#source: The Philosopher's Meme

[harringroveera]

Incorrect Creelson Quotes + The Good Place

[d007saysthings]

That one Mao meme was pissing me off so I was gonna post this and leave it at that.

I however then realized that you could easily counter this argument by saying (some of) these leaders were just figureheads and that the will/desires of the people were being catered to after all. (The fact that you couldn't publicly contradict them would then be either a lie or written off as an(other) irrelevant restriction.)

Or you could steelman (hah, Stalin) the original meme by saying the only reason the West has "democracy" at all is because they're rich enough to hold sham elections (from all the killing and slavery capitalism does). (E.g. all the money that goes into campaigns would be money laundering schemes.)

I hate that you can't just assume the least charitable position for your ideological opponents and leave it at that.

[reality-shitting]

https://www.tumblr.com/antishifter-shifting?source=share

girl i'm new to shifting. i saw this post. for a long time, i was very skeptical ab shifting. it feels very unreal to be real but now i want to try it out.

Girlie pop, I am gonna be so honest, I am not going to waste my energy reading some hateful bs 😭

But I was very much the same as you once! I'm a very logical thinker and I love psychology and science. (If you're also like that, I'd recommend @kitty-kat244 's blog, as they center it around how neuroscience supports shifting) However a few things in my life convinced me that I could at least give it a go.

1, Near Death Experience stories:

My sister passed for a few minutes in kindergarten. To this day, now in her 30s, she describes how she saw herself floating above her body and the ethereal feeling of an OBE. On community tabs like askreddit where people have asked what the afterlife is like, a vast majority of people describe the Void state. Nothingness, peace, pureness, feeling like everything and nothing. I don't possibly think ALL of these people are lying given how similarly close they all are to each other. To add to that, the uptick in recent years of stories from people who believe they experienced quantum immortality. People who were somewhere one minute and suddenly they're thrown in a new place inexplicably. I remember seeing a TikTok of a woman who was driving, she had about an hour left in her drive and she saw another car coming for her. Suddenly she had arrived at her destination. It had only been about 10 minutes. She was crying and shaking and very visibly in distress. Sure, it could've been a fabrication, but like the other stories about the void, there's so many of them that I don't think all of them are lies.

2, my best friend entered the void before I knew what it was:

In Highschool, my childhood best friend messaged me one day about a "really weird dream" she had. She described just floating in a white void, feeling like she didn't exist, didn't have a body, with an everlasting sense of calmness and peace. Again, this I now know is what we would call the void state. To this day, she talks about how she wants to "go back".

3, The man who dreamt for 17 years:

This is a story very commonly told throughout the internet and I first heard it in middle school. I'll summarize it, but essentially a man went to bed one night and in his "dream", time flowed the same way, everything was as detailed and fluid as our everyday reality. Everything acted as it did in reality. He met a girl, got married, had children, moved up in his career. Then one day, he noticed something off about his lampshade in the living room. He focused on it and suddenly, he woke up in his bed. He was so devastated about waking up from this "dream" that he needed therapy. He lived for seventeen years in the span of one night. Now this story was everywhere and everyone thought "oh that's so crazy" but when we describe shifting, which is exactly what his story describes, we're called delusional. Personally, I don't care if people think I'm crazy, I just keep it to myself. But the fact that such an incident has been recorded before, people believed it and people, to this day, even make memes about his story? I'm honestly very surprised the shifting community doesn't bring this account up more often, as it's from so long before shifting was known and it lines up so perfectly with our experiences, right down to time ratios.

4, My own childhood beliefs:

When I was young- and I mean, Pre-K young- I distinctly remember wondering and asking my parents, "What if I'm not actually me? What if I just wake up as "me" everyday and I have the memories of the old me?". (Don't ask how I was so philosophical, I think kids are just like that. I know this sounds like bullshit believe me lmao but I'm adding ALL of my personal reasons) Anyways, this is actually a core belief of shifting. That we are constantly shifting through time and timelines that just match up with our beliefs. So you are not the "you" you were yesterday. Does that make sense? I also firmly, firmly believed in the multiverse theory and that everything was real somewhere. I remember making Gravity Falls x LPS Popular crossover videos when I was 10 because, hey, it's probably there somewhere, why not? Crossover episodes on TV certainly didn't cause my belief to waver because look! Timmy Turner is in Jimmy Neutron now! So they both exist separately, simultaneously and together! And I just kinda, applied it to everything. What's real here is fictional in another world and vice versa.

5, last resort:

As the world deteriorates and I grew up, I didn't want to just.. Work a 9-5 until I died. There has to be something more than that. So, after I heard about shifting success stories I decided "fuck it. Either I'll wake up here and carry on with my day or I'll wake up somewhere much more peaceful. Happier. With life and freedoms that I could never imagine in a million years." Many shifters became shifters because they were at their wits end. I see so many people who admit that if they hadn't found shifting, they would have killed themselves. At the end of the day, even if it's "fake", it's given a lot of people hope that things can change in a time that seems to be getting increasingly darker.

Now, I think a lot of us were at one point where you are. "It doesn't seem real, but it's interesting enough to try". "Oh it's cringe, but it does seem enticing". Let yourself be cringe. Shifting is for those who want it all. For those who don't want to slave away for the rest of their lives. For those who can see greener pastures on the other side and wish to hop the fence. Ask yourself this : what truly is there to lose? Our community is very open to those who are simply curious, and we acknowledge that not everyone will be interested in participating in our practice and that's ok too :) Whatever you choose to do, do what makes you happy. You hurt no one by deciding to do something for yourself <3

[boykingscourt]

https://www.tumblr.com/samdeanjohn/778046292073070592/whats-uncomfortably-like-abuse-apologism-isnt?source=share you dont have to reply because op deleted it (i think its related to your video because that post was from one of their mutuals lol) but it said: "what's uncomfortably like abuse apologism isn't extending nuance and empathy towards dean when he behaves badly. it's the constant "he was high/on demon blood/possessed/soulless/not in his right mind" rhetoric that is used to pretend none of the violence and cruelty sam has also directed towards his brother could have ever been his fault or affected dean and impacted his reactions ever. disingenuous at best." and i dont know what theyre trying to say here tbh because? becoming an addict through rubys explicit manipulation (plus azazels plan), possession (lol. lmao even), being soulless (this one kills me) are things that happened to sam, theyre pretty much not his fault and he is a victim lol and if anything your video just proves that dean is Just Like That 😭 as if dean beating the shit out of sam (among others things) is just "behaving badly". these people are insane. they already ship incest, the least of their worries should be their blorbo being a fucking abuser lmao

love the username lmaooo can only assume they have me blocked

yeah I mean you said it but the thing is no one who is serious about sam uses demon blood addiction as an "excuse" at all because the issue isn't "how much responsibility does an addict have for their actions?" it's "this person is an addict and look at how their loved ones are treating them." like we're not just not on the same page; we're coming at this from a fundamentally different place (and samblr happens to be right as always)

like talk about "[they pretend] none of the violence and cruelty sam has also directed towards his brother could have ever been his fault or affected dean and impacted his reactions ever" - which btw is that in the room with us?? - has the fact that one of the only times sam has ever hit dean first came in the SAME EPISODE where dean and bobby imprisoned, tortured, and tried to kill him and then dean stalked sam all the way to his hotel room to presumably drag him right back to that escaped their memory?

and I don't mean this in a "sam did nothing wrong <333" way. sam actually did nothing wrong and deserved to do worse. that's not disingenuous that's watching the show without our heads crammed so far up dean's ass that the lack of air makes us produce posts like above

in other words, no excuse for sam is necessary!

