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arcticdementor · 3 years

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I have a certain fondness for cyclical history, or at least the notion that there are some structural patterns that seem to recur in predictable waves throughout history – including ones that could explain our current period of upheaval.

Several observers of history have theorized broad 60-100 year secular “cycles” of historical disorder and reorder, such as William Strauss and Neil Howe’s generational theory and Peter Turchin’s “cliodynamic” forecast of an “age of discord” – both of which predicted a period of extended crisis around 2020 and now seem to pretty much be playing out exactly as prophesized.

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This stuff is worth exploring more, and I aim to do so in the future. But first, I think it might be worth it for us to start by actually thinking bigger – much bigger. As in: what if we aren’t witnessing a period of change “unseen in a century,” but unseen in five centuries? And, what if we are engulfed not in a secular cycle, but in one more fundamentally religious in nature? That’s an important question to analyze, even if you aren’t religious.

In the last decade we’ve seen the emergence in the West of a strident new ideology of “Social Justice” which, despite its self-conceived secularism, many observers have now convincingly argued bears all the hallmarks of a new religious cult, complete with a new metaphysics of truth and reality, a concept of original sin, a new hierarchy of moral virtues, a self-constructed canonical liturgy and a strict orthodoxy, a de-facto priesthood, sacred spaces, self-abasing rituals, a community of believers, linguistic shibboleths, blasphemy laws, and excommunication – among other giveaways.

But, quite notably, this “New Faith” seems to have, consciously or unconsciously, modeled most of its belief system and ritual practices straight out of the Christian tradition, from an overarching preoccupation with the weak and the victimized, along with an emphasis on atonement (though any conception of grace, forgiveness, or redemption is notably absent), right down to specific forms of ritual, like the washing of feet or the symbolic reenactment of martyrdom.

This raises an interesting question: is what we are witnessing now less an entirely new faith than what in the past would have instead been immediately recognized and categorized as part of the long list of Christian heresies, large and small, which challenged the established church throughout history? Could we be living through, as I posited briefly in my introductory essay to The Upheaval, a religious revolution similar to the Reformation that wracked Europe beginning around 500 years ago?

A 500 Year Cycle

Enter the late Phyllis Tickle, an American academic and journalist following religious trends, and her 2008 book The Great Emergence, which essentially argued precisely that. Tickle’s book is frankly what I would have described as a work of pure kookery as recently as five years ago, but, well, times have changed.

The Great Emergence posits that Christianity has throughout its history been shaped by a recurring 500 year-long cycle of structural and spiritual dissolution, turmoil, and re-formation. Each time, the Church has seemingly been seized by a collective desire to cast off established institutional structures and beliefs. She identifies four past rotations of this cycle, coincidentally describing a “mighty upheaval” that has inevitably consumed the Christian world at every climax of this cycle before order was eventually restored.

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Tickle describes an established religion as a sort of cable – not just a metaphorical “cable of meaning that keeps the human social unit connected to some purpose and/or power greater than itself,” but with the analogy of an actual cable.

Inside a steel cable are three interwoven strands, in this case representing spirituality (interior religious experience and belief), corporeality (the physical embodiment/evidence of a religious practice’s existence and practice, such as books, liturgy, or a priest’s robes), and morality (essentially applied spirituality, filtered through corporeality). On the outside of the cable is a waterproof casing that protects the interior. In our analogy, this is the religion’s story (the mythic and actual shared history that unites members). Finally, in between the casing and the strands is a pliable mesh sleeve that makes the cable more flexible and less brittle, and helps to absorb shocks. This is the common imagination or illusion of the religion’s believers about “how the world works” and is “to be imaged and thereby understood.” It serves as a general operating system for the group.

So constructed, said religious cable can rest underwater on the seabed of history for quite a long time unperturbed in its function. However, eventually the outer casing (the story) will become corroded, and the interior mesh (collective imagination) disrupted by events. At first this is fine, and the cable continues to hold, or is even repaired. That is until “that fateful time, about once every five hundred years, when the outer casing of the story and inner sleeve of the shared illusion take a blow simultaneously. When that happens, a hole is opened straight through to the braid. The water rushes in; and human nature being what human nature is, we reach our collective hand in through the hole and pull out the three strands one at a time. Spirituality first, corporeality second, and morality last. We pull each up, consider it from every possible angle, and at times finger it beyond all imagining.” (If you’re now thinking of the rapid growth of people in the 21st century that began claiming they’re “spiritual but not religious,” you are connecting the dots here).

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Which brings us to a final interesting pattern that Tickle identifies in every cycle: the emergence of at least one “new form” of Christianity, but also simultaneously a process of “re-traditioning” by the original faith that has “occurred with each turn of the eras and is a substantial dynamic in the progression from upheaval to renewed stability.” In the case of the Reformation, the Church was “freed” to tackle errors and corruptions, and to make significant institutional reforms (in the Fifth Lateran Council, the Councils of Trent, etc.) during a period of counter-reformation that would eventually produce a less decadent and more unified, clarified, and vibrant Catholic Church.

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What happened in sum, in Tickle’s telling, is that “sola scriptura, scriptura sola,” which “had answered the authority question in the sixteenth century and, more or less, had sustained the centuries between the Great Reformation” and the modern day, was mortally wounded. In largely Protestant America, this had big consequences (and meanwhile the Catholic Church was facing similar pressures). Any agreement on the three strands of the cable – what it means to be “spiritual”; what the corporeality of the church should looks like, or if it should even exist; and eventually what it means to be a moral person – was now gone.

The result, she says, has been the emergence of a new faith structure.

The very first manifestation of this, Tickle argues, dates back to the birth and explosive growth in America of Pentecostalism, a form of “charismatic” Protestantism that emphasizes a radically egalitarian, direct and personal relationship with God sufficient to produce the famed “speaking in tongues” common in Pentecostal worship. Pentecostalism “by definition assumes direct contact of the believer with God and, by extension, the direct agency of the Holy Spirit as instructor and counselor and commander as well as comforter.” As such, “Pentecostalism assumes that ultimate authority is experiential rather than canonical… Pentecostalism, in other words offered the Great Emergence its first, solid, applied answer to the question of where now is our authority.”

Today, however, even Pentecostalism is beginning to break down – along with evangelicalism and pretty much every other denomination – and see its followers assimilated into something new: the “Emergent Church.” But what exactly is that?

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And the “Emergents,” it turns out, “are postmodern.” Despite all that rationalist science from earlier, the takeaway from the collapse of authority has been “that logic is not worth nearly so much as the last five hundred years would have had us believe. It is, therefore, not to be trusted as an absolute, nor are its conclusions to be taken as truth just because they depend from logical thinking.”

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But who ultimately determines the narrative in this ultra-democratic faith? Tickle taps into network theory to answer: crowd sourcing. The group will manifest its own values and own authority. This “differs [from the past] in that it employs total egalitarianism, a respect for worth of the hoi polloi that even pure democracy never had, and a complete indifference to capitalism as a virtue or to individualism as a godly circumstance.”

Is any of this beginning to sound somewhat worrying to you? Well don’t worry, says Tickle – and it is worth pausing here to note that Tickle is an enthusiastic self-described Emergent who thinks this is all great news – the coalescing Emergent Church will settle on new answers to authority, spirituality, morality, and practice, and find its footing as the new dominant Christianity. Meanwhile the reactionaries left in the corners will undergo a process of re-traditioning and come out the better for it in the end. And they can take heart that “every time the incrustations of an overly established Christianity have been broken open, the faith has spread – and been spread – dramatically into new geographic and demographic areas, thereby increasing exponentially the range and depth of Christianity’s reach as a result of its time of unease and distress.”

And with the new egalitarian faith tradition so deeply in touch with our common humanity, all the bloodshed and general unpleasantness experienced during every past historical case of “emergence” will presumably be avoided (Tickle seems to forget about that part in her excitement). Then everyone will live happily ever after – or at least for another 500 years.

That was Tickle’s conclusion anyway. But she published The Great Emergence in 2008 and died in 2015, so she didn’t live to see what’s actually happened.

The Actual Great Emergence

Tickle wrote her book too soon. Liberal, vibrating, Eastern-inspired hippies no longer, her “Emergent Church” seems to have taken a turn in the last decade that she didn’t see coming, transforming into a rather different beast.

Here’s what I think may have happened. Tickle got a lot of things very right: the cable of institutional Christianity was corroded by science and cultural entropy; sola scriptura, scriptura sola did break down, and the faith did enter a crisis centered on the question “where now is authority?” A new Christianity did began to emerge, just as she described.

In fact the trends toward the collapse of establishment Christianity were perhaps even more powerful than she may have predicted. A recent Gallup poll found that less than 50% of American’s are now official members of a church or other religious organization, down from over 60% in 2008.

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But – and this is my theory – in the end Tickle’s version of Emergent Christianity proved a weak social construct. It existed to gratify its adherents with the belief that they were still morally good members of a religious tradition, whose primary goal was to provide for their happiness, while liberating them from any higher authority beyond themselves and freeing them from any of the responsibilities or strictures that had once characterized that religion.

In other words, Emergent Christianity was mostly Moralistic Therapeutic Deism all along.

Ultimately, this fragile early-stage Emergent Church didn’t resolve the crisis because it didn’t have any real authority, meaningful substance, or unifying purpose.

Meanwhile, many of the seeds planted within Emergent Christianity that Tickle mentioned were still finishing germinating, namely: post-modernism, narrative-driven reality, direct personal relationship with and self-interpretation of divinity, opposition to hierarchy, and crowd-sourced authority.

But, most important of all was I think something Tickle doesn’t really touch on too much: the modernity-driven suspicion, deep within the hearts even of many Christians, that in fact, as Nietzsche infamously put it, “God is dead.” Increasingly skeptical about the existence of any kingdom of God in heaven, they were primed for a logical alternative: building the kingdom of heaven on earth instead.

The stage was thus set for The Great Merger.

At some point the Emergent Church came face-to-face with secular, identity-based “Social Justice” activism – likely in the 2010s, when core theoretical ideas behind that movement, based on post-modern Critical Theory and neo-Marxist frameworks of identitarian struggle, first really began to seep out of the academy and crystalize into effective activist movements, such as Black Lives Matter or the trans rights movement, in a big way.

Both sides liked what they saw, but for the Emergent Church in particular this was a match made in narrative heaven. Secular Social Justice activism dovetailed perfectly with both the strong historical emphasis on social justice work within many Christian denominations (including the Social Gospel movement) and the post-modern seeds already present in Emergent Christianity (such as the primacy of self-interpreted identity). But more importantly it offered Emergents nearly everything they had been missing and longing for. Suddenly they had a new source of authority (the doctrines of Critical Theory and the hierarchy of intersectional identity), a clear metaphysics of good and evil (the oppressed and their oppressors), an ultimate objective (to perfect the world by the elimination of evil), and a grand narrative of how to live in the world.

George Orwell famously wrote in his 1940 review of Mein Kampf that: “Whereas Socialism, and even capitalism in a more grudging way, have said to people ‘I offer you a good time,’ Hitler has said to them ‘I offer you struggle, danger and death,’ and as a result a whole nation flings itself at his feet.” Well, the Emergent Church offered its restless followers comfort and a good time on earth; neo-Marxist Social Justice offered them revolutionary struggle, and so they prostrated themselves immediately.

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That’s not the end of the story though, as I think Emergent Christianity may have had more influence on the secular activist movement than the latter tends to consider. In fact I think it might have been quite important to the rapid emergence and spread of the New Faith.

To start with, it provided the concept of sin. This helped grow and empower the activist movement tremendously. Why? One might not think of free-wheeling secular culture embracing the idea of sin so easily, even joyfully, but it was a simple matter. As an example, picture a hypothetical middle-class suburban white lady, enjoying a relatively comfortable material life but wracked by a vague but unshakable sense of guilt about her existence – for being white in a country with a history often unkind to non-whites; for her consumption habits contributing to environmental pollution and climate change; for being the citizen of a rich country while elsewhere in the world children starve, and so on. Liberalism has never addressed this feeling in a satisfactory way. Suddenly, along comes the New Faith, and tells her that it’s all true: she is indeed a sinner, and she’s not alone! In fact the whole country and her whole race is corrupted by the original sins of colonialism, slavery, and genocide. What a relief! Even better, it has a comprehensive plan of action for how to address this sin.

