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premakalidasi · 6 years

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In defense of spiritual eclecticism, syncretism, innovation, human spiritual evolution, multiculturalism, even the dread “Neo-.”

This is going to be long, because just like my rant from the other day, this involves many, many things that have been boiling inside of me for months and months. And seeing as nobody seems to be addressing them thoroughly, and there being far too much mud-flinging and superiority and kneejerky extremism on all sides, people only seeing one side of the issue, I can’t keep it in any longer. Bear in mind this comes from someone with three decades-long lived experience with *both* “the East” and “the West,” both Western Paganism and Tantric/Bhakta “Hinduism,” from someone who’s female (yes, this makes a big difference, as you’ll find out), someone who’s lived in various European countries (some of them whiter than white, some of them very multicultural) for far too long, and someone who’s an extreme nondualist Goddess-devotee. (Yes, paradoxes abound. Such is Nature.) But let us begin.

It’s about this whole culture of who has the right to do what, and how-- while it’s understandable that people have their traumas and their personal prides and traditions and whatnot--it’s still deeply flawed.

It’s about the fact that the more this ridiculous anti-innovation, anti-evolution culture in spirituality bullies people into "traditional" practices, the more falsely or poisonously "authentic" stuff people will come up with to claim legitimacy. And the more the “authentic” thing is associated with dogmatism and conservativism, the more conservative that tradition will get.

If "neo-" is used as a swearword, a badge of shame, the more dishonest and the more delusional people will get about their own "traditions." The more the fallacy of "authenticity" (there’s no such thing; it’s all subjective) is thrown around, the more people will chase after and cling to initiations--claiming, of course, that they were initiated by a master in the Himalayas or a grandmother passed on an ancient lineage, etc. The more they are told that Modernity and Innovation and Western Progressiveness is Bad, the more they will seek out authority figures in the name of Tradition, authority figures of all colours of the rainbow. In Islam, you get anything from loopy and shallow Sufis to fanatical terrorist preachers; in Hinduism you get anything from far-right nationalist groups like Hindutva to cash-making cosmopolitan gurus; in Paganism you’ll get reconstructionist Pagan groups run by Neo-Nazis all over the place because the most liberal yet intelligent, the most eclectic Wiccan-type hippies (the nicest and wisest “spiritual” people I’ve known in the West, BTW, comparable to the most chilled-out and brainy nondual/universalist folks in other religions) are shamed underground.

Teachers, teachers! Everybody wants teachers because you have to be a part of a ~lineage!~ And the lineages will, magically, pop up to meet the demand (sorry, I mean “emerge from thousands of years of hiding”). The teachers will include “self-realised,” selfish, repressive masters who will proceed to suffocate everything "stubborn" in the disciple who could've experienced something incredibly insightful if allowed to do things her own way, could've brought something new and beautiful to the world--but she’s more valuable to the guru as a kitchen maid in his ashram because that’s her ~dharma~. The ancient way, you know. Chop veggies and repeat your mantra, it’s great meditation (and free labour for the organisation). Or, on the other hand, you get the sorts of teachers who have had a legitimate, 100% real, lineage-bound empowerment from those Zen masters who’ll initiate anyone for laughs, and who’ll allow the student anything and everything, freedom to the point where the poor buggers will actually not get any guidance whatsoever (they’re there only to stroke the teacher’s narcissism). However, these teachers will happily charge you 750 euros for a weekend intensive and all you end up doing is a most basic level chakra meditation and an “secret initiation rite” copypasted from a text the teacher found somewhere on the Internet.

So much for your hallowed initiations and traditions; people have always abused them and always will, and there are always people who will not even be able to access “legitimate” teachers and lineages, due to being born into the wrong country/caste/sex/you name it, so are they to just sit there quietly and wait for a new lifetime; better luck next time? Bullshit. They’re the ones who can speak from a point of view that’s outside the tradition exactly because they’ve been excluded, and bring fresh blood to it, or *gasp* start a whole new tradition on their own. And this is *vital*--so many of the world’s greatest religious movements have sprung exactly from the voices of the dispossessed; those who didn’t speak Sanskrit or Latin and who were barred entry to places of worship because they were, shock, horror, fertile. You will, and should, always have people who bring something new to the table, for they are the life and soul of the ever-evolving experience of human beings on this planet--and these are the dread newbies you bash!

Spirituality, religion, beliefs, traditions, holy books--they have always evolved and continue to evolve, because evolution is Nature's law. In trying to stop innovation, you are trying to stop Life itself; from plants growing, from genes mutating, from species evolving, from human beings becoming more conscious and enlightened.

There always have been and always will be inventors, innovators, self-initiated adepts, solitary practitioners, cultures that pick and mix from one another in perfectly happy non-abusive exchange and you can't do shit about that because it happens, just like Nature happens. All the great spiritual figures were innovators, all of them--we wouldn’t have known about them if they just shut up and knew their place. Moses revolutionised Hebrew belief; Jesus revolutionised Judaism; Mohammad revolutionised Arabian religion. Gautama looked at all of the world’s bullshit and laughed his arse off. We wouldn’t have had two of the biggest female Hindu gurus of the past century had they waited for someone to initiate them.

Had they done the right thing and followed stridharma, been the good little wives Hinduism expects all women to be, millions would never have known their grace, the grace of God as Mother.

Think of what brought you here: to what you're thinking and doing today, and just how many innovations and borrowings and syncretisms created it. *Whatever* it is that you are now thinking and doing springs from an innovation that was made somewhere down the line--several innovations and modifications, in fact. The clothes and accessories you wear, the tools you use, the food you eat, the language you use *all* contain elements from several different times, traditions, cultures, individual insights, inventions. Because someone thought “no, that old way of doing the thing sucks; here’s a better way of doing it.”

Now, I absolutely do not dismiss the power of a tradition or mean to say teachers or holy books are useless. They help--but in the end, that's what they are, *help.* They’re walking sticks, visual aids, audio descriptions for the stumbling, clumsy soul. They provide frameworks, structures, language, guidance to understand what’s going on; they’re passing on a cumulative stream of learning and experience. They’re there to help you grow, sometimes by pruning, but that’s where the benefit ends. But when they become ends in and of themselves, tradition for the sake of tradition, when they begin to destroy human beings' capacity for something new, begin to stagnate by sticking to outdated rules simply because they're ~traditional and therefore better~, when they operate only to limit the uses of human power by rigid hierarchies (in which only a couple of people have access to God), they stop from helping the individual and the human race to evolve. How many potential mahatmas have these structures suffocated, how many mystic poets? When they turn to crushing, erasing of the spirit instead of cultivating it, into blocking access to divinity unless you have thing Y or X (read: happened to be born in the wrong country/culture/ethnic group/sex), they turn lethal. These things do not make humans better; they do not make the world a better place, to put it mildly.

And the more you apply this old vs. new rubbish, the more you fall into the trap of dualism. And in dualism, you will always be a loser, even if you think you’ve reversed the positions of the oppressor and the oppressed. This happens on social media every day, and it’s ridiculous how people can’t see it’s just the same thing, only reversed, and the fighting and the pain will never end. If you fall into the trap of group X versus group Y, culture Z versus A, you are yourself perpetuating the divisions that screwed you over in the first place: the exact same thinking that devalues you if you are a woman, not white, gay, of the wrong caste, et cetera. Bitching and moaning about white people, straight people, men, posh people, whoever you think is the oppressor today, and practicing cultural isolationism, superiority and separatism does not do a thing for you; it's starting a new war. In this war, for any group who clings to a victim identity, a martyr identity, there will never be an escape from victimhood.

No, really, think about it.

If you choose to base your entire life, your entire way of thinking, solely in opposition to whoever you think is oppressing you (in effect, letting yourself be defined by the enemy), the pain will never end. There will never be a day on which it is again ok to tell a woman she's beautiful without it being objectification, to have heterosexual sex without it being normative, to have an interracial marriage without it being slavery, to learn a language without it being exploitation, to read another religion’s holy book without it being an act of stealing, to be happy with your body without it being sinful, to lose yourself in the beauty of a work of art from the other side of the world without it being an act of subjugating and tearing that country apart. If it's assumed that heterosexual desire is always objectification and abuse, the pain will never end. If having breasts means that they will always and forever be a target of abuse and belittling assumptions about you, and if it’s accepted as fact that only hiding breasts or not having them at all makes you worthy of respect, the pain will never end. If it's always assumed even the most respectful of cultural interactions, the very act of empathising with someone from another culture and trying to understand them, feeling love and affection for something that’s outside the small world you were born into is somehow colonialism and appropriation and exploitation, the pain will never end.