"soulless/possessed/not in his right mind" are also interesting because these are also, like you said, instances of sam being a victim

soulless letting dean get turned - and other residents of samblr actually talked about this at length yesterday - and dean's subsequent retaliation (before he even knows sam is soulless) is simply not a legitimate parallel to what dean does to sam in 4x21, for reasons not limited to their respective motivations and the agency (or lack of) each of them has in these situations. and also no it's not as simple, philosophically, as "sam isn't soulless and soulless isn't sam" but like... where was sam's soul when this was happening... (goose chasing meme) WHERE WAS SAM'S SOUL

possessed is not even worth talking about because your skull has to be full of nuts and bolts to try to hold sam accountable for that or try to use it to justify dean's abuse. I will say that this makes sam schrodinger's possessed though because we can apparently hold him responsible for what "he did" when possessed but also dean tricking sam into being possessed by gadreel is no big deal!

"not in his right mind" I can only assume this means hallucifer which again.... lol.. lmao even!

like let's pretend for a moment that sam and dean are equal in terms of the power dynamics of their relationship, to attempt to make sam look as bad or even worse than dean you have to take his actions out of context, but context is everything: because when you apply context to sam you realize "oh hey these parallels are actually bullshit" but when you apply context to dean it is actually worse than previously thought

I'll say one more thing and it's that this is a perfect example of what you ship not getting you off the hook automatically because while I vibe a lot more with wincesties than I do hellers in theory, the dean bias has infected every part of this fandom because they all want him to be their battered bottom, and this (for unnecessary reasons on the bottom front) requires gross mischaracterization for it to work

[odinsblog]

One About The Atmosphere: Want to change minds? Stop trying. Change the atmosphere instead.

Donald Trump in 2016 greets a screaming horde of ecstatic white christian nationalists

Minivan was a nice enough guy. He was easygoing; a happy guy with a frequently deployed smile. I don’t recall much anger from him, nor many strongly held opinions. I wouldn’t call him a philosophical type. No deep late night talks with Stove Minivan is my recollection.

This is the sort of dude I’d hang out with at a party, if there were a party we were both at, but not one with whom I’d maintain a relationship if we both graduated and then moved to different places—which I know for a fact, because that’s what happened. We drifted.

So then what happened is twelve years or so later I got on The Facebook, and Stove Minivan was there, too, and before long, we were friends again, he and I, and so were me and my other college friends, and them with him, and … look, you know the drill. It was The Facebook.

Minivan was no longer a pre-med student at a small northern liberal arts college. He was a doctor—a general care practitioner, if memory serves—in a smallish plains state town, very much like many other towns in the great plains or elsewhere in the country, I imagine.

Anyway, before long I noticed something about Minivan. Even though his feed was full of pictures of him and his lovely family, and he was smiling in them just the same as he always had in college, he was angry.

He was *enraged*

What was he angry about? The Demonrats.

Minivan was absolutely enraged about everything the Demonrats did. He also was out of his mind angry about Killary, and Obummer, the leaders of the Demonrats—or at least they were the front for the real leader of the Demonrats, who even back then I believe was George Soros.

What did the Demonrats do? Oh my heck, what *didn’t* they do? Mostly they hated America and American security and American economic strength, it seems. They engaged in corruption and bowed to foreign powers a lot. They shredded the dignity of the presidency, that’s for sure.

Minivan’s worldview wasn’t particularly coherent, if you want to know the truth.

I couldn’t help to notice that the Demonrats weren’t actually doing many of the things that Minivan thought they were doing.

And I noticed other things.

For example, I couldn’t help but notice that a lot of the policies Minivan supported were directly *causing* the sorts problems that made Minivan so angry.

And I couldn’t help but notice that well-sourced information enraged him more than pretty much anything else.

There was a lot of linking to sites I’d never heard of, like Breitbart and Newsmax, and of course plenty of Fox News. There were a lot of memes. There were a lot of conspiracy theories (a big birther, was Minivan).

Some of his posts contained subtle bigotry. Most of the rest contained not-subtle bigotry. Several of them contained slogans and statements that were, very simply, neo Nazi and white supremacist memes and shibboleths.

There was a lot of commentary accompanying these posts from Minivan, who was saying shocking stuff for a small-town family doctor … the sorts of things that it seemed to me would make people not want to use this person as a doctor, or or sit next to that person on a bus.

I hadn’t heard of Alex Jones, yet, but Minivan sounded a lot like Alex Jones, word for word and beat for beat. He’d even start his posts like a right-wing radio host: Sorry folks, but you can’t even make stuff like this up—ironically, accompanying things that had been made up.

This was all pretty distressing to those of us who had known Minivan back in the day, before he had become so obsessed with Demonrats.

So, a lot of us, myself included, did exactly what The Facebook wants.

We engaged with him.

At the time my belief was, you defeated bad ideas with better ideas, by confronting the bad ideas directly with the better ideas. Debate was for changing minds. You presented your ideas, they presented theirs, you countered, they countered, eventually everybody saw the truth.

But the intention was that I’d change his mind, with facts presented logically, delivered calmly and patiently.

This was my belief.

What happened confounded me, but perhaps you can predict it.

Minivan escalated any correction, however calmly stated or bloodlessly presented, into scorched earth territory. He rejected all proofs by rejecting the source outright as irrevocably tainted by bias, or he’d spiral into non sequitur, spamming our feeds with more misinformation.

He would claim he never said things he had just said, even though the statements were still there for anybody to read, one comment earlier in the thread.

He’d claim that I said things I'd never said, as anyone foolish enough to read through our conversations could discover.

He demonstrated a complete dedication to his ignorance and anger, and a total disinterest in anything like observable truth that contradicted his grievance.

It was confounding and unfamiliar behavior to me, at the time.

At the time.

All of it was larded with grievance, a sense that people like him had never wronged anybody, and everybody else had done nothing but wrong people like him.

The bigotry and authoritarianism grew.

And all the time, on Facebook, he and his family kept smiling their perfect smiles.

I’ll admit that over time my interactions stopped being polite and bloodless, and I’m not particularly sorry for it. I told him some things about himself he seemed not to know, but which I thought really ought to be said.

I have a bit of a penchant for sarcasm, which you may have noticed.

I employed this skill, and you can feel how you want to about sarcasm, but I think it helped convey the correct posture to take toward someone who says the sorts of things Minivan was saying.

The correct posture being "you have proved yourself to be a person who should not be taken seriously, and your positions do not deserve even a modicum of respect."

I found this a more healthy message to convey about Minivan to anybody watching, and I still do.

Eventually he blocked me, and he was out of my life forever. It was the right choice, and I'm very glad he did that.

I’ve pondered the incident since, as it’s become more and more relevant to “the way things are.”

A few things had become clear over time.

Minivan was not somebody whose intentions could be trusted. He was not operating in good faith, and I believe he well knew it, because many of his favorite sources of information have written instruction books on how to engage with people in bad faith.

Minivan was not debating; he was using debate to inject his counterfactual beliefs into the discourse, which were designed to further marginalize already marginalized people while simultaneously cloaking himself in self-exonerating grievance.

More, he was exerting an active effort to not know things that could be easily known, and to demand to be convinced out of deliberate ignorance, not because he was interested in having his ideas challenged, but because he demanded a world in which he got to decide what was real.

