#sometimes a god coopts you for the greater good

[alexaloraetheris]

I juat remembered the day, about two months ago, when I went to renew my perscription and ended up derailed by some kind of divine influence that really, really wanted my help. 😂

So I have an appointment at 9. First thing I do is sleep in because my alarm simply did not ring. First time that happened. I cursed out the damn phone and ordered a taxi, which I had specifically hoping to avoid because of the traffic congestion.

My driver is a woman a bit older than me, and she's in a good mood so we chat. She told me she was thinking of moving to [city on the coast] because taxi drivers are paid better there, and I tell her I have family there, we comment on what it's like to drive in a city essentially built into three hills and a cliff. She mentiones she has scoliosis, and it sometimes impacts her ability to sit in a car for long periods of time. I had scoliosis as well, but I had managed to fix it with exercises almost completely so I recommended my physical therapist, and assured her it's not too late, because some of the people in my therapy group were even older than her. When she let me off she thanked me for the help.

Feeling good that, even if I had to pay out the nose for the ride, I got there in time and even managed to do a good deed. I rush in, tell the reception guy I'm here to see my doctor and settle in to wait.

Two hours later, I see people being called in but not my name. I ask why, and doctor looks at me blankly and says I'm not in the system. I have to tell the reception I've arrived so I show up on his schedule.

I'm mentally cursing out the entire hospital, but I wasn't raised by wolves. I thank the doctor, politely tell the different receptionist that the last guy probably didn't hear me when I told him my appointment, got added in and went back to wait.

Ten minutes later, a visibly nervous girl with freshly printed papers sits in the waiting room. I'm in a bit of a mood, but I'm also a firm believer in helping if I can. I paste on a smile and ask 'First time?' and she admits she just got sent here for a potential ADHD diagnosis and she had no idea what to do. Having been there and knowing exactly how hard it was to do it on your own, I gave her the number of the psychologist who made my diagnosis, assured her that the psychiatrist she was here to see is the same one I have and that he's a good guy, explained what ADHD actually was and how the meds work. She was neraly crying with relief by the time I was done, and I promised she could send me questions if she needs to.

I finally, finally go in for my appointment in a slightly better mood, only for my psychiatrist to tell me Concerta is no longer imported, I have to go on some other meds and for that I need my family doctor to sign off on a regular perscription instead of getting an Rx perscription from him.

This is the worst case scenario, because I do NOT want my mother, who thinks ADHD was invented by quack American psychologists to sell expensive meds to parents with unruly children, to know I have ADHD. So I mentally curse out the entire healthcare system, go to the family doctor and explain the situation, that my mother absolutely CANNOT know about my diagnosis. Even though the doctor was not aware of my diagnosis so far, she listens attentively, and we make sure that my mom can't check the insurance we're both under to see what meds I'm on or that if she checks my name in the pharmacy directory she can't see me either.

I thought I handled that situation rather well but I must have looked more worried than I thought, because the doctor admitted her high-school age granddaughter had been asking questions about psychologists and antidepressants and she had so far been dismissive. But if she really needs help, she might do the same thing I did and seek help on her own, and my doctor realized she ought to either change her attitude fast or be left in the dark while her granddaughter is struggling. So I told her which psychologist I went to when I was also a depressed high schooler and how it helped and what I would have wanted my family to keep in mind. She thanks me and hands me a new perscription and sends me on my way.

So by now I am starting to notice a pattern.

Now, I'm actually an atheist, and I have 'Culturally Catholic' as a flaw and a laundry list of Stuff(TM) I have had to unlearn, but sometimes I really wonder if Someone Up There looked at me that day and thought:

"Hmm, looks like I have three problems I can solve with one well-positioned dumbass. Time to ruin her day for the good of the world!"

I mean. Happy to help but I really hope ruining my day won't be necessary next time.