This helped reorient Social Justice from the purely systemic to the personal. Neo-Marxist roots mean that the modern Social Justice movement tends to think primarily in terms of systems, and aims to drive systemic change to address systemic problems, like “systemic racism.” Broadly speaking, this is still the case, but the problem is that this is both a hard goal and a cold, impersonal one. It’s not very inspiring to tell people their individual agency is of little import to the machine and that the only way to affect progress is to change the whole machine. Activism seems like pretty desperate business in that case. The concept of sin, however, provides a short circuit to this problem: it implies that progress can be made through a sort of personal moral transformation (say by acknowledging one’s privilege and “unconscious bias” and moving from “racist” to “anti-racist”) which anyone can achieve if they “educate” themselves and “do the work.” Liberalism has studiously avoided telling our secular white lady how she should live in the world, so this kind of moral direction provides the relief of having a distinct path. Moreover, if everyone was to accept this path all the problems of the world would be immediately be solved, so convincing (or forcing) more people to accept the Good News and begin their personal transformation becomes an imperative mission.

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Finally, it provides an even greater sense of community to the faithful, helping to overcome the atomizing isolation and loneliness of liquid modernity. This is a somewhat odd community though. Just as Tickle predicted, communications technology has made it simultaneously vast and hyper-democratic. You might question whether the strict orthodoxy and blasphemy codes of the New Faith, to which one must submit or be canceled, are democratic, but that is only because you have forgotten your Plato and Aristotle, either of whom could have warned you what tends to happen to pure democracies. As Aristotle put it in his Politics:

[T]here demagogues spring up. For the people becomes a monarch, and is many in one; and there many have the power in their hand, not as individuals, but collectively… At all events this sort of democracy, which is now a monarchy, and no longer under the control of law, seeks to exercise monarchical sway, and grows into a despot.

If you ever wonder why something you said that was fine 72 hours ago is now an unredeemably racist, sexist, excommunicable offense, it’s because the disembodied Swarm Pope, who leads the People’s Democratic Priesthood of All Believers, crowd-sourced it from the swirling Id of the mob on Twitter while you weren’t looking.

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The problem is that, even if the 500 year cycle that Tickle describes is genuine, it isn’t clear in each case what is cause and what is effect. As Tickle acknowledges at one point in her book, “over and over again,” the “religious enthusiasms” of each period of cyclical emergence “are unfailingly symptomatic or expressive of concomitant political, economic, and social upheavals.” So was the Reformation the cause of Europe’s 16th century turmoil, or just one important manifestation of a broader secular dynamic driving general upheaval? If the “great emergence” was not the cause, then what was? Tickle doesn’t attempt an answer to that, so our inquiry is back near square one.

However, I do have a suspicion that the question Tickle identifies as at the core of recurring crises in established Christianity – “where now is authority?” – is key. It may be that the seeming collapse of any firm locus of authority in almost every aspect of life today – politics, geopolitics, elites in general, religion, morality in general, asset pricing, economics in general, media, information in general, etc. – is central to our whole broader upheaval in the world today.

#n. s. lyons #substack #religion #long #read the whole thing #phyllis tickle #christianity

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astrology-india · 4 years

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Leo Compatibility - The Best and Worst Match

New Post has been published on https://www.astrology-india.com/leo-compatibility/

Leo Compatibility - The Best and Worst Match

A birthday solidly in Leo’s late July to mid-August range generally brings a fun, boisterous personality.

Leos might be too loud for some people, but those up for the challenge will be rewarded with Leo’s generosity and loyalty.

In the Northern Hemisphere, the Sun is in Leo in the hottest part of the summer.

It’s also the part of the summer when gardens and fruit trees are heavy with produce, and people are desperate to hand off excess vegetables and fruits to neighbors they hardly know.

Those born under Leo tend to have this sense of abundance in their background, though they may not be able to articulate it out loud.

They tend to be therefore generous, feeling that there is enough to share.

Even when fully grown, Leos retain a childlike sense of fun. Like kids, they can also at times be self-absorbed and immature.

Leo compatibility with more grounded and serious types can therefore be difficult. Some Sun signs, however, blend well with Leo’s unique combination of strengths and weaknesses.

Leo Compatibility – The Best and Worst Matches

In looking at Leo compatibility with potential partners, it is important to remember that the Sun sign speaks to a person’s basic life purpose.

The Sun sign is not the only thing that matters in astrology.

The full astrological chart plots the position of all celestial bodies, in relation to the earth, at the time of a person’s birth.

Many situations can be clarified including those close to the boundary between one sign and another, but a sun sign reading will give the basics.

The Best Matches For Leo Compatibility

Leo compatibility is greatest with air signs like Gemini and Libra, as well as fellow fire signs Aries and Sagittarius.

Leo and Gemini

Leo is capable of hogging conversation time, but Leo is actually a better listener than people might think when Gemini gets to talking.

Gemini tends to have loads of ideas but not the stamina to get any of them done. Leo has the opposite problem: a tendency to put all their eggs in one basket.

Leo can therefore sift through Gemini’s firehose of thoughts and find those that are capable of amounting to something.

If Leo, an action-oriented fire sign, is sold on an idea, Leo will actually try to make it happen.

Meanwhile, Gemini’s eggs in one basket tendency can get Leo stuck in a rut if something goes wrong with that one basket.

Typically it only takes one Gemini of any cultural heritage to top the old saying of “Two Leo’s, three opinions,”.

Gemini can then help Leo find a fresh perspective on whatever Leo has become intractably frustrated with.

Leo and Libra

Leo and Libra are both idealists who dream of a better world.

Libra, less innocent than Leo, sometimes gets depressed seeing how far the reality of the world is from their ideals of how the world should be.

Leo is more optimistic and tends to see a lot of good in the world, so Leo can help Libra be more optimistic about the future.

The hardest part of Leo and Libra compatibility might be having to decorate a home if they got to the point of living together.

Libra is more elegant and might prefer muted colors. Leo, the Lion, is simply wilder and likes flamboyant brighter shades.

Libra, concerned with portraying a harmonious image, might not want to admit to enjoying Leo’s more boisterous excesses.

Libra’s mock shock, of course, encourages Leo further. It’s hard for even Libra to live up to Leo’s high ideals, but Leo accepts Libra in a way that Libra needs.

Leo and Aries

The thing that Leo loves most about being partnered with Aries is that for once someone else is in trouble for being the loudest and most boisterous person in the room.

As much as Leo loves the spotlight, Leo is willing to hang back while Aries gets wild.

Then Leo can saunter in and look suave by comparison.

This sails right over Aries’s head, as Aries has already impulsively wandered off to the next exciting thing, so there’s no need to worry about Aries being offended.

Aries can have some rough edges, but Leo’s positive attitude sees the good intentions behind Aries’s brash exterior.

Aries women are especially misunderstood by the world in general as aggressive, so they could therefore benefit from the generous heart of a Leo partner.

Leo and Aries always have plenty of activity going on. They definitely feed off each other’s energy, so their duo can become greater than the sum of its parts.

Leo and Sagittarius

Leo and Sagittarius throw excellent parties together. Sagittarius might know the technical details of which kind of wine is the best, and Leo just trusts Sagittarius on that.

Both of them tend to love having boisterous fun with larger groups.

When Leo and Sagittarius are having one on one time, they enjoy travel. Sagittarius might lead their discussion of philosophical matters, but Leo is capable of keeping up.

Both have a basically optimistic attitude. Leo and Sagittarius also understand each other’s needs for alone time to recharge their fire.

Less Compatible Matches For Leo

While the rest of the astrological charts – or just hard work! – can make one of these relationships possible, the hardest matches for Leo are Cancer, Virgo, Capricorn, and Pisces.

Leo and Cancer

A person’s gender can’t be identified from their astrological chart. That being said, Leo and Cancer are a couple where gender differences can really make a difference.

Leo man Cancer woman would be the harder version of a Leo and Cancer pairing.

This tends to be because male socialization takes Leo brashness to the extreme and female socialization takes Cancer emotionalism to her extreme.

The Leo man would always be making the Cancer woman frustrated with him, even though he didn’t mean to, which could create an atmosphere of uncertainty.

Cancer man Leo woman, however, could actually work well because this pair would have a common background of colliding with the expectations for their gender.

The Cancer man probably grew up shamed for being too emotional, and the Leo woman was too loud for a female. In short, together both were always too much.

When they come together, neither wants the other to feel like they are too much.

They are therefore willing to put in the work to hear each other out and make each other feel appreciated, but it could definitely be a lot of work.

Leo and Virgo

“Sparingly” is not a Leo word. Leo’s have an attitude of abundance and generosity, and they live largely.

Unfortunately, this is not Virgo’s approach.

Using an analogy, If Leo and Virgo had to live together and share a shower, it would not work. Leo would be accused of using too much hot water.

Leo has a big picture view and tends to be overwhelmed and frustrated by Virgo’s focus on minor details.

Leo has faith that things will just work out.

Leo is generally right about that, but Leo also fails to appreciate some of Virgo’s skills at things in the physical world requiring precision such as sewing, woodworking, or technology.

Leo has a more positive attitude toward life in general than many other signs, but the tension between Leo and Virgo is enough to test even that.

Leo feels that Virgo assumes the worst of Leo, such as that Leo is intentionally trying to wastewater in the shower and therefore doesn’t care about the environment.

Leo of course pushes back, and then Virgo resents being seen as the killjoy. In Virgo’s mind, Virgo means well.

Leo and Capricorn

Capricorn is not as detail-oriented as fellow earth sign Virgo, but Capricorn is more serious. Leo’s buoyant enthusiasm can, therefore, be too much for Capricorn.

Capricorn begins to wonder when Leo will grow up and settle down.

Capricorn tends to have a narrow view of what success looks like. It usually involves progress in a stable career and meeting life milestones at an early age.

Leo can be more conservative than people think because Leo enjoys the perks of status, and status is the bigger half of the status quo.

Leo and Capricorn could therefore meet in a professional setting, but they would have reached that same mountaintop by two very different roads, and that would soon become apparent.

Leo is more likely to wander into Capricorn’s territory for the wrong reasons than Capricorn is likely to wander into Leo’s territory for any reason.

Leo can learn from this adventure that it is better for a Leo to be a true Leo than a fake Capricorn. Even a Capricorn could ultimately respect a true Leo in the right environment.

Leo and Pisces

Leo and Pisces are both idealists who tend to trust others, so this is what brings them together. Pisces, like Libra, have a tendency to get depressed when reality doesn’t measure up to their ideals.

While Leo is capable of cheering Libra up, Pisces takes it further than Libra does, to the point that Leo winds up getting dragged down into an emotional pit with Pisces.

Pisces, a water sign, has a capacity to recover from its own emotional extremes – the ocean can make some dramatic moves, but ultimately the tides go in and out.

While Leo has dramatic moments of their own, something about the particular emotional extremes of Pisces is Kryptonite for Leo.

If Pisces unleashes a wave big enough to put out Leo’s fire, Leo has a hard time getting it back.

Leo wants to help and wants to fix things. It feeds Leo’s pride to be the fixer. If Pisces puts Leo in a situation that Leo finds unfixable, Leo’s self-worth can therefore really suffer.

The Leo Man

The fun-loving Leo man is known to enjoy being the life of the party.

Occasionally there are more subdued Leo men who have found less dramatic ways to make their individual contributions to the world, but they do all have pride in what they bring to the table.

Leo men enjoy dressing up and looking good, especially if it involves a fancy hairstyle. They often have some creative ability.

Social pressures shape Leo men in different ways than Leo women.

Leo men might not be able to get away with being as emotional as Leo women, but Leo men can have a more bombastic persona than Leo women.

Leo Man Relationship Compatibility

An Aries woman would be an especially good match for a Leo man. As stated above, Aries women tend to be misunderstood because they may come across as aggressive.

A Leo man is, however, kindhearted enough to not get easily upset by an Aries woman. He could also be loud enough himself that an Aries woman would not look like an outlier in relation to him.

Leo Man Sexual Compatibility

Sagittarius, symbolized by the archer, can be athletic, so a Leo man might enjoy a Sagittarius woman for a specific physical connection. She would be the teacher, but he would be an eager student.

The Leo Woman

The generous and gregarious Leo woman is a lot of fun. She has a sunny, positive attitude and tends to see the best in people.

The Leo woman may have a distinctive lion’s mane of big hair. She is concerned with her appearance, but she does not limit herself to the latest trends – she adds her own creative touches.

Social pressures may have toned down some of the Leo woman’s louder and more self-absorbed tendencies over the course of her life, but she is a passionate and emotional person.

Leo Woman Relationship Compatibility

A Leo woman would get an ego boost from being the one to guide a Gemini man through his variety of ideas.

She would be so proud of her contribution that she wouldn’t realize she was doing the lion’s share of the work.