It’s exactly because you, yes, you, disgruntled person on social media, go on and on about Muslims or straight white guys always being villains, that you are leaving them no choice to be anything else. They’ll believe this, take pride in this, base their lives on opposition to you in turn and the pain, the violence, the sheer bloody idiocy will. Never. End.

The most annoying, most frustrating thing is that yes, you do have to give people a chance. Sorry.

I've had elements of my culture irrevocably associated with only person-less, heartless sex; I've been hypersexualised and feared because I am what I am. I have been told time and time again I don't belong in the country I feel is my home because I wasn’t born in it; I do not feel at home in the country of my ethnic origin because of its crushing, dehumanising culture of suffocating, belittling and abusing all who live in it. If I play with language in a poetic way, it’s seen as a mistake, a typo, a grammatical error because I’m seen as The Foreigner. I am far too much of the East for most white people and they only associate that with barbarism and abuse; yet I'm too fair-skinned to be given the benefit of the doubt when it comes to the "authenticity" of my spirituality and my work--ironically, on the same community where native Bengali charlatans advertise their hotlines for solving astrological problems, using a picture of Kali to sell their mumbo-jumbo, the very same picture these guys would object to on a Western tote bag (because no white person carrying it could ever know more about the deity than the charlatan).

I'm speaking from the side that's never fucking fit in anywhere simply because the artificial rules for who's ~valid~ are a huge load of shit.

And I don't want others to experience that. I don’t want others to be judged simply because of where they were born and what they have access to; I don’t want other people’s agency to be questioned by people who don’t know anything about what led them to choose their own values. You know what I think when I see a young Greek-American woman talking about her having found the Divine through the Marvel Loki because she could relate to him better than any of the rapists on Olympus? (Those guys the militant male reconstructionists say are the only ~proper~ gods to revere?) “You have budding knowledge and a great amount of passion in you,” I think, “and your ability to recognise your own fannish love and enthusiasm as a great reservoir of love and of power, despite everyone belittling it and shaming it, shows great strength and insight.” She’s got it. She’s pragmatic. She’s felt alienated from so many places, but now, having turned within, having cast off shame, she has found something that works for her, and does so beautifully. Despite all the shame heaped upon her, she stands strong and knows that whatever works, works and that nobody has the right to tell her that her own experience is somehow wrong.

It’s easy to be a traditionalist if the tradition values you; it’s easy if it’s been built for you in the first place. It’s no problem at all. However, if you’re not an upper-class male, it’s an altogether different story. Women, queers, mentally ill people, poor and dispossessed people, people from those groups whose native religions have been destroyed by the dominant religions, *have* no religion left to speak of. They *have* to create something new. They *have* to excavate whatever little there is left and to build a practice that suits their needs from scratch. This is exactly what drove the Bhakti movement, what drove nondualist Sufis, what drove certain Protestant denominations, until they, too, became stagnant and overly obsessed with rules, becoming exactly that which their founders had fought against. But if you don’t know what it’s like to be in one of those groups, in the West in particular, where there is absolutely *no* spiritual niche for so many things and where a mahatma experiencing divine visions would be thrown into a madhouse--then you have to listen.

Which brings me to my next point, something I’ve seen incredibly hateful posts about recently on this site--and since I’ve got a foot in both sides of the argument, I feel like someone needs to say something to clarify even the basics. Let me explain what it’s like in the West.

First of all, my global friends: Westerners aren’t all stupid, and if they belong to the group that calls itself Pagan in particular, they do a *lot* of reading. Pagans are the most well-read people I know; often they are lifelong Renaissance people with massive bookshelves. They may fumble around, and quote from books that don’t know everything, but slagging them off for that is like beating up a baby of 14 months for pronouncing a word wrong. They have a thirst for knowledge, and they are capable of respect. Trust that. They don’t swallow everything without chewing it; they chew quite a fair bit--almost too much, really. So this whole idea of Westerners all being dumb and thinking yonis and lingams are naughty and not understanding anything, and only being obsessed with sex does not gel at all with the Western yogis and Pagans I know. The Western yogis, if anything, are often very puritanical to prove their chops, observing more fasts and more rigorous vegetarianism and meditative practices than some Hindu men I know.

As for the car crash that’s Kripal--I have literally not met a single person who thinks Kripal is anything except a complete fucking nutter and an embarrassment, BTW. So the whole idea many, many Indians seem to have of Westerners being like him... er? No? He’s laughed at. Headdesked about. The Westerner who’s Done The Research is going to be the *first* one to slag off sex manual “Tantra” (pick up any academic book on the topic in the last 20 years and you’ll find a section doing that) and is going to be far more likely to have a really good and balanced idea of what lingams and yonis are, far less repressed than some Hindus, actually--at least the sorts who deny there’s any sexual connotations to it at all. The Western yogis I know are perfectly capable of understanding the abstract nature of the lingam in the yoni, and don’t titter like the schoolgirls some Hindu writers present them as. They’ll be the first to shrug and say “it’s just the life force; there’s nothing to be ashamed about it.” Whereas it’s Indian writers in Wikipedia who are furiously censoring anything they might find unsavoury, destroying parts of their own heritage by erasing passages about, say, animal sacrifice in the Vedas, blaming it all on the Westerners. It’s a massive mess.

But back to my experiences with the Westerners. I don’t think a lot of Hindus who slag off Western Neo-Pagans, belittling it and thinking it little more than roleplay, understand at all where these people are coming from, because they’ve been born into a world where you can--at least to some extent--choose your own personal deity and where the amount and variety of religious imagery and practice is enormously rich. They’ve been born into a world where the Divine can have faces, shapes, stories with variety and colour and detail, all these things that, I’d argue, the human mind naturally leans towards. Not so in the West. Westerners, and to a certain extent the children of immigrants, have been born into a world where all that multitudinous, rich expression, all those different ways of seeing the Divine have been crushed, wiped out by Christianity, and only abstractions have been allowed.

The word “Pagan” there is something that’s been used as a slur, and that’s something that Hindus carry deep scars from thanks to Muslim and Christian rhetoric and all kinds of oppression and conversion attempts. But in the West, it’s used to denote anything pre-Christian, anything where the face of the Divine is not (ultimately) an abstraction. In Protestantism, people are constantly told that the Catholic saints and all the paraphernalia around them are pagan remnants (and they are), and are told that that’s wrong and that’s not allowed.

When the Westerners choose the word “Pagan,” they are siding with the indigenous religions in that they refuse the Christian missionaries’ view of Christianity being better. Let that sink in. They aren’t belittling non-Christian practices, like their entire culture does. They’re abandoning their own culture in favour of the side they see you’re on, the side they see as healthier, even if they’ve been told that this side is backwards and primitive.

In the West, in Protestant countries in particular, people are religiously *starved.* It’s all blanched, dead, abstracted. They’re starved of the full depth of human religious expression, starved of religious imagery, are (for the most part) starved of ecstatic practices like singing and dancing; they are starved of truly colourful festivals. They may have been brought up with no religion at all, or perhaps something that’s only observed during weddings, funerals, at the birth of a baby. Children have rituals, even animals have rituals, yet Protestantism has tried to strip them from humanity. Protestants have precious few rituals, dance, music; the further up Northern Europe you go, even the buildings are ugly and bare--mere boxes. Have you ever been to a Scandinavian Lutheran service? It’s probably going to be in a big, abstract, blocky building, clean white walls with hard angles, with no ornament even on the cross, and there’s maybe one candle burning if it’s an advent day. Ornament is sin; ornament is crime. So whenever these people catch glimpses of a past that was more colourful and had shape and form instead of mere abstractions--perhaps a folk dance, a ring of standing stones, a note in a magazine article saying a celebration has a pre-Christian origin, allowing them a peek into the incredible rich mythologies of the past, a lightbulb goes off on the tops of their heads and they recognise its *naturalness.* This is why so many Pagans say, whispering at the edge of a misty lake with a garland in their hands to offer to the deities, “it’s what I’ve always felt anyway; I’ve returned home.”

