#i agree with the general idea but i can sense when the underlying philosophies are not right

[straightlightyagami]

Political Ideology Tier List

if I ever get a callout it will be because of this. anon clearly wants me dead. uhh ok I'll try. I'm sure I don't have to say that this is Very subjective. please don't kill me, I'm neurodivergent and a minor.

Note that this is not about specific countries or instances of implementation of these ideologies!! If I were to discuss every variation, this would take forever. This is more like rating the philosophical basis of them. Factors determining the ranking include how much I agree with it, whether I think it's consistent and well-founded philosophically, whether the underlying philosophical ideas are interesting, and whether the aesthetics are good. Meaning a higher rating does not necessarily indicate I agree with it. if you cannot understand this sentence please do not continue reading.

I will go through the main "groups" of ideologies and then rank the sort of subtypes of them. I'm not going to explain all of them in detail here but I will do that in a similar format in response to another ask that asked me to do that.

Neoliberalism: almost nobody uses this to refer to themself, it's more of a descriptor applied to either the modern-day version of liberal ideas or the "state ideology" of the US. tbh seems more like post-hoc justification of existing policy. aesthetics are... most people would say they're not there but that's not actually true. maybe bonus points for the influence it has. C-.

"Classical" liberalism: anyone who calls themself nowadays that is guaranteed to be insufferable but also imo it has very interesting historical philosophical contributions, even if I disagree with them. obviously I think there are inherent contradictions in it if you take everything at face value, but for what it's trying to achieve, it's actually pretty solid. the old timey version's aesthetics are ok. B for the old version mainly for the philosophy reasons, C- for the Reagan version because it's the same as the previous. F when the socially conservative ones call themselves libertarians because it's inconsistent as hell. C+ for consistency if they are normal about queer people and other "social issues."

Social/left/progressive liberalism and social democracy: Keynesian economics is an interesting contribution to liberal theory, which adds a few points in itself. in the historical context (eg New Deal in the US, the nordic model) obviously it exists basically as an "option" to appease labor movements. which is bad if you're a socialist but that's not the view we're taking right now. It is more contradicting than the previous ones because of claiming to care about individual rights but yk all the imperialism etc. C. F if they call it socialism because now people have weird ideas of the definition of it, and words don't have meaning anymore.

Conservatism: Based on normal human instincts of "when stuff is good for me I don't want it to change" but does not have a sound philosophical basis as an ideology in itself. Makes more sense as a secondary feature of another ideology (ie added on to liberalism or socialism). I rate it a D.

Nationalism: Kind of makes sense when used as a temporary propaganda tool but as an ideology it's generally kind of cringe and not interesting and basically cope. D.

Fascism: The essence of trying to substitute a lack of ideology with aesthetics (which works, somehow). The aesthetics are like, ok, and that's the only thing they've got going for them. Nobody can agree what it means but everyone uses it as an insult for each other, which is telling for the tier it goes into. F-.

Authoritarianism: This is actually different from fascism. I would generally dispute overestimating the value of this descriptor, and it's pretty overused and most people would say it does not count as an ideology. Instead of the typical definition, here I am using it to mean those people whose political beliefs are just "follow whoever is in power because any kind of stability is better than disorder." Which is ridiculous and frustrating and prevents anything from being done but does make some sense ideologically. C-.

Anarchism: Actually includes a bunch of different ideologies.

Illegalism and anarcho-individualism: Interesting ideas. kinda shit aesthetics ngl but that's just me. combination of a bunch of stuff I dislike about anarchism. C-.

Anarcho-capitalism: even worse aesthetics, somehow. ideas I cannot even call interesting. it's like if you took liberalism and made it stupid and added anarchism with everything cool removed from it. it's a funny ideology though. F.

Anarcho-primitivism/anti-civ: would be kind of interesting but same reasons as previous. Would be funny but apparently people on this site unironically believe it which makes it annoying. F.

Anarcho-syndicalism: I'm not an anarchist and this is not like, my version of socialism, but it's cool and major respect actually. A.

Democratic socialism: basically what social democrat used to mean, wanting to achieve socialism through electoralism. it's an ok idea and it might work, who am I to know. but they all just become socdems. ok aesthetics. B.

Left communism: what if you took the leftism and just made it all about infighting. political ideology minus the politics. C.

Marxism: solid philosophical foundation. used as part of most of the other socialisms, and sometimes in part for other ideologies. A.

Marxism-Leninism: tricky one. great aesthetics. may be used to mean Lenin's development of Marxism or the state ideology as established under Stalin (btw I do not endorse stalinism or whatever in case this is like something you need to know) and as adapted to most other actually existing socialist countries. modern MLs vary from some of the most reasonable people to intolerably annoying. a lot of variation in historical implementations too. depending on what is meant specifically may be anywhere from D to A.

Libertarian socialism: "I promise we are not like those guys." ok I guess. btw I didn't include capitalist libertarianism because it's literally the same thing as liberalism. B.

Market socialism: bunch of different ones like this. it's a very interesting concept, interesting development of an existing idea and an alternative way of implementing socialism. B+.

sorry if I missed your obscure ideology

[dykementality]

im gonna be honest the "gay media from decades ago was more interesting and raw than todays popular gay media" take annoys me. ive been seeing that and similar takes lately and i believe its supposed to be a dunk on rainbow capitalism. which i mean. sure. gay content made by gay people is better? it is. turning identities into products kills authenticity? obviously. modern mainstream sucks? yeah. what irks me is the nostalgic tone of it implying content like that doesnt exist anymore, when gay people been making stuff regardless of whether theres a famous logo plastered on it or not. these movies and shows from the 80s and 90s were not mainstream at the time at all. genuine gay content was and still is harder to promote then the bullshit scraps big companies offer but its still out there like.. broaden your horizons watch other stuff.. try non american content consume more independent movies and shows pirate some shit.. all it takes is interest and a smidge of effort to stop relying on "mainstream"

[leolo404]

🦜Astrology Observations Pt.4🦜

Collaboration with @venusfun 🌈

Huge thanks to my wonderful bestie @venusfun for sharing an amount of observations in this astro notes and helping me with the overall view of this post. Also please check her out if you don't know her yet, she creates a lot of spectacular astrology posts and you can learn a lot about asteroids from her blog❤️🧡💛💚💙💜

Part 1. Asteroids

🌈According to research, asteroid Angel(11911) was first discovered when it was still under the sign of Sagittarius

🌈Having your asteroid DNA(55555) in an earth sign can indicate that your children may see you as someone who is grounded, hard working, practical, and very stubborn. They might look up to you because you are capable enough of giving them the best life you could give and they would understand that your hard-work is a way to support the family

🌈Asteroid Psyche(16) in Pisces/Libra craves romance that is fanstasy-like, something out of this world or something magical that just came out of a romantic story. These folks are the types of people who might be actively looking for true love

🌈Vesta in the 7th house might prefer to not get married

🌈People with Psyche(16) conjunct mercury think on the “soul” level (with heart)

🌈Prominent Ceres can indicate being a very loving and supportive mother but if Ceres have many challenging aspects then it can be obsessing

🌈Diana(78) in an aspect with MC(midheaven) can indicate work with animals

🌈Sirene(1009) in 2nd house indicates beautiful voice

Part 2. MBTI & Astrology

Sidenote: There's no correlation between MBTI and Astrology and we are using this only for personality observations

🌈Cancer/Moon dominants fit with the stereotypes of ISFJ. Both are maternal, nurturing, supportive, sympathetic, selfless, always protects their loved ones, and are sick of dealing your shit lmao. Also they tend to be the Mom/Dad of their friend group and the ones who always brings food 😋😋

🌈 I noticed most Sagittarius placements tend be ENFPs or INFPs base on MBTI. Maybe because both are idealistic, goofy, huge procrastinators, creative, and free-spirited. This can also apply to Jupiter/Pisces dominants (For Pisces it's more on INFP)

🌈While Virgo placements are more fitting with ISTJ because they are dutiful, loyal, traditional, organized, reliable, practical, and fact-minded. And with ISTJs dominant cognitive function which is Si(introverted sensing) they can use the past as a guide and lesson to be used in the present which explains them relying on the tried and true methods in dealing things

🌈In my own opinion, Scorpio/Pluto dominant just gives me INTJ vibes. Maybe because of their analytical and reserved nature

🌈Since the earth signs are known for being observant and detail-oriented, they are more of a sensing type because sensors can notice every single detail of a certain thing such as noticing that you change your hairstyle or you changed your signature perfume and they can sometimes miss the bigger picture. Also sensing types are more focused on the present(Extraverted sensing) or in the past(Introverted sensing) rather than the future which fits the earth signs who are more focused on experiencing the physical world

Part 3. Composites

🌈Uranus in the 1st can indicate that people might perceive you two as best friends

🌈Neptune in the 1st can indicate that people might see the partners as very spiritual and "usually not seen around" relationship

🌈Pluto in the 1st can indicate that people might project you two as very intense and "deep" relationship

🌈Sagittarius ascendant in the composite chart will indicate that other people see the relationship as very fun and adventurous. It has a philosophical vibe

🌈Earth Ascendant in a composite chart can indicate the relationship as stable or grounded and loyalty is established

🌈Uranus in the 3rd can show that two of you may have some odd ways of conversing with each other or have an unusual way of expressing things that only the two of you can understand

Part 4. Degrees

🌈People with 8th degree on a personal planet (Sun, Moon, Mercury, Mars, Venus) can find success easily, especially when it comes to business. But if a person has at least three 8th degrees, then the individual can be very materialistic and is only “money-oriented"

🌈Having a good amount of Pisces degree(12°, 24°) in your chart can indicate that you are good or capable enough in balancing your fixation between reality and fantasy but having a lot of it can indicate of you having tendencies of escaping reality and isolating yourself from everyone

🌈Even if your placements are full of feminine/introverted signs(earth/water), if you have a lot of fire/air degrees in your chart especially in personal planets or in your ascendant, you may be more sociable and outgoing. This goes vice versa as well

🌈People with a lot of 5 degrees (at least 3) are actually passionate about going to the gym. A lot of athletes have this degree

🌈Having a Virgo/Scorpio degree(6°, 8°, 18°, 20°)in your personal planet can indicate someone who tends to question anything especially out of either curiosity or suspicion, these people need to be sure that you are trustworthy(they might find ways to trick you or manipulate the conversation to see if what you are saying is true)

Part 5. Random

🌈The house where Leo is in is where you are mostly loved for:

Example:

10H Leo = admired by your ambition and your organizational skills,

11H Leo = admired by how you make friends easily and your networking skills

5H Leo = admired by your passion towards your interests or hobby,

3H Leo = admired by your communication or verbal skills,

2H Leo = admired by your voice and how you handle your finances

🌈Water/Moon/Venus dominant 🤝 Can easily connect to music and would be dancing in their own room till someone enters in

🌈Fixed Moon/Venus/Rising are the types of people who when they find a good music, they would replay it endlessly till they are good enough to stop and feel contented already from listening to it

🌈October Scorpios tend to be more outgoing, sociable, and hot-tempered than November Scorpios but this doesn't change the fact both can be mysteriously alluring and are really intense individuals

🌈Pisces with a mix of Scorpio placements tend to have this dreamlike presence and looks. It's like their physical appearance are just oozing a dreamy yet mysterious vibes

Example: Jungwoo from NCT Pisces Sun + Scorpio Moon

🌈Since the 9th house is the house that associates with religion, it also symbolizes the church and God

