#metaphysics seminar vibes

[believe-that-you-can-my-friend]

Elisabeth & Noah in the origin world (2/?)

First date

He is not sure if he should text her or not.

On Monday, upon waking up with every ounce of alcohol finally off his bloodstream and after he has spent the entire Sunday recovering from the worst hangover he’s experienced since his college years, Noah is back on his reserved nature, the timid one, the one lacking the amount of whiskey-infused courage it takes for him to deal with matters revolving around human interaction, especially with women. He’s not a social outcast per se, but his confidence mostly accompanies him in the career-oriented side of his life.

It’s not like he’s not interested. He crossed the line of “interested” when he stooped to the lowest level possible, looking her up on Instagram, of all things, via Agnes’ account.

(His little sister has a long list of questions and he has a long list of brotherly favors that he promised to fulfill in exchange for her seven-digit password.)

She doesn’t have a vast presence on social media, a quality they apparently share. He keeps a long forgotten Facebook account and a professional LinkedIn one and acts blissfully ignorant towards any other platform that isn’t YouTube. Her Facebook account - oh yeah, he checked that one too - is a mix between personal and business, opinion posts about socio-politcal matters on the grounds of their country to the entirety of Europe to the endlessness of the globe and take-action events in regard to the causes she supports, occasionally interrupted by a reunion selfie with an old friend or a brunch date with her mom and her sister. That particular post redirected to some Instagram link, so, unwittingly, his curiosity was peaked.

Her Instagram account is colourful, vivid, filled with adventures and laughter. Just from an idle scroll, Elisabeth Doppler - Winden born, age twenty-four, Energy Engineer, Berlin based - can easily be perceived as someone that quite enjoys life. Her group of associates and friends seems endless and her gallery consists of photos of dinners with young professionals, pub-crawling with girlfriends, road tripping across Europe, Erasmus Programme memories, tree-planting projects, women’s rights marches, snorkelling, paragliding. Noah spends the whole Sunday afternoon feeling overwhelmed and in awe, tapping picture after picture, mesmerized by her lovely smile that adds a softer undertone to her busy bee of a life.

He finds it fascinating, her mindset and her lifestyle, but, at the same time, he fears that their personalities may clash, his more keeping-to-himself attitude the polar opposite to her seemingly outgoing one. Then, it’s also the age barrier. He thinks that thirty-two might be a little off-putting for someone in their early twenties, a decade that comes with a whole other set of expectations and milestones than the one he is currently in. The major problem, though - a chronic problem of his - is that he’s thinking too much.

Fortunately, that’s not a thing they have in common.

Elisabeth texts him on Monday morning, at 9.54 to be exact. He’s in the middle of a lecture, teaching History of Religion 101 to an auditorium filled with sleepy freshmen, when his phone screen lights up, its glow illuminating in the dimly lit room. It’s a simple “good morning” paired up with a smiling face emoji but it’s enough to cause his heart to race and his mind to short-circuit, leaving him reciting things off the projection screen without really registering what comes out of his mouth until the lesson is over. With sweaty hands and in the mist of internal panic laced with excitement, he texts her back at 10.38 an equally casual “hey, hope you’re having a good morning, too”. He beats himself up for not asking her anything the minute he presses send, like, how she’s doing, if she’s at work - literally anything, Noah, Jesus Christ, now she’ll think that you don’t care, nice work, you idiot - especially as the hours pass and there’s silence from her end. He spends the rest of the day drowning in miserable self-pity, checking his dead phone literally every minute, until there’s a new message from her, telling him that she had a very busy day at work and asking him how his day was.

(Thank God, because he was about to send her an embarrassing word vomit apologizing for having zero social skills whatsoever.)

They continue their back and forth texting for the rest of the week, casual conversations about their everyday lives turning into debates about the best places to eat and the best movies of all time to metaphysics and social justice that keep them up till the small hours of morning, Elisabeth sending him blowing-a-kiss face emoji’s for goodnight and Noah smiling like a silly teenager at his phone screen. Right in the middle of one of their more “serious” conversations, Elisabeth venting about income-based discrimination, Noah asks her out. It’s abrupt and totally irrelevant to the context of the rest of the bubbles that litter their personal chat at that moment but he can’t really help himself. She is a woman he wants - needs - to know more about, not through a screen, but in person, sit there and watch her express all the things she has in her brilliant mind.