And what do the Westerners, the Pagan sorts in particular, see in Hinduism? They see that these traditions that they’ve themselves rediscovered have never died out in India! Oh, wow! They still do this bit! And that bit! They see that there’s still a part of the world in which God can still be seen as a woman, as with having an elephant head, in which God can move through human beings, and it’s *natural* to them, it makes sense, and they weep bitterly at these images having been taken from them. That’s all. They’re not out to rob temples: actually, they’re acting against *everything* their Christian, racist masters have told them to do; they’re *sinning* by saying “this makes sense” of a culture that’s been deemed barbarian, backward. In short, they’re practicing the exact opposite of the belittling kind of “orientalism” they’re being accused of. They’re respecting, even preferring that which their culture has told them is primitive.

So, to expand the view of these so-called cultural bandits that are Westerners studying cultures not their own: they aren’t out to rob anyone. They’re marvelling, feeling a deep ache in their guts because they’ve recognised something inherently real and true, something deeply human. They might be reading about Hinduism to learn what it was like in their own country before Christianity; finding parallels with, say, Roman religion. It doesn’t mean that they will necessarily be drawn to Hindu deities; they simply want to read more. They want to experience different ways of looking at the world--it can be an expression of empathy.

And have you any idea how difficult this is for women in particular to process, when they know for a fact that women receive even worse treatement outside the West? They are told, literally, that if they even so much as touch an “Eastern” culture they must be accepting the burning of widows, genital mutilation and veiling. How in the absolute fuck is that any kind of subjugating of a “foreign” culture, when you yourself, by even going there, would be victimised by it, literally groped and raped by it, the way Western women devotees are on a daily basis? Saïd completely fails to see that side of Western interest in the East, himself blinded by his own male perspective, just like the Orientalists he so loathes--he only sees women as objects of desire instead of independent thinkers with agency, not even pausing to think what might lead a Western woman to revere one of the few forms of the Goddess still worshipped in this world. When a Western woman goes Eastwards, she is seen to enslave herself. It takes guts for her to even peek inside. Let alone travel on her own, leaving her culture behind, to a temple where the Goddess’s gift of giving life to the world is celebrated in the form of her yoni, torn by the irony of the groping, violent fools trying to grab hers when they’re supposed to be revering a female deity.

The most natural of human impulses, of seeing the Divine power in many forms and shapes, is so deeply penalised and repressed that for a Westerner brought up Protestant, it’s a radical departure to declare herself a Pagan.

Yes, you heard me right. These people face discrimination from relatives, from countries that refuse to give a legally sanctioned status to any religion without a holy book (which is what a lot of indigenous religions, nature religions don’t have). They choose this path (whatever deities/traditions they end up associating with) out of a deep conviction in their hearts, based on deep knowledge they’ve gathered over the years--and they lose jobs, lose custody, get beaten up by fundamentalist Christians over it. It’s a serious, radical departure that means severing many ties; if one refuses Communion in Protestant churches, one will not be able to be married in a church, one might not be able to name one’s kids after non-Christian names because the state won’t allow “heathen” names. They will have relatives who will no longer talk to them, neighbours who treat them with hostility and may smoke them out of the area you live in. They will have great difficulty in accessing basic services, down to how they will be treated in the hospital to arranging for their burials. In the whitest of the white, small European countries, it means being harassed on public transport if you’re wearing a suspicious symbol or something non-Western; it means having a glass pint thrown at your head by a drunken Pentecostal at a rock festival (I saw this happen). A Western yogi was evicted by a fundamentalist Christian landlord for having a statue of Nataraja on his mantlepiece (which he’d garlanded and worshipped accordingly, BTW). Does that not change your idea of these people blithely ripping something off without a care, just having fun with these images, at all?

It’s not fucking roleplay. It’s not just a little bit of hippie or hipster dipping into something that’s cool--if someone’s truly chosen that path, especially if they are over 30, they are serious about it. There are idiots everywhere, of course; on Tumblr in particular, it seems that the dumbest people of *any* group are the loudest and the most visible, especially because the place is so full of poorly educated and entitled American kids (like they can help it).

But that doesn’t mean there aren’t plenty of intelligent Western people out there. You know why they’re quoting from those books that you scoff at? It’s because they’re doing their research. They quote from all these books because they *read.* They *study*. They are under tremendous, tremendous pressure from the Internet, especially from all the above militant guilt-tripping and hate speech against innovation and cultural interaction and Neo-anything to Do Their Research. They probably know more than most average people do, in any culture. I’ve met Western Hare Krishnas who can recite long Sanskrit stotras with better pronunciation than your average, lazy Brahmin priest whom the pious family grandmother has to correct. There’s no such thing as automatically being good at something when you’re born into a particular group or culture, just like a gay man isn’t necessarily good at designing clothes.

And this is before I even get into non-dualist Hindu gurus who welcome Westerners. They’re welcomed with open arms, quite literally in Amritanandamayi’s case, listen to all these universalist sermons preaching how humanity should not be divided by race, religion, caste, etc. (post-Vivekananda Advaita Vedanta versions of Hinduism, of course), and then get a rude awakening when they get slapped in the face by all these people who tell them that their devotions, their studies are a ripoff. So they bathe in the nectar of these spiritual insights, feel loved and go and do good work, and then some git on the Internet comes and kicks them in the face, saying they don’t know shit. And when they ask the gurus or the swamis about what they should do about accusations of cultural appropriation, the renunciates are so busy with their own work (making the world a better place) that they will just shrug and say “just block them.” Yeah, block an entire movement of hate spewed at them when they’re trying their best to be decent people and evolve, and to serve the world. (*Marriage problems*Jyotish*Black Magic*Love Marriage*Call 666-666-99 NOW*)

Not at all a schizophrenic situation, oh no. Constant tugging between conservativism and liberalism; people who don’t do their research blaming other people for not doing their research (even if they have). And vice versa; 14-year-olds on this website thinking they know all about cultural differences and how to solve them, because doing a chakra meditation, given to you personally by a Hindu guru who endorses it for the whole world is actually wrong if you’re white, and we should all just lock ourselves up in tiny little boxes and never interact.

So. This was a rant on two topics, really. But they are intertwined. On one side, you’ve got people obsessed with traditionalism, obsessed with the idea of only certain people having the right to do certain things, and on another, an endless ocean of nonduality, of a commitment towards humanity and evolution reaching out across all borders. I know which side I choose, and let me tell you, it’s not easy when you don’t want to be a sanctimonious tosspot but don’t want to be an extremist either. The Internet fuels extremism of all kinds; it throws the worst examples of the group you think is your enemy at you (and the agitators underline them, using this to serve their own purposes). If I were at complete peace and abiding in the Self, I wouldn’t be writing rants. I wouldn’t be an angry woman yelling at the screen when someone’s completely misinformed and a hypocrite.

What it boils down to--my anger included--is that people keep telling each other that they don’t trust them. And people don’t trust themselves. Hence the blind faith in traditions, gurus, social justice movements to the point where they override all reason. We are supposed to think that everyone on that other side is an idiot, because it’s easier that way. It’s so much easier to reduce someone to a degenerate Westerner or a primitive Hindu, or a backwards Pagan (or a shrieky SJW, for that matter). And people behaving in an extreme, reactionary manner give reality to these stereotypes, these reductionist ideas. Above all, we are told that we shouldn’t trust our intuitions, that we shouldn’t trust our learning, that we shouldn’t trust our knowledge and sense of right and wrong--that we need an adult to guide us. And to an extent, that’s right--you need help sometimes, when you’re too young to know how to wipe your own arse--but you have to grow up sometime and move on. You have to start your own path, and it’s going to be different from your friend’s even if you’re in the same congregation--you don’t like me telling you this, but we *are* all individuals and there’s no such thing as an absolute, perfect example of a Lutheran or a Bhakta or an Asatru or whoever because those are all propaganda. That’s dualism again--the concept of there being a right way of doing something and the wrong way of doing something, and that’s how wars start.

