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sophieinwonderland · 2 years

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Okay, I want to break down this post that made it to the top of the syscourse tag, especially since it was vagueing an earlier conversation with me.

For the first point, the term "plural" was used specifically to distance itself from OSDD/DID, as an alternative to "multiple" which was more used in OSDD/DID spaces at the time. I assume then that this statement isn't about the term "plural" being intrinsically linked to DID/OSDD but rather, the concept of being multiple beings in one body itself.

And that, I feel, is an equally problematic claim. Spiritual possession has existed throughout the entire world in nearly every culture throughout human history. In contrast, OSDD/DID were only recognized as medical disorders in the past couple hundred years or so. Most plurality throughout history has been considered spiritual in nature. OSDD/DID systems don't own a monopoly on the concept, nor do they even make up the majority of people who could technically fall under the plural umbrella.

As for this hypothetical, sure, it can happen in some case. But OSDD and DID are already highly comorbid with a large number of other disorders. I legitimately wonder how many endo-identifying traumagenic systems with PTSD symptoms with suicidal ideation who aren't in therapy already would suddenly decide to seek help if they knew they had a dissociative disorder on top of that.

Most of the time, this is just stacking one extra diagnosis onto a pile. And if someone's not getting treated for other issues, why would they get treated for this one?

There's obviously value in getting the diagnosis for treatment purposes, but this seems like it could usually be worked out between therapists and patients naturally over the course of treatment for other conditions.

(By the way, I believe the statistic that this is referencing is that 70% of outpatients diagnosed with DID had attempted suicide. This is not a suicide rate. That's obviously way too high and I'm not saying this to minimize the statistic, but because I want to keep facts straight. Also, this study was focused strictly on DID, and did not include OSDD systems as the quote suggests.)

It's never just been about how this hurts non-disordered plurals. That's narrow-minded. It's about how psychiatry as a whole handles and should handle mental health.

The focus of mental health programs is helping people reach a point that's healthy for themselves, not just stopping them from being "different."

For tulpamancy, specifically, many tulpamancers report improvements in symptoms of other disorders because of their plurality. It's likely the same would prove true for other non-OSDD/DID systems If a non-OSDD/DID system is seeking treatment for reasons unrelated to their plurality, trying to diagnose them with a dissociative disorder and convince them that a system that's been overall beneficial to their mental health is part of a disorder can be extremely harmful to the system's mental health.

In the case of someone with MDD who create a tulpa for companionship, the plurality should be seen as a form of treatment to an existing condition, not a disorder, and attempting to treat the plurality could deprive a "DISORDERED" person something that's helping them to heal.

But let's go beyond that and talk about religious considerations. Like I said, the first plurality was spiritual. Should all instances of possession where a spiritual identity takes over be considered pathological? What about voices?

The book When God Talks Back describes religious practices where certain evangelical Christian groups speak to "God" until they can have two-way conversations with it in ways that resemble mind-voice communication. (Also mentioned here.) Should we deem this form of voice-hearing inherently pathological due to similarities to certain hallucinatory experiences, even though the evangelicals (like the tulpamancers) report positive health benefits with no notable impairment?

I know some atheists have the meme that religion is a mental illness, but at what point would medicalizing all experiences of voice hearing and dissociative identity states become religious discrimination?

Finally, let's come back to how this affects disordered systems. You say that you're not saying systems need final fusion, and that's great. But you're supporting the same mentality that leads to that, by pathologizing the experience of plurality itself.

If plurality is inherently pathological, then why wouldn't final fusion be the ideal option for healing 100% of the time? That's the logic used by singlets who think final fusion is the only valid goal for therapy, and don't understand why any system would choose to remain plural.

When you shift the definition of a disorder to any experience of being different, you then subsequently shift the goal of therapy to reaching normalcy and fitting in with society rather than achieving a personal standard of health. And that's sanism.

In the end, I think we're lucky that the American Psychiatric Association is intelligent enough to acknowledge and recognize that not all presentations of similar symptoms should be considered pathological in the DSM-5, and it's integral that we continue to defend that going forward against people who would seek to medicalize non-medical experiences.

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bigskydreaming · 3 years

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Something else to keep in mind is the way things compound? Like for instance, I’ve seen a mini trend of fics lately focusing on the issue of Dick dropping out of college or not wanting to go, which for the record, I feel is another way of building up to the idea that he and Bruce have all these fights during this period that are two way streets instead of like....what canon actually was (reminder that in the canon that Dick actually dropped out he and Bruce actually were never really NOT on good terms, like there’s never been a big fight in the comics about this topic so.....incheresting).

But anyway, my point is its worth keeping in mind that how you frame something at one point in a narrative like.....ideally, you want it to mesh up and align with other things you’ve brought up throughout the narrative, and not accidentally contradict yourself narratively.

I mean, this is really the big gripe most Dick Grayson fans have with his fanon characterization overall:

The fact that it just doesn’t make sense.

In Jason-centric fics that are after his resurrection, how often is Jason utterly convinced that Dick can’t even wipe his ass without Bruce’s approval? And yet in Jason-centric fics that are before his death, how often is Jason thinking about how Dick and Bruce are constantly fighting and Bruce can’t seem to do anything without Dick objecting? Reconcile these two things. They make no sense.

Same thing with fics that talk about Dick being the emotional glue of the family, the one keeping a cool head to calm down everyone else when they’re all taking shots at each other.....until randomly he just pops off without warning because he’s just that hot-tempered. These things mesh, how?

Same thing with Dick being frequently referenced as idealized by the hero community......but every time he interacts with someone like Roy or Kori or other Titans he can’t seem to avoid pissing them off and creating epic grudges. Make it make sense.

Or how Dick disliked or didn’t care about Jason to the extent that he only references him as a cautionary tale because of one line in canon......but the whole damn story where he kills the Joker because of Jason doesn’t count.

Or how its not okay to blame Dick for his own rapes but both of his major breakups which are intrinsically linked to the actions of his rapists like....were clearly and objectively all his fault somehow.

Dick Grayson fans aren’t on board with most of fanon because you can’t sell people on a constantly conflicting characterization that makes no sense and has no internal consistency.....you can only cater to people who don’t NEED to be sold on that because they’ve already decided they’re down with hating a character or largely ignoring him.

And I think people have gotten so used to not thinking twice about contradictory takes on Dick Grayson that they unintentionally undermine their own fics by contradicting themselves without even realizing it.

Like its ridiculously common to come across fics that reference Dick being beloved and charming everyone at the society galas they all have to go to.....but these fics take pot shots at Dick’s name, fashion, mannerisms etc all throughout it just because the author likes it or fans expect it or whatever reason.

But actually THINK about it:

Think how snobby the socialites at these galas are characterized as being any time its Jason their noses are turned down at.....and then look at like.....the constant jokes you as the author make YOURSELF at Dick’s very name, fashion and circus origins......how on Earth does it make ANY sense that these same people aren’t doing the same damn thing about Dick? That they’re actually any more fond of him than they are Jason, if no matter how charming he might be in the moment, the second he turns around its just as easy and likely for them to make a joke about his circus background or name as it is for writers and readers? If you can’t resist doing it, you really think snobby one percenters would bother in-universe?

Hell, they’d be more likely to hate him BECAUSE of his name, his fashion, etc.....because think of how often people not so subtly infer that he’s making a bad choice when he refuses to go by a different name, or dress more accordingly to normal fashions, etc.....

Dick has a million ways he could more easily fit in with the society he was brought into and ease his passage through it, but he puts his foot down at practically every opportunity. The idea that everybody is just dazzled by him at these galas makes no sense because the most consistent character choice made by Dick throughout the decades is that he refuses to CONFORM to others’ expectations of what he should be like.

EVERY SINGLE CHOICE he makes from his name to his wardrobe to his costumes to his education to his city to his living arrangements and on and on is in complete and utter DEFIANCE of what people expect of the eldest son or ward of Bruce Wayne, Prince of Gotham, and that’s by Dick’s conscious and consistent choice. He knows damn well how to be more what people want or expect of him, and that’s not what he wants so he says mmmm but also how bout no.

Dick constantly embodies the idea that you can take the boy out of the circus but you can not and will not take the circus out of the boy no matter what environment you place him in or who you surround him with. He will not allow it. He will not play along.

In what universe is that going to endear him to the very people who would most likely view his choice to prioritize the very things they look down upon as something he consciously PREFERS over their projected expectations or assumptions?

Its not.

Personally, I think Gotham high society despises Dick Grayson no matter what they pretend to his face, and he’s perfectly aware of it. And probably gets some kind of trollish glee out of it because fuck them too, anyway.

(And all of that is WITHOUT even taking into account the fact that a good number of the people at these society galas all along were looking at Dick as their future property, given that they were Owl members who knew all along what they intended for their Gray Son. These people simply do not view and treat Dick as an equal. Its impossible. There’s no way).

Or then back to the idea of Bruce and Dick’s fights in his later teenage years being a two way street....

The core problem at the root of all this is the very idea of a two way street implies a certain give and take. A clashing of equals.

And that’s just not the reality in ANY continuity.

Because the question is, in any given fight between Dick and Bruce in ANY canon....

When does Dick ever WIN these fights?

When does Dick get the outcome he wants OVER what Bruce wants? When does Bruce ever cave? When is it NOT Dick leaving the manor without getting what he came for, or even being kicked out? When has Dick ever been able to say no, I’m NOT fired, or no, I’m NOT giving you control over what happens with Robin. Even when he DOES confront Bruce on these matters, Bruce STILL infamously never caves. He never actually apologizes or admits wrongdoing, he still usually tells Dick to leave. Like I said, basically the only time Dick’s ever got the upper hand in an argument was over the college thing and that time it wasn’t even a fight! Bruce didn’t actually care that much! That was the good timeline! LOL.

But there’s never actually a reversal. There’s no real precedent for Bruce caving to a teenage Dick Grayson and saying hey you know what, you’re right here, I’m overstepping or I’m in the wrong or I’m the one who doesn’t know what he’s talking about because our divergent life experiences here have mine as less relevant to the issue in question than yours do?

It doesn’t happen.

And here’s the problem with that:

Dick’s a literal genius. Every member of the Batfam is. Its how they’re able to do what they do. They’re ALL smart as fuck, capable as fuck. Put any of them in any other situation where they’re the only Bat present, and everyone usually defaults to them. They know what to do, they know what call to make, their approach is borne out by the narrative as being the correct approach. Their intelligence and strategy is validated by the narrative, with Dick being no exception here. In fact he’s particularly NOTED within canon narratives for being the guy everyone in the DC universe trusts to lead them.

Now.....imagine being this guy, who while although still a teenager, is in his late teens, and has YEARS of leading his own team under his belt. Years of being responsible for the lives of teammates and civilians. Years of becoming aware of and comfortable with his own natural brilliance. Years of becoming confident in being capable of making the right call when the situation demands it. Years of learning to TRUST in his ability to make the right call, to know the right approach, because not only are people relying on him to make those calls, he needs to be able to trust he can make them in order to have the confidence to follow through and DO so instead of being frozen with indecision or trying to pass the decision off to someone else, which he NEVER does?

With all that....and even with all due respect to Bruce’s own genius and experience....

What are the chances that in all the times that Bruce and Dick clash in his late teenage years....

Dick is NEVER right?

And yet.....when in any of these conflicts.....is he ever validated in that, versus shut down by Bruce who insists his way is still right?

Imagine being an acknowledged genius with years of experience and responsibility under your belt, but NEVER getting to be right in any arguments with your father, even when just based off pure freaking statistics, its frankly impossible for you to be 100% wrong EVERY SINGLE TIME?

Do you see where the two way street thing starts to fall apart? How can it truly be a two way street if part of the reason the two of them so often end UP aggressively opposed to each other during this time period.....is because of how many times previous encounters have only ended ONE way no matter WHAT?

It makes sense for Dick and Bruce not to clash as much during their younger years, because even the most stubborn kids do understand on a fundamental level that they have things to learn from more experienced adults. And Dick has never been someone mindlessly predisposed towards conflict. He didn’t become an exceptional acrobat by the age of eight by butting heads with his parents every time they tried to teach him, he couldn’t have. He KNOWS how to listen, he KNOWS how to acknowledge when someone else is right.

But as he grows older, when he has more and more experience under his belt, more and more confidence in his own insights in large parts thanks to Bruce’s own efforts in buttressing his confidence in his younger years.....what happens when the balance of who is right and who is wrong in their arguments NEVER EVER starts to shift in his direction even a little bit, no matter HOW much more experienced he seems to get....and what happens when communicating this problem, this imbalance, to the person that really matters here, Bruce himself....still inherently requires Bruce accepting blame and acknowledging even just in THIS case, the idea that he’s not always right at this point and Dick has insights that can challenge his?

Of course there’s going to be more and more conflict....but can you truly argue that its a two way street, even just based off THIS? Is the teenage son truly to blame for being frustrated that he’s not allowed to ever be right, because the thing getting in his way is his father never ever being willing to back down or cave or not have the last word?

This is the sort of inherent contradiction I think lies at the heart of a lot of conflicting viewpoints here. It doesn’t matter how much lip service is being paid to the idea that Dick is intelligent, that Dick is respected, if all your content continually bears out the idea that actually no he’s not, because Bruce is always right, Dick never is in the right in arguments or conflicts.

The latter evidence just is not aligning with the former claims, and thus readers are innately forced to make a choice as to which to believe.....and more likely than not, they’re going to err on the side of substantiating whichever stance actually has more narrative support behind it, in any particular story.

See what I’m saying?

You need to make sure your story is ACTUALLY saying what you think you’re saying or you intended to say....or you end up undermining your own intentions.

Anyway. Just throwing that out there.

