#its actually very difficult to conceptualize them as a person with their own inner life going on

[bananonbinary]

social media relationships are so weird.

like i know that yall aren’t my friends, but i still see stuff and think like “oh that user’s gonna love that one” or “i hope they have something neat to say about this.” you can say a lot about the dangers of attaching too many expectations to strangers and generally feeling overly-familiar about people you really don’t know, but i think it’s really neat how social media has made is so much easier to say like “oh, that’s a human person, not just an object in my periphery. hello human person! i love you!”

[mfkinanaa]

SUN IN LIBRA.

Libra: Cardinal Air     

Ruler: Venus

Keywords: Diplomacy,  Balance, Justice, Partnership

Functional Expression: Impartial, balanced, gracious, refined, artistic, relationship-oriented, charming.

Dysfunctional Expression: Indecisive, insecure, pleasure-seeking, people-pleasing, passive-aggressive.

Seeking Balance.

Born with the Sun in Libra, you are likely to find yourself motivated by a need to take action around principles of fairness, justice and equality.

Libra is symbolized by The Scales. Matters of law, peace and social interaction are governed by this sign. As a Cardinal Air sign, Libra is concerned with the need to act. They will achieve this in ways that are other-oriented, using interpersonal connections as a trigger to drive them forward. Librans tend to seek harmony in their dealings with others, and will strive on most counts to be balanced, objective and fair.

Those with the Sun in Libra tend to concentrate on social interactions, and whether what is being communicated is objective, balanced and fair. This is therefore a highly sociable sign, and the dynamics of one-to-one interaction are important.

Librans are usually very aware of how others are reacting to them. They will strive to maintain good relations, whilst also taking action to get intended outcomes. For such reasons, the sphere of relationship fall under the domain of this sign. If born with the Sun in Libra, it is a relationship lifetime. The need to understand and balance interpersonal dynamics is paramount.

Many Librans are motivated by the need to experience partnership, as they see themselves more clearly through the mirror of“The Other”. Whilst this gives Librans the ability to become “relationship specialists”, it also means that the intricacies of relationship can consume Libran lives.

The search for “the right partner” must always begin and end with the relationship one has with oneself.

Developing a cohesive sense of self through the reflections they gain from others can be problematic. At times Librans focus too much on what they think the other person expects, and so fail to recognize what their own requirements are.

They may lose sight of what they want because they are busy try to manage the others point of view.

Self and Other.

The Sun represents the principle of individuality. Here, in the sign of Libra, the solar principle is said to be in its “fall”.

There is something inherently paradoxical about finding one’s individual self through the agency of another. And yet, this is the archetypal journey that Libra represents.

Those with the Sun in Libra can make masterful diplomats and offer wise counsel. When the relationship emphasis works well it gives great ability to see things from others’ point of view.

At a more dysfunctional level however, it can create individuals with no real ability to know who they are or get what they need Sometimes, those born with the Sun in Libra struggle to see themselves clearly, or even believe that they exist, without someone else telling them that this is so. Co-dependent relationships tend to manifest repeatedly when a sense of individuality is compromised.

As an Air sign, the ability to take a cool or objective stance on a given situation will often predominate. Librans can be relied upon to bring an impartial point-of-view to any decision-making process. They strive to weigh things up and consider every potential outcome before a conclusion is made.

With the Sun in Libra, they can see all perspectives involved in a dispute or resolution process, and have an innate ability to identify the best course of action to meet the greatest need. Librans are guided by reason and logic, so they can identify the outcome that is fairest for everyone involved. Logical discrimination and the willingness to be fair are some of their best attributes.

Unable to Decide.

But this tendency to see at least two sides in every story can also be their downfall.

At the heart of their ability to look at things from different perspectives is also the famed Libran propensity for indecisiveness. In weighing up all possible outcomes, Librans can become perplexed and ultimately overwhelmed.

By trying to be fair to everybody, they can end up becoming ineffective. At an everyday level, this can manifest as the inability to choose.

Consider choosing a dish at a restaurant. Too much time weighing the pros and cons of each option can mean that the desire for food diminishes to the point that it disappears. Trying to think of what the dining partner will want prevents them from making up their own mind.

Yet deliberation is essential to the Libran process. After having coolly assessed each potential outcome, Librans need to state what they prefer with certainty and conviction. Whilst this can be frustrating for those waiting in the wings, it is also a vital part of their process and necessary for their desire to be fair.

Librans need to incorporate the ability to consider the options with the strength to state what they want. Deliberating for too long often leads to missing out on the opportunities that each moment affords.

When it comes to more complex matters this indecisiveness can become a serious liability. It is important for Librans to be aware of the inner motivation that lies at its source.

Librans are driven by both social and conceptual considerations. They want to be fair and objective, but they also want to be liked. Sometimes this combination is difficult to handle. At times, those with the Sun in Libra can be more concerned with avoiding conflict or upsetting others than they are with taking action on what they know to be fair.

Sometimes the risk of others disapproval is more than they can bear, and they will avoid being decisive in order to be liked. Instead of saying what they really want or need, they may insist they “do not mind”, are “happy to go either way”, and so, will not speak up for themselves even though deep down they know that this is wrong.

Sitting on the Fence.

Librans can tend to act as if they are unaware of what is going on around them, rather than admitting to having a preference that someone else might not like.

This can lead to deep internal conflict as they try to “people-please”, whilst wrestling with an inner urge to move toward a middle-ground. This indecisiveness goes against the grain of their inherently Cardinal nature.

With the Sun in Libra, they are here to interact with others and to learn how to do so decisively. Yet they tend to experience significant anxiety around whether others like or approve of them. This anxiety can dissipate their capacity to take action, and lead them to sit on the fence .

They then find themselves at a state of impasse which is precisely what they should avoid. By failing to choose, they inadvertently create stagnation in their lives. This complicates relationships and makes decision-making more challenging.

Because Libra is a sign motivated to act, in some way or another, others will expect this of them. Yet whilst they wrestle with the implications of a possible course of action, others may have already made their minds up and moved on.

Friends and lovers are left wondering why the Libran finds it so hard to say what they really mean. Or instead of stating openly what they actually think, Librans will try and create an outcome without explicitly stating what they have in mind.

This can lead to suspicions of duplicity or manipulation which is in fact the opposite of what the Libran is trying to achieve. By attempting to make things happen whilst at the same time concealing what their true motives are, Librans run the risk of attracting others disapproval.

They can be very good at managing people but will do so in ways that keep others on-side. They have the ability to direct with grace and eloquence. Yet when they avoid decisions or try to always be “nice”, they undermine their self-confidence, as well as their ability to make much needed social inroads.

Aesthetic Sensibilities.

Another important aspect of the Libran urge for balance operates on creative and aesthetic levels. Librans tend to strive toward harmony, proportion and balance. They often have an innate sense of style, and will be very conscious of what goes with what.

This sign is connected to all forms of design. Librans can combine solid intellectual processes with a fine sense of aesthetics to achieve highly successful results. Thus, many talented designers, artists and decorators fall under the influence of this sign, especially where the focus is on creating beauty through the solution of complex practical problems.

Even those Librans who do not express themselves in a creative sense can benefit from this sense of harmony and proportion in their lives. By embracing cultural and aesthetic experiences that speak to their sense of beauty, they enjoy mental stimulation and internal calm.

Librans tend to prefer cultured and civilized environments. They often find coarse environments hard to be around. Their innate sense of beauty, as well as their love of grace, means that they are inclined to seek the refined in the everyday. By surrounding themselves with beauty, they create harmonious situations and experience peace in their day-to-day lives.

Sun in Libra: Your Solar Journey.

When the Sun is found in Libra, a special balancing act needs to occur. At a psychological level, the solar principle symbolically relates to the individual self. It represents the unique and growth-oriented aspects of who we are. When found in the sign of Libra, this individuality must be experienced through the mirror of “The Other”. Thus partnerships, relationships and decision-making processes tend to be the circumstances in which many life-lessons are learned.

You are often gifted with a clear head for analysis, and a good deal of social charm that can make you both popular and well-respected. By using these gifts to make decisions, you experience the inner satisfaction of having held firm to whatever principle is at stake, at the same time as making a social contribution that is beneficial to all concerned. At its heart, the Libran journey involves mastery of relationship. To accomplish this, you must first recognize you are and what you stand for. Once this is achieved, you have the ability to create win-win situations based on mutual harmony and gain.

[chamerionwrites]

Obi-Wan Kenobi or Saw Gerrera, for the character ask

Tumblr has broken my notifications (is this happening to anyone else?) so I completely missed this ask until now, oops. In exchange please enjoy these long and rambling thoughts about Saw Gerrera.

Why I like him: I mean conceptually he’s just! So great. Guerilla veteran of the Clone Wars, funded and trained by the Republic-that-became-the-Empire (and by Anakin Skywalker specifically) for that sweet dramatic irony. A tragic revolutionary who’s been fighting a desperate battle so long that it’s chipped away at his body and his soul; a story about the destructiveness of war even in a just cause. A man with fierce opinions who’s willing to throw down for them (how else does one become a revolutionary), and thus both admirable and difficult to get along with. A man who’s right about a lot of important things and whose understandable-but-not-entirely-rational paranoia makes his VERY rational and prescient investigation of the Death Star tragically easy for others to brush aside as obsession. And at bottom a man who misses his sister, and Jyn’s surrogate father who obviously loves her and did his flawed best to raise her well under the worst possible circumstances. 

There’s just so many layers of character to sink your teeth into there.

Why I don’t like him: Tbqh it’s a measure of how much I enjoy the character that I still found him sympathetic and interesting after he had Bodhi tortured, because #1 in-universe, not fucking cool dude and #2 out-of-universe, I actually have very few predictable fictional squicks but torture gets under my skin in a way that has almost nothing to do with how graphically it’s portrayed, and is a pretty reliable way to flash-evaporate most of my sympathy and also to make me nope straight out of a work if it’s written poorly enough.

Much as I do enjoy the whole tragic-revolutionary thing, in practice I also have to side-eye DLF for casting the black dude in the cautionary tale about revolutionary extremism. On a balance I don’t think it’s handled terribly, but their track record is so bad that on principle it’s a bit. :/

(The Onderon arc in TCW also makes me want to headdesk repeatedly and violently, but that’s a recurring problem with the show and thus hardly the character’s fault LOL.)

Favorite Scene: It’s very blink-and-you’ll-miss-it but I adore that brief tense standoff he has with Cassian, while Jyn is kneeling shocked on the floor after Galen’s message and Jedha is starting to crumble around them. 

Not to be a nerd on main but I’ve said before that one of the things I enjoy about secondary characters is the almost worldbuilding role they can play. Even in the longest novel you don’t have time to paint an exhaustively detailed portrait of everyone. But a sketch that’s sharp and confident can imply a whole person with a rich history and inner life, and merely by existing outside the center of the story that character also implies a world that exists beyond the edges of the narrative frame. Minor characters are like the shading that makes a circle drawn on two-dimensional paper look like a sphere. 

Rogue One does this very well imo and this is a good example, because there’s a whole mini scene with its own conflict and resolution packed into a couple of seconds with zero dialogue, and you learn a lot a lot from it. Cassian is a very tightly-wound character but not typically a jumpy one - he’s alert to the point of hypervigilance but he’s also very focused and decisive in a crisis, and in fact he spends a lot of the movie being the guy improvising a plan in the midst of chaos and dragging everyone else along beside him by sheer force of determination. But when he barrels around that corner and lays eyes on Saw, he looks for just a second like a man who fears he’s in over his head. He takes a RAPID step backwards and scrambles for his blaster, and his body language from that moment on is that of a man looking for an exit while trying not to take his eyes off a threat. It tells you a whole lot about Saw’s reputation that Cassian - much younger, much healthier, as a rule not easily intimidated, and armed with a gun instead of a stick - so very clearly does not want to tangle with him.

And then they have this great little wordless moment of mutual misunderstanding followed by mutual recognition, because both of them instantly size each other up as a threat but then both of them simultaneously move to defend Jyn. Which in turn simultaneously clues them in that they want more or less the same thing here and turns them into wary allies (and also tells the audience several things about each of them as characters). 

There’s just a lot of storytelling-to-the-square-inch there, and I love that kind of thing. 

Favorite Season/Movie: Probably also RO, but since I’ve already talked about it a lot I’m going to give an honorable mention to Rebels for that one scene where Saw all but sends Mon Mothma a space howler, which tickles me both because I enjoy a little bit of complication and seriousness in my fictional politics and for slightly dark-humored popcorn-munching drama trainwreck reasons (if you take a whole bunch of stubborn and passionate people who are by definition prepared to throw down for their opinions, shove them together, and put them under decades of stress, then...yeah, it’s not entirely surprising to end up with at least one person sending another person a twenty-foot-tall hologram of his head so they can have an excruciatingly public argument. That tracks).

Favorite Line: “You can stand to see the Imperial flag reign across the galaxy?”

Favorite Outfit: I think it’s his movie outfit by default since the cartoon ones didn’t leave any particular impression on my mind; I like the details, especially the battered flag as a cape.

OTP: I’m weak for tragedy and sending someone a twenty-foot-tall hologram of your face so you can shout at each other does kind of scream “acrimonious breakup,” especially since the underlying emotion from both of them in that scene is less straightforward anger than pained and furious disappointment. 

BROTP: Probably unsurprisingly, I have a lot of feelings about him as Jyn’s surrogate dad.

Headcanon: One of many reasons things started to get tense between him and the Alliance is that they reached out to various formerly Separatist-aligned guerrilla groups that went straight from fighting the Republic to fighting the Empire, and Saw (understandably, since the CIS occupied his planet) holds a grudge.

Unpopular Opinion: Occasionally I see people saying that he was right all along and 100% the wronged party in the unexplained but clearly messy political breakup between him and the Rebel Alliance. He was right about a lot of things, and the Rebellion as portrayed in RO clearly does have a wing of insufferable wafflers too timid to take real action against the Empire, and personally my assumption is that there was definitely ego and betrayal involved and nobody exactly covered themselves in glory...but also he tortured somebody right there on screen guys, idk what more you want to suggest that maybe there’s valid reason to side-eye some of his methods. 

(Again, out-of-universe there’s plenty to say here about the way Hollywood likes to frame “good” vs “bad” revolutionaries, but in-universe he does some unequivocally awful things.)

A Wish: As a general rule I’m fascinated by the years immediately following ROTS when what eventually became the rebellion was just starting to organize itself, and I would read the hell out of any story set in that time period.

An Oh-God-Please-Don’t-Ever-Happen: When it was Saw’s turn to be narratively framed as the Good Revolutionary Lucasfilm already gave us scrappy resistance fighters attempting to restore the monarchy (LOL) while the Republic hires pirates to run guns to them, so frankly I think it’s mostly uphill from there.

Five words to best describe him: Unrelenting, bitter, brave, dedicated, lonely

My nickname: Idk if it’s a nickname, but I think I’ve called him Jyn’s Murder Dad a couple of times (usually by way of comparison to Cassian’s Murder Dad).

[meta-squash]

Brick Club 1.4.3 “The Lark”

A slightly shorter (only very slightly) Brick Club post from me! Finally!

“To be vicious does not ensure prosperity...” So far we’ve seen two types of viciousness: rich and poor. Hugo is right that viciousness does not ensure prosperity, because I think the two types come in different ways. The viciousness of people like Tholomyes, or Bamatabois come from a sort of carelessness. These people have the money and status to treat people cruelly and poorly without even thinking about their pain. I don’t think it’s just that they don’t care that their actions hurt people; they straight up don’t think about it. Except in more direct, deliberate circumstances, like Bamatabois putting snow down Fantine’s dress, most of the time they do things for their own pleasure/benefit/whim/whatever and don’t think about its effect on others. They have the money and status to do so. On the other hand, poor viciousness is that of desperation. Those who are poor and vicious are probably aware of the damage of their actions, but they don’t care because they are focused on their own wellbeing and survival. They’re aware of the pain, but it’s less important than their own problems. One is viciousness in the midst of maintaining the status quo; the other is viciousness in the midst of clinging to the edge of survival.

I had a post about the two types of dog imagery and symbolism in the brick that included a little bit of this description of Cosette. Cosette is both literally and figuratively a dog in the Thenardier household. We get more imagery of it later on, but even here she’s fed scraps under the table like a dog. She’s treated more like a dog that can speak than like a person.

Which brings me to the fucking severity of the Thenardier’s abuse. I mean, how did Cosette turn out so lovely and sweet? How did she stay so gentle and sweet? I feel like Hugo kind of uses the biblical Jesus time-jump thing to avoid talking about Cosette working through the trauma of her abuse. At the convent we see Valjean’s idea of her more than we actually see Cosette herself. We don’t get much of her internality from ages 7/8 to about 13/14, which means Hugo can use all that time to explain away any traumas or lingering effects. Anyway, I digress. Even at five years old, they’re terrible to her. They feed her scraps under the table, they force her to wake up before everyone else and do all the chores, even the heavy labor. She’s beaten and verbally abused and throughout all of it she has to watch Mme Thenardier doting on her daughters. It frustrates me a little that Hugo seems to decide that she can’t remember any of it when she gets older. Sure, it makes sense to block out severe abuse, but surely some effects remain? Either way, it’s a wonder she turns out so lovely.

(Side note: I think this is one of the reasons people accuse Cosette of being a “flat” character or whatever. Not letting her having an aspect of hardness or hurt makes it harder to believe. It also lessens her parallel to Valjean; he has inner darkness and trauma from prison that he is actively working against through the entire book, but she doesn’t seem to get a similar darkness to also work through/against. I don’t think she’s a flat character at all, but I think this is part of where that accusation comes from.)

I always have such a difficult time with the perspective of money while reading the Brick. Seven francs sounds like nothing to me, but I don’t really know how much it would be in modern terms. I mean, it makes me think of like gas being like 30 cents back in the day and now it’s often $2.00 or more. Or, like, in the US $.70 in 1950 is the same as about 10x that today. I don’t really know what 7 francs would be equivalent to today, so it’s hard to conceptualize how much or how little money [xyz thing] costs in the brick.

Mme Thenardier is awful in a more insidious way than M Thenardier, and it extends to her own children. At first, she her total love for her own daughters means she detests Cosette and feels as though Cosette is taking from them. Later, though, this hatred transfers first to Gavroche, whom she completely abandons to the streets, then to her two unnamed sons, who she gives away, and then to Eponine, who she seems to almost entirely ignore while she seems to dote on Azelma. The specific example is when M Thenardier makes Azelma break the window; Mme Thenardier comforts and kisses her, but both parents ignore Eponine when she complains of the cold and things like that.