Leo Woman Sexual Compatibility

The Leo woman could appreciate an Aries man’s direct approach.

Even though Cancer and Leo are overall a harder pair, a Cancer man might actually work well with a Leo woman sexually because they are both on the innocent side.

Final Thoughts

The four elements in astrology tend to break down into two groups: fire with air, and earth with water.

Leo, a fire sign, therefore interacts most smoothly with fellow fire signs Aries and Sagittarius and with air signs Gemini and Libra.

There are not a whole lot of intrinsic differences between Leo men and Leo women, but the process of socializing people into their gender roles can wind up emphasizing different parts of the Leo personality.

Earth signs like Virgo and Capricorn, as well as water signs like Cancer and Pisces, tend to challenge Leo more. One can, however, often learn a lot from relationships that are more challenging.

There also may be other factors in both partners’ astrological charts that are compatible in spite of a difficult match between Sun signs.

#compatibility #Leo man #Leo woman #relationship

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girl-debord · 5 years

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Cultural Exegesis: Cops on Television

The following is an essay I wrote for a cultural interpretation class last semester.

Surfing the channels on television or scrolling through the selection of shows on Netflix or Hulu, it is just about impossible to miss the waves of police procedurals that saturate American media. As of the week of March 4, 2019, two television programs out of the Nielsen Top 10 list for Prime Broadcast Network TV were dramas focusing on crime and police. Even in shows that aren’t built around the police procedural genre, police feature disproportionately as on-screen characters.

Television dramas following cops are, by this point, a well-established fixture of American media. These shows have been around since the late 40s and have their roots in films about western sheriffs and private detectives. Decades of this kind of entertainment have laid the groundwork for a new set of archetypes of cop characters and made possible the rise of police-centric TV of other genres, including comedies like Brooklyn Nine-Nine and Castle.

In a 2016 interview with The Frame, researcher Kathleen Donovan, co-author of a study entitled “The Role of Entertainment Media in Perceptions of Police Use of Force,” told journalists that her findings showed that people spend more time consuming entertainment media than news, and that that affects their perceptions of the police. “By far the largest impact was on perceptions of how effective the police are,” she said. “In the content analysis, the way police are shown in these shows is that they're incredibly effective. People who watch these shows tend to think that police are a lot better at their job in terms of clearing crimes than they are in reality.” As the name of her study implies, Donovan has also found that television alters public perception of police violence. “It's almost always portrayed in a justified light,” she said. If a cop steps out of line, it is in order to punish someone the show has already proved to the audience is evil or to extract necessary information from a criminal.

While many people feel that they can distinguish between real and fictional cops, Donovan pointed out something that is troubling—“The problem is, [viewers] don't have other places that they're getting this information from,” she said. “They're not getting a lot of interaction with the police officers on a day to day level.” Even a discerning media consumer is likely to spend much more time around the cops of television than the cops of the real world. It is simply impossible to be really unaffected by this.

Of course, the idea that our media consumption habits affect our views should come as no surprise, even when the particular effect a piece of media has is disturbing. But the reason Donovan’s findings are significant is because these television programs do not spring up out of nothing. Certainly there would not be so many cop shows on TV if there was no demand for them, but that demand has its roots in something more sinister.

Matthew Alford reported for The Conversation in 2017 that since the establishment of its Entertainment Liaison Office in 1948, the Pentagon has been involved in the production of more than 1,100 television shows. And at a local level, individual police departments have worked with television producers to create positive PR consistently over the last several decades. In a letter to an ad agency in 1968, Bob Cinader, who was working on the upcoming show Adam-12, wrote, “Like all major police departments throughout the country, the LAPD's two biggest problems are recruitment and community relations. They feel that a series about the uniformed police officer would be of even greater help to them in particular and the cause of law and order in general.” In the wake of the Watts riots of 1965 and a growing sense of anti-authoritarian sentiment, turning to TV was a strategic move for the LAPD. In the time of the Rodney King riots and growing unrest, shows like Law & Order filled a similar role. Even in recent years, NYPD scandals and a resurgence of real critique of the police coincide with Brooklyn Nine-Nine and Blue Bloods.

The relationship goes beyond purely fictional television and into the realm of the late-80s boom of reality television, which turned its eye onto the police with John Langley’s COPS. “COPS’ foremost legacy, aside from its forceful introduction of a new form of televisuality, is as a highly effective PR bullhorn for the ‘human’ side of police-work,” writer Eric Harvey explains in a 2015 essay for Pitchfork. “Reenactments were replaced by what Langley called ‘raw reality,’ which encouraged a voyeuristic position to take in the action. The reality of raw reality, of course, is that COPS traded any pretense toward objectivity for an unprecedented level of backstage access; in the show’s world, perpetrators are anonymous while police officers are well-rounded characters who provide each episode’s narrative arc.”

In the 90s, whether through the sleek stories of Law & Order or the police-raid porn of COPS, television viewers were already absorbing content that would shape their understanding of law enforcement. Even if this content was not directly created by police departments or the Pentagon, in most cases, it had the approval of these authorities, and more importantly, police television going forward would be built upon the very positive image that these shows generated. A contemporary television program might never have its scripts reviewed by a government agency or work with police departments as PR, but in all things pertaining to the cops, the cultural propaganda had already worked its magic. The “good cop” archetype that shows like Adam-12 and Dragnet had worked so hard to make was already a known commodity, an established trope to build on and work with.

But more than the image of the squeaky-clean cop that captured the imaginations of many Americans, the most effective tool in changing the public perception of police has been the methodological understanding of the world that entertainment like this presents to its audiences. As Kathleen Donovan pointed out, the use of force by police is almost unilaterally justified by the narratives of the shows that depict them. “Within a minute and a half of the first episode, the show has summed up its central message: Police violence works,” Aaron Miguel Cantú writes in his 2014 review of Chicago PD. “This is relayed again and again throughout the series: When a cop with a chain-wrapped fist savagely beats a Spanish-speaking suspect demanding an attorney until he relinquishes a tip; when officers debase the idea of policing without intent to arrest; when cops round up black non-criminals and deliver them to precinct torture chambers. In every episode, these methods achieve the desired ends.” The image gritty cop programs like this present of police departments is one of a world that is, perhaps realistically, filled with violence. But in order for the police to be the heroes of this world, the plot must produce ends sufficient to justify the means: the arrest of a violent criminal, the prevention of a dangerous terrorist act, etc.

The underlying implication here is an idea that has come to be woven through much of American media: the world is a dangerous place, and authoritarian measures are a necessary evil to protect the innocent from the criminal. As the philosopher Thomas Hobbes put it, “The condition of man is a condition of war of everyone against everyone.” And certainly Hobbes would approve of this picture painted by cop shows: the rights of criminals (who are at any time determined to be so by law enforcement) are incidental to preserving order and so must be subsumed into the Leviathanic police state for the good of everyone. The television programs can do their best to portray cops as wholesome defenders of the peace. But at some point, there needs to be a little realism—the fact that these people carrying guns on behalf of the state employ violence as a part of their job is too obvious to ignore. So the TV instead presents us with police forces who do engage in violence, who do things which would be unspeakable for any real-life civilian—but they present us with the kind of world that makes this justifiable, a dangerous, threatening world in which everyone is an enemy. Donovan highlights the fact that the majority of television crimes are murders—a gross overrepresentation, but one that helps to uphold this image. This is the kind of world that justifies police violence. The narrative is not just about trusting the police, it’s about being afraid enough of everyone else to believe firmly that everything the police do is necessary.

This is the world of COPS. As Tim Stelloh writes in a 2018 article for The Marshall Project, “Civil rights activists, criminologists, and other observers have described [COPS] as a racist and classist depiction of the country, one in which crime is a relentless threat and officers are often in pitched battle against the poor black and brown perpetrators of that crime.” It’s a fascist’s view of society, coming here not from writers but from the police themselves, whose commentary frames the events of each episode. COPS gives viewers a taste of the reality of American law enforcement, just not the reality it claims. The program allows us to see the role of police as they see themselves, in full, action-packed detail.

The other side of this authoritarian outlook has become a media obsession in recent years, perhaps nearly to the extent of police procedurals. The appeal of shows like NBC’s Dateline in presenting the shock and horror of crime has proven effective even with a more dramatic format. Where Law & Order walked the line between the heroism of the justice system and the horror of crime, programs like Criminal Minds tend to delve deeper into the latter. This kind of media, lending its attention to serial killers and brutal rapists, provides a necessary balance for the traditional cop dramas. Hannibal, American Crime Story, and adjacent programs give us criminals who are as intelligent and charismatic as they are violent—worthy opponents for an increasingly militarized and surveilling police force. Of course, one might argue that these characters are clear fantasies to audiences, like supervillains or space aliens. But if most viewers have little interaction with police, how much experience can they be expected to have with killers? The intellectually or socially capable murderer provides the kind of fear necessary to move people towards embracing the total authority of law enforcement—both on-screen and in real life.

This fear is more congruent with later cop shows whose focus on gritty violence in the name of justice measures up to the violence of depraved criminals that fascinates audiences. But the friendlier image of police from the days of Adam-12 still finds its place in modern television. One niche is in the aforementioned police comedy—shows such as NBC’s Brooklyn Nine-Nine give us police to relate to and enjoy who are earnest in their pursuit of justice and can accomplish their (admittedly tamer) goals with minimal violence and maximal shenanigans. In a time of pubic distrust for the police, B99 excuses its cops from blame by contrasting them to bad cops and making gestures toward the notion that police violence is an issue of concern. But a show that concerns itself mainly with police as a wholesome source of comedy is ill-equipped to deal with the uncomfortable realities of the NYPD’s behavior. How often is Andy Samberg’s good-hearted character called upon to evict homeless people from parks or cooperate with ICE officers to detain migrant families? Citing the NYPD’s record-low public opinion ratings, Will Leitch writes in a review for Bloomberg, “This hasn’t reached the world of Brooklyn Nine-Nine. The only people who hate cops on Brooklyn Nine-Nine are the wretched perps our heroes keep hauling in. The sitcom is standard cop-show fare in that regard, except more so; while a drama can allow our cop heroes the shading to become anti-heroes, the sitcom can’t really go that dark.”

Alongside the police sitcom is another niche for friendly cops to make an appearance which is perhaps more troubling: in children’s media. A slew of op-eds by parents in 2017 in publications like the Guardian and Baptist News called into question some of the implications of television shows like Paw Patrol. The cartoon, featuring dogs in the roles of emergency services, shows its police pup Chase using a “spy drone” for surveillance and coming to the aid of helpless citizens who continually put themselves in danger. Many parents were concerned about the lack of nuance in how the show presented authorities. In a response to these concerns Elissa Strauss wrote for CNN’s website, she cited author Tovah Klein, explaining, “Despite their reputation of innocence, children are bubbling cauldrons of conflicting feelings and impulses. This is especially the case during toddler and preschool years, when they become aware of their capacity to do bad things and struggle with understanding those urges. […] Good and bad are clearly articulated states in those shows, and should one misbehave, the repercussions are clear and predictable.” Strauss seems to believe this is sufficient to let parents breathe a sigh of relief. But if the response to children’s struggle with right and wrong that Paw Patrol gives is to seek the approval of authorities, what is there to be relieved about?

The amiable, endearing police of Paw Patrol and Brooklyn Nine-Nine who are eager to help and the tough, violent cops of Chicago PD and COPS who are a necessary force against the horrors of crime represent a particular understanding of law enforcement that is transmitted to children and adults alike. When the primary experience of most people with police is in entertainment, the images stick, and its effects make themselves known. In public discourse, people can be tricked into defending the actions of real police officers based on their time spent with the stories of fictional cops. Despite claims of a national crime wave and a “war on police,” the Brennan Center reports, as of 2017, declining crime rates and assaults on law enforcement, while Mapping Police Violence reported a general increase in the number of people killed by police from 2013 to 2016. While it may just be the tip of the iceberg of a culture of authoritarianism, cop shows on TV are at least partially responsible.

