#there r better ways to articulate this thing that has been said a thousand times b4 but yk

[literaturebf]

yeah whatever. it's never a waste of time to have loved someone and to have been loved in return. okay

[peachjagiya]

Yes to talking about the dynamics between the individual members and the company. I was started thinking about this again because of Bam's insta, actually, haha.

I agree that I think JK and Tae have a different relationship with the company, as opposed to other members like Namjoon or Jimin. And I definitely think there are similarities between Jk and Tae's approach -- and I think that is based on their own personalities as well as their closeness/influence on each other. Probably a better way to put it but I think they understand their responsibilities when it comes to the company but they have both decided to trust themselves first and foremost. I think about JK's "I'd never do something that everyone thought was wrong but when there are multiple ways, I'm going to do it my way" (paraphrased) and Tae's point about "being free" and his definition of free being different than others.

I think one of the similarities between JK and Tae is their comfort doing "non idol" things.

So the pup-stagram lead in. JK deleting his very popular instagram right before his solo launch simply because he didn't want to have it anymore (and sure, he's using weverse which benefits the company but seriously what doesn't). How does he spend his time on the social media: dance challenges, tipsy midnight lives and, now, managing an instagram for his dog. Carefully curated social media presence. My man said, Imma do me, thankyouverymuch. And let's not forget Tae. THE visual of K-pop. The face that launched a thousand ships. World's most handsome man. He goes to literally anything and grown men for miles lose their minds. What does he do with his anticipated solo launch? A close up of Yeontan. BRILLIANT. They both have different tastes and sounds (yet still have shared playlists!) but both so clearly have decided they are doing to redefine "idol" in a way that works for them.

Obviously there are differences. The company has goals (take over the western world!) and JK is central to that. And that supports his goals. So he benefits more directly from the company than Tae. I cannot articulate how much I love Tae's album strategy - from the sound, the visual, the vibes and the choice not to use the same in house team that has overlooked and undervalued him for 10 years.

I also agree with the point about Jin and Yoongi. I think they maintain a slightly more distanced or level perspective. I think it comes from age/maturity. When they started, they were young but not children. It's also interesting to think about how personal confidence and insecurity plays into it. I think Yoongi was confident in his abilities (he had been working on music prior) but had insecurities/anger about what it meant to be doing this in a k-pop space. Jin may have been insecure about his dancing or singing but he immediately stepped into the role of (handsome) hyung and knew it was needed of him (Yoongi's chicken blender meal, ew). I also think it comes from Jin having some security in his family background and him taking the role of hyung very seriously (more so than "idol"). Yoongi's relationship I think has evolved as he has gotten older, less angry and more successful. I think he has seen it for what it is and understood what needed to be done but that he also understand that changes as they literally built that company into what it is today.

Jimin and Hobi (until this documentary) are interesting because I'm not sure we ever really see them outside of idol mode. JM has acknowledged that even at the beginning he was hyper focused on roles and responsibilities. Maybe because they are performers and dancers. Namjoon used to be more that like that too -- the weight of being the leader - but I think we started to see that shift once he got to released Indigo. In fact, I think their solo careers are really how we can sort of tell so much about not only their tastes but their approach. Ok, this is getting too long. sorry for the rambling.

All of this, yes.

Their solo careers really did show much more authentic sides of themselves. I am so here for who Namjoon became in lives last year. Just a bit more free. When he has so much pressure on him to lead and maintain, I really enjoyed seeing him talking openly and standing up for himself.

Here's a thing I'm pondering: I wonder if they'll find it hard going back into a group setting. I think these guys love each other so much on a personal level but their different professional approaches could create... Hmm, not tension as such...

Maybe just a tiny bit of the awkward initially? Or you might start to see these differences a bit more clearly? This is all just supposition though and they're veterans by now.

It's interesting to think about how they'll navigate this after a period where they've been separated for a long time though. Naturally you'd fall into a routine with each other if you spend most days together but the seven of them are distinctly separate now and did a lot of growing professionally last year. Obviously they all still talk but they're not spending a lot of time working together.

Clear subunits have developed and matured over this period too. JK and Tae, Jimin and Yoongi. But then Jimin and JK are going to have a shared experience, Joonie and Tae too. Yoongi has a very different experience from the other six. And some things might be exactly the same: maknae line still a natural trio (thinking of Jeju), Jin still everyone's mummy, Jimin and Hobi still super close, everyone still holds Namjoon to the highest regard.

The dynamics will be super interesting.

I have a hunch - and honestly I'm just thinking out loud, these aren't hard and fast opinions as such - that JK might be key. He's interesting to me because I think his age and role in the hierarchy of the band has made him at times compliant with the requirements of being an idol and recognises how the company aligns with his goals and yet sometimes he seems extremely weary of it. He seems the most conflicted, maybe. I wonder what 2025 will be like for him most of all.

(the delulu in me says his conflict is very heart versus head but... Let's leave that out of this post for now.)

I'm really intrigued and excited to see. Whether they slip back into full group or if a solo-but-together approach helps them out. I personally would love a tour to include their solo stuff.

Now I'm getting rambly. Thanks anon, this is so interesting to think about 💜

[kjack89]

Determination of Death (pt. 2/2)

Continued from here.

All of the angst. If y’all thought this was going to secretly be angst with a happy ending, well...you’ve got another think coming.

Former E/R, modern AU. CW: car accident, major injuries, discussion of end of life care, referenced major character death.

Joly led the way out of the meeting room, and Grantaire remembered only upon seeing the expectant faces staring at them from the waiting room that no one else knew what was going on. “Oh, and can you, uh, fill everyone else in?” he asked Joly weakly, unable to bring himself to look any of them in the eye. “You have my permission, or whatever.”

“Of course,” Joly said quietly. “Though you should know...they’ll probably have some opinions on what decision you should make.”

Grantaire snorted. “Your friends? Having opinions? I’m shocked, I tell you. Shocked.”

Joly cracked a small smile. “Sarcasm doesn’t become you,” he informed Grantaire. “It never has. Besides, it’s ‘our’.”

Grantaire frowned at his back. “Our what?”

“Our friends. Not just mine.”

Grantaire’s expression softened. “Maybe that was true before—” he started, but he broke off when Joly came to an abrupt stop outside of a hospital room door. “Is this it?”

Joly nodded. “Do you want me to come in with you?”

Grantaire’s initial instinct was to say no, but judging by the look on Joly’s face, it wouldn’t hurt to have someone with him, at least at first. “Yeah,” he said. “Please.”

“Of course.” Joly pushed the door open and held it for Grantaire, who took a deep breath before stepping into the room. It was quiet, especially compared to the chaos of the hospital; the only sounds were the beeping from the heart monitor and whooshing sound from what Grantaire assumed was the ventilator. 

And there, lying on the hospital bed, more still than Grantaire had ever seen him, was Enjolras.

Even with Enjolras’s head bandaged, even with his face bruised and bloody, even with tubes coming out of him from seemingly every angle, Grantaire still would have recognized him. Every line in Enjolras’s body was as familiar to Grantaire as breathing, even now, even like this, even after so much time had passed since he had last seen him.

He crossed to him almost without thinking, drawn as always to Enjolras like a moth to a flame. But this time, Enjolras didn’t glance up at him in irritation for disturbing him when he was working, or with his expression softening when he saw it was Grantaire. He didn’t tilt his head up automatically for a kiss or roll his eyes and brush Grantaire off. He didn’t scrunch his nose and groan because the alarm clock just went off and he didn’t want to get up yet.

He just lay there, completely still, and even though Grantaire had been expecting it, had been bracing himself for it, it still knocked the breath out of him.

Grantaire reached automatically for his hand, running his thumb automatically over the bare spot on Enjolras’s ring finger where his wedding ring had once sat. He wondered briefly what Enjolras had done with it. Grantaire used to joke to anyone who would listen that he had chucked his into the ocean because good fucking riddance, but he hadn’t – his wedding ring was in the back of the top drawer of his dresser. 

He had never been able to articulate why he kept it, but looking at Enjolras lying there like that, feeling the way his own heart stuttered in his chest, he thought he might’ve finally figured it out.

“He’s so warm,” he remarked absently, turning Enjolras’s hand over in his own, rubbing the pad of his thumb across Enjolras’s palm in a way that used to make the man laugh and scold him for tickling him, though there was no reaction now. “I don’t know what I was expecting—”

That wasn’t quite true. He had expected him to be cold.

He had expected him to be dead.

Sympathy was clear in Joly’s expression, and he reached out to gently touch Grantaire’s shoulder. “Are you ok?” he asked softly. 

Of course he wasn’t ok – he was never going to be ok again. But he forced a smile for Joly, and jerked a nod. “Yeah,” he said. “I’m fine.” He cleared his throat, looking back down at Enjolras again. “How – how soon do I need to make a decision?”

“Like I said, we’ll retest for brain activity in a few hours. If we still see some functioning, you technically have as long as you want or need—”

“Joly.” Grantaire didn’t say anything else, but he didn’t need to know – Joly knew him well enough to know he just wanted a straight answer.

“But I’d recommend making a decision on withdrawal of care sooner rather than later, especially if you want to donate his organs,” Joly finished. “The sooner we can harvest them, the better the chances are that they won’t suffer any damage.”

Grantaire nodded again, and Joly squeezed his shoulder. “If you need anything, just push the call button. I’m gonna…” Joly had to pause and clear his throat. “I’m gonna go fill everyone else in.”

“Good luck,” Grantaire told him, meaning it more than he could possibly convey. Joly patted him on the shoulder once more before leaving, and Grantaire was alone with Enjolras.

He had imagined this moment so many times, but never like this.

He sat down in one of the chairs next to Enjolras’s bed without letting go of Enjolras’s hand. Part of him wanted to touch Enjolras, to run his fingers across his cheekbone or trace the line of his jaw, but the bruising and swelling stopped him.

The last thing he wanted to do was cause Enjolras any more pain than he already had.

Instead, he raised Enjolras’s hand to his mouth, pressing a kiss to his knuckles like he had done a thousand times before. “Hey Enj,” he whispered. “It’s been a long time, huh? I know you said you never wanted to see me again, but...I think given the circumstances, we can make an exception.”

Enjolras didn’t respond, and Grantaire just sat like that for a long time, holding Enjolras’s hand in both of his, completely unaware of anything else, including the tears that streamed down his cheeks.

----------

Maybe it was the fact that he’d gotten no sleep the night before, or maybe it was the unbearable emotional trauma, but at some point Grantaire must’ve fallen asleep, because the next thing he knew, someone was shaking his shoulder gently. “Hey,” Joly said, sounding just as tired as Grantaire felt. “I figured you could use some company.”

Grantaire slowly sat up, looking automatically at Enjolras, who hadn’t so much as shifted in the bed. He was still holding Enjolras’s hand, and he squeezed it once, even though he knew he wouldn’t get a response. “I’m always happy for company, but you’ve had an impossibly long day. Shouldn’t you be getting home and getting some sleep?”

“I actually wasn’t talking about myself,” Joly said, opening the door. “I brought some other folks who want to see Enjolras.” Grantaire blinked as all of Les Amis filed in, many with telltale red eyes and exhaustion tightening their features. “Visitors are supposed to be limited to no more than four, but I figured no one in the hospital would mind. Provided, um, you don’t mind either.”

As if Grantaire could very well kick them out now that they were all in there, looking at him expectantly. “Of course not,” Grantaire mumbled, looking back at Enjolras before standing up stiffly. “Someone else can sit with him for a bit—”

The words were barely out of his mouth before Combeferre and Courfeyrac had sat down, Courfeyrac taking Enjolras’s hand, and Grantaire bit back the jealousy he had absolutely no right to feel at that.

He ducked his head as he pushed through to the back of the room, nodding in response to the few murmured greetings he got from the friends he hadn’t seen in almost as long as he hadn’t seen Enjolras. He found himself next to Jehan, who didn’t even hesitate, looping his arm through Grantaire’s and pulling him close, resting his head against Grantaire’s shoulder as if no time had passed at all.

“You doing ok?” he asked him in an undertone, and Grantaire just shrugged.

“Define alright,” he murmured, giving Jehan a tight, strained smile. “I’m alive. Which is about where the bar is at right now.”

Jehan stifled a laugh, which Grantaire found a little gratifying. Then again, if anyone would appreciate morbid humor at a time like this…

Judging by the dirty look Feuilly shot him from his other side, Jehan was about the only one who appreciated it.

He forced himself to look at Enjolras, watching as Combeferre reached up to rest a hand lightly on the top of Enjolras’s head, almost as if he was trying to stroke Enjolras’s hair despite it being hidden by bandages. Courfeyrac let out a shaky sigh. “He could almost be sleeping,” he said.

It took everything in Grantaire not to laugh, though clearly something of what he was feeling must’ve shown on his face, because Jehan arched an eyebrow at him. “What?” he whispered.

Grantaire shook his head, not intending on explaining, but this time, it wasn’t just Feuilly who gave him a look – everyone swiveled to stare at him, as if he had just sworn in church or something. “Nothing, it’s just…” Grantaire cleared his throat. “Clearly none of you ever saw Enjolras sleep. He was the least peaceful sleeper of all time. I think I’ve still got the bruises on my legs from him kicking me as he thrashed around, and it’s been a few years since I was subjected to it. It was like sleeping with a very large, particularly violent fish.”

Bossuet looked very much like he couldn’t decide if he wanted to laugh or cry. “That’s – that’s horrible.”

Grantaire shrugged, managing another small smile. “Maybe. But it’s also true.”

“I really don’t think,” Combeferre interjected, his voice sharp, “that this is an appropriate topic of conversation. If this is the type of thing you want to talk about, maybe you should step outside.”

Combeferre’s disapproval was hardly anything new, and maybe it was just because Grantaire’s nerves were stretched to the breaking point as it was, but he met Combeferre’s icy glare with one of his own. “And seeing as how this is still my husband and I’m still his medical proxy and you’re all here with my permission, maybe you should go fuck yourself,” he said pleasantly.

Combeferre stood up so suddenly that Courfeyrac, who had been resting his head against Combeferre’s shoulder, was almost knocked out of his chair. “Is that really how you want to do this?” he snapped, angrier than Grantaire had ever heard him. “You want a long, protracted legal battle while we get a judge to agree that while you were married to him for all of thirty seconds, we’re his family?:

Joly cleared his throat. “Guys—”

“Good luck with that,” Grantaire said with a smirk. “Just because you hate me doesn’t change the law. I know this wasn’t what you had in mind when you marched and protested in favor of gay marriage, but unintended consequences and all that—”

“Guys,” Joly repeated, louder this time. “All of you need to go outside. It’s time for us to do Enjolras’s repeat brain function tests.”

It was as if all the oxygen had been sucked out of the room. Combeferre’s shoulders slumped, and all the fight left Grantaire just as quickly. They all filed out just as they had filed in, though this time, Grantaire went with them, refusing to look back at Enjolras, mainly because he wasn’t sure he would make it outside if he did. 

As soon as he got out in the hallway, Grantaire slumped with his back against the wall, slowly sliding down until he was sitting on the floor. He wanted nothing more than to hide his head in his hands, to block the world out so that he could pretend this was all a bad dream that he might still wake up from.

But that would just delay the inevitable, and Grantaire had never much cared for that option.

Instead, he forced himself to look up at Combeferre, who was avoiding looking at him. “I’m sorry,” he said softly, and Combeferre’s eyes met his. “Of course I don’t want that. And I didn’t mean—”

“Neither did I,” Combeferre told him, exhaustion clear in his expression. “I know Enjolras loved you. Even after everything. We all do.” Grantaire glanced around the circle of his former friends, and all of them were nodding. His chest suddenly felt too tight, but before he could say anything, Combeferre continued, “And you know just as much as any of us. Probably better than most of us.” Combeferre gave Grantaire a tentative smile. “Besides, he and I had to share a bed at a conference once and I’m pretty sure I limped for about a month afterwards from how many times he kicked me.”

But Grantaire didn’t smile, Combeferre’s words picking open a scab on his heart that he hadn’t even realized he’d been carrying with him. “I don’t know him anymore,” he said softly, and Combeferre’s smile disappeared. “I mean, honestly, I don’t know if I ever did. I thought I did once, maybe. But now…”

He trailed off, and they all fell into silence. After a few minutes like that, quiet, unrelated conversations broke out. Grantaire watched all these people he had once considered his closest friends, watched Courfeyrac wrap his arms around Pontmercy from behind, resting his head against Marius’s back because Marius was too tall for him to rest his chin on his shoulder. He watched as Jehan and Combeferre sat down across the hall, discussing some article they had both read in quiet tones, both clearly looking for a distraction. Bahorel and Feuilly offered to get coffee for anyone who wanted it, and both headed in the direction of the cafeteria, neither walking quite as fast as they usually did. Bossuet sat next to a pretty woman in scrubs who Grantaire didn’t know but realized must be Musichetta, who he had heard about but never gotten a chance to meet before everything fell apart. 

That was nice, Grantaire thought distractedly. They all had someone.

Well, except for him. 

Grantaire was alone.

When the door to Enjolras’s room opened and Joly stepped out, all conversation died. Joly’s expression was unreadable as he looked down at Grantaire. “We should talk privately,” he said, but Grantaire shook his head.

“Whatever you have to say, you might as well tell all of us,” he said tiredly. “Saves you from just having to repeat it in five minutes.”

Joly nodded. “Ok,” he said before taking a deep breath and glancing around at all of them. “The scans revealed the same level of brain activity as before. Meaning he is not legally brain dead.”

Grantaire groaned, tipping his head back to rest it against the wall. “So the ball’s in my court,�� he said heavily, and Joly nodded again.

“Yes. It’s your decision where we go from here.”

Grantaire exhaled sharply before barking a laugh. “You know, the irony is, he said that I would know,” he said to no one in particular.

“What?” Combeferre asked, his brow furrowed.

“That’s why he picked me,” Grantaire said, staring up at the ceiling. “I told Enjolras when we got married that he should still make Pontmercy his medical proxy like everyone else did. Told him that I would probably be right there with him getting my ass kicked so I’d be useless anyway. But he said that he trusted me.” Tears pricked in the corners of Grantaire’s eyes but he didn’t bother trying to stop them as they fell. “He said that I’d know when his work was done, when it was time to let him go.”

Silence again fell over everyone, but this time, it was Bahorel who broke it, blurting, “That’s seriously what you two would talk about?” Everyone stared at him, and he shrugged, looking embarrassed. “I’m sorry, I just – I always wondered.”

“I think we all did,” Jehan muttered, and Grantaire cracked a smile.

“In fairness, we talked about a lot of things, not just what to do in the case of a traumatic injury.” His smile faded. “But given the likelihood that he’d get his head bashed in at a protest one day, it wasn’t exactly a random hypothetical.” 

But in the end, it hadn’t been Enjolras’s activism that had killed him, the way Grantaire always feared it would. It had been a car accident, a random, cruel accident that had ended his entire world, and he was sure there was some lesson to be drawn from that, but he couldn’t quite bring himself to care.

Instead, he twisted his head to look up at Joly. “Anyway, I, uh, I need some time.”

“Of course,” Joly said instantly. “Take as much time as you need.”

Grantaire looked away, glancing around the circle before adding, “And, um, everyone should take some time with him. To say...whatever you need to say.”

He let them work out who was going to go in first as he instead picked himself up off the floor and made his way over to Marius to ask in an undertone, “Can we talk?”

Marius nodded, looking concerned, and they walked away down the hallway. “What’s up?” he asked when they were out of earshot.

Grantaire let out a shaky breath. “I, uh...honestly?” He let out a noise that might’ve been a cough, or a very dry laugh. “It’s going to sound stupid, but I wanted to make sure I haven’t committed tax fraud.”

Whatever Marius had been expecting, that was clearly not it, since he stared at Grantaire as if he’d grown a second head. “Tax fraud?” he repeated.

“Yeah, since I’ve been under the impression that I’ve been divorced, I’ve been filing my taxes as single.”

Marius barked a laugh, quickly covering his mouth. “I’m sorry,” he said. “It’s not funny. None of this is funny. I just can’t believe that’s what you’re worried about.”

Grantaire flinched. “I mean, I’m worried about a lot of things. This is just something that I can do something about.” He glanced at Marius. “Or not, and the IRS is putting a warrant out for my arrest as we speak.”

Marius laughed again, but gentler this time. “You will not be going down for tax fraud,” he said. “The designation is single or married filing separately, which you technically are. Or were.”

The past tense was like a knife to the gut, and Grantaire jerked a nod. “Good,” he said hollowly. “Because if I go down for tax fraud because Enjolras forgot to file our fucking divorce papers, I swear to God, I’ll kill him myself.”