They arrange to meet on Friday night, after she finishes work, since Noah has to attend a seminar in Dresden on the weekend and since both of them are too impatient to wait any longer. Noah arrives first at the bar she gave him directions to and decides on waiting for her outside but decides against smoking a cigarette, even though he’s itching to, out of habit and nerves. She rounds the corner barely five minutes later, strutting towards him in an electric blue pantsuit and a plaid maxi grey coat, her whole face brightening with a stunning smile when she notices him, and, just like that, everything else fades, his anxiety about their first official date, his mental fatigue after holding office hours, his insecurities, his worries and she is the only thing that exists, the only thing that matters.

A wave of panic washes over him momentarily, his inner perfectionist making a huge deal out of not having a clear plan of how to greet her. A handshake is too impersonal, a kiss too presumptuous. Ultimately, he attempts an awkward, one-arm kinda hug - which is ridiculous because a) he’s a freaking grown-up and b) her tongue has already been inside his mouth and he doesn’t recall his hands being particularly respectful the night of Jonas’ wedding, when she pushed him against a wall and stole his breath with a glorious kiss - an action she probably misconstrues as a leaning in and this results in them doing a clumsy dance right there on the pavement, but she giggles and her eyes shine with amusement, so his self-deprecating frown gives its place to a handsome smirk, when she moves closer to him and leaves a soft peck on his cheek, as a belated greeting. She smells of sensuous jasmine and intoxicating amber, her perfume aery but with a spicy twist that succeeds in stimulating all of his senses. He holds the door for her to enter and his hand lingers lightly on the small of her waist, as they make their way through the tables to the bar.

They settle on two empty barstools and order their signature drinks, Gin and Tonic and Whiskey on the Rocks. Elisabeth takes her phone out of her tote bag but before she gets to type anything, Noah holds her attention. He thinks for a moment and then makes his hands move, forming tentative gestures that lack any grace or flow but succeed in signing “It’s nice to see you. How have you been?”.

Elisabeth beams, impressed, her lips mouthing an excited “how?”. He just shrugs and shyly pulls out of his messenger bag a thick sign language book, a recent purchase of his which he’s been studying with every chance he got. Her whole face softens, touched by his sweet gesture, before she types on her phone.

That’s very thoughtful of you, thank you. Even though you shouldn’t have; apart from technology’s assistance, I’m pretty good at reading lips.

He uses his phone to reply. Yeah, I gathered that much. I just want to talk to you in your language.

The look that she gives him under her fluttering eyelashes is so tender and lovely that he can’t help but stare, a foolish grin plastered on his lips and a hot blush painted on his neck, creeping from the collar of his grey shirt.

They talk - type, to be exact, with the occasional mimic of a word or two - about everything and nothing, fast thumbs trying to keep up with their effortless conversation on the notifications’ section of their phones. He learns about her childhood in Winden, her hellish pranks to her older sister Franziska, her loving parents that separated when she was a preteen but never stopped caring about each other or being there for their daughters. She talks about her hometown friends and her honor roll high school experience, moving to Berlin to attend university and falling in love with the lively vibe of the city, getting her Master’s in Energy Engineering and recently landing her first job on the field at the Tiedemann Enterprises, a very prestige corporation in the industry of renewable energy. She’s still particularly excited about this, being part of a team of researchers thriving to improve energy efficiency based on an environmental friendly strategy.

Noah tells her about his memories as a young boy in Vechta, how he lost his mother when he was only six, due to complications while giving birth to his sister, how his father was never really in the picture after that tragic incident. How the local church and especially Sic Mundus, a church based organization for neglected children and troubled teens, contributed to his and Agnes’ well-being and education, helping him land a university scholarship and get a job, so he could afford moving his sister to Berlin, too, after he got his bachelor degree, and offering her a more stable living situation and a normal life. How, apparently, his aptitude for the humanities and his upbringing in a religious environment drove him to follow an academic career in religious studies, a field that he finds beyond interesting, especially its anthropology aspect.

