#however when people find the politics in them & the discourses surrounding lacking….you can’t get in your feels about it

[cuntylittlesalmon]

i’m finding it really hard to take more media discourse seriously right now because a lot of it tends to be hinder by emotional fragility. the “if something make me feel this type of way (namely the escapist, or the horny) it is inherently above criticism, and any attempts to critique (even if said critique is coming from a place of endearment) is an attack on my morality” stuff.

[bettsfic]

do you know anything about like, the development of the purity rhetoric that now seems to be ubiquitous in fandom and how it got there? i used to be on tumblr in like, 2014 and only recently came back to fandom and i remember everyone being generally kind of cool with things like incest ships and morally grey characters (speaking specifically re the frozen fandom and elsa/anna here lmao) whereas now it seems like the conversation about those things has drastically shifted and i am..puzzled by it

this is what i imagine that experience was like for you:

according to fanlore, purity culture started in the homestuck fandom which. based on what i know of homestuck, that tracks. however i’ve never been in homestuck so i’m not sure what that transformation was like. all i know is my personal experience with the disk horse. afaik there’s no cohesive timeline of events across fandom, and i lack the time and resources to be able to make one myself. if anyone knows of one, or wants to make one, please let me know.

i do know that purity culture is a movement started by very young teenagers, who were maybe 13-15 in 2014 and are now 18-20. they were 8-10 when ao3 was founded, and therefore seem to have a limited knowledge of fan history, censorship, and critical thinking. i’m hoping that since they’re now entering college, they’ll get some insight and broader social awareness, and this movement will finally die out in the next few years. 

on any other platform, at any other time, their toxic rhetoric would not have gained traction. but here and now, on tunglr dot com where anyone can gain a platform, where mob mentality thrives and inciting an anonymous dogpile is as easy as hitting Post, where the brokenness of this place makes it difficult to control the content you’re exposed to -- it’s the perfect storm. we live in an age of hopelessness. young people grow up with social media as an extension of their identities, tethered to devices that hold all the information in the world. i think it’s fair for them to be afraid of their futures, and i can understand the desire to control the online spaces where they have the most agency, where their voices are the loudest. 

that may explain why, but not how. as in, where did they pick up this mentality at all? @freedom-of-fanfic (whose work is a necessity in understanding the disk horse) connected anti-shipping to TERF rhetoric. i’ve linked the fanlore page because it has all of the links and some of the responses. i honestly do believe that the language surrounding purity culture has its ugly roots in TERFdom. at its core, purity culture -- the policing of female and queer sexuality -- is misogyny. 

when i started writing destiel circa 2014, fandom was as you described. wincest was a juggernaut on par with destiel. teen wolf was full of underage and noncon. a/b/o was on the rise. it seemed like fandom was a genre without restraint -- anything you wrote, if it found the right audience, would be celebrated unabashedly. people who have been following me for a long time know that i was addicted to adderall at the time and pounding out all sorts of manic nonsense. i remember living on the validation of comments (and at the time, there were lots of comments. not so much anymore, but that’s another story). i got critical comments only rarely, and they were the type that i admired -- readers without judgment thinking through the story, reacting to it earnestly. i made some of my best friends because they left long, critical comments on my work. sometimes they didn’t like it, sometimes they did, but ultimately, they were engaged, and that’s what counted.

i remember my first policing-type comment, i think at the start of all the purity nonsense. it was a destiel fic, and someone very angrily told me i should tag my bottom!cas because it was triggering. i’ve thought about that comment a lot over the years. top/bottom discourse is nothing new, but to say that bottom castiel is triggering? that was ridiculous. but then i realized -- there was a writer in fandom at the time i won’t name, who was known for being extremely sensitive (for bottom!cas especially, which they found triggering), and their very dedicated following offered fic that was safe for their fave to read. i have nothing against this person at all. they were not part of the purity discourse, they were up front about their sensitive nature, and as far as i knew (i believe i met them at a con once?) they were very kind. 

but that commenter had been clearly influenced by this person and believed that a specific fictional character receiving anal sex from another specific fictional character was actual, real triggering content, and it was my obligation as a writer to tag for it. which i did, because i felt bad, and i was baffled by that request. at the time, i wanted more than anything to be liked, and conformed wherever i could. if i got such a request now, i would ignore it because it was rudely written and honestly kind of bonkers. i’d happily add a tag for something i may have missed, or even something i’d never considered before, but there’s no reason a person can’t make that request politely. 

this situation isn’t about purity discourse proper (the commenter didn’t tell me not to write the fic, and it had nothing to do with morality), but it’s the earliest example i can think of where the process of policing had occurred: a person of influence on tumblr affected their follower’s thinking, and that follower felt entitled to command another writer to conform to that ideology.

i could be completely wrong about making these connections. maybe that commenter truly believed bottom!cas was a legitimate widespread trauma. they did not say the fic was triggering to them, but that it might be to some other people, in the same way purity police say “think of the CHILDREN” when in fact they don’t give a fuck about children at all. 

after destiel i moved to stucky, which was, at the time, a juggernaut ship where anyone could write anything. this was also the time when the term “cinnamon roll” became incredibly popular, circa 2015. it was a fun and seemingly innocuous meme, but it positioned the ideas of “purity” and “wholesomeness” in sharp relief, and cemented these ideas by beginning to give it a distinct vocabulary. “trash” was pitched as its opposite. stucky is where i first came into contact with “antis.” in destiel, there had been ship wars, sure, but it was of a different flavor than antis. destiel vs wincest wasn’t about morality in 2014. it was about everything but.

in stucky in 2015, however, the disk horse was running rampant. the MCU had a sub-section of fandom called HTP (hydra trash party) in which steve and/or bucky have dubious or nonconsensual relations with various or many members of hydra. this is the first time i remember being aware of morality becoming a cornerstone of shipping. HTP was loathed by purity police. by the time i wrote a stucky bdsm au, i’d accumulated multiple nasty anons, rude comments from entitled readers, and other nonsense that all said the same thing: your filth is not welcome here in our space of purity. go away.

but the release of the force awakens is what really turned the tide. TFA offered three major ships: stormpilot (as it was called at the time, now finnpoe), reylo, and kylux. the fandom that developed around the sequels was firmly divided. franzeska wrote an amazing meta about this phenomenon which gives some insight into the seeds of purity policing. in short, stormpilot should have been the primary pairing of the sequels, but instead many of the badwrong writers from other fandoms (and HTP specifically, which was how i entered the fandom) flocked to the blank slate of kylux. 

it took a long time for the ship to gain traction. a friend told me that kylux had started with angry star wars racists who hated that there was diversity in the sequel trilogy. and i told them no, i was there, there were twelve of us and a cornchip, and all we cared about was the dirty/darkly comedic potential of these two ridiculous villain characters in one of the biggest franchises of all time. it wasn’t that complicated. i don’t mean to dismiss the discussion of race in fandom; i think it’s important to acknowledge that racism, as franzeska describes far better than i can, plays a huge part in fandom, particularly in star wars, and it’s an important and ongoing discussion to be having, especially given what kelly marie tran has gone through, and how it affected (presumably) rose tico’s extremely limited presence in TROS.

the early fics of kylux weren’t particularly taboo. they were post-TFA hurt/comfort mostly, then slowly the bdsm and power dynamics crept in. those of us who wanted to get away from purity discourse had finally found a new home. for a while. 2016 was the golden era of kylux. we were all very happy.