Something shifted in Marius’s expression. “You know, I’m not sure he did.”

“Did what?” Grantaire asked tiredly.

“Forget,” Marius said, before adding in what he clearly thought was a helpful way, as if Grantaire was incapable of following the simple thread of the conversation, “To file the papers, I mean. I think he didn’t file them on purpose.”

Grantaire stared blankly at him. “And yet he clearly didn’t want to be married to me, so…”

Marius shrugged. “Maybe not. I can’t speak to that.” He hesitated before telling Grantaire, “Technically this is breaking attorney-client privilege, but...he came to me, after you had signed the papers. And he asked me what would happen to his trust fund in the divorce.”

“His trust fund?” Grantaire asked blankly.

“Yeah,” Marius said. “According to your pre-nup, in the case of divorce, all of his original assets revert to his sole ownership, save for what he would owe in spousal support.”

Grantaire shifted uncomfortably. “Look, I never wanted his money—”

“But Enjolras didn’t want that,” Marius continued as if Grantaire hadn’t spoken. “He wanted to make sure you had more than that. So I started to tell him about the process of signing over certain trusts to your name, and he blew me off. Said he’d take care of it.”

“Right.” 

Grantaire wasn’t sure what he was agreeing with, but it didn’t really matter, since Marius ignored him. “But I think what he meant is that he’d take care of you.”

Again, Grantaire’s chest felt painfully tight. “By pretending we were divorced?” he asked skeptically.

Marius shrugged again. “Well, I’ve never once argued that the man’s methods were anything resembling sane, but…” Almost despite himself, Grantaire laughed and Marius managed a small smile. “But yeah, I think that was what he was trying to do.” 

Grantaire shook his head slowly. “After all this time...I really didn’t think he could surprise me anymore.”

“He loved you,” Marius said simply. “I don’t know what happened between you two, and frankly, I don’t want to. But I know that much is true.” Grantaire couldn’t seem to speak, but Marius looked like he understood. “Anyway,” he said, “can I answer any other legal questions for you? Or do anything at all?”

Grantaire was about to tell him no when a sudden realization hit. “Actually, yes,” he said. “Can you get Combeferre and Courfeyrac for me? I want to talk to them.”

---------

As it turned out, between everyone saying their goodbyes to Enjolras and the general chaos of the hospital, including a very angry nurse coming to tell them that they were all liable to get kicked out if they didn’t keep it down, Grantaire didn’t get a chance to talk to Combeferre and Courfeyrac together until it was just the three of them left in Enjolras’s hospital room. Combeferre and Courfeyrac were seated on either side of Enjolras, and Grantaire stood at the end of the bed, wanting to be anywhere but there, talking about anything but what he needed to.

“What would you two do?” he asked finally, when the silence had gotten truly unbearable.

Combeferre looked sharply at him. “Legally, it’s not our decision to make.”

“I know that,” Grantaire said tiredly. “But you knew him better than I did these past few years, and I want to know what you would do.”

Combeferre and Courfeyrac exchanged glances, and it was Courfeyrac who spoke first. “Enjolras wanted to help people,” he said simply. “Yeah, his aim was always more systemic, because he knew as well as any of us that to truly help folks in the long term required breaking the system that was oppressing them in the first place, but that’s still what he wanted to do: to help.” He paused and took a deep breath. “And I think that in this case, even though it’s not a systemic help, he would still want to help people with his death, if he could. So I would– I would withdraw life support so that he could donate his organs.”

Grantaire nodded slowly. “What about you?” he asked Combeferre hoarsely.

Combeferre shook his head, looking back at Enjolras. “I know what the statistics are,” he said, his voice low. “And logic would say that pulling the plug probably makes the most sense, given the odds of him recovering. But as long as there is a chance, any chance…” He swallowed. “Science is progressing rapidly and he could live like this for years, until they’ve developed a treatment that could bring him back to us. We learn more about the brain and healing from brain injuries every single day, and he deserves a chance to see if we discover how to heal him.” He raised his chin as he looked back at Grantaire, something like defiance in his expression. “His work is not done, and I can’t imagine him giving up that chance, no matter how slim the odds are.”

Again Grantaire nodded. “In other words, you’re both completely fucking useless.”

“Enjolras said as much, many, many times,” Courfeyrac said with something like his usual cheerfulness. “Everytime he wanted us to agree with him on something and we didn’t.”

“So like, once a week, at least,” Combeferre muttered, and he and Courfeyrac exchanged a smile at the shared memory. Then he looked back at Grantaire. “But at the end of the day, we’re not the ones making this choice. He didn’t—” His voice broke. “He didn’t choose us. He chose you. And you know him better than you think you do, because you know the parts of him that none of us ever got to see.”

Grantaire opened his mouth to argue with that, but Courfeyrac stood, squeezing Enjolras’s hand once more before releasing it. “We should leave you alone,” he said softly. “Give you some time with him.” He looked at Grantaire, his eyes shining. “Whatever choice you make, you have my full support. Because despite everything, I know you loved him. And that’s enough for me.”

Grantaire could feel tears threatening to fall again, but this time, he brushed them forcefully away as Combeferre and Courfeyrac slipped away. Grantaire took Combeferre’s vacated seat, staring down at Enjolras as if the man might give him a sign, any sign.

He had hoped Combeferre and Courfeyrac would give him some kind of clarity, but he should’ve known they wouldn’t. Especially since they were both completely wrong.

They had known Enjolras, yes, and loved him, but they hadn’t loved him like Grantaire had. Like Grantaire still did. Loving Enjolras for Grantaire had always meant seeing more than just the leader of Les Amis, but seeing the whole man, even for all his many, many faults. Enjolras cared deeply like Courfeyrac had said, yes, but not about helping any one person; he cared only about destroying the systems that kept people in whatever metaphoric chains he cared about that week. He wouldn’t be swayed by the argument that he could save lives or else he would’ve been a living kidney or partial liver donor. 

And he wasn’t a hopeless believer either like Combeferre seemed to think. The thought of Enjolras waiting around for a miracle that might not even happen was utterly laughable. The man’s patience was non-existent. He wouldn’t be content to lie in bed for years on end. He was a man of action, and if there was nothing actionable, it wasn’t anything worth his time. It was, after all, probably why he had been so quick to give up on them, since there wasn’t anything left for him to do or fix.

There was only one argument that would sway Enjolras, one way or another. An argument about the Cause, about the work left undone, and as much as Grantaire was the wrong messenger for anything relating to the Cause or Enjolras’s work, he knew that only he could tell Enjolras what he needed to hear.

Grantaire would obviously never know, but he couldn’t help but think that this was why Enjolras had chosen him. Because whatever else he was, or wasn’t, had been or hadn’t, Enjolras was already gone. Whether they removed the ventilator today or tomorrow or in a week or a year, Enjolras would not be any less gone.

But Grantaire had already lost him, years ago now, and maybe that’s why Enjolras had let this be his decision. 

Because he was the only one who could make it.

And he knew what he had to do.

So he squeezed Enjolras’s hand one more time before standing and going to the door, his eyes clear for the first time all day. “Can you get Joly for me?” he asked Courfeyrac, who was standing closest to the door as if keeping watch. “I’ve made my decision.”

----------

Grantaire stroked the top of Enjolras’s head, pretending that the rough bandages under his fingers were instead the fine blond curls he had never quite been able to capture with the right color when he painted Enjolras. He had spent hours some evenings just running his fingers through Enjolras’s hair, watching the different shades of gold tumble through his fingers, while Enjolras had worked on something or other. 

He would always miss that, in particular, those evenings they spent just the two of them. He would always miss the version of Enjolras that had been his husband. But that was an old hurt now, no matter how much circumstances might make it feel brand new again.

“Damn you,” he said, which wasn’t exactly how he had anticipated starting his goodbye speech, but if he couldn’t be honest in these last moments, then when could he? “Damn you for loving me, and leaving me, and still somehow putting me in this position. For making me be the one to decide, and the one who has to live with that for the rest of my life. You always were an asshole, so I guess I shouldn’t be surprised, but…”

He trailed off, and took Enjolras’s hand, lacing their fingers together, marveling as he always had at how well their hands fit together. There had been a part of them that had always worked, even when nothing else between them seemed to, and it had been that part that he had clung to even when they were well past their expiration date. 

He wondered if that was the part that had stopped Enjolras from filing the papers.

“We were supposed to die together,” he whispered, the breath hitching in his throat. “That’s what I promised, when we got married. That we would be together until we were old. And even if we died early, because of a protest gone bad or something, I still just assumed it’d be you and me leaving together. I never– I never thought I’d be the one left behind.”

He lifted Enjolras’s hand to his mouth again, this time pressing a kiss to the finger where, years ago, he had placed his ring and promised Enjolras he would love him forever. “I didn’t lie, you know,” he told Enjolras. “I still love you. I never stopped loving you.” He shook his head slowly. “I will you until the day I die, no matter if you’re still here or not. And—” His voice broke. “And Joly wasn’t supposed to tell me this, I think it’s supposed to be confidential, but...at least a part of you will still be here. Because there’s a 10-year-old girl in Pennsylvania who’s going to get your kidney. And a 45-year-old father of two who’s getting part of your liver. And your heart—” Again his voice broke. “And your heart is going to keep beating for a very long time because it’s going to a 28-year-old woman.” 

When Joly had told him where Enjolras’s organs were going, when Grantaire signed all the consent forms, he had told him as if it was a comfort, somehow, as if Grantaire didn’t now have a list of people to resent because they were going to live, and Enjolras was not. 

But it was better than no comfort at all.

“You have done more in your brief life than most people could accomplish in two lifetimes,” Grantaire continued, “and more importantly, you are leaving behind people who will continue doing your work. That’s the part of you that I know you care about, so you can rest easy knowing that they will carry you with them for the rest of their lives, fighting the battles you always wanted to. And as for the rest, well—” He was sure that he was crushing Enjolras’s hand with how tightly he held it. “I’ll carry that with me. I’ve got you, I promise. I always have.”

He had figured he would cry, would weep, but instead, he felt strangely at peace, looking down at Enjolras and telling him all of the things he had always wanted to say but had never been able to bring himself to. Just their fucked up luck that it had taken this. 

He leaned in close, his voice no more than a whisper as he told him, fiercely, “Others will take your place in the Cause, and keep fighting. I promise you that. So you can rest now, ok?” He bent over Enjolras and kissed his forehead, his eyelids fluttering closed. “It’s all I ever wanted for you, was for you to rest. And maybe this is selfish of me, maybe it's the most selfish thing I’ve ever done, but I don’t care.” He opened his eyes, searching Enjolras’s face for some sign, any sign, that he heard, that he understood. He knew he wouldn’t find any, but that didn’t matter. 

“The work will never be done, but your part in it is.” His voice cracked. “I love you, and you can stop fighting now.”

They stayed like that for a long moment, Grantaire holding onto Enjolras with everything that he had left. Then a nurse poked her head into the room. “Are you ready?” she asked softly.

It was an asinine question. Of course Grantaire wasn’t ready. He was never going to be ready.

But he jerked a nod anyway and stood, taking a step back so the flurry of doctors and nurses could make Enjolras ready to move, so they could take him to the operating room where they would remove his life support and take the organs he was able to donate. “I love you,” he told Enjolras one last time, something desperate in his voice. “I love you. Don’t fight anymore, ok? Just...just rest.” 

“Sir,” one of the nurses said, her voice gentle. “Sir, you have to let him go.”

“Oh,” Grantaire said numbly. “Of course.”

And he let go of Enjolras’s hand.

[certifiedceraunophile]

7, 15, 17 and 20 :)

SO THIS IS MY FIRST EVER ASK ANSWER,

7. What’s the last thing you read that made you cry?

Honestly it wasn’t a fic or anything, it was actually, this blinding beam of sunshine’s-  ( @carolineforbae ) comment on my fic ‘It’s a Touch Regrettable’

 This queen left a whole rant underneath the fic, unadulterated emotions flowing and spilling,Just the memory of it makes me wanna curl up on a warm bed of grass and weave flower garlands, that comment’s screenshot is actually my phone’s lockscreen picture. I’m not kidding.

 I’m in a healthy happy married relationship with that comment and we were actually wondering about kids just yesterday, so yeah. 

15. Post the last line you wrote without context.

‘But then she catches sight of Klaus’ face and she knows whats displayed across her eyes, it’s awe, it’s wonder, it’s reverence and most of all it’s such incriminating disbelief, and he knows just as much as she, those emotions only come from an undeserving woman. A woman with her head screwed on right enough to pass sound judgement on herself and decisively assign herself unworthy, but that doesn't stop her from greedily taking what she’s been given so freely, that she will take with thanks but would never pay it back, because how could she?

She is unfit for having it in the first place.’

17. Describe a fic that is still in the ‘ideas’ stage.

I’ll do you one better, here’s the aesthetic for a fic that has like “I came, I saw, I conquered” my mind, (pun intended, you’ll understand in a moment).

It’s been burning out my braincells like it’s on fire. I mean the amount of story plot lines and random dialogues that are literally bursting out of my mind like confetti strings honestly it was just all over the place I needed to calm down and compartmentalise so I did this to give the ideas in my head an image, and I got a bit carried away, clearly.

It’s an Ancient Rome-meets-Roman Gladiator-meets-Enemies to Lovers-meets-Mikael you son of a bitch I require your head on this platter, so please do the needful-meets-Caroline giving sponge baths to a dirty bruised yet victorious gladiator!klaus-meets-SMUT.

20. Do you have a favourite fanfic or author? If so, tag them/post a link and share the love!

The list of authors is too long, too too long, but I can bring it down to one person for you,

FIRST AND FOREMOST, 

Like, 

Lend me your ears my fellow plebes, as we stand in the presence of divine erudition, seasoned and soft yet coarse as velvet rubbed the wrong way, A blazing gloriole burst upon her lovely visage, cut her open and you shall find sands from a thousand realms spill forth, every flutter of her eyelash a turn of a page, Kingdoms have not crumbled at the touch of her hands, but the spine of a hundred tomes of sentiment narrated with unfettered reach have, bent with atlas humility as if to say, ‘have me, all of me’ and she devours. 

Honestly I have no idea how to end this, but the ‘her’ I’m talking about is the one and only,

@cbk1000

DO YOU UNDERSTAND THE HONOUR AND PRIVILEGE I FEEL TO EVEN SAY HER NAME,

LIKE BRO, hold me for a second,

This writer is by far the one writer who has captured Caroline, Klaus, Rebekah and Kol, in the most REALEST way.

Like she knows these characters and presents them to us in their most tragically raw state of being, no dilutions, no misplaced underlining, no flower crowns on their head, they are given to you shrivelled, hurt, broken and aged and you bow your head in reverence.

In their most downtrodden days we will cherish them, in their ugliest cruelest days of such evil no love diminishes, in their most deific of moments your knees will buckle and you will submit.

She does not sugarcoat and downplay the most disgusting aspects of their character, presents it to us as they are and tells us,“Hold them, they burn your hands, but hold them still.” and we will do it, like GOD I’M NOT ARTICULATING THIS WELL, hold on, lemme collect my thoughts 

I MEAN SHE HAS KLAUS KILL A BABY, COOK yes, COOK SAID BABY AND THEN FEED THE ROASTED BABY TO ITS FATHER, ALL UNBEKNOWNST TO SAID FATHER AND I THINK ‘FINALLY, KLAUS AS KLAUS AND NOT KLAUS BUT CENSORED BLUR PLACED ON TOP OF EVERYTHING BUT HIS DICK.’

like does that make sense? I really hope that makes sense.

And OK her writing, like her WRITING itself, like remove Klaroline, remove the originals, remove vampires, werewolves, witches, etc etc, and give her a shoelace to right about and she will BLOW YOUR FCKING MIND AWAY. you will worship that piece of literary wonder, it’s poetry, it’s sacred scriptures, it’s imagery, its a fucking PAINTING.

that’s what it is,

IT’S A PAINTING and it’s A MOVING PICTURE.

She doesn’t create a world for you, no she’s nothing so boorish, she merely rules this universe of hers and she’s magnanimous enough to allow you entry, a visit, stay a few days, EXPERIENCE, LIVE, and then you leave a changed human, and this universe she rules will always have a special place in your heart and soul.

THE DEDICATION this writer shows to research, to historic accuracy, to  literally EVERYTHING that is not necessarily the plot itself, GOD, that deserves a separate spiel for itself, the way she makes everything so AUTHENTIC, her describing the fall of the Romonav dynasty as just another byproduct of Klaus’ recreational machinations, JESUS, LIKE THAT transcends storytelling and now is sitting in a place called shared reverie.

I MEAN GO AND READ,

Wherewith to Sate Its Malice

For the Pikes Must be Together

Five Times the Sinner

AND MOST OF ALL,

AU Original series

and come back and read this author review, you’ll agree to everything I’ve said. I promise.

[underthedekutree]

Gender and Race in Zelda Games - Pt 1

Hey, can we talk about how the Gerudo’s defining trait is their gender? It’s very explicitly marketed to the player that they are an all female race and that has a lasting impact on their culture and how they interact with other races, considering they are reproductively compatible with hylians (and is the only way to ensure their survival as a race).

Although Nintendo likes to distance themselves from any political statements, the Zelda franchise does give an insight into their views on gender identity and racial representation. I’m going to be mostly going off of Breath of the Wild (and a bit of OoT) for this.

There are 7 major civilised races in BOTW’s Hyrule, and they’re mainly based on standard tropes of the high fantasy genre, which has most of its roots in the works of J.R.R. Tolkien. Things like the Elder Scrolls and DnD follow a similar set of race tropes. Basically in a nutshell:

Hylians = Humans (protagonist material, has a far reaching empire, medieval aesthetic, predominantly white because yay colonialism amirite)

Zora = Elves (attuned with nature, long life/immortality, thinks they’re better than you, thin/sexy/youthful appearance, feminine)

Gorons = Dwarves (associated with earth, overtly masculine, stocky/stout appearance, b e a r d s)

Koroks = Halflings/Hobbits (smol, associated with plants and greenery, often the starting point in a story, disconnected from the world, humble people, old english farmer aesthetic)

Gerudo = Orc/Haradrim/Khajiit (the Oppressed Minority, often desert people, has an ”Exotic” accent/language, vague mix of middle-eastern, african and/or south american aesthetics)

Rito = Bird People (free spirits, archery for days, native american/canadian aesthetic)

Sheikah = The Asians (tm) (the wise philosophical ones, always has a shrivelled up old Confucian-inspired leader, are probs ninjas)

First of all, no, Hylians are not elven-coded; just because they have pointed ears does not equal elf. The way they are coded in the text is very much human.

So I’m going to elaborate a bit more on the Gerudo here for this post, since they are the strongest example of what my whole point of this is. I’ll be talking about the Gorons in another post later down the track (that’s a whole other can o beans).

Ocarina of Time is where we are first introduced to the Gerudo as a race, and red flag number one comes up: the main villain is Gerudo. The only man in an entire race of women, who has automatically assumed de-facto leadership because of his gender. Hmm. Okay then, game.

Because of Ganondorf’s actions throughout OoT, the Gerudo garner a sour reputation amongst the other races, and a lot of this context comes from reactions to Link wearing the Gerudo Mask. Many are terrified or unsettled by the mask, such as King Zora, some will comment on how it reminds them of a woman in their life, and Darunia very gruffly states how much he hates the Gerudo (wow dude, not cool). There is an everpresent stigma against them as a people, one that only compounds in the Adult time after Ganondorf takes over. In Windwaker, Ganondorf talks about how his original motivation was to take Hyrule for its resources, as his people were suffering in the desert whilst Hyrule florished. But his actions only caused them more suffering, as he seemed not to care for his people once he took Hyrule Castle, and the Gerudo could no longer mingle with Hylians, because this takeover increased the stigma against the Gerudo tenfold.

This stigma was so great that even in Breath of the Wild, thousands of years later, their people are still recovering from their collective shame (eg. Urbosa). Look how long its taken Germany to recover post WWII, and some still hold grudges against them, even though they’re now practically one of the most anti-Nazi nations ever. But clear strides have been made in Gerudo culture - they now seem to be a proud people, embracing both their strength and their femininity. But a new interesting issue arises.

It’s alarming how much suggestion there is in BotW that the Gerudo are being taken advantage of. Men are barred from city walls, and for good reason. All of the men outside of the walls are there for the sole purpose of entering the Forbidden Garden, as it were. Like the men at the bazaar who freeze up when they see lady Link. Or the creepy guy with the sand boots circling the town like a hawk in the hopes of catching a lady’s eye. There are a couple of guys in trouble on the other side of the desert you can save (from a lizalfos I think? If memory serves), and all they will talk about is how Gerudo Town is some kind of paradise of hot women, like they’re using their dicks as a compass. I hope they never get there. And to top it all off, there’s Voe and You, an entire dating class teaching women on how to interact with men, and how to walk the line between being cautious of predators, and not being Risa. 

