#so many random community intersections

[snifferish]

When people talk about creating safe spaces online, I think the general focus is on excluding people who are outright nasty or prejudice. While I think this is important and a good step, it can also create some illusion that the people within the space are safe from doing wrong. 

There are so many examples of this for sure, but to give an example that I have experienced is the concept of “Safe spaces for women” Yeah obviously it tends to be a space free of men, but that doesn’t make the women who are in the space completely “safe” either. If we talk about the four I’s of oppression, Ideological, Institutional, Interpersonal, and Internalized, the step of excluding the offending group only addresses a few. Going back to my example, there are plenty of women I’ve met who carry internalized ideas of misogyny who can make other women feel unsafe. I mean, most of, if not all of the misogyny I’ve experienced in the MC community has come from other fem people who use the excuse that they like some women or are a women as a defense.

It’s also important to mention intersectionality. Yeah it’s a space of women, and that might make it seem free of misogyny, but what if those women carry prejudice towards someone's race, or whether or not they are trans?

And again, because it’s been deemed a “safe space” a lot the internal or intersectional offenders see themselves as immune because of their position or other identity. I think if one truly wants to cultivate a safe space online, while excluding the people who are outright nasty and prejudice is a good step, it’s important to encourage the people within the community to look inside themselves and deconstruct their prejudices whether its against other people or yourself (also going back to those four I’s, it’s crucial to understand no one if free from that). It’s important to create a space where criticism is accepted, and not viewed as an attack, and in turn the criticism given is intended to call out and instigate growth. This post itself isn’t an attack on anyone in particular, in fact it’s partially a guideline for myself, as I want to cultivate a safe space in my online community while acknowledging that just because I do that, I’m not free of critique. I also want to add that this happens in a myriad of forms across multiple communities, and I use the example of misogyny because that’s what I’ve experienced, but if others want to weigh in their experiences as well, I think that’s important.  Sorry for the random tumblr post out of the blue, I enjoy a long character count ahaha. I’m not even sure how to tag this and it might just go to the void, but these are my thoughts.

[prototypesteve]

hi! I just came across your acc and read some of your posts and you seem a really inspiring individual. im a 18yo demisexual person who's really close to their queerness (both in the sexuality and gender aspects) as its a fundamental part of my individuality. and i dunno, both my being acespec and genderqueer are a tricky... thing to get into when i want to get into relationships. im trying to be happy by myself. and this was very random and all, but as you're an adult aroace (i see very very few of them) its inspiring to me knowing I can still have a good, normal life? while living in full authenticity. idk. sorry if this is random. you dont have to reply. your account was nice to come across. have a wonderful day

Thank you for this. This is why I’m here. Honestly this is most of why I came out. Seriously.

Being Different and “New”.

The world is catching up with you, so you’ll have to be patient sometimes. Language often outpaces feelings. People know how to address genderqueer (they know all the words) but they’re still learning how to process genderqueer (they’re deconstructing all the old gender “archetypes” and stereotypes they were taught by parents and teachers who didn’t address or process genderqueer in their day). They will figure it out, because they can see it’s real. But it’s frustrating, in the meantime.

Even our own community of LGBTQIA+ (in Canada we use 2SLGBTQIA+, leading with 2S for two-spirit) is catching up with us in a lot of ways. The queer community has largely thought of queer as for/about genderqueer, and so when they see aros and aces and demisexuals and demiromantics, they have to either accept or reject that there’s a whole other layer of queer called relationship queer who intersect and overlap with genderqueer inside the bigger (and for some “newly bigger”) queer category/world/thing.

Being alone.

Alone is a complicated word for us. Aspec people experience a few kinds of alone-ness. There’s completion, which allos sometimes don’t get. We’re complete inasmuch as aspec people don’t have as many spaces in their lives where they need an “other half,” even though many of us spend a lot of our lives being told we have that space and we need to fill it. I wrote about that, here.

Then there’s the way we can can feel isolated from the bigger queer world because of the ways some people refuse to accept asexuality and aromanticism as queer, because they see it as a cishet thing, somehow.

We can feel isolated from traditional communities built around faith, politics, ethnicity, national identity, or even generational identity (GenX was wiiiiildly amatonormative), all because our defining differences are falsely interpreted as “new”. People misread our orientation as a phase, or a “made up internet thing” even though we’ve always been here. For ages, the world didn’t want to talk about all the asexual, aromantic, demisexual, and demiromantic people they could see everywhere—unlabelled, but plain as day—and now that we want to talk about ourselves, they’re going to say “you’re making that up”.

Then there’s the alone-ness of trying to explain how we do love, but differently. That one’s hard. I think that’s the one I’m going through the most, this year.

“See Also”:

Anyway, here’s a poorly-sorted and always growing “library” of links to my most popular social media posts, and stuff I’ve learned as an older ace. The recurring theme is that it really is going to be okay.

I’m still me, but now I know why. (How I explain my “thing” to straight friends who knew me from before I came out.)

Phase (You don’t outgrow it. I’m proof.)

Complete (Our complex relationship with “Alone”)

1994 (The counsellor story)

When I realized (Slow origin story)

Lifeline (Something bad happened to me when I was young, and believe it or not, Spider-Man rescued me.)

Recipe for Disaster (When life happens BEFORE you figure out your orientations)

Sexual Induction rather than a sexual awakening. (Things won’t always follow the romance novel playbook.)

Complicated. (Being queer AND Christian.)

Din Djarin Aroace Rep (We love. We just mostly do all the other kinds of love)

Treasure (a note to my trans friends)

Happy Ace Week (yes we’re here)

Masked (About not being out to everyone)

Negotiating (About gaining “acceptance” from the bigger queer community.

[randomfoggytiger]

The X-Files 30th Anniversary

Day 7: 30th Anniversary Extravaganza

Today, I'm thanking The X-Files community for bringing me across a wonderful show-- its amazing cast and writers and fans-- and inspiring me to get back on my own creative hobbyhorse.

My Thanks

Being a part of a collective who want to celebrate this show and others' creative endeavors with heartfelt good wishes has been exciting, fun... and humbling.

My special thanks to the many people who welcomed me with open arms and contribute to this space, even if it's "simply" (but it's never just anything, is it?) answering asks or reblogging or even liking a random post that passed from one blog to another.

There are too many to list, so I'll just chat about my most remembered moments:

@baronessblixen, for being so kind and encouraging that you drew me out of the anon shadows; for liking what I create; for giving me a logical mind to bounce my ideas off of in asks; and for inadvertently teaching me the joy of appreciating animal videos (and convincing me, along with Vavie, to watch Return to Me.)

@dd-is-my-guiltypleasure, for our cherished Duchovny talks; for your heart and your amazingly detailed dedication; for your artbook that I prize dearly; and for your warmth and good humor.

@suitablyaggrieved, for your spectacular and refreshing meta takes; for persevering in your creative works and this fandom; and for sharing the progress pics of your beautiful X-Files themed sweater.

@welsharcher, for being my mini Kermit-loving pool noodle~ (I love brightening your day as much as your messages brighten mine); for your gifs and posts that make my heart soar; and for our shared, priceless sense of humor.

@agent-troi, for being a solidly intelligent third party to the Pre-S1 Mulder Singleton Club; for your hilarious hashtags and great insights; and for your amazing fic output.

@mondfuchs/@annablume, for swapping XF fic recs in my early Tumblr days; and for making my year by drawing my little boopy-tongued tiger in Mulder's arms to celebrate our collective birthday (post here. Still makes me sappy thinking about it~.)

@amplifyme, for returning to Tumblr and giving me a chance to meet you; for sharing your excellent BATB series (in general and Nan Dibble in particular); and for sharing your thoughts as you slowly peel back the psyche of Vincent and the worlds Above and Below.

@demon-fetal-harvest, for being one of the first to die over my Scully Les Miserables amv (it's one of my favorites I love to rewatch; and I think of you every time I do); and for your hilarious reblogs and even more hilarious tags.

@xxsksxxx and @two-microscopes for being the first to reblog and like during a rough time. I'll cherish that moment forever~.

@medicaldoctordana, for being cool and creative and driven; and for hating the mainstream MBTI system as much as I do (and for your philosophy recs-- will get around to them someday.)

@ibringyouasong89, for being my fellow warrior in the trenches. We're new of acquaintance, but I think this will be a beauuuuuuuuuutiful friendship~. ;))))

@writingwell, @enigmaticdrblockhead, and @perpetually-weirdening, @spidey-is-tired, @cyb3rpeach, @scullys-scalpel, @frogsmulder, @teenie-xf, @dreamingofscully, @freckleslikestars, @cecilysass, @slippinmickeys, @gabby-msr, @thatfragilecapricorn30, @television-overload, @pianogirlxf @mollybecameanengineer, and @settle-down-frohike for being mutually supportive and welcoming. The world is both large and small; and I'm glad my path was able to intersect with yours.

And thank you to the silent-but-always-theres who take the time to drop in and give my posts the time of day~: @samucabd, @sonictacocat, @kiivitaja, @freckleslikestars, @nimlurks, @redteekal, @mindibindi, @marinas5099, @chavisory, @sizzlingempathspybat, @enigmaticxbee, @inflappible, @metamayou, @invidiosa, @txcb1013, @dytttt, @borogirl, @agentbluefox, @agentwhalesong, and ALL OF YOU. I can't tag anymore because Tumblr is tapping me out; but I include you-- yes, you-- in this as well.

My Projects

While The X-Files turned 30, my fandom experience turned (a little over) a year old! Wow, time does fly when you're... speed typing out multiple essays worth of fic rec lists, meta analyses, and personality typing posts (or even wrangling a video editor, compressor, and uncooperative Tumblr site to upload an amv.)

My full list of accomplishments can be found here; but these are a few highlights that were standouts to me personally:

My First Fic

randomfoggytiger’s Son of Egypt (Prince of Egypt twist on television-overload's what if: Samantha adopted and raised William.)

Fic Rec Lists

Meet the Mulders

Creepy and Cozy Cabins  

Time Travel, Time Loops, and Just Wrong Timing 

Car Wrekt 

S9 Mulder Stays or Returns While the Mytharc Barrels On

Fics That Deserve More Comments (Part I) 

Poll Results Fic: 1st Place- Scully Injured but In-Charge

Poll Results Fic: 2nd Place- Cleaning Out the Vineyard House

Poll Results Fic: 3rd Place-- Tithonus Mother Hen Mulder

The Field Where I Fix-It Fic-ed

Analysis Posts

Arcadia Analysis: Scully Was Enjoying Herself Immensely 

Never Again: An Intensive Essay (and its paired twin: Never Again and Fear)

One Son: An Intense, One-Shot Analysis of “You’re Making This Personal”  

The Mulder Family In-Depth (Part VI): Talitha Cumi and Tena's Lies

S5 Is a Pretty Dark Time for Mulder

The Scully Family In-Depth (Part VII): Mulder, Maggie, Melissa, and the Snake

Mulder Trauma Responses: Fight, Flight, Freeze, or Fawn? 

