozoic Era but a narrative partner of “illicit affairs.” Karlie and Taylor are on the same team in OG “cardigan.” They have a marvelous time being hot, smart, and moderately evil and breaking all the damn rules together. “You know damn well // for you I would ruin myself” gets spit back in Taylor’s face and is that much more impactful.

Karlie is justified in leaving because the moment dies. This phrase describes a relationship that mutually and/or slowly dwindles. Karlie makes a decision to leave and save herself, and indeed makes the better choice because she retains her wild and her sanity. Hence, Peter wins the argument.

It’s unclear when “exile” was written, but I think it was early on in the process because Taylor added bird noises to it. “exile” plus OG “cardigan”/“illicit affairs” illustrates two joint affairs, such as double bearding. Pronoun issues with the second verse of “cardigan” aside, Karlie’s eventual downfall (i.e. the emotional end of “illicit affairs”) is implied to be a result of Taylor…also cheating? Maybe it’s the whole Friends “we were on a break” thing. (IDK, I’ve never actually seen Friends.)

OG “cardigan,” “illicit affairs,” and “exile” were once closely affiliated. More pertinently, by the partial ordering, “illicit affairs” and “exile” were meant to explain how OG “cardigan” connects to “my tears ricochet.” Karlie leaves Taylor during their illicit affair; the affair ruins Karlie; Karlie dies and Taylor shows up at the funeral because she’s pissed; Karlie becomes a vengeful ghost and Taylor is also emotionally ruined forever. Scene.

But these are not the connections that Taylor put out into the world. Obviously we can never know precisely why. One thing that does stick out to me, though, is how hard it is to turn around and align with Wendy given the illicit affair narrative.

In “peace,” Taylor shows her own maturity by acknowledging that she was cowardly and dishonorable. For what? Karlie left her in OG “cardigan,” not the other way around. Taylor runs away with someone else in “exile” (“him”), ostensibly to enjoy a more stable relationship. Her playing the role of the angry funeralgoer in “my tears ricochet” is perfectly reasonable. Taylor was promised love and Karlie didn’t give her what she needed, so she moved on. Therefore, we should conclude that maturity is really…hanging onto someone who doesn’t stay? Having the courage to stay in an incredibly tenuous affair? Apparently, one also must be cheated on in order to mature. These are all strange conclusions.

Taylor illustrates Karlie’s maturity with a monologue of numerous promises—of pretty much everything except peace itself. The illicit affair narrative does strongly support the argument that maturity is learning how to stay true to one’s word. Yet its logical beginning is that one must cheat on another—plus be unfaithful to the person they are cheating with—in order to mature. (Karlie gets burned by the freedom of choice only when she later faces the consequences of the affair.) Also strange.

The illicit affair narrative as a primary emotional catalyst of the album generates even bigger inconsistencies.

“august” both humanizes the person cheated with and leaves them worse off than the cheater. “my tears ricochet” emphasizes the opposite: the one cheated with stays alive and becomes a very ugly person, but the cheater dies.

Arguably, both people should have anticipated the fallout of the (implied to be years-long) affair. “my tears ricochet” is internally inconsistent. “I didn’t have it in myself to go with grace” suggests Karlie died an unfortunate or unforeseen death, not an inevitable one. “You turned into your worst fears” suggests Taylor turned around and became a cheater too.

“invisible string” can support the argument that Taylor and Karlie were always bound to get back together after a breakup. Morally dubious underwriting of the initial affair notwithstanding, this song contradicts “mad woman.” Taylor wrote “mad woman” song shortly after “peace;” in it, she is staunchly against cheating. (She avoids morally dubious underwriting of illicit activity on the album by axing the OG “cardigan”/“illicit affairs”/“exile” narrative, then condemning cheating and seducing in “mad woman” and “illicit affairs,” respectively.)

Again, it is impossible to know when, why, or even exactly how the narrative of the album changed as Taylor was writing it. The dramatization I’ve provided of inconsistencies piling up is only one plausible explanation—and a convoluted one at that—for a change of artistic heart. Whatever the reason, I think it is significant that Taylor performed a volte face to never argue in favor of Peter in the first place.

The album version of “cardigan,” and indeed the entire love triangle, supports Wendy’s side of the argument. “cardigan” shows that James and Betty’s relationship was vibrant, joyous, thrilling, and tender, but above all, perfect. The tone of the song helps Taylor denounce James’ choice to leave Betty as cruel and unnecessary. It is James’ fault for leaving once the “thrill expired,” not Betty’s fault for believing James would stay after the honeymoon phase. “betty” reinforces James’ characterization as the ignorant fool too. Because the album necessarily pigeonholes the leaver in the role of the coward, Wendy wins the argument on the grounds of moral fiber.

(James technically ‘wins’ in “august” because the titular character is left devastated and alone. August embodies youth through hope and yearning. James’ lack of conviction kills that hope. Thus, youthful traits are always collateral damage of the entire maturing process. And, the narrative that pits the characters against each other ends with James, regarded as the paradigm youth, losing the most.)

Perhaps this is the best justification for the existence of the teenage love triangle. Introducing characters who are maturing in various ways still allows Taylor to explore emotional growth. Three separate but fixed perspectives act as a proxy for one person’s changing perspective. By aligning herself with each character at a different time in their life, she shows that maturity (e.g. realism, reliability, patience, etc.) always gives one the upper hand.

The love triangle’s main purpose is to illustrate the philosophy that permeates the rest of the album. folklore as we know it is Taylor’s memorial to all the things lost to youth. Maturity would have prevented so many losses. At the same time, it is impossible to mature without first being youthful, making mistakes, and feeling lost while doing so. This is Taylor’s singular but melancholic endorsement of Wendy. How sad, valuable, and necessary, she says of growing up.

Lest my point be misinterpreted as ‘we can confidently reverse-engineer Taylor’s artistic process,’ here are my main takeaways from the “cardigan” changes:

OG “cardigan” is sad and we should appreciate it as such. “I knew to love would be to lose my mind?” Please.

“cardigan,” as a midway point with respect to age, is the only ideologically ‘variable’ song of the original quartet. Furthermore, by placement and construction, “cardigan” is/was intended to be expository. Changing “cardigan” changes the course she charts through the album. Taking sadness out of one song and spreading it over a storytelling album really changes the meaning of that sadness.

Of the eponymous characters, it’s worth noting that Taylor is James, the leaver, whereas she is left in the OG “cardigan.” It’s utterly fascinating that Taylor chooses to embody ‘hanging on to youth’ angle. What we assume is a very deep, primal feeling is one she overemphasizes for narrative purposes. Consequently, dismissing the love triangle as (fix-it) fiction requires dismissing Taylor’s attachment to youth—being Peter. To that end, we might also need to dismiss the infamous “I never grew up, it’s getting so old” line from “The Archer.” Many others, too…

Red herring though it may be, the love triangle alters folklore’s underlying philosophy, hence the very essence of its melancholy. It seems rather unwise to ignore the love triangle or to reduce it to a cheesy storytelling device. Recognizing that Taylor endorses Wendy and only Wendy is, in my opinion, crucial for clarifying other nebulous ideas in folklore. (I know I sound like a broken record, but I really do think abstraction in the music requires abstraction in analysis. It’s really easy to fall into the habit of tying specific lyrics to people or events. Personally, I find richer and deeper connections by actively working against that habit. I’m not saying this is the only way to do analysis—on the contrary, I think all analysis is correct because it’s all subjective. Rather, I think people overlook the value of occasional abstraction, much to my distress. folklore analysis even seems to demand abstraction. Sue me for believing that things like the underlying philosophy of an album are important, I guess?)

Would you believe that there’s more to this change than what I’ve argued? I’m weary that this is answer is already not what you wanted, so I won’t bang on and quadruple its length. In conclusion: the Implications.

#kaylor #folklore analysis #anonymous #qs

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somnilogical · 5 years ago

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i am prepared to face god this instant

in the case of the native americans, in a counterfactual world where every native human could would do with their muscles what they would yell at a book character in their situation to do with their mouth. where people could would make choices from a third person point of view and then carry out the choices. where when asked by an interrogator for the names of your rebel companions, you say you will know them when they come to avenge me.

<<On 8 Feb 1943, the Nazis hung 17-year-old Yugoslav partisan Lepa Radić. When asked the names of her companions, she replied: “You will know them when they come to avenge me”.>>

<<N. Stolyarova recalls an old woman who was her neighbor on the Butyrki bunks in 1937. They kept on interrogating her every night. Two years earlier, a former Metropolitan of the Orthodox Church, who had escaped from exile, had spent a night at her home on his way through Moscow. “But he wasn’t the former Metropolitan, he was the Metropolitan! Truly, I was worthy of receiving him.” “All right then. To whom did he go when he left Moscow?” “I know, but I won’t tell you!” (The Metropolitan had escaped to Finland via an underground railroad of believers.) At first the interrogators took turns, and then they went after her in groups. They shook their fists in the little old woman’s face, and she replied: “There is nothing you can do with me even if you cut me into pieces. After all, you are afraid of your bosses, and you are afraid of each other, and you are even afraid of killing me.” (They would lose contact with the underground railroad.) “But I am not afraid of anything. I would be glad to be judged by God right this minute.”

There were such people in 1937 too, people who did not return to their cell for their bundles of belongings, who chose death, who signed nothing denouncing anyone.>>

<<One can’t say that the history of the Russian revolutionaries has given us any better examples of steadfastness. But there is no comparison anyway, because none of our revolutionaries ever knew what a really good interrogation could be, with fifty-two different methods to choose from. Just as oxcart drivers of Gogol’s time could not have imagined the speed of a jet plane, those who have never gone through the receiving-line meat grinder of Gulag cannot grasp the true possibilities of interrogation.

We read in Izvestiya for May 24, 1959, that Yuliya Rumyantseva was confined in the internal prison of a Nazi camp while they tried to find out from her the whereabouts of her husband, who had escaped from that same camp. She knew, but she refused to tell! For a reader who is not in the know this is a model of heroism. For a reader with a bitter Gulag past it’s a model of inefficient interrogation: Yuliya did not die under torture, and she was not driven insane. A month later she was simply released—still very much alive and kicking.>>

-alexander solzhenitsyn, the gulag archipelago

if all or even a majority of native americans near the missions had this neurotype, then what id suggest would be for everyone to move away from the missions and if captured refuse to work to the point of death. the missions need slave labour in order to exist and without people to feed on and with long supply lines, they would be undone and people would be free from the largest human-unfriendly institution of the era.

and the outcome would be better than ~60 years of slavery. this is choosing between timelines

somni why do you care about freedom? freedom is like ability-to-live. if people were like "well who cares about the global slavery-and-submission-and-stasis cult" until catholicism actually took over the world, the world would be much worse and we would never get to the stars.

you could say "whats the point, everyone gets assimilated to whatever the social order is now which is driving us all to doom" but like if you are in 1800s america after you keep the world ending for a set of tribes, you work on societal tech to keep it from ending in other ways and landing in this patch of equilibrium-space in the first place.

its like the difference between choosing between timelines and wondering if perhaps the money could be better spent sustaining the lives of those who could be locally saved. there are other organizing principles for moral reasoning besides these, and more than i have thought of so far. i suspect locating new ones is a spatially-loaded skill.

ben hoffman was using the choosing between consistent timelines kind of thinking when he quoted deuteronomy 30:19 in his post about REACH

http://benjaminrosshoffman.com/humans-need-places/

<<I call heaven and earth to record this day against you, that I have set before you life and death, blessing and cursing: therefore choose life, that both thou and thy seed may live.>>

https://www.sefaria.org/Deuteronomy.30.19?lang=bi&aliyot=0

which in context of the passage is exactly the same cognition that would benefit the natives to resist the world's largest human-unfriendly subjugation org and live to iteratively squirm out of these sorts of tangles in the future.