“Children at that age are simply copies of the mother; only the size is reduced.” I can’t help but think about the difference between older Eponine and Mme Thenardier. We don’t get much of Azelma’s characterization, but Eponine is so different from Mme Thenardier when we meet her as a teenager. It’s interesting how unlike either of her parents she is, even before properly meeting Marius.

If the townspeople think Cosette was forgotten by her mother, it stands to reason that Cosette thinks the same thing. Valjean also never really tells her much about Fantine (out of his own weird semi-religious, semi-guilt feelings about her) and I wonder how much that effects her. What would have changed in her if she knew more about her mother?

Fantine just bounces from being manipulated by one man to another. Tholomyes and Thenardier both take advantage of Fantine’s trust and her obliviousness or ignorance. It’s wild how similar both instances of manipulation are; only, in one the payment is emotion and the other is literal money. They both rely heavily on Fantine not picking up on social cues or noticing weird behavior. They also increase their behavior the longer the ruse goes on. For Tholomyes, that means cheating on her with Favourite as well as presumably ignoring her or treating her (and infant Cosette) poorly. For Thenardier, that means lies and constant increasing of payments as well as an increase in abuse towards Cosette as the payments dwindle. Both ruses end in Fantine losing something: her love, her child (twice; she dies with the knowledge that Cosette is not with her in Montreuil-sur-Mer like she had thought), her life.

Okay apparently Hugo snuck this reference to Dumollard in right before publication. Martin Dumollard was a man who lived near Montluel. He would trick women into coming with him from Lyons to Montluel under the guise of being sent by his master to find a domestic servant. He would carry the woman’s luggage on the walk from the train station to the apparent destination, but would take a “short cut” and either would kill the woman in a field and take her belongings, or the woman would sense danger and/or fight back and run away, leaving her luggage behind. When he was caught he and his wife had over 1500 items of other women’s clothing. Over 8 years he had apparently killed at least 3 women and attacked at least 9 others. His trial was at the end of January 1862, and he was executed in early March of the same year. Les Miserables itself was published in 1862 (April? I think? Someone correct me if I’m wrong), so Hugo clearly went back to add that little comment in.

We get a preview of Fantine’s story here, which I really like. I love little in-chapter glimpses of or brief chapter jumps to other characters, just to really get the sense of what things are happening simultaneously.

Like Fantine, we do not hear Cosette speak the first time we see her. “Except that the poor lark never sang.” We are introduced to Cosette in much the same way that we are introduced to Fantine: description first, and later, when Valjean comes to get her, very few lines at first. Her journey is the opposite: she becomes accessible to us as she becomes happier and more safe; Fantine becomes more accessible as she becomes more miserable and unwell.

[appliedtheatreblog]

Geese Theatre

Describe in your own words Geese theatres' key theories.

Geese Theatre focus on the rehabilitation of offenders through the medium of Drama and Theatre. This has been proven to develop social consciousness, self control, self-esteem and responsibility in offenders, deterring them from crime again. Geese have three key theories that they apply when facilitating their participants, all of which encourage them to think deeper into their thinking and feelings and evaluate the person they really are underneath how they portray themselves. 

The first theory we learn about in the Geese Theatre handbook is Social Learning Theory-

This is using social interactive intervention to facilitate a new skill for the participants. It uses a process of applying a specific skill, so that once all the steps have been completed, participants should have successfully acquired that new skill.

The steps are as follows:-

Assessment/Self Assessment- Teaching what a specific skill requires to be successful e.g- Teamwork requires trust.

Instruction- Recommended procedure to follow for practising that skill. E.g practising teamwork would involve several team building exercises, showing participants how to operate as a contributor towards a team.

Modelling- Facilitators giving examples of the skill, this would normally include how NOT to approach the skill.\

Multiple Practise- Practising the skill whilst increasing difficulty and realism each attempt.

Testing- Testing the skill and giving appropriate feedback, where positive reinforcement is essential in encouraging participants to stick with the process.

Real world practise- An opportunity for participants to practise this skill in their everyday life.

When Geese talk about why this sequence is so important, the following is quoted-

“The sequence offers an important conceptual framework for helping participants to develop new skills in a conscious and structured way” (Mountford et al. 19)

This shows how offering this process would leave an impact on participants, asking them exactly why each skill is important and would benefit them daily leaves an impact which would hopefully lead them to approaching situations better in the future.

The second theory is called Cognitive- behavioural Theory

When I first stumbled across this I had a reasonably wide understanding of what it entails. This is due to the fact that Cognitive Behavioural Therapy is used very often in modern day as a psycho-social intervention to treat mental health, it challenges any cognitive distortions and helps to develop personal coping strategies, improving people's control over their emotions. Geese Theatre uses drama as a vehicle through this theory to challenge and explore the beliefs and attitudes of offenders that may lead to them displaying anti-social behaviour. 

Geese explain that offenders often unknowingly place themselves in habitual cycles, which are self-sabotaging and often lead to offending behaviour. By using drama to facilitate this change, Geese starts a conversation which asks ‘Did your choices affect you positively?’ Most of the time that answer is no. They will then ask “What can we do next time to prevent negative outcomes due to personal actions?’ 

They use the example of exploring a victim's experience on the receiving end of antisocial behaviour. They would create a scene in which somebody would play the victim of something like Robbery, this would help by showing that other people are becoming hurt by their actions, holding them responsible for their actions. 

Geese also explain that offenders often have the fixed vision that they are a victim to the system- and other people should feel the pain they do. This is a belief of self-sabotage as they can end up incarcerated due to the extent of their actions, modifying this belief so that offenders feel empowered by opportunity of personal growth, often leads to less offenses in the future.

 The final theory is called Role Theory-

This is the idea that we all play a role in society, and that we have total control over how we play roles in our lives. Role Theory is a way Geese can identify skills and roles that offenders could benefit from developing.

They say -”Role Theory observes how we all play roles in our lives which generate behavioural archetypes associated with that role in any given context.” (Mountford et al., 2002, 19)  

This communicates how offenders often stick to a role that does not benefit them, for example, young offenders can present themselves as incapable of work (even when they are) because they feel like nobody would hire them. This is them intentionally placing themselves in an unemployable box, Geese’s role theory  would come into play here by using drama to teach different job roles to offenders. Such as, the role of an employee, which would benefit them by teaching the behavioural archetypes of succeeding and retaining a job. The biggest message Geese are portraying here is that personal roles are dynamic and can be consciously chosen to benefit your quality of life.

What specifically stood out for you in the Geese theatre reading? (Give 2 examples. Be specific. Did it make you think about something - if so, what? Did it raise questions for you - if so, what are they?)

The first element of Geese Theatres practise that stood out to me, was the concept of ‘The Mask’ this is a metaphor for analysing the inner processes that support the roles we play. It is essentially the ‘front’ we portray to the outside world. Geese attempt to ‘lift the mask’ and go inside the heads of offenders to uncover hidden thoughts and attitudes. This eventually leads to behavioural change as it proves that their inner process leads them to offensive behaviour, challenging the conflict right at its core. What particularly stood out to me, was when it stated that participants would often practice this concept on a fictional character. I think this is such an interesting practise as it shows participants that this can be practised on everyone, meaning people probably perceive them in a way where they believe they are not conducting themselves authentically. I had a think about the character of ‘Javert’ from the musical ‘Les Mis’ and attempted to analyze the hidden thoughts there. This was very interesting to me as it allowed me to see that charter through a deeper lesne, and understand the behaviour that occurred as a result of the inner thoughts. Javert-

Presents himself as a powerful and lawful man, hungry for social justice. Blinded by this and unable to see the good that ex-villain Valjean does for the community. Inner thoughts- disappointed in previous failings to catch Valjean, frustrated he failed his life missions. Feels as though he has nothing else to live for.  The result of this inner process was his ultimate demise. However the chance to analyse those inner feelings, may have led to an emotional breakthrough that could have eventually prevented the dark end to his life. 

Although this may be considered a far fetched evaluation, I can confidently say that I understand why completing an exercise like this would make an offender feel more able and comfortable to analyze themselves with intention to change their damaging inner processes. 

Another concept that I was particularly interested by, is the section that focused on working with resistance, particularly ‘Responding to Resistance’

Geese explain how oftentimes offenders are very resistant to participate in drama because of a fixed idea they have that drama is ‘Silly’ and ‘Just childrens games”. Although this resistance is a difficult bridge for a facilitator, Geese explains how it is important to ask yourself ‘What is causing my person or group to feel resistant or afraid?’ and then ‘How can I modify my approach to accommodate this?’ Offenders often don't want to be tricked into becoming vulnerable, a great facilitator would respond to this fear by ensuring the practise would be entirely based around their boundaries. What particularly intrigues me was that facilitators can utilise resistance to their advantage, participants who are particularly resistant and are seeking out to sabotage the group are often seeking an outcome that works for them in that situation. In this instance, facilitators could respond to the participant in a conversational manner, giving them a response they were not expecting. This encourages new energy and tension into the group, which can be interesting for the participants as it demonstrates how conflict and interpersonal tension can actually lead to creative solutions, not just a power struggle which is more than likely what they are used to.

How does the work of Geese theatre company join up with the wider world of Applied theatre and the idea of dominant narratives?

Geese Theatre company are a perfect example of an Applied Theatre company, they work with marginalised groups in modern society and instigate a conversation that leads to social change. They utilize many techniques that other forms of Applied Theatre do, all of which centre around the voices and capabilities of those in spaces where mainstream theatre doesn't normally exist. The idea of ‘dominant narratives’ is a pattern I would argue is present in many forms of applied theatre. A dominant narrative is the dominant social argument applicable to certain social groups or events. An example of this in relation to Geese Theatre is that offenders don't have the capability to change and are the poison that must be controlled in our society. Another example of this looks back at my first blog post where I explored the Theatre and Health company, Target Theatre. This is the company that explores the views on the elderly in our society and the hidden fears they face. The dominant narrative this company takle is the idea that Elderly people have less to contribute to our society as they are not as physically and emotionally available as the younger generation. Both of the dominant narratives I have outlined above are particularly ruthless, but the function of Applied Theatre in relation to these narratives is to inspire that social change that is so desperately needed, yet this form facilitates that change in a marking and inspiring manner.

Bibliography 

Mountford, A., Brookes, S., & Baim, C. (2002). The Geese Theatre handbook. Waterside Press.

[spamzineglasgow]

(SPAM Cuts) Two Poems by Heather Christle

In this bumper SPAM Cut, Hannah Lee Nussbaum responds to two poems written by Heather Christle — The Running of Several Simulations at Once May Lead to Murky Data and Learned Has Two Syllables and I Only Have One — published here as a diptych in Granta’s August digital issue. Working alongside Christle’s language, Nussbaum considers why we need weird lossy metaphors created by defective machine learning algorithms, the rotten state of metaphor in late-stage human language, the possibility of applying a reverse Turing test to your best friends, and why things feel so good when we are told they are only simulations.

> Learned Has Two Syllables and I Only Have One is the first poem in this diptych by Heather Christle, although the poem isn’t a staccato mono-syllabic exercise, and there are some duo-syllabics and a few sneaky tri-syllabic words in there too. The title of the poem made me try to cram each double into a single (ma-chine as m’chine) and each triple into a double, but manually speaking, this was a total failure when I tried to read the poem out loud like this.

> Christle is conservative with syllables in this poem, because too many would ruin the machinic pace of the piece, would disrupt the leaden plainness of the language being used. Each stanza acts as a divestment from metaphor, and there’s a crystalline, Ouilippan thing happening here. Christle’s words are tautologically sterile, are trying to mean only what they mean, although this is difficult, because even the most ordinary language is metaphorical by nature. Like how happy is a metaphor for up and sad is a metaphor for down, which Natasha Stagg points out in an essay she wrote in 2016 called Internet as Horror, which I read around the same time as I read this poem.

> Christle’s clipped, germ-free language makes me think of Stefan Themerson’s semantic writing, which would not say ‘horse’ but would rather say ‘a solid-hoofed, plant-eating domesticated mammal,’ and it seems true that her language practices the kind of estrangement required when you are doing childcare. The kid will inevitably point to something, like a hair on your arm or a blemish on your face, and say what’s that, what’s that on your arm, what’s that on your face. And you, inevitably, will be really stupefied, stupid feeling too, because your sculpted human brain is trained in abstraction, not literalism, not low-level classification. It’s shame, it’s the abject body, you will probably tell the kid, and you’ll give them an orange cracker and pat their skull, and they will grow up surrounded by words and images which they have been taught to classify as broad political and cultural concepts.

> But when you speak like a computer, or to a computer — which is what Christle seems to be doing in this first poem — you must necessarily turn away from this human meat language of ours, which is supersaturated in allegory and metaphor. Ours is a language deployed towards symbol-heavy populist speechifying, where words are all units of metonymy, where words are constantly circulating and evolving like memes, where each single syllable is pregnant with history and culture, and in fact I would even argue that each syllable in its own right acts as a tiny self-driving metaphor, a little sound island that makes us think of this or that. In late-stage human language, meaning has gone totally viral and each sound has a thick crust around it. Context accumulates and accelerates as words are repeated. Late-stage human language is apparent in terms like “globalist,” “states’ rights,” “locker room,” “inner city” — all saying and not saying, all totems of the way metaphor and abstraction have ossified our words into compact, lazy symbols. Christle’s poem pokes at what’s at stake in moving backwards or outside of our lazy regime of abstraction. Which is, certainly, what is required if we are to approach the problem of machine learning as it relates to language, which is, on the level of content, what this poem is directly about. And maybe it’s not a problem, I’d like to add, but an opening.

> I imagine that she originally wrote a decadent and highly pigmented poem, or at least thought of one, then took a palette knife to it and attempted to strip it back into its constituent zeros and ones. The difficulty — the one she calls a readjustment/no more/painful than/a thicket — is that all of this abstract, high-level information is lost when you strip an image or a word or a whole poem down to its back-end code. New metaphors are created. Metaphors of misidentification, of confusion. An imperfect algorithm might accidentally categorize a red robin as a smear of blood. A long man’s face might be sorted into the column category. To backpedal words into non symbolic, bag-of-formal-qualities territory creates a moment of reverse emergence — concepts are stripped back into their constituent aesthetic facts, and a culturally innocent machine might well make connections between these constituent aesthetic facts, and new, stranger metaphors will be the upshot. The result is inevitably a weird realism, a Picasso-esque reality, which sounds sensual to me, do you agree?

> Said another way, these new lossy metaphors produced by still-too-dumb technology might help us make connections between seemingly disparate words, tease similar properties out of culturally dissimilar symbols. In this way, machinic metaphors might well be a tool of world building that verge on magick — they can make our sense and they can re-arrange it.

*  

> If the activity of cutting language away from abstraction — doing language like a sort-of-dumb machine would do it —  is the move happening in the first poem, Christle’s second poem does something tangential, cock-teasing but not straightforwardly delivering on my guilty desire for facile conceptual twinning between the two texts. The second poem — The Running of Several Simulations at Once May Lead to Murky Data — moves with a protagonist who imagines her meaty human companions — the real ones she is eating dinner with around a real table with real salt shakers ­— to be virtual (or machinic, or programmed, or otherwise computationally choreographed). The protagonist invites us to join her in an uneasy case of pretending, an induced brain-game that makes everything look different. A reverse Turing test that coats real humans (which are typically bland and predicable social organisms) in the dazzling gloss of life-likeness (the amazement with which we hear a machine speak in a women’s voice, as though we have never heard it before, so clear, so feminine). The poem knows that when a virtual object is life-like (what verisimilitude!), it is eons more astonishing than the real thing, because the real thing is yesterday’s news.

> And so Christle’s brain-game (this poem) allows real things to take on the glittery mystique of the virtual or the simulated: artificially I will induce this feeling in myself, the speaker tells us, pretending/—until it is real—that each person/is speaking from a highly naturalistic script,/having carefully rehearsed each/tiny gesture. What intrepid attention to detail! What finely tuned mockups! I am reminded of a short story written by Ben Marcus in 2013, Notes From the Hospital, in which Marcus describes a hospital on an island — a fastidiously fashioned space in which the air is breathable, the scale is one-to-one, and even the most advanced scrutiny cannot reveal the setup to be constructed and forged — so close is it to an actual hospital, with all of the bodies and walls and smells therein. But this hospital isn’t real, we are told — it’s made by a technically masterful artist — and so the thing feels miraculously life-like, accurate, while still retaining some of the impossible and strange and utopian feelings we associate with and assign to things we know to be virtual.    

> Simulation is at the very centre of what poetry is, in the sense that poetry is always a necessarily really inadequate representation of the thing the poet originally tried to evoke. A poem on a page is always a simulation of an original ghost poem, and in this sense a poem is always a record of failure, says poet and critic Allen Grossman (to whom I was led by Ben Lerner, who also writes on this). The actual poem is a failure, but the virtual poem (the poem the poet meant to write) holds within it that feeling of immense potential, the deep, instinctive sensation of a yet-to-be-executed idea in all of its impossible perfection — a schematic, a model, a mockup, a prototype: all perfect ghosts prior to the flaccid not-quite-right of real life execution. Virtuality itself is a way of feeling, a way of looking, and simulation is a sensation, and the sensation is generous, hopeful, rapt.  

> The ginger minutiae of social tics and turns, the remarkable talent it takes to speak, to reach for the salt, to be alive (being alive not being the norm) — all of these signals are consigned to the filing cabinet labeled ‘actual’, and so we don’t see the poetics in these small and ceaseless triumphs. Perhaps it takes a brain game, a reverse Turing test, a clever cranial experiment, a poem that writes around these little moves, to entertain the possibility of the actual poem being the virtual poem, the actual friend as the finely tuned machinic replica, and with such skill! Producing perhaps some awe for their remarkable talent/ for portraying with such detailed conviction/ the humans I know as my friends. Can the meat world shock and delight you as much as an imagined version or close approximation of it might? Does the long cold distance have to be so far?

~

Text and Image: Hannah Nussbaum

Published: 8/3/20

[cygnuswheel]

after running away, a young boy stops, stone still. argus is so dreadfully cold. let’s see what he can do to fix that...