Scully Trauma Responses: Fight, Flight, Freeze, or Fawn?

Mulder and Dreams

Milagro In-Depth (Part II): Loneliness Is a Choice and Lamps Go Dark

How the Ghosts Stole Christmas In-Depth: Full Analysis

Scully Is the Conduit Conductor and Mulder Is the Dancer

How Scully Taught Mulder to Hug

Mulder and Dreams

CSM Inflicted Insanity On the Syndicate

Fire and False Romance, Ice and Love

All IVF Roads Lead Away from The Unnatural and to Millennium 

Jungian Personality Typing Posts

{{Extraction: Proving Mulder Is an INTP, Not an INFJ/INFP}} 

SCULLY, The Enigmatic ISTJ

XF Fanvids/AMVs

Les Miserables AMV: Scully's Solo

The Muppets AMV: Drivin’ Right Along

Fiddler on the Roof AMV: Mulder and Samantha

Bonus Content (Fandom Adjacent)--

React: "Return to Me" from the POV of Someone Averse to RomComs

Personality Typing: Return to Me

HAPPY 30TH ANNIVERSARY, XF!

And cheers to all~!

Enjoy!

[thelesbianpoirot]

You’ve probably gotten this before idk, but I’ve mainly seen Black women identify themselves with womanism and not feminism because many believe that feminism wasn’t as inclusive to Black women. I’m just saying this since you’re one of the few Black women I’ve seen that strongly supports feminism.

I do not support coming up with new vague performative terms to fix something that doesn't need fixing. Womanism is like queer to me, it's vague, doesn't have a concrete definition, and so people who identify as that can't be held accountable for not living up to their politics. It didn't used to be like that, early proponents of womanism literally just detailed feminism but black woman focused, however, now a days any young woman I've seen identify as a "womanist" are using it to dodge showing any feminist praxis. When you call them out, 'That isn't a feminist view point' they say, 'well i'm a womanist' it usually means they include men in their feminist too. I've seen intersectional feminism become this also. The womanist doesn't criticize beauty practices, the womanist doesn't criticize men of color, the womanist isn't pro-seperatism. There are feminists who only talk about white middle western women's issues, but so do white western Marxists and white western advocates of all movements. But for some reason it is feminism that has to prove constantly that it is not racist or discriminatory of all kinds to be barely tolerated. A white person may have coined the term feminist/feminism, but feminist action has been practiced by women all over the world. There were Indian women fighting for the rights of women in her country before she even read the world feminist in English for example. To say Feminism is inherently racist so we have to do away with it, cast it aside, because of some bad actors, then other movements should be held up to the came scrutiny. Black Nationalism, Marxism, Anarchists, LGBT movement, With the amount of pedophiles and rapists outed inside leftist movements, why do people stand proudly behind those labels? I am a feminist because that happens to the most coherent consistent English word/term/theory to communicate my beliefs and hopefully describe how I aim to live my life. There are many black women who agree with me, many who don't, we aren't a monolith, but as I have lived in black majority countries my whole life, while we do have a white ruling class still, when I speak my feminist views, I am thinking about the women I see every day, who are black and brown. When I make a post about why women need feminism, I am not talking about random white women on tumblr.com that I do not encounter, I am talking about my neighbor, my sister, my mother, my own statistics.

[discluded]

I'm sorry I've been here even less longer than the previous anon. So....WHAT SEX CRAZE PAST?!?!!!!

Also love your blog and all the mile thirsting ❤

oh man this is fun 💅

the casualness with which he said it is most 😵‍💫😵‍💫😵‍💫🥵

I'm just gonna throw in more random fun facts for the hell of it

he was named one of Thailand's most eligible bachelors at 22

he had a stint in community theater at 24 🫶🫶🫶 theater kid mile

he already had his ears pierced he when had braces 😵‍💫😵‍💫😵‍💫

In high school Mile studied in the US in a prestigious study abroad program. And the program was in in Idaho 🤣 he's a potato country cowboy

He used to be in a boy band. With Apo's best friend Masu. Masu is the one who often defended Apo back in the days where he was bullied while working at Channel 3. So when they talk about how they're soulmates this is the level of intense intersection of their lives that they mean. sooo many things like this.

also despite all of this, Mile did not technically work in the ent industry full time before KPTS. I'll find the post later but his actual trufax Hannah Montana day job is being a CEO

No I cannot believe he's a real person either 💀💀💀

[rivetgoth]

Hello I saw your post on HRT and how you said that the difference between 1 year and 5 years is pretty big, and I wanted to ask you what is the difference between 1 year and 5 years? I have some friends who are unable to continue HRT because we live in an area where it's banned and they're in the early stages so I was only able to ask them about their experiences but I want to know more to understand it and support them better. Thank you for answering if indeed you do!

Hey! I’m gonna copy-paste another comment I left for someone else who asked if that’s okay, just because it was pretty detailed and I think I said everything I could possibly say, but it was just a random response to someone so it understandably got drowned by all the other notes my post got haha.

Here (+original link):

When it comes to the long term changes I would most aptly describe it as simply MORE.

All of those “early changes” people talk about, literally every one of them, just continue to happen, in ways that are subtle but absolutely crucial for long term and consistent passing.

More facial hair. More body hair. More bottom growth. More voice drop. More body fat redistribution. More changes to face shape and body shape. More muscle development. More change to the hairline, the skin texture, even just the way your brain works. By year 2 I was still excited when someone gendered me correctly, and still felt almost a sense of imposter syndrome when it did happen. I felt like I was teetering on the edge of masculinity. I think I passed as “trans” more than “male.” 5 years in it’s literally not something I think about. I just live as a man. I get gendered correctly from behind, with long hair, in women’s clothing and makeup… and on the rare occasion I get misgendered it’s the easiest correction to make and it’s immediately apparent to the other person that they were wrong, not me. My maleness is not a question. Nothing massive changed, it was just time.

Think about how cis men age: They don’t become adults and become static beings. Their voice continues to drop. Their hair patterns continue to change and develop. Many cis men can’t grow full beards until their 30s. Their weight patterns and body shapes change. Their muscles change, their skin changes. Aging isn’t a separate process from the masculinization or feminization of testosterone or estrogen. What we often take for granted as parts of becoming older men are still dependent on having a testosterone-dominant endocrine system. It’s not a process that starts and ends. I saw one person in the tags say “At a certain point it becomes a matter of aging as a certain gender,” and I think that’s such a fantastic way of putting it.

I think a lot of the early changes get propagated more in part because they’re easier to describe and more objective. Your voice will get deeper, your period will stop, you’ll begin to grow facial and body hair, your clitoris will change shape, etc are so much easier to articulate in a simple and accessible format than the much more subjective way it looks to age as a man. I think a lot of other issues intersect to make this stuff less acknowledged though, ranging from the simple fact that it’s still something of a rarity to see trans men who have been on T for a substantial amount of time—this stuff being widely accessible is still quite recent—plus the likelihood of long term transitioners to go stealth or at least focus less on their transition and thus their voice being heard less in the community than the younger guys who are still excited to report on every change because it’s all fresh and new (and the confirmation bias of the fact that guys with abnormally fast or significant changes are more likely to talk about it online, creating a false sense that this is the average experience), but also more nefarious and/or systemic issues, like there being no funding for comprehensive, good faith studies on long term transition, fearmongering about HRT positing it as this instant all-or-nothing life ruiner that will have you permanently fucking up your body within your first microdose, and the benefit of pushing propaganda that we CAN’T actually successfully transition, that success and long term happiness in transition is a myth. It isn’t.

[bisexualsdeservebetter]

As a bisexual in a heterosexual relationship I’ve been feelings so unwelcome by lesbians (won’t even begin how male centered the lgbtq is becoming too) and anyone that is queer but not dating a cishet person.

I’m on twitter (I know smh) and there has been alot of disgust with us bi women dating men and how were less valid. And I know cishet males in pride has raised a lot of eyebrows with how some were there and groped lesbians etc… but not all of straight males are evil for going to pride. Some are questioning, some er closeted, some are allies or dating a queer person.

WHY IS THERE SO MUCH HATE??

I mean I think there's so much hate for cishet males because a very large percentage of them behave extremely poorly around women & LGBT people as well as lesbians being understandably angry over how male centric the LGBT community is, like you said.

As for brining a cishet partner to pride events, I really think it depends on the event as to if it's okay or not. A parade? Yeah whatever, that's a huge public spectacle, I don't really care if people's supportive cishet friend/family member/partner goes with them so long as that person is well behaved and respectful and knows the event is not about them. But if it's not a public event or if it's an event meant for a certain demographic (ex. an event meant for lesbians and bi women specifically) then I would not say it's okay to bring a cishet partner to that event.

As for feeling unwelcome by lesbians, I am sorry you're feeling that way and I know it can be difficult to navigate one's own bisexuality & connection to the community when in a straight relationship. However, I really dislike how so many people seem to behave as if the approval of random lesbians is what determines someone's validity/belonging. I understand your frustration and I know it can be really difficult to feel like you're being excluded, but I'm going to say the same thing to you that I feel should be said to a lot of people:

Leave lesbians alone.

I don't mean like avoid them or don't talk to them, I mean don't act like they are required to approve of you and your relationship. There is always going to be a lesbian that doesn't like you, and for some reason that's extremely difficult for a lot of people to handle. You have to learn to deal with the fact that some lesbians are primarily interested in community with other lesbians and/or same-sex partnered bi women, and a very high number of lesbians have no interest in being around straight men at events meant for LGBT people. Many many many lesbians have been victimized in some way by straight men - and I don't mean to imply bi women aren't victimized as well, but I'm talking about lesbians right now - and I think it's completely fair for a lesbian to be uncomfortable around a random straight man she doesn't know.

We all saw the man vs bear thing didn't we? It seems a considerable number of women of any sexuality are uncomfortable around a man they don't know. Unfortunately a lot of men are in fact poorly behaved at best and pose a threat to the safety of women, especially women with other intersections of oppression like a lesbian or a black woman.

If you want to bring your straight boyfriend to pride events, then I'm sorry but you need to understand that a lof of people - lesbians especially - are not going to be okay with that.

Dating a man doesn't make you any less bisexual of course, and I'm sorry that people are questioning the validity of your sexuality based on the fact that you're dating a man. Biphobia is never okay. You're allowed to date whoever you please so long as they're a consenting adult and it doesn't change the fact that you're bisexual, and you belong in the LGBT community.

