#quite really it is: self concept / the state / persist imo

[earfgoddesss]

!!!

[mbti-notes]

infj. my head is in chaos regarding the topic of activism, especially in the current climate. i always try to keep myself knowledgeable and take action where i can. but right now, everything is chaos. its like no matter what you do, it will never be enough. i can’t look away or ignore injustice or pain. right now current events are filling my head up. on the other hand i feel like i’m concerned with messages about “be here now." (1)

[con’t: i’m not here in the sense that i’m with the political movement, what i’m reading online, etc. but every time i try to go about my day and focus on the “good” (like nature, or my blessings, etc.) it just feels wrong. like i’m lying to myself. because something is chipping away at me to still focus on the bad, or maybe to just focus on where i’m needed — activism. i’ve signed the petitions, made calls, donated. but an anxiety drives me to continue reading what’s happening and absorb it all i do feel driven to action. i think its natural for me to become consumed by this, these aren’t normal circumstances, and i care, but because of “mindfulness” philosophies and not wanting to be clouded by anger/judgement/fear, i’m starting to question how good it is to become all-consumed. a part of me thinks “i should post something related to this fight,” another thinks “post something unrelated” to show a sliver of happiness/hope in all the madness. i'm really broken up about this. i’m faced with the question: how much is enough? i’m bombarded with messages about “if you’re not posting about this you’re not caring enough!” now i’m too scared to post anything else, even if some people clearly need reprieve and maybe a small distraction in the midst of the pain. i’m scared i’ll be attacked for “not caring enough.” i know this is sort of a vent, but you seem like you might have guidance in this.]

IMO, it isn't a matter of doing "enough", at least that’s not a concept that I use to understand the problem. As long as injustice exists as a systemic problem in our society, then, as citizens in a democracy, we haven't done "enough", have we? In a perfect society, everyone should be treated as equal under the law. Perfection is, by definition, the highest standard, but it's not the standard that should be used to measure the actions of an individual when you’re talking about society at large. Privilege and power aren’t doled out equally in society. You don’t control the color of the skin that you’re born with nor the family that you’re born into. It’s unproductive to whip up guilt about things that you don’t control. It’s more productive to think about how to utilize whatever facets of privilege and power you possess in the wisest, most helpful way possible.

I think a better question to ask is whether you're doing all that you're reasonably able to do, given your moral duties and obligations as a member of society. Are you educating yourself in a way that allows you to be a positive rather than negative influence in society? If enough of us did that, a lot of harm would be prevented. Are you addressing how you might be contributing to systemic injustice in your life? If enough of us did that, we'd be much more mindful about who we reward, how we consume, and the candidates we vote for, which would create significant structural change. Are you able to do something to help support the victims of systemic injustice? If enough of us did that, there'd be enough resources available to root out the bad actors more quickly, which would significantly reduce future victimization. 

The only person you really have power over is yourself. As one person, you have limited time, energy, and resources to solve a problem that exists at the societal level. Your actions are only ever a drop in the bucket, perhaps a few drops if you have some social influence. Yet don't forget that every drop counts in the big picture of trying to fill up that bucket. It's easy to look at the enormity of the bucket and feel like it's impossible to fill (despair); it's hard to keep the drops flowing in at a steady pace (persistence). Generally speaking, long term goals are very difficult to achieve, both for individuals and especially for society, because it's easy to lose sight of an abstract future target when the present suffering is all too real and painful.

I’d say that you don’t understand the concept of “mindfulness” if you think that it’s meant to rid you of all your negativity. Injustice is quite sad to feel and angering to witness, is it not? Do you treat your negative feelings as legitimate? There'd be something wrong with you if you didn't feel anything upon witnessing inhumane treatment, if you didn't care about people getting hurt for no good reason. Negative feelings aren't problematic; it's what you do about your feelings that matters. Since you can’t handle your negative feelings very well, your thinking process is prone to being oversimplistic. People can care about more than one thing at a time, and caring about one thing a lot doesn’t mean you don’t care about other things. You also fail to recognize that the good and the bad are not mutually exclusive but inextricably intertwined. The existence of good doesn’t mean that there shouldn’t be any bad; the existence of bad doesn’t suddenly negate all the good. Being able to envision a better possibility actually serves to make you feel unhappy, sad, or angry that it doesn’t already exist; feeling unhappy, sad, or angry about the negative state of affairs motivates you to create something more positive in the future. In other words, good and bad exist in relationship and should be understood from a bigger, more holistic perspective - it’s useless to try to pretend that one or the other doesn’t exist.  