<<See, I set before you this day life and prosperity, death and adversity.

For I command you this day, to love the LORD your God, to walk in His ways, and to keep His commandments, His laws, and His rules, that you may thrive and increase, and that the LORD your God may bless you in the land that you are about to enter and possess.

But if your heart turns away and you give no heed, and are lured into the worship and service of other gods,

I declare to you this day that you shall certainly perish; you shall not long endure on the soil that you are crossing the Jordan to enter and possess.

I call heaven and earth to witness against you this day: I have put before you life and death, blessing and curse. Choose life—if you and your offspring would live—

by loving the LORD your God, heeding His commands, and holding fast to Him. For thereby you shall have life and shall long endure upon the soil that the LORD swore to your ancestors, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, to give to them.>>

if native americans had social tech which could better survive slavery and forced relocation, maybe things would be different today.

which, this can be cast in a zero-sum frame of having your group survive versus everyone elses which runs against antinationalist heuristics.

but if you are planning to manufacture a pattern which revolutionizes the world, for the good of all life, it is instrumentally useful to avoid assimilation and submission destroying this work.

this applies to multi-generational projects as well as within-a-lifetime choices. if you choose to submit and assimilate and erase all work and structure you have built, each time someone wants to feed on you, then you i (0.7) dont think can really sustain your work.

i wonder if with this worlds distribution of neurotypes, such that maybe most humans cant run consequentialism through a rawlsian veil where they forget which human inherits the label "me" on their muscles. im somewhat optimistic that even those who cant wont make their muscles move according to this, can locate the correct answer.

though there is i think a habit among people whose neurotypes have issues to retroactively rationalize (FAKE REASONING, STORIES) that because you are unable to make your body wont choose your death over the death of three of your friends, equally or more useful to the flourishing of all life, it doesnt make sense to choose your death over theirs.

linta mentioned that they couldnt imagine knowing the right thing to do and then not doing it. that they dont have a gap between these things save for akrasia, i think it is because the gap is filled with fractally expanding justifications of the form "but you cant really expect a human being to give up their life for the sake of their companions, you need to be reasonable and work with humans who exist".

human neurodiversity exists, as a matter of historical fact not all humans have the same weaknesses. in hpmor!metaphor, some people are hermione granger and wont zap people in the milgram compliance test.

and building plans predicated on people who need to divert resources to local stuff because of their neurotype, will replace "if this were a story what plans would i yell at my character do?" with "what would someone who cant run consequentialism through a rawlsian veil, see in 3rd person and then act in harmony with this do?" "someone who needs to divert resources to babies and not personally dying, do?" "what if everyone were like this?"

labeling the latter as "what will happen if everyone is running consequentialism, playing as if from 3rd person and wants humanity to win?" is a distortion of what is going on and compounds as institutions are built on it and the boundaries of what good could be done are strictly smaller than the reach of what good could be done irl.

by the way, the milgram experiment replicated in 2015 poland. gotta check with the replication crisis.

https://qz.com/932110/researchers-have-replicated-a-notorious-social-experiment-that-claimed-to-explain-the-rise-of-fascism/

<<It is exceptionally interesting that in spite of the many years which have passed since the original Milgram experiments, the proportion of people submitting themselves to the authority of the experimenter remains very high. The result of 90% obedience which we have achieved, 95% CI [83.43%, 96.57%], is very close to the number of people pressing the 10th button in the original Milgram studies. For example, in Milgram’s (1974) Experiment No. 2, replicated in our study, 34 of 40 people pressed Button No. 10 (85% of participants, the 95% CI extends from 70.54% to 93.32%).>>

one of my moms who studies fascism once told me she thinks 40-60% of people have as their ideology that they will imitate those in power, and will go along with Power in times of an authoritarian takeover. they believe that they will eat rather than be eaten. given my experience and things like the milgram test, i think its closer to 90-95%.

reading grognor's memorial page it looked like he was very fucked up by the fact that he could do a rawlsian veil consequentialism thought experiment, where he saw himself in third person or forgot which agent was "him" and "his family" and then notice that his muscles werent moving in harmony with the logic of the results.

<<are you doing the best thing you could possibly be doing? why not?

become good

SPEAK TRULY, EVEN IF YOUR VOICE TREMBLES

you continue to underestimate the harm you have done and are doing

are you doing the best thing you could possibly be doing? why not?

The tools you have available are cognitive actions and motor actions. Use them to immanentize the eschaton. You have one life

if you were an alien suddenly transposed into your current body, what would you do now?

Pretend with every thought and action to be a much better person. Reach heaven through fraud.>>

https://grognor.github.io/archives.html

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theonyxpath · 6 years ago

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Matthew Dawkins here, with Meghan Fitzgerald’s Maa-Kep draft for Mummy: The Curse 2nd Edition! Enjoy!

Maa-Kep

Shadow of Pillars

Spies, Junta, Dapifers

We would never say we know better, of course. It’s just that not taking our advice would be a mistake.

I listened closely while he spoke. The people would love him, he said. They would offer their loyalty gladly, and in exchange they would gain power over their own fates. All it would take was a revolution, guns and fists raised high in silhouette against the orange blaze that would light up the night and banish tyranny. I could see his passion, his dedication. His logic was sound. His preparations were prudent. Even now, I laud his efforts.

He looked up from his maps and schedules to beam a smile my way. He cut a handsome figure, there in the candlelight, and I admit his plan had merit. It was a temptation, as surely as any convincing bait ever is. I smiled, too.

“So,” he said, “what do you think? Will it work?”

“It would have,” I assured him. “It would have worked very well, were it not for one fatal flaw.”

“What’s that?” he asked, concern writ plain in his bright eyes.

“You told it to me.”

Tradition of the Amulet

The relics of the Maa-Kep are protective talismans, badges of office, engraved emblems that declare something to be true, and unobtrusive seals that can hold back power, carry it, or transfer it from place to place. Worn or mounted, they passively soak in magic and secrets. Like their amulets, the Maa-Kep are subtle protectors and preservers of ideas and ideals, those who quietly move power from hand to hand or rein it in when it needs limiting for the greater good. They serve quietly but never let anyone forget how important they are. They absorb information, only doling it out when and to whom they believe it’s warranted. They’re the secret police of the Arisen, and the beat they walk is all of civilization. They shepherd ideological purity; sometimes those ideas come from the Judges, sometimes from the mortals the mummies guide, and sometimes from their own meret’s priorities.

Magnanimous in Victory, Blameless in Defeat

Maa-Kep rarely take the spotlight themselves, instead gathering information and then reporting it to someone else who will do the forward-facing work for them. This is partially because they believe to take credit is to disrespect their place as tools and useful right hands, passed down to them from the Judges and the Shan’iatu. It’s also for plausible deniability in case something goes wrong. It’s not that they throw their friends under the bus, it’s just that it’s easier to smooth things over later when they’re not the ones catching the heat. They’re loyal to their leaders but unafraid to speak truth to power — if only behind closed doors. They shape civilization around them by forever making corrections and adjustments to everything and everyone, whether with one quiet word or with a brute force tool — like a fellow mummy or a well-armed cult.

Foundations

In Irem, the Dapifers were originally a collection of middle managers — slave drivers, overseers, and convoy masters. They gradually made themselves indispensable, demonstrating their dedication to making sure Irem’s caravans ran on time and their understanding of the inner workings of empire. The Shan’iatu eventually recognized the guild’s potential to be so much more, and elevated the Maa-Kep to act as secret police whose true purpose was hidden from the other guilds. They preserved the ideological purity of Irem, making sure no one strayed from the path to glory and conquest in the gods’ names.

The Wheel Turns

The guild’s secret duty didn’t stay hidden forever; by the time of the Rite of Return, the others knew why the Spies had been chosen. Their fellow mummies don’t always remember it, though. Having a Maa-Kep in the meret is a slow pendulum swinging between trust and suspicion, as her comrades rediscover her covert goals over and over again; but by the time they remember, she’s always made herself too damn useful to ignore. To this day, it’s gauche to talk about it in polite company, and usually the meret’s cults other than the Maa-Kep’s itself aren’t in the know even once the Arisen remember. To those who don’t, the Junta are valued advisors and scouts, playing the roles of coordinator, majordomo, surveillant, appraiser, and yes, spy — it’s just that few realize this spy is always a double agent, even if it’s for their own good. (Usually.)

Maa-Kep are kingmakers and internal affairs agents, watchdogs and stewards. They are project managers who support their merets and cults, rooting out incompetence, corruption, and untrustworthy sorts. They watch over their allies but also constantly evaluate them. To those who do remember their purpose, a Dapifer is all those things as well as the conductor who guides the meret’s train along the rails and keeps everybody else in line. Some appreciate it; some resent it; and many feel differently depending on the Descent.

The Maa-Kep’s cults are extensions of themselves by way of surveillance, information gathering, and spreading out like a web of eyes and ears with the mummy at its center. The Junta are men in black and spymasters, but also keen investigators with cults full of detectives and journalists, and mysterious strangers who waltz into someone’s life, help him out for no apparent reason, then vanish into the ether — arranging people and events on a grand scale humans can’t see. They’re not the ones who give a man a fish; they’re the ones who teach him to fish by writing the manual and having minions leave it conspicuously on his desk without ever talking to him, watching him from across the street with binoculars while he reads it, and then expecting him to do it right.

Once, the Dapifers weren’t the ones with the big picture vision, instead enforcing that of the Shan’iatu. They were content with that… but the Shan’iatu aren’t around anymore. The Maa-Kep view themselves as the Shan’iatu’s true successors because they enshrine Irem’s highest ideals. They know how things are really supposed to be done, and how to make sure they’re done that way. The less they remember or care about their original mandates, the more they build their own versions of the grand vision in their minds and enforce those. They insist it’s what the Judges want — who better to keep the seats warm for the great sorcerers than the ones who stood by their right hands so long ago?

As Sothis Ascends

A Maa-Kep deals with immortality by resting assured she can rely on her powers of observation and knowledge-gathering to catch her up on anything she forgets or misses, and by staying focused on the minutiae. She can’t contemplate the existential dread of knowing she’ll probably outlive the human race if she’s busy micromanaging everyone else and poking her nose into their business 24/7. She might miss old friends, but at least she got to know them better than anyone else did — probably better than they knew themselves. Thus, they live on in her.

The patterns the Spies see and perpetuate in the world are those of behavior, relationships, and philosophies. They track the principles every society values and how it maintains its high road, or falls from it into a subversion or even perversion of its purported ideals. They understand how civilizations rise and fall by the integrity of their beliefs, their dedication compared to their hypocrisy, and how well their people work together.

Starfall

A Junta turns her back on the Judges because she sees what she believes is a flaw in the gods’ plans or comes to believe that something has corrupted even those lords of Duat. Those who grow to resent their servitude don’t do so because they hate the concept of serving, but because they feel they’re not being utilized to their full potential, they’re being ordered to uphold an impure idea, or their elegant work is stymied by frustrating obstacles beyond their control. Others fall to corruption themselves, losing faith in their purpose after standing vigil for so long or craving the spotlight after lifetimes of hiding in the shadows.