I don’t know how to articulate how this messes with my brain, and I’m very bad at conclusions. Nonetheless, what I am trying to say is this. What does this all tell us about how Nintendo writes women, and how the changing times have affected the representation of women in Zelda? Why are there entire races who are tied to their gender? This trend of coding races to a gender in video games isn’t confined to the Zelda series either, its present in a lot of Nintendo games (if I may gesture to the Lochladies from Mario Odyssey), and media as a whole. Is this a good thing? What is the purpose? I don’t know how to answer those questions. There is always a form of subconscious meaning ascribed to the stories we tell, whether we intend to or not. I don’t know what to do with this information really, its just something to think about. And this is a starting point too, there’s a lot more to be said if you start training your eye to look for these things in the games you’re playing, especially Nintendo games, since they seem to have been free from The Discourse because of how they market their company to be so Opinionless and therefore accomodating to people from all backgrounds. But they most certainly aren’t opinionless.

Disclaimer: I do not believe that Nintendo are trying to push some Political Agenda (the opposite, actually), it’s mostly subconscious coding and association due to, as I mentioned, for us as people to express our own views through story.

Segway to part 2: I said at the start that it’s strange how the femininity of the Gerudo is so heavily highlighted, and its a core part of their identity as a race. So why the hell does this not apply to the freaking GORONS?

Have a nice day, and thanks for reading my rambles :D

[luffyasksandanswers]

// “hi, I’m not from the US” ask set ALL OF THEM YOU COWARD. ALL OF THEM. YOU REBLOGGED THAT MEME NOW COMMIT. GIVE ME MY STALKER KNOWLEDGE. GIMME. OR MEET ME IN THE PIT.

“hi, i’m not from the us” meme - @fearllacy //Bruh, you curious George xD! But dare is a dare and me not want to the coconut pit D: so here we go!

1. favourite place in your country?

Summer cottage, a place to escape the hectic city life *thumbs up*

2. do you prefer spending your holidays in your country or travel abroad?

Toss me with a shoe because of my unecological thinking but I do like to see new places and cultures  so whenever there is a chance, I try to travel abroad. 

3. does your country have access to sea?

We are the land of thousand lakes buuut we also have sea around us, a lot in the south! so we can escape to Estonia xD 

4. favourite dish specific for your country?

Praised Karelian Pasty and Kalakukko here! otherwise our food is pretty much either stolen from Sweden or colorless/tasteless xD 

5. favourite song in your native language?

Me revealed some of them hier :>

6. most hated song in your native language?

Spent the yesterday browsing around Youtube xD and results are täällä

7. three words from your native language that you like the most?

Wow, this is a thing I’ve never thought about it so this should be something to be asked from my mates because they know better which words I repeat nonstop *laughs*  Hey, how about teaching you fellow buddies a few Finnish words?

- Juoksentelisinkohan?  (=I wonder if I should run around aimlessly?)Never heard anyone say this but I think it’s very amusing word in general xD 

- Lohikäärme = dragon Simply put so but if you write “lohi” and “käärme” separated, you get salmon and snake. In other words the translation could also be salmonsnake,kinda makes sense, kinda doesn’t *laughs*

- Pöpelikkö

= ThicketRarely used word for a forest/growth that is hard to walk through, maybe in spoken language means more like “in middle of nowhere” or at least that’s how I use that word ::D  

Bonus: lentokonesuihkuturbiinimoottoriapumekaanikkoaliupseerioppilasThe longest officially approved finnish word monster. In english it would beAeroplaneshowerturbinemotorhelpmechanicnoncommissionedofficerstudent. 

8. do you get confused with other nationalities? if so, which ones and by whom?

I probably told this before but I’m not a bloodline finn, my biological roots are in China (but I’ve spent practically my whole life here so my soul is very suomi perkele saunaan ja torille xD). As imaginable, this causes awkward situations because people get misunderstood or assume things right away but well whoopsies happpen as long as no one makes a number about it, it’s all ok ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ 

9. which of your neighbouring countries would you like to visit most/know best?

Revealed #lifegoals här!

10. most enjoyable swear word in your native language?

Maybe the most heard sweard word is the finnish version of F-word  [x]Frankly spoken I don’t like or use it because it’s like the C-word and dunno, sounds weird when people love to repeat loudly a word that literally means woman’s genitals :D Nah my favorite swearword is “Perkele” because when you are angry you can feel the power in the R-letter.  But I actually use “Helvetti” (=hell) the most, no idea how it happened but anyway, if it’s not “PERRRKELE” then it’s “EI HELVETTI” *laughs* last time I swear like mad was when I had to assemble a furniture at work xD

11. favourite native writer/poet?

Tove Jansson adoration here :>

12. what do you think about English translations 

I have to admit I’m not familiar with translated literacy D: wait no I lied! I’ve read 2 Moomin books in english but don’t remember paying attention to the translation, only thing that was confusing first was the names in english because there wasn’t any expalanations to the names of the (random) side characters xD

13. does your country (or family) have any specific superstitions or traditions that might seem strange to outsiders?

We finns love icy waters but we have another tradition that is a dank meme. I mean TORILLE!! which basically means finns rush to the local market places if we win hockey championships or are good in any other sports. I think it’s a global jokebut yeah finns are trash for getting national recognision. Just mention us anywhere outside the borders and transmit that info to Finland and you can hear and see people hyping it like mad and I am not sure if other countries do this too in such extreme ways xD  

14. do you enjoy your country’s cinema and/or TV?

One thing that makes watching the finnish tv boring is that they literallt recycle the celebrities which means same faces in almost every fame teledrama or shows and practically everywhere you go or channel surf, you’ll see them and then even tabloids need to write nonstop about their slighest moves.  It is good to be ecological but if there is an actor that needs to shove their face everywhere no matter what and they try to keep their fame in every way, it just doesn’t work plus this might be stereotyping but in those “finnish versions” of big shows, finns are somewhat stiff and don’t go like “yeehaw WOHOO \o/” the same way like in the original shows  so it sometimes looks like they try too hard to be like the original or they are just “forced” to be superhyper. 

Another reason I don’t watch much finnish series is that the articulating is bad or then there is something wrong with the audio or it’s just my bad hearing but the actors tend to speak very very quietly so you have to put volume on if you want to hear anything on the telly and then your ears get rekt and wasted because when the commercials (which are louder than the normal speech) comes, the sound is even louder [x] just like when you open your computer and forgot the volume is at maximum and whe Windows start music suddenly appears. 

I bet there are good finnish movies too that are high quality and I personally enjoy the game shows (quiz like thingies) but in general, nah :p 15. a saying, joke, or hermetic meme that only people from your country will get?

Another thing outsiders maybe don’t understand but finns love to queue and freebies and an ultimate example is that usually if a new shop opens up, people can start to queue a long before the grand opening. Funniest thing is that free buckets are the most queued thing and why not because they are useful xD

16. which stereotype about your country you hate the most and which one you somewhat agree with?

Maybe my favorite finnish stereotype is that finns love personal space [x] It is a national joke that if there is a bus stop, finns don’t stand next to each other (well in the capital and big cities maybe) but they have at least 2 meters distance xD 

17. are you interested in your country’s history?

Frankly spoken nah, I mean I liked to hear my grandparents’ stories about the life when they were younger and how my both grandfathers had to see the wars but in general nah, because well we’ve been owned by Swedes and Russians and had a civil war.  

18. do you speak with a dialect of your native language?

I’m originally from the Eastern Finland that has its dialect  and people distinguish it easily. Especially now that I’ve lived outside my hometown during studies and work, people tell that they hear strong dialect although I only use it in the person pronouns *eyes emoji*

19. do you like your country’s flag and/or emblem? what about the national anthem?

Blue is a nice color so thumbs up for that! Well can’t say I’m a fanatic finn but of course it sounds nice to hear the anthem on telly [x]

20. which sport is The Sport in your country?

Hockey is probably where Finland is the most successful but we also like football (duh, everyone likes) but we suck at that so bye FIFA dreams xD you know about that Phil because I ranted about it last summer XD

21. if you could send two things from your country into space, what would they be?

SALMIAKKI and that free bucket *laughs* 

22. what makes you proud about your country? what makes you ashamed?

There are many things very well in Finland, like everyone gets a free basic education and natural disasters such as earthquakes are very rare so it’s quite safe. 

What am I ashamed of? Well frankly spoken we are way too soft on criminals in my opinion so our country should fix the law system so that the criminals would get rougher and longer punishments for rough crimes. 

23. which alcoholic beverage is the favoured one in your country?

I think beers, wines and long drinks are in now? 

24. what other nation is joked about most often in your country?

Sweden! It’s a common joke that we are so jealous of Swedes being better people and succeeding in everything and of course in our jokes swedes are the dummies. I think Scandinavian countries do that about each other like Finland vs Sweden, Iceland vs Denmark and Sweden vs Norway *laughs*

25. would you like to come from another place, be born in another country?

But I am born in another country xD Nah no, I wouldn’t change a thingblue eyes would be cool but finns tend to burn in the sun and I enjoy the summer I’m happy like this :p 26. does your nationality get portrayed in Hollywood/American media? what do you think about the portrayal?

The latest news about Finland in American media must’ve been that when Trump misunderstood the forest defense thing and said something like Finns are so diligent they rake their forest floors [x] but the truth is that we don’t because our climate is different. Of course we have forest fires too but they are much much smaller than in California. 

27. favourite national celebrity?

I fangirled Antti holma here, he handsome, he funny, he has a podcast  :> 

28. does your country have a lot of lakes, mountains, rivers? do you have favourites?I think a couple of mountains exsist [x] but more rivers and thousands of lakes! I like the lakes, since I’ve spent most of my summers at our summer cottage near the lake. Actually never been in the north but I’d love to go on a roadtrip someday to see them!

29. does your region/city have a beef with another place in your country?

We beat Sweden and Russia so no one shall mess with our smol country! :p

Fun fact: There is a guy named Simo Häyhä, a sniper who is said to be killed more than 505 men during the 1939–40 Winter War [x]

30. do you have people of different nationalities in your family?

We have a multicultural family tree, relatives from France, Germany, Sweden, Japan and so on :)! 

[maximuswolf]

The 2020 Election and Lesser Evilism via /r/socialism

The 2020 Election and Lesser Evilism

​

https://preview.redd.it/qvni5ua9i9x51.png?width=960&format=png&auto=webp&s=f10e1be465536cfd08a02f1dccfb056c0d5d37eb

How much will this election really change?

We’ve heard that this election could stop fascism, and that the future of this country hinges on our vote. Is this really true?

This election has been framed as the most important in U.S. history, with the very future of the country on the line. Some have even argued that if Trump gets reelected, then the U.S. will become a fascist country like Nazi Germany. In the eyes of some, voting in presidential elections is seen as something which has a big impact and which makes a difference, in this case potentially stopping the rise of fascism. But is this really true? Will your vote really make a difference? Does every vote really count?

It’s not so hard to answer these questions. On the surface, Joe Biden and Trump seem pretty different. Biden is a veteran politician, with decades of experience in the system. He generally presents himself as an elder-statesman, dignified and honest. This illusion is regularly disrupted by his gaffes and slip-ups from calling Black people a monolithic group to calling for police to “only” shoot people in the leg instead of the heart or the head. But we are constantly reassured that he is in fact quite different from the bombastic, bloviating Trump who had no prior political experience and is quite crude.

We are told, by Biden and his allies, that he is really different than Trump. Yet Biden—just like Trump—has been involved in crooked business deals with his children using his family name for personal enrichment. For example, his son Hunter served as a front man in the Ukraine for all sorts of shady, corrupt deals that Joe Biden was involved in. But the FBI (always a “trustworthy” and “honest” source) has said that this stuff about Biden being corrupt is just lies from Russia so we should all ignore the story. Some are quick to reassure us that, despite his flaws, Biden will not do things like use federal troops and forces against protesters (or at least against “peaceful protesters”).

But we’ve heard this story before. While not exactly the same situation, in 2008 Obama was sold to the American people as the antidote to eight years of neoconservative reaction under Bush. He was dignified and well-spoken where Bush was crude and vulgar. He was supposedly against the wars, while Bush was for them. Obama was an outspoken critic of domestic spying under the Patriot Act which Bush’s administration had created; Obama would be better than Bush for undocumented immigrants, and so on. We were promised a lot of “change” as Obama’s vague slogan went, but we got mostly more of the same, albeit sold to us by a politician who was much more articulate than the prior president.

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If you look at the facts, it becomes clear that there is far more continuity between administrations than change. Presidential elections really have very little impact on U.S. state policy. Just look at how Obama followed in Bush’s footsteps:

Bush started the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan: Obama expanded them, carrying out the “surge” in Afghanistan shortly after being elected, while pretending to draw down U.S. troops in Iraq by replacing them with drone strikes and private mercenaries like Blackwater.

Speaking of drone strikes, while Bush’s administration pioneered the use of drones strikes, it was Obama who massively expanded the program. Every Tuesday he sat down with the head of the CIA to personally decide who the U.S. would assassinate from the sky.

Bush and Cheney expanded domestic spying and torture in their 8 years in office. While on the campaign trail, Obama made a lot of promises about prosecuting people who did this. Once elected, not only did he not prosecute them, he made it clear that he would provide them with immunity for their actions, so that they never had to worry about being put in jail for torture or spying on people.

Bush and Cheney pursued an aggressive policy of deportations of undocumented immigrants. Instead of reversing this, Obama massively expanded it, deporting over 2,000,000 people during his presidency, far more than any president before him.

Bush catered to fossil fuel companies, worked to get them Iraqi oil, and expanded drilling in the U.S., but Bush was nowhere near as good at this as his successor. Obama oversaw the largest expansion of U.S. fossil fuel production since World War II, and turned the U.S. into the largest oil producer in the world.

Bush bailed out the banks in 2008, but Obama continued to bail them out repeatedly over the course of his administration, and even had Citibank and other companies help to hand-pick his cabinet.

These are just a few examples that show how much continuity there really is between administrations. Despite all the money and efforts that politicians spend trying to make it seem like they are different from each other, the actual differences in policy from one administration to the next are very small. Perhaps recognizing this reality is part of the reason Michelle Obama referred to George W. Bush as her “partner in crime.” It’s easy to see why she would have sympathy for Bush, given her husband’s record as a fellow war criminal.

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More recently, people have been correctly condemning Trump’s deployment of troops and other federal agents to suppress the George Floyd protests. Even Biden joined in this criticism, although he was quick to specify that he opposed using force only against “peaceful protesters.” In reality Biden has called for the prosecution and use of force against “anarchists” and looters at the protests, mirroring similar language from Trump. These terms paint with a broad brush and are used to justify crackdowns on activists, especially those who defend themselves against police violence. Those who claim that Biden will be a better alternative to Trump on this question have forgotten how the Obama administration pursued nearly the exact same policy as Trump in suppressing Black Lives Matter protests in Ferguson and Baltimore. Troops were deployed to brutalize people, Feds were called in, including the FBI, and some activists were even assassinated by the government. During Occupy, Obama’s FBI even had a plan to use snipers to simultaneously assassinate key leaders of the movement in every major city in the country if the protests continued to escalate.

Take another one of Trump’s most horrifying policies, his family separation policy at the border. He has locked up children in cages, forcing them to sleep on cement floors in cages of the concentration camps at the border. But many of these concentration camps were built during the Obama administration, and children were already sleeping on concrete floors behind bars just for having come to the United States before Trump was elected. Trump’s only “innovation” to this cruelty was to make sure that the kids were not in the cages with their parents.

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Can you tell the troops sent by Trump to crush protests apart from those sent by Obama?

It is true that in practically every field, Trump has pushed forward more right-wing and reactionary policies. But far from being his personal drive towards turning this country into a fascist dictatorship, these changes are just the most recent in a decades-long trend by both parties which has pushed things further and further to the right. What we have seen over the past decades from one administration to the next, is far more similarities than differences. Regardless of who the people vote for, the same repressive policies at home and abroad are carried out, with things only becoming more repressive over the years. In this election we are being bombarded with messages from everyone from Biden himself to former heads of the FBI and CIA that he is really the best option, or at least the lesser evil.

Given the history of past elections in this country, we should see clearly that electing Biden will not solve any of these problems. Nor will we be able to “hold his feet to the fire” and make sure that “he is accountable to the voters.” This is a liberal fantasy, based on the corrosive logic of lesser-evilism. It tricks people into supporting the system (in one way or another) because of a deeper nihilism about real change, and convinces them that the only way to make change is through a system set up by the ruling class and their political parties for their benefit.

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How different are the two parties after all?

But the truth is that voting really makes almost no difference. Biden will not save us. He will instead continue the long-standing rightward march in U.S. politics. Only we can save ourselves, through getting organized, fighting back, and ultimately creating a revolution to establish a new form of government that actually serves the people’s interests. The deep-seated nihilism that believes that change is only possible within this system fails to see how unstable this system really is. This country has only been around for just over two hundred years. Humans have been on this planet for a few hundred thousand. Are we really supposed to believe that there is no alternative to the present system? Isn’t it obvious that if we work together we can build something far better for the people of this country and the world, a political system where we aren’t always picking the lesser evil, but instead fighting for something good?

It’s time to cast aside illusions about electoral politics and prepare for the long and difficult struggle ahead. We are at the beginning of a major economic collapse, climate change is ravaging the planet and the U.S. and China have begun a new Cold War. Both candidates have made it clear that they will serve the billionaires and bail out the banks, that their plans for climate change are more of the same subsidies to fossil fuel companies and they have both promised to be bigger warmongers than each other in this inter-imperialist conflict with China.

We the people have to find a way forward. We need to break from the nihilism of lesser evilism and see that we can really change the world. But first we have to get organized.

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For more of our updates, follow us on twitter (https://twitter.com/revunitedfront) or check out our website: https://revolutionaryunitedfront.com/

About us: We're the Revolutionary United Front, a US-based revolutionary organization in the U.S. organizing in the Greater Boston, New York, and San Francisco areas. We're working to support and advance various people’s struggles ranging from anti-war, immigrant, and proletarian internationalist solidarity.

Submitted November 04, 2020 at 10:58AM by revunitedfront via reddit https://ift.tt/386mZEm

[skybournerp]

               “The flame is not out, but it is flickering.”

A B O U T

Name: Nekai Teton Nickname: Nik Hero Name: Undecided Age: Nineteen Date & Place of Birth: December 1st, 1997 & Four Corners area, CO Sexuality: Up to Player Pronouns: He/Him Faceclaim: Forrest Goodluck Alternate FCs: N/A Status: OPEN

M O R E

Major & Minor: Political Science & Criminal Justice Classification: Sophomore Occupation: Student & Member of Student Government Rank: Hero Power: Fire Manipulation Limitations: Discipline is of the utmost importance to being able to control the flames around him. It is also much more difficult for Nekai to control fire he has not created.

P E R S O N A L I T Y

+ determined, passionate, articulate - abrasive, irrational, private

B I O G R A P H Y (tw: racism, violence)

The eldest son of Nakoma and Atsa Teton, Nekai was spurred by his parents for greatness. The couple aspired for their children to rise against the assumptions others held against them, and were driven to give their two sons all the opportunities to succeed as they could. A member of the Southern Ute tribe, Nekai spent his childhood living in Ignacio, Colorado, and learning of his tribe’s practices and the prosperity they had achieved in recent years. His parents made sure to pass on tribe traditions, instilling love and respect in their culture and participation in activities such as the Bear Dance in the spring or the Sun Dance in the summer. Atsa and Nakoma also taught their sons control of their powers. Nekai manifested fire manipulation in elementary school, and his family made sure to train him and show him how to control his powers, and to never use them in a way that would risk his life or his safety. The last lesson they taught their two boys was to be aware of the injustices they may face being Native American, which wouldn’t become apparent to Nekai until his teenage years. 

It wasn’t until late middle school, when Nekai grew bored of the lacking school curriculum in his hometown, that he transferred to school in a city twenty-five miles away. It was at this school that his life really began to change. High school challenged him in more ways than one. The school was better funded, and had a better assortment of both regular, Pre-AP and AP courses. The teachers seemed to care about the students. Nekai no longer found himself bored in his classes. But being surrounded by privileged rich white kids who didn’t care about their education or who they hurt with their words and fists proved exhausting and infuriating. These kids didn’t seem to realize how good they had it, how much better off they were than him and some of the other students, and were willing to risk it all for nothing. It lit a fire in him, and he soon set his focus on what he could do to change things for himself, his family, and his tribe. 

