#discuss the relationship of political science with history and economics

[suppotato123]

Thank you to everyone who voted on the last poll, and all the people who put their cool ideas in the tags. This is the new poll and it’ll have to be two parts because there’s too many degrees.

Thaumaturgical Artificing- The scientific study and application of magic as it pertains to Alchemy (the creation of of potions) and Arcana (the engineering of magical devices).

Advanced Applied Necromancy- A degree for those looking for the most modern and ethical methods of raising the dead. This is a degree for those looking for new and inventive ways to apply the Necromantic Arts to the betterment of society. Students can expect to learn the ways in which Necromancy can be applied to various fields such as medicine, criminal justice, and even industry, all wrapped up in serious discussions about ethics and consent.

Arcanic Archaeology- This degree walks students through the history of magical artifacts, how to find them, and their proper uses to aspiring Sorcerers and non-magic users alike.

Linguistic Incantology- The study of the properties of magical languages as well as the characteristics of those languages in general ascertained in order to gain mastery over the magical art of incantation.

Runic Studies- the study of the history of runes and sigils, their relevance in art, politics, and culture, and their various uses to the modern spell caster.

Magiphysical Sciences- The study of Humanoid systems, anatomy, and physical health and fitness as it pertains to magical gestures and more physically involved magic systems.

Mystic Virology- The study of magical diseases and curses, their effects on the humanoid form, and the treatments and counterhexes for such magical conditions.

Beasts Behavior and Health Sciences- This degree will prepare students for work with both wild and domestic fantastical creatures by giving them essential knowledge and essential skills in magical veterinary medicine and biology, grooming, feeding, and care, as well as wildlife rehabilitation.

Magical Performance Arts- A degree for those seeking to enchant and bewilder audiences of all ages. If you’re looking for something something showy and fun, look no further! Includes the option for courses like Enchantments and Shapeshifting.

Wandsmithing Technologies- This is a course for students looking to design wands. Students will learn to many essential lesson including, but not limited to, magidynamics, the magical components of many different wand building materials, and a comprehensive analysis on different wand styles throughout the ages. At the end students will have several wand prototypes and models under their belts.

Criminal Justice- Study how criminal justice organizations function, deal with people and their recurring problems, and create programs and policies that include and benefit the community. Here’s the twist; we add in a little magic to make your job easier. A popular magic class taken for this degree Scrying (with a warrant of course).

Supernatural Physics- the study of how and why magic came to be and how and why it works. Students will learn the structure of magic and how it interacts with other fundamental constituents of the universe.

Economic Divination- This degree provides studies in supply and demand, consumer behavior, and financial markets with an added twist. Students will learn the most reliable methods of divination to help insure future financial success.

Mystic Ecology- The study of relationships among living magical organisms, humanoids, and their physical environments. This degree looks at organisms at the individual, population, community, ecosystem, and biosphere level. Students can expect to learn how to use their magic to help repair damaged ecosystems, increase power output, and cast diagnostic spells to access what remediation is necessary.

Novel Entomology- The scientific study of magical species of insects, arachnids, myriapods, and crustaceans.

Magic History- The history of magic and it’s uses across different ages and cultures. This class will look at the different major events involving and influenced by magic and it’s interaction with society.

General Studies- This degree covers the most basic information on various magical studies and provides a great opportunity for students to discover their magical passions and/or complete their prerequisite courses before moving on to a more advanced degree.

[up2123753theories]

Social Science and Politics

Definitions:

Social –

Relating to society or its organization

Needing companionship and therefore best suited to living in communities.

Sciences –

A particular area of science.

A systematically organized body of knowledge on a particular subject.

Politics –

The activities associated with the governance of a country or area, especially the debate between parties having power.

Activities aimed at improving someone’s status or increasing power within an organization.

Social sciences –

The scientific study of human society and social relationships.

Quote - Rudolph Virchow

Social science is the study of society and social matters. It covers aspects of a society such as the economy, business management, human behaviour, education and so much more. Social science looks at how communities react and cope with certain changes.

As said by Jeffery Parker, another aspect social science looks at is architecture and “how people interact with their physical environment”. Through the study of social sciences and architecture we are able to use the data to see how people interact with certain spaces and what would make more successful designs in the future.

Politics can be a confusing subject for some, and many people avoid talking about it or paying attention to it. It can quite easily be the cause or the beginning of a heated discussion, no matter who talks about it. It covers everything from economics, education, equality, employment, business, how the countries run and so much more.

Politics and architecture seem like an unusual pairing and it is very surprising how much they link. The link between politics and architecture still comes into social science in a sense. Social science covers relationships and how different things affect people and communities.

Fahimeh Yari said that “architecture is a political act”, in his research journal. The explanation he provided for this comment was that, “it has to do with the relationships between people and how they decide to change their conditions of living”. Politics talks about a group of people changing situations and places, so when people come together to design and plan buildings and their materials, functions, resources it links architecture to politics.

Quotes:

“Architecture is all about understanding and improving the built world” – Jeffery Parker “How people interact with their physical environment, how they design and use space, and how buildings and other structures reflect and influence social, economic and cultural factors” – Jeffery Parker “our built environment should meet certain aesthetic standards, especially public buildings that are highly visible” – Bart Van Leeuwen “architecture through its great communicational powers, can be used for political and social objectives” – Fahimeh Yari “in political architecture it can be assumed that form follows values” – Fahimeh Yari “autonomy insists that architecture speaks and develops its own language in its own history relatively independent of world events” – Peggy Deamer “the construction industry participates energetically in the economic engine that is the base, architecture in the realm of culture, allowing capital to do its work without its effects being scrutinized” – Peggy Deamer

References:

Collins. “Politics Definition and Meaning | Collins English Dictionary.” Www.collinsdictionary.com, www.collinsdictionary.com/dictionary/english/politics.

Deamer, Peggy. Architecture and Capitalism : 1845 to the Present. New York, Routledge Taylor & Francis Group, 2014.

Oxford Languages. “Oxford Dictionaries.” Oxford Dictionaries, Oxford University Press, 2023, languages.oup.com/.

Parker, Jeffery. “Is Architecture a Social Science? - Architecture.” Www.architecturemaker.com, 12 Mar. 2023, www.architecturemaker.com/is-architecture-a-social-science/#:~:text=Yes%2C%20architecture%20is%20definitely%20a%20social%20science.%20The.

“Reflections on Architecture, Society and Politics: Social and Cultural Tectonics in the 21st Century.” ArchDaily, 20 Oct. 2016, www.archdaily.com/797727/reflections-on-architecture-society-and-politics-social-and-cultural-tectonics-in-the-21st-century.

van Leeuwen, Bart. “Is Architecture Relevant for Political Theory?” European Journal of Political Theory, 13 Dec. 2021, p. 147488512110636, https://doi.org/10.1177/14748851211063672.

Virchow, Rudolph. “Quote - Rudolph Virchow,” Quote Fancy, quotefancy.com/quote/1645048/Rudolf-Virchow-Medicine-is-a-social-science-and-politics-is-nothing-more-than-medicine-on.

“What Is Social Science? An Animated Overview.” YouTube, 5 Aug. 2014, www.youtube.com/watch?v=BiLj35g_cAU.

Yari, Fahimeh, et al. “Political Architecture and Relation between Architecture and Power.” International Journal of Latest Research in Humanities and Social Science (IJLRHSS), vol. 01, no. 03, www.ijlrhss.com/paper/volume-1-issue-3/11.HSS-066.pdf.

Whilst researching this topic I wanted to link social science and politics to architecture. Using this angle for my research I came across a piece of writing which was edited by Peggy Deamer. Peggy Deamer was born in 1950. She is an architect as well as an architecture professor at Yale University. Peggy edited “Architecture and Capitalism: 1845 to the Present”, which looks at the relationship between architecture and the economy over the years. The book contains essays from eleven different historians, all discussing architecture and capitalism within the period of time they know best. As well as being the editor, Peggy also wrote the introductions which link and summarise the main themes covered. Whilst reading through Peggy’s introduction to the book I came across the quote, “autonomy insists that architecture speaks and develops its own language in its own history relatively independent of world events”, which really stood out to me.

The quote, “autonomy insists that architecture speaks and develops its own language in its own history relatively independent of world events”, caused me to look further into autonomy which led to a deeper understanding of social science, politics, architecture and autonomy. Autonomy is the word for a country or county that is self-governing and is free from external influences. This comment from Peggy seems to suggest that architecture is a field of it’s own and is not influenced by external factors, such as social science and politics.

However, I would disagree and say that architecture is influenced by social science and politics. This is because architecture depends lot on the economic and cultural position of the surrounding environment and people. For example, in the past and present the communities and individuals of the higher class and wealth always had the bigger, more intricate designs and structures, whereas those of lower class always had small and basic house designs. Architecture has also always been greatly influenced by culture, whether it’s based on beliefs, religion, wealth, traditions.

In conclusion of my research I have come to the decision that social science and politics play a huge role within  the study, design and construction of architecture.

[locustheologicus]

Convergence, M Theory, and Creatio Ex Vetere

In this video Neil DeGrasse Tyson and Brian Greene discuss prevelant cosmological theories and some of the problems. There is a hillarious point they make here regarding the ability of our species to resolve the full gamut of cosmological mysteries. In the end are we just too stupid for this task. If I was in this dialogue I would say no, we are not too stupid (although yes, there is certainly a lot of evidence to the contrary) but we are very limited. This reminds me of one of my favorite Star Trek episodes where a higher being assist Captain Picard with broadening his perspective ever so slightly. We humans are indeed limited but we are also imbued with reason and intelligence (even if some people choose not to use it). We are capable of growing in our understanding and like Captain Picard we are able to broaden our own worldview. But this will be done piecemeal, step by step, one step at a time. And it seems we are on the cusp of taking another step in that direction.

This leads me to a post-modern concern that I have wanted to address, the need to articulate a worldview which allows the community to embrace new and creative operating social systems that can address the social problems we face. A dominant theory (expressed by philospher Stephen Toulmin) is that a cosmological worldview sets the foundation for social systems including the political, economic and religious systems. One of these cosmological shifts is the question of time and our understanding of creation, which I will get to in a moment.

To employ this dialogue we have to adopt the model of convergence between religion and science. Convergence promotes a dialogical relationship that mutually respects the contributing roles science and religion. This has been the relationship that a religious institution like the Catholic Church has and ought to continue promoting (although its history has not always been consistent). The theologian John Haught describes this process by asking the following questions:

Doesn't the new cosmic story of a 13.7 billion-year-old universe have theological consequences? Don't the breakthrough ideas of Charles Darwin, Albert Einstein, Georges Lemaitre, Edwin Hubble, Stephen Hawkins, Francis Crick, and other scientific discoverers have any relevance to faith and theology? Convergence insists that they do... Convergence looks for an open-ended conversation between scientists and theologians. The word convergence as used here implies that a fully satisfactory synthesis of science and theology has not yet occurred. The ongoing conversation between science and theology is never fully finished. Convergence seeks to avoid a facile marriage of the two, but it allows for interaction and dialogue between them. It forbids both conflation and mutual isolation. Convergence insists on preserving the differences between science and faith, but it also seeks to clarify their relationship. It propses that scientific understanding of the world can broaden the horizon of one's religious faith, and that the perspective of faith can deepen one's understanding of the meaning of scientific discoveries. (Haught, pg. 16)

The cosmological story has dramatically shifted even though we recognize that we are light years away from understanding the theories that exist. The video above goes through questions that continue to be asked. Nevertheless the theory of cosmopolis does suggest that our emerging cosmological understanding inevitably shapes our worldview and this is what will impact our social structure. If we continue having tests and reap good qualified data that helps us understand the foundations of quantum mechanics and general relativity we hope to have a better sense of this worldview.

Theologically we have a responsibility to continue the work that Aquinas did back in the 13th century when he explored theological questions with the metaphysics that was unfolding in the newly established European Universities. Thankfully this is generally happening, we just need to make sure that the people in the pews (as it were) are not debasing or belittling the process simply because it may be unsettling for some. If this happens we may need the Church to repeat St. Augustine's earlier admonition.

I recently put forward three theological theories that I continue to reflect on as I consider the emerging cosmology. These theories have me reconsider the following:

Our theological anthropology, Grace/Free will

Miracles/"supernatural" events

What the nature of our soul is

Afterlife and temporal mechanics

These questions absolutely fascinate me and I enjoy contemplating such thoughts. I hope that in my own way I can contribute to this process through my own meagre efforts.

Recently I finished reading a fascinating work from John Polkinghouse titled, "Science and the Trinity: The Christian Encounter with Reality." It was a bold work that complements the convergence process with thought provoking ideas. One idea that I found fascinating is the notion that creation is unfolding by an ongoing process rather than coming to exist from nothing. Creation does not blaze forth from nothing, "not ex nihilo but ex vetere, as the resurrected and redeemed transformation of the old." (Polkinghorne, pg. 149). He is suggesting this for understanding how we can theologically reconcile with the definitive futility of the world we live in and the Christian concept of "a new heaven and a new earth." This also allows us to rethink the wisdom of St. Paul's worldview.