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grubbyduck · 4 years

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No Man’s Land - an essay on feminism and forgiveness

I have always proudly named myself a feminist, since I was a little girl and heard my mum proudly announcing herself as a feminist to anyone who would listen.

But I believe the word 'feminist' takes on a false identity in our collective imagination - it is seen as hard, as baked, severe, steadfast, stubborn and rooted. From a male perspective, it possibly means abrasive, or too loud, or intimidatingly intolerant of men. From a female perspective, though, these traits become revered by young feminists; the power of knowing what you think and never rolling over! My experience of being a feminist throughout my life has been anything but - it has been a strange and nebulous aspect of my identity; it has sparked the familiar fires of bravery, ambition, rage, sadness and choking inarticulacy at times, sure, but at other times it has inspired apathy, reactionary attitudes, bravado and dismissivness. And at other, transitive times, it caused me to rethink my entire outlook on the world. And then again. And then again.

In primary school, I read and re-read Sandi Toksvig’s book GIRLS ARE BEST, which takes the reader through the forgotten women of history. I didn’t feel angry - I felt awed that there were female pirates, women on the front line in the world wars, women at the forefront of invention, science and literature. I still remember one line, where it is revealed that NASA’s excuse for only hiring six women astronauts compared to hundreds of men was that they didn’t stock suits small enough.

When I was 13, I tried to start a girl's rugby team at my school. I got together 15 girls who also wanted to form a team. We asked the coaches if they would coach us - their responses varied from 'maybes' to straight up 'no's. The boys in our year laughed at us publicly. We would find an old ball, look up the rules online, and practise ourselves in free periods - but the boys would always come over, make fun of us and take over the game until we all felt too insecure to carry on. I shouted at a lot of boys during that time, and got a reputation among them as someone who was habitually angry and a bit of a buzzkill. Couldn't take a joke - that kind of thing.

When I was around 16, I got my first boyfriend. He was two years older (in his last year of sixth form) and seemed ever so clever to me. He laughed about angry feminists, and I laughed too. He knew I classified myself as a feminist, but, you know, a cool one - who doesn't get annoyed, and doesn't correct their boyfriends' bulging intellects. And in any case, whenever I did argue with him about anything political or philosophical, he would just chant books at me, list off articles he'd read, mention Kant and say 'they teach that wrong at GCSE level'. So I put more effort into researching my opinions (My opinions being things like - Trump is a terrible person who should not be elected as President - oh yeah, it was 2016), but every time I cited an article, he would tell me why that article was wrong or unreliable. I couldn't win. He was a Trump supporter (semi-ironically, but that made it even worse somehow) and he voted Leave in the Brexit referendum. He also wouldn't let me get an IUD even though I had terrible anxiety about getting pregnant, because of his parents' Catholicism. He sulked if he ever got aroused and then I didn’t feel like having sex, because apparently it ‘hurts’ men physically. One time I refused sex and he sulked the whole way through the night, refusing to sleep. I was incensed, and felt sure that my moral and political instincts were right, but I had been slowly worn down into doubting the validity of my own opinions, and into cushioning his ego at every turn - especially when he wasn't accepted into Oxford.

When I was 17/18, I broke up with him, and got on with my A Levels. One of them was English Literature. I remember having essay questions drilled into us, all of which were fairly standard and uninspired, but there was one that I habitually avoided:

'Discuss the presentation of women in this extract'

It irritated me beyond belief to hear the way that our class were parroting phrases like 'commodification and dehumanisation of women' in order to get a good grade. It felt so phony, so oversimplified, and frankly quite insulting. I couldn't bear reading classic books with the intent of finding every instance that the author compares a woman to an animal. It made me so sad! I couldn't understand how the others could happily write about such things and be pleased with their A*. As a keen contributor to lessons, my teacher would often call on me to comment in class - and to her surprise, I think, my responses about 'women's issues' were always sullen and could be characterised by a shrug. I wanted to talk about macro psychology, about Machievellian villains, about Shakespreare's subversion of comic convention in the English Renaissance. I absolutely did not want to talk about womb imagery, about men’s fixation and sexualisation of their mothers or about docile wives. In my application for Cambridge, I wrote about landscape and the psyche in pastoral literature, and got an offer to study English there. I applied to a mixed college - me and my friends agreed that we’d rather not go if we got put into an all female college.

When I was 19, I got a job as an actor in a touring show in my year out before starting at Cambridge. I was the youngest by a few years. One company member - a tall, handsome and very talented man in his mid-twenties - had the exact same job title as me, only he was being paid £100 more than me PER WEEK. I was the only company member who didn’t have an agent, so I called the producers myself to complain. They told me they sympathised, that there just wasn’t enough money in the budget to pay me more - and in the end, I managed to negotiate myself an extra £75 per week by taking on the job of sewing up/fixing any broken costumes and puppets. So I had more work, and was still being paid 25% less. The man in question was a feminist, and complained to his agent (although he fell through on his promise to demand that he lose £50 a week and divide it evenly between us). He was a feminist - and yet he commented on how me and the other woman in the company dressed, and told us what to wear. He was a feminist, only he slept with both of us on tour, and lied to us both about it. He was a feminist, only he pitted me against and isolated me from the only other woman in the company, the only person who may have been a mentor or a confidante. He was a feminist, only he put me down daily about my skills as a performer and made me doubt my intelligence, my talent and my worth.

When I was 20, I started at Cambridge University, studying English Literature. Over the summer, I read Lundy Bancroft’s book ‘Why Does He Do That’ which is a study of abusers and ‘angry and controlling men’. It made me realise that I had not been given the tools to recognise coercive and controlling behaviour - I finally stopped blaming myself for attracting controlling men into my life. I also read ‘Equal’ by Carrie Gracie, about her fight to secure equal pay for equal work at the BBC in 2017-2019. It was reading that book that I fully appreciated that I had already experienced illegal pay discrimination in the workplace. Both made me cry in places, and it felt as though something had thawed in me. I realised that I was not the exception. That ‘women’s issues’ do apply to me. In my first term at Cambridge, I wrote some unorthodox essays. I wrote one on Virginia Woolf named ‘The Dogs Are Dancing’ which began with a page long ‘disclaimer for my womanly emotions’ that attempted to explain to my male supervisor how difficult it is for women to write dispassionately and objectively, as they start to see themselves as unfairly separate, excluded and outlined from the male literary consciousness. He didn’t really understand it, though he enjoyed the passion behind my prose.

The ‘woman questions’ at undergraduate level suddenly didn’t seem as easy, as boring or as depressing as those I had encountered at A Level. I had to reconcile with the fact that I had only been exposed to a whitewashed version of feminism throughout my life. At University, I learned the word Intersectionality - and it made immediate and ferocious sense to me. I wrote an essay on Aphra Behn’s novella ‘Oroonoko’, which is about a Black prince and his pursuit of Imoinda, a Black princess. I had to get to grips with how a feminist author from the Renaissance period tackled issues of race. I had to examine how she dehumanised and sexualised Imionda in the same way that white women were used to being treated by men. I had to really question to what extent Aphra Behn was on Imionda’s side - examine the violent punishment of Oroonoko for mistreating her. I found myself really wanting to believe that Behn had done this purposefully as social commentary. I mentioned in my essay that I was aware of my own white female critical ingenuity. For the first time, I was writing about something I didn’t have any personal authority over in my life - I had to educate myself meticulously in order to speak boldly about race.

As I found myself surrounded by more women who were actively and unashamedly feminist, I realised just how many opinions exist within that bracket. I realised that I didn’t agree with a lot of other feminists about aspects of the movement. I started to only turn up to lectures by women. I started to only read literary criticism written by women - not even consciously; I just realised that I trusted their voices more intrinsically. I started to wish I had applied to an all female college. I realised that all female spaces weren’t uncool - that is an image that I had learned from men, and from trying to impress men. The idea that Black people, trans people, that non binary people could be excluded from feminism seemed completely absurd to me. I ended up in a mindset that was constructed to instinctively mistrust men. Not hate - just mistrust. I started to get fatigued by explaining basic feminist principles to sceptical men.

I watched the TV show Mrs America. It made my heart speed up with longing, with awe, with nerves, sorrow, anger - again, it showed me how diverse the word Feminism is. The longing I felt was for a time where feminist issues seemed by comparison clear-cut, and unifying. A time where it was good to be angry, where anger got stuff done. I am definitely angry. The problem is, the times that feminism has benefitted me and others the most in my life is when I use it forgivingly and patiently. When I sit in my anger, meditate on it, control it, and talk to those I don’t agree with on subjects relating to feminism with the active intent to understand their point of view. Listening to opinions that seemed so clearly wrong to me was the most difficult thing in the world - but it changed my life, and once again, it changed my definition of feminism.

Feminism is listening to Black women berating white feminists, and rather than feeling defensive or exempt, asking questions about how I have contributed to a movement that excludes women of colour. Feminism is listening to my mother’s anxieties about trans women being included in all-female spaces, and asking her where those anxieties stem from. Feminism is understanding that listening to others who disagree with you doesn’t endanger your principles - you can walk away from that conversation and know what you know. Feminism is checking yourself when you undermine or universalise male emotion surrounding the subject. Feminism is allowing your mind to change, to evolve, to include those that you once didn’t consider - it is celebrating quotas, remembering important women, giving thanks for the fact that feminism is so complex, so diverse, so fraught and fought over.

Feminism is common ground. It is no man’s land. It is the space between a Christian housewife and a liberated single trans woman. It is understanding women of other races, other cultures, other religions. It is disabled women, it is autistic women, it is trans men who have biologically female medical needs that are being ignored. It is forgiveness for our selfishness. It feels impossible.

The road to feminism is the road to enlightenment. It is the road to Intersectional equity. It is hard. It is a journey. No one does it perfectly. It is like the female orgasm - culturally ignored, not seen as necessary, a mystery even to a lot of women, many-layered, multitudinous, taboo, comes in waves. It is pleasure, and it is disappointment.

All I know is that the hard-faced, warrior version of feminism that was my understanding only a few years ago reduced my allies and comrades in arms to a small group of people who were almost exaclty like me and so agreed with me on almost everything. Flexible, forgiving and inquisitive feminism has resulted in me loving all women, and fighting for all women consciously. And by fighting for all women, I also must fight for Black civil rights, for disabled rights, for Trans rights, for immigrant rights, for homeless rights, for gay rights, and for all human rights because women intersect every one of these minorities. My scoffing, know-it-all self doing my A Levels could never have felt this kind of love. My ironic jokes about feminists with my first boyfriend could never have made any woman feel loved. My frustration that my SPECIFIC experience of misogyny as a white, middle-class bisexual woman didn’t feel related to the other million female experiences could never have facilitated unity, common ground, or learning to understand women that existed completely out of my experience as a woman.

My feminism has lead me to becoming friends with some of those boys who mocked me for wanting to play rugby, and with the woman that was vying with me over that man in the acting company for 8 months. It is slowly melting my resentment towards all men - it is even allowing me to feel sorry for the men who have mistreated me in the past.

I guess I want to express in this mammoth essay post that so far my feminist journey has lead me to the realisation that if your feminism isn’t growing you, you aren’t doing it right. Perhaps it will morph again in the future. But for now, Feminism is a love of humanity, rather than a hatred of it. That is all.

#Feminism #yooo i have written a thesis lol #didn’t mean to do that it all kind of flowed out #intersectional feminism #forgiveness #carrie gracie #mrs america #why does he do that #lundy bancroft #equal pay #equal rights #literature #university #school #oroonoko #aphra behn

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alethiometry · 3 years

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WAIT can i also get alfred for that character breakdown. please

lmao i was wondering when you’d ask. simp.

How I feel about this character

god....if there’s any character that could be described as “oozing charisma”... it’s our goth king aelfred. from the very beginning of the game he looms over england as not-quite a villain in the conventional sense, but just as a very powerful and very compelling antagonist. i was surprised at how little screentime he got — we don’t see him until oxenefordscire, almost halfway through the game — and then we don’t see him again until the game is almost over. but he’s always lurking... always watching...

i think what i’m getting at is, aelfred of wessex is about as iconic and intrinsic in acv as the t-rex in jurassic world or the shark in jaws. just perfectly threatening, perfectly compelling, and used minimally but perfectly.

i think i would have liked the grand maegester reveal a little more if odyssey hasn’t done the same thing with leader-of-shady-org-manipulates-protag-into-dismantling-it-for-them-because-they’re-not-happy-with-the-way-the-org-is-going-and-can-outsource-the-labor-bc-they’re-rich. YES aelfred makes more sense than aspasia, and YES it was written better in every way, and YES it was a predictable outcome that doesn’t diminish the impact of the revelation... but also... idk. maybe the issue is with odyssey and not valhalla.

i love seeing his interactions with the common people: the little girl in wincestre, and the baker in...whatever village that is. he treats everyone (or... at least christians) with respect and dignity!

finally, while i hate that ubba died offscreen, i love that aelfred was such a petty bitch about it that he didn’t even bother to get ubba’s name right. literally the only instance in the game where i thought, “i want this man to die” ... but that’s just good writing lmao

All the people I ship romantically with this character

you

My non-romantic OTP for this character

i really love his dynamic with eivor! i don’t ship them romantically/sexually but i’m obsessed with their chemistry. they speak to each other as equals and are both held in high regard by their peers, and that makes for a very interesting relationship. they’re the type of people i’d want to see in like a buddy cop or roadtrip movie lmao

i would also have loved to see more of his interactions with fulke, since she was such a prominent villain and worked directly under him. like, how much of her “research” into sigurd’s state of mind did he hear about? or does he just give her leave to do whatever tf she wants as long as it’s like... In The Name Of Christianity or whatever the fuck

My unpopular opinion about this character

i want a 100k+ coffeeshop college au where aelfred is kicked out of school and has to work at a coffeeshop/bakery to pay off his loans but can’t bake a damn pastry to save his life. no plot, no shipping, just aelfred’s daily diary/blog page that gets like 3 views max (one of them is goodwin) where he just muses over his life in the food service industry. it’s wildly out-of-touch the way any rich fancy boy would be, but it’s also... oddly zen.