Nekai used that determination to drive him to graduation, scoring a generous scholarship for a political science program at an out-of-state school. His parents, both ecstatic and saddened at the possibility of their son moving away, supported whatever decision he would make. But they hadn’t predicted he would soon become a part of the protests at Standing Rock. August had just started, which should have marked the beginning of a cross-country journey to a new university, but Nekai decided to join the DAPL protests with several other members of the tribe. The protests had started out peacefully, and Nekai wanted his voice heard collectively with the others against big businesses and government. He hadn’t expected the tremendous impact he would soon become a part of. 

As temperatures dropped that fall, the number of people swelled into the thousands, and the escalation of violence against the protestors grew. But they were gaining media coverage. The American population was listening. Then late November arrived. One attempt to open Backwater Bridge, protesters were met with water cannons, tear gas, concussions grenades and rubber bullets. Protestors were doused with freezing water endlessly. Hundreds were injured. Things spiraled out of control. What happened next was all a blur, everything out of focus and jumbled from the pounding adrenaline, the bone-chilling fear, the raging frustration. Next thing Nekai knew, flames erupted before him. Within seconds he was tackled to the ground, handcuffed, and arrested for assaulting an officer. 

Nothing made sense. They were accusing him of burning a police officer. He remembered nothing. It couldn’t have been him, but they said that it was. The fires were his fault. While waiting to make bail, Special Intelligence contacted him, very intrigued by the mysterious occurrence at Standing Rock. They offered him an ultimatum: they would protect his identity and drop all charges in his acceptance to attend Skybourne University, a place where he could learn to control his gifts. To Nekai, it hardly seemed like a difficult choice, and immediately chose to take what they were offering. A few months later, he found himself at Skybourne, with the goal to turn his life around. He was determined put the past behind him and make himself someone his family could be proud of. 

F A M I L Y

Atsa Teton (father - alive) Nakoma Teton (mother - alive) Tahoma Teton (younger brother - alive)

C O N N E C T I O N S

Karim Beckett: They’re both in Skybourne on the same scholarship so they naturally have met a few times. While they haven’t shared too many intimate details to each other about their lives, and Nekai is fine with that. He likes the casual friendship they’ve developed.

Chantelle Dominguez: They took a class together and Nekai was eager to get to know Chantelle since she was daughter of Skybourne’s President and he is looking to be president of the student government quite soon, but he has found that she is not at all what he expected. She seems a lot more excited to party than to be at school.

[xranker]

Facebook’s Supreme Court for content moderation is coming into focus - The Verge

Yesterday, Mark Zuckerberg made an appearance at the Aspen Ideas Festival In keeping with the spirit of the event, Zuckerberg brought some ideas The big ones: Facebook was right not to remove the doctored video of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi Zuckerberg said it should have been flagged as misleading more quickly, but defended leaving it up (I basically agree with him on this one) ”This is a topic that can be very easily politicized,” Zuckerberg said “People who don’t like the way that something was cut.will kind of argue thatit did not reflect the true intent or was misinformation But we exist in a societywhere we value and cherish free expression” But Facebook will treat deepfakes differently than other forms of misinformation Zuckerberg said that the company’s policy team is currently considering it: “There is a question of whether deepfakes are actually just a completely different category of thing from normal false statements overall, and I think there is a very good case that they are” Facebook can’t protect against election interference alone Zuckerberg was rightly critical of the US government’s extremely weak response to Russian attacks leading up to the 2016 election, saying: ”One of the mistakes that I worry about is that after 2016 when the government didn’t take any kind of counteraction The signal that was sent to the world was that “OK. We’re open for business” Countries can try to do this stuff and our companies will try their best to try to limit it, but fundamentally, there isn’t going to be a major recourse from the American government “Since then, we’ve seen increased activity from Iran and other countries, and we are very engaged in ramping up the defenses” On Tuesday, some reports had suggested that Zuckerberg was going to unveil a surprise new “constitution” for Facebook Instead, on Thursday the company released a report detailing the progress it is making in building an independent oversight board for review The board is connected to Zuckerberg’s big ideas — this is the body that could someday make a binding, independent evaluation of whether a video like the Pelosi fake could stay up on the site Since proposing the idea last year, Facebook has held six workshops around the world, which included more than 650 people from 88 countries Among other things, the company has been conducting a kind of mock trial — having participants debate what to do with particular pieces of controversial content, as part of the work of developing a fair process for the board to implement in the future The idea remains to build a board of 40 people who will make content review decisions in small panels But all of the details are up for discussion, and you can read about the infinitely branching debates the company is now having in the report itself It makes for a surprisingly brisk read — for one thing, it goes out of its way to find and cite examples of people calling the board a stupid idea And it’s much more entertaining than this halting, uncertain conversation between Zuckerberg and two prominent law professors , which attempts to bring a sense of history to the conversation but mostly just magnifies the historical weirdness of absolutely everything under discussion Mostly, though, it’s just wild to watch a public company staging a miniature constitutional convention in 2019 The main problem is that almost anything is possible To wit, from Facebook’s report today: Facebook has suggested that Board members serve a fixed term of three years, renewable once Other suggestions included varied term lengths; staggered appointments; and shorter term lengths, given the “rapid pace of change” in content and technology However, while some felt that three years was too long, others felt it was not long enough The latter believed that more time is necessary for members to become acquainted with their responsibilities, as well as the complexities of content governance Feedback was similarly split on the size of the Board Facebook has suggested up to 40 members on the initial Board, which would be global in nature and organized to operate and decide on cases in panels Some felt this number was too small and expressed concern over “docket management” and “caseloads” Others, conversely, found the number to be unwieldy and unmanageable Still others, on a more practical level, suggested that the Board include 41 members, in case a tiebreak would be required It goes on like this for 38 pages. ( The appendices go on for another 177) Many important decisions appear to remain totally up in the air For example, I assumed that one benefit of developing an independent oversight board would be to allow the board to create precedents — a kind of case law for future board cases to refer to. But according to the progress report, many participants have frowned on the idea of precedents at all: Overall, feedback generally supported some sort of precedent-setting arrangement Most expressed hope that the Oversight Board could support “some idea of … continuity, some idea of stare decisis” that could evaluate “multiple fact patterns and have some precedential weight” Response from the public questionnaire suggested the same The majority of respondents (66%) stated that “considering past decisions is extremely to quite important,” while almost a third (28%) consider past decisions as “somewhat important” Others felt that precedent would need “to be considered carefully, as … there will need to be overruling rules articulated in order to reverse panel decisions that are later seen to be out of step with changing circumstances” Furthermore, it was argued, “a strict coherence rule may cause a situation where the first panel to discuss a certain issue might set a standard that may not be reconsidered later This will create a sense of arbitrariness and stagnation” Others argued that since social media is a rapidly changing industry, precedent should not prevent review of future, similar content In the end, many argued for balance: an understanding of precedent that would help ensure consistency but not necessarily be determinative The report doesn’t make clear how these questions have been resolved, though it seems likely that many have been Facebook says a final charter for the board will be released in August, and that it will work to stand up the first group of panelists shortly thereafter There are at least two good reasons to support Facebook’s board initiative One is that it shows that the company understands its power over public speech is untenable, and is seeking to devolve some of that power back to the public. Two is that by returning some of that power to the people, Facebook can become more accountable to its user base over time The details are all messy, and of course they are — it’s a pseudo-constitutional convention! But the goal still strikes me as a worthy one, and Facebook is moving ahead with a caution that is as welcome as it is rare Democracy Twitter will now hide — but not remove — harmful tweets from public figures In a significant step, Twitter says it will now put a content warning over certain inflammatory tweets posted by big accounts, Makena Kelly reports: Today, Twitter is rolling out a new notice for tweets belonging to public figures that break its community guidelines Now, if a figure like Donald Trump were to tweet something that broke Twitter’s rules, the platform could notify users of the violation and lessen the reach of the tweet In recent interviews, Twitter executives have hinted that a change like this would be coming soon This notice will only apply to tweets from accounts belonging to political figures, verified users, or accounts with more than 100,000 followers If a tweet is flagged as violating platform rules, a team of people from across the company will decide whether it is a “matter of public interest” If so, a light gray box will appear before the tweet notifying users that it’s in violation, but it will remain available to users who click through the box In theory, this could preserve the tweet as part of the public record without allowing it to be promoted to new audiences through the Twitter platform What Facebook Privacy? Candidates’ Tough Talk Is Just That With Missouri Sen Josh Hawley making a racket about Facebook’s data practices, Hamdan Azhar explores how his campaign uses information gleaned from the service: Senator Josh Hawley (R-Missouri) told Yahoo Finance that he wouldn’t trust Facebook with his money “I don’t trust Facebook with anything,” he said Just one problem: Despite their professed concerns with Facebook, both senators’ campaign websites—sherrodbrowncom and joshhawleycom—have an invisible piece of Facebook technology, called a pixel, that tracks when anyone visits their homepages and shares this information with Facebook Hawley’s website even shares when visitors donate and the exact donation amount Facebook can then associate that information with an individual’s Facebook account Facebook Is Challenged To Ban Military Leader Accused Of Killings Aarti Shahani looks at the Facebook presence of warlord Lt Gen Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, who reportedly oversaw the killing of more than 100 people in Sudan: Lt Gen Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, better known as Hemeti, is a social media personality He is also the leader of the Rapid Support Forces — the paramilitary group that attacked thousands of pro-democracy protesters this month, leaving more than 100 dead This is a bit of a second act for Hemeti, who also served time with the Janjaweed, the militia group considered responsible for the genocide in Darfur about 15 years ago, according to Foreign Policy magazine On Facebook, multiple pages promote Hemeti as a formidable yet kind authority figure Artificial intelligence can’t solve online extremism issue, experts tell House panel Emily Birnbaum recaps a hearing this week on online extremism: Top tech companies, including Facebook, have claimed that their AI systems are already successfully detecting a huge swath of terrorist and extremist content But experts at the hearing said those claims are often overblown “Context is vitally important and context can often be hard for algorithms to detect,” Ben Buchanan, an assistant teaching professor at Georgetown University, said Amazon Is Watching Will Oremus explores the Amazon panopticon, now under construction: The Amazon of today runs enormous swaths of the public internet; uses artificial intelligence to crunch data for many of the world’s largest companies and institutions, including the CIA; tracks user shopping habits to build detailed profiles for targeted advertising; and sells cloud-connected, AI-powered speakers and screens for our homes It acquired a company that makes mesh Wi-Fi routers that have access to our private Internet traffic Through Amazon’s subsidiary Ring, it is putting surveillance cameras on millions of people’s doorbells and inviting them to share the footage with their neighbors and the police on a crime-focused social network It is selling face recognition systems to police and private companies The Amazon of tomorrow, as sketched out in patents, contract bids, and marketing materials, could be more omnipresent still Imagine Ring doorbell cameras so ubiquitous that you can’t walk down a street without triggering alerts to your neighbors and police Imagine that these cameras have face recognition systems built in, and can work together as a network to identify people deemed suspicious Imagine Ring surveillance cameras on cars and delivery drones, Ring baby monitors in nurseries, and Amazon Echo devices everywhere from schools to hotels to hospitals. Now imagine that all these Alexa-powered speakers and displays can recognize your voice and analyze your speech patterns to tell when you’re angry, sick, or considering a purchase A 2015 patent filing reported last week by the Telegraph described a system that Amazon called “ surveillance as a service ,” which seems like an apt term for many of the products it’s already selling EU should ban AI-powered citizen scoring and mass surveillance, say experts Europe is moving to block any future implementation of a social credit system, James Vincent reports: A group of policy experts assembled by the EU has recommended that it ban the use of AI for mass surveillance and mass “scoring of individuals”; a practice that potentially involves collecting varied data about citizens — everything from criminal records to their behavior on social media — and then using it to assess their moral or ethical integrity The recommendations are part of the EU’s ongoing efforts to establish itself as a leader in so-called “ethical AI” Earlier this year, it released its first guidelines on the topic, stating that AI in the EU should be deployed in a trustworthy and “human-centric” manner The new report offers more specific recommendations These include identifying areas of AI research that require funding; encouraging the EU to incorporate AI training into schools and universities; and suggesting new methods to monitor the impact of AI However, the paper is only a set of recommendations at this point, and not a blueprint for legislation Leaked Audio: Wayfair’s Co-founder on Migrant-Camp Beds Ellen Cushing obtains audio from a meeting in which the home-goods retailer’s co-founder appears to be unaware that the line between business and politics is rapidly eroding: His argument is a cousin of the one many of his peers in the technology industry have long clung to: that they aren’t really political entities, but simply value-neutral conveyor belts for whatever service it is that they offer—short-term rentals, rides, community, connection, information, entertainment That their sheer scale, multiplied by the wide spectrum of beliefs held by their users, makes moderation of any kind so Sisyphean and so subjective a task that the only possible solution is to allow for just about any idea, or any customer But as my colleague Alexis Madrigal notes, the notion of the unbiased platform is dying before our eyes , if it ever really existed: “Some things could not be said Some types of content were favored by advertisers and companies The algorithms they use to sort and promote content have biases” In other words, you simply cannot order this much information without making some judgments Fear and Loathing in Toronto Anthony Townsend explores why Google’s plans to build a new kind of urban renewal project in Toronto has drawn outrage among locals. It boils down to trust: Data governance has been a lightning rod because its new and scary Early on, Sidewalk put more energy into figuring out how the robot trash chutes would work than how to control data it and others would collect in the proposed district As part of Alphabet, you’d think this would have been a source of unique added value versus say, a conventional development Not so — the company’s initial proposal in 2017, also hundreds of pages, tacked on a 2-page memo to CYA on the topic It didn’t work, and belated efforts to fill the gap only led to more missteps along the way, doing little to calm critics More important questions and criticisms have been raised about Waterfront Toronto’s handling of the Quayside bidding process and its transparency Existential questions for Canadian cities about the shifting line between public and private delivery of government services are also on the table None of these have been satisfactorily addressed by Sidewalk, and the number of elected officials speaking out against the project has grown as a result Elsewhere A Facebook contractor posted a video of Bruce Springsteen lyrics to his profile to protest working conditions He was fired two weeks later Elizabeth Dwoskin reports that a content moderator got fired after posting lyrics from “Factory” and “The Promised Land” on an internal forum Also: On Thursday, a group of a dozen moderators published a new letter reviewed by The Washington Post on Facebook’s internal Workplace forum, demanding better pay and a revision of confidentiality agreements that they say prevent them from seeking clinical help to address the traumatic effects of the job, among other asks The moderators work for an Accenture subsidiary in Austin Inside China’s battle to keep internet addiction in check Celia Chen visits China’s internet addiction treatment centers: Run by Tao Ran, a former People’s Liberation Army colonel who headed army psychology units, the centre is one of the earliest places in China to diagnose and treat internet addiction and is said to have developed treatment protocols that are used in other parts of the country The facility consists of several buildings that serve as canteens, dormitories and treatment rooms, arranged around an internal open-air courtyard that doubles up as a basketball court and where patients assemble for exercise No electronic devices are allowed This Horrifying App Undresses a Photo of Any Woman With a Single Click Samantha Cole writes about a $50 app called DeepNude, which “dispenses with the idea that deepfakes were about anything besides claiming ownership over women’s bodies” The software, called DeepNude, uses a photo of a clothed person and creates a new, naked image of that same person It swaps clothes for naked breasts and a vulva, and only works on images of women When Motherboard tried using an image of a man, it replaced his pants with a vulva While DeepNude works with varying levels of success on images of fully clothed women, it appears to work best on images where the person is already showing a lot of skin We tested the app on dozens of photos and got the most convincing results on high resolution images from Sports Illustrated Swimsuit issues Adam Mosseri interview: Instagram seriously considering potentially massive change for platform Adam Mosseri talks to Gayle King about, among other things: a Facebook breakup: “I think it’s important to be really clear if you believe that we should be separated, why and what problem it’s gonna solve,” he said “If you look at the issues that I’m most focused on, things like bullying or self-harm or elections integrity, all of those problems become exponentially more difficult for us at Instagram to address if you split us up” The Global Economy Runs on Parties You’re Not Invited To Farhad Manjoo goes to a Facebook party at Cannes Lyon: There is obviously something conspicuously icky about the excess on display One morning last week, everyone in Cannes woke up to The Verge’s investigation into horrendous working conditions at a contract facility that hires moderators to monitor Facebook It was a study in contrasts: The moderators complained of bathrooms covered in feces and menstrual blood At Cannes, Facebook bought a piece of the beach and built a coffee bar, meeting space and private boat launch to entertain its clients It’s not true that the internet is eliminating every job for humans There are humans everywhere in the social media supply chain Some of them suffer Others get to schmooze The internet changed everything It also changed nothing Launches Twitch launches subscriber-only streams, but only for creators who don’t violate its rules Twitch is giving its creators another carrot with which to lure paying subscribers, Julia Alexander reports: Twitch is giving its well-behaved streamers a chance to offer a new, VIP-like feature to their most loyal viewers with subscriber-only streams The new feature does exactly what the name suggests: any Twitch Affiliated or Partnered creator can choose to broadcast exclusively for moderators, VIPs, and subscribers. This comes at no additional cost to the subscriber beyond the minimum $5-a-month fee they’re paying to support the streamer Fans who aren’t subscribed will be greeted with a preview of a broadcast before being asked to subscribe to a channel Takes Libra’s Questionable Benefits ($) After interviewing two of its top executives, Ben Thompson calls Libra “a bad idea” To my mind money — which, at the end of the day, is the medium that makes society work, particularly a capitalistic one — has those same high stakes That means the downsides should be weighed more heavily than the upsides, which means less efficiency and more accountability should be preferable to the opposite And that, by extension, means that a currency managed, if not by a single corporation then at best a collection of them, is a bad idea To be sure, all of these objections apply to a reality that is very far in the future, if it arrives at all By the time that future arrives, though, it will be too late to raise them Facebook’s Libra probably won’t help people without bank accounts Half of all adults who don’t have bank accounts live in seven countries, according to a report cited by Facebook Elizabeth Lopatto says this could limit Libra’s power to lift people out of poverty: Facebook is banned in China Some countries, such as Pakistan, Indonesia , and Bangladesh , have temporarily banned Facebook for periods of time, possibly limiting the effectiveness of any money tied to the app Facebook mentions this as a risk factor to its business in its quarterly filing : “Government authorities in other countries may seek to restrict user access to our products if they consider us to be in violation of their laws or a threat to public safety or for other reasons, and certain of our products have been restricted by governments in other countries from time to time” That’s not all: many of these countries have laws around cryptocurrency (Yes, I know it is debatable whether Libra qualifies as a cryptocurrency or not But Facebook is calling Libra a cryptocurrency, so I am going to assume cryptocurrency laws will apply.) India’s current regulations mean Libra can’t operate in the country Pakistan is considering regulation for cryptocurrencies, but currently they are banned Cryptocurrency is also implicitly banned in Bangladesh and China And finally Why People Pretend To Be Boomers In Facebook Groups Brad Esposito talks to people participating in my favorite current trend in Facebook Groups: pretending that you are extremely old: In the group Snider helps manage people post Facebook-prompted text images lamenting the death of their “son” in brutal honestly (“My son is dead“), they share gifs of the American flag in faux patriotism, the words “Flood Facebook with our flag!” emboldened along the top Often, it’s just someone replicating the ham-fisted way the older generation can often find itself using Facebook’s basic features, asking amongst an army of commas what the acronym “wyd” means (“Is this some gang language?“) (Yes it is a gang language) Talk to me Today I invite you to send me tips, comments, questions, and your nominations to Facebook’s oversight board: casey@thevergecom Read the full article

[onestowatch]

sobhhï Discusses Branding, Moods, Inclusion, & New Single “facts up / الحين” [Q&A]

“I'm just trying to knock out all these handshakes and you know, trying to be more social this year,” says Sobhhï in between a laugh as he walked the streets of New York with me on the other end of the phone. Miscommunication for our chat didn’t alter his demeanor, but in fact broke the ice, calling it a “lucky coincidence” on my timing before he continued his travels to Dubai.

The alternative R&B artist simply known as sobhhï has purposely stepped out of the limelight during the duration of his career and embraced a shadowed persona. The pressure to disclose his identity to a constant growing fan base became more apparent with his musical success. “Like my youngest followers are the ones that are most curious, so definitely I do feel that pressure. But I always get reconfirmation too that making the focus not so about me has helped make it more about the music so, I'm pretty happy with the fact,”  explained sobhhï.