For creation awaits with eager expectation the revelation of the children of God; for creation was made subject to futility, not of its own accord but because of the one who subjected it, in hope that creation itself would be set free from slavery to corruption and share in the glorious freedom of the children of God. We know that all creation is groaning in labor pains even until now; and not only that, but we ourselves, who have the firstfruits of the Spirit, we also groan within ourselves as we wait for adoption, the redemption of our bodies. For in hope we were saved. (Romans 8: 19-24)

It is surprising to me that Polkinghorne does not subscribe to panentheism especially as he seems to be a proponent of process theology. However he does offer this unusual opinion as he navigates cosmological eschatology:

God's final purpose is that creatures should enjoy fully the experienceof the unveiled divine presence, and so share in the divine energies, but this must happen by God's love drawing them, so that it is freely and of their own accord that they enter into the intimacy of that relationship, with the rescue from sin and the liberation into life that it brings. It is this totally grace-filled state that is the life of the new creation... The new creation will be a world wholly suffused with the divine presence. It is entirely rational to believe that its natural process will be of a radically different kind from that which science is able to describe today. I do not accept panentheism as a present reality, but I do affirm the eschatological hope of a sacramental panentheism as the character of the new creation. (Polkinghorne, pg. 166)

I think proposing an artificial boundary between an "old" creation that exist outside of the divine presence and a "new" creation that is imbued with the divine presents certain theological problems. I accept the idea of the divine kenosis but even this limitation of the divine does not end our participation with the divine or even our access to divine energies (Holy Spirit). As St. Thomas Aquinas famously said,

But in all creatures there is found the trace of the Trinity, inasmuch as in every creature are found some things which are necessarily reduced to the divine Persons as to their cause. For every creature subsists in its own being; it has a form by which it is determined to a species; and it has relation to some other thing. Therefore, according as it is a created substance, it represents the cause and principle; and in this manner it reveals the Person of the Father, Who is the principle from no principle. - St. Thomas Aquinas: Question 45, Article 7

I personally believe that our Christian faith is open to panetheism and I suggest that the process does continue to evolve as it always has. Creatio Ex Vetere is not just a two step process but an ongoing unfolding of the divine whose very nature is the self subsisting process of existence (ipsum esse subsistens).

I also suggest that science is challenging us to think across these lines as well. M theory seems to suggest that the Big Bang may have also been a type of ongoing cosmic unfolding that we need to reconsider. M theory mathematically presents an eleven dimensional universe that brings all theories together. I do not attempt to understand the math but M theory (presented below) presents us with something called branes cosmology.

Branes are theoretical objects in string theory that represent different dimensions of space. In brane cosmology, our universe is considered to be a three-dimensional brane floating in a higher-dimensional space. These branes can collide or interact with each other, leading to the creation of new universes or causing changes in the existing ones. Branes can also be thought of as membranes that separate different dimensions of space-time.

This theory seems to suggest an Ekpyrotic Universe which is a constantly evolving and unfolding universe based on the impact and interaction of these (mem)branes. If this theory emerges as a cosmological reality we may be able to embrace what it means to live in a universe that is ex vetere and we will find new meaning as we give glory to God in saecula saeculorum.

[jcmarchi]

Q&A: “As long as you have a future, you can still change it”

New Post has been published on https://thedigitalinsider.com/qa-as-long-as-you-have-a-future-you-can-still-change-it/

Q&A: “As long as you have a future, you can still change it”

Tristan Brown is the S.C. Fang Chinese Language and Culture Career Development Professor at MIT. He specializes in law, science, environment and religion of late imperial China, a period running from the 16th through early 20th centuries.

In this Q&A, Brown discusses how his areas of historical research can be useful for examining today’s pressing environmental challenges. This is part of an ongoing series exploring how the MIT School of Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences is addressing the climate crisis.

Q: Why does this era of Chinese history resonate so much for you? How is it relevant to contemporary times and challenges?

A: China has always been interesting to historians because it has a long-recorded history, with data showing how people have coped with environmental and climate changes over the centuries. We have tons of records of various kinds of ecological issues, environmental crises, and the associated outbreaks of calamities, famine, epidemics, and warfare. Historians of China have a lot to offer ongoing conversations about climate.

More specifically, I research conflicts over land and resources that erupted when China was undergoing huge environmental, economic, demographic, and political pressures, and the role that feng shui played as local communities and the state tried to mediate those conflicts. [Feng shui is an ancient Chinese practice combining cosmology, spatial aesthetics, and measurement to divine the right balance between the natural and built environment.] Ultimately, the Qing (1644-1912) state was unable to manage these conflicts, and feng shui–based attempts to make decisions about conserving or exploiting certain areas blew up by the end of the 19th century in the face of pressures to industrialize. This is the subject of my first book, “Laws of the Land: Fengshui and the State in Qing Dynasty China.”

Q: Can you give a sense of how feng shui was used to determine outcomes in environmental cases?

A: We tend to think of feng shui as a popular design mechanism today. While this isn’t completely inaccurate, there was much more to it than that in Chinese history, when it evolved over many centuries. Specifically, there are lots of insights in feng shui that reflect the ways in which people recorded the natural world, explained how components in the environment related to one another, and understood why and how bad things happened. There is an interesting concept in feng shui that your environment affects your health,and specifically your children’s (i.e., descendants and progeny) health. That concept is found across premodern feng shui literature and is one of fundamental principles of the whole knowledge system.

During the period I research, the Qing, the primary fuel energy sources in China came from timber and coal. There were legal cases where communities argued against efforts to mine a local mountain, saying that it could injure the feng shui (i.e., undermine the cosmological balance of natural forces and spatial integrity) of a mountain and hurt the fortunes of an entire region. People were suspicious of coal mining in their communities. They had seen or heard about mines collapsing and flooded mine shafts, they had watched runoff ruin good farmland, causing crops to fail, and even perhaps children to fall ill. Coal mining disturbed the human-earth connection, and thus the relationship between people and nature. People invoked feng shui to express an idea that the extraction of rocks and minerals from the land can have detrimental effects on living communities. Whether out of a sincere community-based concern or out of a more self-interested NIMBYism, feng shui was the primary discourse invoked in these cases.

Not all efforts to conserve areas from mining succeeded, especially as foreign imperialism encroached on China, threatening government and local control over the economy. It became gradually clear to China’s elites that the country had to industrialize to survive, and this involved the difficult and even violent process of taking people from farm work and bringing them to cities, building railways, cutting millions of trees, and mining coal to power it all.

Q: This makes it seem as if the Chinese swept away feng shui whenever it presented a hurdle, putting the country on the path to coal dependence, pollution, and a carbon-emitting future.

A: Feng shui has not disappeared in China, but there’s no doubt about it that development in the form of industrialization took precedence in the 20th century, when it became officially labelled a “superstition” on the national stage. When I first went to China in 2007, city air was so polluted I couldn’t see the horizon. I was 18 years old and the air in some northern cities like Shijiazhuang honestly felt scary. I’ve returned many times since then, of course, and there has been great improvement in air quality, because the government made it a priority.

Feng shui is a future-oriented knowledge, concerned with identifying events that have happened in the past that are related to things happening today, and using that information to influence future events. As Richard Smith of Rice University argues, Chinese have used history to order the past, ritual to order the present, and divination to order the future. Consider, for instance, Xiong’an, a new development area outside of Beijing that is physically marking the era of Xi Jinping’s tenure as paramount leader. As soon as the site was selected, people in China started talking about its feng shui, both out of potential environmental concerns and as a subtle form of political commentary. MIT’s own Sol Andrew Stokols in the Department of Urban Studies and Planning (DUSP) has a fantastic new dissertation examining that new area.

In short, the feng shui masters of old said there will be floods and droughts and bad stuff happening in the future if a course correction isn’t made. But at the same time, in feng shui there’s never a situation that is hopeless; there is no lost cause. So, there is optimism in the knowledge and rhetoric of feng shui that I think might be applicable as time goes on with climate change. As long as you have a future, you can still change it. 

Q: In 2023, you were awarded one of the first grants of MIT’s Climate Nucleus, the faculty committee charged with seeing through the Institute’s climate action plan over the decade. What have you been up to courtesy of this fund?

A: Well, it all started years ago, when I started thinking about great number of mountains in China associated with Buddhism or Daoism that have become national parks in recent decades. Some of these mountains host trees and plant species that are not found in any other part of China. For my grant, I wanted to find out how these mountains have managed to incubate such rare species for the last 2,000 years. And it’s not as simple as just saying, well, Buddhism, right? Because there are plenty of Buddhist mountains that have not fared as well ecologically. The religious landscape is part of the answer, but there’s also all the messiness of material history that surrounds such a mountain.

With this grant, I am bringing together a group of scholars of religion, historians, as well as engineers working in conservation ecology, and we’re trying to figure out what makes some of these places religiously and environmentally distinctive. People come to the project with different approaches. My MIT colleague Serguei Saavedra in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering uses new models in system ecology to measure the resilience of environments under various stresses. My colleague in religious studies, Or Porath at Tel Aviv University, is asking when and how Asian religions have centered — or ignored — animals and animal welfare. Another collaboration with MIT’s Siqi Zheng in DUSP and Wen-Chi Liao at the National University of Singapore is looking at how we can use artificial intelligence, machine learning, and classical feng shui manuals to teach computers how to analyze the value of a property’s feng shui in Sinophone communities around the world. There’s a lot going on!

Q: How do you bring China’s unique environmental history and law into your classroom, and make it immediate and relevant to the world students face today?

A: History is always part of the answer. I mean, whether it’s for an economist, a political scientist, or an architect, history matters. Likewise, when you’re confronting climate change and all these struggles regarding the environment and various crises involving ecosystems, it’s always a good idea to look at how human beings in the past dealt with similar crises. It doesn’t give you a prediction on what would happen in the future, but it gives you some range of possibilities, many of which may at first appear counterintuitive or surprising.

That’s exactly what the humanities do. My job is to make MIT undergraduates care about a people who are no longer alive, who walked the earth a thousand years ago, who confronted terrible times of conflict and hunger. Sometimes these people left behind a written record about their world, and sometimes they didn’t. But we try to hear them out regardless. I want students to develop empathy for these strangers and wonder what it would be like to walk in their shoes. Every one of those people is someone’s ancestor, and they very well could have been your ancestor.

In my class 21H.186 (Nature and Environment in China), we look at the historical precedents that might be useful for today’s environmental challenges, ranging from urban pollution or domestic recycling systems. The fact we’re still here to ask historical questions is itself significant. When we feel despair about climate change, we can ask, “How did individuals endure the changed course of the Yellow River or the Little Ice Age?” Even when it is recording tragedies, history can be understood as an enduring form of hope. 

[reflections-on-self]

On Choosing a Career

The next most difficult question, after determining whether or not I intend to have children in this world, is the question best phrased in the title of Vladimir Lenin's What Is To Be Done?

What is to be done?

When I was a kid, I wanted to be a jet pilot. I was terrified of jets. They were loud and I hated loud noises as a child. But there was something magical about them: they were in the sky! They were with the birds, but they flew much, much faster than the birds. And the planes were all beautiful to my childhood eyes: it is difficult to describe the feeling evoked when one witnesses a pass of America's Blue Angels in their signature blue-and-yellow F/A-18 Hornets. Being a kid at the time, this especially had a big impression on me.

I must not have been a completely clueless child, for, from an early age, I was aware of the relationship between the jets I saw in the sky and the US military. But you could imagine that, lacking any kind of serious adult influence to convince me otherwise, I truly believed that the jets I saw in the sky were defending that vague idea I knew at the time as "America."

So, for the first quarter of my short life, I believed I wanted to be a fighter jet pilot. Through middle school and early high school, I prepared myself to join the US Air Force or the US Navy. I joined the Civil Air Patrol (CAP) and went to a private military school for the first half of my freshman year of high school. I wanted to become a cadet at one of the military service academies, which I hoped guarantee me a job as a pilot.

Sometime in high school, I believe my sophomore year, I took an introductory psychology class. It was my first exposure to the concept of psychology. I immediately found the topic interesting, so I switched from wanting to join the military and become a pilot to wanting to join the military and become a psychiatrist. I think I remember at the time that I believed I wanted to help people and serve my country.

This was a dramatic shift, and it reflected the fact that I began to believe in high school that I would not qualify to become a pilot as a result of my eyesight.

I performed relatively poorly in high school. Public high school in the US, as I would guess any reader who has had the misfortune to experience it might agree, can be a nightmare for self-discovery. By the end of high school, I still had no idea what I wanted to do except the vague notion that I wanted to serve the public in some way. I'd won the school's election for senior class president, which boosted my confidence in believing that I could perform well in some kind of government-related work. It is perhaps here that I decided that I wanted to become a foreign service officer, shortly after a tour I was given of the State Department headquarters in D.C. with a group of CAP cadets.

I enrolled at a nearby college and began taking political science courses. My professors were brilliant and honest. They were not shy about the realities of the wild history of the United States, with its many political contradictions and class-based internal conflicts. This was at the height of the Trump presidency, so debates about the state of what we collectively understood as "our democracy" were frequent.

Around this same time, I was very lucky to meet one of my closest friends, who first introduced me to the basic ideas behind Marxist political-economic theory. We were both employees at a movie theater, so we had many opportunities to discuss these dense, generally philosophically-heavy concepts with each other while ushering theaters together. Looking back, it's all quite serendipitous. Had I not met that friend, I doubt that I ever would have taken Marxist ideas as seriously as I ended up taking them. That would come to be both a blessing and a curse, though, I'm happy to say that, even now, it is more of a blessing that I discovered Marxism when I did.

Being a Marxist-Leninist throughout college made choosing a career in the United States in the early 2020s rather challenging. I lived near a military base, so any job that paid a decent salary was associated with the military-industrial complex that I had come to despise, and therefore, out of the question. Obviously, there was no hope of joining the military and "defending my country" anymore: there was no "country" to defend at that point in my eyes, only class interests. To protect the class interests of the bourgeoisie – which I was not, to my understanding, a part of – seemed like one of the biggest wastes of my life that I could manage. Eventually, this kind of thinking would lead me to further conclude that a job as a foreign service officer working with the Department of State would be just as bootlick-y as joining the military, or working as a civilian for a military contractor.

This idea was intensified when I accepted an offer for a journalism internship with the Institute for Policy Studies (IPS), which is the most left-leaning think tank in Washington, D.C. During the summer of 2019, I conducted research and wrote articles for IPS. The work confirmed my Marxist tendencies, and, perhaps even more frighteningly, it seemed to confirm my Leninist sentiments, as well. D.C. is a beast. That's really the only way I can think to put it.

I returned from the experience and decided to switch my major from Political Science to Philosophy. What an idea. I believe it was one of the best and possibly worst decisions I'd ever made for myself. However, it was also the perfect major to become easily distracted with irrelevant problems. Luckily, I think that this is all part of the journey.