One thing I wish would happen / had happened with this character in canon.

i hesitate to say that i want more screentime with aelfred, because i think his presence in the game was actually executed perfectly. that being said, i would love to have seen more of him, just because i like him so much! i guess we’ll leave that for discovery mode, because unfotunately there’s no way i have the attention span to watch the last kingdom.

character ask thingos

#assassin's creed #ac valhalla #valhalla spoilers #aelfred of wessex #tuserautumn #winedark #ask games

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pamphletstoinspire · 5 years

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Part - 2: Catholic Social Teaching Series: The Common Good, Part 1

Last time, in this space, we looked at the first pillar of Catholic social teaching: the dignity of the human person. This is a concept that is easily familiar to many Catholics, particularly since it undergirds the pro-life movement.

It lies at the root of the truth that human beings are human beings, not human doings; that their value does not depend on how much they can earn, nor on whether they are inside or outside the womb; nor on whether they are too old or sick to be “productive”; nor on whether they are innocent or guilty (since we are all the authors of the passion and death of the Son of God). Our rights and dignity proceed, as President John F. Kennedy put it, “not from the generosity of the state, but from the hand of God.”

We also saw that the Church looks at us as persons — that is, as creatures in a familial relationship with one another — due to the fact that we are made in the image and likeness of a Trinitarian God who is himself a communion of Persons.

This brings us to the next pillar: the common good. The common good — like solidarity — is an aspect of Catholic social teaching that often affects the American ear in a profoundly different way than the phrase “dignity of the human person.”

Many fear that it is the Church’s trendy nod to Marxism, as though the Church pits the common good against the dignity of the human person, as the Marxist pits the rich against the poor or the U.S. Constitution pits the three branches of government against one another to maintain a “balance of power.”

But this is to radically misunderstand Catholic social teaching. As we noted last time, the American conception of the social order, while it draws on certain aspects of a Catholic anthropology, also veers from it.

Our culture tends to see selfishness and sin as the most basic reality and virtue as the mask. So it begins with selfish individuals in conflict as the basis for its politics. Selfish competition in the marketplace, in the state and among various races, classes and genders is seen as the most basic reality, and everything comes down to a perpetual struggle for power among sinners.

Catholic anthropology, by contrast, insists on the human person made in the image and likeness of God as the most basic reality and sin as the mask. So it begins with the following presupposition: Human persons are in the first instance created by God, and love of God and neighbor is the fundamental purpose of our existence. To be sure, sin (and concupiscence) is a reality. But it is not the fundamental reality.

Because of this, the four pillars of Catholic social teaching work in harmony, not against one another. They certainly take into account the fact of the Fall — without which there would be no need for Catholic social teaching (anymore than, say, the angels need instruction on how to love perfectly) — but they do not begin there, as our politics does.

Catholic social teaching starts with the fact of the human person created in the image and likeness of God and with our primordial common call to such goods as vocation, fruitfulness, work and worship. Think of the four pillars as four notes in a chord, not as warring political ideologies.

And so, when the Church speaks of the common good, she does not begin with the rights of the individual in conflict with the needs of the collective, but with the fact that because eachperson is made in the image and likeness of God, all persons are.

Therefore, the Compendium of the Social Doctrine of the Church says:

“The principle of the common good, to which every aspect of social life must be related if it is to attain its fullest meaning, stems from the dignity, unity and equality of all people. According to its primary and broadly accepted sense, the common good indicates ‘the sum total of social conditions which allow people, either as groups or as individuals, to reach their fulfilment more fully and more easily.’”

Since human beings are made in the image and likeness of a Trinitarian God, the family — not the individual, state or corporation — is the living icon of God and the basic building block of civilization. No small part of Catholic social teaching can be summed up in the principle: “If it’s good for the family, it’s good.”

The Church has in view a common end: “a true worldwide cooperation for the common good of the whole of humanity and for future generations also.” Yet this common end is woven together by several necessary and intrinsically linked threads: the sanctity of life, the demand for a living wage, “respect for and the integral promotion of the person and his fundamental rights, commitment to peace, the organization of the state’s powers, a sound juridical system, the protection of the environment and the provision of essential services [such as] food, housing, work, education and access to culture, transportation, basic health care, the freedom of communication and expression and the protection of religious freedom.”

That said, the thing to remember is that building blocks are for building. The Church deeply respects the family and fights to protect it more than any other institution. But the paradox remains that the family, though necessary, is not sufficient for our flourishing as human beings.

The evidence for this is seen in the greatest family in history: the Holy Family. It is not a family simply ordered toward amassing its own good and then passing it on to the children, with no concern for the community.

On the contrary, the Holy Family’s purpose is about offering themselves entirely to the world. Mary and Joseph take seriously the fact that the prophets declare, on behalf of Israel and the whole world, “For to us a child is born” (Isaiah 9:6). This family offers itself and the fruit of Mary’s womb for the life of the world.

Not surprisingly, then, Jesus likewise treats the family as a building block, not as an end in itself. He subordinates it to the kingdom of God in emphatic terms, saying, “If anyone comes to me and does not hate his own father and mother and wife and children and brothers and sisters, yes, and even his own life, he cannot be my disciple” (Luke 14:26).

His point, of course, is not that we should wish evil on the family, but that nothing, not even the family, comes before our fidelity to the kingdom of God.

In a related way, the Gospel tells us that Jesus was asked, “Who are my mother and my brethren?” And looking around at those who sat about him, he said, “Here are my mother and my brethren: Whoever does the will of God is my brother and sister and mother” (Mark 3:33-35).

Once again, the family is hailed as good, but its goodness lies not in being isolated from the community, but by its reaching fulfillment in the kingdom of God. The fruit of Mary’s womb calls us to a generous fruitfulness that will redound not only to our progeny, but to future generations throughout the world.

The mention of future generations ties together two ideas that most moderns seldom think to relate: material generosity and the fruitfulness of the marital act. That’s because our politics has unnaturally severed them.

Conservatism is typically associated with being “pro-life” in terms of procreation and liberalism with being free in terms of money. But in the biblical tradition, separating those ideas is absurd. Generation, generosity, generativity, genital, genealogy and genius (among others) all come from the Latin root gener, meaning “kin,” “clan,” “race” or “stock,” with the root Indo-European meaning of gen being “to beget.”

The connection is not far to seek. Generous persons are life-giving persons in the biblical tradition. They literally give life by begetting children, but also give life to others by recognizing their common humanity and supplying their needs. They further give life by tending the garden of creation and using their genius to create wealth by inventing new things or by husbanding (note that word) nature’s bounty provided by God. Such generosity is characteristic of the biblical saint: archetypally Abraham.

Abraham is particularly remembered in Scripture for his fruitfulness and generosity rooted in faith. God makes him the father of many nations, and his generosity toward those around him is seen constantly.

Indeed, the mark of his call is that his life-giving generosity will ultimately touch the whole planet, and “in you shall all the nations be blessed” (Galatians 3:8). He is generous even to the wicked, famously dickering with God in order to get him to spare the legendarily corrupt cities of Sodom and Gomorrah.

This brings us to one of the core biblical insights about the use of our gifts, whether spiritual or material. What is true of Abraham is true of all his spiritual heirs: namely, that the Chosen People are chosen for the sake of the unchosen. Our gifts, whether in spiritual or material wealth, are given to us for the sake of those who do not have them — and those to whom much is given, much will be required (Luke 12:48).

Indeed, as the Parable of the Talents makes clear, what we are given is expected back with interest. This is a particularly acute responsibility for those of us living in the wealth of the First World when the bottom billion of the world’s population is literally starving to death. We are Dives (the Rich Man). They are Lazarus. And we have the opportunity and responsibility to be Abraham.

As Pope Pius XI said:

“The distribution of created goods, which, as every discerning person knows, is laboring today under the gravest evils due to the huge disparity between the few exceedingly rich and the unnumbered propertyless, must be effectively called back to and brought into conformity with the norms of the common good, that is, social justice.”

This, of course, involves individual initiatives toward generosity and private charity, and the Church and her members are immense engines of such generosity, not only helping the desperate, but, just as important, carrying out the Compendium’s insistence that:

“By means of work and making use of the gift of intelligence, people are able to exercise dominion over the earth and make it a fitting home: ‘In this way, he makes part of the earth his own, precisely the part which he has acquired through work; this is the origin of individual property.’”

This suits the rugged individualist American ethos quite well. Give a man a fish, and you feed him for a day; teach a man to fish, and you feed him for the rest of his life. The Church is all for that. But, then, the Compendium turns to the task of the state, beyond the individual, in addressing the common good as well:

“The responsibility for attaining the common good, besides falling to individual persons, belongs also to the state, since the common good is the reason that the political authority exists. … The individual person, the family or intermediate groups are not able to achieve their full development by themselves for living a truly human life. Hence the necessity of political institutions, the purpose of which is to make available to persons the necessary material, cultural, moral and spiritual goods.”

This too is common sense. The myth that the individual or the family is sufficient to provide for themselves without any help from (or given to) the community is simply foreign to Church Tradition (and to experience and common sense).

In a thousand ways, we are dependent, for example, on an infrastructure maintained by the state, which supports us with everything from an interstate highway system to the Internet, from a police force to a system that defends the weak from the predatory, from a military that protects us from deadly threats to a meteorological surveillance system that warns us of tornadoes, as well as state agencies that work to make sure our food and medicines do not kill or cripple us.

And this is just scratching the surface of the tasks that the state, of necessity, must perform in serving the common good. Our freeway system is not maintained by small bands of local citizens patching potholes on Saturday afternoon. There is a state department for that purpose.

When Hitler declared war, he was not met by some boys from Brooklyn who grabbed their pistols and headed across the Atlantic in a dinghy. The state’s military answered the call.

Of course, being human creations, none of these things are flawless. But without them, a quick look at Somalia, or Tikrit, Iraq, shows what really doing away with the state looks like.

Indeed, St. Paul understood the state to be so vital in forming a more perfect union, establishing justice, ensuring domestic tranquility, providing for the common defense, promoting the general welfare and securing the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity — that is, to maintaining the common good — that he told the Romans:

“Let every person be subject to the governing authorities. For there is no authority except from God, and those that exist have been instituted by God. Therefore, he who resists the authorities resists what God has appointed, and those who resist will incur judgment. For rulers are not a terror to good conduct, but to bad. Would you have no fear of him who is in authority? Then do what is good, and you will receive his approval, for he is God’s servant for your good. But if you do wrong, be afraid, for he does not bear the sword in vain; he is the servant of God to execute his wrath on the wrongdoer. Therefore, one must be subject, not only to avoid God’s wrath, but also for the sake of conscience. For the same reason, you also pay taxes, for the authorities are ministers of God, attending to this very thing. Pay all of them their dues, taxes to whom taxes are due, revenue to whom revenue is due, respect to whom respect is due, honor to whom honor is due” (Romans 13:1–7).

And Paul gives these instructions to the Christian community despite the fact that the Caesar of whom he wrote was Nero, the psychopath who would eventually cut off his head.

This does not, of course, mean that we are to simply knuckle under to every whim of Caesar. Indeed, thanks be to God, we live in a representative system of government where, at least in theory, we hire our Caesar by voting him into office. The task of civil authorities, according to the Compendium, is: “to interpret the common good of their country not only according to the guidelines of the majority, but also according to the effective good of all the members of the community, including the minority.” And when, as sometimes happens, Caesar enacts unjust laws, we have the right and obligation to resist him, since “an unjust law is no law at all,” according to St. Augustine.

No small part of why Caesar can go wrong is that he often forgets that man does not live on bread alone and tries to reduce the human person simply to a consumer and producer of material goods. The blunder of both consumerist capitalism and communism is the insistence that our highest good is merely material. But, in fact, our life begins and ends in Jesus, and he is our Supreme Good.

Scripture points to this in a curious, yet clear way. In the Old Testament, God commanded that Israel celebrate the sabbatical and jubilee years, which required fields to lie fallow, cancellation of debts and a general release of persons and goods — indicating that everyone in Israel has a right to the common goods of land God gave them. Israel never really observed this fully. But when Jesus, God made man, fulfills the Law and the prophets, he embarks on his mission by applying the image of the jubilee to himself (Luke 4:18-19; Isaiah 61:1-2).

Jesus does not mean he is declaring a jubilee year to begin his ministry. He means he is the jubilee, just as he will later say he is the true Bread of Life, prefigured by the manna in the wilderness, and he is the true temple prefigured by the stone building in Jerusalem. What was seen in sign and shadow in the Old Covenant is now revealed in fullness in the Word made flesh.

And so the Church insists that, in the final analysis, every person has the right to know the truth, mercy and love revealed in Jesus Christ, the very embodiment of the common good. All of our other efforts to promote the common good must keep that fact in mind.

Having sketched this framework of the common good and placed it within our transcendent heavenly destiny in Christ, the Church then makes clear, “God gave the earth to the whole human race for the sustenance of all its members, without excluding or favoring anyone.” This is, of course, straight out of Genesis 1 and carries with it implications that are, at once, commonsensical and also very challenging — and none more so for Americans than the principle of the universal destination of goods.

The Compendium tells us, “The right to the common use of goods is the ‘first principle of the whole ethical and social order’ and ‘the characteristic principle of Christian social doctrine.’”