“ i like this one. “ oscar says, holding up the jacket to the mirror with a little smile. the colors are a bit new for him, especially with them being in such bold ratios, but that doesn’t mean that it’s a bad thing in his book. “ what do you think? “

there’s no answer.

the boy expects as much, considering the silent treatment that he’s gotten the past few days, but that doesn’t make the way his heart falls any softer. always too loud when no one expects it, always too quiet when everyone expects him. the walk around argus had been so quiet without the constant thrum in the back of his head, small pushes of approval, disapproval, or pure amusement being left to only the static ring of his ears and mind. blinking, he folds the outerwear gently before placing it into his basket for later.

ozpin hasn’t talked to him in days. a few months back, oscar would have found that to be a blessing, a chance for him to finally think for himself and settle on the idea that destiny never looked good on him. that there was no responsibility to be had, only himself, only the farm, only the routine that he had grown used to living with, as much as he wanted to complain about it at times. it would all be numb again, and he could go on living without thinking too hard on what things could have been. he was just a farmhand, a boy. he was normal. 

but it’s too late for that by now, and he knows that. the passing sight of a dark haired man bedridden flies through his mind, the memory still as fresh as newly fallen snow. the child is reminded that his mental company was also just a boy once, one who strived to do what was right from the very beginning. one that was forced to learn that one day, in order to do what was right, he would have to do wrong. the very notion broke this fairytale boy’s heart into pieces until he had to bury it within himself and hide how much he cared about his own actions. living on had been an apology at some point: i’m so sorry that i wasn’t able to stop everything in time, before it was too late.

“ these belts are good. i wouldn’t have to worry about my outfit flying everywhere if it was held down. “ again, he muses aloud, the accessory sitting innocently on his hands. gods, he never had to think about fashion before, aside from how easy it was to move in them for his work. this was the same line of thought, but a bit more... refined. oscar almost laughs. his aunt would be so happy to know that he finally cared a bit about how he looked. he catches the warped reflection of one of his eyes in the belt buckle. with it comes a sigh. 

it’s not just for him, no.

the greens, the reds, the blacks and golds-- it’s a strange amalgamation for him, but he has to realize that these choices aren’t just on his own behalf, as quiet as the world is right now. “ this place really has some fancy stuff. “ some of the price tags had already made him sweat. how could anyone afford this? the amount of lien wasn’t something that he could bring himself to fathom. but still, good gear could only aid combat. ( he would have been lying if he said that he wasn’t cold out of his mind, too. ) it would take some time for him to get used to it, but hey, oscar’s life seemed to be filled with new things lately. this is just another thing to get used to. “ and i’m going to keep talking to you whether you do or don’t reply, you know. “

there’s the smallest shift in his core. a ripple of some emotion... embarrassment? were he not paying attention, the boy wouldn’t have been able to pick up on it at all. talk about tuning into your inner self. the store keeps humming along despite the boy talking to himself, mostly because the overhead music would drown out whatever whispering he’s doing to anyone but himself. anyone but himself and whoever else is stuck in his head with him, that is. finally, something that stopped the static ring. but oz still doesn’t say a word. oscar rolls his eyes and slips some gloves into the basket. 

this is going to cost his entire life savings at this rate. he hadn’t wanted to tap into them when travelling to mistral, but that was because he was still somewhat in denial at that point. the trip wouldn’t be that long, he told himself as he settled into the train seat and stared out the window. he would have been back before he knew it, and life would have gone back to normal. a glance at his surroundings. yeah, that really panned out exactly how he expected it to, huh. but even back then, he knew that this would be something different, something more magnificent than his naive imagination could have ever conceptualized back then.

( a clash, a scream, a silent apology. he remembers the girl’s first cries so clearly that he still hears it when he closes his eyes. ‘ i don’t have one. ‘ the defeated king says with his head held low, and all oscar can feel is how cold his hands are as the world around them falls apart. ) 

reality was always going to be confusing. it would always come to hurt him more than he expected and rip him away from any fantasies that he had previously. the fairy tales themselves are tainted, and so is his view of everything that he’s ever grown to believe. what a horrid fate for a boy of fourteen years. and what an awful reality that a man of many millennia had come to accept as his new normal after countless failed attempts at trying to forget why he had come back to the land of the living in the first place.

even without the other speaking, oscar knows that ozpin is not one that appreciates pity. the very gesture of it is lower and more pathetic than anything that he could accept, and, in a way, the boy can understand that. to have someone feel bad for you, you, when all they should have been doing was worrying about themselves... it’s not something unfamiliar. maybe that was to be expected, being the wallflower that he had grown up as. for someone to acknowledge all of the wrongs of your life means that you would need to regard yourself as a person worthy of being regarded as human. and ozpin had thrown away that right so long ago when he finally came to accept his mission. so why, oh why, the headmaster asks silently with a certain feeling of wryness that the boy feels in his blood, was oscar pine, his current cursed vessel, feeling bad for him?

“ i’d tell you to shut up, but you’re being smart with me. “ a scoff. he feels the impression of his headmate raising a brow. “ if you weren’t so busy moping, you’d already know. “ fitting room, fitting room... ah. there. “ i thought you were better at the whole mind reading thing compared to me. whenever i try for you i just get a montage of you drinking hot cocoa and looking at your scroll. “ that i can’t read for some reason, he almost adds, but opts against it in favor of sneaking into one of the last available rooms. he’s losing oz’s presence, it feels like a dying wick on its last legs. the man is tired, but so is oscar. and the kid will be damned if the other leaves before saying what he needs to say. “ ... you’ve made a lot of mistakes. “

“ actually, you’re pretty awful. “ oscar mumbles to himself as he takes off his shirt, slipping on the new one. it feels way too new, he’s only worn hand me downs for the last five years or so. but it’s comfortable, in its own way. he’ll get used to it. the stained and worn shirt that he had grown to love is folded neatly and left on the bench. “ i think if we were face to face, the first thing i’d do is kick you where it hurts. “ 

“ but i’m not mad, and it’s not because of your ‘ i can stay calm during anything and everything ‘ attitude. “ the finality of the tone startles even himself, and no doubt shocks his company. “ life sucks, the gods suck, and immortality sucks, no matter what form it comes in. that’s what jinn taught us, remember? “ no response. typical. oscar’s eyebrows narrow, and he readjusts one of his belts. a pause. he takes a breath.

“ jaune’s nephew is really cute. “

surprise. confusion. curiosity. this wasn’t what either of them expected to bring up, apparently. “ i was looking at him the whole time we were at the cotta-arc house. he has a good family. “ clothing himself is so exhausting. oscar lets his arms drop to his sides for a  moment. ( he won’t acknowledge that trying to start up a conversation for the past two hours or so was starting to wear at his stamina. ) “ it reminded me of that one family you had. when you started to try again. “ their smiles are so bright and loving. the wife’s expression is filled with such warmth. 

“ maybe the world is big. maybe it’s hard to protect. “ he continues on, pressing, pushing, trying. “ maybe trying can feel pointless after some time, and maybe people can be difficult and hard to help after all of your effort. “ oz’s eyes are wandering, trying to avoid the conversation. but oscar won’t let him. he holds the other’s shame in his hands and grips it firmly. “ but having a future is important. being able to appreciate the small things is important. “

“ i want to make sure that people still have a future, even if the world is against them. “ the boy is patting himself down now, brushing off any dust specks that he can catch in his sight. “ and i don’t want it to be based on lies this time. “ yang’s eyes still burn so brightly in his memory. he remembers the shock on weiss’ face, the absolute hopelessness on blake’s. ruby had never looked so hurt before. and qrow... the headmaster scowls. he never wanted them to hurt that badly. he didn’t want to destroy everything that they had been working for. he would have been content holding everything on his own shoulders until the end of time, because he had felt how many lifetimes the truth had ruined. a single one would never be enough time to despair. 

“ they’re stronger than you think. “ he retorts, putting a hand to his own chest. he remembers how scared he used to be, how terrified he was at the thought of everything going wrong. “ they want the next generation to grow up happy, like you do. don’t forget how much you care. you just... “ oscar trails off. the entity is quiet, waiting. for once, he wants to listen. “ you just don’t have to care alone anymore. “ 

hm.

he’s done. turning around, oscar finally looks at himself in the mirror. gods, he looks like a completely different person. months ago, he would have never been able to imagine himself in this position, looking this fancy. he can feel in the back of his head that someone else is looking on too, admiring the thread-work, and while his approval is silent as can be, it speaks volumes. they’ve both changed so much over the months. “ well. ready to fake it till i make it. “

the other still doesn’t know how to respond to all of this. to oscar’s newlyfound sense of maturity, to the kindness and acceptance that he had offered to his own plague. it’s a warmth that he had never thought to offer himself in centuries, wretched imitation of humanity that he was. for once he felt... accepted. normal. even though nothing about this situation was normal. if the one person he had wronged the most in this scenario was willing to believe in his goals, then were his constant efforts to face in the inevitable not for naught? maybe.

maybe things would end up okay, if he was working with someone like oscar.

“ now. “

“ i took all this time trying to find something that we’d both like. “ ozpin doesn’t like the smirk that’s starting to grow on the boy’s lips. “ so give me your bank account info or i’ll walk out of this room naked. “

a snort, and then a laugh. but it’s not his own, no. ugh, finally. the boy lets the smile grow more freely across his face as his eyes narrow in pride and satisfaction. as he takes out his scroll, he can hear the slightest whisper in his mind that guides his fingertips...

[frankencomplex]

hc - mbti

          god I already know this is gonna get so fuckign long bc i’m a huge nerd and can never shut up abt personality analyzation. on tht note , if anyone ever wants to talk mbti or just have me overanalyze ur muse’s personality..... hmu bc i physically cannot shut up abt it

charles is an intp ! i’ve probably said this before & it’s like weirdly integral to my portrayal of him ( or at least gives a lot of insight into it ) so for those of you who don’t know what mbti is at All , it’s a personality typology theory that divides human personalities into four categories : introverts / extroverts , intuitives / sensors , thinkers / feelers , and judgers / perceivers. therefore , charles is an introvert intuitive thinker perceiver , or if you want to get real deep & use cognitive function theories , he uses Ti ( introverted thinking ) , Ne ( extroverted intuition ) , Si ( introverted sensing ) , and Fe ( extroverted feeling ) in that order. 

if you read about the basic characteristics of an intp , the personality type ( sometimes nicknamed “ the logician ” ) is known for being “ philosophical innovators, fascinated by logical analysis, systems, and design. They are preoccupied with theory, and search for the universal law behind everything they see. They want to understand the unifying themes of life, in all their complexity. ” source 

the description above is charles to a T , and i’ll explain why ! he’s a huge introvert. by no means does he gain energy from social gatherings , and he’s far more content to explore the contents of his own mind than to explore the minds of others. he’s an intuitive , which means he’s more concerned with abstract , unconventional ideas , and can be quite detached from the world around him , while a sensor would be focused on reality and their concrete senses. he’s metaphorical , dreamy , non - traditional , and unfocused ( though that is not solely an N trait ). he’s a thinker , which means he relies on logic & facts more than his own feelings or the feelings of those around him. lastly , he’s a perceiver , meaning he prefers to work at his own pace without rigid structure , and prefers open endedness over set plans and commitments.

I know that’s a lot , but it makes a lot of sense when you read about it. now , to get deeper , mbti is supported by the theory of cognitive functions ( Ti > Ne > Si > Fe for charles as I mentioned earlier ). the whole idea is that every personality type uses a “ function stack ” of different modes of thinking / interacting with / viewing the world , and there are four predominant functions per type that are all accessed at decreasing levels of development. the first function is the most developed , the last is the least. so , without further ado , here’s charles’s personality type explained by his four functions. i’ve taken the most useful parts of the article on the following website. source

INTPs’ Dominant Function: Introverted Thinking (Ti)

Ti involves the application of logic and reason for the sake of understanding a given situation, system, or problem. INTPs use Ti to bring structure and order to their inner world, granting them a strong sense of inner control. Inwardly, INTPs are highly self-disciplined, working to effectively manage their thoughts and their lives. The disciplined nature of their Ti compels INTPs to frame many things as a goal or challenge. These challenges may be physical (e.g., trying to achieve an ideal state of health or fitness), intellectual, practical, psychoemotional (e.g., becoming self-actualized), or later in their development, interpersonal (e.g., “perfecting” a relationship or becoming a skilled lover). In order to succeed in these personal challenges, INTPs are apt to impose rules on themselves. However, because of the wayward influence of their auxiliary Ne, they commonly end up breaking or sabotaging them.

INTPs are also less interested in working with facts than with ideas. Jung writes: “His ideas have their origin not in objective data, but in his subjective foundation.” INTPs are constantly digging into the background of their own thoughts in order to better understand their origins and to ensure their thinking is founded on solid reasoning. They see it pointless to try to build theories on a dubious conceptual platform.

INTPs often find it easier to identify inconsistencies or logical shortcomings—to assert what is not true—than to identify and confidently assert what is true. They can quickly locate inconsistencies or logical shortcomings in a given theory or argument. They excel when it comes to identifying exceptions or imagining scenarios in which the proposed explanation could breakdown. Due to their sensitivity to theoretical exceptions, they can be quick to throw theories and start from scratch. INTJs, by contrast, seem less deterred by ostensible exceptions, perhaps feeling that they will eventually be explained or otherwise rectified.

When functioning constructively, INTPs, like INFPs, often employ a trial-and-error sort of approach to building their theories and ideas. INTPs start with a given (Ti) and then use their auxiliary Ne to explore various connections and possibilities. They also integrate past experiences and acquired knowledge through their tertiary Si. It is usually only after years of toying with ideas that something resembling a systematic and coherent theory may start to emerge.

INTPs’ Auxiliary Function: Extraverted Intuition (Ne)

INTPs use Extraverted Intuition (Ne) as their auxiliary function. Ne can function either perceptively or expressively. The verbal expression of Ne amounts to something like “brainstorming aloud.” When orating, INTPs may not always seem to “have a point” as they haphazardly drift from one idea to the next. Even ideas that seem inwardly logical and sensible INTPs may suddenly sound incoherent when they attempt to convey them through their Ne.

In its receptive role, Ne prompts INTPs to gather information. It goes beyond or looks behind sense data, allowing INTPs to discern otherwise hidden patterns, possibilities, and potentials. Their Ne is constantly scanning for relationships or patterns within a pool of facts, ideas or experiences. INTPs commonly use this receptive side of their Ne in activities such as reading, researching, and conversation. They enjoy asking questions that allow them to gain insight or knowledge from others, making INTPs good facilitators of conversation.

INTPs may also use their Ne to sniff out intriguing possibilities. They commonly enjoy and assume the role of wanderer or seeker, rarely knowing in advance exactly what they are seeking.

Ne also confers an open-mindedness, helping INTPs see truth on both sides of an issue without forming unwarranted judgments or premature conclusions. More specifically, their Ne can be seen as contributing to their openness to alternative or Bohemian lifestyles. INTPs are those most likely to suddenly become vegetarians, join a commune, or decide to live out of the back of a van. They are drawn to the idea and challenges of an unconventional lifestyle.

Like other NPs, INTPs often have a love-hate relationship with their Ne. They love the fact that it helps them remain open-minded and grasp the bigger picture. But living with Ne also has its challenges. For one, it can make it difficult for INTPs to arrive at firm conclusions or make important decisions. It often seems that at the very moment they are feeling good about a given conclusion or decision, their Ne steps in and causes them to start doubting it again. This has obvious implications for INTPs who are trying to find their niche in the world. This can leave them feeling discouraged and restless, worried that they may never find what they are looking for. They may feel frustrated by their seeming lack of progress toward anything substantial. The fact is that INTPs desperately want to produce something of lasting worth or value, but they also want to ensure they get it right. They don’t want to leave any stone unturned before arriving at a conclusion. While INTPs typically enjoy this quest for truth, there comes a point when they begin to feel the pressures of life impinging on them. Questions about careers and relationships loom large as they enter their late twenties and thirties. This can be frustrating to INTPs as they feel like life is requiring them to make decisions long before they are ready. As is true of all IN types, they feel that life would be far better if they weren’t forced to consider practical concerns.

INTPs’ Tertiary Function: Introverted Sensing (Si)

Unlike Ne (or Se), INTPs’ tertiary function, Introverted Sensing (Si), is a conservative function. It involves an attachment to past experiences and past precedent—to the routine, familiar, and predictable. Types with Si in their functional stack, including INTPs, tend to eat a fairly routine or consistent diet, “eating to live” rather than “living to eat.” Si types are not only conservative with regard to their diet, but with respect to the material world in general. They tend to be savers rather than spenders, seeing excessive material consumption as unnecessary, or perhaps even immoral.

Like other Si types, INTPs also have a diminished need for novel physical pleasures, lavish surroundings, or material comforts. They are minimalists to the core, relatively unconcerned with their physical surroundings.

INTPs’ Inferior Function: Extraverted Feeling (Fe)

Last but not least, Extraverted Feeling (Fe) serves as INTPs’ inferior function. While having inferior feeling doesn’t make INTPs emotionless robots, their feelings do seem to have a mind of their own, often coming and going as they please. Realizing how hard it can be to voluntarily contact or summon their emotions, INTPs tend to feel awkward and uneasy in emotional situations. Although they may be cognitively aware of the appropriate emotional response, if they’re unable to directly tap into their feelings, INTPs can appear clumsy, mechanical, or disingenuous. This can be unsettling to others who are looking for outward signs of authentic emotion from the INTP.

Fe is also concerned with maintaining social harmony. While Ti and Ne may inspire INTPs to function as provocateurs, their Fe encourages them to operate as peacemakers. Far more often than INTJs, INTPs will “bite their tongue” in order to avoid hurting or offending others. Doing so also minimizes the likelihood of emotionally-volatile situations which can engender anxiety and disquiet in this type.

Another aim of Fe involves establishing emotional rapport and connection with others. But again, while INTPs may do at fair job at reading others’ emotions, they may fail to actually “feel” what the other person is feeling. This is why INTPs are sometimes described as “outwardly warm, but inwardly cold or calculating.” Fe can be a bit of an act in the first place (e.g., political glad-handing), but this seems particularly commonplace among INTPs and ISTPs. Although casual social engagement may help them feel good for a while, perhaps even give them an ego boost, without sufficient Ti stimulation, it won’t be long before they’re scoping out the nearest exit.

Finally, it’s not unusual for INTPs to oscillate through phases in which they feel they don’t need other people at all. Especially when their work life is running on all cylinders, they can feel invigorated and invincible. But the psyche will only permit this sort of Ti lopsidedness for so long. Eventually, INTPs start feeling a bit lonely or empty, sensing that something important is missing from their lives. This prompts them to reinitiate contact with others, at least until they feel compelled to reassert their independence. Striking a balance between their independence (Ti) and relationships (Fe) can thus constitute a lifelong challenge for this personality type.

that’s all , if you read this far I will love you forever. if you ever want to talk personality shit , here I am

[noona-clock]

Study: Im Jaebum

In which we dig deeper under the surface of our favorite KPOP idols.

Disclaimer: I do not own any of the gifs used in this post. I am not an astrologer nor am I a professional psychologist. These are my opinions based on the research I have done personally/as a hobby. If you disagree with any of these statements, please do so respectfully.

