#pastoral power

[eligalilei]

Just a thing I wrote somewhere in DMs, thought it was funny/vaguely accurate. Also, anyone who knows me has heard me say some shit like this, so... eh. Maybe nothing to see here:

Psychiatry genuinely is a fucking church.

I mean, I'm genuinely not attacking the use of all meds for all conditions. Some things genuinely work for some people sometimes.

But..... the poor rate of response, its utter unpredictability, and the sort of cryptically ensouled/disavowedly spiritualized nature of some of the conditions, ensures also that it be so, and operate on faith in the one behind the curtain, (Mr.?) Science, and His priests, doctors (of psychiatry, but it is important for their self esteem to emphasize the doctor part whenever given the opportunity).

In order for this to work (placebo is real, and is supported, nay, even enactuated, by the priest's various rituals and workbooks), and to deal with the mysteriously weighty burden of the vacuum of unknowledge.... the priesthood must know.

And if you attack, or even question, the idea that they Know, you attack.... everything. It's an affront to identity, even, for some people.... since the dia-'γνῶσις' is their excuse (though that terming somewhat denigrates sickness...in that word I intend not to attack the sick, which would be all too easy, given our constitutive unsteadiness, but rather to target an attitude toward it, and an idea of what it is) for not being well, for, to be frank, failing at life. Such a situation needs any salve available, real or intangible.

It's not enough to be merely sick (in fact that is the terror... perhaps even the essence of existential terror itself.... the monster, the enemy, unknown... structurally, it cohabits the space of The Thing)... that phrasing is intentionally off-kilter: it is an entire negative in its unknownness, even only a suggestion of (demand for?) suspicion or a dirty signifier of malingering.... to be as a positive, a token accepted as legal tender in any economy, it needs to be a known (sickness).... with little tabs specialmade to be sewn carefully into your identity. . There is no other way.

Also, it resonates with and inherits the structures of what Foucault calls 'pastoral power'.... which is embodied in the systems of sin, confession, penance, and the divine gaze. It's a spiritual inheritor of the church, only sanitized and scientificalized.

No all-knowing God... but rather a messianic all-knower sitting (in hopeful visions, nearly) at the end of history, from the gaze of whom you can hide no spot of illness.

This doesn't, I know, describe everyone involved, everyone who takes meds, every doctor and every nurse.... but it is a common enough attitude that it tangibly haunts the actual efficacy of these systems... more, in fact, it shares with them its rather more tangible breath, which enlivens them, despite not everyone believing in the reality of the ghost.

[ceilidho]

I feel like I’m fighting a one woman battle against romances where the guy is a rich businessman …..die a thousand deaths, you genuinely awful trope. I only give a fuck about regular ass people with regular ass jobs

[currymanganese]

Legacy. You think about it?

And the Lord God caused a deep sleep to fall upon Adam, and he slept: and he took one of his ribs, and closed up the flesh instead thereof; And the rib, which the Lord God had taken from man, made he a woman, and brought her unto the man. And Adam said, This is now bone of my bones, and flesh of my flesh: she shall be called Woman, because she was taken out of Man. Genesis 2:21-23~

"Wait, so what was the best one?"

"Best what? "

"Best meal you ever had."

"Yeah, it was, it was Carmy's."

"I knew it. I knew it, yeah."

"Sydney: Hmm. He is really, really... really good."

"High praise."

"Yeah, but he's still a little bitch."