It's not about suppressing your negative feelings (emotional dysfunction); it's about using them as a catalyst for positive transformation (emotional intelligence). It’s not about whether you have a right to be happy (misplaced guilt); it’s about whether your happiness comes largely at someone else’s expense (examine your complicity). It's not about whether you're doing "enough" (self-punishment); it's about whether you’re mindful of the consequences of what you do (self-awareness). It’s not about whether you should/shouldn’t post this or that online (performative identity); it’s about showing who you are through what you care about (authentic expression). 

If you're trying to stop whatever you do to perpetuate the problem (not always an easy task), educate and raise awareness of the problem (which requires time and energy), and help redirect resources to better tackle the problem (which requires self-sacrifice), that's all you can reasonably expect of yourself or anyone else. Are you being reasonable in your expectations? Your concern seems to be that your "best" isn't perfect and that "trying your best" is all-consuming. As NF, you must always be vigilant about the unhealthy/extreme perfectionism that comes from being far too unrealistic/idealistic. What do you imagine is your "best" and what is the reality of being "at your best"? Can you tell the difference between the self-inflicted ideal of what you want and the reality of what you are? Is devoting all of yourself, like a martyr, your "best"? In REALITY, are you at your best when your life is lived at emotional extremes, constantly exhausting all of your energy? NO. How can you be at your best when your mindset is steeped in self-destructive tendencies?

You are at your best when you are able to maintain a proper balance between your well-being and your devotion to service. Only then are you able to be most effective in helping others. As soon as you start punishing yourself for not being/doing "enough" and start feeling guilty for not suffering in tandem with others (as though creating more suffering helps), you're creating a new problem that’s about you (i.e. your perfectionism and lack of emotional boundaries), and then you're no longer able to contribute of yourself in positive ways. Don’t let the perfect be the enemy of the good. Perhaps you need to reflect on what you consider to be your "best" and re-calibrate it to meet the reality of what it means to be a well-functioning and well-adjusted HUMAN BEING. 

Never forget that you are human, with real limitations that should be observed and respected. If you treat yourself with self-compassion - the compassion that you so easily extend to others - you would never think that making yourself miserable is a good way to help anyone or anything. You may not have the power to solve a social problem single-handedly, but you have the power to help influence positive change in your part of the world. And you won’t be able to exercise that power if you don’t practice proper self-care. 

[hollowandeceptivephilosophy]

Snippets on Theological Issues Pt. 1

Inspired by the Zondervan Counterpoints Series

Miraculous Gifts

I’m a continuationist, though I only particularly expect to see gifts when the church/individual needs to be doing something radical. The performance of gifts in churches in “holding patterns” is not expected by me. (And to be fair, sometimes churches in a given society need to be in holding patterns, not every church is the church in Corinth).    Church Growth

Generally not a fan. The Social Sciences are generally based on a non-Christian ideology and cannot be adapted by the Church without substantially subverting her message. (Aspects of the social sciences are cool and good, but the underlying presupposition is based upon assuming that the fallen world is the way the world actually is in an ontological sense; this is okay for handling pragmatic or day-to-day matters, but will result in the subversion of the church’s ability to genuinely condemn the world).  On the other hand, churches often use “tradition” as an excuse to not actually answer the questions that people are raising today. This is bad and a violation of the great commissions.  (Loudly answering the wrong questions is about as useless as softly answering (perhaps incorrectly) the right questions).  Apologetics