#another frodobell original #acab #copaganda #brooklyn nine nine

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yngwrthr · 5 years

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Grundrisse: pp. 153-163: Overview 4

1.) The money question is secondary/ meaningless if prices = exchange value; there is a balance of supply and demand and of production and consumption; and, in the last instance, there is proportionate production where so-called relations of distribution are relations of production. p. 153

2.) If a bank issues time-chits. A commodity = x labor time, and is exchanged for a quantity of money (chits) = x labor time. At the same time, the bank would have to purchase the commodity, just as the Bank of England gives notes for gold. Therefore, the substantial exchange value of the commodity is exchanged for the symbolic existence of exchange value. Hence, there is no difficulty transposing from commodity to the form of money. Labor time just needs to be authenticated to create its counter-value/ monetary existence. p. 153 (Summary) A bank that issues time-chits buys all commodities at the cost of production and in place of giving out this substantial exchange value (commodities) gives symbolic exchange (chits) as draft on all other commodities with the same exchange value. Therefore, the bank is the general buyer and seller of commodities p. 154 and would not only track the sum of an individual's credit but: 1. Have power to establish exchange value of all commodities 2. Determine the average labor time required for all production 3. Place producers in conditions where they were equally productive 4. Determine the amount of labor time employed in different branches of production; as to make currency really convertible, social production would have to be stabilized so that all needs of partners in exchange were satisfied. The biggest exchange process would not be between commodities but commodities and labor. Workers would not be selling their labor, but exchanging the value of the product of labor. Therefore, bank would be general producer -- not just buyer and seller. p. 155 The bank would be either despotic ruler of production and trustee of distribution or just a board that kept books and accounts for society producing in common, but the latter presupposes common ownership of means of production, opposed to Saint-Simonians who made their bank the papacy of production. p. 156

3.) The dissolution of products/ activities into exchange values presupposes dissolution of all fixed personal, historic dependence of producers on each other. Here; individual production is dependent on production of others and the transformation of their products into their necessities is dependent on the consumption of others. Price and exchange are old; but determination of price by the costs of production and dominance of exchange over all relations of production is found only in the bourgeois society of free competition. Reciprocal dependence is expressed in the constant necessity for exchange. Economists express this as: "each pursues private interest and serves private interest of all -- without knowing it". It could just as well be said that each individual blocks the assertion of others' interest. But the point is: private interest is a socially determined interest -- bound to reproduction of these conditions. While it is the interest of private persons, the content, form, and realization are given by social conditions independent of all. The reciprocal dependence of individuals indifferent to one another forms their social connection. This social bond is expressed in exchange value p. 156 or individualized money. And the power the individual exercises over others and of social wealth exists as the owner of exchange value/ money. Individuals thus carry social power and their bond with society in their pocket. Activity and the product of activity are always exchange value: a generality in which all individuality and peculiarity are extinguished. This is opposed to family/ clan/ community where individuals directly/ naturally reproduce themselves and where productive activity and their share of production are bound to specific labor and products that specifically determine their relation to others. p. 157

4.) The social character of production and product appear as something alien/ objective; confronting individuals not as their relation to one another, but subordinated to relations that subsist independent of them and arising from collisions between mutually independent individuals. Exchange of products and activities -- mutual interconnections -- that are vital, appear as an alien/ autonomous thing. With exchange value, the social connections between people are transformed to a relation between things: personal capacity into objective wealth. The less the power the medium exchange possesses, the greater the power of the community that ties individuals together, e.g., patriarchal, antiquity, feudal, guild. p. 157 Individuals possess power in the form of a thing. Therefore, if you rob the thing of social power, you give it to persons to exercise over persons. 1.) First social form: relations of personal dependence; human productivity develops slightly. 2.) Second social form: personal independence founded on objective dependence; all-round needs and universal capacities formed for first time. 3.) Third social form; free individuality based on universal development and subordination of communal, social productivity as social wealth. Second form creates conditions for third form. Patriarchal/ ancient/ feudal disintegrates with the advent of commerce, luxury, money, exchange value, as modern society grows in same measure. p. 158

5.) Exchange and division of labor reciprocally condition each other. Everyone works for themselves, but their product is nothing for them. Each must exchange to take part in productive activity and transform their product for subsistence. Exchange, when mediated by exchange value/ money, presupposes all-round dependence of producers on each other along with total isolation of their private interests from each other and division of social labor, whose unity/ mutual complimentary exists as a natural relation external and independent of them. Pressure of supply and demand on one another mediates connection of mutually indifferent people. p. 158

6.) Necessity of transforming products to exchange value/ money so that they demonstrate social power in this objective form proves that: 1.) Individuals now produce for and in society 2.) Their production is not directly social. They are subsumed under social production as their fate and cannot manage it as their common wealth. p. 158 Therefore, nothing more erroneous than the postulate of time-chit advocates that united individuals can control total production on the basis of exchange value/ money. The private exchange of all products of labor stands in anti-thesis to distribution based on a natural or political super/ subordination of individuals and also free exchange based on "common appropriation and control of the means of production". The division of labor creates combination/ cooperation that is the antithesis of private interests; e.g., competition, concentration of capital, monopoly, and other antithetical forms of unity that brings the antithesis to the fore. Similarly, private exchange creates (its antithesis) world trade and private "independence" that creates "dependence" on the world market, etc. And while national trade has the semblance of existence in the form of the rate of exchange, reform of the money market will not abolish internal and external trade. However, within bourgeois society -- a society that rests of exchange value -- there arises relations of circulation and production that are "so many mines to explode". The character of antithetical forms of social unity cannot be abolished by "quiet metamorphosis". But if the material conditions of production and corresponding relations of exchange that are a prerequisite for a classless did not exist, all attempts to explode it would be "quixotic". p. 159

7.) Exchange value = relative labor time materialized in products. Money is equal to exchange value of commodities, separated from their substance. And, in this exchange, value or money represent contradictions between commodities and their exchange value/ commodities as exchange value and money. Money owes its existence to the tendency of exchange value to separate itself from the substance of commodities and take a pure form. However, commodities cannot be directly transformed into money, i.e., a certificate of labor time in a commodity cannot serve as its price in the world of exchange. How is this?

(It is clear to economists that collateral, where one person leaves money with another to obtain a commodity, presupposes the objectification of the social bond. Here, economists say that people place faith in a thing/ money that they don’t place in each other. But this is because money is an objectified relation between people or objectified exchange value as a mutual relation between people’s productive activity. While other forms of collateral serve the holder directly as collateral, money is the "dead pledge of society" (Aristotle). But this is because of its social/ symbolic property. And it has this social property only because individuals have alienated their own social relationship from themselves so that it takes the form of a thing.)

As prices, where values are listed as money, it seems that this independence of individuals from the social character of things through commerce -- and thus on the basis of alienation where relations of production and distribution stand opposed to the individual -- is, at the same time, subordinated to the individual again. Since the autonomization of the world market -- (where the activity of each individual is included) increases with the development p. 160 of money relations/ exchange value, since the interdependence in production and consumption increases along with the independence and indifference of consumers and producers to one other; and since this contradiction leads to crises along with alienation and efforts to overcome it:

institutions emerge where each individual can acquire information about the activity of all others and adjust their activity accordingly e.g., re. prices, rates of exchange, and interconnections between those active in commerce -- as the means of communication grow at the same time. Therefore, while supply and demand are independent of the actions of individuals, all attempt to be informed and this, in turn, impacts total supply and demand. While alienation is not overcome by this, relations and connections emerge with the possibility of suspending alienation from the old standpoint. Indeed, the comprehensive view of commerce and production is proof that people's own exchange and production confront them as objective relations, independent of them. E.g., re. the world market: the connection of individuals with all and also the independence of this connection with the individual, has now developed to the extent that conditions exist to go beyond it. It can be said that there is beauty and greatness in this spontaneous interconnection that is independent of knowing and willing individuals and presupposes their reciprocal independence and indifference. Indeed, this objective interconnection is preferable to a lack of connection; local connection based on blood ties; primeval/ natural; or master-servant relation. But it is equally true that individuals cannot gain mastery over their own interconnections p. 161 before they are created. However, it is insipid to think this objective bond is a natural attribute. It is a historic product belonging to a specific phase of development. The alien character in which it presently exists proves that individuals are still engaged in creating their social life and have not yet begun, on the basis of these conditions, to live it. Universally developed individuals, whose social relations are subordinated to their own communal control, are also not a product of nature but history. The development of wealth, where individuality is possible, supposes exchange value that not only produces alienation of individuals from self and others, but universality and comprehensiveness of their relations and capacities. In early stages, individuals are developed more fully because they have not fully worked out their relationships or erected them as independent social powers opposite to them. But it is as ridiculous to yearn for a return to that fullness as it is to believe that history has come to a standstill. The bourgeois view will never advance beyond the antithesis between itself and this romantic view and will accompany it to the end. p. 162

8.) Universal exchangeability of all products with a third objective entity that can be re-exchanged for everything else is identical with universal venality and corruption. Universal prostitution appears as a necessary phase to the development of social character of personal talents, capabilities, activities… Greed is impossible without money. All other forms of accumulation and mania appear primitive and restricted by needs on the one hand and the nature of products on the other. p. 163

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milkshakedoe · 5 years

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@zennistrad splitting this into a second post because sorry it’s so long lol. but yea thinking this response through has helped me articulate my own thoughts and understanding of VFT. hopefully it’s all readable. [first post link for other people]

fetishism is one aspect of impersonal domination (i think this is the correct way to put it?), in that our uncritical perceptions are dominated by value, but it is not the only dimension. but impersonal domination /does/ happen because of capitalist commodities themselves, because of value itself.

it is true that specific private property "norms" - the domination of propertied capitalist over propertyless worker, what Marx calls the “capital-relation” - in a sense are the distinguishing feature of the capitalist mode of production. due to this relationship, the capitalist commodity is distinct from pre-capitalist commodities. but this doesn’t mean that value, taking the forms of capitalist commodity and money, isn’t the driver of the process. the capital-relation may be what enables value to exist, but once called into existence, value is at the steering wheel.

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so yes, what enables value to exist, and its impersonal domination over people, is the existence of doubly-free labor - that is, workers are legally free to sell ability to work (labor-power) to anyone in exchange for money, and thus not obliged to a particular employer in the manner of say, a serf. and the "double" dimension of bourgeois freedom is the capital-relation, as you say, that workers are "free" of substantial property / means of production, and thus obliged to sell labor-power to the capitalist class who own substantial means of production.

because of the first part of this "double freedom”, the "freedom" to sell labor-power to anyone in exchange for money and to withdraw from employment “at will”, the capital-relation does not take place pre-capitalistically through direct social ties of obligation - which are territorially limited by, for instance, lord's domain or the reach of the tributary state - but instead social relationships take place through money (wages in exchange for labor-power, means of subsistence in exchange for wages, commodity in exchange for capital), which knows no inherent borders. the products of individual privately conducted labors can now become socially validated through exchange as components of the global, rather than merely local, /totality/ of the metaphysical social substance of "abstract labor", the totality of commodities in society (they are globally accessible via money) which are also units of abstract labor, units of exchange-ability with this totality aka /value/.

exploitation becomes global, unbounded by direct territorial domination. an important characteristic of direct domination is that political and “economic” power are combined: feudal lords, for example, exercise direct military power over their subjects and power over their personal fortunes; the serf is directly obliged to produce for the lord on threat of explicit violence. but in capitalism, domination becomes impersonal, indirectly social, and the political and “economic” aspects become dissociated from one another.