-Admin B

Sun Sign: Capricorn (Earth)

Jaebum has a lot of Capricorn in his birth chart, so if there’s any one sign he identifies with, it’s going to be this one. I feel if you really understand Capricorn traits, you can get a good grasp on who Jaebum is.

Capricorns are known for being one of the most down to earth, dependable, and solid signs of the whole zodiac. I think we can certainly classify Jaebum as all of these traits. He’s the dad/grandpa of the group, as well as the leader, and he wouldn’t hold these positions if he weren’t dependable and responsible. He’s very good at managing the other members, though not necessarily in an authoritarian way (hence the ‘down to earth’ part).

Another Capricorn trait Jaebum personifies is being on the more serious, conservative side. We all know Jaebum likes to have fun and be funny, but would we say he’s the most fun-loving member of Got7? No, definitely not. Would we say he’s the most serious? I might, actually. As I said earlier, he’s the dad/grandpa of the group, so he’s more likely to be the one breaking up the fun rather than the one creating it. He’s also pretty conservative when it comes to showing affection, giving praise, and values. We all see how uncomfortable he is with skinship with the Got7 members, and he didn’t want to seem like he and BAP’s Youngjae were a couple (but, like, it wouldn’t matter if they were). 

Capricorn is ruled by Saturn which is generally viewed as one of the unluckiest planets. Many Capricorns deal with lots of struggles in life and really don’t have it all that easy. They only get stronger because of it, but they still go through some shit. I honestly don’t know if Jaebum has gone through many personal hardships in his life as he doesn’t tend to share much about his private life. Being an idol certainly has its struggles, and I know it hasn’t been easy to become such a popular group. He’s also had to deal with darker, more serious sides to his personality, but if Jaebum has dealt with any sort of loss or tragedy, I haven’t heard about it. Let me know if you have! Just be on the lookout for our Jaebummie, okay? We need to be ready to support him!

Moon Sign: Scorpio (Water)

I’m going to be honest here. Scorpio is one of the most difficult signs to have in your lunar placement. Your moon sign is connected to your deep, emotional, inner self, and Scorpio is already an intense, deeply emotional sign. So I think we can bet Jaebum has a lot of emotions. But, like a Scorpio, he’s really good at hiding them. Scorpios tend to be pretty mysterious and private, and I think we can all agree Jaebum fits that description. He’s pretty quiet, and he doesn’t reveal too much about his personal life. He doesn’t show too much emotion, including when it comes to the Got7 members. He’s known as being “Chic” and “Cool,” two words which really mean “doesn’t say much.”

This doesn’t mean he has no emotions, of course. He’s got a lot of them. We just don’t see or hear about them all that often. And this also doesn’t mean he never shows affection, because he does! Scorpios are very loyal and loving people. But when you think about Jackson... and then think about Jaebum... the difference is almost comical.

Even though Scorpios are very good at keeping their emotions private, they do actually have a lot going on in their minds. They tend to be very imaginative and creative, and we see this side of Jaebum when he write songs (especially when he releases songs as Defsoul on his SoundCloud).

One other Scorpio trait Jaebum 100% possesses is that of valuing family. Have you seen when he’s at a concert or fanmeet and he spots his parents?! The way he smiles and how his eyes light up?! It’s honestly so adorable, I die inside every time. I can only imagine how great of a husband and father he will be in the future.

Fun fact: Scorpio is known for being intense and very sexual, which is why Jaebum is so good at being RUDE.

Chinese Astrology: Water Rooster

Roosters are seen as one of the more organized signs in the Chinese Zodiac. They are thorough and highly intelligent, and I feel we see these qualities in Jaebum as a leader. As we know, he’s good a managing things (especially the members), and I feel one basically needs to be smart in order to write, compose, and produce one’s own music. 

In addition, Roosters have a propensity to be extremely caring and have a need to help those who are less fortunate than them. While Jaebum is more private, we know he cares so much about the people he loves as well as his fans. He’s got such a big heart despite the struggles he’s had to overcome to become a popular, well-liked idol and leader of Got7.

Something I found interesting about Roosters is they’re very likely to have large families. Since we know how much Jaebum’s family means to him, I wouldn’t be surprised if he ended up having several children in the future!

Numerology: Life Path  3

Those born with the Life Path number of 3 are known as Communicators. They have a talent for communicating with people, though this communication may come through in many different forms. We all know Jaebum is not a huge talker; he’s pretty shy, quiet, and very serious. But he does a heck of a job communicating through his music. (Also through dancing, which seems to be his way of communicating in a more sexual way). He also uses his communication skills as a leader. We heard from the psychology in Got7 Hard Carry that Jaebum is probably one of the best leaders in the KPOP world. He does an excellent job at managing and communicating with the other members. He’s not afraid to say what needs to be said, and the members know exactly what is expected of them.

3s are also known to be talented individuals, and they like presenting their ideas/talents to an audience. Besides the fact Got7 is always capable of drawing huge audiences, Jaebum likes to share his own music with his fans on his SoundCloud. He also FINALLY!!!! got an Instagram, and he’s been sharing posts and stories pretty regularly since then. He’s private, but he still likes to connect with his fans.

MBTI: INFJ

Introverted, Intuitive, Feeling, Judging

Jaebum is definitely Introverted. He is quiet, very serious, and he’s extremely private. It doesn’t really seem like he enjoys going out all that much, either. He keeps to himself most of the time, which is really the best way to tell if someone is Introverted or Extroverted. You can be an outgoing Introvert or a shy Extrovert, something it took me a while to realize. Shy and Introvert are not synonyms! I’m a shy Introvert, but Admin T is not. I think Jaebum is a shy Introvert, but he’s truly an Introvert because he is more reserved, he keeps to himself more often than not, and he has the ability to think through his words before speaking.

I’m very grateful Got7 were professionally typed because I honestly would have a very difficult time typing Jaebum. Since he is so private, it’s hard to really know and understand him. According to the test, however, Jaebum is Intuitive. He actually got the highest score on this type than any other dimension. Since Jaebum shows such a strong inclination toward Intuition, we know he thinks more about the big picture rather than the small details. He has the ability to look to the future and imagine the possibilities. He can think in more abstract, conceptual terms, and he doesn’t necessarily have to experience something to learn about it.

Again, I’m glad Jaebum has been professionally typed because I’m not sure I would’ve come to the conclusion he’s Feeling since he does such a good job of hiding his emotions. Granted, his Feeling score was only two points higher than his Thinking score, so I do feel a bit of validation in my insecurity. I do feel the songs he writes are a good indicator of his feeling domination, though, because he definitely writes songs with a lot of emotion behind them.

Lastly, Jaebum types as Judging. And while this can mean he’s more prone to leading an organized life, it mostly means he’s more controlled by his judging function - his is Feeling. Again, he only scored three points higher in this dimension so his Feeling function will not be extremely dominant. But I can see how he would be controlled by his feelings rather than by his intuitive thinking. I feel like he really takes his members’ feelings into account when making decisions.

Other Studies: Mark Tuan, Jackson Wang, Park Jinyoung, Choi Youngjae, BamBam, Kim Yugyeom

Master list // RULES // Submit a Request! // Read About the Admins

[femmesfollesnebraska]

Blog at 40, Liza Lou at 40

This is the fourth blog post I’ve written on what (feminist and/or women) artists have done/created during their 40th year during my 40th year. First 3:

1) Judy Chicago

2) Carolee Schneemann

3) Wanda Ewing

I include artworks by myself inspired by and/or in tribute to the artists at end of each post as well.

Today I write about Liza Lou, (born 1969), American visual artist best known for her large scale sculptures using glass beads.  Though not currently an artist on the top of my inspiration list, as much of her work leans primarily on the more conceptual side of the spectrum--though not entirely, to be sure--I came across her work the other day as I was researching what contemporary artists are doing in response to the pandemic for an upcoming presentation, and found her Apartogether project.

Screenshot of an Instagram post by Liza Lou announcing the start of Apartogether in response to Covid-19, 2020.

Apartogether is a community art project founded by Liza Lou at the onset of the COVID19 pandemic to foster connection and creativity during a time of social distancing and isolation.  Lou encourages IG followers to make work from familiar materials around the house and to tag it with the Instagram handle @apartogether_art and she archives it on her website. What started as an exercise in combatting long-term isolation has grown into a global community of makers eager to share. She also hosts art talks, a “sew-in” and sessions on Zoom to facilitate conversation among the participants.  As an accessible, open art project, I completely love this - anyone can participate, and everyone can view and appreciate this project. It’s warm, intimate, personal while also being enormous, inspirational and broadly impactful. I can’t help compare to Judy Chicago’s Honor Quilt from The Dinner Party, a crowdsourced quilt made from patches from people worldwide dedicated to women past to present, famous to non, that traveled with the famous work throughout its international tour in the 1980s, but I digress.

Speaking of Chicago, while doing my current research, I found an Op-ed for the New York Times she wrote about the significance of work with content; she articulated everything about her and feminist art that I love now and always have:

Does art matter when we are facing a global crisis such as the current Covid-19 pandemic?

Obviously, there is a great deal of art that doesn’t matter. This includes the work issuing from those university art programs that every year pump out thousands of graduates, taught only to speak in tongues about formal, conceptual and theoretical issues few people care about or can comprehend. Then there is the art created for a global market that has convinced too many people that a piece’s selling price is more important than the content it conveys.

But when art is meaningful and substantive, viewers can become enlightened, inspired and empowered. And this can lead to change, which we urgently need. 

...One might ask what this has to do with the global pandemic afflicting us. The answer lies in art’s power to shed light on the problems we are confronted with at this difficult time.  

...Art that raises awareness of the state of our planet can be especially important in today’s world. One example of this is the work of the contemporary artist and illustrator Sue Coe, whose pieces on animal mistreatment have been ignored or, at best, marginalized by an art community that seems to privilege meaninglessness over consequential work...

(I can’t express how much I love Judy Chicago’s adamant voice. It is so assertively, unapologetically and refreshingly personal and feminist. I highlly recommend reading her books and autobiographies - a new combined edition is actually coming out next year. Also, I currently have her book, New Views, which I’m stoked about starting and reviewing...but I digress, again!)

The point in my bringing this quote up around Liza Lou is that her work created during her 40th year, 2009, Book of Days, leans conceptual.

Liza Lou. Book of Days, Paper and glass beads.

I say “leans,” because, to make an obvious (and unfair) comparison: viewing Book of Days, without context, versus viewing this Judy Chicago’s The Dinner Party, a monumental work with 39 place-settings dedicated to women in Western art history (which Chicago debuted her 40th year, read my blog post here), there is clear content beyond the media with the latter, where the former emphasizes the media. Of course, Dinner Party’s media is very important, and Book of Days does have content beyond the media; its just immediate objective response in comparison is content vs. media. Which, is what Chicago was referring to in her editorial.

My preference typically leans towards feminist art with immediate content impact; as evidenced in my posts on Carolee Schneemann and Wanda Ewing. I haven’t thought about Liza Lou in years; in fact, Ewing was the one to introduce me to her work when I made a series of self portraits using beads (see below). Notably Lou is known for this work, which I love, Kitchen:

Liza Lou: Kitchen, 1994 (c) Liza Lou

Kitchen is a full-scaled kitchen Lou covered, over a five year period, with glistening beads. Lou created this piece after researching the lives of 19th women and kitchen design; the made plans, crafted objects out of paper mâché, painted them, and applied the beads in a mosaic of surface pattern. This work, in Lou’s words, “argues for the dignity of labor”—a labor that here manifests as process and subject, and is linked to gender, since crafts and kitchen work are traditionally female domains.  Some of the popular branded kitchen products depicted also might  comment on American life. Of course I can make a comparison to Chicago’s The Dinner Party, too, using the dinner table/traditional feminine media (ceramics/quilting) to honor these typically deemed inferior media. Or pop art, of course. Lou’s stands on its own--less reverential --more playful, inviting, fun and even personal (Lou did it all herself whereas Chicago had 400+ volunteers; Lou dedicates this to the all-encompassing woman; Chicago to specific though broad reaching women); both with extremely detailed thought, research and planning. 

I didn’t mean for this to be a comparison of Chicago to Lou - but, it is how I’ve been thinking these last couple days--because, to bring it back to Lou’s Book of Days, this work can be viewed as more akin to minimalist work--one can guess what it means--a tall, stack of beaded forms depicting paper--beautiful, white, simple--maybe you think of other such minimalist works that make you aware of your environment such as Mary Corse’ White Inner Bands (2000) made of glass microspheres inside acrylic canvas. I imagine as you move around Lou’s stack of beaded objects, the beads sparkler or shimmer, femininizing the perhaps stale environment. Or perhaps think of the intense linework of Edwina Leapman. Like the laborous line-making of Leapman, so is the intricate beadwork of Lou.

As such, Book of Days, like Kitchen, points to labor, containment, and womanhood in a beautiful, perhaps more subtle way. To be sure, Book of Days includes 365 beaded sheets - the days in a year, completed her 40th year. Making literal cognitive and/or physical aging, perhaps? Perhaps....

Back to viewing it as an object - no context on the wall, no intent known. Is such work, sans clear feminist intent, feminist? Or would it just be meaningless work such as that Chicago points to in her article, lacking educational value?  It is, in fact, feminist regardless. A woman making work, taking up space, is, in itself, political and a feminist statement. As women have been left off the walls, books and pages of history the majority of time and still are underrepresented (minorities even more), anything a woman (broadly defined) makes and is on view, is feminist in itself, clearly evoking social justice intent, or not.

To be sure - I don’t know, but I think Chicago would agree. To note as well, much of her work has minimalist aesthetics, as her training was such.

Here are a few of my older works, made with beads, inspired by Liza Lou:

Sally Brown Deskins: Babylove, beads and yarn on silk, 2007

Sally Brown Deskins: Self portrait with beads, pastel on black paper, 2008

Sally Brown Deskins: Heidi Clock - beads and yarn on a clock (I wish I had a better photo of this - it was donated and sold at an auction at the Bemis Center in 2008 or 2009; the purchaser told me she thought it was the “most authentic clock in the room” (all of the art was clocks)

-Sally Brown Deskins

IG @sallery_art

~

Les Femmes Folles is a volunteer organization founded in 2011 with the mission to support and promote women in all forms, styles and levels of art from around the world with the online journal, print annuals, exhibitions and events; originally inspired by artist Wanda Ewing and her curated exhibit by the name Les Femmes Folles (Wild Women). LFF was created and is curated by Sally Brown Deskins.  LFF Books is a micro-feminist press that publishes 1-2 books per year by the creators of Les Femmes Folles including the award-winning Intimates & Fools (Laura Madeline Wiseman, 2014) , The Hunger of the Cheeky Sisters: Ten Tales (Laura Madeline Wiseman/Lauren Rinaldi, 2015 and Mes Predices (catalog of art/writing by Marie Peter Toltz, 2017). Other titles include Les Femmes Folles: The Women 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014, 2015 and 2016 available on blurb.com, including art, poetry and interview excerpts from women artists. A portion of the proceeds from LFF books and products benefit the University of Nebraska-Omaha’s Wanda Ewing Scholarship Fund.

Submissions always open!

https://femmesfollesnebraska.tumblr.com/callforart-writing

[brynsharrattbcu]

Research Document 1:

These artists are outlined within the Open Borders module guide and should assist me in gaining an insight into how to begin my practise.

George Shaw- Scenes From the Passion: Late

The image above depicts an array of run down garages some expose some still shots with nature and overgrowth reclaiming the space they once occupied. Utilising one point perspective the garages fade into the distance on the left upper quarter of the image and perhaps suggest a timeline of ageing. Shaw used enamel paint regularly found within ethics model kits which allowed him to generate stark contrast and depth within colour and shade; also great levels of detail within the rotting leaves on the ground and flecked paint of the garage doors.

The location isn’t specified but i believe it is inner city as the garage doors have graffiti on their face and the roofing seems to be sheet metal as opposed to roofing felt which would be used in garages located in the suburbs and further away from more deprived inner city locations.

I think Shaw has highlighted this detail of inner city as a way of describing the power of nature against the industrial power of the inner and central city. Being derelict has allowed the vegetation to reestablish itself atop the harsh concrete jungle cities often bring with them. The metamorphosis from useful to unclaimed back to natural is an interesting nuance i could add into my theme of work: showing nature is still the dominant force even though human nature is to overthrow any space we control.

Within his artist statement for the piece, Shaw actually reflects on this work as a memory of himself an the loss of his passion and flair for life. Shaw is the derelict garages and the memory of what they once were is him reminiscing of what used to be:

“I started to make these paintings out of a kind of mourning for the person I used to be: an enthusiastic, passionate teenager who read art books and novels and poems and biographies and watched films and TV and listened to music and dreamed. They are paintings of places that were familiar to me in my childhood and adolescence, places in which I found myself alone and thoughtful. They are places in which I forgot things. ... I paint the paintings of all the times and all the thoughts I lack the language to describe. For the one single moment that I can recall, I feel a dull sadness for the thousands I have forgotten.” (Artist Statement, 2002)

I do like Shaw’s work, having looked at his other Scenes from the Passion pieces, i like his consistent level of detail down the the grain of the mud and the copper colours of the leaves. I think they work very conceptually as in context it’s just a set of garages with bushes growing on them, but i do like to look onto works like this on a conceptual level. His use of enamel paint is also different to many things I’ve seen before, perhaps testing this material myself could give me an interesting medium I’ve never used before.

https://www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/shaw-scenes-from-the-passion-late

Nancy Holt- Sun Tunnels

Holt’s Sun Tunnels is a large scale sculptural instillation. Four large concrete tunnels are placed along the navigational points of the rising and setting sun on the summer or winter solstice. Cut through the wall in the upper half of each tunnel are holes, which form the constellations of Draco, Perseus, Columba and Capricorn; the diameter of the holes alter in relation to the scale of the stars that they correspond to. The holes cast spots of daylight in the dark interiors of the tunnels, which appear almost like stars.

The viewer’s perception of space and scale is questioned as the tunnels sit amongst an unquantifiable panoramic landscape. The tunnels when looked through allow parts of the landscape to become framed and come into focus acting as visual reference points; they extend the viewer visually into the landscape, opening up the perceived space: the pipes operate as a viewfinder. When stood inside of the tunnels, the work becomes enclosed and a frame is given to the landscape.

It is difficult to perceive Holt’s work from imagery, the space that these pipes operate in is something i have never seen before. I also really like the incorporation of astrology in her decision making, a very alternative factor in terms of thinking space and stars from 4 concrete cylinders. I have previously worked with concrete within another module of work and it is not easy to predict or transport so this piece really excites me.

Nancy Holt’s ambition for the piece was to engage people with the world around them and provide regular people with a space that brings them back to earth. Perhaps it could be the tunnels are anchor points for the human psyche. The drawback of this piece is that due to being located in the Great Basin Desert in northern Utah, it isn’t very accessible for the general public. Fortunately, Holt took regular photographs and documented a lot of changes that the piece went through to provide the whole populous with the information they wanted via the internet.