On his latest single, “facts up / الحين,” taken off his forthcoming EP, BLACK I, set to release on Feb. 19, sobhhï brings a multitude of intangible moods on a sultry production. Once again blending trapsoul with R&B, the track is an appetizing fill for colder nights. “facts up” maintains a sensual bedroom soul soundscape which softens a tinge of erotica from sobhhï’s dreamy vocals. His articulation from sensuality of lust towards a mental aspect intertwines with Arabic, English, and the undertone of distance.

In the same vein, sobhhï’s attention to detail on his continued color-palette themed EPs stretches beyond his music, but towards his draped branding. Recently teaming up with like-minded individuals, sobhhï’s latest endeavor, NUIT SANS FIN (night without end), acts as a record label, luxury fashion, and design house focusing on a nightlife style. Heavily influenced from Marty Neumeier’s “The Brand Gap” and “Zag,” sobhhï’s marketing mindset is prevalent on NSF. In order to stray away from the “standard cookie cutter” presentation among a saturation of similar artists, sobhhï states that when people zigs, he zags.

The conversation naturally leads from the ideals of NSF, moods, and the real reason why he spoke Arabic on “facts up.” A lighter side of sobhhï is shown throughout our conversation, always stemming from inclusion, offering a better insight of sobhhï’s thought process. What follows is a condensed version of our conversation.

OTW: Your brand is polished and it kind of goes into something that I noticed that you recently did in NY, it's NSF — which celebrates, if I may quote a "nocturnal lifestyle" — so I wanted more information on that and how that meshes with your overall brand and music.

Sobhhï: I took a look at my catalogue, and I realized there was a little bit of lack of cohesion of what kind of message I’m sending, and I looked around [to] more successful artists. And to me, the music industry’s success is more really about money; it’s about do you have a hit single that's gonna recoup that cost of your advance and all the monthly costs, but for me the success criteria is if fans or people who are listening feel like they're apart of something that's just not music that they hit play, but kind of a world they live in. So, I look at things like you know Drake's OVO and [The] Weeknd's XO, Wiz Khalifa’s Taylor Gang, and A$AP Rocky’s A$AP brand, and I realized those brands are much bigger than the music. They allow people to feel more included. They allow people to change their social media handle to feel like they're part of a family. It's gonna be a design house at the end of the day, which means that it can range from anything from photography to architecture, but the point is it’s a project that allows me to make the feeling that people get from my music to go beyond just the music itself and make it more inclusive. And since then there's been people changing their handles on social media, feeling they’re more included in this family, and I hope I can make it bigger than me. And then one day when I'm not here anymore, it will still be here. And again, NSF means endless night, or night without end, and it kinda describes my music and my whole circle's sort of mindset or lifestyle. It also describes a lot of the millennial culture. You know, binging on Netflix [laughs], sleeping till noon.

OTW: So, are you of the millennial culture?

Sobhhï: That's a good question. [laughs] I would say— are you saying by age or by mentality?

OTW: Either or — it's subjective.

Sobhhï: Okay, I'll say mentality wise. You know like I said, everyone zigs or zags, so if I ever feel like there is a culture of some kind I try not to be so, included. I try to find a way to like stand out a little bit.

OTW: On Essentials, there's a couple tracks that I've noticed that are probably going to be on your upcoming BLACK I EP, right?

Sobhhï: Yes.

OTW: Did you kind of see this as testing the waters in a sense to what would stick, before you would put out, or I guess, polish the EP?

Sobhhï: Um, no. The Essentials are actually the curation of the very best songs from all of the EPs, so you can think of it starting with the concept of colors. I name my EPs after colors because I feel like there's many shades of R&B and hip-hop now, it's not just one sound. So, instead of having an album that sort of has these waves and people take the songs they like out of it, I decided it would be better to just package things in small, very, very, concentrated pieces of bodies of work that have a theme. And I also noticed there's a shift in the music industry, it seems to be diverging, and we're getting really, really, long albums now for people who are shamefully trying to jack up their stream numbers, and we're also getting a movement towards just singles from more independent artists because people don't have the patience to listen to full projects. So, I thought like 3-4 song EPs would be the perfect size that would allow me to go deeper into a topic or a mood, than just one song, and allow me to experiment with transitions, but not long enough to be considered having a dropout rate by the time you're done.

OTW: What I want to touch on is your immersion of Arabic. Even certain references in titles, whether it be a capital and the actual language as well; I think that's very beautiful. What was the idea to immerse Arabic because you really don't hear that a lot. I love Arabic indie rock but I don't hear it in R&B. [laughs]

Sobhhï: Yeah, thank you for appreciating that. I know some people don't. For me, the main motive for that is hip-hop started as a story about being African-American in America and certain forms of oppression that those people faced, and then it's something that grew and was kind of an empowering sound and empowering genre. And as the world became more like immigrant population, hip-hop has kinda gone to the world stage from where it started. And now, it's just... I look around, and I see there's a lot of representation of hip-hop in certain places and then there's certain places where there's people who really like hip-hop but it's not represented for them there. So, the whole point for Arabic for me is I just want more people to feel included in the movement. I look at a lot of my fans. I have a lot of Turkish fans, I have a lot of Arabic fans, I have a lot of fans from France for example, and it's like hopefully one by one I can find ways to represent my supporters in my music over time. And Arabic was just the first thing I did because I happen to speak it [laughs] but you know, that's kinda the concept with it. I want people to listen to it and be like, “Oh wow this isn't just something like happening thousands of miles away that I can't be apart of anymore,” it's like world culture. It's world pop culture.

OTW: You mention a lot about inclusion, whether it be the side project of the record label, as well as immersing cultures and languages together — is that just an overall theme that’s intentional?

Sobhhï: Yeah, I mean it's not like I have an overt agenda. Just like the way I grew up, my parents were both immigrants and they came here to get educated. My dad came for an accounting PhD and then he stayed, and then my mom came for an MBA, and they didn't really like each other very much. You know when your parents don't like each other, it's hard to have family friends; it's hard to even keep good ties with your family. I would say my younger brother and I grew up very lonely and on holidays and special occasions there really wasn't anyone around. And we also moved around a lot too, so these things culminated I guess. For me it's like family, like building a family, is a very important thing. And the same way I'm against racism, and against sexism, and every kinda -ism, I'm also against the concept that family has to be people you're related to because that's just a game of chance, like who you end up being related to doesn't necessarily mean they're good people.

OTW: Let's talk about your single “facts up”— what was the little push behind it? Because that one sounds like something I would ask a distant relationship, like, “Hey, what’s going on?”

Sobhhï: Yeah, so it's hard for me tangibly describe these things because you know, my process is very [laughs] loose. I kind of just step into a studio and these things just come out of my head and then you know I go back and edit them on paper, and then it's done. So, it's hard for me to walk through a very perfect story for you about “there's a girl” [laughs], but there's definitely a distance component to this. I'm hopping between all these cities and it's hard, for my friends and people I always care about, [who] aren't always in the same place. Also, originally I wasn't planning on speaking Arabic in this song, but there was this... I was talking to this girl and she said, “I want to hear you speak in Arabic.” [laughs]

OTW: [laughs]

Sobhhï: So I was like… Okay [laughs].

OTW: Was it that easy?

Sobhhï: Yeah. I didn't think it would turn out that good. [laughs] I mean, I happen to be in the studio at the time and you know nivo, who is my close collaborator, he just finished a session and we were going to get food and usually right before we leave to do something there's like a period of 20 minutes where like he's checking his phone or we're packing stuff up, so I took that 20 minutes to be like, "Okay let me get this out the way" [laughs]...so this is one of the songs where I let nivo hear it in the car and he's like, “Yo, dude you gotta get on this vibe” and I was like, “Really?”

OTW: That's hilarious. Love how things fall into place. Did you ever get to show that girl?

Sobhhï: Yeah, she knows about it [laughs].

OTW: Is there anything else you want to add, talk about?

Sobhhi: I will say BLACK I is just the first project and color dropping this year, there will also be Red III, Purple I, White I, and White II, if I have the stamina and the luck so look out for that, and they will all explore different moods and different feelings and different themes.

[jamesdazell]

RELIGION VS ART, LITERATURE, CULTURE - (Or, How Literature Literally Lost The Plot)

1. Literature ~ I

The origin of the aesthetics of a novel are found in the Gospels, the stories of the Old Testament, Augustinian confession, Plato dialogues (who was a Proto-Christian), comedy, and the moral fable. I wondered for so long why the best novelists were the ones so well acquainted with the Bible. The novel is a thoroughly Judeo-Christian work, and since Christianity is reformation of Judaism, and Islam is the reformation of Judaism through Christian scholarship, the tradition is Islamic too. Twentieth century cinema, a practical development of the novel (not plays) have dysfunctional characters who suffer from themselves usually isolated by their neurosis and essentially are imploding across the story line. Gangster films for instance, horror films, take pleasure in pain and suffering in the sense of violence in medieval passion plays retelling the crucifixion if Christ. The pleasure in suffering. In the degeneration of a man. The very emblem of Christianity is the dead Christ on a cross. Christ who suffers for our sins. It’s unsurprising that the king directors of the mob film genre, Martin Scorsese, Brian de Palma, and Francis Ford Coppola are all Catholic. The genre springs right out of it, and the audience revelled in its violent pains as well as a joy in pessimism, ugliness, and self-deprication, as well follow their descent in to madness and disorder. Not at all like in the tragedies where we take pleasure in the strength in suffering, wisdom on account of suffering. In cinema and the novel, the characters suffer often from their own awful psychological traits (the dysfunctional psychological story is the confession before God and a quest for a redemption, the judgement before God’s eyes, a Catholic guilt), that one suffers for having sinned. Outside of the Bible this also belongs in comedy, where the idiot suffers from ignorance, and in history where the person is said to have fallen to ruin by a lack of prudence. But as time went on, comedy, history, and Christianity all merged. Worst of all, that we’re supposed to take pity on the characters. Pity: the bleakest, heaviest, weakening effect on the body, mind, and spirit there is; and yet a Christian virtue. Pity is far worse than sadness. It’s a degenerating quality that weighs down the spirit and kills off joy. There are films where the stronger our pity for the hero is, the greater we’re to perceive their heroism is even more Christian. And the story is built along the action driven by specifically Christian values and concepts of the world. Fabrications which don’t exist in the actual world. Does the plot have a dualism of good versus evil? The moral good in resentiment towards the moral evil? Does it drive by the foundation value of Christianity: resentiment, and the Christian concept of evil, a figure of immorality, which does not exist, but has hithero been the make-up of every great being on Earth. More a Julius Caesar than a Jesus Christ. One, who possessed every life affirmative instinct possible, the other, the most life degenerating instincts.

Instincts which are also in the foundation of the novel. It’s said the first novel is Cervantes’ Don Quixote. If so, that explicitly proves it: Cervantes a Catholic, written in prison (a hermit existence), a comedy written as a history, that attempts to moralise its audience, written episodically like the picaresque books. The practice of writing a novel requires a hermitage, unphysical hibernation, a kind of discarding of the body, in to an asceticism. Shutting off the world for a writing desk, and life for the imagination. The novel a Christian art form through and through. The novelist becomes confessionally introspective, but doesn’t reveal it through the dialogue, but through the psychological study of its character in the same way that Christians were supposed to keep a diary to observe and critique their moral thoughts. The novel is a really weird form of literature, it’s a medley of many low styles of writing, that don’t even really fit together. 

Even the style of language in a novel is light with a rhythm and cadence that derives from comedies like Menander and histories of Herodotus, instead of the mightier line of epic or tragedy, or even the histories written by Thucydides and Livy. Found from Aristophanes, Plato, Menander, through Apuleius, right through to Cervantes, to Tolstoy, to Garcia-Marquez. The prose style of the novel reached its perfection in the writer Leo Tolstoy. But the Latin elegiac poetry and Roman Latin prose is the best style of writing of all writers ever. It’s Tolstoy but from a totally superior level that completely detoxes Tolstoy from writing. 

Time in a novel never stands still, it shifts back and forth, abruptly, as if the author could never grip a moment. In plays and poetry the matter at hand is gripped with intensity. Time in a novel is always transient without ever putting us in the moment. I have to go to epic poems, plays, and poetry just to hold on to a moment, to really feel the weight of a moment. The plot of novels never keep me gripped because they don’t even grip themselves. There’s more done in a single soliloquy of Shakespeare’s Hamlet than in an entire novel. I want to feel the moment that the character is in, the pressure that is upon him, the choice at the crisis, his own sense of himself, his relationship to his existence, other characters, his decisions, and the universe. I have to feel that the character is involved in something, in some crisis which makes the drama - but I don’t in a novel because the moment disappears and I’m given a new one before I’ve had the chance to accept it.

The playwright and the scriptwriter are both superior practices to the novelist - not to say anything of their content. Although the poet is the supreme writer of all, the playwright has a greater task than the poet, because they present life, the relationships between people, society, and the world at large. There was a time when the poet, playwright, philosopher were one thing and all came out in the same work. That kind of writer remains the most supreme of all. I don’t think a writer like that would even recognise a novelist without a great burst of laughter. How disagreeable the Western novel would have been to Shakespeare, Aeschylus, and Homer. Playwrighting and poetry is more akin to music than it is even its own ugly sibling, the novel.

Tragic heroes seem as though they’re similar but they’re a total opposite. They’re supremely great characters, better than we meet in real life, who suffer from a superfluity of greatness, isolated by their superabundance of energy towards a particular habit that breaks them free from traditions of the world around them, they are explosive across the story line. Essentially they are beaten down by the world that come upon them by feeling this new thing is a threat. “Greatness wins hate” writes Aeschylus in his tragedy The Orestia. Not one tragedy asks you to pity it. The heroes are strength in the face of danger. Pleasure of will to power in the face of pain. Defiant in the face of morality. Self-insistent, an anti-hero, neither good nor evil but beyond both. Tragedies see Christianity as beneath it. The novel (and thereby cinema) is just a comedy we take pity for; a comedy we take all too seriously.

~ II

We perpetuate our values, beliefs, interpretations of the world through the stories that we tell, and the culture we share among an audience. Our own Western tradition of story telling comes from the Abrahamic religions that the West had absorbed for centuries. It’s hard to divert away from them, as the tradition of all our story-telling concepts seem to originate there. Similarly, the stories that are told around the world have their origins in the traditional and prevalent religions of that region. 

In the Western world, wherever you’re telling a story its more than likely that, even if you don’t have to think about it, the story you’re telling has its roots in Abrahamic religion’s values, beliefs, interpretations, concepts, simply because for two-thousand years the West has been predominately divided up by the three Abrahmic faiths. And when we tell a story we are really just interpreting these values, beliefs, ideas, interpretations, goals etc. we are only articulate these through a story. Sunsan Sontag expressed her view of this in a conversation with John Berger, saying that there are no stories. Stories only happen where there are writers. That life doesn’t happen in stories, life merely happens, the universe merely happens, and events merely happen in the infinity of events; and it;s our story-telling that isolates the scenario, constructs their beginning and end, places a perspective of value on to it, and gives it a meaning. That there are no stories until the story-teller makes one.  

Anybody can tell a story. It’s ingrained in us how to tell stories. We know how to tell stories through the stories we absorb all the time through the films we see, the stories we are told as children, the video games we play, the way history is told, the books we read, the essays we read, the way the news is told in the media, and the anecdotes we tell each other - we are surrounded by stories. But where do their own techniques of story-telling come from, and are they universal?

Art has always been religion’s greatest obstacle. Not science. Science, in its relinquishing of the senses as empiricism, and an objectivity that goes as far as to deny human significance “i look at the universe as realise how insignificant we are” science says - thereby denying the body and the powerful significance of one’s life - science has so far been religions greatest ally. Art on the otherhand offered people a whole view of life and power over life that religion has had no comparative to. God is not the issue in the 21st Century. You don’t have to be religious in the modern world to be religious. You just have to perpetuate religion’s values and beliefs through culture and stories. When Martin Luther nailed his treatise to the door of Castle Church in Wittenberg on 31st October 1517, and the Reformation sprung up which effectively ended the Renaissance (the Golden Age of Man of nearly two millennia), because he felt that the Catholic Church had been corrupted by paganism, culture became Christianity’s best ally. Through culture Christianity became secularised. It poisoned the rivers of culture through a new art movement Romanticism. Although philosophically after the Renaissance philosophers have always held scepticism towards Christianity, Romanticism is effectively secular Christianity. Which itself has all the ingredients of the decadent movement (or, playing in one’s ashes, or the delight in degradation), atheism (or Christianity without God), and nihilism (or, conceptual art.)

So what happens the moment you say, “well, I don’t want to tell an Abrahamic story.” Where do you go then? Say that you’re not Jewish, Christian, or Muslim, say you don’t have an Abrahamic interpretation of life and the world, what if you don’t hold Abrahamic values, how do you not tell a story that is relating these Abrahamic values and life interpretations? Let’s consider that.

~ III

I said in an earlier essay on The Tragic Artist that theatre was an extension of poetry and that theatre pre-dated formal Western philosophy. Both formal Western theatre and formal Western philosophy arose within the same people, relatively soon after each other - so soon, it could be easily argued in reaction to each other. Poetry was once philosophy too, but it divided in to two halves, those who made theatre and those who made philosophy. One of art and one of logical reasoning. Both were interpretations of their own world view and extolled the values and beliefs of that world view.

You have to really work hard to untangle the traditional Western mode of story-telling and not step in to it. Here’s a quick list of what our stories cannot involve:

Redemption (as in the endings of Dostoevsky - after a series of immoral actions, then concluding by the act of praying or converting to religion in an act of vindication of from one’s sinful actions)

Pity - characters going through suffering but we have to pity them. Pity has a weakening effect on strength.

Self-sacrifice for the greater good or out of despair of life (or, the martyrdom of Christ)

Suffering from oneself, or from life, (the ineptitude to live well and the author’s demand that we pity their ineptitude and call it drama)

Love of one’s neighbour (converting from individual to the herd)

The idea that love conquers all (Agape - the God’s love is the highest power and redeemer of humankind)

Hatred of the powerful, the people vs the ruler, what is that if not Moses’ people versus the Egyptian rulers, David versus Goliath, Jesus versus the Romans (Considering the Abrahamic religions have their origins in lowest classes of society, the herds of the oppressed lowest classes that rued their rulers, whilst the Asian religions and Ancient Greek religion have their origin in ancient educated nobility. Hatred of the powerful is a resentment of power, and the qualities of powerful, the great, the strong. Pleb revolt in favour of degenerate qualities because they are weaker and want power. The Bible Romanticises these events, but in reality they turn in to the revolutions that gave us Lenin, Saddam Hussein, Hitler, Napoleon, even Donald Trump. I already expressed that in the essay WE.) Hatred of the powerful is hatred of power itself, hatred of the strong is hatred of strength itself.

Sin and the Ten Commandments -That one’s suffers because on is sinful.

Christian concepts for various incarnations of the devil, daemons, whether incarnate or in possession of the soul. (What is the Devil if not a kind of God? And if there are no Gods, then there is no Devil. And if there is the concept of a Devil, there is within that the concept of a God.)

Good and Evil. The idea of a character of moral evil. Evil having its origin in Judeo-Christianism. The closest to evil in non-Abrahamic story-telling is what is contemptible like Eastern cinema, Epic poems or Tragic theatre. In Western stories where the antagonist of moral evil the character is always one-dimensional, flat, depthless, we’re simply supposed to believe in the idea of Evil and that’s what they are In Eastern and Greek, all the characters were good, only that some were contemptible in character, but for that they had to have character.)

Parallel worlds, alternative reality or religious afterlife. - the belief that there is a better world, a truer world, a paradise world that awaits, and that this world is only a punishment, a training, a testing ground for an afterlife where a person is saved from suffering. Or, the inability to handle life and so invents another “better” one and degrades this only and actual one in to a dream, a fabrication, even - ugh! - a punishment.

The all encompassing one hero fated to save the world - (or, the chosen people appointed by divine origin, in the case of the Jews, or the divine son, the world redeemer, in the case of Christ.)

Immortality of the soul - for that there would need to be an afterlife

Free will (so that one can be accountable for one’s actions and thereby punishable, concept of The Last Judgement, and eternal damnation. For that one would need a soul, an afterlife, and a critic like a God)

Faith - (what is faith but not wanting to believe what is true.)

Hope (Hope is the worst kind of cruelty, for it prolongs the torment. Hope after nothing, will to do it, the willingness is all. when it is willed sufficiently enough it is done.)

~ IV

If you were cancel out the timeline and geography of story-telling in the Judeo-Christian tradition, a huge chunk of time and geography is removed. What’s left is Asia, which has its own religious outlooks of Taoism, Buddhism, Shinto etc and Western geographical world that pre-dates the prevalence of Abrahamic religion, ie. Before the Hebrew Bible and before Christianity was made the official religion of the Roman Empire (which pretty much contained all of Europe).