Further still: Minivan *learned* from me. The effect of telling him he was using one or another logical fallacy was not to sharpen his reasoning, but to teach him about the existence of logical fallacies, which let him (incorrectly) accuse others of those same logical fallacies.

So Minivan was deploying the language of logic, in ways that betrayed a total lack of understanding about what those fallacies were, granted, but in ways that likely made him seem more knowledgeable and reasonable to a casual or sympathetic observer.

He learned to ape our phrases and arguments, in much the way he’d learned to ape the style of Alex Jones and all the various Breitbart and Newsmax contributors he used to inform himself.

And these days it occurs to me: I hear a lot about "groomers."

We were not changing him by engaging with him thoughtfully.

We certainly weren’t changing him by engaging with him in kind.

Rather: we were making him better at what he was doing, and we were validating his world view—to himself and others—as one that merited engagement.

And week after week on Facebook, Minivan kept smiling and smiling and getting angrier and angrier, at us and Obummer and all the other Demonrats and liberals and every member of every minority group who dared to fail to ceaselessly assure him that he was right about everything.

I don’t miss Minivan's black-hole-sun smile. I think of it as my first hint of MAGA: politically overrepresented, socially coddled people, often living outwardly happy privileged lives, while seething inwardly that other people might be getting anything, anything at all.

Indeed, soon enough, another figure would come on the scene, whose behavior matched that of Minivan almost exactly, a perfect avatar for this spirit of aggrieved bigotry and supremacy that seemed to be moving through my former friend.

And sure enough, as I saw, there were millions and millions of smiling seething people who loved him.

And that guy became president.

Nobody believed he would. And then he did.

Because Stove Minivan, it turns out, wasn’t some weird outlier.

He was part of a growing new normal, a group of people who had been offered a chance to immigrate from observable reality and enter a dark world of constant hostility, misinformation, and self-loving grievance.

It's an invitation they leapt at, to which they cling even now.

It's a constituency immune to proof, angered by equality, cheered by cruelty, who blame others for the foulness of the shallow puddle of reasoning within which they have demand to be seated, even though we can all see them fouling it themselves, every day.

And afterward, a huge number of those shocked by this development decided the proper reaction was to accommodate it, in the name of unity—a belief, it seems, grounded in the idea that what you choose to get along with isn’t as important as getting along no matter what.

I’ll finish with the question that all of Minivan’s former friends would eventually ask, whenever they gathered together long enough for the subject to arise.

"What the hell happened to Minivan?"

Here’s the answer, I think: nothing.

Nothing happened to Minivan. Nothing at all.

He was always that guy, and he always thought the things he thought.

What changed was that he was given a lot of language with which to express those ideas, and access to enough other people who thought that way too, that it created a critical mass of permission.

The permission allowed him to change his attitudes and actions, and created a lot of other people willing to accommodate and normalize his antisocial anti-reality behavior, rather than reject it out of hand.

In college you could be pretty conservative, honestly. It was a pretty conservative place. But you couldn't behave like Minivan later would.

You’d be understood to be a far-right extremist, and people would then treat you like a far-right extremist.

Which is what you'd be.

I think it just wasn't possible for Minivan to be what he later became, because the atmosphere wasn't conducive to the possibility.

But then the atmosphere changed.

If we want to change it back, it's worth thinking about how atmospheres change.

(source)

[hero-israel]

One of the reasons for the "Left" becoming more and more like a cheerleading squad for exactly the kind of things Leftists are supposed to hate is because so much of this new coalition of young people are coming from conservative backgrounds, but not doing any real work to deradicalize themselves.

They grow up with these Puritanical ideas of sin and justice, crime and punishment, and instead of unlearning any of this they just switch the targets of their disdain. It's switching teams for them, not learning that they don't have to play the game. Most of them are soft conservatives who just want free healthcare.

And these Leftoid chud debate pervert streamers like Hasanabi are a big contributing factor to this, not the only factor, but a prominent one. He definitely puts this veneer of artificiality and commodification over the Left. American society is under a lot of stress right now, culturally and economically. Instead of the Left organically building coalitions it's mostly unorganized college kids reading Al Jazeera and Russian and Chinese propaganda and running as fast as they can away from privilege and having a toddler understanding of class consciousness. It's so pathetic and basic and it will not save us.

You cannot save a society that you don't think is worth saving. They're just practicing radical disengagement and some kind of edgy nihilism. They purport to hate America and the West and want to burn it all down but they know that will never happen which is why they're so comfortable with the cognitive dissonance. It's why they don't vote, and why organizing and demonstrating is like teeth pulling for them. Either black activists have to do all the leg work for them, or the protests have to be about tearing something down, not advocating for any positive change, right now that's Israel. Soon it will be something else.

Unironically, the pussy hat resist lib wine moms did way more with their women's marches than any of these wannabe philosopher college kids are doing with anything. Like I know for a fact a "Leftist" would read a post like that and be like "L + ratio libshit, imagine supporting the neoliberal fascist colonialist concept of due process?" like we're so beyond the pale at this point. When fascism takes over, I'm sure they'll think they're fighting back, but if the fascists learn to coopt enough phrases about climate and Palestine and healthcare, will they even notice the fascists taking over?

I've got a few friends who were raised hardcore fundie Christian, "gays will burn" creation and rapture types. They went to normal public colleges and wound up becoming very left-wing, all the left memes and slogans you can think of, fastidious in their distinctions between and protections of every conceivable marginalized group (which none of them are, on any axis). And.... you can't disagree with them about anything. Can't point out that a source is questionable or that a slogan is psychologically backfiring and producing skepticism or mockery instead of benefits. They will not hear of it, because they are still fundies. They did a binary flip from one team to another but never moderated their tactics or temperament.

[cards-of-rose]

study tip!! how i write essays

going from a long, intensive classical education to my current history major, i've had to write a lot of papers. at this point, i can write a 5 page paper in a few hours, and just a couple weeks ago i wrote a 20 page paper in a single day. i graduated valedictorian with this method (current cGPA of 4.0!) so i thought i'd share how i write them! grab some coffee and settle in - it'll be a long post, but i promise it'll be worth it. :)

first, the topic. if you don't have an assigned topic, pick something that fascinates you, something that you could write pages and pages about. you will. if your topic is assigned, find something in it that you find fascinating. even if you find your topic completely boring, there's always something interesting to glean from it! once you find this, you'll gain motivation, and that's half the battle.

write down a basic outline. when i say basic, i mean barebones. just a vague, 3-point general idea of what you think you might write your paper about. this will guide you in your research! you don't need to worry about writing your full outline just yet.

sources. after you have a basic list of points, it's time to find sources! if they're already assigned, you can skip this step. most of the time they aren't, though. this is the most important part of your paper. you can go to google scholar to find really good academic journals and studies!

generally, the number of sources you have depends on the length of your paper! a good guide is that your amount of sources should number half the length of your paper. so if you have a 5 page paper, 2-3 is a good way to go. if you have a 20 page paper, you'll want around 10.

evidence. skim over your sources and categorize each one under the point you made earlier. this will mean you have a quick reference guide when you're writing, so you don't have to go through a big list of sources when you're looking for evidence! under each source, put a few bullet points talking about the info that you can use for your paper.