“l wanted to bring the vast space of the desert back to human scale. I had no desire to make a megalithic monument. The panoramic view of the landscape is too overwhelming to take in without visual reference points ... through the tunnels, parts of the landscape are framed and come into focus ... the work encloses surrounds....”

(Excerpted from Michelle Laflamme-Childs's press release on Nancy Holt’s Sightlines exhibition, held at SFAI in May-June 2012.)

In my own future work, i could definately take away an inference on mans effect on the natural landscape and the idea that we are all at risk of disconnecting ourselves from the world around us.

Jeremy Deller- Speak to the Earth

This is my first example of a community interaction programme. Interacting with the Klein Gardens in the city of Munster, Deller requested each allotment owner to depict their journey with their garden space ready to relay back to him at the Skulptur Projekte Münster. This is a gathering that occurs every 10 years between owners of the allotments and Dellers aim was to receive a 10 year journey in the form of journals or poems, drawings and cutouts to reflect on the time between each Projekte.

The interaction between human and nature almost parallels the works of Nancy Holt only Holt conveys a need to ground the human mid back to the Earth, whereas Deller is communicated an appreciation for the Earth and a special tie that these individuals have gained to each other and to the lands they work.

I really like this desire to convey the interaction of people and the Earth from Deller. I feel its almost like the piece isn’t the journals or momentos at the end of the 10 years, but is in fact the transition over this time period and the connection these people have with nature and the people around them subsequently. I would definately consider implementing this kind of strategy into my work, whereas the final piece isn’t the definitive outcome but is in fact the process of making the piece that defines the conclusion.

[morshtalon]

Shin Megami Tensei II

(Part 7 of the MegaTen thing)

WARNING: This review contains some moderate spoilers for SMT1 and 2! Read at your own risk!

At last! After two years and three games of questionable quality under their belt, Atlus finally decided to stop fooling around and got its shit together to develop a proper sequel to SMT1. Honestly, the time frame between Majin Tensei and SMT2 means they were probably developed concurrently. There were likely several teams working on these games and Majin Tensei just happened to have been finished first or something like that. Regardless, as one playing through the series in order, I was pleased after Majin Tensei was over, first because it was over, and second because the next title in line was Shin Megami Tensei II.

I was really looking forward to SMT2 at the time. I remember I was in my dentist grandfather’s home about 80 miles away from mine because a tooth restoration had gone somewhat awry and I needed a root canal. During the final moments of Majin Tensei, I had to deal with severe tooth pain, which only heightened the distress of the whole situation, but now - I thought - maybe my gaming experience of the day will alleviate the pain instead of making things worse.

As you boot up the game, you’re treated to a “no relation to real life persons” screen, which I found kind of funny. SMT2 is, in general, much less close to real life than SMT1 was, and no game so far concerned itself with the disclaimer, so I wonder what could have happened behind the scenes to warrant it here. I guess it was because of the intense religious symbolism and inspiration, much bigger than in any other game of the series so far, but I’m not 100% sure. Anyway, I found it interesting.

Anyway, once you get past that, some introductory exposition begins. The game takes place after the Neutral ending of SMT1, and during this cutscene, you are informed that a city, Tokyo Millenium, was built on the site of the ruins of the final dungeon in that game by member of the Messian church, the Law faction representatives of the series.

Of course, this means that the grip of the Messians reaches far in SMT2. Huge chunks of the plot are dedicated to things related to them, their methods, and their relation with Millenium itself. It’s pretty surreal to see a game from this franchise embrace such an overbearing anti-Law philosophy for major, obligatory bullet points in the script, and the whole time I kept thinking “the axis is still there, right? What could the Law path possibly even be about?” and thinking back to how this dynamic existed in SMT1. As I said in my review of that game, on some levels it was a bit arbitrary to select which side you wanted to join, and there were a lot of parallels between them that made the choices feel like they were just giving me an illusion of control. I’m really glad they decided to mature from that and offer a narrative that seems to directly challenge the notion of parallelism that was built in the first installment. Well, spoiler alert, even the Law path is a tad antiestablishment this time around - there’s really no way it couldn’t have been, given the ambitions of the story - and goes against the unrighteousness of the Messians behind Millenium’s stranger, more questionable happenings.

I will say though, it still doesn’t feel like there’s a lot of basic difference between law and chaos, but for different reasons this time around. There is definitely no parallels as to story significance here, but the goals of all alignment paths end up feeling pretty similar. I think the best way to illustrate my point is to note that SMT1 had 3 ways the final part of the game could go, depending on your alignment, but they were basically 2 mirrors of each other and you could either go one way for Law, the other way for Chaos, or both ways for Neutral. In this game, the conditions at which you reach the final point are pretty different (though Neutral feels extremely close to Chaos all the way through SMT2 and the end is no exception), but the final boss is always the same for all three alignments. It makes things a bit of an interesting experience and a definite change of pace from SMT1, but I can’t help but feel, way in the back of my mind, that this story… wasn’t supposed to have the SMT axis, you know? As I said, Neutral and Chaos are very similar and kind of work the same, while Law is basically the game coming up with excuses as to why the player engages in the same activities as the other two, but with different intentions. Frankly, I don’t really need alignment, particularly. I never thought it was an essential element of the series, so it didn’t truly bother me at all, and I mostly thought about this after having already finished playing. For those who might be expecting a more exciting, more philosophical clash of visions and well-developed ideologies, however, I’m afraid SMT2 still falls short of that. But hey, it’s still a commendable effort for 1994, and it feels a lot more adult than its peers at the time.

The plot itself, as is, is very enjoyable. Whereas 1 had a more episodic structure with clear events separating one part of the game from the next, 2 opts for a more continuous progression. There are still momentous events that break up the game and result in major landscape changes, but they’re not as prominent as the ones from the first game. Everything has a bit of a surreal tone to it, and it borrows far more from classic cyberpunk tropes than 1 did. While 1 eventually engages in a post-apocalyptic scenario, it’s more just an excuse to start putting in motion its more outlandish plot points regarding demons and the rising relevance of its fictional figures. 2 fully embraces its setting and extrapolates quite a lot on stuff that had been set up, tackling themes of classism and social discrimination through the tried-and-true methods of a city that’s divided into multiple sectors with a different quality of life and purpose for each of them, as well as several slum-like locales where you come across the people that fell victim to the injustice and cruelty of the governmental powers that be. It also expands quite a bit on the personalities of the different demon races. A new axis was properly established, Light vs. Dark, the axis of virtue, which for now doesn’t serve much of a gameplay purpose but possibly helped the devs more clearly visualize the roles of all the dozens of demon subfactions that exist in the game. Though there is still no shortage of human character-based interaction, a significant amount of time was dedicated to giving the demons themselves more of a persnality and inner quarrels between one another. These elements I described kind of interact with each other; there are some correlations between them and sometimes you have to use items acquired in a certain arc to progress in a different, mostly unrelated arc later on, but I feel like the interconnectivity of the game as a big picture thing could have been deeper.

On that note, we can go on to say that, while I felt like the characters in 1 had more permanence overall, sticking around for longer periods of time before something made the relevant cast rotate around, 2 feels more cyclical with them, making you stumble upon each of the relevant ones at a larger number of points in the storyline but keeping their appearances shorter in comparison. In my opinion, it’s preferrable that way, because old games like these tended to not really develop characters too much while they were with you, instead choosing to further their role in the story at select few moments, so with a larger number of them, a greater amount of interesting developments can occur. However, by the same note, it also feels like they were juggling more separate plot threads of their own as the player’s involvement switches between each faster than they did in 1, which mostly had a central focus for each of its “episodes”.

Even the protagonist himself, while still silent, receives some plot development of his own, perhaps a lesson learned from Last Bible 2 and Majin Tensei. His particular role and how it relates to the other relevant characters is actually one of the highlights of the plot, but I find it doesn’t pay off much in regards to the third act, besides possibly explaining his ability to take down hordes of powerful demons. It’s still interesting to witness though.

Speaking of hordes of demons, I find the game to be as easy as ever. This time, magic effect ammunition has been significantly nerfed, but now it kind of seems like most the time the enemies are just… not really threatening. The first proper arc of the game managed to kill me twice because it’s the beginning and the game has greater control of the circumstances before the huge amount of levels starts piling on and making build possibilities ever more variable. After that, though, the rest is a cakewalk. I’m not a particularly diligent demon recruiter, I didn’t go out of my way to farm for valuable equipment, I never found any sword fusion candidates worth my time, yet I still managed to blaze through the entire game with no problems whatsoever. I wish it had been more difficult, because SMT2 starts losing control of itself again and tossing ridiculosuly powerful - in lore terms - demons at you as you get close to the end. However, the simplicity and repeatability of attack strategies which prove reliable through the entire game means that, for the fifth time, that auto-battle option was put under quite a bit of use, even for these powerful guys. It took out some of the visceral, immersive quality that a properly set up, difficult enemy can have.

Still, I feel like this time, the interesting, juicy plot and the exploration factor kept me from being really bothered by the lack of difficulty. Things are much more streamlined than they were in 1 now. I will admit, conceptually I don’t appreciate the layout and presentation of the world map. As in SMT1, you’re represented by a blue spinning pointer thing, but everything around you is, as mentioned previously, sectioned off, and each section consists of a relatively short, linear walk through a bland, bluish cityscape with token building decorations that feel like you’re dragging your finger through a board game or a chalk drawing on the ground acting like that stands in for movement. It’s very artificial, and when you enter a battle in the world map, you can actually catch a glimpse of what the city looks like, with what seems to be some verticality and layers and quite a dense skyline. It’s the first glimpse in the entire series of a truly awe-inspiring, immersive setting. I wish it were like that all the way through.

Furthermore, first-person areas are as labyrinthine as ever, with maze-like designs with no regard for how it would actually translate to any real place, and a repeated texture that prevents the addition of decoration, flavor or personality. By 1994, it has started to get on my nerves, and it feels unbecoming of a story that, in my opinion, oozes personality on its own. They’re not boring, per se, as they interact nicely with the world map and with their own setpiece trigger tiles (a series staple at this point) to create a raw gameplay experience that feels stimulating as you work through to your next destination. There’s some enjoyment to be had in going really far in one direction, going out into the world map, then into a new area, then out through another exit, then into some other place and so on, progressing with no save point in sight and an ever dwindling supply of resources, getting more and more uncertain you’re even going the right way, until the game gives you some cutscene that confirms that you were doing the right thing all along. I’m glad that, even though there’s a new system in place that basically tells you whete you need to go, it’s still used in a way that leaves the player guessing the internal elements of the journey, and the game balances short bursts of activity and long treks in a satisfying way that kept things interesting from a gameplay perspective. There is an arc where you’re directly going after McGuffins, but I think it’s pulled of with some grace here; there’s a point to it, and once again the ways in which you collect them are an excuse for the designers to get a little cuter with their level design.

Speaking of which, one of the biggest draws for me is that SMT2 starts getting really quirky. Copyright protected versions of Beetlejuice and Michael Jackson make an appearance, there’s a silly reference to Berserk, you barge in on Belphegor sitting in his toilet and kill him while he takes a dump, some demons ask you if you’re gonna turn them into a bundle of experience points, you have to enter a dance contest and steal chameleon-esque robes from a nymph while she takes a shower… A lot of crazy, quirky, funny things happen that help elevate the game and the series’s personality quite a bit, and I feel like there’s a level of confidence and playfulness on the part of the designers, having put in so many things that can go against the somber tone of the narrative, that I can truly appreciate. It’s sort of the same balance of silly and mature/horrifying that would exist in Shadow Hearts a few years down the line, but I feel like SMT2 is much more careful and restrained about it, mostly relegating the silliness to short setpieces to spice up the progression, and it ends up better for it.

When I first heard about the Shin Megami Tensei series, working my way back from Persona 3 and researching some fundamental aspects of the mythos, as well as hearing about how good it all was, I formed a certain image in my mind. It wasn’t very tangible, but it was a high-expectations fueled idealization of what a game with this kind of potential could be like. So far, games in the series haven’t really been able to deliver on that so much. Shin Megami Tensei II is, I believe, the first one to take steps in the direction of this idealization. It plays a lot more with its tropes, it isn’t afraid of utilizing whichever established figure it had througout the series to make a little bit more of a philosophical point this time around, there’s development by the hands of the human characters, and by the end, it feels grand and satisfying. My rating for this game is a very appreciative 7.6 out of 10. Though the gameplay still needs work, I had a blast playing it and enjoying its wackiness and its more somber points on human relationships. They’re simplistic, yes, nothing compared to literary works presenting the same kinds of fundamental points, but in those, you can’t pump the devil’s face full of lead after a chinese turtle god cast tarukaja on you several times in a row so that your bullets come out with the world’s vengeance on their shoulders. If you’re a fan of old-school games, and would like to try out a more complete, more fully visualized old MegaTen story, I really think you should try this game. I liked it quite a bit.

[garywonghc]

Thoughts and the Environment

by Jetsunma Tenzin Palmo

The opening line of the Dhammapada states that everything is preceded by the mind, made up of mind. We live in a world of thought — everything which we perceive within and without depends on our awareness. Without that we are like a corpse. Thought is not restricted to just inside our bodies but radiates out in all directions, permeating and influencing our environment, everyone we meet and the very air we breath.

Some years ago I lived in the hills near to the medieval town of Assisi where, in the sacred sites long associated with St. Francis, despite the blatant commercialism and hordes of tourists, there is an almost palpable aura of spirituality which affects even casual visitors. On several occasions I have met with people who relate how, as simple travellers visiting Assisi on the way between Rome and Florence, quite unexpectedly they experienced intense feelings of peace, ecstasy or spiritual insight. These experiences sometimes altered the course of their lives.

Likewise many seek the sanctuary of certain churches or temples which seem to radiate peace and holiness. Throughout the ages in all countries people have sought the company of saints and sages, because just to be in their presence brings blessings and a sense of peace, even if they never say a word. The grace is beyond our conceptual mind to grasp and is something experienced on a much deeper level of our being which can be known but not expressed.

In contrast when one visits Auschwitz it is not necessary to know its dreadful history in order to feel overwhelmed by the heaviness and despair that permeate the atmosphere. Who has not experienced walking into a room where there has been great sorrow and being swept by a sense of oppression.

Since the time of the Buddha it has been a traditional practice to send thoughts of loving kindness (maitri) throughout the universe to all sentient beings wishing that they may be well and happy. “Sentient beings” means any creature with consciousness whether visible or unseen. Visible creatures includes not just humans but all types of animals that live on or under the earth, in the sky or in the oceans and rivers. It also includes the insect kingdom. Unseen creatures means inhabitants of the various heavenly realms, hell realms, ghost realms and nature spirits and so forth.

So when we send out thoughts of loving kindness we are including all the beings on this planet and then outwards to encompass all the inhabitants of other planets and other realms of existence. In this classification plant life is not included although nature spirits are. This is because traditionally plants were not considered to have consciousness. However it seems that plants do respond to thoughts and words. Plants flourish under loving care in an environment where thoughts of love and nurturing are directed to them or one speaks to them nicely, and in the same fashion they will wither or grow in a sickly manner where they receive angry thoughts or harsh words. However whether this is the plant itself reacting or the spirit attendant on it, would be difficult to say.

From a Mahayana Buddhist perspective ultimately everything which we experience both within us and outside, is an expression of our mind. This means that we can know nothing except through the mind. Everything which we perceive through our senses — eyes, nose, ears, tongue, body and mind itself — depends on consciousness. For example the eye organ perceives an object which is received through the eye consciousness and interpreted through the mind. Where there is no consciousness there is no perception. This includes the sixth sense of mind itself with its thoughts, memories, concepts, emotions and the endless play of our inner world.

Apart from this interaction of senses, their object and consciousness nothing can be known, so we see how very subjective our relationship with the exterior universe actually is. In addition everyone has experienced how mood swings seem to alter the world around us. We are feeling depressed and everything seems grey and heavy. We fall in love and the gloomiest day is bathed in sunshine.

If we are in fact swimming in a world of mental energy, then it makes sense to see that this energy is as positive as possible. Negative thought forms will evoke a negative response both within us and without. This has practical repercussions as we can see in our world today which is so dedicated to the cultivation of the three poisonous attitudes of greed, ill will and confusion. Since our intentions are at the root of our actions, an action motivated by greed and selfishness is not likely to bring about peace and harmony. Man’s greed and rapaciousness, conjoined with a basic lack of foresight or responsibility, has resulted in the tragic plight of our constant wars and conflicts, devastated environment and the wild imbalances in weather conditions and so forth. These disasters originated in our untamed minds. According to ancient Indian thought, the natural world, including crops, weather, livestock etc., flourish when the people live in harmony and keep basic ethical conduct. Diseases, droughts, floods and other disasters will increase where the morality of the inhabitants has broken down and natural laws are no longer respected.

Sometimes the present world seems drenched in darkness and ignorance, given over to self-gratification and self-absorption (even in the so-called “spiritual” circles) and never was the need for genuine wisdom and what His Holiness the Dalai Lama calls Universal Responsibility more urgent. In this darkness even a small light can shine a long way. Our thoughts do influence the environment for good or ill. Therefore it is up to us to see that at least our contribution is positive. One person can affect so many and accomplish so much. Each of us in our own way has the responsibility to uplift our surroundings and whomsoever we have contact with. No one can do it for us. If we each try to sincerely develop a good heart then everything partakes of the benefit.

Therefore, since we live within the kingdom of the mind, it makes sense to create therein a peaceful and harmonious realm. If we want to bring happiness to ourselves and others we must start from where we are. A well-tamed mind brings happiness and an untamed mind brings sorrow and chaos. It is as simple as that. Ultimately the choice is our own.

[somapancakes]

Forgiveness

Philosophy Assignment SEM2 :- Justification, excuse or acceptance? An exploration of the conceptual difficulties in finding a satisfactory definition of forgiveness.