There were only two places where I could go to to find story-telling that was counter-active to those: Asian (particularly Japan) and the Ancient Greeks (specifically Archaic Greece.) The only two story-telling approaches that arose out of world views that sprang from the educated noble, strong, masterful societies and cultures. Japanese and Archaic Greek story-telling comes out the section society that could have the strongest view of life, that stood before society like a eagle on an eyrie.

In Buddhism, there is no concept of evil, there is no sin. Sin has a Jewish origin. The dichotomy of Good and Evil is a Zarathustran origin. Our morality, a Christian. Buddhism isn’t dualistic like the Abrahamic faiths and Hinduism. It’s monoism. The yin and yang are one, complete, whole, inseperable. The East doesn’t have this influence until the 20th century Westernisation in its story-telling. and western story-telling doesn’t begin to break away from it until its Eastern influence in the 20th century. The tradition of tragedy pre-dates the concepts of good and evil. In Homer both Trojans and Greeks are Good, Hector and Achilles are both good. It’s the same in tragic plays. However, in Japanese stories a person can behave in a way that is contemptable. Disloyalty is contempltable, or irresponsibility of power etc. Instead of Christian morality there are noble codes of the samurai just as there are heroic codes in Homer.

What would be my highest concept of an artist? My highest concept of an artist. That one has gratitude and a confidence in the face of all things. Does not seek either consolation or soothing from life. Whom can really swallow the benefit in every bad situation. The Archaic Greeks held so much truth of the nature of life, that life would have been unbearable to live with such a degree of truth. In order to be able to live and not divert from it they created myth, a beautiful veil over life that sprang right out of that truth. What is requires is intoxication and ecstasy in to life that one springs in to visions that beautiful life through gazing in to truth so long. In a word: Art.

Art allows us not only to bare the sufferings and pain of life, but be grateful for it. What cant an artist endure who is of that degree. Who can go through life with confidence and gratitude in the face of all things. The artist who has a super abundance of life, knowing that all things are for them, can bear with reality and know that antagonisms make them. What is there this artist could not be grateful for, could not deal with, could not come through better as a result of all things that arrive to him/her. Everything works for their becoming. There is no misfortune of life. All things that occur work to serve them. And the awareness of the terribleness of life is not consoled, soothed, or diverted from, but overcome through Art. Only an artist to that degree of gratitude to life would I even begin to call an artist. That they overcome, ascends above, and dances right over suffering. They see it for what it truly is and not merely for what it seems to be. That art is the proper affirmation of life. As though he would recoil off the truth of life’s in to art by instinct, in order to love it still all the more. That one has no resentment towards the presence of anything, but only holds what is proper in contempt. And what does this artist hold in contempt? Anything that diminishes this instinct.

~ V

What then are all Abrahamic values? Symptoms of declining life. An impoverished life, poor in spirit, a life denying will. Symptoms that one suffers super abundantly, unendurably, from life, from stronger people, and from one’s own conscience and body. The body becomes sin, weakening, where depressants like pity become a virtue, the individual degenerates in to the need for the herd to protect and preserve it, where every quality of strength becomes an evil, and the afterlife is created as a redeemer from the pain in this one.

To be not without a little scepticism towards the social origin of religions, a little prejudice perhaps, but observation nevertheless, isn’t it funny that in religions which come from the lower classes, God is much more vague and monotheistic. Religions from the lower classes, as expected they would be from a people that knew “power” vaguely and a great singular “them above us” God is something just as fearful as a “the noble rulers” wants to be praised as much by them just as “noble rulers.” Whilst in religions that come from higher classes, gods are many (polytheistic) like the noble courts would be, and resemble many characteristics about noble courts. Since they were “higher up”, they have a gods closer to the eye, closer to the bearer, a god that does not want to be praised all the time, one or many that can be ill-tempered, flawed, and with human temperaments, that can be outwitted, a god like the Olympians, the Egyptian Gods, the Hindu gods, the Shinto gods etc, that one can even be amongst them and perhaps, even overcome them.

I’ll come outright and say it, the prevalence of Abrahamic perspectives have killed off high culture wherever and wherever they have prevailed. Just as they are prevailing right now. We approached a curve during the 20th Century through our enthusiasm for Eastern religion (which make a hundred times more sense) and the Greek Chorus-like ecstatic return to nature in music, (the colourful and enchanted but robust view of life Icelandic Sagas - which we might owe to even for a Bjork), and love of cruelty, sex, and danger in cinema (as it had been on Shakespeare’s stage, Seneca’s, and Sophocles’s stage). I only encourage artists to look elsewhere. Namely Eastern and Archaic Greek. Just recognise that it hinders the greatest art. Make your art out of a higher spirit, mentality, and perspective than what Abrahamic traditions can serve.

~ VI

Do we understand yet what the secret great goodness was occurring through the 20th century right from its beginnings to its end? From Imagism’s interest in the Japanese Haiku, Kabuki and Noh theatre, from modern dance being inspired by the ecstatic movement of Ancient Greek chorus, to Picasso’s enthusiasm for African and Ancient art, to the 60 and 70s enthusiasm for Eastern religion, its stories and symbolism, to the dream-state expressionism in theatre, to the ecstatic method of making music through 60s to 90s. Music became more physiological again, more instinctive on the way it not only affected our emotions but the way it affected our bodies. It could do with far more intellectualism in how it does this, but that it begins there is the naive genius of popular music. The 90s and very early 2000s rekindled a huge enthusiasm for Eastern culture and philosophy and religion, as well as Indian Hinduism (the practice of yoga is still popular, and Buddhist meditation), as well as a Dionysian ecstasy particularly in music, And a love of the strange, the dark, the mysterious, even the terrifying, as something to compel strength, even a love of the ancient Roman and Greek, Eatern worlds (through cinema)). It’s likely our actors are better in the 20th Century than in centuries earlier. Because we are more complete beasts. We are more barbaric, animal, primal, beasts. We don’t sever aspects of ourselves under “sin” like we had done for hundreds and hundreds of years. And combined with the elegance of literary language and scene, we straddle both high and low. We far far less likely to think of life as though it’s a chronic illness, as Abrahamic values had seen it - as even Socrates had seen it when he said “life is a long sickness.” It is precisely our barbarism that makes us more complete human beings, more animal man, fuller of life. And yet not full enough. We began to revive a foundation for super abundant life affirmative values and behaviour. Somehow perhaps very calculatedly underswept almost entirely by the mid-2000 it all disappeared.  Will this curve end? End because of the cultural conscience that has exploded upon it from Middle Eastern terror and political unrest that took hold of the West’s consciousness? Is that not itself more cause for it. Exhaustion versus Exaltation, Energy, Ecstasy. We were on our way to undoing or interfering with the Abrahamic religious influence on the Western culture, and we were creating so much better culture on account of it. How much of the 90s looked to Eastern religion, symbolism, story-telling, cinema and philosophy, that by the year 2000 we were so tired of seeing yet another martial arts appearance in a Hollywood film. But look what that did FOR pop culture. Then swept away swiftly by as early as 2002, beside the low culture that arose of Reality TV of The Simple Life that became in to the Kardashians. Why has the Kardashians been so successful? Because suddenly the whole mediocrity of the world could see themselves as a Kim or Kylie. They didn’t only identify with it they could turn to their own mirror and appear like it, and they could be claim some social affinity to multi-millionaire society to improve their social attractiveness. That took away the imaginative and well-scripted drama on TV. It took music back to that retro-retrograde of music of the raw punk and post-punk that hadn’t quite had its fill, that simplified music and the un-artistic, pathos instead of art, instead of the new peaks it was reaching as a synergy of all the genres and ideas that were circulating in the late 90s taking popular music if not music to where it hadn’t been to. And then 9/11 happened and resurged the cultural and political consciousness of Abrahamic religions. Even resurged Christianity in the West as an ignorant counter-active culture to its bigotry disdain for Islam. (As it’s doing now under Donald Trump.) So once more the Abrahmic culture gained a resurgence, defeating the Eastern-cure that was the enthusiasm for Eastern religions from India to Japan, which would have been the foundation to have a real resurgence in to that most supreme of Greek culture, for Archaic Greek culture, but from our 21st Century advantage of a perspective surveying the whole of all these varying cultures. Isn’t it clear that we were on the way, and that 9/11 interrupted this profoundly!

What fears and distrust of the East and Middle East it made the West. Causing a near immediate effect of making the West forget that the greatest music (and the poetry, cinema, and music of the 60s, 70s, and 90s was profoundly influenced by music of India, Asia, and the Middle-East - just as it influenced Greece, Rome, and the Renaissance, and the Orientalism of the early 20th century, and in short, every great period of Western Art). The 1970s (the first post-modern decade) gave us the 20th Century’s peak in popular culture’s masters. (Not meaning Arts masters, but where popular culture had figures that were touching on the Artistic Masters themselves.) But they were few and far between. But in the 90s the enthusiasm for these few figures was creating a mainstream culture that followed in their footsteps. And by the end of the 90s and first couple of years of the 2000s the brightest stars of this culture were hitting that same mastery and with the broad audience of pop culture full of enthusiasm for them. 2. Music

~ VII

But it was all abandoned. How did the Renaissance end? With the Reformation, with Lutherism, and Calvinism, and Protestant Reform of the Catholic Church that hoped to redeem the church from the Renaissance paganism love of Greece and Rome, to pull it backwards in reverse to the resurgence of Christianity. It already killed off music during the Renaissance. The joyful and strong music of Francesco Landini, Guilliame Dufay, Adam de la Halle, to become the cold and morbid music of Palestrina. That took away rhythmic power in music to have melodic music, that arose from the most commonly heard melodic music, the choirs of Christian mass. The whole tradition of classical music is a censorship on music. There’s no doubt what dances right on top and over Abrahamic religions - the Archaic Greeks, drinking songs, tragedy, ecstatic music, beauty. Dionysius. The Renaissance, the last Golden Age, did not consist of thousands of Leonardo da Vinci’s, these were exceptions, within religious times. It didn’t matter that these were religious times, these were exceptions within those times. It’s not that life is ugly, but the truth of life is ugly. So ugly that without the beautiful image and the ecstatic music we can hardly bare with such truth of life. The world can be a terrible place, that’s why we have culture, so we can live in it, that’s why we have art, so that we don’t perish by the truth. Out of the truth of reality, which would otherwise stun us in horror as stiff as a Niobe, the artist, during intoxication and passion for creativity, recoils in to artistic expression, allowing them despite the truth of life to love it all the more nevertheless. The degree of a musician is often how transformative they can turn an experience; can turn dark to light, can turn pain to pleasure, can stare in to the darkest realities of life and feel untouchable, can scale that same power as its great antagonist and become a laughing dance over it, singing never directly out of pathos but ironic to the lyric, have inventive rhythm sections and polyphonic melodies, can keep rhythm as the stronger force in music than melody, can sing as though to turn all the pain in to pleasure, and through doing so celebrate the reality of life and the vitality of the individual, freed of everything that had tried to hold it down, transformed in to a wild self-affirming return to nature.

When the future high culture looks back at our pop music with any admiration, i know of no other musician it will look admiringly with more certainty than Bjork. Throughout her catalogue she has touched on every genre, and there are touches of every form of music of every kind, without ever not sounding nevertheless quintessentially Bjork. She puts herself in to music and makes it conform to her not her to it. But more than that hers is the one music that is reminiscent of music of previous high cultures. And therefore most likely to be enjoyed by future high cultures. I fundamentally believe this: that all high cultures relished in the same culture. Its a rare culture because its the culture of rare types of people. The confusion of the contemporary world is that it mistakes the high art of the upper classes of the modern world (1600-present) for high culture, when nothing could be further. and that the people’s culture has had more to do with the high culture of high periods, its just that its shallowed and hollowed by a confusion of instinct and low personality, that lacks genius as its audience. But there should be no mistaking the backwards anti-music of opera with music of high cultures compared to the energy and wildness of popular music, made for dance, sex, even danger, and catharsis. And everything else which constitutes virility and life. And essentially strong and healthy types. Enjoyment even in the stimulus of pain in life, (how many albums were conceived out of heartbreak, and how many popular musicians say its hard to write a song from being happy), music which lifts off pain often out of the stimulus of pain. That confronts it instinctively and creates and masters over it intuitively until its purged of pain. And ends up almost grateful for it. What are all the stale opera houses in the world compared to that, which is a music that only tries to dramatise pain. Opera is itself is a complete misunderstanding of music. And for it to be called high art is a complete misunderstanding of culture. The modern world has had no high culture. Not forgetting that classical music and opera both came out of Christian religious music. And that because there was once a time that Church was higher than the state this music was naturally assumed as higher music socially, politically, and religiously. And that instrumentals for dance with secular singing etc had been the great European music until the Church banned it. And its that music that resembled our popular music. Classical music is really just a strange anomaly in the history of music - except for choral music - that really only appears in the modern world and nowhere else. And on the grand scale of how long music has been around, that’s a relatively very short period of time.

My praise for FKA twigs, (who is in many ways that risidual-Abrahamic artist - but what she is, is better than what she does). I praise her for taking music back to its ritualistic nature that it takes us to in ecstasy. I was just watching some videos from the 1990s (actually Give It Away by Anton Corbijn, which is comparable to Papi Pacify). And was just like that’s why music had me so excited back then. it broke down the bullshit. it united us all in this ritualistic ecstasy that is music. the art of music in the 1990s was more real to me than ‘real-life’. I don’t think so much today. I feel music is dressed up in the values of real life. In its materialism and consumerism, its capitalist aspirations. How many shops, manufacturers, qualities of life are entwined with music. Here music was a strength. A gravity. A superpower. A sage. Wherever the visual aesthetic of music brings us back to the nature of music, culture is the better for it. Everything about music in the 1990s verged on the ritualistic, and these projections that sprung from it, that were these visionary icons. As though connecting and portraying something deep and more enriched than the everyday, that seemed to defy and confront it. And liberate it. And liberate us to some greater direction than the world seemed to have in store for us. It seemed to remind of us a way into ourselves and a way out of the miseries of the world. If we could only sustain it in ourselves and overlap it on to the world each day. Dance and music have moved forward in ways that literature hasn’t even begun to. And for that same reason, cinema lags behind too. That’s why I invented my Poets of Ecstasy, as a redeemer of all better things in literature. And as an objection to the ascetic practice of novel writing. 

~ VIII

Homer’s works would itself be inspiration for the whole Archaic age of Greece, taking them out of the dark age. The age that gave it Thucydides, Heraclitus, Protagoras, Pindar, Sappho, and Aeschylus to name a few. And Socrates ended that age, the same way that Luther ended the Renaissance, the same way that Christianity ended the culture of the Romans.   My writings of the last six months have pointed unswervingly to that the Archiac/Tragic period of Greece was the greatest culture and art movement of all time. It even brought Greece out of its own Dark Age. And the philosophy imbued in tragedy is the greatest philosophy of all. And that the Japanese nobility’s tradition of Buddhism and its own folk tales and theatrical stories are only a step lower and are sort of that foundational level if you were to lose your grip on Tragic art. That it’s there to catch you, and ultimately to keep you “culturally hygenic” and prevent you from falling in to the Abrahamic stories that have undone every great period of art and culture in all time.

I’m not blaming any person, I’m blaming psychological traits, values, the interpretations and perspectives on to life that come along with the Abrahamic tradition - as though it were a thing that can be clasped on to a mentality. 3. Visual Art Renaissance and ancient art was not realistic because it was fascinated by the rational view of life but that it painted myths with realism and clarity that was esteemed because it was imagination of cultural myths depicted with the clarity of realism. In the late 19th century they depict real life with subjective impression and a lack of myth. 20th century art is an art period without myths, without stories, without its own tales.  Conceptual art is pure nihilistic art because it has nothing to interpret the world out of it, its a vision without substance beyond opinion, flat, and usually a polemic against something. It is art, but its nihilism. Conceptual art is merely a compensation for lacking myths. We have no stories, we have lens through which to see the world, to interpret it. We shed all our myths through atheism and the modern artistic movements. But nevertheless we have to make sense of the world and comment on it, so we use conceptual perspectives to scrunch it up, chew it up, and breathe air in to it. Conceptual art is that one can't see life with any clarity so the artist sees it through impressions, distortions, and concepts. Lies because he does not know how to see the truth. It doesn’t want Christian tales but it’s replaced them with nothing. So it has non narrative and often non figurative and where it does it is only the mundane absurdity of life, at best an empty but beautiful image, or an art conceived out of a concept of the absurdity of life , an art like this is fundamentally nihilistic. Full of nothing. That life was chaotic absurd and meaningless, just like its art. We live in an age of no myths. What’s needed is poets and story-tellers to create new myths. Romanticism is full of Christian concepts, Gothic is full of Christian concepts, Decadence, Conceptual, Surrealism, etc. The Renaissance proper was verging on to the Greco-Roman Hellenism art and at its very highest examples was veering towards Archaic Greek. The Reformation was the undoing of the Renaissance.The spirit, values, and ideals latched on to the art - which yes, may be a product of the Renaissance through figures like Michelangelo perhaps even Dante - but religion’s great opposition, Art, began to relax in the full summer of its Renaissance and found itself bitten by its enemy. All the myths were made by poets, but the rationality of science and rejection of Christianity left us nothing. I don’t want Christian myths, or even Greek and Roman myths, but we need to start making new myths, out of new values and perspectives. It’s up to poets and story-tellers to give artists a way of seeing the world clearly. A way for the world to see the world clearly. The conceptual artists aimed to do this, the Impressionists, the Romantics, the Renaissance painters, the Byzantine artists, and the Romans and Greeks, and any other era of artists. The only way to overcome Romanticism, is to overcome Christianity. Turn to the East, to the Japanese art, the Buddhist-Hindu art to purify oneself and purge the Romanticism out. Then the Archaic Tragic height, the highest peak art has yet known, will be reachable.

It’s not at all a problem that we have them, but that we don’t have the other, the better. But it gives it a reason to exist. It actually makes tragedy more profound. It’s actually the reason why Shakespeare may be more profound than Aeschylus - because he created a story-telling technique where the morality of Abrahamic faith was the “essence of evil” to the non-Abrahamic principled hero. As though the tragic hero were himself a new found European freedom, a free-spirit in every full sense of the word, who complete stepped out of Western Abrahamic tradition, but could not succeed in “living” within that world. The waste of this free-spirit in the backdrop of the Abrahamic world was Shakespearean tragic; the waste of the exception, the great hope for the future, the greatest. That was his tragedy from his first play to his last. He made all his tragic heroes tremendous by making them defy morality, customs, tradition of the world over and over again until the world finally engulfed him, and then honoured him after his demise. This was a story-telling technique that Aeschylus had no need for. The Abrahamic faith hadn’t yet caught hold of Europe’s higher classes. Aeschylus’s moral world was Zeus, and the breaching the Olympian gods, but even they were used as representations of Aeschylus’ perception in to the order of the universe. Not that it was ruled by gods, but that it had within it patterns of nature. When Aeschylus and Shakespeare are sandwiched on to each other, then there is a story that is entirely built on an understanding of the nature of the universe and the nature of man.

--

Here are a few easy-to-read articles about the differences between East and West story-telling

http://lithub.com/our-fairy-tales-ourselves-storytelling-from-east-to-west/

https://blog.tkmarnell.com/east-asian-storytelling/

http://stilleatingoranges.tumblr.com/post/25153960313/the-significance-of-plot-without-conflict

http://thebookaholic.blogspot.co.uk/2007/11/are-asian-stories-different.html

https://andreaskluth.org/2010/08/18/somewhere-between-apollo-dionysus/

http://www.timsheppard.co.uk/story/dir/traditions/asiamiddleeast.html

[topmixtrends]

IF WE HAVE LEARNED anything from this past presidential election, it is this: that many of us are not adequately equipped to grasp the complexity of what is usually referred to as Middle America. Despite the cottage industry of long-form think pieces that has emerged in an effort to explain the relationship between Donald Trump’s electoral successes and rural America, authored by many of the intellectual voices of our time, we seem to be no nearer an answer to such political conundrums than we were in November. This genre of writing even has a name now: The Reaching-Out Industry. For Timothy Donnelly, the Reaching-Out Industry “has spawned podcasts, books, and TV shows. They share common traits: eschewing (tiresome, predictable) point-by-point debates and stripping things down to a basic level: help us understand you.”

While Donnelly’s ire is directed mostly at liberally authored television programs and cable news shows such as The Van Jones Show and Sarah Silverman’s I Love You, America, it can also be applied to blog posts, long-form analyses, monographs, and book reviews not unlike this one:

I do think there is a genuine desire at work here […] [b]ut once the reaching-out is done, the result isn’t surprising. Biases, right wing fear-mongering, and whitelash combined with a visceral hatred for Hillary Clinton to produce Trump’s victory.