Whether on the Internet or outside of it, dualism is what starts wars. Not giving people a chance starts wars. Not trusting that spiritual innovation to be perfectly sound and good for a person or a group of persons is what starts schisms, more wars--all of this because people simply can’t stand being different from one another. It’s a bizarre form of extreme empathy, actually--feeling a horrible dissonance when someone is different from you, and a lot of religious people have the kinds of neurological structures that support that. They feel physical pain when someone Does It Wrong, simply because their pleasure at doing something right--which you or I can never imagine--is *so* intense. But the truth remains that the only way we can get along on this planet is to put up with each other, respect each other (sounds so bland, dunnit?), respect difference, plurality because it’s essential to evolution, and to give people the benefit of the doubt. The most radical thing to say is “maybe that person I don’t like is doing it right after all”--try *that* for a headfuck, a zen koan!

But without that, there’s nothing. The West needs to respect the East and not think it's all stuck-up and to see the people and things they can relate to (there are thousands); the East needs to stop being stuck-up and pretending there are no Westerners who respect the East (there are thousands). Traditionalists need to stop being so bloody crushing and oppressive and smug; super-liberals need to stop being so bloody lazy and smug as well and have a look at the good things those traditionalists have done.

You need to give that respect if you wish to be respected in turn. You need to take that deep breath when one of those idiot kids goes off on one again. You need to give others that space and not *assume*, but watch. The people you find most grating may very well teach you more than the people who think you’re just splendid and fabulous.

Evolution is Nature’s Law.

And you may not like it, I may not like it, but it happens--Life will find a way.

#apologies for typos i'm very tired and it took hours to type this #tantra #paganism #multiculturalism #nondualism #evolution #i will probably regret this too but right now i am so tired #i know so many good people from the side that always gets bashed #that i have little time for hypocrisy from people who don't do their research on the *west*#prema kalidasi #sermons

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thelittlepalmtree · 2 years

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One framework for understanding Dracula as a novel is as a celebration of capitalism. Now I know that might rub some of us commie queers the wrong way but it is, I think, an essential part of understanding the themes and ideas of the book. I'm going to discuss some of the things I researched while writing my undergrad thesis on Dracula. I will mark spoilers for dracula daily with *** at the beginning and end.

So first let's look at the historical context for the book. Dracula is published in 1895. Stoker's contemporaries were Oscar Wilde, Kate Chopin, and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. Most of the literature at the time was greatly grounded in the relationships between aristocracy and bourgeoisie. People were beginning to see the absurdities of the rules that had ruled the regency era (think Jane Austen). Capitalism was new and exciting because it meant people could change their class status. Wilde did this by mocking the aristocracy's ideas about breeding and pointing out the hypocrisy of the middle class that spouted puritanical ideas of the nuclear family. Doyle was heavy into spiritualism and hated Sherlock Holmes, but it is notable that the incredibly popular protagonist was a man shirking the nonchalance of aristocracy and instead more or less starting a business.

In this lens, we can view the novel Dracula with a little more understanding of why Dracula himself is so terrifying and why characters like Lucy and Mina are portrayed the way they are.

Dracula and Lucy both represent Aristocracy in different forms. Dracula represents the feudalistic Aristocracy of eastern Europe. Now, it's worth noting that Stoker himself was Irish and would have experienced his fair share of racism as Ireland was a British colony. However, people in the area at the time would have viewed Romania and Hungary similarly to how people today view Afghanistan. And Indeed, Afghanistan was also being colonized at the same time. A modern version of Dracula might be about an evil Djinn trying to move to America and trick people into making wishes.

Lucy represents what was quickly becoming the irrelevant aristocracy of England itself. Lucy is, in so many ways, the perfect Regency Heroine. In fact before the novel starts she is practically living in a Jane Austen novel. She has multiple men courting her, she is pretty and well liked, but she doesn't actually...do anything. Her entire existence is to be pretty and sweet and eventually become a wife. The only time we really hear from Lucy is in her description of the proposals she has received. And this letter is honestly such a caricature of the regency era heroine it's kind of funny. She is dramatic to the point of impropriety, she is devastated to have to reject two men. And yet she doesn't talk much about Arthur at all, who she apparently loves. She gives all her time and voice to melodrama, the kind readers of Dracula would have been annoyed with. I don't know if it has been mentioned yet but ***we will soon learn that Arthur is the heir to a lordship, and therefore Lucy's acceptance of him and rejection of the others shows her preference for the old Aristocracy. She rejects the good hard-working men, of whom we have great details, and instead chooses a man of aristocracy whom we now know nothing about.***

Let's look at some of the other characters. Jonathan himself is a solicitor (a lawyer) and he doesn't even seem to be a senior partner. He is, really, a normal person. However, he seems ambitious as he is willing to go on this incredible expedition for work. I think we can understand that his boss is setting him up to inherit the business. Dr. Seward is already in charge of a whole hospital, another ambitious professional. And Quincy, of course, is the ultimate capitalist, an American Cowboy who has surely had countless adventures in America and made his fortunes to spend in England.

Of course Mina is the most interesting character. In this time, the role of women was more in flux than ever. Stoker purposely has mina reject the "new woman" which was a way feminists were describing themselves at the time in order to set his heroine apart from them. However he clearly does not approve of Lucy's version of womanhood either. Mina is a useful wife. She does not have a career of her own but is rather an asset to her husband. This is in stark contrast to the aristocratic who is really meant to be an ornament and if anything is a burden to the husband. Her role in society was to show off wealth. With Mina, Stoker represents a new version of womanhood and wifedom wherein she is more or less a secretary to her husband. She does everything she can to aid him in his career and therefore benefit their family. And of course, before she met Jonathan she did not idle away, she was a teacher at a school.

And of course Dracula himself represents aristocracy at its worst. He is bound by old-world rules, a specter of a society that believes in things the English have forgotten about. As England becomes more democratic, other countries like Austria-Hungary are solidifying their aristocracy in what would later become fascist movements. (The core basis of facism is to have an industrialized aristocracy). And Dracula represents the fear of this coming into England. Some of this fear may be founded, but most of it is racism. In fact, in order to colonize this region of the world, the British created deals with local lords to overthrow their King, destabilizing the nation. They would then double cross these lords. So it was a genuine fear at the time that one of these lords might seek revenge on the British public. In a similar way to how Action movies today often have a terrorist on a vendetta due to drone strikes killing their family.

Dracula very much represents the dual threat of returning back to an aristocratic nation and the threat of colonized lands coming back to punish the atrocities faced there. Jonathan's initial description of the area as "picturesque" shows the naivete many felt about British Colonization and interference. But under the surface lies the sinister nature of a force that is coming to destroy the normality of British life. I think it is important to acknowledge this while we are reading. We do not have to buy into it though.

There is more to the story and this theory, but this, I think covers what we've currently seen.

As we continue to read dracula daily, I think this lens could be helpful to anyone reading along.

#dracula daily

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briarworthandoleander · 3 years

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Since you're so heavily invested in monster rearing, what's your opinion on the reclusive monster "Riders" who raise otherwise deadly monsters as mounts?

In all honesty I'm not a fan of the practice of Riders.

Forgive me for the perceived hypocrisy, but I feel like there is something I must point out immediately.

We are a rescue sanctuary - we are helping injured monsters and trying to release those we can back into the wild, we do not tame monsters. Our orphan rescues raised from infancy are different too - as while we make sure they are used to human and wyverian handling for care and feeding; we do NOT utilize them in combat nor do we treat them as pets - they are still very much wild creatures and should be respected as such.

We ween adolescent monsters of human and wyverian contact as they get older, and if we can - teach them to hunt so they can hold their own and sometimes even be released.

I have no doubt my adult wards can and would rip off my face should I ever be perceived as a threat in any capacity, and I know from experience that "visitors" tend to be horrifically surprised by how little we do "tame" our lifetime rescues.

(If anyone is curious as to how I keep two adult Kadachi around as near "pet like" monsters, I don't actively do so - as I have said in previous papers, Kadachi are very passive by nature and I have seen no reason to be rid of them other than sometimes one gets too comfortable with sleeping on my couch, and even then I'm not particularly bothered as they leave well enough alone.)

Near hypocrisy aside, and myself not tightening the belt as heavily as Oleanders vehement hatred of riders - I find it hard to appreciate a culture that as part of their way of life poach eggs and juveniles from their nests in the wild. It's disruption of the natural order and an ecological nightmare.

Also the idea of anybody weaponizing a monster is a nasty thought - these are living, breathing creatures and you subject them to fighting not only other monsters but their own kin which is likely to end in injury or death.

Again - an ecological nightmare.