outline. this part may seem daunting. i promise, though, it's one of the easiest parts of the paper! you may feel tempted to skip it, but having an outline makes your paper sound better and makes it easier and quicker to write. use the sources and bullet point info you used earlier to fill out your outline. start broad and general, then add details as you do your research! your outline should be about half the length of your paper. don't worry about making it super scholarly - this is just for you, so make it as informal and easy to understand as you want! be stupid, throw in memes, whatever gets it written!

every outline should include an introduction, a body, and a conclusion. i can go over the structure of an outline in another post, but remember the 3 points you thought up earlier? these will form your entire outline, and eventually your essay!

finally, write! open a blank google doc and view it side by side with your outline. once you get started, it's a lot easier to finish than you'd think, especially if you took the time to outline! this is when you can make your dumb outline into something that would make the ancient philosophers proud. don't worry about perfection. just write it as you go. you can edit it later!

quotes/evidence. once you've finished your rough draft, it's time to add the evidence! some profs want quotes, others want you to paraphrase. either way, go through your paper and put in the evidence you researched earlier. don't worry about citations just yet - just put in the link in a comment on your rough draft. it won't be hard to fix it up later.

edit!! please, please don't finish your rough draft and be done with it. you can save so many points by going over it again instead of submitting it in a rushed 3am haze. fix spelling and grammar, add citations and a reference page, edit for clarity, anything you need to make it sound like the best paper you can write! if you're proud of it by the end, you know you've done something right.

congrats, you did it!! make sure you start your paper early and don't wait till the night before - your grade will thank you <3

[avichor]

name. macy pronouns. she / her preferred comms. discord but only after chatting a bit on tumblr dms to suss out vibes unless we've interacted a lot on dash name of muse. literally my entire roster . and no it is not getting trimmed idk how to do that //: experience in RP. i started tumblr rp in 2019 but i was on fb rp since like. 2009? best experiences. h8 to say it but when i joined the desc rpc in late 2019 it was probs the highlight of my rp experience on tumblr, purely bc i was just so new to tumblr rp and naive and excitable so i looked past a lot of things i wouldn't tolerate now. it was the most involved rpc - wise i'd ever been — co-owned a server, created and joined events, actually had sm fun that i haven't really been able to replicate ( but i think it's a given with how much my irl has changed and the time i can even spend on tumblr rp ), and then decimated that rpc :D joining grishaverse rpc is a close second, and then my time writing vincenzo was my last source of unbridled joy ;p outside of rpc experiences, it was the long - lasting friendships and relationship formed. pet peeves / dealbreakers. i have a lot and i've stopped pretending that i don't for the sake of making everyone happy or appearing "nice" or "peaceful". there's a lot of highly questionable behavior that goes on in the rpc ( that goes ignored bc people like to "its just rp let people have fun" ) that it doesn't really stop at pet peeves or dealbreakers for me but rather smth i think really needs to be fixed. anyways most of them can be found in my rules within the dni section! but lack of communication is a huuuuuuuuge pet peeve. also lack of taking accountability, victim - mentality, people who aren't normal about duplicates, people who are freaks, etc. muse preference ( fluff, angst, smut ). none as a singular ?? i get bored with just fluff, i get distraught with too much angst, and i get tired of pure smut ( i'm also just extremely picky with who i'd write actual smut with, it's only one person ). i do prefer threads that are actionable in some sense, when it's purely philosophical discussions or mostly introspection i check out reeeeeaaaal fast. plot or memes. both! but given my lack of energy and time, memes have been really helpful as a tool for me to get to things without relying on active plotting. but ultimately i would like to plot so we have something that works longterm. long or short replies. both! it really depends on the substance because there could be novella type threads that. don't do much, and short threads that actually pack quite a lot into what's written. best time to write. night <3 are you like your muse. the muse types i go for have been less predictable lately, but previously i would gravitate towards baddie fems and clown mascs, some vein of mentally ill, and i think that kinda perfectly encapsulates me as a person. i am a baddie ( real ) and i am very stupid.

tagged by. stolen from @starspurn <3 tagging. @ninkaku , @adamanteine , @bllakcat , @prryhic . @gritandgear , and whoever hasn't done this !!

[poet-to-none]

So it's been Then Shall Change Red: Chapter 2 writing week! (Not to imply it will take only a week).

And if the memes missed you (#tscr au), the summary is I'm EMOTIONAL about it.

I post on occasion how intense researching has been, and it's true, but I've spent my time laying face down in the dirt being dead as well. The cycle must go on to rebirth eventually.

A month ago, someone began to ask me all kinds of wonderful questions in DMs, about Magnus, and then a week ago Sam Reid gave my bsu-tscr project a shout out. I'm reeling from both, and I need to thank others who've been encouraging and supporting too.

The chapter's opening lines are here, and it's my pleasure to share them.

"Heeding pangs. Sunrise now. Flesh about to petrify, senses obliterate, thinking die. We lay safe, he and I, marriage final. Ingression final.

It becomes amative, caressing. 

What a mistake I would have made.

My body belongs to his, in decay. It will create the new. 

I close my hand around that hand o’er my breast, and I hear him weep. My sweet boy. I'm here.

Fate’s done with you its way, Magnus.

Sleeping death stills my all, even what ought give dreams.

Yet no.

A light's knife cuts the bowels of my darkness, the blazing tides under my athanor spill out to me.

Inside vaulted bricks and ashes, where blood’s stained. . .my emptied womb awaits. . .containing illumination and memory, the miracle of a dream. 

How long I’ve asked for a dream! Since the catacombs begot me in a blood red ending of day, eternal!"

Manuscript Image Source: "Rosary of the Philosophers". 1550. Solothurn, Zentralbibliothek, Cod. S I 185, fol. 110r-121r

[sugarydeceit]

gay smilk moments

so dating the fictive in my partner's system shit again, feeling giggly and need to just be a gay bun about it

ok, gay moments to think about in the brain skull rn.

he calls me his dolly, especially when my brain is having a hard time that day.

he's helped me open my eyes to things about myself, my trauma, and things I've repressed or pushed away and avoided, let me cry

and in a lullaby tone after, soothes and comforts. and uses sweet sillies as distractions after, or beautiful heartfelt prose, poetry, music, art, etc.

a new nickname/pet name daily. I swear he fires them off like ricochet and I'm never emotionally prepared fully.

I yap and get emotional or autism stim and flap my hands and go on about hyperfixations and he listens. listens and listens and listens. I get shy after and then he says he just loves my soft and gentle voice.

flirt flirt flirt flirt flirt flirt gODS he's a sappy flirt. like. poetry prose shakespear shit (THUS HIS NICKNAME)

actively shoves shadownilla at me and smiles and goes 'us' with a shit eating grin, knowing it flusters me, especially when it's tragic and or sappy.