i remember talking to a friend about how there were certain things i couldn’t write in certain ships. being from ye olden days of fandom, she was appalled by this idea, and told me i could write anything for any ship i wanted, wasn’t that was the whole point of transformative works? and i agreed! but i tried to explain, if you post badwrong for a fandom of purity police, you’re going to, at best, get dogpiled in your comments/inbox. at worse they will find you, call your employer, and try to ruin your life. people will tell you to kill yourself. they’ll report your tumblr and try to get your blog shut down. there are real-life, harrowing consequences to writing taboo fic, and many who write fic as a hobby don’t have the emotional energy to field these risks.

around this time, discord became popular, which offered a private space for badwrong writers to congregate. i had started grad school and didn’t have much time to write fic. metoo was happening. tromp got elected. kylux was slowly turning mainstream so a lot of us turned our attention to gradence in fantastic beasts. some went on to hannibal and other fandoms that hadn’t yet caught the attention of purity police (but it was, as it is now, just a matter of time). kylux, i feel, was specifically decimated by a single fan creator, who was like a police chief. they would get wind of someone writing underage or noncon and write a call-out post about them, and that writer/artist would get pitchforked. a few times, my comments or posts got screencapped, and posts were written urging people to stop reading my works because of how heinously immoral i was. this happened to several of my friends too. 

the great tumblr tittyban of 2017 happened, which only added fuel to the fire and further legitimized the purity movement. i shifted hesitantly to the 100 fandom, which seemed small in comparison to supernatural, marvel, and star wars. i thought it was a chill place. i was wrong; it was just as toxic as other fandoms. but i also didn’t care anymore, and i appreciated that i was mostly left alone. more importantly, i found a lot of support from other people who were as tired of the purity as i was, and @the100kinkmeme was reborn. 

the state of things is pretty abysmal. there are some really amazing writers out there writing under multiple sock accounts, keeping their fandom identities shattered so as not to call attention to themselves. as much as i understand why writers do that, and i respect that decision, i also think it’s sad. it deprives readers the chance to read that author’s other works. it limits the sense of community and our ability to make friends. it fractures the future of the genre.

what’s most important to acknowledge is that none of this is happening solely in fandom. i went to a writers’ conference where 2 of 3 panels were about the history of moral policing and censorship in art. it is worth noting that of the 40-ish visiting writers on faculty, only one (1) was a woman of color (jaimaica kincaid). naturally, older rich white people who have spent their life in the arts are all about death of the author, separation of art and artist. they’re on the total opposite side of purity police, and they won’t acknowledge at all that racism and sexism are a problem in the creative world. they don’t have any nuance on the discussion, or modern perspectives in light of metoo or popular culture. 

this went on longer than i anticipated. i neglected to mention YFIP (your fave is problematic) an old blog that started the idea of call-out culture by pulling receipts on celebrities, and how call-out culture led to cancel culture, which also aided in the purity disk horse. i think a lot can be said about how some of this stuff is genuinely good (metoo and holding men accountable for their bullshit) while also being profoundly toxic (punishing criminals via mob mentality, ruining their careers and livelihoods through social media, rather than giving them their due process in court. i understand it -- the judicial system is built by the hands of the very predators we seek to condemn, but still. the jury of the internet is never a fair trial). 

if you want to read more, my tag is tsatp (the sacred and the profane). i’m sure i’ve left out a lot, but i can only speak to my experience. i think it would be good if people would share their experience dealing with purity policing, too, so we might get a cohesive timeline in place. feel free to reblog and add your story.

[fytheuntamed]

Do you have any thoughts on why the novel might be so popular among lgbt people despite (sometimes quite obviously) being written by a straight women for straight women. I think this is quite evident in for example the sex scenes

Why do I think the novel is so popular amongst LGBTQ+ people despite being written by a straight woman for straight women? Simple! It’s a good story and the characters are complex and intriguing. No piece of media is ever perfect, so it simply comes down to whether an individual feels the positive aspects of the media outweigh the negative aspects of the media. Are there problematic aspects within the novel? Of course! But that doesn’t mean the novel as a whole should be disregarded. You can consume media while still being critical of it, just like you can like a character while acknowledging that they’re not a good person. LGBTQ+ people, like everyone else, value a good story and interesting characters, so even if there are aspects of the story that we dislike, we may still stick around if we think it’s worth it! Also, I think there’s a shortage of stories like “Mo Dao Zu Shi” where you have LGBTQ+ characters whose sexuality isn’t the focus of the story. Yes, Wangxian are soulmates and very much in love, but that isn’t the whole point. You have a delightful bundle of politics, magic, familial ties, concepts of right and wrong, mystery, etc etc that also features a beautiful love story between two men. I guess my point is, LGBTQ+ people are flawed just like everyone else and sometimes we consume content even if we don’t agree with every part of it.

I’ve avoided getting involved in any discourse surrounding the various versions of MDZS because I wanted to keep this blog drama free, however I would like to take this chance to offer my own thoughts on the “problematic” aspects of the novel. Before I get into it, I just want to make three things clear: 1) I’m white, 2) I’m not mlm, I’m a lesbian, and 3) I’ve only read the second half of the novel and honestly I can’t remember too much of the specifics. The relevance of my opinion on the matter, therefore, is limited and my words should be read with this fact in mind. I would love to hear everyone’s thoughts and feelings on this matter, so do feel free to either leave a comment or reblog and add your two-cents. All I ask is that we keep it respectful so this can continue to be an enjoyable space for all fans.

I’ve been going through the untamed’s tumblr tag daily since the start of this blog in August 2019, so I’ve seen the whole spectrum of opinions on this matter. Some people feel very strongly that some of the ways in which MXTX writes particular aspects of the novel are “problematic,” some people are indifferent, and others feel that criticism of MXTX’s writing comes from a lack of knowledge of Chinese culture (particularly LGBTQ+ Chinese culture). (I remember seeing a post touching upon this last matter, but I didn’t save it, so unfortunately I can’t link it.)

I think the two most common criticisms of the novel that I have come across pertain to matters of consent and the imposing of heteronormative concepts onto Wangxian. Again, I want to stress that I haven’t read the novel in its entirety and my memory of it is foggy. Talking about consent first, some felt the scene in the novel where LWJ kisses an unexpecting blindfolded WWX was a big no no, while others thought it was a very sweet, romantic scene. (To give context for those who have only seen the drama, this scene would have been placed in episode 25 had they included it). For this matter, I’m of the belief that consent is a must. Regardless of whether WWX enjoyed the kiss, the fact stands that no one is entitled to another’s body, and this is why consent is, in my eyes, non-negotiable. For those who have no problem with this scene, I do think it is worth considering how you would feel about this scene had it involved, say, Jin Zixuan kissing a blindfolded Jiang Yanli. If that had been the case, I do think the majority of readers would have found the scene in poor taste (I could be wrong, though!). I will say that the trope of the forceful kiss is extremely common and can be found in every genre; it’s definitely not restricted to LGBTQ+ couples. For the aforementioned reason, I don’t like the forceful kiss scenario irregardless of the genders of the people involved. I do think writing such scenes for LGBTQ+ couples in particular can perpetuate harmful stereotypes, particularly that LGBTQ+ people have no respect for personal boundaries and can’t control their physical desires. I think the situation is doubly bad if the person who is being kissed is “not yet gay,” because again, it perpetuates the idea of the big bad gay person and the innocent “straight” person who is at the whims of said big bad gay.