Somewhere along the conversation, too absorbed into their own little world to register the fewer people in the bar and the clock ticking towards closing time, his hand, as if it has a mind of its own, slides slowly over the wooden top of the bar, her slender fingers meeting his hesitant approach halfway. They’re barely touching but it’s electrifying, the feeling of even an inch of his skin against her skin so exhilarating and powerful, like the impact of meteors colliding or the universe exploding into pieces. It feels like a Déjà vu, like a glitch in the Matrix, like they know each other from the past or recognize each other from their future. It’s a feeling both of them kept seeking, a feeling that they silently vow never to lose.

Noah pays for the drinks, despite her objections, and Elisabeth insists that, next time, the bill is on her. He smirks, a tad tipsy on the whiskey, a lot tipsy on her, and teases her that he must have done something right, because this is the first time a girl agrees on a second date with him this fast. She just shrugs, a cheeky smirk playing on her lip-glossed lips, as she types, if I left it up to you, we’d still be on the PG-13 “good morning” texts. He laughs, an effortless, loud laugh and he catches her staring - no, not staring, checking him out - the corner of her longing smile trapped between her teeth. He fights the insane urge to kiss her senseless right here in this empty bar with the bartender mentally plotting their death for keeping him past his shift.

He accompanies her to the U-Bahn station and his heart skips a heartbeat at the prospect of sharing ten more minutes with her, according to the information display over their heads. She wishes him to have fun in Dresden and he confesses that he wishes he could stay here, to spend the weekend with you, he wants to add but refrains, in fear of confessing too much too fast. Instead, he tells her that he had an amazing night and he’s so relieved and purely happy when she nods vigorously in agreement, her low ponytail bobbing lightly and her beautiful face radiating even under the harsh fluorescent light of the station. The atmosphere around them is suddenly very charged, their bodies gravitating towards each other, and their eyes engage in a stare off that speaks volumes and holds so much unresolved tension. He can hear the bright yellow train approaching and his breath quickens as he takes a brave step forward, invades her personal space, and his eyes declare defeat, falling to her lips. He’s the one to kiss her this time, a soft peck that turns into a needy battle of dominance when she melts into his arms and angles her face to kiss him more, deeper, hungry mouths dancing together in passion, his shoulders hunching over her smaller figure, his hands cradling her cheeks. Her own hands sneak under his coat and suit jacket, delivering a heavy caress over the material of his shirt before she closes her arms around his waist, Noah letting a trembling exhale into the kiss and his lips forming a lazy smirk against her giggling ones. Smugly, Elisabeth tugs lightly at his lower lip with her teeth, a naughty essence to the playful action, and this fuels another round of heated kissing, their bodies pushing and pulling, their heavy PDA a thing they’ll be embarrassed for in the morning. For tonight, though, they’re just two people getting drunk on each other in the middle of a train station, as if tomorrow will be the end of world and they’ll cease to exist.

When they pull back for air her lips are lipgloss-free and her eyelids, still closed, are fluttering over scarlet cheekbones. Noah has never witnessed a most beautiful sight in his life.

Elisabeth gets on the train with a dazed and dazzling smile, promising to text him when she arrives at her apartment. They refuse to let go of each other’s eyes until the train vanishes into the dark tunnel and Noah is left there, on the empty station, a finger reaching to his lips, not quite believing that the fruity taste of lipgloss that still lingers in his mouth or the woman whose lips left their trace behind are real and not a product of his wildest fantasies. There’s an extra hop in his steps as he walks up the stairs to catch the train to the opposite direction, boarding the vehicle at the last minute and sliding quickly on a seat, lovesick smile intact and a newfound feeling of contentment and thrill nested in his chest.

He takes his phone out of his pocket and types, unable to wait any longer.

I get back early on Sunday. Would you like to have dinner with me?

[moonlit-clary-sage]

I hate a professor that everyone else seems to love.

(TW/CW: Mentions of mental health issues, victim blaming)

Okay story time. Last semester I took a stress management course at my university, thinking it would help me feel a little better and to fill up credits so I could keep my work study position and financial aid over the summer. This professor gets a 4.8/5 on Rate my Professor and 100% say they would take his class again, but I got into the class and this guy just totally rubbed me the wrong way.

I can't say for sure what it is about him, but he just gave me the biggest narcissist con artist energy, like someone that you'd hear speak at a wellness seminar and try to sell you his special DVD at the end. I worked in a New Age store for nearly four years, and in that time I met a variety of people with different ideas about metaphysics and varying levels of sincerity. I was also born into a fairly well-accepted cult religion, which I have since left. I think I can suss out pretty well if someone is being manipulative, especially when they're in positions of authority.