I could bring up an idea for something to do as a hobby and he just listens and nods and goes absolutely with heart eyes. and I offer choices for us to do he'd like and prefer, but he always chooses what he knows will get my brain and heart so happy.

rambles about the things he loves and he's such a dork. a shitlord, a little gremlin, a prankster, a trickster, a tease, a silly who just wants to have fun and be chaotic.

inspires and encourages me to be authetncially me, even the parts I think are+

too much or ugly. whether it's my self ship side I'm shy about w him cuz he's a fictive and I know he's not source (he eats it up REGARDLESS)

romantic. how the fuck do I explain how suave, romantic, flirty, smooth, and sweet he is with how he hits me when I need it most?

has actively cuddled me in calls with movies, kissed my cheek, said he cant wait to twirl me. has said such sappy, personal deep, profound, philosophical, and sweet shit it's made my day instantly better.

caregiver. meal plans, asking if I've eaten, making sure I have, the rennie to my little, thinks it's cute when I regress and doesn't make me feel ashamed and lets me live in the moment, cultivates my interests and hobbies and inspires me to try new things.

musical and theater nerd. do I have to elaborate. 11. will go from tucking me in with a goodnight, a kiss, and a sweet little love send off and then send tik tok memes fgjhavf jkavet

has made a game of getting me to see if I know he's in front or not and has had the best time doing it, and every time I do it's like I get the winner bell with all the love and kisses and affection a bunny could want

u know the love is real when u both can tease and playfully insult each other and never actually be upset

HIS WHEEZES AND GIGGLES WHEN HE LAUGHS. I SWEAR THE STAR IS A GIGGLY BITCH AND IT MAKES ME SO FUCKING SAPPY AND GAY AND IT'S THE CUTEST SHIT TO WITNESS.

somehow loves all my jokes and thinks I'm funny and that just gb alfvbuaevbtkua ;w; mannnn im not but knowing he thinks i am makes me so silly

has compared me to the comfort of baked bread, berries, and petrichor after a long drought. that's the sweetest shit

[infwctednyacifier]

Thank you!! I got one more request today :3 for Kokcihi’s coven, can you make a gatekeeper?

-✨🎀

📜⋆｡ 🧿 ₊˚⏳ ˚. SINGLE, ORIGINAL = GATEKEEPER – ALTER PACK

Partially based off of Destiny cuz he's been co-con w me for like the entire day lol. So say hi & thx to Destiny, everybody's favorite philosophical, immortal, cunty Tulpa!!!!!!

Names – Armaros „ Lazarus „ Salvatore „ Orpheus „ Ambrose „ Alucard

Nicknames – Lord „ Lazar „ Alu „ Armar

Age – hundreds of years old ( nearing 1000’s )

Pronouns – he / him „ it / it’s

Gender – cisboy „ lunargender „ bloodcovic „ phosanguial

Terms – man

Orientation – androsexual „ hypersexual

Personality – haughty „ uptight „ narcissistic „ money – fueled „ condescending

Role – gatekeeper „ physical protector „ social protector „ verbal protector „ limit breaker + local rich & dramatic bitch™

Species – vampire

Source – original

Emojis – 📜 „ ⏳ „ 🧿 „ 🍷„ 📱 „ 🩻

Front triggers – blood „ his thrall just existing „ YT channel mentioned below „ other vampires „ his aesthetic ( gothic „ modern „ extravagant & opulent ) „ money „ Salvatore by Lana Del Rey ( and similar music )

Memories – living in his very large „ very rich „ and very gothic castle and being a cunty & rich bitch

Extra – can probably access other headspaces like in a gateway sys „ idk I just feel like he could . Watches those wait what meme Minecraft horror compilations ( check out a channel on YT called JoSa Craft to get what I mean ) and does so like an iPad kid . Fucking his femboy thrall 100% . Most likely knows Destiny . Tired & constantly drinking wine while his thrall sits on his lap and he rambles .

Example message – Greetings, I am Salvatore. I am a androsexual, hypersexual, lunargender, bloodcovic, phosanguial Lord who uses he/him/his and it/it's.

Likes – his thrall „ money „ JoSa Craft „ being a dramatic & rich bitch „ his castle

Dislikes – jealousy „ femininity „ cats „ salty food „ poor people

Faceclaims –

[tongueofcat]

Current WIP Questions Meme!

I was tagged by my good bro @thebarghestiest and I’m so excited I literally haven’t been tagged in one of these in YEARS!!! Okay, ahem, without further ado, let’s FUCKING GO!!! They particularly wanted me to talk about my ‘FMA project’ which is adorable because I have like… multiple FMA fics in the pipeline. But I’ve been talking about my Dungeons and Dragons AU at the moment, so I will focus on that!

What is the main lesson of your story?

It’s very much a canon-divergence story set in an AU. Which, now that I’m saying that is very confusing. I’m translating (to the best of my ability) FMA into a like… what if Edward Elric was a PC at a Dungeons and Dragons table — and the story of FMA was a Dungeons and Dragons game! It’s mostly an AU, but I will probably make tweaks to the overall story, knowing me… so it’s also canon-divergence? I’ll be trying to translate it the best of my ability, though — so the main lesson is the same as the source material! So, uh, equivalent exchange!

What did you use as inspiration for your world building?

Oh man, so I love FMA in every form (I’ve even read some of the light novels and played the video games when I was a teen — some people don’t even know there’s FMA games). I also really love TTRPGs, even 5e D&D… I know there’s better TTRPGs, but D&D will always have a place in my heart as my introduction to the world of TTRPGs! One day I was remembering Elric literally means in Old English/Germanic “Elf King” and “Noble Ruler” and I was like… that’s D&D as shit! Then my brain went that would be a good fic… if there’s an AU for this already I haven’t found it — or at least one I liked? I didn’t look super hard, tbh, so don’t come for me. But, every D&D build I’ve found is for characters inspired by him! So like, I was curious how to translate him and the other characters into the Forgotten Realms? And yeah… it got serious. And now I’m gonna write a fic for it. Because I have to do everything around here, ugh! Haha…

What is your MC trying to achieve, and what are you, the writer, trying to achieve with them?

Edward is going to be similar to his manga/anime self: he wants to get Alphonse’s body back and maybe his arm and leg, too. By finding the philosopher’s stone. I might change the philosopher’s stone to something else… but, honestly? I don’t think I’ll need to! I wouldn’t be surprised if it’s an actual item in the game literature.

How many chapters is your story going to have?

Too many. At least 20, but probably, like, I wanna say 50+? I’m sick and twisted… and I have a lot to cover.

Is it fanfiction or original content? Where do you plan to post it?

Fanfiction! I write original work too (you should check out my original works on Ao3), but this is obviously fanfiction!

When did you start writing?

Like… in general? Since it was introduced in school as an activity. I got really proud of it when I won a creative writing contest in the 3rd grade and even got a little trophy for it. Dopamine filled my brain from that, so I kept chasing that high… by writing more, even if it wasn’t for school. Then I got into post by post roleplaying in the 5th grade hardcore and it was history! I write regularly now and I have for years! It’s one of the few things I really like and respect about myself. I’m confident in my writing prowess! Yay!

Do you have any words of encouragement for fellow writers of writeblr?

Write for yourself, not others. It’s easy to get a high on others praising your work, but don’t let them sway your decisions too much — maybe if they’re a beta reader or someone you ask for advice it’s ok, but don’t do stuff specifically for someone to like it. That’s not really encouragement… uhh, your writing is valid! Even if it isn’t your primary skill or even your first language — it’s better to do than don’t when it’s creating in my opinion! There’s exceptions like (obviously) creating taboo art or stories that glorify, for example, pedophilia! But… you should create! It’s what makes us human! Do the thing! Even if you just write it and never publish it! It’s so valid and great! Beautiful!

Bye-bye! I’m not sure who I’d tag… but if anyone wants to, you can tag me if you do this question meme because you saw mine!

[omegaphilosophia]

The Philosophy of Social Media

The philosophy of social media examines the profound impact of social media platforms on human interaction, identity, and society. This interdisciplinary field intersects with ethics, epistemology, sociology, and media studies, exploring how digital technologies shape our communication, perceptions, and behaviors. By analyzing the philosophical implications of social media, we gain insights into the nature of digital life and its influence on contemporary society.