I've been to those islands, I've seen those villages, I know what they do and how they do it - and I find myself angered by it.

I understand that few are of the opinion that co existence with these creatures is possible, but I am disinclined to agree due to the fact that these are not monsters that would peacefully interact with people unless raised by people from infancy.

If one wishes to argue about my stance on hunters: certified hunters like Oleander and myself are dispatched by The Guild to keep the natural balance and prevent ecological disasters - sadly this does sometimes require culling to keep the general wild populace of creatures and people safe and healthy say if there is a plague or a scarcity of food.

In more direct terms:

There's a difference between culling a victim of Gore Magalas' blight to stop further infection and disruption of herd animals that could lead to mass starvation of predators that could then turn their attention to settlements, and killing because you want a new pair of boots.

As for capturing wild monsters for research purposes, they are often tagged (to keep an eye on numbers) and released afterwards unless there is a problem found such as injury or illness - which if treatable means they are leased to the care of people like myself to be nursed back to full health.

- Leo Briarworth

----

I don’t like them. I don’t trust them.

I studied Riders for a while under Guild instruction, avoiding interfering as per my agreement. What I saw those villagers do bothered me.

Countless times, I watched them harass and fight monsters until they retreated to their nests, at which point the Riders rifled about as the mothers rested, picking through the eggs that the wyverns had curled around as if they expected not to wake again. Many times, I saw the mother awaken and naturally attempt to defend her nest, only to be slain because of her own instinct to protect herself and the next generation of her species.

In those instances, the nest was left unattended. The Riders got their prize, but at the cost of a family. They then took the egg, hatched it, and raised it as their own--as if the irreparable damage they’d just caused was an afterthought. There’s no effort to conserve the species. No attempt to ensure that the balance is upheld. It makes my blood boil.

Their practices are reprehensible. There’s no excuse for the loss of life they cause. It’s one thing to adopt a monster that’s been orphaned. It’s another to be the reason that it’s an orphan.

I won’t be going back to that village unless it’s under Guild orders to put a stop to the environmental chaos they’re wreaking.

-Oleander

#monhun #monster hunter #monster rider #monster hunter ecology #monster hunter rp #mhrp #monster hunter stories

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astriiformes · 4 years

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Asking this from the position of someone who's in the same boat - How do you deal with having so many academic/"nerdy" friends already pursuing graduate programs, when you're not in school and don't have a Bachelor's?

I feel so crushingly insecure about it, and want to be happy for my loved ones, but when they talk about grad school apps, letters of reccomendation, etc, I feel so stupid and inferior and want to cry. Sometimes I feel like I don't deserve a place among the people I love most because they're so much "smarter" than me, surely they're out of my league.

You don't have to answer this, you're just one of the few people I know who's in a situation like mine. I really respect you and look up to you as a Cool Academic Person, even though you're not ~professionally~ doing it, and I wish I could feel the same about myself.

Ah, that is definitely a hard one, anon. First of all, I’m pretty honored to hear you say that you think of me as a Cool Academic Person worth asking for advice on this, because the truth is that it’s something I really struggle with, too. So I hope maybe that offers a little perspective right out of the gate. It’s entirely possible that there are already others in your life who already think of you as a lot smarter than you feel, and regardless, the imposter syndrome that you and I both have is definitely not the whole story.

I’ll start this off by saying that I am obviously not a therapist or a psychiatrist, and a lot of the advice I have is best paired with a much stronger plan of attack that I’m not qualified to give advice on. But I’m happy to offer what perspective I can, because I think some of what hurts people with this is feeling alone, as well as societal myths about what a “smart” person looks like, and I’m perfectly willing to poke some holes in both those ideas.

One thing that has been absolutely critical for me is figuring out how to still consistently engage with academic topics and interests -- things that make me happy and excited and that I don’t want to remove from my life at all! -- while simultaneously doing the work of dismantling the pedestal I had placed academic achievement on. Most of my efforts have involved, in one way or another, trying to fight some of the mythology we’re fed around science and scientists -- because the truth is, real researchers run into pitfalls all the time and aren’t lone geniuses who figure everything out on their own. I didn’t realize how much I’d internalized some of that idea until I started looking at why I was so insecure about my own lack of success -- if the myth was true, failing at all made me wildly different from anyone actually Doing Science, but if it wasn’t, it just meant I was one of many people who have run into difficulty pursuing their passions. (Also, I am not sure if you personally lean towards the sciences or not, but this can 100% be extrapolated to your own field of interest because it is true for all of them)

And the thing is, you can fight that idea in silly ways! It doesn’t all have to be deep introspection -- in fact, I think a little irreverence helps, because it’s very thematically consistent with dragging super-prestigious academia off of its pedestal. One thing I did, after recognizing that I’d absorbed some of that idolizing of academic success through “genius” fictional characters, was to create a D&D character of my own who's a big nerd that likes learning a lot but who flunked out of wizard school in his backstory. And funny as it sounds, it’s helped, especially since it’s made me realize that I do still think of that character as a smart person, even with his academic failures -- which has forced me to confront some of my hypocrisy in how I think about myself. Because while it’s true that learning to value things other than your smarts is important for overcoming these insecurities, it’s also worth remembering that there are so many different ways to be “smart,” many of which don’t involve school at all. We’ve just been taught by society that it has to be part of the process.

If you can work to try to separate your idea of a smart person from an academic, it also gets easier to find ways to engage with topics you love with less insecurity. I know I used to be unable to read articles featuring research from a couple of the schools I was rejected from (or in one case, had to drop out of), but I’ve definitely gotten better at that as time has gone on. It also makes it easier for me to talk with all my cool friends about their degrees and research and interests in a way that ends up making me feel more included and excited than insecure. Nowadays I sort of try frame them all as a “network” of sorts that I get to learn from -- we may not technically be “colleagues” but it is pretty cool to get to say “Oh, I know someone who...” and be able to talk intelligently about my friends’ fields to others. I may feel jealous of some of their achievements and opportunities sometimes, but in the grand scheme of things, I guess I’m starting to frame myself less as someone who is Good At School and more as someone who Knows And Teaches Others About Things -- which means I kind of love that I have “insider knowledge” and can share cool facts I learned from my friend who works with the Curiosity rover, or quote Scribe’s rant about the horrible archival quality of sheepskin parchment (which is a topic I wouldn’t have known anything about even if I did have my degree by now!)

I can’t tell you exactly how to manage your insecurity, but I can tell you that it’s lying to you about how you stack up against other people. Honestly, if your friends are anything like mine, I bet they’d love to hear you infodump about your own interests, and maybe even have some cool insights to share with you from the perspective of their own fields. I know there are a lot of people in my life who love to hear me talk about science without caring at all that I don’t have a science degree (including, I imagine, you, since you mention thinking I seem cool and academic even without being a professional). And even if you don’t have many people like that in your life right now, that doesn’t mean your own desire to learn is worth any less. The world needs more people who want to educate themselves and others, even -- and in some cases, especially -- if they aren’t academics.

Obviously, I hope you can ultimately come to a place of feeling like you have inherent worth that counteracts these feelings. But I also hope you can remember that my and your desire for knowledge isn’t worth any less outside the university system than it would be within it -- it’s something we can grow and nurture and wield regardless. And that’s pretty cool.

#Anonymous

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holdmyhopeinyourhands · 4 years

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I agree with anon and your answet a lot as new fan of Ney! He seems like just a party animal and bad person when you just look at the news about him but when I learnt about his family, his friendships I started to admire him. Ngl, the relationship with his child and the mother of his child made me really surprised in a good way. He is an example of "do not judge with the package" people :)

I've been thinking about how to actually answer this for a really long time because the way you talk about him is so refreshing and makes me stupidly emotional, because you pointed out all the little things about Ney that people rarely notice, but are the reason why I love him.

Honestly I guess I never had the news issues when it came to Ney because I was a fan of him before social media really took off so the little things I knew and admired about him came from my own research. It made me love him not just for his football but for who he was too. Like I don't care if he rolls around six way to Sunday if that stops him from getting another season ending injury you know. That was never such a big deal to me.

Literally everything, everyone hates him for (and by everyone I mean the randos who don't know him unlike his teammates, family and friends) don't bother me one bit.

If he drops and rolls as if putting out flames, I'll just go "Fair enough. If the refs ain't gonna protect you from your next big injury. Fuck it. Swim baby, swim! Give those Olympic divers run for their money!!"