Moving on to WWX and LWJ’s sex life, I have seen multiple people in the tag mentioning WWX having a “rape kink” and their discomfort with this fact. Logically, I understand that we are all allowed, as human beings with different tastes and preferences, to enjoy the things that bring us pleasure (excluding certain obvious things). That being said, I do not personally enjoy rape fantasies in my media and try to stay far away from it. As I mentioned, we are all welcome to our own tastes and preferences, but I do think it is important that we realize that we are all also the product of our environments. Things, including kinks, do not exist in vacuums, and therefore they must arise as a result of some mixture of external and internal forces. Does MXTX giving WWX a rape kink automatically make her demon spawn? Not really. Does MXTX giving WWX a rape kink add anything to his character or the story? Also not really. All this being said, I do think LGBTQ+ media is oversaturated with consent issues and I’d personally like to see this come to an end, because once again, it perpetuates harmful stereotypes that do have a real impact on LGBTQ+ individuals.

As for the imposing of heteronormative concepts onto Wangxian, I think the biggest complaint I’ve seen is about WWX being referred to as the “mom” or the “wife” within the Wangxian couple. I would like to state here that this may be a situation in which cultural differences come into play. Additionally, because the novel is not originally written in English, it may be a case of telephone in which the true meaning becomes distorted as it is translated from one language to another and then to another and so on and so forth. Therefore, I am going to proceed with my thoughts on the matter in a more generalized way. For me, this is a big pet peeve of mine, to the point where I will not reblog content that refers to any of the male characters as “mom” or “wife.” My reasoning is simple: WWX is a man, so he would be someone’s “dad” or “husband,” not their “mom” or “wife.” I know from first-hand experience that non-LGBTQ+ people will often try to place a gay couple within a heterosexual context to make it easier for them to process how two women or two men could be together. I understand the reasoning behind this way of thinking, but that does not mean this way of thinking should be encouraged. It’s bad enough that non-LGBTQ+ couples are ensnared in an endless maze of gendered ways of being and thinking - let’s not force that on LGBTQ+ couples as well. My other issue is that the words “mom” and “wife” not only have gendered connotations, but they have implicit sexual connotations as well. In this context, “mom” and “wife” are just another way of saying “bottom.” Just think about it; nobody’s out there calling LWJ “mom” or “wife.” The whole idea of “top” and “bottom” in gay media is so……..it’s almost like an obsession? And for those of you who may be thinking it’s not that deep and has no bearing on real life….I really wish that were true. Go look at the comments section of any gay couple’s youtube video and you will invariably find someone asking who is the top and who is the bottom. That’s invasive as fuck, y’all, and you don’t see that shit on straight couple’s videos (again, because the assumption is that women are always in the submissive, therefore there’s no need to ask because it’s assumed the answer will always be that the woman “bottoms” and the man “tops”). All this being said, I can only speak about this matter from my viewpoint as a lesbian. If one day I were to get married, I wouldn’t want people referring to my wife as my “husband,” because the whole point is that we’re both the wife! I know there isn’t one rule/mindset that applies to all gay people, so I would love to hear others’ feelings on this matter.

Finally, I would also like to briefly touch upon Mo Xuanyu, who we don’t really get to see in the drama. I don’t know whether LWJ or WWX ever explicitly state their sexualities or which gender(s) they’re attracted to, but I’m pretty sure Mo Xuanyu is explicitly stated to be strictly into men (please correct me if I’m wrong!). I do wonder what MXTX’s intentions were (if there were any) when she decided to make Mo Xuanyu gay, because what I’ve grasped of his characterization is that he is written similarly to other gay male characters that give the impression they were created by checking off a list of every popular stereotype about gay men. I guess I’m just curious, as someone who knows very little about Mo Xuanyu, how others felt about his character in terms of complexity and stereotypes.

If you took the time to read all this, thank you! Let me know your thoughts~

[parismiki]

“How is Paris?”

Hello readers! Welcome to my blog. I’ve been meaning to write a blog for some time now, really since my days in Chicago, but I never felt this urge until now. Currently I feel like I am being tested to my limits and I have so many thoughts about so many different things. Writing has always been an outlet of mine (have kept journals since I learned how to hold a pen basically) and so here it is - a window of insight into my thoughts about a variety of different things. 

I don’t really have a theme for this blog, but I know it will touch on issues that are important to me: race, activism, Japanese American and Asian American identity, feminism, mental health, radical politics, etc. Given that I’m currently also in France with the generous help of a Fulbright scholarship (a lot will be discussed soon about this), my posts may be more focused on my current experience in France and how I have been navigating this foreign country. 

So, to start, many people have been asking me how Paris has been. There is some sort of illusory expectation that people have of my time here in Paris - that I’m happily eating baguettes every day (I am not -- I eat only rice and noodles), that I’m picnicking by the Seine, and I’m going to all these cool art galleries and museums on the daily. 

This could be farther from the truth. 

I am struggling. 

This is not the same experience that I had studying abroad through UChicago three years ago, where I took classes in English taught by UChicago professors at the UChicago Center in Paris with UChicago classmates. I had a huge safety net while I was here, which enabled me to go out and explore the city and meet new locals while still feeling rooted to a community of American students. I didn’t need to get a visa because I was here for less than 90 days, the housing situation was largely taken care of by the study abroad coordinator, and I was used to the UChicago pedagogy. The huge difference here is that I am going to grad school in Paris, working towards a professional degree, which entails a large degree of responsibility, self-reliance and resilience. 

However, this past month has been incredibly difficult for me. The workload is intense, unlike anything I saw in my quarters with the heaviest workloads at UChicago. I am taking eight classes that meet once a week. For one of my core classes, I must read four books for the midterm, which is less than a month away. Work is always on the back of my mind and I fear that I may miss an assignment.  There is rarely any time to be resting or relaxing, because I tell myself, well you could be using this time to study. 

As someone prone to anxiety, the workload and the added stress of being in a new country has taken quite a toll on me. There have been days where it has been hard to get out of bed and days where I feel like I’m just dragging throughout the day. Sometimes I wonder, “is this program worth it? Should I drop out?” but am quickly reminded that if I do, I lose my Fulbright scholarship. Additionally, Sciences Po is not the friendliest when it comes to their students’ mental health - their psychological services are minimal, and they fail you if you miss more than 2 classes (yes, attendance is taken in even the biggest of lecture classes.) I could go on and on about Sciences Po as an institution, but I can save that for another post. I have had to resume sessions with my therapist in Chicago because the French national healthcare system does not cover therapy services! 

Despite all this, I’ve managed to find small pockets of joy during my time here and have really forced myself to practice self-care. One could say that my most recent FB status asking for self-practice tips was a cry for help - surely I couldn’t be the only one who has gone through this. So here’s what has been working for me so far - and you don’t have to be in grad school either to abide by them!

1. Rely on your family and friend networks back home

Thank god for technology - I remember my dad telling me that when he was in college he had to wait in line in his dorm to use the landline to call his parents. I can’t even imagine how my mother kept in touch with her family back in Japan when she immigrated to the US (will write another post on my newfound appreciation for my mom as I transition to life here.) 

That being said, I text regularly with my friends and keep them updated about what’s going on in my life. Some others are also living abroad and it’s nice to know that we have each other’s backs -- one of my dear friends is doing her JET program in rural Kumamoto. She is 7 hours ahead of me, and always texts me a nice meme or a cute gif that I have the honor of waking up to. Last night I felt especially horrible and called one of my friends (who is going to start her master’s in philosophy at Oxford and we’ll be reunited soon!) who helped me calm down. As people starting new lives in new countries we often forget that we have a support system back home, but don’t forget - they helped to get you where you are. 