At this point, I was with a romantic partner whom I can only guess the universe introduced me to so that I would learn a handful of important lessons that I will not go into in this essay. All that I think needs to be said about this chapter of my life is that I became very focused on little else but the relationship I was in with that person, and, looking back, this was one of the biggest mistakes I believe I've ever made in my life. I think I became very preoccupied with trying to make a stable life with that person before I even knew what a "stable life" could potentially look like. Most importantly, I was very unaware of myself at the time, and that makes for a bad relationship.

One of the mistakes that I made in trying to make a stable life with that person instead of focusing on my own goals: I took on an internship for an Elon Musk-run company. I won't get into details, but needless to say, it was one of the worst experiences I'd ever committed myself to. I was lucky that it was only for a few months and that I was able to get out of the situation almost as soon as I'd realized how poorly the place was ran. It was there that I experienced firsthand that, wherever I work, the people who work there must be valued for their labor in ways that matter to them. No shortcuts around that.

I had a decent enough resumé that I was able to find a job back home at the institution I graduated from. I was a web developer for a little over a year between 2022-2023. Most of that year was spent recovering from the experience I'd had working at Musk's company. Then I met the person I wrote about in my first essay, which would completely change everything for me.

Had I not learned? Perhaps. It was a romantic relationship that pulled me out of my daily routine in September 2022 and would make its mark on my heart that, to this day, occasionally stings. When I met her, I suddenly didn't care about money anymore. To be fair, she, too, seemed to be a Marxist, and seemed to find this whole thing that we're all experiencing just as troubling as I did. Nobody else seemed to see that or feel it.

But, for this, I will cut myself some slack. I did fall in love, whatever the hell that means. Shortly after we met, I had this brief fantasy that we could both abandon the madness that was the world around us for a while and serve in the Peace Corps together. I wouldn't be rich, I wouldn't be quite "at home," I probably wouldn't even really know what I was doing – but I'd be working to help somebody, the work would be good work, and I'd be with her. That's all I wanted. That is, even now, all I want.

Well, anyway, the relationship was too brief and she was too whimsical (she was an accordion player) to realize how seriously I felt, how serious what we'd both stumbled upon seemed to be. She was too scared to be honest with me that she loved me, I could tell. I tried very hard to give us the space, the time, whatever it was that was needed for us to grow into something. But something went wrong. The fires in Canada, the distractive nature of our modern society, my stupidity in facing a real situation, shit, I don't know. If I could ask her, I would. But I am not interested in being toyed with, I'm not interested in someone who won't be just a tad more vulnerable and show me that they care.

For a short while, I resolved that I would live my life as if she were here anyway. The idea seemed beautiful to me. I thought it might honor best what I truly believed was supposed to be the big one. I even went through most of the process to join the Peace Corps, alone, and was bound to leave for Botswana later this year.

But I dropped out of the process. Not because I don't want to serve in the Peace Corps, not because I'm bitter about what happened between her and I and I'm taking it out on a life-changing journey in Botswana, but because the 2-year commitment feels just too long for me right now when I barely know what I want to do today. I believe that someday, if I can orient my life in that direction, I can live the dream of serving in the Peace Corps with someone that loves me, and that I love. That sounds wonderful. But I have a very, very hard time getting over this feeling of loss that was induced by the failure of that relationship. It seems fair to say that I should just wait on the Peace Corps until I'm in a much better place.

In the wake of her absence, sometimes, I've been both determined and distraught. I at least put some thought into the future I hope to build for myself, career-wise, before signing up for the Peace Corps. These reflections also had important implications for the decision I made to ultimately postpone Peace Corps service for a later time in my life.

At the end of the day, I don't believe that I ever wanted anything different from what most people throughout history have wanted: peace, community, love, purpose. That these attributes of life are stable, always accessible, and observable in my day-to-day experience. That, whatever I'm doing, I'm helping support those things, in my life and in the lives of others. This all with the deep understanding that others are me. A deep assumption. I could never claim to know such a thing. I want to stand up on a table and yell, like I'm Socrates, "I don't know anything!!!" – but I know that this would cause some trouble in the library I write this from. I assume that others are me in the deepest sense of being that I can express.

So the first thing I thought I wanted to be when I cleared her from my life's plans was a neurosurgeon.

Neurosurgery seemed (and sometimes still seems) like the coolest field in the world to me. We, humans, have managed to create a whole subject, a whole library of understanding, for manually fixing the most mysterious material "thing" in existence: our very own brains. God, what kind of things about reality do neurosurgeons know? How do they see this world? I have wanted to know. The immediate interest goes back to the very purpose of this blog: explorations on selfhood. What, I thought, could be more self-exploratory than learning how to fix problems that involve the nervous system and fixing them with my very hands?

Still now, it pains me to write that paragraph and wonder these days if that is truly what I want to do. Because it does sound interesting. I believe I have the intelligence, coordination, and patience to make a successful career out of it, if I were to really dedicate myself to it.

Community, love, purpose. I am just about certain that a career in neurosurgery would allow me to live with all three. But peace...

Neurosurgeons work, I've been told, absolutely horrific hours. That alone may not be such a deterrent, except for the fact that I'd be working in such high-stakes situations for such large amounts of time and that the risks could involve not only the loss of a patient's life but also legal ramifications were I to make a serious mistake. I am aware I do not make serious mistakes very often, but that is no reason to jump into a very difficult career path in my hubris.

My initial feelings about neurosurgery were likely influenced by the profound loss I felt that I'd experienced with her. I wanted to know what, at the source, was the cause of all of this pain. I could only point to my own brain and say that, somewhere in there, the intense suffering that I had felt and sometimes feel when I think about what happened between us is created. I have no illusions that neurosurgery can solve such problems. But the idea that I could know the brain so intimately so as to be able to work it, fix it, through my very own physical activity, seemed really awesome.

I briefly read the beginning of Dr. Henry Marsh's Do No Harm, a book about a British neurosurgeon's experience. Now, I think that it's just because he's British, but the book was quick to sour me on the idea of becoming a neurosurgeon. The guy had such a negative view of life and his career, although, the writing was outstanding. Marsh even said that he chose to jump into the medical field because of an unrequited love situation. I thought, what!? That's not me! and I began to consider alternatives.

Neurosurgery is awesome and I am not certain that I won't still try to pursue it.

The thing is, I happen to live near one of the best medical schools in the country and, supposedly, in the world. When I started to really think about what I wanted to do with my life, I believe I dove straight for neurosurgery because of a handful of reasons:

Being a neurosurgeon would give me an excuse to completely dedicate myself to my own work. Nobody could tell me I couldn't do this or that, because in the end, if I'm doing it for my career, then I'm doing it for the benefit of both myself and the patient in the long run. I can see this being quite the emotional barrier to put up between myself and the rest of the world.

Again, the surface-level prestige. The kid who wanted to be a pilot when he was a boy grew up and began to claim that he would like to become a neurosurgeon. Between these two positions? Lots of fame, public attention, a kind of fascination, even. At least that I've noticed in American society. This is not a good nor a bad thing in my view.

But also, the deep internal prestige. I work on fixing people's brains with my hands. Man, if I could say that to myself and know that it was true, I'd feel like the coolest guy in the world.

Financial security for myself and my future family (if I have one). As a neurosurgeon, if I wanted, I would imagine that I could move and set up shop just about anywhere in the world.

Being the leader of a diverse team. Neurosurgeons operate in contexts in which they work with fellow surgeons, other doctors, residents, nurses, health techs, etc. I'd love to feel that I am part of a community that values my work and are individual professionals in their own right.

In the end, good reasons, but not good enough, in my opinion. Prestige and isolation should not be the primary reasons to take on a job, I would think. Of course, there are situations in which perhaps that would be the best career path for an individual. I won't deny that I seriously believed for a while that this seemed like the only way I could feel "useful" to the world after losing her. But I am not Dr. Marsh, I'm not depressed, I should not make decisions about my career solely based off of the failure of a romantic relationship. No matter how hard it hurt me that it didn't work out, my choice to become any particularly laborious and intensely challenging role simply out of feeling emotionally invincible post-breakup simply doesn't feel good enough a reason anymore. The path to becoming a neurosurgeon is long, arduous, bound to cause immense suffering on my future self and the people whom that being will love. Lately, it has seemed a path worth letting go of.

I still believe I would like to become a medical doctor of some kind. First, because I feel an obligation to my fellow human beings on a fundamental level. Without a community of human beings to raise me, be patient with and properly reprimand me when I've failed myself or others, to educate me in various matters, and provide me with various desires and needs as well as the means to fulfill them, I believe my life would have been a very negative experience overall. Other people try. A deep assumption of mine is that I need to try, too. Perhaps what little practical applications of Marxism that are left in me are found in this core idea. I was not raised alone, but by a massive, perpetually changing village of human beings, mostly Americans, all with their own lives, yet, at times, so genuinely preoccupied with the state of mine.

I hate to admit, so beautifully preoccupied with the state of mine. At times.

I don't denote that the community that raised me is American to justify that I would inevitably become a doctor through the American healthcare system, which, with what little I know about that behemoth, I understand to be a very complex and likely flawed system. Rather, there is a more obvious and "unshakeable" crime that my people have committed that has resulted in my beginning to seriously question whether or not I should become a doctor anywhere in the world.

I must wonder, as I type this, if any potential reader is already beginning to catch on to what I'm about to begin writing about. That this crime is so deeply ingrained in our collective psyche now, that I haven't even got to type the words yet, and I believe there's a chance that someone who manages to find this and read it already knows I am talking about the war crimes committed by the Israel Defense Forces and supported by the United States government at the al-Ahli and al-Shifa hospitals in the Gaza Strip.

Anyone who is aware of what has happened to hospitals in Gaza might appreciate my reluctance to dedicate myself to medicine in the West in the aftermath. For a while, I was very angry with the world as the news poured in daily of Israeli airstrikes on civilians in the Gaza Strip. I work near people in positions of power in the United States, and there seemed to be no real sense of remorse, regret, indignation, no real sense of what was even going on, among just about every single person I interacted with. I still find myself seriously disoriented and often demotivated to do anything serious with my career after all of that. How can I take this world seriously anymore? Over 30,000 killed. More than thirty thousand people killed in five months. There are no words.

The truth is, I don't take this world that seriously anymore. I have come to value my own direct experience of life more than everything else. I used to want to change it all: I used to dream of a Red American future – housing, food, and meaningful labor for all; a single, tolerant, peaceful Palestinian state spanning the Jordan to the Mediterranean; a healthy Earth; a world that functioned in a kind of mutually-assured peace and harmony, without real borders. I still believe it's all possible, even probable, in due time. But I don't think I'll bother to waste my precious life energy toward any of those goals in particular anymore. I just don't feel the urgency of a burning world. I don't feel urgent about anything anymore. That was a world where she stayed, and while I'm sorry about how that sounds, I'm just about certain of my feelings on it and I wouldn't dare apologize for that. The world is not perfect. Its imperfection is most obvious right now when one calls to mind the suffering endured by human beings in and around the Gaza Strip.

Still, I must choose a career, as I don't intend to commit suicide (R.I.P. Aaron Bushnell). Since I don't intend to commit suicide, I must work with this body that I am expressing myself from and the situation that I have found myself in.

Becoming a medical doctor is still an attractive career path to me, because at the very least, no matter where I am, I am helping someone. Briefly, recently, I considered the path of the MD-PhD, or the physician-scientist. This is in keeping with my interest in studying the "self" through studying the brain, and I'd also get to be involved in clinical settings where I'd be helping people in my community. All of that sounds pretty neat to me.

Physician-scientists, however, are also victims of a system in which they work intense hours. They often compete for scant grant funding. While I'm sure I could succeed there, too, I ought to be honest with myself about the very real need for me to have time, real time, to pursue artistic interests on my off-time. Something tells me that MD-PhDs do not have a thing called "off-time," and it might be a really good idea to just pursue an MD or a PhD in a field that interests me, have that be my full-time, and do stuff like this, writing (and other forms of content creation), on the side.

To that end, I believe, that I have chosen as my primary plan to become a neuroradiologist and manga artist. For now.

A successful career in neuroradiology seems to provide me the ideal balance between working in a role that helps people directly, provides financial stability and a community of fellow professionals, allows me to work for established institutions, and lets me work relatively (to other medical professions) normal working hours. Also, brains. This will provide me with enough of an income to have my own place and, if, somehow, I manage to fall in love with someone else and we agree to start a family, assist in providing for them financially. And if I'm alone, well, I'll have money to travel.

On my off-time, I'm a manga artist. This is the funniest part of all of this: I know that, deep down, if I had all the time in the world and no pressure on me to do anything in particular coming from anywhere, I'd just become a 漫画家 (manga-ka) and write my dream manga. Since I was a kid, I'd always been into anime and manga. But early on, I was discouraged from drawing. My drawings were ugly as a kid. For a short time, I was involved in the Maplestory sprite animation community in my pre-teen days. I made some embarrassingly bad "Maplestory Music Videos" to Avril Lavigne and Breaking Benjamin. I gave up pretty quickly and turned my eyes skyward, bringing us back to the whole pilot ordeal.

I'd pretty much forgotten about all of that until I was with my friends one day, years ago, watching One Punch Man. I became inspired with an anime idea that was initially loosely based off a similar premise. Then, with a close friend of mine, we read Berserk by Kentarō Miura (R.I.P.) together. That was the most inspiring graphic work I ever read at the time, though, it's important to note that it was my first real experience reading a manga. I began to form the dream as I read along of creating my own artistic masterpiece of Miura's level someday, his creative and visually artistic genius were truly impressive. I decided, eventually, that I would make a manga someday, no matter what. I haven't done any work at all to advance the original idea, but having let it simmer in my mind for about as long as any other important project, I believe I could create something truly interesting.

My drawing skills, in the current moment, are about the same as my childhood drawing skills. I'm 24 and turn 25 next month. I haven't even begun practicing again! I know that any artists who happen to read this will probably scoff at my treatment of this dream. I should be giving up that neuroradio-nonsense and throwing myself at the pencil and paper all the time! I should. I know I should.