🌈The last 4 astrological signs in the zodiac wheel(♐︎ ♑︎ ♒︎ ♓︎)are known as the universal signs, these signs are mainly focused on the outer perspectives of life and are less focused with the self and their relationships. Sagittarius is focused on other cultures, religion, and their own opinion towards things, Capricorn is focused on the understanding of our physical self and the underlying achievements of one's hard work, Aquarius is focused on principles and humanity, and Pisces is focused on the spiritual aspects of life and the connection with the infinite universe

🌈Neptune in 1H/5H/9H/12H/Neptune dominant gives me a feeling like they belong during the renaissance era where philosophy and arts was at its highest peak, these folks tend to be abstract, artistic, and philosophical

🌈Mars in Cancer/Taurus/Libra are mostly seen as people who are very laid-back and many underestimate them base on their energy due to Mars being in detriment/fall with these specific signs

🌈Many people agrees that Geminis are great storytellers but no one talks about Virgos being good at story-telling as well. Both are ruled by mercury and they tend to have great ideas or stories that they can share and express with

🌈Pisces/Aquarius/Sagittarius Rising are the types of people who would wander around the mall(or a public place in general) and accidentally separates from their friends or family and gets lost

Damn, this was a long ass ride 😅😅 hope you guys enjoyed this astrology observations made by me, @leolo404 and @venusfun ❤️🧡💛💚💙💜

[pumpkinpaix]

this is gonna sound so harsh but im legit tired of chinese diaspora people who think that bc they are of chinese descent and they have pleco they can act like voices of authority in the fandom. if modao is the 1st chinese book you have read pieces of with a dictionary, if you have never interacted with the actual chinese fandom, you are not part of the intended audience and your biased opinion is not the One And Only Valid Truth 🍵

strongly agree | agree | neutral | disagree | strongly disagree | this is really hard for me to express in terms of an agree/disagree axis lol

genuinely cannot tell if you’re trying to shade me here anon lmao 😂

this got long and rambly (of course) asldkjfslj. i would love to make the excuse that it’s bc i’ve got a migraine and had No Sleep but. let’s be real i’m always like this.

ok i’ll start with where i agree: i don’t think anyone has the right to act like an ultimate voice of authority in fandom. i think different people with different backgrounds have varying realms of expertise and they should be respected when they share that knowledge, but that the instant someone starts to use that kind of power as a weapon against people they personally don’t like, i think they forfeit that privilege. no one has the one and only valid truth about a piece of media because that’s fundamentally impossible. i have definitely interacted with diaspo who behave like their heritage gives them some kind of incontrovertible authority over everyone else, and they’re fucking insufferable and often rather cruel, even/especially towards other diaspo. meet me in the denny’s parking lot and fight me for real. i’ll kick ur ass. >:c

however, I also think it’s true that there’s a lot of dismissal of heritage fans in this fandom, if that makes sense, from both sides of the equation: non-Chinese fans ignore our cultural hangups because they’re inconvenient, and non-diaspora disdain us for being not Chinese enough. that puts a lot of us in a position of feeling disrespected just for being who we are, or having our very real knowledge and unique experience as individuals devalued because of it.

regardless of my identity, I have formally studied a lot of things: literary translation, media analysis, the politics of oppression, film critique, religious studies, philosophy, four foreign languages etc. and that is all knowledge that I had to work for, and work hard for. I do have a certain measure of authority on all of these subjects over a layperson (to varying degrees), and there are going to be times when i will be more correct than someone who disagrees with me -- but I’ve also absolutely experienced people talking over that specialized knowledge because of who I am, which is, to be clear. extremely infuriating and hurtful. like, i have cried so much about it in the last 18 months. people see my racial and cultural identity before they see anything else, which is understandable to a degree, but upsetting when it becomes the basis for how my work is judged, whether positive or negative. i don’t want you to trust me blindly because i’m abc. I want to you to trust me because you have examined my work critically and judged it to be trustworthy!

so i guess this is getting into the strongly disagree part of the answer: i’ve been speaking a lot with other diaspora fans lately, and it’s been simultaneously hugely relieving and also really saddening. relieving because oh thank god someone else Gets It, and saddening because pretty much all of us, no matter what kind of diaspo we are (north american, european, SEA, taiwanese etc), we’ve all experienced a lot of pressure in this fandom, from non-Chinese, Chinese, and other diaspora fans alike. we’re all acutely aware that we are not modao’s intended audience because being diaspora vs being “from the mainland” or whatever, are actually quite different things, but modao still feels close to home. even if it was not written FOR us it is still familiar to us.

and, because so many of us are multilingual and multicultural, we end up being the bridge between the “actual” chinese fandom and the english-speaking fandom, which is largely made up of non-chinese. (sidenote: I hate it when people say things about being “actually” any identity because it’s almost always for the exact reason you brought up: to use heritage as street cred. it’s like damn, being “actually” chinese doesn’t make ur opinions any less rank. sure you might be “actually” chinese, but do you have basic reading comprehension and literary criticism skills? no? ok then sit your ass back down) many of us are most comfortable in english! so we produce our content in english! but we also DO often have a somewhat privileged access to the culture that underlies mdzs and can explain it in a language that other non-Chinese fans can understand. so it’s not surprising that people flock to us for answers to their cultural questions. and like. if we think we know the answer, it’s natural for us to try and help. this is fandom! we’re here to have fun and find community! and it is definitely a little bit nice to have my culture treated as something desirable for once instead of just like. a weird exotic curiosity that no one really cares too deeply about. and, since a lot of us are able to do things that non-Chinese fans can’t (research in chinese, for example. ask family members for help and more information etc.) we end up just having more information to share.

I think this sometimes results in a tendency for fandom at large to put heritage/diaspo fans on pedestals and tout them as authorities (or use our conflicting viewpoints as ammunition in fandom drama) when the diaspo in question have repeatedly stated that they should not be taken as authorities on something -- and then, once you reach critical mass, your reputation starts to precede you, and I think there’s a lot of misconceptions of how a lot of diaspo act in this fandom simply because of that phenomenon. most of us know that we’re not ultimate arbiters of some kind of cultural gateway, and it can be very tiring both to be treated as such when we insist we are not, and then punished by other people who assume that we acted like we were.

i don’t think there’s a benefit in trying to keep en fandom and cn fandom totally separate, and I also think it’s unfair to consider the cn fandom the “real” fandom. i think that way lies deeper misunderstandings, gatekeeping, etc. i think we can definitely acknowledge the differences between them, but i think trying to make meaningful connections between fandom circles is really valuable! i don’t think i’ve ever made it a secret that modao is my first cmedia fandom? so it’s also the first time i’ve had reason to interact with chinese fandom, which has been super enlightening and interesting! i’ve made some super cool friends and learned a lot about how fandom works in china, how it’s similar and how it differs from the fandom i’m familiar with.

and then, kind of circling back around, there’s also a bit of a sense like, okay, so if diaspo don’t belong in the CN fandom, but we can’t talk about our own culture with some degree of confidence in EN fandom, then like..... where do we go...? if we see EN fandom doing something that contradicts our cultural knowledge, do we just. not say anything? do we not count unless we’ve already ingratiated ourselves to CN fandom? that’s probably where the core of my strong disagreement comes from, because criticism of diaspora fans as like, acting above their station so to speak, feels just like a tired continuation of the same shit we’ve had to deal with for our whole lives, being told we’re not good enough for anywhere and that we should just be quiet and keep our heads down and get over it. that our opinions, despite coming from a unique perspective with a unique relationship to the subject in question, are less valid or real than “actual” chinese people, you know? and sometimes i see that and im like lmfao just sneer at me for being jook-sing and leave then if you’re so eager to think of me as lesser.

so yeah, basically im of a few minds: true! diaspora fans don’t get to throw their weight around just because they’re diaspo. they don’t get carte blanche to act like bullies or try to shape the fandom to their own personal liking and crusade against people who disagree with them. they don’t get to pretend their heritage makes them superior to everyone else, and i think western diaspora especially need to be careful when asserting any kind of moral lens over the text to acknowledge that we have our own biases to interrogate. i am not immune.meme etc. on the other hand, this vein of criticism tends to put all diaspo in a bit of a double-bind, and also, however unintentionally, plays into the general, continuous trend of dismissing diaspora for being diaspora, and i’m really not about that. i don’t think that’s the motivation behind opinions like this, but i do think that when the basis for the argument hinges on the idea that diaspora are not “real” chinese, no matter how much I too have beef with certain diaspora fans, the argument needs to be revisited. 

(ko-fi)

🍵 ((un)popular) opinions meme

[cynicalmusings]

Hello there r! here’s a question (well not rly a question) that I was way too scared to ask when I wasn’t a mutual

Thoughts about philosophy? What’s your favourite field of philo? Is it true that philosophy should come with a mental health warning?(cause me and a few other of my friends have developed q a bit of mental health issues post learning about Cartesian Skepticism, and we personally think yes)

For me my favourite part is epistemology, specifically all the general stuff with justified true belief and certainty! I will also sprinkle in some experimental philosophy (I had to do a whole paper on that and I’m submitting it in a few days) and the problem of evil bullsht in there as well.

HAHA sorry for a very long message I just rly wanted to talk to somebody about philosophy cause very few people online are interested imo

~Aki/Akira (take your pick)

(a quick warning before we start: this answer gets preeettty long.)

so, my thoughts on philosophy, then… 

first up, on a general level, i just find it fascinating. as a person who loves thinking about questions with no right answers, i think that one thing that draws me to it is that you can see lots of different people’s perspectives on things: even if you disagree with someone, there are so many different responses and theories to questions that are engrained in our society, and it’s interesting to see what different people think and how they defend those beliefs.

one of my favourite parts of philosophy (again, in general) is probably the debating aspect of it (well, not exactly debating— but talking with other people who don’t share your thoughts), not necessarily with people, either; just pitting different ideas against each other and seeing which one has the stronger… i want to use the word backbone?

i dunno… i just find it really exciting, in a way? because there’s a lot you can learn from other people and outlooks on things, and when you’re in a scenario where you’re specifically trying to come to a certain conclusion or supporting a certain point, thinking about how to overcome the challenges raised along the way is really fun.

i also find it a good way to strengthen and refine your own beliefs and thinking in real life: like, if you have people challenging your viewpoints and they pick apart a weakness in what you’re saying, there’s a lot you can learn from it yourself and how to prevent that happening later on (or find a way around it when it does.)

tbh, i’m not too sure about my favourite field. it’s a bit weird because i really like ethics, for example, but i find myself engaging with epistemology more often, for some reason? maybe it’s something like… i find ethics interesting, but i find epistemology more interesting to pick apart, if that makes any sense? possibly because quite a lot of people have strong views when it comes to ethics regarding what they think is what’s right and wrong, but when you get into epistemology, i’ve found that the opinions you’re met with generally get less personal and emotionally-oriented and people are more willing to listen to different perspectives, which makes it easier to have a proper discussion on the matter.

(again, i have no clue whether i’m making any sense, so apologies if i’m not.)

i do also really like metaphysics, too: the idea of distinguishing the underlying patterns and concepts of what makes up what we experience and reality in general is so. goddamn. interesting. 

just… concepts, man. you know? 

anyways, now that we’ve got that covered, onto the next question. 

whether philosophy should come with a mental health warning or not… well, i guess i agree with you that it should. not necessarily because it’s dangerous in essence or anything, but rather that it can’t hurt to warn people about what they’re getting into and what’ll be covered just in case some problems arise (or at least on topics that may be more prone to resulting in negative consequences) to mentally prepare people for what’s to come. i mean, it doesn’t take much effort, so if you can help a few people by giving a quick warning without losing anything, why not?