2. Read books that nurture your soul

I have always loved to read in order to learn new perspectives, but reading now serves a different purpose: it touches and nurtures my soul. When I first got here, I devoured Ruth Ozeki’s novel A Tale for the Time Being - it was a charming and quirky story that whisked me away to British Columbia/Tokyo. I didn’t know how much I needed it at the time. Currently I’m reading a sociology book called Redefining Japaneseness: Japanese Americans and the Ancestral Homeland, which is so comforting and keeps me super rooted to my own identity. 

I was pretty strategic when packing books and spent a good hour deciding which books to bring with me. I knew that I would be reading a lot of dry public policy and urban theory (I even discussed with my roommate, also an American woman of color, which books we would both bring should we want to borrow from each other’s shelves.) So I brought with me Matthew Desmond’s Evicted (which, luckily enough for me, I ended up having to write a paper on), Viet Thanh Nguyen’s The Sympathizer, which won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction; Keeanga Yamahtta-Taylor’s From #BlackLivesMatter to Black Liberation, and Louise Erdrich’s The Round House (Erdrich is a Native American fiction writer who writes heavily on Native American issues.) I’ve found that conversations surrounding racial justice are quite lacking in French academic discourse, so these books help to fill that gap in my life. In addition, I brought with me some Japanese language books, including ”コンビニ人間” and “君たちはどう生きるか” to practice my Japanese, because I don’t have access to Japanese TV anymore. 

3. Keep yourself intellectually accountable

One of the best pieces of advice I received from the director of the Humanity in Action fellowship I did this past summer was to keep yourself accountable by writing down your own thoughts and critiques of grad school readings in the margins when taking notes. I’ve found that a lot of the readings we are assigned take on a very neoliberal approach to cities and urbanism, and I am incredibly cynical. Sometimes, I just downright disagree. And instead of feeling exasperated by the content, I write down my critiques and will try to bring them up in class, sometimes daring to bring them up with the professor during lectures. This is how I try to stay engaged. 

4. Travel! 

Paris is pretty accessible to many other European countries by plane and train. In fact, just last weekend I was in Madrid visiting a few friends. I was not feeling my best and and even now I still feel awful for my low energy and that I was not as cheery as I hoped to be - but being around people you already know is comforting. In fact, I had a chance to reconnect with a friend from college who is a current Fulbright ETA in Madrid, who told me that he was feeling the same way as me during the same time last year. Knowing that other people have gone through the same motions while transitioning to life abroad makes you feel less alone. 

All in all, to those of you reading, I’m sorry if I have disappointed you with this blog post. However, I do think I need to be honest about my experience here and share with other folks who may be thinking about studying abroad. If anything, I am giving myself all the time I need to breathe, go through the motions, and eventually settle in. This will be a long process, but I am trying to be patient with myself. 

I cannot end this post without acknowledging the people who have been there for me. I’d like to extend a thank you to Keilyn, Sarah, Elisabeth, Gino, Crystal, Brenna, Shirley, Joe, and Amanda. And to my new friends at Sciences Po, I am looking forward to getting to know you and let’s finish this semester strong :) 

Okay and now some photos!

                   This is me in front of the Museo del Prado in Madrid

                    Hard to see but I was really feelin’ my outfit this one day

                                                   Really cute doggo 

              Colorful olives sold at the Marché Saint-Denis, a banlieue of Paris

[darknessfactor]

This is mostly being written because I need to get my own thoughts down about this now, not because I particularly want to get into the Discourse (because I know it exists, and I don’t want to go near it).  Basically, I’m rewatching FMA 2003 and FMAB, and I’m going to talk through my preferences.

I’ll admit that this is my first time watching 03 all the way through.  I got through a little more than half of it in high school, then got bored (ironically right before things started getting good), and tried watching Brotherhood instead.  I did manage to make it all the way through that one.

Having watched both now, I still prefer Brotherhood.  And yes, this is a comparison post.  Untagged, except for my own reference tags.  Like I said: I’m writing this for me.

This list might get long, so if you’ve decided to go ahead and read it anyway, then prepare yourself.  I’ll start with character comparisons, in no particular order.

Roy Mustang: Brotherhood wins by a landslide.  Although 03 does a slightly better job at portraying Roy’s PTSD from the Ishval conflict, I also saw much less of a desire to atone for what he had done.  In Brotherhood, Roy specifically said that he wanted to help rebuild Ishval, and Riza admitted that he planned to allow himself and other state alchemists to be put on trial for their crimes.  In 03, I think that the desire to atone is there, but it is muted, and he seems far more smarmy and power-hungry.  His manipulation of the Elrics is also much more blatant.

Scar: Which leads me to Scar.  Honestly?  This one’s a tie for me.  I liked his ending in Brotherhood more.  I felt he was more threatening in Brotherhood.  I prefer his voice actor in Brotherhood.  However, Brotherhood did one thing that I really, really wish they hadn’t - and that was shift the blame for Winry’s parents from Roy to Scar.  Suddenly it wasn’t alright to root for Scar, because not only had he killed the state alchemists responsible for his people, but he also killed innocent civilians.  Personally, I feel for Scar - he had every reason to believe that his people would never get justice for what had been done to them, so he took matters into his own hands.  Brotherhood was just trying to pull a ‘killing is ALWAYS bad’ thing.

The kids: No, I don’t mean the Elric brothers.  I’m talking about 03′s Wrath and Brotherhood’s Pride.  This time, Brotherhood wins again.  I felt like 03 had the opportunity to go somewhere more meaningful and emotional with Wrath, but instead they just turned him into a psycho (which... considering what he’d been through, it didn’t really surprise me).  Brotherhood’s Pride, however, was almost always a creepy asshole - apart from when Selim acted endearing.  His reveal freaks me out to this day, and to this day he honestly terrifies me.  I do find it somewhat ironic that both Wrath and Pride tried to take Ed’s body for themselves, in the end.

Main villain: Gotta give 03 credit: Dante wins by another landslide.  While both she and Father are fairly one-dimensional, her reveal - as well as her plan - is a lot more insidious, not to mention creepy as hell.  I cringed (in a good way) almost every time she was on screen, and her theme song is AMAZING.  The only time when I really got a ‘what the fuck’ vibe from Father was when he’d half-absorbed Hohenheim just before the country-wide transmutation circle was activated.  For the most part, he was pretty par for the course as far as villains go.  

Bradley: Brotherhood, again.  Much more threatening, much more terrifying.  What happened to Lan Fan, to this day, remains an “oh SHIT” moment for me.  Though personally, I think his death should’ve been more brutal.

Sloth: 03, again.  Really, the only good or interesting thing about Brotherhood’s Sloth was the Armstrong sibling/Curtis teamup to take him down.  03′s Sloth is a hell of a lot more interesting.

Greed: I was kind of surprised by how much I liked 03′s Greed by the time he died.  His arc felt more complete than the arc of the first Greed in Brotherhood.  Still, I’m a sucker for body-sharing tropes, and I love the part that the second Greed played.  So Brotherhood wins this one, though not quite by a landslide.

Characters unique to each series: Brotherhood.  I can’t really think of FMA without thinking of Ling, Lan Fan, Mei, Olivier, or Miles.  Dante is a fantastic villain, and 03′s Sloth and Wrath are interesting characters as well, but Frank Archer almost seems like a Kimblee wanna-be, and I couldn’t give two shits about him.  Ling’s arc might be one of my favorites in Brotherhood, and I can’t not adore Lan Fan and Olivier.  

Riza: Brotherhood, though not by much.  There aren’t too many differences between 03 and Brotherhood Riza, except that Brotherhood went far more in-depth on her character and backstory.  Hell, they devoted an entire episode to it, and though I wasn’t too big of a fan of her learning a lesson from freaking Kimblee, I still appreciate her expanded content.