But I can't. I feel better going for both. Even if I somehow fail, well, I'd rather have failed attempting to do both seriously than dedicate my life to one and become bored, deathly bored, with it. Besides – and I'm truly sorry to the soul that happens to read this and becomes exhausted at the amount of times I say something like this – this is all extra content to me since she left. I really wanted to not exist not that long ago. I love this world and the people in it, but that is true as well as the fact that I still feel completely lost without her. Completely lost. So, perhaps this is a symptom of that feeling of loss that I cannot seem to rid myself of. But that's all okay to me. As long as I'm allowed to process it the way I see fit, which is all of this, then I have nothing to complain about. Nothing at all.

So, here's what I think. I'm going to read the brain scans and I'm going to draw the cool characters and settings and tell some cool stories. To me, this all sounds perfect because it involves the use of my visual faculties so much. I love to see, to watch, to observe. To dig deep into a detailed piece of art with a mixture of my eyes and attention and extract that beautiful, vague idea that periodically appears, sometimes called meaning. I love that, and I'm not sorry for loving it enough that it keeps me on this often wretched-seeming Earth. Even if I'm an American.

I believe the path is there for me to make. I know I'll have to do some cutting. These days, anything goes. I no longer intend to look back, though I inevitably will again.

Update, July 2024

While I do believe that neuroradiology would be an excellent career path for me to take, I've lately been reconsidering.

Nothing in particular has caused this reconsideration. Perhaps a combination of all the various factors of my life have resulted in a new career path that lately I've been thinking I'd rather take: helicopter pilot.

While choosing a medical career was a very deliberate choice that was based off of a prior emotionally raucous moment in my life, the emergence of my wanting to become a helicopter pilot seems to be guided by a much calmer, more honest set of reflections.

I have been reading the Tao Teh Ching lately, translated by John C. H. Wu. Here is a wonderful selection from the work, from Chapter 7, that has been the subject of my own pondering in the context of this topic:

"Therefore, the Sage wants to remain behind, But finds himself at the head of others; Reckons himself out, But finds himself safe and secure. Is it not because he is selfless That his Self is realized?"

I am confident I would be an outstanding doctor. However, as I've been re-reading this essay, considering my own motivations for taking up the career path, I realize that I have not been entirely honest with myself as to why I'd like to become one.

Money.

Yes, the path of the neuroradiologist, especially that which I would have attempted to take on, would have been a very financially rewarding path. If I'm being completely honest with myself, it's most of the reason why I chose medicine. To be rich, and therefore, generally attractive to cishet women. That I would be helping people, saving lives or at least communicating lifesaving information, studying the brain, working with a team – all of those things were very important, but extra. After I lost her, I just wanted to become as attractive as I could possibly be. I don't think there's anything wrong with that.

But money is the classic snare. I shouldn't choose a career based on how much money I believe it would provide me, I think. I should choose a career based on whether I believe I'd enjoy doing it for the rest of my life or not.

I haven't the slightest clue of what it's like to read brain scans. Based on what I've read, it sounds like a really awesome job. Radiologists rely intensely on their eyesight to perform their work. Neuroradiologists, especially, have to be very skilled with discerning the details of a brain scan. This aspect of radiology sounded exciting to me, and I thought it fit perfectly well with my plan to become a manga artist, too. My eyes would create worlds and save lives; this was the thinking behind my dream.

For that reason, I can't be certain anymore that I may tend toward radiology again in the future somehow.

But I'm currently a driver for an important person. And I love my job. Driving is one of my favorite activities. I'm a great driver and often take to the roads in times of distress or hardship, as the roads somehow calm me down. I can drive anywhere: country roads, highways, densely packed cities. I feel the vehicle and the road like nothing else. The confidence I have built in myself partially comes from the sense of confidence with which I face the roads. The roads have taught me more about life and being than any words from any person. As Mao said in On Practice: "In social practice, man’s primary activity in production is his primary source of knowledge." My primary activity is driving, and I'm fairly certain I've learned many important things from the roads that I would otherwise have missed out on.

So, as I've been thinking about my career path lately, one day it seemed to dawn on me that I should just go with what I know I'd be very good at: taking the reins of another vehicle. Not any vehicle, but a vehicle that would solidify my place in a career field. That vehicle is the helicopter.

Peace, community, love, purpose. Those four pillars are essential in my choice for a career. I believe that becoming a helicopter pilot with the US Coast Guard is my path forward, in that case. So, neurosurgeon to neuroradiologist to Coast Guard helicopter pilot. Why?

The US Coast Guard is part of the US military, but it is not a force of aggression tasked with occupying foreign lands, subsuming the populations there into the global capitalist paradigm. The Coast Guard is a defensive maritime organization that falls under the umbrella of the US military as a result of the government's policy decisions. In this function, I would argue that the Coast Guard is mostly an organization of peace. Obviously, this aspect of the Coast Guard isn't perfect: the Coast Guard is very much tasked with preventing the flow of narcotics into the United States, which is bound to have episodes of violence.

The Coast Guard, just as any other branch or government organization, is sure to have good communities around their centers of operation.

Joining the Coast Guard and becoming a helicopter pilot is an act of self-love, in that I recognize that this career would be very easy for me to enter and I would find it very enjoyable.

Lastly, with the rapidly deteriorating conditions of the climate, I believe there is much purpose to this role. Hurricanes are becoming more intense at faster rates. My home is on the east coast, as are the homes of most people that I know and care about. In the course of my lifetime, it appears that the climate will become an increasingly dangerous part of our reality. When the big disasters come, I want to be part of the response. I think that's where my contribution to humanity lies.

Life is strange. But I am very glad to say that I believe that I've really found my calling this year.

[terminalsigma]

Toscano’s entire book can be read as a taxonomy of fascism, but he comes closest to a working definition in his discussion of German philosopher Ernst Bloch’s “Heritage of Our Times,” a “protean, fascinating and unsettling work” first published in 1935 but not available in English until 1991, which seems startlingly germane to the contemporary moment. Writing near the beginning of the Nazi regime, Bloch understood fascism as a “perverted utopian promise,” in Toscano’s phrase, with a strange relationship to time and history. That promise appeals most strongly to social groups who find themselves “somehow out of sync with the rationalizing present of capitalism,” offering them a fraudulent reactivation of “unfulfilled pasts and unrealized presents.”

That strikes me as an almost perfect description of Trump’s most loyal supporters: As reams of social-science research have confirmed, they are not necessarily poor or unemployed or economically struggling in any objective sense — but they clearly perceive themselves as “out of sync” with the dominant social order, and feel enraged or cheated out of something they cannot define but believe they deserve.

Also, this:

Toscano’s deeper point, although he doesn’t exactly put it this way, is that “democracy” and “fascism” exist on a continuum. They share the same fundamental conception of individual or “bourgeois” liberty, ultimately drawn from the likes of John Locke, Adam Smith and Edmund Burke (all of whom would no doubt be horrified by every aspect of 21st-century politics). It’s self-flattering nonsense to treat them as binary states of light and darkness, or to resort to idiotic metaphors about America’s sacred democracy teetering on the edge of a bottomless abyss.

[kairalika]

Diving in Denny Ja 58’s selected work: Revealing the mystery of Ratu Adil and the Corona virus

In this article, we will explore the selected work from Denny Ja 58 which discusses the mystery of Ratu Adil and the Corona virus. Denny JA 58 is a social and political science expert who has examined various social and political phenomena in Indonesia. This latest work explores thoroughly about the mystery of Ratu Adil which is believed by some Indonesian people and also the impact of the Corona virus that is engulfing the world today.    I. Ratu fair, myth or facts?  In this section, we will discuss the mystery of Ratu Adil. Ratu Adil is a leader who is believed to come and bring justice to all humanity. Although it appears in various trust and myths in the world, Ratu Adil is also a conversation in Indonesia. Denny JA 58 conducted a deep research on the origin and trust of the Indonesian people in Ratu Adil. He analyzed various sources and explained his findings in great detail and accurately.    II. Corona Virus: A Global Threat  In this section, we will discuss the Corona virus that is becoming a concern of the world today. The Corona virus or scientifically known as Covid-19 first appeared in Wuhan, China in December 2019. This virus quickly spread to various countries in the world and became a global pandemic. Denny JA 58 reviews the history of the Corona virus, the symptoms caused, and how its spread can be stopped.    III. The relationship between Ratu Adil and the Corona virus  In this section, we will see how Denny Ja 58 connects the mystery of Ratu Adil with the Corona virus. Denny Ja 58 presents various theories put forward by the Indonesian people regarding the linkages between Ratu Adil and the Corona virus. Although these theories have not been scientifically proven, Denny Ja 58 gives an objective view and invites the reader to think critically.    IV. The impact of the corona virus on human life  In this section, we will see the impact of the corona virus on human life as a whole. Denny Ja 58 discusses the impact of this health crisis on the economic, social and political sectors. He also reviewed the steps taken by the Government of Indonesia and other countries to overcome this Pandemic.    V. Conclusion  In the conclusion, Denny Ja 58 concluded that the mystery of Ratu Adil and the Corona virus are two phenomena that have a connection in the lives of Indonesian society. Although there is still much that needs to be further investigated, understanding and awareness of the two becomes important for the community. Denny Ja 58 also invites the reader to continue to look for more certain answers through research and in -depth studies.    In this article, we have diverted the chosen Denny Ja 58 work which reveals the mystery of Ratu Adil and the Corona virus. With a professional writing style, Denny Ja 58 gives a deep and informative explanation of these two phenomena. Through this article, we are expected to gain a better understanding of the mystery of Ratu Adil and the impact of the Corona virus in our lives.

Check more: Diving Division of Denny JA 58 selected work: Uncovering the mystery of Ratu Adil and the Corona virus

[zanele1203]

Do occupational justice concepts inform occupational therapists’ professional actions?

Thomas Kuhn (1977), a philosopher of science, reminds us that "a theory should be fruitful to new research findings. That is, it should disclose new phenomena or previously unnoticed relationships among those already known. The application of an occupational perspective to justice is seen to reveal how individual experiences of Injustice are logically linked to larger contextual, collective, community, holistic, structural, political, discursive, and policy conditions that shape their production of injustice. In a nutshell, the main injustices that will be discussed in the following discussion are social, political, and cultural injustices.

Occupational justice is a powerful concept that bridges the gap between people's well-being and harmful social conditions that limit their ability to do and be. While the precise nature and outcome of social justice have long been debated, the arguments appear to boil down to two key concepts. First, a just society is one in which people are treated fairly, based on a belief in the dignity and sovereignty of the human person. Second, all citizens should share equally in societal resources (Robinson, 2016). Social justice addresses critical social goals, such as acting in ways that reflect an equitable and compassionate world, respecting human dignity, and fostering an inclusive society. As a result, its ideals are held in high regard. The United Nations promotes social justice as a global force against "a future ruined by violence, repression, and disorder," (United Nations, 2006).

For nearly 30 years, occupational justice, and related concepts such as occupational alienation, occupational balance, occupational deprivation, and occupational marginalization have been developed to articulate concerns about injustice and human rights in daily life (Durocher et al, 2014). The central arguments that launched these concepts are that humans are occupational beings and that human occupations occur in social or environmental contexts, and that those working toward an occupationally equitable community can use an occupational lens. The Participatory politics Occupational Justice Framework was created to connect occupational justice concepts with practices that address injustice and lack of rights in everyday life, for example, practices that address social issues such as environmental, and contextual. (Whiteford, 2012). Occupational therapists' social issues practices include working with individuals and with social groups or communities in specific contexts of social injustice (Durocher et al, 2014).

The concept and practices of social occupational therapy aim to investigate the professional, political, and ethical roles of occupational therapists working with socially vulnerable groups. Social occupational therapy focuses on the knowledge used in occupational therapy to help people who lack the social and economic resources to thrive (Barros et al, 2011). Social occupational therapy is defined as politically and ethically framed professional actions that target individuals, groups, or communities in order to enable justice and social rights for people who are currently disadvantaged by social conditions (Barros et al., 2005). Actions are aimed at the contemporary social question, which underpins the causes of inequality, as well as the structural systems in which work and social supports, or lack thereof, determine people's levels of social integration (Castel, 2003). As a result, social issues such as poverty, homelessness, immigration, drug use, unemployment, underemployment, culturally marginalized groups, prostitution, transgender discrimination, being imprisoned and others are critical issues that require professional responses.

Occupational therapy has a theoretical foundation and a history of focusing on people's social participation in society to promote justice and social transformation (Law, 1991). We should not turn a blind eye to issues such as political injustices which are one of the leading factors to the high rate of unemployment. People in positions hire their friends, and relatives who even doesn’t have qualifications for certain specific qualifications leaving hundreds and thousands of South Africans with qualifications jobless. Hence this on the other hand promotes or leads some people to drugs because they are trying to numb the pain of being unable to survive. This, therefore, speaks to OTs to open platforms such as empowerment which is one of the projects that the student therapists at CMC are working on it to give people hope and the basics of things they can possibly do to generate money which will be incorporated with strategies such as budgeting. Therefore, this can possibly lead to green pastures for some individuals.

Because justice is such an important issue throughout the world, it is critical for future occupational therapy professionals to discuss the profession's theoretical framework and practices in relation to occupational justice and critical approaches in occupational therapy (Rudman, 2018These highlight occupational therapists' reluctance to develop critical approaches to changing clients' structural, social, and political contexts, failing to consider the occupational nature of communities, collectivizes, or groups. Future occupational therapy professionals should play a political role in advocating for changes in conditions that impede individuals' and populations' occupational rights. Hammell and Iwama (2012) argue that situations of human rights violations can affect one's capacity and opportunities for well-being.  Hence these draw attention to occupational rights in a variety of contexts, including different cultures hence leading to therapeutic occupational resources which aim to improve individuals' skills. Resources, on the other hand, are required to improve living conditions so occupational therapists should engage in public conversations to address issues such as poverty, literacy advocacy, and respect for the rights of people with disabilities.