In light of such succinct, if not subtly sarcastic observations, what is left to be said? What is the collective purpose of such think pieces and monographs? To better understand their respective subjects? Or, perhaps, to enact a type of religious-political catharsis by way of academic analysis and peer-reviewed publication?

For Robert Wuthnow, much has been said about the rural America that supported Trump in last year’s election, but very little of it is worth reading because it cares little for the role of community within rural communities. While Wuthnow may appear on paper to be a liberal due to his position at Princeton University, as he admits in his epilogue, he is a native son of sorts who has returned to familiar soil in hopes of cultivating insight and perspective of those otherwise interpellated as the political retrograde. For all intents and purposes, he has achieved such a feat with The Left Behind: Decline and Rage in Rural America, yet not exactly for the reasons he may think.

Wuthnow’s central argument is that in order to better understand what he identifies as the “moral cultures in rural communities,” we must first consider rural communities collectively as explicitly moral communities, and, as such, products of larger moral orders. For him, a moral community is “a place to which and in which people feel an obligation to one another and to uphold the local ways of being that govern their expectations about ordinary life and support their feelings of being at home and doing the right things.” Much of the misunderstanding that has taken place in both journalistic and academic accounts of such lifeways has unfolded largely due to a lack of communal context.

Wuthnow bases most of his analysis on three fictitious rural settings, appropriately named Fairfield, Newborough, and Gulfdale, which in turn reflect larger socio-economic and demographic tendencies of uniquely rural environments. Over the course of his research, the various locales (Midwestern, New England, and Southern respectively) provided Wuthnow with upward of one thousand interviews with individuals such as town managers, clergy persons, mayors, farmers, factory workers, and homemakers. Wuthnow argues that if contemporary observers had a better understanding of rural “norms, expectations, and habits” as part of a broader moral community, then there would be less need to try and “understand them” in terms other than their own. “A first measure of understanding for those who live in cities and suburbs […] is to step momentarily inside these communities before articulating disagreements — and certainly before denouncing millions of our fellow citizens as hopelessly deranged.” What do such individuals actually think about politics, race, and American public life? Do they really vote against their own economic self-interests, as many of us have argued? What, then, are such folk thinking?

Not unlike Arlie R. Hochschild’s subtitle, Anger and Mourning on the American Right, Wuthnow’s own subtitle uses explicitly emotional diction to capture the sentiments of rural Americans: decline and rage. Other texts have recently begun to use the word resentment to describe the religious-political force animating much of today’s version of American populism, yet for Wuthnow this usage cuts in both directions. “The moral outrage of rural America is a mixture of fear and anger,” he contends. “The fear is that small town ways of life are disappearing. The anger is that they are under siege. The outrage cannot be understood apart from the loyalties that rural Americans feel toward their communities.”

While some of the rituals, practices, and beliefs discussed by Wuthnow may not be morally or politically correct (one of his chapters is titled “Bigotry”), his usage of moral community speaks to a larger sacred canopy that contextualizes virtually everything that takes place within rural communities. In this sense, Wuthnow’s intent is to reveal how rural lifeways orient their participants to the myriad worlds around them across the United States. “Understanding the variations and central tendencies of rural voters requires spending time listening and trying to see the world through local eyes,” Wuthnow argues. “As is true of any other segment of our nation, rural lives are complex.” For many, such complexity possesses very little intellectual merit because it usually sounds racist or bigoted, or at least it is assumed to sound as such. What, then, is this complexity of which Wuthnow speaks? And what are its sources?

Wuthnow first explains the current sources of socio-economic struggle for those living in rural areas, and then describes how rural communities have responded, and for what reasons. We first learn about rural communities as moral communities, followed by chapters on “Present Dangers” and “Makeshift Solutions.” In describing what he calls “the culture of small towns,” Wuthnow delves into the daily movements of those struggling to find work or commute-able employment and health care in order to better understand the conditions within which they make their lives livable. Once in the proverbial thick-of-it, all-too-familiar socio-economic similarities begin to emerge between largely white rural communities and largely black and brown urban communities. “Drugs and crime that resulted from drugs were an outlet for people in their communities who felt they were stuck and going nowhere. It was similar, they thought, to problems in inner-city neighborhoods where unemployment, under-employment, and poverty rates were high.”

Unlike much of the contemporary analysis directed at rural Americans, however, Wuthnow’s treatment is rendered thickly enough as to reveal a dense network of expectations, common-sense obligations, and relationships that are anything exclusively white or inherently racist. The fact that Wuthnow decided to name the last chapter of his text “Bigotry” speaks to his awareness of such ways of thinking, but he is much less willing to assume such characterizations as part of his academic analysis. Instead, he explores how notions of community both challenge and cultivate racist and anti-racist behavior in rural communities. In many instances throughout the book, “complex” is an understatement: “I just want to have more freedom,” one of Wuthnow’s interviewees responded, “but I don’t know how to get it.”

In general, Wuthnow’s arguments reflect much of the current and past work on the United States’s culture wars by arguing that one of the sources of rural moral outrage is the “culture gap” that seemingly separates Washington from the rest of rural America. While we know a great deal about the affluent, urban-centered cultures of certain areas of DC, New York, or Los Angeles, we know much less about the individuals to whom Wuthnow spoke, beyond the traditional hyperbolic headline. Regardless of such marketing demands, describing a “rural ethic” amid numerous “trouble with Kansas” arguments makes Wuthnow’s project more important for us to consider. “The anger toward specific policies and officeholders is nested within this larger sense of Washington being at odds with the moral communities in which people live,” Wuthnow contends. “Deficit spending is contrary to ordinary people living within their means. Government wastefulness is the antipathy of hometown thrift.” Once seen in this cultural light, one’s self-interests take on much more value than simply socio-economic value; in many ways, rural voting patterns reflect less the decisions of solitary individuals, and more the commitment to maintaining a way of life — complex as it is.

These cultural divisions have lent themselves to dual-purposes in the recent past: politicization and polarization on behalf of culture war. As Wuthnow points out, there is nothing inherent within a given topic of political deliberation that makes it an “issue” at best, or a “hot button issue” at worst. His treatment of rural lifeways illustrates how a form of cultural warfare impinges upon daily conversation in rural communities and churches.

Abortion was something they needed to talk about, most of the clergy said. And it could be talked about in church without the conversation ever having to be explicitly political. As a pastor in Texas explained, “I preach about abortion as a theological issue. I don’t have to turn around then and vote Republican.”

While much has been said about the benefits of single-issue advocacy in the public square since the 1960s, such means cut in both directions — they bring something important to the surface at the expense of virtually everything else, including one’s daily interactions with fellow citizens. In this way, Wuthnow’s interviews reveal just how corrosive American cultural warfare has been on behalf of largely conservative political expediency. “What most concerns me every day is dealing with people,” the pastor explained. “No matter what the issue is, how it affects the person is a heck of a lot more important than ‘the issue.’” As such, cultural warfare has not replaced discussions of GDP with abortion or same-sex marriage, but instead has recalibrated American politics itself to be more conducive to hyperbolic headlines and social media consumption. In fact, one need look no further than this past presidential election to see the fruits of such labors from America’s heartland.

In short, the decline and rage of Wuthnow’s subtitle can be best explained thusly: combine a severe lack of trust in the political process with calculated campaigns engineered by professional political strategists and you get what we currently have today — a populace thoroughly divided against itself for reasons largely unbeknownst to itself. A more productive direction for future commentary would be less concerned with those “voting against their self-interests,” and more with who exactly has made politics about the self-interests of those voting in the first place. In this regard, divisions between liberal and conservative would begin to lose their analytical traction in favor of investigations that foreground political alienation and apathy as the most serious of threats to a democratic polity on a mass scale.

As such, the true value of Wuthnow’s analysis is that it allows us to witness how citizens first internalize and then reflect the political directives that suffuse their daily lives to the detriment of democracy itself. “It is the socially uprooted and unattached members of all classes who support [totalitarian] movements first and in the greatest numbers,” argued fellow sociologist William Kornhauser. This means that “unattached intellectuals, marginal members of the middle class, isolated industrial and farm workers have been among the major social types in totalitarian movements.”

Thanks to Wuthnow’s rich observations, we are able to address and understand what truly confronts us as a nation: the triumph of mass society through mass politics in the name of the “little guy.” Little did we know that such a person would also have the hands to match.

¤

L. Benjamin Rolsky is a research fellow in Religion Studies at Lehigh University.

The post “Little Guy” America appeared first on Los Angeles Review of Books.

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[rockandrollportlandor]

GOOD CHEER RECORDS HOLIDAY SHOWCASE

I've expressed before my affection for Good Cheer Records, a local label that emerged from the DIY all ages indie rock scene in Portland, but whose personnel have connections and influence in the mainstream of local and national indie music. Geek rockerMo Troper, also a writer for the Portland Mercury (cleverly disguised as Morgan Troper), even scored the coveted Pitchfork review, something which has eluded many of the best bands in town at the moment. Troper, the label's co-founder with Blake Hickman, has vanished to Los Angeles, replaced by Maya Stoner, a performer in several GC bands. Kyle Bates' project Drowse has seen praise from Vice's Noisey blog and SPIN Magazine, while another one of the label's star acts, Little Star, have gotten great reviews all over the place, including here on ROCK AND ROLL PORTLAND, OR. My favorite Good Cheer band, Mr. Bones, is sadly over, but the label, with so many other good acts, has hardly been damaged by these shifts--or a scandal that saw Jackson Walker, a member of Good Cheer band Naked Hour, excommunicated in the wake of his much younger ex-girlfriend's allegations of physical/emotional abuse. Good Cheer's bands are each unique, but broadly speaking they traffic in a hyper-sincere, heart-on-sleeve, guitar-based pop/rock that seems to trace its roots back to the 90's and early 00's, a time before MP3s--or at least a time when a single MP3 took a whole morning to download. It's the art-damaged cool and guitar abuse of bands like Pavement and Sonic Youth injected with the bloodletting melodicism of emo and the sweetness of twee-pop. It's a reminder of the truth in that old quote about Pavement being "the band that launched a thousand Weezers." These tendencies make the label's roster a refreshing departure, perhaps even a necessary counter-reaction, to the various fusions of psychedelic rock, dream pop, and blissed-out oddball party music so often seems to dominate Portlandian "pop". The earnestness of Good Cheer's bands, which the label proudly declares free of "mercenary ambition", makes a lot of what was represented by 2016's now-tainted "Mt. Portland" compilation seem positively decadent. On the other side of the coin, that comp's hip groups, often resented across the music scene for their perceived complacence and supposedly undeserved "fame", offer a sense of easy fun and trippy euphoria that the Good Cheer bands often lack--the label's name is pretty ironic, since good cheer is just about the last thing you'll get from most of these bands. Rather, they provide what Kurt Cobain ambivalently called "the comfort in being sad," the paradoxical sense of suffering as painful but life-affirming. At best that means a strangely joyous catharsis on the other side of the pain, at worst it might be written off as wallowing, navel gazing, and irksome preciousness. It's not for everybody, but it's way up my moody emo kid alley. These bands' music is about intimate feelings--even at its most bombastic, it's introverted almost as a rule, and perhaps that's how they create the feeling that they're Your Special Band, even when you're, as I was on this December Wednesday night, surrounded by a bunch of other people watching them. Good Cheer maintains the sense that their acts are the best band in your shitty hometown, who you see in some basement when you're 17, and finally, you've found a place where you fit in, finally, some people who speak for you. Perhaps the ideal place to see these bands is indeed someone's basement, but it was also fitting to see them in a major mid-sized venue like the Holocene--it was a sign that Good Cheer have emerged from a scrappy underground operation to become a major force in that vague genre known as "Portland pop". I didn't catch the entire show, which crammed six acts, successfully, into three hours, but the first group I caught was ALIEN BOY, one of the moodier bands on this moody label. Frontwoman Sonia Weber sings with the lovelorn yearning of Morrissey, but without the sass--unlike with the Moz, we never wonder if she's just milking it. The guitars hiss like TV static and twinkle like stars seen out a car window in the vanishing autumn, the rhythm section sprinting with teenage energy, paradoxically despondent and enthusiastic. At the Holocene, Weber's vocals seemed pretty off key a lot of the time, but it didn't really matter. The melody's largely in the guitars, and even the melody isn't that important. It's the mood the band creates with all of these elements that makes them such a powerful emotive unit. Even off-key, Weber's vocals are the definite not-so-secret weapon here, her contralto timber pitched perfectly in the dead center of the human vocal spectrum, neither male nor female, and therefore unusually universal in a social order still cleaved traumatically in two by a gender binary inherited from a religious order no one even believes in anymore. The group's latest EP, "Stay Alive", is a fantastic piece of gothic power pop, the fury of the instruments on tracks like "Burning II" contrasted to heart-rending effect with the vulnerability of Weber's vocals. These guys are one of my favorite acts Good Cheer has in its corner for 2017. Next up were a pair of musical twin bands, both involving Kyle Bates: DROWSE and FLOATING ROOM. Drowse is the more ambient of two, creating a storm of darkly psychedelic mood energy, as if Bates were some mad scientist attempting to isolate The Feels in their pure plasma form. Bates has been admirably candid about his struggle with clinical depression, even in his press releases, and some of his music is meant to be a literal translation of these horrifying experiences in musical form. As a person who's visited similar hells, I can definitely relate, and if you haven't, Drowse can give you a taste. It's the kind of music you bathe in almost more than listen to. I find it pretty hard to articulate with a vocabulary developed for pop songs--do yourself a favor and just listen. Undergirding the pure emotional whirlpool is a theoretical edge, at least according to Drowse's bio, which references Roland Barthes and Sarah Manguso alongside Mt. Erie and Unwound. I'm pretty sure those are uncommon influences for an indie music bio. Floating Room is the more conventional indie rock side of Bates' muse, but he still hangs in the background, and Maya Stoner writes lyrics and sings lead, while he continues his role as a sound-sculptor. Under this moniker he deals in his version of the Good Cheer house sound, described on the group's Bandcamp page as "the type of sadness felt at 4 in the morning, reserved for the heartbroken and the nervous." The guitar squalls of Drowse, almost more like weather patterns than music, wash over the structure of the songs like photo filters, providing a depth and texture that the more purely rock n roll acts on Good Cheer can't touch. Eschewing the crunchier "alt rock" guitar tones and punk rock enthusiasms of Alien Boy, Mr. Bones, or Cool American for a generously reverberated, fuzz-soaked, more plodding sound, Floating Room crosses definitively into shoegaze territory. It's gloriously eerie and ice-cold in temperature. It's the perfect soundtrack for walking through the woods in the snow, when all sounds are muffled by the falling flakes a the beautiful deathly calm seems to pervade the landscape--and it is a landscape, one you can seemingly gaze far into. On some tracks, the band is almost too delicate for this world, and the sounds seem made of glass, or icicles, ready to crash and fall the moment the temperature gets back above freezing. It's music for winter, for the low-hanging winter sun, gone as soon as it comes up, peering over the leafless treetops, secretly gathering power again once the solstice has passed. TURTLENECKED, the stage name of Harrison Smith, came up next, playing a very short set. Lanky and nervous, he paced the stage, singing R&B songs about being neurotic and narcissistic and romantic, all from electronic backing tracks played from his laptop. It was a very amusing break from all the intensity--even as he sang about heartbreak or unrequited love, Smith was funny, unlike anyone else who I saw perform that night. The stuff on his Bandcamp is mostly minimal indie pop, just electric guitar and drums, very dressed down and sparse, focused on Smith's deadpan vocals, both snarky and pathetic, but always charismatic. An older album, "Pure Plush Bone Cage", was fuzzier and noisier, but Smith's newer style, clean and clear, works better, matching the music's emotional exhibitionism. This presumably even newer R&B stuff is another pretty much genius leap forward. Turtlenecked captures the fine line between self-pity and self-aggrandizement, or rather signals its non-existence, refusing to apologize for anything--or else apologizing for everything--it doesn't really matter which--who ever believes an apology anyway? Good Cheer's brand can, as I said above, come off as overly precious, but Turtlenecked is an exception--one gets the wonderful sense that he barely even believes himself, but it's only the same sincerity of his labelmates doubling back on itself. Morrissey knows this trick well--it's basically his bread and butter. While most of the Good Cheer bands seem to work as band entities, Harrison Smith of one of the few who doesn't really need a band, or for whom any backing band would only be a backing band. He's just an entertaining and engaging enough figure in his own right--perhaps only Mo Troper, among his labelmates, rivals him for sheer personal charisma. Finally was the band I was most keen on seeing, COOL AMERICAN, named for a brand of Doritos. It's the project of singer-guitarist Nathan Tucker, a serious-looking dude who blew through the set with apparently great anxiety, often failing to sing directly into the microphone, seemingly wound tighter than a human can be wound. The band's tall bass player, Tim Howe, with his goofy grin and a santa hat borrowed from Maya Stoner, provided the necessary humorous counterpoint. Cool American's style is a pleasantly loose but melancholy power pop, filled with breezy riffs, mid-tempo grooves and smoothy shifting tempos and beats. But there's also a punk edge in it--at some point in every song, Tucker upshifts into a cathartic yelp, from which I felt sympathy pangs in my own vocal chords, before this explosion of his nervous energy receded, and he began to recharge again. Tucker's vocal range is limited, but the melody's in the guitars, spinning circles around each other, swirling and looping when they aren't exploding. Probably the most direct example of my Pavement-meets-emo description above, Cool American's unusual combination of mellowness and tension feels very much like West Coast life as I've come to know it, the cycle of putting up a veneer of "no worries" chillness and having it break down in the face of un-chill reality, only to put it up again, because fuck life, life should be better than it is. Better to try and fail to be chill and hopeful than live in cynical detachment. And for all their moodiness, the Good Cheer bands are never cynical. They don't just express heavy feelings, they believe in them, affirming their value and meaning in a society that usually runs scared from them. Unlike so much of the buzzy music in Portland, these bands never come off as careerist--you get the sense that any day one of them might break up because so-and-so had to move away for school or whatever. One could be cynical in response and argue that this sincerity is just another brand, but if so, I'll take it over the glassy-eyed smugness and empty glitz of so much of what passes for indie music these days. Long live Good Cheer.

[josephbinningyoumatter]

Are YOU choosing your life, or will life choose it for you?