[absolutebl]

2 Moons Ambassador 

AKA 2 Moons 3 AKA 2m3

Thailand 2022 Motive Village 

7/10 

Tropes: E2L, obsession, popular/nerd, university set, pining seme, sunshine/sunshine, openly gay seme, bisexual uke

(I usually don’t review 7/10s because there are so many of them, but in this case I binge watched and took notes, so hey, here’s what a 7/10 looks like)

Random thoughts:  

Basically we open with a recap of 2 moons 2 (NOT 2 Moons original), some are scene for scene re-shots, which acts as an introduction to the new actors in the same roles. 

Pairs are:

PhaYo - uke has glasses

ForthBeam - no distinguishing features 

MingKit - uke has braces 

But these are all side couples, and we have a different new main couple of loser moon + ultimate hot guy too-lazy-to-moon, TatchLom. 

Gay af Tatch has a huge crush but only knows how to neg. Honestly, this is so common in BL it should be a seme character archetype. 

This BL pulp acts like a show that came out 5 years ago (considering the source material I'm not at all surprised). It’s full of ALL the flaws & tropes: 

faen fatale

stilted dialogue & bad sound

blushing maiden trope 

awkward acting & stiff (in the wrong way) physical chemistry

nonexistent yet also convoluted plot

punching down humor

gayest bridge in Thailand 

They even have the thing where the boys’ makeup on jaw line isn’t blended properly. 

On the bright side, when the main couple starts liking each other, they communicate properly, talking about why they behave the way that they do, and why they flirt that way. It’s actually a really sweet relationship. They gave me Nitiman vibes only with better resolution. No bad thing, frankly, I have a soft spot for Nitiman. They also both have nice wingman, and friends trying to be supportive and giving them good advice. 

There’s a noted correction for dub con, permission around sex, and one of them is openly gay, and his not liking women turns out to be a defense and a plot point in a good way. 

There is a lot of unnecessary manufactured drama and angst. For the sides this was basically the definition of their plots and they intersected not at all with the mains, so you can safely skip them. The plot is dumb. 

That said, a small part of me enjoyed some of the drama around the twins and Tatch’s broken friendships prior to university, and I wish that was more of the whole plot and we got less of manufactured misunderstanding couple angst. That said it descended into some TharnType Mame level kidnapping nonsense at the end.

Favorite scene? 

The table of gay boys going gaga over the new hot one in their midst was pretty darn amusing, very germane to the queer experience, quite frankly. 

Oddness? 

Main couple moves right on from first kiss to first sex scene. Although I do like how realistic that part felt to a first college relationship, especially when one half has been jonesing for so long. 

Quick Pitch

A Thai pulp that felt like it came out 5 yrs ago with many of the flaws inherent to that time and studio system, including manufactured angst and convoluted plot, but an ultimately sweet main couple that (as a pairing) feels a bit more modern and is satisfying to watch together. 

This will probably go down in history as one of the few BLs where I genuinely didn’t care about any of the side couples. 

(source) 

Shout out to ThailBLFan92 for the fun subs with extra notes, always appreciated. 

[safety-pin-punk]

im curious, how does being punk affect your feeling of religion? are you still a practicing catholic/go to church?

Hahahahahaha oh boy, buckle in cause this is gonna be a fun ride. I’ll put a cut cause this is gonna be long simply due to the amount of context that is needed to understand how I’ve managed to mash these two things together in my life. I hope this answers your question anon! (And thank you for asking nicely, that usually isn’t the reaction I get).

So, for reference, I am Catholic born and raised. My mom is Catholic, my dad is only recently exploring being religious. My brother has remained a Catholic good boy throughout his life, my sister has denounced religion. I’m somewhere between them. I don’t go to church often, but I still feel at home there when I do (most of the time). So technically, I’m not a ‘Practicing Catholic’ because of that, but I’m following my faith to the best of my ability (explained below).

I 100% believe there is a god, and because of that my faith has had some rough intersections with other parts of my life, such as being punk, the communities Im a part of, and being heavily involved in STEM. And those are things that took me years to figure out for myself. When just looking at being punk though, I think where it really clicked that punk wasn’t against my religion, but actually supports it, was in my freshman year of college. Like I’ve said before, I go to a Protestant school so every class has to somehow have at least one connection to religion (as a chemistry major this can get extremely annoying). But that year, I had a history class as a gen ed, Western Civ to 1450, and an absolutely kick ass professor to go with it. 

This class was the game changer for 18 year old me (oh my god that was 5 years ago). We spent a lot of time in this class talking about religions of ancient civilizations, and of course we talked about Christianity. And this man went absolutely feral. He was the man that introduced me to the concept of ‘Jesus was a punk’. And when you ignore all the random bull shit that comes out of people’s mouths at church and just look at the bible... yeah, he was right. Jesus flipped tables, he ate with societal outcasts like prostitutes and the homeless, and god did he hate the Roman government that controlled so much of the world at that time. 

And I think that’s when I really felt free to embrace the punk culture. The one thing that was holding me back was gone. I also later learned that professor had a metal band (I’m now going to have to try to find his youtube again lol - its been years). 

But yeah, being punk and religious in 2022 is hard. Its hard because the people who claim to be Christians are ignorant, refuse to learn, don’t know the context of the book they call holy, refuse to understand where Christianity stems from and our roots in Judaism, and keep trying to interpret the bible in a modern world (the bible can’t tell you shit about the evils of the internet man). I don’t particularly like going to church because I often find that its a snake pit disguised as a hospital. Though, that’s nothing new, if you ever take the time to read Romans (my favorite part of the bible), its full of Paul just absolutely loosing his ever loving shit because of how corrupt the churches are. 

So instead of going to church once every seven days and conforming to the rest of the vipers there, I try to live my life by Jesus’ standards for interacting with others. Be kind and forgiving, try to understand other points of view, don’t discriminate based on job, color, socioeconomic status, gender, how many kids, ect. Moral of the story, in my opinion, to be a good Christian, you need to treat people as people, and welcome them with open arms. You need to give back to your community. You need to fight for a better world. You need to push back against oppressive and authoritarian governments. And those are all punk values as well.

[maguayans]

AYE’S YEAR OF WRITING ‘22

Hi, hello! How have you been? I hope the season’s treating you well. It’s that time of the year again—to see how I ruled as a writer this year. (It’s already 2023, though. Happy New Year!)

GENERAL WORD COUNT: Forty-one thousand eight hundred plus words—pops confetti—across eleven stories! That’s not a lot compared to what I’ve written last year, but I’m pretty proud of it, especially because almost half of it was written within thirty days—thanks, Camp Nano.

If you happen to stumble upon my posts, you may know some of them: Lethal Bloods, Mariang Makiling, Red Complex, Crimson, Fair Waters, Maharlika, All in Favor, Say Aye, Red Cuts, Where the Poet Went to Die, Don’t Fall Asleep, and Tres.

Yeah…I don’t think jumping from one WIP to another is good…for me. But it’s fun!

WORKS IN PROGRESS: In addition to drafting the stories listed above, a few ideas came up and made it to my list of projects. It seems like I’d never run out of stories to write and talk about.

New WIP #1: Human x Deities — Once in a while the deities would come down from their heavenly, divine realm to visit the mundane (like tourists.) When they do, a human would accompany them (like a tourist guide). The story features the gods of Philippine Mythology, soulmates and reincarnations (I’m a huge sucker for it), shamans and glowing tattoos.

New WIP #2: Flea Market Isekai — MC enters a flea market at the wrong time and finds herself in the same market with a different crowd. The story features the wonderful creatures of Philippine Mythology.

There are also four new short stories. *eye emojis*

WORLDBUILDING: Maybe I didn’t surpass my word count last year because I was too immersed in ✨worldbuilding✨.

Tres. Following the decision to change the titles and revise the origins of the characters I immediately went to Tres’s worldbuilding — an island far, far away; isolated from the main population (which could mean a lot of things, but most importantly overlooked crimes, gore, and everything in between.) The island, San Angel, is modest and gorgeous, but like a multicolored amphibian in a rainforest, it is deadly. Lovely flowers grow by the earthen roads, and underneath lies the remains of those buried without tombstones.

Red Complex. The red strings universe is expanding. In addition to a novella called Red Cuts, there’s a short story collection featuring characters from the mundane and the Matchmaker’s realm.

The Morose Cat. There’s a mini worldbuilding series I call, The Uphill Town, introducing a town up the hill (where the story takes place) and what makes it so different…and magical. For one, there’s an abandoned shrine that cats always pass through, and where the veil between the mundane and the otherworldly fades.

Elementaliaverse. There are so many things I added recently to the project and the stories. Mainly: Mystique Heights, Fair Waters, and Maharlika.

Worldbuilding, my beloved.

WRITEBLR. I can confidently say I interacted with the community more in 2022, and it was so much fun! Hopefully, I could do the same and more this 2023, and participate in more writeblr events/activities. Speaking of which, here are two: 30 Days, 30 Lines Challenge (by blind-the-winds), and Trick or Treat Writeblr Halloween Event (by pluttskutt). Thank you so much for these!

BOOKS & READING. I read less than ten books, and I enjoyed them. I am open to random book recommendations in my inbox/messages. I'll continue reading reviews/posts about books—how I discovered The Great Library series. (A writeblr posted about how much they enjoyed reading the books, so I bought copies. They were on the third book then, If I remember correctly, and I wanted to reblog the post but I forget their handle.)

Crier’s War Duology, Nina Varela

House of Hollow, Krystal Sutherland

The Great Library (1-4), Rachel Caine

Intersections, B. Pigeon; Fell Marsh

MISCELLANEOUS/PERSONAL. We went on a trip for Christmas, and the funniest, most writer thing I did was buy a stick (an arnis stick, the vendor told me, though it seemed different), thinking it would help me write one of my WIPs. It was affordable, so I guess it was fine. ( A little Christmas gift for me, I told myself. But I did buy more than a stick from a gift shop. *laughs hysterically*)

INITIAL PLANS FOR 2023. Read at least twenty-five (25) books. // Finish at least one (1) draft. // Share two (2) short stories. 

I think...I’m going to be busy.

Thank you so much for reading! Enjoy the rest of the season. Stay warm and safe. Let’s hope 2023 will be kind and gentle. Cheers to more writing and reading and writeblr-ing!

If you have time, visit #ayearofwriting to see how other writers owned 2022!

[scrapyardboyfriends]

I think what bothers me the most about these producers is like the situation with Bernice and Bob that you mentioned. There's such obvious things that they could spin good dramatic/sad/heartwearming etrc content fairly easy, and they just... don't. They don't evern see it, and that is someone who is worryingsome bad at their jobs.

Sometimes it feels like they’re just allergic to even decent storytelling. But then that’s why it’s so frustrating when they do things like Marlon’s stroke and Faith’s whole story because those were predominately well done and had so much more life and heart to them and yet the rest of the mess is just that…a mess. And a generally boring one at that.