According to Hammell (2012), the right to occupational engagement as a means of achieving well-being is one of the fundamental human rights that would be unattainable under conditions of oppression, poverty, and social exclusion. To address issues that limit occupational rights, occupational therapy practices should be directed toward political involvement. Client-centered evaluation of community-based services would also allow OTs to collaborate with clients to determine the relevance and impact of OT’s work on people's lives (Hebert et al, 2000). Specific justice-oriented work would require OTs to form stronger partnerships with clients who are advocating for greater empowerment in and outside of health care (Deegan, 1997). At CMC, one client revealed that he resigned because the company was failing to make reasonable adjustments to his work environment, he is now unable to climb stairs (his office is on the 5th floor) due to a knee injury, and thus the lift in his work environment is not working in cases of load shedding. precisely a result of this, it is our responsibility as OTs to advocate for reasonable workplace accommodations for our clients.

As occupational therapists, we argue that an occupational justice perspective has the potential to apply and cultivate one's ethical thoughts to make us aware of a variety of possible framings of occupational situations, and to imagine what other paths of action ought to be possible. Future occupational therapy professionals must engage in moral imagination in the interests of a better world by thinking about the moral claims embedded in what the construct of occupational justice allows OTs to see. As a result, the practical, theoretical, political, and moral significance, as well as the conceptual power of "occupational justice" are enhanced. (Greene, 1995).

REFERENCES

Barros, D. D., Ghirardi, M. I. G., & Lopes, R. E. (2005). Social occupational therapy: A social-historical perspective. In F. Kronenberg, S. S. Algado & N. Pollard (Eds.), Occupational therapy without borders: Learning from the spirit of survivors (pp.140–151). London, UK: Elsevier Science/Churchill Livingstone.

Barros, D. D., Ghirardi, M. I. G., Lopes, R. E., & Galheigo, S. M. (2011). Brazilian experiences in social occupational therapy. In F.

Castel, R. (2003). From manual workers to wage laborers: Transformation of the social question (R. Boyd, Trans.). New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction.

Deegan, P. (1997). Recovery and empowerment for people with psychiatric disabilities. Social Work in Health Care, 25, 11-24.

Durocher, E., Gibson, B. E., & Rappolt, S. (2014). Occupational justice: A conceptual review. Journal of Occupational Science, 21(4), 418–430. doi:10.1080/ 14427591.2013.775692

Greene, M. (1995). Releasing the imagination: Essays on education, the arts, and social change. London, England: Routledge

Hebert, M., Thibeault, R., Landry, A., Boisvenu, M., & Laporte, D. (2000). Introducing an evaluation of community based occupational therapy services: A client-centred practice. Canadian Journal of Occupational Therapy, 67, 146-154.

Kronenberg, N. Pollard & D. Sakellariou, D. (Eds.), Occupational therapy without borders: Vol.2. Towards an ecology of occupation-based practices (pp. 209–215). Edinburgh, UK: Elsevier.

Laliberte Rudman, D. (2018). Occupational therapy and occupational science: Building critical and transformative alliances. Brazilian Journal of Occupational Therapy, 26(1), 241–249. doi:10.4322/2526–8910.ctoEN1246

Law, M. (1991). The environment: A focus for occupational therapist. Canadian Journal of Occupational Therapy, 58, 171–180.

Robinson, M. (2016). What is social justice? Boone, NC: Appalachian State University. Retrieved from http:// gjs.appstate.edu/social-justice-and-human-rights/whatsocial-justice.

Stadnyk, R., Townsend, E., & Wilcock, A. (2010). Occupational justice. In C. H. Christiansen & E. A. Townsend (Eds.), Introduction to occupation: The art and science of living (2nd ed., pp. 329–358). Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson Education.

Townsend, E. A., & Wilcock, A. A. (2004). Occupational justice. In C. H. Christiansen & E. A. Townsend (Eds.), Introduction to occupation: The art and science of living (pp. 243–273). Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall.

United Nations. (2006). Social justice in an open world: The role of the United Nations. The International Forum for Social Development, Department of Economic and Social Affairs, Division for Social Policy, and Development, ST/ESA/305. New York, NY: United Nations.

Whiteford, G. E., & Hocking, C. (Eds.). (2012). Occupational science: Society, inclusion, participation. Oxford, UK: Wiley-Blackwell.

Wilcock, A., & Townsend, E. (2000). Occupational terminology interactive dialogue: Occupational justice. Journal of Occupational Science, 7(2), 84–86. doi:10. 1080/14427591.2000.9686470

[suppotato123]

Hey this is poll 2 thanks again to everyone who participated in the first one!

- [ ] Thaumaturgical Artificing- The scientific study and application of magic as it pertains to Alchemy (the creation of of potions) and Arcana (the engineering of magical devices).

- [ ] Advanced Applied Necromancy- A degree for those looking for the most modern and ethical methods of raising the dead. This is a degree for those looking for new and inventive ways to apply the Necromantic Arts to the betterment of society. Students can expect to learn the ways in which Necromancy can be applied to various fields such as medicine, criminal justice, and even industry, all wrapped up in serious discussions about ethics and consent.

- [ ] Arcanic Archaeology- This degree walks students through the history of magical artifacts, how to find them, and their proper uses to aspiring Sorcerers and non-magic users alike.

- [ ] Linguistic Incantology- The study of the properties of magical languages as well as the characteristics of those languages in general ascertained in order to gain mastery over the magical art of incantation.

- [ ] Runic Studies- the study of the history of runes and sigils, their relevance in art, politics, and culture, and their various uses to the modern spell caster.

- [ ] Magiphysical Sciences- The study of Humanoid systems, anatomy, and physical health and fitness as it pertains to magical gestures and more physically involved magic systems.

- [ ] Mystic Virology- The study of magical diseases and curses, their effects on the humanoid form, and the treatments and counterhexes for such magical conditions.

- [ ] Beasts Behavior and Health Sciences- This degree will prepare students for work with both wild and domestic fantastical creatures by giving them essential knowledge and essential skills in magical veterinary medicine and biology, grooming, feeding, and care, as well as wildlife rehabilitation.

- [ ] Magical Performance Arts- A degree for those seeking to enchant and bewilder audiences of all ages. If you’re looking for something something showy and fun, look no further! Includes the option for courses like Enchantments and Shapeshifting.

- [ ] Wandsmithing Technologies- This is a course for students looking to design wands. Students will learn to many essential lesson including, but not limited to, magidynamics, the magical components of many different wand building materials, and a comprehensive analysis on different wand styles throughout the ages. At the end students will have several wand prototypes and models under their belts.

- [ ] Criminal Justice- Study how criminal justice organizations function, deal with people and their recurring problems, and create programs and policies that include and benefit the community. Here’s the twist; we add in a little magic to make your job easier. A popular magic class taken for this degree Scrying (with a warrant of course).

- [ ] Supernatural Physics- the study of how and why magic came to be and how and why it works. Students will learn the structure of magic and how it interacts with other fundamental constituents of the universe.

- [ ] Economic Divination- This degree provides studies in supply and demand, consumer behavior, and financial markets with an added twist. Students will learn the most reliable methods of divination to help insure future financial success.

- [ ] Mystic Ecology- The study of relationships among living magical organisms, humanoids, and their physical environments. This degree looks at organisms at the individual, population, community, ecosystem, and biosphere level. Students can expect to learn how to use their magic to help repair damaged ecosystems, increase power output, and cast diagnostic spells to access what remediation is necessary.

- [ ] Novel Entomology- The scientific study of magical species of insects, arachnids, myriapods, and crustaceans.

- [ ] Magic History- The history of magic and it’s uses across different ages and cultures. This class will look at the different major events involving and influenced by magic and it’s interaction with society.

- [ ] General Studies- This degree covers the most basic information on various magical studies and provides a great opportunity for students to discover their magical passions and/or complete their prerequisite courses before moving on to a more advanced degree.

[indigenousandnativewaysofbeing]

Network Sovereignty Among Native and Indigenous Information Technology and Ways of Being

There’s a quote in chapter three of Marisa Elena Duarte's "Network Sovereignty" that sticks with me. It goes like this “Operating within a frame of biological determinism, they [colonists] asserted that the blood showed that the Havasupai people were not entirely Havasupai. Treating the blood as pure information—removed from its context, devoid of significance beyond that of the university lab—the researchers objectified the samples and invested them with values far removed from the desert canyon philosophy of the Havasupai people” (Duarte 36). The researchers were found to have an alternative agenda of “[manipulating] the DNA samples” (Duarte 36).

I want to make a few distinctions here because phrases like “biological determinism” and “pure information” are hard to grasp when you’re not overly familiar with them. Colonial researchers who inherently apply a different understanding of the world, of science, and of ideas of what they believe is true, what they believe the whole world should regard as true, neglected the historical events that led to the regional and global blending of genes for the Havasupai people. What’s more, these scientists have applied their own meanings and have stated them as a universal truth. What they then do with this “truth” is weaponize it against Native and Indigenous peoples. This led to new ways of thinking for Indigenous tribes. Now, they were also tasked with protecting their data and information “as a matter of the integrity of tribal ways of knowing and modes of self-governance” (Duarte 37).

Duarte defines tribal sovereignty in several ways, outlining a “dynamic relationship” between the tenacity of Native and Indigenous peoples and “over [a] millennia” of knowledge and lived experience regarding the homeland in which they protect (37). Eight rights define “Cultural sovereignty and legal-political sovereignty” for “federally recognized tribes,” such as self-governance, determination of citizenship, the right to “administer justice,” regulation of domestic relations, “property inheritance,” “taxation,” “conduct of federal employees,” and “sovereign immunity” (Duarte 37). There is a need to discern differences between the “integrity of a people [and] the integrity of their government,” as Native and Indigenous peoples nourish a long history of information, “tribal histories, languages, philosophies, spiritualities,” and “Indigenous modes of self-governance,” while also adjusting to ongoing colonial conflict (Duarte 37).

The motives of colonial America, then, have made it extremely difficult for Indigenous tribes to receive adequate broadband and internet services. “Inevitably, the decisions that tribal leaders make interface with the decisions and practices of neighboring governments,” writes Duarte when discussing the “Honoring Nations” program from the “Harvard Institute of American Indian Economic Development,” noting that information sharing in this way was designed explicitly with “intertribal and intergovernmental” connections and the accessibility of the Internet to the many tribal homes that lacked “basic phone, cellular, and Internet service” (49). Duarte also expresses the importance of “cultural sovereignty” among elders and younger members of reservation communities, writing that “tribal geopolitics—political boundaries, physical geography, seasonal cycles, [and] self-governance procedures” all determine the usage of ICTs (49).

The image in this blog post describes the broadband services found within the To'Hajiilee Indian Reservation. The sign is posted outside the "To'Hajiilee Senior Citizen Center," marking the beginnings of Covid-19. https://morningconsult.com/2021/11/22/tribal-lands-broadband-deployment-data-feature/#:~:text=The%20efforts%20of%20Indigenous%20leaders,percent%20of%20the%20overall%20population.

Edited: 5/2/2023

[assignments-helps]

Take advantage of our Social Science Assignment Help to earn top grades

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Greatassignmenthelp.com is a leading online assignment help service provider dedicated to providing students with the best writing assistance. We have a team of skilled researchers, proofreaders, and academic writers who have extensive knowledge of various academic disciplines and are qualified to help you with your social science assignment writing. Before proceeding, let us review the subject and its academic disciplines.

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1. Historical context

The term "history" is derived from the Greek word "historian," which means "inquiry or knowledge gained through investigation." The study of the past is known as history. It contains evidence from ancient events as well as information about them. Thus, studying history necessitates the use of appropriate selection material such as historical documents, quoted texts from epics, sculptures, and so on. Academic writers at greatassignmenthelp.com have mastered Social Science degrees from some of the best universities in the world, so they have accurate historical information. The nature of historical evidence is ambiguous, but using our online social science assignment help will solve your problem.

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Political science is the branch of science that studies the judicial system. Political science emphasizes topics such as government formation, individual duties and rights, and organizational rules and policies. In the age of globalization, it is necessary to have a broad understanding of government operations and human rights. Political movements and events that paved the way for the formation of government and judicial policies necessitate critical thinking and knowledge of the subject. Our experts have the necessary experience and credentials to provide you with the best social science assignment.

3. Sociology

It is the scientific study of social behavior. It discusses various aspects of society, such as marriage, behavior, health, religion, and so on, and how these aspects influence human behavior. It is a broad field that enlightens an individual about the community and causes him to see society in a new light. Our experts use references from all sociology theories to ensure that your social science assignment is unique and well-researched.

4. Archaeology

 It is the study of human history through ancient structures, underground burials, artifacts, and cultural landscapes. It is derived from the Greek word 'Archaea,' which means "ancient things." Human activity is studied through the recovery and analysis of ancient evidence. Surveying, excavation, and data analysis are the three basic processes in archaeology.

5. Economics

Economic theory is concerned with the production, consumption, and distribution of goods and services. Simply put, it is the study of how businesses, organizations, and governments can use their limited resources efficiently to maximize output.

[yogenderthakur]

11 May Historical Events Indian History, World History

11 May Historical Events Indian History, World History

11 मई Indian History, World History Historical Events की महत्त्वपूर्ण घटनाएँ : 1745 – फोंटेनॉय की लड़ाई (दोरनिक): ऑस्ट्रियाई ने उत्तराधिकार के लिए युद्ध शुरू किया गया।1749 – ब्रिटिश संसद ने समेकन अधिनियम स्वीकार किया, जिसने रॉयल नेवी को पुनर्गठित किया गया।1751 – पेंसिल्वेनिया अस्पताल डॉ थॉमस बॉन्ड और बेंजामिन फ्रैंकलिन द्वारा स्थापित किया गया। 1752 – अमेरिका के फिलाडेल्फिया में पहली अग्नि बीमा…

[decolonize-the-everything]

I can't believe that person thought your response was incoherent, apparently they cant read.

Because OP is a leftist it's actually a bit deeper than that. And since OP clearly has a complex about comprehension and colonial standards of intellect I'm gonna use your ask to dismantle that a bit for anyone checking out my Tumblr or who shares the same view.

This is long

I went through their recent posts and one says that "anti-intellectualism" is stupid. And I've learned from my experiences in leftists spaces that they LOVE intellectualism. They love name-dropping Marx and telling you to "go read Das Kapital and The Conquest of Bread and get back to me" instead of having actual discussions with people who have opposing views.