ARE YOU CHOOSING YOUR LIFE, OR WILL LIFE CHOOSE IT FOR YOU? Depending on who you check with, they estimate that the average human being makes between six hundred to thirty-five hundred decisions each day. From what we wear, to what and where we eat, to who we call or do not call back, to what we watch or listen to, and on and on and on. We decide what kind of car to purchase, what college to attend, what neighborhood to live in or whether to buy the blue shirt or blouse or the gray one. We determine whom to marry, what kind of entertainment to enjoy and what to have for lunch. We decide in our life every day. Annie Dillard said it this way, “How we spend our days is how we spend our lives.” When I reflected on this question before I penned this, it reminded me of the age-old question: is the zebra black with white stripes, or white with black stripes? There is only one answer it is both black and white. People will spend their entire lives doing something because of a random suggestion by a friend, relative, or an influencer in their lives, or it was just possibly convenient. Perhaps they knew someone who would recommend them for the position. Next thing they know they wake up and it's forty years later, and they have done nothing they had hopes and dreams of doing as a youth. Whatever notions of ambition they had as a kid were mere random scratches on the blackboard of life. - The average person will spend one third of their life at work. Ninety thousand hours at work over a lifetime according to a report by Gettysburg College. - As reported in a Business Insider article, according to the Deloitte’s Shift Index survey, 80% of workers are dissatisfied with their jobs. - According to the American Journal of Family Therapy, those married to workaholics said in a study that they feel more estranged from their partners, and that they feel less control of their relationship. - One third of managers in the UK are losing their sense of humor because of work according to the Quality of Working Life report from Chartered Management Institute and Workplace Health Connect. - Nearly sixty percent of working people are becoming insomniacs because of their jobs according to the Quality of Working Life report from Chartered Management Institute and Workplace Health Connect. - The average person spends over one hundred hours commuting to work in the US according to the US Census Bureau. - One quarter of Americans say work is their number one source of stress according to The National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health. - It is estimated that stress is the fifth-biggest cause of death as reported by The Baltimore Sun. - In Japan, hundreds of Japanese workers die every year from "karoshi," or death by overwork. That might involve suicide or dropping dead at their desks as reported by the Associated Press. - Nearly half of America has gained weight at their current job; 26% have gained over 10 pounds, 11% have gained over 20 according to Career Builders. - That might not be changing for the better soon, as 40% of millennials say they "feel guilty" for using all their vacation days as reported by Randstad. - And even when employees go on vacation, 42% of them say they feel the pressure to check in with their offices while gone, also reported by Randstad. I have a saying that I tell people all the time, typically when they tell me about how unsatisfied they are with their work situation: Do, what you have to do, in order to do what you want to do. Most of you are not doing what you intended to be doing in your youth. Life happened, and WHAM, you are working a job you don’t like, that stresses you out (I’ve seen your emails at 9:00 PM because you were still working), for a company that will fire you in a minute (one oh crap will ruin one hundred Atta boy or girl’s), working with people you may or may not like but have no say so in the matter, possibly doing something you care less about, all so you can just scrape by for forty years, retire, and die. Never living up to the potential you were born for, life destined you to live. A recent study by The Federal Reserve Bank of New York shows that 41% of Recent Grads Work in Jobs Not Requiring a Degree. One of my favorite authors, Jim Rohn, has written, “if you don’t design your own life plan to be a success, chances are you will fall into someone else’s plan. And guess what someone else has planned for your success? Not much.” So how do we design our lives to reflect who we are with what we are (GREAT)? I'm glad you finally asked. Get a DREAM. Most of you have a dream, or at least you think you do. But it's really a wish. My definition of a Dream is something you live, breathe, eat, sleep, that is so big it is scary. A Dream will make you lose sleep to finish up a project you are working on at night so you can say goodbye to your day job. It is something that will keep you home at night to make it happen instead of hanging out with your friends who are not going anywhere either. It will force itself upon you and make you shut off the television, force you to do things that scare the heck out of you that you do, anyway.   So how do you discover your Dream? You must know what it is. I have an acronym for Dream: D- Discover it R- Realize it E- Envision it A-Attain it M- Motivate others with it     Your Dream is something you cannot stop thinking about, it's always on your mind, front and back. Life, and fear, stop you from believing that it is possible, along with life’s Nay Sayers. Those helpful influencers in your life who are trying to protect you. Truth is they just want company. Get the right people on the bus, and the wrong ones off it. Humans will follow the path of least resistance. Change is scary. It is hard. But it is essential to living an authentic life, following your Dream, and being true to your purpose. “anybody can have butterflies in their stomach. The trick is to get them to fly in formation”. Dale Carnegie Discover it To discover your Dream, you must select a Dream that will align with your Purpose without bending to make it fit. Your Purpose is why you are here. Your Dream is what you will do with the life it has blessed you with. For help discovering your Purpose download my Seven Days to Discovering Your Purpose here:https://www.josephbinning.com/product-category/lessons/ You already know what your Dream is, you just need to ask yourself why you have it and what am I going to do with it? Realize it Many are called, yet few will answer. Realize that there is more to life than working someplace for someone who does not care for, or about you. Making a product that you can care less about, with people you may or may not like, for people you do not even know. Job stands for “Just Over Broke” which is all it will keep you. You can do better. Realize you were born for something greater than what you have accepted as normal and believe it. Envision it It sounds simple but seeing in your mind how you want your life to be, and the surrounding life around you, is an enormously powerful tool. Too many times we can lose sight of our vision by taking our focus off our Dream and focus on the “noise” around us. That is why in the working force only 3% do not rely on someone else for a paycheck. 97% of the working force have a wish. Only 3% have a Dream. Attain it Always focus on the Dream and not the person. It's not about you, it's about the Dream. Having a Dream is not a spectator sport, it requires participation. You can tell the size of a persons Dream, by how little it takes to take it away. Live the Dream. Understand the Dream and its larger purpose. Let the world see your Dream threw you. Julius Caesar once said, “If you want to take the island, burn the boats”. Do whatever it takes to make your Dream possible and do not give up. Not only will you be giving up on your Dream, but you will also give up on yourself.   Motivate others with it Make the Dream “feel” special to others. They will not remember what you said, but they will always remember how you made them feel. What makes your dream different and why would people want to be a part of yours? Is it a rite of passage, or a tribal identity? Energize your commitment to the Dream by staying true to the purpose of the Dream. Remember, the center of gravity is found by moving forward, not standing still. Last, live the Dream. Understand it, believe in it, articulate it, and sell the Dream. The larger purpose of the dream and the specific tasks of the Dream need to fulfill the larger purpose of the Dream. Ensure the purpose of the Dream align with your behavior, values, decisions, and language. I have always known my life’s Purpose was to tell people all people, that You Matter. In my upcoming book You Matter, even if you do not think so I do just that. Why? Because it is my Dream to live in a world where we no longer look at skin color, station in life, or popularity. Where every voice is heard, especially those who think theirs do not because they have been told so by so many for so long. Where we all can stop and quiet the noise, be still, and see the genuine beauty around us. Where every child can know that they can be anything they will work at in life and that they are not victims, but warriors. Warriors for good. Won't you join me? The world needs you and your Dream. Now take a chance and jump in the water. We are all waiting for you.     I wrote another article that you might like. You can access it here: THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN FINISHING AND FINISHING WELL IS IN THE TIMING If you have enjoyed this article, please visit me at www.JosephBinning.com for more helpful tips and articles. You can also get more helpful information in my book You Matter, even if you don’t think so which you can purchase on Amazon here Amazon You Matter, even if you don't think so For my free report Happiness Is A Choice click here: Happiness Is A Choice Free Report Remember: Happiness is a choice, so be happy. Read the full article

[josephbinningyoumatter]

Are YOU choosing your life, or will life choose it for you?

ARE YOU CHOOSING YOUR LIFE, OR WILL LIFE CHOOSE IT FOR YOU? Depending on who you check with, they estimate that the average human being makes between six hundred to thirty-five hundred decisions each day. From what we wear, to what and where we eat, to who we call or do not call back, to what we watch or listen to, and on and on and on. We decide what kind of car to purchase, what college to attend, what neighborhood to live in or whether to buy the blue shirt or blouse or the gray one. We determine whom to marry, what kind of entertainment to enjoy and what to have for lunch. We decide in our life every day. Annie Dillard said it this way, “How we spend our days is how we spend our lives.” When I reflected on this question before I penned this, it reminded me of the age-old question: is the zebra black with white stripes, or white with black stripes? There is only one answer it is both black and white. People will spend their entire lives doing something because of a random suggestion by a friend, relative, or an influencer in their lives, or it was just possibly convenient. Perhaps they knew someone who would recommend them for the position. Next thing they know they wake up and it's forty years later, and they have done nothing they had hopes and dreams of doing as a youth. Whatever notions of ambition they had as a kid were mere random scratches on the blackboard of life. - The average person will spend one third of their life at work. Ninety thousand hours at work over a lifetime according to a report by Gettysburg College. - As reported in a Business Insider article, according to the Deloitte’s Shift Index survey, 80% of workers are dissatisfied with their jobs. - According to the American Journal of Family Therapy, those married to workaholics said in a study that they feel more estranged from their partners, and that they feel less control of their relationship. - One third of managers in the UK are losing their sense of humor because of work according to the Quality of Working Life report from Chartered Management Institute and Workplace Health Connect. - Nearly sixty percent of working people are becoming insomniacs because of their jobs according to the Quality of Working Life report from Chartered Management Institute and Workplace Health Connect. - The average person spends over one hundred hours commuting to work in the US according to the US Census Bureau. - One quarter of Americans say work is their number one source of stress according to The National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health. - It is estimated that stress is the fifth-biggest cause of death as reported by The Baltimore Sun. - In Japan, hundreds of Japanese workers die every year from "karoshi," or death by overwork. That might involve suicide or dropping dead at their desks as reported by the Associated Press. - Nearly half of America has gained weight at their current job; 26% have gained over 10 pounds, 11% have gained over 20 according to Career Builders. - That might not be changing for the better soon, as 40% of millennials say they "feel guilty" for using all their vacation days as reported by Randstad. - And even when employees go on vacation, 42% of them say they feel the pressure to check in with their offices while gone, also reported by Randstad. I have a saying that I tell people all the time, typically when they tell me about how unsatisfied they are with their work situation: Do, what you have to do, in order to do what you want to do. Most of you are not doing what you intended to be doing in your youth. Life happened, and WHAM, you are working a job you don’t like, that stresses you out (I’ve seen your emails at 9:00 PM because you were still working), for a company that will fire you in a minute (one oh crap will ruin one hundred Atta boy or girl’s), working with people you may or may not like but have no say so in the matter, possibly doing something you care less about, all so you can just scrape by for forty years, retire, and die. Never living up to the potential you were born for, life destined you to live. A recent study by The Federal Reserve Bank of New York shows that 41% of Recent Grads Work in Jobs Not Requiring a Degree. One of my favorite authors, Jim Rohn, has written, “if you don’t design your own life plan to be a success, chances are you will fall into someone else’s plan. And guess what someone else has planned for your success? Not much.” So how do we design our lives to reflect who we are with what we are (GREAT)? I'm glad you finally asked. Get a DREAM. Most of you have a dream, or at least you think you do. But it's really a wish. My definition of a Dream is something you live, breathe, eat, sleep, that is so big it is scary. A Dream will make you lose sleep to finish up a project you are working on at night so you can say goodbye to your day job. It is something that will keep you home at night to make it happen instead of hanging out with your friends who are not going anywhere either. It will force itself upon you and make you shut off the television, force you to do things that scare the heck out of you that you do, anyway.   So how do you discover your Dream? You must know what it is. I have an acronym for Dream: D- Discover it R- Realize it E- Envision it A-Attain it M- Motivate others with it     Your Dream is something you cannot stop thinking about, it's always on your mind, front and back. Life, and fear, stop you from believing that it is possible, along with life’s Nay Sayers. Those helpful influencers in your life who are trying to protect you. Truth is they just want company. Get the right people on the bus, and the wrong ones off it. Humans will follow the path of least resistance. Change is scary. It is hard. But it is essential to living an authentic life, following your Dream, and being true to your purpose. “anybody can have butterflies in their stomach. The trick is to get them to fly in formation”. Dale Carnegie Discover it To discover your Dream, you must select a Dream that will align with your Purpose without bending to make it fit. Your Purpose is why you are here. Your Dream is what you will do with the life it has blessed you with. For help discovering your Purpose download my Seven Days to Discovering Your Purpose here:https://www.josephbinning.com/product-category/lessons/ You already know what your Dream is, you just need to ask yourself why you have it and what am I going to do with it? Realize it Many are called, yet few will answer. Realize that there is more to life than working someplace for someone who does not care for, or about you. Making a product that you can care less about, with people you may or may not like, for people you do not even know. Job stands for “Just Over Broke” which is all it will keep you. You can do better. Realize you were born for something greater than what you have accepted as normal and believe it. Envision it It sounds simple but seeing in your mind how you want your life to be, and the surrounding life around you, is an enormously powerful tool. Too many times we can lose sight of our vision by taking our focus off our Dream and focus on the “noise” around us. That is why in the working force only 3% do not rely on someone else for a paycheck. 97% of the working force have a wish. Only 3% have a Dream. Attain it Always focus on the Dream and not the person. It's not about you, it's about the Dream. Having a Dream is not a spectator sport, it requires participation. You can tell the size of a persons Dream, by how little it takes to take it away. Live the Dream. Understand the Dream and its larger purpose. Let the world see your Dream threw you. Julius Caesar once said, “If you want to take the island, burn the boats”. Do whatever it takes to make your Dream possible and do not give up. Not only will you be giving up on your Dream, but you will also give up on yourself.   Motivate others with it Make the Dream “feel” special to others. They will not remember what you said, but they will always remember how you made them feel. What makes your dream different and why would people want to be a part of yours? Is it a rite of passage, or a tribal identity? Energize your commitment to the Dream by staying true to the purpose of the Dream. Remember, the center of gravity is found by moving forward, not standing still. Last, live the Dream. Understand it, believe in it, articulate it, and sell the Dream. The larger purpose of the dream and the specific tasks of the Dream need to fulfill the larger purpose of the Dream. Ensure the purpose of the Dream align with your behavior, values, decisions, and language. I have always known my life’s Purpose was to tell people all people, that You Matter. In my upcoming book You Matter, even if you do not think so I do just that. Why? Because it is my Dream to live in a world where we no longer look at skin color, station in life, or popularity. Where every voice is heard, especially those who think theirs do not because they have been told so by so many for so long. Where we all can stop and quiet the noise, be still, and see the genuine beauty around us. Where every child can know that they can be anything they will work at in life and that they are not victims, but warriors. Warriors for good. Won't you join me? The world needs you and your Dream. Now take a chance and jump in the water. We are all waiting for you.     I wrote another article that you might like. You can access it here: THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN FINISHING AND FINISHING WELL IS IN THE TIMING If you have enjoyed this article, please visit me at www.JosephBinning.com for more helpful tips and articles. You can also get more helpful information in my book You Matter, even if you don’t think so which you can purchase on Amazon here Amazon You Matter, even if you don't think so For my free report Happiness Is A Choice click here: Happiness Is A Choice Free Report Remember: Happiness is a choice, so be happy. Read the full article

[josephbinningyoumatter]

Are YOU choosing your life, or will life choose it for you?

ARE YOU CHOOSING YOUR LIFE, OR WILL LIFE CHOOSE IT FOR YOU? Depending on who you check with, they estimate that the average human being makes between six hundred to thirty-five hundred decisions each day. From what we wear, to what and where we eat, to who we call or do not call back, to what we watch or listen to, and on and on and on. We decide what kind of car to purchase, what college to attend, what neighborhood to live in or whether to buy the blue shirt or blouse or the gray one. We determine whom to marry, what kind of entertainment to enjoy and what to have for lunch. We decide in our life every day. Annie Dillard said it this way, “How we spend our days is how we spend our lives.” When I reflected on this question before I penned this, it reminded me of the age-old question: is the zebra black with white stripes, or white with black stripes? There is only one answer it is both black and white. People will spend their entire lives doing something because of a random suggestion by a friend, relative, or an influencer in their lives, or it was just possibly convenient. Perhaps they knew someone who would recommend them for the position. Next thing they know they wake up and it's forty years later, and they have done nothing they had hopes and dreams of doing as a youth. Whatever notions of ambition they had as a kid were mere random scratches on the blackboard of life. - The average person will spend one third of their life at work. Ninety thousand hours at work over a lifetime according to a report by Gettysburg College. - As reported in a Business Insider article, according to the Deloitte’s Shift Index survey, 80% of workers are dissatisfied with their jobs. - According to the American Journal of Family Therapy, those married to workaholics said in a study that they feel more estranged from their partners, and that they feel less control of their relationship. - One third of managers in the UK are losing their sense of humor because of work according to the Quality of Working Life report from Chartered Management Institute and Workplace Health Connect. - Nearly sixty percent of working people are becoming insomniacs because of their jobs according to the Quality of Working Life report from Chartered Management Institute and Workplace Health Connect. - The average person spends over one hundred hours commuting to work in the US according to the US Census Bureau. - One quarter of Americans say work is their number one source of stress according to The National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health. - It is estimated that stress is the fifth-biggest cause of death as reported by The Baltimore Sun. - In Japan, hundreds of Japanese workers die every year from "karoshi," or death by overwork. That might involve suicide or dropping dead at their desks as reported by the Associated Press. - Nearly half of America has gained weight at their current job; 26% have gained over 10 pounds, 11% have gained over 20 according to Career Builders. - That might not be changing for the better soon, as 40% of millennials say they "feel guilty" for using all their vacation days as reported by Randstad. - And even when employees go on vacation, 42% of them say they feel the pressure to check in with their offices while gone, also reported by Randstad. I have a saying that I tell people all the time, typically when they tell me about how unsatisfied they are with their work situation: Do, what you have to do, in order to do what you want to do. Most of you are not doing what you intended to be doing in your youth. Life happened, and WHAM, you are working a job you don’t like, that stresses you out (I’ve seen your emails at 9:00 PM because you were still working), for a company that will fire you in a minute (one oh crap will ruin one hundred Atta boy or girl’s), working with people you may or may not like but have no say so in the matter, possibly doing something you care less about, all so you can just scrape by for forty years, retire, and die. Never living up to the potential you were born for, life destined you to live. A recent study by The Federal Reserve Bank of New York shows that 41% of Recent Grads Work in Jobs Not Requiring a Degree. One of my favorite authors, Jim Rohn, has written, “if you don’t design your own life plan to be a success, chances are you will fall into someone else’s plan. And guess what someone else has planned for your success? Not much.” So how do we design our lives to reflect who we are with what we are (GREAT)? I'm glad you finally asked. Get a DREAM. Most of you have a dream, or at least you think you do. But it's really a wish. My definition of a Dream is something you live, breathe, eat, sleep, that is so big it is scary. A Dream will make you lose sleep to finish up a project you are working on at night so you can say goodbye to your day job. It is something that will keep you home at night to make it happen instead of hanging out with your friends who are not going anywhere either. It will force itself upon you and make you shut off the television, force you to do things that scare the heck out of you that you do, anyway.   So how do you discover your Dream? You must know what it is. I have an acronym for Dream: D- Discover it R- Realize it E- Envision it A-Attain it M- Motivate others with it Your Dream is something you cannot stop thinking about, it's always on your mind, front and back. Life, and fear, stop you from believing that it is possible, along with life’s Nay Sayers. Those helpful influencers in your life who are trying to protect you. Truth is they just want company. Get the right people on the bus, and the wrong ones off it. Humans will follow the path of least resistance. Change is scary. It is hard. But it is essential to living an authentic life, following your Dream, and being true to your purpose. “anybody can have butterflies in their stomach. The trick is to get them to fly in formation”. Dale Carnegie Discover it To discover your Dream, you must select a Dream that will align with your Purpose without bending to make it fit. Your Purpose is why you are here. Your Dream is what you will do with the life it has blessed you with. For help discovering your Purpose download my Seven Days to Discovering Your Purpose here:https://www.josephbinning.com/product-category/lessons/ You already know what your Dream is, you just need to ask yourself why you have it and what am I going to do with it? Realize it Many are called, yet few will answer. Realize that there is more to life than working someplace for someone who does not care for, or about you. Making a product that you can care less about, with people you may or may not like, for people you do not even know. Job stands for “Just Over Broke” which is all it will keep you. You can do better. Realize you were born for something greater than what you have accepted as normal and believe it. Envision it It sounds simple but seeing in your mind how you want your life to be, and the surrounding life around you, is an enormously powerful tool. Too many times we can lose sight of our vision by taking our focus off our Dream and focus on the “noise” around us. That is why in the working force only 3% do not rely on someone else for a paycheck. 97% of the working force have a wish. Only 3% have a Dream. Attain it Always focus on the Dream and not the person. It's not about you, it's about the Dream. Having a Dream is not a spectator sport, it requires participation. You can tell the size of a persons Dream, by how little it takes to take it away. Live the Dream. Understand the Dream and its larger purpose. Let the world see your Dream threw you. Julius Caesar once said, “If you want to take the island, burn the boats”. Do whatever it takes to make your Dream possible and do not give up. Not only will you be giving up on your Dream, but you will also give up on yourself.   Motivate others with it Make the Dream “feel” special to others. They will not remember what you said, but they will always remember how you made them feel. What makes your dream different and why would people want to be a part of yours? Is it a rite of passage, or a tribal identity? Energize your commitment to the Dream by staying true to the purpose of the Dream. Remember, the center of gravity is found by moving forward, not standing still. Last, live the Dream. Understand it, believe in it, articulate it, and sell the Dream. The larger purpose of the dream and the specific tasks of the Dream need to fulfill the larger purpose of the Dream. Ensure the purpose of the Dream align with your behavior, values, decisions, and language. I have always known my life’s Purpose was to tell people all people, that You Matter. In my upcoming book You Matter, even if you do not think so I do just that. Why? Because it is my Dream to live in a world where we no longer look at skin color, station in life, or popularity. Where every voice is heard, especially those who think theirs do not because they have been told so by so many for so long. Where we all can stop and quiet the noise, be still, and see the genuine beauty around us. Where every child can know that they can be anything they will work at in life and that they are not victims, but warriors. Warriors for good. Won't you join me? The world needs you and your Dream. Now take a chance and jump in the water. We are all waiting for you.     I wrote another article that you might like. You can access it here: THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN FINISHING AND FINISHING WELL IS IN THE TIMING If you have enjoyed this article, please visit me at www.JosephBinning.com for more helpful tips and articles. You can also get more helpful information in my book You Matter, even if you don’t think so which you can purchase on Amazon here Amazon You Matter, even if you don't think so For my free report Happiness Is A Choice click here: Happiness Is A Choice Free Report Remember: Happiness is a choice, so be happy. Read the full article