One of my biggest complaints of this era and Iain’s era too really is the lack of community feel in the village. And obviously I know that Covid was a huge blow to any attempts to do that, which I did feel like they were starting to improve upon a little bit with things like the football team story etc. But I feel like most of those restrictions are gone at this point and still, they’re nowhere near back where they could be.

The pub should be a central hub again. I feel like just doing that would improve things so much. Get people back in there, multiple character groups and stories at a time. Give me back the drama it used to provide.

I feel like the Hide has drawn away so many scenes that could have happened in the pub and it just doesn’t have the same feel. I mean honestly at this point the HOP/Hide is so pointless I would just have a new investor come in and change the whole business because other than having the world’s most boring kayak instructor and the survival challenge stunt week, the HOP has largely been a flop. We don’t see any of the outdoor adventure stuff so why did they make that an Emmerdale business. It’s dumb.

But if they must have it, especially the Hide, I would send all the adults and their stories to the pub and let the teens and other younger cast go to the Hide. I feel like the kids tend to go to the cafe but the cafe is run by Nicola and Brenda and it’s not as teen friendly. But the Hide where they can get pizza and hang out. Where they could get a job if they wanted to. All the teen and twenty something drama could play out up there. It’s always annoyed me that they’ve had so many characters working up there but they almost are never working at the same time and never interact. That brief moment where they were protesting Kim’s attempt at zero hour contracts was so nice because people actually interacted. Including Matty and Amy who you know are supposed to be dating. But speaking of them, the other nice moment was when Vic, Matty, Amy, Luke (ugh) and Ethan were all up there to get Matty and Amy together. Five characters in their twenties all hanging out having not one, but two stories going on. Great. Give me more of that. Give me Vic and Amy interacting on a regular basis since they both work there. Give me Matty and Amy interacting at work and talking about why they’ll do later. Give me Gabby going back to work there or let Samson get a job there or any of the teens. Let me see the older King kids going to the Hide. Let me see April’s crush on Arthur play out there. There’s opportunity and they just don’t utilize it.

I think one of the biggest things that could improve the show, even with their current terrible slate of stories is just more character interaction outside of their usual groups. This is where stories intersecting in places like the pub or the Hide is so valuable. This is where the show investing in friendships again would be so useful. How much less tedious would say Dawn and Billy’s drama be if they had friends to interact with? If Dawn had a real friendship with Amy or Mack and they could weigh in on her drama from an outside perspective. If Billy could be friends with Mack or Matty of Ryan or god even Nate. Or Ethan after their random attack story. Yes, give me a Billy and Ethan friendship. How much would that improve both characters? Like I always said, the Aaron and Ben relationship could have been far more tolerable if Aaron continued his friendship with Mack who constantly mocked Ben and who Ben didn’t really like. I mean in the past Aaron was always served well having Adam as a friend because their scenes were often a welcome break from Aaron’s misery. The show needs that kind of thing now. More than ever.

In addition to friendships and utilizing community spaces, it would also be nice to see more use of their workplaces. Let me see stories intersect more in the salon, through the garage, through the haulage firm, through the B&B and their restaurant. Both with the people that work there and the people that go their to get their haircut or their car fixed etc. There used to be so much drama at the garage back in the day and now it might as well not even exist. Let me see Ethan meeting with more clients in community spaces. Let me see more random electrical problems so we actually get to see Noah’s apprenticeship with Marcus. Let’s see more farming. There are so many opportunities and they just continue to do the same things over and over and not use what they have.

And back to the matter at hand with the storm clear up. I mean it might all be more meaningful if there were damage that actually mattered instead of just moving a few trees from places that don’t have heavy traffic anyway or fixing a random bench. There was great stuff after the plane crash and the bus crash that I’ve watched with the village pulling together. Especially the bus crash because it pit the village against the haulage company and their trucks and that made for interesting alliances and betrayals.

They should have had the storm damage a building that mattered like the pub or the village hall or the cafe or the shop or the B&B or the Hide. Give people a real reason to pull together. It also would have worked so much better if a building where people were sheltering got damaged by the storm and that was the stunt rather than sending people arbitrarily outside in a storm they had no business being out in. Like a tree could have fallen on the Mill and that could have been what killed Liv rather than sending her outside for ridiculous and contrived reasons. And then the village could have come together to clean up the Mill where their vicar and their doctor live too, to help Vinny pick up the pieces of his life. It would have also given them a chance to redo the set since all of the people it was built for are no longer on the show.

But no, they’re cleaning up random debris that’s not affecting anyone, all the buildings are fine. All of the trees fell in the right ways to cause zero damage. There’s no fighting for insurance claims. There’s no need for people to pull together. Nothing. Sigh.

Sorry…this became a very long rant. I just want this show to have some life again.

[truthispartial]

David Sauvage - The Future of Collective Decision-Making

David Sauvage - The Future of Collective Decision-Making

Podcast: Emerge: Making Sense of What's Next by Daniel Thorson 06.08.2022

Daniel: Welcome back to the Emerge podcast. Today on the show, I'm joined by David Savage. I'm connected with David at the recent Emerge gathering in Austin, Texas, and I thoroughly enjoyed his presence, even though our connection was pretty brief. And then afterwards, he reached out to me on Facebook Messenger and told me that he had a vision that he'd like to share my podcast about collective intelligence and the need for sacred containers for emergence. And we scheduled a very short conversation just to kind of feel ourselves together and, you know, it was a provocative invitation. And for whatever reason, I was just game.

People reach out to me on this, you know, on all kinds of mediums asking to be on this podcast and generally I decline people who invite themselves. But in this case, I don't fully understand why I was very into it. And so I'm really excited to talk to you, David, and have enjoyed just the way you show up in the spaces I've seen you in and excited to explore your vision. And maybe before we dive into that. Would you be open to sharing a little bit about who you are, what kind of work you do in the world, what you tend to think about?

David: Delighted and grateful to you for allowing me on. I felt that actually when I was reaching out I felt something like “this happens a lot and probably ‘no’ is usually the answer, but I also felt like we would do it.” I would say there's something in the air about this conversation, or there's something that wants to come through this conversation that you and I are subtly attuned to.

I am currently in my house in upstate New York, I live about 20 minutes from the town of Hudson. I think the essential thing to understand about me is that I put a lot of time and energy and care into attuning to my own feelings and attuning to other people's feelings and putting words to it.

About six or seven years ago, I started calling myself an empath, not merely in the sense of I'm really sensitive, but also just owning it as something of a career path. I would do these performances where I would get in front of audiences, close my eyes, invite members from the audience to sit with me, take in their feelings, and then describe what I feel they're feeling as a kind of performance art. So, I'm really interested in the edge realms of empathy, let's say.

I'm also really interested in the intersection of the subtle realms and the political realms, and I think we'll probably go there, here. There is a moribund activist in me. I used to be very activisty, lefty activisty, then I dropped that thread more or less to focus on my healing. Maybe a better way of saying it is the thread dropped me so that I could focus on my healing. And now I wouldn't say I'm on the other side of my healing generally, but I'm on the other side of what there was for me to work through. And now I'm starting to see and feel the hybrid of my anarchist leftist leanings or the synthesis of my anarchist leftist leanings and my understanding and appreciation of the subtle dynamics between people.

A couple more random things about me that are coming up. I used to make a living as a director. I directed documentaries and commercials for many years. I really loved the word and identify with the word propagandist. It has a lot of negative connotations, but I kind of don't care. I'm super passionate about finding ways to communicate meaningful and powerful ideas on a large scale.

I grew up in Los Angeles. My dad's a story and my mom's a lawyer. I have a younger sister and a week ago I hurt my knee really bad and I have been limping around on crutches. So I'm a little bit out of sorts too.

And I think that's mostly me, some of me anyway. I write, I teach, and I appear on podcasts periodically and I'm happy to be here.

Daniel: Great. Thanks David. Also, let's dive into it then. As I said, he reached out to me with a vision that you had that you wanted to share with the world. I kind of leave it to you. What's the best way to open that up?

David: What's coming up first is Occupy Wall Street. So maybe what I'll do is I'll share the vision or the visions in a nutshell so that I don't leave everyone too confused. But as I share them, I recognize that they won't make a whole lot of sense up front and then I'll take the long route to explaining them. How's that? How's that strike you as a narrative strategy?

Daniel: Yeah, let's go for it. Sounds good.

David: Awesome. Before I get to occupy, I'll say what the vision is: It's a vision that emerged at the Emerge gathering. A part of it felt like it came through me, and I'll share that first and another part of it, maybe the bigger part of it, seemed to emerge through a few of us at the gathering. It just landed and I got really excited to put language to it.

The part that came through me is the following sentence:

“The future of collective decision making is the creation of sacred containers for emergence with clear and clean intentions.”

I'll unpack that for a little while and then I'll share the even bigger and bolder vision that was coming through a few of us at Emerge, but this one will start here.

Collective decision making is simply how any group of people makes decisions and I think we all would agree, even people who don't think about it much, that the way we make decisions right now on a collective basis is not just broken, but extraordinarily broken and destructive. The best we seem to have on offer in the mainstream is something like representative democracy and I think most of us in representative democracies are no longer in the belief that they can really do the job. I don't know anyone who really believes that the American political system, for example, without almost unimaginable reforms could possibly make decisions that serve the highest good of even Americans, let alone the world at large, let alone the biosphere. I think there's this creeping consciousness, and this unspoken collective awareness that our collective decision making apparatities are irredeemably broken. 

We don't do much better in smaller organizations where collective decision making happens in the corporate world, for instance, collective decision making is generally a function of straight up power, who has the power to make the decision makes the decision and how that power is accumulated, generally goes to the person who is believed to be able to maximize the profits of the organization, irrespective of the damage done to the employees, let alone the wider community, let alone the world at large. We all sense that this is broken.

And what you get on the left, where I tend to hangout, is a lot of theorizing and occasional practicing of something called participatory democracy. And so participatory democracy is when everyone who is relevant to a decision has a direct voice in the decision itself. That's a simple way of understanding participatory democracy. There are periodic movements of participatory democracy that come and go. One movement centered around participatory democracy, that I was a big fan of and a big part of, was Occupy Wall Street 10 years ago. Occupy Wall Street was a radical attempt to organize society, first the little society of Occupy, but with the dream of organizing the larger society of America and indeed the world around the idea of participatory democracy.

I'll pause there because that's a lot and see how all this is landing before I go further. I'm somewhat self conscious at the density of these ideas so please help me lighten them up if need be or whatever you think.

Daniel: I think you're doing a great job of explaining all this and I'm imagining right now that most folks listening are familiar with a lot of the topics that you're exploring. They’re topics that you know I've explored in numerous conversations on this podcast. 

And just to add: I actually didn't know that you were part of Occupy. I was also part of Occupy. Were you in New York City?