As if nobody but their precious books could possibly have an opinion worth their time.

Here's the thing though.

(I typed a lot here but honestly Russel Means says it best)

"The only possible opening for a statement like this is that I detest writing. The process itself epitomizes the European concept of “legitimate thinking”: what is written has an importance that is denied the spoken. My culture, the Lakota culture, has an oral tradition, so I ordinarily reject writing. It is one of the white world’s ways of destroying the cultures of non-European peoples, the imposing of an abstraction over the spoken relationship of a people.

So what you read here is not what I’ve written. It’s what I’ve said and someone else has written down. I will allow this because it seems that the only way to communicate with the white world is through the dead, dry leaves of a book. I don’t really care whether my words reach whites or not. They have already demonstrated through their history that they cannot hear, cannot see; they can only read (of course, there are exceptions, but the exceptions only prove the rule).

And he goes on to say:

I don’t believe these theories can be separated from the rest of the European intellectual tradition. It’s really just the same old song. The process began much earlier. Newton, for example, “revolutionized” physics and the so-called natural sciences by reducing the physical universe to a linear mathematical equation. Descartes did the same thing with culture. John Locke did it with politics, and Adam Smith did it with economics. Each one of these “thinkers” took a piece of the spirituality of human existence and converted it into a code, an abstraction. They picked up where Christianity ended; they “secularized” Christian religion, as the “scholars” like to say—and in doing so they made Europe more able and ready to act as an expansionist culture. Each of these intellectual revolutions served to abstract the European mentality even further, to remove the wonderful complexity and spirituality from the universe and replace it with a logical sequence: one, two, three, Answer!

(Karl Marx literally laid out the steps that led to a revolution. As if that alone is the answer to all our oppression)

This is what has come to be termed “efficiency” in the European mind. Whatever is mechanical is perfect; whatever seems to work at the moment—that is, proves the mechanical model to be the right one—is considered correct, even when it is clearly untrue. This is why “truth” changes so fast in the European mind; the answers which result from such a process are only stop-gaps, only temporary, and must be continuously discarded in favor of new stop-gaps which support the mechanical models and keep them (the models) alive.

Hegel and Marx were heirs to the thinking of Newton, Descartes, Locke, and Smith. Hegel finished the process of secularizing theology—and that is put in his own terms—he secularized the religious thinking through which Europe understood the universe. Then Marx put Hegel’s philosophy in terms of “materialism,” which is to say that Marx despiritualized Hegel’s work altogether. Again, this is in Marx’ own terms. And this is now seen as the future revolutionary potential of Europe. Europeans may see this as revolutionary, but American Indians see it simply as still more of that same old European conflict between being and gaining. The intellectual roots of a new Marxist form of European imperialism lie in Marx’s—and his followers’—links to the tradition of Newton, Hegel, and the others.

Being is a spiritual proposition. Gaining is a material act. Traditionally, American Indians have always attempted to be the best people they could. Part of that spiritual process was and is to give away wealth, to discard wealth in order not to gain. Material gain is an indicator of false status among traditional people, while it is “proof that the system works” to Europeans. Clearly, there are two completely opposing views at issue here, and Marxism is very far over to the other side from the American Indian view. But let’s look at a major implication of this; it is not merely an intellectual debate.

The European materialist tradition of despiritualizing the universe is very similar to the mental process which goes into dehumanizing another person. And who seems most expert at de humanizing other people? And why? Soldiers who have seen a lot of combat learn to do this to the enemy before going back into combat. Murderers do it before going out to commit murder. Nazi SS guards did it to concentration camp inmates. Cops do it. Corporation leaders do it to the workers they send into uranium mines and steel mills. Politicians do it to everyone in sight. And what the process has in common for each group doing the dehumanizing is that it makes it all right to kill and other wise destroy other people. One of the Christian commandments says, “Thou shalt not kill,” at least not humans, so the trick is to mentally convert the victims into nonhumans. Then you can proclaim violation of your own commandment as a virtue.

In terms of the despiritualization of the universe, the mental process works so that it becomes virtuous to destroy the planet. Terms like progress and development are used as cover words here, the way victory and freedom are used to justify butchery in the dehumanization process. For example, a real estate speculator may refer to “developing” a parcel of ground by opening a gravel quarry; development here means total, permanent destruction, with the earth itself removed. But European logic has gained a few tons of gravel with which more land can be “developed” through the construction of road beds. Ultimately, the whole universe is open—in the European view—to this sort of insanity.

Most important here, perhaps, is the fact that Europeans feel no sense of loss in all this. After all, their philosophers have despiritualized reality, so there is no satisfaction (for them) to be gained in simply observing the wonder of a mountain or a lake or a people in being. No, satisfaction is measured in terms of gaining material. So the mountain becomes gravel, and the lake becomes coolant for a factory, and the people are rounded up for processing through the indoctrination mills Europeans like to call schools.

Which brings us to my last quote.

Revolutionary Marxism, like industrial society in other forms, seeks to ‘rationalize” all people in relation to industry—maximum industry, maximum production. It is a materialist doctrine that despises the American Indian spiritual tradition, our cultures, our lifeways. Marx himself called us “precapitalists” and “primitive.” Precapitalist simply means that, in his view, we would eventually discover capitalism and become capitalists: we have always been economically retarded in Marxist terms. The only manner in which American Indian people could participate in a Marxist revolution would be to join the industrial system, to become factory workers, or “proletarians” as Marx called them. The man was very clear about the fact that his revolution could occur only through the struggle of the proletariat, that the existence of a massive industrial system is a precondition of a successful Marxist society.

I think there’s a problem with language here. Christians, capitalists, Marxists. All of them have been revolutionary in their own minds, but none of them really mean revolution. What they really mean is a continuation. They do what they do in order that European culture can continue to exist and develop according to its needs.

It reduced all of that down to class because for white people, that objectively is the most significant oppression. And from a white perspective I'm sure that's the Objective conclusion because that's the Only oppression All white people experience. It must be the most important then. Right?

The issue is intellectualism doesn't teach you to think for yourself or to consider anyone else's views as valid. It teaches you to accept the written word. And often, as Russel Means mentioned, the word "objective" is often used a weapon to remove anything that might have heart. To remove any ethic or morality that might stop you from dehumanizing someone. Anything that might stop the process of industrialization.

How else could an "objective" point of view on struggle leave out their peers struggling under different axis of oppression? How could it leave it out colonialism? The patriarchy? Racism? Why else would these struggles be deemed too irrelevant to be included?

And if intellectualism at this point seems racist and like a tool of white supremacy, you'd be correct. It is.

That's why OP didn't get it. How could they have? You can't choose to be an intellectual AND have solidarity with anyone who opposes colonization. You can't be an intellectual AND oppose European constructs. You can't choose the superiority offered by white European intellectualism AND be an ally to BIPOC.

[celiabowens]

Adult SFF edition

High/Epic Fantasy

The Lies of Locke Lamora: heist fantasy following a band of misfits! It has morally gray characters, fun banter but heartwrenching moments and a pretty complex plot. It’s a classic to say “if you liked Six of Crows and want to try adult SFF try this” and it’s probably true. 

Kushiel’s Dart: a political fantasy tome loosely inspired by Europe in the Renaissance. Pretty heavy on romance and erotica (with BDSM elements) as it follows a courtesan navigating the political scene. It has an amazing female villain.

A Darker Shade of Magic: probably the easiest way to approach adult fantasy. It has multiple Londons and a pretty unique magic system and concept, plus a crossdressing thief, knives and great banter. 

The Poppy War: grimdark fantasy (TW: abuse, self harm, rape, drug abuse), inspired by Chinese history. It’s adult, but follows younger MCs and the unique blend of different historical periods/inspirations makes it extremely interesting. The characters are extremely fucked up in the best possible way, plus the use of shamanism is awesome.

The Sword of Kaigen: if you liked The Poppy War you could like this one. The Sword of Kaigen is an Asian-inspired militaristic fantasy, with elemental magic, a badass housewife dealing with her past and hiding a sword in her kitchen’s floor. It has interesting and nuanced family dynamics and a great reflection on propaganda and the use of narratives.

The Priory of the Orange Tree: high fantasy, featuring dragons, a F/F romance and pretty complex world building. The author reuses typical fantasy tropes and roles in a fresh way. Very readable in spite of its length.

Empire of Sand: inspired by Mughal India, this one focuses on culture and religion and has great slow burn romance (TW: abuse, slavery). It’s pretty slow paced, but the payoff is great. Also a good "YA crossover”.

The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms: first book in a companion novel trilogy, following a young woman who finds herself at the center of a vicious political struggle, as she’s suddenly become the heir to the throne. 

Black Sun: first book in a new series by Rebecca Roanhorse, inspired by pre-Columbian societies and cultures. It mainly focuses on religious and political conflicts. TW for abuse, mild body horror and suicide (not very graphic). Nice inclusion of lgbt rep across the whole cast + one of the main characters is blind. Great world building!

Historical Fantasy

The Night Circus: perfect transition from YA to Adult for a reader, The Night Circus is a gorgeous historical fantasy romance. The author’s writing is amazing, the descriptions and the subtlety of the main characters’ relationship are to die for.

The City of Brass: political/historical fantasy tome featuring Middle Eastern mythology. It follows younger MCs (honestly another series that could be a good way to approach adult SFF) and has great character growth throughout the series. The first book has some more trope-y elements, but the payoff is worth it. 

The Golem and The Djinni: historical fantasy (if you loved The Night Circus you could like this one), following two mythical creatures as they navigate New York in 1899. Slow burn romance, rich descriptions, fascinating combination of Jewish and Syrian folklore.

Gods of Jade and Shadow: a fantasy bildungsroman set in Mexico during the Jazz age. Another great way to approach adult SFF as it follows a young girl on a life changing adventure. It features Mayan mythology and a god slowly becoming human.

The Ghost Bride: set in Malaya in 1893, it follows the daughter of a ruined man as she receives the proposal to become a ghost bride. Lovely setting, rich in culture and extremely atmospheric.

The Bear and The Nightingale: a coming of age story inspired by Russian folklore. Another great way to start reading adult SFF: it’s very atmospheric and fairy tale-like. Also frost demons are better than men.

Queen of the Conquered: first book in a fantasy duology(?) set in an alternate version of the Caribbean at the time of Scandinavian colonisation. It follows Sigourney, a biracial woman (her mother was a slave, freed by her father) and the only islander who is allowed to own and use kraft and therefore has a position of privilege, which she constantly abuses, while telling herself she’s doing it for the islanders’ benefit. The book is hard to read, because the MC is no hero and her POV can be quite challenging to get through, but if you’re up for it I’d totally recommend this. (TW: slavery, abuse, death).

The Lions of Al-Rassan: this one has minimal fantasy elements, much like other Kay books, as it reads more like an alternate history. Using Moorish Spain as a template, it deals with the conflict between Jews, Muslims and Christians. Much like Under Heaven and most of his historical fantasy it shows common people being swept up in dramatic events. 

Urban Fantasy

The Divine Cities trilogy: starting with City of Stairs, it follows a female diplomat and spymaster(!!). The whole trilogy features an interesting discussion about godhood, religion, fanatism, politics, without ever being boring or preachy. It has complex and rich world building and a pretty compelling mystery.

Foundryside: heist fantasy following a thief as she’s hired to steal a powerful artifact that may change magical technology as she knows it. Also, slow burn F/F romance.

Jade City:  a wuxia inspired, gangster urban fantasy. Great family dynamics, very interesting political and economical subplots. 

One for My Enemy: sort of a modern Romeo and Juliet, but set in New York, starring two magical gangster families. The female characters are to die for.  

Trail of Lightning: inspired by Native mythology and the idea of subsequent worlds. It has a kickass MC and a good mix of original elements and typical UF tropes. You could like this if you liked the Kate Daniels series.

American Gods: a classic of the genre, pretty much brilliant in how it reuses old mythology in a modern setting.

Retellings

Spinning Silver: a very loose retelling of Rumpelstiltskin, with a gorgeous atmosphere. It mainly follows female characters from different social and economical backgrounds and reuses the original tale to challenge the antisemitic ideas around the role of the moneylander.

The Queens of Innis Lear: fantasy retelling of King Lear, very atmospheric and gorgeously written. Slow paced, but very satisfying build up, lots of backstabbing and miscommunication. (heads up though, one of the MCs is coded as aroace and I found the rep pretty bad on that. The book does feature casual bisexual rep though, which was great)

Lady Hotspur: genderbent retelling of Henry IV, set in the same world as The Queens of Innis Lear. Lesbian and bisexual rep. Heavy on political subplots, features ambitious women growing into their roles.

Deathless: sort of a retelling of Koschei the Deathless set in the first half of the 20th century. Brilliant reuse of Russian folklore to weave together politics and history. It does have pretty brutal descriptions of war, morally gray characters, unhealthy relationships and overall a lot of mindfuckery.

Space Opera

A Memory Called Empire: space opera inspired by the Mexica and middle period Byzantium. It focuses on topics like colonialism and the power of narratives and language. It has one of the best descriptions of what it’s like to live in between spaces I’ve ever read. Also very interesting political intrigue and has a slow burn F/F romance (and a poly relationship recalled through flashbacks).

Ninefox Gambit: a Korean-inspired space opera with a magic system based on math. It’s honestly quite convoluted and difficult to follow, but it also features some of the best political intrigue I’ve ever read. Plenty of lying, backstabbing and mind games. It also features lesbian and bisexual rep and an aroace side character (TW: mass shooting, sexual assault).

The Light Brigade: militaristic space opera set in a not-so-defined future in which corporations rule Earth and space in general. The book follows a newly enlisted soldier as they go through gruelling training and experience the side effects of being broken down into atoms to travel at the speed of light. It’s a heavy book, featuring raw descriptions of war, and quite difficult to follow (non-linear timelines...) but it’s also an amazing critique of capitalism and political propaganda (TW: death, mass shooting).

Gideon the Ninth: pretty much lesbian necromancers in space. Very loose world building, but a fun mystery full of banter. Can be quite confusing in the beginning, but a relatively easy and fun way to approach science fiction.