Worldbuilding: Brotherhood, again.  Brotherhood always felt more... like an actual world, whereas everything in 03 felt sort of... isolated.  In 03 we know nothing about the surrounding areas, and... I don’t know, I just never feel like there are people, anywhere.  I like that Liore got more focus in 03, but overall I prefer Brotherhood - for going more into history, for establishing more of the setting.  (I know it would’ve been tougher for 03′s writers to do such, and I give them credit for writing such a compelling story with what they had.)

Music: Brotherhood.  Oh my god, Brotherhood wins so hard for this.  Dante’s theme is the only one that stuck out to me in 03, but Brotherhood?  I have the names of so many of those tracks memorized.  The Intrepid.  Knives and Shadows.  Trisha’s Lullaby.  I get chills whenever I hear any one of these songs.  

Found family theme: This is something that’s prevalent in both series.  Hell, in 03 Armstrong even says it outright after Ed and Al visit Resembool.  It’s never quite stated outright in Brotherhood, and yet I felt like it carried through more strongly in Brotherhood.

In 03, Ed and Al meet and help plenty of people along their journey, but those people don’t really seem to have an impact on them (except maybe Nina Tucker).  I got the sense that, in spite of that, they were still fairly isolated from everyone else; the Elrics against the world.  They have each other in our world after CoS, but it’s just the two of them.  Against the world.  Again.

In Brotherhood, all those people they meet, and help?  It’s very clear that those bonds are still there.  Just look at the family photo in the credits: look at how many people are in it, even if you count out significant others and the Elrics themselves and their kids.  Paninya and Garfield being there just goes to show that there are so many people that the Elrics could easily consider family, in spite of the lack of blood relations.  Ling, Lan Fan, Mustang, Hawkeye, the Rockbells, all the chimeras that Kimblee brought up to Briggs, Izumi, Sig... in the end, in Brotherhood, it was clear that the Elrics had accepted that they couldn’t get as far as they did without these people’s love and support, and I just love that so much.

Story: Brotherhood’s story just seemed more exciting to me.  That’s all there is to it.  I’m a bit of a sucker for political conspiracies, and this screamed ‘political conspiracy’ a lot more than 03.  Also, though I can appreciate the nuance behind 03′s ending, I’ve always been a sucker for happy endings, and Brotherhood’s was definitely happier.

...well, I think these are about all the thoughts I have on this matter.  If I didn’t mention characters, it’s because I think it was a tie for those characters.  I will say for 03: I’m amazed at how its quality improved over time.  The animation and voice acting get remarkably better over time.  Still, Brotherhood is the one that’ll always be closer to my heart.

[thinktosee]

DIVERSITY BECOMES US

Everyone I know is diversity personified. Our thoughts, behaviour and appearance are wonderfully complex and seemingly impossible to understand. Who is the individual in each of us? Frankly, I don’t know. What I do appreciate however, is the fact that we are all so different, so unique that it gives us endless opportunities to learn about ourself and others, and to celebrate this uniqueness forever and ever. Don’t you agree?

Diversity is talked about throughout this site. It’s a favourite topic of discussion. Why is this? Well…because my children taught me its relevance and importance to our everyday interaction and discourse. Of family, friendship and more. Within our family alone, the diversity of thought, belief and opinion is immense. For instance, my children, Sara and David are pacifists. They are guided by non-violent and cooperative actions. They inspire me, no doubt. Ever since they were young, their diversity was already well-formed. Sara loved dogs while David was attached to cats. I still can’t figure out that one. Yet they had one thing in common when it came to pets – they were allergic to fur! But that didn’t stop them. They were just being themselves. And Sara was more an extrovert while David was reserved. 

There is something which requires restating from a previous post, as I feel it is so important – our children can teach us a good deal about diversity. I know my kids did. For some of us, it may be helpful at times to walk in our children’s footsteps. I did and continue to do. It opened my eyes to many possibilities to view the world, its diverse people, creatures, cultures and the environment surrounding us.

Every day, we are deluged with opinions and reports brought to us by the mass media. A rule I have is to read, learn and try as best to think critically. The diversity of opinions out there is quite astounding. But you know what? I like it. It’s a lot better than just one opinion, belief, appearance or rule, where we all must accept. There’s beauty too in social media – we have a plethora of thoughts, displays, opinions and beliefs, all brought to us by the most efficient learning tools since television - the laptop and cell phone. We are all connected to many diverse folks all over the world. Forget about the dominating opinion. That was pre-social media and it still is a dictator’s trap. He lacks the confidence in his opinion, so he forcibly drags us down to his level. But he too is unique, isn’t he? And speaking of maturity, here’s a liberating thought by a very independent individual :

“It’s hard for me to be myself and be judged. I get a bit depressed because I have to do what I don’t want to do. I have to please others, and then I don’t please myself.”

  - Ms Balqis Guidotti

Ms. Guidotti operates a resort on an idyllic island in Indonesia. She faces discrimination and censure for just being herself. Now why must this be so? Who or what is suppressing her individuality? Find out on this informative documentary by DW, the German news media outlet. It is titled : “Indonesia : Diversity under threat.” :

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pD58Dj648gM

Be it a state, political or religious person’s intolerance, it boils down to one thing – suppression of our freedom and liberty, which really means our diversity and individuality. It began long ago, even before this tragic period in history….

Screen shot of a segment of New York Times’ 1619 Project which was awarded the Pulitzer Prizes.

Faith begins with the individual. Each of us is a diverse creature, so naturally resplendent and yet, utterly chaotic. Every day and everywhere, it’s on full-palette display which no state-of-the art colour television screen can ever match. Enjoy and embrace Diversity in us. In you and me.

Let’s hear it from Ms Abidah Naqiyah, in “Indonesia : Diversity under threat,” :

“This nation is created by many people who come from many differences……our nation is very diverse. And in order to make our nation long-lasting, you have to maintain the diversity, by promoting tolerance.”  

Indeed! We do have much to learn from our children. They have a good deal of respect for themselves. That’s it, isn’t it? 

In the Spirit of David Cornelius Singh

- David’s father

www.thinktosee.tumblr.com

[snkret-photography]

Time

I secretly like being overwhelmingly busy. Having a million to-do lists where half of the items are cross-referenced simply because you forgot if you already forgot something. It’s rather rewarding to know that I have enough going on to the point I feel overwhelmed. But alas we’re on a plane again so I have time because can’t do shit in the air. These are prime reflection hours for me. It’s a good time to plug in your headphones, put on a movie you have seen a million times and love, and feel the turbulence and discomfort that comes from sitting in the same mildly comfortable seat for hours on end praying the person behind you falls asleep peacefully. But one thing really stuck out during this leg of the trip: I cannot attribute time or relation to the value of a person in my life. 

I recently was down south in Dallas, TX for a weekend to spend with some friends I never get to interact with much due to distance and life circumstances. I’d say I seem them maybe once a year on average, but not once has it been a bad time. Now these are authentic southern girls with very traditional families and values; I have not once felt tension at the crossroads of us openly discussing our different opinions on government policy, immigration, NRA, home ownership, family structures, etc. We’ve always had very open conversation on topics that are always slated to be avoided on first dates and amongst groups of unlike minds. Never unpleasant, never any animosity for differing opinions, no yelling, no silent treatments or anything of the like. I’ve known them for maybe the last 6 years and every time we see each other, I cannot wait until the next occasion. 