Vessels: Amulets

Who We Are

Internal affairs officer in a metropolitan police department, monitoring society’s dedication to its ideals through its law enforcement

Deep-cover espionage agent, collecting intelligence about cultures and nations around the world and only reporting back what will push her employers to act the way she wants them to

Project manager at a large company, raking in money so the cult can donate large sums to ideologically desirable groups

Butler and house manager for a rich and bustling estate belonging to another Arisen and consisting of generations of a dynasty cult

Trusted advisor to an influential politician or crime lord, whispering and nudging to influence governments, underworlds, or both

Beyond the Shadow of Pillars

Mesen-Nebu: You make an excellent vanguard, even if your materialistic streak makes you a bit of an embarrassment. We’d never say so to your face, though.

Sesha-Hebsu: Without you, many valuable secrets would be lost. Without us, your judgments would ring hollow.

Su-Menent: Curb your worst impulses, my friend. Your work is important, but not as important as you think it is.

Tef-Aabhi: It’s an intricate dance we weave, isn’t it? We both have long memories, but yours are so much more reliable. Pity, that.

Wadjet-Itja: One day, we’ll dig up the secret of how you managed your chicanery, and on that day, you’ll wish you never pretended at immortality.

#Onyx Path Publishing

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houseki-no-suffering · 6 years ago

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Genre: Hurt/Comfort, Romance, Human AU, 1960s AU Characters: Cinnabar/Phosphophyllite, Diamond, Euclase, Bort, Alex, Yellow

A/N: I just- i wanna take this moment to express my deep love and adoration for Antarc and for everything they did. You’ve always been too good for us. Also Alex, ty for being amazing. And thanks to @lapishead for betareding this. Enjoy!

Antarcticite’s silent presence had fit into the domestic monotony of the community with ease.

Like an unobtrusive new piece of the machinery, they would spend their days worrying about Sensei’s health with Rutile, assisting him, or helping Alexandrite with the children. Antarc didn’t make for a good teacher, but they possessed the strained willingness of someone who doesn’t know how to be indebted to people.

In the three weeks that they spent at the dormitories, they singlehandedly inspired Bort to pursue a military career, repaired the dorms’ electrical wiring and overthrew Cinnabar’s life without exchanging more than a couple of words with them.

It wasn’t like Antarcticite was especially charismatic, quite the opposite in fact: they did not like people. However, they acted out of a unique, humble brand of fairness that made their character stand out even when they tried to stay on the sidelines. It was a necessity to be of use. It had Phos literally hanging off Antarc’s every word by the end of the first week.

Maybe it started when Euclase asked Phos to give up their room for Antarc. Phosphophyllite was the youngest kid and the only one to sleep alone in what was the only spare room, it made sense for them to give it to their new guest. But Phosphophyllite complained and whined so much that a flushed Antarc asked Euclase if they could share the room with the kid.

Or maybe it started with Phos’ exuberant enthusiasm. Cinnabar was used to it but Antarcticite was embarrassed to no end by Phos’ antics and they would try anything to keep them busy or quiet. It was how Phos bribed Antarc into becoming their new school tutor and into telling Phos an elaborate recount of their life and of their job, of how they were working with the government and the aeronautics to prevent a new war.

When Alex scoffed, mumbling that it was just anti-soviet capitalist propaganda, Cinnabar silently agreed with them, more to disagree with Antarcticite than out of an interest in politics. Maybe that was how it started, like an ideological divide. Almost overnight, there was a rift between Phos and Cinnabar where there had never been one, and Cinnabar would ride to the lighthouse alone after school while Phos followed Antarc like an excited puppy.

There was a part of Cinnabar that still wanted to reprimand themselves for doing nothing. They should have talked with Antarc, talked with Phos, confronted Phos, told them how they were feeling. Or maybe some part of them already knew that they would lose this battle and it was just shielding Cinnabar from more hurt. The more involved they would be, the harder to let go.

Cinnabar went through those three weeks like a diver jumping off a cliff: leaping into the void, holding their breath and hoping that the water below would be safe. They watched from the sidelines, telling themselves that it was okay and hoping to release a breath once this was over. And then, three days before Antarc was leaving, Phos asked Cinnabar to go for a ride again and broke it to Cinnabar that they would be leaving too.

Cinnabar woke up.

Phos’ ghost was still dancing before their eyes. The first rays of sun were filtering a silvery light through the wood shutters and Cinnabar scowled kicking the sheets away.

“Antarc’s gonna leave next week.”

“Yeah, I know.”

“I’m going with them.”

Mature people were supposed to process and archive a lifetime of occurrences, from the smallest of happenings to significant turning points. It should mean something that Cinnabar wasn’t able to get over just one simple thing.

The process of understanding and accepting life events had always seemed somewhat mechanical in Cinnabar’s eyes and, as much as they enjoyed being analytical, it only came naturally when their logic was applied to external issues. And their mind just happened to be an internal one.

“I’m going with them.”

The main problem wasn’t even the way Phos had looked at Cinnabar yesterday or that they had disappeared off the face of earth for years. It was the cacophony of sounds and words that had decided to resurface in Cinnabar’s mind at the mere mention of Phos. Memories were sociable things, they came in groups and they were always looking for attention. Cinnabar knew they should have repressed them deeper. Like Bort had said once: “Never leave a job undone.”

Bort probably meant that you should get to the root of a problem instead of burying it away or build yourself a castle of illusions. But Bort was probably born a functioning adult while Cinnabar’s inner child still had too much fun ruining their life to give up the position of absolute power. The fact that Cinnabar turned on the radio at high volume to ignore Phos’ voice had everything to do with it.

“I’m going with them.”

In the end, they had to run to get to work in time. They rushed down the street still fastening their coat as if they had not spent thirty minutes of their life contemplating the endless vanity of the universe. And then they rushed back inside because of course they would forget the tests.

Why couldn’t things exist just as simple, uncomplicated concepts? No time, no space, no memories or people, just intangible ideas floating peacefully in the universe’s mind scape.

Dragging themselves into the library, Cinnabar pushed open the door, a tangle of red bed hair and mismatched clothes.

“Hi,” they mumbled.

It took Alexandrite one glance to sense that something was off.

“Are you okay, sweetie?” they walked towards them, taking the papers away from Cinnabar.

“Yeah,” Cinnabar nodded, unsure what to do with their hands now that they had nothing to hold.

Alex took off their glasses as if to better look at them, their eyes soft.

“I’m not going to ask but you can talk to me, okay? I’m aware of the… things currently going on. The town’s small and Euclase likes to talk.”

“Good for ‘em.”

Alex chuckled, ruffling Cinnabar’s hair before the latter had any time to protest.

“Guess so. But talking isn’t that bad from time to time, is it?”

It was way too early for this. So early that part of Cinnabar’s anxiety must still be asleep because for a second they were tempted to actually speak their mind. They crossed their arms over their chest, rocking back and forth on the balls of their feet.

“Got nothing to say. Idiot’s back. Not my problem.”

Cinnabar regretted those words because now Alex looked like they had something to say too and Cinnabar had no idea what to do with the attention. After all, Phos had left with Chryso’s cousin, it was expected that Alex would be concerned about it. It also felt stupid to complain about a dear one being back. Most people had never had that chance, Lexi included.

“Always the realist, I see,” Lexi smiled, burying their interest, “well, it’s not like we have nothing else to do ourselves. Remember the archive?”

“No-“ Cinnabar paled.

“Oh yes! There’s a whole new section waiting for your radiant presence. I totally forgot about the 1955’s kids last time, my bad. It’s not that many. Don’t look at me like that.”

One enthusiast apology after the other, Alexandrite more or less shoved Cinnabar in the archive aisle. Cinnabar was inclined to think that Lexi was doing this on purpose as their own unobtrusive way of helping. Nothing like boring paperwork to keep an overthinker’s mind distracted.

“Thank you for your hard work. I’ll be over there, children’s section,” Alex chirped.

“Thanks.”

“You can do this, Shinsha.”

It sounded purposely generic. Then Alex put their glasses on again and disappeared down the corridor.

Cinnabar walked toward the desk with a loud groan. A few books and papers were already scattered over the wood, a sign that Alex must have noticed their mistake that morning and had been trying to fix it as best as they could. Student cards were piled up next to the ledger of what Cinnabar assumed was the 1955-1956 school year. It was as thick as an encyclopedia.

They climbed on the table, bringing one of their knees to their chest. They could either sit in silent contemplation the whole day or start working. Cinnabar’s thoughts would find a way to reach them anyway so they might as well keep their hands busy. That was what a mature person would do. Probably. Mature Cinnabar seemed like such a foreign concept.

“I’m going with them.”

Where was Phos going now? Was this still home for them? Did they have any choice in coming back? The more Cinnabar reminded themselves they should not care, the more they found themselves thinking about it. What of Antarc?

Cinnabar shut one of the drawers of the archive with more force than usual. The sound reverberated around the library, dissolving in the soft chorus of voices of the building. Cinnabar did not dare find an answer to their questions; what would there be for Cinnabar? Even if they knew, there was no point, so they kept writing down students’ names and dates, imitating Euclase’s calligraphy for the sake of consistency.

Euc had been the first to do archive work, when the school opened. They had been the one to help Sensei build the dormitories, the one to shelter the kids during the war and the one to let the orphans in when it ended.

Euclase was a mature person and they wanted Cinnabar to play family again. Was that what a mature Cinnabar looked like? It just seemed fake and sick in Cinnabar’s eyes. And yet they were confronted with the choice just a few hours later.

They were on their way home, hands sore and stained with ink from writing the whole day. It was late in the afternoon and the sky was tinted a deeper blue, a few stars had begun to light up.

Phosphophyllite had not been following them. Cinnabar refused to be so paranoid as to believe it, but there Phos was, right in front of them. They were sitting on the sidewalk along the town’s main road, the one that Cinnabar would walk at least once a day to get to work.

Phos was looking at them, they had seen Cinnabar coming. They had been waiting for Cinnabar this time and when Cinnabar was at hearing distance, but still distant enough to walk away if they wanted to, Phos stood up with ridiculous solemnity and walked towards them.

Cinnabar didn’t know why they did not run away this time because, when Phos started talking, they felt the same sense of nausea building up in their stomach.

“Hi,” Phos mumbled.

What an elaborate choice of words. Cinnabar crossed their arms on their chest, pressing their lips together.

“I- uhm, I’m sorry. About yesterday. Sorry. Didn’t meant to- well, I mean, it wasn’t on purpose.”

Phos was tormenting the hem of their sleeves. Now that they had Cinnabar’s attention, they were stubbornly avoiding their eyes. Why were the two of them even having this conversation if Phos was the first not to want it?

“So, that was one thing,” Phos let out a breathless chuckle, straightening their back as if they had just taken a weight off their shoulders. They looked like they had grown taller.

“Actually, I need to talk to you. I know you don’t want to, I wouldn’t want to talk with me either, not after everything…” the way Phos’ lips would twist in a resigned smile gave their expression a grieved feeling. It made this conversation even more unbearable.

Phos’ half-sentence hung in the air. It remained dangling between the two of them as Phos kept fidgeting with their sleeves and Cinnabar dug their hands deeper beneath their arms. They were focusing on breathing, counting the seconds between inhaling and exhaling, slowly. They felt like they were suffocating, hazy, as if they weren’t really there.

The seconds kept stretching by in groups of eight and seven with each breath. They became minutes, long like the years that lay between Cinnabar and Phos. Phos who still would not meet Cinnabar’s gaze and who wanted to be there just as much as Cinnabar did.

The thought that they should give Phos a chance crossed Cinnabar’s mind for a brief second. They should hear out Phos’ story, their excuses, they should put aside their own hurt and listen as Phos talked about how happy they had been with Antarc and why they had decided to throw it away.