Inspired by my add-on to @espumado's thread here on the supernatural and mythological references in The Bear. @thoughtfulchaos773 @glitterslag @moodyeucalyptus @vacationship @ambeauty @lecham1644 @tinfishlove @whenmemorydies @brokenwinebox @glitterslag @tvfantic87 @augustmonsooning @devisrina @imliterallyjustablackgirl @angelica4equity @outmakingmoonshine @blackjack-15

[roseworth]

i LOVE dream talk its my favorite conversation topic ever. whenever someone starts a sentence with "last night i had a dream" i am tuned in and listening. tell me everything i will never get bored of hearing the shit that happens in your dreams

[cartoonnonsensegirl]

Favorite Anime Ships

Yumiella x Patrick (Villainess Level 99)

Sei x Albert (The Saint's Magic is Omnipotent)

Arnold x Rishe (7th Time Loop)

Kyoutarou Kakei x Tsugumi Shirasaki (A Good Librarian Like a Good Shepherd)

Nasa Yuzaki x Tsukasa Yuzaki (Tonikawa)

Izumi x Shikimori (Shikimori's Not Just a Cutie)

Noah x Raeliana (Why Raeliana Ended Up at the Duke's Mansion)

Shingo x Miu (Mashiroiro Symphony)

Cecilia x Lawrence (Saint Cecilia and Pastor Lawrence)

Kiyoka Kudou x Miyo Saimori (My Happy Marriage)

Anne x Challe (Sugar Apple Fairy Tale)

[sher-ee]

It’s never who you think it is.

[aj-lenoire]

david didn’t become a preacher after the world ended because he found god. no one needed teachers anymore, no one was sending their kids off to school to learn math. the only way he could keep power and authority—and specifically power and authority over children—was by turning himself into a holy man.

[meegan420]

Thank you :) for praying for @tinyshe and her family!

[ihadtried]

I used to be so afraid right after I deconstructed that I would return to the church. That suddenly I would have to leave behind this new life I loved and enjoyed so much, be sucked back into the tiny box that was my religion. Give up everything I was only just starting to experience. Delete my blog and block my new queer friends and repress repress repress repress.

And now four years later every time I hear a passage from the Bible it sounds more and more ridiculous. It looks more fake with every passing day.

I’m just so much happier

[homoqueerjewhobbit]

One of the main reason I like writing omegaverse is that it's so deeply stupid and embarrassing. It's just a ridiculous set of tropes. I love it so much but we all have embrace the fact that it's so, so silly.

And that's great! It takes alllll the pressure off. No matter how seriously I take this, I'm not letting my parents read it, I'm not sending it out to traditional publishers, I'm not gonna get nominated for a Hugo.

If I finished one of my other, more serious WIPs and I was embarrassed by the result, I would be devastated. It would fundamentally undermine my entire sense of self. But I don't have to worry I'll be embarrassed by this when I'm done because it's omegaverse, so I already am!

The stakes are just so much lower.

[vox-anglosphere]

A peaceful Cotswold village and farmhouse on a sunlit winter's day

[disneydatass]

Why are you so angry all the time? Why do you lock yourself away from the world? Why are you not living your life they ask?

I answer with my own set of questions. How can I live in a body that doesn’t work? In a house divided? In a mind that constantly races? How can I go out and try to make a living when I know off the back of my labor my money goes to funding genocide? How can I think positively and go out and have fun when children are being gun downed for going to school, the movies, the mall? Is this survivor’s guilt? It can’t be. I don’t feel guilty for surviving. I feel rage and sorrow that I have to survive. I should be living. We should be living. One shouldn’t have to struggle to eat, drink, and have basic healthcare and rights.

[craigtowens]

Andrew Murray On Preaching

Andrew Murray shares some insights that all pastors and preachers would do well to carefully consider.

“When the Lord chose His twelve disciples, it was ‘that they might be with Him and that He might send them out to preach’ (Mark 3:14). A life in fellowship with Him prepared them for the work of preaching. …  “The law of their first calling remained unchanged: their unbroken fellowship with Him was the secret of their power to preach and to testify of Him. …  “The same principle stands for all…

[idmnbc]

This part of ‘How To Be A Normal Person’ broke me forever.

[sher-ee]

Not Drag Queens.

Many predators are people in positions of power. People you think are trustworthy.

Adjust your thinking when it comes to who the main violators are.