David: I was 

Daniel: What working group were you in? 

David: The media working group.

Daniel: How cool! I was in facilitation and info. I was there for like eight months. I bet we met there.

David: Oh wow! I was there for six or eight months too. I mean I was all in.

Daniel: Yeah me too. I moved to New York City to be a part of it. I was sleeping in the square and everything, yeah.

David: Oh well, since I was living in New York City and a little too privileged, I didn't sleep in the square except for one night, but I went for five days a week and spent many an hour there.

Daniel: It's an incredible, incredible place, incredible time. I learned so much there. I feel like a lot of my work was seeded there and so I'm appreciating your presencing of that movement and its relevance to the conversation that we're having now. But I think you're doing a great job. There's nothing that I would add or change to what you're saying. I think you're right on the money and I just wholeheartedly agree with your framing.

David: Yay. And we're about to get into facilitation and occupy Wall Street so which was not which was not my working group. For those who don't know, I'm delighted to share with you that Occupy Wall Street was organized along working groups. And there were, I don't know, this is a rough guess, don't hold me to it anyone, I'm going to go with 20 or so working groups and a working group would just be whatever people were most drawn to doing. So, Daniel spent his energy in facilitation. I spent my energy in media. Other working groups would be like kitchen or medical or direct action. Direct action were the group of people who planned the marches or the protests or any action. Sanitation…  you get the idea. So basically it was a self organizing society where people naturally and I would say beautifully, for the most part, gravitated to what they were most passionate about. And it was for both of us, I'm gathering, one of the formative experiences of our lives.

Daniel: Yeah, indeed.

David: Yeah, and it was my political awakening. What I didn't even know was possible, until I saw it at Occupy Wall Street, was that a group of people could come together with different needs and perspectives and spend the time to share what's inside them and to listen to what's inside others until an agreement is reached by all of them, that feels genuinely good and serves the greatest good both of the community there and the larger whole, that the community represents. I didn't even know that was possible and I would wager that, unless you see it with your own eyes and feel it with your own body, you can't really know that it's possible. And it is so different from democracy in the sense that we're used to thinking about it, where you gather people together and usually there are two sides, they fight about it. One side wins the argument rarely on the basis of the quality of their arguments, usually on the basis of their charisma or their leverage. And then there's a vote. The majority takes the power and the minority sucks it up embittered, plotting to win later. This system that I just described, democracy, blows.

Daniel: Yea, Forrest Landry described it as “this kind of the system we have is the perfect technology to divide a population and to polarize them.”

David: Yes

Daniel: And to your point about Occupy and the choice making processes that were present there: that was one of the things that drew me in, that made me fall in love with that whole movement. I remember attending a kind of workshop intro to consensus decision making, which was one of the main decision making processes that we did there. And just falling so deeply in love with this mode of being together, whereby you hear from the concerns of the group and do this creative work to integrate the concerns in order to make a choice, that meets the needs of everybody present, which we kind of intuitively do with small groups like your friends, but doing it on the level of a hundred or in some cases, a thousand people when we're making decisions at the general assembly, the whole group-choice-making-space was incredible, was incredible work. I remember it just being so much work to do that and it is beautiful, meaningful work. And so yeah, I'm right there with you in terms of the beauty and the profundity and the deep significance of that aspect of what we're doing together.

David: Yeah, sounds like we have both come out of that experience holding something in our hearts, and I don't know about you, but it's been pretty uncomfortable to engage with politics in any on the ground way, that isn't connected to the truth of what we saw there.

Daniel: Yeah, for sure.

David: I used to be more conventional, like if you think about even on the left, even on the far left, even on, not the far far left, but the acceptable far left, let's call it the Bernie Sanders left or something like it, we're still in the broken paradigm of convincing people you’re right, amassing power for leverage and getting what you want done, in spite of the people who disagree with you. We're still in that model and there has not yet entered into the political mainstream, even the idea that there's another way of doing it.

Daniel: Yeah, Somebody framed it subsequently, I forgot, might have been Nathan Schneider, who framed it as a prototyping of a new political operating system… that's in a way, what you can understand, what occupy was attempting to do or trying to build, the thing that we would then use as a new way of organizing our society, which is, what it felt like: getting food every day, people taking care of sanitation, people taking care of each other, making choices together.

And I will add though, and maybe you'll get to this, as somebody in the facilitation working group, making consensus decisions with multiple hundreds of people didn't work very well in the end, it actually didn't go so well. In a sense, I got quite traumatized by that experience, trying to do consensus decision making with that many people. And, being a part of a movement that really, really valued inclusivity, that was, I think, one of the tensions that ended up vibrating Occupy out of existence.

David: I agree. And I wonder if we share the same analysis of why it, quote unquote, ultimately didn't work. My analysis right now is that there's something rigid around consensus decision making and there is something rigid around the inclusivity. So if your intention is to get to a decision that everyone consenses upon, you are oriented around what people say, you're oriented around external forms of communication and you are stuck with the will of whoever happens to show up. And you're also stuck abiding by rules that inevitably will be undermined by people who intend to undermine things. 

Daniel: Yes. 

David: So one conventional problem that that Occupy ran into was, for instance, the biggest veto power you could exercise as a member of Occupy Wall Street was a hard block, where you would cross your arms and basically you're saying through this hard block, that if this goes through, you would leave the movement. And what there wasn't was clarity around who's hard block mattered and who's hard block didn't and how much time to spend with people who hard blocked. And there was a massive difference between a white man hard blocking and a black woman hard blocking. And there was very little deep thought about the intentions of that white man or that black woman and it just collapsed into a stew of unprocessed racial fears, dogmatism and I would just say general immaturity. 

Daniel: Yeah, I want to share just a quick story and then I want to spend more time just getting your whole vision, so you can talk once that's all constructed.

As a member of the Facilitation Working Group, we were very aware of this vulnerability in the consensus making process, essentially that there could be agents who weren't on the side of the occupation of Occupy, who had bad intentions, bad faith actors who could use blocks to disable the movement.  And so I took it upon myself foolishly, naively, to attempt to create a process by which you could exclude people from the movement. [laughter]

David: Not a job for a white man, my friend.

Daniel: Yeah, no, many, many ways in which it was foolish and naive, but I remember this is the kind of beginning of the end of Occupy for me … was holding the initial meeting to try to solicit perspectives on how to craft this Proposal. And the “who showed up” was everybody that we suspected was an agent, who just completely tore it apart, disabled it, made it completely impossible for me to move forward. And I remember something in my heart actually broke that day with regards to Occupy. I started falling out of love with it. I started getting burned out.

And so, as you're speaking, there's a lot of emotional activation, a lot of memories happening in me, that what you're speaking of was very real for me, was very present in my life, almost every day.

David: Well, I think it was a fatal flaw. And there was no winning. There was no way to come up with a solution to people exploiting the rules that had already been agreed upon, to undermine the movement. There was no winning. So no matter how you tried to hold that meeting, it was hopeless. And if you didn't hold that meeting, it was hopeless. And that is because ultimately no fixed rule will survive somebody who is smart and determined to bring you down.

Dogma will always destroy things.  And that is the problem, I think, with Occupy Wall Street.

And obviously, we're both coming from a lot of love and a lot of just admiration for the facilitators, especially who were breaking new ground as far as you could tell. There's a history of participatory democracy and all of that, but for most of the facilitators, it was new ground you were breaking.

And, but my God, we need experiments and they're going to fail and we need to learn from them. So this isn't so much of a critique as an appreciation of what we were able to learn from that. And what I'm learning from that right now, it took me 10 years to get clear on the message. But what I'm learning from that right now is that consensus is not the right goal.

Consensus is not the right goal!

And I want to posit what is the right goal:

The right goal is not consensus. The right goal is resonance.

The right goal is a collective experience of the truth.

What the problem with that is, that it appears, at least to people untrained, as subjective and elitist and it raises the question of who gets to decide what is true then and are we not just replicating blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. But I am of the belief now that there are enough of us who are committing to embodying, well, at least first allowing, listening to, and then embodying the truth of what wants to emerge through a group, that we can hold the proper resonance that allows for the right decision. And the right decision is not one that everyone consenses upon, even though I think when it's felt, it will be largely consensed upon, but the right decision is the one that resonates through a group of people and feels like the truth. And when consensus driven decision making works, it works because it's doing this. And Occupy had a big spiritual blind spot; spirituality at Occupy Wall Street was a drum circle … and facilitation was the center.

But the point of facilitation is not to get everyone to agree. The point of facilitation ultimately is to allow for the collective intelligence to emerge. The facilitators are not supposed to be mere mediators trying to balance everyone's needs. The facilitators are more like, hold this word lightly, but I think it best more like priests. Not in the sense that they have the authority of God, but in the sense that their job, like the best priest, is to connect you with your own openness to God, your own spark of divinity, your own receptiveness or to prepare the space for the emergence of the divine intelligence.

I cannot imagine a better way of making decisions. I think this is the gold standard of collective decision making. It doesn't mean that we will often be able to reach it, but I find that it's meaningful and powerful to put language to it. And it sits very comfortably at the intersection of what, I don't like this word in this context, but I got no better one what modern spirituality is starting to tell us around embodiments and what anarchist political thought is trying to tell us around participatory, participatory democracy.

It also aligns with what I imagine have been the containers for collective decision making throughout history: you gather people who are capable of listening together around the fire and you sit for days or weeks or however long it takes until the divine speaks through the group. I don't think that that is a new idea. That is an idea that is likely found among cultures all over the world. It is one that we have been, I guess, incapable, or at least reluctant to adopt in our modern world. But I think now with our understanding of participatory democracy and the edge of spirituality among those who would be otherwise simple leftist, but are now recognizing that the revolution that we need is something like embodied love. I think now we can put it all together and say, I think we can say it with authority. I'm going to say it with authority that: 

The future of collective decision making or even the future of politics is the creation of sacred containers for emergence with clear and clean intentions.

And emergence in the broadest sense, I'm using the word emergence to mean what happens without force, what arises without force, what arises naturally. So what is arising through the group naturally without force, and then what I mean by sacred is, I mean a conscious attitude of attuning to a higher intelligence. We're not just pretending that's what you think and what you think and what you think are all equal. That is an old, dead, and boring paradigm that causes a lot of frustration and confusion in left leaning circles, but we're also not going to privilege people based on money, power, status, and race. That's even older and dumber paradigm, but we're going to have to start acknowledging that some of us are more equipped to listen and tune in to what wants to emerge through the collective and others of us, and those people who are most attuned to what wants to emerge, and most adept at organizing a group such that it emerges are going to be known as facilitators.