It is here that the American pulse often begins to quicken in fear and the suspicion that the Church is talking about some kind of communism. But this is not so. Communism is the theory that private property should be abolished and everything owned by the state. It is a utopian notion that, like many utopian notions, took a single idea from the Christian tradition and exalted it beyond all reason and sense, forgetting that, crippled by sin, we cannot do always what we do sometimes. The idea communism battened on was this: “Now the company of those who believed were of one heart and soul, and no one said that any of the things which he possessed was his own, but they had everything in common” (Acts 4:32).

It’s a beautiful thing when this happens due to a spontaneous outpouring of self-donating love. But, as St. Luke will point out in the story of Ananias and Sapphira just a few sentences later, the serpent of greed and falsehood lurks even in the Church, and still more in the world, due to original sin. So communism was doomed, since a perfect sharing of everything in common is beyond our capacity this side of the eschaton. Communism’s attempt to make it happen through force could and did only end in epic slaughter, gulags, famines and a police state.

Only the Holy Spirit can make saints. Stalin, Mao and Pol Pot made only huge piles of corpses. The communist claim to abolish property and class merely wound up concentrating property and power in the hands of the communist rulers and robbing everybody else of the property that attends the dignity of the human person.

Yet, for a paradoxical reason, this is also why the Church is suspicious of unrestricted capitalism. Of which, more next time.

BY: MARK SHEA

From: https://www.pamphletstoinspire.com/

#catholic social doctrine

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foundlingmother · 5 years

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I read a pro-Ragnarok meta (in particular, it’s pro-Thor and Loki’s “reconciliation”). I don’t want to annoy the person, but I want to talk through some of the things it made me think about, so here’s some word vomit under the cut.

Frequently the meta I find that argues Thor’s approach to Loki in this film repairs their relationship comes from a place I fundamentally disagree with: that Loki’s betrayal of Thor is a pattern intrinsic to Loki’s personality, and not a deviation from a thousand year norm of loyalty stemming from Loki’s various traumas. For instance, this meta’s writer seems to believe in the idea that Loki’s goal in TDW was to trick Thor, and that his act of heroism in saving Thor was not genuine. I disagree, and I think that Ragnarok itself disproves this possibility by repeatedly showing us that Loki’s illusions flicker when they come into contact with something physical.

The meta’s writer argues that Thor leaving Loki on Sakaar would show Loki that they are equals. It’s Thor accepting Loki’s morality (or, in this case, lack thereof) by doing unto Loki as Loki’s done unto him. I have three issues with this. First, Loki would understand this as rejection. I mean, Thor in the previous films saw Loki’s treatment of him as a rejection of their brotherhood, and he doesn’t even have Loki’s self-loathing. There’s no way that Loki sees this as Thor treating them as equals. He sees this as Thor saying, “I’m done with you.” @illwynd‘s pointed out that this robs Loki of any free will. When one of your choices is being abandoned by the last person who ever cared about you, it isn’t a real choice. Yes, Loki’s treated Thor in a similar manner, but that just means that they’re both horrible to one another. Rejection and abandonment aren’t the path to repairing a relationship. Hurt does not cancel out hurt. This does nothing to address their actual issues because Loki betraying and hurting Thor was a symptom. Second, Loki does not attempt to kill Thor or let Thor die because he’s got a funky morality that permits him to do whatever is necessary to accomplish his goals. That’s an aspect of his morality, but it doesn’t apply to Thor’s life. Thor’s feelings can be sacrificed to accomplish Loki’s goals, but not his life. Saving Thor in TDW is what Loki actually would do every time in a stable mental state. Both brothers would die for one another. It’s not even about morality. They just love each other. Third, and most important, Thor should never be content with performing a morality where he does whatever is necessary to accomplish his goals, even at the expense of those he loves. That’s a gross perversion of Thor’s character. There’s a way to resolve their issues without sacrificing their individual moralities (or, in Loki’s case, amorality): let them be individuals not in competition with one another who only strive to be worthy versions of themselves. Admittedly, that’s a lot harder than Thor becoming more like Loki or vice versa.

Also, a better way for Thor to treat Loki as an equal would be for him to acknowledge Loki’s perspective and trauma.

Also also, I appreciate the dark sort of humor that comes from arguing Loki’s free to make the next move after Thor leaves him on Sakaar when Loki literally cannot move. Fun with language.

All this said, it was genuinely nice to read a meta that didn’t go: “You’re wrong and dumb,” and my point here isn’t that I’m trying to say they are (though because I’m not thinking this out well it might come across that way), but rather to explain why I don’t find that interpretation compelling, think that interaction accomplishes anything resembling reconciliation, or think it was the right direction to take Thor’s character (who has for the past few films been seeking to become a good person).

#ragnarok discourse #my thor meta #my loki meta #fandom: marvel

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dareread · 6 years

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In The Consolation of Philosophy, the 5th century Greek scholar and Roman Consul Boethius wrote: “Compare the length of a moment with the period of ten thousand years; the first, however miniscule, does exist as a fraction of a second. But that number of years, or any multiple of it that you may name, cannot even be compared with a limitless extent of time, the reason being that comparisons can be drawn between finite things, but not between finite and infinite.”

Boethius’ insight into the nature of asymmetrical comparison is perennially valid, whether with respect to philosophical and theological speculation, mathematical equations involving infinities, or ideological aspects of political thought. It explains why communist, anarchist or socialist experiments in the life of peoples and nations are bound to fail, for as Boethius might have said, they do not treat of corresponding finite entities. In other words, these adventures in social perfectibility flow from the refusal to ground a vision of the future in historical and political reality.

In order to achieve the possible, it is necessary to acknowledge the real, that is, the limits set by the actual parameters of historical existence and the constraints of human nature. Otherwise we are on the way to creating a dystopian nightmare. One cannot validly compare the imperfect social and political structures of the past and present with a utopian construction that has never come to pass and which exists only in myth, dream and mere desire. No sound conclusion can emerge from such dissonant correlations. To strive, for example, to build an ideal society in which “equality of results” or “outcomes” -- what is called “social justice” -- is guaranteed can only produce a levelled-down caricature of human struggle and accomplishment. We have seen it happen time and again, and the consequences are never pretty.

The infatuation with “outcomes” in the sense of compelled equality persists wherever we may look, significantly in education, where equality of result is enforced under the tired mantra of “diversity and inclusion” -- standards are lowered, everyone is admitted, everyone graduates, everyone gets a trophy or a degree regardless of input, so that no one gets left behind. Mastering the curriculum, however, is a highly competitive venture, meant to sieve winners from losers; we recall the word derives from the Latin for “race course.” The “equality” compulsion is especially paramount in “social justice” legislation which ensures that unmotivated non-contributors to civil order, prosperity and disciplined excellence in any field of endeavor are treated as at least equal to and often favored over successful practitioners and genuine achievers.

There is another, perhaps more clinical, way of regarding the issue, known as the Pareto Principle, deriving from the work of Italian econo-sociologist Vilfredo Pareto(1848-1923.) The “equality” or “outcomes” obsession, as Jordan Peterson has pointed out with reference to Pareto, is a noxious delusion. The Pareto Principle specifies a scalene relationship between causes and effects in human endeavor. Also known as the 80/20 Rule, the principle postulates, as a matter of discernible fact, that 80% of a nation’s wealth is typically controlled by 20% of the population. It has almost always been so. (The Pareto calculus, it should be mentioned, has nothing to do with the urban legend of the greedy “one percent.” The wealthy already contribute disproportionately in terms of employment and taxes to the social leviathan.)

In an interesting aside, Peterson acknowledges that Marx was correct in observing that capital tends to accumulate in the hands of the few. But Marx erred in considering this imbalance a flaw in the capitalist system. For such asymmetry, as Pareto and others have shown, “is a feature of every single system of production that we know of.” Disproportion is intrinsic to human life, whether we like it or not. Moreover, the Rule applies not only to economic factors but to distributions inherent in almost all productive human efforts and enterprises. The potential for human achievement is never evenly distributed. True success in any creative endeavor is invariably a function of that small band of individuals who, as Peterson says, exemplify power, competence, authority and direction in their lives. Briefly, IQ and conscientiousness are the biggest predictors of success.

Although the Rule does not enjoy the status of a Law, it is for the most part reliable. In other words, no matter how we may tamper with distributive sequences, life is simply not fair. People are born with different aptitudes and are exposed to a variant range of formative experiences, giving rise to personal “outcomes” that cannot be preordained. At the same time, the sum of such particulars group into predictable aggregates which are statistically definitive.

Distributions of wealth, as Richard Koch explains in The 80/20 Principle, are “predictably unbalanced,” but the “data relating to things other than wealth or income” can be generalized, as noted, over the broad spectrum of human activities, pursuits and behavior: time-management, distance relations, crime distributions, artistic masterpieces and innumerable other phenomena. One-hundred percent of most things amenable to statistical calculation tend to happen, speaking metaphorically, within a 20% radius, including that which we consider best in life. Out of every 100 books published, to take one instance of how the Rule tends to operate, approximately 20 will have marketable success. It is thus to our advantage, Koch continues, to determine and isolate the 20% of time and effort which are most productive; the remaining 80% turns out to be dispensable.

Elaborating on the Rule with a view to furthering proficiency, engineer Joseph Moses Juran, the father of TQM (Total Quality Management), which revolutionized habits of thought in business, manufacturing and engineering, posited his “Rule of the Vital Few” in accounting for the disparity between inputs and outputs. As Koch puts it in his summary of Juran’s thesis: “For everyone and every institution, it is possible to obtain much that is of value and avoid what is of negative value” by understanding that evolving systems are nonlinear, that “equilibrium is illusory and fleeting,” that minorities are responsible for majority payoffs, and that focusing on the 80% at the expense of the 20% in any sphere of human activity will inevitably yield negative consequences. (Needless to say, the term “minorities” in the expository context alludes not to racial or gender minorities, but to a creative minimum.)

We are clearly indebted, as Nassim Nicholas Taleb stresses, Pareto-like, in his new book Skin in the Game: Hidden Asymmetries in Daily Life, to those who really do have skin in the game, who are “imbued with a sense of pride and honor,” who are “endowed with the spirit of risk taking,” and who “put their soul into something [without] leaving that stuff to someone else.” Taleb’s version of the “minority rule” is even more drastic than Pareto’s, reducing the 20% to “3 or 4 percent of the total population.” They are the “heroes” on whom the good of society depends.

This is another way of saying that we must invest in amortizing excellence by acknowledging our benefactors and by focusing on principles inherent in all distributions of effort, expense, and investment. It follows that success is possible only if we trade in what is actually there to work with, whether in the mind or in the world. You cannot bank on fiat currency, so to speak. And this is true of all personal, technical, scientific, professional and social projects.

Here is where Boethius and Pareto meet. In the political domain utopian theory proposes a radical transformation of society purportedly in the interests of the 80% who produce little with respect to innovation, personal risk, entrepreneurial investment of time and resources, scientific breakthroughs and intellectual advancement. And it does so at the expense of the 20% who are the engines of real prosperity, creative accomplishment and the expansion of the frontiers of knowledge. Its modus operandi is to compare what has never been observed except in literary fables and theoretical assumptions with the millennia of actual social practice and the gradual success of what Karl Popper in The Open Society and Its Enemies called “piecemeal social engineering.” The grand collectivist program is unable to bridge the gap between the there and the not-there, faltering on incommensurables.

In short, socialism in all its forms is doomed to fail because it cannot comprehend that we live within the realm of the finite, as Boethius reminds us, and that excellence is rare, as Pareto and his followers persuasively re-affirm. When the twinned elements of finitude and acumen go unrecognized, mediocrity and failure ensue ineluctably. Individual talent, dedication to one’s work in the world in which we actually live, and intelligence in every department of life are qualities that must be preserved and promoted for their human uniqueness as well as for the benefit of the many. The end result of the veneration of purely notional and immaterial constructs together with the collective fetish of forced equality is, as history has repeatedly proven, economic stagnation, human misery and eventual collapse.

It may sound heartless, but the triumph of the unqualified spells the end of a nation’s -- indeed, of a civilization’s -- historical term. In the real world of ability and performance, skill and attainment, the race is always to the swift and Achilles will always outpace the tortoise -- Ecclesiastes, Aesop and social egalitarians notwithstanding. To rig the race for the advantage of the slow would defeat its purpose, leading to social stasis, personal ennui and lack of meaningful production across the entire sweep of human initiative. If this were the case, there would be no race.

#pareto #socialism #social justice #history #ubi #80/20 #poverty #wealth #redistribution #responsibility #individualism #innovation #boethius

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voicehumanity · 6 years

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The Humanity Party®’s Portrait of a Mass Shooter.

This is a framed mirror.

This is THumP®’s portrait of a mass shooter, of a killer, of a murderer, of a shooting victim involved in a suicide.

At any time, in the same circumstance of emotional imbalance and despair, any one of us could be in this portrait.

THumP® has outlined its official response to the recent American mass shootings and our stance on gun control. (Here is a link to this response.)

Here are a few of the main points of our response:

There will be no effect on gun violence until there are rational changes made to American law and order.

...

We do not believe that government should force the American people to give up their guns. We need the right form of government that can prove to the people that its “well-regulated militia” can do the job better, safer, and more efficiently than unregulated gun owners. Only when the people are convinced that the government is able, will they feel safe enough to trust a government controlled “well-regulated militia.”

Therefore, THumP®’s first course of action is to establish a type of government in which the American people can trust, in which the rest of the world can trust. Only then can people be influenced to give up their possession and use of guns.

Furthermore, we acknowledge that most gun deaths are a cause of suicide. When people lose hope, they lose their desire to live. We insist that if the right form of government existed in which people could hope for a better world, less would want to end their life.