Then Phos’ lips parted. Their eyes shone with a new resolution and they finally lifted them to meet Cinnabar’s. They stepped forward, coming into the light of a nearby lamppost. They had grown taller. They were taller than Cinnabar.

“Do you want to talk? With me?”

Even if it’s me?

Some memories are delicate, fragile things. When you unveil them, the beauty or the pain they carry with them comes out in soft waves, making you dizzy as you run your eyes over them. There is familiarity in those feelings, like an echo, the smell of an old attic that has remained sealed for too long and where each flake of dust reminds you of a different time.

But it’s fragile. Just as you begin to remember, those memories shatter. Familiarity dissolves as old images crash with new ones, merging together, turning to smoke, being carried away by the present, dispersed forever.

Into the cold yellow of the lamppost’s light, Phos looked old. Older than their years. They looked tired, weary. It was in the way they carried themselves, in the way their smile did not reach their eyes, in the way their cheeks would dimple and in the way Phos would hide their eyes under their fringe. Just like Cinnabar.

In that moment, Cinnabar understood what a mature person would do. A friend, a true friend, would throw away their own feelings and ask Phos what was wrong. Because something was, something was terribly wrong.

“Please?” Phos added. It was like a mumbled stab to Cinnabar’s resolution.

They were aware of how much Phosphophyllite had meant to them and of how much they still wanted Phos to mean. Cinnabar would not hope for anything, but this was still Phos, they were in front of them, hidden beneath layers of memories and experiences that they had made without Cinnabar.

But it had been Phos’ choice. Cinnabar had let them go once, because they dared not wish for anything, and they would do it again because wishing was still scary.

They thought about their resentment, about departing coaches and about Antarcticite. They thought that Phos would be going home to Antarc eventually and that they would take better care of Phos than Cinnabar. They thought about Bort’s words.

You owe them nothing.

“No,” Cinnabar pushed the syllable past their lips. It was like remembering how to talk and they regretted it immediately after.

“Alright,” Phos said. The look that crossed their face sat uncomfortably in Cinnabar’s chest. Then Phos stepped aside to let Cinnabar pass, moving out of their way as if they would disappear if they only could.

Cinnabar walked past them as if through a haze, clinging to reasons and an anger they could already feel dissolving. The echo of Phos’ voice came to them as if through water.

“Goodnight,” it said.

#houseki no kuni #land of the lustrous #hnk #cinnaphos #cinnabar #phosphophyllite #1960s au #fic tag

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neonbluebell · 6 years ago

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Reminder: The “political compass” and “Horseshoe theory” are intentionally inaccurate pieces of propaganda

It’s a device designed to give political validity to ideologies that lack coherency and consistency with their espoused values, and is slanted to look favorably on Right-wing ideology.

Prior to the growth in popularity of the political compass (pictured)...

...the world and it’s people conceptualized the political spectrum like this....

...Although, please keep in mind that this version is modernized. Conservatism, prior to the United States adaptation and use of the word, meant something closer to (but not the same as) Traditionalism, and tended to include more neo-classical virtue-ethics-y sort of stuff, for example. But we’re talking in the here and now, and being simple and accessible whilst being accurate to current usage of the language is more important. Now, chances are, you’ve seen this same chart bent around to look like this...

...which is why “Horseshoe theory” is called what it is. It’s implication is that the far Left and far Right have more in common than the center does. This idea came from the 20th century proliferation of theory based on the work of Lenin (who is the basis of Maoism, Stalinism and despite his separatism from the Bolsheviks, Trotsky) and it’s implementation. Whilst socialism had existed, both in societies and as varying social theories for thousands of years, this new wave of thinking presented a radical departure from the norm - it posited that social hierarchy and authority, particularly the state, could be used to create liberty. By utilizing authoritarian power for the good of the people, rather than the good of the state, social order and financial plenty could both proliferate. Once people grew accustomed and happy with the new state of affairs, the state would no longer have to regulate and organize due to people wanting to keep things going as they are, and the state would become redundant and whither away. Thus, “Authoritarian Leftism” was born, a new and untested theory that became incredibly popular for a wide range of reasons. Perhaps foremost among them was that this theory engaged with a real problem - for plenty to exist, social stability needed to be maintained, something that was constantly being upturned by imperialistic invasion, looting and colonization in the nations where it became popular. The USSR was born out of German imperialism, the CPV was born out of French and American imperialism and the CCP was born out of British and Japanese imperialism. But, outside of resisting imperialism (which these new social structures were actually very good at. The fact that North Korea still exists is testimony to that), the reality of this theory was far different. Socialism/communism (two words that historically mean the same thing, though in the post Lenin era, communism came to have additional authoritarian connotations) are by definition control of the means of production (the places where things are made, and skills are performed. Workplaces, essentially) and by the working class rather than an owning class, and the holding of raw resources in common. In no nation that adopted these ideologies did this happen. Control over the means of production was in the hands of “workers councils”, who were essentially elected representatives of the working class. The problem with that was that these people, by joining these councils, effectively were no longer members of the working class. They controlled and administrated the means on production, effectively acting as a new owning class, and replicating the problems that existed under capitalism. These councils were in turn beholden to the state, meaning that true power was far from the working class, and instead resided with an elite ruling class. And, unsurprisingly, elite ruling classes care very little about the people, and terrible atrocities occurred. And here is where we see Horseshoe Theory begin to fall apart in entirety. If it wasn’t EVER socialist or communist, regardless of what they called themselves, well... It wasn’t ever socialist or communist. And as such, placing these ideologies alongside far Left ideologies is a mistake. Because other far Left ideologies actively resisted authoritarian “communism” when they realized what it was actually about.

This flag is the Iron Front flag, also known as the Antifascist Circle. It is an incredibly popular anarchist insignia. The three white arrows represent what they are resisting - Nazis, monarchist and communists (again, the phrase in context means authoritarian “communists”, not socialists). It’s from 1933. The far Left rejected authoritarian “communists” from the very beginning, or at least before anyone else except the fascists. Similar movements sprung up within the USSR - Anarchist sailors, realizing that the Bolsheviks weren’t who they had said they were ideologically, held up in an act of resistance at Kronstadt naval base. Their demands included freedom of speech, the end of deportation to work camps, a change in Soviet war politics, and liberation of the “worker’s councils” from Bolshevik control. They were killed to a man with machineguns. The Black Army, revolutionary anarchists who had been major players in the revolution were denounced and killed. Authoritarian “communists” have ALWAYS been the enemy of the rest of the far Left. Now, if authoritarian “communism” isn’t socialist/communist, and is an enemy of the Left wing, and created a hierarchical society dominated by unquestionable absolute rulers supported by armies of secret police under a regime that was an enemy of any of it’s people considered socially undesirable? It isn’t similar to fascism. It’s just fucking fascism. And saying that fascism and fascism have a lot in common is obvious, because it’s all Right wing ideology. But what of the most famous fascists, the Nazis? You know, the National Socialists. Well, this one is simple - did the workers control the means of production, or was it a capitalist nation where those controlling the means of production were only beholden to the state? The answer is the latter, just like the USSR and their ilk. They were by definition NOT SOCIALISTS. This is an important thing to internalize, that what people label themselves is a matter of optics and political convenience, especially when dealing with populist movements. We understand this when we discuss nations that call themselves democratic, but are not. It’s exactly the same for socialism and communism. With this groundwork laid, let’s (finally) talk about the political compass. As has been established, the upper Left quadrant is in fact the upper Right quadrant. The lower Left quadrant exists, the upper Right quadrant exists...

...But what about the lower Right quadrant. The libertarian Right? Well, the “libertarian” Right (yeah, you know what those quotation marks mean already, don’t you?) operates under the notion that hierarchy occurs naturally, and providing that such power was not gained via or is not used for coercion, intimidation, violence or otherwise, is just and fair. This is the Non Aggression Principal (NAP) that is the heart of “libertarian” Right thought. It’s intent is to maximize freedom, whilst having a clear framework for where your freedom ends and another person’s begins, whilst protecting a core Right wing value - the right to create legacy (To assure that your kith and kin will be cared for by allowing and protecting your rights to personal and private property ownership, especially capital (again, the places where things are made and skills are performed) and raw resources). Involuntary taxation is therefore categorically a violation of the NAP, and within this framework of thought, equatable with theft. Regulation of industry is considered coercion, and violates the NAP. Socialism, which would abolish private property (ownership of capital and raw resources) but allow the retention of personal property (the house you live in, your car, your shoes, your toothbrush) is considered theft. Indeed, the only compatible economic system with this economic system is unregulated, free-association, “laissez-faire” capitalism. And this is exactly where “libertarian” Right ideology becomes incoherent. Because we hadlLaissez-faire capitalism in the Industrial Age. Your unregulated factory that you have knowingly built to be dangerous to cut costs is not ethically different from booby trapping your yard, and looting anyone who's killed. You are knowingly exposing people to danger for profit. And providing you stick warning signs up that state it’s dangerous, you haven’t violated the NAP - because they posit that people freely choose to enter these spaces. They are exposing themselves, according to this logic. The inevitable monopolies that come without regulation of capitalism and MASSIVE taxation on the wealthy mean that capitalists can quickly own whole towns and cities. And they are inevitable, as the best business practices under capitalism are to pay the least you need to in order to retain your workforce, maximize profit, and to prevent your workers (who know the industry) from being able to get enough money to acquire their own capital and become a competitor. If you control all the money, all the food, all the shelter, etc? When people can't afford to live, to eat, to have a home, that's explicitly your fault. And no, they can't just leave to go work for another overlord who's offering better pay, because they have no money to move. At best, they can flee as effective refugees - and that means you've got to abandon your possessions you can't carry, risk hunger, thirst and exposure on the road, etc. Forcible relocation is violence, institutional disenfranchisement is violence, the inability to be free to pursue happiness is violence. It's not all truncheons and guns. Women, PoC, people who are openly queer all face issues of harassment, violence, disproportionate pay and more in our current environment. How's it going to be when no-one is stepping on the neck of bigots? People with disabilities, especially severe physical or developmental disabilities, are already shoehorned into poverty by our society. What happens when they're effectively ruled by a multi-billionaire who only sees value in people as labor tools? Right “libertarianism” is liberty only for an elite, wealthy class of rulers, who regardless of the NAP wield truly absolute power. And what do we call a social arrangement that explicitly hates the Left wing, has absolute rulers, and that disenfranchises, harms and kills “undesirables”? That’s right! It’s fascism! And this is why the political compass is propaganda - Three quarters (3/4) of it contains the ideology of fascism. It’s fascist propaganda. So, if the bottom right corner of this compass is actually the top right corner, we’re left with this...

...Or, if we clean it up, this...

...And if we polish it up and add our detailed data...

We end up back where we began, with an easy to understand political spectrum that makes perfect sense. So why was it over-complicated? What was the end goal of such an action? Well, once you get to this point, something becomes apparent - the dichotomy is between liberty and authority. Between equality and hierarchy. Between sharing and hoarding. Between fighting to uplift ALL of your fellow human beings, and fighting to uplift yourself at their expense. It’s because, once you reach this point, it becomes apparent that it’s as simple as good versus evil. That being a Leftist is an ethical responsibility. And I’m aware that that’s a HUGE assertion to make. But if you call a spade a spade, and stop playing games with language and semantics, this is the only conclusion I can rationally come to.