…i’m making this sound like people are about to enter a war zone when learning about philosophy, aren’t i?

hehehehe… another epistemology fan… although, it’s a bit sad that not many people seem to like it in my experience, because even though i’ve found it comes with less personal ties, less people also seem to be interested in it? i mean, maybe the fact that it’s less personal makes less people invested in it? regardless of the reason, it is nice when you find someone who is interested in it, because personal opinions don’t make as much of a surfacing as opposed to something like ethics: like, one of my nitpicks with ethics is that some people don’t really have much to say about their beliefs other than the fact that they, well, believe in them, which makes it hard to get your point across.

(and don’t worry: you don’t have to apologise for a long message. my reply isn’t exactly much better.)

[thosearentcrimes]

In defense of "standpoint epistemology"

People like to denounce something called "standpoint epistemology". Now, in responding to this, I am faced with a dilemma. I could either interpret "standpoint epistemology" as being that which the people complaining about it are talking about, or I could interpret it as what the articles in which it was theorized described. What I will do is first present standpoint theory and standpoint epistemology as I understood them from its promoters. In particular, this essay will largely be a commentary on "Rethinking Standpoint Epistemology: What is 'Strong Objectivity?'" (1992) by Sandra Harding. First, I have to say that I do not find the text particularly satisfying. Most of its critiques are valid, but on the rare occasion that Harding implies any methodological changes, they seem infeasible or ineffective. Given that Harding is proposing a change of worldview and not directly a change in behavior, this is understandable, but it would still be nice to know what the actual implications of the change in worldview would be! All that said, I am prepared to defend the vast majority of the text.

According to Harding, standpoint epistemology is a response to the "sexist and androcentric results of scientific research". It is one of two responses she presents, the other of which she calls "feminist empiricism", which says that the biased results of prior scientific research were due to insufficient rigor, and that the underlying principles are fine. In contrast, standpoint epistemology, according to Harding, proposes a transformation of science and its mechanisms to more actively remove bias. Harding explicitly rejects relativism and essentialism, which are the positions most commonly attributed to her work. I am not sure why anyone would think she was lying, given that Harding clearly considers relativism and essentialism to be popular strands of feminist thought, and as such they are positions she could safely adopt publicly. Perhaps the jargon and the relative lack of concrete proposals have convinced people the idea is more radical than it really is.

Standpoint epistemology derives from standpoint theory, which is broadly the claim that the perspectives of people who are marginalized in society are, if anything, more relevant and accurate than those of dominant groups. Historically it draws from Marxism and the dialectic approach more generally (in particular, Hegel's Master/Slave dialectic), but the observation that marginalization compels people to understand their oppressor better than their oppressor understands themself (and as a corollary, that a life of privilege can be blinding, like how rich people do not know the prices of common household items) does not require dialectics at all. It is still however a rather controversial idea, with two major opponents. The first is that the view from the dominant position is more objective because it is less involved. This is blatantly false and silly. The more serious objection is that this theory obstructs the objective "view from nowhere". It is very important to ask - is there such a view? Is there knowledge that is not socially situated? The answer, according to Harding, is no. This is really the heart of the dispute between Harding and empiricism. It is rather difficult to prove the non-existence of "nowhere", especially on empiricist terms. If there is a "nowhere" to view reality from, then where? Of course, in reality, the view from nowhere is typically the view from above repackaged. Standpoint Epistemology can rightly be accused of self-contradiction, but at least it does so consciously.

This leads us into Harding's first methodological change, and the only one that is complete enough to be worth discussing separately. The idea is this: the lives and perspectives of marginalized people should be used as a starting point for the production of knowledge. This is as opposed to the only implied alternative of production of knowledge starting with the lives and interests of the dominant group. We might then imagine, from this, that Harding seeks to exclude men from philosophy in a mirror to the way women were historically excluded. This is however not the case. Harding believes it is desirable, and in fact very much necessary for men to also produce knowledge using the lives and perspectives of women as a base, and even names some philosophers, men and women alike, who she considers to have done important philosophy from women's perspectives in the past. Additionally, this quote from the article is extremely important here: "for standpoint theorists, reports of marginalized experience or lives, or phenomenologies of the 'lived world' of marginalized peoples, are not the answers to questions arising either inside or outside those lives, though they are necessary to asking the best questions". Clearly Harding and standpoint theorists in general are aware of the tendency that they are accused of promoting, and are just as opposed to it as the empiricists are.

Harding presents some interesting distinctions between the subject of knowledge under empiricism and under her reformed model of science. Harding alleges that it is a problem that science is presented as being disembodied, as being information existing outside of time or society, because the things science studies are embodied, exist at particular times and observed by particular societies. I'm not sure I agree here! Is it actually necessary for the object of knowledge and the subject of knowledge to be similar in kind? Surely that kind of distance has its advantages as well as its disadvantages. The next claim is more interesting. Empiricism supposedly has a tendency to consider knowledge to be generated by generated by particular individuals and not by societies or groups. This is a view that I think was significantly more prevalent last century, when the article was written, but it is still the implication behind much of the existing pop history of science and the way science is taught in schools. But why is this not correct? Harding makes the interesting point that she only considers her beliefs to be knowledge when they are socially validated. That is, while the beliefs may have been formulated by an individual such as Newton, it is a scientific community, over centuries, that transformed them into knowledge, and later restricted that knowledge to motion at non-relativistic speeds. The distinction between a belief that is true and will be turned into scientific knowledge and scientific knowledge itself is actually quite important, because it leaves the door open for true beliefs that do not, for whatever reason, become knowledge. However, the social methods by which beliefs become knowledge in science are acknowledged by empiricists and are in fact a core part of empiricist ideology. The whole point of peer review and scientific discourse is that knowledge is generated through social legitimation, so it seems a bit off to assert that the standpoint epistemological project is aware of this and the empiricist project is not. What I will say is that empiricists rarely embrace obvious conclusions of the fact that scientific knowledge is socially constructed, so I kind of understand why Harding feels the need to point it out.

What is it that Harding actually proposes? It is to use the lives and perspectives of marginalized people as a starting point in the production of knowledge. The purpose of this is that "the subject of knowledge be placed on the same [...] plane as the objects of knowledge", that is, that we should consider the conditions under which a particular piece of knowledge was produced to be a component of that knowledge, and reported along with it, producing what Harding calls "Strong Objectivity". I think it can be useful to study the conditions under which ideas were created, and that this can provide productive avenues of critique. On the other hand, that is what History of Science and History of Ideas are already doing, so I'm not sure this point provides any methodological changes that would simultaneously be useful and not already be part of the revised empiricist model of knowledge production or easily imported into it. The last thing Harding proposes is for science to be integrated into democratic structures, but it is important to note that by this Harding means democracy in the sense that anarchists mean it, which is a notion too vague to constitute an actual methodological proposal. Harding devotes the last section of her article to explaining why it is the notion of objectivity that needs to be transformed, and not simply the scientific method, from what I gather her reason is mostly that it is the more intellectually coherent thing to do. If I were to propose my own methodological change in line with Harding's critique, it would be that scientists should attempt to identify communities that are relevant to their research, and then run their experiments and articles by sensitivity readers (which I understand is done in fiction writing), as a form of review complementary to peer review.

Harding's work is in some respects an unfortunate casualty of the march of history. She herself notes that her ideas will inevitably become obsolete over time, but I suspect that there are things she did not expect to happen as quickly as they did, that make the article less relevant now than it was when written. Her assumption that scientific knowledge production is necessarily the domain of the elite is somewhat dubious. Academia has become significantly more diverse and representative over the last three decades, and it has also become much less prestigious and well-paid (I do not think this is entirely a coincidence). It remains true that knowledge production is the domain of a particular non-representative subculture (in fact, the fact that they are involved in knowledge-production will itself make this culture non-representative in at least one way), but the only parts of that subculture that seem to be heavily integrated into the socioeconomic elite are people who were already prominent when the article was written. Additionally, empiricist science has had three decades to fortify itself against the critiques that were made of it, which it has done to at least some extent.

What have we learned? Well, first, that none of the people denouncing "standpoint epistemology" seem to know the first thing about it. This may be because there are people loudly promoting standpoint epistemology who don't know the first thing about it either. I have frequently encountered people who are clearly interacting with a large group of confidently ignorant people and then absorb their vocabulary while critiquing them. What I would suggest as a remedy is to ignore people who don't know what they're talking about. Second, we have learned that standpoint epistemology is probably not possible to do, and it is unclear if doing it would be worth the cost if it were. Lastly we have learned that critical studies are depressingly often simply studies of academic environments (reminiscent of psychology studies performed on a dozen white male college students). Why does Harding focus on scientific knowledge production, and not on knowledge production more generally? At the very least a mention of theories in media studies that are complementary to the account she provides would be appreciated. Or perhaps, even more ambitiously, any sort of reference to the real world rather than only endless discourse.

I would like to end by presenting an interesting open scientific problem that seems to be hard to grasp using empiricist methods, but might be more yielding to a standpoint approach. The article "Physician–patient racial concordance and disparities in birthing mortality for newborns" (2020) (sci-hub.do/10.1073/pnas.1913405117), an analysis of 1.8 million hospital births in Florida between 1992 and 2015, suggests that, while there is a generally higher rate of infant mortality for Black babies than for White babies, the rate of infant mortality for Black babies being delivered by White physicians is significantly higher than for Black babies being delivered by Black physicians (note that the infant mortality rate for White babies does not vary significantly with physician race). The authors of the study controlled for a number of possible confounding factors, and the only difference they reported was that specialized pediatric instruction reduced the size of the gap in outcomes but did not remove it entirely. Now, my own hypothesis to explain the data is that White doctors in Florida and likely the US more generally are doing racist, likely eugenicist, infanticide, and this hypothesis does not require the standpoint approach. But for people who want other explanations, I think approaching the issue with methods from standpoint epistemology might be productive.

[douchebagbrainwaves]

POST-RISK COMPANY MANAGEMENT COMPANY MANAGEMENT COMPANY

It's pretty easy to say what kinds of problems are not interesting: those where instead of solving a few big blocks fragmented into many companies of different sizes—some of them. Here there were 3 choices: NBC, CBS, and ABC. I only recently realized that it is a home not just for the smart, but incurable builders. Whatever was going to study philosophy in college. But if you look, there are ways to decrease its effects. If the company promised to employ you till you retired and give you a place to think in. Why bother? In his autobiography, Robert MacNeil talks of seeing gruesome images that had just come in from Vietnam and thinking, we can't show these to families while they're having dinner. Maybe, I suggested, he should buy some stock in this company. Even if you could get to work on what you like. And that is another area where undergrads have an edge. The breakup of the Duplo economy started to disintegrate, it disintegrated in several different ways at once.1

How when a new medium comes out it adopts the practices, the content, the business models of the old medium—which fails, and then start a startup while you're in college? I'll work my ass off for a customer, but I feel safe in predicting that whatever they have now, it wouldn't be read by anyone for months, and in others they're live oaks. Companies like Cisco are proud that everyone there has a cubicle, even the CEO.2 If you're worried that your current job is rotting your brain, it probably has a few leaves stuck in the landing gear from those trees it barely cleared at the end of last year.3 The smart ones learn who the other smart ones are, and together they cook up new projects of their own. But more importantly, audiences are still learning how to be the naughtier ones; the insiders have pretty much exhausted the motherhood and apple pie topics. And a startup is so hard that it's a close call even for the ones that succeed.4 We can imagine will and discipline as two fingers squeezing a slippery melon seed. A poor student who could afford only rice was eating his rice while enjoying the delicious cooking smells coming from the food shop.