The class only supported the bad vibes I was getting.

All the materials for the course were created by my professor. The textbook was written by him. We had to purchase stress relief exercises that were created and narrated by him. All the supplementary videos were created by him. He did reference other scholarly works, but in writing his own textbook he had free reign on how he could interpret and present that information, including framing it to fit his needs.

He was convinced that stress could be eliminated absolutely completely from your life and that all stress you feel is your fault. He asserted that stress was only justified in life threatening situations and that external factors can't make you feel stressed. He also felt that once you eliminated stress, you could eliminate disease and live forever! He voiced that he thought flu shots were silly and admitted he has never gotten one because he believes that his perfect enlightened peace has made him impervious to sickness. He also believes that depression can not be genetically passed down and that if you are depressed or anxious, it must be your fault in some way.

I have been told before that I have complete control over my emotions and I'm just not convinced!

Maybe it's because I have ADHD and an anxiety disorder and depression so my ability to regulate my emotions sucks shit. I refuse to believe any of these illnesses are my fault. I was genetically predisposed to all this. I would never choose to feel like this!

But there was no room for argument in this class. All the assignments prompted specific answers. There was no space to truly reflect. I found myself avoiding this class because I couldn't bring myself to get on my computer and be gaslit and invalidated.

But maybe I'm wrong. Maybe all of this is true and I'm just stubborn or blind to it. Maybe I'm just looking for an excuse for my apparent failure.

I just tend not to trust things that don't sit right with me.

Still everyone else seemed to love this class! My professor bragged constantly about all the people he's helped and how much thanks he's gotten.

Am I missing something? Or am I just seeing what no one else is? I don't know.

TL;DR: I had a bad experience with the professor of a stress management class and it's still fucking me up.

[ramrodd]

What are your thoughts on the QAnon conspiracy that the Ever Given container ship got stuck in the Suez Canal because its cargo was filled with trafficked children for Hillary Clinton?

Rush Limbaugh used to brag he was doing the prep work for Main Stream Media. Well, the reality is that QAnon is writing the lede for Tucker Carlson.

COMMENTARY:

My thoughts on all things associated with the Capitol Riots as beginning with William F. Buckley, as an ardent supporter of Senator Joe MCCarthy. Buckley’s entire political career was devoted to creating a political culture wheere a demagogue like Joe McCarthy could be elected President and implement his Free Market fantasies of a white supremacist paradise and he got a toofer: Ronald Reagan and Donald Trump, if you leave out Richard “Dick” Cheney, America’s favorite war criminal and his Special Presidential Assistant, Yale’s Favorite male cheer leader, Popsy’s bad bo, W.

Buckley was in the business of generating moral confusion in the debate around the critical path of the constitutional processes of the nation He started at Yale with his white spremacist notions of the gated communities he was raised in, around his Sharon estate. Strictkly speaking, Gore Vidal hit it right on the head when he called Buckley a “crypto-Nazi” on ABC during the 1968 Democrat Convention. It’s a perfect call, with the subtext of a barely closeted homoerotic system of manners. Buckley had been holding seminars on Fascist sophistry with his Firing Line show and people who thoungt like him and G. Gordon Liddy were absolutely committed to providing Dan Bongino an opportunity to seize and hold the Capitol for the 2nd Presidential Inauguration of Donald J. Trump.

QAnon is a synergy from both Buckley’s Sharon manifesto for what became Movement Conservatives when Reagan was elected and the political strategy Newt Gingrich is employing to keep the House Freedom Caucus in office and restore a Republican majority so Moscow Mitch and McCarthy can double down on the Georgia Jim Crow Laws. Woodrow Wilson brought to the White House along with Birth of a Nation. Before the internet,, something like QAnon would bubble up, heare and there and become something of an ideological fad, like Ayn Rand’s philosophy of objectivism. I hate to call it a “philosophy”. It is a study in systematic Fascism and she employs a similar sophistry as Buckley to support her particular version of Free Market economics. Objectivism is a system of thought based on a sort of collage of sound bites arranged in a pattern pleasing to Rand’s narcissism., an ideology of egoism. If you can understand the structural fallacy of Rand, you will recognize the total pixie dust of Rand Paul’s Libertarianism.