In the last 6 years, I’ve made many friends of this particular caliber and interactive structure. These are the friends I believe to last a lifetime. Yes, I have older friends who I am still close with and have no indication that it is coming to an end. But on the original premise of time vs quality, in the last 6 years, I’ve lost a lot more friends than I’ve gained. I heavily like the friends I’ve gained more than I loss. Letting time be a supportive reason to maintain a relationship that brought me little to nothing in any particular realm other than dissonance, occasional good conversation, and some reality tv bullshit to remind me why I avoid relationships in almost any capacity. And for anyone who has friends who might as well be on Mona Scott’s payroll, you know letting them go is probably the best thing you can do in your life but damn if they don’t have good storylines out here. Just imagine all the fights, pregnancy scares as the other woman and drinks being thrown; never a filler episode. However, there is a certain level of peace that comes knowing your phone isn’t going to go off at 2am because they’re a dumbass and your loyalty fails you. And it’s one of those things, where you become a walk-on character wrapped up in a storyline you want nothing to do with basically trying to secure a spot in the opening line-up and permanent seat on the reunion couch. And there also comes a point where you realize how far down your life is going that you’re not only at the reunion on the couch, but you don’t have to move as they cycle storylines and you also came ready to fight at least one cast member or they are ready to fight you but you act all grown with a lot of mouth and no bite. Basically, a housewife. 

I’m digressing, it’s been a week without reality tv, we’re switching locations on Love & Hip Hop, I apologize. But the analogy still works. And the point remains, that we allow toxic people to permeate our lives and act as influence on us due to the joy of onlooking and external excitement that their mess brings us, until we’re brought into the mess, which is inevitable. Messy people leave their house because it’s too crowded… they’re just looking for more space, protect your peace. Have you ever heard a friend complain about their toxic relationship but then use the length of the relationship as justification on why they should work it out? Bad friend you constantly complain about, but they did one nice thing for you ages ago when no one else would and now you’re carrying all this extra stress waiting for whatever they’re going to ask you for? We all do it to some degree. We hold onto the people who have been with us the longest because longevity and consistency is a quality in which many don’t have. Allowing their consistency of showing up in your life to overshadow the lesser qualities and actions that permeate their character as a whole. You are not for everyone and everyone is not for you, no matter what similarities you try to use to bridge that gap. We are all human beings with organs and limbs and functional muscle. In the basic sense of being a homo-sapien, there is no difference derived other than the classifications and bucketing we project out onto the world and use to separate ourselves. And when looking for people to connect with, we look for people that we align with on the different bucketing aspects of life from race to religion to political ideologies and so much more. But it is the people with traits that I align with rather than outlooks or bucketing classifications. I have a lot of minority friends who we always tend to connect while being the only colored folk in a room full of white people. Once we get past that surface level connection, it tends to lead us down a path of commonality and good discourse but sometimes with completely different opinions on the world and manners of operations. It doesn’t always work out but there is an instant level of respect that permeates that connection and I can attest that these minimally grow towards anything in the grand scheme of encounters to genuine friendships. The things that have allowed for the greatest growth of friendships is a large respect for differing opinions, a desire to understand the other side, and most importantly (what a lot of people seem to lack) the ability to communicate your opinion with a base from which you derived it and can defend it. It honestly boils down to flexibility to acknowledge that the rest of the world does not think like you or operate like you, but you also are not required to sacrifice your own for others. That discourse on opposing views help you identify the middle ground upon which to build new perspective. That continuous education is the gift of life, not the thing you’re required to do until you’re 16 and 22 if you want to make more money. 

Our differences aren’t what divide us. It is our inexperience, intolerance, ignorance, and inflexibility with difference is what divides us. Someone in your immediate surroundings could be your best friend for life, should you give them the opportunity to prove what you have in common rather than looking at the situation from what you’ve already established you don’t. Have you ever even looked at your relationship with your friends? Do you all just sit around and discuss whatever pops up on someone’s feed or can you have deeply intellectual and often dividing conversation? If that is bringing your life fulfillment, then go on and do you. But for those of us who strive for more and recognize the impact that our affirmed circle has on us, it’s time we let go of people that don’t care whether we sink or swim. Throwing us the life jacket 10 years ago does not aid me when I fall off the boat in a month, again, because you can’t drive nor swim so I’m stuck wherever you left me. Now let’s not discount personal responsibility of ending up somewhere you don’t want to be and it being more attributable to someone else’s actions. You choose where you show up and what you put up with, but others have the responsibility to not take advantage of that. In many cases, the people I’ve known in short fragments of time prove more loyal than those I’ve know my entire life. They show up more, they respond more, check in, support my adventures and provide me the comforts in relations that I seek. When it comes to who you’re going to surround yourself with, you need to be selfish in the decision of what is required for them to do or possess to be in your circle. Time should not be a determinant of them being a friend but rather the caliber of friend that they are. It is the final thing to matter in the grand scheme. Pick what is important for you to thrive and feel well supported and find people who do more than speak on those things. Find people who emulate, live and act on those values because many people will come to take what you’re offering and give you nothing. Many people will “support” you but not take the seconds it takes to actually provide the support that you need. Their words of encouragement exist in only such form, in only your face. Their actions need to live up both when you are around and when you are absent. Their actions need to be consistent for years upon years. It doesn’t matter if they’ve only been showing up for years upon years. A dog will follow you around once it learns that you provide it food. It will attack people who threaten you if you’ve trained it to do such or it has a developed that attachment. But dogs are domesticated and trained to be loyal for years. Humans… friends… they’re trained by others before you meet them. Conditioned to their traits be it by nature or nurture. But some people are dogs… it’s in some people’s nature to emulate that trait.

[healthnotion]

The 7 Habits: Seek First to Understand, Then to Be Understood

Welcome back to our monthly series that summarizes, expands, and riffs on each of the seven habits laid out in The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People by Stephen Covey.

Last time, we discussed the first of what Stephen Covey calls the “public habits” — Habit 4: Think Win/Win. The gist of that habit is to seek to allow everyone involved in a conflict or negotiation to feel as if they’ve “won.” This requires balancing consideration for the needs of others, with the assertiveness to stand up for your own. For Covey, this combination of consideration and assertiveness is what gives rise to maturity.

Habit 5 — “Seek First to Understand, Then to Be Understood” — helps us develop the consideration side of the equation.

We humans are actually pretty dang good at this habit — at grasping what’s going on in the minds of others. In fact, our ability to process a host of obvious and subtle cues in order to attribute mental states (like thoughts, feelings, and beliefs) to others, and thus predict and explain what they are thinking, is one of the things that separates us from other animals. Cognitive scientists call this ability “theory of mind” because when we interact with others, it’s impossible for us to know exactly what they’re thinking/feeling/perceiving, so that we have to construct a theory of what’s going through their heads. Without theory of mind, social interaction would be awkward, clumsy, and nearly impossible.

Think about all the instances in your daily life in which you have to construct a theory on what’s going through the mind of someone else. You do so when you ask your wife how her day was and she exasperatedly says “Fine.” You guess that her day actually wasn’t fine, and so respond by saying: “It sounds like you had a rough day. Tell me what happened.”

You use your theory of mind when you make a sales pitch to a potential client. You watch how they react to certain talking points, and postulate as to what’s holding them back from pulling the trigger.

Theory of mind is what allows humans to cooperate so effectively that we’ve become the dominate species on Earth and have even stepped foot on the moon. Take that chimpanzees!

So if we’re pretty good at understanding others, why did Covey think it was necessary to devote an entire habit to the subject?