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the economic dimension manifests in the threat of starvation and of bankruptcy for capitalists (which leads to the threat of proletarianization and thus of starvation) facing both workers and capitalists alike, as well as the peculiar qualities of value as a creature of abstract wealth, and the iron law of competition. the threat of starvation, of course, compels workers to sell labor-power to capitalists who themselves are compelled to compete with other capitalists to maximize valorization (expansion of value, “profits”).

because value is fundamentally an abstraction from concrete properties and concrete human needs, value is also not inherently attached to the fulfillment of any human needs, nor does it know any inherent limits. not only this, but capitalist production follows the form M-C-M’: value in the form of money is advanced to purchase commodities which are transformed to be sold for (more) money. thus, from the perspective of capital (a sum of value in this process of capitalist production), and of capitalists - those who carry out this logic of investment of money to win back more money - the only surefire measure of benefit is the endless infinite accumulation of abstract “MORE”, and this pursuit of abstract benefit is compelled by the iron law of competition.

the iron law of competition refers to the fact that individual capitals (and thus the capitalists who carry out their logic) can only achieve benefits to themselves at the expense of other capitals. when a capitalist develops some means to increase worker productivity - whether by extending the working day, or improving the production per working hour - the higher potential for production each day enables the capitalist to win greater increases of value, either by downsizing the workforce (typically less realistic when it comes to increasing productivity) or more commonly by increasing the volume of sales and lowering prices. as the market becomes flooded with a greater volume of cheaper goods, other capitalists decline in profits or go bankrupt if they do not attempt to modernize production themselves. thus all capitalists are compelled to compete in hopes of swimming instead of sinking; each puts the screws on the other, just as the screws are put on them. relatedly, most of the profits generated by capital are not accrued by the capitalists themselves, but are re-invested into production to further this ceaseless compulsion to accumulate. capitalists’ great wealth is only incidental to the far greater wealth produced and handled by their enterprises.

as Michael Heinrich puts it in his Introduction to the Three Volumes of Karl Marx's Capital,

If the capitalist merely executes the logic of capital, then it is not he, but rather capital, self-valorizing value, that is the “subject” of the process. Marx refers to capital in this regard as the “automatic subject” (Capital,1:255), a phrase that makes the paradox clear: on the one hand, capital is an automaton, something lifeless, but on the other, as the “subject,” it is the determining agent of the whole process.

and if the capitalists themselves are dominated by value, then it stands to reason that the workers, compelled on pain of the impersonal threat of starvation to sell their powers to the capitalists and participate in the valorization (expansion) process of value / capital to survive, are also dominated by value.

the political dimension of impersonal domination is the existence of the bourgeois state, which unlike pre-capitalist states does not directly dominate people but wields violence relatively sparingly in order to enforce relationships of private property (thus maintaining the capital-relation and indirectly enforcing class rule) and acts as a manifestation of the “total national capital”, acting in the interests of capitalist accumulation as a whole (which may and often does conflict with the interests of individual capitals / capitalists, and does in fact protect the interest of the working class - to the degree and only to the degree that it keeps them working class and ultimately subordinate).

so yes, in a sense you are correct - capitalism does not simply mean a society where commodities exist. but it is because we confront our sociality with other agents in capitalist production through commodities, through money, through the products of labor whose concrete properties are negated by society in favor of their metaphysical abstract social existence as pieces of a homogenous substance of "exchange-ability", that the nature of social relationships in capitalism changes compared to other modes, and thus it is specifically value that asserts impersonal domination over us all.

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of course it might be objected, what about slavery, or race, or other forms of domination and unfree labor that certainly exist or have existed in capitalism? are they too mediated by value and thus “impersonal” or “indirect”? i think Chris Chen's essay The Limit Point of Capitalist Equality and Endnotes’ An Identical Abject-Subject? make a lot of interesting and good points in this regard, while Banaji also gets into this as well from a slightly different approach that i'm still working to understand. Chen’s and Endnotes’ perspectives, which I find compelling, develop on the concept of “relative surplus population”, Marx’s term for people whose employment capital (value in the process of capitalist accumulation) can’t justify to itself in its pursuit of maximum value. the “stagnant” relative surplus population, those who capital cannot periodically re-absorb into the workforce, are excluded from the wage yet still without means of production and thus trapped within the capital-relation, such as the one billion slum dwelling people forced to try and sell their labor under hyper-exploited and self-exploiting conditions within the informal economy, while something like half the world population alongside them manage to hold onto a living through peasant agriculture rather than capitalist labor. because the labor of those excluded from the wage is not valued (not paid a wage) and thus not socially validated through exchange, they come to be seen as a value-less exterior to capitalism that is nevertheless held within it, and become subject to enslavement, and wage differentials as well as judgments of “deserving” compared to “white” workers and those of ethnicities favored by the local nationalism, as well as a kind of direct domination by the bourgeois state - in the forms of policing, warehousing, enslavement, and extermination.

in any case, if we are going to speak of a non-capitalist commodity as a potential basis around which to organize a better society - the hypothetical situation you are speaking of, where people produce for their needs with what they own, and exchange for other things - speaks to a form of society where exchange is subordinated to production for needs. this is the circumstance of peasants in precapitalist societies. but the nature of exchange, even outside capitalism, is that it is not foremost a system of distribution but a system of denial, of gatekeeping. in order to be allowed to need, one is first forced to “deserve”, to provide a product that the other party will accept as equivalent in exchange; in any other circumstance you get nothing. in non-capitalist production it’s true that this can still be made to serve human needs, in the case of producers owning their own means of production and exchanging excess product they don't have use for - but it begs the question of why, if our aim is to build a maximally better society, we don't simply distribute the surplus product to people in need, without extra stipulations.

to be perfectly clear, it’s not that i have any particular moral misgivings against market socialists or even any particularly strong feelings generally about market socialism, i just feel that if we cannot envision a more direct alternative to meeting peoples' needs than price signaling and striving for Pareto efficiency and such, then we’re resigning ourselves to the authority of a certain kind of "nature". it could work, perhaps, but why leave it at that?

#text #theoryposting #critecon #communism #long post

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rjm773 · 6 years

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They never should’ve taken the very best

The Band occupies an extremely exceptional position in my heart, I’ve found; it began with repeated viewings of “The Last Waltz” on Thanksgiving when we were growing up, and it grew to be a device I use to help me properly define America in 2019, nevermind the years prior.

Something about me that, while we all acknowledged it, I didn’t realize helped inform who I was until it was too late: I am the only person in my immediate family who was born in the South, when everyone else was born in New York. My mom still loves to throw down the line that I would’ve fought my own brothers in the Civil War, all of our political inclinations cast aside for the merriment of spectacle. That was all well and good for a while, and I thought about it critically (In my estimation, I’d have gotten my older brother, but not my oldest. That cat continues to slither like the friendliest bodega cat you ever saw).

On him, though: he’s the one that didn’t ever latch onto The Band. It remains curious to me; given their nature, and given his, it strikes me that the relationship is inherently symbiotic, but beauty remains in the eyes of the beholders. I just think he could’ve gotten something more out of “The Shape I’m In” than I ever did, and I assuredly got plenty out of it.

It astounds me that four Canadian dudes and one guy from Arkansas nailed white America better than anybody else in musical history. Or, at least, in rock music. You can start at “The Basement Tapes” and be immediately perplexed; it depends on your relationship with Bob Dylan going in, I guess, but as an apologist, it makes sense that they holed up with him and produced what boils down to the most influential mixtape in folk rock history right around when he decided to roll out “All Along The Watchtower,” which, along with “Like a Rolling Stone,” might be his most well-known song to people who don’t stan Adele all that hard.

My dad once said that “The Weight” is the greatest song ever written. My dad has a lot of problematic opinions, especially as he descends toward mindlessness-via-age, but he might be onto something here. Dylan loved “The Weight” such that he all but wished he’d have written it. It became an SNL sketch forty years later, and we all got it. Robbie hit on something universal with that, and I’ll simultaneously always and never feel comfortable when I hear it.

On “The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down” — I get caught up about Levon Helm not getting a songwriting credit on that one, especially when you know that he’s the one who took Robbie Robertson to libraries to read about the history behind it. Confederate history is a troublesome part of American history that, in all likelihood, should inhabit similar space to that of the Third Reich in Germany. There is a significant amount of shame and embarrassment which subsists among people who like to shout out “losers” now - you know, racists - who deserve to listen to a song like this and accept it as their national anthem, one of regret and displacement. If they heard it every time a southern congressperson died, maybe they’d think harder about their place in life. Probably not, but one can hope.

Levon Helm was The Band. Robbie Robertson was The Band. Garth Hudson was The Band. Richard Manuel was The Band. Rick Danko was The Band. It’s cliched to think of that whole being greater than the sum of its parts, and the gatekeepers at the time have a whole lot to do with them being who they were, but they maximized themselves in each others’ presences all the same.

Once you accept the above, Ronnie Hawkins’ and Bob Dylan’s influence included, you can start to accept The Band, and America, with appropriate degrees of patience. It can be exhausting, and it can leave some things to be desired, but no other group in American history did what they did. No use waiting for the second coming.

#The Band #Levon Helm #Robbie Robertson #Garth Hudson #Rick Danko #Richard Manuel #The South #The Last Waltz #Bob Dylan #Ronnie Hawkins #Rock #Blues #Folk #Folk Rock #Big Pink

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nonvisibility-foreyes · 6 years

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The Creative Act - John Frusciante

Jan 16th, 2013 - http://johnfrusciante.com (archived: https://web.archive.org/web/20130121090649/http://johnfrusciante.com/ )

The phrase The Will To Death refers to the underlying, predominantly unintentional, organization in works by artists who love and are devoted to the creative force, but hate what they see of the life force and its ways. It is a set of abstract principles which may be applied in the creative act. In artistic symbolism, one comes close to death, and not only does he not die, but he lives more fully for having had the experience. It may be conceived as a set of musical/mathematical formulae which the musician utilizes without knowing it.

The creative force is produce of the life force, but our judgement of the life force is based on our perception of its effects, its surface, everything that happens in the external world we know. The closest we come to seeing the essence of the life force is in our perception of the creative force. In works of art, the creative force provides addition and multiplication.The creative force is assisted by human intelligence through our devotion to division and negation, and so, symbolically, from the standpoint of human intelligence, the act of creativity is a striving towards death. The reason creative action can be a fulfilling life enriching thing, is because our creative thinking is negation only on the thoughts surface, the thoughts essence being identical with the wishes of the essence of the life force.

So in The Will To Death one strives towards death, but is indirectly supported by the life force, and so the artists will is always aiming at something it never reaches, for the creative force upholds the aspects of the life force which the human is blind to. And so due to feelings and inner visions, the mental divisions and subtractions an artist must be fluent in carry him down a path that is only subtractive in his relationship to his tools, while the creative force carries the additive substance of the life force which is ultimately perceived.

Subtraction and negation are always a matter of degrees, beyond which is the positive unknown, the essence of the life force. The primary perceptive apparatus of the artist is appropriately blind to the positives behind negation, yet he senses them, and he is often inwardly shown them. But just like people and their attachment to image and appearance, he cannot grasp the positive unseen and unknown, so he clings to his negations, subconsciously knowing they are attached to the life force, but consciously only knowing the life force by the world and its ways, that being his only working image of it. Were it not for the seemingly inexplicable meaning inherent in his work, he would not strive down a path of negation and division. It is the subconscious knowledge that this is actually an upward path which fuels him to continue to strive towards a greater comprehension of the negatives which to most people appear to symbolize the feared unknown, pointless to dissect. In other words, the artist strives toward death, because to him it feels like life. And when he presents his work to others, it looks like life to them, while it is actually negation and death which are beneath the surface. And, of course, beyond the surface of that, as I've just explained, is the life force, once again.

If an artist is applying The Will To Death, he has the following three positions in balance. He is in between, occupied with negation and separation. In front is the expression of life, visible and audible to him and to others, and behind is the creative force, visible and audible only to him. Behind which is the life force, which he can not see anymore than his spectators can see his mental negations, or the personification of the creative force which is perhaps known to him.

Three conditions need to be in balance for the artist to apply The Will To Death:

1) Trust in and devotion to the part of the creative act he can not control. He must possess a conception of the difference between the creative force and himself, to a great degree in order to be controlled by it. This means a kind of letting go of the very parts of himself that share something in common with the creative force, namely, the desire to maintain a solid forward motion. This motion comes if one trusts the creative force. None of us can cause it any more than we can cause the forward motion of time. To take part in it is all that is in our power, and to do so is a great privilege. If ones love for art is great enough, their appreciation for their chance to participate in the creative act great enough, then to trust in the energy which guides them comes naturally, If the artist has an internal personification of this aspect of the force, then it is this that he loves and trusts, but he still must love and trust when there is no image, but only a feeling and a non-specific, non-defined, sensible, talking force of energy. And this trust in what amounts to his own feelings, must be greater than his trust in the things people generally trust, such as general consensus, popularly accepted points of view, commonly adhered to limitations or restrictions, and present day conventions.

2) The ability to mentally lose himself in a fascination with negations and divisions. Essential to the creative process are contradictions, taking things apart, carving away at things, and disconnecting this from that. Most important is contradiction of the force that guides him, his love for this force being so great that the contradiction can not help but lead to a new agreement. He must be going in one direction, and then switch to a new direction, without losing his way. If condition 1 is in place he need not fear going astray. The artists role is to always look for new ways to go, despite that he is not the one driving.