#Left #Socialism #Liberalism #Libertarianism #Right

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itchoosesme · 5 years ago

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Context

The transformative impact of the covid-19 pandemic does not require much introduction but its progress prompts fundamental questions. When it comes to architecture and urbanism we can see once again how the relationship between private space and public space has changed. Previous spatial patterns connecting public with private space have been disrupted which for many reduced an earlier enthusiasm for city living. With our studio we look at new spatial realities as part of a long lasting relationship between architecture and disease. It is in many ways rather obvious for the practice of architecture to be historically linked with the practice of medicine. In ways of teaching; going as far back as Book 1 by Vitruvius written in the 1st century BC. To ways in which public health (or lack thereof) forced structural changes upon cities and their buildings. 'The Sewer Network of Central London' would have never been build if it wasn’t for successive cholera epidemics throughout the 19th century. The lattice of sewage systems required roads above to become wider and straighter as such, generating the current London street grid. Modern architecture moved away from the 19th century decorated interior with its wall coverings, carpets and draperies in its campaign for health. This new paradigm propagating sanitized well ventilated interiors would help fight wide spread tuberculosis in early 20th century Europe. In modern architecture form not only follows function but also the fear of infection. From the widened streets of London lined with trees to antibacterial brass doorknobs in clear white interiors, architecture has been in part shaped by disease. With this studio we observe an implicit connection between spatial design and healthcare. As we speculate on new spatial realities we cannot but think through a sense of continuity; from mid 19th century urbanism to early 20th century modernism. This is important for we do not want to merely focus on mitigation measures in reference to guidelines such as those published by World Health Organization (WHO). We do not glorify teleworking nor distance learning. We do not give up on concepts of urbanity and/ordensity. We don’t observe the widening of space between people as most critical but a broadening of socio-economic divisionas a consequence of this pandemic. We are concerned with a perpetual architectural evolution in which spatial paradigms are subject to radical change symmetrical tothe evolution and spreadingof disease.

Aim

The production of prototypical spatial installations presenting radical thinking on spaceshaped by disease.Such installation should operate as a manifesto concerned with forms of ideological and aesthetic representation. We are interested in reading spaceas a series of connected events, implicitly transitional as we explore new (im)material relationships between private space and public space

Work Flow

We will structure this studio in small collaborative groups of 3 (with one exception since we are 14 students). For your first week of work (after our introduction) each group starts with the compilation of an initial research on particular ideological &aesthetic references in relation to the studio topic. During our second studio day of September 23 each we will present this research to each other.To help you in the use of various media Olivier Otten & Daphne Heemskerk from http://high-rise.nl/indexwill run a ‘Multiple Media’ studio in parallel to this Thematic Design Studio. They will support you in continuously thinking and re-thinking the act of re-presentation.They have organised an MM Workshop‘Reading the Surface’on Friday18 September during a site visit to Quarantine area Rotterdam (Heijplaat). With this workshop and following workshops we want to differentiate the act of mapping ‘Cartesian Space’ from mapping‘Experiential Space’. These kind of concepts will become more clear in the further development of the studio.During the second week we start with the observation and registration of a project site. This exercise is again supported by an MM Workshop during which you will explore the medium of film for the use of film will be used as a representational/design instrument structuring this first phase of this project. With your (filmic) site definition you are asked to read space as a series of connected events, implicitly transitional observing relationships between private space and public space.On September 30th, our third studio day, we will present first video drafts to each other.The following weeks each group continues the development of their filmic site investigation diversifying ideological & aesthetic explorations. To support the development of design speculations within your project site we will gradually work from film towards the production of drawings and the production of models. These will be discussed during weekly group tutorials; providing a forum for debate on form & content. ‘Models’can be negotiated by means of various media; film, collage, drawing, model-making, performance, writing, etc.Each student is asked to keep a ‘Visual Logbook’capturing various conceptual & formal shifts as part of the design process. Olivier Otten & Dapne Heemskerk will support you in the creation of a visual logbook starting with Workshop #3 ‘Inter(Zine).The intermediate outcome of this work will be evaluated and discussed as part ofa midterm review on Friday October 30th.Following the midterm review, each group is asked to develop a thesis; merging various representational strategies (grouping various ideological&aesthetic explorations) and put forward a proposal for the production of a prototypical spatial installation presenting radical thinking on space shaped by disease. At this point concepts and explorations are to be materialised in high resolution design proposals. Students are recommended to use the available workstations. In the digital production studio, you will be able to work with 3D printing, laser cutters and a CNC milling machine. In the woodwork studio’s you will be able to work with professional woodworking equipment such as cutting tables, a milling machine and planning machines. In the metal workshop you will be able to work with equipment for welding, sawing, cutting, turning, forging and bending steel. In the ceramics & plastics studio you will be able to work with clay, plaster and various moulding resins,as well as hard plastics. Ceramic products can be baked in ovens. The outcome of this final phases will be evaluated and discussed during a final review on Tuesday December 8th.

Content and Syllabus

This studio allows student-centred design explorations as part of a collaborative studio. Interior architecture is about nurturing a collaborative intelligence; outside the singularity of one person, one studio, one school, one city. Students develop a design project to a high degree of spatial, material and intellectual resolution. Students develop and manage their own research agenda exploring the wide domain of Interior Architecture and Design. They do this in critical proximity to work produced by other students/practitioners.Teaching and Learning Methods The course consists of 11studio sessions+ 1 final evaluation session in which students discuss their work with a tutor. Students work in small collaborative groups. Students will present intermediate work as part of a formative assessment at midterm. Students will present final work as part of a summative assessment at the end of the project.Assessment criteria Please refer to MIARD Handbook for a complete overview of the final competencies (exit qualifications) that are established in accordance with national and international guidelines. These are the skills that enable students to enter the professional field and work on their own or in interdisciplinary collaborative teams.

Creative ability: They understand complex issues affecting their field of practice and look beyond disciplinary norms with a critical, imaginative and flexible approach to their work. They seek to impact the field of interior architecture and spatial practice. Capacity to conduct self-directed research:They can identify relevant subject matter, questions, and methods to formulate a position and distinct areas of research, design and writing.

Critical reflection and awareness of context: They can critically reflect and analyze issues relevant to their field of practice across a broader social-cultural, historical and theoretical context.They are able to make informed decisions about the circulation of their work among these contexts.

Communicative skills: They can clearly communicate their intent, context, process and research through different formats and media to professional and general audiences.

Capacity for media and technology: They approachmedia analytically and employ novel technologies. They use tools inventively to affect their practice, the profession and society.Making and material ability:They areable to creatively execute fabrication processes, techniques and material research across a specificity of scales and contexts.Organizational skills:They demonstrate a comprehensive ability to self-organize, plan, manage and execute complex and creative projects effectively on their own and in collaboration with others at a professional level.

Assessment Requirement Design submission 100% Students are expected to apply themselves diligently to their studies and, in particular, to comply with attendance requirements of the unit and to submit all work as prescribed.

References Drawing Futures Book free PDF download. Edited by Laura Allen andLuke Caspar Pearson, Executive Editors: Bob Sheil and Frédéric Migayrou, November 2016http://www.ucl.ac.uk/ucl-press/browse-books/drawing-futuresX-Ray Architectureby Beatriz Colomina, Lars Müller PublishersFurtherDeleuze, G. 2003, On Franis Bacon: the logic of sensation, Trans. W. Smith, D. ContinuumDeleuzeG, 1991Empiricism and Subjectivity: An Essay on Hume's Theory of HumanNature translated by C Boundas (Columbia University Press, New York); first published1953Glanville, R (2003) An Irregular Dodekahedron and a Lemon Yellow Citroën , in van Schaik, L ed. (2003b) The Practice of Practice, Melbourne, RMIT PressJean Labatut, History of Architecture through people, JAE Journal of Architectual education 33, no 2 (November 1979)Maurice Merleau-Ponty, 1993, ‘Eye and Mind’, in The Merleau-PontyAesthetics Reader:Philosophy and Painting (Evanston, IL: Northwestern University PressMaurice Merleau-Ponty, 1968, ‘The Visible and the Invisible’, Northwestern Univer

#designbrief

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chasingparamasturbatoryillusions · 7 years ago

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So you wanna Myers-Briggs your character?

Trust me - I know this has been done before. Someone has done this. But I haven’t, like, seen it around or anything, so I’m gonna drop some knowledge on these four little letters and what they say about your character - and, more importantly, how to figure out your character’s type. First off, there are two ways to MB type your character. The first of these is the typical E vs. I, S vs. N, T vs. F, J vs. P ideology - Extrovert vs. Introvert, Sensing vs. iNtuitive, Thinking vs. Feeling, and Judging vs. Perceiving. I’m sure most of the time when y’all want to type y’all’s characters, this is the format you use, and it’s the one most of the online quizzes I’ve taken also use. But, for the most part, this is not how I personally type my characters - and, to be honest, most of the time I just use the quizzes to validate what I’ve already guessed from using the other format. Not that I think the quizzes are accurate; most of the time they type me incorrectly, which is why there’s only one or two that I really liked, back when I solely used those. But, like I said, I tend to not use that format so much anymore but use the second - and that’s the one this is going to focus on: the Jungian Cognitive Processes. Now, as opposed to the four letters, there are eight cognitive processes. This already sounds like it’s more complicated, right? But the truth of the matter is that those processes are grouped into two groups of four, and of those two groups, you have one main process. So instead of trying to figure out four letters, you’re figuring out two processes, which can be a lot easier. (Now, yes, a character technically has each of the eight in a specific order - they each have their own role to fill - but for our purposes, we only need the main two.) So - what are the two groups?