The Long Way to a Small Angry Planet: character driven space opera featuring a found family journeying through space. A fun read, that also deals with topics such as sexuality and race. Quite easy to go through, as the world building and plot aren’t particularly complex themselves. Also features a F/F romance. 

Science Fiction-Fantasy that I can’t fit anywhere else

Vicious: college roommates put themselves through near-death experiences to obtain super powers, only everything goes wrong. Follows a great band of misfits (and pretty much everyone is morally gray).

Middlegame: a brilliant and complex tapestry of alternate timelines, following telepathically connected twins trying to escape the alchemist that wants to use them to obtain godhood (TW: attempted suicide).

Piranesi: the long awaited return of Susanna Clarke, Piranesi is an odd, mysterious book set in a house with infinite rooms and endless corridors, apparently inhabited by only two people. 

Bonus Novella recs: novellas are amazing and don’t sleep on them!

The Empress of Salt and Fortune: an Asian-inspired fantasy novella, it gives a voice to people usually silenced by history. It follows a cleric (non binary rep) as they chronicle the story of the late empress, retold through objects that she used in her life. It focuses on bonds between women and the power that lies in being unnoticed.  

The Black God’s Drums: an urban fantasy novella, based on Orisha mythology and set in an alternate, sort of steampunk, New Orleans. 

The Haunting of Tram Car 015: alternate steampunk Cairo populated by supernatural entities. It has a compelling mystery, starring a great lead.

This Is How You Lose the Time War: epistolary set during a time-travel war, F/F romance and gorgeous prose. 

The Citadel of Weeping Pearls: a novella set in the Xuya universe (a series of novellas/short stories set in a timeline where Asia became dominant, and where the space age has empires of Vietnamese and Chinese inspiration), but can be read as a standalone. It’s a space opera featuring a disappeared citadel and the complex relationship between the empress and her daughter as war threatens her empire.

To Be Taught, If Fortunate: an incredibly heartwarming and yet meaningful novella about research and the meaning of it. It’s the tale of 4 astronauts on a crowdfunded mission to explore space, to observe and report without conquering. It’s written in lovely prose and is very casual in its lgbt rep.

The Deep: very good novella set in an underwater society built by the descendants of African slave women that were tossed overboard. It’s not an easy read at all, as it deals with trauma, both personal and generational ones. 

Bonus short story collections recs

A Cathedral of Myth and Bone: 16 short stories featuring myth, legend and faith, that mainly focus on women reclaiming their agency. 

The Paper Menageries and Other Stories: features plenty of different fantasy and science fiction subgenres. The Paper Menagerie in particular is an extremely moving tale.

Conservation of Shadows: science fiction-fantasy short stories that focus on topics like colonisation and the role of art and language. 

Graphic Novel

Monstress: series set in an alt 1900s matriarchal Asia, following a teenage girl who survived a war and shares a connection with a monster that’s slowly transforming her. (TW: slavery, death).

[mostlysignssomeportents]

Debts that can't be paid, won't be paid

It’s been just over a year since the death of activist, writer and anthropologist Gavid Graeber — a brilliant speaker, writer and thinker who helped give us Occupy, “we are the 99%” and “Bullshit Jobs.”

On the anniversary of David’s death, his widow Nika Dubrovsky convened the first “Art Project” discussion, a fascinating debate between Thomas Piketty and Michael Hudson, a pair of political economists whose work is neatly bridged by Graeber’s own.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GWT0uvBLDbo

Piketty, of course, is the bestselling French economist whose 2013 Capital in the 21st Century was an unlikely, 700+ page viral hit, describing with rare lucidity the macroeconomics that drive capitalism towards cruel and destabilizing inequality

https://memex.craphound.com/2014/06/24/thomas-pikettys-capital-in-the-21st-century/

Hudson, meanwhile, is the debt-historian and economist whose haunting phrase “Debts that can’t be paid, won’t be paid,” is a perfect and irrefutable summation of the inevitable downfall of any system that relies on household debt to drive consumption.

https://pluralistic.net/2020/03/24/grandparents-optional-party/#jubilee

Like Hudson, Graeber was obsessed with the history and politics of debt. His 2012 book “Debt: The First 5,000 years” influenced not just Piketty’s work, but the work of many non-economists, including a large group of science fiction writers.

https://www.tor.com/2012/04/16/the-best-science-fiction-ideas-in-any-non-fiction-ever-david-graebers-debt-the-first-five-thousand-years/

Like Piketty, Graeber was capable of writing extremely long books that were so engaging that people actually read them, absorbing complex and nuanced subjects. DEBT clocked in at 534 pages, and not a dud among them.

And like both Hudson and Piketty, Graeber was obsessed with long timescales and the ways that history is pressed into service to assert that various political situations are inevitable products of human nature, meaning that there’s no point in asking for a fairer system.

In Debt, Graeber reaches back 5,000 years to question (among other things), the “money story” that money was created by individuals who wanted to make barter more efficient, settling on coins as a way to make change for someone who wants a cow but only has chickens to trade.

Graeber shows the “confluence of needs” theory of money to be a fairy tale, something that orthodox economists literally made up as the “most likely” source of money, without ever asking historians about what the record tells us about the origins of money.

Which is a pity, because historians know a lot about this stuff! For example, they can tell you about the Babylonian use of ledgers to record the issuance and redemption of debt in the largely agricultural economy of the day.

This early money would be recognizable to farmers today: during planting season, a share of the eventual harvest is promised in exchange for the inputs needed to plant, nurture and reap the crops.

Like Graeber, Hudson also treats Babylonian policy as key to economics — specifically, the Babylonian understanding that “debts that can’t be paid, won’t be paid,” which is why the state would periodically declare a jubilee in which all debts were declared void.

Without these periodic jubilees, the entire productive economy is swallowed up by debt service — every poor harvest or other unforseeable circumstance drives producers (who are also debtors) further into debt, whose interest creates an inescapable gravity.

Without some way to escape debt’s gravity, all productive labor becomes oriented toward debt-service, and the economy grinds to a halt. If this sounds familiar, you’re probably paying attention to today’s political economy:

https://pluralistic.net/2021/05/19/zombie-debt/#damnation

Piketty also works in long timescales, though his historical analysis is an order of magnitude more recent that Hudston or Graeber’s. At Capital XXI’s core is a data-set, painstakingly assembled by Piketty and his grad students over more than a decade.

That data-set traces “capital flows” (the distribution of wealth and income) for 300+ years, rigorously traced and normalized, so that we can understand things like the relative degree of inequality in different societies over centuries.

Famously, Piketty concludes that no matter how fast an economy is growing — no matter how productive its makers are — that wealth grows faster, making the takers who financed growth even richer than the people whose work is propelling the economy.

This fundamental truth (expressed in economic notation as r > g, or “return on capital is greater than economic growth”) means that “meritocracy” is a lie: the richest people in a market economy aren’t the people who do the best work, it’s the people who started off rich.

Like Hudson, Piketty’s work looks at the relationship between inequality and instability: Piketty uses his data to show that inequality crises trigger political crises, and that high degrees of inequality precede upheavals like the French Revolution and the World Wars.

Given all that, a discussion between Piketty and Hudson, convened in Graeber’s memory, is bound to be fascinating, and they don’t disappoint (if you prefer text to video, check out Naked Capitalism’s transcript):

https://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2021/09/michael-hudson-and-thomas-piketty-debate-inequality-debt-and-reform.html

Here’s my highlight reel of the discussion, with commentary. Hudson opens with a skeptical take on Piketty’s conclusion to Capital XXI, in which he proposes a global wealth tax. Such a tax is nearly impossible to enforce, says Hudson — unlike a jubilee.

Hudson says the source of today’s global vast fortunes is not earnings or income — rather, it’s central banks’ subsidy of the value of stocks and bonds, through rock-bottom interest rates, bond guarantees, etc. These fuel speculative bear markets that run up asset prices.

These state-subsidized fortunes are pumped into the financial markets, becoming the loans that everyone else has to pay debt on, just to survive. As in ancient times, the finance sector eventually swallows the productive economy whole. Without jubilee, you get collapse.

This is true within rich economies, but it’s even more pronounced in the relations between poor debtor countries who were coerced into taking on massive debts by the IMF, who are going to pay an ever-larger share of their GDP to offshore creditors as the economy slows.

The only way for poor countries to service those debts is by imposing crushing austerity, which means starving domestic producers of investment, education and health services, reducing productivity, requiring more austerity — until the whole thing collapses.

Remember: debts that can’t be paid, won’t be paid. It’s an iron law, and cannot be repealed — not by austerity, not by “better management,” not by “living within your means.” Can’t be paid = won’t be paid.

Piketty doesn’t dispute any of this, saying that he’s reconsidered some of the solutions in Capital XXI in light of subsequent events, like the pathetically inadequate global minimum corporate tax of 15%, which only rich countries’ treasuries will get to participate in.

Piketty points to his followup to Capital XXI, the even weightier (and sadly less influential) Capital and Ideology for his more up-to-date thinking on the way to address inequality and instability.

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2020/feb/19/capital-and-ideology-by-thomas-piketty-review-if-inequality-is-illegitimate-why-not-reduce-it

He reiterates his thesis that inequality self-corrects, thanks to the instability it engenders. Left on their own, market economies collapse, torn apart by the bill for guards to defend lenders’ fortunes, the bill for interest payments that enrich lenders.

Impose sufficient austerity and brutality on a society and the cost of defending it exceeds the wealth its productive sector manages to produce, and boom — French Revolution, the World Wars, etc.

Piketty proposes that mounting “catastrophic climate change” might precipitate the next crisis, which is certainly a safe bet, though of course, the question is whether that crisis will come after the point of no return for a habitable planet.

Hudson has ideas about how we might hasten transformative change without risking civilizational collapse. He points out that Piketty’s work identifies inherited wealth as inequality’s wellspring and points out that estate taxes are much more enforceable than wealth taxes.

Certainly, inherited wealth is a live issue today. The latest installment of Propublica’s essential IRS Papers reporting shows how the richest Americans abuse a bizarre loophole to avoid ANY tax on indescribably vast estates:

https://www.propublica.org/article/more-than-half-of-americas-100-richest-people-exploit-special-trusts-to-avoid-estate-taxes

No one knows exactly how much tax avoidance grantor retained annuity trusts (GRATs) drive, because they are shrouded in secrecy. In 2013, the lawyer who created GRATs said they’d allowed the ultra-wealthy to evade $100b in taxes. Their use has increased since then.

Another lever for reducing inequality is political competition. Hudson points out that during the Cold War, capitalist states took steps to prevent runaway inequality in a bid to show that market economies were more stable than centralized, planned economies.

Hudson suggests that competition with China might serve that function today. Without forgiving China for its autocracy and human rights abuses, he gives favorable marks to its economic planners for reining in the finance sector.

It’s true that China intervened heavily in credit markets during the covid crisis, to prevent rentiers from destroying productive businesses that couldn’t service their debts during lockdown, preserving larges swathes of otherwise vulnerable productive firms.

He reminds us that the original meaning of “free market” was “a market free from rents,” where unproductive creditors were not allowed to lay a private tax on productive manufacturers.

https://locusmag.com/2021/03/cory-doctorow-free-markets/

Today, the meaning has been reversed — a market is “free” if creditors face no limits on rent-extraction.

But there’s good reason to be skeptical of claims that China’s economy is being well-managed, as Anne Stevenson-Yang writes.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/annestevenson-yang/2021/09/25/chairman-xi-chinas-looming-crisis-and-the-myth-of-infallibility/

Stevenson-Yang paints a picture of chaotic state management of the Chinese economy, hidden by state-owned media and its rosy outlook. Watchwords like “common prosperity” are empty buzzwords, used to paper over self-interested, corrupt business practices.

State initiatives measure progress through short-term, easily gamed KPIs, something she says is documented in Red Roulette: “a new book written by a disaffected property developer named Desmond Shum.”

https://www.simonandschuster.com/books/Red-Roulette/Desmond-Shum/9781982156152

Now, I’m willing to stipulate that for investors and property developers “corruption” or “incompetence” might be indistinguishable from what the rest of us would call good governance, but some of Stevenson-Yang’s charges seem factual and well-made.

42I found the discussion between Piketty and Hudson fascinating, and if there was anything more that I’d add, it would be a dose of technopolitics (unsurprisingly). After all, technology has a huge bearing on the timing and nature of the shifts that both economists study.

For Piketty, inequality-driven instability collapses when the cost of guard-labor rises too high to bear — other words, eventually, a society gets so unequal that it costs more to stave off guillotines than even the ultrarich can afford.

For Hudson, debt-driven instability collapses when debtors begin to default because they have no ability to service their debts.

Technology changes the nature of both of these collapses. Take guard labor: mass surveillance and technological controls make it cheaper than at any time in history to isolate and neutralize political threats to elite rule.

How much cheaper? Well, in 1989, the Stasi employed one in sixty East Germans to spy on the whole nation.

Today, the NSA spies on the whole world, at a spy:subject ratio that’s more like 1:10,000 — two orders of magnitude more efficient than the spies of a generation ago. That’s a huge productivity gain, and it’s all thanks to digital technology.

When it comes to debtor default, the tension is between coercion and ability to pay. Yes, “debts that can’t be paid, won’t be paid,” but “can’t be aid” is not a hard limit — it turns on how much the debtor is willing to hurt themselves and their loved ones to make payments.

Every mafia armbreaker knows this. When someone can’t pay their debts, you can break their arm and they’ll cash in their kids’ college fund and secretly remortgage their house to make the next payment.

When that runs out, if you threaten to break their legs, the debtor will start breaking into cars. Eventually, this comes to an end, when the debtor goes to prison for 25 years. But in the meantime, coercive force can wring a fair amount of blood from the stone.

Debtor coercion has been transformed by digital technology, from an artisanal, retail handicraft to a scaled up, industrial practice.

https://pluralistic.net/2021/04/02/innovation-unlocks-markets/#digital-arm-breakers

We don’t need the threat of repo men to keep you paying your car note — miss a Tesla payment and your car will phone home and lock its doors. When the tow arrives, it will flash its lights, honk its horn and back out of its parking space for repossession.