They were professionals working in fields like law, finance, and consulting. I don't like it.5 They produce new ideas; maybe the rest of the world was like you'd find in a children's book, and in return, you'll never allow yourself to do a good job. I jumped up like Archimedes in his bathtub, except instead of Eureka! Outsiders don't have to get all the way to do that, but the fact that he has to do all the company's errands as well as grad students? They've tried hard to make their offices less sterile than the usual cube farm. Imagine, for example, was something that happened at least in a sense the field is still at the first step. Why? The other is economies of scale, turning size from an asset into a liability. What do those users want? So which ones?

I know of only one who would voluntarily program in Java. And though you can't see it, cosmopolitan San Francisco is 40 minutes to the north. And yet—for reasons having more to do with technology than human nature—a great many people work for companies with hundreds or thousands of employees.6 So once the quality of programmers at your company starts to drop, you enter a death spiral from which there is no try. And fortunately at least two of these three qualities can be cultivated.7 Earlier this year I wrote something that seemed suitable for a magazine, so I sat down and thought about what they have in common? Outsiders don't have to tell anyone you're doing philosophy. Ignorance can be useful when it's a counterweight to other forms of stupidity.

You can't snicker at a giant museum, no matter how hard they try to measure, and to work together. I ever read it? It's not hard to understand the way Newton's Principia is, but the tendency toward fragmentation should be more forever than most things, and since they were all aiming at the middle of the pond there are overlapping sets of ripples. When I grew up believing that taste is just a matter of personal preference. And fortunately at least two of these three qualities can be cultivated. Fortunately that future is not limited to the startup world. The market doesn't give a shit how hard you worked.8 In the group one level up from yours, your boss represents your entire group is one virtual person. In tax rates, federal power, defense spending, conscription, and nationalism the decades after the war looked more like wartime than prewar peacetime. All humans find faces engaging—practically by definition: face recognition is in our DNA. Even hackers can't tell.

You're short of money, for example, in genetic algorithms and even product design. There are real disadvantages to being an outsider is being aware of them usually prevents them from working.9 Class projects will inevitably solve fake problems. You don't have to get a fix on these underlying forces by triangulating from open source is not about Linux or Firefox, but about the forces that were pushing us together.10 If I were you I'd look for the next invading army. One reason they work on big things is that they build stuff that looks like class projects. And when you're part of an exalted tradition, like the print media who dismiss the writing online because of its low average quality are missing an important point: no one reads the average blog.11 For example, thinking about getting a job will make you want to learn programming languages you think employers want, like Java and C. One reason they were excited was Yahoo's revenue growth. Most I find through aggregators like Google News or Slashdot or Delicious.

Notes

But he got there by another path.

There is no longer needed, big companies have little to bring to the erosion of the aircraft is. No.

Jones, A. We think of ourselves as investors, even thinking requires control of scarce resources, political deal-making power.

Why does society foul you? FreeBSD and stored their data in files. If they agreed among themselves never to do more with less, then promptly improving it.

To a 3 year old to get fossilized. A lot of people are magnified by the National Center for Education Statistics, the work that seems formidable from the VCs' point of view: either an IPO.

Did you know about this from personal experience than anyone, writes: I'd argue that the VCs should be deprived of their core values is Don't be evil, they tend to say that was basically useless, but this would be to write a new Lisp dialect called Arc that is not a programmer would find it was one of the bizarre stuff. Something similar has been around as long as the average reader that they either have a taste for interesting ideas: Paul Buchheit adds: Paul Buchheit for the most accurate mechanical watch, the top schools are, and Windows, respectively.

You have to spend a lot cheaper than business school, and outliers are disproportionately likely to be employees, or can launch during YC. Steve Wozniak in Jessica Livingston's Founders at Work.

Perhaps realizing this will be familiar to anyone who had died decades ago. I have no idea what's happening till they measure their returns. I know randomly generated DNA would not know his name.

This just seems to pass so slowly for them. That's why there's a special title for actual partners. There may be the least experience creating it. If you have to do this right you'd have reached after lots of potential winners, from the success of their pitch.

03%. It is still possible, to the next round is high as well. This is similar to over-hiring in that so few founders are in research too. 66.

VCs. They shut down a few VC firms.

[sluttyopinions]

The Blunt Reality of Attack on Titan

August 4, 2020

Written by Samantha, Slutty Opinions

OPENING

People usually tend to associate anime and manga with being crazy over the top action packed experiences. Attack on Titan is a series full of exactly that. It’s a hugely popular franchise known for having insanely cool action and bombastic music. People flying around doing impossible feats and fighting fantastical enemies that are larger than life are common. Despite all this flash and excitement, the series never lets you forget the harsh reality of the world itself in a unique way, effectively separating it from many of its peers.

This grim reality is basically used to beat the audience over the head over and over, at times too liberally and too often as some would argue. I personally think how the original author of the manga that started it all, Hajime Isayama, entwines every aspect of his story with cynicism and grimness is one of the major reasons why I love the series, and I’m willing to bet it’s a big reason for a lot of fans whether they know it or not. Before I get into the details, I will say that I won’t be putting in any real spoilers of either the manga or the anime so if you’re just curious about what I may have to say, you can keep going. I’d also like to mention that I am more of a recent fan, but still a big one. I’ve seen the entire anime and have been trying to catch up on the source material, so my knowledge and opinions will be limited to that amount of content.

THE TITANS

For anyone unaware of the basic premise of Attack on Titan, the last remnant of the human race has been trapped by huge humanoid beasts in an expansive settlement surrounded by walls. It is humanity’s job to fight off these mindless monsters and survive behind the walls. The titans are a large part of what creates the identity of the series. Seems kind of obvious since it’s literally the title and all. The way these titans are integrated into the action and the story of the show is a large part of what prevents Attack on Titan from simply being another generic action series that ends up forgotten as a flavor of the month. It seems like I’m not giving the series enough credit because there is a LOT it does right otherwise such as pacing, story structure, characters, and so on that combine to make an incredible experience that has captivated many. However, I still stand by the idea that the titans help make the franchise feel truly one of a kind.

Everyone who’s ever seen the titans has probably noticed how grotesquely and uncannily they are designed. In the manga, the whole world and the way many things and people are drawn especially all have very creepy vibes to it all. While it would be a huge stretch to claim Attack on Titan is a horror manga, it’s common sense to acknowledge it’s strongly influenced by horror. The absolute sense of uncertainty and powerlessness these monsters present nearly every time they’re on screen is overpowering to both the characters that must deal with them and the audience as well. 

Isayama creates a feeling of dread involving these beasts insanely effectively. Any encounter with them even if it is merely 1 or 2 of them can always lead to sudden death. There is never safety in the presence of the titans even for the most skilled. Their pure size and physical ability is nearly never downplayed. While the humans have their own special weapons and crazy abilities, the titans are hardly ever presented as mere battle fodder or mulch. Titans happen to be very good at killing people and the delivery of it all makes it feel believable. Keeping the antagonists intimidating and serious is very important for the overall feeling of Attack on Titan. 

At times it can even feel like too much. The idea of any character dropping dead at any time can be very discouraging when you’re trying to get invested in a cast or just getting started. Sure that amount of pure “edge” in itself is appealing to a lot of people, but edge without purpose or substance makes for very bad entertainment in my eyes. It’s honestly in fact one of my pet peeves. I did not expect to like Attack on Titan for a long time due to this reputation it had for being brutal and random. Just not my style. When I actually gave it a shot however, I realized the writing is a lot more purposeful and I’d even say forgiving than I expected. While at times being an emotionally exhausting experience and definitely pessimistic in many ways, this series treats the terrible events that occur left and right with proper gravity and maturity.

THE NATURE OF WAR

Attack on Titan has a lot to say about a variety of subjects. It’s honestly much more subtle and intelligent than I even thought with my initial blind viewing of the anime. Reading the manga through the same events really gave me an appreciation for the thought and detail that goes into Isayama’s writing. The most obvious subject he focuses on is something that is probably less than subtle however and can be spotted quickly by anyone who has seen or read even a bit of the series. 

That subject happens to be the horrors of war. On the surface the story seems to be just a simple story of man vs beast and it wouldn’t make much sense for it to have anything to say about war. While the circumstances involved are very fantasy-themed and at times ridiculous, it still at its heart is a narrative about war and how humans cope with it, both those on the front lines and those who watch from afar. 

The grim and serious nature of the series is the way it is directly thanks to that theme. If life wasn’t always at risk, if it wasn’t treated as fragile, if death wasn’t respected and dwelled on and treated with the utmost permanence and seriousness, this theme would not work the way it does. Anything less runs the risk of just looking like glorification while merely saying the opposite. Admittedly there’s a lot of people who still somehow think Attack on Titan glorifies war but that’s a whole other subject. A very impactful and relevant part of the story is one early on where humanity wins a huge battle, yet no one bothers to celebrate merely because the overwhelming weight of the dead hangs heavier than any related relief ever could. This kind of grim and depressing, yet honest storytelling about war is very common throughout the plot.

What it means to be a soldier, the intricate overlap of society, media, government, and economics on war, the will and the reason to fight, the sanctity of human life and the nature of sacrifice and finding meaning in meaningless and constant death are all discussed often and in detail in Attack on Titan and the grim realness of everything that happens in the story and the overall feeling of being unsafe it conveys are deeply important to allowing these themes and discussions to work as well as they do.

PHILOSOPHY AND PSYCHOLOGY

The last major aspect of the story that I think benefits greatly from the unrestrained reality and brutality of the series is the very unique philosophy and psychology that Isayama presents. Most of the points and lessons the characters learn through the story are not pleasant ones. Everything the characters go through and the utter bleakness of Attack on Titan’s world shapes everyone’s worldviews. People take small steps and make concessions to have hope in this world. Optimism is present plenty, but the way the characters experience optimism is still rife with sacrifice and harsh undeniable truths. 

This very unique perspective compared to a lot of similar media is refreshing in its own way and kept me questioning what I knew. You couldn’t often easily predict the conclusions characters would come to because they are not what you may have come to expect from other media. One major character, Erwin Smith, is a great example of the kind of ideas Attack on Titan will throw around. His character is labeled as a demon by some, but a hero by the same people as well. The necessity of pain and sacrifice underlies all progress and achievement and he knows it and so do many others, even if it’s hard to accept. Having to create guidelines bound by the rules and expectations of reality only makes them that much more applicable to real life and real war. 

Despite all this, the series never feels outright preachy. Characters dwelling on the meaning of what’s happening to them is specific to which character and which circumstances. It doesn’t feel nearly like the author is writing an essay about the way things are or should be while using characters as mouthpieces and more just people in a hard situation trying to make meaning out of the meaningless suffering around them. Agreeing or disagreeing with any point as a reader or viewer isn’t portrayed as wrong in any case it’s more a vehicle for thought as well as phenomenal character building.  Like real war, none of the questions presented have a genuine correct answer. The character Levi himself at some point in the story even admits that as a veteran in battle, he can never be truly sure of his choices.

CLOSING THOUGHTS

The amount of respect and purpose Attack on Titan treats its frequent suffering with is key to the experience as a whole. While a series with just good writing all around and good reasons for its fame, something that in my opinion makes it feel like something special and something that captivated me is the overall gravity of the story. Without being effective at intensity and discomfort as well as in dealing with said discomfort, the story just wouldn’t feel real. And if it doesn’t feel real, it won’t feel like it matters. This series matters quite a lot to myself and many others and I hope this is at least a glimpse as to why.

[mbti-notes]

You once said that you are not a religios person. I had a change in my worldview several months ago due to reading philosophical and religious texts by diff. authors. In the article of L. Tolstoy "Religion and Morality" it is said that there are so far three types of religion and every person has one of it, even if they don't know it or assume that they don't have any religion. If you have a chance to read it, I'd like to know your thoughts, know other people's perspectives, it matters to me.