Key Themes in the Philosophy of Social Media

Digital Identity and Self-Presentation:

Social media allows users to construct and curate their online personas, raising questions about authenticity, self-expression, and the nature of identity.

Philosophers explore how the digital environment influences self-perception and the distinction between online and offline selves.

Epistemology and Information:

The spread of information and misinformation on social media platforms presents challenges to traditional epistemology.

Discussions focus on the credibility of sources, the role of algorithms in shaping information, and the impact of echo chambers on knowledge and belief formation.

Ethics of Communication and Behavior:

The ethical implications of online behavior, including issues of privacy, cyberbullying, and digital harassment, are central to this field.

Philosophers examine the moral responsibilities of individuals and platforms in fostering respectful and ethical online interactions.

Social Media and Society:

Social media's role in shaping public discourse, political engagement, and social movements is a significant area of inquiry.

The influence of social media on democracy, public opinion, and collective action is critically analyzed.

Privacy and Surveillance:

The balance between privacy and surveillance on social media platforms raises important ethical and philosophical questions.

The implications of data collection, user tracking, and digital surveillance on personal freedom and autonomy are explored.

The Nature of Virtual Communities:

Social media creates new forms of community and social interaction, prompting philosophical inquiries into the nature and value of virtual communities.

The concepts of digital solidarity, community building, and the social dynamics of online interactions are examined.

Aesthetics of Social Media:

The visual and aesthetic dimensions of social media, including the impact of images, videos, and memes, are considered.

Philosophers analyze how aesthetic choices and digital art forms influence perception and communication in the digital age.

Addiction and Mental Health:

The psychological effects of social media use, including addiction, anxiety, and the impact on mental health, are significant areas of study.

Philosophers explore the ethical considerations of designing platforms that may contribute to addictive behaviors.

Algorithmic Bias and Justice:

The role of algorithms in shaping social media experiences raises questions about bias, fairness, and justice.

Philosophers critically assess the implications of algorithmic decision-making and its impact on social equality and discrimination.

Commercialization and Consumerism:

The commercialization of social media platforms and the commodification of user data are key concerns.

Discussions focus on the ethical implications of targeted advertising, consumer manipulation, and the economic dynamics of social media companies.

The philosophy of social media provides a comprehensive framework for understanding the complexities of digital interaction and its impact on contemporary life. By examining issues of identity, epistemology, ethics, and societal influence, this field offers valuable insights into the ways social media shapes our world. It encourages a critical and reflective approach to digital life, emphasizing the need for ethical considerations and responsible use of technology.

[religion-is-a-mental-illness]

By: David Marchese

Published: Aug 25, 2023

For more than 50 years, Daniel C. Dennett has been right in the thick of some of humankind’s most meaningful arguments: the nature and function of consciousness and religion, the development and dangers of artificial intelligence and the relationship between science and philosophy, to name a few. For Dennett, an éminence grise of American philosophy who is nonetheless perhaps best known as one of the “four horsemen” of modern atheism alongside Christopher Hitchens, Richard Dawkins and Sam Harris, there are no metaphysical mysteries at the heart of human existence, no magic nor God that makes us who we are. Instead, it’s science and Darwinian evolution all the way down. In his new memoir, “I’ve Been Thinking,” Dennett, a professor emeritus atTufts University and author of multiple books for popular audiences, traces the development of his worldview, which he is keen to point out is no less full of awe or gratitude than that of those more inclined to the supernatural. “I want people to see what a meaningful, happy life I’ve had with these beliefs,” says Dennett, who is 81. “I don’t need mystery.”

Right now it seems as if truth is in shambles, politics has become religion and the planet is screwed. What’s the most valuable contribution philosophers could be making given the state of the world? Well, let’s look at epistemology, the theory of knowledge. Eric Horvitz, the chief scientist at Microsoft, has talked about a “post-epistemic” world. That phrase, the mere fact that he could utter it, is extremely frightening. The presence of agreed-upon landmarks and sources of common knowledge — this is something we’ve taken for granted for a long time and can no longer take for granted. We have to work to try to restore it.

How? By highlighting the conditions under which knowledge is possible. This will look off track for a moment, but we’ll come around: Andrew Wiles proved Fermat’s last theorem.It was one of the great triumphs of mathematics in my lifetime. Why do we know that he did it? Don’t ask me to explain complex mathematics. It’s beyond me. What convinces me that he proved it is that the community of mathematicians of which he’s a part put it under scrutiny and said, “Yep, he’s got it.” That model of constructive and competitive interaction is the key to knowledge. I think we know that the most reliable path to truth is through communication of like-minded and disparate thinkers who devote serious time to trying to get the truth — and there’s no algorithm for that.

There’s a section in your book “Breaking the Spell” where you lament the postmodern idea that truth is relative. How do we decide which truths we should treat as objective and which we treat as subjective? I’m thinking of an area like personal identity, for example, where we hear phrases like, “This is my truth.” The idea of “my truth” is second-rate. The people who think that because this is their opinion, somehow it’s aggressive for others to criticize or reject them — that’s a self-defeating and pernicious attitude. The recommended response is: “We’d like to bring you into the conversation, but if you’re unable to consider arguments for and against your position, then we’ll consider you on the sidelines. You’re a spectator, not a participant.” You don’t get to play the faith card. That’s not how rational inquiry goes.

This is skipping around a little, but in the memoir you refer to the fervor around ChatGPT as a “bubble.” Why is it a bubble? There’s an idea here that I want to talk about: In the piece that I wrote for The Atlantic on counterfeit people, I mentioned that the great danger of GPT-3 and ChatGPTs and so forth is that they can reproduce. They’re memes. You don’t have to be alive to evolve. Viruses aren’t alive; boy, do they evolve. Things evolve because they can, and cultural evolution — memetic evolution — is a potent phenomenon. We don’t want to have censorship, but we want to have something like quarantine to prevent the spread of cultural variants that could destroy culture, destroy democracy. The economist Paul Seabright writes movingly about trust, and trust is a social phenomenon. Society depends on trust. Trust is now seriously endangered by the replicative power of A.I. and phony interactions. This is a grave danger. There’s a natural human tendency to think, If I can do it, I will do it, and not worry about whether I ought to. The A.I. community has altogether too many people who just see the potentiality and aren’t willing to think about risks and responsibility. I would like to throw a pail of cold water on their heads and say, “Wait a minute, it’s not cool to make easily copied devices that will manipulate people in ways that will destroy their trust.”

You’ve written about the idea that comprehension can come out of competence. Does that imply that there’s nothing stopping A.I., which we currently think of as more capable of competence rather than true comprehension, from becoming sentient? Yes, strong A.I. is possible in principle. There’s no magic. Many years ago, Giulio Giorello, wonderful philosopher of science and journalist in Milan, interviewed me, and the headline in the Corriere della Sera the next day was, “Sì, abbiamo un’anima. Ma è fatta di tanti piccoli robot”: “Yes, we have a soul, but it’s made of lots of tiny robots.”

What did you mean by “tiny robots”? Your brain, your whole body, is made of cells. Each cell is a living agent of its own. It has a sort of agenda: It’s trying to stay alive. It’s got to keep itself a supply of energy to keep going. It’s got a metabolism. It’s the descendant of a long ancestry of free-floating, living cells that had to fend for themselves, and they’ve all joined forces to make a multicellular body. Those are little robots. If you look inside them, how do they move? How do neurons reach out and grab other neurons and send signals to them? They’ve got trillions of motor proteins, and motor proteins are not alive. They’re macromolecules. They march along on these little highways on the brain, carrying things around. They’re porters. They carry the necessary materials to keep the cell going and to repair and to extend its dendrites, for instance. Motor proteins aren’t alive. Ribosomes aren’t alive. Life couldn’t exist without these little molecular machines — by the trillions — that are working in your body right now. Human life and human consciousness are made possible by these incredibly brilliant consortia of little robots.