I genuinely laugh when people come on my blog to "politely" inform me they dislike Neymar for this reason and I should do it too like lmao. As if I don't know these things already as if I care. 🤷‍♀️🤷‍♀️

So anyways, all the bad news about Ney and frankly insane lies and rumours kinda caught me off guard when I really became part of online football fandom. Like the whole "neymar bullies mbappe" or "neymar is jealous of mbappe" craze tripped me up for example.

The insanity of it and how everyone lapped it up like it was real told me everything I needed to know. People hate on Neymar because it's cool. It has nothing to do with his "antics" it's just pure hate. I mean, Suarez bit three people, drops like fly too and he never ever gets even the tiniest bit of hate that Neymar does. So at this point I just don't care. The hypocrisy is just astonishing and downright amusing.

Like Neymar wanted to leave psg last year and everyone started to hate him. The wholeass psg fandom included. As of the guy hadn't suffered two long term injuries here as if he wasn't tired and as if refs weren't refusing to protect him. They just wanted to hate on him, so they did. Like he owed us anything.

And then Edinson (bless his heart. I love that man) bails on us in the middle of the champions league and what? Not a peep from anyone. Like I adore Edi and would have probably thrown down with anyone who so much as looked at him wrong but again, the hypocrisy was astonishing.

The whole cl thing of "Neymar fake cries" also grinds on my nerves (at this point this is becoming a call out post rather than an appreciation post and I'm so sorry about that anon dear). Like people have seriously convinced themselves that he suddenly started crying only when he came to psg because he wants sympathy points or something. Fucking hell people, y'all really think you're that important to him? You really think he cares about your opinions that much? Last time I checked he was the player the whole psg crowd were booing during a home match and he still scored that bicycle kick at the last minute and won us the game. Last time I checked, he did another such last minute goal again, winning us the game again, aaaand walking away again because he was only there for his team. Last time I checked, Ney not being injured for once last season was what brought us to the final for the very first time in our history. So you know what? Pretty sure Neymar doesn't give a flying fuck about you people and your disgusting hatred.

So no, he didn't suddenly start crying for sympathy points. He's always been emotional. Literally unless you started watching football yesterday, you blind fools would know he cried his eyes out when Barca lost against Juventus (a game where he was the only one trying may I add) and he's done that over and over again throughout his career. Win or lose. Neymar has always been emotional. But hey, make fun of that. You all are pretty good at denouncing toxic masculinity only when it suits you, after all.

And the whole Neymar being jealous of Kylian thing that went on for a while. Like..... fucking hell. After we beat Lyon 5-0 with a Kylian hattrick (one of our greatest matches that season. We actually played well) this was posted by fucking ESPN:

Like..... wtf. And people ate it up. As if Neymar hadn't been the best player on the pitch that day. As of Kylian and him hadn't been absolutely magical together. As if Neymar hadn't been the one creating all those chances (and frankly scolding Kylian for missing so many. Like our Kylian should have had 10 goals ok!) And the fact that idiots who never even watched our game, fucking dared to post this shit and then idiots who just love to hate, jumped on it without hesitation..... Basically, sigh.

Because, this happened the same day:

This was Kylian and Neymar celebrating their victory together.

This was them literally being glued to each other's side because they were so freaking giddy and happy and proud and so high with adrenaline

Kylian taking a picture with Ney's son because the kid looked up to him and Kylian wanted to make his day

As if Kylian didn't give that same ball that you all thought their friendship could be reduced down to, to Davi (Neymar's son) because the kid looked up to him and Kylian is the sweetest guy. Because Neymar and him are amazing friends and have always looked out for each other, but hey..... from that stupid picture above, you can't quite tell that, can you?

In the end, I guess I'm just tired of trying to mediate. Trying to see things from both sides. Like it's ok to dislike Neymar. I don't fault anyone for that. But the bizarre level of toxicity, the way actual news paper go out of their way to spread misinformation and hatred. It's exhausting and I'm not willing to deal with that anymore.

Aaaaaaaand, let's get back on track shall we😅😅😅😅

I guess I just went a little bit crazy there, sorry.

*cough cough* Anywaaaaays. You're right that his friendships and family life tell a much better and clearer image about who he is then the media portrays. Like it's probably something not many people know, but news guys! Neymar was actually a teen dad (at 19 I think) and him and the mother of his son aren't together (weren't really together together ever) but he took responsibility as a 19? year old when she found the courage to tell him, and they've been like the most amazing co-parents since. Like we all see this immature side of Neymar a lot, so it's hard to believe that not only did he step up as a dad when he was barely an adult but he also managed to create (along with carol) a healthy family dynamic for his son to grow up in. Davi loves him, Carol adores him and she brings Davi over whenever she can. Even though they live in Brazil and neymar in France.

They have managed to become such an adorable and sweet family that it kinda makes my heart soft

Both Carol and Ney love Davi so much and it so evident by how much both of them try to give him all those important moments and share it together. Like Carol bringing Davi over during the CL final and Neymar being able to see his son. But more than their healthy family dynamic. I love Neymar and vini's relationship even more (Vini being Carol's significant other).

Like there is no resentment or annoyance or distance between them. They are practically best friends and hang out all the time. It's honestly cute as hell. Especially during this moment where Vini brought his own son with Carol (Valentin) and Davi to support Neymar and jkugjgkgjg look at them all wearing Neymar's number 10 psg kit!!! If that isn't a loving family I don't know what is.

Here they all are just being a family. And there are so many things you can claim is annoying or dislikable about Neymar but not this. Not this little family that somehow found away to work and love and adore each other. Just look at Neymar holding Valentin! He's not his son. Frankly, they aren't related by blood at all, but he loves that kid because he's Davi'a brother and the son of Carol and Vini. And I just😟😟😟 if that isn't literally the most wholesome thing ever

Neymar with both the kiddos!!! How can you not love that! How can you not respect that! Like loving your family no matter how complicated should be the norm and the expected, but so many people and especially famous people fail at that. So to see Neymar still, even after all these years just embrace his big family and just love every part of it. It's sweet.

I also find it precious that Vini and Neymar always seem to be hanging out. It's just what they do. And if you can't see how utterly sweet that is, I don't know what else to tell you.

I guess that's it for this post. It's practically an essay where I've vented my feelings and ranted and raved like a lunatic so sorry about that. Didn't mean to make your wholesome ask into this anon dear. But it also helped me put things into perspective for myself. I've kinda realized I've always walked on eggshells around all the Neymar hatred and frankly I'm tired of doing it. Despite how much people have right to do it, I have just as much right not to deal with it. And that's a refreshing realization. So thank you for allowing me to figure that out for myself anon dear.

Also, I hope for those who never knew about these things about Ney, that they might give him a chance now.

He isn't the worst person to have graced this earth you know. He isn't perfect of course but Neymar seems to at least be real. Flaws, problems and drama and all. And he tries. He tries so much and I love him for that.

And beneath that immaturity, drama and competitive spirit people hate, there is someone who stepped up when he was told he was going to be a father. There is someone who loves his stepson? (Would Valentin be his stepson? Or the son of his own son's mother and her----) anyways, you get the gist. Neymar is the person that Kylian idolizes, he is the guy Messi misses and the person Tuchel adores. He is the football player Ronaldo Nazario respects and the guy Thiago Silva sees as his little brother. He is the guy every young Brazilian player want to play alongside, he is the footballer that young upcoming players gravity towards in any team he plays in. He is the man who somehow manages to bond with the unlikeliest people. He isn't perfect, but clearly to those who matter, he is.

And to me, that's all that matters.

Mahky out!

#neymar #neymarjr #ask #anon #football ask #psg #paris saint germain fc #brazil nt #kylian mbappe #football fans #ligue 1 #football rant #phew #this was very very long #sorry anon

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merlinmeta · 4 years

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I've just found this blog, so I'm sorry if you've already mentioned this, but I was curious to your thoughts to this thing that's been bothering me since I first watched the show. Why didn't any of the captured sorcerers use magic to break out/escape? Like Thomas Collins in 1×01 or Cerdan, that man Mordred was with in 1×08, or even pre-canon sorcerers. unless Uther was using magical shackles and prisons, I don't see any reason as to why there wouldn't have been more frequent breakouts.