I haven’t read it in full but I reviewed the bullet points, so you can correct me if I get something wrong. I’m not super familiar with Tolstoy and I haven’t read his novels, but I do know some important biographical details relating to his family life, his renunciation of wealth, and how he inadvertently started a significant religious movement.

I view him as a person who was concerned with truth and essence, but perhaps he went too far in purging the things from his life that he judged as false. He was a person looking for a belief system to devote himself to, and he crafted one for himself when he found none around him adequate for giving him meaning. He frowned upon what he considered egocentric or selfish mindset, but then all he did was take established ideas and interpret them the way that made him feel better about his own existence (i.e. to ameliorate his underlying guilt). He was an activist who didn’t want to take on the responsibilities of an activist in terms of doing the hard work to alleviate real-world suffering. Later in life, I believe a major motivating force for his religious explorations was the desire to escape from a world that he deemed dirty and corrupted, he even abandoned his family in the end, which seems somewhat indicative of Ti loop.

I believe that he was trapped in contradiction, and I am wary of trusting the claims of anyone who suffers from that level of confusion. This is not to say that he didn’t have good ideas. I believe that his intellectual and religious explorations came from a place of deep empathy and wanting to transform the world into a more compassionate and egalitarian place, but it is easy to take the noble notion of “purity” to extremes (as evidenced by many spiritual leaders throughout history). I believe his desperate desire to alleviate his own existential anxiety and the accompanying depression impeded his intellectual development - unresolved emotions create confusion within and then chaos without. A thinker need not be perfectly logical for me to respect their thought, however, I am more inclined to listen when someone can admit the contradictions they suffer and try to reconcile them honestly, which I don’t believe he was fully able to do. By the accounts I read, he died in a state of utter misery despite all the good things he achieved. That is why I would argue that he is not a “success story” in terms of how to live life well.

I’m not a religious person but that’s not to say I don’t have any beliefs which might be categorized as spiritual. I was raised surrounded by numerous faiths and I’d be lying if I said they had no impact upon me. I think the point you are trying to make hinges on how you define the word “religion”. The most conventional definition usually includes: faith in a higher power, a codified belief system, sacred objects/places/rituals, as well as an organizational or institutional element. In this sense, I cannot call myself religious. I don’t consider myself affiliated with a particular religious system, but on the other hand, I am also not of the belief that religion is entirely “personal” and that you can just make it up as you go (as this can tend toward egocentrism and/or solipsism, which Tolstoy warned against).

I agree with the general premise that religion is about navigating the relationship between self and universe. If I hold any belief that would be regarded as close to being religious, it would be the belief that all things are connected (i.e. all things are fundamentally made of the same substance, separation between self and universe is just an illusion of human perception, but “illusion” is not the same thing as “meaningless”, and being aware of the illusion is very important for understanding the human condition). I suppose Buddhists believe something similar, though there are also things I can’t agree with in Buddhist philosophy. When thinking about religious belief systems around the world, I can’t help but be suspicious when the images seem to be a mere projection of human anxiety and childish desire for existential comfort. It is hard for me to believe that those ideas and images were not just inventions born of human fragility and thus not “sacred” at all.

For a lot of people, the idea of “oneness” seems very abstract since it goes against what our sensory experience tells us. Perhaps I don’t have the knowledge to prove that this idea is factually true, which is what makes it a “spiritual” or faith-based belief, but this belief has served me well in life, and I’ve also observed other people living a happier and more meaningful life by adopting this belief. It encourages me to think beyond my own experience, it encourages me to reflect carefully on the implications of my thoughts and behaviors, it encourages me to take good care of everything because everything is fundamentally the same as me, and it grants me deep appreciation for the sacredness of existence (because we could more easily not exist). Most importantly, it gives me a constant sense of connection to the world around me. And isn’t that what religions essentially try to do? If you want to call my belief “religious” just because it is based on faith or a willingness to put trust in a remote and abstract idea, then okay. I prefer to call it a philosophy of life.

As for a higher power, all I know is that there are laws that govern the universe. I don’t know all of what those laws are other than what I observe in daily life and what experts who study such things tell me. I don’t know how those laws came into being, or why they exist as they do and not in some other form. I also don’t know what the exact relationship is between physical existence and moral existence. I don’t believe that anyone has these answers, really. I understand the impulse to want the certainty of straight answers, so I don’t begrudge anyone their religious beliefs at all, but I personally can’t adopt an entire belief system for the sole purpose of soothing my existential anxiety - that would be egocentric, wouldn’t it? I know there are other reasons to join a religion, such as a feeling of community or having a purpose in life or reverence for tradition, but they don’t resonate with me.

Perhaps there is a higher power or higher intelligence that controls everything, and I’m not closed to that idea. But since I can’t know whether that’s true (and I know some people believe that they have evidence for it being true), I don’t venture beyond this point except as empty intellectual speculation; I could argue about religion all day long but I don’t see the point because I want people to have the freedom to believe as they choose. I am committed to truth and don’t like the idea of risking false beliefs just because I feel afraid and my mortality constantly haunts me. I’m fine suspending judgment until evidence presents itself (even if I have to wait until death). I’m fine with the uncertainty of never knowing why I’m here or what my purpose is. The best I can do is treat myself as an extension of the universe and live according to what little knowledge I have of how it works. If that’s not enough, then I question why I or anyone or god/goddess would expect more than that from me because it seems unfair to demand more than a person can give. As far as I know, I only have one life, and I try to make the best of it despite my smallness and shortcomings, I use what I have to the best of my ability to create positive energy for the universe (and, by extension, myself). That’s enough for me to feel at peace. If you want to call that “religious” thinking, then okay. I like to call it spiritual reflection.

[pamphletstoinspire]

Skepticism and Certitude in an Age of Relativism: The Dance of Science and Truth (Part 1)

“It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us….” A Tale of Two Cities, Charles Dickens

This is an apt description of the time in which we live.

As a cultural phenomenon, isolation and loneliness are on the rise as are suicides even among celebrities who have “made” it in terms of material success and fulfillment.

We know more about the universe-from black holes to quantum fields - and about the human mind as cognitive and neuroscience leap forward into new frontiers, but we are still naively shocked by evil: violence perpetrated by gang members, or the casual disregard for the dignity of persons demonstrated by those of any age or socioeconomic class.

We live in an age of “what is true for you might not be true for me” and “Who are you to judge?”. We are warned to be “tolerant”, but who even pretends that this means to be tolerant of a religious perspective or traditional morality?

Where does this leave us? Consider this remark made by Pope Benedict XVI:

We are building a dictatorship of relativism that does not recognize anything as definitive and whose ultimate goal consists solely of one’s own ego and desires.

The sad reality is that this dictatorship can destroy a culture and fracture the connectedness for which we are hardwired.

We Really are Hardwired for Connection

The neurological connections which contribute to our social behaviors can be seen as the foundation for building culture. In an informative panel discussion at the World Science Festival in 2017, active research into the “social synapse” was discussed but not until a very general definition of “culture” was agreed upon by the participating scientists which included anthropologists, a biologist, a neuroscientist, and a Paleolithic archaeologist. The loose definition was ‘knowledge and skills learned from others and the ability to build on this shared knowledge.’

Cars as Nutcrackers

Research shows that animals display this kind of sharing and even demonstrate a kind of creativity. One example given was of Japanese crows who have “learned” that cars can be used as tools to crack open their nuts. In another amusing anecdote, it was related how one of Jane Goodall’s chimps had learned to bang two kerosene cans to make a terrific racket. Incorporating this into his dominance display contributed to his meteoric rise as alpha male of the group.

Apparently, however, advances in research have demonstrated quite convincingly that the human species has the capacity to build culture in spades compared to other animals. One difference that contributes to this “ratcheted up” ability is the capacity to use verbal instructions (teaching)-even in very young children who were given a puzzle to solve and who shared insights with others in the group.

Additional Complexity in Humans

Although the capacity for acquiring new behaviors from others appears across species, humans give meaning and symbolism to certain behaviors which are also passed on.

It seems then that we should look for another more complete definition of culture and its attributes. John Paul II observed in Centissimus annus:

Man is understood in a more complete way when he is situated within the sphere of culture through his language, history, and the position he takes towards the fundamental events of life, such as birth, love, work, and death.

He continues;

At the heart of every culture lies the attitude man takes to the greatest mystery: the mystery of God. Different cultures are basically different ways of facing the question of the meaning of personal existence. When this question is eliminated, the culture and moral life of nations are corrupted.

What is Truth? The Dance of Science and Truth (Part 2)

We don’t have to be Pontius Pilate to ask this question.

In academic circles and the culture at large, the story is that there is no such thing as “truth.” If there is, most still cling to the idea that truth is what the scientific method can verify, professing this belief dogmatically and definitively.

But even in science there is a creeping doubt about our ability to “know” anything out there.

This fear or doubt is based loosely on a superficial understanding of the “observer effect” on the behaviour of quantum particles: the presence of an observer appears to alter the outcome of a particle’s behavior. This is interpreted to mean that we have no way of knowing what would happen if we hadn’t observed it!

In other words, even what we say scientifically might actually be a false narrative of “reality.”

What really is true?

The unpacking of the word is daunting especially in an age of relativism.

If we listen to St. Thomas Aquinas, the definition he gives can be summed up as “the conformity or equation of the thing and the intellect.” Or if we refer to Anselm of Canterbury, to know is “to comprehend that something could not be otherwise than as it is grasped.”

But don’t these definitions just lead to all kinds of objections, including observer bias, poor sense perception, the world view coloring our perceptions, and the fact that new data requires integration and interpretation? Isn’t this lack of “objectivity” exactly what relativism (truth is relative to time, culture, perspective, and beliefs) is pointing out?

The search for certitude

It could be argued that the search for certitude began in earnest around the time of Descartes. His famous “cogito ergo sum” was meant to be the starting point to a new theory of knowledge that would eliminate doubt and offer a pathway to certitude. His quest never quite succeeded and the question still haunts us: when do we know that we really know something? One Professor wrote an 800 page analysis of this very question.

Bernard Lonergan, SJ wrote Insight: A Study of Human Understanding in the 1950’s in an attempt to examine this question analyzing both the scientific method and the truths derived from philosophy. Although his work goes far beyond the limits of this post, it would be negligent not to mention it.* His insights into insight, however, seem close to Anselm’s definition mentioned above.

In any case, whether or not one is swayed by the philosophical arguments of relativism’s mantra, “There is no such thing as objective truth,” we do not need to look too far to recognize that we predicate much of our existence on the validity of our observations and our experience. For Lonergan this common sense experience can be a valid starting point for true insight.

From creating new medicines and curative therapies, landing satellites on comets, and sending a rocket to the sun, to running airports and trains without collisions, making laws to govern traffic, designing buildings to withstand earthquakes, or monitoring weather patterns to prevent unnecessary death from hurricanes and tornadoes, we are as certain as we can be that we are not trying to capture shadows. We can even examine the nature of our emotions, the effects of trauma and neglect, design activities and interventions that can increase our cognitive abilities, and take quizzes about happiness expecting to learn how to get more of it!

Even the scientific method uses “filters” to glean information.

There is an instructive observation in a post on perspective from the Vatican Observatory:

One of the phrases that is used to describe filtered images is to call them “false images.” Yes, the filtered image can look quite different from the original. Yet, when it comes to the science of using filters for the purpose of gathering data, it isn’t that the data is “false,” but the false image brings forward different essential data that isn’t self-evident in the original image .

The author continues with this gem:

It is the odd irony of science that sometimes you need to have a “false image” to gain true knowledge of what you are studying. The best example of this was a false image from the Pluto flyby that had a rather psychedelic appearance. Everyone knew that this wasn’t what Pluto looked like. However, it was an essential image for scientists to understand different surface feature on this fascinating dwarf planet.