...

Our patience comes from our hope that people will consider many of the underlying causes of violence against oneself or against others. Economic and social inequality is one of the root causes of desperate, hopeless acts of violence. Another one, just as important, is emotional inequality, where one feels less valued than others.

We have outlined our platform and presented our plan to give hope to people through economic and social changes, as well as personal self-worth and value. A strong, righteous government that is not self-serving can provide relief from the pressures of hopelessness and worthlessness.

...

We ask people to please consider our proposals for the right form of government first. Keep your guns and back our proposals. Once we have proven to the people that the right form of government is one in which a person can hope, and we can prove that this government’s “well-regulated militia” can indeed provide safety and freedom to the people, then we hope that people everywhere will put down their guns and support human equality and a unification of the world.

“Hope” is the intrinsic measure of our humanity, or better, that which we feel can be possible in spite of the improbabilities that seem to be part of our present experience.

It is improbable that we can convince American gun owners to put down their guns, but if we do not try something different that demonstrates a measure of our shared humanity, that we feel can be possible, then there is no hope.

We all share the same humanity. None of us started out in life as one who would kill another person, or our self. So, what makes us become a killer?

What would we find out if we had the patience and took the time to get to know the perpetrators who take others’ lives, or their own? What happened that caused the moment of emotional imbalance when each decided to take the lives of other people, many of whom, in most situations, the perpetrators didn’t personally know?

Society doesn’t seem interested in WHY a person decides to kill others. Once a person makes the choice, the person is no longer seen as human. Society and the media brand them as “perpetrators,” “killers,” “terrorists,” “monsters,” or “mentally ill,” to name a few of the inhumane names given to these human beings.

It will not make a difference whether the U.S. passes stricter gun laws or takes away all the guns from people outside of a “well-regulated militia” (see and read the entire 2nd Amendment to the U.S. Constitution). A knife is a weapon. A rock is a weapon. And a properly aimed vehicle can take many more lives than any gun can, even quicker. Take away all guns and we will witness an emotionally imbalanced human use a vehicle to mow down tens of innocent school children as they walk in crosswalks, to their school bus, or down the street to their own homes.

These types of seemingly senseless violent acts will not end until, unless, we learn WHY human beings become emotionally imbalanced.

Many will say that all of us have personal problems, that all of us have experienced the unfairness of life, but that few of us would kill an innocent person. Can any of us honestly claim that we have had the same experiences, of whatever kind, that the perpetrators had? Have we walked in their shoes? Have we experienced life as they have experienced it? It is The Humanity Party®’s claim that all of us (the world) have contributed to these mass shootings and to the increase in instances of suicide.

Suicide holds the highest rate of death by a gun.

New York Times reports:

“When Americans think about deaths from guns, we tend to focus on homicides. But the problem of gun suicide is inescapable: More than 60 percent of people in this country who die from guns die by suicide.

“Suicide gets a lot less attention than murders for a few reasons. One big one is that news organizations generally don’t cover suicides the way they do murders. There’s evidence that news attention around suicide can lead to more suicides. Suicide is more stigmatized and less discussed than homicide.

“But, as a matter of public health, gun suicides are a huge problem in the United States. Suicide is the second-most common cause of death for Americans between 15 and 34, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Across all ages, it is the 10th-most common cause of death, and caused 1.6 percent of all deaths in 2012.

“Not all of those suicides are by gun, but a majority are. And while some people feeling suicidal impulses will choose another method if a gun is not at hand, public health researchers cite two reasons guns are particularly dangerous: 1) Guns are more lethal than most other methods people try, so someone who attempts suicide another way is more likely to survive; 2) Studies suggest that suicide attempts often occur shortly after people decide to kill themselves, so people with deadly means at hand when the impulse strikes are more likely to use them than those who have to wait or plan.

“That means that strategies that make suicide more inconvenient or difficult can save lives. Guns, when they are in the home, can make self-harm both easy and deadly.”

It is our position that a child’s upbringing, culture, religion, and other societal pressures heavily contribute to suicide.

Take for example, a child who colors outside of the lines with crayons and says, “Look how pretty, mommy!”

A loving mother responds with caring platitudes of adoration and appropriate accolades. The child’s coloring is proudly taped on the refrigerator for the rest of the family and others to see. The child’s art is loved and praised, but later, if the grown child shows no natural artistic ability and shows their work to the world, the world rejects the person because the person draws “outside of the lines.” Where the child could once do no wrong, and no matter what the child did, the child received praise and acceptance, the world does not treat the aged child as the child was emotionally foundationalized.

The alignment of a child’s emotional balance begins from infancy. Children do not learn how to fail. Parents, teachers, the world, do not teach children that failure is okay. Children learn that failure is not an option. The aged child only receives worldly value and acceptance when the person meets the world’s conditions of value and success.

The child is loved, supported, fed, clothed, housed and cared for when sick or when emotional pain is experienced, but once the child reaches the age that the world has determined is adulthood, the child is thrown into a world of inequality and of forced economic livelihood (you either work like everyone else has to or you die.)

In the real world ... in the adult world ... no one cares about the child’s “out of the lines coloring.” Unless the aged child submits their free will to the enslavement of employment, they will have no money, and no one is going to clothe, feed, house, and provide health and mental care for them as their parents did.

The child loses an extreme amount of emotional self-worth and value to the world once the child becomes an adult. The child must forget about everything that the child did to find personal happiness in life from the personal freedom enjoyed as child, liberty that is ripped away when one becomes an adult.

Besides economic struggle and inequality, the self-worth and value that a child receives from established emotional anchors of religion and the prejudiced teachings learned from parents, are threatened as an adult. In the real world: Everyone is right. Which makes everyone wrong. ™️

If we base our individual self-worth and value on our personal right, and another tells us we are wrong, we naturally respond in self-defense. And so many times throughout our shared history this self-defense results in killing through murder and war.

Why can’t we have a world where everyone is right? Why can’t we teach our children that everyone has their own version of right; that the version taught to the child is pertinent and relevant to the child only; that every other child has the right to be right and protected and supported in this individual right? We do not teach this to our children because it threatens our own emotional anchors of, I am right and everyone else is wrong.

We have a world where no one really cares about anyone outside of their circle of loved ones and friends. We stand in this circle, protected, praised, and supported. The circle has replaced our parents and the security of our childhood home life. Few dare to step out of this circle because once one steps out of the circle, and if one does not step into a new circle, the one feels lost, unloved, valueless, and hopeless. Why wouldn’t one take their own life and end this emotional pain and suffering?

The above things are about suicide. What about mass shooters? Why do they do what they do?

To explain why we will use a real-life scenario:

The Humanity Party® has become the only supporter of, and we also could have provided a caring circle of humanity that could have surrounded a human being who lived by the name, Thomas Hamilton.

In March of 1996, Thomas walked into a Primary School in Scotland and killed 16 innocent children under the age of 8. He killed their teacher, then himself.

Why?

Thomas Hamilton isn’t around any longer to tell the world why, but we know why.

Here is why:

Thomas loved children. He was the Director of a few local youth clubs. He was the leader of a local Scout group of young boys.

“Thomas Watt Hamilton was born on May 10, 1952, in Glasgow, Scotland. His mother, a hotel chambermaid, was divorced from his father by the time Hamilton was born. Hamilton never knew his father and grew up with his mother's adoptive parents, believing they were his biological parents. They legally adopted him at age 2. He also thought his biological mother was his sister until he was told the truth when he was 22 years old.”

A loner, Hamilton never formed any close relationships with adults of either sex and seemed particularly uncomfortable around women. Can one imagine why? If you were brought up to believe your grandparents were your parents and your mother was your sister, wouldn’t your view of normal relationships be affected?

There had been several complaints to police regarding Hamilton's behavior towards the young boys who attended the youth clubs he directed. Claims had been made of his having taken photographs of semi-naked boys without parental consent. The entire local community was suspicious of his moral intentions towards boys.

Thomas was never arrested, charged, or convicted of ANY immoral act or behavior towards any boy, of any age, but the people spread their rumors. The police did their investigations. The world took away the only thing that gave Thomas self-worth and value: his ability to be involved with and help young boys.

Thomas Watt Hamilton took from that local community what it had taken from him.

How many lives have been destroyed because of rumor? How many lives have been destroyed because of the unregulated freedom of the press? How many innocent people have been arrested and charged with a crime that they did not commit, but had their name blasted in the media as the “alleged” perpetrator without being given the due process of law that Americans tout is part of their inalienable rights? Rumor, gossip, and the sensationalized media reports generated by unscrupulous journalists are a gross representation of what our humanity has become.

Let’s consider the more recent mass shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School in the United States:

In December of 2012, Adam Lanza outdid Thomas Hamilton and killed 20 children under the age of 8 and 6 teachers.

Why?

No one has ever investigated and reported why.

Why?

Because an honest investigative journalist would be crucified by his or her peers and blacklisted from journalism if he or she investigated and wrote a story about the human being ... not the killer, not the monster, but the human being ... named Adam Lanza. No media outlet in this world would dare publish an honest and thorough exposé of the real life of Adam Lanza and what was really going through his head when he decided to kill 20 innocent children and 6 innocent aged children.

The Humanity Party® has done its homework. We are not afraid to tell the real truth. We are not afraid to report it. We know that only if we start to understand why, can we begin to find a solution to, not only mass shootings, but the increasing number of suicides.

Here is some of what the world believes and is taught about Adam Lanza:

“Lanza attended Sandy Hook Elementary School for four and a half years. He started at Newtown Middle School in 2004 but according to his mother, Nancy, he was 'wracked by anxiety'. His mother told friends her son started getting upset at middle school because of frequent classroom changes during the day. The movement and noise was too stimulating and made him anxious. At one point his anxiety was so intense, his mother took him to the emergency room at Danbury Hospital. In April 2005, she moved him to a new school, St. Rose of Lima, where he lasted only eight weeks.

“At age 14, he went to Newtown High School, where he was named to the honor roll in 2007. Students and teachers who knew him in high school described Lanza as ‘intelligent, but nervous and fidgety’. He avoided attracting attention and was uncomfortable socializing. He is not known to have had any close friends in school. Schoolwork often triggered his underlying sense of hopelessness and by 2008, when Adam turned sixteen he was only going to school occasionally. The intense anxiety Lanza experienced at the time suggests his autism was exacerbated by the hormonal shifts of adolescence. He was taken out of high school and home-schooled by his mother and father. He earned a GED. In 2008 and 2009, he also attended some classes at Western Connecticut State University.”

Some of the clues to the real truth about Adam Lanza are in what the world believes about him, but the world does not want to see Adam as a good, caring human being. The world wants Adam remembered as a monster, as a killer, as a mass shooter, as mentally insane.

The real truth: Adam did not want the children to suffer through the same educational process that he did. This is the only reason why he killed them ... to save them from the world that had abused him.

The Humanity Party® doesn’t want anyone to suffer through the same social and political processes that can change any one of us from a human being into a monster.

We are our biggest problem.

THumP® has the solutions. No one else does.

#the humanity party #sandy hook #thump #suicide #mass shooting #gun control #gun controversy #thomas hamilton #adam lanza #equality #American gun owners #centers for disease control and prevention

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wordcollectionwordcollection · 6 years

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The Authenticity Hoax - Andrew Potter, ISBN 978-0-06-125135-1

“a little science estranges a man from God; a lot of science brings him back.” - Sir Francis Bacon (renaissance polymath, not the modern painter guy) p.24

“…where we once saw intrinsic meaning and value we now find only in the nihilism of market exchange.” p. 45

“Just because you are alienated, it does not mean that there is a problem and that something ought to be done about it… nobody says you are supposed to like your job, and nothing says it is supposed to be fulfilling. To put it bluntly: there’s a reason why they call it work, and there is a reason why they pay you.” // “Alienation theory tries to bridge this is-ought gab by treating alienation like a disease: it not only describes a state of affairs, it also considers that state of affairs as abnormal or unnatural.”// “That is, for a theory of alienation to do any work, it needs a corresponding theory of authenticity.” p. 47, 48, 49

“The point is, Hirst is not selling art, he’s selling a cure for rich people with severe status anxiety.” - “Judging Hirst’s work by the criteria of technical skill, artistic vision, and emotional resonance is like complaining that the Nike swoosh is just a check mark.” p. 99

“We now live in a topsy-turvy world of information abundance, where a glut of ideas is chosen an increasingly listed supply of demand, in the form of time or attention.” p.100 // “What we are seeing dow is the fulfilment of the Rousseauian ideal of every individual as a creative spirit, as millions of amateurs flood the Internet with their own songs, videos, photographs, and stories. But when everyone is so busy creating, who has time to consume any of it? In an economy where what is scarce is attention, the spoils will go to the artist who is best able to command it, even if this requires some rather baroque or contrived setups to achieve.” p. 101 “it is the return of the aura, of the unique and irreproducible artistic work”… p.101… “the gain in deep artistic appreciation is balance by a loss in egalitarian principle”. p.102

“the cardinal value of bullshit is not correctness, but sincerity: “rather than seeking primarily to arrive at accurate representations of a common world,” writes Frankfurt, the bullshitter “turns toward trying to provide honest representations of himself.” Therefore, it is hardly surprising to find that the two areas of human enterprise most concerned with sincerity as opposed to the truth - namely, politics and advertising - are also the areas most steeped in bullshit.” (“the two areas most concerned with the appearance of authenticity”.) p. 114

“Authenticity is like authority or charisma: if you have to tell people you have it, then you probably don’t”. p.114

“Veblen argues that even in a predatory cutlure, the instinct of workmanship remains in force. That is why the members of most leisure classes feel that it is necessary to spend their time and energy on activities that have a veneer of the useful, but which clearly - if subtly - demarcate the performer as a member of the upper class” p. 118, top