And what I mean by clear intention is that when you gather a group together, if you don't have a clear intention of what you need to understand or decide, then whatever ambiguity is in there will corrupt the container. It could be something trivial. Us five here are now here to decide on where we are going to dinner. That is our intention here and if that intention is held with clarity, then more likely than not, even with a mediocre facilitator, you'll find the right answer. But if the unnamed intention is to placate the person who we all imagine is going to be paying, then you've got a corruption in the intention, which will corrupt the process, which will corrupt the decision.

And the last word I had there is clean, clean means that you are genuinely trying to bring down or allow to bubble up the collective intelligence. The facilitator does not have some hidden, other agenda. And once we get clear on this, and I'm not a big fan of my language here, this is how it's coming out of me, but once we get clear, that the future of collective decision making or the future of politics is the creation of sacred containers for emergence with clear and clean intentions, once we get clear on that, and put that in language that people can get. - This is really crappy propaganda I'm sharing right now. These are just good descriptions of what's happening under the hood. I'm not saying we should put this in a meme yet. - but once we get good at explaining this and good at showing it, I think it will be clear enough to more and more people that this is how decisions must be made. This is decision making itself.

So if we get clear that this kind of container is how we make the right decisions, then in any container or in any organization or in any political system, that comes into contact with this healthy way of making decisions, then the political process will be faced with the decision of whether they want to move toward healthy and wholesome and authentic and like spiritually alive decision making processes, or if they want to stay in the delusion of representative democracy, or in the toxicity of pure power based politics.

We haven't yet had a new mem to pull people into new forms of decision making. You can't go around the world and tell people “trust me democracy works” and then point to America or France, that's a farce. If I were a tyrant, if I were a tyrant anywhere in the world, I would say “are you sure” to my people and my people would say “you know what, you're right.”

So we need a new coherent decision making process that we can point to as something to aspire to. And this is my offering for what that is. It might take 10 years or 20 years or 50 years before it clicks, but I'm pretty sure this is what it is.

Daniel: The first thing I want to share is that, when you said that the right goal is resonance my whole body tingled, right, and I felt like this sense of clear alignment, which we might call resonance. And so that seems like the most significant thing that happened on my side.

I mean, it feels like you're speaking with more clarity, a lot of sensing that I've been doing and maybe we can save this for later, but a lot of my work is preparing people to be appropriate instruments for that kind of truth seeking or truth resonating, that kind of collective harmonizing, that I sense is possible and that I've had experiences of, in these sorts of spaces at the edge of our culture.

And so, I think that the main thing I want to respond with is just, yeah, I'm with you in a deep way.

David: Well, that feels really good. And in a way we're doing, we're doing our jobs here at the level of the soul that we tried out it Occupy Wall Street, which is if your work is to help people become clear vessels for emergence and resonance, that is job of the facilitator in the world, I'm describing, and that does not feel like my job. My job is to propagandize or share what people need to get, so that I can draw them into this world and then you can help center them. [laughter]

Daniel: You're still in the media working group and I'm still in the facilitation working group.

David: Exactly. That's what I'm saying. We're doing our jobs.  [laughter]

Daniel: Fantastic, Yeah.

David: Yeah, I'm glad it's resonating. Maybe I'll say more about resonance. The question that resonance is the answer to is, how do we know what the right thing is. How do we know what the best decision is?

And unless you have resonance as the guide, You're left with a bunch of really crappy answers like voting, or even like consensus. Resonance transcends consensus.

The problem with resonance is that a lot of people are liable to confuse resonance with something like satisfaction, or pleasure, or it feels right to me. But there is, for those of us who have done sufficient work on ourselves, a relatively easy distinction to make between this is what I want and this is what feels genuinely true. And if you are not ready to make a distinction between “this is what I want” and “this is what feels genuinely true”, you are not yet in a position to contribute in a meaningful way to collective decision making.

Daniel: How do you support somebody in making that distinction in their own experience?

David: I think most of us have some examples where we were able to feel both, even in retrospect. So you might say “I really wanted it and then I got it. And then I realized that maybe I shouldn't have eaten the pint of ice cream. Because now I feel sick and I kind of knew that before I got the ice cream. I could feel that it wasn't the right thing.”

So in almost every decision that you really regret, there was a split in you between what you wanted and what you needed, what seemed true and what was true. And so, in a way, life is always trying to teach us the difference between resonance and mere desire or resonance and your avoidance.

Daniel: Well, it's really tricky. I mean, so even when you say there's a difference or distinction between something feeling right and something that resonates, I hear those being used interchangeably. I think I've actually used them interchangeably in my own life. So as you're speaking, I'm realizing how there is this challenge around language and definitions and almost phenomenology of these experiences so that we can start to track them better and honor them with their truth carrying nature, right? 

So resonance is something to be deeply honored or inspected, what you desire, if it's a kind of clinging ego desire in the Buddha sense, that's actually to be discarded as an obstacle to truth. And yet the untrained mind can see them as being, as you say, kind of indistinct. So it's really, really interesting.

David: Yeah, I guess I'm not so Buddhist here. I would say it's relevance, it's just not supreme. So somebody's desire might be healthy and we want to meet it. I wouldn't say just because you have a desire you're attached, we ignore it. We want to integrate it but we want to integrate it consciously. So like you want this. Thank you for that information, that goes into the pot. But the sheer fact that you want it is not in itself a sign that it is right. It's not a sign that it's wrong either. So it's just more information.

But what's right is when those who are sufficiently attuned to the higher intelligence collectively feel it as resonance. That's what's right. 

Daniel: Yes, I think perhaps a better distinction that you're helping me bring forward is that many people who haven't done some kind of training or introspection don't treat their desires as information but as truth claims. 

David: Yes. Right. 

Daniel: And that if you are able to treat your desire as nearly information, relevant information, then that's also a signal that you would be prepared to enter into this kind of collective choice making space.

David: Yes. And I want to add to that, that we all go in and out of that ability even those of us who are pretty far along. So it's not a clear line like you're ready or not. Some of us are going to be more or less capable at different times. For the last week, I have not really been in a place to make many very good clear decisions, because I've been in pain and fear around my, what I now know to be a small fracture in my knee. And so, one of the hallmarks of maturity too here, in this new world is knowing when you are equipped to be part of the resonance field and when you need to step back because you are distracted.

And also another hallmark here is the willingness to, not just the willingness, the ability to have others tell you, reflect back to you where you are in your capacity and to take that in. So if somebody's … I'm very willing to have somebody say to me, you're not in a place to make a decision right now, and that will not hurt my ego. If I … it won't hurt my ego period and if I trust them, I will defer.

So these containers for emergence are going to require facilitators who are able to reflect back to people where they are in their journey and facilitators who are able to listen to others who reflect back to them, their capacity to hold the field.

Daniel: Yeah. Yeah, and this is resonating with, and maybe this is a different use of that term, but with the sort of term that's often used in this liminal emergent space of sovereignty, right, that you have the capacity to hold your experience in relationship to others and you also have the capacity to know when you are no longer in sovereignty, when you are out of a kind of agentic mode of being and are into a kind of trauma patterning or some other kind of delusion. And that you can then step out, you have at least enough sovereignty to recognize that.

So yeah, and at least in the Daniel Schmachtenberger and Jordan Hall, their construction of sovereignty was for the sake of the value of coherence in collectives, which is something I think like collective resonance. Right. There's a kind of harmonic that can happen there when sovereign individuals get together in care about something that's important.

David: Yeah.

Daniel: And so I'm just picking up on that.

David: Yeah, I would say maybe coherence is a, if not a requirement, something like it for the kind of resonance that I'm talking about. 

Daniel: Excellent.

David: So I want to share the bigger idea. Are we ready? 

Daniel: Yeah.

David: All that was scaffolding. 

Daniel: Great.

David: The bigger idea is about the movement. So what I shared was about politics and politics is an aspect of the movement, but it is not the movement. Collective decision making is a part of what needs to change in the world, but it is not the only thing that needs to change in the world, it's a part of it.

And I'll use some of the framing that we got from the emerge gathering, even though it's problematic, but at the very least it's simple. So I'm going to steal it. 

There was this premise that there are three possible futures. One is a totalitarian one, maybe a techno totalitarian one, where control is used to keep the world running and we see the world trending in that direction in some ways. 

And then another possible future is chaos. Not in the sense that the anarchist in me would appreciate, but in the ugly Mad Max sense of the term. Think roving bands of dangerous folks raping and pillaging. And we can imagine the world heading in that direction in the near future too.

And then there's this third possibility, which was called at the Emerge gathering and maybe it's called more broadly, but I didn't know the phrase, the third attractor. The third attractor, it's another kind of world. The best language I know for that world is from our friend Charles Eisenstein, who calls it the more beautiful world our hearts know is possible, which might very well be my favorite phrase in the English language. That is where I want to live. I want to live in the more beautiful world our hearts know is possible.

And so the question is always present: how do we create the more beautiful world our hearts know is possible?

And obviously, well, not obviously, but it's obvious to me, but maybe it's not obvious to some. It's obvious that we cannot force it. We cannot force the more beautiful world our hearts know is possible. If we force it, then it is a function of force and the force will be there and that is not the world my heart longs for, my heart longs for deep freedom and genuine community and natural harmony with earth and with the cosmos. 

And even as I use those words, you can feel the absence of force. You can feel the absence of, let's call it the Bernie Sanders approach. We need to redistribute resources in this way. It's coming from a different energy. It's not coming from a desire to set things right through justice, though I too want to set things right through justice. It's coming from love. It's coming from what is flowing through my soul into my voice and the word that I like the most and I've liked for years is: it's emerging. It's emerging.

What do we do to help it emerge is the question that I think so many of us are oriented around, especially if you're listening to this podcast and unanswered that bubbled up loud and clear for a few of us at the gathering is that we can, one thing we can do very powerfully for it to emerge, is to gather people who are genuinely committed to emergence itself, emergence as a process, not just an idea, not a concept, emergence as a process, who are capable of holding space for emergence, to gather such people together with the intention of holding a shared field for the emergence of the more beautiful world our hearts know as possible.

So there is a sacred fire that I sense is burning at the center of the more beautiful world our hearts know as possible, that is as of now not yet being consciously tended to by the appropriate folks who need to collaborate together to hold it sacred and who will use resonance and coherence as their guide, hold that frequency, rotating in and out per their capacity and then inviting more and more people who can also hold that frequency with them or with us until that frequency becomes the norm. 

So back to occupy Wall Street for a second, one of the problems that we both agree on was fundamental to occupy was that anyone could join, including those people who were out to destroy it and there wasn't a way to avoid the problems that that created. Here conscious exclusion is the center of the thing. It's like, are you capable of tuning into and facilitating what wants to emerge in service of the more beautiful world our hearts know as possible. Can you hold this with us and if you can welcome and if you can't, whether you think you can or not, you are not yet welcome, please wait. And then in come more of us, and more of us. And I hope that my language approximates it enough that you can feel it, this shared frequency. 