Forgiveness is a term that we use in everyday conversation, assuming that we know what it means. However, forgiveness is a strange concept. It is one of those subjects which you think isn’t puzzling at all, but when you a start to conceptualise of it in a philosophical manner, it becomes more and more confusing, until you get to the point where you’re wondering how anyone could ever make sense of it at all. Trudy Govier defines forgiveness as that which is concerned with the inner emotional state of the person who has been wronged, and as that which requires a relinquishing of any feelings of resentment towards the wrongdoer. The Oxford Dictionary similarly defines it as when a person stops feeling angry or resentful towards (someone) for an offence, flaw or mistake. John Austin, analyses the concept of forgiveness as a verbal gesture, in what Austin explains as “performative speech”, whilst Jeffrie Murphy explains how forgiveness can be seen as a quasi-legal matter of forgoing retribution, or protesting the claim made against a person by proclaiming that they have a “right” to press charges. Gerrard and Mcnaughton imply that forgiveness is something to do with finding an appropriate response to an act of wrongdoing, and Theologian David Augsburger had to use 27 propositions to try and express his definition of forgiveness. Evidently, the content found within the concept of forgiveness is of inexhaustible richness, thus it seems fitting to say that it is a notion which does not conduct itself in a definite manner, and raises significant questions about the way we deal with acts of wrongdoing regarding both the individual and society as a whole. ​So what is it about forgiveness that makes a definitive definition so hard to find? It seems that it is because the concept itself is very puzzling. There seems to be two things that facilitate this puzzle. The first is that we really need to take seriously the fact that forgiveness is distinct from justifying, excusing, and accepting. Often in daily life, when we think we are forgiving someone, we are failing to distinguish between these three concepts and what it really means to forgive. Thus in reality we, are either excusing, justifying or accepting the wrongdoers harmful act, not forgiving it. So then, it seems that forgiveness is essentially about seeing the wrong as neither justifiable, excusable, nor acceptable and yet - it is still something that can’t, or rather, shouldn’t, really be held against someone - which in itself is confusing. So, it seems that what the important part here is, is that forgiveness is to do with coming to the realisation that you can’t hold something against someone. If this is true then it seems that it is found within a space where blame makes sense and it is difficult to understand why we need forgiveness if we take it out of the context of blame. ​The second thing that seems to be driving the puzzle of forgiveness is linked to the idea of blame, and the appropriateness of it. This idea seems to be an important factor when discussing forgiveness, as people sometimes say - wouldn’t the world be a nicer place if nobody ever got angry or blamed anybody - some would say that these kind of feelings are what makes us human, not to mention the fact that they aren’t always under our conscious control. Allais thinks that related to this idea of blame being appropriate is the idea that certain types of emotional responses - like resentment - can also be appropriate. The key thing to note here is that now we are saying that emotions have content. Philosophers refer to this an intentional content, meaning that there is a way in which an emotion presents its object as being - which in any case can be either appropriate or intelligible, disproportionate or unintelligible. But it seems that forgiveness starts at a point where the emotional response of resentment is warranted or appropriate. Now, depending on the circumstances, resentment may or may not be appropriate. However, it seems generally agreeable that - to be eaten up with resentment is not desirable, and forgiveness is a way of escaping that because it is good for your own mental health. Trudy Govier suggest that mental hygiene is important when talking about forgiveness, suggesting that she who forgives, is allowing both herself and the wrongdoer to be released from undesirable feelings like resentment and guilt, adding that forgiveness is necessary for sane and compassionate ethics. Furthermore, she asserts that “to forgive is to overcome the anger and resentment felt in response to that which was wrong”. However, her point here seems unfinished in that doesn’t explain what she thinks the actual experience of internally forgiving is like; “to overcome anger and resentment” - Ok, but how does this happen? She talks about trust, and that for an offender to accept forgiveness, they must trust that it is forgiveness that they’re being offered, but this too seems to be only partly explained. She does however acknowledge the fact that forgiveness comes in multiple forms and arises from a multitude of different experiences, and when she expresses the idea that forgiveness is not performative in the same way that giving someone a promise is - she touches on what forgiveness is not. So, focusing on this idea that forgiveness is to overcome feelings like anger and resentment, is there a way of ceasing to resent that does not require forgiveness? Well, suppose someone says to the person who wronged them - I’m not angry at you and I don’t resent you, but I will never be able to forget what you have done and I will never see you in the same way again. It would be hard to then say that this person has forgiven, but it seems they have overcome any feelings of resentment or hostility to the offender. So it seems from, this point of view, that the idea of forgiving for the sake of one’s mental health isn’t really what forgiveness is, which brings us back to the puzzle of forgiveness because we begin to see all of these things that are kind of in the vicinity of forgiveness but aren’t exactly the same thing. An important thing to acknowledge, and something which further complicates this discussion, is that there is a tremendous scope of circumstances in which the need for forgiveness arises. This begins at trivial mishaps like forgiving someone who is late for dinner, to the most horrendous of crimes like forgiving someone for murdering your mother or father. The range of forgiveness seems, in part, to be dependant upon the relationship one has with the offender/s. It isn’t just something that happens in interpersonal relationships, but also in international relationships and within society in regarding the rulers and the ruled. Louis Newman suggests that forgiveness differs considerably when offending parties know each other. He goes on to say that a discussion on forgiveness must take into consideration all of these circumstances, with reference also to forgiving someone who has died, someone who is anonymous, and also in the case where someone must forgive themselves. Newman also mentions that the notion of forgiveness as a gift to oneself in itself confuses the overall purpose of forgiveness. He thinks this is because even though there are desirable emotional benefits for she who forgives, it must be done first and foremost as a response to, and for, the benefit of the offender if forgiveness is to have any moral meaning. What he seems to be highlighting here is that there are some acts that look like forgiveness, in a moral sense, but are really nothing of the sort. For example if one forgives for the sake of oneself and not for the sake of the offender, it would seem that this would be driven by selfish needs - obviously this is debatable - where do we draw the line between being selfish and having self respect? as the offence which caused the need for forgiveness in the first place may have been driven by selfishness, as Margaret Holmgren would seem to agree with, requires a certain amount of self respect for the offended to forgive. Newman continues by mentioning the fact that “forgiveness is not an all or nothing proposition”, and that it should not be confused with reconciliation. He acknowledges the reality that there are cases where forgiveness can bring about a deeper and more meaningful relationship between people, but there are also cases where forgiveness just brings a relationship back to as it were before the wrongdoing. Here we can see that there is no deep reconcile, but rather a transformation of feelings from hostility and resentment to agreeing to treat each other with respect. ​Obviously this ‘transformation of feelings’ is a long and complicated process, one which differs considerably between each circumstance of wrongdoing where forgiveness is appropriate. Sometimes there are cases in which the victim of serious wrongdoing requires a considerable amount of time to even begin the process of forgiveness, which leads us to the idea that if one is to forgive too hastily, as David Novitz mentions, it could be an indication of lack of self-respect or servility. Many other philosophers and theologians seem to agree with this view, as Jeffrie Murphy, Joram Haber and Pamela Hieronymi all hold that “forgiveness may be incompatible with self respect, because by forgiving we acquiesce in, or at least fail to protest, the claim implicit in the act of wrongdoing that disparages our worth”. In Immanuel Kant’s Lectures on Ethics, he suggests that a person who doesn’t become angry in the fact of wrongdoing lacks dignity. Aristotle thinks he who fails to respond to wrongdoing with the appropriate amount of anger, as he says in Nicomachean Ethics, is a fool, and since David Hume thinks that feelings like anger and hatred are “inherent in our very frame and constitution” he asserts that one who lacks such feelings exhibits a sign of “weakness and imbecility”. Margaret Holmgren however, differs from this view by saying that an attitude of genuine forgiveness towards an unrepentant offender is fully compatible with a victim’s self respect. This seems pretty understandable and it seems that generally a lot of people would agree, however what she finishes this statement with is the more controversial part - where an attitude of resentment is not. She thinks that if a victim opts an attitude of resentment in order to express that the wrongdoing was indeed wrong, she’s allowing the offender “too much power and importance,” thus failing to asses her own worth and not allowing herself sufficient importance. Firstly it seems that we need to make clear that Holmgren isn’t saying that there’s anything morally wrong with being resentful at some point, as Haber would seem to agree by saying that negative feelings such as resentment are not only natural but sometimes called for as an expression of aversion to mistreatment. However, what Holmgren is saying, is that in the long term, an attitude of resentment is not really compatible with self-respect, respect for others, or respect for moral value (whatever that may mean). So, what reasons does she give for this? Well, one way to look at what resentment does is implied by Murphy when he says “the message, I count, and you do not, and I may use you as a mere thing…”, this seems to be saying that we should perhaps view resentment as a sort of protest - a protest against the message that was communicated through whatever the harmful act was, namely, that you don’t matter too much. But Holmgren doesn’t think that this is quite how it works, because if resentment is sort of this feeling that you need to protest against the way a person treated you, and also to protest the estimation of your value as implied by that treatment, then it would seem that to protest the claim you slightly believe it to be true. Whereas if you simply don’t believe it, and have come to a point where you have completely regained your sense of self worth, then you no longer need to be resentful and if you are, then it seems like you’re still feeling like you need to protest. Holmgren thinks that once the offended party has come to properly address the wrong however, she will just know that she has moral worth, equal status to everyone else and deserves respect because; she knows now that the act was wrong and also why it was wrong, thus, if she respects herself she will trust her judgement and the actions of the wrongdoer won’t affect her. She will understand the wrongdoers “confusing actions” as opposed to reacting to them - thus distinguishing her status independently of his wrong behaviours. What also may play a part here is whether or not you value that person’s estimation of your value. Or whether it has the effect of affecting your own estimation of yourself. For example, if you feel the need to protest something, it implies that you feel that your character has been threatened, whereas if you believe in yourself and truly thought you were a good person, you would just say, well that’s not true and then move on. Bishop Joseph Butler suggested that this is like an inward witness to our sense of right, wrong and justice, whereas Holmgren seems to be saying that it is an indication of our vulnerability. The converse side of this is then, that once you have come to sense your own worth, and have a restored sense of your value, then, Holmgren thinks, there is no reason not to forgive, as “an attitude of forgiveness incorporates both a fundamental respect for the offender as a moral agent and a sincere desire that he will grow and flourish as a person”. This idea is also interesting as forgiveness could also be represented as that which encourages human flourishing, because if it’s true that letting go of resentful feelings is a good thing, it implies we should strive to achieve it because it is just that - good for us collectively. So, as we can see, finding a conceptually satisfying definition of forgiveness has proven extremely problematic; not merely because it is an idea which has a tremendous amount of scope within it, but also because it seems like every instance of it is different in some way. It seems that from the ideas discussed above, the key thing to note is that whatever forgiveness may be, it most definitely is not, and should not, ever be mistaken for justification, excuse or acceptance. This is because the consequences of not being able to properly partake in the process of forgiveness are too dangerous, and can sometimes produce far more sinister and irreversible problems for the victim.

[ephyml]

Mindfulness in Plain English #3

Practical rules for application in Meditation

Don’t expect anything. Just sit back and see what happens. Treat the whole thing as an experiment. Take an active interest in the test itself, but don’t get distracted by your expectations about the results. For that matter, don’t be anxious for any result whatsoever. Let the meditation move along at its own speed in its own direction. Let the meditation teach you. Meditative awareness seeks to see reality exactly as it is. Whether that corresponds to our expectations or not, it does require a temporary suspension of all our preconceptions and ideas. We must store our images, opinions, and interpretations out of the way for the duration of the session. Otherwise we will stumble over them.

Don’t strain. Don’t force anything or make grand, exaggerated efforts. Meditation is not aggressive. There is no place or need for violent striving. Just let your effort be relaxed and steady.

Don’t rush. There is no hurry, so take your time. Settle yourself on a cushion and sit as though you have the whole day. Anything really valuable takes time to develop. Patience, patience, patience.

Don’t cling to anything, and don’t reject anything. Let come what comes, and accommodate yourself to that, whatever it is. If good mental images arise, that is fine. If bad mental images arise, that is fine, too. Look on all of it as equal, and make yourself comfortable with whatever happens. Don’t fight with what you experience, just observe it mindfully.

Let go. Learn to flow with all changes that come up. Loosen up and relax.

Accept everything that arises. Accept your feelings, even the ones you wish you did not have. Accept your experiences, even the ones you hate. Don’t condemn yourself for having human flaws and failings. Learn to see all phenomena in the mind as being perfectly natural and understandable. Try to exercise a disinterested acceptance at all times with respect to everything you experience.

Be gentle with yourself. Be kind to yourself. You may not be perfect, but you are all you’ve got to work with. The process of becoming who you will be begins first with the total acceptance of who you are.

Investigate yourself. Question everything. Take nothing for granted. Don’t believe anything because it sounds pious and some holy man said it. See for yourself. That does not mean that you should be cynical, impudent, or irreverent. It means you should be empirical. Subject all statements to the actual test of your own experience, and let the results be your guide to truth. Insight meditation evolves out of an inner longing to wake up to what is real and to gain liberating insight into the true structure of existence. The entire practice hinges upon this desire to be awake to the truth. Without it, the practice is superficial.

View all problems as challenges. Look upon negativities that arise as opportunities to learn and to grow. Don’t run from them, condemn yourself, or bury your burden in saintly silence. You have a problem? Great. More grist for the mill. Rejoice, dive in, and investigate.

Don’t ponder. You don’t need to figure everything out. Discursive thinking won’t free you from the trap. In meditation, the mind is purified naturally by mindfulness, by wordless bare attention. Habitual deliberation is not necessary to eliminate those things that are keeping you in bondage. All that is necessary is a clear, non-conceptual perception of what they are and how they work. That alone is sufficient to dissolve them. Concepts and reasoning just get in the way. Don’t think. See.

Don’t dwell upon contrasts. Differences do exist between people, but dwelling upon them is a dangerous process. Unless carefully handled, this leads directly to egotism. Ordinary human thinking is full of greed, jealousy, and pride. A man seeing another man on the street may immediately think, “He is better looking than I am.” The instant result is envy or shame. A girl seeing another girl may think, “I am prettier than she is.” The instant result is pride. This sort of comparison is a mental habit, and it leads directly to ill feeling of one sort or another: greed, envy, pride, jealousy, or hatred. It is an unskillful mental state, but we do it all the time. We compare our looks with others, our success, accomplishments, wealth, possessions, or IQ, and all of this leads to the same state-estrangement, barriers between people, and ill feeling. The meditator’s job is to cancel this unskillful habit by examining it thoroughly, and then replacing it with another. Rather than noticing the differences between oneself and others, the meditator trains him or herself to notice the similarities. She centers her attention on those factors that are universal to all life, things that will move her closer to others. Then her comparisons, if any, lead to feelings of kinship rather than of estrangement. 

The essence of universality: When we as meditators perceive any sensory object, we are not to dwell upon it in the ordinary egoistic way. We should rather examine the very process of perception itself. We should watch what that object does to our senses and our perception. We should watch the feelings that arise and the mental activities that follow. We should note the changes that occur in our own consciousness as a result. In watching all these phenomena, we must be aware of the universality of what we are seeing. The initial perception will spark pleasant, unpleasant, or neutral feelings. That is a universal phenomenon, occurring in the minds of others just as it does in our own, and we should see that clearly. By following these feelings various reactions may arise. We may feel greed, lust, or jealousy. We may feel fear, worry, restlessness, or boredom. These reactions are also universal. We should simply note them and then generalize. We should realize that these reactions are normal human responses, and can arise in anybody.

The practice of this style of comparison may feel forced and artificial at first, but it is no less natural than what we ordinarily do. It is merely unfamiliar. With practice, this habit pattern replaces our normal habit of egoistic comparison and feels far more natural in the long run. We become very understanding people as a result. We no longer get upset by the “failings” of others. We progress toward harmony with all life.

What it means to see things as they really are: Seeing things as they are in themselves, with wisdom. Seeing with wisdom means seeing things within the framework of our body-mind complex without prejudices or biases that spring from greed, hatred, and delusion. Ordinarily, when we watch the working of our body-mind complex, we tend to ignore things that are not pleasant to us and hold onto the things that are. This is because our minds are generally influenced by desire, resentment, and delusion. Our ego, self, or opinions get in our way and color our judgement.

As an example, we sit comfortably. After a while, there can arise some uncomfortable feeling in our back or our legs. Our mind immediately experiences that discomfort and forms numerous thoughts around the feeling. At that point, without confusing the feeling with the mental formations, we should isolate the feeling as feeling and watch it mindfully. Feeling is one of the seven universal mental factors. The other six are contact, perception, attention, concentration, life force, and volition. Other times, a certain emotion, such as resentment, fear, or lust, may arise. During these times we should watch the emotion exactly as it is, without confusing it with anything else. When we bundle our aggregates of form, feeling, perceptions, mental formations, and consciousness into one and regard all of them as a feeling, we get confused because the source of the feeling becomes obscured. If we simply dwell upon the feeling without separating it from other mental factors, our realization of truth becomes very difficult. 

If we mindfully investigate our own mind, we will discover bitter truths about ourselves: for example, that we are selfish; we are egocentric; we are attached to our ego; we hold on to our opinions; we think we are right and everybody else is wrong; we are prejudiced; we are biased; and at the bottom of all of this, we do not really love ourselves. This discovery, though bitter, is a most rewarding experience. And in the long run, this discovery delivers us from deeply rooted psychological and spiritual suffering.

We all have blind spots. The other person is our mirror in which we see our faults with wisdom. We should consider the person who shows our shortcomings as one who excavates a hidden treasure of which we were unaware, since it is by knowing the existence of our deficiencies that we can improve ourselves. Improving ourselves is the unswerving path to the perfection that is our goal in life. Before we try to surmount our defects, we should know what they are. Then, and only then, by overcoming these weaknesses, we can cultivate noble qualities hidden in our subconscious mind. 

Practice:

Once you sit, do not change the position again until the end of the time you determined at the beginning. Suppose you change your original position because it is uncomfortable, and assume another position. What happens after awhile is that the new position becomes uncomfortable. Then you want another and after a while it, too, becomes uncomfortable. 

Make your concentration exclusively to breathing. Simply notice the feeling of your inhaling and exhaling breath as it goes in and out right at the rims of your nostrils.

Nice analogy - Farmer Smile

Suppose there is a farmer who uses buffaloes for plowing his rice field. As he is tired in the middle of the day, he unfastens his buffaloes and takes a rest under the cool shade of a tree. When he wakes up, he does not find his animals. He does not worry, but simply walks to the water place where all the animals gather for drinking in the hot midday and he finds his buffaloes there. Without any problem he brings them back and ties them to the yoke again and starts plowing his field.

As you keep your mind focused on the rims of your nostrils, you will be able to notice the sign of the development of meditation. you will feel the pleasant sensation of a sign. Different meditators experience this differently. It will be like a star, or a round gem, or a round pearl, or a cotton seed, or a peg made of heartwood, or a long string, or a wreath of flowers, or a puff of smoke, or a cobweb, or a film of cloud, or a lotus flower, or the disc of the moond, or the disc of the sun.