I think apologetics is useful when it focuses on diffusing particular arguments against Christian Faith, I don’t really think it is useful beyond that.  More particularly, I don’t think evidentialism works as a general model (because evidence is always in relation to given tradition of inquiry, there is no “neutral” evidence), and I don’t think presuppositionalism works either (because while God is in fact necessary for truth, in our intellects he is not, because our intellects cannot comprehend God and thus cannot rely upon him as a fundamental postulate in the way that the presuppositionalists would require; God stands at the end of the process of reasoning, wherein we recognize that the core ideas which we have been using all along only find their true meaning and source in him; but this is the opposite of presuppositional theory). The Reformed Epistemology position is probably the one that I’m closest too; but I don’t think foundationalism in the sense in which they work is terribly useful; our core concepts are inherited from the traditions in which we work, and while we have freedom to improvise within those traditions, we aren’t reliant upon some kind of foundational intuition in the way that the (limited) amount of reformed epistemology I’ve read implies.  (Instead, the sense in which we have a general revelation of God is due to things inherent to anything which could be called a language and linguistically structured desire/sense of self/being-in-the-world; these things guide us towards “general revelation”, not some mysterious intuition. (Though, I entirely confess perhaps that’s what the Reformed Epistemology school has been driving at, in which case I’m quite close to them; and I have enormous respect for them regardless).  Inerrancy

I accept that everything in the Bible is true in some sense, and is binding upon my thought and intellect. I cannot discard any part of the Bible as merely a product of its times, instead I must accept (and to a limit extent, join with) the long effort of my fellow Christians to understand the Bible as the Truth about the Word of God. 

At the level of the text: I accept that the final revisions of the tradition were divinely inspired, and that what they say is normative for Christian faith and practice. While it is not accurate to say God “said” every part of the Bible, he certainly has endorsed every part and said a great deal of it (most of the Prophetic books, most of the Pentateuch etc.) Basically some parts God said, other parts he edited, other parts he published (if we are using the modern publishing process as an analogy).  However, I also believe that what God is saying through the text usually is far more than what the original author was saying, and that there can be substantial tension with what the original author would have understood the text to mean. (But I think that about all texts; the original author and even the original community of interpretation do not necessarily exhaust or finally determine the meaning of a text; though their opinions are quite significant as they are the most fluent speakers of the idiom of a text [under normal circumstances]). However, God still chose this text as God’s text (in way not dissimilar to how he chose this people as God’s people) and therefore one must accept it as chosen by God and not something that can be ignored. So, while there can be tension between God’s intent and the author’s intent, there are limits to the sense in which there can be irreconcilable contradiction between the two.  Law and Gospel

The Law is a form of Gospel, the Gospel is a form of Law. The differences between them are based upon the ontological differences inaugurated by Christ’s Life/Death/Resurrection, and the resulting epistemological differences. 

(The Law kills only because the Law faces sin qua unredeemable and has to fight against it as an enemy; a contradiction only overcome by Christ who in being God could make those naturally enemies friends and children once more. But this is an ontological change, not merely an ethical or “conceptual” one).  The differences between the ethical norms of “the Law” and the ethical norms of “the Gospel” are grounded in this ontological difference. (And thus, some precepts of the Old Testament do not apply to Christians, or at least are not necessary for Gentile Christians). 

I also accept that the Church has the power to generate law, albeit the law that the Church generates is contingent and prudential, not necessarily true in all cases. (as all laws are)

The Law of the Church, to be legitimate, must also be grounded in the revelation of Christ and the new order of being he inaugurated. 

Sanctification

I have a sufficiently sacramental theory of redemption that most of the sanctification debates don’t really interest me.  I don’t really believe in a second work of the Holy Spirit (Other than, maybe Confirmation), I do believe that in every individual case of sin mature Christians can resist; but factually speaking due to corruptions of will or intellect patterns of sin tend to persist throughout the Christian life. (But I also believe in purgatory, so... I think everyone does get sanctified before heaven). 