3) Third is his creation of the appearance of conditions 1 and 2 as being a singular motion, not a multitude of contrary directions. This implies that conditions 1 and 2 are so balanced that there is a perfection of form in every countermovement contained within. Every counteraction soon finds its coordinate. Every ending feels like a new beginning. Every repetition feels like a continued flow. Every negation appears as positivity and every loss appears as a gain. There can be no difference between feeling and appearance to the artist, they must be one in the same. It is this point that is stressed by the undercurrent of the life force. The life force is far away, pertaining to arts essence, and it is also near, pertaining to the perception of the sum of all the things that comprise a works appearance. These are the sides. The artist sees three parts, what the creative force brings and perpetuates, what the artist himself twists, turns and counteracts, and the sum the artist perceives. And it is there that the artists involvement in their work must end, if The Will To Death is to be applied. Otherwise the artist is compromising condition number one, and to whatever degree he does so, the balance required for the application of The Will To Death is thrown off. The artist stands in the middle of two sides. What is beyond these is of no concern to him. He will never directly perceive the life force, and doesn't want to. And he can't hear with other peoples ears, or see with their eyes, and he sacrifices the benefit of his own senses to whatever degree he attempts to do so. The creative force is driving the artist in a car. The artist who attempts to take over the wheel will find The Will To Death unavailable to him, as he has made himself unavailable to it. Humans being located at a single point in the moment is the reason we hear and see as we do, and it is this which makes art and its perception possible in the first place. Our limited scope of vision is a gift, allowing us to see left from right, up from down, positive from negative and so on. Because each of us possesses a singular perspective, we can trust what we see and feel. We can contradict ourselves and be right both times.

So to summarize, one must allow themselves to be controlled by, yet counter, that which controls them, in such a way that the momentum and basic design provided by the controller remains, while the will and individuality of the artist persists. The creative force is half the essence of the life force and half a correlative of the artist and all his essential negativities. In The Will To Death, the creative act is a friendly argument between the creative force and the artist. This is the same as two close friends arguing about boxing. Just as both friends have a certain knowledge in common which provides the basis for the argument, the artists ability to navigate through negations and divisions aligns him with the creative force and its additions and multiplications, to the point that the argument is actually an affirmation of that which connects them.

The life force is primarily concerned with the effects of communicative energy, and the creative force is primarily concerned with the increase of the quality of art, and they have a perpetual friendly argument along these lines, and the lives and work of entertainers and artists, and the various combinations of the two, are the subjects. On the surface, it would seem that the life force always wins the argument with the creative force, and the creative force always wins the argument with artists. But while the life force created the creative force, the creative force in turn created the human perception of the life force. And the creative force creates artists, but humans mere existence creates a space for the creative force to live within. This means the apparent loser is always also the winner, as life force, creative force, artist and audience are all essentially one thing, just as a boxing argument results in the affirmation that each friend is his own man while the sport itself connects their differences. This was all set in motion so the true wishes of the life force would be vivified, of necessity, by negative units of itself, which gradually results in the hidden intentions of the life force becoming visible. The creative forces purpose involves the life forces higher aspects emerging victorious over its lower aspects, and the artists purpose involves the creative forces higher aspects emerging victorious over its lower aspects. What we see of the life force and its ways may often appear detestable, but the creative force we love represents the hidden parts of the life force, which we have been given the power to cultivate. This has been put in our hands in order to bring a flower out of the dirt.

#john frusciante

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richincolor · 6 years

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Picture Us in the Light by Kelly Loy Gilbert

Danny Cheng has always known his parents have secrets. But when he discovers a taped-up box in his father’s closet filled with old letters and a file on a powerful Silicon Valley family, he realizes there’s much more to his family’s past than he ever imagined.

Danny has been an artist for as long as he can remember and it seems his path is set, with a scholarship to RISD and his family’s blessing to pursue the career he’s always dreamed of. Still, contemplating a future without his best friend, Harry Wong, by his side makes Danny feel a panic he can barely put into words. Harry and Danny’s lives are deeply intertwined and as they approach the one-year anniversary of a tragedy that shook their friend group to its core, Danny can’t stop asking himself if Harry is truly in love with his girlfriend, Regina Chan. When Danny digs deeper into his parents’ past, he uncovers a secret that disturbs the foundations of his family history and the carefully constructed facade his parents have maintained begins to crumble. With everything he loves in danger of being stripped away, Danny must face the ghosts of the past in order to build a future that belongs to him. [Image and summary via Goodreads]

Review: I loved Picture Us in the Light, end of story. Full disclosure: I’m basically incapable of producing an objective review, given that I grew up adjacent to Danny’s hometown of Cupertino. Now that that’s out of the way (just kidding, I’m totally circling back to this), let’s get to the actual review.

Picture Us in the Light is set in Silicon Valley, in a majority Asian town, and follows Danny Cheng as he nervously anticipates his acceptance to RISD, where he can fulfill all his dreams as an artist. His future seems all laid out, but he discovers family secrets and grapples with a past tragedy — all of which shape and warp his relationships with his best friends and his parents.

Danny’s story comes together in flashbacks and memories and small moments captured in the present, much like his art. With his future looming, family secrets coming to light, and past tragedy giving way to even more secrets, there’s a lot happening. And with worse execution, it would have felt crowded. Instead, every piece fits just right, and the sum of its parts is something greater, more melancholy and meaningful than you would expect.

My favorite part of the book happens early on, when Danny shares a soul-baring conversation with his best friend Harry. (Aside: No one told me that Danny was queer! Twitter, you have failed me.) That moment, and many more moments in the book, felt so real to me. This is where my Cupertino-adjacent upbringing makes me biased. All the little details and conversations were ones I recognized and had lived to a certain extent: The pressure-cooker academic environment of a Silicon Valley high school, the Ranch 99 grocery bags, hiking at Fremont Older, the constant refrain of “aiya!”, and kicking it at the Cupertino library. It was pretty much like reliving my teenage years, but with 80% more plot twists.

Picture Us in the Light also gets into some heavy topics, be warned: Depression, suicide, and immigration, among others. The issues were handled well and sensitively, in my opinion. Mental health is a very real problem in hyper-competitive schools in Silicon Valley, and that’s something that this book doesn’t shy away from. And in a time when immigrant families are even more vulnerable than before, Picture Us in the Light feels incredibly relevant.

Honestly, I can’t recommend Picture Us in the Light enough. I want to say something cliched and punny about pictures and a thousand words, but I’m not sure what, so I’ll leave you with this: Picture Us in the Light is beautiful and moving and important. Just read it.

Recommendation: Buy it now!

#picture us in the light #kelly loy gilbert #we need diverse books #queer ya #cupertino #ya lit

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jupitermelichios · 6 years

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How to tell if a film is bad

I’m not an expert, but I have an A-level in film studies and I’m an enthusiastic amateur, and I see a lot of people being confused about what makes a film good or bad, so I thought I’d share some things I’ve learnt.

The first thing is that good or bad is ultimately a purely subjective criticism. Just like in any other kind of media criticism, there are plenty of valid criticisms you can make but whether a film is actually good or not is ultimately a matter of taste. The grammar in the Harry Potter books is pretty bonkers in places (how much punctuation does one sentence need?!) but the books are still hugely popular and they touched a lot of people, including me. It’s hard to argue that Harry Potter is bad when it’s so beloved. A thing can be greater than the sum of its parts.

That said, here are some ways to analyse a film.

Technical elements:

This is the actual film-making - the camera-work, the editing, the costumes, sets, music etc. It doesn’t include the script or casting, which we’ll get onto later.

The Cinematography

Cinematography is how the film looks. Colours filters (these days this is most often a grey filter – think the difference between Purgatory and real life in Supernatural for an example of what that looks like, or literally anything directed by Zack Snyder), how something is actually filmed – angles, how close the camera is zoomed in or out, stuff like that, whether the shot is straight on or at an angle, whether we use a normal lens or a distorted one such as a fish-eye lens. The person in charge of that is the cinematographer or director of photography. A lot of directors have a favourite cinematographer that they work with again and again. Guillermo Navarro, for example, has been DP on almost every Guillermo Del Toro movie from Cronos to Pacific Rim. A lot of cinematography is style choices, and so largely subjective, but it also plays a big role in visual storytelling, and a badly filmed film can be genuinely confusing.

Things to look out for: do the shots match the needs of the scene (close ups to show emotion, wide angles for establishing shots of locations etc.), can we follow who's speaking to who during conversations, do you know where people are relative to one another, do fancy shots like Dutch angle shots (where the camera is at an angle so the shot is slanted), shaky hand-held camera shots or fish-eye shots (where the centre is zoomed in more than the edges) add to the narrative or are they just distracting and out of place.

Good cinematography: Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring – every shot is perfectly chosen to build the emotion and tension, wide angle aerial shots give us scale, close-ups give us emotion

Bad cinematography: Battlefield Earth – this entire scene is Dutch angles for no god damn reason

The Editing

Editing is the process of choosing which bits of the stuff filmed goes on the screen, and which goes in the bin. Editors choose when to cut between shots, which shots to cut between, and what order those cuts go in. Depending on the relationship between the director and the editor, the editor can have a huge role in shaping the story. Most modern western film-makers these days go for invisible editing, where the shots flow naturally into one another so that you don't really notice that you're actually switching between three or four different cameras. There are a few notable exceptions. Tarantino films go for a much more noticeable style of editing, hard cutting from shot to shot, which worked great with the late Sally Menke editing his films. Ang Lee's usual collaborator Tim Squyers likes his long shots – holding a single shot for much longer than you usually would before cutting. As long as the scene is comprehensible, it's really a matter of style. For an idea of how it can make a film incomprehensible, try and describe the action scenes from a Michael Bay Transformers movie – it's almost impossible because he uses constant smash-cut editing to confuse the eye about where everyone is relative to one another.

Things to look out for: do you know where everyone is relative to one another, can you follow the action, are you noticing the jumps from shot to shot in a way that doesn't feel natural, are shots being held for an uncomfortably long amount of time.

Good editing: Kingsman: the secret service – the editing is jerky, creating an effect reminiscent of comic book panels, but you know where Galahad is relative to everyone else throughout the fight

Bad editing: Taken 3 – Liam Neeson getting over a fence did not need more than one cut, but instead, we get 13

The Design

Design is the look of the costumes and sets. You might think this is only important in fantasy or historical settings, but it plays a huge part in setting the tone for any film. Legally Blond and Mean Girls wouldn't be the classics they are without the fantastic choices of costumes, which walk a fine line between extravagant enough to be desirable to teenage girls without being cartoonish. In a historical setting you have the added concerns of accuracy, and with a fantasy or sci-fi film, there are things like how clearly the various races are visually defined from one another. Film is a visual medium, and if everyone looks the same is doesn't matter how good the story is, you're going to be confused. And think how well a classic haunted house horror movie wouldn't work if you just set it in a normal looking house.

What to look out for: do the costumes fit the personalities and situations of the characters, are they historically accurate, do the sets seem appropriate (abandoned places look abandoned, fancy places look fancy etc.), if the film features multiple alien races or tribes can you tell what group someone is from, straight up do you like looking at the sets and costumes

Good design: Mad Max: Fury Road – the sets and costumes for this film are bizarrely perfect considering they're from the same series as Lord Humongous. So much thought went into every single design choice, and the result is a visually stunning film.

Bad design: Suicide Squad – the sets are just plain boring, the characters look nothing like their comics counterparts, the female characters are all sexed up for no reason (and when your female characters are showing more flesh than the ones in a DC comic, you know you've screwed up) and Enchantress changes costume multiple times for no reason. Croc is the only good bit of design on show here.

The Sound

Sound is all the stuff you hear including music and sound effects. Sound balancing is the art of picking the volumes all the different stuff should be. Good sound balancing is a rare thing – the ultimate test is explosions followed by dialogue: if the explosion was loud but not painful and you can clearly hear the dialogue that follows, that's probably a well-balanced film. If the explosion was painfully loud, or the dialogue was incomprehensibly quiet, that's a badly balanced film. Sound effects are all the noises that are made artificially, like the noise of magic or ray-guns being used. The music is just that, the music. Used well it's an additional layer of storytelling (in the case of bizarre Uve Boll movie 'In the Name of the King' it basically replaces the script as the main storytelling tool) but it shouldn't detract or distract from the on-screen action. An original soundtrack is one composed of music written especially for the film, a licensed soundtrack is made up of pre-existing music edited to fit the film. Licensed soundtracks are popular in Hollywood right now because Guardians of the Galaxy made all of the money, but done badly they're usually much more distracting than a bad original score.

What to look out for: does the music fit the mood, can you hear everything that's going on, do you feel like your ears are bleeding every time something blows up, is listening to the music distracting you from concentrating on the dialogue or action

Good sound: Star Wars – someone had to come up with the noise for lightsabers, and that person was a god damn genius. 90% of the real appeal of Star Wars is that deeply satisfying noise. Plus the music is great.

Bad sound: GoldenEye – it's a great movie, but the sound during the famous chase scene is atrocious. The music cuts between silence, the Bond theme and the Jaws theme at random, the tire screeches are louder than the dialogue and the music cuts don't match up with the shot cuts the way they should

The Stunts

Stunt choreography is working out all the stunts and stunt work is actually performing them. This doesn't just apply to action movies – if there's a car accident, or a dream sequence involving falling, that's stunt work. Any fight scenes are stunt work. Horse riding is usually stunt work.