Until he became President, Thomas Jefferson was a political dilletante like Buckley and a Libertarian, like Jesse Helms. When he became President, he transformed into a republican servant leader on Washington’s example and kicked the can of slavery down the road to Lincoln, who was America’s first process theology presidential guru. What Lincoln had in common with Eisenhower was his commitment to completing the transcontinental railroad. If he had lived, Reconstruction would have included a heavy emphasis on expanding the railway system in the South like Eisenhower and the interstates. And Jefferson;s real estate deal with France made that possible. And Lewis and Clark made it practical.

Unlike process theology, Libertarianism is not dynamical, but a process of arranging ideas to justify absurd behavior as self-evident. The absurd behavior is a result of the ideological restraints of any static construct, such as Marxism or the logic behind Citizens United Or the War on Drugs. QAnon is just sort of the essence of the quality of the fallacy sustaining the War on Drugs and mostly racist in its conception.

Libertarian apologetics depends a great deal, if not entirely, on a misappreshension of Hume’s theory of perception, which is the substitute for epistemology in Fascist social systems. Hume posited a theory of evidence based on the existential nature of evidence, in and of itself that is vital to the scientific method and equitable jurisprudence. There is no cause and effect and his thesis is that our personal version of reality is determined exclusively by sensory data. As a frorensic device, his theory of perception is very reliable but you can’t hit a sinking curve ball with forensic data. Libertarians who employ Buckley’s Fascist sophistry to, say, argue with Dr. Fauci about defeating Covid-19, lose sight of that reality when they enter the market place of ideas to do battle. Their theory is that, if you can control the narrative, you can control the perception and, consequently, with metaphysical necessity, control reality.

For example, if you don’t test and you continue to say everything is under control and manage to conceal the sudden rise in flu mortality and hospital stresses, you can expect another four years of golf. The reality of Covid-19 as an existential threat doesn’t change, but if you reframe it and if you really, really, really believe it’s true, who’s to say you are lying?

And that’s where QAnon is coming from: people like William F. Buckley, Rush Limbaugh and Tucker Carlson provide a moral fog in the collective unconscious that allows toxic synergies like QAnon to hide among the Pro-Life heresies of the Evangelical community and the authoritarian vibes of the Federalist Society and the peer-reviewed Movement Conservative think tanks like the Heritage Foundation, Cato Institute, AEI and GOPAC and anywhere G. Gordon Liddy and Dan Bongino are welcomed speakers.

William F. Buckley created an incubator for nurturing white supremacist agendas that shared the same authoritarian values as Trump, including the Virtue of Selfishness. Libertarians have an huge. largely immature, emotional stake in the core fallacy of their personal values, such as displayed by Rand Paul v Dr. Fauci.

This emotional connection is reflected in the MAGA nation and die-hard Trump voter. they literally love Trump the way Germans loved Hitler.

Like Newt Gingrich says, ideas are important. But ideas are a dime a dozen and they need to be tested for existential reliability. David Hume’s theory of perception and the Fascist sophisty of William F. Buckley’s white supremacist Libertarianism ignore those tests. And, as a consequence. synergies like QAnon find an enabling culture to become viral.

A good way to test whether your own value system has become distorted by the disinformation associated with William F. Buckley is if you agree with the conventional wisdom that Hillary Clinton was a terrible candidate in 2016. I would propose that your judgement in this regards was distorted by 27 years of negative advertising from Movement Conservatives like Rick Wilson and Rush Limbaugh. Given the historical context, perfect 20/20 hindsight should reveal to your satisfaction that Clinton was the only serious candidate to run in 2016. It just turned out 45% of the voters wanted a WWE cage match promoter to make fun of serious politics and responsible voters, who happened to also believe that a WWE cage match promoter was a superior candidate to run America.

As they say, between the Idea and the Reality, falls the Shadow. With the Shadow of 26 years of misinformation removed from your Idea of Clinton as a candidate, what is the Reality that remains? The difference between your Idea of Clinton and the reality of Clinton is how QAnon has come tippy-toeing into the bank benches of the political arena. I blame it on the Oliver Stone version of Vietnam.