The first group - the Perceiving functions - focus on how your brain takes in information. The second group - the Judging functions - focus on how you make decisions. Simple! Now we’ll focus on each of the functions in those groups and go from there. There are four ways your brain can take in information: -Extroverted Sensing -Introverted Sensing -Extroverted Intuiting -Introverted Intuiting which, again, sounds complicated. But here is what each of those mean in regards to real life. Extroverted Sensing is very much an “in the moment” form of taking in information. What you are currently experiencing - what you touch, taste, see, smell, hear. It is very focused in the physical world. Introverted Sensing compares what you are experiencing now with something you have previously experienced. Like those “spot the difference” images - comparing one with the other to figure something out. Extroverted Intuiting is your brainstorming function. Someone gives you an idea, and you go over all the possible ways it could work out. There is a focus on intent and the possible ways things are connected with each other. Introverted Intuiting is your leap function. When you don’t know how you know something, but all of a sudden - !!! - you know it. Now, characters may use a multitude of these, but there is one that sticks out the most, one that they rely on more than the others. Once you have that one, you can go to the next group. Just as with taking in information, there are four ways you can make decisions: -Extroverted Thinking -Introverted Thinking -Extroverted Feeling -Introverted Feeling which maybe sounds a little less complicated than the first four, but we’ll go over what those mean in real life terms as well. Extroverted Thinking is one of the two logic/data functions. It takes the objective facts given and then makes charts, graphs, outlines, something external and once all of that is compiled, makes a decision from that. Introverted Thinking is the other logic/data function. It uses the same objective facts but builds theories internally on what those may mean, looking for consistencies and inconsistencies and making decisions based on those. Extroverted Feeling is one of the two emotions/values functions. It is what I consider the Ethics function - it focuses on what is best for the group as a whole and makes a decision based on that, regardless of what my personal values might be. Introverted Feeling is one of the two emotions/values functions. It is what I consider the Morals function - it focuses on what is most consistent with my personal values and makes a decision based on that, regardless of what society or the group’s values might be. As with the perceiving functions, your character may use different functions at different times, but there will be one that sticks out the most, one that they rely on more than others. Now, before we go on to the next part, there are some complications. A character with an introverted judging function WILL have an EXTROVERTED perceiving function. In the same manner, a character with an extroverted judging function WILL have an INTROVERTED perceiving function. So, if you’re having trouble, figure out which function is their most dominant function - the function out of all eight that they rely on the most - and that should help you figure out the second one. Once you have your two functions, figure out which of the two is the one they use the most. This is what is known as their Hero function, and the second is what is known as their Parent function. From these, you can figure out their type. If their Hero function is one of the introverted functions, then their first letter is an I; if their Hero function is one of the extroverted functions, their first letter is an E. If either function is sensing, then their second letter is an S; if either function is intuiting, then their second letter is an N. If either function is thinking, then their third letter is a T; if either function is feeling, then their third letter is an F. If their Hero function is one of the perceiving functions (how they take in information), then their fourth letter is a J; if their Hero function is one of the judging functions (how they make decisions), then their fourth letter is a P. Now. This may still seem overwhelming. I know it did to me at first, and sometimes it’s hard to figure out where characters can go. Also, I know having a long list like this doesn’t always help without some examples, so here are some characters I’ve typed so that you can get a general idea of how this works. Right now, I primarily write in the Hannibal fandom, although I have characters from other fandoms as well. I’m using characters from a couple of fandoms - including characters I don’t write - to try and help this make more sense. My first example is Will Graham, from the book Red Dragon. Will Graham’s Hero function is Introverted Intuiting, which is characterized by random !!! leaps. When Will Graham caught Hannibal Lecter, he just knew all of a sudden that Hannibal was the Chesapeake Ripper. it wasn’t until later that he realized this had to do with the drawing of the wounded man in Hannibal’s office. This is his introverted intuiting at work. Will Graham’s Parent function is Extroverted Feeling, which is characterized by making decisions based on what is best for the group as a whole, regardless of personal values. When Will Graham decided to help Crawford and the Bureau track down the Tooth Fairy, he did so because he believed that he would be serving the greater good; he would not have been able to live with himself if any more families were killed because he had not gotten involved. He values those families above his own personal sanity; this is his extroverted feeling at work. Because his Hero function is Introverted, his first letter is I. Because one of his functions is Intuiting, his second letter is N. Because one of his functions is Feeling, his third letter is F. Because his Hero function is from the Perceiving group, his third letter is J. Will Graham, from the book Red Dragon, is thus an INFJ. My second example is Will Graham, from the tv show Hannibal. (Because their types are different, which is important in the fandom.) Will Graham’s Hero function is Introverted Feeling, which is characterized by making decisions based on one’s own personal set of values, regardless of what is best for the group. Will is described as self-righteous by other characters, but more importantly, he personally believed that Hannibal Lecter should not be imprisoned and so used him as bait so that he might be free, regardless of the fact that Hannibal was a cannibalistic serial killer who would likely murder and cannibalize people again if freed. This is his introverted feeling at work. Will Graham’s Parent function is Extroverted Intuiting, which is characterized by brainstorming and seeing connections. Will Graham catches killers by getting into their heads, by seeing how they killed their victims and then brainstorming why they might have done that particular action with these particular victims, trying to see and find all the connections to reach one particular person. This is his extroverted intuiting at work. Because his Hero function is Introverted, his first letter is I. Because one of his functions is Intuiting, his second letter is N. Because one of his functions is Feeling, his third letter is F. Because his Hero function is from the Judging group, his fourth letter is P. Will Graham, from the tv series Hannibal, is thus an INFP. My third example is Fox Mulder, from the tv show The X-Files. Mulder’s Hero function is Introverted Thinking, which is characterized by taking objective facts and building theories around them. I feel this one is self-explanatory. Throughout the series, Mulder is given the same data and facts Scully is given, but he makes decisions on them due to the theories he has about the world and how it works, how he can perceive them working together. This is his introverted thinking at work. Mulder’s Parent function is Extroverted Intuiting, which is characterized by brainstorming and seeing connections. This is something he proves throughout the series but is especially prominent in Grotesque (s3ep14). As opposed to Patterson, who follows what he remembers from one victim to the next, Mulder sees a connection between each of the victims (based on his theories as given by his Hero function). It is this ability to see connections that allows him to find Patterson as the next murderer, even though Patterson himself refuses to believe it. This is his extroverted intuiting at work. Because his Hero function is Introverted, his first letter is I. Because one of his functions is Intuiting, his second letter is N. Because one of his functions is Thinking, his third letter is T. Because his Hero function is from the Judging group, his fourth letter is F. Fox Mulder, from the tv series The X-Files, is thus an INTP. My fourth example is Dana Scully, from the tv series The X-Files. Scully’s Hero function is Introverted Sensing, which is characterized by comparing something you previously experienced with what you are experiencing now. Throughout the series, Scully needs evidence, real genuine proof, to believe Mulder’s theories. She tends to see the data and compare it with what she has already learned as a medical doctor; she often gives medical reasons why something might be happening, regardless of how likely that might be, because it fits with what she has already experienced. This is her introverted sensing at work. Scully’s Parent function is Extroverted Thinking, which is characterized by taking objective facts, compiling them in an external way (graphs, charts, outlines). This is something she proves throughout the series but is especially prominent in relation to how she deals with her cancer. Scully best understands having her cancer, how it is working, and how to treat it once it is in front of her in a real, concrete way. She can see the charts, the graphs of her progress, and this makes it concrete for her (as opposed to Leonard Betts (s4ep12), where her cancer was first suggested, which would have relied on internal thinking for true belief. She suspected but doubted and so required the external proof). Because her Hero function is Introverted, her first letter is I. Because one of her functions is Sensing, her second letter is S. Because one of her functions is Thinking, her third letter is T. Because her Hero function is from the Perceiving group, her fourth letter is J. Dana Scully, from the tv series The X-Files, is thus an ISTJ. I hope these have been helpful! If you have any questions, feel free to ask me, and I’ll see if I can help!

#[ psa from bandit ]#[ save for reference ]#[ this is totally rebloggable ]#[ also apologies this is L O N G. ]

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hotelconcierge · 8 years ago

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The Subprime Directive

no one likes us / i don’t know why

Trying to extract useful information from the 24-hour thinkpiece cycle is like trying to learn English by listening to low fidelity death metal: the signal to noise ratio is very, very low. (Admittedly, kind of a silly comparison—one imbues the audience with depraved bloodlust for unspeakable atrocities, the other is a genre of music.) The cacophony of 40,000 anhedonics exhausting every topical combination of syllables would be enough to institutionalize the Dalai Lama; words are infectious; once you find yourself forming political opinions about internet memes, your life is game over, A + B + Select + Start. I mean damn, I love pattern matching as much as the next former toy-sorter, but sometimes it’s okay to accept that a cigar is a cigar and a butterfly in New Mexico was having a bad day.

If you do want to stay “informed,” instead of doing something worthwhile like working at a soup kitchen or practicing the yo-yo, my advice is that you train yourself to zoom out. No one post-puberty will make a significant error of deductive reasoning. Nothing horrifies a teenager like hypocrisy: the first thing we learn out of Eden is how to circle A —> B around into Z —> A. Logic is easy, ask any expert on Aether. Nor will anyone worth rap battling commit a decisive factual error. Our flat earth has enough case studies to support even the most whacked ideology, ask any schizophrenic. Further, we humans of latitude have practiced the art of the squeal since our first lung expansion. We may be terrible at diagnosis, but we are the GOAT at identifying symptoms. So when you roll up your sleeves to shadowbox with a Bad Argument, you are going to face an internally consistent worldview backed by genuine hurt and fitting examples. This is why change is so difficult, and why other people are so infuriating: the problem is not bias, it is incompleteness. The only way out is to spot what is not included, the lie of omission, which requires perspective. Any given data point is both true and meaningless, a straight line across points makes you Nostradamus. Most arguments are nonsense, but when everyone chooses the same type of nonsense, that tells you something very interesting indeed.

With this methodology in mind, it is my contention that three of the most prevalent post-election news trends are designed with a single goal in mind: to prevent you from looking too closely at this picture—

—while humanity gets crunched into Google AdWords and fed to Cthulhu. The end of all things will be search engine optimized, at least we can take comfort in that.

Trend the first - Fake news: “Solving the Problem of Fake News” (New Yorker), “Donald Trump Won Because of Facebook” (New York Magazine), “Fake News Expert On How False Stories Spread And Why People Believe Them” (NPR), “Students Have 'Dismaying' Inability To Tell Fake News From Real, Study Finds” (NPR), “How Fake News Goes Viral: A Case Study” (New York Times), “How to Destroy the Business Model of Breitbart and Fake News” (New York Times), “The plague of fake news is getting worse -- here's how to protect yourself” (CNN).

Trend the second - Post-truth: “This Article Won’t Change Your Mind” (The Atlantic), “Why Facts Don’t Change Our Minds” (New Yorker), “Why facts don’t matter to Trump’s supporters” (Washington Post), “Why People Continue to Believe Objectively False Things,” (NYTimes), “Why We Believe Obvious Untruths” (NYTimes), “It’s Time to Give Up on Facts” (Slate).

Pause—why do these articles, I suppose it’s too meta to call them “fake news”, exist? I mean, human intransigence has been around since at least the 1980s. And yes, Breitbart sells souls wholesale, but for every article penned in blood by Mephistopheles there are 666 million (Snopes confirms) incorrect tweets, tumblr posts, reddit comments, and Facebook memes. Where do people really get their news? The Urban News Network has no wish to enter such murky waters, nor do they want you to ponder their 2016 election blindsiding and whether, perhaps, maybe, their self-righteous sensationalism even contributed to this abhorrent outcome. No, quite the opposite:

Private browsing and Adblock if you must click the links, these sites will give your computer herpes.

Denunciations of “fake news” both aggrandize the media and flatter their readers—who, after all, are being informed by the Pulitzer-winning journalism that America needs. This crowd is even more pleased by articles on our innate resistance to facts, social science skin flicks brought back pay-per-view. Fake news is a concrete, solvable problem, but “Post-truth”—and note that anyone who uses this phrase is not just drinking the Kool Aid but is doing a keg stand with it—“Post-truth” is cozily fatalistic. “Some people, they just can’t handle facts. What can you do?” Needless to say, every human intransigence piece references the Trump administration in either the first or last paragraph, except the Atlantic piece, which compensates via a cartoon illustration of a Trump supporter being unable to handle facts.

It’s comforting to know that everyone else is dumb, else Facebook would be out of business. But imagining that 3/4ths of the U.S. is occupied by orcs is actually a little scary. It’s too many people to hate, and they have guns, and besides, it’s no fun to be disliked. “Why would they be angry at us?”

Trend the Third - The Oxy and the Pity: “The Original Underclass” (The Atlantic), “2 of a Farmer’s 3 Children Overdosed. What of the Third — and the Land?” (NYTimes), “‘Deaths of Despair’ Are Surging Among the White Working Class” (Bloomberg), “Study: Communities Most Affected By Opioid Epidemic Also Voted For Trump” (NPR), “Orphaned by America’s Opioid Epidemic” (Washington Post), “Disabled, or just desperate?” (Washington Post), “Why The White Working Class Votes Against Itself” (Washington Post).

Not everyone absorbs information through the cultish repetition of buzzwords. So, to accommodate visual learners, the Washington Post has been kind enough to provide photos.