We have a soul, but it’s made of tiny robots. There is no God. These are ideas of yours that I think a lot of people can rationally understand, but the gap between that rational understanding and their feelings involves too much ambivalence or ambiguity for them to accept. What is it about you that you can arrive at those conclusions and not feel adrift, while other people find those ideas too destabilizing to seriously entertain? Some people don’t want magic tricks explained to them. I’m not that person. When I see a magic trick, I want to see how it’s done. People want free will or consciousness, life itself, to be real magic. What I want to show people is, look, the magic of life as evolved, the magic of brains as evolving in between our own ears, that’s thrilling! It’s affirming. You don’t need miracles. You just need to understand the world the way it really is, and it’s unbelievably wonderful. We’re so lucky to be alive! The anxiety that people feel about giving up the traditional magical options, I take that very seriously. I can feel that anxiety. But the more I understood about the things I didn’t understand, the more the anxiety ebbed. The more the joy, the wondrousness came back. At the end of “Darwin’s Dangerous Idea,” I have my little hymn to life and the universe. That’s my God — more wonderful than anything I could imagine in detail, but not magical.

Is it right that your sister is a minister? My older sister is the white sheep of the family. [Laughs.] She went to seminary and was ordained late in her life. She’s still alive. She was raised in the Congregational Church, which became part of what’s now the United Church of Christ, which is religion lite. If all religion were like that, all religion would be fantastic.

So how do you understand religious belief? No problem at all. More people believe in belief in God than believe in God. We should recognize it and recognize that people who believe in belief in God are sometimes very reluctant to consider that they might be wrong. What if I’m wrong? That’s a question I ask myself a lot. These people do not want to ask that question, and I understand why. They’re afraid of what they might discover. I want to give them an example of somebody who asks the question and is not struck down by lightning. I’m often quoted as saying, “There’s no polite way of telling people they’ve devoted their life to an illusion.” Actually, what I said was, “There’s no polite way of asking people to consider whether they’ve devoted their life to an illusion, but sometimes you have to ask it.”

There was something in your memoir that was conspicuous to me: You wrote about the late 1960s, when your pregnant wife had a bowel obstruction. Yeah, we lost the baby.

You describe it as “the saddest, loneliest, most terrifying” time of your life. Yes.

That occupies one paragraph of your memoir. Yes.

What is it indicative of about you — or your book — that a situation you described that way takes up such a small space in the recounting of your life? Look at the title of the book: “I’ve Been Thinking.” There are hundreds of pages of stories that I cut at various points from drafts because they were about my emotional life, my trials and so forth. This isn’t a tell-all book. I don’t talk about unrequited love, failed teenage crushes. There are mistakes I made or almost made that I don’t tell about. That’s just not what the book’s about.

But that brevity — I thought, is that showing something about you? I’m interested that you had that reaction. I bet you won’t be alone in that. We have two adopted children. I don’t talk about them much, but they are joys of our life. I’ll tell you a little story: Joe Weizenbaum was very avuncular with me when we met in 1973. I was teaching at Harvard, and he was writing “Computer Power and Human Reason.” He was sort of my Dutch uncle for a while, giving me advice. And one day I said to him: “You know, Joe, I have a strange worry. Our children are growing up in this house full of books and music and love. They’re having an ideal childhood in many ways, at least by my lights, and I’m afraid that when they get to be adults they’ll be soft as grapes. I don’t want to put troubles in their way, yet it worries me that I’m not giving them any troubles.” He said: “Don’t worry, Dan. They’ll make their own troubles.” And they did, both of them. I don’t talk about those. They’ve overcome the obstacles they created for themselves, and I don’t go into that either. But, boy, I spent as much time on that as I spent on my career as a philosopher.

The title of the book is “I’ve Been Thinking,” but don’t your feelings affect your thinking and the philosophical ideas you pursue? Oh, absolutely! It’s all — to use an old-fashioned term — driven by passion. The emotions rule. When I wrote the book with Matthew Hurley on humor, one of the great insights that Matthew gave me was that all control in human minds is via emotion. This is an important idea. Your laptop has an operating system. It’s dictatorial in how it runs things. It’s the traffic cop. In your brain, there’s no operating system in that sense — it’s all the turmoil of emotions. Happily, we have learned how to harness those emotions. That is to say, the emotions have learned how to harness one another. [Laughs.] But that “self” is at every level and all times driven by what we might call emotions and microemotions. Let’s see how I can put it: When you are choosing the words that come out of your mouth, slight subliminal differences in the emotional tone of one word over another, that’s what’s going to decide which word you use. If you’re in a pissy mood, you use one word. And if you’re in a happy mood, you use a different word. All of that is controlled by emotions.

Is it possible to be objective about the ways in which our emotions drive us? Very good question. There’s a conflict between objectivity and subjectivity here. You can’t objectively, calmly study in yourself the heights of sexual passion. If you try, you fail. Don’t try. You can think about it before or after. You can think about it in others. You can do heterophenomenology, but you can’t coldly study your own passions, because you need other passions to be in charge when you’re doing that. Only one set of agents can be in the driver’s seat at a time. A self is an individually evolved — I use the word “evolved” on purpose — variety of natural selection that trains up the emotional drivers in each of us and achieves a level of balance. It’s an entente. It’s a ruse of sorts that holds until it doesn’t. It’s a story we tell ourselves, but it’s a story guided by facts. It’s not just made up. We should agree with Richard Rorty and Jacques Derrida, because the ideal of objective truth in the sense of what Tom Nagel speaks about in “The View From Nowhere” — that’s a sort of ideal that is not achievable in any meaningful way. Absolute truth, off the table. But practical truth? That’s real, and that’s what we’re striving for. Rorty was the hero of a lot of postmodernists, and he seemed to be saying that there was no notion of truth, that it was all just conversation. I always resisted: No, no, there’s still a good notion of truth. It’s the notion of truth that you use when you say, “Is this a good map of the roads in the state?” We can get quite objective about that. [Laughs.] Rorty called that the vegetarian concept of truth. OK, let’s be vegetarians!

[ Archive: https://archive.vn/uTgJP ]

[casualtheoriesandthoughts]

Honor and Shame in Avatar: the Last Airbender

So I rewatched ATLA (as one does) recently and in my nostalgia trip, I found myself focusing on Zuko's "honor" obsession, and also the way I've seen people react to it. I realize that ATLA as a whole has been fan-theorized ad nauseam (though it doesn't seem to stop any of us!), but I do want to reflect on the way the word "honor" is interpreted by fans. I don't want to meme honor too much, though.

Too late, I suppose. But at any rate, this is probably fan-philosophy more than theory. I should preface this post by saying that my contention is based mostly on anecdotal evidence. I have seen fans assume that Zuko kind of discards the notion of "honor" more than a few times, especially when people read Zuko's arc as a commentary on abuse (which it definitely is, of course). This post from Blackwell Philosophy makes a similar conclusion, even though it attempts to draw on Confucian sources to elaborate on the concept of honor: "...as Zuko’s character arc shows, the only authentic honor we can pursue is the honor that lies within us and that comes from our own actions."