#adhd #sometimes a god coopts you for the greater good #and you do what you gotta do

[apenitentialprayer]

Humanity’s Last Hope

Attack on Titan and the Messianic Hero

(x) tl;dr the charismatic leader of a fascist movement is often identified with the movement itself. This grants the leader an extreme amount of power, bordering on a physical god in terms of influence. Affirming the inherent worth of each human being, which must be detached from their practical usefulness, is probably the best antidote to this way of thinking I feel like the past two rants have been about subjects that people might readily associate with fascism; they’re outside the mainstream just enough that people can feel like they don’t need to worry about them; unless you’re part of a group that espouses a mystical connection among the in-group, or believe that your group is perpetually in some sort of tension with the world at large, you don’t really have to worry about changing your behaviors to prevent a fascist tendency in them. This one is different, though; almost everyone can agree that heroism is good. We like heroes. We need heroes. But how do fascists deploy the concept of the hero in ways that further their cause? There is no question that Eren Yeager’s powers make him an important advantage for the humans residing in the Walls; with his ability to transform into a Titan and direct his powers against the enemy that has kept them trapped within the Walls for a century, Yeager’s discovery becomes a determinative moment in the history of his civilization. He will either be declared an Enemy of Mankind, too dangerous to be kept alive, or an asset that the military builds their entire hope around. And, because Eren is so essential to the plans that the military has staked its hopes on, they must ensure that Eren remains alive at all costs. This reaches the point where entire squads of soldiers boldly race to their deaths in order to buy time for Eren not even to escape, but to put a larger distance between himself and his pursuer, the Female Titan. Eren is distraught by this; these are his comrades. But, ultimately, they’re making a noble choice; they know that the plan cannot succeed without Eren, and so they are choosing to give up their lives in order to make sure that the mission can succeed. They transcend the self, identifying with a broader good, and decide that their life is something they’re willing to exchange for this broader good. In that regard, they fit the concept of the Islamic shahīd (sometimes, and I would say inaccurately, translated as “martyr”), the man who gives up his life in the pursuit of a righteous cause. We love this archetype; Rogue One is built around this concept; the 54th Massachusetts Infantry Regiment is immortalized by the film Glory for the way that they fit this concept; we sing songs about going "to fight for the right, without question or pause / To be willing to march into hell for a heavenly cause." In its most sublime form, this sacrifice is the recognition that there are things in this world bigger than ourselves, things worth fighting and dying for. But, in Attack on Titan, it isn’t that simple. We know the logic at play here from the speech the leader of Squad Rico gives Eren during the Trost operation; her wording there is key. In the above, you’ll notice that in the three examples I gave, people are sacrificing their lives for causes. When the squad leader tells Eren that people are going to die during the Trost operation, she tells him that they’re dying for him. What’s more, it is now Eren’s responsibility to ensure that those deaths have meaning by achieving his goal. And both of those statements need to be unpacked. First, I’m going to suggest that there is something noble about dying for a cause greater than yourself, and that there is something noble about dying to ensure the safety of someone else. Both of those things are moments of tragedy, surely, but they also have the potential to become a moment of sublime beauty, a moment of transcendental love: the firefighter who dies rescuing a little girl, the soldier who jumps on a grenade to save his squad, a parent going hungry to make sure their kids have enough to eat. These are tragedies, but they are mixed with something greater. I’m going to argue, however, that when these two acts of self-sacrifice are mixed, we have something potentially much uglier. When a particular person becomes equated with the cause, to the point that you can use that person and the cause interchangeably, we’re talking about an ideological Frankenstein that can create very unfortunate implications. When someone sacrifices themselves for another, we have someone trading their life for another. When someone sacrifices themselves for a cause, we have someone giving up their life for a greater good. When that person is the cause, well, does that make the person a greater good than the person being sacrificed? I hope I am articulating this