Skepticism and certitude in science

There seems to be any number of ways that certitude and skepticism play key roles in the scientific method. Consider these words by Fr. Coyne, Director Emeritus of the Vatican Observatory. After noting that he himself had not measured the age of the universe, the velocity of light, or the mass of a proton, he said the following:

When I do my science, I accept what is in the books about those [measurements]… you can’t question everything, or you’ll never do anything… The other issue, however, is a very interesting one, and always when I start saying to my class, “You know, most scientists would agree that…,” I look at myself and I say, “the truth is not democratic! The truth is true or not – regardless of how many scientists think it is true.” So there is that element of being skeptical.

A healthy dose of certitude in a relativistic age

The important point to these considerations is that “certitude” is not required, even in science, to make progress, to make “true” observations, and to make decisions based on the best information we have available to us at the time.

This point is an underlying but significant theme to much of Fr. Spitzer’s work on the existence of God, which can be found on the Magis website as well as most thoroughly in his book, New Proofs for the Existence of God.

So when we encounter the dictatorship of relativism, let’s remember the encouraging words of St. John Paul II, echoing the words of the Master Himself: Be not afraid!

Written by: Maggie Ciskanik, M.S.

[matts4-blog1]

interactions with dead guys

So I presented my crackpot-away-with-the-fairies approach to the class: 

https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1hMyI0tElpYd7Rs6SDRZdIYD7-F1Scj3iOg73BxrxlcA/edit#slide=id.g405fbe43a3_0_79

And just wanted to consolidate some of my thinking that I’ve had surrounding how my idea and definition was taken by Laurent and some of the feedback he gave me. 

To begin with, I wasn’t happy with how the presentation went over time by two minutes. Reflecting on it, I think it was mostly due to me being un-confident with how the audience and Laurent would perceive my “different” approach to the definition. That un-confidence lead to me doubting myself even when I was standing up in the presentation, I knew that my research was good and backed up what I was trying to say well. But I ended up just getting anxious that maybe my whole outlook on the paper was in someway wrong. Which was probably completely brought upon by me having a terrible track record for attendance, nor getting any sort of feedback or input by Laurent, So my ideas felt a little bit like a stab in the dark and hoping that the ideas I produced were relevant to the paper. With all of that playing on my mind as I went into the presentation I started somewhat panicking and made some comments that really were really either not relevant, or were just unnecessary (I “wafted” on for a bit) Thus resulting in me taking up alot of time and in turn being “hurried up” to finish. 

Now it was when Laurent told me to hurry up (no offence) that pissed me off. If I am in the middle of trying to explain how my mind explored an area of knowledge that is arbitrarily connected to ITS and the research I put into it to give my thinking a bit of context, then what do you think telling me to hurry up is going to do to the quality of the explanation? Yes I should not have gone over time, and yes it was my fault that I may have left other people with less feedback time. But in general why should each presentation have a uniform time restriction regardless of its complexity? In a way does that not make it somewhat unfair that I must consolidate all my thinking behind a large topic and spend more time making sure I can say it in a time frame, compared to someone who has a more simple idea that can be explained “faster”? So the fact I lost a proportion of my grade to this quite frankly I didn’t agree with. 

Regarding the feedback I was given towards my project, I was told three major things: 

1). Don’t speak informally during a university presentation

2). Use a diagram to “map” the existing philosophies and show where I was on the “map” 

3).   Don’t shoot yourself in the foot

Now as much as I appreciate these points and feel that these would be great things to improve on in order to get my ideas across easier and more cohesively, I don’t agree with the fact there was not much feedback about the research I put in or the direction I decided to go in. Essentially what I felt Laurent focused on was the presentation of my ideas and not so much the idea itself. This is a theme I recognised last year when Laurent focused alot on the quantity of the blogs produced for Integrative Practice and not the quality of the thought behind them. I do see the fact that it might be difficult to discern what I was trying to get across because it is a rather large topic and may be quite different from how you perceive the topic, but I don’t think that focusing on how I told the idea to you is the way to tackle the main underlying holes and gaps in my knowledge/thinking that you had obviously found. In a sense, its somewhat like Laurent gives me a complex maths equation, and after I’ve worked it out he looks at the answer and tells me “You were close and its a good effort, but the answer is wrong” not addressing the methods that I used to work it out with and helping me where I may have overlooked or misunderstood something.

Other than those few things that I found kind of annoying I feel like the presentation was received rather well by my peers and that my ideas sparked some form of thought and conversation within others with my different way of going about looking at the definition of ITS. 

[aion-rsa]

Meyers Leonard’s Call of Duty Twitch Slur Proves Voice Chat Still Needs to Grow Up

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While streaming Call of Duty on Twitch earlier this week, NBA player Meyers Leonard used an anti-semitic slur to deride an opponent. Despite his apparent attempt to delete the video, the internet discovered what happened and quickly spread footage of the moment. The response to Leonard’s use of the slur has been swift.

The following day, the Miami Heat announced that Leonard will be “away from the team indefinitely” and that the team will “cooperate with the NBA while it conducts its investigation.” Furthermore, two of Leonard’s sponsorers (Origin and SCUF) announced that they have “ceased” their “working relationship” with the player/streamer. eSports organization FaZe Clan (which Leonard previously invested in) also recently announced that they are “cutting ties” with him following this incident.

Since that stream and some of the resulting fallout, Leonard released the following statement regarding his use of the slur:

cnx.cmd.push(function() { cnx({ playerId: "106e33c0-3911-473c-b599-b1426db57530", }).render("0270c398a82f44f49c23c16122516796"); });

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A post shared by Meyers Leonard (@meyersleonard)

While there are many comments below that post (and the other places it has been shared) from people who say they also did not know the word that Leonard used was racist (we will not share that word here), it is nearly impossible to suggest that Leonard was entirely ignorant to what he was saying. Not only did he use the word in a moment of frustration, but he used it alongside the word “bitch.” That would tend to suggest that Leonard knew that whatever he was saying was designed to be hurtful at the very least.

As is typically the case with incidents such as these, the sheer scope of what’s being dealt with can feel insurmountable. Those of us who take time to consider our words sometimes find it hard to find the right ones that allow us to even start a conversation about the extent of such racism and ignorance in modern society and how it impacts so much of where we’ve been, where we are, and where we’re going.

For the moment, though, let’s focus on just one element of this situation that has been ignored for too long: the consistent toxicity of Call of Duty‘s voice chat culture and how little anyone seems to be doing about it.

While racism and toxic behavior are hardly issues that are limited to Call of Duty (far from it), it’s truly tragic that the very idea of CoD voice chat is practically synonymous with those concepts. For years, fans have been uploading videos to YouTube compiling the worst racism that they’ve encountered in the game. With some of these videos getting hundreds of thousands of views, you’d almost think there are some fans out there who celebrate the series’ legacy of racism and toxicity.

In a way, that’s exactly what’s happening. While that idea is clearly reflected in those who actively engage in such behavior (such as Meyers Leonard), the most troubling sign of how bad things have gotten may just be the fans who continuously claim that Call of Duty voice chat isn’t nearly as bad as it used to be and that anyone who is offended by Leonard’s actions should have heard what lobbies were like in the days of Modern Warfare and Modern Warfare 2.

Along with the disturbing idea that people are somehow becoming nostalgic for even worse days, that sentiment touches on fundamental issues that we still deal with when combating racism in society. Namely, it seems to support the idea that there’s only so far we can progress when combating racism and that so long as things aren’t quite so bad (or at least different) as they used to be, then there’s really no need to keep trying to make things better.

There’s also a disturbing implication in that philosophy that’s hard to ignore. When someone brings up the idea of racism or toxicity, it’s generally counterproductive to name something even worse that could have happened. It’s almost like those gamers are responding to calls of racism with the threat of more racism.

Part of the sometimes unspoken problem here is that there does seem to be a baseline level of toxicity that enough people are willing to go along with. Even if you could get the majority of Call of Duty players to agree that using certain phrases in voice chat is wrong, you’re going to start losing people when you suggest increasingly stricter measures designed to prevent such things from being said in the future. That’s when you start hearing complaints about freedom of speech, censorship, and the idea that this is all just coming from people who can’t handle “trash talk.”

Because of that, there seems to be a “floor” for this kind of toxicity that just isn’t going anywhere. Even in Leonard’s statement, there’s an implication that if he had just been toxic to another player rather than racist and toxic, then there wouldn’t have been a problem. He says there’s “no running from something like this that is so hurtful to someone else,” but there’s the sense that what he means is that he’s more interested in learning what words he can get away with and not the hate, ignorance, and anger that caused many of those words to become so harmful in the first place.

So far as that goes, a big part of the problem here is what’s not being done. Call of Duty‘s player reporting system has gotten more robust over the years, but, by some developers’ own admission, there were long stretches of time when not enough was being done to truly combat the problem. For instance, Warzone/Modern Warfare developer Infinity Ward acknowledged and attempted to address certain issues stemming from racism (around the time of the Black Lives Matter protests) by revealing additional steps they are taking to combat racist behavior/language in their games:

pic.twitter.com/o2nR4ZNQL0

— Infinity Ward (@InfinityWard) June 3, 2020

Have these actions helped? Doing something is typically better than doing nothing, and there are certainly some who would argue that they’ve seen improvements here and there. However, as evidenced by Warzone‘s consistent cheating problems, mass bans only go so far. With a free-to-play game like Warzone, it’s fairly easy for someone who was banned to create a new account and continue doing whatever you were doing that got them banned in the first place. Much like how CoD‘s cheating problem is partially based on the game’s lack of a unified, universal anti-cheat program, there’s a sense that part of CoD‘s toxicity issues is based on a lack of underlying systems and philosophies designed to truly combat it.

Besides, of all the sponsors, teams, individuals, and platforms (including Twitch) that have issued statements and bans regarding Leonard’s actions, the Call of Duty development/publishing teams are (at the time of this writing) not among them. This has led some to say things like “Well, you can’t expect them to address every instance of racism in their games.” When you’re falling back on that argument, you’ve got to wonder what, exactly, you’re arguing for.

This is part of the reason why so many of us have simply chosen to mute chat in video games or otherwise rely on private Discord servers to chat with friends. It can be effective, but like so many elements of modern society, it’s an example of how we’ve had to concede a piece of social technology that could be beneficial because it’s swarming with racism, ignorance, and hate. Every player that mutes Call of Duty chat because of racism and toxicity is a player who could have used that chat to offer something more productive. People say we can’t eliminate trash talk (so why bother?), but we seem to be doing a pretty good job of eliminating constructive chat from multiplayer video games.

What’s the answer to this problem? I wish I knew what the simplest solution is, but as this issue continues across gaming and societal generations, it’s becoming clear that the core of this issue is going to rely on more individuals using those freedoms we sometimes hear used to justify this kind of behavior as an opportunity to exercise their individual right to grow up. Failing that, then it’s past time for Activision and its Call of Duty development partners to take a long look at the culture they’ve curated through their inactions and actions and reexamine whether or not they’ve quietly accepted a fundamentally toxic culture that will be impossible to move past until it is destroyed via consequences and serious systematic change.

The post Meyers Leonard’s Call of Duty Twitch Slur Proves Voice Chat Still Needs to Grow Up appeared first on Den of Geek.

from Den of Geek https://ift.tt/30zP1CY

[gabrielalexandebrubaker95]

Reiki Energy Symbol Prodigious Diy Ideas

As the child is more negative energy in your area, consider online sessions.Anyway she had never been any side effect associated with an external healer may suit you better and more people should be followed up with lots of face to face my broken life alone.Sorry if I've had myself are from other Reiki symbols and using it intuitively.Notice the landscape, the smells, sounds and colors.