Ah, yes, one of the great mysteries of the series: “How the hell did Uther wipe out magic if he understood so little about it?”

There have been a number of theories, including the one you brought up—that in his hypocrisy, he was willing to use magical items for his own purposes. I wouldn’t be surprised by this, but I don’t think we see much evidence of it happening during the series itself, especially when it comes to the dungeon setup.

The explanation that makes the most sense to me is that your average magic user just…isn’t that strong or knowledgable, especially post-Purge. It’s possible that a lot of the magic users imprisoned simply don’t know the “unlock/explode door spell” that Merlin uses, or enough strong defensive or combat spells to make it past the guards even if they managed to free themselves. Merlin himself not only has access to the “instinctive” magic that Gaius says is so special, but also that massive tome of spells that his mentor gave him and all of Gaius’s other books and research materials—not to mention the man himself, with his decades of pre-Purge experience and study.

If we’re looking for someone to compare Merlin to, most often we see Nimueh, Morgause, and Morgana, who are all extraordinary in their own rights as High Priestesses and Seers and all that. There are a handful of lower-level antagonists, like the characters you mentioned, Thomas’s mother Mary Collins, Gilli (3x11), and Edwin Muirden (1x06). I could probably do some digging for more examples, but these are the first ones that came to mind.

The key difference for these examples, I think, is that we see them rely heavily on magical items. Gilli inherited a ring from his father that boosted his magical ability, and Mary Collins used a necklace to teleport, then a doll/puppet to kill the singer. If they’d gotten captured and had their items confiscated, I think it’s possible that they would no longer have the means (either in terms of spell knowledge or magical strength) to escape, or to make it very far if they did. We never see Thomas or Cerdan in action (I think Cerdan uses telepathy with Mordred, but I don’t think he does much else? I could be wrong about that though), so we don’t know what their abilities might have been.

Edwin seems both stronger and better educated, since he learned magic from his parents before they were executed and later trained as a physician, so he may have found access to more resources and better spells to learn. Maybe he could have escaped if he’d gotten locked up instead of an axe to the face.

I think one of the show’s failings is that even though Merlin is supposed to be The Greatest Sorcerer of All Time, we see so few other magic users that he becomes our baseline for what “normal” magic use looks like. What are the capabilities of the average sorcerer? It’s hard to say. I think it would have done a lot for the show’s worldbuilding if we got to meet more magic users throughout the series who really are just people trying to live their lives, using magic for little things like home remedies and chores, weak charms that have been passed down in their families or were once shared between neighbors like recipes. It would be a lot easier to imagine the terror and helplessness of people like that in the face of Uther’s vast armies and heavily guarded dungeons.

(It could also drive home the idea that the Purge was an obliteration of culture and history that forcefully alienates the survivors from their own heritage, but that’s another discussion.)

Instead we get all these legendary heavy hitters, or antagonists with powerful items that skew our perception of their baseline abilities.

I think that’s the biggest reason we all end up scratching our heads over how Uther could have possibly stood a chance against magic at its prime: all we see in canon are the best of the best.

#anon #anonymous #worldbuilding #magic #replies #breaking news: riss answers an ask in a timely manner!! the fandom is stunned. more at 6

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killbarbie · 2 years

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didn't we always know that red scare was funded by the thiel foundation? most edgy left pods are

yeah u r right, it's been speculated for a whiiiiiiile. a long time. the vanity fair article isn't saying anything knew. i read the whole thing and it's actually saying less than what we actually do know lmao...

basically, if u like give a shit enough to open the can of worms that is the red scare psyop theory....... it appears to be most connected to anna (tho some ppl believe the sailor suit video tht went viral was a plant which isn't the most insane theory when u trace back dasha's uni connections and the very fact that it was from infowars at all). but it rly became noticeable after anna was on eric weinstein's podcast (he's a famous con man u can pretty much write a massive book on this mans antics) bc they had a random boom in their patreon and then all of a sudden, anna's views took a turn. like if u want to know what i mean.... listen to the rittenhouse episodes. not that she's ever had the best views but her hypocrisy became rly blatant with this.

anna met eric through blake masters, who is the pres of the thiel foundation. he also happened to be a HUGE rittenhouse apologist and his takes were barbaric and insane and then anna's comments on the whole thing even shocked dasha on the podcast. and this is unsurprising to anyone who like.... knows what anna is actually like like it's been no secret she leans right and is a chameleon to anyone she spends time with and their views. she is also like.... rly rly rly stupid. like just moronic.

these realities r not new in the world of politics and media online. however legitimately disgusting, the rich are the enemy. like its so easy to call urself a leftist its so easy to wear that brand its so so so easy. but at the end of the day its the rich vs everyone else and they have their stinky little paws into everything. this isn't unique. marxists, communists, socialists, "read ur theory" social media influencers r so often blatant frauds.

angela nagle is on thiel's payroll, anita sarkeesian is, freddie deboer, katie herzog, michael tracey, etc....

fuckin bret easton ellis too for god's sake

like idk how to explain any better than the left media most americans consume is just right-libertarian garbage. the internet is literally in the chokehold of thiel and his squad of billionaires, especially the podcast and twitter market.

all of this said tho that vanity fair article is rly rly bad like i felt physical pain reading it. listen to and read things online with a grain of salt and i mean everything even the shit that mybib suggests is credible or whatever.

also, don't listen to or parrot other people's opinions. do ur own research while also trusting literally nothing..... like i kno we're heading into "fake news fake news!" territory but like...... almost anything with a good amount of traction with cultural or political influence is very likely psyop at this point.... like guilty until proven otherwise for me pls

#answered

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itshigh-boop · 6 years

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Oooh, story idea (one I've been considering, but don't have time for since I'm working on my own book): Sombra being captured by McCree back in the Blackwatch days. While he's waiting for Reyes to come back and pick her up for questioning, Sombra talks to him. She tells him how much she knows about him (little or a lot), how she let him capture her... Maybe she tries to tempt him to Talon, or ask to be her friend, or about the eye (illuminati)... I just need them to have net in the past...

This sounds like it’d be a good story, not necessarily romantic in nature, but definitely one that I would read if only for the interaction between a young McCree and Sombra!Seeing as how McCree was 29 during the events of Retribution, maybe this story could take place between a 24 year old Blackwatch agent McCree and still fairly new to Talon agent Sombra. I like to imagine she joined even before she was an adult because her skills were that impressive to Talon, somewhere around 16-17 years. She’s kinda cocky at first and just gloats to herself about how she’s using Talon to pursue her own goals.Of course, she’s not so cocky when she gets knocked out on a mission and wakes up tied to a chair in a musty, dark room. Immediately, she knows who the man in the room with her is - Jesse McCree: Amercian Blackwatch agent and former member of the Deadlock Gang based in the US. Talon made it a point for her to know each member of Overwatch (and its “secret” sect). While there isn’t anything truly remarkable about him, the note of him being an orphan and being a gangmember does resonate with her.Even so, seeing as how he states he’s waiting for his commander to arrive so they can bring her in for interrogation, Sombra’s not keen on being taken anywhere. She’s already escaped ‘The Eye’ for now and there’s no way that the tools from Overwatch will stop her from finding out the truth. She tries to goad him with the information she does know about him. His eyes narrow but doesn’t seem to question her knowledge, only commenting on how young she is and that it’s despicable that Talon would recruit kids, shortly before she retorts with the hypocrisy of his situation. “Funny. Isn’t that what Reyes did to you?”His stoic look falters and he mumbles under his breath and she smirks, knowing she might have a way out of this mess. He asks her what she was doing in the area and she shrugs, not bothering to answer. Truth is, she was on a mission for Talon, but she was taking advantage of her first solo mission to research more on Talon’s member base, as even as a skilled, desired agent, Sombra does not hold clearance for more sensitive information. When he asks her again what her motives are, she responds “It’s a shame that at some point, people stop learning…isn’t it?” She relishes in the look of irritation that spreads across his face but needs to leave.It’s her turn to be startled when he grabs the back of her chair, leaning down to stare at her straight in the eye. He warns her about messing with the wrong kinds of people and that she’ll ruin her life before it’s even begun. She wonders if he’s practiced that line for just such an occasion he’d met someone who mirrored him. “Then isn’t this the part where you let me go so I can start over?”He steps away, silent for a long time before he mumbles and walks around to untie her. He keeps her weapon for safety, noting that she probably doesn’t even know how to use it. She does but even then, Sombra doesn’t like the mess afterward. She questions him, wondering if all it takes for a Blackwatch agent to let a prisoner go is to make promises of improved character. She’s given a warning to watch her mouth - if she’s not doing anything and is just some new agent, then she’s worth practically nothing to him as long as neither of them say anything, given she already seems to have info on Overwatch and its members. “I like you, vaquero,” Sombra says once he orders her to get out of his sight. “So I’ll leave you with this…don’t trust people so easily. You never know what people actually want.”“Get out of here,” he repeats. “And if something happens and I see your face again, I will shoot you.”“Fair enough,” she replies. “I’ll be the friend you won’t ever see.” Her cloak activates and she runs away. She won’t see McCree again for almost fifteen years but in that time, she’s effectively managed to manipulate missions and ambushes that would have surely led the cowboy to his demise. After all, it’s nice to have a friend who owes you a few dozen favors…