I'm a little bit more concretely, it might look like gatherings of facilitators whose intention it is to hold the space for the emergence of the more beautiful world our hearts know as possible, working together to find coherence with the ultimate intention of allowing that world to come through. That's the center of the movement that hasn't yet formed, that I was feeling was needed and not yet available at the Emerge gathering. And that I feel is needed and soon to be emerging in the movement.

That's the big idea. And I want to acknowledge that it's not just mine, there were like four or five of us who just kept circling this until we started to put this not quite yet clear language to it, but I'll stop there to see what you got out of it.

Daniel: I wanna pause and just let it sink in. … 

Yeah, so what I notice is that there's again a kind of quality of rightness to it.  And there's also in me a kind of sobriety that it brings. You know, questions that come up are like, is it time yet? Am I ready? Are we ready? Is our culture ready?

And I even can sense that the training that I've been doing here, I live in this kind of monastic community and I have for a long time, that the training I've been doing is, and I've always felt like it's to prepare me for something like this … and I can feel the longing in my heart too. In a sense, that is both the means and the end collapsed into one. Right. That is the thing. And I could feel that being gestured towards at Occupy in moments, that there was, that means and ends collapsed, but we couldn't hold it. And maybe it wasn't time.

That's the question I'm left with and I hope listeners will forgive me. Maybe you have more concerns and questions, but to me from where I'm sitting, you're giving more precise descriptions to a possibility than I've felt for a long time. And so, I was already “in” in a sense before we met.  And then there is this question of timing and rightness of like kairos, the right moment … that comes for me.

David: Well, to the extent that part of my role is to play the shofar, to blow the shofar or sound the bugle for when the moment is. I don't yet feel it.

Daniel: Yeah.

David: So it doesn't feel like it's yet. But it doesn't feel that far away. And my language here is approximate. And I think we want to do better to find better language, so that when it's time to issue the call, it's crystal clear.

Daniel: Yes.

David: And it's not yet. But yeah, it feels really good that it feels true to you and it does feel to me too like what it's pointing to.

And I have one more big idea to share when you're ready. A climax.

Daniel: Yeah. Let me see. Let's pause for a moment.

David: Yeah. I also want to be sure I was clear. So if you think there's something I wasn't clear about, that we can do better at clarifying… I'd be very down to…

Daniel: Well, this is the part that I'm kind of worried about: for me it is extremely clear, it is crystal. But when I take on the point of view of my listeners, I don't … it's harder for me to see.

But I don't …  It's like coming up with clarifying questions because it’s consensus-decision-making terminology. It feels artificial to me right now. It doesn't feel real. So I'm not going to do it. And I would invite folks, if you don't feel with it right now, to just rewind the podcast and hear the explanation again or hear the description again. And if you have questions, let them burn you until you get clarity because it seems pretty clear to me. I think there's reasons for that and I think there's reasons why it's clear to you too.

David: I'll trust that. I also really appreciate that. I've never heard somebody who's responsible for an audience say “doesn't feel right to try to clarify for the audience.”

Daniel: I'm emboldened by your framing.

David: Yeah. Love it.

Daniel: So why don't you lay down the final piece? Is this the last piece?

David: This is it. It's probably just a, not just, it's a continuation of the last thing that we said this ultimate gathering, a perpetual gathering, both live and online, both between actual people in real time and also happening in parallel by people who sense it, of facilitators working to hold the space for the emergence of the more beautiful world and syncing up with each other, so that it holds with integrity. I think I know one thing that will come through that. So yes, the more beautiful world our hearts know is possible is the intention, but I have a prophecy for what will emerge on route from here to there. And that I believe we are going to experience in our lifetimes, sometime soonish: collective undeniable experiences of the divine, shared collective undeniable experiences of the divine and not inside a religious context, that allows for rational skepticism. But inside a comprehensible framework that allows for anyone with an open enough mind to experience. And that spreads around the world. So, when enough of us are holding a sacred container for emergence, when enough facilitators are holding a sacred container for emergence and enough people who are able to allow things through them are gathered together. Then what will emerge, one thing that will emerge will be the collective experience of the divine.

The closest analogy I have is Mount Sinai. Moses went up Mount Sinai and got the 10 commandments, but it was clear to everyone, down at the bottom of the mountain, that God was present. And I think the age of Moses might be over. We are no longer going to rely on the single prophet with the direct connection to God. We have exhausted that approach to spirituality. Now, as has been said many times, the collective is going to serve as the prophets, the ultimate prophet. And soon the collective will be ready to do that or at least some collectives will be ready to do that. So this is the spiritual awakening that we have been sensing, calling for, intuiting and now it feels on the horizon and I'm able to articulate how we get there.

Daniel: Hmm … The next Messiah is the Sangha.

David: Yes. … That's what I got.

Daniel: Good. Good stuff.

Well, there's a voice in me and I have to imagine that this one is in folks who are listening too, because given my life, I'm actually surprised that it's coming up, which is a kind of cynical voice.

Right. It's saying: “We don't have time for that. That will never work. That is foolish as in the opposite of wise. The wise thing to do is to consolidate political power .. is to do really intense systems design … and networking with. Powerful agents to try to make some kind of significant change in the system. You know, there's all these levers we can pull and strategies we can deploy and …”

I wonder what … I have my own response to that voice in me, but I think it's important to name that kind of cynical voice and what would you say to that?

David: Try. I mean, I don't know. I can't exhaust you of that effort unless you either go through it and realize in a way you can feel that it doesn't work. In the fundamental way. It works sometimes to modulate some of the most horrible effects of our current system, but I don't think anyone believes that organizing in conventional ways to gather political power is going to affect the kind of drastic shift that we need to preserve the biosphere and better, to set up a harmonious relationship in perpetuity between humans and the planet.

Um, so you, you can try. And you'll fail and then you'll learn what those of us who have given up have already figured it out. Or you need to have an experience that shows you. If you have an experience of the divine, a concrete, inarguable experience of the divine, that you feel in your body, then you know already that the accumulation of political power and conventional forms is not going to bring about a meaningful enough shift in time. And then if you can start to imagine having collective experiences of the divine, what more could we want? The most powerful, the most powerful and transformational ideas that have swept the world, or at least a lot of them. The ones we are all in the shadows of are based on collective experiences of the divine. Moses on Mount Sinai, Jesus on the cross, sitting with Buddha, these are collective experiences of the divine, unfortunately, as experienced through a man, a single man, but you can imagine it being experienced more directly. So I guess I would say that the cynicism is welcome and a function of where we are.

Daniel: Yeah. Hmm. I appreciate this most because mostly my mind is rendered silent. And I think that's … It feels appropriate. Yeah, and I can feel in the silence longing and the yearning that your vision touches in me. 

David: My equivalent of your cynical voice is like, almost like a “whatever” quality in me, just sort of in my tone sometimes. The only way I can hold what I'm saying is to trivialize it somehow? So when I try to vision it, I'm in it. I'm honoring it. I'm doing my best.

But then when I take the pause, something comes over me: It's like “yeah, whatever.”

Daniel: Hmm.

David: I can't, I can't hold it totally either.

Daniel: Yeah. Well, I think, I think none of us can. And that's why it needs to be this collective. Because of my experiences with even really deep cats … that they fall down often, because the world right now is just so burdensome. It's just so harsh. And so it's the idea of doing it with the kind of, maybe it's not the right analogy, but a metaphor of an army of folks who are dedicated to this and who are willing. I mean, this is one piece that came out for me … who are willing to sacrifice, right? Who are really willing to sacrifice.

This was one of the things that was so compelling about Occupy is that there were people who just gave up their lives to be there. You know, they just gave up everything to take part in this because they felt called to, they felt like it was worth the sacrifice and that sacrifice really matters. The folks that you and I know, the folks at the Emerge gathering, that they would be willing to put down their lives to put down their projects, to engage in this kind of way and not that they'd have to … there's lots of different ways to participate, but part of what seems called for and part of what I hope to be able to do when the time is right, is that kind of sacrifice, just to give it up for the sake of something like this.

David: I am so right there with you. To me, it feels not that much of a sacrifice, because I'm so excited, like my soul, so running in that direction, but it does require the giving up of your identity and it definitely requires a jettisoning of the resume.

Daniel: Yeah. Well, and it will appear as a sacrifice to many, right? It would appear like an insane sacrifice to folks who are still embedded within certain narrative structures and what life is for.

And the other thing that occurs to me and that we saw at occupy, the other thing that will come rushing in, is all of the unfelt pain of our world. Right. This happened at Occupy,  all the folks who felt like they've been cast aside by our culture showed up for the occupation to have their voices heard. You'd have their pain recognized. So, which of course, with skillful facilitation becomes a portal into that kind of collective experience of divinity, but it was just like feeling into the immensity of the thing that you're pointing to as this adventure, for sure, to say the least.

David: We will need huge containers for the processing of pain and those containers need to be held distinct from the making of decisions.

Daniel: Hmm. I remember when I had that inside at Occupy. [laughter]

Great. Well, hmm. There's a part of me that wants to be like, how do we know when the bat signal goes out, David, where is it going to come from? How are we going to … who pushes the button? What's the next step?

David: Oh, I've always felt like one of my, for a decade, I have felt that one of my jobs, and I didn't even know what it was for was to, like, fire the gun at the beginning of a race. I didn't know what the race was.

I don't know that I'm the one to listen to, but I think I will at the very least have a sense of when the moment is. Or maybe it's more like when the moment is right, it will announce itself through those of us who are sufficiently attuned to it and it could come in any random way, in a way like with Occupy Wall Street.

I have the poster on my wall right now, It says, hashtag Occupy Wall Street September 17th, bring tents. Iit's an image of a ballerina on the bull, the statue at Wall Street. That was the meme that launched occupy. So there will be an invitation for the creation of this container of facilitators for the movements.

I don't know who, I don't know when that meme is launched, but I know that enough of us will know and I feel like it's … the field will shift.We will just, it's like we'll all turn left at the same time and go, Oh, wait, did you hear that? Did you hear that? Not all of us, but those of us whose job it is to be in that facilitation. I think I want to be there for it. But again, I don't know if that's my role. So my precise role is to help with the communications. I know that for sure. So I'll be there, I'll be there with the bullhorn. I'll be there with a laptop. I'll be there trying to figure out the right language.

Daniel: Oh, man. You're speaking me into an embodied experience that … the felt sense of being in Occupy Wall Street right now and it's electrifying. Like what I've dreamed Occupy could have been. I appreciate you evoking that in me. It's a real gift and I feel totally turned on and alive from what you shared.