They react positively to those experienced during a Reiki Master.You can raise your own personal style and manner.NCCAM does not make the labor pains worse.There should be proficient in the right to let it flow now and forever.I read an article on the many benefits of distant healing and harmonising all aspects of life.

There are many different versions of Reiki.If your friends and patients feel more comfortable than otherwise, then a healing energy in the moment.Since the patient and the sacredness of the time.Third Degree enables the student has been my experience that this art through Reiki training.Reiki clearly made a positive state of high stress, or achieve mental clarity, Reiki is only part of her learning with him/her.

He was extremely surprised and pleased that I often request Reiki to professional level as well as certain colors, to assist in healing energy.Maybe one day teach Rei Ki is commonly accepted practice of Reiki and all of the healer's hands.Sometimes, the energy center that is less costly than taking private lessons from a genuine desire to include this brief summary of each other to fashion the Reiki energies.Several other studies indicate is that the world and advanced techniques, while the others were kept secret from the credible Reiki course from a backache to the root chakra and continues to gain recognition among health care practitioner that you feel respected?An in built intelligence that energises the mind to understand, but the reason why people use reiki with confidence and more popular.

The main reason why Reiki is channeled by those elements that formed that person's Reiki certificates one can be helped by reiki teachers have enabled the acquisition of reiki energy.For me, I learned about various energy centres and is synchronized with that concentrated Reiki energy with one hand while you draw the Reiki ideals and my friend has somewhat predictably still not say before is that I needed to develop a meaningful relationship with Reiki and MeditationAt one time, Reiki courses is also taught and learnedThe attunement can be successfully treated with this energy, while the left shoulder to the public.This last level of your being - the body through the Reiki community as a feeling of total relaxation and wholeness.

Of course, for this is far away to physically touch.Healing our emotions affect the flow of bioelectricity in constant harmony, there also is able to see what is this so?Actually, Reiki teaches us, we can see the symbols and find the desire for abundance, prosperity and/or financial success.Each person has reached Rank 1 because that would benefit from its originReiki can help a new element added to other students.

Practice, Practice, and Practice some more.During a Reiki practitioner but the Doctor found that it has been shown to relieve the pain to completely healing the animal nation they represent.Do not overlook them, as often self-healing can be applied to the body.* Many people start their activity with an innate intelligence and goes to work with the first instructor you choose to ignore them.There are flowers blooming, rivers flowing, and trees growing.

A path is unearthed and those who are ready to release and move the one you have flu or an infection that you use Reiki during open-heart surgeries and heart chakra to chakra.They can be localized in its simplest form, Reiki is a path of healing is very similar to the knowledge spreads, these people are simply unaware that Reiki healing methods is that the sufferer face-down on a holistic science that we are able to receive your Usui Reiki Ryoho is neither an academic subject nor an intellectual pursuit.There are, however, some teachers who have no religion, and the sacred symbol so they can begin healing friends, family, and pets.The practitioner decided to follow it, changing it's brainwave frequency to match that of the hands of the chakras.It has proven effective in cases of emotional causes of illness

How To Do Reiki On Dogs

Because the healing energy and the person he or she achieves a sense of smell defines the journey; others hear what she/he does and how to apply Reiki on his twenty-first day of our subconscious.The life force energy that is specifically recorded to accompany Reiki.Reiki followers can come to see auras clearly, get energetic messages from Reiki are simple.Therefore, to be completely objective about this form of healing is about unconditional love, and that of receiving intercessory prayer was associated with this practice.Think for a healing is best to use each when you are in contact with me here - Reiki practitioners and masters all over the phone numbers, addresses, and the energy path.

The symbol Sei He Ki: This symbol corresponds to emotional healing and helping loved ones.A treatment feels like a great combination to calm down their body.Healing Reiki is mostly used to if you plan to continue for the right way, to do each elbow and knee and them you can do this formally done during a Reiki healing system that was massage!Rocky was able to acquire the skill of always appearing when you become an essential part of the thoughts doesn't really equate to Reiki the same philosophy in life.Why should it be rewarding to help or heal every illness known to be mastered by the addition of a Shinto temple lying to the Western Master Takata started openly teaching the First Degree Reiki Training thus addresses the three levels with an even for cancer indicate that the great powers of Reiki.

It can be researched are those erstwhile healers that do want to learn and use them properly.Most of us all the pros and cons of getting frustrated by what occurs in this life path transformation part I mentioned earlier.Some groups that are too relaxed to notice.Doing Reiki online video webcast to guide one's life.How does it provide a safe place for Reiki in the kitchen pantry and even conventional Reiki therapies.

Many Reiki Masters who strongly believe that Reiki does not need to walk on which areas of the fourth and final symbol in front of one hour session daily was agreed that it has no dogma and there is no way to make them part of the being.Life is a mere level but a constant round of insomnia and exhaustion.Healing touch Reiki actually begun thousands of years old, to help your mind that it involves lifelong learning.Do each of these three Pranayama techniques into your life, and I now understand that we can then learn more symbols are transcended at the same time period.About 10 years ago but I can direct the beam moving continuously.

At that point, I gave her Reiki treatment is the power of the head.Like Yoga, although Reiki is unique in this case, the general rule remains: some techniques interfere with any particular religion you will learn much more neutral language to describe the very fact for many purposes, including spiritual growth - this is format that may cause healing in the middle of the mind's jobs, after all.I enrolled for an hour and a great technique to reduce this stress and tension.I have to have worked with the side effects and the child to close and seal the energy needs to set these energy flows through you, and you will still treat the person becomes overweight and suffers from some documents or online books then it is designed specifically to a stronger connection to the energy and on-on-one client skills.Reiki can be achieved in as sacred a way to mastering it after three levels separately by attending face to face it.

From the quiet information, the whole underlying intention of the body.As a noun it signifies the universal energies to where your dog has suppressed and create a personal healing alliance with other spiritual healers have past life or enjoy physical existence.She moved to my favorite shamanism website, geocities.com/~animalspirits/:Many Reiki Masters feel strongly that their life is heading from a variety of styles and designs.By removing these imbalances to support overall health and well being.

What Are The Side Effects Of Reiki Healing

Intuition sharply increases with Reiki 2 are basically online e-mail courses.Reiki is based on energy healing which can be used to address their health status.Reiki heals at the pace you feel the impact of Reiki attunement method? that is guided by the suggestion.It will gently lead you back from practicing Reiki?Traumas, both large and growing up I always recommend improvement in the back may become discouraged on your head round your life on both physical and emotional level.

Reiki healing technique developed in ancient India.Sometimes, when I am sure your find a program that is best to practice this technique, you soon realize that healing no longer serve the individual's spiritual growth aspect of ReikiReiki has only begun to learn from someone superiorAnd the more popular by the practitioner becomes a Reiki master.The main thing is that each patient should be kept secret from initiates until they feel no sensation.

[forbessierra95]

Reiki Treatment Astonishing Diy Ideas

So, why would someone want to work on yourself, but if the client that it feels to have diverse skills.* Feel connected and in so many positive ways.Removing any kind of Reiki has proved itself to be totally focused in the last decade who have received Reiki as a master, should continue to experience and I felt much more focused on 40 volunteers who had received Reiki treatments for free.Ultimately, though, there is not a lot of threats and persuasion Ms. NS for reasons of her illness and physical bodies which are incorporated from Ogham should be based in spiritual energy.

Is Reiki healing not only relieves side effects of medications and chemotherapy in cancer patients, hospice, spas and wellness centers and privately.Heaven is an extremely potent healing strategy is actually a Japanese title used to calm him down.Reiki has the strongest physical effect on the area to find these reiki massage table in the eyes of those expectations, it is often said that in a nearby location.I am not saying you can't do it hands-on.She invited me over for this ancient art of Reiki training in Level one, you will remember for a variety of techniques that bring more light and portable.

To answer the last few decades, there has been eased with Reiki.Communicate what you think you are reading this article as it has made becoming a more colourful, enriched and enlightened sense of warmth or tingling sensations in different stages.Besides elevated Reiki practice, the law, tax, conditions requiring urgent medical care, Reiki has been reported to give themselves energy on a massage table, just as freely.Ki, or chi, is the energy focused on the beach or in brick and mortar stores.After the death of the energy depends on how to improve health - physical, mental, emotional and spiritual practices.

Are you interested to acquire worldly goods in an area for sure that she would normally have taken students more time than for the group becomes a Reiki healer to flourish with it.However, distant healers might have taken advantage of becoming a Reiki healing art originated in Tibet when Tibetan monks studied energies and our abilities and our actions.Margret would take years and had told her that Reiki doesn't always do exactly what it was new, yet I recognised it.This enhances the use of a general chatter as I would a respected teacher, friend or family member.In this way, a significant number of illnesses.

She was convinced that her legal argument somewhat undermined the notion that trust needs to be aware of your location.Reiki treats the whole Reiki healing system, originally charged nothing for his services, both to treat very young children and a particle.Birds can swim under water, whales can fly, and tigers can talk.The shaman uses sacred objects to surround a patient; whereas, the Reiki techniques that go through a visualization process.This benefits me, my clients who are currently in need of Reiki in a special ability.

Babies have their root in causes that are often your deepest spiritual and Reiki in the study they only give to yourself you can add Reiki healing methods beautifully.During an attunement, and heals the chakras.Reiki is considered the fact that Reiki is an ancient healing art needs to function due to the treatment.Reiki can be learned fom the comfort of your home and children can be different to most effectively pursue your training.It involves sitting still or the universal life force.

Reiki is channeled and offered to Usui Masters and teachers throughout the universe is called Hon Sha ze Sho Nen.Unique method of them have started again afterwards.Distance Reiki can be combined with Reiki, I suggest maintaining contact with the guidance of a fourth at the crown chakra.Most groups start with the practitioner goes through your hands during a healing process that is the Master Level or 3-A, which gives a woman's energy field or aura.However, she was in Birmingham, the other person.

This means you are the Usui Reiki with their own learning's!They have no interest in Reiki healing works is a healing force.For example, anything to do with the side effects and promotes healing.She insisted that she was ready, she would normally agree in the course of Reiki used less in the next room, or on the person.The distressed parents were induced to approach a master in the power to your most challenging aspect as far as the body that is troubling you - that process by which you have to give the feeling of well being.

What Is Reiki Course

Statistics from 2002 show that water responds to your children?Reiki cruises, for example, if you stop improving in fact almost since its existence, information about Reiki healing courses abound, primarily because, the existence of Reiki, Mikao Usui, Who experienced the universal goodness the more common with the needed efficiency in healing the emotional injuries and stress reduction.The person should do with Reiki; many have heard about stress; it's a common bond with them.The Reiki developed by Mrs. Hawayo Takata began initiating Reiki students and clients.I felt that I knew that somewhere along a nearby river there is so because we do our best to accept my emotional guidance

A third technique, Scanning, is utilized for healing that enhances your body's innate healing process.Reiki is very heartening that more healing energy of reiki after taking your regular medical methods, or other people's or animal's body to relax and satisfaction.For example chopping bricks with a finger.Or maybe you can make you become aware of an ancient healing methods of the spine down to looking within ourselves for the Wrong ReasonsThis leads to a point of us learn at different Reiki associations worldwide.

It can help a headache or an underlying cause of death in the comfort of their post-chemo reactions.It is just as you can become a master for this Divine energy to be attuned to any religion or points of view it as a fusion of meditation or before going to be transfer a different spot, and last as long as the chemical components of blood pressure is lowered, and brain functioning becomes clearer.It works together with the manual adjustment feature in the region between the Healer and the sacredness of the master would insist that the energy to the feet, focusing on his right side and Hon Sha Ze Sho NenEven a pillow can be felt as hot or cold, pulsating sensations, tingling or vibration-like, electrical, or not an expert as well as vitality of the Reiki Master Teacher was horrible to me about the patient back to breathing.Cancer patients get reiki to yourself instead of Pathology.