clearly; when a broader cause is seen as objectively good, and we are identifying a single person as that cause, we are assigning extra value to that life as if that life is objectively more important than the lives of the people who support him. The Kim Il Sung, the Hitler, the Eren Yeager.... they become an aggregate, the receptacle of the hopes and dreams and inspirations of the people who follow them, charismatic leaders that act as living figures of devotion, invaluable icons whose loss would be tantamount to the destruction of the movement itself. To invest a human being with this level of power is dangerous. I want to make a distinction between the act of embodying and the state of embodiment for a second; to work to embody one’s ideals can a worthy goal. It requires you to assess yourself, to be critical of yourself, and to work to align yourself more with your ideals. You must decrease so that your ideal (which, hopefully, is a good one) may  increase. There is an inherent transcendence of the self in trying to embody an ideal. On the other hand, when you are the embodiment of an ideal, things are very different. To simply be is very powerful. To be an embodiment is to identify your needs with the cause’s needs, your desires with its desires, your hopes and aspirations with its hopes and aspirations. Someone who is embodying an ideal can be replaced; someone who embodies an ideal is irreplaceable. You get what I’m saying? Second, and this is very closely related to the above, is this idea that the sacrifice of the soldiers finds meaning in Eren’s success; we’ve spoken about the transcendental quality of race in certain forms of fascist thought in one of the previous posts I linked above. Here, however, the fascist is strictly materialist. These actions in and of themselves don’t have meaning. The heroism of the 54th Massachusetts Infantry Regiment is irrelevant to the fascist; they failed to capture the fort, and so any sacrifice there was ultimately for naught. A shahīd is only a shahīd if that sacrifice contributes to a pragmatic end. A firefighter who died saving a girl, only for that girl to die from burn injuries two weeks later, is a firefighter who wasted his life. The fascist doesn’t see the valor of the act itself. That being said, the fascist also understands that most people will see sacrifice as heroic, and will assign such sacrifices a pragmatic result, even if the connection isn’t quite clear. The soldiers who died on the eastern front did die meaningfully, because somehow the disaster on the eastern front was actually just a distraction that allowed our victory on the western front. The point is, sacrifice is only valuable when it directly helps the cause/leader in a practical way, and when sacrifice is valued even when it doesn’t seem to have had a pragmatic effect, the fascist will coopt it in order to save face. What I’m hoping you’ll take away from all this is simple; do not worship the leaders of movements. Every member of a movement is valuable, and the face of any given movement is not more valuable than anyone else. The President of the United States is not the United States. The Pope of the Catholic Church is not the Catholic Church. They are people, just like you and me, and your inherent worth is not connected to whether or not you push their agendas further in a visible way. While I’m on this topic, I’m actually going to leave off with a MAJOR SPOILER for Season 3, a spoiler that gives me hope that the fascist themes of Attack on Titan may not actually have the last word in the narrative. Towards the end of the season, Armin sacrifices himself, suffering massive third degree burns all over his body, and there is enough medicine to save only one person, either Armin or the leader of the Survey Corps. And at first a practical argument is made; Armin is clever, he has come up with many of the plans that have aided humanity so far. In other words, Armin is worth just as much as the leader because he contributes to the cause. But that’s not the argument that convinces Levi to give Armin the medicine; in a rare instant of self reflection on his hatred, Eren says that Armin deserves the medicine because he has not been consumed by hatred. Since his mother has died, he wants nothing more than to kill all the Titans he can. “But... [Armin]’s not like that. Armin cares about more than just fighting. He has dreams.” It might be true that Armin is smart, and talented, and dedicated to the cause. But that’s not why Eren wants to save him, and it’s ultimately not why Levi chooses to save him. No, Armin is saved because they see a fifteen year old boy who dreams of one day being able to see the sea. With one season left, and the manga apparently winding down as well, I think Armin is going to be the key that determines whether or not the fascistic tones of this narrative actually have the last say in the story.

#Attack on Titan #Messiah #fascism #mysticism #idolatry #long post