“All forms of status competition are zero-sum games, since in order for one to gain in status, someone else must lose. It is easy to see, then, how leisure class exploits will quickly take on the character of a classic arms race, with more and more effort being spent by everyone involved just to maintain their same relative place in the pecking order. It is this collective expenditure of resources that Veblen saw as wasteful, even though it is perfectly rational behaviour from the perspective of reach member of the leisure class. Status has real value after all, and people cannot be faulted for pursuing and defending it.” p. 119, bottom

“what of the worry that politics ends up being marketed like Big Macs, pitched to the west common denominator? The proper reply to this is, So what?” People always put emphasis in that phrase on the word lowest, when it should be placed on the word common.” P.184, top “The worry is always that other people - in particular, the people who support the other side - are being manipulated…. This is a slippery slope, and it is dangerous for anyone, no matter what their partisan allegiances, to have so much contempt for voters. Democracy is based not the premise that reasonable people can disagree over issues of fundamental importance, from abortion and gay rights to the proper balance between freedom and security. When the mere fact that someone supports the other side becomes evidence that they have been brainwashed, then the truth is you no longer believe in democracy.” p.184/185 bottom/top

‘The cosmopolitans are talking about the importance of certain liberal principles, while the communitarians are concerned about the effects of that liberalism on values. The principles/values distinction is one that we don’t usually make in our everyday language…. when we talk about principles, we are referring to the general rules that govern our sense of right, such as…. equality, freedoms of religion, speech and association that support a liberal soviet. Values, on the other hand, refer to our sense of what is good to do or believe. Values are what give our lives meaning or purpose….. the liberal principle of free speech allows you to express yourself as you choose, while values will determine the manner in which you choose to express yourself.” p. 211 bottom

Suburbs/Streetcar/Automotive industry story. “A major catalyst in North American cities was the streetcar, which for the first time made it possible for a large number of people to get from the downtown to the outskirts and back, in a reasonable period of time and at a reasonable price. Housing developments sprung up along the streetcar lines as more and more people abandoned the commotion of the city for quieter developments of row houses, bungalows, and semidetached homes. This process was well underway by the 1920s, but it was interrupted by the depression and then by the Second World War. Once the war was over though, the decanting of the city to the suburbs began once again, encouraged this time by the twin forces of big business and big government.

As it is usually told, the story of the postwar outward migration has a conspiratorial edge to it. After the war, america had a huge industrial and manufacturing surplus capacity that could not be soaked up by the devastated economies of Europe. So the Detroit car makers teamed up with the oil companies and the housing industry to convince young couples that their future happiness could not be found in the dirt and grime of the city but in the pastoral gentility of the country. to get there, though, they were going to have to drive. To cement their role as the midwives of the American dream, General Motors, Standard Oil, and a few other companies bought the streetcar lines in a number of cities and tore up the tracks, while the federal government instituted a massive road and highway construction plan that connected the increasingly hollow city cores with the booming suburbs.

Thus did the American way of life come to be identified with the automotive way of life, and these pioneering families found themselves living in cooke-cutter developments that offered neither the convenience and community of the city nor the privacy and charm of the country. Instead, they were stranded in a no man’s land, a vacant and sterile world from which they only means of escape was the automobile” p.220 &221

“virtually the entire car against the suburbs is little more than lifestyle snobbery disguised as a quest for authenticity. Or more accurately, it appears to be a classic instance of the desire for authenticity revealing itself as a thinly veiled form of contempt for middle class tastes and preference.” p.226

“This isn’t political commentary, its a form of authenticity tourism, and in her jaunt through the… p.269

#Authenticity #alienation #work #suburbia #suburbs #politics #democracy #polarisation #hirst #value #worth #damien hirst #modern art #exchange #status #andrew #potter #andrew potter

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mykidsgay · 7 years

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On Chosen Families

"My daughter is 17, and she came out as gay about 4 months ago. Soon after, she started hanging out with other kids in her school's GSA. I don't have a problem with these kids, but she spends EVERY MOMENT possible with them, and I feel her pulling away from her family. It all just feels so intense. Is this normal?"

Question Submitted Anonymously Answered by Amanda Neumann

—

Amanda Says:

First off, it’s great that your daughter was comfortable coming out to you! Being out in high school can be extremely hard, and having a supportive family can make a world of difference in helping your daughter feel safe and confident in her identity and environment.

Now to your question: yes, this is normal. It's important to remember that while this may feel sudden to you, your daughter has likely been working towards accepting her sexuality for some time, possibly for years. Finding a group of peers with similar experiences and identities probably feels affirming in an unparalleled way. Having friends who are the same age, from the same place, and who are experiencing the same pressures as her is important and specific. No matter how supportive and accepting her straight friends (and family) are, they can’t relate to these LGBTQ-specific experiences and feelings.

I’m sure this has been an intense process for your daughter, just like it has been for you. It’s wonderful that you are searching for help as opposed to instantly stopping her from associating with her new friends. Many teenagers aren’t so lucky. While you love and support your daughter, it’s unlikely that everyone in her GSA has the same experience.

For many people in the LGBTQ community, “chosen families” are vital sources of support and community, even when a person’s biological family is supportive. A chosen family is simply a group of people who intentionally choose one another to play significant emotional roles in each other's lives. A chosen family can be a group of teenagers who can support each other through coming out to their parents, their friends, their teachers, and their classmates. A chosen family can be a group of college students navigating the legal aspects of finding jobs as LGBTQ individuals. A chosen family can also be a group of adults supporting each other through the many aspects of parenting. Chosen families are specifically important in the LGBTQ community because of a couple very important factors.

First, there are laws that still prevent LGBTQ people from living fully equal lives. For instance, where I live in Indiana, I can be fired, denied employment, and denied housing because of my sexual identity. I encourage you to look into state laws and policies that affect the LGBTQ community to gain a better understanding of why your daughter, and other folks in her GSA, might feel the need to be spend so much time together.There is a lot of scary information going around, especially in these frustratingly uncertain political times, and being able to talk about it with people who are affected in the same way is extremely important.

Second, the LGBTQ community has a history of needing non-familial support. It’s wonderful that this is not the case for your daughter, as you not only support her but are working towards gaining a better understanding of LGBTQ issues by writing to us at My Kid Is Gay (which is awesome!). However, it’s no secret that many LGBTQ people in America, and throughout the world, are often treated unfairly and unlovingly by their biological families (from “conversion” therapy to disownment). Even when an LGBTQ individual comes from a queer-friendly household, there can be estrangement or an uncomfortable change in dynamic. Unlike most minority groups (such as race, religion, and ethnicity) the LGBTQ identity is not intrinsically shared by family members. This makes finding an outside community even more important to LGBTQ folks.

As your daughter continues to create her own chosen families and communities, I encourage you to learn more about the people she surrounds herself with. I doubt your daughter is actively distancing herself from you and the rest of her biological family; Rather, she’s just adding more support to her life. It’s likely that your love and understanding has also helped your daughter support other LGBTQ folks in her GSA, who might not have support from their parents (if they are out to them at all). I can’t stress enough how important it is to talk with your daughter. If you feel like she’s pulling away from you, start a conversation about it. I promise that she will appreciate that much more than being asked to distance herself from her new friends.

Learn more, talk more, and, most importantly, care as much as possible about your daughter and her community. Writing in to My Kid Is Gay was an amazing step and I hope that you continue to learn and grow with your daughter.

PFLAG

LGBTQ & Chosen Families via A Better Balance

State Laws and Policies via Human Rights Campaign

***

Click here to read about our brilliant contributors!

#my kid is gay #parents #parenting #parenting advice #advice #amanda neumann #chosen family #lgbt #lgbtq #lgbtqia #coming out #gsa

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plabsind · 4 years

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The Need Cycle

Before we delve deep into the intricacies of products, let us first define what a product is. If Steve Jobs and Jonathan Ive is to be believed-a product is an extension of a human being that helps do a certain job effectively. Taking an analogy, let’s look at how it makes sense. Let’s assume you want to listen to music and the only way to do it is if it can be played on a player, computer system, television or a device but can you store songs and conveniently carry it around wherever you go. iPOD solved the problem by creating a simple ergonomic device that could be carried anywhere without much trouble. It gave a lot of power to the user. It made him feel he is in control of his life. The illusion of free will wasn’t no more an illusion. In a nutshell every product makes a user supremely happy because the user is now able to do his job perfectly using the device. Keeping that in mind one would have to delve a little deeper in the customer’s journey map and look for a lot of things normally unnoticed.

We happened to define the purpose why a product is created. Clayton Christensen in his famous ‘Job Theory’ talks about the fact that a product designer or an innovator creates a product so that the customer could do his job well. If the customer can do his job really well with the help of the said product or service then the product becomes a really valuable product and over time if it continuously delivers then it builds a brand that can be trusted time and again. Incidentally the problem is that most product managers cannot understand what the real problem is. As Tedd Levitt says, “People are looking for quarter inch holes not quarter inch drills” but most product guys end up thinking creating a drill is the problem and that is why we have a very high failure rate in the product space. When Google launched it’s search engine, the problem was not that there wasn’t any search engine. Alta Vista and Yahoo Search were the dominant search players back then. The problem was they were cluttered and their search results were not accurate. Page Rank solved the problem of accuracy, the latency was as low as one can imagine and the minimalistic design attracted people to try it out. That’s how they turned from just a search engine to actually a verb or a noun.

So if we were to talk about the stages of need fulfilment, we’d have to consider three different stages. First stage which usually happens because of a an external or internal trigger that motivates people to take action, Post the action the there is some amount of variable reward that prompts people to invest their money or reward in the product. That excerpt is taken from Nir Eyal’s ‘Hooked’ and is quite true for a lot of habit forming products. However what is to be noticed is that even after the user is prompted to use the product, it’s still a want for him. In his mind he still treats the product as a want. Most products that are launched become wants and find it difficult to go beyond that. In the product space we call it getting a product market fit. The ones that actually get a product market fit or a market product fit as Brian Balfour calls it usually become part of a need. They are no longer a want but are now needed by people to complete a certain task. The thing to be noted is that although it makes lives relatively easier for users but they can still do away if the product isn’t there to fulfil the said requirement or need. The third and the final stage in the desire fulfilment cycle is when the product achieves an iconic status as it is now required to avert an existential crisis. Users can’t do away with it easily. An absence of it would somehow lead to an existential crisis and will make the amygdala react to it due to an intrinsic fear. So fear drives the acceptance and usage of the product.

Let me cut an example- when mobile phones arrived in India sometime in the 2000s- they were expensive and a design nightmare but they provided instant communication on the go but to the Indian diaspora, they were pretty much a want. People would majorly use their PSTN phones and had no complains. Slowly and steadily as mobile phones became better looking and a little cheaper, most people bought mobile phones to communicate but had their PSTN phones as well. In most cases the PSTN phones were still used repeatedly but mobiles too found equal usage. Soon after the digital revolution made broadbands cheaper and data cards provided internet to almost anyone on the planet. A host of important services suddenly jumped to the mobile and within a a decade mobile phones became an integral part of our lives. Today every single part of our business or personal life is driven by the mobile phone in some way or the other. One can’t use UPI to pay your bills without a mobile phone. You can’t use a taxi hailing app without a mobile phone. One can’t order food easily without a mobile phone. One can’t order stuff online easily without a mobile phone. But in a way it’s fulfilling an important human need. Devoid of mobile phones life would be facing an existential crisis for a majority of folks these days.

So to sum it all every product has to move through these three stages of need fulfilment before they become a sustainable product and eventually the company becomes sustainable. But the sad part is that only 1% to 2% products actually convert to a sustainable version of themselves. Most products fail to make a mark in becoming a tool to avert existential crisis. But what exactly is the problem that stops them from becoming one. Well we’d have to write a new blog for that but it has a lot to do with customer centricity, customer happiness, continual innovation, reducing friction, adding more and more value to products or services. A lot has been written about why products fail but it’s equally important to understand the need cycle to understand how a product in its lifetime will drift toward it. The fact is that a very few percentage drift to the last part of the need cycle. The journey from the first part to the last part of the need cycle takes years and years of innovation, cultural upheaval, formidable leadership, favourable socio economic and geo political situations and above all relentless focus on execution. But here is an exception to the rule. The need cycle typically exists for products that are trying to operate in the blue ocean space. They are typically trying to create a market of their owing to the disruption they are promising. But as we have all seen Geoffrey Moore’s Product Adoption Lifecycle, we know that by the time a product manages to reach the late majority, it is believed to have become an integral part of the human value chain where people can’t live without the product.

Having spoken about the three different stages of the need cycle, it’s important to know that most products that stay relevant for a certain period of time in the need cycle be it the first phase of wants or the second phase of quasi need or the third phase or real need, typically fall out of it due to market dynamism. The order in which they fall is again dependent on which phase they are in. Products or services typically in the first phase fall out real quick. It is followed by products in the second phase. The products in the third phase of the need cycle are products that stick around for a very long time. These are the products that create a brand value for a company in the long run. We see these brands all around us. They are quite high on the customer happiness index. Now that we have tried to explain deeply about the need cycle. It’s important to understand that one does not need to operate only in a sequential way but one can choose to operate in either one of these phases. Like for instance, in the current pandemic, companies creating products that help people with the pandemic would surely see sales skyrocketing and fear would drive most people would procure things they would otherwise not consider buying. But the phase is quite temporal in nature and there might be a day when the product might languish. More so every great product has had to cross the three phases of the need cycle to become a brand.