He returned in torn jeans and, with nothing better to do, went outside. He limped to the truck and fiddled with jumper cables. He set a fire inside an iron bin and burned some trash. He inspected a sheet of aluminum he had found, wondering how much he could sell it for. He walked into the woods and walked out. He looked at the road. A car hadn’t passed in a long while. It was 1 in the afternoon. The day already felt over. (Washington Post)

Madie Clark looks in on her granddaughter Zoie Pulliam, 10, and a visiting relative at their home in South Charleston. Clark moved into the bedroom where her daughter Amanda Pulliam and son-in-law Austin Pulliam died of heroin overdoses. (Washington Post)

This is poverty porn. Orphaned kids and burning trash and mothers trailing secondhand smoke and framed pictures of Jesus. Sunburns and Frito-Lays and rotting teeth and AM country radio in waiting rooms. Dead grass, chronic pain, highway-Walmart-highway tessellated on a map. The loss of manufacturing jobs. A people devoid of purpose, seeing no option but to kill the pain or else themselves.

If you think the above paragraph is accurate, then I bet you think rap music videos are an accurate depiction of urban black life. It’s a stereotype, a stereotype constructed for your convenience. There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your half-forgotten high school reading list. I don’t dispute that Dogville is accurate for some portion of the white working class. But it’s far from the whole picture.

Per fivethirtyeight: Clinton did well in medium-income, high-education counties; Trump did well in high-income, medium-education counties, pictured above. No one in a town of 95k median income is so overwhelmed by “economic anxiety” that they spaz out into intravenous heroin. #MakeAmericaGreatAgain is predicated on education, or lack thereof—class, not income. And to the neutral pH water crowd, that’s terrifying.

Different monikers have been proposed for the Urban News Network audience: blue tribe, White People, upper middle class, Aspirational 14%. For simplicity, I’m going to use “liberals,” but please do not interpret the following blast of vitriol as “conservative,” “leftist,” “anarcho-marxist,” or otherwise politically motivated. You will not find a policy proposal here. This is a critique of people.

The alt-right contends that a liberal belief in “multiculturalism,” uttered as a slur, is undermining the foundations of civilization. They’re delusional. Liberals don’t believe in multiculturalism at all. In its purest form, liberal ideology only recognizes two types of people: liberals, and the tragically misguided—who, if not for their brainwashing, would listen to hold music and take Zoloft like any sensible person. Oh sure, you can consume your culture. Dress how you will, eat your ethnic food and celebrate your ethnic holidays (how exotic!), place your religion on the mantlepiece, complain about white people on any number of white-people-owned forums and newspapers. Be as cultural as you want, as long as you choose cash or credit and don’t contradict the superculture. Zizek voice:

“The tragedy of our predicament, when we are within ideology, is that when we think we escape it, into our dreams—at that point, we are within ideology.”

Liberals do not want to look at cultural values, they do not even want to acknowledge that cultural values exist, because that would mean they have a set of cultural values, and ain’t nobody gonna FaceTime that abyss. So how do liberals explain the people who read magazines about car radios? If the FOX demographic contains human beings with thought-out opinions, then they are terrifying. But if they are would-be Tesla owners who have been cruelly deprived of Cotillion lessons, who have been tricked by Steve Bannon into liking Harley-Davidson and hydromorphone, who, as the saying goes, are “voting against their own interests”—then nothing needs to change.

As of late, this blog’s essays have been obsessed with a particular theme: how, in a capitalist society, defining yourself against something perversely encourages that something to exist. Your freakout alerts enemies, exes, and passing contrarians that they should rush to the other side; your panic deepens; soon enough you’ll pay the opposition to set up their bowling pins just so you can see them get knocked down again. But if/when your rage congeals into boredom and it’s time to silence a group once and for all, a different tack is required: pity.

The media coverage of the opioid epidemic aims to turn rural America into an Oppressed Group. It is the final bombardment of a culture war campaign that has been going on for decades, spearheaded by 600 episodes of This American Life crying “Look, even these savages have some nobility!” The Hallmark cards for Trump voters are not an attempt to heal a divided nation, they are Liberals Going Their Own Way. We want other groups to be post-truth, deprived of free will in an incoherent and unjust society, because this allows us to completely ignore them. For their own good.

Sam Altman of Y Combinator asked Trump supporters to explain to their vote. A few highlights:

“He is not politically correct.” Note: This sentiment came up a lot, probably in at least a third of the conversations I had.

“He is anti-immigration.” Note: This sentiment came up a lot. The most surprising takeaway for me how little it seemed to be driven by economic concerns, and how much it was driven by fears about “losing our culture”, “safety”, “community”, and a general Us-vs.-Them mentality.

“He is anti-abortion.” A number of people I spoke to said they didn’t care about anything else he did and would always vote for whichever candidate was more anti-abortion.

I humbly submit that NONE OF THESE ISSUES were discussed in the run-up to the 2016 election. “Political correctness” prompted an eye-roll and a mention of a rogues gallery weakman (e.g. Milo Yiannopoulos). Immigration was always discussed in terms of economic anxiety or xenophobia/racism, never in terms of “loss of culture.” As to abortion...“What is this, 2004? Who cares?”

I have no idea if Altman’s sample was representative, methodology not printed, standard disclaimers apply. But I am concerned. As Hollywood liberalism disappears deeper and deeper into its own fractalizing asshole, those outside its cultural sphere—in America, France, England, and elsewhere—will feel progressively less heard and respected, which will prompt liberalism to bury its head all the more. “How come the white working class uses government programs while railing against handouts?” Because you are the government. They’ll take what they can, but they’ll be damned if they beg for it. “Why are all these hicks voting for authoritarianism?” Exercise some basic cognitive empathy, please. They’re not voting for authoritarianism. They’re voting for fuck you.

All I’m asking for is honor in dueling: when someone raises a specific complaint, address that complaint, not what you think that complaint should be. I’m not saying that you have to be nice to Trump supporters. I’m not saying their opinions aren’t—arguably—myopic, evil, stupid. But it's far better to say that someone has stupid opinions than to say that someone is so stupid that they are incapable of having a meaningful opinion. Liberal insistence on the latter has turned political discourse into a vacuum where everyone can scream yet no one feels heard. You should see what it’s done to their kids.

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the-ninth-of-november-blog · 8 years ago

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Why the Inmates Will Run the Asylum

The future Secretary of Energy ran for president to close the Department of Energy. Education will be run by a woman opposed to public schools. Labor goes to the man whose employees say they “can’t think of anyone less qualified to enforce laws that are supposed to protect employees.” The Senate Indian Affairs Committee will be headed by a supporter of the Dakota Access Pipeline. The guy protecting Civil Rights laws made his career opposing them. Even the more conventional pick for Transportation has only one connection to transportation - a family shipping company once caught smuggling cocaine into Europe. A body on “vaccine safety” will be put together under an opponent of vaccination. Sober, serious positions in Homeland Security and Defense go to people with conspiracy theory obsessions. The guy meant to deal with Wall Street is from Goldman-Sachs; so are two others.

It’s possible to discern a pattern, is what I’m saying. It’s the theme of the times.

So why does DT nominate people who are the antithesis of their positions? Why is Congress indulging too?

It’s actually hard to say. The straightforward answer is, because he has populist and authoritarian tendencies, and that's often how it's done. But that's not very helpful; the real question is whether he's operating from a playbook, or just following his instincts - scrambling to get too much done in too short a time while being Donald. Both are certainly possible.

The Republican Playbook

The GOP playbook - especially the hyper-partisan, low-ideology version he's aligned with - argues for maximizing “victories” and maximizing liberal outrage. Anything Dems would unite to denounce but be unable to stop gets filed neatly under Victory. And his angry racist base - that 35-40% of the party that carried him to nomination - they are the #liberaltears drinkers.

The Authoritarian Playbook

The Putin playbook also advocates for this kind of behavior, and you can track Putin's habits spreading with his successful subversion of neighbors - in Hungary, in Turkey, in Georgia, in Ukraine until the latest revolution and war. For the Putin playbook it's about governing through promotion of chaos. Fight with parts of the government that aren't prepared to or used to internal fights. Then replace the heads of various branches with your people, institutionalizing politicized infighting within more and more arms of the government. Everything gets less efficient, but the reduced efficiency is visibly tied to the “establishment” fighting you. And the only way something big can get done reliably and efficiently is when The Leader takes a direct hand in a petty dispute (that, yes, he is often responsible for).

The Playbook an Illiterate Outsider Celebrity Developer would Improvise

On the other hand, it doesn't have to be from anyone else’s playbook at all. This is a guy who thought being rich made him qualified, and that DC insiders were the problem. Hiring the richest people he could find that know a lot about the sector in question has a sort of logical consistency, if you accept the original premises as valid. It just does.

...Of course, it could also be some combination of the three.

#who not to nominate #dt #the donald #trump #donald trump #the appointees

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santo-antonio · 5 years ago

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Growth is exploring past your understanding responding to the new challenges of the world letting go of old certainties to make space for new possibilites You must develop a strong self understanding before attempting to understand the world otherwise you will fall for bias’ and fallacies you will be a pawn in someone elses battle, you will be easily mislead by others because you easily mislead yourself, you will confuse the outer and inner worlds like the rorshacht test when the world presents you with an ambigious cloud your perception will reflect your inner turmoils, maybe you will see an angry parent figure, maybe you will see deaths and horrors this is a problem with overactive thoughts and emotions specifically of morality you will convert open questions into ideological claims instead of converting ideological claims into open questions A Tree can only grow as tall as its roots will support it

analytical claims vs synthetic claims analytical claims The only forms of knowledge that are absolute unviersal truths is maths and internally consistent logic, 1+1=2 is an analytical claim it is absolutely true cults may even try to get you to deny analytical claims to get you to signal absolute obedience (captain picard knew there are 4 lights but winston concededs the 5th and is reeducatied) pretty much everything else is a synthetic claim synthetic claims are a sy your physical body appears to be finite and has a seemingly solid boundary of the skin. the event horizons of various sense organs such as the pupils for the eyes the nostrils for the noze the ear canal for the ears etc etc are the bridges doors and windows to the outerworld what are the uses and limits of sensory data how does that relate to absolute knowledge i know i definitely saw a cat on the way to work and when i reached out to touch it i felt the softness of its fur, a vaguely animal smell but i also know the outer world appears to be infinitely detailed and boundless in every direction scale and dimension from sub atomic to atomic to the cells in your organs your organs in your body you as a person in your family/town/nation/company as a town near to a large city from a large city to a county/state fom a state to a nation from a nation to a continent from a continent to the globe from the planet to the solar system from the solarsystem to the galaxy, from the galaxy to the galactic cluster the universe has different rules for different contexts looking out from planet earth at the universe revealed some clear signals the universe is expanding not just the mass/energy within space/time but space/time its self appears expanding at an accelerating rate physics is not a unified field attempts to unify physics have been digging a deeper hole at the time of newton our understanding of the world was gaining clarity and precision einstein’s special relativity shows us that at speeds near the limit the rules of physics change einstien general relativity shows us that at gravitation forces near the limit of space time curvature a pocket of space and time called a black hole can form from which it is proposed you can never escape if you observe phenomena of the physical universe and you explore past what you understand Before you are ready to percieve the outside world clearly you must understand the uses and limitations of your senses and thoughts and emotions your inner world must become clear to you for you to escape the endless entangling cycles of false conclusions, false certainty, judgement, moral judgement, anxiety, outrage, anger, bargining, depression. The first important distinction to be made that grounds you in your lived experience is the inner and outerworld the inner world has many layers of senses and perceptions you are blind to the totality of sensory experience going around you there are blood hounds who can smell when you are 40 minutes late there is ultraviolet light from the sun that causes flowers to glow in attractive patterns to bees that we have lenses to eliminate there is infrared light emitting from your raditator and oven that doesnt blind you with its red glow, either our eyes are not atuned to pick up these frequencies just as when you breathe you might have knowledge of the human chemical process within you but you have a limited perception of the complexity of the situation, as you pause for a moment focus your mind on the experience of a deep soothing inhalation and a forceful exhalation you might have never drawn awareness to the knowledge that you are part of an oxygen-carbon dioxide cycle with plants, forrests and ocean microbes across the entire globe a chemical network of respiration, oxygen releases the calories in your food (O2 -> Co2) and photosynthesis a chemical network that uses carbon to store the energy of the sun(Co2 -> O2) the tree’s have a motive for participating in this exchange in balance with the human needs for oxygen breathing oxygen from trees does not diminish your awareness 1 cube meter of air around you contains 2.652×10^25 molecules in college a chemistry teachermade an uncomforatble calculation of the probability that we were currently breathing atleast 1 molecule of air that any historical figure had breathed breathing is a mixture of conscious and unconscious activity, how many people do you think consciously practice awareness that as they are breathing they are part of local and global cycles of chemical exchange when you read posts on social media, watch videos made by activists designed to agitate particularly ones with conclusive decicisions about groups of people embedded with moral compulsions are you conscious of the moral instructions being imposed onto you the false consclusions that trap you in a certain world view once you have concluded that a certain leader is either good or bad you have placed limits on your perception, confirmation bias is a natural consequence of the human brain and must be fought against to prevent devolving into a cult