Christian Spirituality

I don’t really understand what this means, but insofar as I do understand... I think each major doctrinal loci properly speaking is a source of deep existential satisfaction, along with the scriptures and the Church (understood to encompass both the living and the dead).  Both excessive individualism and excessive communalism will result in a failure to continue to seek God through Christ Jesus as the Center though, as all of these things only have coherence in that (and through our baptism).  Divine Providence

God’s causal activity is not in competition with creatures, and is ontologically an entirely different sort of thing. (So God “divinely” causing things never precludes a creature “creaturely” causing them). (See Tanner and Aquinas) [God of course can use divine causation to, in one way or another, cause things in a creaturely sense, such events are what we usually call miracles. But this is not God’s typical mode of causal relation to things].  Thus while God causes everything that occurs, that tells us very little about how God governs the world.  Otherwise I broadly accept a Molinist view: God chooses this world among other worlds he could have chosen to create. Since creating a world is, for God, a non-temporal event, he knows all that will happen in this world, but the things that happen are co-determined by the internal logic of this world (and indeed, God could not have created *this* world without creating *this* world with *this* internal logic). 

Eternal Security

I don’t really believe in this, other than in the sense that God’s creation of the world includes the creation of all who will be saved. However, individual persons accept and reject God’s grace, and thereby accept or reject salvation that is available to them; and their position can change over time.

The Problem of Canaan

The major problems in this text are resolved by recognizing that the reformulation in “genocidal” or “holy war” language is a polemical response to Assyrian theories of religious war, and is meant to indicate that God fights powerfully for his people as well.  The earlier layer of stories which the later author is adapting include elements which make it reasonably obvious imo (Such as Rahab, Gibeon, etc). that the actual conquest was not genocidal [and indeed, historically speaking probably resulted in the assimilation of many rural Canaanites as new tribes of Israel]. There is still some tensions (after all, God definitely endorses a war of conquest even if it was not historically genocidal, and is reformulated in more absolute terms later, and is apparently consenting to being used in what is functionally state propaganda.) But I do think that this is inherent to choosing to become a God to a particular people who exist in a particular place and time.  

(So I guess my view is a mixture of: the events didn’t happen in this way, and the primary point is not ‘God wants you to kill Canaanites” but rather “God has destroyed powerful enemies utterly in the past, much like these empires claim they can do; he can give us triumph over Assyria”. And then of course there are the spiritual and Christological readings which add even more depth.) 

[phantomthiefjeanne]

Hey, I saw your blog with the pic of Jeanne from the Manga Kamikaze Kaito Jeanne. :) And i just finished (the third Time 🙈) the Manga and i wanted to ask for your Option. If you don't want because it's for you a long time since you read them it's okay 😊🙈 if it doesn't bother you here my question 😄 In the last Chapter we see noyn (which i really really like him) with silk and that he said he will wait for the next reborn of Maron. Part one

Part 2 So what do you think how would he use the time? I mean is he teaching in the old school for years as teacher and then stop because he doesn’t age and take an other identity to come back or do you believe he travels with silk. I also stand in chapter 22 in arina comments that noyn and silk (in his human body) have a relationship like yaoi. I was surprised because i thought he loves Jeanne (Woman) and not both man and women. 🙈

Part 3 Sorry i didn’t plan to write so much. I just had to ask you. 🙈🙈😊 and i now a Crazy question

Hey! First of all, I’d like to preface this with an apology for answering so late. I’ve been mostly off tumblr because of school and then piano stuff and then gearing up for university, but hopefully I’m not too late! 

Ok, so for Noin…I gotta start by saying that I’m not the biggest fan of his ultimate trajectory in the manga (full disclosure: I’m not the biggest fan of his character to begin with, so that bias might colour this response). Of all the changes and resulting tonal/themic shifts the anime didn’t land (Finn’s brainwashing for example), I think Noin’s arc there was handled better than in the manga the constraints of tv also removed the horrifying assault scene among other things. so I mean, staying with the lost love he should’ve long gotten over by then might not have been the best ending when letting go might be the better option, but it was better than deciding to continue to pursue said lost love’s underage reincarnation years in the future even after having assaulted her, lemme tell you. 