As a product manager one needs to be extra vigilant in the context of a need cycle. One needs to see how the product is interacting with the environment and how it is solving an important customer problem. One has to continually validate the customer satisfaction rate to keep up with the dynamism. One has to truly keep on delivering for a consistent period of time for a product to reach the third phase. It would help if a product manager understands a bit about behavioural psychology, game theory and data science to understand a bit about the enigmatic nature of human behaviour. At PLabs we help our students understand human behaviour in detail that helps them take their products to the market keeping in mind the the need cycle.

#product #business #product managers #productmanagement #technology #startups #leaders

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live4thelord · 4 years

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Why Hell is Eternal and Other Teachings on Hell

This is the thirteenth and final installment in a series on the Four Last Things: Death, Judgment, Heaven and Hell.

The teachings of the Lord on Hell are difficult, especially in today’s climate. The most difficult questions that arise relate to its eternal nature and how to square its existence with a God who is loving and rich in mercy. As a closing reflection on Hell and on the Four Last Things, let us ponder a series of questions.

1. Does God love the souls in Hell? Yes.

How could they continue to exist if He did not love them, sustain them, and continue to provide for them? God loves because He is love. Although we may fail to be able to experience or accept His love, God loves every being He has made, human or angelic.

The souls in Hell may have refused to empty their arms to receive His embrace, but God has not withdrawn His love for them. He permits those who have rejected Him to live apart from him. God honors their freedom to say no, even respecting it when it becomes permanent, as it has for fallen angels and the souls in Hell.

God is not tormenting the damned. The fire and other miseries are largely expressions of the sad condition of those who have rejected the one thing for which they were made: to be caught up into the love and perfection of God and the joy of all the saints.

2. Is there any good at all in Hell? Yes. Are all the damned punished equally? No.

While Heaven is perfection and pure goodness, Hell is not pure evil. The reason for this is that evil is the privation or absence of something good that should be there. If goodness were completely absent, there would be nothing there. Therefore, there must be some goodness in Hell or there would be nothing at all. St. Thomas Aquinas teaches,

It is impossible for evil to be pure and without the admixture of good …. [So]those who will be thrust into hell will not be free from all good … those who are in hell can receive the reward of their goods, in so far as their past goods avail for the mitigation of their punishment (Summa Theologica, Supplement 69.7, reply ad 9).

This can assist us in understanding that God’s punishments are just and that the damned are neither devoid of all good nor lacking in any experience of good. Even though a soul does not wish to dwell in God’s Kingdom (evidenced by rejection of God or the values of His Kingdom), the nature of suffering in Hell is commensurate with the sin(s) that caused exclusion from Heaven.

This would seem to be true even of demons. In the Rite of Exorcism, the exorcist warns the possessing demons, “The longer you delay your departure, the worse your punishment shall be.” This suggest levels of punishment in Hell based on the degree of unrepented wickedness.

In his Inferno, Dante described levels within Hell and wrote that not all the damned experience identical sufferings. Thus, an unrepentant adulterer might not experience the same suffering in kind or degree as would a genocidal, atheistic head of state responsible for the death of millions. Both have rejected key values of the Kingdom: one rejected chastity, the other rejected the worship due to God and the sacredness of human life. The magnitude of those sins is very different and so would be the consequences.

Heaven is a place of absolute perfection, a work accomplished by God for those who say yes. Hell, though a place of great evil, is not one of absolute evil. It cannot be, because God continues to sustain human and angelic beings in existence there and existence itself is good. God also judges them according to their deeds (Rom 2:6). Their good deeds may ameliorate their sufferings. This, too, is good and allows for good in varying degrees there. Hell is not in any way pleasant, but it is not equally bad for all. Thus God’s justice, which is good, reaches even Hell.

3. Do the souls in Hell repent of what they have done? No, not directly.

After death, repentance in the formal sense is not possible. However, St. Thomas makes an important distinction. He says,

A person may repent of sin in two ways: in one way directly, in another way indirectly. He repents of a sin directly who hates sin as such: and he repents indirectly who hates it on account of something connected with it, for instance punishment or something of that kind. Accordingly, the wicked will not repent of their sins directly, because consent in the malice of sin will remain in them; but they will repent indirectly, inasmuch as they will suffer from the punishment inflicted on them for sin (Summa Theologica, Supplement, q 98, art 2).

This explains the “wailing and grinding of teeth” in so far as it points to the lament of the damned. They do not lament their choice to sin without repenting, but for the consequences. In the Parable of Lazarus, the rich man in Hell laments his suffering but expresses no regret over the way he treated the beggar Lazarus. Indeed, he still sees Lazarus as a kind of errand-boy, who should fetch him water and warn his brothers. In a certain sense the rich man cannot repent; his character is now quickened and his choices forever fixed.

4. Is eternal punishment just? Yes.

Many who might otherwise accept God’s punishment of sinners are still dismayed that Hell is eternal. Why should one be punished eternally for sins committed over a brief time span, perhaps in just a moment? The punishment does not seem to fit the crime.

This logic presumes that the eternal nature of Hell is intrinsic to the punishment, but it is not. Rather, Hell is eternal because repentance is no longer available after death. Our decision for or against God and the values of His Kingdom values becomes forever fixed. Because at this point the will is fixed and obstinate, the repentance that unlocks mercy will never be forthcoming.

St. Thomas teaches,

[A]s Damascene says (De Fide Orth. ii) “death is to men what their fall was to the angels.” Now after their fall the angels could not be restored [Cf. I:64:2]. Therefore, neither can man after death: and thus the punishment of the damned will have no end. … [So] just as the demons are obstinate in wickedness and therefore have to be punished for ever, so too are the souls of men who die without charity, since “death is to men what their fall was to the angels,” as Damascene says (Summa Theologica, Supplement, q 99, art 3).

5. Do the souls in Hell hate God? No, not directly.

St. Thomas teaches,

The appetite is moved by good or evil apprehended. Now God is apprehended in two ways, namely in Himself, as by the blessed, who see Him in His essence; and in His effects, as by us and by the damned. Since, then, He is goodness by His essence, He cannot in Himself be displeasing to any will; wherefore whoever sees Him in His essence cannot hate Him.

On the other hand, some of His effects are displeasing to the will in so far as they are opposed to any one: and accordingly a person may hate God not in Himself, but by reason of His effects. Therefore, the damned, perceiving God in His punishment, which is the effect of His justice, hate Him, even as they hate the punishment inflicted on them (Summa Theologica, Supplement, q 98, art 5).

6. Do the souls in hell wish they were dead? No.

It is impossible to detest what is fundamentally good, and to exist is fundamentally good. Those who say that they “wish they were dead” do not really wish nonexistence upon themselves. Rather, they wish an end to their suffering. So it is with the souls in Hell. St. Thomas teaches,

Not to be may be considered in two ways. First, in itself, and thus it can nowise be desirable, since it has no aspect of good, but is pure privation of good. Secondly, it may be considered as a relief from a painful life or from some unhappiness: and thus “not to be” takes on the aspect of good, since “to lack an evil is a kind of good” as the Philosopher says (Ethic. v, 1). In this way it is better for the damned not to be than to be unhappy. Hence it is said (Matthew 26:24): “It were better for him, if that man had not been born,” and (Jeremiah 20:14): “Cursed be the day wherein I was born,” where a gloss of Jerome observes: “It is better not to be than to be evilly.” In this sense the damned can prefer “not to be” according to their deliberate reason (Summa Theologica, Supplement, q 98, art 3).

7. Do the souls in Hell see the blessed in Heaven?

Some biblical texts say that the damned see the saints in glory. For example, the rich man in the parable can see Lazarus in the Bosom of Abraham (Lk 16:3). Further, Jesus says, There will be weeping and gnashing of teeth when you see Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and all the prophets in the kingdom of God, but you yourselves are thrown out (Lk 13:28). However, St Thomas makes a distinction:

The damned, before the judgment day, will see the blessed in glory, in such a way as to know, not what that glory is like, but only that they are in a state of glory that surpasses all thought. This will trouble them, both because they will, through envy, grieve for their happiness, and because they have forfeited that glory. Hence it is written (Wisdom 5:2) concerning the wicked: “Seeing it” they “shall be troubled with terrible fear.”

After the judgment day, however, they will be altogether deprived of seeing the blessed: nor will this lessen their punishment, but will increase it; because they will bear in remembrance the glory of the blessed which they saw at or before the judgment: and this will torment them. Moreover, they will be tormented by finding themselves deemed unworthy even to see the glory which the saints merit to have (Summa Theologica, Supplement, q 98, art 9).

St Thomas does not cite a Scripture for this conclusion. However, certain texts about the Last Judgment emphasize a kind of definitive separation. For example, in Matthew 25 we read this: All the nations will be gathered before [the Son of Man], and he will separate the people one from another as a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats. … Then they will go away to eternal punishment, but the righteous to eternal life (Mat 25:32, 46).

Clearly, Hell is a tragic and eternal separation from God. Repentance, which unlocks mercy, is available to us; but after death, like clay pottery placed in the kiln, our decision is forever fixed.

Choose the Lord today! Judgment day looms. Now is the time to admit our sins humbly and to seek the Lord’s mercy. There is simply nothing more foolish than defiance and an obstinate refusal to repent. At some point, our hardened hearts will reach a state in which there is no turning back. To die in such a condition is to close the door of our heart on God forever.

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lsbuniblog-blog · 6 years

Text

Time and Progress

Time and progress have both recently become increasingly debatable topics, specifically regarding their intrinsic links and discordant relationship. There is lots to be said about how they behave, both above and below the surface. This essay will examine how the two terms behave, both in relationship to each other as well as their perceived qualities; that being, the notion of time-space compression, spaciotemporality, and the continued trajectory of postmodernity, including the heightened importance of appropriation, in relation to the work of Richard Prince.

To begin with, one must understand the definition of both terms. Oxford dictionaries define ‘time’ as follows; “The indefinite continued progress of existence and events in the past, present, and future regarded as a whole.” - Stevenson, A. (2010). Oxford dictionary of English. New York, NY: Oxford University Press. This particular definition is intriguing because of its secondary use of the word, ‘progress’, contextually describing existence. It is clear that the English Oxford Dictionary holds strong modernist views, quantifying progress through time, as to suggest that we as a society, are consistently progressing as time passes us, with no deterioration or counter-progression taking place at any point. Perhaps the reason for this over-simplification of what is a far more complex term, is a result of the clear correlation between time and progress, evident through technological advancements. However, this fails to consider that correlation does not equal causation. To counter this, an example of a disadvantage of postmodern society might include the introduction of nuclear weapons. It is difficult to classify this as progress, as defined by the English Oxford Dictionary.

Time is perceptual. It is not a fixed concept. it is relative to interpretation, and speeds up and slows down accordingly. This is why quantifying it through minutes and hours is in many ways a redundant practice. This only allows us to map out the past and future, like coordinates on a globe. Jorge Luis Borge (1970) states, “Time can’t be measured in days the way money is measured in pesos and centavos, because all pesos are equal, while every day, perhaps every hour, is different.” The Oxford English Dictionary fails to take into account either of these two very important factors; relativity, and time’s discordant relationship with progress.

After questioning the relativity of time, one must consider if the same rules apply to progress. What one person might describe as progress, another might not. The English Oxford Dictionary defines progress as follows; “Forward or onward movement towards a destination.”. The use of the term ‘destination’ assumes a finishing point, which again, is a relative concept. This fails to take into account that what might be one person’s destination, might not be consistent with many other people.

Taking for instance, the shift from Realism into Postmodernism, we can appreciate that it allowed society to develop individual nuances through beliefs, and challenge the sweeping assumptions and generalisations that are perpetuated through Modernism. Postmodernism developed a new epoch of art and media that catalysed individual expression and identity. However, one might argue that this deconstruction of governing conceptualisation and perpetuation of increasingly significant individual expression has consequently led us down a path of narcissism, cynicism, and ultimately isolation. “Postmodern irony and cynicism's become an end in itself, a measure of hip sophistication and literary savvy.” Wallace D, (1996) Infinite Jest. One must question if this is progress, a cultural shift, or even a step backwards.

You can see this transition through portraiture, well before the invention of photography. Whilst the intention of art was to present reality in its truest replication, the art ecosystem stagnated. Take one of the most famous and influential painters from the 17th century; Rembrandt, who was one of the great leaders in the renaissance era. Rembrandt understood light in a way that no other painter did. Rembrandt would argue that the most accomplished painters would be those who were capable of replicating reality in the most mirror like fidelity. However, moving on some years, where abstract works began to emerge, you will notice a shift in intent. No longer is the need for replicating relevant. That job has been made redundant by photography, Instead, postmodern influences push art into adopting notions such as semiotics, and tackling lazy assumptions once relied upon.

There are two main philosophies regarding the movement of time, each relevant, borrowing from each other in some way or another. We start with absolute time, which as the name suggests, dictates time as a linear, 2d structure. It acts only as frame upon which we plan events and record history. “Absolute space is fixed and we record or plan events within its frame.” Harvey, D. (2005). Spaces of Neoliberalization: Towards a Theory of Uneven Geographical Development. Stuttgart: Steiner, p.94. It is perhaps the most common way that time is viewed. It is currently 10:43am on Tuesday 1st May as I write this, and I know for a fact that offering this information is an accessible way for anyone to visualise exactly how long ago it was, in relation to their position in time. Absolute time also introduces the ability to recall information; I could ask you where you were and what you were doing at this time, and perhaps with the help of a calendar, you would be able to give me an accurate response. However, if I were to ask how long ago this feels, I danger confusing absolute time to one of relativity, because the latter is entirely subjective, whilst the former is not.