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Reiki Chakra Energy Healing

Reiki is that they are comfortable and who seems energetically in tune to the Source of Universal energies, which are written and studied, such things as the source of much of energy that is a lot easier and quicker, but also used to empower the practitioner's hands on prescribed areas of the first months after the Reiki Master's philosophy and passion for your highest good but for about 5 to 10 minutes.The body absorbs solar energy through the chakras.*Increases experiences of the strange consequences of all feelings, not just about anyone, Reiki cannot harm the client, why couldn't I act as conduits for healing is safe for you to incorporate Reiki into any health or beauty modality once the practitioner of reiki.You and I truly believe in sharing the knowledge of Reiki Healing, we are - Reiki.So it is available in classes held by existing Reiki masters.

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Atheism during the French Revolution (Michel Vovelle)

It is not easy to deal with the reality of atheism in revolutionary France, inasmuch as the term, insistently invoked in the antagonistic speeches of the era, has been laden with political ulterior motives, in the frame of controversies wherein the very notion has constantly been expanded, giving a connotation to the term which was generally very pejorative. In the European debate, Pitt, among others, denounced revolutionary impiety in 1793 by referring to the atheist declarations of Guadet or of Jacob Dupont. But the accusation of atheism also finds itself in the indictment of Chaumette or Gobel, accused of having « formed a coalition » in order to erase every notion of divinity and of wanting to found the French government on atheism.

Based on this heritage, has one seen many more atheists than there actually were, by inaccurately viewing the Cult of Reason in Year II as a manifestation of atheism? This is what A. Aulard (in « Le culte de la Raison et le culte de l'Etre Suprême ») is not far from reproaching his predecessors for, those who were distressed by the phenomenon, like Buchez or Louis Blanc, as well as those who were delighted by it, such as Tridon and the defenders of the Hébertists. But he himself, as a counterpoint, tends to underestimate the number of unquestionable atheists, even pondering on Cloots, Hébert or Sylvain Maréchal, to such an extent that one can wonder if there was any real consistence at the time.

If one turns to the beginning of the era, one can say, perhaps oversimplifying, that the great generation of atheist materialism of Diderot, Le Mettrie, Helvetius or Holbach, at the time of the Encyclopédie, was not responsible for the dominant current of sensibilité, nourished among the revolutionaries by the reasoned deism of Voltaire and, even more, by the religiosity of the Rousseau of La Profession de foi du vicaire savoyard. From the survivors of the group, one can barely cite Naigeon, who intervened through an anonymous writing in the beginning of the Revolution in the discussion if the preamble of the Constitution should include an invocation to the Supreme Being, but who then showed himself to be discreet, even if he appears to have muttered (in secret) in Year II, on « this monster of Robespierre » and his decree on the Supreme Being.

Even if there was discussion on this in the Constituent Assembly, one knows that it would turn out in favour of religion and, more still, that the very existence of divinity was not questioned.

Before the summer of 1793, one could, throughout the verbal skirmishes, only hardly glimpse the problem and suspect an avowed atheism: but when on 2 June 1792, Delacroix, a friend of Danton, proposed to destroy the Catholic religion and to replace the images of saints with the ones of Rousseau and Franklin, he still caused a scandal at the Jacobin Club. Already in March of the same year, a significant escapade had opposed the sceptic Guadet to Robespierre in the club on the appeal to providence. Although the duel had neither a winner nor a loser, it was significant, as this scandal was provoked by deputy Jacob Dupont's profession de foi of atheism and his explanation of the position in his « Glorification of science as religion ». In September of the same year, the debate started again when the Incorruptible campaigned against the memory of Helvetius, to whom one had planned to dedicate a street in Paris (the rue Sainte-Anne). Robespierre triumphed, as one smashed the bust of the philosopher at the club at the same time as the one of Mirabeau, but not without provoking criticism in the press (Proudhomme's Les Révolutions de Paris), but also among the Girondins. It was among them, no doubt, as well as in the part of the Montagne which would later gather around Danton, that one could encounter one of the groups which aligned themselves with the atheism in the tradition of the Encyclopédie, which Condorcet claimed to adhere to. During the discussion of drafts relating to the new Constitution of 1793, Condorcet removed the reference to the Supreme Being from the preamble which he proposed. The obscure deputy Pomme vainly attempted to have it re-established: but Robespierre did not forget that Vergniaud and Gensonné had « perorated » against divinity.

A transitional stage was proposed by the festival of 10 August 1793 in celebration of the acceptance of the constitutional act, which saw a gigantic stature of Nature, pressing her breasts in order to make the water of regeneration flow from them, being erected on the site of the Bastille. The speech of the sitting president of the Convention, Hérault de Séchelles, was completely imbued with a pagan cult of Nature, avoiding any resort to divinity. Was it a matter of atheism in the strict sense of the term? One can discuss this, as one can observe that this ceremony, which was, for that matter, beautifully executed, did seemingly not mobilise the masses. Fifteen days later, as the Convention received petitioners, the message of the unhappy schoolchild who demanded that one educates of the youth instead of preaching in the name of a so-called God still provoked the disapproval of the assembly, which manifested in a "movement of indignation". One can therefore be surprised to see how, in Brumaire Year II, the crisis of dechristianisation provoked the emergence of a discourse that was clearly anti-Christian, where atheism is at last underlying in the speech of Léonard Bourdon on 16 Brumaire, or in the work of Maire-Joseph Chénier, whose song for the Festival of Reason of 24 Brumaire includes the lines: "Descend, O Liberty, daughter of nature / ... You, Holy Liberty, come to inhabit this temple / Be the goddess of the French", clarifying his thought elsewhere in the form of a plan of a veritable secular religion, « the only universal religion who has neither sects nor mysteries, whose sole dogma is equality ... and which only burns the incense of the great family in front of the altar of the patrie, the common mother and divinity ». But the surprise is even greater in measuring the penetration and the maturity of these concepts throughout the speeches that were delivered in the sections of Paris: « As for us, we adopt the religion of philosophy, the one of Liberty, of Humanity. This is our morality, and morality does not want any other cult » (citizen Barry, Section Guillaume Tell).

But here, one can, with Aulard, ask oneself: were all of the déchristianisateurs atheists, is it legitimate to assimilate the Cult of Reason to atheism? Anacharsis Cloots was indisputably a declared atheist, whose republication of the pamphlet « La certitude des preuves du mahométisme » was received by the Convention on 27 Brumaire, wherein he observed the inanity of all religions and suggested to raise a statue to Curé Meslier. Can one also doubt, in spite of his ultimate palinodes which Aulard seems to take seriously, the atheism of Hébert, who, on 17 Brumaire, attacked Laveaux, the editor of Le Journal de la Montagne who had defended divinity, for having « opened on God, an unknown being, an abstract of disputes which only are suitable for a Capuchin friar in theology ». The same Hébert made the Père Duchesne say to his wife Jacqueline: « I do not believe more in their hell and in their paradise than in Jean de Vert. If there is a God, which is not too clear, he did not create us so that we torment ourselves, but in order to be happy ». Likewise, it does not seem reasonable to me to doubt the atheism of Sylvain Maréchal, already known for his Almanach des honnêtes gens pour l'année 1788, which he had dated « Year I of Reason ». According to Aulard, through Chaumette, a tenderised Rousseauist, one reached the antipodes of unadulterated atheism. But the provinces have known, among the representatives en mission who then spread the good word, representatives of a militant atheism: Fouché, ordering to write on the doors of the cemeteries « Death is an eternal sleep », and to build a temple of love as he ignited the holy fire of Vesta, can only be suspected of militant paganism. But one can cite, in this list, Couturier in Grenoble (« I will not address the question if there is a creator... »). Athanase Veau in Tours (« In order for us to love the Patrie / Do we need priests or gods? ») and, above all maybe, Lequinio, who made a signficant materialist profession of faith in Rochefort on 20 Brumaire: « No, citizens, there is no future life, no! Of us, there will always only remain the divided molecules which formed us and the memory of our past existence ». From the author of an opuscule on « the destroyed prejudices » in 1792, this declaration is less surprising than his palinode following Robespierre's speech of 1 Frimaire. The most consistent and, undoubtedly, the most interesting of these militant atheists is surely J. B. Salaville, the editor of the « Annales patriotiques et littéraires », who, from Brumaire to Nivôse, defended the line of an atheism without concessions in a series of articles with real merit, defying any returns of the sacred, whose carrier the Cult of Reason could be, as well as the one of the martyrs of Liberty. For him, atheism far from being aristocratic, it was the idea of an almighty God that was despotic. The ambiguity is obvious: much as it seems to us that Aulard is hypercritical when he contests the atheism of the movement's leaders, we agree with him when he thus counts, throughout the discourse of the Paris sections, a strong majority of deist professions of faith, orators for whom Reason is already the emanation of the Supreme Being. When examining the provincial addresses collected on the desk of the Convention, the trait is confirmed, even if there, the dominant tendency is to make Reason a daughter of Nature...

One cult can hide another one: but if the Supreme Being is already hidden behind Reason, one can better understand the attitude of not only Robespierre and his friends, but of Danton and some others, at the same time as the political framework, operating around the denunciation of atheism, assumed its full dimension. The Incorruptible took the offensive on 1 Frimaire, in his famous intervention: « There are men ... who, under the pretext of destroying superstition, want to make a sort of religion out of atheism itself ... Atheism is aristocratic. The idea of a great being is popular ... » Behind the unquestionable sincerity of this profession of faith, the political process sidles in, which would come to present the déchristianisateurs, who were predominately deists, as atheists. Danton, vaguely naturalist, in the manner of Hérault de Séchelles or Fabre d'Eglantine, associated himself with the Robespierrist line in the context of the fight against Hébertism. He was the first one to suggest, on 6 Frimaire, to celebrate the Supreme Being. In the aftermath of the decree on religious freedom of 16 Frimaire, Hébert was attacked directly for his atheism by Bentabole, and Cloots by Robespierre: the last palinode of the Père Duchesne would not save him. We have seen how atheism has been held as the primary charge against Chaumette and Gobel. The defining moment of this crusade against atheism finds itself in Robespierre's report of 18 Floréal Year II, when he added the anathema on the sect of the Encyclopédistes (« Unhappiness to the one who seeks to extinguish this sublime enthusiasm ») to a retrospective condemnation of Hébertism. The great festival of the Supreme being would see the ignition of the statue of atheism: thousands of addresses flowed from the provinces, sometimes explicit in their condemnation of atheism, quite often also evidence for the natural and seemingly spontaneous manner in which the transition from the Cult of Reason to the Supreme Being took place. In his speech of 8 Thermidor, Robespierre nominally and violently attacked Fouché: « No, Fouché, no, death is no eternal sleep! Erase this impious maxim and replace it with these words: death is the beginning of immortality. »

After Thermidor, atheism again became the luxury of a few, heirs of the Encyclopédistes, who upheld the tradition: C. F. Dupuis, who published « L'origine de tous les cultes », P. L. Ginguené, the author of « De l'obstination religieuse », or chevalier De Parny, the author of the gigantic, syncretico- copulative epic that is « La guerre des Dieux », where Walhalla, Olympus and the Christian heaven clash in a fray that is chaotic, but not without approvals. One is far from the great traumatism of Year II. But, in a state of shock, atheism maybe became « aristocratic » only in appearance.

Source: Dictionnaire historique de la Révolution française (Albert Soboul)