And with all that, as cool as the timeloop concept objectively is with Noin being the one to infect himself with a demon in the first place, I wish Arina hadn’t gone down that route because it left him with not only a bad ending, but one that didn’t really exist. It didn’t serve a purpose thematically, and it didn’t serve the story, either. His only notable appearance after the time travel arc is showing up to swoop in on Maron when she thought Chiaki was rejecting her. Despite being quite powerful, he’s not a player in the final battles and is barely mentioned in the main story afterwards. 

A better resolution imo would be 1) having him succeed in making sure he never became a demon knight in the first place, then 2) having him find out that Jeanne wasn’t actually saved, 3) having him deal with the tragedy of that again, but this time 4) finally making peace with it and fading away to allow his human self to live on in the past and continue the good fight in Jeanne’s memory (operating under the time paradox theory that a new universe has been created or something, so that demonknight!Noin’s impact on the future could be preserved. or not preserved. he never really did that much for the main storyline and even Zen’s sideplot could have functioned without him oops). Is that too idealistic and even forgiving of a redemption for him? maybe, but hey, at least this resolution doesn’t involve forgiving the man for trying to assault someone, congratulating him for not repeating the deed and saying it’s ok because “he wasn’t going to go through with it was he”, allowing his obsession with a teenaged girl to continue because apparently that kind of persistency is romantic, and calling that a “redemption arc”! haha! because that would never be the canonical alternative! 

cries

In any case, to answer your question, I’d like to think that Noin spent the years after the Devil’s defeat continuing to be a teacher. We never really saw his teaching in action in the manga, but maybe he’s good at it, maybe those extra years spent on Earth has given him special insight on the subject he teaches, history, and the languages he’s accumulated (because asides from French and Japanese, he could’ve easily learned more) get to finally be put to use after his years of recluse. Maybe he finally gets a hobby now that the devil is gone. For all the art thievery in this series, there’s no actual artist character, so maybe he can be that. 

I also really like your idea that he goes on to travel with Silk, after some time passes and his unfading youth is starting to look more and more suspicious, and his chances with Maron seem to get slimmer and slimmer as she and Chiaki progress in their old-married-couple-life. We don’t have much insight on how Noin spent his life while waiting for Maron’s birth (just that he somehow watched her grow up from afar?) but since he’s still immortal he can fill in the blanks on some of the things he didn’t get to do, places he didn’t get to visit while under Satan’s command. Will he learn to let Maron go? Who knows. It’s not even a sure thing that she’ll be reincarnated afterwards, and I’ve always liked the ambiguity of that. Without as potent of power since giving Eve’s powers to Finn, maybe her reincarnations’ll be harder to track down, and what starts as a quest to finding that reincarnated soul more or less ends with Noin finding HIMSELF on his travels. Maybe the real Maron was the friends he made along the way, amiright?

Maybe without the Devil around, Noin’s immortality won’t last? I like the thought of that, because like I said, I think he deserves a finite end at some point. His fatal flaw’s always been the inability to let go, and somehow he’s never really punished for it. Giving up his life or at least his immortality to save someone or do something, now that would be a grand gesture for a man this persistent, grander than his “time travel and possess your past self with a demon so that you can wait for a girl to be born in 500 years” imo.

I don’t know if I like the idea of Noin and Silk together romantically because power unbalance and other unhealthiness aside, Noin was Silk’s creator and Silk is supposed to look like a little kid (Zen, specifically) in his human form, making for an age difference and something akin to a parental relationship as far as physical appearances go as well. But I mean, if Noin softens up in the future and becomes kinder I guess it could work out? To clarify, though, Arina actually states in the volume 22 free speech that Noin and Silk are platonic, mentioning the yaoi genre only to say that she wasn’t herself a fan of the genre but she didn’t mind people who were, and that Silk and Noin didn’t fit under that sort of relationship. (At least, that’s what it says in my copy of volume 5; I have the CMX English edition. Where did you read that part? I’m wondering how if there’s been a mistranslation) Of course, you can have queer representation without being put under that label uh in fact please do. Noin can very well be attracted to both Jeanne/Maron and Silk, though! I can hc him being pan very easily. I don’t think sexual orientation really adds to or detracts anything from his character–I’m just not too sure that he’s great representation considering his villainy. 

And now it’s totally my turn to apologize for writing this much, haha