Things to look out for: does it look realistic, can you tell when they switch from actor to stunt performer, can you see the wires (literally or metaphorically), do the characters have distinct fighting styles where appropriate

Good stunts: Pirates of the Caribbean: Curse of the black pearl – the first fight between Jack and Will is a thing of beauty, perfectly coordinated, silly without being completely unbelievable, timed beautifully and totally in character

Bad stunts: The Dark Knight Rises – watch carefully and you'll notice several henchmen dramatically collapsing without ever being touched, plus the whole scene relies on they attacking one or two at a time

The other stuff:

The Casting

Casting is what actor is picked for what role, and it can have a really big impact on the finished product. Casting actors who despise one another as best friends, or an actor who looks and sounds like a human puppy dog as the scariest character, for example, can kill an otherwise good film stone dead. And then there's whitewashing characters who were supposed to be people of colour. The casting director is in charge of this, though directors also have a say as do producers.

What to look out for: does the actor physically look like the character they're playing, do they have the range for the role, do they have believable chemistry with the people they're sharing the film with, do you believe what they're saying and doing

Good casting: Watchmen – whatever else you may think about this film, it's perfectly cast. No one but Jackie Earle Haley could have delivered Rorschach's dialogue and still ended up with the audience rooting for him, plus everyone looks like they just walked right off the page

Bad casting: Psycho – remaking Psycho was a weird idea to begin with, but casting Vince Vaughn as the serial killer was a truly ludicrous idea. He's easily the worst thing about a thoroughly uninspired production

The Writing

Writing is the actual plot of the film, the dialogue, and usually a fair chunk of how the lines are delivered (scripts will often specify the emotion actors are aiming for, as well as some of the movements they should make). There's a trend these days in film reviewing to make the technical elements the be all and end all of a film's quality while overlooking the script itself. I see a lot of people blaming directors for not being able to film unfilmably bad scripts, and I very rarely see the writers getting the praise they deserve when a film has a really great story.

What to look out for: are the characters developed as individuals, do you know that the key players motivations are, do the decisions people make make sense, do you understand what is going on.

Good writing: The Mummy – despite an extremely silly plot, you are completely clear from the beginning what the motivations are, and why everyone is doing the deeply silly things they do, plus every single good guy is likeable, which is surprisingly rare

Bad writing: Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice – this script resolves the central conflict by having the characters realise that their (totally unrelated) mothers have the same name. They realise this because on the brink of death, one of the characters starts talking about his mother by name, despite always calling her mom up to this point.

The Directing

And finally, the directing. A director oversees the actual making of the film. They tell actors how to deliver their lines. They discuss with designers, cinematographers and editors how they want the film to look. They have a say in casting and they interpret the text of the script. It can be hard to pin down how much of any one production is down to the director and how much the other people working alongside them, but generally, the sign of a truly good director is when all the elements work together to tell the story.

Good direction: Pan's Labyrinth – Del Toro also wrote and helped design this film, so it's very much his baby, but the whole film is a master-class in how to bring together all the elements of a film into a cohesive whole, and it speaks volumes about the relationship he has with his crew

Bad direction: Blood Rayne – Uve Boll deliberately makes terrible films as part of a complicated tax dodge and is also a horrible human being, so it's no surprise that Blood Rayne is an appalling mess of a film that Ben Kingsley only agreed to be because they promised he could keep his cape

Hopefully, this has been helpful, and next time someone tells you a film you love is bad or vice verse you’ll actually be able to put into words exactly why they’re wrong.

#film studies #film making #film 101

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centaurrential · 4 years

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“The Big See”

Before I start this next project, here are some addenda to my last post:

1. I made an error in my section on units of measurement. The time it takes for light to travel a meter is actually approximately 1/300,000ths of a second. However, what I said about using light as a standard for measurement still stands, and it’s pretty reasonable to at least think of it that way. That’s because light is sort of hierarchical in the sense that we obey it (at least we did, initially), and we don’t run the risk of falling into infinite regress, which according to professional philosophers is a problem (I might say that with a little sarcasm...). We didn’t build light like we do its human counterparts in terms of ‘boss-dom’; we only perform something like an irrigation.

2. An important intermediary in the psychology of a grocery shopper is an assumption that the supermarket will have what they need. The very fact that people even make these kinds of assumptions is indicative of how advanced our economy has become. So again, please stay mindful about the processes, that you don’t see plainly, that ensure you can have what you want. In one episode of “The Crown”, set some time in the 1960s, the Prime Minister of Great Britain (who happens to be the leader of the Labour Party - go figure) remarks that the opening of a new supermarket signals the “democratization” of food and other essentials, and he is quite right. Our essentials (and certainly non-essentials too!) have been consolidated into single, publicly accessible buildings--anyone can walk in and out. Many different products sit on the shelves, inertly, side by side--neighbours--as the inconspicuous faces of a wildly complex yet hidden ecosystem.

P.S. The link between human psychology and economics will resurface later in this post.

When developing characters, writers of fiction often comment on the momentum that launches the characters into writing themselves, almost independently of the author’s own mind. Hmm, I wonder why that is? Maybe it has something to do with that little thing that starts with the letter “A” and ends with “rchetypes”... I feel the same way about my own writing, which I view like a fiddlehead unfurling into a frond.

Ok, so, I was brought into this world at the intersection of a lot of different forces at work--I was a bridge between two completely different socio-economic classes, and I suppose that inevitably set me on a trajectory by which I would find myself in many, many diverse and often peculiar social situations. You know, if you’ve lived a quiet life that doesn’t involve zig-zagging from one insane scenario to the next, you’d assume that all people are a certain way. I will never say that I was always comfortable in such situations, but as a result of introspection and for my own sanity I needed to excavate some gratitude for those experiences. The reason for that is, the more difference, the more heterogeneity in the set of things you come into contact with, the more clearly you can see things for what they are. Here’s an analogy: It’s akin to the meaning of something, carved by a sentence. In the spirit of boundedness, sentences are then coated with another layer of meaning as they sit within paragraphs. Paragraphs within stories, and stories within ‘bodies of canonical literature’.

I admit it: I am a spy. When I was younger and less self-assured I’d often find myself the onlooker in social situations, and if I was a participant, it would often be to my detriment. Sometimes that was ‘cause something about me attracted negative attention, and sometimes because I found myself in a state of social paralysis, not having a clue what magic word would open the sky and send the ladder of social climbing down and within my reach. But in all of my glorious sponginess I picked up little observations here and there and so this, below, is the culmination of all that.

This is a commentary on human relationships, and particularly what people think they should offer to those relationships. I must make it clear that I am not pretending the problem is an easy one to solve because we are dealing with instinct, and deeply ingrained attitudes, but I do have principles and I do have an orientation that I prefer. Ultimately the way one chooses to act is their own prerogative (given a certain amount of knowledge that they possess), but there are always sacrifices to be made and consequences to think about. And for those who are capable of it, guilt is a beast.

I was once in a conversation with a mental health professional--a psychiatrist, to be exact. Meaning he had a legal licence to practise mental healthcare, to conduct psychotherapy, and to prescribe medication. He had what we think of as ‘credentials’. He said to me, “relationships don’t define you”.

WHAT?!

This is the kind of person that is entrusted with the emotional mending and security of a damaged individual, and these approaches to life are thought to be okay? Imagine someone impressionable, lost, misunderstood, and unable to understand people in return, taking this idiot’s word as law, and then applying that attitude toward their life’s activities from thereon out. It’s like, why the fuck are you feeling shitty in the first place? It’s because people can be cruel, and if you’re telling me that that’s not at all involved in forming your character, then...well, I just don’t know what to say to that. And the converse is true, too: as a human agent, you do have a responsibility to other people. This psychiatrist was basically saying that you are free from obligations to others, and I think that’s definitely reflected in the attitudes of the immature. If you don’t want that kind of responsibility then go be a hermit, completely alone, in the middle of nowhere, and let’s see how well you do. At least if you’re on your own you won’t have to be accountable to others.

You see, for the people who find themselves on the more radical side of the spectrum of reductionism, nothing and nobody is special, and nothing is sacred. In fact, I think reductionism breeds nihilism. (FYI, if you’re new to the idea of ‘reductionism’, it simply means that anything and everything can be explained in scientific terms. So for example, an emotion you may be feeling is only due to the presence of a hormone, or neurotransmitter, and along with that, its molecular structure and how that interacts with your neural structure.) Every damn thing can be explained to oblivion...

Fools.

Imagine physically entering a room with furnishings arranged a certain way, art of a particular kind on the wall, different colours interacting with one another, and the feeling you get when you take it all in. Do you feel good? It must mean the different elements giving the space definition are interacting harmoniously according to your innate sensibilities. Do you feel bad energy? Then there is something amiss. Maybe you can figure out what needs changing, maybe you can’t. Maybe it’s so overwhelmingly bad that you have to leave the space. I see human interaction the same way, and I challenge the reductionists to piece together every little detail about the nice room that they can, and then give me a scientific explanation for why those details produce a certain feeling. I want it to be revelatory enough to make me go, “So THAT’s why!!!”

I hope you trust your grammar.

I don’t know much about feng shui, but I’d imagine what I described above is similar. And because it’s obvious different people have different aesthetic preferences, it follows that the ‘energetic configurations’ they prefer are different too. By now you probably realize that when I use the term “energy” I’m not using it like E = mc2, I’m using it in the New Age way.

Sometimes quasi-reductionists allow for things called “emergent properties”. That basically means that there are little elements that can easily be described in an atomistic fashion, but that “the whole is greater than the sum of its parts”. If you think that way, then maybe the idea of a soul has some credibility. I think this is what Rene Descartes (also the inventor of the Cartesian plane I used in my last post) grappled with in his investigation into where the mind “sat”. He decided it was the pineal gland, but he was saying that there needs to be a location, a physical location. The mind-body dichotomy is a difficult thing to resolve, if it’s even a dichotomy at all... But I think in general people have a hard time with the concept of a soul because the soul is intangible, and science is now so integral to the way we live our lives that without scientific explanation we are left dumbfounded. But we can’t just leave it at that; oh no, it’s yet another frontier that must be conquered... If there’s something we think we can know, we must know it.

It’s sort of been decided that reason in decision-making is best practice. That was to ensure the people who make decisions are trustworthy; that their personal biases and wacky emotions wouldn’t get in the way of valuable, objective contributions to the development of civilization. If you consider the lay of the land today and you think it’s a good thing, then that shift in thinking paid off nicely. But emotion of ANY kind is now thought to be an interference; it is unprofessional, it is inappropriate, it is not reasonable.

In fact, for many people, relationships are just an afterthought. Like parents who don’t think twice about the way they say things to their young children when admonishing them. And emotional labour isn’t thought to require as much mindfulness, or to be as rewarding as market-related labour and therefore the young ones you’re responsible for teaching about how to behave as honourable people in the world suffer greatly. Wake up! Those little ones will, in no time, be carrying the anchors of the future within them. Child psychologists have identified the age period between 2 and 4 years to be absolutely crucial in forming a child’s sociability. Of course the relative progression of time for an adult compared to a child is fast. Two years can go by in what seems like an instant (and parents do often say that is the case), but for a child of that age, two years is a hell of a long time. Additionally, we need to take seriously the fact that investment of that type is not something you can just go back and change in case it doesn’t suit you in the future. It’s either now, or never.

And as those kids grow up, they’re going to find something to invest in, too.

Say you, the now-grown kid, decide to one day admit to a friend that, God forbid, you want to fall in love and you are searching for your partner. The usual response is: “Focus on your education. Focus on your career; get that established before you do anything like that.” And the best one of all: “Have some ‘fun’ before you settle down.” Okay, there’s a lot to unpack here.

Right off the bat you know this friend doesn’t give equal importance to both “The Career” and to romantic relationships. You know what that’s a product of? Propaganda. I mean, how could you possibly be a productive member of a capitalist society if you devote a good chunk of your energy to another person? There’s no bankable return on that kind of labour! The perpetrators of that propaganda hate real love because it’s so compelling and because it compels people like that it’s considered a “distraction” - it interferes with the profiteer’s ability to squeeze out of you everything that they possibly can. So what they’ve decided to do is market individualism and radical independence as ‘the right way’. And not only that, but what real love can show you is a need to switch up your priorities, that there is less you need in the way of materialism because the love from this person sends you to outer SPACE!

We’re told it’s a dangerous thing for a person to be dependent on another in that way. But that is yet another example of things we just assume to be the truth because that’s the structure of the current zeitgeist.