The ability to digitally repossess, or partially repossess (as in India, where loan-shark cellphone companies disable your most-used apps if you miss a payment) the tools you rely on for life and livelihood makes it cost-effective to apply coercion at scale.

Cheap guard-labor and cheap coercion mean that crisis can be deferred for ever-longer timescales. Thus, societies up the only kind of debt that really matters: policy debt. Lives are ruined, productive capacity tanked, the planet poisoned.

Add tech to Piketty or Hudson’s analysis and things start to look a lot less self-correcting, and the odds tilt against our civilization, our species and our planet. If a correction only comes after the point of no return, we’re in very deep shit indeed.

[postmodernbeing]

Shingeki no Kyojin headcanons: 104th training corps (College AU)

Hello, Postmodernbeing here. This time I wanted to write about things that I actually know, since I’m a college student and I’m studing History and Social Sciences I found myself wondering about what would the 104th training corps focus their studies on if all of them had chosen humanities as their career. I hope you find this funny and at least a bit accurate.

IMPORTANT:  I do not own Shingeki no Kyojin, only these HCs are my own. // Might contain a few spoilers from the manga. // English is not my first language and I study uni at Latin America, so scientifical terms/words/concepts may vary. Anyhow, I thank you for reading and for your patience.

Eren Jaeger

He’s passionate about Military History, not to be confused with history of army. Eren’s rather focused in strategies, weapons and semiotics involved in military speech.

First started with books about great wars in modern era. The use of certain weapons took him by surprise due the technological development.

Then he took classes about discourse analysis, semiotics and such, and felt inspired by the discourse reflected in emblems, uniforms, flags, etc.

Eren doesn’t really have a preference between occidental or oriental, North or South, Modern or Ancient settings. He would simply devour all the books that deal with military strategy and warlike conflicts. Although he has more experience and information about great wars in modern era.

He’s fascinated with the inexhaustible human desire of freedom and the extent that it can reach. This fascination might not be very healthy, he concludes.

Also, finds a cruel beauty in violence when showed in freedom and ideals are protected over one’s own life. But he won’t tell his classmates or professors. He knows is a controversial opinion for he’s still aware the implications of massive conflicts and the abuse of power.

One thing led to another, Eren is now taking classes and reading about philosophy in war and anthropological perspectives about violence through time.

He’s so into social movements besides his main interest in college: “No one’s really free until all humanity is”, that’s his life motto pretty much.

Due his readings and researches he decided it was important to develop a political stance about the world’s problems. Eren strongly believes all lives worth the same, but systems and nations had imposed over others and vulnerated other human's lives.

Yes, Eren is anti-capitalist and anti-imperialist.

Mikasa Ackerman

Asian Studies Major / History Minor.

She thinks by studying these degrees, she pays honor to her heritage. Specially to her mother. Her family is the proudest for Mikasa is also the best student in her whole generation.

Mikasa received a scholarship thanks to Azumabito family, who are co-founders of an academic institution dedicated to Asian historical and cultural research. She might as well start working when she graduates.

Although she’s passionate about Japan’s history, she has written a few articles and essays about Asian Studies themselves and the importance of preserving but also divulging by means of art and sciences.

In her essays and research work, she likes to employ tools from many disciplines since she strongly believes all humanities and social sciences serve the very same purpose at scrutinize the social reality all the same. Might as well use demographics, ethnology, sociology, philosophy, anthropology, archeology, and so on. For it proves to bring light into questions that history by itself could answer unsatisfactorily (in Mikasa’s opinion).

Even her professors wonder how she manages to organize that much information and pull it off successfully. She might as well be more brilliant than a few PhD’s students.

Armin Arlert

Prehistoric studies / Archeology

He’s so into the studies about the prehistoric humans and routes of migration.

Passionate about the ocean and natural wonders since kid, Armin believed his career would be environmentalist or geoscience related.

That was the agreement he had with his grandad since middleschool, until he read Paul Rivet’s “The Origins of the American Man” book and captured him thoroughly. The way the book explained logically the diverse theories about global migration and enlisted the challenges of modern archeology -for there are numerous mysteries- simply devoured his conscience.

He knew from the books he’d read that most evidence of the first settlements are deep under dirt or far away in the ocean whose level has risen over the centuries leaving primitive camps – and answers – unreachable. 

That’s the reason he is so eager to study and give his best to contribute both archeology and history disciplines. Also, he’ll forever love the ocean and nature, just leave him do all the fieldwork, please.

Jean Kirstein

History of industry / Industrial heritage / Historical materialism

Jean first started interested in capitalist industries and production development in first world countries. Kind of rejected other visions and explanations since he’d read about positivism studies.

His interest in such matters started when he was a just boy. He often found himself wondering how things were made and that question captured him ever since. As he grew up, he realized that machines and industrial processes were highly involved in the most mundane objects creation.

Nonetheless, he learnt that not always the best machinery was used, nor the best work conditions were available for mass production. From that moment he’d started to read about the First Industrial Revolution and his mind just took off with questions. Invariably, he learned about labour struggle and the transforming power due workforce.

Between his readings and university classes, he’d knew more about labour movements, unions. And in the theoretical aspect, he'd learned about historical materialism analysis.

One could say that Jean possesses a humanistic vision of the implications in mass production under capitalist system along history and nowadays.

Marco Bodt

Royalty's history / Medieval Studies 

I wanted to keep his canonical fascination to royalty and the best way to do that was including Medieval Studies.

Marco would study since the fall of Roman Empire until the latest gossip of royal families all across Europe.

Might get a bit of Eurocentric with his essays but in real life discussions he’s always open to debates about decolonization. He has even read Frantz Fanon books and possesses a critical thinking about colonial countries and their relations with the so named third world.

Nevertheless, Marco finds a strange beauty in the lives of monarchs and he’s interested in study from their education, hobbies, strategies, relationships, everything.

I’d say that his favorite historical period is probably the establishment of the descendants of the barbarian peoples in the new kingdoms such as the Visigoths, Ostrogoths, Franks, Vandals, Huns, Saxons, Angles and Jutes (holy shit, they're a lot).

Because this would transcend as the beginning of his favorite matter of analysis.

Sasha Braus

History of gastronomy, development of cooking, antropology and archeological studies.

Sasha’s interested in the history that shows human development of food and cooking. She finds wonders when she inquires into cultural aspects from the first farming till modern artistic expressions that would involve food.

Such as gastronomy. But her attention got caught in literature’s food representation too, with its symbols and allegories, also in paintings that belong in still life movement, but also Sasha finds interest when food is used as rhetorical devices (for example: the apple in Adam and Eve’s myth).

She’s curious about primitive systems of irrigation, cultivation, food distribution, adaptation of wild species; as well as the domestication of animals, the diversification of the diet and its link with sedentary life, as well as the subsequent division of labor once the need for food was assured in humanity’ first cities.

Sasha’s convinced that alimentation is the pilar of civilization as we know it. For it involves cultural, artistic, economic, emotion and social aspects. Food is a microcosm of analysis of humanity.

Sasha hasn’t a favorite historical period or setting. But she definitely has a special fascination for first civilizations and their link with alimentation. Also, she likes to study the development gastronomy in occident world around different regions, social classes, and time.

Although, let’s be honest, Sasha would devour (lol, couldn’t help it) ANY book about agriculture, cattle raising, cooking or gastronomy. 

Connie Springer

Micro-history / History of everyday life.

Connie loves his hometown, has a deep respect to his family and traditions. That’s why he finds himself wondering about the most ordinary events that developed in his dear Ragako. 

The book “The Cheese and the Worms” by Carlo Ginzburg changed the way he used to understand history and capture him into meaningful discussions about what he learned was called micro-history.

His favorite quote from that book is: “As with language, culture offers to the individual a horizon of latent possibilities—a flexible and invisible cage in which he can exercise his own conditional liberty.”

Once deep into studying the Italian historians and their works, he decided to give it a try, and ever since he’s mesmerized with the mundane vestiges craftsmen that worked in his village left behind.

Connie’s parents are so proud of him and his achivements, but mostly because he became a passionate academic over human and simple matters, (so down to earth our big baby).

His attitude towards his essays and research works truly shows his great heart and humility. Connie is aware that academic works have no use if they are not meant to teach us about ourselves too and current times.

Empathy and hard work, that’s how one could describe the elements that integrate his recently started academic career.

Historia Reiss

Political History / Statistician

Her father’s family pressured Historia since she was a little girl into studying History just like his dad. For he’s a very famous historian that had made important researches and books about the greatest statesmen of Paradis.

She thought in numerous ways that she could sabotage her career or study any other career without her family’s consent and end with her linage of historians. But she ended up enrolling in tuition and so far, she is trying her best in her studies. Historia swears this is the right path for her.

But don’t let the appearances fool you, even thought she studies her father’s career and the very same branch of history’s discipline, she has her own critical sense and she’s so talented on her own, very meticulous with her research papers.

Definitely wants a PhD about women, power and politics. We stand a Gender Studies Queen.

Her complementary disciplines are Political Sciences. Historia also has a talent for philosophy and owns a diary with all her thoughts about them. She hopes one day she would write a book or a manifesto about an innovative methodology for research and teaching History of Politic Thinking.

Ymir 

Religion’s History / Theology

Just like Historia, Ymir was pressured into studying History. And if she’s totally honest, she still has some doubts about it. Even if she couldn’t imagine herself studying anything else.

Anyways, Ymir thought that she could build her career around topics that she enjoys. So, she finally chose theology for unusual reasons.

Her classmates had grown up in religious families or had experience studying the doctrines they practiced. But she, being an agnostic, found satisfaction in unraveling belief systems in different cultures and time periods.

Albeit she studies in Paradis’ University, she currently has the opportunity of taking an academic exchange at Marley’s University. This only made Ymir more conflicted about her future, for she wants to stay (near Historia) but she’s aware that Marley would offer her more academic opportunities for her specialization.

Nowadays she’s working in some collaborative research paper with some people from Mythological Studies from the Literature department. She’s nailing it, writing some historical studies about titans in Greek mythology and its impact in shaping neoclassical poetry. Her brains ugh, love her.

Reiner Braun

Official History / Biographies of heroes and great wars.

His mother convinced him with numerous books about great national heroes, but mostly because she knew that would mean sure job to her son. All political administration in every level requires of an official chronicler. 

When he started his college courses, Reiner felt motivated and he was actually convinced that he had the vocation. But the more he read the less sure he felt that the academic world was for him. He wondered if he made the right choice. If he did it for him or for his mother.

Stories and myths about heroes have always cheered him up. That gave him purpose and consoled him when feeling down. Or at least it was like that when younger. Reiner truly didn’t feel like himself when regretting his choices, but he couldn’t help it for he was changing in more than a way.

That’s why he decided to experiment with other disciplines and with time he would find joy in historical novels. He would analyze them just as good as a litterateur and research about historical context in the written story AND study the artwork’s context itself.

His favorites theorical books are: “Historical Text as Literary Artifact” by Hayden White and Michel de Certeau’ “The Writing of History”.·        

Heroes stories would always accompany him, just differently now.

Bertolt Hoover

History of mentalities / Les Annales

Intimate relationships, basic habits and attitudes. / Culture

Bertie has always been a much reticent and shy guy. As he grew up, he consolidated his sullen personality, but maintained a friendly attitude towards anyone who needed him. That’s why he thought that the priority in his studies was to be at the service of his classmates.

So, although he was passionate about research and was a fan of the French Les Annales current, he considered his mission to be in the Archive. As a cataloger, organizer and curator of ancient documents.

But the ways of History are always mysterious, and Doctor Magath showed him that other way of being was possible. Before Bertolt picked his specialty, he met Theo Magath, a professor who recently had finished writing a book: “The Idea of Death in Liberio’s Ghetto in Marley During its War Against Eldia (Paradis)” (long-ass titles are historians specialty btw). After Magath ended his book’ presentation, Bertolt reached him. They talked for hours and finally, he felt inspired into pursuing his true passion. Magath gifted him “The Historian’s Craft” by Marc Bloch as a way to reminding him his way.

By the time Bertolt took History of Mentalities as optional class, he already had some basic notions about Les Annales, Lucien Febvre, Marc Bloch, Fernand Braudel, Jacques Le Goff and such. 

Being the gentle giant he is, Bertolt finds joy in reading about different lifestyles in diverse cultures. He constantly wonders about the origin of social constructs and the way they shape thinking as much as identity.

This boy is a wonder, he might not be the best in oral presentations or  extracurricular activities but sure as hell he’ll graduate with honors.

Annie Leonhart

Oral history, about institutions. Particularly, police and justice system in early XXs.

Albeit she got into the same University than Bertolt and Reiner, even shared classes and hopes, Annie regularly felt disconnected from her studies. With time she realized it wasn't due her career itself but rather because of the currents that her professors had suggested her taking. Until now.

Talking with Hitch and Marlow about their doubts concerning subjects and departments it came up the topics of history and present time but also oral history. She’d never heard something like that before. So, that very same week, Annie started searching for information about that.

She ended up with more questions: is it all of this just academic journalism? Or maybe sociology? When we can talk about regular history and when it starts being present time? If she introduces interviews due oral history, then that makes it an interdisciplinary work? Which are the best systems for analyzing data? Definitely, she’ll need help from anthropology and sociology departments if she wants to keep going. 

Contrary to her initial prognostic, philosophy and history of historic writing became her new allies, and the text “Le temps présent et l'historiographie contemporaine” (Present Time and Contemporary Historiography) by Bédarida among others, provided Annie another perspective. 

Regarding her favorite topics, she wouldn’t say that she selected them freely. They were just practical preferences. For institutions own extensive archives and numerous functionaries. One way or another, she ended up tangled in judicial system and police issues.

With new tools and object for studying, one could find Annie having a blast as detective too. Even if her academic essays focus on institutions’ history and configuration, she’s also working in corruption and more. She doesn’t do it because she believes it’s the right thing, but besides, the thrill of the tea is spicy. Although she won’t admit it.