Earlier in your practice you had inhaling and exhaling as objects of meditation. Now you have the sign as the third object of meditation. When you focus your mind on this third object, your mind reaches a stage of concentration sufficient for your practice of insight meditation. This sign is strongly present at the rims of the nostrils. Master it and gain full control of it so that whatever you want, it should be available. Unite the mind with this sign that is available in the present moment and let the mind flow with every succeeding moment. As you pay bare attention to it, you will see that the sign itself is changing every moment. Keep your mind with the changing moments. Also, notice that your mind can be concentrated only on the present moment. This unity of the mind with the present moment is called momentary concentration. As moments are incessantly passing away one after another, the mind keeps pace with them, changing with them, appearing and disappearing with them without clinging to any of them. If we try to stop the mind at one moment, we end up in frustration because the mind cannot be held fast. It must keep up with what is happening in the new moment. As the present moment can be found any moment, every waking moment can be made a concentrated moment.

As your mindfulness develops, your resentment for the change, your dislike for the unpleasant experiences, your greed for the pleasant experiences, and the notion of selfhood will be replaced by the deeper awareness of impermanence, unsatisfactoriness, and selflessness. This knowledge of reality in your experience helps you to foster a more calm, peaceful, and mature attitude toward your life. You will see what you thought in the past to be permanent is changing with such inconceivable rapidity that even your mind cannot keep up with these changes. Somehow you will be able to notice many of these changes. You will see the subtlety of impermanence and the subtlety of selflessness. This insight will show you the way to peace and happiness, and will give you the wisdom to handle your daily problems in life.

5 7 / 1 9 6

[bluewatsons]

Gerda Reith, Consumption and its Discontents: Addiction, Identity and the Problems of Freedom, 55 British J Sociology 283 (2004)

Abstract

The focus of this paper is on the notion of ‘addictive consumption’, conceived as a set of discourses that are embedded within wider socio-historical processes of governance and control. It examines the discursive convergences and conflicts between practices of consumption and notions of addiction, which it notes are consistently represented in terms of the oppositional categories of self-control vs. compulsion and freedom vs. determinism. These interrelations are explored with reference to the development of notions of addiction, and their relation to shifting configurations of identity, subjectivity and governance.

Finally, it suggests that the notion of ‘addiction’ has particular valence in advanced liberal societies, where an unprecedented emphasis on the values of freedom, autonomy and choice not only encourage the conditions for its proliferation into ever wider areas of social life, but also reveal deep tensions within the ideology of consumerism itself.

‘Every age develops its own peculiar forms of pathology, which express in exaggerated form, its underlying character structure’ (Christopher Lasch 1979: 41)

1. Introduction

The focus of this paper is on the development of a paradox within affluent western consumer societies, whereby the values of freedom, autonomy and choice associated with the spread of consumerism have been accompanied by the emergence of an oppositional set of discourses concerned with a vitiation of freedom, an undermining of agency, and a lack of choice, and characterized by the expansion of myriad so-called ‘addictive’ states. In this context, the paper aims to examine the processes involved in the ‘pathologizing’ of increas- ing forms of consumption – from substances like drugs and alcohol, to activi- ties like gambling and shopping – as well as the corresponding proliferation of various ‘addict identities’, that has occurred during the last few decades.

In his essay, ‘Civilisation and its Discontents’ (1985 [1930]), Freud wrote that civilization is created through restraint – is ‘built up upon a renunciation of instinct’ – and this is also the source of tension; of its discontents. The argu- ment here is that today, such concerns are articulated in terms of consump- tion and their interaction with oppositional discourses of addiction. It is suggested that ideas about ‘addiction’ or ‘pathology’ are actually cyphers for concerns about issues of control – whether of individuals, or wider social groups – that are part of a dynamic process located within a matrix of socio- economic relations of power and governance, and within which particular con- figurations of identity and subjectivity are embedded.

It is argued that the construction of discourses of ‘addiction’ and the creation of ‘addict identities’ is part of a process that has been described by Foucault as the ‘constitution of subjects’, whereby the intersection of various forms of power, knowledge and authority create new ways of con- ceiving and ‘thinking of’ types of person. Beginning around the nineteenth century, such processes have involved new ways of critically conceptualizing consumers, as well as new ways of shaping and controlling patterns of consumption.

Initially, the figure of the addict was constructed as the outcome of an interaction between the properties of specific substances, regarded as dangerous and powerful, and the consumption patterns of certain disruptive social groups. However, along with the development of new techniques of governance associated with the shift to post industrial, neo-liberal societies, ‘addict identities’ have increasingly come to be defined in terms of subjective, individual evaluations of a loss of control. As its subject has shifted from the group to the individual, the potential field of addiction itself has expanded to include an increasingly large range of commodities and experiences that ever-wider sections of the population fear undermines their sense of personal agency, and threatens their very freedom as consumers.

These ‘consumer pathologies’ proliferate within wider discourses of addiction, which tend to be defined in terms that are oppositional to the core neoliberal values of freedom, autonomy and choice, and in this status as ‘the other’, reveal the deep tensions that exist within contemporary practices and discourses of consumption, governance and freedom themselves.

Over the following pages, this article attempts to examine these relationships by outlining a genealogy of ‘addictive consumption’, which, due to the breadth of its subject matter and the constraints of space, is put forward more as a suggestive interpretation than as an analytical critique of the material covered.

2. Free to choose?

During the period of late modernity, practices and discourses of consumption have become increasingly central throughout the affluent societies of the West. This is especially the case in the political and economic formations of neo- liberalism, where issues of freedom and control, and identity and subjectivity coalesce in very specific ways.

In these formations, consumption tends to be presented as a creative, sym- bolic force that plays a crucial role in shaping identity into what Anthony Giddens (1991) calls a ‘narrative of the self’. With an increasing number of commodities and lifestyles on offer, identity comes to be defined as a fluid con- struct rather than an essential, core category, and one whose formation is a matter of personal choice: as Ewen and Ewen (1982: 250) put it, today, there are ‘no rules only choices . . . Everyone can be anyone’.

This ideal of fluid identity is founded on the premise of freedom – the supreme political, even ethical, ideology of western societies – at least in the politics of neo-liberalism, as exemplified in Milton Friedman’s (1980) famous shibboleth ‘free to choose’. As well as being central, neo-liberal conceptions and practices of freedom are also distinctly ambivalent. Not only is freedom desirable, it is also an obligation, since it is through the exercise of freedom that individuals not only realize themselves, but also govern themselves. Such ‘government through freedom’ (Rose 1999: xxiii) is carried out largely through consumption, for as Rose notes, the same forces that de-legitimize public ‘interference’ in private life also expose the individual to a variety of new regulatory forms – namely those of the marketplace. Today, citizenship is demonstrated ‘through the free exercise of personal choice among a variety of marketed options’ (Rose 1999: 230).

In the face of ambivalent liberal practices and conceptions of freedom, con- sumers are presented with a paradox: on the one hand, they are, indeed, ‘free to chose’: to carve out a lifestyle and identity from the marketed options available, but on the other, they are also obliged to subjugate aspects of themselves, to mould their subjective states and inner desires in accordance with cultural norms and social institutions. We shall return to the implications of this dichotomy later in the paper. For now, we can note the association of such a conflict with aspects of what Daniel Bell (1976) first described as the ‘cultural contradictions of capitalism’ – the opposition between the values of asceticism and control, associated with the protestant work ethic, and those of a consumerist ethic based on hedonism and instant gratification.1 The need to balance these becomes increasingly difficult as the dynamic of consumer capitalism proliferates on a global scale, and as conspicuous consumption and self-fulfilment increasingly become elevated to the status of individual ‘rights’.

3. Discourse(s) of ‘addiction’

The argument here is that in modern society this tension is expressed through the interaction and convergence of practices of consumption with discourses of ‘addiction’. The notion of addiction is a complex one. From its roots in Roman Law, where it denoted some kind of enslavement: ‘A surrender, or dedication, of any one to a master’ (Oxford English Dictionary [OED] 1991), it has come to assume a variety of meanings across various disciplines. In medi- cine, for example, it denotes physiological dependence (Peele 1985); legally, it is discussed in terms of mental illness which relieves afflicted individuals of responsibility for their actions (Rose 1986), while popular beliefs and media representations tend to be made up of a complex of moral, medical and mytho- logical configurations, sometimes regarding addicts as helpless victims, some- times criminals or lunatics, or simply distinct ‘types’ of person. It is not the intention of this paper to engage with these heterogeneous interpretations, nor with discussions of the material and physical factors associated with addiction. Rather, it attempts to transcend them and instead consider addiction in terms of a set of discourses that are embedded in socio-historical formations and caught up in particular relations of power and knowledge. In this sense, it is regarded as a discursive device that transmits the notion of disordered con- sumption, and that articulates a sense of loss of control; a subordination of personal agency to some external or unwilled mechanism.

This kind of configuration is defined in opposition to the core values of neo- liberalism. The notion of addiction turns the sovereign consumer on its head, transforming freedom into determinism and desire into need. Rather than consuming to realize the self, in the state of addiction, the individual is con- sumed by consumption; the self destroyed. Whereas the consumer chooses to act, addicts are forced to do so. Now, there are no choices, only rules. Here, we return to the etymological root of ‘consumption’ – from the Latin con sumere: ‘to devour, waste, destroy’ (OED 2001), which alerts us to its dual nature – its destructive, enslaving potential, as well as its creative possibilities.

This image of ‘addiction’ is underpinned by what can be described as a deification of the commodity, whereby a substance – usually described as a ‘drug’ (or, increasingly, an experience, described as ‘drug-like’) – is attributed with influential powers – no less than the ability to overwhelm the sovereign individual and transform them into something else entirely – an addict. As the bearer of these ‘addictive’ properties, the commodity appears to take on a demonic life of its own, and swallows up everything – reason, volition and autonomy – it comes into contact with.

A useful point of departure here can be found in Marx’s deconstruction of the commodity. In Volume One of Capital, he explains how its fetishization as an inherently valuable natural object actually conceals the social relations that create it. He begins his analysis of capitalism with an analysis of the commodity which, he writes, is a mysterious thing ‘abounding in metaphysical subtleties and theological niceties’ and surrounded by ‘magic and necromancy’ (Marx 1976: 163, 169). Although commodities only embody the objectified labour of workers, value is actually ascribed to them as things, and it is this that ‘transforms every product of labour into a social hieroglyphic’ (Marx 1976: 167). Marx describes this transformation as ‘fetishism’ – the process whereby the social relations congealed within the commodity form appear as a relation between things. The transformative power is taken a step further when commodities actually appear to assume an autonomous power, and come to dominate the workers themselves.

We can recognize a similarly transformative power in the commodities involved in the discourse of addiction; and in fact, Derrida (1993) has already argued that the ‘fetishism of [drug] addiction’ exists only in a rhetorical sense; not as a ‘real’ feature of the world, but rather as a part of a complex of cultural norms and structural relations. In a similar vein, it is being suggested here that, just as the general commodity form mystifies human relations, so the specific commodities that are caught up in discourses of addiction also conceal wider social relations.

The aim here is to try to untangle some of the complex social forms that the consumption of commodities conceals, and we can begin this by turning to look at the intersection of socio-economic and political relations of power and domination that gave rise to the emergence of the concept of addiction itself.

4. The birth of the ‘addict’

Towards the end of the nineteenth century, a convergence of interests between the industrial nation-state and the medical profession coalesced into a (frag- mentary) discourse that postulated a state of ‘addiction’ as a ‘disease of the will’, and created a new type of individual – an ‘addict’ – as a distinct identity.

The industrialization of the West brought about economic and political upheaval, and ushered in new social relations based around urbanization, immigration, social class and gender. The bourgeois emphasis on industrial productivity and labour discipline elevated the properties of self regulation and control to personal as well as political virtues, and also gave rise to an increasing intolerance of behaviour regarded as potentially disruptive. In the midst of all this turmoil, and at the same time, seemingly symbolic of it, came dramatically increased levels of actual consumption throughout the population. Increased availability of consumer goods and rising material affluence brought about a ‘democratisation of luxury’ (Williams 1982) that many social commentators watched with dread, with, for example, Durkheim (1970 [1897]) warning of the ‘insatiable and bottomless abyss’ of desire that would lead to suicide and anomie. The loss of control that was inherent in excessive behaviour – and especially one of its most visible manifestations in excessive consumption – was anathema to reason, and was understood as a clear threat to the moral and political order of industrial society.

Such social disruption provided a convenient backdrop for an embryonic medical profession keen to establish its legitimacy as a distinct and superior form of knowledge and authority. At this juncture, the concerns of both state and medicine coalesced around the moral-religious notion of the ‘will’ – the higher ethical faculty that controlled the body. Utilizing the new statistical techniques of government – the records of the Registrar General, mortality statistics and case studies – the medical profession introduced a new concept of pathology in the idea that the will could be diseased; a condition that left individuals unable to govern their impulses, and enslaved by forces beyond their control (Berridge and Edwards 1987; Levine 1978).2 The relation between powerful substances and weak individuals was known as an ‘addiction’ – a physical disease that was part of a materialist epistemology, but also a moral vice: an ethical failing on the part of the individual. Although initially it referred to substances like alcohol and opium, its linking of physical pathology and vulnerable wills with the irresistible temptations of modern society saw the notion of addiction quickly expand to apply to a range of substances and activities, from tobacco and caffeine to shopping, that were coming to be seen as the pathologies of an increasingly consumerist society. The concept of addiction articulated the rising social tensions generated by the move to industrial modernity, thinly veiled in the language of medicine and morality. As Porter puts it, modernity itself was coming to be regarded as pathological: as ‘morbidly self destructive and self-enslaving: the acquisitive society was the addictive society’ (Porter 1992: 180).

The medical–moral discourse on addiction introduced new ways of con- ceiving the consumption of particular substances, and new ways of regarding certain types of behaviour, but more importantly, it also transformed the con- sumer into a new type of person – an addict.

This process can be seen as an element of what Ian Hacking (1986) describes as ‘making up people’, from Foucault’s (1976) notion of ‘the constitution of subjects’ , where the observation and classification of specific features and types of behaviour provides the tools for new ways of thinking and talking about subjects. How things are said, who says them, and what they say and do not say, create an order of knowledge, a taxonomy, a discourse, and so make a particular subject visible.

Foucault’s genealogy of power has outlined the many categories that were ‘made up’ in this way during the modern period, including criminals, homosexuals and the insane, and it is argued here that ‘the addict’ represents one more figure in such a process. The similarities of the processes of construction have been noted elsewhere (Kohn 1987; Sedgewick 1993), but are worth returning to here, in the following passage, in which ‘addict’ has replaced Foucault’s original ‘homosexual’

The 19th century [addict] became a personage, a past, a case history, and a childhood, in addition to being a type of life, a life form, and a morphology, with an indiscreet anatomy and possibly a mysterious physiology. Nothing that went into his total composition was unaffected by his [addiction]. It was everywhere present in him: at the root of all his actions because it was in their insidious and indefinitely active principle; written immodestly on his face and body because it was a secret that always gave itself away. It was cosubstantial with him, less as a habitual sin than as a singular nature. (Foucault 1976: 43)

The relinquishing of control over one’s consumption formed the basis of a specific type of person – a ‘singular nature’. The figure of ‘the addict’ was characterized as a deviant identity; one that was lacking in willpower, and whose consumption was characterized by frenzied craving, repetition and loss of control. These individuals had failed to manage the new relations required by consumer modernity – rather than enriching their lives with moderate consumption, they were being overwhelmed and even destroyed by immoderate impulses. The fear of loss of control returned to the original meaning of addiction as literal enslavement when the contemporary physician, Thomas Trotter, bemoaned that the nation that had once ruled the waves ‘had degenerated into a nation of slaves’ (in Porter 1992: 186). Addicts destablized the hierarchy of mind and body, and transgressed the boundary that kept production and consumption in balance. They were unable to do anything but consume, since disordered consumption also implies disordered production, and this was the problem – the antithesis of the Protestant work ethic, and a form of madness in an industrial age of reason.

Although the discourse on addiction was initially worked out with the sup- posedly sensitive temperaments and complex physiognomies of the middle classes in mind, such ideas converged with wider fears over social disorder, so that the notion of addiction as a general loss of control came to be associated with the ‘problematic’ behaviour of specific social groups. The willpower and self control of the working classes, women and immigrants was regarded as especially weak: a ‘stratification of the will’ (Valverde 1997) that encouraged a perception of their consumption practices as being inherently disruptive, and that corresponded to the stratification of industrial society itself. Excessive working-class consumption was regarded as a dangerous vice that threatened productivity, and, while addiction among middle-class women was tolerated and bound up with notions of hysteria and other ‘female complaints’, working women’s excesses were incorporated into eugenicist notions of degeneration and condemned as a hereditary trait that undermined the health of the population (Valverde 1998; McDonald 1994). Meanwhile, ideas about racial contagion were closely tied up with economic insecurity, with the figure of the Chinese addict ‘polluting’ the nation with foreign habits a thinly veiled disguise for fears of unemployment and instability in general (Kohn 1987; Berridge and Edwards 1987).

Accordingly, a range of disciplinary regimes were directed at those who were unable to regulate their consumption, from the moral training of the temperance movement, to the disciplinary control of inebriate homes, and, to a lesser extent, insane asylums and even prisons (Levine 1978; Valverde 1997),

while various Acts outlawed or regulated forms of consumption amongst the working class, from alcohol and opium to gambling. Such techniques represented an overt exertion of what Foucault (1978) describes as disciplinary and bio-power – the disciplining of bodies and the regulation of populations. The ‘disciplinary gaze’ aimed to install the values of self-control and reason, and so modify the consumption practices of specific disorderly groups, by building up atrophied wills through discipline and hard work. If individuals were unable to control themselves, then the techniques and institutions of the state would do it for them.

The notion of addiction was not, then, the ‘discovery’ of some new disease; but rather, to return to Marx’s phrase, the creation of a fetish. It was the emergence of a politically expedient discourse that articulated concerns about social disorder in a way that connected the consumption practices of particular groups with wider social trends. The addict was a ‘made up’ person, whose parents were a convergence of interests between the industrial state and the medical profession, and who linked the individual with the social body. Addicts served as a repository for widespread fears of unrest – a group who had a deviant identity stamped upon them, so that they could be just as forcibly ‘cured’.

Although the ‘expert’ discourse of addiction never achieved epistemological hegemony, its influence was vast, and its legacy is still with us today, as the field of ‘problematic’ consumption expands, along with the exponential growth of consumer culture itself.