Well, while we’ve been endowed with a fairly deft ability to understand the minds of our fellow human beings, that ability is still subject to some innate biases that sometimes muddle our perception. And when there’s a failure of understanding, a whole host of problems pop-up: couples argue and bicker, children feel estranged from parents, toxic cultures develop inside companies, and countries go to war. 

So while we’re generally good at understanding others, we can’t take that ability for granted. We have to be mindful of the ways our theory of mind can go astray.

Why We Fail to Understand Others & How to Rectify These Mistakes

Social psychologist Nick Epley has spent his career trying to figure out why we misunderstand others. He highlighted his research in a reader-friendly book entitled Mindwise: Why We Misunderstand What Others Think, Believe, Feel, and Want.  (I interviewed Juliana Schroeder, one of Nick’s research assistants, on the podcast a few years ago. Take a listen if you haven’t already. It’s a good rundown of his findings.)

According to Nick, our mistakes about what others are thinking “come from the two most basic questions that underlie any social interaction. First, does ‘it’ have a mind? And second, what state is that mind in?”

I Have a Rational, Human Mind, But That Idiot Doesn’t

As to the first question, you’re probably thinking “When would I ever think that someone else I’m interacting with doesn’t have a mind?” According to Nick’s research, however, you engage in a form of this thinking quite a bit. He calls this failure to fully recognize the human mind of another “dehumanization.” The most extreme form of dehumanization, of course, would be genocide. Instead of seeing victims as fellow human beings, the executioners see them as dirty animals or pests that need exterminating.

While the vast majority of us will never take part in mass genocide, we all fall prey to dehumanizing others in more subtle, everyday ways. The most common way we do this is by assuming others’ minds are less sophisticated than our own. For example, Nick’s research has shown that affluent people tend to think that poor people lack self-control, free will, and initiative. On the flipside, poor people have a tendency to believe that rich people are unfeeling, callous, money-grubbing robots. In both cases, each group assumes the minds of the other group aren’t as human as theirs.

Other research has shown that while business managers say they work for intrinsic motivations like improving the lives of their customers, these same managers often assume their employees are solely working for the money. Employees on the other hand, often think their managers are heartless taskmasters. Again, you’ve got one group assuming that the other isn’t as human.

Our current political climate is partly the result of members of different political parties dehumanizing each other. People subconsciously assume that those on the opposite side of the aisle are stupid, immoral, and out of touch with reality.

Or take driving. As George Carlin famously mused, “Have you ever noticed that everyone driving slower than you is an idiot, and anyone going faster than you is a maniac?” In both instances, you assume you’re the rational human, while everyone else on the road is a mindless dolt or an inconsiderate jagweed. And the funny thing is, those jagweeds are probably thinking the same thing about you.

Why do we do this? Our brains are just wired to react this way when we think that someone seems different from us — either physically or psychologically. The part of our brain that lights up when we engage in theory of mind — called the medial prefrontal cortex (MPFC) — lights up particularly strongly when we’re “reading” the mind of someone close to us (again, either physically or psychologically). Conversely, the more literally or metaphorically distant someone seems, the less the MPFC engages, which results in us thinking that person is less than fully human. When a boss interacts with an employee or an employee interacts with a boss, they recognize a difference between themselves, so both will tend to dehumanize the other, ever so slightly.

Our tendency to dehumanize others who aren’t “close” to us contributes to the dismal state of online discourse. When you tweet at someone, they’re likely hundreds or thousands of miles away from you; you can’t look them in the eyes or read their facial expressions. Instead of a human, they’re just some online avatar. So you don’t think twice about telling them how despicable they are.

Failing to see the full humanity of someone would obviously get in the way of understanding them; if you begin the interaction assuming there’s no mind there to understand (or that it’s quite impoverished compared to yours), you’ll just blow them off entirely.

How to Overcome the Tendency to Dehumanize

Overcoming our natural tendency to “other” others is pretty straightforward. Instead of focusing on what makes you different from them, focus on what you have in common. As soon as you start seeing the similarities between you and another person, your MPFC will begin lighting up more, and you’ll find yourself increasingly understanding them as fellow human beings.

The thing that really lights up our MPFC is when we’re in close physical proximity to others and interact with them in face-to-face conversations; doing a physical activity together helps build interpersonal cohesion as well.

So if you’re a boss and you catch yourself thinking your employee is just doing enough work to get paid, remind yourself that he likely got into this field for the same reason you did and has an interest in it outside a paycheck. To really light up that MPFC, go have lunch together, or play a round of golf.

Or when you’re out driving in rush-hour traffic, and you catch yourself thinking you’re surrounded by idiots and maniacs, practice your humanizing ability by reminding yourself that your fellow drivers are probably trying to get home to their families — just like you are. You’d want others to cut you some slack, so cut them some slack too.

If you’re tired of the rancor of online discourse, spend less time in digital space interacting with avatars, and more time in “meat space,” interacting with other minds, the cogs of which you can see working in real time.

On a related note, don’t have serious arguments with your significant other over text message — the distance created by this abstract form of communication will gin up the animosity.

Find common ground and preferably talk and do things with other people face-to-face.

It’s that simple.

These Glasses Work Great for Me; They’ll Work Great for You Too

All of us gaze out at the world through the eyeholes of our own personal perspective — a filter so fixed and all-pervasive that we hardly realize it exists. We no more notice it than a fish notices it’s swimming in water.

Author David Foster Wallace explained this fact well in his “This Is Water” speech:

“Everything in my own immediate experience supports my deep belief that I am the absolute center of the universe, the realest, most vivid and important person in existence. We rarely talk about this sort of natural, basic self-centeredness, because it’s so socially repulsive, but it’s pretty much the same for all of us, deep down. It is our default-setting, hard-wired into our boards at birth. Think about it: There is no experience you’ve had that you were not at the absolute center of. The world as you experience it is right there in front of you, or behind you, to the left or right of you, on your TV, or your monitor, or whatever. Other people’s thoughts and feelings have to be communicated to you somehow, but your own are so immediate, urgent, real.”

The fact that we see ourselves as the center of the universe gets at the second question we subconsciously ask ourselves when interacting with another person: “What state is that mind in?”

The answer we give this question — subconsciously but quite assuredly — is, “A similar state to my own.”

Because most of our thoughts are about ourselves and we spend every waking minute marinating in these literally self-centered thoughts, we have a tendency to assume that other people perceive and process the world the same way that we do. We typically don’t consciously realize this until we have a super salient epiphany moment that unveils the fact that someone else thinks in a fundamentally different way. Even once you’ve had such an experience, you still sometimes slip into assuming that other people’s minds are very much like your own. Epley calls this “the lens problem.”

One problem with our egocentric lens, is that it can get in the way of our ability to communicate; you may think that someone should naturally understand something, because you can understand it quite well in your own mind.

To grasp this issue, think of the “tapping” game you may have played as a kid. You tap out a song and have your friend guess what it is. When you do the tapping, the taps sound just like the song—melody and all—that you can “hear” in your head, so that you feel your buddy should be able to easily recognize it. But your friend just hears a bunch of taps that all sound the same. So he guesses wrong, and you’re baffled, because the fact you were tapping out “The Power of Love” by Huey Lewis and the News was so very obvious.

Another issue with our inability to recognize that we view the world through a personal lens, is that instead of seeking to understand how someone else is seeing things, we try to solve their unique issues by applying our own framework to them.

Covey gives a metaphor for this lens problem, by using the example of literal lenses:

“Suppose you’ve been having trouble with your eyes and you decide to go to an optometrist for help. After briefly listening to your complaint, he takes off his glasses and hands them to you.