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dota2noobm · 7 years ago

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how2to18 · 8 years ago

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IN JANUARY 1924, David Hilbert gave a lecture on infinity. To his listeners, the mathematician offered a parable of hospitality unhinged. Hilbert described a hotel with a countably infinite number of rooms, each occupied. The trouble comes when a new guest arrives: where, he asked, do we house her? The trick, infinity being infinitely capacious, is to move the guest in Room One to Room Two, the guest in Room Two to Room Three, and so on and so on, moving those in Room x to Room x+1. But don’t get too comfortable. Soon an infinite number of guests arrives all at once. Again, the solution is reassuringly, almost bathetically, uncomplicated. Each guest simply doubles their room number, moving from Room x to Room 2x — leaving an infinite number of odd-numbered rooms, a miracle of interstitial abundances.

In deepening Hilbert’s paradox, we might think of the symbolic status of the hotel in the years after World War I, when he conceived of and presented his work. A kind of chrome-and-bubble cosmopolitanism gleams in the lobbies of the fictionalized Grand Hotel. Its semi-publicness, internationalism, its connotations of locking, leaving, and lust on the lam, all mark the hotel as a supremely resonant topos of the interwar imaginary. Think of Jean Rhys’s Left Bank Stories (1927), Vicki Baum’s Menschen im Hotel (1929), and even Ernst Lubitsch’s Trouble in Paradise (1932), in which the hotel is the meeting place of strangers, lovers, soldiers, thieves, playboys, debtors, vamps, and queers. Remember, too, the soaring immigration rates, the flurry of border-crossing by those bereaved, displaced, or disaffected. Despite its sometimes vicious glitz and posh exclusion, the hotel whispers an urgent, plangent question: where do we put our guests? Hilbert supplements the query with vertiginous utopianism: by what ingenuities could we house the whole world’s dispossessed?

Darren Aronofsky’s mother! is about a house that is also the world, where a poet (Javier Bardem) flounders in a protracted state of creative sterility while his wife (Jennifer Lawrence) does all the emotional heavy lifting that brooding male artists require from their ladies. She is lovingly remodeling the house after a mysterious fire burned it to its foundations; since the film’s opening shot is of Lawrence herself, red-eyed and wreathed in CGI flames, we know where we are going and where we have been.

The couple trudges on in edenic boredom; he stares at blank pages and goes for long walks, while she mixes pigments and paints walls with an ardency we understand to be displaced. Suddenly, a stranger arrives: Ed Harris, at once alarming and charming. (We know from A History of Violence (2005) that it is bad news when Harris shows up unannounced.) The men talk to each other and take to each other, and, through the poet’s generosity — a generosity that is really self-loathing, alchemizing under the gaze of admiration into something fleetingly like self-love — the uninvited becomes the guest. Lawrence plays this first act with fragility, restraint, and desperate self-possession. Her house violated, her husband distracted, she suffers the accelerating encroachment of the exterior on her interior, a pressure which finds its formal correlate in cinematographer Matthew Libatique’s steel-tight close-ups and unrelenting panning. We get the sense that Lawrence would escape our scrutiny if she could.

Once the guest arrives, a logic of exponential duplication sets it: one guest becomes two, Michelle Pfeiffer playing the gloriously catty Eve to Harris’s chainsmoking Adam. They find the god/poet’s forbidden fruit (a mysterious glass memento from the house that had burned down) and unceremoniously destroy it. Two guests then become a family plot; the plot swiftly dilates and delivers an inheritance, then a murder, then a wake, and then a party. One becomes two becomes too many. The unwilling hostess, yanked into a celebration that is really a siege, kicks everyone out in an almost campy revision of Aronofsky’s own Noah (2014) — the guests break the sink and flood the kitchen, then are forced to leave en masse. Candescent with mutual resentments, the couple fuck for the first time in ages, and Lawrence’s never-named character leaps to eponymity: she is pregnant, and the second act can begin.

The party/wake is merely a rehearsal for the pandemonium of the second act, when the poet’s masterpiece — his scripture, achieved as if exogenously after the flood — fills the house with fans who quickly turn fanatical. Aronofsky’s allegorical imagination is most exuberant in this final act: logos and allegiance, word and bond, metastasize into ideology and violence. That once unwelcome Adam has produced an entire genealogy of human malice. The house swells with a history too compressed to be distinct: cross-cutting iconographies, the whistling shrieks of bullets, the ambient sounds of degradation, fear, and subjection.

The aesthetic mode here is that of the combat sublime: a shuttling between the overwhelming immensity and visceral particularity of armed conflict, simultaneously mapping war as a system and surviving war as a terrain. Think of Emmanuel Lubezki’s unending tracking shots in Children of Men (2006), the way one body set in motion is made to navigate unnavigable scenes of terror. Both films take the problem of the untrained civilian in the warzone as the grounds for their most astonishing technical virtuosity. Amid the dazzling, dizzying vicissitudes of modern warmaking, Aronofsky and Cuarón foreground pregnant women’s bodies as the privileged site for the crisscrossing temporalities of crisis: a double-pulse in the berserk distended present, where the future is continually foreclosed. In both cases, pregnancy is exceptional, overdetermined, Rosemaryesque, and already and forever the film’s, not the mother’s own. Indeed, mother!’s only mother cannot mother, placing her among the many women who would flee the regulating frame of patriarchy’s close-up if they could.

In January 1996, Jacques Derrida gave a lecture on hospitality. To his listeners, the philosopher offered a pun, what he called the pas d’hospitalité, where pas means both “step” and “no” — describing, therefore, the guest’s arrival as a transgression in two senses. The pas d’hospitalité is both a crossing of the threshold and an unstated but lively threat to the host. It is both the enactment of hospitality and the articulation of its eternal internal antagonisms:

It is as though hospitality were the impossible […] as though the categorical imperative of hospitality commanded that we transgress all the laws (in the plural) of hospitality, namely, the conditions, the norms, the rights and the duties that are imposed on hosts and hostesses, on the men or women who give a welcome as well as the men or women who receive it. And vice versa, it is as though ‘the laws (plural) of hospitality, in marking limits, powers, rights, and duties, consisted in challenging and transgressing the law of hospitality’, which would command that the arrivant be offered an unconditional welcome.

No matter how welcome you are, selon Derrida, you are never really as welcome as you ought to be. For Derrida, our “laws (plural)” remain conjugated, perversely, in both the imperative and the conditional. If a society comprised of latched doors still clings tenaciously to the idealized values of sanctuary and succor, then that society must create protocols and customs, “limits, powers, rights, and duties,” that constrain and qualify the relation of the guest to the host. In service of an ideal, expected, unconditional hospitality, we list provisos and set restrictions. Derrida’s deconstructionist brio is subtended by a dark, almost tragedian, understanding of the encounter between strangers: to enter the home of the host is to implicitly threaten her life; to greet the guest is to implicitly court disaster. Derrida’s hotel is Hilbert’s through a glass darkly: yes, there is always another room, but not because of some insatiable itch for infinity. The Derridean hotel would be an endless series of transgressions and impositions which pull taut the tensions between the imperative and the condition. Vigilant, cagy, the concierge watches to make sure you don’t pull a knife when you reach for your keys.

Combining Hilbert’s interminable guest list with Derrida’s robust cynicism, mother! literalizes the pas d’hospitalité, the step forward that is also a resounding negation. Every guest in the film’s house carries ruination like poison in her pockets. In interviews, Aronofsky has stressed that his film is “actually” about ecological devastation, but he either misses or dismisses the intimate link between climate change and refugeeism (the latter being the condition out of which Gilbert’s hospitality experiment could emerge). Instead, Aronofsky fixates on a woman’s body, her baby, and the house she attempts, with such futile resolve, to refurbish and renew. Far from fevered or obscure, the message is actually quite clear: protect the synecdoche, our mother earth — protect this beautiful, fragile house. Under this interpretive schema, the guests in mother! are the anthropocene: the great and ghastly pressure of humanity on the world’s ecohistory.

Phantasmatically transforming refugees into insurgents, Aronofsky turns need and supplication into theft. This is the symbolic work of xenophobia. But Aronofsky’s screechy eschatology, his telos of a house/world on fire, disregards the subtler and more urgent implications of climate change. An emergent and unfolding cluster of phenomena, not some pyrotechnic narrative climax, climate change affects the globe’s most vulnerable populations and thereby produces the sanctuary-seeking peoples whom Aronofsky would depict as labile fools, cannibals, and vandals.

What could it mean for this story to be one of abundant refuge rather than home invasion? How must we reinvent hospitality now that rates of homelessness, landlessness, will only continue to rise exponentially in the wake of climate devastation? In The Mushroom at the End of the World: On the Possibility of Life in Capitalist Ruins, Anna Lowenhaupt Tsing describes a mode of survival she calls “contamination as collaboration.” Tracing the matsutake mushroom across the globe because she hopes to draw both inspiration and theory from this hardy and adaptable fungus, Tsing insists that “staying alive — for every species — requires livable collaborations. Collaboration means working across difference, which leads to contamination.” This contamination is both transformation and loss: according to Tsing, we must risk our integrity and self-possession if we wish to live. This is what queer theorist Tim Dean calls the “ethics of the stranger” and what Judith Butler emphasizes in Precarious Life when she asks her readers to return to the state of vulnerability we could never really escape to begin with:

For if I am confounded by you, then you are already of me, and I am nowhere without you. I cannot muster the “we” except by finding the way in which I am tied to “you,” by trying to translate but finding that my own language must break up and yield if I am to know you. You are what I gain through this disorientation and loss.

This mutual undoing is where hospitality begins: not despite or instead of but through disorientation and loss. What’s certain is that we need films that cook up collaborative contaminations — not xenophobic paranoia. Films that can think with the roomy, rangy zest of a mathematician chasing infinity — which is to say, with love.

Nolan Gear is a PhD candidate at Columbia University, where he researches the relays between early film and literature. He will be teaching a course on cinema and modernism this coming spring.

The post “mother!” and Her Guests appeared first on Los Angeles Review of Books.

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