5. Disordered identities: the proliferation of ‘addictions’

Towards the end of the twentieth century, the concept of addiction developed in ways that gave birth to a whole range of what can be described as ‘disordered identities’, and that were related to wider processes of governance and control in late modern, neo-liberal societies. The focus of the ‘gaze’ shifted away from the behaviour of groups and the properties of specific substances, and on to individuals, where it bifurcated into an analysis of the physical processes of the body, underlined by the testimony of subjective mental states. So, on the one hand, discussions of addiction today tend to be characterized by a strict reductionism that claims a causal link between excessive consumption and physiological processes. Medical and psychiatric explanations locate the root of problem consumption in the body of the individual, peering into the pathways of cellular activity, into the crevices of cortical functioning, and even examining the subject’s past in the genetic codes of their DNA. Such a focus claims the existence of causal relationships between organic, physical processes and certain types of excessive behaviour, so establishing the existence of a disease state; a pathology. Such analyses, which hold chemicals and genes responsible for everything from taking drugs to eating chocolate, have been criticized by social scientists for their incorrect assumption of causation, and for their foundation in a biological determinism that undermines the basis of free will (Peele 1985; May 2001).

On the other hand, however, and perhaps most interestingly, these medical discourses are also characterized by a focus on internal, subjective states identified by individuals themselves. These concentrate on vague entities like feelings and emotions and the degree to which individuals feel able to exercise agency in the unfolding of their own lives. Fundamentally, their concern is with how people feel about their behaviour, and more specifically, how they feel about their ability to control it. This subjectivist focus lies at the heart of clinical definitions, largely thanks to E.M Jellineck’s classic The Disease Concept of Alcoholism which, in 1960, used the notion of ‘loss of control’ as the criteria to distinguish between those who drank heavily but were not addicted and those who were truly diseased (Conrad and Schneider 1992). This focus was reflected in the redefinition of ‘addiction’, by the World Health Organization in 1964, as ‘dependency’ – a shift of attention onto individuals’ perceived needs that made subjective evaluation of ‘loss of control’ central to diagnosis.

So, we are faced with a complex notion of addiction (or dependence), which, although ostensibly physical and determinist, is ultimately rooted in subjective criteria. Such dualism is apparent in the listings of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-IV), the reference manual for medical and psychological disorders, which identifies ‘pathological’ behaviour on the basis of a range of non-medical factors, such as ‘tolerance, withdrawal, compulsive use’ or ‘related problems’ which include disruption to personal rel tionships, and vocational, financial and legal problems (American Psychiatric Association [APA] 1994). Such criteria are socially and culturally relative, and, because they depend on the individual’s interpretation of their own experience and emotional states, are ultimately deeply subjective.

By making subjective assessments of loss of control themselves diagnostic criteria, the field of addiction becomes potentially infinite, expanding to embrace ever-increasing substances and behaviours, across ever wider swathes of the population. And indeed, wherever it is applied we see consumer pathologies expand to embrace individuals who feel they are unable to control their consumption in a variety of areas, from shopping and gambling to eating McDonald’s and surfing the Internet. It seems as if every aspect of human behaviour can exist in a pathological form! Eve Sedgewick (1993) describes these as ‘epidemics of the will’ – paralysis of the freedom that is so highly valued in consumer society.

Such ‘epidemics’ are built up through a combination of often divergent discourses, which contribute towards the creation of various consumer pathologies, or disordered identities: the ‘making up’ of many new ‘types’ of people. For example, over the past twenty years, the DSM-IV has developed an increasing number of formal, medical taxonomies of problematic consumer behaviour, out of which new types of medicalized identities – or patients – are constructed, including pathological gamblers, anorexics, bulimics, kleptomaniacs, and with the increasing likelihood of the newly-researched categories of ‘shopaholics’ and ‘carboholics’ being added to the list (Holden 2001; Eccles 2002). The pathological gambler is perhaps one of the most successful creations of this medical discourse; a distinct ‘type’ of person who was ‘made up’ through an association of statistical surveys, medical questionnaires and academic research at the same time that commercial gambling developed into a mass consumer activity during the 1980s (Collins 1996).

These ‘disordered identities’ are not merely limited to formal, medical discourses however, but actually exist in a far more fluid, dynamic sense in which they are constantly interpreted, adopted and modified by individuals themselves. Pathological gamblers, for instance, do not only exist in the surveys and diagnoses of public health and medicine, but as players who actively identify themselves as such. It is here that we encounter an apparent contradiction, in which, despite its status as a discursive object, the whole idea of ‘addiction’ nevertheless becomes something ‘real’ for those who subscribe to its determinist influence. Evidence of the adoption of a ‘pathological’ nomenclature can be seen in the growth of self-help groups that develop around forms of problematic consumption. A recent list includes groups for addictions to, amongst other things, shopping, pills, caffeine, credit, the internet, food and gambling (Becker 2000), and while they might not actually indicate the presence of new diseases, more interestingly, they act as testimony to individuals’ subjective identification with behaviour they feel is out of control.

We can see this most clearly in the articulations of self help therapy groups such as Alcoholics Anonymous, Narcotics Anonymous and Gamblers Anonymous, whose philosophy rests on members’ identification with an essential ‘addict identity’ that is fixed and unchanging, and whose very nature it is to consume to excess. The primary role of Gamblers Anonymous, for instance, is to help members come to accept their distinction from non-gamblers, and is reinforced by the frequent, public admission that: ‘I am a compulsive gambler’.

The first step to recovery, the group argues, is to concede fully to our innermost selves that we are compulsive gamblers . . . the delusion that we are like other people, or presently may be, has to be smashed. We have lost the ability to control our gambling. We know that no real compulsive gambler ever regains control. (www.gamblersanonymous.org)

This is an identification with an essential identity that is stable and unchanging; based on an incurable disease and defined by a complete and irreversible loss of control.

Osborne describes how modern medicine’s concern with the symptoms of disease, rather than disease itself, makes a new notion of pathology possible. Now, he writes, ‘the question posed by modern medicine is not “how do you feel?”, nor even perhaps “what have you got?”, but “what have you become?”’ (Osborne 1998: 268). In this conception can be seen the expression of the effect of ‘addiction’ that has overtaken the individual; destroyed the possibility for choice over future options, and therefore of change in any way. The dynamic, self-expressing self has been replaced by its opposite: one for whom identity is static, and who out of necessity, must refuse the possibility of future choosing, since total abstinence is regarded as the only way of guaranteeing sobriety.

This is the polar opposite of the neo-liberal ideal – an ontological state of being that is immutable and unchanging, rather than a fluid ‘narrative of the self’ that is continually in flux, and freely constructed by the choosing individual.

These discourses of addiction and identity are in constant process of inter- action with actors who modify, adopt and otherwise transform them. We see this when individuals articulate their perceived loss of control in quasi-medical terms, adopting the language of science to describe, and in some cases, lend authority to their condition (Davies 1992). It is in this context that people interpret notions of poly- or cross addictions to talk about their ‘addictive personalities’, and, for example, members of Gamblers Anonymous argue for pathological gambling to be recognized as a form of mental illness or an incur- able disease. Meanwhile, legal arguments have been made, and contested, on the assumption of the existence of essential addict identities as distinct – legally irresponsible – types of person (Rose 1986; Peele 1985). Ironically, given their status as shifting assemblages of features or social constructs, these categories actually come to assume real status – for those who feel they ‘belong’ to them, as much as for those who ascribe them to others.3

We can see, then, that since its creation in the nineteenth century, the ‘addict’ has grown up and spawned many more ‘types’ of disordered consumer identities that, like the proliferation of consumption itself, are increasingly widely dispersed throughout the population. But whereas the nineteenth century addict had a deviant identity stamped upon them, today’s consumer pathologies are increasingly characterized by identification with subjective states, and freely expressed by individuals themselves.

6. Governance and freedom in consumer society

These narratives of identity and subjectivity are embedded in the particular modes of governance of neo-liberal consumer societies, where they play a crucial role in new forms of social control, as well as expressing the tensions inherent within them.

The gradual withdrawal of the state from the regulation of public life in recent years has seen an increased emphasis on the ongoing process that has been characterized as a shift from external regulation to internal forms of self government. As consumer culture becomes more global and prolific, and less restrained by formal mechanisms, so demands for control go deeper into the individual, and become more urgent. Control is individualized and internal- ized. This is epitomized by what has been described as the move from act to identity based governance, where individuals are governed not so much through what they do, but through who they are – through the shaping of par- ticular kinds of subjectivity (Valverde 1997; Rose 1999). This is integral to what Foucault (1991) calls ‘governmentality’ – a set of practices based on ‘the conduct of conduct’ that are concerned with how to govern the self and others, and are carried out at the level of the individual in ways of acting and think- ing that continually guide and modify behaviour.

Crucial to this project are the forms of knowledge and authority generated by what Nikolas Rose (1999) terms the ‘psy sciences’ – the disciplines and practices of psychology, psychiatry and psychoanalysis. By constantly refining their techniques for evaluating behaviour and establishing new standards of comparison, these define notions of normality and abnormality, and so con- tinually ‘make up’ new types of people, situated along a continuum that stretches from pathology to health. They operate in symbiosis with their economic-political climate, constructing particular categories of identity and moulding forms of subjectivity in ways that are consonant with prevalent cul- tural values and social institutions. In terms of the ideology of advanced liberalism, this means shaping identities that are capable of managing their freedom through self-government, and of controlling their consumption through sovereign action. Ultimately, as Rose puts it, the psy sciences ‘fabri- cate subjects capable of bearing the burdens of liberty’ (Rose 1999: viii).

And it is quite a burden. As we saw earlier, the dual nature of freedom means that individuals are governed not against but through their freedom; obliged to subjugate it by continually modifying and shaping not just their external behaviour, but also their internal states too. The values of autonomy, freedom and choice, are to be internalized as subjective states, and emotions and desires continually monitored to produce a well balanced individual – an appropriate, sovereign, consumer identity.

Although this governance of the self is the individual’s responsibility, there are plenty of experts within the epistemological field of the ‘psy sciences’ – social workers, counsellors and therapists who Rose (1999: 3) calls ‘engineers of the human soul’ – to provide guidance on the management of every aspect of inner life, from relationships and work to emotions and, of course, con- sumption habits.

This approach has resonance with what has been described by Pat O’Malley as ‘prudentialism’, and converges with discussions about risk and governance within neo-liberal societies, in which a shift in power, from the dis- ciplining of individuals to the regulation of populations based on the man- agement of risks, is said to have taken place. These debates are complex, and outside the scope of this paper.4 However, the notion of risk should at least be mentioned, since some of its features intersect – and indeed, sometimes counter – the arguments being made here. Discussions of risk are embedded within discourses and practices of neo-liberalism, where they contribute to the constitution of the subject as a calculative, prudent and autonomous agent. Here, individuals have a responsibility to consume rationally in order to safe- guard their health and wellbeing, and to calculate, and so avoid, potential dangers – expressed as risks. In this discourse, focus shifts from the individual subject to the relationships between individuals and a variety of factors – social, physical, and environmental – where risks to the consumer are supposed to lie.

It has been argued that discourses of risk have overtaken or replaced discourses of addiction (May 2001), and also that they have dissolved the notion of a subject (Castel 1991; Dean 1999), replacing it with a combination of factors and relationships instead. Although some of this is persuasive, the argument here is that the existence of a regulatory shift to a bio-politics of the popula- tion does not necessarily entail either a dissolution of the subject, or a wholescale transition from one set of discourses to another, but rather a more ‘messy’ overlapping of dialogues and the forms of governance associated with them. The subject is not dissolved entirely, since, as we have seen, a robust – if multifarious ‘addict identity’ – persists in a number of dialogues and narratives, from sections of the medical profession, to self help groups and popular discourses. It exists both as a label among self defined addicts themselves, and as an (ultimately realizable and negatively defined) identity to be avoided by prudent risk negotiators. In fact, in some ways, the language of risk actually reinforces the notion of ‘addiction’ as a realist category, in its postulation of the existence of some state that the individual is actually at risk from. It is not, then, a case of transition or dissolution, but rather a more complex intersection and convergence of discourses, and the forms of governance associated with them.

And in fact, notions of addiction and risk intersect in a very particular way. Both generate a general sense of insecurity, conceived in the former as a subjective sense of loss of control, and in the latter as vulnerability to potential danger. The location of risks in a miasma of interrelations expands the potential for danger across a range of factors, and spreads vulnerability throughout the entire population – anyone can be ‘at risk’ from a huge variety of – often invisible – elements. Similarly, the identification of addiction with a subjective sense of a loss of control creates a climate in which ‘addiction’ is felt to lurk everywhere; there are a potentially infinite number of situations and substances that can catch the consumer unawares and undermine agency – it could be said that addiction becomes a potential danger, a risk, in itself. The intense focus on the analysis and monitoring of their own subjective states makes individuals hyper sensitive, ever alert to signs of loss of control. And, because innermost thoughts and emotions are the medium through which freedom is controlled, as well as the measure of its loss, there seems to be no limit to the situations and substances that can erode it and undermine agency. In this inversion of the ideal of consumer freedom, we can rephrase Ewen and Ewen, so that now there are no choices, only rules, and everyone can be [addicted to] anything. Such a focus makes the burdens of liberty even greater, so that it becomes imperative to be vigilant, to regulate behaviour, to guard against risk and keep watch on subjective states – to continually monitor one’s freedom.

It is this vital role that the ‘addict’ has failed to do. By failing to manage their freedom, they have given up the crucial attributes of autonomy and choice, and replaced the dynamic, sovereign self that is constructed through consumption with an essential state of being that is destroyed by it. And in this, we can see the construction of a figure that both embodies the contradictions of consumption at the same time that it is expelled by them. At a time when the admonition to choose from a barrage of commodities and experiences is at its most insistent, the active adoption of the ‘addict identity’ may be interpreted as the embrace of a determined state that rejects the need for such choice. The spread of addictions can be seen as a counter to the global proliferation of consumption: a refusal of choice that has become overwhelming; a denial of freedom that is illusory.

In an ongoing and reflexive process, the forms of governance that contribute to the creation of these addict identities also attempt to regulate them and return them to their ‘normal’ state. Addicts’ refusal to regulate choice and exercise self control activates the ‘hidden despotism’ (Valverde 1997) of liberal society, whereby those deemed not to possess the attributes required for freedom are subject to various forms of intervention and discipline, or even denied it altogether. In general, this is a gentler form of governance than that meted out to the nineteenth century underclass, however. Rather than diseased wills that have to be disciplined, now attempts to shape or ‘cure’ disorders of consumption tend to be therapeutic; based on the reshaping of subjectivity and the building up of self control and agency (Rose 1999). Here, therapy itself becomes a form of government; a ‘technology of citizenship’ for acting upon ourselves ‘so that the police, the guards and the doctors do not have to do so’ (Cruickshank 1996: 234). It is not surprising, then, that the solution to many modern problems – including disorders of consumption such as kleptomania, gambling, drug taking, compulsive spending and over-eating – is seen to lie in the raising of the esteem of the sufferer, and is conducted through a range of media, from rehabilitation clinics to talk shows and self help books. The intention is not narcissistic self regard, but a boosting of the ego so that it is able to resume control over life; literally, a returning to power of the self- actualizing self that was overtaken by the daemonic force of addiction. This type of governance is carried out by restoring control to the out-of-control individual; returning them to the status of consumers who are ‘capable of bearing the burdens of liberty’ so that they may be once more able and willing participants in the subjugation of their own freedom.5

7. Conclusions

Although the preceding discussion has focused on the convergence between broad historical shifts and cultural processes rather than on the specifics of particular forms of behaviour, it is hoped that such an approach has at least begun to draw attention to some of the complexities involved in the interaction of formations of consumption with discourses of addiction. In particular, it has attempted to demonstrate how the widespread adoption and proliferation of ever more disordered consumer identities – of pathological gamblers, kleptomaniacs, anorexics, bulimics, shopaholics, and the rest – highlights the discursive conflicts that exist between consumption, freedom and governance within late modern societies. At a time when the practice and ideology of consumption proliferates on a global scale, when the value of freedom is virtually hypostatized, and when the very definition of identity rests largely on the exercise of free choice among a range of consumer possibilities, problems of freedom become problems of consumption, and go to the very heart of the self. In a climate like this, the notion of dependency: the idea that the consumer might not be free after all, has a particular horror, and must be expelled.

What is new in modern society is not the emphasis on issues of freedom per se, but rather the unprecedented emphasis on freedom as a mode of governance by and through the individual. Innermost states are the medium through which freedom is controlled, as well as the measure of its loss. Today we are governed not against but through our freedom, which is why its loss or vitiation is articulated in terms of its opposite: in determined states such as addiction – the ‘other’.

Ironically, it is this intense valuation placed on freedom that sows the seeds for its undermining. The promotion of the ideology of consumer sovereignty – as a subjective state, as well as a mode of governance – is the fertile soil out of which the shoots of ever more ‘addictions’ grow. This, then, is the fetishism of addiction – an apparently individual pathology that disguises the deep tensions that arise from the ambivalence of freedom as a form of control.

Notes

Although it should be noted that recent analyses of consumption have attempted to transcend such dualism, arguing that in fact the two ethics exist in a symbiotic relation, and in many ways, are actually complementary (Campbell 1987; McCracken 1988).

The idea that individuals may suffer from a compulsion to act in ways beyond their control had existed from the late eighteenth century, when Benjamin Rush discussed the ‘disease of inebriety’, although such notions were not formulated into the specific medical concept of addiction until later (Levine 

It should be pointed out that, on the other hand, in recent years, discourses of ‘normalization’ have emerged that have sought to incorporate elements of behaviour previously marginalized as ‘addictive’ into the mainstream. The consumption of drugs in particular has been subject to such a process, with the case being made that these constitute a central part of youth culture, and have to be understood within locally situated values and lifestyles (Parker, Aldridge and Measham 1998). This has been accompanied by a shift in terminology that has seen the replacement of terms such as ‘addict’ with the less pejorative ‘user’, ‘consumer’ or ‘misuser’, in line with the shift to policies of harm reduction (O’Malley 1999). Such a trend contributes to the complexity of discourses of addiction, and appears to exist alongside oppositional discourses of discrete addict identities.

There is a considerable literature on this, but relevant to the arguments put forward here, see, for example, Barry, Osborne and Rose (eds) 1996; Burchell, Gordon and Miller (eds) 1991; O’Malley 1996, 1999; Dean 1999.

Such therapeutic reshaping of subjectivity also has a darker side in modern society, whereby those who are not willing agents in their own subjection are exposed to more draconian measures, ranging from fines and compulsory rehabilitation to legal discipline and imprisonment, in a distribution that tends to reflect traditional social hierarchies. Although the external coercion and restrictive laws of sovereign and disciplinary control are largely superseded by governmental regulation, a variety of forms of governance can co-exist in what Foucault describes as a triangle of practices. As he puts it: ‘we need to see things not in terms of the replacement of a society of sovereignty by a disciplinary society by a society of government; in reality one has a triangle, sovereignty-discipline-government’ (Foucault 1991: 102).

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