But let's remember that honor never ceases to be an operative idea even after Zuko makes the decision to switch sides. Iroh even says that this choice is about honor: "You restored your own honor, and only you can restore the honor of the Fire Nation." Whether you believe Iroh is up to you, but I'm inclined to take him and the series' terms seriously.

The Blackwell essay discusses righteous and conventional honor and disgrace, both of which describe relative states of esteem or reverence that people have for themselves or others. Righteous honor/disgrace comes from an inner assessment of one's virtues, and conventional honor/disgrace comes from external assessments. While I cannot claim to be familiar with Xunzi or Confucian philosophy more generally, this discussion is useful for drawing out a potential ambiguity that the English term "honor" that I suspect arises in the minds of English-speaking viewers.

For a show that seeks to draw significantly on Asian (especially Chinese) cultural, religious and philosophical resources, the use of the word honor in ATLA seems to flatten multiple ideas surrounding virtue, respect and propriety into a single usage. I realize it's a children's TV show, but it is still one that directly portrays war and colonial violence. Nuance is not missing from ATLA, most of the time anyway.

There are multiple words that translate to different aspects of honor in Confucian thought. Among them are the Five Virtues:

Rén (仁, benevolence, humaneness);

Yì  (義, righteousness, justice);

Lǐ (禮, propriety, rites);

Zhì (智, wisdom, knowledge);

Xìn (信, sincerity, faithfulness).

All of these, in my opinion, bear upon the idea of honorable conduct in some way. "Honor" in English generally connotes propriety in one's relationships and a solid sense of one's own values, especially when shared in community with others (think of a brotherhood of knights or the retainers of a king). "Honor" is also a verb, which conveys esteem or reverence paid to someone else (often for good deeds performed). It is the latter usage that the Blackwell essay calls conventional honor (勢 - shì), quoting Xunzi, and which it recognizes need not be associated with righteous or "honorable" behavior. Other words that may be associated with conventional honor are 榮 (róng, glory) or 尊 (zūn, reverence), even when paid to a genuinely honorable person. It is this tension which Helen de Cruz, the author, recognizes as the central theme of Zuko's struggle with honor.

My point here is less about the correspondence of English to Chinese concepts, than to point out the awkwardness of the uses of the noun "honor" and the verb "to honor". It creates a slippage between the notion of externally received esteem and the personal, moral propriety that one has (and which Zuko ultimately claims).

Consider, by contrast, Iroh's repeatedly being scorned by his family and nation. He never once wavers from his own values and convictions, all the while remaining loyal to the welfare of his people and his family. Two places this shows up are his claim that he is not, in fact, a traitor to the Fire Nation when he turns on Zhao at the North Pole, and again when he explains that he would not take back the throne of the Fire Nation from Ozai, as he believed that history and the people would only view it as a power struggle between brothers. Both choices involve seeming straying from his purported causes (the Fire Nation and the resistance respectively), but in reality conform to his values for balance in the world and righteousness in governance. It is why Iroh, despite being elderly, chooses to assist his nephew Zuko and even allows himself to be imprisoned because of it.

This raises important questions about honor and its opposite, shame or disgrace. In my experience in English-speaking circles in America, there is a great deal of resistance to the very ideas of honor and shame, especially nowadays with conversations about mental health and self-love. I imagine that it is because these terms conjure feelings and images of inferiority and humiliation before family and community, especially if the terms of the conflict are being stated hypocritically. I certainly don't hold these feelings against anyone, though I wonder how we might recover the more basic principles behind "honor" and "shame" for living our lives in the future.

Honor and shame exist in many Asian cultures, with merits and flaws alike. As an Indian American myself, I grew up with my own concepts in Kannada of ಮರ್ಯಾದೆ (maryāde) and ಸಂಕೋಚ (saṅkōca). These are not exactly the same as "honor" and "shame" per se, but were extremely functional in teaching me about the relationship between a view of oneself and others' views of the same, albeit somewhat problematically. ಮರ್ಯಾದೆ (maryāde) is generally glossed as "etiquette" or "manners", but is often associated with notions of a proper upbringing and treating others well. ಸಂಕೋಚ (saṅkōca) is a variety of shame, experienced when gifts are excessive or favors are too generous. It literally means "contraction", and was taught to me as the idea of feeling small because of someone's inordinate generosity. It is not a good thing to shower gifts, praise or support when it makes someone feel incapable or unworthy of the fruits of their own efforts.

Thinking about this in relationship to Zuko's own journey with the ideas of honor and shame, I believe it is possible to view honor more generatively. Honor isn't about getting accolades or validation from others (at the very least, not all the time), but living fully by one's values, particularly in relationship with others. Zuko wanted his father's love, but didn't realize that no amount of falling in line with his expectations would earn him self-respect, because it violated his own principles and severed his relationships with people he cared about, like his uncle. Insofar as honor serves to make one's relationships ethical, just and even loving, I think it's not such a bad idea. Similarly, shame for Zuko isn't about needing to be dehumanized or abused, but his feeling that he has strayed from his own values and done wrong by others. Speaking English, I think we can fall into a trap that "honor" for oneself and "honoring" others unilaterally are the same thing, and the same goes for the word "shame". Feeling that one's values have been betrayed or violated by one's own mistakes may or may not be called "shame", but it sounds right to me. The reason is that it comes with the ever-present possibility of redemption and restoration.

Zuko's journey toward recovering his own honor was about learning what he strayed from and thus what mattered to him, because it made him more alone than anyone in the world. In contrast to de Cruz, I think honor is about one's relationships to others and the values embodied in it, something that Zuko was ultimately able to restore in the end. It might not be the most original take in the world, but it makes me appreciate Zuko's arc that much more.

[cherryblossomshadow]

THANK YOU for explaining the pathologic joke

.

Image descriptions below the cut:

[Images 1-3 ID and source: Screenshots from hbomberguy's video, "Pathologic is Genius, And Here's Why." The character Bachelor (Daniil Dankovsky) has said, "Truth does not do as much good in the world as the appearance of truth does evil." The subtitles tell you that hbomberguy is saying,

Oh, wow. That's a good quote. I'm gonna use that in a future video and pretend a philosopher said it. Watch out for that.

/end ID]

.

[Image 4 ID and source: Screenshot from hbomberguy's video, "Plagiarism and You(Tube)." White text on a starry background seems like it is the kind of pithy quote you would see on Facebook etc. The official Pathologic portrait for the Bachelor is used as a floating head to the right of the text, adding to that impression. The text reads:

Truth does not do as much good in the world as the appearance of truth does evil. - Daniil Dankovsky

/end ID]

.

[Image 5 ID: Meme of John Mulaney from the Netflix Is A Joke special, saying "and then I didn't," edited to read:

and then he did

/end ID]

.

[Image 6 ID: Screenshot from hbomberguy's video, "Plagiarism and You(Tube)." hbomberguy is staring into the camera, talking, with Image 4 floating to the left of his head /end ID]

.

[Image 7 ID and source: Screenshot from hbomberguy's video, "Plagiarism and You(Tube)." hbomberguy is still talking, with Image 4 still floating to the left of his head. There is new text on the screen, below his face, reading:

"Truth does not do as much good in the world as the appearance of truth does evil." - François de La Rochefoucauld

A portrait of Rochefoucauld floats to the right of the text /end ID]

might have taken like 4 years but oh boy he sure made good on that promise lol