The next main structural philosophy regarding time is variation, or relativity within time. This theory addresses the fact that time is experienced at different speeds, depending on the individual. One of the most influential minds denouncing relativity was Einstein, who believed that all forms of measurement depended on the frame of reference of the observer. "When you are courting a nice girl an hour seems like a second. When you sit on a red-hot cinder a second seems like an hour. That's relativity." Einstein A. This premise is referred to as spaciotemporality.

One of the major contributing factors to the relativity of time, is time - space compression, which dictates how as technological improvements are made, space grows smaller. The introduction of global telecommunications, faster transport, and most notably the internet, means that now, sending a message to someone halfway across the world, no longer requires weeks of foot travel, and can now instead be sent virtually instantaneously via text, email, or any one of the many social medium we now heavily rely on. “As space appears to shrink to a global village of telecommunications and a ‘spaceship earth’ of economic and ecological interdependencies - to use just two familiar and everyday images - and as time horizons shorten to the point where the present is all there is, so we have to learn to cope with an overwhelming sense of compression of our spacial and temporal worlds” Harvey, D. (1989). The Condition of Postmodernity. (p.240).

The interpretation of time also depends on the volume of events that occur within a timeframe. The experience of boredom is only encountered once the body is deprived of sensory stimulation, which causes the experience of time to elongate. On the other end of the spectrum, keeping levels of sensory experience up, catalyses its passing. However this is only short term. Long term side effects of experiencing boredom causes the complete opposite effect. This is the main reason as to why adults in their 50’s, feel as though time passes them faster than whilst we were younger. This causes us to value the time we have more while we have less of it, and to treat it more like a commodity. “The findings support the contention that depressed affect produces a subjective slowing of time” John D. Watt, (1991). Effect of Boredom Proneness on Time Perception. Vol 69, Issue 1, p.323 - 327.

This leads the question of how these state of affairs intend to progress. One of two things might happen. Firstly, stagnation occurs, through technological superiority; technology has advanced so far that it becomes impossible to travel any faster through space, and thus no more progress is made. One must question whether time - space compression will continue in the same trajectory, and what a future world might look like if this were to occur. One must entertain the idea where everything is experienced simultaneously and instantly, all at once. It is difficult to fathom such an idea, however it remains relevant for the duration of this potentially worrying trajectory.

Time can also be broken up into categories based on influences regarding art and media. The phrase, ‘Avante Garde’ is commonly used to demote what is ‘new’, or ‘original’. Cambridge dictionary defines the expression as “The painters, writers, musicians, and other artists whose ideas, styles, and methods are very original or modern in comparison to the period in which they live, or the work of these artists”. Cambridge University Press. (2008) Cambridge Advanced Learner’s Dictionary. Derived from French terminology, ‘Avante Garde’, or ‘Vanguard’ in English, refers to the part of the army that is positioned ahead of the others, with the intention of breaking through the resistance of their adversaries. This aids in defining its current use, that being a style in which artists of all media platforms use which is considered new and original. Artists who use this tactic intend to ‘break through’ mainstream tropes in order to create something new and thought provoking. These works often stir controversy, however successful works are later on appreciated for their contribution to whatever field of media they belong to.

An example of a controversial and ‘Avante Garde’ creation might be Richard Prince’s ‘Malboro Man’ piece, where he took photographs of the Marlboro cigarette campaign by Sam Abell, subsequently selling it for over one billion dollars at Christie's New York in 2005. It was the most a rephotograph had ever been sold for. This is considered ‘Avante Garde’ because of the way that Prince changed how photography and its relationship with art was viewed. By re-appropriating an existing photograph, Prince essentially destroyed the idea that duplicates hold less value than the original, challenging ideas of context, and what makes art art. Prince was one of many different artists who explored context and appropriation, alongside people such as Warhol and Duchamp. “To photograph is to appropriate the thing photographed” Sontag S (1977) On Photography.

In conclusion, both the terms, ‘time’ and ‘progress’ are absolute and relative depending on their context and individual preference. Both are relevant yet not mutually exclusive. Progress on the other hand is entirely relative, and is conditioned upon individual beliefs and morals. It assumes a destination, yet remains fluid through individual interpretation.

References

Cambridge University Press. (2008) Cambridge Advanced Learner’s Dictionary. Einstein A Geographical Development. Stuttgart: Steiner, p.94. Harvey, D. (1989). The Condition of Postmodernity. (p.240). Harvey, D. (2005). Spaces of Neoliberalization: Towards a Theory of Uneven Jorge Luis Borge (1970) Sontag S (1977) On Photography Stevenson, A. (2010). Oxford dictionary of English. New York, NY: Oxford University Press. Wallace D, (1996) Infinite Jest

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anecdotaltruthbomb · 6 years

Photo

Are we frugivore?

We are monkeys! Rediscovering this fact has implications that go beyond understanding our digestive system. It has important intellectual and spiritual implications.

Seriously?

Yes, I am at it again.

To be clear, monkey is a fruitarian slang word for someone who is in the know, in touch with their physiological reality, based on being open minded about experience, perhaps intellectually humbled but mainly divorced from the hubris of capitalist agendas. The word is not far removed in meaning from a word like fruitbat. The point of it is being in touch with your true nature and being in an OPEN relationship with your left brain. It’s not the tight assed scientific term, that differentiates between those animals with tail (monkeys) and those without a tail (great apes). To exclusively left brained science, we are apes, but to us it’s all the same monkey business.

People who think they are “frugivore” may end up eating nothing but fruit, due to the magic of language, but only human beings could be so dogmatic, left brained. Monkey is a much larger concept.

A monkey can do whatever he wants. Monkeys can kill you, so beware.

Okay, erm, but … so what is … like … our natural diet?

All creatures of nature thrive on raw food. The coagulation / denaturalisation of three dimensional molecules must render them unrecognizable to this intelligent evolution, that is being those creatures. What is it to do about those unrecognizable items, when most of them are like that? Keep all of them out and risk starvation? Let all of them in and drown in toxic crap? Often it does not even have a choice. These objects will simply slip in and cause whatever.

Also, our digestive tract is optimized for fruits of (mixed, not average) caloric density and more tender leafy greens, than you would find or be happy to pay for in an organic grocery store. Mothermilk contains mammal proteins and mammal fats, fruit and greens contain fats too but also starches, this is why we can also digest and thrive on similar, modest, amounts of starches from other plants, like tubers, unless they contain toxic substances, which many do for their protection. It’s why we have digestive enzymes and acids and a taste for all of these macronutrients and animal proteins, from milk over scawny insects to very tender animal bodies, such as eggs or small water life - but we do not have the acid to kill off bacteria and parasites in raw animal products, nor do we have enzymes (or appropriate immune reactions) to deal with randomly dentured/cooked proteins or anti-oxidants to deal with extremely oxidized processed fats. We can eat nuts occasionally, but larger quantities of them will not nourish us properly and some if not all are slightly toxic in a raw state - we can deal with many of these toxins of those plants, that are not our fruit, in moderation only. Some are even beneficial in moderation. It’s all about the raw and nontoxic qualities, the right measurements and combinations, not only in a single meal or eating session, but in in your whole digestive tract and in the case of “animal products”, like the mother-milk of your own species, there is a lot of hormonal and genetic programming going on, that will affect us - but milk of other species will affect us differently. Mooo! You can’t ever stupidly judge whole fruit groups. For instance every grain or pseudo grain is different and any preparation of it too. And some foods require the body to form more protective mucus than others, but the pretense of mucus does still not allow for a generalized judgement about how toxic that protective (toxin binding) mucus layer ends up being later on. With mucus it is also a matter of timing and moderation. It comes with nuts and seeds and grains and dairy and meat and if you eat those foods daily, it accumulates and becomes like a dirty pond for dangerous bacteria. Being “frugivore” would not even imply that you could eat all fruit. Some fruit are toxic. Some fruit have mildly aggressive enzymes, such as zucchini. Those are also mucus forming. Also mucus can only bind / protect you against so much toxins. You just have to understand that we mainly thrive on vitamins, anti-oxidants and soluble fibers, such as those of fruit and tender leafy greens - so these foods must always be your first choice and if you can afford them in great variety and quality, they can suffice. You also mainly thrive on sugars (combined with a certain amount of minerals required for their metabolism). Also proteins and fats, but only in strong moderation. So these foods can not ideally replace fruit as main energy staple, in the case of a fruit shortage. If you have to substitute fruits, chose starchy vegetable, tubers and carefully selected and prepared grains and think of them as second choice. Nuts and seeds are best be thought of as medicinal supplementation. And most importantly sugars and overt fats, such as nuts, must be eaten in isolation from each other, as the body can not efficiently metabolize high quantities of both at the same time. This simple and physiologically almost ‘obvious’ fact ( but a never understood fact … i mean, just think for a bit about how blood and liver and muscles work) is the root of that insane low-carb mentality. People don’t even realize that a diet, that has 30% of calories coming from fat, is already a HIGH fat diet, wherein most meals are improperly combined, which leads to the blood sugar issues, that everyone is familiar with - due to that fat in the blood. They think this is a low fat diet. And then they think the carbs must be the fault in this diet. Nonsense.

We must eat when hungry and not for entertainment. Metabolism can’t be forced. Stuffing goes south. We can deal with moderate amounts of harsh fibers, but must avoid constipation, pressure, stretching of intestines. Most people suffer from dangerous stretching and blow outs in their colon. This leads to pain, intoxication, inflammation, rotting, cancer.

This paragraphs comes without much proof, because i am not your research servant and because my point is to introduce you to differentiation, that you need, to know what you are looking for, to ask the right questions. Many false ideas about nutrition are because people can’t think outside of the box and are locked into false assumptions and questions, such as, famously, that we must be either grain or meat eaters (both foods that are almost equally hurting in the long run and if eaten exclusively). A big source of confusion is also the detox crisis. The better you treat your body, the more you become aware of hopefully temporary symptoms from past sins. All that coagulated crap is sitting deep inside of your colon and your whole lymph system.

So what was that about intellectual and spiritual implications of being a monkey?

The main intellectual implication is a full acknowledgement of the principles of evolution. You transcend and include your roots and depend on the health of your included roots, forever. You don’t just leave something behind and become something else, with entirely different needs. We are not even as good at hiding this fact as butterflies. The immense importance of evolutionary thinking is explored by Ken Wilber's Integral Theory or by Spiral dynamics and way too big for this article.

A more specific, psychoanalytic implication is that monkeys have a tool building intelligence. Our thinking is driven my motivation and is thus narrowed down into narratives of expectation. This is a great weakness, we must acknowledge and deal with carefully.

Also, many argue that humans tend to personify reality. It is thought to be the reason for religions. Some mistake it to be childish magical thinking, which is underestimating the phenomenon greatly. Sure enough, childish magical thinking was the developmental root of what this really is, but it plays a critical part in our whole intelligence, for all times to come. It is what Carl Jung describes as introverted Intuition. It is a comprehension of processes that is specialized on understanding the intentions of living creatures or the intrinsic directions of organic entities, meaning organic or subjective processes such as satiation, purging, procreating, dreaming, flirting. It is not exactly subjective, but generally and originally oriented towards understanding and expressing our intrinsic subjective interests. It is not our only comprehension of processes. There is also what Carl Jung calls extroverted Intuition. It is an understanding that tries to comprehend the full situation, which also includes inanimate things, as such. Monkeys must know how to jump from tree to tree, they understand how trees are affected by wind and are in this way objective. But it is still, usually unbeknownst to the observer, somehow relative to his intention behind the interaction with these objective processes. It is not exactly objective, but generally oriented towards the object, it is our capability to learn to adapt to all kinds of circumstances. These two intuitions can never become separated from each other entirely and yet every human, most likely unlike monkeys, has a strong preference for one over the other, often to the unhealthy point of denying the other. So back to monkeys. They don’t have this differentiation yet, which has such a huge influence on how humans understand and misunderstand and deny reality, to the point of destroying their bodies, their relationships, their environment. I will leave just you with this eye opener. Now see for yourself you much influence these two forms of intelligence have on absolutely everything.

More on the spiritual implications though. One of the insane consequences of how our comprehension of process, that means of life in general, but also of biology in particular, has become differentiated into these two seemingly contradictory perspectives or cognitive /neurological faculties, without being properly recognized as being only SUBJECTIVELY different (meaning that the world of cause and effect is objectively undivided) and without being integrated again, is that we are stuck with many brands of ridiculous dualities. The materialistic, capitalistic, achievement oriented world of science isn’t always much less insane than the religious, god fearing, immortality assuming, body denying spirituality, but mainly just differently insane. (I am fully aware of stages and still say this, for reasons!)

Now thinking of monkeys can not teach you how to properly differentiate and integrate your Intelligence of processes. But the human, as we know him, has become a symbol of division and our western philosophy has a tradition of misunderstanding our developmental journey as being the maximization and perfection of this division, the infinite stretching of the gap, between the supposedly purely bodily animal and the supposedly more and more purely spiritual human, which must snap terribly when we die. The monkey, that you stare at in a zoo, may therefore be a symbol of being pure body to you.

But meeting that monkey inside of you forces you to acknowledge the fact, that the whole human world, the world that exists in our understanding, human cognition, consisting of the four functional domains (process,form,manipulation,motivation), was made up, subjectively only, but that dream was objectively made by this evolution of the central nervous system, in which body and spirit are obviously the same.

"Only when spirit and matter come together, consciousness is born." [...] "Fluids come together and the ‘I Am’ appear. " Nisargadatta.

You are still a monkey. In that sense you can not have fallen out of Eden. You are just bringing your subjective dreams of division into it. You miss the mark. The monkey is your true nature. The monkey does not realize what he is. You do not yet realize what you are. But you CAN realize, that you are that monkey and what that monkey really is. Life, Involution and Evolution, Spirit and Soul, all one, dancing with death.

#thoughts

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