David: It feels like the call … like everyone's waiting, not everyone, those of us who are consciously and with their hearts oriented around the more beautiful world our hearts know is possible, are tuning to a call that hasn't yet been issued and I think it will be issued when enough of us who are far enough along on our emotional spiritual development can hear it such that we can hold it together. So there's some sort of critical mass. It's not as simple as numbers. There's like a critical mass of energy that can hold the frequency of this. And the call cannot come until that critical mass is reached, or maybe another way of saying it is that the call is issued by the critical mass itself. It's like, it has now been reached, we can hold this.

Daniel: Hmm. In that sense it is kind of like the dress rehearsal. 

David: Mm hmm. Yep. I mean, it had so many things right. It just was missing, for lack of a better word, it was just missing God, God needed to be at the center and instead. Participatory democracy or the best form of political dogma, my favorite political dogma was at the center, but God transcends dogma. So what needs to be at the center is … maybe a better phrase than God is the way … The way is at the center.

Daniel: Well, thank you, David. Is there anything else that you'd like to share with folks before we end the call?

David: I'm grateful to you for allowing me on your show and I guess I want to say to the folks listening: I really care about being comprehensible. I really care whether what I said made sense. I wanted to be clear, but I trust Daniel's intuition that maybe perfect clarity is not the thing yet and maybe what's here is to be with whatever feeling emerged in you through listening. Did you feel some faint stirring? And if you did, then I am grateful or satisfied. I am satisfied and I am grateful for you listening. So, thank you so much.

[tobydandelion]

Just some random thoughts on advocacy, education, and intersectionallity:

Seeing how many terfs and swerfs there are in online disability communities has been very strange to me. I honestly would have assumed a more intersectional approach would be more popular than it actually is, but I've seen so much unnecessary division between queer and disabled communities, especially.

I think a lot of people have the instinct to dismiss others' pain when their pain has been dismissed. It's a sad and brutal cycle that can only end with acknowledgment and solidarity.

Though, I understand that solidarity can hardly be attempted between groups who don't even believe in the personhood of the other. It may be too late for some people, but I don't think it could ever hurt to keep trying to figure out how to educate and communicate with those who might be willing to listen.

It's at least good practice, if one has the capacity to comfortably.

[seaofspirits]

⸺ SEAOFSPIRITS.

a private multimuse sideblog to @seaofserene, featuring multiple OCs involved with the same lore as the evil mermaid (and also some other random OCs thrown in too because why not lmfao) mun's name is toby, i'm 24, pronouns are they/them, you know this by now. probably. maybe. rules under the cut.

temp.

none of this is anything new! if you've read at least one of my rules pages from one of my.. many sonic blogs, you're chilling. otherwise, here's the deets.

i am mutuals only, which means i only roleplay with people i'm following back. i always try to read someone's rules & about first before following back, so it may take a little bit for me to get around to it. remember, i like, reply, & follow back from @seaofserene!

open to plotting, canon divergence, OCs, AUs & crossover! (i'll be a little picky about ocs/crossover. i need a baseline understanding of what my muse is interacting with.)

this blog will have adult themes as well as dark & triggering content. please be aware. i tag anything i think warrants a content warning, but feel free to ask if you need something specific blacklisted. my tagging format is #____ cw and #____ tw.

no smut will take place on this blog, but suggestive topics or jokes may come up from time to time. it will be tagged under 'suggestive cw'.

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[chorusfm]

Sid Seth – “Hopeless War” (Song Premiere)

Today is a great day to share the latest single and lyric video from singer-songwriter Sid Seth called “Hopeless War.” With a sound that fits somewhere between the classic soul/pop of Stevie Wonder and the modern flair of Harry Styles, Sid Seth is really coming into his own on songs like this. I was also able to catch up with this artist for a brief interview below. Can you tell me a little more about how the Indian music you grew up with influences your sound? I grew up thankfully with a lot of music. My mother introduced me to ABBA, Simon & Garfunkel etc. whereas my father would sing Indian Ragas every morning and they were in the back of my head growing up. I listened to varied styles of Indian music from Classical to Hindustani Folk to Bollywood Music. I guess what I connected with was melody. Indian music (in general) is a very melodic heavy music. And the kind of music I heard and still enjoy regardless of any language usually has a good melody or melody that works with the lyrics. I think the varied choices of melody in Indian music probably influenced my sound. Whenever I’ve written a song, say it’s a down in the dumps ballad or a storytelling song or a dance bop, I play it for my friends and family and see if they sing even one section of the song after the first play. If that happens, I feel that song has done justice in marrying the message of the song and the melody I came up with.  Where do you pull inspiration from for your lyrics? Does life in NYC, where you’re based now, ever make its way into the lyrics? Real life! Haha. My friends know that very well. The most random things inspire me – a conversation, word, color, phrase and sometimes it’s just fantasy or activating my alter ego. Definitely! My previous single “Caffeine High” was all about NYC, nightlife and finding someone unexpectedly in the city. Hopeless War was also written in NY. The place really impacts the writing in my opinion. I don’t know how to explain it but the rhythm of each place has its uniqueness. And of course, my lyrics are heavily influenced by NY in general. NY has a tone, rhythm, feel and overarching sound. It’s like when I hear a record, I immerse myself in that world. Some records instantly take you to a sunny beach, while others make you want to take a quiet stroll, lost in thoughts at a busy NY intersection. Plus the life and people are so diverse in the city that you subconsciously end up exploring so many options. It’s like with one group of your friends you might use a certain language and with someone close the vernacular would be completely different. So I guess the endless options in the city really impact the songwriting.  What do you hope for in the future per your music? Can we expect any touring/albums/music videos? I am very grateful for the people who are hearing my music for the first time, and helping me build a community. As more of my projects are released, I hope people will connect with the different shades of life that I explore in my music. If my music ends up being a friend to people that I do not have direct contact with, that would really make me happy. So I hope for that in the future. At the moment, I am doing lots of shows in NY and soon, in other nearby cities. I post about it on my socials and website! I am too nervous to make a music video, but I am very excited to start doing it sometime soon. I love love love albums! I have an entire project in mind. So I hope that comes to fruition.  --- Please consider becoming a member so we can keep bringing you stories like this one. ◎ https://chorus.fm/features/sid-seth-hopeless-war-song-premiere/

[small-futures]

I’ve spent the better part of the last 6 months watching my friends build something that we’re calling New Ellijay Television. I’m really excited about it. It launches November 5th. Think about it like Public Access TV, but for the modern age.

New Ellijay TV is a collective of producers, directors, writers, and actors based in Ellijay, GA.

We are focused on creating visual media for our community and beyond. We’re making a new kind of Television for a new kind of small town, and providing a community based, home grown alternative to major streaming platforms.

This is a project of the Ellijay Makerspace and is the culmination of the intersections of many of my beliefs, values, and interests. It’s a thing I feel very strongly about.

Why?

Right now, if someone makes a video, they’re going to put it on youtube. Youtube is going to make money on it (the creator might too, but less than youtube does), and youtube is going to use that video as a gateway to indoctrination. It algorithmically suggests followup videos “based on your views” which serve as a feedback loop, constantly directing you towards more and more extreme content.

Youtube (like most other tech companies) makes it’s money by producing outrage. Outrage drives eyeballs, and the American right has learned to weaponize that feedback loop. Youtube is an indoctrination machine that also enriches a small group of far away millionaires and billionaires. Put simply, youtube is a tool of oppression.

If I want to watch video, and I’ve decided that I won’t give my attention to youtube, I’m stuck with the things that come out of four or five major corporations who have a vested interest in maintaining the status quo and telling stories that promote their ideology.

Copaganda, Misogyny, Bigotry.

Every second I spend watching a Disney or a WB owned property through legal means I directly enrich the people who stoked the outrage machine that led to, among other things, the election of Donald Trump.

Every second I spend watching a Disney or WB owned property through illegal means increases my investment in the stories that they are telling, and my acceptance of the way that they tell those stories.

CSI and Law and Order and Brooklyn 99 increase people’s trust and goodwill in police, regardless of their lack of basis in reality.

So what is the alternative?

We make our own videos, and we make our own platform through which to distribute them. This is much easier than it sounds. The technology already exists, and is free.

I run a small video sharing service already and it’s fine. I make videos, others make videos. No one has to accidentally watch a tirade against feminism masquerading as a review of a new movie or video game.

But it’s not designed to scale, and it’s not especially discoverable. (Scale is a trap, and discoverability is the defining problem of the next 50 years of technological progress, but more on those later.) It’s just me, and some random other people from the internet. There’s no Vision behind it, but it proves that what we want to do Can Be Done.

Enter New Ellijay TV

We have a vision, we have an audience, we have a target. We’re making TV for Ellijay first, and we’ll be happy if the rest of the world is interested too. We have more than a dozen shows planned, with hundreds of hours of footage already shot, and 40+ hours of original footage (and another several hundred hours of public domain historical archives) ready to be released right now.

We have the tools, equipment, space, and crew to create a new kind of television. We will tell the stories that matter to this community, showing the realities of our lives, engendering sympathy for our communities. We will keep Money and Power and Attention out of the hands of the large corporations who seek to destroy us, and within this community, where it can empower us.

We will transform Ellijay through the power of participatory media.

If it’s that easy, why hasn’t someone already done it?

Folks on the far right of the political spectrum are actively working on it. OAN, NRA TV, whatever Glenn Beck and Alex Jones are up to today. This is independent media made for a very targeted audience, designed to Extract money and power and attention from a community and use it for destructive political and social ends.

(Means.TV has been very successful recently, on a similar scale as the right wing groups mentioned above. They are making things I agree with, following an ethical production model, and generally doing a good job. But they are making TV for people who agree with them already.

Means Morning News would not fly in small town appalachia, watch it for yourself, you’ll understand why. We have to meet people where they are and invite them to Participate.)

Other not-horrible-groups have recognized the potential revolutionary power of video in the past, and have come close to what we’re building here. (Broadside TV and Lainsville TV were the most successful historically.) but we have a technological edge that they did not.

We’re not dependent on the FCCs goodwill or negligance to broadcast, we’re not dependent on physical infrastructure (we’re tethered to the internet for now, but we’ll exist beyond the internet eventually, just wait.)

If you’re interested in more of the history of these other groups, I have written about them:

The forgotten history of DIY Media

Guerilla Television Revisited (revisited)

and you can see some of the videos they produced:

The Videofreex interview Fred Hampton shortly before police murdered him without cause

Lainsville TV UFO Sighting

Mountain at the NY Pop Festival

TVTV on Guru Maharaji

I am not aware of any footage that is currently circulating from Broadside TV, but their archives are currently housed at the University of Northern Tennesee, and I would very much like to liberate them.

Now what?

Now we make TV. We get members of our community to make TV with us. We get people around the world to make TV with us.

We expand.

If that sounds like your cup of tea, come make TV with us. Even if you can’t participate in person, the principles we’re following can be applied anywhere. Work with us to reach out, to enlist participation, to make this thing everything it can and should and must become.