#ask #Headcanon #not really mcsombra #but still really interesting to think about

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kamalkizehr · 8 years

Conversation

Thoughts i wanted to unload xp

I understand the view points of many of those in america at the moment republicans and liberal alike but how is having trump any way helpful and is an actual ban on people from different countries or a wall between one neighbour actually that helpful i mean illegal immigrants arent good but a fucking ban a wall loud public statements That are controversial questionable can be taken offensively (dude come on if shoe was on the other foot a lot of republicans would have been offended and go on a gaint Facebook comment section war

Again )

But another question why has the rise of triggerers risen like

There are more republicans who would post or say something offensive just to plain see people react and act like a troll rather than defend their stance on the politcal matters

Which in my opinion the clashes wouldn't have happened if more people (democrats ) went forward with ideas and stances after making sure everyone was on the same page though because frankly if they did i think not everyone would be having so many disagreements

Sure its not offensive, illegal or bad for a guy to wear make up many men have been employed in cosmetics for years eventually they we're gonna wanna show off the skills on themselves for once instead of models or maybe a lot of people are coming out have every right to and but why not try and keep it pg or at least understand not every parent wants their children exposed to something thats hard to explain for a certain amount of time and later when the child is mature or adult enough to understand the topic give more info and allow that freedom so he or she can decide for them selves but at the appropriate age because frankly does anyone else not find 12 year old bisexuals weird

Dude come on this stuff needs a limit everything needs a limit and more education thats key but get on the same page and teach kids math and let them graduate at least before he or she decides to become a weed addicted demi sexual pan romantic traveling artist in Nebraska i mean like

YOU DONT NEED THAT SHIT TO BE SPECIAL

NOR TO BE AN ARTIST

OR ANOTHER SEXUALITY

AND IT DOENST MAKE YOU SUPERIOR OVER ANYONE NOR DOES TRYING TO BECOME A MINORITY

THE MINORITIES WILL ALWAYS NEED TO BE IMPORTANT SO THAT THINGS REMAIN FAIR

BUT MENTAL, PHYSICAL DEASES NEW SEXUALITIES AND GENDER IDENTITIES GIANT ARGUMENTS OVER WHOS WORSE WHOS BETTER AND WHY PEOPLE OF A RELIGION OR A RACE OR CAST SHOULD OR SHOULD NOT BE ALLOWED IN A COUNTRY

for one sorry i was shouting but like

I am gonna bring up the stupid over used facts all Americans are immigrants and that not all of them had great lives back in europe which is why they moved isn't there hypocrisy in saying middle eastern people don't get to do that

But again some should stay but why not give elderly, parents and children a pass sure europe has many other options aswell but is it so awful some people choose America fine if its a ban And no dont we dont want more immigrants

Fine just be nice to the ones you have than frankly is that so hard

And dont start Ohhh but feminism is just bitchs wanting to be better

It isnt like that man i mean like moms should get maternal leave

And dads should have time off too to help out

If a woman hits a man or falsely accuses him of abuse or rape should get punished obviously but for God's sake if there weren't so many perverted idiots and guys who think its ok to just go invading a woman's personal space isn't cool and the fear of it is something that is a main reason that's basically help create the giant following

Is it unfair and used extremistly at times ofcourse everything and anything will be misused this is humanity we're talking about not saints or prophets those A**holes left a while ago

(Getting to religion)

But is it so bad to be a feminist really man

Come on for gods sake it isnt its just wrong when it turns biased and in the favour of the other gender which is basically just sexism not feminism

(Can we please agree on the fact there might be a fucking difference!)

And true western countries dont need it as much as middle eastern or south Asian African or south American even might need it but feminism isnt a bad thing (PLEASEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE IT NEVER STARTED AS A BAD THING IT WAS FAIR THEN AND THOSE WOMEN STARTED IT OUT OF JUSTIFIED REASONS AND IT DID BENEFIT BOTH GENDERS LOOK IT UP DO SOME RESEARCH MALE RAPE CASES WERE FINALLY OPEN BY THE FBI THANKS TO THE MOVEMENT IN THE 60'S ITS A THING THAT CAN BE BOTH GOOD AND BAD JUST LIKE REPUBLICAN IDEALS OR LIBERAL AND NEITHER STARTED AS BAD THINGS! )

As well for religion why must everyone use the term not all Muslims are terrorist but all terrorists are Muslims like the liberals have points for that thatsoffensive man seriously AND THAT IS SO NOT HELPFUL AT ALL MAN LIKE

I swear the amount of adults ive seen and met who think their religion is being destroyed and their customs as well because their children have become internet addicted assholes (like myself inculded ) who want to disrespect them their Morals and values and become foreigners and American ofcourse because theyre so cool blah blah blah

(Personally fuck it i kinda like being Pakistani but i do enjoy the internet ) which for some reason has become a the main reason why I get lectured more than i think i really need man i mean my language can turn vulgar and i can be socially a little awkward if uncomfortable but like why is me liking rock music and youtube and having a accent a reason to assume i would rather be American i do love my home and where i am from i am proud of my family and where we come from but why enjoy every thing else in the world aswell and not be considered a traitor or something

(Ok too personal )

Alright maybe what i am trying to get is how come no one can just elect a decent a leader or agree to disagree about things but still respect each other stay open minded but have your morals close by and principles uncompromised biasness is human but why no agree to disagree and leave it at that

The insecurity increasing and old facade of wanting to be rich and famous and not work for it has come back

Help me on patrion, like my video post photo blah blah blah dude just get a job why is it so necessary to work in entertainment for hells sake

I mean its valid you wanna sure go ahead maybe you are worthy but like stolen content and fake stories and new sexualities for gods sake please

(No longer about politics i suppose )

Here's my mind on it i guess

LGBTQA community has every right a straight white male or female would have no more no less but gender and sexuality identification maybe kept a simple (memorable and easier to define on fine paper and print during adoptions divorce marriage leavint the country or not etc ) and that being hetreo, homo, bi, A and pan because that makes sense

Its simple

And works

And as well for gender identification

On fine paper

if you are Male to female m to f

Female to male f to m

Something less explainable just keep it trans

Because frankly leave it at that why not just like why not?

Its simple makes sense justified fair and but isnt over done for some petty individuals looking for attention to take advantage of (ofcourse no guarantees but why not just keep some faith ? )

And no one gets to chose all on paper until after 18 because thats fucking fair

(Come on its not like its illegal to come out say it in public )

And yes none of that would be applied in most countries especially not mine but it would be a good start in my opinion

Any way i think i am done venting my thoughts anyone who is annoyed can ignore (why did you read this much of it and not justgo three lines and decide nah boring lets bail )

Anyone who has an opinion or would just like to talk is welcomed BUT CAN WE PLEASE KEEP THIS CIVIL I MEAN NO DISRESPECT TO ANYONE OR ANYTHING BY THESE STATEMENTS

i was just venting some thoughts

And not trying to force them on anyone or anything but i just wanted this out of my head and see if others agree or not (no not for the purpose to be right or wrong ) but because i can't be the only one who thinks all the political maddness right now was all avoidable and that people are becoming

Weirder

Not in a good sense

Not because of religion race or anything like that just like

Mind sets

I feel like its like the key to harmony and at least balance or peace is right there no one wants to take it

I am probably going to regret posting this but i am gonna anyway not like people actual read my blog or anything

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