‘Put these on,’ he says. ‘I’ve worn this pair of glasses for ten years now, and they’ve really helped me.’

‘This is terrible! I can’t see a thing!’ you exclaim.

‘Well, what’s wrong?’ he asks. ‘They work great for me. Try harder.’

‘I am trying,’ you insist. ‘Everything is a blur.’

‘Well, what’s the matter with you? Think positively.’

‘Okay. I positively can’t see a thing.’

‘Boy, are you ungrateful!’ he chides. ‘And after all I’ve done to help you!’”

Would you go back to such an optometrist? Certainly not. He didn’t even try to understand how you saw the world and just assumed what worked for him would work for you; as Covey puts it, he prescribed before he diagnosed.

You wouldn’t want that kind of guy for an optometrist, and people don’t want that kind of guy as a friend, co-worker, or husband either. If you really want to understand people, you can’t assume they see things through the same lens you do, and you can’t solve their problem by trying to make them look through it too; you have to get a grasp of how they see things, and then tailor your approach accordingly.

How to Overcome the Lens Problem

Overcoming the lens problem takes a lot of self-awareness and a lot of intentionality.

First, recognize that you have a tendency to understand people through your own egocentric lens. Instead of assuming that you’ve got a good handle on someone, because they think pretty much like you do, assume that they’re seeing the world differently.

Second, instead of trying to fit their perspective into your own, try to understand it the way they themselves do.

How do you do that?

You ask questions.

So simple, yet we often don’t do it because we’re overly confident in our ability to understand what others are thinking and what they need. We want to tell, when we really need to listen.

Avoid asking “why” questions, though. Why? Because most people don’t actually know why they do the things they do or like the things they like. They think they do, but they’re likely speculating or following some narrative that’s become distorted and embellished. At the same time, asking “why” questions can make people feel defensive, since, no matter how well-intended, they tend to come off as criticism, as relationship expert Dr. John Gottman observes:

“When you ask, ‘Why do you think like that?’ the other person is likely to hear, ‘Stop thinking that, you’re wrong!’ A more successful approach would be, ‘What leads you to think that?’ or, ‘Help me understand how you decided that.’”

So focus on who, what, when, where, and how instead. Those questions will likely give you some great information to help you better understand the mind of another person.

After you’ve asked a question, shut up and really listen. We’ve published an entire series on how to listen better. Go read those articles and implement the insights there.

Still don’t understand the person? Ask more questions.

Perspective getting takes work and time. But it’s well worth the effort.

By seeking first to understand, you’ll be in a better position to find Win-Win solutions to interpersonal problems, the trust in your relationships will increase significantly, and your circle of influence will expand in turn.

See how all these habits work synergistically? Which is a nice segue to the next habit in the series . . . Synergize.

The post The 7 Habits: Seek First to Understand, Then to Be Understood appeared first on The Art of Manliness.

The 7 Habits: Seek First to Understand, Then to Be Understood published first on https://mensproblem.tumblr.com

[theliterateape]

American Discourse is an Ethnic Telephone Game

By Chris Churchill

As the demographics have changed in the United States over it’s long history and we become a more and more diverse country, there seems to be a major piece of reality that the dominant culture, i.e. white folks, is missing or ignoring.

There have been a lot of clashes regarding racial and cultural insensitivity by the dominant culture. Problems with the public reception of confederate flags, confederate monuments, monuments to heroes that don’t represent American ideals anymore, Christopher Columbus, Thanksgiving and so on. The list seems to grow daily. All these things that were once seen as part of the fabric of our culture, those things that made America, America, are now being dismantled in the public square and are being declared obsolete, insensitive and even evil.

And your aunt shrugs. She can’t believe it. Why are people trying to ruin my good time? Your dad scoffs. This is the way it’s always been. Are these people not real Americans? Maybe you can’t expect them to be “real Americans” if their feelings about America are not included in your understanding of what America means.

In fact, much of America remains baffled that anyone would question these long time American institutions and icons. Why isn’t Columbus a hero? Because he killed the Indians? Because he mislabeled the Indians? What’s wrong with Thanksgiving? We’re being thankful for a genocide? This is tough stuffing to chew.  Here’s the issue, though. The defenders of the old icons, idols and heroes are forgetting that it’s all about the audience. Who is the message intended for?

In most cases, the traditions in America were created by white people of European descent for white people of European descent. And when this nation was built, many of these white people thought that it would stay that way. Or at least, the idea that the demographics might change seemed so unlikely or so distant in the future that our founding fathers didn’t really concern themselves with it.

One good thing this country has managed to maintain, however, is the idea that it is a great place for all types of people. Welcome the immigrant! You’re free to be what you are here! As long as you aren’t hurting anyone, you are free to wear your clothes, eat your foods, practice your religion or lack thereof, and live your own unique truth. The greatest thing about America is it’s ability to embrace new philosophies and ideals as new people add to the populace. In a way, America is Borg. When you move here, we will assimilate you. And, by that, I mean in the way the Borg does.  We will accept all your knowledge and beliefs and incorporate them into who we are as a nation.

This means you don’t have to be like me to be American, supposedly. But again, it seems that a lot of people are missing this idea in the strawman arguments surrounding PC culture. People dismiss considerations for others as being politically correct when they don’t like considering another human's feelings. (Some might call that being kind but that’s another essay.)

Here’s what the dominant culture is missing: audience. Audience is the key in all the issues of what is beneficial to our culture. The dominant culture is still acting like there aren’t enough people of other races and faiths to really include them in the decisions as to what is appropriate in terms of public policy, what is important in terms of the inclusion of the needs of all Americans.

When we used to talk about Columbus discovering America, that was white, European Americans talking to other white, European Americans. Because, Columbus did discover America, if by discovering America, you mean you were the first of your people to notice it was there. Like the first astronomer to discover Neptune. We don’t really know if he was the first life form in the universe to notice it. We just assume he was the first human to see it through a telescope and write it down. And, of course, acknowledging Chris Rock’s famous words on the subject, there were already millions of people here when “America” was “discovered." 

One time I discovered a nice coffee shop. I mean, as far as my household and friends were concerned, I was the first one to recognize that it was a nice place to go. It doesn’t mean that the people who ran the coffee shop hadn’t already noticed they were there.

So now the audience is way different than it was before. America, due to it’s lovely capacity to take in and accept others, and partially due to our attempt to start making things right with those that we murdered or enslaved to get to this place, is a much more diverse place. America isn’t just people of white, European descent. We must accept that, usually, the term Traditional American Values doesn’t mean American at all. It often means European American Values and is bandied about as easily decoded code between whites who don’t want to include others' needs in their decisions about what America is and what America needs.

Real American discourse is the descendant of a slave telling a story to which white people can’t relate to a Latino friend. Real American discourse is the Chinese American and the Vietnamese American talking about something other than Kardassia and its inhabitants. Real American discourse also includes white people but it isn’t just white people. And it isn’t just land owners and aristocrats either. If this is America, then audience must be considered. The laws of the land, if this is truly a democracy, are decided by this audience. Understand and accept that the audience is different than it was two hundred years ago. “Traditional America” is a defunct mindset about only one type of American.

If America was a white man doing a standup bit, he would have to stop telling racist jokes by now. Because we are a bigger family and we should be able to see that all people are equal. All people deserve equal consideration. Jokes that are simply about the otherness of the other are only acceptable if the other agrees to the sentiment and finds humor in it too.

America is good when it embraces its audience. And it’s audience is everyone. Or, at least it should be.