And what’s more, you shouldn’t put all your eggs in one basket because people are fickle. Your education is something no one can take away from you, but your partner could leave in a heartbeat, if they decide there are better “opportunities” around. But then I say to the partner who took off: if you think of love and romance as opportunities, maybe you shouldn’t allow other folks to waste their time on you. And even if you are like that and you think you’ve found someone you could legally bind yourself to, you’re certainly not spiritually bound, and I would hate to be that other person, knowing that you’re not throwing your entire might into it; that you’re not loving at full capacity.

Of course, that conception of “romancing” can be learned too, and this is where that notion of “fun” comes into play. To be shallow and promiscuous, to make sure that you can lose your virginity as fast as possible, the free love, the cool detachment from relationships - it’s all bullshit. The sixties were obviously a pivotal moment for the shift in perception of sex and for some reason people thought the revolution to be completely justifiable. Now, people are convinced that giving it all away is a sign of liberation, of self-confidence, of self-determination - even if there’s something tugging at them that may be hinting otherwise. And even if that’s genuinely what you want to do with yourself, I can’t help but think of that attitude as being inherently nihilistic.

Many years ago I was reading an issue of Cosmopolitan where I came across an interview with Scarlett Johansson. Never mind what her personal decisions looked like, she said something profound. She said that sex (of the kind that involves both a penis and a vagina) is fundamentally different between men and women: for women, sex literally is invasive. People with penises share; people with vaginas invite. And for a young woman to try to convince herself that she should feel empowered by these invitations, it can be seriously damaging. I’d say the same is true for a lot of men, who really do believe that sex should be shared in the context of committed love, but conventional wisdom dictates that men find it easier to be promiscuous, to separate emotion from sex, and that women really need to “catch up” as part of their commitment to feminism. This obviously applies to non-binary individuals too. Like I said earlier, what one decides to do is their prerogative, but look critically at your reasons for making certain choices. Don’t, for one second, force yourself to believe that being promiscuous is the only way you can take ownership of your sexuality. Coercion doesn’t just happen on a one-to-one level.

The point is that people aren’t fucking disposable, but of course disposability is capitalism’s modus operandi and that doesn’t just apply to that smartphone of yours that’s gonna break in a couple of years (or that will be superseded by a better model, whichever comes first).

People do still look for love; it’s in our nature. But these days, they make lists of qualities their ideal partners must possess. And it’s always generic shit like, “must have a sense of humour, must be kind, must be good-looking”...o rly? But the things that cause you to love a person can’t be captured with such dull language. When I think of these lists, I think of that song by Beyonce, “Irreplaceable”. She’s telling the dude not to get too comfortable because the spot he is currently occupying can easily be filled by someone else! That is not love, that is opportunism. Why would you even bother? When you really love a person, you think, “This is the truth. Things cannot be any other way.”

I also happen to think that once people sort of reach the age when marriage becomes a serious consideration, they often don’t marry because of love and a willingness to merge their lives. It’s more like, “Well you seem convenient and this is yet another thing I have to check off my to-do list.” I really want to give some folks a good shake and say to them, you do realize that the wedding you are planning is ONE day where you get to be the star, where you’re gathering the people that mean something to you so you can make a public declaration of your love and commitment to care for the person’s heart (because that is your responsibility), and that a wedding day is absolutely nothing like the rest of your life?!

And then there’s that trope in modern Hollywood, where partnered, career women gather around wine and complain about their significant others. Guys do it too, but they’re obviously shown drinking beer instead of wine and it’s more like, “Oh, you know the old ball-and-chain said I did X wrong today...” And similarly, in “The Crown”, where Tony, Princess Margaret’s photographer lover distinctly says, “Marriage is the opposite of happiness” - but they get married anyway!!! It’s like there’s a brick wall that’s being thrown up, cutting you off from your partner. That doesn’t look like a real partnership to me. And I think, the moment you decide that’s what you’re gonna do, that’s how you’re gonna live your life in response to this other person, then you should seriously reconsider your choices. I used to look at people who behaved like that and think, God, is that what marriage is actually like? Then I want no part of it! Those sorts of arrangements inevitably lead to misery. And divorce can send a person packing with their tail between their legs because it is perceived as a failure. And rightly so. It is a failure of mindfulness, it is a reflection of the “afterthought” I spoke of earlier. It is an indication of your decision to work harder at other shit than at your most important relationship. It is a situation where gratitude is replaced by taking things for granted.

People tend to think that if you’re not a relative of someone’s, that when the “only” stakes at hand are romantic/intimate ones, that such a person is untrustworthy. That’s because those bonds are no longer thought to be strong enough to withstand tests. Let me provide you with a reality check: sometimes even your blood relatives cannot be trusted because they don’t always have your best interests at heart. And if you assume that their goodwill toward you is a given because you are a “natural” family, you would be wrong. Again, you must always pay attention to a person’s motives, what spurs them into action, and we would all do well to treat opinions formed out of resentment with a grain of salt.

You may think that psychopaths are only out to end conscious lives, but those are only the obvious ones, and often they don’t get very far because they are so obvious. The people who put their own evil to good use are disguised in much better ways - so well that you can’t even tell, and they’re the ones that deliberately manipulate your thinking for their own benefit, but definitely not for yours. You may have encountered someone like this in your personal life and sensed that something was “off”. But you’re in denial because there’s no way someone close to you could have evil in them, and you really want to believe that he or she is a good person, but you certainly won’t say anything for fear of blowing the roof off the house. How awkward would THAT be?

I want to offer a new definition of capitalism, which is “the method of creating problems where there are none, and offering a solution that can only be purchased.” Problems are identified in advertising and marketing. Solutions are in the shops. Take make-up for example. I’ve worn it, and at some point I’ll probably wear it again. It can be fun; it can be a way to express yourself as part of a sartorial performance, where people gather to see what you have to (non-verbally) say. But I do not approve of the thinking that a person needs to distort their features, every damn day, because they think their natural faces aren’t good enough. Over the last decade or so, make-up development and marketing has basically exploded and been supported by seemingly innocuous vehicles such as Instagram. And why is it that women suffer disproportionately in this arena compared to men? Don’t get me wrong - men have their problems too, which I will talk about in a bit. But THIS is just so lopsided: what capitalists are telling you is that there is a gap between who you really are and how you should be, and you need to fork out the money, and you need to engage in more labour, to close that gap. No doubt though, what they demand of you must be reasonable enough that it will captivate a large enough audience to make development worth it.

“Aspect perception” is key here, and I’m not talking about ‘contouring of the face’. I’m talking about the entrenched attitude that your plain skin, in all its blemish-y loveliness, needs fixing. I do believe it takes courage to go out in public and leave behind the foundation and the concealer and the other like, SEVEN products some women use daily, because in a way you are baring yourself and you are making yourself vulnerable. Flamboyant women have it easier than flamboyant men, that’s for sure. But male faces are fine just as they are; why can’t that hold true for women?

So now we’re entering the territory of that wild beast we like to call feminism. I just want to make a disclaimer before I piss a lot of people off, in case I haven’t already done so: there is absolutely no way an umbrella term like feminism can equalize all women in terms of the problems we experience, and we must be very careful to sift through those problems that women happen to experience, and those problems that women have because they are women. After all, feminism is at its core a meditation on causes and effects, problems and ways to mitigate them. I mean, I don’t blame people for the messiness of this topic - it’s really bloody hard to put one’s finger on a single, fundamental fact from which all problems emanate. What I absolutely cannot condone is the idea that the solution is to HATE MEN. Sure, there are disgraceful men around, but there are also disgraceful women who believe that they possess a sort of “moral immunity” just because they are women. I’ve had conversations with (at least partially straight) women who may or may not be in relationships with men, who BASH men for the sole reason that they are men! It’s shocking. Would you want to be in a relationship with a person who felt that you were a problem because of something you couldn’t change?

I understand that patriarchy can hit women hard. Some more so than others. But men suffer because of “patriarchy” too, and they don’t always enjoy the privilege that leftists assume men have. Let me explain it this way: when you see a man with power, you see a man. The problem on “the woman’s side” is that she feels there is no one to represent her. That’s one kind of problem. On the other hand, what men see when they look at a man with power is someone pretending to represent them, but what’s actually going on is that the man-spectator identifies all the qualities he has that don’t match up to the ‘ideal’ ones being marketed, and sees that gap I spoke of earlier and really struggles with what he needs to do to fill it. So here we go, here is a problem for which a solution must be found. Feminism shouldn’t be about antagonism between men and women, but unfortunately that’s how things have evolved and certain subsets of women are playing dodgeball with certain subsets of men. Men aren’t just thrown into the world as babies with a hunger for domination - those are learned behaviours, just as women with questionable morals are taught too. But of course a lot of men feel they need to keep quiet because this privilege is their birthright and because they’re men they’ve forfeited any shot at an opinion! At least that’s how it appears to me.

I’ve encountered all manner of people in my life, and let me reiterate something that I think we’ve heard lots. No matter what political orientation a person has, no matter how “cool” they are, to decide if they’re worth having around you must look at the way they treat people, because that’ll illuminate what they really think life should be made of. I’ve met people who consider themselves “radical social justice warriors” and “progressive”, but they’re rude, unkind, and worst of all, they lack humility. Many of them are filled with hate too. And while it is obvious that we need to recalibrate ourselves socially (hence this post), oppression comes in forms that many progressives are totally oblivious to, often because they are “worldly” individuals who come from middle-class backgrounds.

Oppression is not just about the colour of someone’s skin or sexuality. For crying out loud, a person who is too tall or too short can technically be oppressed too, if they find themselves in a situation that wasn’t constructed with their literal point of view in mind! I would define oppression as “a relationship between a person and their environment, whereby the environment is constructed in such a way that does not allow for the free and comfortable movement and expression of that individual.” So oppression isn’t static, and if we were to continue thinking of it as static, we’d still be running into problems trying to figure out what the hell to do about it.

Now, you may be asking why I’m talking about radical politics in a post that is focused on relationships. I’ve been around people who were socially disenfranchised. Not since I got ‘woke’, but when I was a child. There’s nothing less motivating or less empowering than the feeling that no one listens to your voice and you haven’t got anyone to translate for you, or to amplify your voice through a friggin’ megaphone. The people in those positions are usually poor, but they’re still trying to live their lives with the goal to at least sometimes feel happy. If that means shopping at big bad Walmart, then so be it. There is no “organizational”, or mobilizing potential there. It is by virtue of that fact that they continue to be in the positions they are in! They have few friends. They are avoided. They are forgotten. You don’t act like a good person because if you don’t you’re going to Hell. You act like a good person because you can’t stand the thought of someone else’s loneliness, pain, and the thought that real love might be completely absent from their lives. And to think that you have caused another’s pain, that is hell in itself. Sometimes I think about those people and I get sad, but what comforts me is the beatitude, “The meek will inherit the Earth.” That one always stuck with me.

Another thing. I’ve come into contact with people who have anarchistic sentiments, and frankly I sympathize with them. They do see how messed up this world has become and some feel desperate enough that they think we’d all be in a better position if we didn’t have capitalism’s puppets signing on the dotted lines. However, I don’t think it’s practical to raze the organizational components of society to the ground. Not only because the sheer amount of infrastructure we’ve built, but because things are so convoluted that people would enter a state of psychological shock! And while some shock is good, too much is debilitating. So with that understanding in mind, any criticisms I have, I offer from a dialectical perspective.

Karl Marx kind of used dialectics in his theories, and what the word basically means is that you’ve got something called a ‘thesis’ and something called an ‘antithesis’, with the antithesis usually being a response to the thesis, and they are always in opposition in some way. If you get lucky, you can meld the two together to generate a ‘synthesis’. This process can go on indefinitely, but the premise is that you can use the tools you’ve already got (and we have MANY, both technological and conceptual) to create something new... and possibly something better. People are angry all over the place (obviously - look how long this post is) and for good reason, but we really need to rethink how we channel that anger. I believe we all agree in one way though: just cut the shit.

Evil is a supernatural thing that preys on you and intentionally toys with the way you see yourself, and the way you see other people. It performs a rape of the soul. It creeps so slyly it can literally be staring you in the face and you don’t even notice it. It’s not like the ‘bad guys’ you see in Hollywood, where it’s blatant about its evilness. What’s so shockingly messed up about it is that it can totally disorient you. It sends you spiralling, shoves you into insanity, makes you distrustful, suspicious. It isolates you. It can cause you to value things you shouldn’t, and it devalues what’s already good.

I know, because it’s happened to me.

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